CHRISTIANIZATION AND ITS CHALLENGES† Having vowed, they fulfi lled their vow to (the church of) Sts Sergios
and Bacchos. † Sergios and Symeoni(o)s and Daniel and Thomas, sons of
Maximinos, village of Kaper Korao(n).^24Such items were sometimes stamped with official silver marks, which pro-
vide an accurate means of dating them. Many of the earlier Syrian churches
were extremely simple in style, but here too elaborate buildings soon grew
up, for instance spectacularly at the great pilgrimage centres of St Sergius at
Resafa near the Euphrates, where the sixth-century cathedral again replaced
an earlier building, and Qalaat Semaan, the sanctuary of St Symeon the Stylite,
where a great church composed of four basilicas in a cruciform arrangement,
with adjoining large cenobitic monastery and other buildings amounting to
a virtual ‘pilgrim village’, grew up around the column on top of which the
saint had lived for more than thirty years. Local traders soon also ensured
also that the pilgrims would approach the site along a road lined with shops.
At Palmyra, which had generally been thought to have gone into a decline
after the defeat of Zenobia in the late third century, eight churches have been
identified, including a sixth-century basilica on a scale similar to that at Qalaat
Semaan.^25
Figure 3.2 The great church complex at Qalaat Semaan, Syria, with the remains of the pillar
of St Symeon the Elder