Mesopotamia

MESOPOTAMIA. - Region comprised between the mountains (Kafiari) of Armenia in the north, the Zagros in the east, and the Syro-Arabian desert in the south; toward the west it borders on the Taurus and Anti-Lebanon Mountains. It can be divided into Upper M., which descends as far as 'Abd el-'Aziz, Singâr and Hamrîn; into Middle M., which extends to the borders of Babylonia; and into Lower M., which is Babylonia itself, already previously known as Akkad (north) and Sumer (south). The name M. is generally restricted to the middle and lower parts. Noteworthy are the two great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, which, rising in Armenia, are at most about 467 km. apart in their courses from one another, then draw near each other near Baghdad, only to separate again until together they form the Saṭṭ el-'Arab (at el-Qurnah), a river which after about 161 km. empties into the Persian Gulf. The Ġezirah,

"island", is the region between the Tigris, the Euphrates and the Ḥabur, which, like the Balîḥ to the west of it, is a tributary of the Euphrates. In the east, the two rivers Zab and especially the Dijala contribute to giving the Tigris its steep and violent course, little practicable for navigation.

The uniform character of M. forced its inhabitants either to the cultivation of the fertile land, so as eventually to form powerful states (v. MARI; MITANNI), or to nomadic pastoralism in the parts farthest from the rivers.

M. had many names. Already Samâl-Adad I (1748-1716 B.C.) of Assyria spoke of it as "the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates". The importance of these two rivers is reflected in the name naḥrima of el-'Amârnah, naharin of the Egyptian and the 'Aram nahârájim of the Bible, which was used from the 16th to the 10th century B.C. For the dual or non-dual explanation of this name, and for its synonyms, Mitanni, Ḥanigalbat, Ḥurri, v. MITANNI. For the most part the Assyrian conquerors mention names of cities in M. or of localities such as Šubaru, Kummub, Bit-Adini, etc. From Assurbanipal (669-626) onward, the phrase ebir nâri, "beyond the river", designates the Assyrian provinces west of the Euphrates, and in the Persian texts it designates the satrapy of Syria, which however included, under Darius, also the region east of the Euphrates. The dual force of Nahârájim is seen in the Greek Μακασποταμία (in the Septuagint, cod. B of Inde, 3, 8, 10 one reads instead Σορία ποταμῶν), which strictly speaking refers to the country between the two great rivers. But here too usage varied. Alexander the Great, it appears, founded a new satrapy under the name of Μακασποταμία, which extended to the east of the Tigris, and this satrapy was maintained in the times of the Seleucids. Eratosthenes and Strabo exclude, Pliny sometimes includes Babylonia in the concept of M. The Roman province of M., probably already existing from the year 195 A.D., seems to have extended from the Ḥabur as far as the Tigris and, after Diocletian, included also the region of Amida in the north. For the history of M., v. ASBIRI.

CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY

Mesopotamia is the only region in which, during the first centuries of the Christian era, a great Christian art developed outside not only the political frontiers of the Roman Empire but also, and more importantly, outside its cultural environment, and without any relation to or influence from its artistic expression and in general from that late Hellenism of which it is the last survival. For this reason it represents a unique and extremely important phenomenon. It is understood, however, that we always mean Mesopotamia in the historical Sasanian sense, inasmuch as two ecclesiastical provinces, which nevertheless form part of the same region in the geographical sense, find themselves in a very different condition: these are Osroene, that is, the region of Edessa with the monuments of that city and of Wiranšehir, and Roman Mesopotamia with those of Diarbekir (Amida) and of Mayaferqat (Martyropolis), which connect with those of northern Syria and must therefore be studied separately. The origins of the evangelization of Mesopotamia are quite obscure: probably the religion of Christ first spread in the powerful and wealthy Jewish communities of Babylonia, and of this period one can at most accept the semi-legendary name of Mari and the activity of missionaries coming from Edessa, aided by the great importation of Roman prisoners, brought mainly from Coele-Syria, which already in the 3rd century was largely Christian. At the end of the 3rd century an ecclesiastical organization was already constituted, and the see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon was occupied by Papa bar Aggai, who is the historical founder of the Church of Mesopotamia. The Christians of Mesopotamia thus found themselves very early, and perhaps already in the 2nd century, under the necessity of constructing religious buildings, churches, as is moreover documented also by the Mīḥa Zhha or religious chronicle of Adiabene, whose substantial authenticity has been vainly contested, for a very ancient period.

The most archaic Christian sanctuary known today is the one found at the locality of Qasr bint al-Qaḏi at Ctesiphon. The excavations have brought to light two churches, the second built on the ruins of the first, and having the perimeter walls in common. The lower one is a very elongated rectangular hall with two rows of columns along the longer walls and almost leaning against them: the apse portion has completely disappeared. The structure of our hall is very similar to that of certain Sasanian royal buildings. The second church has survived in a much better state of preservation: it is a rectangular hall with doors only in the long walls: the western one is completely solid, while in the eastern one doors open giving access to three rectangular chambers forming the triple sanctuary characteristic of Mesopotamian churches also in later periods. Along the long walls there are two rows of four pillars each, connected to the perimeter walls by small arches that must have supported conches. The structure is identical to that of a hall of the Palace of Sarvīstān from the era of Bahrān Gūr (420-438). From the examination of these monuments two fundamental facts emerge: the first is that the church is conceived as a wide hall, that is, with entrances on the long sides, thereby repeating a very ancient Mesopotamian tradition in the structure of the temple, contrary, that is, to the tradition of the classical world which always (save for very rare exceptions) places the entrance to the temple on one of the short sides. The second is that the church copies in its architectural structure a great hall of a Sasanian royal palace. The Christians of Mesopotamia, having to build a church and living completely outside any classical tradition that led to the adoption of the basilica form, conceived it according to the very ancient indigenous tradition of the temple as a wide hall and gave it the architectural forms of the great assembly halls of the contemporary royal palaces. This constitutes their profound characteristic.

To a later period belong the two churches discovered at al-Ḥīrah. Both have the general form of the aforementioned churches of Ctesiphon, that is, that of an elongated rectangle with entrances on the longer sides and with the same triple sanctuary. One of these churches has the nave divided into three parts by two rows of four large round pillars. In the middle of the church, in what would be the central nave, there is the Bīẓūẓ, that is, a platform raised from the floor having a bench for the priests on three sides, according to a structure that is found again at Ruṣāfah and in very many churches of northern Syria, and which is well described in the liturgical treatise attributed to George of Arbela. The churches of al-Ḥīrah are decorated with stuccoes of the style dominant in Mesopotamia in the 7th-8th century. Of a completely different type are the churches found in the northern part of the region, in the Tūr 'Abdīn. The most important are those of Mar Azizael at Kefz Zeh, of Mar Kyriakos at Arnās, of Mar Philoxenus at Midyād. They always have the plan of wide halls of very elongated rectangular shape, without interior supports and therefore with a single nave, terminated by an apse to the east, surrounded by several rooms, some even behind the apse itself. Generally they have to the south a rectangular narthex, as long as the church. This is covered with a barrel vault resting on a series of arches leaning against the long walls. Such a structure is already found in the small Syrian temple of Dat Ras and is the one characteristic of the great audience halls, the "gate" of Muslim palaces: thus at Msāttā, Kherbet al-Mefḡer or Ukhaidir. The conception of taking as a model for the church the great palatine assembly hall thus continues.

But the Tūr 'Abdīn has also preserved several examples of monastic churches. Monasticism is very ancient in Mesopotamia: tradition connects it with an Awḡīn

(Eugenius) of Clysmā (Suez) who would have imported from his native Egypt the Rules of St. Anthony and of St. Pachomius, but certainly the monuments that still remain are well posterior to the supposed era of this legendary figure. The most important are: that of Qartamīn which probably goes back to the era of the emperor Anastasius (401-518), that of Mar Ibrāhīm and Mar Ubil at Midyād. The church there is constituted by a narthex in the form of a portico on pillars, from which one enters a rectangular hall covered with a barrel vault, a wide hall where the generatrices of the vault are perpendicular to the axis of the building. The back wall of the hall is pierced by three doors that give access to the three square chambers of the sanctuary. The walls are faced with great arches as in the group of churches previously described. At the convent of Mar Ya'qūb al-Ḥabīs at Ṣalāh there is the same church plan, with the sole difference that the central chamber of the sanctuary is provided with an apse, semicircular internally and polygonal externally, of certain Byzantine influence. The characteristic of the tripartite sanctuary together with that of the portico on the facade connects the plan of these churches with the type of the Babylonian temple, especially approaching its derivations of the Roman era, such as the Qasr Fīra'ūn at Petra or the temples of the Palmyrene gods and of Artemis-Nanānīa at Dura. More precise Syrian influences are found in the church of al-'Adrā at Hāh: the sculpted decoration is entirely of the north-Syrian type and the plan of the central hall with the middle part open to a dome and the two extreme parts to two semi-domes, and the central part of the sanctuary, semicircular with the facing decorated with niches interspersed with small columns, bring it close to the trichorum-cell monuments of Palestine and Egypt.

In the late Middle Ages, in Mesopotamia one finds churches of a form entirely different from that described up to this point, that is, with a structure of three elongated naves, separated by two rows of pillars, all three covered with a barrel vault at the same height, with the usual triple sanctuary where the chambers are likewise covered with barrel vaults and exceptionally by a dome, as at the Ulu Ġamī' of Karkūh, at the churches of Mar Petrōs and that of Mar Aḥudhēemmeh, both at Moṣul, and at that of the convent of Mar Beḥīnām. Other churches, such as those of Mar Girgīs, of Mar Ya'qūb, of Taḥrat Mīrām al-'Adrā, all at Moṣul, have a more complex form of sanctuary, different from one case to another and not reducible to a fixed rule. Churches with a single nave are not lacking, however, such as that of the convent of Mar Awḡīn or that of Mar Yūḥannān at Moṣul. The first of these is a reconstruction of 1282 of the Seleucid era (= 1271). Very remarkable in these churches is the rich carved decoration, especially at Mar Aḥudhēemmeh, where some decorative elements belong to the era of Nūr ad-Dīn and others to the Mongol era; Mar Petrōs with fragments from the time of Badr ad-Dīn Lū'lū, and the convent of Mar Beḥīnām rebuilt in 1164. Also very remarkable are the structures of the domes with apparent ribs executed in the manner of star polygons of the Seljuq type, which are also found in the mosque of Iṣfahān. All this decoration is absolutely of the same style as that found in contemporary Islamic monuments. The phenomenon of the stylistic and iconographic identity of the Christian and Muslim artistic productions of Mesopotamia under the Seljuqs and the Il-Khāns is not limited to architectural decoration. One must also take into account the many objects in bronze and in damascened copper, several of which bear representations of Christian subjects and whose center of production was mainly Moṣul. These are works of artists who worked indifferently for Christians and Muslims, such as the well-known Dāwūd ibn Ṣalāma. The religious tolerance of that period reaches the point that the masterpiece of these series, that is, the great plate with Christian subjects now in the collections of the Duke of Arenberg at Brussels, was executed, according to an inscription engraved on it, for Malik Ṣāliḥ Ayyūb, sultan of Egypt and Damascus in 1240-49, who was of Mesopotamian origin. The same fusion of the art of the two communities also manifests itself in miniatures: one may see principally the Laurentian Oriental manuscript 387 written at Mardin in 1299, that of the British Museum add. 7170 of 1216-20, and the Vatican Syriac 559 executed in 1220 at the monastery of Mar Mattai. Their very beautiful miniatures are in the same style as the contemporary Muslim manuscripts.

Ugo Monneret de Villard