In January I continued to stay at the American Center of Oriental Research to work on my various research projects.
I spent a lot of time working on the index for the first two volumes of Gustaf Dalman’s study of Palestinian customs, finally finishing it at the end of January. That brought to an end a full six-months of work on the Dalman translation that I had put in since late 2010.
In January I also worked on the application to have the Baptism Site accepted on the list of UNESCO world heritage sites, translated more of Mohammad Ghosheh’s book about the Dome of the Rock and put some final touches on my reports about the Humayma excavations.
On Monday January 7 I attended a reception for the ACOR trustees. Prince Raad ibn Zaid attended and I showed him the photograph of him from 1965 in Mohammad Ghosheh’s Dhakirat al-Quds volumes of historic photographs of Jerusalem that I am translating into English.
The second week of January was an interesting time for weather. It started off with two days of heavy rains that disrupted most everything, not least traffic due to exceptional flooding of the streets. Then the snow started falling early Wednesday January 9, which also immediately cut off the internet for much of the country. The snowfall continued for two days, although the total amount of snow accumulation was not exceptional. Things started to recover on Friday and the internet places near the University were open. Wireless internet connections came back on Saturday, but we at ACOR could not connect to any websites other than Google ones, like Gmail and Google Earth, and Skype. The problem was especially acute for ACOR’s service provider and only after six and a half days did ACOR’s internet finally start to work again.
On Sunday January 21 I joined a trip to Umm al-Jimal. The US ambassador came to see the results of the recently completed consolidation of some of the buildings there by Bert de Vries and his team that had been financed by the embassy’s Ambassador’s Fund.
On the evening of Thursday January 24 I went on a trip to Ghor al-Safi. Dino Politis, the director of the excavations there, had come to Amman and I went back with him, accompanied by Micaela Sinibaldi from ACOR. It had been a while since I had seen the results of the on-going excavations, so the next day, Friday, I got a tour of the Shaykh ‘Isa settlement site and the Tawahin Mamluk-period sugar mills and on Saturday morning I got a tour of the recently opened museum. Later that morning Micaela and I took a bus back to Amman.
On Tuesday January 29 I gave a public lecture at ACOR about Daily Life on the Masjid al-Aqsa Compound in the Ottoman Period, in which I spoke about the things that residents and pilgrims do, the people who work on the compound, proper etiquette and non-Muslims on the compound.
I spent a lot of time working on the index for the first two volumes of Gustaf Dalman’s study of Palestinian customs, finally finishing it at the end of January. That brought to an end a full six-months of work on the Dalman translation that I had put in since late 2010.
In January I also worked on the application to have the Baptism Site accepted on the list of UNESCO world heritage sites, translated more of Mohammad Ghosheh’s book about the Dome of the Rock and put some final touches on my reports about the Humayma excavations.
On Monday January 7 I attended a reception for the ACOR trustees. Prince Raad ibn Zaid attended and I showed him the photograph of him from 1965 in Mohammad Ghosheh’s Dhakirat al-Quds volumes of historic photographs of Jerusalem that I am translating into English.
Prince Raad and his wife Princess Majda looking at his photograph from 1965
The second week of January was an interesting time for weather. It started off with two days of heavy rains that disrupted most everything, not least traffic due to exceptional flooding of the streets. Then the snow started falling early Wednesday January 9, which also immediately cut off the internet for much of the country. The snowfall continued for two days, although the total amount of snow accumulation was not exceptional. Things started to recover on Friday and the internet places near the University were open. Wireless internet connections came back on Saturday, but we at ACOR could not connect to any websites other than Google ones, like Gmail and Google Earth, and Skype. The problem was especially acute for ACOR’s service provider and only after six and a half days did ACOR’s internet finally start to work again.
The ACOR snowmen
On Sunday January 21 I joined a trip to Umm al-Jimal. The US ambassador came to see the results of the recently completed consolidation of some of the buildings there by Bert de Vries and his team that had been financed by the embassy’s Ambassador’s Fund.
The Umm al-Jimal team with the US ambassador
On the evening of Thursday January 24 I went on a trip to Ghor al-Safi. Dino Politis, the director of the excavations there, had come to Amman and I went back with him, accompanied by Micaela Sinibaldi from ACOR. It had been a while since I had seen the results of the on-going excavations, so the next day, Friday, I got a tour of the Shaykh ‘Isa settlement site and the Tawahin Mamluk-period sugar mills and on Saturday morning I got a tour of the recently opened museum. Later that morning Micaela and I took a bus back to Amman.
Dino in the Ghor al-Safi Museum
The Mamluk Sugar Mills in Ghor al-Safi
On Tuesday January 29 I gave a public lecture at ACOR about Daily Life on the Masjid al-Aqsa Compound in the Ottoman Period, in which I spoke about the things that residents and pilgrims do, the people who work on the compound, proper etiquette and non-Muslims on the compound.
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