Overview of Islamic Archaeology

Archaeology is the science concerned with the study of objects made or used by humans—dwellings, furniture, tools, and art—that have been left behind by them.

Since ancient times, humanity has known certain forms of care for old objects. Interest in the remains of predecessors, the desire to possess them, the wish to perpetuate the memory of their owners, and the enjoyment of their beauty are linked to human instincts and drives: such as the love of ownership, the appreciation of beauty, the love of knowledge and curiosity, and the perpetuation of memory. This sometimes led to the careful collection of objets d’art, beautiful or precious antiquities, or those that carry special memories or particular meanings.

The ancient Eastern civilisations knew the collection and preservation of objets d’art, especially for religious or funerary purposes. Examples include the statues and objets d’art placed in temples and tombs, and those discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt. Recent excavations at the site of the ancient city of Ur in Iraq revealed a building that was probably a local museum: ancient objets d’art were found there that had been collected by Princess Bel-Shalti-Nannar, daughter of Nabonidus (555–538 BC), one of the kings of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.¹

In the ancient Greek period the Greek temples resembled museums, because of the treasures and precious objets d’art they contained. The Ptolemies founded in Alexandria a museum that is rightly regarded as the most famous and greatest of the ancient museums: they collected in it thousands of objets d’art and manuscripts. The kings of Pergamon in Asia Minor competed with them, exerting every effort to obtain the finest objets d’art dating from the periods of the flourishing of Greek art, and they also established a library that rivalled the Library of Alexandria in wealth and grandeur. The Romans likewise took care to collect objets d’art in their temples and palaces; their great men would open the doors of their palaces to the public on certain occasions so that people might view the objets d’art they contained. The Emperor Hadrian himself was fond of beautiful antiquities and built at Tivoli a structure for the preservation of drawings and a museum of sculpture.¹

The Arabs before Islam knew how to appreciate precious objets d’art and to preserve them, and they used to offer them to their sanctuaries. Al-Maydānī relates that Māriya bint Ẓālim ibn Wahb presented her two earrings to the Kaʿba; each was adorned with two large pearls the size of pigeon’s eggs. A proverb was coined about them: “Take it even if it is for Māriya’s earrings.” Some reports state that ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib ibn Hāshim found two golden gazelles in the well of Zamzam and presented them to the Kaʿba.

The Muslims in their turn were keen to collect precious objets d’art: the palaces of the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Fatimids, the Andalusians and other wealthy Muslims were filled with furniture and rare and precious objets d’art. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than what the historians record about the treasures and objets d’art taken from the palace of the Fatimid caliph al-Mustanṣir during the Great Hardship.¹ In the Islamic world there were also dealers in precious and rare objets d’art. One example is Abū Saʿd Ibrāhīm al-Nashtarī, a dealer in objets d’art in the Fatimid period.

Care for the collection of objets d’art then passed to Europe in the Christian era. Churches and monasteries took care to preserve relics associated with the great saints and monks—such as the tools they used or the garments they wore, and the like. Interest in collecting objets d’art appeared prominently in the European Renaissance in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the phenomenon spread to many European countries. The palaces of famous families, such as the Medici in Florence, were filled with beautiful objets d’art dating from the Classical period, as well as those produced by artists of the Renaissance itself. It is well known that the collections of objets d’art belonging to some of these families later became the basis of many European museums; indeed, some of the palaces themselves later became national museums, such as the Louvre Palace in Paris.

The care taken by later generations for the remains of their predecessors was not limited to portable objets d’art or to treasures of gold and silver; it extended to ancient buildings of every kind—religious, civil and military. Religious buildings received the largest share of maintenance and preservation; consequently most of the ancient architectural remains that have come down to us are religious buildings—temples or tombs.

Connected with the care for objets d’art and ancient remains is another manifestation that humanity has known since earliest times: the search for and excavation of treasures and precious objets d’art.

The search for treasures and valuable objects was a widespread phenomenon in all ages. It was the custom of many wealthy people to bury their wealth in the ground, in a wall, or “under the paving-stone,” as the saying goes. Consequently, after the owner’s death or absence, people would search for the hidden wealth by digging and excavation. The Holy Qur’an alludes to something of this kind in Sūrat al-Kahf: “As for the wall, it belonged to two orphan boys in the city, and beneath it was a treasure belonging to them. Their father had been a righteous man, and your Lord intended that they should reach full maturity and extract their treasure.”¹

Many stories have been written about the buried and hidden treasures of pirates and the search for them by digging and excavation.

One of the most striking examples of attempts to obtain wealth and treasures by digging and excavation is what used to take place in ancient Egypt, when the tombs of the Pharaohs and the ancient Egyptians, with the precious treasures they contained, aroused the greed of many. Modern archaeologists have found most of these tombs empty, after their discovery, of the furniture and treasures they once held. We can imagine the precious objets d’art that those tombs contained if we contemplate the treasures discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun, which escaped plundering.²

The practice of searching for treasures and antiquities by digging continued after the Renaissance. Some of this work, however, was carried out secretly, in concealment, and on a private basis. These methods are still practised today, as used to happen in the village of al-Qurna in Egypt at the hands of antiquities thieves and those who dealt with certain dealers in antiquities and tourists.

In the beginning, the search for antiquities was undertaken solely in order to obtain objets d’art and treasures, without any care for studying the circumstances in which they were found. Consequently the discoveries in most cases lost their historical value, even though they retained material and artistic value.

Among the most important discoveries of the eighteenth century were the remains of Herculaneum (1711) and Pompeii (beginning in 1748).

These were followed by the studies of the French scholars in Egypt during the French Expedition (1798–1801).¹ Of the same kind was the work of Lord Elgin in removing many of the sculptures of the Parthenon and transferring them to the British Museum, where they were displayed in 1816.

This was followed by numerous excavations in various parts of the world; among the most notable were those carried out by Schliemann (1832–1890) at Troy, Mycenae and Tiryns, and those of Arthur Evans in Crete (beginning in 1900).

From the end of the nineteenth century the search for antiquities was characterised by a spirit of excitement, when excavators began to work under the auspices of institutions, universities and government bodies with the aim of obtaining archaeological treasures.

If modern archaeology is concerned especially with the study of what remains or has been discovered of antiquities, this phenomenon was also known in antiquity. Authors wrote about the remains of their predecessors and took an interest in them: Herodotus (the Father of History) spoke of the ancient remains he had seen; Thucydides, the ancient Greek historian (c. 460–395 BC), referred to certain remains of earlier peoples—buildings, garments and funerary furnishings. In this connection we may also mention other Greek authors such as Pausanias (second century BC), Plutarch, Strabo, Lucian and Athenaeus. One of the most famous writers on architectural remains was Vitruvius, who in the age of Augustus wrote a treatise on building construction in which he sometimes referred back to the classical authors.

The remains of predecessors also attracted the attention of the pre-Islamic Arab poets, who mentioned the palace of Ghumdān, Salḥīn, Baynūn, al-Khawarnaq and others, and described them in their poetry.

The term “archaeology” (i.e. the science of antiquities) appeared in Europe in the seventeenth century, when interest was concentrated on the Classical or ancient Roman periods; consequently the term almost came to be restricted to Classical antiquities. With the passage of time, however, the content of the term expanded. At the beginning of the nineteenth century it also came to include Egyptian archaeology; archaeological research then extended to Mesopotamian, Persian, Hittite and Nabataean antiquities. From 1930 attention began to be paid to the antiquities of Algeria and the Russian lands, and archaeological research spread to Africa and the rest of Asia. From the middle of the nineteenth century interest in prehistoric remains became clear, and towards the end of the nineteenth century archaeology crystallised as a modern science. It thus came to comprise two interrelated matters:

The first is the scientific recovery of the object, the recording of its position relative to the other objects found with it, its precise description, the restoration of what is damaged, its conservation, its preservation or display, and the writing about it. In all of this archaeology employs modern methods, benefiting from the advances achieved by other sciences in the fields of surveying, photography, engineering, chemistry, entomology, medicine, anthropology (the science of human nature), geology, geography, ethnography (the science of the distinctive characteristics of peoples) and others. The recovery or extraction of antiquities is carried out principally by careful and conscious excavation in the ground. The search for antiquities may also take place under the surface of the water—whether in river beds, in the depths of seas and lakes, or along their shores.¹

The second matter is the study of the discovered antiquities, and their use, on the one hand, for artistic enjoyment and, on the other, for casting new light on human civilisation and its development, for deriving history from them, and for interpreting historical events in their light. Archaeology is closely linked with history, philology (the science of languages) and the history of art, so closely that it is sometimes difficult to draw a precise boundary between them. Moreover, the remains of certain civilisations are considered closer to the history of art than to archaeology. Examples of this are Classical antiquities, Islamic antiquities, and the antiquities of the Renaissance and the periods that followed it, for the character of perfection and beauty predominates in them.

¹ Woolley, Ur of the Chaldees, p. 65.

(Other footnotes appearing in the original pages have been retained in sense where the reference was clear; incomplete references in the source have been noted only by number.)

Module Key Takeaways

• Archaeology is the scientific study of human-made objects and remains to reconstruct past civilizations.
• Care for and collection of antiquities existed in ancient Eastern, Greek, Roman, Arab, and Islamic cultures, then flourished in Europe.
• Modern archaeology uses scientific excavation, preservation, and analysis to derive history from material remains.