Ancient Byzantine churches of Jordan: Studying Rihab’s Greek inscriptions, mosaics

AMMAN — Located between Mafraq and Jerash, Rihab is a village with an exceptional historical and archaeological importance. In the 1990’s, a number of structures and artefacts were discovered at Rihab, including early Christian churches and mosaics. 

A group of scholars found thirty Greek inscriptions and excavated the ecclesiastical complex of St John the Baptist. The inscriptions found on the mosaic floors depict the laying of pavements in the 6th and early 7th centuries AD, while the second group of epitaphs belonged to the Roman period and these blocks were reused in the building.

According to the academic consensus, the church complex is dated between the 6th and 7th centuries AD and the structures did not differ architecturally from similar basilicas of that period.

The inscribed mosaics from the north church states the name of the church and the date of its building: “Under the most holy and blessed Polyeuktos, archbishop and metropolites, this church of St John the Baptist was paved with mosaics at the expenses of the common fund of the kastron and the holy place, by the zeal of George, priest and periodeutes, and of Severos, steward, in the month of Apellaios, at the time of the eighth indiction, in the year 514 of the province.”

“Polyeuktos was an archbishop of Bostra known to have held this position from 594AD to 624AD. He appears at Riab in no less than five other inscriptions,” noted a French epigrapher Julien Aliquot, adding that the mosaic from the church of St John the Baptist is more precisely dated during his time in office between AD 17th November and 16th December, 619. 

That period falls in the time of the Persian occupation of Rihab during the Byzantine-Sassanid war (602-628AD). 

The text simply refers to the site as a kastron, or a “fortified place” while other epigraphic documents mention an “estate” or a “village” instead, Aliquot said, adding that the presence of Roman soldiers in Riab had only been suspected. 

“Given the current state of knowledge, it is still impossible to specify how the ancient settlement of Riab was fortified and when it was granted the title of kastron.

Just like the building of an enclosure wall, this status was one of the possible prerequisites for claiming the status of a city,” Aliquot highlighted, adding that the emergence of a collective social organisation on a local scale was surely another. 

In this respect, it is worth emphasising that the 619AD dedication, as it can be today restored, mentions the existence of a common fund managed by a local community and ecclesiastical authorities, at least with regard to the funding of religious buildings.

The excavation conducted at the site between 2008 and 2014 revealed a second, much larger basilica with three aisles adjoining the first church on its southern side, he said, adding that it was according to a pattern that was common in the provinces of Arabia and Palestine.

“The role of the community in funding the mosaic floors of the twin churches of St John the Baptist may partly explain the reuse of a series of Roman tombstones in the Byzantine construction,”Aliquot said.

The site of Rihab was no exception in the late antiquity and the early Byzantine period as we saw the spectacular development of large villages with an embryonic community organisation around places of worship, especially in sites located at the interface of the countryside and the steppe, on the margins of the territories of cities in Roman Arabia, said Professor Pierre-Louis Gatier. 

“This phenomenon is particularly well documented in northern Jordan through the famous examples of Umm Al Jimal and Samra in the territory of Bostra,” Aliquot said.