BARĀD, CANOPY TOMB
An hour and a half to the north-west of Kalōteh lies Barād, the largest and most interesting of the villages in the Jebel Sim'ān. It is partly re-inhabited by Kurds. I found my camp pitched in an open space opposite a very lovely funeral monument consisting of a canopy carried by four piers set on a high podium. Near it stood a large rock-cut sarcophagus and a number of other tombs, partly rock-cut and partly built. I examined two churches in the centre of the town. In one the nave, 68 ft. 6 in. long, was divided from the aisles by four great piers, 6 ft. deep from east to west, with an intercolumniation of 18 ft. The nave was 23 ft. wide and the apse 12 ft. deep. The wide intercolumniation is a proof of a comparatively late date, sixth century or thereabouts. The second church was still larger, 118 ft. 6 in. by 73 ft. 6 in., but completely ruined except for the west wall and part of the apse. To the north of it there was a small chapel, with an apse perfectly preserved; near it lay a sarcophagus which suggested that the chapel may have been a mausoleum. The eastern end of the town contained a complex of buildings of polygonal masonry, including a square enclosure with a square chamber ill the centre of it, resting on a vault that was possibly a tomb. To the extreme west of the town stood a fine tower with some large and well preserved houses near it. A small church lay between it and the main body of the town. Near my camp was a curious building with two apses irregularly placed in the east wall. I take it to have been pre-Christian. The walls stood up to the vault, which was perfectly preserved. While Mūsa and I measured and planned this building we were watched by two persons in long white robes and turbans, who exhibited the greatest interest in our movements. They were, said Mūsa, Government officials, sent into the Jebel Sim'ān to take a census of the population with a view to levying the capitation tax.
The next day was one of the most disagreeable that I remember. A band of thick cloud stretched across the sky immediately above the Jebel Sim'ān, keeping us in a cold grey shadow, while to north and south we saw the mountains and the plain bathed in sunshine. We rode north for about an hour to Keifār, a large village near the extreme edge of the Jebel Sim'ān. Beyond the valley of the Afrīn, which bounds the hills to the north-west, rose the first great buttresses of the Giour Dāgh. Mūsa observed that in the valley and the further hills there were no more ruined villages; they end abruptly at the limits of the Jebel Sim'ān, and Syrian civilisation seems to have penetrated no further to the north, for what reason it is impossible to say. At Keifār there were three churches much ruined, but showing traces of decoration exquisitely treated, a few good houses, and a canopy tomb something like the one at Barād. There was a large population of Kurds. We rode back to Barād and so south-east to Kefr Nebu, about an hour and a half away through bitter wind and rain. There was a Syriac inscription here on a lintel, one or two Kufic tombstones, and a very splendid house partially restored, but I was a great deal too cold to give them the attention they deserved. Chilled to the bone and profoundly discouraged by attempts at taking time exposures in a high wind, I made straight for my tents at Bāsufān, an hour's ride from Kefr Nebu, leaving unexplored a couple of ruined sites to the south.
BARĀD, TOWER TO THE WEST OF THE TOWN