Bosra and the South
chapter 7 Bosra and the South Bosra Roman Bozrah . was a beautiful city, with long straight avenues and spacious thoroughfares; but the Saracens built their miserable little shops and quaint irregular houses along the sides of the streets, out and in, here and there, as fancy or funds directed; and they thus converted the stately Roman capital, as they did Damascus and Antioch, into a labyrinth of narrow, crooked, gloomy lanes.[1] [1865] Bosra,[2] 140km south of Damascus, the main town in the Hauran, and a site investigated by today’s archaeologists,1 was in ancient times the centre of a rich and prosperous agricultural region, and well endowded with monuments including temples, theatre, hippodrome and amphitheatre, the main area pro- tected by walls. Its towers were visible for miles around,[3] but some travel- lers believed it had been more affected by earthquakes than other sites.[4] The imprint of the hippodrome may be seen from the Ayyubid Citadel, itself built round the Roman theatre, and presumably using very large quantities of blocks from the amphitheatre, barely 30m distant. This is only known to us from recent excavation, and no early travellers mention it, so either the Ayyubid builders must have stripped it to the foundations, or earlier inhabitants must have used its blocks for churches and houses. In any case, by the 20th century, the site was covered in modern houses and gardens. Since amphitheatres were so often turned into fortresses in post-Roman times, it is likely the structure had been partly robbed out well before the Ayyubids.
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