The Umayyad Grilles of Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Identity, Interpretation, and Innovation: The Worlds of Islamic Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Discovered in 1936 and excavated for two years by Daniel Schlumberger, Inspector of the Antiquities Department during the French Mandate (at the time), Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi remains one of the most important early Islamic sites. In this paper, I will introduce the site and its history of archaeological expeditions. I will describe the plaster grilles, the initial disposition of their fragments, and their painstaking reconstruction by Nassib Saliby. These window grilles were ultimately displayed in the (recently destroyed) Palmyra Museum, and mainly at the Damascus National Museum in architectural configurations that often simulate their original context. With this foundation, I will discuss how the Umayyad grilles contributed to a novel creative dynamic of interior illumination, anticipating by many centuries the stained-glass compositions of ecclesiastic structures in Europe. Finally, I will reflect on how the case of Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi created significant problems for both heritage management in Syria and also for the tantalizing proximity of archeological and historical knowledge.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Identity, Interpretation, and Innovation: The Worlds of Islamic Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33645