HAÏDRA. – Arabic name of a Roman town called Ammaedera or also Ammaedara in an inscription (CIL, 8, 11532), “Ad Medera” in the Itinerary of Antoninus and on the Peutinger Table, Ammetera in Procopius (De aedif., VI, 6). A Christian inscription from Rome of the fourth century recalls a Victorina de regione Admederenium (E. Diehl, Inscriptiones christ. latinae veteres, Berlin 1925–31, no. 4454).
It was founded during the Flavian dynasty in the southern part of Africa Proconsularis, on the road linking Carthage to Theveste; it bore the name “Colonia Flavia Augusta emerita Ammaedera”. Christianity flourished there from the third century, since its bishop Eugenius was present at the Conference of Carthage in 256; later Speratus attended that of 411; in the Byzantine period the bishop Crescensianus is recorded (CIL, 8, 11645).
Among the monuments of H. relating to Christianity, mention must first be made of the ansate marble slab (2.50 × 0.53 m) discovered in 1934 and erected by a “Marcellus illustris” in honor of an imposing group of local martyrs, “qui persecutione Diocletiani et Maximiani divinis legibus passi sunt” (L. Poinsot, in Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historiques, February 1934, pp. xiii–xviii).
S. Gsell described a group of ruins of five Christian buildings identified in H., namely a Christian building measuring 21.15 × 8.60 m, in which a marble block was found bearing the inscription: “Hic habentur memoriae sanctorum Pantaleonti Iuliani et comitum”, dating from the fifth or sixth century (CIL, 8, 10515); a second church in the Byzantine citadel, measuring 13.20 × 5.60 m, with the beginning of the hymn “Gloria in excelsis” engraved in the apse (ibid., 8, 462), together with an adjoining dwelling. A third church, with an apse, lay to the north of the citadel; a fourth, smaller one (8.38 × 8.65 m), stood east of the city, with an adjoining building thought to have been a monastery. There, in 1934, a stone block was found, formerly a funerary stele, in which a reliquary receptacle had been carved, bearing the inscription: “Hic habentur reliquiae beati martiris et antistis Cypriani depositae a beato Mallo episcopo anno IIII Domini Iustini Imperatoris”. It therefore dates from A.D. 568–69; the relics are those of the bishop of Carthage, St. Cyprian, and Mello is the bishop of H. (L. Poinso, 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 located near the theater (16.50 × 7 m), with a floor formed from funerary inscriptions, including one from the fourteenth year of the reign of Thrasamund, that is, from 510–11.