Tell Jindires, Ancient Gindaros

A settlement mound rising at the edge of the town of Jindires, on the bank of the Afrin river. Its ancient name was Gindaros. The first settlement goes back to the end of the fourth millennium BC; refounded in the Hellenistic period, the city lived on into Byzantine times. In 38 BC Roman legions defeated the Parthian crown prince Pacorus here, and in the 4th century the city had its own bishop. Excavations that began in 1993 opened up the mound layer by layer.

Getting there

Jindires is 68 kilometres from Aleppo by road and 21 kilometres south-west of Afrin. The mound sits at the edge of town, with the modern settlement built around its foot. There is no public transport information; you hire a car and driver in Aleppo or Afrin. The town was badly damaged in the earthquake of 6 February 2023, and hundreds of people were killed or injured. Check the state of the roads and the town before you set out.

How long it takes

Forty-five minutes. What you come to see is not a single building but the mound itself. It can go into the same day as Afrin.

What the mound holds

The layers cover a long span. The richest finds date from the Middle Bronze Age, the first half of the second millennium BC: fortifications and sacred buildings. Iron Age material is largely limited to the early phase, and almost nothing can be dated after 600 BC.

After a long stretch of thin settlement, the city was most likely refounded under Seleucus I around 300 BC, probably as a staging post on the road between Antioch and Cyrrhus. The streets were laid out on a Hippodamian grid — a regular Greek street plan — with long rectangular blocks between them. Geophysical survey shows a plan packed with houses of different sizes and no single dominant monument or square. The name may come from Genderros, a town in Macedonia between Pella and Edessa. The excavations turned up Hellenistic and Roman pottery, a hoard of Roman silver coins and a bronze hoard, and a mid-Roman lower town was identified beyond the mound.

A battle, a bishop, hot springs

The city passed into the Roman province of Syria with Pompey’s conquest in 63 BC. In 38 BC legions under Publius Ventidius Bassus defeated a Parthian army; the crown prince Pacorus died in the battle. In AD 252/253 the Sasanian king Shapur I took the city, and its name appears in his inscription at the Ka’ba-ye Zartosht. The emperor Theodosius I (379–395) fortified it. English-language sources say traces of the wall survive on the south and west faces of the mound, while excavation found no wall around the Hellenistic city. The geographer Strabo described the mound as a fit hideout for thieves.

Its one known bishop, Peter, attended the councils of Nicaea in 325 and Antioch in 341. The relics of Saint Marinus were kept here for a time and later moved to Antioch. In the 6th century war, plague and earthquakes wore the city down, and after the Arab conquest of 637 the ancient city drops out of the sources. In the 14th century the geographer al-Dimashqi described Jindires as a busy place and wrote of hot springs whose waters rose and flowed away no one knew where.

Don’t miss

The south and west faces of the mound. That is where English-language sources place the traces of the Theodosian wall.