Oxbow Books

As early as the first travels by Europeans to the city, Palmyra has been associated with the Zenobian struggles for independence against oppressive Imperial authority and the monumental archaeological remains from Roman times. Aided by the position of the settlement at the fringe of the desert, these factors have contributed to the creation of a romantic and picturesque image of this ruined city in which the less impressive post-Roman remains have rarely found space. Indeed, a generalised story of decline, greatly inflated by neoclassical scholars and travellers, has dominated the theory used in secondary literature to describe the fate of this settlement following the collapse of the Palmyrene power.

Despite having lost its commercial position in the east–west caravan trade, Palmyra maintained a strategic role throughout Late Antiquity as a stronghold along the eastern borderlands, hosting one legion in the 4th century and one of the two duces of Phoenicia Libanensis in the first half of the 6th century. In the Early Islamic period, the city remained the political centre of the powerful Banū Kalb and played a pivotal role in supporting the caliphate until the collapse of the Umayyad dynasty. After this event, Palmyra became a minor settlement, experiencing a process of major shrinkage that ended with the creation of a village within the temenos of the Sanctuary of Bēl.

This form of urbanism finds its best parallel in the oriental urban planning tradition characteristic of cities such as Assur or Hattusa, rather than in those created anew by Romans (Frézouls 1976a, 199, n. 21; see also, Yon 2001, esp. 181). In this light, the installation of the Great Colonnade, which found its origin in Hellenistic times (Bejor 1999), can be read as an attempt to find a compromise between two architectonical traditions (Frézouls 1976a, 199).