Hauran

On my last day visiting Pierre-Marie, he kindly took me on a tour of the Hauran district north of Bosra. This is still the lava country, all around the Jebel Druze. And indeed, north of Bosra, one rapidly arrives in Druze country. All the younger women have their hair uncovered, there are 5-pointed, coloured rosettes everywhere, older ladies wear only plain black dresses and have elaborate white head scarves, and sometimes you see men in those baggy ?Turkish pants. This area was incredibly rich agriculturally in the past, and Suweida is in modern times the 4th largest town in Syria. We went to Suweida, as P.M. had to visit friends in the directorate there, so I checked out the museum, and we looked at the little of Roman Suweida that survives, then we drove to Canawat and Sia to see the Nabatean material, then Shahba, which was the birthplace of Philip who became the only Arab Roman Emperor. He renamed the joint Philipopolis (no ego problems, clearly) and embarked on a massive building programme. But died. So they stopped. We unfortunately had taken a very long time at the Sia Nabataean temple and so got to Shahba after the famous mosaics museum closed. Sigh. Next time. It seems a lovely town, and I'm sure Philip would be proud of it today. In the half-built, massive baths, we came across a youngish Syrian woman with an older man (?father, ?husband) who quizzed us extensively when they heard P.M. explaining things to me. Turns out she is planning on being a tour guide, and has taken it upon herself to visit as many sites as possible - they only had a Syrian guide book, and were fairly sure they were being misled by it. If only they had bought Ross Burns' Monuments of Syria (shameless plug - you will read & see in a later blog about Ross's quick visit to ACOR when he, me, Peter Edwell, Penny Hyde, Brennan Roorda and Aladdin Madi went for a picnic to Iraq el-Amir).

Now, pictures:














The Odeon at Suweida above, the main road coming into Suweida to right, with ?church in foreground, and right at the back, the remains of an arch, which was used to hang people off of in mediaeval times. Note the French style street lighting.

Suweida museum has an incredible collection of basalt statues and architectural carvings, epigraphy and mosaics. Here at the beginning of the museum though, is this terrific bit of rock art:


Here is a pretty mean looking Gorgon:

Look - these guys at least tried - could you carve basalt and make the doggie look real?

Above, Artemis surprised at her bath Above here, Venus at her toilette admiring herself


Close up of the face of Tethys showing shading.