QASR AMRA

Qusayr Amra was a fortress commissioned by Prince Walid ibn Yazid, better known as Caliph Walid II. Although his reign was short-lived, from 743 to 744, he left his mark on the Umayyad dynasty. The castle was probably built between 730 and 740 and served as a garrison as well as a palatial residence dedicated to the pleasures of the princes.

The audience hall. Built according to a plan with three naves with barrel vaults, it is reminiscent of Byzantine architecture. There is an alcove in the central nave and two rooms in the side naves which probably served as private audience rooms. The reception rooms are connected by a door to a bathhouse, a Roman legacy much appreciated by the Arabs. The interior of the first room included a checkroom under the central alcove(apodyterium) and a cold bath(frigidarium). The second room was dedicated to warm baths(tepidarium) and the third room was the hot room(caldarium). Outside the baths, you will see the hydraulic system that allowed the water to be conveyed: composed of a cistern and a very deep well of about 15 m, surrounded by a circle of more than 6 m in diameter dug into the ground. This circle must have corresponded to the route followed by the beast of burden (a camel or a donkey) attached to a wheel, which was used to bring up the water from the well.

The walls, floor and ceilings are covered with marble and frescoes, with scenes of hunting and daily life, in which more than 250 Byzantine-inspired figures appear. Many of them are isolated in black square frames as in some Roman, Byzantine and Western manuscripts of the medieval period. They represent warriors, musicians, stone cutters, dancers, architects and... naked women taking a bath. These last drawings are quite exceptional in Islamic art, which does not allow human representations, and even less so of women in Eve's clothing. It seems that Al-Walid was a true art lover and, above all, a very liberal man for his time.

The fresco of the Kings. This is the most famous fresco on the site, but it has been heavily degraded. It shows the Umayyad caliph wearing his headdress as on Iranian coins, surrounded by the other great rulers of the time. The Arabic and Greek inscriptions allow us to identify the emperor of Byzantium, the Visigoth Roderick, the Persian emperor Khosroes and the Negus of Abyssinia. The emperor of China and the Turkish khaqan are also present. The figure of Roderick, who died in 711, is an indication that allows the construction of the site to be dated. The influence of pre-Islamic Iran is both iconographic and stylistic: the representation of royal figures recalls the Sassanid custom of portraits of the royal lineage, as does the disappearance of the bodies behind the decorative mass of costumes. The kings seem to pledge their allegiance to the Muslim ruler, differentiating the fresco from other decorative ornaments; the aim here is to assert the power of the Muslim ruler over his rivals.

The other frescoes of the audience room. The prince and his throne in the central alcove of the audience hall seem to be inspired by Byzantine art and also symbolize Umayyad power. The architectural throne and the two lateral figures are comparable to the representations in Syriac manuscripts. In the apse of the audience hall, a reclining figure under a sheet is observed by a cherub and a figure of Eros. Another scene presents wrestlers in ancient style. To their left, a fight between a lion and a gazelle evokes that of Khirbat al-Mafjar in Jericho. In the same room, a primrose hunt evokes Roman mosaics but also the favorite activity of the Sassanian king Bahrâm Gûr. The large scene on the southeast side of the audience hall shows a female figure reminiscent of the Greek Aphrodite in front of a rectangular pool. Women watch her from a balcony, hidden behind an openwork fence.

The frescoes of the baths. In the hot room, naked female figures are accompanied by children. The style adopted for the figurative representations owes much to other artistic centers of the Mediterranean world. The opulent nude women with their bodies surrounded by brown are reminiscent of Coptic art. Their elaborate hairstyles are reminiscent of Palmyrene representations. The small round faces with large eyes recall Parthian, Sassanid and Coptic art.

The dome of the caldarium is also richly decorated with an astrological sky, with the signs of the zodiac from Greco-Roman mythology. They were probably copied from an ancient globe. The first known representation of the sky in Islamic art, this decoration reflects the taste of Muslim scientists for this subject, which was one of their main fields of research and led to the creation of observatories, astronomical manuscripts, astrolabes... This decoration can be compared to illustrations from the Treatise on Fixed Stars (1009). The constellations are personified, as on the ancient models. In 2017, the Italian renovation institute Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione e il Restauro took over the renovation of the castle's wall paintings.