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It is located south of the Euphrates and north of the
Syrian semi-desert, 160 km south-east of Aleppo and 30 km south of the
Aleppo-Raqqa road.
Rasafeh palace was the residence of Hisham ibn Abdul Malik, the third
Omayyad Caliph, whose age was a golden one, due to his great interest in
the arts and in architecture. He had several palaces built in various
parts of Syria. He was in favour of simplicity and modesty; this is why
he chose Rasafeh as his residence. There, he died and was buried.
The palace was originally a church, built to commemorate a Roman officer
(St. Sergius), who died in defence of Christianity in the 4th century.
In 616, the church was invaded by the Persians, robbed and destroyed.
When Hisham ibn Abdul Malik became a caliph in the 8th century, he built
two beautiful palaces on its site. Later, the Abbassids invaded and
destroyed what the Caliph Hisham had built. Very little of the ruins of
the Mar Sarkis church remain. Parts of the church have been used as a
mosque; inscriptions in both Arabic and Greek, engraved on the walls,
indicate that Christians and Muslims co-existed peacefully in Syria from
the 13th century onwards.
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