Explore the Location and history of this artwork, Painting of the Six Kings.
The painting is located in Qasr Amra (also transcribed "Quseir Amra", literally "little palace of Amra"), an Umayyad desert structure and a UNESCO World Heritage Site about 85 kilometres (53 mi) east of Amman and 21 kilometres (13 mi) southwest of the Azraq Oasis in modern-day Jordan. The complex has several frescoes painted on its walls. The remoteness and size of the structure suggest that it served as a desert retreat for Umayyad rulers at the time.The painting is on the southern end of the west portion of the main wall. Along with other works in the complex, it was cleaned and preserved in the 1970s by a team from the National Archaeological Museum of Spain.Historian Elizabeth Drayson estimated the earliest possible date for the painting to be 710, the year of the accession of Roderic – one of the kings portrayed in the painting – and the latest to be 750, the year of Abbasid Revolution that overthrew the Umayyads. The artist who painted the fresco is unknown. The patron who commissioned the building, including the painting, was likely one of the caliphs al-Walid I (reigned 705–715), al-Walid II (r.  743–744) or Yazid III (r.  744). It might have been commissioned after the patron became caliph, or before, when the patron was a member of the caliph's family and held the position of governor or heir.The complex, long familiar to local nomads, was first visited by a Westerner in 1898, by the Czech scholar Alois Musil. He first arrived in the complex and saw the paintings on 8 June that year, guided by a group Bedouins. Musil and his companion, Austrian artist Alphons Leopold Mielich, tried to remove the painting from the site, causing permanent damage. A fragment of the painting, containing labels and partial crowns of two of the figures, is now in the Museum of Islamic Art, BerlinMusil's 1907 publication Kusejr 'Amra included a tracing made by Mielich on the spot, Musil's interpretative copy made on the spot, Mielich's later reproduction, and Mielich's written description of the painting. This publication included their observations made before much of the damage to the painting was done.
Azraq Oasis Elizabeth Drayson National Archaeological Museum of Spain Spain Bedouin Alphons Leopold Mielich fresco al-Walid I Qasr Amra Jordan al-Walid II UNESCO tracing Abbasid Revolution Roderic World Heritage Site Amman Yazid III Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin caliph Yazid II Alois Musil Yazid I