The Roman Temple at Slim (Slaim)

A Roman temple of the 2nd century in the village of Slim, about 10 kilometres north of Suwayda on the Damascus–Suwayda road. The historian Ted Kaizer calls its plan unique and its architectural decoration very rich. In photographs taken for the Dumbarton Oaks archive in 1996, the north-east corner of the east front is still standing: a tall corner pilaster with its capital, entablature and a piece of the pediment on top.

Getting there

The road from Damascus down to Suwayda passes the village. Attil lies to the west of Slim, Shahba to the north and Qanawat to the south-east; the temple at Attil is a few kilometres away. The village is known for its oak woods and for the valley that shares its name.

What to see

The temple is rectangular and sits on a podium close to two and a half metres high. Inside, three rooms follow one another: an entrance porch (pronaos), the main hall (naos) and, at the back, the inner sanctuary (adyton). The photographs show the remains of the east front in detail, with the pilaster capital, the entablature, the pediment and a small turret set into the corner.

Who studied it

The traveller W. J. Bankes was the first to record the temple, in 1819. Howard Crosby Butler, head of the Princeton expedition, examined it in the early 20th century. K. S. Freyberger worked on the building between 1980 and 1988.

What not to miss

Look at the top of the north-east corner. Above the pilaster capital comes the entablature, above that the end of the pediment, and a small turret sits on the corner. Nearly every frame in the Dumbarton Oaks series is aimed at this corner; it is where the building’s ornament reads best.

The village’s name and past

Sources disagree on the ancient name of the village: one gives the Latin Selaema, another Neapolis. In the Ottoman tax register of 1596 it appears as Salam, with 17 households. Druze resettled it in the 18th century, and the Abu Assaf family long held sway there. The traveller Burckhardt wrote that the village sheltered people escaping conscription and taxes. Maqam Abu Rafi’, a Druze shrine, stands in the village.

Where it stands now

Slim is in Suwayda governorate, which has been inside an armed conflict since July 2025. The present condition of the temple cannot be confirmed from independent sources, and access to the region is not regular. This page tells you what the temple at Slim is; it does not tell you that you can go there today.