BINBIRKILISE (Bin Bir Kilise, "One Thousand and One Churches"). - This is the name given to the ruins of an ancient Byzantine city in Lycaonia (Asia Minor), characterized by a great number of churches. The desert area in which it stands, at the foot of the Kara Dagh, was visited first by L. de Labord, then by H. Holtzmann, J. Smirnov, J. W. Crowfoot, J. A. Wilson, W. M. Ramsay and G. L. Bell, who studied its monuments.
Originally B. must have been a typical provincial city of the early Byzantine age, and attempts have been made to identify it with Barata. The abundance of sacred buildings, liturgically oriented, leads one to recognize the city as an important religious center.
Some fifty churches have in fact been recorded; the dating of the oldest goes back to the 5th century: these are grouped in the lower city (where 28 of them were counted); the others stand on the nearby plateau, on which the new fortified city was established after the Arab invasion of the end of the 7th century. Many of the older churches appear to have been restored around the 9th century, when a new period of relative prosperity followed. The typological features of these buildings do not differ from those of the neighboring cities (Daouleh, for example). They are constructions in cut stone, mostly covered with vaults. Frequent is the adoption of a basilical plan with three naves, divided by piers, with a single apse and narthex, flanked by side rooms; the barrel vaults are often reinforced by transverse arches. The dimensions of the buildings are generally quite modest, with the exception of one basilica that "only in this respect" differs notably from the others.
Besides the basilical structures, one notes single-nave churches with a transept arranged in an Egyptian cross, cruciform domed buildings and a few examples of churches with a polygonal plan.
The modesty of the construction is mirrored in the decoration, with its poor and scanty ornaments; in the monuments of B. one sometimes notes the pointed arch, called horseshoe, and it is possible to discern in them Syrian and Armenian architectural influences.
Bibliography4 works
Guglielmo De Angelis D'Ossat