Amman April 1-21

I spent the first part of April in Amman, continuing my fellowship at the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR) to help Ghazi Bisheh write the final report of his excavations in 1993-1994 at the Burnt Palace in Madaba.

Things were looking up for the project this month. Ghazi was able to locate his monthly and quarterly reports, and I found some additional records, so we have enough information now to produce the report. We also retrieved the pottery from the project from the Department of Antiquities storerooms. Emma Morse, an American studying Arabic at the University of Jordan, also started helping out as a volunteer for a few hours each week.

My Palestinian Customs book was published by the University of Jordan Press in early April, only a couple of weeks after I had submitted the final camera-ready copy. I got my author’s copies on April 6, although copies are not yet available for sale.

The cover of my Palestinian Customs book

I also worked on my article about Jerusalem in the Umayyad period for the upcoming conference at Oxford University on religious conversion in Late Antiquity and I polished my translation of a 19th-century German article about Jerusalem.

On April 5 I went with Chris Tuttle, the Associate Director of ACOR, Tali Ginni, from the Israeli Antiquities Authority, and Ben Anderson, currently a fellow at ACOR, on a day trip to Petra. We went see to the Petra Church and then spend a long time at the Temple of the Winged Lions, before having lunch with the German excavation team currently in Petra. Later in the afternoon we dropped Tali off at the Aqaba-Eilat border crossing, before returning to ACOR later that night. That was the first time I had been to Petra since 2004.

Chris and Tali at the Temple of the Winged Lions

Among other scholarly activities, on April 8 I met Raouf Abujaber in his downtown office. He is interested in the Ottoman period history of Jordan and I presented him with a copy of my Palestinian Customs book. On April 14 I attended a lecture at ACOR by Franklin Price about nautical archaeology, which was followed by a reception and on April 18 I attended the lecture at the Columbia Center by Hazem Malhas on the environment; he is the newly appointed Minister of the Environment. On April 21 I attended the all-day Science Day archaeology conference at the University of Jordan.

On Friday April 16 I went to Jerash with Ivana Kvetanova, an ACOR fellow from Slovakia who is interested in early Christianity. We walked all around, especially seeing all the Byzantine churches, including the Church of Peter and Paul in the east part of the city, which I had not seen before.

Amoing other activities, on April 7 I invited Mira D’Souza for lunch at ACOR. She is an undergraduate at Drexel University currently studying Arabic at the University of Jordan. Mira is the daughter of Andreas and Diane D’Souza, the former directors of the Henry Martyn Institute in Hyderabad, where I worked between 2000 and 2006. I met Mira again on April 12 for the flamenco dance performance by Rocio Molina. On April 10 I went to see the recently-released Pakistani movie with a serious theme, Khuda Ki Liye (For the Sake of God) at the Royal Cultural Centre.