Roman era The
oasis settlement now named Shahba had been the native hamlet of the
Roman emperor Philip the Arab. After Philip became emperor in 244, he dedicated himself to rebuilding the little community as a
colonia. The contemporary community that was replaced with the new construction was so insignificant that one author states that the city can be considered to have been built on virgin soil, making it the last of the Roman cities founded in the East. and
AresThe city was renamed Philippopolis (a name with homonyms) in dedication to the emperor, who is said to have wanted to turn his native city into a replica of
Rome herself. A hexagonal-style temple and an open-air place of worship of local style, called a
kalybe, a
triumphal arch,
baths, a starkly unornamented
theatre faced with
basalt blocks, a large structure that has been interpreted as a
basilica, and the
Philippeion (
illustration, right) surrounded by a great wall with ceremonial gates, were laid out and built following the grid plan of a typical Roman city. The public structures formed what author Arthur Segal has called a kind of "imported façade". The rest of the urban architecture was modest and vernacular. The city was never completed as building seems to have stopped abruptly after the death of Philip in 249. The new city followed the extremely regular Roman grid-plan, with the main colonnaded
Cardo maximus intersecting a colonnaded
Decumanus Maximus at right angles near the center. Lesser streets marked off
insulae, many of which never saw houses constructed upon them.
Ottoman era In 1596 Shahba appeared in the
Ottoman tax registers as
Sahba and was part of the
nahiya of Bani Miglad in the
Hauran Sanjak. It had an entirely
Muslim population consisting of 8 households and 3 bachelors, who paid a fixed tax rate of 40% on wheat,
barley, summer crops, goats and/or beehives; a total of 5,050
akçe. In 1838
Shuhba was noted by
Eli Smith as being located in
Jabal Hauran, and inhabited by Druze and "Greek" Christians. Because it was far from population centers that would have required cut stone for building and might have quarried it from those deserted in Philippopolis, Shahba today contains well-preserved ruins of the ancient Roman city. A museum located in the city exhibits some beautiful examples of
Roman mosaics. The especially rich iconography of the figurative mosaic on the theme,
The Glory of the Earth, discovered in 1952 in the so-called "Maison Aoua", is conserved today in the museum of Damascus and has proved a rich resource for
iconographers. The relatively well-preserved
Roman bridge at Nimreh is located in the vicinity. In the 18th century
Druze populations from
Mount Lebanon moved into the area. A Christian presence exists in the city to the present. ==Demographics==