as-Safīra; Safīra; Safīrāʾ; Bersera? Complete

Description

A village near Beroia/modern Aleppo registered in TIB 15 on p. 1672 as as-Safīra. Also spelt: Safīra, Safīrāʾ, and Sfīre Bersera?. Little is known of the site's plan and buildings but it seems that the settlement's roots go back to at least the second century CE. though an islodated eighth-century BC Aramaic inscription was also recorded here. Klaus Peter Todt and Bernard Andreas Vest in TIB 15 consider the possibility that Honigmann's identification of this site with ancient Bersera, a travel station near Beroia is correct. On their checklist of notable buildings, they mention a basilica with a Greek inscription. Around the site, several smaller settlements also yielded late antique Aramaic inscriptions and ruins of early Byzantine buildings, especially al-Qalʿa / Qalʿat Safīra with a monastery and Ǧneyd / Ǧened. Literature: TIB 15 – Todt, K.P., Vest, B.A., Tabula Imperii Byzantini, vol. 15 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2014), p. 1672. Syriac inscriptions: Giron, N., ‘Inscriptions syriaques’, Journal Asiatique 19 (1922), no. C = Mouterde, R., Poidebard, A., Le limes de Chalcis. Organisation de la steppe en haute Syrie romaine (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geutner, 1945), 222, no. 1 and Pl. CXX,3 (dedicatory, probably brought from a nearby settlement: el-Mouʿallaq). Mouterde, R., Poidebard, A., Le limes de Chalcis. Organisation de la steppe en haute Syrie romaine (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geutner, 1945), 222-223, no. 2 and Pl. CXX,5 (names, probably brought from a nearby settlement: el-Mouʿallaq). Greek inscriptions: IGLS II – Mouterde, R., Jalabert, L. (eds.), Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie, vol. 2: Chalcidique et Antiochène: nos 257-698 (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1939), nos. 260–261 (one reused in a mosque, another in a private house – at least one comes from the basilica).