Khirbat al-Minya

Khirbat al-Minya
Ruins of Khirbat al-Minya
Data
place	Tabgha , Israel
Construction year	1st half of the 8th century
Floor space	approx. 4800 m²
Coordinates	32 ° 51 '53.5 "  N , 35 ° 32' 10.4"  E Coordinates: 32 ° 51 '53.5 "  N , 35 ° 32' 10.4"  E
particularities
Archaeological site

Khirbat al-Minya ( Arabic خربة المنية, DMG Ḫirbat al-Minya ), also Ayn Minyat Hisham or Horvat Minnim , was an Umayyad palace complex near the place Tabgha on the northwestern bank of the Sea of ​​Galilee in northern Israel . The desert castle , preserved today only as a ruin , had an outer wall with towers reminiscent of a Roman military camp , as well as a luxurious interior. These included a palace-owned mosque and a bathing facility. Khirbat al-Minya is the only known early Islamic caliph's palace on Israeli territory. It was built under the caliph al-Walid I or his successor al-Walid II from the Umayyad dynasty in the early 8th century.

Research history

Since the second half of the 19th century, Khirbat al-Minya has been associated with biblical places such as Capernaum or Bethsaida , the birthplace of Peter and other apostles. Between 1865 and 1911 there were several archaeological surveys in the area of ​​the ruins, which exclusively brought about medieval finds. In 1911, under the direction of Andreas Evaristus Mader, the German Görres Society began researching the palace complex, which was initially also limited to surface examinations. Mader initially mistook the site as a Roman military camp due to the surrounding defensive wall and the corner and intermediate towers. Since Mader was still of the opinion that he had found evidence from Roman and early Christian times, the society organized the first excavation campaign in Khirbat al-Minya in 1932, which at that time was still an average of 4 meters high and 300 × 200 meters in size. Some remains of the wall were already visible above ground. During the excavation under Mader's direction, it was possible to uncover a square domed room with a mosaic floor in the western part and a monumental gate system in the eastern section. Furthermore, the enclosure wall of the palace complex with nine towers was uncovered. Even after the first excavation campaign was over, Mader stuck to his opinion that he had a Roman one here. Castle from the 1st or 2nd century in front of you.

The second excavation campaign took place in 1936 under the direction of the Christian archaeologist Alfons Maria Schneider , as Mader had to leave Palestine in the course of 1932 for health reasons. (He died in March 1949). First, Schneider had Khirbat al-Minya re-measured. The photo showed that the system was 67 × 73 meters. The subsequent exposure of the gate system resulted in two portal towers and a square domed room with rich architectural decor. Further excavations on the west wall uncovered, among other things, remains of the wall, which Schneider hypothetically reconstructed into two identical room groups with a symmetrical structure from a central room with flanking two-room groups. Schneider continued to have the inside of the south wall examined, but he did not find any further remains of the wall here. He transferred this result to the north side without any control. In addition, remnants of the courtyard paving made of basalt slabs were found. Due to the lack of a defensive character of the gate, Schneider rejected the theory of the fort and identified al-Minya as a palace complex, which he still classified as pre-Islamic in the 5th century.

The third campaign of the Görres Society took place in 1937 under the leadership of Oswin Puttrich-Reignard , who also held this task until the fifth excavation campaign. Puttrich-Reignard followed a theory by Sir Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell from the University of Cairo , according to which Khirbat al-Minya was an Umayyad palace of the 8th / 9th centuries. Century acts. The discovery of a mosque in the southern part of the residential building confirmed Creswell's thesis. The mosque was 13 × 20 meters in size with a prayer niche in the south wall. In total, the mosque had three entrances, one of which was in the north and one in the west of the building, from where access from the palace part was possible. Another entrance in the outer wall in the east probably served believers who lived outside the palace. This finding and an inscription recovered as early as 1936 document the construction of the facility in the Umayyad period (7th / 8th centuries). Nevertheless, Puttrich-Reignard avoided publishing this date at this point in time. He had the southern section, which Schneider had already examined the previous year, exposed again and discovered that in 1936 he had not dug deep enough. Puttrich-Reignard discovered other groups of rooms, which he called the “palace district”. During the excavation north of the mosque, two rooms were found in which a large amount of unprocessed tesserae was found. For Puttrich-Reignard, it was a workshop. He took this workshop as an indication that the palace complex was never completed. Puttrich-Reignard's predecessor, Alfons Maria Schneider, felt provoked by the new dating and the non-completion theory and tried to reconcile the thesis he had made the previous year with the results of the third campaign. In his counter-speech, Schneider took the view that Khirbat al-Minya was a pre-Islamic palace, which was later built into a mosque in Umayyad times. For this he consulted a Byzantine street directory from the middle of the 7th century, which allegedly referred to Khirbat al-Minya.

The third excavation campaign took place from 1937 to spring 1938, during which about a quarter of the entire complex was exposed. Puttrich-Reignard also tried to investigate the apron between the lake and the palace complex, but the groundwater level made this work difficult. After consulting the French archaeologist Daniel Schlumberger , who had excavated the fortress of Qasr al-Khayr al-Gharbi , Puttrich-Reignard finally decided to date the palace complex to the Umayyad era. He assumed that Khirbat al-Minya was built as a winter palace in the 8th century and in the 13th / 14th century. Century experienced another usage phase before the facility was destroyed around 1400.

Despite political unrest in Palestine, the fifth excavation campaign of the Görres Society took place from October 1938 to May 1939, during which approx. 50% of the palace complex was exposed. Puttrich-Reignard further doubted Alfons Maria Schneider's interpretation of the excavation results of the second campaign. Jean Sauvaget , who suspected an Umayyad bathing complex in the western palace district , intervened in this discussion . The thesis of the bathing facility could explain discrepancies discovered by Schneider in the excavation plan presented by Puttrich-Reignard. This question should be clarified in the upcoming excavation campaign planned for 1940. However, the Second World War prevented further investigations by the Görres Society. After the end of the fifth excavation campaign, the excavation site was covered with earth. Plans for a reconstruction and reuse of Khirbat al-Minya could no longer be implemented. Oswin Puttrich-Reignard fell on the Eastern Front in 1942 .

An American-Israeli research team led by Oleg Grabar carried out the sixth excavation campaign in the palace complex in the summer of 1959. The focus of this investigation was the west wing of the desert castle. However, Grabar could not prove the bathing facility postulated by Sauvaget. Grabar was able to add to the layout of the complex and expose further mosaics. Furthermore, Grabar was able to stratigraphically prove three post-Umayyad settlement horizons, which Schneider and Puttrich-Reignard had already observed: a Mamluk phase in the 13th / 14th. Century and two Ottoman phases from the 17th and 19th centuries.

No further excavations took place between 1959 and 2005, which means that the courtyard and areas of the western wing remained unclear in the architectural structure of the complex. In the 1990s the building was Surveys by Markus Ritter and Gisela Helmecke committed. They found overgrown ruins overgrown with palm trees and the mosaic floors still covered with sand.

The scientific evaluation of the hitherto taken place excavations began at the University of Bamberg , as Markus Ritter one of the finds aufarbeitete of Baudekors the Umayyad palace in a master's thesis in 1994, some of the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem and the Museum of Islamic Art (Berlin) kept and a small part of them were under construction. In 2012 he presented a new assessment of the marble relief slabs. Up until then they had been mistaken for Christian spoils, but it can be shown that they were used in the early Islamic palace, revised and supplemented by new relief plates that can be dated early Islamic. In a book monograph on the construction and decor of the palace complex from 2017, he documents and comparatively examines all finds of the diverse and rich decor, describes the findings of the architecture and discusses written sources and the dates. In a master's thesis in 1998, Franziska Bloch worked on the finds of unglazed ceramics from the excavations based on the pieces that are in Berlin, and published the results in 2006. In a master's thesis in 2006, Anja Dreiser examined the finds of sgraffito and Champlevé ceramics from the excavations and published it in 2011.

In 2005, Myriam Rosen-Ayalon and Katia Cytryn-Silverman again undertook archaeological investigations on the building. They examined the courtyard on the east side and areas in the west wing. In 2015, Hans-Peter Kuhnen from the University of Mainz began preparing for a resumption of excavation work with the aim of further exploring and preserving the palace complex. The conservation measures are financed with funds from the cultural preservation program of the Federal Foreign Office and carried out by a German-Israeli restoration team in cooperation with the Institute for Building Research at the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences . In September 2016, Kuhnen carried out what is now the seventh excavation campaign in Khirbat al-Minya. Kuhnen discovered evidence of medieval sugar cane cultivation and associated boiling ovens for the production of sugar.

The magnificent furnishings of the palace complex

Ornate decorative element made of marble

The early excavation campaigns already showed that Khirbat al-Minya must have been a palace complex with rich and splendid furnishings. The main portal was already equipped with richly ornamented stone decor. In the so-called “throne room” there was a white marble floor. The walls were covered with marble up to a height of 2 meters. This included ornamented marble relief panels that were painted in color or filled with a colored paste. Such marble relief slabs were also found in the north wing. There were colorful wall mosaics above. The floor mosaics in the “palace district” were all decorated with purely ornamental decors, which formed various kinds of carpet-like braided patterns. Furthermore, marble remains of columns and capitals, window grilles made of stucco and glass inlays as well as at least one room with an ornamental stucco paneling were found in Khirbat al-Minya.

Dating

While Mader had assumed at the beginning of the exploration of Khirbat al-Minya, due to the Roman-looking defense system, that he was dealing with a site from late antiquity, it became clear at the latest when Puttrich-Reignard discovered the mosque integrated into the palace in the third excavation campaign it had to be an early Islamic caliphate palace. The formal comparison of the floor plan and the architectural forms with other buildings leads to the conclusion that it must be a complex from the time of the rule of the Umayyad dynasty (661–750).

Further arguments can be used to date the palace complex. First of all there is a building inscription discovered by Schneider . The marble block had a three-line Arabic inscription which, according to a translation by Ernst Kühnel from 1937, says:

In the name of God, the most merciful and compassionate. / Which commanded (to be erected) the servant of God al-Walid, / Prince of the believers ... under the direction of Abdallah, sons of ...

According to Kühnel and Puttrich-Reignard, the ruler mentioned was the caliph al-Walid I, who ruled from 705 to 715. With this find the date seemed to be cleared, but Alfons Maria Schneider contradicted this view. Since he considered the building to be pre-Islamic, he assigned the inscription to a later renovation phase in which the mosque was also built. In his opinion, the marble block was poorly processed and did not fit into the magnificent gate system made of gray-yellow limestone. Markus Ritter examined the inscription again and pointed out that it remains to be seen whether al-Walid I or the later Caliph al-Walid II, who ruled in 743 and 744, is meant. The use of older Spolia marble can therefore also be found in other Umayyad buildings, the shape and text are comparable to other Umayyad building inscriptions. According to Ritter, a reconstruction of the broken inscription stone suggests that it was not located on the portal where it was found, but was originally built above the outer entrance to the mosque.

The Umayyad coins found in the excavations and the processing of the unglazed ceramics carried out by Franziska Bloch offer further dating approaches. She divided the material into eight different groups of goods, the first four being common ceramics from the Umayyad period and goods 6 to 8 being typical ceramics from the 12th century onwards. The fifth ceramic group, the so-called cream ware, is of particular importance here . This is classified in the period from the end of the 8th to the 10th century. According to this find analysis, continued use among the Abbasids after 750 is documented.

UNESCO World Heritage Site

In 2000, the Israeli Antiquities Administration proposed Khirbat al-Minya for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List . The application failed due to an inadequate presentation of the site.

literature

• Franziska Bloch: Hirbat al-Minya. The unglazed ceramic. In: Franziska Bloch, Verena Daiber, Peter Knötzele : Studies on late antique and Islamic ceramics. Hirbat al-Minya - Baalbek - Resafa (= Orient Archeology 18). Marie Leidorf, Rahden / Westfalen 2006. pp. 1–110.
• Christoph Borgans: Enigmatic Ruins on the Sea of ​​Galilee, in: Publik-Forum No. 14, July 22, 2016, p. 31.
• Claude Reignier Conder , Horatio Herbert Kitchener : The survey of western Palestine. Memoirs of the topography, orography, hydrography, and archeology. Volume 1, London 1881 ( digitized version ).
• Anja Dreiser: The sgraffito and champlevé ceramics from Ḫirbat al-Minya on the Sea of ​​Galilee. Revision of the master's thesis University of Bamberg. ( Digitized version )
• Gisela Helmecke: The excavations in Tabgha / Chirbat al-Minya 1936–1939 . In: Jens Kröger : Islamic art in Berlin collections. 100 years of the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin. Berlin 2005, pp. 150–155.
• Hans-Peter Kuhnen: Khirbat al-Minya: The Umayyad Palace on the Sea of ​​Galilee (= Orient Archeology 36). Marie Leidorf, Rahden / Westphalia 2016. ISBN 978-3-89646-666-2
• Hans-Peter Kuhnen, Franziska Bloch: Caliphate on the Sea of ​​Galilee. The Palace of Khirbat al-Minya / The age of the Caliphs at the Sea of ​​Galilee: The Palace of Khirbat al-Minya. Nünnerich-Asmus, Mainz 2014. ISBN 978-3-943904-75-8
• Hans-Peter Kuhnen, Miri Pines, Oren Tal: Horbat Minnim Preliminary Report. Hadashot Arkheologiyot - Excavations and Surveys in Israel. Volume 130, 2018. ( digitized version ).
• Andreas Evaristus Mader: The excavation of a Roman fort on Chirbet el-Minje on the Via Maris near et-Tabgha on Lake Gennesareth. In: The Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society. Volume 13, 1933, pp. 209-221.
• Oswin Puttrich-Reignard: The third excavation campaign on Chirbet el-Minje. February to March 1937. In: Alfons Maria Schneider, Oswin Puttrich-Reignard: An early Islamic building on Lake Genesareth. Two reports of the excavations in Chirbet el-Minye. Cologne 1937, pp. 25-41.
• Oswin Puttrich-Reignard: The palace complex of Chirbet el Minje. In: Valmar Cramer, Gustav Meinertz : The Holy Land in the past and present. Collected contributions and reports on Palestine research. Volume 1, Cologne 1939. pp. 9-29.
• Alfons Maria Schneider: The excavation on Chirbet el-Minje on Lake Genesareth. March and April 1936. In: Alfons Maria Schneider, Oswin Puttrich-Reignard: An early Islamic building on Lake Genesareth. Two reports of the excavations in Chirbet el-Minye. Cologne 1937, pp. 7-23.
• Markus Ritter: The building decoration of the Umayyad palace Ḫirbat al-Minya on the Sea of ​​Galilee. Master's thesis University of Bamberg 1994.
• Markus Ritter: Umayyad ornament and Christian motifs: marble relief frieze (Champlevé) in the palace of Ḫirbat al-Minya. In: Contributions to Islamic Art and Archeology, Vol. 3, Ed. Ernst Herzfeld-Gesellschaft; Red. L. Korn and A. Heidenreich, Wiesbaden: Reichert 2012, pp. 113–137.
• Markus Ritter: Umayyad Foundation Inscriptions and the Inscription of Khirbat al-Minya: Text, Usage, Visual Form. In: Hans-Peter Kuhnen (ed.): Khirbat al-Minya: the Umayyad palace on the Sea of ​​Galilee. Rahden / Westfalen 2016, pp. 59–84.
• Markus Ritter: The Umayyad palace of the 8th century in Ḫirbat al-Minya on the lake of Tiberias: construction and decoration (= Studies in Islamic Art and Archeology 1). Reichert, Wiesbaden 2017. ISBN 978-3-89500-679-1
• Alfons Maria Schneider: Comments on the new report on the excavations in chirbet al-minje. In: Oriens Christianus. Half-yearly newsletters for customers of the Christian Orient. Volume 35, Leipzig 1938, pp. 122-126.
• Alfons Maria Schneider: The mosaics from chirbet el minje. In: Valmar Cramer, Gustav Meinertz: The Holy Land in the past and present. Collected contributions and reports on Palestine research. Volume 1, pp. 30-33.
• Alfons Maria Schneider: The “building inscription” from chirbet el-minje. In: Oriens Christianus. Half-yearly newsletters for customers of the Christian Orient. Volume 36, Leipzig 1941, pp. 115-117.

Web links

Commons : Khirbet Al Minya  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Markus Ritter Ritter: The building decoration of the Umayyad palace Ḫirbat al-Minya on the Sea of ​​Galilee. Master's thesis University of Bamberg 1994.
2. ^ Franziska Bloch, The unglazed ceramics from Ḫirbat al-Minya, Master's thesis University of Bamberg 1998.
3. ^ Anja Dreiser, Sgraffito and Champlevé ceramics from Ḫirbat al-Minya on the Sea of ​​Galilee, Master's thesis University of Bamberg 2006.
4. ↑ Myriam Rosen-Ayalon, Katia Cytryn-Silverman, Giora Solar: Khirbat al-Minya: Notes and News, Israel Exploration Journal 55, 2005, pp. 216-219.
5. ↑ Mainz archaeologists are restoring the early Islamic caliph's palace on the Sea of ​​Galilee. Brief report on the restoration efforts of the University of Mainz on Archäologie-online.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Mysterious ruins on the Sea of ​​Galilee in FAZ from June 7, 2016, page 32
7. ↑ Merchants and sugar cane boilers in the caliph's palace: Khirbat al-Minya reveals first secrets. Short report on Archäologie-online.de
8. ↑ Ritter 2016, SS 59–84; Ritter 2017, pp. 50–57.
9. ↑ Ritter 2017, pp. 46–48.
10. ↑ UNESCO nomination for Khirbat al-Minya