The Cathedral of Bosra

At the eastern end of the town, among basalt walls and toppled column bases, stand the remains of a church. An inscription now lost recorded that the building was consecrated in 512 by Julianos, Archbishop of Bosra; that is where the name cathedral comes from. It was dedicated to three Roman soldiers martyred for their faith — Sergius, Bacchus and Leontius.

Why it matters

Because of the plan. A square outer shell, a four-lobed central space carried on columns inside it, a wide apse to the east, a dome above. In an age when the basilica plan dominated, this was an early and ambitious attempt at a centrally planned church. UNESCO calls it an extremely important example in the evolution of early church architectural forms, and it is accepted as having shaped later Christian architecture and, to a degree, Islamic architecture as well.

What survives

The dome is gone and most of the building is ruin. What stands is the plan itself: the square walls, the apse, and the circle the column bases draw on the ground. Some of the visible stone is spolia — taken from Nabataean and Roman buildings and carried here, so that two different hands sit side by side in the same wall. Traces of fresco survive in patches of plaster.

The building next door

The ruin immediately north of the cathedral is known as the Basilica of Bahira. The name comes from the Christian monk who, in Islamic tradition, recognised the young Muhammad when a caravan passed through. Modern historians do not accept the story as historical, and some medieval Muslim scholars rejected it too; but the building is real and you can walk up to it. The two are separate structures and they are constantly confused — even photo archives carry frames filed under the wrong name.

How long it takes

Half an hour. The ruin is not large, but you need to stand in the middle and turn all the way round to read the plan; from outside you see only a wall. You reach it through the houses around it, and there is no separate gate.