#bosra

Theater of Bosra

Bostra (Bosra), Arabia, Syria

2nd century CE

15,000 Spectators

It was built in either the second quarter or the second half of the second century CE and is constructed of black basalt. It is likely that the theatre was built during the reign of Trajan. The theatre was originally built outside the walls of the town, but was later completely enclosed by an Ayyūbid fortress. 

The theatre is 102 metres across and has seating for about 15,000 people; it is thus among the largest of the Ancient Roman civilisation. It served a city that once had 80,000 inhabitants. It is also one of the best preserved both in Syria and across the Roman empire. It was substantially restored between 1947 and 1970, before which it contained large quantities of sand, which may have helped to protect the interior.

In accordance with the local topography, it had to be built in purely flat terrain and it forms a uniform structure consisting of an auditorium and a stage building. The shape of the façade of the auditorium is difficult to imagine today because the building was later framed by an Arab fortress, which is the real reason that the theater has been preserved so extraordinarily well. From the outside, entrances led through 29 arches in the outer wall of the auditorium. one of the entrances was in its central axis. 

Overall, the façade consists of a double-storey row of arches and a row of rectangular windows above. Individual consoles for holding the “sun sails” have been preserved. The normal spectators reached their seats through these arcades. There were 13 staircases available to them, which they could reach from an inner corridor behind the outer façade. The outer entrances or those in the 180° axis of the theater led as aditus maximi under the east and west stands into the orchestra. The others led to a further inner contact, from which stairs to the auditorium lead directly to the praecinctio, i.e. directed the corridor between ima and media cavea. This approach could also be reached from the aditus maximi, where corridors branched off to the side. 

Here you had the choice of going down to the better ranks or up to the worse ranks or the media cavea. The access to the cavea was the more convenient, as it was at ground level. The top row of the cavea consisted of a continuous row of seats with backrests, which is why one would assume that there were places for higher-ranking personalities. there were 6 stairs in between that led to the lower places of the 5 kerkides. Only from the middle wedge did a double staircase lead down to the orchestra. There are no other levels of honor for seats of honor or bisellia in the orchestra. 

The passage from the praecinctio into the media cavea was less comfortable: To do this, one had to climb again narrow stairs leading to the side and now reached the 6 stairs, which opened up the next higher 5 kerkides. Another approach (praecinctio) lies between media and summa cavea. This can be reached via the inner staircase system, until you finally step outside at ground level and, bending to the side, reached the top tier of seats via further double staircases behind the balteus of the praecinctio. Above this there is finally a round portico, the porticus in summa cavea, of which some of the columns are still preserved in situ. It is this detail that sets the Bosra Theater apart as actually the best preserved in the ancient world.

At the ends of both praecinctiones are small doors that lead to the higher floors of the two basilicas. The walls of the basilicas facing the auditorium are decorated at the top with a series of pilasters and 3 small wall niches underneath. The tribunalia via the aditus maximi can be reached from the lower praecinctio. From there, there was the best view of the stage and the auditorium. The stage or the pulpitum can be entered via the side basilicas. The front of the stage is structured by the usual sequence of half and rectangular niches. At the back of the stage is the scaenae frons, here consisting of two round niches on the side and a round niche pulled apart in the middle. It has three floors, which can still be clearly seen in the rear wall of the stage. The lower column position has been rebuilt. In contrast to the dark basalt, it consists of light limestone. The lower order is Corinthian, above which Ionic and Tuscan columns are assumed. Behind the scaenae frons is the perfectly preserved space of the postscaenium. The theater is dated differently in the scientific literature: General urbanistic reasons speak in favor of placing the building in the founding period of the Roman Bosra, but an analysis of the architectural ornamentation of the theater led to it being dated to the early Severe period around 200 CE.

BOSRA, Syria: Mobile phone in hand, student Abdelaziz Al-Aswad bounds up the steps of an UNESCO-listed Roman theater in southern Syria, elated that the heritage site has survived seven years of civil war.

The second-century theater stands tall in the ancient city of Bosra, which the United Nations cultural body designated as under threat after Syria’s conflict broke out.

Al-Aswad was among dozens to visit and take pictures of the theater under grey skies on Friday, as part of an organized trip to the area sanctioned by the tourism ministry.

The Roman theatre at Bosra, the best preserved example in the middle east, built by Trajan in the 2nd century - has been damaged by SAA shelling

The city is near the front line where the SAA is advancing in it’s push to eliminate rebel control over Daraa and south west Syria near the Golan Heights

East Gate of Bosra

Bostra (Bosra), Arabia, Syria

End of 1st /start of 2nd century CE

This arch is one having a single, broad, high opening, in form of a tunnel vault, through its minor axis, and two narrow, low, tunnel vaults piercing the masonry on either side of the main opening, through the major axis of the structure, at right angles to the main arch. 

 Assuming that the proportions of the podium are approximately correct, we find the first storey, on both faces of the arch and on either side of the opening, ornamented with pilasters at the angles, quarter columns adjoining the pilasters, and half columns flanking niches in the middle of each side. The architrave breaks out en ressaiit over each pilaster and half column, but the other members of the entablature above the architrave are omitted. In the upper storey another composition is repeated four times, twice on either face of the arch. This is made up of four pilasters which ascend from the ressauts of the lower order, and three niches, one large semi-circular niche in the middle space and a small rectangular niche in either of the side spaces. 

The pilasters have no bases, their caps are formed by a simple moulding which is carried across the face of the arch, breaking out over each, and curving upward in an arch above the middle niche. The main arch is the central feature of this storey. Its archivolt has a good set of architrave mouldings which spring from the ressauts above the lower pilasters. It will be noted that two of the pilasters of the upper storey terminate below rather clumsily upon the extrados of these arch mouldings. There is no attempt to produce the effect of an entablature above the order of the upper storey, the wall rises in two plain courses to a height a little above the crown of the main arch where a moulded string course is carried across the entire face of the arch. 

There are remains which show that the building was at least one tall course higher than the string moulding; but it is impossible to know how much higher the structure was, or how it was completed at the top. I have added a deep overhanging cymatium of the ordinary Hauranian type to finish the restoration; but there may have been a complete Attic storey in the style of Roman arches. Section A-B gives the treatment of the two interior faces of the arch, with the opening of the low vaulted side passages. Nothing in this drawing is restored save the podium and the profile of the crowning mouldings of the arch. The ends of the edifice are almost wholly conjectural, the lower storey being almost completely hidden by modern buildings at both ends and the upper part being in ruins. 

The more important details of this building are given on a larger scale in Plate X. The order is most unusual, though, as we have seen, it was not unique in Bosra, and it is not difficult to detect the resemblance it bears to examples known in Petra, Hegra and Sf. For this reason I do not hesitate to call it a Nabataean order. The bases of the half and quarter columns may not be given with complete accuracy; for I found them badly injured; but the capitals and the architrave and other mouldings are in good preservation. The caps of the grouped pilasters and quarter columns at the exterior and interior angles on the east face are compound designs in which the circular mouldings of the half columns are replaced by a row of stiff, erect, acanthus leaves. 

The abacus of each pilaster cap is of the same “horned” variety as that of the half columns, and a single “horn” of the same type of abacus projects above the quarter column. The architrave is low, with two bands and a very salient cymatium. It is a pity that no inscription has as yet been found that might give a definite date to this monument. We may not even look to Petra for dated monuments that would assist in dating this arch. But the dated and dateable buildings erected in the Hauran under the Antonine emperors and under the emperors of the third century present none of the details which set this monument apart, and point to an earlier date, perhaps in the reign of Trajan, probably earlier. 

The peculiar abacus of the capitals in this edifice is a common feature in the rock-hewn facades of Petra which are believed to be earlier than the year 106 CE The combined pilaster and quarter columns under a composite cap of this strange order appear in rock-hewn tomb fronts discovered at Hegra and published by the Dominican Fathers Jaussen and Savignac. These particular details appear, without the circular mouldings below the abacus, beside the doorways of three tombs (E 18) (A 5) and (B 1), all dated by Nabataean inscriptions of the year 31 CE. 3 and in the same part of another tomb (F 4) dated in the 24th year of Malichus II., i. e. 63-64 CE. Engaged columns, and pilasters with quarter columns attached, both having circular mouldings below the abacus, all very like those in the East Arch at Bosra, are found in a rock-hewn façade in Petra (No. 633)4 which bears a Nabataean inscription that is to be dated early in the second century of this era. It is therefore plain that these details were well known in the country of the Nabataeans in the first century CE and early in the second. The capital with a cluster of leaves below the “horned” abacus has not been found in Petra or Hegra. This fact however need not interfere with our assigning the East Arch of Bosra to a date near the end of the first, or early in the second, century; for Greek influence was much stronger here than in the regions farther south.

(Text is told first hand by Howard Crosby Butler, who wrote the Syria series)