Khirbat al-Minya: Der Umayyadenpalast am See Genezareth

To this day, Arab and Greek writers of the 9th/10th cent. have been shaping our image of the infancy of Islam. However, it is very difficult to attest their postulated militant incursions in the archaeological evidence, so that the model of invasion is increasingly being replaced by one of transformation. This also becomes clear from the present conference volume of a meeting held in Berlin in 2011 on the 8th-cent. palace at Khirbat al-Minya in Israel, which has been excavated since the 1930s. It contains a foreword, seven articles, a bibliography, and a list of authors. The papers deal with a survey of the geoarchaeology of its surroundings conducted by Mainz University [Schneider e. g.], dated evidence of landscape change from Hellenistic to Early Islamic times in the same area [Kuhnen], text, usage, and visual form of Umayyad foundation inscriptions [Ritter], the geographical conditions of the Sea of Galilee/Lake Tiberias in Islamic times [Zwickel], the two long-lived Umayyad sites of Tiberias and Khirbat al-Minya on its western shore [Cytryn], Early Islamic rural settlements in Jordan [Häser], and the settlement history at Lake Tiberias in the Islamic Period [Bloch].