تطور الفنون المعمارية في سورية قبل الاسلام ٢_a .. كتاب العمارة العربية الاسلامية

Multiple or overlapping doors, covered with wooden lintels, supported on columns or sometimes statues, such as the Gate of Halaf Palace. Picture No. (4), which reminds us of the columns of the Cariatide Temple in the Acropolis of Athens, which was built several centuries after the construction of Halaf Palace (Kabara Palace).

The drawers and square towers that we find at gates and on walls were used, equipped with serrated merlons. There were vaults erected in adobe pillars, and small domes, and the outer walls were equipped with pilasters, with wall supports to help hold the walls together. Then they turned into a decorative element, and became close together, creating what looked like niches (Mary's Palace). These pillars developed into half-columns in Persian art (the Parthian Palace in Assyria, and Khosrau's Palace in Mada'in). The ancients also knew how to use iron and lead wedges to hold together large building stones (Ugarit and Ain Dara).

In terms of decorative elements, we find that the fresco, that is, the kilassa decorated with murals and colors, was used in an early era in ancient Syrian cities. Wonderful examples were found in Mari and Tel Persib (Photo No. 5).

Mosaics were known in the early era in the Arab East (Temple of Uruk, third millennium) and were made of nails or brick pens with colored heads, which were embedded in the mud walls to form decorative shapes. The bricks laid in geometric shapes resulting from the difference in the positions of the bricks were used as a decorative element that was found. Examples of it were found in the Temple of Ishtar in Babylon. The Persians later adapted this technique from the Palace of Dara in Susa, and the Palace of Ixir-Kis in Per Sopolis, and it would appear later in the Arab-Islamic era. Bricks coated with colored enamel are also known for colored ceramic and faience panels.

As for buildings built of stone, the best example of them in Syria is found in the Canaanite buildings of Ugarit, which date back to the middle of the second millennium BC. The walls were built with regular courses of carved stone, in which iron wedges were sometimes used to connect the stones, and were provided with wall supports.

In the Ugarit Palace, stone stairs were found indicating the presence of two floors. The palace courtyards were paved with stone and provided with rectangular water pools and wells with stone beads. In Ugarit, underground tombs were found, built of well-carved stone, with stairs descending to them, and with doors with arches, covered with stone arches (Photos 1 and 2).

The city has a fortified gate equipped with towers, and the entrance to it consists of a broken axis, which is considered the oldest example of this type of fortified entrance, which will be the common design in all the gates of Arab cities and castles later on.

There are stone gutters and canals that transport water to the public underground sewers, which indicates an early organization of health services.

The reality is that the Muslim Arabs did not recognize the effects of these civilizations that became extinct centuries before the emergence of Islam. But they were in direct contact with intermediate arts that benefited from the first before its extinction and borrowed from it directly or indirectly. These are the classical arts, the product of Greece, the Romans, and the Byzantines, the effects of which abound in the Levant. And the Sasanian arts that prevailed in the region bordering the Levant from the east, in Iraq and Persia.

This reality forces us to take another look at the characteristics of these arts that benefited Arab civilization in its inception stage, and even when Arab Islamic art began to be established.

3- Classical architecture:

As for the classical arts, they were known to Syria following Alexander’s conquest in 333 BC, and they continued until the Islamic conquests in 635 AD. It has prevailed over ten centuries and is represented by three arts: Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine.

The Hellenistic influence is evident in the organization and construction of cities in a tangible way, and the effects of this planning are seen in the cities that were renewed by Greece, such as Damascus and Aleppo, or that were founded during their era, such as Latakia, Apamea, Antioch, and Dura Europos (Sahiyyat al-Furat). The Greeks also transferred to Syria an architectural art based on the use of three types of stone columns, Doric, Ionic, and Korani. Above the columns rose a table of carved stones decorated with decorations, consisting of a column, a frieze, and a cornice (1). Above all of the facades was a triangular front decorated with prominently carved images.