The Monastery of Mor Yakub at Salah

The main church has a transversal plan, with narthex and tripartite sanctuary on the long eastern side. the nave of the church is lit by four windows on the south side and one on the north. There are crosses and other ornaments painted on its walls. The brick-vaulted cover is considered a typical element of an architectural tradition developed locally during the 8th century (Keser Kayaalp, Elif. ‘Church Building in the Ṭur ʿAbdin in the First Centuries of the Islamic Rule’. Authority and Control in the Countryside: From Antiquity to Islam in the Mediterranean and Near East: 6th-10th Century, 18 October 2018, 176–209). Mor Yakub brick vault is considered, by the archaeologist Elif Keser-Kayaalp, the most masterly built one that has survived in the Ṭūr ‘Abdīn. It is composed of diagonally placed bricks and half-cylinder roof tiles as decoration, and it is divided into three compartments by two transverse stone arches which are painted to look like brick. Unlike other brick vaults in the region, the springing of the vault is of stone up to a considerable height. This may indicate that the original vault was made of stone, as is the case in the almost identical transverse-hall type church at Ambar near the city of Dara/Anastasiopolis. The stone vault of the church, which was most probably a sixth-century foundation, may have later been replaced by brick (Keser Kayaalp 2018: 193).

In the case of the transverse-hall type church of Mor Yaqub at Salah, the doorway on the west wall leading to the sanctuaries is particularly elaborate. It is flanked with highly decorated pilasters and topped with a profiled arch, differently from simple doorways found locally in churches of the same type. The style of the decoration on the pilasters, with garlands, doves and vines in stone relief and Corinthian capitals, indeed, has no real parallels in the region, although it recalls both sixth-century and eighth-century traditions, it is a kind of transition between them, but closer to the latter (Keser Kayaalp 2018: 194).

West of the ancient complex are present-day addictions, including guesthouses for religious tourists,

On the northern hill from the valley are a number of cells cut into the rock wall, each of which containing a shallow bench carved into the rock.

North of the main church are the remains of a structure of large limestone ashlars in isodomic square work, which nowadays is partially used as a storage space for work tools or as animal shed. The western part of this complex show evidence of a modern structural intervention. An archaeological investigation is here a desideratum, for it could discover whether this structure was actually part of a pagan temple, as suggested in the Life of Mor Yakub, or alternatively constitutes what remain of the original monastic building.

In the 20th century, a bell tower was added to the structure, an architectural element that during the last century has become a distinctive feature of the Ṭūr ‘Abdīn hilly region.

VIRGINIA SOMMELLA