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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
The early church architecture of Syria remains comparatively little known in western academic circles, yet there is no area of the early Christian world where the remains of so many churches of different types have been preserved. The main purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to this architecture; it also offers bibliography for those who may feel moved to find out more. Within Syria itself, there were marked regional variations which allow the area to be divided into three districts on the basis of geography, architectural style and building materials. The first of these to be treated here is northern Syria, essentially the late Roman provinces of Syria I and Syria II with their capitals at Apamea and Antioch. The paper then turns to southern Syria, that is most of the province of Arabia with its capital at Bostra, before moving to the final area, comprising Jordan, the southern part of Provincia Arabia and the eastern, transjordanian half of Palestine III.
1 I shall use the term Syria to include the modern Syrian Arab Republic, the Kingdom of Jordan, and the area of Antioch (the Sanjak of Alexandretta, ceded by the French to Turkey in 1939).
2 See Bowersock, G. W., Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 de Vogüé, Marquis M., Syrie centrale, architecture civile et religieuse du 1er au Vlle siècle, 2 vols (Paris, 1865-77).Google Scholar
4 Butler, H. C., Publications of an American Expedition to Syria in 1899-1900. (New York and London, 1903)Google Scholar. The material on the churches was collected in his Early Churches in Syria, Fourth to Seventh Centuries, ed. E. Baldwin Smith (Princeton, NJ, 1929).
5 Butler, H. C. et al., Syria. Publications of the Princeton Archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904-5 and 1909, 4 vols in 9 (Leiden, 1907-49).Google Scholar
6 Tchalenko, G., Villages antiques de la Syrie du nord, 3 vols (Paris, 1953-8).Google Scholar
7 Lassus, J., Sanctuaires chrétiens de Syrie (Paris, 1947).Google Scholar
8 Crowfoot, J. W., The churches’, in C. H. Kraeling, ed., Gerasa, City of the Decapolis (New Haven, CT, 1938), pp. 171–262.Google Scholar
9 For good discussions of recent work with bibliographies see Pena, I., The Christian Art of Byzantine Syria (London, 1996)Google Scholar, and M. Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, American Center of Oriental Research Publications, 1 (Amman, 1993).
10 See Fig. 1 for the plan of Bostra cathedral, the best preserved of these sites. On these churches, see the important article by Eugene Kleinbauer, W., ‘The origin and functions of the aisled tetraconch churches in Syria and Northern Mesopotamia’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 27 (1973). pp. 91–114.Google Scholar
11 On the Great Church, Downey, G., A History of Antioch in Syria (Princeton, NJ, 1961), pp. 242–50, 568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 For the environment and general archaeology of this area, see Tate, G., Les Campagnes de la Syrie du nord (Paris, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the churches see Lassus, Sanctuaires, and G. Tchalenko and E. Baccache, Églises de village de la Syrie du nord, 2 vols (Paris, 1979-80).
13 See the list in Naccache, Alice, Le Décor des églises de villages d’Antiochene, 2 vols (Paris, 1992), 1, pp. 24–5.Google Scholar
14 Tchalenko, Églises, pp. 17-23.
15 Butler, Early Churches, pp. 62-4.
16 Tchalenko, Églises, pp. 52-60.
17 Note also the new decorative elements thought to have been introduced by the priestmason Markianos Kyris (fl. 390-420): see Naccache, Décor, 1, pp. 262-3.
18 For the origin of the basilica form in northern Syria, see Lassus, Sanctuaires, pp. 54-6.
19 See Naccache, Décor, 1, p. 23, where she suggests that the basilica of Julianos at Brad (399-402) is the earliest church with an important west door: see the plan in Lassus, Sanctuaires, fig. 77 (p. 169). For a fuller discussion of doors, ibid., pp. 186-94.
20 On these, Biscop, J.-L. and Sodini, J.-P., ‘Qal’at Sem’an et les chevets à colonnes de Syrie du nord’, Syria, 61 (1984), pp. 267–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 On Qalb Lozeh, Butler, Early Churches, pp. 71-3; Tchalenko, Églises, pp. 256-62.
22 The architectural stone carving is fully discussed in Naccache, Décor, passim.
23 Pena, Christian Art, pp. 83-4.
24 Astonishingly, there is no monograph dedicated to the architecture of the church and its ancillary structures. The main stages of development are clearly described in Tchalenko, Villages, 1, pp. 223-77, 2, pis lxxi-lxxix.
25 Quoted in Pena, Christian Art, p. 137.
26 Butler, Early Churches, pp. 97-8.
27 Apart from discussions in Lassus, Sanctuaires, there is no general account of the ecclesiastical architecture of this important region.
28 For the best recent account of the archaeology of the city, see M. Sartre, Bostra: des origines à l’Islam (Paris, 1985). The cathedral is discussed on pp. 122-6.
29 Ibid., pp. 120-2.
30 Lassus, Sanctuaires, pp. 25-8. For the late antique town of Umm al-Jimal see de Vries, B., ed., Umm al-Jimal: a Frontier Towm and its Landscape in Northern Jordan, vol. 1: Fieldwork, 1972-1981, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Supplementary Series, 26 (Portsmouth, RI, 1998).Google Scholar
31 Butler, Early Churches, p. 122; Lassus, Sanctuaires, p. 142. The dedicatory inscription is given in full in ibid., p. 140.
32 For the churches of Jordan in general, Schick, R., The Christian Communities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule (Princeton, NJ, 1995).Google Scholar
33 See Crowfoot, ‘Churches’, for a thorough discussion of these monuments.
34 On which see Donner, H., The Mosaic Map of Madaba (Kampen, 1992).Google Scholar
35 For these see the comprehensive survey in Piccirillo, Mosaics, passim.
36 Fiema, Z. T., Schick, R., and ‘Amr, K., ‘The Petra church project: interim report, 1992-1994’, in The Roman and Byzantine Near East: Some Recent Archaeological Research, Journal of Roman Archaeology, Supplementary Series, 14 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1995), pp. 293–303.Google Scholar
37 For a most illuminating view of the present state of the eastern churches and their monuments see Dalrymple, W., From the Holy Mountain (London, 1997).Google Scholar
38 On this see Schick, , Christian Communities, pp. 112–38.Google Scholar
