Al-Jarud

al-Jārūd was a small city in the Wadi Hamar area, about 40 km east of the Balikh River in present-day Syria, inhabited during the 9th century.[1][2] It is identified with Kharāb Sayyār, a ruin site covering 42 hectares and consisting of a square-shaped town surrounded by a system of walls and ditches.[1][2][3] At its peak during the mid-9th century, al-Jarud was a minor regional center in the middle of "a flourishing agricultural landscape" on the fertile Wadi Hamar, with at least 60 contemporary settlements identified within a 13 km radius.[1][2]

Remains of carved stucco wall decorations found at Kharab Sayyar, identified with al-Jarud.

History

Excavator Jan-Waalke Meyer originally proposed that occupation at the site began during the Umayyad period, perhaps in the 730s or 740s,[3] but has since revised her chronology of the site to exclude an Umayyad and early Abbasid phase at al-Jarud.[2] In any case, according to Stefan Heidemann, al-Jarud was only built "to any significant extent" in the middle of the 9th century.[2] At this point, the Abbasid capital was in Samarra, and the demand for agricultural produce was at its peak.[2] The latest dated evidence found at al-Jarud is a coin fragment dated to the reign of al-Mu'tadid, between the years 892 and 902, and it was probably abandoned not too long after that.[1]

Layout

The general layout of al-Jarud is almost identical to that of the nearby towns of Hisn Maslama and Tall Mahra.[2] Like them, al-Jarud was surrounded by square city walls, 650x650 m in length and embellished with projecting half-towers.[2] The towers served basically zero defensive purpose and were probably instead built as "symbols of urban pride and wealth in [a] small rural town".[2]

Inside the walls, near the southeastern corner of al-Jarud, there was a large multi-roomed building with stucco decoration that possibly belonged to members of the economic elite.[3] A geomagnetic survey revealed a large rectangular building with a large courtyard near the town's northwest corner; this building was probably a mosque.[3] Excavation in the northeastern area uncovered a "series of abutting houses with courts, bathrooms, wells, cisterns, and nicely decorated walls".[3] There was a bathhouse with multicolored walls, which later got turned into a workshop, as well as two large cisterns connected to a canal that flowed through the town's northern gate.[3] Outside the walls, there was a structure that may have been a khan, possibly indicating that al-Jarud was a trade center of some sort.[3]

See also

References
  1. Heidemann, Stefan (2009). "Settlement Patterns, Economic Development and Archaeological Coin Finds in Bilad al-Sham: the Case of the Diyar Mudar - The Process of Transformation from the 6th to the 10th Century A.D." (PDF). Orient-Archäologie. 24: 493–516. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  2. Heidemann, Stefan (2011). "The Agricultural Hinterland of Baghdad, al-Raqqa and Samarra': Settlement Patterns in the Diyar Muḍar". In Borrut, A.; Debié, M.; Papaconstantinou, A.; Pieri, D.; Sodini, J.-P. (eds.). Le Proche-Orient de Justinien aux Abbasides: Peuplement et Dynamiques Spatiales. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers. ISBN 978-2-503-53572-2. Retrieved 20 March 2022.
  3. De Jong, Lidewijde (2012). "Resettling the Steppe: the archaeology of the Balikh Valley in the Early Islamic period". In Matthews, Roger; Curtis, John (eds.). Proceedings of the 7th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz. pp. 517–31. ISBN 978-3-447-06685-3. Retrieved 20 March 2022.

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