A temple consisting of the west, or rear, wall, 9.60 m. long, together with 3 m. of north wall and 4.20 m of south wall, of a building in the finest type of finished ashlar are preserved up to the cornice. The building is pieced out to a square in coarse masonry which probably stands upon older foundations. In the east wall the jambs of a richly carved doorway have been inserted.
East of the temple about 30 m distant, and directly on axis with it, are the ruins of an apse nearly 8 m. wide, flanked by smaller apses, 4.50 m. wide. The central apse projects beyond the others and is enclosed is straight walls. The width of these apses is about 20 m, and I have no doubt that the nave of the church extended as far as the front of the temple, and that the temple, rebuilt or altered, served as some sort of a religious building in Christian times after the building of the church. The church, it may be remarked, is perhaps the only basilica! church with triple apses in Syria, excepting the easternmost of the four basilicas which compose the great church of St. Simeon at Kal’at Sim’an in Northern Syria. The whole space between the temple and the apses is now filled with houses of comparatively recent construction. The temple is used as a store house for straw and was full on the occasion of my visit. It was with the greatest difficulty that one could get about to distinguish the old walls from the new, and the Christian work from the Pagan. South of the church was a courtyard, a part of the pavement of which still serves for the court of a modern house. The buildings about the ancient courtyard have been destroyed and rebuilt; but there are twisted column-shafts and other interesting details lying in the court and built into the new walls. I think it most probable that a large monastery exist ed here, built on the site of an old Pagan shrine. It seems quite likely that the pavement of the cloister court of the church had originally been the pavement of the temenos of the Nabataean temple.
Howard Crosby Butler and Enno Littmann, Syria: Publications of the Princeton University Archaeological Expeditions to Syria in 1904-1905 and 1909, vol. 2:A (Leyden: E.J. Brill, 1919), 108-109
