Qasr al-Banat
Coordinates: 35 ° 56 '52.9 " N , 39 ° 1' 34.3" E
Qasr al-Banat ( Arabic قصر البنات, DMG qaṣr al-banāt 'girl's castle ') is the brick ruins of a residence from the 12th century in the Syrian city of ar-Raqqa .
location
The building is located in the area of the formerly fortified Abbasid city of ar-Rafiqa, about 150 meters west of the east wall and 400 meters north of the Baghdad gate. When the modern city of ar-Raqqa began to expand rapidly in the 1970s, the entire historical site was built over. The archaeological area at Qasr al-Banat was also reduced by new residential buildings to such an extent that only a free space 80 meters wide and 200 meters long remained, which is bordered in the east by the city wall and on the other sides by streets and rows of houses.
history
The Roman-Byzantine city of Callinicum was conquered by the Arabs in 639 and renamed ar-Raqqa ("the river valley"). The Umayyad -Kalif Hisham (691-743) to one kilometer west have built two palaces, according to medieval sources. The Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur (709 / 713-775) had a new city ar-Rafiqa ("the consort") built as a border fortress against the Byzantines and fortified by a horseshoe-shaped city wall, the straight side of which is parallel to the south to the then river bed of the Euphrates . The late antique / Umayyad city was abandoned in the 10th century and is now completely overbuilt by the eastern suburb of Mischlab. Ar-Rafiqa became the residence of Hārūn ar-Raschīd (around 763-809). He founded a palace district outside the city wall in the northeast, which was archaeologically documented in the middle of the 20th century, but has since been overbuilt. Apart from the eastern city wall, the Friday Mosque (the visible remains of the restoration and reconstruction in 1165/66 under Nur ad-Din Mahmud ) have been preserved within the city from this time.
Around 1900 the ruins of ar-Raqqa were examined several times. So far, the documentation by Ernst Herzfeld , who, together with Friedrich Sarre, thoroughly researched ar-Raqqa in the archaeological survey of the Mesopotamus between the Euphrates and Tigris in 1907, has been fundamental . A little later, in 1909, Gertrude Bell visited the then largely uninhabited ruined city. Your description also includes information on Qasr al-Banat.
Design
Qasr al-Banat is a monument dated by Kassem Toueir to the Zengid and Ayyubid times of the 12th century according to the building plan and ornamental forms , the origins of which go back to the 9th century. There are no written sources that mention a builder. The later Ayyubid historian Ibn Nazif al-Hamawi mentions a Dār al-Atābak ("Palace of Atabak"). Since atābak was a Zengidic title, the palace probably falls during their reign.
The center of the facility consists of a classic four- iwan facility , in which four brick halls vaulted with pointed barrels are arranged around an open courtyard with an area of 9 × 9.7 meters. The side, half-open halls in the east and west measured 3.8 × 5.3 meters. On the central axis from south to north, three rooms bordering the courtyard could be reached. The passage through the middle room led across an open space to a domed Ivan.
The basic form of this building complex is of Iranian origin and was very rare in Syria in the 12th century. Only the Koran school ( madrasa ), also built under Nur ad-Din in Damascus , and the hospital ( maristan ) have this construction plan, which was common in mosques, palaces and caravanserais in Iran , in the center of their complex.
The northern main hall has a three-aisled vestibule across the entire width of the inner courtyard. The surrounding 41 rooms are irregular and not symmetrical. From 1977 to 1982 Kassem Toueir uncovered the complex for the Syrian Antiquities Service at the same time as the Heraqla victory monument to the west of the city and had it partially rebuilt with bricks fired as true to the original as possible. The walls and ivan arches that can now be seen have largely been reconstructed. A sloping three-storey wall segment with stucco decoration offers an idea of the originally plastered surfaces. There, in the upper area, the remains of muqarnas that were once triple stacked can be seen , underneath stepped round arch niches with multi-pass shapes . When Friedrich Sarre and Ernst Herzfeld visited the complex in 1907, followed by Gertrude Bell in 1910, they found this part of the building as the only one standing upright above an otherwise flat field of ruins.
The area is fenced and usually locked, but can be seen from all sides.
literature
- Kassem Toueir: Reconstructing an Islamic Palace in Syria . In: Archeology, Vol. 35, No. 4, July / August 1982, pp. 30-37
- Kassem Toueir: The Qasr al-Banat in ar-Raqqa. Excavation, reconstruction and rebuilding (1977–1982). In: Damaszener Mitteilungen, 1985
Web links
- Pat McDonnell Twair: A Career at Raqqa. Saudi Aramco World, September / October 1995
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stefan Heidemann: The story of ar-Raqqa and ar Rāfiqa - an overview . In: Stefan Heidemann, Andrea Becker (Ed.): The Islamic City. Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 2003, p. 48
- ↑ Kassem Toueir, 1982, p. 35
- ^ Robert Hillenbrand: Eastern Islamic influences in Syria: Raqqa and Qal'at Ja'bar in the later 12th century. In: Julian Raby (ed.): The Art of Syria and the Jazīra, 1100–1250. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1985, pp. 21-48, here p. 37 f; Reprinted in Robert Hillenbrand: Studies in Medieval Islamic Architecture. Vol I. The Pindar Press, London 2001, pp. 190-224