H04 Bosra — Church #3

Summary information

• Location

  GPS coordinates: 32.51294, 36.48781

  Coordinates are approximate.

• Description

  In the heart of the modern village of Bosra, among the walls of private houses and other buildings, may be traced the bare outline of a large basilical church. The nave alone was over 25 m. long. The apse was very wide and showed a part of its curve beyond the east walls of the two narrow side chambers; in this curve were five parallel windows. The openings between the side chambers and the aisles were arched. Only one pier of the nave is in place , this shows that there were three broad arches on either side of the nave; but, since three arches of equal width with the arch whose width is known would not carry the arcade to the point where the west wall is known to have been, one must assume either a narrow arch at the west ends of both arcades, as in many churches of Northeastern Syria, or an interior narthex at this point, The presence of modern buildings makes it impossible to clear up the matter.

  Howard Crosby Butler, Early Churches in Syria: Fourth to Seventh Centuries, Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology (Princeton, N.J.: Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 1929), 119.

• Phasing

  Not stated.

• Bibliogaphy

  Butler, Howard Crosby. Early Churches in Syria: Fourth to Seventh Centuries. Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology. Princeton, N.J.: Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 1929.