Evidence ID
E02246Saint Name
George, martyr in Nicomedia or Diospolis, ob. c. 303 : S00259Saint Name in Source
ΓεώργιοςType of Evidence
Inscriptions - Formal inscriptions (stone, mosaic, etc.)
Archaeological and architectural - Cult buildings (churches, mausolea)Evidence not before
500Evidence not after
550Activity not before
500Activity not after
550Place of Evidence - Region
Arabia
ArabiaPlace of Evidence - City, village, etc
Bosra
Sammā'Place of evidence - City name in other Language(s)
Bosra
Sakkaia / Maximianopolis
Σακκαια
Sakkaia
Saccaea
Eaccaea
Maximianopolis
Shaqqa
Schaqqa
Shakka
Sammā'
Sakkaia / Maximianopolis
Σακκαια
Sakkaia
Saccaea
Eaccaea
Maximianopolis
Shaqqa
Schaqqa
ShakkaCult activities - Places
Cult building - independent (church)Cult activities - Non Liturgical Practices and Customs
Prayer/supplication/invocationCult Activities - Protagonists in Cult and Narratives
Aristocrats
OfficialsSource
High quality stone lintel, at both ends decorated with elaborate low-relief carvings of crosses framed by chevrons and squares with loops, and with a low-relief cross within a circle in the middle of the inscribed face. H. 0.35 m; W. 1.60 m.
Seen and photographed by Maurice Sartre in 1986. First published by him in 1993 and republished in 2011. The lintel was set in the facade of a church at the top of the village, in modern times dedicated to Saint Elijah.Discussion
The inscription contains a simple invocation, but given the fact that it was inscribed on a lintel, one can presume that it was meant to commemorate the construction of a church dedicated to Saint George. The editor associates the formula of this invocation with the 8th verse of Psalm 120/121 ('The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in') often carved above doorways in Syria, but in our opinion this is not correct, as the inscription is aimed at the acquisition of help for a specific person and not for all residents and visitors of a household.
The highlight of this text is certainly the figure of the supplicant - an Arab phylarch whose name is rendered in Greek as Aboou Chirib. Sartre suggests that this transcriptions corresponds to the Arab name Abū Karib, which is rendered in Greek as Αβοχαραβος/Abocharabos by Procopius. As the title of endoxotatos /gloriosissimus was borne by Arab phylarchs mostly in the 6th c. as a sign of their high dignity (equal to that of duces of the province of Arabia), we can presume that the inscription dates to that period. Based on this supposition Sartre wonders whether our phylarch can be identical with the Abocharabos (see: PLRE 3, s.v. Abocharabus) known to Procopius and probably to John Malalas, a phylarch of Palestine in 529 and a brother of al-Ḥārith (V), son of Jabala, a Ghassanid/Jafnid chieftain, and uncle of al-Mundhir (III). It is also possible that this phylarch was involved in the suppression of the 529 revolt of the Samaritans. For other sources mentioning Abū Karib, a papyrus from Petra in Palaestina III, dated 574, where he appears in an arbitration (E03663), and a Syriac manuscript from the territory of Palmyra, see two recent papers by Fergus Millar (2013), and Pierre-Louis Gatier (2015, 211-212). The truth is, however, that we cannot prove that he is the person mentioned in our text.
According to Sartre the inscription is an invocation, executed by the inhabitants of the village when the phylarch was passing by that place. In our opinion the high quality of the lintel suggests rather the foundation inscription of a church (see above).Bibliography
Editions:
Sartre, M., and Sartre-Fauriat, A. (eds.), Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie, vol. 13/2: Bostra (Supplément) et la plaine de la Nuqrah (BAH 194, Beirut: Institut français du Proche-Orient, 2011), no. 9837.
Sartre, M., "Deux phylarques arabes dans l'Arabie byzantine", Le Muséon 106 (1993), 151-153.
Further reading:
Bevan, G., Fisher, G., and Genequand, D., "The late antique church at Tall al-'Umayrī East: New evidence for the Jafnid family and the cult of St. Sergius in northern Jordan", Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 373 (2015), 58.
Bevan, G., Fisher, G., and others "Arabs and Christianity", in: G. Fisher an others, Arabs and Empires before Islam (Oxford: OUP, 2015), 324.
Gatier, P.-L., "Les Jafnides dans l'épigraphie grecque au VIe siècle", in: D. Genequand, Ch., Robin (eds.), Les Jafnides : des rois arabes au service de Byzance : VIe siècle de l'ère chrétienne : actes du colloque de Paris, 24-25 novembre 2008 (Paris: Éditions De Boccard, 2015), 211-212.
Millar, F., "A Syriac codex from near Palmyra and the 'Ghassanid' Abokarib", Hugoye. Journal of Syriac Studies 16 (2013), 15-35.
Reference works:
Bulletin épigraphique (1994), 662; (2015), 688.
Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 43, 1089.
L'Année épigraphique (1993), 1638.
