A Number Of Niches (If I Recollect Right, Nine), Not Perpendicular Like The Egyptian Sepulchral Niches, But Horizontal, Have Been Built Around The Wall.

Into this chamber opens a subterraneous passage, which is said by the Kurds, to continue a long way under ground, in the direction of Antakia.

I could not persuade any body to enter it with me. Adjacent to this sepulchre is another vaulted, open hall, which has been changed by its present proprietors into stables, and an apartment for receiving strangers in the heat of summer. The softness of the calcareous stone from the adjacent hills, with which the buildings are constructed, has caused all the ornaments of the arches and columns and even the shafts themselves to decay; enough remains however, of their clumsy and overcharged ornaments, to shew that the edifices are of an advanced period of the Greek empire. The columns are very small in proportion to the arches which they support, and I did not see any above eighteen or twenty feet high. The perishable nature of the stone has not left a single inscription visible, if there ever were any, with the exception of some names of Frenchmen from Aleppo, who visited the place eighty years ago. The sign of the cross is visible in several places. If these buildings were constructed in pious commemoration of the devout sufferings of St. Simon Stylites, who passed thirty-five years of his life upon a column, they are probably of the sixth century. St. Simon died towards the end of the fifth century, and in the seventh century Syria was conquered and converted to Islamism by the successors of Mohammed. The structures are certainly not of the date of the Crusades. On the eastern side of the building are the remains of an aqueduct, the continuation of which is again met with on the opposite hill. The Kurdine inhabitants of these ruins collect at present the rain water in cisterns.

Descending from the top of the hill on the western side, the remains of a broad paved causeway lead to an arch, which stands about ten minutes walk from the castle, and faces the ruins of a city, built at the foot of the hill, of which a number of buildings are still extant. These ruins, called Bokatur, are uninhabited, their circumference may be estimated at about one mile and a half. Amongst the many private houses a palace may be distinguished, surrounded by a low portico, at which terminates the causeway leading from the arch. At half an hour’s distance to the S.W. of Bokatur, are ruins resembling the former in extent and structure. I saw several houses of which the front was supported by columns, of a smaller size than those of the palace at Bokatur. This place is now called Immature, at three quarters of an hour to the W. of it, are other similar ruins of a town called Filtire, which I did not see. The two latter places are now inhabited by some poor Kurdine families.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 430 of 453
Words from 224149 to 224658 of 236498