FINLAND & PALESTINE Proceedings of a Joint Workshop

The Identification ofthe So-Called Hisham's
Another Umayyad structure provides a point of comparison to
Qasr Hisham. It, too, seems to have been a caravanserai. It is a
large, rectangular (66 x 73 m) Umayyad building at Khirbet al­
Minyeh south of the Sea of Galilee. 19 There, an inscription of
al-Walid ibn Abd-el-Malik (ruled 705-715) indicates an earlier
8 th century date for the original construction of the site. No
decorative art has survived from thereO
Identification of a later Mamluk caravanserai and an Ottoman
khan, Kh. Minya, nearby on the way from Damascus, give weight
to the suggestion that the Umayyad "palace" of al-Minyeh was
also built to serve travelers and pilgrims, especially as it included
a bath and a mosque. Both the trade route passing al-Minyeh,
and the one leaving north from al-Mafjar, may have passed Beth
Shean (Beisan in Arabic), where an Umayyad mansion, and other
evidence of Umayyad actiVity, has been discovered. 21
knowledge, the palace identification of Qasr Hisham has not been previously
challenged in studies of Umayyad architecture.
19 F. Bloch, Studien zur spaetantiken und is/amischen Keramik: Hirbat a/-Minya
- 8aalbek -Resala (Orient Archaeologie 18; Rahden: Marie Leidorf, 2004).
20 Kh. al-Minyeh is, unfortunately, in a bad state of preservation. It was studied
1932-37, with the results of the last season published by O. Puttrich-Reignard,
"Die Palast-Anlage von Chirbet el-Minje: Ein Vorbericht ueber die Ergebnisse
der im Fruehjahr u. Herbst 1937 u. im Fruehjahr 1938 durchgefuehrten 3. u. 4.
Grabungskampagne auf Chirbet el-Minje bei Tabgha am See Genezareth,"
Palaestina-Hejte des Deutschen Vereins vom Heiligen Lande 17-20 (1939) 9-29.
In 1959 excavations in the western part of the enclosure established the stratigraphy
in this area O. Grabar, J. Perrot, B. Ravani, M. Rosen, "Sondages a Khirbet
el-Minyeh," lEi 10 (1960) 226-43. They noticed signs of a Mamluk caravanserai,
indicating that a trade and pilgrimage route passed here. We may safely
assume that, also in the original Umayyad building group, there was a caravanserai,
mosque and a bath. The Ottoman caravanserai Khirbet Minya was serving
travelers on an important Damascus-Cairo route.
21 0 . Sion, "A Mansion House from the Late Byzantine-Umayyad Period in Beth
Shean-Scythopolis," Liber Annuus, Studium 8iblicum Franciscanum 52 (2002)
353-367.
20