Moain Sadeq

Career With support from fellow archaeologist Klaus Brisch and funding from the Deutschen Akademischen Austauschdienst, Sadeq developed his doctoral thesis into a book, published by Klaus Schwarz Verlag in 1991. Die mamlukische Architektur der Stadt Gaza was a survey of Islamic architecture in Gaza. Also in 1991 Sadeq co-founded the Faculty of Education in Gaza, which later became Al-Aqsa University.

alt=A rectangular hole in the ground, with high walls forming two sides opposite the camera. There are labels denoting different layers and features on the vertical faces, and inside the hole the ground is stepped as different parts have been excavated to different depths.

The Palestinian National Authority established the Department of Antiquities in 1994 with responsibility for managing Palestine's cultural heritage sites. Sadeq was one of the founders of the department's Gaza branch, and is an expert on Gaza's archaeology. In his role as Director of the Department of Antiquities in Gaza, Sadeq was involved in a number of archaeological projects, such as the Gaza Research Project which began in 1996 and was led by Louise Steel, Joanne Clarke, and Sadeq. The project searched for evidence of archaeological remains dating to the Bronze Age in the region. Sadeq discovered a Bronze Age site in 1996, al-Moghraqa, which became one of the foci of the Gaza Research Project and underwent excavation. In 1999, Sadeq and Peter Fischer led excavations at Tell el-‘Ajjul which was last excavated in the 1930s. Along with Hamdan Taha, the head of the Department of Antiquities, Sadeq was involved with negotiations with Israel about the return of artefacts excavated in Palestine during the Israeli occupation.

Building projects in Gaza led to the discovery of new archaeological sites such as Tell es-Sakan, a Bronze Age fortified settlement discovered in 1998 where Sadeq led archaeological investigations with Pierre de Miroschedji between 1999 and 2000. The site began as an Egyptian settlement before it was abandoned and reinhabited by the Canaanites; Tell es-Sakan is the oldest known Egyptian fortification to have been excavated.

With archaeological fieldwork in Gaza impractical due to conflict with Israel, and a diminishing budget for excavations after Hamas came to power, Sadeq left Gaza with his family in 2007. He moved to Canada where, through the Scholars at Risk project, he worked at Massey College and the Royal Ontario Museum. In 2010, Sadeq was a visiting professor at the Institute for Global Citizenship at Centennial College in Canada. In August that year, Sadeq took up a position teaching archaeology at Qatar University.

Selected publications

Books

Articles and chapters