I flew from Hyderabad back to Amman on September 27. I then spent a couple of days at the American Center of Oriental Research. Among other things I proofread the Arabic for Archaeologists booklet that I worked on in the spring.
Then on September 29 I traveled to Jerusalem. There was an unusally large number of tourists in line – a couple hundred from Indonesia, China and Korea – so that it took six hours to cross, rather than the more typical four hours.
My several months of travel are now at an end, as I start a new six-month National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship at the Albright Institute to produce a catalogue of Arabic inscriptions in the Islamic Museum that is part of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
I arrived in Jerusalem in time for the end of Ramadan at sunset, which also coincides this year with the start of Jewish New Year. There was a parade of Palestinian bagpipe players along the street outside the Albright Institute to mark the occasion.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Hyderabad September 24-26
After spending five days in Delhi, I flew to Hyderabad into the spectacular new airport that opened in March. I spent the bulk of two days at the Henry Martyn Institute (HMI), where I had taught in the Islamic studies programs between 2000 and 2006. This was my third short trip back since I left in mid-2006. The current director is retiring in December, so there was a lot of news about the transition to get caught up on.
The HMI campus
I had dinner one evening with Christy Femila, one of my former students, who last spring finished the Masters of Theology program that HMI offers with Luther Seminary in St Paul, Minnesota. She has now joined the HMI academic staff.
Christy Femila
I had dinner a second evening with Shashi Singha, the HMI administrator, and I also spent a good deal of time chatting with Vijay Sastry, another of my former students and a HMI-Luther MTh student, who is also now on the HMI academic staff.
Vijay Sastry at my former desk
I have been impressed by how rapidly Hyderabad has been developing economically. New shopping malls are sprouting up like mushrooms, as I also observed in Delhi. One other sign of Hyderabad becoming an international city is the decision by the US State Department to open a consulate here. When it opens in a couple of months, it will be only the second consulate in the city; Iran has had a small consulate for some years due to the large 12er Shi‘ite community in Hyderabad. I had dinner my third evening with the US foreign service officer who is in charge of getting the consulate up and running; he is an interesting character who had a previous career as a singer on Broadway.
Hyderabad has suffered from some bombing incidents recently, so security is everpresent at every mall entrance; in the underground parking garage at one mall, every car gets searched. That is a level of security I once found only in Israel; Jordan also has a lot of security guards with metal dectors now at hotel and shop entrances.
I stayed my three nights in Hyderabad with Timothy Marthand, a 33-year old native Hyderabadi who is a world-class concert pianist. He has the Steinway concert grand that Arthur Rubinstein used to play in his living room.
I bought from Timothy his slightly-used iPhone. I am not sure that I really need a US $500 cell phone, but it is a neat toy to have. Timothy also passed on to me some more music for my iPod, including one piece that I was not familiar with: Boccherini’s Fandango Quintetto. The version by Andreas Staier for two harpsichords and castanettes is spectacular. (The recording is posted on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhzR_MYcjiU, although the sound quality leaves much to be desired).
One reason for my trip to Hyderabad was to finally take care of some stuff that I have had in storage with Vijay for the past two years. I took a lot of stuff back with me to Jordan, but I got caught for excess baggage. I arrived at the airport with luggage that weighed 43 kilos (the limit is 20 kilos) and a carry-on backpack that weighed 14 kilos (the limit is 6 kilos). I spent an hour at the counter discarding about 15 kilos of stuff, but still got hit with a US $220 charge for the remaining excess weight.
The HMI campusI had dinner one evening with Christy Femila, one of my former students, who last spring finished the Masters of Theology program that HMI offers with Luther Seminary in St Paul, Minnesota. She has now joined the HMI academic staff.
Christy FemilaI had dinner a second evening with Shashi Singha, the HMI administrator, and I also spent a good deal of time chatting with Vijay Sastry, another of my former students and a HMI-Luther MTh student, who is also now on the HMI academic staff.
Vijay Sastry at my former deskI have been impressed by how rapidly Hyderabad has been developing economically. New shopping malls are sprouting up like mushrooms, as I also observed in Delhi. One other sign of Hyderabad becoming an international city is the decision by the US State Department to open a consulate here. When it opens in a couple of months, it will be only the second consulate in the city; Iran has had a small consulate for some years due to the large 12er Shi‘ite community in Hyderabad. I had dinner my third evening with the US foreign service officer who is in charge of getting the consulate up and running; he is an interesting character who had a previous career as a singer on Broadway.
Hyderabad has suffered from some bombing incidents recently, so security is everpresent at every mall entrance; in the underground parking garage at one mall, every car gets searched. That is a level of security I once found only in Israel; Jordan also has a lot of security guards with metal dectors now at hotel and shop entrances.
I stayed my three nights in Hyderabad with Timothy Marthand, a 33-year old native Hyderabadi who is a world-class concert pianist. He has the Steinway concert grand that Arthur Rubinstein used to play in his living room.
I bought from Timothy his slightly-used iPhone. I am not sure that I really need a US $500 cell phone, but it is a neat toy to have. Timothy also passed on to me some more music for my iPod, including one piece that I was not familiar with: Boccherini’s Fandango Quintetto. The version by Andreas Staier for two harpsichords and castanettes is spectacular. (The recording is posted on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhzR_MYcjiU, although the sound quality leaves much to be desired).
One reason for my trip to Hyderabad was to finally take care of some stuff that I have had in storage with Vijay for the past two years. I took a lot of stuff back with me to Jordan, but I got caught for excess baggage. I arrived at the airport with luggage that weighed 43 kilos (the limit is 20 kilos) and a carry-on backpack that weighed 14 kilos (the limit is 6 kilos). I spent an hour at the counter discarding about 15 kilos of stuff, but still got hit with a US $220 charge for the remaining excess weight.
Delhi September 19-23, 2008
I have now finished an eight-day trip to India that took me to Delhi and Hyderabad. During my years in India between 2000 and 2006 I had only spent a couple of days in Delhi, so on this trip I took the opportunity to see more of the city, before I went to Hyderabad to visit friends at the Henry Martyn Institute.
I flew with Gulf Air from Amman on Thursday September 18, via Bahrain, to Delhi, arriving early in the morning of Friday September 19. Things started out badly, when I could not find my hotel for the longest time. I had picked my particular hotel because the hotel’s website, copied by the various on-line booking websites, lists it as being a couple minutes away from a metro stop near the city center, even though the hotel is in fact a couple of kilometers away from where the website puts it, about a ten minute walk from the next metro stop down the line.
Delhi’s new mass transit system is excellent. The first segments opened for service a few years ago and further lines are under contruction. In the crowded stations in the city center, the passengers actually line up in order to board the metro trains in orderly fashion.
I flew with Gulf Air from Amman on Thursday September 18, via Bahrain, to Delhi, arriving early in the morning of Friday September 19. Things started out badly, when I could not find my hotel for the longest time. I had picked my particular hotel because the hotel’s website, copied by the various on-line booking websites, lists it as being a couple minutes away from a metro stop near the city center, even though the hotel is in fact a couple of kilometers away from where the website puts it, about a ten minute walk from the next metro stop down the line.
Delhi’s new mass transit system is excellent. The first segments opened for service a few years ago and further lines are under contruction. In the crowded stations in the city center, the passengers actually line up in order to board the metro trains in orderly fashion.
Passengers lining up at one of the Delhi metro stations.
I arrived in Delhi about a week after a series of bomb blasts, so security was much in evidence. At the metro stations passengers have to go through metal detectors and have bags searched. The same is the case for many upscale buildings, like shopping malls. As an anti-terrorism effort, someone got the bright idea to turn garbage bins in public places upside down so that bombs can no longer be placed in them; but then neither can garbage.
Garbage bins in the Delhi zoo placed upside-down as an anti-terrorism measure.
During my five days in Delhi I did a lot of sight-seeing of places I had not been to before, including the national archaeological museum, the Qutub Minar (the first imperial mosque compound in India from the end of the 12th century), the Purana Qil‘a (old citadel) and zoo. At the Qutub Minar compound, I was interested to see the extensive reuse of architectural elements from Hindu temples; the images were all defaced. (Muslim reuse of earlier buildings or architectural elements is a favorite research topic of mine, being part of my PhD dissertation).
Hindu architectural elements reused in the mosque in the Qutub Minar compound
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Amman and Jerusalem
Since the end of the archaeological excavation at Jurash, Saudi Arabia at the end of August, I have been spending time at the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) in Amman, Jordan and the Albright Institute in Jerusalem.
I did a bit of work on a number of projects, including the field report of my excavation trench at Jurash. As German language practise, I translated two articles from German into English written a century ago about the Muslim cemeteries in Jerusalem and Palestinian customs. This is in continuation of three century-old German articles about Muslim shrines in Palestine that I translated earlier this year. I do not know yet how I will publish these translations. At ACOR I also proofread the Beginning Arabic for Archaeologists booklet that I worked on in the spring and did some planning for a possible short excavation season at Humayma in southern Jordan in the spring of 2009. Although I spent most of my time in the ACOR library, I did have the chance to make a day-trip with Dino Politis to Ghor al-Safi at the south end of the Dead Sea to see his recent excavations (I had participated in his excavations at Lot’s Cave years ago). I also saw the building of the new Lot’s Cave museum, which should open in a year or so.
I also did some work on the catalogue of Arabic inscriptions in the Islamic Museum that is part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which will be my research project starting in October. The situation on the compound is a bit less tense than has been the case in recent years. In one positive development, after blocking it for years, the Israeli have finally allowed some sophisticated equipment for manuscript conservation to be brought onto the compound. So hopefully the manuscript conservation laboratory housed in the Madrasah al-Ashrafiyah can now get started on conserving the major collection of Quran manuscripts and other documents in the Islamic Museum that are in dire need of attention.
I will be leaving Amman later today (September 18) on a trip to India, which will take me to Delhi and Hyderabad, before I return to start my upcoming National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship at the Albright Institute on October 1.
I did a bit of work on a number of projects, including the field report of my excavation trench at Jurash. As German language practise, I translated two articles from German into English written a century ago about the Muslim cemeteries in Jerusalem and Palestinian customs. This is in continuation of three century-old German articles about Muslim shrines in Palestine that I translated earlier this year. I do not know yet how I will publish these translations. At ACOR I also proofread the Beginning Arabic for Archaeologists booklet that I worked on in the spring and did some planning for a possible short excavation season at Humayma in southern Jordan in the spring of 2009. Although I spent most of my time in the ACOR library, I did have the chance to make a day-trip with Dino Politis to Ghor al-Safi at the south end of the Dead Sea to see his recent excavations (I had participated in his excavations at Lot’s Cave years ago). I also saw the building of the new Lot’s Cave museum, which should open in a year or so.
I also did some work on the catalogue of Arabic inscriptions in the Islamic Museum that is part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which will be my research project starting in October. The situation on the compound is a bit less tense than has been the case in recent years. In one positive development, after blocking it for years, the Israeli have finally allowed some sophisticated equipment for manuscript conservation to be brought onto the compound. So hopefully the manuscript conservation laboratory housed in the Madrasah al-Ashrafiyah can now get started on conserving the major collection of Quran manuscripts and other documents in the Islamic Museum that are in dire need of attention.
I will be leaving Amman later today (September 18) on a trip to India, which will take me to Delhi and Hyderabad, before I return to start my upcoming National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship at the Albright Institute on October 1.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)