Cambridge Ancient Hi.. - Index of

608 21b. syria, palestine and mesopotamia
There is an almost total absence of literary, archaeological or epigraphic
evidence from this area in the second half of the sixth century. Berytus,
which had grown in importance in late antiquity, was severely damaged by
an earthquake followed by a fire in 550–1, and when the Piacenza pilgrim
passed through in about 570 the bishop told him that the famous law
school had ceased to function as a result of the earthquake. 68 Smaller towns
like Tripolis, Botrys and Byblos are also said to have suffered badly. 69 It may
well be the case that the shift of population and economic activity away
from the coast to inland towns, like Damascus, Homs and Aleppo, so
noticeable in the first century of Muslim rule, may have begun earlier.
Further south, Tyre, capital of Phoenicia Libanensis, seems to have preserved
some urban life, and the Piacenza pilgrim noted textile manufacture
and brothels in the city; 70 its inhabitants put up a vigorous resistance to the
attacks of the Persians in the early seventh century. Caesarea, 71 too, seems
to have maintained some sort of urban life down to the Muslim conquests,
and Arab sources 72 mention a garrison and markets there, though whether
this included all the vast area of the antique city or only the restricted
fortified perimeter around the theatre is unclear.
The evidence from inland cities is problematic. We can say with some
certainty that there is no evidence, literary or epigraphic, of significant construction
in the provincial capitals of Apamea, Bostra or Scythopolis after
540, and we know that Apamea was sacked by the Persians in 573 and
Bostra by the Arabs in 583. Antioch was rebuilt on Justinian’s orders after
the Persian conquest of 540 and the earthquake of 542, though the archaeological
and literary evidence for this rebuilding is limited. It is also important
to stress that we have virtually no information on cities like Beroea and
Damascus which may well have been late antique ‘success stories’.
Demographically and economically, the rural areas may have been more
resilient. The evidence from the limestone massifs of northern Syria seems
to show that domestic building virtually ceased after the mid sixth century:
in the small but prosperous village of Refada by the monastery of St Symeon
Stylites, for example, there is a series of elegant houses, some with columned
porticoes, dated from 341 to 516, but nothing from the second half of the
sixth century. 73 It seems, however, that the building of churches and monasteries
still continued: for example, the monastery of Braij, in the country surrounded
by its own fields, seems to have been built in the late sixth century. 74
68 Antonini Placentini, Itinerarium cap. 1,p.129; cf. Agathias, Hist. ii.15.
69 See Malalas p. 485 Bonn. 70 Itinerarium cap. 2,pp.129–30.
71 For a pessimistic assessment of Caesarea in late antiquity see Levine (1985) 135–9.
72 al-Balād· urī, Futuh · al-Buldān ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden 1866), pp. 141–2. al-Balād · urī also notes (pp.
117–18) that Umayyad rulers made efforts to rebuild and repopulate the coastal cities of Tyre and Acre,
which are described as being in ruins, but whether this was the result of the invasions of the early
seventh century or a more gradual decline is not clear. 73 Tchalenko, Villages i.194–7.
74 Tchalenko, Villages 124–5, 158–9, 173.
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