CONTINUITY and CHANGE in CITIES of PALESTINE DURING the EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD the CASES of JERUSALEM and RAMLA Gideon Avni
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CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN CITIES OF PALESTINE DURING THE EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD THE CASES OF JERUSALEM AND RAMLA Gideon Avni There is not among the towns of the provinces one questions of continuity and change in urban settle- larger than [Jerusalem]. .The buildings of the Holy ment patterns between the seventh and eleventh City are of stone, and you will not find finer or more centuries are visible in a comparison of the two cities. solid construction anywhere. .The markets are The pace of modern archaeological research in clean, the mosque is of the largest, and nowhere are Jerusalem and Ramla has been fundamentally dif- Holy Places more numerous. ferent. While Jerusalem has been the focus of large- Al-Ramla . is a delightful and well-built city. It is scale surveys and excavations for the last 150 years situated in the midst of fertile rural areas. .Trade that now permit reconstruction of the city layout here is profitable, and the means of livelihood during Byzantine and Early Islamic times (figs. 1, 2), easy. It possesses elegant hostelries and pleasant the small town of Ramla has received little scholarly baths . spacious houses, fine mosques, and broad attention and its Early Islamic urban layout long re- streets.1 mained virtually terra incognita. During the last fifteen years, however, both cities have been subject to ex- These lively descriptions of Jerusalem and Ramla, tensive archaeological research because of acceler- written in the tenth century by the Jerusalemite his- ated modern construction. Recent excavations in torian and geographer al-Muqaddas‹, represent the Jerusalem, conducted mainly in areas surrounding central position of these two cities in Early Islamic 2 the Old City, have revealed a large network of Palestine. Although located only 30 miles apart, it Christian monasteries and agricultural farms that was seems that Jerusalem and Ramla had become two established during the Byzantine period and con- distinctive urban entities. In the three centuries since tinued to expand and flourish in Early Islamic times. the Muslim conquest, Jerusalem, the main religious Small-scale excavations inside the Old City show center of Palestine, had passed through a gradual the same chronological framework. In Ramla more process of urban change and transformation from a than 120 rescue excavations were conducted be- Roman and Byzantine city into a medieval Middle tween 1990 and 2008 that exposed significant seg- Eastern city. Al-Ramla, the newly created Early Is- ments of the Early Islamic city and provided an op- lamic city that became the administrative capital of portunity to establish the chronological framework Palestine, introduced a new concept of settlement for its development and a preliminary reconstruc- hitherto unknown in this region. Wide-ranging tion of its urban layout (fig. 3). Study of large-scale 1 Al-Muqaddas‹, A≈san al-Taq⁄s‹m fi Ma‘rifat al-Aq⁄l‹m, M. Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions (Reading: J. De Goeje, ed., 2nd ed. (Bibliotheca geographicorum Garnet, 1994), 139–40. For the major role of Muqad- arabicorum, 3; Leiden: Brill, 1906), 164, 166–67. das‹’s descriptions in reconstructing the urban frame- 2 Parts of Muqaddas‹’s work were translated and pub- work of the Arab world in the tenth century see P. lished in G. Le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems Wheatley, The Places Men Pray Together (Chicago: (London 1890, reprint Beirut: Khaitas 1965). For a re- University of Chicago Press, 2001), viii–xv, 58–70. cent translation see B. A. Collins, Al-Muqaddas‹: The 1 2 GIDEON AVNI Figure 1 Map of Jerusalem in the eighth century (Israel Antiquities Authority) processes of urban development in both cities reveals surroundings in the seventh and eighth centuries. a most complicated picture that casts new light on Construction of the Dome of the Rock and the al- settlement patterns and cultural changes in Early Is- Aqsa Mosque marked a major urban change that lamic Palestine. shifted the urban focus from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to the Temple Mount/Haram el-Shar‹f, Early Islamic Jerusalem renewing this area as the religious center of the city.3 This period in Jerusalem has traditionally been iden- Large-scale excavations conducted to the south tified with the substantial new building and reno- and southwest of the Temple Mount during the last vations conducted on the Temple Mount and in its forty years have revealed the hitherto unknown re- 3 The main Early Islamic monuments on the Temple 1969); O. Grabar, “The Umayyad Dome of the Rock Mount attracted the attention of scholars from the in Jerusalem,” Ars orientalis 3 (1959), 33–62; idem, The nineteenth century onward, and there is an exhaustive Shape of the Holy–Early Islamic Jerusalem (Princeton: literature. The major works are K. A. C. Creswell, Princeton University Press, 1996); M. Rosen-Ayalon, Early Muslim Architecture, 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press The Early Islamic Monuments of al-Haram al-Sharîf, An CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN CITIES OF PALESTINE 3 Figure 2 Map of Jerusalem in the eleventh century (Israel Antiquities Authority) mains of four monumental buildings, identified as Temple Mount represented a dramatic change in palaces or administrative centers,4 that were found- the function of this area, and the newly erected ed during the Umayyad rule in Jerusalem.5 This monuments dominated a significant part of Jerus- massive Early Islamic construction adjacent to the alem’s urban layout.6 Iconograhic Study (Qedem, 28; Jerusalem: Hebrew The Early Islamic Monuments, 8–11; Grabar, Shape of the University, 1989); A. Elad, Medieval Jerusalem and Is- Holy, 128–30. lamic Worship–Holy Places, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage 5 The recent excavations conducted at the southwest- (Leiden: Brill 1995). ern “palace” raised the possibility that at least some 4 The excavations were conducted by Mazar and Ben- large-scale construction commenced in this area al- Dov 1968–1978 and by Reich and Billig 1994–1996. ready during the Byzantine period. This suggestion See B. Mazar, The Mountain of the Lord (New York: has been published only in a preliminary form; see Y. Doubleday 1975); M. Ben Dov, In the Shadow of the Baruch and R. Reich, “The Umayyad Buildings near Temple (New York: Harper and Row, 1982), 273– the Temple Mount: Reconsideration in the Light of 321; R. Reich and Y. Billig, “Excavations near the Recent Excavations,” in New Studies on Jerusalem, E. Temple Mount and Robinson Arch, 1994–1996,” in Baruch and A. Faust, eds., 8 [Hebrew] (Ramat Gan: Ancient Jerusalem Revealed, 2nd ed., H. Geva, ed. (Jeru- Bar Ilan University, 2000), 117–32. salem: Israel Exploration Society, 2000), 340–52. For 6 Several interpretations for the political and religious the interpretation of the buildings see Rosen-Ayalon, background that led to the establishment of the new 4 GIDEON AVNI It should be noted though that the Temple Jerusalem preserved many of its Byzantine urban Mount area is the only area of Early Islamic Jerus- characteristics. alem where a significant change of the urban layout Byzantine Jerusalem is well known from ar- has been identified as a direct result of the incoming chaeological discoveries, historical descriptions, and Islamic regime. Other parts of the city show no sig- even visual representations, such as the famous nificant change and continuity from the Byzantine- Madaba map, which depicts the city’s urban layout period urban fabric is evident. Archaeological ev- and its major monuments around the sixth century, idence for continuity in both private urban dwell- emphasizing the central position of the Church of the ings and Christian religious institutions has become Holy Sepulcher within the urban landscape.7 The ar- evident in excavations conducted recently in several chaeological and historical evidence points toward places in and around Jerusalem. In fact, Early Islamic ongoing construction process and urban expansion in and around Jerusalem between the fourth and the seventh centuries.8 Urban construction expanded far beyond the city walls, especially to the north and east. Its main characteristic was a network of churches and monasteries established north of the Damascus Gate9 and on the slopes of the Mount of Olives10 to the east of the walled city. Several monastic compounds were constructed also to the west, southwest, and south of the city limits.11 This major expansion continued well into Early Islamic times, and most of the Chris- tian religious institutes functioned at least until the eighth and ninth centuries.12 pography of Early Islamic Jerusalem see D. Bahat, Figure 3 “The Physical lnfrastructure,” in The History of Jerusa- Plan of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the lem–The Early Muslim Period (638–1099), J. Prawer and adjacent church constructed in the Early Islamic H. Ben-Shammai, eds. (Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, period (Israel Antiquities Authority) 1996), 38–101. 8 Tsafrir, “Topography and Archaeology,” 285–95, 330–42. Islamic center in the Temple Mount/Haram el-Shar‹f 9 See M. J. Lagrange, Saint Étienne et son sanctuaire à Jérus- area have been suggested; see Elad, Medieval Jerusalem, alem (Paris: Alphonse Picard, 1894); Vincent and Abel, 147–62, for a summary of previous research. Jérusalem nouvelle, 743–879; and for the recent excava- 7 The most comprehensive archaeological and histori- tions D. Amit and S. Wolff, “An Armenian Monastery cal evaluation of Byzantine and Early Islamic Jerusa- in the Morasha Neighborhood, Jerusalem,” in Ancient lem is still the monumental work of H. Vincent and Jerusalem Revealed, 293–98; V. Tzaferis, N. Feig, A. F.-M. Abel, Jérusalem, Recherches de topographie, Onn, and E. Shukrun, “Excavations at the Third Wall, , 2: (Paris: Li- North of the Jerusalem Old City,” ibid., 287–92. d’archéologie et d’histoire Jérusalem nouvelle 10 brairie Victor Lecoffre, 1914–26).