Western Christian Pilgrims to the Holy Land in the Early Ottoman Period
Edited by Hans Bloesch. Bern: Die Schweizer Bibliophilen Gesellschaft, 1929).
Dr. Robert Shick
Independent Scholar, Author, and Ongoing ACOR Publication Fellow
Wednesday 19 March 2014 at 6:00pm
Reception to Follow
About the Lecture
This talk will examine the varied experiences of some Western Christian pilgrims who traveled to the Holy Land during the 16th and 17th centuries, focusing on two of them: Heinrich Wölfli, a sober Protestant theologian from Switzerland who went on pilgrimage in 1520, and George Robinson, a zealous 18 year-old Quaker from England sent by the Holy Spirit to Jerusalem in 1657 to testify to God’s love.
About the Lecturer
Dr. Robert Schick is an archaeologist and an historian of the Byzantine and Islamic periods with a special interest in the city of Jerusalem in the Islamic periods. He has worked on excavation projects in Jordan for many years. As an ongoing Publication Fellow at ACOR, he is preparing the final report of an archaeological excavation from 1992-1993 of a Byzantine-Early Islamic building (the Burnt Palace) in Madaba. As a scholar he has received numerous fellowships affiliated with both ACOR and the Albright Institute in Jerusalem.
He has recently been an adjunct professor of archaeology at the University of Bamberg in Germany and previously served on the Islamic Studies faculty of the Henry Martyn Institute in Hyderabad, India. Earlier in his career he was a lecturer at Jerusalem University College, Al-Quds University, Bir Zeit University, and Al-Najah National University in Nablus.
Dr. Schick earned a Ph.D. from University of Chicago, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (1987) and a B.A. in Arabic and Ancient Near Eastern History from the University of Pennsylvania (1978).