Lecture Summaries: 13 November, 2008

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JABAL HAROUN NEAR PETRA: 1000 YEARS OF RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE

by
Zbigniew T. Fiema
The Academy of Finland

The Jabal Haroun mountain, located ca. 5 km SW of Petra in southern Jordan, is the highest peak in the area, easily attracting attention and imagination. According to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions, the mountain is the burial location of Aaron, Moses’s brother. Since 1997, the Finnish Jabal Haroun Project has carried out the archaeological excavations of a Byzantine monastery located on the high plateau of the mountain. But the existence of the monastery exemplifies only a part of the whole spectrum of the religious significance accorded to the mountain since Nabataean times continuing well into the Islamic period.  The excavations revealed that initially, the site was occupied by a Nabataean “high place” sanctuary, a cistern, a triclinium and other rooms, all probably of the 1st century B.C./A.D. date. In the later 5th century, a monoapsidal basilica with adjacent chapel were built at the site, associated with several rooms, a hostel quarter and courtyards, forming a large enclosed rectangle.  Apparently, one of the religious phenomena associated with the rise of Early Christianity in the Near East - the transformation of a pagan cultic place into a sacred, Biblical location - had taken place at Jabal Haroun. The Byzantine monastic center which incorporated the earlier Nabataean remains, had a memorial character clearly associated with pilgrimages. The church was richly decorated with marble furnishings, glass wall mosaics and the mosaic floor in the narthex. The church and the chapel underwent several phases of remodelling, following episodes of destruction, probably of seismic nature. The ecclesiastical occupation of the church ended by the late 8th century and the chapel by the 9th but other structures were probably still in use by the Crusader period.