I arrived in Jerusalem mid-day on Wednesday April 10 and settled into the Albright Institute for a ten-day stay.
My first activity was to get my blog postings up to date, which took several days, since each of the individual days of my recent project in India warranted a separate blog entry.
I also met my Palestinian colleague Mohammed Ghosheh to go over my draft translation of his Dome of the Rock book.
On the afternoon of Sunday April 14 I went to Ramallah to visit Khitam and Ohood, two of my former students at the Institute of Islamic Archaeology of al-Quds University in the mid-1990s. We had a late lunch in a Chinese restaurant near Khitam’s architecture office.
On the way back to Jerusalem, rather than go through the Qalandia checkpoint as usual, I decided to do something different and I took a taxi that made a loop to the east and entered Jerusalem through the Hizma checkpoint; the only drawback was that it took about 45 minutes for the van to fill up with passengers before starting. Otherwise going through the checkpoints was straightforward.
On Tuesday April 16, I went to the Israel Museum, which had free admission because of Israel Independence Day. There was about a twenty-minute line to get in, but an even longer line for the current King Herod exhibit, which I skipped. I had not been to the Israel Museum for some years, and not since the recent remodeling. I was especially interested to see the Museum’s South Asia holdings, a painted wooden ceiling from a medieval synagogue near Bamberg and some Arabic inscriptions from Jerusalem. I also made a special point of photographing the marble furnishings of the Byzantine-period synagogue of Susita that show deliberate damage to images carved on them for use in my upcoming lecture in Germany.
On Thursday April 18, Nicholas Pelham, the Israel reporter for the Economist magazine came to the Albright and I spoke with him about Jerusalem and Muslim-Christian relations in the Ayyubid period. The next morning, Friday April 19, I led a tour of the Islamic monuments in the Old City for the Albright fellows. Nicholas Pelham also came, so I focused on the Ayyubid period buildings.
On the evening of Saturday April 20, I took a sherut taxi to Ben Gurion Airport for my 12:55 am flight on Sunday to Germany, with a transfer in the Istanbul airport.
My first activity was to get my blog postings up to date, which took several days, since each of the individual days of my recent project in India warranted a separate blog entry.
I also met my Palestinian colleague Mohammed Ghosheh to go over my draft translation of his Dome of the Rock book.
On the afternoon of Sunday April 14 I went to Ramallah to visit Khitam and Ohood, two of my former students at the Institute of Islamic Archaeology of al-Quds University in the mid-1990s. We had a late lunch in a Chinese restaurant near Khitam’s architecture office.
Khitam (right), Ohood and me in Ramallah
On the way back to Jerusalem, rather than go through the Qalandia checkpoint as usual, I decided to do something different and I took a taxi that made a loop to the east and entered Jerusalem through the Hizma checkpoint; the only drawback was that it took about 45 minutes for the van to fill up with passengers before starting. Otherwise going through the checkpoints was straightforward.
On Tuesday April 16, I went to the Israel Museum, which had free admission because of Israel Independence Day. There was about a twenty-minute line to get in, but an even longer line for the current King Herod exhibit, which I skipped. I had not been to the Israel Museum for some years, and not since the recent remodeling. I was especially interested to see the Museum’s South Asia holdings, a painted wooden ceiling from a medieval synagogue near Bamberg and some Arabic inscriptions from Jerusalem. I also made a special point of photographing the marble furnishings of the Byzantine-period synagogue of Susita that show deliberate damage to images carved on them for use in my upcoming lecture in Germany.
A marble panel from Susita in the Israel Museum
On Thursday April 18, Nicholas Pelham, the Israel reporter for the Economist magazine came to the Albright and I spoke with him about Jerusalem and Muslim-Christian relations in the Ayyubid period. The next morning, Friday April 19, I led a tour of the Islamic monuments in the Old City for the Albright fellows. Nicholas Pelham also came, so I focused on the Ayyubid period buildings.
The Albright fellows in the Tekkiyah of Khasseki Sultan in the Old City
On the evening of Saturday April 20, I took a sherut taxi to Ben Gurion Airport for my 12:55 am flight on Sunday to Germany, with a transfer in the Istanbul airport.
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