Qasr Amra
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How it came to be
Qusayr Amra stands in the desert of eastern Jordan beside the Wadi Butum, a seasonal watercourse. An inscription found in 2012 dates it to between 723 and 743 and names its builder as Walid ibn Yazid, who later became the Umayyad caliph Walid II. It served both as a garrison fort and as a retreat where the prince could relax.
The walls and ceilings of the audience hall and the bath are covered with paintings: hunting, dancing and craftsmen at work, and a scene of six kings that includes the Byzantine emperor, the Visigothic king Roderic, the Sasanian shah and the Negus of Ethiopia. The dome over the hot room shows the constellations and the zodiac, which UNESCO counts among the earliest surviving depictions of the heavens on a dome. UNESCO describes these paintings as unique in Umayyad architecture.
Alois Musil rediscovered the building in 1898. Between 1971 and 1974 the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid restored the paintings, but the shellac it applied later damaged them, and the University of Granada removed it in 1996. The site was inscribed in 1985.
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