Qasr al Abd

About Qasr al Abd

Qasr al-Abd is a large Hellenistic palace from the first quarter of the second century BCE. Most scholars agree it was built by the Tobiads, a notable Jewish family of the Second Temple period, although the descriptions doesn't mention that. Its ruins stand in modern-day Jordan in the valley of Wadi Seer, close to the village of Iraq al-Amir, approximately 17 kilometers west of Amman.

Qasr al-Abd is a rare Hellenistic palace standing among the orchards of Wadi Seer in the village of Iraq al-Amir, about 17 km west of Amman, and one of the very few Hellenistic buildings surviving anywhere in the Levant. It was built around 200–175 BC by Hyrcanus, a leading member of the Tobiad family that then governed the Amman region, after he left Al-Quds following a family quarrel, as the historian Josephus relates; he described the palace, the "animals of prodigious magnitude" carved on it and its water system. The building was never finished, since Hyrcanus died in 175 BC. The palace measures about 40 by 20 m and stands 13 m high on two storeys, built of huge limestone blocks up to seven metres long, which is why local legend credited it to a giant "slave" (abd). Its facades carry reliefs of lions, panthers and other animals, some of which served as fountains, and it was surrounded by an artificial pool that mirrored it as if it floated on water. The earthquake of 363 brought part of it down, but its reuse as a Byzantine church preserved both storeys. A French team under the archaeologist Ernest Will and the architect François Larché restored it and re-set its stones between 1979 and 1985, and the site was improved in 2018. A few minutes away are the Iraq al-Amir caves cut into the cliff, one of them inscribed with the name "Tobiah".

Where:

Amman, Jordan