Late Late Antiquity (6Th and 7Th Centuries) in the Cities of the Roman Near East*

Chapter 15 Late Late Antiquity (6th and 7th Centuries) in the Cities of the Roman Near East*

In northern Syria, along the desert fringe, villages have produced a very large number of late inscriptions.1 Much less is known about the major cities. Epiphania (Hama)2 and Emesa (Homs) have left few archaeological or epi- graphic remains, principally because their sites are still densely built up. Late Roman Antioch is deeply buried.3 Apamea is the exception. The city was abandoned in the Middle Ages. This has given the Baltys the opportunity to exca- vate the city, which achieved the status of provincial capital around 415, and for some time flourished exceedingly. After earthquakes in 526 and 528 had destroyed much of Apamea, monumental colonnades, mansions and churches were rebuilt, even though the agora was progressively abandoned. In 573 the city was burnt by the Persians, and a large part of its population deported. From this date there is evidence of decline and impoverishment, though the destroyed monuments were rebuilt once more. It was only in the second quar- ter of the 7th century that the character of the city began to change radically, great mansions being clumsily remodelled into working farms.4 There is evidence that the cities of northern Syria were already weakened before the last and most destructive Persian war (602–629). The coastal cities did not really recover before the coming of the Egyptian Fatimid dynasty in 969.5 Pentz has suggested that economic regression in northern Syria had a seri- ous effect on the livelihood of the caravan trading tribes of Arabia in the late

* This article was previously published in Mediterraneo Antico 3.1 (2000), pp. 43–75. 1 Published in the series IGLS. 2 But see now: P. Pentz, Hama, fouilles et recherches 1931–38, IV, 1, The Medieval Citadel and its Architecture, Copenhagen 1997. 3 G. Downey, A History of Antioch in Syria, Princeton 1961. 4 C. Balty, Apamée au VIe siècle, in C. Morrisson & J. Lefort (eds.), Hommes et richesses dans l’empire byzantin I, Brussels 1989, 79–96. 5 H. Kennedy, The last century of Byzantine Syria, ByzF 10, 1985, 141–183; also Antioch from Byzantium to Islam, in J. Rich (ed.), The City in Later Antiquity, London 1992, 181–198; L. Conrad, The plague in Bilad al-Sham in pre-Islamic times, in M.A. Bakhit and M. Asfour (eds.), Proceedings of the Symposium on Bilad al-Sham II, Amman 1986, 143–163; Id., Epidemic disease in central Syria in the late sixth century: Some new insights from the verse of Hanân ibn Thâbit, BMGS 18, 1994, 12–58.

6th and early 7th centuries, and that the resulting hardship was a principal motive for their invasion of the settled lands of Syria and Palestine under Islam.6 This is an interesting hypothesis, but to date nothing more. What is clear is that the 7th century did not bring about a collapse of urbanism in Syria comparable to that which happened at that time in Asia Minor. In Palestine a number of the cities evidently increased their populations in later Late Antiquity. The walled area of Caesarea was extended in the fifth century to enclose about 95 ha, that of Tiberias in the sixth to enclose around 75 ha.7 Twenty two towns of Byzantine Palestine and Arabia measured over 30 ha, of which six ranged between 80 and 100 ha, and three were larger than 100 ha. Jerusalem, the largest city covered 120 ha.8 The archaeological evidence for flourishing urban life is paralleled by the findings of area surveys of rural districts: there too the late Late Roman period appears to have been a time of peak activity.9 Cities were of course changing. Churches rather than temples came to dom- inate the townscape.10 Some temples were destroyed. We know most about a wave of destruction of temples in Syria around 390. This was instigated by the monks in the countryside, cooperating with bishops in the cities, among whom Marcellus of Apamea was the most active and fanatical.11 Yet more often temples were simply allowed to decay, and their ruins, like those of the precinct of Artemis at Gerasa, and those of a second century temple in the very centre of Scythopolis, must have long continued to tower impressively over what were

6 P. Pentz, The invisible conquest, the ontogenesis of sixth and seventh century Syria, Copenhagen 1992, 68–71. 7 A. Walmsley, Byzantine Palestine and Arabia, in N. Christie & S.T. Loseby, Towns in Transition: Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, Aldershot and Brookfield 1996, 126–158, esp. 147–150. 8 M. Broshi, The population of Western Palestine in the Roman-Byzantine period, basor 236, (1980), 1–10. 9 Christie, Loseby, Towns in Transition, cit. (n. 7), 152, fig. 6, 8 (Hesban, Ghor & Araba, Yabis). Helen G. Saradi, The Byzantine City in the Sixth Century, Literary Images and Historical Reality, Athens 2006, 31–37, a very interesting and informative study. Building regulations: Catherine Saliou, Le Traité d’urbanisme de Julien d’Ascalon (VI siècle), Travaux et Mémoires, Collège de France, Monographies 8, Paris 1996. 10 A special case: B. Brenk, Die Christianisierung des jüdischen Stadtzentrums von Kapernaum, in C. Moss and K. Kiefer (eds.), Byzantine East, Latin West: Studies in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann, Princeton 1995, 15–26, on Christianisation of Jewish city centre. 11 Lib. Or. XXX, Pro templis, text and English tr. by F. Norman, Libanius: Selected Works, II, 92–151; Soz., HE VII 15; cf. F.R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization II, Leiden 1994, 283–289.