Chapter Una probabile riproduzione omayyade del Santo Sepolcro di Gerusalemme

Abstract

The Jordan Archaeological Museum in ʿAmman houses an Islamic copper alloy incense burner, which can be dated to the late 7th or early 8th century according to its discovery (in the late 1940s) in an Umayyad dwelling in the ʿAmman Citadel in Jordan. It is one of the earliest Islamic examples of a metal incense burner in an architectural form, namely a shape that spread widely later in the Seljuk Iranian area. The hypothesis is put forward here that it is a rare Islamic 'reproduction' of the Anastasis rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem before its destruction in 1009 by the Fatimid al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh. An intended use is suggested as a “votive” object of Islamic (or even Christian?) manufacture intended for a Christian user in the eclectic milieu of the bilād al-shām of the Umayyad period.