Jerusalem April 2-29

I spent the month of April at the Albright Institute in Jerusalem working on my various research projects.

On the morning of Monday April 2 I left Amman and traveled across the Allenby Bridge to Jerusalem, arriving at the Albright Institute about noon, after a travel time of just under five hours door to door. Years ago the average travel time was around three and a half to four hours, but the time on the Israeli side has increased in recent years.

The next day, Tuesday April 3, I participated in a workshop at the British Institute on Jerusalem and Constantinople, Cities of Caesar, Cities of God. The workshop was to a considerable extent a repeat of the workshop last July in Heidelberg. The organizer and most of the speakers were Germans who had been in Heidelberg. I also gave a reworked version of my Heidelberg presentation about relations between Jerusalem and Constantinople during the Iconoclastic Period.

In the course of the month, I spent a great deal of my time in the Albright Institute library reading through accounts of western pilgrims and travellers to Jerusalem for what they wrote about the al-Aqsa Mosque compound; a great many travel accounts I could download over the internet on googlebooks. I also proofread the first Gustaf Dalman volume about Palestinian customs and worked further on the captions to Humberto da Silveira’s photographs in his book about the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

On Sunday April 9 was I able to start work in the al-Aqsa Mosque library. Khader Salameh, the library director, had stayed on in Amman after the Bilad al-Sham conference. Once he returned to Jerusalem he brought me my permit that allowed me to be on the compound independent of the tourist visiting hours. In the library I worked further on our catalogue of the Arabic inscriptions in the museum; during this stay I organized the photographs that we want to include in the catalogue.

On Friday April 14 I went to Ramallah to visit Khitam, one of my former students at the Institute of Islamic Archaeology from the 1990s. I first went to Khirbat Shuwaykah, the archaeological site on the south side of the city where I had worked with the Institute in the summers of 1996 and 1997.

Khirbat Shuwayka showing the squares I had excavated in 1996 and 1997

I then walked around the city center, and bought some Jerusalem-related books at a local bookstore, including one book published in 2013 – that date is repeated four times, so it was not a typo. I then met Khitam just when a parade of Boy and Girl Scouts passed by.

The book published in 2013

The parade

Khitam, who works as an architect in Ramallah, took me to her apartment for lunch; Uhud, another of my former students, was also there.

Khitam, Uhud and Me

On Thursday April 19 I participated in an evening workshop at the Yad Izhak Ben Zvi Institute that was part of a series sponsored by a Hebrew University study group about the Islamization of Palestine in the early Islamic period. I spoke about Christians and Muslims in Jordan in the Early Islamic Period. The Archaeological Evidence.

On Saturday morning April 28, I led the Albright fellows on a tour of Islamic monuments in the Old City.

Staying at the Albright were four scholars from China, supported by a new fellowship program. One evening one of the Chinese fellows had a birthday party; he invited some other Chinese friends, so for a time there were more Chinese present than Americans.

The group at the birthday party

The Chinese residents cooked a Chinese dinner on Sunday April 29, but unfortunately I had to leave for the airport just as the dinner started.

I took an overnight flight to Warsaw, Poland, which was the least expensive option, but at the cost of having a seven and a half hour layover in the Riga airport, but at least I was able to put that time in the Riga airport to profitable use.

Amman March 27-April 1

I got back to the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman on my flight from Istanbul at 10:30 pm on March 26. I spent the next busy days at ACOR.

I spent my first day back on Tuesday March 27 preparing for my public lecture that evening for the Friends of Archaeology and Heritage about the Archaeology of Early Buddhism in India, in which I spoke in general and presented the results of my survey last December. My talk was followed by extended questions from members of the audience who wanted to know some elementary information about religions in India independent of my talk.

On Wednesday in the afternoon I went downtown to the National Museum at the invitation of Fatimah Maari, a curator there, to see the exhibits. The museum should finally open in a few months. On Thursday I met Hisham Khatib to discuss his forthcoming book about his collection of paintings and books about Jerusalem.

I also started to go through the page proofs of the translation of Gustaf Dalman’s first volume and worked on my report about the marble from the excavations at Humayma.

On Friday I invited my colleague Khader Salameh from Jerusalem to come to ACOR for lunch. He had never been to ACOR before. He had come to attend a conference at the University of Jordan about agriculture in Bilad al-Sham (geographical Syria) in the Islamic periods.

The conference was sponsored by the History of Bilad al-Sham Committee of the University of Jordan, headed by Dr. Adnan al-Bakhit. I was invited to participate, but I declined to present a paper, because I did not really have anything to say about agriculture. I did, however, attend the sessions on the opening day of the conference on Sunday April 1. Two of my former students from the late 1990s at al-Quds University in Jerusalem also attended. My colleague Dino Politis was one of the four participants who gave presentations in English; otherwise all the papers over the four days were in Arabic.

Me, Dino and Khader at the conference lunch

Dino and me at a conference session

Dino, Jean (who has been supporting a women’s cooperative

 in Ghor al-Safi) and me at the conference dinner.

Istanbul March 25-26

On Sunday March 25, I did more sight-seeing in Istanbul. Unfortunately the mosaics museum was closed for renovations. I saw the Archaeology Museum in the morning. On display there is a gallery about Palestine, including the inscription from the Siloam tunnel in Jerusalem.

The Siloam tunnel inscription

 In the afternoon I saw the Dolmabahce Palace.

The Dolmabahce Palace

I then walked around the crowded Taksim area. Along the way I bought a shoulder bag for transporting back to Amman all of the books that I had bought at the various museums. In the evening I took a train from the Sirkeci train station to the end of the line and back for a couple of hours; that was not so worth-while because it soon got dark and there was standing room only for most of the trip out.

The next day, Monday March 26, was imperial mosque day. I went to the Blue Mosque of Sultan Ahmet first thing in the morning.

The dome of the Blue Mosque

I then took a tram out to the Topkapi Gate and walked along the city wall to the north to the Mihrimah Mosque and a cemetery where Hafir and ‘Abd al-Sadiq ibn Amir, two Companions of the Prophet Muhammad, are buried and then the Chora Monastery.

The dome of the Mihrimah Mosque

The grave of ‘Abd al-Sadiq ibn Amir

The dome of the Chora monastery

I then walked back, stopping at the sequence of imperial mosques along the way: the Mehmet Fatih Mosque; it was noon prayer time so I did not go inside; then the Sehzadeh Mosque; the Kalendar Mosque; the Sulemaniye Mosque;and the Beyazit Mosque, where it was afternoon prayer time, so I did not go in.

The dome in the mausoleum of Mehmet Fatih

The dome of the Sehzadeh Mosque

The dome of the Kalendar Mosque

The dome of the Suleymaniye Mosque

Finally, I walked around the Istanbul University campus, before returning to the hotel for a shuttle bus to the airport for my 7:50 pm flight to Amman.

The bookstall area behind the Beyazit Mosque at Istanbul
 University, with the bust of Ibrahim Müteferrika,
who introduced the first printing press in the
Ottoman state in 1729.

Istanbul March 23-24

My flight from New York City arrived in Istanbul on Friday March 23 at 10:00 am. I had found a super cheap fare with Turkish Airlines that enabled me to stop over on my way back to Jordan for a few days without any added charge. The only other time I had been in Istanbul was for a few days as a 14-year old in 1971, so I took advantage of the opportunity to fill what had been a gap in my travels, given how interested I am in Byzantine studies.

I stayed in a hotel in the Sultan Ahmet neighborhood, very close to the Hagia Sophia and Topkapi palace, in an area where virtually every building is a hotel, restaurant or travel agent. The first afternoon I walked around along a main street west for a couple kilometers and walked through the Grand Bazaar on the way back.

The next day, Saturday March 24, I did a lot of sight-seeing. I got a three-day museum pass and started off with the Topkapi Palace for a couple of hours.

A room in the Topkapi Palace

I then went to the Turkish and Islamic Museum, where I saw the Umayyad milestone of ‘Abd al-Malik from near Jerusalem and the Fatimid inscription that prohibits non-Muslims from entering the mosque built in the east end of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

The Arabic inscriptions in the Turkish and Islamic Museum.

‘Abd al-Malik’s milestone is on the left and the Fatimid
 inscription from the mosque in the east end of the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre is to its right.

In the afternoon I went to the Hagia Sophia. I was interested to see in a side area a sarcophagus decorated with crosses that had been cut away.

The cut-away crosses

A crew filming a documentary in the Hagia Sophia

I then went to the nearby underground water reservoir and then in the evening I took a tram heading west to the end of the line and back.

New York City March 18-22

Early in the morning of Sunday March 18, I took a flight from Amman to New York City, arriving in the mid-afternoon. I came to participate in a symposium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in conjunction with their newly opened exhibition on Byzantium and Islam; I had written a number of entries for the exhibition catalogue. The Museum put me up in a hotel nearby for four nights.

I spent Monday at the museum for a special scholars’ day tour of the exhibit with presentations by a number of scholars. I finally got to see the back side of one of the pots that I wrote the catalogue entry for. It had been on display in the Amman citadel museum in such a way that I could not see it fully.

The back side of the pot

That evening I had dinner with my cousin Gretchen Morgenson, who is a reporter for the New York Times, and her son.

Gretchen Morgenson and me

The symposium was on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 20. I spoke for half an hour about the Destruction of Images in Eighth-Century Palestine. A video of the symposium has been posted on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8VIKJHvZuI. Or search for Metropolitan Museum Schick.

That day I also had the opportunity to see the museum, especially the newly opened Islamic Art galleries.

I had not been in New York City in years, and I had never spent much time in the city, so I went sight-seeing the next day, Wednesday. I went to the Guggenheim Museum, which was a disappointing waste of time and money, and then to Lower Manhattan, Wall Street and the Battery.

The next morning, Thursday March 22, I went to the American Museum of Natural History; I was able to check email for the first time in several days with the Museum’s free Wi-Fi access. In the afternoon I went to Kennedy Airport for my 5:45 pm flight to Istanbul.

Amman February 15-March 17

I continued to stay at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman working intensively on my various research projects. During the first part of this period, there were no distractions, so I did not even leave the building for an extended number of days.

My main activity was to write a survey article about the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem for a book of photographs by Humberto da Silveira; I had written the captions for his book last fall.

I also spent a few days compiling Western travel accounts of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound. I also spent a few days working on my Humayma excavation reports and on the Madaba Archaeological Park report.

I attended the usual round of archaeology lectures, one each at the Friends of Archaeology and Heritage, the British Institute, the German Institute and ACOR. Barbara Porter, the ACOR director, spoke about the Petra Church Project of 1992-1993, in which I had participated, and the ongoing work there.

From right: Barbara Porter with Fatimah Maari and Khairieh ‘Amr, two other Petra Church project participants from 1992-1993, and me.

On March 8 I attended a day of presentations at the Baptism site on the Jordan River about the proposal to have it listed as a World Cultural Heritage site and on March 14 went to the Umayyad desert palace of Qusayr Amra for a presentation about the restoration work being done there on the famous fresco paintings.

One of the conservators speaking about the frescoes at Qusayr Amra

On March 16 I took a visiting group of Albright Institute fellows from Jerusalem around sites south of Amman and around Madaba.

I also met Muhammad Ghosheh and one day went to the National Press in Amman with him to see the page layout of his spectacular Dome of the Rock book that is nearing completion. I also met Hisham Khatib and went to his home in Amman to see his large collection of paintings and books about Jerusalem and to talk about his draft of a new book about his collection.

There was a snow fall on March 1 that lasted for a couple of days before melting.

Snow at ACOR

I also bought a new laptop computer. I got a tax refund at the airport when I left for New York on the evening of March 17.

Amman January 6-February 15

I arrived back at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan on the evening of Friday January 6. After having traveled around so much in recent weeks, I stayed put for a while. 
 

I had not gotten much done on my various research projects over the past couple of months, so a backlog of work I needed to do was accumulating. So after spending a couple of days writing the blog entries for my India trip, I spent much of the following weeks finishing my revisions to Nadia Sukhtian’s draft translation of Gustaf Dalman’s first two volumes in German about Palestinian customs. Over the last year and a half, I have spent over four full months on that project. Whether we will plunge into translating Gustaf Dalman’s six remaining volumes remains to be seen. I also finished an article about Jerusalem in the early Islamic period and got started on a report about the early Buddhism survey project in December.

One new development was my joining the Jordanian committee that is preparing an application to UNESCO to have the Baptism Site on the Jordan River listed as a World Cultural Heritage site. I attended a planning meeting at the Ministry of Tourism on February 1.

Among social events, I attended two evenings of lectures about ancient Jerusalem held at the Royal Cultural Center, along with the usual round of other archaeology lectures, which included Bert de Vries and his team speaking at ACOR about the ongoing conservation activities at the Byzantine and early Islamic site of  Umm al-Jimal. On Friday February 3 I joined the Friends of Archaeology trip to Umm al-Jimal, in northern Jordan, where I had worked in 1984. That season I had excavated the north church of the Double Church complex, and on this trip I was able to see for the first time the recent clearance of the south church by the Department of Antiquities.

The Byzantine house at Umm al-Jimal that is the current focus of preservation efforts

Bert (far left) and the Friends of Archaeology at the south Double Church

The south Double Church

Muwaffaq, a local archaeologist, pointing out a Nabatean inscription