Early Islamic Syria

177 Pages·2007·1.313 MB·English

by  Alan Walmsley

Early Islamic Syria
BLOOMSBURY DEBATESIN ARCHAEOLOGY
Series editor: Richard Hodges
Against Cultural Property John Carman
Archaeology: The Conceptual Challenge Timothy Insoll
Archaeology and Text John Moreland
Beyond Celts, Germans and Scythians Peter Wells
Combat Archaeology John Schofield
Debating the Archaeological Heritage Robin Skeates
Early Islamic Syria Alan Walmsley
Gerasa and the Decapolis David Kennedy
Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership Colin Renfrew
The Origins of the English Catherine Hills
Rethinking Wetland Archaeology Robert Van de Noort &
Aidan O’Sullivan
The Roman Countryside Stephen Dyson
Shipwreck Archaeology of the Holy Land Sean Kingsley
Social Evolution Mark Pluciennik
State Formation in Early China Li Liu & Xingcan Chen
Towns and Trade in the Age of Charlemagne Richard Hodges
Villa to VillageRiccardo Francovich and Richard Hodges
Early Islamic Syria
AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL
ASSESSMENT
Alan Walmsley
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway
London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10018
UK USA
www.bloomsbury.com
First published in 2007 by Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
Reprinted in 2012 by Bristol Classical Press
© Alan Walmsley, 2007
Alan Walmsley has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting
on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication
can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: PB: 978-0-7156-3570-4
ePUB: 978-1-4725-3776-8
ePDF: 978-1-4725-3775-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Contents
List of Illustrations 8
Preface 9
1. Defining Islamic archaeology in Syria-Palestine 15
2. After Justinian, 565-635 CE 31
The condition of towns in the later sixth century 34
The impact of multiple conquests 45
3. Material culture and society 48
Pottery and early Islamic society 49
Numismatics, government and social change 59
Craft goods, exotica and prestige items 64
Material culture, archaeology and early Islamic
transformations 69
4. Sites and settlement processes 71
A formal urban hierarchy 72
Urban Archaeology 76
Existing towns: tradition, additions and renewal 77
New establishments 90
Settlements with intent 104
Rural settlement profiles 107
Site histories and settlement processes 111
5. Life 113
Food 113
Industry 117
Religious life 120
Housing and domestic life 126
Environment, landscape and the human factor 132
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Early Islamic Syria
6. Prospects: ongoing debates in Islamic archaeology 137
The archaeology of late antique Arab society 139
Qur’anic archaeology 141
‘Gap’ archaeology in the post-Umayyad period 144
Looking beyond the longue durée: resilience theory 146
A concluding note 148
Brief chronology of early Islamic Arabia and
Syria-Palestine 149
Glossary 155
Bibliography 157
Index 172
6
For my mother, Violet
and in memory of my father, George
7
List of Illustrations
Fig. 1. Map of Syria-Palestine showing major regions
and sites 32
Fig. 2. Coinage supply in southern Syria-Palestine
during the sixth to early seventh century 40
Fig. 3. Plan of Umm al-Jimal in north Jordan 43
Fig. 4. A selection of diagnostic early Islamic pottery
from southern Syria-Palestine 50
Fig. 5. Ware types and chronology of early Islamic
pottery at Pella 56
Fig. 6. Cosy heating: a fenestrated Egyptian-style
brazier found in a mid-eighth-century house at
Pella 66
Fig. 7. The five-province administrative structure (the
ajnad) of early Islamic Syria-Palestine, after c.
685, based on ninth-century Arabic geographical
sources 75
Fig. 8. Plan of the church, mosque and suq complex at
Rusafah, Syria 82
Fig. 9. Mosque and market at Jarash in the eighth
century 85
Fig. 10. Plan of al-Bakhra, Syria 96
Fig. 11. Reconstructed plan of Mshatta 101
Fig. 12. General plan of the domestic units at Pella,
destroyed in the 749 CE earthquake 128
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Preface
In this book I endeavour to offer a concise account of Islamic
archaeology as it has developed and is today in the region of
geographical Syria-Palestine. For any book that purports to
deal with current issues in archaeology, this region is unsur-
passed. Even choosing a name by which to describe the region
is problematic, and exposes compelling current political ten-
sions. In this work ‘Syria-Palestine’ is used to describe the area
covered by the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel
and the Palestinian territories, with a small part of southern
Turkey, but should not be viewed as expressing any other
opinion. The term is an old one for the region, but is the best,
given current circumstances. ‘The Levant’ was another option,
but it can be awkward to use in writing and is compromised by
its past use as a cultural term, sometimes pejoratively. As this
book sets out to counter earlier judgemental approaches to the
archaeology of Islamic Syria-Palestine, the term ‘The Levant’
seemed particularly inappropriate.
While setting geographical parameters can be difficult and
fraught, the region offers the archaeologist particular attrac-
tions in dealing with an Islamic past as a result of the
tremendous advances made in relevant archaeological research
in the last few decades. A virtual explosion in discovery and
interpretation has characterised the field since the 1980s in
particular, in which archaeological-anthropological approaches
have come to supplement, then become independent of, and,
more recently, supplant traditional art historical and architec-
9