Bridge at Nimreh
32.83326254831836.691637635231Koordinaten: 32 ° 49 ' 59.7 "N, 36 ° 41' 29.9 " E
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Wadi al - Liwa
The Bridge at Nimreh is a certificate from the 3rd or 4th century AD Roman arch bridge in Syria near Shahba, the ancient Philippopolis. Your vault construction of three parallel transverse arches based on local building traditions of the ancient cultural landscape of the Hauran and - if known - unique in Roman bridge building.
Traffic of Hauran
The Bridge at Nimreh is in the Hauran ( ancient name: Auranitis ), an approximately 80 km southeast of Damascus volcanic mountain located in the transition zone between agricultural land and desert. Thanks to fertile soils and sufficient rainfall threw the land in Roman times particularly high agricultural income from the transport of which enabled an extensive road network. Also point of several trade routes played the region has a special role: the domestic connection between the hubs Petra, Damascus and Aleppo led straight through the main town of Bosra, while the trans- Arabian caravan route and the route to Palmyra, the later strata Diocletiana, the Hauran in the north or south at least touched on. The ultimate expansion of infrastructure took place after the establishment of the Province of Arabia by the Emperor Trajan in 106 AD, when the Romans Frontier Province secured and Bosra through the system of forts and military roads against the raids of nomadic desert tribes to the location of the Legio III Cyrenaica certain. The dissected by wadis mountain also made the construction of fixed bridges necessary, one of which not only have survived the time in Nimreh, but also two more in Djemerrin and Kharaba.
Bridge construction
The bridge is located 10 km south-east of Shahba at the foot of the mountain village Nimreh, which is attested by the name Namara already in Onomastikon of Eusebius as a major town ( vicus grandis). Located near the modern route, they crossed the Wadi al - Liwa in an almost right angle. At the western end of the otherwise rectilinear bridge meets with a slight bend of 120 ° on the Wadirand, a subsequent thereto causeway disappears after about 100 m on the ground. The total length is 25 m, the eastern section of 15 m to the bow apex is longer by 5 m than the western. The bridge width of 4.52 m corresponds interestingly, in the Kharaba. With a wingspan of 6.73 m and a height of 3.10 m the only arc describes a slightly flatter curve (about 160 ° ) than the normal Roman arch (180 ° ); the height of the arch above the apex Wadibett is 3.60 m.
The arch bridge is comprised of three parallel stationary at a distance of 1.20 m transverse arches, the spaces are covered up with the road surface with elongated basalt blocks; the transverse arches themselves are built from brick made of 60 cm long, 30 cm wide and equally high blocks. This design principle of Transversalbögen with cap jewels is - if known - in Roman bridges a rarity dar. It is found in the Hauran even with ceiling constructions of late antique warehouses and central buildings as well as in the early Christian church in Nimreh and leaves on a deployment in late antiquity in the 3rd or 4th century AD close. Perhaps the construction of the bridge concrete falls in the heyday of the region in the 3rd century, which reached its climax with the expansion of Shahba, the birthplace of the Emperor Philip the Arab, to Philippopolis. The use of transverse arches to Raumeinwölbung was continued as a local structural engineering in the Hauran to the first half of the 20th century.
Probably the bridge without a foundation built directly on the upcoming underground. The almost unadorned masonry consists of rectangular, roughly smoothed basalt stones of various sizes that are dry to each other ( opus quasi- quadratum ) without mortar compound. The use of basalt occurred in Roman bridge building seldom before and - as with other ancient bridges in the Hauran also - be attributed to the abundant availability of this type of rock on site. The casing is broken on both sides in the spandrels and the view to the filling of boulders, coarse sand and earth free. The road surface well preserved, especially in the ramp area is composed of large, smooth basalt stones.