PART 2
PALACES OF THE EARLY
ISLAMIC CALIPHATES
(SEVENTH-TENTH CENTURIES)
UMAYYAD PALACES RECONSIDERED
BY OLEG GRABAR
THE LATEST, MOST COMPLETE, AND MOST AUTHORITATIVE
survey of early Islamic architecture-Allan's reworking
of Creswell's standard history-contains
seventeen partly documented buildings datable
between 690 and 750, the main decades of Umayyad
rule, and fitting into the general category of
palaces. It is a loose category including nearly all
foundations with living accommodations for
which a reasonable assumption can be made of
sponsorship or use by the state (a daral-imarafor
instance), by the rulingdynasty, or bymembers of
the Arabian aristocracy associated with theUmay-
yads.1
Out of these seventeen buildings, five-al-Muwaqqar,
Rusafa, Qastal, Qasr al-Tuba, and Tulul
al-Sha'iba-are too poorly known or too poorly
preserved to allow for significant conclusions,2
two--'Anjar and Amman-pose avery complicated
set of problems in the interpretation of archaeological
evidence, which, in my opinion,
does not necessarily lead to the Umayyad dates
proposed by the investigators of these sites, and
four-Jerusalem, Qasr Kharana, Jabal Says, and
Qasr al-Hayr East-are not palaces or even royal
or dynastic residences, at least not in myjudgment,
although this judgment is not necessarily
shared by all scholars.3
This process ofelimination leaves six relatively
well-known buildings-Kufa, Khirbat Minya,
Qusayr 'Amra, Qasr al-Hayr West, Khirbat alMafjar,
and Mshatta-which can be reasonably
assumed to be dynastic foundations of the Umayyad
dynasty. For Kufa the evidence is essentially
historical in the sense that written accounts of
events from thelast decades ofthe seventh century
and the first ones of the eighth justify the
interpretation of an excavated building as the dar
al-imaraof the Umayyad governors.4
At Khirbat
Minya, Khirbat al-Mafjar, and Qasr al-Hayr West
(all of which were first thought by archaeologists
to be pre-Islamic Christian foundations), inscriptions
were discovered which suggest that some
aspect of the construction of these buildings was
sponsored or ordered byaruling Umayyad caliph
or else that a caliph was alive while the building
was being built. But not one of these inscriptions
can be considered as a foundation statement or
as decorative writing in the manner of later
Islamic foundations or ornamental inscriptions. 5
For Qusayr Amra, as we shall see shortly, there is
a valid presumption for an Umayyad dynastic
patronage on the basis of the paintings decorating
the monument. As to Mshatta, it is primarily
itsinordinate size andits peculiar decoration that
make it reasonable to assume that only princes,
and in alllikelihood ruling princes, had access to
the funds and personnel necessary for its planning
and construction, and for a completion
which never took place.6
In short, we have no direct knowledge ofthese
buildings as palaces built for ruling Umayyad
princes, andI shall return in my conclusion to the
hypotheses which can be derived from thisapparent
absence of clearly cut, written or archaeological,
external labels. Nor can we really argue that
their shape, the functions they imply, or their
decoration make it necessary for all of them to be
Umayyad creations. In fact, as I reread some of
the papers, articles, and books I wrote on them
over the years, I realize that there may have been
a major methodological flaw in parts of my reasoning.
Following very respectable masters like
Sauvaget, Herzfeld, Stern, and in his own way
Creswell, I consistently tried to fit all these buildingsinto
a single pattern by assuming that theyall
reflected the same architectural and functional
type: a villa with living and formal or official
quarters arranged around a porticoed court in
standard square buildings with a single, usually
massive, entrance; a bath, most of the time an
independent building; a mosque; a variety of
service areas; and possibly formal gardens or
orchards. The type would have developed within
the rich tradition of secular architecture in the
late-antique Mediterranean area.And, following
primarily Sauvaget but frequently using documentation
gathered much earlier by Lammens
and Herzfeld, 7
I further assumed that this particular
type could be fitted into a reconstruction or
a model of Umayyad aristocratic behavior. But
that reconstruction ofbehavior was based on very
different sources: written texts in which an originally
orally transmitted poetry predominates;
archaeological sources involving the interpretation
of excavated spaces and other remains; and
finally a more complicated source which may be
OLEG GRABAR
called "ecological logic" and which consists in
apparent changes within the lands ruled by the
Umayyads which require significant investments
of money and labor.8
The resulting hypothesis was a simple one.
Umayyad patrons, a nouveau riche class of aristocrats
from central Arabia, invested in the land
they inherited or conquered and in a life of
varying but usually considerable luxury. The palaces
illustrate the setting for that life. Variations
and peculiarities in the model were then seen as
aberrations reflecting individual needs or preferences
in taste or behavior for which no explanation
was likely to be found. A case in point is that
of the twin quarters of Qasr al-Tuba for which
some romantic or family explanation could always
be invented and proposed but no proof can
be found.9
To the historian of architecture, that is to say, of
techniques which require considerable investments
of funds and differentiated competencies
from specifically trained practitioners, the assumption
of types adapting rapidly or slowly to
new patrons was then and remains now a reasonable
one, for the hitherto unknown sponsorship
of architecture by rich aristocrats from northwestern
Arabian cities did not necessarily demand
new functions or seek to satisfy new needs.
This patronage could easily accommodate itself
to the prevailing habits ofbuilding and ofdesigning
within the Mediterranean world, and one or
two technical innovations from elsewhere-as,
for instance, the covering of stone walls with
stucco-easily found a place in an essentially
traditional system. A typical problem of design
arose from the new requirement for an oriented
place of prayer. The mosque became a compositional
problem with several early and more or less
successful solutions until buildings apparently
began to be oriented in order to meet the necessity
of fitting a mosque into them. Oratories
appear, most commonly to the right of the entrance
(Mshatta, Ukhaydir)."°
The more original aspect of these Umayyad
secular buildings is how they transformed, or at
least modified, the architectural profile of an
area by introducing the amenities ofa wealthier
and restricted private life of "masters" into a
simple landscape of farms and villages with their
churches and occasional civic buildings such as
baths or into old Roman military cities." The
Umayyads, this hypothesis implied, did not really
inventmuch that is new; they simply putwhatever
they found in spaces which had not previously
been used for these purposes.
There are several other, more specific issues of
architectural history, like the technology ofbuilding
for instance, which come up whenever there
is a combination of a set of buildings from a
restricted period of time, in a relatively limited
space, and with more or less the same patronage.1
2
Beyond elementary measurements and the
establishment of the most basic modular principle
of designing and with the exception of the
question of brick in Syria and Palestine about
which a few things have been written, these technical
issues have hardly been touched, however
important they are for establishing the technological
potential of a time.
A more specific approach to the establishments
attributed to the Umayyad dynasty can be derived
from a number ofpuzzles in the architecture and
decoration of remaining buildings. These puzzles
led historians ofart, ofvisual forms, to seek an
explanation in the history provided by texts. Such
features as the elaborate reception rooms of
Mshatta and the rich decoration of Khirbat alMafjar
did not quite coincide with the simpleminded
image created by earlier historians such
as Lammens and Creswell of an easy-going, funloving,
but not very serious life attributed to
freely moving and semi-nomadic Umayyad princes
and assorted aristocrats. Nor is fancy decoration
necessary for landlords in their manorial
and private estates. As a result, several studies,
whether or not they acknowledge the original
inspiration of Sauvaget for the method involved,
sought to describe an Umayyad ceremonial life
and to fit that life within the ruins or reconstructions
of whatever remained from alleged palac-
es.'3
The best among these studies, notably Hamilton's
meditation on al-Walid and Khirbat
al-Mafjar, have provided a very tempting and
coherent picture, based to a large degree on
poetry, of an unstable equilibrium between formality
and fun, between rigidity and freedom, all
of it bathed in virile sensuality. It is a coherent
picture in the sense that the poetry of the time
and especially the ways in which this poetry was
recited in male gatherings seem to fit with the
spaces provided by the ruins.
But there are problems. For instance, too many
of the examples ofalmost anything in these studies
deal with al-Walid II, who was in many ways an
eccentric hardly typical of his rank and of the
office he occupied. And there are always dangers
94
UMAYYAD PALACES RECONSIDERED
in excerpting examples from literary contexts
whose own rules have not been ascertained. In
general, there are many theoretical and concrete
pitfalls in explaining architecture through poetry,
unless, as for instance with much later Persian
lyrical poetry, the poetry itself deals with architecture
or, as in the Alhambra, ad hoc poetry adorns
architecture.' 4
The danger exists because the
sphere of life and of behavior in which poetry
appears is the immediate and the evanescent;
much ofitwas not written down at the moment of
recitation, but at the moment when the event in
which it participated was recorded.
Architecture, on the other hand, is more permanent,
unless, of course, we consider decoration
separately from building on the grounds that
some of its techniques-especially painting and
carved or molded stucco-were themselves
changeable or could be covered with other materials
such as textiles.'5
The skin of architecture
like that of snakes can be changed, at leastin part.
A remarkable feature of Umayyad architecture
is the quantity as well as the quality of the decoration
it exhibits, still in situ, as in the Dome of the
Rock and the mosque of Damascus, or through
masses offragments, some in place, others reconstructed
into their original compositions, many
still hiding in unopened crates in the basements
of museums or exhibited as bulk remains in their
drawers and galleries.' 6
The curious point is that
the decoration of the main Umayyad palatial
establishments has been less well studied than
architecture or planning in that period, probably
because Creswell spent relatively little time on
the decoration, much of which was discovered
after the first edition of his work. The only partial
exception is that of classical art historical issues
dealing with genetic sources which have occupied
afew scholars, especially in the early decades
of the century.'7
This absence of studies is all the more peculiar
since the originality and the variety ofdecoration
in Umayyad palaces are quite astounding. Yet,
precisely because ofitsvariety and originality, the
study of this decoration leads to a number of
methodological problems. Among approaches
which have been tried is one I used for the first
time some forty years ago, and which was probably
even more dubious than the procedure I used
for architectural planning and design. Following
the model ofChristian andBuddhist art,I sought
to find in the decoration of walls, floors, and
ceilings a set of types, that is to say, of common
standards with local variations. The assumption,
valid for religious arts with an ecclesiastical patronage,
was that models (actual ones on monuments
and objects or written ones in manuals)
must exist for any visual program to be executed
and to be understood. In reality, of course, the
secular arts operate quite differently from religious
art. It istherefore more fruitful and, in fact,
necessary to attempt to understand the individual
combinations of themes and forms located in
one monument.'8
The establishment of vocabularies
and grammars of forms and the definition
of typologies are proper endeavors, but because
in secular art almost every statement through a
given object ormonument is a different combination
of terms and means something different,
typologies must follow rather than precede individual
analyses. In a nutshell, system follows syn-
tagm.'9
In the absence offormal manuals and of
a doctrine about the arts, the only way one can
eventually reach a sense of the language used in
the art of Umayyad palaces is first to provide
reasonable hypotheses about every monument
by itself. Such hypotheses are all the more important
since every one of the monuments involved
provides a range of information which is peculiarly
its own. I shall illustrate the point with two
examples.
The first one is that of Qasr al-Hayr West, for
which the last written and drawn statements by
the excavators, all of whom are now deceased,
have recently been published. 20
The second one
is Qusayr'Amra, the firstofthe Umayyad dynastic
establishments to have come to light, and the
only one which is not in ruins. It underwent a
major overhaul some twenty years ago, but its
complete actual appearance today is, rather
shamefully, not yet available in print.2
'
I shall be brief about Qasr al-Hayr. In addition
to the sculptures and paintings which are well
known, have been visible for over a generation in
the Damascus Museum, have been mentioned in
general books and manuals, and have even been
subjected to elementary scholarly analyses, we
are presented with painted fragments which were
exhibited occasionally but never published and
with stone and stucco sculptures of personages
known only to visitors to the storerooms of the
Damascus Museum.22 It is nearly impossible to
reconstruct how these paintings and sculptures
fitted anywhere, except for a few fragments on
the facade of the palace rebuilt in the Damascus
Museum andfor two largepaintings found on the
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OLEG GRABAR
floor of the staircases. 23
It is, therefore, nearly
impossible to propose a program for these images,
or even sequences of visual impressions with
some iconographic or expressive meaning. This
is so even when the sources of a motif are clear.
For instance, two sculptures found at Qasr alHayr
resemble representations of rulers in Byzantine
and Sasanian art.2 4
But if we argue, as I and
others have done, that, because these had been
forms for the representation of pre-Islamic rulers,
they must now be representations of Umayyad
princes, then we also have to argue that a
sculpture with obvious Palmyrene funerary associations
(fig. 1) should be connected to some
funeral theme in Umayyad times.25
What then is
it doing on the facade of the building?
A similar position of iconographic skepticism
can be argued for almost every fragmentfound at
Qasr al-Hayr West. But the same skepticism need
not apply if one tries to identify, even tentatively,
not so much the subject matter as the sources of
inspiration for the images. Within the limits and
restrictions of existing information and investigations,
the genetic pool from which these images
came may be the only kind of meaning or semantic
range available for the decorative motifs from
Qasr al-Hayr West which can be traced with some
certainty. The most interesting and most unexpected
point about this genetic pool seems to be
the close relationship between the paintings and
sculptures from Qasr al-Hayr and the artof Soghd
in Central Asia, and even the Buddhist and Manichean
arts found farther east in the Tarim ba-
sin.26
The question is how did themes and styles
from the northeastern frontier of the Muslim
empire (and even beyond) reach Syria, when
none of the patrons of Syrian and Palestinian
buildings had ever set foot there and the movement
of artisans, while not impossible, seems
technically unlikely at this time. The answer lies
almost certainly in transmission through objectssilver
objects sent as tribute or as gifts, textiles,
perhaps rugs. Books are not likely to have been
important at this time, a few decades before the
appearance ofpaper through the same route, but
painted bark and bone could have been among
the marvels brought from the east.27
It is also
through textiles and works in metal that Mediterranean
motifs can be imagined to have reached a
remote site like Qasr al-Hayr and through silver
objects that Iranian ones would have become
available.2 8
Thus the evidence from Qasr al-Hayr West does
not lead one to interpret the decoration on the
walls within a social, official, or personal setting,
but it does explain how certain combinations of
forms ended up in a striking location of the
Syrian steppe. We become informed on the movement
ofworks ofart and ofartistic motives across
western Asia rather than on their meaning in the
setting they eventually adorned. This is so because
the heterogeneity of the vocabulary ofthe
palace seems to me to be its only characteristic
which lends itself to a positive conclusion.
Let me turn now to the bath house of Qusayr
'Amra which is only one of a larger group of
constructions including now-ruined living quarters,
a watch-tower, and a hydraulic complex. Its
discovery a century ago affected nearly all historians
of Islamic culture because of the paintings
which adorn the bath andwhose subjects seem to
reflect the life of princely leisure. Now we have
the advantage of possessing all the information
we are ever going to get and of having it in situ.2 9
It is possible to reconstruct the probable models
for many of the paintings. Just as at Qasr alHayr,
objects, mostly from the Mediterranean,
but also from the Sasanian world, had a clear
impact on the paintings. Moreover, as I have
already pointed out elsewhere, there were also
many images inspired by a direct perception of
the actual setting of the building and of the
events which took place in it. This was not done
in order to present the illusion of a physical
world, but in order to commemorate events which
had either taken place or been recalled there.3 0
In fact, those images which are new, without a
clear model, seem often to be more caricatured
and more awkward than the conventional representations
in the bath. It is as though someone, a
patron no doubt, had requested topics that may
have been a bit outside the competence of the
painters, for the whole place has the appearance
of a lively amateur exhibition. The more important
point, however, is that even here, where
about five-sixths of what had once been there is
preserved, no clear sense ofwhat is shown emerges.
This may well be an example ofthe art historical
principle that it takes two to tango, or that a
unique building is almost impossible to understand,
especially when additional contextual evidence
is missing.
It is tempting to give up,just as itis tempting to
excerpt something immediately understood like
the Six Kings and to elaborate from there on
some grand iconographic message." So far, to my
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UMAYYAD PALACES RECONSIDERED
knowledge, none of these approaches hasworked,
although admittedly so little has been written
about this fascinating little place that even methodological
judgments are dubious. What can be
proposed is something akin to chemical tests
used to determine the composition ofsome product,
thatis, try possibilities until something works.
Here are two examples.
The first one is difficult to illustrate because,
when the photographs I used were made,3 2
I was
concerned with recording two-dimensional painted
panels on walls. I did not try to record photographically
or even to determine on the spot the
impressions made on users and visitors from
various points of view logical and unique to this
particular place: the entrance, doorways, the floors
on which one sat, the apse or throne niche in the
center of the building, and so on.
Pending verification at Qusayr 'Amra itself, I
propose two visual impressions as correct assessments
of the building's impact. One concerns the
wealth of pictures hanging on the wall: there are
so many of them that one can hardly make sense
of them as a whole, and one moves almost automatically
to consider them individually. Just as in
a museum, one is overwhelmed by the quantity of
pictures, and one can only handle them one at a
time. I am unclear about the psychological implications
of this cascade of ever-present images.
The second impression is that the first and richest
hall of the bath, usually interpreted as a throne
hall, is dominated by the image of an enthroned
ruler in the apse and by a series of large panels in
the rightvault ending at thevault's back wall (fig.
2). The comparable area in the left vault is cutup
into smaller sections and visually less effective
from a distance.
The question iswhether thisvisualjudgment, if
accurate,justifies arguing that the woman by the
pool (fig. 3), the Six Kings, and the "Lady Nike"
(fig. 4)33 are, with the prince in the back of the
apse, more significant than other images. One
could propose several other similar readings of
the walls from a variety of points of view corresponding
to the likely uses of the building. The
result of this kind of investigation would be to
establish hierarchies according to the way the
paintings are perceived, but I am not sure that
such hierarchies would not themselves become
arbitrary constructs rather than useful explana-
tions.
My second approach is even more subjective, at
least in its premise. A striking feature of Qusayr
'Amra is the extraordinary number and variety of
women represented on its walls in a truly minuscule
space: half-dressed ladies around the prince
(figs. 5 and 6), Lady Nik6 (fig. 4), the tall lady by
the pool (fig. 3), nude dancers (fig. 7), a heavily
dressed dancer (fig. 8), another standing naked
woman (fig. 9; now in the Berlin Museum), a
woman apparently alighting in front of a man
(fig. 10), meditating personifications identified
by Greek inscriptions (fig. 11), busts of welldressed
women in the central nave of the main
hall as though looking at the goings-on below
(fig. 12), a cogitating nude woman in one of the
side rooms for bathing (fig. 13), and partly damaged
paintings of totally naked women and children
also found in one of the small bathing
rooms that seem to depict domestic activities that
would have taken place in precisely such a room
(figs. 14 and 15).
Almost none of these representations of women
finds adequate parallels in comparable or
reasonably comparable artistic traditions, except
occasionally in details like the stubby and awkward
legs so typical of Coptic textiles, poses and
gestures clearly belonging to the ways of representation
in late-antique art, and occasionally the
memory of a classical personification or of a
Sasanian symbol.
The point I would like to make, however, is a
different one. While the presence of so many
women predominates at Qusayr 'Amra, it is striking
that they are so different from each other.
Sensuous performances cohabitwith highly proper
ones, possible narratives coexistwith apparent
scenes of leisure and domestic life, and trite
personifications are found alongside concrete
references. Should one try to argue that what is
shown or reflected in Qusayr 'Amra is the world
of the women whose power, both political and
cultural, was, in early Islamic times, considerable?
Or should one interpret all ofthisas amen's
locker-room view of the world? A preliminary
argument can be made for either possibility, and
maybe others exist as well. The full appreciation
of this strange and fascinating museum ofrather
mediocre paintings most probably requires the
elaboration of a series of categories of understanding,
one ofwhich may even be the traditional
art historical one of specific iconographic
meanings and ofan equilibrium ofsources from
many origins.
What conclusions can one draw from these remarks?
The most important one is that Umayyad
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OLEG GRABAR
palaces, or at least a small number among them,
contain a considerable amount of data which
should at this time be considered syntagmatically,
that is, in terms of the unit in which they are
found, rather than systemically, in terms of the
separate histories of each example. Before returning
to types and to broad vistas, it may be
worthwhile to plunge into the depth of each
palatial establishment, to study all ofits details, to
imagine how it was built and what went on in it.
This sort of analysis should not stop at information
provided by the monument or by written
sources about its time, nor even by the sources
which can be identified for any part of it. It is
perfectly appropriate to bring to bear everything
from gender studies to technological analyses
which can develop a grip on the monument. Such
a monographic approach, like a proper trench in
an archaeological investigation, would at least
begin to show that each one ofsome sixbuildings
can bristle with specific references and interpretations,
acquiring a full personality of its own.
The acquisition of such precise information
together with a range ofpossible interpretations
would allow for the first time three additional
discourses. One is the art historical one of witnessing,
in the first half of the eighth century, a
series of transfers of forms and of meanings, as
new sponsors and new resources contribute to
the recomposition of older forms, on the one
hand, and to the development ofnew meanings,
on the other. The most obvious example of the
latter is the ceremonial pastime, which acquires
new dimensions with the luxurious baths of Khirbat
al-Mafjar or the grandiose composition of
Mshatta.
A second discourse concerns the Umayyad
phenomenon. It can explain how anew aristocracy
from the outside established itself in ancient
lands, but the more tantalizing question iswhether
the specific phenomenon of Umayyad palaces
played any significant role in the development of
a new art of princes eventually associated with
Muslim rulers. One would also be able to return
with better information and fuller perception to
standard problems of early Islamic art like the
formation ofa princely cycle and the myths that
developed around the Umayyads. At this time, I
am doubtful that the Umayyads were as important
and innovative in secular art as they were in
the art of the mosque, but the matter will be
discussed over the years to come, I hope.
Finally, there is a thematic discourse. The
Umayyad establishments belong somewhere in
one or more schemes of royal and aristocratic
living and behaving. Most of them are private
palaces which constantly use public artistic triggers-like
a decorated facade, for example-to
audiences who are impossible to identify. But
although their most brilliant features are inside,
tobe treasured andenjoyed and not tobe shared,
theylack clear spaces for private and familyliving.
They seem different from anything else and yet
can be related to French Renaissance palaces or
to nineteenth-century villas in the West perhaps
more easily than to their Roman ancestors. In
short theyhave a significant contribution to make
to the broader understanding of what rulers
sought to do with their architecture and its decoration:
to proclaim and display their glory or
perhaps to create places in order to hide and
enjoy their wealth.
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Notes
This paper is neither a coherentreevaluation of Umayyad
palaces nor quite a repetition of remarks begun
some forty years ago for my doctoral dissertation at
Princeton University. It is rather a moment in a continuing
meditation on the first monuments of Islamic
art, perhaps with adifferent set of questions and interpretations
than I and others developed in the fifties of
this century.
1. I A. C. Creswell, A ShortAccount ofEarly Islamic
Architecture,revised byJames W. Allan (Aldershot,
1989). The buildings are in the order in which they
appear in Creswell, and in whatis also supposed to
be their chronological order: Kufa, Khirbat alMinya,
Jerusalem, Qasr Kharana, Qusayr Amra,
Jabal Says, cAnj ar,al-Muwaqqar, Qasr al-Hayr West,
Rusafa, Qasral-Hayr East, Amman, Qastal, Khirbat
al-Mafjar, Mshatta, Qasr al-Tuba, Tulul al-Shaiba.
I have not included in this list places like Qasr
Burquc or Bayir, where there were Umayyad foundations
but which are too damaged to allow for
significant architectural rather than archaeological
or geographical conclusions. Nor does this list
include buildings like the Khadra in Damascus
which are known to have existed but aboutwhich
toolittle can be reconstructed, even though some
ofthese constructions, like the Damascus palaceof
Mu'awiya or Wasit's palace of al-Hajjaj, in their
time oreventually acquired a mythical value. Both
of these buildings are mentioned in Creswell-Allan,
but there are many places like Fustat, Basra,
Merv, and probably other cities for which written
sources yield some information. In the absence of
a reasonably complete survey of these sources,
occasional accidental references would have been
misleading. I have also not counted in the list of
seventeen "palaces," buildings like Qasr Hallabat
inJordan or Raqqa in Syria, where recent excavations
have found significant Umayyad uses and
modifications of older buildings or Umayyad secular
buildings like the ones being excavated in
Aqaba or Humayma in Jordan which may have
been palaces, but whose investigation is still incomplete.
Finally, I have left aside the full investigation
ofthe long list of possible Umayyad princely
establishments made, partly as a heuristic
exercise, byJean Sauvaget, "Observations sur les
monuments omeyyades," JournalAsiatique 231
(1939). This list contains many places which are
merely settlements without palatial functions or
whose exact dates are still under discussion.
2. Actually quite a bit is known about Rusafa and
about Qastal, but much of the available information
is not easily accessible. For Qastal, for
instance, the activities of Patricia Carlier are
summarized in her thesis for a Doctorat de
troisieme cycle from the University of Aix-enProvence,
Qastal, chiteau umayyade (Aix, 1984).
For Rusafa, the pertinent results of the renewed
German excavations have not yet, to my knowledge,
been published. I am sure that departments
of antiquities and private notes of travelers and
archaeologists contain large quantities of useful
information.
3. For Qasr Kharana, see the rather complete study
and original interpretation by Stephen K. Urice,
Qasr Kharanain the Transjordan(Durham, N.C.:
American Schools of Oriental Research, 1987).
For the other three sites, see the comments provided
in Oleg Grabar et al., City in the Desert (Cambridge,
1978), 151-52. On Jerusalem the only
easily accessible source consists in the very impressionistic
and personal accounts of Meir Ben-Dov,
In the Shadow of the Temple (New York, 1982), esp.
273-321. More detailed views on these buildings
will appear in my forthcoming book on the early
medieval city of Jerusalem. In my view, the date
and functions of the Amman citadel have not yet
been resolved, in spite of the assiduous and meticulous
works by A. Almagro, El palacioomeyyade de
Amman (Madrid, 1984), and byAlistair Northedge
in his unpublished dissertation on the topic completed
in 1982 at the University of London. 'Anjar's
problem isquite different. Too little has been
published ofwhatwas discovered there and its size
as well as apparently commercial functions do not
fit with what is known of Umayyad economic policies
in this area as opposed, for instance, to northern
Mesopotamia where new trade routes can be
assumed. Furthermore, its alleged palace does not
look like known Umayyad ones.
4. Most ofthe immediate evidence on Kufa is found
in Creswell's larger volumes, pt. 1,46 ff. But, since
Kufa remained as a major and very lively city for
several centuries, it should be possible to analyze
and interpret the continuing use of this building,
a possibility which cannot be pursued with the
evidence which has been published.
5. At Qasr al-Hayr West and at Khirbat al-Mafjar
fragments of statements written casually on marble
plaques mention the name of the caliph
Hisham, once as the sender ofa message, the other
time as the recipient of one. Both statements
contain the names of otherwise unknown and
unidentified individuals, and it is extremely difficult
to imagine the circumstances which would
have led to the writing of these messages on marble
plaques presumably destined to be used in
the buildings. They are correctly interpreted
as graffiti, not as inscriptions. See Daniel Schlum-
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OLEG GRABAR
berger, "Kasr el-Heir," Syria 20 (1939): 373, and
R. W. Hamilton, KhirbatalMafar(Oxford, 1957),
43. The written fragment found at Khirbat alMinya
is possibly a genuine inscription since it
begins with the traditional invocation of God's
name and with the words mimma amarabihi, "what
has ordered," the typical beginning of thousands
of medieval inscriptions on objects or buildings.
The problem is that the stone with the inscription
is reused in the palace and there is no way
of knowing to what it referred. See O. Puttrich-Reignard,
"Die Palastanlage von Chirbet
el-Minje," Palastina-Heftedes Deutschen Vereins
vom Heilige Lande 17-20 (1939). The three
documents are quite different from clear-cut
foundation inscriptions like the one from Qasr
al-Hayr East.
6. Elsewhere I have argued for an early Abbasid date
for Mshatta (Oleg Grabar, 'The Date and Meaning
ofMshatta," DumbartonOaksPapers41[1987]),but
itis only slightly later than the one usually given to
the palace and does not affect the reasoning of this
paper. See now the excellent summary byVolkmar
Enderlein and Michael Meinecke, "Mshatta-Fassade,"JahrbuchderBerlinerMuseen
24 (1992), with
a discussion of epigraphic information I did not
know.
7. There is no one statement of Sauvaget's definitive
opinions on the subject of Umayyad palaces. The
most important ones are "Remarques sur les monuments
omeyyades," JournalAsiatique231 (1939);
and "Chateaux omeyyades de Syrie," Revue des
itudesislamiques39 (1967), published posthumously.
But he made remarks on these "palaces" on
many other occasions. H. Lammens, "'La Badia' et
la 'Hira' sous les Omayyades," MelangesdelaFaculti
Onrientale,Univ. St.Joseph, Beirut,4 (1910); E. Herzfeld,
"Mshatta, Hira und Badiya,"Jahrbuchderpreussischen
Kuntsammlungen42 (1921).
8. One example of ecological studies with implications
for Umayyad palaces isA. M. Watson, AgriculturalInnovation
in the Early Islamic World (Cambridge,
1983).
9. Such is essentially my position; see Oleg Grabar,
TheFormationofIslamicArt, 2nd ed. (New Haven,
1989), and Richard Ettinghausen and Oleg Grabar,
IslamicArt 650-1250 (London, 1985).
10. A thorough studyofearly solutions to the problem
of finding a place for mosques in a language of
planning that did not have them lies beyond my
purposes here, but I do want to note that many
early Islamic buildings (Ziza, Qastal, Umm alWalid,
Qasr Hallabat, all in Transjordan)
have small mosques outside the main residential
complex.
11. The landscape ofChristian times can best be seen
in books like G. Tchalenko, Villages antiquesde la
Syriedu Nord (Paris, 1959). Much has been accomplished
since thattime, andnumerous excavations
and surveys, especially in Jordan, have modified
some of the views developed a generation ago,
especially around the extent and character of the
cultural continuity ofthe area. Consult the reports
found in various archaeological journals. For a
recent publication which touches on many of the
pertinent problems, see P. Canivet and J.-P. ReyCoquais,
La Syrie de Byzance d l'Islam (Damascus,
1992).
12. See, as an example, thework ofJ.Ward-Perkins on
vaults in UniversityofSt. Andrews, The GreatPalaceof
the Byzantine Emperors, 2nd report (Edinburgh,
1958). On a much smaller scale similar analyses
have been carried out on Palestinian churches and
synagogues.
13. J. Sauvaget, La mosquie omeyyade de Midine (Paris,
1947), is the first book to have used this approach
of blending written and visual documentation. For
later studies, see Oleg Grabar, "Notes sur les cermonies
omeyyades," in Studies in Memory of Gaston
Wiet, ed. Myriam Rosen-Ayalon (Jerusalem, 1977);
Robert Hillenbrand, "La Dolce Vita in Early Islamic
Syria," Art History 5 (1982); and especially Robert
Hamilton's admirable Al-Walid and HisFriends
(Oxford, 1988). In reality the historiography of
this particular approach is older than Sauvaget, as
Lammens in particular and Herzfeld were inspired
by buildings to search for texts, but they did not
look for ceremonies and for behavior, something
which has been compelled on a scholarship affected
by the decoration which came out of excavations
for the most part.
14. For the Alhambra, see Oleg Grabar, TheAlhambra
(London, 1978). To my knowledge no study has
been devoted specifically to the references to architecture
in Persian poetry or in Ottoman panegyrics,
whether descriptions of buildings or metaphors
and images using architecture. I owe to
Professor Necipoglu the reference to A. S. Levend,
TiirkEdebiyatznda ehrengizlerveSehrengizlerdestanbul
(Istanbul, 1957).
15. A typical early Islamic example of changing textiles
is that of the Kacba in Mecca which was covered
anew every year with fancy embroideries; alAzraqi,
AkhbarMakka, in GeschichtederStadtMekka,
ed. G. Wuistenfeld (Leipzig, 1858), 1, 104 ff.
Another kind of change using textiles were the
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UMAYYAD PALACES RECONSIDERED
temporary modifications made for special occasions,
as when the Baghdad palaces were festively
transformed through textiles for the arrival of a
Byzantine embassy; see, among many places, Grabar,
Formation,168 ff. For a more general theory of
textile aesthetics, see Lisa Golombek, "The Draped
Universe of Islam," in Contentand Context of Visual
Arts in theIslamicWorld, ed. P. Soucek (University
Park, Penna, 1988).
16. The principal structures with decoration are Khirbat
Minya (practically only mosaics), Qasr al-Hayr
West (paintings and sculpted stucco), Khirbat alMafar
(mosaics, stucco, and sculpture in stone
and in stucco), Qusayr cAmra (paintings), Qastal
(mosaics), and Mshatta (stone sculpture, a few
stucco fragments). The basic bibliography on all
of these except Qastal can be found in Ettinghausen
and Grabar, IslamicArt andArchitecture,26-70.
For Qastal, see above.
17. Genetic discussion of the origin of motifs was
central to much of what has been written on the
facade of Mshatta and on the mosaics of the Dome
of the Rock. Most of it derived from the complex
ways of analyzing the decorative arts developed
out ofgrammars ofornament on the one hand
and the theoretical studies of A. Riegl on the
other.
18. I first approached the subject ofa general system
in Umayyad art in my dissertation, "Umayyad Art
and Ceremonies," Princeton University, 1955. Itis
outdated in manyways andin error in some, butits
impact can be found in most of the works quoted
in n. 13.
19. The major exception to the rule lies in coinage,
where both written sources and existing series of
coinsemphasize the necessity for a system offorms
in order for any one item to be understood.
20. DanielSchlumberger, Qasral-Heiral-Gharbi(Paris,
1986).
21. See M. Almagro and others, QusayrAmra(Madrid,
1984), which unfortunately does not give a complete
survey of the restored frescoes. It is also
unfortunate that there isno account ofthe degree
of restoration which has been provided in some
instances, nor is anything really known about the
technical details ofthe paintings.
22. Bibliographic references will be found in CreswellAllan,
EarlyMuslim Architecture and in Ettinghausen
and Grabar, IslamicArt.Some pieces have been
shown in various traveling exhibitions organized
by the Syrian DepartmentofAntiquities, especially
the one held at the Muse du Monde Arabe in
1990-91 which focused on Umayyad palaces.Their
catalogues provide a few additional pictures and
minimal comments.
23. DanielSchlumberger, "Deuxfresques omeyyades,"
Syria 25 (1946-48); Richard Ettinghausen, Arab
Painting(Geneva, 1962), 35, 37.
24. Oleg Grabar, "Islamic Art and Byzantium," Dumbarton
Oaks Papers18 (1964).
25. It is, of course, true that as an exercise in pure
connoisseurship the Qasr al-Hayr sculpture differs
in many details from actual Palmyrene works. Does
it matter? How different must an imitation be in
order not to be meaningful as an imitation? Conversely,
are meanings carried together with forms?
26. There is no convenient access to the immensely
rich treasures of early medieval art from Central
and Inner Asia. A very general survey is Tamara
Talbot Rice, AncientArts of CentralAsia(New York,
1965). Rich and accurate, but geographically more
restricted information is found in the published
catalogue of an exhibition that never took place,
Culture and Art of Ancient Uzbekistan, 2 vols. in
Russian and English (Moscow, 1991) .Alittle-known
and unexpected source of major importance for
Qasr al-Hayr as well as Khirbat al-Mafjar is Varakhsha
in Uzbekistan, which has friezes of animals
strikingly similar to the Umayyad ones; see V. A.
Shishkin, "Arhitekturnaia Dekoratsia Dvortsa v
Varahshe," HermitageMuseum, Trudy Otdela Istorii
Kultury i skusstva Vostoka,vol. 4 (Leningrad, 1947).
For further examples see my comments on the
paintings of Mafjar in Hamilton's publication of
the palace and A. von Le Coq, Die Buddhistische
Spdtantike (Berlin, 1922-33), :pl. 20 and ff.; 5:pls.
12 and 33, comparable to fragments from Mafjar
and Qasr al-Hayr.
27. It iswell ascertained that considerable booty came
from the conquest of Central Asia and that taxes
were at times paid in objects rather than cash. A
complete gathering ofall appropriate texts would
be a very worthy enterprise.
28. The arguments justifying this position are much
beyond the range and purposes of this paper.
From a methodological point ofview I am trying to
distinguish artistic transfers which took place
through objects from the ones made by traveling
artisans or artists.
29. The restoration work was accomplished by a team
sent by the Spanish government. The results of its
work are rather impressive, as can be seen in the
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OLEG GRABAR
book by M. Almagro and others quoted earlier.
There are, however, several placeswhere the paintings
visible now differ from the fragments seen by
Musil a century ago and photographed by the
Reverend Fathers Jaussen and Savignac, Mission
archiologiqueen Arabie, vol. 3 (Paris, 1922). While
important for the overall interpretation of the
bath's paintings, these queries are not particularly
pertinent to the point of this essay.
30. Oleg Grabar, "La place de QusayrAmrah dans l'art
profane," Cahiersarchiologiques36 (1988).
31. Oleg Grabar, 'The Painting of the Six Kings at
Qusayr Amrah," Ars Orientalis1 (1954).
32. This is an appropriate occasion to recall the help
ofFred Anderegg, for some time Head of Photographic
Services at the University of Michigan,
who came with me on so many Syrian andJordanian
trips and who took and often developed his
pictures in most unusual places.
To the right of the tent, in the upper part of the
panel, there is a Greek inscription reading quite
clearly NIKE, "Victory." In an article published a
few years ago, I connected NIKE known for a
hundred years with a number of Greek letters
discovered by the Spanish restorers to have been
painted on the left of the tent at the same level as
NIKE. In "Une inscription grecque a QusayrAmra,"
Revue desitudesislamiques(MilangesDominiqueSourdel)
54 (1986), I argued that there was a single
name and proposed thatitbe readARIS [TO] NIKE.
Unfortunately, I do not believe any longer that this
reading is possible for a whole series ofreasons. A
suggestive alternative willbe proposed by Dr. Garth
Fowden in a forthcoming book which, if acceptable,
will be of extraordinary importance for the
understanding of Qusayr'Amra. I am most grateful
to Dr. Fowden for having shared his interpretation
with me and for many wonderful discussions
of Qusayr Amra. See Garth Fowden, Empire to
Commonwealth (Princeton, 1993), 143-49.
33. The representation on thiswall isof awell-dressed
woman in a tent with various figures around her.
102