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A scattering of forgotten structures lost in the folds of a hilly terrain, the ancient villages of the Limestone Massif of Northern Syria have remained walled in silence for centuries. Yet, the harmony of these churches, houses, oil presses, baths, and cisterns; the soberness of the monasteries, cloister towers and Stylite columns eaten by time; the erosion of these skeletons of stone and brick ravaged by winds and baked by the heat of many summers – all these yield hidden messages, fragments of the history of the blossoming of northern Syria’s early Christians.
These ruins also tell us the humble history of peasant builders from the 1rd to the 8th century, who laboured their land, prospered through grape and olive farming; Over 700 ancient sites have been catalogued scattered in the breathtaking landscape of plateaus reaching up to 1000m. The Jebel Semaan, Jebel Halaqa, Jebel Baricha, Jebel Ala, Jebel Doueli, Jebel Wastani and finally further south the Jebel Zawiyeh are the links of that form the chain of the Limestone Massif – framed by the city of Cyrrhus in the north, Apamea in the south, the Orontes valley in the West and the plains of Aleppo, Qinnesrin and Maarat an-Numan in the East.
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