Turmanin

36.23333333333336.816666666667Koordinaten: 36 ° 14 '0 "N, 36 ° 49' 0" E

Deir Turmanin, also Turmanin, The Termanin; was an early Byzantine settlement in the territory of the Dead Cities in northwestern Syria. The almost completely vanished monastery church from the end of the 5th century was one of the most magnificent buildings in the region.

Location

Deir Turmanin lies in Idlib province north of the main road that leads west from Aleppo to the Turkish border crossing Bab al - Hawa. The road runs as the Roman period through the plane of Dana, which is bounded on the south by the karst hills of Jebel Barisha and in the north of Jebel Halaqa, both of which are part of the North Syrian limestone massif. Deir Turmanin lies on 428 meters in the north- east of this agricultural plain, five kilometers east of Dana ( North) and about eleven miles south of the early Byzantine monastery town of Deir Seman. The remains of the ancient settlement are slightly raised on the edge of cornfields outside the modern village.

Townscape and history

The area was already inhabited in Roman times, as a resulting in Dana grave monument dating from the 2nd century AD shows. A few kilometers south-east of Deir Turmanin can see a section of the Roman road between Aleppo and Antioch. The place had its heyday from the 4th to the 7th century. In the center stood a monastery with a church and several residential and outbuildings. The exterior walls of one of these large stone from limestone blocks without mortar buildings are preserved to the second floor height. They show a rural, simple style with rectangular, non-profiled window openings; Attached porches resting on massive pillars.

Basilica

Deir Turmanin is not mentioned because this still visible remains in the literature, but because of his basilica from the end of the 5th century, which played an important role in the development of the Syrian church architecture. When Howard Crosby Butler in 1900 visited the site as part of an expedition of Princeton University, he found virtually no more debris. The knowledge of this church based on the description of Melchior Comte de Vogüé, who had found in the 1860s, the building almost completely preserved condition. In addition to what has happened to the church in the meantime, there are no reliable sources. The church belonged to the few years earlier ( 470 ) finished wide arcades Basilica of Qalb Loze and oriented in the biggest pilgrimage church of Qal Sim'an ( Simeon monastery) to the northern core region which was crucial in the development of the Syrian church architecture.

The three-aisled basilica arcades had six columns in each row, wearing the round arches. At least one of the capitals at the clerestory was designed as Korbkapitell that should remind you of a fruit basket with its perpendicular, diamond-shaped pattern with a tank-shaped outline. The transitions occur above and below by interlacing. This type of Korbkapitells probably Mesopotamian origin. The arcades were terminated at the western entrance side and on the triumphal arch of the apse in supporting pilasters.

While the round apse projecting at the well- preserved church of Qalb Loze free from the east wall, at Deir Termanin a very rarely seen polygonal ( pentagonal ) apse was trapped between lateral rectangular apse side rooms. Such risalitartig projecting apse adjoining rooms, there was also at the same time Phocas Church of Basufan. For the three great cathedrals, Qalb Loze, Deir Turmanin and Qal Sim'an columns are on the outer wall of the apse between the windows presented typical carrying the cornice. The columns filled in these buildings as a decorative and structural function. In conscious imitation of the style some smaller churches attacked in this column arrangement, whereby it acts rather hard and creatively less makes sense. An example is the round apse at the South Church of Bankusa and the Basilica ( North Church ) from Deir Seta in which twelve small pillars even appeared on a straight east wall. Both are in the area of Jebel Barisha.

The northern apse adjoining room was connected by an arched opening to the aisle, which points to the function as Martyrion ( relic chamber ); the southern side room served the clergy as diaconicon, he was only accessible via a door from the side of the ship. The church owned at the northern and southern long side each two inputs and another portal in the middle of the western front. There, a three-part narthex was built out, with lateral, the roofs of the side aisles towering towers. Such a magnificently designed two towers had in the area of the dead cities only Qalb Loze and in the southern Jebel Zawiya the Bizzoskirche of Ruweiha. For the Hauran region a two-tower facade applies to the missing five-aisled church of As - Suwayda as secured, for some other churches, there are only guesses. The representative corner towers are the redesign of a basic idea that can be traced in the region over the Greco- Roman temple and palace façades on the Hittite Hilani courtyard house churches. For the full development of the two towers came in European Romanesque architecture.