Atalaia Point Archaeological Discovery
900 Year-Old Cemetery at Atalaia investigated by archaeologists.
Story and photographs from the website:
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Seven graves in the cemetery of the Ribat Arrifana (Fortress Arrifana), located at Ponta da Atalaia (Watchtower Point) in Vale da Telha on the coast of Aljezur, have been excavated by a team of archaeologists co-ordinated by Rosa and Mário Varela Gomes, in a short project during the last fifteen days of July.
Ponta da Atalaia has been described by the “Real Adventures” website as a “fantastic promontory where we can see many ruins and excavations of an ancient Moorish fortress (Ribat) controlled by Ibn Qasî around 1150”.
One of these graves belonged to the twelfth century Ibrāhīm bn bn Sulaymān Hayyān, perhaps one of the monks of this monastery, or an Islamic pilgrim who ended up dying there in 1148 AD.
Or perhaps, as surmised by Rosa Varela Gomes, “did he perish in battle and was buried here? “
How do the researchers know the name of the man buried in just one of about seven dozen graves discovered in the necropolis situated alongside the ancient Ribat?
Thanks to a stele epigraph – ie a tombstone with an inscription carved in stone – which was discovered two years ago, still attached to the head of the grave they were able to identify the man whose skeleton was discovered there.
This and other stele discovered in the Islamic cemetery are considered a find of great importance and rarity. As archaeologist Rosa Varela Gomes explained: “The two epigraphed stelae we found here are the only ones known in situ in the Iberian Peninsula”.
Of the seven graves, another discovery is also said to be an oddity, since it is the skeleton of a woman. “We do not know if it was a woman who lived here,” said the archaeologist, which would be somewhat unusual, since this was a gathering place of Islamic warrior-monks.
Despite the heat, wind and strong sun beating down, the team was dedicated to digging with infinite care, around the skeletons buried in that little peninsula on the sea, nine centuries ago. Sometimes it meant these young archaeologists lying prone on the ground, with their heads hanging down into the pit inches from secular bones.
“There are so many well preserved graves here in this timeline,” explained Rosa Varela Gomes.
But the survey of seven skeletons in as many graves was not the only new discovery of the short fifteen days of the excavations during this summer campaign at Ribat Arrifana.
“The big news was the identification of a section of the wall, about 10 meters south of the Ribat,” explained Rosa Varela Gomes; one more piece in the jigsaw as they try to reconstruct the history of Ribat, which was last year classified as a national monument.
The excavation campaign team coordinated by Rosa and Mário Varela Gomes included further ten students with a Master’s Degree in Archaeology from the New University of Lisbon, as well as the anthropologists Nathalie and Filipa Antunes Ferreira dos Santos Amado.
The presence of two anthropologists is essential for monitoring the survey and making further study of the osteological remains, ie the skeletons removed from the old cemetery. After the field work, “the osteological estates are now being cleaned and studied at the Laboratory of Archaeology FCSH UNL,” said Rosa Varela Gomes.
After the early years, the campaigns of archaeological excavations have relied on the logistical and financial support of the Chamber of Aljezur and the Gulbenkian Foundation. This latest project was only possible thanks to the research project funded by the Fondation Max van Berchem, Geneva.
This time, Mário Varela Gomes lamented, ‘the Board has not given us accommodation or transport, as in previous years, which is unfortunate. We are not asking for money, we just needed logistical support, namely that let us accommodate students in the sports gymasium’.
A Sufi master grappling with Christians
For the past twelve years, ie, since 2002, the archaeologists and Mário Rosa Varela Gomes have co-ordinated excavations at the tip of Ponta da Atalaia, a small rocky promontory, on the coast of Aljezur.
At its tip, in the troubled twelfth century, there was a Ribat, a kind of fortress-monastery, inhabited by Muslim warrior-monks who took a vow of poverty, led by the celebrated Ibn-Qasi, a Sufi master who then inhabited the community until the Moors were driven out of Portugal by the Christian Knights of D. Afonso Henriques.
During over a dozen archaeological campaigns, researchers have already uncovered several structures of the ancient monastery-fortress, namely the circular base of the minaret, with its mosques mihrabs (oratories facing Mecca), Koranic school ( madrasa ) and necropolis. Because these, by neccessity of cost and opportunity, are short archaeological campaigns, much work remains to 
be done—in fact only about a third of all the Ribat is already dug.
The Ribat of Ponta da Atalaia is considered the most important structure of its kind in the Iberian Peninsula and its discovery has sparked the interest of researchers across Europe. It is, according stressed Rosa Varela Gomes, the “most western Islamic archaeological site of Europe.”
Classified as a national monument last year – the only one of the entire municipality of Aljezur – the Ribat is located on private land, but has not yet been purchased by the state, something that came to be expected in the first version of the Southwest Coast Polis Environmental Assessment Study of the Strategic Intervention for Rehabilitation and Improvement of the Southwest Alentejo and Costa Vicentina / Polis Coastal South,
Over the years of archaeological work, the Ribat Arrifana has been visited by many citizens of Islamic countries, some quite distinguished, especially princes, ambassadors and other dignitaries.
These contacts left the arachaeologists constantly hoping that they would generate some financial and logistical support, taking into account the historical importance of the site for Muslims. But so far none has been fortchcoming.
