Mshatta Facade

Mshatta Facade

The Mshatta Facade is the decorated part of the facade of the 8th century Umayyad residential palace of Qasr Mshatta, one of the Desert Castles in Jordan, which is currently installed in the south wing of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Germany. It is part of the permanent exhibition of the Museum für Islamische Kunst dedicated to Islamic art from the 8th to the 19th centuries.

History

detail

The facade belonged to the Qasr Mshatta]—Mshatta palace, which was excavated about 30 km south of the contemporary Jordanian capital of Amman. It is thought to have served as a winter residence and storage halls during the Umayyad period. The building of the palace probably dates to the era of the caliph Al-Walid II (743-744). After Al Walid was murdered, it was left incomplete and later ruined in an earthquake. The sections of the outer wall remaining in situ are much plainer.

Unusually for an Umayyad building, the main structures are built from burnt bricks resting on a foundation layer of finely dressed stone; the carved facade is also in stone. The name of the place, Mshatta, is a name used by the modern Bedouins in the area, and the original name remains unknown.

The remains of the palace were excavated and discovered in 1840. The facade was a gift from the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II to Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany. A large part of it was brought to the then Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum (now the Bode Museum) in Berlin in 1903. It was reconstructed as a 33 metres long, 5 metres high facade, with two towers, and parts of a central gateway. In 1932 it was reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum. It was seriously damaged during the Second World War and the bombardment of Berlin. Today, it is one of the most important exhibits of the Museum für Islamische Kunst in the Pergamon Museum, and a key monument of early Islamic art and architecture, demonstrating early forms of the arabesque and also animals carved in relief.

See also

• Islamic architecture

References

• Grabar, Oleg The Date and Meaning of Mshatta Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 41, Studies on Art and Archeology in Honor of Ernst Kitzinger on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday (1987), pp. 243-247
• Enderlein, Volkmar Mshatta-A Caliphs Palace The Pergamon Museum Information leaflet No. ISL I, Berlin, 1996

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mshatta facade

• The Date and Meaning of Mshatta

Coordinates: 52°31′16″N 13°23′46″E / 52.521°N 13.396°E / 52.521; 13.396