The church was constructed from green, yellow, white and black stone which was brought from an older castle located at Ma'rib. Leading to the church was a marble staircase, while the door was made of bronze or copper. The church combined three separate architectural elements known as bayt, iwan and qubbah. Iwan and qubbah, consisted of mosaic ornamentation of floral motives and gold star for the former, and polychrome mosaic crosses, silver and gold for the latter. Taking into consideration a Byzantine edict issued in 427 prohibiting the placement of crosses to locations where they can be stepped upon, it is probable that the crosses were positioned on the walls. The rest of the decoration consisted of carved precious woods and ivory, combined with gold panels inset with precious stones and crosses. Chroniclers make no reference to figurative representations, a style commonly encountered in the aniconic Syrian and Palestinian mosaic traditions. [5]
There were recurrences of the plague in Syria–Palestine about every decade between 688/89 and 744/45. [35] "The Umaiyad [sic] dynasty was literally plagued by this disease ", in the words of Dols. [36] The deaths of the Umayyad caliphs Mu'awiya II ( r . 683–684 ), Marwan I ( r . 684–685 ), Abd al-Malik ( r . 685–705 ), Sulayman ( r . 715–717 ) and the Umayyad governors in Iraq al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba ( r . 661–671 ) and Ziyad ibn Abihi ( r . 685–673 ) may all possibly have been caused by the plague epidemics in Syria and Iraq. [37] [21] The caliphs routinely withdrew from the cities to their desert palaces when the plague emerged during the summer months. [36] Notable among them was Caliph Hisham ( r . 724–743 ), who preferred his palace at Rusafa over Damascus because he viewed the latter to be unhealthy. [38]
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