Deirouni Chapel on the Jebel Barisha

A small monastic chapel standing on its own on the slope below Baqirha, on the Jebel Barisha. In plan it is a plain rectangle, but the stone carving round its windows is fine work. In its 2011 evaluation ICOMOS, UNESCO’s advisory body, describes Deirouni as a monastic chapel of rare decorative quality and very well preserved. It is one of four elements named for the Jebel Barisha archaeological park.

Getting there

South of the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, in the Dana subdistrict. You go to Baqirha first; the chapel is 580 metres north of the settlement there, lower down the slope. Dar Qita is 685 metres to the north-east. So the chapel lies on the walking line between two Dead Cities — the abandoned late-antique stone villages of northern Syria. There is no public transport; you hire a car and driver in Idlib or Sarmada.

How long it takes

Half an hour. That is enough to walk round all four sides and read the rows of windows. It works best as a stop on the walk between Baqirha and Dar Qita.

What you see

In Early Churches in Syria, published in 1929, Howard Crosby Butler uses this chapel to show that the simplest plan did not mean the simplest decoration. The plan is a single rectangle with one door. Each long side has five windows high up. Each short end has three windows low down and two above, plus one more in the gable.

The decoration gathers round the windows. The doorways have rich mouldings. A deep moulding at the sill level of the upper windows runs all the way round the building, climbing over the round arch of each window and dropping back down. The three low windows at each end are framed by mouldings that curl between them and finish in a spiral at the end of the row. The gables carry a heavy cornice, and their windows have moulded frames. In photographs taken in 1996 for the Dumbarton Oaks archive, the west and south fronts stand up to the gable.

Where the name comes from

Maps give it as Deirouni, the ICOMOS report as Deiroune and Butler’s book as Burdj id-Deruni. Burj is Arabic for tower. When searching, try all three spellings.

How it stands today

During the war years, displaced families took shelter in the Dead Cities of the Jebel Barisha. We found no verified recent record of the chapel’s condition. Do not walk into a building people are living in. Unexploded ordnance is a reported hazard in rural Idlib: stay on the path and do not touch metal lying on the ground.

Don’t miss

The lower row of windows on the west front. The mouldings between the three windows curl and turn into spirals at both ends. This is where the carving Butler describes reads most clearly.