The caliph's palace of Khirbat al-Minya was built on the shores of the Sea of the Sea with the help of a team from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. There was a Christian or Jewish settlement in the vicinity before the palace was built.
The most recent undertakings in the area around the early Islamic caliph's palace in Israel have yielded a lot of information. The team of archaeologists from Mainz used geomagnetic methods to make the discovery. They discovered that the building of the caliph's palace was built on greenfield land on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, not as previously thought, but adjacent to and respectfully.
The purpose of the research project was to train students in archeology. The site of the excavations on the Sea of Galilee has been owned by the German Association of the Holy Land since 1895.
The Mainz archaeological team found stone structures made of basalt dating to different periods, with plastered walls and colorful mosaic floors. The plants depicted in one of the mosaics have long, curved stems similar to those depicted in Nile-scene mosaics from the 5th to 6th century. The life-giving power of the Nile river was symbolized by the mosaic's images of the flora and fauna native to the Nile valley. That is the reason why luxurious dwellings in cities of late antiquity were decorated with Nile- scene mosaics.
The caliph's palace was planned a long time ago.
The settlement on the shores of the lake was already thriving hundreds of years before the work on the caliph's palace began. The original inhabitants were either Christians or Jews, and they were joined by a small Islamic community so that they could access the palace mosque. The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates ruled the site from the 7th to the 11th century.
During this time, parts of the mosaics fell victim to pickaxes and sections of old walls were torn down to make way for new construction. The Muslim custom was for the dead to be buried in a graveyard with their faces pointed towards Mecca.
The stone built furnace was exposed by the Mainz team. Sugar cane was one of the top agricultural exports of the Holy Land from the early Middle Ages, but large amounts of water and wood were required to cultivate it. By the 20th century, the area around the lake had not fully recovered from the soil erosion and environmental disaster caused by it. Excavations at the Caliph's Palace from 1936 to 1939 and those in 2016 found evidence of dozens of such furnaces in operation during the 12th century.
Caliph Walid's palace was built on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in an area that had been inhabited for many years. It was here that the cultivation of sugar cane caused lasting damage to the environment.
The settlement next to the caliph's palace has been brought to the attention of the public thanks to our research. During its lifetime, it experienced alternating periods of innovation and decline, but there was no real change to its existence.
Where to dig was shown inmagnetic surface surveys.
The Mainz-based team was able to locate the historic hotspot with its test pits because of the results of the surface surveys conducted on-site. The technology uses magnetic sensors to detect and map small variations in the Earth's magnetic field caused by soil changes. This makes it possible for archaeologists to predict the course of walls and flooring without using a spade. To date the potential structures, archaeologists need to dig targeted test pits, as did the team from the Department of Ancient Studies at JGU.
The team had to wait three years before they were able to see what was waiting for them because of the coronaviruses. They were richly rewarded for their hard work.
It was our prior scans that gave us an idea of what we were likely to find. The results of our excavations have been what we were hoping for. The current excavations on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, which will continue next year, show that combining these two methods of investigation is the future of our discipline.
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