- Type
- Palace / château
- Origins
- 740 · 8th century per Wikidata: founding, first mention or construction
- Style
- Umayyad architecture
- Commissioned by
- Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik
- Coordinates
- 31.8819°, 35.4598°
History
The residence, also known as Khirbat al-Mafjar, was built in the 740s on the plain north of Jericho. Tradition attributes it to the Umayyad caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, though some scholars link it to his successor al-Walid II. The complex included a palace with a courtyard, a mosque and a grand bath hall with an audience room. An earthquake in 749 brought the buildings down, probably before they were finished. The ruins were excavated in the 1930s and 1940s by Dimitri Baramki and Robert Hamilton.
What to see
The highlight is the great bath hall, whose mosaic floor covers more than 800 square metres; since 2021 it has been protected by a roof, so it can be seen in full. The small audience room keeps the Tree of Life mosaic. Visitors also see the palace courtyard with a reconstructed stone rosette window, while some of the stucco work is in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.
Wikipedia article Wikidata Q2456319
Popularity: articles about this site in 19 Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia language editions and others).