“Castle of the Slave”—Mystery Solved

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One of the most dramatic archaeological monuments in Jordan—an admittedly Jewish one—has been repeatedly misidentified. French historian Ernest Will called it the “Finest Hellenistic monument in the Near East”1 and considered it a château.2 The structure is known locally as Qasr al-Abd, or “Castle of the Slave (or Servant).” It is part of a 75-acre estate called Airaq al-Amir (also spelled ‘Iraq el-Emir), lying 12 miles southwest of the Jordanian capital, Amman. The site was entered via a monumental gateway, much of which remains in a ruined state and hidden by undergrowth.3 The glory of the site, however, is […]

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Footnotes

Ehud Netzer, “In Search of Herod’s Tomb” and Hershel Shanks, “Ehud Netzer (1934–2010)”, BAR, 37:01.

Ehud Netzer, “Floating in the Desert,” Archaeology Odyssey 02:01.

Geoffrey B. Waywell and Andrea Berlin, “Monumental Tombs from Maussollos to the Maccabees,” BAR, 33:03.

Waywell and Berlin, “Monumental Tombs from Maussollos to the Maccabees,” BAR, 33:03.

See Hershel Shanks, “Inscription Reveals Roots of Maccabean Revolt,” BAR, 34:06.

Endnotes

Ernest Will, “Un Monument Hellenistique en Jordanie: Le Qasr el-abd d’Iraq al-Amir,” in Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 1 (1982), pp. 197–200.

E. Will and F. Larché, Iraq al-Amir: Le Chateau du Tobiade Hyrcan, vol. 1 (Paris: Guethner, 1991).

It stands to the southeast of Qasr al-Abd, at the east end of the massive retaining wall around the “lake.” Today the site is entered from the north by road from Amman.

Stephen G. Rosenberg, Airaq al-Amir: The Architecture of the Tobiads (Oxford: John and Erica Hedges, 2006), fig. 9 and p. 191.

Benjamin Mazar, “The Tobiads,” Israel Exploration Journal 7 (1957), pp. 137–145, 229–238.

Josephus, Antiquities 12.230–231.

Theodor Noeldeke, “Bemerkungen,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 19 (1865), pp. 637–641.

Charles L. Irby and James Mangles, Travels in Egypt and Nubia, Syria and Asia Minor During the Years 1817 and 1818 (London: T. White, 1823; reprinted by Darf, 1985), pp. 473–474.

Félicien de Saulcy, Voyage en Terre Sainte, vol. 1 (Paris: Librairie Académique, 1865), pp. 211–224.

10.

H.C. Butler, Ancient Architecture in Syria, Division II, Princeton University Archaeological Expedition in Syria 1904–1905 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1907), pp. 17–18.

11.

Paul W. Lapp, “The Second and Third Campaigns at Araq el-Emir,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 171 (1963), pp. 30–31.

12.

Ernest Will, “Recent Work at Araq el-Emir: The Qasr el-Abd Rediscovered” Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 47 (1983), pp. 149–154.

13.

De Saulcy, Voyage en Terre Sainte, pp. 211–224.

14.

Claude R. Conder, The Survey of Eastern Palestine, vol. 1 (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1889), pp. 65–87.

15.

Janos Fedak, Monumental Tombs of the Hellenistic Age (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), p. 66.

16.

Josephus, Antiquities 12.230; 13.210–211.

17.

For Halicarnassus and Cnidos, see Arnold W. Lawrence, Greek Architecture (Middlesex, England: Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 253 and 255; for Belevi, see Theodore Fyfe, Hellenistic Architecture: An Introductory Study (Cambridge, UK: University Press, 1936), p. 52; for Xanthos, see Fedak, Monumental Tombs, pp. 296–297.

18.

Cassius Dio, Roman History 56.42.

19.

De Saulcy, Voyage en Terre Sainte, p. 225.