I am here to help a Jordanian archaeologist, Ghazi Bisheh, write the final report of his excavations in 1993-1994 at the Burnt Palace in Madaba. His year-long excavation of a Byzantine and Early Islamic period palatial building was an ACOR-US Agency for International Development project to promote the tourist development of Madaba, but regrettably almost nothing was ever published about the excavations. I am the first recipient of ACOR’s new publications fellowship, intended to support publication of old excavation projects, especially ACOR-sponsored ones.
So I spent a number of days sorting through files of the project at ACOR, and searching for things stored in various nooks and crannies of ACOR that I had not been in before. Unfortunately, Ghazi has not able to locate his field notes, plans and summary reports, although he had not yet looked everywhere in his home. We did, however, locate the pottery from his excavation. Ghazi and I went out one day to the Department of Antiquities storeroom to identify the several crates of pottery in storage there, but we need to receive formal permission from the Department to bring the pottery to ACOR. Samer Shraideh, the person who had inked all of the drawings for the project, came to ACOR one day to go over his materials with me. Tom Dailey, the USAID person back in the early 1990s, also happened to pass through ACOR for a couple of days.
Ghazi sorting through the pottery in the storeroom
In the meantime I translated into English an article in Italian that the Franciscan archaeologist Michele Piccirillo had written about his own excavations at the Burnt Palace.
With work on the Madaba Burnt Palace publication temporarily stymied, I was able to work on other projects. I finished the final proofreading and indexing of my Palestinian Customs book that the Bilad al-Sham History Committee of the University of Jordan will be publishing; Dr. Adnan Bakhit heads the committee. I submitted the final camera-ready copy on March 22. I also started writing my article about the Islamization of Jerusalem in the early Islamic period for presentation at a conference at Oxford University at the end of April. I did another round of editing of Khader’s long article about the renovations of the Ottoman sultan Mahmud II in Jerusalem in the early 19th century, before sending it back to him for further comment and I also proofread the upcoming issue of Near Eastern Archaeology.
I also did some English editing of articles for the University of Jordan’s Jordan Journal for History and Archaeology, which Dr. Bakhit edits. I was scarcely in the country for 24 hours before he called me up to do the editing – mostly of the English abstracts for articles in Arabic. This time around I have an official letter from the university president authorizing me a payment of 1 dinar ($1.40) per page that I copyedit.
On Monday March 16 I gave a public lecture at ACOR about Muslim pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Ottoman Period, followed by a reception. My presentation, which focused on the pilgrimage account of two Moroccan pilgrims from the late 18th and early 20th centuries was well received. I also attended a number of lectures given by fellows at ACOR and at the Friends of Archaeology Society.
Dino Politis was in the country with a small group to work on the pottery from his recent excavations in Ghor al-Safi. I was able to chat with him in Amman, as well as his colleague Chris Entwhistle from the British Museum, whom I had last met when I was working with Dino at the Lot’s Cave excavations in 1994. Another person who passed through ACOR with a group of students was Warren Schultz, who was in graduate school at the University of Chicago when I was there. At the end of the month Tali Gini, who works in the Negev for the Israel Antiquities Authority, came to ACOR for some ten days to sort through records from the Temple of the Winged Lions in Petra, and I had plenty of occasions to chat with her.
On Sunday March 14 I went with a group of ACOR fellows to Yarmouk University in Irbid to attend a reception introducing new faculty members in the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology. Afterwards we got a tour of their laboratories.
On Friday March 19 Ghazi and I were invited by Othman and Enaya Malhas to their home in Anjara, near Ajlun for a lunch gathering. Othman is a retired mathematics professor who is building a conference center in one part of his country estate. Othman is a fan of the Roman mathematician Nicomachus of Gerasa (modern-day Jerash). Most of the other guests were members of the extended family, including Hazem Malhas, whom I have met on and off over the years, including once in Hyderabad. Hazem recently became the minister for the environment.
On Friday March 26 I went to Madaba for the day. I had been in Madaba a year ago with some people from the Albright Institute, but it had been some years since I had walked around the city to see all of the scattered antiquities. It being Friday, the specific area of the Burnt Palace was closed, but I could see it from a distance.
The Shelter over the Burnt Palace
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