Antique & Vintage Postcards

Intricate as frozen lacework, the celebrated carved stone window rosette of Hisham's Palace floats within its reconstructed arch at the archaeological site near Jericho — one of the finest examples of early Islamic decorative stonework anywhere in the world, dating to the Umayyad caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik's winter palace of c.724–743 AD — the six-pointed interlace pattern a breathtaking marriage of Byzantine craft tradition and nascent Islamic ornament, photographed here in vivid chrome color against a deep blue West Bank sky. This unused tourist postcard, published by I. Amad and labeled "Israel" in a collector's hand on the reverse, was likely acquired during the Israeli administration of the West Bank following 1967; it stands as a small document of a politically complex era when Jericho's antiquities were marketed under Israeli tourism infrastructure. The card has never traveled, its back blank and clean, waiting.