Download PDF | (Oxford Studies in Byzantium) Elif Keser Kayaalp - Church Architecture of Late Antique Northern Mesopotamia-Oxford University Press (2021).
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Acknowledgements
This book stems from my doctoral thesis (submitted to Oxford University in 2009) and I am extremely grateful to my supervisor Marlia Mango for her generosity which she displayed in many different and wonderful ways. I am much obliged to Linda Wheatley-Irving, who has been an unfading support throughout the research and the preparation of this book. She helped me access many sources, and read the whole book with patience. I received great help and encouragement from David Taylor whom I cannot thank enough. I am grateful to my two examiners, Bryan Ward-Perkins and Jim Crow for providing invaluable feedback and suggestions.
I am indebted to Elizabeth Jeffreys for encouraging me to return to the idea of turning my thesis into a book. I am much obliged to Sebastian Brock and Andrew Palmer who replied to my many questions. Andrew was also so kind to read my chapter on Tur “Abdin. The three anonymous reviewers improved the text with their comments and suggestions. I wish Judith McKenzie, Fergus Millar, and Cyril Mango could see this book published. They read parts of my work when I was writing my thesis, and provided vital feedback. I remember them with great appreciation.
I am grateful to Jale Erzen, Suna Giiven, and Belgin Turan-Ozkaya, from the Program of History of Architecture at Middle East Technical University, who supported my research in the first place. Without a Clarendon Scholarship, I could not have gone to Oxford. Exeter College and later Wolfson College were home to me and my husband. Grants from Exeter College and the Meyerstein, Craven, Hanna Dolabani, and Ghazarian Funds made my three seasons of fieldwork between 2005 and 2007 feasible. The post-doctoral fellowships from the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), the Research Centre for Anatolian Civilisation of Ko¢ University (ANAMED), and the Turkish Cultural Foundation made further research possible.
Between 2011 and 2015, I worked at Mardin Artuklu University, which gave me the opportunity to revisit some sites. Thanks to the Humboldt Fellowship that I received in 2015, I could rewrite some parts of the thesis. I completed the book during the lockdown due to the pandemic, when for me, the material was more accessible than before due to the cooperation of academics. I am grateful to all colleagues who sent publications and replied to my questions. It is unfortunately not possible to list all the names.
I thank the Royal Geographical Society, which holds the original diaries of Gertrude Bell, for granting permission to reproduce some of her plans; to the Max von Oppenheim Stiftung and the Gertrude Bell Archive for providing high resolution images and giving permission to use them. In 2019, I took part in a project of the KMKD (Kiiltiirel Mirast Koruma Dernegi/Association for the Protection of Cultural Heritage) to document the Syriac heritage at risk in Tur “‘Abdin with the permission of the Ministry of Culture of Turkey.
I am much obliged to the KMKD for the opportunity to go back to beautiful Tur “Abdin and for granting me permission to use their drone photographs. I also thank Gina Coulthard, Petra Sijpestein, Alexander Sterkens, Alican Kutlay, and Serra Durugontil for their permissions to include some parts from my previously published material.
I am indebted to Nihat Erdogan, the previous director of the Mardin Museum, for providing information about their excavations, and for his permission to reproduce some images here. I extend my appreciation to Martine Assénat, Ayta¢ Coskun, Mehmet Onal, Sinan Kaplan, and Volkan Baglayici for kindly sending me their photographs and giving permission to use them. Mihayel Akyiiz deserves a special thanks for the photograph in the cover. I am obliged to Anthony Comfort for making the three maps of the book with me. I am grateful to the General Directorate of Monuments and Museums of Turkey for granting me permission to work in the region and its museums, and to use the photographs taken during my fieldwork.
Numerous people helped me during my fieldwork. I am especially indebted to Nevin Soyukaya, Cihat Kirkciioglu, Bahattin Celik, the late Hasan Idikurt, Ibrahim Tabak, Hamit Kaya, Cesur Abak, Giilten Kavak, Liitfi Kavak, Fatos Kavak and Sezgin Kavak. My late uncle Alaeddin Kavak showed great interest in my research and helped in any way he could. The support of the Syrian Orthodox community for my project has made me proud and happy. I am much obliged to Mor Timotheos Samuel Aktas (Bishop of Tur “Abdin), Mor Philoxenos Saliba Ozmen (Bishop of Mardin), Gabriel Akyiiz (Priest of Kirklar Church in Mardin), Gabriel Rabo, Isa Biiyiik, Habib Aydin, Saliba Bityiik, Kuryakos Ergiin, Danyel Cepe, Metin Ezilmez, Kuryakos Acar, Yusuf Sezer, Turgut Alaca, and Ozcan Geer for their help.
My deepest thanks also go to Adriene Baron Tacla, Zeynep Yiirekli Gérkay, Kutalmis Gorkay, Natalija Ristovska, Marina Bazzani, Lukas Amadeus Schachner, Yvonne Petrina, Judith Pffeifer, Evrim Binbas, Efthymios Rizos, Elizabeth Harrison, Priscilla Lange, Nurdan Atalay, Aysegiil Baykan, Kutlu Akalin, Giinder Varinlioglu, Murat Kiiciik, Sena Kayasii, Sebnem Sencerman, Gdkce Biiyikmete, Gil Ozatesler Ulkiican, Betiil Teoman, and Ozlem Oztopcu, who helped me over the years in many different ways for the completion of this book. A special thanks to Dirk Krausmiiller for reading my texts patiently over the years, including this book when it was a draft.
Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Remziye and Uzeyir Keser. It was after seeing some photographs of Mor Yuhannon in Qelleth that my mum took when she was visiting Savur, hometown of my grandfather, that I became interested in the Syrian Orthodox churches. That was when I started studying architecture. Later that year, I went to Yoldath Aloho in Diyarbakir with my Hacianne, Atiye Kavak, to whom, I believe, I owe my enthusiasm and love for this subject. I am grateful to my dear brother Burak Keser who has been my pillar of support, and to my niece Yasemin who brings lots of joy to my life. My husband, Aren Leon Kayaalp, helped me at all stages of this book, from driving me around between villages to editing the photographs. I dedicate this book to him with love and gratitude.
Introduction
When we think of the Late Antique churches and monasteries of Northern Mesopotamia, we probably visualize a few Syrian Orthodox monasteries near Mardin. This book stems partly from the need to widen this image by bringing together the scattered material, in the form of architecture, epigraphy, hagiography, and historical sources.’
It hopes to show that the architecture of Late Antique churches and monasteries of the region constitute important evidence for the Byzantine architecture in the remote parts of the Empire that would compare with other regions and that it is as equally important as other regional architectures like Cilician or Cappodocian. It draws attention to the aspects of church architecture ranging from macro to micro, and sometimes from tangible to intangible, focusing on settlements, variety of plan types, the significant continuity of the classical tradition in the architectural decoration, the diversity of the building techniques, patrons, imperial motivations, and stories that claim and make places.
The period covered in this book is between the fourth and eighth centuries, which spans the last centuries of Byzantine and the first one and a half centuries of Arab rule.? The book hopes to offer a regional contribution to the study of the transformation that the Byzantine Empire underwent in the Late Antique period. It aspires to follow the changes in the nature of the church-building activities and church architecture with the Arab conquest. It also aims to contribute to Syriac studies by showing the potential for further research, especially in terms of epigraphy and pointing out some architectural features that are unique to the churches of the Syrian Orthodox to discuss if they served as identity markers. It highlights interactions in this multi-ethnic and multilingual region that shaped the landscape.
Setting geographical limits for architectural studies may prove difficult since there are often no clear-cut boundaries between architectural styles and techniques. However, Northern Mesopotamia provides evidence that makes it easy to talk about it as an entity. Geographically, the term “Northern Mesopotamia’ in this book refers to the region bounded by the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the modern Syria-Turkey border (Fig. 1.1);? a region that is known today mostly for the conflicts that have been going on for decades.*
The region is composed mostly of plains (Harran, Surug, Ceylanpinar, and Birecik). Tur “Abdin and the Tektek Mountains, which will often be referred to, are the two low plateaux in the region. The highest geographical feature is a volcanic mountain called Karacadag, rising in the middle of the region. Mardin Daglar1 (mountains) compose the second highest geographical feature. The main cities included in this study are Nisibis (Nusaybin), Edessa (Sanliurfa), Amida (Diyarbakir), Anastasiopolis (Dara/Oguz), Constantia (Viransehir), and Martyropolis (Silvan) (Figs. 1.2 and 1.3). While there will be mentions of Batnae (Suruc?) and Carrhae (Harran), I shall not dedicate separate chapters to them.
These were not the only cities in the region. We know the names of more cities from the lists of the synods, which are by no means complete.* This geographical region does not correspond to one single Byzantine province in the fourth or sixth centuries but covers parts of Mesopotamia, Osrhoene, Armenia IV, and the Sasanian province of Bet “Arabaye.
The church in the title of the book refers to religious buildings, including also monasteries. As is the case with most of Eastern Medieval Architecture, the best surviving material evidence comes from the churches and monasteries of the region. As Robert Ousterhout argued ‘...the religious buildings represent the concerns that were most important to the society that built them. They have survived for a reason’ and ‘a church is never only a church’.
They ‘may stand as a manifestation of piety and the spiritual aspirations of its age, and we would be remiss not to recognize it as such. But it is also a social construct, an emblem of power, prestige, and identity; it represents the combined efforts of artisans of varying backgrounds and social statuses; it is the product of intention, a social contract orchestrated within a hierarchy of command, technical knowledge, and labor.’° As we shall see, this is even more true for the contested and multicultural lands of Mesopotamia.
Today even in the most run-down villages of the region that I shall deal with, one can find parts of the churches that are still standing. While doing a formal analysis of the churches, the book will also pay attention to some aesthetic solutions to design problems, functional and liturgical needs, and symbolism.’ Although my focus will be mostly on the churches, I will mention the other monuments when necessary in an attempt to provide a more complete view of the region.
Below I shall provide a background that shows that this landscape is prominent, with many different dynamics at work, which inevitably had an impact on the physical spaces. The situation near the border, wars, persecutions within the Empire, the efforts of the Empire to unite the Church, rival claims as to which was the oldest and true faith, Arab conquests, and geography are the main factors that had an impact on the cities, villages, churches, and monasteries of this region. The complicated history of the region cannot be dealt with in more detail here but when dealing with individual cities and buildings, I shall provide more historical data, by trying to see what hagiographies, chronicles, and poems can offer® to an understanding of the church buildings.
The book focuses first on the individual cities and their surroundings. As the surroundings of the cities cannot be thought of in isolation from the city, this approach has been preferred to dividing the discussion into cities and countryside or rural. However, Tur “Abdin is discussed separately as it has a considerable number of standing buildings and it seems to have developed an architectural vocabulary of its own, although connected in ways both to the architecture in the cities and countryside elsewhere in the region.
In the Epilogue, a chronological approach has been taken to follow what has changed after the Arab conquest. In the Epilogue, the material is further contextualized under the titles of church plans, building materials and techniques, decoration, builders and patrons, the language of inscriptions, denomination of churches, and communal identity.
1.1 Northern Mesopotamia as a Frontier Region
The foremost defining characteristic of Northern Mesopotamia is probably its status as a frontier region throughout the Roman period and Late Antiquity.” As a borderland and stage for continuous warfare between the Romans and Persians (Byzantines and Sasanians), the region has long attracted the attention of students of Late Antique political and military history.'° The wars of the fourth century reshaped the borders between the two powers.
With the treaty signed by the emperor Jovian in 363, the Roman Empire lost, amongst other places, the important city of Nisibis. Following a period of peace in the fifth century, war broke out again in 502 and continued until 505. During that war, the easy access of Persians to the cities of the region led to the main fortification projects in the region. There followed a period of peace and, consequently, building activity in the region until 528, when another war broke out, which lasted until 531. In 532, the Treaty of Eternal Peace was agreed.
It lasted only seven years. From 540, war continued on and off until 562, when another peace agreement was made, and this time it lasted a decade. In 573, Dara fell to the Persians. In 591, the Byzantines reconquered the territories lost to the Persians, after helping Khusrow II to return to the Persian throne. However, this period of co-operation did not last long, and in the years, following Phocas’s usurpation in 602, Northern Mesopotamia again fell to the Persians. It remained under their rule until the Emperor Heraclius’s reconquest in 623. In 639/640, Arabs conquered the region.””
The Tigris was the most prominent geographical boundary in this borderland; hence, when Andrew Palmer talks about Tur “Abdin, he calls it ‘the Tigris frontier’. Palmer discusses at length the frontier in relation to Tur ‘Abdin, as a region projecting towards Persian lands.’? Tur “Abdin, a high limestone plateau, provided a natural geographic boundary between the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires. In addition, it had many fortresses.** In the eighth century, the Arab writer Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub, although not a contemporary, provided a description of the frontier which appeared to depend remarkably on the geographical features of the region:
Before Islam, Mesopotamia belonged in part to the Romans and in part to Persia, each people keeping in its possessions a body of troops and administrators. Ra’s al-“Ayn [Reshaina] and the territory beyond it as far as the Euphrates belonged to the Romans; Nisibis and the territory beyond it as far as the Tigris belonged to the Persians. The plain of Mardin and of Dara as far as Sinjar [Mount Singara] and the desert was Persian; the mountains of Mardin, Dara and Tur ‘Abdin were Roman. The frontier between the two peoples was marked by the fort named Sarja [Sargathon], between Dara and Nisibis."*
Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub identifies the border region first and foremost by the main cities—Resh‘ayna’® and Nisibis—and, only secondly, does he mention the rivers and the juxtaposition of plains and mountains. In the last sentence, he emphasizes the role of the fort of Sargathon. Accordingly, this frontier was formed by fortified cities, natural barriers, and forts.
While studying frontiers today, the emphasis is on ‘a network of roads’ and ‘a distribution of forts and other fortified sites along or across natural frontiers’.‘° Although maps show the border as a line, one must imagine it as a fluid zone. The accounts of Procopius have led some scholars to suggest that Rhabdion Castle, known also as the Castle of Tur “Abdin (later Qalat Hatem Tay), and the land around it was a piece of Roman land in Persian territory.’” These may illustrate how poorly defined the border was."®
The fortifications defining this zone can be best pictured by following Procopius’s list of the forts that Justinian built or rebuilt in an area stretching between Dara and Amida: namely Cephas, Sauras, Margdis, Lournés, Idriphthon, Atachas, Siphrius, Rhipalthas, Banasymeoén, Sinas, Rhasios, and Dabanas, and ‘some others which have been there from ancient times’. Some of these forts have been identified. Cephas is modern Hasankeyf (which means Castle of the Rock in Syriac) and was in fact built by Constantine II together with Rhabdion. Rhipalthas is thought to be 30 kilometres west of Hasankeyf, and Sauras is modern Savur, which has a substantial fort. Margdis is the modern city of Mardin, Rabat is associated with Siphrius and Banasymeon with Qartmin or Mor Gabriel monastery.
Idriphthon has been identified with Hisarkaya, located north of Savur.”° There are other fortresses in the region that stand out as substantial settlements with great potential for archaeology. For example, Sercehan, identified as Sargathon, located a few kilometres east of Nisibis, can be considered as a standard quadriburgium type of fort.?’ Kale-i Zerzevan is a substantial settlement with a church, probably for use by soldiers and their families only, and is identified as Samachi.” Hisarkaya and Kale-i Zerzevan are fortified hilltop settlements similar to those in the Balkans.”
1.2 Christological Debates
The Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) had a great impact on the social and cultural formation of the region. The ‘Church of the East’ did not accept the Council of Ephesus™* and the Syrian Orthodox Church, together with other Oriental Orthodox Churches, did not concur with the Council of Chalcedon, which agreed that Christ was to be acknowledged as existing in two natures. A large number of Christians in a broad region, mainly those who spoke Syriac, rejected this Christological formula. The Christians who rejected Chalcedon came to be known as Monophysites, but there is now a preference for the term ‘Miaphysites’.”°
Although at the beginning, the bishoprics of the cities of Mesopotamia were alternating between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian bishops, the persecutions of the non-Chalcedonians eventually prepared the ground for the development of a separate Church hierarchy. In the formation of the Syrian Orthodox Church hierarchy, John (d. 538), the exiled bishop of Tella/Constantia, played an important role. He began to ordain deacons and priests so that the nonChalcedonians did not have to receive their Eucharist from a Chalcedonian clergy.
The network he created was seen by the contemporaries as a distinguished community, a politeia. According to Andrade, the biographers of John perceived the members of John’s politeia as determined ‘by faith and ascetic behaviour, not ethnicity, culture, or native region, and it had the potential to transcend the authority of the imperial institutions that sanctioned persecution and endorsed religious impiety’ and thus they saw John as someone exposing the ‘the artificiality of the border located between Nisibis and Dara, which only existed through administrative logistics and the rigorous implementation of military force’.”°
A few decades later, Jacob Baradaeus (d. 578) from Tella, played an important role in the survival of the Syrian Orthodox church. After Baradaeus, the church was called by some ‘Jacobite’. This term is considered hostile as it pictures him as the founder of the Church. Jacob was sent to Constantinople in 527/8 to look after the Miaphysites there. Justinian’s wife Theodora gave the Palace of Hormisdas to their use. With the help of Theodora, he was consecrated in Constantinople as the bishop of Edessa to look after the non-Chalcedonian communities.
He ordained many bishops, priests, and deacons. He travelled in disguise, which is the reason for his name burd‘oyo ‘dressed in saddle-cloth’. Sebastian Brock says he should be seen as someone who was providing the pastoral needs of the Miaphysite community all over the Near East.’” After Justinian, the negotiations between these Christological positions continued. The situation of the Syrian Orthodox depended on the attitudes of the emperors.”* The formation of this new hierarchy had an impact, not only on the landscape of the rural parts of the region, but also in the cities, as I shall discuss below.
1.3 After the Arab Conquest
This book’s chronology extends to the period after the Arab conquest. By 639/640, all of Mesopotamia was under Arab rule.”? With the conquest of the region, the frontier shifted to the west of the Taurus Range.*° Although limited in geographical extent, the survey of Kurbanhdyiik, which is located in the western part of the region we study, pictures a peak of settlements in the sixth century, then a temporary drop in the seventh and then a rise again in the eighth century.*’
Surveys in the Middle Euphrates region between Deir ez-Zor and Abu Kamal,” and the Balikh Valley** also show expansion of settlements in the Umayyad and Abbasid periods.** In the Limestone Massif of Syria, which has many common properties, especially with Tur “Abdin, villages are recorded to have lasted to the ninth and tenth centuries.** There was notable agricultural development in these areas in that period. Although there has not been a similar systematic survey in the Northern Mesopotamia, the textual, architectural, and epigraphic evidence may suggest a similar image.*°
The picture we have for the situation of the region after the conquest comes from Syriac sources. As Penn argues, there was not a unified Syriac view of Islam. Sources range ‘from overtly antagonistic to downright friendly’, making any generalization about Christian-Muslim relations reductionist.*” Although it is true that Islamic conquests resulted with a cultural break, Humphreys pointed out that ‘we should not imagine that the churches of the East were isolated by the Islamic conquests; we might rather argue that Constantinople and Rome were now cut off from the intellectual and devotional energy that these centres had provided’.**
Besides their impressive intellectual productivity, especially in the Syriac language, Christian communities also left eminent architectural remains under early Islam. Although architectural evidence from Syria and Palestine has usually been the focus of attention, Christian building in the early Islamic period stretched from Iraq and the Persian Gulf to Egypt and Armenia. In Tur “Abdin, we see the seeds of a consistent architectural vocabulary in that period.”
Until “Abd al-Malik (d. 705), the Umayyads seem to be not interested in converting the Christians. They needed the poll tax (jizyah) that they imposed on the Christians. Although Christians thought this was a phase, by the early eighth century, they seemed to understand that Arab rule would not end soon. The questions and answers of Jacob, the miaphysite Bishop of Edessa (d. 708), give interesting insights into the reactions of the Christians to this new religion.*° After the Abbasid revolution in 750, conversion to Islam became more prevalent. However, for this period as well there are different accounts, as some thought Abbasid caliphs valued the Christians more highly than the Umayyads. However, it should be noted that the situation of the East and West Syrians probably differed.**
To determine the approach to church building after the conquest is equally difficult. It has been argued that, the main document concerning the prohibition of church- building, the Pact of ‘Umar, dates later than the mid-seventh century.” In the process of the production of the Pact of ‘Umar, various versions were composed reflecting different positions on the subject, some being more tolerant towards Christians. These versions give interesting insights into the Muslims’ approach towards church building.
According to the version of al-Shafi‘i (d. 820), in a city which has a specific peace agreement or in which dhimmis live separately, the building of churches was acceptable. Levy-Rubin quotes Muhammad b. al-Hasan al-Shaybani (d. 805) who writes that the dhimmis are allowed to keep their prayer-houses or rebuild them: ‘If the Muslims establish a city in that place, they should tear down the synagogues and churches there, but the dhimmis should be allowed to build similar ones outside the city.’ This seems the only mention of the countryside in those texts. Their focus is almost exclusively on cities and except for al-Shafi''s version, all of them call for a ban on building new churches.
Robinson points out that amongst the Christians, the discussion was more about who had authority over the churches once built, East or West Syrians.** Around Mosul, it was clearly the East Syrians, but Nisibis, for example, was a contested place. The Life of Simeon of the Olives (d. 734), bishop of Harran, illustrates this notion quite well. Its interpolation also shows the changing attitudes of the Muslims towards church building.*’
The Life of Theodotus of Amida (d. 698) describes Christian authorities in charge of Samosata, Tur “Abdin, Maypherqat, and Dara. He was dragged to a mosque in Amida because of being accused to be a friend of Byzantines. His Life also tells the visit of the tax-collector who came to collect money from the monastic community.** Based mainly on these accounts, Robinson argued that there was a loose, taxation-based provincial administration.
Local elites were not much affected, and the power of some urban Christian notables might have increased.*” As in Syria, Muslims were likely more concerned to control building activity in the cities, probably because they primarily settled there,** but were less engaged or more tolerant in the countryside. Thus, this situation may have made the church building/rebuilding activities in the region, which we shall discuss in Section 4.2, possible.
The Chronicle of Zuqnin (concerning events until 775) extends to the period after the Abbasid revolution. The chronicle’s accounts of the first years after the Abbasid revolution include the destruction of monasteries in the region.” However, for the mid-eighth century, the chronicle indicates the prosperity of the Christians by saying that the land was productive and shrines began to be built and churches renovated. Although the chronicle also mentions that the caliph issued an order to register the properties of churches and monasteries in 768/769, in general, it does not paint a dark picture of oppression.
The account of the Caliph’s visit to the region supports a picture of a flourishing province until 769. Seeing the prosperity of the region, ‘Instead of thanking him for this state, the caliph, who is described as a man who sets his mind more toward the sword than toward peace, roared over Abbas saying “Where is it that you said that the Jazira was in ruins?” Then he took away his assets and treated him with all kinds of evils.’ The caliph appointed agents to take a census of all the people for a poll tax and ‘from here misfortunes began’.°? The confusing accounts in the Chronicle of Zuqnin is probably due to the involvement of multiple authors in the writing of this chronicle.**
While there were also apocalyptic accounts of the conquest and its aftermath, some West Syrian sources saw the Islamic conquest as a punishment for Byzantine ecclesiastical policy and expressed a sense of relief. The Life of Theodotus (d. 698) tell us that some Syrian Orthodox living by the border had to move to Byzantine territories because of food shortage in the region under the Arabs and those refugees were persecuted by the Byzantines to make them change their faith. Theodotus met the Byzantine authorities and made them promise they will not put Syrian Orthodox under pressure.*”
The confusing statements regarding the situation of the Christians under Islam continued also in Dionysius of Tel-Mahre who wrote in the second half of the ninth century (d. 846).°* Humphreys suggested that Dionysius wants his readers to see Islamic rule as being ‘simultaneously a gift of Divine Providence and a test and a temptation for the faithful’.** Despite providing interesting accounts about building churches, literary sources fail to communicate the extent of building and patronage, the changing nature of villages and monasteries, and architectural features. Under the individual headings of cities in Chapter 2 and in Chapter 3, Tur “Abdin, I shall refer to church building/rebuilding under the Arabs in more detail.
1.4 Research on the Region
The region has been a focus of attention for political history as a result of being a frontier, for church histories because of the Christological discussions, and for linguistic studies due to literary production in Syriac. The physical remains have received comparatively little attention. The early accounts of the region are by western travellers and military officers of the early twentieth century, whose accounts now provide important information, especially for the lost buildings.** The region was mapped during that period.*° Greek, Latin, and Syriac inscriptions were recorded.*” Some buildings were described in more detail.** Amongst the scholars of the twentieth century who studied the region, we should single out Gertrude Bell. Her two publications on Tur “Abdin (a limestone plateau located just to the north of Nisibis)*?
were edited by Marlia Mundell Mango, supplemented by notes from Bell’s previous publications, her unpublished journals and notebooks in the Royal Geographical Society in London, and her unpublished photographs that are now kept at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.°° Mundell Mango’s introduction and catalogue of sites expanded the boundaries of Bell’s previous publications from Tur ‘Abdin to wider Northern Mesopotamia.
The book on Amida by Max van Berchem and Joseph Strzygowski, which includes a contribution also by Bell on Tur ‘Abdin, is another important publication that enables one to contextualize Amida and Tur “Abdin together.® In this book, Strzygowski discusses the Great Mosque of Amida and the churches of the city, and also the Octagon in Constantia. He linked the origins of Christian art to this region. He acknowledges the remarkable architecture but mentions it together with the Syriac textual sources to support his view that Early Christian Architecture has its roots in the Orient. Strzygowski describes the cities of Edessa, Amida, and Nisibis, ‘which play an important role in the rise of Christian art’, as centres where Hellenistic art flourished. He continues: “This Aramaic hinterland to Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and even Egypt, by combining, as it does, the forces of Nearer Asia, is the progenitor of the germinal forms of Christian art... From what Vogiié had published and from the important further advances that were recently made by the Princeton Expedition, we should have expected Northern Mesopotamia to present a similar picture to Syria, perhaps somewhat reduced and provincialized.
It was a great surprise to find that the exact opposite is the case. We might have formed a suspicion of it from “The Chronicle of Edessa” and the Theological School of Nisibis, but recognition of the fact was first brought home to us by a comparison of the great central churches of Wiranschehr, Resapha and Amida. How amazing individual achievement must have been in urban ecclesiastical architecture alone!’
Although he described this architecture as ‘amazing individual achievement’, his assumption that one would expect to find architecture similar to Syria, ‘perhaps somewhat reduced and provincialized’ in this region prevailed in the scholarship until recently. Given his racist views, later scholarship might have been reluctant to share his views.” In his influential textbook on early Christian and Byzantine architecture, Richard Krautheimer has a section entitled ‘Mesopotamia and Tur Abdin’ under the chapter “The Borderlands’. He provides a plan of the Mor Gabriel monastery and a picture of the Church of Yoldath Aloho at Hah. He mentions the East Syrian churches on the other side of the border, at Ctesiphon and Hira. He pictures the whole of Mesopotamia as a land where we find local or folk architecture, and describes the complex architectural sculpture of the region as imported from Syria.** He does not mention the urban church architecture.
Ousterhout, in his very recent textbook, deals with the region under the title ‘Transformation at the Edges of Empire’ where he covers the seventh through ninth centuries. He treats the region’s architecture together with that of the Caucasus, Palestine, Jordan, and Egypt. He notes that church construction in most of Mesopotamia is known only from excavation. In Northern Mesopotamia, only the cathedral of Nisibis and foundations of the cathedral in Dara have been excavated, and the lack of sufficient archaeology in the region for this period is a problem. About churches, by which we understand him to mean urban churches, he says: ‘Most were simple basilicas, with tripartite sanctuaries, often squared off.’ He then turns to Tur “Abdin.
Although his focus is the transitional period, he points out that by the sixth century, in Tur “Abdin, distinct architectural forms were developed, like the ‘transversally barrel-vaulted nave with a tripartite sanctuary’. He singled out five monuments, namely the monasteries of Mor Gabriel, Dayr al-Za‘faran, Mor Ya‘qub at Salah, Yoldath Aloho at Hah, and Mor Lo‘ozor at Habsenas.® In fact, only the last two date to the ‘transitional period’, but for the sake of the organization of the book, the earlier period is also briefly mentioned here. It is a comprehensive selection of monuments given that this book is a monumental textbook on Byzantine Architecture.
Turning back to the publications focusing on the region, we can mention Ugo Monneret de Villard who published on the churches and monasteries of Tur “Abdin, which may have contributed to the later interest of the Italian archaeologists in the region.°° Between 1950 and 1975, expeditions to the region started again, one of which was carried out by the University of Michigan in 1956. It was never published because, according to Jules Leroy, it did not go beyond taking pretty photographs.” In the 1960s, Leroy and his team conducted architectural surveys in Tur ‘Abdin and produced important drawings.®
In the second half of the seventies and the early eighties, there was again a considerable interest in the region and this is when Marlia Mundell Mango updated Bell’s works mentioned above and published most of her articles on the region.’ Gernot Wiessner, a theologian, published his documentation of the monuments of Tur ‘Abdin between 1982 and 1993. His corpus, composed of eight volumes (including photographs and plans), provides more material for comparison although he avoids dating and architectural contextualization.”°
Palmer’s work, which explores the monastic life in the Late Antique Monastery of Mor Gabriel in Tur “Abdin through texts and architectural remains, is not confined to this monastery but sheds light on the wider Tur “Abdin.”’ His corpus of Syriac inscriptions of Tur ‘Abdin is a mine of information about the dating and patronage of some of the churches.”” His recent article on monasteries provides a systematic analysis of the texts based on geography.’* Apart from these, members of the Syrian Orthodox community of Turkey published books on Tur “Abdin and on individual villages and monasteries.’* Hans Hollerweger’s book with beautiful pictures and forewords by the Patriarch, Brock, and Palmer is a useful introduction to the region.”°
Excavations and archaeological surveys have been extremely limited in the region. The most prominent excavation in the region related to Late Antiquity is Kale-i Zerzevan. The excavations in Nisibis have been continuing on and off for some time. In Dara, excavations started again in 2020. There have been excavations in Harran, Haleplibah¢e, and the Kizilkoyun and Kale Etegi area in Urfa.”° Recently, a remarkable village church has been excavated in Gola near Goktas by the Museum of Mardin.”” The Museum of Mardin also did some cleaning work in the Church of Mor Sobo at Hah and in the Monastery of Mor Lo‘ozor at Habsenas.
A number of salvage excavations and surveys have been undertaken in the sites that were to be submerged due to the construction of the Ilisu (Batman vicinity) and Karkamis (Carchemish) dams (Birecik vicinity) (under the project for the development of Southeast Anatolia, GAP).”* The period of Late Antiquity was not a high priority for any of these projects, but some produced material about the Late Antique and early Islamic period.”” In Hasankeyf (Cephas), which was an important late Roman fortress, the focus has been mainly on the Islamic remains.
The picture these surveys portray is as follows: in the Late Antique period of the fourth to sixth centuries, there was a high density and wide distribution of settlements along both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. To cite one example, a small area in the westernmost part of Mesopotamia, around Kurbanhdéyiik, in the Lower Karababa basin along the Euphrates River, was surveyed, and changes in settlement patterns over time have been suggested, based on the interpretation of surface sherding. This survey was one of many such surface surveys carried out under ‘The Tigris-Euphrates Archaeological Reconnaissance Project’.*° It has been claimed that all available settlement niches were occupied due to the increased trade as a result of Osrhoene’s provincial status and the presence of troops. This also led to an increase in agricultural investment and production, and the attraction of immigrants to the area for work.**
The priority given to the areas to be affected by the dams and the security issues resulted in less attention to the area between the rivers. Despite that priority, a survey has been undertaken in the Harran plain.*” Tahsin Korkut, from Yiiziincii Yil University in Van, continues a survey in Tur “Abdin which he started in 2017. A recent survey done by the Association for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (Kiltirel Miras1 Koruma Dernegi, KMKD) focused on the buildings in Tur “Abdin that are under threat of disappearance. I also participated in this survey and we were able to visit some monasteries that could not be reached for decades due to security reasons.** There is still a need for detailed field surveys in the region around Derik and the region known as the Tektek mountains.
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