page_title: Lajat
section_title: Byzantine period
hierarchical_section_title: Lajat / History / Antiquity / Byzantine period
caption_attribution_description: English: Izra, Syria, Basilica of St George Deutsch: Izra, Syrien, Georgskirche
context_page_description: The Lajat, also spelled Lejat, Lajah, el-Leja or Laja, is the largest lava field in southern Syria, spanning some 900 square kilometers. Located about 50 kilometers southeast of Damascus, the Lajat borders the Hauran plain to the west and the foothills of Jabal al-Druze to the south. The average elevation is between 600 and 700 meters above sea level, with the highest volcanic cone being 1,159 meters above sea level. Receiving little annual rainfall, the Lajat is largely barren, though there are scattered patches of arable land in some of its depressions.
  The region has been known by a number of names throughout its history, including "Argob" in the Hebrew Bible and "Trachonitis" by the Greeks, a name under which it is mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. Long inhabited by Arab groups, it saw development under the Romans, who built a road through the center of the region connecting it with the empire's province of Syria. The pagan cults that predominated in Trachonitis during the Roman and pre-Roman era persisted through much of the Byzantine era, until the 6th century when Christianity became dominant.
context_section_description: The Romans were succeeded by the Byzantine Empire in Syria during the mid-4th century CE. For the following three centuries, Trachonitis saw a huge uptick in settlement and building activity. Among the major Byzantine-era settlements were Bosor (modern Busra al-Harir), Zorava, Jirrin, Sur, Deir al-Juwani, Rimea, Umm al-Zaytun, Shaqra and Harran. There are at least thirty sites in the Lajat with ruins tracing back to the Byzantine era. The Byzantine era saw the expansion of Christianity in the regions surrounding the Lajat, but there archaeological evidence indicates that Christianity only affected a few Lajat villages, particularly those along its southwestern edges, until the mid 6th century. One of the earliest known Christian communities in Trachonitis was Sur (ancient name unknown), which had a Christian edifice dated to 458.
  Zorava was the cosmopolitan capital of Byzantine Trachonitis. Its pagan temple was replaced by the martyrium of Saint George in 515 and the town became a bishopric in 542. There are no earlier indications of a Christian presence in Zorava. In addition to its Arab inhabitants, the town had a Greek-speaking community (Greek was the lingua franca of Byzantine Syria), made up mostly of army veterans, who themselves were likely ethnic Arabs recruited from the province. By the mid-6th century, the Arabs of Trachonitis had largely become Christians with the cult of Saint Elijah being predominant; the cult of Saint Sergius was dominant in Trachonitis' neighboring regions. In Harran, a bilingual Arabic-Greek inscription dated from 568 describes the construction of a martyrium built by a local Arab phylarch.
caption: The Byzantine-era basilica of Saint George in Izra (ancient Zorava), located in the southwestern edge of the Lajat
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