Baalbek, Inscription. XXIX
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Herzfeld, Ernst, 1879-1948
setName: label: See more items in
content: Ernst Herzfeld Papers
label: See more items in
content: Ernst Herzfeld Papers / Series 4: Photographic Files / 4.14: Photo File 14: "Syria: Architecture & Inscriptions" / 4.14.1: Vol. 1
container: label: Container
content: Item Print 147
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Photographs
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents note
content: Print corresponds to negative number 3534.
label: Scope and Contents
content: Baalbeck (Lebanon):Umayyad Mosque within the Citadel: View of Arabic Inscription No. XXIX, in Naskhi Mameluke Script. 1899-1914. 13 cm. x 18 cm. As early as 1893, Ernst Herzfeld, Moritz Sobernheim, and Max Freiherr von Oppenheim participated in Max Van Berchem's project to create a Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum. During the following 25 years, research materials such as glass negatives, photographic prints, drawings, maps, and notebooks were circulating among the four archaeologists. In the case of this glass negative, it may have been taken by Moritz Sobernheim on a visit to Baalbeck between 1899 and 1905, as mentioned in his 1922 publication, "Baalbek in Islamischer Zeit, in Voradruck aus dem Werke: Baalbek, Ergebnisse der Aus rabungen und Unterschungen in den Jahren 1898 bis 1905, Vol. 3." Handwritten notes accompanying related print in photo file 14, vol. 2 reads, "Baalb. XXIX."

Additional information from staff reads, "Under the Ayyubids (1175-1250) and the Mamluks (1279-1516), Baalbek witnessed a revival of its political and economic role. To defend the city from crusader attacks, the Ayyubids built a citadel on the site of the temples of Jupiter and Bacchus, which continued to be used during the Mamluk period. Of this citadel and the town that existed within, the fortification wall, a gate, the towers and a mosque remain. Outside the fortified citadel, the old Shiite Mosque, the great and the small Ras al-Ain Mosques, Qubbat al-Amjad, Qubbat Douris and Qubbat as-Saadin were constructed." Additional information from Staff reads, "Glass negative is missing." 

Cited in: Sobernheim, Moritz: "'Baalbek in Islamischer Zeit', in Voradruck aus dem Werke: Baalbek, Ergebnisse der Aus rabungen und Unterschungen in den Jahren 1898 bis 1905, Vol. 3. Berlin, 1922, Druck der Vereinigung Wissenschaftlicher Verleger, Walter De Gruyter & Co; p.31."