This church dates back to the C5th, but has been damaged and rebuilt many times over its history. Before the current civil war, it was last rebuilt in the 1990s having sustained damage in the 1982 offensive by the Syrian government against the Muslim Brotherhood in the city. Elements of the earliest structure do survive and it is particularly interesting for being a transverse-nave church, a type more usually found in the Tur Abdin region of Turkey.
Although Hama, then known as Epiphania, was an important Christian centre in late antiquity, more recently it had one of the smallest Christian communities in a major city. For that reason this entry is linked to nearby Homs, rather than treating Hama as a separate collection of data.
Creator
Emma Loosley
Date of Visit
May 1997
Contributor
Emma Loosley
Rights
Metadata and all media released under Creative Commons unless otherwise indicated
Type
Architecture
Tags
Architecture, C20th, C5th, Church, Hama, Syria, The Entrance of the Theotokos in the Temple, Transverse nave, Tur Abdin, Turkey
Collection
Citation
Emma Loosley, “The Church of the Entrance of the Theotokos in the Temple, Hama,” Architecture and Asceticism, accessed December 22, 2024, https://architectureandasceticism.exeter.ac.uk/items/show/247.