Max van Berchem
إِذا المَرءُ لَم يُدنَس مِنَ اللُؤمِ عِرضُهُ
فَكُلُّ رِداءٍ يَرتَديهِ جَميلُ
There is no question that we owe thanks, gratitude and admiration to Max van Berchem; for he is, without a doubt, the pioneer and founder of the scholarly field of the study of Arabic epigraphy. He created the method according to which Arabic inscriptions should be studied in context, that is to say against their historical, geographical, cultural, linguistic, and paleographical background. His masterpieces Matériaux pour un Corpus Incriptionum Arabicarum (MCIA) on Egypt and Jerusalem are pure demonstrations of what scholarship should be. The staggering number of inscriptions which he recorded and published is amazing, particularly if one takes into consideration that he died at the age of 58. He aimed high, because he regarded the material for the MCIA as part of a grand project of collecting and publishing all the inscriptions found in the Arab, and probably the Islamic world. He felt that these monuments are continually exposed to destruction.
In addition to his three massive volumes of the MCIA, he published many more inscriptions which he collected during his travels in the Middle East and Asia Minor. These studies were collected and re-published in the two volumes of the Opera Minora by the Fondation Max van Berchem with an excellent index composed by Professor Charles Genequand (Edition Slatkine, Geneva, 1978). Many records of inscriptions collected by van Berchem are preserved in the archives of the Fondation. These include the beginnings of studies on sheets of papers in his handwriting, usually the reading of the inscriptions and their description copied from the carnet, which he used on the spot, and some preliminary notes. The inscriptions themselves were recorded according to three methods: hand copy by van Berchem, photocopy when one of these 19th century early cameras was available, and mainly squeezes (estampage, abklatsch). Getting near an inscription in order to prepare a squeeze put van Berchem many times in real danger, when he had to climb, unprotected in any way, on very long ladders between six to twelve-metres-long as we see in the attached photograph taken in 1914. We see him after climbing to the top end of the long ladder, in order to take a squeeze of an inscription high on the north wall of the Ḥaram. There are a few people standing near the bottom of the ladder engaged in conversation; none of them, except for the curious children, seem to pay attention to the Franjī on top, and nobody holds the ladder which could easily collapse to one side. As for van Berchem, half his body is hanging out to the right and both hands are busy sticking the wet squeeze paper onto the inscription.
Max van Berchem on a ladder
In one case, according to his testimony, he wanted to examine the rafters on the roof of the octagon of the Dome of the Rock when the place was in darkness, about 10 to 12 metres above the ground, and he had to jump over the wide space between the rafters. It was a miracle, he says, that he managed not to fall, probably to his death. (See below no. 36.) When he wanted to examine the long inscription in the Dome of the Rock from the outer ambulatory, he climbed a 12-meter ladder again without any support or minimal safety device. The danger was always there, whether in Jerusalem, in Cairo or in other parts of Syria, because most of the inscriptions he recorded on squeezes needed physical contact between the hands of the squeeze maker and the inscription. Many of these inscriptions were at a great height and a good ladder was very rare. The squeezes are stored in the MvB archives in Geneva. For many years I have been working on these squeezes, registering them and attaching an initial reading and identification to each one. The first eighty squeezes were published in an addendum to the CIAP in 2007. The rest of the squeezes are stored electronically and can easily be traced according to the running number which appears in red on each squeeze. The amount of material left in van Berchem’s files and squeezes is stunning and had he lived longer there is no question that all this material would have been published according to his original vision of the universal corpus of Arabic inscriptions.
His daughter Marguerite Gautier van Berchem composed a short biography of her father based on his memoires and documents, particularly his letters to his mother covering the period from 1871 to 1910. (Marguerite Gautier-van Berchem et Solange Ory, La Jérusalem Musulmane dans l’oeuvre de Max van Berchem. Lausanne, Editions de Trois Continents 1978: 15–23). In homage to this great scholar I feel that I should pay him a debt of honour and introduce this volume of the CIAP on Jerusalem with a summary of his biography.
He was born in Geneva on March 16 1863. In 1877 when he was thirteen years old he entered a gymnasium in Stuttgart, and two years later, after graduating, he went to Leipzig, at that time the great centre of oriental studies, where he received his doctorate maxima cum laude in March 1886, at the age of 23. Afterwards we meet him in the universities of Strasbourg and Berlin impressing the scholars there and particularly his patron Edward Sachau. The trend in oriental studies at the time was the history and archeology of the Arabic civilization to which he decided to dedicate himself, once he had acquired perfect knowledge of Arabic. At the end of that same year, 1886, and accompanied by his mother, the young scholar travelled to Egypt, and there for the first time he came into contact with the treasures that Cairo could offer. This was the beginning of his career on the ground. The diary of his mother notes day by day the work of her son. It was then that he decided to study Arabic epigraphy. When they returned to Europe in 1887, the idea of the large project of the Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum was already born in his mind. At the beginning of 1888 he arrived again in Cairo with his brother Victor to prepare his trip to Syria. After lengthy preparations, on 23 March 1888 they departed by train to Ismailiyah and thereafter to Port Sa’id on their way to Syria. An Egyptian dragoman, efficient and loyal, looked after the logistics of this trip which, in addition to the recorded inscriptions, supplied the material for his future two-volume book describing his Syrian adventure, the main material for which he collected many years later. (see below). From Port Sa’id, van Berchem’s company boarded a French boat to Jaffa and on the 26 of March they were on their way to Jerusalem. On 29 March, the van Berchem brothers arrived in Jerusalem. He described his first encounter with the Holy City in a letter to his mother which he wrote “sous les murs de Jérusalem” on that same day. “I am writing this letter to you not knowing when it will reach you. We made a contract for 45 days with a good dragoman called Daibas Fadoul, who was charged with furnishing us with everything for the voyage: tents, food, beds, canteen, a cook, beasts of burden and for riding etc., for 200 francs a day that is to say 50 francs per head.” (They were four Europeans in the caravan: Max, Victor and two Venetian gentlemen). It is interesting to learn about the company that was involved, showing how complicated it was at the time to embark on such a trip. “Our caravan was composed of 20 mules for baggage and encampment, 7 to 8 horses, we four, the dragoman, one cook, and one domestic aid to the cook, another domestic, and the leaders of the beasts of burden.” At the age of twenty-five (picture above on the left) he saw Jerusalem for the first time. Initially, when he first saw its walls he was disappointed, which he later regretted. The man who thereafter dedicated most his life to Jerusalem, left for us the following description of the city in the same letter to his mother, the beginning of which I quoted above. “We encamped in the place in which the Crusaders camped for the first time … Yesterday and today (Thursday) we saw the city: the Ḥaram ash-Shérif, Mosque of al-Aksa, on the site of the old Temple, the Holy Sepulchre, the ruins of the Hospital of St. John, the city walls, the Kidron, the Hinnom, Siloa, the tombs, the citadel. What can I tell you about Jerusalem?… I saw things that are very beautiful, but nothing very striking. Its streets are narrow, winding uphill. Its houses all built with stone, tattered, full of picturesque recesses bestriding the streets on somber arcades. It is a mixture of all the styles, of all times, the souvenirs of Jews, Greeks, Romans, Christians, Muslims. The churches of the Middle Ages next to the mosque; all this encircled by a great wall of stones perched on a mountain between two deep ravines with the background of blue mountains: the sky of Italy and a sun of the orient. In the streets one meets all the nations, people who came from all corners of the world united here by the same religious thinking (dans une méme penseée religiouse) but separated by manners and ideas.”
Further on van Berchem enumerates all the non-Muslim religious communities in Jerusalem according to the quarters in which they live. The Christians: Greek (Orthodox), Latin (Catholics), Armenian, and the Jews who keep to themselves in their southern quarter and are recognized by their headgear and sidelocks. This first meeting with Jerusalem was short but it gave van Berchem the opportunity to get acquainted with the city and its monuments. He copied and registered some inscriptions and photographed a few on glass negatives, before he left the city. The caravan quitted Jerusalem after touring its environment and reached Damascus on 24 May 1888 after three weeks of riding through Syria. He left a very vivid description of the route and the inhabitants whom he met on the way, in a letter to his mother. Once in Damascus he described the city and its monuments in great detail. He also drew a plan of the city, thus giving us a good idea of the Syrian capital in that period.
Between 1889 to 1890, van Berchem concentrated on Egypt where he travelled frequently. In 1891 at the age of 28 he got married to Elizabeth de Saugy and in 1892 the young couple travelled to Cairo where they spent the winter. In that same year, having been three times in the orient and collecting a large amount of epigraphic and other material, van Berchem issued an alarming call to the scholars of the world: “The Muslim monuments are neglected, their ruins, still magnificent, soon will be but vestiges of their glorious artistic past. Their historical inscriptions will disappear. They should all be surveyed, all the texts engraved on mosques, tombstones, caravanserais, madrasas, the castles and the bridges. (There is a need) to photograph the monuments, explore all the Muslim regions, study all the mobile objects which adorn museums or are in private collections and publish these texts systematically in a fashion that will provide a lively commentary on the Muslim institutions.”
On 2 March 1893 van Berchem and his wife embarked in Alexandria for Jaffa. They spent some time in Ramlah, where he collected many inscriptions, and continued from there to Jerusalem, this time by the newly built railway which connected Jaffa with Jerusalem. In the three weeks that they spent in Jerusalem, van Berchem recorded more than one hundred inscriptions working mainly in the Ḥaram, taking squeezes, photographing and copying, accompanied by a kawas and a soldier assigned to him by the Ottoman authorities. At the end of March, the van Berchem couple travelled to Damascus. At the end of a fifteen days stay in the Umayyad capital, his collection of inscriptions was greatly enriched. These inscriptions he would later publish in several articles. A few weeks after the return of the couple to Geneva in May 1893, Mrs. van Berchem died. Terribly affected by the death of his young wife, van Berchem stopped working for a while. In the end, however, summoning up all his inner powers he resumed his work and in spring 1894 he left for Alexandria where he embarked again for Jaffa. From there he went to Jerusalem on 10 May 1894, this time to work on the inscriptions of the city, after spending ten days touring the Ḥaram again. In 1895 during the months of April, May and June, he toured Syria on horseback with Edmond Fatio, a Genevan architect. This tour yielded his two-volume itinerary, Voyage en Syrie, which was published only some twenty years later.
Eighteen years elapsed without van Berchem being seen in the Orient. These were years of hard and intensive work, travelling in Europe participating in congresses, spending time in Paris. There, on 31 March 1913 he was admitted as a corresponding member to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, that became the patron of the publication of the Corpus. At the age of 50 (picture above on the left) he was the youngest associate foreign member of this most prestigious academy. At the end of 1913 he travelled to Constantinople where he met his colleague and friend Halil Edhem the director of the Ottoman Museums, who helped him with the official arrangements for his work in Jerusalem. After returning to Geneva, in February 1914 he departed for Cairo and was later joined by his second wife and her sister. On 1 April 1914 they left Egypt for Jerusalem by boat and train. With the help of the Dominican priests of the École Biblique he resumed his work in the city and in the Ḥaram, always accompanied by a soldier and an Ottoman official. He reviewed all the inscriptions which he had registered during his previous stays in the city in 1888, 1892, 1893, and 1894, and those which he had discovered since then, making an effort that nothing should escape him. When he left for Europe a few weeks later he had the feeling that his work “on the ground” was complete and that what remained was the composition of the Corpus of Jerusalem. With the clouds of war on the horizon it was clear his work would suffer, particularly when the war actually broke out. He was mobilized for a few months to the Swiss army, and when released he returned to Geneva to resume his work, but his heart was not in it. He wrote to Ernst Herzfeld his pupil and friend in Germany: “My wonderful material about Jerusalem is in front of me and I do not get around to work on it.” In spite of that he completed the Corpus, but the man was weakened, worn out. After a few months of intense work his health gave way. He died on 7 March 1921, just nine days before his 58th birthday.
The Corpus of Jerusalem, the crown of his scholarly work was born!
The reaction to his death came from all over the scholarly world. “He departed to his celestial Jerusalem” wrote Herzfeld, and Jaussen added “It is true to say that he succumbed on the walls of the Holy City.”
This and the other volumes of the CIAP follow in his footsteps, use his methods of research and rely on his wonder-ful work.
Scaffolding prepared in 1970 to enable reading of the long inscription in the Dome of the Rock.
In spite of the better conditions, I still had to climb to the top of the scaffolding on a ladder not much different from the one on which van Berchem climbed 56 years earlier
