November 7, 1999
Field of Ruins in the Sand
By JOHN ASH
t was my traveling companion, Leyla,
who persuaded me that I had to see
Sergiopolis (modern Resafe), a Byzantine holy city stranded in the desert
wastes of northern Syria, about 120
miles southeast of Aleppo.
To me it seemed
too far, and it was May; I was convinced
that the drive would be hot, tiring and dull.
But Leyla is not easily thwarted. We were
going to see Sergiopolis whether I liked it or
not, and of course she knew I would love it.
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Dave Bartruff for The New York Times |
Mohammed Muraweh, a guide, at the main entrance to the Resafe ruins.
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Inquiries were made in Aleppo, and I soon
discovered that, in Syria, it is still possible to
travel in 19th-century style (or an updated
version thereof) without bankrupting yourself. In short order we had acquired a guide
(Walid), a driver (Abu Halil) and a spacious
minibus lavishly decorated on the interior
with tassels, figurines, lights, artificial flowers, photographs and Koranic quotations.
There was even a miniature TV.
Walid was tall, dignified and almost excessively solicitous, constantly inquiring
whether "Mr. John" (myself) was pleased
with the way things were going. In general I
was very pleased.
Abu Halil was genial,
handsome and, judging by photographs he
showed us of a slimmer version of himself
lounging on the hood of a Chevrolet, had
once been something of a ladies' man.
He
was now happily married, and had brought
his young son Mustafa along for the ride. It
was Mustafa's function to open the door for
us, run errands and take care of the all-important picnicking equipment.
It didn't take long to escape from Aleppo's
dusty suburbs. The level land stretched
away infinitely to the eastern horizon.
Only
to the north was there a faint line of hills, but
before long even these began to fade. It
looked as though the journey might be as
monotonous as I had feared, but then Walid
asked us if we would like to see the beehive
village of Fa.
We turned off the highway,
and within minutes the soft, undulating outlines of Fa's mudbrick houses came into
view. At first glance they could almost have
been mistaken for natural formations. The
so-called "beehives," infused with a lovely
pinkish tone, were in fact conical domes of
dried mud that resembled women's breasts.
They were arranged in long rows or around
courtyards, and were used for dwellings,
storehouses and ovens.
Our arrival naturally attracted some attention, especially as Leyla, who is Turkish
and German, has blond tresses that wouldn't shame a Valkyrie. The attention was
never hostile or intrusive, however, and the
dread word baksheesh was never uttered.
Syrians in general are very well-mannered
people, and before we could leave Fa we had
to meet the village elders. This was a process almost as slow and ceremonious as a
scene in a Robert Wilson opera. The elders
were tall and stately, and served us fierce
coffee in tiny cups.
East of Fa, police checkpoints began to
multiply.
There were good reasons for this,
though we did not feel too menaced. We
were on the main route from Aleppo to Iraq,
which passes through a major oil
field, and close by is a massive dam
on the Euphrates that supplies Syria
with much of its water and power.
Walid dealt with these encounters
very gracefully, and the police were
more bored than officious.
The heat was intensifying, so it
was a relief when the vast blue expanse of Lake Assad came into view
and we headed toward it. The road
crossed the dam, offering a fine view
of the Euphrates River's many winding channels, before turning toward
the 12th-century castle of Qal'at al-Jabar, which rises from a rock projecting into the lake. Of more immediate interest to me was the restaurant set in a shady garden at the base
of the rock. For once the term "oasis" seemed entirely justified.
e lingered over
lunch for as long
as we reasonably could, but
the sun was still
high when we left. Then for a brief
but unnerving interval we lost our
way. This was easy to do, since the
landscape offered few landmarks beyond oil pumps nodding inanely as if
constantly assenting to something.
Luckily we soon ran into another
checkpoint where we were politely
set on our way, and suddenly, improbably, there it was -- the holy city
of St. Sergius, ringed by great walls
above which towered the shattered
remains of extravagant churches.
It is hard to describe the effect of
first seeing Sergiopolis. It seems to
leap fully formed from the ground
like a mirage or a grandiose delusion, but it is real enough, and has a
long history. It is mentioned in the
Old Testament (2 Kings and Isaiah)
under the name Rezeph, but it was
not a place of much importance until
A.D. 305, when Sergius was martyred
here. Before his execution the saint
was subjected to a number of horribly imaginative tortures. With hindsight such measures smack of desperation: only eight years later
Christianity had triumphed. The sufferings of Sergius were not forgotten.
Resafe was renamed in his honor,
and soon became a pilgrimage center. In the late fifth and early sixth
centuries its citizens embarked on a
spectacular church-building spree.
| 
Dave Bartruff for The New York Times |
Visitors to Qal'at al-Jabar; in the background is Lake Assad.
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Our minibus drew up outside the
city's northern gate -- a magnificent
edifice with an unusual arrangement
of five richly decorated arches. Beyond them the brutal desert sun still
pounded on the ruins, and I was
already feeling decidedly faint. Perhaps I had drunk too deep the coffee
of Fa? We sat listlessly in the shade
of the city walls, until I decided it
was better to risk sunstroke than
come all the way to Sergiopolis and
not see it. Walid was not of the same
mind, and would clearly have agreed
with the old Moroccan saying: "Only
tourists and donkeys stand in the
sun." He was enough of a gentleman,
however, to provide Leyla with a
kaffiyeh (the traditional Arab headdress) to shield her face.
Abu Halil and Mustafa, for their
part, were setting up tea-making
equipment and slicing cucumbers
for the restorative picnic they felt we
would need after our exertions. The
Syrians, like the Turks, have a wonderful ability to make the most inhospitable places feel like home.
With Leyla now fetchingly veiled,
we strode out into the light. Apart
from a German archaeologist, we
were the only visitors.
Before us lay
a vast field of ruins partly buried in
sand, and traversed by a broad,
north-south street. To the right was a
group of cisterns large enough to
keep the population supplied with
water for two years.
To the left was a
sequence of three churches. One of
these must have contained the tomb
of Saint Sergius, but nobody seems to
be quite sure which it was. (One
theory is that all three held the
saint's remains at different times.)
The first church seems to have
served as the city's cathedral. Its
central dome collapsed long ago --
perhaps brought down by the earthquake that devastated the city in the
late eighth century -- and the space
it once covered was surrounded by
enormous, prostrate columns. The
eastern apse with its three nobly
proportioned windows was still
largely intact, however, and I suddenly noticed I was no longer feeling
ill. For some reason ruins always
have a therapeutic effect on me.
The second church was the most
ruinous. It had been constructed of a
scintillant but highly friable form of
gypsum, and, over the years, had
been reduced to huge shards with
elaborate decorations like lace. The
third church is the largest so it probably has the best claim to be Sergius'
last resting place. It is also the best
preserved, and therein lies a paradox, for the entire structure came
near to collapsing soon after it was
built, perhaps even as it was being
built. Syria in the fifth and sixth
centuries was the scene of daring
experiments in church architecture,
but in the case of the third church at
Resafe, this daring outpaced the
builders' engineering skills, leaving
us with a fascinating story in stone.
| 
Dave Bartruff for The New York Times |
The largest and best-preserved church in Resafe has smaller arches placed inside large ones.
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According to the original plan the
superstructure was to have been carried on only six extremely wide arches (three on either side of the nave).
The weight proved too much for
them, however, so two smaller arches were hastily placed inside each of
the original arches. This was a relatively elegant solution, but the next
problem to face the builders left no
room for aesthetic niceties. They
may have built too high on inadequate foundations. At any rate the
walls began to lean outward in all
directions. It must have seemed as if
the saint disapproved of the design of
his church. Collapse could only be
averted by the construction of buttresses so massive that at first I
mistook them for fortifications.
The drastic nature of the problem
is demonstrated by the fact that one
of these buttresses was built against
the western facade, blocking the
original entrance to the church. This
compromised the architect's vision,
but it worked: the church's arches
(and arches within arches) have survived, and as the late afternoon light
fell through them the overall effect
was not one of desperate improvisation so much as richness and splendor. It only remained to return to the
north gate and our tea and cucumbers, which, in the context of the
Syrian desert, seemed a perversely
English prospect, as if Lady Bracknell had preceded us.
We arranged for the car, driver
and guide at the Baron Hotel, Baron
Street, Aleppo, (021) 2210 880, fax
(021) 2218 164.
A day's outing, with a
picnic, costs $70 to $100. The pleasant
restaurant at Qal'at al-Jabar has immaculate restrooms.
