Sites et monuments disparus les tdmoinages de voyageurs.

• Author: TABBAA, YASSER
• Position: Review

Sites et monuments disparus les tdmoinages de voyageurs. Edited by RIKA GYSELEN. Res orientales, vol. 8. Bures-sur-Yvette: GROUPE POUR L'dTUDE DE LA CIVILIZATION DU MOYEN-ORIENT, 1996. Pp. 205.

This important volume contains twelve studies that use travelers' accounts in order to reconstruct the physical appearance or commemorative associations of archaeological sites or monuments. Written in French (eight) and English (four), these studies highlight the excellent archaeological and geographical work that is currently being done by French and other European scholars. They cover a considerable historical and geographical span, ranging from the fifth century B.C. to the early twentieth century and from Spain to the Indian subcontinent. Three deal with pre-Islamic sites and the remaining nine examine materials from the medieval and post-medieval periods. Three deal with Spain and the Maghreb; five discuss Middle Eastern sites; three examine Iran and Central Asia; and one deals with the Indus valley.

Overall, these studies juxtapose original documents or new interpretations of published documents with archaeological remains in order to aid in the identification of a site or in reconstructing its original appearance, its history of transformation, and its original or later associations. The relationship between text and site, or narrative and archaeology, is rarely straightforward or unproblematic, and the authors expend considerable effort in exploring the divergence between the two realms of evidence. Nearly all shun an uncritical or positivistic understanding of the travelers' accounts, proposing instead that these descriptions were colored by the authors' biases and intellectual constitutions and by the modes and models of explanation prevailing in their respective periods. The problem is most coherently addressed in Sanjyot Mehendale's "Begram and the Reexamination of 1-Isuan-tsang's Kapisa," which sets out to dispute the seventh-century Chinese traveler's identification of Begram as Kapisi, the capi tal of the Kushan emperors. Mehendale argues that despite the overall authenticity of Hsuantsang's account, its vision was indelibly colored by the traveler's primary interest in Buddhism and his general disregard for regional histories. He further argues that the archaeology conducted on this site was itself tainted by an uncritical acceptance of Hsuan-tsang's faulty identification, which it attempted to reinforce rather than question.

Even...