The InterDependent

When Emperor Justinian took control of the Roman Empire in 527 A.D., it marked the beginning of Byzantine Christian rule and the virtual demise of paganism. Today, reminders of this transitional moment can be seen in 40 ancient villages and towns in northwest Syria that are now called “dead cities” but during their heyday reflected rural life in late antiquity and life in the Byzantine era. The villages were added last month with 24 other locations to Unesco’s World Heritage sites.

The towns and villages were set among limestone hills between the ancient Aleppo and Hama highway in the east and the Orontes River in the west.

Recently, the region, particularly in Hama, has experienced some of the worst repression and killing by Syrian forces in the civil war there. And on June 30, CNN reported that the Syrian military sent tanks and helicopters into an area near Al-Bara, one of the 40 villages, apparently bombarding some ruins. In early antiquity, Al-Bara was one of the more important producers of wine and olive oil, as were many of the other dead cities.

Unesco, however, said that it had not received any evidence of damage to Al-Bara or other sites among the villages.

“Usually private or civil society entities write to Unesco to draw attention on any damages,” said Nada Al-Hassan, a program specialist for the agency who is based in New York. “Unesco has received none so far.”

If the sites are endangered, the World Heritage Committee can decide to inscribe them in danger. In extreme circumstances, the sites can be delisted.

“Delisting has been applied only twice in the history of the convention and is done in extreme cases where the outstanding universal value of a site is irreversibly lost,” Al-Hassan said in an e-mail.

The dead cities, also called “forgotten cities,” were built and inhabited during the first to the seventh centuries, a period when the Roman Empire, pagan practices and different architectural forms intermingled, said Rochelle Roca-Hachem, Unesco program specialist for culture in New York.

It is the only complete agrarian region left from antiquity, said Prof. Nasser Rabbat, director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of “The Dead Cities: Lessons From Its History and Views on Its Future,” speaking with National Public Radio recently.

Copyright C.H.-Chr.Lohmann

A Byzantine church in the region of Syria known as the "dead cities," made up of ancient ruins from the first to seventh centuries.

The villages, which are grouped across eight parks, dot the virtually treeless landscape with limestone architectural ruins of homes, temples, churches, cisterns, bathhouses and convents. Some vestiges illustrate hydraulic systems, protective walls and Roman farming plots, testaments to the region’s origins as a major agricultural hub between the ancient centers of Antioch (now in Turkey) and Apamea (about 34 miles north of Hama) before Damascus, to the far south, took over as the nexus of activity.

Dead cities is an 18th-century term, Professor Rabbat said in an e-mail interview with The InterDependent. It was a description first used by a French baron who visited the region and noticed that the ruined villages were mostly deserted. “The romantic name stuck and became the unofficial name of the region.”

The villages were built by peasants and, later on, by religious groups. The area encompasses more than 800 villages in less than 1,000 square miles, Professor Rabbat said.

“The earliest inscription is dated to 122 C.E. [also known as A.D.] and the last is 863 C.E., which means that they span the late Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic periods,” he said. “They all adopt a certain classical style, modified by regional preferences and the formal qualities of the building material, which is hewn limestone used without any mortar.”

Professor Rabbat noted that the architecture is not strictly Roman but is classical because Syria was part of the Hellenistic world before it was taken over by Rome. Syrian Classicism is the correct term, a style that combines forms from Mesopotamia, Arabia and Egypt.

Copyright C.H.-Chr.Lohmann

Part of an ancient Syrian village in a swath of land between current-day Aleppo and Hama.

Despite the villages’ value, they were abandoned in the 8th to 10th centuries after the Islamic conquest of the Byzantine Empire. Many people moved from Antioch to Damascus, causing the region’s decline. A few villages expanded in the 12th to 13th centuries, but no growth occurred again until the late-19th century, during the late Ottoman period.

It’s easy to visualize their original splendor among the ruins.

“What’s beautiful and original about this site is not that this happened during the Syrian Republic existence but that it happened before Christ, so it’s important to the region,” Roca-Hachem of Unesco said. “It’s important to the world that we preserve it, that we recognize what’s unique and interesting about it.”

Although a designation on the World Heritage list brings a variety of benefits, including increases in tourism, Professor Rabbat argues against opening a region exclusively to cultural and increased commercial tourism to improve the economy. In his book, he proposes developing an agricultural base for the region, which would not only secure livelihoods but also temper tourism – avoiding large international hotel chains, for example.