Barisha, Harem District

Barisha (

The place is located in the Idlib Governorate on the eponymous ridge, the Jebel Barischa, in the central area of the northern Syrian limestone massif. The road in a northerly direction after one kilometer at the junction towards Dahis over and reached after four kilometers at an intersection, the small village of Ras al-Hosn, after two more kilometers, the early Byzantine neighboring towns Baqirha and Deir Qeita. From here it is another eight kilometers east to the junction with the Aleppo road at the Syrian-Turkish border crossing Bal al-Hawa. The most famous place in the region is Qalb Loze, which is eight kilometers west, separated from Barischa by a valley on the also running in a north–south direction Jebel il-Ala. Other ancient ruins can be found nearby. To the south, the road leads over Deir Seita to Idlib.

From the modern village without infrastructure the ruin field can be seen half a kilometer to the north. It lies on a flat slope beyond a valley in the midst of

Townscape

The cultivation of olives and wine was the heyday of the town from the 4th to the 6th century. In Barischa, in comparison to other dead cities, an above-average number of olive presses have been preserved. There were in the center of the village in the area of the church some stately two-storey buildings, which are referred to as residences and on one side a pillar portico was introduced. Striking is the high number of smaller and very simple residential buildings with rectangular plain windows without portico, whose upright walls are made of huge stone blocks.

Barischa, unlike most of the dead cities was archaeologically studied late and is therefore little known in the general literature. The first thorough examination of the 6th-century church was made by Christine Strube in the 1970s.

The only church built by a local workshop is a three-naved