BSY_FB_29-32-b

32

in Arabic times, and there is a ruined mosque,
built of good fragments, near the centre of the town.
This has a mihrab in the S. wall and a circular
minaret with winding stairs at its N.E. angle.

Among the houses there restored for use is the house
the plan of which is given opp. p.31: This a very
well planned and well built house, with a sort of
mezzanine story in the rear of the main arched
apartment on the ground floor. In the first story, in which
more probably the domestic apartments reached only
by an outer stair: is a large room with a transverse
arch with classic impost mouldings. Above the moulding,
the first springer has an inverted inscription upon
its soffit: a fragment of the same inscr. lies just within
the main room on the same floor. The inscr. refers to the
moulding of the "triclinos", and I believe that these two arch
stones, having fallen, were misplaced in the arabic arch moulding
and that they were parts of the original arch. The insc. is
dated in the year 431 A.D.. It is possible that "triclinos",
is the equivalent of Triclinium in Roman archaeology.
There are indications that this house had a 3rd (or with mez.) a 4th floor.