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Jordan Times
17-03-2025
- General
- Jordan Times
Excavation in Jerash uncovers Islamic-Period mint, insights into city's economics
AMMAN — Scholars involved in excavation of Jerash, ancient Gerasa, discovered an Islamic-period mint in the city. Copper coins were issued in both a pre-reform and post-reform series. "This seemingly straightforward discovery, overlooked due to the close similarity of Jerash coin types to the much larger production from Baysan, marked a major step forward in the identification of a significant role for Jerash in Islamic times," said the professor Alan Walmsley from the Macquarie University in Australia. The professor added that the minting of coins was an indication of wider administrative and geopolitical strategies, from which a comprehensive programme of urban development could be expected, and probably one compatible with the urban layout of Anjar. Jerash issued coins in the same style as the more prolific coppers of Baysan/Scythopolis as Baysan was an important Early Islamic town, with a hilltop governor's madina. The pre—reform types follow the heavy fabric of the Justin II and Sophia Byzantine series, which was clearly very popular in the area well after their distribution and, thereafter, co-circulated with the first Umayyad issues. The preference for two figures on the obverse of the coppers may have led to a brief production at, or for, Jerash of an unusual "Double Standing Caliph" type often found there, Walmsley elaborated. The professor added that the post reform issues are stylistically more regular, although still on the large size; a degree of coinage uniformity in Bilad Al Sham was not achieved until the end of the Umayyad period. "Not entirely clear is why some of the district towns were authorised to issue coins and others not, while other issues had a non-urban attribution, but to some degree, it must indicate varying levels of administrative function, social rank, and group identities," the scholar said. Taking into consideration the historical and numismatic material previously mentioned, and after fruitful discussions with Jordanian colleagues, who interpret this enigmatic coin as an accession issue of AD685 in which the two figures represent Abd Al Malik Ibn Marwan as caliph and his brother, Abd Al Aziz, as his designated successor. 'The Islamic Jerash Project sought to look beyond the mosque to set it within other urban features of Late Antiquity, such as streets, markets, baths, palaces, churches, and residential quarters,' Walmsley maintained. The professor noted that it was never intended to simply excavate a mosque in isolation, unlike, in many cases, the earlier excavation of churches and Roman—period monuments at Jerash; rather, it set out to place the building within a wider urban context over the longue durée. "To achieve this goal, we had to not only investigate what was below the mosque but also what lay around it — that is to say horizontally — and to link both the 'down' and 'around' through stratigraphic and chronological comparisons," the professor said. "The objective was to build a settlement profile for downtown Jerash that, through applying the principles of archaeological and architectural stratigraphy, spanned hundreds of years," Walmsley highlighted. Talking about the souk during the Islamic period, the scholar emphasized a discovery of a row of shops along the eastern wall of the Phase-2 mosque, and in them a number of marble tablets with shopkeepers' accounts in proficient Arabic, revealed the central role played by the mosque in the daily operation of the marketplace. "From this, it became abundantly clear that the Jerash mosque had been deliberately situated at this location in the commercial heart of the town. This arrangement mirrored those known for other Early Islamic towns such as Damascus, Aleppo, Al Fustfit, and — somewhat later — Fatimid Cairo," Walmsley said. The professor added that it was decided to investigate this area in more detail, as well as the mosque shops, a row of shops across the street (on the east side) were excavated. "The changes at Jerash were sympathetic to the original urban plan and intensified commercial activity in the town centre; social and economic life continued to do well in Jordan after the arrival of Islam, whereas earlier opinions assumed general social and economic decline," Walmsley concluded.
Jordan Times
15-02-2025
- General
- Jordan Times
From Byzantine to Mamluk: Reinterpreting archaeological record of Gharandal in South Jordan
Columns of the Byzantine church in Gharandal, southern Jordan (Photo courtesy of ACOR) AMMAN – Ceramics from Gharandal constitute an important component of a much larger research project on the social and economic history of Late Antique and early Islamic Jordan and Palestine. "Until recently the dearth of dependable ceramic chrono-typologies crossing the crucial transitional period between Late Antiquity and the early Islamic period has hindered an authoritative analysis of the occupational history of individual sites, and impeded any valid assessment of regional settlement histories," said the professor Alan Walmsley from the Macquarie University in Australia. "Issues of production and trade, cultural regionality and social change were also overlooked, as the data were not able to meet the difficult questions generated by these studies," Walmsley added. In the last two decades, however, great advances have been made in understanding of socio-economic conditions in other parts of Jordan, in no small part due to the establishment of a reliable and stratigraphically linked pottery sequence from excavations at sites such as Amman Citadel, Jerash, Pella and Aqaba. The 1990's were turning point in reassessment of social and cultural conditions in Jordan during the early Islamic period. The absence of any immediate and significant break in the cultural record at the time of the emergence of Islam (633-640 AD) or, as has been recognised more recently, with the overthrow of the Umayyad Dynasty in 750AD, has obliged archaeologists to tackle issues of social continuity and change from a much broader perspective than simple historical 'causes and effect', said Walmsley. "Conventional wisdom, largely based on regional survey work, argues for considerable abandonment of settlements in the lead up to the Islamic expansion and, in effect, the virtual end of settled life on any significant scale south of the Dead Sea -Wadi Rasa divide in the early Islamic period," said the professor. Walmsley added that the region has been dismissed as forgotten, depopulated and marginal; politically and culturally bypassed under the early Caliphate (a view perhaps more descriptive of nineteenth century European perceptions than the situation in the sixth-seventh centuries). Yet, the persistence of the region and its sites in the Muslim and Crusader sources would suggest otherwise, and the Gharandal Archaeological Project seeks to elucidate, from the archaeological record, the nature and extent of urban and rural settlement in Al Jibal during the Late Antique-early Islamic transition. The Gharandal excavations have revealed, through the ceramics and their contexts, the continuity of occupation from Byzantine into Mamluk times while showing the complexities of settlement development that occurred over this period. The pottery from the church fills, with the preponderance of light blooms and decorative combing could easily be mistaken for sixth-century "Byzantine", and could well account for the low representation of early Islamic sites in the regional surveys of south Jordan, the scholar retorted. "Similarly, the characterisation of the first handmade wares and their dating to the late-tenth and eleventh century has not been widely acknowledged," said the professor. "The misallocation of these wares to an amorphous 'Ayyubid-Mamluk' category, or even to the Ottoman period, has probably denied the proper recognition of settlement in this period for south Jordan. Hence very quickly the imagined Byzantine-Mamluk settlement 'gap' for the south is being filled," Walmsley noted.
Jordan Times
10-02-2025
- Science
- Jordan Times
Gharandal excavations reveal multiple layers of Jordan's past
AMMAN — Gharandal is located in south Jordan, some 15 kilometres south-east of Tafileh and five kilometres south-east of the Edomite site of Busayra. Standing at an elevation of 1,300 metres, Gharandal commands an advantageous position next to a spring at the head of a broad valley system named the Sayl Al Riyah. 'The spring water is used to irrigate agricultural fields in the wadi as it descends to the west and the principal produce is table grapes, apricots and figs,' noted Alan Walmsley, a professor from Macquarie University in Australia. Walmsley added that beyond the agricultural fields the valley continues westwards, and descends rapidly as it passes north of Busayra, eventually reaching the expanse of the Wadi Arabah further west. Here new archaeological research, including a refinement of the ceramic record, can make a valuable contribution. The remains of Classical and Islamic Gharandal lie on the south bank of the Sayl Riyah above the spring in the wadi, reaching up the slope until the land flattens out to a plateau. Visible features include a large double-rectangular enclosure on the ridge summit, a later Byzantine-period church featuring distinctive upright monolithic columns that was built abutting the north wall of the enclosure complex, and extensive domestic quarters, the professor pointed out, noting that local limestone was the main building material. "The modern village of Gharandal, consisting almost entirely of relocated residents of Busayra, has greatly encroached on the archaeological site, limiting the area available for research," Walmsley said. In 1997 and 1998, the Department of Antiquities and The University of Sydney conducted two field seasons and the team excavated the church and mosaics at the site. "The excavation of the numerous standing baulks within the body of the church was a complicated and somewhat frustrating experience, the careful removal of the crumbling baulks was an immediate necessity if the post-ecclesiastical history of the church was to be recovered," Walmsley said, noting that in Area A was recovered and retrieved a valuable corpus of Islamic pottery. Within the nave of the church the most rewarding sequence came with the removal of the adjoining The main construction phase of the Islamic housing in the church nave was represented by extensive stonewalls, a dividing room arch and a major surface. This architecture sat upon a series of levelling deposits, known as the "yellow chippy" layers due to their distinctive colour and texture, the professor said. He added that the removal of baulks in the eastern half of the church took place in both the 1997 and 1998 seasons. "Here the domestic occupation appeared more intensive and the sequence greatly complicated when compared to the wall and floor sequence uncovered over the nave. Excavations concentrated on seven baulks, the main ones being situated over the upper platform and apse wall of the sanctuary," Walmsley said. The professor pointed out that associated floors were elusive in the soft ashy deposits. Removal of these latest house walls and deposits revealed a major domestic phase underneath. Of long duration, this phase was typified by superimposed door thresholds and multipleta buns. The accumulation of archaeological deposits within the church at Gharandal commenced with the intentional infilling of the nave with a thick yellow clay level to the height of the sanctuary floor. "This fill, in addition to covering the paved nave, also concealed and protected the mosaics in the narthex and both aisles. Its spreading seems to have coincided with the deconsecration of the church as a place of Christian worship, as all the church furniture including the altar, sanctuary screens and pulpit, was unceremoniously removed at this time," Walmsley underlined. The destruction of the church is incontrovertibly revealed by the laying of brown-yellow clayey fills over the demolished apse wall and the construction of the first domestic structures, consisting of stonewalls and superimposed earth floor levels. "The fills contained considerable amounts of broken roof tile, while the lowest floor levels produced the first handmade wares, unpainted to painted, and contemporary brown wheel-made cooking pots," Walmsley concluded.
