Selma Al-Radi

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Selma Al-Radi ( Arabic سلمى الراضي, DMG Salmā ar-Rāḍī , b. July 23, 1939 in Baghdad , Iraq ; died October 7, 2010 in Manhattan , New York , United States ) was an Iraqi archaeologist and anthropologist . She started and directed the restoration of the Amiriya Amdrasa in Rada'a , Yemen for over 20 years .

biography

Selma Al-Radi was born in Baghdad, Iraq. Her father, Muhammed Selim Al-Radi, was the Iraqi ambassador to Iran and India, so she grew up in Tehran and New Delhi . She received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Cambridge in Akkadian , Hebrew and Persian . Her tutor was Joan Oates , a recognized Mesopotamian archaeologist. After graduation, Selma Al-Radi returned to Baghdad, where she started working at the National Museum of Iraq .

Selma Al-Radi and her cousin Lamya Gailani were the first women in Iraq to undertake archaeological digs as representatives of the archaeological service. One of her first assignments was to join the team led by David Oates (her tutor's husband) who discovered a large depository of Nimrud ivory . Many of the pieces were restored by Selma Al-Radi, which gave her a first look at restoration work. She then obtained her Masters in Art History and Archeology at Columbia University in New York in 1967 with the help of her tutor Edith Porada . After her return she continued to work in the Department of Antiquities and in the museum. The family left Iraq to settle in Beirut , where Selma taught at the American University of Beirut from 1969 to 1974 . She enrolled at the University of Amsterdam for a Ph.D. to reach. Your supervisors were Maurits van Loon from Amsterdam and Edith Porada from Columbia University. At the University of Amsterdam there was no compulsory attendance for PhD students after all courses were completed. Selma Al-Radi undertook her Ph.D. research at the Bronze Age archaeological site of Phlamoudhi Vounari in Cyprus . Her doctoral thesis was published in 1983.

In 1977 Selma Al-Radi accepted a position as a consultant at the Yemeni National Museum in Sanaa . The Yemen remained the main theme for their entire working life further. She did a lot of archaeological research, participated in excavations and revitalized the area of ​​building restoration; especially of adobe palaces in the Hadramaut .

Her main work was the restoration of the Amiriya Madrasa, originally probably not a madrasa (school), but a large palace with a small mosque . In 1983, in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities under Qadi Ismail Al-Aqwa ', she began to restore the structure of the huge building that threatened to collapse. With local craftsmen, whose expertise has been passed on for generations, she revived the medieval craft of building in Yemen. In particular, she reinvented the qudad , a waterproof lime plastering mortar that contains pozzolans (pozzolana) and in this respect is similar to the mortars used in ancient Rome such as Opus_caementitium . After laboratory experiments, they discovered the correct mixture of volcanic ash and slaked lime . The results were published in 1995. The many masons and qudad masters became a school for restorers after the project received international attention. Many workers were hired to rebuild old houses in Yemen or to use the same methods to build new houses there. Selma Al-Radi was a tireless fundraiser for restoration funds from the Dutch and Yemeni governments.

After the structure of the Amiriya Madrasa was stabilized, she turned her attention to the beautifully painted mosque. The sanctuary was decorated with wall paintings in colorful designs, part of a tradition of painted wood and plaster ceilings in Yemen since the early Middle Ages. Selma Al-Radi documented these painted mosques, a uniqueness in Islamic architecture, and there were many of these structures in Yemen. She documented 40 of these mosques. Together with the Centro di Conservazione Archaeologica in Rome, a five-year project under the direction of Roberto Nardi began to conserve and restore these paintings. Students were involved in the work. Selma Al-Radi cleaned the intricately shaped stucco decorations, which had been whitewashed over and over again over the decades, with her own dentist's tools. The results of the restoration of the stucco and the painting were described in a book. The New York Times described the project as "an immense undertaking" and the madrasa as "one of the great treasures of Islamic art and architecture".

Honors

In 2005, Al-Radi received the Yemeni Presidential Medal of Culture. In 2007, Al-Radi and Yahya Al-Nasiri received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for their work in restoration.

family

Al-Radi was the sister of Nuha al-Radi, the author of the book "Baghdad Diaries: A Woman's Chronicle of War and Exile". Al-Radi was married to Qais Al-Awqati, a professor of medicine and physiology at Columbia University . Her son, Rakan Ammar Zahawi, from her first marriage is an environmental scientist who runs the Las Cruces Biological Station in Costa Rica.

Publications (selection)

  • Phlamoudhi Vounari. A sanctuary site in Cyprus . In: Studies in Mediterranean archeology . tape 65 . P. Åström Förlag, Göteborg 1983, ISBN 91-86098-10-1 (Selma Al-Radis doctoral thesis).
  • Selma Al-Radi, Ruth Barnes, Yahya Al-Nasiri, Venetia Porter: The 'Amiriya in Rada'. The history and restoration of a sixteenth-century madrasa in the Yemen . In: Robert Hillenbrand (Ed.): Oxford studies in Islamic ar . tape 13 . Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 1997, ISBN 0-19-728023-4 .
  • Selma Al Radi, Roberto Nardi, Chiara Zizola: Amiriya Madrasa: the conservation of the mural paintings . Ed .: Centro di conservazione archeologica. Self-published, Rome 2005, ISBN 88-901903-1-0 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Margalit Fox: Selma Al-Radi, Restored Historic Madrasa, Dies at 71 . In: The New York Times . October 14, 2010, ISSN  0362-4331 (English, nytimes.com [accessed February 5, 2017]).
  2. ↑ In Memoriam: Selma Al-Radi. In: Tabsir: Insight on Islam and the Middle East. October 11, 2010, accessed February 5, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Qais Al-Awqati: Selma Al-Radi 1939-2010. In: Qais Al-Awqati: The Signal and the Noise. July 19, 2013, archived from the original on July 19, 2013 ; accessed on February 5, 2017 .
  4. ↑ Selma Al-Radi: Phlamoudhi Vounari. A sanctuary site in Cyprus . In: Studies in Mediterranean archeology . tape 65 . P. Åström Förlag, Göteborg 1983, ISBN 91-86098-10-1 .
  5. ↑ Selma Al-Radi, Ruth Barnes, Yahya Al-Nasiri, Venetia Porter: The 'Amiriya in Rada'. The history and restoration of a sixteenth-century madrasa in the Yemen . In: Robert Hillenbrand (Ed.): Oxford studies in Islamic ar . tape 13 . Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 1997, ISBN 0-19-728023-4 (English).
  6. ↑ Selma Al Radi, Roberto Nardi, Chiara Zizola: Amiriya Madrasa. The conservation of the mural paintings . Ed .: Centro di conservazione archeologica. Self-published, Rome 2005, ISBN 88-901903-1-0 .
  7. ^ Restoration of the Amiriya Complex. Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), accessed February 5, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Nuha al-Radi: Baghdad Diaries: A Woman's Chronicle of War and Exile . 1st edition. Vintage, New York 2003, ISBN 1-4000-7525-4 .
personal data
SURNAME Al-Radi, Selma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES سلمى الراضي
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Iraqi archaeologist and anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 23, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Baghdad , Iraq
DATE OF DEATH October 7, 2010
Place of death Manhattan , New York City , United States