Lamia al-Gailani Werr

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Lamia al-Gailani (January 16, 2019)

Lamia al-Gailani Werr ( Arabic لمياء الكيلاني, DMG Lamyāʾ al-Kailānī ; born on March 8, 1938 in Baghdad ; died on January 18, 2019 in Amman ) was an Iraqi archaeologist from the Middle East . Her specialty was ancient Mesopotamia . She was one of the first women archaeologists in her country and was considered the " doyenne " of Iraqi archeology.

Professional biography

Lamia al-Gailani studied for one year Law at the University of Baghdad , because they wanted to get involved politically. Her family, who wanted to prevent that ("They wanted me to be nice, learn English and get married. Full stop", meaning "They wanted me to be nice, learn English and get married. Period"), promised her to go to England to let go if she changes subject. She then went to Cambridge , where she obtained her bachelor's degree in archeology. In 1961 she started working as a curator at the Iraqi National Museum . In the 1970s, she returned to the UK back to at the University of Edinburgh their master to complete and then at the UCL Institute of Archeology in London to do a doctorate . Her doctoral thesis was supervised by Barbara Parker-Mallowan and was an examination of Old Babylonian cylinder seals in the Iraqi National Museum. The dissertation was not published until 1988. The curator of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum , Dominique Collon, described the work as "a concise and informative discussion" that should serve as a model for future studies. After receiving her doctorate in 1977, al-Gailani stayed in London and worked as a research assistant at the UCL Institute of Archeology and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

Lamia al-Gailani traveled to Iraq again and again and tried to ensure that contact between local archaeologists and the wider academic world was maintained under the regime of Saddam Hussein . In 1999, together with Salim al-Alusi, she wrote the book The First Arabs in Arabic , a popular scientific account of the archeology of the early Arab culture in Mesopotamia.

From 2003 onwards, al-Gailani's professional focus was on rebuilding the Iraqi National Museum after it had been looted and badly damaged in the course of the Iraq war : "A nightmare we do not wake up from," she described her feelings. She sharply criticized the US government, which had officially promised her and other archaeologists before the war that the museum would be protected: "I am angry and personally feel betrayed." In the chaos of war alone, 5,000 cylinder seals were lost. She regularly spoke out in public about the problems the museum is struggling with and criticized the Iraqi government's negligent attitude towards monument protection in post-war Iraq. She worked as an advisor to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and was just as involved in the reopening of the Iraqi National Museum in 2015 as in the founding of the Basra Museum in 2016. She advised the authors of the documentary Gertrude Bell - Letters from Baghdad (2018).

At the time of her death in 2019, al-Gailani, with the assistance of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, was training Iraqi curators and curating a planned exhibition for the museum in Basra. She also worked on two books, one on the history of the Iraqi National Museum and another on the Iraqi royal family.

Personal

The mausoleum where Lamia al-Gailani is buried

Lamia al-Gailani came from a prominent Iraqi Sufi family. Her parents were Madiha Asif Mahmud Arif-Agha and Ahmad Jamal Al-Din Al-Gailani. Among her ancestors were ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī , the founder of the Qādirīya order in the 12th century, and Sayyid Abd ar-Rahman al-Haidari al-Gaibani , first prime minister of Iraq from 1920 to 1922.

Al-Gailani was married twice. Her first husband was her cousin Abd al-Rahman Al-Gailani, an Iraqi historian of early Islamic architecture and sculptor . After the divorce, she married her second husband in 1976, George Werr († 2003), a Christian businessman from Jordan with whom she lived in London. When asked what her Muslim family said before marrying Werr, she replied, “You will get over it.” She has three daughters, one of whom is Noorah al-Gailani (from her first marriage) curator of Islamic Civilizations in the Glasgow Museums (as of 2019).

Lamia al-Gailani Werr died on 18 January 2019 at the age of 80 years in the Jordanian capital Amman on a stroke . Her coffin was carried in a long funeral procession from the museum to the mausoleum of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, where she was buried.

Honors

Al-Gailani was the only lifelong honorary member of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq . In 2009 she was awarded the Gertrude Bell Memorial Gold Medal .

Web links

Commons : Lamia al-Gailani Werr  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Samar Kadi: Iraq bids farewell to archaeologist Lamia al-Gailani. In: The Arab Weekly. January 22, 2019, accessed January 23, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b Jane Arraf: Remembering Lamia Al-Gailani, Pioneering Iraqi Archaeologist. In: wuwm.com. Retrieved February 17, 2020 .
  3. ^ A b c d Joan Porter McIver / Paul Collins: Dr Lamia Al Gailani Werr. In: The British Institute for the Study of Iraq. Accessed February 16, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Lamia al-Gailani: Studies in the Chronology and Regional Style of Old Babylonian Cylinder Seals (=  Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 23 ). Undena, Malibu 1988, ISBN 978-0-89003-173-5 .
  5. ^ Dominique Collon: Review of Studies in the Chronology and Regional Style of Old Babylonian Cylinder Seals by Lamia al-Gailani Werr . In: Orientalia (Nova Series) . tape 60 , no. 4 , 1991, pp. 366-369 .
  6. ↑ a b Iraqi 'treasure' Lamia Al Gailani Werr dies in Amman. In: The National. January 19, 2019, accessed January 23, 2019 .
  7. ^ A b c Hadani Ditmars: 'The Rose of Baghdad': Lamia al-Gailani-Werr, defender of Iraq's heritage. In: Middle East Eye. February 9, 2019, accessed February 16, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Lamia Al-Gailani Werr, 80, Dies; Archaeologist Rescued Iraqi Art. In: nytimes.com. January 25, 2019, accessed February 16, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Lamia al-Gailani Werr (1938-2019). In: Cambridge Core. Accessed February 16, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Noorah Al-Gailani. In: collections.glasgowmuseums.com. Retrieved February 16, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Gailani Werr, Lamia al
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Iraqi archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 8, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Baghdad , Iraq
DATE OF DEATH 18th January 2019
Place of death Amman