Hisham's Palace
Hisham's Palace (Arabic: Khirbat al-Mafjar) is the archaeological remains of an Umayyad winter palace located five km north of Jericho in the West Bank.
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[edit] Construction and layout
The palace was built on the northern outskirts of Jericho, then an imperial domain, in 743–744 CE by Al-Walid ibn Yazid during the caliphate of his predecessor Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik,[1] who ruled the Umayyad empire from 723 until his death in 743. It was modeled on a Roman bath house and was covered with exquisite colored mosaics and stucco.[2]
The complex comprised a palace, a paved courtyard, a bath house, a mosque, a fountain courtyard, a 60-hectare enclosure containing plants, animals, mosaic and decoration of the highest standard.[3] The palace itself was a large square building with a monumental entrance and rooms on two floors around a long porticoed courtyard.[4][5]
A sophisticated system of underground pipes was constructed to provide hot water and portions of the system still exist. The bath house also served as an audience room and banqueting hall.[6] The architecture of the bath's main hall and fountain contain many examples of late antique and classical secular building techniques not known elsewhere.[4]
Recent excavations have uncovered workshops and storerooms, which may indicate that the palace was also an Umayyad town.[7]
[edit] Mosaics
In the top right corner of the Bath is a small room that was reserved for the Prince. In this room a luscious mysterious mosaic panel stood. The main panel depicts a large tree and underneath it a lion attacking a deer (right side) and two deer peacefully grazing (left side). The panel's interpretations have varied, with some claiming that the panel probably represents good and bad governance, while others wrote extensively to explain that the Lion represents the prince and the deer his wives or harem. The latter back their claim with the argument that the deer seem peaceful and un-intimidated by the lion's presence. Thousands of fragments of the mosaics are stored in the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem, but few were able to study them.[4]
The stucco features depictions of semi-naked women and is unique in Islamic art.[2]
Many of the details of the palace are known to historians as a result of the excavation and reconstruction of its layout by Robert Hamilton.[8]
The luxurious decoration throughout the palace surpasses that known in late Roman equivalents, something that is often taken as evidence of the irreligious nature of the Umayyads.[9]
The palace was destroyed in 747 by an earthquake.[10]
[edit] Modern Threats
According to Global Heritage Fund (GHF), the rapid urban development of Jericho, as well as expansion of agricultural activity in the area, are seriously threatening archaeologists’ access to the palace’s disappearing ruins, much of which remain unexplored. GHF also cites insufficient management as a major threat, explaining that the remains of the palace, including an extensive water management network, have been greatly damaged by both natural causes and invasive development. Important structures such as walls and bridges have also been left to collapse.
In a 2010 report titled Saving Our Vanishing Heritage, GHF identified Hisham's Palace as one of 12 worldwide heritage sites most "On the Verge" of irreparable loss and destruction.[11]
[edit] Gallery
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Hansen & Wickham, 2000, p. 287.
- ^ a b Petersen, 1996, p. 230.
- ^ Turner, 2004, p. 101.
- ^ a b c Bowersock, Brown & Grabar, 1999, p. 551.
- ^ Floorplan, Nasser Rabbat / Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, MIT at ArchNet.
- ^ Hollingsworth, 2003, p. 117.
- ^ Holt et al., 1977, p. 707.
- ^ Necipoğlu, 1997, pp. 11–14.
- ^ Barker, 1999, p. 1088.
- ^ Bussagli, 2005, p. 60.
- ^ http://globalheritagefund.org/index.php/what_we_do/sites_on_the_verge/
[edit] References
- Barker, Graeme (1999). Companion Encyclopedia of Archaeology. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-06448-1
- Bowersock, Glen Warren, Brown, Peter and Grabar, Oleg (1999). Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-51173-5
- Bussagli, Marco (2005). Understanding Architecture. I. B. Tauris. ISBN 1-84511-089-7
- Hansen, Inge Lyse and Wickham, Chris (2000). The Long Eighth Century. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-11723-7
- Hollingsworth, Mary (2003). Art in World History. Giunti. ISBN 88-09-03474-0
- Holt, Peter Malcolm, Lambton, Ann Katherine Swynford and Lewis, Bernard (1999). The Cambridge History of Islam. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29138-0
- Necipoğlu, Gülru (1997). Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-10872-6
- Petersen, Andrew (1996). Dictionary of Islamic Architecture. London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-06084-2
- Turner, Tom (2004). Garden History: Philosophy and Design 2000 BC – 2000 AD. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-415-31748-7
[edit] External links
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