Mamluk-Era burial discovery in Black Desert: Delving into 14th-Century Rituals and Practices

AMMAN — The researchers who worked in the Black Desert found poorly preserved skeletal remains of a human, who apparently had been buried in one of the structures at Jabel Qurma. 

“The skeletal elements included several small cranial parts, four incisor teeth, as well as fragments of a radius, a (right) mandible, a (right) carpal bone, a phalanx, and two ribs,” noted Merel Bruning from Leiden University. Bruning is a research assistant for Landscape of Survival Project led by Professor Peter Akkermans from Leiden University.

“The few bones seem to belong to a single adult person, but the high degree of fragmentation does not allow for further detail,” said Akkerman, adding that two bone fragments were radiocarbon-dated and indicated that the adult person was interred somewhere in the 14th century AD, during the Mamluk period. 

“Significantly, it seems that the deceased person bore a colourful necklace made of stone, faience, shell and bronze. Our field surveys have yielded substantial evidence for Mamluk presence in the Jabel Qurma region, in the form of camp sites, so-called desert mosques and other places of religious significance, characterised by one or more inscriptions on stone," Akkermans elaborated, noting that the regular occurrence of hijri dates in the inscriptions confirm the date of these sites within the 14th century.

Contemporary graves, however, are still rare: In addition to the burial at QUR-595, two other Mamluk-period graves have been located at present in the Jebel Qurma region One comes from the site of QUR-829, in the form of an inhumation in a stone-lined pit; and another comes from the site of QUR-148, where a tower tomb of the late first millennium BC appears to have been re-used for burial in the Mamluk period. .

"Contrary to the burial at QUR-595, these graves provided no evidence for the presence of [Mamluk-period] items that were worn on the body such as beads or clasps, nor for burial gifts. Interestingly, together with the human remains at QUR-595, there were also a few skeletal parts of a single adult camel [Camelus dromedarus]," said Bruning, adding that these comprised seven phalanges and the fragments of teeth, a calcaneus, a talus, a humerus, a femur, a metatarsal/carpal, and several tarsal bones.

Furthermore, the phalanges show traces of exostosis (benign growths of bone extending outwards from the surface of the phalanges) on the lateral and medial side of the shaft. None of the bones had cut marks, indicating that they were not waste material or the result of slaughter for dietary purposes. 

"Although the camel bones have not yet been radiocarbon-dated, it is highly tempting to associate them with the 14th-century human remains at the site," Bruning said, noting that if so, they may represent a baliya sacrifice – the offering of an animal (usually a camel) for the deceased individual to use in the afterlife.

 Several other burial cairns in the Jebel Qurma area, unfortunately all plundered and as yet undated, contained camel bones in the looting debris, and may perhaps represent similar baliya rituals. 

"Excavations in the Arabian Peninsula have made clear that the practice of baliya was common in pre-Islamic Arabia and persisted well into the early Islamic period, as late as the Abbasid times. However, our current data from Jebel Qurma suggest the continuation of the baliya immolation in north-eastern Jordan into even much later periods, into the Mamluk era of the 14th century AD," Bruning underlined.

While the baliya habit is formally prohibited by Islam, it appears to have lingered for 800 years or so after the advent of the Muslim faith. 

“However, it is important to note that we should not consider this persistence as a sign of local ignorance or any kind of deep conservatism because of the area’s remoteness from Islamic centres. The Mamluk-period religious installations in the Jabel Qurma area and the many inscriptions in the form of prayers testify to the full adherence of the local population to the Islamic religion,” Akkermans emphasised, adding that because of the considerable damage done to the site by modern looting, virtually none of the human and animal skeletal remains were found in situ; hence, it remains difficult to precisely identify their place of burial. 

"However, it can be safely assumed that the original burials did not take place in stone-built cairns that are several metres across, which are quite common in the Jabel Qurma area," Akkermans said, adding that the amount of basalt rocks in and around the installations at QUR-595 is simply too small to allow for any (substantial) mound of stone. 

"We must therefore conclude that the burials were true inhumations, in the sense of burial pits dug into the ground. If we take into account their size, depth, and orientation, the looting pits, from which the skeletal remains must have come, suggest two places suited for burial: one in Structure A and another in Structure B.," Bruning underscored, noting that although the contours of Structure A were cut by a looter’s pit, it seems to comprise a roughly rectangular pit, about 2.5 m long, 1 m wide and 0.8 m deep. 

There was a small human cranial fragment still in it, presumably in situ in the soil at the very base of the pit. This pit, we believe, contained the human interment, the more so because of its roughly east-west orientation, in agreement with Islamic burial custom in the region. The looting pit in the neighbouring Structure B is much larger and much more irregular in shape and depth, and originally probably contained the camel burial, scholars explained, adding that it extends in the shape of a crescent over a length of about 4 m along the southern and eastern interior façade of the structure.