Places

Qasr Ibn Wardan today lies in fairly marginal country on the edge of the Syrian Steppe. Once it housed a Byzantine mansion house / church complex typical of such establishments intended both to exploit the area’s agricultural potential and to ensure its protection. The mansion house or ‘palace’ is dated by inscription to AD 564, […]

This Bronze Age city was originally dug in the 1920s, during the French Mandate period. More recent excavations by several Syrian and European teams have revealed a city with the attributes of a rich kingdom, as revealed by the remains of extensive Middle / Late Bronze Age palace complexes including an intact royal grave. Qatna […]

This small site, scattered between houses of a modern village, contains a surprising variety of remains including Roman funeral reliefs and rock-cut tombs, a two-column funeral monument and a tower. تنتشر البقايا الأثرية من العصر الروماني في هذا الموقع بين بيوت القرية الحديثة، وتتضمن مجموعات متنوعة وفخمة من المنحوتات الجنائزية والمدافن المحفورة بالصخر، إضافة إلى […]

Little remains of the ancient Roman and Byzantine town, once protecting an important cross-roads on the communications route between Antioch and the Syrian Steppe. The small town of al-`iss (العيسى) lies under the mountain today topped by the tomb of an Islamic holy man. The classical-era fortress covered the smaller acropolis hill southwest of the […]

While the town had its origins as a city of the classical era, Raqqa assumed a new role when it was chosen as the site for a major new city on the mid-Euphrates. First developed by the Caliph Abu Jaafar al-Mansuri as a summer capital, it was adopted as his permanent residence  by the later `Abbasid Caliph, […]

This rather untidy and neglected site on the Syrian coast north of Latakia presents few remains that can be readily interpreted by visitors amid the out-of-control vegetation. The two main periods of activity were Late Bronze Age and the Phoenician or Iron Age. The remains in the gallery below are from the North Palace (LBA) […]

Now a deserted village, Refade evokes much of the charm of the ‘Dead Cities’. Curiously there is no church but the nearby chapel at Sitt al-Rum may have served the village in Byzantine times. Butler describes Refade as ‘the most picturesque of all the little deserted cities of the hill country’ and Tchalenko saw it […]