Qanawat ( ar, قَنَوَات, Qanawāt) is a village in Syria, located 7 km north-east of

al-Suwayda As-Suwayda ( ar, ٱلسُّوَيْدَاء / ALA-LC romanization: ''as-Suwaydāʾ''), also spelled ''Sweida'' or ''Swaida'', is a mainly Druze city located in southwestern Syria, close to the border with Jordan. It is the capital of As-Suwayda ...

. It stands at an elevation of about 1,200 m, near a river and surrounded by woods. Its inhabitants are entirely from the Druze community. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Qanawat had a population of 8,324 in the 2004 census.

History

Qanawat is one of the earliest cities in the

Bashan Bashan (; he, הַבָּשָׁן, translit=ha-Bashan; la, Basan or ''Basanitis'') is the ancient, biblical name used for the northernmost region of the Transjordan during the Iron Age. It is situated in modern-day Syria. Its western part, now ...

and Hauran areas. It is probably evidenced in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Ancient Egyptian documents like the

execration texts Execration texts, also referred to as proscription lists, are ancient Egyptian hieratic texts, listing enemies of the pharaoh, most often enemies of the Egyptian state or troublesome foreign neighbors. The texts were most often written upon sta ...

(second group) of the 20th-19th century BC, and the Amarna letters of the 14th century BC (as Qanu, in EA 204).

Hellenistic and Roman history

The ancient Hellenistic-Roman city of Canatha (also Kanatha, Κάναθα in

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

), is mentioned for the first time in the reign of

Herod the Great Herod I (; ; grc-gre, ; c. 72 – 4 or 1 BCE), also known as Herod the Great, was a Roman Jewish client king of Judea, referred to as the Herodian kingdom. He is known for his colossal building projects throughout Judea, including his renova ...

(1st century BC), when

Nabatean The Nabataeans or Nabateans (; Nabataean Aramaic: , , vocalized as ; Arabic: , , singular , ; compare grc, Ναβαταῖος, translit=Nabataîos; la, Nabataeus) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and the southern Lev ...

Arab forces defeated a Jewish army. It remained an issue of contention between the two powers. From

Pompey Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (; 29 September 106 BC – 28 September 48 BC), known in English as Pompey or Pompey the Great, was a leading Roman general and statesman. He played a significant role in the transformation of ...

's time until

Trajan Trajan ( ; la, Caesar Nerva Traianus; 18 September 539/11 August 117) was Roman emperor from 98 to 117. Officially declared ''optimus princeps'' ("best ruler") by the senate, Trajan is remembered as a successful soldier-emperor who presi ...

's, it was a city of the

Decapolis The Decapolis (Greek: grc, Δεκάπολις, Dekápolis, Ten Cities, label=none) was a group of ten Hellenistic cities on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire in the Southern Levant in the first centuries BCE and CE. They formed a group ...

, a loose federation of cities allowed by the Romans to enjoy a degree of autonomy. In the 1st century AD it was annexed to the Roman province of Syria, and in the 2nd century it was rechristened Septimia Canatha by

Septimius Severus Lucius Septimius Severus (; 11 April 145 – 4 February 211) was Roman emperor from 193 to 211. He was born in Leptis Magna (present-day Al-Khums, Libya) in the Roman province of Africa. As a young man he advanced through the customary suc ...

, a

Roman colony A Roman (plural ) was originally a Roman outpost established in conquered territory to secure it. Eventually, however, the term came to denote the highest status of a Roman city. It is also the origin of the modern term ''colony''. Character ...

, and transferred to the province of

Arabia The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plat ...

Bishopric

Only one of the bishops of Canatha is known by name: Theodosius took part in the

Robber Council The Second Council of Ephesus was a Christological church synod in 449 AD convened by Emperor Theodosius II under the presidency of Pope Dioscorus I of Alexandria. It was intended to be an ecumenical council, and it is accepted as such by the ...

of Ephesus in 449, in the

Council of Chalcedon The Council of Chalcedon (; la, Concilium Chalcedonense), ''Synodos tēs Chalkēdonos'' was the fourth ecumenical council of the Christian Church. It was convoked by the Roman emperor Marcian. The council convened in the city of Chalcedon, Bi ...

in 451, and in a synod called by Patriarch Gennadius I of Constantinople in 459 against simony. No longer a residential bishopric, Canatha is today listed by the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

as a

titular see A titular see in various churches is an episcopal see of a former diocese that no longer functions, sometimes called a "dead diocese". The ordinary or hierarch of such a see may be styled a "titular metropolitan" (highest rank), "titular archbis ...

Early Islamic era

A center of Christianity in the area, Canatha was captured by the Muslim Arabs in 637, and declined in importance until in the 9th century it was reduced to a poor village.

Ottoman era

A-060 Qanawat, Syria in 1900 by Gertrude Bell

In 1596 Qanawat appeared in the Ottoman tax registers as part of the ''

nahiya A nāḥiyah ( ar, , plural ''nawāḥī'' ), also nahiya or nahia, is a regional or local type of administrative division that usually consists of a number of villages or sometimes smaller towns. In Tajikistan, it is a second-level division w ...

'' (subdistrict) of Bani Nasiyya of the

Hauran Sanjak The Hauran ( ar, حَوْرَان, ''Ḥawrān''; also spelled ''Hawran'' or ''Houran'') is a region that spans parts of southern Syria and northern Jordan. It is bound in the north by the Ghouta oasis, eastwards by the al-Safa field, to the ...

. It had a population of twelve Muslim and five Christian households. Among the inhabitants were a group of settled Bedouin. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 20% on various agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, goats and/or beehives; a total of 4,750 akçe. Qanawat was abandoned between the 17th and 18th centuries. However, by the 1820s, it was among the first villages in the Jabal Hauran to be repopulated by Druze migrants from Mount Lebanon.Firro 1992, p. 149. At the time, five or six Druze families settled the village. Because of its Roman past, Qanawat already had paved pathways, readily available empty houses and water sources.Firro 1992, p. 151. However, its population had only incrementally increased between 1830 and 1850. Though during that period it became the home of Druze religious sheikhs, it was not until the 1850s that was Qanawat established as the seat of the preeminent ''shaykh al-aql'' (Druze religious leader) and the center of local Druze politics. Following further Druze migration to the area after the

1860 Mount Lebanon civil war The 1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus (also called the 1860 Syrian Civil War) was a civil conflict in Mount Lebanon during Ottoman rule in 1860–1861 fought mainly between the local Druze and Christians. Following decisive Druze ...

, Qanawat grew into a large village. The first ''shaykh al-aql'' of Qanawat was Ibrahim al-Hajari who played a key role in mobilizing Druze resistance to the conscription orders of the Egyptian governor Ibrahim Pasha in the late 1830s.Firro 1992, p. 182. Ibrahim died in 1840 and was succeeded by his son Husayn. Qanawat at the time was under the control of the

Al Hamdan Al Hamdan ( ar, ال حمدان) is a Druze clan based in Jabal al-Druze, a mountainous region in southeastern Syria. They were among the earliest Druze settlers in Jabal Hauran and were the dominant local force in that region between their establis ...

, the leading Druze family of the Hauran. However, under Husayn’s leadership, the Hajari family formed the ''mashaykat al-aql'', which gradually became the main religious institution recognized by the Druze of Hauran. The Al Hamdan used it to further their influence among the Druze, but lost Qanawat to the Bani al-Atrash in the 1860s.Firro 1992, p. 183. The latter only nominally controlled Qanawat with the al-Hajari family running the village’s affairs independently through the ''mashaykhat al-aql''.

Main sights

The city's extensive ancient ruins are 1500 m in length and 750 m in breadth. Among them are a Roman bridge and a rock-hewn

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

, with nine tiers of seats and an orchestra nineteen meters in diameter, also a nymphaeum, an aqueduct, and a large prostyle temple with portico and colonnades. North-west of the town is a late 2nd- or early 3rd-century peripteral temple, built on a high platform surrounded by a colonnade. For years, this temple was believed to honour Helios, but an inscription discovered in 2002 shows that it was dedicated to a local god, Rabbos. The monument known as Es-Serai (also ''Seraya'', "palace") dates from around the 2nd century AD and was originally a temple, and then, from the 4th/5th centuries, a Christian

basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's Forum (Roman), forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building ...

. It is 22 m long, and was preceded by an outside portico and an atrium with eighteen columns. The German explorer

Hermann Burchardt Hermann Burchardt (November 18, 1857 – December 19, 1909) was a German explorer and photographer of Jewish descent, who is renowned for his black and white pictorial essays of scenes in Arabia in the early 20th century. Life Burchardt, born in ...

visited the town in 1895, taking photographs of its antiquities, photographs which are now held in the

Ethnological Museum of Berlin The Ethnological Museum of Berlin (german: Ethnologisches Museum Berlin) is one of the Berlin State Museums (german: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), the de facto national collection of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is presently located in ...

.General view of Qanawat
(click on photo to enlarge)
Qanawat, Serail
(click on photo to enlarge).

Gallery of images

Al Quanawat-Kanatha - GAR - 8-01.jpg, Roman building, Al Quanawat in 2008 Al Quanawat-Kanatha - GAR - 8-02.jpg, Roman building, Al Quanawat in 2008 Al Quanawat-Kanatha - GAR - 8-03.jpg, Window reliefs Al Quanawat-Kanatha - GAR - 8-05.jpg, Temple of Rabbos, Al Quanawat in 2008 Al Quanawat-Kanatha - GAR - 8-04.jpg, Roman nympheum, Al Quanawat in 2008 File:Al Quanawat-Kanatha - GAR - 8-06.jpg, Roman tower, Al Quanawat in 2008

References

Bibliography

* * * *
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites-Canatha

External links

Map of the town
Google Maps {{coord, 32, 45, 20, N, 36, 37, 0, E, display=title Decapolis Roman towns and cities in Syria Archaeological sites in as-Suwayda Governorate Populated places in as-Suwayda District Former populated places in Syria Druze communities in Syria