Made for the Eye of One Who Sees: Canadian Contributions to the Study of Islamic Art and Archaeology 9780228013259

Table of contents :
Cover
MADE FOR THE EYE OF ONE WHO SEES
Title
Copyright
CONTENTS
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Note to the Reader
Treasures from the Islamic World at the Royal Ontario Museum
Introduction
PART ONE READING ARCHITECTURE
1 Mshatta’s Façade and the Viewer
2 Innovative Tomb or Garden Retreat? The Bara Batashewala Mahal in Mughal Delhi
3 The Wazir Khan Masjid in Lahore: A Study of the Inscriptions
4 The Mosques of Firuz Shah
PART TWO ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH
5 The Challenge of Interpreting Archaeological Remains in the Light of Written Sources: A Discussion Based on the Work of the Canadian Archaeological Mission in Zabid, Yemen
6 The Canadian Archaeological Mission of the Royal Ontario Museum in Yemen
7 Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Preliminary Observations on the Production and Use of Ceramic Drainage Pipes in the Islamic Middle East
8 A Group of Fourteenth-Century Ceramics from Deir Mar Musa, Syria
PART THREE MATERIAL AND VISUAL CULTURE
9 Reaching New Heights: The Giraffe in the Material Culture, Ceremonial, and Diplomacy of Fatimid Egypt
10 Investigations into Later Persian Ceramics at the Royal Ontario Museum (1987–)
11 Stone Lions of Isfahan
12 Princes, Wine, and Animated Nature: Tabriz Painting about 1500
PART FOUR THE PRODUCTION AND RECEPTION OF ISLAMIC ART IN MODERN TIMES
13 Building the Islamic Art Collection at the Royal Ontario Museum: The First Decades
14 Henri Matisse’s Portrait of a Standing Riffian: Islam, Byzantium, and “Aristocratic Barbarism”
15 The Dialogic Exhibition
16 Process Thinking for Islamic Art and Media Art: Performative Abstraction and Collective Transformation
Illustrations
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Made for the Eye of One Who Sees

Made for the Eye of One Who Sees Canadian Contributions to the Study of Islamic Art and Archaeology edited by marcus milwright a n d e va n t h i a b a b o u l a

m c g ill-queen’s universit y press Montreal & Kingston • London • Chicago and

the royal ontar io museum Toronto

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2022 isbn 978-0-2280-1204-7 (cloth) isbn 978-0-2280-1325-9 (epdf) Legal deposit third quarter 2022 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Funding was also received from the University of Victoria’s Book and Creative Work Subvention Fund. rom acknowledges the generous support of the Joann and Rodger McLennan Endowment Fund in making this publication possible.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: Made for the eye of one who sees : Canadian contributions to the study of Islamic art and archaeology / edited by Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula ; image editor: Fahmida Suleman. Names: Milwright, Marcus, editor. | Baboula, Evanthia, 1968- editor. | Royal Ontario Museum. publisher. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220180660 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220180733 | isbn 9780228012047 (cloth) | isbn 9780228013259 (epdf) Subjects: lcsh: Islamic art. | lcsh: Islamic architecture. | lcsh: Excavations (Archaeology)—Islamic countries. | lcsh: Material culture—Islamic countries. | lcsh: Museums—Ontario—Toronto. Classification: lcc n6260 .m33 2022 | ddc 704.9/4897—dc23 This book was designed and typeset by studio oneonone in Minion 11/14

contents

Foreword vii Josh Basseches Acknowledgments ix Note to the Reader xi Treasures from the Islamic World at the Royal Ontario Museum xiii Fahmida Suleman Introduction 3 Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula Pa rt On e Reading Ar chitecture 1

Mshatta’s Façade and the Viewer 25 Alexander Townson

2

Innovative Tomb or Garden Retreat? The Bara Batashewala Mahal in Mughal Delhi 60 Hussein Keshani

3

The Wazir Khan Masjid in Lahore: A Study of the Inscriptions 98 Erica Cruikshank Dodd 4

The Mosques of Firuz Shah 131 Anthony Welch

Pa rt t w o ar ch aeolog ical resear ch 5

The Challenge of Interpreting Archaeological Remains in the Light of Written Sources: A Discussion Based on the Work of the Canadian Archaeological Mission in Zabid, Yemen 151 Ingrid Hehmeyer

6

The Canadian Archaeological Mission of the Royal Ontario Museum in Yemen 167 Edward Keall

contents 7

8

Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Preliminary Observations on the Production and Use of Ceramic Drainage Pipes in the Islamic Middle East 196 Marcus Milwright A Group of Fourteenth-Century Ceramics from Deir Mar Musa, Syria 221 Robert Mason Part t h ree M at eri al and Vi sual Cult ure 9

Reaching New Heights: The Giraffe in the Material Culture, Ceremonial, and Diplomacy of Fatimid Egypt 233 Fahmida Suleman 10

Investigations into Later Persian Ceramics at the Royal Ontario Museum (1987–) 255 Lisa Golombek 11

12

Stone Lions of Isfahan 272 Parviz Tanavoli

Princes, Wine, and Animated Nature: Tabriz Painting about 1500 283 Karin Rührdanz Part f our The Pr oduction and Reception of I sl a m ic Art i n M odern T i m es

13

14

Building the Islamic Art Collection at the Royal Ontario Museum: The First Decades 311 Bita Pourvash Henri Matisse’s Portrait of a Standing Riffian: Islam, Byzantium, and “Aristocratic Barbarism” 330 Mark Antliff 15 The Dialogic Exhibition 351 Patricia Bentley and Zulfikar Hirji

16

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Process Thinking for Islamic Art and Media Art: Performative Abstraction and Collective Transformation 376 Laura U. Marks Illustrations 391 Contributors 401 Index 405

f or e w or d

The title of this publication, Made for the Eye of One Who Sees, derives from the poetry of Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273), one of the most famous and beloved mystical poets of the Islamic world. His translated verse reads, “Everything that is made beautiful and fair and lovely is made for the eye of one who sees.” In other words, it is the quality of the eye that determines and recognizes true beauty and craftsmanship. Charles T. Currelly (1876–1957), the founding director and first curator of archaeology of the Royal Ontario Museum (rom), possessed such an eye. Currelly acquired all kinds of objects for the rom, from prehistoric flint to priceless Chinese porcelain. A graduate of theology at Victoria College, University of Toronto (U of T), and later trained as an archaeologist by Flinders Petrie (d. 1942), Currelly became a visionary museum-builder who believed that museums have an educational purpose: to display the material achievements of humanity through all time to inspire the present day. Persuasive, charming, and ambitious, Ontario-born Currelly garnered the trust and support of several affluent and influential Canadians to invest in establishing a global museum in Toronto that would be on par with the great museums of London and New York. That dream was fulfilled in 1914 when the “Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology” opened its doors to the public with Currelly as its first director. He remained in that position until 1946. Islamic artifacts were, indeed, among the many things that Currelly collected. From 1905 to 1908, with a limited budget and time, he acquired about 700 objects that formed the basis of the rom’s present-day Islamic collections, including more than 300 medieval pottery sherds acquired from excavations in Egypt, specifically for teaching purposes. Today, the rom houses around 10,000 objects from the Islamic world spanning six curatorial areas: Islamic World; Global Africa; Global South Asia; China; Europe; and Global Fashion and Textiles. This allows the rom to present a wide breadth of the Islamic world – from West Africa to Northwest China – as well as works by contemporary artists in diaspora from North America and Europe. I am grateful to Dr Fahmida Suleman, our newest curator of the Islamic World, for selecting highlights of the rom’s collection for this volume. The appointment of Dr Lisa Golombek as the rom’s first curator of Islamic art, from 1967 to 2005, marked a major turning point for the field in Canada. Golombek spearheaded no less than three gallery installations during her tenure, and her many acquisitions and publications focusing on the arts of Iran and Central Asia remain

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foreword

a lasting legacy for the rom. The museum’s academic staff have also generated worldclass research and publications in the fields of Islamic art, archaeology, architecture, and ethnography, as attested to by the fact that a third of this publication’s authors were or continue to be integral to the rom: Lisa Golombek, Edward Keal, Robert Mason, Karin Ruehrdanz, Fahmida Suleman, and Bita Pourvash. Many museum staff are cross-appointed as professors at U of T and other institutions of higher learning, enabling them to teach and provide students with hands-on learning opportunities using the rom’s rich collections. However, much has changed in Canada since the mid-1960s, and this timely publication underscores how much the scholarly and artistic landscape dedicated to the art and material culture of the Islamic world has transformed over the last six decades. Across Canada, notably in the provinces of British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, academics and curators affiliated with world-class institutions have generated scholarly and accessible publications, university programs, and exhibitions focusing on the visual and material cultures of the Islamic world. Canada is also home to vibrant communities of established and budding artists with strong connections to the Islamic world, including Parviz Tanavoli, a contributor to this volume. The establishment of Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum (akm) in 2014 has provided the rom with an important ally to ensure recurring, high-calibre programmatic activities that shine a light on the artistic, intellectual, and scientific contributions of Muslim civilizations to world heritage for local and international audiences. The only way to foster better understanding, mutual respect, and an appreciation of the diversity of Islamic cultures is through purposeful cooperation. Although in its nascent stage, a concrete example is the Toronto-based Islamic Art and Material Culture Collaborative (iamcc), an endeavour that harnesses the capacities and resources of the rom, U of T, and the akm to foster innovative, interdisciplinary research on the arts and material cultures of the Islamic world. I am grateful to Professors Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula for inviting the rom to participate as co-publishers of this unique project, and to Jonathan Crago, editor in chief at McGill-Queen’s University Press, for shepherding it to completion. Many thanks to the Joann and Rodger McLennan Endowment Fund for supporting this wonderful publication. By collaborating on this ground-breaking project, the rom has played a role in celebrating the contributions of scholars here and outside Canada who continue to advance the fields of Islamic art and archaeology and foster a wider appreciation of the Islamic world’s cultural legacy for civilizations, past, present, and future. To quote Rumi once again, “Listen with ears of tolerance. See through the eyes of compassion. Speak with the language of love.” josh basseches Director and ceo, Royal Ontario Museum

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acknowledgments

This book has taken some time to reach publication, and we first offer our deep appreciation of the authors who have shown stoicism in the face of delays. We are most grateful to Mark Abley and Jonathan Crago at McGill-Queen’s University Press for their expert guidance throughout this process. Thanks also to Shelagh Plunkett and the anonymous reviewers for their comments, all of which have improved the end result. The lavish colour illustration of the book has been made possible through the generosity of the Royal Ontario Museum. Fahmida Suleman and Sheeza Sarfraz were instrumental in making this possible. The publication costs were also supported by the University of Victoria’s Book and Creative Work Subvention Fund as well as the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program (aspp), which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (sshrc) and administered by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (fhss) of Canada, and we are delighted to be able to acknowledge these financial contributions. Many individuals have also offered advice and expertise since this project was first mooted, including Ruba Kanaʿan, Kathy Van Vliet, Teddi Dols, Seyedhamed Yeganehfarzand, Bita Pourvash, Mohammad al-Asad, Derryl Maclean, Alnoor Merchant, Iona Hubner, and Martin Segger. We would not have been able to complete this work without the love and support of our families.

We dedicate this book to the memory of Anthony Welch (1942–2021), valued colleague at the University of Victoria and a pioneer of the study of Islamic art in Canada.

n ot e to t h e r e a d e r

The contributions in this volume address the visual and material cultures of a very large geographical area, encompassing many parts of the Islamic world, as well as Europe and North America. The chronological range is equally vast, ranging from the eighth century to the present. Given the sheer number of linguistic traditions represented in this volume, the editors decided to adopt a pragmatic approach to the issue of transliteration. Hence, the contributors have been allowed some latitude in the treatment of specialist terms, toponyms, personal names, and book titles. Some general rules have been applied, however. Where full transliteration is employed, it follows the system found in the International Journal of Middle East Studies (also the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam). Arabic and Persian personal names are given without dotted letters and macrons above long vowels, though the letters ‘ayn (ʿ) and hamza’ (ʾ) are retained in most cases. Place names are also left without special characters, and, in cases of well known towns and cities, the form most commonly found in English-language publications is preferred (Cairo, Jerusalem, and so on).

Treasures from the Islamic World at the Royal Ontario Museum Fahmida Suleman, Curator, Islamic World

When the rom opened its doors to the public in 1914, with Charles Trick Currelly as its first director, the museum already had about 700 artifacts from the Islamic world, mainly from the Middle East. Today, the rom houses around 10,000 artifacts from across the breadth of the Islamic world dating from the seventh century to the present day, including a small but growing collection of works by contemporary artists from Canada and elsewhere. These collections span six curatorial areas: Islamic World, Global Africa, Global South Asia, China, Europe, and Global Fashion and Textiles. The treasures selected here underscore the breadth and richness of the rom’s holdings today and supplement the objects published within other chapters in this volume.

The marriage celebration of Sasanian King Bahram Gur and the Khwarazm princess in the green-domed palace. Manuscript painting from the Haft Paykar (Seven Beauties) of the poet Nizami (d.1209) and part of his Khamsa (Quintet).

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Maker’s name unrecorded Iran (possibly Shiraz), mid-16th c. Opaque watercolour, ink, and gold on paper Height 35.6 cm/width 23.2 cm 938.29.5, purchased by C.T. Currelly from H.K. Monif in 1938

Loose-leaf manuscript of the renowned prayer book in praise of the Prophet Muhammad, Dala’il al-Khayrat (Waymarks of Blessings), composed by the Moroccan Sufi scholar Muhammad b. Sulayman al-Jazuli (d.1465). Shown here is the start of the sixth prayer with an illuminated section header and the manuscript’s embossed leather cover. Maker’s name unrecorded West Africa (possibly Nigeria), c. 1890s Ink and pigments on paper Page height 15.5 cm/width 11 cm 962.76.3.A, gift of Rev. O.G. Barrow

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Wooden Qur’an board with handle covered in leather. Inscribed are (from top) Surat al-‘Asr (The Epoch; Time) 103:1–3, Surat al-Takathur (The Competition; Piling Up) 102:1–8, and Surat al-Qari‘a (The Great Calamity) 101:1–11.

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Maker’s name unrecorded Northern Nigeria, early 20th c. Wood, leather, and ink Height 53 cm/width 23.5 cm 969.201.22, ex-collection of Charles R. Tourney

Star-shaped ceramic tile with a lustre painted design of two seated figures in conversation wearing Mongol Ilkhanid-period decorated robes and owl-feather hats. Such tiles embellished the interiors of tombs and palaces and many were inscribed with Persian poetry like this one. Maker’s name unrecorded Kashan, Iran, 1310–40 Stonepaste, moulded and painted in lustre and cobalt blue over an opaque white tin glaze Length 20.5 cm/depth 1.5 cm 961 x 167.2, part of the rom’s historic collections and later incorporated in 1961 xvii

Tile from an architectural frieze with part of a Qur’anic inscription in moulded relief, painted in blue thuluth script against a lustred background of dense foliage inhabited by birds and hares. Possibly made for the tomb pavilion of ʿAbd alSamad, a Sufi shaikh buried at Natanz, near Isfahan, Iran. Maker’s name unrecorded Kashan, Iran, c. 1310 Stonepaste, with moulded and carved decoration, painted in lustre, cobalt blue, and copper turquoise pigments over an opaque white tin glaze Height 34.92/width 34.92 cm/depth 3 cm 909.25.11, purchased by C.T. Currelly in Paris from M & R Stora in 1909 xviii

Wooden grave cover (sunduq) with carved Arabic inscriptions including the first and part of the second chapters of the Qur’an, names of the Twelver Shi’i Imams and of the Prophet and his family, as well as the saying (hadith), “This world is the sowing ground for the next; The grave is the storage chest (sunduq) of good works.” Made by Muhammad b. Ahmad Iran, 11th c.–12th c. Sycamore wood, carved Height 69.5 cm/length 145.1 cm/width 60.5 cm 974.68.1, ex-collection of Hagop Kevorkian, purchased in Toronto from Sotheby Parke Bernet in 1974

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Dish with ship featuring the Seal of Solomon motif on its sail. The Biblical king Solomon, considered a prophet in Islam, is revered as the steward of the winds in Islamic tradition (Qur’an 21:81). The proliferation of ship designs on Iznik ceramics from the late sixteenth century to the mid-seventeenth century reflected the importance of the Ottoman navy at this time. Maker’s name unrecorded Iznik, Turkey, c. 1600 Ceramic (stonepaste, thrown), with copper green, cobalt blue, iron red, and chromium black paint, and transparent lead alkali glaze Diameter 30 cm/height 5.8 cm 941.21.5, gift of Miss Amice Calverley in 1941

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This shallow dish is decorated with tulips, hyacinths, a carnation, and a rose that spring from a leafy tuft along with a serrated saz leaf and other blooms. The proliferation of naturalistic flowers in Ottoman art was bolstered by a thriving garden culture and coincided with the introduction in the 1550s of an iron-rich red pigment, dramatically changing the visual aesthetic of Iznik ceramics. Maker’s name unrecorded Iznik, Turkey, c. 1575 Ceramic (stonepaste, thrown), with copper turquoise, cobalt blue, iron red, and chromium black paint, and transparent lead alkali glaze Height 5.5 cm/diameter 31.4 cm 909.28.1, purchased by C.T. Currelly in London, UK, from the Spanish Art Gallery in 1909

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Lustre ceramics flourished in medieval Al-Andalus (southern Spain and Portugal) with the arrival of Egyptian and Syrian potters. By 1400, Muslim (“Moorish”) potters working under Christian patronage in the northern city of Manises created so-called Hispano-Moresque wares that fused Islamic and Gothic designs. These coveted commodities were exported to Italy, such as this plate bearing the coat of arms of the Bonacossi family of Ferrara, and helped spawn Italian lustre production. Maker’s name unrecorded Manises, Valencia, Spain, 1450–75 Tin glazed earthenware painted in cobalt blue, manganese purple, and gold lustre pigments Diameter 31.8 cm 933.20.1, purchased by C.T. Currelly in Paris from M & R Stora in 1933 xxii

This illuminated Qur’an manuscript is the twenty-fourth juz’ or section of a dispersed thirty-part Qur’an. It may have once belonged to the Great Mosque of Khanbaliq (modern Beijing). The Chinese-speaking Hui Muslims of eastern and central China grew closer to the imperial Ming court and became influential patrons of new art forms. Most Qur’an copies from China are bound in thirty separate volumes so that a section could be read each day during the month of Ramadan. Maker’s name unrecorded China, possibly ah 804/1401 ad; Ming period Ink, opaque watercolour, and gold on paper; leather binding Folio height 25 cm/width 17.5 cm 996.45.1, purchased from Christie’s, London, 1996 xxiii

This porcelain incense burner bears an undeciphered pious inscription or Prophetic saying (hadith) in Sini, a style of Arabic script developed by Chinese Hui Muslim calligraphers during the Ming period (1368–1644). The shahada (testimony of faith), basmala (“In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Caring”), or Beautiful Names of God were also inscribed on ritual and scribal objects, replacing Chinese auspicious symbols (e.g. fish, lotus, vase, conch, wheel, knot) on similar objects made for Taoist and Confucian altars.

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Maker’s name unrecorded Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China, mid-17th c. to early 18th c.; Qing period Ceramic (porcelain, thrown) with cobalt blue paint under a transparent glaze Height 16.5 cm/diameter 19.9 cm 925.25.18, purchased by C.T. Currelly from the George Crofts Collection in 1925

The art of enamelled glass reached an apogee during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. Syrian and Egyptian artists painted intricate designs on blown vessels using gold and enamelled pigments made of crushed coloured glass, fusing them through firing. A number of these objects, including this bottle, made their way to China through Muslim traders who founded colonies there and exported silks and other goods to West Asia. The rom’s bottle was discovered in a mosque in China’s Shanxi province. Its Arabic inscription reads: “Glory to our master, the sultan, the king, the ruler, the warrior.” Maker’s name unrecorded Made in Syria, possibly Aleppo; mid-13th c. Glass, blown, enamelled, gilded Height 27.2 cm 924.26.1, purchased by C.T. Currelly from the George Crofts Collection in 1924

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Zahoor ul Akhlaq (1941–1999) is considered the father of Pakistani contemporary art. He developed a distinctive genre of painting and sculpture by experimenting with South Asian vernacular forms (e.g. miniature painting, calligraphy) and western modernism (e.g. expressionism, abstract). This work, a gradation of colour from deep red to ochre yellow with a dripping frame of brilliant blue is a nod to the intricate framed borders in Mughal painting. An abstract female form, symbolic of life-force among other things, breaks the frame, bridging abstraction with realism and heightening emotional impact.

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Zahoor ul Akhlaq, Untitled Lahore, Pakistan, c. 1991 Acrylic on canvas Height 190.5 cm/width 127 cm 2020.26.1, purchased from the artist’s estate. This acquisition was made possible with the generous support of the Louise Hawley Stone Charitable Trust.

In this painting from a manuscript of the Baburnama (Memoirs of Babur), the first Mughal emperor meets with the notables of Samarqand after his second capture of the city, while the battle still rages outside the palace gates. Before his final descent into India in 1526 and the subsequent establishment of a ruling Mughal dynasty there, Babur attempted to increase his strength in his ancestral homeland of Fergana (eastern Uzbekistan) by capturing the city of Samarqand. He won and lost the city three times to the Uzbeks and was eventually ousted, necessitating his plan to conquer India. Maker’s name unrecorded India (North), c. 1590 (painting); 17th c. (border) Opaque watercolour and gold on paper Height 42.9 cm/width 27.7 cm 976.306.1, gift in memory of Alic Jan Lee. Certified by the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board under the terms of the Cultural Property Export and Import Act

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This long hip wrapper (kain panjang), customarily worn by men and women, is dyed in shades of green, blue, and golden yellow. The complicated hand-drawn pattern in batik (wax resist) is dominated by a lattice in the centre field filled with abstract floral motifs. The choice of design, evoking ceramic tiles, and the prominent use of green suggest that it was produced in an Arab-run workshop along the North Coast of Java ostensibly for Arab communities settled in the region.

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Maker’s name unrecorded Java (North Coast), Indonesia, early 20th c. Cotton, dyes, hand-drawn wax resist batik Length 250 cm/width 107 cm 2011.73.34, gift of Louise Hawley Stone Charitable Trust

Necklace with a silver amulet pendant decorated with a yellow and green enamelled rosette, twisted and beaded silver wire, and granulation. Silver, shells, amber, coral, and amazonite represent economic prosperity and are amuletic elements believed to enhance fertility, health, and good fortune. Maker’s name unrecorded Morocco, 19th c. (pendant); 20th c. (necklace) Silver, coral, amber, amazonite, shells, cotton, enamelled Length 52 cm/pendant length 5 cm/pendant depth 1.5 cm Royal Ontario Museum, 2008.71.14, gift of Karen Mulhallen xxix

Artist Dilyara Kaipova’s contemporary works are rooted in centuries-old textile traditions of Uzbekistan and engage with a range of modern socio-cultural issues and identities of her country. This quilted ikat robe (chapan) entitled Darth Vader II, woven with images of the Star Wars villain Darth Vader’s helmet, interrogates the absorption of American pop culture icons by Uzbekistan and other Central Asian countries following the dismantling of the ussr. Dilyara Kaipova in collaboration with ikat weavers and a master quilter Margilan, Fergana Valley, Uzbekistan, 2020 Cotton, ikat-tie resist dyed and quilted Length 111 cm/width 176 cm (sleeve to sleeve) 2021.48.1, purchased from Sapar Contemporary Gallery

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Tekke Turkmen woman’s gilded silver jewellery inlaid with carnelians. Comprising a large triangular pectoral amulet holder, pair of bracelets, and a heart-shaped ornament with small side pendants to be worn in her hair plaits. Makers’ names unrecorded Iran or Central Asia, late 19th–early 20th c. Silver, fire-gilded and chased, wirework, cabochon-cut carnelians, wire chains, and spherical bells Amulet height 41 cm/width 39.5 cm; bracelet height 8.8 cm/width 7.5 cm/depth 6 cm; heart-shaped pendant height 9.8 cm/width 6.7 cm 2013.21.17, 32.1-2, 28.1-3, gift of Dr Neil Moran

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Gold damascened shield (sipar) with four bosses, ornamented with engraved floral decoration and cartouches inscribed with Persian poetry in praise of heroes and the owner. Part of a three-part set of a Qajar warrior’s armour including an arm guard (bazu-band) and helmet (kulah khud). Maker’s name unrecorded Iran, late 19th c. Wrought steel, engraved and gilded, with cotton lining Height 11 cm/diameter 42 cm 913.10.45.C, purchased by C.T. Currelly in London, UK, from Fenton & Sons in 1913

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Made for the Eye of One Who Sees

Introduction Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula

On 15 October 2016 the exhibition Syria: A Living History opened at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto.1 Organized under the patronage of unesco, and drawing on public and private collections, the exhibition aimed to “illuminate Syria’s cultural diversity, historical continuity, resourcefulness, and resilience.” Carefully chosen, and often pairing comparable objects from different time periods, the display documented the roles played by visual art in the religious and secular dimensions of Syrian life from prehistory to the present day. For example, the curators placed a sixth-century silver jar with repoussé ornament next to an intricately inlaid brass vessel produced seven centuries later but with the same profile and dimensions. This pairing was a potent reminder of the remarkable continuities of craft practice in the region. In the twentieth century artists such as Fateh al-Moudarres (d. 1999) were able to combine the aesthetics of international modernism with a symbolic vocabulary drawn from Syria’s intertwined confessional traditions.2 The exhibition continued through to the February of the following year and was complemented by invited lectures, cultural events, and a day-long workshop. The last of these brought together an international panel of scholars to present research that took the audience from the dawn of urban civilization in the country through to the creation and reception of television programs broadcast in recent years on Syrian State television.3 The shadow of the devastating civil war (2011–present) was never far away in these presentations, whether in the analysis of the implicit but daring critiques of government policy found in contemporary television drama, the widespread looting of the country’s immensely rich archaeological record, or the uncertain fate of the countless, beautiful religious monuments dating from late antiquity and the Islamic centuries. While it is certainly the case that our primary attention should be with the human catastrophe caused by the ongoing war, it is also vital that the world focuses on the degradation of the cultural heritage of Syria.4 This is an issue in which art historians, archaeologists, museum curators, and others involved with the study and preservation of material and visual culture, can make a tangible contribution,

Above and opposite I.1–I.2 View of Syria: A Living History, Aga Khan Museum, 2016. Opposite below I.3 Façade of the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto.

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and it is fitting that one of Canada’s newest cultural institutions, the Aga Khan Museum (opened in 2014), was able to play such a visible role in highlighting what is at stake if the world allows the destruction to continue.5 The initial planning for the present book occurred in the year before the uprisings of 2010 that came to be known collectively as the “Arab Spring.” When prospective contributors to the volume were first contacted, these popular movements were only in their first phases, with little indication of what lay ahead in countries such as Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Yemen. In 2010 few would have guessed the extent to which ancient sites like Palmyra in Syria and Hatra and Nimrud in Iraq would suffer at the hands of Islamic State or the sheer number of shrines and other religious buildings in those countries that would be reduced to rubble through shell fire or the use of pipe bombs.6 Bombing in Yemen has extensively damaged the Maʾrib Dam, one of the greatest surviving examples of ancient engineering, and precious

m a rc u s m i lw r i g h t a n d eva n t h i a ba b o u l a

urban centres such as Shibam, Zabid, and Sanaʿa. Thus, the initial motivations for wanting to assemble a book of this nature appear rather different from the vantage point of 2022, particularly with the awareness of the vulnerability of archaeological sites, monuments, craft traditions, and museums in times of civil conflict and political instability. That first motivation, hatched in 2009, was that Canada’s role in the evolving study of the art and material record of the Islamic world was insufficiently appreciated and that it would be beneficial to bring together the work of emerging and established scholars working in the country with those of Canadian citizens associated with universities and museums across the world. In our view that basic goal remains highly worthwhile, for Canadian scholars and non-Canadians based in Canadian institutions have contributed in significant ways to many dimensions of Islamic art and archaeology, from the establishment of long-term fieldwork projects (reports of two of those undertaken in Yemen and Syria are included in this volume; chapters 5, 6, and 8) to detailed studies of architecture, portable arts, and manuscript paintings. Canadian scholars have been responsible for methodological advances and for championing scientific approaches to object study (see below). Curators in Canadian museums and galleries have mounted displays and exhibitions that focus on the diverse visual cultures of the Islamic world, from the seventh century to the present day. Last, and by no means least, is the task of disseminating knowledge about Islamic art, architecture, and archaeology through teaching and various forms of public engagement. These achievements can be located throughout the evolution of the disciplines of Islamic art and Islamic archaeology but have become more prominent since the 1970s. In the increasingly challenging environment facing scholars since late 2010, the need to define the parameters of the Canadian contribution to these disciplines has gained a greater resonance. One way to approach this problem is to review the highpoints in the story of Canadian engagement with the material and visual cultures of the Islamic world. Some of the early phases, relating to the collecting practices of the Royal Ontario Museum, are dealt with later in the book (chapter 13), but further comments are warranted on the significant achievements – publications, exhibitions, and archaeological projects – undertaken since 1967, the year that the Royal Ontario Museum appointed Lisa Golombek as its first curator of Islamic art. Publications, exhibitions, and other achievements are the products of people, and it was the gradual expansion of posts at universities and museums that helped to increase the Canadian presence in Islamic art and Middle Eastern archaeology. Notable developments in 1971 were the appointments of Anthony Welch to the Department of History in Art (now renamed Art History and Visual Studies) at the University of Victoria and Edward Keall at the Royal Ontario Museum. In the following year the Ukrainian-born Canadian scholar Renata Holod started teaching Islamic art at the University of Pennsylvania.7 Sheila Blair is another Canadian-born scholar to come to prominence at this time.8 6

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I.4 Map of sites and locations in the Islamic world.

The teaching of Islamic art and archaeology at the University of Victoria has been continued by Erica Dodd, Nancy Micklewright, and Marcus Milwright. Full-time faculty positions in Islamic art history, including areas of cinema and new media, have since been added at the University of British Columbia Okanagan (Hussein Keshani, a former doctoral student of Anthony Welch), Simon Fraser University (Laura Marks), the University of British Columbia (Saygin Salgirli), and the University of Toronto Mississauga (Ruba Kana’an). Other university faculty in Canada with interests in aspects of Islamic art, archaeology, and manuscript studies are Ingrid Hehmeyer (Ryerson University), Hugo Cardoso (Simon Fraser University), Victor Ostapchuk (University of Toronto), Evanthia Baboula (University of Victoria), Melia Belli Bose (University of Victoria), Maria Subtelny (University of Toronto), Cecily Hilsdale (McGill University), and Adam Gacek (Islamic Studies Library of McGill University). Other specialists in Islamic visual and material culture holding adjunct appointments at Canadian institutions include Angela Andersen (University of Victoria). The Royal Ontario Museum has appointed further specialists in Islamic visual and material culture: Lisa Golombek, Karin Rührdanz, Fahmida Suleman, and Robert Mason. Since its foundation the Aga Khan Museum has employed several scholars of Islamic art in curatorial and administrative roles: Filiz Çakir Phillip, Ruba Kanaʿan, Ulrike al-Khamis, Bita Pourvash, Heather Ecker, Marika Sardar, and 7

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Michael Chagnon. Jessica Hallett (Universidade Nova de Lisbao, Portugal) is one of the prominent Canadian scholars currently working in Europe. Elaine Wright and Fahmida Suleman also held curatorial posts in the Department of Islamic Manuscripts of Chester Beatty Library, Dublin and the British Museum (Modern Middle East Objects) respectively. It is beyond the scope of this introduction to provide a full catalogue of the significant publications by the scholars mentioned above, though many can be found in the citations given later in the book. A few preliminary comments are offered here concerning some of the most influential works of recent decades. These range from articles and chapters through to monographs, gazetteers, edited collections, and textbooks. Among the shorter pieces that have been most cited in later scholarship are Erica Dodd’s “Image of the Word: Notes on the Religious Iconography of Islam” (1966) and Lisa Golombek’s “The Draped Universe of Islam” (1988).9 In the former, Dodd offers potent speculations on the meanings behind the written word that have stimulated subsequent scholarship on the epigraphy of the Islamic world from the seventh century to the present.10 The relationship between the textual content and visual form of Muslim scripture is a major preoccupation of a collection of essays edited by Fahmida Suleman, and published in 2007.11 Dodd expanded her ideas into a book-length treatment, co-authored with Shereen Khairallah.12 Golombek’s paper, on the other hand, targeted the “period eye” of pre-modern observers, noting the ways in which admiration for textiles pervaded the aesthetic considerations of other media.13 Perhaps her most valuable observation was that decorative media – mosaic, tiles, opus sectile, and so on – were employed to “clothe” the cheap construction materials of many Islamic buildings beneath a glittering, polychromatic skin. This creative slippage between visual languages of individual media and between the portable and the monumental has proved to be fertile ground for Islamic art historians.14 There has been a strong involvement in archaeological projects across the Islamic world, including Djerba (Tunisia), Raqqa (Syria), Zabid (Yemen), Karak, Tall Jawa, and Mudaybiʿ (Jordan).15 Ottoman architecture and material culture has been examined in the Peloponnese, in Bosnia, and in Ukraine.16 Another contribution to the field is the publication of an introductory survey of Islamic archaeology.17 Canadians have been responsible for advances in archaeological science. For example, Robert Mason has collaborated with Michael Tite on seminal articles exploring the evolution and technical characteristics of Abbasid tin-glazed wares and stonepaste (also known as frit ware) ceramics.18 These perspectives have also been brought to the analysis of ceramics excavated in the early Islamic city of Raqqa-Rafiqa.19 Mason subsequently brought together his work in a monograph, published in 2004, that remains a standard work in the field of Middle Eastern glazed ceramics.20 Other studies have brought together conventional art-historical analysis with historical contextualization and the scientific analysis of ceramic bodies and glazes. Notable examples are the books produced on Timurid and Safavid glazed wares (the latter is reviewed in chapter 10) by specialists at the Royal Ontario Museum.21

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Lisa Golombek has maintained a strong interest in architecture and architectural decoration. Perhaps her most substantial contribution in this field is the gazetteer of Timurid architecture, coauthored with Donald Wilber (d. 1997).22 The architecture of India, from the Delhi Sultanate to the British Raj, has attracted the attention of other Canadian scholars,23 while there has also been interesting research on Islamic buildings of the second half of the twentieth century.24 Scholars such as Anthony Welch, Elaine Wright, and Karin Rührdanz have concentrated on painting and the arts of the book.25 Ruba Kana’an has offered fresh perspectives on the role of “signatures” on metalwork through an examination of Islamic contract law and other types of legal text.26 This approach offers fruitful avenues for future research across all the portable arts. The social status of artisans has been analyzed by other scholars in Canada, including Maya Shatzmiller.27 Lastly, mention should be made of the edited collection People of the Prophet’s House (2015) for its focus on the visual and material cultures of Shiʿi Islam.28 Permanent displays of Islamic art can be found at the Aga Khan Museum and the Royal Ontario Museum.29 Objects from both collections are discussed in the chapters making up the remainder of this book. In order to gain a sense of the depth and diversity of the Islamic material held at the Royal Ontario Museum, a selection of objects and manuscripts from different periods and regions are illustrated in a series of colour plates. There are smaller assemblages of Islamic artifacts across the country in public institutions including the Nickle Art Gallery (University of Calgary), the Musée des Beaux-arts de Montréal, the Museum of Anthropology (University of British Columbia), the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.30 Although it is not possible to do justice to the holdings in private hands, mention should be made of the major collection of Persian crafts assembled by Parviz Tanavoli. The ceramics collected across the Islamic world by Erica Dodd are on loan to the University of Victoria Art Collection, while the Royal Ontario Museum possesses significant holdings of Middle Eastern pottery (covering both preIslamic and Islamic periods) gathered from excavations conducted by A. Douglas Tushingham (d. 2002), Edward Keall, and others.31 One innovative diachronic exhibition is discussed in greater detail later (chapter 15), but there have been many others that address the arts and crafts of Islam from the earliest times to the present day. Notable recent examples include Persian Steel: The Tanavoli Collection (Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 2007),32 Coffee and Smokes in Medieval Yemen (Royal Ontario Museum, 2009–10), and Cairo Under Wraps: Early Islamic Textiles (Royal Ontario Museum, 2015). Others, such as Silk Roads, China Ships (Royal Ontario Museum, 1982–83), draw the Islamic world into larger dynamics of international trade and cross-cultural contact.33 Astri Wright has focused much of her research on the work of contemporary artists in Indonesia and Muslim artists in other countries.34 Her research practice makes active use of exhibitions, including the curation of Seeker, Sentry, Sage: Shades of Islam in Contemporary Art, held at the Maltwood Museum and Gallery in the University of Victoria in 2006. Other exhibitions dealing with the works of contemporary Muslim artists include

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Safar/Voyage: Contemporary Works by Arab, Persian and Turkish Artists (Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, 2013) and Parviz Tanavoli (Aga Khan Museum, 2016–17).35 Readers of this volume will be confronted by a wide range of topics, covering many periods and regions of the Islamic world. The theoretical standpoints and methodologies employed in the following chapters are also diverse in nature, reflecting the fact that contributors come from the disciplines of art history, archaeology, and archaeological science. The contributors themselves are academics, museum curators, independent researchers, collectors, and practising artists. For these reasons the chapters themselves are rather heterogenous in everything from subject matter to writing style. The chapters range from extended essays to shorter notes. These facts can be frankly acknowledged from the outset, as it was always our aim to be inclusive in the collection of individual contributions. The diversity apparent in the following chapters represents, in part, the many ways in which Canadians, and scholars operating in Canada, are contributing to the understanding of the material and visual culture of the Islamic world. Hence, there is a distinct value in the juxtaposition of variant perspectives drawn from such examples as the creation of an exhibition, the excavation of an ancient urban site, the close examination of a manuscript painting, and the petrographic analysis of ceramic sherds. This exists in the comparison of results from different activities but also from the fact that no medium or technique discussed in the book is privileged over another: drainpipes and everyday textiles sit side-by-side with monumental architecture and the arts of the book. Following a similar line of thought Oleg Grabar (d. 2011), the preeminent historian of Islamic art in the twentieth century, observed that “every piece of evidence – a great monument or a ceramic series – must have its epistemological limits properly defined before it can be used to suggest the growth and evolution of a culture’s material and aesthetic creativity.”36 While Grabar indicates that each class of object will vary in the extent of the meaningful historical data it can be expected to provide, it is striking that his vision encompasses the totality of material culture from major buildings to sherds of pottery. The inclusivity of his approach is also seen in his characterization of archaeology as “an attempt to provide a complete description of the material culture of a time or place.”37 This breadth of focus accords well with the current state of the discipline, though there are fewer scholars now who are able to operate comfortably across numerous media or in several periods and regions of the Islamic world. Increasing specialization has tended to restrict the scope of the research conducted by individual researchers and to set boundaries on the conversations that are possible across disciplinary divides. Furthermore, the drive toward regionally based discourses has led some to question the usefulness of “Islamic art” as an umbrella term to describe the cultural achievements of a vast geographical area.38 These are predictable challenges that have come with the evolution of the study of the material and visual culture of the Islamic world in recent decades. Clearly these changes bring with them many advantages, allowing for the development of more sophisticated discourse.

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The increasing maturity of Islamic art history and archaeology (at the levels of theory, the collection of data, and argumentation) is driven in part by the growth in the numbers of graduate students, faculty, museum curators, and other professionals engaged in these fields of study. As noted above, this expansion is certainly evident in Canada in the last two decades. It remains the case, however, that the community of interested scholars in Canada is relatively small, particularly if compared to the United States or Europe. As yet, there is no professional association for Islamic art historians in Canada,39 and scholars in this field are not found regularly at the annual meetings of the University Art Association of Canada.40 Talks on Islamic visual and material culture have also been given on occasion at the meetings of the Canadian Society of Medievalists and the Medieval Art Historians of Canada, though both organizations continue to be more focused on European themes.41 Venues for the publication of the results of research tend also to be located outside of Canada. While none of these factors preclude the development of vibrant teaching and research (indeed, there is clear evidence for both of these), they have perhaps impeded the sharing of ideas and methods, research collaborations, the writing of grant applications, and the establishment of common goals. In this context a degree of eclecticism is to be expected in both the selection of projects and the presentation of results. The Canadian contribution to the study of Islamic art and archaeology has a global reach, though the coverage is presently uneven, with some regions and dynastic periods more densely researched than others. In order to account for these factors, the book is divided into four parts, organized along thematic, rather than temporal or geographical lines. The first part addresses the architectural traditions of the pre-modern Islamic world, focusing most attention on the issues of patronage and the communication of meaning. The first contributor, Alexander Townson (chapter 1), concerns himself with one of the most famous manifestations of Umayyad secular architecture, the carved façade of the unfinished palace of Mshatta in Jordan. One of the most ambitious and complex examples of early Islamic architectural decoration, the façade of Mshatta resists a unified iconographic reading. Townson’s approach to this knotty problem emphasizes the experience of the viewer, making intriguing use of sight lines and areas of symmetry in order to highlight significant groupings of motifs. Hussein Keshani (chapter 2) questions the functions performed by the Bara Batashewala Mahal in Delhi. Located within a formal garden, this elegant early seventeenth-century structure represents part of a larger set of architectural developments during the Mughal period. While it came to be used as a tomb for Mirza Muzaffar, Keshani’s meticulous analysis of the architecture, the epigraphic program, and the political context, concludes that it was his wife Shahzadah Khanam who was the most likely patron and that the building was probably originally designed with a residential function in mind. Chapter 3 presents an analysis of the epigraphic content of one building, the Wazir Khan Masjid in Lahore. The author, Erica Cruikshank Dodd, has long concerned herself with the role of text in Islamic architecture, and in this study she interprets

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the precise choice of ubiquitous and less commonly encountered Qur’anic verses within the structure. This interpretation also encompasses other types of text, including the kalima (statement of faith), Persian poetry, and foundation inscriptions. Dodd makes illuminating comparisons to the iconography figural cycles found in medieval Christian cathedrals, arguing that the meaning of Islamic inscriptions is closely linked to their precise location (for example, above doorways and in the vicinity of the miḥra¯b). Anthony Welch discusses aspects of the religious patronage of the fourteenth-century Tughluq ruler, Firuz Shah, in chapter 4. Firuz Shah was evidently enthusiastic about building, establishing a ministry to organize the skilled labour needed for his grand projects. Welch draws interesting comparisons with the activities of the Mamluks, another contemporary dynasty with a similar interest in the promotion of religious architecture. The second part of the book is concerned with archaeological research. The first two contributions (chapters 5 and 6) present evidence from the Canadian Archaeological Mission of the Royal Ontario Museum’s long-term project centred on the Yemeni city of Zabid. Founded in 820, the city became both prosperous and a centre for intellectual activity. The project gains particular importance in the present context in that it is an example of Canadian archaeological research focused on an urban foundation of the Islamic period. Where the Royal Ontario Museum has long promoted archaeology in the Middle East, previous sites, such as Jerusalem and Dhiban, include extensive pre-Islamic occupation phases. In chapter 5 Ingrid Hehmeyer concerns herself with the relationship between archaeology and primary texts. In this study, archaeological evidence is weighed against the written representations of the activities of two dynasties that controlled Yemen, the Ayyubids (1173–1228) and the Rasulids (1228–1454). Hehmeyer argues that archaeological analysis needs to be sensitive to inherent biases in contemporary chronicles and other written records. Her example of the unrelenting negative treatment of the local governor Ibn Qabib by the chronicler al-Khazraji (d. 1510) brings to mind Procopius’s notorious depiction of the emperor Justinian and empress Theodora in the Secret History and reminds us that primary sources should never be accepted at face value.42 The second chapter (6) is by Edward Keall and reviews the history of the museum’s research, from the initial survey work through to the detailed archaeological examination of the urban fabric of Zabid. Keall also reflects on the vital importance of integrating the historical record with the physical evidence provided by excavations and architectural analyses. Chapter 7 takes a thematic approach, concentrating on one type of artifact: ceramic drainage pipes made between the seventh and the early twentieth centuries in the Middle East. The chapter employs textual, ethnographic, and archaeological evidence to assess the main typological variations in drainage pipe design. The manufacture of these items often constituted a significant specialist craft in the larger cities of the pre-modern Middle East. The last chapter in this part (8) is an analysis of a cache of pottery excavated at the monastery of Deir Mar Musa in central Syria. Robert Mason assesses these fourteenth-century glazed wares in the light of epigraphic evidence from the monastery. These objects shine an important light on

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the consumption of pottery among a specific religious community living under Mamluk rule. The third part of the book addresses different dimensions of the study of material and visual culture. Fahmida Suleman turns her attention to the visual vocabulary of the Fatimid caliphate in chapter 9. Her study of representations of giraffes on lustre-painted glazed ceramics leads her to consider the roles played by these exotic beasts in the ritual life of the dynasty. These rituals need to be understood in the context of the urban topography of Cairo and Fustat and were a means for the Fatimid elite to connect with the wider public. In chapter 10 Lisa Golombek reviews the study of post-Timurid Persian decorated ceramics at the Royal Ontario Museum. The author notes the correspondences to Chinese prototypes but argues that a closer analysis of the Persian glazed wares is required in order to clarify issues of provenance and chronology. The methodology presented in the chapter offers a model for scholars seeking to create ceramic sequences in other contexts. In chapter 11 Parviz Tanavoli, the renowned Persian sculptor, turns his attention to a neglected aspect of the craft traditions of pre-modern Iran: the stone lions that appear at key locations across the city of Isfahan. Sculpted lions are found in association with tombs elsewhere in Iran, but Tanavoli presents evidence that those found in Isfahan are the oldest, as well as demonstrating the highest levels of craftsmanship. The author links their appearance to the rise of the Safavid dynasty (1501– 1736) and particularly the symbolic association commonly made between the lion and ʿAli ibn Abi Talib. In chapter 12 Karin Rührdanz offers a detailed study of three paintings (one of which is housed in the Royal Ontario Museum) produced in Tabriz. Rührdanz questions whether the paintings should be attributed with the rule of the Aqquyunlu dynasty or with the Safavids who succeeded them in Tabriz in the early sixteenth century. Important in this respect is the presence of Safavidstyle conical caps on some figures, though this visual evidence is shown by the author to be less conclusive than it might appear at first sight. The fourth part of the book is devoted to Islamic art from the early twentieth century to the present, concentrating both on the reception of Islamic visual culture and the works of Muslim artists. Bita Pourvash’s study of the early phase of collecting Islamic art at the Royal Ontario Museum (chapter 13) focuses on the activities of the first director, Charles Trick Currelly (d. 1957). Identifying the foreign trips and the network of patrons and dealers with which Currelly interacted, Pourvash is able to trace the changing ideas about the collecting and display of objects acquired in Egypt and other regions of the Middle East. Her conclusions add further to our understanding of the problematic discourse about the definition of Islamic material and visual culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In chapter 14 Mark Antliff considers the impact of Islamic and Byzantine art on the work of Henri Matisse (d. 1954). Matisse spent seven months in 1912–13 in Morocco, and this period resulted in many paintings and drawings. The imprint of this sojourn in the Islamic world is apparent too in his treatment of “Orientalist” subject matter later in his career. Antliff explores Matisse’s engagement with these topics through an examination

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of the painting, Standing Riffian (Le rifain debout, 1912). The essay demonstrates the ways in which the ideas of Matthew Stewart Prichard (d. 1936) and Henri Bergson (d. 1941) influenced the work of Matisse at this time. While Islamic and Byzantine aesthetics offered Matisse a vital challenge to the constricting qualities of Renaissance art, Antliff argues that this adoption of non-Western visual modes must be seen in the context of wider intellectual currents within the European avant-garde. The last two chapters probe intersections between the work of contemporary artists and the diverse visual cultures of the Islamic world. Patricia Bentley and Zulfikar Hirji reflect in chapter 15 on the creation of an exhibition, Magic Squares: The Patterned Imagination of Muslim Africa in Contemporary Culture, held at the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, in 2011. Their aim was to bring historical and contemporary objects together in order to create a visual dialogue within the exhibition space. The exhibition’s focus on the visual culture of Africa also challenged the existing boundaries of what is held to constitute “Islamic art.” The final chapter (16) is provided by Laura Marks, who takes the opportunity to develop ideas outlined in her 2010 publication, Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art. Concerning the connections between the aesthetic values of traditional forms of Islamic art and the visual culture associated with “new media,” Marks highlights the roles of Islamic philosophy and theology in the formation of key components of Islamic art and suggests that these ideas also have a relevance for our interpretation of computer-based art form. In closing this introduction, some words of sincere thanks are due to our contributors. They have exemplified the Canadian virtues of patience and courtesy, even when faced with the delays in bringing this volume together (for which the editors offer their apologies). These same qualities have been displayed in abundance by Mark Abley of McGill-Queen’s University Press. The following chapters represent a small insight into the Canadian academic engagement with the material and visual culture of the Islamic world, though it should be noted that there are other researchers not represented here. It is to be hoped that more volumes of this type will appear in the coming years, bringing to the fore the perspectives of other researchers and also allowing outside observers to track the growth and evolution of these fields of study in Canada. Does this mean that in future it might be possible to talk about a distinctively “Canadian” approach to the study of Islamic art history or archaeology? The diversity of the contributions in this volume argues against such speculation, though some comments can be made about the ways in which future research in these fields will relate to the strategic research goals being established in Canadian universities and grant-awarding bodies. For example, universities across Canada have sought in recent years to embed a sense of cultural awareness in framing documents relating to research and teaching. This has been driven in significant part by the need to address the “calls to action” generated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (2008–15), and Canadian universities have responded with the creation of Indigenous Strategic Plans.43 Researchers also have to adhere to strict ethical stan-

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dards in research, particularly when conducted with live subjects. The awareness of the social responsibilities of Canadian research institutions extends to work with other communities, both nationally and internationally. In this respect, it is worth noting the dimensions of research that are most emphasized in university framing documents and their relevance for the study of Islamic visual and material culture (historic and contemporary). For example, the University of Victoria’s Strategic Framework prioritizes respect and reconciliation as well as global engagement, with “equity, diversity and inclusion” built in as a core value. Following similar ideas, the University of British Columbia states research and other activities should be directed toward a focus on global citizenship, sustainability, and social justice with respect (defined as a “regard felt or shown towards different people, ideas and actions”) comprising one of the three essential values of the institution.44 These concepts are reflected in institutional plans made by numerous Canadian universities and illustrate the shared commitment to forms of critical engagement that respect cultural values.45 A sceptic might argue that “mission statements” bear little relation to the diverse work performed by individual scholars, though it should be noted that university priorities, as expressed through their strategic plans, are increasingly being utilized in the evaluation of applications for research chairs and major funding. Similar processes can be seen in the evaluations of proposals by Canadian grant-giving bodies.46 Whether or not distinctive “Canadian” approaches to the study of Islamic visual and material culture will evolve in the coming years as the result of wider university initiatives or other environmental factors, there is good reason to believe that the enduring contributions of scholars located in Canadian institutions and of Canadians working internationally will gain greater recognition. Increasing numbers of students specializing in these fields are graduating from doctoral and master’s programs in Canada, and these people will doubtless make a major impact on academic and museum life in the coming decades. At a time when cultural heritage is endangered in so many regions of the Islamic world, that contribution should be nurtured and encouraged.

note s 1 A full catalogue of the exhibit was not produced, but the Aga Khan Museum did publish a booklet containing some of the most notable pieces. See Aga Khan Museum, Syria. The booklet contains contributions by then director Henry Kim and by Nasser Rabbat, Ross Burns, and Filiz Çakir Phillip. 2 On Syrian art in the second half of the twentieth century, see Lenssen, “Syrian AvantGarde.” 3 To be published as an edited collection by Nasser Rabbat. 4 On this issue, see essays collected in Karimi and Rabbat, eds, Destruction of Cultural Heritage. On iconoclastic acts in the Islamic world, also see: Flood, “Between Cult and Culture.” 5 The museum also hosted the biannual conference of the Historians of Islamic Art in 2014.

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6 For the current situation in Syria, see the website created by Ross Burns in 2011: “Monuments of Syria.” See also the page devoted to unesco World Heritage sites in Syria and Iraq respectively. 7 Her career is reviewed in the “Preface,” in Roxburgh, ed., Envisioning Islamic Art, ix–xix. 8 Sheila Blair, now professor at Boston College and Virginia Commonwealth University. Her list of publications is too extensive to review here; her main areas of research interest comprise the visual cultures of the eastern Islamic world, epigraphy, calligraphy, and the art and architecture of the Ilkhanid Empire. 9 Dodd, “Image of the Word”; Golombek, “Draped Universe.” Both essays were subsequently reprinted in a collection of groundbreaking art-historical essays: Hoffman, ed., Late Antique and Medieval Art. 10 On the development of ideas relating to the visual dimensions of Islamic script, see Elias, Aisha’s Cushion, 236–83. On the relationship of morphology to textual content, see Milwright, Dome of the Rock. Further publications on these issues can be found in the bibliographies of these books. 11 Suleman, ed., Word of God, Art of Man. See particularly the editor’s introduction and the closing remarks offered by Sheila Blair. 12 Dodd and Khairallah, Image of the Word. 13 The term is borrowed from the writings of Michael Baxandall and has become part of the standard vocabulary of art history. 14 For example, see the treatments of two- and three-dimensional geometry in: Tabbaa, Transformation of Islamic Art; Neçipoğlu, Topkapi Scroll. 15 P.M. Michèle Daviau of Wilfrid Laurier University has conducted extensive archaeological work in Jordan, including Tall Jawa (discussed in chapter 7 of this volume). Much of this has focused on ancient phases, though some publications have dealt with material culture of the Islamic period. For example, Daviau, “The Inhabited Vine Motif.” Other archaeologists involved in projects in the Middle East are Tim Harrison (University of Toronto) and Debra Foran (Wilfrid Laurier). 16 For example, Milwright and Baboula, “Water on the Ground;” Buturović, Carved in Stone. For the fortress of Akkerman in the Ukraine, see: http://akkermanfortress.utoronto.ca (accessed 15 December 2017). 17 Milwright, Islamic Archaeology. 18 For example, Mason and Tite, “Tin-Opacification”; Mason and Tite, “Islamic Stonepaste Technology.” 19 Mason and Keall, “Between Baṣra and Sa¯marra¯ʾ.” Marcus Milwright is engaged in the ongoing study of ceramics excavated during British, Syrian, and German projects in Raqqa. 20 Mason, Shine Like the Sun. 21 Golombek, Bailey and Mason, Tamerlane’s Tableware; Golombek, Mason, Proctor, and Reilly, Persian Pottery in the First Global Age. 22 Golombek and Wilber, Timurid Architecture. 23 For example: Welch, Keshani, and Bain, “Epigraphs, Scripture and Architecture”; Keshani, “Architecture and the Twelver Shiʿa Tradition”; Welch, Segger, and DeCaro, “Building for the Raj.”

i n t ro d u c t i o n 24 Holod and Khan, The Contemporary Mosque. 25 Welch, Artists for the Shah; Wright, The Look of the Book; Rührdanz, “ʿAja¯ʾib al-Makhlпqa¯t Manuscripts.” 26 Kana’an, “The de jure ‘Artist.’” 27 Shatzmiller, Labour. 28 Suleman, ed., People of the Prophet’s House. See also Daftary and Hirji, The Ismailis. 29 On the redesign of the Islamic display at the Royal Ontario Museum, see Golombek, “Forty Years of Change.” 30 Ådahl and Ahlund, eds, Islamic Art Collections, 9–12. 31 Appointed in 1964 as chief archaeologist, Tushingham worked for twenty-seven years at the Royal Ontario Museum. Two of his most important projects were the Armenian Garden in Jerusalem and the multi-period site of Dhiban in Jordan. 32 The exhibition took place at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, having previously been shown at the Ashmolean Museum, the Institut du Monde Arabe, and the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. On this collection, see Allan and Gilmour, Persian Steel. 33 The catalogue for this exhibition appeared as Vollmer, Keall, and Nagai-Berthrong, Silk Roads, China Ships. 34 Wright, Soul, Spirit and Mountain. 35 For a major exhibition curated outside of Canada, see Holod and Ousterhout, eds, Osman Hamdi Bey and the Americans. 36 Grabar, Formation of Islamic Art, xvii. 37 Grabar, “Islamic Art and Archaeology.” On the problems involved in defining Islamic archaeology, see Milwright, “Defining Islamic Archaeology.” Also Vernoit, “Rise of Islamic Archaeology.” 38 For contributions on this issue, see Blair and Bloom, “The Mirage of Islamic Art”; Flood, “From the Prophet to Postmodernism?” 39 By comparison, there are associations in cognate fields, such as the Canadian Committee of Byzantinists and the Canadian Society of Medievalists. 40 The journal published by the University Art Association of Canada is racar (Revue d’Art Canadienne/Canadian Art Review). Published since 1974, racar has included three research articles that deal wholly or in part with Islamic material and visual culture. These are Harding and Micklewright, “Mamluks and Venetians”; Welch, Segger, and DeCaro, “Building for the Raj”; McLeod, “By a Wing and Tale.” Also worthy of mention for its concern with the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas and the statues of Saddam Hussein is Carr, “Leaders, Legends, and Felons.” 41 Aside from the Historians of Islamic Art meeting of 2014 mentioned above, two other conference panels devoted exclusively to themes in Islamic art and archaeology have taken place in recent years. These were at the Middle East and Islamic Studies Consortium of British Columbia (meicon) conference held at the University of Victoria in 2013 and the Canadian Society of Medievalists conference held at Ryerson University in Toronto in 2017. 42 Procopius, The Secret History, trans., G.A. Williamson with an introduction by Peter Sarris, new edition (London and New York: Penguin Classics, 2007). 17

m a rc u s m i lw r i g h t a n d eva n t h i a ba b o u l a 43 For example: Mount Royal University, Strategic Indigenous Plan: https://www.mtroyal.ca/ IndigenousMountRoyal/indigenous-strategic-plan/index.htm; The Indigenous Framework for York University: A Guide to Action: https://www.mtroyal.ca/IndigenousMountRoyal/ indigenous-strategic-plan/index.htm. On this issue, see Treleaven, “How Canadian Universities are responding to the trc Calls to Action.” 44 A Strategic Framework for the University of Victoria: 2018–2023: https://www.uvic.ca/strate gicframework/assets/docs/strategic-framework-2018.pdf (accessed 11 December 2019); ubc Strategic Plan: https://strategicplan.ubc.ca (accessed 11 December 2019). 45 This point is particularly pertinent to the “Western” study of the Islamic world, given the long debate about the relationship between scholarly (“Orientalist”) endeavours and political/economic colonialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 46 For example, see the statements about research goals in Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Strategic Plan, 2016–2020: https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/ about-au_sujet/publications/strategic-plan-strategique-2016-eng.pdf (accessed 11 December 2019). This document states that research must, among other things, “explore and expand our cultural heritage” and “enable new types of research, training and knowledge mobilization, bringing diverse perspectives to bear on the research process.”

biblio g r aphy Ådahl, Karin, and Mikael Ahlund, eds. Islamic Art Collections: An International Survey. Richmond UK: Routledge-Curzon, 2000. Aga Khan Museum. Syria: A Living History. Toronto: Aga Khan Museum, 2016. Akkerman Fortress Project: http://akkermanfortress.utoronto.ca (accessed 15 December 2017). Allan, James, and Brian Gilmour. Persian Steel: The Tanavoli Collection. Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 15. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Blair, Sheila, and Jonathan Bloom. “The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field.” Art Bulletin 85, no. 1 (2003): 152–84. Burns, Ross. “Monuments of Syria.” http://monumentsofsyria.com (accessed 5 July 2017). Buturović, Amila. Carved in Stone, Etched in Memory: Death, Tombstones, and Commemoration in Bosnian Islam since c. 1500. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015. Carr, Angela. “Leaders, Legends, and Felons: Negotiating Portraiture, from Veneration to Vandalism.” racar: Revue d’Art Canadienne/Canadian Art Review 30, no. 1/2 (2005): 101–13. Daftary, Farhad, and Zulfikar Hirji. The Ismailis: An Illustrated History. London: Azimuth Editions and Thames and Hudson in collaboration with the Institute for Ismaili Studies, 2008. Daviau, P.M. Michèle. “The Inhabited Vine Motif and Mould-Made Lamps: A Continuing Tradition in the Early Islamic Period.” Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 10 (2009): 27–39. Dodd, Erica. “The Image of the Word: Notes on the Religious Iconography of Islam.” Berytus 18 (1969): 35–79. 18

i n t ro d u c t i o n Dodd, Erica, and Shereen Khairallah. The Image of the Word: A Study of Quranic Verses in Islamic Architecture. Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1981. Elias, Jamal. Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2012. Flood, Finbarr. “Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum.” The Art Bulletin 84, no. 4 (2002): 641–59. – “From the Prophet to Postmodernism? New World Orders and the End of Islamic Art.” In Making Art History: A changing Discipline and its Institutions, edited by Elizabeth Mansfield, 31–53. London: Routledge, 2007. Golombek, Lisa. “The Draped Universe of Islam.” In Content and Context in Islamic Art, edited by Priscilla Soucek, 25–38. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988. Golombek, Lisa, Gauvin Bailey, and Robert Mason. Tamerlane’s Tableware: A New Approach to the Chinoiserie Ceramics of Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Iran. Bibliotheca Iranica: Islamic Art and Archaeology Series 6. Costa Mesa and Toronto: Mazda in association with the Royal Ontario Museum, 1996. Golombek, Lisa, Robert Mason, Patricia Proctor, and Eileen Reilly. Persian Pottery in the First Global Age: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Arts and Archaeology of the Islamic World I. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013. Golombek, Lisa, and Donald Wilber. The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan, 2 vols. Princeton Monographs in Art and Archaeology 46. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989. Grabar, Oleg. The Formation of Islamic Art. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973. – “Islamic Art and Archaeology.” In The Study of the Middle East: Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, edited by Leonard Binder, 229–63. New York: Wiley, 1976. Harding, Catherine, and Nancy Micklewright. “Mamluks and Venetians: An Intercultural Perspective on Fourteenth-Century Material Culture in the Mediterranean.” racar: Revue d’Art Canadienne/Canadian Art Review 24, no. 2 (1997): 47–66. Hoffman, Eva, ed. Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World. Blackwell Anthologies of Art History. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. Holod, Renata, and Hasan-Uddin Khan. The Contemporary Mosque: Architects, Clients and Designs Since the 1950s. Assisted by Kimberly Mims. New York: Rizzoli, 1997. Holod, Renata, and Robert Ousterhout, eds. Osman Hamdi Bey and the Americans: Archaeology, Diplomacy, Art. Istanbul: Pera Museum, 2011. Jayyusi, Salma, Renata Holod, Attilio Petruccioli, and André Raymond, eds. The City in the Islamic World, 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Kana’an, Ruba. “The de jure ‘Artist’ of the Bobrinsky Bucket: Production and Patronage of Metalwork in pre-Mongol Khurasan and Transoxiana.” Islamic Law and Society 16, no. 2 (2009): 175–201. Karimi, Pamela, and Nasser Rabbat, eds. The Destruction of Cultural Heritage: From 19

m a rc u s m i lw r i g h t a n d eva n t h i a ba b o u l a Napoléon to isis, The Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative. http://we-aggre gate.org/project/the-destruction-of-cultural-heritage-from-napoleon-to-isis (accessed 5 July 2017). Keshani, Hussein. “Architecture and the Twelver Shiʿa Tradition: The Great Ima¯mba¯ra¯ Complex of Lucknow.” Muqarnas 23 (2006): 219–50. Lenssen, Anneka. “The Plasticity of the Syrian Avant-Garde, 1964–1970.” ARTMargins 2, no. 2 (2013): 43–70. McLeod, Erin. “By a Wing and Tale: Authenticating the Archive in Mohamad-Said Baalbaki’s ‘Al-Buraq/The Prophet’s Human-Headed Mount.’” racar 38, no. 1 (2013): 97–105. Mason, Robert. Shine Like the Sun: Lustre-Painted and Associated Pottery from the Medieval Middle East. Bibliotheca Iranica: Islamic Art and Architecture Series 12. Toronto and Costa Mesa: Mazda, 2004. Mason, Robert, and Edward Keall. “Between Baṣra and Sa¯marra¯ʾ. Petrographic Analysis.” In Ar-Raqqa I: Frühislamische Keramik von Tall Aswad, edited by Peter Miglus, 139–42. Mainz am Rhein: Philipp Von Zabern, 1999. Mason, Robert, and Michael Tite. “The Beginnings of Islamic Stonepaste Technology.” Archaeometry 36, no. 1 (1994): 77–91. – “The Beginnings of Tin-Opacification of Pottery Glazes.” Archaeometry 39, no. 1 (1997): 41–58. Milwright, Marcus. “Defining Islamic Archaeology: Some preliminary Notes.” akpia@mit Forum: Studies in Architecture, History and Culture (2009): 1–11. web.mit.edu/akpia.www/ articlemilwrightpdf (accessed 5 July 2017). – The Dome of the Rock and its Umayyad Mosaic Inscriptions. Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. – An Introduction to Islamic Archaeology. Edinburgh Islamic Surveys. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. Milwright, Marcus, and Evanthia Baboula. “Water on the Ground: Water Systems in Two Ottoman Greek Port Cities.” In Rivers of Paradise: Water in Islamic Art and Culture, edited by Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, 213–38. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009. Mount Royal University. Strategic Indigenous Plan: https://www.mtroyal.ca/Indigenous MountRoyal/indigenous-strategic-plan/index.htm. Neçipoğlu, Gülru. The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture. Santa Monica: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1995. Procopius. The Secret History. Translated by G.A. Williamson with an introduction by P. Sarris, new edition. London and New York: Penguin Classics, 2007. Rührdanz, Karin. “Illustrated Persian ʿAja¯ʾib al-Makhlпqa¯t Manuscripts and Their Function in Early Modern Times.” In Society and Culture in the Early Modern Middle East: Studies on Iran in the Safavid Period, edited by Andrew Newman, 33–50. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003. Shatzmiller, Maya. Labour in the Medieval Islamic World. Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts 4. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1994. 20

i n t ro d u c t i o n Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Strategic Plan, 2016–2020: https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/about-au_sujet/publications/strategic-plan-strategique2016-eng.pdf (accessed 11 December 2019). Suleman, Fahmida, ed. People of the Prophet’s House: Artistic and Ritual Expressions of Shiʿi Islam. London: Azimuth Editions in collaboration with the Institute of Ismaili Studies and the British Museum’s Department of the Middle East, 2015. – ed. Word of God, Art of Man: The Qurʾan and its Creative Expressions. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press in association with the Institute for Ismaili Studies, 2007. Tabbaa, Yasser. The Transformation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival. London: I. B. Tauris, 2001. Treleaven, Sarah. “How Canadian Universities are responding to the trc Calls to Action,” Maclean’s (7 December 2018): https://www.macleans.ca/education/how-canadianuniversities-are-responding-to-the-trcs-calls-to-action/ (accessed 11 December 2019). unesco World Heritage sites Iraq. http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/iq/ (accessed 5 July 2017). unesco World Heritage sites in Syria. http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/sy/ (accessed 5 July 2017). University of British Columbia. ubc Strategic Plan: https://strategicplan.ubc.ca (accessed 11 December 2019). University of Victoria. A Strategic Framework for the University of Victoria: 2018–2023: https://www.uvic.ca/strategicframework/assets/docs/strategic-framework-2018.pdf (accessed 11 December 2019). Vernoit, Stephen. “The Rise of Islamic Archaeology.” Muqarnas 14 (1997): 1–10. Vollmer, John, Edward Keall, and E. Nagai-Berthrong. Silk Roads, China Ships. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1983. Welch, Anthony. Artists for the Shah: Late Sixteenth-Century Painting at the Imperial Court of Iran. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976. Welch, Anthony, Hussein Keshani, and Alexandra Bain. “Epigraphs, Scripture and Architecture in the Early Delhi Sultanate.” Muqarnas 19 (2002): 12–43. Welch, Anthony, Martin Segger, and Nicholas DeCaro. “Building for the Raj: Richard Roskell Bayne.” racar: Revue d’Art Canadienne/Canadian Art Review 34, no. 2 (2009): 74–86. Wright, Elaine. The Look of the Book: Manuscript Production in Shiraz, 1303–1452. Seattle: University of Washington Press with Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2013. Wright, Astri. Soul, Spirit and Mountain: Preoccupations of contemporary Indonesian Painters, Kuala Lumpur. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. York University. Indigenous Framework for York University: A Guide to Action: https://www. mtroyal.ca/IndigenousMountRoyal/indigenous-strategic-plan/index.htm.

21

pa rt o n e

Reading Architecture

chapter 1

Mshatta’s Façade and the Viewer Alexander Townson

Mshatta has entered the canon of Islamic art as an example of Umayyad architectural eclecticism. Most have ascribed its patronage to the reputedly eccentric caliph Walid II (r. 743–44),1 whose excesses are thought to have manifested themselves in fanciful works of architecture. Yet regardless of who had it built, Mshatta is sufficiently engaging to stand on its own, intrinsic merits. With this in mind, I will question whether an ornamental band that once bedecked the structure’s entrance was planned not only according to the patron’s wishes but also in consideration of the viewer. This requires conjecture. Like the majority of Mshatta’s architecture, the decoration was never finished.2 Most of it is now in Berlin, to where it was shipped in 1904 as a diplomatic gift from the Ottoman Empire.3 Given that I have as my focus the perspective of Mshatta’s intended audience, my analysis prioritizes what a visitor could have witnessed rather than the disembodied images a present-day scholar might see in the pages of a book. This hypothetical individual will determine which viewpoints of the façade were prominent. The images contained in these important locations will then be described and compared to analogues to determine their possible iconographic significance. I will also provide examples of motifs from opposite sides of the ornamental band that are comparable. Their similarities will demonstrate possible relationships between the two sections of the façade. Finally, the evidence for a sequential arrangement of imagery will be considered, keeping in mind the potential role of a central axis in dividing both sides of the façade. To achieve these goals, I shall employ photographs taken before the façade’s removal as well as cross-sectional diagrams that demonstrate the effect of protruding towers on the viewer’s lines of sight. Far from exhibiting a haphazard borrowing of misunderstood foreign ideas by a culture in its infancy, Mshatta’s façade will be shown to display evidence of a sophisticated and well-planned artistic program, which consciously employed a visual vocabulary consisting of late antique and Sasanian elements known to its audience but combined and adapted in a uniquely Umayyad fashion.

alexander tow nson

1.1 Photograph of Mshatta with sheep in the foreground. The Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University.

t h e s i te

26

During her visit on 22 March 1900, Gertrude Bell (d. 1926) witnessed Mshatta in the role that may have given rise to its contemporary name: a place to winter one’s flock. In her diary she wrote that the ruin was “indescribably beautiful and pathetic, standing solitary in the rolling plains with no inhabited place within 30 miles of it but the black tents of the Arabs.”4 Things have changed. Mshatta now lies at the edge of the Queen Alia International Airport, roughly twenty-four kilometres south and seven kilometres east of the centre of Amman, Jordan. As can be seen in a drawing by Bruno Schulz (d. 1932) published in 1904, Mshatta is an edifice of 147 metres per external side, enclosed by limestone masonry walls roughly 1.5 metres thick.5 Twenty-five towers abut its exterior. Most of these are curvilinear, excepting two that are polyhedral, and which flank a single entrance to

mshat ta’s façade and the v iewer

1.2 Plan of Mshatta. After Schulz, 1904, pl. I.

the south. They resemble cylinders and octagonal prisms respectively but their external surfaces end at the line of the enclosure wall, which effectively cuts them down the middle. Of the interior, only a central tract possesses any significant structures above the foundation level.6 In its southeast corner is a rectangular room with a niche oriented to the qibla, indicating what was likely to be a mosque. At its north end is a room formed by three apses of baked brick on a stone foundation.7 This area was once accessed by walking under the same number of arches.8 A central axis of symmetry flows through the tract, connecting the main entrance in the south to the apsidal area in the north via a large central courtyard. Mshatta’s exact function is unconfirmed.9 Were it to have been a palace, in whole or in part, as many believe, ceremonial processions might have followed northward along this axis.10 A dashed line at the bottom of Schulz’s drawing, parallel to the southern enclosure wall, connects a curvilinear tower to the two polyhedral towers that form the entranceway. This marks the section of Mshatta that was brought to Berlin. In 1898, when the façade was still attached to the enclosure wall, Rudolf Ernst Brünnow (d. 1917) took several pictures of it during his travels with Alfred von Domaszewski (d. 1927) through Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria).11 One of these photographs reveals a

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alexander tow nson

1.3 Mshatta’s façade in situ, 1897–98. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Princeton University.

zigzag band that divides the wall into equilateral triangles, each of which has at its centre a rosette.12 Ten equilateral triangles sit on either side of the entrance, each resting on a hypotenuse. These are interspersed with the same number of triangles pointing downward from above the zigzag. Triangles half the size stand astride the door and at both extremities of the façade. All of these features would have been visible from afar, their outlines defined by the shadows of a moulded border. One might think of this vision as a marshal one, with triangles and their rosettes like rows of shields with their bosses. Not as obvious in Brünnow’s photograph, but evident upon closer inspection, the rosettes below the zigzag are uniformly poly-lobed, while those above are octagonal. This echoes the divide between towers that appear cylindrical and those that resemble octagonal prisms.

a na r r at ive

28

Each triangle contains subsidiary ornament whose intricacy and shallow carving suggest the decoration was to be perceived at close range. Most of the façade’s figural imagery is in the lower portion of each triangle, at the elevation of the observer’s head when on foot. In order to see the upper area of each triangular composition, one would have had to tilt the head backwards. A more privileged visitor on horse-

mshat ta’s façade and the v iewer

back (or camelback) would not have had this difficulty, but there are two indications that those who planned Mshatta’s external decoration may have had in mind the subservient visitor, looking up from below: the upper edges of the moulded zigzag, mostly concealed when viewed from below, were left uncarved, and the subsidiary carvings of the triangles positioned above the zigzag were mostly unfinished. The latter may also reflect a decorative process that moved from bottom to top, following the growth of vegetation it depicted. It also emphasizes the primacy of the ornamental band’s baseline with regard to scenes of importance. If each triangle were to have been closely observed, Mshatta’s visitors may have been expected to see more than the prominent zigzag. Perhaps, as occurred to Charles Clermont-Ganneau (d. 1923) in 1906, they were meant to read a story from the ornament. La merveilleuse décoration de la façade semble devoir être interprétée comme l’apothéose de la vigne. C’est une sorte de texte en images qui a son unité, à condition d’être “lu” de droite à gauche et non, comme on l’a fait jusqu’ici, de gauche à droite. La vigne est d’abord représentée en fleurs, puis se développant graduellement, à divers états de maturité, jusqu’au moment où elle est envahie part toutes les bêtes de la creation qui se régalent de ses grappes.13

1.4 Upper portion of the zigzag.

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alexander tow nson

This interpretation rests on a progressive scanning of the façade from one end to the other. It applies the methodology of reading texts to the interpretation of a set of images. If envoys to the Umayyad ruling class included more than just Arabic speakers, a decision to decorate in legible images, rather than in text, may have accommodated a diversity of linguistic backgrounds. Clermont-Ganneau’s idea prompts the question: in what physical manner could such a visitor have read the whole façade?

lines of sig ht In his comparative study, “La mosquée et le palais,” from his book, La mosquée Omeyyade de Médine: étude sur les origines architecturales de la mosquée et de la basilique, Jean Sauvaget considered the visibility of the miḥra¯b within the setting of a hypostyle hall.14 Although portions of the entire qibla wall may be within view of a significant number of congregants, supporting pillars obscure the prayer niche for those not situated on the main axis. At Mshatta a similar situation might have occurred in the triple-apse of the northern structure, if that space were to have been used as an audience hall. Sauvaget’s methodology can also be applied to the exterior of buildings. When Mshatta is viewed from the south, and in a stationary position on the central axis, the towers that flank the entrance obscure parts of the façade.15 The only way to read every segment of the façade in sequence is by walking along the wall and placing oneself in front of each triangle. Without this freedom, areas immediately to the west and east of each entrance tower become dead zones to a viewer standing at any distance from the enclosure wall. Of these areas, the zone to the left (from the viewer’s perspective) of the western polyhedral tower contains a large number of confronting animals, some of Clermont-Ganneau’s “beasts of creation.” The obscurity of this part of the façade when viewed from the central axis may have caused this motif to be repeated, rather than risk the introduction of new imagery into an area not easily seen. At all distances except those nearest the threshold, the extremities of the façade are more visible than any other section. Clermont-Ganneau emphasized the western end, which fits into the last position of his reading from right to left. Au sommet du dernier (et non du premier) panneau triangulaire et dominant ainsi tout l’ensemble, emerge des pampres une figure humaine, coiffée d’une sorte de bonnet phrygien […]16 None of the limestone blocks above the rosette of the easternmost triangle were in place at the time these observations were published, as is evident in one of Brünnow’s photographs taken almost a decade earlier. The absence of an image at the 30

1.5 Lines of sight to Mshatta’s façade from the central axis, at varying distances from the entrance. Façade outline after Schulz, 1904.

alexander tow nson

1.6 Easternmost triangle in situ, 1897–98. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Princeton University. Opposite 1.7 Westernmost triangle in situ, 1897–98. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Princeton University.

eastern end comparable to the bonneted figure of the westernmost triangle is therefore hypothetical. Yet there is a similarity between these two triangles in the lower sections known to us. Perfectly formed circles with beaded, possibly pearled, borders rest on the base of the western triangle, just as they do on the eastern triangle, where they have additional circular layers. Clermont-Ganneau spoke of a first and a last triangle, but the very act of comparing the two implies a relationship of symmetry. The final triangle to the west may end a narrative progression but perhaps not one that begins in the east. Both extremities of the façade could have been similar bookends to a composition originating at the central entrance.

a hum a n face

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To the viewer, the westernmost and easternmost triangles would have seemed important because of their superior visibility and distinction as bookends to the façade. This may have motivated the choice of what to carve in these locations. At the western end is the figure noted by Clermont-Ganneau. In Berlin, one sees it apparently

standing awkwardly with only faint outlines of eyes and two parallel lines for a nose on its disproportionately large head. This creature has been referred to as a dog by Henry Baker Tristram,17 called a sphinx or gorgon by Josef Strzygowksi,18 and described as “a cat-like animal, turned to the right, with a human face turned forwards” by K.A.C. Creswell.19 Brünnow’s photograph of the figure, blessed by the contrasts enabled by natural light, and taken when the façade was in better condition, shows something wholly different: below a human face, wearing a Phrygian cap as Clermont-Ganneau noted, is the profile of a seated animal facing east. The illustration of Mshatta’s façade produced for Brünnow’s account of his travels, Die Provincia Arabia, also identifies this animal.20 It is likely a lion, and might have played an iconographic role comparable

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1.8 Westernmost triangle, detail of the apex.

34

1.9 Westernmost triangle in situ, detail of the apex shown in 1.7.

to those of the creatures at the base of other triangles. Its posterior is in an adjoining block, whose edge gives the false impression that the front of the animal is the body of the human head above. The features of this head were rendered naturalistically, with eyes looking downward and into the façade, in a general eastern direction toward an observer situated in line with Mshatta’s entrance. Clermont-Ganneau spoke of “dominance” in reference to the figure he saw, which is justifiable given its visual prominence, its elevated position, and its gaze over the viewer. As Brünnow’s photograph demonstrates, the lion and face become even more distinct from their darker surroundings when lit by the sun (fig. 1.7). A human head in an elevated position atop a seated lion is reminiscent of a sculpture from the bath porch façade at Khirbat al-Mafjar, another Umayyad architectural complex. There, a man is depicted standing on two lions, in a manner found in representations of Byzantine and Persian rulers.21 The bath porch façade sculpture is also comparable to a monarch seated above two lions, as depicted in a Sasanian

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silver plate.22 Akin to Mshatta, a rosette is placed below the standing figure of Khirbat al-Mafjar. At Mshatta, however, the moulded frame of the façade’s zigzag prevented full sculptural representation: the acute angle of the triangle’s apex may have forced a head to take the place of a whole body. The pointed Phrygian cap worn by the head mimics the angular space into which it fits. As a motif, the Phrygian cap is widespread, often conveying a general idea of areas to the east, as it did for the Magi depicted in the Byzantine mosaics of the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, or more specifically a Persian association, as was the case with sculptures of the god Mithras. In both its symbolism and in the direction of its gaze, the face that wears this hat announces a connection between Mshatta and the lands of the Sasanians. Yet it also bears affinity to an example much closer to home. The image of a man (or his synecdochic face) with lions at his feet could refer to King Solomon’s gold and ivory throne. According to the Bible, the arms of this royal seat were flanked by lions, which also guarded its six steps.23 Alternatively, the combination of a face and a lion may represent the astrological symbol of the sun in Leo, which was considered an auspicious conjunction of planets.24 At the minimum, we can be certain that the lion and human face were placed in a significant location on the façade and that they have corollaries in the sculptural decoration of at least one other ambitious work of architecture commissioned by the Umayyads.

s y m m et ry Just as the façade is composed of two parts of equal size, and the triangles at the extremities mirror each other, so do the south-facing sides of the two polyhedral towers flanking the entrance present related images. The southern face of Mshatta’s western polyhedral tower depicts two facing male lions drinking from a central basin. Not only do these animals have similar manes and facial features, they also mimic each other’s stance, suggesting a vertical axis of symmetry dividing the triangle in two. Animals face each other elsewhere on the western wing of the façade, but seldom do they resemble each other so closely. The counterpart on the southern side of the eastern polyhedral tower displays a winged palmette sitting atop a stem protruding from the baseline of the triangle. Although the stem leans slightly to the viewer’s right, and the vine scroll that backs it does not form an entirely balanced composition, by rising from the centre of the triangle it indicates a vertical axis of symmetry similar to the triangle’s corollary on the western tower. The wings of the palmette at the top of the stem splay outwards either side of this axis, mimicking in diminutive fashion the duality of the lions. A relationship between both towers, which display two of the principal images of the façade, is apparent. Both motifs may represent royal authority. Facing lions have been said to symbolize the Umayyad caliphate, borrowing a leonine iconographic tradition employed

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1.10, 1.11 South faces of the polyhedral towers with details of lower portions (Western tower above, Eastern tower below).

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in at least one Byzantine portable object.25 Less obviously, the wings of the palmette echo Sasanian crowns common to profiles of rulers on coinage minted before the numismatic reforms of the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 685–705) and also present in the mosaics of the Dome of the Rock. The stem on which the palmette rests could also be compared to the qaḍгb (baton) held by the caliph during ceremonial processions. Beneath the layering of iconography, similarities in the compositional arrangement of these two triangles at the entrance to Mshatta further demonstrate the existence of a parallel message conveyed on opposite parts of the façade using different motifs. The double images that result from reflections across axes of symmetry also replicate patterns found on textiles, supporting the argument that Mshatta’s façade functioned like a hanging carpet.26

the ent r ance The possibility of a simultaneous view of both sides of the façade would have disappeared at closer distances, where the abutting towers prevented the ornamental band from being observed in its entirety (fig. 1.5). For someone about to cross the threshold, the triangles that remained visible, particularly those surrounding the doorway, would have demanded immediate attention. Because they were perpendicular to the approaching viewer’s line of sight, they might have been difficult to perceive from far away. Once the building was about to be entered, however, they could have been observed with a simple turning of the head. The triangle to the right of a viewer facing north and standing near the entrance possesses intricate carvings, while lacking identifiable images apart from repetitive vegetal motifs. Strzygowski noted that the stem of a plant depicted in it stayed thin throughout rather than thickening after leaving the vase at its root.27 For Creswell, this brought evenness to the field.28 By contrast, the opposite triangle on the viewer’s left devotes most of its space to figural imagery. Those triangles that follow further to its west present animals on a solid linear base. Here, however, vines define the positions of figures at varying heights from the baseline, thereby diminishing their poise. Much of the space is occupied by animals, including humans, encircled by tendrils as in the inhabited vine scrolls that fill the mosaic floors of Christian buildings in the Madaba region south-west of Amman, such as the Church of Saints Lot and Procopius in Khirbat al-Mukhayyat, the Church at Mount Nebo, and the Church of Saint Stephen in Umm al-Rasas.29 The last of these churches was constructed after Mshatta, suggesting a shared late antique iconographic heritage for Muslim and Christian architectural decoration in Bilad al-Sham. Creswell noted that this triangle contained quadrupeds facing outwards.30 Nowhere else on the façade does this occur. If the symbol of Umayyad rule was two facing lions, this image is its opposite. One of the quadrupeds stands in the right corner, behind and above a human figure also identified by Creswell. In its hands is 37

1.12 Triangle west of the entrance in situ, 1897–98. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Princeton University.

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a basket full of grapes, whose woven strands were still clear in Brünnow’s photograph. The human is cornered in an acutely angled space, unaware of the animal to the rear. Unlike the seated lion in the triangle at the western extremity of the façade, here the beast is lively and dominant. One can understand why this basket-carrying figure and the clustered and hanging grapes displayed throughout the ornamental band may have led Clermont-Ganneau to see the façade of Mshatta as an apotheosis of the vine. Yet caution should be exercised when describing Mshatta as a reflection of Walid II’s supposed penchant for alcohol. While he was known to drink on the throne, Umayyad caliphs in general imbibed during official ceremonies.31 A vintaging scene displaying a figure holding a basket of grapes may also be found in Sasanian silverware.32 Additionally, the

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mosaics of Byzantine churches in Bilad al-Sham contain depictions of wine making. They have not been employed to demonstrate a taste for alcohol in their patrons. As Creswell observed and as Brünnow’s photograph indicates, much of the triangle that contained the grape harvester had weathered badly. The upper portion of its rosette is heavily worn. Several photographs of Mshatta display people standing above this part of the enclosure wall, such as those taken when Bell visited the site (and see fig. 1.1). It is conceivable that the rosette and moulding of this triangle could have been used as steps to ascend the façade, even if they were not designed for this purpose. If Mshatta were to have been a fortified structure, the easy scaling of its walls by attackers would have been a significant weakness.33 Referring to the lower left corner of the triangle, Creswell recorded that the filling of its vine circle had “half crumbled away.”34 A closer inspection reveals that enough has survived to indicate the outline of another human.35 Like Creswell, Brünnow seems to have overlooked this figure. The illustrations in Die Provincia Arabia did not identify any imagery within the left portion of the triangle.36 Yet even in the remnants now in Berlin there are traces of a human with his back to the corner.

1.13 Photograph of Mshatta with people standing on its walls. The Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University.

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1.14 Triangle west of the entrance, outline of a human figure in the left corner.

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Unlike the diminutive figure in the opposite corner, this person is aware of being threatened. His knees are bent in the direction of what is likely a lion in an aggressive posture, its mouth open and its left paw raised. The figure stands on a circular tendril, angling his left arm toward the lion while defending his other side. Raised above his head and away from the approaching lion is his right arm. Despite the poor state of preservation, it is possible to identify a circular object in this extended limb. Three dots are visible within the band of a disc. Perhaps this is a miniature version of the pearl-bordered roundels found in the triangles on the western and eastern ends of the façade. Its size relative to the figure suggests that it may have represented a diadem. A contorted human faced by a lion contrasts with the serene image at the top of the westernmost triangle. Unlike the depiction of a face elevated above a seated lion, here both figures are level, they are closer in size, and the lion threatens a human. Comparisons could be made to the depictions of rulers holding diadems in the Sasanian rock carvings of Naqsh-i Rustam and Taq-i Bustan37 and to similar scenes on Sasanian silverware.38 At Mshatta, the dignity and poise of these other images has been torn asunder and replaced with a tense scene in which one possible symbol of authority, a diadem, is being held back from another such symbol, a lion. One might read this as an allusion to the conquered Sasanian Empire, whose regal imagery is being subverted, in a way that would have been jarring to those familiar with it.

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1.15 Smaller triangle east of the entrance.

Similarly, the nearby scene of an aggressive lion threatening a diminutive grape picker, the latter figure common in Byzantine art, could be explained as an Umayyad appropriation of eastern Roman imagery, with the often-peaceful vintaging scene transformed into one of heightened tension. Less certain, though plausible, is that it may have been a statement against the gathering of grapes to produce wine. In this one triangle, which would have remained fresh in the minds of visitors entering the precinct, was a set of figural images deliberately evoking the caliphate’s two main imperial rivals in a metamorphosed and unfamiliar manner. Its unsettling nature, imbued with the threat of attack, might have been intended to set the stage for upcoming experiences within Mshatta’s precinct, perhaps involving actual live examples of the exotic animals it depicted. Should this have been the case, both static ornament and real life could have been combined to bewilder and intimidate a visitor, as one reads in later accounts of diplomatic visits.39 A dividing line between two stylistic approaches to the façade’s vegetal decoration occurs at the entrance, not exactly in the opening of the doorway but between the first complete triangle to the east of the entrance and the triangle half its size that is squeezed between it and the door frame.40 Instead of being considered part of the

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western or eastern sides of the façade, the smaller triangles to either side of the entrance might be viewed together as a separate central entity. Split in two by the door, they are bound by rosettes that once contained the same internal composition. Their figural imagery follows that which is found elsewhere on the western portion of the façade. The vines that fill them are thick and branch-like, differing from the thin and tightly wound curls of the triangles to the east. Nevertheless, a pervasive growth of plants unites the two wings of the façade.

the east w ing The preponderance of vegetal ornament in the eastern portion of the façade makes the identification of iconographic trends difficult. Many of the eastern blocks may have been left on site by the team that removed the façade, simply because the lack of figural decoration reduced their allure to those accustomed to the prominence of such imagery.41 An observer might have recognized outlines of animals more easily than the leaves, branches, and fruits connected in almost unbroken links within each triangle. Animate life may have been placed deliberately to the west. The likely presence of a mosque behind the eastern half of Mshatta’s enclosure wall has been used to justify the absence of figural imagery in that part of the façade.42 Yet one wonders why portions of the façade with figural imagery are so replete with plant life if a distinction was being made between the animal and the vegetal. Several animals, moreover, notably a lion and birds, are present immediately east of the doorway. Conversely, sections of entirely vegetal imagery extend beyond the parameters of the mosque’s qibla wall.43 The portion of the façade that was devoid of figural imagery may only have been estimated. It is often remarked that in Islamic art, paradise is represented by the verdant garden through which rivers flow. At Mshatta, green gardens cover the entire façade. Unlike the Barada panel of the Great Mosque of Damascus, however, Mshatta’s façade contains no depictions of water beneath its vegetation. That is, unless the curves visible in the profile of Mshatta’s base moulding were to replicate the ripples of a cascade. Irrespective of the unifying features of the façade’s moulded border, the iconography of Muslim paradise may be found on both wings of the ornamental band.

aniconic imagery

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We have already observed elements of symmetry in Mshatta’s façade: the triangles at either extremity contain pearl-bordered circles, possibly representing diadems; a pair of lions decorates the south face of the western polyhedral tower, mimicking the paired wings topping a palmette on the southern side of the eastern polyhedral

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1.16 View of the western wing of the façade from the central axis, with a visible triangle outlined.

tower. Comparable motifs were placed equidistant from the doorway, turning it into a vertical axis of symmetry. A viewer positioned away from this axis would have had difficulty in correlating motifs from both wings of the façade. Further similarities between motifs on either wing of the façade exist, if not strictly defined by the symmetrical relationships that govern the triangles at the extremities of the ornamental band and on the southern faces of the entrance towers. In the east, figural imagery may have been alluded to in symbols, mirroring their more overt equivalents in the west. I will consider a few examples. A triangle on the western portion of the façade, visible from the central axis of the complex even when close to the entrance, and therefore of potential importance, displays two proud, griffin-like animals facing each other. Creswell saw in one the pointed ears of a fox and in the other the mane of a hyena.44 He did not notice that at the foot of each was another creature: on the left was an animal that resembled a seated hare with its paw raised, and on the right was an animal that may have been an outstretched hyena or a dog. They meld with the surrounding growth, as if leafy

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1.17 Detail of facing griffins from a triangle on the western wing of the façade.

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addenda to the vines. Like the Sasanian rock carving at Naqsh-i Rustam, in which the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda invests Ardashir by handing him a diadem while both are on horseback, the griffins of this triangle trample and dominate subordinate animals. One could argue that facing griffins, like Mshatta’s many facing lions, represented regal, and in this case specifically Umayyad, supremacy. Patterns of facing winged animals can also be found on high-value Byzantine and Sasanian textiles.45 The motif of superposition, exhibited by the griffins and the animals beneath them, may be thematically related to the human face positioned atop a seated lion in the westernmost triangle. In that triangle, the scene was calm and the dominance synecdochic. The message of one animal ascending over another may be observed across the western wing of the façade, with gradations in dynamism: the triangle near the entrance displays a lion raising its paw threateningly toward a cowering human; the centre of the band contains facing griffins that demonstrate strength in their proud stances but which are without motion; the final triangle to the west is even more restful with its seated lion and human face. Cleaved from its body, the latter is bereft of movement. Only its eyes can hint at tension.

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1.18 Easternmost triangle in situ, detail of the lower portion shown in figure 1.6.

Finding a corollary in the eastern wing to the theme of dominance is challenging. In the final triangle to the east (fig. 1.6), which would have been as visible to a viewer standing on the central axis as the westernmost triangle, two vines sprout from either side of a central circle that may be crushing them under its weight. Their position equates to that of the hare and hyena trampled below the griffins already noted. If the round object is a symbol of rulership, such as a diadem, then the scene it occupies may be conveying a subtle message of subordination to authority similar to the imagery in the western triangles. Further comparison can be made between the anatomy of the facing griffins and the seemingly aniconic decoration of the eastern wing. When its triangle was still at the site, the griffin with the head of a hyena displayed an anatomy composed in part of clearly defined spherical objects. Its left shoulder is an assemblage of similar forms, which are at the root of a wing. Creswell compared them to a cluster of grapes.46 The south side of the eastern polyhedral tower also possessed wings rooted in clusters of grape-like objects. Mshatta’s carvers may have been enhancing both sides of the façade with the same decorative conventions. It is also plausible that on the side of the ornamental band associated with the mosque, wings rooted in clustered spheres were a metonymic attempt to suggest the figural with the inanimate. Employing inanimate imagery in such a manner may explain the triangle to the right of the south face of the eastern polyhedral tower. Most of the triangle’s blocks had collapsed when Brünnow and Domaszewski visited the site, and it was not included with the drawings of the façade in Die Provincia Arabia. Fortunately, its surviving fragments are now in Berlin. Creswell saw in the triangle a motif also found in the mosaics of the Dome of the Rock. He noted that Strzygowski had called this object a “Flügelpalmette,” the German word for winged palmette.47 Present in triplicate along the vertical axis that divides the triangle in two, this motif is less naturalistic than the winged palmettes in the triangle to its west. Yet both renderings of palmettes possess a sheath of two symmetrical wings enclosing a pointed bud, with two small leaves curling downward from either side of its base.

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Above and opposite top 1.19 Triangle from the western wing of the façade in situ and detail of a griffin taken from the same photograph. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive Princeton University.

1.20 Southeast face of the eastern polyhedral tower, detail of a Flügelpalmette.

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1.21 Graffito from a façade block. Schulz, 1904.

In either form, the winged palmette is comparable to a symbol of Sasanian royal power: the winged crown.48 Oleg Grabar saw this type of crown in the mosaics of the Dome of the Rock.49 In the octagon of the dome, one such crown is contained within a shell whose outline resembles the stylized Flügelpalmette of Mshatta,50 while another on the drum of the dome, with much larger wings, is closer in appearance to the winged palmette.51 Mshatta’s decorators may have been familiar with representations of Sasanian rulers. This is suggested by a piece of graffito found at the site, which depicts a forward-facing human wearing a crown akin to the winged palmettes of the façade.52 Mshatta’s location in a region with a tradition of Byzantine art but relatively distant from the Iranian plateau may have favoured portable objects as a convenient means of reference for those wishing to decorate in Sasanian imagery. One does not 48

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1.22 Triangle from the eastern wing of the façade in situ, detail of the lower portion as shown in figure 1.23.

have to look far for architectural decoration displaying vintaging scenes of Hellenistic ancestry comparable to some of the low-relief ornament composing the western wing of Mshatta’s façade. The mosaics of the Madaba region, particularly those of the Byzantine Church of Saints Lot and Procopius in Khirbat al-Mukhayyat, portray bunches of grapes being pruned and picked, as well as large baskets full of the fruit. For the decoration of the eastern wing of Mshatta, however, there is not a regional wealth of architectural precedents. Early Islamic Arab-Sasanian coinage, which borrowed its imagery from coins minted by the Sasanian rulers Khusraw II and Yazdagird III, could have informed the graffito and the choice of how to carve the winged palmette.53 These coins were in common usage until the reforms of ‘Abd al-Malik, which occurred only a few decades before Mshatta’s assumed date of construction, and until the 770s in certain eastern regions of the caliphate. Some may have remained in circulation in Bilad al-Sham during the early eighth century. The crowns they display are of the feathered variety, closer to the ornament of the Dome of the Rock and of Mshatta. Coinage is not the only type of portable object worth considering. One example of a Sasanian silver plate depicts a winged human flying above a scene that includes a seated monarch and two lions drinking from a vase.54 That this object contains many of the key motifs of Mshatta’s façade suggests a repertoire of similar imagery may have been available to the decorators of Mshatta. If so, they may have regarded the seemingly aniconic winged palmettes of the eastern portion of the façade as representations of winged beings. The Flügelpalmette could have been another attempt to reflect the mythological creatures of the western portion of Mshatta’s façade without resorting to figural 49

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imagery. Substantial artistic borrowing from the Dome of the Rock, one of the most sacred works of Muslim architecture, also suggests a standard Umayyad approach to the ornamentation of architecture associated with holy spaces. The typological relationship between Mshatta and the Dome of the Rock is most strongly demonstrated in an image unlike anything else within the limestone façade. Sadly, it no longer exists, but Brünnow’s photograph captured well the triangle from which it came. The prominence of this image is partly due to its unfinished state, which projected it from its surroundings. Situated in the middle of the eastern wing of the façade, it would have been within clear line of sight of someone positioned on the central axis (fig. 1.5). In this capacity, it equals the position of the facing griffins of the western part of the façade, but as an image it is distinct. The bottom of the object is shaped liked the basins depicted in other triangles, while its remainder is connected to emerging vines. Strzygowski compared the tendrils of this strange motif to the tentacles of a cuttlefish.55 In doing this, he echoed Mshatta’s disturbing of the boundaries between the animate and the inanimate. The motif ’s sprouting of symmetrical vines upward and outwards is a larger version of the winged palmette and in turn of the feathered Sasanian crown. A strikingly similar image may be found in the internal mosaics of the drum of the Dome of the Rock, in one spandrel where vines emerge from a diadem and envelop an object whose outline is that of a winged palmette.56 The images at both sites are delineated in the same manner and contain the same stream of spherical, pearl-like, objects within two main tendrils. We might think of Mshatta’s façade as an externalizing of decoration normally reserved for private spaces, since it displays a motif also situated in the most internal and sacred area of the Dome of the Rock. Imagery associated with a significant religious structure may have been included because of the mosque that lies inside Mshatta’s enclosure wall, but it might also reflect the general direction of the qibla to its south. This latter explanation could justify the even distribution of vegetation across the façade. At Mshatta and at the Dome of the Rock, the same motifs look toward something sacred.

pro g ression We have seen already on the western half of the façade a sequence of changing images from the entrance outwards. To the east, comparable transitions are subtle. Initially, fine vegetation surrounds isolated winged palmettes. Like the humans of the first whole triangle west of Mshatta’s entrance, the palmettes are subsumed in numerous curling tendrils. Further along, in the so-called “cuttlefish” image, a vine scroll forms the background of a prominent motif as visible to the viewer as the facing griffins on the western wing. Finally, in the easternmost triangle, precisely executed diadems bookend the composition of the horizontal band. 50

1.23 Triangle from the eastern wing of the façade in situ, 1897–98. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Princeton University.

animation In addition to the decorative signposts placed in important locations on the eastern wing, general change across the eastern triangles mimics the growth of vegetation. Palmettes occur infrequently at first, constrained by the vines to which they are attached. Moving eastward they multiply, gaining numerical superiority and filling the space they are given. This may be seen in the next-to-last triangle of an eastward progression, whose few fragments survive in Berlin. Brünnow photographed the triangle when it was whole. Its circular vines are looser versions of the final triangle’s

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more formal pearl-bordered discs, into which they may have been transformed. It is also filled with numerous copies of the simplified winged palmette, or Flügelpalmette, that appear to fly and which engender a sense of plenty. They rise from the centre of the baseline and spawn throughout the area bordered by the triangle. Clermont-Ganneau’s reading of the façade cannot be justified if this part of the ornament is considered. The rapid increase in palmettes counters the idea of a vine developing gradually into different stages of maturity. Moreover, the palmettes multiply eastward, in the opposite direction of a reading from right to left. The growth of vegetation in the east is nevertheless gradual when compared to a sequence of two triangles on the façade’s western wing. As we have seen, the lower section of the south facing side of the western polyhedral tower displayed in profile two seated male lions (fig. 1.10). They face each other, while looking down and into a central chalice. Two unidentified circular objects sit on top of the basin, each in front of the open mouth of one of the lions. In the next triangle to the west, it is revealed that these objects were not decorative extensions of the bowl. In place of plain spheres are the round heads and bodies of two birds emerging from the water. The circular shapes of the previous triangle may have represented the heads of the fowl breaking the water’s surface.57 As if reacting to these newly present creatures, the lions have become aggressive, not only baring their teeth and opening their jaws but also raising their paws, an action noticed by Creswell.58 In this short span of the façade, we have an indication that a linear narrative was projected onto Mshatta’s ornamental band. Scanning quickly from right to left, one sees the birds rise as if alive. Mshatta’s decoration was anything but static. Its ornamental band evinces narrative progression requiring skilled planning and a keen observation of nature. Moreover, these scenes demonstrate that the façade was likely to be read from the centre outwards. Few birds can fly backwards, which would be required if the two triangles are read from left to right.

conclusion

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From a methodology of formal analysis, one can demonstrate that Mshatta’s ornamental band was defined by basic rules of symmetry over which was carved decoration of bewildering complexity. The façade’s images adhere to a compositional outline that places similar scenes equidistant to the central axis of the building. This bipartite arrangement may have emphasized the primacy of a processional route through the site, and in turn the importance of Mshatta’s potential ceremonial function. A visitor walking along the site’s main axis may have been a number of things: a religious person returning from the hajj; a local tribal leader seeking audience with a member of the Umayyad ruling class; an envoy from a foreign empire on diplomatic travel. Whether Mshatta was to be a palace, a fortified outpost, a caravanserai, or even a small city, many types of visitor are plausible. Their diverse backgrounds

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1.24 Southwest face of the western polyhedral tower, detail of birds emerging from a chalice.

could not have been entirely anticipated. It was perhaps for this reason that images widely known from portable objects were employed throughout the decoration. This might also explain why the two wings of Mshatta’s façade, though typologically divisible into late antique and Persianate, were cross-pollinated with Byzantine and Sasanian motifs, in an artistic departure from the pre-reform coins that could so easily be separated into Arab-Byzantine or Arab-Sasanian types. Umayyad art aimed at a wide audience by subsuming the material culture of its competitors and of the diverse cultures it now ruled. It was not alone in doing this. Just as some Byzantine silks copied Sasanian models, so did Sasanian metalware employ Hellenistic motifs. When observed individually in the slides of an art history lecture, Mshatta’s triangles are enormously alluring. If, as I have argued, the façade to which they belonged was to have been viewed as a coherent and comprehensive set of interdependent decoration, rather than as a piecemeal and random assemblage of dislocated images, the ornamental band that once stood in Bilad al-Sham was possessed of a unified

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logic more compelling than its disparate triangular parts. This logic, which determined the ordering of motifs, was not based solely on universal themes such as the growth of nature or the apotheosis of the vine. On the contrary, the intended meaning of the façade, though conveyed in a visual vocabulary known to those fluent in late antique and Sasanian material culture, was specific to an Umayyad context. Perhaps this is what made Mshatta’s beauty indescribable to Gertrude Bell. The full details of Mshatta’s cultural context cannot be ascertained easily. Some of its aspects, however, are evinced in the building’s ruined blocks: architecture and its decoration are predicated on the physical aspects of ceremony; secular and sacred spaces co-exist; communication with the viewer is paramount. This viewer would not have been stationary. The same may be said of the façade. A sense of progressive movement occurs through the manipulation of motifs that, for the most part, are in themselves static. Dynamism is achieved by repeating some images and by meaningfully adding or omitting others. Seldom is movement suggested in any individual animal or vegetal motif. Those figures that do display traces of the threat of action are situated mainly in the full triangle to the left of the entrance. If this part of the façade were meant to have jarred a viewer about to enter Mshatta, and who was familiar with calmer, static representations of Byzantine and Sasanian imagery, a more realistic mode of representation might have added an important emphasis. Moreover, the isolation of this area from the remainder of the façade’s western wing meant that fewer of its triangles could be used to foster a sense of motion. Dynamic motifs in a constricted space may have been necessary. Mshatta also offers the opportunity to witness at one site both figural and nonfigural imagery in the context of a space where the supernatural and the worldly co-exist. Sauvaget’s inspired blurring of the functional boundary between mosque and palace is here evinced in a single ornamental band. Mshatta’s façade reveals what iconographic choices the Umayyads may have made when decorating architecture that was simultaneously sacred and secular, while also allowing distinctions between the two to be made. These distinctions were not based on a strict separation between figural and non-figural imagery, for in Mshatta’s inanimate decoration the animate was evoked. They were formed by intelligent selections from a larger repertoire that was in itself permissive of human and animal representation. The decision to convey motion using static images may have been a compromise between nascent prohibitions against animate imagery and the need to cater to viewers familiar with naturalistic art. Whether or not this compromise was deliberate, the façade’s adoption of formulaic motifs from the east and its emphasis on the ceremonial aspects of communication between humans and architecture demonstrate a way of conceptualizing decoration and space that is closer to the late antique Near East than it is to the realism of Hellenistic or Imperial Roman art. Mshatta’s impressive ornament is a signal example of the transformation of Byzantine and Sasanian decorative modes into Islamic ones within the wider scope of late antique to medieval cultural change. 54

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9 10

11 12

I wish to thank Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula for their unflinching support, my mother and my wife for encouraging me in my research, and my son for sharing his enthusiasm for life. Although Walid II is widely considered to be Mshatta’s patron, Yazid II (r. 720–24) is another worthy candidate, whom I considered in my 2007 ma thesis at the University of Victoria. See Herzfeld, 1910, “Die Genesis der islamischen Kunst,” 130, 143 (English translation published in 2002); Fowden, Qusayr ‘Amra, 145. Recent scholarship, published after my thesis, offers two scenarios for dating Mshatta – one Umayyad, with the construction continuing into the Abbasid period; the other early Abbasid. See Cramer and Perlich, “Reconsidering the Dating of Qasr al-Mshatta,” 228. Archaeological work begun while this chapter was being drafted demonstrates that Mshatta, though unfinished, may have been in use while it was being constructed. See Cramer and Perlich, “Reconsidering the Dating of Qasr al-Mshatta,” 223–4. Enderlein and Meinecke, “Graben–Forschen–Präsentieren.” (English translation published in 2010.) Gertrude Bell, letter of 22 March 1900. Schulz, “Mschatta I,” pl. I. For a recent study of Mshatta’s masonry, see Perlich, “Ritzzeichnungen am Qasr al-Mschatta.” Swiss archaeological missions in 1998 and 2000 revealed additional foundations that indicate each of Mshatta’s lateral strips may have contained two rectangular courtyards and twelve housing units. See Bujard, “Reconstitution du projet architectural.” The northern building may have been intended to host receptions. The decorated segment of the southern enclosure wall, to which the building’s width corresponds exactly, might have marked it. See Hillenbrand, “Islamic Art at the Crossroads,” 80. Also Enderlein and Meinecke, “Graben–Forschen–Präsentieren,” 153. Dr Ghazi Bisheh informed me that the triple-arched entrance was restored by an archaeological team from the Museum für Islamische Kunst – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Personal communication, 7 July 2011. The results of this impressive work have been published in Cramer et al., Qasr al-Mschatta. On the purpose of the quṣпr, see Denis Genequand, “Umayyad Castles.” Accounts of ceremonies might explain how a palace façade functioned within the context of a royal audience. See Qaddumi, ed. and trans., Book of Gifts and Rarities, 146–65. Although no such texts survive from the Umayyad period, it is possible Byzantine and Sasanian practices were emulated. See Grabar, “Ceremonial and Art,” 85, 96. Grabar observed there is no Umayyad equivalent to Constantine Porphyrogenitus’s De Ceremoniis. See his “Notes sur les ceremonies,” 52. I thank Thomas Leisten for bringing Princeton University’s remarkable Brünnow and Domaszewski photographic archive to my attention. One must assume the triangles above the zigzag on the eastern wing of the façade were to contain rosettes, since the eastern portion of the ornamental band was missing its upper layers as early as 1872, when Henry Baker Tristram visited the site. See Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, I.2: 601.

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13 “The exquisite decoration of the facade should be interpreted as the apotheosis of the vine. It is a sort of text-in-images that needs to be “read” from right to left, not left to right, which has traditionally been the case. The vine is represented first by flowers, then develops gradually through various states of maturity, until the moment it is invaded by all the beasts of creation who enjoy its fruits.” From Clermont-Ganneau, review of Die Provincia Arabia. I am grateful to Finbarr Flood for bringing this interpretation to my attention. Clermont-Ganneau was presumably taking his cue from the book he was reviewing, in which Brünnow and von Domaszewski labelled Mshatta’s triangles from left to right, in a manner that has been described as following “Western convention.” See Troelenberg, Mshatta in Berlin, 51. 14 Sauvaget, La mosquée Omeyyade de Médine, 146. (English translation published in 2002.) 15 Schulz’s renderings of the façade (“Mschatta I,” 2) were the basis of my line-of-sight diagrams. 16 “At the top of the last – not the first – triangular panel and dominating everything as a result, a human figure emerges from the vine branches, wearing a Phrygian cap.” From Clermont-Ganneau, review of Die Provincia Arabia. The remainder of the passage sees the figure as Dionysiac in character, which corresponds with Clermont-Ganneau’s notion that Mshatta’s ornament is an apotheosis of the vine. 17 Tristram, The Land of Moab, 196. 18 Strzygowski, “Mschatta II,” 309. 19 Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, I.2: 597. 20 Brünnow and Domaszewski, Die Provincia Arabia, pl. XLVI. The illustrations of the façade are by Paul Huguenim (pls. XLV–XLVIII). 21 Hamilton, Khirbat al Mafjar, 231. 22 Grabar, Sasanian Silver, 102, fig. 14. 23 I Kings 10:18 and Chronicles 9:17. Discussed in Priscilla Soucek, “Solomon’s Throne/ Solomon’s Bath,” 113. Also Hillenbrand, “La Dolce Vita,” 12, n.140. 24 Allan, Islamic Metalwork, 53. Also Ettinghausen, From Byzantium to Sasanian Iran, pl. III, fig. 10. 25 Hamilton, Khirbat al Mafjar, 231. 26 Hillenbrand, “Islamic Art at the Crossroads,” 72. 27 Strzygowski, “Mschatta II,” 314. 28 Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, I.2: 601. 29 Wandel, “Ørkenslottet Mshattas Skønhed.” 30 Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, I.2: 600. 31 Grabar, “Ceremonial and Art,” 83. 32 Ettinghausen, From Byzantium to Sasanian Iran, pl. V, fig. 17. 33 Genequand argued that external decoration of the Umayyad quṣūr must have reduced their martial appearance. See his “Umayyad Castles,” 25. 34 Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, I.2: 600. 35 See Wandel, “Qasr Al-Mushatta,” 20, fig. 6. 36 Brünnow and Domaszewski, Die Provincia Arabia, pl. XLVII. 37 See Cramer et al., Qasr al-Mschatta, fig. 124.

mshat ta’s façade and the v iewer 38 Grabar, Sasanian Silver, 103, fig. 16. 39 Qaddumi, trans., Book of Gifts and Rarities, 146–65. 40 The cordon in the photograph (fig. 1.16) closes the present-day entrance to the office of the director of the Museum für Islamische Kunst-Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. 41 Enderlein and Meinecke, “Graben–Forschen–Präsentieren,” 158; Tristram and Vaillhé quoted in Brünnow and Domaszewski, Die Provincia Arabia, 143–7. 42 Enderlein and Meinecke, “Graben–Forschen–Präsentieren,” 156. 43 See Hillenbrand, “La Dolce Vita,” 28, n.140. 44 Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, I.2: 599. 45 Ettinghausen, From Byzantium to Sasanian Iran, pl. XIII, fig. 47. 46 Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, I.2: 599. 47 Ibid., 601, n.3. 48 Erdmann, “Die sasanidische Krone.” 49 Grabar, “The Umayyad Dome of the Rock,” 48. 50 Ibid., pl. 3, figs 5, 6. 51 Ibid., pl. 3, fig. 4. 52 Schulz, “Mschatta I,” 31, fig. 15; Erdmann, “Die sasanidische Krone,” 243. 53 I am grateful to Finbarr Flood for suggesting numismatic sources for Mshatta’s imagery. He observed that profiles of Sasanian rulers are more common than frontal views. The latter appear in gold coins. Personal communication, 23 February 2006. The rarity of frontal views reduces the chance that the human face of the westernmost triangle followed a Sasanian numismatic model. Marcus Milwright informs me that frontal depictions of caliphs may be found on Umayyad gold, silver, and copper coins and on Abbasid bust-length silver medals, perhaps showing an awareness of Sasanian gold coins. Personal communication, 2 August 2012. 54 Grabar, Sasanian Silver, 103, fig. 15. 55 Strzygowski, “Mschatta II,” 317. 56 For example, Grabar, “The Umayyad Dome of the Rock,” 26. 57 Dr Priscilla Soucek suggested to me that the circular objects in the basin may represent eggs, in which case the birds not only emerge from the water but also hatch. Personal communication, 23 February 2006. 58 Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, I.2: 599–600.

biblio g r aphy Allan, James. Islamic Metalwork: The Nuhad es-Said Collection. London: Sotheby’s, 1982. Bell, Gertrude. Letter of 22 March 1900. Robinson Library Special Collections. University of Newcastle upon Tyne. http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/letter_details.php?letter_id=1144 (accessed 5 September 2012). Brünnow, Rudolf Ernst, and Alfred von Domaszewski. Die Provincia Arabia: Auf Grund Zweier in den Jahren 1897 und 1898 Unternommenen Reisen und der Berichte Früherer Reisender, vol. 2. Strassburg: Verlag von Karl J. Trübner, 1905. Bujard, Jacques. “Reconstitution du projet architectural du palais omeyyade de Mschatta (Jordanie).” Architectura 38, no. 1 (2008): 13–34.

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alexander tow nson Clermont-Ganneau, Charles. “Review of Die Provincia Arabia, vol. 2, by Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski.” Recueil d’archéologie orientale 5 (1906): 206. Cramer, Johannes, and Barbara Perlich. “Reconsidering the Dating of Qasr al-Mshatta.” In Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie: herausgegeben von der Ernst-HerzfeldGesellschaft Band 4, edited by Julia Gonnella, Rania Abdellatif, and Simone Struth, 220–33. Wiesbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2014. Cramer, Johannes, Barbara Perlich, Günther Schauerte, Ghazi Bisheh, Claus-Peter Haase, Monther Jamhawi, and Fawwaz al-Kreisheh, eds. Qasr al-Mschatta: Ein Frühislamischer Palast in Jordanien und Berlin Band 1, 2. Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2016. Creswell, K.A.C. Early Muslim Architecture, revised edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. Enderlein, Volkmar, and Michael Meinecke. “Excavation–Investigation–Presentation: Problems of Representing past Cultures in the Example of the Mshatta Façade.” Translated by Jonathan Bower. Art in Translation 2, no. 3 (2010): 309–72. – “Graben–Forschen–Präsentieren. Probleme der Darstellung Vergangener Kulturen am Beispiel den Mschatta-Fassade.” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 34 (1992): 137–72. Erdmann, Kurt. “Die sasanidische Krone an der Fassade von Mschatta.” Forschungen und Fortschritte 28 (1985): 242–5. Ettinghausen, Richard. From Byzantium to Sasanian Iran and the Islamic World: Three Modes of Artistic Influence. Leiden: Brill, 1972. Fowden, Garth. Qusayr ‘Amra: Art and the Umayyad Elite in Late Antique Syria. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Genequand, Denis. “Umayyad Castles: The Shift from Late Antique, Military Architecture to Early Islamic Palatial Building.” In Muslim Military Architecture in Greater Syria, edited by Hugh Kennedy, 3–44. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Grabar, Oleg. “Ceremonial and Art at the Umayyad Court.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1955. – “Notes Sur Les Ceremonies Umayyades.” In Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet, edited by Myriam Rosen-Ayalon, 51–60. Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1977. – Sasanian Silver: Late Antique and Early Mediaeval Arts of Luxury from Iran. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1967. – “The Umayyad Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.” Ars Orientalis 3 (1959): 33–62. – “The Umayyad Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.” In Jerusalem, Constructing the Study of Islamic Art, vol. 4, edited by Oleg Grabar, 1–46. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Hamilton, Robert. Khirbat Al Mafjar: An Arabian Mansion in the Jordan Valley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959. Herzfeld, Ernst. “Die Genesis der islamischen Kunst und das Mshatta Problem.” Der Islam 1, no. 2 (1910): 27–63, 115–44. – “Die Genesis der islamischen Kunst und das Mshatta Problem.” Translated by Fritz Hillenbrand and Jonathan Bloom. In Early Islamic Art and Architecture, edited by Jonathan Bloom, 7–86. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002. Hillenbrand, Robert. “La Dolce Vita in Early Islamic Syria: The Evidence of Later Umayyad Palaces.” Art History 5 (1982): 1–35. 58

mshat ta’s façade and the v iewer – “Islamic Art at the Crossroads: East versus West at Mshatta.” In Essays in Islamic Art and Architecture in Honor of Katharina Otto-Dorn, Islamic Art and Architecture, vol. 1, edited by Abbas Daneshvari, 63–86. Malibu: Undena Publications, 1981. Perlich, Barbara. “Ritzzeichnungen am Qasr al-Mschatta. Neue Einsichten in das frühislamische Bauwesen.” Architectura 40, no. 2 (2010): 135–40. Qaddumi, Ghada, trans. Book of Gifts and Rarities (Kitab al-Hadaya wa al-Tuhaf). Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1996. Sauvaget, Jean. “The Mosque and the Palace.” Translated by Matthew Gordon. In Early Islamic Art and Architecture, edited by Jonathan Bloom, 109–47. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002. – La mosquée Omeyyade de Médine: étude sur les origines architecturales de la mosquée et de la basilique. Paris: Vanoest, 1947. Schulz, Bruno. “Mschatta I: Bericht über die Aufnahme der Ruine.” Jahrbuch der Königlich Preuzischen Kunstsammlungen 25 (1904): 205–24, pls. I–VII. Soucek, Priscilla. “Solomon’s Throne/Solomon’s Bath: Model or Metaphor?” Muqarnas 23 (1993): 109–34. Strzygowski, Josef. “Mschatta II: Kunstwissenschaftliche Untersuchung.” Jahrbuch der Königlich Preuzischen Kunstsammlungen 25 (1904): 225–373. Tristram, Henry Baker. The Land of Moab: Travels and Discoveries on the East Side of the Dead Sea and Jordan. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873. Troelenberg, Eva-Maria. Mshatta in Berlin. Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2016. Wandel, Peter. “Qasr Al-Mushatta and the Origin of the Eclecticism of the Early Islamic Art.” Unpublished Cand. mag. spec. indiv. dissertation, University of Copenhagen, 2007. Wandel, Peter. “Ørkenslottet Mshattas Skønhed.” Sfinx 2 (2012): 84–9.

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chapter 2

Innovative Tomb or Garden Retreat? The Bara Batashewala Mahal in Mughal Delhi Hussein Keshani

Visitors to New Delhi often make time to see the impressive tomb of the Mughal emperor Humayun (fig. 2.1). Until recently, few have had the opportunity to see the charming Mughal-era buildings built outside the perimeter walls to the north, which have been newly restored.1 One of these is the enigmatic building known as the Bara Batashewala Mahal. Unknown to many, the building provides a glimpse into not only what smaller garden-tombs of Mughal elites in the early seventeenth century were like but perhaps the garden-homes of the extended imperial family as well. Like Humayun’s nearby tomb completed more than thirty years earlier, the Bara Batashewala Mahal, built around 1012/1603–04, is located in what was the outskirts of Humayun’s citadel Dinpanah (The Abode of Religion), now known as New Delhi’s Purana Qila (The Old Fort). Set within what was probably once a walled garden divided into quarters (chaha¯r ba¯gh) and upon a platform 1.1 m high, the building is a single-story, flat-roofed, masonry structure that is square in plan (26.4 × 26.4 m) with remnants of once smooth stucco finishes and highly refined interior ornamental relief patterns and painting. The walled garden also contains a smaller octagonal structure now in ruins labelled the Chhota Batashewala Mahal. Organized according to a sophisticated nine-fold geometric plan with a large central chamber surrounded by a series of smaller rooms, the building is roofed with a complex system of shallow domes and arches. A cenotaph exposed to the open sky can be found on the roof. The combination of a nine-fold plan with a flat roof is not unique, as several nearcontemporary examples attest. Inside the Bara Batashewala Mahal is a long epigraph in Farsi that includes the date assigned to the building and reads, In the name of God, who is merciful and clement. Mirza Muzaffar, who was a scion of the Royal Stock and the first fruit of the plant of desire, Repaired from the mortal world with longings lamentations and sighs from the heart. When I enquired the date of his death,

2.1 Humayun’s tomb environs.

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wisdom said “He was an effigy belonging to paradise.” The writer of the (above) letters is Abdunnabi Al Hussaini, may his end be good.2 The phrase “He was an effigy belonging to paradise” is a chronogram meaning a significant date was encoded in the letters of the words using the ʾabjad system in which Arabic letters were assigned standard numerical values. Decoded, the phrase reveals that the mysterious Mirza Muzaffar entombed in the building died in 1012/ 1603–04 during the last years of the impressive reign of the third Mughal emperor Akbar in South Asia.3 Chronograms were popular at the time, but this one, unlike the cleverest ones of the day, is formulaic and refers to nothing specific about the deceased. Nevertheless, the epitaph has been transformed by a talented artisan into a beautiful plaster panel of calligraphy rendered in the cursive nastaʿlīq script.

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Opposite 2.2 Plan of the Bara Batashewala and Chhota Batashewala Mahals. Above 2.3 Elevation and plan of the Bara Batashewala Mahal.

2.4 Detail of plaster Farsi funerary epigraph in the Bara Batashewala Mahal.

For Mughal architectural historians the Bara Batashewala Mahal is generally assumed to have been conceived as a tomb but one that is inspired by residential buildings rather than conventional tomb architecture. Its significance is thought to lie with its place in the evolution of monumental imperial tomb design. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Mughal monumental tomb design expanded beyond the more typical dome and square/octagon plan combination to include tombs with flat roofs and alternative vaultings, a genre that has been labelled “platform tombs.” The Bara Batashewala Mahal, with its flat roof, then is seen as an important precursor to later monuments like the tomb of Iʿtmad al-Dawla in Agra. However, there are good reasons to consider that the Bara Batashewala Mahal was conceived first as a residence and later reused as a tomb. Regardless of whether the building was a residence reused as a tomb or a tomb designed to resemble a residence, the Bara Batashewala Mahal is significant not only as a structure that sheds light on the evolution of Mughal tomb architecture but also the design of suburban garden-homes in early seventeenth-century Mughal India.

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When the British-led Archaeological Survey of India (asi) investigated Mirza Muzaffar’s decaying tomb between the years 1916 and 1922, they skilfully identified the entombed as Mirza Muzaffar Husayn, a son-in-law of none other than the celebrated Mughal emperor Akbar and someone who was mentioned in several court histories

the bar a batashewal a mahal in mug hal delhi

of Akbar’s reign.4 The asi paid only brief attention to the masonry building that was subsequently left abandoned, though it came to be designated as being in need of official protection. Interestingly, the asi bestowed the ambiguous label – the Tomb of Mirza Muzaffar Husayn – Bara Batashewala Mahal – on the building. In English, the building was labelled a tomb, which made sense since the central chamber appeared to be a crypt, the roof bore a cenotaph, and a funerary epitaph was present. However, the building was unlike most preceding Mughal tombs since it had no protruding dome. The latter Urdu/Hindi term, no doubt learned from locals, literally meant a palace (maḥal) belonging to a bata¯sha¯ wa¯la, someone who makes and sells raw sugar or sugar cakes that are hollow inside, a fitting description for the building given its large central chamber.5 The elastic term maḥal commonly connoted a palatial residence of some sort but could also mean a large monument, a collection of walled compounds, an urban quarter or, as was likely the case here, a single walled enclosure containing one or more buildings inside. Characterizing the building as a palace was not entirely far-fetched. Its plan and design was perhaps reminiscent of small residential buildings of the intertwined Timurid, Safavid, and Mughal architectural traditions. The bilingual titling of the structure along with its design highlighted the central ambiguity inherent to the building: Was it an innovative tomb modelled after a residence or was it a residence that became a tomb? Decades after the asi’s original survey of the Bara Batashewala Mahal and after Indian independence, an employee of the now Indian-led asi, M.C. Joshi, published the only article dedicated exclusively to the Bara Batashewala Mahal.6 Joshi succinctly described the building with text, photographs, and plan and elevation drawings. His analysis emphasized the role of structure in the building’s design and the building’s role as a precursor to the famous tomb of Iʿtmad al-Dawla in Agra, making it an important example in the rise of flat-roofed “platform tombs.”7 Joshi also argued that tensile structures once surmounted the building’s flat roof and speculated that the building was a tomb designed after contemporary garden houses.8 Though highly useful, Joshi’s five-page article served only as a preliminary study of the intriguing tomb of Mirza Muzaffar Husayn. Broader studies of Mughal architecture occasionally mentioned the Bara Batashewala Mahal and also elaborated on the rise of platform tombs, the use of a common architectural vocabulary for both tombs and residential structures, and the combination of chaha¯r ba¯gh garden design with residential and funerary buildings. Even though little has been written about non-imperial Mughal residential architecture,9 previous writers have generally accepted that the Bara Batashawala Mahal is influenced by residential design. Imperial rather than non-imperial precedents have often been referenced, suggesting there is a need to place the building more firmly in the context of contemporary suburban development and tomb building practices of Delhi and other Mughal regions. Textual references to contemporary residences have also not been considered in any detail. In general, the discussions of platform tombs have shied away from explaining why domes fell out of favour and

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experimentation with flat roofs occurred; they have tended to assume that such abrupt, arbitrary innovations in Mughal architecture were typical. Consequently, the Bara Batashewala Mahal continues to be shrouded in questions, and one especially worth exploring is how closely did it resemble contemporary garden-homes? But first, it would be helpful to better understand who Mirza Muzaffar Husayn was.

mirza mu zaffar husayn – a bio g r a phy Mirza Muzaffar Husayn was indeed of “royal stock” as his epitaph noted. His genealogy wove together two strands of Timur’s descendants. His father was Ibrahim Husayn Mirza; his mother was Gulrukh Begam, the daughter of Mirza Kamran, Humayun’s brother. Both of his parents claimed descent from the second son of Timur, ʿUmar Shaykh Mirza. Ibrahim Husayn Mirza was part of a powerful family rebellion that challenged Akbar in Gujarat in 977/1569 during his second decade of rule. Confronted at Sarnal by a small imperial force led by Akbar himself, Ibrahim Husayn abandoned his wife and son and became a fugitive, his defeat memorialized forever in words and images in the imperial copies of the Akbar na¯mah, the official history of Akbar’s reign by court historian Abu al-Fazl. Ibrahim Husayn died en route to Multan, Sind, but his shrewd wife Gulrukh Begam survived by fleeing south to the Deccan protecting their young son Mirza Muzaffar Husayn.10 As a young man of fifteen or sixteen, Mirza Muzaffar was drawn away from the Deccan back to Gujarat by his father’s friend to rebel against Akbar; it was the first in a series of missteps that would mark his life.11 The two rebels managed to secure the Gujarati city Ahmadabad for a short while, but the effort failed and Muzaffar Husain fled. He was eventually captured and sent to Agra in 986/1579 to explain himself to the emperor, where he was imprisoned for his crimes.12 Mirza Muzzafar languished in prison until Akbar, according to Abu al-Fazl, inexplicably forgave him the next year (987/1579) on the grounds that he was of “noble nature and clear soul brought down by associations with the wicked.”13 Overcome, Mirza Muzaffar’s mother, who accompanied him on his release, fell down before the emperor’s feet, grateful for her son’s pardon.14 Akbar’s forgiveness was so complete that the former rebel was given the territory (sarka¯r) of Kanauj just east of Agra to administer. The revenues he controlled amounted to approximately a quarter of the revenues of the entire Agra territory.15 He must have distinguished himself since he was later wedded to the emperor’s eldest daughter, known as either Sultan Khanam or Shahzadah Khanam (b. 976/1569) in 1002/1594.16 Mirza Muzaffar was not the first member of his family to marry into the imperial family. In 1000/1592 his sister Nur al-Nisa, also called Shahi Begam, became one of the wives of Prince Salim, Akbar’s celebrated first-born son later known as Jahangir.17 She was married to Jahangir on 2 Juma¯da al-Tha¯ni 1000/16 March 1592 and Jahangir appears to have had a daughter with her who died in infancy. Unfortunately, Mirza 66

2.5 Tulsi Kalan and Banwari, Mirza Ibrahim Husain hunting and his defeat by the imperial troops (right side), Akbarnama, 1590–95.

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Muzaffar was an alcoholic and complaints against his degeneration led to the cancellation of his land-revenue grant (tiyпl) and another brief imprisonment. Released again, Mirza Muzaffar was later delegated to besiege Fort Lalang in 1008/1599–1600. In a surprising turn of events, the troubled son-in-law quarrelled with an official, left his post, shed his clothes, and became a faqir roaming about Gujarat. Once again, Mirza Muzaffar was caught and brought before the aging Akbar. For the last time, he was imprisoned but released shortly afterwards in 1009/1600–01 and soon died. The date of his death, 1012/1603–04, was only recorded on the epitaph in the Bara Batashewala Mahal. In contrast to Mirza Muzaffar Husayn, his wife Sultan Khanam led a much less restless life. She was the eldest daughter of Akbar and Bibi Salima Begam and was born around the same time as Akbar’s heir Prince Salim. She was barely mentioned in Akbar’s court history, the Akbar na¯mah, but in Jahangir’s memoirs he explained how she was given over to Akbar’s mother Maryam Makani to be raised. In one translation he affectionately noted, “Amongst all my sisters, in integrity, truth and zeal for my welfare, she is without her equal; but her time is principally devoted to the worship of her creator.”18 One of her trusted servants was an individual Jahangir called the a¯gha¯ of a¯gha¯s, who was subsequently put in charge of Jahangir’s zana¯nah in 994/1586 by Akbar.19 Another helpful reference to Sultan Khanam was made in the account of the Dutch East India Company employee Francisco Pelseart, who visited India from 1029/1620 to 1036/1627 and resided for a while in Agra. He noted that, like other members of the Mughal elite, Shazadah Khanam owned a garden-home on Agra’s western riverbank.20 Perhaps she, not Mirza Muzaffar Husayn, was the patron of the Bara Batashewala Mahal?

p ossible pat rons

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There were several possible patrons of the Bara Batashewala Mahal: Mirza Muzaffar himself, his wife Sultan Khanam, his sister Nur al-Nisa, his mother Gulrukh Begam, or a combination of the above. No record of any children born to Mirza Muzaffar Husayn and Sultan Khanam was made. Among the possibilities, Sultan Khanam stands out as the most likely patron of the building. Mirza Muzaffar Husayn was best positioned to commission such a structure soon after he was appointed administrator of Kanauj following his release from prison in 987/1579. When he was stripped of his tiyпl between 1002/1594 and 1008/1599–1600, his capacity to commission works of architecture was more limited. His access to financial resources was even more questionable following his final release from jail. After Jahangir’s ascent to the throne in the year following Mirza Muzaffar Husayn’s death, Mirza Muzaffar’s sister Nur al-Nisa had access to considerable wealth. If the architectural efforts of Jahangir’s more famous wife Nur Jahan reflected the trends of imperial patronage among imperial wives, then it was entirely plausible that she commissioned a structure that would become a tomb for her troublesome brother.

the bar a batashewal a mahal in mug hal delhi

Finally, Mirza Muzaffar Husayn’s mother Gulrukh Begam was apparently nearing the end of her life in 1023/1614 at Ajmer when she was visited by Jahangir.21 She may have also had the resources and the desire to entomb the son she had once protected so vigorously. However, Sultan Khanam was also a woman of considerable wealth and means. As a daughter of Akbar, she was entitled to an inheritance when he passed. Since Jahangir held her in high esteem, she would have been lavished with presents upon his accession to the throne in 1014/1605 and she already received a salary, which was increased along with those of the women in Akbar’s zana¯nah.22 Like the other possible patrons, due to her close relationship with the imperial court she would have had access to the highly skilled architects and painters who worked on the building. She was also affluent enough to have already constructed a garden residence of note in the suburbs of Agra, as Pelseart observed. More significantly, Sultan Khanam was the person most familiar with Delhi and none of the other possible patrons held as strong a connection to the area. As a member of the imperial zana¯nah prior to her marriage, she no doubt accompanied Akbar on some if not all of his ten documented visits to Delhi prior to her marriage to Mirza Muzaffar.23 Mughal rulers generally travelled with their families and courtiers particularly on ceremonial occasions, and Sultan Khanam grew up with an imperial ritual in which the emperor and his cortege were carried regularly to the monumental and increasingly sacred shrine of Humayun in the Dinpanah environs. After her marriage in 1002/1594 and before her husband’s death in 1012/1603–04, she would have had both the means and the inclination to build in the Dinpanah suburbs structures that would facilitate travel to the city to visit her grandfather’s hallowed monumental tomb and/or commemorate her husband. Furthermore, her former trusted servant the a¯gha¯ of a¯gha¯s retired to the area to build a residence, a garden, a tomb, a saray, and a bridge.

t he a¯ g ha¯ of a¯ g ha¯ s’ bui l d i n g Located near the Bara Batashewala Mahal are two particularly interesting developments likely related to the construction of the Bara Batashewala Mahal: a bridge known as Barah Pula (The Twelve Pier Bridge) and a compound belonging to the Arab Saray on the southwest corner of the walled enclosure surrounding the garden of Humayun’s tomb. The bridge was once inscribed with its patron’s name Miharban Agha and its construction date, 1030/1611–12.24 The epigraph, written on a stone tablet that fell into the water in the late nineteenth century, explained that the bridge, which facilitated road traffic to the region, was built as a form of public service: God is great, [It was] Owing to Jahangir Shah, the son of Akbar Shah,

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Whose justice is [like unto] the wind and mankind [like unto] flowers; To his friends he is a crested chief like the hoopoe, To his enemies he is ringed like a dove; Hind in his reign, Was addressed by Istambol as ‘[I am] your servant,’ Hazrath Delhi is a garden, Which has taken sweet odours from flowers and colour from wine; In the seventh year of his reign Which was such [a time] that the Nightingale did not complain of the cruelties of the flowers, Miharban Agha, his special servant, Chief of the King’s seraglio [who] has knowledge of all [its] secrets, Built this bridge out of a kindly feeling [to others], That it might be of service to him on that bridge [in the day of Judgment.] I asked for the date of this [building] from the firmament, The face [of the firmament] looked like a full blown flower with joy. It said: Take up your pen and write [He] built this bridge out of kindness [Miharban].25

2.6 General view of the Bara Pula Bridge, Delhi, 1030/1611–12, photographed in the 1870s.

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2.7 Interior of Mihr Banu Saray, New Delhi, c. 1030/1611–12, photographed in 2009.

The bridge would have been newly completed when William Finch visited the area between 1016/1608 and 1019/1611, since he mentions a bridge with eleven arches in his description of the area surrounding Humayun’s tomb.26 A slightly later writer, Niccolao Manucci, who lived in India from 1066/1656 to 1129/1717, also observed the impressive bridge.27 Attached to the enclosure of Humayun’s tomb was a smaller compound with an inscribed entrance gate and a rectilinear courtyard with surrounding cells, suggesting it was likely a saray built to accommodate travelling merchants or alternatively a madrasa for religious scholars in training. The inscription reads, In the name of God, who is merciful and clement. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet. The Mihrbanu Qadimi of the Padshah Jahangir.28 Given the similarities between the names Mihrban Agha and Mihrbanu Qadimi, both the bridge and the compound were likely built by the same patron and at the same time. But who was Mihrban Agha and what connection did they have with Mirza Muzaffar Husayn? 71

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In his memoirs, Jahangir specifically mentioned a servant entitled the a¯gha¯ of a¯gha¯s who worked for Jahangir’s sister Shahzadah Khanam, Mirza Muzaffar Husayn’s wife, until Akbar placed the a¯gha¯ in charge of Jahangir’s own zana¯nah in 994/1585– 86. After having rendered a life of service, the a¯gha¯ of a¯gha¯s, who was of the same age as Akbar, made a request to retire to Delhi to spend the rest of his life in prayer. Once in Delhi, the a¯gha¯ commissioned “a garden, a saray and a tomb” which Jahangir visited on Dhū al-Ḥijja 20, 1028/November 28, 1619 after making pilgrimage to Humayun’s tomb and the darga¯h of Nizamuddin accompanied by his sons and the ladies of the zana¯nah, like his father had once done.29 The references to Jahangir on the gate inscription, Agha on the bridge inscription, and Mihrban on both, combined with Jahangir’s affectionate description of his esteemed old servant the a¯gha¯ of a¯gha¯s and a record of his visit to the a¯gha¯’s home in Delhi after visiting Humayun’s tomb all point to the bridge and the compound having been built by the a¯gha¯ of a¯gha¯s. A decade after the death of Mirza Muzaffar Husayn, the chief servant of his wife Shazadah Khanam was constructing a significant bridge and compound adjacent to the prestigious tomb of Humayun and in the vicinity of the Bara Batashewala Mahal. The a¯gha¯ of a¯gha¯s’ use of the Humayun’s tomb environs to construct a retirement residence, a garden, and a tomb along with the charitable bridge and saray shows how garden, tomb, and residence commissions overlapped with each other. But it also invites the question of whether the a¯gha¯ of a¯gha¯s’ former mistress Shazadah Khanam would have been similarly inclined to establish a peaceful garden-home near Humayun’s tomb like the one she had in Agra to spend her last days. If Sultan Khanam’s servant was an active patron of architecture in the area, then she was likely one too. As provocative as the historical record is, a closer look at the Bara Batashewala Mahal’s design in comparison with contemporary textual references to residences and tombs and surviving buildings is needed to further explore the nature and purpose of the structure.

the bar a batashewal a mahal – a closer lo ok

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Once scarred by graffiti and crumbling, the Bara Batashewala Mahal today sits outside the walls of Humayun’s Tomb, protected for now from the immense pressures of urban development. Several years ago a discarded cenotaph lay just outside the compound entrance, perhaps belonging to one of the nearby buildings. A pathway through a grove of trees leads from the entrance to the compound to the south side of the Bara Batashewala Mahal. Wall remnants indicate that an area roughly 190 metres square was once enclosed. The one-story building is square in plan and is aligned with the four cardinal directions; it sits atop a platform with protruding stairs on all but the west side – the direction of Mecca. There the platform itself protrudes noticeably. Prior to restoration, the top portion of the building’s exterior façade had deteriorated considerably, revealing masonry walls with cores of rubble

2.8 The Bara Batashewala Mahal (1012/1603–04) and the “temporary” structures built by the Bharat Scouts and Guides, New Delhi (1989).

and lime mortar and regularly laid, mortar-lined stone facing. Near the roofline, portions of a simple plaster cornice survive and small drainage openings with stone spouts can be observed. There is ample evidence that the walls were once finished with coarse, straw-laced plaster, covered by a much finer, higher quality white plaster that was painted in several areas a deep red colour. Each of the building’s four exterior jewel-box-like facades consists of a series of five alternating rectangular and semi-octagonal alcoves. The rectangular alcoves include openings that lead to the building’s interior and above them are small arched windows allowing in scatterings of light. One window on the south façade retains its original stone latticework designed using a hexagonal motif.30 Several of the spandrels of the alcoves retain finely cut floral and calligraphic medallions made from plaster. All of the alcoves have niches, which are abundant in the interior as well. A recurring architectural motif throughout the building is the flat arch: a rectangle with rounded tops. The distinctive flat arch is found everywhere from niches to doorways and was derived from earlier Timurid architecture. The two octagonal alcoves on the building’s south side also incorporate narrow, twisting stairways leading to the roof, though these are partially blocked. At the centre of the flat roof is a shallow square platform with a modest grave-marker at the centre exposed to the sky. The perimeter of the flat roof is bounded by a low parapet. A previous writer observed the presence of glazed tiles with a triple-leaf motif on the parapet as well as stone rings that may have been used to support extended fabric canopies on the roof.31

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Top left 2.9 Stone lattice window, Bara Batashewala Mahal, New Delhi, 1012/1603–04. Top right 2.10 Interior of southern long chamber, Bara Batashewala Mahal, New Delhi, 1012/1603–04. Above 2.11 Interior of Tuman Aqa Complex, Kuhsan, Afghanistan, 1440–41. Photograph, Josephine Powell, c. 1960.

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2.12 Shamsah in interior of southern long chamber, Bara Batashewala Mahal, New Delhi, 1012/1603–04.

A geometric and kaleidoscopic delight, the plan of the Bara Batashewala Mahal consists of a large central square chamber surrounded by twelve interlinked chambers, a variant of the nine-fold or hasht behisht plan used in both tombs and residential structures in Akbar’s period (fig. 2.3).32 Four of these surrounding chambers are long womb-like rooms, each spanning a side of the central chamber and each with a central archway leading to the exterior. Only the south chamber has a passageway leading inside and down into the central chamber that was blocked off by a jarring modern green metal gate typically used by the asi. It has been noted that neither a grave-marker nor a floor are present in this square central chamber.33 In each corner of the building are two rooms – one octagonal and one square – that connect the surrounding long chambers to each other. The seamless integration of the diagonal square chambers into the structure is particularly clever and enhances the building’s circulation, allowing one to move from one rectangular chamber to another without passing through the octagonal corner rooms, which could be cordoned off for privacy and accessed independently from the outside. Passage from one chamber to another is provided by a rectangular doorway with rounded top corners and a smaller arched opening overhead. A surprisingly complex roofing system for the building is evident (fig. 2.10). Shallow domes and half-domes, built with spirals of rubble and supported on shallow arches, cover the various chambers. Joshi noted the central chamber was covered by a large shallow dome as well. Such complex vaulting for a relatively small

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2.13 Shamsah from the late Shahjahan Album, India, c. 1650. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian.

Clockwise 2.14 Shamsahs. (a) Shamsah on south dome interior of Jamaatkhana, Nizamuddin, New Delhi, 979–80/1572–73; (b) Shamsah on dome interior of tomb of Rahim Khan, New Delhi, 1035/1626; (c) Shamsah on dome interior of Lakkar Wala tomb, New Delhi, c. 1012/1603–04; (d) Shamsah on interior of dome of Jamali Kamali Tomb, New Delhi, 1528–29/1536.

building reflects not only the expertise of a master builder but also their playfulness in three dimensions. Significant traces of elegant ornamentation, reminiscent of contemporary Mughal miniature paintings, survive throughout the interior. Skilfully executed plaster archnets decorated the transition spaces between the domes and the walls and were once lined with dark colouring. The archnets, which were also used in the exterior alcoves, made the base of the domes appear as polygonal stars. On the interior of the domes of the long chambers on the south and north side and the dome of the southeast octagonal chamber survive spectacular but decaying medallions, based on a radiating floral motif and often called shamsahs. Separate graphic elements surround the medallions. Half-medallions are used over the octagonal ends of the long chambers as well. The dome ornaments are inscribed in plaster and painted with red, blue, white, and gold, colour palettes resonant with contemporary Mughal manuscripts;

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Top 2.15 Plaster ornament on interior archway of southern long chamber, Bara Batashewala Mahal, New Delhi, 1012/1603–04. Bottom 2.16 The plaster funerary inscription and chīnī kha¯nah image of the Bara Batashewala Mahal, New Delhi, 1012/1603–04.

2.17 Tulsi and Bhawani, detail of the construction of Fathpur showing pavilion niches, Akbar na¯mah, 1590–95, Victoria and Albert Museum.

they strongly resemble shamsahs used on nearby contemporary buildings. Remnants of inscribed octagonal geometric patterns cover the soffits of the broad interior arches in the long chambers. On the lower walls of the eastern long chamber remains a dado (īza¯ra) of wellpreserved, glazed, hexagonal tiles cemented with white grout. In contrast, the lower walls of the long chamber on the north are ornamented with complex white-lined geometric patterns inscribed into plaster and painted red. The lower walls of the octagonal chambers were once completely plastered, incised with a rectangle and painted solid red. Compared to the tilework, the plaster has deteriorated considerably. Additional ornamental plasterwork is also observable. Over the south entrance

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to the central chamber a unique flat arch plaster panel has been rendered with niches, wine vessels, cypress trees, and flowers in relief, forming an image of what is often called a chīnī kha¯nah. A chīnī kha¯nah was a pleasing architectural feature formed from an ensemble of recessed niches in a wall that stored and displayed attractive expensive wares. Such features were often depicted in miniatures.34 Epigraphs, many of them religious, also ornament the Bara Batashewala Mahal. The plaster relief Farsi epigraph in the long southern chamber mentioned above is located over the entrance to the central chamber. It spans the room’s length and is rendered elegantly in the nastaʿlīq calligraphic style against a floriated background relief. But there were also other instances of epigraphy. In 1936, M.A. Husain explained that the spandrels of the arches on the east and west facades bore plaster medallions incised with the phrase “There is no god but God,” the first line of the conventional Islamic profession of faith called the shaha¯da.35 The spandrels of the interior arches also bore smaller incised plaster calligraphic medallions. The inscriptions included the shaha¯da’s first line combined with the line “O God” (ya¯ alla¯h). The eastern chamber medallions bore the phrases “O SelfSubsisting” (ya¯ qayyпm) and “O Ever-lasting” (ya¯ dayyпm). The western chamber medallions also bore the first line of the shaha¯da but with the words “O Primordial” (ya¯ badпḥ) and “O Bestower” (ya¯ wahha¯b) instead. Additional medallions in the east chamber use the word “O Opener” (ya¯ fatta¯ḥ) in the ṭughra¯ʾ calligraphic style surrounded by renderings of names of Prophet Muhammad’s four sons – Ibrahim, Qasim, Tahir, and Tayib – in the naskh style. Many of these intricate medallions were carefully chipped away, possibly by looters and no longer exist in place. Reminders of Islamic devotion discreetly pervaded the building, further giving it the air of a contemplative retreat. In the same vein, there was also a Farsi line of poetry located opposite the west entrance, written in Indian ink and in nastaʿlīq script, read: “A dome [light] as the vapour [and high] as the blue dome [of the heaven].” The eastern wall of the west chamber bore graffiti written in shikastah script referring to a Dalip Chand who resided there and was dated 28 Safar of the thirteenth year of Shah Jahan’s reign (1050/1640–41), attesting to the building’s usability as a residence. Like the exterior alcoves, all the perimeter chambers incorporate flat arches. The interior niches of the long chambers differ in that they are further emphasized with a plaster border with a pointed tip and painted red (fig. 2.4). Small plaster medallions with geometric designs also flank the niches. The Bara Batashewala Mahal was not the only structure built within its walled enclosure. A few metres to the northeast, an octagonal domed structure, now in ruins, was built. The close proximity of the building and its similar plasterwork indicate that the same craftsmen were employed for both structures. The building was still intact when the asi listed it as the Chhota (small) Batashewala Mahal.36 Though no grave markers remain at the Chhota Batashewala Mahal, the Qurʾanic inscriptions, the apparent crypt and the once extant dome are features consistent with contemporary tomb architecture. If the Chhota Batashewala Mahal was in fact a

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2.18 Chhota Batashewala Mahal, New Delhi, c. 1012/1603–04.

conventional purpose-built tomb, then it begs the question why an unconventional approach to tomb building would be taken for the nearby Bara Batashewala Mahal.

r iver ine garden-home deve lopment The accounts of European travellers and Mughal court historians usefully illuminated the patterns of development in Mughal urban and suburban areas, such as the Bara Batashewala Mahal environs. One key pattern was the proliferation of walled garden-homes and walled gardens outside the imperial citadels but near the riverfronts. Outside the central fortresses of the major cities Lahore, Agra, and Dinpanah, nobles and successful merchants typically competed with each other to build on and near the local riverfronts.37 They built walled compounds to encompass not only gardens (chaha¯r ba¯gh) bearing fruits and flowers but also residences and, later, tombs. The cases of Lahore and Agra especially point to the kind of development that occurred in Dinpanah. The English traveller Nicholas Withington who visited Agra in 1023/1614 observed “noblemen’s houses which are verye fayer and for the most parte seated by the riversyde.”38 Similarly, Francisco Pelsaert, an officer of the Dutch East India Company

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who lived in Agra for seven years wrote in 1035/1626, “[E]veryone has tried to be close to the riverbank, and consequently the water-front is occupied by the costly palaces of all the famous lords, which make it appear very gay and magnificent, and extend for a distance of 6 kos or 3 ½ Holland miles.”39 Pelsaert went on to name the owners of some of Agra’s most prominent residences. Agra under Akbar consisted of a large fort near the river that housed the ruler’s residence and nearby bazaars and mosques surrounded by a forested suburb littered with open cemetery gardens, enclosed gardens and residences of the nobility, sarays, tombs, dervish lodges, shrines, temples, agricultural plots, and mud house villages.40 Bernier described the Agra riverfront from the terrace of the Taj Mahal, commenting, “From this terrace are seen the Jumna, flowing below – a large expanse of luxuriant gardens – a part of the city of Agra – the fortress – and all the fine residences of the omrahs [umara¯ʾ], erected on the banks of the river.”41 But the clearest evidence of riverine garden residential development was recorded in an annotated eighteenthcentury map of Agra that showed the Yamuna River lined with garden residences labelled with their builders’ names.42 Like Lahore and Agra, Dinpanah’s suburbs along the Yamuna River, the general vicinity where the Bara Batashewala Mahal was located, also experienced riverine garden residence development. The prominent Delhi noble Shaykh Farid Bukhari Bakshi Beg maintained several residences along the Yamuna River, according to the Akbar na¯mah. Referring to Akbar’s visit to Humayun’s tomb and the Delhi region in 984/1577, Abu al-Fazl wrote, “On 3 Dai, Divine month [24 December], he visited the quarters of Shaikh Farid [Bukhari] Bakshi Beg, who had many seats in that delightful neighbourhood on the banks of the jamuna.”43 The precise locations along the Yamuna were not specified but the context implied that they were in the vicinity of Humayun’s tomb.44 Father Monserrate, who visited Delhi in 988/1581 but completed his travel account outside India a decade later in 999/1591, wrote, Delinum [Delhi] is inhabited by substantial and wealthy Brachmanae [Brahmin], and of course by a Mongol garrison. Hence its many private mansions add considerably to the magnificence of the city. For the neighbourhood is rich in stone and lime, and the rich men construct for themselves well-built, lofty and handsomely decorated residences … Time fails me to describe the lovely parks and the many residential districts on both sides of the Jomanis [Yamuna], which passes close to the city on the east. The parks and gardens are filled with a rich profusion of fruit and flowers.45 Delhi was no longer the populous, affluent centre it once was, the differences in population reflected in the numbers of troops assigned to it. In Abu al-Fazl’s listing for the sarka¯r of Delhi in the Āʾin-i Akbarī, a text completed by 1011/1602, he noted that 1,500 infantry were stationed in Delhi. However, this contrasted 82

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strongly with the 15,000 infantry stationed in Agra and its suburbs or the 4,000 stationed at Lahore.46 Like Monserratte, William Finch visited Dinpanah and its environs between 1016/1608 and 1019/1611 and wrote that Dinpanah was “seated in a goodly place, environed with goodly pleasant gardens and monuments.”47 He also noticed the shaded boulevards developed by Humayun and specifically mentioned one leading from the city fortress of Dinpanah to Humayun’s tomb and to a newly completed bridge on a branch of the Yamuna River, the Barah Pula. He wrote, “A little short way from [old Delhi] is a stone bridge of eleven arches, over a branch of the Gemini (Jumna): from hence a broadway shaded with great trees, leading to the sepulcher of Hamaron (Humayun).”48 Just a few years after Finch’s visit between 1023/1615 and 1024/1616, Richard Steel and John Crowther passed through Delhi and commented that “many of the great men have their gardens and pleasure houses here, and are here buried, so that it is beautified with many fine buildings.”49 Referring to his experiences in India between 1066/1656 and 1078/1668, Francois Bernier similarly observed riverine residential development in Delhi, commenting, “The dwellings of the omrahs [umara¯ʾ], though mostly situated on the banks of the river, and in the suburbs, are yet scattered in every direction.”50

tomb bu il d i n g a ro un d d i n pa na h The development of riverine palaces and gardens in major Mughal cities overlapped with another trend: the proliferation of funerary architecture. As older generations of Mughal elites passed away, burial in the public cemeteries on city outskirts was deemed insufficient and competition to build monumental tombs developed, a key model being the immense tomb of Humayun on the outskirts of Dinpanah. The suburban landscape of important cities was soon littered with tombs, but many of them along with gardens and palaces quickly fell into disrepair, with relatives of the deceased lacking either the interest or the resources to maintain them.51 Like their Il-Khanid, Timurid, and Delhi Sultanate predecessors, Mughal elites often commissioned tombs to serve as conspicuous commemorative displays of personal wealth and power mixed with a dose of piety. Family members were often buried together and private walled gardens served as desirable sites for lavish tombs, as did water tanks, hilltops, the prestigious shrines of Sufi shaykhs, and riverbanks.52 In contrast to the vibrant impression of Delhi conveyed by Monserratte, Abu alFazl described a more desolate Delhi in the Āʾin-i Akbarī. He explained that Dinpanah was built over the ancient citadel of Indrapat and that Humayun’s tomb was recently built over what was the Sultanate city of Kilukhari. For Abu al-Fazl, Dinpanah had begun to decay and he saw the city and its environs as full of cemeteries. In his mind Delhi was home to the graves of illustrious historical religious figures 83

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like the Chishti shaykh Nizam al-Din Awliya and sultans of the Sultanate era, which is why he wrote, “[Y]et even is this latest Delhi now for the most part in ruins. The cemeteries are, however, populous … Many now living, likewise, have laid out pleasant spots and groves for their final resting place – to the introspective a source of blissful ecstasy, to the wise an incentive to watchfulness.”53 The area where the Bara Batashewala Mahal was located was distinct from the suburbs in Lahore and Agra in two ways. First, the area included the nearby darga¯h of the fourteenth-century Shaykh Nizam al-Din Awliya. This darga¯h was a spiritual centre, burial ground, and locus for human settlement since the shaykh’s death in 725/1325. The site attracted the patronage of members of the Mughal elite and several were entombed there. Second, monumental tombs in enclosed gardens, the Suri tomb of ʿIsa Khan and the immense tomb of Humayun were developed in the area, so funerary buildings permeated this zone as well.

garden-homes in words

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Aside from imperial palace buildings, surprisingly little has been written about nonimperial garden-home architecture of Mughal elites located in the suburbs. More elaborate garden structures or pavilions were known by a number of names, including khwa¯b ga¯h (place of sleep), a¯ra¯m ga¯h (place of peace), khalwat ga¯h (private chamber), chaha¯r ba¯gh (quartered garden), kha¯nah ba¯gh (garden-house), and ba¯rahdarī (twelve-arch pavilion). Historical textual accounts suggest that suburban elite residences of the period were typically located at the centre of walled gardens that yielded fruits and flowers and were filled with trees that shaded the building. They stood on raised platforms, the open areas of which were used as places of leisure or for sleeping on summer nights. They were often one story high with a flat roof but occasionally rose to two stories. Platforms and roofs were also used for leisure and sleeping. Garden-homes sometimes included a central underground chamber to provide refuge from intense heat. Residences commonly had four sides, each with openings to allow the winds to pass through from all directions. Pelsaert explained that walled compounds where the elites resided were called maḥals and these had high perimeter walls that enclosed water tanks, gardens, and other structures. Speaking of women’s quarters in particular, he wrote, “As a rule they have three or four wives, the daughters of worthy men, but the senior wife commands most respect. All live together in the enclosure surrounded by high walls, which is called the mahal, having tanks and gardens inside.”54 Principal structures were located at the centre of walled gardens, sometimes surrounded by trees to provide shade. Writing about the residences of Delhi, Bernier explained, “A house to be greatly admired must be seated in the middle of a large flower garden, and should have four large-divans, raised the height of a man from the ground, and exposed to the four winds, so that the coolness may be felt from any quarter.”55 Thinking of Ahmadabad, Gujarat, but perhaps also Delhi, Terry de-

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scribed the purpose of trees in garden residences: “It is their manner in many places to plant about and amongst their buildings, trees which grow high and broad, the shadow whereof keeps their houses by far more cool.”56 Maḥals or walled enclosures often had their own waterworks, which included small reservoir tanks, wells, bathing tanks, and wheelhouses with oxen to raise and circulate water throughout the maḥal and supply water to the pools and fountains of the residential structures. Pelsaert commented, “There are usually gardens and tanks inside the house; and in the hot weather the tanks are filled daily with fresh water, drawn by oxen from wells. The water is drawn, or sometimes raised by a wheel, in such quantity that it flows through a leaden pipe and rises like a fountain.”57 Terry described wide, round wells fed by springs. The wells were made of stone, lined with plaster, and surmounted with a building that enclosed oxen that drew up water using a pulley of buckets.58 Bernier also noted, “A good house has its court-yards, gardens, trees, basons of water, small jets d’eau in the hall or at the entrance.”59 Thinking of a garden-house in Surat, Gujarat, Terry described in detail the waterworks found in a typical Mughal garden-house: In the middle of those gardens, they have such wells, as before described, the tops whereof stand a good deal higher than the planted ground, which lies even and flat below them, from whence water is conveyed in narrow open passages (they not knowing the use of leaden pipes) to all the parts of them, in the dry season of the year. In those gardens, likewise they have little round tanks to bathe in, whose sides and bottoms are made firm and smooth with that plaster before named, they are fill’d by aquaducts from those wells, and they can empty them when they please, as well as fill them. The water that is conveyed into those small tanks, usually runs down broad stone tables, that have many hollows made in them, like to scollop-shells, which water in its passage makes such a pretty murmur, as helps to tie their senses with the bonds of sleep, in the hot seasons of the day, when they constantly keep their houses, and then they lie down near them on their carpets, to be lull’d asleep. Those bathing places are within, or very near their garden houses, which usually are by far more near, than any other of their dwelling.60 The houses Pelsaert described were single storied and flat-roofed. He observed, “They are noble and pleasant, with many apartments, but there is not much in the way of an upper story except a flat roof, on which to enjoy the evening air.”61 Terry also noticed the flat-roofed homes, commenting, They build their houses low, not above two stories, and many of their tops flat and thick, which keep off the violence of the heat, and those flat tops, supported with strong timber, and coated over with a plaster, (like that we call plaster of Paris) keep them dry in the times of the rains. Those broad terraces, or flat roofs, some of them lofty, are places where many people may stand (and so they

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often do) early in the morning, and in the evening late like camelions, to draw and drink in fresh air; and they are made after this fashion, for prospect, as well as pleasure.62 A wide range of mud coatings and plasters was used to finish buildings. Abu alFazl explained that a mud coating (gač) made of 468 kg (20 man) of earth and 23 kg (1 man) of straw was typically used to cover 11 m (14 gaz) of walls, 8 m (10 gaz) of roofs or floors, and 12 m (15 gaz) of interior walls and ceilings.63 On top of the dried mud coating builders applied a finer, plaster face-coating (astar ka¯rī). To produce 0.81 m (1 gaz), one needed 23 kg (1 man) of quicklime (chпna¯h), 9 kg (10 sers) of another type of lime (qalaʿī), 12.6 kg (14 sers) of pulverized brick (surkhī), and 0.23 kg (0.25 sers) hemp or flax fibre (san).64 Finally, another even finer layer (ṣandala ka¯rī) was applied. To make 0.81 m (1 gaz), 6.3 kg (7 sers) of lime (qalaʿī) and 2.7 kg (3 sers) of pulverized brick (surkhī) were required. In addition to Terry’s observation about roof plaster, Pelsaert noted, [T]he white plaster of the walls is very noteworthy, and far superior to anything in our country. They use unslaked lime, which is mixed with milk, gum, and sugar into a thin paste. When the walls have been plastered with lime, they apply this paste, rubbing it with well-designed trowels until it is smooth; then they polish it steadily with agates, perhaps for a whole day, until it is dry and hard, and shines like alabaster, or can even be used as a looking-glass.65

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Some houses had an underground apartment to serve as a refuge from the heat known as a tah kha¯nah.66 Bernier noted, “A good house has … handsome subterraneous apartments which are furnished with large fans, and on account of their coolness fit places for repose from noon until four or five o’clock, when the air becomes suffocatingly warm.”67 Interior walls were sparsely ornamented according to Terry, who wrote, “[The walls] are kept very white, and set off with a little neat painting, and nothing else.”68 Interior walls also had niches to store and display precious ceramics, and ceilings could be ornamented with paint and gold leaf. According to Bernier, “Five or six feet from the floor, the sides of the room are full of niches, cut in a variety of shapes, tasteful and well proportioned, in which are seen porcelain vases and flower pots. The ceiling is gilt and painted, but without pictures of man or beast.”69 Window openings when used, especially on second floors, were covered with perforated screens that allowed fresh air in. Terry described these screens as “lesser lights made in the walls of those rooms, which are always free and open; the use of glass windows, or any other shuttings being not known there.”70 The interior floors were covered with textiles. Terry noted, “[A]ll their bravery is upon their floors, all which are made even with fine earth, or plaster, on which they spread their most excellent carpets in their tents, as well as in their dwelling-houses, laying some coarse thing under to preserve them.”71 Bernier observed, “The interior

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of a good house has the whole floor covered with a cotton mat four inches in thickness, over which a fine white cloth is spread during the summer, and a silk carpet in the winter.”72 More luxurious mattresses and cushions, some made of velvet or satin and some with flower embroideries made with silk, gold, and silver, were used throughout. Relatively little furniture was used. People sat and slept on the cushioned floors and sometimes on cots with nets, some “lavishly ornamented with gold or silver.”73 Terry commented, “On those carpets they sleep in the night time, or else upon a hard quilt, or lying upon a slight and low bedstead they call a cot, bottomed with broad girt web, made of cotton wool.”74 Expensive household items, such as gold and silver serving dishes and precious ceramics, added to the luxury of homes. Pelsaert noted, “[T]hey use more gold and silver in serving food than we do.”75

simil ar homes and different tombs Surviving examples of the kinds of residences Pelsaert and others described are rare. However, there are a few extant buildings constructed around the same time as the Bara Batashewala Mahal that combine a flat roof with the nine-fold plan. These highly similar structures are mostly residences and not tombs. Those tombs that do share similarities are surrounded by questions, lending credence to the notion the Bara Batashewala Mahal closely follows contemporary residential design. One extant building that was clearly intended as a residence and shared strong similarities with the Bara Batashewala Mahal was built not by the Mughals but by their rivals in the Deccan, the Nizam Shahis. Completed in 990/1583, the Farah Bagh garden-residence on the periphery of the Ahmadnagar fort in the Deccan was situated within a 250-metre square walled garden. The flat-roofed forty-metre square building employed a nine-fold plan, but unlike the Bara Batashewala Mahal it was a two-story building and its roof was not completely flat.76 The Mughals also built similar residential buildings. Akbar’s forts in Ajmer (completed 977/1570) and Allahabad (completed 991/1583) each had a residential building that combined a flat roof with a nine-fold plan, the latter one in Allahabad being more elaborate. It was initially called khalwatga¯h-i kha¯ṣ (The Private Retiring Room) and later termed the “Rani ki Mahall.” The core building, like the Bara Batashewala Mahal, was roughly twenty-five metres square.77 The “Rani ki Mahall” differed from the Bara Batashewala Mahal with its multi-pillared masonry veranda, but the iron rings on the roof of the Bara Batashewala Mahal suggest a textile verandah was used to shade the building perimeter on the platform, a common practice in Mughal architecture. The water palace of Shah Quli Khan at Narnaul (999–1001/1591–93) also combined a flat roof and a nine-fold plan but differed from the Bara Batashewala Mahal since it was sited within an artificial lake instead of a garden, stood two stories high, and incorporated four chatri domes, one on each corner of the roof.78 Another interesting example was the undated “Chauburj” (Four Towers) in Agra, which R.

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Nath argued was a residence built by Babur and reused as his tomb, but this remains open for debate. The building also combined a nine-fold plan with a flat roof like the Bara Batashewala Mahal.79 Underground chambers (tah kha¯nahs) were sometimes used in Mughal gardenpavilions as refuges from the heat, one example being the pavilion at Nur Afshan Bagh, the earliest surviving Mughal garden in Agra commonly known as the Ram Bagh and likely commissioned by Nur Jahan.80 In plan the pavilions of the Nur Afshan Bagh differed considerably from the Bara Batashewala Mahal, but they attest to the use of tah kha¯nahs in seventeenth-century residential Mughal architecture. Akbar’s “Jahangiri Mahal” of the Agra Fort also had a tah kha¯nah with a pool located under its garden court.81 Tah kha¯nahs were likely a feature of Delhi’s Mughal residential architecture as well, an important possible surviving example being the tah kha¯nah of the palace of the Mughal noble, Safavid émigré, and engineer ʿAli Mardan Khan (d. 1067/1656– 57). William Dalrymple suggested the current office of the chief engineer for Northern Railways, the former bungalow of British Resident William Fraser, was built over the basement of the palace of ʿAli Mardan Khan.82 Dalrymple saw the basement as the best example of a surviving domestic tah kha¯nah in Delhi, a feature the British sometimes incorporated into their British Indian residences and called tykhanas. Located north of Shajahanabad near the Kashmiri gate and overlooking the original Yamuna riverbank, the palace was later bestowed to Jahanara, Shah Jahan’s daughter, after ʿAli Mardan Khan’s death and was subsequently occupied by William Fraser.83 However, tah kha¯nahs were not unique to residential buildings. They could refer to underground or partly submerged crypts of tombs where the bodies were actually buried, their presence indicated by grave markers on upper stories. Alternatively, they referred to a series of lower-story or underground rooms, such as the tah kha¯nahs found at the tomb of Iʿtmad al-Dawla and the Taj Mahal.84 In both cases, the rooms allowed for views of the Yamuna River. Surviving purpose-built Mughal tombs constructed prior to the Bara Batashewala Mahal generally combined a simple square or octagonal plan without surrounding rooms with a projecting double-domed roof. Four datable examples of tombs combining octagonal plans with domed roofs are the tomb of Adham Khan (d. 969/1561– 62); the tomb of his brother Muhammad Quli Khan (c. 1019/1610) in old Delhi (Mehrauli); the tomb called the Afsarwala Gumbad near Humayun’s tomb, which enclosed a gravestone dated 974/1566–67; and the tomb of Shah Quli Khan at Narnaul (982/1574–75). Near-contemporary tombs such as the one for Anarkali in Lahore (1024/1615) continued the domed tradition of tomb design. One example of a squareplanned domed tomb was the tomb of Atga Khan (973/1566–67) in the nearby area of Nizamuddin.85 There were a few purpose-built tombs constructed before the Bara Batashewala Mahal that used variants of a nine-fold plan but they typically incorporated a monumental dome. Two datable examples are the unusual Timurid mausoleum of Ulugh Beg and ʿAbd al-Razzaq in Ghazna, Afghanistan (built c. 864–907/1460–1502);86 and

the bar a batashewal a mahal in mug hal delhi

Humayun’s tomb in Delhi. A number of tombs with flat roofs were constructed after Mirza Muzaffar’s death near Sikandra and Lahore, such as the tombs of Maryam alZamani (d. 1032/1623) at Sikandra, Jahangir at Lahore (built 1037–47/1628–38), and Nur Jahan (d. 1055/1645) also at Lahore. The actual similarity of these buildings to the Bara Batashewala Mahal is worth examining. There is one structure more than any others that closely resembles the Bara Batashewala Mahal and that is the nearby Sunderwala Mahal, located in “Sunder Bagh” just north of the gardens of Humayun’s tomb. It also combines a nine-fold plan with a flat roof and has a deep sunken chamber, but it bears no inscriptions and cannot be precisely dated. It also has no cenotaph either on the roof or underground so it is not clear whether it was a residence, a tomb, or both, even though it is often assumed to have been a tomb. The close similarities between the Bara Batashewala and Sunderwala Mahals suggest that the same master builder is responsible for both and sought to perfect their plans, and that the patrons of the two structures are either the same or connected in some way. The structures that are most similar to the Bara Batashewala Mahal and built prior to it are all residences. Prior-built tombs, especially in the Delhi region, generally have domes. Subsequently built monumental tombs for Jahangir and Nur Jahan in Lahore employ flat roofs, but it is not clear that Nur Jahan’s tomb was a purpose-built tomb. Other examples, like the tomb of Akbar in Sikandra or the tomb of Iʿtmad al-Dawla, appear to be similar but are not since they have significant superstructures or vaulting. The observation that the Bara Batashewala Mahal resembles residential architecture is not new, but it is made in vague and unsubstantiated ways and is attached to the assumption that the building was built as a tomb and not a residence. However, if the Bara Batashewala Mahal closely resembles residential buildings, then it is reasonable to wonder whether it was built as a residence to begin with.

conclusion The Bara Batashewala Mahal is an ambiguous structure and the initial purpose for which it was built remains and perhaps always will be subject to speculation. Traditionally the building is interpreted as a purpose-built tomb modelled after unspecified residences. The orientation of the Bara Batashewala Mahal, its rooftop cenotaph, its crypt-like central chamber, and its funerary epitaph all point to it having been conceived as a mausoleum. However, it is important to recognize that an alternative interpretation is not only plausible but arguably more convincing, one in which the building was first built as a residence and then later converted into a tomb. Mughal architectural innovations tend to evolve more incrementally than suddenly and tombs of the period typically have projecting domes. Why would the makers of the Bara Batashewala Mahal inexplicably choose to deviate from the conventional tomb architecture of the day? Furthermore, why was a domed tomb, the Chhota

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Batashewala Mahal, built mere metres away? Innovations generally do not occur without reason and it is difficult to discern what the reason might be in this case. The Dinpanah riverine suburb where the Bara Batashewala Mahal is located is not only where Mughal elites built tomb-gardens inspired by the monumental example of Humayun’s tomb and the blessed grave of the Sultanate-era Sufi Nizam al-Din Awliya, but it is also an area where they first built garden-homes. The environs of Humayun’s tomb then are a place where both garden-homes and gardentombs coexisted. With its flat roof, its nine-fold plan, its architectural ornaments, and its practical niches, the design of the Bara Batashewala Mahal also accords well with nearcontemporary textual descriptions of garden-residences, with representations in Mughal miniatures, and with surviving examples of imperial residential palace architecture. Furthermore, the building resembles small homes of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, leaving one to wonder whether it was a home when it was first built. That the building came to be used as a tomb is not in question, but it is far from certain that it was built solely to be a tomb. The most likely patron of the building is not the entombed Mirza Muzaffar Husayn but his wife Shahzadah Khanam, Akbar’s eldest daughter and Jahangir’s favourite sister. She possessed the requisite wealth, she established a garden-residence in Agra, and she had access to architects and painters of imperial calibre. She had most likely formed an emotional attachment to the site, which was located so close to the majestic tomb of her grandfather Humayun and the buildings of her longtime servant the a¯gha¯ of a¯gha¯s, who had retired to the area. Shahzadah Khanam probably commissioned the building sometime after her marriage to Mirza Muzaffar in 1002/1594 and before his death in 1012/1603–04, after which she could have converted the building into a tomb. If the Bara Batashewala Mahal was initially a residence that was later converted into a tomb by Shahzadah Khanam, then it presents some interesting implications for our understanding of Mughal architecture on the eve of Akbar’s reign. For one, it offers the opportunity to reconsider the emergence of platform tombs after the fifteenth century in the context of suburban riverine development trends in key northern Mughal cities where garden-home construction intersected with the building of garden-tombs. In this light, the emergence of platform tombs is less the result of arbitrary creativity, a quest for closer fidelity with Quranic visions of paradise or an effort to project piety along with grandeur, and more the result of a trend where existing garden estates and buildings are pragmatically reused as tombs. The case of the Bara Batashewala Mahal reminds us that the relationship between form and function in Mughal architecture is often highly elastic and that it is important to consider if buildings were reused and adapted to serve different purposes depending on their circumstances. Stylistically, the Bara Batashewala remains of considerable importance to the study of Mughal architectural history offering an interesting permutation of the nine-fold 90

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plan, a possible example of a tah kha¯nah, and an all-too-scarce example of the interior ornament used on buildings in Delhi and Mughal architecture in general during the end of Akbar’s reign and the ascent of his son Jahangir. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Bara Batashewala Mahal is that it can potentially offer a tantalizingly rare window into the kinds of domestic architecture built by women of the extended Mughal imperial family outside imperial fortress walls at the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is a world of lush walled gardens cooled by the waters of the Yamuna, flourishing with fruit, vegetables, and flowers, and graced by the spirits of Mughal ancestors and cherished saints. Within these gardens were homes intricately ornamented with detail suited to contemporary miniature paintings and endowed with rooftop visions of ethereal marble-clad domes floating above the green canopy of Delhi’s storied trees. Little is known about the Mughal domestic architecture of the early seventeenth century and the Bara Batashewala Mahal remains a building that has the potential to shed much light on the subject.

note s 1 Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Conservation and Landscape Restoration. Photographs of the Bara Batashewala site that appear in this chapter were taken prior to recent conservation efforts. 2 Hasan et al., eds, Monuments of Delhi, 2: 113–14. 3 The Farsi phrase for “He was an effigy in paradise” is ‫رکیپ دوب یتشحب نآ‬. The numerical equivalents for the words are as follows: ‫ = نآ‬51; ‫ = یتشحب‬720; ‫ = دوب‬12; ‫ = رکیپ‬230. The sum of the numbers gives the date: 51 + 720 + 12 + 230 = 1013. Hasan appears to have subtracted 1 from the solution to arrive at 1012, an operation frequently performed for chronograms, though cues to do so were typically provided. Alternatively, the use of the Farsi letter ‫ پ‬, which is not part of the Arabic alphabet and included the traditional ʾabjad, may have been a reason for the subtraction. 4 Ibn Mubarak, The Akbarnama, 3: 22, 289, 294, 301, 302, 330, 379, 386, 571, 990; Muqim, The Tabaqat-i-Akbari, 2: 383, 501, 509, 518. Badaʾuni, The Muntakhab al-tawarikh, 2: 148, 256, 260, 274. Khan, History of Gujerat, 317; Ibn Mubarak, The A-in-i Akbari, 1: 513. 5 Platts, A Dictionary of Urdu, 131. 6 Joshi, “Bada Batashewala Mahal.” Brief mentions can also be found in: Asher, Architecture, 185; Sharma, Delhi, 112–13; Lowry, “Delhi in the 16th Century,” 12; Findly, Nur Jahan, 237–38; Sharma, Mughal Architecture, 123–7. 7 Asher, Architecture, 106; Koch, Mughal Architecture, 74. 8 Joshi, “Bada Batashewala Mahal,” 12–13. 9 Asher, “Sub-Imperial Palaces,” 281–303. 10 Khan, History of Gujerat, 317. 11 Badaʾuni, Muntakhab al-tawarikh 2: 256. 12 Muqim, Tabaqat-i-Akbari, 281. 91

hussein keshani 13 14 15 16 17 18

19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

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39 40

Ibn Mubarak, Akbarnama, 3: 301. Muqim, Tabaqat-i-Akbari, 281. Ibn Mubarak, A-in-i Akbari 2: 193–5. Blochman in: Ibn Mubarak, A-in-i Akbari 1: 516; Ibn Mubarak, Akbarnama 2: 502–9. Badaʾuni, Muntakhab al-tawarikh 2: 260. Ibn Mubarak, Akbarnama, 3: 966–70; Jahangir, Memoirs, 21: Blochman in: Ibn Mubarak, A-in-i Akbari 1: 516. Jahangir, Memoirs, 46. Cf. idem, The Tпzuk-i-Jahangīrī, 1: 34; idem, The Jahangirnama, 37. For a critique of Price’s translation in general, see Rogers and Beveridge in: Jahangir, Tпzuk-i-Jahangīrī, 1: vii. Following Rieu, they take issue with the manuscript used in Price’s 1829 translation, suggesting parts of it were later additions. However, I see no reason to reject the manuscript outright. Jahangir, Jahangirnama, 314. Cf. idem, Tпzuk-i-Jahangīrī, 2: 84. Thackston concludes the a¯gha¯ of a¯gha¯s is a man, but Rogers and Beveridge are under the impression the individual is a woman. Pelsaert, Jahangir’s India, 2. Blochman in: Ibn Mubarak, A-in-i Akbari 1: 516; Beale, An Oriental biographical Dictionary, 98. Jahangir, Tпzuk-i-Jahangīrī, 1: 10; idem, Jahangirnama, 27. Koch, “The Delhi of the Mughals.” Hasan et al., eds, Monuments of Delhi, 2: 127–8; Khan, Monuments of Delhi, 3: 209–10; idem, “Description des monuments”; idem, Asar al-sanadid, part 3: 59. Stephen, Archaeology, 209–10. Finch, “Observations,” 8: 292. Manucci, Storia Do Mogor, 1: 119. Hasan et al., Monuments of Delhi, 2: 130–1; Khan, Asar al-sanadid (1904), part 3: 62–3. See also, Stephen, Remains of Delhi, 199. Jahangir, Tпzuk-i-Jahangīrī, 2: 84. Compare with Jahangir, Jahangirnama, 314–16. The lattice closely resembles the screens at the tomb of Atgah Khan in nearby Nizamuddin. Joshi, “Bada Batashewala Mahal,” 11. Koch, Mughal Architecture, 45–6. Koch, “Mughal Agra,” 1: 559. Joshi, “Bada Batashewala Mahal,” 11. Chida-Razvi, “Chini-khana.” Husain, Record, 14. Hasan et al., Monuments of Delhi, 2: 114. Wescoat, Brand and Mir, “Gardens,” 555; Koch, “Mughal Agra.” Nicholas Withington in Kaul, ed., Travellers’ India, 226. See also Kaul, “Extracts of a Tractate,” 4: 175. Withington writes, “Agra is a huge Towne, the wall two course in compasse, fairest and highest that ever I saw, well replenished with Ordnance : the rest (except Noble-mens houses, faire seated by the river) ruinous.” Pelsaert, Jahangir’s India, 2. Six kos is roughly equivalent to 17.5 to 20 km. Terry, A Voyage to East India, 272–3.

the bar a batashewal a mahal in mug hal delhi 41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71

Bernier, Voyages, 2:15; idem, Travels, 1: 339–40. Beach and Koch, King of the World, 209. Ibn Mubarak, A-in-i Akbari 3: 310–16. See also Koch, Mughal Art, 168. Another interpretation is found in Koch, Mughal Art, 8. She locates Shaikh Farid’s residences at Salimgarh a fort just north of present-day Red Fort (Shahjahanbad) that was apparently given to Farid. Koch also interprets Akbar’s visit to Shaikh Farid’s quarters as a period of stay. Monserrate, Mongolicae legationis commentarius, 513–704; idem, Commentary, 97–8. Ibn Mubarak, Akbarnama 2: 292, 193, 322. Finch, “Observations,” 292. Ibid. Steel and Crowther, “Journey,” 9: 207. Bernier, Travels, 1: 281. Umara¯ʾ is the plural of amīr and refers to Mughal elites and commanders. Pelsaert, Jahangir’s India, 56. Mundy, Travels, 2/35: 229. Ibn Mubarak, A-in-i Akbari 2: 284. Pelsaert, Jahangir’s India, 64. Bernier, Travels, 1: 281–2. Terry, Voyage to East India, 179. Pelsaert, Jahangir’s India, 66. Terry, Voyage to East India, 187. Bernier, Travels, 1: 281. Terry, Voyage to East India, 188–9. Pelsaert, Jahangir’s India, 66. Terry, Voyage to East India, 176–7. Ibn Mubarak, A-in-i Akbari 1: 236. Abu al-Fadl presumably meant 1 gaz × 14 gaz. Koch holds that Akbar’s standardized unit the gaz-i ila¯hī was 0.81 to 0.82 m long. See Koch, Mughal Architecture, 139. Richards also maintains the gaz was equal to 31.92 inches or 0.81m and that 1 man equalled 51.63 pounds or 23.42kg. See Richards, The Mughal Empire, 84. Ibn Mubarak, A-in-i Akbari, 1: 33. Chпna¯h is quicklime derived from boiling kankar, sedimented earth in semi-arid, alluvial plains like the Delhi region. Qalaʿī appears to have been another form of lime derived from qarried limestone. For a more detailed discussion, see: Qaisar, Building Construction, 19–22. For an estimation of the weight of 1 ser, see Hunter, Akbar, 186. One ser is equated to 2 pounds or 0.9kg. Pelsaert, Jahangir’s India, 66–7. Whitworth, An Anglo-Indian Dictionary, 307, 324; Shakespear, Dictionary, 261. Bernier, Travels, 1: 281. Terry, Voyage to East India, 185. Bernier, Travels, 1: 281–3. Terry, Voyage to East India, 178. Terry, Voyage to East India, 185–6.

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hussein keshani 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

Bernier, Travels, 1: 281–3. Pelsaert, Jahangir’s India, 67. Terry, Voyage to East India, 186. Pelsaert, Jahangir’s India, 67. Michell and Ziebrowski, Architecture, 38–40, figs 17, 18. Koch, Mughal Architecture, 62, fig. 54. Koch, Mughal Architecture, 47, fig. 25. For an octagonal variant on the nine-fold plan see the Hada Mahall on 48–9, figs 27, 28. Nath, “Chauburj,” 306–17. Koch, “Mughal Agra,” 571. See also: Asher, Architecture, 129. Koch, “Mughal Palace Gardens,” 161, n.17. Dalrymple, City of Djinns, 123–5. Asher, Architecture, 273. For a discussion of the tah kha¯nah of Safdar Jang’s eighteenth century Delhi palace see: Blake, Shahjahanabad, 47. Koch, The Complete Taj Mahal, 62, 147–8; Koch, “Mughal Agra,” 571. Welch, “Emperor’s Grief.” See Hoag, “Tomb of Ulugh Beg.” The building was probably built by Ulugh Beg, the Timurid governor of Ghazna and Kabul. The square building consisted of a square central chamber surrounded by eight smaller chambers. Though the building has long chambers with octagonal ends, the perimeter chambers are not all linked, and unlike the Bara Batashewala Mahal, they do not link to the central chamber.

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Lowry, Glenn. “Delhi in the 16th Century.” Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic Environmental Design Research Centre 0 (1984): 7–17. Manucci, Niccolao. Storia Do Mogor or Mogul India 1653–1708. Translated by William Irvine, 4 vols. London: John Murray, 1907. Michell G. and M. Ziebrowski. Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Monserrate, Antonio. Mongolicae legationis commentarius. Edited by H. Hosten. (Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 3, no. 9). Calcutta: Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1914. Monserrate, Antonio. The Commentary of Father Monserrate, S.J., on his Journey to the Court of Akbar. Translated by J.S. Hoyland. London: Oxford University Press, 1922. Mundy, Peter. The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608–1667: Travels in Asia, 1628–1634, vol. 2. Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1914. Nath, R. “Chauburj: The Tomb of Babur at Agra.” In Encyclopaedic Survey of Islamic Culture, edited by Mohamed Taher. New Delhi: Anmol Publications pvt, 1997, reprinted 2003. Nizam al-Din Ahmad ibn Muhammad Muqim. The Tabaqat-i-Akbari of Khwajah Nizamuddin Ahmad: A History of India from the Early Musalman Invasions to the Thirtysixth Year of the Reign of Akbar. Translated by B. De, 3 vols. Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1936. Pelsaert, Francisco. Jahangir’s India, The Remonstrantie of Francisco Pelsaert. Translated by W.H. Moreland and P. Geyl. 1925. Reprinted Delhi: Idarah-i Adabiyat-i Delhi, 1972. Platts, John. A Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English. London: W.H. Allen & Co., 1884. Qaisar, Ahsan Jan. Building Construction in Mughal India. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. Richards, John. The Mughal Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, reprinted 2001. Sayyid Ahmad Khan. Asar al-sanadid. Delhi, 1847. Reprinted 1904. – “Description des monuments de Delhi en 1852, d’après le texte Hindoustani de Saiyid Ahmad Khan.” Translated by J.H. Garcin de Tassy. Journal Asiatique 15 (1860): 508–36. Also: 16 (1860): 190–254, 392–451, 521–43; 18 (1861): 77–97. – Monuments of Delhi: Historical Study. Translated by R. Nath. New Delhi: Ambika, 1979. Shakespear, John A. Dictionary Hindustani and English, second edition. London: Kegan Paul, 1820. Sharma, Praduman Kumar. Mughal Architecture of Delhi: A Study of Mosques and Tombs (1556–1627 A.D.). New Delhi: Sundeep Prakashan, 2000. Sharma, Y.D. Delhi and its Neighbourhood. New Delhi: A.S.I., 1964, reprinted 2001. Steel, Richard, and John Crowther. “Journey of Richard Steel and John Crowther, from Agimere, in India, to Ispahan, in Persia, in the Years 1615, and 1616.” In General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, edited by Robert Kerr, 18 vols. Edinburgh: Blackwood & London: T. Cadell, 1824. Stephen, Carr. The Archaeology and Monumental Remains of Delhi. Calcutta: Carr Stephen, 1876.

the bar a batashewal a mahal in mug hal delhi Terry, Edward. A Voyage to East India. London: J. Wilkie, 1655, reprinted 1777. Welch, Anthony. “The Emperor’s Grief: Two Mughal Tombs.” Muqarnas 25 (2008): 255–74. Wescoat, James, Michael Brand, and Naeem Mir. “Gardens, Roads and Legendary Tunnels: The Underground Memory of Mughal Lahore.” Journal of Historical Geography 17.1 (1991): 555–88. Whitworth, George. An Anglo–Indian Dictionary. London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1885. Withington, Nicholas. “Extracts of a Tractate, written by Nicholas Withington, which was left in the Mogols Countrey by Captaine Best, a Factor, his Adventures and Travels therein.” In Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes, edited by Samuel Purchas, 20 vols. Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1905.

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chapter 3

The Wazir Khan Masjid in Lahore: A Study of the Inscriptions Erica Cruikshank Dodd

The importance of inscriptions has been underestimated by Western writers on Islamic art. Inscriptions are the most potent element in the arts of Islam everywhere in the world, without distinction as to place or period. It is that which makes a work of art “Islamic,” the single unifying element in very diverse styles from different regions or periods of history.1 The appearance of the Islamic architectural inscriptions in the Indian subcontinent looks very different, however, from the Islamic decorative tradition in the Mediterranean world. Where the decoration in Southeast and South Asia is based on vibrant colour and a flat, two-dimensional surface, the Western Islamic tradition grew out of a classical sculptural tradition, and inscriptions are more likely to have been carved in stone and stucco. Anywhere in the world the Qurʾan defines the world for a Muslim, so the written word on an object not only ornaments to please the eye but, more importantly, gives the decoration meaning. The Wazir Khan Masjid in Lahore is a splendid example of architectural decoration, representing the highest point of Mughal glory. It demonstrates the function of “The Word” and also offers a deeper understanding of a general Islamic aesthetic. The Wazir Khan Masjid was built in 1045/1635 by Hakim ʿAli al-Din, who was physician to Shah Jahan and made governor of Punjab when Shah Jahan became the ruler in 1627. When Shah Jahan visited Lahore in 1638, Hakim ʿAli al-Din took him on a visit to the mausoleum of Jahangir, which had been completed under his supervision. The emperor was so impressed with this work that he then authorized the wazir to restore large parts of his great fort in Lahore. This the Wazir Khan accomplished; while he did so he also seized the opportunity to build his own monument, on which he lavished his personal fortune. At this time Lahore was devastated and in ruins, and the Wazir Khan erected not a mosque alone, but he chose to make this building the centre of a vast social complex within the city. The mosque was at the head of this complex surrounded by a number of dependencies. It was built around the old shrine of a popular fourteenth-century Ghaznavid saint, Miran Shah Gazaruni, whose tomb remains in the courtyard where it is still visited. This tomb, at the time, was already the centre of a devoted Sufi cult; it then became the focus for the Wazir’s greater plan: he not only refurbished the city walls and rebuilt the gates. Between

3.1 Wazir Khan Mosque, Lahore. General view of the façade, photographed in 2014.

the gates and the mosque, he built baths, sarays, palace-lined streets, and bazaars, all of which were connected in the same grandiose plan. The baths, the residential houses, and the little shops over the bazaars are still there, forming a sizable section of the old city of Lahore.2 The mosque at the centre of this complex was established as a waqf to guarantee a school for students of the Hanafite school of law in perpetuity.3 Bookshops in the interior supported scholars who lived and studied there. Workmen in the most respected crafts, the leather binders, calligraphers, and ceramic ka¯shī-ka¯rī workers were lodged in the large square in front of the mosque. Passed on from father to son, these shops remained in the hands of the original families well into the twentieth century. The grandiose design and quality of workmanship of the complex demonstrates that Wazir Khan’s Lahore was one of the finest examples of town planning in the Mughal period.4 The Wazir himself died of colic in 1620.

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3.2 Bookshops near the Wazir Khan Mosque.

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3.3 Wazir Khan Mosque, Lahore, reproduced in a coloured lithograph by W. Carpenter held in the Lahore Archives.

The present mosque has not fared well in the past century, and it fell into disrepair. Recently, however, it became the subject of careful reconstruction financed by the World Bank.5 A painting by William Carpenter (d. 1899) dated 1854 depicts the entrance gate and square in front of the mosque and gives some idea of its former grandeur. Unhappily, it is not possible in the present context to illustrate all the inscriptions in the mosque. Taken together, they present an imaginatively complicated, infinitely subtle artistic conception, as complex and magnificent as was the patron’s ambitious plan for the greater city.6

i n s c r i p t i o n s o n t h e g ate Over the grand main entrance (fig. 3.1) the Arabic Kalima is written in nastaʿlīq script along with the date the mosque was finished (1045/1635). The nastaʿlīq style of writing is also used for other inscriptions on the gate, the rest of which are in Persian. By contrast, in the interior of the mosque all the inscriptions are in Arabic thuluth closer to an informal naskh. This distinction has a purpose that will be noted below. Rectangular panels on either side of the kalima bear the name of the ruler Shah Jahan, during whose reign this mosque was built. The year of its foundation by the

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3.4 Inscription on the right side of the gateway, Wazir Khan Mosque.

Wazir Khan, 1044/1634, is noted both by the written date and by means of a Persian chronogram. On the right of the gate is written, Constructed during the reign of the valiant king, the Lord of Constellations, (Ṣa¯ḥib Qira¯n) Shah Jahan, The founder of this house of God is the humblest of old and faithful servants, Wazir Khan. On the left, When I asked of Reason the date of the foundation of this magnificent masjid, It answered: this is the place of worship of the pious. When I asked of Reason the date of its foundation, It answered “say the founder of this masjid is Wazir Khan. 1044.”

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If given their traditional numbered values, the Persian letters in the last phrase in the last line of each panel on the left also give the date 1044 H.7 These verses introduce a theme that is maintained throughout the inscriptions in the mosque, that is the balance of the spiritual and the rational sides of human nature, concepts characteristic of certain directions of Sufi thought and early Hanafite

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law.8 The Persian couplets with the date are in a mystical form familiar to Persian poetry, while the worldly or numbered date is provided with the explanation of “Reason.” This double theme of worldly and spiritual harmony is repeated several times among the inscriptions in the mosque. Under these panels of patronage and dedication, two panels of inscription, one on either side of the gate, are under the corbelled porches at a level where every passer-by could read them easily. These are in blue ka¯shī-ka¯rī on a white, delicately flowered ground. On the right is a Persian quatrain: The edifice, which like the sanctuary of heaven, Is a source of bounty – Has like the temple of the Kaʿba for its object the benefit of mankind. To the congregation may its gate ever remain open with prosperity until the day of resurrection. On the left, In the corn-field of this world, O well-conducted man, wherever is sown by man, is reaped by him in the world to come. In your dealings, then, have a good foundation in the world. For all have to prove their way to heaven through this gateway at last. Signed by the calligrapher Muhammad ʿAli. The duality of the panels above is thus repeated in the panels below: the verses on the right refer to the Kaʿba as a model for this masjid and as a reflection of the “sanctuary of heaven” after the resurrection. Verses on the left refer to the “corn-field of this world” as an introduction to the next. The verses not only balance the verses on the lintel above but they also introduce a second theme, current throughout the inscriptions – their placement on the building with respect to their meaning. As the worshipper enters the gate, he passes between the two lower inscriptions that express the progression from the physical to the spiritual realm. On the right, verses liken the masjid to the Kaʿba, indicating the direction for prayer, the worldly sign of spiritual passage. On the left, the verses instruct the believers to behave in their dealings outside the masjid in a way that will ensure them reward in the world to come. Both verses invite the believer to enter through this gateway, the physical passage indicating the direction of heaven. The symbolic theme of the masjid as the way to paradise has been described before.9 Indeed, this makes the masjid a qibla for the world, indicating the direction for prayer, and the gateway becomes like a miḥra¯b in the qibla. This image is repeated on the façade of the prayer hall, giving onto the courtyard.

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As mentioned above, outside the mosque the writing is in Persian nastaʿlīq, the literary, courtly language and writing style of the inhabitants of Lahore. They speak to the passers-by in their own language, inviting them to be honest in their business and worldly dealings so that they may enter paradise in the same way as they enter this gate. Inside, in the religious or spiritual space, inscriptions are in Arabic, the language in which God revealed the Book and the style is Arabic thuluth or naskh. An important decorative element is preserved throughout the mosque: the space that is not filled with inscription is used to illustrate the inscriptions (figs 3.1, 3.6, 3.9–16). Fine mosaic work of vases and flowers illustrate the theme of the inscriptions, the basic theme of paradise. Just as the beauties of this world are an indication of the sublime beauty of the next world, the stylized patterns of flowers, trees, and garlands pictured on the walls represent the “gardens underneath which rivers flow.” The motifs point to an orderly heaven. The stylized patterns describe the hidden harmony in this world, not the chaos experienced on the surface. In other words, the motifs taken from nature are intended to show the underlying, mysterious, and beautiful patterns of this universe, where everywhere God’s hand is revealed for “he who can understand.” These patterns are frequently taken to be the principal element of the decoration, and the inscriptions are mentioned as subsidiary to them. I argue it is the other way round: the theme of the decoration of the mosque is given in the inscriptions. Thus, the decorations illustrate these inscriptions, as pictures illustrate a text. This is an important distinction that has not always been recognized. Another important factor is demonstrated in the decoration of the gateway (and in the illustrations referred to above): the inscriptions always conform to the design of this building and give meaning to the structure which would otherwise be absent. In the traditions of Islamic art, from Spain to China, the inscription and its ornamentation never covers the structure with meaningless patterns like rugs thrown over the walls. The ornament is never careless of the structure it decorates. Notice, for example, how the size and placement of each panel of inscription is determined by the architecture and its relationship with the spectator or inhabitant. The lower inscriptions are placed where they can be read and are in a language immediately intelligible to the believer. The higher inscriptions refer to sovereignty between this world and the next, and they are all subservient to the great words that underline Islam: the kalima. On entering the mosque gateway, the believers walk under the kalima and thus symbolically submit to Islam. They also submit to the sovereigns whom God has directed to lead the umma (community), in this case the Wazir Khan. They are directed along this path by the inscriptions on either side of the gate. In between the words are the marvellous patterns that describe the meaning of his action, the meaning of this world in its relation to the next.

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the façade of the pr ayer hall The inscriptions which probably once decorated the minarets and the two sidewalls of the courtyard no longer exist. Once inside the gate we are directed immediately to the great façade of the prayer hall on the far side of the court, with two iwans on either side of the central arch. On the upper lintel of the main façade and dominating the surface is a panel containing the whole of the Āyat al-Kursī, the Verse of the Throne (Q 2:255/256), in thuluth, signed by Muhammad Sharif (fig. 3.6): God there is no god but He, the Living, the Everlasting. Slumber seizes Him not, neither sleep; to Him belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth. Who is there that shall intercede with Him save by His Leave? He knows what lies before them and what is after them, and they comprehend not anything of His knowledge save such as He wills. His throne comprises the heavens and earth; the preserving of them oppresses Him not; He is the All-high, the All-glorious. Besides the kalima, this verse is habitually used in mosque decoration throughout the Muslim world.10 It is used for tombs especially but also on tombstones or stretched under the great domes of Islamic buildings. It is also used on smaller portable objects. It portrays the supreme and omnipotent God, along with the symbols of victorious royalty. This image expands upon the image of the gateway entrance: like the inscriptions on the gateway, it conveys the authority of God, but it also makes the point that in matters of religion there is no intercessor between believers and their God. This last point is important because inscriptions in the interior of the prayer hall are concerned with what lies in the heart of the believer and the distinctions between the true believer and the hypocrite. In other words, although the rulers have been put in this world by God to rule, only God is the ultimate authority and only he knows what is in the believer’s heart. This inscription draws attention to another important aspect: the use of colour. The Qurʾanic inscriptions are not only written in a different style but they are generally coloured in blue on white (white being the traditional colour for absolute purity). This is also true for the Qurʾanic inscriptions inside the prayer hall, although these may also be white on blue. There are, however, one or two interesting exceptions 105

Top 3.5 Courtyard and prayer hall, Wazir Khan Mosque, photographed in 2007. Bottom 3.6 Façade of the prayer hall, Wazir Khan Mosque.

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3.7 Tile panels on the façade of the prayer hall.

to this rule that will be pointed out in due course. What is more, the Qurʾanic inscriptions are, for the most part, austere and not elaborately decorated. Decorations of flowers and geometrical elaborations are common for Mughal art, but these decorations are not used for the inscriptions of the Holy Book. Framing the Āyat al-Kursī on all three sides are six verses from the Sпrat al-Fatḥ, the Victory Sūra (Q 48:1–6), in blue on white (figs 3.5, 3.6): Surely We have given thee a manifest victory, that God may forgive thee thy former and thy latter sins, and complete His blessing upon thee, and guide thee on a straight path, that God may help thee with Mighty help. 107

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It is He who sent down the Shechina11 into the hearts of the believers, that they might add faith to their faith – to God belong the hosts of the heavens and the earth; God is All-knowing, All-Wise – and that He may admit the believers, men and women alike, into gardens underneath which rivers flow, therein to dwell forever, and acquit them of their evil deeds; that is in God’s sight a mighty triumph; and that He may chastise the hypocrites, men and women alike, and those who think evil thoughts of God; against them shall be the evil turn of fortune. God is wroth with them, and has cursed them and has prepared for them Gehenna – an evil homecoming! These verses convey the image of total and final victory, the victory over death. They are found commonly within the Islamic tradition of architectural decoration.12 Surrounding the entrance to the hall of prayer, the verses make the entrance into a victory monument. The symbolic representation of a victory arch has ancient Roman and Christian antecedents, and it continues in Islamic countries today. When pilgrims return from the hajj, or even when important visitors enter a village or a town, it is customary to erect a victory arch for them to pass through. These Qurʾanic inscriptions are written in bold, blue thuluth against a white ground. Thuluth is used for the Qurʾanic inscriptions in contrast to the more graceful nastaʿlīq on the entrance. Below the Qurʾanic inscriptions on the façade, where the reader could best see them, are two simple and popular ḥadīth written in Arabic (figs 3.6, 3.7). In contrast to the mighty thuluth of the Qurʾan and the everyday Persian nastaʿlīq, these inscriptions, intended for the immediate inspiration of the believer, are written in a more informal cursive verging on naskh. The meaning of these panels on either side of the door give the same opposing sense as the verses on the outside of the gateway. On the right is the spiritual direction: on the left, the reference to this world as preparation for the next. On the right: “He who prays in a congregation, is 27 times more effective.” In the corresponding position on the left, is a reference to worldly speech in the masjid and the Day of Judgment: “A time will come when people will talk of worldly things in the masjid.” Along the whole length at the top of the walls of the façade are three panels of inscription on each side of the central iwan (figs 3.5, 3.6). They are all Qurʾanic, and, like the verses described on the outside of the gateway, the verses on the left are paired 108

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with the verses on the right. Reading from the right corner of the court across to the central arch, (a) Sпrat al-Baqara (Q 2:125) And when We appointed the House to be a place of visitation for the people, and a sanctuary, and “Take to yourselves Abraham’s station for a place of prayer.” And We made covenant with Abraham and Ishmael: “Purify My House for those that shall go about it and those that cleave to it, to those who bow and prostrate themselves” (in worship). This verse is not commonly used in Islamic architectural decoration. Abraham was the first ḥanīf (monotheist), and according to tradition it was he who built the first masjid in Mecca. Its use in this connection suggests an association with the Hanafite foundations of the mosque, as they were specifically designated in the will of the Wazir Khan. The same reference occurred in the inscriptions on the gateway. Here the verse refers to Abraham and Ishmael and Abraham’s station. The second one further elaborates this theme: (b) Sпrat al-Baqara (Q 2:127) And when Abraham, and Ishmael with him, raised up the foundations of the House: “Our Lord, receive this from us; Thou art the All-hearing, the All-knowing.” This verse, which speaks of the founding of the House by Abraham and Ishmael, is also written on the minaret of the Great Mosque in Aleppo (1090), the Talisman Gate in Baghdad (1221), on a construction stone in India (1323), and on the ʿAlai gate in Delhi (1311).13 Along with the two earlier references, the selection of this verse for monuments in Baghdad and India underlines the connection with the Hanafite school, which was born in Baghdad, became predominant in Central Asia, and to which this mosque belonged according to the will of its founder.14 The verse suggests, like the one on the gate, that by building this masjid the Wazir Khan is following in the footsteps of Abraham and Ishmael. This image is further emphasized in two more verses on the façade, and the same thought is repeated emphatically inside the prayer hall. (c) Sпrat al-Baqara (Q 2:144) We see thee turning thy face about 109

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in the heaven; now We will surely turn thee to a direction that shall satisfy thee. turn thy face towards the Holy Masjid; and wherever you are, turn your faces towards it. those who have been given the Book know it is the truth from their Lord; God is not heedless of the things they do. This last verse was first used on miḥra¯bs in Cairo. It is relevant to such an architectural element for it refers to Mecca and to the direction for prayer. By placing the verse on the facade of the prayer hall, however, it makes the whole prayer hall into a miḥra¯b pointing the direction toward Mecca.15 This allusion to the miḥra¯b was also made in the inscription on the gate of the mosque. There are other examples of the verse used in this fashion in Cairo, but this use is not common on the Indian subcontinent. On the left side, from right to left, (a) Sпrat a¯l ʿimra¯n (Q 3:96–97) The first House established for the people was that at Bekka, a place holy, and a guidance to all beings. Therein are clear signs – the station of Abraham and whosoever enters it is in security. It is the duty of all men toward God to come to the House a pilgrim, if he is able to make his way there. As for the unbeliever, God is All-Sufficient nor needs any being … It is significant that these verses occur on the door of the Banū Jumʿa in Mecca (758), in Medina (735), once in Jerusalem (1329), and again on the ʿAlai gate in Delhi (1311).16 The Qurʾanic passage emphasizes the founding of the first masjid in Mecca. The use of this passage associates this masjid with the one at Mecca. (b) Sпrat at-Tawba (Q 9:18) Only he shall inhabit God’s places of worship who believes in God and the Last Day, and performs the prayer, and pays the alms, and fears none but God alone; it may be that those will be among the guided. This a¯ya, more than any other verse in the Qurʾan, defines the purpose of this mosque or any mosque. It was commonly used in this way, placed on the gateway of mosques all over the Islamic world.17 If only one verse from the Qurʾan is inscribed on the mosque, it is generally this one. It emphasizes the point that there is no intercessor between the believer and God, for “he fears none but God alone.” 110

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(c) Sпrat at-Tawba (Q 9:108–109) A masjid that was founded upon god fearing from the first day is worthier for thee to stand in; therein are men who love to cleanse themselves; and God loves those who cleanse themselves. Signed by Hajj Yusuf Kashmiri, 1634. Here the words refer to a function of this mosque not previously articulated: the very important ritual of ablutions. In the courtyard of the Wazir Khan Masjid there was an impressive pool, recently renovated. The verse is not a common one but was previously used in Cairo, over the door of the Juyushi Mosque (1085), on a marble slab in Madrid (1137), and on the three sides of the door of one of the oldest mosques in Aleppo, the al-Tuti Mosque (1150).18 There is no apparent connection between its use in Lahore and these earlier examples. Thus three of these verses, on the right of the main iwan, refer to the establishment of the heavenly masjid in Mecca according to God’s will. The first one on the left of the iwan refers to the purpose of the first masjid as a model for all masjids, “a place holy and a guidance to all beings,” and the following two refer to the purpose of the masjid and the rituals. This relationship between the two masjids – the masjid founded by Abraham as a model for all masjids (pointing in the direction of Divine Truth) and this particular masjid founded by the Wazir Khan in the Old City of Lahore – repeats the balance between the heavenly and the particular that was written on the two sides of the entrance gate. The selection of verses used in the Wazir Khan Masjid and their placement have a fresh originality that indicates profound understanding of subject and content. Below this band of Qurʾanic inscriptions are two panels, one above the other, on each of the piers between the side arches (figs 3.6, 3.7): the two top panels on either side repeat the same message written in blue on white ka¯shī-ka¯rī: the Kalima once again, but here woven into a ṭughra¯, and the five ra¯shidпn including Hussayn and Hassan (Hassanayn). These are the champions of Islam, proclaimed on either side of the Gateway of Victory: Allah, Muhammad, Abu Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthman, ʿAli and Hassanayn. On the bottom panel, on the right is written in blue on yellow: The Believer in the masjid is like a fish in water; The hypocrite is like a bird in a net.

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This popular saying is written in blue on gold (instead of white) and is addressed to the people. It explains the ḥadīth beside it on the pier nearer the central gateway, which spoke of prayer being most effective in a group. On the bottom panel, on the left (fig. 3.7) is written: People use their speaking power in the service of religion. This panel, again blue on gold, explains its companion panel on the front façade, the ḥadīth, indicating that worldly things should not be spoken of in the masjid. All the inscriptions along the façade of the mosque are interrelated. They not only adorn the structure but explain it. The decoration invites believers to take part in the rituals of the structure, for the words are all directed to them. As they enter to do their ablutions, to think, and to pray they are part of a single community of believers. There is no one placed over them save the great God of the throne and beneath that the divine words. Beneath the Qurʾan are the further explanations, for those who would understand: both the ḥadīth and direct popular instructions. On the right are references to the founding and purpose of the masjid at Mecca, which led the viewer to the references to the founding and purpose of the present mosque, on the left. The inscriptions of the central façade continue the imagery of the miḥra¯b on the entrance gate and point the way to the inner miḥra¯b at the heart of the mosque. The individual structural parts are linked by the Victory Sūra, which leads from the court to another archway and then another door to the prayer hall, the innermost heart of the mosque. This image is then completed by the inscriptions in the prayer hall: they refer to the truth revealed by God, the truth in the heart of the believer, which is known only to God, and they warn against the hypocrite.

the d o or to the pr ayer hall The doorway to the prayer hall is under a graceful alveolate archway. The tall panels are decorated with inscriptions and with floral designs in fresco. Whereas all the decoration on the exterior of the mosque is in glazed tile ka¯shī-ka¯rī (fig. 3.10), the surfaces not exposed to weather, the interior of the prayer hall, and its inner doorways are painted in fresco in a delicate Mughal style that combines naturalistic detail with formal, stylized, graceful patterns. Everywhere, the mosque is filled with inscriptions illustrated and adorned by the floral designs. Around the door proper is a Qurʾanic verse (fig. 3.8), this time in reverse, white on blue, from the Sпrat al-Āʿra¯f (Q 7:163–66):

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And question them concerning the township which was bordering the sea, when they transgressed the Sabbath, when their fish came to them on the day of their Sabbath, swimming shorewards

3.8 Doorway in the centre of the façade of the prayer hall.

but on the day they kept not Sabbath, they came not unto them. Even so We were trying them for their ungodliness … So when they forgot that they were reminded of, We delivered those who were forbidding wickedness and We seized the evildoers with evil chastisement for their ungodliness. In addition, on the left, up to half the height of the door and in order to fill in the remaining space, is a passage from the Sūra of the Believers: Sпrat al-Muʾminпn (Q 23:115–18): He shall say, “Ye have tarried but a little, did you know. What, did you think that We created you only for sport, and that you would not be returned to Us?” then high exalted be God,

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3.9 Alveolate panels above the central door in the façade of the prayer hall.

3.10 Detail of the kashi-kari style design from the gateway.

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the King, the True! There is no god but He, the Lord of the noble Throne. And whosoever calls upon another god with God, whereof he has no proof, his reckoning is with his Lord; surely the unbelievers shall not prosper. And say: “My Lord, forgive and have mercy, for Thou art the best of the merciful.” The choice of these verses appears to be unique for this mosque. They continue the image of the throne on the façade and, more importantly, introduce only the true believers to His sanctuary, insisting once again on the absolute omnipotence of God and on his great mercy. The doorway thus becomes a judgement, a separation of the good souls from the bad. Above the door several alveolate panels are filled with Qurʾanic verses referring to the Last Judgement and penitence (fig. 3.9). White writing against a blue ground alternates with white against red. The introduction of a red background is a stunning innovation, for the subjects of these verses are devoted to the fires of hell that await the hypocrite or the unbeliever who enters this sanctuary. The blue on white verses represent the prayers of good souls on the Day of Judgement and the white on red are the voices of those who are doomed. This image has the same effect as the great Last Judgement sculptures on the doorways of medieval Christian cathedrals. These verses represent the prayers of the souls on the Day of Judgement, as the verse around the door portrays God in judgement upon both the good and the bad, in his great mercy. Written in white on blue, the first panel is from Sпrat Āl ʿImra¯n (Q 3:53). This verse is found earlier on the mausoleum of the Mamluk Amir Barakat Khan in Jerusalem (1246):19 Lord, we believe in that Thou hast sent down, and we follow the Messenger. Inscribe us therefore with those who bear witness. Written in white on red, the second panel on the right (on the right side above the front door) is from Sпrat Āl ʿImra¯n (Q 3:16). This verse is rarely used in architecture: 115

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Our Lord, we believe; forgive us our sins and guard us against the chastisement of the Fire. Written in alternating blue and red, the centre panels above the door have the more commonly employed verses from Sпrat Āl ʿImra¯n (Q 3:191–4):20 (Men) who remember God, standing and sitting and on their sides, and reflect upon the creation of the heavens and the earth: “Our Lord, Thou has not created this for vanity. Glory be to thee! Guard us against the chastisement of the fire …” Our Lord, whomsoever Thou admitest into the fire, Thou wilt have abased; and the evildoers shall have no helpers. Our Lord, we have heard a caller calling us to belief, saying, “Believe you in your Lord!” And we believe. Our Lord, forgive Thou us our sins and acquit us of our evil deeds, and take us to Thee with the pious. On the left side of the front door (written in white on red) is a verse from the Sпrat al-Āʿra¯f (Q 7:23). This verse is used only here in Islamic architecture: “Lord, we have wronged ourselves, and if Thou dost not forgive us, and have mercy upon us, we shall surely be among the lost.” The first panel on the left side of the door is in blue on white and comprises Sпrat al-Āʿra¯f (Q 7:89). This is also unique: Our Lord embraces all things in His knowledge. In God we have put our trust. Our Lord, give true deliverance 116

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between us and our people; Thou art the best of deliverers. Although some of these verses are to be found individually on other Islamic structures, their combination on this gateway is unique. Indeed, the specific reference to the Last Judgement on this doorway, and to the pleadings of the “little souls,” both good and bad, is so surprisingly similar to the same representation in sculpture on the doorways of the great European cathedrals, that it is tempting to see the influence of European artistic ideas in this connection.21 Above the door, in the spandrels of the arch and at the head of the alveolate semidome, are cartouches, suspended like angels in a cathedral, containing the Kalima and intertwined words of praise, along with invocations to Muhammad, ʿAli, Hassan, and Hussayn (fig. 3.9).

in the pr ayer hall The believers then pass through this door, under the angels and the prayers of the “little souls,” to the prayer hall where they encounter a continuing glory of inscriptions and a most complex structure of relationships between them. Some of the inscriptions are quotations, prayers of the Prophet, sayings referring to the “heart of the believer,” and to “true belief,” thus illustrating a Sufi interpretation of the Qurʾan within Hanafite tradition. As the believers step into the central miḥra¯b bay, three panels on either side of the bay contain the words of three Sufi saints: Junayd, Abu Baqr Shibli, and Abu Sufyan (fig. 3.11). These words are painted in three panels repeated in mirror image on the other side of the bay, so that they may be read in the same order by worshippers as they enter and leave. Thus these panels show the pairing and the opposites, or the balance between Reason and Spirit in the architectural decoration, described earlier in connection with the gate and again in connection with the façade of the prayer hall. The walls in the prayer hall are decorated for the most part with repetitive designs of flowers in vases, many of which have been richly repainted in more modern times.22 Boldest are the great verses of the Sпrat al-Tagha¯bun (Q 64), given in its entirety on the four sides of the square under the dome, in addition to parts of the Sпrat al-Jumʿa (Q 62) and Sпrat al-Ḥashr (Q 59) (fig. 3.13). At the end of the Tagha¯bun is the signature of the Katib Hussayn. Space prevents the full quotation of these verses: Al-Tagha¯bun: All that is in the heavens and the earth magnifies God. His is the Kingdom, and His is the praise, and he is powerful over everything. 117

3.11 Detail showing inscribed panels with Sufi themes.

It is He that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth who created you. One of you is an unbeliever and one of you a believer; and God sees the things you do. He created the heavens and the earth with the truth ... Al- Jumʿa: All that is in the heavens and the earth magnifies God ... Al-Ḥashr: All that is in the heavens and the earth magnifies God; He is the All-mighty, the All-wise. It is He who expelled from their habitations the unbelievers among the People of the book at the first mustering ...

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As the souls are separated on the Day of Judgement and represented by verses over the doorway, so the triumphant God on the Day of Resurrection, creator of both believers and unbelievers, dominates all the other verses in the prayer hall. One verse only of the Tagha¯bun occurs over the arches of the Dome of the Rock, in exactly the same position as it is here. It also occurs on a minbar in Sinaï, and twice

Top 3.12 Interior dome in the prayer hall, photographed in 2016. Bottom 3.13 View of the interior of the central dome in the prayer hall.

Top 3.14 Inscription above the miḥra¯b containing Sura¯t al-Zumar. Bottom 3.15 Detail containing the names of Allah and Muhammad.

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in Delhi.23 Here it is raised like a triumph in praise of God, most suitably positioned. Sпrat al-Jumʿa was previously used several times, mainly in Delhi,24 and Sпrat alḤashr was commonly found in Delhi.25 All three magnify and praise God, admit the believer into gardens underneath which rivers flow, and warn against unbelievers and the hypocrites. Around the miḥra¯b in each of the two side bays, on either side of the main miḥra¯b in the central bay, and again around each of the miḥra¯b-shaped panels in the drum are written the names of God. Around the central miḥra¯b are verses from the Sпrat Ibra¯hīm (Q 14:38–41) (partly visible in fig. 3.14): Oh Lord, Thou knowest what we keep secret and what we publish; from God nothing whatever is hidden in earth and heaven. Praise be to God, who has given me though I am old, Ishmael and Isaac; surely my Lord hears the petition. My Lord, make me a performer of the prayer, and of my seed. Our Lord, and receive my petition. Our Lord, forgive Thou me and my parents, and the believers, upon the day when the reckoning shall come to pass. This sпra and these particular verses are rarely used in architecture. Nor do they fit any mihra¯b but were apparently selected here to support the Wazir’s demand that the mosque should be established in perpetuity for the Hanafite school of theology, as Abraham was the first ḥanīf, the founder of the first mosque, and the founder of the true religion (Q 10:105). On the façade of the prayer hall is the reference to Abraham and Ishmael in the “uncultivable valley” of Mecca. Indeed, the Wazir Khan himself, as founder of this mosque, must have felt that he was following in the steps of the first prophet, in the uncultivable ruins of Lahore, as the earlier inscriptions in the mosque suggest. He must have been conscious of his colossal program of rebuilding, of which the mosque was at the centre, and, indeed, of the waqf to the Hanafite school which he ensured into perpetuity with and for his heirs. Panels on either side of the miḥra¯b, written in white on blue, contain further prayers of the Prophet, and above, on either side are cartouches, again like flying angels, inscribed in white on blue with the invocation: ya¯ fatḥ, “Oh Victory!” Above the main mihra¯b is a superb gold panel with black writing from the Sпrat al-Zumar, the Troops (Q 39: 53–5) (fig. 3.14).26 The use of black on gold to illustrate the Qurʾan, the only example in this mosque, is surprising, but, like the verses above the entrance to the prayer hall, the choice of colour seems to have been deliberate. The position of this panel is high above the present worshipper, suspended under 121

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the dome of heaven. The subject is that of judgement, but above all it proclaims God’s mercy, even for sinners: Oh my people who have been prodigal against yourselves, do not despair of God’s mercy; surely God forgives sins altogether; surely He is the All-forgiving, the All-compassionate. Turn unto your Lord and surrender to Him, ere the chastisement comes upon you, then you will not be helped. And follow the fairest of what has been sent down to you from your Lord, ere the chastisement comes upon you suddenly while you are unaware. This grouping of the inscribed panels in the miḥra¯b bay are interdependent and their full content is enhanced by association. In the centre of the miḥra¯b, leading the congregation is the prayer of Abraham, written in white on blue. On either side, also in white on blue, are other prayers of the Prophet and above it, suspended in gold, the verses of God’s mercy. In the level above that, on each wall of the octagonal drum are five panels with more ḥadīth or prayers. They are inscribed in gold on a blue ground, surrounded by the names of God. The panel above the miḥra¯b reads, What you give me, no one can take. What you do not give me, no one can take. All these verses ride on the verses of the Tagha¯bun, and above them is the rising dome with its infinite patterns, promising eternity. The side halls of the mosque are elaborately adorned, and each bay is balanced by a bay on the other side of the mihrab bay. The passages between each of the bays are demarcated at the level of the worshipper with ḥadīth in mirror patterns one side of the passage repeating the other side. Thus, the worshipper passes between them, as it were absorbing their presence. Here again is the duality mentioned earlier. Suspended high above these inscriptions, at the top of the vaults are cartouches with tughras, with various forms of praise to Allah and repeating the Sпrat al-Ikhla¯ṣ (Q 112), the sпra that encompasses all the rest:

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In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, Say: “He is God, One, god the Everlasting Refuge, Who has not begotten, and has not been begotten and equal to Him is not any one.”

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There are no laudatory inscriptions in the main dome itself. This space was apparently left unadorned. By contrast, the side domes are filled with laudatory passages, in cartouches with floral patterns. Sometimes the spaces between the garlands and flowers are filled with yet more inscriptions. The dome designs are balanced on either side of the central bay, the end two repeating their design, and the middle two again. The miḥra¯b in each of the side bays has no specific inscription to balance the one in the central miḥra¯b. Instead, over the miḥra¯b in each bay, paired on each side, are enormous gold letters: Allah, and Muhammad (fig. 3.15); Allah and Kafe (God, Muhammad; God, Sufficiency). These great letters are filled with the Āyat al-Kursī, written in very small letters inside the large ones. The large entrance gateway and the gateway of the prayer hall both make use of alveolate panels above the door. In the interior of the mosque, the muqarnas is more frequently used to support the transitions from a horizontal to a vertical plane (see figs 3.3, 3.4). Unlike other architectural traditions where the transitions between planes may be hidden or intended to counter the force of natural gravity, transitions are not hidden in Islamic architecture; they are emphasized, constructed as part of the structure and made part of the decoration. While the architectural function is clearly visible, each one of the alveolate panels and each of the tiny panels of the muqarnas is singled out and adorned with its own decoration in order to accommodate themselves to the overall pattern of the structure. This artistic vision, where function, decorative unity, and individual pattern are harmoniously combined, is rooted in the centuries of artistic tradition that lay behind the Mughal experience.

the back of the ent r ance gate When the faithful worshippers have washed and completed the rituals within the prayer hall and after they have contemplated their actions and admired the vision of paradise represented on the walls of the mosque, talked quietly to their friends of things not worldly, rested in the shade, and perhaps read from the books laid out for them on wooden stands, they turn to leave. As they do so they pay alms to the needy at the gates and put on their shoes with the help of the benches at either side. As they turn to resume the busy trade clamouring for them in the bazaar outside, they may consider the inscription over their heads on the west side of the gate as they leave. This is a popular Persian couplet, written in nastaʿlīq, written in blue on gold, preparing them in their own language for a return to this world. The two worlds are again important, and the theme is of submission: Muhammad of Arabia is the honour of both the worlds, He, who is not the dust of his threshold, let dust be thrown over his head. 123

3.16 Courtyard façade leading to the main entrance to the Wazir Khan Mosque, photographed in 2016.

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The inscriptions in the Wazir Khan Masjid belong to an artistic language that illustrates a uniquely Muslim view of the world, common to all Muslims and to Islamic art and architecture in any part of the world. In all its variations, this artistic language illustrates the fundamental unity of Islam. Only a few inscriptions have been described here, but the underlying patterns of meaning are used in the same way throughout the decoration of this mosque just as they are in other Muslim buildings, whether they are in China, Saudi Arabia, or Washington dc. As more detail is revealed, the pattern becomes more intensely elaborate, but, like oriental music, the basic rhythms echo throughout the song, giving a powerful unity to the whole composition. Unlike Christian architecture, where the size and shape of different parts of a building have a symbolic meaning according to the performance of the liturgy, the various parts of a building in the world of Islam are not significant in themselves but are given meaning through the inscriptions, just as the actual world is given spiritual meaning through words of the Qurʾan.

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3.17 Tile panel over the entrance to the Wazir Khan Mosque.

In the beginning of this chapter, certain principles of decoration were pointed out with reference to the inscriptions on the main gate and these principles resonate throughout the building. In the first place, the inscriptions are balanced between one part of the building and another, with pairs and opposites placed so that each is a reflection of or an addition to the other. This aspect reflects at once the duality and the inseparable unity that is so much a part of Islamic thought. As this world is a mirror of the next world, so there is an inseparable connection, a continuity between this world and the next. This organic connection between different inscriptions was indicated by those on the gate, and repeated or emphasized by the inscriptions throughout the mosque. Second, inscriptions were placed on the building with reference to the function of that particular part of the building. This practice is followed from the introductory Persian invitation on the gate, through the prescribed rituals of the courtyard, to the private and intimate prayers of the farthest miḥra¯b in the heart of the mosque, where only God knows what is really in the heart of the believer, and where the Sпrat ilIkhla¯ṣ is suspended overhead. Third, the style of writing corresponds to the purpose and meaning of the inscriptions. This is a courtly mosque, and the exterior inscriptions are in the courtly

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language of the time, Persian nastaʿlīq. In the courtyard the inscriptions turn to the Arabic of the Qurʾan, written in classic thuluth. In the heart of the prayer hall naskh is employed to give the scripture a more intimate impression. Fourth, it is the inscriptions that create the patterns of decoration and not the other way round. The decoration illustrates the inscriptions like the pictures in a book. Fifth, the best Islamic architectural decoration never hides the structure of a building but instead emphasizes it, underlining the significant parts. The structure of the mosque is revealed as part of the marvellous pattern created by God. The “illustrations,” the patterns of flowers and vines or pure geometry, fill in the spaces left by inscriptions. This gives meaning and purpose to form and space. When inscriptions are the main element of this decoration, intelligible communication with the spectators invites them also to become a part of the structure. Sixth, colour is used to support the content of the inscriptions, and in the case of passages drawn from the Qurʾan the inscriptions are not adorned with flowers. For the most part, Qurʾanic inscriptions are written in blue on a plain white ground, although there are exceptions to this rule (white on blue or when referring to hell, white on red). Non-Qurʾanic inscriptions referring to worldly matters, and placed outside the mosque, are adorned with floral decorations of infinite variety. Seventh, the selection of inscriptions in this mosque, as compared with the use of inscriptions elsewhere in the Islamic world, is distinctive. Some of the Qurʾanic verses used in the Wazir Khan Masjid are those that were used widely in the Islamic world and they give the mosque a universal Islamic character. Others were previously used on buildings only in the subcontinent. These identify the mosque with the area and time of its building. A third category are those which are found only in this mosque. This last category are those identified with the Hanafite sect. In this way the inscriptions in the Wazir Khan Masjid express the universality of Islam, the specifically Mughal expression of this experience, and the personal triumph of Hakim ʿAli al-Din, the Wazir Khan himself.

n ote s

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This chapter was completed during my tenure as a fellow with the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, University of Victoria. I am grateful for the support and encouragement of the director Dr Harold Coward and members of the centre. In Pakistan, I would like to thank Professor M. Tufayl of the Islamic University in Islamabad and Dr Safir Akhtar Rahi for thoughtful advice during the course of my research. Professor Tufayl, with his extraordinary knowledge of the Qurʾan, checked all my photographs and identified the inscriptions. My thanks also to Dr Zafar Ishaq Ansari, director of the Islamic Research Institute at the Islamic University, Islamabad, for continued assistance at the institute, and Mr Said Ahmed Zafar, the chief librarian. While I was working on this study of the inscriptions in the Wazir Khan, Mr Kamil Khan Mumtaz, distinguished architect in Lahore, kindly lent me a paper written previously by him but not published on the inscriptions. Our conclusions are very similar. I have not used his ideas in this paper in the

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1 2

3

4 5 6

7 8

9

10

hope that he will publish his paper soon. In my final study of the inscriptions, I hope that I may quote from his published article. Bruce Wanell kindly read this chapter and made some interesting suggestions. The subject was presented and fully discussed in Dodd, “The Image of the Word,” 58; Dodd and Khairallah, Image of the Word. Chaghatai, The Wazir Khan Mosque, 5–6 (English and Urdu text). For older references to the building of the mosque, see: Chishti, Tahqiqat-i-Chishti, 674; Lall, Tarikh-i-Lahore, 34, 171; Mathir al-Umara (Calcutta, 1903), III: 933–6 (not consulted); Kanbuh, ʿAmal Salih, II: 5–8; Latif, Lahore, 61, 216ff; Bhakkari, Zakhirat al-Khawanin, III: 15–16. Chaghatai, The Wazir Khan Mosque, 61–4; Latif, Lahore, 218–19, with an English translation of the will. See also Begley with Desai, trans. and ed., Taj Mahal, 183–4. The authenticity of this will has been challenged, but Dr Ahmed Nabi Khan assures me that the document of the will, which he has studied, is authentic. I have not seen the original document. Unfortunately, there is very little left of the larger city he established in his hometown, Wazirabad in the Gujranwala District. World Bank, Walled City of Lahore. Although some original inscriptions may be missing in the present masjid and many are repaired, the main inscriptions on the entrance gate, on the façade and in the prayer hall, appear to belong to the original structure. Whereas the inscriptions on the outside panels are in tile mosaic, most of the inscriptions in the main prayer hall are painted and have clearly been renewed more than once. Since their selection and placement is so coherent and their content so intelligent, they likely preserve the originals. Since inscriptions play such an important part of the decoration of the masjid, it is likely that the original minarets also had inscriptions, although there are none on the minarets today. The same may be said of the north and south walls of the courtyard and their gateways. For comparable examples of this usage of inscriptions on architecture, see Begley, “The symbolic Role of Calligraphy,” 7–18. The “two worlds” referred to here are explicitly mentioned on the back of the gate (see below and fig. 3.16) and are relevant to universal Sufi practice. See Yazaki, “Morality and early Sufi literature,” 74–97 (especially 75). The reference to “reason” conforms to Hanafi doctrine, where reason is permitted in the interpretation of Qurʾanic text or ḥadīth. See Wheeler, Applying the Canon of Islam; Hallaq, “Hanafite School of Law.” Dodd, “The Image of the Word,” 58; Dodd with Shereen Khairallah, The Image of the Word, I: 57. Compare the inscriptions in the Taj Mahal, and in Sikandra: Begley, “The myth of the Taj Mahal”; Begley and Desai, Taj Mahal, xxxix. Dodd and Khairallah, Image of the Word, I: 64–5; II: 10–18, where are listed about 142 monuments (on some it appears twice) in different countries. A number of recent publications on inscriptions illustrate more Qurʾanic verses than appear in Dodd and Khairallah, Image of the Word. Among these are the studies of the Taj Mahal, by Begley (note 7). Several of the verses illustrated below also occur in the Taj Mahal, including the Verse of the Throne. I have used throughout this article the “interpretations” of the Qurʾan by A.J. Arberry (d. 1969), rather than the direct translations. This is because they convey the

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11

12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

22

23 128

original sense and some of the original beauty of the poetry, which the more literal translations do not. This is Arberry’s transliteration. The Arabic is better transliterated as sakīna, and translates as “tranquility.” Cf. translation by Zayid, trans., The Qurʾan. Blachère uses the expression “la Présence Divine” in Blachère, trans., Le Coran, 542. Pickthall translates it as “peace of reassurance.” Cf. Pickthall, trans., The Holy Qurʾan, 356. Dodd and Khairallah, Image of the Word, II: 118–22, which lists more than fifty examples of this sпra as a whole or in part, over a wide geographical area. Cf. note 10. Dodd and Khairallah, Image of the Word, II: 5. There is no obvious connection between the name for Abraham, Ḥanif, and the word for members of the Hanafi school of law, ḥanafiyya. See Eisenberg and Wensinck, “Ibra¯hīm.” Also Buhl, “Ḥanif ”; Heffening, “Ḥanafiyya.” Buhl points out that those who follow Abraham, the “true believers,” or “those who possess the real or true religion” are called Ḥanifiyya and also, more rarely, Ḥanafiyya. Abraham and the first mosque (masjid) of Mecca are mentioned so prominently in the Wazir Khan Mosque, built for the Hanafi school, that an understanding between the two groups is suggested. See n. 9. Dodd and Khairallah, Image of the Word, II: 29. Ibid., 43–53. Ibid., 59. Ibid., 29. Found in Delhi but also in Cairo, Baghdad, and Spain. See Dodd and Khairallah, Image of the Word, II: 34–5. This suggestion would be extravagant were it not for European influences in other courtly art of this period: cf. Koch, “The baluster Column”; Koch, “Jahangir and the Angels”; Koch, “Nur Jahan’s Pavilions.” For a recent study of the frescoes in the fort, Lahore, see: Cooper, “Sikhs, saints and shadows of angels.” The interaction, if any, between the use of light and colour in the program of church decoration and the parallel practice in contemporary mosque decoration has yet to be explored. Cf. Dodd and Khairallah, Image of the Word, I :36, 40; Dodd, “Mar Musa al-Habashi,” 96. Trees are also paradise motifs and some fine cypress trees are painted in the alveolate semi domes of the miḥra¯b walls in the Wazir Khan mosque. The cypress are familiar motifs in Mughal art and they are also painted in the niches of the Wazir Khan baths. In the first bay to the north of the miḥra¯b bay, at eye level, are a pair of opposing panels, with cypress and a willow, on one side, and a banyan tree on the other. Ilay Cooper thoughtfully drew my attention to similar banyans painted in the tomb of Jahangir. The banyan appears to have crept into Mughal art through earlier sources. There are several banyan trees in early Mughal miniatures, and they were then, as they are today, associated with the burial place of a holy person. Compare, for example, the splendid large banyan by the holy pool at Thanesar, in the Akbar Nama. See Sen, Paintings from the Akbar Nama, pl. 42. Dodd and Khairallah, Image of the Word, II, 135.

the wazir khan masjid in l ahore 24 Ibid., 133. 25 Ibid., 131. 26 Ibid., 108

biblio g r aphy Begley, Wayne. “The Myth of the Taj Mahal and a new Theory of its symbolic Meaning.” Art Bulletin 61 (1979): 7–37. – “The Symbolic Role of Calligraphy on Three Imperial Mosques of Shah Jahan.” In Kaledarsana: American Studies in the Art of India, edited by Joanna G. William, 7–18. New Delhi, American Institute of India Studies, 1981. Begley, Wayne, and Z.A. Desai, trans. and ed. Taj Mahal, the Illumined Tomb: An Anthology of Seventeenth-Century Mughal and European Documentary Sources. Cambridge ma and Seattle: The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture and University of Washington Press, 1989. Bhakkari, Shaykh Farid. Zakhirat al-Khawanin. Edited by S. Moinul Haq. Karachi: Pakistan Historical Society, 1961–74. Blachère, Régis, trans. Le Coran. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1957. Buhl, F. “Ḥanif.” In A shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, edited by H.A.R. Gibb and J.H. Kramer, 132–3. Leiden and London: Brill and Luzak and Co., 1961. Chaghatai, M. Abdullah. The Wazir Khan Mosque: History and Architecture. Lahore: Kitab Khana-i-Nauras, 1975. Chishti, Nur Ahmad. Tahqiqat-i-Chishti. Lahore, 1867. Cooper, Ilay. “Sikhs, Saints and Shadows of Angels: Some Mughal Murals in Buildings Along the north Wall of Lahore Fort.” South Asian Studies 9, no. 3 (1993): 11–28. Dodd, Erica Cruikshank. “The Image of the Word.” Berytus 18 (1969): 35–79. – “The Monastery of Mar Musa al-Habashi, near Nebek, Syria.” Arte medievale 2, ser. 6 (1992): 61–144. Dodd, Erica Cruikshank, with Shereen Khairallah. The Image of the Word: A Study of Qurʾanic Verses in Islamic Architecture, 2 vols. Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 1981. Eisenberg, J., and A.J. Wensinck. “Ibra¯hīm.” In A Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, edited by H.A.R. Gibb and J.H. Kramer, 154–5. Leiden and London: Brill and Luzak and Co., 1961. Gibb, H.A.R., and J.H. Kramer, eds. A Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam. Leiden and London: Brill and Luzak and Co., 1961. Heffening, W. “Ḥanafiyya.” In A Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, edited by H.A.R. Gibb and J.H. Kramer, 131–2. Leiden and London: Brill and Luzak and Co., 1961. Kanbuh, Muhammad Salih. ʿAmal Salih. Edited by Ghulam Yazdani. Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1923–46. Koch, Ebba. “The Baluster Column: A European Motif in Mughal Architecture and its Meaning.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 45 (1982): 251–61. – “Jahangir and the Angels: Recently Discovered Wall Paintings under European Influence in the Fort of Lahore.” In India and the West: Proceedings of a Seminar Dedicated to the 129

er ica cruikshank d o dd Memory of Hermann Goetz, edited by Joachim Deppert. South Asian Studies 15 (1983): 173–95. – “Notes on the Painted and Sculptured Decoration of Nur Jahan’s Pavilions in the Ram Bagh (Bagh-i Nur Afshan) at Agra.” In Facets of Indian Art, edited by Robin Skelton, Andrew Topsfield, Susan Stronge, and Rosemary Crill, 51–65. London: Victoria and Albert Museum Press, 1986. Lall, Lala Kanhya. Tarikh-i-Lahore. Lahore, 1884. Latif, S.M. Lahore: Its History, Architectural Remains and Antiquities. Lahore: New Imperial Press, 1892. Mattar, Philip, ed. Encyclopaedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa, second edition. New York: Macmillan Reference, 2004. Pickthall, Muhammad Marmaduke, trans. The Holy Qurʾan, Islamic Research Publication 77. Islamabad: Idarah-yi Tahqiqat-i Islami, al-Jamiʿah al-Islamiyah al-ʿAlamiyah, 1988. Sen, Geeti. Paintings from the Akbar Nama: A Visual Chronicle of Mughal India. Varanasi and Calcutta: Lustre Press in association with Rupa, 1984. Wheeler, Brannon. Applying the Canon of Islam: The Authorization and Maintenance of Interpretative Reasoning in Hanafite Scholarship. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. World Bank. World Bank: Sustainable Development. Walled City of Lahore: Cultural Heritage and Tourism. Pre-feasibility Study (August, 2005). Yazaki, Saeko. “Morality and Early Sufi literature.” In The Cambridge Companion to Sufism, edited by Lloyd Ridgeon. 74–97. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Zayid, Mahmud, trans. The Qurʾan, an English Translation of the Meaning of the Qurʾan. Beirut: Dar al-Choura, 1980.

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chapter 4

The Mosques of Firuz Shah Anthony Welch

The Sultanate of Delhi served as a nexus of Islamic wealth, art, and learning and, like the Mamluk empire (1250–1517) to the west, was a fierce opponent of the Mongols. The Delhi sultanate was, however, not based upon centuries of Islamic culture but instead upon a confluence of Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, and other Indian faiths under Muslim political authority.1 Under the Sultanate of Delhi from 1192 to 1526 a rapid and effective expansion of Islam began in northern India until its wealth surpassed that of Cairo. But unlike their Cairene counterparts, the sultans of Delhi never managed to create an enduring classic style of Islamic architecture, and buildings created under their patronage remained highly individual, inventive, and eclectic, characterized by their capacity to explore what was novel rather than what was traditional.2

t h e e a r ly hy p o st y l e m o s q u e The conquest of Delhi in 1192 under the leadership of the Ghurid sultan Muʿizz alDin Sam (r. 1171–1206) marked the advent of Islamic rule in northern India and the beginning of a tradition of Islamic architecture. In 1206 the general Qutb al-Din Aybak was declared the first independent Muʿizzi sultan, and the city of Delhi became the capital of an aggressive and rapidly expanding sultanate that extended deep into the Deccan during the reigns of his successor, sultan Iltutmish (r. 1211–36), and the Khalji dynasty (1290–1320). During these first two dynasties the construction of impressive mosques (sing. ja¯miʿ) was imperative: work on the ja¯miʿ in Delhi began in 1192 and on the ja¯miʿ of the northern Indian city of Ajmer shortly afterward. In large measure these two early mosques were built with the spolia from razed Hindu and Jain temples: in Delhi four-metre tall pillars supported the vaults of the arcades and came from twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples in the Delhi region that were systematically destroyed in order to supply the building materials for the mosque. The Qutb mosque was built on the foundations of a Vaishnavite temple. This process of destruction and reuse was repeated in subsequent northern Indian mosques as Islam

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4.1 Iron pillar in the old ja¯miʿ mosque of Delhi.

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expanded in India. The new Muslim rulers were scrupulous in effacing or covering temple figures, but in the ja¯miʿ in Delhi they also employed rich patterns of geometric and vegetal motifs to conceal non-Muslim forms. As a result, the initial qibla arcade presented a hodgepodge of recycled stone work that must have seemed odd or even inappropriate to the Muslim conquerors who brought with them Afghani and Central Asian traditions of brick and arched architectural forms. In order to give the qibla a more familiar form, they erected in front of it a stone “screen” of ogive arches.

4.2 Qutb Minar.

Detached from the qibla, this feature covered the area with Arabic and Persian inscriptions and geometric ornament, so that worshippers would see a façade reminiscent of architectural forms in their Ghurid homeland. Sultan Iltutmish also installed the celebrated Iron Pillar directly in front of the highest point of the mosque’s qibla screen. Predating the Muslim conquests of northern India by several centuries, it had likely supported at first a sculptured image of Garuda, the Hindu god of victory, or of Vishnu, the deity to whom the original temple was dedicated. For the conquering Ghurid army the removal of the sculpture served as a means of proclaiming Islam’s victory. The sultans initially looked west for their architectural models, as they also looked west for formal, legal investiture from the Abbasid caliphs. Despite the formidable distance from Delhi to Cairo, the sultans of Delhi defined themselves in terms of their obeisance to the Abbasid caliph, even if the caliph exerted no meaningful or practical authority in Delhi. Similarly, the first Delhi sultans looked north and west for their aesthetic direction. The plan of the old ja¯miʿ (also known as the Qutb mosque or the Quwwat al-Islam) is a classic hypostyle, while its great minar is based on Ghurid prototypes. The somewhat later mosque of Sultan Iltutmish in Ajmer is also a pillared rectangle with engaged minars framing the central arch of the qibla screen. Both mosques in Delhi and Ajmer are decorated with complex arabesques, geometric patterns, and inscriptional programs in Kufic and thuluth that present predictable references to the virtues of Islam and the value of communal prayer.

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Less predictable but more strident are numerous inscriptions delineating the evils of idolatry and polytheism and underscoring the political authority of Sunni Islam.3 The original Qutb mosque underwent two expansions, first under Sultan Iltutmish and second from 1296 to 1316 under Sultan ʿAlaʾ al-Din, whose grandiose architectural ambitions were paid for with loot from the sultan’s raids and conquests in central and southern India. Contemporary texts also refer to a palace and government buildings. The expanded hypostyle grew to include not only a much expanded mosque but also a madrasa, royal tombs, and the first story of a second minar. The hypostyle form and the arched screen made use of a conservative architecture known throughout the Islamic world. For these early generations of Muslims in India legitimacy in politics and faith was paramount, and replicating what was familiar from back home was a primary concern. Islam was presenting to the conquered Hindu majority population an architecture that was not just foreign but was intrinsically distant and distinct.

sultan muhammad and the four-iwan mosque

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The seventy-eight years of effective rule by the Tughluq dynasty (1320–98), however, constitute a period of architectural activity and achievement in northern India matched only by the Mughals (1526–1858). The reigns of Ghiyath al-Din (r. 1320–25), Muhammad (r. 1325–51), and Firuz Shah (r. 1351–88) mark the heyday of the Delhi sultanate, brought to an abrupt end by Timur’s invasion and sack of Delhi in 1398. Notable patrons of literature and learning, the Tughluq sultans supported orthodox Islamic institutions as well as Sufi orders, and were notably open to the cultural influence of northern India’s non-Muslim majority. But the sultans also changed the architectural landscape of northern India through the establishment of new city centres such as Hissar, Jaunpur, and three distinct urban developments within the confines of greater Delhi itself, including the fortified city of Tughluqabad in southeast Delhi, built between 1320 and 1323. These Tughluq sultans were active, determined, and informed builders, and during the sixty-eight years from 1320 to 1388 Islamic architecture in northern India was transformed from a provincial variant of Ghurid styles to an energetic and imaginative exploration of architectural possibilities, some of them so innovative that from our vantage point they seem to be utterly unexpected. Particularly under Firuz Shah, a formidable ministry of architecture was established that made possible the sultan’s many ambitious projects. This bureaucracy supported experimentation and innovation on a grand scale. Their buildings were often daring and eschewed consistency in favour of eclecticism: Tughluq patrons did not always seek the comfort of a well-honed and predictable style. Tughluqabad was built under the direction of Ahmad ibn Ayaz, an Anatolian noble appointed court architect by Sultan Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq and then promoted to the post of grand vizier in the reign of Sultan Muhammad, the second Tughluq ruler (1325–51). Perhaps complicit in the assassination of Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq, Ahmad

4.3 Entrance stairway to mosque of Sultan Muhammad Tughluq, 1343.

4.4 Mosque of Sultan Muhammad Tughluq, ground plan.

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ibn Ayaz was executed early in the reign of Sultan Firuz Shah. Located in the approximate centre of the ruined city of Tughluqabad, the ja¯miʿ was situated on the southern side of the principal east–west road through the town. A square measuring 110 metres per side, it was constructed of rubble masonry faced with blocks of cut stone. In keeping with subsequent Tughluq design, its remains suggest the existence of a large platform raised high enough above ground level to protect the mosque’s foundations from the monsoon rains: domed arcades on the north, east, and south sides frame an open courtyard and a prayer hall before the qibla; a taller, central qibla dome may have been flanked by small minars. In the southeast corner of the mosque is a second, smaller platform. Mehrdad and Natalie Shokoohey have posited that it was the support for a Mauryan period “Asokan” stone pillar that served as a symbolic minar, a visual reiteration of the Iron Pillar in the Qutb mosque in Delhi.4 The second Tughluq ruler, Sultan Muhammad, famous for his learning and his cruelty, appointed a court architect, Zahir al-Din al-Jayush, whose name suggests that he was one of the many Persians of talent and experience who migrated to northern India during the decades of Mongol rule in Iran. He may have been charged with the design and construction of the sultan’s city of Jahanpanah, to the west of Tughluqabad. In his Rihla (Journey), Ibn Battuta, who resided at the court of Sultan Muhammad from 1334 to 1342, describes the Dar Sara palace of Sultan Muhammad, also known as the Hazar Sutun,5 as well as the ja¯miʿ adjacent to it. The two buildings were likely completed in 1343 when Ibn Battuta left Delhi. The mosque measures ninety by ninety-four metres and is approached on the east side by a broad flight of stairs rising from the street to an imposing entrance, a combination of dome and interior iwan that reflects an Iranian model. Each side of the mosque is divided into eight low domes, and in the middle of each side is a large ogive iwan: the qibla iwan is larger and taller than the other three and dominates the courtyard with its projecting non-functional, engaged minars, three stories high: the first story is polygonal, and the upper two stories are circular and taper like the Qutb Minar. From the northwest corner of the mosque projects a royal maqṣпra, three bays square with a massive stone miḥra¯b. Passage from the mosque into the maqṣпra is by means of a doorway so low that one cannot walk upright through it, and it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for an assassin, bent-double, to attack the monarch. A road originally extended from the exterior north side of the maqṣпra to the palace, and musicians would have been placed along its length to provide nawbat (formal processional music) for the sultan and his retinue. As in Ghiyath al-Din’s ja¯miʿ at Tughluqabad, the walls slope and are composed of rubble stone masonry covered with a thick coat of durable gach (a layer of smooth cement about two centimetres thick), originally painted, presumably in the bright hues generally favoured by Tughluq patrons. The mosque’s arcades are protected from the rains by long stone eaves, and the bays are covered by low domes on massive square stone pillars. The exterior surfaces on the north, south, and west sides are sparsely decorated with small, inset blue-glazed tiles, some of which are intact and represent the first known use of Iranian-style blue ceramic tiles in Sultanate architecture. These features strongly suggest that the Tugh-

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luqabad and Jahanpanah mosques relied on talented Iranian architects who had come to Delhi to work for the generous, if dangerously erratic, sultan. Although the qibla and minar at the Qutb mosque are densely decorated with floral and geometric ornament and panels of Qurʾanic inscriptions, as well as historical Arabic and Persian ones, neither of these two Tughluq mosques carries significant sacred or profane epigraphs. The Ghurid and Muʿizzi passion for the written word on buildings seems to have come to an abrupt end.6

a rch i te c t u re u n d e r f i ru z s h a h : t h e t wo - stor i e d plinth mosque Sultan Muhammad died in 1351 and was succeeded by his reluctant nephew Firuz Shah, characterized by the contemporary chronicler ʿAfif as a “very cautious man” with three abiding interests: governance, hunting, and building. Of these passions the most pronounced was architecture, according to ʿAfif: “Sultan Firuz surpassed all his predecessors on the throne of Delhi in the erection of buildings: indeed, no monarch of any country surpassed him. He built cities, forts, palaces, bunds, mosques, and tombs in great numbers.” ʿAfif ’s account is matched by the sultan’s own purported observations recorded in his Futпḥa¯t (Victories): Among the gifts which God bestowed upon me, His humble servant, was a desire to erect public buildings. So I built many mosques and madrasas and khanqahs, that the learned and the elders, the devout and the holy, might worship God in these edifices, and aid the kind builder with their prayers.7 After his installation as sultan, Firuz Shah established a well-funded ministry of buildings that included architects, engineers, and artisans; it could not have been otherwise given the resulting abundance of new buildings. First, he turned his attention to the construction around 1354 of a citadel, aptly named Firuzabad, on the west side of the Jumna river in Delhi. Its ja¯miʿ had a first-story plinth of vaulted cells that probably provided space for shops rented as waqf to supply goods and funds for the mosque’s upkeep: the sultan’s futпḥa¯t emphasizes the importance of establishing regular upkeep monies for religious institutions. Worship took place on the second story. The Jumna river flowed past the east side of the mosque, where the ruins of a pillared hall may have served as the landing for river craft, including perhaps a royal barge. The main entrance into the mosque was on the north side, where a broad staircase led to a domed gatehouse, slightly smaller than the gate into Sultan Muhammad’s mosque in Jahanpanah. The interior of the Firuzabad mosque was nearly square and was roofed with domed vaults except for an open rectangle measuring twenty-three by nine metres in which stood a circular pavilion approximately six and a half metres in diameter and on which, according to ʿAfif, the sultan’s futпḥa¯t were inscribed. Except for the remains of a stone foundation, no trace

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4.5 Citadel of Firuzabad, courtyard and qibla, 1351.

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of it has survived, however. Another anomaly is presented by the qibla, a unique structure to which none of the contemporary sources refers. It consists of two parallel walls enclosing a flight of stairs running north–south that reaches its highest point in the centre of the qibla. The purpose of this concealed passage is unclear: one and a half metres in width, it was too dark, narrow, and awkward to serve as a maqṣпra. It must nevertheless have had a protective purpose, and that may be explained by the remarkable structure on the mosque’s north side. In this attached building a double plinth supported a third story in which was embedded a solid sandstone pillar (or lat) thirteen metres high and weighing twenty-four and a half metric tonnes. Corner staircases led to this upper balustrade. A fourth level of open, domed pavilions surrounded and symbolically protected the pillar. Dating from the time of the northern Indian emperor Asoka (r. 269–32 bce), the pillar was visible from the main road to the west and from the Jumna River to the east. Both ʿAfif and the author of an anonymous contemporary text, the Sīrat-i Fīrпz Sha¯hī, refer to the pillar as the mina¯r-i zarrin (Golden Minar). The Sīrat also provides detailed descriptions of the removal of the pillar in 764/1367 from its original location 192 kilometres north of Delhi, its transportation on rafts down the Jumna, and its placement in Firuzabad. The buildings in the citadel were plastered and whitewashed, and must have enhanced the golden hue of the sandstone pillar such that it was given the epithet “golden.” Contemporary poems refer to the stepped structure and the pillar as one of the wonders of the age. “After it had remained an object of worship of the polytheists and infidels for so many thousands of years, through the efforts of Sultan Firuz Shah and by the grace of God, [the pillar] became the minar of a place of wor-

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4.6 Citadel of Firuzabad, Golden Minar, 1367. Section drawing.

ship for the faithful.” As Asher and Talbot have pointed out, this and other pillars from the reign of the emperor Asoka subsequently became linked with Alexander the Great, a hero in Firdawsi’s Shahnama and other works of Persian literature.8 The pillar is inscribed with seven edicts of the emperor Asoka. These puzzled Firuz Shah’s scholarly entourage who recognized their antiquity but could not read them. As ʿAfif also recognized, the act of moving the pillar and placing it in the sultan’s mosque emphasized the relationship between the early sultans of Delhi and the Tughluq sultanate and was a clear statement of political and religious legitimacy. It also underscored the sultan’s intelligence, for he was supposedly involved in the entire process of identifying the pillar in its original location, supervising the transport of the pillar to Delhi, and overseeing the construction of the supporting pyramidal

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structure, finished on 30 September 1367 (4 Ṣafar 769). Once again, ʿAfif is appropriately impressed: “But, in truth, those who for their shrewdness, sagacity, and ingenuity claimed to be the equals of Avicenna, Plato, Galenus, Aristotle, and Bururjmihr … considered that the removal of the pillar was absolutely impossible.”9 The sultan’s knowledge and ingenuity not only surpassed that of the great figures of Greek science and philosophy, but also of the sixth-century Iranian savant and vizier Bururj-mihr, celebrated particularly in Firdawsi’s Sha¯hna¯ma. Until the nineteenth century ruined remains of a stone walkway bridged the space between the mosque and the minar, according to ʿAfif: “After this a corridor was built between the mosque and the pillar which latter now stood within the outer enclosure of the mosque.”10 Despite its unusual design and purpose, the Golden Minar had been transformed from a pre-Islamic pillar into a Muslim minar. Located within the mosque’s enclosure, it was considered part of the mosque. The minar’s several stories may also have served as a kind of platform to catch breezes off the adjacent Jumna River and to provide a viewpoint over river traffic and the citadel’s interior for the sultan and his entourage. The corridor between minar and mosque allowed easy passage in response to the call to prayer. In any case the Sīrat’s full description of the building is unusual: its abundance of detail is matched only by texts of the Mughal period. The Golden Minar rests on a building without credible precedent. It does not emerge from an identifiable tradition. It is, in short, an oddity. The Sīrat describes in detail the process of finding and installing the Golden Pillar, but there is no expression of wonder at the stepped design of the supporting structure.11 No one seeks to justify or excuse it: in itself, that is quite understandable, since the Sīrat repeatedly asserts that the building is the sultan’s invention, built according to the sultan’s priorities, his love of architecture, and his penchant for undertaking engineering challenges and adventures. According to the author of the Sīrat, the sultan initiated the process of moving the pillar from its original location to Delhi: From the scheme of taking down the pillar, its transportation by boats, removal to the boats, and from the boats to the fort, and its re-erection therein, as well as the construction of the building on which it was erected, every one of these works was done exactly according to the orders and suggestions of His Majesty the King.

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The monarch’s involvement is central to the entire endeavour and is invariably expressed as part of a formula. Whenever a technical or design problem comes up, the sultan calls together the appropriate advisers. But their collective wisdom is insufficient, and the sultan has to intervene by offering a workable solution. While this scenario may sound like an artifice or fulsome panegyric, it may also make sense, since the sultan’s architectural and engineering competence is emphasized so much. Even if it looks like an elaborate architectural “folly,” the Golden Minar is a building designed by and for a great occasion. It does not seem to have been influenced by

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indigenous non-Muslim buildings. In its way this four-storied building, erected with such care and credited entirely to the sultan’s ingenuity, is intentionally unique: it has no history, and it does not lead to a future.12 Courtiers and members of the royal family may have made use of the qibla passage to move discreetly from the palaces on the south side of the citadel to the minar on the north side of the mosque. First appearing here in Firuzabad, similar qibla passageways can be found in later Sultanate mosques. Clearly, the sultan and his court had high regard for the Golden Minar, and the sultan recognized it as one of the signal achievements of his reign. That it deserved such attention and was so fully described in contemporary texts is in itself remarkable: not until the Mughal period does one find descriptions of such length and detail accorded to buildings. In most regards it is also a unique structure. It is a building without precedent, an oddity, a creation of the sultan himself who does not seek to explain it, justify it, or excuse it. It seems to have been built to satisfy the sultan’s priorities, his love for architecture, and his penchant for engineering challenges. It was a design created for the occasion.

kal a n m o s q u e at t h e t u r k m a n g ate The Kalan mosque near the Turkman Gate in central Delhi bears a dedicatory inscription, dated 789/1387, over the east entrance ascribing its construction to the vizier Khan-i Jahan Junan Shah. Built in the last year of the sultan’s reign, its design pays homage to the two-story plinth plan in the citadel of Firuzabad, more than thirty years before. Built on a ground floor plinth of vaulted chambers, this twostoried mosque, where worship takes place on the second story, is approached by a long staircase on the east leading to the domed entrance chamber. The mosque has five miḥra¯bs and behind them extends a broad qibla passageway. In its two-story plinth, its high stairway, its rectangular second-story courtyard framed by domed arcades, its ground floor vaulted rooms, and its qibla passage, the mosque of Khan-i Jahan is modelled on the ja¯miʿ in the Firuzabad citadel.

the cross-axial mosque An additional type of mosque further demonstrates the originality of Tughluq architecture. The uninscribed Khirki mosque is located in the southeastern part of Jahanpanah, the district of south Delhi originally developed during the reign of Sultan Muhammad. For the first three years of his reign, however, Firuz Shah resided in Jahanpanah while his citadel of Firuzabad was under construction, and it is likely that the Khirki mosque was created during this period for the use of the sultan and his immediate entourage. If so, then it is the sultan’s inaugural building and prefigures his later imaginative patronage. A square measuring fifty-two metres on a side, the mosque

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4.7 Khirki mosque, 1352. Right 4.8 Khirki mosque, 1352, ground plan.

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has four corner towers and three projecting gateways on the east, north, and south sides. The gateways at the north and south are three-storied and circular in plan, and each is framed by two engaged minars. The four-storied east gateway functions as the main gate leading to the qibla, which is marked by fifteen miḥra¯bs. The second story is decorated with stellate flanging similar to that of the third story of the Qutb Minar. The reuse of this dramatic, historic pattern is surely intended to visually link the two mosques. The mid-fourteenth-century Khirki mosque built for the new sultan is therefore a deliberate reference to the early thirteenth-century Qutb Minar. It is also another dramatic example of the sultan’s love for architectural innovation. The interior is divided into four quadrants by cross-axial domed corridors three bays wide. An arcade, three bays deep and fifteen bays long, runs along the interior of all four sides of the mosque. Seen from the roof, the mosque consists of twentyfive square units about nine metres on a side. Four of these square units are open to the sky and function as light wells illuminating the otherwise very dark interior. The remaining twenty-one units consist of nine bays each and are covered by domes on low drums; the miḥra¯b chamber projects out from the west wall. The plan of the Khirki mosque is measured, deliberate, and symmetrical (indeed, it seems to be a kind of architectural chaha¯r ba¯gh) and is one of the most ingenious structures in the Delhi sultanate, though it was not notably influential. Only one other mosque in the Delhi area pays homage to the sultan’s innovation. An inscription on the Kalan mosque near the darga¯h (Sufi centre) of Nizamuddin bears the date 772/1370–71 and identifies sultan Firuz Shah’s vizier, Khan-i Jahan Junan Shah, as its patron. It measures twenty-seven metres on a side, and its gateways are square, domed chambers framed by small tapering minars. The interior qibla sanctuary is three bays deep and eleven bays in length. The north, south, and east arcades are domed but only one bay deep. Four rectangular, open light wells break up and illuminate the interior, but they lack the symmetry and harmony of the Khirki mosque. The mosque’s origins in the Khirki mosque, built twenty years earlier, are obvious, and the use of the cross-axial plan carefully restates this legacy. It is puzzling, however, that despite the ingenuity of the design, neither the sultan’s mosque nor the vizier’s left any legacy in subsequent architecture in the Sultanate. If the Khirki mosque owes its basic design to Firuz Shah, the sultan was apparently not willing to let a subordinate use the same idea again.

t h e t u r k m a n g ate ka l a n m o s q u e A high two-storied plinth plan around an open courtyard is favoured by a later patron in the 789/1387 Kalan mosque near the Turkman Gate in central Delhi or about two kilometres from the Golden Minar of Firuzabad. The Kalan mosque at the Turkman Gate is approached by a long stairway of twenty-nine stairs leading from the lower to the upper story so that the main entrance projects nine metres out from the mosque’s eastern wall. Above the doorway is a thulпth-style inscription crediting

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the construction of the mosque to the vizier Junah Shah Maqbul Khan Jahar. The Turkman Gate Kalan mosque is forty-three metres in length and thirty-seven metres in width, and makes use of the building material found in nearly all Tughluq buildings: a core of rough-cut stone encased in a thick layer of painted gach. At each corner there is a projecting circular tower, and thirty-three windows bring light into the arcades of the upper story. The interior of this upper story is equally divided between an open rectangle and a vaulted sanctuary five bays wide and three bays deep. Five miḥra¯bs mark the qibla wall, and a covered passage runs behind the qibla. That this idea was adopted from the sultan’s mosque in the citadel is likely.

the hauz khas madr asa Outside the boundaries of Jahanpanah is the madrasa of Hauz Khas, named after the hauz (reservoir) excavated and constructed by sultan ʿAlaʾ al-Din Khalji (r. 1296– 1316). In 1352, the first year of his long reign, Firuz Shah ordered the transformation of the site through the construction of a madrasa on the south and east sides of the reservoir. From the outset of his rule, he appears to have special plans for the site: his own tomb was built at the junction of the two sides and was the means by which students and faculty could easily move from one side of the madrasa to the other. They did, in fact, proceed into the centre of the tomb and then pass through the miḥra¯b, a solution to a design problem that occurs nowhere else in Delhi Sultanate architecture. Directly connected to the water of the hauz was a complex four-part flight of stairs, regal in appearance and practical in function. If the hauz was full of water at the end of the monsoon, the stairs were submerged, and the hauz could be used for pleasure purposes like boating or relaxed conversation. Gradually, as water receded in the hot seasons or was used by the students and scholars in the madrasa, the stairs became uncovered, and users had to descend the stairs to get to the water level. The long east side of the madrasa contains a vaulted hall and a triple-domed pavilion. At the north end of the hall was the madrasa’s mosque, an apparently simple structure with an open courtyard, double-vaulted bays on the north and south sides, and single-vaulted bays on the qibla side. The qibla has five miḥra¯bs that consist of five jalis, as tall as a worshiper facing them, so that light pours in through the jali windows and from the open courtyard. But on the madrasa’s north, south, and west sides are narrow stairways leading down to or up from the water of the hauz. They may have been intended for the wuḍпʾ, ritual ablution before prayer. What if the sultan was boating on the hauz when the adha¯n was called? The mosque stairs might have provided a quick and convenient means of ascent. Or they might have been designed to provide the sultan with an unobstructed view over the waters of the artificial lake of the hauz. One of the largest building projects of this gifted and energetic patron, the madrasa not only served the company of scholars and students but 144

4.9 Hauz Khas stairway and tomb, 1388.

4.10 Hauz Khas mosque interior, 1354.

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also linked the sultan with them, “the learned and the elders, the devout and the holy, [who] might aid the kind builder with their prayers.”13 Most of the madrasa’s obvious design antecedents can be found in Hindu palace architecture rather than in Islamic architecture, and the complex is Muslim in purpose if not in form. Indeed, even its patronage and its storage and use of water are the product of builders who had expertise in traditional Hindu hydraulic architecture. Only the mosque at its north end is identifiably Islamic, and it is a modified hypostyle, transformed by its complex and original experiment with water: its qibla separates stone from water, and the attached staircases allow a visitor to move on water-bounded staircases on three sides. During prayer in the hot seasons a breeze from the hauz would have cooled the faithful in prayer in the mosque’s courtyard; they could also have heard the restful sound of the ripples on the water’s surface.

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The shape and patronage of architecture under Firuz Shah are marked by abundance. Not only are dozens of structures erected but they are of a dazzling number and variety. They represent the way in which Firuz Shah saw himself, as an informed and gifted builder driven by grandiose architectural ambitions. While the mosque was necessarily the most important type of building in a Muslim society, even if one that was relatively short-lived, there was still an almost bewildering abundance of other sorts: tombs, madrasas, palaces, hunting lodges, forts, water courses, and gardens to name a few. It is also to be assumed that an ambitious courtier or official would oversee one or more building projects, and in the case of Khan-i Jahan Maqbul Khan there is the name, rank, and history of the non-royal patron himself. This man funded the creation of two important mosques that follow the general aesthetic directions of earlier buildings for the sultan. Amidst this abundance of buildings with diverse functions, however, there was little unity of style or type. Instead, one encounters abundance and diversity but no overall visual effect. In following the general plans and outlines of two royal mosques, Khan-i Jahan Maqbul Khan may have showed us possible elements of a Tughluq architectural style, emerging from sub-royal buildings. The royal mosques themselves were given to demonstrating the idiosyncrasies of the ruler. Buildings done in great abundance for Firuz Shah reflected the personal taste of the sultan, who had the funds to be quirky. How else does one explain odd structures like the Golden Minar and its ingenious support or the special spot reserved in the Firuzabad citadel for displaying the sultan’s futпḥa¯t? Such oddities reflected the royal person’s taste and therefore needed long and detailed explanations such as what we find in the Sīrat. That vital text even gives the impression of embarrassment at the strange building created and justified by the sultan. The sultan used Asokan pillars elsewhere too but simply displayed them as stand-alone columns in the courtyards of mosques rather than as huge complexes towering over their associated mosques.

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note s 1 On the interactions prior to the sultanate period, see Flood, Objects of Translation. 2 An early study of Sultanate architecture in India is Brown, Indian Architecture. More recent studies are by Nath, History of Sultanate Architecture and Merklinger, Sultanate Architecture. 3 Welch, Keshani, and Bain, “Epigraphs, Scripture, and Architecture.” Abridged and reprinted in Flood, ed., Piety and Politics, 179–222. 4 See Shokoohey and Shokoohey, Tughluqabad. The city’s walls, street layout, and ruined buildings provide us with the earliest existing example of Sultanate city planning. The incorporation of Asokan pillars into royal architecture is one of the most striking elements of architectural patronage under Sultan Firuz Shah. 5 To the north of the mosque is a ruined two-story structure that may be identified with the Hazar Sutun (Palace of a Thousand Columns). What must have been the sultan’s royal road connects the palace to the mosque’s maqṣпra. In his post-conquest circuit of Delhi Timur seems to have been particularly impressed by several buildings: Tughluqabad, the mosque of Jahanpanah, the Hauz Khas madrasa, and the great Hauz Shamsi. 6 One of only three exceptions to this exclusion of inscriptions is the small tomb of Zafar Khan situated in the fortified necropolis on the south side of Tughluqabad. Its epigraphic program is limited to the tomb’s interior, is datable to 1323–25, and is so dark that it can barely be read. The jama¯ʿat kha¯na of the darga¯h of Nizamuddin is also inscribed. The last notable epigraphic program is known to us only through text rather than building. In 1354 the third Tughluq sultan, Firuz Shah, oversaw the construction of the city of Firuzabad, and in the centre of his mosque placed a circular pavilion bearing the text of his own book, the Futпḥa¯t (Victories). 7 Firuz Shah in Elliot, trans., The History of India 3: 382. All other quotations in this chapter are taken from this volume of the compilation. 8 Asher and Talbot, India Before Europe, 44. The dominant figure of the previous dynasty, ʿAlaʾ al-Din Khalji, was also known as the “Second Alexander.” 9 See note 7. 10 See note 7. 11 Although the Firuzabad pillar is the largest and most visible of these Mauryan monuments, there are other instances of the sultan’s use of them. There may have been one attached to the ja¯miʿ mosque of Tughluqabad. The remains of a large pillar stand at Delhi’s Northern Ridge, and there are pillars in mosque enclosures in Jaunpur, Hissar, and Fathabad. 12 The Golden Minar can be compared in concept, though not in form, with the ninthcentury minars at the Great Mosque and the Abu Dulaf Mosque in Samarra. But it is the first calculated departure from basic Islamic building types in the Delhi Sultanate. In its stepped form it recalls the cosmic mountain of Hindu and Jain temple architecture: the Tughluqs could have seen or heard about structures like the fifth-century stepped temple at Harwan. 13 See note 7. 147

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biblio g r aphy Asher, Catherine, and Cynthia Talbot. India Before Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Brown, Percy. Indian Architecture (The Islamic Period). Bombay: Taraporevala, 1942. Elliot, H.M., trans. The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians: The Muhammadan Period. Edited by John Dowson, 8 vols. London: Trübner, 1867–77. Flood, Finbarr. Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter. Princeton nj: Princeton University Press, 2009. – ed. Piety and Politics in the Early Indian Mosque. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008. Merklinger, Elizabeth. Sultanate Architecture of Pre-Mughal India. New Delhi, Munshiram Manoharlal, 2005. Nath, Ram. History of Sultanate Architecture. New Delhi: Abhinav, 1978. Shokoohey, Mehrdad, and Natalie Shokoohey. Tughluqabad: A Paradigm for Indo-Islamic urban Planning and its architectural Components. London: Araxus Books, 2007. Welch, Anthony, Hussein Keshani, and Alexandra Bain. “Epigraphs, Scripture, and Architecture in the Early Delhi Sultanate.” Muqarnas 19 (2002): 12–43.

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Archaeological Research

chapter 5

The Challenge of Interpreting Archaeological Remains in the Light of Written Sources: A Discussion Based on the Work of the Canadian Archaeological Mission in Zabid, Yemen Ingrid Hehmeyer

i n t ro d u c t i o n In Islamic archaeology, besides the excavation record, we have a rich body of written sources at our disposal. Timothy Insoll emphasizes in the introduction to his book The Archaeology of Islam that the archaeologist specializing in the Islamic period is “in a privileged position” due to the availability of – among others – historical sources that add information to and aid in the interpretation of a culture.1 The archaeologist does not have to spend a lifetime to define a people’s identity through fieldwork. In terms of the body of written sources, a suitable comparison might be the cuneiform corpus for ancient Mesopotamia. But in this example the matching archaeological record has been well developed over the past 150 years. For the Islamic world this is not the case. In addition, even the archaeology that has been done for the Islamic period was motivated for quite some time by the drive to unearth art objects. The world of Islam is also far broader than Mesopotamia, so that the possible variants in terms of local differences are manifold. Interpreting the written sources and matching them with the archaeological remains can be a tricky task. All too often, the excavated evidence has a different quality than what is reported in the texts, and ground proof for noted historical events cannot be found. Contradicting statements made in the texts, sometimes even in one and the same, pose an additional problem. Which is the one that should be taken as authoritative? The archaeologist who needs to interpret the sources may also have a natural predisposition towards one group of people, or a favourite ruler, or conversely a bias against them. An example of how widely interpretations can differ in archaeology emerged during the work of the Canadian Archaeological Mission of the Royal Ontario Museum (camrom) in Zabid, Yemen. Zabid lies midway across the Red Sea coastal plain,

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5.1 Location of Zabid on the Red Sea coastal plain of Yemen.

some twenty-five kilometres both from the sea in the west and the piedmont of the Yemeni highlands in the east. camrom’s mandate is to study all available sources – archaeological remains exposed through trench work, historical buildings standing above ground, and historical texts – in order to evaluate the status of Zabid as a medieval Islamic city. Part of the research has involved investigating the relationship between the city and its agricultural hinterland. The biannual floods in the Wadi Zabid form the main source of water, both for direct diversion of the floodwater into the field system for irrigation and for recharging the groundwater that can be tapped by wells. Traditionally, groundwater drawn by wells supplied the urban population with drinking and domestic water.2 Zabid was founded in 820 as a military camp.3 Yet, during the following centuries, the city became economically prosperous and it acquired an international reputation as a seat of learning, with numerous institutions and establishments sponsored by rulers and wealthy members of the population. This is underlined by a survey of Zabid’s religious buildings in the year 1393. It recorded some 230 mosques and religious colleges (sing. madrasa), a figure that reflects the city’s importance as a centre of learning.4 To whom should we give credit for creating the infrastructure? Was it the twelfth-century military conquerors, the Ayyubids (1173–1228), or their successors and long-term residents, the Rasulids (1228–1454)? How do we support the pros and 152

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cons, with archaeological evidence, written sources, or both? How credible are the tangible remains on the one hand and the written records on the other? And how impartial is our own interpretation? These are the questions that I will address in the following sections.

1. archaeolo g ical and art-histor ical assessment, as confir med throug h a text : the example of the iskandar iy ya madr asa The northeastern corner of the compound of the citadel of Zabid is occupied by the so-called citadel mosque.5 In 1997 the Canadian Mission began a building conservation program of this mosque, in the course of which an inscriptional panel on either side of the prayer niche, the miḥra¯b, emerged from under many layers of whitewash that had obscured it from view. Surprisingly, the inscription was found not to contain the expected Qurʾanic text but rather a dedication of a long forgotten waqf, a charitable endowment, specifying sponsorship of a madrasa.6 The name of the patron is given as Iskandar min Barsbay, and since the inscription is dated to the year 940/1533, this man is taken to be Iskandar ibn Suli, also known as Iskandar Mawz.7 He was the last of the Lawandi commanders to rule in Zabid, having seized power in 1530. In order to understand who these Lawandis were, the political events around the year 1516 need to be addressed briefly, when the Egyptian Mamluk sultanate invaded Yemen, aided by a contingent of 2,000 Lawandi mercenaries funded by the Ottoman Turks and commanded by a Mamluk. The Lawandis were a mixture of freebooters from Mediterranean coast lands, the Levant (hence the term “Levantine,” Arabized as “Lawandi”), conscripted into the Ottoman navy.8 Zabid was conquered in June 1516. In 1517, when the Mamluk sultanate in Cairo was overthrown by the Ottomans, the situation in Yemen became complicated. A series of Mamluks and Lawandis seized control of what was now a militarily occupied country but without official recognition. The Lawandi mercenaries lived by the skin of their teeth, on occasion murdering one another.9 None of them were around long enough, nor ruled under conditions that would have allowed them to make major investments, with the exception of the last one, Iskandar Mawz. He successfully ruled for six-and-a-half years, from 1530 to 1536, and acquired a local reputation for justice and munificence. The sixteenth-century chronicler al-Nahrawali conveniently refers to this Iskandar Mawz as having “built” (bana¯) a madrasa in Zabid by the name of al-Iskandariyya.10 Since the citadel mosque has long since been known locally by this name, it has generally been taken by scholars that the mosque was built by Iskandar.11 On this basis, it was often dismissed rather cavalierly as being moderately recent, an Ottoman mosque12 and therefore of no great interest in terms of Yemeni art and architecture. 153

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5.2 The citadel mosque-madrasa (al-Iskandariyya) in Zabid.

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As early as 1983 and 1984, however, Edward Keall suggested that the mosque was originally a fourteenth-century Rasulid construction.13 He based his argument on an assessment of the building’s multi-domed architecture, its layout, and the style of its original painted ceiling decorations. The minaret is clearly a later addition. This is visible at the join between mosque and minaret, where the two are attached but do not actually bond. The base of the minaret bears a dedicatory inscription, in

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5.3 Decorative panel in the northeastern corner of the courtyard arcade of the Iskandariyya mosque-madrasa, with remains of original Rasulid plasterwork and the central part replaced with a new inscription.

which part of the name of Iskandar can be made out, together with a scarcely legible but nevertheless discernible date giving the month of Ramadan of the year 940/1533.14 Keall speculates that the associated Iskandariyya attribution was likely due to the donation of monies made by Iskandar to the mosque, along with a renovation scheme and the building of the minaret.15 This suggestion was corroborated by the 1997 building conservation program that allowed for careful scrutiny of the mosque structure and its interior, including excavation of a small sondage in the prayer hall. The association with Iskandar, the patron of the madrasa, is to be connected with the later period of renovation and redecoration, when the existing mosque was turned into a religious college and lost its original attribution. There is unequivocal evidence of changes made to the decorative scheme in the survival of part of a panel lodged in the northeastern corner of the courtyard arcade. The style of design for this carved plasterwork is distinctly different from that found elsewhere in the building. Significantly, the central part of the panel was hacked out and replaced with a new dedicatory inscription. In other words, this was a retroactive modification of the earlier panel. We find evidence of

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5.4 The letters ka¯f, nпn, da¯l of Iskandar’s name, as shown on the modified courtyard inscription.

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the sponsor in the more recent plaster style running along the wall on the south side of the courtyard. Figure 5.4 shows the letters ka¯f-nпn-da¯l of Iskandar’s name.16 The same ka¯f-nпn-da¯l can be observed on the base of the minaret. The renovation also included the insertion of the two stone panels carrying the waqf inscription on either side of the prayer niche. They were clearly fit into the existing qibla wall. Besides giving the name of the patron, the carved-in-stone text reflects important practical details of Iskandar’s dedication of a waqf foundation trust in support of the madrasa. The inscription specifies three different areas in the Wadi Zabid network that are named after the respective canal – here called sharīj – irrigating them. For each of these three areas, the text lists a number of individual properties of land and levies derived from them.17 The inscription reflects the importance of sponsorship for the sustenance of Zabid’s economic, cultural, and religious life, in this case derived from the agricultural hinterland. Clearly, an engineered system of diversion dams and distribution devices that allowed the control of the fickle but often violent wadi spate for farming purposes was in place and operating successfully at the time. For camrom, the text is a priceless document because it meshes with everything that the project has learned from the archaeological and historical work about the irrigation scheme and water allocation system of the Wadi Zabid. In this instance, then, text and archaeology complement one another.

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5.5 Waqf inscription panel on the left side of the miḥra¯b in the Iskandariyya mosque-madrasa, top lines, with the word sharīj at the left end of both lines.

2. the problem of moder n-day ac ademic inter pretat ion: ay yubids versus r asulids 2.1. Historical Context Who was responsible for laying the foundations of the infrastructure that gave Zabid its medieval prosperity, both economically and intellectually, as reflected in the Iskandariyya mosque-madrasa? The most significant source of information on the early history of Zabid is the twelfth-century poet and prose writer ʿUmara al-Yamani’s work on the history of Yemen, Taʾrīkh al-Yaman. The author (d. 1174) reports that it was a certain Ibn Ziyad who founded Zabid in 820 as a military camp. He had been sent by the Abbasid caliph al-Maʾmun to lead a military intervention against troublesome tribes in this area of Yemen. Ibn Ziyad eventually established a local dynasty in his own name, with Zabid as its seat. The Ziyadids ruled Zabid and environs for the next 200 years.18 For almost two centuries after around 1000, rather chaotic political conditions prevailed in the region of Zabid, and the state of the economy around this time is hard to judge. It is, however, remarkable that both the textual evidence and the archaeological remains confirm that investment in a water-distribution system had started. A well-built plaster-lined underground canal some 35 cm wide on the inside

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and at least 145 cm deep that was excavated on the east side of Zabid (fig. 5.6) can be dated to the tenth to eleventh centuries on the basis of a palm-of-the-hand sized pottery sherd used deliberately in its original footings.19 The cut line in the trench indicates clearly that the canal had originally been constructed in “cut-and-fill” technique; that is, a trench was dug in open ground, one or two courses of baked brick were laid with lime mortar to the full width of the trench, then the rest of the canal walls were built up. Following completion of the side walls, the inner surfaces of the canal were covered with waterproof lime plaster. The only possible source of the water is the piedmont of the mountains some twenty kilometres to the east of the site, where groundwater or a modest perennial base flow in the Wadi Zabid – resulting from groundwater seepage – would have been tapped and would have provided a year-round, albeit frugal, supply of water. Conveniently, Zabid’s famous scholar Ibn al-Daybaʿ (1461–1537) describes such a water system in his work on the history of Zabid, Bughyat al-mustafīd fī akhba¯r madīnat Zabīd, when he writes about the water supply to the district of the city: “There is an abundantly flowing spring, the water comes from the east in an underground canal until it approaches the city, then it emerges at ground surface.” Concerning the original construction of this canal, Ibn al-Daybaʿ continues: “The first one who tapped the aforementioned spring and built the canal for it and led it to the city was the Qadi al-Rashid … Ahmad … Ibn al-Zubayr … the author and poet from alAswan. He was unique in his age in the science of engineering and the legal sciences.”20 Ibn al-Zubayr, the Egyptian water engineer who had been sent to Yemen, eventually returned to his native country where he died in 563/1167–68.21 Other writers relate even earlier evidence for engineered water-delivery systems. The tenthcentury geographer al-Muqaddasi refers back to the ninth century and reports that “Ibn Ziyad had a channel led to the town.”22 I am not suggesting here that camrom actually dug up one of the water conduits described in the texts nor do the dates indicated in the texts match the archaeological evidence precisely. The speculative connection, though, between a textual reference and an excavated feature is tempting. Part of our justification as practising archaeologists is trying to give definition to a cultural record. The association of an excavated item with a reference in a historical text seems to be a logical part of our work because it means putting a name tag on an otherwise nameless object. But, as Keall observes “the power of a written name should not seduce us into stretching the truth in order to allow a name association to colour the interpretation of what we dig up.”23 In a 1993 publication Keall already pointed towards the risky practice in archaeology of trying “to provide a pedigree for a previously unknown site by frantically searching for this or that clue in the written texts … [T]he archaeologist bends over backwards to apply to the chosen site an appropriate tag, in the form of a famous name, that it is hoped will give legitimacy to the work.”24 This admonition is of particular significance with regard to the following reflections. It is important to acknowledge that engineered water systems require a great deal of investment and subsequent maintenance. Since the texts tell us of intense insta-

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bility in the area of Zabid during the eleventh century25 and of the rather disruptive behaviour of a certain ʿAli ibn Mahdi around the middle of the twelfth century, who reportedly terrorized the countryside and actually besieged Zabid in 1160,26 one might want to look into the two great dynasties of the medieval period, the Ayyubids and the Rasulids, as being responsible for the major schemes that were put in place, both to supply the city with water and for farming purposes.

2.2. The Rasulids Let us first consider the Rasulids, who ruled a large part of Yemen from 1228 to 1454. The most significant authority for this time is a certain al-Khazraji (d. 1410), the official court historian of the Rasulids (see also discussion in chapter 6). His chronicle of the dynasty is poetically entitled al-ʿUqпd al-luʾluʾiyya (The Pearl-Strings).27 We know of a clear government involvement in agriculture and horticulture under the Rasulids, due to the fact that the Rasulid sultans took great personal interest in these subjects.28 The Rasulids invested in a major way in water distribution systems, which is attested both by the historical sources – for example, al-Khazraji refers to a flooddiversion barrage in the Wadi Zabid, constructed under one of the Rasulid sultans29 – and the archaeological record, for example, a water-supply system that was excavated by camrom. This had been constructed in two phases and consisted originally of three lines of glazed ceramic pipes set into a bed of baked brick laid in lime mortar. Later, the pipe bed was superimposed by a second one, carrying a single and considerably larger pipe. A thin but distinct line of separation is clearly visible in the brick masonry, marking the change between the two stages. The pipes brought water to the northern environs of Zabid.30 The texts also speak of new plants that were introduced into Yemen during Rasulid times. Al-Khazraji reports among the events of the month of Shawwa¯l 770/May 1369 the arrival of the ambassadors of Abyssinia and Calicut at the court of the sultan, offering him a great variety of exotic plants, among them white and yellow jasmine and roses.31 Horticultural experiments were conducted in the royal gardens, and the observations and results, the failures and successes were described in texts.32 A number of the agricultural manuscripts from Rasulid Yemen were compiled by the sultans themselves, or at least in the name of a sultan.33 Besides supporting agriculture, the Rasulid rulers were great patrons of other sciences.34 They bear major responsibility for making the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries one of the most prosperous periods in Yemen’s history.

2.3. The Ayyubids This evaluation of the Rasulids’ achievements is not unanimous. There are those among western historians who rather favour their predecessors, the Ayyubids of Syria. In his commentaries of texts dealing with the Ayyubid occupation of Yemen (1173–1228), the British historian G. Rex Smith invariably gives credit to the Ayyubids

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Left 5.6 Underground plaster-lined water conduit on the east side of Zabid. Above 5.7 Ceramic pipes set into a bed of baked brick, with the two bottom lines complete.

for the installation of policies and infrastructure following their successful unification of the territory.35 According to him, it was their hard work that reestablished order and an effective administration in Yemen and allowed the country to prosper again. One might, however, counter Smith’s enthusiasm for the Ayyubids by pointing out the numbers of times in their short period of rule where there was no Ayyubid ruler present in the country, apparently due to the fact that they were rather uncomfortable in Yemen.36 In fact, each time a new governor arrived he had to spend an inordinate amount of time, resources, and energy in reinstalling Ayyubid authority.37 What chances did they have, then, to initiate significant programs of development? They can certainly be given credit for various reconstruction projects – for instance, rebuilding the Grand Mosque of Zabid, which also included the addition of a minaret, a creditable act of munificence.38 But we may question whether the Wadi Zabid received a lot of Ayyubid investment.39

2.4. Ayyubids or Rasulids?

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It is just as easy to praise the Rasulids as it is to put down the Ayyubids. The point is that our own personal likes and dislikes can be rather dangerous when it comes to assessment of historical contributions because an academic may lean towards interpreting finds in the light of his or her pre-established attitudes.

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Giving credit to one’s favourite people goes hand in hand with assigning dynastic names and dates to define archaeological periods and thus the inherent danger of obscuring the differences between political history and archaeology. This problem has been stated very succinctly by Donald Whitcomb,40 and it becomes particularly clear when looking at the results of dynastic change. When the Rasulids – who had arrived in Yemen with the early Ayyubids, as their army commanders – took control of Yemen in 1228, it did not necessarily mean that the potters started manufacturing vessels according to a new standard that very year, even less so because the transfer of power from the Ayyubids to the Rasulids happened bloodlessly, implying a general tendency of continuity.41 Perhaps twenty years later we may see new trends developing, but a clear distinction between an Ayyubid-period pot and an early Rasulidperiod pot in Yemen is not easy to make.42 A neutral periodization based, for instance, on two-century intervals as used by the Canadian Archaeological Mission,43 is a clear attempt to eliminate this bias, so as not to give credit to the wrong people, resulting from our predisposition towards one group or conversely our preconception against them.

3. bias in the histor ical source s Not only may modern-day academics be biased but so may the compilers of historical texts themselves. In his chronicle of the Rasulid dynasty, al-Khazraji informs us about one of the deputy governors, a certain Qadi Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Qabib, who in the year 1353 out of malevolence encouraged a provincial governor in his attempt to extort money from the tribesmen in the Zabid environs, with subsequent military action and displacement of some of the tribesmen.44 According to alKhazraji, these events mark the beginning of a dramatic economic decline and virtual tribal anarchy in the countryside around Zabid. In fact, the archaeological record suggests the opposite. Extensive settlements across the landscape, associated with good quality pottery, imply a high degree of economic prosperity and significant levels of consumer activity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. During surface surveys, such sites have been recorded in many different parts of the study region, whether along the main north–south highway, towards the coast, or in the now largely sand desert stretches in between. One may therefore question what al-Khazraji’s observations are worth and how far we can trust him.45 May one suggest that he might have had his own personal reasons to develop a bias against Ibn Qabib, the local governor? Reading the malicious anecdotes around Ibn Qabib as reported by al-Khazraji makes one wonder what it was that caused him to write not even one respectful word about a man who apparently enjoyed a very successful career at the Rasulid court. Was there perhaps jealousy involved? The most explicit example of al-Khazraji’s contempt for Ibn Qabib comes from a story in which he describes an incident of treachery towards an official guest in Zabid who was incapacitated when his host secretly administered hemp in

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the food. On his way home, the man fell off his horse and died. According to alKhazraji, it was Ibn Qabib who was behind this plot.46

conclusion We have to acknowledge that it would be impossible to create a context for our archaeological findings without texts. It would also be irresponsible to ignore the textual information. The historical sources provide invaluable details on the structure of early and medieval Islamic society, its political organizations, its religious tenets, its social complexities, and its regional diversities. Clearly, it would be impossible to reinvent all of these from a few holes in the ground. The challenge that the archaeologist faces is to avoid distortion in archaeological interpretation by maintaining a critical mindset and by balancing textual information and the excavation record. After all, the field archaeologist has a unique opportunity to refine social, economic, and political issues based on the tangible reality, i.e., the excavated material. The modern anthropologist would call this “ground-truthing.”

n ote s 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8 9

10 11

12

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Insoll, Archaeology of Islam, 2. This is confirmed in the historical texts, e.g., Ibn al-Daybaʿ, al-Faḍl al-mazīd, 48. ʿUmara al-Yamani, Yaman, 4 (English), 3 (Arabic). Al-Khazraji, The Pearl-Strings, 2:216 (English), 5:244 (Arabic). For a plan of the Zabid citadel and the citadel mosque, see figs 1 and 4 in Keall, “A Preliminary Report.” See Hehmeyer, A History of Water Engineering and Management, 95–112, for the Arabic text of the inscription and its detailed analysis in the context of previous archaeological and historical studies of the Wadi Zabid. Al-Nahrawali, al-Barq al-yama¯nī, 56. Blackburn, Turkish-Yemenite Political Relations, 31–65, gives a detailed description of the events. It is worth mentioning at this point that the Mamluks and the Lawandis, who had invaded Yemen jointly, remained confined largely to the Yemeni Red Sea coastal plain, the Tihama. See Blackburn, Turkish-Yemenite Political Relations, 55. Al-Nahrawali, al-Barq al-yama¯nī, 58. See, for instance, Finster, “Geschichtlicher Abriss,” 24 and n.40. Finster errs twice here by attributing the construction of the mosque to Iskandar and by stating that this happened around the year 1520. Finster, “An Outline,” 135. As pointed out by Edward Keall, the mistake made by Finster is “not distinguishing between the somewhat unstable period, when the Lawandi mercenaries rivalled for power … and the formally administered Ottoman occupation (after 1539).” See Keall, “The Syrian Origins,” n.4.

inter pret ing archaeolo g ical remains 13 Keall, “Zabid and Its Hinterland,” 59; and Keall, “A Preliminary Report,” 54. 14 For the minaret inscription, see Keall, “A Few Facts,” 68. The reading of the date was slightly refined in light of the waqf dedication on either side of the miḥra¯b of the mosque. 15 Keall, “Zabid and Its Hinterland,” 59; and Keall, “A Preliminary Report,” 54. 16 Keall, “The Syrian Origins,” 221–2, gives a brief description of Iskandar’s major renovation scheme of the building. 17 See note 6. 18 On Ibn Ziyad, the Ziyadid dynasty, and its accomplishments, see ʿUmara al-Yamani, Yaman, 1–15 (English), 1–11 (Arabic). For information on the author and his work, see iii–xii. 19 For details, see Hehmeyer, A History of Water Engineering and Management, 113–18. 20 Ibn al-Daybaʿ, Akhba¯r madīnat Zabīd, 48. The statement is repeated on page 73. 21 Ibn al-Daybaʿ, Akhba¯r madīnat Zabīd, 48. According to Ibn Khallikan, Biographical Dictionary, 1:143, Ibn al-Zubayr died in 561/1166. 22 Al-Muqaddasi, The Best Divisions for Knowledge, 82. 23 Keall, “Persian Castle Saga.” 24 Keall, “One Man’s Mede is Another Man’s Persian,” 275. 25 ʿUmara al-Yamani, Yaman, 81–7 (English), 60–4 (Arabic); and Chelhod, “Introduction à l’histoire sociale et urbaine de Zabīd,” 56–7 and 59–62. 26 Smith, The Ayyпbids and Early Rasпlids, 56–62. 27 Al-Khazraji, The Pearl-Strings. For details on the author, see Bosworth, “al-Khazradjī,” 1188. 28 Varisco, “A Royal Crop Register,” 3. 29 Al-Khazraji reports the breaking of a diversion barrage (ʿaqm) in the Wadi Zabid by a strong flood in the year 802/1399; see The Pearl-Strings, 2:284 (English), 5:314 (Arabic). He refers to “al-ʿaqm al-kabīr al-Muja¯hidī,” which implies that the barrage was erected by al-Mujahid ʿAli, the fifth Rasulid sultan (r. 1321–63). 30 For details, see Hehmeyer, A History of Water Engineering and Management, 121–4. 31 Al-Khazraji, The Pearl-Strings, 2:119–20 (English), 5:139 (Arabic). 32 The main source describing these experiments in the royal gardens is Bughyat al-falla¯ḥīn, composed around 1370 by the sixth Rasulid sultan, al-Afdal al-ʿAbbas (r. 1363–77); see Meyerhof, “Sur un traité d’agriculture,” 56–7, 59–62, and passim; and Serjeant, “The Cultivation of Cereals in Medieval Yemen,” 35–6 and 54. See Varisco, “Agriculture in Rasulid Zabīd,” 338–49, for the range of horticultural species that were cultivated in the Tihama and, more specifically, along the Wadi Zabid during Rasulid times. Many of the plant species listed are not indigenous to Yemen. 33 For an annotated list of Daniel M. Varisco’s numerous publications on the agricultural manuscripts from Rasulid Yemen, see Hehmeyer, A History of Water Engineering and Management, 65, n.29. 34 Varisco, Medieval Agriculture and Islamic Science, 3. See 14–16 for the wide range of scientific topics that the third Rasulid sultan, al-Ashraf ʿUmar (r. 1295–96), addressed in his writings. 35 For example, Smith, “The Ayyūbids and Rasūlids: The Transfer of Power,” 174; and, more explicitly, Smith, “Rasūlids,” 456.

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ing r id hehmeyer 36 This is even mentioned by Smith himself. See his “The Ayyūbids and Rasūlids: The Transfer of Power,” 187 and passim; and Smith, The Ayyпbids and Early Rasпlids, 89–90. For a list of the Ayyubid rulers in Yemen and the dates of their being in office, see Smith, “The Political History of the Islamic Yemen,” 138–9. 37 Smith, “The Political History of the Islamic Yemen,” 136. Smith gives a detailed account of the political problems that the Ayyubids faced during their rule in Yemen in his “The Early and Medieval History of Ṣanʿa¯ʾ,” 60–4. 38 Keall, “Zabid and Its Hinterland,” 59. 39 See Stookey, Yemen, 101–4. 40 Whitcomb, “Reassessing the Archaeology,” 386. 41 See Smith, “The Ayyūbids and Rasūlids: The Transfer of Power.” 42 For Jordan, Whitcomb suggests at least two generations as the time span required for a transformation of styles to take place. See his “Reassessing the Archaeology,” 386. 43 Ciuk and Keall, Zabid Project Pottery Manual, 4–6. 44 Al-Khazraji, The Pearl-Strings, 2:78–85 (English), 5:94–102 (Arabic). A detailed description of the circumstances is given in Stookey, Yemen, 122–3. 45 For doubts on al-Khazraji’s objectivity and reliability as a historian, see also Smith, “The Ayyūbids and Rasūlids: The Transfer of Power.” 46 Al-Khazraji, The Pearl-Strings, 2:90–2 (English), 5:108–10 (Arabic).

biblio g r aphy

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Blackburn, J. Richard. “Turkish-Yemenite Political Relations, 1538–1568.” PhD diss., University of Toronto, 1971 (unpublished). Bosworth, Clifford E. “Al-Khazradjī.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 4 (1978): 1188. Chelhod, Joseph. “Introduction à l’histoire sociale et urbaine de Zabīd.” Arabica 2 (1978): 48–88. Ciuk, Christopher, and Edward J. Keall. Zabid Project Pottery Manual 1995: Pre-Islamic and Islamic Ceramics from the Zabid Area, North Yemen. bar International Series, 655. Oxford: Tempus Reparatum, 1996. Finster, Barbara. “Geschichtlicher Abriss der islamischen Sakralarchitektur im Yemen.” Eothen 4–7 (1993–96 [1998]): 15–32, 182–98. – “An Outline of the History of Islamic Religious Architecture in Yemen.” Muqarnas 9 (1992): 124–47. Hehmeyer, Ingrid. A History of Water Engineering and Management in Yemen: Material Remains and Textual Foundations. Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section 1: The Near and Middle East, 129. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Ibn al-Dayba, ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn ʿAli. al-Faḍl al-mazīd ‘ala¯ Bughyat al-mustafīd fī akhba¯r madīnat Zabīd. Edited by Joseph Chelhod. Sanʿaʾ: Markaz al-dirasat wa-l-buhuth al-yamani, 1983. Ibn Khallikan, Ahmad ibn Muhammad. Biographical Dictionary. Translated by William MacGuckin de Slane. Paris: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1842. Insoll, Timothy. The Archaeology of Islam. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.

inter pret ing archaeolo g ical remains Keall, Edward J. “A Few Facts about Zabid.” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 19 (1989): 61–9. – “One Man’s Mede Is Another Man’s Persian; One Man’s Coconut Is Another Man’s Grenade.” Muqarnas 10 (1993): 275–85. – “Persian Castle Saga.” Paper presented at the Millennium Wisdom Symposium, York University and Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 4 October 1999. – “A Preliminary Report on the Architecture of Zabīd.” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 14 (1984): 51–65. – “The Syrian Origins of Yemen’s National Mosque Style.” Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies 37 (2001): 219–26. – “Zabid and Its Hinterland: 1982 Report.” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 13 (1983): 53–69. Khazraji, ʿAli ibn al-Hasan al-. The Pearl-Strings; A History of the Resúliyy Dynasty of Yemen, by ʿAliyyu ʾbnu ʾl-Ḥasan ʾel-Khazrejiyy. Translated by James W. Redhouse, edited by Muhammad ʿAsal. 5 vols. (E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Series, 3). Leiden: Brill; London: Luzac, 1906–18. Meyerhof, Max. “Sur un traité d’agriculture composé par un sultan yéménite du XIVe siècle (deuxième partie).” Bulletin de l’Institut d’Égypte 26 (1944): 51–65. Muqaddasi, Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-. The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions: A Translation of Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Maʿrifat al-Aqalim. Translated by Basil Anthony Collins. Reading: Garnet, 1994. Nahrawali, Qutb al-Din Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-. Al-Barq al-yama¯nī fī l-fatḥ alʿuthma¯nī. Edited by Hamad al-Jasir. Riyadh: Dar al-yamama lil-bahth wa-l-tarjama wa-l-nashr, 1387/1967. Serjeant, Robert B. “The Cultivation of Cereals in Medieval Yemen. (A Translation of the Bughyat al-Falla¯ḥīn of the Rasūlid Sultan, al-Malik al-Afḍal al-ʿAbba¯s b. ʿAlī, Composed circa 1370 A.D.).” Arabian Studies 1 (1974): 25–74. Smith, G. Rex. The Ayyпbids and Early Rasпlids in the Yemen (567–694/1173–1295). Vol. 2: A Study of Ibn Ḥa¯tim’s Kita¯b al-Simṭ Including Glossary, Geographical and Tribal Indices and Maps. E.J.W. Gibb Memorial New Series, 26.2. London: Luzac, 1978. – “The Ayyūbids and Rasūlids: The Transfer of Power in 7th/13th Century Yemen.” Islamic Culture 43 (1969): 175–88. – “The Early and Medieval History of Ṣanʿa¯ʾ, ca. 622–953/1515 [sic].” In Ṣanʿa¯ʾ: An Arabian Islamic City, edited by Robert B. Serjeant and Ronald Lewcock, 49–67. London: World of Islam Festival Trust, 1983. – “The Political History of the Islamic Yemen Down to the First Turkish Invasion (1–945/ 622–1538).” In Yemen: 3000 Years of Art and Civilization in Arabia Felix, edited by Werner Daum, 129–39. Innsbruck: Pinguin Verlag; Frankfurt/Main: Umschau Verlag, 1987. – “Rasūlids.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 8 (1995): 455–7. Stookey, Robert W. Yemen: The Politics of the Yemen Arab Republic. Boulder, co: Westview Press, 1978. ʿUmara al-Yamani, Najm al-Din. Yaman, Its Early Mediaeval History, by Najm ad-Din ʿOma¯rah al-Ḥakami; also the Abridged History of Its Dynasties by Ibn Khaldпn and an

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ing r id hehmeyer Account of the Karmathians of Yaman by Abu ʿAbd Allah Baha ad-Din al-Janadi. Edited and translated by Henry Cassels Kay. London: Arnold, 1892. Repr. Farnborough, England: Gregg International Publishers, 1968. Varisco, Daniel M. “Agriculture in Rasulid Zabīd.” In Studies on Arabia in Honour of Professor G. Rex Smith, edited by John F. Healey and Venetia Porter, 323–51. Journal of Semitic Studies, Supplement 14. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. – Medieval Agriculture and Islamic Science: The Almanac of a Yemeni Sultan. Publications on the Near East, University of Washington, 6. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994. – “A Royal Crop Register from Rasulid Yemen.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 34 (1991): 1–22. Whitcomb, Donald. “Reassessing the Archaeology of Jordan of the Abbasid Period.” Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 4 (1992): 385–90.

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chapter 6

The Canadian Archaeological Mission of the Royal Ontario Museum in Yemen Edward Keall

The Canadian Archaeological Mission in Yemen is a multi-faceted project on the Red Sea coastal plain of the Tihamah. The main focus is the Islamic city of Zabid, a living town with important medieval traditions known from written texts. Zabid lies midway between the foothills of the Yemeni highlands and the coast (fig. 5.1). Evidence for the city’s past has come from varied contexts, from regional site reconnaissance, trench excavation, and scrutiny of architectural remains. Serious attention has also been given to the region’s prehistory. It is argued that if we want to evaluate Zabid prosperity in medieval times, we must ascertain what went on before the city’s “fiat” foundation in 820. Considerable effort and financial resources have been applied to the study of Zabid’s pre-Islamic past.1 The choice of Zabid for extended surface reconnaissance and excavation was based on the premise that it was an important place in the past but without the enormous scale epitomized by, say, a Damascus or a Cairo. It was judged by this writer in 1982 that it was feasible for a modestly funded Canadian expedition to make significant discoveries about a medieval Islamic city – within the lifetime of the project’s director. Published texts, written in medieval times, provided the opportunity for the overall outline of Zabid’s history to be known ahead of time. Particularly valuable were the chronicles that were written as eyewitness accounts, though these also included sometimes misleading statements gleaned from texts written centuries earlier. Zabid had the reputation of an intellectual haven in medieval times, and this reputation has carried over, with some distortion, into the way modern commentators write about the city. The chronicler Ibn al-Daybaʿ (1461–1537), a teacher of ḥadīth, besides his Qurʾanic knowledge, speaks of being educated in mathematical sciences in Zabid.2 Zabid as a university town is a popular misconception. Rather, learning took place at the feet of a teacher in a mosque. He attracted students by virtue of his reputation. It is true there were madrasas founded explicitly for teaching. Such institutions were spread across the city but were not built in the manner of the classic Ottoman or Mamluk madrasas. There were no dormitories in them; students lived in nearby residences, as today, in buildings called riba¯ṭs. Based on their physical ground plans, madrasas in Zabid are indistinguishable from mosques. As testimony

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6.1 1970s aerial photograph of Zabid.

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to the prolific sponsorship of madrasas during Zabid’s heyday, see Giunta’s listing of textual references to the thirty-nine madrasas named for the Rasulid era.3 One of the challenges facing the Canadian Mission was to identify the source of funding that fostered sponsorship of intellectual and religious institutions. Were these sponsors sultans, state officials, or private individuals? Whoever they were, we judge from our research that investment capital for impressive urban infrastructure was largely generated through income from irrigation farming, either from taxes levied on the land or from commercial sale of the harvest. Certainly, the city did benefit from its closeness to the Indian Ocean seaways and the associated trading activity, though wealth came primarily from the productivity of its land.

Left 6.2 Zabid’s farmland immediately beyond the city. Below 6.3 Harvest storks of sorghum in the fields of the Wadi Zabid.

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backg round to the pro g r a m In 1981 overtures by Keall to Qadi Ismaʿil al-Akwaʾ to set up the Canadian program in the Tihamah were favourably received. Surface reconnaissance of archaeological sites and documentation of standing architectural remains were conducted in and around Zabid in 1982 and 1983.4 The first steps were made towards establishing an effective ceramic typology for the study area. The identity of the Canadian Archaeological Mission of the Royal Ontario Museum (camrom; see also chapter 5) was recognized in 1987 by the Yemeni authorities through a renewable five-year agreement. The current licensing agency is the Ministry of Culture’s General Organization for Antiquities and Museums. The mission’s home base is in the old citadel of Zabid, a walled compound that before the 1962 revolution housed the Yemeni military. Between 1982 and 1997 the primary focus of the research was the city of Zabid itself. The Zabid project’s major aim was to define the settlement’s physical evolution as an urban place. Strategic soundings were designed to help evaluate patterns of land use over time in different areas of the city.5 The project also had the objective of describing Zabid’s historical relationship to its immediate hinterland, as well as assessing its international reputation. Beginning in 1992, increasing attention was paid to the role of agriculture in support of Zabid’s urban economy. Water delivery systems for both the city and the irrigated farmland became a vital part of the project’s enquiry (see Hehmeyer in this volume; chapter 5).

t h e d i st i n c t ive ver nac u l a r b r i c k architecture of zabid

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The Zabid Citadel heritage conservation program began in 1987 as a direct result of a need for the Canadian mission to have a place to live. The former military barracks, abandoned in 1962, were derelict. The Yemeni authorities approved restoration of some of the buildings in return for the right of occupancy. The initiative helped the traditional building industry to survive – an important factor in the successful unesco-supported bid to designate Zabid as a heritage city.6 The Zabid Citadel now houses a museum describing the history of the city and the work of the Canadian Mission. The decorative brick facades of Zabid’s vernacular architecture are distinctive.7 This brickwork was featured in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s iconic 1974 movie, Il fiore delle mille e una notte (released in English as Arabian Nights). It is the use of recycled bricks, with variable sizes, that give the walls their distinctive look. No doubt the tradition dates back several centuries at least, but it is highly unlikely the tradition can be traced to the very beginning of the city’s existence. The decorative schemes are dependent upon the use of good-quality recycled baked bricks. The bricks used are immensely hard, having been fired at a very high temperature, to the point that some of them are partially vitrified. They are dark

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6.4 Articulated brickwork on a traditional Zabidi house façade.

red, often with a reduced (black) core. Brick fragments facilitate intricate brickwork designs. There is no archaeological evidence that bricks of this quality were being made before c. 1000. A much softer, low-fired orange brick characterizes the remains of the ninth to tenth-century city. These earlier bricks are not suitable for recycling. The first textual reference to brick recycling is from the early thirteenth-century writer Ibn al-Mujawir (d. 1291).8 It is unlikely that the concept of an exterior decorative building façade occurred in Zabid before that time. Certainly there is ample evidence in Old South Arabia for decorated interior temple walls. But “articulated/ architectonic” exterior building façades in Islamic architecture are only attested for the first time in Cairo’s early twelfth-century Fatimid al-Aqmar mosque.9

t he canadian a rch a e o l o g i c a l pro g r a m in the cit y of zabid As outlined above, Zabid is predominantly a city made of baked brick. The city has been systematically mined over the centuries for materials to recycle from derelict or buried structures. The phenomenon was immensely disappointing at first to the Canadian mission because the original motivation for starting the Zabid project was the expectation of encountering features and remains that would give insight into

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medieval Islamic city life. Brick mining has largely destroyed that record. Nevertheless, one may take academic advantage of the phenomenon and reflect upon how this brick recycling represents an interesting urban dynamic. Naturally, in areas where the settlement is still inhabited, reaching the past is a challenge. Besides excavations in the heart of the city – inside the al-Ashaʿir mosque, one of the oldest mosques of Islam (founded during the lifetime of the Prophet) – insight into the character of the city’s core has been limited to observing deposits recovered from deep shafts dug for the construction of new toilets attached to private houses. Our primary excavation record has come from the southeastern sector of the city, particularly in the area of the citadel, as well as immediately outside it where until recently there was no modern overburden. Exposures reaching preninth-century terrain, beneath what is potentially the earliest bottom layer of the city, have been made in several locations, but in no instance do they exceed a few square metres in area. A number of extended exposures have been made on the periphery of the city in contexts that may be properly described as “suburban.” When strata do survive moderately intact deep down (without brick robbing), their depth makes them difficult to excavate extensively. With such small exposures it is critical to have good control over the pottery – by far the most prevalent artifact recovered from both surface reconnaissance and trench excavation. A minute percentage of the recovered pottery is of foreign origin – predominantly from Egypt, Iraq, Iran, China, and Southeast Asia, ranging from the ninth century to the present. The overwhelming majority of the pots were made locally. In the early stage of the project, most of the decorative designs were unknown to scholarship. Through association with pottery of better-known foreign origin, an effective working typology for the locally produced wares was gradually devised. Sequences of pottery found consistently in trench-work also added to the refinement of this project ceramic typology. Initially, instrument neutron activation analysis (inaa) contributed vital clues to the distinction between locally produced and imported pottery.10 However, the analytical technique that proved to be the most effective in identifying local production – and distinguishing therefore imported fabrics – involved ceramic petrography (thin-section analysis).11 This technique uses polarizing light to characterize mineral particles present in the clays. These provide definitive fingerprints of the clay types. When clay sources of that variety are sourced locally, local production can be affirmed. Through this, and the excavation of kiln products and kiln furniture, it was possible to build up a picture of pottery production in the Zabid region.12 An overview of the Zabid pottery typology was published in Ciuk and Keall.13 It should be acknowledged here that slight revisions need to be made to the dates assigned to some of the pottery types in that monograph, as a result of excavations in wider areas at depth than before, along with the discoveries of other scholars elsewhere in Yemen.14 But the scheme remains basically solid and can still be used for general chronological control of the Zabid pottery corpus. 172

Top 6.5 Examples of locally made glazed and unglazed pottery wares recovered from Zabid. Royal Ontario Museum. Bottom 6.6 Examples of imported pottery recovered from Zabid. Royal Ontario Museum.

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chroniclers of zabid’s past

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The single most important writer for the early history of Zabid is ʿUmara al-Yamani (d. 1174).15 The city first comes to our attention as a formal settlement created in 820 by Ibn Ziyad, an Abbasid military emissary dispatched to Yemen by Abbasid caliph al-Maʾmun (r. 813–33) to settle tribal problems along the Red Sea coast where the alAshaʿir tribe formed the dominant group of residents. After settling the disturbances, Ibn Ziyad soon usurped the right to rule in his own name. Ziyadid rule (820–1018) brought Zabid to the fore in the context of Yemeni history. The city began to experience particularly vibrant times around the year 1000 when reportedly the vizier Husayn b. Salama made structural improvements to the city and built facilities for the hajj pilgrimage traffic in the region. The Najahid-Sulayhid interlude that followed the Ziyadid demise is little known, except for ʿUmara’s commentary.16 The Najahids were originally Abyssinian court slaves who had seized control of the state in the dying years of the Ziyadid era. There is a tendency on the part of both Yemeni and western commentators to dismiss their contribution to Zabid’s history with the remark that they were “the black slavedynasty.” This is disparaging and even misleading. It is incontrovertible, though, that two rival principalities vied for control of the Tihama at this time: the Najahids with their ethnic roots in Ethiopia and the Ismaʿili Sulayhids with a power base in the Yemeni highlands. The Sulayhids had strong ties with the Fatimids of Egypt. Taking advantage of weak authority in the region during the mid-twelfth century, the revolutionary ʿAli b. Mahdi successfully rallied support for his cause, coercing his followers to ravage the countryside and break into the besieged city of Zabid in 1159. Chaotic conditions prevailing in the region induced Zabid’s citizens to appeal for outside help, a request that was met by the Ayyubid Turanshah who invaded Yemen in 1173 under the pretext of expelling the Mahdists.17 Ayyubid administrative and economic reforms helped create the infrastructure that became the main basis for Zabid’s subsequent economic prosperity. Insights into Yemen for this period come from Ibn al-Mujawir, a Damascus native who visited Zabid three times, writing from a businessman’s point of view. His text carries important contemporary notices on Yemen’s markets. He drew schematic maps of various cities, including one of Zabid.18 Starting with a bloodless coup, the Rasulids (1228–1454) replaced the Ayyubids and built upon their initiatives. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were Zabid’s most distinguished period both from an economic and cultural point of view. Extensive references to the lives of the sultans during what may be called Zabid’s greatest age are recorded by al-Khazraji, a court historian, who composed al-ʿUqпd al-luʾluʾiyya (The Pearl-Strings).19 He was a native son of Zabid who died in 1412, after living under four Rasulid sultans. His official position means that we must be cautious about trusting implicitly everything that he states (see also comments in chapter 5). For while it is true that the Rasulid state did begin to fragment in the mid-fourteenth century, the archaeological record suggests that this was more a

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question of state mismanagement than a matter of tribal anarchy, as al-Khazraji’s inferences are more inclined to imply. The fifteenth century saw considerable investment activity following the time when the Tahirids seized the reins of power (1461–1537). This activity is well illustrated by Zabid’s most famous historian, Ibn al-Daybaʿ, who held the post of teacher of ḥadīth in the city’s congregational mosque during the rule of the last Tahirid sultan, al-Malik al-Zafir Amir II (r. 1489–1517). Sultan Amir was a significant patron of the arts. Ibn al-Daybaʿs main text covers the history of Zabid from its ninth-century foundation down to the fifteenth century.20 The second section of this work adds supplemental information for the sixteenth-century phase of Tahirid rule, but Ibn al-Daybaʿ left no record of the last twenty years of his life when Zabid was subjected to foreign occupation by Mamluks and Ottomans. Hostile occupation of Yemen by the Egyptian Mamluks in 1516, aimed at keeping the Portuguese out of the Red Sea, brought drastic change. Firearms were introduced for the first time. However, with the immediate demise of the Mamluks on their home turf at the hands of the Ottomans in 1517, Yemen was left with an army of occupation but without leadership. During the interim between the fall of the Mamluk state and 1539 when the Ottomans came to claim their titular inheritance a variety of the original Mamluk expeditionary officers vied for control of the occupied territory (1517–39). Some of these figures were actually originally conscripted in the Levant as mercenaries by the Ottomans to assist the Mamluk campaign. They can be grouped for convenience under the general name of “Lawandi.” The main text for the Lawandi era and the subsequent early Ottoman period is al-Nahrawali, who died in 1592.21 Though a small and insignificant group of military officers, judged from a world perspective, the Lawandis’ role in Zabid is highly significant, particularly because two of them – Kamal al-Rumi (r. 1521–23) and Iskandar b. Suli (r. 1530–36) – are associated by name with still-standing architectural monuments. One should not discount, however, the fact that Iskandar adopted for his madrasa a building originally constructed in an earlier era.22 It is conceivable that the same holds for the madrasa attributed to Kamal al-Rumi. Al-Nahrawali gives important eyewitness accounts of events reflecting the tenuous control of the country that ultimately forced Ottoman Sinan Pasha to mount a campaign, in 1568–70, to re-establish military authority in Yemen. The archaeological record suggests that during their superficial occupation of the country the soldiers were likely forced to be rapacious in their behaviour, plundering the countryside for provisions, due to the lack of regular pay.23 In spite of Sinan’s initiatives, Ottoman control of Yemen was never firm. It seems likely that the first fort – a small one – was built at this time in Zabid, the precursor of the much later and larger citadel. Cannon balls in the excavations reflect defensive activity around this time. Zabid, which had become an important Ottoman base in Yemen, was one of the last strongholds to hold out before pressure forced them to withdraw from the country in 1635.

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6.7 Sixteenth-century Ottoman fort excavation layer with cannon balls.

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For the eighteenth century we have observations about Zabid made by European explorer Carsten Niebuhr (d. 1815).24 In the early nineteenth century international manoeuvrings over control of the Red Sea and its adjacent lands, along with the rise of the Wahhabi state in what became Saudi Arabia, brought renewed attention to Zabid. But during this era Zabid was no longer the place it once was. Patterns of world trade were changing as Europeans came to dominate the shipping lanes of the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. Economic activities in the Tihamah revolved more and more around trans-shipment of coffee from the Yemeni highlands. The now fashionable coffee came from bushes growing on the high mountain slopes well to the northeast of Zabid. European brokers assembled to buy this luxury product in Bayt al-Faqih; Zabid was essentially bypassed in this equation, as the bales were transported for shipment to the port of Mocha (Mukha), far to the south.25 Domination of the Indian Ocean by European naval powers brought mass-produced goods to Yemen, effectively destroying the integrity of the local ceramic and textile industries, except for the most basic of utilitarian household products. Four themes from the program have been selected here to reflect this variety of historical experience and to furnish insights into Zabid’s character of the past. The information and ideas are intended to be comprehensible to a lay audience; at the same time specialists may benefit from the fact that some of the interpretations have only recently begun to gel, including results emerging from excavations in the winter of 2010–11.

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get t ing to the bot tom of zabid: one thousand years of ur ban history Development agency reporters and tour guides alike impart the sense that the extant vestiges of Zabid echo its famous past. The idea that until recently Zabid was a medieval city almost frozen in time is romantic and false. The irrefutable conclusion that can be drawn from archaeological observations, with nuances extracted from scrutiny of written texts, is that Zabid was never static in the past. On the contrary, there has often been rebuilding and redevelopment, along with occasional massive land-use change, at least in the part of the city where extended excavations have been possible.26

Zabid’s Early Years The important reality to address is that in all the trenches dug on Zabid’s southeast side, there are no substantial structures from before around the beginning of the eleventh century. The pottery unearthed in these areas indicates a presence of people in the ninth to tenth centuries but no evidence of a built urban environment. One may envisage individual families living in isolated households, in somewhat ephemeral homes, outside of the city, but not part of it. The absence of substantial tangible remains in this southeastern area means that, in the ninth century, the area of today’s Zabid Citadel lay outside of the Ziyadid city. The earliest record of built brick architecture exposed inside the deep trench of the citadel excavations dates to c. 1000. In keeping with this sense, one may usefully refer to al-Khazraji’s report that the slave wife of a Najahid sultan built a villa outside the city in order to keep her infant safe from the swords of the soldiers.27 Most likely the villagers outside ninth-century Zabid were families associated with the moderately recent settlement of the al-Ashaʿir tribe in the area who had immigrated from the Hadramawt during the general exodus of tribes from southern Arabia in the sixth century. The area, however, was in all likelihood not heavily settled in the ninth century because considerable numbers of Yemenis had heeded the call (and the attractive opportunity) to join the cause of Islam during the early years of its expansive conquests.28 To consider the original layout of Zabid, we may start with the notion of a circular layout by referring to the geographer al-Muqaddasi’s (d. 991) well-known comment that Zabid was popularly called “the Baghdad of Yemen.”29 We may limit ourselves to the idea that this meant simply that Zabid was a place of beauty and a centre of excellence, enjoying the promotion of scholarship and science. But can we also take this as a reference to the famous Madinat al-Salam of Baghdad? From this association there would be a sense that Zabid was circular like the Round City of Baghdad.30 Certainly, this sense is reinforced by the Wadi Zabid map, with the city positioned in relationship to its canals, as drawn by the Rasulid-era author of a manuscript describing taxation districts in the Yemen of his time.31 There is also the famous map

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6.8 Ibn al-Mujawir’s map of Zabid, after Chelhod, 1978.

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of the thirteenth century traveller, Ibn al-Mujawir. The text adds explicit facts and figures about the city’s dimensions.32 We can continue to reinforce the notion of a circular city even by consulting the modern city’s layout. Zabid’s ghostly imprint from the past is entirely different from, for example, that of Damascus where the rectangular grid of the old Roman city still permeates its thoroughfares. An impression of circularity can be drawn from looking at the street map of Zabid (figs 6.1 and 6.9) where lines of streets radiate as arteries from the centre of the city. Given that we may surmise that the al-Ashaʿir mosque was at the centre of the city of Zabid, and if we exclude those areas where we have no evidence of a built environment for the early years of Islam, we can impose a circular shape on the city map that is much smaller in diameter than that of the city today. Significantly, the Grand Mosque lies outside of this hypothetically small early city (compare figs 6.9 and 6.10). This meshes very nicely with an observation made by the Canadian mission in 1988 that archaeological deposits in the area surrounding the Grand Mosque

6.9 The hypothesized dimensions and circular shape of Ziyadid Zabid.

were moderately shallow, compared to those closer to the centre of the city (meaning much less occupational deposition). This led to the obvious conclusion, even years ago, that the Grand Mosque had been built in open space outside the then existing city. We must acknowledge that Ibn al-Mujawir’s map (fig. 6.8) gives three different dimensions for the circular walls of the city of Zabid under three different state authorities: the largest, that of the Najahids (called Habashah); next, that of the Mahdists; and the smallest, that of the Ayyubids (called Ghuzz). We must then consider the actual measurements cited by Ibn al-Mujawir in his text. Calculating his measurement units, of the so-called dhira¯ʿ (twenty-four fingers = c. 45 cm),33 we arrive at a measurement for the diameter of the city and its 109 towers as a little over 1.5 km. This is pretty close to that of the surmised greatest extension of Zabid in the mid-sixteenth century, as extrapolated from the 1970s aerial photograph (figs 6.1 and 6.10) when hypothetically the Mustafa Pasha mosque lay within the city.

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6.10 Zabid’s largest dimension, mid-sixteenth century.

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Ibn al-Mujawir tells us that Tughtaqin Sayf al-Islam, the Ayyubid amir, intended to build a second wall to house the army in the intervening space but never got around to building it.34 It is most likely that the small wall that Ibn al-Mujawir depicts on his map, associated with the name of the al-Ghuzz (i.e. that of the Ayyubids), represents that inner Ayyubid wall, possibly with its footings based on the remains of the original Ziyadid wall. It is inconceivable that this smallest of the three walls was 1.5 km in diameter. For that would make the Najahid wall depicted on the map implausibly vast in circumference. There are no archaeological remains discernible on the surface around Zabid that attest to an urban settlement greater than 1.5 km in diameter (apart from obvious suburban entities). The present writer argues that the dimensions of the city wall that Ibn al-Mujawir actually surveyed reflect in fact the remains of the pre-Ayyubid Najahid wall. Could he really judge the age of the extant wall of Zabid that was measured? Did he draw

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the map when he was still actually in Zabid, with a precise memory of the features recorded? Did he even draw the map himself? He was a little short in the skills of analytical science, given some of the fanciful stories he recounts. For instance, in describing one of the wadis in the Tihama, he tells how there was a lady in the district so fat that, if she sat in the wadi, she could block the flow of the spate in order to have it flow in the desired direction.35

Zabid from Ottoman Times Onwards One highly significant phenomenon relating to Zabid’s former shape and size is that in the area southeast of the Zabid Citadel, while there are no pre-1000 remains unearthed in excavations, there are also no urban vestiges from after around the middle of the sixteenth century. Fairly soon after the grandiose creation of the Mustafa Pasha (al-Bayshihah) mosque, the city started to contract. At this time the Ottoman military forces in Yemen had their backs against the wall in the face of attacks by the Zaydi Imam.36 The Ottomans apparently demolished well-built houses in the southeastern quarter,37 probably to source bricks needed for construction of a fort. Demolishing the houses would have also served to provide a clear range for cannons fired from the fort when the garrison was under such duress at that time. The reduced city now likely took on the pear-shaped look that we are familiar with on the aerial photograph (fig. 6.1). The archaeological evidence assembled by the Canadian Mission indicates that the area demolished by the Ottomans was never rebuilt. Furthermore, the city wall was actually pulled down by the Imam, following his expulsion of the Ottomans in 1635.38 Indeed, Niebuhr reported in 1792 that the walls of Zabid had been demolished to their foundations by people using the materials for recycling.39 Zabid was re-walled once again in 1807, as part of Sharif Hammud’s manoeuvrings in the Tihamah.40 The flimsy nature of the current citadel wall reflects what must have been a very hurried building of Zabid’s defences in a rather impoverished reaction to these insecure times. The incorporation of the exterior walls of the structure of the Citadel Mosque (al-Iskandariyya) as part of the defensive system and the hacking through the dedicatory inscription of Iskandar on the minaret to provide a gun embrasure also reinforce this sense of expediency. The backs of houses were incorporated in the construction of the wall.41 It seems likely that the city wall would have been built along the alignment of the remains of the pear-shaped wall of the Ottomans. This is the wall that survived until the 1960s. When the Ottoman Turks returned after a two-century absence to occupy the north of Yemen for the second time in 1869, they reinstituted the citadel area as a garrison base. A larger tower was added to the citadel to accommodate the emplacements needed for heavy cannon artillery firing fused shells. Following expulsion of the Turks at the end of World War I, the citadel continued to be occupied by the Imam’s army until the end of the Revolution in 1962 when Imam al-Husayn was overthrown. A dispatch to the White House by the US ambassador in Aden describes

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Above 6.11 Gun embrasure hacked through Iskandar’s dedicatory inscription on his minaret. Right 6.12 The early nineteenth-century Zabid Citadel, with added larger ordnance towers.

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his arrival outside of Zabid in 1945, on his way to meet Imam Yahya in Sanaʿa.42 Trumpeters on the wall of the Bab al-Qurtub (south gate) heralded the approach of the diplomatic convoy. This wall was demolished after the Republican Revolution of 1962, when the Imam’s garrison was disbanded and the bricks of the city wall were put up for sale by the municipal authorities. The aerial photograph of the 1970s reveals the alignment of that wall beyond the dwellings, marked very clearly by a berm that formed the outer edge of a drainage moat outside the wall (fig. 6.1).

zabid’s histor ical deve lopment as seen t h ro u g h a rch a e o l o g i c a l exc avat i o n : the al-ashaʿir mosque probes The first probe was conducted in the arcade next to the minaret. Stylistically the minaret matches that of the congregational mosque and on that basis should be Ayyubid in date, though textual references to its construction are absent. It has always been judged by historians of architecture to be short in height, by comparison with that of the congregational mosque.43 In fact, the base of the minaret is more than five metres below the level of the courtyard and, as a result, at least nine metres below today’s street level. The Canadian mission’s rule of thumb is that ground surfaces rise on an average of roughly 1 cm per year, in other words 1 m per century. In the Zabid Citadel, the earliest layers of the city lie eleven metres below today’s surface, appropriately reflecting just over a thousand years of history. It is a sobering thought that both western and Yemeni commentators have invariably looked upon the al-Ashaʿir mosque as a reflection of the work of sponsors like Ibn Salamah, the charismatic wazīr of late Ziyadid times, with the sense that the mosque as it exists today is the original building, and should be revered as such. The reality is that texts speak of building changes made over time, such as an enlargement in 1429, with a section for females, in response to the growing number of students.44 Furthermore, the stratigraphic evidence indicates that the arcade columns just inside the south entrance, where the Canadian probe was made, are probably no more than two centuries old. These columns are built over earlier remains. What is particularly interesting is that in the rebuildings, the new walls were always in the same alignment as those below. It must be admitted that the same structural features, such as round columns, were not always repeated. This certainly means that we cannot automatically take the ground plan of the extant mosque as reflecting the form of the mosque in the past. It is entirely plausible that the brick feature abutting the minaret face relates to 1486 when the mosque’s walls were raised by seven cubits because the building was being buried within the rising layers of the city, and judged to be damp as a result.45 The trench was dug to down below the base of the minaret, but at that point it was too tiny to let us reach the absolute beginnings of Zabid. In any event, the first mosque was assuredly much smaller than the existing one, and we would not have found a

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6.13 Al-Ashaʿir mosque south arcade and minaret. Right 6.14 Sounding within the al-Ashaʿir south arcade alongside the minaret.

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6.15 Excavation trench breaking through the floor of the fifteenth-century al-Ashaʿir mosque ablution pool.

trace of it even if we could have dug deeper in that confined area. At the point where we did stop, a wall had been chopped for construction of the minaret. The soft orange nature of the bricks suggests a date earlier than c. 1000. Their alignment was not according to the qibla and clearly reflects something other than a mosque structure. In a second probe within the complex of al-Ashaʿir mosque, to the east, outside of the covered building, we were able to reach virgin soil. This was a probe conducted through the floor of a derelict birka, the old ablution pool. Some years ago, the floor of the birka had cracked, and attempts to repair the crack with Portland cement had proven unsuccessful. Eventually, the birka was backfilled, a terrazzo tile floor installed on top, and piped water with faucets for individual use provided. Bad drainage and leaking taps caused damage to the surrounding walls; hence the demand for excavation probes to judge the soundness of the walls below ground. We emptied part of the back-filled pool and then broke through its floor. Pottery immediately below the floor of the pool was entirely pre-sixteenth century in date. One may reasonably hypothesize that the pool’s construction was the product of sponsorship by the Rasulid queen Jihat Farhan, who is credited with such a work in 1412.46 In addition, mosque reconstruction work cited above for 1486 included provision of an exterior gate for the pool, designed to keep people from tracking mud into the mosque on rainy days.47

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Interestingly, all of the layers beneath the birka down to the natural gravels consisted of a series of kitchens of the kind known today in Yemen as makhbaza, serving oven-roast meat, broth, and oven-baked flat bread. They give us a sense of an active market souk just outside the mosque. It is not possible from this evidence to determine whether this was strictly a commercial enterprise within the souk (but adjacent to the mosque) or one designed as part of a waqf institution to support financially the running of the mosque or even as an eatery for the mosque’s students. Nevertheless, it does underline the fact that in Zabid, as in Islam elsewhere, commerce was not incompatible with religion.

6.16 Sequence of pre-fifteenth-century kitchens adjacent to the al-Ashaʿir mosque.

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6.17 Painted designs in the zone of transition of al-Iskandariyya (Citadel Mosque).

exp osing lost t r aces of the running of the sixte enth-century al-iskandar iy ya madr asa For the past two centuries or so, heralding onset of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, mosques in Zabid have been ritually cleansed by the application of whitewash to wall surfaces. The ceiling of the Citadel Mosque was out of reach and did not receive these repeated coatings of whitewash. As a consequence, at the beginning of the Canadian mission’s program in the citadel in 1987, the original ceiling paintings were visible, though badly stained through exposure to the elements. The mosque itself is judged by its domed style (along with the ceiling paintings) to be a monument built in the Rasulid era by an unknown patron in the thirteenth or fourteenth century.48 A start was made on stabilizing these painted surfaces in 1997. Lower down, repeated coats of whitewash had obscured the decorations, though this action had preserved them in the process. Unexpectedly, a dedicatory waqf inscription, revealed beneath the many layers of whitewash next to the miḥra¯b prayer niche, produced a forgotten text and the key to understanding the building’s history. Inscribed panels on either side of the miḥra¯b herald sponsorship of a madrasa in 940/1533, by the Lawandi military commander Iskandar (Mawz). The original decorative plasterwork in the colonnaded courtyard was clearly defaced in order to insert a new decorative

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6.18 Beginning lines of the exposed waqf text announcing Iskandar Mawz’s madrasa.

scheme with a flamboyant announcement of the new sponsorship. We may assert that the mosque underwent a face-lift in the early sixteenth century when Iskandar Mawz made a major overhaul of the likely neglected mosque and proclaimed his madrasa (on the chronology of construction and renovation, see also chapter 5). The dedicatory waqf text declares financial support for the school derived from harvest grain produced in the Wadi Zabid farm district, with precise measurements of the amount of the harvest from each of the irrigated tracts designated in the waqf for the Wadi Zabid farmland area.49 This opened a new window for our understanding of the role of agriculture, as a vital factor in the economic, social, and cultural life of the city.

coffee and smokes: so cial habits revealed in the lives of the ot toman gar r ison in zabid

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What is striking is that amongst the artifacts recovered from the sixteenth- to early seventeenth-century Ottoman fort in Zabid is an assortment of ceramic coffee cups and smokers’ pipes made from a local white-firing clay. Potters made these devices using for the first time yellow and green glazes. The utensils are finely made, reflecting a desire on the part of the garrison to indulge in their relaxations with items of elegance.

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6.19 A miscellany of smokers’ pipes, sixteenth–nineteenth centuries. The small green and yellow ones are from the sixteenth century. Royal Ontario Museum.

The Ottomans left Yemen in 1635, and, therefore, the indulgent lifestyle of the garrison is likely to have occurred in the few decades before that time, not in the last chaotic months before the pullout. From our knowledge of the beleaguered conditions of the occupying forces one may deduce from the archaeological record that the fort was built around the troubled times of 1568. One is tempted to suggest that the coffee drinking and pipe smoking devices were used by the soldiers of the garrison in the years immediately following that.

Coffee Drinking The presence of the coffee cups is interesting, though not controversial. The practice of coffee drinking had actually begun in Yemen towards the end of the fifteenth century, before the Ottoman occupation.50 At first, coffee drinking was exclusively limited to the mystical Sufi orders who consumed the beverage by sharing it communally from a bowl served with a sipping ladle.51 It did not take long before the urban residents of places like Aden and Zabid acquired the new habit as well. In this society an individual drinking vessel was preferred, and the coffee cup was born.52 With the existence of Yemeni merchant communities abroad, the practice of coffee drinking spread.53

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Pipe Smoking The first plants of Nicotiana tabacum were brought back from the New World to Portugal in the 1550s as botanical specimens.54 It has generally been held that the Ottomans acquired the habit of smoking tobacco from Europeans around the end of the sixteenth century.55 Subsequently, the Middle East proved to have ideal soil and conditions for the cultivation of tobacco, and smoking became a universal past time ever after. The record from the excavations in Zabid suggests that the Ottoman forces of occupation in Yemen already knew about the pleasures of smoking several decades before we would traditionally have assumed (fig. 6.19), if we follow the written record faithfully. Supporting this dating is an obscure Yemeni Arabic text, written around 1590,56 that compares the different pleasures experienced in smoking a dry pipe as compared to a water pipe. Apart from the moderately novel idea that the Turks knew about smoking some time before they are generally credited with that knowledge, the Yemeni text is significant for its reference to dry pipes and water pipes. Tobacco came from the New World and was universally smoked either in a dry-stem pipe or as a rolled leaf in the form of a cigar. Normally when one adopts a habit, one also adopts the paraphernalia that go along with it. With regards to tobacco, who first thought of the idea of drawing tobacco smoke through water, to cool it, in a hubble-bubble? We can speculate that water pipe smoking existed in the Middle East before the arrival of tobacco. In the Middle East, coffee houses are synonymous with the provision of water pipes. Two regional words are significantly applied to the water pipe (hookah) – narghile and madaʿah are both derived etymologically from the word “coconut.” It is argued that a coconut was the original water container for a hubble-bubble. Following this line of argument, the habit of water-pipe smoking may have originated before tobacco use where coconuts were native (South Asia) and the substance smoked was cannabis, which is prevalent throughout Asia.57 The first water pipes were diminutive and held in the hand. As imported tobacco became more readily available, and subsequently cultivated locally, the substance became cheaper. Larger pipes were invented, along the lines of the classic water pipe seen in the Middle East today. One of the first vessels to be used for this purpose was the kendi. This was originally a spouted drinking vessel used exclusively in cultic rituals in Buddhist Asia, though the spout made it eminently suitable for adaptation as a hubblebubble water-reservoir. It was used for this purpose first in seventeenth-century Iran. In Yemen, too, larger pipes were adopted once tobacco was a readily available as a homegrown commodity. These pipes are quite different from the sixteenthcentury ones.

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summary Five main points about the historical development of the city can be drawn from the material reviewed in this chapter. First, tribesmen from Yemen heeded the Prophet Muhammad’s call, returning to spread Islam in their country. A small mosque was built in the Prophet’s lifetime where later the city of Zabid would grow. The city was founded in the early ninth century by an Abbasid military officer sent to settle tribal uprisings. Second, resident patrons – both government officials and royal family members – sponsored mosques and schools between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, giving Zabid the reputation for a city of scholarship. Third, European penetration of the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth century and measures by the Ottomans to counter Portuguese threats in the Red Sea deprived the Yemenis of their traditional maritime trade networks, although a Yemeni insurgency forced the Ottomans to leave after only a century of occupation. Fourth, due to the Ottoman presence, the spread of the Yemeni custom of coffee drinking brought prosperity to Yemen, but this was short-lived as Europeans successfully transplanted coffee bushes to their colonial territories. Fifth, in the nineteenth century Zabid became drawn into the theatre of manoeuvrings between the Ottomans, the British and the Wahhabis for control of the Red Sea. Today Zabid is a modest provincial administrative centre with a unesco cultural heritage designation.

note s 1 For a sense of the range of the material culture of the Holocene recorded by the mission, see Keall, “Placing al-Midamman in Time,” 98–9. For Islamic Zabid, see idem, “Archäologie in der Tihamah,” 27–32. 2 Ibn al-Daybaʿ, al-Faḍl al-mazīd, 218. 3 Giunta, Rasпlid Architectural Patronage, 346–52. 4 Keall, “Zabid and its Hinterland”; idem, “Dynamics of Zabid.” 5 Keall, “A few Facts”; idem, “Drastic Changes.” 6 Bonnenfant, Zabîd. 7 For a good sense of the characteristic Zabidi brick architecture, see Bonnenfant, Zabid au Yémen. 8 Smith, ed. and trans., Tarīkh al-Mustabsir, 103, 105. 9 Hoag, Islamic Architecture, pl. 182. 10 Hallett et al., “Chemical Analysis.” 11 Mason and Keall, “Provenance.” 12 Keall, “Smokers’ Pipes.” 13 Ciuk and Keall, Zabid Project Pottery. 14 The facts from Sharma have been particularly important in helping us refine our typology of the Zabid pottery corpus because that assemblage comes from a very limited range of time, namely 980–1140. See Rouguelle, “The Sharma Horizon.” In the winter of 2010–11, I had the good fortune to be invited to examine the pottery excavated from the Rasulid

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15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

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34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

mosque and adjacent guesthouse complex at Hays, which according to an inscription on the wall of the mosque was completed in the year 1280. Many of the types of pottery that I recorded were well known to me but not necessarily previously well dated. For example, regarding Ciuk and Keall, Zabid Project Pottery Manual, pl. 43 / l–m, we can now safely attribute this type of common globular and incised bowl to the late thirteenth century and later (rather than fourteenth to fifteenth), and along with it, of course, other types familiar to me that were associated with them. Kay, ed. and trans., Yaman. Ibid. Smith, The Ayyпbids and early Rasпlids. Smith, Tarīkh al-Mustabsir, 104; Chelhod, “Introduction,” 58. Redhouse and ʿAsal, ed. and trans., The Pearl-Strings. Ibn al-Daybaʿ, Akhba¯r madīnat Zabīd. Al-Nahrawali, al-Barq al-Yama¯nī. Keall, “Syrian Origins,” 221. For a sense of the strained circumstances of the first Ottoman occupation of Yemen in the 1580s and the impoverished conditions of the troops, see Blackburn, “Collapse of Ottoman Authority.” Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien, 1: 328. For Mocha’s rise to pre-eminence as a port, see Brouwer, Al-Mukha¯, 45–55. Cf. Keally, “Drastic Changes.” Al-Khazraji, al-‘Asjad al-masbпq, 116–17. Al-Madʿaj, The Yemen in early Islam, 103. Al-Muqaddasi, Aḥsan al-Taqa¯sīm, 82. Cf. Lassner, Topography of Baghdad, 52–3; map 122. Jazim ed., Irtifa¯ al-dawla al-Mu’ayyadiyya, maps 18, 387. Smith, Tarīkh al-Mustabsir, 101–4. Ibid., 40n18. The question of weights and measures in the medieval Islamic world is immensely complicated (cf. Mortel, “Weights and Measures”). Standards of measurement vary considerably from country to country, even place to place. They can even vary according to the time of year. This measurement of 45 cm for a cubit is no more than an informed guess. There may well be a sizeable margin of error. Smith, Tarīkh al-Mustabsir, 101. Ibid., 124. Blackburn, “Collapse of Ottoman Authority.” Keall, “Facts About Zabid,” 67. Al-Bahkali, Nafḥ al-ʿпd, 228–9. Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien, I: 328. Al-Bakhali, Nafḥ al-ʿпd, 228-9. Ibid. Clark, “Letter to the State Department.” For example, see Porter, “History and Monuments,” 288. Ibn al-Daybaʿ, Akhba¯r madīnat Zabīd, 112.

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Ibid. Ibid., 108. Ibid., 112. Keall, “Syrian Origins,” 221. Keall and Hehmeyer, “Sponsorship of a Madrasa,” 35. Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses, 22–3. Ibid., 74. Keall, “Evolution,” 35–50. Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses, 28. Keall, “One Man’s Mede,” 277. Laufer, “Introduction of Tobacco,” 61. Cited in Serjeant, “The Market,” 175. The fame of cannabis as a mind-altering substance in Asia goes all the way back to fifthcentury bc Herodotus who speaks of Scythians getting high on burning hemp seeds on a fire and inhaling the smoke under a blanket.

biblio g r aphy Bahkali, ʿAbd al-Rahman al-. Nafḥ al-ʿпd fī sirfat dawlat al-sharīf Ḥamпd. Edited by M. al-ʿAqili. Riyadh: Jazan Press, 1982. Blackburn, Richard. “The Collapse of Ottoman Authority in Yemen, 968/1560–976/1568.” Die Welt des Islam 19 (1979): 119–76. Bonnenfant, Paul. Zabid au Yémen. Archéologie du vivant. Aix-en-Provence: Édisud, 2004. – Zabîd, Patrimoine mondial. (Saba 5–6). Bruxelles: Amyris, 1999. Brouwer, Cees. Al-Mukha¯. Profile of a Yemeni Seaport as Sketched by Servants of the Dutch East India Company (voc) 1614–1640. Amsterdam: D’Fluyte Rarob, 1997. Chelhod, Joseph. “Introduction à l’histoire sociale et urbaine de Zabid.” Arabica 25 (1978): 48–88. Ciuk, Christopher, and Edward Keall. Zabid Project Pottery Manual 1995. Pre-Islamic and Islamic Ceramics from the Zabid area, North Yemen. British Archaeological Reports International Series 665. Oxford: Tempus Reparatum, 1996. Clark, Harlan B. “Letter to the State Department.” Washington, dc: State Department Archives, 1945. Giunta, Roberta. The Rasпlid Architectural Patronage in Yemen. A Catalogue. Naples: Istitutu Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 1997. Hallett, Jessica, Edward Keall, Vanda Vitali, and Ronald Hancock. “Chemical Analysis of Yemeni Archaeological Ceramics and the Egyptian Enigma.” Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry 110, no. 1 (1987): 293–302. Hattox, Ralph. Coffee and Coffeehouses. The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1985. Hehmeyer, Ingrid, and Edward J. Keall. “Water and Land Management in the Zabid Hinterland.” al-‘Usur al-Wusta (Bulletin of Middle East Mediaevalists) 5 (1993): 25–7. Hoag, John. Islamic Architecture. New York: Abrams, 1977. Ibn al-Daybaʿ, ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn ʿAli. al-Faḍl al-mazīd ‘ala¯ bughyat al-mustafīd fī akhba¯r

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madīnat Zabīd. Edited by Joseph Chelhod. San‘a’: Markaz al-Dira¯sa¯t wa-al-Buḥūth alYamanī, 1999. Ibn al-Mujawir, see Smith, ed. and trans. Tarīkh al-Mustabsir. Jazim, Muhammad ʿA., ed. Irtifa¯ al-dawla al-Mu’ayyadiyya: jiba¯yat Bila¯d al-Yaman fī ‘ahd al-sulṭa¯n al-Malik al-Mu’ayyad Da¯‘пd b.Yпsuf al-Rasпl (m. 721/1321) (Le Livre des Révenues du sultan rasulide al-Malik al-Muayyad Dawud b. Yusuf). (La bibliothèque Yémenite 2). Sanaʿa: Centre Français d’Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales de Sanaa, 2008. Kay, Henry, ed. and trans. Yaman, Its Early Mediaeval History, by Najm ad-Din ‘Oma¯rah al-Ḥakami; Also the Abridged History of Its Dynasties by Ibn Khaldпn and an Account of the Karmathians of Yaman by Abu ‘Abd Allah Baha ad-Din al-Janadi. London: Arnold, 1892. Reprinted Farnborough, England: Gregg International, 1968. Keall, Edward. “Archäologie in der Tihamah. Die Forschungen der Kanadischen Archäologischen Mission des Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, in Zabid und Umgebung.” JemenReport 30, no. 1 (1999): 27–32. – “The Changing Positions of Zabid’s Red Sea Port Sites.” Chroniques Yémenites 15 (2008): 111–25. – “Drastic Changes in 16th Century Zabid.” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 21 (1991): 79–96. – “The Dynamics of Zabid and Its Hinterland: The Survey of a Town on the Tihamah Plain of Yemen.” World Archaeology 14, no. 3 (1983): 378–92. – “The Evolution of the First Coffee Cups in Yemen.” In Le commerce du café avant l’ère des plantations colonials. Espaces, réseaux, sociétés (xv –xix siècle), edited by Michel Tuscherer, 35–50. (Cahiers des annales islamologiques 20). Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale 2001. – “A Few Facts about Zabid.” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 19 (1989): 61–9. – “One Man’s Mede is Another Man’s Persian; One Man’s Coconut is Another Man’s Grenade.” Muqarnas 10 (1993): 275–85. – “Placing al-Midamman in Time. The Work of the Canadian Archaeological Mission on the Tihama Coast, from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age.” Archäologische Berichte aus dem Yemen 10 (2005): 87–100. – “Smokers’ Pipes and the Fine Pottery Tradition of Hays.” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 22 (1992): 29–46. – “The Syrian Origins of Yemen’s National Mosque Style.” Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies 37 (2001): 219–26. – “Zabid and its Hinterland: 1982 Report.” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 13 (1983): 53–69. Keall, Edward, and Ingrid Hehmeyer. “Sponsorship of a Madrasa, Reflecting the Value of Farmland in the Urban Economy of Zabid, Yemen.” al-‘Uṣпr al-Wusṭa¯ (Bulletin of Middle East Mediaevalists) 10 (1998): 33–5, 47. Khazraji, ʿAli ibn al-Hasan al-. al-‘asjad al-masbпq fī man tawalla al-Yaman min al-mulпk. Sanaʿa: Ministry of Culture and Media, 1981. Lassner, Jacob. The Topography of Baghdad in the Early Middle Ages. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1970.

t h e c a na d i a n a rch a e o l o g i c a l m i s s i o n Laufer, Berthold. “Introduction of Tobacco into Europe.” Field Museum Anthropology Leaflet 19 (1924), 1–65. Madʿaj, ʿAbd al-Muhsin Madʿaj Muhammad al-. The Yemen in early Islam, 9–233/ 630–847: A Political History. Durham Middle East Monographs 3. London: Ithaca, 1988. Mason, Robert, and Edward Keall. “Provenance of Local Ceramic Industry and the Characterization of Imports: Petrography of Pottery from Medieval Yemen.” Antiquity 62 (1988): 452–63. Mortel, R.T. “Weights and Measures During the Late Ayyūbid and Mamlūk Periods.” Arabian Studies 8 (1990): 177–87. Muqaddasi, Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-. Aḥsan al-Taqa¯sīm fī Ma‘rifat al-Aqa¯līm, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions. Translated by Basil A. Collins. Reading: Garnet, 1994. Nahrawali, Qutb al-Din Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-. al-Barq al-Yama¯nī fī al-fatḥ al‘Uthma¯nī, edited by Hamd al-Jasir. Riyadh: Da¯r al-Yama¯ma li-al-Baḥth wa-al-Tarjama wa-al-Nashr, 1387/1967. Niebuhr, Carsten. Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und den umliegenden Ländern. Graz: Akademische Druck, 1968. Porter, Venetia. “The History and Monuments of the Tahirid Dynasty of the Yemen 858– 923/1454–1517.” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Durham: School of Oriental Studies, 1992. Redhouse, James, and Muhammad ʿAsal, ed. and trans. The Pearl-Strings; A History of the Resúliyy Dynasty of Yemen, by ‘Aliyyu ’bnu ’l-Ḥasan ’el-Khazrejiyy, 5 vols. E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Series III. Leiden and London: Brill and Luzac, 1906–18. Rouguelle, Axelle. “The Sharma Horizon: Sgraffiato Wares and Other Glazed Ceramics of the Indian Ocean Trade (c. ad 980–1140).” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies 35 (2005): 223–46. Serjeant, Robert B. “The Market, Business Life, Occupations, the Legality and Sale of Stimulants.” In San‘a’. An Arabian Islamic City, edited by Robert B. Serjeant and Ronald Lewcock. London: World of Islam Festival Trust, 1983. Smith, G. Rex, ed. The Ayyпbids and Early Rasпlids in the Yemen (567–694/1173–1295). A Study of Ibn Ḥa¯tim’s Kita¯b al-Simṭ including Glossary, Geographical and Tribal Indices and Maps. E.J.W. Gibb Memorial New Series XXVI.2. London: Luzac, 1978. Smith, G. Rex, ed. and trans. Tarīkh al-Mustabsir. A Traveller in Thirteenth-Century Arabia. Translated from Oscar Löfgren’s Arabic Text and Edited with Revisions and Annotations. (Hakluyt Society Third Series 19). Hampshire: Ashgate, 2008. ‘Umara al-Yamani, see Kay, ed. and trans. Yaman.

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chapter 7

Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Preliminary Observations on the Production and Use of Ceramic Drainage Pipes in the Islamic Middle East Marcus Milwright

In his Kita¯b al-Ifa¯da wa’l-iʿtiba¯r (Book of Testimony and Recollection) the Iraqi physician and scholar ʿAbd al-Latif al-Baghdadi (d. 1231) gives a fascinating account of the people, flora and fauna, and monuments of Egypt. His endlessly curious gaze extended beyond the predictable wonders of the pharaohs and the palaces of the sultan and his emirs to encompass the designs of streets, markets, and domestic dwellings. He writes of the wind catchers that funnel the cool winds from the north into the houses, of the bricks used in construction projects, and of the design of Egyptian bathhouses. He also turned his attention below the ground to look at the methods employed in laying the foundations of buildings. He even has praise for the most mundane aspects of architectural design. He writes, They construct the latrine drains (qanawa¯t al-mara¯ḥīḍ) very solidly, and I found in a ruined palace these drains still existing in good condition. They dug the trenches until water was found, in a manner so that for a very long time there was no need to clean them out.1 Descriptions of latrine drains are hardly a common feature of medieval Arabic literature, but the importance of effective systems of waste removal was not lost upon the inhabitants, including the writers, of Middle Eastern towns and cities. In his Kita¯b al-Bukhala¯ʾ (Book of Misers) the satirist al-Jahiz (d. 868–69) relates many tales about the serving and eating of food. These stories sometimes took a scatological turn. In one episode a secretary goes into hiding in Basra from the forces of the Abbasid caliph Abu Jaʿfar al-Mansur (r. 754–75). The second place he hides is with a landlord who had fallen on hard times in the Banu Tamim area of town. The house had a privy that evacuated onto the street. One day the secretary was sitting on the privy when he heard the clamour of voices and the landlord making denials and excuses to his neighbours. Al-Jahiz continues that the neighbours demand of the landlord,

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What are these soft turds discharging from your privy nowadays? All we ever saw before looked like camel dung due to your diet of dry biscuits. Soft turds tell us there’s fresh fruit and vegetables on the menu these days! You must be living off someone in hiding, otherwise you would have introduced him. As the poet said, “Mischief hides behind a screen but goodness fears not to be seen.”2 Al-Jahiz is not the only author of this time to find humour in the baser aspects of human life; for example, al-Masʿudi (d. c. 956) reports a story told to cheer up caliph al-Radi (r. 934–40) in which a guest is forced to think of every word and euphemism he knows for lavatory in an unsuccessful quest to locate this feature within the house of his host. The caliph appears to have found this bawdy tale highly amusing and rewarded the narrator handsomely.3 More serious issues can be drawn from al-Jahiz’s anecdote: beyond the obvious inconvenience and unpleasantness of poor sanitation within densely occupied cities, the absence of effective sewerage had significant implications for public health. In his treatise devoted to healthcare in Egypt the physician Ibn Ridwan (d. 1061) remarked on the health problems caused by allowing latrines to be evacuated into the Nile.4 Al-Thaʿalibi (d. 1038) finds it worthwhile to note that an unpleasant feature of the city of al-Akhwaz was the presence of “streams fed by open sewers from their privies and drainage channels for their ablutions places.”5 The danger of epidemics was reduced through the maintenance of reliable supplies of potable water to the inhabitants of the cities of the Islamic Middle East. Fresh water might be transported considerable distances by means of aqueducts or underground canals (qana¯t, pl. qana¯wa¯t). Such extensive capital expenditure was usually the domain of the state. Both the provision of fresh water and the evacuation of waste water and human waste required the construction of underground channels and, in the case of buildings comprising two or more storeys, channels running through the walls. Within these channels were placed pipes, most commonly constructed of baked ceramic though they might sometimes be carved from stone (such as basalt). In bathhouses one also encounters pipes made from lead or copper. Such was the demand for ceramic drainpipes that entire districts of towns might be given over to their production. This was an important, if poorly documented industry throughout the Islamic world and it continued in many regions until relatively recently. This article presents some observations on the study of the manufacture and utilization of ceramic drainpipes (encompassing those for fresh water and for waste products) in the Middle East during the Islamic period. It is an aspect of urban planning that has not received the attention it deserves. Although they are seldom discussed in detail in archaeological reports, such pipes formed an integral part of many Islamic aqueducts and were also sometimes employed in the subterranean channels that brought water into cities in the Middle East. In addition, ceramic pipes were used to carry away rainwater, domestic water, and human waste from buildings. There exist a few pioneering studies of drainage and sanitation systems in the towns and cities of the Islamic world (discussed later in the article) but much remains to

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be done. The first part of this chapter assesses some of the significant textual sources on drainpipes in pre-Islamic literature and brings together evidence on these issues in written sources from the tenth to the early twentieth century. The second part is an annotated checklist of archaeological evidence from the Islamic Middle East reporting ceramic drainpipes in both the transportation of fresh water and in the evacuation of waste. (Omitted from consideration are the clay hoops used in qana¯ts in the eastern Islamic regions.)

d r a i n p i pe s a n d t h e i r i n sta l l at i o n : ev idence from w r it ten source s The technology required for the manufacture and installation of water and drainage pipes predates the birth of Islam by many centuries. Archaeological research indicates that the earliest use of interlocking ceramic pipes is to be found on Late Bronze Age (c. 1600–1000 bce) sites in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean.6 Herodotus in his History 3.60 describes the construction on the island of Samos in the sixth century bce of a long channel with pipes that transported water from a local spring. The most extensive corpus of ancient written sources bearing on the issue of municipal water supply produced by Roman writers, particularly from the first century bce to the end of the first century ce.7 Starting with the actual dimensions and laying of ceramic pipes, there are valuable discussions in the writings of both Vitruvius (d. after c. 15 ce) in his On Architecture 8.6.8 (De architectura, also known as the Ten Books of Architecture) and Pliny the Elder (d. 79 ce) in his Natural History 31.57–8. The former is the more detailed, and states, Terracotta tubes with walls no less than two digits thick are to be made in such a way that they are flanged at one end, so that one pipe can slide into and join tightly with another. The joints, furthermore, are to be smeared with unslaked lime worked up with oil. At the bends at either end of the level venter [“belly,” a wider section designed to prevent excessive water pressure in the pipes] a block of red stone is to be placed right at the elbow joint and bored out, so that the last pipe along the descent can be jointed to the stone along with the first of the level venter. In the same way, also at the uphill slope the last pipe of the level venter is to be jointed to a hollow block of red stone, and the first of the rising pipeline jointed in the same manner. Pliny offers a very similar account, adding that that the incline of the system of pipes should not be less than one quarter of an inch per one hundred feet. The passage by Vitruvius quoted above is part of a longer discourse on the transportation of water using pipes.8 Like Pliny, he notes that water can also be conducted via ma198

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sonry channels and lead piping, the latter being preferred when the source produces water at greater pressure. Significantly, Vitruvius outlines the different grades of pipe according to their ability to withstand a stated water pressure (the greater the pressure, the longer the sheet of lead that would be rolled to make the pipe). The Roman general and statesman Frontinus (d. 103 ce) offers further details on the gauges of lead pipes employed in the water system of Rome.9 While ceramic pipes were not meant to carry water under high pressure, Vitruvius’s insistence that the walls of these tubes should be “no less that two digits thick” was likely to ensure that they did not burst when carrying the water emanating from a spring or other water source. Lead pipes were evidently capable of holding water at greater pressure, but it was an expensive material to be used fairly sparingly. Vitruvius also identifies two other significant advantages of ceramic pipes.10 The first being that defects in a system required less specialist knowledge to repair and the second that the water from ceramic pipes was healthier and had a better flavour than that brought by lead pipes. In this context, he makes perceptive remarks about the poor health enjoyed by workers of lead sheet. The provision of fresh water into Rome and other cities of the empire was evidently a major source of pride for many writers. For instance, Frontinus makes a striking boast: “With such numerous and indispensable structures carrying so many waters, compare, if you please, the idle pyramids, or else the indolent but famous works of the Greeks.”11 For Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, anyone viewing the abundant water supply of Rome, “will acknowledge that nothing more marvellous has ever existed in the whole world.”12 Arabic writers too dwelt on the civil engineering projects that brought fresh water into the cities and palatial complexes of the Islamic world, though most offer relatively little practical detail. For example, Khatib al-Baghdadi (d. 1071) relates that underground conduits were constructed to bring water from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to his native city. He bases his account on that of the ninth-century writer al-Yaʿqubi, who adds that these conduits were constructed on baked brick and lime mortar.13 The provision of fresh water also attracted the attention of travellers from other regions; in his description of Damascus, the twelfth-century writer, Benjamin of Tudela remarks upon the pipes (presumably of baked clay) that were employed to carry river water to the streets and markets of the city.14 As we will see in the following section, ceramic drainpipes were often a feature of water transportation systems in the Islamic world, but they seldom merit specific mention in written sources. Arabic geographical encyclopaedias and local histories often include data on the crafts operating within towns or cities. References to ceramic manufacture are rare – both the ubiquity of the craft and the relatively low unit cost of the finished artifacts are probably contributory factors in this respect – and the information contained within in them is rather disappointing. It is probably local topographic studies that will represent the most promising resource for future study of the ceramic crafts; for example, the detailed examination conducted by Nikita Elisséeff of 199

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the descriptions of Damascus written between the twelfth and the sixteenth century revealed the extra-mural area occupied by the workshops of the kпziyyīn, the potters responsible for the manufacture of pipes, among other types of vessel.15 Valuable though such references are, they do not furnish the researcher with much concerning actual production practices or the range of pipes that potters produced for the Damascene market. Two Arabic accounts are known to this author that detail processes involved in the manufacture of drainpipes. The first appears in an anonymous work entitled alFila¯ḥa al-nabaṭiyya ([Book of ] Nabatean Agriculture). The text survives in four manuscripts. The section of the text dealing with hydrology and hydraulic engineering was presented in a French translation by Toufic Fahd. The translator notes that elements of this section of al-Fila¯ḥa al-nabaṭiyya were employed by the twelfthcentury Spanish author Ibn al-ʿAwwam in his Kita¯b al-Fila¯ḥa. Whether the anonymous work does, in fact, draw on Nabatean source material is questionable (claims of Nabatean origins for information are something of a topos in medieval Arabic literature). Concerning the manufacture of ceramic water pipes the text states, Take earth that is clayey and not sandy, and sieve it to remove any waste, and mix it with water, as was described above for lime with egg white and oil. Then cover it with water and leave it in this state for ten days until it absorbs the water and becomes like a soup (ḥasп), not too light or too thick. Then expose it to the air until it swells (qabba) a little, and then beat it with a thick board, knead it, and beat it again and again, night and day or for two consecutive days. Then one can manufacture pipes and canals whose thickness is equal to one third of its diameter. Allow to dry, and then leave in the sun all day. They are then arranged in a kiln burning reeds [and fired] until it can be seen that they are ready. They are allowed to cool, then taken out and used for the supply of water.16

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The description in al-Fila¯ḥa al-nabaṭiyya offers an elaborate process for the preparation of the clay but is vague concerning the design and manufacture of the pipes themselves. Presumably, the author does not intend that the clay should be combined with egg white and oil (these being the ingredients required for the lime mixture), though this point is somewhat ambiguous in the French translation. Perhaps most significant is the author’s insistence on the thickness of the walls of the pipes (one third of the internal diameter). A little later in the text the author discusses the use of pipes made from lead.17 The second account of pipe making appears in a book known as the Qa¯mпs alṣina¯ʿa¯t al-sha¯miyya (Dictionary of Damascene Crafts, and from now on referred to as the Qa¯mпs) written between 1890 and about 1905 by Muhammad Saʿid al-Qasimi (d. 1900) and his son Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi (d. 1914), with the collaboration of Khalil al-ʿAzm (d. 1926). Detailing the many crafts operating in the Syrian capital in the last years of Ottoman rule, this book contains a chapter devoted to the activities of the Qasa¯ṭilī. On this craft the authors write,

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It is the craft of making pipes (sing. qasṭal). And [for the] pipe, make them from the red earth (al-turra¯b al-aḥmar), mix it with sufficient water, and from it [i.e. the mixture] all kinds of pipe can be made by means of a special hollowedout mold. When it is done, it is allowed to dry in the sun until it is ready. It is then baked in a special oven (furn). And there are many types [of pipe] both large and small. And of them, the one known as al-zamr has the smallest dimensions. Then al-sharkas is the largest of the first group. Then the biggest is known as al-īra¯nī. And from them are [also] al-sabīlī, al-mujīr, and al-zinja¯rī. And [the last of] these is the largest in dimensions. They [the different types of pipe] are designed for drawing sweet water from reservoirs to the houses and other buildings.18 The dictionary paints a picture of a successful industry making a range of pipes for domestic and public use (sadly, the dimensions of the different sorts of pipe are not specified). In the final section of the chapter the authors observe, “And indeed it is an important craft in Damascus, and it has its own special neighbourhood (maḥalla) in the city, and it is known that [the work of] the pipe makers is much in demand and generates good profits.” Other ceramic production centres also made drainpipes though, to judge from the case of grey-ware potteries of Gaza, it was usually the case that drainpipes were made among a range of vessel forms (i.e. there were no potters who specialized exclusively in the manufacture of pipes).19 In fact, by the end of nineteenth century the craft of the qasa¯ṭilī had only a few more decades to survive in Greater Syria. In the first half of the twentieth century, the makers of ceramic pipes started to compete with drainpipes made of reinforced cement. For instance, a factory in Beirut manufacturing these items is mentioned in the 1940s.20 Quite when the makers of ceramic drainpipes ceased to operate in Damascus is unknown; a list of crafts in the city compiled by Louis Massignon in 1927 includes several types of ceramic worker but no explicit mention is made of the qasa¯ṭilī.21 A late record of the practice of a potter making drainpipes appears in Pierre Bazantay’s book on the crafts of Antioch published in 1936. In this case, the photograph depicting the unglazed ceramic vessel types produced by a potter in the city contains an example of a drainpipe.22 The author notes the similarity of the contemporary item to much earlier examples in Roman and Byzantine conduits found among the ruins of Antioch.23 It is unclear, however, whether the Antiochene potter actually made such pipes on a regular basis or was merely illustrating for Bazantay the range of vessels he was capable of producing. In contrast to the account given in the Qa¯mпs, however, the drainpipe in Bazantay’s photograph appears to be wheelthrown and not cast in a mould. Perhaps the most detailed records of the medieval period pertaining to the installation and renovation of drainage systems are to be found in the Geniza archive. Within this diverse collection of fragmentary documents are several of the eleventh and twelfth centuries recording maintenance work on houses and synagogues of the Jewish community in Cairo. The work on the drains was done by a contractor known

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7.1 Pottery types produced by a potter in Antioch, 1930s. After Bazantay, Enquête sur l’artisanat à Antioche, pl. 37.

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as the ʿamal qana¯t.24 From the late 1030s, one document records the cleaning of a pipe costing 8 dirhams and the construction of “the drainpipe of Da¯r al-Quṭayṭ (‘House of the little Tomcat’) and its outlet into the Nile for 18 dirhams.”25 Another from this decade refers to the completion of “a drainpipe and lateral channels (mizrab, pl. maza¯rīb).”26 These latter features were presumably designed to catch the rainwater from the roof. It was one of the duties of the market inspector (muḥtasib) to ensure that the maza¯rīb jutting out from houses did not send their water directly into the street.27 From c. 1040 comes the record in the Geniza archive of the demolition of a pipe for 1.5 dirhams.28 Two twelfth-century documents are interesting not just for the information about the drainage systems but also for the opportunities they offer to place the prices into

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a wider context. The first is dated 1165 and mentions the “cleaning of a pipe (tanẓīf al-qana¯h) in the court (qa¯ʿa) behind the sukka¯ in the Synagogue of the Palestinians” for a sum of 31.5 dirhams. This sum may be compared to the cost incurred for the construction of a bathhouse (154 dirhams), the repair of an apartment (31 dirhams), and the removal of rubbish from the synagogue (3.5 dirhams).29 It is striking that the construction of a bathhouse only cost five times as much as the cleaning of a set of drainpipes. The second is dated 1183–84 and records the installation of two pipes, one in a house of a shaykh (23.5 dirhams) and the other “in the duwayra adjacent the Synagogue of the Babylonians” (14 dirhams). Elsewhere in this extensive document one finds sums including a month’s worth of oil for the lamps of two synagogues (16 dirhams), a month’s wage for a night watchman (9.5 dirhams), “wages for cleaning the qa¯ʿa, a lock and a carpenter” (5 dirhams), and the sums paid to three rabbis for teaching over a three-month period (60, 9, and 7 dirhams respectively).30 Thus, the installation and cleaning of drainpipes represented a considerable expense when seen in relation to the monthly salaries of labourers and rabbis. Ottoman period sijills (legal records) from the Shariʿa court in Jerusalem provide similar evidence regarding the construction and maintenance of water supply and storage and of the sanitation infrastructure. Descriptions of houses regularly included details about cisterns and latrines.31 The sijill detailing the restorations associated with Khan al-Wakala (the charcoal khan), dated 948/1541 is valuable for data on prices for different aspects of restoration, construction, and cleaning. The repairs to the latrines of the khan are listed as 300 ʿuthma¯nīs and the assessment of the repairs as a further 300. This is a considerable sum when seen in relation to other tasks such as the construction of a wall (80) and the lowering of arches in an arcade (160) but is small in comparison to the costs of construction materials and skilled labour. The total bill for all the work on the site amounted to 20,250 ʿuthma¯nīs.32 Records of piping (metal and ceramic) appear in documents relating to bathhouses of the sixteenth century in Jerusalem.33 Pottery pipes were often buried within the walls of hammams and only become visible when they are replaced by modern steel tubing. Examples are recorded from Damascus and Busra.34 A specialist, known as a qanawa¯tī, was responsible for the construction and cleaning of the qana¯t al-sabīl supplying the inhabitants of Jerusalem with water. The names of several master qanawa¯tīs appear in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century documentary sources from Jerusalem.35 There are also descriptions of the craft of the qanawa¯tī from late Ottoman Damascus.36 Noting that the qanawa¯tī was known in earlier times as the sura¯ba¯tī (vowelling is not certain, but it must be related to masrab, the word for drain or sewer), the authors stress the vital role of this craft in providing the systems that allow the draining of waste from houses and neighbourhoods. Significantly, treatment of the qanawa¯tī in the Qa¯mпs concentrates upon the flushing away of waste rather than the provision of fresh water. The activity was confessionally defined: the chapter on the qanawa¯tī states that “this craft is not practised in Damascus except by the Jews (yahпd), and they have the complete knowledge of it.” The Qa¯mпs notes the existence of other crafts dominated by Jews, such as the

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engraving of copper/brass items (the naqqa¯sh) and the tinning of metal vessels (the samkarī), as well as others that were principally the domain of Christians.37 In the case of the qanawa¯tī it is possible that the craft was avoided by Muslims for reasons of ritual purity, though this is not stated explicitly.

checklist from isl amic sites in the middle east This section presents a list of sites in the Middle East (an area encompassing Egypt in the west and Iran in the east) reporting the existence of drainage pipes.38 Short comments are included concerning the contexts in which these objects were found, particularly if they were recovered as part of an aqueduct or drainage system. Particular attention is given to the dimensions of these pipes (some profile drawings are provided on figs 7.2 and 7.6). The list given below is doubtless incomplete, but it is hoped that this will provide a starting point for future study. It should be noted that late antique drainage systems – including ceramic, stone, or metal piping – have been recovered during excavations in Jordan,39 Turkey,40 and elsewhere. Excavations of Islamic sites in other regions also provide other points of comparison. Important published examples include Madinat al-Zahraʾ in Spain and Mansura in Pakistan.41 Note: There is considerable variation in the extent of the information about drainage pipes in the publications listed below. The amount of detail provided in my own commentary depends upon what is provided in the source publications. In cases where two or more publications are mentioned for a given site, I have not always identified in the short description the source of the information.

Acre (Israel) Tatcher: Excavation of the municipal gardens site revealed evidence (stratum 1) of Ottoman-period irrigation system combining open channels and ceramic pipes.

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Stern: The report of an aqueduct constructed by Sulayman Pasha in 1815 and marked on maps produced during the Mandate period. The section of the aqueduct is located between two extant siphon towers from the same project. The aqueduct is 1m high and built of coarsely dressed stone. Three pipelines are exposed. The first is a stone pipeline composed of blocks 0.36 × 0.36 m × 0.55 m with a hole of diameter 0.2 m bored through it. The pipes are laid in a bed of hard white mortar. The second is a pottery line east of the stone one and comprises sections of 0.2 × 0.29 m laid in a channel and covered with broken pieces of pipe and white mortar, with a layer of stone slabs above. The third has been partly destroyed by the stone channel above. This consists of two sets of pipes (0.22 × 0.28 m) arranged in parallel. The channel is filled with hard, grey mortar. References: Tatcher, “ʿAkko,” 12–13; Stern, “Akko,” 104–5, fig. 91.

7.2 Representative types of ceramic pipes found during excavations in the Middle East (not to scale). a–c: from the Amman Citadel, Umayyad and early Abbasid period (after Arce); d–f: from the citadel at Hama (after Pentz).

ʿAmman Citadel (Jordan) Arce: A detailed examination of the Umayyad-period hydraulic infrastructure of the ʿAmman citadel. The author, Arce, identifies structures used for the collection and storage of rainwater and the evacuation of sewage and other waste. These include pre-existing Roman-Byzantine elements, Umayyad constructions and restorations, and restorations of the Abbasid period (fig. 7.2a–c).

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7.3 Drainage channel beneath a colonnaded street on the ʿAmman citadel, Jordan. Eighth century.

Northedge: Drain discovered running beneath the colonnaded street of the Umayyad period. The channel is formed of masonry and appears to be lined with plaster. No pipes are visible. Plastered drainage channels (without ceramic pipes) appear in other parts of the site dating to the Umayyad and Abbasid phases. References: Arce, “The Umayyad Hydraulic System,” fig. 2.h–I; Northedge, Studies on Roman and Islamic ‘Amman, 142, 147, 149, fig. 60, pls. 74.C, 78.A, B.

ʿAna (Iraq) A fragment of a turquoise-glazed drainpipe was found in the rubble fill of a plaster floor in a house in area J3. Parallels are noted with Samarra (see below) indicating a ninth-century date. This date is confirmed by other glazed ceramics from this excavated context. References: Northedge, “Middle Sasanian to Islamic pottery,” 91, fig. 42.3.

Baʿalbak (Lebanon) An illustration of a drainpipe in the wall of the “Arab tower” on the site. References: Sarre, Keramik, 95, fig. 105. 206

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7.4 Glazed drainpipe fragments excavated in ʿAna, Iraq.

Cairo (Egypt) The author, Speiser, refers to an Ottoman period (?) “tuyaux pour l’alimentation” installed to the west of a basin in the madrasa of sultan al-Nasir Muhammad. See also plan of the drainage canals running from the Madrasa of al-Nasir Muhammad illustrated in the report. References: Speiser, “Recherches archéologiques,” 425, fig. 11.

Damascus Citadel (Syria) Gardiol: The terrace of the “Ayyubid palace” has five evacuation holes for rainwater, one of which was perhaps connected to a vertical canalization of baked ceramic tubes running through the wall, probably from the latrines located above. No illustrations of the ceramic pipes. McPhillips: Reference is made to the twelfth-century ceramics found in the water outflow systems of the “salle à colonnes.” References: Gardiol, “Le ‘palais ayyoubide’ de la citadelle de Damas,” 51; McPhillips, “Twelfth-century pottery,” 141. 207

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Fustat (Egypt) El-Harawy: Excavation of a fountain in Tulunid-period house with, running from it, the supports of ceramic pipes (not illustrated). Gayraud: Fustat contains aqueducts dating from Umayyad to Fatimid period. Channels are visible but not the pipes. Scanlon: The aqueduct associated with “Fustat A” contains slightly ribbed pipes (0.18 m in diameter and 0.375 m long) encased in brick and mortar. Flues running through the walls of houses do not appear to have ceramic pipes within them. Basin of a “domicile” has a drain made up of pipes with walls 0.01 m thick, with internal diameter of 0.16 m and length of 0.31 m (similar to the aqueduct) draining to a pit to the southeast. Around the basin are remains of the water pipes that fed it (though the precise location of the feeder points is not apparent). These pipes had a diameter of 0.08 m and a length, when fitted together of 0.21 m. The sections connected with a “sleeve” 0.05 m in diameter and 0.06 m long. Profile drawings are not provided of the different type of pipe. Scanlon refers to flues built into the walls of “tenements” to allow the functioning of latrines on upper floors. No illustrations are given of the ceramic pipes. References: el-Hawary, “Une maison de l’époque toulounide,” 80; Gayraud, “Fostat,” 450–2, figs 12–15; Scanlon, “Preliminary report,” 16–17, 21, pls III.6, VII.15, XV.38, 39; Scanlon, “Housing and sanitation,” 188; Kubiak and Scanlon, eds, Fustat Expedition, figs 29, 35.

Hama (Syria) The Danish excavations of the citadel in Hama brought to light an extensive hydraulic infrastructure, including cisterns and fountains. Ceramic pipes, laid within stone-lined channels supplied fresh water (raised from the Orontes using waterwheels) to the cisterns and fountains, and carried away spent water. Pipes functioned as outlets from latrines and from houses into the street. The ceramic pipes were all wheel-thrown from a coarse, reddish clay. They vary in length, bore, and in the shape of the joints indicating several phases of construction (fig. 7.2d–e). Some junction pipes were angled at 60° or 90° (fig. 7.2f). Finds of coins in association with these systems indicate that they date from the eleventh century and later. References: Pentz, Medieval Citadel, 37–75, 88–9, figs 30, 73, 127–9.

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Underground oven with a flue constructed of two ceramic drainage pipes. These have a diameter of 0.16 m at one end and 0.1 m at the other. The oven dates to the last phase of occupation from the late thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries. References: Danti, The Ilkhanid Heartland, 13–14, fig. 8, pls. D–F.

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7.5 Clay oven with drainpipe used as a flue, probably Ayyubid period. Square XV from the “Armenian Garden” excavation, Jerusalem.

Jabal Says (Syria) Water pools and other hydraulic features were recovered from the excavation of this Umayyad qaṣr. The illustrations show stone-lined drainage channels in “room LII,” and some ceramic pipes are visible. No dimensions or profile drawings are given. References: Brisch, “Das omayyadische Schloss,” 142–3, fig. 1, pl. LI a, b; Schmidt and Bloch, Das umayyadische “Wüstenschloss.”

Jerusalem. Armenian Garden Excavation of the late eleventh to early twelfth-century levels at the “Armenian Garden” site revealed an oven with ceramic drainage pipes attached to it, forming a flue. Similar employment of pipes can be seen at Hasanlu Tepe (see above). References: Tushingham, Excavations in Jerusalem, fig. 38.20, pl. 103.

Jerusalem. Damascus Gate Shards from drainpipes were found in unstratified post-Crusader deposits. References: Wightman, The Damascus Gate, 72, pl. 61.7. 209

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Jerusalem. Palaces South of the Temple Mount There are reports that numerous drainpipes were excavated from the sewerage system of “Building II” in the Umayyad palatial complex. Drains and downspouts (either to channel rainwater or to service latrines on upper stories) were recovered from the Umayyad palatial complex immediately south of the Temple Mount. Three basic types of pipe (A, B, and C) are isolated in the report. Type C has most in common with pipes found in medieval contexts. The variations in length and diameter indicate that the three types of pipe belong to different drain systems. Several comparanda for these types are identified in late Byzantine and Umayyad sites in Greater Syria. A second drain, perhaps associated with renovations ordered by the Mamluk sultan Qaytbay (r. 1468–96), comprises ceramic pipes laid into a rubble-lined trench covered with capstones. References: Ben-Dov, In the Shadow of the Temple, 307–8; Prag, Excavations by K.M. Kenyon, 131–40, 148–56, figs 104, 108, 112, 146.1–5.

Karak (Jordan) These artifacts were found within an unstratified deposit within the castle. Two groups of pipes identified: the first with a wide bore (0.14–0.28 m) and made from a pale fabric; and the second with a smaller bore and made from reddish clay. Some of the second group may be hand formed. Ceramic pipes can also be seen embedded into walls within the castle itself (personal observation). References: Milwright, Fortress of the Raven, 164–5, 287–90, cat. pages 12.7–10, 13.1–2.

Khirbat al-Mafjar (Palestine Authority) The report of the excavations of eighth-century bathhouse contains several references to ceramic pipes. The outlet pipes from two tanks in the cold room are defined as having diameters of 0.1 and 0.04 m respectively. The author relates the latter to the anecdote recorded in the Kita¯b al-Agha¯nī about Walid ibn Yazid (al-Walid II, r. 743–44) making use of a plunge pool filled with water and wine. References: Hamilton, Khirbat al-Mafjar, 49, 53–5, 60–1, figs 19, 20.

Nishapur (Iran) Report of a house in the “Tepe Madraseh” site. Signs of a “soakaway” inserted into the wall likely through an existing carved stucco panel. References: Wilkinson, Nishapur, 143, fig.1.157.

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7.6 Ceramic drainpipe recovered at Qalʿat Bahrain. After Frifelt et al., Islamic Remains in Bahrain, fig. 182.

Qalʿat Bahrain (Bahrain) Pipes placed in a channel leading from a cistern “cut into the surface of a threshold belonging to the late Hellenistic occupation directly under the fortress.” The pipes are unusual in form, without any narrowing at neck to allow fitting to next pipe. The illustrated pipe also has combed decoration on the exterior. Another piece of ceramic pipe found in the Islamic town. References: Frifelt, Islamic Remains in Bahrain, 102–3, figs 182–3.

Qaqun (Israel) Ceramic pipes visible within the walls of this structure. References: Pringle, ed., The Red Tower, 66–7, 69, 76 (site 36), fig. 18.

Qasr al-Hayr East (Syria) Lines of ceramic pipes were found within the buildings of the outer enclosure. These Umayyad period drains were constructed from three types of pipe: the first with a length of 0.39 m, a maximum internal diameter of 0.17 m and minimum diameter at the flanged end of 0.126 m; the second with a length of 0.315 m, a maximum internal diameter of 0.165 m and minimum at the flanged end of 0.118 m; and the third

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with a length of 0.385 m, a maximum internal diameter of 0.165 m and minimum diameter at the flanged end of 0.123 m. Handmade pipes, from the secondary occupation of the site, were located in the northeast quarter of the outer enclosure. Ceramic flue pipes with an oval interior were also found in association with the bathhouse (though not in situ). References: Grabar et al., City in the Desert, I, 179–80; II, 275 (Ap. 21), 276 (Ap. 22, 23), 277 (Ap. 24, 25), 278 (Ap. 26, 27), 279 (Ap. 28).

Qasr al-Hayr West (Syria) In the area of the latrines within the Umayyad qaṣr there is a masonry pillar containing within it a vertical flue made up of ceramic pipes. This did not seem to be the drain of the latrines. References: Schlumberger, “Les fouilles de Qasr el-Heir el-Gharbi,” 229, fig. 10.

Palmyra/Tadmur (Syria) The report on the Umayyad-period market notes the presence of a stone water channel, as well as others formed on ceramic pipes sealed at their joints with plaster. The ceramic pipework is presumed to date to the same phase as the shops, though they are not believed to have supplied fresh water to these establishments. References: al-Asʿad and Stepniowski, “The Umayyad suq,” 209–10, fig. 6.1, pl. 54.b.

Raqqa (Syria) Tal Aswad: This industrial site operated for some decades in the period between 771 and about 825. The bulk of the ceramic production was of unglazed pottery for local consumption in Raqqa and its sister city of Rafiqa. Drainage pipes (with different designs and dimensions) and ceramic water channels were among the items produced by potters at Tal Aswad, using a porous pale clay. Additional examples were recovered from the University of Nottingham excavations (unpublished). Qasr al-Banat, Raqqa: Ceramic pipes are visible within the walls of this structure (personal observation, 2001). References: Miglus, ed., Ar-Raqqa, pl. 61.

Samarra (Iraq) Herzfeld’s excavations of “House IX” revealed drainpipes of two basic types: short with a wide diameter (up to 0.225 m) and long with a diameter of 0.83 m at the narrow end. “House XIV” contained drainpipes with a diameter of 0.95 m at the narrow 212

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7.7 Glazed drainpipe found in Qasr al-ʿAshiq, Samarra, Iraq. Ninth century.

end and 0.12 m at the wide end. Long ceramic pipes covered with a turquoisecoloured glaze are visible within Qasr al-ʿAshiq. Other examples from excavations in the city are housed in the Samarra Museum.42 References: Leisten, Excavations in Samarra, 131–3, 141, figs 82, 90.

Soane/Sahyun (Syria) Grandin refers to “vestiges of ceramic drains, designed to catch rainwater, are visible in the corners” of the southeast cistern in the castle. No illustrations or dimensions given. References: Grandin, “Introduction to the citadel,” 154.

Saqqara (Egypt) Final report of excavations at the monastery of Apa Jeremias. The occupation of the site dates between the end of the fifth and the mid-ninth centuries. Among the finds was a water conduit formed of ceramic pipes laid into stone troughs (1.5 m long) with plaster. The pipes are described as 0.38 m long with a diameter of 0.07 m on one side and narrowing to a 0.04 m long “nozzle” at the other. According to the report, “they are laid, in defiance of good practice, with the narrow ends pointing against the flow of water.” References: Quibell, Excavations at Saqqara, 12–14, pls. XXIX, XXX.

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Shawbak/Montreal (Jordan) The occupational debris (mainly dating to the Mamluk phase) within the qa¯ʿa (“throneroom complex”) of the castle included examples of drainage pipes. References: Brown, “Late Islamic Shobak,” 237, fig. 13.40, 41.

Sirjan (Iran) Report of the excavations by Andrew Williamson at a site probably identified with medieval Sirjan. The drainage systems and other features in the sondages are dated to c. 950–1050. These include ceramic pipes and qana¯t hoops. References: Morgan and Leatherby, “Excavated ceramics from Sirjan,” 41–2, pls. 16, 18.

Tall Jawa (Jordan) A ceramic drainage pipe was discovered in “Building 600,” a house dating to the early Islamic period. The pipe was set into a wall and had no outlet, and perhaps functioned as a soakaway. Other features of the house included ceramic channels and a jar used as a drain or latrine. References: Daviau, “Architectural features in Building 600,” 125–8, fig. 6.1–4.

Tripoli (Lebanon) Ceramic pipes seen in the floors and set into the walls within the citadel above the port town (personal observation, 2001).

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The written sources surveyed in the first section describe an important craft sector that must have been present in all substantial towns and cities of the Middle East. The Qa¯mпs differentiates between the makers of pipes and those responsible for laying and restoring them in Damascus, and it seems likely that this division of labour existed in other urban areas. The reference to the confessionally specific nature of the qanawa¯tī might also reflect practices elsewhere in the Islamic world, though this is an issue that requires more attention. From the Geniza and other archival sources we get a sense of the cost of installing and maintaining drainage systems; this evidently represented a significant consideration in building projects. The archaeological evidence reviewed in the second part of this chapter is too fragmentary, both in geographical and chronological terms, to allow for the creation of a meaningful typology of Islamic-period ceramic drainage pipes. While most of the examples surveyed in the previous section are relatively simple, unglazed shapes (mould-cast or

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wheel-thrown), there was evidence of glazing, and even decorative additions such as combed incisions on the exterior. While the addition of glaze might have some functional significance – the reduction in the porosity of the ceramic fabric – it is difficult to understand why an artisan might seek to ornament a pipe that was destined to be buried under the ground or set within a flue. The pipes were all designed to fit one inside another, but there were distinct variations in the types of interlocking profiles employed at the wider and narrower ends. There is also considerable variation in the bore and the wall thickness of the pipes, perhaps indicating that the design took account of the pressure of the water that was to pass through them. Lastly, it is intriguing to see the ways in which pipes were employed for secondary purposes in domestic settings (for example, as flues for stoves or to connect rooms to soakaways); these were clearly useful artifacts and the inhabitants of Middle Eastern villages and urban settlements made sure that unused or recovered drainage pipes did not go to waste.

note s 1 ʿAbd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, The Eastern Key, 179. 2 al-Jahiz, Avarice and the Avaricious, 191–2. 3 al-Masʿudi, The Meadows of Gold, 405–7. For a survey of scatological themes in Medieval Arabic literature, see: van Gelder, God’s Banquet, 74–90. 4 Quoted in Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 4: 361. 5 al-Thaʿalibi, Curious and Entertaining Information, 127. 6 Wilson, “Drainage and Sanitation,” 151–80. 7 The translations and references to Latin authors are all taken from Humphrey, Oleson, and Sherwood ed. and trans., Greek and Roman Technology, 294–308. 8 Vitruvius, On Architecture 8.6.1–11. 9 Frontinus, On the Aqueducts of Rome 1.23–5, 29, 31, 33–6. 10 Vitruvius, On Architecture 8.6.10–11. 11 Frontinus, On the Aqueducts of Rome 1.16. 12 Pliny, Natural History 36.23. 13 Lassner, Topography of Baghdad, 103, 279, n.11. 14 Quoted in Ziadeh, Damascus under the Mamluks, 25. 15 Elisséeff, “Corporations de Damas,” 69, no. 18. 16 Translated from the French translation in Fahd, “Un traité des eaux,” 298. My thanks to John Oleson for bringing this fascinating source to my attention. 17 Fahd, “Traité des eaux,” 299. 18 al-Qasimi, al-Qasimi and al-ʿAzm, Dictionnaire, 351 (chapter 274). 19 Gatt, “Industrielles aus Gaza,” 71–2. 20 Naval Intelligence Division, Syria, 303. 21 Massignon, “La structure du travail.” 22 Bazantay, Antioche, pl. 37 no. 13. 23 Bazantay, Antioche, 38.

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marcus milw r ig ht 24 Gil, “Maintenance, building operations, and repairs,” 176–9; Gil, Jewish Pious Foundations, passim. 25 Gil, Jewish Pious Foundations, 156. See also Goitein, “Main industries,” 188–9; Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 4: 54. 26 Gil, Jewish Pious Foundations, 171. 27 Ibn al-Ukhuwwa, Maʿa¯lim al-qurba, 179 (Arabic text). 28 Gil, Jewish Pious Foundations, 186. 29 Ibid., 302–3. 30 Ibid., 353–5. 31 For example, Salameh, “Aspects of the Sijills,” 130. 32 Salameh, “Aspects of the Sijills,” 142 (appendix 10.1). 33 Dow, Baths of Palestine, 30–1. 34 Ibid., 31. Citing M. Ecochard and C. Le Coeur, Les bains de Damas (Beirut: Institut Français de Damas, 1942–43), I: 31. 35 Atallah, “Architects in Jerusalem,” 163–4. 36 Al-Qasimi, al-Qasimi, and al-ʿAzm, Dictionnaire, 364–5 (chapter 293). And see 455 (chapter 378). 37 These crafts are discussed in: Milwright, “‘Metalworking in Damascus.” 38 Pipes made of other materials are not included in this checklist. For pipes made of basalt at al-Rabadha in Saudia Arabia, see al-Rashid, Al-Rabadhah, 48. 39 For example, see contributions by Waheeb, “Ancient Water Supply Systems,” 237, fig. 3; al-Daire, “Water management in Trans-Jordan,” 220, figs 3 and 4. 40 For example, Harrison, Excavations at Saraçhane, 26, 113, pls. 29, 33, 36, 38, 40, 41, 56, 57. 41 Triano Vallejo, “Madinat al-Zahraʾ,” 8–12; Farooq, “Excavations at Mansurah,” 28–9. 42 My thanks to Alastair Northedge for the information about these artifacts, and for allowing me to publish the photograph.

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cer amic dr ainage pipes in the isl amic middle east Atallah, Mahmud. “Architects in Jerusalem in the 10th–11th/16th–17th Centuries: The Documentary Evidence.” In Ottoman Jerusalem, the Living City: 1517–1917, edited by Robert Hillenbrand and Sylvia Auld, 159–90. London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000. Bazantay, Pierre. Enquête sur l’artisanat à Antioche. Les états du Levant sous Mandat Français. Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1936. Ben-Dov, Meir. In the Shadow of the Temple: The Discovery of Ancient Jerusalem. New York: Harper and Row, 1985. Brisch, Klaus. “Das omayyadische Schloss in Usais (II).” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts Abteilung Kairo 20 (1965): 138–77. Brown, Robin. “Late Islamic Shobak: A Summary Report of the 1986 Excavations.” Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan (1988): 267–88. Danti, Michael. The Ilkhanid Heartland: Hasanlu Tepe (Iran), Period I. Hasanlu Excavation Reports II. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology, 2004. Daviau, P.M. Michèle ed. Excavations at Tall Jawa, Jordan. Volume 4: The early Islamic House. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 11, no. 4. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. Dow, Martin. The Islamic Baths of Palestine. British Academy Monographs in Archaeology 7. Oxford: British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and Oxford University Press, 1996. El-Hawary, Hasan Mohamed. “Une maison de l’époque toulounide.” Bulletin de l’Institut d’Égypte, série 6, no. 15 (1932–33): 79–87. Elisséeff, Nikita. “Corporations de Damas sour Nūr al-Dīn. Matériaux pour une topographie économique de Damas au XIIe siècle.” Arabica 3 (1956): 61–79. Fahd, Toufik. “Un traité des eaux dans al-Fila¯ḥa an-Nabaṭiyya (hydrogéologie, hydraulique, agricole, hydrologie).” Atti del convegno internazionale sul tema ‘La Persia nel Medioevo.’ Quaduni: dell’Academia Nazionale dei Lincei 160 (1971): 279–326. Farooq, Abdul Aziz. “Excavations at Mansurah (13th Season).” Pakistan Archaeology 10-12 (1974-86): 3–35. Frifelt, Karen, with contributions by Pernille Bangsgaard and Venetia Porter. Islamic Remains in Bahrain. The Carlsberg Foundation’s Gulf Project. Jutland Archaeological Society Publications 37. Moesgaard: Jutland Archaeological Society, Moesgaard Museum, and the Ministry of Information, State of Bahrain, 2001. Gardiol, Jean-Blaise. “Le ‘palais ayyoubide’ de la citadelle de Damas: Premières données archéologiques et nouvelle observations.” Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales 53–4. Supplément: Études et travaux à la citadelle de Damas, 2000–2001: Un premièr bilan (2002): 47–58. Gatt, G. “Industrielles aus Gaza.” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 8 (1885): 59–79. Gayraud, Roland-Pierre. “Fostat: Évolution d’une capitale arabe du VIIe au XIIe siècle d’aprés les fouilles d’Istabl ʿAntar.” In Colloque international d’archéologie islamique, ifao, Le Caire, 3–7 février 1993, edited by Roland-Pierre Gayraud, 435–60. Textes arabes et études islamiques 36. Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1998. Gil, Moshe. Documents of Jewish Pious Foundations from the Cairo Geniza. Leiden: Brill, 1976. – “Maintenance, Building Operations, and Repairs in the Houses of the Qodesh in Fustat: A Geniza Study.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 14 (1971): 136–95. 217

marcus milw r ig ht Goitein, Shlomo. “The Main Industries of the Mediterranean Area as Reflected in the Records of the Cairo Geniza.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 1 (1958): 168–97. – A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 5 vols. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967–83. Grabar, Oleg, Renata Holod, James Knustad, and William Trousdale. City in the Desert: Qasr al-Hayr East. Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 23/24. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1978. Grandin, Thierry. “Introduction to the Citadel of Salah al-Din.” In Syria, Medieval Citadels Between East and West, edited by Stefano Bianca. Umberto Allemandi and Co. for The Aga Khan Trust for Culture, 2007. https://www.archnet.org/publications/5189. Hamilton, Robert. Khirbat al-Mafjar, an Arabian Mansion in the Jordan Valley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959. Harrison, R.M. Excavations at Saraçhane in Istanbul. Volume I: The Excavations, Structures, Architectural Decorations, Small Finds, Coins, Bones, and Molluscs. Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press and Dumbarton Oaks, 1986. Hillenbrand, Robert, and Sylvia Auld, eds. Ottoman Jerusalem, the living City: 1517–1917. London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000. Humphrey, John, John Oleson, and Andrew Sherwood, eds. and trans. Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Ibn al-Ukhuwwa, Diyaʾ al-Din Muhammad ibn Muhammad. The Maʿa¯lim al-qurba fī aḥka¯m al-ḥisba. Edited with partial translation by Reuben Levy. London: Luzak, 1938. Jahiz, Abu ʿUthman ʿAmr ibn Bahr al-. Avarice and the Avaricious (Kitâb al-Bukhalâ). Translated by Jim Colville. Kegan Paul Arabia Library 5. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1999. Kubiak, Wladislaw, and George Scanlon, eds. Fustat Expedition Final report. Volume 2; Fustat-C. American Research Center in Egypt Reports 2. Winona Lake: arce, 1989. Lassner, Jacob. The Topography of Baghdad in the Early Middle Ages. Text and Studies. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970. Leisten, Thomas. Excavations in Samarra. Volume 1: Architecture. Final Report of the First Campaign, 1910–1912. Baghdader Forschungen 20. Manz am Rhein: Von Zabern, 2003. Massignon, Louis. “La structure du travail à Damas en 1927: Type d’enquête sociographique.” Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie 15 (1953): 34–52. Masʿudi, Abu al-Hasan ʿAli al-. The Meadows of Gold: The Abbasids. Translated and edited by Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1989. McPhillips, Stephen. “Twelfth-century Pottery from the Citadel of Damascus.” Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales 53–4. Supplément: Études et travaux à la citadelle de Damas, 20002001: Un premièr bilan (2002): 139–56. Miglus, Peter, ed. Ar-Raqqa I. Die frühislamische Keramik von Tall Aswad. Mainz am Rhein: Von Zabern, 1999. 218

cer amic dr ainage pipes in the isl amic middle east Milwright, Marcus. The Fortress of the Raven: Karak in the Middle Islamic Period (1100– 1650). Islamic Civilization: Studies and Texts 72. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008. – “Metalworking in Damascus at the End of the Ottoman Period: An Analysis of the Qamus al-Sina‘at al-Shamiyya.” In Metalwork and Material Culture in the Islamic World: Art, Crafts and Text. Essays Presented to James W. Allan, edited by Venetia Porter and Mariam Rosser-Owen, 265–80. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012. Morgan, Peter, and Janet Leatherby. “Excavated Ceramics from Sirjan.” In Syria and Iran: Three Studies in Medieval Ceramics, edited by James Allan and Caroline Roberts, 23–172, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 4. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Naval Intelligence Division. Syria, April 1943. Geographical Handbook Series B.R. 513. London: British Admiralty, 1944. Northedge, Alastair. “Middle Sasanian to Islamic Pottery and Stone Vessels.” In Excavations at ʿAna. Qalʿa Island, edited by A. Northedge, A. Bamber, and M. Roaf, 459–71. (Iraq Archaeological Reports 1). Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1988. – Studies on Roman and Islamic ʿAmman. The Excavations of C.-M. Bennet and Other Investigations. Volume 1: History, Site and Architecture. British Academy Monographs in Archaeology 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pentz, Peter. The Medieval Citadel and its Architecture. Hama. Fouilles et Recherches de la Fondation Carlberg, 1931–1938, IV. Copenhagen: Nationalmuseet, 1997. Prag, Kay. Excavations by K.M. Kenyon in Jerusalem, 1961–1967. Volume V: Discoveries in Hellenistic to Ottoman Jerusalem. Levant Supplementary Series 7. Oxford: Council for British Research in the Levant and Oxbow Books, 2008. Pringle, Denys, ed. The Red Tower (al-Burj al-Ahmar): Settlement in the Plain of Sharon at the Time of the Crusaders and Mamluks, A.D. 1099–1516. British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem Monograph Series 1. London: British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, 1986. Qasimi, Muhammad Saʿid al-, Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi and Khalil al-ʿAzm. Dictionnaire des métiers damascains. Edited by Zafer al-Qasimi. Le Monde d’Outre-Mer passé et présent. Deuxième série. Documents III. 2 vols. Paris and Le Haye: Mouton and Co., 1960. Quibell, James. Excavations at Saqqara (1908–09, 1909–10), IV, The Monastery of Apa Jeremias. Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1912. Salameh, Khadr. “Aspects of the Sijills of the Shariʿa Court in Jerusalem.” In Ottoman Jerusalem, the living City: 1517–1917, edited by Robert Hillenbrand and Sylvia Auld, 103–44. London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000. Sarre, Friedrich. Keramik und andere Kleinfunde der islamischen Zeit von Baalbek. Berlin and Leipzig: W. de Gruyter, 1925. Scanlon, George. “Housing and Sanitation: Some Aspects of Medieval Islamic Public Service.” In The Islamic City: A Colloquium, edited by Albert Hourani and Samuel Stern, 179–94. Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1970. – “Preliminary Report: Excavations at Fustat, 1964.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 4 (1965): 7–30. Schlumberger, Daniel. “Les fouilles de Qasr el-Heir el-Gharbi (1936–1938). Rapport préliminaire.” Syria 20 (1939): 195–238.

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marcus milw r ig ht Schmidt, Kurt, and Franziska Bloch. Das umayyadische “Wüstenschloss” und die Siedlung am Ǧabal Says. Damaszener Forschungen 14. 2 vols. Darmstadt: Philipp von Zabern, 2011–12. Speiser, Philipp. “Recherches archéologiques dans le Caire Fatimide: Les éléments d’un puzzle.” In Colloque international d’archéologie islamique, ifao, Le Caire, 3–7 février 1993, edited by Roland-Pierre Gayraud, 419–34. Textes arabes et études islamiques 36. Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1998. Stern, Eliezer. “Akko.” Excavations and Surveys in Israel 9 (1989–90): 104–5. Tatcher, Ayelet. “ʿAkko.” Excavations and Surveys in Israel 18 (1998): 12–13. Thaʿalibi, Abu Mansur ʿAbd al-Malik b. Muhammad b. Ismaʿil al-. The Book of Curious and Entertaining Information. The Lata’if al-ma‘arif of Tha‘alibi. Translated by Clifford Bosworth. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968. Triano Vallejo, Antonio. “Madinat al-Zahraʾ: Transformation of a Caliphal City.” In Revisiting Al-Andalus: Perspectives on the Material Culture of Islamic Iberia and Beyond, edited by Glaire Anderson and Mariam Rosser-Owen, 3–26. Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World 34. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007. Tushingham, A.D. Excavations in Jerusalem, 1961–1967, Volume 1. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1985. Van Gelder, Geert Jan. God’s Banquet: Food in Classical Arabic Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000. Waheeb, Mohammad. “Ancient Water Supply Systems in Bethany Beyond the Jordan.” In Men of Dikes and Canals: The Archaeology of Water in the Middle East, edited by HansDieter Bienert and Jutta Häser, 231–60. Rahden: Marie Leidorf, 2004. Wightman, G. The Damascus Gate, Jerusalem: Excavations by C.-M. Bennett and J.B. Henessy at the Damascus Gate, Jerusalem, 1964–66. British Archaeological Reports International series 519. Oxford: bar, 1989. Wilkinson, Charles. Nishapur: Some Early Islamic Buildings and Their Decoration. New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986. Wilson, Andrew. “Drainage and Sanitation.” In Handbook of Ancient Water Technology, edited by Örjan Wikander. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Ziadeh, Nicola. Damascus under the Mamluks. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964.

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chapter 8

A Group of Fourteenth-Century Ceramics from Deir Mar Musa, Syria Robert Mason

About 90 km north of Damascus in the desert Qalamoun Mountains, isolated between the road from Damascus to Homs/Hama/Aleppo and the road from Damascus to Palmyra-Tadmor, lies the Monastery of St Moses or Deir Mar Musa. It is unusual in Syria in being a desert monastery, intended for isolated reflection rather than engagement with the general populace. Judging by the architecture, the monastery was founded as a monastery in the late fourth or early fifth century.1 It flourished in the remainder of the Byzantine period (i.e. until the early seventh century) and also through the centuries of Islamic rule. During all that time the monastic buildings expanded as the centre for a community dispersed across the landscape; the monks actually lived in hermitage caves eked out of the brittle limestone of the Qalamoun. In a monastery of this type, known as a laura, the monks only came to the central buildings on Sundays.2 In about 1200 a devastating earthquake in the region caused extensive damage to the monastery buildings.3 The repairs necessitated by the earthquake were subsequently covered with painting, resulting in one of the most remarkable collections of frescoes in Syria.4 In the late fifteenth century it is known that the monks of Deir Mar Musa were responsible for the production of a large number of manuscripts.5 There is evidence for building work at this time. Two inscriptions claim to have constructed a “fortress” on the site: one, located in the courtyard, is dated to 1779 of the Seleucid calendar (1467/68 ce) and the second, over the present main entrance, is dated to 1809 of the Seleucid calendar and 903 hijrī (1497/98 ce).6 There are indeed at least two further phases recognizable in the architecture at Deir Mar Musa that may fit these data.7 Further inscriptions attest to intermittent activity until the abandonment of the monastery in the early nineteenth century. Canadian scholar Erica Dodd undertook a study of the frescoes in the abandoned buildings. An early paper on the subject by Dodd was read by Italian Jesuit Paolo Dall’Oglio, who went to the site in 1982. Dall’Oglio refounded a monastery there, and through the 1980s and subsequently, volunteers helped to refurbish the derelict structures. During the restoration work objects were found from the earlier occupation phases. These included coins, glass, wood, wax candles, metal, but above all, pottery.8

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8.1 Map showing the location of Deir Mar Musa.

the deir mar musa p ot tery

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Despite there being almost 1,400 years of occupation, strangely the overwhelming majority of the pottery found at the site can be assigned to the period, c. 1250–1500. This corresponds to the period of Mamluk rule in Greater Syria (1260–1516). This assemblage includes several fragments of underglaze painted wares made in Damascus before the influence of Yuan blue and white (which I put at c. 1380); one fragment of Damascus blue and white made under Yuan influence but before the Timurid invasion (c. 1380–1400); a single fragment of Yuan Longquan celadon; several fragments of handmade unglazed slip-painted pottery of a quality I would at-

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8.3 Slip-painted, copper-lead-glazed pottery from Deir Mar Musa.

8.2 Slip-painted, copper-lead-glazed pottery from Deir Mar Musa.

tribute as vaguely “Mamluk” (i.e. late thirteenth–fifteenth centuries); and several reconstructable bowls of slip-incised and slip-painted lead-glazed clay earthenware type that are the subject of this paper, and which I will be calling the “lead-glazed group” (figs 8.2–9).9 I first came to Deir Mar Musa in 2002 essentially as a tourist while excavating at another site. I thought this corpus of lead-glazed wares to be so distinct and in such large fragments (including reconstructable profiles in many cases), that I returned in 2004 in order to study this group and write a paper about it. At that time Fr Paolo convinced me that it was God’s will that I undertake an archaeological study of the site and its surrounding region, partly, I think, because it was a manifestation of the Canadian connection with the site (thanks to Erica Dodd). I did indeed start that work and, God-willing, he and I will be able in the future to return to our work at Deir Mar Musa. In the meantime I can at least publish this paper on the pottery that brought me back there.

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Above and opposite 8.4–8.7 Slip-excised, copper-splashed lead-glazed pottery from Deir Mar Musa.

Petrography of the Lead-Glazed Group

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It is important to start with the petrography of this group as it demonstrates that the lead-glazed pieces were all produced in one centre. The petrofabric (figs 8.10–11) comprises a bimodal distribution of inclusions, with a coarser population of mode of c. 0.3 and maximum of 0.6 mm, consisting of well-sorted, well-rounded to rounded grains of 4–6 per cent quartz, 1–2 per cent micritic carbonate, and up to trace orthoclase (actually represented by a single grain in a single thin-section); plus a fine population of mode of c. 0.05 mm consisting of very well sorted, angular to sub-angular grains of 16–21 per cent quartz, 2 per cent opaques, 1–2 per cent muscovite, and trace amounts of orthoclase and amphibole. Although I cannot relate this petrofabric precisely to any clay-bodied ware known to me, the coarse population, predominantly of quartz, is similar to the stonepaste petrofabric for Damascus.10 Both have quartz that is unusually clear of fluid inclusions, unusually free of feldspars, and have a mode of 0.3 mm. This is probably not

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enough to be certain, and further work on the clay-bodied wares of the region is necessary. The fact that Damascus is the most likely candidate should not be allowed too much weight given the widespread distribution patterns of the pottery that are known across the Islamic world. However, the petrofabric is sufficiently consistent to indicate that all of these wares were made in the same place.

The Lead-Glazed Group There are two main groups in the lead-glazed wares. The first have a fired clay earthenware body, painted with a white slip (actually mostly crushed quartz), and an overall high-lead glaze, typically coloured copper-green (fig. 8.2: dmm.05; fig. 8.3: dmm.12 and dmm.16; fig. 8.8). The forms of these vessels follow those of Yuan celadon bowls quite closely, although the lead-glazed pieces from Deir Mar Musa have a taller foot-ring. The flower-petal design slip-painted in reserve on the interior is also

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8.8–8.9 Photomicrograph of Deir Mar Musa lead-glazed ware. Cross-polarized light, width of view about 1mm.

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a clear reference to the lotus-petal shapes and decoration of the Yuan celadons. Judging from my studies of Iranian lustre-ware, the forms of Yuan celadons are found introduced during Group 8 and overwhelm the local forms in Group 9.11 The transition from Group 8 to 9 occurs in 1285.12 The forms and decoration do not, however, betray any influence of later Yuan blue and white, which probably does not appear until c. 1380 (this can be inferred from the lack of development in the Damascus copies of Yuan wares found in the Timurid destruction levels at Aleppo and Hama). As there is no other dating evidence for this pottery yet available, and taking into consideration the problems with dating types of pottery that are not on the cutting edge of fashion, a date of c. 1280–1380 would seem appropriate for the group from Deir Mar Musa. The second main group typically has a fired clay earthenware body, and overall white slip which is then incised with a narrow sharp tool or excised with a broad sharp tool in order to reveal the underlying red body thereby creating a design; this is then covered with a high-lead glaze which is in part splashed with copper-green (figs 8.4–7, 8.9). I tend to call this general type “slip-incised ware,” although elsewhere the Anglicized Italian term for “scratched” has given us the term “sgraffiato.” While a variety of designs is used to decorate the pottery, including crosses, stars, and blossoms, and there are a number of vessel forms, including broad-rimmed dishes and deep bowls (with or without carinations, and with or without slightly recurved rims), the consistent execution of this group and the presence of recurring attributes (like the design incised around the interior of the rim in almost all of them) strongly suggests that they are roughly contemporary. It is even possible that they were produced at the same time as a single group. Generally the designs and forms individually do not provide much useful information, although crosses and similar radial motifs

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seem widespread in the period c. 1250–1500. However, some of the pieces provide better dating, for example dmm.X (fig. 8.7) seems to have a similar Yuan celadonderived form and decoration as the slip-painted wares. Therefore, it would not be a great leap to put the entire group of slip-incised ware into the c. 1280–1380 date range suggested for the first group.

why so mu ch fourte enth-century p ot tery? There is nothing in the archaeological record to provide any evidence for why all the diagnostic pottery at the monastery should belong to the fourteenth century. Apart from the fifteen large fragments drawn here, there were a significant number of smaller fragments of these types. Given the fact that they have such similar rim profiles, some of these fragments may fit the fifteen drawn vessels or be from other similar vessels, one may reasonably conclude that the complete assemblage originally belonged to about thirty glazed ceramic vessels. I had originally assumed that all of these fourteenth-century fragments (especially given that they were large pieces and had not been underfoot for some time) marked a period of abandonment of the monastery. The historical record suggests a different chronology, but in my opinion a good archaeologist does not privilege textual over physical evidence in the reconstruction of past events. However, my architectural study of Deir Mar Musa supports the evidence in the historical record that the monastery flourished for centuries afterwards. It might be assumed that there was something unusual about the time the pottery was deposited or something unusual happened. For most of the monastery’s history the material culture was probably very modest. Although monasteries may at times be sites of elite occupation, there is no reason to believe that this would often have been the case, particularly given the vows of poverty taken by the residents. One unusual event that did occur is recorded in an Arabic inscription painted onto the church frescoes.13 This inscription records that in year 1656 of the Seleucid calendar (1343/44 ce) Marcos, bishop of Jerusalem, Homs, and Damascus, came to the monastery and “imposed conditions” on the monks. This would have been an important event, as Marcos was the head of the church. One might equate this with the pope visiting the monastery in the present day. The visit might suggest that either the monks were doing something very right or they were doing something very wrong. It rather sounds like the latter. It could also be that medieval church leaders simply needed to look like they were going around keeping everyone on the straight and narrow (this being before the era of pope-mobiles and world tours). If the monks were doing something very right, one can conjecture that the visit of the bishop subsequently attracted the wealth necessary to buy the finest pottery. Perhaps this wealth even resulted from the production of books in the renowned scriptorium. Conversely, it might have been perceived that the monks of Deir Mar Musa were acquiring too many elite worldly goods (such as very fine pottery). With

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regards to the latter point it may be relevant that the elite wares, including the Chinese import and the underglaze-painted wares, were all found as very fragmentary and abraded shards, while the more modest lead-glazed wares were larger fragments, many of which could be reconstructed. Is it conceivable that Marcos came and broke all the elite wares, and the community went out and bought more modest wares? Another factor to consider is the possible preparations made by the monks for the visit of Marcos. I discussed the issue of the abundant fourteenth-century pottery with the present superior, Fr Paolo, and asked him, what would he do if the pope came to visit? He said, “I would go in to Damascus and buy new pottery for the visit!”

conclusion The factors that led to the inhabitants of Deir Mar Musa acquiring all this fourteenthcentury pottery are likely to remain obscure. Nevertheless, the lead-glazed wares discussed above do provide a useful corpus for defining the types of lead-glazed wares consumed by non-elite groups in Mamluk-era Syria.

n ote s

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

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10 11

I would like to thank Michel Maqdisi and others at the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums for their help and co-operation; Fr Paolo Dall’Oglio and Emma Loosley for information and input on the subject matter; I would like to thank Emma’s uncle Ink for sending me to see her at Mar Musa in the first place; and lastly I would like to recognize the generosity of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the University of Toronto, and the Royal Ontario Museum for supporting this project. Mason, “Monastery of St Moses the Abyssinian”; Mason, “The Desert, the Divine, and a Disaster.” Hirschfeld, Judean Desert Monasteries, 10–11, 18–33. There were several, see Ambraseys, “12th Century Seismic Paroxysm.” Dall’Oglio et al., Il restauro del monastero; Dodd, Frescoes of Mar Musa al-Habashi. Kaufhold, “Notizen über das Moseskloster.” John McCullough, “Appendix I: The Syriac Inscriptions,” in: Dodd, Frescoes of Mar Musa al-Habashi, 146–7 (Inscriptions 1 and 2). See: Mason, “The Monastery of St Moses”; Mason, “The Desert, the Divine, and a Disaster.” The non-ceramics items have not been published, but they were placed in the museum created on the site. Illustrations of the other wares may be found in: A.F. Taraqg, “Studio dei reperti archeologici nel monastero di san Mose l’Abissino,” in Dall’Oglio et al., Il restauro del monastero, 74–82. Mason, Shine Like the Sun, 201. Ibid., 130.

fourte enth-century cer amics from deir mar musa 12 This chronology can be established with some certainty due to the number of pieces inscribed with dates. 13 Kassim Toueir, “Appendix II: The Arabic Inscriptions,” in: Dodd, Frescoes of Mar Musa al-Habashi, 172–3 (Inscription 17). The Arabic term used for “imposed conditions” is ishtaraṭa.

biblio g r aphy Ambraseys, N.N. “The 12th Century Seismic Paroxysm in the Middle East: A Historical Perspective.” Annals of Geophysics 47.2/3 (2004): 733–58. Dall’Oglio, P., M. Cordaro, L. Alberto, et al. Il restauro del monastero di San Mose l’Abisino, Nebek, Siria. Damascus: Ministero degli Esteri della Repubblica Italiana, Direzione Generale della Cooperazione allo Sviluppo, 1998. Dodd, Erica. The Frescoes of Mar Musa al-Habashi: A Study in Medieval Painting in Syria. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2001. Hirschfeld, Yizhar. The Judean Desert Monasteries in the Byzantine Period. New Haven, nj: Yale University Press, 1992. Kaufhold, H. “Notizen über das Moseskloster bei Nabk und das Julianskloster bei Qaryatain in Syrien.” Oriens Christianus 79 (1995): 48–119. Mason, Robert. “The Desert, the Divine, and a Disaster in the Architecture and Chronology of the Monastery of St Moses the Abyssinian, Syria.” Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 11 (2011): 3–17. – “The Monastery of St Moses the Abyssinian (Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi), Syria,” Antiquity 83, no. 319 (2009): http://antiquity.ac.uk.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/projgall/mason/ (accessed 18 August 2015). – Shine Like the Sun: Lustre-painted and Associated Pottery from the Medieval Middle East. Costa Mesa, ca: Mazda Press/Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum Press, 2004.

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Material and Visual Culture

chapter 9

Reaching New Heights: The Giraffe in the Material Culture, Ceremonial, and Diplomacy of Fatimid Egypt Fahmida Suleman Throughout history political regimes have utilized public ceremonial and diplomatic gifts as potent articulations of authority, allegiance, and power. Millions of viewers around the globe are mesmerized by live broadcasts of large-scale spectacles, from opening ceremonies of Olympic games to royal coronations and weddings, attesting to the continued importance and effectiveness of ceremonial in the twenty-first century. Such pageants provide powerful visual messages about a nation’s economic and cultural wealth, political stability, and its role as a major player on the world’s stage. This careful engineering of spectacle was no less the case in medieval Egypt when it was governed by the Fatimid dynasty (969–1171).

9.1 A Masai giraffe, Mikumi National Park, Tanzania.

fahmida suleman

In her seminal publication, Paula Sanders demonstrates how the rulers of the dynasty, who functioned as both secular rulers and Ismaʿili imams (religious leaders), used the cities of Cairo and Fustat as stages for public ceremonies and processions for all to see.1 The studies by Caroline Williams, Jonathan Bloom, and Irene Bierman also provide compelling evidence of how the Fatimid caliphs and their courtiers used specific visual iconography and well-chosen Qurʾanic inscriptions on their architecture and coinage to assert their religious and political legitimacy as a counter-caliphate to the Abbasids of Baghdad.2 Building on these investigations, this case study presents another facet of these phenomena. Relying on literary and artistic evidence, this chapter explores how the Fatimids used exotic beasts – focusing specifically on the giraffe – as part of their elaborate public ceremonies and as diplomatic gifts to bolster their political alliances. The chapter also highlights how portable works of art, including lustre ceramics, were used hand-in-hand alongside public ceremonial as vehicles to disseminate visual messages of the dynasty’s power and glory.3

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In order to grasp fully the significance of exotic beasts as part of Fatimid ceremonial, it is first necessary to appreciate widely held perceptions of the giraffe in the medieval period. Indeed, throughout antiquity and into the Middle Ages the average person would very rarely have had the chance to see a live giraffe. Consequently, medieval writers’ perceptions of the giraffe were those of amazement and curiosity, and misperceptions about the biological origins of the animal abounded. The most prevalent theory was that giraffes were composite creatures borne from the union of a male leopard and a female wild camel – thus resulting in the species name camelopardalis, a Latinized form of the Greek for “camel” (kamelos) and “leopard” (pardalis). This belief is clearly attested in a depiction on a Byzantine floor mosaic in the Diakonikon Baptistery in the Sanctuary of Moses at Mount Nebo, Jordan, dated 530. The full set of vignettes on the mosaic panel include hunting and pastoral scenes on the upper three registers and a procession of exotic animals on the bottom row featuring an ostrich, zebra, and giraffe led by two grooms. The giraffe is portrayed as a single-humped camel with a spotted hide, exemplifying the belief in its crossbred origins. A groom in Phrygian-style dress leads the giraffe on his left and a zebra on his right, and a bare-chested Nubian or African groom leads the ostrich along the parade of exotic beasts. Significantly, the zebra and ostrich were also perceived as exotic creatures of mongrel parentage from antiquity and into the medieval period. In the Graeco-Roman world the zebra was believed to be a cross between a tiger and a horse and was thus called a hippotigris (i.e. “horse-tiger”); similarly, the ostrich was named a Struthio-camelus (“bird-camel”).4 One of the earliest Arabic texts discussing the giraffe is the Kita¯b al-Ḥayawa¯n (The Book of Animals) by the prolific polymath, al-Jahiz (d. 869).5 This text was widely

9.2 Floor mosaic with a Giraffa camelopardalis and groom (bottom right), dated 531, Diakonikon Baptistery, Mount Nebo, Jordan.

known and read in the urban centres of the Islamic world due to the fame of the author and his informal writing style.6 Furthermore, the appealing nature of his adab literature would have encouraged oral transmissions and discussions of the themes and ideas in his works. As for the origins of the giraffe, al-Jahiz challenged the popularly accepted notion that it was a composite creature borne from the offspring of a male leopard and a female wild camel, which then mates with a wild cow or ox.7 He claimed that this falsehood was based on a misunderstanding of the Persian denotation for the giraffe as the ushtur-gaw-palank – literally, “the camel-cow-leopard.”8 As further clarification al-Jahiz explained the Persian practice of naming animals according to what they resembled, which was not necessarily what they derived from. Thus, he confirmed that the Persian name for an ostrich, ushtur-murg or “camelbird,” related to the way the bird’s featherless muscular thighs and “hoofed” feet resembled those of the camel and did not assume a hybrid parentage.9 Discussions around the giraffe’s mongrel origins persisted over many centuries. Although the geographer al-Masʿudi (d. 956) asserted in his Murпj al-Dhahab wa Maʿa¯din al-Jawhar (Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems) that the giraffe belonged to a distinct species, which is able to mate and reproduce only with its own kind, he did not, ironically, abandon the contradictory notion that a giraffe may also result from the proximity of different wild animals when they gather by watering holes during the heat of a Nubian summer.10 Subsequently, the famous cosmographer,

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9.3 Giraffe (Arabic zara¯fa or zura¯fa), folio from a copy of al-Qazwini’s Aja¯ʾib al-Makhlпqa¯t (Wonders of Creation), late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, Iraq or Eastern Turkey. Opaque watercolour, ink, gold and silver on paper, 32.7 × 22.4 cm. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian.

al-Qazwini (d. 1283), classified the giraffe as a creature of amazement and curiosity in his Kita¯b al-Aja¯ʾib al-Makhlпqa¯t wa Ghara¯ʾib al-Mawjпda¯t (The Wonders of Creation and Oddities of Existence). A late fourteenth-century illustrated copy of this work depicts the animal as al-Qazwini described it: a camel-headed, cow-horned, leopard-spotted creature, with its hind legs shorter than its forelegs, and having a gazelle’s tail. Characterized as a wondrous and strange curiosity of nature for centuries, one can only imagine the sensation caused for those who witnessed a live giraffe in the medieval period; a subject we shall return to in due course.

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Despite the widespread confusion and awe surrounding the origins of the animal, a relatively naturalistic image of a giraffe appears on a lustre-painted ceramic bowl from the Fatimid period, now located in the Benaki Museum in Athens.11 It is not very large at 24 cm in diameter and its clay body is covered in a milky white glaze with the main decoration painted in olive and golden yellow lustre pigments. The

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9.4 Lustre bowl with a giraffe and groom, late tenth–early eleventh century, Egypt d. 24 cm., Benaki Museum.

areas of restoration and repainting do not significantly impact the bowl’s main iconography. The giraffe, outlined in profile, is centrally placed and its height from hoof to horn nearly occupies the diameter of the bowl. It has the usual markings of a giraffe with a spotted body and horns. The animal’s back is covered with a fancy saddlecloth and its youthful groom holds a long leash that is harnessed to a nosering through the giraffe’s snout. The giraffe’s raised front hoof indicates that the beast is in motion and the groom is shown running in front of it. The artist who painted this bowl has not signed it nor is there any indication on the bowl of its date of production. The details seem to demonstrate that the artist had either seen a giraffe or was working from a pretty realistic picture of one. The groom’s large size is disproportionate compared to the animal, although one could argue that the artist has depicted a young giraffe (i.e. a calf). The groom’s attire includes a thigh-length tunic, which is pulled up around the hips, thus freeing his legs to facilitate movement. His tunic, pointed cap, boots, and leggings are very similar to styles of dress worn by hunters and labourers depicted in Byzantine manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.12 However, the ṭira¯z-like bands

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on his cap and sleeves and the peculiar detail of the painter’s inclusion of “breasts” on the male groom firmly locates this bowl in the Fatimid artistic tradition. The latter convention of indicating breasts – using a reserved circle with a stroke of lustre in it – is repeatedly employed by lustre painters of this period to indicate both female figures and beardless male youths, and most likely derived from an earlier Abbasid tradition of lustre painting.13 The third element of this composition is a tall curving tree behind the giraffe; the remaining sections of the bowl are filled in with densely packed peacock-eye motifs.14 The discovery of another giraffe bowl in the Museum für Islamische Kunst (Berlin) is a remarkable breakthrough in the study of the unsigned Athens bowl. With a diameter of 37 cm, the Berlin bowl’s decoration is almost identical to that on the smaller Benaki bowl, except that the artist has symmetrically doubled the three-element composition of the latter.15 Significantly, the fragmentary Berlin bowl is signed, [ʿama]l Muslim [ib]n al-Dahha¯n (literally, “the work of Muslim, son of the Painter”), in between the heads of the two giraffes on the front of the bowl. The shared composition and design of the two bowls raises several issues, including the use of pattern books by potters in the Fatimid period, the importance of signed versus unsigned pieces, and Muslim’s possible authorship of the anonymous Benaki bowl. Next, we shall investigate the latter issue and address the others in the conclusion. Gaston Wiet’s 1953 publication of another fragmentary plate signed by Muslim in the Benaki collection firmly locates this artist in the reign of the Fatimid caliph, alHakim bi-Amr Allah (r. 996–1021).16 The dating of Muslim’s activity as a potter is based on the dedicatory inscription on the rim of the plate which reads: [ʿama]l Muslim b. al-Dahha¯n wafaqa [Ab]ī al-Ḥasan Iqba¯l al-Ḥa¯kimī (“The work of Muslim, son of al-Dahhan [i.e. the painter] to please [Abu] al-Hasan Iqbal [the courtier of the caliph] al-Hakim”). Although the identity of the bowl’s patron, Abu’l-Hasan Iqbal al-Hakimi, remains unknown, another lustre bowl, signed by Muslim in the name of Ghaban, al-Hakim’s commander-in-chief of the army, confirms that the artist was actively producing work for members of the court during the caliph’s reign. Furthermore, Viktoria Meinecke-Berg’s discovery of the signed doubled giraffe bowl demonstrates that the Benaki and Berlin giraffe bowls were produced by Muslim b. al-Dahhan or artists from his atelier.17 This establishes the date of production of both giraffe bowls within the reign of caliph al-Hakim. The Benaki and Berlin bowls are, it seems, the earliest surviving examples of this iconography in Islamic art.18 What was Muslim’s source of inspiration for the iconography of these bowls? Some scholars argue that the subject matter of a giraffe and groom is a conventional motif inherited from an age-old established royal iconography.19 However, in the Fatimid Egyptian context it is more likely that Muslim was drawing inspiration from events he witnessed in person. Throughout history Egypt remained one of the major distribution centres for giraffes from across Africa.20 Giraffes were also kept in Egyptian royal menageries from the earliest times. In the Pharaonic period the highly coveted beast was believed to possess magical powers concentrated in its tail. Thus, there are several depictions on Pharaonic tomb paintings and temple reliefs of giraffes

9.5 (a) Fragmentary and restored “doubled-giraffe” lustre bowl signed by Muslim, dated 986–1025, Egypt. Earthenware, lustre painted over an opaque white glaze, d. 37 cm. Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin; (b) Reconstruction drawing of the Berlin doubled-giraffe bowl by Gertraud Zotter. After Meinecke-Berg, 1999a, “Das Giraffenbild,” fig.1.

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presented as royal tribute to the pharaoh.21 Numerous written accounts from the Graeco-Roman period reveal the trophy status accorded to the giraffe during that time. Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–247 bce) paraded a giraffe through the streets of Alexandria to celebrate his triumph over the city. The first Egyptian giraffe arrived in Rome in 46 bce and marched in Caesar’s triumphal processions over a period of several days.22 The royal pursuit of owning and publicly exhibiting giraffes persisted in the Islamic period. We know from the accounts of the Mamluk historian, alMaqrizi (d. 1442), that Khumarawayh b. Ahmad b. Tulun (d. 896), the Abbasid governor of Egypt, ordered the construction of several stables to house his exotic animal menagerie, including the iṣṭabl al-zara¯fa¯t (i.e. giraffe stables).23 More than five centuries later, an eyewitness account by Ruy González de Clavijo (d. 1412), the Spanish ambassador to the court of Timur, provides an awe-struck description of a beast he beheld for the very first time called a jornufa (i.e. giraffe), which was sent as a gift from the Mamluk sultan of Egypt to Timur in 1402.24 Unsurprisingly, the giraffe was a highly prized animal for private collection by the Fatimid caliphs of Egypt. However, the public display of the giraffe took on a new, complex dimension as part of the dynasty’s carefully orchestrated urban processions on major religious occasions; the beast also attained greater significance when presented as part of an assembly of well-chosen diplomatic gifts from the Fatimid rulers.

the g i r affe in fatimid ceremonial Historical accounts attest to the presence of giraffes in ceremonial court processions, beginning in the reign of caliph al-ʿAziz bi’llah (r. 975–96) in the late tenth century as part of the celebrations marking the two great festivals, ʿĪd al-Fiṭr and ʿĪd alNaḥr. Here, al-Maqrizi quotes from an eyewitness account of the Fatimid historian al-Musabbihi:25 Al-Musabbihi recounts [in the year 380/990] … on the day of the ʿĪd [al-Fiṭr] al-ʿAziz bi’llah rode [his horse on procession] for the ʿĪd prayer and in his presence (baina yadai-hi) were palfreys (jana¯ʾib), and silk brocaded palanquins (qiba¯b) bedecked in ornaments (ḥulīy). [Also by his side were] uniformed (ziyy) troops from among [the regiments of] the Turks, Daylams, ʿAzīziyya, Ikhshīdiyya, Ka¯fпriyya, and the people of Iraq (Ahl al-ʿIra¯q). [They wore garments of] heavy silk brocade, swords, and belts made of gold. The palfreys carried saddles of gold encrusted with jewels (jawhar) and saddles made of ambergris (ʿanbar).26 [Also along this procession] was an elephant ridden by men bearing arms (al-rija¯la bi’l-sila¯ḥ) and a giraffe. Then he dismounted with the ceremonial parasol (miẓalla) laden with jewels and with his grandfather’s staff (qaḍīb jaddhu) in his hand27 (peace be upon him and his descendants) and he proceeded [to the muṣalla (prayer ground)].28 240

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9.6 Map of early Fatimid Cairo (969–1073 ce); includes processional route and location of muṣallà. Adapted from Carel Bertram’s map in Bierman, Writing Signs, map 2.

During the ʿĪd al-Fiṭr celebrations of 1005 al-ʿAziz’s son and successor, caliph alHakim, rode on procession through Cairo to the muṣalla29 accompanied by an entourage of officials, six horses with jewel-encrusted saddles, six elephants, and five giraffes.30 Although historians’ accounts provide a context in which giraffes appear as part of these lavish processions, they do not furnish any details of the onlookers’ reactions toward the marvellous animals during these grand affairs. Fortunately, there is a contemporary source that hints at the kind of sensation a giraffe may have caused on such occasions in medieval Egypt. 241

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The eleventh-century Kita¯b al-Dhakha¯ʾir wa’l-Tuḥaf (Book of Gifts and Rarities), an invaluable source for the history and politics of gift exchange in the medieval Muslim world, offers some insight into the symbolic nature of certain items that were presented and received within the courtly milieu. One such account relates an occasion in the year 421/1029–30, when al-Hakim’s son, caliph al-Zahir (r. 1021–36) sent an impressive cargo of gifts to his governor in North Africa, al-Muʿizz b. Badis b. Ziri (r. 1016–62), the fourth ruler of the Zirid dynasty.31 The vast array of gifts comprised exotic specialities from the Eastern Islamic lands such as jewels, perfumes, and Khurasani camels bearing howdahs full of beautiful singers, dancers, and eunuchs. From his own Egyptian domain the caliph sent precious textiles, gilded and jewelled armour, expensive thoroughbreds, and a magnificent giraffe, imposing in its loftiness and finery. In 1031, at the investiture ceremony of Ibn Badis’s son as the prince of the Zirid dynasty (aqd al-ima¯ra), the Zirid court poet, Ibn Rashiq al-Qayrawani, composed a panegyric to commemorate the event and the appropriateness of the gift received from the Fatimid caliph.32 The following is a translation of a few verses from Ibn Rashiq’s qaṣīda, which opens with a description of the giraffe:33 I see the moist earth and seas laden [with gifts] being carried towards you, [in such abundance] that earth and sea cannot support them. There is nothing remaining of value from Iraq … or elsewhere, [not one] thing that delights the eye. It is as if the whole of the East hastened34 to be encompassed in your virtuous right hand. A giraffe has come to you from the accoutrements of kings, announcing [herself through her] manifold attributes. She unites the charms she conveys, even though they compete in her physical makeup and the incompatibility of her limbs. Among the neck-bending creatures, her gait reveals nobility and extravagance. She stretches out a neck in the air adorning her, as if it were a banner underneath the [commander’s] banner. Her tail end is lowered while her bosom is lofty, as if she squats though she is standing. [She appears] as if she were pelted35 by perfume-crushing stones, which if arranged together, would make up the face of the [moist red] earth. She has selected an exclusive garb, the likes of which [the designers of] Sanʿaʾ would find laborious to create. Coloured like the hue of the fertile earth36 though it is [expensive] finery, in part embellished like marble by the jeweller. Or like [the colour of] dusky clouds sewn [together] which are cleaved by flashes of lightning. 242

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Or like the way the iron plates of a coat of mail clap together when polished at the edges. How wonderfully she has armed herself with her [own] skin, if only it was [truly] a protection [for her]. The giraffe (zara¯fa is feminine in Arabic) is described as part of the winnings of kings that belong to Ibn Badis, hailing from the “exotic East” with its perfumes, rare beasts, and beautiful slaves.37 The Zirid ruler not only possesses the delights of the East, he also symbolically controls the world by possessing the giraffe whose mottled hide pieces together the “face of the earth.” The giraffe’s long neck is likened to one of the military standards on procession and her hide to a protective coat of mail. Thus, she joins the noble ranks of the Zirid troops, marching alongside them. She is extolled for her beauty, although emphasis is placed on her disproportionate limbs, betraying medieval notions of her mixed parentage. Her dappled hide appears delicately marbled by a skilled jeweller so that her skin exceeds any robe fashioned by the greatest designers of Yemen. These metaphors of the giraffe’s beauty and exoticism symbolize her special status in creation and reflect the wealth and luxury of the earthly master that owns her. Ibn Rashiq’s poetry helps to imagine the sort of public fascination, awe, and admiration a bedecked giraffe would have evoked as part of a royal procession through the streets of Cairo. The lavishness of the gifts described by Ibn Rashiq can also be understood within the context of the political and diplomatic exchanges between the Fatimids and the Zirids at this time. The Zirid alliance began in the early days of the dynasty during the campaigns of the Fatimid general, al-Jawhar.38 However, by the time of al-Muʿizz b. Badis’s accession in 1016–17, Zirid allegiance to the Fatimids was rapidly deteriorating. In that year many Ismaʿili Shiʿi supporters of the Fatimids living in Qayrawan, Mahdiyya, Tunis, and Tripoli were massacred by Sunni Maliki rioters without any interference on the part of the Zirid government.39 The situation at the palace in Cairo was also deeply embroiled following the sudden disappearance and mysterious death of caliph al-Hakim in 1021.40 This was followed by the orchestrated accession of the sixteen-year-old caliph al-Zahir by his aunt and regent, Sitt alMulk, in 1021. Subsequently, the reins of political power drifted away from the Fatimid caliph and into the hands of various regents, viziers, and generals for extended periods of rule. The weakened and decentralized Fatimid state needed to maintain the loyalty of the Zirids as powerful allies and trade partners. Zirid-governed Ifriqiya (now Tunisia) was a crucial entrepôt for the trading systems of the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Sahara. The Fatimids depended on the region for grain, gold, soldiers, and slaves. They also relied on Zirid support to help contain any anti-Ismaʿili sentiments in the region.41 Thus, despite the internal turmoil faced by the dynasty, the exoticism and flamboyancy of al-Zahir’s gifts, including the giraffe, Khurasani camels, and the finest textiles (most certainly bearing ṭira¯z inscriptions with blessings 243

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for the caliph and his dynasty), reinforced Zirid ties while providing a public display of power and stability.42 This display of pomp and ceremony was augmented in Fatimid Cairo itself. According to Paula Sanders, in the years following al-Zahir’s caliphate the militarization of the state and the caliph’s continued loss of power resulted in the augmentation of pomp and ceremony within Fatimid Cairo itself in order to create the illusion of political stability. As a result, al-Zahir’s usurpers manipulated the visual symbols of caliphal authority by organising public displays of elaborate ceremonial and multiplying caliphal insignia.43 On both ʿĪd al-Fiṭr and ʿĪd al-Naḥr in 1024 al-Zahir rode on procession from the palace to the muṣalla accompanied by his Turkish and North African troops and commanders, his statesmen, an elephant, and several giraffes.44 The caliph wore his ancestral sword and held the ceremonial staff, while the troops marched next to him carrying the royal lance, brocade banners, and a red ceremonial parasol over his head.45 As in previous periods, the giraffes and the elephant formed part of the rank and file of troops and statesmen who marched next to the caliph as symbols of his royal insignia. However, the number of caliphal emblems on display had significantly multiplied since the time of al-ʿAziz, as did the number of officials who ascended the minbar (pulpit) with the caliph for the ʿĪd prayer.46 This heightening of ceremony created an elaborate public façade to mask the decrease of alZahir’s authority; he was completely excluded from participating in state affairs, now run by his new and powerful regent, ʿAli b. Ahmad al-Jarjaraʾi, and the latter’s favoured group of notables.47 Returning to the discussion on the sources and meaning of the iconography of the giraffe and groom decorating the Benaki and Berlin lustre bowls, several conclusions can be drawn based on the historical circumstances outlined above. Firstly, Fatimid court ceremonial, unlike Abbasid ceremonial, was characterized from an early period by its urban and processional nature, allowing the populations of Cairo and Fustat to participate in the activities of the court.48 During the reigns of al-ʿAziz, al-Hakim, and al-Zahir giraffes were occasionally paraded through public spaces in celebration of the most important Muslim religious holidays in Egypt.49 Al-Musabbihi’s (d. 1029) eyewitness account describes the processional route and the elaborate ceremonies that took place within and outside the walled city, affirming that the giraffes and their grooms were in full view of the public attending these functions.50 Secondly, if we re-examine the dates deduced for Muslim b. al-Dahhan’s activity as a painter of pottery, that is, sometime during the reign of al-Hakim (r. 996–1021), it is also possible that Muslim was active after al-Hakim’s death during the first few years of al-Zahir’s reign. Hence, there is strong evidence to suggest that Muslim and members of his workshop could have witnessed the ʿĪd processions during the reign of al-Hakim or al-Zahir and that their lustre designs were referring precisely to these events. The grooms painted on the Benaki and Berlin lustre bowls are wearing attire decorated with ṭira¯z bands, which suggests the context of a royal procession. With respect to the artist’s use of direct observation of a giraffe as a model for the Benaki bowl, Richard Ettinghausen remarks,

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9.7 Examples of lustre pottery shards from two other “giraffe bowls.”

The giraffe is not accurately rendered, possibly because of the various medieval Muslim theories about its mongrel origin, which might have influenced the artist, but its general aspect as well as the running gait of its attendant indicate that the whole is based on actual, though still deficient, observation.51 There is further evidence to support the theory that these lustre bowls were based on actual events and were not simply reiterations of an age-old theme of the animal garden.52 In her study of the double-giraffe bowl in Berlin, Meinecke-Berg noted the existence of more than twenty other shards of pottery in the Berlin Museum’s collection that belong to two or perhaps three other “giraffe bowls” similar to the Benaki and Berlin bowls.53 This implies that the potter Muslim and artists of his atelier were commissioned to produce several lustre bowls depicting the bedecked giraffe and running groom and were likely working from a master template, which may explain Ettinghausen’s comment regarding the “actual, though still deficient, observation” of the painter who executed the Benaki bowl. These bowls may have served a commemorative purpose following such grand occasions during al-Hakim’s procession in the year 1005. Moreover, if we accept Sanders’s argument for the political circumstances surrounding the augmentation of ceremony during the reign of al-Zahir, the bowls, as commemorative gifts, could have served as mediums for celebrating

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these ceremonies after the events, and for disseminating the message of political stability to a wider audience.54 The novelty and excitement for giraffes on ceremonial procession continued in the late Fatimid period according to al-Maqrizi’s account of the ʿĪd al-Fiṭr celebrations of 1122 during the reign of caliph al-Amir bi-Ahkam Allah (r. 1101–30).55 AlMaqrizi does not mention live giraffes in his description of the Nile inundation ceremonies led by al-Amir a year later; however, he describes lustre trays (al-ṣawa¯nī al-dhahab)56 that were used to display figurines of soldiers, giraffes, and elephants made of gold and silver inlaid with pearls and other precious gems – effectively a model procession in miniature.57

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This study of the iconography of the giraffe on Fatimid lustre ceramics raises the issue of a “shared iconography” between the court and the urban classes. Our evidence suggests that the Benaki and Berlin lustre bowls were court-commissioned pieces that recorded visual snap-shots of the public celebrations orchestrated by the ruling powers to propagate notions of sovereignty and political stability. We know that Muslim b. al-Dahhan produced other lustre ceramics commissioned by individuals connected to the court and his authorship of the giraffe bowls further confirms his status as a well-regarded artist of the Fatimid period who received royal patronage. The larger Berlin bowl, signed by the artist, may have held greater monetary value than the smaller unsigned Benaki bowl. However, the similarity between their designs suggests they were based on a template designed by Muslim, which would have been copied by artists of his atelier to make several “giraffe bowls” for the urban market and as diplomatic gifts. The use of templates for lustre designs is substantiated by other examples of this period.58 As a result, the recipients of these bowls may have ranged from members of the court and foreign dignitaries to clients from the urban populations of Egypt. The letters from the Cairo Geniza attest to a booming seafaring economy in Fatimid Egypt, where merchant families were affluent members of society and acquired luxury goods such as textiles woven with gold thread, high-quality Chinese porcelain, and lustre pottery.59 Archaeological evidence corroborates the written sources since lustre pottery has been retrieved from various urban regions of Egypt, signalling an urban market,60 while the two dedicatory lustre bowls that have come down to us were commissioned by officials connected to the court. Throughout history the giraffe has remained a symbol of power, a wondrous and strange curiosity, and a living example of the complexity of creation. On important festive occasions, the populace of medieval Cairo were given a privileged glimpse of these wondrous creatures parading through their streets, instigating the giraffe’s appearance on the lustre pottery of that period in celebration of its uniqueness and as a vehicle to promote the political aspirations of the Fatimid dynasty. An intriguing

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9.8 Barber’s dish with a giraffe and groom made to mark the arrival of a giraffe in the Jardin des Plantes in 1827. Musée national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris.

parallel to the Benaki giraffe bowl appears on a nineteenth-century barber’s ceramic shaving dish, depicting a leashed giraffe being led by her African groom. This dish is all the more significant for our investigation because it was one of several ceramic items commissioned in France to commemorate the gift of a Nubian giraffe presented by the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt, Muhammad ʿAli (r. 1805–48), to king Charles X (r. 1824–30) in 1826.61

note s 1 Sanders, Ritual. 2 Irene Bierman, Writing Signs; Bloom, “Mosque of al-Hakim”; Williams, “The Cult of ‘Alid Saints.” 3 On the use of lustre-painted ceramics in the Fatimid courtly sphere see Suleman, “From Shards to Bards,” 138. 4 Figuier, Mammalia, 223; Martin, An Introduction to the Study of Birds, 395–7 (citing Aristotle and Pliny). 5 Al-Jahiz, Kita¯b al-Ḥayawa¯n, 2: 5. There are almost two hundred known titles of al-Jahiz, and later authors referred to him as Ṣa¯ḥib al-Manṭiq, “the master of logic/eloquence.”

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6 According to Zwettler, as a result of the standardization of Arabic grammar and the widespread use of paper in the Islamic heartlands by the end of the eighth century, “the level of effective literacy reached in the urban centres of the Islamic empire, among most classes of the Muslim population, was probably higher and more broadly based than any other culture had achieved or would achieve until the late Renaissance.” Zwettler, “al-Jahiẓ,” 48. 7 Al-Jahiz, Kita¯b al-Ḥayawa¯n, 2: 5. 8 Actually, al-Jahiz mistranslated the Persian word palank (balank in Arabic) as hyena rather than leopard, although one can assume in this case he was referring to the spotted variety of the hyena. 9 Al-Jahiz, Kita¯b al-Ḥayawa¯n, 1: 143. 10 Al-Masʿudi, Murпj al-dhahab wa maʿa¯din al-jawhar, 2: 5. 11 The areas of restoration and repainting do not significantly impact the bowl’s main iconography. I wish to thank Mina Moraitou at the Benaki Museum for allowing me to examine and photograph this bowl (inv. no. 749). The main bibliography on it includes: Philon, Early Islamic Ceramics, 172, 220, fig. 464, plate XXI; Meinecke-Berg, “Das Giraffenbild”; Meinecke-Berg, “Fatimid Painting,” 354ff; Ettinghausen, “Early Realism,” 265ff.; Institut du Monde Arabe, Trésors fatimides du Caire, 112, no. 36; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Schätze der Kalifen, 105–6, no. 53; Musée de Cluny, Reflets d’or, 34, no. 16; Komaroff, Gifts of the Sultan, 110, 287. I also wish to thank Dr Teresa Bernheimer for her translation assistance. 12 Note the attire of the hunter from an eleventh-century copy of Pseudo-Oppian’s Cynegetica in Venice illustrated in Spatharakis, “Observations,” 146–67. 13 Note the Abbasid lustre shard depicting a beardless male with “breasts” wearing attire with ṭira¯z-bands in Philon, Early Islamic Ceramics, pl. XI–C and fig. 355, p. 159. Ṭira¯z-bands were embroidered or woven on garments worn by employees and officials of the ruling Islamic dynasty and usually included the ruler’s name with a place and date of production. 14 Meinecke-Berg identifies it as a lotus tree, derived from a Late Antique artistic tradition. See “Das Giraffenbild,” 341–2. For a discussion on the significance of the peacock-eye motif, see Suleman, “From Shards to Bards,” 138. 15 Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin, inv. no. I. 43/64.135. The nineteen shards of this bowl were identified by Johanna Zick-Nissen and published by Meinecke-Berg, “Das Giraffenbild” and “Fatimid Painting”; and Musée de Cluny, Reflets d’or, 34, no. 16. Apart from the shapes of the spots on the giraffes’ hides, the iconography on the two bowls is almost identical. As the Berlin bowl is in a fragmentary state, the full reconstruction by Gertraud Zotter was based on the Benaki bowl’s design. 16 Wiet, “Un céramiste,” 168. 17 Meinecke-Berg, “Das Giraffenbild” and “Fatimid Painting.” 18 For later examples see Institut du Monde Arabe, Trésors fatimides, cat. no. 200; Cott, Siculo-Arabic Ivories, cat. no. 38; Zwettler, “al-Jahiẓ,” 46; Hillenbrand, “Bestiaries,” 185; Komaroff, Gifts of the Sultan, 106–7. 19 In support of this see Meinecke-Berg, “Fatimid Painting,” 358; Grabar, “Qu’est-ce que l’art fatimide?” 16; Grube, “Realism or Formalism.”

the g ir affe in the mater ial culture of fatimid eg y p t 20 Laufer, The Giraffe, 25. The Giraffa camelopardalis species thrives throughout most of central and southern Africa. The Giraffa reticulata, with evenly spaced five-sided spots, is restricted to northeast Africa in Somalia, Ethiopia, and northern Kenya and is depicted in Persian and Chinese art (see Hillenbrand, “Bestiaries,” 185 and Laufer, The Giraffe, 3). The rare Rothchilds giraffe has a golden brown colour. The Masai giraffe, probably the one depicted on the Egyptian lustre bowls, is the smallest and has irregularly shaped spots. 21 In the tomb paintings of Huy, the viceroy of Nubia at Thebes (c. 1358–50 bce), servants are depicted carrying trays of gold, perfume, animal skins, and giraffes’ tails, and leading a young Nubian giraffe as tribute to King Tutankhamen. See Mekhitarian, Egyptian Painting, pl. 40; Laufer, The Giraffe, 19–25; Houlihan, Animal World, colour pl. XV. 22 Contemporary sources relate that the giraffe’s appearance at the Roman circus caused great sensation. Laufer, The Giraffe, 58. Michael Allin’s historical novel, Zarafa, relates how the giraffe was subsequently killed by lions as part of the circus entertainment. See Zarafa, 97. 23 Al-Maqrizi, Livre des admonitions, 219, 221. See also Meinecke-Berg, “Das Giraffenbild,” 334. 24 Clavijo, Narrative of the Embassy, 86–7. For an Islamic depiction of this giraffe, see Komaroff, Gifts of the Sultan, 106–7, 288. 25 ʿĪd al-Fiṭr (on the first of Shawwa¯l) marks the occasion of the breaking of the fast following the month of Ramaḍa¯n.ʿĪd al-Naḥr (tenth of Dhū’l-Ḥijja, also called ʿĪd al-Aḍḥa) commemorates the event of the Prophet Abraham’s sacrifice of his son as an act of obedience to God. 26 Ambergris, a costly substance with a perfumed odour, is excrement from the belly of the sperm whale. The skin of the whale was used to make shields, sandals, shoes, and saddles. For further uses of the substance see al-Qaddumi, trans., Gifts and Rarities, 417. Sanders translates ʿanbar as amber. See Sanders, Ritual, 49. 27 Sanders identifies it as the Prophet’s staff. See Ritual, Politics and the City, 49. 28 Al-Maqrizi, al-khiṭaṭ wa’l-a¯tha¯r (1853–54), 1:451 (quoting al-Musabbihi). For another account mentioning a giraffe and an elephant on the ʿĪd al-Fiṭr procession during the reign of al-ʿAziz in AH 383 (983 ce) see al-Maqrizi, Ittiʿa¯ẓ al-ḥunafa¯ʾ, 1:279; see also MeineckeBerg, “Das Giraffenbild,” 335. 29 The muṣalla was located outside the northern city wall near Bab al-Nasr and the mosque of al-Hakim. Badr al-Jamali incorporated al-Hakim’s mosque inside the extension of the walls built by him in 1087, but he left the muṣalla outside his fortifications. For the establishment and importance of the muṣalla in the Fatimid period see Sanders, Ritual, 45. 30 395 H. Al-Maqrizi, Akhba¯r al-aʾimma al-fa¯ṭimiyyīn al-khulafa¯ʾ, 2:58. These elaborate ceremonies were stopped by the caliph as part of his edicts some time later. In 403/1012–13 al-Hakim “made a great point of celebrating the two great Islamic festivals without a procession and without ornaments.” See Canard, “Al-Ḥa¯kim bi-Amr Alla¯h,” and also Meinecke-Berg, “Das Giraffenbild,” 335n18. 31 Anon., Kita¯b al-Dhakha¯ʾir, 68–70. Al-Zahir’s gift was sent to reciprocate the gift presented by Ibn Badis the previous year. See Qaddumi, trans., Book of Gifts and Rarities, 106–8. 32 Born in 1000, Ibn Rashiq became Ibn Badis’s court poet around the age of twenty and died in 1063–64 or 1070–71 in Mazara, Sicily.

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33 Translated from al-Qayrawani, Dīwa¯n, 16–18. There are slight variations in the verses from his Dīwa¯n and those quoted in Anon., Kita¯b al-Dhakha¯ʾir, 71–2. See also Qaddumi, trans., Gifts and Rarities, 106–8. I wish to thank Dr Nadia Jamil for her help during the early stages of my work on Kita¯b al-Dhakha¯ʾir and with this poem in particular. 34 ḥatta ka-anna al-sharqa aʿmala fikra-hu, literally “It is as if the East focused its concerns.” 35 The verb used is rajama, meaning to throw or pelt. The eighth form, irtajama, means to be heaped with stones and may also apply here. 36 The word is dabl, meaning manure. Al-Qaddumi prefers to read it as dhabl (i.e. motherof-pearl). 37 I include Egypt as part of the “exotic East,” as seen from the perspective of Ibn Badis in North Africa. 38 Ziri b. Manad, chief of the Sanhaja tribe and a fervent Ismaʿili Shiʿi, was given permission by the Fatimid caliph al-Qaʾim to found and fortify the city of Ashir in Ifriqiya. Later, caliph al-Muʿizz bestowed the governorship of North Africa to Buluggin b. Ziri, the founder of the dynasty. See Daftary, The Isma¯ʿīlīs, 162. 39 For the anti-Shiʿi massacres see Daftary, The Isma¯ʿīlīs, 182–3; Idris, La Berbérie orientale, 1:143ff; Brett, “The Fatimid Revolution (861-973),” 629–32. 40 The circumstances surrounding al-Hakim’s death are shrouded in mysterious and conflicting reports. One account accused the Fatimid princess Sitt al-Mulk, al-Hakim’s sister, of plotting his murder. See Daftary, The Isma¯ʿīlīs, 191–2. 41 Brett, “The Fatimid revolution,” 615–19; and Idris, La Berbérie orientale, 151–2. 42 As a result of complex economic, political and religious tensions in the region, Ibn Badis formally renounced the suzerainty of the Fatimids around the year 1048 in favour of the Abbasids, and the khuṭba was read in the name of Abbasid caliph in all of the Zirid territories. In 1054 Ibn Badis reaffirmed his allegiance to the Fatimids, as did his successor, but by then the dynasty had permanently lost Ifriqiya. Daftary, The Isma¯ʿīlīs, 201; Brett, “The Fatimid Revolution,” 633–6. 43 Sanders, Ritual, 67. 44 Al-Musabbihi, al-Juzʾ al-arbaʿпn. For the account of ʿĪd al-Fiṭr see 65ff., and for the ʿĪd al-Naḥr see 80ff. 45 Al-Musabbihi, al-Juzʾ al-arbaʿпn, 80. 46 Ibid., 66. Sanders notes that this is the first report of an ʿĪd procession that mentions the caliph’s ceremonial staff (qaḍīb), lance (rumḥ), sword (sayf), and parasol (miẓalla) all together. She states, “Coming as they do at what appears to be the nadir of al-Zahir’s power, these developments signify not power but, rather, the illusion of power.” See her, Ritual, 67. 47 Daftary, The Isma¯ʿīlīs, 192. 48 As Sanders best explains, “Abbasid caliphal ceremonies were static; they took place almost entirely in the palace. In fact, the two accounts we have of urban processions in the city of Baghdad are both processions of wazirs. The Abbasid caliphs clearly had a different conception of their capital city than did the Fatimids.” Sanders, Ritual, 8. 49 Although there is no mention of giraffes, elephants were paraded along processions during the time of caliph al-Muʿizz li-Din Allah (d. 975). See Sanders, Ritual, 47. It appears that urban ceremonies conducted by the Fatimid caliphs in Egypt had already been estab-

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51

52 53 54

55 56

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lished during the North African phase of the dynasty. Processions for ʿĪd al-Fiṭr were also conducted during the Ikhshidid and Tulunid periods in Egypt. See Sanders, Ritual, 48. Al-Musabbihi, al-Juzʾ al-arbaʿпn, 80–81. His description of the ʿĪd al-Naḥr ceremonies in 1024 include an account of the sacrificial ceremonies of she-camels conducted by the caliph at the public manḥar outside Bab al-Futuh and the more private ceremonies at the palace. Ettinghausen, “Early Realism,” 265. Conversely, Meinecke-Berg prefers to contextualize this image as a continuation of a late antique-Byzantine iconographic tradition that flourished in Fatimid Egypt through Coptic art, although she does not reject the possibility that Muslim saw giraffes during such processions. Meinecke-Berg, “Das Giraffenbild,” 336. This being Meinecke-Berg’s argument. Meinecke-Berg, “Fatimid Painting,” 356; eadem, “Das Giraffenbild,” 341. Ibid., 333 and n.8. The ʿĪd celebrations during the reign of al-Zahir in 1024–25 coincided with severe famine and economic crisis in Egypt – an unlikely time for members of the public to commission lustre pottery. See Daftary, The Isma¯ʿīlīs, 192. However, this would not have precluded members of the court from commissioning commemorative bowls as gifts for high officials and notables within and outside Egypt. Al-Maqrizi, al-Khiṭaṭ (1853–54), 1:454. The Arabic term used, al-ṣawa¯nī al-dhahab is somewhat ambiguous and may also refer to trays made of gold. For a discussion on the problems of translating the terms ṣīnī and ṣawa¯nī in medieval sources see Suleman, “The Lion, the Hare and Lustre Ware,” 39–46. Al-Maqrizi, al-Khiṭaṭ (1853–54), 1:472; Sanders, Ritual, 105–6. There are two near identical lustre bowls depicting harpies in the Benaki Museum (inv. no. 203) and the Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo (inv. no. 14988). Meinecke-Berg also mentions the existence of fragments of a third harpy bowl in the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin (inv. no. I 43/64, 141, 289). See Meinecke-Berg, “Fatimid Painting,” 354, n.26. For the evidence see Suleman, “From Shards to Bards,” 135–8. For examples from the Cairo Geniza of the contents of wedding trousseaus and merchant lists see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, vol. 4. For the full archaeological findings see Scanlon and Kubiak, Fusṭa¯ṭ Expedition. The novel, Zafara, by Michael Allin details the long and arduous journey of this female giraffe from Egypt to France and how her parade through the streets of Paris and Marseilles created a huge sensation. See also Komaroff, Gifts of the Sultan, 288–9, for a miniature paper theatre produced in England to commemorate Muhammad ʿAli’s giraffe.

biblio g r aphy Allin, Michael. Zarafa. London: Headline Publishing, 1998. Anon. (attributed to Ibn al-Zubayr). Kita¯b al-Dhakha¯ʾir wa’l-tuḥaf li’l-Qa¯ḍī al-Rashīd b. al-Zubayr. Edited by Muhammad Hamid Allah. Kuwait: Government Press of Kuwait, 1959. Bierman, Irene. Writing Signs: The Fatimid Public Text. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998.

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fahmida suleman Bloom, Jonathan. “The Mosque of al-Hakim in Cairo.” Muqarnas 1 (1983): 15–36. Brett, Michael. “The Fatimid Revolution (861–973) and its Aftermath in North Africa.” In Cambridge History of Africa 2 (c. 500 bc–ad 1050). Edited by J.D. Fage, 589–636. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Caiger-Smith, Alan. Lustre Pottery: Technique, Tradition and Innovation in Islam and the Western World. London: Faber, 1985. Cott, Perry. Siculo-Arabic Ivories. Princeton: Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University, 1939. Daftary, Farhad. The Isma¯ʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines, second edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. De Clavijo, Ruy González. Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo to the Court of Timour at Samarcand, A.D. 1403–6. Translated by Clements R. Markham. London: Hakluyt Society, 1859. Ettinghausen, Richard. “Early Realism in Islamic Art.” In Studi Orientalistici in onore di Giorgio Levi Della Vida (Rome: Instituto per l’Oriente, 1956), 250–73. Figuier, Louis. Mammalia: Their Various Orders and Habits. London: Chapman and Hall, 1870. Goitein, Shlomo. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. Volume 4: Daily Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. Grabar, Oleg. “Qu’est-ce que l’art fatimide?” In L’Égypte Fatimide: Son art et son histoire, edited by Marianne Barrucand, 11–18. Paris: University of Paris-Sorbonne Press, 1999. Grube, Ernst. “Realism or Formalism: Notes on Some Fatimid Lustre-Painted Ceramic Vessels.” In Studi in onore di Francesco Gabrieli nel suo ottantesimo compleanno, edited by Renato Traini, 423–32. Rome: University of Rome “La Sapienza,” 1984. Hillenbrand, Robert. “Mamlūk and Īkha¯nid Bestiaries: Convention and Experiment.” Ars Orientalis 18 (1988): 149–65. Houlihan, Patrick. The Animal World of the Pharaohs. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1996. Idris, Hady. La Berbérie orientale sous les Zīrīdes, Xe-XIIe siècles. Paris: AdrienMaisonneuve, 1962. Institut du Monde Arabe. Trésors fatimides du Caire (exposition présentée à l’Institut du monde arabe du 28 avril au 30 août 1998). Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe 1998. Jahiz, Abu ʿUthman ʿAmr b. Bahr al-. Kita¯b al-Ḥayawa¯n. Edited by Muhammad Harun, 8 vols. Cairo: Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1966–69. Komaroff, Linda. Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts. New Haven and London: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2011. Kunsthistorisches Museum. Schätze der Kalifen: Islamische Kunst zur Fatimidenzeit (Wien, Künstlerhaus, 16. November bis 21. Februar 1999). Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1998. Laufer, Berthold. The Giraffe in History and Art. Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1928. 252

the g ir affe in the mater ial culture of fatimid eg y p t Maqrizi, Taqi al-Din Ahmad b. ʿAli al-. Kita¯b al-Mawa¯ʿiẓ wa’l iʿtiba¯r bi-dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa’la¯tha¯r, vols. 1–2. Edited by Muhammad Quttah al-ʿAdawi. Bulaq: Al Amiriya Press, 1270/1853–54. – Ittiʿa¯ẓ al-ḥunafa¯ʾ bi-akhba¯r al-aʾimma al-fa¯ṭimiyyīn al-khulafa¯ʾ, edited by Jamal al-Din al-Shayyal and Muhammad Hilmi M. Ahmad. Cairo: Lajnat Ihyaʾ al-Turath al-Islami, 1967–73. – Kita¯b al-Mawa¯ʿiẓ wa’l iʿtiba¯r bi-dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa’l-a¯tha¯r (Livre des admonitions et de l’observation pour l’histoire des quartiers et des monuments ou description historique et topographique de l’Égypte), Series vol. 3, part 3. Translated by Paul Casanova. Cairo: ifao, 1906. Martin, W. An Introduction to the Study of Birds, or, the Elements of Ornithology. London, Religious Tract Society, 1835. Masʿudi, Abu al-Hasan ʿAli b. al-Husayn b. ʿAli al-. Murпj al-dhahab wa maʿa¯din aljawhar, 4 vols. Edited Muhammad Muhyi al-Din ʿAbd al-Hamid. Beirut: al-Maktabah al-ʿAsriyah, 1976. Meinecke-Berg, Viktoria. “Das Giraffenbild des fatimidischen Keramikmalers Muslim.” Damaszener Mitteilungen 11 (1999): 331–44. – “Fatimid Painting on Tradition and Style: The Workshop of Muslim.” In L’Égypte Fatimide: Son art et son histoire, edited by Marianne Barrucand, 349–58. Paris: University of Paris-Sorbonne Press, 1999. Mekhitarian, Arpag. Egyptian Painting. Geneva: Skira, 1954. Musabbihi, Muhammad b. ʿUbayd Allah b. Ahmad, al-. al-Juzʾ al-arbaʿпn min akhba¯r Miṣr li’l-Musabbiḥī (Tome quarantième de la chronique d’Égypte de Musabbiḥī. Le Prince alMukhta¯r ʿIzz al-Mulk Muḥammad Ibn ʿUbayd Alla¯h Ibn Aḥmad, 366-420/977–1029), Part 1: Partie Historique, edited by Ayman Fuʾad Sayyid and Thierry Bianquis. Cairo: ifao, 1978. Musée de Cluny. Reflets d’or: D’Orient en Occident la céramique lustrée ixe–xve siècle (Musée de Cluny – Musée National du Moyen Age, 9 Avril – 1er Septembre 2008). Paris: Editions de la rmn 2008. Philon, Helen. Early Islamic Ceramics: Ninth to Late Twelfth Centuries, the Benaki Museum Athens. Athens: Benaki Museum and Islamic Art Publications, 1980. Qaddumi, Ghada al-Hijjawi al-, trans. Book of Gifts and Rarities (Kita¯b al-Hada¯ya¯ wa altuḥaf): Selections Compiled in the Fifteenth Century from an Eleventh-Century Manuscript on Gifts and Treasures. Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 1996. Qayrawani, Abu Muhammad al-Hasan ibn Rashiq al-. Dīwa¯n Ibn Rashīq al-Qayrawa¯nī, edited by ʿAbd al-Rahman Yaghi. Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafa, no date. Sanders, Paula. Ritual, Politics and the City in Fatimid Cairo. Albany: suny Press 1994. Scanlon, George, and Wladyslaw Kubiak. Fusṭa¯ṭ Expedition Final Report, Vol. 2: Fusṭa¯ṭ-C. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns 1989. Spatharakis, Ioannis. “Observations on a Few Illuminations in Ps.-Oppian’s Cynegetica ms. in Venice.” In idem, Studies in Byzantine Manuscript Illumination and Iconography. London: Pindar Press, 1996, 146–67. 253

fahmida suleman Suleman, Fahmida. “The Lion, the Hare and Lustre Ware: Studies in the Iconography of Lustre Ceramics from Fa¯ṭimid Egypt (969–1171 ce).” D. Phil. dissertation. University of Oxford, 2004. – “From Shards to Bards: Pottery-Making in Historic Cairo.” In Living in Historic Cairo: Past and Present in an Islamic City, edited by Farhad Daftary, Elizabeth Fernea, and Azim Nanji, 132–44. London and Washington: Azimuth Editions in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies and University of Washington Press, 2010. Wiet, Gaston. “Un céramiste de l’époque fatimide.” Journal Asiatique 241 (1953): 249–53. Williams, Caroline. “The Cult of ‘Alid Saints in the Fatimid Monuments of Cairo. Part I: The Mosque of al-Aqmar.” Muqarnas 1 (1983): 37–52. Zwettler, M. “Abu ʿUthman ʿUmar bin Bahr al-Jahiẓ (776–869).” In The Genius of Arab Civilization: Source of the Renaissance. Edited by John R. Hayes, 46–9. London: Phaidon, 1976.

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chapter 10

Investigations into Later Persian Ceramics at the Royal Ontario Museum (1987–) Lisa Golombek

Within the Royal Ontario Museum’s (rom) collection of objects from the Islamic world, ceramics dominate. Along with many of the world’s great museums that were just starting to build collections in this area in the early twentieth century, the rom was able to acquire large numbers of Timurid (fifteenth century) and Safavid pottery (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries). Most of it came from Armenian dealers, trading in the Caucasus, Iran, Cairo, and many European cities. Because the number of pots surviving from these periods in many museums is vast, I felt that an in-depth study of the material might yield significant information about the ceramics industry in these periods and shed light on certain aspects of their social history.1 These wares posed a special problem because they reflect the global impact that Chinese blue-and-white porcelain had begun to exert since the late fourteenth century. The Chinese wares were made from kaolin clay, which produces a translucent, brilliant white body attractive to markets all over the world. Designs are painted in cobalt, which was originally imported from the Middle East, where local potters had used it effectively together with other colourful pigments. Beginning in the mid-fourteenth century the new Chinese wares restricted the palette to the bright blue pigment. The decoration was distinctively Chinese, with figural scenes and vegetal motifs drawn from scroll painting, wood-block designs, textiles, and other arts and wholly unlike anything produced in the Islamic world or elsewhere. The Chinese began exporting these new wares toward the end of the fourteenth century. From this moment on, Persian potters looked to Chinese and other Asian models (based on the Chinese), while abandoning their traditional love for colourful, lively scenes of horsemen, courtiers, and animals. Persian potters could not achieve the translucency of porcelain because they lacked the kaolin clay, but they were able to approach the brilliance of the white body using finely ground quartz (stonepaste). Although often seen as imitative of the Chinese, later Persian pottery ranges in quality from vessels that are superb in both drawing and technical quality to the crassly painted goods designed for a mass market. This wide range makes it one of the most fascinating aggregations to plumb for information on social and economic history.

lisa golombek

Past studies of Persian chinoiserie ceramics have focussed on the Chinese models, attempting to date thereby the Persian imitations.2 While this approach might yield dates before which the model was not available, it was not reliable because of the Persian potter’s tendency to copy models that were antiques, preserved in royal or private collections. Nor does identifying Chinese themes that appear on groups of vessels help us differentiate workshops because all workshops had access to the same models.3 Only when there is a definite break in style coming from China, as with the onset of Kangxi rule in the late seventeenth century (1662–1722), can the Chinese models be reliable sources of dating Persian pottery. Regarding the use of motifs or style as criteria, we found that certain aspects of the decoration, such as the backs of dishes (fig. 10.4), could be useful indicators of both date and provenance. This information arose, however, only out of studies that allowed our team to group designs based on other criteria.

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The Timurid project was conceived in 1987 and presented in a publication of the Royal Ontario Museum in 1996.4 Its goal was to find objective criteria for establishing chronology and provenance before any further conclusions could be drawn. The reader is referred to the publication for a discussion of these criteria. Here we will summarize the most relevant findings and the routes that took us there. What was needed first was a method for grouping pots on the basis of their internal characteristics. The petrographic analysis of Islamic stonepaste wares, then being developed by Robert Mason, was adopted as the basis for determining groups and, in some cases, provenance.5 The stonepaste body is composed largely of quartz, but every source of quartz looks somewhat different mineralogically. Some have inclusions. Some have grains that are rounded, indicating erosion. Mason has been able to define groups of vessels sharing the same petrology. In many cases we have been able to pin these groups to geographic regions or even to specific sites. Provenance could also be suggested by distribution (many documented sherd collections were used) or, in rare cases, by inscriptions on the object naming the place of manufacture. Seriation of motifs by Gauvin A. Bailey helped establish relative chronology, which could be fixed to a certain extent by a small number of objects bearing dates. For the Safavid period the motifs were drawn and analyzed by Eileen Reilly. Patty Proctor dealt with the links to the Chinese repertory. Mason continued to provide the petrographic underpinning. The number of Timurid vessels in our museum’s collection was small, but other museums held sherd collections from which petrographic samples could be taken. Of particular interest were the sherds excavated in Samarqand and Kunya Urgench, which are spread among several museums – in Samarqand, Moscow, and St Petersburg (The Hermitage). These vessels were painted in a style reminiscent of Syrian copies of Yuan blue-and-white wares (fig. 10.1). Notable was the lotus blossom with

l ater persian cer amics at the royal ontar io museum

10.1 Bowl, underglaze painted stonepaste, Samarqand petrofabric, c. 1410. Royal Ontario Museum.

pointy petals, which we refer to as the “Syrian blossom.”6 We were led to conclude that the earliest chinoiserie-producing workshops in Samarqand were founded by the potters brought from Syria by Timur, following the conquest of Damascus in 1401. The Samarqand petrofabric was distinguished through the presence of sandlike grains, suggesting that the source of the quartz was pebbles from a riverbed. This would have been the type of source that Syrian potters knew from home. The Samarqand workshop continued to reproduce late Yuan designs even though the styles of porcelain then being exported from China had undergone great change under the Ming dynasty. After Timur’s death in 1405, the centre of power shifted to Herat under the rule of his son Shahrukh (1405–47). He and many of the sons and grandsons of Timur greatly admired Chinese pottery and received shipments of porcelain, much of it as gifts from the emperor. When the foreign craftsmen residing in Samarqand were allowed to return home in 1411, some may have moved elsewhere in the Timurid world. Two new workshops were established in Khurasan: at Mashhad and Nishapur.7 Here the potters could produce chinoiserie vessels for markets that did not have access to the Chinese originals. The identification of the Mashhad workshop was based on petrographic analysis of two vessels, inscribed with the name of their place of manufacture as well as the date. Although separated by some forty years, they shared a petrofabric with the same characteristics.8 The Nishapur workshop was identified through examination

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of sherds excavated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.9 As well, one early Safavid dish bears a date and names its provenance as Nishapur (929/1522–23), and it shares stylistic idiosyncrasies with a series of confirmed Nishapur vessels.10 A fourth Timurid workshop was identified but its location has not been established. This is called “Indian Ocean” ware because sherds sharing the same petrofabric have been found at Siraf as well as in East Africa. A likely source is Susa, where some vessels of this type were found and are now in the Louvre.11 The production can be sequenced on the basis of several dated vessels from Nishapur and Mashhad. A group of Nishapur turquoise and black wares date between 1468 and 1495.12 Their designs are possibly based on the Chinese “Cizhou” models.13 The other significant group consists of dishes and bowls (“peony” class) that were inspired by early Ming vessels with large, fleshy blossoms as well as birds and other animals (fig. 10.2). The Nishapur examples are superbly painted, imitating even the “heaped-and-piled” brushstrokes of the Ming originals. We know that the Nishapur workshop continued to function well into the early Safavid period because of the dish mentioned above. The fate of the Timurid Mashhad workshop is not clear, but by the early seventeenth century a pottery at Mashhad was taking its quartz from the same source. A study of the motifs used on the backs of dishes indicates that each workshop had its own set. For Nishapur it was the “double-scroll” (fig. 10.3A). For Mashhad it was a series of discrete tendrils. Each also had distinctive rim designs. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, as Timurid power gave way to Turkman domination, some of the potters of Khurasan left for Tabriz, the new Turkman capital. Here, despite the unfavourable conditions for ceramic production (igneous rock rather than quartz), a pottery was established that would dominate in the sixteenth century.14 Initially, the production was quite fine, emulating the work of the Khurasan potters and using some of its trademark rims and backs. During the sixteenth century, Tabriz evolved a series of back motifs over time (fig. 10.3 B–G; J–l). The findings of the Timurid Ceramics Project, in addition to the establishment of provenances and chronology, illuminate two distinct areas of investigation. The first relates to the operation of local workshops. Here we found that workshops tended to cater to the capital city of the realm, whether or not that city had a tradition of making fine pottery. Samarqand did enjoy a reputation for elite wares in the ninth through eleventh centuries, but it does not seem to have distinguished itself in the succeeding centuries until Timur. His potteries were established by fiat, that is, he deliberately brought in specialists who could imitate Chinese blue-and-white. We do not know much about the production of fine pottery in Timurid Herat, but because two major centres of production, Nishapur and Mashhad, lay nearby, we may suppose that they supplied the capital city of Timur’s successor, Shahrukh. Nishapur had, in fact, been a major centre of production prior to the Timurid period, from the ninth century through the twelfth and possibly right through to the fifteenth century. When the Turkmen dynasties took over in Tabriz in the second half of the 258

10.2 Dish, underglaze painted stonepaste, “peony style,” Nishapur petrofabric, late fifteenth–early sixteenth century. Royal Ontario Museum.

10.3 Drawing of motifs found on backs of late fifteenth- to sixteenth-century dishes.

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fifteenth century, they sponsored pottery workshops despite the lack of good local quartz for the stonepaste body. Potteries were established in or near centres of political power. The other set of conclusions concerns the impact of the competition from foreign imports, that is, Chinese porcelain. Timurid potters strove to make their vessels look Chinese, perhaps for an aristocratic market that did not have access to the originals or could not afford them. However, there is a wide range of quality in the Persian imitations. Some are very crude while others demonstrate the well-honed skills of the painter. This range of quality suggests that all levels of society admired the Chinese wares and were to some extent knowledgeable about their existence and their legendary properties. The imitation did not have to be perfect in order to substitute for the real thing. The segment of society catered to by the potters was fairly broad, ranging presumably from middle class to aristocracy. Although often of high quality, what distinguishes the Timurid production of chinoiserie pottery from that of the next period, the Safavid, was the absence of a need to replace the Chinese object. Vessels looked very Chinese, but no one would mistake them for porcelain. The copying was not precise even though the painting could be very skilful.

t h e s a fav i d cer a m i c s p ro j e c t

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The number of Timurid vessels and sherds identified for inclusion in the database, some 200 objects, was relatively small compared to the size of the Safavid database (more than 2,000). We began researching the Safavid period (1505–1722) in 1996. Beginning with the transition from Timurid/Turkman to Safavid, we noted the continuation of the late fifteenth-century workshops at Tabriz (which became the Safavid capital in 1506) and Nishapur. Some of this production had been included in the Timurid book as “early sixteenth-century,” but we found that much of it extended well into the second half of the century. Not until the Jiajing period (1522– 66) did the Persian potters depart from Timurid tradition and seek inspiration in contemporary Chinese imports.15 The Tabriz workshop was dominant throughout the century. At the time that Shah Tahmasb moved the Safavid capital from Tabriz to Qazvin (1555–56), a small workshop was established there that produced figural tiles and vessels. The seventeenth century opens with a new set of dynamics. In 1598 the ruler Shah Abbas moved the capital again, this time to Isfahan, already a great mercantile centre. He embellished his new capital and called upon his closest associates to develop new suburbs. The crowning centrepiece was the great Maydan-i Shah, a huge piazza, still today the favoured tourist destination, with its majestic Friday mosque, jewel-like Lutfallah mosque, commanding Ali Qapu gate to the palace grounds, and interminable bazaar. European travellers and merchants began to seek contracts with the Shah that would assist them in the silk trade. Part of the cargo that they were shipping from the Far East along with spices was Chinese porcelain. Their large ships, carracks,

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took over the maritime trade from native seamen. Not only did they command the seas, European merchants also tailored the output of the Chinese potters to suit foreign markets. Iran stood in the middle, between the sources of the goods – China, Japan, and the spice islands of the archipelago – and the Mediterranean. The Persian Gulf became an entrepôt for these goods, some of which remained in Iran and impacted on production for local markets. The pottery industry was the one that was hardest hit. For this project visits to Kerman and Ardabil (2001–04) yielded surprising information that confirmed some previously undocumented assertions about Safavid pottery (for example, that Kerman was the major centre of production) but refuted others that had long been cherished (such as the attribution of pots with black outlines to the other major centre, Mashhad).16 Many more textual sources bearing directly or indirectly on the history of the pottery industry exist for the Safavid study than were available for the Timurid study. Of singular importance have been the trading records of the Dutch East India Company.17 The impetus given to the production of Chinese porcelain by the European trading companies from around 1600 strongly affected local production in Iran. Local potters had either to produce cheaper versions of good quality or appeal to a downscale market. It has been possible through establishing a chronology of the Safavid pottery to observe how foreign competition affected the industry over the decades of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Both European travellers’ reports18 and Persian literature (particularly, the tazkirat) reveal how Safavid society regarded this pottery, considering it almost as fine as the Chinese original and, in some cases, even finer. The methodology was based on the Timurid project, but many more samples were used to establish the petrography. Studies were made of the rims and backs that yielded diagnostic information comparable to that of the earlier project. However, the designs on the face of dishes could not be used diagnostically if they were close to the Chinese models. In the seventeenth century we see the introduction of “potters’ marks” on the base of many vessels. Close study of these indicated that the square type of mark (fig. 10.4), which imitates the Chinese reign mark, was initially used by all workshops (Mashhad and Kerman) but that the “tassel-mark” (fig. 10.7b), which appears only in the second half of the seventeenth century, is to be found only on Kerman wares. The use of these marks seems to be related to efforts to make the pots look more “Chinese.” In fact, records of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) indicate that European traders encouraged Persian potters to copy the Chinese marks.19 Some European travellers even remarked that Dutch traders in Europe were passing off the Persian copies for Chinese. Studies of shapes were generally not diagnostic, as they merely copied Chinese models that could be either antique or contemporary. However, a whole series of new shapes appear in Persian pottery that reflect new customs and habits, such as the smoking of tobacco and the drinking of coffee. Vessels made for these new practices were often adaptations of existing Chinese forms. Vases for cut flowers with multiple nozzles were particularly common (fig. 10.7a).

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10.4 Selection of potters’ marks found on Safavid pottery, early seventeenth century.

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Using the chronology that we derived from seriation and epigraphic information, we have been able to recreate the narrative of this industry, which we have divided into four phases. The earliest examples (phase I: 1615–40), judging by several dated vessels (1630s), are of superb quality and come from both Kerman and Mashhad (fig. 10.5). Some were inspired by contemporary imports and could, therefore, be considered competitive with Chinese imports, possibly even in markets outside Iran. They are characterized by the use of panelled borders, referred to in the literature as “Kraak” panels (see fig. 10.6, a phase II example with these panels) because they are commonly found on the Chinese Ming porcelains shipped to Europe in the large carracks (Dutch: kraak). The Persian vessels are close copies of the Chinese and have potters’ marks based on Chinese square reign marks.20 However, they tend to utilize

10.5 Dish, underglaze painted stonepaste, Kerman petrofabric, c. 1630. Royal Ontario Museum.

black outlines to simulate the deeper shades of blue. The vessels produced by the two major centres, Kerman and Mashhad, are indistinguishable, with the exception of a group of Mashhad dishes that resemble the Chinese only with respect to their central design. In this phase I a modest workshop located south of the new capital, at Qumisheh, known in the sixteenth century for the manufacture of tile grave markers and other inscribed tiles, began to produce vessels. These are invariably inferior to those of the major centres. In the literature on Safavid pottery, this group often goes by the name “Kubachi ware,” after the village in Daghestan where hundreds were discovered in the late nineteenth century and sold abroad. None were produced there, and the site of Kubachi poses interesting problems, which do not relate directly to our subject.21

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10.6 Dish, underglaze painted stonepaste, Kerman, c. 1640. Royal Ontario Museum.

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The second phase (1640–50) covers the transition to a period during which, in the absence of massive imports from China due to unrest there, Persian potters exercised a certain freedom to break out from constraints imposed earlier by the markets. By the middle of the century, with Chinese exports still not coming, a new era opened for the potters of Iran (phase III: 1650–80). Kerman led the way,22 abandoning the black outlining in most cases (fig. 10.6), and allowing the traditional penchant for creating abstract designs to modify Chinese-inspired motifs. Naturalistic vines and scrolls were transformed into diapers of curling leaves (fig. 10.7). New genres came into play as the palette extended to include accents of red and olive green (fig. 10.8). These were applied to slips against a white ground in designs drawn from the Persian repertory but on the same piece, contrasting with recognizable Chinese blue-onwhite themes. Other techniques, such as incised or carved slip-painting, once a mainstay of Persian pottery, returned. Potters in Kerman adopted a unique mark for their

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10.7 (a) Multi-nozzle vase for cut flowers, underglaze painted stonepaste, Kerman, c. 1650. Note stylized curling vines on shoulder and (b) tasselmark found on base of vase. Royal Ontario Museum.

product, resembling a tassel (fig. 10.7b). The tassel-mark took many different forms, even in the hands of the same potter, but is always distinguishable from other forms. Other workshops continued to employ the square mark but gradually this gave way to groups of illegible characters. Kerman developed a distinct back motif, the “fanscroll” which only appears during this timeframe (phase III) (fig. 10.9). This motif is securely dated and provenanced by a dish acquired by the Royal Ontario Museum and dated to 1084/1673–74. During this phase many new shapes emerged, particularly the flat tray-like dish, perhaps reflecting a new taste for small condiments or appetizers. Water-pipe bases (qalyans) took many different forms (see fig. 10.8), the most popular being those with mammary spout (based on the South Asian kendi) and those based on the pearshaped bottle. Because imports from China had all but stopped, the Persian potters could dominate the domestic market. Records of the European trading companies show that they sought out other sources being unable to obtain porcelain from China. By 1650 Japan began to make superb porcelain for the European market.23 Persian pottery found success in the markets of South Asia.

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Right 10.8 Qalyan (water-pipe base), underglaze painted stonepaste with polychrome slip painting, Kerman, c. 1660–80. Royal Ontario Museum. Below 10.9 Back of dated dish with “fan spray” back, typical of Kerman wares, 1084/1673–74. Royal Ontario Museum. Opposite 10.10 Qumisheh ware, showing incised lines used to speed up process of painting, stonepaste body, Qumisheh (Isfahan) petrofabric, c. 1650–80. Royal Ontario Museum.

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Not all workshops followed in Kerman’s path. There must still have been a demand for copies of the early seventeenth-century Kraak wares, as these were the models for the Qumisheh workshop during phase III. Kraak-inspired Persian wares are particularly prominent among the wares found in Kubachi, a mountain village in Daghestan, in the late nineteenth century (fig. 10.10). The Kraak copies were mass-produced for a hungry market, the identity of which we can only surmise – perhaps the army of the Shah or the servants of the court. To the uninformed they may look “Chinese,” but they are very poorly executed. The painting is done by etching into the hardened clay, probably using a stencil, and allowing the cobalt to seep into the channels to form the design. As a result, the painting is very blurry and the detail is difficult to see. This method allowed for rapid production. Several other workshops may have become active at this time, producing variations on Kraak themes. The final phase (phase IV: 1680–1722) begins with the resumption of production in China during the reign of the Kangxi emperor (1662–1722). The hallmarks that had characterized Kerman wares disappeared completely. In fact, Kerman may have lost its place to Mashhad at this point, as some of the finest pieces seem to be coming from that workshop (fig. 10.11). Persian potters tried to compete with the imports 267

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10.11 Large plate, underglaze painted stonepaste, attributed to Mashhad, c. 1700. Royal Ontario Museum.

by copying the new designs. During the previous phase they had revived the art of making lustre-painted pottery and this now became one of their main production lines. Sampled lustre wares indicate a Mashhad provenance, but several unsampled wares have tassel-marks, which suggests a Kerman origin. The lustre pieces are generally small, made for coffee or tea services, or the personal spittoon. To the traditional palette of golden brown, they added bright yellows and reds. Often the lustre will be painted on a blue ground in one area and on a contrasting white ground elsewhere (fig. 10.12). The bodies are made of very finely ground quartz. Another popular type was the carved white ware, sometimes pierced to appear translucent. In Afghanistan a vassal of the Safavids at Qandahar rebelled, leading to the invasion of Iran by the Afghans in 1719. Besieged in his capital of Isfahan the last inde268

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10.12 Lustre painted bowl, stonepaste body, Mashhad petrofabric, last quarter of seventeenth century. Royal Ontario Museum.

pendent Safavid Shah, Sultan Husayn, capitulated in 1722. While the Afghan attacks must have been disruptive, a greater threat to the Persian pottery industry came from the re-emergence of China as a major exporter of porcelain worldwide during the last decades of the seventeenth century. Persian potters could simply not compete with the massive influx of Chinese pottery arriving in Iran. While the Persian potters might make attractive wares, they could not produce porcelain. Nor could they make their own wares in sufficient quantity for an economically viable export trade. In the end they had to lower their sights, making pottery for the underclasses while the middle class could enjoy the affordable luxury imports. What happened to the ceramic industry was perhaps a foreboding of the fate of local manufacturing throughout the Middle East under the new dynamics of expanding globalized competition. 269

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n ote s 1 Indispensable for the study of this pottery is the publication of the vast collection of blue-and-white Persian pottery in the Victoria and Albert Museum in Crowe’s Persia and China. 2 Crowe, Persia and China, has used the Chinese models discreetly and made significant contributions to arriving at a relative chronology of the Persian wares, especially for the late seventeenth century. 3 This was the approach of Whitman in her doctoral thesis, “Persian Blue-and-White Ceramics.” Groups of vessels sharing the same theme were considered to be contemporaneous. 4 Golombek, Mason, and Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware. 5 On petrographic analysis see Mason, “Criteria for the Petrographic Characterization.” 6 Golombek, Mason and Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware, fig. 4.4 (see 126 for discussion of Samarqand wares). 7 Golombek, Mason and Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware, 131–6. 8 Ibid., 37. 9 Ibid., 38. 10 The dish is in the Middle East Culture Centre in Tokyo. See Golombek and Mason, “New Evidence,” 33–6. 11 I would like to thank Dr Marthe Bernus-Taylor for drawing my attention to this bowl and for enabling me to study the Susa material (for a forthcoming publication); on the petrofabric, see Golombek, Mason and Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware, 36. 12 Ibid., 134. 13 See motifs in Golombek, Mason and Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware, fig. 4.3 and pls. 50–2. 14 Golombek, Mason and Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware, 39–45. 15 The exception was a brief period during the first quarter of the sixteenth century when a series of vessels were produced at Tabriz that were inspired by the late fifteenth-century Ming designs characterized by tiny curled leaves, scrolling around large blossoms. See Golombek, Mason and Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware, fig. 4.8, F17 and derivatives. 16 Almost every writer on Safavid pottery has subscribed to this thesis: for example, Lane, Later Islamic Pottery, 92. Based on this erroneous assumption, Lane continues to compound errors in trying to reconstruct the history of the industry on 98–9. 17 Volker, Porcelain. 18 The most significant comments are summarized in Lane, Later Islamic Pottery, appendix (119–23). 19 The sources are discussed in Golombek et al., Persian Pottery in the First Global Age, 29–30. Orders from the voc agent at Masulipatam (before 1612) remarked, “It should be borne in mind that the aforesaid porcelains are most desired when they have a blue mark drawn like a character on the bottom” (Volker, Porcelain, 66–7). This comment refers to the Chinese exports, but it suggests that the Persian imitations of the Chinese would be more convincing if they also bore such marks. 20 Golombek, Mason, and Proctor, “Safavid Potters’ Marks.” 270

l ater persian cer amics at the royal ontar io museum 21 I have discussed the “Kubachi problem” elsewhere. See Golombek, Mason, Proctor and Reilly, Persian Pottery in the First Global Age. 22 Golombek, “Safavid Ceramic Industry”; Mason, “Petrography of Pottery.” 23 Volker, Porcelain, chapter 10.

biblio g r aphy Crowe, Yolanda. Persia and China: Safavid Blue and White Ceramics in the Victoria and Albert Museum 1501–1738. London: La Borie and Thames and Hudson, 2002. Golombek, Lisa. “The Safavid Ceramic Industry at Kirman.” Iran 41 (2003): 253–70. Golombek, Lisa, and Robert Mason. “New Evidence for Safavid Ceramic Production at Nishapur.” Apollo 142, no. 40 (1995): 33–6. Golombek, Lisa, Robert Mason, and Gauvin Bailey. Tamerlane’s Tableware: A New Approach to the Chinoiserie Ceramics of Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Iran. Costa Mesa, ca: Mazda, 1996. Golombek, Lisa, Robert Mason, and Patty Proctor. “Safavid Potters’ Marks and the Question of Provenance.” Iran 39 (2001): 207–36. Golombek, Lisa, Robert Mason, Patricia Proctor, and Eileen Reilly. Persian Pottery in the First Global Age: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Arts and Archaeology of the Islamic World 1. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014. Lane, Arthur. Later Islamic Pottery: Persia, Syria, Egypt, Turkey. London: Faber and Faber, 1957. Mason, Robert. “Criteria for the Petrographic Characterization of Stonepaste Ceramics.” Archaeometry 37 (1995): 307–22. – “Petrography of Pottery from Kirman.” Iran 41 (2003): 271–8. Volker, T. Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company as Recorded in the Dagh Registers of Batavia Castle, Those of Hirado and Deshima, and Other Contemporary Papers, 1602–1682. Leiden: Brill, 1954. Whitman, Marina. “Persian Blue-and-White Ceramics: Cycles of Chinoiserie.” Unpublished PhD thesis, New York University, 1978.

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chapter 11

The Stone Lions of Isfahan Parviz Tanavoli

Among the numerous stone lions placed on the tombs of the cemeteries in western and central Iran, those of Isfahan are very special. Isfahan’s six stone lions are not only the finest of all cemetery stone lions but they also seem to be the oldest. Besides introducing all six stone lions and their locations, this paper will discuss the role and the symbolism of these three-dimensional sculptures on the holiest sites – cemeteries, shrines, and mosques – of the Islamic land of Iran and the paradoxical justifications for the usage of such sculptures in Shiʿa tradition. In addition to these six stone lions, in the past there was a seventh one, which has disappeared, but which will be briefly discussed as well. The most famous of the six stone lions are the two that are installed under the Khaju Bridge by the Zayandeh-rud River. According to the only source, their placement under the Khaju Bridge goes back to the time of the Qajar ruler, Fath ʿAli Shah (r. 1771–1834). Before that they were installed at the Darvazeh-yi (city gate) Toaqchi.1 No one knows, however, whether these two lions were originally made for the abovementioned city gate or, like the other stone lions, were first installed on some tombs and then removed to the city gate.2 The other stone lions in Isfahan are installed in shrines and mosques. Among them is the stone lion at the Harun Velayat Shrine, which seems to be the oldest. Although it lacks any date or inscription, its masterly workmanship and its style distinguish it from other stone lions. This lion is installed beside the shrine, but it can only be viewed from outside (the street side) through a low fence, which encircles the outer walls of the shrine. Perhaps this was the site of the tomb of the man in honour of whom the stone lion was made. Traditionally it is seen to be an honour for a Muslim to be buried in the vicinity of a shrine. The Imamzadeh (shrine) of Harun Velayat is one of the oldest in Isfahan. On its entrance is an inscribed ceramic tile stating that the building’s construction is attributed to Shah Ismaʿil I (r. 1501– 24). In another inscribed panel, the name of its architect is given as Hussein Banna (i.e. Hussein the builder). Jean Chardin (Sir John Chardin, d. 1713), who visited Isfahan in the seventeenth century, recounts a story about the bravery of this Hussein Banna, who heroically saved Shah Ismaʿil’s wife on a stormy day. As a result of this

Above 11.1 Stone lion, Khaju Bridge, south side, seventeenth century, 82 × 128 × 42 cm. Left 11.2 Stone lion, Khaju Bridge, north side, seventeenth century, 96 × 170 × 43 cm. Below 11.3 Stone lion at Harun Velayat Shrine with detail showing compasses, sixteenth or seventeenth century, 93 × 183 × 46 cm.

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11.4 Stone lion at the Darb-i Imam Mosque, seventeenth century, 78 × 136 × 44 cm.

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act he was brought to the attention of the shah, and when his skills as a mason became known, Hussein Banna was commissioned to enlarge the complex that includes this structure.3 Could it be that this stone lion was made in honour of this Hussein Banna? A beautiful pair of compasses carved on the left shoulder of the lion strengthens this presumption, as the compasses may be related to the profession of the man in whose honour the lion was made. Not far from the stone lion at the Harun Velayat Shrine is another in the courtyard of the Darb-i Imam Mosque. A sword is carved on one flank of this lion and a circular motif on the other flank.4 Again, there is no documentary information about this stone lion. The local people believe it was made to honour a pahlavan (strong athlete). In traditional Persian culture a pahlavan is not just a strong athlete, he is a legendary hero.5 The circular motif on the shoulder of the lion may represent a shield or possibly the sun, which has long been associated with the lion in Iran since pre-Islamic times. In Mithraism, the ancient religion of Iranians, Mithra tamed all creatures and elements of the world then struggled with the sun and brought it under his power and subsequently enjoyed an intimate relationship with it.6 Several ancient objects bearing the lion and the sun have come to light. These are mainly seals, among them a black stone seal showing a rounded sun above the shoulder of a lion.7 After the advent of Islam this trend not only survived but developed further. From the tenth century onward there are numerous examples of lion and sun designs on ceramics bowls,

Top 11.5 Stone lion in the Darpush Quarter, seventeenth century, 80 × 142 × 51 cm. Bottom 11.6 Stone lion at the Ahmad Shrine, seventeenth century, 74 × 128 × 38 cm.

tiles, and coins.8 Allowing for this long relationship between the lion and the sun, it is possible that the circular shapes on the stone lions were instead representations of shields. Since the lions were installed on the tombs of warriors, the main emphasis was probably upon items of armour and weaponry, such as swords, rifles, shields.

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Another Safavid stone lion is known as the shir-i sangi-yi Darpush (stone lion of Darpush quarter). The Darpush quarter was one of the oldest quarters of Isfahan. In the 1980s the mayor of Isfahan destroyed an important part of the Darpush quarter in order to run a highway through it. Luckily, the stone lion of Darpush was saved and installed on the side of the highway. On each side of the body of this stone lion, there is a verse of poetry about the loss of the deceased, but no name or date is mentioned. The last stone lion in our list is that of Imamzadeh Ahmad (Ahmad Shrine). This shrine is located on the east side of the famous Iman (formerly Shah) Mosque in the bazaar of Isfahan and the stone lion is placed in its courtyard facing the entrance door. Unlike the other stone lions, inscriptions on this example include helpful information. Carved on each side of the body of the lion are six verses of poetry, two of which follow: I left the world with a sad and regretful heart, My pain [will last] alas till the Day of Judgement. At the beginning of my life, by the rotation of the orbit, My chest was cut by dagger and steel, my friends. If you pass by, viewing the gardens, Remember Muhammad who, when young, went under the earth. Neither a leg to step out to the field/desert, Nor a hand to remove a thorn from the leg, They closed my sight, Watching flowers and singing birds in the gardens, My friend; should you get together to chat, Remember me and my failure.

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On the back of the neck the identity of the deceased is given as Muhammad Beg, son of Hussein Khan.9 No date is specified, but one of the verses of poetry mentions the “young Muhammad,” indicating that the deceased died young. In the far corner of the courtyard of this shrine there used to be a small stone lion in a kneeling position,10 a pose different from that of all the other stone lions, which are standing on their four feet. Unfortunately that lion is no longer there. The small size of the kneeling lion was perhaps an indication that the honoured deceased was a child. Also, in addition to facial features, on its body a rifle was carved, but there was no collar. The stone lions of Isfahan are deeply rooted in Shiʿite beliefs and relating to Imam ʿAli, the first Shiʿite imam and the son in-law of the prophet Muhammad. Not only is one of the titles of ʿAli “Heydar” (lion) but his bravery and manliness are considered by Iranians to be like those of a lion. This must be primarily why stone lions became a legitimate tomb marker for heroic figures. The symbols carved on the bodies of the stone lions also affirm this association. On most stone lions, including those

stone lions of isfahan

11.7 Stone lion formerly at the Ahmad Shrine, eighteenth century, 17 × 44 × 25 cm. Present location unknown.

of Isfahan, a sword, dagger, or firearm is carved.11 These weapons, associated with the honoured deceased, are all signs of the skills of warriors and athletes. This accords with the oral testimony of local people concerning the meaning of the stone lions. On the front legs of one of the stone lions of Khaju Bridge (fig. 11.1), two wooden mils (weights for strengthening arm muscles)12 are carved and on the body of the same lion a kabaddeh and a sang (both instruments for strengthening the muscles of arms, shoulders, and back) are also carved.13 These are traditional Iranian pieces of sports equipment. Also, the mouths of nearly all the stone lions in Isfahan are open; the head of a man is often carved in the open mouth. Both of these features emphasize the ferocity and power of the animal, which is depicted as not yet tamed (as explained below). With the exception of the small kneeling lion that has disappeared, all the stone lions of Isfahan are in a standing position. They all look straight ahead, their bodies smooth with soft curves, but their legs are schematic, with straight lines. On all of them a collar is carved on the neck, a sign to indicate the domestication of the animal. In other words, despite its fierce power, it is friendly and genial. Another interesting sign on some of the stone lions of Isfahan is the arabesque decoration on top of their heads or back. The most beautiful example bearing such arabesque ornament is that of the Harun Velayat Shrine. The arabesque on this lion starts from the tip of the nose, covers the upper part of the face, and finishes with a

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triangular shape on the back. Similar arabesque motifs, though not as elaborate as that of Harun Velayat, are carved on the back of one of the stone lions of the Khaju bridge, as well as on the lions of the Darb-i Imam Mosque and that of the Darpush quarter. Such use of arabesque ornamentation derives from royal attire. In many Safavid paintings royal figures are depicted with such decoration on their shoulders.14 This tradition must have roots well before the Safavids, as in some Timurid paintings the ruler and other royal figures are depicted with similar arabesque designs on their shoulders.15 To show the superiority and the power of the lion, this arabesque ornamentation was therefore an appropriate choice, especially since among the Iranians, as elsewhere, the lion is considered “the king of the beasts.”16

the question of dating Since none of the stone lions of Isfahan bear a date, it is hard to establish their age. Through other methods (explained below), however, it is possible to make some fairly accurate estimates. One of these methods is by comparison with dated examples. Not far from Isfahan in the neighbouring province of Chahar Mahal-i Bakhtiari there are several stone lions with dates carved on them. On one of them, from the village of Hafshi-jan thirteen kilometres south of Shahr-i Kord, the date 1185/1771 is clearly legible.17 Also, a stone ram now located outside the museum in Chahar Mahal bears the date 1157/1744.18 Although both dates are well after the period of Safavid rule (1501–1736), a comparison between them and those of the Isfahan group reveals obvious distinctions. The dated stone lion and ram of Chahar Mahal are not comparable with those of Isfahan in terms of craftsmanship. The former are rough and rudimentary and the latter refined and beautifully carved. The Isfahan group gives the impression of having been made by master or court carvers, while those of the villages of Chahar Mahal were made by ordinary stone carvers, suggesting that those in Isfahan were made during the Safavid era (for examples of Bakhtiari lions, see fig. 11.8). Another way of estimating the age of the stone lions of Isfahan is to trace their history in other regions of Iran. As discussed above, the Safavids were promoters of stone lions as a symbolic reference to Imam ʿAli, the son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad. In several cemeteries around Tabriz, the first capital of the Safavid rulers, numerous stone lions can still be found.19 The age of one of these stone lions, according to the author of the The Ancient Monuments of Azarbaijan, predates the Safavids to the time of Sultan Uvayse Ilkhanid (d. 1419).20 This date corresponds with some of the stone rams in the eastern part of Anatolia,21 as well as those in Zanjan. Some of the stone rams placed on the tomb sites in Zanjan area could also be as old as those of eastern Turkey.22 It is reasonable to presume that when the Safavids changed the capital from Tabriz to Qazvin (in 1555) and then to Isfahan (in 1598), they carried the tradition of carving stone lions with them. 278

11.8 Bakhtiari stone lions in the cemetery at Bazoft.

symbolism For the Safavids, Imam ʿAli was an exemplar of man’s excellence. The shahs encouraged their men to be brave and to be ready for any sacrifice and, like ʿAli, completely devoted to God. From Safavid times onward, not only were the tombs of brave men and martyrs honoured with the image of a lion but the lion became one of the most recognized iconographic elements of the Shiʿite Iranians. The depiction of the lion on the banners of mosques and Husseiniehs should be mentioned.23 The images of lions on such banners were composed of calligraphy spelling out a well-known Shiʿite prayer in praise of ʿAli. The prayer translates as “Call upon ʿAli, through whom miracles are made manifest; you will find him a help in misfortunes. All anguish and sorrow will disappear through your friendship, Oh ʿAli, Oh ʿAli, Oh ʿAli.” The number of items bearing the image of the lion related to popular beliefs goes far beyond the scope of this paper, however.24 The desire of Iranians to associate Imam ʿAli and the lion has led to many images created by popular artists in the past few centuries. One of the most famous of these images is a tame lion resting at Imam ʿAli’s feet.25 ʿAli is sometimes also depicted in such images with his two sons, Imam Hassan and Imam Hussein. In prayers and iconographies, too, Imam ʿAli and his sons often stand next to a lion.26 There are 279

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11.9 Detail of a Husseinieh banner, nineteenth century. Qalamkar on cotton, 230 × 253 × 195 cm.

many narratives associated with these images, the most popular of which is the story of Imam ʿAli rescuing a lion that had fallen into a pond. The lion then becomes a devotee of Imam ʿAli and prostrates itself before him whenever it sees the Imam. This very same lion comes belatedly to the scene of the battle of Karbalaʾ to help Imam Hussein and his children. It is customary in passion plays and mourning ceremonies for someone to play the role of the lamenting lion.

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1 Lotfollah Honarfar, in a footnote, refers to this information as being provided to him by a knowledgeable local person. See Honarfar, Assar-i tarikhi-yi Isfahan, 292. 2 Stone lions are tomb markers. It is odd to install stone lions by the city gates. Probably these two stone lions were removed from a cemetery, though no information is available. 3 Chardin, Voyages, 3: 43–4. Chardin also cites the inscription naming Hussein: “Par la bonne fortune de Dourmich Can [Shah Isma’il’s Grand Vizier, who arranged for Hussein to enlarge the shrine complex], à qui tout est possible,/Que ce monument demeure en mémoire de la reconnaissance de Hassein le Maçon.” 4 For more information, see Tanavoli, Lion Rugs, 36–9. 5 See Mosahab, Da’erat al-mo’aaref farsi, 1: 571.

stone lions of isfahan 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13

14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Cumont, Mysteries of Mithra, 132. Tanavoli, Lion Rugs, 36, fig. 48. Ibid., 37. For a full description, see Honarfar, Assar-i tarikhi-yi Isfahan, 674. The author saw and photographed this stone lion in the mid-1970s. For comparable weapons in other media, see some of the sixteenth-century Persian paintings in Babaie, “Lions,” 239–82, pls. 22–6. A mil is made of wood in a long conical shape with a handle on top. The athletes hold a pair of mils in each hand and turn them around their shoulders to strengthen the arm and shoulder muscles. The kabbadeh and the sang shown on the body of this lion are also two traditional instruments of athletes, mainly used in zurkhaneh (literally, the house of strength or sport house). For more information and images of these instruments, see Mosahab, Da’erat al-mo’aaref farsi, 1: 1192, 1193. For some examples, see Soudavar, Persian Court, pls 146, 156, 218. For some examples, see Lentz and Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision, 186, 243. The two illustrations are: 1. A portrait of Hussein Mirza, c. 1520, after an original by Kamal al-Din Bihzad (in c. 1490), Harvard Art Museum; 2. Folio attributed to Mirza ʿAli, Tabriz, c. 1540, Harvard University Art Museum. For more information, see Tanavoli, Lion Rugs, 21, 22, 49. A picture of this stone lion appears in Galloway, ed., Parviz Tanavoli, 227. See Tanavoli, Sang-e qabr, 26–7. For some of the stone lions of Azarbaijan, see Tanavoli, Sang-e qabr, 70–4. For more information, see Karang, Asar-i bastani-yi Azarbaijan, 1: 630, 631. For two examples, see Roxburgh, ed., Turks, 202, 413. For more information, see Tanavoli, Sang-i qabr, 76–9. A Husseinieh is often a temporary mosque (a tent) set up during the holy month of Muharram to mourn the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. For some of these objects, see Tanavoli, Lion Rugs, 24–7; idem, Sang-i qabr, 12. Tanavoli, Lion Rugs, 24. Porter and Hatam, eds, Parviz Tanavoli, 394–9.

biblio g r aphy Babaie, Sussan. “Lions in the Islamic Arts of Iran.” In Parviz Tanavoli and the Lions of Iran, edited by Venetia Porter and Behzad Hatam, 239–86. Tehran: Nazar Art Publication, 2017. Chardin, Jean. Voyages de monsieur le chevalier Chardin, en Perse, et autres lieux de l’Orient, 3 vols. Amsterdam: Jean Louis de Lorme, 1711. Cumont, Franz. The Mysteries of Mithra. Translated by Thomas McCormack. New York: Dover Publications, 1956. David Galloway, ed. Parviz Tanavoli: Sculptor, Writer & Collector. Tehran: Iranian Art Publishing, 2000. Honarfar, Lotfollah. Assar-i tarikhi-yi Isfahan. (The Historical Monuments of Isfahan). Isfahan, 1344/1965.

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parv iz tanavoli Karang, Abdol’ali. Asar-i bastani-yi Azarbaijan (The Ancient Monuments of Azarbaijan). Tabriz: Intisharat’i Idarah-i Kull-i Amuzish va Parvarish Azarbayjan Sharqi, 1351/1972. Lentz, Thomas, and Glenn Lowry. Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989. Mosahab, Gholamhosseyn. Da’erat al- mo’aaref farsi (Encyclopaedia of Farsi). Tehran, 1345/1966. Porter, Venetia, and Behzad Hatam, eds. Parviz Tanavoli and the Lions of Iran. Tehran: Nazar Art Publication, 2017. Roxburgh, David, ed. Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600–1600. London: Royal Academy Press, 2005. Soudavar, Abolala. Art of the Persian Court. New York: Rizzoli, 1992. Tanavoli, Parviz. Lion Rugs: The Lion in the Art and Culture of Iran. Basel: Wepf, 1985. – Sang-i qabr (Tombstones). Tehran: Bun’gah, 1388/2009.

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chapter 12

Princes, Wine, and Animated Nature: Tabriz Painting about 1500 Karin Rührdanz

Consulting from time to time Die persisch-islamische Miniaturmalerei (1914) by Philipp Walter Schulz, one would come across two puzzling pictures.1 One painting depicts two aristocratic youths with two attendants in a garden in front of a palace; the other shows a groom sitting amidst flowering plants and bushes, with his horse standing behind him. Schulz did not elaborate on these paintings but only related that they belonged to a work called Gul-u Mul. Since no lines of text accompanied the published miniatures, nothing could be done to verify his statement but wait in the hope that, someday, the miniatures that had been in the Kervorkian Collection when Schulz published them would become accessible again. In the meantime, neither picture caught the attention of scholars although it seemed likely that they originated from Aqquyunlu Tabriz; any painting that could be added to the still very limited corpus of works connected to this court atelier should have been welcomed. Most probably, their disappearance from view and their connection to an enigmatic text discouraged research. Fortunately, at a certain point both miniatures resurfaced although this event went rather unnoticed. Already in 1975 Eleanor Sims had listed one of the miniatures among the illustrated manuscripts and single leaves at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (mia) and had it published in colour.2 The text on the back (discussed below) was not identified at that time. The second miniature waited longer. Selected by Orhan Pamuk for a short essay, a detail of it showing groom and horse was published in colour in 2005 in Asiatica, the journal of the Freer and Sackler Galleries.3 Furthermore, in 2007 a miniature named “Three figures against a leafy landscape,” which looked closely related to those two pictures, was put up for sale with Christie’s.4 Its acquisition by the Royal Ontario Museum (rom 2007.48.1) led to the research presented here. The external features of the three objects (figs 12.1–3) can be described as follows: The mia miniature is the largest (15.24 × 8.89 cm).5 Its margins are made of slightly reddish paper speckled with gold. The multicoloured ruling is composed of an inner golden band, followed by a thick red line, a thick greenish line, and another golden band, all enclosed by a thin, dark blue line. The same type of frame – without the

12.1 Garden scene with prince and courtiers, Tabriz, about 1500. Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

12.2 Waiting groom with horse in wooded grove, Tabriz, about 1500. Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian.

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12.3 Prince with courtiers in landscape, Tabriz, about 1500. Royal Ontario Museum.

inner golden band – is found on the back surrounding the written surface (fig. 12.4). This is a recto page displaying verses and prose. It comprises eight lines of very fine nastaʿlīq on creamy-whitish paper powdered with gold. Below a space filled with a golden tendril, a golden rectangle must once have contained a colophon. Now one may only detect the word katabahu at the beginning. 286

12.4 Fragment of Gul-u Mul text. Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

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The miniature belonging to the Freer Gallery (fig. 12.2) measures 12.6 × 6.1 cm inside a golden band. It is placed on a recto page with margins of the same goldspattered paper, as the mia picture. On the verso, eleven lines of prose text and verses are found written on the same kind of paper as described above (fig. 12.5). While the leaf measures 16.8 × 9.7 cm, the written surface covers an area of 9.6 × 4.2 cm and is enclosed in the same multicoloured frame.6 The rom picture (fig. 12.3) is of exactly the same size (12.6 × 6.1 cm) as the Freer miniature but has a multicoloured ruling like the larger mia picture. This frame is surrounded by a patchwork border of gold-speckled paper.7 A golden band and a thin red line separate the inner from the outer border for which the same kind of paper was used. Thus, in contrast to the other two, this miniature had been cut and “matted” to be placed in an album or behind glass.8 The treatment deprives us of any information the back of the painting may have contained. Of the external features it is, therefore, the size of the miniature only that points to a connection with the two other paintings. Stylistic comparison must take into account that the rom miniature has suffered abrasion and some overpainting (notably on the head and turban of the figure in the middle) while the other two paintings are well preserved. The similarities are nevertheless clearly visible. The young prince and his companions display the same slim, elegant figures with extremely small hands and feet on both the mia and the rom miniatures. The upper gown seems to slide from their narrow shoulders. Red, orange, and blue are the preferred colours of their garments. Fur lining and highheeled boots underline their elegant appearance. One figure in both paintings is dressed in exactly the same way: dark blue with fur lining over orange, and white boots on high heels. Since the face suffered some repair in the case of the rom painting, it no longer contributes any information. It may never have done so, however, because facial individualization did not concern the painter. The two untouched faces in the rom painting represent non-individualized male beauty in the same way as in the mia picture: clean, slightly oval faces with elongated arched eyebrows and a tiny mouth. All elements of the lush and swaying vegetation displayed on the rom miniature can also be seen on the other two pictures, including the strangely bent tree that seems to touch the leafy ground near the lower border of the painting with its top. The leaves of large flowering plants and bushes are painted in a lighter green with yellowish rendering that makes them stand out against a darker green background. Since the depiction of a waiting horse with groom asks for a complementary part, and the composition of the landscape fits well, one could imagine a picture like the rom miniature to form a double-page illustration with the Freer miniature. Each painting would go well with the topic of “Rose and Wine” or Gul-u Mul. This is the name of several Persian literary debates (muna¯ẓara). In such contests, two objects like Pen and Sword or Rose and Wine, or two phenomena like Day and Night or Love and Reason, appear in person and argue whose merits are the greatest. In 288

12.5 Fragment of Gul-u Mul text. Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian.

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the past, this genre did not attract much attention from historians of Persian literature.9 Recent research mentions as a very early example a homonymous qaṣīda by Farrukhi (d. 1037–38).10 The era of the independent prose debates (since the twelfth century) started again with “Rose and Wine” by a certain Abu Saʿd (Abu Saʿid) Tirmizi.11 Another muna¯ẓara featuring the same protagonists is either attributed to Muhammad Zangi Bukhari (late thirteenth/early fourteenth century) or to Siraj alDin Qumri Amuli (d. 1228).12 Both prose debates are among a larger number of such works contained in the Safīna-yi Tabrīz, a compendium of 209 Persian and Arabic works copied in the final years of Ilkhanid rule in Iran.13 Its publication provided the opportunity to check the text fragments preserved on the mia (fig. 12.4) and Freer (fig. 12.5) leaves against two versions of the contest between Rose and Wine. Most lines on the back of the Freer miniature relate a speech of Wine with the response of Rose beginning in the tenth line. This fragment of the debate, indeed, belongs to the muna¯ẓara ascribed to Siraj al-Din Qumri in the Safīna-yi Tabrīz.14 However, the lines on the recto of the mia painting first seemed unconnected to this work. The discrepancy was only explained when a particular manuscript of Gul-u Mul was studied. This unillustrated manuscript was copied by Sultan Ali Mashhadi in 895/1489– 90, according to the colophon, and belongs to the Mahdavi collection in Tehran.15 In contrast to earlier copies of literary debates, this is a small, separate manuscript.16 It contains the same Gul-u Mul prose text that is attributed to Siraj al-Din Qumri in the Safīna-yi Tabrīz but differs from it at the end.17 After having completed the muna¯ẓara itself, in the text contained in the Safīna-yi Tabrīz the author approaches his son, admonishes him, and points him to the metaphorical meaning of the debate.18 The copy by Sultan Ali Mashhadi in the Mahdavi collection has these lines replaced by a less intimate speech, including a poem that seems to be addressed to a ruler. This change could have been introduced to please a royal patron who may well have been Sultan Husayn Mirza.19 That the defence of Wine from a mystical point of view was originally addressed not to a court but to a gathering of likeminded friends20 may later have required some adjustment of the text in order to fit it into the courtly environment: the added lines explicitly praise a ruler’s majlis.21 It is these final lines that are found on the back of the mia picture. Hence, concerning the identity of the text on the back of both the mia and the Freer miniature, Schulz was justified in connecting the miniatures to the debate between Rose and Wine. With respect to the history of Persian manuscript illustration, this would have been a very interesting case because literary debates are usually not illustrated.22 The existence of a fine copy by Sultan Ali Mashhadi preserved as a separate manuscript, and its somewhat customized text, indicates that the work had experienced a re-evaluation in the late fifteenth century. Against this background, having the process of upgrading completed by illustration would be a novelty, but not unlikely, and it would not necessarily have required a Herat model. The Aqquyunlu court was in touch with developments in Herat. Poets, artists, and scholars moved between both cultural centres and dedicated their works to members of

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both dynasties.23 In the vivid exchange it was mostly Herat that took the lead, but not always.24 Dīva¯n illustration, for instance, was practised in the west (Shiraz and Tabriz) earlier than we can find it in the east25 – a fact of some relevance for the set of the three miniatures, as will be elaborated below. Since literary debates were composed by poets living in the Aqquyunlu realm and one was dedicated to a prince,26 it would not be a surprise to see this genre also illustrated for the first time. Regrettably, however, there is reason to doubt that the three miniatures belong to the same manuscript from which the leaves with the Gul-u Mul text are taken. Still, the mia miniature (fig. 12.1) would be conceivable as a finispiece decoration. Such paintings are not bound by the measurements of the written surface. The Freer leaf (fig. 12.2), however, is more problematic. As mentioned before, its composition demands a continuation of the scene on the left side. Hence, the horse and groom should originally have had their place on a verso side of a manuscript leaf. In fact, the picture now occupies the recto. This also makes it less likely that the paintings were executed on separate sheets first or taken from elsewhere and inserted in the process of producing the Gul-u Mul copy. Through such a remake the right part of a larger composition may have ended up as a single miniature but most probably not on a recto page.27 At this point therefore, our understanding of the three miniatures cannot be based upon the Gul-u Mul text. While an attempt to identify the particular text from which the miniatures were taken looks futile, one can determine the genre to which such a text would have belonged. The size of the miniatures indicates that their making most likely followed the standards of the newly introduced dīva¯n miniatures. Illustrations to dīva¯n copies and anthologies that assemble selections of lyrical poetry by several authors obviously constitute the most appropriate comparison group. Such manuscripts had been decorated by illumination, margin drawings, coloured vignettes, and fancy stencilled decoration since the early fifteenth century.28 If mixed anthologies incorporated miniatures, these exclusively illustrated fragments of epic poetry that were included in the manuscripts. In anthologies limited to lyrical poetry and in dīva¯n manuscripts it took until the 1460s for paintings to appear, probably in Shiraz first. The part played in this process by the atelier of the Qaraquyunlu prince Pir Budaq remains obscure.29 That a northwestern workshop, too, was involved in such activities is evident from the so-called Shamakha anthology of 1468.30 In this collection of lyrical poetry composed by twelve poets, the means of determining the topic of an illustration remained essentially the same as in narrative poetry: picking up a subject mentioned in the text, with the difference that responding to an explicit description of an episode had to be replaced by a response to mere allusion. The compositions avoided dynamic configuration. Instead, most miniatures illustrate moments of affliction and inner tension experienced by mystics.31 Even the surprising depiction of the flooded city of Baghdad comes across as rather tranquil.32 Courtly entertainment features twice, as a feast on the double-page frontispiece and as the more intimate gathering of a prince with his companions over a game of chess, a miniature that foreshadows the further development of Tabriz dīva¯n illustration.33

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The selection of subjects and their visual treatment reveal the Shamakha anthology of 1468 as a document of transition on the way to creating genre-specific miniatures for manuscripts containing lyrical poetry. Simply following the path of epic poetry and prose tale illustration was impossible because of the absence of narrative.34 At the very most, lyrical poetry contained metaphors alluding to stories told elsewhere. Seizing upon such allusions was one solution to this problem, which was tried out over the following two centuries. That is how depictions like those of Majnun following Layla and Shirin meeting Farhad entered, for instance, an early copy of Jami’s Dīva¯n, most probably made in Shiraz.35 In the same manuscript other miniatures visually elaborated on circumstances under which poetry was enjoyed. This second type of approach to the problem offered a whole range of topics to the painter, from the splendid court majlis to the serene gathering of poets to the tavern scene and from public performances to intimate togetherness. A one-column safīna-style anthology made for Yusuf b. Uzun Hasan (d. 1490) combines a preference for depicting such occasions with a range of traditional decorative elements.36 A third approach, partly converging with the second, took recourse to the ever-present imagery of the princely cycle distributing the different aspects of courtly representation (such as enthronement, feast, ceremonial outing, hunt, and polo play37) in four or five miniatures throughout the manuscript. A Dīva¯n of Amir Khusrau Dihlavi, copied in 1488 most probably in Shiraz, exemplifies this option while it also contains two miniatures of the first type.38 Indulging in the depiction of aristocratic lifestyle reached its peak with illustrated dīva¯n manuscripts produced in the first half of the sixteenth century in Tabriz and Istanbul.39 In the last quarter of the fifteenth century a “mixed approach” was the common one resulting in an incoherent sequence of illustrations to dīva¯n copies and anthologies where a picture representing a generic princely polo play might be followed by an image of Shirin visiting Farhad at Bisutun. Two small dīva¯n manuscripts that exclusively focus on the princely cycle are of particular interest because they combine lyrical mood with stylistic affinity to the three miniatures discussed here (figs 12.1– 3). Both contain poetry in Turkish. The first is a Dīva¯n of Nava’i copied in December 1471 by the calligrapher ʿAbd al-Rahim b. ʿAbd al-Rahman Khwarizmi and now in the Egyptian National Library (figs 12.6, 12.8).40 The small volume of sixty-seven folios has two illustrations depicting princely leisure. Because of the calligrapher’s association with Khalil b. Uzun Hasan (d. 1478) it is likely that the manuscript was made for this prince while he was governor of Shiraz (1470–78).41 Its two miniatures, however, belong neither to the brownish style that was particularly en vogue in Shiraz during the 1470s nor to the so-called Turkman commercial style. Instead, they represent a refined level of painting for Turkman courts which one meets again in the illustrations of the other illustrated dīva¯n, now in the Chester Beatty Library (figs 12.7, 12.9).42 This equally small volume of seventy-three folios containing the poetry of a certain amir Hidayat-Allah was obviously illustrated by the same hand.43 An inscription on the illuminated double-page frontispiece with a dedication to sultan Khalil dates it to 1478, about six months prior to his death and the year the prince

12.6 Prince on horseback encounters youth, Dīva¯n Navaʾi, Tabriz or Shiraz, 1471. Egyptian National Library.

12.7 Prince on horseback, with retinue, Dīva¯n Hidayat, Tabriz, 1478. Chester Beatty Library.

tabr iz painting about 1500

succeeded his father on the throne. All four illustrations refer to courtly leisure and would fit the princely cycle equally well. They do so, however, in an intimate way, each time showing the prince/ruler in the company of a few people only. He appears foremost as a connoisseur of poetry, music, flowering nature, wine, and as an authority on other courtly pleasures like the hunt. This approach allowed for the correlation of the pictures with the mood of lyrical poetry and resulted in particularly fitting dīva¯n miniatures. The most original setting displayed in the Dīva¯n Hidayat is the “vinery” where the prince’s conversation with an elderly man takes place beneath a pergola (fol. 70b).44 The delicate drawing of the vines and trees at the back of the party is matched by the meticulous depiction of blue-and-white vases with flowers and jewel-studded metalware arranged in front of the elegant figures. Apart from slightly extending the pergola into the upper margin, this composition keeps within the rules of the written surface. Such restraint was not respected in another illustration where the artist painted over the golden ruling into the outer margin (fol. 19b) (fig. 12.7)45 and on the two remaining miniatures where he placed part of the composition beyond the ruling on the plain margin (fols. 8b and 38b) (fig. 12.9).46 The latter compositional device was also used by him for one of the miniatures (fol. 47b) (fig. 12.8) in the Dīva¯n Navaʾi while the other illustration continues over the ruling into the lower and outer margin (fol. 18b) (fig. 12.6).47 For some reason, the common sequence of illumination following illustration had been reversed in these manuscripts prompting the artist to overpaint the ruling in several cases. The artist’s efforts either to ignore the restrictive line around the written surface or to integrate it into the composition demonstrate his attempt to stretch the limits set by genre and manuscript size.48 Such intention could also have resulted in a double-page painting featuring groom and horse isolated on one page, as further discussed below. The first miniature in the Dīva¯n Nava’i (fol. 18b) (fig. 12.6) and an illustration in the Dīva¯n Hidayat (fol. 19b) (fig. 12.7) use essentially the same composition although a small but significant modification should not be dismissed: the earlier encounter of the prince on horseback with a youth was replaced by his representation in the company of a falconer, another armed courtier, and a runner. Turned into a selfpleasing reflection, it probably echoes Khalil’s new status at the top of the Aqquyunlu realm. The dense but finely executed blossoming vegetation that completely covered the ground in the first miniature is now confined to areas above and below the figures where it does not run the risk of absorbing them. This less interfering arrangement allowed the main figures to clearly stand out against a sparsely structured background whereas other areas of the picture space might be filled with exuberant vegetation and “animated” rocks. This approach characterizes the most sophisticated miniatures in the famous Khamsa of Nizami (H. 762) of the Topkapı Saray Museum.49 Placing figures “on top” of a bewildering array of all kind of vegetation seems a different approach that cared more about a splendid carpet effect than about spatial relationship and meaningful isolation of the protagonists. In fact, however, it goes

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12.8 Prince seated outside tent, with courtiers in attendance, Dīva¯n Navaʾi, Tabriz or Shiraz, 1471. Egyptian National Library.

12.9 Prince enjoying wine and music in landscape, Dīva¯n Hidayat, Tabriz, 1478. Chester Beatty Library.

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only one step further in the two-dimensional treatment of space that distinguishes Tabriz painting from Herat work of the same period and can be seen side by side with a more sophisticated spatial arrangement in H. 762.50 The most spectacular result of such a visual approach is the “Sleeping Rustam,” a miniature that belongs to the first decade of the sixteenth century in Tabriz painting.51 The same treatment of exuberant ground vegetation as a flat surface is also met on the miniatures in a manuscript containing the masnavī Jama¯l-u Jala¯l by Muhammad Nazlabadi, which were painted about the same time52 and must have kept its attraction into the second decade of the sixteenth century when a dīva¯n containing poetry by Shah Ismaʿil was illustrated.53 The intensity accorded to the landscape background and the rendering of its details chronologically place the set containing the mia, Freer, and rom miniatures between the dīva¯n copies illustrated for sultan Khalil and the masnavī Jama¯l-u Jala¯l. Another indicator is an idiosyncratic compositional arrangement: the isolated but still important positioning of groom and horse. The original and somehow problematic idea to dedicate one part of a double-page illustration to the depiction of the waiting groom with horse had forerunners in Tabriz miniatures, which depicted groom and horse outside the ruling, at the margin, as in the Dīva¯n Hidayat (fig. 12.9) and in the only miniature illustrating Haydar Tilba’s Turkish Makhzan al-Asra¯r that had been copied for sultan Yaʿqub in 1478.54 Although in the latter the groom with two mounts is incorporated into the extended, still small picture space, he achieves an unexpectedly prominent position. On the paintings in the Jama¯l-u Jala¯l manuscript groom and mount(s) are omnipresent. The inclusion of a horse with groom in attention in compositions limited to few figures obviously served as a means to convey the lofty status of the prince. It cannot be excluded, however, that there was more behind the emphasis placed on this detail. Muhammad Nazlabadi’s Jama¯l-u Jala¯l bestows a special role on Jalal’s servant and companion Faylasuf.55 Such stories about faithful and shrewd servants that princes relied upon may have influenced the perception of how to distinguish a princely appearance even in smaller and more intimate compositions, at least in Tabriz painting in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. For a more precise chronological attribution of the mia, Freer, and rom paintings, the figures and their headgear can serve as indicators. It happened from time to time in Persian miniature painting that painters resorted to elongating and slimming figures in order to convey cultivated elegance and/or spiritual loftiness. Such a tendency developed in late fifteenth-century Aqquyunlu court painting and continued into early Safavid painting, as exemplified by the illustrations of H. 762.56 The somewhat later illustrations of the Dīva¯n Khata’i display figures in Safavid garb that come closest to resembling the slender figures on the mia, Freer, and rom miniatures.57 That one of the paintings in the Dīva¯n Khata’i (fol. 2b, referred to earlier) shows five aristocratic youths enjoying company and wine in a slightly less dense but likewise delicately drawn garden landscape makes the similarities even more obvious. The impact of this striving for decorative gracefulness is also strongly felt on the derivative level

tabr iz painting about 1500

of early sixteenth-century Shiraz Turkman as it developed up to about 1505 and, particularly, Safavid manuscript illustration where this development is eventually carried to excess by less accomplished artists. In the work of these painters the slim figures with globular heads on thin, stretched necks look like caricatures of the mannered youth in the mia and rom pictures.58 All this indicates that the three paintings discussed here should be attributed to about 1500 rather than to the 1480s. The shape of the caps visible above the turbans even raises the question whether they might belong to the very early period of Safavid rule in Tabriz. It is only at a second glimpse that the tampering of those caps is revealed on all three miniatures, apart from the already mentioned repair/overpainting that changed the shape of the kulah and turban of the central figure in the rom miniature. In all other cases the raised cap was thinly covered with white paint, obviously with the aim to make it “disappear” among the turban cloth. As far as can be detected, the shape and colour of the caps had not been uniform. The three figures in the centre of the mia picture displayed conical red caps higher than the rounded green cap of the servant with the wine bottle and the red caps of the groom and the kneeling youth at the rom miniatures. The higher variant comes very near to the shape dominating the third illustration (fol. 5a) in Jama¯l-u Jala¯l.59 Since the copying of that text was completed in 1502/1503 while the execution of the paintings was not completed until 1505, the somewhat experimental approach to the depiction of the headgear seems to reflect evolvement of and variations in the shape of the cap during the first years of Safavid power.60 This does not finally settle the question for the three dispersed miniatures because it cannot be excluded that a higher kulah was an element of the elegant rendering of courtly figures in the later Turkman period. For lack of dated Tabriz Turkman work one can only refer to the reflection of the court style in those Shiraz illustrations that exhibit Tabriz influence in other significant elements like figure drawing and the complete covering of the ground with plants.61 The conical and pointed caps there, although smaller and not as high, seem to be part of an ornamental and refined rendering of figures. Hence, while the argument for an attribution of the mia, Freer, and rom miniatures to the very early years of Safavid rule in Tabriz seems stronger, one should not completely rule out that they were made in the turbulent final phase of the Aqquyunlu. Not knowing to which kind of text the three miniatures belonged, it seemed, nevertheless, appropriate to analyze them in the context of the creation of visual complements to lyrical poetry. Such illustrations were not bound by considerations of place and time. Reflection of mood and invitation to contemplation, although part of many narrative miniatures, became the main functions of these three miniatures. Without effectively leaving the sphere of aristocratic self-adulation, the scenes remain casual and intimate. Although the groom waiting for his master to return may have had more mundane thoughts crossing his mind than those voiced by Pamuk, a person contemplating the picture could well have felt that way: “The branches bend in the wind and rise up again, the flowers grow and fall, the forest sways like a wave and the whole world trembles. We hear the hum of the forest, the world’s lament.”62

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n ote s 1 Schulz, Miniaturmalerei, 1: Taf. N. 2 41.58.2. See Sims, “Persian Miniature Painting,” 50, fig. 6. 3 F1954.26. See Pamuk, “In the Forest.” I would like to thank Massumeh Farhad for pointing me to this publication. 4 Christie’s, Arts of the Islamic World, lot 228. 5 The information is based on the images kindly provided by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The measurements can be found on the website where the miniature is called “Garden scene with princes and attendants.” www.artsmia.org/search/index.php?term= Persian+miniatures (accessed 18 February 2011). 6 The author would like to thank the Freer and Sackler Galleries for the permission to inspect the miniature and for providing the images. 7 With the vertical borders 2.4 cm wide and the horizontal borders 2 cm high, the area comprising miniature, frame, and inner border measures 17.3 × 11.6 cm. 8 The thereby created leaf now measures 28.5 × 22.5 cm. 9 After early research, see in particular Ethé, “Ueber persische Tenzonen.” Interest has recently been revived by the facsimile publication of the Safīna-yi Tabrīz, see note 13. 10 Purjavadi, “Literary Debates,” 137–8. 11 Ibid., 138. 12 Ibid. For the character of the treatment of the topic in this work and its mystical inclination, see Purjavadi, Zaba¯n-i ḥa¯l dar irfa¯n va adabīya¯t-i pa¯rsī, 463–8. 13 Safīna-yi Tabrīz, text no. 45, 234–9, and text no. 199, 719–21. The text was composed in 721–23/1321–23. For an introduction and overview, see Seyed-Gohrab, “Casing the Treasury.” Since I did not have access to earlier publications of both debates, I am thankful to Živa Vessel for her help in obtaining a copy of the facsimile edition. 14 Safīna-yi Tabrīz, 719 (last three lines). 15 Danishpazhuh, Fihrist-i nuskhaha¯-yi khaṭṭī-yi kita¯bkha¯na-yi duktur Aṣghar Mahdavī, 92, no. 93. The information on the manuscript is repeated in Munzavi, Fihrist-i nuskhaha¯-yi khaṭṭī-yi fa¯rsī, 3085, no. 33356. 16 I am grateful to Mrs Mahdavi and Mrs Fariba Eftekhar for answering my questions on the manuscript. It comprises twenty folios and its measurements are given as 18.5 × 11.2 cm for the codex and 10.5 × 7.3 cm for the written surface. 17 I would like to thank the Central Library of the University of Tehran for providing me with a cd copy of the microfilm (no. 8729) and Bita Pourvash for kindly taking care of the order on my behalf. 18 Safīna-yi Tabriz, 721 (last four lines of the work); see also Purjavadi, Zaba¯n-i ḥa¯l dar ʿirfa¯n va adabīya¯t-i pa¯rsī, 464–5, where a similar passage is mentioned as part of a preface, see Zangi Bukhari, Zangī-na¯ma. 19 While the shamsa, the only illumination of the manuscript, is not readable on the cd copy, it is said to have a dedication to Sultan Husayn Mirza (letter from Mrs Eftekhar referring to the opinion of N. Purjavadi who considered it genuine). 20 Purjavadi, “Literary Debates,” 142. 300

tabr iz painting about 1500 21 How far this puts a twist on the debate itself must be left to a historian of literature to decide. 22 Indeed, the only illustrated manuscript so far known was made in Ottoman Baghdad in 1600 and contains Fuzuli’s Turkish debate poem Bang ve ba¯de (Dresden, Sächsische Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, E 362), see Rührdanz, “Islamische Miniaturhandschriften”; Rührdanz, Orientalische illustrierte Handschriften, 136–7, plate on 31. 23 Woods, The Aqquyunlu, 137–8; for a prominent example, see Lingwood, “Ja¯mī’s Sala¯ma¯n va Absa¯l.” 24 The Tabriz court may have also led in lavish spending on individual works of art and architecture, see Golombek, “Discourses,” 13. 25 More than a dozen illustrated manuscripts of Persian dīva¯n manuscripts and poetic anthologies and three in Turkish attributable to the Aqquyunlu realm are extant, most of them produced at Shiraz as the style of the miniatures reveals but some in Turkman court style. In contrast, fine dīva¯n copies originating from Herat impress by their calligraphy and illumination (for example, the Turkish Dīva¯n of Sultan Husayn Mirza in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982.120.1, see Roxburgh, The Persian Album, 173, fig. 94) while in some cases illustrations seem to have been added later (for a discussion of this phenomenon, again connected to a Dīva¯n of Sultan Husayn, see Rührdanz, “Zwischen Botschaft und Kommerz,” 385–6; and in more detail, Rührdanz, “Die Herausbildung”). 26 A muna¯ẓara called Tīgh-u Qalam was dedicated to Yusuf b. Uzun Hasan by the author Khwaja Mas’ud Qumi, see Davud, “Muna¯ẓara-yi tīgh-u qalam,” 188. Earlier, a prose anthology copied in 1459 for the Qaraquyunlu prince Pir Budaq by the calligrapher Shaykh Mahmud in Shiraz contains the Gul-u Mul by Tirmizi, see Arberry, The Chester Beatty Library, 64–5, no. 134; for the identification of the text, see Purjavadi, “Literary Debates,” 140. 27 Besides, a section of a blue line as it appears as part of the frame surrounding the written surface of the Gul-u Mul text can be detected near the right side of the Freer miniature indicating a more recent insertion of the miniature. 28 Roxburgh, The Persian Album, 152–9. 29 The paintings in a copy of Hafiz’ Dīva¯n (tsm, H. 1015) dated 1465–66 and made for Pir Budaq in Baghdad, could not be assessed. Another early copy (tsm, Y. 93), dated 1469, see Karatay, Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi, 216–17, nos. 628, 629, has illustrations in Turkman commercial style. 30 British Library, Add. 16561, see Rieu, Catalogue, 734–5; Titley, Miniatures from Persian Manuscripts, 38, no. 97. 31 Titley, “Miniature Paintings,” 35, fig. 27; Canby, Persian Painting, 70, fig. 45. 32 Sims et al., Peerless Images, 179, fig. 92; Roxburgh, ed., Turks, 246, no. 208. 33 For the frontispiece, see Stchoukine, Les peintures, pl. XLV; for the other miniature on fol. 36b, see Titley, Persian Miniature Painting, 69, pl. 6. 34 This obstacle may have contributed to the avoidance of dīva¯n illustration in late fifteenthcentury Herat with its highly sophisticated visual transformation of mystical ideas through narrative miniatures. 35 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 13.228.4, copied by ʿAbd al-Karim al-Khwarizmi most 301

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36

37

38

39

40

41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 302

probably in the 1470s and illustrated in commercial Turkman style, see Jackson and Yohannan, eds, A Catalogue, 140–5, no. 17; http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/ search-the-collections/140003751 (accessed 20 August 2012). Besides these common subjects, this manuscript contains an unusually large share of narrative illustrations, probably due to its production at an early, experimental stage. British Library, Or. 13193, illustrated 1470–80 in brownish style, see Titley, Miniatures from Persian Manuscripts, 40, no. 102A, pl. 14; Meredith-Owens, “A New Illustrated Persian Anthology.” One important aspect of the cycle, the battle/single combat was obviously not deemed appropriate for the purpose. In its place another aristocratic game and form of war training, namely shooting arrows at a ball on top of a pole (qabaq), was added to the cycle. British Library, Or. 5770, illustrated in commercial Turkman style with a peculiar penchant for polo scenes, see Titley, Miniatures from Persian Manuscripts, 24, no. 63; Robinson, “Origin and Date,” fig. 7; Titley, “Works of Amir Khusrau,” 35, figs 28–9. See, for example, Suleiman and Suleimanova, Miniatures, Illustrations, figs 145–50, 166–81, 253–7, for examples of Nava’i’s Dīva¯n among those manuscripts. While two manuscripts in the British Library (Or. 5346 and Or. 13061) perfectly fit the third approach, in another one (Or. 4125) the representation of the courtly environment was shunned, see Titley, Miniatures from Turkish Manuscripts, 62–3, nos. 53–5, pls. 40–2; a well documented example of a Persian dīva¯n is cod. Mixt. 356, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, see Duda, Islamische Handschriften I, 178–80, taf. 153–60. For an assessment of the prevalent style in these manuscripts, see Rührdanz, as in note 25. Lit. turc. 68 m, see Stchoukine, “Les manuscrits illustrés musulmans,” 151, no. XXXV, and 155, fig. 8. The manuscript is dated 12 Rajab 876 (25 December 1471). For a facsimile of the complete manuscript with an introduction, see Erkinov, ʿAlī Shīr Nava¯ʾī. I would like to thank the Egyptian National Library for providing photographs of the manuscript and Noha Abou-Khatwa for her help in obtaining this material. Soucek, “ʿAbd-al-Raḥīm b. ʿAbd-al-Raḥma¯n Ḵva¯razmī.” The signing of a prose text (Aya Sofya 2031) in Shiraz in the following year (1473) confirms that the calligrapher was active there. T 401, see Minorsky, Chester Beatty Library, 1–3, pl. 1. I am grateful to the Chester Beatty Library for the photographs of T 401. On the author, see ibid, and recently Roxburgh, ed., Turks, 426, no. 198. Minorsky, Chester Beatty Library, pl. 1b; for a colour reproduction, see Roxburgh ed., Turks, 238. Minorsky, Chester Beatty Library, pl. 1a. Robinson, Persian Drawings, 108, pl. 80. See note 40. For a range of effects created by using the margins to place figures outside the ruling, see Brend, “Beyond the Pale.” Stchoukine, Les peintures des manuscrits, 71–81. For relevant colour reproduction, see, for example, Ipşiroğlu, Das Bild im Islam, pl. 87; Gray, ed., The Arts of the Book in Central Asia, pl. LXVII; Çağman and Tanındı, The Topkapı Saray Museum, pl. 72; Keir Collection, III.

tabr iz painting about 1500

50

51

52

53

54 55

56 57 58

59 60 61 62

208, see Robinson, ed., The Keir Collection, colour pl. 20. For an interpretation of some characteristics of style including the exuberant and animated nature in the context of “exaggerated” Sufism, see Rührdanz, “Zwischen Botschaft und Kommerz,” 382–5. Compare, for example, fol. 163b, see Stchoukine, La “Khamseh” de Niẓa¯mī, pl. XLVIIb, with a pavilion scene like fol. 177b. On this image, see Çağman and Tanındı, Topkapı Saray Museum, pl. 72. Robinson, “Sha¯h-Na¯meh Illustrations”; Sims, Peerless Images, 162–4; also a colour reproduction in Blair and Bloom, The Art and Architecture of Islam, 166, fig. 208. For colour reproductions of the other two extant miniatures from this Sha¯hna¯ma, see Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst Leipzig, Asiatische Kunst, 184–5. Uppsala University Library, O Nova 2, see Zetterstéen and Lamm, Moḥammed Āṣafī; Brend, “Jama¯l va Jala¯l.” Concerning the revision of authorship and patronage, see Purjavadi, “Mathnavī-yi Jama¯l-u Jala¯l va sara¯yanda-yi a¯n”; and Shukufa Qubadi (Chokofeh Ghobadi), Mathnavī Jama¯l et Jala¯l, 1–5 (of French summary). I would like to thank the Library of Uppsala University for providing a cd-rom of the manuscript and Ali Muhaddis for pointing me to his article on the subject. I am also very grateful to Bita Pourvash for obtaining a copy of the Jama¯l-u Jala¯l edition for me. Freer and Sackler Galleries, S86.0060, see Lowry and Beach, Checklist of the Vever Collection, 136–8, no. 168. For a colour reproduction of fol. 2a, the most relevant miniature here, see Lowry, A Jeweller’s Eye, 118–19, no. 28. Dīva¯n Hidayat, fol. 8, see note 49; Khamsa Nizami H. 762, fol. 163b, see note 52. To a certain degree his position reflects the role of the leading ʿayya¯r in the prose romances. His particular function in the story mainly accunts for Faylasuf ’s appearance on nineteen of the thirty-four miniatures in the Jama¯l-u Jala¯l manuscript. On Persian popular prose romances in general, see Hanaway, “Persian Popular Romances.” For the convergence of ʽayya¯r and sha¯ṭir (often visualized in the figure of the groom), see Gaillard, “Du ʿayya¯r au ša¯ṭer.” Interestingly, the kind of adventures Jalal encounters while searching for Jamal, the daughter of the fairy king, has much in common with popular prose romances. Faylasuf is called ʿayya¯r several times in the story, for instance, on 24a, 35b, 40a–b. See note 49. See note 53. Examples of the late Turkman phase in Shiraz are a Mihr-u Mushtarī manuscript, dated 1499–1500, see Çağman and Tanındı, Topkapı Saray Museum, no. 70; two Khamsa Nizami, see Robinson, Persian Paintings in the India Office Library, 25–42, nos. 86–133, and Duda, Islamische Handschriften I, 33–7, Abb. 107–34. For examples of the proto-Safavid style in Shiraz, c. 1505–20, see Stchoukine, La “Khamseh” de Niẓa¯mī, 106–13, nos. XXXI–XXXV. For colour reproductions, see Uluç, Turkman Governors, 86–7, figs 40–1; 100–101, fig. 49; 106, figs 54–5; 22, fig. 73. Zetterstéen and Lamm, Moḥammed Āṣafī, pl. 3. Changes in the actual shape of the cap in those early years may have played a role, too, see Brend, “Jama¯l va Jala¯l,” 33. See note 53. Pamuk, “In the Forest.”

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in der persischen Miniaturmalerei zu Ende des 15.Jahrhunderts.” Hallesche Beiträge zur Orientwissenschaft 6. Halle: Martin-Luther-Universität, 1984, 81–95. – “Islamische Miniaturhandschriften aus den Beständen der ddr IV: Illustrationen zu Fuḍūlīs Bang wa ba¯de.” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität HalleWittenberg 27, G, Heft 3 (1978): 107–14. – Orientalische illustrierte Handschriften aus Museen und Bibliotheken der ddr. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1984. – “Zwischen Botschaft und Kommerz: Zum geistig-kulturellen Hintergrund persischer Illustrationsstile im späten 15. und frühen 16. Jahrhundert.” In Iran und iranisch geprägte Kulturen: Studien zum 65. Geburtstag von Bert G. Fragner, edited by Markus Ritter, Ralph Kauz, and Birgitt Hoffmann, 322–88. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2008. Safīna-yi Tabrīz, compiled and copied by Abu’l-Majd Muhammad b. Mahmud Tabrizi. Facsimile edited by Nasr-Allah Purjavadi. Tehran: Markazi-i nashr-i danishgahi, 1381/ 2003. Schmitz, Barbara. Islamic Manuscripts in the New York Public Library. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press and The New York Public Library, 1992. Schulz, Philipp. Die persisch-islamische Miniaturmalerei, volume 1. Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1914. Seyed-Gohrab, Ali. “Casing the Treasury: The Safīna-yi Tabrīz and Its Compiler.” In The Treasury of Tabriz: The Great Il-Khanid Compendium, edited by Ali A. Seyed-Gohrab and S. McGlinn, 15–42. Amsterdam: Rozenberg, and West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2007. Sims, Eleanor. “Persian Miniature Painting in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.” The Minneapolis Institute of Arts Bulletin 62 (1975): 50–73. Sims, Eleanor, Boris Marshak, Ernst Grube, and Hossein Amirsadeghi. Peerless Images: Persian Painting and Its Sources. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002. Soucek, Priscilla. “ʿAbd-al-Raḥīm b. ʿAbd-al-Raḥma¯n Ḵva¯razmī.” In Encyclopaedia Iranica, volume 1, edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 143. London, Boston, and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. Stchoukine, Ivan. “Les manuscrits illustrés musulmans de la Bibliothèque du Caire.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 13 (1935): 138–58. – Les peintures des manuscrits de la “Khamseh” de Niẓa¯mī au Topkapı Sarayı Müzesi d’Istanbul. Paris: Institut français d’archéologie de Beyrouth, 1977. – Les peintures des manuscrits timuride. Paris: Geuthner, 1954. Suleiman, Hamid, and Fazila Suleimanova. Miniatures Illustrations of Alisher Navoi’s Works of the XV–XIXth Centuries. Tashkent: Fan, 1982. Titley, Norah. “Miniature Paintings Illustrating the Works of Amir Khusrau: 15th, 16th, 17th Centuries.” Marg 28 (1975): 19–52. – Miniatures from Persian Manuscripts: A Catalogue and Subject Index of Paintings from Persia, India and Turkey in the British Library and the British Museum. London: The British Library, 1977. – Miniatures from Turkish Manuscripts: A Catalogue and Subject Index of Paintings in the British Library and the British Museum. London: British Library, 1981.

tabr iz painting about 1500 – Persian Miniature Painting and its Influence on the Art of Turkey and India. London: The British Library, 1983. Uluç, Lale. Turkman Governors, Shiraz Artisans and Ottoman Collectors: Sixteenth-Century Shiraz Manuscripts. Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası, 2006. Woods, John. The Aqquyunlu: Clan, Confederation, Empire. Revised and expanded edition. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1999. Zangi Bukhari, Muhammad. Zangī-na¯ma. Edited by Iraj Afshar. Tehran: Intisharat-i Tus, 1372/1993. Zetterstéen, Karl, and Lamm, Carl. Moḥammed Āṣafī, The Story of Jama¯l and Jala¯l: An Illuminated Manuscript in the Library of Uppsala University. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1948.

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The Production and Reception of Islamic Art in Modern Times

chapter 13

Building the Islamic Art Collection at the Royal Ontario Museum: The First Decades Bita Pourvash

As the first director of the Royal Ontario Museum of Art and Archaeology (rom), Charles Trick Currelly (1876–1957) – an Ontario-born Canadian with a background in theological studies who later became an archaeologist – was faced with the task of establishing the diverse collections of a major museum in Toronto.1 According to its own motto, this museum should collect, study, and exhibit objects that illustrate the “The Arts of Man Through All the Years.”2 The development of various of its collections, including Islamic art,3 was dictated by Currelly’s mandate to acquire artifacts in a broad category: “from the stone tools of our early ancestors up to the modern times.”4 Currelly’s limited time, budget, and expertise also influenced the whole process of shaping the rom. This article explores how these factors, along with the educational aims of the museum and the interests of Currelly’s friends and various dealers, affected the formation of the rom’s Islamic art collection.5 It focuses mainly on the first half of the twentieth century: from Currelly’s first acquisitions in Cairo to assembling Islamic art objects and displaying them in a separate gallery.6

rom: a major museum for toronto The early history of the formation of museums in Canada can be traced back to the late seventeenth century when collections were gathered by various educational and religious institutions. However, it was during the nineteenth century that Canada witnessed most of the achievements in gathering collections and establishing museums. By the end of the nineteenth century Toronto was growing rapidly, both in terms of its city borders and its population. In order to become a metropolis it felt the necessity to establish a “major” museum in Toronto. Establishing such a museum would enable the people of Ontario to collect and display their individual past, as well as to place themselves more firmly within the British Empire.7 At the same time, by collecting objects from various cultures and civilizations they could compete with museums in the United States.8 Having such a museum would allow Toronto

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to acquire a position equal to that of other cosmopolitan cities such as London, Paris, or New York. While there had been efforts to create a major provincial museum in Toronto as early as the 1830s, this aim was only accomplished with the establishment of the Royal Ontario Museum. This museum had its roots in the small teaching collections of various colleges of the University of Toronto that were formed during the second half of the nineteenth century.9 In 1902, when Currelly (who was a graduate of Victoria College) started his career as an archaeologist in Egypt, he provided this college with artifacts that were acquired from Egypt. Following his accomplishment and the expansion of this collection and with the support of people such as Sir Edmund Walker (1848–1924) – an influential member of the university’s board of trustees and the driving force behind the rom’s foundation10 – Currelly proposed the establishment of a museum for the University of Toronto in 1905. Besides being affiliated with the university, this forthcoming museum was also to have a public mandate, and it was later funded both by the university and the government of Ontario. In the beginning, however, there were some debates about its name and its national or provincial status. Walker, for example, preferred to call it the Royal Canadian Museum; this name was even used in some early correspondence.11 However, reserving national status for the institutions in Ottawa, the museum in Toronto was named the Royal Ontario Museum in 1910.12 It was officially established in 1912 and was opened to the public in 1914, with Currelly as the first director of the Royal Ontario Museum of Art and Archaeology – one of the five museums under the umbrella of the Royal Ontario Museum.13 Unlike most other Canadian museums that mainly focused on local history or European art, the Royal Ontario Museum of Art and Archaeology – based on the museum’s mandate14 – was planned to cover all aspects of world culture. It became one of the first and largest museums in Canada to collect and display the arts of various geographical and cultural regions from First Nations to East Asia. Islamic art was collected as a component of the art of the Near East. During its first decades this collection was not built on a scholarly plan. It grew up during the time Currelly was trying to assemble the diverse collections of the museum.

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The fact that Currelly was working as an archaeologist in Egypt when he first proposed his plan for a university museum plays an important role in understanding the development of the Islamic art collection at the Royal Ontario Museum. As a graduate of theology with some background in drawing, Currelly had made his first trip to London in 1902 at the age of twenty-six. During a visit to the British Museum he had the opportunity to be introduced to Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942), a prominent archaeologist working in Egypt. Petrie accepted Currelly

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as his assistant, and soon after Currelly became a staff member of the Egypt Exploration Fund.15 His presence in Egypt opened his access to markets in Cairo and other Middle Eastern cities, such as Damascus and Jerusalem, and helped him in making connections with influential dealers and friends in this field. It also provided him with an opportunity to investigate the history, culture, and art of the region. For example, it was during a trip from Egypt to Palestine that Currelly passed through Turkey and became fascinated with its tilework. As he mentions in his book, “It awakened me to the marvelous possibilities of glazed earthenware tile.”16 When Currelly started to build the rom’s collections in the first decade of the twentieth century the antiquity market was flourishing. Many museums were already well established in Europe and the United States and the market for Islamic art objects had largely shifted from the Middle East to European capitals such as Paris and London.17 Islamic art was in high demand especially due to its decorative aspects, which had captured the attention of art movements such as Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts. The increase in the number of exhibitions of Islamic art and comparisons of designs between these objects and the style of the Art Nouveau artists resulted in the growth of commercial dealing of these works.18 At the same time the Middle Eastern market had gained new life due to the increasing number of tourists visiting this region. This activity also redefined the Middle East as a competitive place that provided artifacts of more reasonable prices for tourists and collectors. It was due to this affordable market in Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries that Currelly was able to convince Walker to support the idea of establishing a provincial museum in Toronto. Walker himself had nourished this idea for years. However, he believed that Toronto had already lost its opportunity to create such a museum since the market had become prohibitive and the prices had risen dramatically. In order to prove to Walker that there were still possibilities to turn this dream into reality, Currelly provided him with a price comparison of two identical objects: one that he had acquired inexpensively from Egypt’s market and another for which he had paid a high price through a London dealer.19 Having seen this, Walker was convinced that they could still establish a museum if they focused their purchases mainly on the more reasonable markets, like the one in Egypt. His support gave Currelly the confidence and financial strength to increase his acquisitions both in terms of quantity and variety. From November 1905 through the end of 1908 Currelly acquired most of the rom’s future Islamic art collection from Egypt’s markets where other dealers from the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa were also active. He purchased the first three items for this collection of the museum in 1905: two Qurʾan manuscripts and a sword. One of these Qurʾan manuscripts is an excellent example of Circassian Mamluk calligraphy and illumination. It was written in 1464 by an amir who, besides being an administrative and military figure, was also a very talented calligrapher.20 These objects were all supplied by Dimitri Andalaft, a well-known dealer in Khan al-Khalili in Cairo. Andalaft, along with Joseph Cohen, Michel Casira, E. Hatoun, and G. Kalebdjian – other dealers who also had shops in Khan al-Khalili or the

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13.1 Mamluk Qurʾan manuscript, Egypt or Syria, dated 1464. Royal Ontario Museum.

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Ismailia Quarter – were considered the most renowned antique dealers in Cairo, and Currelly preferred to buy from them.21 According to Sladen,22 some of these dealers were more active in the “Oriental” market as opposed to selling ancient Egyptian material. They provided customers with services such as fixed prices and a good knowledge of English and therefore were approached mostly by Europeans and Americans.23 Purchasing from the Egyptian and neighbouring markets did have additional advantages for a collector like Currelly. The presence of some less prominent dealers provided a good opportunity for bargaining, at which Currelly had already become adept.24 Also it was easier to benefit from the volatility in prices due to changing political circumstances. For example, in response to Currelly’s interest in acquiring a Middle Eastern interior from Damascus as early as 1911, John D. Whiting (1882– 1951), Currelly’s dealer-friend in Jerusalem (from Fr. Vester & Co., the American Colony Store in Jerusalem), informed him in 1936 of the availability and reduced price of these rooms. According to Whiting, until then the wealthy owners had re-

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fused to sell their houses or had asked for an “exorbitant price.” However, after the Franco-Syrian Treaty of Independence of 1936 these houses were about to be destroyed, mostly due to the changes that French occupation introduced into the fabric of Khan al-Wazir in Damascus, and the owners were ready to sell them below the market price.25 On the other hand, one of the major disadvantages of purchasing directly from the Middle Eastern markets was the prevalence of forgery. During the time Currelly was building the museum’s collections the forgery market in the Middle East reached one of its highest points.26 Consequently, customers became more cautious about whether the objects that they were purchasing were original. In this market those who could afford the services of well-established dealers in Europe and the United States, or dealers like Andalaft in Egypt, benefited from a “guarantee” that these dealers provided on their sold items. It was believed that their prices were reasonable and that they would refund the money whenever an article was proved to be a forgery.27 Later, when his funding increased, Currelly extended his purchases to other centres, such as Jerusalem, as well as European markets, especially Paris and London. He made his first purchases from European markets between 1906 and 1908. This included ten arms and armour pieces and two ceramic wares, purchased from Fenton & Sons in London, and two Iznik plates, purchased from the Spanish Art Gallery in London.28 However, his first major purchase outside Cairo in the field of Islamic art occurred in 1909. This comprised seventy-two ceramics – several are outstanding examples of seventeenth-century Safavid blue-and-white ceramics – acquired from dealers such as R. & M. Stora and Kalebdjian in Paris and S.M. Franck & Co., Fenton & Sons, and the Spanish Art Gallery in London.29 While Currelly acquired the rom’s Islamic art collection from various famous and lesser known sources, a number of dealers were never approached by him. One of these was Dikran Kelekian (1868–1951). The first reference to Kelekian in the rom’s documents is in 1911. In this letter Hornblower told Currelly about an Iznik plate decorated with a ship design that was in Kelekian’s possession. Hornblower expressed his desire to acquire this plate, though he could not afford it due to its high price.30 Later, in 1919, Kelekian himself attempted to build a relationship with the rom. He invited Walker to visit his collection in New York. Walker in turn mentioned in a letter that he had enjoyed seeing Kelekian’s Persian materials several times. However, Walker continued, he always hesitated to ask Kelekian to establish relations with the rom because he knew that the museum could not afford his prices. Walker also mentioned that the development of the rom had indeed been due to its success in purchasing objects under “very favourable circumstances.”31 In the first decade of the twentieth century Currelly collected around 700 objects for the rom’s future Islamic art collection, including 331 sherds acquired from excavations.32 He developed the museum on a limited budget and in a short space of time. Walker later confessed that he “had never been connected with anything that had gone ahead as fast as the Royal Ontario Museum.”33 315

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During his time in Egypt, Currelly not only laid the foundation of the museum’s collections, but he also strengthened his relationship with dealers and patrons. These were the people who continued to support and provide him with the best available objects in the market. Throughout his trips Currelly also became well connected to the high profile museums in the United Kingdom and the United States, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. As a result, despite its distinctive character, the rom shows influences from the museums that acted as its prototypes in those countries.34 Among valuable connections, Currelly established his friendship with George Davis Hornblower (1864–1951), a British official in the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior, who was very influential in building the Islamic art collection at the rom. Hornblower was an Egyptologist and anthropologist but was also a collector and a dealer. He sometimes purchased objects in Egypt and later sold them in Europe and the United States.35 While George Croft, the rom’s main supplier of East Asian material, has been acknowledged as the third important figure in the history of the rom and the foundation of its collections36 (along with Currelly and Walker), Hornblower could be counted as the fourth and the first regarding the Islamic art collection. As Currelly mentions, his visit to Hornblower was “one of the most fortunate things” that happened to him regarding the museum and that his debt to him was beyond anything one could ever repay.37 Apart from ancient Egyptian antiquities, Hornblower’s main interests were rugs, embroideries, and Chinese ceramics. However, as he mentions himself, he had also acquired a good knowledge of Islamic pottery by studying various ceramic fragments.38 While Currelly was in Egypt, he stayed with Hornblower for some time in the grand old Turkish house in which the latter was living. Currelly and Hornblower spent time together discussing art and visiting dealers especially in the areas related to carpets and ceramics. Most of these dealers were friends of Hornblower’s and had an excellent relationship with him, which Currelly inherited. As Currelly states, it was Hornblower who helped him and gave him the necessary knowledge on purchasing and collecting artifacts. They often spent Sunday afternoons together studying the evolution of Islamic architecture. They even went on a trip to Spain to study Cordoba.39 When Currelly left Egypt in 1908, he tried to arrange regular visits and correspondence with his dealer friends in order to keep their support.40 However, it was Hornblower who arranged most of the purchases for Currelly and even for the latter’s friends and the museum’s patrons, such as Walker.41 In some cases Hornblower tried to find a close match to Currelly’s request, such as the nineteenth-century decorated Iranian set of armour currently in the museum’s collection.42 In some other cases Currelly left the matter completely to Hornblower.43 He continued to collect and send items to Currelly even after he himself left Cairo and settled in London in the 1920s. Currelly’s reliance on Hornblower was so profound that in a letter to Horn-

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blower Currelly mentions, “I ought to have a printed form of thanks so that I could send one off every day or two, but if you wouldn’t mind having them printed yourself in calendar form and tearing one down every morning, you would have our mental attitude of both gratitude and laziness.”44 In addition to these dealers and friends, Currelly formed the rom’s collections partly through private gifts of patrons who supported him by giving money towards his purchases or by donating and bequeathing their collections to the museum. For example, Walter Massey (1864–1901), a member of Victoria College’s board of regents, and other members of his family, including his sister Lillian Treble (1854–1915), were among the early supporters of the rom. Also, after Walter Massey’s death his brother and Currelly established the Walter Massey Biblical Collection fund that also helped Currelly purchase objects for the museum.45 One of the other early benefactors who contributed to the Islamic art collection was Robert A.W. Ferguson (1877–1915).46 His is a good example of the dual relationship between Currelly and donors. According to his will, dated 1911, Ferguson bequeathed part of his collection, including eighteen items, which were mostly pistols and nineteenth-century Iranian sets of armour, to the future University Museum.47 There is evidence that suggests Ferguson and Currelly were in touch before Ferguson wrote his will. Prior to the establishment of the rom Currelly mounted two exhibitions (in 1907 and 1911) in Wycliffe College, Toronto. Ferguson was aware of at least one of these exhibitions and mentioned them in his will. On the other hand, one month after the date of this will, Currelly showed interest in acquiring some figurative Iranian shields and helmets, similar to the ones in Ferguson’s collection. He asked Hornblower who later found and purchased an example and sent it to Currelly. This set of armour is the first of its kind that entered the collection of the rom.48 Another Canadian who had a collection of Islamic art and was in contact with Currelly was Sir William C. Van Horne (1843–1915), the pioneering Canadian railway executive and one of the leading collectors in Montreal.49 Currelly heard about his knowledge of ceramics when he was in Egypt in 1902. Although Van Horne was more interested in East Asian materials, he also had a large amount of pottery and carpets from Islamic lands in his collection. While his collection of carpets and East Asian ceramics were displayed in various parts of his house, almost all the Islamic ceramics were kept in his library.50 This might have been due to the size of his Islamic art collection, which was smaller than his other collections and thus best fitted into his library, or because these objects were not expected to arouse the interest of his general guests and visitors at that time. However, since his library was potentially a place where he spent a great amount of his time, they must have appealed to him. Van Horne, as Currelly states in his letter to Van Horne’s grandson, was one of the key figures from whom Currelly acquired his knowledge of pottery.51 Van Horne was also instrumental in establishing contacts between Currelly and F. Cleveland Morgan (1881–1962), the first curator of the Department of Decorative Arts at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (called the Art Association of Montreal until 1948).52

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Morgan officially started to build up the collection of Islamic art in Montreal a decade later than the one at the rom but under completely different circumstances. At the time of Morgan’s appointment as curator of the Department of Decorative Arts, the Montreal Museum of Arts was already well established, with roots going back to the 1860s. The fact that Morgan limited his collecting to decorative arts allowed him to be more precise about his acquisitions than Currelly, who had to purchase for the entire Museum of Art and Archaeology. Currelly had to acquire a substantial number of objects in a short period of time to establish the museum. It is, therefore, not surprising that Morgan states, “it should be remembered that the progress of the museum should be measured by the quality of the additions and not by the quantity.”53 Currelly and Morgan were friends from 1913 if not before and visited each other from time to time.54 While Currelly influenced Morgan in his approach towards ancient Egyptian material, Morgan on the other hand was a helpful colleague regarding decorative arts. They assisted each other in finding and acquiring appropriate bargains and even offered materials to one another from time to time, such as a fine Turkish carpet that Morgan presented to the rom.55 Both also referred their trusted dealers to each other.56

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The general concept of the rom as a university museum influenced the type, quality, and arrangement of what was to be the Islamic art collection even though few objects from earlier teaching collections were incorporated. Its identity as an educational museum was such an important factor in forming the rom that “research and study” had been described as its “brain and backbone.”57 There are, for example, almost 1,540 pottery fragments in the Islamic art collection that were collected for the purpose of education and research rather than public display. For Currelly these fragments were more valuable than the complete pieces in terms of their educational importance. He considered himself “lucky” to have been in Cairo during the Fustat excavations, which gave him the opportunity to acquire these sherds.58 This focus on the educational function of the objects could sometimes result in the acquisition not just of genuine pieces but also of objects of lower quality, casts, or forgeries appropriate only for teaching purposes. In one case Walker himself gave Currelly some materials that he brought back from one of his trips. He asked Currelly either to use them for students and educational purposes or discard them.59 When the rom officially opened in 1914, the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology went on display together with its four other counterparts (the Royal Ontario Museums of Geology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology, and Zoology) all in one building. While the basement and the second floor were dedicated to the other four museums, the Museum of Art and Archaeology occupied the ground and first floor of the building. The galleries were organized geographically, chronologi-

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13.2 Floor plan of the Royal Ontario Museum. From the Outline Guide published in 1939.

cally, or by material. There were displays of prehistoric Europe, Greece and Rome, Babylon and Egypt, the American Indian, and the Chinese collection. Collections of furniture, arms and armour, ironwork, ceramics, and glass were each displayed separately. Although objects of Islamic art were being collected for the museum, they seemed not to be a priority for display at that time. Some of these objects were spread across the museum among other collections according to their material, such as arms and armour and ceramics. These objects were referred to by the geographical name of the place from which they were acquired or, broadly, as objects from the Near East. For example according to the first available guidebook of the museum in 1916, there were “Rhodian, Damascus and Persian wares of the Nearer East” on display in the “Glazed Earthenware Gallery” on the ground floor.60 During the two decades after the opening of the rom, the museum’s collection grew continuously. It grew so fast that by the early 1920s the galleries had already become crowded. This led to the major expansion of the museum in 1933 and the addition of a new wing.61 The Museum of Art and Archaeology remained in the old wing. It occupied the whole building and most of the centre block between the two wings. Prior to this renovation, galleries retained the same general outline for almost

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13.3–13.4 Photographs of the Royal Ontario Museum exhibition Persian Painting and Islamic Applied Art, 1957.

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two decades.62 However, after the renovation the museum expanded into almost seventy rooms and various new galleries were added.63 Two galleries were dedicated to Near and Middle Eastern objects as well as South Asia. These galleries were located in the East Asiatic Section on the third floor. They displayed objects from Iran, Turkey, India, and other South Asian countries. Since 1933 the general guidebook of the museum mentions these galleries as the “Near East,” while notably the same galleries were called “Iran, et cetera” and “India, et cetera” in the rom’s East Asiatic guidebook (fig. 13.2).64 Even though the term “Islamic art” had been used in Currelly’s correspondence as early as 1936, he did not dedicate a gallery with this name until the late 1940s.65 Since 1947 what was previously called the Near Eastern or Iran gallery was renamed the gallery of “Mohammedan” art in the museum’s guidebook.66 This identification could be considered the rom’s first attempt to bring together the arts from the geographical areas later grouped under the term, Islamic art.67 The gallery kept this

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13.5 Photograph of the Royal Ontario Museum exhibition Oriental Rugs: The Kalman Collection, 1958.

name for more than a decade until 1956 when it officially appeared as the Islamic gallery. This displayed mostly pottery and glass wares (complete objects and sherds) from countries such as Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Egypt. Other objects such as arms and armour, however, were not part of this gallery. For years they remained on display in the gallery on the main floor that was dedicated to “the art of war” (one of Currelly’s main interests) along with items from other countries.68 During its first decades the Islamic gallery at the rom was shaped mostly as the natural result of the museum’s expansion, and it was changed according to the available collected objects in the museum. The only exhibitions related to the field of Islamic art were made using objects that were donated to the collection, as happened with the 1947 exhibition of the collection of the First Lord Kitchener (1850–1916), which included one hundred items of Islamic arms and armour donated to the rom.69 In 1957 the first exhibition dedicated to Islamic art was mounted at the rom

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(figs 13.3, 13.4) Called Persian Painting and Islamic Applied Art, this exhibition was comprised jointly of the rom’s collection and loans from Mrs Bronfman and Mrs Slatkin.70 Another exhibition, The Oriental Rugs: the Kalman Collection, went on display in 1958 as the result of the loan by Mr and Mrs Kalman who formed their collection during the twenty-six years that they had lived in Cairo (fig. 13.5).71 At the rom Islamic art remained under the authority of the Near Eastern curators until 1966 when it transferred to the newly created West Asian department. One year later Dr Lisa Golombek joined the museum as its first Islamic art historian and later curator of Islamic art (1967–2005).72 This marked the end of the first phase of shaping the Islamic art collection at the rom and the beginning of a more specialized approach to this field.

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I would like to thank the following from the Department of Art and Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum: Dr Karin Rührdanz (former Senior Curator of Islamic Art) for her valuable support and help in all the stages of writing this article; Bill Pratt (former Collection Technician – East and West Asia) for his help in accessing the rom’s collection and database; Dr Lisa Golombek (Curator Emerita of Islamic Art) and Dr Edward Keall (Curator Emeritus of the West Asian Section) for kindly sharing their information regarding the development of the Islamic Art Collection of the rom; and the rom Registration Department for assisting me in using the archival documents. For further readings about Currelly and the establishment of the Royal Ontario Museum, see: Currelly, I Brought the Ages Home; Edgar, “The Royal Ontario Museum”; Dickson, The Museum Makers; Teather, The Royal Ontario Museum. The rom has two mottoes that were carved on either side of the museum’s original entrance (where they are still visible): to tell the story of “The Arts of Man through all the Years” and “The Record of Nature through countless Ages.” As later discussed in the chapter, the term “Islamic art” was not used to refer to the collection at the rom until at least the mid-1930s. It is, however, used in this present context to refer to items that later were grouped under this term. The terminology employed for the galleries at the museum is discussed later in this chapter. Royal Ontario Museum, A Handbook, v. Today the collection of Islamic art at the Royal Ontario Museum consists of about 10,000 objects in total. These objects have been divided between three different collections of the Department of Art and Culture: Islamic Art Department (that is in charge of the majority of the collection), Textiles and Fashion Department, and the South Asian Department. The focus of this chapter is the development of the collection of the Islamic Art Department. These decades have been referred to as the “golden ages” of the rom in general. See Cameron, The Royal Ontario Museum, 2. As Currelly mentions: “Our close connection with England naturally made it necessary to do all I could to illustrate the descent and British ancestry of our own tools and domestic gear”: Currelly, I Brought the Ages Home, 275.

bu i l d i n g t h e i s l a m i c a rt c o l l e c t i o n 8 For the history of museum development in Canada and the sources of influence, see: MacKenzie, Museums and Empire; Key, Beyond Four Walls; Mak, “Patterns of Change”; Miers and Markham, A Report. For the history of educational museums in Canada which followed the South Kensington model, see: Canada (Province of, 1841–66) Council of Public Instruction for Upper Canada, The Educational Museum and School of Art and Design for Upper Canada. 9 On the close association between the rom and the University of Toronto, see: Teather, A Prehistory, 11; Heinrich, “Royal Neighbour,” 8. 10 He was also the general manager and later president of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. See: Glazebrook, Sir Edmund Walker; Duffy, “Triangulating the rom.” 11 See the following letters: Sir Edmund Walker to Currelly, 8 December 1910; Cecil Smith to Currelly, 18 May 1911. 12 MacKenzie, Museums and Empire, 21 13 The other museums were Geology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology, and Zoology. 14 For the rom’s motto and mandate, see note 3. 15 Currelly, I Brought the Ages Home, 32–7; Dickson, The Museum Makers, 15–18; Yamamoto, “The Excavator’s Digs,” 19–21. 16 Currelly, I Brought the Ages Home, 80–1. 17 Vernoit, “Islamic Art and Architecture,” 29–32. 18 For the use of Islamic art as a source of inspiration by various art movements, see: Hagedorn, “German Collections,” 12–13; Ward, “Islamism,” 273. For more information on the exhibiting of Islamic art and the commercial dealing of Islamic objects, see Vernoit, “Islamic Art and Architecture.” 19 Currelly, I Brought the Ages Home, 129–30. 20 rom 905.8.2. This Qurʾan manuscript was commissioned by sultan al-Malik al-Zahir Abi Saʿid Khushqadam (r. 1461–67) and written by ‘Abdallah al-Sayfi (?) Janibek, the dawa¯da¯r al-kabīr of Malik al-Zahir. This Qurʾan manuscript has been studied by Noha Aboukhatwa in her doctoral thesis completed at the University of Toronto. The other is a late seventeenth-century Ottoman Qurʾan manuscript from Turkey (905.8.1). The third object is a nineteenth-century inscribed sword, also from Turkey (905.7.1). 21 On Khan al-Khalili and Ismailia Quarter and the dealers of Cairo, see Sladen, Oriental Cairo, 13, 19, 78. 22 Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen (1856–1947), an English author and academic, who later migrated to Australia. 23 Sladen, Oriental Cairo, 96–8. 24 Mathews, “The Right Man,” 17. 25 See these letters: Fr. Vester & Co. to Charels T. Currelly, 14 July 1911; John D. Whiting to Currelly, 2 May 1936. Khan al-Wazir is located between the citadel and the Umayyad Mosque. Parts of it were demolished during the French Mandate. 26 The nineteenth century through to the 1930s could be considered the great age of faking in many areas of antiquity. See Jones, Craddock, and Barker, eds, Fake?, 161–2. 27 For example, the letter: Khan Monif to Currelly, 16 September 1935. See also comments in Sladen, Oriental Cairo, 96.

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28 Arms and armour: 906.11 and 908.30 accession series; a Safavid blue-and-white dish (908.22.1) and an eighteenth-century Kütahya plate (908.22.2); Iznik plates (908.17.1–2). 29 For reproductions, see Mason and Golombek, “The Petrography,” figs 6, 8; Golombek, Mason, and Bailey, Tamerlane Tableware, pls. 72–74; Golombek et al., Persian Pottery of the first Global Age, cat. nos. 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 17, 18, 27, 32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 49, 52, 53. 30 Letter: Hornblower to Currelly, 27 May 1911. He used the old term, “Rodian” (sic), in his letter. 31 See the letters: Dikran Kelekian to Sir Edmund Walker, 16 October 1919; Walker to Kelekian, 31 October 1919. 32 See note 58. 33 Letter: Currelly to Webb (Sir Edmund Walker’s daughter), 24 July 1939. 34 Currelly, I Brought the Ages Home, 159; Heinrich, “Royal Neighbour”; Teather, A Prehistory, 4–8. 35 See, for example, the letter: George D. Hornblower to Currelly, 7 April 1911. Hornblower later donated most of his collection to museums in the United Kingdom such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, and the Fitzwilliam Museum. He also donated sixteen objects to the rom in 1940. For more information on Hornblower, see Dawson and Uphill, Who Was Who in Egyptology, 145. 36 Duffy, “Triangulating the rom.” 37 Currelly, I Brought the Ages Home, 150, 166. 38 Ibid., 166; Letter: Hornblower to Currelly, 19 May 1911. 39 Currelly, I Brought the Ages Home, 134, 150, 166, 177. 40 For example, the letter: G. Kalabdjian to Currelly, 10 March 1915. 41 See, for example, the letters: Hornblower to Currelly, 27 November 1912; Hornblower to Currelly, 28[?] November 1912. 42 rom 911.39.1.a–c. Set of nineteenth-century gilded, chiselled, and etched steel armour (helmet, shield, and armguard). The shield includes the quote “Rika¯[bī-yi] Na¯dir Sha¯h Sulta¯n” (The companion/servant of the Nadir Shah). Hornblower had mentioned to Currelly that this attribution might not be correct. See letter: Hornblower to Currelly, 27 May 1911. 43 See, for example, the letter: Currelly to Hornblower, 29 September 1925. 44 Letter: Currelly to Hornblower, 17 January 1935. 45 Objects that were donated to the collection by Walter Massey after 1907 were purchased by Currelly from this fund. Lillian Treble’s collection consisted mostly of Middle Eastern textiles. She sometimes used Currelly’s guidance in acquiring objects for her collection. For more information about Walter Massey and his fund, see Finlay, The Force of Culture, 26, 88. 46 Son of Archibald Ferguson and Catherine Amelia Ferguson (née Walker). The original source of his acquisitions is not clear, except for a model of the Taj Mahal that he acquired through a missionary, who brought it back from India. See the letter: Mat Muriel Holladay to Gerard Brett, 13 February 1954. 47 One of these sets includes the quote “Bandi-yi sha¯h-i vila¯yat ʿAbba¯s” (ʿAbbas, the slave/

bu i l d i n g t h e i s l a m i c a rt c o l l e c t i o n

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56

57 58

59 60

61 62 63 64 65 66

delegate of Imam ʿAli) (rom 916.15.2). Ferguson’s collection entered the museum after his death in 1916. His will is available in the Archives of Ontario as No. 30938 (MS 584 Reel 1896). Letter: Hornblower to Currelly, 19 May 1911. See also note 42. Knowles, William C. Van Horne. Van Horne, valuation list. Mr. Carter’s Valuation on [William Van Horne’s] artistic Property other than Pictures, in 1917, 1929, 1941 (1942). Letter: Currelly to Lt William Van Horne, 20 June 1944. Morgan, “F. Cleveland Morgan,” 51. For information on Morgan, see Morgan, “F. Cleveland Morgan” and Germain, A City’s Museum, 63–7. Morgan, “F. Cleveland Morgan,” 5. Letter: Cleveland Morgan to Currelly, 20 December 1921; Morgan, “F. Cleveland Morgan,” 51–2. rom 916.16.2. Mid-eighteenth-century Turkish rug (222 × 190 cm); symmetrical knots with floral design. Currelly was interested in buying a similar rug when he was in Cairo. However, since he had a limited budget, he decided to buy three other rugs for “threetenth” in total of the price that he would have had to pay for such a rug. See Currelly, I Brought the Ages Home, 173. For example, see the letters: Joseph Monif to Currelly, 17 January 1940; Croft to Currelly, 18 June 1918 and 30 June 1918. In a 1940 letter to Currelly, Monif stated that “Mr Morgan of Montreal was over at my place, he asked me to send you an [sic] snapshot of some very early potteries.” Joseph Monif to Currelly, 17 January 1940. Cameron, The Royal Ontario Museum, 1. Currelly, I Brought the Ages Home, 171–2. Currelly acquired 331 sherds from Fustat during the winter of 1907–08. This collection of sherds covers a wide range of techniques, dates, and locations of production. For published examples of these sherds, see Mason, Shine Like the Sun, pls. C1, C2, C3. Later in 1923 the British Museum also donated 112 sherds to the rom. These are mostly ceramic and glass sherds from Samarra excavations as early as the ninth-century (rom 923.29 and 923.34 series). Letter: Walker to Currelly, 1 December 1919. Royal Ontario Museum, Guide to the Galleries (1916), 6. For more information on rom galleries and the display of art objects during the first half of the twentieth century, see Royal Ontario Museum’s guidebooks published from 1916 to 1950. For the rom renovation in 1933, see Brown, Bold Vision, 82–4. See Royal Ontario Museum, Guide to the Galleries (1931/1933). Cf. Royal Ontario Museum’s guide of 1916 (note 61). Currelly, I Brought the Ages Home, 159–60. See Royal Ontario Museum, Guide to the Galleries (1933), floor plan; compare to the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology, Outline Guide (1939), floor plan. See the letter: John D. Whiting to Currelly, 1 July 1936. See Royal Ontario Museum, The Earth, Life and the Works of Man, 48. For the term “Mohammedan” and its usage in the 1910 exhibition in Munich, see Shalem, “The 1910 Exhibition,” 7–8.

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bita p ourvash 67 For a discussion of the term, Islamic art, see Shalem, “What do we mean.” 68 Royal Ontario Museum, A Handbook (1956), 43, 49–50. For Currelly’s interest in arms and armour see Walton, “Provincial Hoplology.” 69 948.1 accessioned series. This collection was donated by Henry Herbert Kitchener, the third Lord Kitchener, to the rom in 1948. 70 Saidye Bronfman (1897–1995), wife of Samuel Bronfman (1889–1971), an entrepreneur and philanthropist and founder of Distillers Corporation Ltd. He later established the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation, one of Canada’s major private granting foundations. I would like to thank their daughter, Dr Phyllis Lambert, for kindly sharing her information about the Bronfman family’s art collection. Regina Shoolman Slatkin, wife of Charles Slatkin: art collector and owner of Slatkin Gallery in New York. For information and images of this exhibition see rom’s Archive: rg107: Box 1; rg97 (B): Box 4. 71 See rom’s Archive: rg97-1-B; rg107: Box 2; rg140-1. Also Royal Ontario Museum, Oriental Rugs. 72 She was in the last year of her doctorate at the University of Michigan when she joined the museum.

biblio g r aphy

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Brown, Kelvin. Bold Vision: The Architecture of the Royal Ontario Museum. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 2011. Cameron, Duncan. The Royal Ontario Museum 1912–1962. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1961. Canada (Province of, 1841–66) Council of Public Instruction for Upper Canada. The Educational Museum and School of Art and Design for Upper Canada, with a Plan of the English educational Museum, etc. Toronto: Lovell, 1858 (privately printed). Currelly, Charles. I Brought the Ages Home. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1956. Dawson, W., and E. Uphill. Who Was Who in Egyptology. London: The Egypt Exploration Society, 1972. Dickson, Lovat. The Museum Makers: The History of the Royal Ontario Museum. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1986. Duffy, Dennis. “Triangulating the rom.” Journal of Canadian Studies 40, no 1 (2006): 157–81. Finlay, Karen. The Force of Culture: Vincent Massey and Canadian Sovereignty. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2004. Germain, George-Hébert. A City’s Museum: A History of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2007. Glazebrook, G. Sir Edmund Walker. London: Oxford University Press, 1933. Golombek, Lisa, Robert Mason, and Gauvin Bailey. Tamerlane Tableware: A New Approach to the Chinoiserie Ceramics of Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Iran. Costa Mesa, ca: Mazda Publishers in association with Royal Ontario Museum, 1996. Golombek, Lisa, Robert Mason, Patricia Proctor, and Eileen Reilly. Persian Pottery in the First Global Age: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. (Arts and Archaeology of the Islamic World 1). Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013.

bu i l d i n g t h e i s l a m i c a rt c o l l e c t i o n Hagedorn, Annette. “How Islamic Art Entered German Collections Since the Middle Ages.” In Islamic Art in Germany, edited by Joachim Gierlichs and Annette Hagedorn, 11–14. Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2004. Heinrich, Theodore. “Royal Neighbour.” Museum News 37, no. 4 (1959): 8–14. Jones, Mark, Paul Craddock, and Nicholas Barker, eds. Fake? The Art of Deception. London: British Museum, 1990. Key, Archie. Beyond Four Walls. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1973. Knowles, Valerie. William C. Van Horne: Railway Titan. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2010. MacKenzie, John. Museums and Empire: Natural History, Human Cultures, and Colonial Identities. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009. Mak, Eileen. “Patterns of Change, Sources of Influence: An Historical Study of the Canadian Museum and the Middle Class, 1850–1950.” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of British Columbia, 1996. Mason, Robert. Shine Like the Sun: Lustre-Painted and Associated Pottery from the Medieval Middle East. Costa Mesa, ca: Mazda Publishers in association with Royal Ontario Museum, 2004. Mason, Robert, and Lisa Golombek. “The Petrography of Iranian Safavid Ceramics.” Journal of Archaeological Science 30 (2003): 251–61. Mathews, Julia. “The Right Man in the Right Place at the Right Time.” Rotunda 38, no. 3 (2006): 14–18. Miers, Henry, and S. Markham. A Report on the Museums of Canada. London: Museums Association, 1932. Morgan, Norma. “F. Cleveland Morgan and the Decorative Arts Collection in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.” Unpublished ma thesis, Concordia University, 1985. Pelham, Edgar. “The Royal Ontario Museum.” University of Toronto Quarterly 17, no. 2 (1948): 168–78. Royal Ontario Museum. The Earth, Life and the Works of Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1947. – Guide to the Galleries: Archaeology, Geology, Mineralogy, Palaeontology, Zoology. Toronto?: No publisher, 1916. – Guide to the Galleries of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario: Archaeology, Geology, Mineralogy, Paleaontology, Zoology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1931. Published in another edition in 1933. – Oriental Rugs: The Kalman Collection: Toronto: No publisher, 1958? – The Royal Ontario Museum: A Handbook, 100 Queen’s Park, Toronto. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956. Sandler, Rivanne. “Iranian Studies at the University of Toronto.” Iranian Studies 42, no. 4 (2009): 611–20. Shalem, Avinoam. “The 1910 Exhibition ‘Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst’ revisited.” In After One Hundred Years: The 1910 Exhibition “Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst” reconsidered, edited by Andrea Lermer and Avinoam Shalem, 1–15. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. 327

bita p ourvash – “What do we mean when we say ‘Islamic Art’? A Plea for Critical Rewriting of the History of the Arts of Islam.” Journal of Art Historiography 6 (June, 2012): 1–18. Sladen, Douglas. Oriental Cairo, the City of the “Arabian Nights.” London: Hurst and Blackett, 1911. Teather, Lynne. The Royal Ontario Museum: A Prehistory, 1830–1914. Toronto: Canada Universal Press, 2005. Vernoit, Stephen. “Islamic Art, XI, 2: Collectors and Collecting. Europe and North America.” In The Dictionary of Art, edited by Terukazu Akiyama et al., 16: 553–5. New York: Grove’s Dictionaries, 1996. – “Islamic Art and Architecture: An Overview of Scholarship and Collecting, c. 1850–c. 1950.” In Discovering Islamic Art: Scholars, Collectors, and Collections, 1850–1950, edited by Stephen Vernoit, 1–61. London: I.B. Tauris, 2000. Vollmer, John, Edward Keall, and E. Nagai-Berthrong. Silk Roads, China Ships. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1983. Walton, Steven. “Provincial Hoplology: Collecting Arms and Armour in Ontario, 1850– 1950.” Journal of the History of the Collections 19, no. 1 (2007): 89–114. Ward, Rachel. “Islamism, Not an Easy Matter.” In A.W. Franks: Nineteenth-Century Collecting and the British Museum, edited by Marjorie Caygill and John Cherry, 272–85. London: British Museum, 1997. Winder, Bayly. “Four Decades of Middle Eastern Studies.” The Middle East Journal 41, no. 1 (1987): 40–63. Yamamoto, Kei. “The Excavator’s Digs, a Glimpse into the Past. Excavation the Hut of rom Founder Charels Trick Currelly in Abydos, Egypt.” Rotunda 38, no. 3 (2006): 19–21.

archival source s Letters (rom Registration Department): Croft, George to Charles T. Currelly, Croft, George, 1918, Correspondence, 18 June 1918; 30 June 1918; Croft, George to Charles T. Currelly, Hornblower, G.D., Acquisition, Invoices, Correspondence, 17 January 1935; Currelly, Charles T. to O.D. Skelton, Kitchener, The late Lord, 22 November 1932; Currelly, Charles T. to Dorothy Webb, Walker, Sir Edmund, Correspondence and Invoices, 24 July 1939; Currelly, Charles T. to Lt William Van Horne, Currelly Archival Material 1920–1929, Van Horne, Sir and Mrs., Correspondences, 20 June 1944; Holladay, May Muriel to Gerard Brett, Ferguson, R.A.W., 13 February 1954; Hornblower, George D. to Charles T. Currelly, Hornblower, G.D., Invoices, Correspondence, 7 April 1911; 19 May 1911; 27 May 1911; 27 November 1912; 28[?] November 1912; Kelekian, Dikran to Sir Edmund Walker, Walker, Sir Edmund, Correspondence and Invoices, 16 October 1919; Monif, Khan, H. to Charles T. Currelly, Monif, Khan, H., 16 September 1935; 17 January 1940; Morgan, Cleveland to Charles T. Currelly, Montreal Art Association, 20 December 1921; Smith, Cecil to Charles T. Currelly, Currelly Archival Material, Miscellaneous, 18 May 1911; Vester, Fr. & Co. to Charles T. Currelly, Vester, Fr. & Co., 14 July 1911; Walker, Sir Edmund to Charles T. Currelly, Walker, Sir Edmund, Correspondences and Invoices, 8 December 1910; 5 February 1912; 1 December 1919; Walker, Sir Edmund to Dikran Kelekian, Walker, Sir Edmund, Correspondence and 328

bu i l d i n g t h e i s l a m i c a rt c o l l e c t i o n Invoices, 31 October 1919; Whiting, John D. to Charles T. Currelly, 2 May 1936; Whiting, John D. to Charles T. Currelly, Vester, Fr. & Co., 1 July 1936. rom Registration Department: Van Horne, 1942, “Mr. Carter’s Valuation on [William Van Horne’s] Artistic Property Other than Pictures, in 1917, 1929, 1941.” Currelly Archival Materials 1920–1929, Van Horne, Sir Lt. and Mrs., Correspondences. rom Archive: rg97–1–B; rg97 (B):Box4; rg107:Box1; rg107:Box2; rg140–1. Archives of Ontario: Ferguson, Robert A. W., Will, No. 30938 (MS 584 Reel 1896).

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chapter 14

Henri Matisse’s Portrait of a Standing Riffian: Islam, Byzantium, and “Aristocratic Barbarism” Mark Antliff

Art historians have long recognized the impact of Byzantine and Islamic aesthetics on Henri Matisse’s developing abstraction before World War I,1 but the relation of those artistic precedents to Matisse’s interest in the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941) has yet to be fully explored. To do so we must consider the theory of art developed by Matisse’s close friend Matthew Stewart Prichard (1865–1936) depicted here in a laudatory portrait etched by Matisse in 1914 (fig. 14.2).2 A British aesthetician of independent means, Prichard nurtured Matisse’s interest in Bergson from 1909 onward and utilized the philosopher’s theory to attack the High Renaissance and its academic legacy, which he pitted against the “intuitive” aesthetics of Byzantine and Islamic cultures. Scholars have noted that Matisse’s awareness of Bergson predated his contact with Prichard, but I would agree with Henri Labrusse that Matisse’s interest in the French philosopher gained greater focus and intensity as a result of Prichard’s influence. This burgeoning friendship led Matisse to closely study Bergson in October 1912 while residing in Tangier, Morocco, shortly before he painted one of his most famous Orientalist portraits, his Le rifain debout, or Standing Riffian, of late 1912 (fig. 14.3).3 This interchange also exposed the decidedly secular Matisse to a new spiritualism, for Prichard was an ally of Catholic Modernism, a movement that followed Bergson in dismissing the intellect as a mere pragmatic tool incapable of grasping a fuller reality cast as the undivided flux of temporal change.4 Bergsonists allied to the Catholic Modernist movement argued that religious belief should be grounded in our intuitive reflection on the miracle of our own durational development and that of the world around us, manifest in what Bergson termed the élan vital animating the universe.5 Prichard hoped that Bergson’s metaphysics would return Europeans to the wellsprings of religious faith, an anti-rationalist project that, for Prichard, had a precedent in the ability of Byzantine aesthetics and liturgy to effect a profound spiritual change in the faithful. But as a Bergsonian vitalist who did not adhere to any single religion,6 Prichard went further in claiming that a spiritual fervor akin to Bergsonian intuition was native to all belief systems, and his endorsement of both Islamic and Byzantine aesthetics was therefore an expression of his quixotic attempt to overcome the pernicious im-

matisse’s p ort r ait of a standing r iffian

14.2 Henri Matisse, Portrait of M.S. Prichard, 1914. Etching, 18 × 12.2 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York.

14.1 Alvin Langdon Coburn, Henri Matisse, 1913.

pact of secularism, rationalism, and materialism on the Occident. Prichard identified Matisse’s aesthetic as yet another manifestation of this hoped-for spiritual vitalism; I would argue that Matisse came to endorse this viewpoint and that his Standing Riffian is exemplary of this new orientation. In 1913 Prichard identified the combination of Byzantine and Arabic designs in the twelfth-century Cappella Palatina in Palermo as “the locus classicus justification of the Byzantine-Matisse attitude” which he grounded in Bergsonian precepts (fig. 14.4).7 Crucial to this synthesis was a construction of pictorial space in response to the feeling of duration – Bergson’s term for our subjective experience of time – rather than the rational precepts governing Euclidean space and single vanishing point perspective (fig. 14.5). According to Bergson real space, in contrast to abstract Euclidean space, was composed of differing “degrees of extensity,” Bergson’s term for the mixture of time and space found in concrete experience. Movement in the Bergsonian sense encompassed other notions of change, including qualitative sensations of colour or sound, and processes of aging and psychological “becoming.” Unable to recognize change, the intellect, like the Euclidean space it fabricated,

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14.3 Matisse, Standing Riffian, late 1912. Oil on canvas, 146.5 × 97.7 cm. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

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substituted stasis for dynamism.8 In Bergson’s cosmology, concrete duration in all its forms possesses a rhythm, since it is a synthesis of the temporal and spatial. Thus Bergson, in the series of London lectures attended by Prichard, claimed that there is an “enormous difference between the rhythm of our own duration and the rhythm of the duration of matter.” In these same lectures and in his earlier book, Time and Free Will (1889), which Prichard read assiduously, Bergson compared our consciousness to a “melody” and identified sensations such as that of colour as the “qualitative” manifestations of the absorption of vibratory matter into the rhythmic tension of our own duration.9

matisse’s p ort r ait of a standing r iffian

14.4 Cappella Palatina (Nave Ceiling), 1130–43. Palermo, Sicily.

Matisse endorsed Bergson’s notion of rhythmic extensity, and this intuitive concept of space arguably played a role in his embrace of Islamic and Byzantine aesthetics, especially after his trip with Prichard to the exhibition of Islamic art in Munich in October 191010 and his encounter with what he referred to as “Byzantine” icons while visiting Russia the following year. In fact, Matisse’s veneration of Islamic

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14.5 Perugino, Delivery of the Keys to Saint Peter, 1482. Fresco, 3.48 × 5.70 m. Sistine Chapel, Vatican.

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aesthetics predated his first encounter with Prichard in 1909, which led the British aesthetician to identify Matisse’s earlier responses to Islamic art in works such as his Harmony in Red of 1908 as exemplary of his own Bergsonian notion of intuitive space. As Frereshteh Daftari has noted, Matisse’s exposure to Islamic carpets and Persian miniatures, such as the fifteenth-century Herati composition, The First Meeting between the Prince Houmay and the Princess Houmayoun, showed him “how to suggest three-dimensionality without imitating naturalistic space,” for the miniatures, “in spite of their flatness imply or create an illusion of depth.”11 Indeed as I have shown elsewhere, Matisse’s production, from Harmony in Red (autumn 1908) to The Red Studio (late autumn 1911) (fig. 14.8), constitutes a pictorial meditation on the differences between European academic perspective and a Bergsonian interpretation of “oriental” approaches to space.12 Ambiguous relations between foreground and background space, unmodulated planes of colour, disjunctions in scale, multiple viewpoints, and lack of a compositional centre were all pictorial devices adapted by Matisse from Persian miniatures.13 A case in point is Matisse’s Harmony in Red, the durational qualities of which are clearly inscribed in the painting’s title. The rhythmic extensity in Harmony in Red has a disturbing effect upon our perception of spatial location. The first thing worth noticing is that, with the exception of the items on the table, no single object, whether the window sill, woman, chairs, or table itself, is depicted in its entirety. The objects are not positioned on a visible floor; we cannot firmly ground them in three-dimensional space. The painting’s narrative is disarmingly simple, a maid is preparing a table for dinner, but to what degree is the table identifiable as a solid object? Its shape is hidden under a red tablecloth, but the cloth, delineated by a pencil-thin line, is

14.6 Henri Matisse, Harmony in Red, 1908. Oil on canvas, 180 × 220 cm. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.

14.7 The First Meeting Between the Prince Houmay and the Princess Houmayoun, c. 1430–40. Iran, Timurid Dynasty, Herat School. Tempera on board 29 × 17.5 cm. Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

mar k antliff

14.8 Henri Matisse, The Red Studio, autumn 1911. Oil on canvas, 181 × 219.1 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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hardly distinguishable from the wall. In the bottom left hand corner of the picture this line disappears, so that we can no longer separate the tablecloth from the wall behind it. On the side furthest away from us, where the table and the windowsill run parallel, Matisse periodically breaks the line, affecting a Cézannesque passage where spatial definition is needed most. The position occupied by the chair behind the woman is completely ambiguous. The maid’s arm appears to hide the table’s corner from view, yet the chair is pushed under the table at this very juncture, as if the table leg were knocked out to accommodate it. Or is the seat of the chair, in fact, facing the other way, towards the red wall behind it? The most alarming feature in Harmony in Red is the manner in which the tablecloth’s decorations of blue pots and vines seem to crawl over the table and wall. As part of the decorative tablecloth, these designs do not aid in defining the table as a three-dimensional object nor do the still-life objects on the table, since they fail to cast shadows across its surface. Where there should be a clear distinction between the table’s surface and the side facing us there is only an unmodulated field of red. Moreover where we should encounter the folds of the cloth at the bottom left hand corner of the table, Matisse instead paints a flowerpot decoration. Once again the pot does not “bend” with the corner; it is painted flat and frontal like the wallpaper pots behind it. The effect of the surging field of red, combined with these partially delineated objects, is to push everything up to the foreground, transforming the space into a two-dimensional surface. The sense of play between foreground and background space is further enhanced by Matisse’s adaptation of the Islamic technique of “framing” an exterior view, for many of the Persian miniatures seen by Matisse contained window views in which the distant landscape appeared closer than the interior walls framing it.14

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14.9 Andrei Rublev, Old Testament Trinity, 1411. Tempera on panel, 142 × 114 cm. Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow.

Matisse extended this spatial paradigm to include the art of Byzantium when he travelled to St Petersburg and Moscow in October–November 1911 where he saw works comparable to Andrei Rublev’s Old Testament Trinity of 1411 or the iconostasis screen in the Kremlin’s Cathedral of the Annunciation.15 Matisse, like many avantgarde artists, admired the Russian “primitives” for their use of reverse perspective to suggest depth, the degree of abstraction created by their highly saturated colours and lack of shadows, and their hieratic presentation of free-floating figures,16 but he also aligned this art with Bergsonian metaphysics. For Matisse, Russian icon painting testified to the merger of religious fervour and intuitive insight Prichard associated with the Byzantine tradition. “If I instinctively admired the Primitives in the Louvre and then Oriental art, in particular at the extraordinary exhibition in Munich,” stated Matisse in a 1947 essay on The Path of Colour, “it is because I found in them a new confirmation. Persian miniatures, for example, showed me the full possibility of my sensations … By its properties this art suggests a larger and truly plastic space.” In the same essay, Matisse added that his fall 1911 trip to Russia and exposure there to “Byzantine painting” had confirmed the insights provided by the Munich exhibition: “my revelation came from the Orient.” That revelation reinforced Matisse’s desire to “get away from imitation, even in light,” and to use colour to express “emotion and not as a transcription of nature.”17 In statements made to the Russian press in 1911 Matisse spoke of the “mood of mysticism” permeating the Kremlin’s cathedrals. “Nowhere have I ever seen such a wealth of color, such purity, such immediacy of

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expression.” “The Modern artist,” Matisse concluded, should “pursue the harmony of colors” found in these icons.18 Matisse claimed that Russian icons, like the Persian miniatures, showed him how to suggest three-dimensionality without employing linear perspective, for such works, in spite of their flatness, imply or create an illusion of depth. A case of such aesthetic hybridity is Matisse’s Red Studio (1911), completed shortly after the trip to Russia (fig. 14.8). The all-pervasive red in this painting causes our attention to oscillate between volumetric depth and a decorative surface, as if the fluctuant field of red introduced a rhythmic “pulse” to our experience of the painting. Thus like Harmony in Red, the Red Studio is dominated by an oscillating field of colour that embodies rhythmic extensity, but the painting bears yet another relation to duration, in so far as it is a pictorial record of his artistic production from 1906 to the present.19 As with Harmony in Red, Matisse has created spatial ambiguities: the unmodulated red invades every surface, with the result that the schematic, incomplete outlines of the floor and adjacent walls dissolve into a seamless spatial field. That rejection of European academicism is signalled in other ways as well, for the floral motifs surrounding the nude on the ceramic plate and the Large Nude (1911) resting against the left-hand wall were inspired by Persian ceramic ware Matisse saw in Munich. Furthermore, as Frereshteh Daftari notes, a formal analogy with these works is recapitulated,

14.10 Iconostasis Screen, c. fourteenth to nineteenth centuries. Cathedral of the Annunciation (1484–89), the Kremlin, Moscow.

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14.11 Henri Matisse, Large Nude, 1911. Distemper on canvas (destroyed).

by the “real” flowers issuing from the vase and forming a graceful arabesque around another nude … Less striking and for that reason all the more subtle is the thematic allusion carried by this formal analogy, in that by embellishing (with floral motifs of Islamic provenance) the image of the nude in the picture and in the ceramic, as well as by figuring the form of the arabesque (the leitmotif of Islamic decoration) in the guise of an “organic” metaphor, Matisse was … proposing that the encomiastic tenor of the Islamic decorative aesthetic is ontologically central to his life and his art.20 As I have argued elsewhere a central theme in this work is that of contrasting approaches to temporality.21 Indeed at the painting’s central axis stands the very symbol of the temporality the Bergsonian artist seeks to efface, that is, a free-standing clock. The clock transforms the rhythmic cadence of individual duration into a homogeneous, measured unit; the artist by contrast transposes that duration into a creative act. Clock time is the quantified, anonymous time of the scientist. Real duration can only be grasped through intuition; it is part of a creative process. To signal the suspension of the former experience of time in favour of the latter, Matisse removed the hands from the clock and let it stand as testimony to a concept of time he consciously rejected and as a foil to the durational experience and rhythmic extensity that gave shape to the “plastic space” of his canvases. This sensation of extensity is enhanced by the ambiguous placement of the chair in the right foreground, which undergoes a perspectival shift as one moves from the chair’s top to bottom.

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The Red Studio is an image of what Deepak Ananth perceptibly describes as “an intangible, noetic space,”22 but even more importantly it is a depiction of Matisse’s atelier, the spatial qualities of which register the rhythmic duration of the artist in a highly creative state of mind. Matisse has deliberately subverted any sense of pictorial coherence by creating an indeterminant space wherein three-dimensional objects are not fully delineated and appear to meld into a plainer surface of monochromatic red. Matisse has reduced the materiality of the utilitarian objects inhabiting the room to a bare outline – the dresser and clock against the back wall, the chair and table in the foreground, the pedestals on which his sculptures stand. By contrast those objects identified with Matisse’s creative powers – the decorated ceramic dish on the table, the adjacent box of crayons, the series of paintings, frames, sculptures, and unfinished plaster cast lining the back wall – all these, to quote Ananth, “betoken the real, declaring themselves in effect as markers of the only reality that counts for the artist.”23 The nasturtium, which wraps around Matisse’s statue of a female nude on the table, is there to remind us of Bergson’s correlation in his 1907 book, Creative Evolution between nature’s generative impulse and the creative energy of the artist.24 The later correlation is crucial if we are to grasp the full import of Byzantine aesthetics for Matisse’s project. Prichard recognized that the Byzantine era had long past, but he nevertheless hoped that Matisse’s art could forge a modern link to the spirit of Byzantium. This issue came to the fore when Prichard contemplated the plight of the avant-garde artist as one who did not decorate religious interiors but was instead condemned to create works destined for a secular environment, whether a commercial gallery or a museum. Prichard lamented this state of affairs in a series of letters before the war, culminating in a February 1914 manifesto summarizing his Bergsonian critique of the decline of religious faith in modern Europe.25 As part of a liturgical program, Byzantine mosaics, geometric motifs in a Mosque or Iconostasis screens are all subordinate to the act of worship; but when such art was removed to a museum or gallery setting this religious experience – which Prichard describes as intuitive – is lost. Prichard first broached this thesis in November 1909 in a diatribe against the modern museum and the destructive role of curators who removed works of art from religious settings and deposited them in an antivital “mausoleum.” Curators then classified, ordered and hung such work according to style, date, and subject matter, and the public who entered this secular space now experienced religious art through the mediation of a scientific mentalité. “No longer actuated by heightened sentiment,” “no longer aware of a deeper, more exalted, more glorious life,” Prichard declares, “the museum goer is in science, seeking identities and framing concepts.” A scientific approach generates psychological detachment, and the religious image or decorative program no longer elicits an emotional response, no longer “introduces rhythms into our consciousness.”26 In a Byzantine church or Islamic mosque the beholder is enveloped within an emotionally charged space, the absorptive power of which reportedly transforms our consciousness as our souls resonate with the extensive rhythms surrounding us. Religious images and

14.12 Roger Fry, Amenopolis, 1913. Printed linen (block-printed on selvedge), 79.5 × 85 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

motifs, when removed from a church or mosque, become mere objects to be classified in a comparative manner according to style, date, or pictorial school, yet originally, “they were not things, but unidentified parts of great unities.” It is the curator who, like “the materialist man of science,” destroys a unity Prichard identifies as “living and organic.” Removing paintings from a religious setting or the decorative ensemble of a palace interior, he “cuts [this unity] all up into morsels and thinks that each of the pieces is a part of a whole; but he forgets that the whole has a life of its own, an existence he has destroyed in his operation.”27 In February 1914 Prichard updated this thesis, asserting that artists themselves had begun responding to such intellectualism by producing paintings designed for museums. Such works were devoid of the “affective,” with “nothing related to an inner sense of reality”: contemporary examples included the Cubist paintings of Picasso, Roger Fry’s fabric designs for his Londonbased Omega Workshops, and the music of the American composer Leo Ornstein. Ornstein’s compositions, we are told are “arranged with an amazing sense of order” but convey “nothing related to an inner sense of reality, only something to listen to consciously and accept with intelligence.”28

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In June 1912 Prichard had expressed similar doubts about Matisse, asserting that, despite his rhythmic abstraction, “Matisse’s art fails in suggesting important action to us.”29 Here Prichard touched on a central issue: how could he reconcile Matisse’s art – created for secular patrons, displayed in commercial galleries or private homes, and devoid of religious imagery – with his call for an affective art capable of inspiring a spiritual renewal? Prichard resolved this conundrum with a bold thesis: Matisse’s creativity was itself an expression of the élan vital and as such tapped into the same vital impulse that animated artists during the era of Byzantium. This thesis would have resonated with Matisse, who in an interview in Moscow in November 1911 stated that “art is a mirror reflecting the artist’s soul” and that “in these icons the soul of the artists who painted them opens out like a mystical flower.”30 Such views indicate Matisse’s awareness of Bergson’s concept of the personality31 and its relation to what Prichard referred to as actuated sentiment. Prichard had attended Bergson’s lectures on the personality at the Collège de France in 1910, and Bergson later reiterated his findings in his London lectures of 1911 (which Prichard attended) and in his Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1914.32 Thus Prichard was well positioned to assimilate Bergson’s theory into his conception of Matisse as an artist privileged with the task of inaugurating a spiritual revolution. Bergson described our personality as continually developing throughout the entire existence of consciousness.33 Thus we not only retain everything in our conscious or unconscious memory, we prolong the past into our present through our actions. Bergson described this process as an effort of will, “a continual forward movement, gathering up the entire past and creating the future,” which was expressive of the élan vital animating all creative activity.34 Thus our personality has two essential aspects: memory “taking in the whole scope of our unconscious past” and our will, animated by an internal impulse “continually straining towards the future.”35 Our intellect routinely filters these memories with a view to immediate action for pragmatic ends: in such instances our personality is given less scope for expression. By contrast when we act creatively we bring more of our personality to bear in our ongoing activity, and our actions are more closely attuned to the durational élan vital of which we are a part. It is artists who possess the greatest capacity for self-expression, and as such their actions are more creative. This willed ability to create is reportedly unique to humanity and the internal impulse driving our personal development is itself an expression of a larger evolutionary process. “Each personality,” states Bergson, “is a creative force; and there is every appearance that the role of each person is to create, just as if a great Artist had produced as his work other artists.” However in our everyday existence most of us are still held captive by our intellect and its utilitarian concerns. Bergson’s intuitive method is designed to free us from such limitations, so that we too can unleash our own creative force and become “the productive agent of novelty in the world.”36 As I have shown elsewhere, beginning in fall 1913 Prichard claimed that this vital force found its fullest expression in a series of portraits drawn and painted by his friend Matisse.37 In a remarkable letter written in 1913 to one such sitter, the American

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14.13 Henri Matisse, Portrait of Mabel Warren, 1913. Pencil on paper, 28.2 × 21.6 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Mabel Warren, Prichard described this process.38 He began by noting “the immense effort necessary for creation” which “entailed a transformation of Matisse’s perceptual faculties [as he set about] reading the depths of personality.” “Listen for a moment how he prepared himself,” added Prichard, “when Matisse first felt that he wanted to make a drawing of you he consecrated himself to this end and purified himself for it, just as if he had been an eastern craftsman.” Such consecration elicited a reciprocal response in Mrs Warren, which allowed Matisse to grasp her personality during the sitting. “For some time I thought it too difficult,” said Matisse, “there was a constant movement of her will giving and withdrawing, opening and closing; my

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14.14 Nomisma histamenon of John I Tzimiskes (r. 969–76), Constantinople. Gold. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum.

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first drawing was nothing, but when, after hesitating, her being agreed to lend itself, I was able to work.” Mrs Warren’s willed sympathy with the artist resulted in a vibratory sensation: “There was no change in her features unless in the light of her eyes,” reported Matisse, “but there was a constant vibration, it was like a rippling lake.”39 In the earlier drawing Warren’s physiognomy is cursorily rendered with a single pencil stroke to indicate each feature, but in the final drawing her eyes are deep set, her head and shoulders composed of a series of overlapping, tremulous lines. Matisse described Warren as “an aristocrat in line with the aristocracy of Europe,” whom he then contrasted with the non-European “aristocracy of the savage” exemplified in his mind by his 1912 drawing and related painting of a Standing Riffian, depicting a Moroccan Berber dressed in traditional costume (fig. 14.3).40 In this construction Warren and her Muslim counterpart are both identified as aristocratic, but the latter is primitivized as a “noble savage” in Matisse’s Orientalist imagination. Prichard then flattered Warren by informing her that she “summoned strength from Matisse which was not in him before and helped Life make a step in advance, for such an act of creation constitutes a deathless addition to consciousness.”41 These statements praise Matisse’s ability to plumb an individual’s personality to grasp a deeper élan vital coursing through humanity, for Mrs Warren and the Riffian possess qualities native to the collective élan of their racial origins, identified here as European and Oriental. Thus it is significant that in March 1913, Matisse informed Prichard that his Riffian portrait was inspired in part by an ancient coin minted during the reign of the tenth-century Byzantine emperor John I Tzimiskes (r. 969– 76).42 Henri Labrusse has compared the Riffian to the representation of Christ on the front of the coin,43 but I would argue that Matisse’s three-quarter portrait bears greater similarity to the obverse side depicting Emperor John I receiving a blessing from Mary. When read in terms of Bergson’s theory of the élan vital, Matisse’s in-

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corporation of Byzantine iconicity into this portrait of a Riffian takes on additional significance as a sign of the spirit of righteous militancy native to the Muslim Orient. John I’s short reign was characterized by his spectacular success as a military general; the Berbers from the Atlas Mountains in turn were tribesmen who had actively resisted European colonial incursions in North Africa.44 By conflating a portrait of a contemporary Riffian, whom Matisse characterizes as an aristocrat, with a tenthcentury imperial defender of Byzantium, Matisse could allude to the shared militancy uniting ancient Byzantium with current Islamic culture in its confrontation with a moribund, secularized West mired in materialism. Thus, although Matisse arguably distanced his sitter from contemporary politics in Morocco by employing colour and facture to abstract the image and by placing the Berber against a neutral background,45 his choice to endow this Riffian with the iconic dignity of a warrioraristocrat signalled another kind of politics, infused with a romanticized conception of both Byzantium and the world of contemporary Islam. In sum, for Matisse the myth of Byzantium and of the Islamic world was part and parcel of an embodied awareness of an organic life force, manifest as art. This notion was additionally cast by Prichard in terms of an imagined community of believers and a concept of the élan vital defined along racial and metaphysical lines. That paradigm was shared by other Bergsonists affiliated with the European avant-garde. For Matisse’s Cubist contemporaries the concept took the form of a Celtic life force in their debates with nationalist defenders of Graeco-Latin culture; in interwar France Bergsonists Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) and Léopold Senghor (1906–2001) configured their anti-colonial notion of Négritude as a vitalist counter discourse to French Imperialism, and in 1949 Matisse’s son-in-law Georges Duthuit (1891–1973) reiterated Prichard’s thesis in a manifesto titled “Matisse and Byzantine Space” published in the avant-garde journal, Transition.46 Thus Prichard and Matisse’s mythic conflation Islamic and Byzantine spirituality was just one configuration within a broader spectrum as modernists deployed their Bergsonism to combat a plurality of adversaries, both real and imagined.

note s 1 Matisse’s interest in Islamic culture first developed in 1903 when he visited an exhibition of Islamic art held in the Marson Gallery in the Louvre. In 1906 he travelled to Biskra in Algeria, returning to Paris with Berber rugs and ceramics, and in 1907 he renewed this interest by visiting a series of exhibitions in the Louvre devoted to Islamic carpets and fabrics from different time periods. Matisse’s enthusiasm for the art of the Islamic world was further enhanced in October 1910 when he accompanied his close friend Matthew Stewart Prichard to the great exhibition of Islamic art held in Munich, and in December of that year he visited the Alhambra in Spain. In 1911 he travelled to Russia where he studied Byzantine icons, and in 1912 he made two extended trips to Algiers in Morocco. The literature on Matisse and Islamic art and culture is vast. Articles and books especially relevant to my discussion include: Ananth, “Frames Within Frames”; Schneider, “Two Things at

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Once”; Labrusse, “How Islam Came to Matisse”; the chapter on Matisse in Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics; Labrusse, Matisse: La condition de l’image; Cowart and Schneider Matisse in Morocco. See my analysis of the impact of Prichard’s Bergsonian metaphysics on Matisse. See Antliff, “The Rhythms of Duration.” For further studies, see Labrusse, Matisse: La condition de l’image, 94–115; and chapter 6 of Bock-Weiss, Henri Matisse. Labrusse, Matisse: La condition de l’image, 96–8. Eva-Marie Troelenberg, citing Labrusse, has likewise noted Prichard’s impact on Matisse at this juncture with reference to the Islamic-inspired floral motifs and spatial ambiguities in Matisse’s Still Life with Eggplants (1911) and his Zorah on the Terrace of 1912. See Troelenberg, “Saltare il fosso.” On The Standing Riffian, see Coyle and Kernan, “The Standing Riffian,” 94; Grammont, “Seated Riffian.” For more on the wider context of Orientalist art, see: Rosenthal, Orientalism; Lemaire, The Orient. For Orientalism in scholarly discourse, see the contrasting viewpoints of: Said, Orientalism; Irwin, For Lust of Knowing. See Antliff, “The Rhythms of Duration,” 186. Catholic modernism is a rationalist position that allows for the evolution of doctrine, both in content and the ways in which they are communicated. Hence, Catholic modernism allowed for the updating of moral standards in the Church, while not asserting that this contradicted earlier beliefs. On this, see Cohen, “Reason and Faith”; Grogin, Bergsonian Controversy, 150–9. Grogin, Bergsonian Controversy, 156–8. Bock-Weiss, Henri Matisse, 159–60. Prichard recorded his unfolding enthusiasm for both Bergson and Matisse in copious letters penned to his American friend Isabella Stewart Gardner (now available in microfilm at the Archives of American Art under the Isabella Stewart Gardner Papers). See Prichard to Gardner, 24 April 1913. Bergson developed his thesis about “concrete extension” as a mixture of time and space in his book Matter and Memory (1896) and in his 1911 lectures on “The Nature of the Soul,” which Prichard attended in London. See Bergson, Matter and Memory, 326; and “L’immortalité de l’âme” (1911) in Robinet, ed., Mélanges, 944–59. See Bergson, “L’immortalité de l’âme” (1911) in Robinet, ed., Mélanges, 952, 958; Bergson, Time and Free Will, 100, 106, 111. On Prichard’s enthusiastic response to Bergson’s aesthetic pronouncements in Time and Free Will and to Bergson’s Matter and Memory (1896), see letters from Prichard to Gardner dated 22 June 1909, and 24 October 1909. The Munich exhibition was published in three oversize illustrated volumes in 1912. See anon., Die Ausstellung von Meisterwerken muhammedanischer Kunst. For an analysis of the exhibition installation and the 1912 catalogue, see: Troelenberg, “Framing the Artwork.” For a comprehensive analysis of Matisse’s familiarity with Persian art, see Daftari, Influence of Persian Art, 156–218. Antliff, “The Rhythms of Duration,” 188–92. See Daftari, Influence of Persian Art, 183–218; Ananth, “Frames within Frames,” 153–77. See Daftari, Influence of Persian Art, 166. For succinct overviews of Matisse’s trip to Russia, see Rusakov, “Matisse in Russia”; Hilton, “Matisse in Moscow.”

matisse’s p ort r ait of a standing r iffian 16 For an overview of the impact of Russian Icons on the avant-garde, see Gatrall, “Introduction,” in Gatrall and Greenfield Alter Icons, 1–21. 17 Henri Matisse, “The Path of Colour” (1947) in Flam, Matisse on Art, 178. 18 “Nedalya o Matisse,” Protiv techniya (5 November 1911). Quoted in Rusakov, “Matisse in Russia,” 289. 19 Flam, Matisse: The Man and His Art, 321–2. 20 Ananth, “Frames Within Frames,” 160–1. 21 For a Bergsonian analysis of the Red Studio, see Antliff, “The Rhythms of Duration,” 192. 22 Ananth, “Frames Within Frames,” 161. 23 Ibid. 24 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 6, 23, 43, 51. For a summary of Bergson’s views on artistic and biological creativity see Antliff, Inventing Bergson, 103–5. 25 See, for example, Prichard’s comments on the European artist’s “scientific” focus on forms of representation to the detriment of an intuitive meditation of form and colour in Prichard to Gardner, 20 July 1909. On 26 November 1909 Prichard criticized museum curators for removing works of art designed for religious interiors from these emotionally charged environments and into the dead realm of the museum where individuals “are no longer activated by heightened sentiment” and works of art are subjected to scientific forms of classification. In February 1914 Prichard extended this critique to include forms of avant-garde abstraction, which were reportedly designed for museums and thus were devoid of sentiment, and with it, the capacity to provoke an intuitive state of mind. See Prichard to Gardner, 20 July 1909, and 9 February 1914 (Archive of American Art, Gardner Papers). 26 Prichard to Gardner, 20 July 1909 (Archive of American Art, Gardner Papers). 27 Ibid. 28 See Prichard to Gardner, 9 February 1914 (Archive of American Art, Gardner Papers). 29 Prichard to Gardner, 5 June 1912 (Archive of American Art, Gardner Papers). 30 “Nedalya o Matisse,” Protiv techniya (5 November, 1911). Quoted in Rusakov, “Matisse in Russia,” 289. 31 That concept was first broached in Bergson, Creative Evolution, 5–6, 199–202. 32 Prichard stated that he was going to be attending Bergson’s lectures on “the Personality” in a letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner dated 18 December 1910 (Gardner Papers, Archives of American Art). For a summation of those lectures, which Bergson delivered in 1911, see Grivet, “La théorie de la personne après Bergson” (1911) in Robinet, Mélanges, 847–75. For Bergson’s October 1911 London lectures on the nature of the soul, see Bergson, “The Nature of the Soul,” in Robinet, Mélanges, 944–59; for his Gifford Lectures of April–May 1914, see Bergson, “The Problem of the Personality” in Robinet, Mélanges, 1051–71; and Bergson, Gifford Lectures. 33 Bergson, “The Nature of the Soul,” 953–4. 34 Bergson, “The Problem of the Personality,” 1065. 35 Bergson first developed this thesis in his 1911 lectures on the personality in Paris and later summarized his findings in his 1914 Gifford lectures. See Bergson, “La théorie de la personne,” and “The Problem of Personality,” in Robinet, Mélanges, 859–63, 1066–7.

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mar k antliff 36 Bergson, “The Problem of the Personality,” 1070–1. 37 In a letter dated 4 November 1913 Prichard referred to Matisse’s Portrait of Amélie Matisse (1913) in this regard. See Prichard to Gardner, 4 November 1913 (Archive of American Art, Gardner Papers); I have also discussed this letter in Antliff, “The Rhythms of Duration,” 196–201. 38 “M.S. Prichard to M. Warren, Paris, 7 November, 1913,” reproduced in Hofer, Three Portrait Drawings (no pagination). 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. Also see my discussion of the Warren portrait and related works in Antliff, “The Rhythms of Duration,” 196–201. 42 Prichard’s record of his conversation with Matisse concerning the impact of the Byzantine coin on the artists design for the Riffian Portrait is reproduced in Duthuit, Écrits sur Matisse, 227; Labrusse, Matisse: La condition de l’image, 106. 43 See Labrusse’s discussion of the coin and its impact on Matisse’s Le Rifain debout (late 1912) and Le Rifain assis (1912–13) in Labrusse, Matisse: La condition de l’image, 106–8. Claudine Grammont reprises Labrusse’s argument with reference to Matisse’s Le Rifain assis in her “Seated Riffian,” 181–3. 44 On John I Tzimiskes (969–76), see Goodacre, Coinage of the Byzantine Empire, 211–14. For an excellent analysis of the Riffians’ active resistance to French colonial incursions in Morocco see Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics, 176–81. 45 Roger Benjamin has argued that Matisse actively suppressed any association of the Riffian with the role of the Riffian tribesmen in resisting French and Spanish colonialism through his pictorial procedures. He also notes that Matisse’s stereotyping of his sitter as barbaric resonated with that of his close friend, the anti-colonialist politician Marcel Sembat (1862– 1922), who claimed that Matisse’s portrait of this “splendid barbarian” reminded him of “the Moors in the Song of Roland.” Benjamin rightly interprets such pronouncements as indicative of a romanticized conception of the colonial Other, and he concludes that Sembat’s praise for Mattisse’s painting was a sign of the former’s “conception of cultural activity as distinct from and somehow above political operations.” See Benjamin, Orientalist Aesthetics, 176–9. I would argue that Prichard’s mediating impact on Matisse introduced another set of equations into this Orientalist matrix. 46 On the Cubists’ Celtic nationalism, see Antliff, Inventing Bergson, 106–34; on Senghor and concepts of Négritude, see Jones, The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy; on Georges Duthuit and the journal Transition, see Peers, “Utopia and Heterotopia”; and Duthuit, “Matisse and Byzantine Space.”

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matisse’s p ort r ait of a standing r iffian Antliff, Mark. Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-Garde. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. – “The Rhythms of Duration: Bergson and the Art of Matisse.” In New Bergson, edited by John Mullarkey, 184–208. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Benjamin, Roger. Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution (1907). Authorized translation by Arthur Mitchell. New York: MacMillan, 1911. Reprinted New York: H. Holt and Co., 1937. – Gifford Lectures: The Problem of Personality. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1914. – Matter and Memory. Translated by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1911. – Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immmediate Data of Consciousness. Translated by F.L. Pogson. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1910. Reprinted: New York: Harper & Row, 1960. Bock-Weiss, Catherine. Henri Matisse: Modernist against the Grain. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009. Cohen, Paul. “Reason and Faith: The Bergsonian Catholic Youth of Pre-War Paris.” Historical Reflections 13, nos 2–3 (1986): 473–97. Cowart, Jack, and Pierre Schneider, eds. Matisse in Morocco: The Paintings and Drawings, 1912–1913. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1990. Coyle, Laura, and Beatrice Kernan. “The Standing Riffian.” In Matisse in Morocco: The Paintings and Drawings, 1912–1913, edited by Jack Cowart and Pierre Schneider, 94. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1990. Daftari, Frereshteh. The Influence of Persian Art on Gauguin, Matisse and Kandinsky. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1991. Duthuit, Georges. Écrits sur Matisse. Paris: École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts, 1992. – “Matisse and Byzantine Space.” Transition 5 (1949): 20–37. Flam, Jack, ed. and trans. Matisse on Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. – Matisse: The Man and his Art, 1869–1918. London: Cornell University Press, 1986. Gatrall, Jefferson, and Douglas Greenfield, eds. Alter Icons: The Russian Icon and Modernity. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Goodacre, Hugh. A Handbook of Coinage of the Byzantine Empire. London: Spink and Sons, 1957. Grammont, Claudine. “Seated Riffian (Le Riffian Assis).” In Matisse in the Barnes Foundation, Volume 2, edited by Yves-Alain Bois, 174–87. London: Thames & Hudson, 2015. Grogin, R. The Bergsonian Controversy in France, 1900–1914. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1988. Hilton, Alison. “Matisse in Moscow.” Art Journal (Winter, 1969): 166–73. Hofer, Philip. Three Portrait Drawings with a Letter by M.S. Prichard Describing Their Creation in 1913. Boston: Meadow Press, 1974. Irwin, Robert. For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies. London: Penguin Books, 2007.

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mar k antliff Jones, Donna. The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Négritude, Vitalism, and Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Labrusse, Rémi. “How Islam Came to Matisse: An Occidental Story.” In Matisse in the Alhambra, 1910–2010, edited by Francisco Jarauta and Maria de Mar Villafranca, 31–47. Granada and Madrid: Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife and Tf Editores, 2010. – Matisse: La condition de l’image. Paris: Gallimard, 1999. Lemaire, Gérard-Georges. The Orient in Western Art. Cologne: Könemann, 2001. Peers, Glenn. “Utopia and Heterotopia: Byzantine Modernisms in America.” Studies in Medievalism 19 (2010): 77–113. Robinet, André, ed. Mélanges. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1972. Rosenthal, Donald. Orientalism: The Near East in French Painting, 1800–1880. Rochester: Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, 1984. Rusakov, Yu. “Matisse in Russia in the Autumn of 1911.” Translated by John E. Bowlt. Burlington Magazine (May, 1975): 284–91. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Schneider, Pierre. “Two Things at Once: Matisse and the Orient.” In Matisse in the Alhambra, 1919–2010, edited by Francisco Jarauta and Maria de Mar Villafranca, 53–68. Granada and Madrid: Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife and Tf Editores, 2010. Troelenberg, Eva-Maria. “Framing the Artwork: Munich 1910 and the Image of Islamic Art.” In After One Hundred Years. The 1910 Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst Exhibition reconsidered, edited by Andrea Lermer and Avinoam Shalem, 37–64. Islamic History and Civilization 82. Leiden: Brill, 2010. – “Saltare il fosso: Matisse et l’“inutilità” catalitica di esporre le arti islamiche.” In Matisse Arabesque, edited by Ester Coen, 45–51. Milan: Skira, 2015.

archival source s Isabella Stewart Gardner Papers, Archives of American Art: M.S. Prichard to I.S. Gardner (22 June 1909, 20 July 1909, 24 October 1909, 18 December 1910, 5 June 1912, 24 April 1913, 4 November 1913, 9 February 1914).

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chapter 15

The Dialogic Exhibition Patricia Bentley and Zulfikar Hirji

Magic Squares: The Patterned Imagination of Muslim Africa in Contemporary Culture was an exhibition held at the Textile Museum of Canada (tmc) in Toronto from May to November 2011. This two-part chapter concerns the distinctive engagements that a curator, Patricia Bentley, and her academic interlocutor and exhibition consultant, Zulfikar Hirji, had with regard to the development and mounting of the exhibition. The first section, “The patterned imagination,” is by Bentley and the second section, “Intra-cultural dialogue,” is by Hirji. The chapter describes how Magic Squares created a dialogic and inter-subjective setting in which objects, persons, and ideas spoke to each other through time and space and ultimately initiated a multisensory, conversational, and imaginative site through which museum patrons could explore critical human themes through the art of Muslim Africans. In so doing, the authors seek to challenge Islamic art scholarship and exhibition practices to rethink their conventions, boundaries, and interfaces, particularly in relation to the art and material culture of Muslim Africans, who are regularly positioned outside of the classical canon of Islamic art.

the pat ter ned imag ination In May 2011 Magic Squares: The Patterned Imagination of Muslim Africa in Contemporary Culture opened at the tmc. The exhibition explored the layered meanings in a constellation of patterns on African textiles that arise from the numeric arrays known as magic squares. It did this by setting up juxtapositions and interactions of the textiles and objects with one another and with works by four contemporary artists: Jamelie Hassan, Hamid Kachmar, Alia Toor, and Tim Whiten. The exhibition consisted of thirty objects from the Textile Museum of Canada’s African collection, eight contemporary works of art, and eight objects on loan from private collections. Taking into account the gallery plan of several small rooms arranged in circular configuration, Bentley designed the exhibition layout and graphics to put the objects and artworks in arrangements that would sensitize the visitor to their intra- and

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15.1 Diagram of a 3 × 3 magic square.

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inter-cultural conversations with each other. The exhibition aimed to question several assumptions made by Western scholarship: that the art and material culture produced by Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa is peripheral to Islamic art and to African art as well; that there is a hierarchy of value in art objects, with textiles at the bottom; and, in a museum context, that the sense of sight is the dominant, indeed the only sense necessary for a comprehensive understanding of visual art. These assumptions were refuted by Magic Squares, which showcased a robust art practice that is multivalent and multisensory and is based on beliefs such as the protective and curative power of the Qurʾan. The exhibition countered the exclusive use of sight by offering sensory spaces throughout: a touching space, two listening spaces, a smelling space, and a playing space. As curator, the approach I chose emphasized the new insights that could be gained through active sensory engagements with museum materials like artifacts and texts – which are usually passively received by visitors with commentary by the curatorial voice of authority – thus exposing what Hirji (below) calls “intra-cultural dialogues” and multiple perspectives in the exhibition. In this section of the chapter I begin by discussing the “pattern engine” – the dynamic transformation of the magic square into a talisman and a multi-iterated pattern that is used in a range of material culture. I then consider the formulation of the exhibition, the central trope of which was the magic square. A magic square is an arrangement in a square array of numbers (referred to in mathematics as “n” numbers) in such a way that each row, each column, and each main diagonal has the same sum. The magic square has been used in many different contexts worldwide. In the framework of the exhibition it is represented both explicitly and implicitly in patterns on many West African textiles as a talisman with the power to effect protection and healing for the wearer. The diagram shows a threeby-three magic square, regarded as the original and, mathematically, the smallest form. Its sum is fifteen.1 In the exhibition I sought to demonstrate the contention that the magic square has operated in West African visual culture not as a pattern but as what I regard to be a pattern engine, influencing the creation of patterns on textiles and other objects of material culture. This view was inspired by Labelle Prussin’s Hatumere: Islamic Design in West Africa (1986). In her work on Islamic influences in the West African

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built environment, Prussin examines the pervasive presence of Islamic aesthetics that reflect belief systems in that region and argues that they are based on the talismanic function of the magic square.2 In the catalogue for the Smithsonian exhibition Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art (2007), curator Christine Kreamer reinforces Prussin’s interpretation of amulets as prayers that materialize the connection between oral and written communication.3 The agency of the magic square as a pattern engine derives mainly from the fact that it was thought to be a model of the correct proportion of the universe in ancient times.4 Scholars have traced it back to China in the second millennium bce, and some researchers believe it went to China even earlier from Iraq.5 Representations of the square appear to have become very important in medieval Islamic philosophy and science of the ninth to the twelfth century, especially in the square’s link to the Greek Pythagorean belief that numbers are the essence of the universe.6 The “magic” in the English name used for squares here is attributed to their later association with Arabic alchemical texts by European scholars.7 In Arabic, magic squares are called wafq al-aʿdad or “harmonious arrangement of the numbers.”8 In the medieval Islamic milieu they came to be associated with talismans9 but not with the word sihr (magic).10 For example, the Persian scientist, Jabir Ibn Hayyan (d. c. 815), wrote about magic squares as epitomizing the proportions used in the ancient and medieval science of alchemy.11 Amulets containing Islamic talismans have been in use in West Africa since the medieval period.12 These talismans are composed of a written component – verses of the Qurʾan and/or recitations of the ninety-nine names of God – and a graphic component, usually a version of a magic square. As Alain Epelboin, Constant Hamès, and Anne Raggi suggest, the talismans developed over centuries of use into “a transcultural non-verbal meta-language,”13 and the magic square inscribed within them became a grapheme of this meta-language, recognizable solely by its grid configuration. The objects displayed in the exhibition illuminate these various iterations: the magic square as an ancient metaphor for universal order, an Islamic talisman containing the magic square as a “supercharged prayer,”14 and a protective pattern on textiles meant to be worn close to the body. The configuration of the pattern, whether portrayed as a knot, a checkerboard, or another shape, is able to carry the emotional charge of the original talisman. With a topic of such scope, both geographically and historically, it was important to anchor the visitor’s experience of the exhibition at a particular starting point and to build from there. I chose a cotton strip-woven shirt from Burkina Faso to introduce the exhibition.15 Three magic square-like drawings are inscribed on its surface along with writing in Arabic. In addition, four small amulet packages thought to contain talismanic inscriptions and drawings are sewn around the neck of the shirt. Ruba Kana’an examined the shirt and prepared a translation and interpretation of the inscriptions. According to Kana’an, all the writing is Qurʾanic in nature (derived from the Qurʾan or taken from different parts of it) with a limited number of direct quotations of Qurʾanic verses.16 Twenty of the twenty-eight primed blocks

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15.2 (a) Shirt, from Kiembara, Mossi, Burkina Faso, c. 1990. Cotton, strip-woven, sewn and inscribed with Arabic writing and graphic symbols. (b) detail showing an amulet package and enigmatic square. Textile Museum of Canada.

15.3 The Arabic text on the shirt shown in 15.2 translated into English, with arrows indicating the order of the text. The panel with the magic squares can be read independently.

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15.4 Installation view of the Magic Squares exhibition. Textile Museum of Canada.

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contain recitations of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God derived from the Qurʾan. The remainder of the written sections contains prayers, sayings, and blessings, as well as the three-gridded squares. One side of the garment holds a seven-by-seven square and a two-by-two square; the former is filled with enigmatic symbols and the latter has circles containing symbols on each of the vertices and Arabic writing in the cells. The two-by-two square is repeated, with some changes, on the other side of the shirt. Kana’an’s translation shows that the writing of the names conforms to an order resembling a knot. The writing follows an interlaced path in the order of the blocks, which is indicated by the arrow, and even in the names themselves, which cross back and forth in a series of alternations. An example is in block four, “The Withholder. The Expander. The Abaser. The Exalter. The Bestower of Honour. The Humiliator.” The shirt is a talisman and, I would add, one with a complex nature: its differences from talismanic shirts found in other parts of the Islamic world include the coarse, hand-spun cotton, the strip-woven construction, the cut – West African talismanic shirts, unlike other examples, all lack sleeves17 – and the presence of amulet packets sewn to the front and back. Its similarities to other talismanic shirts include the inscriptions taken from the Qurʾan and the magic squares. The shirt from Burkina Faso was a critical choice because it acted as a vector through which the subject, the magic square, was fused with the object, the shirt, in a highly fluid space that included the visitor in a conversation enacted by the act of walking through the spaces of the exhibition. In other words, the shirt was at the centre of a network of meanings traced in the exhibition along inter-subjective pathways marked by the other garments and objects, by the sensory spaces, and by the contemporary art works. By following these pathways, a visitor to the exhibition would come upon multiple references to the shirt’s – and the magic square’s – iconography. At one location a group of garments with attached amulets or appliquéd and embroidered motifs in the shape of amulets shared the gallery space

15.5 Alia Toor, 99 Names of Aman (detail), 2004. Embroidery on dust masks, collection of the artist.

with the Burkina Faso shirt and matrix-patterned cloths from Niger and Mali. At another, Alia Toor’s artwork 99 Names of Aman was accompanied by an audio clip of the ninety-nine names in recitation. In a small, pass-through section a trio of interactive experiences were available to the visitor: a listening space with a playlist of music from Muslim Africa on headphones, a computer workstation with a portal to the Aluka web site18 showing manuscript digitization and architectural conservation work in parts of Africa, and a playing space set up with pencil-and-paper activities based on magic square games and Sudoku and Kakuro puzzles. The development of the exhibition was prompted by a desire to provide a space where these threaded conversations and connections could be freely and actively followed by visitors as they walked around it, looking, listening, touching, and even – at one sensory space – smelling. Constance Classen and David Howes suggest strategies such as handling stations and interactive computer programs that might be employed to give museum visitors “more possibilities for dynamic interaction.”19 The sensory spaces in Magic Squares were installed in the galleries to test some of these strategies and their underlying philosophy.

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At its best, an exhibition in a museum is a uniquely dynamic interpretive form that promotes experiential rather than didactic learning. By brokering public conversations and inspiring different ways to look at and to understand art and the cultural contexts in which art is produced and received, an exhibition can ask questions and instigate discussions about difference and belonging, diversity and plurality, and centre and periphery in contemporary Canada. This is what the curatorial project of Magic Squares set out to do. An advisory group was established to help the curator negotiate the complex questions inherent in the material to be presented: of African and Islamic art, of Muslims in Africa, of the image of Islam prevalent in the Western world today, and even of the word “magic” in the exhibition title. Years ago, Into the Heart of Africa (1990), an exhibition of African art at the Royal Ontario Museum, had catalyzed a group of protestors to accuse the museum of perpetuating attitudes of colonialism and even racism. A later case study suggested that not enough community consultation had taken place, and that the tone of the exhibition was too ironic and therefore misinterpreted by the very communities that could have benefitted the most from the presentation of parts of their history.20 The Magic Squares advisory group included representatives of the Toronto District School Board, artists and other members of the Muslim community, and academics who work in related disciplines. I was aware that African art was consistently labelled “primitive” and that Islam was viewed in the West as a monolithic entity associated with 9/11, and I was anxious to present a convincing argument showing the opposite view as defined by Hirji and myself in this chapter. While I was well aware of these potential pitfalls, a strong objection in the group to the word “magic” took me by surprise. In my mind the word refers on the one hand to the magic square’s mathematical and game-like function – the fact that all directions in the grid add up to the same sum is called “magic,” as in a particularly elegant magic trick – and on the other hand to an alternative system of rationality with its own internal logic that has deeply informed art practices of many different kinds across the world. Magic is to me an essential and fascinating part of the way humans interact with their environments and make meaning in their lives. An educator suggested it was in her view a Western construct associated in students’ minds with Harry Potter and Halloween, and – even worse – that by including magic in the title of an exhibition about Africa, we would be reinforcing the very stereotypes we intended to counter. By struggling with this issue in the advisory group and coming to a consensus that the word has much broader meaning, and that presenting it in the context of the exhibition would prompt a growth in learning and understanding in students and their teachers, we were prepared to address the question when it was raised again by a teacher during the special focus group held after the opening. The contemporary art works by Hassan, Kachmar, Toor, and Whiten played an important role in picking up and following the exhibition’s nexus of conversations. Unlike the unknown creators who fashioned the African garments and objects for other purposes than display in a museum, these four artists work in art practices whose purpose is gallery display. This difference was part of the artists’ multivalent

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15.6 Tim Whiten, Mary’s Permeating Sign, 2006. Cast glass, pillow, edition of two. Olga Korper Gallery.

approach to the objects, an approach that also featured a range of media. None of the artists in Magic Squares identify themselves as textile artists; in fact, all work with many different materials, including fibre if its unique properties can be put in service to the artist’s intention. Whiten’s works Magic Squares and Mary’s Permeating Sign are in etched glass while Hassan uses watercolour painting and assemblages of objects in Slave Letter and neon tubing in ‫( ی‬Manuscript Page), Slippers of Disobedience, and Dawa. In Kachmar’s Tiswingimin – the word for “meditations” in the Berber Amazigh language – dense fields of symbols collaged on masonite boards measure the distance between script and pattern and speak, like Toor’s embroidery, of the iterative power of praying and chanting. The theme of the transformation of script into pattern was threaded through the entire exhibition. One of the most powerful objects in the galleries was a wooden Qurʾanic writing board from Nigeria, the handle of which is symbolized as an arrow motif on a wrapper, also from Nigeria. Another correspondence of the writing board with the other objects was found in the writing itself. Arabic calligraphy appeared on multiple objects and art works in the exhibition: in the embroidery on caps from Zanzibar, in Hassan’s neon work ‫( ی‬Manuscript Page), and in Toor’s mesmeric 99 Names of Aman. This mutability of translation between different forms of expression is rooted in the makers themselves. In the regions of Africa represented by Magic Squares, a high degree of literacy and social status is enjoyed by the skilled trades, and it is often the case that the same people who make leather amulet covers and

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15.7 Jamelie Hassan, Slave Letter, 1983. Watercolour painting with four clay tablets and cloth containing objects. Textile Museum of Canada.

15.8 Hamid Kachmar, Tiswingimin, 2011, and detail. Goatskin, henna, saffron, mixed media on board, collection of the artist.

Qurʾan covers, or embroider robes and caps, are the religious leaders in their communities.21 Thus, the embellishment they choose for their various products, whether spiritual or domestic, moves fluidly from calligraphy into pattern, as script itself becomes a form of ornament. Magic Squares: The Patterned Imagination of Muslim Africa in Contemporary Culture offered a strongly themed approach to the interpretation of the museum’s collection of African textiles. The display of this collection in tandem with contemporary art works allowed cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural connections to be made within the particular time and space of an exhibition. By exploring the ways these 361

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15.9 Qur’anic writing board, nineteenth century, Hausa, Nigeria. Wood, carved and written on with ink, leather bound handle. Collection of Patricia Bentley.

objects and artworks communicate the contexts of African Muslim societies, the exhibition presented a perspective on these societies other than the one in circulation in mainstream parlance, a perspective that emphasizes their diversity and their uniqueness while showing the humanity and values they share with all people – including visitors to a museum for textiles in downtown Toronto in the summer and fall of 2011. 362

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15.10 Men’s caps (kofia), 1990, Zanzibar. Cotton, commercially woven, sewn and embroidered with cotton thread, collection of Zulfikar Hirji.

int r a- c ult ur a l d i a l o g ue Much recent academic writing about museums focuses on the role and relevance of the museum in the contemporary public sphere.22 Of particular concern is the museum’s ability to actively engage and dialogue with a broad range of audiences. In Canada, museums and galleries frequently interpolate or gloss these concerns with reference to “multiculturalism,” a long debated concept and state policy that frames discourses about Canadian national identity.23 Direct and indirect references to multiculturalism, diversity, community engagement and dialogue are found in the mission statements of many public and private museums and galleries in Canada including the tmc where Magic Squares was held.24 For example, the tmc states that its permanent collection “celebrates cultural diversity,” that the “Museum connects culturally and artistically diverse audiences,” and that its “exhibitions and programs afford an opportunity for all visitors, regardless of background, to appreciate and experience the traditions and cultural expressions of their neighbours.”25 363

15.11 Jamelie Hassan, ‫( ی‬Manuscript Page), 2006, edition of three. Colour photograph on masonite, neon light. Textile Museum of Canada.

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Magic Squares obviously fits these aspects of the Textile Museum’s mission insofar as it exhibited the cultural heritage of Muslim Africans to Canadians. This somewhat prosaic type of conversation is what I regard as “inter-cultural” or “cross-cultural” dialogue: a conversation wherein one reified culture is called upon to converse with another equally reified one. However, the exhibition also initiated a series of intracultural dialogues: conversations that begin with the premise that there is diversity within a culture. Intra-cultural dialogue, as I have defined it elsewhere, not only presents the internal diversity within a society or cultural group, it excavates the differences between and shared concerns of social actors about a range of existential issues over time and the multiple ways in which these social actors express themselves.26 As such, intra-cultural conversations trouble the homogeneous and static imaginaries and prefigured boundaries regularly assigned to social categories such as “Muslims” and “Africans,” sometimes dispensing with these categories altogether. In so doing intra-cultural dialogues present new imaginaries, extend boundaries, and take conversations in directions that are relevant to the concerns of the social actors involved.

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My aim in this section of our chapter is to raise some critical issues about Islamic art and its representation in contemporary museums by putting Magic Squares in conversation with the intersecting scholarly discourses about Islam, Africa, Islamic Art, African Art, and Islamic Art in Africa. After a summative critique of this scholarship, I discuss two intra-cultural dialogues through which Magic Squares responds to some of the issues this scholarship raises. Exhibitions of the art and material culture of Islam and Muslims in Africa are usually informed by scholarship on “Africa,” “Islam,” “African Art,” “Islamic Art,” and “Islamic Art in Africa.” Magic Squares was no exception. As Bentley discusses above, her research for the exhibition was based on particular strands of this scholarship and an intellectual engagement with academics working closely with this scholarship, including myself. In this regard I should like to note that in working with Bentley as she undertook her research and curatorial process, I offered limited comments and suggestions on her methodology and conceptual framing. I also recognized that Bentley’s previous research and practice had already informed some of her theoretical propositions discussed below and thus mentioned these only obliquely or in passing. Hence, in the ethnographic tradition of Trinh T. Minh-ha, I opted to “walk beside” and “speak nearby” her as well as the artists and objects she selected for the show.27 As an anthropologist and social historian of Islam and Muslim societies and Africa, the reverberations of the histories of this scholarship were uppermost in my mind as I began to engage with the exhibition’s development. For example, the title of the exhibition, which juxtaposes “Islam,” “Africa,” and “magic,” was the subject of much consternation and critical reflection on the part of the exhibition’s advisory group. I asked if it were possible for Magic Squares to take stock of this legacy without becoming entangled in it, particularly its points of reference and vocabularies and tropes. In part prompted by Edward Said’s provocation that history leaves an “infinity of traces” on us that require taking stock of, I thought about the colonial origins of this scholarship and the traces colonialism has left upon it.28 I recalled that scholarship on “Africa,” “Islam,” “African art,” “Islamic art,” and “Islamic art in Africa” was born in the age of Europe’s conquests and colonization of Africa and Asia, which reached their apex in the late nineteenth century. These were processes that carved up, mapped out, and displayed the world according to the European imagination. The naming and division of “Africa” from the “Middle East,” the “lands of Islam,” the “Orient,” or the “Arab world” and “North Africa” from “sub-Saharan Africa” or “Black Africa,” were of Europe’s making. These ways of conceiving the world were reinforced through European colonial regimes of knowledge such as the World’s Fairs and the newly minted institution of the public museum.29 Colonial taxonomies also morphed into specialist academic fields. Islamic studies, Oriental studies, and African studies, as well as the study of Islamic art and African art, all began their lives in the colonial era and remain part of academia to this day. In this regard, I recalled Immanuel Wallerstein’s concerns about how post-colonial power structures, including the academy and other institutions, uncritically perpetuate colonial constructs such as “Africa.”30

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Indeed, over the past few decades, post-colonial theorists like Said and Wallerstein have alerted us to problematic aspects of particular master tropes, conceptual frameworks and terms in the contemporary academic lexicon that are the products of colonialism. However, whereas terms such as “primitive” and “oriental” have received overwhelming critical attention, their euphemistic counterparts, such as “Africa” and “Islam,” remain comparatively unproblematized, dehistoricized, under theorized, and thus semantically intact, Wallerstein’s interventions notwithstanding. As such, the regularly unqualified uses of terms such as “Africa” and “Islam” in scholarly contexts unwittingly reproduce European colonial regimes of knowledge and re-inscribe narratives of colonial domination onto the bodies and objects of scholarly inquiry. Such terms continue to perform the labour of colonialism in post-colonial spaces. In this regard I note that the nomenclature alone of many scholarly areas suggests the extent to which they remain suffused with the exigencies of the logic that created them. Moreover, as I shall discuss in greater detail below, the manner in which they produce and define the subjects of their discourse belies their colonial legacy. This becomes especially evident when scholarship on “Africa” and “African art” comes into proximity with that of “Islam” and “Islamic art.” In what follows I provide a summative critique of this interface and discuss its implications for Magic Squares. Several recent studies show that scholars have been deeply ambivalent about the relationship between “Africa” and “Islam” and have employed a number of strategies to contend with their equivocations. Scott Reese, for example, observes that most historians of Islam have regularly dismissed Islam and Muslims in Africa as either peripheral to “classical” Islamic history or “orthodox” Islam; they compare Islam in Africa with normative categories that are essentially of their own making.31 With particular reference to the study of Islamic art in Africa, René Bravmann suggests that, like historians of Islam, historians of Islamic art have regularly treated Africa as an “eternal other” or a backwater whose material culture is marginal and inferior to that of the “central Islamic lands” of the Middle East and North Africa, the Mediterranean, and Asia. Apart from North Africa, most surveys of Islamic Art rarely include examples of art produced by Muslims in other parts of the African continent, despite there being evidence for the presence of Muslim centres in some parts of “sub-Saharan Africa” since at least the eighth century.32 When scholars of Islamic art have fully engaged with the art of Muslim Africans or Islamic art in Africa, they also seem to work from normative definitions of Islam that quickly fall back on notions of “primitive” (Africa) and “civilized” (Islam) or “orthodox” and “heterodox.” Karin Adahl’s introduction to Islamic Art and Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa (1995) makes this explicit when she asks, How then should the limits for what is Islamic art be set? With the perspective of an art historian dealing mainly with classical Islamic art, I find it hard to accept a tribal mask as an Islamic art object in spite of its justification in 366

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rituals which have been assimilated into the African Islamic society from pagan practices.33 Conversely, René Bravmann and others have shown that scholars of Africa and African art have regularly diminished, obscured, or disregarded Islam’s importance. Robert Launay, for example, states that anthropologists working on African societies have regularly engaged in a “very deliberate policy” of “avoiding Islam” in order to focus on “authentic” Africans.34 John Picton makes this concrete when he observes that “Africa,” in the context of African art, usually refers to that region which is described as sub-Saharan or Black, characterized by a multitude of local traditions, essentially of pre-colonial origin, in art, religion, language, politics and so forth.35 For Picton, this perspective explicitly excludes Islam as well as other religious traditions such as Christianity that is based upon “false premises” of cultural homogeneity and geographic isolation. Picton speaks directly to the failed logic of African art scholars when he states that “Writing a history of art in West Africa without due reference to Islam would be about as sensible as trying to consider European art history in the absence of Christianity.”36 Bravmann and Picton are among a small group of scholars who have challenged the scholarly trajectories of African and Islamic art historians. However, more often, when African art historians have included Islam and Muslims in their surveys, they continue to frame Africa in “primitive” terms and Islam in “orientalist” terms. For example, in the exhibition catalogue for Africa: The Art of a Continent (1999), Tom Phillips simultaneously states his desire to uncover “Africa beneath Africa” and lauds the inclusion of “Medieval Cairo” in the exhibition as a historical region in Africa that exemplifies the “pure character of Islamic Art.”37 It is interesting to note the response to Phillips’s catalogue by Islamic art historians Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom. They question the “didactic or polemical purpose” of Phillips’s continental survey of African art, despite his inclusion of Islamic art.38 They also argue that such types of regional approaches only serve to reify boundaries created by colonial, imperial, nationalist, or other ideological agendas. Ironically, Blair and Bloom’s own surveys of Islamic art include almost no references to Muslim African art produced outside of North Africa.39 Like other Islamic art historians, they appear to remain focused on a formulaic Islamic art canon that excludes Muslim art from Africa south of the Sahara. Phillips’s qualified inclusions and Blair and Bloom’s qualified exclusions raise questions about why it is that Muslim Africans and their art and material culture are so problematic for studies of either Islamic art or African art. While a fulsome examination of this issue is beyond the scope of the present chapter, it is evident that part of the problem lies within the definitions and frameworks that 367

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scholars use for their inquiries – definitions and frameworks that have their roots in a European colonial world view during which their areas of study were formed and in which they remain enmeshed. More recently, scholars, particularly those engaged in the study of African art, have begun to challenge the assumptions of African art historians as well as Islamic art historians.40 I should like to highlight two examples. First, in his continental survey, Africa, Arts and Cultures, John Mack explicitly makes the case for the inclusion of the art of North, Northeast Africa, and the Sahara. He states that these regions of Africa are regularly excluded in pan-African studies because they tend to be lumped into the “Arab World” and the “Islamic World.” For Mack this is unsatisfactory. He argues that while such terms and the geographies to which they refer are “essentially Western constructs,” their continued use tends to “obscure the religious, ethnic and cultural diversity which exists within the internal boundaries thus created” and give undue credit to “external influences in shaping African culture.”41 Mack’s observations prompted me to 1. reconsider the presentation of Islam’s influence on Africa as a form of one-way traffic that effectively obliterated local or indigenous aesthetic expressions; 2. ask questions about the internal differences within Africa’s regions, suggesting that the reception of Islamic ideas was not uniform even within a given locality; and 3. consider the extent to which Islamic art in geographical regions north of the Sahara and indeed outside of continental Africa were influenced by African Muslims and non-Muslim African communities. Put differently, was there also aesthetic traffic out of Africa to other parts of the globe? The second example that provokes other questions and thinking about the place of Muslim African art and material culture is Inscribing Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems of African Art, a catalogue accompanying an exhibition held at the Smithsonian in 2007. Here the authors utilize a thematic approach to present scripts, texts, objects, ideas, and aesthetic expressions related to writing and graphic systems on continental Africa from antiquity to the present day. While the authors make sporadic references to imported and indigenous traditions, on the whole they do not begin by delineating distinctions between African art and Islamic art or between Africans and African Muslims. In addition, Africa is not presented as a predefined cultural space in which indigenous expressions have been universally oppressed by foreign influences. Rather, Africa is referred to as more of a heuristic device or geographic container in which many different aesthetic expressions co-exist and are in dialogue (easily and uneasily). Hence, Mary Roberts’s chapter on “Sacred Scripts,” for example, comfortably juxtaposes Egyptian hieroglyphs with Ethiopian inscribed icons and African Muslim talismans in order to make a larger point about the spiritual “power and efficacy of letters and writing.”42 By thematically presenting diverse forms of literacy in multiple aesthetic media across time and space, the authors overturn stereotypes about Africans as illiterate and primitive without further invoking other reified categorizations. In so doing, they echo Arjun Appadurai’s “global cultural flows” approach to the study of contemporary modernity – a propo368

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sition that accounts for the fluid and accelerated movement of people, goods, and ideas in the contemporary world as well as the disjunctures and ruptures that such movements encounter and engender.43 What Appadurai seeks to unfold is a series of intersecting “scapes” such as ethnoscapes and mediascapes. As such, Inscribing Meaning suggests new possibilities for a curatorial direction in which the flow of ideas, people, and materiality become the focus of critical enquiry and unfolding conversations, rather than a set of prefigured social, political, and religious entities. In sum, such recent examples suggest new ways of presenting imaginaries and articulations about the interfaces between Islam, Africa, Islamic art, African art, Muslim Africans, and their art and material culture that are both cognizant and critical of the past. In what follows, I discuss two intra-cultural dialogues in which Magic Squares incorporated and extended the possibilities suggested by this type of critically engaged scholarship. One of the intra-cultural dialogues that Magic Squares initiated was achieved through Bentley’s juxtaposition of different iterations and responses to the magic square pattern and material culture produced in Muslim African contexts across time and space. Bentley also almost abandoned chronologies of style, influences, or origins save a poetic nod to a talismanic shirt from Burkina Faso that served as her muse throughout the development of the show, which she placed at the beginning of the exhibition. Thus, similar to the Smithsonian’s Inscribing Meaning exhibition, the thematic approach of Magic Squares generated an aesthetic map of Africa and Muslims in Africa that focused on the flows and interactions of material culture and its producers. In this way Magic Squares did not suggest that the material culture on display was representative of Islam or Africa or Muslim Africans. Rather, Magic Squares invited audiences to listen in on conversations between social actors and communities who express themselves within what I regard to be a shared “artscape.” The articulation of this imaginary was also possible because Bentley unapologetically placed herself squarely at the centre of the Magic Squares assemblage and thus abandoned any pretence of authenticity and representation. Bentley recognized the risks associated with representation as a curatorial practice. As she notes above, she was particularly conscious of this strategy due to the spectral presence of the rom’s Into the Heart of Africa exhibition (1990) that was met with vehement censure from African Canadian communities in Toronto. Her concerns in this regard were also evident at our advisory group meetings during which we discussed the problems with contemporary representations of racialized communities and Islam and Muslims. As a result of Bentley’s curatorial strategy, questions such as, “what is African?,” “what is Islamic/Muslim?,” or “what is hybrid/neither?,” were somewhat muted in the exhibition. It was the material culture itself that was called upon to raise questions about how humans variously use particular patterns to express and explore ideas about nature, the universe, the divine, protection, and healing. In sum, what Magic Squares provided was a window into a particular set of conversations taking place amongst social actors who share an aesthetic landscape but differ quite widely 369

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on the form, content, and meaning of their expressions. This was the imaginary of Islam, Africa, and Muslims in Africa that the exhibition foregrounds. The second intra-cultural dialogue that took place in Magic Squares was a conversation between the cultural heritage of Muslim Africans and four contemporary artists, Jamelie Hassan, Hamid Kachmar, Alia Toor, and Tim Whiten, each of whom have their own particular relationships to Islam and Africa, and three of whom are Canadian nationals. While becoming more frequent curatorial practice, the inclusion of contemporary artists exhibiting their work in the same space as historical objects has not been a regular practice in contemporary displays of Islamic art, in which there has been an almost strict separation between the exhibition of contemporary, modern, and pre-modern. Again, questions can be asked as to why this curatorial practice has been favoured and what effects this practice has had on the static representations of Islam and Muslims and what it serves to signal to contemporary audiences. These issues require careful theoretical attention but are beyond the scope of this chapter. In Magic Squares the strategic inclusion of contemporary art served to animate conversations with the historical material culture in unexpected ways; the artists’ works can be described as a series of extended conversations that were somewhat serendipitous. In this regard, it is important to recall that only Kachmar’s work had been commissioned for the exhibition; the works of Hassan, Toor, and Whiten were completed projects in their own right that Bentley felt resonated with her concerns about how patterns such as magic squares continue to speak in the contemporary period. While each of the contemporary artists’ works deserves fuller analysis, I should like to focus here on Whiten’s sculptures, Mary’s Permeating Sign (2006) and Magic Squares (2002–03), both of which Bentley placed at the close of the exhibition. Whiten’s works in Magic Squares are of a deeply personal nature and are ways in which “he is attending to his own history,” as suggested to me by one of his longtime collaborators. Mary’s Permeating Sign is an etched cast glass rolling pin set onto a white pillow. While quick to resist any discussion of the meanings behind his work, Whiten did mention to me that Mary’s Permeating Sign related to his mother and that the etched square with numerals, a magic square, was his mother’s birth date and constellation worked out mathematically. He also told me that the sandblasted crystal glass sculpture, Magic Squares, was his own birth date and constellation rendered geometrically. Despite being of an African American background (he was born in Inkster, Michigan) and deeply immersed in the writings of many mystics and poets, such as Jalal al-din Rumi (d. 1273), Whiten resists all forms of self-categorization. Whiten, as I came to understand, also resists the categorization of his works as “art.” He defines them as “cultural objects.” The two works in the exhibition are located within his history and memory and speak about his own personal spiritual search but are also about the capacity for human intuitive and felt knowledge, more generally. For Whiten, these cultural objects serve to link this world with the world of the imagi370

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nation. As he told me, “glass of particular types have a greater propensity to achieve this affect than other materials” he has worked with. I noted during the installation of his work in the exhibition that Whiten was particularly attentive to the lighting conditions that would allow people to peer through both sculptures. In the case of Mary’s Permeating Sign it was important to him that people could see through the etched magic square into the clear and mottled glass in the centre of the rolling pin. In the case of the Magic Squares, it was important to him that people could see through the centre of the intersecting geometric squares that “pop” and “transport” the viewer when seen at the correct angle. In these ways Whiten’s aesthetic sensibilities are a form of dialogue between memory, history, and the felt present. His cultural objects force viewers to look past the external traces on the glass exterior in order to sense and know something altogether more internal. In this way Whiten’s works not only resonate and dialogue with the objects and material culture in Magic Squares, they also suggest ways in which we might re-view historical cultural objects whose makers are not present to describe their meanings and intended affects. They make evident a sophia perennis that Whiten believes persists through the ages and between spaces but that human kind needs to be reminded of. As such, Whiten’s works compel the viewer to return to the beginning of Magic Squares, the talismanic shirt from Burkina Faso, which also contains a series of magic squares as well as its own geometry worked out in the strategic placement of Qurʾanic verses. Owing to the circle design of the gallery space, the viewer has only to walk across a few feet from Whiten’s work to begin the journey through Magic Squares again.

conclusions This chapter has sought to present two views about the development and mounting of an exhibition of Muslim African material culture and the challenges that emerged in the process. Our aims have been to suggest ways in which the exhibition’s curation utilized a dialogic approach or set of conversational strategies and to address some of the critical challenges that emerged. These included using a thematic approach, a sensory approach, and an approach that set the objects in an intra-cultural conversation with each other and with contemporary art. A constant challenge in the exhibition’s research and execution was the manner in which Islamic art scholarship and curatorial practices have regularly disregarded the material culture of Muslim Africans, particularly of communities south of the Sahara, and the conventional manner in which Islamic art and material culture have been exhibited. Ironically, the dialogic approach to the exhibition has also allowed us to use this chapter to establish a dialogue with Islamic art historians and curators. Our hope is that it will be the first of many. 371

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n ote s 1 For more information on the mathematical functions of magic squares, see: Pickover, The Zen of Magic Squares; Swetz, Legacy of the Luoshu. 2 Prussin, Hatumere, 75. 3 Kreamer et al., Inscribed Meaning, 19. 4 Cammann, “Islamic and Indian Magic Squares,” 182. 5 Stapleton, “Antiquity of Alchemy,” 18. 6 Stapleton and Stapleton, “Ancient and Modern Aspects,” 31. 7 Sesiano, “Quadratus mirabilis,” 201. 8 Sesiano, “Wafk.” 9 For recent discussions on objects of protection and healing in Islamic art, see Porter, Saif, and Savage-Smith, “Medieval Islamic Amulets, Talismans and Magic.” 10 Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddima, 179. 11 Stapleton, “Alchemy,” 15. Stapleton explains that the nine numbers in the three by three magic square were of paramount importance to Hayyan’s theories of medieval alchemy and because of this the square was considered an effective talisman for protection in childbirth. 12 Prussin, Hatumere, 73. 13 Epelboin, Hamès, and Raggi, “Cinq tuniques,” 150. 14 Dols, “The Theory of Magic in Healing,” 80. 15 This shirt (T91.0091) was collected in the village of Kiembara, Burkina Faso in 1991. It is in the collection of the Textile Museum of Canada. 16 This reading was made by Ruba Kana’an, 2011. For a recent fulsome discussion of the shirt (T91.0091), see Kana’an, “And God will Protect Thee from Mankind (Q. 5:67).” 17 Epelboin, Hamès, and Raggi, “Cinq tuniques,” 161. 18 Aluka is an online digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa, run by Ithaka: http://www.aluka.org/ (accessed 2 December 2011). 19 Classen and Howes, “The Museum as Sensescape,” 219. 20 Butler, Contested Representations, 76. 21 Hassan, Art and Islamic Literacy, 101. 22 Barrett, Museums and the Public Sphere; Karp and Levine, Exhibiting Cultures; Karp, Kreamer, and Levine, Museum and Communities. 23 Mackey, The House of Difference. 24 See for example: Art Gallery of Ontario: http://www.ago.net/mandate, n.d. (accessed 10 December 2011); Royal Ontario Museum: http://rom.on.ca/about/index.php, n.d. (accessed 10 December 2011); Vancouver Museum: http://www.museumofvancouver.ca/about/overview, n.d. (accessed 10 December 2011). Also see the fundamental values of the Canada Council for the Arts, a major source of funding for museums, galleries and artists: http://www.canadacouncil.ca/aboutus/ Background/ry12856558495235.htm, August 2007 (accessed 10 December 2011). 25 http://www.textilemuseum.ca/about/ and http://www.textilemuseum.ca/join/, n.d. (accessed 10 December 2011). 372

the dialo g ic exhibition 26 Hirji, ed., Diversity and Pluralism. 27 See Minh-ha, Reassemblage (1982). In this 40-minute ethnographic film on women of rural Senegal, Minh-ha attempts to decolonize and subvert Euronormative and Euroidentified methodologies and processes of anthropology and film making through subtle and overt manipulations of sound and imagery. 28 Said, Orientalism. Said draws upon Antonio Gramsci’s work as the basis of his critique. 29 Çelik, Displaying the Orient. 30 Wallerstein, Unthinking Social Science. 31 “Introduction,” in Reese, The Transmission of Learning, 2. See also Hirji, “Approaching the Qur’an.” 32 Insoll, The Archaeology of Islam. See note 35. 33 “Introduction,” in Adahl and Sahlstrom, Islamic Art and Culture, 18. 34 Launay, “An Invisible Religion?” 35 Picton, “Desperately Seeking Africa,” 105. 36 Picton, “Keeping the Faith,” 195. 37 Phillips, Africa, 12–17. 38 Blair and Bloom, Cosmophilia, 160–1. 39 Blair and Bloom, The Art and Architecture of Islam. By the same authors, Islamic Arts. The same observation applies to most surveys of Islamic Art. 40 See also Visonà et al., A History of Art in Africa. 41 Mack, Africa, 33. 42 Roberts, “Sacred Scripts,” 89. 43 Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 33ff.

biblio g r aphy Adahl, Karin, and Berit Sahlstrom, eds. Islamic Art and Culture in sub-Saharan Africa. Philadelphia: Coronet Books, 1995. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Barrett, Jennifer. Museums and the Public Sphere. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Blair, Sheila, and Jonathan Bloom. The Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250–1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. – Cosmophilia: Islamic Art from the David Collection. Chestnut Hill, ma: McMullen Museum, 2006. – Islamic Arts. London and New York: Phaidon, 1997. Butler, Shelley. Contested Representations: Revisiting Into the Heart of Africa. Broadview Ethnographies and Case Studies. Peterborough Ontario: Broadview Press, 2008. Cammann, Schuyler. “Islamic and Indian Magic Squares. Part I.” History of Religions 8.3 (1969): 181–209. Çelik, Zeynep. Displaying the Orient: Architecture of Islam at nineteenth-Century World’s Fairs. Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Classen, Constance, and David Howes. “The Museum as Sensescape: Western Sensibilities 373

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and Indigenous Artifacts.” In Colonialism, Museums, and Material Culture, English edition, edited by Elizabeth Edwards, Chris Gosden, and Ruth Phillips, 199–222. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006. Dols, Michael. “The Theory of Magic in Healing.” In Magic and Divination in Early Islam, edited by Emilie Savage-Smith, 87–102. The Formation of the Classical Islamic World 42. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Epelboin, Alain, Contant Hamès, and Anne Raggi. “Cinq tuniques talismaniques récentes en provenance de Dakar (Sénegal).” In Coran et talismans: Textes et pratiques magiques en milieu musulman, edited by Contant Hamès, 147–74. Paris: Karthala, 2007. Hassan, Salah. Art and Islamic Literacy among the Hausa of northern Nigeria. Lewiston ny: E. Mellen Press, 1992. Hirji, Zulfikar, ed. “Approaching the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa.” In Approaches to the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Zulfikar Hirji, 1–23. Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2019. – Diversity and Pluralism in Islam: Historical and Contemporary Discourses Amongst Muslims. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010. Ibn Khaldun, ʿAbd al-Rahman b. Muhammad. The Muqaddima: An Introduction to History, abridged version of the translation by Franz Rosenthal and ed. N. Dawood. Princeton nj: Princeton University Press, 2005. Insoll, Timothy. The Archaeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Kana’an, Ruba. “And God will Project Thee from Mankind (Q. 5:67): A Talismanic Shirt from West Africa.” In Approaches to the Qur’an in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Zulfikar Hirji, 259–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2019. Karp, Ivan, and S. Levine. Exhibiting Cultures: the Poetics and Politics and Museum Display. Washington, dc: Smithsonian Institution, 1991. Karp, Ivan, C. Kreamer, and S. Levine, eds. Museum and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. Washington, dc: Smithsonian Institution, 1992. Kreamer, Christine, Mary Roberts, Elizabeth Harney, and Allyson Purpura. Inscribed Meaning: Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art. Washington, dc: Smithsonian Institution, 2007. Launay, Robert. “An Invisible Religion? Anthropology’s Avoidance of Islam in Africa.” In African Anthropologies: History, Critique, and Practice, edited by David Mills, Mustafa Babiker, and Mwenda Ntarangwi, 188–203. London: codesria and Zed Books, 2006. Mack, John, ed. Africa: Arts and Culture. London: British Museum Press, 2000. Mackey, Eva. The House of Difference: Cultural Politics and National Identity in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Minh-ha, Trinh T., dir. Reassemblage: From Firelight to Screen, 19; New York: Women Make Movies, 16mm/dvd, 40 minutes. Phillips, Tom ed. Africa: The Art of a Continent. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1999. Pickover, Clifford. The Zen of Magic Squares, Circles, and Stars: An Exhibition of Surprising Structures Across Dimensions. Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 2002.

the dialo g ic exhibition Picton, John. “Desperately Seeking Africa.” Oxford Art Journal 15, no. 2 (1992): 104–12. – “Keeping the Faith: Islam and West African Art History in the Nineteenth Century.” In Islamic Art in the 19th Century: Tradition, Innovation and Eclecticism, edited by Doris Behrens-Abouseif and Stephen Vernoit, 199–229. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006. Porter, Venetia, Lianna Saif, and Emilie Savage-Smith. “Medieval Islamic Amulets, Talismans, and Magic.” In A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, edited by Finbarr Flood and Gülru Necipoğlu, II: 521–57. Hoboken, nj: Wiley, 2017. Prussin, Labelle. Hatumere: Islamic Design in West Africa. Berkeley, ca: University of California Press and Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1986. Reese, Scott, ed. The Transmission of Learning in Islamic Africa. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004. Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Vintage Books, 1979. Sesiano, J. “Quadratus mirabilis.” In The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New Perspectives, edited by J.P. Hogendijk and A.I. Sabra, 199–233. Cambridge, ma: The mit Press, 2003. – “Wafk,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition (Brill Online). Stapleton, H.E. “The Antiquity of Alchemy.” Ambix 5, no. 1 (1953): 1–43. Stapleton, H.E., and G.J.W. Stapleton. “Ancient and Modern Aspects of Pythagoreanism.” Osiris 13 (1958): 12–53. Frank Swetz. Legacy of the Luoshu: The 4,000 Year Search for the Meaning of the Magic Square of Order Three, second edition. Wellesley, ma: A.K. Peters, 2008. Visonà, Monica, Robin Poynor, Herbert Cole, and Preston Biler. A History of Art in Africa, second edition. New York: Pearson, 2001. Wallerstein, Immanuel. Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century Paradigms. Cambridge ma: Polity, 1991.

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chapter 16

Process Thinking for Islamic Art and Media Art: Performative Abstraction and Collective Transformation Laura U. Marks

This chapter, developed from the premise of my book Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (2010), proposes that classical Islamic religious art and contemporary media artworks share performative qualities and that contemporary media art practice and theory can learn from the sophisticated methods of Islamic art from multiple regions and periods.1 The argument is based on enfolding– unfolding aesthetics, a method I have developed that draws on both Euro-American and eastern Islamic philosophies of process, including those of Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, Abu ʿAli Ibn Sina, and Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi. Enfolding– unfolding aesthetics examines how perceptible images unfold from information, a nonvisual quantification, such as code or text, by way of specific algorithms or what I call “manners of unfolding.” In turn information unfolds from the infinite, which can be understood philosophically as the universe or the Open, or religiously as God. Every art form has its own manner of unfolding. What initially drew me to seek Islamic “origins” for contemporary algorithmic media art was the hunch that classical Islamic religious art could provide aesthetic and philosophical criteria to improve the media arts of our time and critique the society in which they take form. Over the years of researching these relationships, my attention has been increasingly drawn to the strong current of process philosophy that moves between Islamic and EuroAmerican thought, which informs the processual, performative nature of unfolding in works of art. Understanding images as the result of processes, rather than as representations, allows us to see Islamic art as performative and closely links its strategies to those of modern and contemporary art. Enfoldment and Infinity’s fundamental thesis is that Western algorithmic and media artworks are informed by Islamic aesthetics, whether the artists are aware of it or (as is most likely) not. To use Islamic aesthetics now means to adapt its process approach, its manners of unfolding, for contemporary art and media. Thus, after an overview of the book’s founding concept of enfolding–unfolding aesthetics, I turn to a case study of generative abstraction and processual figuration in the media artworks of Mounir Fatmi. At the end of the chapter I discuss the Substantial Motion

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Research Network, which grew from the artists and scholars from Muslim and nonMuslim backgrounds who responded to my bridging of Islamic and media art, many of whom deploy enfolding–unfolding aesthetics in media from painting to interactive art.

enfolding–unfolding aesthetics In the late 1990s I began noticing that many of the media that populate everyday life are the result of nonperceptible codes. I began to develop an aesthetic theory that could account for the way perceptible images in computer-based art are often less important than the code that generated them. Against then current notions that computer-based media are an immaterial foundation of the image, I argued that both image and code arise from the material, historical, and social world. Looking for art–historical parallels to strengthen this argument, I quickly realized that Islamic arts, especially those that avoid figurative imaging, provided not only a precedent for the still new computer-based media arts but a slew of creative strategies that could inspire contemporary media makers and theorists. Islamic art is rich with models of retreating from and returning to the perceptible, enfolding and unfolding. Moreover, enfolding–unfolding aesthetics allows us to see images – including aniconic images – not as static but as stages in a process of unfolding. This model brings together the logic of Charles Sanders Peirce, Henri Bergson’s theory of perception in a universe conceived as “flowing-matter,” Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy of the fold based on Leibniz’s Monadology, and physicist David Bohm’s concept of the “implicate order.”2 It is also informed by currents of Islamic thought, including neo-Platonist understandings of emanation, Ismaʿili theories of enfolded (ba¯ṭin) knowledge, Ibn Sina’s (d. 1037) concept of the univocity of being, and later, Mulla Sadra’s (d. 1640) concept of tashkīk al-wujпd, the modulation of being. Enfolding–unfolding aesthetics answers the question Where do images, those things that we perceive with our senses, come from? by arguing that they come from the universe, infinite, unarticulated, and unknowable in itself. When we perceive, it is the universe touching us. Bergson calls the universe the “infinite set of all images,” which Deleuze terms the plane of immanence and also “flowing-matter.”3 I called it the infinite to emphasize the parallel with Islamic theological conceptions of God. The infinite is ultimately unknowable, but it contains all things, including information and image, in an enfolded and virtual state. Here enormous philosophical and theological questions arise. For example, do the virtual contents of the infinite have form, do they only take form once they are actualized, and if the latter, does the actual continue to transform? On these questions, later Islamic process philosophers such as Ibn Sina and Mulla Sadra have much to offer contemporary process philosophy.4 Now and then some part of the infinite selectively unfolds; something that was inaccessible to thought or perception becomes accessible. In our everyday perception 377

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we face an infinity of possible things to perceive, of which we select just a few to actually perceive. Usually the infinite unfolds as an image, which I define, following Bergson, as that which is perceptible to the senses. When something is perceptible to our senses, it is a bit of the infinite that has unfolded. However, sometimes the images we perceive do not unfold directly from the world – as a photograph or a landscape painting might, for example – but as images of information. For the infinite also unfolds at the level of information: it is selectively quantified in discrete forms, for example as data, actions, and language. Thus, the image is a selective explication of either the infinite or of information. As a Peircean Third, the image shows us how information has selected, unfolded, and expressed certain aspects of the infinite. Thus, while we cannot perceive the universe directly, we can learn about it by studying the way information filters the universe to give rise to perceptible images. Information is a filter, as in Deleuze’s argument that, for each monad, there lies between chaos and the perceptible world a filter that extracts “differentials that could be integrated in ordered perceptions.”5 However, this filter is subject to power, in a way that has accelerated with media in the age of capitalism: information ideologically pre-selects the world prior to perception. This suspicious conception of information, which as I mentioned initiated me on this research path, resonates with concepts from philosophy of science and technology: Vilém Flusser’s technical images, communication technologies that depend on mathematical code; Richard Grusin’s concept of pre-mediation; Bernard Steigler’s argument that information, in the hands of a few power brokers, comes to define collective memory.6 These views, together with current critiques of the effects of information capitalism on perception from theorists such as Jonathan Crary, Jonathan Beller, and Pasi Väliaho,7 engender the most dispiriting attitude toward the algorithmically generated media that surround us. Hence, it was thrilling to find in classical Islamic art artworks whose algorithmic nature drew attention to a source more infinite than capitalism and to a fascinating array of ways that the perceptible world can flow from this source. Islamic art’s manners of unfolding and its vision of a divine source can, I argue, be “immanentized” to critique capitalist media and generate more meaningful alternatives. Enfoldment and Infinity argues that each theological approach and the artworks associated with it privilege a particular manner of unfolding. Each of chapters 6 through 108 is structured around a particular manner of unfolding that characterizes a given moment in theological and intellectual history, and the art that can be seen to respond to these views. For example, in the atomist theory of causality proposed by al-Ashʿari (d. 835) and further developed by al-Ghazali (d. 1111), God disposes phenomena however he sees fit. Fire burns cotton not because of the internal properties of each but because God has decided it should; but tomorrow he may decide it should not, for example.9 Ashʿarites argue that it is pointless hubris to try to infer or “unfold” effect from cause. The manner of unfolding in the Ashʿarite universe is that relationships be378

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tween God and the perceptible world, or infinite and image, are unknowable. As a result, the perceptible world is fragmentary and discontinuous in structure: as Muhsin Mahdi puts it, “The atomistic world does not have its inner structure but emphasizes God’s activity at every point.”10 Bringing atomism to cinema, Jalal Toufic proposes that a film as a whole reproduces the illusion of temporal time, while individual frames show that the individual responds not to earthly time but to God, who destroys and recreates him/her at every moment. Toufic’s bracing alternative to conventional film theories of suture seems to become only more true as more of our images become digital. As computer-based media move images into users’ hands, through such simple means as YouTube remixes, the breaks between images are often as important in people’s experience as is the illusionistic continuity between them. In chapter 7, “Baghdad, 1000: Origin of the Pixel,” I argue that Islamic concepts of matter and temporality help us to make sense of contemporary media that constantly come together, break down into a thousand luminous fragments, and come together differently. Other manners of unfolding include austere enfoldment in the theology and (some) art of the Almohads (c. 1120–1248), discussed in chapter 7, and expressive unfoldment in the luxuriant paintings of Kamal al-Din Bihzad (d. c. 1535) in fifteenthcentury Timurid Iran, which seems to be informed by the theory of emanation as a set of cascading relationships between God and the material world.11 In an astute review of Enfoldment and Infinity, Josh Ellenbogen, an intellectual historian as well as historian of photography and modern art, critiqued my use of the terms “code” and “information” to refer to both computer-based and Islamic art, arguing that their meanings diverge too far to be really useful.12 I appreciate this critique. I believe the concept of information as a selective quantification that in turn is expressive is useful and flexible to describe what is going on in many at forms. However, it does take a lot of conceptual maneuvering to make the secular media arts proportional to the religious weight of Islamic art. It demands a philosophy of immanence, such that the making and reception of algorithmic media be understood to take place in an interconnected dunya or world-below, now constituted as the entire universe.

perfor mative aniconism One of the most interesting common characteristics of Islamic art and computerbased art is aniconism: a manner of unfolding in which the perceptible image is almost entirely enfolded. In both cases, the cause of the perceptible image cannot be represented but only referred to indirectly. For many good reasons, art historians have rejected the notion that Islamic art is defined by the rejection of representational imagery. The unrepresentability of God can be a reason to eschew image making, if one worries that people will mistake the image for the divine being, but this does 379

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not characterize the majority of art making in majority-Muslim lands. However, the concept of enfolding is not a phenomenon of representation but one of process. I redefine aniconism in Islamic art as a process-based phenomenon in which it is not a question of punishing the desires of the faithful by destroying representational images but of withdrawing the divine from perception. Withdrawal enfolds the divine image yet invites a devotional attitude, so that it is not in seeing but in imagining that the faithful come close to the presence of God. The unrepresentability of God can also compel people to multiply images in the confidence that no image can represent the divine, but images can perform the longing of the faithful, as in figurative book paintings of the fifteenth-century school of Tabriz. The withdrawal of figurative images in much Islamic art enables a shift from representing life to performing life. Geometric ornament is often full of performative life, as contemplating it one can witness forms springing from a central point and multiplying, reflecting, and rotating around their symmetries, in a movement that can appear to take place in time. For example, the interior of the dome of the Friday Mosque at Yazd (originally constructed 1324–28) with its spiralling geometric yazdi bandi ornamentation that increases in complexity as it radiates from the dome can invite the viewer, gazing upward, to image and embody the process of creation and ceaseless, harmonious change in the universe. Vegetal ornament also gives a wonderful sense of the way a non-moving medium such as tile or textile can enact growth and development, by lending the fecundity of developing plant forms to rules for pattern development not drawn from nature.13 For example, the vegetal ornament on the Qajar-period (1796–1925) walls of the Friday Mosque in Isfahan not only interweaves vine like motifs but also grows vines through circular passages in leaves and plant forms (a motif I speculate might be drawn from the lingzhi mushrooms that symbolize longevity in Chinese painting, which are sometimes depicted with holes in their stems), in a fractal fantasy of unnatural growth. The image performs a process of emergence. In Western visual art and cinema from the early twentieth century to our time, aniconism or the avoidance of figuration often operates on similar principles to those of classical Islamic art. Some artworks challenge art’s capacity to represent the divine, like Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (1915), or to represent anything at all. Later in the century, a deconstructive movement in cinema negated the audiovisual medium’s capacity to reproduce experience, beginning perhaps with Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), whose Japanese protagonist insists to his French lover, “You saw nothing at Hiroshima.” In such works an enfolded image refuses to divulge its knowledge, encapsulating Jalal Toufic’s argument that artworks made after a “surpassing disaster” become unavailable as culture.14 However, other enfolded images draw the perceiver in and invite imagination. Hiroshi Sugimoto’s time-lapse photographs of movie theater screens condense the time-based, social experience of cinema-going into a blindingly white absence inviting viewers to imaginatively reconstruct the event. Other aniconic works similarly shift the responsibility of 380

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meaning-making from the artwork to the viewer, accepting in turn that these meanings will be constructed subjectively, if at all. Most contemporary artworks do not represent life but bring life into being. This may be carried out in performative artworks like the paintings of Jackson Pollock, images that index the performance that generated them. It may be by computer-based artworks using genetic algorithms to create new and unanticipated forms that evolve according to changes in their environment, such as human interactions.15 It may be in relational artworks that create connections and tensions among people in social situations. In all these cases, representation is replaced by process. To explore this idea further, I propose the concepts of generative abstraction and performativity of figuration.

gener ative abst r ac tion Abstraction in Western art history tends to be associated with the lack of a figure, given the largely figurative tradition of Western art before modernism.16 In modern and contemporary art, abstract art is usually distinguished from non-figurative art in that the figure is abstracted, rather than entirely absent. To deal with the difference between these terms, it is useful to think of figuration as the expression of a process that occurs in time. The figure is captured, as it were, in the process of coming into being: a process that occurs either in the work or art itself or through the beholder’s engagement with it. We can think of this process as performative: the act of bringing into being, making, or revealing. As I argue above, this approach to images gives precedence to performance over representation, and process over substance. We might understand it, for example, in terms of Gilbert Simondon’s concept of individuation, whereby a figure (or any thing) is just the result of a process, the way a wave is the result of the movement of the sea.17 Many artists draw on the performativity of the image in order to critique the fixity of the figure. When things appear as fixed representations it is easier to imagine that they do not change and that all that they are is contained in the image of them. Artists intervene in the politics of representation by critiquing this kind of fixity and showing that things are in process. Later I will explore how Moroccan French video artist Mounir Fatmi returns regularly to the prohibitive and productive processes of aniconism and the emergence of figuration under new conditions of performativity. Fatmi works on the unbearable image, the silhouette, and a troubled figure-ground distinction. His works generate what Gilles Deleuze termed the Figural: a figuration that does not respect the boundaries required by representation.18 As I describe above, both Islamic art and Islamic philosophy developed rich practices and concepts of being as process long before these arrived to modern Western art and philosophy. Islamic art is rich with precedents for non-figurative art that has an interior fullness, a generative image that performs its coming into being. Indeed we can argue that this is one of the achievements of aniconism: an image that is not 381

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lacking in anything but performing being. We can term this process-based imaging “generative abstraction,” since it is abstraction that arises from or returns to figuration. The obverse concept would be “performative figuration.” Since the last decades of the twentieth century, concepts of abstraction in Western art have expanded to include ideas of an abstract image not based on lack. Critical theory has begun to place a greater emphasis on Western twentieth-century philosophies that emphasize process, becoming, performativity, creative evolution. The process philosophies of Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, Gilbert Simondon (1992), Gilles Deleuze (2002), and others support the idea that a non-figurative image is full, not empty. For example, Simondon argues that substances are not fixed but undergo transformation in the course of their being. In so doing, Western twentieth-century and contemporary thought has drawn closer to long-established Islamic modern philosophies of process, becoming, and individuation. The most fully developed of these is probably the work of Sadra in seventeenth-century Persia. As Parviz Morewedge points out, Islamic philosophy from Suhrawardi on abandoned substantialism for process.19 The processual nature of Sadra’s philosophy develops from his critique of Ibn Sina’s concept of the univocity of being. The problem with Ibn Sina’s influential concept is that it lacks fluidity because Ibn Sina drew on an Aristotelian understanding that substances or quiddities, like “man” and “horse,” are the basic entities of being: this is substantialism. Sadra maintained Ibn Sina’s concept of God as the only Necessary Being (wa¯jib al-wujпd) on which all other existences are contingent but redefined it as act or process: alsaraya¯n al-wujпd, the flow of Being. Sadra invented the concept of substantial motion (al-haraka¯t al-jawhariyya; also translated as transubstantiation or trans-substantial motion). This concept allows Sadra to describe a universe in which everything is unified by a constant flow of becoming, which he terms tashkīk al-wujпd, the modulation of being. In Sadra’s process philosophy, existence is not static but a principle of modulation or individuation (tashakhkhus) and in turn things are modulations of the singular reality that is Being. Substantial motion respects the potential for intensification in all things. Sadra wrote, “The act of being is the most real of things with respect to real effectuation, because what is other than it becomes effectively real through it.”20 In a sort of divine vitalism, things are transforming, becoming more real and more intense, in the process of drawing closer to God.21 Sadra’s account of substantial motion thus resonates with Simondon’s argument, three centuries later, that individuation is ontologically prior to individuals, and individuals are simply symptoms or effects of a flow of being: “If the being is no longer conceived using the model of a substance, it becomes possible to think the relation as one of the non-identity of being to itself.”22 These shared concerns of modern Euro-American and modern Islamic philosophy with conceptions of being as process are gradually being recognized.23 Art theory now can fruitfully call on shared Islamic and Western concepts of generative abstraction. Artists are already doing this. Many artists in the Muslim world entered

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contemporary art practice through Western-style art education, which in some institutions stopped at modernist abstraction24 – inheriting and transforming European worries about figuration. However, many contemporary artists from Muslim backgrounds incorporated Islamic conceptions of generative abstraction into their practice later.25 By now, Islamic and Western practices of abstraction, as well as conceptions of abstraction, are closer than they have been for centuries. While we can identify many examples of what I am calling generative abstraction in visual art, my examples here come from experimental media art. Film and other time-based media arts have their own issues with abstraction, of course, given that it is the norm that they be figurative, but the time-based image is also an ideal medium for testing and showing process. Moving image media works that engage abstraction thus tend to be working rigorously and thoughtfully with process-based approaches to figuration. The subset of these concerns that I propose to examine in the rest of this chapter is the performativity of figuration. Mounir Fatmi’s Dieu me pardonne (2001–04) addresses the obscene by showing, then shielding the eyes of the viewer from a barrage of images: pornography, news footage of a Palestinian youth shot by Israeli soldiers, a martyr’s coffin. “May God forgive me,” as the title says, for the lustful and murderous thoughts that these images brought upon me. At intervals three texts appear: “the first look is for you / the second is for the devil / the third look is a crime.” This last occurs over an aerial shot of the bombing of Baghdad in the first Gulf War (1990–91) from the viewpoint of its destroyers. “Smart” weapons that align bombardment with vision are designed to hypostasize the figure-ground distinction in order to identify a target.26 Weaponized vision is the limit case of figuration, turning the representation image into an operational image or an image that plays a role in operations that bypass the human subject.27 Fatmi tries different ways to put women’s figures into process. For the porn movie, he uses an analog video synthesis effect that floods the broader areas of the figure with colours, an effect similar to solarization. The effect is that the naked actress’s supine body becomes insubstantial, an outline filled with pulsing colours; her nipples and belly seem to fall away. Carved this way by the video synthesis, the actress’s naked body looks rather like a death’s head, in a gesture to memento mori. But because the colours and shapes created within the outline of her body are changing, Fatmi’s treatment of the woman’s figure also suggests that we are seeing a process. Her naked, displayed body exists not in itself but in a set of relations that include the viewer and that change in time, as Simondon describes the circumstances of individuation. We can also think of the pornographic scene in terms of Sadra’s process-based critique of materiality and sense perception. All entities in the cosmos are engaged in a process of refinement as they draw away from matter, which has the least reality, toward God, who is the only reality. Minerals, plants, animals, and humans, in the many states of our souls from vegetal to intellecting to potentially angelic, are all undergoing transformation. Sadra emphasizes that each entity transforms according to its nature: “Everything betaking itself in a direction with respect to its own nature

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inevitably has an essential final goal that is the most eminent state for it.” He cites the Qurʾan: “Surely unto God all things come home” (42:53).28 This emphasis of Sadra’s suggests that the process of transformation must proceed through the materiality of a thing, rather than try to transcend it immediately. The metamorphosing pornographic image in Fatmi’s Dieu me pardonne hints at this kind of transformation that must begin in situ, where the thing is. The process of transformation is also at work in Fatmi’s videos Muhammad Ali, le labyrinthe (2010) and Who Is Joseph Anton? (2013). Both of these approach a famous man, the boxer Muhammad Ali and the writer Salman Rushdie, who has been trapped and hemmed in by the images created of him. Ali’s entrapment has partly to do with the way his conversion to Islam was politicized and used to manipulate him, by the media and by people inside the Nation of Islam. Rushdie was entrapped in an image created by the fatwa against him for blasphemy – entrapped to such a degree that he famously had to go underground and take an alias, Joseph Anton (combining the names of his two favourite writers, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov). Who Is Joseph Anton? consists of an animation that we watch Fatmi produce. The artist’s hands cut photographs of Conrad and Chekhov into masks. Hand-drawn lines, like preparatory diagrams for a computer simulation, map points on the writers’ faces, while other, more crystalline diagrams map the shapes of skulls. Thus, in just a few seconds Fatmi captures the miserable condition in which Rushdie must live: threatened with death, while his creative career and he himself are reduced to a symbol.29 This montage suggests that the writer lives between the matter of his threatened body, the political forces in which he is captured, and the space for imagination. It recalls Sadra’s emphasis that humans are transformed by using imagination and thought to get closer to divine truth. Rushdie is an insistently secular writer, of course, but in his emphasis on freedom of imagination and thought he is struggling to actualize Sadra’s observation, “Know that the soul is let loose in this bodily world with respect to one level and one potency – that is, her reflective and imaginal potency, which is what belongs to her in her essence.”30

azadeh emadi on sadr a’s substantial motion i n p i xe l - ba s e d m e d i a In 2011, having read my articles about atomist aesthetics and the life within the pixel, Azadeh Emadi, a media artist and scholar then doing her PhD at Auckland University of Technology, contacted me, interested to further develop an understanding of pixel-based digital media in light of Islamic concepts. Since then Emadi has articulated a synthesis of atomist thought and the philosophy of Sadra to shed light on the relationship between the pixel, the frame, and the world, arguing that the experience of the pixel models the process of renewal and transformation that Sadra terms “substantial motion.” Emadi writes, 384

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In the Sadrian view, stability and form arise from motion (becoming, for Deleuze). Rather than many unmoved single frames appearing and disappearing to create a moving-image (as with analogue film), with digital-video there is only one image moving and changing as a whole. These changes are due to the internal elements of the digital-image, pixels. They occur in relation to the outside insofar as the code that is informed by the filmed external object, which moves and changes the related elements of the digital frame. Like people, pixels have “a destination that recapitulates all the destinations of the universe”. As microcosms, they envelop “the seminal reasons of the macrocosm,” and their “substantial renewal both fulfils and encapsulates the renewal of all natures and all souls” [citing Jambet]. Seen from the perspective of Substantial Motion, digital-video has the potential to render the reality of existence more truthfully because its pixels, as a unified internal multiplicity, are changing and moving in infinite time as well as forming a perceptual unit of moving-image.31 Emadi strongly expands my initial argument that the pixel in digital media closely approximates the point in atomist philosophy in that it reveals the sustained image to be an illusion, as well as Toufic’s point that in cinema the cut between frames is more truthful than the continuity of movement. Furthermore, only the point has a real connection to the invisible world. In light of Sadra’s concepts of temporal time and divine time, Emadi argues that the illusionistic video image exists in temporal time, while the pixel, annihilated and remade every second, relates to divine time. Thus a digital video can exemplify the relationship between temporal and divine time. She examines this idea in her own media artworks that isolate the pixels in digital video.

the substantial motion research net wor k My first intended audience for Enfoldment and Infinity was new media artists and scholars in general, in order to share with them the “good news” that these seemingly new arts had a practical and philosophical heritage in the Muslim world. This news is beginning to resonate alongside other non-Western media art genealogies, as more people understand heretofore “Western” arts and technologies to be inextricable from long histories of intellectual and artistic exchange. Artists who work with process appreciate the dynamism of enfolding–unfolding aesthetics. Scholars of comparative philosophy who, like me, seek to restore the mutually informative relationship between Islamic and Euro-American thought responded warmly to Enfoldment and Infinity and subsequent writings on philosophy. Intellectual historians respond to the book’s model of history as itself a process of enfolding and unfolding. However, the warmest response to the book was from media artists of Muslim backgrounds. Many of them expressed satisfaction that the book brought 385

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together two parts of their lives they had held separate, being a Muslim and being a media artist. Azadeh Emadi and I entered a long intellectual collaboration. I joined her doctoral committee as her external supervisor. And in 2016 it was Emadi who convinced me that the scores of artists and scholars around the world who contacted me after the publication of Enfoldment and Infinity should form a research network, to abolish our isolation and support each other’s work. And thus the Substantial Motion Research Network (smrn) was born. Emadi and I co-founded this collaborative, international network in 2018 to develop intercultural and non-Western approaches to media art and philosophy and to demonstrate the global heritage of media technologies. smrn’s growing membership includes scholars and artists from seventeen countries. We are art historians, media scholars, anthropologists, curators, and artists working in painting, film, video, sound, performance, and interactive media. About a third of smrn’s members work on art and philosophy in the Muslim tradition, with a focus on Persian and Ottoman histories. Others plumb Islamic, South Asian, East Asian, and West African philosophy, art, and vernacular practices for media genealogies. Others trace the travels of art, philosophy, and politics along the former Silk Road, through the Caucasus and the Western steppes to de-Westernize the history of European art. Still others sneak Islamicate processes into what looks like contemporary abstraction. A map on the smrn home page, substantialmotion.org, shows our locations all over the world. The site not only publishes our collective activities but also allows network members to share and collaborate in private, on the model of a secret society. smrn members hold workshops on “De-Westernizing your Media Practice,” sharing the smrn method with local audiences. We create podcasts on the Creative Disturbance channel. smrn members hold thrilling meetings online monthly to share work in progress, putting our name in action as we give each other feedback based on our diverse backgrounds and knowledge. These intense feedback sessions are bearing fruit as members complete the works they were developing, such as Javad Khajavi’s book on calligraphic animation, abstract painter Steven Baris’s numerous exhibitions of works based on diagrammatic process, Cigdem Borucu’s electroacoustic compositions for early Ottoman newsreels, Navine G. Khan-Dossos’s exhibition of apparently ornamental wall frescoes based on UK government’s “pre-crime” surveillance policies, Siying Duan’s work on the “empty shot” in Chinese and Western cinema, my book chapter on talismanic images, and many other projects.32 On the video conferencing interface, it is beautiful to see everybody’s faces as they listen and respond to the presenter: engaged, curious, smiling, or sleepy, since we are connecting across every time zone, and morning in Vancouver is afternoon in Istanbul, evening in Guwahati, and the wee hours of the night in Auckland. Emadi proposed that we model the network on Sadra’s concept of substantial motion, whereby an entity transforms from within by drawing on energies from without. And indeed we experience a generative process as each member’s ideas and practices 386

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individuate and refine in the light of our colleagues’ generous responses: energies that may not be divine but that certainly ground us in the collective, immanent infinity of this world.

note s 1 By “Islamic,” I do not refer to all art made in predominantly Muslim societies but art made primarily for religious purposes or contexts. By “classical,” I mean those periods in which artists in Muslim societies developed sustained bodies of work that corresponded, however lightly, to the religious and political views of their time and place, such that one can speak of Abbasid art, Safavid art, Andalusian art, and so on. 2 Bergson, Matter and Memory; Peirce, “The Principles of Phenomenology”; Deleuze, The Fold; Bohm, Wholeness. 3 For Bergson, Deleuze writes that “Image” is identical with movement: “The material universe, the plane of immanence, is the machinic assemblage of movement-images.” See Deleuze, Cinema 1, 58, 59. 4 I have since explored these questions in Marks, “A Deleuzian Ijtihad”; “Real Images Flow”; “‘We Will Exchange Your Likeness’”; and “Lively Up Your Ontology.” 5 Deleuze, “What Is an Event?” in The Fold, 76–82. 6 Stiegler, Technique and Time, 2: 134; Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers, A History of Chemistry. On Stengers see Schuppli, Material Witness. 7 Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism; Beller, “Pathologistics of Attention”; Valiaho, Biopolitical Screens. 8 Marks, Enfoldment and Infinity: “Baghdad, 830: Birth of the Algorithm,” 153–88; “Baghdad, 1000: Origin of the Pixel,” 189–218; “Cairo, 972: Ancestor of the Morph,” 219–52; “Herat, 1487: Early Virtual Reality,” 253–88; “Karabagh, 1700: Seeds of Artificial Life,” 289–316. 9 On causality in atomist thought see Leaman, “Creation and the Controversy over the Nature of Causality,” in idem, An Introduction, 94–106. 10 Mahdi, “The Rational Tradition in Islam,” 52. 11 Discussed in chapter 9 of Marks, Enfoldment and Infinity. 12 Josh Ellenbogen, “Review.” 13 Discussed in chapter 10 of Marks, Enfoldment and Infinity. 14 Toufic, Forthcoming, 64–75. 15 Genetic algorithms are digital simulations of biological genetics: see Whitelaw, Metacreation. 16 This was the premise of “Abstraction Unframed,” Fourth Annual Conference of amca, nyu Abu Dhabi and Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, 22–24 May 2016. 17 Simondon, “The Genesis of the Individual.” 18 Deleuze, Francis Bacon. 19 Morewedge, “The Neoplatonic Structure.” See also Goodman, Avicenna, 62. 20 Sadr al-Din al-Shirazi, Divine Witness, quoted in Jambet, The Act of Being, 75. 21 This paragraph is borrowed from Marks, “Real Images Flow.” 387

l aur a u. mar ks 22 Simondon, “The Genesis of the Individual,” 312. 23 See, for example, Arkoun, “Rethinking Islam Today”; Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ed., Islamic Philosophy; and Rizvi, Mulla Sadra¯. 24 Winegar, Creative Reckonings; Elnoshokaty, “Experimental Media Workshop.” 25 Shabout, “Contemporaneity.” 26 Virilio, The Vision Machine. 27 Farocki, “Phantom Images.” 28 Mulla Sadra, The Elixir of the Gnostics, §22, p. 62. 29 This description is from my chapter on Fatmi in Marks, Hanan al-Cinema. 30 Sadra, The Elixir of the Gnostics, §32, p. 64. 31 Emadi, “Motion Within Motion,” 459. 32 Khajavi, Arabic Script in Motion; Khan-Dossos, “There Is No Alternative”; for Borucu’s work, see https://www.cigdemborucu.net/film-composition; for Baris’s exhibitions, see https://www.stevenbaris.com/news; Duan, “Thinking, Feeling and Experiencing”; Marks, “Talisman-images.”

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Arkoun, Mohammed. “Rethinking Islam Today.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 588 (July 2003): 18–39. Beller, Jonathan. “Pathologistics of Attention.” Discourse 35, no. 1 (Winter 2013), 46–71. Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette, and Isabelle Stengers. A History of Chemistry. London: Harvard University Press, 1996. Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. Translated by N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer. New York: Zone, 1991. Bohm, David. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. New York: Routledge, 2002. Crary, Jonathan. 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. New York: Verso Books, 2013. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. – The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Translated by Tom Conley. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1993. – Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Translated by Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Duan, Siying. “Thinking, Feeling and Experiencing the ‘Empty Shot’ (kong jingtou 空镜头).” Film-Philosophy, forthcoming. Ellenbogen, Josh. “Review: Erkki Huhtamo, Illusions in Motion: Media Archaeology of the Moving Panorama and Related Spectacles; Laura U. Marks, Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art.” Art Bulletin 96, no. 1 (2014): 132–4. Elnoshokaty, Shady. “Experimental Media Workshop, Helwan University, 2000–2007.” http://mediaartworkshop.com/about.html (accessed 26 September 2013). Emadi, Azadeh. “Motion Within Motion: Investigating Digital Video in Light of Substantial Motion.” labs, Leonardo Journal 49, no. 5 (2016): 459. Farocki, Haroun. “Phantom Images.” Translated by Brian Poole. Public 29 (2004): 13–22. Goodman, Lenn Evan. Avicenna. New York: Routledge, 1992.

pro cess thinking for isl amic art Jambet, Christian. The Act of Being: The Philosophy of Revelation in Mulla¯ Sadra¯. New York: Zone, 2006. Khajavi, M. Javad. Arabic Script in Motion: A Theory of Temporal Text-based Art. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Khan-Dossos, Navine G. “There Is No Alternative.” Showroom Gallery, London, July 4–27, 2019. Leaman, Oliver. An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Mahdi, Muhsin. “The Rational Tradition in Islam.” In Intellectual Traditions in Islam, edited by Farhad Daftary, 43–65. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2000. Marks, Laura U. “A Deleuzian Ijtihad: Unfolding Deleuze’s Islamic Sources occulted in the Ethnic Cleansing of Spain.” In Deleuze and Race, edited by Arun Saldhana, 51–72. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013. – Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2010. – Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2015. – “Lively Up Your Ontology: Bringing Deleuze into Sadra’s Modulated Universe.” Qui Parle? 27, no. 2 (December 2018): 321–54. – “Real Images Flow: Mulla Sadra Meets Film-Philosophy.” Film-Philosophy 20 (2015): 24–46. – “Talisman-Images: From the Cosmos to your Body.” In Deleuze, Guattari and the Art of Multiplicity, edited by Radek Przedpełski and S.E. Wilmer. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming. – “‘We Will Exchange Your Likeness and Recreate You in What You Will Not Know’: Cinema and Intercultural Process Philosophy.” In The Anthem Handbook of Film Theory, edited by Hunter Vaughn and Tom Conley, 119–41. London: Anthem Press, 2018. Morewedge, Parviz. “The Neoplatonic Structure of Some Islamic Mystical Doctrines.” In Neoplatonism and Islamic Thought, Ancient and Modern, vol. 5, edited by Parviz Morewedge, 51–72. Albany, ny: suny Press, 1992. Peirce, Charles Sanders. “The Principles of Phenomenology.” In Philosophical Writings of Peirce, edited by Justus Buchler, 74–97. New York: Dover, 1955. Rizvi, Sajjad H. Mulla Sadra¯ and Metaphysics: Modulation of Being. London: Routledge, 2009. Sadra, Mulla, The Elixir of the Gnostics. Translated by William C. Chittick. Provo, ut: Brigham Young University Press, 2003. Schuppli, Susan. Material Witness: Forensics, Media, Evidence. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2020. Shabout, Nada. “Contemporaneity in the Arab World.” In New Vision: Arab contemporary art in the 21st century, edited by Hossein Amirsadeghi, Salwa Mikdadi, Nada Shabout, 14–21. London: Thames and Hudson, 2009. Simondon, Gilbert. “The Genesis of the Individual.” Translated by Mark Cohen and Sanford Kwinter. In Incorporations, edited by Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter, 296–319. New York: Zone Books, 1992.

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l aur a u. mar ks Stiegler, Bernard. Technique and Time, 2 vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. Toufic, Jalal. Forthcoming. Berkeley: Atelos, 2000. Tymieniecka, Anna-Teresa, ed. Islamic Philosophy and Occidental Phenomenology on the Perennial Issue of Microcosm and Macrocosm. Dordrecht: Springer, 2006. Valiaho, Pasi. Biopolitical Screens: Image, Power, and the Neoliberal Brain. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2014. Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. Whitelaw, Mitchell. Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life. Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 2004. Winegar, Jessica. Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt. Palo Alto, ca: Stanford University Press, 2006.

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Illustrations

I.1. View of Syria: A Living History exhibition, Aga Khan Museum, 2016. Photograph: Janet Kimber. 4 I.2. View of Syria: A Living History exhibition, Aga Khan Museum, 2016. Photograph: Janet Kimber. 5 I.3. Façade of the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto. Photograph: Kashan Mistry. 5 I.4. Map of main sites and locations in the Islamic world. Created by Seyedhamed Yeganehfarzand. 7 1.1. Photograph of Mshatta with sheep in the foreground. The Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University, A232. 26 1.2. Plan of Mshatta. After Schulz, 1904, pl. I. 27 1.3. Mshatta’s façade in situ, 1897–98. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 432. 28 1.4. Upper portion of the zigzag. Photograph: Alexander Townson. 29 1.5. Lines of sight to Mshatta’s façade from the central axis, at varying distances from the entrance. Façade outline after Schulz, 1904, p. 2. 31 1.6. Easternmost triangle in situ, 1897–98. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 525. 32 1.7. Westernmost triangle in situ, 1897–98. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow & Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 477. 33 1.8. Westernmost triangle, detail of the apex. Photograph: Alexander Townson. 34 1.9. Westernmost triangle in situ, detail of the apex. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 477, detail. 34 1.10. South face of the western polyhedral tower, detail of the lower portion. Photograph: Alexander Townson. 36 1.11. South face of the eastern polyhedral tower, detail of the lower portion. Photograph: Alexander Townson. 36 1.12. Triangle west of the entrance in situ, 1897–98. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 500. 38

i l lust r at i o n s 1.13. Photograph of Mshatta with people standing on its walls. The Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University, A233. 39 1.14. Triangle west of the entrance, outline of a human figure in the left corner. Photograph: Alexander Townson. 40 1.15. Smaller triangle east of the entrance. Photograph: Alexander Townson. 41 1.16. View of the western wing of the façade from the central axis, with a visible triangle outlined. Photograph: Alexander Townson. 43 1.17. Detail of facing griffins from a triangle on the western wing of the façade. Photograph: Alexander Townson. 44 1.18. Easternmost triangle in situ, detail of the lower portion. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 525, detail. 45 1.19. Triangle from the western wing of the façade in situ and detail of a griffin taken from the same photograph. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 486. 46 1.20. Southeast face of the eastern polyhedral tower, detail of a Flügelpalmette. Photograph: Alexander Townson. 47 1.21. Graffito from a façade block. Schulz, 1904, p. 223. 48 1.22. Triangle from the eastern wing of the façade in situ, detail of the lower portion. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 521, detail. 49 1.23. Triangle from the eastern wing of the façade in situ, 1897–98. Rudolf Ernst Brünnow and Alfred von Domaszewski Archive, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University, 521. 51 1.24. Southwest face of the western polyhedral tower, detail of birds emerging from a chalice. Photograph: Alexander Townson. 53 2.1. Humayun’s tomb environs. Drawing: Hussein Keshani. 61 2.2. Plan of the Bara Batashewala and Chhota Batashewala Mahals. Drawing: Hussein Keshani. 62 2.3. Elevation and plan of the Bara Batashewala Mahal. Drawing: Hussein Keshani. 63 2.4. Detail of plaster Farsi funerary epigraph in the Bara Batashewala Mahal. Photograph: Hussein Keshani, 2010. 64 2.5. Tulsi Kalan and Banwari, Mirza Ibrahim Husain hunting and his defeat by the imperial troops (right side), Akbarnama, 1590–95. Victoria & Albert Museum, IS.2:1041896. 67 2.6. General view of the Bara Pula Bridge, Delhi, 1030/1611–12. Photograph: W. Caney, Archaeological Survey of India Collections, 1870s. British Library; shelfmark: Photograph 1003/(865); item no.: 1003865. 70 2.7. Interior of Mihr Banu Saray, New Delhi, c. 1030/1611–12. Photograph: Varun Shiv Kapur, 27 March 2009. 71 2.8. The Bara Batashewala Mahal (1012/1603–1604) and the “temporary” structures built 392

i l lust r at i o n s by the Bharat Scouts and Guides, New Delhi (1989). Photograph: Hussein Keshani, 2010. 73 2.9. Stone lattice window, Bara Batashewala Mahal, New Delhi, 1012/1603–1604. Photograph: Hussein Keshani, 2010. 74 2.10. Interior of southern long chamber, Bara Batashewala Mahal, New Delhi, 1012/1603– 1604. Photograph: Hussein Keshani, 2010. 74 2.11. Interior of Tuman Aqa complex, Kuhsan, Afghanistan, 1440–41. Josephine Powell Photograph (c. 1960). Courtesy of Special Collections, Fine Arts Library, Harvard University, 154.2 K115 9Tu(I)Do1. 74 2.12. Shamsah in interior of southern long chamber, Bara Batashewala Mahal, New Delhi, 1012/1603–1604. Photograph: Hussein Keshani, 2010. 75 2.13. Shamsah from the Late Shahjahan Album, India, c. 1650. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian, S1986.70. 76 2.14. Shamsahs. (a) Shamsah on south dome interior of Jamaatkhana, Nizamuddin, New Delhi, 979–80/1572–73; (b) Shamsah on dome interior of tomb of Rahim Khan, New Delhi, 1035/1626; (c) Shamsah on dome interior of Lakkar Wala tomb, New Delhi, c. 1012/1603–1604 (d) Shamsah on interior of dome of Jamali Kamali tomb, New Delhi, 1528–29/1536. Photographs: Hussein Keshani (a–c), Varun Shiv Kapur (d). 77 2.15. Plaster ornament on interior archway of southern long chamber, Bara Batashewala Mahal, New Delhi, 1012/1603–1604. Photograph: Hussein Keshani, 2010. 78 2.16. The plaster funerary inscription and chīnī kha¯nah image of the Bara Batashewala Mahal, New Delhi, 1012/1603–1604. Photograph: Hussein Keshani, 2010. 78 2.17. Tulsi and Bhawani, detail of the construction of Fathpur showing pavilion niches, Akbar na¯mah, 1590–95, Victoria and Albert Museum, IS.2:86-1896. 79 2.18. Chhota Batashewala Mahal, New Delhi, c. 1012/1603–1604. Photograph: Hussein Keshani, 2010. 81 3.1. Wazir Khan Mosque, Lahore. General view of the façade. Wikimedia Commons. Photograph: Muhammad Ashar, 2014. 99 3.2. Bookshops near the Wazir Khan Mosque. Photograph: Erica Dodd. 100 3.3. Wazir Khan Mosque, Lahore reproduced in a coloured lithograph by W. Carpenter held in the Lahore Archives. Reproduced from: F.A. Aijazuddin, Lahore, Illustrated Views of the 19th Century (Lahore, 1991), 109. 101 3.4. Inscription on the right side of the gateway, Wazir Khan Mosque. Photograph: Erica Dodd. 102 3.5. Courtyard and prayer hall, Wazir Khan Mosque. Wikimedia Commons. Photograph: MariamSM, 2007. 106 3.6. Façade of the prayer hall, Wazir Khan Mosque. Photograph: Erica Dodd. 106 3.7. Tile panels on the façade of the prayer hall. Photograph: Erica Dodd. 107 3.8. Doorway in the centre of the façade of the prayer hall. Photograph: Erica Dodd. 113 3.9. Alveolate panels above the central door the façade of the prayer hall. Photograph: Erica Dodd. 114 393

i l lust r at i o n s 3.10. Detail of the kashi-kari style design from the gateway, Wazir Khan Mosque. Photograph: Erica Dodd. 114 3.11. Detail showing inscribed panels with Sufi themes. Photograph: Erica Dodd. 118 3.12. Interior do the prayer hall. Wikimedia Commons. Photograph: Fassifarooq, 2016. 119 3.13. View of the interior of the central dome in the prayer hall. Photograph: Erica Dodd. 119 3.14. Inscription above the miḥra¯b containing Sura¯t al-Zumar. Photograph: Erica Dodd. 120 3.15. Detail containing the names of Allah and Muhammad. Photograph: Erica Dodd. 120 3.16. Courtyard façade leading to the main entrance to the Wazir Khan Mosque. Wikimedia Commons. Photograph: Moiz Ismaili, 2016. 124 3.17. Tile panel over the entrance to the Wazir Khan Mosque. Photograph: Erica Dodd. 125 4.1. Iron pillar in the old ja¯miʿ mosque of Delhi. Photograph: Anthony Welch. 132 4.2. Qutb Minar. Photograph: Anthony Welch. 133 4.3. Entrance stairway to mosque of Sultan Muhammad Tughluq, 1343. Photograph: Anthony Welch. 135 4.4. Mosque of Sultan Muhammad Tughluq, ground plan. 135 4.5. Citadel of Firuzabad, courtyard and qibla, 1351. Photograph: Anthony Welch. 138 4.6. Citadel of Firuzabad, Golden Minar, 1367. Section drawing. Drawing: Naomi Shields, 2021. 139 4.7. Khirki mosque, 1352. Photograph: Anthony Welch. 142 4.8. Khirki mosque, 1352, ground plan. 142 4.9. Hauz Khas stairway and tomb, 1388. Photograph: Anthony Welch. 145 4.10. Hauz Khas mosque interior, 1354. Photograph: Anthony Welch. 145 5.1. Location of Zabid on the Red Sea coastal plain of Yemen. 152 5.2. The citadel mosque-madrasa (al-Iskandariyya) in Zabid. Photograph: Ingrid Hehmeyer. 154 5.3. Decorative panel in the northeastern corner of the courtyard arcade of the Iskandariyya mosque-madrasa, with remains of original Rasulid plasterwork and the central part replaced with a new inscription. Photograph: Ingrid Hehmeyer. 155 5.4. The letters ka¯f, nпn, da¯l of Iskandar’s name, as shown on the modified courtyard inscription. Photograph: Ingrid Hehmeyer. 156 5.5. Waqf inscription panel on the left side of the miḥra¯b in the Iskandariyya mosquemadrasa, top lines, with the word sharīj at the left end of both lines. Photograph: Ingrid Hehmeyer. 157 5.6. Underground plaster-lined water conduit on the east side of Zabid. Photograph: Ingrid Hehmeyer. 160 5.7. Ceramic pipes set into a bed of baked brick, with the two bottom lines complete. Photograph: Ingrid Hehmeyer. 160 394

i l lust r at i o n s 6.1. 1970s aerial photograph of Zabid. Photograph: British Royal Air Force. 168 6.2. Zabid’s farmland immediately beyond the city. Photograph: Edward Keall. 169 6.3. Harvest storks of sorghum in the fields of the Wadi Zabid. Photograph: Edward Keall. 169 6.4. Articulated brickwork on a traditional Zabidi house façade. Photograph: Edward Keall. 171 6.5. Examples of locally made glazed and unglazed pottery wares recovered from Zabid. Royal Ontario Museum: 981.217.71, 981.217.78, 981.217.118, 982.187.63, 983.243.60, 983.243.62. 173 6.6. Examples of imported pottery recovered from Zabid. Royal Ontario Museum: 982.187.53, 982.187.131, 982.187.135, 982.187.137, 982.187.139, 983.243.14, 983.243.69. 173 6.7. Sixteenth-century Ottoman fort excavation layer with cannon balls. Photograph: Edward Keall. 176 6.8. Ibn al-Mujawir’s map of Zabid, after Chelhod, 1978. 178 6.9. The hypothesized dimensions and circular shape of Ziyadid Zabid. 179 6.10. Zabid’s largest dimension, mid-sixteenth century. 180 6.11. Gun embrasure hacked through Iskandar’s dedicatory inscription on his minaret. Photograph: Edward Keall. 182 6.12. The early nineteenth-century Zabid Citadel, with added larger ordnance towers. Photograph: Edward Keall. 182 6.13. Al-Ashaʿir mosque south arcade and minaret. Photograph: Edward Keall. 184 6.14. Sounding within the al-Ashaʿir south arcade alongside the minaret. Photograph: Edward Keall. 184 6.15. Excavation trench breaking through the floor of the fifteenth century al-Ashaʿir mosque ablution pool. Photograph: Edward Keall. 185 6.16. Sequence of pre-fifteenth-century kitchens adjacent to the al-Ashaʿir mosque. Photograph: Edward Keall. 186 6.17. Painted designs in the zone of transition of al-Iskandariyya (Citadel Mosque). Photograph: Edward Keall. 187 6.18. Beginning lines of the exposed waqf text announcing Iskandar Mawz’s madrasa. Photograph: Edward Keall. 188 6.19. A miscellany of smokers’ pipes, sixteenth–nineteenth centuries. The small green and yellow ones are from the sixteenth century. Royal Ontario Museum: 983.243.18, 990.152.286, 990.152.288, 990.152.322, 990.152.549. 189 7.1. Pottery types produced by a potter in Antioch, 1930s. After: Bazantay, Enquête sur l’artisanat à Antioche, pl. 37. 202 7.2. Representative types of ceramic pipes found during excavations in the Middle East (not to scale). a–c: from the Amman Citadel, Umayyad and early Abbasid period (after Arce); d–f: from the citadel at Hama (after Pentz). Drawings: Genevieve Neelin and Marcus Milwright. 205 7.3. Drainage channel beneath a colonnaded street on the ʿAmman citadel, Jordan. Eighth century. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. 206

395

i l lust r at i o n s 7.4. Glazed drainpipe fragments excavated in ʿAna, Iraq. Photograph: Alastair Northedge. 207 7.5. Clay oven with drainpipe used as a flue, probably Ayyubid period. Square XV from the “Armenian Garden” excavation, Jerusalem. Photograph: A. Douglas Tushingham. Reproduced courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum. 209 7.6. Ceramic drainpipe recovered at Qalʿat Bahrain. After Frifelt et al., Islamic Remains in Bahrain, fig. 182. Drawing: Genevieve Neelin. 211 7.7. Glazed drainpipe found in Qasr al-ʿAshiq, Samarra, Iraq. Ninth century. Photograph: Alastair Northedge. 213 8.1. Map showing the location of Deir Mar Musa. Drawing: Robert Mason. 222 8.2. Slip-painted, copper-lead-glazed pottery from Deir Mar Musa. Drawing: Robert Mason. 223 8.3. Slip-painted, copper-lead-glazed pottery from Deir Mar Musa. Drawing: Robert Mason. 223 8.4. Slip-excised, copper-splashed lead-glazed pottery from Deir Mar Musa. Drawing: Robert Mason. 224 8.5. Slip-excised, copper-splashed lead-glazed pottery from Deir Mar Musa. Drawing: Robert Mason. 224 8.6. Slip-excised, copper-splashed lead-glazed pottery from Deir Mar Musa. Drawing: Robert Mason. 225 8.7. Slip-excised, copper-splashed lead-glazed pottery from Deir Mar Musa. Drawing: Robert Mason. 225 8.8. Photomicrograph of Deir Mar Musa lead-glazed ware. Cross polarized light, width of view about 1mm. 226 8.9. Photomicrograph of Deir Mar Musa lead-glazed ware. Cross polarized light, width of view about 1mm. 226

396

9.1. A Masai giraffe, Mikumi National Park, Tanzania. Photograph: Muhammad Mahdi Karim. 233 9.2. Floor mosaic with a giraffa camelopardalis and groom (bottom right), dated 531, Diakonikon Baptistery, Mount Nebo, Jordan. Photograph: Jerzy Strzelecki. 235 9.3. Giraffe (Arabic zara¯fa or zura¯fa), folio from a copy of al-Qazwini’s ʿAja¯ʾib alMakhlпqa¯t (Wonders of Creation), late-fourteenth or early-fifteenth century, Iraq or Eastern Turkey. Opaque watercolour, ink, gold and silver on paper, 32.7 × 22.4 cm. Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, dc, purchase F1954.88. 236 9.4. Lustre bowl with a giraffe and groom, late tenth–early eleventh century, Egypt, d. 24 cm., Benaki Museum no. 749, Athens. Photo courtesy Benaki Museum. 237 9.5. (a) Fragmentary and restored “doubled-giraffe” lustre bowl signed by Muslim, dated 986–1025, Egypt. Earthenware, lustre painted over an opaque white glaze, d. 37 cm. Museum für Islamische Kunst – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, no. I.43/64.135. Photograph: Johannes Kramer; (b) Reconstruction drawing of the Berlin doubled-giraffe bowl

i l lust r at i o n s by Gertraud Zotter. After Meinecke-Berg, 1999a, “Das Giraffenbild,” fig.1, p.333. Reproduced with the kind permission of Gertraud Zotter. 239 9.6. Map of early Fatimid Cairo (969–1073 ce); includes processional route and location of muṣallà. Adapted from Carel Bertram’s map in, Bierman, Writing Signs, map 2, p. 70. Drawing: Naomi Shields. 241 9.7. Examples of lustre pottery shards from two other “giraffe bowls,” Berlin, inv. nos. 135. Photograph: Fahmida Suleman, with kind permission from the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin. 245 9.8. Barber’s dish with a giraffe and groom made to mark the arrival of a giraffe in the Jardin des Plantes in 1827. Musée national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, France, inv no D1881. © rmn-Grand Palais/Art Resource, ny. 247 10.1. Bowl, underglaze painted stonepaste, Samarqand petrofabric, c. 1410. Royal Ontario Museum, 993.72.2. ©rom. Photo: Brian Boyle. 257 10.2. Dish, underglaze painted stonepaste, “peony style,” Nishapur petrofabric, late fifteenth–early sixteenth century. Royal Ontario Museum, 2004.101.1. ©rom. Photo: Brian Boyle. 259 10.3. Drawing of motifs found on backs of late fifteenth to sixteenth-century dishes. 259 10.4. Selection of potters’ marks found on Safavid pottery, early seventeenth century. 262 10.5. Dish, underglaze painted stonepaste, Kerman petrofabric, c. 1630. Royal Ontario Museum, 909.25.4. ©rom. Photo: Brian Boyle. 263 10.6. Dish, underglaze painted stonepaste, Kerman, c. 1640. Royal Ontario Museum, 2003.58.1. ©rom. Photo: Brian Boyle. 264 10.7. a) Multi-nozzle vase for cut flowers, underglaze painted stonepaste, Kerman, c. 1650. Royal Ontario Museum, 2004.102.2. ©rom. Photo: Brian Boyle.; b) Tassel-mark found on base of multi-nozzle vase. 265 10.8. Qalyan (water-pipe base), underglaze painted stonepaste with polychrome slip painting, Kerman, c. 1660–80. Royal Ontario Museum, 928.22.3. ©rom. Photo: Brian Boyle. 266 10.9. Back of dated dish with “fan spray” back, typical of Kerman wares, 1084/1673–74. Royal Ontario Museum, 2000.48.1. ©rom. Photo: Brian Boyle. 266 10.10. Qumisheh ware, showing incised lines used to speed up process of painting, stonepaste body, Qumisheh (Isfahan) petrofabric, c. 1650–80. Royal Ontario Museum, 909.25.3. ©rom. Photo: Brian Boyle. 267 10.11. Large plate, underglaze painted stonepaste, attributed to Mashhad, c. 1700.Royal Ontario Museum, 2006.20.1. ©rom. Photo: Brian Boyle. 268 10.12. Lustre-painted bowl, stonepaste body, Mashhad petrofabric, last quarter of seventeenth century. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 959.205.1. ©rom. Photo: Brian Boyle. 269 11.1. Stone lion, Khaju Bridge, south side, seventeenth century. 82 × 128 × 42 cm. Photograph: Parviz Tanavoli. 273 397

i l lust r at i o n s 11.2. Stone lion, Khaju Bridge, north side, seventeenth century, 96 × 170 × 43 cm. Photograph: Parviz Tanavoli. 273 11.3a and b. Stone lion at Harun Velayat Shrine, sixteenth or seventeenth century, 93 × 183 × 46 cm. Photograph: Parviz Tanavoli. 273 11.4. Stone lion at the Darb-i Imam Mosque, seventeenth century, 78 × 136 × 44 cm. Photograph: Parviz Tanavoli. 274 11.5. Stone lion in the Darpush Quarter, seventeenth century. 80 × 142 × 51 cm. Photograph: Parviz Tanavoli. 275 11.6. Stone lion at the Ahmad Shrine, seventeenth century, 74 × 128 × 38 cm. Photograph: Parviz Tanavoli. 275 11.7. Stone lion formerly at the Ahmad Shrine, eighteenth century, 17 × 44 × 25 cm. Present location unknown. 277 11.8. Bakhtiari stone lions in the cemetery at Bazoft. Photograph: Parviz Tanavoli, 1999. 279 11.9. Detail of a Husseinieh banner, nineteenth century. Qalamkar on cotton, 230 × 253 × 195 cm. Private collection. 280 12.1. Garden scene with prince and courtiers, Tabriz, about 1500. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 41.58.2. Courtesy: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Gift of Mr C.C. Webber. 284 12.2. Waiting groom with horse in wooded grove, Tabriz, about 1500. Freer and Sackler Galleries, F 1954.26a. Courtesy: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, dc. 285 12.3. Prince with courtiers in landscape, Tabriz, about 1500. Royal Ontario Museum, 2007.48.1. Photograph: Brian Boyle. 286 12.4. Fragment of Gul-u Mul text. Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 41.58.2. Courtesy: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Gift of Mr C.C. Webber. 287 12.5. Fragment of Gul-u Mul text. Freer and Sackler Galleries, F 1954.26b. Courtesy: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, dc. 289 12.6. Prince on horseback encounters youth, Dīva¯n Navaʾi, Tabriz or Shiraz, 1471. Egyptian National Library, Adab Turki 68m, fol. 18b. 293 12.7. Prince on horseback, with retinue, Dīva¯n Hidayat, Tabriz, 1478. Chester Beatty Library, T 401, fol 19b. 294 12.8. Prince seated outside tent, with courtiers in attendance, Dīva¯n Navaʾi, Tabriz or Shiraz, 1471. Egyptian National Library, Adab Turki 68m, fol. 47b. 296 12.9. Prince enjoying wine and music in landscape, Dīva¯n Hidayat, Tabriz, 1478. Chester Beatty Library, T 401, fol 8b. 297 13.1. Mamluk Qurʾan manuscript, Egypt or Syria, dated 1464. Royal Ontario Museum, 905.8.2. 314 13.2. Floor plan of the Royal Ontario Museum. From the Outline Guide, 1939. Courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum. 319 13.3. Photograph of the Royal Ontario Museum exhibition, Persian Painting and Islamic Applied Art, 1957. Courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum. 320 398

i l lust r at i o n s 13.4. Photograph of the Royal Ontario Museum exhibition, Persian Painting and Islamic Applied Art, 1957. Courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum. 320 13.5. Photograph of the Royal Ontario Museum exhibition, Oriental Rugs: The Kalman Collection, 1958. Courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum. 321 14.1. Alvin Langdon Coburn, Henri Matisse, 1913. 331 14.2. Henri Matisse, Portrait of M.S. Prichard, 1914. Etching, 18 × 12.2 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York. 331 14.3. Matisse, Standing Riffian, late 1912. Oil on canvas, 146.5 × 97.7 cm. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. 332 14.4. Cappella Palatina (Nave Ceiling), 1130–43. Palermo, Sicily. 333 14.5. Perugino, Delivery of the Keys to Saint Peter, 1482. Fresco, 3.48 × 5.70 m. Sistine Chapel, Vatican. 334 14.6. Henri Matisse, Harmony in Red, 1908. Oil on canvas, 180 × 220 cm. Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. 335 14.7. The First Meeting between the Prince Houmay and the Princess Houmayoun, c. 1430–40. Iran, Timurid Dynasty, Herat School. Tempera on board 29 × 17.5 cm. Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. n. 3727. 335 14.8. Henri Matisse, The Red Studio, autumn 1911. Oil on canvas, 181 × 219.1 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York. 336 14.9. Andrei Rublev, Old Testament Trinity, 1411. Tempera on panel, 142 × 114 cm. Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow. 337 14.10. Iconostasis Screen, c. fourteenth to nineteenth centuries. Cathedral of the Annunciation (1484–89), the Kremlin, Moscow. 338 14.11. Henri Matisse, Large Nude, 1911. Distemper on canvas (destroyed). 339 14.12. Roger Fry, Amenopolis, 1913. Printed linen (block-printed on selvedge), 79.5 × 85 cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 341 14.13. Henri Matisse, Portrait of Mabel Warren, 1913. Pencil on paper, 28.2 × 21.6 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 343 14.14. Nomisma histamenon of John I Tzimiskes (r. 969–76), Constantinople. Gold. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Bequest Thomas Whittemore, 1951.31.4.1414. 344 15.1. Diagram of a 3 × 3 magic square. Drawing: Patricia Bentley. 352 15.2a and b. Shirt, village of Kiembara, Burkina Faso, Mossi, c. 1990. Cotton, hand-spun, woven, sewn, and inscribed with Arabic writing and graphic symbols, gift of Victoria Henry, T91.0091. Photograph: Maciek Linowski. Courtesy of the Textile Museum of Canada. 354 15.3. The Arabic text on the shirt shown in fig. 15.2 translated into English, with arrows indicating the order of the text. Translated from Arabic by Ruba Kana’an. Drawing: Patricia Bentley. 355 15.4. Installation view of the Magic Squares exhibition. Textile Museum of Canada. 356 399

i l lust r at i o n s 15.5. Alia Toor, 99 Names of Aman (detail), 2004. Embroidery on dust masks, collection of the artist. Photograph: Nurjahan Akhlaq. 357 15.6. Tim Whiten, Mary’s Permeating Sign, 2006. Cast glass, pillow, edition of two, courtesy of the artist and Olga Korper Gallery. Photograph: Nurjahan Akhlaq. 359 15.7. Jamelie Hassan, Slave Letter, 1983, watercolour painting with four clay tablets and cloth containing objects, collection of Matthew Teitelbaum. Photograph: Jill Kitchener. Courtesy of the Textile Museum of Canada. 360 15.8a and b. Hamid Kachmar, Tiswingimin, 2011. Goatskin, henna, saffron, mixed media on board, collection of the artist. Photographs: Nurjahan Akhlaq. 361 15.9. Qur’anic writing board, nineteenth century, Hausa, Nigeria. Wood, carved and written on with ink, leather bound handle, collection of Patricia Bentley. Photograph: Nurjahan Akhlaq. 362 15.10. Men’s caps (kofia), 1990, Zanzibar. Cotton, commercially woven, sewn and embroidered with cotton thread, collection of Zulfikar Hirji. Photograph: Nurjahan Akhlaq. 363 15.11. Jamelie Hassan, ‫( ی‬Manuscript Page), 2006, edition of three, colour photograph on masonite, neon light, collection of Museum London. Photograph: Jill Kitchener. Courtesy of Textile Museum of Canada. 364

400

Contributors

mark antliff is Mary Grace Wilson Professor of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University. His research concentrates on nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, theory, and criticism. He is the author of books including Inventing Bergson: Cultural Politics and the Parisian Avant-Garde (1993) and Avant-Garde Fascism: The Mobilization of Myth, Art and Culture in France, 1909–1939 (2007).

evanthia baboula is assistant professor in the Department of Art History and Visual Studies and associate dean of fine arts, University of Victoria. Her research focuses on Byzantine art, the Ottoman period in Greece, and cross-cultural contact in the Mediterranean. She is the author of articles including “Nafpaktos: A Town to be envied even by Sultans,” Journal of Modern Hellenism (2010–11).

patricia bentley is curator at the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto. She has curated exhibitions including Book of Hours (2002), Dance of Pattern (2005), and The Lion King of Mali (2008).

erica cruikshank dodd is emerita fellow at the Centre for the Studies of Religion and Society, University of Victoria. She previously taught in several institutions including the universities of Oxford, McGill, McMaster, Victoria, and Toronto. Her research interests encompass Islamic art, Byzantine art, and the arts of the Christian communities of the Middle East. Her books include Byzantine Silver Stamps (1962) and, with Shereen Khairallah, The Image of the Word (1982).

lisa golombek is curator emeritus (Islamic art) at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Her research focuses on the art and architecture of the Persian-speaking lands of the Islamic world. She is the author of The Timurid Shrine of Gazur Gah (1969) and has co-authored books including The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan (1988), Tamerlane’s Tableware: A New Approach to the Chinoiserie Ceramics of Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Iran (1996), and Persian Pottery in the First Global Age: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (2013).

cont r ibu tors

ingrid hehmeyer is associate professor in the history of science and technology in the Department of History, Ryerson University. Her research interests encompass water technology, astronomy, medical sciences, and magic. She is the author of numerous articles on these themes, and co-edited (with Hanne Schönig) Herbal Medicine in Yemen: Traditional Knowledge and Practice, and Their Value for Today’s World (2012).

zulfikar hirji is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, York University. He has conducted fieldwork and archival research in East Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Europe, and North America. He is the author of books such as Between Two Empires: Sheikh-Sir Mbarak al-Hinawy (1896–1959) (2012) and has edited collections including Diversity and Pluralism in Muslim Contexts: Historical and Contemporary Discourses Amongst Muslims (2010).

edward keall is curator emeritus at the Royal Ontario Museum. He has organized exhibitions in the Wirth Gallery of the Middle East and has directed archaeological projects at Qalʿeh-i Yazdigird in Iran and Zabid in Yemen. He is the author of numerous articles on pre-Islamic and Islamic archaeology and has also written on the early evidence for the smoking of tobacco in the Middle East.

hussein keshani is associate professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, University of British Columbia (Okanagan). His research focuses on the Islamic art and architecture of South Asia. He held a fellowship at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at mit, and is the author of articles including “The Abbasid Palace of Theophilus,” al-Masaq (2004), and “Architecture and the Twelver Shiʿa Tradition: The Great Ima¯mba¯ra¯ Complex of Lucknow,” Muqarnas (2006).

laura marks is Grant Strate Professor in the School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University. Her research interests encompass media art and philosophy, with an intercultural focus. She is author of books including Enfoldment and Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art (2010) and Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image (2015).

robert mason is responsible for the collections database of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. He combines archaeology, anthropology, art history, and geology in his research. He is the author of numerous articles and the book Shine Like the Sun: Lustre-Painted and Associated Pottery from the Medieval Middle East (2004). He is one of the authors of Tamerlane’s Tableware: A New Approach to the Chinoiserie Ceramics of Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Iran (1996) and Persian Pottery in the First Global Age: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (2013).

402

cont r ibu tors

marcus milwright is professor of Islamic art and archaeology in the Department of Art History and Visual Studies, University of Victoria. He is involved in archaeological projects in Syria, Jordan, and Greece and is the author of books including An Introduction to Islamic Archaeology (2010), Islamic Arts and Crafts: An Anthology (2017), and The Queen of Sheba’s Gift: A History of the True Balsam of Matarea (2021).

bita pourvash is curatorial assistant at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto. Her research focuses on the history of collecting, particularly of Islamic and Middle Eastern objects.

karin rührdanz is curator emeritus (Islamic art) at the Royal Ontario Museum. Her research focuses on the arts of the book in the eastern Islamic world. She is co-author (with Rachel Milstein and Barbara Schmitz) of Stories of the Prophets: Illustrated Manuscripts of Qiṣa¯ṣ al-Anbiya¯ʾ (1999), as well as numerous articles and book chapters.

fahmida suleman is curator of the Islamic World collection at the Royal Ontario Museum and previously served as the Phyllis Bishop Curator for the Modern Middle East at the British Museum. She is the author of Textiles of the Middle East and Central Asia: The Fabric of Life (2016) and editor of collections including Word of God, Art of Man: The Qurʾan and Its Creative Expressions (2010).

parviz tanavoli is one of Iran’s leading sculptors. His work has been exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions in Austria, Britain, Germany, Italy, and the usa. He is a major collector of Persian art and has written books on traditional Iranian crafts including Persian Flat-Weaves (2002) and Gabbeh: Art Underfoot (2004).

alexander townson is an independent scholar with research interests in the architecture of Umayyad Syria and Spain. He has studied Islamic art and archaeology in Victoria and Oxford and is currently working on an article about the planning of the palatial complex of Madinat al-Zahraʾ.

anthony welch was emeritus professor of Islamic art at the University of Victoria. His research concentrated on the art and architecture of Iran and India. His books include Shah ʿAbbas and the Arts of Isfahan (1973) and Artists for the Shah: Late Sixteenth-Century Painting at the Court of the Shah (1976).

403

Index

Abbasid caliphate, 133, 234 ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwan, caliph, 37, 49 Abraham (Ibrahim), patriarch, 109, 111 Abu al-Fazl, 66, 82, 83, 86 Abu Bakr, caliph, 111 Abulnnabi al-Hussaini, 62 Abu Sufyan, 117 Abyssinia, 159 Acre, 204 Adahl, Karin, 336–7 Aden, 189 Afghanistan, 88, 268–9 ʿAfif, 137, 138, 140 Africa, xiii, 14, 238, 357, 358, 365, 367, 368, 369, 370 Agra, 64, 65, 66, 68, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87; Agra Fort, 88; Nur Afshan Bagh, 88; Taj Mahal, 82, 88; tomb of Iʿtmad al-Dawla, 65, 65, 88, 89 Ahmadabad, 84 Ahmad ibn Ayaz, 134–5 Ahmadnagar Fort, 87 Ahura Mazda, 44 Ajmer, 87, 131, 133 Akbar, emperor, 62, 64–5, 66, 68, 69, 75, 82, 87, 89, 90, 91

Akhlaq, Zahoor ul, xxvi Akhwaz, 197 ʿAkko. See Acre Akwaʾ, Qadi Ismaʿil al-, 170 ʿAlaʾ al-Din Khalji, sultan, 134, 144 Aleppo, xxv, 109, 221, 226; Great Mosque, 109; Tuti mosque, al-, 111 Alexander the Great, 139 Alexandria, 240 ʿAli ibn Abi Talib, caliph (Imam ʿAli), 13, 111, 117, 276, 278, 279, 280 ʿAli ibn Mahdi, 159, 174 ʿAli Mardan Khan, 88 al-Khamis, Ulrike, 8 Allahabad, 87 Almohad dynasty, 379 Amir bi-Ahkam Allah, caliph al-, 246 Amman, 37, 205–6; Amman Citadel, 205–6; Queen Alia International Airport, 26 Amuli, Siraj al-Din Qumri, 290 ʿAna, 206–7 Ananth, Deepak, 340 Anatolia, 278 Andalaft, Dimitri, 313, 315

Antioch, 201 Anton, Joseph, 384 Antliff, Mark, 13–14, 401 Appadurai, Arjun, 368–9 Aqquyunlu dynasty, 13, 283, 290, 295, 299 Arabia, 123, 177 Arabian Sea, 176 Arab Spring, 4 Archaeological Survey of India, 64 Ardabil, 261 Ardashir, shah, 44 Aristotle, 140 Ashaʿir tribe, 177 Ashʿari, Abu al-Hasan ʿAli b. Ismaʿil b. Ishaq al-, 378 Asia, 365 Asoka, emperor, 138, 139 Athens, 235; Benaki Museum, 235, 244, 245, 246, 247 Atlas Mountains, 345 Auckland, 386; Auckland University of Technology, 384 Avicenna. See Ibn Sina, Abu ʿAli Awliya, Nizam al-Din, 84, 90 Ayyubid sultanate, 12, 152, 159–60, 161, 174, 180

index ʿAziz bi’llah, caliph al-, 240, 244 ʿAzm, Khalil al-, 200

406

Baʿalbak, 206 Baboula, Evanthia, viii, 401 Babur, sultan, xxvii, 88 Babylon, 319 Baghdad, 109, 177, 234, 291, 379, 383; Talisman Gate, 109 Baghdadi, ʿAbd al-Latif al-, 196 Bahrain, 211 Barakat Khan, amir, 115 Baris, Steven, 386 Basra, 196 Bazantay, Pierre, 201 Beijing (Khanbaliq), xxiii Beirut, 201 Bell, Gertrude, 26, 54 Beller, Jonathan, 378 Belli Bose, Melia, 7 Benjamin of Tudela, 199 Bentley, Patricia, 14, 351, 365, 369, 370, 401 Bergson, Henri, 14, 330, 331–2, 333, 340, 342, 344, 376–8, 382 Berbers, 344, 345 Berlin, 25, 27, 32, 45, 51, 238, 244, 245, 246; Museum für Islamische Kunst, 238 Bernier, François, 82, 83, 85, 86 Bierman, Irene, 234 Bihzad, Kamal al-Din, 379 Bilad al-Sham, 27, 37, 39, 49, 53, 201, 222 Bisitun, 292 Blair, Sheila, 6, 367 Bloom, Jonathan, 234, 367 Böhm, David, 377 Borucu, Cigdem, 377 Bosnia, 8

Bravmann, René, 366–7 British Raj, 9 Brünnow, Rudolf Ernst, 27, 28, 33, 34, 38, 39, 45, 50, 51 Bukhari, Muhammad Zangi, 290 Burkina Faso, 353, 356, 357, 369 Busra, 203 Byzantium. See Istanbul Caesar, 240 Cairo, 13, 110, 111, 131, 133, 153, 167, 201, 207, 234, 244, 246, 313, 316, 317, 322, 367; Dar al-Qutayt (House of the Little Tomcat), 202; Egyptian Ministry of the Interior, 316; Egyptian National Library, 292; Fustat, 208, 234; Ismailia Quarter, 314; Juyushi Mosque, 111; Khan alKhalili, 313; Synagogue of the Babylonians, 202; Synagogue of the Palestinians, 202 Calicut, 159 Canada, vii–viii, xiii, 6, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 311, 312, 358, 363 Canadian Archaeological Mission of the Royal Ontario Museum (camrom), 151, 152, 153, 158, 159, 161, 167, 168, 170, 171, 178, 181 Carpenter, William, 101 Casira, Michel, 313 Caucasus, 386 Central Asia, vii, xxxii, 109 Césaire, Aimé, 345 Chahar Mahal, 278 Chahar Mahal-i Bakhtiari province. See Chahar Mahal

Chardin, Jean (Sir John Chardin), 272 Charles X, king of France, 247 Chekhov, Anton, 384 China, vii, xiii, xxiii, xxv, 104, 124, 172, 255, 257, 261, 264, 265, 267, 269, 317, 353 Clavijo, Ruy González de, 240 Clermont-Ganneau, Charles, 29, 30, 32, 34, 38, 51 Cohen, Joseph, 313 Conrad, Joseph, 384 Cordoba, 316 Crary, Jonathan, 378 Creswell, K.A.C., 33, 37, 39, 43, 45, 51 Croft, George, 316 Crowther, John, 83 Currelly, Charles Trick, vii, xiii, 13, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 320, 321 Daftari, Frereshteh, 334, 338 Daghestan, 263 Dahhan, Muslim b. al-, 238, 244 Dall’Oglio, Father Paolo, 221, 223 Dalrymple, William, 88 Damascus, 42, 167, 174, 199, 200, 201, 203, 207, 221, 222, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 257, 313, 314, 315, 319; Citadel, 207; Great Mosque of Damascus, 42; Khan alWazir, 315 Deccan, 87 Deir Mar Musa (Monastery of St Moses), 12, 221–8 Deleuze, Gilles, 377, 378, 381, 382, 385 Delhi, 10, 60, 65, 69, 70, 72,

index 83–4, 88, 89, 91, 109, 121, 131, 133, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 143, 146; ʿAlai Gate, 109; Bara Batashewala Mahal, 10, 60–91; Barah Pula (The Twelve Pier Bridge), 69, 83; Chhota Batashewala Mahal, 60, 80, 89–90; Dinpanah, 60, 69, 81, 83– 4, 90; Golden Minar, 138, 140, 141, 146; Kalan Mosque, 141, 143–4; Old Delhi (Mehrauli), 83, 88; Qutb Mosque (Quwwat al-Islam), 131, 133, 134, 136, 137, 143; Turkman Gate, 141, 144 Delhi Sultanate, 9, 83–4; 131, 134, 144 Dhiban, 12 Dihlavi, Amir Khusrau, 292 Dinpanah. See Delhi Djerba, 8 Dodd, Erica Cruikshank, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 221, 223, 401 Domaszewski, Alfred von, 27, 45 Dublin, 292; Chester Beatty Library, 292 Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde OostIndische Compagnie), 68, 81, 261 Duthuit, Georges, 345 East Africa, 258 East Asia, 312 Edinburgh, University of, 392 Egypt, vii, 4, 172, 196, 197, 204, 207, 208, 213, 233, 240, 241, 246, 247, 312, 316, 319, 321 Egypt Exploration Fund, 313 Elisséeff, Nikita, 199

Ellenbogen, Josh, 379 Emadi, Azadeh, 384–5, 386 Ethiopia, 174 Ettinghausen, Richard, 244 Euphrates River, 199 Europe, vii, xiii, 313, 315, 319

Greece, 319 Grusin, Richard, 378 Gujarat, 64, 84, 85 Gulf War, First, 383 Gulrukh Begam, 66, 68, 69 Guwahati, 386

Fahd, Toufic, 200 Farrukhi, 290 Fath ʿAli Shah, 272 Fatimid caliphate, 13, 233 Fatmi, Mounir, 376, 381, 383, 384 Ferguson, Robert A. W., 317 Ferrara, xxii Finch, William, 71, 83 Firuzabad, 137, 141, 146 Firuz Shah Tughlaq, sultan, 12, 131, 134, 136, 137, 138, 139, 144, 146 Fort Lalang, 68 France, 247 Fraser, William, 88 Frontinus, Sextus Julius, 199 Fry, Roger, 341 Fustat. See Cairo

Hadramawt, 177 Hafshi-jan, 278 Hakim ʿAli al-Din, 98, 126 Hakim bi-Amr Allah, caliph al-, 238, 241, 242, 244 Hama, 208, 221, 226 Hasan b. ʿAli (Imam Hasan), 111, 117, 279 Hasanlu Tepe, 208 Hassan, Jamelie, 351, 358, 359, 370 Hatoun, E., 313 Hatra, 4 Hehmeyer, Ingrid, 7, 12, 402 Herat, 257, 258, 290 Herodotus, 198 Hidayat-Allah, 292, 295, 298 Hirji, Zulfikar, 14, 351, 352, 358, 402 Hissar, 134 Holod, Renata, 6 Homs, 221, 227 Hornblower, George Davis, 315, 316, 317 Humayun, sultan, 60, 69, 71, 72, 82, 83, 88, 89 Husain, M.A., 80 Husayn b. Salama, 174 Hussain b. ʿAli (Imam Hussain), 117, 279, 280 Hussein Banna, 272, 274

Galenus (Galen), Claudius, 140 Gaza, 201 Geniza Archive, 202, 214, 246 Ghaban, 238 Ghazali, Abu Hamid Muhammad b. Muhammad al-, 378 Ghazna, Mausoleum of Ulugh Beg and ʿAbd alRazzaq, 88 Ghiyath al-Din, sultan, 134, 136 Golombek, Lisa, vii–viii, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 322, 401 Grabar, Oleg, 10, 48 Greater Syria. See Bilad al-Sham

Ibn al-ʿAwwam, Abu Zakariyya, 200 Ibn al-Daybaʿ, Abu ʿAbdallah ʿAbd al-Rahman, 158, 167, 175 407

index

408

Ibn al-Mujawir, Yusuf ibn Yaʿqub, 171, 174, 178, 180 Ibn al-Zubayr, Qadi ʿAbdallah, 158 Ibn Battuta, Abu ʿAbdallah Muhammad, 136 Ibn Qabib, Qadi Shihab alDin Ahmad, 12, 161, 162 Ibn Rashiq al-Qayrawani, 242 Ibn Ridwan, Abu al-Hasan ʿAli, 197 Ibn Salamah, 189 Ibn Sina, Abu ʿAli, 140, 376, 377, 382 Ibn Ziyad, ʿUbayd Allah, 157, 174 Ibrahim Husayn Mirza, 66 Ifriqiya. See Tunisia Ilkhanid dynasty, 131 Iltutmish, sultan, 131, 133, 134 Imam ʿAli. See ʿAli ibn Abi Talib Imam Yahya, 183 India, xxvii, 9, 64, 68, 82, 109, 132, 134 Indian Ocean, 168, 176, 191, 258 Indian Subcontinent. See India Indonesia, xxviii Insoll, Timothy, 151 Iqbal, [Abu] al-Hasan, 238 Iran, viii, xvii, xix, xxxi, xxxii, 172, 204, 208, 210, 214, 261, 268–9, 321, 379 Iraq, 4, 172, 206, 212–13, 272, 320, 353 Isfahan, 13, 260, 272–80, 380; Ali Qapu Gate, 260; Darbi Imam Mosque, 274, 278; Darpush Quarter, 276, 278; Darvazeh-yi Toaqchi, 272; Friday Mosque, 260, 380; Imam Shah Mosque,

276; Imamzadeh Ahmad, 276; Imamzadeh of Harun Velayat, 272, 274, 277–8; Khaju Bridge, 272, 278; Lutfallah Mosque, 260; Maydan-i Shah, 260 Ishmael (Ismaʿil), 109 Iskandar ibn Suli (Iskandar Mawz). See Iskandar min Barsbay Iskandar min Barsbay, 153, 155, 156, 175, 188 Islamic State (isis, isil, Daesh), 4 Israel, 204, 211 Istanbul, 295, 340, 342, 345, 386; Topkapı Saray Museum, 295 Italy, xxii Iznik, xx, xxi, 315 Jabal Says, 209 Jabir ibn Hayyan, 353 Jahangir, emperor, 66, 68, 69, 72, 89, 90, 98 Jahanpanah, 136, 141; Hauz Khas Madrasa, 144–6; Khirki Mosque, 141–3 Jahiz, Abu ʿUthman b. Bahr al-Kinani al-, 196–7, 234–5 Jami, Nur al-Din ʿAbd alRahman, 292 Japan, 261, 265 Jarjaraʾi, ʿAli b. Ahmad al-, 244 Jaupur, 134 Java, xxviii Jayush, Zahir al-Din al-, 136 Jazuli, Muhammad b. Sulayman al-, xv Jerusalem, 12, 115, 203, 209– 10, 227, 313, 314, 315; American Colony Store, 314; Armenian Garden, 209; Damascus Gate, 209;

Dome of the Rock, 37, 45, 48, 49, 50, 118; Fr. Vester & Co., 314; Khan al-Wakala, 203; Palaces south of the Temple Mount, 210 Jiajing period, 260 Jihat Farhan, 185 John I Tzimiskes, emperor, 344–5 Jordan, 8, 204, 205, 210, 214, 234 Joshi, M.C., 65 Junayd, 117 Kachmar, Hamid, 351, 358, 359, 370 Kaipova, Dilyara, xxx Kalebdjian, G., 313, 315 Kamal al-Rumi, 175 Kana’an, Ruba, 7, 8, 9, 353–6 Kanauj, 66 Kangxi period, 256, 267 Karak, 8, 210 Karbalaʾ, 280 Kashan, xvii, xviii Katib Hussayn, 117 Keall, Edward, viii, 6, 9, 12, 154, 158, 170, 172, 402 Kelekian, Dikran, 315 Kerman, 261, 262–5, 267, 268 Keshani, Hussein, 7, 10, 402 Khairallah, Shereen, 8 Khajavi, Javad, 386 Khalil b. Uzun Hasan, 292 Khan-Dossos, Navine G., 386 Khan-i Jahan Junan Shah, 141, 146 Khatib al-Baghdadi, 199 Khazraji, ʿAli ibn Hasan al-, 12, 159, 161, 162, 174–5, 177 Khirbat al-Mafjar, 34–5, 210 Khirbat al-Mukhayyat, Church of Saints Lot and Procopius, 37, 49

index Khumarawayh b. Ahmad b. Tulun, 240 Khurasan, 257, 258 Khusraw II, shah, 49 Khwarizmi, ʿAbd al-Rahim b. ʿAbd al-Rahman, 292 Kilukhari, 83 Kitchener, First Lord, 321 Kreamer, Christine, 353 Kubachi, 263, 267 Kunya Urgench, 256 Labrusse, Henri, 330, 344 Lahore, xxvi, 10, 81, 83, 84, 89, 98, 99, 104, 111, 121, 126; Wazir Khan Masjid, 10, 98–126 Launay, Robert, 367 Lawandi mercenaries, 153, 175 Lebanon, 206, 214 Leibniz, Gottfried, 377 Levant, 175 Libya, 4 London, vii, 312, 313, 315, 316; British Museum, 8, 312, 316; Fenton & Sons, 315; Omega Workshops, 341; Spanish Art Gallery, 315; Victoria and Albert Museum, 316 Mack, John, 368 Madaba, 37, 49 Madinat al-Salam. See Baghdad Madinat al-Zahraʾ, 204 Madrid, 111 Mahdi, Muhsin, 379 Mahdists, 174 Malevich, Kazimir, 381 Mali, 357 Malik al-Zafir Amir II, sultan al-, 175

Mamluk sultanate, 12, 13, 131, 153, 175, 222, 228 Maʾmun, caliph al-, 157 Manises, xxii Mansur, caliph Abu Jaʿfar al-, 196 Mansura, 204 Manucci, Niccolao, 71 Maqrizi, Taqi al-Din Ahmad b. ʿAli al-, 240, 246 Marcos, bishop of Jerusalem, Homs, and Damascus, 227–8 Maʾrib Dam, 4 Marks, Laura, 7, 14, 402 Mary, Virgin, 344 Maryam Makani, 68 Mashhad, 257, 258, 261, 262–3, 268 Mason, Robert, viii, 7, 8, 12, 256, 402 Massey, Walter, 317 Massignon, Louis, 201 Masʿudi, Abu al-Hasan ʿAli b. al-Husayn al-, 197, 235 Matisse, Henri, 13–14, 330, 331, 333, 334, 336, 337, 338, 339, 340, 342, 343, 344, 345 Mecca, 72, 109, 110, 112; Banu Jumʿa, door of, 110; Kaʿba, 103 Medina, 30, 110 Mediterranean, 98, 198, 243, 261 Meinecke-Berg, Viktoria, 238, 245 Mesopotamia, 151 Micklewright, Nancy, 7 Middle East, 12, 13, 190, 196, 197, 198, 204, 255, 269, 313, 315, 320 Miharban Agha, 69, 70, 71, 72 Milwright, Marcus, viii, 7, 403

Ming Dynasty, xxiii, xxiv, 257 Minh-ha, Trinh T., 365 Minneapolis Institute of Arts (mia), 283, 288, 290, 291, 298, 299 Miran Shah Gazaruni, 98 Mirza Muzaffar Husayn, 10, 60, 62, 64, 65, 66–8, 69, 71, 72, 89, 90 Mithras (Mithra), 35, 274 Mocha (Mukha), 176 Mongols. See Ilkhanid Dynasty Monserrate, Father, 82, 83 Montreal, Musée des Beaux-arts de Montréal, 9, 317 Morewedge, Parviz, 382 Morgan, F. Cleveland, 317–18 Morocco, xxix, 13, 330, 345 Moscow, 256, 337; Kremlin, Cathedral of the Annunciation, 337 Moudarres, Fateh al-, 1 Mount Nebo, 37, 234; Diakonikon Baptistery, Sanctuary of Moses, 234 Mshatta, 10, 25–54 Mudaybiʿ, 8 Mughal dynasty, xxvii, 87, 141 Muhammad, Prophet, xv, xix, 71, 80, 111, 117, 121, 123, 172, 191, 276, 278 Muhammad, sultan, 134, 135, 137 Muhammad Ali (boxer), 384 Muhammad ʿAli (scribe), 103 Muhammad ʿAli (viceroy of Egypt), 247 Muhammad Beg, son of Hussein Khan, 276

409

index Muhammad Quli Khan, 88 Muhammad Sharif, 105 Muʿizz al-Din Sam, sultan al-, 131 Muʿizz b. Badis b. Ziri, al-, 242, 243 Multan, 66 Munich, 337, 338 Muqaddasi Shams al-Din Abu ʿAbdallah al-, 158, 177 Musabbihi, al-Amir Mukhtar ʿIzz al-Mulk al-, 240, 244 Nahrawali, Qutb al-Din al-, 153, 175 Najahids, 174, 179 Naqsh-i Rustam, 40, 44 Narnaul, tomb of Shah Quli Khan, 87–8 Natanz, xviii Nath, R., 87–8 Navaʾi, Ali-Shir, 295 Nazlabadi, Muhammad, 298 Near East. See Middle East New Delhi. See Delhi New York, vii, 312, 315; Metropolitan Museum of Art, 258 Niebuhr, Carsten, 176, 181 Niger, 357 Nigeria, xv, xvii, 369 Nile River, 197, 202 Nimrud, 4 Nishapur, 210, 257, 258, 260; Tepe Madraseh, 210 Nizami, Jamal al-Din Abu Muhammad, xiv, 295 Nizam Shahis, 87 North Africa, 242, 243, 313, 345, 365, 366, 367 Nur al-Nisa (also Shahi Begam), 66, 68 Nur Jahan, 68, 69 410

Ontario, 311 Ornstein, Leo, 341 Ostapchuk, Victor, 7 Ottoman sultanate, 25, 175, 181, 189 Pakistan, xxvi, 204 Palermo, Cappella Palatina, 313 Palestine, 313 Palestine Authority, 210 Palmyra, 4, 212 Pamuk, Orhan, 299 Paris, 312, 313, 315; Collège de France, 342; Louvre Museum, 258, 337; R. & M. Stora, 315 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 170 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 377 Peloponnese, 8 Pelseart, Francisco, 68, 69, 82, 84, 85, 87 Petrie, Sir William Matthew Flinders, vii, 312 Phillips, Tom, 367 Picasso, Pablo, 341 Picton, John, 367 Pir Budaq, 291 Pliny the Elder, 198, 199 Pollock, Jackson, 381 Portugal, 190 Pourvash, Bita, viii, 8, 13, 403 Prichard, Matthew Stewart, 14, 330, 331, 332, 333, 334, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345 Prussin, Labelle, 352–3 Ptolemy II Philadelphus, 240 Qajar dynasty, 380 Qalamoun Mountains, 221 Qalʿat Bahrain, 211 Qandahar, 268 Qaqun, 221 Qaraquyunlu dynasty, 291

Qasimi, Jamal al-Din al-, 200 Qasimi, Muhammad Saʿid al-, 200 Qasr al-Hayr East, 211–12 Qasr al-Hayr West, 212 Qazvin, 260, 278 Qazwini, Zakariya al-, 235 Qumisheh, 263, 267 Qumri, Siraj al-Din, 290 Qutb al-Din Aybak, 131 Radi, caliph al-, 197 Rafiqa. See Raqqa Raqqa, 8, 212; Qasr alBanat, 212; Tal Aswad, 212 Raqqa-Rafiqa. See Raqqa Rasulid dynasty, 12, 152, 159, 161, 168, 174 Ravenna, Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, 35 Red Sea, 151, 175, 191 Resnais, Alain, 380 Roberts, Mary, 368 Rome, 199, 319 Rublev, Andrei, 331 Rührdanz, Karin, viii, 7, 9, 13, 403 Rumi, Jalal al-din, vii–viii, 370 Rushdie, Salman, 384 Russia, 33, 337, 338 Rustam, 298 Sadra, Mulla, 377, 382, 383–5 Safavid dynasty, 13, 278 Sahara, 243, 368, 371 Sahyun. See Saone Said, Edward, 365 Samarqand, 256, 257 Samarra, 212–13; House XIV, 212–13; Qasr alʿAshiq, 212 Samos, 198 Sanaʿa, 6

index Sanders, Paula, 234, 244 Saone, 213 Saqqara, Monastery of Apa Jeremias, 213 Sasanian dynasty, 40 Saudi Arabia, 124 Sauvaget, Jean, 30, 54 Schulz, Bruno, 26, 27 Schulz, Philipp Walter, 283, 290 Senghor, Léopold, 345 Shah Abbas, 260 Shah Ismaʿil I, 272, 298 Shah Jahan, 80, 88, 98, 101, 102 Shahr-i Kord, 278 Shahrukh, 257 Shah Tahmasb, 260 Shahzadah Khanam, 10, 66, 68, 69, 72, 90 Shawbak, 214 Shaykh Farid Bukhari Bakshi Beg, 82 Shibam, 6 Shibli, Abu Baqr, 117 Shiraz, 291, 292, 299 Shirazi, Sadr al-Din al-, 376 Sikandra, 89 Simondon, Gilbert, 381, 382 Sinaï, 118, 258 Sinan Pasha, 175 Sirjan, 214 Sladen, Douglas, 314 Smith, G. Rex, 159–60 Solomon, king, 35 South Asia, vii, xiii, 62, 98, 190, 265, 313, 320 Southeast Asia, 98, 172 Spain, xxii, 104, 204, 316 Steel, Richard, 83 Steigler, Bernard, 378 St Petersburg, Hermitage Museum, 256 Strzygowksi, Josef, 33, 37, 45, 50

Sub-Saharan Africa, 352, 368 Substantial Motion Research Network, 385–7 Sugimoto, Hiroshi, 380 Suleman, Fahmida, vii–viii, 7, 8, 13, 403 Sultan Ali Mashhadi, 290 Sultan Husayn, Shah, 269 Sultan Khalil, 292, 295 Sultan Khanam. See Shahzadah Khanam Sultan Uvayse Ilkhanid, 278 Syria, xxv, 3–4, 6, 8, 12, 207, 208, 209, 211–12, 213, 221, 228, 321 Tabriz, 12, 258, 260, 278, 283, 291, 298, 299, 380 Tadmur. See Palmyra Tahirids, 175 Tall Jawa, 8, 214 Tanavoli, Parviz, viii, 9, 10, 13, 403 Tangier, 330 Taq-i Bustan, 40 Tehran, 290 Terry, Edward, 84–5, 86, 87 Thaʿalibi, ʿAbd al-Malik b. Muhammad al-, 197 Tigris river, 199 Tihamah, 170, 174, 176, 181 Tilba, Haydar, 298 Timur, 66, 134, 240, 257, 258 Tirmizi, Abu Saʿd, 290 Toor, Alia, 351, 357, 358, 370 Toronto, vii, 3, 14, 311, 312, 313, 351, 362; Aga Khan Museum, viii, 3–4, 9; Royal Ontario Museum, vii, xiii, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 255, 256, 265, 283, 298, 299, 311–22, 358, 369; Textile Museum of Canada (tmc), 14, 351, 363–4; University of Toronto, vii, 312;

Victoria College, vii, 312, 317; Wycliffe College, 317 Toufic, Jalal, 379, 380 Townson, Alexander, 10, 403 Treble, Lillian, 317 Tripoli, 214 Tristram, Henry Baker, 33 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 14 Tughluqabad, 134, 136 Tughluq dynasty, 134 Tughtaqin Sayf al-Islam, 180 Tunisia, 4, 8, 243 Turanshah, 174 Turkey, xx, xxi, 204, 278, 313, 321 Tushingham, A. Douglas, 9 Ukraine, 8 ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab, caliph, 111 ʿUmar Shaykh Mirza, 66 Umayyad caliphate, 35, 37, 52, 54 Umm al-Rasas, Church of Saint Stephen, 37 unesco, 3, 170, 191 United Kingdom, 313, 386 United States, 311, 313, 315, 316 ʿUthman ibn Affan, caliph, 111 Uzbekistan, xxx Väliaho, Pasi, 378 Vancouver, 386; Museum of Anthropology, 9, 10; Simon Fraser University, 7; University of British Columbia, 9, 15 Van Horne, Sir William C., 317 Victoria, 9; Art Gallery of

411

index Greater Victoria, 9; University of Victoria, 6–7, 9, 16 Vitruvius, 198–9 Wahhabi state, 176, 191 Wadi Zabid, 152, 156, 158, 159, 160, 177, 188 Walid II, caliph al-, 25, 38 Walker, Sir Edmund, 312, 313, 315, 316, 316, 317 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 365–6 Warren, Mabel, 343–4 Washington, dc, 124; Freer and Sackler Galleries, 288, 298, 299 Wazir Khan, 99, 102, 121 Welch, Anthony, 6, 7, 9, 12, 403 West Africa, xv, 353

412

Whitcomb, Donald, 161 Whitehead, Alfred North, 376, 382 Whiten, Tim, 351, 358, 359, 370, 371 Whiting, John D., 314 Wiet, Gaston, 238 Wilber, Donald, 9 Williams, Caroline, 234 Withington, Nicholas, 81 World Bank, 101 World War I, 181, 330 Wright, Astri, 9 Wright, Elaine, 8, 9 Yamani, ʿUmara al-, 157, 174 Yamuna river, 82, 88, 91 Yaʿqubi, Abu al-ʿAbbas Ahmad b. Abi Yaʿqub al-, 199 Yazd, Friday Mosque, 380

Yazdagird III, shah, 49 Yemen, 4, 6, 8, 151, 153, 157, 158, 159, 161, 167, 175, 177, 189, 191, 243 Yusuf b. Uzun Hasan, 292 Zabid, 6, 8, 12, 151–62, 167– 91; Ashaʿir Mosque, 172, 178, 183–7; Bab al-Qurtub, 183; Citadel, 153, 170, 177, 181, 183; Iskandariyya Madrasa, 153–7, 181, 187–8; Mustafa Pasha (al-Bayshihah) Mosque, 179, 181 Zahir, caliph al-, 242, 244 Zanjan, 278 Zanzibar, 359 Zayandeh-rud river, 272 Zirid dynasty, 242, 243 Ziyadid dynasty, 157, 174