Tiberias January 20-21

The last stage of my trip was a visit to Tiberias to see the excavations there. I left the hotel in Jerusalem early in the morning of Thursday January 20 and went to the West Jerusalem bus station for the 6:30 am bus to Tiberias, which arrived at 9:00. Katia Cytryn-Silverman, a professor of archaeology at Hebrew University, met me and took me to see her excavations at the early Islamic site in the south part of Tiberias with the impressive remains of the Friday mosque. Later in the day Nimrod Luz, a professor of cultural geography at Western Galilee College, joined us.

Katia

Katia and Nimrod Luz

In the afternoon Katia dropped me off at the church at Mount Berenice, which overlooks Tiberias.

The church at Mount Berenice and the view of Tiberias

Luckily, a couple of tourists there at the time with a car offered me a lift back to Tiberias, saving me a very long walk. I checked into a hotel on the north side of the city and that evening I walked around a bit.

The following morning, Friday January 21 I returned to Jordan. I went to the bus station for a 10:00 bus to Beth Shean, which arrived at 10:45. Rather than pay for a taxi, I then walked to the Jordan River crossing, which took an hour and fifteen minutes; I had walked that distance a couple of times previously in the late 1990s. The border crossing was routine. On the Jordanian side the only transportation option is a taxi, so I took a taxi to the bus station in Irbid and from there a bus to Amman. I arrived at ACOR in the mid-afternoon, after about five hours of total travel time.

Jerusalem January 14-19

I arrived in Jerusalem at 2:30 on Friday January 14 and checked into the Capitol Hotel on Salah al-Din Street, just down the street from the Albright Institute; there was no room available at the Albright. I went over to the Albright for the 4:00 tea, where I chatted with some of the current resident fellows. I also met Donald Whitcomb and later that evening I went with Donald, his son John, and Michael Jennings, a graduate student at the University of Chicago to a nearby restaurant. We talked about their on-going excavations at the early Islamic palace at Khirbat al-Mafjar in Jericho.

The next day, Saturday January 15, I took it easier. First thing I got a SIM card for Israel and made calls to arrange appointments for the next days. In the afternoon I met Benjamin Dolinka, a former Albright fellow, who has just started working for the Israeli Antiquities Authority. I also met Muhammad Ghosheh, my Palestinian colleague.

The next day, Sunday January 16 I went to the church service at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Old City. The current pastor is Fred Strikert, formerly at Wartburg College in Waverly. There was an overflow crowd of mostly Americans at the service, including the brother of James Sauer, a former director of ACOR.

Fred Strikert, James Sauer’s brother and me

In the afternoon I went to see Fahmi al-Ansari, who still operates his library in the basement of a building down the street from the Albright. His hopes to move to a better location remain unrealized. I thumbed through recent publications about Jerusalem there. That evening I met Muhammad Ghosheh at the Ambassador Hotel for dinner and discussed our Jerusalem projects. He told me about a recently published album of historic photographs of Jerusalem published in Instabul by an Islamic research foundation (IRCICA) that they sell for the grotesque rip-off price of 1200 $US! Muhammad had a copy that he lent me to take a look at.

The next day, Monday January 17, I went to the Islamic Museum on the al-Aqsa Mosque compound to meet Khader Salameh, the museum director. We spoke about our Arabic inscriptions project. In the afternoon I went to the Albright for 4:00 tea and made arrangements to join tomorrow’s Albright field trip.

On Tuesday January 18 I joined the Albright fellows on their trip to Qumran and then Khirbat al-Mafjar in Jericho. I do not think that I had been to Qumran since 1971. This trip was the most convenient way for me to get to Khirbat al-Mafjar to see the impressive excavation results. Unfortunately, none of the Palestinian participants were at the site that day. It was the same day that the Russian president Medvedev came to Jericho. There were a few banners and flags along the streets, but otherwise his visit did not impinge on ours.

Steven Pfann telling the Albright group about Qumran

Donald Whitcomb showing the Albright group the excavations at Khirbat al-Mafjar

On Wednesday morning January 19 I attended a conference about the Islamization of Palestine held at the Yad Izhak Ben Zvi Institute in West Jerusalem. Unfortunately all of the presentations were in Hebrew so I got very little out of it, although it was a good opportunity to meet people, including ‘Umar ‘Abd Rabbu, one of my former students who gave a presentation about Fatimid Jerusalem. I left at the noon break and walked around the Mamilla cemetery to see what was going on with the construction of the Museum of Tolerance that has destroyed part of the cemetery.

The Mamilla Cemetery with the perimeter fence of the Museum of Tolerance in the right background

I then walked up to the Mount of Olives to look around, and on my way back to the hotel I stopped at the Sahirah Muslim cemetery near Herod’s Gate in order to photograph the grave of ‘Abd Allah Mukhlis, a Palestinian historian of Islamic Jerusalem who died in 1948.

The grave of ‘Abd Allah Mukhlis in the Sahirah cemetery.

Negev January 12-14

I left on a nine-day trip to Israel on Wednesday January 12. I got to the Tabarbour bus station just before a bus to the Allenby Bridge left at 7:30. The bus cost one dinar, much less than the shared taxi that I would normally take. There was a long wait on the Jordanian side until the shuttle bus across the bridge came and then another long wait on the Israeli side, followed by a long line for passport control and a long wait for the minibus to Jerusalem to fill up. So the trip took a total of five hours, longer than the average of around four hours.

Upon arrival at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem at 12:00, I went to the West Jerusalem central bus station to catch the 2:30 bus to Beer Sheva, which arrived at 4:00. Tali Gini-Erickson met me there. She had invited me to spend a couple of days with her and visit archaeological sites in the Negev. She is the archaeology inspector for the southern Negev region for the Israeli Antiquities Authority with a special interest in the Nabatean period and in recent years she has been coming to Jordan to work on excavation projects in Petra. Tali took me to her home in a moshav next to the Nessana border crossing with Egypt.

The next day Thursday January 13, Tali and I got an early start at 7:30 for a full day of visiting archaeological sites, mostly Nabatean through early Islamic. We first went to Mitzpe Shivta and then Shivta with its remarkably well preserved churches.

Tali in the north church at Shivta

We then traveled north, stopping briefly at the Qariot site and then Horvat Enim. We then went to Susiyah where we saw the major synagogue and its mosaics currently under restoration.

Doret Shalom restoring the mosaics at Susiyah

We then returned south and visited Mampsis. I have spent very little time in the Negev over the years, and I had not been to any of those sites before.

The next day Friday January 14 Tali and I visited more archaeological sites. We started off at Nessana. I had been there before in 1971 at the start of a family trip to Sinai with the Al Glock family.

Our VW camping buses at Nessana in 1971

The same view today

It was Friday, a weekend day, so we were able to go into the extensive Israeli military training grounds to visit the major archaeological sites of Rehovot and Saadon and the remarkably poorly visible site of Elusa.

The excavated church at Rehovot

We also went to Sde Boker.

The early open-air mosque at Sde Boker

After that busy morning, Tali dropped me off at the Beer Sheva bus station in time for a 1:00 pm bus back to Jerusalem.

Amman December 26-January 11

Back in Amman, I stayed at the American Center of Oriental Research once again. I worked on my various projects, especially the revisions to Nadia Sukhtian’s translation of volume 1 of Gustaf Dalman’s study of Palestinian customs; on Sunday January 9 Nadia and I met with Dr. Bakhit at the University of Jordan to discuss options about the Dalman translation project.

Among other academic activities I finished corrections to my article about Christian Identifications of Muslim Buildings in Medieval Jerusalem and finished my long overdue article about Muslim pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Ottoman period. I also wrote a letter of recommendation for a former student of mine from HMI who wants to enroll in a Ph.D. program at McGill University, only to be caught off guard, when they rejected the letter because at the moment I am without an academic affiliation.

I also did some investigating on the internet about the Dutch East India company in India, as I thought through the options for my little project next December. My two colleagues from Bamberg, Anja and Ilse who were with me in Humayma in 2009, expressed an interest in joining my Bhimunipatnam project. As it happens they will be in India anyway at the time.

On Monday December 27 I was surprised when a first cousin of mine, Gretchen Morgenson, walked into the front door of ACOR. She knew that I have been around in Jordan over the years, but she did not get in contact with me before her vacation trip to Jordan with her husband and son. Gretchen is the daughter of my mother’s sister and works as a financial reporter for the New York Times; she won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002. I have no clear memory when we last met, perhaps it was in the late 1960s. That evening we went out to dinner and the next day I went with them to Mount Nebo and then Madaba, and I showed them around the Madaba Archaeological Park. After lunch in Madaba, I returned to Amman, while they headed on to Petra.

Gretchen and me at the Madaba Archaeological Park

On Tuesday January 2 I had other visitors: Florina and Ashok from India. Florina had been the associate director for praxis at the Henry Martyn Institute in Hyderabad during my last year there; both she and her husband have doctorates in conflict resolution from Eastern Mennonite University. They had been at a conflict resolution workshop in Israel and had a day to spend in Jordan before their return to Chennai. I met them at the airport and took them to Madaba to see the Madaba Archaeological Park and other sites. We arrived at ACOR in time for lunch; we had a lively conversation with a number of business students from the Thunderbird School of Management who are staying at ACOR for a three-week January internship. After lunch a friend of theirs, Raghda who is also involved in peace work, came by and we chatted further until it was time for them to go to the airport for their flight.

Florina, Ashok and me in the Church of the Apostles in Madaba

ACOR was filled to capacity with the Thunderbird students and other residents, so I decided to schedule a trip to Israel for a few days. That trip required me to go to the US Embassy to get extra pages for my passport, for which the embassy now charges 85 dollars; up to just a few months ago that service was free.

Dubai December 24-25

For my travels from India back to Jordan, I decided to stop over in Dubai. Oddly, by traveling on December 23 I got a sharply reduced price for an airline ticket. The airline ticket with the stop over plus the hotel bill for two nights came out less than the cost of an airline ticket for a direct flight on December 22 or earlier. I had not been out of the airport in Dubai or any of the other Persian Gulf states before, so the decision to stop over was easy to make.

I stayed at a hotel near the Union metro station. On Friday December 24, I walked around and stopped at a local supermarket at the time of the Friday noon prayers, when the supermarket was overrun by house maids from the Philippines and Sri Lanka doing their shopping on their day off. The supermarket had a sizable selection of pork on offer, in a separate room.

Later in the afternoon I rode around on the metro lines. The sleek metro opened about a year ago. I got off at the Burj Dubai. About half of the people who got out at that station took a picture of the Burj Dubai, as did I. The building is too tall to fit within one shot on my iPhone camera.

The Burj Dubai

I then walked around the Dubai Mall for a couple of hours. During my two days I did not see all that many people who were obviously local Emiratis; Pakistanis seemed to be the largest expatriate group. In December the temperature was ideal.

The next day, Saturday December 25, I hung out at the hotel, before leaving for the airport for my afternoon flight to Amman. That was the most un-Christmasy Christmas Day I have ever spent. At the airport I noticed a drinks stand with a wonderful misprint selling non-carbonated sweat.

The sign for non-carbonated sweat

Hyderabad December 21-23

Back in Hyderabad, I stayed at the HMI campus again. On Tuesday December 21, I went into the city to meet my friend Timothy Marthand, the world-class pianist. He will be performing in his first concert tour in a few months. He, a German piano student who is taking lessons with him and I went to a local restaurant, one of a number of fancy places that have sprung up in recent years in the Banjara Hills neighborhood.

The next morning, Wednesday December 22, I went to the Andhra Pradesh State Department of Archaeology to meet a staff archaeologist there, P. Subramanyam, to discuss the idea of my documenting the 17th century Dutch East India Company settlement at Bhimunipatnam. After that positive meeting, I went again to visit Timothy Marthand and Shanely, the singer with whom he has been performing lieder by Robert Schumann (his favorite is Dein Angesicht, opus 127, no. 2, text by Heinrich Heine).

While in Banjara Hills, I took my iPhone to a local cell phone place to get it unlocked; which was quickly done. I had bought the iPhone as an unlocked phone second hand a couple of years ago from Timothy in India, but it had started to malfunction recently and in an attempt to fix it, I ended up locking it. After visiting Timothy, I went to the Hyderabad book fair, where I ended up buying a lot of books.

The next morning Thursday December 23, I went into the city to do some shopping at Big Bazaar in Abids and in the afternoon I left for the airport for my flight to Dubai that left at 6:40 and arrived at 9:15 and I checked into my hotel at 11:15.

Visakhapatnam December 18-20

On the morning of Saturday December 18 I flew from Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam on the east coast of India to visit my friend Rani Sarma for a couple days. I have visited her and her husband in Visakhaptnam several times before in previous trips to India. She is currently working on the draft of a book about the early Buddhist presence in Andhra Pradesh and during this stay I read through her current draft.

For Sunday December 19, Rani had arranged a tour of the major early Buddhist site of Sankaram, south of Visakhapatnam, for the officers of the Indian naval base at Visakhapatnam. The tour was sponsored by the local chapter of INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Culutural Heritage); Rani is the current president. After the tour of the site, the navy provided lunch for the group.

The naval officers listening to Rani, with the Buddhist caves of Sankaram in the background.

The members of the Visakhapatnam chapter of INTACH at Sankaram.

After the site of Sankaram, Rani and I met a local archaeologist who wanted to show us two other undocumented early Buddhist sites in the vicinity. One proved to be on a hill that was too remote, so we turned back, while at the second site only a few fired bricks and a wall line hinted at the presence of something substantial.

Rani, the local archaeologist and the hill too far

The group looking at traces of a wall line at the second Buddhist site

The next day I spoke at length with Rani about the possibility of us undertaking a small project to document some of the archaeological sites in the Visakhapatnam district when I come again to India next December. The idea to document a Dutch East India company settlement in the town of Bhimunipatnam, north of Visakhapatnam, seemed most promising. That evening I flew back to Hyderabad.

Hyderabad December 14-17

My overnight bus from Shirdi arrived in Hyderabad at 6:15 in the morning on Wednesday December 14 and I walked around a bit, passing by the old office building of the Henry Martyn Institute, before going to the new Henry Martyn Institute campus on the south side of the city.

The old HMI building

This time around I had arranged to stay at the HMI hostel during my days in Hyderabad. I spent much of the day chatting with various HMI faculty and staff members. In the afternoon I went to the Old City, where I walked around the 12er Shi‘ite areas, seeing what was going on for Muharram, the ten-day commemoration of the martyrdom of Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in 680 A.D.

A mural in the Old City showing the major 12er Shi‘ite shrines.

The next day, Thursday December 15 was the eighth day of Muharram. I spent the day at HMI and spent some time inquiring about arrangements for the HMI students to attend a Shi‘ite majlis session of mourning for Husayn that evening. Things worked out and at 5:45 I went with Christy Femila, one of my former students who is now a faculty member at HMI, and several of the students in the Islamic studies program to the Old City. We walked around the 12er Shi‘ite areas, before meeting Fatimah Ali Khan, a member of HMI’s academic committee and professor of sociology at the University of Hyderabad, at the Badshahi Ashurkhana (shrine for Husayn). She spoke to us about Muharram customs before taking us to a majlis session nearby that went on for a couple of hours. She then took us to the prominent Aza Zahra Ashurkhana and the Dar al-Shifa compound in the heart of the 12er Shi‘ite area of the Old City.

The next day Friday December 16 I stayed at HMI and lay low, suffering from a sore throat and head congestion. Preparations at HMI were underway for the Christmas program that evening and at 2:30 I joined a group for carol singing. The Christmas program was followed by a dinner.

HMI staff and students making the rounds of the campus singing carols

The HMI staff and family members

The HMI students singing at the Christmas program. From left students from
Germany, UK, Tanzania, South Korea and India, including two from Nagaland.

Saturday December 17 was the tenth of Muharram, the culmination of the mourning period for Husayn, marked by a procession of self-flagellants in the Old City. In the afternoon I went with the HMI group to the Old City to see the procession. We got onto the balcony of a building overlooking the procession route, so we had a good view. The procession with several thousand participants took about two hours to pass by. I had witnessed the procession three other times during my years in Hyderabad, but it is always interesting to see again.

A group of self-flagellants cutting their scalps with knives

A video of a group of self-flagellants. Note the person spraying the participants with water.

Nasik and Shirdi December 11-13

My overnight flight from Riyadh arrived in Mumbai early in the morning of Saturday December 11 and I headed on to Nasik, a major Hindu pilgrimage city s few hours north of the city. I had not gone there during my years in India, but chose to go there on this trip, because Jodi Magness, an archaeological colleague of mine, her husband Jim happened to be touring India with another couple and were scheduled to be in Nasik now. Jodi had sent me their itinerary some months ago, and so when the pieces fell into place for my trip to Saudi Arabia and India, I realized that we could meet up, at least for a day or two in Nasik.

Rather than undergo the hassle of trying to get to Nasik by bus or train, I hired a private car that took about three hours. I had booked a room over the internet at the Emerald Park Hotel, but it took a very long time to find the hotel. It turns out that the hotel is located a couple of kilometers away from where the map on Expedia.com shows it. Even worse, there is a second Emerald Park hotel in the same general area, where my driver dropped me off. But I eventually got to the hotel.

I then walked around for a while, before taking an autoricksaw to the Gateway Hotel where Jodi’s group was staying. Unfortunately, that also took a very long time to find, because the Gateway Hotel had only recently adopted that name, and auto drivers only knew of it by its former Taj Residency name. Also it turns out that the hotel is located several kilometers away from where the Expedia.com map shows it.

I had chosen my Emerald Park Hotel because it was ostensibly located a short walking distance from the more expensive Gateway Hotel, but my best intentions failed miserably when both hotels proved to be located kilometers away from where they were supposed to be.

Anyway, I met Jodi and made arrangements for the next day. As I had walked around earlier that day, I had seen a Big Bazaar shopping center not so far from my hotel, so I asked my auto driver to take me there, but instead he took me to a different Big Bazaar farther away. I eventually got back to my hotel.

The next morning of Sunday December 12, Jodi and her group picked me up at my hotel and we went to the Pandavleni early Buddhist caves south of the city. It turns out that Jodi’s travel companions were Karen Britt and her husband Daniel. Karen is a professor of Byzantine Art at the University of Louisville, whom I knew of but had not met before.

Karen Britt and me at the Pandavleni caves

The group at the Pandavleni caves: from right: Jodi, Karen, me, Jim, and Dan

We then went to the historic Sundarnarayan Temple in the city center and then to the colorful Rakmund tank and market area, the center of attraction for Hindu pilgrims.

The Rakmund tank and market area

A misshapen carrot offered at a shrine at the Rakmund tank

We then went to a nearby restaurant for lunch, before they dropped me off back at my hotel. Later that evening I went to the Big Bazaar – City Mall near my hotel and inquired at a travel agent about how to get to Hyderabad the next day, but it was too late on a Sunday to get a ticket.

The next morning Monday December 13 I went back to the travel agent and made arrangements to get to Hyderabad. The best option was to take a bus to Shirdi and then an overnight bus from Shirdi to Hyderabad. So I went to the bus station, where I took a local bus for the two and a half hour trip to Shirdi, arriving at 2:15 pm. I then hung out in Shirdi, before my overnight bus to Hyderabad left at 7:30.

I had been to Shirdi before on one of my annual trips with my students. Shirdi is a small village that has turned into a major pilgrimage center because of Sai Baba, a saint who lived there until he died in 1918. Sai Baba of Shirdi is a very interesting figure. He was an identifiably Muslim sufi mystic who espoused a form of non-denominational piety, but after his death, he has been turned into a leading Hindu saint, who attracts hoards of Hindu pilgrims from far and wide.