Bosra

What happened to October? I have been remiss on blogging so hope to remedy that over the next couple of days with updates. First we'll start with my trip to Syria.

This was timed to match 3 events: Pierre-Marie Blanc, an old friend who I never manage to be in the same country as, was coming back to Syria from France for 3 weeks to study his pottery from excavations in Bosra. He is, after many years based in Damascus with IFPO/CNRS, back in La Belle France with his family and in charge of the Hellenistic and Roman Levant for the French archaeology people (I confess I'm a bit confused about the French system, but they have this wonderful CNRS which seems to employ hundreds of archaeologists, so clearly the French think archaeology is science);

(Pierre-Marie, seated, talking to his oldest friend in Bosra, Suleiman, at S's little shop/cafe)

Through Stephen Bourke I had a contact with Bettina Fischer-Genz who is leading part of the German team working at Baalbek, and they were in the field in early October, and to extend a visa to stay in Jordan beyond one month I needed to either get a blood test done or leave for at least 24 hours.
So then came the normal comedy of establishing how to get to Bosra from Amman by public transport. When I went to Abdali to ask the service (shared taxi/sedan driving between fixed destinations) drivers, who normally drive between Amman and Damascus, they all said, "oh there is no service, you must come with me in my special car for the special price of .... [insert here some ridiculous sum of money]". So I got Feras to go down there with me, and he got the same answer first time. So I told him I'd sit in the car and he should go and ask for himself. Aha. Easy. Service to border, get taxi for about $10 from border to Bosra (outrageous - works out at the same price to drive for 20 minutes from border to Bosra, as for 2 hours from Amman to Damascus, but that is Syria). So I headed off next morning, my service driver kindly drove around at the border to find a taxi for me to Bosra and agreed I'd pay 500 syrian pounds + 1 JD, then after some issues (Syrian taxi driver picked up another guy without asking me, and then said, it's OK, you can pay just 500 SP, the other guy will pay 200SP - for the same distance !! ) I got to Bosra.

Pierre-Marie told me to just ask for Boutros, which is Arabic for Peter, and it worked. The French, who all like to live well, have a deal with the local restaurant for lunch and dinner:




(main square outside theatre/citadel, and gate into "our" restaurant left, interior of restaurant above)


The dig house is on top of the mediaeval citadel which was built around and in the Roman theatre. This protected the theatre which is the most intact in the Empire.

On this photo (below) you can see above, and a bit behind the scenae frons (stage facade) a series of round roofed rooms, with a bit of a verandah - that's the dig house [don't forget you can always get a bigger version of photos if you double click on them].



Getting up there is tricky - the stairs inside the tower are as steep as a very very long ladder,



















(the rooms and bathrooms are built into these Ottoman fortified rooms, which makes the second bathroom a challenge).

my room in the dig house, note original tiles on floor

The view is wonderful over old Bosra.

I expect a few surprised tourists got unexpected views of me and Pierre-Marie munching on our breakfast bread and jam and drinking milky French breakfast coffee in our pj's on the dig house terrace, but heh, what do I care? Lucky I took respectable jamies.

I spent a couple of days wandering around Bosra, which has an ancient tell (Bronze and Iron Age which hasn't been very much investigated), significant Nabatean occupation,
and then it became the Roman period capital of the province of Arabia.
There is quite a bit of evidence for reusing and resizing buildings:

(The baths {and many other structures} had been used as housing until very recently, when the Syrians booted out all the families without influence, and then have left the buildings to disintegrate ... sigh.)









The EU sponsored reconstruction of the dome of one set of baths (not the biggest, but the best preserved with a nice sequence of expansion during the Roman period, and then Abbasid period reuse as industrial areas) was halted once the European engineer came out and saw the Syrian interpretation of his scaffolding construction plans. Where he had had posts of a certain dimension to hold up 10 tonnes, the Syrians had decided posts one quarter the size would be fine. What could possibly go wrong?

I collected quite a few images of ancient game boards carved into the stones of the theatre, and often reused in the castle.















I should mention here, that the Syrians ride bikes a lot, and zillions of cheap Chinese motorbikes - saw one family of 5 on a motorbike!!



There are some important early Islamic mosques, schools and baths.

(this is the narrowed down Roman street with the very early al-Omari mosque on the left, and the Hammam Manjak (Islamic baths) across the street. The mosque was founded by the Caliph Umar, conqueror (or Opener, depending on your view) of Syria, and may have been the first mosque founded after the death of the Prophet. I didn't get to go inside - no time - but it looked interesting mainly because it was full of people; mosques are like community halls crossed with youth clubs crossed with railway waiting rooms)











There is a huge reservoir, still in use.














P.-M. had excavated the important cathedral church just outside the Nabatean Arch, which marks one end/turning point in the main street. The church was built from reused blocks, from an earlier, Roman building, and the builders marked the materials they used with mason's marks so they could be reassembled in the right order.




















Bosra is today a relatively small town, of mixed charm, to which the Hejaz steam train still comes twice a week:

If you need to know more .... click here

On my last day there, Pierre-Marie took me on a tour of some of the other Nabatean and/or Roman sites of the Hauran .... in the next blog ... and then I headed for Damascus.