Pearl of the Desert

A History of Palmyra

Rubina Raja

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English

Oxford University Press
24 October 2020

History; Middle Eastern history; Ancient history: to c 500 CE

Palmyra has long attracted the attention of the world. Well before its rediscovery in the seventeenth century, the ancient city gained legendary status because of its Queen Zenobia, who in the third century CE rebelled against Rome and expanded Palmyra's territory into what is now modern Turkey and Egypt. Even though Zenobia's empire was a fairly short interlude and the Romans struck back hard, devastating the city, her path to imperial power was one which tells us much about Palmyrene identity in the period before the defeat. While Zenobia has gained renewed interest among both scholars and the press, and while she has served as a political symbol for Syria's president Assad--a statue of her was recently erected in Damascus--the time leading up to her reign still remains underexplored.Â

Pearl of the Desert is the most comprehensive history of this fabled ancient city in English. Assimilating the rich archaeological and literary evidence, Rubina Raja unfolds the story chronologically, from the earliest evidence of settlement in the Bronze Age to Palmyra's rise as an urban center in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods, its destruction by Rome in 273 CE, and its survival in the Byzantine and medieval Islamic periods. The book ends with a discussion of Palmyra's modern rediscovery and, more recently, its chaotic misfortunes during the Syrian civil war when it was used as a symbol of, alternately, the resistance of the rebels, the power of ISIS, and the supremacy of the Syrian state. After several years of destruction and looting, securing of the site has begun as well as planning for its restoration. At this turning point in Palmyra's long history, there is no better time to assess the past, present, and future of this remarkable city.

By: Rubina Raja
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 152mm, Width: 229mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780190852221
ISBN 10: 0190852224
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 24 October 2020
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Rubina Raja holds the chair of Classical Archaeology at Aarhus University and is director of the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre for Urban Network Evolutions. She is also the director of the Palmyra Portrait Project, which she initiated in 2012.

Reviews for Pearl of the Desert: A History of Palmyra

Raja's account of Palmyrene history studies the city's glorious civilization of the first three centuries of our era in the context of the site's earlier settlement and especially of its later reception and also of the tragic events which occurred in Syria over the last decennium. The book is a vital contribution to the ongoing debates about Palmyra's place within multiple social, cultural, and political networks of the ancient world. * Ted Kaizer, Durham University * Raja's tightly-researched narrative makes Palmyra's people and their desert city stand out in vivid intercultural colors. * Bert Smith, University of Oxford *