HAÏDRA. - Arabic name of a Roman town
called Ammaedera or also Ammaedara in an in-
scription (CIL, 8, 11532), «Ad Medera» in the
Itinerarium Antonini and in the Peutinger Table, Am-
metra by Procopius (De aedif., VI, 6). A Christian inscription from Rome of the 4th century recalls a Victorina
de regione Admederensium (E. Diehl, Inscriptiones
christ. latinae veteres, Berlin 1925-31, no. 4454).
It was founded during the Flavian dynasty in the south-
ern part of proconsular Africa, on the road that linked
Carthage to Tebessa; it bore the name of «Colonia Flavia
Augusta emerita Ammaedera». Christianity flourished there
from the 3rd century since its bishop Eugenius was
present at the Council of Carthage in 256; later Speratus
attended that of 411; in the Byzantine era the bishop Crescen-
tianus is recorded (CIL, 8, 11645).
Among the monuments of H. relating to Christianity, the
first to be mentioned is the marble ansate slab (m. 2.50 x 0.53)
discovered in 1934 and set up by a «Marcellus illustris»
in honour of an imposing group of local martyrs, «qui
persecutione Diocletiani et Maximiani divinis legibus
passi sunt» (L. Poinssot, in Bulletin archéologique du
Comité des travaux historiques, Feb. 1934, pp. XIII-
XVIII).
S. Gsell illustrated a group of ruins of five Christian
buildings identified at H., namely a Christian building
of m. 21.15 x 8.60; in which a block of
marble was found with the inscription: «Hic habentur memoriae san-
ctorum Pantaleonti Iuliani et comitum», from the 5th-6th
century (CIL, 8, 10515); a second church in the Byzantine
citadel m. 13.20 x 5.60 with the beginning of the hymn
«Gloria in excelsis» inscribed in the apse (ibid., 8, 462),
with an attached dwelling. A third apse-ended church is to
the north of the citadel, a fourth smaller one (m. 8.38
x 8.65) to the east of the city, with an attached building
considered to be a monastery; there in 1934 a stone block
was found, previously a funerary cippus, which was adapted
as a reliquary with the inscription: «Hic habentur reliquiae beati martiris et antistis Cypriani depositae a beato Mallo episcopo anno IIII Domini Iustini Imperatoris». It is thus from the years 568-69; the relics are of the bishop of Carthage St Cyprian; and Mello is the bishop of H. (L. Poinssot, Une inscription mentionnant des reliques de St Cyprien, in Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des inscr. et belles lettres, 1934, p. 249 ff.). A fifth church is near the theatre (m. 16.50 x 7), with a floor made up of funerary inscriptions, among which one from the 14th year of the reign of Trasmondus, i.e. 510-11.