Travel Guide Rassafe - Rassafa

Amazing site that of Rassafé, where one discovers a large quadrilateral from where only ruins of a soil riddled with underground excavations and habitat sites. Here the gypsum stone with the thousand bursts beneath the sun, the silence of the places, the quality of the Byzantine remains mark the visitor deeply.The biblical «Recef» of the Second Book of the Kings becomes Rassafé, while the city plays an important role during the Hellenistic and then Roman period in defending the borders of the Empire.But it was the martyrdom of Saint Serge, a Roman soldier converted to Christianity, who refused to honor Jupiter here in 305 apr. I.C., who will decide the fate of the city. The recognition of Christianity, the will of an emperor (Anastase I, at the hinge of the th and th centuries) and the support of the Ghassanids Arabs will double this stronghold of a renowned centre of pilgrimage.The Byzantine Sergiopolis is covered by monuments, a programme that Emperor Justinian, in the middle of the century, accompanies the reinforcement of the defences. Because the Sasanians are at the gates of the city, which will be ransacked in 616. Sassano-Byzantine rivalry will play the game of Muslim Arabs. Master of the region, the Caliph Caliph will raise a tomb that the rival dynasty of Des will destroy (after 750). Losing its strategic interest with the abandonment of the Euphrates as a border, then its religious role with the expansion of Islam, the city will gradually turn off. The Mongols in the th century will give him the kick of grace.