[ti:Early Mosque Found Near Sea of Galilee] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]更多听力请访问51VOA.COM [00:00.04]Archaeologists in Israel say they have discovered [00:04.08]the remains of an early mosque in the northern city of Tiberias. [00:10.64]The Islamic prayer center is believed to date back [00:14.76]to the earliest decades of the religion. [00:19.36]The mosque’s foundations were excavated just south of the Sea of Galilee [00:25.44]by a team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. [00:31.16]The scientists believe it was built about a generation [00:35.52]after the death of the Islamic prophet Mohammad. [00:41.16]That makes it one of the earliest Muslim religious centers [00:45.44]to be studied by archaeologists. [00:50.12]Katia Cytryn-Silverman is an expert in Islamic archaeology [00:55.00]at Hebrew University and is leading the excavation. [01:00.84]She said, “We know about many early mosques [01:05.04]that were founded right in the beginning of the Islamic period.” [01:10.64]Other mosques dating from around the same time [01:14.48]include the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, [01:19.08]the Great Mosque of Damascus in Syria [01:22.96]and Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque. [01:26.96]All are still in use today. [01:31.40]Cytryn-Silverman said that excavating the Tiberian mosque [01:36.20]is a rare chance to study the early designs [01:39.76]and structure of Muslim prayer centers. [01:44.32]When the mosque was built around 670 AD, [01:48.72]Tiberias had been a Muslim-ruled city for a few decades. [01:55.36]The city was named after Rome’s second emperor around 20 AD. [02:02.84]It was a major center of Jewish life and research for nearly five centuries. [02:10.44]Before Muslim armies captured the city in 635, [02:15.24]Tiberias was home to one of many Christian holy places [02:19.68]along the coast of the Sea of Galilee. [02:23.72]Until recently, little was known about the city’s early Muslim past. [02:30.52]Archaeological excavations around Tiberias have stopped [02:34.84]and started for the past 100 years. [02:39.48]In recent years, the ancient city has started yielding [02:43.36]other monumental buildings from its past, [02:46.96]including a large Roman theater overlooking the water and a Byzantine church. [02:54.28]Since early last year, the coronavirus pandemic has stopped [02:59.00]excavations and plant life has grown over the ruins. [03:04.56]Hebrew University and its partners, [03:07.64]the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology, [03:10.88]plan to restart the excavation this month. [03:15.96]The first excavations of the site in the 1950s [03:19.80]led researchers to believe [03:21.76]that the building was a Byzantine marketplace later used as a mosque. [03:28.20]But Cytryn-Silverman’s excavations went deeper beneath the floor. [03:34.68]Coins and ceramics discovered in the foundations [03:39.12]helped date them to around 660-680 AD. [03:45.76]The building’s size and rooms [03:48.36]looked similar to other mosques from the same time period. [03:54.12]The first mosque built in Tiberias [03:56.96]stood side by side with the local Jewish and Christian worship centers. [04:03.84]Cytryn-Silverman said the earliest structure of the mosque [04:07.80]was “more humble” than a larger structure that replaced it 50 years later. [04:13.92]“At least until the monumental mosque was erected in the 8th century [04:19.68]the church continued being the main building in Tiberias,” she added. [04:26.36]Cytryn-Silverman says this supports the idea that the early Muslim rulers [04:32.28]— who governed a mostly non-Muslim population [04:35.88]— were more accepting of other religions. [04:40.56]“They were not in a hurry to make their presence expressed into buildings. [04:45.48]They were not destroying others’ houses of prayers, [04:49.76]but they were actually fitting themselves into the societies [04:54.32]that they now were the leaders of,” she said. [04:58.36]I’m Jonathan Evans. 更多听力请访问51VOA.COM