Umm idj-Djimal (Thantia?)

187

West Church. One of the largest, and quite the best preserved, of all the fifteen
churches of Umm idj-Djimal, and one which was apparently the most imposing and the
most beautiful, is the church near the gate of Commodus, just outside the west wall
of the city. Though outside the city wall, it is connected with the city by one wall
that connects its east end with the Roman gate and another that extends southward
from its southwest angle and turns to join the city wall north of the Praetorium. A
ground plan and a photograph of the church were published by Schumacher1 in 1897.
I have made only one, slight correction in his plan by deepening the apse, adding a
cross section and a longitudinal section and two new photographs to what has already
been published. The west end preserves two storeys quite completely (Ill. 164). The
south arcade of the nave is standing with the clearstory wall above it (Ill. 165), the
east end is almost complete, the crown of the half dome only having fallen, and a
large section of the south aisle wall still stands with a portal in it.
In taking up the study of this building, we find ourselves immediately transported
from Southern Syria, from the Hauran, to the regions of Northern Syria, for in ground
plan and in superstructure, this church is foreign to the region in which it is located;
but conforms to plans and methods of building which are common in the North. Even
the black basalt of which it is made does not stamp it as a product of the South; for
this material is found in many northern churches in the basalt country between the
mountains and the Euphrates, in the cAla, at Kerratin, il-Anderin, and the Djebel il-Hass.
The plan (Ill. 166), it will be observed, consists of a well proportioned nave divided
into aisles by two arcades of four arches each, carried on square piers. The deep-set
apse is flanked by spacious side chambers, giving a straight east wall to the building,
and the west end has two square towers with an arched narthex between them. The
broad arches of the nave were built of very shallow voussoirs, i. e., voussoirs which
were long in the soffit but very short from extrados to introdos, and these were brought
together upon small impost blocks, not nearly so large as the piers upon which they
rest (See Sect. A—B and C—D). The tall clearstorey wall above the arches was pierced
with square-topped windows, one above each of the arches of the nave. That the
roof of the nave was gabled may be seen from the fragment of a gable still in place
and shown in Ill. 164. The west wall was pierced on this level by a large round-
arched window. The half dome of the apse was built of concrete with volcanic scoriae
in it. The side aisles were roofed with flat slabs of stone resting upon the aisle walls
and upon a corbel course above the nave arches which may be seen in Ill. 165.
This whole system of roofing is exactly like that employed in the church at Kalb Lauzeh
in Northern Syria.
A great part of the church edifice, including the aisle walls and the lower storey
of the west facade, in addition to the piers and arches, was built of highly finished
quadrated work, and the presence of a Classical moulding dividing the storeys of the
facade suggests that all this beautifully finished material was taken from some building
of the Roman period. The whole of the clearstorey, the upper part of the facade, and
the walls of the chambers beside the apse were built of smooth quadrated masonry
of good quality. The towers which flank the west facade, and which originally had an
arch between them, like the western towers of the church at Kalb Lauzeh in Northern

1 Z.D.P.-V. 'yi pp. 157, 158.