GEOGRAPHY

As you look at lonely Resafa in the desert, it is easy to forget that once it stood on one of the world's main roads, with populous towns and cities all around. It was on several great caravan roads, with Palmyra to the south, Dura-Europos southeast, and Aleppo on the west. Hardly a day passed that did not see streams of traffic converging on its walls. Caravans did not follow the edge of the Euphrates closeby, as the ravines made travel difficult, and every small village expected their toll. Instead, the large caravans moved parallel to the river but farther inland. This put Resafa on the east-west trail.

Just to the north and northeast of Resafa there were two fords of the Euphrates, one at Nicephorium [ar-Rakka] and the lesser, at Thapsacus [Balis]. Elsewhere along the Euphrates the river came right up to the cliffside, forbidding an easy crossing. Thus travel from Palestine and Egypt was funneled up the broad valley between the foothills of the Antilebanon and Alawit ranges tot he west, and the higher plateau to the east called, al-Bisri [Bashan]. This eastern plateau is deeply cut many times with erosion valleys, extending the travel distance going around, or causing hardship on animal and handlers with constant ascent and descent.

The village if Resafa had no spring or running water; it depended upon cisterns holding the winter and spring rains. The rainfall in this area is more than sufficient, enough for year-around pasturage to the south of Resafa. The Bedouin still water their flocks with the brackish water from the open well at the north-west tip of the rampart. The rope, more than 120 feet long, shows how deep the well is. There are four immense, vaulted underground rain-water cisterns, still covered with water-tight cement.

Fortress

The massive walls, formed of massive blocks of stone, surround Resafa almost without a break. It is possible to follow the sentry-walk for hundreds of yards at a stretch, and to enter the guard-houses where Byzantine garrisons kept watch over the desert. There are three rectangular gates, the big central one for wagon traffic, two flanking entrances for pedestrian and horsemounted traffic. Roman arches, formed of white gypsum, sit on columns with Byzantine capitals. The gypsum is quarried fifteen miles away, and the white stone glitters like quartz crystals in the sun.

Etymology

The name is spelt Roseph in the Vulgate, Rezeph in the Revised Version. It was called Sergiopolis later by the Romans. Some modern translators spell it Resapha.

HISTORY

Resafa was an important annex of Palmyra during the first few centuries of the Christian era, under Roman influence. The Euphrates River was the frontier between the Persian Empire and the expanding Empire of Rome. Planted right in the path of the Persian attacks on the Byzantine Empire, the town must have led an anxious life, and many a time it beat off armies with the aid of the warrior Saint Sergious.

Resafa is mentioned in Isaiah 37:12, where Sennacherib boasts to Hezekiah that he has captured it along with other towns. Little else is heard of Resafa until the 4th century as a pilgrimage town of St. Sergius. Sergiuos and Bacchus were Syrian officers and friends who died for their Christian faith in the early 4th century, about 305 CE. They became known as defenders of the town, and considered Saints.

Some indication of the fame of St. Sergius is the strange fact that one of his greatest devotees was Chosroes II, King of Persia, a pagan rule. During a crisis in his affairs, Chosroes appealed for help to St. Sergius and vowed to the martyr a golden cross should his wish be granted. Not only did he fulfill his promise, but he sent back to Resafa the gold cross of Justinian, which had been looted during a Persian raid in the time of Chosroes I. On a second occasion the Persian King appealed to St. Sergius, this time that one of his wives might have a son. This desire was also granted. In order to show his gratitude, the Persian sent to the priests of Resafa many precious gifts, including rich vessels to be used in the services of the church and bearing his name.

Resafa survived with weaving mills using the wool of the countless sheep that were the areas wealth.

MONUMENTS

Strong buttresses support the defensive wall on the inside. Made of big blocks well bonded together, they allow room for a vaulted passage to serve as a curtain. The row of arches creates an effect of alternating light and shade and the whole is bathed in a rose-colored glow. Of the city itself, there remains only two or three buildings that can be identified. All round is desolation; the bare and upturned land is pitted with craters, the work of generations of treasure-seekers.

Church remains

From the north gate, the Via Recta formed the main thoroughfare of the city. It is now no more than a pathway overgrown with grass, but lining it on either side there are still blocks of marble, the broken stumps of pillars and chunks of wall from the past. The street leads to a first building of some size: the martyrium, a church where, at an early date, the bodies of Saint Sergius and his companions Bacchus and Julia were laid to rest. It is a basilican church with an apse. The floor and walls are made of gypsum stone found in Rasafa and the great monolithic columns are of rose-colored marble. The apsidal chapels are well preserved; the capitals and the archway carved like lace.

Several archways are early Roman style; then were later filled in and the arch remodeled in the Arab style. There are many examples of column capitals in the Arabic style, which is similiar to Corinthian. Unfortunately, the whole structure seems to stand only by a miracle; the keystone has already slipped more than half its height. Clearing, restoration and strengthening us urgently needed if this relic from one of the great periods of Syrian art is not to become a scatter of stones forgotten in the sand.

A hundred meters east of the martyrium stands a larger and more majestic replica of the first church, the great basilica dedicated to Saint Sergius. It has the same logical layout, the same shapeliness, the same pretty decoration and, of course, the same great beauty of the building material. Built on to the north wall of the basilica, and perhaps taken from a lateral nave of the Christian building, is a big rectangular, colonnaded hall used as a mosque in the 13th or 14th century. Two alcoves made in the church wall became mihrabs. There are both Byzantine and Arab writing which confirm that the two religious, Christianity and Islam, lived side by side at Rasafa right into the Middle Ages.

Close to the great basilica, an opening in the south-east corner of the rampart leads outside the walls to a knoll on which Caliph Hisham built his palace with a square layout and with all the rooms opening on to a vast inner courtyard. Unfortunately, the destruction wreaked by the hatred of the Abbassides for the Omayyads and centuries of erosion of the brick have left little here to fire the imagination.

Behind the martyrium, several vaulted rooms are to be seen in a building with a central courtyard, a cavansary, used to hold enormous amounts of water (the southernmost is 58 meters long, 22 meters wide and 13 meters deep), later an inn for pilgrims. Their capacity gives a good idea of the population of Rasafa, now nothing more than a tiny fragment of crystal glittering in a dreary desert.