PH02 Jiye — mono-apsidal basilica

Summary information

• Location

  GPS coordinates: 33.6662, 35.43467

  Structure is partially visible in Google maps.

• Description

  The attempt to reconstruct the plan of this church, located in the sand by the sea, is based on knowledge only of the pavements and a few lower layers of walls dismantled and plundered as a quarry for building materials. The building reconstructed by the excavators appeared as a basilica with three naves, 19 m long, with walls 1.10 m thick. From the rows of supports between the naves, only fragments of three capitals and the stylobates, some 40 cm wide, remained.

  At the E end of the N side of the nave, three steps descended to a “concrete” followed by a mosaic floor, perpendicular to the naves, belonging to the baptistery. It was not possible to demarcate the sanctuary which was to be located between the steps of the staircase, the baptistery, and an annexed SE room. It was undoubtedly significantly higher than the other rooms, and due to its location and the probable thickness of its cut stone walls, it must have been a prime target for lovers of reused materials.

  The Stylobate measures 0.40 m and a dimension of 2.40 m could be noted across the width of the aisles. The length of 19 m which could be determined for the mosaic on the side aisle gives the presumed length of the entire church. The 1.60 m mosaic strip which runs along the colonnade on one side, inside the central nave, and on the other the axial paved surface was seen on a maximum of 12.50 m. This projection of the choir into the nave is flanked, on either side, by a mosaic strip which runs along the supports which separate the naves.

  Mosaics were found in the two side naves, along the edge of the central nave, in the baptistery and in the room at the end of the S aisle. In the central nave, the mosaic was well preserved on the left side, over a length of 12.5 m and 1.60 m in width, from the E end of the nave; it was less well only in part E of the right side. The N aisle still had a mosaic surface of 5.90 m by 2 m wide, while only a few fragments remained in the S aisle. The carpets of the baptistery and the SE room were well preserved. Overall, the pavements of the western part of the site had suffered the most.

  Pauline Donceel-Voûte and Bernadette Gillain, Les pavements des églises byzantines de Syrie et du Liban: Volume I : Décor, archéologie et liturgie, Publications d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie de l’université catholique de Louvain 69 (Institut Supérieur d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art Collège Érasme, 1988), 354-355.

• Phasing

  The date of the inscription of the baptistery is late (573-574), but that of the installation of the mosaics in the nave and the SE room “J” cannot be far from it; the similarities in technique and repertoire between them as well as with the mosaics quite close in time and space, from el-Koursi dated 585, and from Nébi Younès also from 585, are sufficiently clear for the whole can be dated to the 70s of the 6th century.

  Pauline Donceel-Voûte and Bernadette Gillain, Les pavements des églises byzantines de Syrie et du Liban: Volume I : Décor, archéologie et liturgie, Publications d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie de l’université catholique de Louvain 69 (Institut Supérieur d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art Collège Érasme, 1988), 358.

• Bibliogaphy

  Liban: Volume I : Décor, archéologie et liturgie. Publications d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie de l’université catholique de Louvain 69. Institut Supérieur d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art Collège Érasme, 1988.