An art at the junction of the Syriac, Byzantine and Latin traditions
The village, the name of which may be traced to a Syrian god, Hadidat or to a corrupted form of "Bet - Hadkté", “the place of new homes” stands at about 540 meters above sea level – altitude at which, a string of villages formed, between Jbeil and Koura, a zone of confluence between the local populations and the crusaders during the 12th and 13th centuries. The Maronites who lived in these, the Northern regions of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the County of Tripoli, in mediaeval times were, according to historian Claude Cahen, “highland crofters” isolated from Rome and Constantinople and held at bay by other Near-Eastern groups, be they Christian or Muslim. He went on to write that they flourished in their encounter with the “Franks” whom they introduced to Syrian customs and institutions and through whom they accepted Roman authority, at the end of the 12th century. William, Latin Bishop of Tyre bears witness to this good relationship and to the radical change the traditions come from Rome effected among these “Syrians living in the province of Phenice”, which made the Maronites the first among Eastern Christian communities to come into communion with the Catholic Church. Merchants from Genoa and Pisa would enjoy their cooperation within the free trading space born of these exchanges.
In the Jbeil region, the architecture of chapels and churches displays original features resulting from the cross-fertilising of diverse influences. To start with, they harp back to the local community's ideas and traditions. Indeed, most of these monuments were built with reused materials on the vestiges of pagan temples or in local rough-hewn dimension stone. In the church of Mar Charbel at Ma'ad, for instance, the stone used by the Crusaders is what local people call malaki[1]. These buildings have preserved ancient inscriptions and architectonic elements within their current structures.
The Maronite community built chapels in this region as a way to display its existence, hence the adoption of geometric, unadorned shapes, “espousing nature to charm our sensitivity rather than our builder acumen”(Alexis Moukarzel). Flush with the ground along a simple architectural plan supplemented with an iconographic program in the local style, the building was meant to last. The variations in the structure of the architectonic elements (windows, doors, blind walls, porch, barrel vault) bear out a stylistic syncretism with specific identifiable features:
• Simplicity of the plans: cuboid with straight geometric lines, monolithic, oriented towards the light (according to the lay of the land)
• Wall thickness
• A cuboid groin-vaulted porch under a terraced roof extends the nave onto the western façade.
• The apse is extended into the thickness of the eastern wall or protrudes eastwards
• Chapels' openings echo those of local dwellings (shape, size..)
• Austere internal decoration
• Flat roof, terraced
• Barrel vaults, pointed barrel vaults, rib vaults, single-naved, two naves three naves (basilica plan), modest dimensions
• The saint's chapel is set higher than the nave
• The sanctuary is always semi-circular topped by a semi-dome underscored by a cornice.
• No external decorative elements
• Pictorial program on the walls
• No windows apart from the opening above the Triumphal arch
• The stone setting is meticulous and put together with precision
