16 April 2025; updated 17 April 2025
Alois Musil (1864–1944) was a Czech explorer who travelled extensively in the Middle East from 1895 to 1917, including southern Jordan and the Negev between 1896 and 1902, just after the Ottomans reestablished government control of the region in 1894. He was the first explorer to travel systematically in southern Jordan and record archaeological sites and geographical features. He is best known for his discovery of Quseir ‘Amra in 1898.
He published the results of his travels in southern Jordan and the Negev in three volumes titled Arabia Petraea in 1907-1908. Because those volumes were written in German, they have been neglected, especially his ethnographic travel report. He immersed himself more deeply into the local culture than other explorers and he documented the first extensive corpus of Arabic poetry and music in Jordan.The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session.
The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session.
Date: May 6, 2025
Time: 6:00 p.m. Amman Time (11:00 a.m. EDT)
Place: American Center of Research, Amman (click for directions)
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82345476587?pwd=0bFedtwJ9BotdIBjHRyJLe8U1e2wEh.1
Webinar ID: 846 5648 2394
Passcode: 752987
YouTube livestream: https://www.youtube.com/@ACORJordan1968/streams
About the Speaker:
Dr. Robert Schick is an independent scholar who has devoted the bulk of his academic career to the history and archaeology of Jordan in the Late Roman to Islamic periods, with a focus on southern Jordan, with a second interest in the Islamic sites and monuments of Jerusalem. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1987 with a study on the Christian communities in Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic rule, and he has participated in numerous seasons of excavations in Jordan since 1980. He is a freelance translator of scholarly literature from German and Arabic into English, including the eight German volumes by Gustaf Dalman about Palestinian folk customs written a hundred years ago. He taught archaeology courses at the Palestinian al-Quds University and Bir Zeit University between 1995 and 1998, and he taught Islamic Studies in Hyderabad, India, from 2000 to 2006. He was based at the University of Mainz from 2014 to 2019.
