By Peter Brown (Editor) Garth Fowden
From the stony desolation of Jordan's desolate tract, it truly is yet a step via a doorway into the bathtub residence of the Qusayr 'Amra searching resort. inside of, multicolored frescoes depict scenes from courtly existence and the quest, in addition to musicians, dancing women, and bare bathing girls. The tourist is transported to the posh and erotic international of a mid-eighth-century Muslim Arab prince. For students, even though, Qusayr 'Amra, most likely painted within the 730s or 740s, has proved a mirage, its concreteness dissolved by way of doubts approximately date, customer, and that means. this can be the 1st book-length contextualization of the mysterious monument via a compelling research of its iconography and of the literary assets for the Umayyad interval. It illuminates not just the way of living of the early Muslim elite but in addition the lengthy afterglow of overdue vintage Syria. Illustrations: 60 b/w photos, eleven line illustrations, 2 maps
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Example text
In the summer of 1896 Musil moved to the town of Mádabá in the hill country across the Jordan, practiced his Arabic with the farmers, and explored Moab and Edom on horseback with a local Catholic missionary. Already at this early stage he showed a propensity for ethnographical observation and mapmaking, with extreme care for the accurate rendering of place-names. It was in Moab in 1896 that Musil first heard tell of Qu3ayr ªAmra, in the anarchic region east of the Pilgrim Road from Damascus via Maªán to Makka.
But by 1905 Musil seems to have come to the view that the patron had been an Umayyad prince in the first half of the eighth century, and specifically al-Walíd b. Yazíd (708/9–44), who was heir apparent throughout the reign of his uncle Hishám (724–43), and then briefly became caliph as al-Walíd II (743–44). In a summary note accompanying his topographical and historical chapter for Ku3ejr A ª mra, which he submitted to the Nordarabische Kommission in 1905, Musil stated that in his opinion al-Walíd had lived at Qu3ayr ªAmra, and had ordered the construction of the courtyard dwelling that, as we shall see in chapter 2, stood a few hundred meters away from the bath house.
Mielich neither saw everything that is visible now, nor published copies of everything he had seen—for example, the hunt panel in the hall’s west aisle. 21 As for the first volume, it comprised essays by various hands. Here, the lion’s share fell to Musil himself, who chose to preface his account of the topography and history of the area with a lengthy description of his visits to the site in 1898, 1900, and 1901. Written in a lucid and compelling German, Musil’s contribution fuses travelogue, ethnographic observation, and archaeology.