squarish building/‘fort’ Complete

ID: 48

Building type: forts and fortifications

Context:

monastery; fort

Site:

Inscriptions:

52

Description:

According to René Mouterde and André Poidebard, a bulky squarish enclosure, measuring 39 x 30 m, with only one entrance in the East wall, and a Syriac inscription on the lintel above it. The building may have been a third-century structure (perhaps a fort?), which was converted into a monastic building in the fifth century or later. Mouterde and Poidebard noticed that it resembled a building from the monastery of Turkmānīya (for that site, cf. TIB 15, p. 1848). See Mouterde, R., Poidebard, A., Le limes de Chalcis. Organisation de la steppe en haute Syrie romaine (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geutner, 1945), 91.