Amman September 1-October 13

I spent September and the first half of October at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman. My principal project was to work on the final report of the excavations in the Madaba Archaeological Park from the early 1990s. I also worked further to edit the English version of Mohammad Ghosheh’s book about Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. I also agreed to translate the next of the eight volumes about Palestinian customs by Gustaf Dalman, although I will not do the bulk of the translation work for the next volume until early 2014.

On Saturday and Sunday September 8-9 I attended a conference at the University of Jordan on Burial Customs in Bilad al-Sham in the Roman to Islamic Periods. I spoke on Sunday about burials in early Christian churches, focused on my excavation in 1989 of a tomb from the early Abbasid period in the lower church at al-Quwaysmah, on the south side of Amman.

On the evening of September 8, I attended a dinner for the conference participants and after the conference session on Sunday afternoon September 9, I joined the excursion for the conference participants to visit tombs in the Amman area. We stopped first at the Roman mausoleum at Nuwayjis on the north side of Amman.

 

The conference participants at the Roman mausoleum at Nuwayjis

After a stop at the Iron Age site of Mabraq, we arrived at the Roman-period Sleepers’ Cave on the south side of Amman, which by local tradition is the cave of the Quranic story of the People of the Cave, known to Christian tradition as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. The main cave is now an Islamic site, and the women members of the group had to put on long garments.

One of the women entering the Cave of the Sleepers

To the west of the main Cave of the Sleepers is a row of Roman rock-cut tombs.

 

The main Roman rock-cut tomb to the west

Those tombs are enclosed by a fence, and when the custodians would not let us in, we simply climbed through a gap in the fence.

 

The group jumping the fence

The following day, Monday September 10, Christoph Eger and Beatrice Huber, two of the conference participants, and I went with a hired car and driver on a day trip to Irbid, Umm Qays and Pella in northern Jordan. Our first stop was the Darat al-Saray Museum in Irbid, which I had not been to since it opened a few years ago. The archaeology museum is housed in a renovated late Ottoman building.

The inner courtyard of the Darat al-Saray Museum

The mosaics gallery of the Darat al-Saray Museum

We then went to the major Roman-Byzantine city site of Umm Qays and walked around the extensive ruins.

The three of us at the Roman theater at Umm Qays

We were not able to get into the big underground mausoleum there, so Christoph tried taking photographs of the interior by lowering his camera through a light shaft.

Christoph taking a photograph

After touring the site, we had lunch at the restaurant, with its wonderful view.

 

The three of us at the Umm Qays restaurant

The last stop of the day was the major Roman-Byzantine city site of Pella in the Jordan Valley. We walked around the extensive ruins.

The site of Pella from the rest house

The schedule of public events and evening lectures also picked up once again. In addition to the usual round of archaeology lectures, on October 4 I went with some friends to the Rainbow Theater during a European Film Festival to see the recent Austrian documentary “What Happiness Is” about Bhutan and the country’s Gross National Happiness survey. The next morning I took two people passing through ACOR to visit the National Museum downtown; this was the first time I had been to the museum since it partially opened some months ago. On October 6 I gave a talk about Early Islamic Jordan for the participants in an archaeology tour of Jordan that ACOR was hosting.

I also made arrangements to travel to the United States to attend a memorial gathering of relatives in Louisville, Kentucky on October 20 for an elderly aunt of mine who had died in early September. Because of the extended Id al-Adha holiday starting on Monday October 14 marking the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, I decided to leave on my trip early and go to Rome for a few days first. And so early on the morning of Monday October 14 I flew to Rome.

Amman August 1-31

I returned to the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman on August 1 for another long stay. My principal project was to continue work on the final report of the excavations in the Madaba Archaeological Park from the early 1990s.

But I spent a good deal of time on other projects, including during the first week of August going through the page proofs of the final report volume of the Humayma excavations from the 1990s. I also finished an article about the Destruction of Images in 8th Century Palestine, which was the topic of the presentation I had given at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in March 2012, and did some editing of the English articles from last year’s Bilad al-Sham conference at the University of Jordan. I also put in the final touches to my reworked application for a three-year research fellowship in Germany to start in 2014. At the end of the month I did some further work editing Mohammad Ghosheh’s book about Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem that I had worked on earlier in June.

Soon after my arrival back in Amman, I received copies of Volume 1, parts 1 and 2 of Gustaf Dalman’s Work and Customs in Palestine, newly published by Dar al-Nashr in Ramallah and Amman. I had spent a lot of time over the past couple of years working on Nadia Sukhtian’s draft English translation of his German text.

The cover of Gustaf Dalman’s Work and Customs in Palestine

The Muslim fasting month of Ramadan continued through the first week in August, followed by the Id al-Fitr holiday, which closed down ACOR for a few days. There were no public events that I attended during the month. Rather, I stayed put at ACOR.

Dubuque and Chicago July 22-31

I had traveled to the USA to come to Dubuque, Iowa for my parents’ 65th wedding anniversary.

My bus from Chicago arrived in Dubuque at 11:00 on Monday July 22 and I went to the Luther Manor retirement home, where my parents live and where I could stay in a guest room. My brother John let me have use of his car for the week.

Over the next days, I had a dental appointment and a physical exam and did some shopping; I frittered away a lot of time watching YouTube videos, but on two days I did get to the Wartburg Seminary library.

On Thursday July 25 I had lunch with Jeff Walser, a friend from high school days and a fellow University of Chicago alumnus.

 

Jeff Walser and me

On Sunday July 28 I took Mom and Dad to St Peters for church for the first time in a while;

they rarely go anywhere anymore that requires riding in a car.

Later that afternoon, I went to John and Renee’s place, and met there Linda, Dennis and his mom, who had come up from Coralville. I saw for the first time some of the wild turkeys that live in the woods behind their house. Deer also show up on occasion.

The wild turkeys in the backyard

We then all gathered for dinner at a restaurant downtown in celebration of my parents’ 65th wedding anniversary.

The group at the restaurant (from left: Dad, Mom, Dennis’ mom, Linda, Dennis, me John and Renee

The Schick family (from left: Linda, Mom, Dad, John and me)

The next afternoon on Monday July 29 I took the bus into Chicago and stayed for the night in Hyde Park with Fred Donner, my University of Chicago PhD dissertation advisor. The next day, Tuesday July 30 I spent on the University of Chicago campus, including some time at the Oriental Institute library.

In a statement about God versus Mammon, the conversion of the old Chicago Theological Seminary across the street from the Oriental Institute into the new Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics is in full swing. The Coop Bookstore in the seminary basement has moved to a new location a block away; I could not resist getting a few books there.

 

The conversion underway

 

The new Coop Bookstore

That evening I took a 10:15 pm flight from O’Hare to Frankfurt, arriving at 1:30 pm and then after a seven-hour layover I flew on to Amman, arriving at 1:30 am on Thursday August 1, travel that spanned three calendar days.

Istanbul July 20-21

Istanbul July 20-21

On the morning of Saturday July 20 I traveled from Iznik back to Istanbul for my flight to Chicago. But when I got up and checked my flight details, I discovered that I had misremembered the flight departure time. It was not at 10:00 pm, the time of my original flight from Istanbul to Amman, but rather at 2:00 pm.

It was too late for me to recover and take an early bus from Iznik to catch the first ferry of the day from the Yalova ferry terminal. I had to wait for the 11:30 ferry, which as it turned out left late and only reached the Yenikapi ferry terminal in Istanbul at 1:00.  That did not leave me enough time to get to the Ataturk airport before the 2:00 flight closed. I reached the airline help desk at 1:45, but it was too late, even though the departure of the flight ended up being delayed for 45 minutes.

Fortunately the lady at the airline help desk was able to get me on the same flight the next day. I ended up having to pay a penalty of 100 US dollars.

There are worse things in life than having to spend another day in Istanbul, and that afternoon I explored the city for a while, before checking into a hotel for the night.

The next day, Sunday July 21, I got to the airport on time for the 2:00 pm flight to Newark and then an onward flight to O’Hare, which arrived at midnight. I took the subway to the downtown bus station, arriving at 1:30 am. I took advantage of the free wireless internet at the bus station to get caught up, as I waited for the bus to Dubuque that left Chicago at 6:15.

Istanbul and Iznik July 16-19

At noon on Tuesday July 16 I flew from Prague to Istanbul, arriving in the mid-afternoon. I went into the city and checked into my hotel near the Yenikapi ferry terminal. I walked around and was surprised by some rainfall.

The next morning, Wednesday July 17 I took the 70-minute ferry ride to Yalova and from there took an hour mini-bus trip to Iznik, arriving at 2:30.

 

The Istanbul sky-line from the ferry

I had left open my plans for the next days, but as soon as I settled into my nice hotel along the lake front, I decided to stay there for three nights, not just my original one night.

 

The view from my hotel room

I spent the rest of Wednesday and then Thursday and Friday walking around to see the numerous sights and monuments from the Byzantine and Ottoman periods, when Iznik, Byzantine Nicaea, was much more prominent than it is today.

 

Nicaea was the location of the first and seventh ecumenical church councils. The Church of Hagia Sophia, where the seventh ecumenical church council took place in 787 AD, was recently renovated and opened as a functioning mosque.

 

The exterior of the Church of Hagia Sophia

 

The interior of the Church of Hagia Sophia

 

The city wall and gates from the Byzantine period are still largely intact.

 

 

The east Lefke city gate

 

 

The south Yeniseher city gate

The one major industry in the town is the manufacture of replicas of the exquisite glazed tiles and pottery for which the city was famous in the Ottoman period. There are many workshops and stores selling Iznik tiles and pottery, including the Suleyman Pasha Medrese, the first Ottoman madrasah from the 14^th century, which is now used as a pottery market. I bought three plates there.

 

 

An Iznik plate (photo from Wikipedia)

 

Remains of the Ottoman period pottery kilns

 

The Suleyman Pasha Medrese

The most prominent monument is the Nilüfer Hatun Imaret, where the archaeological museum is housed. It is currently closed for a major renovation. I was surprised to see a full crew at work there as I walked by at noon on a Ramadan Friday.

 

Renovations underway at the Nilüfer Hatun Imaret at noon on a Ramadan Friday

 

Nearby is the Blue Mosque from the 14th century.

The Blue Mosque

On the south outskirts of the town is the 14^th century Kirgizlar mausoleum for soldier mystics at the time of the Ottoman conquest.

 

The Kirgizlar mausoleum

Around the town are numerous other monuments and graves, often identified with signs. The English sign for the grave of Alaadin Ali Esved, however, left something to be desired.

The grave of Alaadin Ali Esved

The sign

At least it was not as bad as an English guide book to Ephesus I remember from 1971 that was filled with howlers like a statement that the Virgin Mary was without sin until she came to love with St John in Ephesus – my all-time favorite typo.

I saw very few other Westerners during my stay in Iznik and I was surprised by how much I blended in. On four occasions people started talking to me in Turkish, assuming I was a local.

Madrid and Bamberg July 8-15

After the Islamic archaeology conference in Toledo, on the morning of Monday July 8 I traveled with many of the conference participants to Madrid by train. Anja had arranged for us to tour the Valencia de Don Juan collection of Islamic art.

 

One of the galleries of the Valencia de Don Juan collection

 

Three of the group examining an Arabic inscription

 

Our guide (left)

That tour was the end of the scheduled activities of the conference, but I had decided to stay on in Madrid for an additional day before returning to Bamberg. I checked into a hotel and then walked around the center of Madrid.

 

People in Madrid protesting the economic situation

 I went to the Reina Sofia art museum, where the Guernica painting by Picasso is on display. Later I went to the Prado Museum, where there is free admission after 6:00; I was able to make a quick run through the galleries until closing time at 8:00.

The next day Tuesday July 9 I toured the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Museum in the morning and at noon I walked around the Botanical Gardens.

The Botanical Gardens

I then headed to the airport for my flight back to Nürnberg. The flight left Madrid 20 minutes late, which was a problem since that cut a third off of the single hour I had to get to the outlying terminal 2F in De Gaulle airport in Paris for my connecting flight. I made the flight with only moments to spare.

Back in Bamberg after my trip to Spain, I spent my final week winding things up for this current stay. I finished my article about Jerusalem in the Abbasid period.

While back in Bamberg, I decided on short notice to change my travel plans and travel to the USA for my parents’ 65^th wedding anniversary on Sunday July 28. I found out that the cheapest airfares from Europe to Chicago were from Istanbul; they were around 20-30 percent cheaper than anywhere else. That was fine, since months ago, when I bought my round-trip ticket to come to Germany from Amman, I had decided to spend a week in Turkey before returning to Amman at the end of July. So I already had a ticket for travel from Prague to Istanbul and ended up forfeiting only the Istanbul-Amman portion of my ticket.

So on Monday July 15, I moved out of my apartment and took an afternoon train to Nürnberg and then an express bus on to Prague, arriving in the evening at the airport, where I spent the night in a cheap hotel.

Toledo July 3-7

On Wednesday July 3 I traveled to Spain to attend the annual conference in Toledo of the Ernst Herzfeld Society for Islamic Art and Archaeology. This was my first trip to Spain.

On the morning of July 3, I flew with a number of others from the University of Bamberg from Nürnberg to Madrid via Paris, and then took a train to Toledo. I got a first opportunity to explore the exceptionally attractive old city on the way to my hotel.

The next day, Thursday July 4, I explored the old city of Toledo, before the opening session of the conference that evening. After the opening session, I joined the conference participants for a special tour of the well-preserved medieval El Transito Synagogue.

The conference continued on Friday July 5 and Saturday July 6. I gave my presentation about the excavations of the Burnt Palace in Madaba, Jordan on Saturday morning. The conference was held in the Royal Foundation of Madrid, adjacent to an art museum for the sculptor Victorio Macho.

The Royal Foundation of Madrid and Victorio Macho Museum on the right

 

The view from the Victorio Macho Art Museum

Saturday evening I joined the conference participants for a tour of the city. We went to the Mosque of Cristo de la Luz, a well-preserved 10^th-century mosque that was later converted into a church, where we got a tour by the excavator.

The Mosque / Church of Cristo de la Luz

 

The ceiling of the mosque

Our archaeologist guide, with Fernando Valdes, the conference organizer, behind.

The conference participants on the tour in front of the Cathedral of Saint Mary

On Sunday July 7 I joined the conference participants for a tour of the Puerta del Vado, one of the city gates.

 

The Puerta del Vado

Our guide speaking about his excavations below the gate

Afterwards, I walked around the city and went to the San Juan de los Reyes monastery and the Iglesia de los Jesuitas. There are lots of other sites to see in Toledo that I did not get to.

The courtyard of the San Juan de los Reyes monastery

The Iglesia de los Jesuitas

 

The view from the top of the Iglesia de los Jesuitas

Bamberg June 1-July 2

I spent the month of June in Bamberg continuing to work on my various research and editing projects. I finished the report about the second season of my survey project in Bhimunipatnam, India and started work on an article about Muslims in Jerusalem in the Abbasid Period, which I had presented at the Jerusalem conference last July.

During the last week in June I edited a draft English translation of the latest book by Mohammed Ghosheh about Islamic Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina. That was a rushed book project that needed to be out in time for Ramadan next month. So I only had time to complete a portion of the full editing work needed to get the English text into good shape.

On Friday June 14 I made a day trip to Mainz to attend a conference at the Roman-Germanic Central Museum about Geographical Information Systems and Byzantium. While there I also had the opportunity to speak with Johannes Pahlitzsch about my research grant proposal to come next year to the University of Mainz.

Among the various public lectures, concerts and other cultural events that I attended, on Sunday June 9 I went to the neighboring town of Bischberg to attend a concert in celebration of the 1000^th anniversary of the establishment of the town.

 

The concert in Bischberg

During this current stay in Bamberg I downloaded a lot of operas, ballets and Shakespeare’s plays from YouTube. I was just in time, because a few days after I finished downloading what I wanted, YouTube eliminated the ability to download videos. I was especially impressed by a performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring by the Joffrey Ballet in 1989 with a reconstruction of the original choreography by Nijinsky.

 

 

 

Bamberg and Würzburg May 11-May 31

On Saturday May 11, I took a train from Berlin to Bamberg and moved into the building with short-term rental apartments where I have stayed before.

During the month I finished work on my draft translation of the Dome of the Rock book by my Palestinian colleague Mohammad Ghosheh and I worked on the report of my survey project in Bhimunipatnam last February and March. I also spent some time at the end of May translating the descriptions of the course offerings of the Religion Department of the University of Eichstätt. Sabine, the wife of Klaus Bieberstein, my Bamberg colleague, is on the faculty there, and they want to have basic information about the university available in English, even though students need to know German to take the courses.

When I made the booking for my apartment some months ago, all the apartments in the building had already been booked for the Pentecost weekend, so I needed to move out on Saturday May 18 and move back in on Tuesday May 21. For those days I decided to go to the nearby city of Würzburg, where I had not been since my year in Bamberg in 2007.

In Würzburg the leading attraction is the historic Residenz from the 18th century, and I walked around the gardens of the palatial Residenz and took the tour of the building.

The Residenz

I also went to the Marienberg castle with the Mainfränkisches and Fürstenbau Museums. While walking around in Wüzburg I also came across the building where Wilhelm Röntgen had discovered x-rays in 1895.

The Röntgen building in Würzburg

One evening in Würzburg I went to a performance of Alban Berg’s opera Wozzeck. I had not seen the opera performed before, although I remember well the original play by Georg Büchner from an undergraduate German literature course. On Sunday May 19, it turned out that the hotel where I was staying was at the finish line for the annual marathon, half marathon and 10 km races.

The start of the 10 km race from my hotel window. The finish line is at the upper right corner.

On Tuesday May 21, I moved back into my apartment in Bamberg.

The weather had been beautiful on Saturday and for the Marathon race on Sunday, but it turned cloudy and rainy that Sunday afternoon, the start of a two-week period of almost unbroken cloudy and rainy days. About the only time the weather was nice was on the morning of Thursday May 30 Fronleichnam (Corpus Christi) Day, at the time of the annual Catholic procession.

Low clearance for the Fronleichnam procession in Bamberg.

Sunday May 12 was Museum Day and I went to the Natural History Museum, where I had my office in 2007. I attended a lecture about the spectacular fossil finds from the Jurassic Period that the Museum has been uncovering at a nearby quarry at Wattendorf, and I took a tour of the museum storerooms in some underground vaults that run beneath the office of my colleague Klaus.

On Tuesday May 14 I went to the University of Erlangen to attend a lecture about the Eschatological Meaning of the Templum Domini in Jerusalem by Michelina Di Cesare. I joined the group of international research fellows for dinner afterwards.



The dinner group in Erlangen (Michelina is hidden behind the raised beer glass)