[Reader-list] SBAH in Samarra attacked and looted

[yasir ~]

[fwd from H-ISLAMART at h-net.msu.edu]


Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 23:13:08 +0200
From: Alastair Northedge <anorthedge at wanadoo.fr>

A letter was leaked today from the SBAH (State
Board of Antiquities and Heritage) in Baghdad
that on the 20th May, the SBAH Inspectorate in
Samarra was attacked and looted. If I understand
the Arabic correctly, the vehicles and equipment
were stolen and the buildings blown up. There
are, or were, two SBAH buildings in Samarra: the
dig house opposite to the Spiral Minaret
(al-Malwiya), and the museum, located in the
Baghdad Gate of the Old City. The mention of
vehicles shows that it is the dig house that was attacked.

In my time in Samarra, excavation finds,
certainly of the Western excavations, were stored
in the museum. We do not have any reports about
the survival of this building. The plans and
archives of the Iraqi excavations of Samarra
since 1980 were stored in the dig house, and must
be presumed to have been lost. In principle,
according to the rules of SBAH, copies (or
originals) of the major records were sent to
Baghdad. However minor records, such as the
excavation notebooks, may not have been transfered.

I should mention that, with the authorisation of
SBAH, I was able to copy a substantial proportion
of the excavation plans, for my overall study of
the archaeology of Samarra. The first volume, the
Historical Topography of Samarra, was published
in 2006. The second volume, the Archaeological
Atlas of Samarra, to be published by the British
School of Archaeology in Iraq in the near future, summarises the excavations.

--
Alastair Northedge
Professeur d'Art et d'Archéologie Islamiques
UFR d'Art et d'Archéologie
Université de Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne)
3, rue Michelet,
75006 Paris
tél. 01 53 73 71 08
télécopie : 01 53 73 71 13
Email : Alastair.Northedge at univ-paris1.fr ou anorthedge at wanadoo.fr