Frescoes in the Muslim residence and bathhouse Qusayr 'Amra

Amman, lies Qusayr ‘Amra, a small building, as the name is indicating (Fig. 1). It belongs to the group of so-called desert castles. It consists of a bathcumaudience hall, fully decorated with a wealth of frescoes, some rather enigmatic. The representation of nude and semi-nude dancers, musicians and some other nude rather impressive women is not so common in an Islamic building from the eighth century A.D., although one cannot uphold the view that the representation of human figures in a secular building is forbidden in the Koran.1 But it is true that, apart from the palace buildings Khirbat al-Mafjar near Jericho and Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi in Syria both with baths, no other Umayyad building from the seventh or eighth century is found with such a wealth of representations of human beings.