Jerusalem January 14-19

I arrived in Jerusalem at 2:30 on Friday January 14 and checked into the Capitol Hotel on Salah al-Din Street, just down the street from the Albright Institute; there was no room available at the Albright. I went over to the Albright for the 4:00 tea, where I chatted with some of the current resident fellows. I also met Donald Whitcomb and later that evening I went with Donald, his son John, and Michael Jennings, a graduate student at the University of Chicago to a nearby restaurant. We talked about their on-going excavations at the early Islamic palace at Khirbat al-Mafjar in Jericho.

The next day, Saturday January 15, I took it easier. First thing I got a SIM card for Israel and made calls to arrange appointments for the next days. In the afternoon I met Benjamin Dolinka, a former Albright fellow, who has just started working for the Israeli Antiquities Authority. I also met Muhammad Ghosheh, my Palestinian colleague.

The next day, Sunday January 16 I went to the church service at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Old City. The current pastor is Fred Strikert, formerly at Wartburg College in Waverly. There was an overflow crowd of mostly Americans at the service, including the brother of James Sauer, a former director of ACOR.

Fred Strikert, James Sauer’s brother and me

In the afternoon I went to see Fahmi al-Ansari, who still operates his library in the basement of a building down the street from the Albright. His hopes to move to a better location remain unrealized. I thumbed through recent publications about Jerusalem there. That evening I met Muhammad Ghosheh at the Ambassador Hotel for dinner and discussed our Jerusalem projects. He told me about a recently published album of historic photographs of Jerusalem published in Instabul by an Islamic research foundation (IRCICA) that they sell for the grotesque rip-off price of 1200 $US! Muhammad had a copy that he lent me to take a look at.

The next day, Monday January 17, I went to the Islamic Museum on the al-Aqsa Mosque compound to meet Khader Salameh, the museum director. We spoke about our Arabic inscriptions project. In the afternoon I went to the Albright for 4:00 tea and made arrangements to join tomorrow’s Albright field trip.

On Tuesday January 18 I joined the Albright fellows on their trip to Qumran and then Khirbat al-Mafjar in Jericho. I do not think that I had been to Qumran since 1971. This trip was the most convenient way for me to get to Khirbat al-Mafjar to see the impressive excavation results. Unfortunately, none of the Palestinian participants were at the site that day. It was the same day that the Russian president Medvedev came to Jericho. There were a few banners and flags along the streets, but otherwise his visit did not impinge on ours.

Steven Pfann telling the Albright group about Qumran

Donald Whitcomb showing the Albright group the excavations at Khirbat al-Mafjar

On Wednesday morning January 19 I attended a conference about the Islamization of Palestine held at the Yad Izhak Ben Zvi Institute in West Jerusalem. Unfortunately all of the presentations were in Hebrew so I got very little out of it, although it was a good opportunity to meet people, including ‘Umar ‘Abd Rabbu, one of my former students who gave a presentation about Fatimid Jerusalem. I left at the noon break and walked around the Mamilla cemetery to see what was going on with the construction of the Museum of Tolerance that has destroyed part of the cemetery.

The Mamilla Cemetery with the perimeter fence of the Museum of Tolerance in the right background

I then walked up to the Mount of Olives to look around, and on my way back to the hotel I stopped at the Sahirah Muslim cemetery near Herod’s Gate in order to photograph the grave of ‘Abd Allah Mukhlis, a Palestinian historian of Islamic Jerusalem who died in 1948.

The grave of ‘Abd Allah Mukhlis in the Sahirah cemetery.