Bamberg November 18-25

I traveled back to Germany to attend an academic conference at the University of Bamberg about the Dome of the Rock in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Perspective.

I arrived in Frankfurt on Sunday morning November 18 and took the train to Bamberg, arriving in the late afternoon. I went to the hotel where I had made a booking over the internet, only to discover that there is no receptionist there on Sunday afternoons. People who arrive are supposed to call a phone number to find out how to get the room key from a storage box. But my repeated attempts to call were unanswered, so I eventually gave up and went to another hotel, arriving just minutes before their own reception desk closed for the evening.

The next morning I went to the first hotel to find out what had happened; I preferred to stay where I now was and I was able to cancel my reservation for the full days of my stay without any penalty.

Over the following days I spent some time in the University library, mostly proofreading the Gustaf Dalman volumes and working on my presentation for the conference. On Wednesday November 21 I spoke on the phone with my colleague in Mainz, Johannes Pahlitzsch, about my proposal for a three-year research grant that had been turned down; he had recently received the official comments of the evaluators, which were mostly positive. So it seems that I can rework the application and reapply.

The Dome of the Rock symposium started Friday afternoon November 23 and continued Saturday morning. I gave a presentation about the Dome of the Rock in the Ottoman period.

Hanswulf Bloedhorn from Tübingen came to attend the conference, so after the conference ended, he, my Bamberg colleague Klaus Bieberstein and I had the chance to talk over our Jerusalem sites and monuments project, which has been stalled for a couple of years now; there is little prospect that we will finish the project in its original encyclopedic form.

Spread throughout the University of Bamberg campus is a temporary art exhibit consisting of a number of sculptures of seated figures on poles that light up at night with colors that change every minute or so. They seemed very out of place to me.

One of the sculptures

On Sunday November 25 I took the train to the Frankfurt airport for my evening flight back to Amman. This last month of travel had worked out well, with my being able to fit my annual family visit to the USA in between two conferences in Germany.

Chicago and Dubuque October 23-November 17

I traveled from Germany to the USA for a family visit. I arrived in Chicago in the afternoon of Tuesday October 23. I went to Hyde Park to stay with Fred Donner, my PhD thesis supervisor from the 1980s. The next day I spent at the University of Chicago campus. On Thursday morning October 25 I took the bus from Chicago to Dubuque, Iowa.. My father met me and took me to the Luther Manor retirement home where they are living. During my visit over the coming days I stayed in a guest room there.

A number of days I went to Wartburg Seminary to work in the library; while there I mostly proofread the Gustaf Dalman volumes. On October 28 I attended a lecture there by Dr. Ann Fritschel about the book of Amos; that was her inaugural lecture as holder of the Frank and Joyce Benz Chair in Scripture. Frank Benz is a retired Wartburg professor, who was in attendance, so I had the chance to chat with him, the first time our paths had crossed in many years. I had first meet Ann when we were both research fellows at the Albright Institute in Jerusalem in 1996.

Ann Fritschel giving her lecture

On Sunday November 4 I gave a presentation at church about Islam and events in the Middle East. My brother John came, as did my sister Linda and her friend Dennis from Coralville. Afterwards we went to a restaurant with Pastor Teig and his wife and David Horstmann, who is now taking care of my parents’ affairs, and his wife.

The group

I was around for the elections and voted in Dubuque for I think the first time ever. The Saturday before, November 3, both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama came to Dubuque on campaign stops. I went to both. First was the Romney rally at noon with a couple thousand people at the airport. Richard Petty also spoke; his talent as a race car driver did not carry over into public speaking. Curiously, I met three Indians at the rally from Tamil Nadu and Kerala, who are working at the local IBM office in Dubuque. The Obama rally was down town with around five thousand people later that afternoon. Among the Obama items for sale were campaign buttons in Hebrew.

The Mitt Romney rally

The Barack Obama rally

The Obama campaign buttons for sale

One task I needed to do during my stay was to sort through my stuff in the garage. My parents have decided to stop driving, so they will soon give up the garage. So I needed to move my stuff to a storage facility elsewhere in town. I also had dental appointments and an eye examination. I also watched a lot of movies I live-streamed over the internet. During my last days I developed a cough that lasted for quite a while.

On Wednesday afternoon, November 14 I took the bus back to Chicago and stayed with Fred Donner again. I came to attend the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research from Thursday to Saturday. I did not give a presentation this year. On Thursday I attended conference session; that evening there was a reception at the Oriental Institute Museum. I also attended conference sessions on Friday.

On Saturday November 17, after attending conference sessions, I went to O’Hare airport for my late afternoon flight to Frankfurt; the plain arrived late in Madrid, so I had to rush to make the connection to Frankfurt.

Germany October 16-22

I had traveled to Germany to attend an international conference at the University of Mainz about the Relations of Byzantium to the Arab Near East (9th to 15th centuries). I gave a presentation about Palestine in the Abbasid Period.

I arrived a day early on the morning of Tuesday October 16, so after settling into my accommodations, I toured the Antike Schiffahrt Museum, which highlights a number of Roman ships found in excavations along the Rhine River in Mainz, and walked around the city.

The conference began the evening of Wednesday October 17 and continued through Friday afternoon October 19. At the end of the conference I heard the unofficial news that my application had been turned down for a three-year research position at the University of Mainz that would have started in early 2013.

Early the next morning, Saturday October 20, I took a train to Meiningen in southern Thüringen, arriving at noon. I checked into a hotel and then went to the nearby village of Rohr. Because it was such a nice day, I walked the seven kilometer distance. In Rohr I visited Armin and Terini, my two friends from my days at the Henry Martyn Institute in Hyderabad, and their son Viktor, who is not quite two years old. It was a short visit, before I needed to take the train back to Meiningen in time for the 7:30 performance at the Südthüringisches Staatstheater.

Viktor

I had come to Meiningen several times before for opera performances, but this time around the performance was something exceptional – an opera with an Islamic theme. The opera is entitled Abai, named after the hero of the work, Abai Qunanbaiuli, a prominent Muslim figure in Khazakhstan who died in 1904. The opera was composed by Achmet Zhubanov and Latif Hamdi with the libretto by Muchtar Auesow and was first performed in 1944. This performance in Meiningen was the first performance in Germany of the opera.

The flyer for the opera

Included with the program was a small CD with a few selections of the music of the opera. The music was composed in a typical Russian style and used normal symphonic instruments. The performance was fine, although I can understand why the composers are not world famous.

The next day, Sunday October 21, I took the train to Bamberg. That evening I met my two colleagues Anja and Ilse to discuss the project in India in February, which may end up being cancelled. The next day Monday October 22 I spent at the University library and in the afternoon I met my colleague Klaus. That evening I took a train to the Frankfurt airport, arriving at midnight. I then hung out until my flight to Chicago left at 7:20 am, with a stop-over in Madrid.

Madaba and Amman October 7-15

After the trip to the Kerak Plateau, I spend the next days in Madaba to check some details at the Madaba Archaeological Park for the report that I have been working on. I stayed at a local hotel in Madaba.

I had received a permit from the Department of Antiquities and on my first day, Sunday October 7, I introduced myself to the directors of the Madaba offices of the Department of Antiquities, Ministry of Tourism and the Madaba Mosaics School.

The next day I went to the Madaba Archaeological Park and took some notes at the Church of the Prophet Elias and the Burnt Palace. In particular I took measurements of the density of the tesserae (number of cubes per ten square centimeters) in the various mosaic floors around the site.

The Tyche with 160 mosaic cubes per ten square centimeters

On Tuesday October 9, I came to Amman to attend a day-long conference at the Department of Antiquities about the Umayyad Desert Castles.

On the fourth day, Wednesday October 10, I took further notes at the Archaeological Park, especially checking what the various photographs from the 1992-1993 excavations actually show. The weeds and trash at the site of the Archaeological Park had been removed recently, leaving the site the cleanest I had ever noticed it. A shelter over the Church of the Martyrs is currently under construction. That afternoon I came to Amman and moved back into ACOR.

The shelter at the Church of the Martyrs

Back at ACOR, I worked on a variety of projects to wind things up during the final days of my current stay in Jordan. In response to an email from the Archaeological Survey of India about missing elements of my application for my planned survey of heritage buildings in Bhimunipatnam in February, I worked further on my proposal, but I was unable to get everything in order before a critical application deadline. So it looks doubtful that the project will get a permit this year.

I also proofread the upcoming issue of the Jordan Journal for History and Archaeology and my Masjid al-Aqsa article for Humberto da Silveira’s book. On October 13, Nadia Sukhtian invited Isabelle Rubin and me to her place to discuss work on the Gustaf Dalman translations, and on October 14 I attended a meeting about the UNESCO Baptism Site World Heritage application. On October 15 Mohammad Ghosheh came by to discuss his new book about the Dome of the Rock; we went to a fancy Japanese restaurant and then he took me to the airport for my overnight flight to Frankfurt.

Kerak October 6

On October 6, Firas, Ana and I spent a second day visiting sites with Byzantine churches in the Kerak Plateau.

In the morning we first went to the city of Kerak to see the modern Roman Catholic church and we saw the basement apartment there where Firas and his parents had once lived.

Firas in the church basement

We also stopped by the Greek Orthodox church, but no one was there.

We then spent the rest of the day seeing sites in the north Kerak plateau. We went to the town of Adir, north of Kerak, where we saw the modern Roman Catholic church and a cave of no particualar importance in the compound; we then saw the Greek Orthodox church there.

The cave in the Roman Catholic compound in Adir

We then went to the uninvestigated site of Khirbat Da‘udiyah and then the major Roman and Byzantine ruins in the city of al-Rabba, with a large church in the middle of the site.

The church at al-Rabba

We then proceeded north to the site of Tadun, where we saw some recent illicit digging in the large unexcavated church there.

The illicit digging at Tadun

Next was the church site at Ja‘dat al-Jabur, which has suffered badly since I had worked briefly there in 1994 and 1996, and the nearby uninvestigated church at al-Dann wa-al-Baradan.

The church at Ja‘dat al-Jabur

The church at al-Dann wa-al-Baradan

The next site was the hilltop of Shihan with its church. The Georgian project to work there that I had a tangential role in a few years ago never got off the ground.

The ruins at Shihan

We then went to the tourist restaurant overlooking the Wadi Mujib. The restaurant has high, rip-off-the-tourists prices; curiously the restaurant owner assumed that Firas was the local driver that Ana and I had hired, so he gave Firas a sizable payment as Firas’ cut for having brought us to the restaurant. That made the price for the lunch buffet more reasonable.

Firas, Ana and I at the restaurant overlooking the Wadi Mujib

We then continued north across the Wadi Mujib and stopped at the major site of Dhiban, with its two badly preserved churches that I have never been able to identify among the rubble of the site.

Recently excavated trenches at Dhiban

On the way back to Amman at the end of our two-day trip, I got out in Madaba, so that I could spend the next few days checking some details at the Madaba Archaeological Park.

Kerak October 5

After having spent a routine month in Amman at ACOR, I went on a trip to visit Byzantine church sites in the Kerak Plateau. It had been a couple of years since I had last visited these sites.

I went with Firas Bqain, with whom I had gone to Wadi Rum in August and who grew up in Kerak, and Ana Silkatcheva, a younger scholar interested in Byzantine period mosaics whom I had first met only recently; many of the following photographs are by Ana.

The three of us left early in the morning of October 5 and drove to the Kerak Plateau. We stopped first at Khirbat al-Sar, a major site on the southwest side of Amman where an early researcher had identified a church that cannot now be located in the badly disturbed rubble.

The area of the possible church at Khirbat al-Sar

We then went to the recently excavated church at el-‘Umayri East, south of Amman.

Firas and Ana at el-‘Umayri East

We then continued to the Roman legionary fortress of el-Lejjun, where I had participated in the excavations in the 1980s, including excavating a church in 1985.

Firas and I at the church at el-Lejjun

It turns out that the site guard was one of my workmen from the 1987 season, so after we saw the site, we spent some time at his nearby tent.

The group at the site guard’s tent

We then went to al-Murayghah, a large site with a church that had been badly bulldozed in the late 1990s.

The area of the bulldozed church at al-Murayghah

We then drove through the city of Kerak and down to the highway to the east towards the Dead Sea to a spot where a mosaic floor is exposed in a road cut.

Ana pointing to the line of mosaic cubes in the road cut

We then drove back up to the plateau to where Firas’ parents live north of Kerak. We had lunch there, before heading out to visit more sites. We went south of Kerak to the village of Umm Hamat, where there are slight remains of a church, as well as a reused lintel with crosses on it that I had not noticed during my previous visits to the village.

The church at Umm Hamat with the apse curve on the left

The reused lintel with crosses at Umm Hamat

We then visited the nearby site of Nakhal with two churches, where I had excavated in 1993. Both buildings have collapsed badly since then.

One of the churches at Nakhal

The other church at Nakhal

The next site was the village of Dhat Ras, where there are some Nabataean and Roman remains.

The Roman temple at Dhat Ras

Then came Shuqayrah, the site of an Umayyad palatial estate on the south edge of the Kerak Plateaeu, where the continuing excavations by Muta University have uncovered a great deal since I last visited the site several years ago.

The view to the south into the Wadi Hasa from Shuqayrah

The final stop around sunset was the village of Muhay, where there is a large unexcavated Byzantine church.

Firas at the church at Muhay

We then returned to the house of Firas’ parents, where we had dinner and spent the night.

Amman August 26-October 4

Back at ACOR after the Wadi Rum trip, I resumed my routine over the following weeks of working on the report of the Madaba Archaeological Park excavations of 1992-1993. Among other things, I processed some modern glass finds from the excavations, which curiously included a bottle from Bad Salzbrunn, a spa now in Poland that was part of Germany before 1945.

I also prepared a proposal to conduct a further survey of Dutch and British colonial buildings in Bhimunipatnam, India in February 2013. I contacted the American Institute of Indian Studies in Delhi about proper procedures for getting permission from the Archaeological Survey of India and a research visa, only to discover that I had missed a significant deadline for applications, so whether we will get a permit is questionable.

Now that Ramadan was over, the usual public lectures and events resumed, which included a reception on September 20 at the German Institute and a lecture on October 1 at the British Institute by the director Carol Palmer about Lucjan Turkowski, a Polish ethnographer stationed in Palestine during the Second World War who made observations about Palestinian then.

Wadi Rum August 24-25

On Friday August 24 I went on an overnight trip to Wadi Rum with Joey Corbett, an ACOR fellow who is studying rock carvings and inscriptions in the Wadi Rum area of southern Jordan, and Firas Bqain, the new events administrator at the British Institute of Archaeology. We left in the morning and arrived at the Wadi Rum park in the late afternoon. I had not been to the park, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, since they started charging admission some years ago. We went to the Nabataean Temple and then to the spring, where I had not been before.

Joey Corbett at the spring with a Nabataean inscription at the far upper left

At sunset we went to a nearby site with an important rock covered with drawings and inscriptions.

Joey and Firas at the rock

A detail of the rock drawings and inscriptions

We spent the night at one of the tourist camps. The next morning Saturday August 25 we went to the Wadi Shirah north of Wadi Rum to see the Umayyad period open-air mosque there with an inscription there dated to Ramadan 107 AH/January 726 AD. Firas had written his MA thesis about the mosque and he wants to publish an article about it, so he and Joey needed to come to take some photographs. We found that the mosque had been badly vandalized recently.

Firas at the south qiblah wall of the open-air mosque

The Arabic inscription at the site dated to 107 AH/726 AD

We returned to Amman that afternoon, stopping at the Ottoman hajj fort at Wadi Hasa on the way back. The entrance was locked, so we could only walk around briefly.

The Ottoman hajj fort at Wadi Hasa

Amman July 17-August 23

On Tuesday July 17 I traveled to Amman, Jordan and moved into the American Center of Oriental Research for another three-month stay. I got a late start in the morning at 9:30 and so ended up having to take an expensive private taxi to the Allenby Bridge. After a long wait on the Israeli side, I eventually got to ACOR after six hours of travel time, one of the longest times the trip has taken.

I was back at ACOR to continue work on the final report of the Madaba Archaeological Park excavations from 1992-1993. But during the first month, I also worked on a variety of other projects. I worked further on Western Accounts of the Masjid al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem, did some editing of the proposal to have the Baptism Site on the Jordan River nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and proofread further the first of Gustaf Dalman’s volumes about Palestinian customs. I also finished my report about the survey last December of the heritage buildings in Bhimunipatnam, India.

I also did some final work on my translations of the Royal Scientific Society documents about 19th and 20th century Jerusalem for their new website and on Thursday July 26 I attended a meeting at the Royal Scientific Society about the documents – that was the first time I had been on their compound beyond the far side of the University of Jordan since 1994, when I worked for a few months at the Al al-Bayt University liaison office there.

Mohammad Ghosheh, my Palestinian colleague, also came by with a copy of his newly published, spectacular book about the Dome of the Rock.

The Muslim fasting month of Ramadan started on July 21 and ended on August 19, followed by the Muslim holiday of Id al-Fitr, so there were none of the usual public lectures or other events to attend during that time, beyond some in-house presentations by current ACOR fellows, and so I mostly stayed put at ACOR. There are better wireless internet capabilities at ACOR now, and I frittered away a good deal of time live-streaming YouTube videos in the course of the month.

Jerusalem July 1-16

I had traveled to Jerusalem to attend a conference on Jerusalem: Past, Present, and Future held at the Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Institute. The conference put me up in the Little House in Rehavia hotel, next to the Institute. On my first morning, Sunday July 1, I went to the L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art not so far away, where I had not been since the late 1990s.

The next morning Monday July 2 I went to the City of David archaeological park in Silwan for a guided tour for the conference participants given by Marva Baluka.

Marva Baluka giving the tour

Then we had a tour of the Siloam tunnel by Rony Reich. It was very valuable to understand the results of the recent archaeological work in the tunnel, especially the evidence that shows that the southwest corner of the Herodian temple compound around Robinson’s Arch was one of the last parts to be finished.

Rony Reich explaining the results of his work below Robinson’s Arch

That evening was a dinner for the conference participants and the opening session of the conference. The conference continued on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday July 3-5. My presentation about Christians and Muslims in Jerusalem during the Abbasid Period was on Wednesday morning.

On Friday July 6, I moved into the Albright Institute for the next ten days. During my stay I mostly worked on Western pilgrim accounts of the Masjid al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem and on revisions to my Masjid al-Aqsa article for Humberto da Silveria’s book. I also met Khader Salameh, with whom I am cataloguing the Arabic inscriptions in the Islamic Museum, but I did not get onto the Masjid al-Aqsa compound on this trip. On Wednesday July 11 I went to the Jordanian Embassy in Tel Aviv to get an entry visa for Jordan.

Among other cultural activities, on Saturday July 14 I attended a recorder and guitar concert at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Old City and on Sunday July 15 I attended a reception and dinner at the Rockefeller Museum hosted by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Prague June 30

My two months in Bamberg came to an end on Friday June 29. I traveled from Bamberg via a train to Nürnberg and then a convenient direct bus to Prague, arriving in the evening after four and half hours of travel time. I had passed through Prague for a couple of hours on my way to Bamberg in May and I wanted to take the opportunity to spend some more time there on my way to Jerusalem. Flights from Prague to Ben Gurion Airport were also significantly cheaper than from elsewhere.

I spent the next day Saturday June 30 sightseeing in Prague. I walked around and ended up at the royal castle. I took the full tour, seeing everything there was to see, including the windows of the infamous Defenstration of Prague that triggered the start of the Thirty-Years War in 1618.

The Defenestration of Prague windows

I then walked around some more and went to the Naprstek Anthropology Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures. My fancy was especially taken by a brief video display of Korean breakdancers accompanied by zither (gayageum) players. Over the following days I spent a lot of time watching related videos on YouTube.

I then got a 90-minute subway ticket and rode some of the subway lines until it was time to go to the airport for my flight to Ben Gurion Airport that left at 10:20 pm. The flight arrived at 3:00 am and so I hung out at the airport terminal for a few hours before taking a sherut van to Jerusalem.

Bamberg and Meiningen June 6-29

I continued to live in Bamberg for a second month to continue work on my various Jerusalem research projects. I spent much of my time examining what Western pilgrims and travelers who came to Jerusalem from the 14th to 19th centuries wrote about the Masjid al-Aqsa compound. I also spend some days translating into English a long Arabic document about Jerusalem in the 19th and 20th centuries for a website about Jerusalem being prepared by the Jordanian Royal Scientific Society.

During the month I also met my colleagues Anja Heidenreich and Ilse Sturkenboom to discuss progress on the report of our archaeological survey in the Visakhapatnam District of India last December and plans for a second season this coming December.


On June 6 I went to the nearby city of Erlangen to meet two colleagues of early Christian art and archaeology at the university there: Ute Verstegen and Carola Jäggi.

Ute Verstegen in the university scent garden

The next day June 7 was Corpus Christi Day, a state holiday in Bavaria, marked by a big religious procession through the old city in the morning.

The procession with the offices of the Natural History Museum (where I had my office in 2007) in the background

One of the statues being put back

That afternoon I went to Erlangen again to meet Jürgen Zangenberg, a Hellenistic and Roman historian who is one of the editors of the encyclopedia for which I had written my Roman Jerusalem article last month.

Jürgen Zangenberg, his daughter and me

In the middle of the month was a series of concerts on the theme the Turks Before Vienna; the group Accentus Austria gave two concerts of Austro-Hungarian music. I bought their CD, which I listened to a lot in the following days. Also part of the series was a lecture about Alla Turca music, in which a pianist played a piano with a janissary novelty pedal that produced a thump and rang a bell.

The piano with the janissary element

On Saturday June 16 I joined a day-long nature hike, led by naturalist Hermann Bösch. One highpoint of the trip was him showing us a cluster of some 15 plants belonging to a very rare and endangered species. We also saw an early medieval archaeological site with little to see above the surface.

Hermann Bösch at the find spot of the rare plant.

The group at the archaeological site

On Friday June 22 I had to move out of my apartment because someone else had rented the apartment for the weekend a long time ago. So I went to the city of Meiningen in southern Thuringia, a two-hour train ride away. On Saturday I went to the nearby village of Rohr to visit my two friends Armin and Terini, who were both students of mine in Hyderabad. That evening I attended a performance of Wagner’s early opera Das Liebesverbot, based on Shakespeare’s comedy Measure for Measure at the South Thuringia State Theater. The opera was nice enough, but I could understand why it is only rarely performed. On Sunday morning I went to Meiningen’s Elizabeth Palace museum and the English Garden with its artificial romantic ruins. That afternoon Armin and Terini drove me back to Bamberg and they went on to see the State Garden Show.

The artificial romantic ruins in Meiningen

Armin, Terini and Viktor

Later that afternoon, I went to the nearby town of Ebern and walked around for a couple of hours before returning to Bamberg and moving back into my apartment.

An historic bridge with statues in Ebern