Barbalissos

Barbalissos was a city rebuilt near the ruinous site of ancient Emar in the Roman province of Mesopotamia, now in Syria.

History

It was a city in the Provincia Augusta Euphratensis, where the "Equites Dalmatae Illyriciani" (a cavalry unit recruited in the Balkans) kept garrison ("Notitia Dignitatum Orientis", ed. Boecking, 88, 389). In 253 it was the site of the Battle of Barbalissos between the Sassanid Persians under Shapur I and Roman troops. Byzantine Emperor Justinian raised anew its walls (Procopius, "De Aedificiis" II, 19; Malalas, "Chronographia", XVIII, in Jacques Paul Migne, "Pat. Gr." XCVII, 676).

Ecclesiastical history

At an early date its bishop was a suffragan of Hierapolis Bambyce, a metropolis in the Patriarchate of Antioch. Its bishop Antonius was present at the First Council of Nicaea (325); two other bishops, Aquilinus and Marinianus, are known between 431 and 451 (Lequien, II, 949). The see is still mentioned in the sixth century. From 793 to 1042 five "Jacobite" bishops of the Syriac Orthodox Church are known bearing this title ("Revue de l'Orient chrétien" 6, 191).

As of 1913, it remained a Roman Catholic titular bishopric in the former Roman province of Mesopotamia. [ [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02284c.htm Barbalissos] - Catholic Encyclopedia article]

Ruins

Its site is marked by the ruins at Qala'at Balis, which partly retains the old name, south of Tell Meskene (the ancient Emar), in modern Syria, on the road from Aleppo to the site of Sura (city)Sura, where the Euphrates turns suddenly to the east. The spellings Barbarissos and Barbairissos in later "Notitiae" are wrong; so is Barbaricus campus in Procopius's "De bello Persico" (II, 99). Michel Le Quien (I, 407) wrongly gives Barbalissus as synonymous with Balbisse, another bishopric in Cappadocia, known only in 1143.

References