Mshatta facade

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The Mshatta facade is the relief- covered facade of the Jordanian desert residence of Mshatta from the middle of the 8th century.

The Mshatta facade

history

The facade belonged to the palace of Mschatta, the ruins of which are about 30 kilometers south of the Jordanian capital Amman . Parts of it are still found on the grounds of Amman Airport in Jordan.

The entire complex is an Umayyad complex with a square floor plan with 144 meters of internal sides and a central courtyard 57 meters in length. The palace inside was probably begun in the reign of Caliph Al-Walid II (743-744). It remained unfinished after the caliph's assassination and was destroyed by an earthquake a little later. The name Mschatta ("winter camp") was adopted by the Bedouins , as no tradition of the original name was found.

It was "rediscovered" on the European side in 1840. Because it was feared that after the construction of the Hejaz Railway in the immediate vicinity of the ruin from the cultural monument valuable components could be used, Josef Strzygowski won Wilhelm von Bode over the idea of ​​purchasing the facade for the Berlin museums. Bode proposed this to Kaiser Wilhelm II, first in an audience and then in a memorandum of April 3, 1902. Finally, the facade was given away to Kaiser Wilhelm II for dismantling by the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid II . The Hejaz Railway then enabled the facade to be removed without any problems. In 1903, the greater part came to the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, which was then under construction (today Bode Museum ). Since shortly after Bode, Julius Euting had also turned to the emperor with a proposal for the production of plaster casts, a public dispute ensued in 1904 over the authorship of the idea.

In 1932 the south facade of the Pergamon Museum was built. It was badly damaged in World War II. Today it is one of the main attractions of the Museum of Islamic Art in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, along with the Aleppo Room . There the facade is 33 meters long and 5 meters high with two gate towers and conveys a vivid picture of early Islamic architecture, which is characterized by Roman naturalistic representations and early Byzantine stone-cutting techniques in Syria. The combined laying technique of house stones and bricks on the walls of the building, the arrangement of the rooms and the construction of the vaults, on the other hand, is attributed to Persian-Iraqi influence.

literature

  • Volkmar Enderlein : Structural observations on the facade of Mschatta. In: Arts and Crafts in Islam: 2nd Bamberg Symposium of Islamic Art, July 25-27, 1996. In: Oriente moderno, Nuova serie 23 (84), No. 2, 2004, pp. 417–426.
  • Volkmar Enderlein: Mschatta - a caliph's castle . Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Prussian cultural heritage, guide sheet no. ISL. 1, 1994
  • Volkmar Enderlein, Michael Meinecke : Digging, researching, presenting. Problems of the representation of past cultures using the example of the Mshatta facade . In: Yearbook of the Berlin Museums, 34th Volume, 1992, pp. 137–172
  • Eva-Maria Troelenberg: Mschatta in Berlin. Foundations of Islamic Art. Verlag Kettler, Dortmund 2014, ISBN 978-3-86206-334-5
  • Leo Trümpelmann : Mschatta. A contribution to the determination of the art circle, the dating and the style of ornamentation. Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 1962

Web links

Commons : Mshatta facade  - collection of images, videos and audio files


Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Volkmar Enderlein : The acquisition of the facade of Mschatta . In: Research and Reports, Vol. 26, (1987), pp. 81-90, p. 81
  2. ↑ Volkmar Enderlein : The acquisition of the facade of Mschatta . In: Research and Reports, Vol. 26, (1987), pp. 81-90, p. 86; see. Julius Euting (1839-1913) ( Memento from August 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ): Through J. Euting's mediation, part of the facade of the Mschatta desert castle came to Berlin as a gift from the Sultan to Kaiser Wilhelm II
  3. ^ Trümpelmann, pp. 13, 18 / Frank Rainer Scheck: Jordan. Peoples and cultures between the Jordan and the Red Sea. DuMont, Cologne 1994, p. 252

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '15 "  N , 13 ° 23' 47"  E