Britain and the Arab Middle East

by Cooper, Lisa;

  Hiraqla

  More important Islamic-period sites were to follow shortly after Qal‘at Jabbar on Bell's journey. A day-and-a-half's ride further down the river (50 km) took her to the enigmatic ruin of Hiraqla (her ‘amp;#x1E24;araglah’), which she described as a rectangular fortress surrounded by a ditch and circular enclosure and was distinguished by four corner towers and brick vaults that required centring for their construction.213 Bell did not believe that Hiraqla could be Islamic in date, and on that topic she agreed with other scholars, particularly Sachau, who saw it as a Roman military camp or fort.214 Investigations undertaken by Sarre and Herzfeld after their own trip down the Euphrates in 1907, however, proposed an alternative dating, during the Abbasid period, setting its construction solidly in the Islamic period of the early ninth century CE.215 As Sarre and Herzfeld were able to ascertain from Arab historians’ accounts, Hiraqla had in fact been built by the caliph Harun al-Rashid and represents the remains of an unfinished monument to a military triumph against the Byzantines at Herakleon, in Anatolia.216 Although Bell's suspected date for the monument proved to be incorrect, architecturally she did properly recognize that the brick vaults of the structure had supported a platform above, upon which had stood an upper storey, an observation that Herzfeld himself would also make and with which all scholars concur.217

  Raqqa

  Bell reached Raqqa, near the confluence of the Euphrates and Balikh Rivers, another 8 km beyond Hiraqla, finding here a wealth of Islamic period ruins. As with Qal‘at Jabbar, judging by her diary entries and letters from the time of her visit to the site, Bell did not possess a great deal of historical background about Raqqa.218 Her subsequent account of the site in Amurath to Amurath, however, shows that she learned enough to make several educated observations about the remains she recorded and photographed there.

  Bell correctly surmised that of the two main ruin fields at Raqqa, the more easterly of the two was the site of the oldest Classical period city, known variously as Nicephorium and Callicium.219 Its earliest foundations extended back to the Hellenistic period, and she was able to find traces of these in the form of marble column fragments and capitals scattered in the area around a still-standing square minaret in the centre of the ruin field.220 We now know that the minaret and the mosque to which it belonged stood in the midst of this city, renamed ‘Raqqa’ after the Arab conquest in 639–40. The city experienced an embellishment during the Umayyad period of the eighth century, when the caliph Hisham established a new market at Raqqa, built two palaces, commissioned a bridge over the river and dug a canal to supply water to the city.221 Significantly, the square minaret, which Bell observed to be made of brick resting on a stone base, now no longer exists, and her photograph, along with one taken by Max Oppenheim, are the only visual records of this once grand structure (Fig. 2.15).222

  Bell also correctly conjectured that the western ruin field at Raqqa represented the remains of Rafiqa (meaning ‘Companion’), the city established by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur around 771–2. This new foundation was further expanded and aggrandized by his grandson Harun al-Rashid between 786 and 808, serving for a time as the ruler's summer capital.223 She observed the constructional details of Rafiqa's horseshoe-shaped double city wall, the mounded ruins of which would have been clearly seen amid the desert plain upon which they were set.224 She did not record the cluster of ruins to the north of the city wall, however, which upon excavation proved to be the site of a complex of palaces built by Harun al-Rashid and his court.225 Rather, she was drawn to the ruined buildings for which preserved parts could still be seen above ground, these including the Baghdad Gate in the south-easterly corner of the Rafiqa horseshoe enclosure, the so-called Qasr al-Banat – a ruined palace within the walls to the north – and the congregational mosque and minaret in the centre of the city.

  Fig. 2.12 Bell’s photograph of the ‘Water Gate’ at the site of Munbaqa (her ‘Munbayah’). Many of the large stones in this area on the summit derive from two of the site’s Bronze Age monumental temples.

  It is no wonder that Bell was impressed with the remnants of the Baghdad Gate, given its finely decorated brick façade (Fig. 2.16).226 In truth, however, no other monument in the entire Islamic world has evoked such disputes concerning its date of construction. K.A.C. Creswell assigned this distinctive structure to the time of the caliph al-Mansur, seeing it as part and parcel of the fortified enclosure of Rafiqa built in the late eighth century.227 R. Hillenbrand argued that its decorative features and arch type made it a much later construction, possibly attributable to the late eleventh or twelfth century, with parallels in the Seljuq architecture of the Zengid period.228 L. Korn argued that its decorative similarities to the palace of Qasr al-‘Ashiq at Samarra place its date in the late ninth or early tenth century.229 Bell did not speculate on the date of the Baghdad Gate in her description in Amurath to Amurath, only noting that the Frenchman H. Viollet attributed it to Harun al-Rashid.230 Nevertheless, even at this stage she seemed aware that some of its architectural features could be diagnostic indicators of later dates. She noted, for example, that the Baghdad Gate's ‘flattened pointed arch’ was comparable to a thirteenth-century building near Ukhaidir.231 Significantly, it was this arch form that would lead others, such as John Warren, to question Creswell's eighth-century date of the Baghdad Gate and to ascribe the structure as a whole to a later time.232 Today, the precise date of the Baghdad Gate's construction at Raqqa remains unresolved, although few would now ascribe it to the early caliphs of the Abbasid Era.233

  Bell's photographs of the twelfth-century Qasr al-Banat of Rafiqa, described by her as ‘the group of palace ruins near the east wall’, nicely highlight the edifice's striking decoration.234 Particularly noteworthy are her images of the palace's four-storey tower on the east side, where a rich plaster decoration had been applied thickly over the brickwork.235 The two photographs that Bell took of the tower and its decoration are all the more valuable in that this impressive structure no longer exists (Fig. 2.17).236 Also valuable is Bell's photograph of the south-western corner of the Qasr al-Banat, spanned by an elegantly adorned muqarnas vault and blind arches (Fig. 2.18).237 A large portion of this vaulting had already fallen by the time Creswell visited the site and photographed it in the 1930s, and so we are fortunate that Bell took the time to document this impressive and beautiful part of the palace.238

  Bell spent the greatest amount of her three-day visit to Raqqa in the centre of Rafiqa, inspecting and planning the city's congregational mosque. Despite its ruinous state, Bell could make out its mudbrick outer walls with round bastions and its central court, where a brick minaret stood above a stone square base. Given the minaret's distinctive form and dog-tooth ornament near the top, comparing favourably with the minaret she had just seen at Qal‘at Jabbar, she was correct in assigning its construction to the later Atebeg Nur al-Din, c.1165–6 CE.239 Similarly, she rightly assigned one of the mosque's brick arcades, still preserved on the south side of the court, to Nur al-Din on account of a Kufic inscription over the central arch, which reported his renovations to the mosque.240 Nevertheless, Bell suspected that Nur al-Din had essentially retained the original plan of the mosque through his repairs, a point further taken up by others such as Creswell, who fixed the original date of the mosque's construction to the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur around 772 CE.241

  Fig. 2.13 Bell’s photo of the Islamic-period castle Qal.at Jabbar, standing over the Euphrates River valley below. With the completion of the Tabqa Dam and the formation of Lake Assad behind it in the 1970s, the river valley was flooded, and the castle now stands as an island amid the lake’s blue waters.

  Bell's keen powers of observation picked up important details of the mosque, and these were described, planned or captured in her photographs. Her estimation of the number and position of entrances into the mosque interior comes impressively close to what has been confirmed by the most recent German probes of the structure.242 Her photographs provide with clarity the details of
the stucco capitals of the engaged columns that appear in Nur al-Din's arcade,243 as well as a rounded pier with open-jointed brick coursing.244

  Besides noting Raqqa's architecture, Bell showed an appreciation for the city's pottery, which she saw strewn about the ruins of both Rafiqa and Raqqa. Already by her time, ‘Raqqa ware’ had become highly prized for its beauty and skilful craftsmanship, and complete vessels found among the ruins by locals were being collected and sold to dealers in Aleppo, many making their way to European consumers.245 In its own time, Raqqa had been well known throughout the Muslim world for its craft industries, especially pottery and glass, which continued to be manufactured for 500 years until the demise of production prior to the Mongol invasion of Syria in 1258–60.246 Potters’ workshops, which have been located in several zones within and beyond both Rafiqa and Raqqa, were producing a variety of glazed and unglazed wares, the most celebrated coming from the second half of the twelfth up to the mid-thirteenth centuries and consisting of lustre-painted stonepaste wares, these traded widely throughout the Near East and reaching southern Europe.247

  Fig. 2.14a Bell’s 1909 detail of a baked brick façade above the gateway at the medieval castle of Qal‘at Jabbar.

  Fig. 2.14b In 2009, the author photographed the same feature shown in Fig. 2.14a, illustrating the damage sustained to the decorative pattern of bricks.

  In all, the site of Raqqa left a distinct impression on Bell. Her visit had immersed her in Islamic-period remains, and she rightly recognized Raqqa's important place in the overall development of art and architecture, with its blend of both Syrian and Mesopotamian techniques, materials and designs. Raqqa was all the more intriguing given that only a handful of scholars before her had taken the time to study its remains, and she looked forward to the further research she would undertake upon her return to England. The significance of Raqqa to Bell is borne out in a letter written to her parents, in which she relates her plans for a future book that would study the art and architecture of Raqqa alongside those of Ukhaidir and Samarra, these latter sites being those into which she had poured her greatest energies during her 1909 journey.248 In the end, she did not undertake this work – Ukhaidir became the site that would consume most of Bell's scholarly endeavours in Islamic-period archaeology – but she never forgot Raqqa, its architectural forms and decoration being utilized at the service of Ukhaidir, helping to establish that site's place and importance in the evolution of Mesopotamian architecture.

  Fig. 2.15 Bell’s photograph of the square brick minaret from the ruin field of Raqqa, dated to the Umayyad period of the eighth century, is one of the only visual records of this structure, which is no longer standing.

  Below Raqqa to ‘Anah

  Bell's interest did not flag as she made her way along the east bank of the Euphrates below Raqqa and as far as ‘Anah. She continued to stop to inspect ancient sites, amply present in this stretch of the river valley, photographing their remains, speculating on their age, significance and ancient names. Highlights of this riverine region through which Bell now passed included the well-preserved and impressive fortress of Halebiye, standing opposite her track, on the right bank of the river, about 100 km south of Raqqa.249 She would have been familiar with the history of this site. It had been fortified first in the third century CE by the famous queen of Palmyra, Zenobia, whose vast realm had once stretched over to the Euphrates River. After Zenobia rebelled, claiming her kingdom's independence from Rome, Halebiye was captured by the Romans shortly after they took Palmyra in 273 CE.250 Henceforth, Halebiye served as an important part of Rome's eastern defences against the Sasanian kingdom to the east. Halebiye still acted as an important line of defence on the eastern frontier at the time of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I in the sixth century CE, and to him one may attribute some of the impressive ruins of the site that are still seen today, such as its massive stone city wall and gates, a three-storey praetorium built into the city wall, and a citadel on its western summit.251 Bell did not cross the river to inspect this site more closely, rather settling on an inspection of the contemporary yet less impressive sister fortress of Zalebiye on the left bank of the river, about 3 km downstream from Halebiye. Although she did not plan Zalebiye, she gives a brief account of its towered walls perched high above the river below, its fortified entrance gate, and the remains of a town beyond the fort upstream.252 Virtually no systematic excavation work has been carried out at Zalebiye, and Bell's photographs attest to the fact that its ruins look nearly the same now as when she visited the site. Similarly, the course of the Euphrates River, judging by Bell's photograph of it, looking upstream back towards Halebiye, is one of the few stretches to remain virtually unaltered.253

  Fig. 2.16 Bell’s photo of the impressive Baghdad Gate of Raqqa, with its fine brick arched entrance, side niche with brick hazarbaf decoration, and an upper façade of tri-lobed niches resting on engaged collonnettes. The gate remnant stands at the south-eastern corner of the fortified enclosure of Rafiqa, built by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur in the eighth century, although the gate itself is believed to represent a later Islamic-period construction.

  Significantly, both Halebiye and Zalebiye were strategically positioned at a place on the Euphrates where the river channel narrows between rocky outcrops. This special topography would have facilitated the means by which the ancient defenders of the two sites could have supervised riverine traffic while watching over the caravan crossing point on the river.254 In the most recent past, this narrow channel was selected as the proposed place for the construction of yet another dam in Syria, originally slated to be completed by around 2012.255 Both Halebiye and Zalebiye would have been affected by this dam, not to mention many other archaeological sites up-river, which would have been either partially or completely flooded. The recent political upheavals in Syria have brought a halt to this initiative – and so, at least for the time being, this ancient stretch of the Euphrates River and its magnificent walled guardians of another tumultuous era still exist.

  Below the town of Deir ez-Zor, where Bell was able to procure provisions and rest the pack animals, she continued her journey, still visiting and recording the remains of ancient sites. Notable was the site of Buseirah near the confluence of the Khabur River with the Euphrates, the location of ancient Circesium, a frontier station founded by the Roman emperor Diocletian (245–311 CE).256 Here she noted the existence of small chambers with walls of tiles and stones exposed by the locals, and possible traces of vaults, as well as a later building that the local inhabitants called a church, but she did not plan these features or linger at length to comprehend them more fully.257 Further down the river at Werdi, opposite the town of Abu Kemal, Bell visited the standing tower tombs of Baghouz (her ‘Irzî’) high upon the cliffs behind the river valley. Her photograph of the best preserved tomb, this known elsewhere as the tower of Abu Gelal, is presented in Amurath to Amurath.258 Observing their internal staircases and burial chambers beneath the bases of the towers and into the bedrock below, Bell conjectured that the tombs dated to the first or second century CE. However, more recent studies of the tombs, and their resemblance to similarly arranged tower tombs at Palmyra, suggest an even earlier date, sometime in the first century BCE.259

  The landscape was changing as Bell made her way down this stretch of the river. The stream itself was now characterized by numerous islands in its midst. The east and west banks, consisting of desert lands inhabited by the pastoral nomadic tribes of the Dulaim (Bell's ‘Deleim’), Amarat and Jeraif, were now occasionally interrupted by cultivated fields, palm groves and fruit trees.260 Bell also observed the presence of groaning wooden norias, water wheels that conveyed the river water up to the higher levels on the banks, providing irrigation for the fields and gardens.261 This altered landscape prompted Bell to report that she had ‘passed over an unseen frontier’ into Babylonia.262 Perhaps not coincidentally, it was in this area, below the town of Abu Kemal and above ‘Anah on the Euphrates, that the modern political border
between Syria and Iraq was drawn up after World War I by European administrators, including Bell herself.

  Fig. 2.17a + b The four-storey tower of the Qasr al-Banat, a twelfthcentury elite residence at Raqqa (opposite). The structure is noted for its rich plaster decoration over the brickwork, which included a frieze of keel-shaped hoods containing smaller, cusped blind arches. In between, deep triangular indentations ensured a strong contrast between light and shade (above). Bell’s valuable photographs are some of the few images of this impressive structure, which has not survived.

  Arriving at the settlement of Rawa on the east bank of the Euphrates, Bell crossed to the opposite bank by ferry, thereby reaching ‘Anah, a well-populated market town along the post-road coming up from Baghdad. The town occupied a narrow strip of land by the water's edge, several kilometres long and characterized by mudbrick residences and market stalls, interspersed with gardens of palm groves. Not wanting to linger, however, Bell quickly found another ferry to take her to the island of Lubbad in the stream just opposite the lower end of ‘Anah. The island was thickly strewn with archaeological remains, having been inhabited as early as the Old Babylonian period.263 It was also known to have been occupied during the Neo-Assyrian period of the early first millennium BCE, of which Bell herself saw evidence in the form of a carved stone relief fragment.264 Particularly prominent on the island, however, were remains from the later Islamic period, namely a distinctive brick minaret that had once stood alongside a twelfth-century congregational mosque. Bell's photographs of this tall minaret, with its octagonal form, broken by eight rows of niches with cusped arches, are singularly striking (Fig. 2.19), as are the views she photographed from its summit, which take in the island's lush ‘paradise of fruit-trees, palms and corn’ (Fig. 2.20).265 Bell could not have predicted that this beautiful and ancient island would no longer exist by the end of the twentieth century. With the construction of the Iraqi Haditha Dam in the 1980s, the island at ‘Anah was completely flooded, and a large lake now stands in its place.266 The townspeople of ‘Anah relocated the octagonal minaret to the modern town on the west bank in 1985, but sadly, this last remnant of the town's rich ancient heritage was destroyed by a bomb in June 2006.267 Bell's photograph remains one of the loveliest and clearest images of that monument in its original island location.