ABSTRACT
The results of the excavations and surveys in Bilad al-Qadim indicate that different components of the Early and Middle Islamic town (eighth to fourteenth centuries), albeit disturbed and reworked, have survived. The structures which were investigated seemed to have been used for a variety of purposes; in the Al-Khamis mosque precincts enclosure for domestic purposes, but also for craft-production, and thus perhaps variously as housing, workshops, retail units and storage space. The other structural complex excavated, capped by the disused shrine was equally functionally multifaceted, with a putative ‘fort’, a palatial or rich merchants’ house, mosque, and shrine all represented. Moreover, these were not isolated units as the other archaeological ‘snapshots’ within Bilad al-Qadim indicate; the water channels, the wells such as Abu Zaydan, the ephemeral spreads of pottery in the dying plantations, the mounds, all indicate a complex archaeological landscape, which is as yet little understood, but which is rapidly disappearing as development proceeds apace.
