Middle Eastern Encounters: Collected Essays on Visual, Material, and Textual Interactions between the Eighth and the Twenty-first Centuries 9781463241940

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Middle Eastern Encounters

Islamic History and Thought

21 Series Editor Series Editorial Board

Peter Adamson Beatrice Gründler Beatrice Gruendler Ahmad Ahmad Khan Khan

Jack Tannous Isabel Toral-Niehoff Manolis Manolis Ulbricht Ulbricht

Jack Tannous

Advisory Editorial Board Islamic History and Thought provides a platform for scholarly research on any geographic areaUlbricht within the expansive Islamic Manolis Binyamin Abrahamov Konrad world, stretching from the Mediterranean to Hirschler China, and dated to Asadthe Q.eve Ahmed Howard-Johnston any period from of Islam untilJames the early modern era. This Jan Just Witkam Mehmetcan Akpinar Maher Jarrar(Arabic, Persian, series contains original monographs, translations Syriac, Greek, and Latin) and edited volumes. Abdulhadi Alajmi Marcus Milwright Mohammad-Ali Amir-Moezzi Harry Munt Arezou Azad Gabriel Said Reynolds Massimo Campanini Massimo Campanini Walid A. Saleh Agostino Series Editorial Board: Godefroid de Callataÿ Jens Scheiner Maria Conterno Delfina Serrano Peter AdamsonFarhad Daftary Farhad Daftary Georges Tamer Beatrice Gruendler Wael Hallaq Ahmad Khan

Jack Tannous Islamic History and Thought provides a platform for scholarly research Isabel Toral-Niehoff on any geographic area within the expansive Islamic world, stretching from the Mediterranean to China, and dated to any Manolis Ulbricht period from the eve of Islam until the early modern era. This series contains original monographs, translations (Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Jan Justand Witkam Greek, Latin) and edited volumes.

Middle Eastern Encounters

Collected Essays on Visual, Material, and Textual Interactions between the Eighth and the Twenty-first Centuries

Marcus Milwright

gp 2020

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2020 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. ‫ܚ‬

1

2020

ISBN 978-1-4632-4193-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available from the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ............................................................................. ix List of illustrations .............................................................................. xi Text and image acknowledgements ................................................ xxiii Notes for the reader ........................................................................... xxv Introduction .......................................................................................... 1 Continuity, appropriation, emulation, and transformation ......2 Forms of representation .............................................................. 11 Theoretical standpoints ............................................................. 20 Chapter 1. Raqqa before ‘Raqqa wares’: Toward a typology of ornament in the ceramic workshops of early Abbasid Tal Aswad .......................................................................................... 31 Tal Aswad in the early Islamic period ........................................ 36 The Production of relief-moulded wares at Tal Aswad............ 39 1. Vessel typology and manufacturing process........................... 39 2. Incised and punched decoration ........................................... 44 3. The compositional field and repeated bands ..........................51 4. Composite designs in the friezes ............................................ 52 Chapter 2. Fixtures and fittings: The role of decoration in Abbasid palace design ................................................................. 61 The Process of construction ....................................................... 65 1. The Brief .................................................................................. 65 2. Resources ................................................................................ 70 3. Man-power ............................................................................. 80 Relative costs ...............................................................................82 1. Wall .......................................................................................... 83 2. Triple-īwān hall ....................................................................... 93 v

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3. Summary of the costs ............................................................ 102 The Role of the viewer ............................................................. 109 Conclusion ................................................................................. 114 Chapter 3. ‘Waves of the sea’: Responses to marble in written sources (ninth–fifteenth centuries)........................................... 119 Descriptions of marble ............................................................. 124 Chapter 4. Rūm, Ṣīn and the idea of the ‘portrait’ in Medieval Arabic literary and visual culture .............................................. 135 Medieval Islamic accounts of the arts of Rūm and Ṣīn ........... 144 The Expectations of the viewer ................................................ 150 Chapter 5. Reynald of Châtillon and the Red Sea expedition of 1182–1183..................................................................................... 163 The Events of the Winter of 1182–83........................................ 164 Holy relics and the treatment of the dead................................ 172 Conclusion ................................................................................. 191 Chapter 6. The Cup of the sāqī: Origins of an emblem of the Mamluk khāṣṣakiyya..................................................................195 Chapter 7. Experiencing the Middle East during the Great War: J. M., Lieutenant Goddard and Captain Page ......................... 217 Mesopot. ................................................................................... 233 Colour Plates Chapter 8. An Ayyubid in Mamluk guise: The portrait of Saladin in Paolo Giovio’s Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (1575) ... 247 Giovio’s Saladin in text and image .......................................... 249 Visual Sources from the Middle East ....................................... 255 European representations of Saladin .......................................262 Horned turbans in the Mamluk sultanate.............................. 274 Conclusion ................................................................................ 278 Chapter 9. So despicable a vessel: Representations of Tamerlane in printed books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries .. 281 Tamerlane and early European scholarship ............................ 284 Representations in printed books ........................................... 296 1. ‘Portraits’ ............................................................................... 296 2. Narrative images .................................................................... 314 Ethnicity and character in text and image ................................ 323 Conclusion ................................................................................. 335

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Chapter 10. Bayezid’s cage: A re-examination of a venerable academic controversy ..................................................................... 341 Historical events and later representations .............................. 343 From d’Herbelot to Köprülü: Changing academic viewpoints on Bayezid’s cage ................................................... 352 Re-evaluating the Greek and Arabic sources ...........................370 Chapter 11. The martyred sultan: Tuman Bay II in André Thevet’s Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés ......................... 379 Mamluks in European art and the representation of Tuman Bay..................................................................................... 384 Tuman Bay in fact and fiction ................................................ 400 Literary context ........................................................................ 409 Conclusion ................................................................................ 416 Chapter 12. Representations of the medical examination and imprisonment of Saddam Hussein ............................................... 423 Capture and captivity: Images and their reception ................ 426 Capture and humiliation: Historical parallels ........................ 434 Conclusion ............................................................................... 444 Cumulative bibliography ................................................................. 447 Index ...................................................................................................517

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to the editorial board of the Islamic History and Thought series of Gorgias Press for the opportunity to republish in an updated form this set of articles and chapters, and to Adam Walker for his support of this project. I have benefited from his advice and comments as the manuscript was prepared for publication. The publishers of the original articles and chapters are acknowledged in the footnotes, but mention should be made of individuals who have helped in obtaining the necessary permissions: Sarah Ansari, Bethan Ball, Chris Dickert, Teddi Dols, Tareq Ismael, Gülrü Neçipoğlu, Nicola Ramsey, Geraldine Richards, Michèle Hannoosh, Catriona MacLeod, and Marlis Saleh. Thanks are also due to Derek Kennet, Andrew Webb, Erin Campbell, Catherine Harding, Annette Kraemer, Dimitris Krallis, Julian Raby, Finbarr Flood, Jeremy Johns, Shafiq Abouzayd, Robert Irwin, Ruba Kana’an, Ruth Barnes, Donald Richards, Julie Meisami, Chase Robinson, Eleanor Robson, Stephanie Dalley, Barry Wood, Robert Hillenbrand, Nebehat Avçioğlu, Dimitris Kastritsis, Julian Henderson, Filiz Tütüncü, Véronique François, Murhaf al-Khalaf, Athamadia Baboula, Maya Yazigi, Niall Christie, Anna Contadini, Fuyubi Nakamura, Heather Dean, Lara Wilson, Chris Petter, Naomi Shields, Michael Peaker, Mary Collyer, and Mary Milwright. Some of the research presented in this book was supported by grants and fellowships, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge the Arts and Humanities Research Board (UK), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Frances A. Yates Fellowship programme at the Warburg Institute. The studies in this book could not have been written without the support and wise advice provided by my wife, Evanthia Baboula. Loukas and Clio are to be congratulated for tolerating household ix

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discussions about arcane research matters when there were probably more pressing things to talk about. Lastly, this book is dedicated to Robert Hillenbrand, an inspirational teacher and tireless advocate for new scholars.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Colour Plates Plate 1. Umayyad marble veneer in the eastern vestibule, Great Mosque in Damascus. Photograph: Marcus Milwright Plate 2: Erasistratos and student. From an Arabic manuscript of Dioscorides, De materia medica (Khawāṣṣ al-ashjār), 1224/661. Freer Gallery of Art, F1947.5. Photograph courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Plate 3: Madrasa-Mosque of ʿIsa ibn ʿUmar al-Burtasi, Tripoli. Between 1290 and 1324. Mosaic decoration of the miḥrāb hood. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Plate 4: Late Antique marble sigma-shaped altar top with added Arabic inscription in one of the īwāns of the Maristān of Nur alDin, Damascus. Photograph: Marcus Milwright, 2000. Plate 5. ‘Little Grey Home in the Wet.’ Watercolour painting by J. M., 1917–18. University of Victoria Library: SC325 (sketchbook 1, image 46). Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. Plate 6. German aerial photograph (c. October 1917) showing military trenching in the vicinity of Samarra. From H. V. S. Page’s copy of Edmund Candler, Long Road to Baghdad (1919), ii, appended page between pp. 180 and 181. Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. Plate 7. German aerial photograph (c. October 1917) showing the walled town of Samarra and areas of the Abbasid city. From H. V. S. Page’s copy of Edmund Candler, Long Road to Baghdad xi

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(1919), ii, appended page between pp. 180 and 181. Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. Plate 8: Saladin from The Six Ages of the World (BL MS Add. 30359), Italy, fifteenth century. Ink, pigment and gilding on parchment. Courtesy of the British Library. Erich Lessing / Art Resource. Figures I.1. Obverse of a hemidrachm minted by al-Jarir, governor of Tabaristan, 786–88. Collection of the author. Photograph: Iona Hubner. I.2. Pseudo-Kufic ornament in brick and mortar on an exterior wall of the church of the Theotokos, Monastery of Hosios Loukas, Phokis, Greece, 946–55. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. I.3. Sherds of lead-glazed earthenware and glazed stonepaste vessels excavated in Fustat and Barqiyya (Cairo), some of which include Chinese-inspired designs. Twelfth to fifteenth centuries. Collection of Erica Dodd. I.4. Obverse of an Artuqid copper coin (fals) carrying a portrait head (likely to be emperor Constantine). Late twelfth century. Collection of the author. Photograph: Iona Hubner. Figure 1.1. Ceramic mould recovered from a surface deposit at Tal Aswad, Syria, with drawings of the punch designs. Late eighth or early ninth century. Figure 1.2. Reconstructed profile of a relief-moulded unglazed ceramic jug produced at TA00/2. Late eighth or early ninth century. Drawing: Kent Rawlinson. Figure 1.3. Interior view of a sherd from the body of relief-moulded unglazed ceramic jug excavated at Tal Aswad. Late eighth or early ninth century. Figure 1.4. Upper and lower sections from ceramic slipper lamps excavated at Tal Aswad. Late eighth or early ninth century. Figure 1.5. Ceramic kiln rods excavated at Tal Fukhkhar, Raqqa. Eleventh or twelfth century?

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Figure 1.6. Selection of punch designs found on moulds and sherds from Tal Aswad (not to scale). Figure 1.7. Carved stucco panels from the palaces located north of alRafiqa (Raqqa), Syria. Late eighth or early ninth century. Photographed by the author in the Raqqa Archaeological Museum in 2001. Figure 1.8. Carved stucco panels from the palaces located north of alRafiqa (Raqqa), Syria. Late eighth or early ninth century. Photographed by the author in the Raqqa Archaeological Museum in 2001. Figure 1.9. Drawing of a detail from a carved stucco frieze (‘style A’) from Samarra, Iraq. Ninth century. Figure 1.10. Drawings of ‘vinescroll’ design (left) and ‘tree’ design (right) from relief-moulded sherds excavated at TA00/2 (not to scale). Figure 1.11. Drawings of repeated patterns and composite designs from TA00/2 incorporating the ‘hollow heart’ punch (not to scale). Figure 1.12. A. Drawings of comparative designs from three late Sasanian / early Islamic beaten copper alloy platters. After photographs in: Loukonine and Ivanov, Persian Art; Rosen-Ayalon, Early Islamic Monuments; Pietrovsky and Vrieze, eds, Heavenly Art. B. Drawings of rosette designs from the carved limestone façade of Mshatta, Jordan. After Strzygowski, ‘Mschatta II,’ fig. 75. Figure 2.1. Construction of river rafts on inflated goatskins. Mosul bridge seen in the distance. American Colony Jerusalem, Photographic Department, 1932 (G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division: LC-DIG-matpc-16216. Figure 2.2. Inflating goatskins for river rafts, Mosul. American Colony Jerusalem, Photographic Department, 1932 (G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division: LC-M33-4819 [P&P]. Figure 2.3. Boats loaded with pottery pipes on the Euphrates river at Hilla, Iraq. American Colony Jerusalem, Photographic De-

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partment, 1932 (G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division: LC-M33-4716 [P&P]. Figure 2.4. Map of the Middle East showing the main sites discussed in the chapter. Created by Seyedhamed Yeghanehfarzand. Figure 2.5. Pouring mud into the wooden matrix. Department of Antiquities brick-making site, Hiraqla, Syria. 2000. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Figure 2.6. Lifting the wooden matrix to reveal the wet bricks. Department of Antiquities brick-making site, Hiraqla, Syria. 2000. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Figure 2.7. Bricks drying in a shed. Department of Antiquities brickmaking site, Hiraqla, Syria. 2000. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Figure 2.8. Digging out clay from the levigation tanks. Department of Antiquities brick-making site, Hiraqla, Syria. 2000. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Figure 2.9. Brick kiln constructed in the 1970s. Department of Antiquities brick-making site, Hiraqla, Syria. 2000. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Figure 2.10. Stoking the kiln during a brick firing. Department of Antiquities brick-making site, Hiraqla, Syria. 2000. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Figure 2.11. ‘Bevelled style’ stucco panel from Samarra. Drawing: Marcus Milwright. Figure 2.12. Bab al-ʿAmma, Samarra. Creswell Archive, negative no. 6334. Courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Figure 2.13. Plan and elevation of a structure based on the Bab alʿAmma. Drawing: Naomi Shields. Figure 2.14. Camel caravan carrying agricultural goods. Unknown location. American Colony Jerusalem, Photographic Department, 1936? (G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division: LC-M333959 [P&P]. Figure 2.15. Plan of Istabulat, Samarra. Image courtesy of Google Earth.

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Figure 3.1. Umayyad marble veneer, Great Mosque in Damascus (detail). Photograph: Marcus Milwright Figure 3.2. Cotton, warp ikat. Yemen, probably tenth century. 1988.21 Griffith Collection. Copyright Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Figure 4.1. ‘Standing caliph’ dinar (77/696–97), SICA no. 705. Formerly Ashmolean Museum. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Figure 4.2. Solon and students. From a manuscript of al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik, Mukhtār al-ḥikam wa maḥāsin al-kalim, early thirteenth century. Topkapɩ Sarayɩ Library, Ahmet III, 3206 fol. 24r. Reproduced courtesy of the Topkapɩ Sarayɩ Library, Istanbul. Werner Forman / Art Resource. Figure 4.3. Ibn Bakhtishuʿ and student. From a manuscript of Ibn Bakhtishuʿ, Kitāb Naʿt al-ḥayawān, c. 1220–25. British Library, Or. 2784 fol. 101v. Photograph copyright British Library. Figure 4.4. Socrates and students. From a manuscript of alMubashshir ibn Fatik, Mukhtār al-ḥikam wa maḥāsin alkalim, early thirteenth century. Topkapɩ Sarayɩ Library, Ahmet III, 3206 fol. 48r. Reproduced courtesy of the Topkapɩ Sarayɩ Library, Istanbul. Bridgeman-Giraudon / Art Resource. Figure 5.1. Map of the Middle East showing sites mentioned in the text. Prepared by Chris Mundigler. Figure 5.2. Map of the south of Greater Syria showing the principal towns and castles of Frankish Oultrejourdain. Prepared by Chris Mundigler. Figure 5.3. Drawing of the lead seal of Reynald de Châtillon as seigneure of Oultrejourdain, 1177–87. Cabinet des Medailles, Paris. Figure 5.4. View of Karak castle from the south, 2005. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Figure 5.5. Mamluk monument to the battle of Muʾta in 629. Fourteenth century. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Figure 6.1. Blazon of Kitbugha b. ʿAbdallah al-Mansuri. Taken from the base of an inlaid brass candlestick commissioned by Kit-

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bugha. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Drawing: Marcus Milwright. Figure 6.2. Polychrome enamelled porcelain cup. China (Ch’engHua period, 1465–87). Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Drawing: Marcus Milwright. Figure 6.3. Madrasa-mausoleum of sultan Baybars, Damascus. Mosaic decoration of the miḥrāb hood. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Figure 6.4. Pelagius chalice, Spain, end of the twelfth century. Louvre Museum. Drawing: Marcus Milwright. Figure 6.5. The burial of bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, History of Outremer, Brit. Lib. Henry Yates Thompson ms. 12, fol. 34v. Photograph by permission of the British Library, London. Figure 6.6. Tancred receives gifts from satraps, History of Outremer, ms. W.137, fo. 33r. Photograph by permission of the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Figure 6.7. The poisoning of Alexander, Universal History, Bibl. Roy. ms. 18295, fol. 148v. Photograph by permission of the Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, Brussels. Figure 6.8. Late Antique basalt block carved with crosses placed into the entrance of the Madrasa al-Halawiyya, Aleppo, 1149 and later. Photograph: Marcus Milwright, 2001. Figure 6.9. Late Antique marble rectangular altar top reused in one of the īwāns of the Maristān of Nur al-Din, Damascus. Photograph: Marcus Milwright, 2000. Figure 7.1. Detail of colour pl. 5. Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. Figure 7.2. ‘Our feet shall stand within Thy gates, O Jerusalem. Psalm CXXII.’ Watercolour painting by J. M., after 9 December 1917. University of Victoria Library: SC325 (sketchbook 1, image 56). Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. Figure 7.3. Lt Goddard’s sketches from pp. 56–57 of Archibald Wavell, The Palestine Campaign (1932). Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada.

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Figure 7.4. Lt Goddard’s sketch of a cavalry soldier from p. 37 of Archibald Wavell, The Palestine Campaign (1932). Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. Figure 7.5. Lt Goddard’s sketch from p. 252 of Archibald Wavell, The Palestine Campaign (1932). Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. Figure 7.6. A cavalry trooper (in late wartime Ottoman Imperial Army field uniform), and an officer from an Ottoman Kurdish Tribal Cavalry Regiment in WWI (after drawing by Lt. Goddard). The cavalry trooper has modified his pull-over shirt, adding a row of spare ammunition breast loops, ideal for the single loading Turkish M1874 Peabody-Martini Rifles, being used by the Ottoman cavalry in WWI. The officer is wearing a full-dress pre-1908 uniform still worn by the Ottoman Kurdish Tribal Cavalry Regiments, at the start of WWI. Source Chris Flaherty. Figure 7.7. Photograph of the railroad near Samarra. Pasted into H. V. S. Page’s copy of Edmund Candler, Long Road to Baghdad (1919), ii, p. 178 (the photograph has been rectified for tone and contrast). Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. Figure 7.8. Richard Carline, ‘Samarra, Mesopotamia: Seen from an Aeroplane, 1919.’ Watercolour on paper, 1919. Art.IWM ART 2667. Image courtesy of the Imperial War Museum. Figure 7.9. Remnants of World War I trenches southeast of alIstablat. Image courtesy of Google Earth. Figure 8.1. Saladin from Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basel: Peter Perna, 1575), p. 29. Cambridge University Library: O.7.16–1. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Figure 8.2. Saladin, Sultan of Egypt by Cristofano dell’Altissimo. Oil on wood, mid sixteenth century. Uffizi 1890 n.15. Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attivà culturali / Art Resource, NY. Figure 8.3. Fals minted in Mayyafariqin in 586/1190–91. After Eddé, Saladin. Drawing: Marcus Milwright.

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Figure 8.4. Page of a manuscript of al-Jazari’s, Kitāb fī maʿrifat alḥiyal al-handasiyya. Manuscript dated 1354. Freer and Sackler Galleries. F1932.19. Freer and Sackler Galleries / Art Resource. Figure 8.5. a, b) details of headgear from roundels on the Baptistère de Saint Louis (after Rice, Baptistère); c, d, e) Drawings of headgear from an inlaid brass bowl signed by Muhammad ibn al-Zayn, late thirteenth century (after Esin Atil, Renaissance of Islam, 1981). Drawings: Marcus Milwright. Figure 8.6. Saladin from André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés (Paris, 1584), fol. 627r. After Thevet (Cholakian) 1973. Figure 8.7. a.) Enamelled plaque with a portrait of an unnamed Egyptian sultan. Probably Limoges, sixteenth century. Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Brunswick; b.) Enthroned governor from The Reception of the Ambassadors, 1511. Anonymous Venetian artist. Louvre. Drawings: Marcus Milwright. Figure 8.8. Leather puppet of a boat with sailors and elite occupant. Bought by Paul Kahle in Manzala, Egypt, 1909. Seventeenth century, Egypt. Courtesy of Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung Institut für Medienkultur und Theater, University of Cologne. Figure 9.1. Plate from 1593 edition of Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great. After Scolar Press Facsimile edition. Menston and London, 1973. Figure 9.2. Tamerlane from Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum, 1493. (After Taschen facsimile edition, 2001). Figure 9.3. Bayezid (left) and Tamerlane (right) from Guillaume Rouillé, Promptuarium Iconum. Lyons, 1553. Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. 3 Delta 188, p. 190. Figure 9.4. Tamerlane from Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium. Basel, 1596. Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. F.5.2 (1), Art, p. 102. Figure 9.5. Feast after the conquest of Delhi. Painting from a manuscript of the Ẓafarnāma of Sharaf al-Din Yazdi, dated 893/1436. Reproduced by permission of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, 1960.198.

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Figure 9.6. Tamerlane from André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres Grecz, Latins et Payens. Paris, 1584. By permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge, fol. 630r. Figure 9.7. Tamerlane from Laonicus Chalcocondylas, L’Histoire de la decadence de l’empire Grec et establissement de celuy des Turcs par Chalcocondile Athenien (Paris 1662). Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. T.4.11 Jur., p. 52. Figure 9.8. Equestrian portrait of Tamerlane from Philip Lonicer, Chronicon Turcicorum. Frankfurt, 1578. Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. H.5.2. Art., fol. 14v. Figure 9.9. Ruler supervising building work from Hetʿum, Sensuyuent les fleurs des hystoires de la terre dorient. Paris, c. 1530. Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. Douce HH 226 (1), sig. Qii r. Figure 9.10. Ruler presiding in judgement from Hetʿum, Sensuyuent les fleurs des hystoires de la terre dorient. Paris c. 1530. Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. Douce HH 226 (1), sig. Rii v. Figure 9.11. Tamerlane witnessing a scene of brutality from Johannes Schiltberger, Ein wunderbarliche uund kurtzweilege History. Frankfurt, c. 1549. Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. Vet.D1 e.67. Figure 9.12. Tamerlane feasting from Johannes Schiltberger, Ein wunderbarliche uund kurtzweilege History. Frankfurt, c. 1549. Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. Vet.D1 e.67. Figure 9.13. Tamerlane and Bayezid from Philip Lonicer, Chronicon Turcicorum. Frankfurt, 1578. Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. H.5.2 Art, fol. 14r. Figure 9.14. Attila the Hun from Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium. Basel, 1596. Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. F.5.2 (1), Art, p. 10. Figure 11.1. Portrait of Sultan Tuman Bay II in André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés (Paris, 1584), fol. 639r. St John’s College Library, Cambridge: F.6.17–18. By per-

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mission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge. Figure 11.2. Portrait of Sultan Qansawh al-Ghawri in Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basel, 1575), p. 222. Cambridge University Library: O.7.16–1. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Figure 11.3. Portrait of Sultan Tumanbay II in Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basel, 1575), p. 225. Cambridge University Library: O.7.16–1. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Figure 11.4. Portrait of Sultan Sultan Qansawh al-Ghawri in JeanJacques Boissard, Vitae et icones sultanorum Turcicorum (Paris, 1596), plate facing p. 141. Cambridge University Library: T.5.6. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Figure 11.5. Portrait of Sultan Tumanbay II in Jean-Jacques Boissard, Vitae et icones sultanorum Turcicorum (Paris, 1596), plate facing p. 148. Cambridge University Library: T.5.6. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Figure 11.6. Sultan Tumanbay being led to his execution. In André Thevet, Cosmographie universelle (Paris, 1575), fol. 37v. Cambridge University Library: Rel.bb.57.1. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Figure 11.7. Obverse and reverse of bronze medal made for Mehmed II Fatih by Gentile Bellini, 1479. British Museum, Department of Coins and Medals: 1883.3.1. Figure 11.8. Portrait of Atabalipa in André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés (Paris, 1584), fol. 641r. St John’s College Library, Cambridge: F.6.17–18. By permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge. Figure 11.9. Vittore Carpaccio, St George baptising, Scuola S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni (c. 1502–1508). Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource. Figure 11.10. St Sebastian. Master of the Greenville Tondo, Umbria, c. 1500–10. Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to the New Jersey State Museum; transferred to the Princeton University Art Museum, 1995–330. Princeton University Art Museum / Art Resource.

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Figure 11.11. Ecce Homo. Woodcut by Hans Baldung Grien, 1511. Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1917. 17.50.15–359. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum. Figure 11.12. Justin Martyr in André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés (Paris, 1584), fol. 7r. St John’s College Library, Cambridge: F.6.17–18. By permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge. Figure 11.13: Bab Zuwayla, Cairo, 1091–92 and later. Courtesy of Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair. Figure 11.14: Leather shadow puppets depicting chained captives. Egypt, fourteenth–seventeenth century. Discovered in Manzala, Egypt by Paul Kahle. Linden Museum: 84677. Courtesy of the Linden Museum, Stuttgart. Figure 11.15: Execution of Tumanbay outside Bab Zuwayla, Cairo, in 1517. Unknown source, seventeenth century (?). Drawing after digital image: Marcus Milwright. Figure 12.1. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, Coalition Provisional Authority Administrator, presents video of Saddam Hussein going through a medical examination shortly after his capture in Tikrit, Dec. 13, 2003, during a press conference at the Iraqi Forum in Baghdad, Dec. 14, 2003. Photo: Staff Sgt. Steven Pearsall, U.S. Air Force. Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_ Navy_031214-F-1093P003_Ambassador_L._Paul_Bremer, Coalition_Provisional_Authority_Administrator,_presents_a_video_ of_Saddam_Hussein_going_through_a_medical_examination.j pg (Last consulted: 26 September 2019). Figure 12.2. Sultan Bayezid in a cage from Philip Lonicer, Chronicon Turcicorum. Frankfurt, 1578. Bodleian Library: H.5.2.Art., fol. 12v. Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library.

TEXT AND IMAGE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Publications: Chapter 1: Courtesy of the editorial board of al-Rafidan and the Institute for Cultural Studies of Ancient Iraq, Kokushikan University, Tokyo. Chapter 2: Courtesy of the editorial board of the Oxford Studies in Islamic Art and Oxford University Press. Chapter 3: Courtesy of Edinburgh University Press. Chapter 4: Courtesy of the Journal of Modern Hellenism, Centre for Hellenic Studies, Simon Fraser University. Chapter 5: Courtesy of E. J. Brill. Chapter 6: Courtesy of Aram Periodical and Peeters Publishers. Chapter 8: Courtesy of Mamluk Studies Review, University of Chicago. Chapter 9: Courtesy of Muqarnas and E. J. Brill. Chapter 10: Courtesy of Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, London and Cambridge University Press. Chapter 11: Courtesy of Word & Image and Taylor & Francis. Chapter 12: Courtesy of International Journal of Contemporary Iraq Studies / Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World and Intellect Publisher. Images: Plate 2, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Plates 5-7, figures 7.1–5, 7.7: McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. xxiii

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Plate 8, figures 4.3, 6.5: British Library. Figure 1.2: Kent Rawlinson Figures 2.1–3, 2.14: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Figure 2.4: Seyedhamed Yeghanehfarzand. Figure 2.12: Creswell Archive, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Figure 2.13: Naomi Shields. Figure 2.15: Google Earth. Figure 3.2: Griffith Collection, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Figures 4.2, 4.4: Topkapi Sarayi Library. Art Resource NY. Figure 5.1, 5.2: Chris Mundigler. Figure 6.6: Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Figure 6.7: Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, Brussels. Figure 7.6: Chris Flaherty. Figure 7.8: Imperial War Museum. Figures 8.1, 8.8, 8.9, 9.5, 11.3–8: Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Figure 8.2: Uffizi /Ministero per i Beni e le Attivà culturali / Art Resource, NY. Figure 8.8: Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung Institut für Medienkultur und Theater, University of Cologne. Figures 9.2, 9.6–13, 11.14, 12.3: Bodleian Library, Oxford. Figures 9.4, 11.1, 11.8, 11.12: The Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge. Figure 11.7. British Museum. Figure 11.9: Scuola S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni / Art Resource. Figure 11.10: Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to the New Jersey State Museum / Princeton University Art Museum. Art Resource NY. Figure 11.11: The Metropolitan Museum, New York. Figure 11.13: Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair. Figure 11.14: Linden Museum, Stuttgart. Figure 12.2: Wikimedia (Staff Sgt. Steven Pearsall).

NOTES FOR THE READER The chapters in this volume were first published in a range of books and journals. In order to make the chapters more consistent I have standardised the transliteration of Arabic, spelling (British rather than American English), italicisation, citation system, and footnoting. The transliteration of Arabic follows the system of the International Journal of Middle East Studies and the third edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam. Dotted consonants and long vowels are not included for personal names and toponyms, though ‘ayns (ʿ) and hamzas (ʾ) have been maintained. English spellings are employed for well-known towns and cities (Cairo, Jerusalem, Mecca, Medina, and so on). Arabic words that are in use in English are left unitalised. I have not attempted to standardise the names of Greek primary sources, and in some cases have opted for older versions rather than those employed in more recent scholarly writing (for example, Chalcocondylas rather than Chalkokondyles and Ducas rather than Doukas). Unless stated otherwise, the dates are given according to the Common Era. The pagination of the original publications has been marked into the texts of the chapters enclosed in square brackets. In places where the numbering in square brackets is not sequential (i.e. missing one or more pages) it is because the pages of the original publication contained only figures/photographic plates. Some maps have been replaced and a few photographs have been cut where it has proved unfeasible to reproduce them again. I have updated the material in the footnotes to account for new publications and, where necessary, corrected inaccurate assertions.

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INTRODUCTION This volume is made up of articles and book chapters that deal with encounters in which the peoples, faiths, or material cultures of the Islamic world were involved either as agents or as the subject of actions or observations by others. It hardly possible to engage in the meaningful study of the visual or literary cultures of the Islamic world without considering the interactions that Muslims, and others living under Muslim rule had with the civilisations that existed in the same regions prior to the Islamic conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries. All regions of the Islamic world contained other confessional communities, each possessing their own artistic and intellectual traditions. Artists, writers, and scholars also engaged in profound and diverse ways with the cultures of the polities they found beyond the borders of the Islamic world, most notably China, the Byzantine empire, Christian Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Indian subcontinent. Adventurers, merchants, and emissaries from Islamic lands came into direct contact with non-Muslim cultures, while others formed their understanding through means such as oral and written accounts of journeys or the purchasing of imported goods and slaves. Imported manufactured items affected the technologies and aesthetic qualities of the arts of the Islamic world and have been the subject of extensive art-historical study. Muslims and non-Muslims living in Islamic regions could also become subjects during these phases of interaction. In this volume these ‘outsider’ perspectives come primarily from early Modern European artists and scholars (Chapters 8–11), though it would be possible to address this issue from many other historical periods and geographical settings. Two chapters address evidence from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (7 & 12). While both studies possess features that 1

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are peculiar to their times, some of the ways ideas are expressed through text and image evidently have roots in earlier centuries. The chapters presented here were published over about two decades. Naturally enough, the methodologies are not consistent due to the fact that the chapters cover a span of thirteenth centuries and diverse topics including ornamental programs on unglazed pottery, the logistics of early Islamic palace construction, the transfer of motifs during the Crusader period, and European depictions of Muslim rulers. No attempt is made here to offer a synthesis of the main modes and historical evolution of Medieval and early Modern cultural contact; rather, the chapters present discrete case studies that analyse specific contexts in which forms of interaction occurred. I hope that these will be of interest in their own right, but also provide some analytical tools that could be applied to the study of the roles performed by material and visual culture in moments of engagement between different political or religious cultures.

CONTINUITY, APPROPRIATION, EMULATION, AND TRANSFORMATION

The student of the arts and archaeology of the Islamic period, particularly in the first three or four centuries, has to engage with the extensive evidence for continuity with the practices of previous centuries. Where older scholarship tended to view the emergence of Islam in the seventh century as a decisive rupture with the classical past, it is more common today to regard the early Islamic period as, in many respects, an extension of Late Antiquity. This is easily appreciated in the archaeological record: for example, vessel forms and decorative modes in ceramics and glass remain largely consistent from the sixth to the first half of the eighth century in many regions of the Middle East. Irrigation technology and other aspects of crop cultivation and animal rearing continued as they had done for centuries, while the plans of rural towns tended to evolve at a slow pace, unless they were affected by earthquakes or other catastrophic damage.1 Change tends to build on 1 These issues are summarised in Alan Walmsley, Early Islamic Syria: An archaeological Assessment (London: Duckworth, 2007); Marcus Milwright,

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existing structures and forms of expression; a building like the Dome of the Rock is hugely important in the subsequent history of Islamic architecture and visual art, but its form (that of a centrally-planned domed martyrium) and ornamental media (including glass mosaic and marble veneer) would have been entirely familiar to a Late Antique urban viewer.2 Similarly, the urban foundations (miṣr, pl. amṣār) of the seventh and eighth centuries incorporated new building types – the mosque and governor’s residence (dār al-imāra) – but were often planned in the manner of a classical polis around two colonnaded main thoroughfares (cardo and decumanus). This is not to claim that the Islamic period did not bring with it important, and irreversible changes to the newly conquered regions. The production of visual culture provides an opportunity to trace the creative syntheses in which the artists working for Muslim patrons sought to generate new meanings from an existing Late Antique vocabulary, abandoning some elements and introducing others that were specific to the new Islamic context. Hence, a motif with a defined semantic range in pre-Islamic art could reappear in a new guise on an object or monument of the seventh or eighth centuries.3 These processes varied in their pace and depth from region to region, depending on localised political and cultural factors; for example, An Introduction to Islamic Archaeology, New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), pp. 24–43; Gideon Avni, The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An archaeological Approach, Oxford Studies in Byzantium (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 2 Marcus Milwright, The Dome of the Rock and its Umayyad Mosaic Inscriptions, Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016). For Late Antique buildings with similar forms, see Rina Avner, ‘The account of Caesarea by the Piacenza Pilgrim and the recent archaeological discovery of the octagonal church in Caesarea Maritima,’ Palestine Exploration Quarterly 140.3 (2008): 203–12; Rina Avner, ‘The Dome of the Rock in the light of the development of concentric martyria in Jerusalem. Architecture and architectural iconography,’ Muqarnas 27 (2009): 31–49; Oleg Grabar, The Dome of the Rock (Harvard MA: Belknap Press, 2006). 3 For example, see Luke Treadwell, ‘“Mihrab and ʿanaza” or “sacrum and spear”? A reconsideration of an early Marwanid silver drachm,’ Muqarnas 22 (2005): 1–28.

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where the bulk of the empire abandoned Islamic adaptations of Sasanian silver coins (the so-called ‘Arab-Sasanian drachms) with the move to fully epigraphic coinage after 77/696–97, the region of Tabaristan, south of the Caspian Sea, continued to mint issues carrying simplified images of the defunct Sasanian dynasty through to the latter part of the eighth century (fig. I.1). This must have been a conscious nod to the sentiments of the non-Muslim majority population.

Figure I.1. Obverse of a hemidrachm minted by al-Jarir, governor of Tabaristan, 786–88. Collection of the author. Photograph: Iona Hubner. It should also be remembered that the pace of conversion to Islam was, in most cases, relatively slow; with the exception of the Arabian peninsula, it has been estimated that most of the central Islamic lands did not have majority populations of Muslims until the tenth or

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eleventh centuries.4 Gideon Avni’s meticulous analysis of archaeological evidence indicates that towns in Palestine did not generally undergo the transformation to a recognisably ‘Islamic’ urban plan until the tenth or eleventh centuries.5 While change could occur in an organic fashion, there is also compelling evidence for the conscious repurposing of older objects as a means to generate new meanings. The Dome of the Rock has already been mentioned in the context of Late Antique architectural and visual vocabularies, but should not be viewed merely as some neutral homage to the past. The presence of Sasanian royal imagery and representations of Byzantine imperial jewellery both suggest an iconography of appropriation, emphasising the victory of Islam. This reading is supported by later textual accounts that claim the vast ceremonial crown from the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon was displayed in the Dome of the Rock.6 Art produced during the Umayyad caliphate abounds with examples of symbolic appropriation, and it remains a potent theme in later Islamic visual culture. Periods of political and cultural challenge often provided the environment for this type of artistic strategy. For example, the Crusading period in the Middle East (1098–1291) includes numerous examples of the forcible reuse of buildings, architectural elements, and portable objects. Following the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, the Dome of the Rock was renamed the Templum Domini, and later surmounted with the golden cross.7 Nur al-Din Zangi (r. 1146–74) ordered the destruction of Aleppo’s Late Antique cathedral, with the elegant apse of the building being subsequently incorporated into the Halawiyya madrasa. The 4 On this issue, see Richard Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in quantitative History (Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1979). 5 Avni, The Byzantine-Islamic Transition. 6 Oleg Grabar, ‘The Umayyad Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem,’ Ars Orientalis 3 (1959): 3–62; Myriam Rosen Ayalon, Early Islamic Monuments of alḤaram al-Sharīf. An iconographic Study, Qedem 28 (Jerusalem: Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, 1989); Nasser Rabbat, ‘The meaning of the Dome of the Rock,’ Muqarnas 6 (1989): 12–21. 7 Following the reconquest of the city by Ayyubid forces the cross was sent to the caliph and then buried beneath one of the main gates of Baghdad. See Chapter 6.

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same ruler also adorned his hospital (maristān) in Damascus with marble altar tables, each carved and painted with Arabic inscriptions (colour pl. 4 and fig. 6.8. For a piece of spolia from the entrance of the Madrasa al-Halawiyya, see fig. 6.9).8 This last example draws comparison with an inscribed marble plaque recovered during excavations in Ascalon. The twelfth-century Arabic inscription was later defaced with a series of crudely carved and painted shields, the larger ones carrying the emblem of the Crusader knight, Sir Hugh Wake, lord of Bourne (d. 1241).9 In cases of appropriation the meaning depends upon the viewer being able to recognise that the object or motif has been taken from some other context. This might be from a past culture in a given region, as can be seen, for example, in the prominent display of architectural spolia in mosques across the Indian subcontinent.10 Changes to the structure or appearance of the appropriated item, however violent, must not entirely deface its original character. The same can also be said for emulation, though in these cases artisans and their patrons adopted a positive view of the material or aesthetic qualities of an ancient or imported object, and there is little or no propagandist intent. The process of emulation does, however, cast revealing light on societal values, including the attitudes toward past cultures and of those existing beyond the borders of the Islamic world. The impact of Chinese portable art, particularly glazed pottery, has long been recognised as a factor in the development of Islamic visual culture. The glaze surfaces and vessel shapes of imported bowls were copied in Basra from the late eighth century, while the aesthetic qualities of blue-and-white porcelain are readily apparent in many later manufacturing centres across the Middle East. European producers also engaged in imitations 8

On the use of spolia in this period, see Finbarr Flood, ‘The Medieval trophy as an art-historical trope: Coptic and Byzantine “altars” in Islamic contexts,’ Muqarnas 18 (2001): 41–72. 9 Moshe Sharon, ‘A new Fatimid inscription from Ascalon and its historical setting,’ ʿAtiqot 26 (1995): 61–86. 10 Finbarr Flood, ‘Pillars, palimpsests and princely practices: Translating the past in Sultanate Delhi,’ Res: Journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics 43 (2003): 95–116.

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of Chinese prototypes, with the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC, founded in 1602) even commissioning Persian potters to make blue-and-white stonepaste wares as a way to satisfy the demands of the market.11 Islamic visual culture was also emulated in Europe, with varying degrees of fidelity to the original sources. The bold aesthetic qualities of Islamic epigraphy stimulated the production of pseudo-epigraphic decoration on the facades of churches (fig. I.2) and on the costumes and haloes of the Virgin and saints depicted on altarpieces.12 Imported Turkish and Persian carpets are a regular feature of European painting during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, reflecting the prevalence of these items in elite households. European artists produced images of the Middle East (see below), often incorporating known buildings that they had either seen first-hand or appreciated through the illustrations produced by others.13 One such interaction was the dispatch of Italian artists to the court of sultan Mehmed II Fatih (r. 1444–46, 1451–81) in Istanbul. Gentile Bellini’s (d. 1507) sojourn in the Ottoman capital was particularly productive, resulting in drawings, paintings, and a cast medal bearing the portrait of the sultan (fig. 11.9).

On these issues, see: T. Volker, Porcelain and the Dutch East India Company, Mededelingen van Het Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden 11 (Leiden: Brill, 1971); John Carswell, ‘Ṣīn in Syria,’ Iran 17 (1979): 15–24; Marcus Milwright, ‘Pottery in written sources of the Ayyubid-Mamluk period (c. 567–923/1171–1517,’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 62.3 (1999): 504–18; Lisa Golombek, 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). 12 See examples discussed in: Rosamund Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley: University of Caifornia Press, 2002); contributions in Charles Burnett and Anna Contadini, eds, Islam and the Italian Renaissance (London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1999). 13 Julian Raby, ‘Picturing the Levant,’ in Jay Levenson, ed., Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration (Washington DC: The National Gallery of Art, 1992), pp. 77–81. 11

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Figure I.2. Pseudo-Kufic ornament in brick and mortar on an exterior wall of the church of the Theotokos, Monastery of Hosios Loukas, Phokis, Greece, 946–55. Photograph: Alicia Walker. More significant in the present context is that the illusionistic modes of representation employed by Bellini were avidly studied by Turkish court artists. The products of this interaction incorporate some of the Venetian artist’s use of modelling while maintaining preoccupations with flat patterning and rich application of colour that are more typical of indigenous miniature painting.14 Similar interactions between European and Islamic painting styles occurred in the ateliers of the Iran and Mughal India. The advent of photography brought

14

For a survey of this set of events, with detailed bibliography of earlier studies, see Caroline Campbell and Alan Chong, eds, Bellini and the East (London and Boston: Yale University Press for the National Gallery Company, London, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2005).

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new challenges, resulting in new experiments by artists across the Islamic world.15 The fusing of stylistic traditions creates challenges for arthistorical analysis that cannot be resolved satisfactorily through the isolation of the manufacturing site or the application of a conventional label: ‘Islamic,’ ‘Crusader,’ ‘Byzantine,’ ‘Buddhist,’ ‘Chinese,’ and so on. The very fact that groups of objects such as the so-called VenetoSaracenic metalwork remain the subject of spirited academic discourse is because their technical features and decorative characteristics synthesise disparate traditions and, thus, resist simplistic cultural designation.16 Of course, many other groups of objects and paintings offer similar challenges, and it is usually most productive to focus on the dynamic nature of the encounters between the different agents (comprising objects, texts, individuals and groups of people) rather than whether the result can be considered as belonging, to a greater or lesser degree, to a particular geographic, religious, or dynastic descriptor. It is also possible to trace the ways in which appropriated or imported visual modes are transformed within the society that receives them. Transformations can occur because artisans simply tended to reinterpret imported styles according to the constraints of the craft traditions in which they were trained. Hence, close emulation soon gives way to renderings that contain only selected components of the prototype (fig. I.3). Ultimately, like the invoking of an ancient monument in the 15 For example, see the comments on royal portraiture in Julian Raby, Qajar Portraits: Figure Paintings from nineteenth-century Persia (London: Azimuth Editions in association with the Iran Heritage Foundation, 1999). On the challenges of providing a photographic image of the royal body in Japan, see Mikiko Hirayama, ‘The emperor’s new clothes: Japanese visuality and imperial portrait photography,’ History of Photography 33.2 (2009): 165–84. On early photography in the Middle East, see Sarah Graham-Brown, Images of Women: The Portrayal of Women in Photography in the Middle East, 1860–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Nissan Perez, Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East, 1839–1885 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988). 16 For example, see: Sylvia Auld, Renaissance Venice, Islam and Mahmud the Kurd: A Metalworking Enigma (London: Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2004); Doris Behrens-Abouseif, ‘Veneto-Saracenic metalware, a Mamluk art,’ Mamluk Studies Review 9.2 (2005): 147–72.

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design of an Abbasid palace (Chapter 2), what is retained can consist of little more than an idea.17 Other factors include the purging motifs that do not conform to the religious codes or cultural values of a society. This might in some contexts extend to the representations of animate life, though the practice of setting Chinese blue-and-white porcelain (some of which carry depictions of birds and mythical beasts) into the walls of mosques demonstrates a degree of flexibility in the interpretation of traditional Muslim prohibitions.18

Figure I.3. Sherds of lead-glazed earthenware and glazed stonepaste vessels excavated in Fustat and Barqiyya (Cairo), some of which include Chinese-inspired designs. Twelfth to fifteenth centuries. Collection of Erica Dodd. 17

Cf. Richard Krautheimer, ‘An introduction to an “iconography of Mediaeval architecture,”’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 1–33; Nuha Khoury, ‘The Dome of the Rock, the Kaʿba and Ghumdan: Arab myths and Umayyad monuments,’ Muqarnas 10 (1993): 57–66. 18 For example, see the stucco miḥrābs in Ibadi mosques in Oman discussed in Paolo Costa, Historic mosques and shrines of Oman, BAR International Series 938 (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2001). Other instances are discussed in Marcus Milwright, ‘Prologues and epilogues in Islamic ceramics: Clays, repairs and secondary use,’ Medieval Ceramics 25 (2001): 72–83.

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FORMS OF REPRESENTATION Many of the chapters in this book deal with forms of representation, visual or textual, of other cultures. Representations can vary in character, from admiration – for example, Medieval European descriptions of the manufactured goods available in the markets of the Middle East,19 or the eulogy penned by al-Jahiz (d. 868) about the supposed abilities of the painters of Rūm (Chapter 4) – to those that are openly hostile to their subjects. Between the two extremes exist a continuum of responses, though it is important in all cases to address the political and cultural factors underlying the production of representations. Even the apparently ‘objective’ images in European printed travel books, such as the depictions of cityscapes or local costumes, must be interpreted in the context of Medieval and early Modern discourses about otherness. As will be shown in the third section of the book, European scholars and artists from the late fifteenth to the seventeenth century were well aware of the expansionist goals of the Ottoman empire, and this threat coloured their depictions of not just Turks, but of Arabs, Persians, and the inhabitants of Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Deeply entrenched Medieval views about the nature of Islam endured into the early Modern period (and, indeed, still resurface in contemporary discourse), and had an impact upon the depictions of Muslims in texts and images.20 These are not, however, the only factors at play: for example, evidence is brought forward later concerning the role of Christian the-

Simone Sigoli in Theophilus Bellorini and Eugene Hoade, trans., Visit to the Holy Places of Egypt, Sinai, Palestine and Syria in 1384 by Frescobaldi, Gucci & Sigoli, Publications of the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum 6 (Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1948), pp. 182–83. 20 John Tolan, Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2008). Also Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image. Second edition (Oxford: One World, 1993); Dorothee Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977). 19

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ology and the reliance of early Modern European scholars upon classical learning.21 The representations formulated within the Islamic world were also conditioned by diverse factors. Islamic law established ways of designating non-Muslims as followers of scripture (the ahl al-kitāb, or ‘people of the book’22) or as pagans and unbelievers (kaffār), while geographical space could be broadly defined according to the categories of dār al-Islām and dār al-ḥarb (‘abode of war/chaos’), with some allowance made for the provision of treaties between the two (the dār al-ṣulḥ). These divisions are, however, rather theoretical in nature; on-the-ground relations between people and polities can be shown to be more nuanced throughout Islamic history.23 While Muslim jurists might accuse other faiths of idolatry (shirk) or place restrictions on the ability of Christians and Jews to build or renovate places of worship, ruling dynasties often exercised more tolerance, whether for reasons of personal conviction or political expediency. Examples can be found particularly where Muslims ruled over substantial non-Muslim populations in newly conquered territories. The hybrid nature of Artuqid and Zangid coinage in northern Mesopotamia and Anatolia offers a useful case study of the ways in which officially sanctioned visual imagery could be employed in the

21

Margaret Meserve, ‘From Samarkand to Scythia: Reinventions of Asia in Renaissance geography and political thought,’ in Pius II, ‘el-più expeditivo pontifice’: Selected Studies on Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405–1464), ed. Zweder von Martels and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), pp. 13–39; Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 22 Islamic law also uses the term dhimmī (‘protected people’) who were encompassed by the Covenant of ʿUmar. On this document, see Arthur Tritton, The Caliphs and their non-Muslim Subjects: A critical Study of the Covenant of ʿUmar, Islam and the Muslim World 14 (London: Frank Cass, 1970). 23 For example, see Cemal Kafadar, ‘A Rome of one’s own: Reflections on cultural geography and identity in the lands of Rūm,’ Muqarnas 24 (2007): 7–25.

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negotiation of relations between different cultural groups within a Muslim polity (fig. I.4).

Figure I.4. Obverse of an Artuqid copper coin (fals) carrying a portrait head (likely to be emperor Constantine). Late twelfth century. Collection of the author. Photograph: Iona Hubner. Muslim scholars and travellers also expressed appreciation for elements of foreign cultures, especially manufactured goods. Archaeology provides further evidence of the taste of consumers in the Islamic world for imported goods, including printed textiles from the Indian subcontinent and glazed ceramics from southeast Asia and Europe.24 Descriptions of people beyond the borders of the Islamic world cannot be read as purely objective accounts, but they sometimes contain elements of grudging admiration. The tenthcentury scholar and ambassador, Ibn Fadlan lauds the excellent physiques and martial skills of the Rūsʾ (probably meaning Vikings) he encountered on the Volga river while at the same time describing them as ‘the filthiest of all God’s creatures.’25 The representation of 24

For a summary of archaeological evidence on these issues, see Milwright, Islamic Archaeology, pp. 167–72. 25 James Montgomery, ‘Ibn Fadlān and the Rūsiyyah,’ Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 3 (2000): 1–25; Richard Frye, Ibn Fadlan’s Journey to Russia: A tenth-century Traveler from Baghdad to the Volga River (Prince-

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the pre-Islamic past is equally varied in textual sources. The Arabic term al-jāhiliyya (‘the [time of] ignorance’) refers to the time before the revelation of Islam, and carries predictably negative connotations. However, while the pagan culture of Arabia could be roundly condemned by Muslim scholars, even here there is some scope for wonder at the Maʿrib dam, the palace of Ghumdan, and other monuments left behind by earlier dynasties. The artistic and intellectual inheritance of Byzantine and Sasanian lands elicited much more fulsome praise.26 The most enduring dimensions of this was perhaps the ‘Translation Movement,’27 though one can also point to the comprehensive absorption of Late Antique artistic idioms into the canon of Islamic material and visual culture. The Translation Movement focused principally on Greek writing, and this long process firmly located ancient authorities at the heart of secular Islamic scholarship. Familiar names such as Aristotle, Dioscorides, Galen, and Ptolemy of Alexandria were all brought into intellectual discourse with few qualms expressed about their pagan origins. In the same manner, Christian scholars would rely on the achievements of Muslim luminaries like Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, and alRazi, even providing them with Latinised names as a token of their incorporation into Western European learning. These processes of ton NJ: Markus Wiener, 2005). On the role of material culture in these trading networks, see Melanie Michailidis, ‘Samanid silver and trade along the Fur Route,’ Medieval Encounters 18 (2012): 315–38. Islamic goods also appear in an elite burial dating to the thirteenth-century in southern Ukraine. See Renata Holod and Yuriy Rassamakin, ‘Imported and native remedies for a wounded “prince” Gravegoods from the Chungal Kurgan in the Black Sea steppe of the thirteenth century,’ Medieval Encounters 18 (2012): 339–81. 26 See, for example, Richard Ettinghausen, From Byzantium to Sasanian Iran and the Islamic World (Leiden: Brill, 1972); Oleg Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art, rev. ed. (New Haven NJ and London: Yale University Press, 1987); Nadia El-Cheikh, Byzantium viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2004). 27 Franz Rosenthal, The classical Heritage in Islam (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975); Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and early ʿAbbasid Society (2th–4th/8th–10th Centuries) (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).

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translation and synthesis are apparent in written and visual representations of the scholars themselves. Personalities of the antique world were described in Arabic biographical sketches (some of which were later translated into European languages), while manuscript painters produced depictions, often replacing Classical outfits and furnishings for those that would be found typically in the Medieval Middle East (Chapter 4). Sympathetic depictions of Muslim scholars appear in paintings by European artists, while Dante groups both classical Greek and prominent Muslims scholars, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, in the uppermost of the nine circles of Hell (i.e. the one reserved for virtuous pagans and the unbaptised).28 As noted above, the European representations of the Islamic world and its inhabitants must be viewed in the context of long-held Christian preconceptions about Islam. To this can be added the antiSemitic tropes of the Medieval period, and the general fascination with the exotic, but disquieting ‘Other.’ Political circumstances also play an important part, ranging from major historical events – the Reconquista on the Iberian peninsula, the Crusading period in the Middle East, and the Ottoman conquest in eastern and central Europe – to more localised interactions between Christian and Muslim dynasties. Another factor is the degree of access to information. Many Medieval Christians thought that Muslims worshipped an unholy ‘trinity’ of Muhammad, Tervagant, and Apollo, and accusations of idolatrous behaviour appear in other texts.29 These claims might even be expressed by Christians who lived alongside Muslim Inferno canto IV. On influence of Islamic literature on the Divine Comedy, see Philip Kennedy, ‘The Muslim sources for Dante?’ in Dionisius Agius and Richard Hitchcock, eds, The Arab Influence in Medieval Europe, Folia Scholastica Mediterranea (Reading: Ithaca, 1994), pp. 63–82. 29 For this claim, and the wider Christian discourse on idolatry, see Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-making in Medieval Art, Cambridge New Art History and Criticism (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989). For an examination of a specific episode in a Crusader primary source, see Xavier Muratova, ‘Western chronicles of the First Crusade as sources for the history of art in the Holy Land,’ in Jaroslav Folda, ed., Crusader Art in the twelfth Century, British Archaeological Reports: International Series 152 (Oxford: BAR, 1982), pp. 47–69. 28

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communities, as happened in Iberia.30 Such assertions look strange when viewed against the presentation of orthodox Islamic practice by Sunni jurists, though it is worth remembering that very few Medieval and early Modern Christians can have enjoyed access to the Qurʾan, collections of ḥadīth, and legal texts.31 Furthermore, the belief-systems and practices found in everyday life are sometimes at variance with the strictures of Islamic law, from the use of amulets and talismans to the unusual rituals associated with the visitation of tombs (Chapter 5). In other words, pre-modern Christian scholars, travellers, and artists often had to make use of the data they could gather through observation and hearsay; an appreciation of Islam based on public manifestations of popular piety or the testimony of a local guide (dragoman) might well have had little in common with that constructed by the modern researcher with access to critical editions of primary texts. Access to information is also an important issue in the interpretation of what may be loosely described as ‘portraits.’ We commonly consider a reliable portrait to be one which was made in the presence of the sitter, with the artist granted considerable time with the subject in order to assemble a two- or three-dimensional likeness. Photography allows for a likeness to be created at greater speed, though again, the modern viewer assumes that a skilled photographer will 30

For example, see Robert Southern’s memorable appreciation of the understandings of Islam formed in tenth-century Andalus by bishop Eulogius and Paul Alvarus. He writes: ‘It was a product of ignorance, but ignorance of a peculiarly complex kind…If they saw and understood little of what went on around them, and if they knew nothing of Islam as a religion, it was because they wished to know nothing. The situation of an oppressed and unpopular minority within a minority is not a suitable one for scientific inquiry into the true position of the oppressor.’ See Robert Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 25. On this issue, see now Andrew Sorben, ‘Prophetic resistance to Islam in ninth-century Córdoba: Paulus Alvarus and the Indiculus Luminosus,’ Medieval Encounters 25.5–6 (2019): 433–56. 31 For example, James Kritzeck, Peter the Venerable and Islam, Princeton Studies on the Near East (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964, reprinted 2016); Southern, Western Views of Islam, pp. 52–61 (discussing Roger Bacon).

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draw out aspects of the character of the sitter through sensitive use of pose, lighting, tonality, and setting. Clearly many of the representations of known individuals dealt with later in the book (especially Chapters 4, 8, 9, 11) cannot be considered as portraits when measured against the criteria outlined above: none were made in the presence of the sitter with many produced centuries after the person had died. In addition, we cannot assume that the producers and intended audiences approached images with the same expectations as a contemporary viewer attending an exhibition of portrait painting, sculpture, or photography. The challenge, therefore, is to recover the expectations pre-modern viewers might have had and how artists addressed these when depicting figures from the past. This last issue is often tied up with the written descriptions, whether in a Medieval Arabic manuscript (Chapter 4) or in European printed books (Chapter 8, 9, 11). The primacy of the written over the visual is a commonplace in the arts of the book in the Arabspeaking world. This is not merely due to the practice of the scribe leaving spaces in the text for the illustrator to fill, as in many cases representation is primarily textual in nature.32 For example, Muslims wishing to reconstruct a mental image of the Prophet Muhammad prior to the first painted representations in the late thirteenth century would have relied upon information in biographies by Ibn Hisham (d. 833) and others. Some early Islamic authors claim the existence of paintings of the Prophet, owned by the Byzantine emperor (or sometimes, the emperor of China), but this is a literary device, with our understanding of the apparent appearances of Muhammad and other prophets still transmitted through text.33 The main innovation in this context is the notion that the painted image possesses a powerful quality that can elicit an emotional response 32

Eva Hoffman, ‘The beginnings of the illustrated Arabic book: An intersection between art and scholarship,’ Muqarnas 17 (2000): 37–52. 33 Michael Cooperson, ‘Images without illustrations: The visual imagination in classical Arabic biography,’ in Oleg Grabar and Cynthia Robinson, eds, Islamic Art and Literature (Princeton NJ: Markus Wiener, 2001), pp. 7–20; Oleg Grabar and Mika Natif, ‘The story of the portraits of the Prophet Muhammad,’ Studia Islamica 96 (2004): 19–37.

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from the viewer. Thus, illustrations in Arab manuscripts seldom operate independently from their textual basis, though they clearly have the potential to suggest further areas of interpretation through reference to other written works or visual sources.34 The role of prototypes is vital to the interpretation of the different groups of ‘portraits’ dealt with in this book. This is seen in the development of ‘author portrait’ frontispieces in Arab manuscript painting, though in some cases it was in the adoption of a compositional format rather than the direct copying of a specific individual. The production of icons is deeply rooted in the idea of prototypes, most famously the belief that the first painting of the Virgin and Child was undertaken by St Luke. Byzantine culture abounds with stories about miraculous visions providing the basis for painting of saints, indicating that the accuracy of the painted portrait relies upon the intervention of the saint being depicted.35 The creators of images of Muslim rulers in sixteenth-century biographical encyclopaedias also appeal to prototypes, but of a more tangible nature. In these cases, the veracity of the image relied on the claim that it had been copied from a visual source (anything from a coin or medal through to a carved relief or painting) made in the presence of the subject. Naturally any deficiencies in the prototype (for example, the diminutive profile found on an ancient coin) would remain in the woodcut or engraved image produced in the book. These were not, therefore, the insightful portraits of great artists of the Renaissance, but rather historical records that supported the condensed biographical accounts written by scholars, like Paolo Giovio (d. 1552).36 Prototypes 34

For example, see the interpretations offered in: Grace Guest and Richard Ettinghausen, ‘The Iconography of a Kāshān luster plate,’ Ars Orientalis 4 (1961): 25–64; Chad Kia, ‘Is the bearded man drowning? Picturing the figurative in late fifteenth-century painting from Herat,’ Muqarnas 23 (2006): 85–105. 35 Henry Maguire, Icons of their Bodies: Saints and their Images in Byzantium (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 5–47. 36 Linda Klinger, ‘Images of identity: Italian portrait collections of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,’ in The Image of the Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance, ed. Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson (London: British Mu-

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varied considerably in their degree of plausibility, however. This can be attributed to sharp practices by publishers (simply recycling existing images for new purposes; see Chapter 9) or because reliable information about a given person was difficult to obtain. Giovio encountered this problem with several of his Muslim subjects, despite his considerable efforts to obtain images (Chapters 8 & 9). A consistent concern in the chapters dealing with ‘portraits’ is how these images were understood by their audiences. This must always be a somewhat speculative exercise, but remains important if our goal is to recapture the way such images fitted within the cultural values of their time. It is valid to think of images in manuscripts and printed books being, to some extent, ‘read,’ both in relation to the texts they illustrated and in the light of other written works bearing on human appearance and character. For example, an educated reader might have brought a knowledge of physiognomy to the interpretation of the depiction of an ancient scholar or a Muslim sultan. This body of writing claimed to reveal the personality traits of a person through the analysis of physical appearance, while some authors extended this to encompass the characteristics of entire ethnicities (Chapter 9).37 Such generalising accounts make for uncomfortable reading today, but clearly appealed to pre-modern audiences trying to find some way of comprehending the cultures and peoples of distant lands that most would never visit. Lack of reliable information allowed works of imagination like the Travels of Sir John Mandeville to fill the voids, providing readers with descriptions of grotesque creatures and abhorrent rituals.38 Imagination doubtless plays a role in the interpretation of the representations of Muslim rulers, particularly those like Tamerlane, whose acts of cruelty and martial virseum Press, 1998), pp. 67–79; contributions in The Sultan’s Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman (Istanbul: Işbank, 2000). 37 See sources collected in Chapter 9. 38 Iain Higgins, trans. with annotations, The Book of John Mandeville, with related Texts (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2011). For an example of how this text was understood by a pre-modern reader, see Carlo Ginzburg, Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a sixteenth-century Miller, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (London: Penguin Books, 1992), pp. 41–51.

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tues fascinated European audiences in the decades and centuries after his death (Chapters 9 & 10). Thus, images become a canvas onto which the reader/viewer could project their own beliefs, desires, and fears. We can only guess at these individual responses, though some of the widely-held preconceptions, at least, are recorded in contemporary texts.

THEORETICAL STANDPOINTS The chapters making up this volume deal with different types of interactions from the early Islamic period through to the twenty-first century in which material or visual culture played a significant part. The exchanged items become commodities, at least at the moment when the exchange is enacted. This commodification can extend well beyond what is considered ethical in a contemporary context: Medieval and early Modern societies provide abundant examples of humans (slaves) and bodily remains (relics) being brought into the spheres of monetary and ritualised exchange. Visual culture may be considered as a subset of material culture, though the exchange or appropriation of motifs (see, for example, Chapter 6) can exist independently of the physical objects that carry them. All of these forms of exchange are predicated on systems of societal value. Exchange also requires the circulation of information; for example, an object such as a sacred relic becomes a worthless piece of bone when removed from its proper context and from the religious narratives that provide it with meaning (cf. Chapter 5). Conversely, a bone can move from having no value to being ‘priceless’ if societies can be persuaded to associate it with the life of a given saint.39 Exchange itself can take many forms from barter and monetised interactions to plunder, extortion, redistribution, and gift-giving.40 The last of these categories 39

Patrick Geary, ‘Sacred commodities: The circulation of medieval relics,’ in Arjun Appadurai, ed., The social Life of Things: Commodities in cultural Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 169–91. 40 Karl Polanyi, ‘The economy as an instituted process,’ in Karl Polanyi, Conrad Arensberg, and Harry Pearson, eds, Trade and Market in the early Empires (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1957), pp. 243–69; Abraham Rotstein, ‘Karl Polanyi’s concept of non-market trade,’ The Journal of Eco-

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generates particularly complex social interactions, because of the implication of reciprocity (sometimes in the form of expressions of loyalty or promises of service).41 These qualities are also in evidence in the gift-giving that occurred between states in the course of ongoing diplomatic contact.42 The mechanics of exchange and the role of objects in these complex interactions have been the subject of many theoretical studies by archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and art historians. The following chapters do not deal with these explicitly, but it is worth reviewing here some significant approaches.43 Anthropologinomic History 30.1 (1970): 117–26; Philip Grierson, ‘Commerce in the Dark Ages: A critique of the evidence,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 9 (1959): 123–40. 41 The classic anthropological account of this process is Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W. D. Halls with a foreword by Mary Douglas (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1990). The meanings generated by exchange are also addressed in Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 42 Studies of the lavish gifts that appear in diplomatic exchanges involving the Islamic world have tended to be documentary in nature, without engaging explicitly with theoretical issues. However, see the ideas developed in recent studies, such as Anthony Cutler, ‘Gifts and gift exchange as aspects of Byzantine, Arab, and related economies,’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55 (2001): 247–78; Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Practicing Diplomacy in the Mamluk Sultanate: Gifts and Material Culture in the Medieval Islamic World (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014); Samuel Ottowil-Soulsby, ‘The camels of Charles the Bald,’ Medieval Encounters 25.3 (2019): 263–92. For perspectives drawn from ancient periods, see Carlo Zaccagnini, ‘Aspects of ceremonial exchange during the late second millennium BC,’ in Michael Rowlands, Mogens Larsen, and Kristian Kristiansen, eds, Centre and Periphery in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 57–65. 43 Anthropological and art-historical approaches are discussed in greater detail below. Useful archaeological studies of the workings of exchange systems include: Robert Adams, ‘Anthropological perspectives on ancient trade,’ Current Anthropology 15 (1974): 239–58; Andrew and Susan Sherratt, ‘From luxuries to commodities: the nature of Mediterranean Bronze Age Trading Systems,’ in Noel Gale, ed., Bronze Age Trade in the Mediterranean. Papers Presented at the Conference held at Rewley House, Oxford, in December 1989, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 90 (Jonsered: Paul

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cal research provides particularly useful insights into the circulation of objects between different socio-economic or familial groups, and across the boundaries between societies. Societies tend to privilege certain classes of objects in the negotiation of ritualised encounters, with features such as material, shape, and ornamentation signalling kinship structures or forms of group identification. Meanings clearly shift as objects move across boundaries or between the status of commodity and something that cannot be circulated (due to sanctification or the imposition of sumptuary restrictions). These fluctuations in meaning and status have led scholars to talk about the ‘biographies’ of objects that circulate in societies, past and present.44 Meaning can also be tied up with ‘use value,’ a term that appreciates the relative worth of classes of things not just on a monetary scale but according to the roles they perform in given societies. Thus, an object or other commodity employed in a central political or religious ritual will possess a high use value. This sense of value might not, of course, be shared by other cultures if they do not employ the same ritual or allocate it the same degree of importance.45 Mary Åströms Förlag, 1991), pp. 351–86; Roberta Tomber, ‘Quantitative approaches to the investigation of long-distance exchange,’ Journal of Roman Archaeology 6 (1993): 142–66. Exchange networks and commodities in Medieval culture are the subjects of important historical studies, such as: Janet Abu Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System, A.D. 1250– 1350 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); Thomas Allsen, Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A cultural History of Islamic Textiles, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). For a broader historical scope, see also Philip Curtin, Cross-cultural Trade in World History, Studies in Comparative World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 44 Igor Kopytoff, ‘The cultural biography of things,’ in Arjun Appadurai, ed., The social Life of Things: Commodities in cultural Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 64–91. Also Michael Rowlands, ‘Value and cultural transmission of things,’ in Wim van Binsbergen and Peter Geschiere, eds, Commodification: Things, Agency and Identity (The Social Life of Things revisited) (Münster: Lit, 2005), pp. 267–81. 45 Arjun Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value,’ in Arjun Appadurai, ed., The social Life of Things: Commodities in cultural Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 3–63. See also

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Helms has emphasised the role of ‘esoteric knowledge’ in the maintenance of relations of power in pre-modern societies.46 This concept has clear implications for the circulation of rare commodities that were generally the preserve of societal elites. Value in such contexts tends to be predicated on the generation of oral or written narratives establishing historical associations or extrinsic characteristics that pertain to ritualised uses of the commodity.47 While some narratives might enjoy wide circulation, others would be known to a select few in a society, such as the religious officials tasked with enacting a specific ceremony. Objects can also be viewed as having ‘agency’ in their own right, affecting human behaviour in different ways according to context and location.48 Finbarr Flood provides examples of this complex process in the translation of objects across cultural boundaries in Medieval India.49 Scholars have sought for ways to describe the range of interactions between groups and societies that occur in historical and contemporary contexts and the effects that these forms of human contact had on material and visual culture. It is important to recognise

contributions in Wim van Binsbergen and Peter Geschiere, eds, Commodification: Things, Agency and Identity (The Social Life of Things revisited) (Münster: Lit, 2005). 46 Mary Helms, Ulysses’ Sail: An ethnographic Odyssey of Power, Knowledge and geographical Distance (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). 47 For example, see Julian Raby, ‘Terra Lemnia and the potteries of the Golden Horn: An antique revival under Ottoman auspices,’ Byzantinische Forschungen 21 (1995): 305–42; Marcus Milwright, ‘Balsam in the Mediaeval Mediterranean: A case study of information and commodity exchange,’ Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 14.1 (2001): 3–23. 48 Ian Hodder, Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things (Oxford and New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). On p. 69 he notes: ‘this dependence [on things] draws humans in, sometimes seems to lock them in, to specific forms of behavior – a human behavior adjusted to, even at times regulated by the behavior of things.’ 49 Finbarr Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval Hindu-Muslim Encounter (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 61–87 et passim.

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the power differentials that can shape the interaction itself.50 Clearly, cultural encounters between polities of broadly equal political, economic, and military power will take on a different character to the flow of objects and ideas from a colonising group and a colonised one.51 Power relationships could also be a matter of perceived cultural superiority, as might be argued for the Byzantine empire’s calculated dispatches of art and skilled artisans to other kingdoms and empires (even during phases of conflict). The impact of these initiatives can be seen in the long-term engagement between Islam and the visual culture of the Byzantine world.52 As noted in the previous section, the study of material and visual culture can address objects that find their way into new contexts for which they were not originally intended, objects that have been augmented or adjusted to fit into their new cultural environment, and newly created objects that possess elements drawn from two or more cultures (but which could not be mistaken as a product of a single tradition). There are different ways of theorising these phenomena, with the concept of hybridity providing a useful means to appreciate the processes that generate new forms in what Homi Bhabha defines as the ‘third space.’53 This space is quite distinct from its host cultures, permitting the growth of innovative visual and textual discourses. 50

For example, cross-pollination, translation, acculturation, creolisation, assimilation, and hybridity. 51 Influential studies in this field include Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture, Routledge Classics (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004); Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1994). For a survey of other important interpretations, see Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, eds, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1995). 52 Hamilton A. R. Gibb, ‘Arab-Byzantine relations,’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 12 (1958): 221–33; El-Cheikh, Byzantium viewed by the Arabs. 53 The concept derives from Bhabha, Location of Culture. For art-historical discussions of hybridity in relation to Islamic material and visual culture, see Talinn Grigor, ‘Orient oder Rom? Qajar “Aryan” architecture and Strzygowski’s art history,’ Art Bulletin 89.3 (2007): 562–90; Esra Akcan, ‘Channels and items of translation,’ in Jill Casid and Aruna D’Souza, eds, Art History in the Wake of the Global Turn, Clark Studies in the Visual Arts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 145–60.

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The issue of representation can also be appreciated in the context of evolving power relations between the Islamic world and its neighbours. This critical analysis has been productively directed toward the European (and, from the nineteenth century, North American) representations of the ‘Orient,’ through academic study, popular literature, drama, and visual arts.54 Many of the representations dealt with throughout this book can be broadly described as ‘Orientalist’ in nature, though a clear distinction can be made between a European image of a sultan made in Italy or Germany during the sixteenth century (a time of Ottoman imperial expansion) and one made in the nineteenth century, when Western Europe was in the political and economic ascendancy. Similar points can be made about the evolution of European scholarship on the Islamic world from the early Modern period to more recent times (on this, see especially Chapter 10).55 Portraits represent a specialised category of representations. Notions of ‘likeness,’ and, more broadly, the roles performed by portraits are culturally-defined.56 The production of portraits also takes on political and religious connotations, as is seen, for example, The foundational text on this field is Said, Orientalism. This study has generated extensive critiques, both positive and negative. For example, see: A. L. Macfie, ed., Orientalism, a Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000); Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies (London: Penguin Books, 2007) (especially, pp. 310–30). A valuable case study dealing with Egyptian perceptions of a late nineteenthcentury Orientalist recreation, see Timothy Mitchell, ‘Orientalism and the exhibitionary order,’ in Nicholas Dirks, ed., Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), pp. 289–318. 55 On this scholarship, see Irwin, For Lust of Knowing. 56 For example, see: Richard Brilliant, Portraiture, Essays in Art and Culture (London: Reaktion Books, 1991); Priscilla Soucek, ‘The theory and practice of portraiture in the Persian tradition,’ Muqarnas 17 (2000): 97–108; Maguire, Icons of their Bodies; Maria Loh, ‘Renaissance faciality,’ Oxford Journal of Art (Special Issue. Mal’Ochhio: Looking Awry at the Renaissance) 32.3 (2009): 341–63; Bronwen Wilson, ‘Learning how to read: Giovanni Battista della Porta, Physiognomy, and printed portrait books,’ Visual Knowledges Conference, The University of Edinburgh, 17-20 September 2003. Pdf available at: http://www.iash.ed.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/wilson.pdf (last consulted: 2 March 2016). 54

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in European depictions of rulers from the Islamic world and the Americas.57 The chapters of this volume are divided into three broad themes, though there is some degree of overlap between them. The first section (Chapters 1–4) is devoted to a range of interactions between Islamic art and architecture and the material and visual cultures of the Middle East and Mediterranean regions prior to the seventh century. Chapter 1 addresses the production of relief-moulded pottery in the early Abbasid (late eighth and early ninth centuries) workshops excavated in Raqqa, Syria. Constructed to support the newly founded Abbasid city (madīna) of al-Rafiqa, the pottery workshops produced a wide range of utilitarian and decorated ceramic wares. Excavations have revealed both moulds and finished vessels of reliefmoulded wares, allowing for a detailed consideration of the manufacturing process, and the methods used in the formation of repeat patterns. Analysis of these patterns suggests ways in which those tasked with decorating the vessels drew on the visual vocabulary of Late Antiquity, but also started to create visual relationships that anticipate later developments in Islamic ornament. Chapter 2 analyses the logistical considerations involved in the construction and ornamentation of the types of palatial buildings found in the ninth-century Abbasid capital of Samarra. A particular challenge in southern Mesopotamia was the paucity of fuel, necessitating a reliance on mud-brick in the majority of the structures in the city. Building techniques show the continued reliance upon the ancient craft traditions of Iraq and the surrounding regions. Chapter 3 57

For example, Bronwen Wilson, ‘Reflecting on the Turk in late sixteenthcentury Venetian portrait books,’ Word & Image 19.1 (2003): 38–58. Also contributions in James Harper, ed., The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450–1750: Visual Imagery before Orientalism (Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2011). On the representation of peoples in Central America, see James Córdova, ‘Drinking from the fifth cup: Notes on the drunken Indian image in colonial Mexico,’ Word & Image 31.1 (2015): 1–18. Also see discussion in Chapter 11 of this volume.

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focuses on a single material used in Islamic architectural ornamentation. The methods of cutting marble veneer draw heavily on Late Antique practices, and connections can be drawn between passages of ekphrasis (rhetorical description) in Greek and later accounts of architectural spaces by writers from the Islamic world. Descriptions of the patterning of marble in Arabic and Persian develop themes that have a particular resonance in Islamic culture, particularly the fascination with the aesthetic qualities of fine textiles. Chapter 4 looks at Arab manuscript painting in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, and questions the extent to which we can consider the representation of named individuals – scholars from the Islamic and pre-Islamic periods – to be ‘portraits.’ It is argued that the portrait is a culturally constructed category, and that in the context of the literate classes of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Middle East, it involves a fusion of classical ideas and perspectives drawn from Arabic writing. The chapter examines the potential role of ancient Greek physiognomic studies in the Islamic appreciation of depicted facial features. The second section of the book addresses the theme of encounters resulting from war and military conquest. Chapter 5 reviews the evidence concerning the Red Sea expedition planned by the Crusader lord of Oultrejourdain, Reynald of Châtillon. This audacious plan to launch boats into the Red Sea is only recorded in one contemporary Frankish source, but is discussed in greater detail by Arab chroniclers and travellers. The Arab sources contend that Reynald intended for his men to march to Medina in order to exhume the remains of the Prophet Muhammad and bring them back to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Allowing for the possibility that this is simply propaganda, the chapter provides a cultural context for the practice of moving bodily relics in Medieval Europe and the Middle East. The last part examines the apparent removal of the head of Husayn ibn ʿAli from Ascalon to Cairo in 1154, and the potential relevance of this event to Reynald’s understanding of Islamic attitudes toward the dead. Chapter 6 focuses on the schematic depiction of a stem cup in the heraldic motifs (often know by scholars as blazons) of the Mamluk sultanate (1250–1517). The cup represents the office of the sāqī, or cupbearer, and is a common motif from the 1290s through to the end of the dynasty. The profile of the cup does not correlate, however,

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with the types of drinking vessel employed in informal or ritualised events among the Mamluk elite. This fact opens up the possibility that the cup was introduced from elsewhere. The chapter seeks an explanation for the Mamluk stem cup motif in the gifting of cups, the forcible appropriation of coats-of-arms, and other forms of visual and material interaction between Franks and Muslims during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The final chapter (7) of this section is a previously unpublished study based on books and manuscripts in the McPherson Library of the University of Victoria. The study focuses on the experiences of soldiers during World War I, who either served in the Middle East or reflected on this theatre of operations in their writing and images. Two of the examples dealt with in the chapter deal with the Palestine campaign, and the third with the Mesopotamian campaign. This third example comprises an annotated copy of Edmund Candler’s 1919 publication, The Long Road to Baghdad. The original owner of the book, H. V. S. Page chose to add marginal notes, as well as pasting into the two volumes of the book photographs, typed documents, and newspaper cuttings collected during his time in Iraq (1917–23). The third section deals with visual and textual representations of Muslim rulers in ‘Western’ media from the fifteenth to the early twenty-first centuries. These have been arranged in broadly chronological order according to the regnal dates of the represented ruler. The subject of Chapter 8 is a woodcut image of Saladin (Salah alDin) produced for a sixteenth-century illustrated biographical encyclopaedia compiled by the Italian bishop, Paolo Giovio (d. 1552). Analysis of the woodcut, and the oil painting on which it is based, demonstrates that Giovio was probably relying on visual material made during the Mamluk sultanate (1250–1517), though he offered novel interpretations of the iconography of the elaborate turban. Giovio was evidently fascinated by Muslim rulers, including ‘portraits’ of all the sultans of the Ottoman dynasty in the same encyclopaedia. The Central Asian conqueror, Tamerlane (Timur-i Lang or Temür, d. 1405), is another to appear in his portrait collection and biographical studies. Tamerlane is also pictured in many other printed works. This diverse group of images is assessed in Chapter 9. He occupies an unusual position in early Modern European scholarship

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in that he was both reviled for his cruelty and revered as a successful adversary of the Ottoman empire. The chapter discusses the concept of the ‘scourge of God,’ and how it was used to rationalise the constructed personality of Tamerlane. Chapter 10 is concerned with one event in the life of the Central Asian conqueror: the capture and subsequent treatment of Bayezid I (r. 1389–1402). The Ottoman sultan was apprehended after the battle of Ankara in 1402, and died in captivity in 1403, but little else is known for certain. This lack of resolution is not the result of a paucity of source material: numerous writers advance claims about the humiliations endured by the sultan, particularly that Tamerlane placed his captive in a cage. Other more lurid details include the use of golden chains, the degrading treatment of the sultan’s wife, and that Bayezid had to feed on scraps thrown from Tamerlane’s table. While these ornamentations to the basic narrative are easily disproved, the story of the cage is more problematic, and was taken seriously by many scholars of Islamic history from the seventeenth century onwards. This chain of authorities is examined, illustrating the reliance upon a small number of primary accounts. The last section revisits the most important Greek, Arabic, and Persian primary texts. The last sultan of the Mamluk dynasty, al-Ashraf Tumanbay II was one of many victims of the Ottoman territorial advances of the sixteenth century. His fate did not capture the imaginations of European scholars, artists, and playwrights in the same way as that of Bayezid I, though there are some interesting depictions in printed books. Chapter 11 focuses on one in a biographical encyclopaedia compiled by the French writer, André Thevet. Notably, the sultan is not shown in regal posture, but bound in ropes, stripped of his turban, and with eyes raised upward in the manner of a Christian martyr. The iconography of this unusual composition is analysed, with reference made to textual accounts of his capture and execution in Arabic and European sources. The last chapter (12) also deals with images of capture, focusing on the decision to broadcast the medical examination of Saddam Hussein in December 2003. The former leader of Iraq was also the subject of written and visual representations in popular media across Europe and North America. The strategies employed in these images are compared to sixteenth-century printed representations of the humiliations said to have been inflict-

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ed on sultan Bayezid by Tamerlane. The comparison illustrates the consistent recourse to historical allusions, and a fascination with violence and abuses of personal dignity.

CHAPTER 1. RAQQA BEFORE ‘RAQQA WARES’: TOWARD A TYPOLOGY OF ORNAMENT IN THE CERAMIC WORKSHOPS OF EARLY

ABBASID TAL ASWAD1

The creation of typologies is a fundamental component of the study of ceramics. Most attention has been paid by scholars to the profiles of vessels as this information is the easiest to convey in diagrammatic form in archaeological publications. If they are to be meaningful, typologies clearly also need to take account of other factors including ceramic fabric, manufacturing practices, and the addition of surface treatments such as burnishing, incising, moulding, slips, and glazes. The study of pottery recovered from Islamic occupation phases in 1 Marcus Milwright, ‘Raqqa before “Raqqa wares”: Toward a typology of ornament in the ceramic workshops of early Abbasid Tal Aswad,’ alRāfidān 32 (2011): 232–45. The present version is revision of the 2011 article, correcting typographical errors and expanding the discussion. It has also been augmented with additional references. I am most grateful to Véronique François for her invitation to participate in the Round Table held at the LAMM in Aix-en-Provence in May 2010. The initial research for this chapter was undertaken in Raqqa between 1998 and 2001 as part of the Raqqa Ancient Industries Project (directed by Professor Julian Henderson of the University of Nottingham). The last season of my research in 2001 was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board, UK.

31

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the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula must, of course, pay close attention to questions of surface treatment and ornamentation. All of these regions are marked by a rich diversity of decorated ceramic traditions, both unglazed and glazed, from the eighth century onward. Surveying some of the better published groups of Islamic decorated pottery – such as the sgraffito wares and the underglazepainted stonepaste wares of the Mamluk period in Egypt and Syria2 – one is struck by the dazzling abundance of compositions employed on bowls, closed vessels, and other forms. This huge variety clearly represents a considerable methodological challenge, one that is often further compounded by uncertainties concerning chronology and provenance. A valuable contribution to the study of decorated typologies has been made by Robert Mason in his reconstruction of the early history of lustre-painted ceramics in the Middle East.3 Mason recognises that the complex designs on the interiors of bowls (and the simple, repeated patterns on the exteriors) can be broken down into smaller components, each of which can be 2

On these, see: Marilyn Jenkins, ‘Mamluk underglaze-painted pottery: Foundations for future study,’ Muqarnas 2 (1984): 95–114; Cristina Tonghini, Qalʿat Jaʿbar Pottery. A Study of a Syrian fortified Site of the late 11th–14th Centuries, British Academy Monographs in Archaeology 11 (London and Oxford: Council for British Research in the Levant and Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 27–74; Marcus Milwright, ‘Modest luxuries: Decorated lead-glazed pottery in the south of Bilad al-Sham (thirteenth–fourteenth Century),’ Muqarnas 20 (2003): 85–111; Bethany Walker, ‘Ceramic evidence for political transformations in early Mamluk Egypt,’ Mamluk Studies Review 8.1 (2004): 1–114; Marcus Milwright, ‘Turquoise and black: Notes on an underglaze-painted stonepaste ware of the Mamluk period,’ Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 140.3 (2008): 123–34. 3 Robert Mason, Shine like the Sun: Lustre-painted and associated Pottery from the Medieval Middle East, Bibliotheca Iranica. Islamic Art and Architecture Series 12 (Costa Mesa CA and Toronto: Mazda and Royal Ontario Museum, 2004). See also Lisa Golombek, Robert Mason and Gauvin Bailey, Tamerlane’s Tableware: A new Approach to Chinoiserie Ceramics of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Iran, Bibliotheca Iranica. Islamic Art and Archaeology Series 6 (Costa Mesa CA and Toronto: Mazda and Royal Ontario Museum, 1996).

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drawn and categorised. His reasoning is that these constitute the learned marks of individual painters or workshops. These marks are akin to the set of movements performed by a potter when making a specific vessel shape repeatedly on a kick wheel. Mason seeks to combine his vocabulary of decorative components with a conventional typology of vessel profiles and the scientific analysis of ceramic fabrics and glazes. Mason’s integrated analysis of the physical and visual characteristics of glazed ceramics has yielded significant results. At a methodological level one needs to recognise that the formation of typologies of simple painted marks or motifs is, to a greater or lesser extent, a matter of subjective judgement. In this respect early Islamic relief-moulded ware offers an interesting opportunity to examine the possibilities and pitfalls of constructing typologies of ornamental features because the principal decorative tool is the (metal) punch. The marks made by such stamps are relatively easy to categorise both on the decorative moulds (fig. 1.1) and on the finished vessels. Indeed, this process of categorising decorative and epigraphic punches is already commonplace in the study of Roman terra sigillata and the stamped ornament on Late Antique African red slipware.4 Substantial numbers of moulds and relief-moulded sherds have been recovered from German and British excavations of the early Abbasid industrial site known as Tal Aswad (‘Black hill’), north of the suburb of Mishlab in the city of Raqqa in northeastern Syria.5 Relief-moulded wares were produced in the workshops of Tal Aswad for a limited period (see below), and the extensive assemblage from this locality allows for a detailed evaluation of the [233] working practices of the potters. For example, see: Felix Oswald and Thomas Pryce, An Introduction to the Study of Terra Sigillata, treated from a chronological Standpoint. Reprinted with revisions by G. Simpson (London: Gregg Press, 1966); John Hayes, Late Roman Pottery (London: British School at Rome, 1972), pp. 217–83; Brian Hartley and Brenda Dickinson, Names on Terra Sigillata: An Index of Makers’ Stamps and Signature on Gallo-Roman Sigillata (Samian Ware), 9 vols (London: Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, 2008–). 5 For a map of the site, see Peter Miglus, ed., Ar-Raqqa I: Frühislamische Keramik von Tall Aswad (Mainz am Rhein: Phillip von Zabern, 1999), taf. 1. 4

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Figure 1.1. Ceramic mould recovered from a surface deposit at Tal Aswad, Syria, with drawings of the punch designs. Late eighth or early ninth century. The analysis of relief-moulded pottery from Tal Aswad presented here includes consideration of the process of manufacture, the typology, and dating of the extant vessels, and an examination of the composition of the ornament. The first task in the analysis of the ornament involves identification of the vocabulary of punch designs as they appear both on the moulds and the extant sherds. The next stage involves looking at how these individual motifs were used, with incised lines, to generate repeat patterns and a range of composite motifs. Two questions are particularly relevant here: first, do there exist factors that act as constraints upon the ways in which specific motifs are spatially arranged?; and second, what are the recurrent structures employed in the formation of larger decorative schemes? This research aims ultimately to construct a ‘grammar’ for the decoration on relief-moulded pottery.6 This chapter presents some initial 6

For an example of this type of study of ceramic ornamentation, see Dorothy Washburn, A Symmetry Analysis of Upper Gila Area Ceramic Design (Cambridge MA: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 1977). For more on this issue, see Dorothy Washburn, Dorothy and Donald Crowe, Symmetries of Culture: Theory and Practice

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stages in this larger analytical project. A comparison is made with the relief-moulded pottery gathered from other sites excavated by the Raqqa Ancient Industries Project (led by Professor Julian Henderson of Nottingham University, UK) and with the published finds from the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (German Archaeological Institute) at Tal Aswad.7 In the final section the results are placed into the wider context of the development of ornament in the early Islamic period. This also requires a consideration of the relationship between the ornamental modes of Late Antiquity and those of the first three centuries of the Islamic period. Scholars have demonstrated that many of the characteristic aspects of Islamic two- and three-dimensional ornament (such as the creation of geometric patterns employing multiple lines of symmetry) do not come into being before the eleventh century. Early Islamic decorative arts exhibit signs of continuity with the pre-Islamic centuries, though there are significant dynamics, including the gradual rejection of classical naturalism and an interest in spatial ambiguity. Both are, of course, exemplified in the ‘bevelled’ style in Samarra, though they are also manifested in Islamic art before the ninth century.8 The relief-moulded pottery of Tal Aswad is one example of this of Plane-Pattern Analysis (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987). For a critical evaluation of structuralist approaches to archaeology, see Ian Hodder, Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 35–56. 7 On these projects, see: Miglus, ed., Ar-Raqqa I; Julian Henderson, ‘Archaeological investigations of an Islamic industrial complex at Raqqa, Syria,’ Damaszener Mitteilungen 11 (1999): 243–65; Julian Henderson, Keith Challis, Sarah O’Hara, Sean McLoughlin, Adam Gardner, and Gary Priestnall, ‘Experiment and innovation: Early Islamic industry at al-Raqqa, Syria,’ Antiquity 79 (2005): 130–45. For more recent work, see: Véronique François and Ibrahim Shaddoud, ‘Un nouvel atelier de potier d’époque Abbasside au sud de Tell Abou Ali à Raqqa,’ al-Rāfidān 34 (2013): 21–81. 8 On these issues, see: Terry Allen, Five Essays on Islamic Art (Sebastapol CA: Solipsist Press, 1988); Michael Meinecke, ‘Early Abbasid stucco in Bilad al-Sham,’ in M. Adnan Bakhit and Robert Schick, eds, Bilad al-Sham during the ʿAbbasid Period (132 A.H./750 A.D. – 451 A.H./1059 A.D.). Proceedings of the fifth International Conference for the History of Bilad al-

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broader phenomenon. Before embarking upon this analysis, it is necessary to establish briefly the setting of Tal Aswad within the historical development of Raqqa in the early Islamic period.

TAL ASWAD IN THE EARLY ISLAMIC PERIOD The industrial region of the site, known today as Tal Aswad, came into being as the result of the construction of the new city of alRafiqa (‘the Companion’) in the last quarter of the eighth century.9 The impressively fortified city of al-Rafiqa was located approximately 600m to the west of the existing settlement, called Kallinikos. Following its incorporation into the new Islamic polity in 639–40, Kallinikos was renamed al-Raqqa (a term that means ‘swamp,’ referring to the backwash of the Balikh river). Prior to the commencement of building work on al-Rafiqa in 771–72, the area immediately north of Raqqa-Kallinikos was utilised as a cemetery for [234] the indigenous Christian population,10 and it appears to have continued this function following the establishment of the pottery workshops. Some fourteen kilns have been located during geophysical surveys and excavations by the Raqqa Ancient Industries Project in the vicinity of Tal Aswad (the excavated sites are known as TA98/1, TA00/1, Sham (Amman: Lajnat Tarikh Bilad al-Sham, 1991), pp. 226–37 (English and French section); Gülru Neçipoğlu, The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (Santa Monica CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1995); Marcus Milwright, ‘Samarra and ʿAbbasid ornament,’ in Gülru Neçipoğlu and Finbarr Flood, eds, The Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, Blackwell Companions to Art History (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), I: 177–96. 9 On the history of the region in the early Islamic period, see: Stefan Heidemann, ‘Geschichte von ar-Raqqa/ar-Rafiqa – ein Überblick,’ in Stefan Heidemann and Andrea Becker, eds, Raqqa II: Die islamische Stadt (Mainz am Rhein: Phillip von Zabern, 2003), pp. 9–56; Stefan Heidemann, ‘The history of the industrial and commercial area of ʿAbbasid al-Raqqa, called al-Raqqa al-Muḥtariqa,’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 69.1 (2006): 33–52. 10 On the Christian population, see: Chase Robinson, ‘Ar-Raqqa in the Syriac historical tradition,’ in Stefan Heidemann and Andrea Becker, eds, Al-Raqqa II: Die islamische Stadt (Mainz am Rhein: Phillip von Zabern, 2003), pp. 81–85.

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TA00/2, and TA01/2, and probably comprise three distinct workshops). Additional kilns were discovered further to the east in earlier German excavations.11 Tal Aswad formed part of a larger Abbasid period industrial complex comprising a substantial glass workshop built on the hypocaust of an earlier bathhouse (at a site further west known today as Tal Zujaj) and perhaps also other heavy industrial manufacturing facilities (such as ironworking and brick making) in the land between Raqqa-Kallinikos and al-Rafiqa.12 It seems probable that the pottery workshops of Tal Aswad were operated by teams of potters brought into the area from other regions (there is no sign of industrial activity on the site prior to c. 770). Iraqi towns such as al-Hira may have provided some of the specialised manpower.13 The main task of the Tal Aswad potters was evidently to produce utilitarian unglazed wares – water jugs (wheelthrown and relief-moulded types), storage vessels, cooking pots, lamps, chamber pots, and drainpipes – needed by the inhabitants of al-Rafiqa (which was built to house a garrison of soldiers

Miglus, ed., Ar-Raqqa I, taf. 5. For a map of the whole site, see: Verena Daiber and Andrea Becker, eds, Raqqa III: Baudenkmäler und Paläste I (Mainz am Rhein: Phillip von Zabern, 2004), map 3. 12 Cristina Tonghini and Julian Henderson, ‘An eleventh-century pottery production workshop at al-Raqqa. Preliminary report,’ Levant 30 (1998): 113–27; Henderson, ‘Archaeological investigations’; Henderson et al., ‘Experiment and innovation.’ 13 On the ceramics of al-Hira, see: David Talbot Rice, ‘The Oxford excavations at Hira,’ Ars Islamica 1 (1934): 51–73; Marie-Odile Rousset, ‘Quelques précisions sur le matériel de Ḥīra (céramique et verre),’ Archéologie Islamiques 4 (1994): 19–55. The issue of imported man-power and technologies, is discussed in Marcus Milwright, ‘External factors in the evolution of the ceramic industries of Raqqa, eighth to the early twelfth centuries,’ in Stefan Heidemann, ed., al-Raqqa V (Mainz am Rhein: Phillip von Zabern, forthcoming). On the introduction of buff-wares into early Islamic Greater Syria, see Alan Walmsley, ‘Turning East. The appearance of Islamic cream ware in Jordan: The “end of Antiquity”?’ in Erin Villeneuve and Pamela Watson, eds, La céramique Byzantine et proto-Islamique en Syrie-Jordanie (IVeVIIIe siècles apr. J.-C.), Bibliothèque Archéologique et Historique 159 (Beirut: IFPO, 2001), pp. 305–13. 11

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from Khurasan) and palaces constructed to the north.14 Excavations of the workshops and their associated refuse areas revealed much smaller quantities of glazed pottery, often of rather variable quality, probably indicating a continued reliance by consumers in RaqqaRafiqa on Basra and other major ceramic producers of Iraq for their decorated glazed wares.15 The high point of Abbasid Raqqa was during the occupation by the caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786– 809) and his court. For twelve years the city functioned as the seat of the caliphate, until the departure of Harun al-Rashid for Baghdad in 808. Raqqa-Rafiqa continued to be an important administrative centre after 808, but the breakdown in security in northern Jazira in the early ninth century appears to have adversely affected Tal Aswad. The governor, Tahir al-Husayn, is known to have constructed a defensive wall Raqqa-Rafiqa in 815.16 Keith Challis has tentatively identified this feature through analysis of satellite images, and if the route he proposes is correct, then it would mean that Tal Aswad was deliberately left as an extra-mural locality.17 The latest coin from Tal Aswad dates to 201/825–26, and it seems probable that ceramic production ceased around this time.18 Further work on the stratigraphy and the finds will be needed to establish the evolution of ceramic manufacture at Tal Aswad, but the basic 14

A full analysis of the ceramic assemblage of TA00/2 is being prepared for publication by the author. 15 Robert Mason and Edward Keall, ‘Between Baṣra and Sāmarrāʾ. Petrographic analysis,’ in Peter Miglus, ed., Ar-Raqqa I: Frühislamische Keramik von Tall Aswad (Mainz am Rhein: Phillip von Zabern, 1999), pp. 139–42. Also discussed in Milwright, ‘External factors.’ 16 Heidemann, Geschichte von ar-Raqqa/ar-Rafiqa,’ p. 37; ‘al-Raqqa alMuḥtariqa,’ p. 42. 17 Keith Challis, Keith, Gary Priestnall, Julian Henderson, and Sarah O’Hara, ‘Corona remotely-sensed imagery in dryland archaeology: The Islamic city of al-Raqqa, Syria,’ Journal of Field Archaeology 29 (2004): 146–48, fig. 6.4. 18 Stefan Heidemann, ‘Fundmünzen,’ in Peter Miglus, ed., Ar-Raqqa I: Frühislamische Keramik von Tall Aswad (Mainz am Rhein: Phillip von Zabern, 1999), pp. 15–16.

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chronological parameters can be defined with reasonable certainty from c. 771 to sometime between 815 and c. 826. In later centuries ceramic and glass manufacture shifted further west, first into the region between the two cities (which itself took on an urban character and came to be known as ‘the Burning Raqqa,’ al-Raqqa alMuḥtariqa), and in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries within the walls of al-Rafiqa.19

THE PRODUCTION OF RELIEF-MOULDED WARES AT TAL ASWAD 1. Vessel typology and manufacturing process The range of vessel types that employ relief-moulded decoration is limited. Jugs/ewers are the most common form, followed by slipper lamps (not discussed in this chapter), though other rare types are also reported. The fragment of a splashed ware bowl was recovered from Tal Zujaj. The bevel-cut rim of the bowl conforms to a type seen in Abbasid contexts at Tal Aswad. Prior to the application of glaze, the vessel was pressed into a decorative mould, but no attempt was subsequently made to smooth over the depressions made on the interior of the bowl. The rarity of this type is [235] probably explained by this rather awkward feature of the whole design. Another sherd from Tal Zujaj is from the neck of a closed form with a single handle attached to the lip of the vessel.20 The neck is wide and slightly flared in the manner of undecorated ‘egg shell’ wares found in Abbasid contexts all over Raqqa. Unlike the jugs from Tal Aswad, the neck of the vessel from Tal Zujaj is decorated with relief-moulding, including motifs such as arcades and large rosettes. These features are not found on relief-moulded pottery from TA00/2 or TA01/2.

19

Heidemann, ‘al-Raqqa al-Muḥtariqa,’ pp. 44–48; Marcus Milwright, ‘Ceramics from recent excavations near the eastern wall of Rafiqa (Raqqa), Syria,’ Levant 37 (2005): 197–219. 20 Henderson, ‘Archaeological investigations,’ fig. 4.

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The relief-moulded jugs from Tal Aswad all appear to have adopted much the same form. A complete profile was reconstructed from sherds excavated at TA00/2 (fig. 1.2). This profile correlates well with other examples of early Islamic relief-moulded jugs in the National Museum in Damascus, excavated in Raqqa and elsewhere in Syria.21 The jug is composed of a globular body standing on a high pedestal foot. The globular body connects to a tall cylindrical neck that rises to an angular rim (usually without a spout to facilitate the pouring of liquids). A long handle connects the uppermost part of the neck with the body. The top of the handle is fitted with a thumb rest, the summit of which may be decorated with a simple stamped or incised design. Impressed patterns may also be seen on the remainder of the handle. This elaborate shape may have its origins in late Sasanian and early Islamic metalwork. The manufacturing process of the relief-moulded vessels was a complex one.22 Fortunately, the recovery of moulds and discarded vessels around the kilns at TA98, TA00/1, TA00/2, and TA01/2 means that it is possible to reconstruct many of the stages in the overall process.23 Examination of the ceramic fabric of the sherds from TA00/2 revealed a considerable degree of consistency in the texture, hardness, and mineral inclusions of the fired clay. This was a well-prepared and finely-levigated, porous paste. Much the same clay appears to have been used in the manufacture of the moulds. The fired colour proved to be more variable, ranging from pale green to buff and pink, though this is probably the result of changes in the atmosphere of the kiln during the firing. A few examples from Abu al-Faraj al-ʿUsh, ‘Fukhkhār ghayr maṭlī, II,’ Annales Archéologiques Arabes Syriennes 11–12 (1961–62): pls. 1, 11.54, 56, 57; Daiber and Becker, eds, Raqqa III, taf. 68. For references to other published sites in Syria and Iraq, see: Julia Gonnella, ‘Reliefkeramik,’ in Peter Miglus, ed., Ar-Raqqa I: Frühislamische Keramik von Tall Aswad (Mainz am Rhein: Phillip von Zabern, 1999), p. 55. 22 On this process, see Jan Kalsbeek, ‘Medieval pottery from the Levant entirely or partly made in moulds,’ Newsletter of the Department of Pottery Technology, Leiden University 9/10 (1991–92): 47–53. 23 On the relief-moulded wares from the German excavations Tal Aswad, see Gonnella, ‘Reliefkeramik,’ pp. 58–61, 63–75, taf. 77–88. 21

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TA00/2 and elsewhere had fired dark grey, perhaps indicating that they had shattered during the firing, later becoming part of the rake out from the kiln.

Figure 1.2. Reconstructed profile of a relief-moulded unglazed ceramic jug produced at TA00/2. Late eighth or early ninth century. The most important part of the process is the manufacture of the globular body because this carried the relief-moulded decoration. The moulds found at Tal Aswad are wheelthrown with thick walls and are approximately hemispherical on the interior. The internal surface was

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carefully smoothed prior to the application of the incised and stamped [236] decoration (done when the mould was leather hard). Concentric incised lines were presumably made with the mould fixed on a wheel or turning stand, while other incisions were made freehand. The remainder of the ornament was achieved using a variety of small punches, usually no more than 5mm in diameter though some larger punches were also detected (see below). In a few cases, it seems that moulds were either made by pressing a relief-moulded vessel into the wet clay of the mould (i.e. to produce a second-generation design) or by using as a punch a small baked clay tablet impressed with a design. In both cases the quality of the resulting moulded decoration is coarser and much less well defined than is the case with the first technique. The body of the jug was made by pressing wet clay into the mould. Analysis of the sherds indicates that the same repeated finger motion from the base of the mould up to the rim was made by the craftsmen of the TA00/2 workshop. This contrasts with the sherds from TA01/2, which exhibit much less care in pressing the clay into the mould. Once the clay had been pressed into the mould, the edges were cut with a blade to create a bevelled edge. This process was repeated in order to create the other half of the body. (No example was detected where moulds with different designs had been used in the manufacture of the upper and lower halves of the jug.) in order to affix the two halves, a ribbon of wet clay was placed between the two (fig. 1.3). The two halves were then pressed together, the joint disguised on the exterior with a hand-formed ‘piecrust’ decoration. In many examples from TA00/2 the two halves sheared off at the junction during the firing, perhaps because the clay had been allowed to become too dry before the joint was made (this same problem is also seen in the manufacture of slipper lamps; fig. 1.4). A hole was then made in the top of the body before the addition of the neck (pierced filters are uncommon, though they are encountered on some contemporary egg-shell wares). Both the neck and the foot were turned on a wheel before being connected to the body, the junctions being smoothed over and covered with a band of simple incised decoration. A handle was then attached with the hand-moulded thumb rest added as the last element of the design.

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Figure 1.3. Interior view of a sherd from the body of reliefmoulded unglazed ceramic jug excavated at Tal Aswad. Late eighth or early ninth century.

Figure 1.4. Upper and lower sections from ceramic slipper lamps excavated at Tal Aswad. Late eighth or early ninth century. It is not clear from the excavated kilns at Tal Aswad whether relief-moulded vessels were fired separately from other types of unglazed pottery. The absence of glazed drips on the relief-moulded

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wares from TA00/2 indicates that they were probably not stacked in the kiln with glazed pottery, however. Furthermore, kiln rods and plates were not recovered from around the TA00/2 kilns, even though these are common from the later phase of ceramic production represented by the finds from Tal Fukhkhar (fig. 1.5).24 The variation detected in the fired colour of sherds from Tal Aswad is evidence that the chamber of the kiln might be subject to shifts between oxidising and reducing atmospheres. For unglazed pottery this lack of control was probably of little consequence for the durability of the finished product. 2. Incised and punched decoration The decorative schemes of the Abbasid relief-moulded wares from Raqqa rely upon two basic elements in the formation of the design: free-drawn lines with a sharp stylus and motifs created through the use of punches. The incised lines vary in depth and profile. Commonly, lines are used to subdivide the ornamental field into narrow concentric band and wider central friezes, though a few moulds do not adopt this strategy. Lines might be added to create further subdivisions to form the branches and stems of continuous vinescroll ornaments. No example was identified where an incised line passed over or obliterated a stamped motif. This suggests that the linear elements were drawn on the moulds prior to the application of the stamped motifs. Stamped motifs were identified through examination of both the moulds excavated by the Raqqa Ancient Industries Project at Tal Aswad (TA98, TA00/1, TA00/2, TA01/2) and other sides (Tal Abu ʿAli and Tal Zujaj) and the relief-moulded sherds recovered from TA00/2. The definition of the stamped motifs found on the moulds is usually much sharper with details (sometimes only visible [237] under magnification) that do not find their way onto the sherds. For this reason, it is not always possible to ascertain whether a specific motif identified on a mould and on a relief-moulded sherd were made using 24 On the finds from this site, see Tonghini and Henderson, ‘Pottery production workshop.’ A complete examination of the pottery from this site is being prepared for publication by the author.

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the same punch. Furthermore, TA00/2 produced no example of a sherd from a relief-moulded vessels that could be correlated with the overall decorative composition found on a surviving mould from Tal Aswad. This anomaly may be partly explained if the extant moulds were those that broke during firing, and, thus, were never used. What happened to the moulds that were actually used remained unresolved, however. The identification of the designs of individual punches is complicated by the formation of simple composite designs from two or three decorative tools. Examples of this practice include circular or lozenge frames around other smaller motifs and the combination of a dotted with a three-part leaf. It is not always possible to ascertain whether such composite were made with one or more punches.

Figure 1.5. Ceramic kiln rods excavated at Tal Fukhkhar, Raqqa. Eleventh or twelfth century?

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Seventy-one separate punch designs were isolated on the moulds excavated by the Raqqa Ancient Industries Project (fig. 1.6). The moulds from TA00/2 produced twenty-five designs (including the mould for a handle). The punch designs can be organised into a series of categories: ‘dots and circles’; ‘dots with punched holes’; ‘trefoils’; ‘ellipses’; ‘teardrops’; ‘hearts’; ‘lozenges’; ‘pentagons’; ‘horseshoes’; ‘leaves’; ‘rosettes’; ‘composite circle motifs’; ‘composite linear motifs’; ‘composite lozenge motifs’; ‘miscellaneous’; and ‘large composite motifs.’ This subdivision of the corpus of stamp motifs into broad categories is, of course, a heuristic device: it is not meant to imply either that the craftsmen would have recognised a specific motif as representing a ‘leaf’ a ‘rosette,’ or a ‘teardrop,’ or that this subdivision of the motifs into categories meaningfully reflects anything about the actual working practices of the potters of Abbasid Raqqa. That said, there are instances where one is justified in arguing that a motif can be given a descriptive label according to the function it performs in a larger decorative scheme. For example, the use of a motif in the context of a vinescroll ornament would tend to indicate that it was understood to be a representation, however abstracted, of an organic element. There is, however, room for considerable ambiguity in the area of representation (see below).

Figure 1.6. Selection of punch designs found on moulds and sherds from Tal Aswad (not to scale).

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Technically, the punched designs fall into two basic groups. The first group, comprising the majority of the corpus, is formed through the use of small punches made of metal.25 The designs are deeply impressed into the clay, and the details tend to be sharp. The second, and much smaller [238] group is more crude and shallow and was probably formed through the use of clay tablets or by pressing an already manufactured relief-moulded vessel into an undecorated mould. Examples of this latter category are reported from moulds excavated at TA98 and TA01/2. What becomes apparent from an examination of the first group of stamped designs on the mould is that the craftsmen were relying upon subtle variations within a small vocabulary of basic forms. Geometric forms such as dots, circles, ellipses, and lozenges are found in varying degrees of elaboration. Other broadly ‘representational’ motifs such as trefoils, horseshoes, and hearts, are also employed. Vegetal motifs (leaves and rosettes) tend to be highly schematic in character, such that many examples occupy an ambiguous territory between representation and geometric abstraction. Only one unquestionably zoomorphic motif was recovered, the bird on a mould from TA00/1. Absent from the Tal Aswad moulds were human and epigraphic elements, and only one published sherd from the German excavations of the site incorporates architectonic forms.26 The number of punches employed on a single mould varies considerably. The mould illustrated on figure 1.1 makes use of only three punches and a sharp point. Notably, the punch employed in the narrow band at the top is repeated in the compartments and bands established in the remainder of the decorative area. The same punches also appear on different moulds found at Tal Aswad, sug25

Unfortunately, no punch has been recovered during the excavations of the site. The assumption that they were made of metal is based on the fineness of the detail. This could only have been achieved using a very hard and durable material. Ivory and semi-precious stones, such as agate, are possible alternatives, though they are less likely than copper alloys, iron, or steel. 26 Miglus, ed., ar-Raqqa I, taf. 75.

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gesting that punches circulated among the potters within a given workshop, and perhaps even between workshops. These detailed punches must have been relatively expensive tools. An indication of the potential value of tools comes from the documents of the Cairo Geniza: contracts dealing with partnerships sometimes specify that specialised implements needed by a workshop constituted part of the shared assets.27 Studies of traditional ceramic manufacture in Pakistan also illustrate that a specialised items, such as a fritting kiln, could be co-owned by two pottery workshops.28 Eighty-three motifs were recovered from the relief-moulded sherds of TA00/2 (fig. 1.6). As with the moulds, it is possible to arrange these into a series of categories: ‘dots and circles’; ‘lozenges’; ‘horseshoes’; ‘leaves’; ‘rosettes’; ‘composite circle motifs’; and ‘large composite motifs.’ Many of the categories found on the moulds are taken up in the TA00/2 sherds, though some are absent on the sherds, including ‘pentagons,’ ‘composite linear,’ ‘composite lozenge,’ and zoomorphic motifs (all of which are rare on the extant moulds). Perhaps more telling is the comparison with the vocabulary of punched designs on the TA00/2 moulds. Predictably, there are numerous points of confluence, though some of the motifs are unique to the TA00/2 moulds. The sherds from TA00/2 include a greater range of motifs, including some new categories, such as the ‘triangle’ and the ‘cross,’ as well as variants upon ‘hearts,’ ‘leaves,’ ‘horseshoes,’ and ‘rosettes.’ In general, however, the typology of motifs follows the general character of the moulds with a strong emphasis on the use of two main groups: highly schematic vegetal forms and geometric abstract forms. Human, zoomorphic, epigraphic, and architectonic motifs are not found on the TA00/2 sherds. Arabic Shlomo Goitein, A Mediterranean Society. Volume I: Economic Foundations (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 87, 365. 28 Owen Rye and Clifford Evans, Traditional Pottery Techniques of Pakistan: Field and Laboratory Studies, Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 21 (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1976), p. 94. Discussed in Nurhan Atasoy and Julian Raby, Iznik: The Pottery of Ottoman Turkey (London: Alexandria Press, 1989), p. 63. 27

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script appears on one published relief-moulded bowl excavated in one of the Abbasid palaces north of al-Rafiqa, but the inscription makes clear that the mould (and, presumably, the vessel) were manufactured in al-Hira by one, Ibrahim al-Nasrani.29 The overwhelming majority of the motifs are symmetrical along one or more axes. In the case of leaf designs, this takes the form a strict symmetry across one axis formed by the central vein of the leaf. They are depicted flat to the picture plane, without any sense of curving in space. The same characteristics are apparent in the vegetal forms represented in the carved stucco panels of the Abbasid palaces located north of al-Rafiqa (figs 1.7, 1.8), and in ‘style 1’ panels from Samarra (fig. 1.9). Single axis symmetry can be demonstrated with other categories, such as teardrops, triangles, trefoils, and hearts. Ellipses and lozenges tend to be symmetrical through two perpendicular axes. Composite rosettes and composite circle designs may be symmetrical through two, three, or four axes. Single and multiple framing bands are a common feature. The other common area of elaboration is the use of tiny decorative marks, usually dots or hatching with oblique dashes, to fill the framing band. It is difficult to account for the additional level of detail on functional grounds because this [239] very seldom registers on the relief-moulded sherds. The fact that so much of the fine detail of the punches can be seen on the moulds but fails to register on the finished vessels is a strong indication that the punches were initially made for some other purpose. Repoussé metalwork or leatherworking are both possibilities in this respect.30

29

Gonnella, ‘Reliefkeramik,’ pp. 57–58; Claus-Peter Haase, ‘Inschriften der islamischen Zeit,’ in Stefan Heidemann and Andrea Becker, eds, Raqqa II: Die islamische Stadt (Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern, 2003), p. 109, no. 46, taf. 38.1. On an inscription added over the surface of a buff-ware jug, see Marcus Milwright, ‘An inscribed jug from Raqqa: Scripture and the expression of identity,’ in Melia Belli Bose and Saleema Waraich, eds, Intersections: Visual Cultures of Islamic Cosmopolitanism (Miami: University of Florida Press: forthcoming).

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Figure 1.7. Carved stucco panels from the palaces located north of alRafiqa (Raqqa), Syria. Late eighth or early ninth century. Photographed by the author in the Raqqa Archaeological Museum in 2001.

Figure 1.8. Carved stucco panels from the palaces located north of alRafiqa (Raqqa), Syria. Late eighth or early ninth century. Photographed by the author in the Raqqa Archaeological Museum in 2001. 30

On the sharing of decorative punches by potters and metalworkers in Medieval Europe, see Catherine Mortimer, ‘Punching and stamping on Anglo-Saxon

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Figure 1.9. Drawing of a detail from a carved stucco frieze (‘style A’) from Samarra, Iraq. Ninth century. 3. The compositional field and repeated bands In the majority of both the moulds and the relief-moulded sherds from TA00/2 the compositional field is broken up into a series of concentric bands. A broad division is proposed here between the narrow bands (generally composed of one motif repeated or simple combinations of motifs) and friezes (generally containing repetitions of one or more complex composite design). Although this division into bands and friezes is somewhat artificial, it is clear from an examartefacts,’ in Guy de Boe and Frans Verhaeghe, eds, Material Culture in Medieval Europe: Papers of the ‘Medieval Europe Brugge 1997’ Conference, vol. 7 (Zellick: Instituut voor het Archeologisch Patrimonium, 1997), pp. 77–85.

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ination of the complete compositions that the narrow bands are usually placed above and below the friezes to act as a frame. A few comments can be offered about the arrangement of the patterns within the narrow bands. The simplest make use of a single motif. At its most basic, the design can be achieved by repeating the given motif along the central axis parallel to the concentric incised lines that frame the band. Thus, a line of symmetry is created through the centre of the band. In some cases this is varied by: placing the line of motifs in the lower part of the band; tilting the motifs slightly off the central axis; arranging the motifs vertically within the band; or alternating the orientation of the motifs. Greater complexity could be introduced by the alternation of two or more motifs (often with the motifs arranged vertically and connected to one another by curved lines incised into the mould). The most complex designs found in the narrow bands take the form of rather abstracted vinescrolls (these also appear in the main friezes) (fig. 1.10). Incised lines were added first with the punches being applied in the gaps to create designs that are usually broadly symmetrical along a central axis. While some of the vinescrolls attempt a degree of naturalism through the use of leaf-shaped punches and a punch comprised of six open circles arranged in a triangular formation, in imitation of a bunch [240] of grapes, the designers of the moulds evidently felt free to incorporate other motifs. For example, one vinescroll utilises a heart and a rosette punch, and another uses the same ‘heart’ in an asymmetrical repeat pattern with a leaf-shaped punch (fig. 1.11). 4. Composite designs in the friezes It is beyond the scope of this chapter to present a complete examination of the compositional arrangements of the main friezes, but come general comments can be offered here. Occasionally the entire space is filled with a repeated design, employing one or more punches. The field of the frieze might be broken down to create narrow bands and larger compartments (e.g. fig. 1.1) of varying shapes and dimensions in a manner not unlike the ‘panel style’ found on underglaze-painted stonepaste wares of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Another common approach was to create large designs – typically rosettes and tree-like forms – and arrange them around the frieze leaving areas of undecorated ground between them. Sometimes these composite de-

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signs are bordered by incised lines. Two composite designs might be alternated within a single frieze.

Figure 1.10. Drawings of ‘vinescroll’ design (left) and ‘tree’ design (right) from relief-moulded sherds excavated at TA00/2 (not to scale).

Figure 1.11. Drawings of repeated patterns and composite designs from TA00/2 incorporating the ‘hollow heart’ punch (not to scale).

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The composite designs tend to be arranged according to lines of symmetry: the ‘tree’ forms are broadly symmetrical around the vertical axis and the rosettes are organised around two, three, or four axes (figs. 1.10, 1.11). The trees are usually relatively simple designs with incised lines establishing the central ‘trunk’ and ‘branches.’ Two, or sometimes three punches are then applied at the ends of the ‘branches’ and at the top of the ‘trunk.’ No attempt is made to suggest a third dimension, with the entire form adopting the look of a plant pressed into a book.31 This type of symmetry along the vertical axis can also be seen in carved stucco from Raqqan palaces, though the designs themselves differ (fig. 1.8). The composite rosettes commonly make use of a flower-like punch in the centre with a relatively wide range of punches – particularly leaves, trefoils, and hearts – surrounding it in either centrifugal or centripetal orientation. One of the issues noted in the introduction was that constraints must have existed upon the creation of repeated bands, composite motifs, and complete compositions. In other words, despite the immense number of permutations permitted through the combination of, for example, twenty punches within a given workshop, the designers of the moulds relied upon a relatively limited vocabulary of composite forms. Constraints may have been imposed by the models drawn from other media (such as metalwork) or simply from the long-established design practices of a workshop. Patterns books do not survive from this early period, though documents of this type are known from the fifteenth century and later in different parts of the Islamic world.32 Sometimes workshops seem to have held a preference for one or more punch design, employing it widely in repeated bands and composite motifs. To cite one example: numerous sherds from TA00/2 make use 31

This mode of representation probably derives from decoration on metalwork, or other portable arts. Some comparisons could also be drawn with the more diagrammatic style of botanical illustration found in Greek and Arabic copies of Dioscorides. For examples and discussion of the illustrations, see Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals: The illustrative Traditions, The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture (London, Toronto and Buffalo: The British Library and University of Toronto Press, 2000). 32 For example, Neçipoğlu, The Topkapi Scroll.

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of the same ‘hollow heart’ design. This appears in simple repeated bands, vinescrolls, and in a range of rosette and tree designs (fig. 1.10). Given that the vinescrolls and trees are, notionally at least, derived from organic forms one might presume that the ‘hollow heart’ was simply a substitute for leaf-shaped or fruit-shaped punches. This reading is questioned, however, by the combination of hearts and leaves/fruit in a variety of vinescrolls, trees, and rosettes. In conclusion, some preliminary remarks can be made about the wider visual context for the production of relief-moulded wares in early Abbasid Raqqa. This examination promotes questions about the inter-relationships of different craft activities during the early Islamic period. How might the characteristics identified in the previous sections contribute to our understanding of the larger issue of the evolution of Late Antique ornamental traditions toward the increasingly abstracted and spatially ambiguous modes of early Islamic decoration exemplified by the carved and moulded stucco panels recovered from the buildings of ninth-century Samarra?33 In its use of decorative punches within a ceramic mould the relief-moulded pottery of Tal Aswad [241] is a descendant of Roman terra sigillata pottery. Broad parallels may be suggested with specific punch designs – for example, rosettes, leaves, and selected geometric forms – but the differences are as striking as the similarities. First, relief-moulded wares from Raqqa are made from porous clays that fired to a buff or pinkish hue in contrast to the hard, reddish fabrics of terra sigillata. Second, the moulds of early Islamic wares tend to be decorated solely with punches and incisions; they lack the delicately carved detail that is a common feature of terra sigillata between the first century BCE and the second century CE. Third, representations of humans and other animate life are virtually absent in the

33

On early developments in late Sasanian/early Islamic stucco, see: Deborah Thompson, Stucco from Chal Tarkhan-Eshqabad near Rayy, Colt Archaeological Institute Publications (Warminster: Aris & Philips, 1976); Meinecke, ‘Early Abbasid stucco.’ For the carved stucco of Abbasid Raqqa, see Daiber and Becker, eds, Raqqa III, taf. 73–79, 82.

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relief-moulded wares of Tal Aswad.34 Finally, the pottery of Raqqa lacks the inscriptional content that is common on terra sigillata, particularly the stamps carrying the maker’s name.35 The tendency toward abstraction seen at Tal Aswad is, however, a feature of the punches employed on some African red slip wares of the Late Antique period, though these stamped (rather than moulded) vessels did also incorporate representations of human figures and animals.36 The strong connections between pottery and metalwork have been recognised in numerous academic studies, with metal vessels usually representing the prototypes for the cheaper medium of ceramics.37 The typical profile of the Tal Aswad relief-moulded jugs does not find exact parallels in the published metalwork of the late Sasanian and early Islamic periods, though the complexity involved in constructing a ceramic vessel of this nature suggests that the makers were attempting to imitate a metal form.38 A survey of Sasanian and early Islamic [242] silver does also provides significant correlations both in specific motifs (particularly the rosettes, hearts, and leaves) and in the schematic quality of the vinescrolls and other decorative bands.39 That said, the bold figural content of most Sasanian silver dishes and ewers did not find its way onto Cf. Oswald and Pryce, Terra Sigillata, pls. XXXIII–XXXVI. on Terra Sigillata. 36 Hayes, Late Roman Pottery, figs. 38–57. 37 See: contributions in Michael Vickers, ed., Pots and Pans: A Colloquium on precious Metals and Ceramics in the Muslim, Chinese, and GraecoRoman Worlds, Oxford 1985), Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 3 (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1986); Yasser Tabbaa, ‘Bronze shapes in Iranian ceramics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,’ Muqarnas 4 (1987): 98– 113. The practice of imitating across media is discussed extensively in Margaret Graves, Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 38 On links between relief-moulded wares and the aesthetics of bejewelling artifacts, see Eva Baer, ‘Jeweled ceramics from Medieval Islam: A note on the ambiguity of Islamic ornament,’ Muqarnas 6 (1989): 83–97. 39 Cf. examples illustrated in Arthur Pope and Phyllis Ackerman, A Survey of Persian Art, from Prehistoric Times to the Present, third edition (Ashira: SOPA, 1977), VII: pls. 204, 215, 216A, 221, 225A, 232A, 232B; Oleg Grabar, Sasanian Silver: late Antique and early Medieval Arts of Luxury from Iran (Ann Arbor MI: The University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1967), cat. nos. 17, 20, 24, 35, 40, 41, 51, 52. 34

35 Hartley and Dickinson, Names

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relief-moulded wares made in Raqqa or in any other of the known production centres of the Umayyad and Abbasid periods.

Figure 1.12. A. Drawings of comparative designs from three late Sasanian / early Islamic beaten copper alloy platters. After photographs in: Loukonine and Ivanov, Persian Art; Rosen-Ayalon, Early Islamic Monuments; Pietrovsky and Vrieze, eds, Heavenly Art. B. Drawings of rosette designs from the carved limestone façade of Mshatta, Jordan. After Strzygowski, ‘Mschatta II,’ fig. 75. The most persuasive parallels may be sought in a smaller corpus of late Sasanian / post-Sasanian beaten copper alloy vessels produced in Iran, and elsewhere in the Middle East. Three undated platters, two in the Hermitage and one in the Islamic Art Museum in Berlin [243], offer an array of schematic plant forms, debased vinescrolls,

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abstract motifs, and repeated ornamental bands (fig. 1.12.A).40 While none of the composite or repeated designs offers an exact parallel for the relief-moulded wares of Tal Aswad, the motifs found on these decorated bronzes are perhaps the nearest correlates in their abstracted quality. The simplified vinescroll and rosettes also appear as chased ornament on an eighth-century bronze ewer and on the bodies of two falcon-shaped aquamaniles, the first undated but probably of the mid eighth century, and the second by one Sulayman, and from the year [1]80/796–97.41 The general characteristics of the ornamental modes on the relief-moulded pottery of Tal Aswad can be located within the changes occurring in the decorative arts during the Late Antique period. These characteristics include: the debasement of ‘naturalistic’ forms such as vinescrolls; the dominance of repeated patterns in the overall design; and the increasing tendency toward abstraction. Can one identify in the pottery of Tal Aswad themes which point toward the widespread rejection of ‘classicising’ ornament in the carved and moulded stucco of Samarra? A full answer to this question will only be possible following a complete analysis of the design practices of the potters of early Islamic Raqqa, but the examples highlighted in the previous paragraphs offer some potential avenues. First, the vinescroll designs often incorporate visually ‘inappropriate’ punch designs, such as hearts, and also introduce asymmetry with different motifs above and below the central axis. An earlier example of this Vladimir Loukonine and Anatoly Ivanov, Persian Art, lost Treasures (London: Mage Publishers, 2003), pp. 100–101, cat. no. 89; Pope and Ackerman, Survey, VII: pl. 235; Mikhail Pietrovsky and John Vrieze, eds, Heavenly Art, earthly Beauty: Art of Islam (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2000), p. 156 cat. no. 110; Miriam Rosen-Ayalon, The early Islamic Monuments of the Haram al-Sharif: An iconographic Study, Qedem 28 (Jerusalem: The Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1989), fig. 28. 41 Richard Ettinghausen and Oleg Grabar, The Art and Architecture of Islam, 650–1250, Pelican History of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), fig. 47; Loukonine and Ivanov, Persian Art, pp. 96–97, cat. 84; Mikhail Pietrovsky and J. Michael Rogers, eds, Heaven on Earth: Art from Islamic Lands. Works from the State Hermitage Museum and the Khalili Collection (New York: Prestel, 2004), pp. 80–81, cat. nos. 29, 30. 40

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asymmetry may be found in the mosaics of the soffits of the octagonal arcade in the Dome of the Rock.42 Second, the composite rosettes usually combine together notionally organic elements with purely abstract shapes. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for the leaves and other features to be arranged centripetally around the central rosette punch. This formulation denies the composite design any sense of structural logic, in that the different elements should all connect in to the central component. The increasing abstraction of the rosette designs has been identified in the carved console panels of the Aqsa mosque, some of which may date to the Abbasid restoration of the 770s, while the centripetal organisation of organic components appears in the monumental rosettes (fig. 1.12.B) carved onto the façade of the unfinished palaces of Mshatta in Jordan (probably 740s).43 Thus, the relief-moulded wares of Raqqa can be understood as another example of the shifting aesthetics of this formative phase in the evolution of Islamic art. Clearly, it would be premature to assert that the potters of Tal Aswad were engaged with direct dialogue with other groups of artisans, such as the stucco workers working on the palaces north of al-Rafiqa or on buildings elsewhere in the early Abbasid empire. Hence, we cannot yet establish the extent to which the transformations in early Islamic art can be considered as a unified phenomenon (as opposed to a series of somewhat independent trajectories). There is, however, evidence for the movement of workshops in order to populate the industrial zones of the new Abbasid urban foundations, and this process must have led to the pooling of See examples illustrated in Said Nuseibeh and Oleg Grabar, The Dome of the Rock (New York: Rizzoli, 1996), pls. on pp. 96, 98, 103, 105. 43 Josef Strzygowski, ‘Mschatta II: Kunstwissenschaft Untersuchlung,’ Jahrbuch der Königlich Preuzischen Kunstammlungen 25 (1904): 294, fig. 75; Robert Hillenbrand, ‘Umayyad woodwork in the Aqsa Mosque,’ in Jeremy Johns, ed., Bayt al-Maqdis: Jerusalem and early Islam, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 9.2 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 309–310, fig. 64. On Mshatta, see now Johannes Cramer, Barbara Perlich, Günther Schauerte, Ghazi Bishah, Claus-Peter Haase, Monther Jamhawi, Fawwaz Khurayshah, eds, Qasr al-Mschatta: Ein frühislamischer Paläst in Jordanien und Berlin, Berliner Beiträge zur Bauforschung und Denkmalpflege 16, 2 vols (Petersberg: Michael imhof Verlag, 2016). 42

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technical skills and aesthetic preferences. The close connections, in both vessel form and decorative practices, between metalwork and relief-moulded pottery also suggests some degree of collaboration between different craft specialisms. At very least, it is reasonable to assume that the potters obtained their punches from metalworkers and had seen examples of decorated copper alloy or silver ewers. These networks of interdependence have the potential to illuminate the processes of artistic evolution from Late Antiquity to early Islam.44

On the study of early Islamic craft practices, see Rina Talgam, The stylistic Origins of Umayyad Sculpture and Decoration (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004); Marcus Milwright, The Dome of the Rock and its Umayyad Mosaic Inscriptions, Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016). 44

CHAPTER 2. FIXTURES AND FITTINGS: THE ROLE OF DECORATION IN ABBASID PALACE DESIGN1 At the end of the twelfth century the adventurer, Ibn Jubayr (d. 1217) wrote of the ruins of Samarra: …today it is a warning to see it. Where is its al-Muʿtasim, its alWathiq, its al-Mutawakkil? …it is as he (al-Masʿudi, d. 956) described it, although only a trace of its beauties remains. ‘God inherits the earth and everything on it (Qurʾan 19:40).’2

The vast expanses of fragmentary structures on the banks of the Tigris have provoked similar reactions in other Arab and Western travellers down to the modern day. Clearly, such responses only represent a distant echo of the intended impact of the city in its heyday 1 Marcus Milwright, ‘Fixtures and Fittings: The Role of Decoration in Abbasid Palace Design,’ in Chase Robinson, ed., A Medieval Islamic City reconsidered: An interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 14 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 79–109. The initial version of the chapter has been updated with references to more recent scholarship and new illustrations. I would like to thank Chase Robinson and Julian Raby for their criticisms of the initial version of this chapter. Thanks are also due to Eleanor Robson, Jeremy Johns, Robert Hillenbrand, Barry Wood, and Stephanie Dalley for the information they provided on a range of topics. 2 Muhammad b. Ahmad ibn Jubayr, Riḥlat Ibn Jubayr, ed. William Wright, revised by Michael de Goeje, E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Series 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1907), p. 232.

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during the third/ninth century. This chapter offers speculations concerning the types of visual experience that might have been provided by the palatial architecture of Samarra and how the arrangement of the decoration may have contributed to those experiences. The archaeological and textual evidence available for the study of the role of decoration in Samarran palaces is not, at first sight, promising. Natural processes of decay, coupled with centuries of robbing of all items of value from the site have left only the merest remnants of the original ornamental programmes of these structures.3 Very little of the decoration has been found in situ, and many 3

The main publications for the fresco painting, woodwork, marble, ceramics, and glass are: Ernst Herzfeld, Der Wandschmuck der Bauten von Samarra und seine Ornamentik, Forschungen zur islamischen Kunst. Die Ausgrabungen von Samarra II.1 (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1923); Ernst Herzfeld, Die Malereien von Samarra, Forschungen zur islamischen Kunst Die Ausgrabungen von Samarra II.3 (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1927); Friedrich Sarre, Die Keramik von Samarra, Forschungen zur islamichen Kunst. Die Ausgrabungen von Samarra II.2 (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1925); Carl Lamm, Das Glas von Samarra, Forschungen zur islamischen Kunst. Die Ausgrabungen von Samarra II.4 (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1928). Additional artefacts recovered by the Directorate-General of Antiquities and further site reports are to be found in the journal, Sumer. The stucco decoration at Samarra has received the most scholarly attention. See: K. A. C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, Volume II: Early ‘Abbāsids, Umayyads of Cordova, Aghlabids, Ṭūlūnids, and Sāmānids, A.D. 751–905 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), pp. 286–88; Terry Allen, Five Essays on Islamic Art (Sebastapol CA: Solipsist Press, 1988), pp. 1–15; Richard Ettinghausen and Grabar, Oleg, The Art and Architecture of Islam, 650–1250, Pelican History of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 102–105. The presence of similar stucco decoration in Abbasid-period contexts in Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria) and Arabia is discussed in Michael Meinecke, ‘Early Abbasid Stucco Decoration in Bilād al-Shām,’ in M. Adnan Bakhit and Robert Schick, eds, The fifth International Conference on Bilād al-Sham (English language section) (Amman: Lajnat Tarikh Bilad al-Sham, 1994), pp. 226–67. On later ‘bevelled style’ stucco, see Richard Ettinghausen, ‘The “beveled style” in the post-Samarra period,’ George Miles, ed., Archaeologica Orientalia in Memoriam Ernst Herzfeld (Locust Valley NY: J. J. Augustin, 1952), pp. 72–83. More recent scholarship on Samarran decorative art include: Thomas Leisten, Excavation of Samarra. Volume 1: Architecture. Final Report of the first Campaign, 1910–1912, Baghdader Forschungen 20 (Mainz

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of the artefacts recovered through excavation were published with inadequate contextual information.4 We know from written sources that many Abbasid palaces had second storeys, but the appearance of these upper rooms remains unknown because so little of the site [80] has survived more than a metre or two above ground level. Contemporary accounts of buildings and their use in the Abbasid period are clearly important for coming to an understanding of the role of architectural decoration, though descriptions of the actual appearance of specific palaces are scarce. Given the limitations of the source material it would be unrealistic to attempt any reconstruction of the decorative scheme within a specific Samarran palace. Rather, I want to look at the processes of design and construction in order to isolate the types of decisions which would have been made at various stages. The method adopted in this chapter is based on studies of the relationship between intenam Rhein: Philipp von Zabern, 2003); L. Burgio, R. Clark, and Mariam Rosser-Owen, ‘Raman analysis of ninth-century stuccoes from Samarra,’ Journal of Archaeological Science, 34.5 (2007): 756–72; Marcus Milwright, ‘Samarra and ʿAbbasid ornament,’ in Gülrü Neçipoğlu and Finbarr Flood, eds, The Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, Blackwell Companions to Art History (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), I: 177–96. 4 The archaeological evidence is reviewed more fully in: Alastair Northedge, ‘The palaces of the Abbasids at Samarra,’ in Chase Robinson, ed., A medieval Islamic City reconsidered: An interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 29–67; Alastair Northedge, The historical Topography of Samarra, Samarra Studies 1 (London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq and Fondation Max van Berchem, 2005); Alastair Northedge and Derek Kennet, Archaeological Atlas of Samarra, Samarra Studies 2, 1 (London: British Institute for the Study of Iraq and Fondation Max van Berchem, 2015). Northedge notes that the value of the publication of finds from Samarra by Herzfeld, Sarre, and Lamm is crucially compromised by the failure to produce the final studies of the architecture. As a result, it is impossible to place finds into a proper chronological and spatial context. In the case of the Dar al-Khilafa, this omission is particularly serious because the complex has undergone several phases of construction and renovation. See Alastair Northedge, ‘Creswell, Herzfeld and Sāmarrāʾ,’ Muqarnas 8 (1991): 74–93. For the final publication of the 1910–12 excavation seasons, see Leisten, Excavation of Samarra.

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tion and practice developed in other fields of art and architectural history.5 The decoration of a structure is seen as one part of a process beginning with the stated desires of the patron and ending with the completed building. In the following sections the role of decoration as a constituent element of this process is analysed in two ways. First, the addition of decoration to a palace is seen in terms of the cost (defined in terms of the expenditure of labour and materials) relative to the costs involved in the erection of the bricks and mortar. Two hypothetical examples are chosen to examine the importance of local resources in defining the dominant modes of building and decoration. Issues include the logistical problems involved in shifting between building materials (for example, from mud-brick to baked brick) or between different ornamental media (for example, from stucco to marble veneer). Second, this analysis of relative cost is placed in the context of a complex society in which the patrons and viewers of these palaces operated. The aim of this second section is to identify some of the value systems that serve to define the ways in which the design of a palace and its decorative program were conceived in the third/ninth century. This twin approach is adopted in order to focus on the balance between the patron’s desire that the building should reflect his own power and magnificence through the use of scale and the employment of costly materials, and the constraints imposed by habitual building practices and the availability of man-power, materials, and fuel. The assumption that runs through this dissection of the process of design and construction is that the palace is intended – through its massing of forms and arrangement of fixed and portable decorative media – to elicit a specific range of responses from the viewer. Both the See particularly: Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in fifteenthcentury Italy: A Primer in the social History of pictorial Style (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1972); Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985); Janet DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla: A Study in the Design, Construction, and Economics of Large-Scale Building Projects in Imperial Rome, Journal of Roman Art Supplementary Series 25 (Portsmouth RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1997). 5

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architecture and its ornament seek to create an environment that will communicate to the viewer (whether it be the caliph, an official, or a visitor to the palace) the meaning of the space as well as more complex iconographic messages relating to the patron of the building. The fragmentary state of the secular palaces at Samarra means that much of the symbolic charge of the [81] architectural spaces will remain elusive, but it is possible to consider the choice of decorative media in the context of the attitudes of contemporary viewers, as they are expressed in texts of the early Islamic period. This type of anecdotal evidence gives some idea of the reactions of observers when confronted by palatial architecture and the lavish ceremonies that took place in them.

THE PROCESS OF CONSTRUCTION 1. The Brief It is common practice to associate the construction of royal buildings with their patrons. While it is certainly the case that the initial impetus behind the construction of a palace would have come from the ruler, or perhaps his entourage, their impact on the actual design process was probably minor. With some exceptions such as the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (r. 908–13, as coemperor, 913–20 as sole emperor),6 or the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II (r. 1444–46, 1451–81),7 it can be assumed that the ruler was capable of setting the brief for the design of an individual palace only in the most general terms. Accounts of the Abbasid period give some idea of the role of the patron’s taste in the formation of the finished building. It is reported of al-Muʿtasim that he ‘took no pleasure in making buildings decorative and attractive to see; his sole aim was to

Theophanes Continuatus trans. in Cyril Mango, ed., The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453: Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972), pp. 207–209. 7 Gülrü Neçipoğlu, Architecture, Ceremonial and Power: The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 13–15. 6

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make them study (iḥkām).’8 While this account does not necessarily indicate the caliph’s active participation in the design process, it does suggest (assuming the account is given any credence) he required his architects to place a greater emphasis on architectural form at the expense of surface ornament. It is questionable whether this view, attributed to al-Muʿtasim, is also representative of the attitudes of other Abbasid caliphs during the Samarran period (836–92). Caliph al-Mansur (r. 754–75) appears to have been personally involved in the planning of al-Karkh when it was decided to remove the markets from the round city of Baghdad (Madīnat al-Salām). According to al-Khatib al-Baghdadi (d. 1071), the caliph called for a wide garment on which he traced the arrangement of the market; he also ordered the construction of a mosque in the area.9 Whether the caliph was responsible for anything more than establishing the basic topography of the market area is not clear. It seems likely, however, that the plans and dimensions of the mosque and of the mercantile and residential districts would have followed conventional formulae. Once the basic spatial relationships had been sketched and the areas of land designated, engineers probably would have been able to supervise the construction work without detailed drawings.10 Palaces 8 Al-Fadl b. Marwan cited in Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa’l-mulūk, ed. Michael de Goeje et al., 15 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1879–1901), III: 1326. Translation according to Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari, The Reunification of the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate: The Caliphate of al-Ma’mūn AD 812– 33/AH 198–213, trans. and annotated Clifford Bosworth, The History of alṬabarī 32, ser. ed. E. Yarshater, Bibliotheca persica (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), p. 212. 9 Jacob Lassner, The Topography of Baghdad in the Early Middle Ages: Text and Studies (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970), p. 61 10 Al-Muʿtasim gave parcels of land to his generals in order that they should construct markets and residential areas. See Ahmad b. Abi Yaʿqub b. Wadih al-Yaʿqubi, Kitāb al-Buldān, ed. M. de Goeje, Bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum 7 (Leiden: Brill, 1892), pp. 258–59. For the relationship of drawn plans and work on site, see K. A. C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, Volume I, revised edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 109–111; Gülrü Neçipoğlu-Kafadar, ‘Plans and models in 15th- and 16th-century Ottoman architectural practice,’ Journal of the Society Architectural Historians 45 (1986): 231.

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[82] and other ambitious structures would have required more careful planning, though this does not mean that all aspects of the final building were drawn up beforehand. Some sections of palaces, such as the gateways, courtyards, throne rooms, and royal apartments, may well have been conceived with the aid of ground plans, and even architectural elevations or three-dimensional models. Other areas for kitchens, stabling, or guard rooms may have been left blank on the overall plan because they could be designed and constructed on site.11 The design brief for a palace might be expressed in terms of desires to induce specific responses: to astonish, to entertain, to disorient, and so on. Equally, it might be formulated in direct relation to previous buildings (both of the dynasty and of more ancient periods). Thus, the proposed palace must normally be larger and more magnificent than previous examples, or it must imitate specific famous features of early monuments.12 The interrelated aims of the design brief – that it should provoke feelings of awe in the viewer and that the grandeur of the building should exhibit the power of the ruler – have been described in the context of Assyrian architecture as the ‘rhetorical function’ of the palace.13 11 For a discussion of the role of drawings and models in Islamic architectural

design, see: Neçipoğlu-Kafadar, ‘Plans and models’; Renata Holod, ‘Text, plan and building: On the transmission of architectural knowledge,’ in Margaret Sevcenko, ed., Theories and Principles of Design in the Architecture of Islamic Societies (Cambridge MA: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1988), pp. 1–12; Jonathan Bloom, ‘On the transmission of designs in early Islamic architecture,’ Muqarnas 10 (1993): 21–28. 12 An example of this practice is provided by the fifteenth-century author, Khalil al-Zahiri, in a discussion of the design of the madrasa-mausoleum complex of sultan al-Nasir Hasan (r. 1347–51, 1355–61) in Cairo. The author recounts that the sultan, ‘asked the architects (sing. muhandis) “which is the highest building in the world?” He was told, “Iwan Kisra.” So he ordered that it should be measured and record exactly and that his madrasa should be ten cubits higher.’ Cited in Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, revised edition, p. 111. 13 Irene Winter, ‘“Seat of kingship”/“A wonder to behold”: The palace as construct in the ancient Near East,’ Ars Orientalis 23 (1993): 38. She writes, ‘The palace is thus set up as a mirror for the king. It is a physical manifestation of the ruler’s power and ability to build; and at the same time, by having built it so impressively, the ruler has further demonstrated his power

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Al-Masʿudi gives another example of a brief being set by caliph al-Mutawakkil: During his reign al-Mutawakkil constructed a building according to a plan unknown at that time which was known as al-Ḥīri, ‘Of the Two Wings and Loggias (al-kammayn wa’l-arwiqa).’ The idea was suggested to him by one of his courtiers, who, in the course of an evening’s conversation, told him of a king of Hira, of the dynasty of Nuʿman of the tribe of Banu Nasr, had a passion for war and, wishing to have it constantly in mind, had had constructed at his capital of Hira a building which would evoke an army drawn up in battle lines. The loggia (riwāq) of the palace – intended as the king’s reception room – represented the centre of the army. The two wings symbolised the right and left flanks and were for the use of the most important members of the court. The right-hand wing was the royal wardrobe, while the right-hand one served as a repository for drinks. The loggia of the palace stretched over the centre and the two wings, and the three gates of the palace led to it. This is the building, which is still today called ‘The Two Wings,’ and also ‘al-Ḥīri,’ in memory of the town of Hira. The people had similar [83] houses built in imitation of the style of the palace of al-Mutawakkil – and it has remained famous down to our own day.14

If we accept this as a genuine account of the formation of a design brief, then it represents an interesting document of caliphal intention. The composition of the ground-plan expresses a specific iconography derived from an earlier tradition (whether real or imagand ability to command resources, induce astonishment, and create a fitting seat of government – in short, to rule. The rhetorical function of the palace, as exemplified through its affect, is, I would argue, as essential as its residential, administrative, productive, and ceremonial functions.’ 14 ʿAli b. al-Husayn al-Masʿudi, Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʿādin al-jawhar, ed. and trans. Abel Pavet de Courteille and A. Charles Barbier de Meynard (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1861–77), VII: 192–93. Translated in al-Masʿudi, The Meadows of Gold: The ʿAbbasids, trans. and ed. Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone (London and New York: Kegan Paul, 1989), p. 240.

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inary).15 Subsequently this composition became a popular theme for the patrons of large houses in Samarra.16 While al-Masʿudi’s description gives some detail concerning the allocation of functions to different zones of the abode of the Hiran king, he does not specify how the idea of the two-winged palace was transformed into an actual building capable of fulfilling the practical and ceremonial functions of an Abbasid caliphal dwelling. Moving from the specific aspects of the patron’s brief, the design was constrained by the practical, ceremonial, and administrative functions performed by pre-modern palatial structures. This building needed to provide a private residential area for the monarch and his family, as well as possibly accommodation for the royal retinue, bodyguards, and servants. Areas had to be provided for different occasions, such as the reception of dignitaries, the holding of religious festivals, feasts, processions and nightly entertainments by musicians and poets in the company of boon companions. One might also expect the palace to contain a mosque, treasury, dīwān, and stabling for animals. It would be possible to amend this list in many ways, and to reorganise the categories in relation to the specific plans of Samarran palaces, but what is clear is that the basic design process must allow for this diversity of functions, often with single spaces performing multiple functions. These requirements place certain restrictions on the degree of innovation possible in the design of palaces. Functional and ceremonial considerations are, however, only two of the many constraints 15

It can be inferred from this account that the principal characteristics of the composition and iconography of older buildings were transmitted orally rather than through the means of drawings. See Bloom, ‘Transmission of designs,’ p. 15. The imitation by wealthy Samarrans of caliphal practice is also seen in the specific garments and textiles. Masʿudi, Murūj al-dhahab, VII: 190–91. 16 An example of this phenomenon is the fascination with the pre-Islamic Yemeni palace of Ghumdan. See Nuha Khoury, ‘The Dome of the Rock, the Kaʿba and Ghumdan: Arab myths and Umayyad monuments,’ Muqarnas 10 (1993): 57–66. On the imitation of prototypes in Medieval architecture, see: Richard Krautheimer, ‘An introduction to an “iconography of Mediaeval architecture,”’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 1–33.

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placed on the design process. The business of moving from the initial design brief to the finished structure is also affected by the impact of habitual building practices and the logistical challenges imposed by the availability of resources and man-power. 2. Resources The initial choice of site is of crucial importance to the success of a major construction. At a basic level this includes the suitability of the ground for sinking foundations and [84] the availability of bulk construction materials within a relatively small geographical range.17 Solid tracks need to be constructed around the site for the transport of goods. The movement of items from further afield is facilitated by the presence of canals and natural waterways.18 Abundant supplies of water are also needed for the mixing of construction materials and, of course, as drinking water for the building workers and livestock.19 17

According to al-Masʿudi, the hardness of the ground was a factor, which led al-Muʿtasim to abandon work at Qatul. See Masʿudi, Murūj al-dhahab, VII: 119. Also Ahmad b. Abi Yaʿqub b. Wadih al-Yaʿqubi, Kitāb al-Buldān, ed. Michael de Goeje, Bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum 7 (Leiden: Brill, 1892), pp. 256–57. 18 Ibn Serapion (Suhrab), ‘Description of Mesopotamia and Baghdād, written about the year 900 AD by Ibn Serapion,’ ed. and trans., Guy Le Strange, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1895): 1–76 (part 1); 255–315 (part 2). Also see comments in J. Michael Rogers, ‘Sāmarrāʾ, a study in medieval townplanning,’ in Albert Hourani and Samuel Stern, eds, The Islamic City, a Colloquium published under the Auspices of the Near Eastern Studies Group, Oxford, and the Near East Center, University of Pennsylvania, Papers on Islamic History 1 (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1970), pp. 139–40, 144–45. 19 The importance of locating building work near water sources is illustrated in the description of an unnamed construction project commissioned caliph al-Walid II (r. 743–44), ‘…but the water was fifteen miles distant from it. He collected workmen from all quarters, and built that city by means of forced labour; and on account of the multitude many died every day from the scarcity of water; for though water was carried thither by twelve hundred camels daily, yet this was not enough for them.’ Severus ibn alMuqaffaʿ, History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria, ed. and trans. Basil Evetts, Patrologia Orientalis 5–10 (1910–15), III: 114–15. The absence of potable water at Samarra is discussed in Rogers, ‘Medieval townplanning,’ pp. 140–41.

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The natural resources of this part of the Mesopotamian plain have a crucial role in defining the dominant modes of construction and decoration (and thus much of the visual impact of the palaces themselves). The alluvial plain provides almost endless quantities of clay-rich soil for the manufacture of pisé (rammed earth), mudbricks, baked bricks, drainage pipes, roof tiles, and other ceramic items. Gypsum is plentiful and can be used for the manufacture of stucco and mortar. Gypsum is also employed as an additive in mudbricks or cut into blocks for construction.20 Harder types of stone are not commonly used as a building material for reasons of availability. Date palm is planted on the plain, as far north as Samarra, and the palm wood is utilised for scaffolding, while the outer fibres are made into ropes and the leaves into baskets.21 The manufacture of mud-bricks (with pisé the most common building material at Samarra) requires the addition of straw and sand, both to increase the strength and to reduce the shrinkage and cracking as the bricks dry.22 Modern studies indicate that every 1m3 of earth requires 0.33m3 of sand and approximately 20kg of straw, as well as water for mixing.23 Using a modern Syrian example, Oates suggests that the production of 100 mud-bricks (of unspecified size) requires 1.5 sacks, or approximately 60kg of straw – corresponding to 20

For the use of gypsum blocks, see the discussion of Qasr al-ʿAshiq in Northedge, ‘Palaces of the Abbasids.’ 21 Naval Intelligence Division, Iraq and the Persian Gulf, Geographical Handbook Series, B. R. 524 (London: Naval Intelligence Division, 1944), pp. 457–58. 22 Straw is also employed in the manufacture of the mud paste used in pisé construction. See Hans Wulff, The traditional Crafts of Persia. Their Development, Technology, and Influence on Eastern and Western Civilizations (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 1966), p. 108. 23 Hasan Fathy, Gourna, A Tale of Two Villages, Prism Art Series 4 (Giza: Ministry of Culture, 1969), p. 198. This quantity produces 660 bricks of 0.23 x 0.11 x 0.11m = a total volume of 1.169m3. The section devoted to mud-brick manufacture is reproduced in Marcus Milwright, Islamic Arts and Crafts: An Anthology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), pp. 196–97. Studies of mud-brick production in modern Iran indicate that no sand was used in the mixture. See Wulff, Traditional Crafts of Persia, p. 109.

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the product of 0.125 hectares of barley stubble.24 It can thus be seen that the supply and transport of appropriate additives both for the pisé and the mud-brick – whether it be straw, animal dung, reeds, gypsum, or sand – presented a potential logistical problem during the construction of the Samarran palaces. [85] The production of mud-brick is usually limited to the hotter months of the year so that the drying time is shortened, thus reducing the land needed for storing the drying bricks.25 Baked bricks were also utilised in the building of Samarra. A major potential resource of baked bricks was the nearby pre-Islamic structure. While the dismantling of these earlier buildings obviates the need for fuel, it poses other difficulties: the common use of lime and gypsum mortar makes the extraction of whole bricks difficult, and the materials had then to be transported to Samarra.26 The manufacture of items such as baked bricks, stucco, and mortar requires, however, large quantities of fuel. In the case of baked bricks, it is apparent from ethnographic studies and nineteenth-century builders’ manuals that the preparation of the clay and the addition of temper are important aspects of the process that need to be done over a peri-

24

David Oates, ‘Innovations in mud-brick: Decoration and structural techniques in ancient Mesopotamia,’ World Archaeology 21 (1990): 389–90. On brick making in seventeenth-century Iran, see the remarks of Sir John Chardin. Quoted in Milwright, Arts and Crafts, p. 193. 25 P. Roger S. Moorey, Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries. The archaeological Evidence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 304–305. Traditionally May and June were the preferred months for making bricks (hot weather and plentiful supplies of chaff) with July and August set up for building work. 26 The nineteenth-century traveller Claudius Rich (cited in Moorey, Materials and Industries, p. 331) remarks of one ancient structure that it consisted of ‘fine burnt brick… laid in lime-cement of such tenacity, that those whose business it is have given up working, on account of the extreme difficulty of extracting them whole.’ This may be the reason behind the abandonment of al-Mansur’s plan to reuse bricks from the Iwan Kisra in the construction of Baghdad. See al-Khatib al-Baghdadi translated in Lassner, Topography of Baghdad, p. 128.

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od of weeks of months.27 Eighteenth-century records indicate that the firing of a kiln of internal volume of 100m3 (able to hold 65m3 of bricks) requires 40 tonnes of wood (or a somewhat larger volume of faggots of twigs) with a firing time of 60 hours.28 Thus, it can be extrapolated that 318 bricks of dimensions of 0.27 x 0.27 x 0.07m29 could be produced per tonne of wood, and a total of 12,740 bricks per firing. Modern pottery kilns in upper Egypt make use of bundles of sugar cane stalks as fuel, and it is possible that similar agricultural waste may have been employed at Samarra (though the manufacture of mud-bricks would place additional demands on this material).30 The mortar, used to bond the bricks in a wall, is usually composed of lime or gypsum plaster combined with a mixture of sand and soil. Gypsum is more readily [86] available in the Samarra region rather than limestone. The lime derived from burning and slaking limestone produces a harder and more durable material for both Wulff, Traditional Crafts of Persia, p. 115; Edward Dobson, A rudimentary Treatise on the Manufacture of Bricks and Tiles (London: John Weale, 1850), pp. 21–27. 28 Cited in DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 117. Wulff, Traditional Crafts of Persia, p. 116. The author describes traditional Iranian kilns, which fire 25,000 bricks of 8 x 8 x 2 inches (i.e. c. [0.2 x 0.2. x 0.051m] x 25,000 = 51m3 capacity). 29 Based on the maximum size of the baked bricks at the Congregational Mosque in Samarra. See Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture (1940), p. 254. Much bigger mud-bricks are recorded at Samarra (Northedge, ‘Planning Sāmarrāʾ,’ p. 114) and at Baghdad (al-Khatib al-Baghdadi trans. in Lassner, Topography of Baghdad, p. 51, and notes on p. 38) but this smaller size is adopted for the sake of convenience in the calculations. 30 Lucien Golvin, Jacques Thiriot and Mona Zakariyya, Les Potiers actuels de Fusṭāṭ, Bibliothèque d’études de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale du Caire (Cairo: Institut Françias d’Archéologie Orientale, 1982), p. 54. This material was also used in conjunction with fuel oil in brick kilns in Iran, although before World War II desert shrubs were employed. The collection of enough brushwood for one firing could take several weeks. See Wulff, Traditional Crafts of Persia, pp. 116–117. Deposits of bitumen are reported in southern Iraq. This could be combined with kindling as fuel for use in firing kilns. The brick-makers of the kilns of Hiraqla in Syria (see figs. 2.9, 10) made use of sheep and goat droppings mixed with diesel (personal observation in 2000). 27

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stucco and mortar.31 The burning of lime for three or four days at a temperature of 800–900°C is, however, labour intensive and costly in fuel.32 In contrast, gypsum can be reduced to a hemihydrate (suitable for use in stucco and mortar) when heated for a limited period to a temperature of less than 200°C. Nineteenth-century reports of the manufacture of the hemihydrate of gypsum (‘Plaster of Paris’) indicate that it could be achieved using faggots of twigs for fuel without the construction of a kiln.33 The supplies of sand needed for the production of stucco and mortar could presumably be gathered from the banks of the Tigris. The sand and other additives comprise 75% of the total volume of the mortar.34

31 Moorey, Materials and Industries, p. 330. George Burnell, A rudimentary Treatise on Limes, Cements, Mortars, Concretes, Mastics, Plastering, etc. (London: Virtue & Co., 1850), p. 103. The author estimates that gypsum mortar has only one third of the adhesive strength of lime mortar. Lime mortar (ṣārūj) appears to have been preferred to gypsum (jiṣṣ) in the baked brick sections of the construction of Baghdad. See: Lasnner, Topography of Baghdad, pp. 238–39, notes 17 and 20; Muhammad Manazir Ahsan, Social Life under the Abbasids, 170–289 AH (786–902 AD) (London, New York and Beirut: Longman and Librairie de Liban, 1979), p. 179. 32 Various estimates are available from nineteenth-century sources and modern experiments. DeLaine (The Baths of Caracalla, p. 113) estimates that, depending on the calorific value of the wood, between 1.6 and 3.3 tonnes of wood are required to produce 1m3 of lime. See, however, lower estimates in Moorey, Materials and Industries, p. 330. The long-term operation of lime kilns expended vast quantities of timber. An English document dated 1275 records that the two royal kilns had consumed 500 oak trees in the forest of Wellington. See Louis Salzmann, Building in England down to 1540: A documentary History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), p. 150. 33 Burnell, Treatise on Limes, pp. 100–104. Driving off the water reduces the volume of the material by 20.9%. In twentieth-century Iran gypsum was burned using brushwood as fuel in the same kilns used for lime, though presumably a shorter firing time was needed for the gypsum. See Wulff, Traditional Crafts of Persia, pp. 126–27. 34 Burnell, Treatise on Limes, p. 67; DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 181. For information on mortar and plaster in Yemen, see Ronald Lewcock quoted in Milwright, Arts and Crafts, pp. 193–94.

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Wood was utilised in scaffolding, moulds for decorative stucco, and architectural elements such as doors, decorative panels, tie beams, flooring, and rafters.35 Palm trunks are a readily available source of wood in southern Iraq, and the areas close to the banks of the Tigris also provide limited supplied of willow (Salix aemophylla) and Euphrates poplar (Populus euphratica).36 Other types of wood are imported. The mountainous areas of Kurdistan contain plentiful supplies of timber and the Tigris, north of Mosul, although not easily navigable, is suited to the transport of logs supported on inflated animal skins (known as kalaks; fig. 2.1 & 2.2).37 Excavations in the throne-room of the Dar al-Khilafa (caliphal palace, also known in scholarship as the Jawsaq palace) recovered fragments of teak used for the doors and soffits.38 The teak and other dark hardwoods were presumably brought from India by ship. It seems likely that cargoes of exotic hardwoods were brought up the Tigris from the coast as far as Baghdad before being transferred onto the canal system to Samarra. In the first half of the twentieth century [87] ships – known as muhaylas and safīnas – with a capacity of between 5 and 10 tonnes, were still being hauled by their crews upriver on the Euphrates and the Tigris.39 This was evidently both time-consuming and labour35

No upper story has survived at Samarra, but holes in the wall behind the northwest īwān of the Bab al-ʿAmma indicate the use of wooden beams to support an upper floor. See Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture (1940), pp. 234–35. 36 Naval Intelligence Division, Iraq, pp. 190, 457. Chesney notes the presence of alder, silver poplar, weeping willow, oak, ash, plane, sycamore, beech, walnut, and tamarisk near the banks of the Euphrates. See Francis Chesney, The Expedition for the Survey of the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris, 2 vols. (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850), I: 591. 37 Naval Intelligence Division, Iraq, pp. 196–97, 559–61. This river trade on the Tigris is referred to by Yaʿqubi, Kitāb al-Buldān, p. 263. Similar rafts were taken down the Euphrates to Iraq from as far north as Erzincan in modern Turkey. See Naval Intelligence Division, Turkey, Geographical Handbook Series, B. R. 507, 507A (London: Naval Intelligence Division, 1942–43), II: 178. 38 Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture (1940), pp. 237–38. 39 Naval Intelligence Division, Iraq, p. 558 and photo 215. According to Chesney (Expedition, II: 598), the prevailing winds meant that boats could

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intensive. Smaller vessels might also carry goods, using sails for propulsion (fig. 2.3). These expensive woods were probably sparingly employed in the palaces.40

Figure 2.1. Construction of river rafts on inflated goatskins. Mosul bridge seen in the distance. American Colony Jerusalem, Photographic Department, 1932 (G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division: LC-DIG-matpc-16216.

only make one journey in each direction per year on the sea passage from the Persian Gulf to India. 40 An example of economy in the use of imported wood can be found in Fatimid Cairo. Tie beams in the mosque of al-Hakim are constructed of palm logs faced with thin planks of carved teak. See Richard Ettinghausen and Grabar, Oleg, The Art and Architecture of Islam, 650–1250, Pelican History of Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994), fig. 169.

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Figure 2.2. Inflating goatskins for river rafts, Mosul. American Colony Jerusalem, Photographic Department, 1932 (G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division: LC-M33-4819 [P&P].

Figure 2.3. Boats loaded with pottery pipes on the Euphrates river at Hilla, Iraq. American Colony Jerusalem, Photographic Department, 1932 (G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division: LC-M33-4716 [P&P].

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Figure 2.4. Map of the Middle East showing the main sites discussed in the chapter. Created by Seyedhamed Yeghanehfarzand. The geology of the Mesopotamian plain does not provide large supplies of stone for construction work. Stone was used principally for paving and in ornamental contexts, such as opus sectile, mosaic, veneer panels, revetments, architectural orders, and freestanding features. As a result, the marble (here meaning any hard stone that can be polished to a shine) had to be either imported or recycled from earlier structures. Evidently the initial construction phase of Samarra created a requirement for fine stone, which could not be met by the existing resources of the region. Al-Muʿtasim ordered the establishment of marble workshops (sing. dār ṣināʿat al-rukhām) at Latakiyya, and may also have made use of ancient quarries at Antioch.41 The transporta-

Yaʿqubi, Kitāb al-buldān, p. 258. According to the geographer al-Dimashqi (fl. late thirteenth century) the marble quarries of Latakiyya were still in operation in his time. Cited in Muhsin Yusuf, Economic Survey of Syria during the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, Islamkundliche Untersuchungen 14 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1995), p. 56. Marble quarries also exist around Mosul, though whether these were exploited in the Abbasid period is unknown. See 41

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tion of loads of cut stone from such a far-off location as Latakiyya would have been feasible taking a land route from Aleppo and then to the ports on the Euphrates at Jisr Manbij or Balis (fig. 2.4).42 From the Euphrates, ships or rafts would have passed on to the Nahr ʿIsa that joins to Baghdad. Before reaching the city, the cargoes would have been unloaded to other craft in order to pass through the smaller canals, finishing with the Nahr Dujayl, which joins the Tigris south of Samarra.43 Al-Yaʿqubi (d. 897–98) describes the arrival of ships from Raqqa carrying goods both from Syria and Egypt, so it seems likely that commodities (including stone) from the latter were transported down the Nile, then by sea to the Syrian coast and by land to the Euphrates. Of course, material from Egypt could have passed to Iraq by sea, using ports located on the Red Sea.44 It is difficult to be specific about other materials used in the construction process. Metals such as iron, lead, copper, and tin would have been required. Beirut was known for the high quality of its iron, though other sources may have been more convenient.45 The fourteenth-century Persian writer, Abu al-Qasim, reports that lead was found in Kirman, Yazd, Rum, and the ‘scattered lands of the Bulghars,’ copper was mined in Rum and Dazzamar in Azerbayjan, while tin came from Europe [88], China, and the Bulghar regions.46 The manufacture of glass and glazes for ceramics may have required high-quality sand. Jabal Bishr was known in the thirteenth century for the quality of its sand and would have been well-placed to supply

J. Peters, ‘Tigris,’ Encyclopaedia Britannica, thirteenth edition (London and New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1926), XXV: 970. 42 Abu al-Qasim ʿUbayd Allah b. ʿAbd Allah ibn Khurdadhbih, Kitāb alMasālik wa’l-mamālik, ed. Michael de Goeje, Bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1889), pp. 153–54; Yusuf, Economic Survey of Syria, p. 89. 43 For the canals, see Ibn Serapion, ‘Description of Mesopotamia,’ pp. 71, 270–71 and map facing p. 33. 44 Yaʿqubi, Kitāb al-Buldān, p. 250. 45 Yusuf, Economic Survey of Syria, p. 54. Peters (‘Tigris,’ p. 970) notes that iron is found in the region of Diyarbakir. 46 James Allan, ‘Abū’l-Qāṣim’s Treatise on Ceramics,’ Iran 11 (1973): 112.

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Iraq via the Euphrates, but other sources may have been available.47 The mineral pigments, lapis lazuli and cobalt, were brought from Afghanistan and the Kashan region respectively.48 While evidence of large-scale glass production has been located in Qadisiyya, at the southern end of Samarra, there is nothing to preclude much of the specialised manufactured commodities being made in urban centres, such as Baghdad and Basra, given the prior existence of a relatively efficient transport infrastructure.49 3. Man-power The provision of man-power for major construction projects presents a range of logistical difficulties. First, there is the seasonal dimension to many parts of the construction process, and so the numbers of workers required to do one task would fluctuate through the year. In some cases it is possible to move labour between different [89] activities, but this becomes less feasible the more specialised the activity. Second, the project requires workmen with different levels of skill, and it may be that the available pool of labourers or craftsmen able to perform a specific task was limited.50 In addition, workers brought from outside of the local area would have to be housed and supplied with other basic necessities. There exists too little evidence in primary written sources even to begin to estimate the number of unskilled workmen who might have been employed at any one time. The total numbers will have changed considerably, though the phases of major construction durYaqut b. ʿAbd Allah al-Hamawi al-Rumi, Kitāb Muʿjam al-buldān. Published as Ferdinand Wüstenfeld, ed., Jacut’s geographisches Wörterbuch (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1866–73), I: 631. 48 Allan, ‘Abū’l-Qāṣim’s Treatise,’ pp. 116–117. 49 Alastair Northedge, T. J. Wilkinson and Robin Falkner, ‘Survey and excavations at Sāmarrāʾ 1989,’ Iraq 52 (1990): 135. Yaʿqubi (Kitāb al-buldān, p. 264) writes that glass workers and potters were brought from Basra by al-Muʿtasim. 50 Fluctuations in man-power levels during major construction projects have been analysed with reference to the Roman and Ottoman periods. See DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, pp. 191, 194; Omer Barkan, ‘L’Organisation du travail dans le chantier d’une grande mosquée à Istanbul au XVIe siècle,’ Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations 17 (1962): 1093–1106. 47

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ing the caliphates of al-Muʿtasim and al-Mutawakkil must have placed a strain upon the human resources of the local region. Presumably, agricultural labourers in the Sawād could have been employed at certain times during the year. Although there is no direct evidence that soldiers were utilised as unskilled workmen in palace construction, they do seem to have been involved in building their own quarters, other urban structures, and in the digging of canals.51 The use of convict labour, perhaps also including prisoners-of-war, is attested under the Ottomans, and presumably similar resources were exploited by the Abbasid caliphs.52 In terms of cost, these types of labour had considerable advantages: agricultural workers because they could work as corvée labour during the summer months when they were not needed on the fields;53 soldiers because they were paid in any case; and prisoners because they were not paid at all (though they had to be fed and housed). The search for skilled labour presents a very different range of issues. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the provision of skilled labour for major construction projects was a problem during the Roman and Byzantine periods.54 It is possible that the foundation of Baghdad by 51 Examples include the construction of mosques and bazaars at Karkh. See Yaʿqubi, Kitāb al-buldān, p. 259. 52 Barkan, ‘L’Organisation du travail,’ p. 1094. See also comments on the building of al-Rafiqa, next to Raqqa in Syria in Michael Meinecke, Patterns of stylistic Changes in Islamic Architecture: Local Traditions versus migrating Artists, Hagop Kevorkian Series of Near Eastern Art and Civilization (New York and London: New York University Press, 1996), pp. 5–30. 53 The Aphrodito papyri provide evidence for the use of corvée labour during the Umayyad period for ship-building in Egypt and for construction projects in Jerusalem and Damascus. See H. Idris Bell, ed., Greek Papyri in the British Museum. Catalogue with Texts. Vol. IV: The Aphrodito Papyri (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1910), nos. 1403, 1408, 1411 and comments on p. 286, n. 48. 54 For example, discussing the construction of the city of Nicomedia in the fourth century, the historian Lactantius remarks, ‘…Diocletian had a limitless passion for building, which led to an equally limitless scouring of the provinces to raise workers, craftsmen, wagons, and whatever is necessary for building operations.’ See Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum, ed. and trans. J. L. Creed, Oxford Early English Christian Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), p. 13.

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al-Mansur, and subsequent caliphal projects in the area, would have led to the establishment of a permanent pool of artisans, but the exceptional nature of the work at Samarra appears to have exceeded the local supply. Al-Yaʿqubi reports that al-Muʿtasim ordered the governors of the provinces to send craftsmen for the building of the city.55 Examples of this practice [90] of forced relocation from later in the Islamic period indicate that the craftsmen involved in architectural projects were appropriately paid and allowed to return home after a period of months or, in some cases, years.56 In addition to workers and supervisors on site, there would also have been groups of skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled labourers involved in the provision of raw and processed materials, and in the transport of commodities.

RELATIVE COSTS Contemporary and later sources provide some figures concerning the costs of specific buildings at Samarra, both palaces and mosques.57 There also exist estimates for the monies spent on the foundation of the city of Baghdad by caliph al-Mansur.58 Such figures should be approached with caution, however. Even if the accounts of the oftenenormous sums of money spent are taken literally, there must have been much waste and inefficiency, as well as considerable scope for corruption by building contractors and officials at many stages of the construction process. In this section I approach the issue from a different perspective. The argument developed in the introduction is that one of the primary aims of palatial architecture was to create a visual environment that could define a set of appropriate responses in the viewer. The previous two sections outlined the types of materials and human resources 55 Yaʿqubi, Kitāb

al-buldān, p. 258. Shlomo Goitein, A Mediterranean Society. The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967–83), I: 82; Barkan, ‘L’Organisation du travail,’ p. 1097. 57 See, for example, the list of al-Mutawakkil’s expenditure on building and renovation work in Yaqut, Jacut’s geographisches Wörterbuch, III: 17. 58 Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi trans. in Lassner, Topography of Baghdad, p. 49, and notes on pp. 235–36. 56

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available for this task and suggested some of the factors that might operate as constraints upon palace construction on the Mesopotamian plain. The purpose of this section is to make calculations according to the requirements for materials and man-power in order to ascertain the relative costs in labour and materials for different types of activity. The following paragraphs address two hypothetical examples – a buttressed brick wall and a triple-īwān hall – and attempt to assess the types of logistical considerations that might occur through the stages of design, construction, and decoration. These examples are chosen because they represent the types of structural units encountered in Samarra and other sites of the Abbasid period. The buttressed wall and the triple-īwān hall also involve different levels of technological sophistication, and thus necessitate different allocations of resources and labour. Man-power constants for the various activities have been gathered from a wide range of sources (primary texts, secondary studies, ethnographic observations, and modern reconstructions) and, therefore, it should be emphasised that [91] the resulting calculations must be considered as highly speculative. The examples are simplified in several important respects. No account has been taken of the costs of activities such as levelling or terracing the site, making tools, feeding and housing the workers, and the maintenance of animals. In addition, no attempt is made to calculate the costs involved in the transport of raw and processed materials around the site. 1. Wall The first hypothetical case is a wall 100m long and 1m wide with a total height of 6m (1m for the foundations and 5m above ground). The brick foundations are laid on the bottom of the trench without a preliminary bed of mortar, and the foundations do not require additional shoring.59 The size of the brick is taken to be 0.27 x 0.27 x 0.07m (half 59 This method of construction is found in ancient mud-brick structures in Iraq. I am grateful to Stephanie Dalley for this information. Wulff (Traditional Crafts of Persia, p. 108) describes different building practices in Iran. He writes that the foundations were usually 0.5m deep and filled with alternating layers of lime mortar and coarse stone ballast. Once filled, the foundations were left for three or four weeks in order to harden.

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bricks would have been required in smaller numbers for the facing of the wall, but they are not included in the calculations). Semi-circular buttresses of radius 0.7m are placed at 10m intervals along the exterior face of the wall. It is assumed that only one type of brick is used, though published descriptions from Samarra suggest material such as pisé and mud-brick might be combined in alternate courses. The first job consists of excavating the trench. This involves the removal of approximately 170m3 of soil.60 Additional labour would be required for the removal of the soil from the site, perhaps to an area where it could be used in the manufacture of mud-brick. The wall itself has a total volume of 692m3 of which 577m3 comprises bricks and 115m3 mortar.61 Assuming the proportions accord with those given for modern Egyptian mud-brick production, the material for the bricks requires 494m3 of soil, 165m3 of sand, and 9,873kg of straw (the equivalent of about 20 hectares of barley stubble).62 Mixing these materials (excluding the volume for the straw) takes between 219 and 363 man days, depending on the coefficient used for calculation.63 Disregarding the half bricks, we can estimate the total number required for the wall at 131,000 bricks. Nineteenth-century reports give figures of between 10,000 and 36,000 bricks moulded and transported to the drying area by one brick moulder and two assistants in a week (figs 2.5–7).64 A median figure of 3,000 per day by a team of three is suggested here. [92]

60

The foundation trench is 0.2m larger on all sides to provide room for the laying of bricks. The spaces would have to be filled after the construction of the lower course of the wall. The coefficient for the digging the soil is 0.15 man days per m3. See DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 268. 61 Using the Old Babylonian measurement of the volume of a wall was fivesixths brick and one-sixth mortar. See Eleanor Robson, Mesopotamian Mathematics, 2100–1600 BC: Technical Constants in Bureaucracy and Education, Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts 14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 68. 62 Based on Fathy’s (Gourna, p. 198) calculation that 1m3 soil, 0.33m3 sand, and 20kg of straw make the equivalent of 1.169m3 of mud-bricks. 63 DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 268 (0.55 man days per m3); Robson, Mesopotamian Mathematics, p. 75 (0.33 man days per m3).

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Figure 2.5. Pouring mud into the wooden matrix. Department of Antiquities brick-making site, Hiraqla, Syria. 2000. Photograph: Marcus Milwright.

Figure 2.6. Lifting the wooden matrix to reveal the wet bricks. Department of Antiquities brick-making site, Hiraqla, Syria. 2000. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. 64 Dobson, A rudimentary Treatise, pp. 29–30 (although the bricks are smaller than the Samarran example). Fathy (Gourna, p. 200) calculates that a team of four men (two moulding bricks, one mixing, and one transporting materials) could produce 3,000 mud-bricks of 0.24 x 0.12 x 0.08m per day. Wulff (Traditional Crafts of Persia, p. 110) estimates that an Iranian worker could mould 250 mud-bricks of 8 x 8 x 1.5 inches per hour, though he does not specify the length of a working day.

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Figure 2.7. Bricks drying in a shed. Department of Antiquities brick-making site, Hiraqla, Syria. 2000. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. The mortar is assumed to consist of 25% gypsum plaster and 75% sand, gravel, and soil mix.65 In order to achieve a volume of 29m3 of gypsum plaster, 36m3 of gypsum rock must be excavated (this takes into account the loss of volume during firing).66 If the expenditure of energy of firing lime is reduced by a factor of five, gypsum for the wall would require approximately 38 man days and 19.8 tonnes of fuel (in the form of brushwood or agricultural waste).67 Additional labour, perhaps in the 65

While mud was often used as a mortar in mud-brick construction in this region, reports of architecture at Samarra do mention the employment of gypsum mortar in mud-brick construction. See Alastair Northedge and Robin Falkner, ‘The 1986 survey season at Sāmarrāʾ,’ Iraq 49 (1987): 151. 66 DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 113. She gives a figure of 1 man day per m3 for quarrying limestone. Gypsum, being a softer rock, is probably easier to excavate, and so a figure of 0.5 man days per m3 is suggested here. 67 Using calculations for burning of lime in DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 113. Excluding the labour needed for quarrying the limestone, the total involved in bringing the material to the kiln, loading the kiln, firing the kiln, and unloading the kiln is 6.9 man days per 66m3 (363m3 = 38 man days). The reduced figure for fuel comes to 0.55 tonnes per m3 for burning gypsum.

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form of an animal-powered mill, would be needed to crush the burnt gypsum.68 The mortar is mixed on the site by the construction team. Table 1: Labour and fuel expenditure involved in the construction of Wall 1 (brick) Stage

Activity

Man days (total)

Man days (skilled)

Fuel (tonnes)

Foundation trench

Removal of soil

26

Bricks

Digging (soil and sand) Mixing Moulding bricks

99 219 113

Quarrying gypsum Digging sand Burning gypsum Mixing

18 13 38 69

Laying bricks and mortar Scaffolding

1,107 37

138 9

1,739

207

19.8

96

249.3

303

269.1

Mortar

Construction

TOTAL (mud-brick) Baked bricks

Stacking, firing, unstacking 288

TOTAL (baked brick)

2,027

48

12

19.8

[93] The laying of the bricks and mortar could have been done by unskilled labour led by a master bricklayer/mason. The Gourna housing project provides a model for the possible division of labour. According to Hasan Fathy (d. 1989), one mason and two as68 A mill of this type is described in the nineteenth century by Claudius Rich (cited in Moorey, Materials and Industries, p. 330). Burnell (Treatise on Limes, pp. 102–103) comments that plaster should not be transported over long distances in powdered form because of the tendency of the powder to rehydrate. Wulff (Traditional Crafts of Persia, p. 134) notes that plaster was usually delivered to the building site in the form of uncrushed particles.

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sistants are capable of laying 5m3 of bricks and mortar per day. The team is supported by a further five labourers for carrying bricks from the stacks and lifting. A single workman assigned to prepare the mortar is shared between the two teams while a scaffolding team of four men (including one skilled worker) is shared between fifteen teams of bricklayers.69

Figure 2.8. Digging out clay from the levigation tanks. Department of Antiquities brick-making site, Hiraqla, Syria. 2000. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. It is important to note that the costs of transport are largely omitted, though the addition man and animal power needed both for moving material around the site and for bringing wood (for scaffolding), brushwood (for fuel), and straw from greater distances are likely to have been considerable. Some additional skilled man days should also be added if the wall contains ornamental brick features. If the previous figures are taken as a basic unit measurement of expenditure, then one can propose the magnitude of extra expenditure involved in changes of media (for example, from mud69 Fathy, Gourna, p. 208.

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brick to baked brick) and in the addition of surface ornament to the interior of the wall. Samarran palaces provide evidence for the transition from pisé to mud-brick to baked brick. These transitions reflect the relative importance of the built elements, with baked brick usually being reserved for the central areas utilised by the Abbasid elite. The use of baked brick might also be related to the greater structural complexity of these important areas, often featuring second stories and vaulted or domed spaces. Assuming the baked brick is not reused from earlier structures, this adds both to the fuel and man-power expenditure (see Table 1). The digging of the clay and sand corresponds to the numbers given for mud-brick, though the clay probably requires more careful preparation, including sieving and levigation (fig. 2.8). No account of these activities is made in the total labour calculation.70 Moulding and stacking would be much the same as the mudbrick, but additional labour would be needed for loading and unloading the kiln. Each load from a kiln with a capacity of 65m3 (12,740 bricks) requires between 27 and 47 man days (loading the kiln, firing, and unloading the kiln) and 23.4 tonnes of fuel (fig. 2.9 & 2.10).71 For the hypothetical wall, the additional labour and fuel involved in a transition from mud-brick to baked brick as the mode of construction comes to between 288 and 501 man days (approximately 33% of which is skilled labour) and 249.3 tonnes of fuel (excluding the labour to gather the fuel and transport it to the kiln). [94]

70 For the preparation of the clay and additives in baked brick production in Iran, see Wulff, Traditional Crafts of Persia, p. 115. 71 Based on figures for the operation of a nineteenth-century Italian kiln. See DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, pp. 117–118. The two man-power estimates refer to table 9 (bessales and bipedales respectively) and the figures for carrying and loading the kiln (29 and 11 man days respectively), firing the kiln (10 man days), and unloading (8 and 6 man days respectively).

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Figure 2.9. Brick kiln constructed in the 1970s. Department of Antiquities brick-making site, Hiraqla, Syria. 2000. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. The other factor that needs to be considered in this section is the cost of labour and fuel associated with the addition of gypsum stucco decoration to the interior of the wall. This is an artificial exercise in that the published evidence does not indicate whether exterior walls or walls enclosing maydāns were decorated in this way. Ernst Herzfeld (d. 1948) does, however, publish examples of stucco wall facings in Balkuwara that might well extend as high as 4–5m.72 A common pattern appears to consist of a dado of about 1–1.5m separated from an upper section by a narrow ornamental band. The upper section alternates plain strips with vertical bands of decoration containing deep niches. The plain areas might also have contained fresco paintings. For the purposes of calculation it is assumed that 40% of the total plastered area of 500m2 is decorated with either moulded or carved detail.

72

Herzfeld, Erster vorläufiger Bericht, taf. XI.

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Figure 2.10. Stoking the kiln during a brick firing. Department of Antiquities brick-making site, Hiraqla, Syria. 2000. Photograph: Marcus Milwright.

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Table 2: Labour and fuel expenditure involved in the decoration of Wall 1 (stucco) Stage

Layer 1 Layer 2 Decoration TOTAL

Activity

Preparing the mortar Applying the mortar Scaffolding Preparing the stucco Applying the stucco Scaffolding Various techniques

Man days (total)

Man days (skilled)

Fuel

22 252 22 14 252 22 520 1,104

3 84 5 3 84 5 520 707

4.3

(tonnes)

4

8.3

The preliminary coat of mortar on the inner side of the wall is assumed to be 25% gypsum and 75% sand. Photographs of the stucco decoration in situ suggest that the stucco layer was relatively thin, and so this calculation assumes a rendering layer of 0.05m of mortar and a second layer of 0.005m on the undecorated sections of gypsum stucco.73 The carved and moulded panels, some of which appear to have been assembled separately and attached to the wall, stand proud of the undecorated sections and so these parts are taken to be an average of 0.025m thick (0.005 for the second coat and 0.02 for the decorative panels). The rendering coat (using 6m3 of gypsum and 19m3 of sand) is applied at a rate of 6m2 per day by a plasterer and an assistant.74 Another labourer would be required to carry it from the mixing area to the wall. The second layer of finer stucco is of variable thickness over the wall surface. [95] Herzfeld reports that the decorative stucco of Samarra was constructed almost entirely of gypsum (assumed here to be a

73

The thickness of the preliminary and secondary coats are adapted from DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, pp. 181–82. 74 I have adopted a higher figure than given in DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 182.

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mixture of 90% gypsum and 10% sand).75 The labour figure for preparing 6.5m3 of stucco should probably be increased to account for the greater care in the selection and preparation of the materials needed in this upper coat of stucco.76 The second coat could be applied using the same labour as given for the first coat (the reduced effort needed for the actual application of the stucco being roughly compensated by the time needed to clean and polish the finished surface).77 A wide range of decorative techniques – moulding, carving, stamping, and engraving – are employed in Samarran stucco, but there is no way to account for these differences in relation to overall labour costs. It should be noted, however, that the use of wooden or plaster moulds in the ‘bevelled style’ stucco panels is certain to have reduced the time spent on producing large sections of decoration (figs. 1.7–9 & 2.11)78 Another significant factor is that work of carving and moulding panels is done exclusively by skilled craftsmen. DeLaine, discussing Roman stucco work, gives an estimate of 1.55 man days per 1m2, presumably including the provision of labourers and scaffolding, as well as the cleaning, polishing, and oiling of the surface.79 Time would have to be added for the inclusion of any painted details. 2. Triple-īwān hall This example is based on the dimensions of the Bab al-ʿAmma, but simplified for the sake of the calculations (figs. 2.12 & 2.13). The tripleīwān hall is constructed of baked brick (0.25 x 0.27 x 0.07m) with foundations 1m deep, laid directly on the bottom of the foundation trench in the manner outlined for the previous example. The wall at the front and back of the structure rises to a uniform height of 12m. Herzfeld, Erster vorläufiger Bericht, pp. 14–15 (trans. in Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture [1940], p. 283. See also Wulff, Traditional Crafts of Persia, pp. 134–35. 76 Wulff, Traditional Crafts of Persia, p. 134. 77 For the final preparation of the stucco surface, see Wulff, Traditional Crafts of Persia, p. 135; Burnell, Treatise on Limes, pp. 112–113. 78 Herzfeld translated in Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture (1940), pp. 287–88. 79 DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 182. 75

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The back wall is solid and abuts the wall of the barrel vault. The front wall above the level of the springing of the arch (at 7m above the ground) is 1.3m thick. For the purposes of calculation, the barrel vaults are semi-circular in profile. The vaults are assumed to be 0.35m thick (one brick plus a layer of mortar on the exterior of the vault) though additional material would probably be added on top of this.80

Figure 2.11. ‘Bevelled style’ stucco panel from Samarra. Drawing: Marcus Milwright. The excavation of 177 m3 of foundation trenches expends 27 man days of labour. The total volume of this feature (including the foundations comes to 1,398 m3 (approximately twice that of the hypothetical wall). This breaks down into 1,165 m3 (228,300 bricks) and 233 m3 of mortar. According to the figures given in the [97] previous example, the production of this quantity of bricks requires between 1,142 and 1,795 80 For example, Wulff (Traditional Crafts of Persia, pp. 111–112, fig. 168) illustrates a hollow-built transition between a vault and a flat roof. Note the thick layer of mortar above the vault).

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man days and 419.4 tonnes of fuel and the mortar between 223 man days (29 skilled) and 43.3 tonnes of fuel (excluding transport costs).

Figure 2.12. Bab al-ʿAmma, Samarra. Creswell Archive, negative no. 6334. Courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Figure 2.13. Plan and elevation of a structure based on the Bab alʿAmma. Drawing: Naomi Shields.

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The first 8m of the walls to the springing of the arches (including 1m of foundations) and the back wall to 12m could be laid in the manner described in the first example. This requires 2,192 man days of labour. The next stage is the building of the vaults. Surviving brick vaults of this period comprise a band of bricks laid horizontally and leaning slightly inwards with the remainder of the vault made up of bricks laid lengthways in a series of half rings.81 Assuming that each row of bricks is left to dry before the application of the next, there is no need for centring to be used in the assembly of the vault. The construction of the vault is done by skilled bricklayers, though workmen would have been required for lifting the bricks (perhaps two per bricklayer), mixing the mortar (perhaps one man per two bricklayers), and creating the scaffolding for reaching the roof area (four men per fifteen teams). If each bricklayer was able to lay and mortar 500 bricks per day, then the job would expend 218 man days (62 skilled). The last piece of brickwork is the remainder of the front wall above the springing of the vault. According to previous calculations, this volume of brickwork (85m3) could be constructed in 149 man days. Taking the lower estimates, a total figure for the construction of the triple-īwān hall can be given as 3,950 man days and 463.7 tonnes of fuel (excluding transport costs). The remainder of this section considers the man power and fuel costs involved in decorating the internal space (including the floor). Combinations of different [98] ornamental media are analysed. It is assumed in both of the case studies discussed below that the internal walls and vaults are covered in a preliminary coat of 0.05m of mortar. This represents an area of 892m2, requiring 45m3 of mortar. A layer of mortar at least 0.3m thick (perhaps mixed with layers of broken rock) is needed as the bedding of a ceramic tile or marble floor.82 In the first hypothetical decorative scheme the internal spaces are decorated exclusively with stucco and the floor is paved with unglazed ceramic tiles. 40% of the surface of the wall below the springing of the vault is decorated, while 20% of the surface of the vaults and the upper part of the end walls is decorated. The thickness and composition of 81 Creswell, Early

Muslim Architecture (1940), p. 61. The mortar of the floor is laid at a rate of 0.13 days per m2. See DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 180. 82

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the second plaster coating and decorated sections accord with the wall in example 1. The baked ceramic tiles are of 0.35 x 0.35 x 0.05m. The second coat of study and decorative panels would need a total volume of 11m3. 2,480 ceramic tiles (15m3) would cover the floor area. The laying of the tiles requires 0.18 man days per m2, assuming that the additional mortar required for the setting of the tiles is negligible.83 Table 3: Labour and fuel expenditure involved in Decoration 1 (Triple-īwān hall) Stage

Layer 1 (walls and vault) Layer 2 (walls and vault) Decoration Floor

Activity

Man days (total)

Man days (skilled)

Fuel

Preparing mortar

28

4

7.7

Applying mortar Scaffolding Preparing stucco

458 41 12

153 10 4

6.6

Applying stucco Scaffolding Various techniques Preparing mortar Manufacturing tiles Laying tiles

458 41 474 106 17 55

153 10 474 10 3 55

1,690

876

TOTAL

(tonnes)

1 15.7 5.5 36.5

In the second case a much more lavish decorative scheme is proposed. The floor is paved with marble slabs of 0.7 x 0.7 x 0.025m and the walls with a dado of cut marble 2m high (slabs of 1 x 0.5 x 0.025m). The remainder of the walls up to 0.25m below the springing of the vault (i.e. 6.75m above ground) is decorated stucco. The last 0.25m comprises a carved marble course constructed of slabs measuring 1 x 0.25 x 0.025m. the vaults are decorated with glass mo-

83

DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 181.

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saic. The tesserae have an average size of 0.007 x 0.007 x 0.009m (resulting in c. 15,000 glass cubes per m2).84

Figure 2.14. Camel caravan carrying agricultural goods. Unknown location. American Colony Jerusalem, Photographic Department, 1936? (G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection). Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division: LC-M33-3959 [P&P]. The floor would require 620 marble slabs. Man-power costs (other than transport) are predicated on the surface areas being cut and polished. The total surface area of the slabs is 651m2, which can be cut at a rate of 1.2 days per m2 (one cut producing two surfaces). The laying of the stone expends 0.18 days per m2, and polishing the Labour coefficients cited in DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 180. A description of marble cutting in the quarries of Ramla is given by NasirKhusraw. Cited in Yusuf, Economic Survey of Syria, p. 56. For a modern translation, see Abu Muʿin Hamid al-Din Nasir-i Khusraw, Nāṣer-e Khosraw’s Book of Travels (Safarnāma), trans. Wheeler Thackston, Persian Heritage Series 36 (New York: Persian Heritage Foundation, 1986), p. 20.

84

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stone floor, 0.51 days per m2. The marble of the dado requires 350 slabs, although slightly different dimensions would be needed for the back walls. Laying the marble veneer on the walls takes 0.67 days per m2, and polishing 0.59 days per m2 (to a higher grade than the floor).85 It is assumed that the carved design on one slab of the upper course can be completed in two days. Both the floor and the upper course slabs are laid into 0.02m of mortar. Additional labour would be needed for the production of iron or bronze nails and cramps for holding the wall panels in place.86 [99] Assuming that the marble is not reused, the cost of the stone must also include the quarrying (4 days per m3 by one quarryman and two assistants) and initial shaping of the block (one stonecutter at 7.5 days per m3). The total volume of stone required is 12.5m3, though more would be needed to allow for wastage when cutting the finished slabs.87 The largest additional cost is the transport from the quarry (taken to be Latakiyya) to Samarra. If the route is assumed to be that outlined in the resources section (see fig. 2.4), then it involves a journey of approximately 870km by water and 220km by land. The method of land transport would probably depend upon whether the slabs were cut to the correct size at the quarry of transported as larger blocks. According to Chesney, loads of up to 800lb (= 363kg) could be carried by dromedaries, while Bactrian camels could carry 1,200lb (= 545kg). Dromedaries were, however, faster moving, being able to cover about 40km in a day (fig. 2.14).88 Larger loads would require 85

The manufacture of iron and bronze is very costly in both labour and fuel. See comments in DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, pp. 121, 122, 215– 216. On metalworking practices during the Islamic period, see James Allan, Persian Metal Technology, 700-1300 A.D., Oxford Oriental Monographs (London: Ithaca Press for the Faculty of Oriental Studies and Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, 1979). 86 From labour coefficients cited in DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 121. 87 Figures adapted from DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 128. 88 Chesney, Expedition, I: 582–84; Richard Lydekker, ‘Camel,’ Encyclopaedia Britannica, thirteenth edition (London and New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1926), V: 103. Assuming a specific gravity for marble of 2.7 (John Callender, Time Saver Standards for Architectural Design Data, sixth edition [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982]), then the land journey of 220km

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the use of animal-drawn carts (covering c. 24km during a 10-hour day), though this method depends upon the existence of wellmaintained tracks and roads.89 A single cart load is estimated at 0.5m3 (= c. 1.35 tonnes) and one man is needed for the cart and an additional 0.095 days per m3 for loading and unloading.90 The entire quantity of marble is transported on four rafts,91 carried by a constant flow of 6.44km per hour, with a crew of five men.92 It is assumed that the boat moves continuously for 16 hours per day on the river and for 10 hours per day at 4km per hour on the canals, when pulled by the crew of five men. Loading and unloading the stone at Balis in Syria, from Nahr ʿIsa onto the subsidiary canals, and at Samarra adds additional labour. The rafts themselves may have been constructed further up the Euphrates in the forested areas around Erzincan, and this task would add to the overall man-power expenditure. The decorated stucco zone comprises 457m2, requiring 11m3 of stucco (containing 90% gypsum and 10% sand) for the second layer and for the decorated panels. A bedding layer for the tesserae could be done by a caravan of 93 dromedaries (Arabian camels) over a period of 5.5 days (not counting the time for the return journey unloaded). If a man can supervise up to six camels (Richard Bulliet, The Camel and the Wheel [Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1975], p. 25) then the journey requires 88 man days. 89 On the disappearance of wheeled transport across the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia, see Bulliet, The Camel and the Wheel. This phenomenon also reduced the requirement for paved roads. 90 Labour coefficients of 0.08 man days per m3 (loading) and 0.015 man days per m3 (unloading) from DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 128. This seems to underestimate the difficulty of moving a commodity as heavy and as easily damaged as marble. 91 A load of 5–10 tonnes would not be unusual on a kalak, perhaps supported on 200 or more inflated animal skins. Larger kalaks were also constructed. See Naval Intelligence Division, Turkey, I: 177. 92 The speed of the Euphrates at Hit is 4 mph (= 6.44 kmph). See H. Rawlinson, C. Wilson and J. Peters, ‘Euphrates,’ Encyclopaedia Britannica, thirteenth edition (London and New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1926), IX: 896. The flow of the Tigris near the Turkish border at Çizre is recorded as 2.5mph (= 4 kmph). See Naval Intelligence Division, Turkey, I: 178.

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0.02m thick over 239m2 of vaults needs 5m3 of mortar. At a rate of 15,000 tesserae per m2, this means a total area of glass of 175.4m2 with a thickness of 0.009m (total volume = 1.6m3). It is assumed that the production of glass requires at least ten times the labour and 50% more fuel than baked bricks per m3. [100] 14,000 tesserae can be cut per man day. Creating the mosaics requires workmen for: laying the plaster bed (0.4 man days per m2); sketching the design and the placing of the tesserae (total of 2.8 man days per m2); the provision of scaffolding; and workmen assisting the plasterer and mosaicist respectively.93 If 40% of the mosaic is on gold ground,94 this expends between 0.608 and 1.149kg of gold (143–270 dīnārs). Between 33 and 62 man days would be needed for the beating and arranging the gold into sheets (assuming a working day of ten hours and excluding the labour and fuel needed to prepare the gold ready for beating).95 [101]

93 Labour coefficients from DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 181. The author also cites Petrasanta’s calculations concerning the mosaics of Monreale cathedral, which suggests a much slower rate of 10–14 man days per m2. The rate must depend on the quality of the decoration, though this factor is difficult to assess. 94 Gold leaf mosaic is reported at Balkuwara. See Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture (1940), p. 268. 95 Anon., ‘Gold beating,’ Encyclopaedia Britannica, thirteenth edition (London and New York: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1926), XII: 202. Variant numbers are based on the descriptions of Pliny the Elder in the first century CE and twentieth-century British practice respectively. In the former 1oz (28.35g) of gold is beaten out to 750 leaves of c. 3 x 3 inches (= 4.3548m2) and in the latter 1oz of gold is beaten into 1,200 sheets measuring 3.25 x 3.25 inches (= 8.1774m2). The gold is beaten in three stages, which require a total of 15.33 man hours per oz (3 hours have been added to the figures for the beating itself to account for the time needed to cut and rearrange the sheets before the initial beating and after the second and third stages). A working day is assumed to be ten hours.

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Table 4: Labour and fuel expenditure involved in Decoration 2 (Triple-īwān hall) Stage

Layer 1 Layer 2 Stucco decoration Preparing marble Transport Marble (floor)

Marble (walls)

Preparing mosaic Laying mosaic

Activity

Man days (total)

Total Total Total Quarrying and shaping

527 273 708 244 590 Mortar 106 Cutting panels 390 Preparing mortar 106 Laying stone 55 Polishing 151 Mortar 9 Cutting panels (all) 252 Carving (upper course) 176 Laying stone (all) 131 Polishing (all) 116 Producing glass 7 Cutting tesserae 188 Beating gold leaf 33 Mortar 5 Applying mosaic (total) 1,595

TOTAL

5,556

Man days (skilled)

Fuel

257 89 708 144 119 10 390 10 55 151 2 252 176 131 116 7 188 33 1 781

7.7 7.1

3,610

33.8

(tonnes)

15.7

1.7

0.8 0.8

3. Summary of the costs Table 5 gives a summary of the man-power and fuel costs involved in the examples discussed in the previous section. Perhaps the first point which should be made is that all the numbers certainly underestimate the total man-power expenditure. In the absence of evidence concerning the distances between specific palaces and production areas for bulk materials, such as mud-brick, baked brick, mortar, and gypsum stucco (all made from locally available raw materials), no attempt is made to assess the extra labour and animal power needed for the carriage of such items around the city. Palm trunks and scaffolding (as well as fibres for ropes and leaves for making baskets),

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straw for mud-bricks, and fuel for the brick kilns and for the burning of gypsum also had to be gathered from beyond Samarra itself, and this factor must increase the projected transport costs. No allowance is made for site supervisors and overseers because it is unknown how many of each group was required in relation to the total workforce.96 In addition, the discussion of the decoration is too simplified. Marble presumably came from more than one source, and was probably cut into patterns as well as rectangular slabs. Coloured mosaic glass requires the use of expensive minerals, and glass was also employed for other purposes, including windows, wall panels, and possibly, floor tiles.97 Other media, such as wood (for floorboards, doors, tie beams, and decorative panels), [102] fresco painting, glazed ceramic tiles, iron, and bronze are not considered.

Figure 2.15. Plan of Istabulat, Samarra. Image courtesy of Google Earth.

96

References are made to supervisors and architects in the construction of Baghdad. See Khatib al-Baghdadi trans. in Lassner, Topography of Baghdad, p. 51. Images of building sites do appear in the work of the fifteenth-century Persian painter, Kamal al-Din Bihzad, but while these scenes include representations of supervisors and overseers, as well as types of craftsmen and labourers employed on construction projects, they could not be used to infer actual numbers per activity. For illustrations, see Ebadollah Bahari, Bihzad: Master of Persian Painting (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1996), pls. 36–37, 84. 97 Glass floor tiles appear in the Abbasid palaces excavated at Raqqa. See S. Abdulhak, ‘Les fouilles de la Direction Générale des Antiquités à Rakka,’ Annales archéologiques arabes syriennes 1.1 (1951): 115 and fig. 4.

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Table 5: Summary of the labour and fuel expenditure Activity

Man days (total)

Man days (skilled)

Skilled Fuel man days (% of total) (tonnes)

Mud-brick wall (construction) Baked brick wall (construction) Decoration of wall

1,739 2,027 1,104

207 303 707

11.99 15.04 64.04

19.8 269.1 8.3

TOTAL (mud-brick wall and decoration)

2,843

914

32.15

28.1

TOTAL (baked brick wall and decoration)

3,131

1,010

32.26

277.4

Triple-īwān hall (construction) Decoration 1 Decoration 2

3,950 1,690 5,556

762 876 3,610

19.29 51.83 64.97

463.7 35.5 33.8

TOTAL (construction and Decoration 1)

5,640

1,638

29.04

29.04

TOTAL (construction and Decoration 2)

9,506

4,372

45.99

497.5

The fragmentary state of the buildings at Samarra means that it is impossible to estimate the true extent of baked brick construction and the wall areas covered with decoration per palace, but it seems likely that both factors were constrained by the costs of skilled labour, fuel, and long-distance transport. In the case of skilled labour, taking the monthly salaries of workmen and master masons in Baghdad between 762 and 766 (1.25–1.875 and 2.5–3.125 dirhams respectively),98 then the latter received between 66% and 100% more than the former (comparing the highest with the highest and the lowest with the lowest respectively). If this represents a stable coefficient for wages into the third/ninth century, it can be seen that the real costs of skilled labour in the two examples increases significantly. For the wall, the expenditure on skilled labour involved in the decoration is 98 Eliyahu Ashtor, Histoire des prix et des salaires dans l’Orient médiéval (Paris: SEVPEN, 1969), p. 64.

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equivalent to an additional 471–707 unskilled man days. In the second example, the expenditure on skilled labour involved in the decoration is equivalent to an additional 583–876 (decoration scheme 1) and 2,407–3,610 (decoration scheme 2) unskilled man days.99 Converting all the man-power requirements into unskilled man days using the lower wage coefficient, the total labour costs in Table 5 increase by between 19% and 23%.100 It could also be that the availability of some specialised craftsmen was limited, and this factor might result in certain activities carrying a disproportionately high cost. Other implications of the figures in Table 5 can be illustrated by transferring them to one of the extant palaces. Admittedly, given the state of the ruins of Samarra, this is a dangerous exercise, and the figures given below should be seen only as a potential guide to the orders of magnitude involved in large-scale construction project in this period. Taking the complex of Istabulat (fig. 2.15), the walls enclosing the four courtyards comprise a total of approximately 6,000m.101 If 99 It is assumed in this chapter that the materials used in the construction and decoration do not have an intrinsic value (i.e. separate from the labour and fuel cost involved in manufacture). Gold is perhaps the exception because of its use as currency. Using wage levels for the period, 762–66, 0.608kg and 1.149kg would translate (at a rate of 12 dirhams to the dīnār) to 22,880 or 34,320 and 43,200 or 64,800 unskilled man days respectively, according to the different estimates of the monthly wage (assuming 25 working days per month). These numbers would have to be revised according to labouring wages for the mid third/ninth century. For the dirham-dīnār conversion rate, see Ashtor, Histoire des prix, p. 64. 100 Further refinements of these calculations could be suggested with the use of evidence of wage levels on construction projects in the Geniza archive. Two features can be highlighted here. First, the daily wages of skilled workers are supplemented by the provision of lunch, while those of manual labourers are not. Second, stucco workers are the best paid group of craftsmen, exceeding even the wages of masons. See Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, I: 96, 113. For a discussion of the consumption of basic foodstuffs at Samarra, see Jeremy Johns, ‘Feeding the army,’ in Chase Robinson, ed., A Medieval Islamic City reconsidered: An interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 183–90. 101 Calculation based on the plan in Northedge, ‘The palaces of the Abbasids,’ fig. 12.

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these were built of mud-brick in the manner outlined in Example 1, then the construction would require approximately 104,000 man days. If it is assumed that 2% of the enclosed space consists of unbuttressed mud-brick [103] walls of a height of 4m, without foundations, then this aspect of the construction adds a further 227,000 man days. Of course, the total man-power calculation would also have to be increased to include the levelling of the site and the construction of such features as vaults, roofing, drains, second stories, and so on. At first sight, the labour requirements look considerable, but it can be expressed in a different ways as a team of 5,000 labourers working for approximately 66 days.102 The substitution of baked brick for mud-brick in any area of the complex would result in a 17% increase in the labour requirement per m3 of wall, but the figures for fuel are more dramatic. The use of baked brick rather than mudbrick in only 10% of the complex would more than double the total fuel requirement from 3,800 to 9,600 tonnes. The practice of reusing materials, such as baked brick from earlier structures, suggests that the provision of fuel represented a major logistical problem on the Mesopotamian plain. Given that the manufacture of mud-bricks would have consumed substantial quantities of straw from the agricultural regions surrounding Samarra, it seems 102

Numbers of this magniture should not be surprising when seen in the context of caliphal building projects. The ability of the Abbasid caliphs to command, at short notice, the labour resources needed for major construction work is well illustrated by the case of Tuwana in Cilicia. According to al-Tabari, al-Maʾmun ordered his son ʿAbbas to organise the building of a madīna (city), which included a massive outer wall 3 farsakhs (approximately 18km) in circumference with four fortified gateways. The outer wall, at least, of the madīna appears to have been completed within the year 218/833–34, though it was soon demolished on the orders of the new caliph al-Muʿtasim, immediately after the death of al-Maʾmun. See al-Tabari, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa’l-mulūk, III: 1111–1112, 1164. Translated in Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari, Storm and Stress along the Northern Frontiers of the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate: The Caliphate of al-Mu‘taṣim, AD 833–842/AH 218– 227, trans. and annotated Clifford Bosworth, The History of al-Ṭabarī 33, ser. ed. E. Yarshater, Bibliotheca persica (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), p. 2. My thanks to Robert Hillenbrand for drawing this account to my attention.

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unlikely that there would have been sufficient straw remaining to make it a viable source of fuel for the burning of gypsum and the firing of baked bricks. In the case of the hypothetical construction of the mud-brick walls at Istabulat, approximately 1,900 tonnes of straw or other agricultural waste would have been required to make the bricks, or the equivalent of c. 4,000 hectares of barley stubble. If the straw was also used as fuel for burning the gypsum, then this activity would have expended a further 3,800 tonnes, or the equivalent of c. 8,000 hectares of barley stubble (although this figure could perhaps be reduced if the straw was mixed with deposits of bitumen found in the region). Another option for fuel would have been the logs of date palms or other trees, but, again, this resource was also needed for other activities. It appears that the supply of date palms for scaffolding, structural work, and fuel was insufficient from the land around Samarra, at least during the initial construction phase of the city, because al-Muʿtasim called for palm trunks to be sent from Basra, Baghdad, the Sawad, Antioch, and the Syrian coast.103 The transport of bulk materials from beyond Samarra would have considerable increased the total expenditure involved in the construction of the palaces. The real [104] costs of long-distance transport are difficult to assess, however. Transport on land was substantially more expensive than by water (particularly if downstream by river),104 and this meant that the movement of heavy goods over long distances could be contemplated only where there existed navigable rivers and sea passages. While the movement of heavy items must have been very expensive, anecdotal evidence suggests, at least in the case of marble, that this may have been exceeded by the costs of quarrying, shaping, and sawing the stone. As an example, cut Yaʿqubi, Kitāb al-buldān, p. 258. For example, Roman sources indicate that wheat lost 44–55% of its value every 100 Roman miles by road, but only 6.38% of its value over the same distance by river. See: Richard Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire: Quantitative Studies, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 368; DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, pp. 210–11. Also Bulliet (Camel and the Wheel, p. 20) for comments on the relative costs of transport by ox-cart and camel. 103

104

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stone pavements and other architectural features were exported from Egypt even though new stone was available much closer to Iraq on the north Syrian coast.105 It could be, however, that the second-hand Egyptian material included rarer types of coloured stone, which could not be procured elsewhere.106 While some types of decoration, such as marble veneer, mosaic, and gold leaf, might appear both impractical and prohibitively expensive for the large-scale architecture of Samarra, written sources and archaeological evidence confirm that such luxury media were utilised extensively in both palaces and mosques. Clearly, in choosing such materials, the patron is motivated by concerns other than just cost. The building of a Congregational Mosque in the imperial capital placed a responsibility on the caliph to employ the finest materials in other construction – in the case of Samarra, this means the exclusive use of baked brick – and decoration. The imperial mosque is a public building and the grandeur of the structure functions as a symbolic expression of the interconnectedness of religion and secular power. Monuments such as palaces operate in a different way. It remains the intention of the patron that the scale and opulence of his palace should reflect his own magnificence, though the primary audience for this statement of caliphal power is not the public at large. Unlike the Congregational Mosque, the palace is not constructed and ornamented to the same quality throughout. Further, there appears to be little sense of permanence in Samarran palace design; the valuable materials [105] might well be stripped out and reused in a new construction project as soon as the building fell out of use. In Severus ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, History of the Patriarchs, IV: 512–515. The account mentions the forcible removal of columns and pavements from the churches of Egypt. It must have been the high costs involved in the manufacture of marble columns and complex cut stone floors that made the transport of such items to Iraq worthwhile. For labour costs of cutting and shaping marble columns, see DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla, p. 121. 106 The difficulties involved in the transport of antique columns from Egypt and Lebanon for use in the Süleymaniye mosque in Istanbul has been traced in Ottoman documents. See J. Michael Rogers, ‘The state and the arts of medieval Turkey, part I. The stones of Süleymaniye,’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 14 (1982): 71–86. 105

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order to come to a better understanding of the design choices made in palace architecture one must look to evidence concerning the value systems and expectations of contemporary patrons and viewers.

THE ROLE OF THE VIEWER The values and perceptions of the contemporary viewer may provide a key to understanding the types of decisions made during the process of design, construction, and decoration at Samarra.107 What did contemporary viewers – from the patrons to those who came for an audience – expect of spaces within these palaces? Was there among contemporary viewers a shared vocabulary of forms, media, and motifs that served to denote diverse concepts, such as royal magnificence, accessibility, remoteness, or princely pleasure? Accounts of the experiences of viewers of these architectural spaces would help to answer these questions, but there appear to be a limited number of descriptions that can be correlated precisely with built structures in Samarra.108 In order to come to some conclusions concerning the impact of contemporary perceptions on the design process and subsequent utilisation of the palaces, we need to consider descriptions of both objects and architecture across the early centuries of Islam. 107 In the field of art history there have been attempts to reconstruct the value systems of pre-modern audiences using both objects and written sources. Examples include Baxandall’s, Painting and Experience and Patterns of Intention and Jaś Elsner’s, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity, Cambridge Studies in New Art History and Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). For the early Islamic period, see Robert Hamilton, Walid and his Friends: An Umayyad Tragedy, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 6 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). A link between architectural design and contemporary poetry at the Taʾifa courts of eleventh- and twelfthcentury Spain is suggested in Cynthia Robinson, ‘Seeing paradise: Metaphor and vision in Taʾifa palace architecture,’ Gesta 36.2 (1997): 145–55. 108 See comments in: Dominique Sourdel, ‘Questions de cérémonial abbaside,’ Revue des études islamiques 28 (1960): 121–48; Julie Scott Meisami, ‘The Palace-complex as emblem. Some Samarran qaṣīdas,’ in Chase Robinson, ed., A medieval Islamic City reconsidered: An interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 69–78.

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Some tentative suggestions are made here, though more detailed study is needed.109 Two avenues of inquiry seem to be relevant to the analysis of palaces: first, written descriptions of individual rooms or buildings; and second, accounts of the employment of palaces in specific ceremonies. An account of a palatial interior is recorded by the scholar and transmitter of traditions, Hammad al-Rawiya (d. c. 772), who was summoned to an audience with caliph Hisham (r. 724–43) in Damascus. He reports: I was admitted into his presence and found him in a spacious house paved with marble; and he was in a majlis also paved with marble. There, between every slab and its neighbour was a strip (qaḍīb) of gold; and so it was with the walls. Hisham was sitting on a red carpet (ṭinfisa ḥamrāʾ) and his clothes were of red silk perfumed with musk and ambergris. In front of him were two containers of gold filled with crushed musk, which he stirred with his hand to diffuse the scent.110

This is a good example of the ways in which the visual and olfactory responses of a viewer might be manipulated within a palatial setting.111 The viewer betrays a considerable sensitivity to the quality of the materials: the silk of the clothes, the musk and ambergris of the perfume, the marble of the walls, and the gold of the cramps holding [106] the marble panels in place. Marble plays a key role as an indicator of splendour; it is implied in this account that the mar109

See, however, a survey of texts concerning houses and furnishing in Ahsan, Social Life, pp. 165–201. 110 Abu al-Faraj ʿAli b. Husayn al-Isfahani, Kitāb al-Aghānī (Bulaq: Matbaʿat Dar al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyya, 1868), V: 166. Trans. in Hamilton, Walid and his Friends, p. 76. 111 On the roles of sound and smell in architectural settings, see: Nina Ergin, ‘The fragrance of the divine: Ottoman incense burners and their context,’ Art Bulletin 96.1 (2014): 70–97; Nina Ergin, ‘A sound status among the Ottoman elite: Architecture patrons of sixteenth-century Istanbul mosques and their recitation programs,’ in Michael Frishkopf and Federico Spinetti, eds, Music, Sound and Architecture in Islam (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2018), pp. 37–58.

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ble is employed for the paving throughout the palace and as a wall covering for the most significant area, the caliph’s reception room. The presence of other materials, such as gold, silver, mosaic, and imported woods, denoted the wealth and power of the patrons of buildings in the Abbasid period.112 It is noticeable, however, that no mention is made by Hammad al-Rawiya of the actual appearance of the ornamental materials he saw, and this holds true for many accounts of the ninth and tenth centuries. The visual experiences created by the buildings and their fixed decoration were complemented by the addition of sculptures, textiles, furniture, and other portable objects. Sculptural elements in the palaces of Abbasid Baghdad and Samarra included the famous automata and fountains constructed of precious metals.113 The extravagance of such items focused the attention of the viewer upon the magnificence of the ruler; his wealth, his ability to command resources, his position as the greatest patron of art were all implied in the lavish use of rare materials. Conversely, the sculptures and other precious metal ornamentation were most vulnerable to recycling in times of economic hardship.114 Remnants of wooden furniture have been recovered from Samarra, but cushions and mattresses were

Al-Tabari, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa’l-mulūk, III: 537; Ahsan, Social Life, pp. 177–78. On the perceptions of marble in early Islamic culture, see Marcus Milwright, ‘“Waves of the sea”: Responses to marble in written sources (9th–15th Century),’ in Bernard O’Kane, ed., The Iconography of Islamic Art. Studies in Honour of Professor Robert Hillenbrand (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 211–21. 113 For example, the caliph al-Muqtadir’s mechanical tree in Baghdad (described in Qaddumi, trans., Gifts and Rarities, p. 154) or al-Mutawakkil’s statue of a dolphin in Birkat al-Husnaʾ (Buhturi cited in Northedge and Falkner, ‘Survey and excavations,’ p. 133). 114 Shabushti gives a vivid description of the precious materials employed in the decoration of al-Mutawakkil’s palace of al-Burj. See Abu al-Hasan ʿAli b. Muhammad al-Shabushti, Kitāb al-Diyārāt, ed. Kurkis ʿAwwād, third printing (Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthanna, 1986), p. 159. Trans. in Northedge, ‘Palaces of the Abbasids.’ On the demolition of the palace, the gold and silver sculpture was minted as coin. 112

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probably more extensively employed.115 Numerous scholars have remarked on the importance of carpets and textile hangings in the formation of interior spaces across the Islamic world.116 It is apparent from written sources that contemporary viewers were able to distinguish many different types of fabric, and perhaps particular combinations of luxury materials were intended to provide visual cues for the viewer concerning the status and personality of the patron.117 The impact of a house full of carpets and furnishings covered with patterned textiles is likened by the fourth/tenth-century Baghdadi author, Abu al-Mutahhar Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Azdi, to ‘the ground covered with flowers.’118 Perhaps the main point about these portable elements of the design is that they could be rearranged in order to create different effects. On some occasions tented structures might also be erected in gardens and inside īwāns.119 Natural and artificial lighting must also have played a crucial role in [107] shaping the experience of architectural spaces.120 For example, it seems likely that 115 K. Hammudi, ‘Qaṣr al-khalīfa al-Mu‘taṣim fī Sāmarrāʾ,’ Sumer 38 (1982): fig. on p. 203 (Arabic section). For a general discussion of domestic furnishings in the early Islamic world, see Ahsan, Social Life, pp. 190–95; Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, IV: 105–32. 116 For example, Lisa Golombek, ‘The draped universe of Islam,’ in Priscilla Soucek, ed., Content and Context of visual Arts in the Islamic World: Papers from a Colloquium in Memory of Richard Ettinghausen (Pennsylvania and London: Pennsylvania State University Press for the College Art Association, 1988), pp. 25–49. 117 Specific symbolism might also be inferred from the presence of figural designs on textiles. See, for example, the account of the carpet on which alMutawakkil was assassinated. See al-Masʿudi, Murūj al-dhahab, VII: 290– 94. On the written sources providing evidence about textiles in the early Islamic world, see Robert Serjeant, ‘Material for a history of Islamic textiles up to the Mongol conquest,’ Ars Islamica 13-14 (1948), pp. 75-117. Also Ars Islamica 9 (1942): 54–92; 10 (1943): 71–104; 11–12 (1946): 98-145; 15–16 (1951): 29–85, 273–305. 118 Translated in Ahsan, Social Life, p. 194. Descriptions of paradise in the Qurʾan include references to carpets, brocade, and cushions. See Qurʾan 55:54, 76. 119 Sourdel, ‘Cérémonial abbaside,’ pp. 128–30. 120 Lamm, Das Glas. For a discussion of domestic lighting, see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, IV: 132–36.

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low relief patterns of the stucco – particularly in the ‘bevelled style’ (fig. 2.11) – would have been animated by the flickering light of candles or oil lamps. The practice of rearranging portable objects is a significant feature of the use of palaces for ceremonial purposes. Descriptions of the reception of foreign dignitaries in the early Islamic courts illustrate the monumental effort made to create an environment that would surround and overwhelm the visitor.121 The creation of this elaborate fantasy world took weeks or months of preparation, and presumably involved the transport of items such as tapestries, carpets, curtains, clothing, and gold and silverwork from the caliphal treasury and from other palaces.122 Accounts suggest that the floors and wall surfaces were covered with hangings as well as garments and pieces of armour.123 Other elements of the experience included displays of mechanical devices and exotic animals, the deployment of massed ranks of soldiers and court officials, the use of perfumes, and the careful orchestration of both sound and silence.124 The passage from one court to another disoriented the viewer, but also established a narrative, culminating in the audience with the caliph himself. 121

For example, the reception in Baghdad of the Byzantine ambassador by the caliph al-Muqtadir in 305/917. Similar versions are given by al-Khatib alBaghdadi (trans. in Lassner, Topography of Baghdad, pp. 86–91) and Qaddumi, trans., Gifts and Rarities, pp. 148–54. Numerous parallels can be drawn with the arrangement of similar ceremonies at the Byzantine court. See Averil Cameron, ‘The construction of court ritual: The Byzantine Book of Ceremonies,’ in David Cannadine and Simon Price, eds, Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 106–36. 122 Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, trans. in Lassner, Topography of Baghdad, p. 88. The author remarks that the Byzantine ambassador had to wait two months for his audience, ‘…until al-Muqtadir completed the decoration of his palace and arranging of the furniture therein.’ 123 For example, Qaddumi, trans., Gifts and Rarities, pp. 163–64. 124 During solemn ceremonies in the Buyid court, archers were instructed to shoot birds out of the sky if they disturbed the silence with their singing. My thanks to Julian Raby for this information.

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All means possible were used to create a sensory environment that could impress upon the viewer (the foreign dignitary, for example) a sense of the power and magnificence of the ruler. In this, the palatial architecture with its fixed and temporary decoration played an integral role in the creation of a ceremonial narrative. These highly contrived events probably served other purposes and catered for the experiences of other viewers. Those officials, soldiers, and attendants who took part in these rituals were given a sense of their place in the official hierarchy.125 Perhaps this hierarchy was expressed through one’s placement within the entire narrative: in which courtyard, in what spatial relation to the caliph, and so on. In times of celebration the distinction between public and private space might be partially dissolved as the public was given access to some parts of the palace.126 At other times [108] monumental gateways provided the terminus for public processions as well as the point of contact between the outside and the private world of the palace.127 It seems likely that the urban population of Samarra derived a different range of experiences from these ceremonial occasions than did the members of the court; the form and decoration of features such as the Bab al-ʿAmma (fig. 2.12) had to address the expectations of these two types of viewer.

CONCLUSION This chapter has stressed the importance of the process of design and construction in understanding Samarran palatial architecture and its decoration. In any given location architects and engineers have access to a limited range of bulk materials with which to give physical form 125

Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos remarks that properly observed ceremonies reflect, ‘the harmonious movement with which God the Creator has imbued the world…to make the imperial power seem more awesome to its subjects, and at the same time more agreeable and more impressive.’ Trans. in Cameron, ‘Court ritual,’ p. 118. 126 Ahsan, Social Life, pp. 275–76. 127 See also comments in Chase Robinson, ‘Introduction,’ in Chase Robinson, ed., A medieval Islamic City reconsidered: An interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 9–20.

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to the design brief set by the patron. These bulk materials play a central role in establishing the dominant modes of construction and decoration. In the case of the Mesopotamian plain, the abundance of clay-rich soil and low availability of stone and wood, made mudbrick and pisé the most common building materials, while nearby deposits of gypsum made stucco the most common medium of decoration. The style of palatial architecture developed in Samarra could also be seen in part as a response to constraints imposed by manpower. On the one hand, the apparent lack of structural innovation in the palaces of Samarra indicates a desire to minimise the numbers of engineers and skilled artisans required during the building process, while on the other hand, the massive horizontal expansion seen at Samarra made good use of the plentiful supplies of unskilled labour. Building on the scale seen at Samarra would have been futile, however, if the concept of scale as a reflection of royal splendour had not been generally understood by observers in third/ninth-century Iraq. It seems likely that the caliphs were measuring their own achievements against the vast palatial complexes of the Sasanian empire (c. 223–651), and of other ancient cultures of the region. Written sources indicate that the caliphs were willing to spend extravagant sums on the construction and decoration of palaces. Although the real costs in terms of man-power and fuel of large-scale building in mud-brick appear to have been comparatively low in relation to the costs involved in, for example, stone construction, the problems created by the supply of skilled labour and the transport of luxury materials and fuel imposed significant constraints on the overall design process, which money alone could not solve. These logistical considerations help to account for the common practice of recycling everything from marble panels and gold leaf [109] down to baked brick as one palace (or residential district) fell out of use and another took its place. The reuse of decorative elements from earlier buildings may well have led to uncomfortable juxtapositions of styles in palatial interiors. The speed with which buildings were constructed, and the great expanses of wall space created within them, seem to have stimulated the development of rather mechanical and unimagi-

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native approaches to surface decoration.128 This is most evident in the ‘bevelled style’ stucco panels, but can also be seen in the broad, shallow carving of the wood and marble panels. Further, the emphasis on speed over quality would perhaps account for the relatively crude, linear manner adopted in the surviving fresco painting of the Dar al-Khilafa. Although it would be dangerous to draw too many conclusions from the fragmentary painted remains, it seems as if the painters working in Samarra were unable to design figurative compositions that could be successfully expanded to fill the spaces created within the palaces.129 Analysis of the levels of expenditure of the labour and resources involved in different activities can help to give some insight into the types of decisions made during the design, construction, and decoration phases, but this does not account for the final forms of the palaces themselves. It was suggested in the introduction that the principal aim of ancient palaces was to create an environment that would control the responses of the viewer. There is certainly a theatricality 128

For valid criticisms of my rather negative judgments of Samarran architecture and decoration, see comments by Barbara Finster in her review of Chase Robinson, ed., A medieval Islamic City reconsidered: An interdisciplinary Approach to Samarra, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001) published in the Journal of Islamic Studies 15.2 (2004): 240–43. My thinking on these issues has changed since the publication of this chapter in 2001. See now Milwright, ‘Samarra and ʿAbbasid ornament.’ 129 Famous frescos from the Dar al-Khilafa such as the ‘two dancers’ panel (Herzfeld, Die Malereien von Samarra, pls. I, II) are, in fact, rather small in scale (about 1m in height). It seems likely that diminutive designs would have been lost in the interior spaces of this huge palace. On the paintings, see also Eva Hoffman, ‘Between east and west: The wall paintings of Samarra and the construction of Abbasid princely culture,’ Muqarnas, 25 (2008): 107–32. This painting style can be contrasted with the bolder and more successful wall painting seen in Lashkari Bazar. See Daniel Schlumberger, Lashkari Bazar, une résidence royale ghaznévide et ghoride, Mémoires de la délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan 18 (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1978), pp. 61–65, pls. 121–24. Also Yuri Karev, ‘Qarakhanid wall painting in the citadel of Samarqand: First report and preliminary observations,’ Muqarnas 22 (2005): 45–84.

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apparent in the descriptions of ceremonial events at Samarra. The whole experience is presented as a narrative passing from one space to the next within the palace, with illusion and effect often more important than substance. The brick construction and fixed decoration of stucco, marble, tiles, and wood might be camouflaged by thousands of vividly patterned textiles brought in for the occasion, while automata created a glittering imitation of animate life. The role of these temporary ‘fittings’ (including both physical objects and items such as perfume and lighting) is crucial to an understanding of the intended impact of the Samarran palaces; they serve to redefine architectural spaces and the nature of the sensory experience created for the viewer. Further study of the role of the decoration must make the leap of imagination necessary to consider the importance of both the lost ornamental media and the complex literary culture that helped to formulate the system of values within which the Samarran palaces were conceived.

CHAPTER 3. ‘WAVES OF THE SEA’: RESPONSES TO MARBLE IN WRITTEN SOURCES (NINTH– FIFTEENTH CENTURIES)1 Marble2 has played a key role in the monumental architecture of the Mediterranean Basin and Middle East since ancient times. Sources of marble in the ancient world were limited,3 and activities such as quarrying, transporting, sawing veneer panels and paving stones, cutting opus sectile, carving architectural details, and polishing stone 1

Marcus Milwright, ‘“Waves of the sea”: Responses to marble in written sources (9th-15th Century),’ in Bernard O’Kane, ed., The Iconography of Islamic Art. Studies in Honour of Professor Robert Hillenbrand (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 211–21. I would like to thank Dominic Brookshaw, Ruth Barnes, Ruba Kana’an and Julie Meisami for their help in the preparation of this article. 2 The term ‘marble’ is used here to describe any hard stone that can be polished to a shine. This may include a wide range of stones including marbles, breccias, granites, porphyries, diorites, basalts and alabaster. 3 For the main marble quarries of the ancient world, see Hazel Dodge and John Bryan Ward-Perkins, eds, Marble in Antiquity. Collected Papers of J. B. Ward-Perkins, Archaeological Monographs of the British School at Rome 6 (London: British School at Rome, 1992), pp. 15–16, fig. 3. On the reuse of ancient marble in later architecture, see Michael Greenhalgh, Marble Past, monumental Present: Building with Antiquities in the Medieval Mediterranean (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2009); Michael Greenhalgh, Constantinople to Cordoba: Dismantling Architecture in the East, North Africa, and Islamic Spain (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012).

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all required teams of skilled craftsmen.4 It is not surprising, therefore, that marble was seldom used as the principal material of construction. There is archaeological evidence for the facing of rubble masonry with decorative marble panels as early as the sixth-century BCE in Greece,5 and this ornamental use of marble remained popular in the architecture of the Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic periods. Whilst plain, monochrome stone was generally the preferred medium for freestanding sculpture or carved architectural details, heavily veined or polychromatic stones were deemed more suitable for veneer and opus sectile, and, to a lesser extent, paving and column drums. Importantly, it is the variable colouration and the patterning of veins within a given stone that form the basis of the decorative scheme. Skilled craftsmen learned to maximise the impact of such patterns through the careful selection and sawing of marble blocks, but other designs might come about by serendipity. Describing the activities of the sculptors of the island of Chios in the Archaic period Pliny the Elder (d. 79 CE) writes: All these artists, then, used only white marble from the island of Paros, a stone which they used to call lychnites because, as Varro reports, it was quarried in galleries by the light of lamps…A marvel is reported concerning the quarries at Paros; when a single block of stone was split with wedges, the stone-workers found that there was an image of Silenus inside.6

The event Pliny relates does not involve merely an act of observation. Rather, in surveying the peculiar arrangement of mineral staining [212] the quarrymen projected onto the surface of the stone

4

For a discussion of the labour involved in these activities, see Janet DeLaine, The Baths of Caracalla: a Study in the Design, Construction, and Economics of large-scale building Projects in Imperial Rome, Journal of Roman Archaeology. Supplementary Series 25 (Portsmouth RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1997), pp. 118–21. 5 Emerson Swift, Roman Sources of Christian Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), p. 127, fig. 64. 6 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 36:4:14.

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the idea of how the figure of Silenus might look.7 This process of imaginative projection is taken to much greater heights in the genre of rhetorical description of art and architecture (ekphrasis) developed during the late Antique and Byzantine periods. One of the most elaborate texts of this type is Paul the Silentiary’s well-known account of the ambo of the St Sophia in Constantinople written in 563 in which the author constructs an involved simile of a ‘sea-girt island’ through the conflation of the variegated green Thessalian stone panelling on the pulpit itself (‘whose abundant meadows delight the eye’) and the setting of the structure, like a rocky promontory on a pavement of blue-veined Proconnesian marble (‘an isthmus beaten by waves on either side’). He also notes, ‘…And in other places you may see natural markings of the stone that resemble in their changeful lines the moon and the stars.’8 It may be asked to what extent such eulogies are truly representative of the experiences and perceptions of contemporary viewers, but it is clear that Byzantine writers of the sixth century and later had become accustomed to ‘seeing’ landscapes, oceans, stars and flowers within stone slabs. Equally, craftsmen developed ever more complex designs in marble veneer to satisfy the demands of their educated audience. Patrons of the sixth century made specific reference to the ability of skilled marble workers to create pictures that imitated nature through the cutting and connection of patterned marble.9 The accounts of Medieval travellers to the St Sophia, St Vitale in Ravenna, and St Mark’s in Venice

I have borrowed the concept of ‘projection’ from Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of pictorial Representation (London: Phaidon, 1960). 8 The complete text is translated in Cyril Mango, trans. and ed., The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453: Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 91–96. See also comments in Gervase Mathew, Byzantine Aesthetics (London: John Murray, 1963), pp. 35–36, 76–77. On symbolic understandings of marble paving, see Fabio Barry, ‘Walking on water: Cosmic floors in Antiquity and the Middle Ages,’ Art Bulletin 89.4 (2007): 627–54. 9 John Onians, ‘Abstraction and imagination in Late Antiquity,’ Art History 3 (1980): 10. 7

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regularly claim to recognise representations of human figures in the marble panels adorning the walls.10 The practice of cladding the interiors of buildings with marble paving and veneer revetments also spread to the Middle East. Examples in Palestine known from written sources and archaeological evidence include the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the cathedral of Tyre, the churches of St Stephen’s and St Sergius in Gaza, and both the cathedral and the church of St Theodore in Jerash.11 The techniques of sawing marble panels may have been exported beyond the confines of the Byzantine empire. The chronicler, al-Tabari (d. c. 923) claims that the ‘Qaysar’ (i.e. Justinian I, r. 527–65) sent to Abraha, ruler of Yemen in the mid sixth century, ‘workmen and mosaics and marble (al-ṣunnāʿ wa’l-fusayfasāʾ wa’l-rukhām)’ for the decoration of his church, called al-Qalis (al-Qalīs) in Sanʿaʾ.12 Whether this represents anything more than a literary topos – it bears obvious similarities to later accounts concerning the decoration of the Prophet’s Mosque and Great Mosque in Damascus by al-Walid I (r. 705–15)13 – is not apparent, though other descriptions of the church make clear that marble, mosaic and other fine materials were employed. The earliest references to the use of marble in Islamic architecture should perhaps be viewed with some caution. Writing in the sixteenth century, al-Diyarbakri asserts that the caliph ʿUthman (r. 644–55) made use of marble columns in his reconstruction of the 10

Onians, ‘Abstraction,’ pp. 9–10. Michael of Thessalonica draws an analogy between the veining of marble in St Sophia and human flesh: ‘One of these stones even puts on the guise of living flesh, and, whitish in colour, displays all over itself what look like gaping veins of blood. A statue of such material would be a plausible counterfeit of a man.’ Trans. in Cyril Mango and John Parker, ‘A twelfth-century description of St. Sophia,’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 14 (1960): 239. 11 Swift, Roman Sources, pp. 131–33; John Crowfoot, Early Churches in Palestine (London: Humphrey Milford, 1941), pp. 7, 15, 58, 63; Mango, Sources, 60–72. 12 Abu Jaʿfar Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa’l-mulūk, ed. Michael de Goeje (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1879–1901), I.2: 935. 13 Hamilton A. R. Gibb, ‘Arab-Byzantine relations,’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 12 (1958): 221–33.

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Prophet’s [213] mosque in Medina.14 This claim is not substantiated in other accounts. Al-Masʿudi (d. c. 956) reports that in 684 the ‘counter-caliph,’ Ibn al-Zubayr (d. 692) brought mosaics and three marble columns (asāṭin min rukhām) from the Yemeni church of alQalis for use in the rebuilding of the Kaʿba.15 While it is plausible that the fine materials were plundered for use in the Meccan sanctuary, the fullest description of al-Qalis given by al-Azraqi (d. c. 865) states that the columns inside the church were of sāj (probably teak).16 Much clearer evidence is available for the Umayyad dynasty. Marble was employed extensively in the great building programmes of the caliphs ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 685–705) and al-Walid I in Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, and Damascus.17 From the Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque of Damascus there are examples of marble columns, capitals, veneer panels (colour pl. 1 & fig. 3.1), and carved window grilles dating from the first phases of construction.18 The use of marble was not confined to religious monuments; for example, an account of an audience with Hisham (r. 724–43) notes that the caCited in K. A. C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), I.1: 40. 15 Abu al-Hasan, al-Masʿudi, Les Prairies d’or, trans. and ed. Charles Barbier de Meynard (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1861–77), V: 192–93. 16 Abu Walid Muhammad b. ʿAbdallah al-Azraqi, Geschichte und Beschreibung der Stadt Mekka, Die Chroniken der Stadt Mekka 1, ed. Ferdinand Wüstenfeld (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1858), pp. 89–90. This interpretion relies upon the reading of al-ʿumud al-sāj (for al-ʿamal bi’l-sāj) proposed in Robert Serjeant and Ronald Lewcock, Ṣanʿāʾ: an Arabian Islamic City (London: World of Islam Festival Trust, 1983), p. 45, n. 30. 17 The literary and archaeological evidence is reviewed in Creswell, Architecture I.1: 65–196. 18 Very little of the marble veneer in either building dates to the Umayyad period. See H. R. Allen, ‘Observations on the original Appearance of the Dome of the Rock,’ in Jeremy Johns, ed., Bayt al-Maqdis: Jerusalem and early Islam. Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 9.2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 206, 208–209. For photographs possibly showing original veneer panels, see Ernest Richmond, The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem: a Description of its Structure and Decoration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), figs. 4, 6, 7, 59, 60. The fire of 1893 destroyed most of the original marble veneer in the Great Mosque in Damascus. 14

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liph’s palace in Damascus was paved with marble and that the walls of the audience chamber were covered with marble panels held in place with gilded clamps.19

Figure 3.1. Umayyad marble veneer, Great Mosque in Damascus (detail). Photograph: Marcus Milwright.

DESCRIPTIONS OF MARBLE Marble is found in different forms in the structures of subsequent dynasties all over the Islamic world. This chapter focuses upon the range of responses to the appearance of marble (principally in the forms of veneer panels, opus sectile and columns) in Arabic and Persian texts of ninth to the fifteenth centuries. In particular, I am concerned with what the content and vocabulary of these descriptions can tell us about the meanings attached to marble in early Islamic architecture.

Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, Kitāb al-Aghānī (Cairo: Matbaʿat Dar al-Kutub al-ʿArabiyah, 1905), V: 157–58. The remnants of similar decorative programmes are reported from Khirbat al-Minya and Qusayr ʿAmra. See Creswell, Early Islamic Architecture I.2: 385, 395, n. 10.

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The descriptions of marble found in Arabic and Persian texts vary in form and detail. The terms marmar20 and rukhām both appear in texts of the period under discussion, although the former is usually used to mean white stone without pattern or veining. Rukhām enjoys more varied usage from white stone (including alabaster21) to coloured and variegated marbles. In some cases the fact that the marble is coloured might be particularly emphasised; for example, the thirteenth-century writer, Abu al-Makarim describes the church of al-Qalis as being paved ‘with coloured marble (bi’lrukhām al-mulawwan).’22 Some descriptions merely note the colour of the stone, such as Ibn Rustah’s (fl. ninth–tenth centuries) description of the arrangement of red, white and green marble panelling on the interior of the Kaʿba.23 Attempts are also made to identify other subsidiary colours or textures within types of coloured stone. AlBiruni (d. 972) describes the black onyx (jazaʿ) stone of the Kaʿba as ‘black striped (mukhaṭṭāṭ) with white.’24 The geographer, al-Bakri (d. 1094) writes the reuse of ‘two red columns spotted/striped (muwashshā) with yellow, which are of matchless beauty’ from an ancient church in the [214] construction of the Great Mosque of Qayrawan in 688–97.25 The Persian traveller, Nasir-i Khusraw (d. c. 1088) 20 Derived

from the Greek μάρμαρον. Sometimes described as rukhām malakī or rukhām malaki abyaḍ. See Nikita Elisséeff, trans. and ed., La Description de Damas d’Ibn ʿAsākir (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1959), p. 24 [16], n. 3. 22 Abu al-Makarim (cited incorrectly as Abu Salih the Armenian), The Churches and Monasteries of Egypt and some neighbouring Countries, trans. and ed. Basil Evetts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894–95), p. 139 (Arabic text). 23 Abu ʿAli Ahmad b. ʿUmar ibn Rustah, Kitāb al-aʿlāq al-nafīsa VII, Bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum 7 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1892), p. 36. 24 Cited in Finbarr Flood, ‘Light in stone. The commemoration of the Prophet in Umayyad architecture,’ in Jeremy Johns, ed., Bayt al-Maqdis: Jerusalem and early Islam. Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 9.2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 316. 25 ʿAbdallah b. Abu al-ʿAziz al-Bakri, Description de l’Afrique septentrionale. Texte arabe, ed. William M. de Slane, Baron (Paris: Librairie Paul Geuthner, 1911), p. 22. See also Creswell, Architecture, I.2: 518. The term muwashshā is also employed by al-Dimashqi in describing the marble quarries 21

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saw on the platform of the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem ‘four piers of green marble that resembles emerald (zumurrud), except that the marble has many different coloured dots/flecks (s. nuqṭa) in it.’26 In waqf documents of the Mamluk period one encounters short descriptive terms for coloured marble including ḥalībī (‘milk’), summāqī (‘sumac,’ i.e. porphyry), zurzūrī (‘starling’ or ‘piebald’), ghurābī (‘crow’ or ‘raven’), marsīnī (‘myrtle’), al-laḥm wa’l-shaḥm (‘meat and fat’), and muʿarraq (‘veined’).27 It seems likely that these labels represent a shorthand employed by architects, craftsmen and dealers in ornamental stone. Ibn Sasra (fl. late fourteenth) indicates that this may be the case in a description of the marble panelling of the Great Mosque in Damascus: It is said that the two slabs of porphyry (al-rukhām al-summāqī) were from the throne of Bilqīs [i.e. the Queen of Sheba] and there was no equal to them in this world. The walls were covered (murakhkhama) up to the edge of the mosaic with the same marble that is above the mihrab today, and there is nothing like it at this time. It is called the ‘waves of the sea’ (mawj al-baḥr) by of Latakya. See Shams al-Din Abu ʿAbdallah Muhammad al-Dimashqi, Cosmographie de Chems-ed-Din Abou Abdallah Mohammed edDimachqui, ed. Michael Mehren (St. Petersburg: Académie Impériale des Sciences, 1866), p. 209. 26 Nasir-i Khusraw, Safar-nāmeh-i hākim, ed. Muhammad Dabirsiyaqi (Tehran: Kitabha-yi Jibi, 1977), p. 54; Nāser-e Khosraw’s Book of Travels, trans. Wheeler Thackston (Albany NY: Bibliotheca Persica, 1986), pp. 33– 34. 27 Examples are taken from the waqfs of sultans Faraj ibn Barquq and Qaytbay. See Salih Mostafa, ‘The Cairene sabil: Form and meaning,’ Muqarnas 6 (1991): 40; Leo Mayer, ed., The Buildings of Qaytbay as described in his Endowment Deed (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1938), pp. 6, 12. See also comments in Jane Jakeman, ‘Abstract Art and Communication in “Mamluk” Architecture.’ (D. Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1993), p. 100; J. Michael Rogers, ‘The state and the arts in Ottoman Turkey. Part 1. The stones of Süleymaniye,’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 14 (1982): 73–74; Howard Crane, trans. and ed., Risāle-i Miʿmāriyye. An early-seventeenthcentury Ottoman Treatise on Architecture, Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture 1 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), pp. 71–72.

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architects (s. muhandis), and when a man examines it, he sees it is one of the wonders and marvels of the world.28

The likening of the patterns within marble to water is a common theme found in the works of Roman and Byzantine writers in the centuries before the birth of Islam.29 The same metaphor appears in Jewish literature; the Babylonian Amoraim of the fourth century CE describes the marble of the Herodian temple as being like the ‘waves of the sea.’30 Even more elaborate comparisons between water and marble are to be found in the Talmudic story of the ‘Four who entered Paradise’ in the mystical text, the Hekhaloth. In one Medieval version of the story the shining surfaces of the marble in the sixth palace create the impression that ‘hundreds of thousands and millions of waves of water stormed against him, and yet there was not a drop of water.’31 Other allusions to water appear in Arabic literature. The poet al-Buhturi (d. c. 898) in his eulogy about the Samarran palace of al-Kāmil draws the following comparison: 20

As if the glass walls of its interior were waves beating upon the seashore;

21

As if its striped marble (tafwīf al-rukhām), where its pattern meets the opposite prospect,

22

Were streaks of rainclouds arrayed between clouds, dark and light,

Muhammad b. Muhammad ibn Sasra, A Chronicle of Damascus 1389– 1397, trans. and ed. William Brinner (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963), fol. 120a. 29 Onians, ‘Abstraction,’ pp. 7–9. 30 Tziona Grossmark, ‘“Shayish” (marble) in Rabbinic literature,’ in Moshe Fischer, ed., Marble Studies: Roman Palestine and the Marble Trade, Xenia 40 (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag, 1998), pp. 276–77. Also further observations in Tziona Grossmark, ‘Marble as a building material in Rabbinic literature,’ Mediterranean Chronicle 2 (2012): 61–78. 31 Trans. in Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1946), pp. 52–53. See also Grossmark, ‘Rabbinic literature,’ pp. 277–78. 28

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The appearance of marble also provoked other comparisons. Nasir-i Khusraw remarks that the flecked green marble of the balustrade [215] (dār-āfrīn) around the platform of the Haram in Jerusalem had the appearance of ‘a meadow with flowers in bloom (marghazār-i gulhā shukufta).’33 Al-Hamdani (d. 945) in his book about the antiquities of southern Arabia mentions a stone slab (s. balāṭa) opposite the king’s palace at Madr which he claims bears the ‘image of the sun and the moon (ṣūrat al-shams wa’l-qamar).’34 Perhaps the most detailed account of marble panelling is given by Ibn Jubayr (d. 1217) in his description of the interior of the Kaʿba: In the wall facing the entrant, which is that running from the Yemen corner to the Syrian, are five marble panels set lengthways as if they were doors. They come down to a distance of five spans (s. shibr) from the ground, and each of them is about a man’s stature in height. Three of them are red, and two green, and all have white tessellations (tajzīʿ bayāḍ) so that I have never seen a more beautiful sight. They are as if speckled (tanqīṭ). The red one adjoins the Yemen corner, and next to it at a distance of five spans is a green…They are all sited in this manner, there being between each panel and the other the distance we have stated. Between each pair is a marble [slab] of pure and unstained whiteness (rukhām abyaḍ ṣāfi’l-lawn nāṣiʿ al-bayāḍ) on which Great and Glorious God had fashioned (aḥdatha), at its first creation, the remarkable designs (s. shakl), inclining to blue, of trees and branches (māʾila ila’l-zurqa mushajjara mughaṣṣana), and another beside it with the same design exactly, as if they were parts [of the same stone]; and if one were placed over the other each deAl-Buhturi, al-Walid ibn ʿUbayd, Dīwān al-Buhturī, ed. H. al-Sirafi (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿarif, 1963), no. 641. Trans. according to Julie Meisami, ‘The palace-complex as emblem: Some Samarran qaṣīdas,’ in Chase Robinson, ed., Samarra: New Approaches to an Early Islamic City, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 73. 33 Nasir-i Khusraw, Safar-nāmeh, p. 55; Thackston, trans. and ed., Travels, p. 34. 34 Al-Hamdani, Hasan ibn Ahmad, Kitāb al-iklīl, vol. 8, ed. A. al-Karmali (Baghdad: Dar al-Salam, 1931), p. 116. 32

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sign would correspond to its opposite. There is no doubt that each slab is the half of the other, and when the cut was made they divided to make these designs and each was placed beside its sister. The space between the green and the red panel is that of two slabs, their combined width being five spans, according to the number mentioned above. The designs on these slabs vary in shape, and each slab lies beside its sister. The sides of these marble slabs are braced by cornices two fingers wide (qadr iṣbaʿayn), of marble tessellated with greens and speckled reds (al-rukhām al-mujazzaʿ min al-akhḍar wa’l-aḥmār al-munaqqatayn), and whites, that are like wands turned on a lathe (anābīb mukhrūṭa), such as to stagger the imagination.35

The main focus of Ibn Jubayr’s account is the pair of white panels carrying symmetrical designs. He is aware that this effect has been achieved through the splitting of a single block of veined stone. Interestingly, he asserts that the designs of trees and branches were ‘fashioned, at its first creation’ by God, thus implicitly denying the creative role of the viewer to project images onto the surface of the stone. Also noticeable is the avoidance of allusions to animate life; that is, things possessing a soul/spirit (rūḥ).36 This restriction may be partially explained by the fact that most of the marble was located in religious buildings, but there remains the impression that the Arabic and Persian texts employ a more limited vocabulary than is seen in [216] Byzantine ekphrasis. In the following paragraphs I want to suggest two aspects of the discussion of marble that perhaps represent perspectives drawn from the culture of early Islam: first, the commemorative use of marble and other stones; and second, the association of the surface qualities of marble to patterned textiles. Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Jubayr, Riḥla, ed. William Wright, revised Michael de Goeje, E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series 5, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1907), pp. 93–94. Adapted from trans. in Ronald Broadhurst, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr (London: Jonathan Cape, 1952), p. 89. 36 For a discussion of the legitimacy of figural representation based on the interpretation of Qurʾan and ḥadīth, see A. J. Wensinck and T. Fahd, ‘ṣūra’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam. Second Edition 9 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 889– 92; Jakeman, Abstract Art, pp. 64–65. 35

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Ibn Sasra’s claim that the porphyry slabs in the Great Mosque in Damascus were part of the throne of Bilqis is found in earlier accounts.37 This is one example of a widespread phenomenon of linking marble, and other stones, with locations, historical figures or preIslamic deities. It seems likely that this literary device was intended to set off chains of associations for readers of the texts (thus rendering less significant a description of the aesthetic qualities of the stone). For example, the alabaster slabs in the roof, and perhaps also the red, white and green marble veneer, of the Kaʿba might evoke memories of the mythical splendours of the ancient palace of Ghumdan.38 That, during the jāhiliyya, stone slabs or blocks were the focus of religious practices is recognised by al-Hamdani and Ibn al-Kalbi (d. 821).39 In Jerusalem the black paving slab (al-balāṭat al-sawdā’) within the Dome of the Rock was believed to be a cover for one of the gateways of Paradise.40 Other stones were associated with the life of the Prophet. A white (or red) marble paving slab in the Kaʿba was said mark his praying place (muṣallā).41 Tabari records that the mosque built in the time of Muʿawiya (661-80) upon the site of the house of Khadija contained a stone slab to the left of the doorway which the Prophet had used to shelter himself from stones thrown from neighbouring houses.42 Re37 Elisséeff, Description, p. 51.

38 For example, see al-Hamdani, Iklīl, pp. 16–26.

39 Al-Hamdani, Iklīl, p. 83: the author notes that the king would genuflect (kaf-

fara lihā) when passing a stone slab embedded in a wall opposite the palace. Hisham ibn al-Kalbi, Kitāb al-asnām, ed. and trans. Wahib Atallah (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1969), p. 11: al-Lāt is described as an ‘idol block’ (ṣakhra murabbaʿa) presumably indicating that it was not carved into a representative form. See also Gerald Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 40 Amikan Elad, Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship: Holy Places, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage, Islamic History and Civilization. Studies and Texts 8 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), pp. 78–81. See also Flood, ‘Light,’ pp. 327–29. 41 Al-Azraqi, Mekka, p. 147; Thackston, trans. and ed., Travels, p. 77; Ibn Jubayr, Riḥla, p. 94. A green marble slab (rukhām khiḍrāʾ) in the ḥijr marked the tomb of Ismaʿil. See Muhammad b. ʿAbdallah ibn Battuta, Voyages d’Ibn Battoutah, trans. and ed. Charles Defrémery and Beniamino Sanguinetti (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1853–58), I: 310. 42 Al-Tabari, Taʾrīkh I.3: 1130.

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cent research has suggested that the stone discs set into mihrabs (and possibly also the black stone of the Meccan sanctuary) associated with the building programme of al-Walid were meant as a form of aniconic commemoration of the Prophet.43

Figure 3.2. Cotton, warp ikat. Yemen, probably 10th century. 1988.21 Griffith Collection. Copyright Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The last point I want to make relates to the visual comparisons between patterned textiles (in particular, the ikat cloths of Yemen known as washī or ʿaṣb44) and marble. The central importance of textiles in the material culture and aesthetic sensibility of the Medieval Islamic world has been discussed by Lisa Golombek.45 Decorative 43

Flood, ‘Light,’ pp. 353–57. Although Muslim tradition places the black stone of Mecca in the lifetime of the Prophet. See Hawting, Idolatry, pp. 85–86, 106. 44 These terms appear to be synonymous. ʿAṣb refers to the practice of knotting the warp threads prior to dyeing them. This technique creates the variegated patterns when they are woven. See Carl Lamm, Cotton in Mediaeval Textiles of the Near East (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1937), pp. 152–56, 236–37, pl. XVIII.d. See also Robert Serjeant, ‘Material for a history of Islamic textiles up to the Mongol conquest (IV),’ Ars Islamica 13 (1948): 75–88. For further examples of Yemeni ikat, see Georgette Cornu, Tissus islamiques de la collection Pfister (Vatican: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1992), nos. 6744, 6751–53. 45 Lisa Golombek, ‘The draped universe of Islam,’ in Priscilla Soucek, ed., Content and Context of the visual Arts in the Islamic World (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), pp. 25–50.

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brickwork, stucco or tiles might function, like wall hangings as the ‘clothing’ for a building and in some cases the qualities of patterned textiles were imitated in architectural ornament.46 In this context it is significant that the vertical bands ornamented with slightly blurred wavy lines (fig. 3.2) found on ikat textiles bear striking similarities to variegated marble. The use of such textiles in architectural contexts has a long history in the Hijaz: ʿaṣb al-yamanī is specified as the material covering the Kaʿba before the time of the Prophet.47 It is tempting to see the marble panelling used by al-Walid to cover the interior of the structure48 as a means to echo, in a more lasting medium, the aesthetic qualities of varicoloured ikat hangings. Another aspect of this comparison can be seen in the vocabulary (terms based on the roots w-sh-y,49 fw-f 50 and kh-ṭ-ṭ51) used to describe both textiles and marble. Writing about [217] Yemeni napkins (s. mandīl), Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (d. 939) remarks that they are ‘like the flowers of spring (ka-annahā’l-nuwwār al-rabīʿ);’52 associations also employed by Byzantine writers and Nasir-i Khusraw when discussing marble. One type of Egyptian textile, known as buqalamūn or abū qalamūn, actually took its name from the semi-precious stone jasper because the use of different coloured threads for the warp and weft created an iridescent effect.53 Golombek, ‘Universe,’ p. 34, figs. 13–16. The use of the term hazār-bāf (‘a thousand weaves’) to describe a style of brickwork suggests this relationship was recognised by Persian craftsmen. 47 Al-Azraqi, Mekka, pp. 173–74. 48 Al-Azraqi, Mekka, p. 147. 49 For example, Serjeant, ‘Material (IV),’ p. 79: a Yemeni cloak referred to as ḥulla awfāf yamaniyya muwashshā. 50 For example, Edward Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1863–93), p. 2460: striped Yemeni cloth called burdu afwāfin. 51 For example, Robert Serjeant, ‘Material for a history of Islamic textiles up to the Mongol conquest (I),’ Ars Islamica 9 (1942): 80: Baghdadi ʿAttābī cloth is described as mukhaṭṭaṭ. See also Lane, Lexicon, p. 499. 52 Ahmad b. Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, Kitāb al-ʿiqd al-farīd (Cairo: Matbaʿat Bulaq, 1887), I: 46. 53 Serjeant, ‘Material (IV),’ pp. 95–96. Al-Masʿudi makes the explicit link between the two. See Prairies, II: 437–38. 46

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This brief survey has encompassed descriptions ranging from the simple phrases found in waqf documents to more elaborate prose and poetry. Authors usually resort to stock adjectives and metaphors in order to differentiate colours and textures of different types of stone.54 Returning to the extant Umayyad marble panelling in the Great Mosque of Damascus it is clear that the craftsmen who produced them were working within a late Antique idiom. The quartersawn veneer and the framed lozenge of coloured stone were both designs that would have been familiar to a contemporary Byzantine viewer. Certainly, it is possible to detect in the texts discussed above parallels with Byzantine literary devices employed in the description of marble – though I am unaware of any example of the transmission from Greek to Arabic of a text of this nature55 – but I believe that other concerns are also present in the works of Muslim authors. At one level, the visual qualities of the stone evoke comparisons to patterned textiles, and at another, stones themselves become signifiers of other things, people or places. It is this allusive dimension that provides one of the main challenges for those concerned with the interpretation of descriptions of material culture in written sources of the Medieval Islamic period.56

The author of the Risāle-i miʿmāriyye claims to be able to differentiate marbles according to the tone they make when struck. See Crane, ed. and trans., Treatise, p. 68. 55 Cf. discussions of Greek painting in the works of Arab authors. See Franz Rosenthal, The classical Heritage in Islam (London: Routledge, 1975), pp. 44–45, 265–66. 56 On this topic, see now Margaret Graves, Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 54

CHAPTER 4. RŪM , ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC LITERARY AND VISUAL CULTURE1

Already in the first century of Islam members of the political elite were commissioning two- and three-dimensional representations of specific individuals. According to the Egyptian author, al-Maqrizi (d. 1442) the first caliph of the Umayyad dynasty, Muʿawiya ibn Abi Sufyan (r. 661–80), minted a coin bearing his own image. While no such coin has ever been located, a standing figure in Arab garb – presumably, as he dressed for the congregational prayer – appears on the obverse of a gold coin (dīnār) minted in Damascus by ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 685–705), and numerous copper issues from other mints in Greater Syria (fig. 4.1).2 The country residences (qaṣr, pl. quṣūr) built for the Umayyad family in the same region contain other examples of ‘portraits’ including two stucco statues of standing rulers – that originally adorned the facades of the palatial building of Qasr al1 Marcus Milwright, ‘Rum, Sin and the idea of the “portrait” in medieval Islamic

literary and visual culture,’ Journal of Modern Hellenism 28 (2010–11): 75–102. On the ‘standing caliph’ copper and gold coins, see: Steve Album and Tony Goodwin, Sylloge of Islamic Coins in the Ashmolean Museum. Volume 1: The Pre-Reform Coinage of the early Islamic Period (London: Ashmolean Museum and Spink and Son, 2002), pp. 91–99. For the specific reference to the supposed coin of Muʿawiya in al-Maqrizi’s, Shudhūr al-ʿuqūd, see p. 93, n. 65 and p. 95 n. 67. Goodwin concludes that al-Maqrizi must have been referring to one of the ‘standing caliph’ coins issued by ʿAbd al-Malik. 2

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Hayr West and the bathhouse of Khirbat al-Mafjar. These sculptures are generally assumed represent caliph Hisham (r. 724–43) in the case

Figure 4.1. ‘Standing caliph’ dinar (77/696–97), SICA no. 705. Formerly Ashmolean Museum. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. of Qasr al-Hayr West, and the other his nephew, Walid ibn Yazid (caliph Walid II, r. 743–44), but their identities cannot be established with absolute certainty due the absence of supporting inscriptions.3 The process of identification made somewhat easier in fresco cycle of the little bathhouse of Qusayr ʿAmra because the presence of short 3

These sculptures are illustrated and discussed in numerous publications, including: Garth Fowden, Quṣayr ʿAmra: Art of the Umayyad Elite in Late Antique Syria, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 36 (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 122–23, figs. 39, 46

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 137 explanatory captions in Greek and Arabic. Most famous of all of the painted panels is [76] the one known as the ‘Six Kings.’ Although much denuded, the inscriptions and details of costume allow for the identification of four of the six: ‘Kaisar’ (i.e. the Byzantine emperor), ‘Kisra’ (i.e. either the Sasanian shah Khusraw I or Khusraw II), the Negus of Abyssinia, and Roderick, the Visigothic king at the time of the Arab conquest of the Iberian peninsula in 711.4 Monumental paintings, architectural carvings, and textile hangings depicting Muslim rulers and their entourages were evidently commissioned for palaces in later centuries, though little physical evidence has survived. Scholars such as Thomas Arnold (d. 1930), Richard Ettinghausen (d. 1979), and Nasser Rabbat have drawn attention to intriguing descriptions in Arabic written sources. Egypt appears to have enjoyed a long tradition of figural architectural decoration from the Tulunids (868–905) to the Mamluk sultanate (1250– 1517), though the content of these depictions varied considerably according to the ruler and dynasty. The son of Ibn Tulun, Khumarawayh (r. 884–96) ornamented a room known as the Bayt al-Dhahab (‘House of Gold’) with painted wooden relief-carvings. Depicting the ruler with his concubines and singing girls, the figures were apparently adorned with crowns and jewellery.5 Aside from the obvious extravagance entailed in the use of such gilded and bejewelled additions, these features may perhaps have aided in the identification of each figure. Other written accounts illustrate this desire to distinguish individuals within larger figural compositions. The Fatimid caliph al-Amir bi-Akham Allah (r. 1101–30) constructed a belvedere with painted representations of famous poets and their respective 4 On this design, see: Oleg Grabar, ‘The painting of the six kings at Qusayr ʿAmrah,’ Ars Orientalis 1 (1954): 185–87; Garth Fowden, Quṣayr ʿAmra, pp. 197–226. 5 Taqi al-Din Ahmad b. ʿAli, al-Maqrizi Kitāb al-mawāʿiẓ wa’l-iʿtibār bidhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa’l-āthār, 2 vols. (Bulaq: El-Amiriya Press, 1270–72/1853– 55), 1: 316. Discussed in: Richard Ettinghausen, ‘Painting in the Fatimid period: A reconstruction,’ Ars Islamica 9 (1942): 112; Nasser Rabbat, The Citadel of Cairo: A new Interpretation of royal Mamluk Architecture, Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts 14 (Leiden and Boston: E. J. Brill, 1995), p. 171.

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home towns. Each painting was accompanied by an excerpt penned by the poet in question.6 Predictably, the figural architectural paintings of the Mamluk period expressed greater concern for militaristic themes and principles of hierarchy. The domed structure (qubba) commissioned by Baybars I (r. 1260–77) in the citadel of Cairo contained paintings of the sultan, his amirs, and retinue in ceremonial regalia during a procession. The figures painted in the Īwān al-Ashrafī built on the citadel by sultan al-Ashraf Khalil (r. 1290–93) also included the principal amirs of the day, each one with his personal emblem [77] (rank) represented above his head.7 These Mamluk decorative programs do not survive, but we can get some sense of their character by looking at inlaid metalwork vessels such as the so-called Baptistère de Saint Louis, variously dated by scholars from the sultanate of Baybars I to the third reign of al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun (1310–41).8 This concern with representing the ruler surrounded by his retinue does not originate in the Mamluk period; during the twelfth and thirteenth century in northern Mesopotamia this type of highly formalised ‘group portrait’ appears in architectural decoration, inlaid metalwork, and illustrated manuscripts. Centuries of weathering have removed many of the fine details from the carved figures on monuments like the bridge over the Tigris constructed by the Artuqid atabak of Hisn Kayfa, Qara Arslan (r. 1148–67), or the niche from the Guʾ Kummet at Sinjar (c. 1240). The rendering of facial features, costume and attributes of office can be recovered with greater certainty from painted scenes in manuscripts of the early thir6 Maqrizi, Khiṭaṭ, 1: 318. Discussed in: Thomas Arnold, Painting in Islam: A Study of the Place of pictorial Art in Muslim Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928, reprinted with new introduction, London and Toronto: Dover Publications, 1965), p. 127; Ettinghausen, ‘Painting in the Fatimid period,’ p. 112. 7 The written accounts of these decorative programs are discussed in: Rabbat, Citadel of Cairo, pp. 129–30, 169–70. 8 On the motifs represented on this basin and its date, see: David S. Rice, Le Baptistère de Saint Louis (Paris: Editions du Chêne, 1951); Doris BehrensAbouseif, ‘The Baptistère de Saint Louis: A reinterpretation,’ Islamic Art 3 (1989): 3–13.

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 139 teenth century. Impressive examples of this genre are the frontispieces of the Kitāb al-Aghānī of al-Isfahani (d. 967) produced for the ruler of Mosul, Badr al-Din Luʾluʾ, in 1218–19, and the frontispiece of the Kitāb al-Diryāq (‘Book of Antidotes’) now in Vienna. The latter manuscript may have been made for the same ruler and is usually dated to the 1230s. The young male attendants on either side of the ruler in the Kitāb al-Diryāq frontispiece each hold an object (or in one case what appears to be a goose) symbolising their ceremonial office at the court.9 A fascinating feature of the illustrated manuscripts produced in Syria, Iraq, and south-eastern Turkey during the late twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth century is the proliferation of representations of specific individuals. Occurring on the frontispieces and in the illustrations within the texts, these paintings mainly depict patrons and authors10 (excluding representations of fictional characters such as Abu Zayd and al-Harith in the Maqāmāt of al-Hariri11). The latter category of authors is perhaps most intriguing because it en9

On this type of royal entourage and representations in manuscript painting, portable arts and architecture, see: Estelle Whelan, ‘Representations of the khāṣṣakīyah and the origins of Mamluk emblems,’ in Priscilla Soucek, ed., Content and Context of the Visual Arts in the Islamic World (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), pp. 220–25; Nasser Rabbat, ‘Rank,’ Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition, 8 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), pp. 431–33; Rabbat, Citadel of Cairo, pp. 173–77. On the frontispiece of the Vienna Kitāb al-Diryāq, see also Oya Pancaroglu, ‘Socializing medicine: Illustrations of the Kitāb al-Diryāq,’ Muqarnas 18, 2001: 166–67. 10 For studies of author and patron portraits in Arabic manuscripts of the thirteenth century, see: Eva Hoffman, ‘The author portrait in thirteenthcentury Arabic manuscripts: A new Islamic context for a Late Antique tradition,’ Muqarnas 10 (1993): 6–20; Robert Hillenbrand, ‘The Schefer Hariri: A study in Islamic frontispiece design,’ in Anna Contadini, ed., Arab Painting: Text and Image in illustrated Arabic Manuscripts, Handbook of Oriental Studies: Section 1. The Near and Middle East 90 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 117–34. 11 On the paintings in the extant thirteenth-century manuscripts, see Oleg Grabar, The Illustrations of the Maqamat (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

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compasses both Muslims and famous authorities from Antiquity. The Islamic interest in the achievements of Greek-speaking [78] scholars of Antiquity can be traced to the beginning of the ‘translation movement’ in late eighth-century Baghdad.12 Although the most active phase of translation of Greek texts into Syriac and Arabic was over by the eleventh century, this did not spell the end of engagement with the Antique past. Indeed, the minor principalities that sprang up in north-western Iraq, northeastern Syria, and the formerly Byzantine regions of southern Anatolia appear to have been particularly interested in Greek intellectual and visual culture. Classical spolia and classicising architectural details appear on numerous Islamic monuments in these regions; Zengid and Artuqid rulers minted copper coins with figural motifs including astrological signs, imitations of Antique profile portraits, and even such explicitly Christian designs as the Byzantine emperor crowned by the Virgin Mary.13 The Hellenophile spirit implied by the ‘classical revival’ buildings and figural coins is also much in evidence in the manuscripts of the period. The Artuqids are known to have commissioned new Arabic translations of the Peri ilis iatrikis, or De materia medica, of the first-century CE botanist and physician, Pedanios Dioscorides.14 The same dynasty employed for about twenty five years the engineer and author, al-Jazari (d. 1206). His book on fine engineering, Kitāb fī 12

On the translation of Greek literature in the early Islamic world, see Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and early ʿAbbasid Society (2th-4th/8th-10th Centuries) (London and New York: Routledge, 1998). Also Franz Rosenthal, The classical Heritage in Islam (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975). 13 On the interest in antique art and architecture, see Terry Allen, A Revival of Classical Antiquity in Syria (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1986). On the figural coinage of this period, see Nicholas Lowick, ‘The religious, the royal and the popular in the figural coinage of the Jazira,’ in Julian Raby, ed., The Art of Syria and the Jazīra, 1100-1250, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 1 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 159–74. 14 Mahmoud Sadek, The Arabic Materia Medica of Dioscorides (St-JeanChrysostome: Les Editions du Sphinx, 1983), pp. 10–13; Minta Collins, Medieval Herbals, the illustrative Traditions, The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture (London and Toronto: The British Library and University of Toronto Press, 2000), pp. 124–30.

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 141 maʿrifat al-ḥiyal al-handasiyya, is clearly much indebted to the work of Antique scholars such as Philo of Byzantium (d. c. 220 BCE) and Hero of Alexandria (d. 70 CE).15 To what extent can these representations in late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Arab manuscripts be considered as portraits?16 Certainly, for all of their lively draughtsmanship and vivid colouration, they do not conform closely to a modern idea of a portrait. Missing are the highly naturalistic mode of representation and close attention to nuances of facial features that are commonly considered by contemporary audiences as hallmarks of a successful painted or sculpted portrait. We also assume that most contemporary portraits would be executed on the basis of first-hand experience of the subject. With the exception of the patron portraits (and it seems unlikely that these powerful men afforded long sittings for their court artists) the paintings in the Arabic manuscripts usually depict figures who were long dead. The rather schematic, linear [79] style sometimes borders on caricature, and there is often as much attention given to costume as details of individual physique and facial expression. Furthermore, in seeking out models for their representations of figures from the past, Islamic painters made considerable use of compositions from other manuscript traditions. An obvious example is the Late Antique ‘author portrait’ frontispiece. From this basic prototype evolved the images of Evangelists in Byzantine, and other Eastern Christian gospel books as well as paintings in secular manuscripts such as the double frontispiece of Dioscorides and stu-

15 Ibn Razzaz al-Jazari, The Book of Knowledge of ingenious mechanical Devices (Kitāb fī maʿrifat al-ḥiyal al-handasiyya) , translated and annotated Donald Hill (Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1974); Rachel Ward. ‘Evidence for a school of painting at the Artuqid court,’ in Julian Raby, ed., The Art of Syria and the Jazīra, 1100-1250, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 1 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 69–83. 16 On views concerning portraiture in Persian art and literature, see Priscilla Soucek, ‘The theory and practice of portraiture in the Persian tradition,’ Muqarnas 17 (2000): 97–108. Also Arnold, Painting in Islam, pp. 123–32.

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dents produced in 626/1229 for the Syrian ruler, Shams al-Din Abu al-Fadaʾil Muhammad.17 Richard Brilliant in his 1991 book, Portraiture, provides a good starting point for a wider definition of what might constitute a portrait. He writes: ‘Simply put, portraits are works of art, intentionally made of living or once living people by artists, in a variety of media, and for an audience.’18 He also emphasises the importance of establishing the socio-cultural norms of the audience for which a portrait was produced: Portraits reflect social realities. Their imagery combines the conventions of behaviour and appearance appropriate to the members of a society at a particular time, as defined by the categories of age, gender, race, physical beauty, occupation, social and civic status, and class The synthetic study of portraiture requires some sensitivity to the social implications of its representational modes, to the documentary value of art works as aspects of social history, and to the subtle interaction between social and artistic conventions.19

These areas of interpretation can be most successfully approached in historical periods where there exists abundant primary written sources dealing with the reception of art, and more specifically of portraiture. While the thirteenth-century Middle East is certainly not lacking for primary texts, very few of them concern themselves in any detail with the physical appearances of specific individuals or with the production and appreciation of portraiture (some [80] examples of such writings are considered in the following sections). The paucity available written sources on portraiture represents a serious constraint upon the interpretation of representations of individuals painted by Islamic manuscript artists, but it may be possible 17 On this manuscript (Topkapi library, Ahmed III, codex 2127) and the double frontispiece, see: Sadek, Arabic Materia Medica, p. 17; Collins, Medieval Herbals, pp. 127–29, pl. X; Eva Hoffman, ‘The author portrait.’ 18 Richard Brilliant, Portraiture, Essays in Art and Culture (London: Reaktion Books, 1991), p. 8. 19 Brilliant, Portraiture, p. 11.

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 143 to offer some insights into these images by locating them within the wider literary culture of the period. This speculative approach takes as its inspiration Michael Baxandall’s 1972 book, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy. What is most relevant in the present context is the breadth of source material – from treatises on practical geometry to books of poetry and music – that Baxandall employs in his attempt to reconstruct the ‘period eye’ of his archetypal patron, the ‘church-going businessman with a taste for dancing.’20 Those patrons whose names are recorded in surviving illustrated late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century manuscripts (or in historical references to the commissioning of illustrated manuscripts) are principally members of the ruling Turkic Muslim elites of Syria, Anatolia and north-western Iraq.21 As already noted, several of these powerful men exhibited a Hellenophile orientation in aspects of their patronage of scholarship and art. To what extent might this orientation, or other aspects of their cultural pursuits, education, or world view have influenced the production of representational painting by the artists who worked for them? Clearly, a proper examination of the ‘period eye’ of the elites of the Artuqid, Zengid, and Ayyubid courts is beyond the scope of a single chapter. Some preliminary comments on this issue can be made through the examination of two themes. The first is the discussion of foreign portraits (probably mostly fictional) in historical texts and works of belles-lettres (adab) written prior to the thirteenth century. The second is the possible influence of the classical discipline of physiognomy upon the 20 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1972). The quote appears on p. 109. 21 Clearly others, such as wealthy merchants and scholars also purchased illustrated manuscript paintings in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, though less information survives concerning their identities. On non-royal patronage at this time, see: Oleg Grabar, ‘The illustrated Maqamat of the thirteenth-century: The bourgeoisie and the arts,’ in Albert Hourani and Samuel Stern, eds, The Islamic City: A Colloquium, Papers on Islamic History 1 (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer and University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970), pp. 207–22; Pancaroglu, ‘Socializing medicine,’ pp. 155–66.

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construction and subsequent interpretation of painted portraits. Both themes bear upon the question of whether there existed in the literary culture of Medieval Islam a set of ideas about what might constitute a meaningful portrait of an individual. [81]

MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC ACCOUNTS OF THE ARTS OF RŪM AND

ṢĪN

The admiration of the arts of non-Islamic cultures – particularly that of Rūm (literally ‘Rome,’ but meaning variously the ancient GraecoRoman world, the Byzantine empire, or Anatolia) and Ṣīn (China, or more broadly Southeast Asia) – is a recurrent theme in Medieval Arabic and Persian literature. This appreciation was often extended to the portable arts and architecture, but some of the most extensive accounts refer to representational painting and portraits found on textiles. An example of the appreciation of the skills of foreign artists is given by the eleventh-century writer, al-Tha‘alibi, in his Laṭāʾif almaʿārif (‘[Book of] Curious and Entertaining Information’). Discussing the different sorts of representation (tamthil) produced by the Chinese (ṣīn), he claims: They are extraordinarily skilled at shaping statues, and they excel at making carved representations and pictures. They carry this out to such a pitch that one of their artists will make a representation of a man, leaving nothing out except the man’s soul (rūḥ); then the artist will no longer feel satisfied with it, and will turn it into a man who is laughing. Then he will still be further dissatisfied, and will differentiate between the laugh of a man laughing derisively and one laughing out of confusion; or between a man smiling and one wondering in amazement; or between a laugh expressing pure joy and one expressing scorn. In this way, he makes one expression turn into another, and so on.22

According to the translation in: The Book of curious and entertaining Information. The Laṭāʾif al-maʿārif of Thaʿālibī, trans. Clifford Bosworth (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968), p. 141. For the Arabic text, see Abu Mansur ʿAbd al-Malik b. Muhammad b. Ismaʿil al-Thaʿalibi, 22

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 145 There is, of course, no reason to assume that al-Thaʿalibi had seen such Chinese paintings and sculptures. Although the glazed ceramics from southeast China would have been commonly seen in the markets of the Middle East between the ninth and the eleventh century (and these imported items are singled out for praise by the author earlier in his book), it was not until the establishment of the Ilkhanate in the late thirteenth century that there is evidence for the importation of Chinese scroll paintings into the Islamic Middle East. The veracity of al-Thaʿalibi’s account of Chinese portraiture is [82] rendered even more questionable by the fact that it is almost identical to a description of the painting of the Greeks (Rūm) penned by the ninth-century poet and satirist, al-Jahiz (d. 868–69), in his Kitāb al-Akhbār. The earlier writer’s appreciation adds the detail that the Greek artists were able to paint ‘a picture within a picture and repeat the process two or three times.’23 Like al-Thaʿalibi’s notional Chinese artists, one is left to wonder what Rūmī (Ancient Greek or Byzantine) painters al-Jahiz had in mind. Even the finest icons and illustrated manuscripts produced during the so-called Macedonian Renaissance that came after the end of iconoclasm in 843 seem to lack – to the modern eye, at least – the intense degree of psychological insight implied by al-Jahiz in his account. Furthermore, had al-Jahiz actually seen examples of Byzantine painting it seems improbable that it would have been such masterpieces of Medieval ‘naturalism’ as the Paris Psalter or the illustrated copy of the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzos made for emperor Basil I (r. 866–86). Nor, as an inhabitant of southern Iraq, is he likely to have seen many examples of classical Greek or Roman painting and sculpture. Both texts should be understood therefore as literary exercises meant for the entertainment of the reader. This sort of rheLaṭāʾif al-maʿārif, ed. Ibrahim al-Ibyari and Hasan Kamil al-Sayrafi (Cairo: Dar Ihya al-Kutub al-Arabiyya, 1960), pp. 220–22. 23 Al-Jahiz translated in Rosenthal, Classical Heritage, p. 44. Another version of the same story about Rūmī painting is to be found in Ibn al-Faqih’s, Kitāb al-Buldān. See El-Cheikh, Byzantium, p. 59, n. 100. It is unclear, however, whether al-Thaʿalibi relied upon al-Jahiz, Ibn al-Faqih, or some other source for this passage.

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torical description of art and architecture (ekphrasis) was, of course, a well-established genre in the eastern Mediterranean region. Examples of ekphrasis appear in the works of numerous Greek and Latin authors from the first century CE, enjoying particular popularity in the Byzantine empire.24 The accounts of al-Thaʿalibi and al-Jahiz are not the only examples in Medieval Islamic literature of the intertwining of Rūm and Ṣīn. Another example of this phenomenon involves the portraits of the Prophet Muhammad that supposedly existed beyond the confines of the Dar al-Islam.25 Known in numerous Arabic sources, the earliest example of the story of the miraculous portrait of the Prophet appears in al-Dinawari’s al-Akhbār al-ṭiwāl, completed in about 895. In this story the first caliph Abu Bakr (r. 632-34) instructs one ‘Abd al-Malik ibn al-Samit to travel to Constantinople to meet the emperor (unnamed in this text, though later accounts such as that of the eleventh-century author, al-Bayhaqi, claim it to be [83] Heraclius, r. 610–41). During this audience, the Muslim envoy is shown an ‘object’ (ʿatida, presumably a box), apparently once owned by Alexander the Great, with many compartments, each containing a piece of cloth (khirqa) with a representation (ṣūra) of a man. The emperor draws them out and explains that they represent Adam, Moses, David, Solomon, and Jesus. According to al-Dinawari: Studies of Late Antique and Byzantine ekphrasis include: John Onians, ‘Abstraction and imagination in Late Antiquity,’ Art History 3 (1980): 1–23; Henry Maguire, ‘Truth and convention in Byzantine descriptions of works of art,’ Dumbarton Oaks Papers 28 (1974): 113–40; Henry Maguire, Art and Eloquence in Byzantium (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). Numerous examples of Byzantine ekphrasis are translated in Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453: Sources and Documents (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1972). 25 On these stories, see: Nadia El-Cheikh, ‘Muhammad and Heraclius: A study in legitimacy,’ Studia Islamica, 89 (1996): 18–19; Nadia El-Cheikh, Byzantium viewed by the Arabs (Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 52–54; David Roxburgh, Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran, Studies and Sources in Islamic Art and Architecture. Supplements to Muqarnas 9 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001), pp. 170–74; Oleg Grabar and Mika Natif, ‘The story of the portraits of the Prophet Muhammad,’ Studia Islamica 96 (2004): 19–37. 24

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 147 Then he opened another door and pulled out a black piece of cloth with a representation in white, which was the picture of the Prophet Muhammad. Upon seeing the picture the envoy wept. The emperor said ‘What is the matter with you?’ The envoy answered, ‘This is a representation of our Prophet Muhammad, God bless him and grant him salvation.’ The emperor asked, ‘By your religion is this indeed the representation of your Prophet?’ The envoy replied, ‘Yes, this is the representation of our Prophet as if he were alive.’26

Links have been suggested with the Byzantine tradition of the Mandylion, the cloth carrying the miraculous impression of Christ that was presented to the first-century governor, Abgar of Edessa.27 Byzantine literature has other examples of images of saints that were miraculously impressed onto the surface of a wooden board prior to the painting of an icon.28 Significantly, no mention is made in alDinawari’s account (or any of the later versions of this story) to the representations having been painted. Thus, the implication is that like the Mandylion they are of divine origin, being not made by human hand (a miraculous image of this sort is known in Greek as acheiropoietas). A different emphasis is given in the ‘Chinese’ version of the tale recorded by the Iraqi author, al-Masʿudi (d. c. 956), in his Murūj aldhahab (‘Meadows of Gold’). In this case an Arab envoy from the Quraysh tribe is asked by the ruler of China if he would recognise his ‘master’ (ṣāḥib, i.e. the Prophet) from his portrait (ṣūra). A box is then brought and the envoy is shown a representation on a scroll of paper. Recognizing it as a likeness of the Prophet, the envoy recites a prayer. This scroll, and the others [84] representing earlier prophets 26

According to translation in Grabar and Natif, ‘Portraits of the Prophet,’ pp. 23–24. For the Arabic text, see Ahmad b. Dawud al-Dinawari. alAkhbār al-ṭiwāl, ed. ʿAbd al-Muʾnim Amin (Cairo: ʿIsa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1960), pp. 18–19. 27 On the Mandylion of Edessa, see Robin Cormack, Writing in Gold: Byzantine Society and its Icons (London: George Philip, 1985), pp. 124–25. 28 Henry Maguire, Icons of their Bodies: Saints and their Images in Byzantium (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 6–12.

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each carried a detailed biographical inscription. In answer to the Chinese ruler’s question concerning how the Arab recognised images of the Prophets he replies tellingly: ‘By what was depicted of their things (bi-man ṣuwwara min amrhim): Noah shown entering the Ark, Moses with his rod and the children of Israel, Jesus on a donkey and accompanied by the apostles.’ Muhammad was shown riding a camel accompanied by companions dressed in bedouin outfits.29 Another text, the anonymous eleventh-century work entitled Kitāb al-hadāyā wa’l-tuḥaf (‘Book of Gifts and Rarities’), also describes a similar luxurious box, though this time it forms part of a gift sent by the ‘King of China’ to the Sasanian Shah, Khusraw I Anushirvan (r. 531–79). Woven in red-gold thread on a ground of lapis lazuli, the precious silk fabric in the box carried an image of the enthroned and crowned Chinese ruler attended by servants carrying flywhisks.30 The description given in the Book of Gifts and Rarities sounds rather more like Roman-Byzantine royal imagery, and a similar image including the attendants with flywhisks (sing. flabellum) can even be seen in the niche of the audience hall in the eighthcentury bathhouse of Qusayr ʿAmra.31 29 Abu al-Hasan ʿAli ibn al-Husayn ibn ʿAli al-Masʿudi, Les prairies d’or (Murūj al-dhahab), ed. Charles Barbier de Meynard and Abel Pavet de Courteille with corrections by Charles Pellat, Publications de l’Université Libanaise. Section des Etudes Historiques 11 (Beirut: American University of Beirut Press, 1965), 1: 345. The relevant section is translated and analysed in Grabar and Natif, ‘Portraits of the Prophet,’ pp. 24–25. See also Priscilla Soucek, ‘The life of the Prophet: Illustrated versions,’ in Priscilla Soucek, ed., Content and Context of the Visual Arts in the Islamic World (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), p. 193. Grabar and Natif note that al-Masʿudi’s anecdote was drawn from an earlier source: a text by Abu Zayd Hassan al-Sirafi written in 916 and itself derived from the account of an Arab merchant who had travelled to China in 851. 30 Ghada Qaddumi, trans. and ed., Book of Gifts and Rarities (Kitāb alHadāyā wa al-Tuḥaf). Selections compiled in the Fifteenth Century from an Eleventh-Century Manuscript on Gifts and Treasures (Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 61–62 (no. 1). For another set of portraits of kings (this time in the Fatimid treasury in Cairo), see p. 381 (no. 231). 31 On this painting, see Fowden, Quṣayr ʿAmra, pp. 115–41.

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 149 A more direct comparison between the representational arts of Rūm and Ṣīn is made in the Sikandar-nāma of the Persian poet Nizami (d. 1209). According to this telling of the legendary exploits of Alexander the Great, the ruler of China was entertaining Alexander as a guest. During their conversation it was asked which craftsmen of the world were the best painters. In order to resolve this issue a curtain was hung from a dome and a Rūmī painter set to work on one side and a Ṣīnī painter on the other, neither able to look at the other’s work until both pictures were completed. When completed, the initial inspection by the ‘king’ (presumably meaning Alexander) suggested that the two works were indistinguishable, but soon the fundamental difference between them was revealed. According to Thomas Arnold’s free translation, the poem continues: [85] Yet ‘twixt the two a difference there was,The one reflected what the other gave. This stirred the wonder of the sage of Greece, As soon as he beheld the painted walls. Here was a clue; he followed up the thread, Until he tracked at last the hidden truth. He bade the men of Rūm again hang down The curtain which divided this from that. When once again the curtain hung down between, One picture faded, while the other glowed. With lustrous colour shone the Rūmī’s forms; Rust overgrew the Ṣīnī’s mirror,- dimmed. The king, amazed, beheld the Ṣīnī’s work

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Thus, the Rūmī painter’s superiority in painting form and colour is asserted over the Chinese skill merely in ‘polishing’ to achieve a dim reflection of reality.33 This is not the only example of a painting competition in Islamic literature; al-Maqrizi describes a contest between al-Qasir (perhaps an Egyptian) and an Iraqi painter called Ibn ʿAziz both in the employ of Yazuri, the vizier of the Fatimid caliph between 1050 and 1058. A great patron of the arts, Yazuri instructed the artists to paint a dancing girl in a niche. Ibn ʿAziz employed colour as a means to make the girl appear to emerge from the niche while the eventual winner, al-Qasir, used tonal contrast to achieve the effect of the girl entering the niche.34 Of course, this topos of duelling artists has more ancient roots; Pliny (d. 79 CE) in his Natural History records the competition that apparently took place between the Greek artists, Zeuxis and Parrhasios in the fifth-century BCE.35 Significantly, in all three examples victory was achieved through what was judged to be the most successful illusion of space and form. [86]

THE EXPECTATIONS OF THE VIEWER Ettinghausen drew some cautious inferences about the nature of Iraqi and Egyptian painting styles from al-Maqrizi’s account of the contest instigated by Yazuri.36 In the comparisons between the painting of Rūm and Ṣīn discussed in the previous section, one might also detect a greater admiration for the former because of its more convincing attempts to create an illusion of the natural world. Certainly, it was principally to Byzantine and Late Antique prototypes that Translated in Arnold, Painting in Islam, pp. 66–68 (slightly adapted from original). 33 A different note is struck by al-Marzawi (d. after 1120) who claims that the craftsmen of Rūm are the masters of the applied arts, but that they are inferior to the Chinese. See El-Cheikh, Byzantium, p. 60. 34 Maqrizi, Khiṭaṭ, 2: 318. Translated in Arnold, Painting in Islam, p. 22. See also Ettinghausen, ‘Painting in the Fatimid period,’ pp. 112–13. 35 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 35:36. 36 Ettinghausen, ‘Painting in the Fatimid period,’ pp. 113–14. 32

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 151 Middle Eastern manuscript painters of the twelfth and early thirteenth century looked for inspiration; Chinese modes of representation only start to exert a major influence on the arts of the Islamic book in the last years of the thirteenth century. In general, however, it would appear that the literary examples discussed above are of relatively little value as a source for reconstructing the visual characteristics of either Islamic or non-Islamic painting styles prior to the thirteenth century. Where these written sources are perhaps more useful is in establishing the ideas that existed about how representational art might affect the viewer and what expectations a viewer might then have of those ‘portraits’ encountered in manuscript painting or other visual sources such as architectural decoration. Firstly, the claims made for the abilities of the painters of Rūm and Ṣīn by al-Thaʿalibi and al-Jahiz, unreliable as they most probably are as evidence for the appearance of actual representations, do suggest that both authors and their readers shared a belief that paintings have the potential to convey profound insights into human psychology. A worthwhile comparison can be made in this context with the discussion of icons in Byzantine literature. As Henry Maguire has demonstrated, Orthodox Christians believed their icons to be highly lifelike (a characteristic that al-Dinawari also claims for the portrait of the Prophet owned by the Byzantine emperor), and to represent the known character traits and physical appearance of the given saint.37 Secondly, it is apparent that representational images were held to possess considerable power over those who viewed them. Al-Dinawari’s description of the display of the box [87] of portraits is particularly notable for the emotional impact it has on the representative of caliph Abu Bakr; confronted by the image of Muhammad the Arab envoy is reported to have wept. In the ‘Chinese’ version of the story given by al-Masʿudi, the Muslim viewer was moved to recite a prayer on seeing the representation of the Prophet. Representational art was believed to be powerful in other ways. Images might have apotropaic qualities; for instance, the Book of 37 Maguire, Icons

of their Bodies, pp. 15–46.

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Gifts and Rarities claims that a ring bearing the design of an aroused monkey would induce an erection in any man who wore it.38 Darker resonances are found in al-Masʿudi’s story of a carpet bearing the images of Sasanian shahs and the Umayyad caliph Yazid ibn Walid (Yazid III, r. 744) that was set before the Abbasid caliph al-Muntasir (r. 861–62). According to al-Masʿudi this same carpet was also beneath the feet of caliph al-Mutawakkil when he was assassinated in 861. It is implied that the depiction on the carpet of murderers who subsequently enjoyed short reigns – the Sasanian Shirawayh (it is unclear which ruler this is meant to be) and Yazid III – offered an ill omen for any monarch who displayed it.39 Readers of the Murūj aldhahab had only to look to the brief caliphate of al-Muntasir for confirmation of this prophecy. The dangerous lure of representational art is, of course, a preoccupation of iconoclasts of all religions. Numerous sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad (ḥadīth) warned pious Muslims against the display of pictures, and the biographies of the Prophet also record his order to rid the Kaʿba of its idols and all but one of its figural paintings.40 It is interesting that in al-Masʿudi’s anecdote about the Arab emissaries at the Chinese court the identification of the prophets should have been achieved through the recognition of specific attributes: the ark of Noah, the rod of Moses, and so on (much as a Byzantine observer might recognise the saint depicted in an icon). No mention is made of the facial or bodily characteristics that might aid in the process of identification (though this is a feature of some of the other versions of this story set in the court of Heraclius). Although no Islamic image of the Prophet Muhammad survives before Qaddumi, trans. and ed., Book of Gifts and Rarities, pp. 115–16 (no. 102). Cf. p. 115 (no. 104). 39 Masʿudi, The Meadows of Gold, trans. Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone (New York and London: Kegan Paul International, 1989), pp. 268–69. Also discussed in Arnold, Painting in Islam, pp. 64–65. 40 On the relevant ḥadīth, see Dan Van Reenan, ‘The Bildverbot: A new survey,’ Der Islam 67 (1990): 27–77. On attitudes toward images in early Islam, see: Erica Dodd, ‘The image of the word,’ Berytus 18 (1969): 35–61; Oleg Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art, revised and enlarged edition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 72–98. 38

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 153 the late thirteenth century,41 a literate person could [88] still have gained some impression of his appearance from historical and biographical writings. For instance, one report, attributed to a companion of the Prophet, and included in the history of Damascus composed by the chronicler, Ibn al-ʿAsakir (d. 1175) claims that as a young man Muhammad was: light-skinned with ruddy complexion, and had curly hair falling halfway over his ears. He walked holding his head high. He had a small hooked nose; dark eyes, flashing teeth, fine hair on his chest, stubby hands and feet, and a dense beard.42

Textual representation appears in most cases to have preceded painted portraits, and for most Islamic literary genres no accompanying illustrations were considered necessary. Significantly, the vast tradition of Arabic biographic writing – the most extensive corpus of textual representations of individual men and women in Islamic culture – never attracted illustrations. From the early thirteenth century there is one text, a copy of al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik’s (fl. eleventh century) Book of Choicest Maxims and best Sayings (Mukhtār alḥikam wa-maḥāsin al-kilam) now in the Topkapɩ library, that allows us to correlate written descriptions and painted images. Compiled from Arabic translations of ancient Greek sources and completed in 1048–49, it is quite likely that al-Mubashshir’s autograph manuscript was designed with accompanying illustrations.43 Aside from listing 41

On the earliest Islamic images of the Prophet, see: Soucek, ‘The life of the Prophet’; Robert Hillenbrand, ‘Images of Muhammad in al-Biruni’s Chronology of Ancient Nations,’ in Robert Hillenbrand, ed., Persian Painting from the Mongols to the Qajars. Studies in Honour of Basil W. Robinson, Pembroke Persian Papers 3 (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000), pp. 129–46. 42 Translated in Michael Cooperson, ‘Images without illustrations: The visual imagination in classical Arabic biography,’ in Oleg Grabar and Cynthia Robinson, eds, Islamic Art and Literature (Princeton NJ: Markus Wiener, 2001), p. 11. 43 On the biography of al-Mubashshir and the history of the Mukhtār and its subsequent translations, see Franz Rosenthal, ‘Al-Mubashshir ibn Fatîk: Prolegomena to an abortive edition,’ Oriens 13–14 (1960-61): 132–58. See also

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improving sayings of each featured man, al-Mubashshir gives the reader a brief description of his physical appearance. For instance, at the end of his section about the Athenian statesman, Solon (d. 558 BCE), the Arab author writes: He was of pale complexion with blue eyes, a crooked nose, long beard, sparse hair on the cheeks, with a thin stomach, twisted shoulders, pleasant in speech, vigorous in language, and on his right forearm was a large mole (khāl kabīr).44

Clearly, the artist of the Topkapi manuscript attempted to give Solon some of the physical attributes listed by al-Mubashshir, though he [89] omits the significant detail of the mole on his arm (fig. 4.2). Is it possible to take the interpretation of this sort of written and visual representation any further? Some responses to this question can be offered by employing another area of Antique Greek scholarship that found its way into Islamic culture: physiognomy, the discipline of reading character through the outward manifestations of the body and face. That physiognomy (in Arabic, firāsa) was regarded as a legitimate scientific activity is indicated by its inclusion in the eleventh-century polymath, Ibn Sina’s (d. 1037) list of the disciplines making up the branch of practical wisdom (ḥikma).45 Most surviving Arabic treatisEva Hoffman. ‘The beginnings of the illustrated Arabic book: An intersection between art and scholarship,’ Muqarnas 17 (2000): 47. 44 Abu al-Wafaʾ al-Mubashshir ibn Fatik, Mukhtār al-ḥikam wa-maḥāsin al-kilam. Published under the title, Los Bocados de Oro (Mujtar al-hikam), ed. ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Badawi (Madrid: Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islamicos, 1958), p. 36. Translations of other biographical sketches from alMubashshir ibn Fatik’s text, see Rosenthal, Classical Heritage, pp. 28–29 (Plato), pp. 33–36 (Galen). On the illustrations of the Topkapı manuscript, see Richard Ettinghausen, Arab Painting, Treasure of Asia (Geneva: Skira, 1962), pp. 74–79. 45 On physiognomy in Islamic culture, see Antonella Ghersetti, ‘The semiotic paradigm: Physiognomy and medicine Islamic culture,’ in Simon Swain, ed., Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul. Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 279–308. On Ibn Sina’s views on firasa within the broader category of wisdom (ḥikma), see pp. 285–87.

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 155 es on firāsa date after the eleventh century, but translated Greek works are known to have been circulating before this date. The most famous of these is the Physiognomy of Polemon of Laodicea, a second-century politician and intellectual. Tellingly, Polemon is described by al-Jahiz as the ṣāḥib al-firāsa, or ‘master of physiognomy.’46

Figure 4.2. Solon and students. From a manuscript of alMubashshir ibn Fatik, M ukhtār al-ḥikam wa maḥāsin al-kalim, early thirteenth century. Topkapɩ Sarayɩ Library, Ahmet III, 3206 fol. 24r.. Reproduced courtesy of the Topkapɩ Sarayɩ Library, Istanbul. Werner Forman / Art Resource. The notion that character traits might be revealed in aspects of physical appearance is apparent also in Byzantine literature. Procopius (d. c. 565) in his notorious Secret History remarks of emperor Justinian I (r. 527–65) that, ‘he bore a strong resemblance to Domitian, Vespasian’s son, whose monstrous behaviour left such a mark on the Al-Jahiz, Kitāb al-ḥayawān. Quoted in Antonella Ghersetti and Simon Swain, ‘Polemon’s Physiognomy in the Arabic tradition,’ in Simon Swain, ed., Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul. Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 309. 46

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Romans that even when they had carved up his whole body they did not feel that they had exhausted their indignation against him:…’ That said, Procopius does grudgingly admit the emperor possessed a round, and not unattractive face.47 More explicit in its employment of physiognomic principles is a description of emperor Basil II (r. 976-1025) in the Chronographia of Michael Psellus (d. 1078). He writes: So much for his character. As for his personal appearance, it betrayed the natural nobility of the man, for his eyes were lightblue and fiery, the eyebrows not overhanging nor sullen, nor yet extended in one straight line, like a woman’s, but well-arched and indicative of his pride. The eyes were neither deep-set (a sign of knavishness and cunning) nor yet too prominent (a sign of [90] frivolity), but they shone with a brilliance that was manly. His whole face was rounded off, as if from the centre into a perfect circle, and joined to his shoulders by a neck that was firm and not too long. His chest was neither thrust out in front of him, nor hanging on him so to speak, nor again was it concave and, as it were, cramped; rather was it the mean between two extremes, and the rest of his body was in harmony with it.48

Psellus emphasises the balance between two extremes and the proportionality that, in his view, were exemplified in the body and face of the emperor. Most significant in the present context is that he enters into physiognomic interpretations of specific features such as the setting of the eyes and the shape of the eyebrows. It is also conceivable that physiognomic principles were employed in the creation of official portraiture produced for Roman and Byzantine emperors.49 Procopius, The Secret History, trans. G. A. Williamson (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1966), p. 78. 48 Michael Psellus, Chronographia 1:36. See Michael Psellus. Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, trans. E. R. Sewter (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1966), p. 48. The same author gives an interesting description of the physical appearance of emperor Constantine IX (r. 1042–55). See Chronographia 6:125–26 (Fourteen Byzantine Rulers, pp. 220–21). 49 This possibility is explored in Jaś Elsner, ‘Physiognomics: Art and text,’ in Simon Swain, ed., Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul. Polemon’s Physiognomy 47

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 157 To what extent might the ‘science’ of physiognomy have informed Arab painting in the thirteenth century? Returning to the portrait of Solon (fig. 4.2), one might point to features such as his large head (at least, in comparison to others in the painting), substantial square chin, long nose, relatively full lips, and large mouth. On these characteristics Polemon makes a number of interesting comments: ‘Largeness of the head is an indication of high ambition, understanding and intelligence’; ‘If you see that the chin has four edges, judge the owner for boldness and strength’; ‘The thick, long, round, strong nose indicates power, strength and great zeal’; and ‘Largeness of mouth and thickness of the lip indicates desires of the stomach and much eating, and in addition he is tyrannical and very patient.’ On the ruddy complexion of the cheeks Polemon remarks, ‘it indicates desirousness, perseverance, and treachery,’ and that red cheeks indicate ‘love of drunkenness and of greed.’ Elsewhere he notes, however, that the man who loves knowledge has ‘an evenly proportioned and upright build and a white colour mixed with red.’50 Similar themes are perhaps present in two other paintings of scholars (colour pl. 2, fig. 4.3), one the third-century BCE Greek physician [91], Erasistratos from an Arabic manuscript of Dioscorides’ De materia medica dated 621/1224,51 and the early Islamic physician from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 203–24. 50 The quotes from Polemon’s Physiognomy are taken from the edition and translation of the Arabic manuscript now in the library of Leiden University. See Robert Hoyland, ‘A new edition and translation of the Leiden Polemon,’ in Simon Swain, ed., Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul. Polemon’s Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 329-463. The specific quotations appear on pp. 421 (chapter 30), 415 (chapter 24), 417 (chapter 26), 415 (chapter 25), 419 (chapter 28), 429 (chapter 38), 447 (chapter 55). 51 The identity of ancient authority is confirmed in the marginal text, reading ‘ṣūrat Aristratus’ (‘image of Eristatratos’). On the employment of marginal annotations of this type, see Bernard O’Kane, ‘The uses of captions in Medieval literary Arabic manuscripts,’ in Anna Contadini, ed., Arab Painting: Text and Image in illustrated Arabic Manuscripts, Handbook of Ori-

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and scientist, Ibn Bakhtishuʿ (d. c. 829) from a copy of his own work, Kitāb naʿt al-ḥayawān dating to c. 1220–25.52 Comparing Ibn Bakhtishuʿ to his student, it is apparent that the artist has chosen, like the

Figure 4.3. Ibn Bakhtishuʿ and student. From a manuscript of Ibn Bakhtishuʿ, Kitāb Naʿt al-ḥayawān, c. 1220–25. British Library, Or. 2784 fol. 101v. Photograph copyright British Library. ental Studies: Section 1. The Near and Middle East 90 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 135–44. 52 These paintings are discussed in greater detail in Anna Contadini, ‘A question in Arab painting: The Ibn al-Sufi manuscript in Tehran and its art-historical connections,’ Muqarnas 23 (2006): 47–84.

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 159 painter of Solon, to emphasise the size of the older man’s head. That both Ibn Bakhtishuʿ and Erasistratos are shown in profile places great emphasis upon their curved noses, a feature that Polemon claims ‘indicates much thinking.’53 Depicted as an old, rather downcast man, the prominent eyebrows of Ibn Bakhtishuʿ are conceivably a further indication of his character. Polemon remarks of this, ‘if the hair of the eyebrow is very thick, it indicates grief and sadness.’54 In common with the painting of Solon, ruddiness of complexion is clearly an important characteristic in the representation of Erasisratos. The redness of the whole body is a feature that Polemon claims indicates, ‘cunning and much thought.’ One also senses that the modelling of his arms is meant to convey not just knowledge but physical strength. Predictably, Polemon observes that those with solid, strong shoulders possess power and strength.55 Lastly, we can look at the painting of Socrates from the Topkapɩ manuscript of al-Mubashshir’s Book of choicest Maxims and best Sayings (fig. 4.4). The text itself provides a description of the man: ‘He was a man of light reddish or bluish complexion, stout in build and of ugly countenance. His shoulders were narrow, his motion slow but he was quick in verbal reaction. His beard was dishevelled and he was not tall.’56 The account also mentions his shyness. Clearly, the artist of the Topkapɩ manuscript has retained little of this description. Neither stout, nor obviously ugly, only the narrow shoulders are perhaps apparent in the painting. In the previous images I sought to bring out Polemon, Physiognomy. Trans. in Hoyland, ‘A new edition,’ p. 417 (chapter 26). 54 Polemon, Physiognomy. Trans. in Hoyland, ‘A new edition,’ p. 437 (chapter 48). 55 Polemon, Physiognomy. Trans. in Hoyland, ‘A new edition,’ pp. 427 (chapter 36), 409 (chapter 20). 56 Mubashshir ibn Fatik, Mukhtār, p. 90. According to the translation in: Ilai Alon, Socrates in Mediaeval Arabic Literature, Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science. Texts and Studies 10 (Jerusalem and Leiden: Magnes Press and Brill, 1991), p. 44. Cf. Franz Rosenthal, ‘Art and aesthetics in Graeco-Arabic wisdom literature,’ in Franz Rosenthal, Four Essays on Art and Literature in Islam, L. A. Mayer Memorial Studies in Islamic Art and Archaeology 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1971), p. 8. 53

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largely positive characteristics – thoughtfulness, strength, perseverance, boldness, and so on – in the portraits, but is it possible that more negative personal traits might be communicated? Polemon observes, for instance, that thin shoulders are a sign of weakness and cowardice. The long neck of Socrates is a conspicuous feature, and Polemon states, ‘If you see that the neck is thin and long, judge for its owner [92] goodness and bad habits.’57 The large eyebrows might, like those of Ibn Bakhtishuʿ denote grief and sadness.

Figure 4.4. Socrates and students. From a manuscript of alMubashshir ibn Fatik, M ukhtār al-ḥikam wa maḥāsin al-kalim, early thirteenth century. Topkapɩ Sarayɩ Library, Ahmet III, 3206 fol. 48r. Reproduced courtesy of the Topkapɩ Sarayɩ Library, Istanbul. Bridgeman-Giraudon / Art Resource. Polemon, Physiognomy. Trans. in Hoyland, ‘A new edition,’ pp. 409 (chapter 20), 411 (chapter 23).

57

CHAPTER 4. RŪM, ṢĪN AND THE IDEA OF THE ‘PORTRAIT’ 161 How might this be rationalised with the status of Socrates as a towering philosopher, and a man who faced his death with great heroism? Interestingly, the supposed ugliness of Socrates is a recurrent topos that finds its way from Greek into Arabic literature. Most pertinent in this context is a story from an anonymous Arabic compilation of classical wisdom that a picture of Socrates was shown to a man who claimed to be a physiognomer. Not knowing the identification of the sitter, the physiognomer claimed ‘this man is gripped by corrupt passion.’ The account continues: ‘People then burst into laughter and said, “this is Socrates, the most chaste of all people!” Socrates then said to them, “Wait, this man has not lied, since my character is as he said, but I govern myself and overcome my passion.”’58 In concluding this short study some words of caution are in order. It would indeed be a stretch to assert that the painters of these manuscripts had a trusty volume of Polemon at their side when they started work on a portrait. Furthermore, my use of Polemon’s Physiognomy has been highly selective, and it might be possible to advance quite different interpretations of the painted ‘portraits’ discussed above using other parts of the same text.59 Our fragmentary knowledge about Medieval Islamic libraries, and the reading habits of wealthy patrons means that any conclusions concerning the impact of the wider literary environment upon the patronage of painting and the instructions given to painters must remain highly tentative. For instance, the education of an Artuqid prince – a dynasty This quotation comes from an anonymous work entitled, al-Mukhtār min kalām al-ḥukamāʾ al-arbaʿah al-akābir. Translated in Alon, Socrates, pp. 43–44. 59 Anna Contadini notes the urgent need for scholars of Arab manuscript painting to make use of methodological advances – particularly in the analysis of the relationship between text and image – in other fields of manuscript studies. For these, and other observations on this subject, see her, ‘The manuscript as a whole,’ in Anna Contadini, ed., Arab Painting: Text and Image in illustrated Arabic Manuscripts, Handbook of Oriental Studies: Section 1. The Near and Middle East 90 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 3–16. 58

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known to have been active patrons of illustrated manuscripts during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries – is likely to have focused principally on Qurʾan, ḥadīth, and Islamic law, with other nonreligious themes given less attention. That said, the illustrations discussed in the previous paragraphs appear in books that are, largely speaking, derived from Greek works of Antiquity. Even a cursory survey of the courtly environment of northern Mesopotamia in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries reveals its considerable interest in Hellenistic culture, whether it be in the commissioning of Arabic translations of Greek texts, the patronage of al-Jazari, or the [93] minting of classicising copper coins. Areas like Syria, Iraq and Anatolia benefited from the vigorous interaction of Christian and Muslim scholars. Byzantine ekphrasis and hagiographic literature both illustrate the widely-held view that icons could capture the actual appearance and character of their subjects, and this belief also appears in the discussions of figural representation in works of adab and poetry. The cross-pollination between the Byzantine and Islamic world is also vividly manifested in art and architecture. For these reasons we are justified in trying to establish a preliminary definition of the ‘period eye’ of wealthy Muslim patrons and the artists and scribes who served them.

CHAPTER 5. REYNALD OF CHÂTILLON AND THE RED SEA EXPEDITION OF 1182–1183 Reynald of Châtillon, the last lord of the Crusader barony of Oultrejourdain, is a man who can be said to have received his share of bad press during his life and in the centuries after his death. It is perhaps fitting that Reynald seems to have ended his career in spectacular fashion, allegedly losing his head to the sword of Salah al-Din (r. 1174–93) following the Battle of Hattin in 1187. Predictably, Arab writers of the medieval period revile Reynald. They point to his raiding of the pilgrimage caravans heading to Mecca, his cruelty toward prisoners, and, of course, the naval raid in the Red Sea. Perhaps surprisingly, the historians of the Kingdom of Jerusalem hardly view Reynald in a more favourable light. It has been suggested that William of Tyre (d. c. 1186) took a particular dislike to Reynald because he had opposed the former’s elevation to the status of Patriarch in 1180.1 It is William’s view of Reynald that has coloured the historical 1

Bernard Hamilton, ‘The elephant of Christ: Reynald of Châtillon,’ in Derek Baker, ed., Religious Motivation: Biographical and sociological Problems for the Church Historian, Studies in church history 15 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), pp. 97, 101. Hamilton has offered an alternative, and more positive portrait of Reynald in the period following his release from captivity in 1176. He stresses Reynald’s involvement in internal policy making and defence of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. See Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and his Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). See also comments in

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tradition from the end of the twelfth century through to the modern day. Reynald is commonly regarded as a dangerously unpredictable adventurer whose violation of the truce between Salah al-Din and Baldwin IV (r. 1174–85) led ultimately to the disastrous defeat at Hattin. My purpose in this chapter is not to rehabilitate the reputation of a twelfth-century Crusader baron, but rather to examine one of the most striking episodes in the latter part of his career, the Red Sea expedition of 1182–83. This important event has been studied by [236] a number of scholars during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – Gustave Schlumberger, Joshua Prawer, Bernard Hamilton and Gary Leiser among others.2 I should make clear from the outset that I do not propose to offer new primary sources on the Red Sea expedition itself. What will be presented here consists of speculations around a specific accusation found in the Arabic accounts: that Reynald sent his men in order to dig up the bones of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina. What I hope to demonstrate is that this objective of the expedition can be better understood if we look at the ways in which Reynald would have perceived the ritual practices relating to the treatment of the dead and popular pilgrimages to the shrines of saints in the Muslim world of the twelfth century.

THE EVENTS OF THE WINTER OF 1182–83 Before moving on to consider the motivations behind this expedition, it is necessary to review the main historical events. The only Carole Hillenbrand, ‘The imprisonment of Reynald of Châtillon,’ in Chase Robinson, ed., Texts, Documents and Artefacts: Islamic Studies in Honour of D. S. Richards, Islamic History and Civilization. Studies and Texts 45 (Leiden and Boston: E. J. Brill, 2003), pp. 79–102. 2 Gustave Schlumberger, Renaud de Châtillon, Prince d’Antioche, Seigneur de la Terre d’Outre-Jourdain, third edition (Paris: Plon, 1923), pp. 199–222; Hamilton, ‘Elephant of Christ,’ and The Leper King, pp. 179–85; Gary Leiser, ‘The Crusader raid in the Red Sea in 578/1182-83,’ Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 13 (1976): 87–100; Joshua Prawer, Crusader Institutions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 471–84. This list is far from exhaustive. Other works concerned with this event are given in Leiser, ‘Crusader raid,’ p. 98, n. 3.

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Crusader source to mention the expedition is Ernoul (fl. late twelfth century), but he characterises it as some sort of voyage of exploration, mentioning later that the soldiers sent from Karak were never seen again.3 It is intriguing that no other Crusader historian sees fit to mention the expedition at all. Was any discussion of it expunged from the records by William of Tyre and his supporters? Given the ultimate failure of the expedition, it is probable that William would have wanted to relate it in his chronicle in order to belittle Reynald.4 Another possibility is that none of the Crusader knights returned alive [237] to the Crusader-controlled territories; with no information about the events of that winter the expedition simply faded from the historical record. An implication that may be drawn from this second hypothesis is that the expedition was not necessarily planned with the knowledge of Baldwin IV. Could the king afford to lend his support to such a risky strategy, and if so, would it have remained secret from Salah al-Din during the period it was being planned?5 No definitive answer is available to this question, and in the remainder of this chapter I will work on the assumption that the expedition was a personal enterprise planned, funded and executed by Reynald and his close allies.

Ernoul in Louis de Mas Latrie, ed., Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Tresorier (Paris: Société de l’Histoire Français, 1871), pp. 69–70. The relevant passage is translated in Hamilton, The Leper King, p. 179. 4 As he does at other times in his chronicle. For example, see his comments about Reynald’s act of penance in front of the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus in 1156. William of Tyre 18:23. William of Tyre, A History of Deeds done beyond the Sea, trans. Emily Babcock and A. Krey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), I: 277. 5 Salah al-Din operated an effective spy network in the Crusader states that even numbered Sybilla, wife of Bohemond III, prince of Antioch. See Leiser, ‘Crusader raid,’ p. 88. Hamilton (The Leper king, pp. 179–80) argues, however, that the cost of the venture would have required royal support. He suggests that Salah al-Din may have had signs that an operation was being planned, but failed to guess that it would consist of a naval raid in the Red Sea. 3

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We have to rely on the accounts provided by Muslim writers for an understanding of the events in the Red Sea during the winter of 1182–83 (figs. 5.1 & 2). This fact should give pause for thought, because we have to be aware of the likely biases in the Arabic sources and the desire to turn the events to a propagandist purpose. Fur-

Figure 5.1. Map of the Middle East showing sites mentioned in the text. Prepared by Chris Mundigler. thermore, these sources are unlikely to be a reliable guide to the initial motivations for the expedition. Nevertheless, in the absence of

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other information it is the Arabic sources that must provide the framework for further discussion. These accounts differ in some points of detail, but there is general agreement over the chronology

Figure 5.2. Map of the south of Greater Syria showing the principal towns and castles of Frankish Oultrejourdain. Prepared by Chris Mundigler.

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of the events. The fullest exploration of the available sources was made in an important but seldom cited article by Leiser,6 and I rely on the translations and analyses presented in this work for the following discussion of the main events of the Red Sea expedition. It has been noted by other scholars that Reynald must have planned his attack in the Red Sea some time (perhaps as long as two years7) before its execution. The lack of suitable timber in southern Jordan meant that Reynald needed to bring it in from the ports of Palestine. Hamilton suggests that the sections of the ships may have been [238] assembled in Ascalon, the port under the control of Reynald’s ally, Guy de Lusignan (d. 1187).8 The sections of the boats were transported with the aid of local Bedouin south to the Red Sea coast during the winter of 1182–83. Once on the coast, the boats9 – probably between five and ten in total – were assembled and two were sent to besiege the island fortress of Qalʿat Ayla (often known as the Ile de Graye) off the coast.10 The Crusader ships were probably crewed by Arab sailors who knew the difficult currents, winds and reefs in the Red Sea. The remainder of the Frankish ships headed south to ʿAydhab on the Egyptian coast where they raided and pillaged the town, the boats sitting at anchor, and nearby trading caravans travelling east from the town of Qus. It was presumably from the raid at ʿAydhab that the authorities in Cairo got first news that the Crusaders had penetrated the Red 6 Leiser, ‘Crusader raid.’

Malcolm Lyons and David Jackson, Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 185 (citing letters recorded in the writings of Qadi al-Fadil). 8 Hamilton, ‘Elephant of Christ,’ p. 103, n. 49. 9 The Arabic accounts of the event do not provide descriptions of the scale or design of Reynald’s vessels. The words markab, safina and shawani are employed. Perhaps the most important detail is that, according to an account given by al-Dhahabi (citing a work by ʿAbd al-Latif al-Baghdadi) the Ayyubid admiral Husam al-Din Luʾluʾ estimated the vessels were carrying about three hundred men in total. See Leiser, ‘Crusader raid,’ p. 93. 10 For an archaeological and historical survey of this fortress, see Jean-Michel Mouton and Samir ʿAbd al-Malik, ‘La fortresse de l’Ile de Graye (Qalʿat Ayla) à l’époque de Saladin,’ Annales Islamologiques 29 (1995): 75–90. 7

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Sea. Salah al-Din’s brother, al-Malik al-ʿAdil,11 dispatched the admiral Husam al-Din Luʾluʾ to the Gulf of Suez. From there Luʾluʾ set sail with the aim of intercepting the Crusader fleet. While this was going on Reynald’s boats were heading west to the coast of the Hijaz. Sibt ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1256) claims that the Frankish ships were headed for Jidda.12 It may be that they were blown off course by the unpredictable winter winds in the Red Sea, and the closest the Franks got was the port of Rabigh to the north. At this point, some of the Frankish knights landed and headed in the direction of Medina. Those that stayed on the ships were confronted by the fleet of Luʾluʾ and defeated. Luʾluʾ then took some of his men ashore and pursued the Crusader expeditionary force. When he finally cornered them sometime in the months of Shawwal and Dhu al-Hijja 578 (late January–April 1183), Reynald’s men were offered the chance to surrender and convert to Islam or face imprisonment and execution. It is not recorded that any of the Crusaders chose the first [239] option, and there are accounts that prisoners were sent to Mina near Mecca and killed. Luʾluʾ returned with the other prisoners to Cairo. According to the account of ʿImad al-Din (d. 1201), the sultan wrote to the admiral instructing him ‘to cut off their heads and suppress all traces of what they had done so that not one of their eyes would remain to blink and no one would tell of the way of that sea or know of it.’13 Before moving on to explore the possible motivations behind the expedition, it is important to establish what political impact it did have on the Christian and Muslim polities of the Middle East. Leiser points to a number of issues.14 First, the presence of Crusader ships in the Red Sea severely dented the personal prestige of Salah alDin. He could hardly claim to be the defender of the Holy Cities of 11

Some of the descriptions claim that another brother, Sayf al-Din ordered the preparation of warships to be sent against Reynald’s vessels. See Leiser, ‘Crusader raid,’ p. 91. 12 Leiser, ‘Crusader raid,’ p. 92. 13 ʿImad al-Din trans. in Leiser, Crusader raid,’ p. 90. 14 Leiser, ‘Crusader raid,’ pp. 96–98. The significance of Red Sea trade is emphasised in the interpretation of this event given by Prawer, Crusader Institutions, pp. 471–84.

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Mecca and Medina while pilgrims were being slaughtered in the boats passing from the Egyptian coast to the Hijaz. Second, the Crusader presence disrupted the lines of communication between Yemen and the remainder of the regions controlled by the Ayyubids. The Crusader ships left the governor of Yemen, Sayf al-Din Tughtukin, Salah al-Din’s brother, in an exposed position. Third, if the Crusaders were able to maintain a naval presence, they would be in a position to profit from the lucrative trade coming from the Indian Ocean into the Red Sea. Fourth, the access the Crusaders now had to the western shores of the Red Sea meant that they would be able to form alliances with enemies of the Ayyubids in Upper Egypt. Lastly, the expedition again emphasised the need for the Ayyubid authorities to find ways of controlling the Bedouin of southern Jordan, the Hijaz, and the Red Sea coast of Egypt. Reviewing the points given above, it becomes apparent that most of the problems the Red Sea expedition caused Salah al-Din were temporary in nature.15 When they were finally intercepted, the Crusader ships appear to have been relatively easily defeated by the fleet of Husam al-Din Luʾluʾ dispatched from its anchorage in the Gulf [240] of Suez.16 For the Crusaders to have achieved a more lasting impact, they would have needed a much larger fleet as well as some means to maintain their supply lines from Karak down to the Red Sea coast (fig. 5.2). Reynald managed to transport in secret the sections of the five to ten ships he used for this initial expedition from Karak south to the port of Ayla, but could he have hoped to continue to move sections of ships through southern Jordan on camel back without being attacked by Ayyubid forces after 1183? It should be noted that Reynald did not control the coast around Ayla, and his military resources in the early 1180s were barely sufficient to 15 Also it is important to recognise that some of the outcomes of the expedition cannot have been foreseen by the Crusaders. For example, it seems unlikely that they would have had any reliable information about the situation of the Ayyubids in Yemen. 16 For comments on Salah al-Din’s fleet in the Red Sea, see Richard Ehrenkreutz, ‘The place of Saladin in the naval History of the Mediterranean Sea,’ Journal of the American Oriental Society 75 (1955): 107.

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defend Karak and the other castles of his barony from attack by the armies of Salah al-Din.17 Given the circumstances outlined above, it seems likely that Reynald designed his expedition into the Red Sea as a ‘hit-and-run’ operation with a more defined purpose. A claim found consistently in the Arabic accounts of the Red Sea expedition is that Reynald ordered his men to march to Medina in order to dig up the remains from the burial chamber (ḥujra) of the Prophet Muhammad and return with them to the Crusader kingdom. What was to happen to the contents of the grave after this is not clear. It is most probable that the bones would have been employed as a bargaining tool in future negotiations with Salah al-Din, but some sources go even further, suggesting that Reynald wished to re-bury the Prophet’s remains and charge Muslims to visit them.18 Leiser has demonstrated that the first accusation is almost certainly more than just Muslim propaganda.19 The [241] second accusation – that the bones were to be re-buried (in Karak?) – has been widely rejected, however. Of course, there is no guarantee that Salah al-Din, and the other Muslim rulers of the region would have sat down at the negotiating table in order to bargain for the stolen bones. Such a grave offence against Muslim sensibilities might easily have provoked a concerted military backlash that would have extinguished the Crusader states altogether. Assuming that the accusations in the Muslim sources contain some element of truth, there remains the question of how Reynald could have formulated such an audacious plan. What was it that made him think that his enemies would share his own perceptions of the value of the bones of the Prophet? If he did intend to carry off the contents of the Prophet’s tomb from Medina 17 Lyons and Jackson, Saladin, p.

185. Leiser, ‘Crusader raid’; Hamilton, ‘Elephant of Christ,’ p. 104, n. 52. Those making this accusation include al-Dhahabi (d. 1348), Maqrizi (d. 1442) and Mujir al-Din al-ʿUlaymi (d. 1521). Significantly, all of these authors are writing some time after the events, though al-Dhahabi’s biographical account of Husam al-Din Luʾluʾ does make use of information drawn from the writings of ʿAbd al-Latif al-Baghdadi. The latter knew the admiral, Salah al-Din and other important figures such as ʿImad al-Din, al-Qadi al-Fadil and Baha’ al-Din b. Shaddad. 19 Leiser, ‘Crusader raid’ p. 97. 18

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then we must suppose he had gained some impression about how such bones and other artefacts were valued by contemporary Muslim society. In the remainder of this chapter I want to speculate on the cultural environment and historical circumstances that might have formed Reynald’s understanding of the function of holy relics in the Muslim world.

HOLY RELICS AND THE TREATMENT OF THE DEAD Reynald, a native of northern France, came from a society that placed enormous value on relics, whether they were the bones of saints or the artefacts associated with them. Importantly, these human relics were also portable, in the sense that the bones of a saint might move from one location to another through means of donation, barter or theft.20 Such exchanges might affect the precise value attached to a given set of bones, but it is clear that the more general sense of worth – financial and symbolic – of such religious commodities [242] was not tied to location; bones might be removed from their initial place of interment, but they did not lose their potential efficacy when they were established in a new location (and, in some cases, the act of theft might even enhance this quality). This understanding of holy relics as valued but portable artefacts is evident also in the culture of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other Crusader states. Seen in this general cultural context, it could be argued that Reynald simply assumed that the Muslim communities of the Middle East would share this European appreciation of the exchange value of the bones of saints or other related relics. Reviewing the history of the Islamic world of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, there are recorded cases of the movement of Muslim sacred relics such as a

20

This subject has been discussed by Patrick Geary. See his Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the central Middle Ages (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978); ‘Sacred commodities: The circulation of medieval relics,’ in Arjun Appadurai, ed., The social Life of Things. Commodities in cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 168–91.

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Qurʾan associated with the third caliph ʿUthman.21 Moving to an earlier period, there is even the case of the theft of the Black Stone from the Kaʿba by the Qarmati leader, Abu Tahir, in 920.22 Though these episodes are important in the context of Islamic history, the movement of artefacts like sacred stones or ancient Qurʾan must be viewed as very different from the exhumation and transport of human bones from one location to another. Furthermore, we do not have any evidence that the Crusaders were aware of either the theft of the Black Stone from Mecca by the Qarmatians or the significance accorded in the Sunni tradition to the ʿUthmanic Qurʾan. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to examine the changing perceptions of Islam in Europe and the Crusader states from the eleventh to the thirteenth century,23 but a few points may be highlighted. Observations made by European Christians of Muslim ritual practices or of Muslim religious architecture in the Middle East were [243] usually conditioned by a pre-determined ideological framework. Most European Christians of the eleventh and twelfth centuries possessed deeply-entrenched views of Islam as an idolatrous faith much concerned with the role of representational art in ritual practices and in particular the worship of two- and three-dimensional 21

According to Ibn al-Dawadari, the ʿUthmanic Qurʾan located in Maʿarrat al-Nuʿman was moved at the time of the capture of the Syrian town by the Crusaders in 1098. The Qurʾan was deposited in Damascus where it became an important focus for popular reverence, particularly during times of emergency. See comments in Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades, Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), p. 305. Also Josef Meri, The Cult of Saints among Muslims and Jews in Medieval Syria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 114–16. 22 Wilferd Madelung, ‘Karmaṭī,’ Encyclopaedia of Islam. Second Edition, 4 (1978): 662. 23 This complex issue has been dealt with by many scholars. For example, see: Robert Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962); Dorothee Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977); Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image. Second edition (Oxford: One World, 1993); Benjamin Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches toward the Muslims (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).

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images of their unholy ‘trinity’ of Muhammad, Tervagant and Apollo.24 For example, the chronicle, the Gesta Tancredi, claims that a giant silver statue of Muhammad was discovered within the area of the Temple Mount following the capture of Jerusalem in 1099.25 While this account is obviously a fabrication, the belief that the Prophet Muhammad himself was worshipped as the ‘father’ of the ‘trinity’ could have made his grave seem an attractive target for a military expedition. The problem is that these are rather generalised concepts which do not help to establish what might have stimulated a Crusader baron like Reynald of Châtillon to contemplate something as dangerous as a raid on the city of Medina. In order to come to a clearer understanding of the possible motivations behind the Red Sea expedition, it is necessary to consider in greater detail the circumstances of Reynald in the years leading up to 1182–83. Not long after his release from his sixteen-year captivity in Aleppo in 1176, Reynald of Châtillon acceded to a new title. In 1177 he became lord of Oultrejourdain following his marriage to Stephanie of Milly (fig. 5.3). The seigneurie encompassed the lands of modern-day Jordan south of the Wadi al-Mujib and, though somewhat remote from the centres of power in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Crusader states to the north, Oultrejourdain retained a considerable strategic and economic importance. In the years before his arrival, the town of Karak had grown in stature in other ways (fig. 5.4). In 1167 a new archbishop of Petra and the metropolitan of Arabia, Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-making in Medieval Art, Cambridge New Art History and Criticism (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 129–64. It should be noted, however, that not all Christians in Europe and the Crusader states held that Islam was an idolatrous religion. For example, see James Kritzeck, Peter the Venerable and Islam (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1964); Camille, Gothic Idol, pp. 140–41. 25 Raoul of Caen trans. in Camille, Gothic Idol, pp. 142–44. See also Xavier Muratova, ‘Western chronicles of the First Crusade as sources for the history of art in the Holy Land,’ in Jaroslav Folda, ed., Crusader Art in the twelfth Century, British Archaeological Reports International Series 152 (Oxford: British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 47–52. 24

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Guerricus, installed himself in Karak.26 A cathedral was constructed in the town at this [244] time.27 There were no other Latin bishops in Oultrejourdain, although the archbishop had a Greek Orthodox suffragan at the monastery of St Catherine’s in the Sinai.28 The German pilgrim, Thietmar, who passed through the region in 1217,

Figure 5.3. Drawing of the lead seal of Reynald de Châtillon as seigneure of Oultrejourdain, 1177–87. Cabinet des Medailles, Paris. claims that an attempt was made by the nobleman of ‘Petra and Scobach’ (i.e. Karak and Shawbak) to move the bones of St Catherine of Tyre, History of Deeds, II: 346. For the cathedral, see Denys Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Corpus. Volume I: A-K (excluding Acre and Jerusalem) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 287, no. 129. 28 Aubrey Stewart, trans., Anonymous Pilgrims i-viii, Palestine Pilgrims Texts Society 6 (London: Palestine Pilgrim Texts Society, 1894), p. 31 (probably written after 1198). 26 William 27

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from the monastery in the Sinai to another church in Oultrejourdain (this was apparently foiled as the result of miraculous intervention).29 Thietmar does not give the name of the noble in question, but Reynald is certainly a plausible candidate. The attempt – if it ever took place – failed, but it could have been part of a more ambitious strategy to elevate the religious status of Oultrejourdain among the Crusader states.

Figure 5.4. View of Karak castle from the south, 2005. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Looking around the lands of Oultrejourdain, Reynald must have been aware of the presence of other major sites of pilgrimage. Perhaps the most important of these was the shrine of Aaron located near ancient Petra on Jabal Harun, a site venerated by Jews, Muslims and Christians. A twelfth-century map of the region marks the site with a picture of a church and the words ‘Sanctus Aaron.’30 A few miles south of Karak is Muʾta, the site of a battle between Muslim and ByzThietmar, Magister Thietmari peregrinatio, ed. Johann Laurent (Hamburg: Theodor Gottlieb, 1857), pp. 37-38. 30 Pringle (1993), 251–52. Thietmar records the presence of two Greek monks at the church in 1217. See his Peregrinatio, p. 38. 29

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antine forces in 629. The battle led to the death of several companions of the Prophet, and they were all buried in the immediate vicinity.31 The present structures on the outskirts of modern Mu’ta (fig. 5.5) and in the town of Mazar date to later periods, but the pilgrimage guide (Kitāb al-ishārāt ilā maʿrifat al-ziyārāt) written by Abu al-Hasan ʿAli ibn Abi Bakr al-Harawi (d. 1215) does provide evidence that the burial places of these early martyrs were important sites of pilgrimage through the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.32 He [245] also notes another tomb at the village of Sarafa (probably located on the banks of the Dead Sea), dedicated to Yushaʿ b. Nun.33

Figure 5.5. Mamluk monument to the battle of Muʾta in 629. Fourteenth century. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. Frants Buhl, ‘Mu’ta,’ Encyclopaedia of Islam. Second Edition, 8 (1993): 756–57. 32 Abu al-Hasan ʿAli b. Abi Bakr al-Harawi, Kitāb al-ishārāt ilā maʿrifat alziyārāt, ed. Janine Sourdel-Thomine (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1953), p. 19. Trans. in Guide des lieux de pèlerinage, trans. Janine Sourdel-Thomine (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1957), pp. 47–48. 33 Al-Harawi, al-Ziyārāt, p. 18. Trans. in al-Harawi, Pèlerinage, p. 47 (and see n. 3). 31

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Reynald could have learned about popular Muslim practices relating to the shrines of Muslim saints from sending his spies to observe what went on around Muʾta, and it is worth remembering that he also must have gained some understanding of Islam during his long captivity in Aleppo. This is not to suggest, of course, that his experience as a prisoner in Aleppo, or such information as he would have been able to gather about the activities of Muslim pilgrims in Jordan, would have led him to an sympathetic appreciation of Islam.34 Rather, I suggest that he was unlikely to have taken at face value the stereotypical portrayal of the faith and practice of Islam found in Crusader texts of the twelfth century. If Reynald’s actions in 1182–83 were motivated by a particular interpretation of Islamic practices, we are left with the problem of identifying important episodes in the Sunni or Shiʿi Muslim territories of Syria and Egypt. The treatment of the dead and the practices surrounding the veneration of saints in the Islamic Middle East during this period can be assessed using different textual sources. Historical and geographical works contain descriptions of actual events, while legal texts and related material provide an insight into the ethical dimensions of the rituals of death, burial and pilgrimage. It is important to recognise, however, that a considerable divide exists between the ideals of behaviour outlined in many legal works and the actual activities of pilgrims visiting the shrines of saints in regions like Syria, Palestine and Egypt. If we turn first to the attitudes expressed toward the bodies of the dead in Sunni Muslim texts, there is little that would encourage either the veneration of the dead or the creation of portable relics. In fact, ḥadīth and later legal texts of the Sunni tradition actively [246] 34

For the imprisonment of Reynald in Aleppo, see Hillenbrand, ‘Imprisonment.’ It is frustrating that this period of his life remains almost completely undocumented in Arabic and Crusader sources. Hillenbrand does offer some speculations concerning Reynald’s life and mental state during this time. She suggests that he must have learned some Arabic and gained some knowledge of Islam and Muslim cultural practices during his captivity. She notes, however, that his long confinement may have actually established within him the resolve to fight Islam that becomes so evident in his actions after his release.

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oppose such practices. One of the earliest texts on Islamic law, the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Imam Malik ibn Anas (d. 795–96), contains a number of important pronouncements on the treatment of the dead. He also discusses the disturbance of the bones of Muslims. One such text reads, ‘The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, cursed both men and women who dug up [graves].’ Another related text reads ‘Yahya related to me from Malik that he heard that ʿAʾisha, the wife of the Prophet […] used to say ‘breaking the bone of a Muslim when he is dead is like breaking it when he is alive.’ She meant if done in wrong action.’35 Collections of market law (ḥisba) also contain comments concerning the proper treatment of the dead and other issues relating to the rituals of burial and the visitation of tombs. This can be seen if we take one example, that of the Kitāb niṣāb al-iḥtisāb of ʿUmar b. Muhammad al-Sunami (fl. thirteenth–fourteenth century). In matters of death and burial there is an emphasis upon simplicity and austerity. He notes that the dead should be interred as close as possible to the place of death (i.e. within a distance of two miles). While he does not hold it to be reprehensible to eulogise the dead person during the funeral (so long as the information represents the strict truth), al-Sunami forbids conspicuous acts of emotion such as ‘wailing, rending of clothes, and scratching of faces.’ Even the reading of the Qurʾan at the graveside is regarded as an unacceptable innovation (bidʿa), because the mourners will be too preoccupied to listen to the words.36 Al-Sunami is also concerned with what happens to the grave after the body is interred. One of the tasks of the market inspector (muḥtasib) was to prevent ‘people from building false graves and Malik ibn Anas, Al-Muwatta of Imam Malik ibn Anas. The first Formulation of Islamic Law, trans. Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley, The Islamic Classical Library (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1989), p. 91. For the burial of the dead in general, see pp. 85–92. 36 ʿUmar b. Muhammad al-Sunami, The Theory and the Practice of Market Law in Medieval Islam: A Study of Kitāb Niṣāb al-Iḥtisāb of ʿUmar b. Muḥammad al-Sunāmī (fl. 7th-8th/13th-14th Century), trans. M. Izzi Dien (London: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 1997), pp. 76–78, 109. 35

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performing pilgrimages to saints or mosques in a way which is similar to pilgrimage to the Kaʿba.’37 Citing the authority of ḥadīth, he does allow for women to visit tombs (other than that of the Prophet [247] Muhammad) in cases where there is a connection between the visitor and the dead person.38 The appropriate activities at the graveside are strictly delimited, however. Graves are not to be walked, sat or slept upon; prayer (ṣalāt) is not be performed near graves; drinks like sherbet are not to be consumed; and fresh vegetation is not to be cleared from the burial site. Cemeteries are also not to be used for building or the grazing or riding of animals.39 Lastly, he has some comments concerning exceptional circumstances when the exhumation and movement of the bones of the dead may occur. He allows for the placing of a body in an old grave where there are no longer any traces of bones, but where such traces remain they should not be disturbed. The exhumation and movement of a body is also permitted in cases where the land on which the burial took place was misappropriated. The protections afforded the remains of dead Muslims did not extend to the cemeteries of Zoroastrians (majūs) and, presumably, other religions not protected under the Covenant of ʿUmar. He notes that where traces of a Zoroastrian cemetery still exist, the bones may be removed if the site is to be transformed into a Muslim place of burial.40 There is no need to labour the point, but it is clear that Sunni jurists did not condone the veneration of the dead, the construction of shrines over their burial site, or the moving of the bones of dead Muslims. Of course, with regard to the first two issues practice was very different from the theory all over the Islamic world. Small 37 Al-Sunami, Market Law, 45, 109. On the ‘discovery’ of the shrines of saints in Cairo, see discussion in Boaz Shoshan, Popular Culture in medieval Cairo, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 9–23. 38 Al-Sunami, Market Law, pp. 58–59. 39 Al-Sunami, Market Law, pp. 108–110. Malik ibn Anas notes that ʿAli b. Abi Talib used to rest his head on graves and lie upon them. He concludes that it is ‘only forbidden to sit on graves to relieve oneself.’ See Malik ibn Anas, Al-Muwatta, p. 89. 40 Al-Sunami, Market Law, pp. 68–69.

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domed structures (qubba) were constructed over the tombs of revered Muslims from at least the eighth century,41 and many examples existed within the lands occupied by the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other Crusader states.42 We get some picture of the activities [248] involved in the pilgrimages to the shrines of saints from those who wrote either in support or in condemnation of such practices. This issue has recently been addressed by Josef Meri in his study of the popular veneration of Muslim and Jewish saints in Syria.43 Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111) wrote in support of pilgrimage (ziyāra) to tombs (of saints or loved ones) in his book Iḥyaʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (Revivification of the religious sciences). He asserted that it was to be performed according to the sunna of the Prophet. Al-Ghazali’s notion 41

For a general survey of commemorative and funerary architecture in the early centuries of Islam, see Oleg Grabar, ‘The earliest Islamic commemorative structures: Notes and documents,’ Ars Orientalis 6 (1966): 7–46. On the early attitudes to saints and holy men in Islam, see Chase Robinson, ‘Prophecy and holy Men in early Islam,’ in James Howard-Johnston and Paul Hayward, eds, The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 241–62. 42 For a survey of practices of popular veneration in early twentieth-century Palestine, see Tawfiq Canaan, Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine, Luzak Oriental Religions Series 5 (London: Luzak and Co., 1927). For an architectural survey of Muslim shrines in the region, see Andrew Petersen, A Gazetteer of Buildings in Muslim Palestine (Part 1), Council for British Research in the Levant Monographs 12 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 43 Josef Meri, The Cult of Saints among Muslims and Jews in Medieval Syria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). I have made use of Meri’s analyses and translations of the sources in the following discussion. See also Christopher Taylor, In the Vicinity of the Righteous: Ziyāra and the Veneration of Muslim Saints in late Medieval Egypt, Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts 22 (Leiden: Brill, 1999). For more recent scholarship, see also: Daniella Talmon-Heller, Islamic Piety in Medieval Syria: Mosques, Cemeteries and Sermons under the Zangids and the Ayyūbids (1146–1260), Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 7 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007); Stephennie Mulder, The Shrines of the ʿAlids in Medieval Syria: Sunnis, Shīʿīs, and the Architecture of Co-existence (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014).

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of ziyāra is a primarily one of contemplation and remembrance in which the visitor supplicates on behalf of the deceased.44 Al-Ghazali and the other supporters of the veneration of saints present a rather idealised picture of the practices that were followed around tombs (particularly the tombs of saints). It may well be that some pilgrims acted with the restraint suggested in al-Ghazali’s account, but there was evidently another, more active dimension to ziyāra that comes out most vividly in the writings of those who condemned such practices. The most critical stance was taken by jurists of the Hanbali school of jurisprudence. Although Ibn Hanbal (d. 855) offered no explicit criticism of the practice of ziyāra, his followers asserted that it constituted an unacceptable innovation (bidʿa). Furthermore, the veneration of saints was held to be a form of polytheism (shirk). The best known of these jurists is the Syrian, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), but there are earlier accounts that give some idea of the activities of pilgrims in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Damascene jurist Ibn ʿAqil (d. 1119) provides an account of rituals followed in his own time: When the prescriptions of the revealed Law (takālif) became difficult for the ignorant and the wretched, they turned away from the Law to glorifying conventions (awḍāʿ) which they created for themselves and were convenient for them since, with these conventions, they did not come under the jurisdiction of others. In my estimation, they are infidels [249] by virtue of these innovations, such as glorifying tombs and honouring them with what the Law prohibited of kindling lights, kissing [the tombs], and covering them with fragrance, addressing the dead with needs (khiṭāb al-mawlā bi’l-ḥawāʾij), writing formulae on paper with the message: ‘Oh my Lord, do such and such a thing for me’; taking earth [from the grave] as a blessing, pouring sweet 44 Trans. in Meri, Cult of Saints, p. 139: ‘What is intended from visiting tombs is for the visitor to reflect on the ziyāra and for the visited to benefit from his supplication. The visitor ought not to be heedless of supplicating for himself and for the deceased or reflecting on him. He is in a state of reflection when he pictures in his heart the dead, how his members have separated and how he will be resurrected from his grave.’

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fragrances over graves, setting out on a journey for them, and casting rags on trees in imitation of those who worshipped the gods Lat and ʿUzza.45

Of course, we should remain sensitive to the possibility that Ibn ʿAqil is misrepresenting the real situation for the purposes of his argument – although much of what he describes correlates with the observations made around Palestinian shrines in the early twentieth century – but his account is relatively mild compared to the claims of later jurists such as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 1350), a follower of Ibn Taymiyya.46 Referring to a lost pilgrimage guide, possibly of Shiʿi origin, called Manāsik ḥajj al-qabr (Rules for making pilgrimage to shrines), Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya presents an account of ziyāra as an emotionally-charged activity where the boundaries between popular veneration and proper practices of prayer and pilgrimage to Mecca (ḥajj) are dangerously obscured. He writes: You see them prostrating, bending themselves, and seeking favour and satisfaction from the dead [only to fill their hands] with disappointment and loss. To other than God, rather to Satan, their tears flow there, their voices rise. The deceased is called upon to fulfil needs, to dispel sorrows, make the indigent free from want, to relieve the diseased and afflicted. After that they turn to circumambulating the grave in imitation of the Bayt alḤaram which God had made holy and guidance unto the inhabitants of the world. Then they begin to kiss [it] and touch it – Did you not see the Black Stone and what those visiting the Bayt al-Ḥaram do with it? Then they soiled their foreheads and cheeks near it [i.e. the grave] which God knows are not soiled thus before it in prostration. Then they conclude the rites (pl. 45 Trans. in George Makdisi, Ibn ʿAqil, Religion and Culture in classical Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), p. 212. See also Meri, Cult of Saints, p. 129. Lat and ʿUzza are gods of the pre-Islamic period in Arabia. 46 For a more detailed discussion of the attitudes expressed by these two jurists on the subject of ziyāra, see Taylor, Vicinity of the Righteous, pp. 168–94.

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The acts of circumambulation and the kissing of the tomb itself are clearly adopted from the rites performed around the Kaʿba during the ḥajj, and it is not difficult to understand how such unorthodox rituals would have scandalised a Hanbali jurist. As we will see below, this conflation of the tomb of a revered figure with the Kaʿba in Mecca has further symbolic resonances within Fatimid ceremonial. For the purposes of this chapter, the significance of the descriptions given by scholars such as Ibn ʿAqil and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya is that they provide an indication of just how far popular pilgrimage in Syria and Palestine may have diverged from the practices laid down in Sunni Muslim jurisprudence. Nevertheless, there do appear to have been some defined boundaries to acceptable behaviour relating to the visitation of tombs. Importantly, the pilgrimage was tied to the believed place of burial. The stricture against the disturbance of the bones of the dead – or, indeed, their removal to another location – was observed (with the rare exceptions discussed below). This situation may be contrasted with the relatively frequent exhumation of bones from the tombs of Christian saints and the great mobility of human relics in Medieval Europe and the Crusader States. There are very few references to Muslims transporting the bones of saints from one site to another in Syria, Palestine or Egypt during the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries. One example concerns the head of St John the Baptist (Yahya b. Zakariyyaʾ). The best known shrine for the head of Yahya b. Zakariyyaʾ is located in the Great Mosque in Damascus. According to traditional accounts, the head was discovered during the demolition of the Byzantine cathedral and the construction of the mosque of the Umayyad caliph alWalid b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 705–15). Importantly, Damascus was not the only place believed to contain the head of Yahya b. Zakariyyaʾ. The town of Baʿlabakk also claimed to have the head of the saint, but 47 Trans. in Meri, Cult

of Saints, pp. 134–35.

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this sacred relic was transferred first to Hims and then, in 1043, to Aleppo. The skull was stored in a marble basin within a cabinet inside an oratory (maqām) within the citadel. Ibn Shaddad (d. 1285) writes that, following the Mongol invasion of Aleppo in 1260, the skull was moved to the Great Mosque of the city and buried west of the minbar.48 It seems unlikely that the location of the Damascene or Aleppine skulls was common currency among the Frankish inhabitants of the [251] Crusader states, but it is intriguing that Reynald of Châtillon probably spent most of his sixteen-year incarceration in the citadel of Aleppo. Although it can only be a matter of speculation, it is not impossible that, as a prisoner in the citadel, Reynald would have learned of the existence and unusual history of the holy relic venerated in the maqām nearby. If we turn to the activities of the Fatimid caliphate we find a rather different picture relating to the treatment of bones as relics. This Ismaʿili dynasty developed a distinctive ideology based around the status of the caliph himself, and his descent from the Prophet Muhammad through the line of ʿAli and Fatima. Relics played an important role in the ceremonies of the Fatimid court, and great emphasis was placed on the physical remains of the former imāms. When the caliph al-Muʿizz (r. 953–75) made his ceremonial procession from the city of Mansuriyya to the new capital of Cairo in Egypt after 969 he carried with him the coffins of the first three Fatimid imāms. These coffins were then interred in the Saffron Tomb (Turbat al-Zaʿfarān) in southwest corner of the eastern palace of Cairo. Interestingly, the coffins might be moved from this location on a temporary basis when the need arose; caliph al-ʿAziz (r. 975–96) took them with him during his campaign to recapture Aleppo in 996.49 The tomb of the Fatimid imāms was invested with a specific symbolic significance in the panegyric poetry of the period. Ibn Haniʾ (d. c. 973) writes: We are brought by noble camels in pilgrimage to the sanctuary (ḥaram) of the imām, across vast expanses of desert 48 This episode

is discussed in Meri, Cult of Saints, pp. 200–201.

49 Sanders (1994), p. 42.

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The poem alludes to the practice of circumambulating the Kaʿba in Mecca and kissing the Black Stone in the southeast corner, but there is also a more immediate reference to poetic descriptions of the palace of the earlier Fatimid caliph ʿUbayd Allah (r. 909–34) in Mahdiyya, occupied by the caliph from 920: [252] And in the West is an exalted residence where prayer and fasting are accepted: It is al-Mahdiyya, sacred and protected, as the sacred city is in Tihama. Your footsteps make the ground wherever you tread like the Maqam Ibrahim Just as the pilgrim kisses the [sacred] corner, so do we kiss the walls of your palace.51

It is worth noting that the events alluded to here all occurred a considerable time before the arrival of the Crusaders into the Holy Land at the end of the eleventh century. The continuing relevance of the sacred symbolism of the Fatimid palaces in Cairo, and the tomb of the imāms in particular, can be seen in a surprising location. Two inlaid marble panels found in the vicinity of the twelfth-century Cappella Palatina in Palermo carry Arabic inscriptions with distinct parallels to the poetic texts just discussed. The second fragmentary inscription reads, ‘kiss its corner after clinging [to it], and contemplate the beauty that it contains, and.’ It has been argued by Jeremy Johns that the two marble panels were probably placed around one of the doorways of the Palatine Hall of the Norman king of Sicily, 50 Trans. in Paula Sanders, Ritual, Politics and the City in Fatimid Cairo (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 41. 51 Trans. in Sanders, Ritual, pp. 41–42.

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Roger II (r. 1130–54). This building was constructed around the time of his coronation in 1130.52 The Norman court maintained active diplomatic contacts with the caliphs of Egypt, and presumably rulers like Roger II were conversant with some of the protocols and royal symbolism of the Fatimid court. That said, it would be a leap of faith to assert that this evidence of the knowledge of Fatimid ceremonial in Norman Sicily necessarily indicates that the Frankish inhabitants of the Crusader kingdoms – even those with familial links to the rulers of Sicily – were equally well informed on such matters. In the absence of any persuasive evidence, it is probably safer to assume that the Crusaders knew relatively little about either the ceremonies conducted in Fatimid Cairo or their symbolic content.53 [253] Another example of the movement of holy relics during the Fatimid caliphate may be of greater relevance to the affairs of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and perhaps also to the actions of Reynald of Châtillon. The mid twelfth century saw the gradual collapse of the Fatimid territories along the coast of southern Palestine. The key event is the fall of the port of Ascalon in 1153. This loss was of more than economic significance because Ascalon was also venerated as the site of the shrine of the head of Husayn b. ʿAli b. Abi Talib. When Husayn was martyred at Karbalaʾ in 680, his body was buried near where it fell, but the head was sent to the Umayyad caliph Yazid b. Muʿawiya (r. 683–84) in Damascus. It is not known what then happened to the head, although one source mentions that it was buried

52

Jeremy Johns, ‘The Norman kings of Sicily and the Fatimid caliphate,’ in Marjorie Chibnall, ed., Anglo-Norman Studies 15 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993), pp. 149–53. 53 Although see Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘King Fulk of Jerusalem and the “Sultan of Babylon”,’ in Benjamin Kedar, Jonathan Riley-Smith and R. Hiestand, eds, Montjoie: Studies in Crusader History in Honour of Hans Eberhard Mayer (Aldershot: Variorum, 1997), pp. 55–66. He discusses the example of an embassy between the Fatimid caliph and king Fulk. For the relationships between Fatimid and Byzantine ceremonial, see Marius Canard, ‘Le cérémonial fâtimite et le cérémonial byzantin. Essai de comparaison,’ Byzantion 21 (1951): 355–420.

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during the rule of Sulayman ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 715–17).54 Muslim writers provide a number of locations for the head, including Baʿlabakk, Hims, Aleppo, Damascus, Raqqa, Medina, Merv and Ascalon. The ‘discovery’ of the head of Husayn in Ascalon was made by the Fatimid general, Badr al-Jamali, in 1091. Ascalon contained a sanctuary dedicated to three Egyptian Christian martyrs beheaded in 308, and it may be that the existence of such a head cult in the town gave Badr al-Jamali the idea of creating a Shiʿi shrine in the same location (significantly, no sources before 1091 mention the existence of the head of Husayn in Ascalon).55 In the second half of the eleventh century the Fatimid caliphate had experienced losses of territory in Sicily, North Africa, and Palestine. Attempts to retake the city of Damascus in 1078–79, 1085–86 and 1089–90 had all ended in failure, while in Mecca and Medina the religious authorities had reverted to naming the Abbasid caliph in the khuṭba.56 In such difficult circumstances the appearance of the head of Husayn on the borders of the Fatimid empire was indeed fortuitous. Badr al-Jamali endeavoured to make as much as he could of the [254] miraculous discovery of the head. He constructed a shrine (mashhad) to house the head and furnished it with a minbar carrying a long inscription. The inscription provides interesting information concerning the appearance of the head of Husayn, but also states the intention that the shrine would become a place of pilgrimage: He [Badr al-Jamali] has come forward with the foundation of this minbar for the adornment of the exalted mashhad which he constructed, wherein he deposited this head in its most exalted Meri, Cult of Saints, p. 192; Khalid Sindawi, ‘The head of Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī: Its various places of burial and the miracles that it performed,’ in Marshall Breger and Leonard Hammer, eds, Holy Places in the IsraelPalestinian Conflict: Confrontation and Co-existence (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 264–73. 55 The history of the head(s) of Husayn is discussed in Caroline Williams, ‘The cult of the ʿAlid saints in the Fatimid monuments of Cairo. Part I: The mosque of al-Aqmar,’ Muqarnas 1 (1983): 37–52; Meri, Cult of Saints, pp. 191–95. See also Grabar, ‘Commemorative structures,’ pp. 29–30. 56 Williams, ‘Cult,’ p. 41. 54

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place as qibla for the amir and for the prayers of those accepted by God and an intercessor for those who seek intercession and for visitants.57

The discovery and sanctification of the head of Husayn in Ascalon is treated with considerable scepticism in the writings of Sunni authors of the twelfth to fifteenth century,58 but the shrine does appear to have become the focus of considerable veneration among Shiʿi Muslims from its foundation in 1091. Unfortunately for the Fatimid caliphs, their control of this strategic port on the Palestine coast was threatened in the twelfth century by the advance of the Crusaders from the north. The capture of the city in 1153 (548 AH) was achieved by the forces of Baldwin III (r. 1143–63) after a seven-month siege.59 According to al-Harawi, the head of Husayn was transported by the Muslims to the eastern palace in Cairo60 at the moment of the capture of the port of Ascalon by the Crusaders.61 The claim made by al-Harawi is substantiated in several Arabic sources, but a somewhat different account of the events is given by the Egyptian author, al-Maqrizi (d. 1442). In his monumental work devoted to the cities of Cairo [255] and Fustat, Kitāb al-mawāʿiẓ wa’l57 According to trans. in Williams, ‘Cult,’ pp. 41–42. 58 Taylor, Vicinity

of the Righteous, p. 67. The siege was established on 25 January 1153 and Ascalon was surrendered to the Crusader army on 12 or 22 August of the same year. See William of Tyre 17:22; 17:29 (trans. History of Deeds, II: 220, 233–34 and notes). Significantly, William is well aware that Ascalon was of considerable importance to the Fatimid caliph, but he sees this very much in strategic terms. No mention is made of the sacred relic located there. He writes, ‘That monarch [i.e. the caliph] and his princes felt the utmost solicitude for Ascalon, realizing that if it should fall and come into the power of the Christians there would be nothing to prevent our leaders from invading Egypt without let or hindrance and seizing that kingdom by force.’ See William of Tyre 17:22 (trans. History of Deeds, II: 220). 60 For a discussion of the ceremonies relating to the shrine of Husayn in the Fatimid palace, see Sanders, Ritual, pp. 131–34. On the moving of the head, see now Daniel de Smet, ‘La translation du raʾs al-Ḥusayn au Caire fatimide,’ in Urbain Vermeulen and Daniel de Smet, eds, Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), pp. 29–44. 61 Al-Harawi, al-Ziyārāt, p. 32. Trans. in al-Harawi, Pèlerinage, pp. 75–76. 59

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iʿtibār bi-dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa’l-āthār he claims that in 1154–55 (549 AH) the Fatimid vizier, al-Salah Talaʾiʿ b. Ruzzik negotiated with the Crusaders in order to transfer the head of Husayn from Ascalon to Cairo.62 Maqrizi also writes that the vizier placed it into a green silk bag on a seat of ebony, and perfumed it with musk and other substances.63 Maqrizi was writing a long time after the events, but it is worth noting that he had access to a number of now-lost works of Fatimid history.64 If this negotiation between the Fatimid vizier and the Crusader authorities did occur, then it would establish a precedent for the idea that Muslim rulers could be persuaded to make financial or territorial concessions for the return of sacred artefacts. As far as I am aware, the Crusader accounts of the capture of Ascalon do not mention the fate of the head of Husayn, but it seems likely that those involved in the siege, or in the administration of the city in later years would have known of the shrine – which continued to be venerated by Muslims in Palestine65 – as well as of the head that had been contained within it. Returning to an earlier point, Guy de Lusignan, an ally of Reynald, had control of the port of Ascalon. If Hamilton is correct in his assumption that materials were brought from Ascalon to Karak in preparation for the Red Sea expedition,66 then this might provide some grounds for thinking that Reynald was aware of the recent history of the head of Husayn. A further intriguing piece of circumstantial evidence is that the first mention of 62 Taqi al-Din Ahmad b. ʿAli, al-Maqrizi, Kitāb al-mawāʿiẓ wa’l-iʿtibār bidhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa’l-āthār (Bulaq: El-Amiriya Press, 1270-72/1853-55), I: 427. This account mentions a mosque built by the vizier outside Bab Zuwayla as the intended place of interment for the relic. 63 Al-Maqrizi cited Meri, Cult of Saints, p. 193. 64 For example, his account of the founding of the shrine of Husayn in Cairo is based on the writings of the Fatimid author Ibn Muyassar. See Meri, Cult of Saints, 193. 65 For example, see Al-Harawi, al-Ziyārāt, p. 32. Trans. in al-Harawi, Pèlerinage, pp. 75–76. Canaan describes a feast (mawsim) for Husayn in Ascalon in the early twentieth century. He records that sterile women hoping to become pregant would bathe in the sea and then sacrifice a sheep in honour of the saint. See his Mohammedan Saints, p. 135. 66 Hamilton, ‘Elephant of Christ,’ p. 103, n. 49.

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Reynald of Châtillon in the chronicle of William of Tyre is as a mercenary soldier under Baldwin III at the siege of Ascalon.67 [255]

CONCLUSION The Red Sea expedition of 1182–83 has been studied on numerous occasions, and it seems unlikely that many new sources for this episode will be discovered in future years. While the bulk of the evidence comes from Muslim authors there is no reason to doubt their overall presentation of the events. Reynald of Châtillon may well have intended for his men to march to Medina in order to exhume the bones of the Prophet Muhammad (this does not preclude the possibility that the expedition was designed with additional strategic objectives). This chapter set out to identify the factors that may have led Reynald to assume that his Muslim enemies would share his appreciation of sacred human remains as high value commodities that could be stolen, transported, negotiated, and re-buried. Although it is possible to establish something of the cultural and intellectual environment in the Crusader and Muslim states of the twelfth century, it should be admitted that there is no way of knowing how any of the events discussed previously might have affected the perceptions of Reynald himself. What is presented in this chapter are merely speculations based on the available sources. Nevertheless, the diverse evidence concerning the treatment of the dead – and particularly the remains of holy men and women – by Muslims in the Middle East between the late tenth and the thirteenth century does provide some insights into what might have motivated the Reynald to plan this notorious venture. The charge of idolatry often levelled against the Muslims by European authors of the Crusader period appears somewhat ironic to modern readers. The aniconic quality of Muslim religious art and architecture in eleventh- and twelfth-century Greater Syria (Bilad alWilliam of Tyre 17:21 (trans. History of Deeds, II: 218); Hamilton, ‘Elephant of Christ,’ p. 98, n.8. Reynald’s status as a mercenary is again noted by William when the former marries Constance of Antioch. See William of Tyre 17:26 (trans. History of Deeds, II: 224). 67

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Sham) stands in marked contrast to the profusion of figural sculptures and icons employed in the adornment of churches and other Christian structures during the Medieval period. Many of the accounts of Muslim ‘idols’ can be explained simply as fabrications by Crusader propagandists, but I believe it is important to take account of the widespread occurrence of ‘unorthodox’ ritual practices around the shrines of Muslim saints. Franks living in the Crusader states would not have [257] had access to the pious condemnations of ziyāra found in the writings of Sunni jurists, but they may well have had the opportunity to observe the emotional displays and strange rites that often accompanied pilgrimages to well-known shrines in Palestine and Jordan. Given the inherent prejudices of most European Christians of this period, it is not hard to imagine how some of the activities of Muslims performing such pilgrimages to tombs could have been portrayed as idolatrous.68 Likewise, Reynald would have formulated his understanding of the faith and practice of Islam from what he witnessed personally or from what he heard from others. In addition, he may even have learned something of the principles of Islam from his gaolers in Aleppo during his long captivity. One of the fundamental differences in the veneration of saints by Frankish Christians and Muslims in the eleventh and twelfth centuries is to be found in the treatment of the body of the deceased. Whatever the excesses of Muslim pilgrims around tombs of saints in this period, the exhumation and relocation of bones were both extremely rare. The prohibition on the digging up of graves is emphasised in several ḥadīth, and the later pronouncements of Muslim jurists. Two exceptional cases – the supposed heads of St John the Baptist in Aleppo and Husayn b. ʿAli b. Abi Talib in Ascalon – have been discussed in this chapter. Interestingly, in both cases circumstantial links can be made to episodes in the life of Reynald of Châtillon. The head of Husayn is the more significant of the two because of the possibility that the Fatimid vizier, al-Salah Talaʾiʿ b. Ruzzik, actually negotiated with the conquerors of Ascalon for the return of 68 For examples of accounts of pilgrimages that are explicitly idolatrous in character, see Meri, Cult of Saints, pp. 208–209.

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the head. Assuming this negotiation did take place, it would have sent a powerful message to the Crusaders. An ambitious soldier like Reynald would have needed to understand neither the doctrinal differences between Shiʿi and Sunni Islam, nor the precise significance of Husayn to the Fatimid caliphs, to have been impressed by the value accorded to this relic. Perhaps the events in Ascalon in 1153–55 provide a key to understanding Reynald’s exploits in the Red Sea nearly thirty years later.

CHAPTER 6. THE CUP OF THE SĀQĪ: ORIGINS OF AN EMBLEM OF THE MAMLUK KHĀ ṢṢAKIYYA Blazonry is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the art of the Mamluk period (1250–1517). These simple and visually arresting designs can be found adorning the architecture of the towns and cities in the Levant as well as a variety of portable objects. The vocabulary of motifs is relatively small, being composed of abstract symbols and simplified depictions of animals or inanimate objects. One of the most ubiquitous of these emblems is the cup. This chapter will look at the origins of this motif. In the second half of the nineteenth century scholars such as Achille-Constant-Théodore-Émile Prisse d’Avennes (d. 1879), Yacoub Artin (d. 1919), and Stanley Lane-Poole (d. 1931) turned their attention to Mamluk blazonry,1 but the first coherent interpretation of the ico1

For a comprehensive bibliography of the early studies concerning Mamluk blazonry, see Leo Mayer, Saracenic Heraldry (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1933), pp. 271–82. For more on this topic, see: James Allan, ‘Mamlūk sultanic heraldry and the numismatic evidence: A reinterpretation,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1970): 99–112; Michael Meinecke, ‘Zur mamlukischen Heraldik,’ Mitteilungen der Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Abteilung Kairo 28.2 (1972): 213–87; Michael Meinecke, ‘Die Bedeutung der mamlukischen Heraldik für die Kunstgeschichte,’ in D. Voigt, ed., XVIII. Deutscher Orientalistentag, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, supplement 2 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1974), pp. 213–40; Paul Balog, ‘New considerations on Mamlūk heraldry,’ American Numis-

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nography of the system of motifs had to wait until the publication in 1933 of Leo Aryeh Mayer’s (d. 1959) Saracenic Heraldry. The central thesis of the book is that the majority of the motifs found within Mamluk blazons represent objects denoting the offices of the khāṣṣakiyya. The khāṣṣakiyya was a corps of young mamlūks selected to perform ceremonial functions at the courts of al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub (sultan of Egypt, 1240–49) and, later, the Mamluk sultans. At the end of the period of service, the members of the court would be manumitted and given the title of amīr. Many of those who served in this corps could expect to be promoted to the highest military and administrative posts in the Mamluk regime. Mayer points to a passage in Ibn Taghribirdi’s (d. 1470), al-Nujūm relating to the last years of the Ayyubid period (1171–1250): ‘…therefore, when he [sultan al-Salih Ayyub] dubbed him [Aybak al-Turkmani, later sultan of Egypt: 1250– 57] an amīr, he gave him the figure of a table (khawānjā) as blazon,’2 Aybak had been the sultan’s taster and so it seems probable that the table (khānjā/khawānjā) was a symbol of that office. Mayer concludes that, for most of the Bahri Mamluk period, amīrs were assigned a personal blazon according to the last office they held in the khāṣṣakiyya.3 Mayer uses evidence from inscriptions to identify the offices to which the numerous blazons allude. The list includes the cup of the cup-bearer (sāqī), the napkin of the jamdār, the table of the jāshnikīr, the polo sticks of the [242] jūkandār, the pen-box of the dawādār, the bow of the bunduqdār, and the sword of the silāḥdār. There are no known examples of the cup of the sāqī being adopted by former mamlūks of the Ayyubid sultans. Kitbugha b. ʿAbdallah al-Mansuri (r. 1294–96), captured at the battle of Hims in 1260, was matic Society Museum Notes 22 (1977): 183–211; Bethany Walker, ‘Ceramic evidence for political transformations in early Mamluk Egypt,’ Mamluk Studies Review 8.1 (2004): 1–114. 2 Jamal al-Din Yusuf b. al-Amir Sayf al-Din Ibn Taghribirdi, al-Nujūm alzāhira mulūk Miṣr wa’l-Qāhira, 16 vols (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyah. Al-Qism al-Adabi, 1929–72), VII: 4. For other references to the use of emblems in the Ayyubid and Mamluk worlds, see Nasser Rabbat, ‘Rank,’ Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, vol. 8 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1954– 2005), pp. 431–33. 3 Mayer, Saracenic Heraldry, pp. 1–2.

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later taken into the service of sultan Qalawun (r. 1279–90). According to the chronicler, al-Dhahabi (d. 1348), Kitbugha used a cup on his amiral banner.4 The blazon of a cup appears on a brass candlestick made for him between 1290 and 1293, and on some copper coinage struck after his accession to the sultanate.5 He must have taken the motif after he was freed by Qalawun at some time before the latter’s death in 1290.

Figure 6.1. Blazon of Kitbugha b. ʿAbdallah al-Mansuri. Taken from the base of an inlaid brass candlestick commissioned by Kitbugha. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Drawing: Marcus Milwright. The blazon found on the candlestick commissioned by Kitbugha (fig. 6.1) is the first extant example of the cup and, as such, makes a good starting point [243] for a description of the vessel shape: rendered in silhouette, the cup has a relatively wide bowl with an everted lip, supported on a high splayed base of almost equal diameter to the bowl. At the summit of the base is a pronounced knop. During the fourteenth century the overall proportions of the vessel Quoted in Mayer, Saracenic Heraldry, p. 144. Esin Atil, Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks (Washington DC: The Smithsonian Press, 1981), pp. 65–68, cat. no. 16. 4 5

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become more squat, but no other important changes occur through the course of the Mamluk dynasty.

Figure 6.2. Polychrome enamelled porcelain cup. China (Ch’eng-Hua period, 1465–87). Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. Drawing: Marcus Milwright. In the face of the evidence from inscriptions and literary sources, there can be little doubt that the cup found in Mamluk blazons denotes the office of the sāqī. We can date the first appearance of the motif to the last quarter of the thirteenth century. The problem is that the cup depicted in these blazons is not a representation of the type of drinking vessel in use at the Ayyubid or Mamluk courts. There are no representations of the Mamluk khāṣṣakiyya in its entirety, but there exist images of cupbearers attending sultans and amīrs. Consistently the drinking vessels used are flared beakers and not pedestal cups.6 Images of life outside the court also contain For representations of the khāṣṣakiyya in the thirteenth century, see Estelle Whelan, ‘ Representations of the khāṣṣakiyyah and the origins of Mamluk emblems,’ in Priscilla Soucek, ed., Content and Context of the Visual Arts of

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depictions of people drinking. The illustrated Maqāmāt manuscripts of the thirteenth century provide evidence about the wide range of vessel types in use in the Islamic Middle East, and although various types of pedestal bowls can be located, drinkers are generally seen holding beakers.7 This shape is not difficult to find in extant glass and ceramics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.8 Although most of the drinking vessels in use in this period appear to have taken the form of beakers, there exist a few examples of stem cups.9 In addition, there are also larger glass pedestal bowls, perhaps inspired by Saljuq metalwork.10 While these pieces exhibit some similarities with the cup of the sāqī blazon, they differ in the proportions, and the lack of a high flared base and everted lip. Richard Ettinghausen (d. 1979) proposed that the cup was based on an imported model.11 He suggested that the type of stem cup found in Chinese porcelain and celadon may have been the prototype (fig. 6.2) [244]. Literary sources of the Mamluk period make clear that Chithe Islamic World. Papers from a Colloquium in Memory of Richard Ettinghausen, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, 2–4 April 1980 (University Park Penn. and London: University of Pennsylvania Press for the College Art Association of America, 1988), pp. 219–55. See also comments in Priscilla Soucek, ‘Sāḳī,’ Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, vol. 8 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1954–2005), pp. 885–87. A large pedestal bowl with a knop is seen in the hands of a servant in an inlaid brass vessel by Muhammad ibn alZayn illustrated in Atil, Renaissance of Islam, pp. 74–75, cat. no. 20. A curious drinking cup with a stem but no foot is seen on the so-called Baptistère of St Louis. See David Storm Rice, Le baptistère de Saint Louis (Paris: Éditions du Chêne, 1953), pls. V, XX, XXI. 7 See microfiches appended to Oleg Grabar, Illustrations of the Maqamat (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 8 Carl Lamm, Mittelalteriche Gläser und Steinschnittarbeiten aus dem Nahen Osten, 2 vols, Forschungen zur islamischen Kunst 5 (Berlin: D. Reimer, 1929–30), II: taf. 141, 163. 9 Atil, Renaissance of Islam, p. 142, cat. no. 62. 10 Lamm, Mittelalteriche Gläser, II: taf. 161.2, 162.1, 189.1–3; David Storm Rice, The Wade Cup in the Cleveland Museum of Art (Paris: Éditions du Chêne, 1955), pls. XII.a, XIII, XIV.d, XV. 11 Richard Ettinghausen, ‘Further comments on Mamluk playing cards,’ in Ursula McCracken, Lilian Randall and Richard Randall, eds, Gatherings in Honor of Dorothy E. Miner (Baltimore: Walters Art Gallery, 1974), pp. 61–65.

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nese pottery was highly valued, and bowls and drinking vessels were used in court ceremonies,12 but there are problems with this interpretation. The stem cup is seen in celadon wares of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, though it is not known if these items were manufactured for export.13 The shape never has the strongly flared base and pronounced knop seen in the blazon. Furthermore, if such a desirable and expensive item was used by the sāqī in Mamluk court ceremonial, it is somewhat surprising that no depictions exist of a sultan or attendant holding such a cup. [245] Another possibility is that the cup is not based on an actual vessel, but on a depiction of a cup. Vases, footed bowls, and stem cups are a relatively common feature of Late Antique ornament.14 These items are often depicted in paradisiac settings flanked by animals or birds. In other cases, vegetation seems to grow out the vessel. In early Islamic architecture these motifs are picked up in examples such as a bronze plate covering one of the tie beams in the octagonal arcade of the Dome of the Rock and the carved façade of the palace of Mshatta.15 The Bahri Mamluk period witnessed a revival of motifs and techniques from the art of the Umayyad caliphate, perhaps stimulated by the renovations undertaken on the Great Mosque of Damascus and the buildings of the Haram al-Sharif. A mosaic covering the miḥrāb hood in the mausoleum of Baybars in Damascus, completed in the 1270s, contains such a stem cup with sprouting vegetation (fig. 6.3). Fourteenth-century examples of mosaic miḥrāb hoods with similar designs include those of the mosque Zaccaria Pagani, Le voyage du magnifique et très illustré chevalier et procurateur de Saint Marc, Domenico Trevisano. Appended to Le voyage d’Outremer de Jean Thenaud suivi de la relation de l’ambassadeur Domenico Trevisan auprès du soudan d’Égypte, trans. Charles Schefer (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1884), p. 191. 13 For example, Anthony Du Boulay, Christie’s pictorial History of Chinese Ceramics (Oxford: Phaidon and Christie’s, 1984), p. 97, figs. 14, 15. 14 Michele Piccirillo, with Patricia Bikai and Thomas Dailey, The Mosaics of Jordan (Amman: American Center of Oriental Research, 1993), pls. 20, 41, 104, 485, 589. 15 K. A. C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture: Umayyads, early ʿAbbasids and Tulunids, second edition, 2 vols in 3 parts (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1969), I.1: pl. 28e; I.2: pl. 127. 12

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of Tankiz al-Husami al-Nasiri, governor of Syria (1312–40), in Damascus and the madrasa-mosque of ʿIsa ibn ʿUmar al-Burtasi (d. 1324) in Tripoli (colour pl. 3).16 The paradisiac symbolism of the stem cup and vegetation appears also in illustrated manuscripts, such as a copy of the Kashf al-asrār of Ibn Ghanim al-Maqdisi (d. 1279).17

Figure 6.3. Madrasa-mausoleum of sultan Baybars, Damascus. Mosaic decoration of the miḥrāb hood. Photograph: Marcus Milwright. 16

On the revival of mosaic in the early Mamluk period, see Finbarr Flood, ‘Umayyad survivals and Mamluk revivals: Qalawunid architecture and the Great Mosque of Damascus,’ Muqarnas 14 (1997): 57–79. On the architecture commissioned by Tankiz, see Ellen Kenney, Power and Patronage in Medieval Syria: The Architecture and urban Works of Tankiz al-Nāṣirī (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 17 Ms. Lala Ismaʿil 565, Library of the Süleymaniye mosque, Istanbul. See especially the miniatures on fols. 22v and 29v. Illustrated in Duncan Haldane, Mamluk Painting (Warminster: Aris and Philips, 1978), p. 53, pl. 10; Richard Ettinghausen, Arab Painting (Geneva: Skira, 1962), pl. on p. 158. This latter illustration bears intriguing similarities to depictions of birds flanking flowering cups seen decorating canon tables of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Armenian gospels. The possibility of a connection between the cup of the sāqī and Armenian art is discussed later in this chapter.

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I do not want to discount completely the possibility that the cup of the sāqī derives from these miḥrāb mosaics and, ultimately, from classical sources. The vessel depicted in the Baybars complex predates the first known appearance of the cup in blazonry, but it should be noted that the cup in the mosaic lacks the everted lip. In addition, all of the mosaics have been extensively restored this century, and we should be cautious in the analysis of precise details. Lastly, it is unclear why a motif associated with paradisiac imagery should have been transposed into the new context of blazonry. The disparity between the type of drinking vessels used in court and the type shown in the blazon has led to the assumption that the cup depicted was one associated with other ritual purposes. At the end of the nineteenth century the German scholar, Joseph von Karabacek (d. 1918) suggested a link to the initiation ceremonies of the futuwwa.18 These disparate youth organisations were transformed during the caliphate of al-Nasir li-Din Allah (r. 1180–1225) in the first quarter of the thirteenth century. He encouraged Muslim rulers to join, and it is known that [246] one part of the initiation involved drinking from a cup (kāʾs) filled with salt water. The ritual fell into disuse with the fall of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, but was revitalised under the patronage of sultan Baybars I (r. 1260–77) and his successors. Another ceremony involving cups patronised by the Mamluk rulers was the annual anointing of the Nilometer at Rawda.19 While it is possible that such ritual purposes influenced the type of cup depicted in the sāqī blazon, the literary sources tell us nothing about the form of the cups used and no representations of these rituals are known. 18

Joseph Karabacek, ‘Ein damascenischer Leuchtner des 14. Jahrhunderts,’ Reportium für Kunstwissenschaft 1 (1876): 265–82. See also Claude Cahen and Franz Taeschner, ‘Futuwwa,’ Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, vol. 3 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1954–2005), pp. 961–69. For a rejection of the connection between the rituals of the futuwwa and the motifs on Mamluk blazons, see William Leaf, ‘Not trousers but trumpets: A further look at Saracenic heraldry,’ Palestine Exploration Quarterly 114 (1982): 47–51. 19 William Popper, The Cairo Nilometer: Studies in Ibn Taghrî Birdî’s Chronicles of Egypt, 1 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1951), pp. 71–72.

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The remainder of this chapter is devoted to exploring another potential source for the cup of the sāqi. Leonardo Frescobaldi (fl. late fourteenth century), a Florentine who visited Egypt and Syria in 1384, was perhaps the first author to draw attention to the similarity between the cup of the sāqī and a chalice. In a description of an island in the Nile, north of Cairo, he writes: …it is the place where was taken the king of France (i.e. Louis IX, r. 1226–70), when he made Crusade to Saracen parts. On the above mentioned king was placed a ransom of two million florins, and he was released on parole, having left as forfeit the consecrated body of our Lord Jesus Christ in a chalice, which at the time agreed was with great reverence collected. And the admiral and the men-at-arms of the sultan in remembrance of this victory, and in derision of our faith, carry painted on horses’ covers a chalice.20

Tall tales recounted by local guides are familiar enough today, but all stories must contain some grain of truth in order to succeed. Fundamentally, the story told by Frescobaldi relies on the striking resemblance between the cup of the sāqī and a chalice. Can anything be made of this visual similarity? Chalices have been unearthed in Syria, dating as early as the sixth century, but these ancient examples do not correspond in shape and decoration to the type of eucharistic vessel that would have been recognised by a European observer like Frescobaldi.21 The Commun-

20 Leonardo Frescobaldi in Theophilus Bellorini and Eugene Hoade, trans., with preface and notes by Bellarmino Bagatti, Visit to the Holy Places of Egypt, Sinai, Palestine, and Syria in 1384 by Frescobaldi, Gucci, and Sigoli, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum 6 (Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1948), p. 44. Variants of this story were still being told to travellers in Egypt as late as the seventeenth century. See Otto Kurz, ‘Mamluk heraldry and the interpretatio Christiana,’ in Myriam Rosen-Ayalon, ed., Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet (Jerusalem: Institute of Inner Asian and African Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 297–307. 21 Marlia Mango, with Carol Snow and Terry Drayman Weisser, Silver from early Byzantium: The Kaper Koraon and related Treasures (Baltimore:

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ion cup underwent a stylistic evolution in Europe during the Medieval period culminating, at the turn of the thirteenth century, in the form of cup still familiar today. After c. 1200 the churches of Europe abandoned the highly embellished, Byzantine-influenced, twohandled chalice, and adopted a new and less ornamented style of Communion cup.22 A [249] good example of this type is the Pelagius chalice, manufactured in Spain at the end of the twelfth century (fig. 6.4). Far fewer secular goblets have survived from the Medieval period, but manuscript illustrations indicate that these drinking vessels adopted a similar profile to that of the chalice. Chalices and secular goblets of this new type were introduced into Bilad al-Sham (Greater Syria) through the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and the other Crusader polities. The European style permeated into the visual and material culture of the Christian communities of Syria and Palestine. The cache of silver gilt liturgical items recovered from the church of the Holy Cross at Rusafa includes a complete chalice bearing Syriac inscriptions, and the base section of a second chalice. These items were found in a sealed context with coins dating between 1243 and 1259, and were likely hidden prior to the conquest of the site by the Mongols in 1259.23 Representations of this type of Trustees of the Walters Art Gallery, 1986), nos. 2, 3, 27–30, 41, 57–59, 61, 62, 73, 77–80. 22 William Watts, Catalogue of Chalices and other Communion Vessels (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1922), pp. 16–17. Numerous representations of chalices are known in Western European manuscripts of this period. See, for example, C. M. Kaufmann, Romanesque Manuscripts, 1066– 1190 (London: H. Miller, 1975), pp. 93–96, 108–111. 23 The Rusafa hoard is now housed in the Syrian National Museum in Damascus: 29311 AN29. See Tilo Ulbert, ‘The silver treasures of Resafa/Sergiopolis,’ in Susanne Kerner, ed., The Near East in Antiquity: German Contributions to the Archaeology of Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt I (Amman: Al Kutba, German Protestant Institute for Archaeology, 1990), pp. 105–110. The dating evidence is summarised in Hansgerd Hellenkemper, ‘Ecclesiastical silver hoards and their findspots: Implications for the treasure found at Korydalla, Lycia,’ in Susan Boyd and Marlia Mango, eds, Ecclesiastical Silver Plate in sixth-century Byzantium (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1992), p. 67.

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chalice can be found in two Syrian Jacobite manuscripts painted in the 1220s.24 Stylistic analysis of the compositions indicates that the prototypes for these illustrations come from Europe and the [250] Byzantine world. Chalices also appear in Armenian gospels of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Interestingly, the motif of the chalice sprouting vegetation can be seen in the Burtasi madrasa-mosque miḥrāb mosaic (colour pl. 3) are also found in these paintings.25

Figure 6.4. Pelagius chalice, Spain, end of the twelfth century. Louvre Museum. Drawing: Marcus Milwright. It is important to recognise that chalices and other liturgical items played a conspicuous part in the religious and political life of Medieval 24 Hugo Buchthal, ‘The painting of the Syrian Jacobites and its relation to Byzantine and Islamic art,’ Syria 20 (1939): pl. XVI.1, 2 and text. A chalice made in c. 1300 for a priest of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is now housed in the Victoria & Albert Museum. See Henrik Budde and Gereon Sievernich, eds, Europa und Orient, 800–1900 (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Lexikon Verlag, 1989), 597, fig. 689 (on p. 595) (cat. 4/89). 25 Sirarpie Der Nersessian, Armenian Manuscript painting in the Freer Gallery of Art, Freer Gallery of Art Oriental Studies 6 (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1963), pls. 15, 16, 35, 39, 44; M. Janashian, Armenian Miniatures of the Monastic Library at San Lazzaro, trans. B. Grebanier (Venice: San Lazzaro, 1966), pls. LVI.a, LIX, LXIII, LXXX.

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Europe. Chalices made of precious metals were used for display, suspended beneath arches in churches, or carried in front of religious processions.26 Chalices were included in the burial of bishops (fig. 6.5).27

Figure 6.5. The burial of bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, History of Outremer , Brit. Lib. Henry Yates Thompson ms. 12, fol. 34v. Photograph by permission of the British Library, London.

Fernand Cabrol, Henri Leclercq et al., Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1907–), II.2: col. 1623, fig. 1901. 27 Cabrol, Leclercq et al., Dictionnaire d’archéologie, II.2, col. 1644; John Milner, The History, civil, ecclesiastical, and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester, 2 vols (London: Cadell and Davis, 1798–1801), II: 227. 26

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William of Tyre’s (d. 1186) account of the capture of Antioch hints that the manufacture of liturgical items had a propagandist message during the time of the Crusades. He writes that, after the seizure of the city, ‘gold and silver taken as spoils from the enemy were brought for making candelabra, crosses, chalices, inscriptions from Holy Writ, and all other things necessary for the service of the Church.’28 Cups were also used for secular ritual. Jean de Joinville (d. 1317), the companion of Louis IX, describes a treaty between a Byzantine delegation and a Turkish tribal group, which was concluded with the drinking of a mixture of wine, water, and the protagonists’ blood from a large silver goblet.29 Cups had an important role in the West as gifts. Louis IX sent a gift to the leader of the Ismaʿili sect of northwestern Syria that included gold cups, in the hope of making an alliance.30 Similar gifts were made between Crusader monarchs: Richard I (r. 1189–99) gave twenty cups, two of which were gold, to Guy de Lusignan (king of Jerusalem, 1186–92), while Tancred, prince of Galilee (d. 1112), bestowed gifts of cups on the messengers of the king of France.31 The types of cups used for gifts can be seen in miniatures from the late thirteenth-century manuscripts painted in Eu-

28 William of Tyre, A History of Deeds done beyond the Sea, trans. Emily Babcock and August Krey, 2 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), I: 296–97. 29 Jean de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, trans. and ed. Natalis de Wailly, second edition (Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot frères, fils et cie, 1874), pp. 495–98. Ceremonies involving cups are very well established among the cultures of Central Asia. See Emil Esin, ‘The cup rites of Inner-Asian and Turkish art,’ in Oktay Aslanapa and Rudolf Naumann, eds, Forschungen zur Kunst Asiens: In Memoriam Kurt Erdmann (Istanbul: Istanbul Universitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi, Türk ve Islâm Sanati Kürsüsü, 1969), pp. 224– 61. 30 Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, p. 458. 31 Ambroise, The Crusade of Richard the Lion-Heart, trans. Merton Hubert with additional notes by John La Monte (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), ll. 914–915, 1733–34.

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rope from originals produced in Acre (fig. 6.6). Presentational cups were often filled with fruit, or other delicacies.

Figure 6.6. Tancred receives gifts from satraps, History of Outremer , ms. W.137, fo. 33r. Photograph by permission of the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. The system of heraldry that developed in Medieval Europe seems to have its roots in Norman society. The Acre Roll in the Bodleian library,32 which depicts the arms of the knights who accompanied Richard I on Crusade, provides documentary evidence that heraldry was well established in the Kingdom of [251] Jerusalem by the end of the twelfth century. Cups can be found on English rolls of arms predating the first use of the motif of the sāqī on Mamluk blazonry in c. 1290. A manuscript in the National Library of Scotland depicts the arms of the benefactors of Westminster cathedral during the reign of Henry III (r. 1216–72). [252] These arms were set up in 32

Bodleian Library, Oxford. Ashmolean ms. 1120.

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the building in 1220. In this list are three coats that contain covered cups: Argentine (or [de] Argentein), Butler, and Warruppe.33 The coat of Richard Argentine (red with three silver covered cups) can be found in the [253] Matthew Paris roll, dated to 1244.34 Cups also appear in the shield adorning the tomb of Richard de la Wich, bishop of Chichester between 1245 and his death in 1253.35 The reason for the appearance of gold covered cups on the coats of families known to have served as butlers is clear enough, but the use of silver covered cups on the arms of the Argentine family requires some explanation. The family held considerable influence in thirteenth-century England: Reginald Argentine was sheriff of several counties and sat in Westminster Hall as a judge. His son Richard (b. 1220) was governor of Hertford castle and one of the stewards of the king’s household. The family held the privilege of serving the king at his coronation with a silver-gilt cup of wine. The king paid for the cup, but the server retained it after the ceremony, and later members of the family mention these vessels in their wills. A ceremonial covered cup is depicted in an illustration of the poisoning of Alexander the Great (r. 336–323 BCE) from a Universal History

John Wither, Arms of the Nobility of England, of the Benefactors of Westminster Abbey, and the Participants of the Siege of Rouen, taken from the Books by Mr Glover Somerset, the Herald, and Dr Joseph Holland of Cullers. National Library of Scotland: Adv. ms. 31.7.10, fol. 97r. 34 Anthony Wagner, A Catalogue of English Mediaeval Rolls of Arms, Harleian Society Publications 100 (Oxford: Printed at the University Press, 1950), pp. 1–2, pl. 1. Other rolls of arms containing coats covered with cups can be found in Nicolas Harris Nicholas and Joseph Gwilt, eds, Rolls of Arms of the Reign of Edward II (London: W. Pickering, Apollo Press, 1829), nos. 93, 431, 572, 916; George Armytage, ed., Ancient Rolls of Arms: The Charles Roll of the Reigns of Henry II and Edward I (London: J. R. Smith, 1869), nos. 653, 659. 35 William Riland Bedford, The Blazon of Episcopacy (London: J. R. Smith, 1897), p. 32, pl. XV.12. Chalices also appear on the seals of religious institutions in the thirteenth century. See Walter de Gray Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols (London: British Museum Press, 1887–1900), V: nos. 18833, 18911. 33

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painted in c. 1290 (fig. 6.7). Richard Argentine made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land where [254] he became known as ‘David’s Tower’ due to his strength and valour in battle. He was killed in a battle outside Antioch in 1246.36

Figure 6.7. The poisoning of Alexander, Universal History, Bibl. Roy. ms. 18295, fol. 148v. Photograph by permission of the Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, Brussels. 36

W. M. Palmer, ‘Argentine’s manor, Melbourne, Cambridgeshire, 1317–8,’ Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquaries Society 28 (1925–26): 27–29; James Dansey, The English Crusaders, Part 1 (London: Dickinson, 1849), chapter entitled, ‘The Seventh Crusade under Prince Edward of England’ (unpaginated text). Dansey gives a different account, claiming that both Reginald and Richard went on Crusade. Reginald became a Templar knight and bore the army’s standard at the battle of Antioch. He died in this conflict. On the members of the Argentine family in this period, see Anon., ‘Outline of the history of the Argentein family: 11th to 13th centuries’ in Some Notes on Medieval English Genealogy. http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/families/arg/argoutl1.shtml (last accessed: 8 September 2019).

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While it is possible to establish a visual correspondence between the cup of the sāqī and the chalices and goblets circulating in the Frankish states of the Syrian littoral, this does not provide any clue as to the means by which an image of a cup might have travelled between the Christian and Muslim camps or the motivation behind the adoption of a foreign device. In the following paragraphs I will identify some of the mechanisms through which motifs and objects travelled and outline the context of diplomatic exchange in the second half of the thirteenth century. There are some passages in the writings of Frankish and Arab historians that describe the exchange of blazons between warring sides. Joinville claims that the banner of the Ayyubid general, Fakhr al-Din b. Sadr al-Din al-Shaykh, was divided into three bands: one carrying the arms of emperor Frederick II (r. 1220–50), who had made him a knight; another of the sultan of Aleppo; and the last, the arms of the Egyptian sultan.37 The chronicler and Mamluk amīr, Baybars al-Mansuri (d. 1324–25) gives another example of the adoption of a Frankish coat of arms, this time by a Mamluk soldier. During the siege of Antioch in 1268 a soldier from the force of Shams alDin Aqsunqur al-Faraqani, governor of Syria, captured and made hostage the constable of the city, a man called Simon Mansel. The constable gave a good account of himself before Baybars I and was allowed to conduct the negotiations between the officials of the city and the sultan. Baybars al-Mansuri records that the soldier who captured the constable was shown great favour by the sultan, being raised to the title of amīr and being permitted to bear the colours (rank) of his hostage on his flag (sanjaq) for the rest of his life.38 37 Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, pp. 196–98. See also William Leaf, ‘Saracenic and Crusader heraldry in Joinville’s History of St Louis,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1983): 208–14. 38 Baybars al-Mansuri, Zubdat al-fikra fī taʾrīkh al-hijra, ed. D. S. Richards, Nasharat Islamiyah 42 (Beirut: Yutlabu min Dar al-Nashr, 1998), pp. 110, 113. My thanks to Donald Richards for making me aware of this passage in the chronicle. There is no record of the actual heraldic design involved in this incident, but it is possible to find the family of Mansel, or Manssel in Picardie. The earliest coat of arms mentioned is in 1441: sinople, three molettes or (three gold six-pointed spurs on a green ground). See Henri Jougla de Mo-

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Coats of arms and the standards of armies seized in battle were sometimes exploited for propagandist purposes. Joinville describes the capture of the arms of the comte d’Artois by Fakhr al-Din. Mistaking the colours for those of the French king, he showed them to his army as proof that Louis IX had been killed in battle.39 When sultan al-Ashraf Khalil (r. 1290–93) made his triumphal entry into [255] Damascus after the capture of Acre he was preceded by Frankish prisoners. One carried a reversed Crusader banner and another a banner and spear on which was tied the hair of slain comrades.40 Writing in 1422, Sir Gilbert de Lannoy (d. 1462), an English envoy to Egypt, reports than in Alexandria, ‘they have a house full of antique armour of the Christians: and all the modern, which is presented to the sultan, or won by him from the Christians, is deposited there.’41 A sword of Italian origin in the Metropolitan Museum bears an inscription that in 1419 it was placed in the arsenal at Alexandria. Items from this treasury may have been periodically displayed to the public.42 renas, ed., Grand armorial de France, IV (E–M) (Paris: Société du Grand Armorial de France, 1934), p. 519, no. 22704. Dansey, English Crusaders, chapter entitled, ‘The Second Crusade’: the author gives the name of a Robert de Maunsell, who commanded an army that repulsed the forces of Nur al-Din b. Zangi near Tripoli. Dansey give the coat of arms of the family as gules, fess argent (horizontal white bar on a red ground). 39 Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, p. 261. 40 Al-Yununi, Dhayl mirʿāt al-zamān, discussed in Donald Little, ‘The fall of ʿAkka in 690/1291: The Muslim version,’ in Moshe Sharon, ed., Studies in Islamic History and Civilization in Honor of David Ayalon (Jerusalem and Leiden: Cana and Brill, 1986), p. 179. 41 Lannoy, Gilbert de, ‘A survey of Egypt and Syria undertaken in the year 1422 by Sir Gilbert de Lannoy,’ trans. and annotated by J. Webb, Archaeologia 21 (1827): 369. 42 Robert Irwin in Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 249. See also Evliya Çelebi, Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa in the seventeenth Century, trans. Joseph von Hammer Purgstall, 2 vols in 3 parts (London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1834–50), I: 179. Discussing a shield in the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem reputedly owned by king David, Evliya Çelebi remarks, ‘…they

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European sources abound with rumours that the Ayyubid and Mamluk rulers collected relics associated with Christian belief, often with propagandist intent.43 Numerous authors claim that Salah alDin had retained the fragments of the True Cross following the defeat of Crusader forces at Hattin in 1187.44 An Aragonese embassy in 1322 requested this relic, the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper, and the body of St Barbara from sultan al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun (third reign: 1310–41).45 Booty was gathered from the capture of Sis, and religious artefacts were probably retained from this, and other campaigns into Cilicia.46 Spolia plundered from Christian were of pure steel. Such shields were seen at Cairo in the treasures of Berkuk Sultan, Katibai Sultan, and Guri Sultan, which were produced on the occasion of great shows.’ 43 On the propagandist activities of this time, including the public professions of jihad, see: Yasser Tabbaa, ‘Monuments with a message: Propagation of jihad under Nur al-Din (1146–1174),’ in Vladimir Goss and Christine Bornstein, eds, The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period of the Crusades (Kalamazoo MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1986), pp. 223–40; Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades, Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), pp. 89–255; Finbarr Flood, ‘The Medieval trophy as an art-historical trope: Coptic and Byzantine “altars” in Islamic contexts,’ Muqarnas 18 (2001): 41– 72; Karen Mathews, ‘Mamluks and Crusaders: Architectural appropriation and cultural encounters in Mamluk monuments,’ in Sarah Lambert and Helen Nicholson, eds, Languages of Love and Hate: Conflict, Communication and Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean, International Medieval Research 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), pp. 177–200. 44 For example, Louis Mas Latrie, ed., Chronique d’Ernoul et Bernard le Trésorier (Paris: Mme Ve J. Renouard, 1871), pp. 417, 464. 45 Aziz Atiya, Egypt and Aragon: Embassies and diplomatic Correspondences between 1300 and 1330 (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1938), pp. 44–45. The reason for suspecting that the last item was in the hands of the sultan was that the church of Sitt Barbara in Cairo had been damaged and looted by Muslim rioters in 1318–1319. The cup referred to in the embassy may have been the two-handled chalice said by Bede to have been venerated by pilgrims in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. See Albert Way, ‘Notes on ancient ornaments. Vessels and appliances of sacred use: The chalice,’ Archaeological Journal 3 (1846): 131. 46 Ahmad ibn ʿAli al-Maqrizi, Kitāb al-sulūk li-maʿrifat duwal al-mulūk, ed. Mustafa Ziyada and S. Ashour, 4 vols in 12 parts (Cairo: Lajnat al-Talif wa-

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buildings was incorporated into Zangid (1127–1250) and Mamluk structures. Ibn al-ʿAdim (d. 1262) records that Nur al-Din Zangi (r. 1146–74) brought from Apamea, ‘an altar on which the Christians made sacrifices’ and placed it in the Madrasa al-Halawiyya in Aleppo. A carved block bearing a crosses was also set into the doorway at some point in the history of the complex (fig. 6.8). The practice of reusing altar tables can be seen in the maristān of Nur al-Din in Damascus (colour pl. 4, fig. 6.9).47 Objects bearing overtly Christian

Figure 6.8. Late Antique basalt block carved with crosses placed into the entrance of the Madrasa al-Halawiyya, Aleppo, 1149 and later. Photograph: Marcus Milwright, 2001. al-Tarjamah wa-al-Nashr, 1934–72), I: 616–618. Mamluk forces on campaign in Cilicia retained church vessels and relics following the capture of Romgla in 1292. The return of these objects forms part of the stipulations of a treaty signed between king Hethoum II and sultan Kitbugha. See Vahan Kurkjian, A History of Armenia (New York: Armenian General Benevolent Union, 1964), p. 251. 47 Ernst Herzfeld, Matériaux pour un corpus inscriptionum arabicarum. Deuxième partie: Syrie du nord. Inscriptions et monuments d’Alep, Mémoires publiés par les membres de l’Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire 76, 2 vols in 3 parts (Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1954–56), I: 208. This issue has been addressed in greater detail in Flood, ‘The Medieval trophy.’

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imagery were also [256] commissioned for the sultan and other members of the Ayyubid court. An example is a basin in the Freer Gallery of Art, which is dedicated in the inscription to sultan al-Salih Ayyub.48

Figure 6.9. Late Antique marble rectangular altar top reused in one of the īwāns of the Maristān of Nur al-Din, Damascus. Photograph: Marcus Milwright, 2000. 48 Eva Baer, Ayyubid

Metalwork with Christian images, Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture: Supplements to Muqarnas 4 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1989), pls. 63–68. On this group of metalwork, see also Renee Katzenstein and Glenn Lowry, ‘Christian themes in thirteenth-century Islamic metalwork,’ Muqarnas 1 (1983): 53–68. For the objects associated with al-Salih Ayyub, see Rachel Ward, ‘Style versus substance: The Christian iconography on two vessels made for the Ayyubid sultan al-Salih Ayyub,’ in Bernard O’Kane, ed., The Iconography of Islamic Art: Studies in Honour of Robert Hillenbrand (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), pp. 309–24.

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The examples discussed above provide some suggestive, if inconclusive evidence for the Western European origin of the cup of the sāqī. Manuscript illustrations give an indication of the types of large stem cups used as presentational vessels and, on at least one occasion, such cups were sent from a Christian king to a Muslim ruler. Other lavish diplomatic gifts are also recorded in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and other objects such as the Freer basin indicate an openness to cultural exchange in this period. As an example, the emperor Frederick II enjoyed cordial relations with both sultan al-Kamil (sultan of Egypt: 1219–38) and al-Salih Ayyub, even warning the latter of the impending invasion of the Egyptian coast by the forces of Louis IX.49 The other side of cultural exchange in this period of conflict was the acquisition of object or images as booty. Accounts of the fall of Acre and Antioch indicate that the desecration of items associated with Christian belief constituted part of the symbolism of victory.50 Other trophies would be retained by the sultan and used for public display. The appropriation of captured coats of arms was another means by which European images were transferred to the visual cultures of the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultanates. The specific event that might have led to the first use of the stem cup in the blazon of the sāqī is unknown, but it seems plausible that the choice of this conspicuously European Christian device was meant to convey a symbolic message of victory over the Crusaders. Transposed to the new context of blazonry, the image of the stem cup survived until the fall of the Mamluk sultanate in 1517. 49 Peter M. Holt, Early Mamluk Diplomacy (1260–1290): Treaties of Baybars and Qalāwūn with Christian Rulers (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1996), p. 26. 50 Thaddeo of Naples quoted in Aziz Atiya, The Crusade in the later Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1938), pp. 32–33. The famous letter sent by sultan Baybars to Bohemond, prince of Antioch, telling him of the destruction of the city claims that crosses were broken and gospels were scattered. One of the sources to cite this letter is Abu al-Hasan ʿAli ibn al-Furat, Ayyubids, Mamlukes and Crusaders: Selections from the Tārīkh al-duwal wa’l-mulūk of Ibn Furāt, trans. Ursula Lyons, Malcolm Lyons and ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith (Cambridge: Heffer, 1971), I: 159–60; II: 122–25.

CHAPTER 7. EXPERIENCING THE MIDDLE EAST DURING THE GREAT WAR: J. M., LIEUTENANT GODDARD AND CAPTAIN PAGE1 World War I had a profound impact upon the visual and material culture of the Middle East. The practitioners of the traditional crafts were already under pressure from mass-produced items imported from Europe and changing tastes among their local clientele. Many economically important crafts – the weaving of silk textiles being one of the best documented – declined in the second half of the nineteenth century and largely disappeared in the first decades of the following century. Other groups of artisans found ways of adapting themselves, ranging from the fashioning of vessels and lamps out of discarded benzine cans to the manufacture of footwear in ‘European’ styles or new types of object such as cigarette holders. Another form of recycling that occurs during and after the war is the creation of lidded boxes and vases from artillery shell cases.2 Many of these were 1

Previously unpublished. I am most grateful to Michael Peaker, Mary Collyer, and the staff of the Qualicum Beach Historical Museum for locating the biographical information on H. V. S. Page. My thanks to Derek Kennet for sharing his knowledge of aerial photography around Samarra. Other valuable help was provided by the staff of the Special Collections and Archives department of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria. 2 Pierre Bazantay, Enquête sur l’artisanat à Antioche, Les états du Levant sous Mandat Français (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1936), pp. 37–38;

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probably made as keepsakes for British, Australian, and Canadian soldiers, and the same can probably be said of the chased brass platter in the Victoria and Albert Museum that depicts the British troops and local people in the Iraqi town of al-Hindiyya following the Armistice of Mudros on 31 October 1918.3 There can be little doubt that exposure to Middle Eastern culture (as well as its climate and geography) left a lasting imprint upon many of the troops who were called upon to fight in the Palestine and Mesopotamian campaigns. Recollections of these experiences (positive and negative) appear in varied forms, from letters and memoirs through to photographs, drawings and paintings. The last of these include the extraordinary watercolour and oil paintings of Iraq and Greater Syria from the air produced by Richard (d. 1980) and Sydney Carline (d. 1929).4 Personal reflections sometimes contain intriguing evidence about the people, monuments, and archaeology of the Middle East. This chapter considers this issue from the perspective of a manuscript and two annotated books located in the Special Collections Department of the University of Victoria Library. The manuscript is Muhammad Saʿid al-Qasimi, Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi & Khalil al-ʿAzm (alAzem), Dictionnaire des métiers damascains, ed. Zafer al-Qasimi, Le Monde d’Outre-Mer passé et présent, Deuxième série, Documents iii (Paris and Le Haye: Mouton and Co., 1960), pp. 81–82, 356, 393–94 [Arabic text]; Roger Owen, The Middle East in the world Economy, 1800–1914 (London: Methuen, 1981), pp. 153–88, 244–72; Haim Gerber, Ottoman Rule in Jerusalem, 1890–1914, Islamkundiche Untersuchungen 101 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 1985), pp. 62–67; Marcus Milwright, ‘Wood and woodworking in Late Ottoman Damascus: An analysis of the Qāmūs al-Ṣināʿāt al-Šāmiyya,’ Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales 61 (2012): 556; Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula, ‘Damascene ‘trench art’: A note on Mamluk Revival metalwork in early twentieth-century Syria,’ Levant 46.3 (2014): 382–98. 3 Tim Stanley with Mariam Rosser Owen and Stephen Vernoit, Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the Middle East (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2004), 150–51; Victoria and Albert Museum Collections. n.d. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O66716/tray/ (last consulted: 1 July 2019). 4 Historypin.org. https://www.historypin.org/en/carline-brothers-richard-andsydney-carline/geo/49.779565,18.544162,5/bounds/ 38.528921,8.53287,58.914633, 28.555454/paging/1/pin/167448 (last consulted: 1 July 2019).

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a two-volume set of drawings and watercolours from the Western Front.5 The published books are copies of: Archibald Wavell (1st Earl Wavell, d. 1950), The Palestine Campaigns and Edmund Candler (d. 1926), The Long Road to Baghdad.6 These books contain annotations and additions by their former owners, both of whom were soldiers who saw active service. In about 1969–70 the McPherson Library purchased two bound albums containing 130 drawings and watercolours. Many of the images are dated, with the majority coming from the years 1917 and 1918. The most recent drawing in the group comes from 1920, and it can be assumed that the albums were assembled in this year or soon afterwards. No information survives in the library’s archives concerning the seller of the albums, though it seems likely that they were purchased from a book dealer in Britain.7 The remaining information concerning provenance comes from evidence within the albums themselves. Volume one starts with a dedication page. Above the text is the crest of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, and evidence elsewhere in the albums indicates that the author was attached to the Royal Field Artillery. The albums are dedicated to ‘my daughter Adèle,’ and the author finishes the text with the initials ‘J M.’ Unfortunately, J. M. provides no other information about himself. The majority of the other images in the two volumes are signed with his monogram: a combination of the J and M, possibly with the addition of a small C or O (perhaps indicating a middle initial?).

5 University of Victoria Library SC325.

Archibald Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns (London: Constable, 1928. Third edition, 1931) (University of Victoria Special Collections: D568.7 W3 1929); Edmund Candler, The long Road to Baghdad, 2 vols. (London and New York: Cassell, 1919) (University of Victoria Special Collections: D568.5 C25 1919). 7 My thanks to Chris Petter, former keeper of Special Collections, for sharing his knowledge about the J. M. sketchbooks. The search for the full name of J. M. continues, though no definitive identification has yet been made. For digital scans of the illustrations, see: http://spcoll.library.uvic.ca /Digit/JM%20Web/index.htm (last consulted: 1 July 2019). 6

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Figure 7.1. Detail of colour pl. 5. Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. J. M. distinguishes himself from what he describes as ‘the real artists at the real Base.’ This may be a reference to the official war artists, but it can also be regarded as an act of modesty; indeed, he entitles the two volumes, ‘Sketches of War’ rather than try to present them as more sophisticated artistic productions. This self-representation is, however, rather at odds with the evidence. The one page of preparatory pencil sketches to appear in these volumes indicates that J. M. was in the habit of carefully constructing his compositions prior to the employment of a pen or brush.8 In other words, the remainder of the 8 J. M. sketchbook 2, image 46.

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watercolour and pen-and-ink studies should be considered as finished works. These are the practices of an experienced draughtsman or illustrator, though it is unknown whether J. M. received any formal artistic training prior to the outbreak of war. J. M. spent a considerable time on the front lines in the areas around Ypres and Menin during 1917 and 1918. His status as an officer can be gathered from clues in numerous works in the two albums. The clearest evidence comes, however, from the painting entitled, ‘Little Grey Home in the Wet’ that depicts his own quarters (colour pl. 5 & fig. 7.1). Significant among the details are the spurs, probably indicating that J. M. held the rank of major. In the present context, the most interesting feature of this image is the map of the eastern Mediterranean pinned to the back wall. Gallipoli does not feature on the map, the focus being Western Egypt, the northern part of the Arabian peninsula (the word ‘Arabia’ is just visible), Greater Syria, western Iraq, and eastern Anatolia. J. M. gives no explanation for the prominent placement of this map, though it is conceivable that he had been attached to the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in the earlier part of the war. The most explicit reference to the activities of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force comes in another composition from volume one (fig. 7.2). This image includes a caption quoting Psalm 122.2: ‘Our feet shall stand within Thy gates, O Jerusalem.’ J. M. represents a British ‘Tommy’ standing in a gateway smoking a clay pipe. His uniform (including the pith helmet, or sola topee), water canteen, and Lee Enfield Rifle accord with what one might expect of a private involved in the campaign. His florid complexion and unbuttoned jacket are presumably meant to signal to the viewer the hot climate (although the event alluded to in the watercolour occurred in December; see below). The architecture in the background is generic in character, not exhibiting any familiarity with the topography and architecture of Jerusalem. It is just possible, however, that the squat minaret on the left side draws its inspiration from Fatimid-period examples in Upper Egypt such as Shallal, Aswan, Isna, and Edfu.9 The other figure in the painting, pre9 Jonathan Bloom, The Minaret, Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), pp. 204–207, figs. 8.11–16.

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sumably meant to be an old Palestinian, achieves a greater veracity through details such as the red leather slippers (bābūj, pl. bawābīj), the arrangement of the turban and red cap, the loose trousers and waistband.10 Whether these observations were based on his own memories from Egypt is unclear; J. M. could, of course, have drawn his inspiration from images of Middle Eastern people found in illustrated books and magazines of the period.

Figure 7.2. ‘Our feet shall stand within Thy gates, O Jerusalem. Psalm CXXII.’ Watercolour painting by J. M., after 9 December 1917. University of Victoria Library: SC325 (sketchbook 1, image 56). Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. The painting is not dated, but it is likely that it was made soon after the capture of Jerusalem on 9 December 1917. While this event On the making of slippers in Damascus, see ‘The Qāmūs al-ṣināʿāt alShāmiyya as a record of the leather-working crafts of late Ottoman Damascus,’ in Marcus Milwright, The Arts and Crafts of Syria and Egypt from the Ayyubids to World War I: Collected Essays, Islamic History and Thought 7 (Piscataway NJ: Gorgias Press, 2018), p. 255. 10

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was of relatively minor strategic importance within the larger Palestine campaign, its symbolic resonance was much greater. General Sir Edmund H. H. Allenby (d. 1936) clearly perceived the potent symbolism of bringing the Holy City under British authority; making a clear contrast to Kaiser Wilhelm II’s (r. 1888–1918; d. 1941) decision to enter Jerusalem on his horse in 1898, Allenby dismounted outside the walls and passed on foot through the Jaffa Gate with his senior staff on 11 December. Allenby’s victories in Palestine and his entry into Jerusalem were the subject of considerable media attention. For example, the 19 December issue of Punch included a cartoon by Bernard Partridge (d. 1945) of Richard I of England (r. 1189–99) contemplating Jerusalem with the caption, ‘The Last Crusade. Coeur-de-Lion (looking down on the Holy City). “My dream comes true!”’ By contrast, a cartoon of Kaiser Wilhelm by E. T. Reed in The Bystander (19 December) described him as ‘Coeur-dePeacock,’ mocking the vanity of his visit to Jerusalem nearly twenty years earlier. The cartoon also derides him as ‘Crusader-cumCook’s-Tourist-Guillioun-Friend of Islam.’11 Allenby could claim to be the first Christian to have authority over the Holy City since the age of the Crusades. His capture of Jerusalem was celebrated in a poster designed by M. M. Harris, and printed in Cincinnati in 1918, which equates Judah Maccabee and General Allenby. The title has the words ‘Chanukah 165 B.C.’ and ‘Chanukah 1917’ separated by a portrait of President Woodrow Wilson. Beneath are the words, ‘Who is like unto Thee among the mighty o Eternal / and there will come for Zion a Redeemer.’ The first half comes from Exodus 15:11 and the second from Isaiah 59:20; both passages are employed in regular liturgy, though neither has a direct link to the festival of Hannukah.12 The metalworkers of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and 11 For these, and other cartoons and popular images of the period, see: http://mideastcartoonhistory.com/1917to1928.html (last consulted: 1 July 2019). 12 This image can be found at several online sites (for example: https://www.maozisrael.org/magazine_issues/november-2017/ [last consulted: 1 July 2019]), though none provide a collection where an original version is located. Another poster, dated 1912, by the same artist sought to make links between President Taft (r. 1909–13) and Judah Maccabee.

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Design (founded by Boris Schatz in Jerusalem in 1906) also commemorated the date of the fall of Jerusalem on 9 December on vases made from decorated artillery shell cases. Others from the same workshop simply carry the year, 1917, while one even lists Allenby’s campaign in Palestine from the first Battle of Gaza (March 1917) to the Battle of Jericho (February 1918). Decorated ‘trench art’ was also produced by metalworkers in Damascus during this period. One undated example carries an inlaid Hebrew inscription in two roundels that comes from Malachi 3:23/4:5: ‘See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.’13 The context for this Messianic text is unclear, though it might also connect with Allenby’s entry into Jerusalem. Damascene metalworkers also produced decorated artillery shell boxes and vases carrying 1 October 1918, the date of the capture of Damascus by Allied and Arab soldiers.

Figure 7.3 (left). Lt Goddard’s sketches from pp. 56–57 of Archibald Wavell, The Palestine Campaign (1932). Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. Figure 7.4 (right). Lt Goddard’s sketch of a cavalry soldier from p. 37 of Archibald Wavell, The Palestine Campaign (1932). Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. The flyleaf of University of Victoria copy of The Palestine Campaigns is inscribed in red pencil by the original owner, a Lieutenant

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Goddard, formerly of the 3rd Carabiniers (Prince of Wales Dragoon Guards). The 3rd Carabiniers were formed in 1922 as an amalgamation of the 3rd Dragoon Guards (Prince of Wales) and the 6th Dragoon Guards (Carabiniers). In 1928 the regiment was retitled to the form employed by Goddard. Although the first name is difficult to decipher with certainty, it seems likely to be Brian, in which case he can probably be identified as Brian Maurice Goddard (1901–44), son of Francis Evelyn Goddard and Maud Goddard. At the time of his death in action he had the rank of major, meaning his annotations to The Palestine Campaigns were made considerably earlier in his military career, presumably soon after the printing of the book itself in 1931.14 His age makes it unlikely that he saw service in the Middle East during World War I; hence, like J. M.’s painting marking the capture of Jerusalem, his annotations exist at one level of remove from the events themselves. Goddard marks up considerable parts of the remainder of the book in red pencil. Much of this comprises underlinings or strokes added in the margins or onto maps. He also offers some corrections and additions to Wavell’s narrative, though these appear to be of limited historical value. Goddard also marks the footnote on this page referring to the fact that Sir John Maxwell (1859–1929) had suggested in October 1914 that the British should seek out alliances with the Arabs of the Hijaz.15 Goddard’s interest in the fighters associated with the Arab Revolt appears in a more surprising form in a series of rough sketches (figs 7.3 & 7.4). These comprise a standing Arab (or possibly representation of T. E. Lawrence?) with a camel, a seated figure, and a small design of a mounted rider brandishing a sword. A last drawing 13

Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula, ‘Damascene “Trench art”: A note on Mamluk Revival metalwork in early twentieth-century Syria,’ Levant 46.3 (2014): 392. Reprinted in Marcus Milwright, Arts and Crafts of Egypt and Syria from the Ayyubids to World War I: Collected Essays, Islamic History and Thought 7 (Piscataway NJ: Gorgias Press, 2018), pp. 285–310 (see pp. 299–300). 14 Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Major Goddard, Brian Maurice. https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/2407949/goddard,-brianmaurice/ (last consulted: 29 June 2019). 15 Wavell, The Palestine Campaigns, p. 52

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appears at the back of the book (fig. 7.5), and may depict a Turkish soldier. He wears a cap, or serpuş, and a fly fronted jacket with a belt tied around the waist. A curved dagger is tucked into the belt. Goddard probably represents the figure with long boots rather than the

Figure 7.5. Lt Goddard’s sketch from p. 252 of Archibald Wavell,

The Palestine Campaign (1932). Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada.

ankle boots and puttees. The jacket has the additional feature of breast loops for the storage of additional ammunition rounds. The soldier does not sport a bandolier.16 16

On military outfits of this period, see Ottoman Uniforms. http://www.ottoman-uniforms.com/ww1-1915-to-1918-period-turkishuniforms/ (last consulted: 27 December 2014).

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The general features outlined above suggest that Goddard was attempting to represent a member of the Ottoman Tribal Cavalry wearing the type of cotton pull-over jacket that was employed in the latter years of the war (fig. 7.6). The tribal cavalry was formed from the units of the former Hamidiye Cavalry, that had been disbanded at the time of the overthrow of sultan Abul Hamid II (27 April

Figure 7.6. A cavalry trooper (in late wartime Ottoman Imperial Army field uniform), and an officer from an Ottoman Kurdish Tribal Cavalry Regiment in WWI (after drawing by Lt. Goddard). The cavalry trooper has modified his pull-over shirt, adding a row of spare ammunition breast loops, ideal for the single loading Turkish M1874 Peabody-Martini Rifles, being used by the Ottoman cavalry in WWI. The officer is wearing a fulldress pre-1908 uniform still worn by the Ottoman Kurdish Tribal Cavalry Regiments, at the start of WWI. Source Chris Flaherty.

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1909).17 Some units remained in service after this date, including the ‘Tribal Regiments’ (primarily made up of Kurds) sent to Yemen and Albania. During World War I there were Kurdish units attached to the Twelfth Army in Mosul. Typically a cavalry soldier would have been armed with a M1874 Peabody-Martini rifle. The fierce reputation of these fighters is rather at odds with the good-natured humour of Goddard’s sketch. The other annotated book considered in this chapter offers a more sustained engagement with the culture and environment of the Middle East during the conflict and in the aftermath of the fighting. The copy of Candler’s Long Road to Baghdad in the University of Victoria Library was owned, according to the signature on the flyleaf, by H. V. S. Page, formerly captain in the 125th Napier Rifles. He can be identified as Herbert Vero Shaw Page (1897–1978). Born in Moosomin, Saskatchewan to Lydia Pierce and George Shaw Page, H. V. S. Page attended the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, and received his commissioned in 1915. In the same year he left Canada for Glasgow. He was part of the Indian Army from 4 January 1916 and is still listed as such in his last military reference in July 1923. According to the London Gazette (17 August 1917) he was attached to the 123rd Outram Rifles from 4 August 1917.18 From other documentation, including additional entries in the London Gazette, it can be gathered that he was a Lieutenant from 4 August 1916, Acting Captain (with the 125th Napier Rifles) from 26 August to 23 November 1917, and Substantive Captain on 4 August 1919. He made a trip back to Canada between August and December Klein, The Margins of Empire: Kurdish Militias in the Ottoman tribal Zone (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), pp. 53–94 18 London Gazette (17 August 1917). Page donated a substantial number of objects to the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia. From these, and the notes he provided to the museum, it is apparent that his first period of active service was at the Mohmand Blockade on the northwest frontier of British India in 1916–17. He also took part in the Palestine campaign, spending time both in Transjordan and Palestine. The objects in the Museum of Anthropology will be the subject of a future study. My thanks to Fuyubi Nakamura for assisting in my research on this collection. 17Janet

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of 1920, but in 1921 he was back in active service, working at the Iraq Military College in Baghdad (see below). He married in Britain in March 1921, but his wife, Ivy, died the following year. He returned to Canada in 1922, settling in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island. He married again to Barbara Tryman, though the couple subsequently divorced. In the voters list of 1935 he is described as a reporter. In later documentation he is listed as a farmer, presumably having taken over the farm of his parents, George and Lydia.19 He died in Nanaimo, Vancouver Island leaving no children. H. V. S. Page left two publications relating to World War I to the University of Victoria Library: Candler’s, Long Road to Baghdad and John Ward’s, With the ‘Die Hards’ in Siberia (London and New York: Cassell, 1920). The latter contains Page’s signature, but no further annotations. The book on the Mesopotamian campaign received extensive annotation, however, as this was the theatre of war in which Page had direct experience. His additions to the printed text appear in both of the published volumes. They take a variety of forms: handwritten notes in the margins; longer pieces of prose and poetry located at the ends of the two volumes (either written on blank pages or on separate sheets that have been glued in place; three photographs attached into the main text; and an official report about summer temperatures in Iraq in 1921 glued to the inside back cover of volume 2. This last piece is not fully visible due to the later addition of a library slip. (In the same volume Page remarks: ‘To heat shaving water here – put it outside!’20) The bulk of Page’s annotations to Candler’s text appear in volume 2, chapters 36 (‘Samarrah’) and 41 (‘Jebel Hamrin and Tekrit’).21 These chapters describe military engagements in which Page played an active part; his annotations mainly take the form of clarifications and corrections to Candler’s presentation of the military engagements. For example, he adds to the map illustrating the first battle of Istablat (or Istabulat) on 21 April 1917 that the supporting regiments Brad Wylie, Qualicum Beach, a History, revised edition (Winnipeg: Hignell Printing for Brad Wylie, 2003), p. 113. 20 Candler, Long Road, 2: 179 21 Candler, Long Road, 2: 165–178, 236–245 19

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were his own, the 125th Rifles, as well as the 20th Punjabis.22 On the same page he provides important information about the outset of this engagement: ‘a patrol of the 125 Rifles (Cmdr. Capt. T. W. Rees) started the battle on the 21st, encountering a stronger Turkish patrol, which it defeated – every man except one of the British officer [sic] was hit.’ The chapter dealing with Samarra is also interesting for the photograph Page adds to the final page (fig. 7.7).23 His pencil written caption reads: ‘Vero got to Samarrah 25th April ’17 by railway on cars drawn by mules.’

Figure 7.7. Photograph of the railroad near Samarra. Pasted into H. V. S. Page’s copy of Edmund Candler, Long Road to Baghdad (1919), ii, p. 178 (the photograph has been rectified for tone and contrast). Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada. In the latter chapter (41) Page’s annotations are concentrated on the fighting around Daur (Dur) and move north to capture Tikrit 22 23

Candler, Long Road, 2: 166 Candler, Long Road, 2: 178

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(1–3 November). Again, he presents much information that does not appear in the printed text. For example, Page claims that the failure of the infantry to cut off the Turks retreating from Dur was due to faulty map reading caused by the lack of landmarks (and not Turkish artillery bombardment as suggested by Candler).24 Page writes vividly about the experiences of battle, noting in one passage: ‘We attacked at dawn after a night’s march – deadly cold! Strict orders were given to keep silence. The advance was the most ungodly row ever heard – every mule in the division braying, men coughing, officers cursing and the heavies [i.e. heavy artillery] being dragged by “caterpillar” tractors!!!’ He continues in another section on the same page, ‘we finally bumped into the Turkish position at an angle, and the heavies (plus tractors) found themselves between us and the Turks, and had to turn and race for it round the Division (2 miles an hour, and the troops cheering them on!). Lord knows how they got there!’25 A note on the following page provides some personal information about his role: ‘note. Watches had not been synchronised in the 19th Bde., and we had to judge our moment of advance by the lifting of the barrage at 4p.m. – 4.07 by my watch. One of our guns was firing short and wiped out 2/5 of my P.M platoon. B & D. Coys, 125th in front line. C. Coy. Support. H. V. S. P. commanding front line.’ Candler remarks upon the disappointment felt by many soldiers when confronted with ancient sites such as Ezra’s tomb (alʿUzayr) and the ‘Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’ at Qurna, on the bank of the Tigris river north of Basra.26 Despite its supposed associations with the Garden of Eden, a soldier is quoted by Candler as not being willing to sacrifice ‘the end of a “fag”’ to see the venerated tree. Page adds an extended commentary on the fate of this tree at the end of volume 2. It reads: Qurnah possessed one small, stunted tree of other than the palm variety, which was shown to visiting troops by the local Arabs as Candler, Long Road, 2: 240 Road, 2: 241 26 Candler, Long Road, 2: 200 24

25 Candler, Long

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MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS the genuine ‘tree of knowledge of the garden of Eden;’ and the village prospered exceedingly by reason of bakshish. It became the fashion to pose for snapshots among the branches of the tree, till in 1920 a large group of soldiers arrived, overloaded the tree, and broke it off short. The Arabs at once put in a claim for compensation for the taking away of their means of livelihood; and a G.R.O. [General Routine Order] appeared, as follows –: ‘a Court of Enquiry, composed as under, will assemble _ _ _ to enquire into the circumstances under which the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, situated at Qurnah, became broken on _ _ th, 1920. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Proceedings to be forwarded in duplicate.’ The Court of Enquiry recommended that the tree should be replaced, and it was ‘re-planted’ in the centre of a bed of cement; upon which the Arabs declared themselves satisfied!

The event described by Page occurred on New Year’s Eve 1919; a group of British sappers, probably the worse for drink, were responsible for the damage to the tree. A captain in the Royal Engineers, Marmaduke Tudsbery (d. 1983; later the civil engineer during the construction of Broadcasting House in London), was ordered to review the damage. He concluded in his report to Major Cyril Blomeley that the tree had already been dead for some time before the damage occurred. The Military Works Department did, however, attach the broken trunk to the stump with cement and restore the brick pedestal. Blomeley’s records that this met with the satisfaction of the local people and ended a ‘troublesome little episode.’ Photographs taken in about 1944 indicate that the trunk had again fallen down.27 The carbon copy letter appended to volume 2 is dated 21 December 1921, and comprises two sheets. The letter is addressed to the 27 Brook Wilensky-Lanford, The Tree of Knowledge at Qurna, Iraq. http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/the_tree_of_knowledge (last consulted: 1 July 2019).

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Adjutant of the Iraq Military College in Baghdad and deals with the week when Page served as the duty officer (12–19 December 1921). The letter expresses his dissatisfaction at the turnout and discipline of the guard and of the guard commander at the College. He offers some withering comments in conclusion: ‘I would like to congratulate the guard on having performed the motion of sloping and presenting arms moderately correctly. This, however, may have been due to an oversight on their part, as it was the only thing properly performed during the whole of the inspection.’ Page’s poem, entitled ‘Mesopot.’ appears in the blank pages at the end of volume 2. This copy must, therefore, have been written sometime after he purchased his copy of Candler’s book. It is, of course, possible that the poem was composed earlier than 1919. (The transcription of the poems below maintains the spelling, shortened words, punctuation, and capitalisation as they appear in the originals.)

MESOPOT. ‘a great big bit of beastliness fell out of hell, you see and settled down where once the garden of Eden used to be. They filled it up with dust and flies, and then threw in some stones, and killed off all the useful things, to strew about their bones. Then they sprinkled it with water, first to feed the cholera germs, and let in Turks and germans, ‘cos they hadn’t any worms. With malaria then, and typhus too, they finished off the lot,

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The second, untitled poem is typed onto two legal size sheets and appended to volume 1. The paper and the typeface are consistent with those of the letter Page wrote at the Iraq Military College in 1921. The original composition must be earlier, however, probably dating between May 1916 and early 1917. This time-span can be established more closely through the references to the battle of Hanna (21 January 1916), the battle of Dujaila (8 March 1916), and surrender of British forces at Kut al-Amara on 29 April 1916. Judging by the reference to the ‘mayor of Baghdad,’ the poem was penned prior to the conquest of the city (11 March 1917). Page evidently intended that it be sung, for he adds the instruction (at the top of the first page): ‘Tune: – ‘Patsy-atsy-oory-ay.’ The poem reads: A

was an apple that grew, so they say, In the garden of Eden down Kurna way, Till Eve came along and ate it one day, And got thrown out of Mesopotamia.

B

is the biscuit that’s made in Delhi, It breaks your teeth and bruises your belly, And grinds your intestines into jelly, In the land of Mesopotamia.

C

is the poor old Indian Corps, Which went to France in the war, Now it gathers the crops and fights no more, In the land of Mesopotamia.

D

is the digging we’ve all of us done, Since first we started to fight the Hun,

CHAPTER 7. MIDDLE EAST DURING THE GREAT WAR And by now we have shifted ten thousand ton, Of matti in Mesopotamia. E

was the energy shown by the Staff, Before the much advertised Hanna strafe, Yet the net result was the Turks had a laugh, At our Staff in Mesopotamia.

F

stands for Fazal who flies in the sky, To bring the brute down we’ve had many a try, Yet the shells that we shot at him all pass him by, And fall on Mesopotamia.

G

is the grazing we do all the day, We fervently hope that someday we may, Get issued again with a ration of hay, Although we’re in Mesopotamia.

H

are the Harems which it appears, Have flourished in Baghdad for hundreds of years, We propose to annex all the Destitute Dears, When their husbands leave Mesopotamia,

I

is the Indian Government --- but, On this subject I’m told I must keep my mouth shut, For it’s all due to them that we failed to reach Kut, El Amara in Mesopotamia.

J

is the jam with the label that lies, And states that in Paris it won the first prize,

235

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MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS But out here we use it for catching the flies, That swarm in Mesopotamia. K

are the kisses from lips sweet and fair, Waiting for us around Leicester Square, When we wend our way home after wasting a year, Or two in Mesopotamia.

L

is the loot which we hope we will seize, Wives, and wine, and bags of rupees, When the Mayor of Baghdad hands over his keys, To the British in Mesopotamia.

M

is the local mosquito whose bite, Keeps us awake all the hours of the night, And makes all our faces a horrible sight, In this land of Mesopotamia.

N

is the Navy that’s tied to the shore, They’ve lashins of beer and stores galore, Oh! I wish I’d joined the Navy before, I came to Mesopotamia.

O

are the orders we get from the Corps, Thank goodness by now we are perfectly sure, If issued at three they’ll be cancelled at four, By the muddlers of Mesopotamia.

P

are the Postal Officials who fail, To deliver each week more than half of our Mail,

CHAPTER 7. MIDDLE EAST DURING THE GREAT WAR If they had their deserts, they would all be gaol, Instead of Mesopotamia. Q’s is the quinnine which we take every day, To keep the Malarial fever away, Which we’re bound to get sooner or later they say, If we stop in Mesopotamia. R

are rations they give us to eat, For breakfast there’s biscuits for dinner there’s meat, And if we’ve been good we get jam for a treat, With our tea in Mesopotamia.

S&T are supposed to supply, The army with food …We all hope when they die, They may go to a place as hot and dry, As this horrid Mesopotamia. U

is the lake called UMM-EL-BRAHM, Which guards our flank from all possible harm, And waters GORRINGE’s barley farm, In the middle of Mesopotamia.

V

was the victory won at DUJAILAH, I heard it first from a friend who’s a sailor, Who read it in Reuter’s on board his mahela, On the Tigris in Mesopotamia.

W

stands for the wonder and pain, With which we regard the infirm and insane,

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are the extras the Corps says we get, But so far there isn’t a unit I’ve met, That has drawn a single one of them yet, Since they landed in Mesopotamia.

Y

is the yearning we feel every day, For a passage to Basra and thence to Bombay, If we get there we’ll see that we stay right away, From this wilderness Mesopotamia.

I

tried very hard and at last I hit, On a verse which the letter Z would fit, But the Censor deleted every bit, Save the last word Mesopotamia.

--CHORUS after each verse : – Oh! Twin Canals is a horrible spot, There isn’t a drop of drink to be got, And they’re going to leave us here to rot, In the middle of Mesopotamia.

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Some details require further explanation. Matti means ‘dirt’ or ‘soil’ in the Tegalu language of India,28 and was presumably in common use in the Indian Army. ‘S&T’ refers to the Service and Transport Corps that formed part of the British Indian Army. In 1923 the organisation was renamed the Royal Indian Army Service Corps. ‘Gorringe’ can be identified as Lieutenant General Sir George Frederick Gorringe (1868–1945), commander of the 3rd Indian Army Corps until July 1916. The reference to his farm is obscure, though it might allude to his activities maintaining supplies of food and ammunition along the Tigris during the siege of Kut. I have been unable to identify ‘Fazal,’ though he was probably a pilot attached to the Aviation Squadrons of the Ottoman Empire (Osmanlı Tayyare Bölükleri). This poem is, in fact, found in a variety of publications from 1917 and later. The author is unknown, though it commonly bears the title of the ‘Mesopotamian Alphabet.’ The earliest appearance in print is probably in the trench newspaper, the B. E. F. Times [B. E. F. = British Expeditionary Force], no. 3, vol. 1 (Saturday 20 January 1917).29 It is introduced there as: ‘The following has been sent us from the Indian Army by one of our old Divisional Friends. He suggests that someone should have a shot at the “B. E. F. Alphabet Up-to-date.” Will some please try and submit efforts early? – Ed.’ Page’s text differs in minor ways from this, and other published versions. For example, in the B. E. F. Times version ‘Gorringe’s’ (to ‘G------s’) is censored as is the mention of the ‘Indian Generals who guide the campaign’ (to ‘Old * ------ ------- --- -----’). There are other small changes to the words of the poem. Matti is changed to ‘matter.’ Page starts his chorus with ‘Oh! Twin Canals is a horrible spot,’ but this is given in the B. E. F. Times as 28 V. Rao Vemuri, ed., Tegalu – English Dictionary and Thesaurus (New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2002), 5: 369 29 Frederick Roberts, ed., The Wipers Times: A complete Facsimile of the famous World War One Trench Newspaper, incorporating the ‘New Church’ Times, The Kemmel Times, The Somme Times, the B. E. F. Times, and the ‘Better Times,’ introduction with glossary and notes by Patrick Beaver and foreword by Henry Williamson (London: Peter Davies Limited, 1973. Reprinted London and Basingstoke: Papermac, 1988), pp. 160–61. Also reproduced in Vivien Noakes, ed., Voices of Silence: The alternative Book of First World War Poetry (Stroud: The History Press, 2006), chapter 6.

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‘Chahels is really a horrible spot’ (also omitted is instruction that this verse is to be employed as a chorus). ‘F’ in Page’s version stands for Fazal rather than ‘Fritz’ in the B. E. F. Times. One can only speculate as to whether Page is the original author of this well-known poem; the literary style bears similarities to ‘Mesopot.’, and it is noteworthy that his own rendition of the ‘Mesopotamian Alphabet’ is uncensored and he also makes reference to words and names (such as matti and the Ottoman pilot, Fazal) that would only have made sense to those involved in the Mesopotamian campaign. Furthermore, none of the published versions indicate the rhythmic structure (‘Patsy-atsy-oory-ay’) required for recitation of the text. Page attached in an additional sheet between pages 180 and 181 (chapter 37) in volume 2. The sheet carries two photographs, both now rather corroded, creased, and abraded (colour pls 6 & 7). His handwritten annotations provide an explanation for these intriguing images. The two captions read: ‘Samarrah, from the air (note traces of streets of ancient city. German Flying Corps photo)’ and ‘Part of our trench system, Samarrah. German Flying Corps photo.’ Below the second caption he adds, ‘Both above were spoiled prints from the dark-room at aviation field, Tekrit. 5.11.17.’ The date of 5 November is only two days after the capture of the city by British and Indian troops. The photographs themselves carry no dates, though they were presumably taken by the Imperial German Flying Corps (Die Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches) earlier in 1917. German aerial images from World War I have already been employed by archaeologists; for example, analysis of photographs led to the identification of a previously unknown Roman site near Beersheva.30 Campaigns of aerial photography continued after 1918, and these to have been employed in archaeological research. An extensive group of aerial photographs exists for the region of Samarra, dating from the 30Peter

Fabian, ‘The late-Roman military camp at Beer Sheba: A new discovery,’ Journal of Roman Archaeology 8 (1995): 234–40.; Robert Belwey and David Kennedy, ‘Historical aerial imagery in Jordan and the wider Middle East,’ in William Hanson and Ioana Oltean, eds, Archaeology from historical aerial and Satellite Archives (New York: Springer, 2013), p. 233.

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early twentieth century. The Royal Flying Corps took photographs of the site in 1917 (now in the Royal Geographical Society), while the Royal Air Force took further images in 1924 and 1928 (now in the Institute of Archaeology, University College, London).31 In 1919 Richard Carline produced a watercolour showing Samarra from the air (fig. 7.8). The two intelligence photographs collected by Page are interesting, therefore, for the fact that they are the result of German aerial reconnaissance. While they cover only a small part of ancient Samarra, the early date of these images (i.e. prior to November 1917) is worthy of

Figure 7.8. Richard Carline, ‘Samarra, Mesopotamia: Seen from an Aeroplane, 1919.’ Watercolour on paper, 1919. Art.IWM ART 2667. Image courtesy of the Imperial War Museum.

George Beazeley, ‘Air-photography in archaeology,’ The Geographical Journal 53.5 (1919): 330–35; George Beazeley, ‘Surveys in Mesopotamia during the War,’ The Geographical Journal 55.2 (1920): 109–23. 31

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comment; they belong to the same year as the earliest identified photographs of the site produced by the Royal Flying Corps.32 The photograph of military trenching (colour pl. 6) contains few identifying features, although it probably depicts an area southeast of the Abbasid complex of al-Istablat. This area witnessed some of the heaviest fighting in 1917, and had a strategic importance due to the proximity of the railway line. The complexity of the trenching in this area is alluded to by Candler in his account of the fighting. The photograph itself shows multiple lines of trenches, each laid out with the ‘crow step’ pattern favoured by military engineers on both sides of the conflict. The line of multiple dots running diagonally from the upper margin is clearly a qanāt (i.e. an underground canal). The strip of land above the lower margin of the image appears to be marked out into rectangles and largely occupied by regularly spaced white dots (military tents). A few sections of World War I trenches survive around al-Istablat. One section, located about 2.2km southeast of the Abbasid site, preserves two broadly parallel lines of trenches set at an angle to a qanāt (fig. 7.9), although the precise arrangement is different to the 1917 photograph. The other photograph (colour pl. 7) is much easier to identify. The top right corner of the image shows the majority of the walled medieval town of Samarra, while the eastern bank of the Tigris river appears in the lower section of the photograph. The top margin of the photograph is oriented approximately east, meaning that the Congregational Mosque is located just beyond the top left hand margin. The ʿAskariyya shrine complex at the centre of the town is sharply defined as are the nineteenth-century perimeter walls and towers (these urban fortifications were dismantled from 1936). The street plan accords with the map created by Northedge on the basis of 1924 photographs (see also R. Carline’s painting, see fig. 7.8).33 It is

Alastair Northedge and Derek Kennet, Archaeological Atlas of Samarra, Samarra Studies 2, 1 (London: British Institute for the Study of Iraq and Fondation Max van Berchem, 2015), pp. 7–8. 33 Alastair Northedge, The historical Topography of Samarra, Samarra Studies 1 (London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq and Fondation Max 32

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possible, as Page notes in his caption, to make out traces of the streets and buildings of the ancient city. Signs of more recent occupation are also apparent in the area to the north and northwest of the wall town; these comprise blocks of white tents and associated structures, though it is not apparent to which army they belonged.

Figure 7.9. Remnants of World War I trenches southeast of alIstabulat. Image courtesy of Google Earth. The western section of the city wall shows clearly the long arcade running along its length. One standing extra-mural structure is visible just to the west of the town. It appears to be a substantial square-planned building with an annex on the eastern side (facing the walls) and would have been reached through the western gate, known as Bab Qatun. The outline of the wide Abbasid avenue known as Shariʿ al-Khalij can just be made out immediately to the west. The purpose of this building is not clear. Given the presence of van Berchem, 2005), pp. 242–46, fig. 107. See also Beazeley, ‘Surveys in Mesopotamia,’ pls. between pp. 116 and 117.

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unoccupied intra-mural zones, particularly in the west, in the town, it is unlikely that the extra-mural building is residential in function. The area immediately north of this structure was employed as a cemetery. There seem to be a few small constructions (casting shadows) that could be grave markers. It is possible that the rectangular structure on the 1917 photograph is a shrine, though no trace of a dome is visible above the main body of the building. The markings of the ninth-century roads and buildings correlates well with later photographs of the same area (part of alMuʿtasim’s city of Surra Man Raʾa) and the maps produced by Northedge.34 The German photograph retrieved by Page offers little more additional information, though the roads spreading from a central junction just to the north of the walled town are worthy of mention. Northedge identifies two of the roads by name (Shariʿ alAʿzam and Shariʿ Abi Ahmad),35 but it is possible to make out a third on the photograph to the west of the others. It might be that this is a more modern track created by the traffic to the military area, though this reading is made less likely by the fact that the line continues further north beyond the tents. The watercolour sketches, drawings, annotations, poems, letters, and photographs reviewed above offer relatively little new information on the military and political history of the Middle East during World War I. Of the three, only Page provides detailed recollections of the specific battles, while the other two are more removed from the dayto-day realities of the Mesopotamian and Palestine campaigns. What these documents do illuminate more clearly, however, is the personal experiences of war in the region, whether seen first-hand or from afar. J. M. captures vividly the excitement that was generated by the capture of Jerusalem and the entry into the city by Allenby. His watercolour painting on this topic is one part of a much larger phenomenon that finds different expressions across the British Empire and in the United States. Page’s contribution is the most important 34

Northedge, Historical Topography, p. 101, fig. 42.

35 On the main streets, see 2005, Northedge, Historical Topography, pp. 100–107.

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of the three, providing primary documentation, such as the German aerial photographs, as well as poetry and prose of a more personal nature. Whether the two poems were his own, or were simply recorded by him, they are significant for their unvarnished style, reflecting the mood and worldviews of soldiers caught in unfamiliar and highly challenging environments. Systematic gathering of this information in other collections could well yield more poems, commentaries, drawings, and photographs that will be of value to archaeologists, military historians, and other scholars of the twentieth-century Middle East. The art of this period has started to gain greater attention among scholars of Islamic art, and these books suggest another potential area of future research.

Plate 1. Umayyad marble veneer in the eastern vestibule, Great Mosque in Damascus. Photograph: Marcus Milwright

Plate 2: Erasistratos and student. From an Arabic manuscript of Dioscorides, De materia medica (Khawāṣṣ al-ashjār ), 1224/661. Freer Gallery of Art, F1947.5. Photograph courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

Plate 3: Madrasa-Mosque of ʿIsa ibn ʿUmar al-Burtasi, Tripoli. Between 1290 and 1324. M iḥrāb hood containing glass mosaic. Photograph: Marcus Milwright.

Plate 4: Late Antique marble sigma-shaped altar top with added Arabic inscription in one of the īwāns of the M aristān of Nur alDin, Damascus. Photograph: Marcus Milwright, 2000.

Plate 5. ‘Little Grey Home in the Wet.’ Watercolour painting by J. M., 1917–18. University of Victoria Library: SC325 (sketchbook 1, image 46). Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada.

Plate 6. German aerial photograph (c. October 1917) showing military trenching in the vicinity of Samarra. From H. V. S. Page’s copy of Edmund Candler, Long Road to Baghdad (1919), ii, appended page between pp. 180 and 181. Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada.

Plate 7. German aerial photograph (c. October 1917) showing the walled town of Samarra and areas of the Abbasid city. From H. V. S. Page’s copy of Edmund Candler, Long Road to Baghdad (1919), ii, appended page between pp. 180 and 181. Image courtesy of the McPherson Library, University of Victoria, Canada.

Plate 8: Saladin from The Six Ages of the World (BL MS Add. 30359), Italy, fifteenth century. Ink, pigment and gilding on parchment. Courtesy of the British Library. Erich Lessing / Art Resource.

CHAPTER 8. AN AYYUBID IN MAMLUK GUISE: THE PORTRAIT OF SALADIN IN PAOLO GIOVIO’S E LOGIA VIRORUM BELLICA VIRTUTE ILLUSTRIUM (1575)1 Biographical encyclopaedias were an important source of information for those sixteenth-century Europeans wishing to inform themselves about the recent events and principal political figures of the Islamic world. Published by Guillaume Rouillé in Lyon in 1551, the Promptuarium iconum (‘Storeroom of Images’) is notable as the first of this genre of printed books to include a full set of portraits of the Ottoman sultans (Osman I to Süleyman I), each accompanied by a short biographical note. A shrewd businessman, Rouillé probably included these portraits and an image of Temür (Tamerlane, r. 1370–1405), victor over sultan Bayezid I Yıldırım (r. 1389–1402, d. 1403) at the battle of Ankara in 1402, to cater for the public thirst for information concerning the expanding empire of the Turks.2 More significant than the Promptuarium, however, is the contribution made by the Italian 1

Marcus Milwright, ‘An Ayyubid in Mamluk guise: The portrait of Saladin in Paolo Giovio’s Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (1575),’ Mamluk Studies Review 18 (2014–15 [2016]): 187–217. 2 On Rouillé’s treatment of the Turkish sultans, see Julian Raby, ‘From Europe to Istanbul,’ in The Sultan’s Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman (Istanbul: Işbank, 2000), pp. 138–41.

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scholar and bishop of Nocera, Paolo Giovio (d. 1552). Author of influential studies of Ottoman and Islamic history, he was also well known in his own time for his portrait collection, located in his houses in Rome and on the banks of Lake Como.3 Although the majority of the illustrious figures depicted in this extensive group of oil paintings came from Antiquity and from Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe Giovio also commissioned paintings of all the Ottoman sultans, and notable Turks like the admiral, Barbarossa. Among the other Muslims to be included were Salah al-Din (Saladin), Timur, the Safavid shahs Ismaʿil and Tahmasp, the late Mamluk sultans Qayt Bay, Qansawh alGhawri, and al-Ashraf Tuman Bay II, the Turkoman Uzun Hasan, and the rulers of Tunis and Morocco. Each oil portrait was displayed with an explanatory inscription written by Giovio, and these texts formed the basis of his published biographical [188] encyclopaedias. The military and political figures were grouped together under the title, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium, printed in an unillustrated edition in Florence in 1551. In 1575 Peter Perna published an edition of the Elogia in Basel containing the same text but with the addition of woodcut portraits by Tobias Stimmer (d. 1584) after the original paintings.4 Stimmer’s striking representation of the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, Saladin (r. 1171–93) is the subject of this chapter. 3

The most detailed study of the portrait collection is: Linda Klinger, ‘The portrait collection of Paolo Giovio,’ 2 volumes (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1991). Also see her ‘Images of identity: Italian portrait collections of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,’ in The Image of the Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance, ed. Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson (London: British Museum Press, 1998), pp. 67–79. On his treatment of the Ottomans, see: Raby ‘From Europe to Istanbul,’ pp. 141–50. On Giovio as an historian of the Islamic world, see: Vernon Parry, ‘Renaissance historical literature in relation to the Near and Middle East (with special reference to Paolo Giovio),’ in Historians of the Middle East, ed. Bernard Lewis and Peter Holt (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 277–88. 4 Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basel: Peter Perna, 1575). The Latin text is now available in an Italian translation: idem, Elogi degli uomini illustri, trans. Franco Minonzio and Andrea Guasparri (Turin: Einaudi, 2006). For Saladin, see pp. 467–69.

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GIOVIO’S SALADIN IN TEXT AND IMAGE Giovio’s entry devoted ‘Saladinus Sulthanus’ appears early in the Elogia, comprising pages 29–31 of book I. Stimmer’s woodcut portrait is placed immediately beneath the title on page 29 (fig. 8.1). In

Figure 8.1. Saladin from Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basel: Peter Perna, 1575), p. 29. Cambridge University Library: O.7.16–1. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. common with all of the portraits in the 1575 edition the central woodcut is held within an elaborate inhabited frame. A limited number of these decorative frames is employed repeatedly throughout the book and there is no reason to assume that this feature was

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intended to provide any further iconographic dimensions to the enclosed portrait. Inside the frame is a half-length representation of a late middle-aged man dressed in a tightly-fitting buttoned jacket partly covered by a thick, fur-lined cape. The sultan addresses the viewer directly. He sports extended moustaches and a long beard divided into two points.5 His head is covered by an elaborate turban knotted to create horn-like projections, five of which are visible. His hands can be seen at the base of the image; their arrangement suggests the holding of a sword or dagger though neither weapon is apparent. Commonly a ruler in an Islamic representation would be seen holding a napkin (Arabic: mandīl) and a goblet but these features are not included in Stimmer’s woodcut.6 Behind his right shoulder is an object comprising what may be a reliquary (bearing a diminutive image of the crucified Christ) fixed onto a pole. The decorative ribbon below the ‘reliquary’ is emblazoned with the words VICTORIAE TESTIS (‘commemoration of victory’). The present whereabouts of the original oil portrait in Giovio’s collection is unknown, though two copies survive: one in Florence and the other in [189] Schloss Ambras in Austria.7 Comparison with the painted portrait by Cristofano dell’Altissimo (d. 1605) probably made between 1552 and 1568 for Cosimo de’ Medici, and now in the Uffizi (fig. 8.2) suggests that the addition of features into the background of the woodcut is an innovation by Stimmer. No mention of the reliquary/standard is made in the accompanying text, but it may be speculated that Stimmer (perhaps at the behest of his publisher Peter Perna) was making a visual reference to the fragments of the 5

The interpretation of beard shapes in Europe is dealt with in: Will Fisher, ‘The Renaissance beard: Masculinity in Early Modern England,’ Renaissance Quarterly 54.1 (2001): 155–87. 6 On the symbolism of this object, see: Franz Rosenthal, ‘A note on the mandīl,’ in Franz Rosenthal, Four Essays on Art and Literature in Islam, L. A. Mayer Memorial Studies in Islamic Art and Archaeology 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1971), pp. 63–99. 7 Klinger, ‘Portrait collection,’ 1: 163–64, cat. 312; Friedrich Kenner, ‘Die Porträtsammlung der Erzherzogs Ferdinand von Tirol,’ Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 19.1 (1898): 115–16.

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True Cross that are believed to have been captured by Saladin from the Crusader army following the battle of Hattin in 1187. This is not the only example of Stimmer incorporating elements not seen in the

Figure 8.2. Saladin, Sultan of Egypt by Cristofano dell’Altissimo. Oil on wood, mid sixteenth century. Uffizi 1890 n.15. Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attivà culturali / Art Resource, NY.

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surviving oil paintings; for instance, his portrait of Timur has a wartorn landscape in the background containing a schematic representation of a caged man – the defeated Ottoman sultan, Bayezid I – carried on a horse-drawn cart (fig. 9.4).8 Stimmer’s Saladin also differs from Cristofano dell’Altissimo’s oil portrait in being half length, thus incorporating the clasped hands of the sultan. In other respects, however, the woodcut follows relatively closely the fully frontal pose, facial features, clothing, and headgear of the painting. Giovio had written briefly about the career of Saladin in the first book of his Historiarum sui temporis, but he provides more detail in the Elogia.9 As might be expected, his biographical treatment of this twelfth-century sultan lacks the degree of accuracy found in his accounts of the Muslim rulers nearer to his own time, particularly the more recent Ottoman sultans. Describing Saladin simply as a ‘Saracen,’ Giovio notes that he came to power through the execution of the Egyptian caliph (i.e. the last Fatimid ruler, al-ʿAdid, r. 1160–71), for whom he had been employed as a mercenary. Despite accusing Saladin of perfidy in the overthrow of the caliph, Giovio provides a generous outline of the sultan’s character: possessed of courage, an invincible spirit, a sharp mind, and physical strength, Saladin was favoured by fortune throughout his military career. He also acted with justice and cultivated religious observance in his empire. Giovio compliments his subject on his use of spies and his ability to judge the ideal times to wage war and to negotiate truces. He refers to Giovanni Boccaccio’s (d. 1375) claim in the Decameron (9:9) that the sultan even disguised himself as a merchant in order to travel as a spy through France and Italy. [190] In common with many of his contemporaries Giovio attributes the victory of the Muslim army in 1187 to the rivalries between the Frankish leaders in the Holy Land. He notes that, on capturing Giovio, Elogia, p. 102. On this image, see: Marcus Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel: Representations of Tamerlane in printed books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,’ Muqarnas 23 (2006): 322–25, fig. 4. 9 Paolo Giovio, Historiarum sui temporis (Florence: Laurentii Torrentini dvcalis typographi, 1550–52), I: 221; idem, Elogia, pp. 29–31. 8

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Jerusalem, Saladin’s only restriction on Christian worship was the removal of the bronze bells from the churches. He allowed pilgrims to continue to venerate the Holy Sepulchre and left the tomb of Godfrey of Bouillon (d. 1100), first ruler of the kingdom of Jerusalem, undesecrated. Giovio describes the simplicity of Saladin’s burial (quoting a short passage from Boccaccio on this theme), and claims that he entrusted the sultanate to his son, Saphandino. In this case, Giovio simplifies the establishment of the Ayyubid confederacy in 1192 and its aftermath, and erroneously asserts that Saladin was Saphandino’s father. In fact, Saphandino (or Safandino) is a Latin corruption of the name of Saladin’s brother, Abu Bakr Sayf al-Din al-ʿAdil, sultan of Damascus from 1196 and sultan of Egypt, 1200–18. Giovio’s confusion over chronology and Ayyubid genealogy is further illustrated by his assertion that Louis IX’s capture of Damietta occurred during the reign of either ‘Saladin, or, as seems more likely, Saphandino.’ Giovio does not provide the dates for Louis IX’s crusade to Egypt (1250–54), and it is possible that he confused this with the activities of the earlier French king, Louis VII during the ill-fated Second Crusade (1147–49). Giovio also repeats the popular story – first recorded in the mid fourteenth century – that the captured French king left with the Muslims the Holy Sacrament, pledging to provide the ransom money on his return to his country.10 The most interesting details come at the end of Giovio’s account of the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. He writes of the sultan’s appearance: In life Saladin had the habit, typical of his people, of wearing wrapped around his head a headdress of linen with horns (sing. cornu), as visual evidence of the many valiant kingdoms he had conquered. Hereafter, as we know, this type of crown (diadema) 10 On this story, see: Otto Kurz, ‘Mamluk heraldry and the interpretatio Christiana,’ in Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet, ed. Myriam RosenAyalon (Jerusalem: Institute of Asian and African Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 297-307; Marcus Milwright, ‘The cup of the sāqī: Origins of an emblem of the Mamluk Khāṣṣakiyya,’ Aram 9–10 (1997–98): 248.

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Aside from being a Venetian official, Donado da Lezze’s (d. 1526) name appears as author of the Historia Turchesca, an influential account of [191] the rise of the Ottomans through to 1514.12 Whether he did, in fact, pen this work is unclear (there are certainly good reasons to doubt that the other attributed author, Giovanni Maria Angiolello had any role in its production, though the Historia Turchesca evidently makes use of his work), but Donado da Lezze was known, as Giovio asserts, for his interest in history and antiquities. The time da Lezze spent in Cyprus and Syria would have attracted Giovio’s attention when it came to finding visual source material for his portrait of Saladin. That Giovio should seek out such information is very much in keeping with what is known about the methods employed in the assembling of his portrait collection.13 Reviewing the surviving paintings from Giovio’s collection, and the copies made for Cosimo de’ Medici and Ferdinand von Tirol, it is clear that their value is not primarily aesthetic. Nor do the paintings exhibit the sorts of psychological insights that are apparent in the best Italian portrai11 Giovio, Elogia, p. 30. I most grateful to Julian Raby for his corrections to and comments on my initial translation of this passage. 12 Pierre McKay, ‘The content and authorship of the Historia Turchesca,’ in İstanbul Üniversitesi 550. yıl, Uluslararası Bizans ve Osmanlı Sempozyumu (XV. Yüzyıl): 30-31 Mayıs 2003 = 550th anniversary of the Istanbul University, International Byzantine and Ottoman Symposium (XVth century): 30–31 May 2003, ed. by Sümer Atasoy (Istanbul: Istanbul Universitesi, 2004), pp. 213–22. The Historia Turchesca is available in an edition edited by Ion Ursu in Bucharest in 1909. 13 Linda Klinger and Julian Raby, ‘Barbarossa and Sinan: A portrait of two Ottoman corsairs from the collection of Paolo Giovio,’ in Venezia e l’Oriente Vicino: Atti del primo congresso internazionale sul’Arte Islamica, ed. Ernst Grube (Venice: L’Atra Riva, 1989), pp. 47–59; Raby, ‘From Europe to Istanbul,’ pp. 145–46.

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ture of the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, Giovio’s collection was much admired in its time; for Giovio and his contemporaries these ‘portraits’ were esteemed because each was based upon a prototype – a painting, coin, medal, sculpture, or drawing – believed to have been made in the presence of the person. Artefacts such as ancient coins and medals must have tested the ingenuity of the artists working for Giovio, and some of the resulting paintings are distinctly lacking in animation. Though variable in quality these paintings allowed the viewer to get some sense of the ‘true’ appearances of famous figures of past and present. Giovio went to considerable efforts to acquire his likenesses of the Ottoman sultans, even obtaining through intermediaries a set of sixteenth-century Turkish paintings. His representation of Timur may also derive from a fifteenth-century Persian manuscript painting, though the original source is unknown.14 It seems clear that da Lezze provided an image of some sort (not just a textual description) that was believed to be a depiction of Saladin. In what medium the image was made or what form it might have taken cannot be ascertained from Giovio’s testimony. Neither is it apparent whether this image was made by a European painter or by an artist from the Islamic Middle East. For Giovio, it appears that the most important aspect of the prototype was the distinctive ‘horned’ [192] turban. Giovio assumes that these conspicuous projections are symbols of Saladin’s territorial conquests.

VISUAL SOURCES FROM THE MIDDLE EAST What then was the visual prototype (or prototypes) for the painted image of Saladin in Giovio’s collection, and the version of it subsequently produced by Tobias Stimmer? No definitive answer can be offered for this question. If a precise model cannot be located is it possible, at least, to suggest what sort of images may have been employed in the composition of this image? Aside from the connection with da Lezze mentioned above the painting and the woodcut pro14

Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel,’ p. 325, fig. 5.

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vide some clues. Noteworthy are the frontality of the sultan and his elaborate turban. These themes are explored in the remainder of this chapter. The fact that Giovio’s representations of Saladin are fully frontal is worthy of comment as this is very seldom encountered in the remainder of his portrait collection. Presumably, the unusual pose was dictated by the prototype obtained by Giovio, and scholars have speculated whether this may have come from portrait collections in Egypt or Venice. While a Western European source is certainly feasible (see below), there is no reason to discount the portable arts and secular manuscript paintings produced in the Middle East, particularly given the evidence for Giovio procuring such items in his search for reliable images of other Muslim sultans. Although it can hardly be said to be an ubiquitous theme in Islamic art, numerous representations of Muslim caliphs and sultans are known. Commonly, the ruler is distinguished from those around him by his centrality in the composition, his praeternatural scale, and his frontality (the attendants usually being turned toward him rather than toward the viewer). He may also be seated – crosslegged on either a dais or a bench-like throne – with attendants standing. The frontal gaze and central placement are also maintained in images lacking attendant figures.15 This motif reaches its simplest form in copper coinage (fals, pl. fulūs), and one such seated, turbaned man appears on a fals issued by Saladin in Mayyafariqin in 586/1190–91 (fig. 8.3).16 There is no reason, however, to sup-

15 For a discussion of the common imagery of such enthronement scenes in the eastern Islamic world, see Robert Hillenbrand, ‘Images of authority on Kashan lustreware,’ in Islamic Art in the Ashmolean Museum. Part One, ed. James Allan, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 10 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 167–98. 16 On this coin and others of the same period, see: Nicholas Lowick, ‘The religious, the royal and the popular in the figural coinage of the Jazīra,’ in The Art of Syria and the Jazīra, 1100-1250, ed. Julian Raby, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 1 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press in association with the Oriental Institute, 1985), pp. 159–74. Rulers wearing headgear comprising projecting ‘horns,’ or perhaps feathers, appear on

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pose that Giovio possessed a copy of this rather undistinguished [193] copper coin, nor that he had seen the other similar designs on fulūs minted by Artuqid and Zengid atābaks in northern Mesopotamia during the twelfth century (though he evidently made use of coins in the creation of portraits of some rulers of the ancient world).

Figure 8.3. Fals minted in Mayyafariqin in 586/1190–91. After Eddé, Saladin. Drawing: Marcus Milwright. A manuscript painting in the Freer Gallery of Art has sometimes been claimed, explicitly or implicitly, to be a near contempo-

fulūs issued in Mardin in 581–85 H. and Nisibin in 594 H. (see pp. 164– 65).

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rary image of Saladin (fig. 8.4), although I am unaware of any evidence to support this assertion.17 Compared to ruler portraits found in early thirteenth-century manuscripts – such as the famous painting of the enthroned Badr al-Din Luʾluʾ, atābak of Mosul, with his court on the frontispiece of a copy of the Kitāb al-Āghānī (Book of Songs) of Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, dated 1218–1918 – this supposed representation of the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty looks both schematic in character and rather crudely drawn. The sparseness of the area surrounding the ‘sultan’ has more in common with the engineering diagrams. Indeed, the painting is now attributed to a Mamluk-period copy of the Kitāb fī maʿrifat al-ḥiyal al-handasiyya (Book of Knowledge of ingenious mechanical Devices) by Abu al-ʿIzz ibn Ismaʿil ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari (d. 1206).19 Other Islamic ruler ‘portraits’ made their way to Europe during the Medieval and early Modern periods. These include such items as carved ivory from Umayyad Spain and the Fatimid caliphate, and, most pertinently in the present context, inlaid metalwork from thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Egypt and Syria. The most famous of these is the so-called Baptistère de Saint Louis, an inlaid brass basin dating between the second half of the thirteenth and the early part of the fourteenth century and signed by one Muhammad ibn alZayn.20 The complex figural cycles on the basin contain two enthronement scenes with unnamed Mamluk sultans flanked by cup17 For example, the image appears on the front cover of Anne-Marie Eddé, Saladin, Grandes Biographies (Paris: Flammarion, 2008). 18 For an illustration of this famous image, see: David Roxburgh, ed., Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600–1600 (London: The Royal Academy, 2005), p. 97, no. 54. 19 The illustrations of this text are discussed in: Derek Hill, The Book of the Knowledge of ingenious mechanical Devices (Dordrecht and Boston, 1974); Rachel Ward, ‘Evidence for a school of painting at the Artuqid court,’ in The Art of Syria and the Jazīra, 1100-1250, ed. Julian Raby, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art 1 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press in association with the Oriental Institute, 1985), pp. 69–83. 20 On this basin, see: David S. Rice, Le baptistère de Saint Louis (Paris: Éditions du Chêne, 1953); Esin Atil, Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981), pp. 76–80, no. 21.

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Figure 8.4. Page of a manuscript of al-Jazari’s, Kitāb fī maʿrifat al-ḥiyal al-handasiyya . Manuscript dated 1354. Image courtesy of the Freer and Sackler Galleries. F1932.19. Freer and Sackler Galleries / Art Resource.

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bearers and other attendants (fig. 8.5. a, b). These roundels have as their central focus an enthroned royal figure looking directly out of the scene and holding a beaker and a napkin. Aside from the frontality of the pose in each case, these figures are also interesting for their headgear; rather than a turban, they wear a crown-like head covering with three peaks. Albrecht Fuess has identified this feature as a sharbūsh, a triangular crown that was popular with Turkish ruler between the tenth and [194] the thirteenth century. The sharbūsh was apparently introduced to Egypt by the Ayyubids, and remained in use for some public occasions under the Bahri Mamluk sultans. Amirs were at times allowed to wear it. The Mamluk chronicler, alMaqrizi (d. 1442) indicates that the sharbūsh fell out of use during the Circassian (Burji) Mamluk period.21

Figure 8.5. a, b) details of headgear from roundels on the Baptistère de Saint Louis (after Rice, Baptistère). Drawings: Marcus Milwright. Another inlaid brass bowl signed by Muhammad ibn al-Zayn carries images of enthroned Mamluk rulers and courtiers (fig. 8.5. c– e).22 Like the Baptistère, this smaller vessel contains numerous images of early Mamluk headgear, ranging from turbans to crowns. One of 21

Albrecht Fuess, ‘Sultans with Horns: The political significance of headgear in the Mamluk empire,’ Mamluk Studies Review 12.2 (2008): 31, citing al-Maqrizi, Kitāb al-Mawāʿiẓ wa-al-iʿtibār fī dhikr al-khiṭāṭ wa-al-āthār, ed. Ayman Fuʾad Sayyid (London: Muassasat al-Furqan lil-Turath al-Islami, 2002–2004), 3: 668. 22 Atil, Renaissance of Islam, pp. 74–75, no. 20.

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the roundels contains an enthroned figure sporting what appears to be a sharbūsh. Another enthroned male (not enclosed in a roundel) holding a bow and a mace wears a bifurcated head covering rising to two horn-like projections. The chased lines on the surface of the sections of silver sheet suggest that this might be an elaborately wound turban, though this identification must remain conjectural.

Figure 8.5. c, d, e) Drawings of headgear from an inlaid brass bowl signed by Muhammad ibn al-Zayn, late thirteenth century (after Esin Atil, Renaissance of Islam, 1981). Drawings: Marcus Milwright The absence of dedicatory inscriptions on the two vessels signed by Ibn al-Zayn is puzzling; while attempts have been made to attribute the Baptistère to Mamluk patrons during the time of sultan Baybars I (r. 1260–77) or the third reign of al-Nasir Muḥammad ibn Qalawun (1310–41),23 there remains the possibility – persuasively argued by Rachel Ward – that some of these lavish items were made wealthy European patrons, and not for Mamluk sultans or amirs. She notes that those pieces of inlaid metalwork containing the names of members of the Mamluk elite do not employ representations of humans.24 The first documentary evidence to place the Baptistère in France dates to 1742, though it seems probable that it had come into Rice, Baptistère; Doris Behren-Abouseif, ‘The Baptistère de Saint Louis: A reinterpretation,’ Islamic Art 3 (1988-89): 3–9. 24 Rachel Ward, ‘“The Baptistère de Saint Louis” – A Mamluk basin made for export to Europe,’ in Islam and the Italian Renaissance, ed. Charles Burnett and Anna Contadini (London: The Warburg Institute, University of London, 1999), pp. 113–32. A noteworthy example of an inlaid vessel made for a European client, but lacking figural ornament is the brass basin made for Hugh IV of Lusignan, king of Cyprus (r. 1324–59) now in the Louvre. 23

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the country considerably earlier.25 We should perhaps assume a relatively extensive trade in high quality metalwork (including examples with figural decoration) from Egypt and Syria to Europe during the Ayyubid and early Mamluk periods. European coats of arms were [195] added to Mamluk metalwork in the fifteenth century, but by that time the taste for human or zoomorphic decoration was waning.26

EUROPEAN REPRESENTATIONS OF SALADIN The deeds and personality of Saladin were subjects of considerable interest in Europe from the late twelfth century onward. He has been evaluated by historians and his life has been incorporated into literature and poetry (see below). Unsurprisingly the European fascination with the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty and victor at the battle of Hattin did not just find expression in literature and drama. Medieval representations of Saladin range from manuscript paintings to pieces of architectural ornament. An interesting example of this genre is the slip-painted and glazed tiles from Chertsey abbey (dating to c. 1250) representing a formalised battle between Richard I and Saladin in which the former succeeds in knocking his Muslim adversary to the ground. The Ayyubid sultan is shown as a beardless youth dressed without armour and wielding an implausibly large sword.27 An older Saladin features in the illustration of the battle of Hattin in the mid thirteenth-century volume of Matthew Paris’ Chronica majora in Corpus Christi college, Cambridge. In this painting, the bearded Saladin (seen in profile) wrests the True Cross from

25 Rice, Baptistère, pp. 1–2. 26

For example, a candlestick in the British Museum, probably made in Damascus in c. 1400 and carrying the arms of a Venetian family. Illustrated in Sylvia Auld, ‘Master Mahmud and inlaid Metalwork in the 15th century,’ in Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New Haven and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2006), p. 217, cat. 94. 27 Elizabeth Eames, English Medieval Tiles (London: British Museum Publications, 1985), pp. 38–41, fig. 44.

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the desperate figure of Guy de Lusignan.28 Some other Medieval representations of Muslims adopt grotesque facial types and darkened skins, presumably as a means to signal the supposedly diabolic nature of their religious practices. For instance, a marginal drawing in the fourteenth-century Luttrell Psalter repeats the composition of the Chertsey tile, but gives the Muslim knight (Saladin?) a grimace, a hooked nose, and a swarthy complexion.29 Fifteenth-century French manuscript painting provides further representations of Saladin. For instance, the Chronique des empereurs by David Aubert (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris ms 5090), made between 1461 and 1462 for Philippe le Bon, contains images of a militant Saladin dressed in armour and pursuing battles against the Franks. He has a full, dark beard which separates into two ‘forks’ and wears on his head a conical cap around which is wrapped a relatively small [196] turban.30 This arrangement is similar to the type employed by the Ottoman sultans from the time of Mehmed II Fatih (r. 1444–46, 1451–81) onward in which the fabric of the turban was wound around a ribbed cap (tāj), although comparison could also be made with the Mamluk cap (kallawta or kallafta) with its turban.31 The principal difference appears to be in the quantity of material wrapped around the cap, which in the case of the Ottoman sultans was much more considerable. Saladin’s execution of Renaud de Châ28 Suzanne Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora (Aldershot: Scolar Press in association with Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 1987), pp. 269–72, fig. 171. 29 Reproduced in Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 51 (lower plate). 30 These manuscript images are illustrated in the unnumbered colour plates in Eddé, Saladin. 31 Julian Raby, Venice, Dürer and the Oriental Mode, Hans Huth Memorial Studies 1 (London: Islamic Art Publications, 1982), pp. 21–22. Portraits of the sultan are also reproduced in: Julian Raby, ‘Opening gambits,’ in The Sultan’s Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman (Istanbul: Işbank, 2000), pp. 80–91, cat. 1–8; Caroline Campbell and Alan Chong, eds, Bellini and the East (London and Boston: National Gallery and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2005), pp. 66–79.

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tillon, lord of Oultrejourdain, is depicted in an early fifteenthcentury Trésor des histoires (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris ms 5077).32 In this case, the Muslim ruler is shown as an older man with a long white beard which again splits into two. The cap is the prominent aspect of his headgear with the turban reduced to a white band encircling the lower section. Late Medieval images of these types did not provide the inspiration for Giovio’s portrait of Saladin, though they may have been picked up in another sixteenth-century biographical encyclopaedia. The engraved image of Saladin in Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés by André Thevet (d. 1590), published in Paris in 1584, makes use of the tall cap and diminutive turban of the type described above (fig. 8.6).33 Thevet unfortunately does not specify the visual source for the engraving. Perhaps the most interesting European image of Saladin in the present context is one that appears on a parchment roll in the British library (colour pl. 8). Produced in Italy in the fifteenth century, this roll (BL MS Add. 30359) is entitled The Six Ages of the World, and includes the stern-faced image of ‘Saladinus rex Aegypti’ as number eighty-six in its list of famous personages. The Ayyubid sultan wears a European-style coat of armour, though he carries a scimitar in his right hand rather than a straight sword. His beard is full, but lacks the two points seen in Giovio’s Saladin. In his left hand he carries a golden orb. Although not fully frontal, there is an obvious point of comparison with the portraits created by Cristofano dell’Altissimo and Tobias [197] Stimmer: the fifteenth-century Saladin painted on BL MS Add. 30359 wears a substantial turban with a series of points rising from around its summit. Are the points around Saladin’s turban on the Italian parchment roll schematic representations of knotted pieces of linen? Both dell’Altissimo and Stimmer devoted considerable attention to the turban of the sultan, indicating by the drawing and modelling the tight twists of the fabric making up the horns. By contrast, the Illustrated in the unnumbered color plates in Eddé, Saladin. This book is reprinted under the same title, edited by Reuben Cholakian (Delmar NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1973). Saladin is dealt with in chapter 137 (627r–629v).

32 33

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angular points on the headgear of Saladin in BL MS Add. 30359 have no obvious connection to the wound fabric that makes up the remainder of the turban. Furthermore, these points appear once to have been gilded (like the orb, the gold leaf of these sections is now much abraded). Thus, it is more probable that the artist responsible for this ‘portrait’ of the Ayyubid sultan was trying to combine the traditional Muslim turban with a golden crown.

Figure 8.6. Saladin from André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés (Paris, 1584), fol. 627r. After Thevet (Cholakian) 1973.

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This combination of two types of headgear – one Islamic and the other European – is unlikely to have been drawn from a Middle Eastern image of Saladin. Crowns were not, of course, a normal attribute of Muslim rulers of the Middle East during the Medieval period. Instead, authority was connoted by the specific form, colour, and dimensions of the turban. This became particularly important during the Mamluk sultanate (see below). Some of the portraits commissioned by the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II do show an interest in establishing a symbolic link between the royal turban and the crown. The famous portrait of Mehmed painted by Gentile Bellini (d. 1507) in 1480 (now in the National Gallery in London) surrounds the sultan with seven crowns, six floating in the black background in the upper left and upper right of the painting and a final one stitched in pearls in the sumptuous textile draped over the architectural frame. The bronze medal designed by the same artist and cast in c.1480 (fig. 11.7) depicts three identical crowns on the reverse (the obverse carrying the portrait of Mehmed). Given that a medal cast in 1480 by Bertoldo di Giovanni (d. 1491) carries on the reverse the image of three captured female figures, identified by the captions as Greece, Trebizond, and Asia, it is possible that the crowns on Bellini’s medal are meant to stand for the conquests of the sultans.34 Ottoman experiments with the iconography of European headgear – both royal/imperial and papal – reached their greatest heights with the gold helmet commissioned from Venetian goldsmiths by sultan Süleyman I Qanuni (r. 1520–66) in 1532.35 If one looks to European art of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, however, there is much more evidence for the combination of the crown and the turban. In some cases this hybrid headgear is intended merely to signal that the wearer is of royal stature, as can be 34 Raby, ‘Opening gambits,’ p. 88, cat. 5. This medal was commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici as a gift for Mehmed II. 35 On this episode, see: Otto Kurz, ‘A gold helmet made in Venice for Sulayman the Magnificent,’ Gazette des Beaux-arts 74 (1969): 249–58; Gülru Necipoğlu, ‘Süleyman the Magnificent and the representation of power in the context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-papal rivalry,’ Art Bulletin 71 (1989): 401–27.

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seen in Peter Flöthner’s (d. 1546) series of princes and kings. An anonymous print of the Judgement of Solomon probably [198] produced in Wittenberg in the second half of the sixteenth century has the Old Testament king sporting a turban and crown.36 Hugo van der Goes’ (d. 1482/83) Monforte Altarpiece (c. 1470) has one of the magi wearing a large red hat, somewhat like a turban, circled by a crown, while the kneeling king has set his head covering – a fur hat carrying an inset diadem – on the ground.37 The magi also wear crowns combined with turbans or other types of hat in Benozzo Gozzoli’s (d. 1497) frescos of the Procession of the Magi (1459–60) in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence.38 Other types of authority might also be signalled by the turban and crown; a printed version of the works of Aristotle made in Venice in 1483 contains hand-painted illuminations by Girolamo da Cremona (fl. 1451-83), including one of the turba philosophorum (‘crowd of philosophers’). Among the represented philosophers are two of Aristotle’s major Muslim commentators, Ibn Rushd (Averroës, d. 1198) and Ibn Sina (Avicenna, d. 1037). The latter wears the robe of an Italian physician but his head is covered by a turban topped with a golden crown.39 Commonly the linking of the crown and turban appears to have distinctly negative connotations; these qualities are seen most powerfully in German woodcuts of the sixteenth century. For instance, a woodcut by Erhard Schoen (d. 1592) dated 1531 and entitled, ‘Portal of Shame of the Twelve Tyrants of the Old Testament,’ represents the Pharaoh wearing a turban surmounted by spikes much Max Geisberg, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, 1500-1550, revised edition ed. Walter Strauss (New York: Hacker Books, 1974), 3: 822; Walter Strauss, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, 1550–1600 (New York: Hacker Books, 1975), 3: 1265. 37 Friedrich Winkler, Das Werk des Hugo van der Goes (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1964), pp. 9–23. The central panel is illustrated on pl. 1. 38 Diane Cole Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 81–119, pls. 97, 105–109. 39 Illustrated in Michael Barry, ‘Renaissance Venice and her “Moors,”’ in Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797, ed. Stefano Carboni (New Haven and London: Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2006), p. 168, fig. 5. 36

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like that of Saladin in BL MS Add. 30359. Both are, of course, rulers of Egypt. Another print by Lucas Mayer (active in Nuremberg, 1566–1605) entitled, ‘Mandate and Report of the Great Lord “Generis Masculini” against the powerless Decrees of ‘Feminarius,’ has the ruler wearing a spiked turban.40 German prints made to express Protestant sympathies often depicted the twin evils of the Pope and the Turkish sultan, with the latter often wearing a turban and crown. Matthias Gerung (d. 1570) included this distinctive piece of headgear in a number of woodcuts including memorable representations of: the Pope and the sultan dragging infidels and Catholics into Hell (forming the backdrop to Christ preaching); Christ dispatching Roman clerics and infidels into the mouth of Hell; the Turks engulfed in fire brought down from the Heavens. By the same artist is the ‘Adoration of the [199] seven-headed beast’ from his Apocalypse series. Here again one finds a prominent figure wearing a turban and crown.41 Intriguingly Saladin himself is sometimes associated with the apocalyptic seven-headed beast (Revelation 12:3). In his commentary on the Book of Revelations entitled Expositio in apocalypsim, the twelfth-century theologian, Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202) identified this beast as the devil and that the seven heads represented the seven chief persecutors of the Church running chronologically from Herod to the Antichrist. The sixth head was Saladin who Joachim claims, ‘at this present time persecutes the church of God; and has her into captivity with the Lord’s Sepulchre, and the Holy City of Jerusalem, and the land in which the Lord walked [as man]…’ In the illustrations of this scene in two early manuscripts of Joachim’s later work on this theme, Liber figurarum, in Oxford and Dresden, the sixth head of the beast is identified as ‘Saladinus’ and is the only one of the seven to be adorned with a crown (but no turban).42 Geisberg, Woodcut, 1500–1550, 3: 1070; Strauss, Woodcut, 1550–1600, 3: 726. 41 Strauss, Woodcut, 1550–1600, 1: 282, 289, 297, 313, 314, 325. 42 Marjorie Reeves and Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, The Figurae of Joachim of Fiore (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 146–52, pl. 21, 22; Robert Lerner, ‘Antichrists and Antichrist in Joachim of Fiore,’ Speculum 60.3 (1985): 563–68. 40

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Figure 8.7. a.) Enamelled plaque with a portrait of an unnamed Egyptian sultan. Probably Limoges, sixteenth century. Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Brunswick. Drawing: Marcus Milwright. The horned turban of Giovio’s Saladin can be linked to another group of European images of the sixteenth century. In this case, they are representations not of Saladin or Ottoman rulers, but of Mamluk sultans and governors. A striking enamelled plaque, probably produced in Limoges in the sixteenth century, depicts a standing figure wearing an elaborate turban (fig. 8.7.a). The plaque entered the col-

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lection of the Dukes of Brunswick in the eighteenth century. The plaque carries an inscription, the first word unfortunately has disappeared but the second reads, SOLTANUS. In an article published in 1913 Marquet de Vasselot pointed to the similarities between this plaque and the painting of Saladin by dell’Altissimo made after the original in Giovio’s portrait collection.43 Both depict the sultan frontally, he wears rather similar clothing (such as the buttoning of the inner robe and the fur lining of his outer cloak), his beard divides into two points, and his turban rises to a series of projections (four being visible in the enamel plaque and five in dell’Altissimo’s painting). The same areas of similarity can be highlighted with half-length portrait in Stimmer’s woodcut in the 1575 Elogia. Clearly there are also differences, and these are most obvious in the face (and facial expression) of the sultan and in treatment of the turban. Where dell’Altissimo and Stimmer depict a relatively narrow turban dominated by five curving projections terminating in points, the enamelled plaque has a wider lower section rising to a series of balloon like folds of cloth. This latter feature invites [200] comparison with the portrait of the Mamluk sultan Qansawh al-Ghawri (r. 1501–16) in the 1590 edition of Cesare Vecellio’s De gli habiti antichi et moderni di diverse parti del mondo libri due.44 Figures attired identifiably Mamluk costumes and headgear are a feature of Italian painting in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, particularly in Venice. In a few cases these are depictions of Muslims within broadly contemporary scenes, but it was also common practice to employ characteristically Mamluk or Ottoman features in Christian religious painting as a means to establish an appropriately ‘Oriental’ visual context for the narrative being represented. These narratives included scenes from Christ’s passion and the lives of saints. The most important surviving visual document of the Venetian appreciation of Mamluk culture is an anonymous work entitled, The Reception of the Ambassadors (fig. 8.7.b). This work is now 43

J.-J. Marquet de Vasselot, ‘Un portrait de sultan par un émailleur limousin,’ Archives de l’Art Français 7 (1913): 93–104. 44 Marquet de Vasselot, ‘Un portrait de sultan,’ p. 99; Raby, Oriental Mode, p. 48, fig. 24.

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dated 1511 or soon afterward on the basis of a recently rediscovered inscription.45 There is general agreement that this painting provides

Figure 8.7. b.) Enthroned governor from The Reception of the Ambassadors, 1511. Anonymous Venetian artist. Louvre. Drawing: Marcus Milwright.

45 Campbell and Chong, Bellini

and the East, pp. 22–23, no. 2.

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some topographically accurate details of Damascus, especially the Umayyad mosque which Julian Raby has demonstrated is probably depicted from the viewpoint of the Venetian compound (fondaco) in the city.46 Equally accurate are the details of the late Mamluk insignia on the walls and gate and the costumes worn by the Mamluk soldiers and officials. Pertinent to the present study is the Muslim man seated at the front of the dais outside gate for he wears a large and elaborate white turban rising to six rounded projections. Raby and Fuess both conclude that the painting shows a version of the takhfīfa kabīra known commonly as the nāʿūra (‘the waterwheel’) because of its distinctive profile. This turban started as a sultanic prerogative, though there was some relaxation of this restriction in the early years of the sixteenth century to allow amirs of one hundred (amīr miʾa wa muqaddam alf) to wear it as well (see below). This is the senior rank required for the governor (nāʾib al-salṭana) of Syria who is most probably depicted in the Reception.47 Other painted, drawn or printed images of Mamluk high officials must have been available in Venice prior to completion of the Reception of the Ambassadors for features such as the insignia, nāʿūra, tall fur hat (ṭāqiyya), and tufted cap (zamṭ) appear in religious paintings from 1499 onward. Giovanni Mansueti (fl. 1485– 1526) made considerable use of these themes in his cycle of paintings devoted to the life of St Mark. Consistently the nāʿūra is placed on the head of enthroned figures and clearly acts as a visual shorthand to denote Oriental authority. The zamṭ appears several times in the St George cycle painted by Vittore Carpaccio [201] (d. 1525/26).48 Albrecht Dürer (d. 1528) too picked up on the vogue for Mamluk detail as the result of his trips to Venice in 1495 and 1505–1506. Raby has demonstrated that the German artist’s Small Woodcut Passion (1509–11) differs significantly from his earlier woodcuts of the same scenes. Where in the earlier representations of the Passion he had employed turbans and other headgear of Ottoman derivation for the tormentors of Christ, these switch largely to Mamluk styles in the 46 Raby, Oriental

Mode, pp. 55–60, figs. 38–41.

48 Raby, Oriental

Mode, pp. 35–54, 66–77.

47 Ibid., p. 62; Fuess, ‘Sultans with horns,’ pp. 80–81.

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Small Woodcut Passion. Notably the woodcut of Pilate washing his Hands has the governor attired in a tall turban with two prominent knots around the ears.49 This form is probably the turban of the high secretary (dawādār) of the Mamluk sultanate, at least in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century.50 Giovio himself commissioned portraits of three Mamluk sultans, Qayt Bay, Qansawh al-Ghawri, and Tuman Bay II, each of whom wears an elaborate turban (figs 11.2 & 11.3).51 The first two wear turbans with two twisted horns made of fabric at the summit of the turban directly above the forehead (this arrangement is also seen in Vecellio’s later depiction of Qansawh al-Ghawri). Tuman Bay II has a rather different tall turban with knots of material located near the ears. As noted above, this latter item of headgear is believed to be the type worn by an amir of the rank of dawādār, and perhaps indicates that the source for Giovio’s portrait was a representation of Tuman Bay II made before he became sultan. Of course, the prototype could also have been another Mamluk notable who rose only to the rank of dawādār. Significantly, Giovio specifies the source for his portrait of Qayt Bay. He writes that it was made after an image that had been painted for a palace at Memphis destroyed by the Turks in 1517. Friedrich Kenner speculates that the sources for the other Mamluk portraits (and that of Saladin) in Giovio’s collection came from Egyptian portrait collections, or possibly Venetian portraits made after originals painted in sixteenth-century Egypt.52

49 Ibid., p. 30, fig. 15

50 Fuess, ‘Sultans with horns,’ p. 81.

51 For the original images, see: Giovio, Elogia, 170 (Magnus Caythbeius = Qayt Bay), 222 (Campso Gaurus = Qansawh al-Ghawri); 225 (Tomumbeius ultimus = Tuman Bay). These images were the prototypes for portrait roundels in Jean-Jacques Boissard, Vitae et icones sultanorum Turcicorum (Frankfurt: Theodor de Bry, 1596). Illustrations of Qansawh al-Ghawri and Tuman Bay from the edition of 1648 are reproduced in Fuess, ‘Sultans with horns,’ figs. 9, 10 (with translations of the Latin captions). 52 Kenner, ‘Die Porträtsammlung,’ pp. 115–16. Other scholars have suggested a Venetian provenance for the prototype. See Klinger, Portrait Collection, 2: 163.

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HORNED TURBANS IN THE MAMLUK SULTANATE The previous section concluded with some evidence of European representations of Mamluk sultans produced during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth [202] century. Given the tendency of European artists to exaggerate qualities of Muslim costume (as writers also did when writing about the cultural practices of the Middle East), one might legitimately ask whether the large and unusually shaped turbans in their paintings and drawings were simply Orientalist fantasies. There is, however, enough evidence – visual and textual – to suggest that this is not the case. The former category offers fewer examples, though it is possible to point to a painting of a battle scene in a sixteenth-century Ottoman Selīm-nāme in the Topkapı Sarayı Library. Discussed by Raby and Fuess, this depiction of an engagement between Turkish and Mamluk forces clearly shows the differences in the profiles of the turbans, with the latter possessing a taller profile with a flattened frontal face.53 Shadow puppets are another important source. In 1909 the renowned Orientalist Paul Kahle bought a cache of ancient shadow puppets in the Egyptian village of Manzala. He argued that this group of more than eighty fragmentary leather and textile puppets could be dated to the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, though it now appears likely that they were produced rather later, and perhaps over a much more extended period. Particularly important in the present context is a puppet of a boat containing a wealthy occupant smoking a water pipe (hookah or narghile) (fig. 8.8).54 The fact that he is seen smoking argues in favour of a date in the seventeenth or early eighteenth century, but his headgear belongs to the end of the Mamluk sultanate. Comparison with Giovio’s image of sultan Tuman Bay II (fig. 11.3) indicates that the man within the boat is probably wearing the turban of the Mamluk dawādār (see above). Raby, Oriental Mode, fig. 28; Fuess, ‘Sultans with horns,’ p. 83, fig. 13. This puppet is discussed in: Paul Kahle, ‘Islamische Schattenspielfiguren aus Egypten. II. Teil,’ Der Islam 2 (1911): 153–59; Marcus Milwright, ‘On the date of Paul Kahle’s Egyptian shadow puppets,’ Muqarnas 28 (2011): 52–57, fig. 6.a, b. 53

54

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Figure 8.8. Leather puppet of a boat with sailors and elite occupant. Bought by Paul Kahle in Manzala, Egypt, 1909. Seventeenth century, Egypt. Courtesy of Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung Institut für Medienkultur und Theater, University of Cologne. Recent research by Fuess has provided greater precision for the introduction of the elaborate horned turbans of the Mamluk period. They belong to a type known as the takhfīfa (literally, ‘the lighter one’) that first makes their appearance at the end of the fourteenth century. According to the Egyptian chronicler, Ibn Iyas (d. after 1524), it was sultan Barquq (r. 1382–89, 1390–99) who first wore the takhfīfa ṣaghīra (‘small takhfīfa’) in public in 1394. It did not become commonplace at this time, however, and it is only from the late 1460s that it is mentioned more frequently in public gatherings of the Mamluk elite. There was also an evolution toward larger, and more complex forms of the takhfīfa. In the last years of the fifteenth century there are references to the takhfīfa kabīra (‘large takhfīfa’).55 This item of headgear also included horns made from folds of mate55 Fuess, ‘Sultans with horns,’ pp. 77–78.

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rial. As noted above, the largest of all these was the nāʿūra (‘waterwheel’) with six horns. Others were equipped with four and two projections. While the nāʿūra was reserved [203] for sultans and governors, there is evidence that sultans did also make use of the takhfīfa with two horns; for instance, Qansawh al-Ghawri wore such a turban during an embassy with the Venetian, Domenico Trevisan in 1512. In his account of this event Trevisan remarks that the two projections on the turban (he calls it a ‘fez’) were each half the length of an arm.56 This same two-horn takhfīfa can be seen on the head of the sultan in his portrait in Giovio’s Elogia (fig. 12.2). The demise of the takhfīfa, kallawta, zamṭ, and other distinctive forms of Mamluk apparel occurred in the years following the Ottoman conquest in 1517, and particularly after the suppression of the Mamluk revolt against Turkish rule that occurred after the death of sultan Selim I in 1520. In general terms the turban was understood to connote both authority and Muslim (male) identity. These qualities drew their potency from the ḥadīth, particularly a popular saying variously ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad (d. 623) and the Rāshidūn caliphs ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634-44) and ʿAli ibn Abi Talib (r. 656-61): ‘the turbans (ʿimāma, pl. ʿamāʾīm) are the crowns of the Arabs.’57 The deliberate linkage of the turban and the crown has already been noted in the European portraits of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II Fatih. Fuess has argued that the takhfīfa, in both its small and large versions, has more specific meanings that can be located in the political culture of the turbulent last decades of the Mamluk sultanate in Egypt.58 The key moment occurred at the beginning of the short rule of al-Nasir Muhammad (r. 1496–98), son of the last great Mamluk sultan, Qayt Bay. According to Ibn Iyas, the young sultan appeared at Friday prayers wearing the takhfīfa ṣaghīra rather than the official kallawta. This act appears to have been intended as a statement to the Mamluk court: al-Nasir was using the takhfīfa to signal his desire 56 Ibid., p. 78. 57

M. J. Kister, ‘“The crowns of this community…” Some notes on the turban in the Muslim tradition,’ Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 24 (2000): 217–45. 58 Fuess, ‘Sultans with horns,’ pp. 79–80.

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to create a new political order and to make clear that he would not relinquish power to the older amirs who had served his father (few sons of sultans enjoyed long rules during the fifteenth century, with power usually passing instead to a senior Mamluk amir). A concerted reaction to al-Nasir’s provocative gesture did not take long to materialise. Within a month of the sultan’s adoption of the takhfīfa ṣaghīra, the leading amirs took to wearing larger versions of the takhfīfa with horns. The political impasse between the young sultan and his court led to al-Nasir’s assassination in 1498 and a prolonged struggle for supremacy among the leading amirs that culminated in the elevation of Qansawh al-Ghawri in 1501. The taste for the horned takhfīfa persisted after the death of al-Nasir in 1498, and became a dominant feature of court culture in the last years of the Mamluk sultanate. Written [204] sources of the sixteenth century provide indications concerning the symbolism of these striking turbans. Ibn Iyas quotes a remark made by a contemporary poet following a conversation with an amir: ‘I was in the war and Dhu alQarnayn was calling me: “I am a ram (kabsh). When the sheep pass me by and try to go out then I push them with my horns.”’59 The recognition of the horns of the takhfīfa as references to the ram extended beyond the political elite and became the subject of a popular aphorism. Ibn Iyas also records that the nāʿūra was understood as the crown of the rulers of Egypt, and that it had its origins with the kings of Persia. The Qurʾanic Dhu al-Qarnayn (i.e. ‘possessor of the two horns’) is identified with Alexander the Great in Medieval Islam. Fuess notes the status of Alexander both as an epic hero and archetype of kingship. This ancient ruler was also associated with the ram as the result of having been named the son of the ram-headed Egyptian deity, Zeus-Amun.60

59 Translated by Albrecht Fuess in ibid., p. 78. The quote comes from Ibn Iyas, Abu al-Barakat Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Hanafi, Die Chronik des Ibn Ijās (Badāʾiʿ al-zuhūr fī waqāʾiʿ al-duhūr), eds, Muhammad Mustafa, Moritz Sobernheim, Paul Kahle et al. (Leipzig, Stuttgart and Istanbul: Brockhaus, Steiner and Maṭabaʿat al-Maʿrif, 1931-74), 3: 340. 60 Quran 18:83–98. Fuess, ‘Sultans with horns,’ pp. 78–79.

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CONCLUSION While the prototype for Giovio’s Saladin remains unclear, there seems little doubt that it must have been produced in the last two decades of the Mamluk period, or soon after the fall of the dynasty in 1517. The form of the Ayyubid sultan’s headgear in both dell’Altissimo’s painting and Stimmer’s print is the Mamluk nāʿūra, the six-horned turban that probably evolved from earlier forms of the takhfīfa kabīra worn by powerful amirs during the short rule of sultan al-Nasir Muḥammad. The nāʿūra appears to have been relatively common during the rule of the penultimate Mamluk sultan, Qansawh al-Ghawri, and turns up in textual sources, paintings, drawings, and prints. The wearing of the nāʿūra was restricted to sultans and a few high officials. Qansawh al-Ghawri himself seems to have made use of both the six-horned and two-horned turbans on public occasions, and it is in the latter type that he is depicted in Giovio’s Elogia. Giovio was, therefore, mistaken in his belief that Saladin would have worn a turban of this sort and we may also infer that his prototype was probably a representation of a member of the Mamluk elite. More interesting, however, is to establish what Giovio understood of the symbolism of the nāʿūra and why he might have thought it appropriate as the head-covering of Saladin. Giovio’s own caption to his painting of Saladin – reproduced in both the 1551 and 1575 editions of the Elogia – asserts that the horns of the turban were intended to symbolise the victories of sultan. Unfortunately Giovio does not state which military engagements or territorial conquests might be reflected in the five [205] horns visible on the sultan’s headgear. His failure to provide specific details on this issue is perhaps a further indication of the difficulty he experienced in finding reliable historical information about Saladin. Reviewing the evidence for the symbolism of the nāʿūra, there is little to support the notion that its projections were explicit emblems of victory; rather it would appear that its six horns were a sign of higher status (Mamluks of lesser rank being restricted to four or two horns on their takhfīfa). It is possible, however, that Giovio and his contemporaries may have picked up on the connection made by the Mamluks themselves between the ram-like, two-horn takhfīfa and Alexander the Great. If this were the case, however, one would expect the

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victorious Saladin and not the defeated sultan Qansawh al-Ghawri to have been equipped with the two-horned turban. Clearly Giovio believed that the nāʿūra was appropriate for Saladin, and some explanation for this can be sought in other European images produced of Muslim rulers during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The painted portrait and medal of Mehmed produced by Gentile Bellini implied a symbolic equivalence between the crown and the turban. Significantly, the crowns on Bellini’s medal are believed to stand for his conquests of Asia, Europe, and Trebizond. The propagandist activities of Süleyman I, particularly the extravagant helmet commissioned in 1529–30 from the Caorlini family of goldsmiths in Venice and delivered to Istanbul in 1532, also sought to forge links between Muslim and Christian traditions of authority. Süleyman gave crowns to vassal Christian rulers, and this practice was perpetuated by later Ottoman sultans. European art of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries also provided numerous examples of the combination of the crown (always shown with numerous projections rising vertically from the headband) and the turban into a single piece of Orientalist headgear. This European invention was placed on the heads of the magi, Muslim philosophers, a pharaoh, and in one instance Saladin himself. The sheer variety of wearers does not allow for a single interpretation of the crownturban, though it is most prevalent in apocalyptic scenes. The association with tyranny is indicated by the pharaoh who wears the crownturban, while the depiction of Saladin from The Six Ages of the World parchment roll encourages a rather bellicose and malevolent reading.61 Visually, at least, the prominent rising horns of the nāʿūra provided a Muslim counterpart to the crown-turban. Saladin occupies an ambiguous place in European culture from the late twelfth to the sixteenth century.62 Giovio reflects this in his 61 On the concept of tyranny and its association with Muslim rulers, see Nebahat Avcioğlu, ‘Ahmed I and the allegories of tyranny in the frontispiece to George Sandy’s Relation of a Journey,’ Muqarnas 18 (2001): 203– 26. 62 Robert Irwin, ‘Saladin and the Third Crusade: A case study in historiography and the historical novel,’ in Companion to Historiography, ed. Mi-

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own biography of the famous [206] enemy of the Crusaders; Saladin’s admirable personal qualities and tactical skills are balanced against his adherence to Islam and his perfidious overthrow of the legitimate ruler of Egypt. It is perhaps the theme of victory that is dominant both in Giovio’s writings and in the depiction of Saladin, with the Mamluk horned turban itself becoming a visual manifestation of the sultan’s military successes. In this context it is fitting that Stimmer should have added the reliquary, presumably containing the True Cross, into the background of the image. As potent a symbol of Saladin’s crushing defeat of the Crusaders as his reoccupation of the holy city of Jerusalem, the supposed presence of this precious relic in the treasury of Cairo continued excite diplomatic activity in Christian Europe long after the fall of the Ayyubid dynasty.63 This combination of factors results in one of the most memorable images in the 1575 edition of Giovio’s, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium.

chael Bentley (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 139–52; Jean Richard, ‘Les transformations de l’image de Saladin dans les sources occidentales,’ Revue des mondes musulmanes et de la Méditerranée 89–90 (2000): 177–87; John Tolan, Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2008), pp. 79–100. 63 For example, see ʿAziz S. Ayiya, Egypt and Aragon: Embassies and diplomatic Correspondence between 1300 and 1330 A.D. (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1938. Reprinted Nendeln: Kraus Reprints, 1966).

CHAPTER 9. SO DESPICABLE A VESSEL: REPRESENTATIONS OF TAMERLANE IN PRINTED BOOKS OF THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES Of all the great warriors who swept across Central Asia and the Middle East in the Medieval period Tamerlane1 is, arguably, the one who had the most enduring impact on the culture of Renaissance and early Modern Europe. The achievements of Tamerlane seem to have both fascinated and horrified European audiences and, from the middle of the fifteenth century to the early nineteenth century, he appears in numerous histories and biographical encyclopaedias, as well as plays by the likes of Marlowe, Racine, and Rowe, operas by Vivaldi, Scarlatti and Handel, and even a ballet.2 In addition, repre1

‘Tamerlane’ is used throughout this chapter though European sources of the fifteenth-seventeenth century employ a wide range of variant spellings. The European name, Tamerlane, derives from the Persian, Timur-i Lang, meaning ‘Timur the Lame,’ and referring to his lameness on his right side. His Turkic name is more correctly rendered as Temür. See Beatrice Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 1. 2 For a discussion of this cultural phenomenon, and the details of the different types of dramatic performace, see Walter Denny, ‘Images of Turks in the European imagination,’ in Walter Denny et al., Court and Conquest: Ottoman Origins and the Design of Handel’s Tamerlano at the Glimmer-

281

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sentations of Tamerlane are to be found in paintings, tapestries, prints and drawings.3 That this fearsome ruler was invoked as a kind of ‘bogeyman’ is indicated by a passage in Michel de Montaigne’s (d. 1592) essay, Of Repentance: The value of the soul consists not in flying high, but in an orderly pace. Its grandeur is exercised not in greatness, but in mediocrity. As those who judge and touch us inwardly make little account of the brilliance of our public acts, and see that these are only thin streams and jets of water spurting from a bottom otherwise muddy and thick; so likewise those who judge of us by this brave outward appearance draw similar conclusions about our inner constitution, and cannot associate common faculties, glass Opera (Kent OH: The Kent State University Museum, 1999), pp. 6–9. I would like to thank Walter Denny for sending me a copy of this publication. Also: Michele Bernardini, ‘‘Tamerlano e Bayezid in gabbia.’ Fortuna di un tema storico orientale nell’arte e nel teatro del Settecento,’ in U. Marazzi and A. Gallotta, eds, La Conoscenza dell’Asia e dell’Africa in Italia nei secoli XVII e XIX, a c, vol. 3.2 (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1989), pp. 729–60; Michele Bernardini, ‘Tamerlano protagonista orientale del Settocento europeo,’ in Gian Mario Anselmi, ed., Mappe della Letteratura Europea e Mediterranea, Dal Barrocco all’Ottocento 2 (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2000), pp. 227–48. For the ballet, see Henry Bishop and Gaetano Rossi, Tamerlane et Bajazet, the new grand heroic Ballet as performed at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket with the most enthusiastic Applause. Ballet by Sigr. Rossi,… (London: Pearce and Co., 1806). 3 For the paintings in the Neues Palais in Potsdam by Andrea Celesti, see Anton Maria Mucchi and C. Della Croce, Il Pittore Andrea Celesti (Milan: Silvana, 1954), p. 86, fig. 29. One of the paintings in Schloss Eggenberg, Graz by either Carl Franz Caspar or Andreas Raemblmayer, see Denny, ‘Images of Turks,’ p. 6, fig. 6. For tapestries, see E. Neumann, ‘Tamerlan und Bajazet: Eine antwerpener Tapisserien-Series des 17. Jahrhunderts,’ in Jozef Duverger, ed., Miscellanea Jozef Duverger (Ledenberg: Gent, 1968), II: 819– 35. A drawing by Rembrandt of Tamerlane with companions is illustrated in Rudolf Wittower, Selected Lectures of Rudolf Wittkower: The Impact of Non-European Civilization on the Art of the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 214, fig. 11–29. For further references, see Andor Pigler, Barockthemen eine Auswahl von Verzeichnissen zur Ikonographie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Budapest: Verlag der Ungarischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1974), II: 447.

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just like their own, with these other faculties that astonish them and are so far beyond their scope. So we give demons wild shapes. And who does not give Tamerlane raised eyebrows, open nostrils, a dreadful face, and immense size, like the size of the imaginary picture of him we have formed from the renown of his name?4

Montaigne’s comments suggest that there existed a popular notion of the physical characteristics of the Asian conqueror, but his brief notes do not allow us to reconstruct exactly how Tamerlane was represented in the visual and dramatic arts of Renaissance and early Modern Europe. In this chapter I will focus on the ways in which Tamerlane was depicted in printed books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although not an exhaustive survey of the available printed material, the present selection provides a representative sample of the images found in the historical treatises, biographical dictionaries, plays, and accounts written by travellers to the Middle East and Central Asia. While these woodcut ‘portraits’ of Tamerlane vary considerably in their quality of execution, they are important because, with the possible exception of performances of plays, it was through the medium of printed books that visual representations of Tamerlane were most widely circulated among the literate society of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. This level of circulation may be contrasted with the much smaller audiences that would have seen paintings or tapestries in private houses and palaces. This chapter argues that this group of printed representations provides important evidence for the prevalent beliefs concerning the ethnicity and character of Tamerlane. Much of this information is communicated to the viewer by means of costume, facial features, and facial hair, and the chapter seeks to identify the potential sources According to the translation in Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald Frame (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1958), pp. 614–15 (for the complete essay, see book 3, chapter 2, pp. 610–21). For the original text, see Michel de Montaigne, Oeuvres complètes, eds Albert Thibaudet and Maurice Rat (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), p. 787. 4

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for these details. The images are designed to complement texts, but in most cases, they do not function as direct illustrations of specific passages of writing. Significantly, those sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury books that contain illustrations of Tamerlane do not tend to provide written descriptions of the physical appearance of the man. Indeed, few European authors from the fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth century furnish their audience with anything but the briefest information on this issue, preferring instead to focus on the presentation of Tamerlane’s life and accomplishments. What does appear in the texts, however, is a discussion of his origins and an assessment of the ways in which [318] his deeds – both good and bad – reflected the essential qualities of his character. In the last section of the chapter, the representations of Tamerlane are considered in the context of physiognomic treatises and Renaissance and early modern scholarship on the history and peoples of Asia.

TAMERLANE AND EARLY EUROPEAN SCHOLARSHIP The biography of Tamerlane can be briefly sketched out. He was born into the clan Barlas in the region of Samarqand sometime in the 1320s or 1330s. The clan formed part of the ulus Chaghatay, a confederation around the family of the second son of Chinggiz Khan that occupied an extensive, but loosely defined area east of the Oxus river. The Barlas claimed descent from an important amir during the reign of Chinggiz but had no royal ancestry. Even at the zenith of his power Tamerlane scrupulously avoided using the title of khān (i.e. ruler). Tamerlane first comes to prominence in the 1360s possessing a following of powerful figures both in the clan Barlas and other tribal groups of the ulus Chaghatay. Having established his overall command of the ulus Chaghatay by 1379, Tamerlane set out on a series of campaigns of conquest that took him beyond his native Transoxiana east to the areas southeast of Lake Balkash, west into Iran, Iraq, Syria and Anatolia, north into the lands northeast of the Aral sea, northwest into Khworezm and the lands of the Golden Horde, and south into Afghanistan and northern India. His last major victory was over the forces of Ottoman sultan Bayezid I near Ankara in July 1402. The

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sultan himself was taken captive and, while there is little consensus in the historical sources concerning his treatment by Tamerlane, it is known that Bayezid died a few months later in 1403.5 This victory had the effects of delaying the growth of Ottoman power and ensuring the survival of the Byzantine empire for a few more decades. In the autumn of 1404 Tamerlane mounted his campaign against China, but died early in 1405 with this last task uncompleted.6 Although he adopts a stance largely hostile to his subject, the historian Ibn ʿArabshah (d. 1450) provides a relatively generous and detailed account of Tamerlane’s physical appearance. His description of Tamerlane has been found to correlate well with the characteristics of one of the skeletons exhumed in 1941 from Gur-i Amir in Samarqand.7 Ibn ʿArabshah states that Tamerlane was tall, with a strong build and fair complexion, and lame on his right side. Ibn ʿArabshah also draws attention to the radiance of his eyes, as well as his powerful voice, long beard and thick fingers.8 While those who met him said that Tamerlane did not enjoy any form of frivolity, he was apparently noted for loving intellectual debate and chessplaying. All sources concur that he was possessed of a profound intellect and, though illiterate, employed scholars fluent in Arabic, Persian and Turkic to instruct him in the sciences and Islamic history. Tamerlane’s religious beliefs remain the subject of scholarly debate, though it would appear that his sympathies were with Sunni Islam. He also seems to have been influenced by the Naqshbandi Sufi order. He kept sufi shaykhs and religious scholars in his entourage, and 5 On this issue, see Chapter 10 in

this volume. For the career of Tamerlane, see Manz, Rise and Rule; Hilda Hookham, Tamburlaine the Conqueror (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964). 7 A facial reconstruction was also done. See Mikhail Gerasimov, The Face Finder, trans. Alan H. Brodrick (London: Hutchinson, 1971), pp. 131–38, and pl. following p. 112. And see David Morgan, The Mongols, The Peoples of Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), p. 200. 8 For a translation of this passage, see Hookham, Tamburlaine, pp. 83–84. The complete text is available in Ahmad b. Muhammad ibn ʿArabshah, Tamerlane, or Timur the great Amir, trans. John Sanders (London: Luzac, 1936. Reprinted Lahore: Progressive Books, 1976). 6

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remained a major patron of religious architecture throughout his career.9 From the time of the very first contacts Europeans took the garbled and inaccurate reports they possessed of the man and his life and reshaped them to fit existing stereotypes of Oriental kingship (many of which were associated with specific historical figures of the distant past). For example, reports of Tamerlane’s first military victory over the forces of Ottoman sultan Bayezid, at Sivas in Anatolia in August 1400, reached London in the February of the following year. According to the merchants who carried the story to England, the Turkish sultan had been killed and the victorious Asian king and 60,000 of his people had accepted Christianity.10 This curious revival of the legend of Prester John,11 the mythical Christian king who lived beyond the borders of the Islamic world, also brings to mind the numerous thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century European accounts of the apparent conversion of the Mongol khans to Christianity. The belief that a powerful Asian Christian ruler might aid in the eradication of Muslim rule in the Holy Land prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity between Europe and the Mongol khanates.12 In a 9 J. Michael Rogers, trans., ‘V. V. Bartol’d’s article O Pogrebenii Timura (“The burial of Timur”),’ Iran 12 (1974): 84–86; Manz, Rise and Rule, pp. 18–19. 10 This event occurred during the visit to London of the Byzantine emperor Manuel II. For discussion of these events, see Donald Nicol, ‘A Byzantine emperor in England. Manuel II’s visit to London in 1400–1401,’ University of Birmingham Historical Review 12.2 (1971): 219–22; Donald Nicol, The last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261-1453, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 313–15. 11 For Prester John, see Charles Beckingham, The Achievements of Prester John. An inaugural Lecture delivered on 17 May 1966 (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1966); Robert Silverberg, The Realm of Prester John (Garden City NY: Doubleday, 1972); Igor de Rachewiltz, Prester John and Europe’s Discovery of East Asia (Canberra: Australia National University Press, 1972). 12 The two best known accounts are those of John of Piano Carpini and William of Rubruck. For the former, see Charles Dawson, ed., The Mongol Mission: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, The Makers of

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similar manner, information about Tamerlane made its way to the courts of Europe as the result of diplomatic missions sent east in the decade before the great conqueror’s death in 1405. Charles VI of France (r. 1380–1422) sent Dominican emissaries to Tamerlane in 1396 while Ruy González di Clavijo (d. 1412), the representative of Henry III of Castille (r. 1390–1406), arrived in the imperial capital of Samarqand in 1403–1404.13 For all its value to modern [319] historians, Clavijo’s account of his meeting with Tamerlane enjoyed a limited readership the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.14 It is worth asking, therefore, how did an informed European reader of the sixteenth or early seventeenth century gain an understanding of the biographical details of Tamerlane? Modern scholarship on the historical Temür makes use of primary written sources, particularly in Persian and Arabic, but these did not become available to European writers before the second quarter of the seventeenth century;15 the first translated editions of the key historical sources, Christendom (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955), and for the latter, see William of Rubruck, The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck. His Journey to the Court of the Great Khan Möngke, 1253–1255, trans. Peter Jackson with notes by David Morgan, Hakluyt Society Second series 173 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1990). 13 Nicol, Last Centuries, p. 314. The Byzantine emperor John VII, and possibly also Manuel II, made diplomatic contact with Tamerlane. For Clavijo’s embassy, see Ruy González di Clavijo, Narrative of the Spanish Embassy to the Court of Timur at Samarkand in the Years, 1403–1406, trans. Guy Le Strange (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1928). 14 This text was first published in Spanish in Madrid in 1582. I have been unable to locate any evidence that any of the sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury historians discussed in this section consulted Clavijo. The text was published in the same city in 1782, under the title, Historia del Gran Tamerlan; this edition contains an introduction by Gonzalo Argote de Molina as well as additional sections taken from the writings of Pedro Mexía and Paolo Giovio. 15 Jean du Bec’s claim, made on the title page of his Histoire du grand empereur Tamerlanes…Tirée des monuments antiques des Arabes, par Mesre Jean du Bec, Abbé de Montrémer (Rouen: Loys Loudet, 1590), that his writings were ‘tirée des monuments antiques des Arabes,’ has been widely rejected. It is intriguing, however, that he makes some comments concerning the origins of Tamerlane that are not found in the works of other histo-

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Ibn ʿArabshah and Sharaf al-Din Yazdi (d. 1454), were not published in Europe until 1636 and 1722 respectively.16 Accounts of Tamerlane, rians of this period. It has also been suggested Hetʿum’s (also Hayton and Hetoum), Sensuyuent les fleurs des hystoires de la terre dorient (probably first printed between c. 1501–10 – I have used an editon in the Bodleian library printed in Paris in c. 1530; see below) may have made use of nonEuropean (or perhaps Byzantine Greek) sources. See Ethel Seaton, ‘Fresh sources for Marlowe,’ Review of English Studies 5.20 (1929): 399–401; EllisFermor’s introduction in Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great in Two Parts, ed. Una Ellis-Fermor (London: Methuen, 1930), pp. 17–18, 27. Both authors were, however, unaware that Hetʿum’s original text contained only four parts. Hetʿum, who died in c. 1311, cannot have written the section dealing with Tamerlane (part 5). Beatrice Manz (‘Tamerlane’s career and its uses,’ Journal of World History 13.1 [2002]: 12, n. 26) notes that part 5 is the work of the Dominican Jean of Sultaniyya, who returned from the court of Tamerlane to France in 1403, though it is evident that the text of the 1530 edition of Les fleurs, at least, contains interpolations by other authors. For example, in one passage the author directly cites Aeneas Piccolomini (available in a printed edition in Paris in 1509), ‘Le Pape Pie Second qui estoyt bien pres de ce temps la dit en ses hystoires que Tamburlan fyst enchaynet ledict turc de chayne dor; et le faisoit menger soubz la table avecques les chiens. Et toutes les foys quil vouloit monter a cheval il falloit que ledict turc se mist la terre sur les piedz: et sur les mains: et quil suy dedist le dos pour mettre le pied dessus pour avoit advantage pour monter sur sondit cheval.’ See Hetʿum (Hetoum), Prince of Korghos, Sensuyuent les fleurs des hystoires de la Terre Dorient (Paris: On les vent à Paris, en la rue neufve Nostre Dame, à l’enseigne de l’Escu de France, c. 1531), fol. Riiir. 16 Ahmad b. Muhammad ibn ʿArabshah, Ahmedis Arabsiadae: Vitae et rerum gestarum Timuri, qui vulgo Tamerlaini dicitur historia, ed. Jacobus Golius (Leiden: Elseviriana, 1636); Ibn ʿArabshah, L’histoire du grand Tamerlan, trans. Pierre Vattier (Paris: Remy Soubret, 1658). Sharaf al-Din Yazdi’s Zafarnama was translated by François Pétis de la Croix in 1722. See Sharaf al-Din ʿAli Yazdi, Histoire de Timur-bec, connu sous le nom du grand Tamerlan, empereur des Mogols et Tartares, trans. Alexandre Pétis de la Croix. 4 vols. (Paris: André Cailleau, 1722). An English translation appeared the following year. See Yazdi, The History of Timur-Bec, known by the Name of Tamerlain the Great, Emperor of the Moguls and Tartars (London: J. Darby, 1723). The fascinating account of the meeting between Ibn Khaldun and Tamerlane was not brought to wide attention prior to the twentieth century. See Walter Fischel, ed. and trans., Ibn Khaldun and Tamerlane (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1952).

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and particularly his dealings with the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I, also appear in the works of Turkish chroniclers.17 A handful of sixteenthcentury European scholars exploited such sources directly,18 but for the remainder information from the Turkish histories was mediated through the works of Byzantine authors,19 most importantly Laonicus Chalcocondylas (d. c. 1490). His history was printed in a Latin translation by Conrad Clauser in 1556,20 but it is possible that the emigré Greek, Theodore Spandugino (Spandounes) consulted the original Greek text in manuscript form before this date. The Istoria Turco-Byzantina of Doukas (d. 1462) remained in manuscript form

17

For example, Mehmed Neshri (d. c. 1520), Tursun Beg (d. 1499), and Ibn Kemal (d. 1534). For these historians, see Franz Babinger, Die Geschchtsschrieber der Osmanen und ihre Werke (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1927). A translation from the work of the sixteenth-century Turkish scholar Mustafa b. Hasan Jannabi entitled, De Gestis Timurlenki was published in Vienna in 1680. This text was published too late to have had any impact on the European historians surveyed in this chapter. 18 Johannes Leunclavius (d. 1593) is known to have made direct use of works in Turkish, translated for him by Joanne Gaudier, for his history, Annales sultanorum othmanidarum (Frankfurt: A. Wechel, 1558). See Ellis-Fermor in Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great in Two Parts, p. 34. Leunclavius also produced a Latin translation of Chalcocondylas, entitled, Laonici Chalcocondylae Atheniensis historium libri decem: Historiarum de origine ac rebus gestis Turcorum (Paris, 1650). Spandugino claims to have consulted ‘annali di Turchi’ in the composition of his study of the origins of the Turkish sultans first published in a partial edition in Lucca in 1509; for a discussion of the early editions of his work and his sources, see Nicol’s introductory notes in Theodore Spandounes (Spandugino), On the Origins of the Ottoman Empire, trans. Donald Nicol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. xix–xxv. 19 For a general review of the later Byzantine historians and their attitudes to the Turks, see Sir Steven Runciman, ‘Byzantine Historians and the Ottoman Turks,’ in Bernard Lewis and Peter Holt, eds, Historians of the Middle East (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 271– 76. 20 Laonicus Chalcocondylas, Laonici Chalcocondylae Atheniensis, de origine et rebus gestis Turcorum Libri Decem, trans. Conrado Clausero (Basle: Per I. Oporinum, 1556).

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until it was edited by I. Bullialdus in Paris in 1649.21 It is not known whether manuscripts of George Sphrantzes’ (also Phrantzes, d. 1477) history were read by any Italian, German, French or English authors of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.22 There are also important accounts left by Europeans who had direct experience in the Middle East and Central Asia in the early fifteenth century.23 For example, Johannes Schiltberger (d. after 1427) was held as a captive by Tamerlane’s army between 1402 and 1405, 21

The author claims that Bayezid was held in iron chains and manacles following a failed escape attempt. For a modern translation, see Michael Ducas (Doukas), Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks, trans. Harry Magoulias (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975), xvi.12 (pp. 95–96). 22 Phrantzes (Sphrantzes) has been credited as the first author to record the fallacious story that Tamerlane had Bayezid imprisoned in an iron cage. See Louis Wann, ‘The Oriental in Elizabethan drama,’ Modern Philology 12 (1915): 423–47; Samuel Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), pp. 469–70; Ellis-Fermor in Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great in Two Parts, p. 24, n. 1. It has been suggested that this legend has its origins in a misunderstanding of the Turkish word kafes (Ottoman: qafes; deriving from the Arabic qafaṣ), which can mean either litter or cage. See Joseph Von HammerPurgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches. Erster Band: Von der Gründung des osmanischen Reiches bis zur Eroberung Constantinopels, 1300–1453 (Pest: C. A. Hartleben, 1827), I: 317-23. A further meaning can be given to kafes/qafes which might provide a better explanation of its use in Turkish sources. The term can refer to the ritual seclusion placed around an Ottoman sultan or amir. My thanks for Ruba Kanaʿan for this information. For a modern translation, see Georgios Phrantzes (Sphrantzes), The Fall of the Byzantine Empire: A Chronicle of George Sphrantzes, 1401–77, trans. Marios Philippides (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980). It should be noted that this edition contains no mention of the imprisonment of Bayezid in an iron cage (see p. 1). The iron cage only appears as an interpolation in Makarios Melissenos’ sixteenth-century redaction of Sphrantzes. I am grateful to Theodora Antonopoulou for this observation. These issues are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 10. 23 Some accounts did not surface before the twentieth century. For example, see Walter Fischel, ‘A new Latin source on Tamerlane’s conquest of Damascus (1400/1401). (B. de Mignanelli’s “Vita Tamerlani,” 1416),’ Oriens 9 (1956): 201–32.

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and this episode forms part of his travel account that was first published in Ulm in c. 1473.24 The audience for Schiltberger’s writings remained restricted to readers of German and, as far as I have been able to ascertain, he is not cited by historians working in Italy, France and England. Other valuable sources of information such as the Marshal Jean Boucicault (fl. early fifteenth century) and Constantine of Ostrovica (d.1563) were also neglected.25 Two writers with firsthand knowledge of the Ottoman empire did have an influence on the development of European historical writing. Giovanni Angiolello had served first as a slave of Mehmed II from 1470, and then in the Ottoman army. He escaped in 1481, and later composed his Historia Turchesca that deals with events from 1300 to 1514. This text remained in manuscript form until the twentieth century, but was probably consulted by several scholars in early sixteenth-century Italy.26 Nicola Sagundino (d. 1463 or 1464) had been captured by the 24

For a study of the early editions of John Buchan Telfer’s introduction in Johannes Schiltberger, The Bondage and Travels of Johann Schiltberger, a Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1396-1427, trans. John Bucham Telfer, Hakluyt Travellers 58 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1879), pp. x– xiv. 25 Marshal Boucicault, governor of Genoa until 1409, gathered oral reports of the events in the Ottoman empire, but his writings were not published until much later. Interestingly, his account of the defeat of Bayezid contains no mention that the sultan was humiliated by Tamerlane. See Marêschal de Boucicault, Histoire du Marêschal de Boucicault, ed. Guillaume de Voys (Le Haye, 1711), p. 108. A later work that may reflect a knowledge of earlier Turkish sources is Constantine of Ostrovica’s (Konstantin Mikhailović, d. 1563), Historya neb Kronyka Turecka od Michala Konstantina z Ostrowicze (Litomysl, 1565). Constantine had been captured by the Ottomans and served in their army. For an English translation, see Konstantin Mikhailović (Constantine of Ostrovica), Memoirs of a Janissary, trans. Benjamin Stolz with historical notes by Svat Soucek, Michigan Slavic Translations 3 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975). See introductory notes for details of other early publications on Turkish history by George of Hungary and Felix Ragusinus. 26 Paolo Giovio seems to have gained information from Angiolello (either through personal acquaintance or through the mediation of Donado da Lezze). See Vernon Parry, ‘Renaissance historical literature in relation to the Near and Middle East (with special reference to Paolo Giovio),’ in Histori-

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Turks in Thessalonica in 1430 and held captive for thirteen months. In 1456 he composed the Liber de familia Autumanorum id est Turchorum (also known as De origine et gestis Turcarum liber) for Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II, d. 1464).27 Although it was not printed until 1551, the manuscript was used by Piccolomini in the composition of his influential Asiae Europaeque elegantissima descriptio (first published in 1509).28 It was in Italy in the first half of the sixteenth century that the main elements of the biography of Tamerlane were codified. By the middle of the century authors in other parts of Europe made their own contributions, either as new compositions or translations of the Italian histories. This European ‘biography’ of Tamerlane has very little to do with records of events found in the Middle Eastern, or even Greek sources, and the Italian, French, German and English historians also made limited use of the first-hand accounts provided by those who actually spent time in the Middle East or Central Asia from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century.29 Instead, these authors ans of the Middle East, ed. Bernard Lewis and Peter Holt (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 285. For Donado da Lezze’s edition of Angiolello’s text, see Historia turchesca, 1300–1514 (Bucharest: C. Gobl, 1909). 27 Sagundino’s text was first published in Venice in 1551. See Nicol’s introduction in Spandoundes, On the Origins, p. xxi. 28 Cosmographia Pii Papae in Asiae et Europae eleganti descriptione (Paris: Geoffrey Tory and Henri Estienne, 1509). Other editions appeared in the sixteenth century. I have consulted Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Opera quae extant omnia (Basle: Henrich Petri, 1571). See particularly pp. 359–62, 382– 84, 395 For Piccolomini’s use of Sagundino’s work, see Nicol’s introduction in Spandounes, On the Origins, pp. xix–xxi. The observations of the merchant Niccolò de’Conti (as recorded in Poggio Bracciolini’s, De varietate fortunae, 1447) were also used by Piccolomini in his writings on Asia. For a detailed discussion of Piccolomini’s sources and methodology, see Margaret Meserve, ‘From Samarkand to Scythia: Reinventions of Asia in Renaissance geography and political thought,’ in Zweder von Martels and Arjo Vanderjagt, eds, Pius II, ‘el più expeditivo pontifice’: Selected Studies on Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405–1464) (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), pp. 13–39. 29 For example, European readers could acquaint themselves with accounts of Mongol culture by John of Piano Carpini, Hetʿum and Marco Polo be-

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relied upon a small body of shared information, freely borrowing one another’s ornamentations to the basic narrative. In addition to Piccolomini’s text, they also had other brief accounts of Tamerlane provided in second-hand sources such as Matteo Palmerius (d. 1475) in his continuation of the Chronicon of Eusebius, and Bartholomaeus Sacchi de Platina’s (d. 1481) life of Pope Boniface IX.30 Seen from the perspective of the modern scholar of Central Asian history, these often fanciful works have almost no merit, but they are of much greater importance for the understanding of how Tamerlane was perceived and the ways in which he was given visual form in plays, paintings, tapestries, drawings and printed books. The sixteenth-century literature on Tamerlane has been reviewed in greater detail elsewhere,31 but some of the main points can be summarised here. Perhaps the most important of the early printed histories is Andrea Cambini’s (d. 1527), Della origine de Turchi cause both had been incorporated into Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale. The Speculum Historiale was printed in the late fifteenth century (for example, Strasbourg 1478) and further editions were printed in the sixteenth century. See Juliet Vale, Edward III and Chivalry. Chivalric Society and its Context, 1270-1350 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1982), p. 72. 30 For example, the continuation of Matteo Palmieri (d. 1475) of the Chronicon of Eusebius and the life of St Boniface IX by Bartolommeo Sacchi (d. 1481). Other potential sources include Andrea Biglia’s writing on Mongol history in his study of eastern Christendom (1432); Francesco Filelfo’s oration before the Council of Mantua in 1459; and Flavio Biondo’s oration to Alfonso of Aragon in 1453. See Ellis-Fermor’s introduction in Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, in two Parts, pp. 26–27; Meserve, ‘Samarkand to Scythia,’ pp. 31–34. For an English translation, see Bartolommeo Sacchi, Lives of the Popes from the Time of our Saviour Jesus Christ to the Reign of Sixtus IV, trans. Paul Rycaut (London: C. Wilkinson, 1685). For Tamerlane, see esp. p. 335. 31 Most of this work has concentrated on the sources employed by Marlowe in Tamburlaine the Great. This research is brought together in EllisFermor’s introduction in Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, in two Parts, pp. 17–50. It should be noted, however, Ellis-Fermor fails to grasp the significance of the fact that Piccolomini’s text predates Cambini, in terms of both the date of composition and the first printing. The comments on Hetʿum should also be revised in the light of more modern research on the author. See notes 15 and 72.

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(Florence, 1529),32 for it brings together almost all of the elements of the European biography, and influenced the development of most later works. He takes details from Palmerius and Piccolomini, but adds several more that are his own invention. Cambini’s account forms the basis of descriptions of the life of Tamerlane written by such authors as Pierre de la Primaudaye (d. 1542), Pedro Mexía (d. c. 1552), Coelius [320] Curio (d. 1567), Christopher Richier (fl. sixteenth century) and Petrus Perondino (fl. sixteenth century).33 The bishop and historian, Paolo Giovio (d. 1552) is known to have made use of a wide range of oral testimony and written sources in the composition of his writings on Turkish history and the biographies of Ottoman sultans. These appeared in Commentario delle cose de’ Turchi (Venice, 1531) and the Historiarum sui temporis libri XLV (Florence, 1550–52), as well as his biographical dictionary entitled Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Florence, 1551).34 In his treatment of Tamerlane, however, he relied upon the Italian histories of Cambini I have consulted the English translation: Andreas Cambini, Two Commentaries, the One of the Originall Turks and the House of Ottomanno…and thother of the Warre of the Turke against George Scanderbeg, trans. J. Shute (London: R. Hall for H. Toye, 1562. Reprinted Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1970). 33 The editions of these authors I have consulted are: Pierre de la Primaudaye, The French Academie wherein is discoursed the Institution of Maners, trans. Thomas Bowes (London: Georg. Bishop, 1589); Pedro Mexía, Diverse leçons (Paris: Claude Micard, 1572); Coelius Augustino Curio, A Notable Historie of the Saracens, trans. Thomas Newton (London: Abraham Veale, 1575. Reprinted Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1977); Christophe Richier, De Rebus Turcaru ad Franciscanum gallorum Christianiss, 4 vols (Paris: Rob. Stephani, 1540) (for Tamerlane, see book 3). Mexía was loosely translated as Thomas Fortescue, The Foreste, or a Collection of Histories, no less Profitable, than Pleasant and Necessary (London: H. Wykes and Ihon Kyngston for Willyam Jones, 1571). I was unable to locate a copy of Perondino’s work, but the relevant citation is Petrus Perondino, Magni Tamerlanis Scytharum imperatoris vita (Florence, 1553). 34 For an evaluation of Giovio’s historical method and his publications on Islamic history, see Parry, ‘Renaissance historical literature,’ pp. 281–89. For an English translation of Giovio’s history of the Turks, see Paolo Giovio, A shorte Treatise vpon the Turkes Chronicles, trans. Peter Ashton (London: Edwarde Whitchurche, 1546). 32

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and his predecessors, and provides little that is novel. The mid sixteenth century also saw the publication (or re-publication in revised form) of older works by Sagundino and Spandugino. Later authors who make use of the traditional account of the life of Tamerlane include André Thevet (d. 1590), Philip Lonicer (d. 1599), Jean Boissard (d. 1602), Jean du Bec (d. 1610) and Richard Knolles (d. 1610).35 What emerged from these works was a vision of Tamerlane that continued to have a pervasive influence even after the publication of more reliable historical works in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Greek. The ‘European’ Tamerlane was a Scythian or Tartar,36 born of poor parents, who spent the early part of his career as a shepherd (or sometimes as a sheep rustler or soldier). Through his courage, energy, military genius, and sheer force of personality, he was able to assemble an army that set out on a series of military conquests. While he was able to instil a rigid sense of discipline within his army, his campaigns were marked by acts of barbarous cruelty, including the slaughter of unarmed women and children. His most famous victory was over the Ottoman army, and led to the capture of Bayezid I. The sultan was kept in chains (some accounts claim these were made of gold) within an iron cage, and was forced to feed, like a dog, from scraps under the table. Many accounts claim that Tamerlane used Bayezid as a block when he mounted his horse. Tamerlane was able to use The editions I have consulted are: André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés Grecz, Latins et Payens, recueillez de leurs tableaux, livres, médalles antiques et modernes (Paris: I. Keruert and Guillaume Chaudiere, 1584); Jean Boissard, Vitae et icones sultanorum Turcicorum (Frankfurt: Theodor de Bry, 1596); Philip Lonicer, Chronicon Turcicorum (Frankfurt: Moenum Feyerabendt, 1578); Jean du Bec, Histoire du grand empereur Tamerlanes. ...Tirée des monuments antiques des Arabes, par Mesre Jean du Bec, Abbé de Montrémer (Rouen: Loys Loudet, 1590); Richard Knolles, The General History of the Turkes, from the first Beginning of that Nation to the Rising of the Ottoman Familie, fifth edition (London: Adam Islip, 1638). It should be noted, however, that these authors did not follow earlier accounts slavishly, and there are novel details, some based on research or acuity, and others simply inventions. 36 To some extent, these terms are synonymous in the literature of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The significance of the Scythian designation is discussed in greater detail later in the chapter. 35

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slaves and the riches from his conquests to construct the magnificent city of Samarqand. In his later life he became accustomed to luxury and debauchery and, on his death, his empire fell into ruin.

REPRESENTATIONS IN PRINTED BOOKS 1. ‘Portraits’ The first group of images can be grouped under the general category of portraits, in that the focus is the appearance of Tamerlane without any attempt to introduce a narrative component to the image. Of course, none of the images can be considered to be a portrait in the sense that it constitutes a realistic likeness of the person it purports to represent (not least because they were all composed well over a century after his death and in parts of the world geographically distant from Central Asia). In only one case – that of Paolo Giovio – is there even the possibility that the ‘portrait’ was based on a prototype believed to have been made in the presence of Tamerlane himself. Thus, the value of the portraits lies not in the likenesses they provide, but in what these images reveal about the attitudes of the people who commissioned and composed them. In this sense the images of Tamerlane are a visual projection of European beliefs concerning his ethnicity and the ways in which details of his physical appearance (particularly his face) expressed his character. These ‘portraits’ were created to perform different functions in the books discussed below, and it is evident that there is a considerable variation in the amount of research and creative thought put into them. For this reason, the portraits are not discussed in chronological order. Rather, the least significant (those found in the works of Marlowe, Schedel, and Rouillé) are disposed of first, and the remainder are analysed according to thematic categories. In the two parts of Tamburlaine the Great,37 Christopher Marlowe (d. 1593) presents a compelling psychological portrait of the

37 The full title of the 1590 edition is Tamburlaine the Great, who, from a Scythian Shepherd, by his rare and wonderful Conquests became a most

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man who rose from his humble origins as a ‘Scythian shepherd’ to become the great conqueror of Asia. In a conversation between Cosroe and Menaphon the latter even provides a brief account of the ruler’s physical appearance, noting his height, sinewy strength, pale complexion, and lofty brows about which ‘hangs a knot of amber hair wrappèd in curls, as fierce Achilles was.’ Most important of all are his eyes, which Menaphon describes thus: …’Twixt his manly pitch A pearl more worth than all the world is placed, Wherein by curious sovereignty of art Are fixed his piercing instruments of sight, Whose fiery circles bear encompassèd A heaven of heavenly bodies in their spheres That guides his steps and actions to the throne Where honour sits invested royally;38

The piercing, even fiery, eyes are a feature of printed portraits and written descriptions of Tamerlane from the mid and late sixteenth century that are discussed later.39 Given the richness of Marpuissant and mighty Monarch, and for his Tyranny and Terror was termed the Scourge of God. 38 Pt. 1, scene 2, act 1, ll. 11–18 (the previous quote comes from ll. 23–24). The edition used for this quotation is in Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine, Parts I and II, Doctor Faustus, A- and B-Texts, The Jew of Malta, Edward II, eds. David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 39 That the earliest productions of the play by the Lord Admiral’s Men also found means to emphasise the incandescent qualities of the central character is suggested in the references made to a coat edged with copper lace and breeches of crimson velvet. See Philip Henslowe, Henslowe Papers. Being Documents supplementary to Henslowe’s Diary, ed., Walter Greg (London: A. H. Bullen, 1907), pp. 119–20. For a discussion of color symbolism in the stagings of Tamburlaine the Great, see Marie Channing Linthicum, Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (Oxford: Clar-

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lowe’s text, it is somewhat surprising that the early editions of the play did not attract much by way of illustrations. This was probably largely [321] a matter of cost as plays of this sort were issued in relatively cheap octavo editions unlike the more luxurious large format volumes made for authors such as Paolo Giovio and André Thevet (see below). An engraved portrait, identified in the legend as ‘Tamburlaine, the great,’ is to be found facing the first page of the second part of Marlowe’s play in the first and second editions (London, 1590 and 1593).40 His appearance is that of an English nobleman, though perhaps his high brow and fair complexion lend him a certain similarity to Marlowe’s account of the physical characteristics of his Tamburlaine (fig. 9.1). There is little reason to devote serious atten-

Figure 9.1. Plate from 1593 edition of Christopher Marlowe,

Tamburlaine the Great. After Scolar Press Facsimile edition (Menston and London, 1973).

endon Press, 1936), p. 26; William Armstrong, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine: The Images and the Stage, University of Hull Inaugural Lecture (Hull: University of Hull, 1966), p. 16. 40 The 1593 edition is available in a modern facsimile edition. See Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great. A Scolar Press Facsimile, introduction by Roma Gill (Menston and London: Scolar Press, 1973).

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tion to this image, however, because the engraved plate had already been used on the title page of a pamphlet entitled, A Short Admonition or Warning, upon the detestable Treason wherewith Sir William Stanley and Rowland Yorke have Betraied and Delivered Monie to the Spaniards (London, 1587).41 Richard Jones was the printer of this pamphlet and both editions of Tamburlaine, and it is probable that he arranged for the insertion of the old portrait in its new location. This was not the first time Tamerlane had been represented as a European knight: another armoured figure, identified as Tamerlane, ‘great Tartar king over Parthia,’ appears a century earlier in Hartmann Schedel’s world history (fig. 9.2).42

Figure 9.2. Tamerlane from Hartmann Schedel, Liber chronicarum, 1493 (After Taschen facsimile edition, 2001). 41 See Bowers’ introduction in Christopher Marlowe, The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe, ed. Fredson Bowers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 1: 73, n. 2. 42 Liber chronicarum. For the illustration in the facsimile edition, see Hartmann Schedel, Chronicle of the World. The complete and annotated Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, introduction by Stephan Füssel (Cologne and London: Taschen, 2001), fol.ccxxxviiir.

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The Promptuarium Iconum published by Guillaume Rouillé in Lyons in 1553 is best known today as the earliest printed work to contain a complete set of portraits of the Ottoman sultans.43 Representatives of the Mamluk and Safavid dynasties are notable by their absence, but Rouillé did choose [322] to include the figure of Tamerlane, the presence of which is explained by his placement on the same page as the portrait of the fourth sultan, Bayezid I in part II of the book (fig. 9.3).44 The rather haggard Ottoman sultan is depicted in profile, while the more energetic figure of Tamerlane appears in three-quarters, and is identified as TAMBEBL (presumably the second B should be read as R). The portrait of Bayezid – like those of the remainder of his dynasty – displays some level of concern for the appropriate costume and headgear of a Turkish ruler, but it is difficult to detect any such scruples in the representation of his supposedly Central Asian counterpart. Although the second half of the abbreviated inscription running around the head makes some reference to his ethnicity in the words TAR.IMP (i.e. ‘emperor of the Tartars’), and the text below the image notes his origins in the Scythian regions and his dominion over the regions of Parthia and Soghdia, everything about the face, hairstyle and clothing appears to be Western European in character. There is an obvious disparity in the treatment of the two emperors, one a Western gentleman and the other clearly signalled as a Muslim. An answer to this problem is suggested by a consideration of the circumstances of the production of the Promptuarium. The book was a vast undertaking, containing 828 portraits from Adam and Eve through to the present day and the publisher, Rouillé, often made up the numbers through the simple expedient of plagiarising Guillaume Rouillé, Promptuarii iconum insigniorum a seculo hominum subiectis eorum vitis, per compendium ex probatissimus autoribus desumptis (Lyons: Guillaume Rouillé, 1553. Reprinted 1581), p. 190. The work was reprinted in the same city in 1581. Rouillé’s depiction of the Ottoman sultans is discussed in greater detail by Julian Raby in The Sultan’s Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman (Istanbul: Işbank, 2000), pp. 138–41. 44 In the short text beneath the images, Rouillé quotes Paolo Giovio to the effect that Bayezid was placed in golden chains within an iron cage. 43

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other historical and biographical works. The similarity between the portraits of the Ottoman sultans in the Promptuarium and the Sommario et Alboro delli Principi Othomani (engraved by Niccolò Nelli with captions by Francesco Sansovino, and published in Venice in 1567) has led scholars to propose that the two works drew on a common source, probably located in Venice. An alternative hypothesis places the original date of the publication of the Sommario prior to 1553.45 Rouillé’s Venetian connections probably allowed him access to images of the Ottoman rulers, but his decision to include Tamerlane evidently presented a problem. It seems likely that, in the absence of a suitable prototype, he commissioned the production of a generic middle-aged male figure.

Figure 9.3. Bayezid (left) and Tamerlane (right) from Guillaume Rouillé, Promptuarium Iconum (Lyons, 1553). Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. 3 Delta 188, p. 190. Of greater interest than the previous examples is the portrait of Tamerlane that appears in the biographical encyclopaedia compiled by the Italian bishop and scholar Paolo Giovio (d. 1552) entitled, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium. An unillustrated version appeared in Florence in 1551, and more than two decades passed before the publisher Peter Perna produced a fully illustrated version of Giovio’s text with woodcuts by Swiss artist Tobias Stimmer (d.

45 These arguments are summarized in Raby in The Sultan’s Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman (Istanbul: Işbank, 2000), p. 140.

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1584).46 The portrait of Tamerlane, emperor of Scythians, is placed at the beginning of the chapter dealing with his life and achievements in book II of the 1575 Elogia (fig. 9.4). Stimmer’s Tamerlane is an imposing middle-aged man depicted within a landscape setting. His eyes look directly at the viewer and there is a slight knotting of the brow, accentuated by the prominent eyebrows and the wrinkles of skin at the top of the nose. The nose is notable for the broadness of the bridge and the large nostrils. He has extravagant moustaches and a trimmed beard that fails to cover his cheeks and the upper part of his chin. On his head he sports a tall felt hat with a fur brim and what may be a series of large pearls set into a diadem. The ornate inhabited frame [323] surrounding the figure of Tamerlane is one of a small repertoire of similar devices used repeatedly through the book.47 Paolo Giovio is a significant figure in European Orientalist scholarship of the sixteenth century, but he seems to have garnered greater acclaim in his own time for another activity. He assembled a collection of more than 400 portraits of literary and military figures from the past, each painting provided with a label on which Giovio wrote a summary of the person’s character and achievements. 48 His Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium veris imaginibus supposita, quae apud Musaeum spectantur (Basel: Peter Perna, 1575. Reprinted 1596). See also the discussion of the 1575 edition in Raby in The Sultan’s Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman (Istanbul: Işbank, 2000), pp. 141–50. 47 For example, the same frame surrounds the portraits of Ataxerxes, emperor Frederick I, Carmognola, Gattamelata, and cardinal Ascanius Sforza. 48 For a detailed study of Giovio’s portrait collection, see Linda Klinger, ‘The portrait collection of Paolo Giovio,’ 2 vols (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1991). See also Linda Klinger, ‘Images of identity: Italian portrait collections of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,’ in The Image of the Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance, ed. Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson (London: British Museum Press, 1998), pp. 67–79; Linda Klinger and Julian Raby, ‘Barbarossa and Sinan: A portrait of two Ottoman corsairs from the collection of Paolo Giovio,’ in Venezia e l’Oriente Vicino: Atti del primo congresso internazionale sul’Arte Islamica, ed. Ernst Grube (Venice: L’Atra Riva, 1989), pp. 47–59. 46

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wide-ranging interests were reflected in the portrait collection, which included figures as diverse as Attila the Hun, the Safavid Shah Tahmasp, and the Turkoman ruler Uzun Hasan. Housed at his residence in Rome and his villa in Como, Giovio’s portrait collection was widely admired: during his lifetime arrangements were made for the

Figure 9.4. Tamerlane from Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basel, 1596). Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. F.5.2 (1), Art, p. 102.

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paintings to be copied for Cosimo de’ Medici, while in the decades after his death further sets were commissioned by Archduke Ferdinand II von Tyrol, Isabella Gonzaga, and others.49 Most of the portraits in the collection are now most easily accessed in the woodcut illustrations made by Stimmer for the two volumes, Elogia Virorum Bellica Virtute Illustrium (1575) and the Elogia Virorum Literis Illustrium (1577).50 The portrait of Tamerlane in the 1575 Elogia was based on a painting in the Giovio portrait collection. Lorenz Schrader (d. 1606), during his visit to the palazzo of the Giovio family at some time between 1557 and 1560, saw paintings of Tamerlane and Hannibal.51 Stimmer made his preparatory drawings during a visit to Giovio’s residence on Lake Como sometime between 1570 and 1572. The original painting of Tamerlane from the Giovio collection does not survive, but a copy probably made by Cristofano dell’Altissimo (d. 1605) for Cosimo de’ Medici, exists in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence.52 Assuming that the Uffizi painting is a faithful copy of Giovio’s original, then it is evident that Stimmer introduced a number of innovations. There are minor adjustments to the pose, outfit, weapons and format. Stimmer also exaggerated some of the facial features to create a more dramatic effect (some of this may be explained by the change from the oil painting to the more schematic mode of representation required by the woodcut). More significant, however, is the inclusion of a rocky 49 Klinger, Portrait collection,’ 1: 79; Raby in The

Sultan’s Portrait, pp. 143-44. To this list may be added the one illustrated volume based on the portrait collection published in Giovio’s lifetime. This work is entitled, Vitae Duodecim Vicecomitum Mediolani Principum (1549), and deals with the lives of the Visconti family of Milan. See Raby in The Sultan’s Portrait, p. 142. 51 Klinger, ‘Portrait collection,’ 1: 73. 52 My comments are based on studying a reproduction of this painting in the photographic archives of the Warburg Institute, University of London. Another image of Tamerlane dating between 1579 and 1580 is recorded in the collection of Archduke Ferdinand in Schloss Ambras. See Friedrich Kenner, ‘Die Porträtsammlung der Erzherzogs Ferdinand von Tirol,’ Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 19.1 (1898), pp. 143–44; Donald Lach, Asia and the Making of Europe. Volume II: A Century of Wonder (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 26, n. 121; Klinger, ‘Portrait collection,’ 1: 79. 50

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landscape with ruined buildings. Landscape backgrounds are not a common feature of the portraits in the 1575 edition of the Elogia, and it is worth examining what it adds to the portrait of Tamerlane. In a general sense, this scene of sterility and [324] destruction finds a parallel in the background details within Erhard Schoen’s (d. 1542) Ravages of the Turks (1532),53 and can be read as a means to illustrate, in a condensed manner, the barbarity of Tamerlane’s conquests. The abbreviated quality of the features in the background of the Stimmer portrait may also derive from the simplified landscape, human and animal vignettes that appear in sixteenth-century printed atlases. For example, the three tents in Stimmer’s image may be compared to a similar composition seen in the map of Russia and Moscovie from Abraham Ortelius,’ Theatrum orbis terrarum (Antwerp, 1570).54 Parallels with book illustrations and paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries leave little doubt that the caged figure on

53

The version of this print in the British Museum is reproduced in Max Geisberg, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, 1500–1550, revised edition ed. Walter Strauss (New York: Hacker Books, 1974), 4: 1202–1205 (G1251–53). 54 Illustrated in Peter Whitfield, Mapping the World: A History of Exploration (London: Folio Society, 2000), p. 168; Ethan Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel: Parables of Order and Enterprise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 173, fig. 88. It is possible that more specific meanings can be read into the image. It is possible that the three tents are a reference to the story found in numerous sixteenth-century histories, that during the sieges of cities the ruler was in the habit of pitching tents of three different colours as messages to the defenders. White tents and pavilions were erected first to indicate that the inhabitants would suffer no harm if they surrendered. Red tents declared that the masters of all households would be put to death, and, finally, black tents signalled that no further appeals would be entertained and all inhabitants of the city were to be put to the sword. Cambini, Two Commentaries, fol.5r. This theme is also picked up in Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. For a discussion of the symbolic dimensions of the colored tents, see Channing Linthicum, Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare, p. 26; Roy Battenhouse, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. A Study in Renaissance Moral Philosophy (Nashville TN: Vanderbilt, 1941), p. 137.

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the cart in lower right-hand corner of Stimmer’s print should be identified as the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I.55 In her thesis devoted to the portait collection, Linda Klinger argues that Giovio’s portraits are not to be judged by the psychological insights and technical virtuosity that are the hallmarks of more gifted painters. Rather, the value of each [325] portrait lay in the belief, shared by Giovio and his contemporaries, that it was derived ultimately from an image made in the presence of that individual. These likenesses came from a wide range of sources including coins, medals, paintings and drawings, and, naturally, this placed significant constraints on those entrusted with the task of producing oil paintings. The challenges of obtaining reliable images of non-European figures were also considerable and Giovio went to great lengths in order to obtain the likenesses of the Muslims who appeared in his portrait collection. For example, an image believed to represent Saladin was obtained from Donado de Lezze, a Venetian stationed in Cyprus. In addition, Giovio managed to locate a number of depictions of the Ottoman sultans.56 The visual sources used in the Giovio portraits of Tamerlane are unknown, though it is possible that he may have been able to obtain examples of fifteenth- or sixteenth-century Persian miniature paintings. There are some intriguing similarities with representations of Tamerlane in Timurid illustrated books: a Shirazi manuscript of Yazdi’s Ẓafarnāma (Book of Conquests) made for Ibrahim Sultan in 839/1436, for example, contains numerous images of Tamerlane that consistently depict the conqueror with moustaches that extend beyond his upper lip and a relatively short-cropped beard that does not

55

For example, a comparable image of the sultan in a cage on wheels is to be found in Sebastian Münster, Cosmographia universalis. Das ist Beschreibung der gangen Welt (Basle: Henric Petrina, 1628. Reprinted Lindau: Antiqua-Verlag, 1984), 2: 1457. Bayezid is also depicted in the same way in one of the paintings from Schloss Eggenberg (c. 1672). See Denny, ‘Images of Turks,’ p. 6, fig. 6. 56 Klinger and Raby, ‘Barbarossa and Sinan,’ n. 32; Raby in The Sultan’s Portrait, pp. 145–46; Marcus Milwright, ‘An Ayyubid in Mamluk guise: The Portrait of Saladin in Paolo Giovio’s, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (1575),’ Mamluk Studies Review 18 (2014–15): 187–217.

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cover his cheeks.57 The illustration of the feast following the conquest of Delhi in this manuscript (fig. 9.5) provides further parallels in the

Figure 9.5. Feast after the conquest of Delhi. Painting from a manuscript of the Ẓafarnāma of Sharaf al-Din Yazdi, dated 893/1436. Reproduced by permission of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, 1960.198. shape of the headgear, the close-fitting jacket, and the orientation of the head. A Ẓafarnāma manuscript dated 873/1467–68 also gives Tamerlane a similar pattern of facial hair,58 while paintings made for Illustrated in David Roxburgh, ed., Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600–1600 (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2005), nos. 168–71. See also no. 148. 58 For example, fols. 82b–83a. ‘Timur granting an audience in Balkh on the occasion of his accession to power in April 1370.’ Illustrated in Thomas Lentz and Glenn Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and 57

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later Timurid rulers invite further comparisons. The specific feature of the fur-brimmed felt hat combined with a diadem may indicate a connection to German woodcut images of Grand Prince of Moscow, Vasilii III (1505–33), produced by Erhard Schoen in the 1520s.59

Figure 9.6. Tamerlane from André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres Grecz, Latins et Payens. Paris, 1584. By permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge, fol. 630r.

Culture in the fifteenth Century (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), pp. 264–65 (cat. 147). 59 He produced an equestrian representation and a bust-length portrait, both of which employ the same head covering. The bust-length portrait was copied by Hans Weygel in 1563 and renamed as Ivan IV (‘the Terrible’). See Sergei Bogatyrev, ‘Bronze tsars: Ivan the Terrible and Fedor Ivanovich in the décor of early modern guns,’ in Simon Dixon, ed., Personality and Place in Russian Culture: Essays in Memory of Lindsey Hughes (London: Modern Humanities Research Association for the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 2010), pp. 53–57, figs. 2, 3.

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A portrait of Tamerlane appears in a second sixteenth-century biographical dictionary, André Thevet’s Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres Grecz, Latins et Payens (Paris, 1584). Chapter 138 of book VIII is devoted to ‘Tamerlan, empereur des Tartares’ and begins with a half-length portrait (fig. 9.6). Although it lacks an ornate frame, the significant parallels with the representation of Tamerlane in the 1575 edition of the Elogia, suggests that Thevet instructed his artist to use that portrait as the principal model for his own print. The transformation of the felt hat into one made entirely of fur may reflect the influence of representations of costumes in contemporary publications; for example, similar tall fur hat is worn by a Tartar soldier in an illustration of Russian costumes from Abraham de Bruyn’s, Omnium pene Europae, Asiae, Aphricae atque Americae gentium habitus (Antwerp, 1581).60 The face of Tamerlane in Les vrais pourtraits has a distinctly different character to the Stimmer image. The nose in the Thevet portrait is longer without the prominent nostrils, while the modelling in the cheeks makes the face more gaunt. The junction of the brow and the nose remains very broad, but does not have the curious folds of skin seen in the Elogia image. The beard in the latter portrait is both longer and fuller, but with slightly shorter moustaches. The Elogia portrait conveys a sense of menace through the facial expression and the tilt of the head, but Thevet’s Tamerlane makes a more explicit gesture by drawing his sword from its sheath. The rather short [326] arms and diminutive hands in the latter portrait suggest that this is the work of a less skilled artist. An abbreviated version of Thevet’s dictionary was translated into English by George Gerbier under the title, Prosopographia: or, some select Poutraitures and Lives, of ancient and modern illustrious Personages (London, 1657). Another edition was printed in Cambridge in 1676. Both versions of the text include a section devoted to the life of ‘Tamberlain.’ There is an obvious reliance upon the model provided by the French edition of 1584, though the end result in the 1676 edition lacks the sense of contained energy in the original 60 Illustrated in Kavaler, Pieter

Bruegel, p. 173, fig. 89.

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woodcut.61 A more skilful adaptation of the Tamerlane in Les vrais pourtraits can be found in the 1662 Paris edition of Blaise de Vigenère’s translation of the history of Laonicus Chalcocondylas, L’Histoire de la decadence de l’empire Grec (fig. 9.7).62 The basic pose of this portrait follows the one in Les vrais pourtraits – albeit, in reverse – though the cruder modelling lend this image a less naturalistic quality than the Thevet portrait. A striking feature of the 1662 portrait is the addition of the sun and moon on either side of Tamerlane’s head. While the Byzantine accounts of the the life of Tamerlane include references to one cosmic event – the appearance of a comet that illuminated the night sky63 – the sun and the moon in the background of this portrait have no direct relevance to the text of Chalcocondylas. This celestial pairing is found in medieval and Renaissance art, most commonly in André Thevet, Prosopographia: or, some select Pourtraitures and Lives, of ancient and modern illustrious, trans. George Gerbier (Cambridge: John Hayes, 1676). This portrait is illustrated in the original version of the article, but is not included here. See Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel,’ fig. 7. 62 This illustration does not appear in Blaise de Vigenère’s translation printed in Paris 1584. The edition in which the illustration appears is Laonicus Chalcocondylas, L’Histoire de la decadence de l’empire Grec et establissement de celuy des Turcs par Chalcocondile Athenien. Trans. Blaise de Vigenaire Bourbonais (Paris: A. Covrbé, 1662). The description of Tamerlane (not part of Chalcocondylas’ original text) found on the page facing the illustration in the 1662 edition (I: 53) does not correlate closely with the illustration: ‘Sa stature estoit moyenne, les epaules un peu estroites, la jambe belle, les yeux pleins de majesté, de sorte qu’à peine en pouuoit-on supporter le regard: mais par modestie, il s’abstenoit de regarder celuy qui parloit à luy. La reste du visage estoit affable, et bien proportionné. Il n’avoit gueres du poil au menton, et aussi peu de moustache, portoit les cheveux long et crespus, dequels il faisoit grande conte (à cause qu’il se disoit estre de la race de Samson) joint qu’il estoient fort beaux et d’une couleur brune, et tirant sur le violet.’ 63 In accounts written by the Byzantine historians there is a description of a comet that illuminated the night sky and did not allow the other stars to shine. According to Doukas, this portent of evil remained visible in the sky from the spring to the autumn of that year. See Ducas, Decline and Fall, xvi.3 (pp. 91–92). 61

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association with representations of the Apocalypse.64 Most significant in the present context are the sets of wood-cut illustrations made for the Book of Revelation by Northern European artists, including Albrecht Dürer (in 1498), Hans Burgkmair (1523), Sebald

Figure 9.7. Tamerlane from Laonicus Chalcocondylas, L’Histoire de

la decadence de l’empire Grec et establissement de celuy des Turcs par Chalcocondile Athenien (Paris 1662). Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. T.4.11 Jur., p. 52.

64

The paired sun and moon also appear in some other scences. For example, woodcuts by Dürer of the Lamentation of Christ, the Crucifixion, and Christ showing his disciples the heavens also include them. See Willi Kurth, The complete Woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer, trans. Silvia Welsh (New York: Arden, 1936), pls. 87, 88, 154. Other examples include prints by Hans Schäufflein (Christ on the Cross with the Virgin and St John, c. 1516) and Michael Ostendorfer (Lamentation, 1548). See Max Geisberg, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, 1500-1550, revised edition ed. Walter Strauss (New York: Hacker Books, 1974).3: 920–21, 955 (G. 964–65, G. 1044).

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Beham [327] (1539), Matthias Gerung (1544–48), and Gerhard van Groeningen (c. 1565–71). The conjunction of the sun and moon appears in representations of the breaking of the Sixth Seal (Revelation 6:12–13) and, less frequently, the sounding of the trumpet by the

Figure 9.8. Equestrian portrait of Tamerlane from Philip Lonicer, Chronicon Turcicorum (Frankfurt, 1578). Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. H.5.2. Art., fol. 14v. Fourth Angel (Revelation 8:12).65 Although the precise significance of the motifs in the 1662 portrait is unclear, it seems likely that the 65 For illustrations of these two themes, see Kurth, Complete Woodcuts, pl. 110; Walter Strauss, The German single-leaf Woodcuts, 1550–1600, 4 vols. (New York: Arden, 1936), I: 275; Frances Carey, ed., The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1999), cat. nos. 10, 33, 57, 58, 86; Paul Huber, Apokalypse: Bildzyklen zur Johannes-Offenbarung in Trier, auf dem Athos und Caillaud d’Angiers

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widespread understanding of Tamerlane as the ‘scourge of God’ and as one of the ‘people of Magog,’ or Massagetae (see below), made the apocalyptic imagery appropriate for this illustration. An equestrian portrait appears on fol.14v in Philip Lonicer’s Chronicon Turcicorum (Frankfurt, 1578). Identified in the caption as ‘Tamerlanes Scytha,’ it is perhaps the most ambitious of the portrait images (fig. 9.8), showing the ruler mounted on a sinuous horse within a shallow landscape space. Sitting in a high fronted saddle, the ruler is made more impressive by his praeternatural scale in relation to his mount. Although the concept of the equestrian portrait was well established in Europe by the last quarter of the sixteenth century, Lonicer’s Tamerlane is not a typical example of the genre, in that his weaponry includes a bow and arrows (the standard accessory of a Turco-Mongolian warrior). His clothing and headgear suggest that the designer of the woodcut in the Lonicer image may have employed diverse sources including [328] representations of Russian Tartar soldiers,66 and equestrian portraits made of the Ottoman sultan Süleyman I. Several printed images of the sultan exist from the mid sixteenth century, but perhaps the most relevant are from the 1575 edition of Giovio’s Elogia,67 and the set of seven woodcuts printed by Pieter Coecke van Aelst in 1553, depicting an imperial pa-

(Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1989), pp. 65, 77, and fig. 133. On ideas concerning the apocalypse in the sixteenth century, see Benjamin Paul, ‘“And the moon has started to bleed”: Apocalypticism and religious reform in Venetian art at the time of the battle of Lepanto,’ in James Harper, ed., The Turk and Islam in the Western Eye, 1450–1750: Visual Imagery before Orientalism (Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 67–94. My thanks to Gülru Necipoğlu for bringing the apocalyptic iconography of the sun and moon to my attention. 66 For example, the arrangement of the bow case and quiver attached to the belt is seen also in a representation of a Tartar soldier from an engraving showing Russian costumes in Abraham de Bruyn’s 1581 publication (see above). Note also similarities in the facial hair (large moustaches and cheanshaven chin) and the form of the topcoat. Illustrated in Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel, p. 173, fig. 89. 67 Raby in The Sultan’s Portrait, 2000, fig. 28k.

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rade in Constantinople.68 Between the Coecke van Aelst and the Lonicer prints there are important points of similarity: each have the large turban wrapped around a tall cap (the Ottoman tāj), though Tamerlane’s is ornamented by a series of straps.69 The faces are not identical, but both have the hawkish profile, long moustaches, and clean-shaven chin (whereas Süleyman is often seen with a full beard in other printed images from the 1550s and 1560s). The most striking difference is in the pose and attitude of the two figures. Where Süleyman is depicted in stately procession, the representation of Tamerlane and his mount is full of dynamism, as if standing on the edge of the battlefield.70 2. Narrative images The images that appear in an edition of Hetʿum’s Sensuyuent les fleurs des hystoires de la terre dorient (Paris, c. 1530) are among the earliest printed representations associated with Tamerlane.71 Les fleurs has a 68 The Sultan’s Portrait, 2000, cat. no. 20 and comments by Jürg Meyer zur Capellen and Serpil Bağci in the same volume, pp. 102–103. See also Gülru Neçipoğlu, ‘Süleyman the Magnificent and the representation of power in the context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-Papal rivalry,’ Art Bulletin 71.3 (1989): 401–27 (especially pp. 418–19, fig. 28). Another possible comparison is with the Rouillé/Sansovino portrait of Mehmed I. See Raby in The Sultan’s Portrait, figs. 27j, 34g. 69 For the employment of Ottoman headgear in European paintings and graphic arts, see Julian Raby, Venice, Dürer, and the Oriental Mode (London: Islamic Art Publications, 1982), pp. 21–34. 70 The active quality of this portrait may be compared to the more schematic representation of mounted warriors in Jenkins/Ortelius map of Russia and Moscovie. See Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel, p. 173, fig. 88; Whitfield, Mapping the World, p. 168. 71 An earlier image of Tamerlane can be found in Schedel’s Liber chronicarum of 1493 (see n. 42). Editions of Schiltberger’s travels from c. 1478 onward contain woodcut illustrations, but these volumes are all extremely scarce. The only one of this early series I have consulted is Johannes Schiltberger, Ein wunderbarliche unnd kurtzweilige History (Frankfurt: Hermann Gülfferich, c. 1549). For details about the early editions, see Buchan Telfer’s introduction in Schiltberger, Bondage and Travels, pp. x–xi.

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curious history, having been dictated by one Hetʿum (also known as Hayton and Heythoum) (d. c. 1311) to Nicole Falcon de Toul in Poitiers during August 1307.72 In its original form Hetʿum’s work was probably divided into four parts: the first concerned with the geography and peoples of Asia; the second with the history of the Middle East from ancient times through to the development of the Arab and Turkish polities; the third with the history of the Mongols (concentrating on their relations with the kingdom of Armenia); and the fourth with a proposal for a new Crusade to capture the Holy Land involving the collaboration of the Mongols and Armenians. Hetʿum cannot, however, have been responsible for the fifth part, dealing with the life of Tamerlane, that appears in the printed edition of c. 1530.73

72 The text was composed at the request of Pope Clement V. It was subsequently translated into Latin by Falcon de Toul, and into Spanish by an anonymous scholar. The true identity of the author – sometimes known as Hetʿum, prince of Korikos (or Korghos) – has yet to be resolved, though his detailed knowledge of events in the kingdom of Cilician Armenia in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries indicates that he was an important member of the Armenian royal family. The text, in Latin and French versions, proved popular around Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was printed in numerous editions. Strangely, it was not until the nineteenth century that an Armenian translation of Les fleurs was published. For the history and authorship of Les fleurs, see David Bundy, ‘Hetʿum’s La flor des estoires de la Terre d’Orient: A study in medieval Armenian historiography and propaganda,’ Revue des Études Arméniennes 20 (1986–87): 223–35; Robert Thomson, A Bibliography of Classical Armenian Literature to 1500 AD, Corpus Christianorum (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), p. 139. 73 Not all early printed editions of Hetʿum’s history contain the fifth part. For example, it is not included in Richard Pynson’s c. 1520 English translation of the French text. See Hetʿum (Hetoum), Prince of Korghos, A Lytell Cronycle. Richard Pynson’s Translation (c 1520) of La Fleur des Histoires de la Terre d’Orient (c 1307), ed. Glenn Burger (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 1988).

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Figure 9.9 (left). Ruler supervising building work from Hetʿum, Sensuyuent les fleurs des hystoires de la terre dorient (Paris, c. 1530). Douce HH 226 (1), sig. Qii r. Figure 9.10 (right). Ruler presiding in judgement from Idem. Douce HH 226 (1), sig. Rii v. Images reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. Of relevance to the present discussion are two small woodcuts in part five of the c. 1530 edition (figs 9.9 & 9.10); the first illustrating a monarch supervising building work (sig. Qiir), and the second with a monarch in an outdoor setting standing in judgement in front of three men (sig. Riiv). Before discussing these images in more detail, it should be noted that both woodcuts occur elsewhere in the book. In other words, these images were not designed specifically for inclusion in part five of Les fleurs, and the monarch seen in the woodcuts cannot be considered as an attempt by the artists to represent the figure of Tamerlane himself.74 Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the illustrations 74 Stylistic differences in the modelling of the draperies and the treatment of the faces, architecture and the vegetation suggest that the two plates were completed by different craftsmen.

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occur in the chapters dealing with the Mongols (in part three of the text) and with Tamerlane.75 It can, therefore, be assumed that the compilers of the text wanted these images to complement the issues dealt with in those parts of the text, and to function as a means for readers to visualise peoples of Central Asian origin. The woodcut of the monarch standing in judgement (fig. 9.10) is the less assured of the two images. The dress and hairstyles of the figures are consistent with the fashions of early sixteenth-century Europe, while [329] the full beard of the king and the shape of his crown only confirm his European origin. The other woodcut (fig. 9.9) certainly contains numerous European features – including the style of the architecture and the costumes of the workmen – but the ruler is given some unusual details in his overall appearance. His beard lacks a moustache, and most of his facial hair seems to grow below his chin. His headgear is not the conventional crown, but what seems to be a combination of turban (or perhaps raised cap) and a diadem,76 while his topcoat is tied by a cord or sash that hangs down on his right side. Another significant feature is the ‘pearled’ border running around his cuffs and the hem of his topcoat. Both the cord or sash and the pearl-lined clothing are found in an illustration from the edition of Johannes Schiltberger’s travel journal, Ein wunderbarliche uund kurtzweilege History published in Frankfurt in c. 1549 (fig. 9.11). The pearled border seen in these two illustrations is famously associated with the royal outfits of the Sasanian dynasty of Iran, though it was subsequently adopted by Muslim rulers and Byzantine emperors. It may be that the details in these woodcuts function visual shorthand to locate the scene in a non-European setting. 75 The illustration on sig. Qiir (part 5 between chapters 9 and 10) appears in part 3, chapter 25 (concerned with battles between Tartars and Saracens) in the c. 1531 edition. The illustration on fol. Riiv (part 5, chapter 15) appears in part 3 in a chapter about ‘Mango Caan’ (i.e. Möngke Khan). See Hetʿum (Hetoum), Prince of Korghos, Sensuyuent les fleurs des hystoires de la Terre Dorient (Paris: On les vent à Paris, en la rue neufve Nostre Dame, à l’enseigne de l’Escu de France, c. 1531). 76 A similar feature is later seen in the painting of Tamerlane in the collection of Paolo Giovio, and the woodcut by Tobias Stimmer in the 1575 edition of Giogio’s Elogia.

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Figure 9.11. Tamerlane witnessing a scene of brutality from Johannes Schiltberger, Ein wunderbarliche uund kurtzweilege History (Frankfurt, c. 1549). Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. Vet.D1 e.67. This first image of Tamerlane in the c. 1549 edition of Schiltberger’s travels (fig. 9.11) takes place either inside or outside a fortified structure. The central scene comprises a young woman kneeling within a fire and being beaten by two men wielding cudgels. They wear short tunics and each of their limbs is encircled by four bangles. The diabolic nature of this incident is emphasised by the darkened sky above and the presence of two demons. To the right, the ruler and his attendant look on impassively. The malevolent quality of the image is further intensified by the diagonal shading that covers the parts of the faces of Tamerlane and the other two figures. The ruler is distinguished by his tall crown, elaborate outfit, long beard and drawn face. The second image appears on fol.Giiiv, and represents Tamerlane being entertained at court (fig. 9.12). The ruler on the right is recognisable by his crown and beard, though his long hair is more of a feature. He rises slightly from his chair and gestures toward a group of three musicians seated on a camel and a diminutive elephant. The faces of the musicians appear rather bestial, though it is

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difficult to ascertain whether this detail is meant to have any significance.

Figure 9.12. Tamerlane feasting from Johannes Schiltberger, E in wunderbarliche uund kurtzweilege History (Frankfurt, c. 1549). Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. Vet.D1 e.67. Neither of these woodcuts is a direct illustration to the accompanying text, but they may be interpreted as representing European notions of the Oriental tyrant. One depicts a scene of barbarous cruelty, while the other attempts to give a sense of the opulent lifestyle enjoyed by Asian rulers. Manuscript painting of the fifteenth century contains comparable images. For example, the image of an Oriental king witnessing a man being burnt at the stake appears in the account of Marco Polo in the Livre des merveilles of Jean Duc de Berry (painted by the Boucicault Master). The same manuscript also contains other rather fanciful images such as ‘Baptism of Zagatai in the church of the Baptism at Samarkand’ and ‘feasting in the court of the Great Khan.’77 77 Cod. 2810 in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. For the illustrations, see Sergio Solmi, ed., Il Libro di Marco Polo detto millione. Nella versione trecentesca dell’ ‘ottimo’ (Florence: G. Einaudi, 1958), pls. opposite 51, 106; Mil-

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Another image of Oriental entertainments is to be found in a late fourteenth-century manuscript in the British Library entitled, Tractatus de septem vitiis.78 The painting, depicting the sin of gluttony, has an identifiably Mongol ruler presiding over the festivities in his court. Unlike the paintings by the Boucicault Master or the woodcuts in the edition of Schiltberger’s travels, the artist of the British Library manuscript appears to have a clear awareness of how a Central Asian ruler should look. One of the c. 1549 woodcuts (fig. 9.9) is probably making a generalised reference to Schiltberger’s account of the capture of Isfahan, and to associated stories about the siege of Damascus. He writes that the conquest of Isfahan was accompanied by the [330] massacre of the children of the city. The act seen in the woodcut may refer to the story found in many other sources that Tamerlane ordered the murder of the virgins and children sent by the people of Damascus to plea for clemency.79 Demons are sometimes also found in representations of Ottoman sultans in printed books of the sixteenth century.80

lard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Boucicaut Master, Kress Foundation Studies in the History of European Art (London: Phaidon, 1968), pls. 82, 83. 78 This illustration is reproduced in Robert Irwin, ‘Islam and the Crusades, 1096–1699,’ in Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 253. The author notes that the painter must have had access to a Persian miniature. 79 For his account of the siege of Isfahan, see Schiltberger, Bondage and Travels, chapter 18 (pp. 27–28). For one of the numerous versions of the slaughter of the virgins of Damascus, see Cambini, Two Commentaries, fols. 4v–5r. 80 For example, see the frontispiece of a book published in Venice entitled, Lamento et ultima disperatione de Selim Gran Turco. In this case, however, the demon appears to be tempting the sultan to commit suicide. See Nebahat Avçioğlu, ‘Ahmed I and the allegories of tyranny in the frontispiece to George Sandy’s Relation of a Journey,’ Muqarnas 18 (2001): 207–208, fig. 8.

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Figure 9.13. Tamerlane and Bayezid from Philip Lonicer, Chronicon Turcicorum (Frankfurt, 1578). Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. H.5.2 Art, fol. 14r. Philip Lonicer’s Chronicon Turcicorum contains a second image of Tamerlane on the facing page to the equestrian portrait (fig. 9.13). This composition is more crowded than its companion with the central figure of the Central Asian ruler accompanied by attendants to either side and a kneeling figure by his feet. Tamerlane’s facial features differ from the previous woodcut in the hooked nose and the presence of a beard that covers his chin and the sides of his jaw. Other changes have been made in his headgear, the patterned brocade of his robes, his chequered trousers, and his shoes. The horse’s fittings are also more elaborately ornamented, suggesting that both horse and rider were preparing to take part in a parade. The apparel of the standing attendants can be divided into two categories. The first group are bearded and wear turbans with feathers arranged at the top. The second group are also bearded and each carries a different weapon (bow, axe and musket). These soldiers wear fitted topcoats with frogging on the chest. Though all three wear tall caps with an ornamental band around the rim, the precise form varies. The headgear of the soldier on the right has a piece of material that folds over the top and covers the back of his neck. This feature is lacking for the

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two soldiers on the right, but both have a plume of feathers rising from the front of the cap. The bearded kneeling figure wears a different turban somewhat reminiscent of that worn by Bayezid I in Rouillé’s Promptuarium and Sansovino’s Sommario.81 This woodcut represents one of the humiliations that European historians believed had been meted out to the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I: that he was employed as Tamerlane’s mounting block whenever the latter climbed onto his horse (Lonicer also includes an illustration of Bayezid confined within a cage; see fig. 12.3). I will address the numerous representations of the humiliations of Bayezid in a future article, but here I want to focus on the representation of Tamerlane and his entourage. Again, it is apparent that much of the influence for the costumes and facial types comes from European representations of Ottoman imperial ceremony. The flap of material seen in the cap of the right-hand soldier in the Lonicer woodcut can be seen on those of janissaries in the Coecke van Aelst woodcut of 1553. Even closer associations may be drawn with Domenico de’ Franceschi’s 1563 woodcut representation of sultan Süleyman riding to Friday prayer.82 In this case, the Janissaries wear two types of tall cap (börk) – one with the flap of material and the other without – and turbans wrapped around a central cap, or tāj. The principal difference between [331] the types of headgear found in the 1563 woodcut and those in Lonicer’s image is in the added feathers. The practice of attaching feathers into fur or felt caps is associated with Mongol, Timurid, and Turkman royal processions,83 though comparison might be made with attached plumes on top of the helmet-crown in the famous profile portrait of sultan Süleyman.84 Attendants at Otto81 Raby in The

Sultan’s Portrait, figs. 27d, 34d. The Sultan’s Portrait, cat. no. 21 and comments by Meyer zur Capellen and Bağci on p. 103. 83 For example, see Linda Komaroff and Stefano Carboni, eds, The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256–1353 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), figs. 35, 39, 68, 84, 220, 222, 261. 84 Neçipoğlu, ‘Süleyman the Magnificent,’ figs. 1–4, 10, 17, 22, 25. Some comparison may be made between the cap of the right-hand soldier and the 82

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man imperial ceremonies were also provided with ornamental feathers, which can be seen in Ottoman miniatures and European drawings of parade helmets. The differences in Tamerlane’s clothing in the two images in Lonicer’s Chronicon turcicorum can be partially explained by the functions – military versus ceremonial – the ruler is performing. One is seen in military guise while the other is preparing for a military procession. It is strange, however, that his facial features – straight nose or hooked, clean shaven around the chin and jaw or fully bearded – should be different in the two woodcuts in the Chronicon Turcicorum. The first has a straight nose while the second is hooked. It would appear that the chief source of inspiration for this second Tamerlane came from European images of the Ottomans. The Domenico de’ Franceschi woodcut provides a model of a sultan riding within an imperial procession, and also depicts the sultan with a full beard and moustaches. There are also interesting parallels in the patterning of the textiles. Comparable profile images of the bearded Süleyman are similarly found in Sansovino’s Sommario and a woodcut produced by Matteo Pagan in c. 1550.85

ETHNICITY AND CHARACTER IN TEXT AND IMAGE Reviewing the portraits of Tamerlane in books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it becomes apparent that there was very little consensus about his physical appearance, or even his ethnicity. There is little to indicate that the creators of most of the representations discussed in this chapter thought very deeply about the actual appearance of the historical Tamerlane and what details of his costume, physique, hairstyle, and facial features (including his facial hair) might indicate about his ethnicity and character. Schedel, Rouillé and the printer Richard Jones opted to represent the great conqueror as a European gentleman. The illustrators of Hetʿum’s Les fleurs headgear worn by Osman Gazi in the 1575 Elogia. See Raby in The Sultan’s Portrait, fig. 28a. 85 Meyer zur Capellen and Bağci in The Sultan’s Portrait, pp. 100–102, fig. 22.

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adopted different approaches, with one image of ‘Tamerlane’ as a European monarch and the other given a few Oriental attributes in his apparel and face. The two woodcuts in Schiltberger’s travels make use of established [332] conventions in the depiction of eastern rulers drawn from earlier manuscript illustrations, while Lonicer’s Chronicon Turcicorum employs visual devices seen in the representations of the Ottoman sultan Süleyman I, adding some details of costume and weaponry to suggest the origins of Tamerlane among the warriors of the Russian and Central Asian steppe lands. The portraits found in the works of Giovio and Thevet provide more fertile ground for further study. Giovio and Thevet included portraits of Safavid Shahs and Ottoman, Mamluk and Ayyubid sultans, and it is clear that both authors were concerned that Tamerlane should be distinguished – by means of his facial features, hair and costume – from these Muslim rulers. One reason for this distinction is that the historians of the sixteenth century seem to have been unaware of the fact that Tamerlane was a Muslim.86 Thus, there was little reason to assume that this ‘heathen’ ruler would have adopted the manners and customs of the Muslim sultans further west. Indeed, the details of his dress appear to be a means to signal that Tamerlane’s origins were in the steppe lands of Asia. His pointed cap with its fur brim and the padded jacket both appear in representations of Turco-Mongolian peoples in paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.87 One of the most striking European images For example, see comments in Giovio, Elogia, p. 104. Cambini claims that Tamerlane had driven the ‘Saracens’ from his native Parthia. See his Two Commentaries, fol. 3r. Marlowe even has his Tamburlaine order the burning of, ‘…the Turkish Alcaron and all the heaps of superstitious books / Found in the temple of that Mahomet.’ Tamburlaine 2:5.1 (Marlowe, Tamburlaine, Parts I and II, pp. 171–73). See also comments in Chew, Crescent and the Rose, p. 472. 87 For the appearance of ‘Tartars’ in Italian painting, see Leonardo Olschki, ‘Asiatic exoticism in Italian painting of the early Renaissance,’ Art Bulletin 26 (1944): 95–108. That the idea of a ‘tartar’ facial type was well established in Europe in the fourteenth century is indicated by the example of a procession organized by William Montague before a royal tournament in Cheapside, London in 1331 the crowds were entertained by the sight of sixteen men 86

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of a ‘Tartar’ is the drawing of an archer made by Pisanello (d. 1455) as a preparatory sketch for his fresco of St George and the Princess of Trebizond in the Pelligrini chapel of the Church of Sta Anastasia in Verona.88 This work was clearly based on first-hand observation, and correlates well with the description of the appearance of Mongol men given by John of Piano Carpini in the thirteenth century. He writes: in appearance the Tartars are quite different from all other men, for they are broader than other people between the eyes and across the cheekbones. Their cheeks are rather prominent above their jaws; they have a fat small nose, their eyes are little and their eyelids raised above their eyebrows…Hardly any of them grow beards, although they have some hair on the upper lip and chin and this they do not trim.89

Mongols are occasionally identified in printed books [333] by their facial types and clothing. One example is Johannes von dressed in ‘Tartar clothes’ and fur hats and with their faces covered by masks in the likenesses of Tartars. See Vale, Edward III and Chivalry, pp. 62, 70, 72. For the impact of the Mongols on European culture, see Felicatas Schmieder, Europa und die Fremden: Die Mongolen im Urteil des Abenlandes vom 13. bis in das 15. Jahrhundert, Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 16 (Signmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1994). 88 Illustrated in George Hill, Drawings of Pisanello (New York: Dover Publications, 1965), pl. XV, no. 18. For the painting, see Paolo Marini, Pisanello (Milan: Electa, 1996), figs. 156, 175. Olschki, ‘Asiatic exoticism,’ pp. 104–106. The author notes that Turco-Mongolian slaves were relatively common in fifteenth-century Italy, and male slaves were often employed as archers. Pisanello also represented the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus in a pointed Tartar-style hat in his famous portrait medal. Raby notes that this became part of the standard Western European depiction of despotic rule. See Raby, Venice, Dürer and the Oriental Mode, p. 2, n. 4, 5. 89 John of Piano Carpini, Historia Mongalorum in Dawson, The Mongol Mission, pp. 6–7. The armies of the Mongol khans often contained peoples of many regions and ethnicities, but the commanding officers were all of Turco-Mongol descent. The accurate observations of John of Piano Carpini would have allowed European armies to target these most important soldiers on the battlefield. I am grateful to Iain Higgins for this observation.

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Thurocz’s Chronica Hungarorum (Brünn [Brno], 1488) where the broad, flat faces of the horsemen (and the pointed hats worn by several of them) contrast with the faces and apparel of the Hungarian villagers.90 To some extent, the Giovio/Stimmer portrait bears similarities to John of Piano Carpini’s description, as well as the visual representations of ‘Tartars’ found in European paintings of the fourtenth and fifteenth centuries. The eyes are set wide apart and the nose is broad, particularly around the nostrils. His beard appears relatively thin (certainly in comparison to the Thevet portrait).91 That said, the large eyes and overall proportions of the face seem more European in character. Similar features may be noted in the painting in the Uffizi. Thevet’s portrait does not look at all Mongol in appearance, despite the fact that the author describes the man as ‘empereur des Tartares.’ Most European historians failed to make any connection between Tamerlane and the Mongols, however, and Thevet and Jean du Bec are unusual among their contemporaries in suggesting that Tamerlane was of the bloodline of the great khans of the thirteenth century.92 The confusion over Tamerlane’s origins is apparent in the terminology employed by European authors. Many describe him as a ‘Scythian,’ while others – such as Cambini, Richier and Jean du Bec – note that he was born in a region called ‘Parthia.’ The use of these anachronistic terms suggests a desire to distinguish Tamerlane from the earlier Mongol emperors such as Chinggiz, Möngke and Qubilai, See Horst Kunze, Geschichte der Buchillustration in Deutschland das 15. Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1975), p. 1: fig. on 244. Note, however, that in the equivalent illustration in the edition printed in Augsburg in the same year (fig. on p. 245), the Mongol soldiers are given a distinctly Turkish appearance. 91 For observations on the interpretation of facial hair in Renaissance portraiture, see Will Fisher, ‘The Renaissance beard: Masculinity in Early Modern England,’ Renaissance Quarterly 54.1 (2001): 155–87. 92 Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits, fol. 630v; du Bec, Histoire du grand empereur Tamerlanes, pp. 8–9. Jean du Bec also mentions that his ancestors came from the land of Sachetay (i.e. the ulus Chaghatay). See also comments of the fifteenth-century humanist Andrea Biglia, discussed in Meserve, ‘Samarkand to Scythia,’ pp. 31–32. 90

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but the designation of ‘Scythian’ had also developed a distinct set of meanings in the intellectual culture of late fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury Italy.93 The term Scythian has an ancient pedigree, appearing in the writings of Herodotus and Thucydides. The second-century CE geographer Ptolemy suggests that the savagery of the Scythians was a product of the cold climate.94 For Italian writers of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the most important figure of Antiquity to have emerged from the shadowy region of Scythia was the fearsome fifth-century conqueror, Attila the Hun. Not surprisingly, most of the coverage of Attila and his conquests in Europe is profoundly negative in character.95 His tyrannical rule and indiscriminate pillage earn him the title of ‘scourge of God’ (flagellum dei) or ‘terror of the world’ in many sources, while in the Divine Comedy Dante (d. 1321) places him in the seventh circle of Hell.96 Piccolomini claims that the Huns had been brought forth from the union of women and demons,97 and this concept is given a startling visual 93

The use of classical sources on Asian by Renaissance scholars is discussed in detail in Meserve, ‘Samarkand to Scythia.’ See also John Larner, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 133–50. 94 Denis Sinor, ‘The Inner Asian warriors,’ Journal of the American Oriental Society 101 (1981): 133–34. Sinor notes that Ptolemy employs the word ‘Scythian’ to refer to all northern peoples. Ptolemy’s Geography was translated into Latin in 1408. See Olschki, ‘Asiatic exoticism,’ p. 96. 95 For a detailed discussion, see Marianna Birnbaum, ‘Attila’s Renaissance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,’ in Franz Baülm and Marianna Birnbaum, eds, Attila: The Man and his Image (Budapest: Corvino, 1993), pp. 82–96. 96 Dante, Inferno XII:134. For a review of this material, see Anthony D’Elia, ‘Genealogy and the limits of panegyric: Turks and Huns in fifteenthcentury epithalamia,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 34.4 (2003): 973–91. 97 Piccolomini, Cosmographia vel de mondo universo historiarum. Cited in D’Elia, ‘Genealogy and the limits of panegyric,’ p. 981. In this he appears to be relying on earlier sources such as Jordanes (Origins and Deeds of the Getae, itself based on the lost Gothic History of Cassiodorus). Jordanes claims that unclean spirits ‘bestowed their embraces on the sorceresses and begot this savage race.’ It also seems likely that Piccolomini’s understanding of the Huns relied upon the account given by Ammianus Marcellinus. See Maenchen-Helfen, World of the Huns, pp. 5, 9–17.

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manifestation in the profile portrait in Giovio’s 1575 Elogia (fig. 9.14). Attila’s distinctly goat-like appearance is emphasised by the addition of two short, curling horns.98 Comparable profile images of Attila as a satyr are known earlier in the sixteenth century.99 In the same period, however, Attila was being given a more positive image by scholars in Hungary (the commonly-held belief that the Hungarians were the descendants of the ancient Huns can be traced as early as the eleventh century100). This re-invention of Attila ranged from the praise of his military skill to the implausible claim that, following a vision of Christ, he turned his energies to fighting heretics.101 This surprising elevation of Attila also occurs in the panegyric poetry written by Giovanni Marliani to celebrate the marriage of Bianca Maria Sforza to the Hungarian, Johannes Corvinus in 1487.102

For the illustration, see Giovio, Elogia (1575), p. 10. Part of the text reads, ‘Haec facies inhumano luridoque pallor, ac esseri oris monstroso ductu, et torua oculorum nictatione terribilis, immanem hunnorum Regis Athile saeuitiem spirat.’ 99 See the examples of a medal commemorating the destruction of Aquileia and a medallion in the façade of the Charterhouse in Pavia. See Franz Baülm and Marianna Birnbaum, eds, Attila: The Man and his Image (Budapest: Corvino, 1993), figs. 24, 53. For a devil sporting similar horns, see the Temptation of Christ in the Desert panel from the altarpiece painted for Queen Isabella in c. 1496–1504 by Michael Sittow. Illustrated in Jay Levenson, ed. Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 162–64, cat. no. 43. 100 Birnbaum, ‘Attila’s Renaissance,’ p. 82; D’Elia, ‘Genealogy and the limits of panegyric,’ p. 980, n. 37. 101 By comparison, in 1459 Francesco Filelfo claimed that Christ had sent Tamerlane and his armies to rescue the Byzantine empire. See Meserve, ‘Samarkand to Scythia,’ p. 33. 102 D’Elia, ‘Genealogy and the limits of panegyric,’ pp. 977–82. 98

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Figure 9.14. Attila the Hun from Paolo Giovio, E logia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basel, 1575). Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. F.5.2 (1), p. 10.

Just as the Ottoman Turks could, on occasion, be described by Renaissance authors as descendants of the ancient Trojans,103 so the 103 Terence Spencer, ‘Turks and Trojans in the Renaissance,’ Modern Language Review 47 (1952): 330–33.; D’Elia, ‘Genealogy and the limits of panegyric,’ pp. 982–91.

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description of Tamerlane as a Scythian placed him into a cultural context that would help explain his character and actions. The ‘Scythian’ Huns and Tamerlane were at times also equated with the Massagetae, or ‘people of Magog’ (Ezekiel 38:1–23).104 Like Attila, that earlier product of Scythia, Tamerlane was both praised for his military and organisation skills and reviled for his spectacular cruelty and godlessness. Events in their respective European biographies exhibit certain correspondences, and these are picked up in writings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.105 Tamerlane’s slaughter of the innocents of Damascus finds a parallel in Attila’s notorious killJ. Otto Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in their History and Culture, ed. Max Knight (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 2–5. The author notes that Huns were demonised in Latin sources of the fifth and sixth centuries, often being associated with the ‘Massagetae,’ or people of Magog (Ezekiel 38:1–39), with the Goths as the people of Gog. Flavius Josephus in the first century CE makes a link between Magog and the Scythians (while Jerome is perhaps the first to suggest that the Scythians discussed by Herodotus were to be identified with the Huns). For further translations of primary Latin sources on the Huns, see Colin Gordon, The Age of Attila: Fifth-Century Byzantium and the Barbarians (Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press, 1960), chapter 3 (pp. 57–111). Chalcocondylas makes an association between Tamerlane and the Massagetae, though his account stops short of stating that this was the conqueror’s ethnicity. See Nicolaos Nicoloudis, ed. and trans., Laonikos Chalkokondyles: A Translation and Commentary of the ‘Demonstration of Histories’ (Books I–III) (Athens: Historical Publications St. D. Basilopoulis, 1996), pp. 264 (Greek), 265 (English). For Filelfo us of the title, ‘Thomyris the Massagete,’ to describe Tamerlane. See Meserve, ‘Samarkand to Scythia,’ p. 33 (perhaps a confusion with Tomyris, queen of the Massagetae in the time of the Persian king Cyrus, as discussed by Herodotus). For a different view on the relationship of Tamerlane with the Massagetae, see Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits, fol. 631r. 105 Perhaps the most explicit comparison between Tamerlane and Attila can be found in Loys Le Roy, De la vicissitude ou variété des choses en l’univers, et concurrences des armes et des lettres par les premières et plus illustrés nations du monde (Paris: Pierre l’Huilier, 1575), fols. 108v–109r. See also Hallett-Smith, ‘Tamburlaine and the Renaissance,’ in Elizabethan Studies and other Essays in Honor of George F. Reynolds, vol. 2, no. 4 (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1945), pp. 126–31. 104

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ing of St Ursula and her ten thousand virgins.106 Both employed strategies of destruction and indiscriminate massacre following the siege of cities. One might even associate Tamerlane’s supposed veneration for the Byzantine empire with Marliani’s assertion that Attila retreated from Rome without sacking the city because of his respect for pope Leo.107 Most importantly, both Attila and [334] Tamerlane were believed to function as ‘scourges of God,’ the instruments of Divine Will sent to test the faithful and to punish both individual and collective sins.108 This theme is well developed in the literature about Tamerlane, and forms part of the explanation of his rapid ascent from his humble origins to that of great conqueror.109 It may be that the staring eyes, a common feature of the Giovio and Thevet portraits, are meant to function as a visual reference. The exaggerated irises and pupils seen in the Thevet portrait (and again in the 1662 Chalcocondylas), bring to mind Marlowe’s description of Tamerlane The Golden Legend, cited in D’Elia, ‘Genealogy and the limits of panegyric,’ p. 980. 107 For Tamerlane and the Byzantine empire, see: Meserve, ‘Samarkand to Scythia,’ pp. 33–34; Spandounes, Origins, pp. 23–24; Cantemir (Kantemir), Demetrie, The History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire. Part One: Containing the Growth of the Ottoman Empire from the Reign of Othman the Founder, to the Reign of Mahomet IV. That is, from the year 1300, to the Siege of Vienna, in 1683, trans. N. Tindall (London: James, John and Paul Knapton, 1734–35), p. 53, n. 18. For Attila and pope Leo, see D’Elia, ‘Genealogy and the limits of panegyric,’ p. 981. Marliani’s claim can also be found in the works of Late Antique authors such as Priscus of Panium. The relevant section of Priscus’ account is translated in Gordon, Age of Attila, p. 108. 108 For a discussion of the concept in relation to the Ottomans, see Kenneth Setton, ‘Lutheranism and the Turkish peril,’ Balkan Studies 3 (1962): 133– 68. For Tamerlane as a ‘scourge of God,’ see Battenhouse, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, passim. 109 For others, the rise was attributed to his character. For example, see George Whetstone, The English Myrror (London: G. Seton, 1586. Reprinted Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1973), p. 97. He remarks, ‘Tamburlaine being a poore labourer, or in best degree a meane souldiour, descended from the Parthians: notwithstanding the povertye of his parents: even from infancy he had a reaching and an imaginative mind, the strength and comelinesse of his body, aunswered the haughtiness of his heart.’ 106

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and, more pertinently, the oft-quoted episode of the Genoese merchant who questioned Tamerlane about his cruelty toward the inhabitants of Damascus. According to the account given by Fortescue in The Foreste (London 1571), the ruler: [335] answered in most furious wrath and ire, his face red and firy, his eyes flaming with burning sparckles, as if blasing out on euerie side. ‘Thou supposest me to be a man, but thou do much abuseth me, for none other am I, but the wrathe and vengeance of God, and ruine of the Worlde.’110

This quote seems to have particular relevance for the apocalyptic imagery seen in the sky behind Tamerlane in the 1662 edition of Chalcocondylas. We have seen already how Montaigne used the reports he had heard and read of Tamerlane to construct for himself a demonic form of the conqueror;111 presumably, the Thevet and Chalcocondylas portraits would have satisfied Montaigne’s mental image. Other visual inspiration could have been drawn from the works of historians and dramatists. What writers such as Cambini, Giovio and Mexía provided for the visual artist were vivid descriptions of the combination of human characteristics that formed the man. These writers also made comparisons with other famous military figures. For example, Cambini remarks, ‘those that have seen Tamerlano living, have said that he resembled much both in face, and manners, Anibal of Carthage, according to the opinion of diverse ancient writers.’112 Significantly, Hannibal is also compared to Attila the Hun by 110 Fortescue, The

Foreste, p. 70. A comparison may be drawn with Piccolomini’s diabolic description of Mehmed II in Oratio Aeneae de Constantinopolitana clade et bello contra Turcos congregando. He writes that Mehmed, ‘with his terrifying face, black eyes, terrible voice, [and] wicked nods commands murders, demands the slaughter of now one and now another, and washes his hands in the blood of Christians. He defiles and pollutes everything.’ According to the translation in D’Elia, ‘Genealogy and the limits of panegyric,’ pp. 988–89. 112 Cambini, Two Commentaries, fol. 5v. See also Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits, fol. 630v. Tamerlane is also compared to Alexander the Great by Fortescue in The Foreste (presumably following Mexìa). See Battenhouse, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, p. 165. 111

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Marliani in his oration of 1487.113 In this sense, the resultant images act as an exemplar of the martial virtues and barbarous cruelty rather than an accurate record of a specific ethnic type.114 Paolo Giovio Lomazzo (d. 1600), a follower of Leonardo, takes this idea further by suggesting that specific historical figures embody certain emotional states. The author writes that the faces of cruel men never possess ‘gratious mildnesse of countenance.’ His list of those who were ‘most famous for crueltie’ includes Cyrus, Herod, Medea, Attila, Barbarossa, Selim I and Tamerlane.115 Concerning the qualities of ‘roughnesse’ Lamazzo opines that this personality trait leads a man to slow and graceless movement, perversity and obstinacy. He notes that these characteristics were shared by the Tartars, Scythians, Goths, Vandals and Lombards (the last of which originated, according to the author, in deserts of Scythia). These tribes are regarded by Lomazzo as ‘void of pittie, or respect of humane or diuine affaires.’ He concludes that they were: rude men, bare-legged, fierce, without military arte, without furniture of warre, or horses, of sauage behauiour, with warlike countenances, dreadfull &c. as they write of Tamberlane that cruell Tartarian, of the Lestrigones whome Ariosto describeth, and of Polyphemus.116 113

Cited in D’Elia, ‘Genealogy and the limits of panegyric,’ p. 980. On Tamerlane as the embodiment of military prowess, self discipline, industry and liberality, see Battenhouse, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, pp. 139– 43. For a discussion of Marlowe’s use of Machiavellian notions of virtù in Tamburlaine the Great, see pp. 208–10. See also the discussion of the complex iconography of tyranny in printed books of this period in Avçioğlu, ‘Ahmed I.’ 115 I am citing the English translation Paolo Lomazzo, A Tracte containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge, trans. Richard Haydock (London: Ioseph Barnes, 1598. Reprinted Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1969), book II, chapter IX, 35. For a recent discussion of Leonardo’s interest in physiognomy and grotesque facial types, see Linda Wolk-Simon in Andrea Bayer, ed., Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 92– 99. 116 Lomazzo, Curious Paintinge, book II, chapter IX, p. 37 114

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These ideas also found in a later physiognomic text concerned with the characters of famous men by John Evelyn (d. 1706). The author remarks of sultan Süleyman I that he had, ‘all the Signs of Haughtiness and Cruelty; such repugnant Strokes, and Figures there are Ingraven in the Countenance.’117 In an earlier passage he lists other tyrants including Nero, Bayezid I, Tamerlane and Charles, Duke of Burgundy whose faces reflected their evil characters. He makes some interesting comments about specific facial features that are of relevance to the portraits of Tamerlane in Giovio and Thevet. Of nostrils, he writes, ‘if wide, Generous, Bold, and sometimes Pertinacious and Cruel.’ The wrinkles of the forehead also attract his attention, and he notes, ‘if curv’d and bending, of Wrath and Displeasure. If rising Arch-Wise, Pride and Disdain.’118 Comparable observations are made in general physiognomic texts of the seventeenth century. For example Marin Cureau de la Chambre (d. 1669) argues that it is possible to find evidence of courage in a man by comparing his features with those of a lion. He remarks that lions have ‘large mouths, harsh and thick hair, the forehead full of folds and contractions between the eyebrows, the extremities large and tough, the flesh hard and musculous, the voice big and resounding.119 The reference to the folds and contractions on the forehead and between the brows is particularly noticeable in the 117 John Evelyn, Numismata. A Discourse of Medals Ancient and Modern (London: Benj. Tooke, 1697), p. 306 (this, and the following quotes appear in chapter IX: ‘A Digression concerning Physiognomy,’ pp. 292–342). For his comments on Tartars and Scythians, see pp. 311–314. 118 Evelyn, Numismata, pp. 296, 297, 305. 119 La Chambre, The Art of how to know Men (London, 1665), p. 20. Cited in Peter Harrison, ‘Reading the passions: The Fall, the passions, and dominion over nature,’ in Stephan Gaukroger, ed., The soft Underbelly of Reason: The Passions in the seventeenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), p. 57. In writing of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, animals are commonly associated with specific passions. While lions are linked to courage, tigers and domestic cats are often believed to embody cruelty. A follower of Jacob Boehme notes that the Tartars are like cats and dogs because they remain blind for five days after birth. See Harrison, ‘Reading the passions,’ p. 55.

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Giovio/Stimmer portrait. La Chambre observes that, among other physical qualities, the brave man possesses ‘openness of nostrils and greatness, or wideness, of mouth.’120 Similar themes can be found in later physiognomic treatises.121 Clearly, caution should be exercised in associating these later works with images produced in earlier phases, but they perhaps give some clue as to how the faces in biographical dictionaries were designed to be read by their audiences.

CONCLUSION Demetrius Cantemir (d. 1723) provides an interesting account of Tamerlane commissioning a portrait. According to Cantemir a Persian prisoner saved himself from execution by demonstrating his skill as a painter. Tamerlane agreed to have his portrait drawn by the Persian. Cantemir’s account continues: The Painter, observing that Prince to be lame in his right thigh and blind of his left eye, drew him with this right leg bent or inclining, his left eye shut and a bow apply’d to the other, as if he had been shooting at game. Temurleng admiring the ingenuity of the Painter pardon’d him and set him at liberty.122 [336]

While Cantemir was certainly better informed about the origins and life of Tamerlane than most European historians of the sixteenth century, his account of the painting of the portrait should not be viewed in an uncritical fashion. Tamerlane was lame in his right leg (and had arrow wounds in his right arm), but there is no evidence La Chambre, How to know Men, p. 23. Cited in Harrison, ‘Reading the passions,’ p. 60. 121 For example, Lavater observes that foreheads with knots, protruberances, and angles denote qualities including vigour, harshness, oppression, and perseverance. His comments on the nose also bring to mind aspects of the Giovio and Thevet portraits. He writes, ‘Wherever I have seen a nose with a broad back, I have found it [to] appertain to an extraordinary man.’ See Johann Caspar Lavater, Physiognomy, or the corresponding Analogy between the Conformation of the Features and the ruling Passions of the Mind, trans. Samuel Shaw (London, 1800), pp. 51, 61. 122 This passage is quoted according to the English translation. See Cantemir, Growth and Decay, p. 53, n. 17. 120

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that he was blind in his right eye. Cantemir’s invention has no basis in surviving Timurid and Mughal paintings of Tamerlane, but makes sense when viewed in the context of conventions employed in Renaissance portraiture to conceal facial wounds and deformities.123 This example illustrates the central problem in the interpretation of the ‘portraits’ of Tamerlane reviewed in this chapter. These representations tell us little about how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European artists reacted to the visual cultures of Iran or Central Asia. Unlike the appearance in Europe of ‘Tartar’ imagery in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, or the portraits produced of Ottoman sultans from the sixteenth century onward, the representations of Tamerlane have only the faintest connection to eastern prototypes. Neither did they make use of such written descriptions or visual representations of ‘Tartars’ as existed in Europe at this time.124 Paolo Giovio may have possessed a Persian (or perhaps Turkish) painting he believed was a portrayal of Tamerlane, but this fact is less significant than is a consideration of the ways in which the Giovio portrait, and those occurring in other books and visual media, functioned in relation to the textual examination of the Central Asian conqueror. The uncertainty over the ethnicity and religious affiliation of Tamerlane is a product of both the limited sources of information and the selective approach to sources employed by European scholars from the mid-fifteenth century. For example, Piccolomini’s influential vision of Asian history and geography drew significant inspiration from authors like Strabo and Ptolemy, and, like many who came after him, Piccolomini tended to favour the interpretation of antique authorities over the observations of those late medieval travellers who possessed first-hand experience of the Middle East and Central Asia. In addition, sixteenth-century scholars seeking out data on the life of Tamerlane in Chalcocondylas, or other Greek historians, 123

For example, Piero della Francesca’s profile portrait of the one-eyed Federigo da Montefeltro (1465). 124 Though note the similarities of costume between some of the Tamerlane portraits and the image of the Russian Tartar soldier. See, for example, Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel, p. 173, fig. 89.

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would have discovered an Asia of the imagination, where recognisable ethnic or tribal groupings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Persians, Circassians, Chaghatay, and so on – coexisted with peoples of an ancient or mythic past, such as the Massagetae, Scythians, Hyrcanes, and Cadusians. In this context, it becomes easier to understand the common failure to apprehend the connection, admittedly somewhat complex, between Tamerlane and the great Mongol conquerors of the thirteenth century. (By contrast, the genealogical links were both understood and celebrated by Mughal rulers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.125) European historians were more comfortable comparing Tamerlane with such figures from the classical past as Cyrus, Darius, Alexander, Hannibal, and, most importantly, Attila the Hun. The considerable scholarly and artistic interest in Tamerlane in the period up to the end of the seventeenth century needs to be understood in the wider context of the evolving relations between Europe and the Ottoman empire. It is instructive to compare the description of Tamerlane in Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1776–78) with those found in the works of earlier historians.126 The greater accuracy of Gibbon’s account stems not only from the access he enjoyed to translated editions of Ibn ʿArabshah, Sharaf al-Din Yazdi and others, but also from the critical stance he takes to his sources.127 In this latter respect Gibbon

125

The Mughals traced themselves to Tamerlane and then as far back as Alan Go’a, the ancestress of the Mongol imperial family. See Irfan Habib, ‘Timur in the political tradition and historiography of Mughal India,’ in Maria Szuppe, ed., L’heritage timouride Iran-Asie Central-Inde, XV– XVIII siècles, Cahiers d’Asie Centrale 3–4 (1997): 297–312; Manz, ‘Tamerlane’s career,’ pp. 12–14. 126 His discussion of Tamerlane appears in Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1776–78) 6: chapter 45 (pp. 331–77). For Gibbon’s approach to Mongol history, see David Morgan, ‘Edward Gibbon and the East,’ Iran 33 (1995): 85–92. 127 For example, note his rejection of the legend about Bayezid and the iron cage (he also remarks that Voltaire was sceptical about this), and his com-

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has much more in common with modern historians than with those working in the previous two centuries. Another important factor contributing to Gibbon’s handling of the subject is historical. The Ottoman threat to Europe diminished significantly in the decades following the failed siege of Vienna in 1683 and, by Gibbon’s time, it was possible to view earlier events in Islamic history in a relatively dispassionate manner. By contrast, earlier treatments of Tamerlane were composed in the shadow of Turkish expansion. Aside from first-hand accounts written by the likes of Clavijo, de Mignanelli and Schiltberger, the earliest attempts to place Tamerlane into the political history of Asia occurred in the mid fifteenth century and this scholarly enterprise only increased in intensity during the following century. While Piccolomini was writing in the aftermath of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, later scholars such as Cambini and Giovio must have been acutely aware that the fall of Belgrade in 1521 and the island of Rhodes in 1522, and the siege of Vienna in 1529 did not represent the limit of Ottoman imperial aspirations in Europe. It can be seen, therefore, that the study of Tamerlane represented more than scholarly whim or simply a fascination with Asiatic exoticism. European [337] scholars were searching for ways to understand and combat the rise of Turkish power. The battle of Ankara offered a rare example of a victory over the Ottoman empire, and a comforting vision of Divine punishment meted out to a Muslim ruler by a godless barbarian. Tamerlane’s role as a ‘scourge of God’ lent some logic to the fact that he suffered no setback during his own career, for European readers could reassure themselves that, on his death, this scourge was cast into the fire of damnation. Some authors sought out figures who had opposed the Turks and compared their relative merits. For example, an anonymous text, The Conduct and Character of Nicholas Serini (London, 1664) discusses Tamerlane, George Scanderbeg and Nicholas Serini, stating, ‘the first an heathen born to punish Infidelity; the second a Papist born to vindicate Christianity; the third a Protestant, born as some think to reform the ment that Eastern sources should not be read uncritically because they often flatter their subjects. See Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 6: 352–54.

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world.’ Of Tamerlane the author continues, ‘we must needs confess that it is scarcely possible, lesse credible, that so despicable a vessel should contain so great a stocke of admirable actions, and thence a branch should have sprung, which did subvert the Turkish monarchy, and several other potentates.’128 Tamerlane develops a complex personality in the literature,129 and this personality was shaped to meet different requirements. In one of his earliest manifestations in Europe, he is depicted as a pagan converted to Christianity. The reference to the medieval legend of Prester John is clear, but by the second half of the fifteenth century a new theme is developed. The recasting of Tamerlane as a ‘Scythian’ was a means to locate him within an Antique tradition of barbarian conquerors including, most famously, Attila the Hun. It is striking, however, that there are relatively few illustrations of Tamerlane in the considerable body of printed books of the period (the costs of book production may provide some explanation for this). The woodcut illustrations discussed in this chapter consist of portraits and a narrow range of narrative scenes. Concerning the latter group, it is clear that many of the narrative themes go unexplored in the woodcuts. Certainly, concepts such as the ‘scourge of God’ are not easily transferred into visual form, though some artists did, at least, convey a sense of menace in their portraits. It was the text, however, that carried the main burden of informing and entertaining; images could be jettisoned leaving the reader’s imagination to fill the space. From the latter part of the seventeenth century the European apO. C., The Conduct and Character of Count Nicholas Serini, Protestant Generalissimo of the Auxilaries in Hungary, the most prudent and resolved Champion of Christendom (London: Samuel Speed, 1664). The latter quote is, in fact, a free translation from Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits, fol. 630r. The phrase ‘so despicable a vessel’ does not appear in the French edition of Thevet, though it is introduced into the English translations (Prosopographia) of 1667 and 1676. 129 An interesting comparison can be drawn with the representation of Shah Ismaʿil in European literature. See Palmira Brummett, ‘The myth of Shah Ismail Safavi: Political rhetoric and “divine” kingship,’ in John Tolan, ed., Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam: a Book of Essays, Garland Medieval Casebooks (New York and London: Garland, 1996), pp. 331–59. 128

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proach to Tamerlane divides into two branches. On one side scholars began to assemble an increasingly accurate reconstruction of the origins and life of the historical Temür, using the testimony of primary European sources and the translations of Arabic, Persian and Turkish chronicles.130 On the other side the Tamerlane of the Western imagination lived on in increasingly fanciful form in plays, operas, ballets, and popular expressions.131 Faint echoes of this mighty empire builder are to be found in Victorian Christmas pantomime,132 while his name still crops up in expected contexts through to the present day. 133

130

Although the modern historical assessment of his life and achievements might well be coloured by nationalistic or other cultural concerns. On the treatment of Tamerlane by Soviet historians and in post-Soviet Uzbekistan, see Manz, ‘Tamerlane’s career,’ pp. 15–24. 131 It has been related to me by Vassilios Baboulas that the name ‘Tamerlanos’ was still being used in rural Boeotia (Greece) into the mid twentieth century to describe a man of physical ugliness and criminal character. 132 For example, A. Henry, Timour the Tartar; or Harlequin and the beautiful Princess of Mingrelia, and fair Circassian: A Christmas Piece, of Nonsense (Middlesborough: no publisher, 1865). Also Gilbert Abbott À Beckett and Henry Wallack, Timour the Tartar: A melodramatic operatic burlesque Extravaganza in two Acts (1845. British Library: 42983). 133 For example, in the satirical film, War, Inc. (directed by Joshua Seftel, and released in 2008), the corporation responsible for running the war in a fictional Central Asian state is appropriately named, Tamerlane. More difficult to interpret is the decision to give the name Tamburlaine to a hotel in Cambridge, UK.

CHAPTER 10. BAYEZID’S CAGE: A RE-EXAMINATION OF A VENERABLE ACADEMIC CONTROVERSY1

The sixth-century version of the Liber Pontificalis contains a reference to a request made by a certain Lucius, a second-century king of ‘Britanio,’ to pope Eleutherius (r. c. 174–89). In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People Bede (d. 735), identifies this event as the first evidence for the conversion of the British to Christianity. He writes: ‘This pious request was quickly granted, and the Britons received the Faith and held it peacefully in all its purity and fullness until the time of the emperor Diocletian.’ Bede’s narrative was later embellished by Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. c. 1155) and became a central plank of English theological debates during the Reformation.2 1

Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula, ‘Bayezid’s Cage: A Reexamination of a venerable academic Controversy,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, ser. 3, 21.3 (2011): 239–60. The authors would like to thank Dimitris Kastritsis for sharing his expertise in early Ottoman historiography and for translating a passage from the chronicle of Ashikpashazade. Robert Irwin kindly read through a draft of this article and also permitted us to read the typescript of a lecture concerning European views on Oriental despotism. We are also indebted to Filiz Tütüncü for making a summary translation of an article by the Turkish scholar, Fuad Köprülü. 2 On the story of Lucius, and his importance in English theology, see Felicity Heal, ‘What can King Lucius do for you? The Reformation and the Early British Church,’ English Historical Review, 120.487 (June, 2005): 593–614. The quote from Bede appears on p. 595 (Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People I:4).

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The historicity of Lucius was finally demolished in the mid nineteenth century, but it was not until 1904 that the origins of the legend were established. A. von Harnack discovered that one of the sources for the Liber mentions Britium, the name of the fortress of Edessa ruled in the second century by Lucius Aelius Septimus Megas Abgar IX. He concluded that a later scribe of the Liber had mistakenly rendered ‘Britio’ in the source [240] text as ‘Britanio.’3 This example illustrates the fragile foundations on which remarkably tenacious legends can be built. Most of all, stories and legends persist because they remain meaningful for later audiences. In this chapter we discuss another story that has enjoyed a long life in scholarly literature, drama, and the visual arts: the alleged caging of the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I Yıldırım (r. 1389–1402 and d. 1403) by the Central Asian conqueror, Temür (r. 1370–1405, and otherwise known as Timur-i Lang, or in European sources as Tamerlane). A full analysis of the range of primary sources on this event – Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Greek, Latin, Italian, German, and Spanish to name just some of the languages employed by the relevant authors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – is beyond the scope of this chapter. Rather, our attention is devoted to the evolution of scholarly discourse on the existence (or otherwise) of the cage, with a particular focus on the period from the late seventeenth to the first half of the twentieth century. Significant are the sources available to the scholars who wrote on this subject and the ways in which they exploited them. Like the example of king Lucius, scholarly debate around the captivity of Bayezid must be located within a larger historical framework, particularly the changing relations between the polities of Christian Europe and the Ottoman empire between the second half of the fifteenth century (following the fall of Constantinople in 1453) and the nineteenth century.

3

Heal, ‘King Lucius,’ p. 614. Citing A. Von Harnack, ‘Der Brief des britischen Königs Lucius an den Papst Eleutherus,’ Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 1 (1904): 909–16.

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HISTORICAL EVENTS AND LATER REPRESENTATIONS On July 28 1402 (19 Dhu al-Hijja 804) the armies of sultan Bayezid and Temür met on the field of Çubuk Ovasi near to Ankara. Marking the culmination of a long-standing dispute over the control of the former territories of the Rumi Saljuqs, the battle of Ankara had been preceded by Temür’s conquest of the Anatolian city of Sivas in 1400 and Bayezid’s retaliatory strike against Erzincan. Relations between the two men had not been improved by a bitter exchange of embassies in the previous years and by Bayezid’s support of the Black Sheep Turkomen. True to his epithet, Yıldırım (‘the thunderbolt’), Bayezid appears to have rushed to battle without proper preparation of his forces. Arriving at Çubuk Ovasi he found Temür’s engineers had dammed off the available water and had built substantial ramparts around their own positions. Desertions further weakened Bayezid’s position, and the final result of the battle was a decisive defeat for the Ottoman army with many thousands of soldiers left dead on the battle field.4 The battle of Ankara is one of the most important conflicts of the late Medieval period; the impact of the battle can be detected in the political history of the region in the decades after 1402. Some of the more immediate effects of the battle can be briefly summarised: first, sultan Bayezid was captured following the battle and died in captivity in 1403; second, the removal of the sultan sparked off a civil war between his sons that was only resolved with the accession of Mehmed I in 1413; third, the Ottoman empire itself was for several decades [241] greatly reduced in the extent of its territories and its political influence; and fourth, the defeat of the Ottoman army re-

For a description of this battle, see: Herbert Gibbons, The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire: A History of the Osmanlis up to the Death of Bayezid I (1300–1403) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916), pp. 249–54. On this conflict and the wider military engagement between Bayezid and Temür, see MarieMathilde Alexandrescu-Dersca, La campagne de Timur en Anatolie, Publicatiunile Institutului de Turcologie 1 (Bucharest: Imprimeria Nationala, 1942).

4

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lieved the siege of Constantinople and ensured the survival of the diminutive Byzantine empire for another half a century.5 Despite the existence of a wide array of primary textual sources in Persian, Arabic, Ottoman Turkish and European languages, there remains considerable uncertainty concerning what actually transpired when the defeated sultan was brought to the camp of Temür in the evening after the battle. Persian, Turkish and Greek sources concur that the sultan was bound in some manner, and it seems likely that Temür ordered that these bonds be removed while he conducted an interview with his captive. Another recurrent theme is that Bayezid, heedless of his precarious situation, answered the questions posed to him in a haughty manner that likely displeased Temür. While it had been the latter’s practice to seek oaths of submission and re-establish vanquished princes as Timurid vassals in their former territories, it is clear that Bayezid was not released from captivity. He died some months later in 1403 and, on the request of his sons, his body was transported to a mausoleum in Bursa. We will return to the accounts of Bayezid’s captivity written by Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Greek later in the chapter, but first it is necessary to examine the ways in which this event was represented in Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.6 The earliest European accounts, which include those of Johannes Schiltberger (d. after 1429) who was captured by Tamerlane’s army before being allowed to return to his native Germany and Jean Boucicault (d. 1421), governor of Genoa in the early years of the fifteenth century, provide little detail concerning the treatment of the Ottoman sultan beyond the facts of his captivity and death. Neither mentions On the Ottoman civil war, see Dimitris Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid: Empire Building and Representation in the Ottoman Civil War of 1402– 1413, The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage 38 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007). On the immediate aftermath of the battle of Ankara, see pp. 44–78. 6 For an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources dealing with the life of Temür, see: Michele Bernardini, ‘The historiography concerning Timur-i Lang. A bibliographical survey,’ in Italo-Uzbek Scientific Cooperation in Archaeology and Islamic Studies: An Overview, ed. Samuela Pagani (Rome: Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 2003), pp. 137–196. 5

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the employment of a cage to imprison Bayezid.7 The ambassador of Henry of Castille, Ruy González di Clavijo (d. 1412), who visited Tamerlane in Samarqand in September–November 1404, has nothing to add on the existence or otherwise of a cage. Clavijo was in Constantinople soon after the return of Manuel II Palaeologos (r. 1391–1425) from his European trip in July 1403. Clavijo met both the emperor and members of the Byzantine court during this visit.8 Had reports of the caging of Bayezid have reached Constantinople by the time of Clavijo’s visit one might have expected him to have mentioned it. Notably, none of the Greek primary sources written in the first decade of the fifteenth century contains a reference to the captivity of the Ottoman sultan.9 [242] It is clear, however, that more graphic stories were circulating in Europe in the first half of the fifteenth century because they appear in sources such as the Chronicon Tarvisinum and the letters of the Italian humanist, Poggio Bracciolini (d. 1459) in his De Varietate Fortunae. Probably composed around the time of the death of pope Martin V (r. 1417–31), Bracciolini’s text makes the following comment about the treatment of Bayezid: ‘caveaque in modum fere inclusum per omnem Asiam circumtulit.’10 More influential than eiJohannes Schiltberger, The Bondage and Travels of Johannes Schiltberger, a Native of Bavaria, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1396–1427, trans. J. Buchan Telfer with notes by P. Bruun (London: Hakluyt Society, 1879), pp. 20– 21 (cap. 12–13); Boucicault, Histoire du Marêschal de Boucicault, ed. Guillaume de Voys (La Haye, 1711), pp. 107–109; Joseph Delaville Le Roulx, La France en Orient au XIVe Siècle: Expéditions du Maréchal Boucicaut (Paris: Ernest Thorin, 1886), p. 394. 8 Ruy Gonzalez di Clavijo, Embassy to Tamerlane, 1403–1406, trans. Guy Le Strange (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1928), pp. 24, 129–37. On the last years of Bayezid’s siege of Constantinople, see: Dionysios Hadjopoulos, ‘Le premier siège de Constantinople par les Ottomans de 1394 à 1402’ (PhD dissertation, University of Montreal, 1980), pp. 184–207. 9 This material has been analysed in a paper by Evanthia Baboula entitled, ‘Greek sources on the life of Tamerlane,’ delivered at the Byzantine Studies conference at the University of Toronto in 2008. This paper is being prepared for publication. 10 Chronicon Tarvisinum = Chronica composita ab eloquentissimo viro ser Andrea de Redusiis de Quero cancellario communis Tarvisii, cols. 741–866 7

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ther of these, however, was the account of the fate of the Ottoman sultan in Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini’s (pope Pius II, r. 1458–64), Asiae Europaeque elegantissima descriptio, composed in the late 1450s and early 1460s and first published in Paris in 1509.11 Piccolomini brought together the key elements that were to remain fundamental to the European narrative for some two centuries: first, the sultan (often known in European writings as Bajazet) was placed in an iron cage; second, he was forced, like a dog, to eat scraps from under the table of Tamerlane; and third, Bayezid was employed as the ‘Scythian’ ruler’s mounting block when the latter got onto his horse.12 Further elaborations can be found in later histories such as in: Ludovico Muratori, ed., Rerum Italicarum scriptores 19 (Milan: Ex Typographia Societas Palatinaeae, 1731), see cols. 800–801; Poggio Bracciolini, De varietate fortunae, ed. and commentary by Outi Merisalo, Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian Toimituksia. Annales Academicae Scientiarum Fennicae. Series B, no. 265 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1993), book 1, ll. 643–44 (p. 108). The Vitae Pontificum of Bartolomeo Platini (Sacchi), first published in Venice in 1479, mentions that Bayezid was led in chains but does not refer to a cage. See: The Lives of the Popes from the Time of Our Saviour Jesus Christ to the Reign of Sixtus IV, trans. Paul Rycaut (London: Christopher Wilkinson, 1685), p. 335. Another early source detailing the captivity and mistreatment of the Ottoman sultan (but without mention of the cage) is: Annales estenses = Chronica nova illustris et magnifici Domini Nicolai Marchionis Estensis & c., cols. 905–1096 in Muratori, ed., Rerum Italicarum scriptores 18 (1731). See col. 974. 11 Cosmographie Pii Papae in Asiae et Europae eleganti descriptione (Paris: Geoffroy Tory and Henri Estienne, 1509). 12 The two relevant sections appear in ‘Asia’ cap. 30 (‘Regem omnium potentissimum Pazaitem [Bayezid] Turcorum dominum cum pari equitum numero et magnis peditum copiis fineis suos tutantem apud Armenos prelio superatum ducentis millibus hominum interfectis vivum caepit, caueque in modum fere inclusum per omnem Asiam circumtulit egregium et admirandum humanarum rerum spectaculum’) and ‘Europe’ cap. 4 (‘Pazaitem cathena vinctum prandens quasi canem sub mensa sua comedere iussit, ascensurus equum eo tanquam scabello usus est’). See: Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Opera quae extant omnia (Basle: Henrich Petri, 1571), pp. 313, 394– 96. The readings given above diverge somewhat from the 1571 edition. See Merisalo, ‘Introduzione: Il De varietate fortunae,’ in Bracciolini, Fortunae, p. 194.

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the history of the Turks composed by Theodore Spandounes (Spandugino, d. after 1538). His first version of his history was written in Italian and completed in 1509. A French translation by Balarin de Raconis was published in 1519. In this version Spandounes alleges the use of chains of gold and that the sultan was employed as Temür’s mounting block.13 It is only in later revisions of the text that Spandounes adds the reference to the cage.14 He also includes a lurid description of the public humiliation of Bayezid’s wives and concubines by Temür (Sachatai): When Sachatai got back to ‘Scytia’ he staged a magnificent triumph for his victory over Bayezid and a great assembly attended by almost all of the lords and princes of Scytia; and the cage containing Bayezid was brought in. Then [Sachatai] did something very out of keeping with his grandeur and noble character. He had Ildrim’s wife, who was also his prisoner brought in and he [243] caused her clothes to be ripped down to her navel so that she showed all her pudenda; and he made her wait upon and serve food to his guests. Ildrim, seeing his wife thus shamed, bewailed his fortune and wanted to kill himself at once. But he had no knife or other means. So he banged his head against the iron bars of his cage so hard that he dispatched himself miserably.15

Constantine Mikhailović of Ostrovica (d. after 1563), who had served in the Ottoman army and spoke Turkish, also alleges that Despina was forced to serve drinks to the guests of Temür as a means Theodore Spandouginos, La genealogie du grand Turc a present regnant (Paris: François Regnault, 1519), chapter 5 (unpaginated text). He writes: ‘et tint cestuy Aldrin tout le temps de sa Vie enchaisne de chaisnes dor: & a chascune fois quil vouloit monter a cheval ou en son chariot – le faisoit conduyre devant luy / & en duy mettant le pied sur lespaulle sailloit.’ 14 On the history of the text, see: Donald Nicol’s introduction in Theodore Spandounes, On the Origins of the Ottoman Empire, trans. Donald Nicol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. xvii–xviii. His two revisions were completed in 1531 and 1538. Printed editions of the 1538 recension were published in Lucca (1550) and Florence (1551). 15 According to Donald Nicol’s translation in: Spandounes, On the Origins of the Ottoman Empire, pp. 23–24. 13

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to humiliate sultan Bayezid. Mikhailović claims that the sultan poisoned himself using his own finger ring. No reference is made to the use of a cage, and, in common with the Persian sources, Mikhailović’s account indicates that Temür was upset by Bayezid’s suicide.16 It is worth emphasising that, aside from early primary sources such as Schiltberger, Clavijo, Boucicault, Jean of Sultaniyya (fl. late 14th to early 15th century), and Stefan Lazarević, Despot of Serbia (r. 1402–27), the European authors mentioned above can hardly be viewed as reliable sources on Timurid or Ottoman history.17 The last generation of Byzantine historians – Laonicus Chalcocondylas (d. 1490), Michael Ducas (d. c. 1470), and George Phrantzes (also Sphrantzes, d. c. 1478) appear to have been better informed about Turkish history than their contemporaries in the Catholic West, probably as the result of direct or indirect access to primary sources in Turkish, Persian or perhaps Arabic.18 By contrast, only one West16

The Czech text was first published in Litomyasl in 1565 under the title, Historya neb Kronyka Turecka od Michala Konstantina z Ostrowicze. For an English translation, see Konstantin Mikhailović (Constantine of Ostrovica), Memoirs of a Janissary, trans. Benjamin Stolz with historical notes by Svat Soucek, Michigan Slavic Translations 3 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975). The relevant passage appears on p. 53. Temür’s reaction to the sultan’s suicide is recorded thus, ‘The Great Khan, seeing such an evil deed as this, that he had poisoned himself, said in their language: “Yaban kaltil gendizina kimisstur,” which means “A crazy man, that he should take his own life. I meant to let him go back home honorably, and I am sorry that he put an end to himself so vilely.” Then the Great Khan let all his men go, and having respectfully dispatched Despina, had her accompanied all the way back to Brusa, to her land. Thus ended the Turkish war with the Tartars.’ 17 For the account of Jean of Sultaniyya, see: H. Moranvillé, ‘Mémoire sur Tamerlan et sa cour, par un Dominicain, en 1403,’ Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 55.5 (September–October 1894), pp. 433–64 (esp. pp. 458–59). On Stefan Lazarević, see: Lebensbeschreibung des Despoten Stefan Lazarević con Konstantin dem Philosophen, ed. Maximilian Braun, Slavo-Orientalia. Monographienreihe über die Wechselbeziehungen zwischen der slavischen und orientalischen Welt 1 (Wiesbaden and ‘S-Gravenhage: Otto Harrassowitz and Mouton and Co., 1956), pp. 16–21. 18 For a brief summary of the writings on Turkish history by the last generation of Byzantine historians, see Sir Steven Runciman, ‘Byzantine historians

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ern European scholar of the sixteenth century, Johnannes Leunclavius (d. 1593), is known to have consulted Turkish chronicles (see below). A few scholars of Ottoman history – most notably Paolo Giovio (d. 1552) – tried to remedy their lack of knowledge of Middle Eastern written sources by seeking out oral testimony of those who had travelled to the Middle East and visual sources (such as the painted portraits of sultans produced in Turkey).19 Where these (often highly inaccurate) European histories are more valuable, [244] however, is in gauging the perceptions of the Islamic world among the literate elite of Europe during the period of the great military successes of the Ottoman empire. Clearly, from its first appearance in the second quarter of the fifteenth century the idea that Bayezid had been confined in a cage proved highly attractive to Europeans as they looked anxiously toward the seemingly inexorable expansion of the Turkish polity. The sufferings of Bayezid also found expresion in Europe in the visual and dramatic arts from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century. While most printed books on Turkish history were unillustrated, woodcut prints showing the fate of the Ottoman sultan apand the Ottoman Turks,’ in Historians of the Middle East, eds. Bernard Lewis and Peter Holt (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 271–76. On the discussion of Temür with a particular emphasis on the writings of Chalcocondylas, see : Nicolaos Nicoloudis, ‘Byzantine historians on the wars of Timur (Tamerlane) in Central Asia and the Middle East,’ Journal of Oriental and African Studies 8 (Athens, 1996), pp. 83– 94. 19 On the study of Islamic history in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, see: Vernon Parry, ‘Renaissance historical literature in relation to the Near and Middle East (with special reference to Paolo Giovio),’ in Lewis and Holt, eds, Historians of the Middle East, pp. 277–89; Linda Klinger, ‘The Portrait Collection of Paolo Giovio,’ 2 vols. (PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1991); Margaret Meserve, ‘From Samarkand to Scythia: Reinventions of Asia in Renaissance geography and political thought,’ in Pius II, ‘el-più expeditivo pontifice’: Selected Studies on Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405–1464), ed. Zweder von Martels and Arjo Vanderjagt (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), pp. 13–39; Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

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pear in works such as Philip Lonicer’s Chronicon Turcicorum (1578). Depictions of the capture and caging of Bayezid were painted for the Neues Palais in Potsdam (by Andrea Celesti) and Schloss Eggenberg in Graz (by Carl Franz Caspar or Andreas Raemblmayer). Tapestries were also produced on these themes in Antwerp during the seventeenth century.20 In Tamburlaine the Great, first performed in 1587, the dramatist, Christopher Marlowe (d. 1593) made his Bayezid function as the footstool to the Scythian ruler’s throne. The confrontation between Temür and Bayezid was explored by later playwrights, most successfully by Nicholas Rowe (d. 1718) in his Tamerlane, a Tragedy (first performed in 1701). Robert Irwin notes that Rowe’s Tamerlane was performed annually on 5 November (the date of William of Orange’s landing in England) until 1815. Thus, for Protestant English audiences the glorious Tamerlane stood for William III (r. 1688–1702) while Bayezid represented Catholic monarchy – the French ruler, Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715), and presumably also the deposed Stuart king James II (r. 1685–88).21 Several operas and even a ballet were also composed on the life of Temür and his conflict with Bayezid.22 Clearly most of this literary and visual material is pure invention, and careful examination can reveal the initial points of reference. For instance, in about 260 CE the Roman emperor Valerian (r. 20 For references to these works, see: Walter Denny, ‘Images of Turks in the European imagination,’ in Walter Denny et al., Court and Conquest: Ottoman Origins and the Design of Handel’s Tamerlano at the Glimmerglass Opera (Kent OH: The Kent State University Museum, 1999), pp. 3–18 (esp. pp. 6–9); Marcus Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel: Representations of Tamerlane in printed books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,’ Muqarnas 23 (2006): 337–38 n. 3. 21 Robert Irwin, ‘Oriental despotism in eighteenth-century European literature.’ Unpublished typescript. On this theme, see also Michael Curtis, Orientalism and Islam: European Thinkers on Oriental Despotism in the Middle East and India (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). On Rowe’s play, see: Donald Clark, ‘The source and characterization of Nicholas Rowe’s Tamerlane,’ Modern Language Notes 65.3 (March 1950): 145–52. 22 Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel,’ p. 317.

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253–60) suffered the indignity of becoming the mounting block of the Persian shah Shapur (r. 240–72). The event can be seen on a monumental rock relief at Naqsh-i Rustam in Iran, but more relevant for the present purposes is the fact that the fate of Valerian became, for Christian moralists from Lactantius (d. c. 325) in the fourth century through to Giovanni Boccaccio (d. 1375) in his De Casibus virorum illustrium (1355–74), a symbol of both the transience of earthly power and [245] Divine retribution for the Roman emperor’s treatment of Christians.23 This event is recorded in visual form in illustrated manuscripts and printed versions of Boccaccio’s text (and the popular translation by John Lydgate entitled, The Fall of Princes, completed in 1438–39).24 Marlowe’s vision of Bayezid as the footstool to the throne appears earlier in the woodcut frontispiece to the 1570 edition of John Foxe’s (d. 1587) Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days (also known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs) in which Henry VIII (r. 1509–47) makes similar use of pope Clement VII (r. 1523–34).25 While it is possible to strip away much of the extraneous detail from these European accounts, three accusations – that the sultan was imprisoned in an iron cage, that his harem were subjected to public indignities in his presence, and that his humiliations caused him to commit suicide – are not easily explained away simply as literary references to earlier events. The first of these, Bayezid’s imprisonment in a cage, has stimulated the greatest amount of academic controversy from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century. The next section of this chapter establishes the scholarly dramatis personae and how the debate over the existence of the cage has Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum, ed. and trans. J. L. Creed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 5:2-4; Giovanni Boccaccio, De casibus virorum illustribus 8:2. For an illustration of the relief at Naqsh-i Rustam, see: Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity: From Marcus Aurielius to Muhammad (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971), p. 19, no. 11. 24 For Lydgate’s discussion of the fate of emperor Valerian, see: Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, ed. Henry Bergen, 4 vols (Washington DC: Carnegie Institute of Washington Publications, 1923–27), 3: 835–37. 25 Illustrated in Michael Hattaway, ed., A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), p. 369, pl.2. 23

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evolved over this long period. The final section re-examines some of the oft quoted primary sources in Greek and Arabic. We state from the outset that, despite the confident assertions made by numerous scholars, we do not believe that the sources allow for a definitive resolution concerning the existence or otherwise of the cage. Of greater interest is the issue of the precise sources and methods employed by the many historians who concerned themselves with the fate of the Ottoman sultan.

FROM D’HERBELOT TO KÖPRÜLÜ: CHANGING ACADEMIC VIEWPOINTS ON BAYEZID’S CAGE Modern studies of Ottoman and Timurid history exhibit little interest in the alleged caging of Bayezid I by Temür. Passing over the question in silence, they tend to record simply that the sultan died in captivity.26 There are good reasons for this lack of elaboration; it is the fact that Bayezid’s capture resulted in a debilitating civil war that is of primary significance in the historical record. Today it is left to more journalistic books such as Justin Marozzi’s Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (2004) to revive the question of the cage.27 The point here is not to denigrate a readable and competent piece of popular history, but to establish that the sources carefully marshalled by Marozzi in support of his [246] interpretation (he concludes that the cage was a fiction) are largely the same as those 26 For example, see: Stanford Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Volume 1: Empire of the Gazis. The Rise of the Ottoman Empire, 1280–1808 (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 35; Colin Imber, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1481 (Istanbul: The Isis Press, 1990), pp. 54–55; idem, The Ottoman Empire, 1300–1650: The Structure of Power (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 17; Beatrice Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 73. 27 Justin Marozzi, Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (Cambridge MA and New York: Da Capo Press, 2004), pp. 335–37. The question of the cage is also dealt with in Patrick John Balfour (Lord Kinross), The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977), p. 76.

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employed by Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (d. 1856) in the first volume of Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches (1827). Many of these arguments are advanced earlier by Edward Gibbon (d. 1794) in the final volume of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1778). In turn, both relied upon the collation of written sources presented in Barthélemy d’Herbelot de Molainville’s (d. 1695) Bibliothèque orientale, ou dictionaire universel (published in 1697 having been completed by Antoine Galland [d. 1715], the famous translator of the Thousand and One Nights). D’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque orientale makes a good starting point for an analysis of the scholarly debate over the caging of Bayezid.28 The scope of d’Herbelot’s reading of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish sources far exceeded that of any previous reference work on Islamic history. In the introductory section to his encyclopaedia he claims to have consulted the writings of four key authors on the life of Temür: Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ʿArabshah (d. 1450), Muhammad ibn Khavand Shah (Mirkhvand, d. 1498), Ghiyath al-Din Khvandamir (d. 1534 or 37), and Sharaf al-Din ʿAli Yazdi (d. 1454). Of these, only Ibn ʿArabshah’s Kitāb al-ʿajāʼib al-maqdūr fī akhbār Timūr was available in printed form (both in Arabic and French translation).29 It is also evident that he is aware of some of the Turkish histories of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, although he does not name them in the list of authors he had consulted. D’Herbelot mentions 28 Edward Pococke (d. 1691) should perhaps be credited as the first true Orientalist to concern himself with the caging of Bayezid, though his comments in the supplement to his history of Barhebraeus are not extensive. See: Edward Pococke, ed., Supplementum historiae dynastiarum in quo historiae orientalis series a Gregorii Abu’l-Faragii (Oxford: Henricus Hall and Richard Davis, 1663), p. 45, no. 4. On the history of European and North American Orientalist scholarship, see: Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies (London: Allen Lane, 2006, reprinted Penguin Books, 2007). 29 The two editions of Ahmad b. Muhammad ibn ʿArabshah’s text are: Ahmedis Arabsiadae: Vitae et rerum gestarum Timuri, qui vulgo Tamerlaini dicitur historia, ed. Jacobus Golius (Leiden: Elseviriana, 1636); L’histoire du grand Tamerlan, trans. Pierre Vattier (Paris: Remy Soubret, 1658).

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the captivity of Bayezid briefly in the entry devoted to Temür (Timour), but the bulk of his comments on this question appear in the entry entitled, ‘Baiazid, ou Abu Iezid Ben Morad Gazi.’30 Without giving specific citations to his sources, d’Herbelot assembles a reconstruction of the encounter between Bayezid and Temür in which the latter treats his captive with respect, offering him a meal in his tent. They have a conversation that encompasses such issues as the government of empires and the vissicitudes of fate, that finishes with Temür posing a question. D’Herbelot writes: …But having finished the conversation with a request as to what would have been the treatment he would have received had he fallen into the same disgrace; this Sultan, who was naturally shy, replied that he would have locked him [Temür] in an iron cage, and carried him about in this state among all the provinces of his empire. The victor, surprised by the brutality of his prisoner’s response, took at the same time the resolution to treat him as he [Temür] would have been treated had he fallen into his [Bayezid’s hands],…31 [247]

According to d’Herbelot’s account, Temür was unable to take Bayezid all the way to Samarqand because of the latter’s death in 804 (this should be 805). D’Herbelot concludes by noting that some Turkish historians claim the sultan died by his own hand. As already noted, Leunclavius was able to exploit these sources with the aid of a 30 Barthélemy d’Herbelot, Bibliothèque orientale ou dictionaire universel (Paris: La Compagnie des Libraires, 1697), pp. 175–76 (Baiazid), pp. 877–88 (Timour). 31 D’Herbelot, Bibliothèque orientale, p. 176: ‘…mais ayant terminé la conversation par une demande qu’il lui fit sur le traitement qu’il auroit reçu de lui en cas qu’il fût tombé dans la même disgrace; ce Sultan, qui étoit d’un naturel farouche, lui répondit qu’il auroit enfermé dans la cage de fer, et fait porter en cet état dans toutes les provinces de son Empire. Le vainqueur surpris d’une réponse si brutale de son prisonnier, prit même temps la resolution de lui faire le même traitement qu’il auroit reçu de lui, s’il etoit tombé entre ses mains,…’

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translator, one Johannes Gaudier (known as ‘Spiegel’) in his Annales sultanorum Othmanidarum (1588). Leunclavius also claims considerable familiarity with Medieval Greek histories.32 He records the conversation between Temür and Bayezid in similar terms to d’Herbelot, and his version was then repeated in Jean-Jacques Boissard’s (d. 1602), Vitae et Icones sultanorum (1596) and Richard Knolles’ (d. 1610) The generall Historie of the Turkes (1603).33 The first of the major Persian historians of this period to be made widely available to European scholars was Sharaf al-Din ʿAli Yazdi. His panegyric biography of Temür, the Ẓafarnāma, was translated into French by Alexandre Pétis de la Croix (d. 1751) and published under the title, Histoire de Timur-bec in 1722. An English translation of this edition appeared in the following year.34 According to Yazdi, Bayezid was brought as a prisoner with his hands tied into the presence of Temür. The latter was touched by pity and compassion, and ordered the sultan’s hands to be freed before they started their conversation. Temür’s gracious manner led Bayezid to admit the fault of his actions, and the remainder of Yazdi’s account emphasises the good treatment of Bayezid prior to his death from Johannes Leunclavius, Annales sultanorum Othmanidarum (Frankfurt Andrea Wecheli, Claudium Marnium, and Ioannem Aubriam, 1588), pp. 24–25. His Greek sources are listed in the last page of the index (unpaginated). He gives the following list: ‘Chronica diuersa manuscripta, Graeca, Latina, Germanica,’ Emanuel Musicius Atheniensis, Georgius Hustius Illyricus, Georgius Pachymerius, Nicephorus Gregoras, Nicetas Choniates, Nicolaus Nicolaides Delphinas, Nicolaus Sophianus, “Origines vrbis Constantinopolitanae liber m.s.,” Petrus Bizarus, Philippus Callimachus, “Praetor Graeciae, manuscr.,” Thomas Spanduginus Cantacuzenus, Zonaras, Zosimus Comes, Zygomalas Protonotarius Graecus.’ 33 Jean-Jacques Boissard, Vitae et icones sultanorum Turcicorum (Frankfurt: Theodor de Bry, 1596), f. 13r; Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes (London: Adam Islip, 1603), pp. 220–21. 34 Sharaf al-Din ʿAli Yazdi, Histoire de Timur-bec, connu sous le nom du grand Tamerlan, empereur des Mogols et Tartares, trans. Alexandre Pétis de la Croix. 4 vols. (Paris: André Cailleau, 1722). The English translation of the French edition was made by John Darby under the title, The History of Timur-Bec, known by the Name of Tamerlain the Great, Emperor of the Moguls and Tartars (London: J. Darby, 1723). 32

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apoplexy (an event that apparently much affected Temür as he had intended to replace the Turkish sultan on his throne).35 Pétis de la Croix was well aware of the stories regarding the caging of Bayezid. Adopting a more critical stance to the available Islamic sources than one sees in D’Herbelot’s entry on Bayezid and the works of other earlier writers, Pétis de la Croix remarks in the introduction to his translation: As Timur-Bec had defeated the Turks and Arabs from Syria, and he had even taken the Sultan Bajazet, it is small wonder he was mistreated by the Historians of these Nations, who in defiance of truth, and against the dignity of history, have fallen into [treating] this subject with great excess. We see by the lecture of Condemir, and of many other historians, that everything they have written of the origin and adventures of Timur-Bec, are fables and that their animosity against the Prince made them invent [these]. So to destroy completely the fable, we will attach [to him] the name of Timur-Bec, and lose that of Tamerlane, which has been adopted.36

The person identified as ‘Condemir’ in this passage is Demetrie Cantemir, Voivode of Moldavia (d. 1723), whose influential The History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire was translated into English in 1734–35. Cantemir follows the prevalent view that

35 Yazdi, Histoire

de Timur-bec, 4: 65 (chapter LX). Pétis de la Croix’s introduction in Yazdi, Histoire de Timur-bec, I: xvii– xviii: ‘Comme Timur-Bec avoit vaincu des Turcs & les Arabes de Syrie, qu’il avoit pris même le Sultan Bajazet, il ne faut pas s’étonner qu’il ait été maltraité pas les Historiens de ces Nations, lesquels au mépris de la verité, & contre la dignité de l’histoire, sont tombez sur ce sujet dans de grand excés. On voit par la lecture de Condemir, & de quantité d’autres Historiens, que tout ce qu’ils ont écrit de l’origine & des avantures de Timur-Bec, sont des fables, que leur animosité contre se Prince leur a fait inventer. Ainsi pour détruire entierement la fable, nous nous attacherons au nom de Timur-Bec, & laisserons celui de Tamerlan qu’elle avoit adopté.’

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Bayezid had been confined in a cage.37 The footnote to the paragraph quoted above Pétis de la Croix’s offers further thoughts on the cage: These are passionate historians who invented the fable of the iron cage, in which they said the victor had placed Bajazet. And it was followed by several European, but we see the fallacy [in the writing of] our author (Yazdi), who is contemporary, and reports to the contrary, that Timur-Bec always treated Bajazet as his equal, and that he restored to him all the honours due to the most important kings.38

Additional support for Pétis de la Croix’s positive assessment of Temür’s conduct was provided later in David Price’s (d. 1835), Chronological Retrospect, or Memoirs of the principal Events of Mahommedan History (1811–21), a three-volume work largely based on translations of Mirkhvand’s vast history, Tārīkh-i rawẓat al-ṣafā.39 Differing only in relatively minor details (such as the cause of sultan’s Demetrie Cantemir (Kantemir), The History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire. Part One: Containing the Growth of the Ottoman Empire from the Reign of Othman the Founder, to the Reign of Mahomet IV. That is, from the year 1300, to the Siege of Vienna, in 1683, trans. N. Tindall (London: James, John and Paul Knapton, 1734–35). On the reign of Bayezid, see part one, pp. 46–57. Cantemir’s discussion of the cage appears on p. 55. 38 Pétis de la Croix’s introduction in Yazdi, Histoire de Timur-bec, I: xvii note (a): ‘Ce sont ces Historiens passionez qui ont inventé la Fable de la cage de fer, dans laquelle ils disent que le Vainqueur fit mettre Bajazet & il ont été suivis par plusieurs Européens: mais on en voit la fausseté dans notre auteur, qui est contemporain, & qui rapporte au contraire, que Timur-Bec traita toujours Bajazet comme son égal, & qu’il lui fit rendre tous les honneurs qui sont dús aux plus grands Rois.’ Elsewhere Pétis de la Croix notes his awareness of the French translation (by Pierre Vattier) of Ibn ʿArabshah. He also notes that he became aware of Clavijo’s work only after he had completed his translation. 39 Muhammad b. Khvand Shah b. Mahmud (Mirkhvand), Chronological Retrospect or Memoirs of the principal Events of Mahommedan History, from the Death of the Arabian Legislator, to the Accession of the Emperor Akbar, and the Establishment of the Moghul Empire in Hindustaun, trans. David Price, 3 vols. (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1811–21). The relevant events appear in vol. 3.1: 393–423. 37

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death from asthma and inflammation of the throat) from Yazdi’s version of events, Price’s collation of Mirkhwand and other Persian authors appears to have been little noted by the nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars who have dealt with Bayezid’s cage. This oversight may have been because Yazdi’s biography was so entrenched in European scholarship by this time, and was perhaps also due to the fact that in the Chronological Retrospect it is very difficult to prise apart the original translations from the translator’s commentary. Mirkhvand is now regarded as an important source on the life of Temür because of his use of first-hand testimony. In this respect, his assertions – based on the testimony of an eye-witness, Sayyid Ahmad Tarkhan, brother-in-law of Shahrukh (r. 1405–47)40 – that Bayezid was brought bound into Temür’s presence, but that he was subsequently unmanacled and never confined in a cage carry considerable weight.41 An [249] edition of Khvandamir’s chronicle, Habīb al-siyar, was published in 1857, but it had no noticeable impact upon the debate.42 The increasingly critical evaluation of source material is a feature of later scholarly contributions in the second half of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, d. 1778) turned his attention to the question of the treatment of Bayezid in chapter 75 of his Essai sur l’histoire générale (1756 and translated into English in 1782). Without citing specific primary sources, he asserts that the cage is not mentioned by Persian or Arab authors, and appears in the Turkish chronicles ‘perhaps in order to render Tamerlane odious; or rather because they copied it from the Greek historians.’ His Temür is very much the magnanimous ruler drawn by Yazdi, and this characterisation leads Voltaire to conclude, Mirkhvand, Chronological Retrospect, 3.1:. 394. Shahrukh granted land to Sayyid Ahmad Tarkhan in 810/1407–1408. See Manz, Rise and Rule, p. 140. 41 For the relevant events in a modern edition, see Mirkhvand, Tarikh rawzat al-safa, ed. Riza Quli Khan Hidayat and Jamshid Kiyanfar (Tehran: Asatir, 2001), 9: 5026–39. 42 Ghiyath al-Din ibn Humam al-Din Khvandamir, The Habeeb-os-seear: Being the History of the World from the earliest Times to the Year of the Hejira 930 A.D. (Bombay: Amudee Press, 1857). 40

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‘it is difficult to reconcile the iron cage, and the base affront done to Bajazet’s wife, with the generosity which the Turks attribute to Tamerlane.’ He extends his scepticism to all Islamic sources noting that ‘Oriental’ historians often put grandiose words into the mouths of their subjects.43 Voltaire’s assessment of the problems inherent in the interpretation of Islamic histories is noted approvingly by Edward Gibbon in the final volume of the Decline and Fall.44 Straying well beyond his remit of writing the history of the Roman empire through to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Gibbon devotes considerable attention to aspects of Islamic and Asian history. His fascination with the Mongols has been discussed by David Morgan,45 and it is little surprise that he should also have been intrigued by the personality and achievements of Temür. Unable to read Arabic or Persian, Gibbon went to considerable effort to consult all of the published translations of Middle Eastern histories, supplementing this with an extensive knowledge of primary sources in Greek and Latin. His treatment of the caging of Bayezid represented the most comprehensive examination yet of the primary sources, and was undertaken with his characteristic acuity. He notes that the story of the iron cage was employed in past times as a moral lesson, and that it ‘is now rejected as a fable by modern writers, who smile on vulgar credulity.’46 In order According to translation in Voltaire, An Essay on universal History and the Manners and Spirit of Nations from the Reign of Charlemagne, to the Age of Lewis XIV, trans. Mr Nugent (Edinburgh: William Creech, 1782), pp. 87–88. For the French text, see Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l’histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Louis XIII, tome 1, ed. René Pomeau (Paris: Editions Garnier Frères, 1963), pp. 805–806. 44 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J. B. Bury, second edition (London: Methuen and Co., 1902), 7: 60–65. 45 David Morgan, ‘Edward Gibbon and the East,’ Iran 33 (1995): 85–92. Also: Rolando Minuti, ‘Gibbon and the Asiatic barbarians: Notes on the French sources of The Decline and Fall,’ in ed. David Womersley, Edward Gibbon, Bicentenary Essays, Studies on Voltaire in the Eighteenth Century 355 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1997), pp. 21–44. 46 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, 7: 60. 43

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to come to his own conclusion, however, Gibbon sifts through the information in the primary sources at his disposal. Gibbon’s assesses the potential veracity of those writers who claim the good treatment of Bayezid and of those who assert that Temür confined him in a cage. Emphasis is given to Yazdi’s positive portrayal of Temür’s behaviour, particularly in view of its early composition (in the 1420s) and the consistencies evident between the Ẓafarnama and other Persian accounts cited by d’Herbelot. Gibbon is, however, wary of the ‘flattery’ that, in his [250] opinion, pervades such sources, and turns his attention to evidence in favour of the cage. In addition to the quotes of Poggius Bracciolini, Gibbon adduces other references to the cage in European writings of the first three decades of the fifteenth century. He then addresses the important Arabic source, Ibn ʿArabshah, whose history of Temür is characterised by Gibbon as ‘florid and malevolent.’ That said, he is struck by the correspondence between the broadly contemporaneous testimonies of Europeans like Bracciolini and Ibn ʿArabshah in the matter of the cage. Ibn ʿArabshah also adds details concerning the humiliation of the concubines and wives of Bayezid. Of the Greek historians Gibbon singles out Phrantzes, partly on chronological grounds, but mainly because he was sent in 1429 as an ambassador to Murad II (r. 1421–44, 1446–51) and, therefore, may have conversed with elderly janissaries who had also been imprisoned by Temür. According to Gibbon (and many later scholars), Phrantzes is the one fifteenth-century Greek historian to refer to the employment of a cage to confine sultan Bayezid. Lastly, referring to the Turkish historians who write about the cage, Gibbon remarks, ‘…some credit may be allowed to national historians, who cannot stigmatize the Tartar without uncovering the shame of their king and country.’47 Faced with two conflicting bodies of evidence Gibbon seeks for a ‘fair and moderate’ conclusion. He writes: I am satisfied that Sherefeddin Ali [Yazdi] has faithfully described the first ostentatious interview, in which the conqueror, whose spirits were harmonized by success, affected the character 47 Gibbon, Decline

and Fall, 7: 64.

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of generosity. But his mind was insensibly alienated by the unseasonable arrogance of Bajazet; the complaints of his enemies, the Anatolian princes, were just and vehement; and Timour betrayed a design of leading his royal captive in triumph to Samarcand. An attempt to facilitate his escape, by digging a mine under the tent, provoked the Mogul [sic] emperor to impose a harsher restraint; and, in his perpetual marches, an iron cage or waggon might be invented, not as a wanton insult, but as a rigorous precaution.48

The severity of this treatment leads Gibbon to conclude that Temür could be held responsible for the Ottoman sultan’s untimely death.49 Both Voltaire and Gibbon portray the actions and character of Temür in a relatively positive light. Their comments should be seen in the wider context of the debate concerning Oriental despotism in eighteenth-century Europe. In their favourable assessment of some Muslim rulers Voltaire and Gibbon can be grouped with such Orientalists as Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (d. 1805) and Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (d. 1838) on the opposite side of the European view of despotism from Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (d. 1755).50 Further confirmation of the statesmanlike character of Temür was provided by the publication of A Specimen of the civil and military Institutes of Timour, or Tamerlane (1780), translated from a Persian manuscript by Joseph White. Although it is now recognised as a work of the Mughal court in the seventeenth century, the Institutes of Timour exerted some influence over scholarly views of Temür in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.51 48 Ibid.

49 Ibid.

50 Irwin, ‘Oriental despotism’; Curtis, Orientalism

and Islam, pp. 72–102. John White, trans., A Specimen of the civil and military Institutes of Timour, or Tamerlane (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1780). An improved English translation was made by Major William Davy (1783) and a French translation was completed by Louis Langlès (1787). For a critical assessment of the Institutes, see: Gergely Csiky, ‘The Tuzukat-i Timuri as a source for military history,’ Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungarium 59.4 (2006), pp. 439–91. 51

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Notably, [251] Gibbon had also written admiringly of the law code (yasa) attributed to Chinggiz Khan (Genghis Khan, d. 1227), even comparing it to the Constitutions of Carolina (1669) by John Locke (d. 1704) and Anthony Ashley-Cooper, first earl of Shaftesbury (d. 1683).52 An influential contribution to the study of the primary sources dealing with Bayezid’s cage was made by Joseph von HammerPurgstall in the first volume of his Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches (1827).53 Aside from his examination of the Turkish historians, Ashikpashazade (d. 1481), Mehmed Neshri (d. c.1520), and Hoca Saʿd al-Din Efendi (d. 1599), the key element of his argument is philological. He focuses his attention on the meaning of the Turkish word, qafes, that was commonly understood to mean simply ‘cage.’ Relevant too is the Arabic term qafaṣ used by Ibn ʿArabshah in his life of Temür. Crucially, Von Hammer points out that qafes (he transcribes the word as kafes) does not simply have to be read as ‘cage’ (Käfich), but can also be understood as ‘a barred room’ (ein vergittertes Zimmer) or ‘a barred litter’ (Sänfte). He argues that this misunderstanding has led to the perpetuation of the ‘fairytale’ (Mährchen) of the iron cage in the writings of Ibn ʿArabshah, Phrantzes and numerous Western European historians.54 Von Hammer points to a passage in the chronicle of Neshri that is translated in Geschichte des osGibbon, Decline and Fall, 7: 4 n. 8. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall, Geschichte des osmanischen Reiches. Erster Band: Von der Gründung des osmanischen Reiches bis zur Eroberung Constantinopels, 1300–1453 (Pest: C. A. Hartleben, 1827), pp. 317–23. Von Hammer also later translated parts of the Seyahatname of Evliya Çelebi (d. 1682), including the section in which the author repeats the story of the conversation that led to the caging of Bayezid by Temür. See Narrative of Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa in the seventeenth Century by Evliya Efendi, trans. Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall (London: Oriental Translation Fund, 1846), 1: 29. 54 Writing earlier in the century the Marquis de Salaberry d’Irumberry put forward the claim that the reference to the cage in Ibn ʿArabshah’s text was an interpolation by his Turkish editor and translator, Nazmi-zade. See: Histoire de l’empire Ottoman, depuis sa fondation jusqu’à la paix de Yassi, en 1792, 4 vols. (Paris: Le Normant, 1813), 4: 200–201. Cited in Gibbons, Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, p. 255 n. 1. 52 53

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manischen Reiches as, ‘Timur liess eine Sänfte machen, in der man ihn (Bajesid) wie in einem Kafes zwischen zwey Pferden trug.’55 Thus, Neshri’s account appears to be specifying a litter held between two horses. In addition, this term was often applied to the litters used to carry women of the harem, and could even be applied to the residence (Wohnung) of the princes in the palace of Constantinople. In this last context, qafes implies also the ritual seclusion that was established around the sultan and the princes of the Ottoman dynasty. According to Von Hammer’s interpretation qafes loses most of its negative connotations. Thus, Temür’s actions were, as is implied in the Persian accounts, consistent with the necessary respect for the dignity of this royal captive. While Von Hammer-Purgstall’s analysis of the Turkish word, qafes, was widely accepted throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, a note of dissent was offered by Gustav Weil in volume 5 of his Geschichte der Chalifen (1862).56 Weil points to the fact that the Arabic term qafaṣ lacks the secondary meanings found in Ottoman Turkish. He concluds that Ibn ʿArabshah, an author conversant with Turkish source material, would have been able to substitute a suitable Arabic term for ‘litter’ (or, at least, some further clarification in the text) if that were what he actually wanted to indicate. Weil’s scepticism concerning Von Hammer’s approach is echoed by Herbert Gibbons (d. 1934) in The Foundation of the Ottoman [252] Empire (1916). Gibbons also suggests that for Bayezid the humiliation of being placed in a ‘harem litter like a woman’ would have been no less than being placed in a cage meant for a wild beast.57 Two points may be offered in support of Weil’s viewpoint. The first relates to the semantic range of qafaṣ in Medieval Arabic sources. For scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century there existed two readily accessible reference works – Edward Lane’s (d. 1876) Arabic-English Lexicon (1863–93) and Reinhart 55 Von Hammer, Geschichte, p. 320.

Gustav Weil, Geschichte des Abbasidenchalifats in Egypten, vol. II (= Geschichte der Chalifen vol. V) (Stuttgart: J. B. Messler’schen Buchhandlungen, 1862), p. 96. 57 Gibbons, Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, p. 255 n. 1. 56

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Dozy’s (d. 1883), Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes (1881) – that offered definitions for qafaṣ as well as examples of primary texts in which the word appears.58 Curiously, we have found no evidence that these works were consulted by any scholar writing about the caging of Bayezid. Lane’s Lexicon does record a meaning of ‘a thing composed of two curved pieces of wood between which is a net,’ but this does not appear to be something sufficiently substantial to carry or enclose a man. Furthermore, the first definitions offered in this entry in the Lexicon indicate relatively small objects such as a cage or coop (made of wood or reeds) for confining birds or animals. Lane also notes that the word can refer to the ‘the cage-formed structure of the bones of the thorax.’ The second point is that had Ibn ʿArabshah intended his use of qafaṣ to bear the meanings it carries in Turkish, one might have expected the word to have been repeated in subsequent retellings of the captivity of Bayezid by other Arab historians. Strikingly, no mention of a qafaṣ is found in Ibn Taghribirdi’s (d. 1470) account of these events in al-Nujūm al-zāhira fi mulūk miṣr wa’l-qāhira, even though he was personally acquainted with Ibn ʿArabshah.59 Ibn Taghribirdi records only that the sultan appeared before Temür ‘hobbling in shackles (qayd pl. quyūd)’ and that he was held in this manner at the time of his death in prison in the month of Dhu al-Hijja 805 (June 1403).60 Edward Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon, derived from the best and most copious Eastern sources (London: Williams and Norgate, 1863–93, reprinted Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1984), book 1, p. 2551; Reinhart Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes (Leiden: Brill, 1881), 2: 391. Lane’s Lexicon made extensive use of the monumental eighteenth-century dictionary of classical Arabic, Taj al-ʿArus, first published in Cairo in 1888/89–90. 59 For the biography of Ibn ʿArabshah and his relations with other fifteenthcentury scholars, see McChesney, Robert, ‘A note on the life and works of Ibn ʿArabshah,’ in Judith Pfeiffer and Sholeh Quinn, eds, History and Historiography of Post-Mongol Central Asia and the Middle East: Studies in Honor of John E. Woods (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), pp. 205–49. Also: Johannes Pedersen, ‘Ibn ʿArabshah,’ Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2002), 2: 711. 60 Abu al-Mahasin ibn Taghribirdi, Abû ’l-Mahâsin ibn Taghrî Birdî’s Annals entitled, al-Nujûm az-Zâhira fî Mulûk Misr wal-Kâhira (Vol. VI, part I, No. 1) , ed. William Popper, University of California Publications in 58

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Between the 1860s and the 1940s most of the significant contributions to the debate over the caging of Bayezid focused upon the information in the earliest Turkish histories.61 The relevant sections of Neshri’s account of the Ottoman dynasty were edited with a German translation by Theodor Nöldeke (d. 1930) in 1861.62 Franz Babinger (d. 1967) produced an edition of the chronicle by ʿUruj b. ʿAdil (fl. late fifteenth century) in 1925 which was exploited by Nicholas Martinovitch in a short article published in the Journal Asiatique [253] in 1927.63 ʿUruj b. ʿAdil records the alleged conversation in which Bayezid, in answer to Temür’s question of what would have happened if their situations had been reversed, carelessly responded that he would have imprisoned his captive in an iron cage (qafes). This remark seals his fate as Temür immediately orders a cage to be made to confine the Ottoman sultan. Martinovitch confidently asserts that this relatively early account (in fact, written several decSemitic Philology VI.1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1915), pp. 83–84. Translated by William Popper as, History of Egypt, 1382–1469. Part II, 1399–1411 A.D. Translated from the Arabic Annals of Abû l-Mahâsin ibn Taghrî Birdî, University of California Publications in Semitic Philology 14 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954), pp. 61– 62. 61 Discussions of the cage also appear in histories of the Ottoman sultanate and the Byzantine empire during this period, but none advances new primary source material. For example, see: Edwin Pears, The Destruction of the Greek Empire and the Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903), pp. 144–45; Gibbons, Foundation of the Ottoman Empire, pp. 254–56 and notes. 62 For the reference to the qafes made for Bayezid, see: Theodor Nöldeke, ‘Auszüge aus Neshri’s Geschichte des osmânischen Hauses,’ Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 15 (1861): 367. 63 Franz Babinger, ed., Die frühosmanischen Jahrbücher des Urudsch, Quellenwerke des islamischen Schrifttums 2 (Hannover: OrientBuchhandlung Heinz Lafaire, 1925), pp. 35–36; N. Martinovitch, ‘La cage du Sultan Bayazid,’ Journal Asiatique 211.1 (July–September 1927): 135-37. He translates the relevant section of ʿUruj’s chronicle on p. 137. A version of the same story appears (without an attribution to a specific author) in Henry Keene and Thomas Beale, An Oriental Biographical Dictionary (London, 1894. Reprinted New York: Klaus Reprint Corporation, 1965), p. 99 (‘Baiazid I’).

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ades after the earliest European references to the cage) definitively solves the question of the cage. He appears to have been unaware that European scholars including Leunclavius in the late sixteenth and d’Herbelot in the late seventeenth century were already aware of Turkish sources recording this supposed conversation. In his article Martinovitch also surveys the Russian publications that discuss Bayezid’s cage. The last major salvo in this scholarly controversy was penned by the Turkish scholar, Mehmet Fuad Köprülü (d. 1966) for the journal, Belleten. Entitled, ‘Yıldırım Beyazıd’ın esareti ve ıntıhari hakkinda’ (‘On the story of Bayezid Yıldırım’s captivity and suicide’), Köprülü’s article represents the most sustained Quellenkritik of the Turkish, Persian, and Arabic sources that discuss the treatment of Bayezid from his initial capture through to his death. A second article by the author revisiting the question of Bayezid’s alleged suicide appeared in the 1942 issue of Belleten.64 Split into two halves (the first dealing with the cage and the second with the allegation that the Ottoman sultan killed himself), the 1937 article starts with a brief summary of the major primary sources and of the interpretations offered by earlier scholars. Köprülü disagrees with Von Hammer’s conclusion that the cage was no more than a legend. He also questions Martinovitch’s assertions and the reliability of Babinger’s edition of ʿUruj b. ʿAdil as a tool for the study of the period. In common with Herbert Gibbons he believes that the question of the historicity of the cage ‘is yet far from being resolved.’65 Notable too is the praise he has for Edward Gibbon’s undogmatic methodology and conclusions regarding the cage. Köprülü’s analysis of the Turkish sources is of great importance.66 He divides the accounts into those that make no mention of the cage or seek to discount its existence from those that write of it 64 Mehmet Fuad Köprülü, ‘Yıldırım Beyazıd’ın esareti ve ıntıhari hakkinda,’ Belleten. Türk Tarıh Kurumu 1.2 (1937): 591–603 (on the cage, see pp. 591– 98); idem, ‘Yıldırım Bayezıd’ın ıntıhari mes’elesı,’ Belleten. Türk Tarıh Kurumu 7 (1943): 591–99. 65 Köprülü, ‘Yıldırım Beyazıd’ın esareti,’ p. 592. 66 Köprülü, ‘Yıldırım Beyazıd’ın esareti,’ pp. 592–95.

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as an historical event. The first group includes the very earliest Ottoman chronicles, Sukrullah’s Behcat-ul Tevarikh and the history of Muhammad b. Haci Halil Konevi’im, and other later works by Idris Bitlisi, Ibn Kemal (Kemalpashazade), and Saʿd al-Din Hoca. What holds this first group together is that they were either court historians (who had a vested interest in expunging evidence of the humiliation of a sultan of the dynasty) or simply writers aiming to praise the Ottoman rulers. Saʿd al-Din, considered by Köprülü as an official historian of the Ottoman state, went to particular lengths to try to show the cage to be a rumour (including consulting Yazdi’s Ẓafarnāma), and his scepticism probably [254] influenced the approach taken by Von Hammer. Among this first group Köprülü identifies one exception: Sehnameci Lokman who in the late sixteenth century wrote that ‘Timur had a cage made out of iron that looked like a throne (taht) and put Yıldırım in it.’ As Köprülü notes, although the account claims the object looked like a throne, it is clearly a type of cage (qafes). The second group is composed of independent historians from among the Anatolian Turks who felt no need to praise the Ottoman sultans. These include the anonymous, Tevarikh-i Al-i Osman, the histories of ʿUruj, Ashikpashazade, Muhyiddin, Lutfi Pasha, Neshri, and the verse history of Hadidi. Ashikpashazade’s account is interesting in that he claims it to have been based on the testimony of a lefthanded individual who was in the service of Bayezid from the battle of Ankara through to his death in captivity. While Von Hammer inferred it was a palanquin, not a cage that was made for the Ottoman sultan, Köprülü draws attention to Ashikpashazade’s actual statement: ‘the cage was not a palanquin (taht-i revan) that was merely aimed for the transportation of the captive sultan, but a vessel that would prevent him from escaping.’67 From these sources Kö67 Köprülü, ‘Yıldırım Beyazıd’ın esareti,’ p. 593. Dimitris Kastritsis kindly provided a translation of the relevant passage in Ashikpashazade’s chronicle. Significantly, the Turkish author claims to derive his information from a first-hand source, a soldier in Bayezid’s elite guards. It reads: ‘Question: Oh dervish, since you yourself were not at that battle (i.e. Ankara) from whom are you transmitting this story? Answer: There was a naib in Bursa named

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prülü concludes that the rumour about the cage was circulating in Anatolia in the early fifteenth century. According to Köprülü further confirmation of this comes from the chronicle of Phrantzes, who had visited the Ottoman court in 1429 and Ibn ʿArabshah, who had also spent time in Anatolia and was conversant in Turkish. Another Arabic historian, Ibn Iyas (d. after 1521), also records the story of the cage in his chronicle, perhaps drawing on Ibn ʿArabshah or traditions circulating among the Ottoman conquerors of Egypt. Köprülü mentions the Greek historian, Spandounes, as another who had been in Turkey and had close relations with Ottoman court circles (though Köprülü was unaware that the earliest published editions of Spandounes’ history lack any reference to the cage – see above). On the basis of his analysis of the sources Köprülü concludes that the cage was most probably an historical fact. He favours the reconstruction offered by Edward Gibbon. That the Persian sources – he cites Yazdi, Nizam al-Din Shami (fl. 1404) and Hafiz Abru (d. 1430) – make no mention of can be explained by their desire to show Temür in the best possible light. The omission of the cage from many of the Byzantine and Western European accounts is not seen by Köprülü as sufficient reason to deny its existence. Finally, he identifies examples from Arabic and Persian chronicles of the caging or placing in chains of captured princes and sultans. In addition, KöKoca Naib, who was one of Bayezid Khan’s solaks (elite guards) and was with him when he was taken prisoner. He was also with him in Aksehir when he passed away. I asked him ‘how did Timur keep Bayezid?’ and he answered, ‘he had a litter (taht-i revan) constructed, like a cage (qafes) suspended between two horses. Whenever they travelled, [Timur] had [Bayezid] transported [in the litter] in front of him, and when they camped he had him placed in front of his own tent.’ This Koja Naib I am talking about went to Sultan Mehmed, who gave him the command of the castle of Amasya, and when he got old Sultan Murad brought him to Bursa and gave him a naibship. I have not transmitted most of his story, for that would make my account too long.’ For the original Ottoman Turkish, see: Friedrich Giese, ed., Die altosmanische Chronik des Asikpasazade auf Grund mehrerer neuentdeckter Handschriften (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz, 1929), p. 71.

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prülü cites an example of similar treatment of Christian merchants from the writings of Jean de Joinville (d. 1317), companion of Louis [255] IX (r. 1226–70) on the Seventh Crusade, and the popular sufi verse that ‘the physical body is an iron cage that imprisons the spirit.’68 While no major advances have been made in the analysis of Islamic primary sources surrounding the captivity of Bayezid since Köprülü’s 1937 article, mention should be made of the collation of European and Middle Eastern primary sources offered in MarieMathilde Alexandrescu-Dersca’s 1942 publication, La campagne de Timur en Anatolie (1402).69 Michele Bernardini has conducted the most detailed analysis of the primary and secondary sources on the cage in recent years, also making numerous important observations about the portrayal of the conflict between Temür and Bayezid in European dramatic traditions.70 Most of the significant Arabic, Persian, and Turkish sources are now available in critical editions. An English translation of Ibn ʿArabshah’s life of Temür by John Sanders was published in 1936, and modern popular biographies of Temür were written by Harold Lamb (1928) and Hilda Hookham (1962).71 68 Köprülü, ‘Yıldırım

Beyazıd’ın esareti,’ pp. 597–98. See ‘Appendice IV: La cage de fer,’ in Alexandrescu-Dersca, Campagne de Timur, pp. 120–22. 70 Michele Bernardini, ‘‘Tamerlano e Bayezid in gabbia.’ Fortuna di un tema storico orientale nell’arte e nel teatro del Settecento,’ in U. Marazzi and A. Gallotta, eds, La Conoscenza dell’Asia e dell’Africa in Italia nei secoli XVII e XIX, a c, vol. 3.2 (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1989), pp. 729–60. See also: idem, ‘Tamerlano protagonista orientale del Settocento europeo,’ in Gian Mario Anselmi, ed., Mappe della Letteratura Europea e Mediterranea, Dal Barrocco all’Ottocento 2 (Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2000), pp. 227–48; idem, ‘Tamerlano, i Genovesi e il favoloso Axalla,’ in M. Bernadini, E. Garcia, A. Cerbo and C. Borrelli, eds, Europa e Islam tra i Secoli XIV e XVI, Collana ‘Matteo Ripa’ 17 (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 2002), pp. 391–426. 71 Ibn ʿArabshah, Tamerlane, or Timur the great Amir, trans. John Sanders (London: Luzac, 1936 reprinted Lahore: Progressive Books, 1976); Harold Lamb, Tamerlane, the Earth Shaker (New York: R. M. McBride, 1928); Hilda Hookham, Tamburlaine the Conqueror (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964). 69

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Adam Knobler has brought to light additional European primary sources dating from the last years of Temür’s rule.72 Lastly, the question of Bayezid’s cage has also been explored by scholars of Christopher Marlowe. The most thorough examination of the sources consulted by Marlowe is provided by Una Ellis-Fermor (d. 1958) in the introduction to her edition of Tamburlaine the Great (1930).73 Although she incorrectly identifies the chronicle of the Armenian, Hetʿum (d. c. 1311), as a primary source for the life of Temür (this final section of the early printed versions of Les flors des histoires is, in fact, a later addition74), her discussion of the sources is, nevertheless, intriguing as a guide to what an educated reader of the late sixteenth century would have been able to learn about the lives of Temür and Bayezid through consultation of European printed books.

RE-EVALUATING THE GREEK AND ARABIC SOURCES It is beyond the scope of this chapter to present a critical analysis of all the primary sources dealing with the treatment of Bayezid during his captivity. A detailed examination of the pertinent material in the earliest Turkish histories is certainly required, and the Arabic, [256] Persian, and Eastern European primary accounts also warrant further attention. What will be offered in this section is a re-evaluation of the Greek and Arabic sources that have most frequently been employed by Orientalists in their discussions of the alleged caging of the Ottoman sultan. 72

Adam Knobler, ‘Timur the (Terrible/Tartar) trope: A case of repositioning in popular literature and history,’ Medieval Encounters 7.1 (2001): 101– 112 (esp. pp. 101–104). 73 Una Ellis-Fermor, ‘Sources of the play,’ in Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, in two Parts, ed. Una Ellis-Fermor (London: Methuen, 1930), pp. 17–61. Other investigations of the sources employed by Marlowe in the writing of Tamburlaine the Great include: Ethel Seaton, ‘Fresh sources for Marlowe,’ The Review of English Studies 5.20 (October 1929): 385–401; Samuel Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), pp. 469– 70. 74 Beatrice Manz, ‘Tamerlane’s career and its uses,’ Journal of World History 13.1 (2002): 12 n. 26; Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel,’ p. 338 n. 15.

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The major Greek historians of the last phases of the Byzantine empire have often been cited in the debate over the existence of Bayezid’s cage. While the Greek sources of the early fifteenth century and the biography of Mehmed II (r. 1444–46, 1451–81) by Critovoulos of Imbros (d. c. 1470) have nothing to add to what is known elsewhere,75 the histories of Ducas, Chalcocondylas, and Phrantzes deserve more attention than they have previously been given. In his chronicle Ducas provides a relatively detailed account of the battle of Ankara and its aftermath. He makes the following remarks about the capture of Bayezid by the troops of Temür (he calls them Scythians): And Bayezid’s misfortunes became so great that the Scythians approached him and told him ‘Descend from the horse, lord Bayezid, and come. Temir-chan is calling you.’ Then, even though he did not want to for the horse was Arabian and very valuable, he descended from the horse. They laid [a saddle] on a small pony (ἱππάριον σμικρὸν), sat him on it and took him away to Temir-chan. When he (i.e. Temür) was informed that Bayezid had been captured, he ordered the setting up of a tent, and sat in the tent playing chess with his son, declaring that ‘I do not care at all about Bayezid’s capture since through my immeasurable force I [already] had him like a small sparrow in a trap (ὡς στρουθίον ἐν παγίδι).’76

75

For the Byzantine perspectives on the life of Temür, see: Nicoloudis, ‘Byzantine historians’; Baboula, ‘Greek sources.’ For Critovoulos, see: History of Mehmed the Conqueror by Kritovoulos, trans. Charles Riggs (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954). On the battle of Ankara and the capture of Bayezid, see 1:78 (pp. 30–31). 76 Michael Ducas, Istoria = Ducas. Istoria Turco-Bizantina (1341–1462) , ed. Vasile Grecu. Scriptores Byzantini 1 (Bucharest: Academia Republicae Romanicae, 1958), pp. 29–435 (the quoted passage is: 16:8–9). For an English translation, see: Decline and Fall of Byzantium to the Ottoman Turks, trans. Harry Magoulias (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975), pp. 95–96.

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Ducas continues with an account of the first meeting between Temür and Bayezid in which the former treats his captive graciously. Temür places him in tents and orders the digging of a ditch around them, with soldiers stationed both inside and outside this boundary. Following an attempt to mine under the tent and release the Ottoman sultan, Temür takes further measures. Most pertinently, Ducas claims, ‘Since then a large prison was made for him and iron collars and handcuffs (σίδηροι κλοιοὶ καὶ χειροπέδαι) for the night.’77 It was in this condition that Bayezid finally died, possibly poisoning himself. Ducas concludes his account noting that Temür had intended to take Bayezid back to ‘Persia’ in order to exhibit to his people the ‘sort of beast he had gained power over.’78 Chalcocondylas offers less of interest, though he does mention that, following his capture and first interview with Temür, Bayezid was paraded on a mule (ἐπὶ ἡμιόνου) around the Timurid army camp. He also confirms the detail that Despina (called by him ‘Lazar’s daughter’) ‘was paraded with him in the camp, and they had her pour wine opposite her husband.’ Like Ducas he records the digging of a tunnel under the tent of the Ottoman sultan.79 [257] Phrantzes has the least to say. In the Chronicon minus he merely records that ‘the amir Bayezid was killed by Temir on 28 July.’80 The content and brevity of Phrantzes’ treatment of this theme accords 77 Ducas, Istoria 16:12. 78 Ducas, Istoria 17:7

Laonicus Chalcocondylas, Laonici Chalcocondylae. Historiarum demonstrationes, ed. E. Darkó, vol. I (Budapest: Academia Litterarum Hungarica, 1922), pp. 149–50. For the Greek text with parallel English translation, see: A Translation and Commentary of the ‘Demonstrations of Histories’ (Books I–III), Historical Monographs 16, trans. and ed. Nicolaos Nicoloudis (Athens: Historical Publications St. D. Basilopoulos, 1996). The conflict between Bayezid and Temür appears in Book 3 (pp. 319–27). 80 Georgios Phrantzes, Chronicon minus = Georgios Sphrantzes. Memorii, 1401–77, ed. Vasile Grecu. Scriptores Byzantini 5 (Bucharest: Academia Republicae Romanicae, 1966), pp. 2–146 (the quoted passage is in cap. 1). For an English translation, see: The Fall of the Byzantine Empire: A Chronicle of George Sphrantzes, 1401–77, trans. Marios Philippides (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), pp. 1–2. 79

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well with one of the earliest Turkish sources to deal with events in the first decade of the fifteenth century, the anonymous work entitled Aḥvāl-ı Sultān Mehemmed bin Bāyezīd Ḫān (translated recently under the title, ‘The Tales of Sultan Mehmed, Son of Bayezid Khan’). Completed soon after the termination of the civil war in 1413, this semi-mythic biographical text differs in character from conventional chronicles. It perhaps reflects, however, the sort of retelling of events that Phrantzes may have encountered when he sent as ambassador to sultan Murad II in 1429. In common with the chronicle of Phrantzes, ‘the Tales of Sultan Mehmed’ deals with the fate of sultan Bayezid in the first few lines. The first paragraph describes with the victory of Temür at the battle of Ankara, and the scattering of the Turkish forces. Mehmed had found his way back to Rum, and from there he received news that his father had been taken captive and that the whereabouts of his brothers were unknown. The author continues by quoting the words apparently uttered by Mehmed in which he laments the collapse of the empire of Osman, and concludes with the following statement: ‘My father the sultan has been captured by the enemy. Past pleasures have turned to pain, and joy has been replaced by grief.’81 The more extensive account of events can be found in another Greek work, based on Phrantzes’ original history, known as the Chronicon maius. As has been recognised by scholars of Byzantine history since the 1930s (but was unknown to the authors surveyed in the previous section), the Chronicon maius is an expansion of Phrantzes’ text by Makarios Melissenos (or Melissourgos, d. 1585), metropolitan of Monemvasia. The Chronicon maius was written in Naples where Makarios and his brother Theodoros had fled after leading an unsuccessful insurrection against Ottoman rule in the Peloponnese in the aftermath of the battle of Lepanto in 1571. Ma-

Dimitris Kastritsis, trans., The Tales of Sultan Mehmed, Son of Bayezid Khan [Aḥvāl-ı Sulṭān Meḥemmed bin Bāyezīd Ḫān] , Sources of Oriental Languages and Literatures 78 (Cambridge MA: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, Harvard University, 2007), p. 1. On the date of the text, see also his The Sons of Bayezid, pp. 28–33.

81

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karios Melissenos may also have travelled to Spain.82 Like the history of Spandounes, another emigré Greek, Melissenos’ Chronicon maius betrays an awareness of sixteenth-century Italian writing on Turkish history.83 The first printed edition of Melissenos’ history (credited to Phrantzes) appeared in Venice in 1604. A critical edition containing both the Chronicon minus and Chronicon maius was prepared by Vasile Grecu (d. 1972) and published in 1966. Melissenos places the alleged caging of Bayezid after [258] his first interview with Temür (Demiris). It is the Ottoman sultan’s haughty responses that seal his fate: ‘When Demiris heard Bayezid’s arrogant words he was angered and made an iron cell (κουβούκλιον ἐκ σιδήρου), put him inside and after a while killed him.’84 One of the most powerful pieces of evidence in favour of the caging of Bayezid is the testimony of Ibn ʿArabshah. Although the evident hostility to Temür in the Kitāb al-ʿajāʾib al-maqdūr fī akhbār Tīmūr means that it cannot be viewed as an unbiased text on the subject, the relatively early date of composition (in the 1430s) and Ibn ʿArabshah’s knowledge of Persian and Turkish sources give his account considerable credibility. What is curious, however, is how little attention has been paid to what Ibn ʿArabshah actually writes in his description of the capture and subsequent humiliations of Bayezid. The crucial passage in this respect relates to the moment in the 82

On the biography of Makarios Melissenos, see: Philippides, ‘Introduction,’ in Phrantzes, The Fall of the Byzantine Empire, pp. 8–10. 83 For another example of a Greek chronicle conspicuously influenced by Italian historical writing, see: Marios Philippides, trans. and ed., Byzantium, Europe, and the early Ottoman Sultans, 1373–1513. An anonymous Greek Chronicle of the seventeenth Century (Codex Barberinus Graecus 111), Late Byzantine and Ottoman Studies 4 (New Rochelle NY: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1990). For Bayezid’s capture, humiliation, and death in captivity, see 2:31–36 (pp. 31–32). While the text includes the European inventions of Bayezid being bound in golden chains and that he was forced to be Temür’s footstool, no mention is made of a cage. 84 Makarios Melissenos (Pseudo-Phrantzes) Chronicon maius = Georgios Sphrantzes. Memorii, 1401–77, ed. Vasile Grecu, Scriptores Byzantini 5 (Bucharest: Academia Republicae Romanicae, 1966), pp. 150–448 (the quoted section is on p. 224).

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aftermath of the battle of Ankara when the sultan was apprehended. Before reviewing the words Ibn ʿArabshah uses, it is also worth noting that, unlike the Persian histories, he does not discuss the first time that the Ottoman sultan was brought into the presence of Temür. Instead, the brief mention of Bayezid’s capture is followed by two short chapters discussing the ensuing chaos within the Ottoman territories and the feuding of the sultan’s surviving sons. Following this, Ibn ʿArabshah records Temür’s practice of daily bringing the shackled Bayezid into his presence. According to his account Temür ‘received him with kind and cheerful speech and marks of pity, then derided and mocked him.’85 It is on the occasion of a public banquet that Bayezid endured the added indignity of witnessing his wives and concubines serving as cupbearers to Temür’s guests. Much of this detail is recorded in abbreviated form by Ibn Taghribirdi.86 Therefore, in Ibn ʿArabshah’s version of events the reference to the cage (qafaṣ) appears before the first recorded meeting between Bayezid and Temür and not after they have already conversed (as is suggested in the Turkish accounts). Equally significant is the precise context in which the term qafaṣ is employed. The relevant passage reads (according to the Sanders translation): Then their arms being exhausted and the front line and reserves alike decimated, even the most distant of the enemy advanced upon them at will and strangers crushed them with swords and spears and filled pools with their blood and marshes with their limbs and Ibn Othman [Bayezid] was taken and bound with fetters (muqayyad) like a bird in a cage (ka’l-ṭayr fi’l-qafaṣ).87

In order to render the last clause into idiomatic English, Sanders changed the expression from the definite article (as it appears in the Arabic) to the indefinite article. If one examines this clause in both 85 Ibn ʿArabshah, Tamerlane, p. 188

(chapter 26). 83–84. 87 Ibn ʿArabshah, Tamerlane, pp. 183–84 (with additions from the Arabic). For the Arabic text, see: Ibn ʿArabshah, ʿAjāʾib al-maqdūr fī nawāʾib Tīmūr, ed. ʿAli Muhammad ʿAmr (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anjilu al-Misriyya, 1399/1989), p. 200. 86 Ibn Taghribiri, al-Nujum 6:

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the modern Arabic edition and the English translation, the most natural interpretation would be that ‘like’ (ka) refers not simply to ‘a bird’ but to ‘a bird in a cage.’ In order to transform it to mean that Bayezid was indeed placed within a cage, one might expect ‘fi’l-qafaṣ’ to be placed before ‘ka’l-ṭayr,’ and not after. In any case, what this clause is being compared to (using ka) is the present situation of Bayezid following his capture: that [259] he is bound or shackled (muqayyad). There is no verb in the sentence that would indicate the sense of being placed or confined within something. In other words, Ibn ʿArabshah is evoking the image of a caged bird as a simile for the reduced state of the captured sultan. In this context it is also worth repeating that a common meaning attributed to the word, qafaṣ, in Medieval Arabic is that of a cage or coop for birds (but not a large structure meant to imprison a man).88 If one looks elsewhere in Ibn ʿArabshah’s text, it is apparent that he frequently employed similes and metaphors as a means to heighten dramatic pitch. By contrast, the more sober historian, Ibn Taghribirdi, retained the content of Ibn ʿArabshah’s account, including the humiliating encounters between Bayezid and his captor, but omitted the more literary flourishes such as the likening of the Ottoman sultan to a bird in a cage. It is intriguing that Ducas also employs the motif of an ensnared bird in his report of Temür’s reaction to the capture of Bayezid. Ducas’ metaphor also appears in the narrative before the Ottoman sultan is brought into the presence of Temür (though the context in which it is used is rather different from Ibn ʿArabshah’s). Why then have scholars persisted with this misinterpretation of Ibn ʿArabshah’s text? The answer appears to lie in the overwhelming reliance (even by Orientalists conversant in Arabic89) upon the earliest European translation, Pierre Vattier’s (d. 1667), L’histoire du grand Tamerlan, published in Paris in 1658 rather than the Arabic edition produced by Jacob Golius (or Gool, d. 1667) and published 88 See note 58.

In this context it is relevant to note that Golius’ edition of the Kitāb alʿajāʼib al-maqdūr fī akhbār Timūr must have been fairly well known among Arabists as it was commonly employed as a text for the teaching of Arabic. See Irwin, Lust of Knowing, p. 103. 89

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under the Latin title, Vitae et rerum gestarum Timuri, in 1636.90 In his translation Vattier introduces punctuation – a feature not found in Arabic texts prior to the twentieth century – which in this case significantly revises the original meaning. He translates the relevant passage rather freely as: ‘Le fils d’Othoman tomba dans le piège, et se trouva enfermé, comme l’oyseau, dans la cage.’91 One may reasonably conclude that the simple addition of two commas has affected more than three hundred years of scholarship; this punctuation led many readers to assume Ibn ʿArabshah believed that Bayezid was, like a bird, locked in a cage!92 In conclusion, it should be emphasised that the precise details of the captivity of Bayezid are of little importance to an understanding of the early evolution of the Ottoman empire. One might ask, therefore, whether there is any value in pursuing such a recherché topic. Perhaps the main reason for focusing upon this issue is the light it sheds on European Orientalist historiography in the early Modern and Modern periods. Although scholars such as d’Herbelot, Voltaire, Gibbon, and Von Hammer had unburdened themselves of the baggage of Christian moral philosophy that conditioned the interpretation of Asian history in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they were not immune to other [260] prejudices. In particular this can be seen in the changing evaluation of the personality of Temür. During the Renaissance he had functioned both as the Machiavellian prince and the ‘scourge of God,’93 while in the eighteenth century it was not uncommon for scholars to view him in some respects as an embodiment of Enlightenment values. The coarse barbarity of parading a captured ruler in a cage fitted uncomfortably into this vi90 See note 29.

91 Vattier, L’Histoire, Book 6, p. 196.

92 The transformative role of punctuation in this case brings to mind the examples discussed by Lynne Truss in Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to English Punctuation (London: Profile Books, 2003). 93 On these themes, see Roy Battenhouse, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine: A Study in Renaissance moral Philosophy (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1941). Also Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel,’ pp. 333–35.

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sion, and was either suppressed on linguistic grounds or justified as a somewhat reluctant response to the haughty behaviour of Bayezid. Finally, another recurrent phenomenon uncovered in this research is the willingness of scholars to cite one another rather than the original sources, forming chains of transmission not unlike the isnāds found in compilations of ḥadīth and in the works of Islamic historians. Of course, it would be dangerous to assume that any of us are immune to the same flaws.

CHAPTER 11. THE MARTYRED SULTAN: TUMAN BAY II IN ANDRE THEVET’S L ES VRAIS POURTRAITS ET VIES DES HOMMES ILLUSTRES1

The rising power of the Ottoman Turks was a major factor in the growth of representations, textual and visual, of Muslims in sixteenth-century Europe. Scholars produced historical surveys of dynasties and individual Islamic rulers while more dramatic, but less historically accurate depictions of Islamic rulers were penned by playwrights.2 The popular interest in Muslims was also catered for in the creation of single-leaf woodcuts ranging from relatively neutral por1

Marcus Milwright, ‘The martyred sultan: Tuman Bay II in André Thevet’s Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés (1584),’ Word & Image 33.1 (2017): 1–17. I am grateful to Athamadia Baboula for translating some of the texts cited in this chapter. I would also like to thank Erin Campbell, Robert Irwin, Julian Raby, and Annette Kraemer for their valuable advice during the research and writing of this chapter. I received interesting commentary on a draft text from the participants in my graduate seminar class on the artistic interactions between Europe and the Islamic world (Spring 2016). Valuable critiques were also offered by the anonymous reviewers of this chapter. 2 On this topic, see: Samuel Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937); Roy Battenhouse, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. A Study in Renaissance moral Philosophy (Nashville: University of Tennessee Press, 1941). On earlier literary representations, see Dorothee Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977).

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traits and costume studies to emotive compositions such as Erhard Schön’s (d. 1542), Ravages of the Turks (1532).3 Another means by which members of the literate elite of sixteenth-century Europe could find information about the Islamic world was through biographical dictionaries. Chief among them was the Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium by the scholar and bishop, Paolo Giovio (d. 1552). The first illustrated edition of the text was published in Basel in 1575 and contained woodcuts by Tobias Stimmer (d. 1584) made after the original paintings in Giovio’s collection.4 The book included a significant number of biographical accounts of Muslims, including all of the sultans of the Ottoman dynasty,5 the Ayyubid sultan, Salah al-Din (Saladin, r. 1171–93), the Cen3

Turks also appear regularly in German woodcuts depicting scenes from the Book of Revelations. For examples, see Max Geisberg, The German SingleLeaf Woodcut, 1500–1550, revised edition ed. Walter Strauss (New York: Hacker, 1974), IV: pls. 1191–92, 1202–1205; Walter Strauss, The German SingleLeaf Woodcut, 1550–1600 (New York: Hacker, 1975), I: pls. 174, 282, 289, 297, 313, 314, 325; II: pls. 644, 652; III: pl. 1178. On emotive images of Turkish barbarity, see Heather Madar, ‘Dracula, the Turks, and the rhetoric of impaling in sixteenth-century Germany,’ in John Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, eds, Death, Torture, and the broken Body in European Art, 1300-1650 (Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 166–90. On Protestant attitudes toward the Turks in sixteenth-century Germany, see Kenneth Setton, ‘Lutheranism and the Turkish peril,’ Balkan Studies 3 (1962): 133–68. 4 Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basel: Peter Perna, 1575). The Latin text is now available in an Italian translation: Paolo Giovio, Elogi degli uomini illustri, trans. Franco Minonzio and Andrea Guasparri (Turin: Guilio Einaudi, 2006). On Giovio and his collection, see Linda Klinger, The Portrait Collection of Paolo Giovio, 2 volumes (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1991). Also Linda Klinger, ‘Images of identity: Italian portrait collections of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,’ in Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson, eds, The Image, the Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance (London: The British Museum Press, 1998), pp. 67–79; Linda Klinger and Julian Raby, ‘Barbarossa and Sinan: A portrait of two Ottoman Corsairs from the collection of Paolo Giovio,’ in Ernst Grube, ed., Veneziana e l’Oriente Vicino: Atti del primo congresso internazionale sul’Arte Islamica, (Venice: L’Altra Riva, 1989), pp. 47–59. 5 The first European printed book to contain a complete set of the Ottoman sultans is Guillaume Rouillé, Promptuarii iconum insigniorum a seculo

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tral Asian conqueror Timur (Tamerlane, r. 1370–1405), and the Mamluk sultans, Qaʾit Bay (r. 1468–96), Qansawh al-Ghawri (r. 150116), and Tuman Bay II (r. 1516–17).6 Another prominent biographical encyclopaedia to exhibit an interest in non-European themes is André Thevet’s, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés Grecz, Latins et Payens, recueillez de leurs tableaux, livres, médalles antiques et modernes (1584).7 Thevet (1516–90) was a Franciscan father who served as chaplain to Catherine de’ Medici and later as court historian and cosmographer in Paris. He is best known today for the account he published in 1557 of his journey to Brazil, La singularitez de la France antarctique.8 In many respects Les vrais pourtraits lacks the scholarly credentials of the Elogia; for example, Thevet freely plagiarised both Giovio and

hominum subiectis eorum vitis, per compendium ex probatissimus autoribus desumptis (Lyons: Guillaume Rouillé, 1551). 6 On Giovio’s visual sources, see Julian Raby, ‘From Europe to Istanbul,’ in The Sultan’s Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman (Istanbul: Işbank, 2000), pp. 141–50. For a detailed comparison of the Elogia and Ottoman portrait album (Şemāʿilnāme) created in 1579 by the painter, Nakkaş Osman, and the court historian, Seyyid Lokman, see Emine Fetvacı, ‘From print to trace: An Ottoman imperial portrait book and its Western European models,’ Art Bulletin 95.2 (2013): 243–68. For Giovio as a historian of the Islamic world, see Vernon Parry, ‘Renaissance historical literature in relation to the Near and Middle East (with special Reference to Paolo Giovio),’ in Bernard Lewis and Peter M. Holt, eds, Historians of the Middle East (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 277–88. 7 André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés Grecz, Latins et Payens, recueillez de leurs tableaux, livres, médalles antiques et modernes (Paris: I. Keruert and Guillaume Chaudiere, 1584). The 1584 edition is available as a facsimile (the page size is, however, smaller than the original. See Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés (1584): A Facsimile Edition, ed., Reuben Cholakian (New York: Delmar, 1973). For a digitised version of the text, see https://archive.org/details/lesvraispourtrai03thev (last consulted: 2 June 2016). 8 For biographical details on Thevet and his sources, see: Jean Adhemar, Frère André Thevet. Grand voyageur et cosmographe des rois du France au XVIe siècle, Profils franciscains (Paris: Éditions Franciscaines, 1947); Jean Catacuzène, ‘Frère André Thevet (1516-1590). Grand voyageur, cosmographe royal et auteur échevelé,’ Biblos 15 (1979): 31–38.

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Fulvio Orsini (d. 1600).9 Allowing for these limitations, Thevet’s biographical work is still striking for its geographical scope. Relying upon personal experience Thevet includes entries on indigenous preColumbian rulers of the Americas.10 He is also known to have travelled around the eastern Mediterranean, including Greece, Istanbul, Syro-Palestine, and Egypt.11 His treatment of the Islamic world largely follows Giovio’s Elogia,12 but with the addition of the Arab polymath, Avicenna (Ibn Sina, d. 1037), the Sharif of Fez and Morocco, and Şehzade Mustafa, the eldest son of the Süleyman I who was executed at the sultan’s order in 1553. There are elements of originality in Les vrais pourtraits. One such novelty is the representation of the last Mamluk sultan, Tuman Bay II.13 Engraved on a copper plate by an unknown artist,14 Tuman Bay is

9

Eugene Dwyer, ‘André Thevet and Fulvio Orsini: The beginnings of the modern tradition of classical portrait iconography in France,’ Art Bulletin 75.3 (1993): 467–80. 10 On his approach to the indigenous peoples of the Americas and his sources, see: Geoffroy Atkinson, Les nouveaux horizons de la Renaissance française (Paris: Librairie E. Droz, 1935. Reprinted, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1969), pp. 289–97; Roger Schlesinger and Arthur Stabler, André Thevet’s America: A sixteenth-century View. An Edition-Translation with Notes and Introduction (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1986). For the indigenous peoples discussed in Les vrais pourtraits, see Roger Schlesinger, ed., Portraits from the Age of Exploration: Selections from André Thevet’s Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés, trans. Edward Benson (Urbana and Chicago: University of illinois Press, 1993), pp. 99–146. On the construction of ideas about the habits and character of indigenous peoples, see James Córdova, ‘Drinking from the fifth cup: Notes on the drunken Indian image in colonial Mexico,’ Word & Image 31.1 (2015): 1–18. 11 On his travels to Egypt, see Jean Chesneau and André Thevet, Voyages en Égypte, 1549–1552, ed. Frank Lestringant, La Collection des voyageurs en Égypte 24 (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1984). 12 On Thevet’s use of Giovio’s portrait of Tamerlane, see Marcus Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel: Representations of Tamerlane in printed books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,’ Muqarnas 23 (2006): 317–44 (see p. 325). 13 He appears in book 8, chapter 140 of Les vrais pourtraits (fols 639r–640v). The illustration is on fol. 639r.

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depicted as a middle-aged, bearded man with his head tilted upward and his eyes raised to the sky. Significantly, the sultan’s balding head is left uncovered, and his hands and arms are bound with ropes (fig. 11.1).

Figure 11.1. Portrait of Sultan Tuman Bay II in André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés (Paris, 1584), fol. 639r. St John’s College Library, Cambridge: F.6.17–18. By permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge. In the introduction to Les vrais pourtraits Thevet claims to have commissioned engravers from Flanders to make the illustrations. See Schlesinger, ed., Portraits from the Age of Exploration, pp. 13–14.

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This chapter examines these unusual features, suggesting reasons why this portrait diverges from the common modes employed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the representation of Muslim rulers, particularly the sultans of the Mamluk and Ottoman dynasties. I argue that the image should also be understood in the context of the European reaction to the expansion of the Ottoman empire during the sixteenth century. Tuman Bay’s capture and execution were, therefore, potent reminders of the potential consequences of resisting Turkish military power. The last Mamluk sultan’s fate was, however, represented in Les vrais pourtraits in a more positive light through the complex iconography of Christian martyrdom.

MAMLUKS IN EUROPEAN ART AND THE REPRESENTATION OF TUMAN BAY Although images of Turks are more prevalent in the visual arts of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there exist [2] numerous representations of inhabitants of the Mamluk sultanate, from sultans and high officials to soldiers and common people.15 Erhard Reuwich’s (fl. 1480s) woodcut illustrations in Bernard von Breydenbach’s (d. 1497), Peregrinatio in terram sanctam include images of different sociopolitical and religious communities in the Middle East. Reuwich had accompanied the author, von Breydenbach on his travels. First published in Mainz in 1486, the book was reprinted numerous times in subsequent decades. Evidence of its impact on the visual arts can be found in Vittore Carpaccio’s (d. 1525 or 1526), Triumph of St George Julian Raby, Venice, Dürer and the Oriental Mode, Hans Huth Memorial Studies 1 (London: Islamic Art Publications, 1982), pp. 35–54; Julian Raby, ‘Picturing the Levant,’ in Jay Levenson, ed., Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration (Washington DC: The National Gallery of Art, 1992), pp. 77–81; Gerhard Weiss, ‘The pilgrim as tourist: Travels in the Holy Land reflected in the published accounts of German pilgrims between 1450 and 1550,’ in Marilyn Chiat and Kathryn Reyerson, eds, The Medieval Mediterranean: Cross-cultural Contacts (St Cloud MN: North Star Press, 1988), pp. 119–31; Caroline Campbell and Alan Chong, eds, Bellini and the East (London and Boston: Yale Univeristy Press for the National Gallery Company, London, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2005), pp. 24–28.

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in the Scuola S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni in Venice (c. 1502–1508), where adapted versions appear of the Dome of the Rock and the tower of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre from Reuwich’s panorama of Jerusalem.16 Venice was the conduit through which many European artists formed their image of the Mamluk elite and of other inhabitants of the Mamluk sultanate. Albrecht Dürer’s (d. 1528) second visit to Venice in c. 1505–1506 led him to incorporate distinctive Mamluk turbans – identifiable by the complex folding of the material – on characters in his series known as the Small Woodcut Passion (c. 1509– 11). Formerly, Dürer had employed the Turkish turban (formed from material wound around a conical cap known as a tāj) to lend his New Testament scenes an appropriately Oriental tone.17 It is not known what sources Dürer employed in his shift to the Mamluk turban, though there are somewhat later Venetian paintings that include Mamluk headgear. The best known of these is the anonymous work entitled, Reception of the Venetian Ambassadors (dated 1511).18 It is now believed that this work depicts the presentation in Damascus in 1508 of the proconsul Pietro Zen (d. 1539) to the governor (nāʾib alsalṭāna) of Syria. Most pertinent in the present context is the representation of headgear worn by Mamluk soldiers and officials. The former group wear either the tall fur hat known as tāqiyya or the red bonnet (zamṭ), while the status of the different officials in the scene is indicated by the shapes of their turbans. The governor wears the sixhorned turban (fig. 8.7.b) known as al-takhfīfa al-kabīra, though a more popular name was al-nāʿūra, meaning ‘the waterwheel.’ The Egyptian chronicler, Muhammad b. Ahmad ibn Iyas (d. c. 1522) 16 Raby, Venice,

Dürer and the Oriental Mode, pp. 66–81. Raby, Venice, Dürer and the Oriental Mode, pp. 21–34; Bronwen Wilson, ‘Reflecting on the Turk in late sixteenth-century Venetian portrait books,’ Word & Image 19.1 (2003): 38–58. 18 Raby, Venice, Dürer and the Oriental Mode, pp. 55–65; Campbell and Chong, eds, Bellini and the East, pp. 22–23. On the lives of Italian merchants in the Syrian capital, see Deborah Howard, ‘Death in Venice: Venetians in Syria in the mid fifteenth century,’ Muqarnas 20 (2003): 143–57. 17

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notes that, in 1496, the right to wear this elaborate head covering was extended to ‘amirs of one thousand’ (amīr mīʾa muqaddam alf). Formerly only the sultan had been permitted to wear it.

Figure 11.2. Portrait of Sultan Qansawh al-Ghawri in Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basel, 1575), p. 222. Cambridge University Library: O.7.16–1. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Other Venetian artists, such as Giovanni Mansueti (d. 1527), included the nāʿūra in their paintings as a means to connote Oriental authority.19 By contrast, the illustration in Giovio’s 1575 edition of 19 Raby, Venice,

Dürer and the Oriental Mode, pp. 35–40. Also Albrecht Fuess, ‘Sultans with horns: The political significance of headgear in the Mamluk em-

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the Elogia of the penultimate Mamluk sultan, Qansawh al-Ghawri (r. 1501–16) has two forward-facing ‘horns’ on the upper part of the turban (fig. 11.2). The top of the turban is cropped from the woodcut of Tuman Bay (fig. 11.3) making it difficult to be sure of about the

Figure 11.3. Portrait of Sultan Tumanbay II in Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basel, 1575), p. 225. Cambridge University Library: O.7.16–1. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. pire,’ Mamluk Studies Review 12.2 (2008): 71–94 (see pp. 80–81). For surviving examples of Mamluk military costume, see David Nicolle, Late Mamluk military Equipment, Travaux et études de la Mission Archéologique Syro-Française, Citadelle de Damas 3 (Damascus: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2011), pp. 41–122, figs. 1–82.

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overall shape. Nevertheless, the tall profile, and the knotting of the lower section make clear that a distinction is being made between the Mamluk style and the Ottoman arrangement of material wound around a tāj. The woodcuts of last two Mamluk sultans in the Elogia were the visual sources employed by the several later European historians; similar images appear in Jean-Jacques Boissard (d. 1602), Vitae et icones sultanorum Turcicorum (Frankfurt: Theodore de Bry, 1596) (figs. 11.4 & 11.5) and Richard Knolles (d. 1610), Generall Historie of

Figure 11.4. Portrait of Sultan Sultan Qansawh al-Ghawri in JeanJacques Boissard, Vitae et icones sultanorum Turcicorum (Paris, 1596), plate facing p. 141. Cambridge University Library: T.5.6. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

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the Turkes (London: Adam Islip, 1603).20 The closest correlate in the Elogia for the ‘waterwheel’ form seen in the Reception is the portrait of Saladin (fig. 8.1).21 The visual source for Giovio’s image of the

Figure 11.5. Portrait of Sultan Tumanbay II in Jean-Jacques Boissard, Vitae et icones sultanorum Turcicorum (Paris, 1596), plate facing p. 148. Cambridge University Library: T.5.6. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. 20

Illustrations of Qansawh al-Ghawri and Tuman Bay from the 1648 edition of Boissard’s text are reproduced in Fuess, ‘Sultans with horns,’ figs. 9, 10 (with translations of the Latin captions). 21 Marcus Milwright, ‘An Ayyubid in Mamluk guise: The portrait of Saladin in Paolo Giovio’s, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (1575),’ Mamluk Studies Review 18 (2014–15 [2016]): 187–217. Also comments in J.J. Marquet de Vasselot, ‘Un portrait de sultan par un émailleur limousin,’ Archives de l’art français 7 (1913): 93–104.

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founder of the Ayyubid dynasty was apparently obtained from Donado da Lezze (d. 1526), a Venetian based in Cyprus.22 Identified as ‘Tomombet, dernier soldan d’Égypte,’ Thevet’s depiction of Tuman Bay is quite unlike that in Giovio’s Elogia and the later portraits in the works of Boissard and Knolles. Without the explanatory title there would be little in this image to signal that the subject was from the Middle East. The [3] patterned brocade of his closely-fitted jacket is somewhat similar to extant Mamluk silks, and comparable textiles may also be seen covering Oriental figures in paintings by Carpaccio and others.23 Tuman Bay’s outfit can hardly be described as distinctively Mamluk, however; the same vocabulary of patterned brocades existed in contemporary Europe and the Palaeologan phase of the Byzantine empire.24 What would have functioned much more effectively as a token of his status as a Mamluk sultan was, of course, the nāʿūra, or another form of the takhfīfa kabīra. [4] Accounts of the capture and execution of Tuman Bay (see below) give no indication that he was stripped of his turban prior to being hanged, and it is worth reflecting upon the potential sigGiovio, Elogia (1575), p. 30. In translation, this reads: ‘In life Saladin had the habit, typical of his people, of wearing wrapped around his head a headdress of linen with horns (sing. cornu), as visual evidence of the many valiant kingdoms he had conquered. Hereafter, as we know, this type of crown (diadema) has been adopted by his successors. This description of the mode of dress of Saladin was communicated to us by the Venetian patrician Donado da Lezze, who has long been magistrate in Cyprus and Syria, famous for his passion for history and antiquities in general.’ Discussed in Milwright, ‘An Ayyubid in Mamluk guise,’ pp. 190–92. Also Klinger, Portrait Collection, I: 163–64, cat. 312; Friedrich Kenner, ‘Die Porträtsammlung der Erzherzogs Ferdinand von Tirol,’ Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 19.1 (1898): 6–146 (see pp. 115–16). 23 Patricia Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 125–32, 193–218; Stefania Mason, Carpaccio: The major pictorial Cycles, trans. Andrew Ellis (Milan and New York: Skira, 2000), figures on pp. 146–63. 24 Louis Mackie, ‘Toward an understanding of Mamluk silks: National and international considerations,’ Muqarnas 2 (1984): 127–46. Also Rosamund Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300–1600 (Berkeley: University of Caifornia Press, 2002), pp. 27–49. 22

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nificance of this omission from Thevet’s image. The importance of this visual theme is reinforced by the fact that the woodcut image of the sultan being led to his execution in his Cosmographie universelle (1575) is also bareheaded (fig. 11.6).25

Figure 11.6. Sultan Tumanbay being led to his execution. In André Thevet, Cosmographie universelle (Paris, 1575), fol. 37v. Cambridge University Library: Rel.bb.57.1. Courtesy of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. A popular ḥadīth, variously ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad and to the caliphs ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab (r. 634–44) and ʿAli ibn Abi Talib (r. 656–61) reads, ‘the turban (al-ʿamāʾim) is the

André Thevet, Cosmographie universelle (Paris: Guillaume Chaudiere, 1575), I: fol. 37v.

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crown of the Arabs.’26 This saying encapsulates the status of the turban as a Muslim garment, as well as implying its potent political symbolism within Islamic society. A brief survey of European representations of Turkish and Mamluk sultans reveals that the symbolic roles performed by the turban were relatively well understood. The turban worn by a sultan was equated with the crown of a European Christian monarch in the sense that it was recognised as an attribute of kingship. This visual linking of the turban and the crown is seen vividly in the painted portrait of Mehmed II Fatih (r. 1444–46, 1451–81) produced by the Venetian artist, Gentile Bellini (d. 1507). The medal produced by the same artist has the portrait on the obverse and three crowns on the reverse (fig. 11.7).27 The visual evidence suggests that some of the Ottoman sultans sought to employ the symbolism of the crown in diplomatic exchanges; Süleyman I even commissioned an elaborate jewelled hat from Venice, combining elements of European imperial crowns and the Papal tiara.28 At a more prosaic level the turban was an essential component of the public appearance of a Muslim man, and the lack of a proper head covering was, at least, indecorous and, at worst, compromised his masculinity. The fact that Tuman Bay is bound in ropes only adds to the sense in which he is reduced both as an ruler and as a man. Thevet explores this latter theme in an image of Atabalipa (i.e.

26

Discussed in M. J. Kister, ‘“The crowns of this community”… Some notes on the turban in the Muslim tradition,’ Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 24 (2000): 217–45. 27 Campell and Chong, eds, Bellini and the East, pp. 74–75; Julian Raby, ‘Pride and prejudice: Mehmed the Conqueror and the Italian portrait medal,’ in Italian Medals, ed. J. Graham Pollard, Studies in the History of Art 21 (Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, 1987), pp. 171–94 (see pp. 180– 83). 28 This commission is discussed extensively in: Otto Kurz, ‘A gold helmet made in Venice for Sulayman the Magnificent,’ Gazette des beaux-arts 74 (1969): 249–58; Gülru Necipoğlu, ‘Süleyman the Magnificent and the representation of power in the context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-Papal rivalry,’ Art Bulletin 71 (1989): 401–27.

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Figure 11.7. Obverse and reverse of bronze medal made for Mehmed II Fatih by Gentile Bellini, 1479. British Museum, Department of Coins and Medals: 1883.3.1. Atahualpa, d. 1533), the last sovereign emperor (Sapa Inca) of the Incas, prior to the Spanish conquest (fig. 11.8).29 In this case the ruler is bound in chains, though he retains his ceremonial headgear. An intriguing, though less likely line of interpretation relates to the removal of the turban as a sign of conversion to Christianity. This is suggested by Carpaccio’s painting of the St George baptising in the Scuola S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni (c. 1502–1508) where those accepting baptism have set their turbans aside on the ground and kneel bareheaded before the saint (fig. 11.9).30 [5] A somewhat different reading of the image is suggested by combination of the binding of Tuman Bay’s arms and aspects of his pose; to a sixteenth-century European viewer familiar with the conventions of Catholic religious art, the depiction of the Mamluk sul-

29 Thevet, Les

vrais pourtraits, book VIII, chapter 141, fols 641r–v (the image is on 641r). 30 Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting, pp. 214–15, fig. 131; Mason, Carpaccio: The major pictorial Cycles, figures on pp. 156–57, 162–63.

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tan must have looked like that of a martyrdom.31 Tuman Bay’s upward gaze is commonly adopted by Christian martyrs in paintings and prints, including commonly represented saints such as Agatha,

Figure 11.8. Portrait of Atabalipa in André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés (Paris, 1584), fol. 641r. St John’s College Library, Cambridge: F.6.17–18. By permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge.

31 Another intriguing detail is the arrangement of Tuman Bay’s left hand. Although not identical, the placement of the fingers is reminiscent of the right hand in images of Christ Pantocrator. The fingers are believed in the Orthodox tradition to represent the two Greek letters, chi and ro. If such an image were employed as one visual source, one can imagine how the right hand would have been transposed to the left as part of the printing process. I am grateful to Erica Dodd for pointing out this feature of the image of Tuman Bay.

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Stephen, George, and Sebastian.32 The last of these is additionally relevant in that St Sebastian is usually shown bound to a tree or a column, though it should be noted that usually his hands are either behind his back or above his head. Early paintings of this popular theme include those of Andrea Mantegna (1456–59, 1480, and 1490), Piero del Pollaiuolo (c. 1475), and Antonello da Messina (1477–79).33

Figure 11.9. Vittore Carpaccio, St George baptising, Scuola S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni (c. 1502–1508). © Art Resource. Cameraphoto Arte, Venice / Art Resource. The martyrdom of St Sebastian remained a popular image for painters and printmakers through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 32

On the biographies, martyrdoms, and iconographic characteristics of these saints, see Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien. Tome III: Iconographie de saints, in 3 parts (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958–59), pp. 27–32, 444–56, 571–79, 1190–99. For examples of Dutch martyr images of the late sixteenth century, see David Freedberg, ‘The representation of martyrdoms during the early Counter-Reformation in Antwerp,’ Burlington Magazine 118 (1976): 128–38. He illustrates a pair of paintings of the charity and martyrdom of Saints Cosmas and Damian (fig. 3) in the Koninklijk Museum Voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp in which one of the saints is shown with hands bound in front of his body. 33 The paintings by Mantegna are located in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Musée de Louvre, and the Ca’ d’Oro, Venice. Those by Pollaiuolo and da Messina are in the National Gallery, London and the Gëmaldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden respectively.

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and it is not implausible that aspects of the iconography of this scene informed the production of Thevet’s image of Tuman Bay. The tilt of the head and the upward gaze are encountered in images of the

Figure 11.10. St Sebastian. Master of the Greenville Tondo, Umbria, c. 1500–10. Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation to the New Jersey State Museum; transferred to the Princeton University Art Museum, 1995–330. Princeton University Art Museum / Art Resource.

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saint, including the panel produced by the Umbrian, Master of the Greenville Tondo in c. 1500–1510 (fig. 11.10). More direct parallels for the bound hands and arms of the Tuman Bay image can, however, be found in representations of the Passion of Christ. Sixteenth-century versions of Ecce Homo (from John 9:15), commonly show Christ with his hands tied in front of him, whether he is seen within a larger urban [6] setting or in closer focus, usually half-length. Numerous painted examples exist prior to the publication of Les vrais pourtraits in 1584, though none offers close comparison to the image of Tuman Bay.34 In most cases, however, the gaze of Christ is directed at the viewer or toward the ground, while the hands are slanted downwards. A woodcut, dated 1511, by Hans Baldung Grien (fig. 11.11) offers a different pose, the upturned head of Christ having been derived from a chalk drawing by Dürer.35 The Man of Sorrows is a closely related, even synonymous theme, the emphasis in this case being upon the depiction of the tortured body, usually with the instruments of the Passion.36 34

For example, see those showing Christ with bound arms by Mantegna (1500, Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris), Andrea Solario (1505–1506, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan), Quentin Massys (1520, Doge’s Palace, Venice), Correggio (c. 1526, National Gallery, London), and Titian (1558–60, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin). Antonello da Messina’s paintings of this theme give Christ an upturned head, but crop the paintings to remove the hands from view. 35 James Marrow and Alan Shestack, eds, Hans Baldung Grien: Prints and Drawings (Chicago: Yale University Art Gallery and University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 152–55, cat. 29. The Dürer drawing is illustrated as fig. 29c. Dürer’s own renditions in the ‘Large Passion’ (1496–98) and ‘Small Passion’ series (1509–11) place Christ in architectural settings with other figures. The frontal pose of Christ in the ‘Small Passion’ does show some similarities to the image of Tuman Bay, though it seems to be an unlikely prototype. 36 On the Man of Sorrows, see Sixten Ringbom, Icon to Narrative: The Rise of dramatic Close-up in fifteenth-century devotional Painting, second edition (Beukenlaan: Davaco, 1984), pp. 142–47; Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, trans. J. Seligman (London: Lund Humphries, 1972), II: 194–219; Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, ‘The suffering Christ and visual mnemonics in Netherlandish devotions,’ in Death, Torture, and the broken Body in

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Figure 11.11. E cce Homo. Woodcut by Hans Baldung Grien, 1511. Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1917. 17.50.15–359. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum. European Art, 1300-1650, eds, John Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives (Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 35–54.

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While these lines of interpretation may seem a little far-fetched at first sight, it is worth noting that one of the engravers employed by Thevet adopts these conventions in his depiction of the influential Christian apologist Justin, martyred by beheading in 165 CE (fig. 11.12).37 Among the visual similarities with the Mamluk sultan are the

Figure 11.12. Justin Martyr in André Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés (Paris, 1584), fol. 7r. St John’s College Library, Cambridge: F.6.17–18. By permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge. upward gaze, the furrowed brow and the arrangement of the fingers of the right hand. Furthermore, one can detect a note of sympathy, Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits, book 1, fol. 7r. His biography appears on fols 7r–8v.

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even pathos in Thevet’s image of the Mamluk sultan (qualities that are much less apparent in the treatment of Atabalipa in the same publication). Some explanation for this sympathetic quality may be sought in the last days of Tuman Bay, and, more importantly, in the ways those events were recast in the textual traditions of Egypt and Europe during the sixteenth century.

TUMAN BAY IN FACT AND FICTION Al-Malik al-Ashraf Abu al-Nasr min Qansawh al-Nasiri Tuman Bay (c. 1474/75–1517) enjoyed a relatively distinguished career before his brief tenure as sultan of Mamluk state.38 Much of his biography can be reconstructed from the chronicle written by the Cairene scholar, Ibn Iyas. Nephew of the penultimate sultan, al-Qansawh al-Ghawri (r. 1501–16), Tuman Bay was bought by his uncle and presented to sultan Qaʾit Bay, [7] in whose court he served as a mamluk. Manumitted during the sultanate of Qaʾit Bay’s son, al-Nasir Muhammad (r. 1496–98), Tuman Bay began to hold high offices of state during the rule of Qansawh al-Ghawri.39 His military and administrative abilities were recognised with his appointment the supervisor of the annual pilgrimage to the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina (amīr alḥājj) in 1511, and regent of the sultan in his absence (nāʾib al-ghayba) first in 1514, and again in 1516 when sultan al-Ghawri led the Mamluk army to Syria to face the forces of the Ottoman sultan Selim I (r. 1512–20). The battle at Marj Dabiq on 25 Rajab 922/24 August 1516 was a catastrophic defeat for the Mamluks; al-Ghawri was killed, his 38

Peter M. Holt, ‘The last Mamlūk sultan: Al-Malik al-Ashraf Tūmān Bay,’ Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 25 (2001): 234–46. 39 For the history of the last decades of the Mamluk sultanate, see also Carl Petry, Twilight of Majesty: The Reigns of the Mamlūk Sultans al-Ashrāf Qāytbāy and Qānṣūh al-Ghawrī in Egypt (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1993). On history writing in Ottoman Egypt, see Peter M. Holt, ‘Ottoman Egypt (1517–1798): An account of Arabic historical sources,’ in Peter Holt, Studies in the History of the Near East (London: Frank Cass, 1973), pp. 151–60; Michael Winter, ‘An Arabic and a Turkish chronicler from the beginning of Ottoman rule in Egypt: A comparative study,’ in Amy Singer and Amnon Cohen, eds, Aspects of Ottoman History: Papers from CIEPO IX (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1994), pp. 318–26.

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forces were scattered, and soon all of Syria was annexed by the Ottoman sultan. The way was opened for the Turkish forces to march on Egypt. It was in these perilous circumstances that a delegation of the most powerful amirs proposed that Tuman Bay assume the sultanate. Tuman Bay initially refused this offer, only relenting when he had received a signed pledge of loyalty from the amirs. Ibn Iyas provides a generally positive commentary on the Mamluk sultan’s attempts to organise his forces, as well as to repeal some of the unjust legislation established by his predecessor, alGhawri. That said, the author does include one telling episode in which Tuman Bay was apparently reduced to a state of terror after reading a threatening communiqué from the Ottoman sultan. David Ayalon proposed that the defeats suffered at the hands of the Ottoman army of Selim could be attributed to failure of the Mamluk sultanate to adopt firearms. This influential hypothesis has been questioned by Robert Irwin, who points to extensive evidence for the enthusiastic experimentation with firearms by al-Ghawri.40 Tuman Bay too appears to have embraced these new technologies, and it is perhaps his over-reliance upon static lines of cannon rather than a fixation with the traditional Mamluk values of furūsiyya (literally horsemanship, though it can be understood more broadly as chivalry) that accounts for his inability to combat the advancing Ottoman army. The first defeat of his forces occurred on 29 Dhu al-Hijja 922/22 January 1517 at Raydaniyya, to the northeast of Cairo, and Tuman Bay fled the battlefield. On the Friday after the battle the Friday sermon (khuṭba) was pronounced in the name of Selim in the mosques of Cairo. Withdrawing to Bahnasa Tuman Bay wrote offering to govern Egypt as a vassal of the Ottoman sultan (an offer that Selim had already made prior to the battle of Raydaniyya). Tuman Bay’s request 40 David Ayalon, Gunpowder and Firearms in the Mamluk Kingdom (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1956). Contra Robert Irwin, ‘Gunpowder and firearms in the Mamluk sultanate reconsidered,’ in Michael Winter and Amelia Levanoni, eds, The Mamluks in Egyptian and Syrian Politics and Society, Medieval Mediterranean 51 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), pp. 117–39.

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was favourably received, but reconciliation between the two men was thwarted by the opposition of the Royal Mamluks and the subsequent slaughter of the Ottoman delegation sent to Tuman Bay’s camp. The final battle between the two took place at Giza on 10 Rabiʿ 923/2 April 1517. Tuman Bay escaped and sought refuge with a bedouin ally, Hasan al-Murʿi, but was betrayed to the Ottomans.

Figure 11.13: Bab Zuwayla, Cairo, 1091–92 and later. Courtesy of Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair.

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Wearing the ‘robes like those of an Arab of al-Hawwara,’41 Tuman Bay was placed in captivity in the Ottoman camp at Inbaba. Although Selim appears to have favoured sending him into exile in Mecca, the Ottoman sultan eventually decided that a public execution would quash the rumours circulating in Egypt that Tuman Bay remained at large. Still dressed as a bedouin, the defeated Mamluk sultan was brought in irons (fi’l-ḥadīd) on horseback to Bab Zuwayla, the southern gate of Cairo (fig. 11.13). Displaying the noble bearing that impressed both Turkish and Egyptian observers, he asked the assembled crowds to recite the opening sura of the Qurʾan (fātiḥa) for him three times. This done he was hanged, his body being left for three days before being taken for burial in the madrasa (religious school) of sultan Qansawh al-Ghawri.42 The captivity and execution of Tuman Bay elicited different reactions in Egypt. Displaying their customary irreverence for figures of authority, performers of shadow plays incorporated the death of the last Mamluk sultan into their repertoire. These performances were even seen by Selim himself, who took a troupe back with him to Istanbul.43 Sadly, neither the puppets nor the text survive, though some extant examples do show chained captives (fig. 11.14). It is possible that a painting of the hanging of Tuman Bay records the denouement of a shadow play.44 The painting itself is unattributed, but the popular style can probably be associated with the so-called

41 Holt, ‘The last Mamlūk sultan,’ p. 245. 42

Ibid., pp. 245–46. Shmeul Moreh, Live Theatre and dramatic literature in the Medieval Arab World (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), p. 136; Metin And, Karagöz: Turkish Shadow Theatre. Revised new edition (Istanbul: Dost, 1979), p. 25; Marcus Milwright, ‘On the date of Paul Kahle’s Egyptian shadow puppets,’ Muqarnas 28 (2011): 43–68 (see p. 49). 44 The image was used for an online poster for a conference on the late Mamluk period held at the Middle East Documentation Center of the University of Chicago in about 2006. Unfortunately, the original published source for this image was not kept by the organisers. I am grateful to Warren Schultz for this efforts in trying to track down this image. 43

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‘Bazaar painters’ of the seventeenth century (fig. 11.15).45 [8] While there is no reason to question Ibn Iyas’ overall presentation of the events, his own status as a member of a family of awlād al-nās (i.e. freeborn sons of Mamluks) naturally led him to mourn

Figure 11.14: Leather shadow puppets depicting chained captives. Egypt, fourteenth–seventeenth century. Discovered in Manzala, Egypt by Paul Kahle. Linden Museum: 84677. Courtesy of the Linden Museum, Stuttgart. 45

The term, ‘bazaar painter,’ was coined by the Turkish art historian, Metin And (d. 2008), and refers to the urban artists working outside the court. I am grateful to Julian Raby and Eva Baer for their thoughts on the style of the painting of the hanging of Tumanbay. On Turkish shadow plays, see And, Karagöz.

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the passing of the political system of which he was a part.46 It is sultan al-Ghawri, and not Tuman Bay that Ibn Iyas blames for the weakening of the political, social, and economic state of the sultanate. He also notes the barbarity of the invaders, including the execution of many prominent Mamluks following the capture of Cairo.

Figure 11.15: Execution of Tumanbay outside Bab Zuwayla, Cairo, in 1517. Unknown source, seventeenth century (?). Drawing after digital image: Marcus Milwright. 46

For his biography and works, see Michael Winter, ‘Ibn Iyās, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad (b. 1448; d. 1522),’ in C. Kafadar, H. Karateke, and C. Fleischer, eds, Historians of the Ottoman Empire. Online: https://ottomanhistorians .uchicago.edu/sites/ottomanhistorians.uchicago.edu/files/ibniyas_en.pdf (last consulted: 8 February 2016).

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The case of amir Sudun Dawadari provides an interesting comparison to the fate of Tuman Bay. Apprehended by a bedouin and presented to the Turkish forces, the amir was dressed with a blue turban (the headcovering imposed upon Christians by the Mamluk authorities) and then paraded on a donkey. Already suffering from a broken leg, the amir died on his stead. His severed head was later displayed in the Ottoman camp.47 Ibn Iyas’ version of the fall of the Mamluk sultanate did not, however, enjoy the greatest prominence in the Middle East in the decades and centuries after the execution of Tuman Bay. The most influential account is given by Ahmad b. ʿAli ibn Zunbul (d. after 1574). Few biographical details exist, though he was probably born in c. 1500 in the Nile Delta town of Mahalla. It is possible that he was an eye-witness to sultan Selim’s entry into Cairo. Ibn Zunbul spent part of his career as the dream interpreter for the Ottoman governor of Egypt, Mahmud Pasha (d. 1567), and was author of treatises on geomancy and cosmology.48 Composed around the year 1553, he refers to his historical work as the Kitāb al-infiṣāl dawlat al-awān wa ittiṣāl dawlat Banī ʿUthmān (‘The Departure of the temporal Dynasty and the Coming of the Ottomans’), though it is often called Wāqiʿat al-sulṭān al-Ghawrī maʿa Salīm al-ʿUthmān (‘Encounter of

47 Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Iyas, Die Chronik des Ibn Ijâs, ed. Paul Kahle and Muhammad Mustafa, Bibliotheca Islamica 5e (Istanbul and Leipzig: Staatsdrukerai and F. A. Brockhaus, 1932), pp. 145–46. For the French translation, see Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Iyas, Journal d’un bourgeois du Caire, trans. Gaston Wiet (Paris: SEVPEN, 1960), II: 141–42. 48 On Ibn Zunbul, see Benjamin Lellouch, ‘Ibn Zunbul, un Égyptien face à l’universalisme ottoman (seizième siècle),’ Studia Islamica 79 (1994): 143-55; Benjamin Lellouch, ‘Ibn Zunbul, Aḥmad b. ʿAli (d. 1574),’ in C. Kafadar, H. Karateke, and C. Fleischer, eds, Historians of the Ottoman Empire, ed. C. Kafadar, H. Karateke, and C. Fleischer. Online: https://ottomanhistorians. uchicago.edu/sites/ottomanhistorians.uchicago.edu/files/ibnzunbul_en.pdf (last consulted: 8 February 2016). A somewhat different interpretation is offered in Robert Irwin, ‘Ibn Zunbul and the romance of history,’ in Julia Bray, ed., Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam: Muslim Horizons (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 3–15.

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sultan al-Ghawri with Selim the Ottoman’).49 The popularity of the Infiṣāl is indicated by the large number of surviving manuscripts, including Turkish translations of the original Arabic. Located between the Mamluk historical tradition, of which Ibn Iyas was the last exponent, and the popular epics like the Sīrat ʿAntar and Sīrat alẒāhir Baybars, Ibn Zunbul’s recounting of the transition from Mamluk to Ottoman rule has been dubbed by Irwin as the first example in Arabic of the genre of historical romance. [10] Irwin gives some general observations about the tone and content of the Infiṣāl.50 First, internal features of the text such as the frequent recapitulations of previous events and the elaborate dialogues between characters indicate that the Infiṣāl was designed to be performed, presumably by the professional storytellers who were common feature of Cairo, and other cities during the Mamluk and Ottoman periods. Second, Ibn Zunbul seeks to reshape historical events so as to facilitate the narrative flow. Extraneous elements are excised, with the battle scenes sometimes reduced to single combat between the key players in the story. The explicit subject of the text is the struggle between the Mamluks, the embodiment of the principles of furūsiyya, and the Ottomans, adherents of the new technology of firearms, but Irwin suggests that underlying theme is the role of fate in deciding the lifespan of people and dynasties. For this reason, dreams, prophecy, magic, and fortune-telling are ubiquitous elements in the narrative. Third, the principal players are drawn in extreme terms. Ibn Zunbul characterises Tuman Bay as paragon of virtue and bravery. He is both a military man and a sufi. The Mamluk sultan is instructed about his fate by dreams, and even takes time to write a poem (qaṣīda) before a battle. Selim, on the other hand, is gifted with knowledge of the occult, including the ability to read men’s souls through their physical appearance (firāsa). Unlike the earlier chroni49

Irwin, ‘Ibn Zunbul,’ p. 5. The edition I will refer to below is: Ahmad b. ʿAli ibn Zunbul, Wāqiʿat al-sulṭān al-Ghawrī maʿa Salīm al-ʿUthmān, ed. ʿAbd al-Munʿim ʿAmir, Adab al-Ḥarb (Cairo: al-Haya al-Misriyya alʿAmma li’l-Kitab, 1997). 50 Irwin, ‘Ibn Zunbul,’ pp. 6–10.

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cler Ibn Iyas, Ibn Zunbul stresses the legitimacy of the Ottoman campaign against the Mamluks as well as the personal piety of the Turkish sultan. The enduring success of Ibn Zunbul’s vision of Mamluk heroes and villains is demonstrated by an account given by the Turkish traveller, Evliya Çelebi (d. 1682). He observes that Circassian beys passing the burial place of Tuman Bay in the madrasa of sultan al-Ghawri would bow their heads in respect.51 By contrast, the beys would turn their heads away from the tomb of the quisling amir, Khayrbay. Legends concerning Tuman Bay and the activities of his widow remain in circulation until the present day in the neighborhood of Bab Zuwayla, the place of the sultan’s ‘martyrdom.’52 Lastly, the Infiṣāl played an important role in Ottoman Egypt in the formation of a collective memory about the history of the Mamluk sultanate. Dignitaries in Cairo appear to have assembled their image of the Mamluk period not from sober annalistic chronicles by the likes of Ibn Taghri Birdi (d. 1470), but from the dramatic reconstructions of Ibn Zunbul and ahistorical folktales such as the Sīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars.53 Jane Hathaway argues that the reliance up51 Jane Hathaway, A Tale of two Factions: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen, SUNY Series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 50–51; Jane Hathaway, ‘Mamluk “revivals” and Mamluk nostalgia in Ottoman Egypt,’ in Michael Winter and Amelia Levanoni, eds, The Mamluks in Egyptian and Syrian Politics and Society, The Medieval Mediterranean 51 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), pp. 387–406. 52 Amina Elbendary, ‘History and parallel history.’ Review of: Emed Abu Ghazi, Tūmānbay: al-sulṭān al-shahīd (Tumanbay: The Martyred Sultan), Cairo: Mirette, 1999, Al-Ahram, no. 472, 9-15 March, 2000. Online: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/472/bk5_472.htm (last consulted 25 April 2007) 53 On the development of this epic treatment of the life of Baybars, see Amina Elbendary, ‘The sultan, the tyrant and the hero: Changing Medieval perceptions of al-Ẓāhir Baybars,’ Mamluk Studies Review 5 (2001): 141–57. A summary of one version of this text appears in Malcolm Lyons, The Arabian Epic, heroic and oral Story-Telling. Volume 3: Texts, University of Cambridge Oriental Publications 49 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 77–236.

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on the Infiṣāl also served important socio-political purposes. In particular, this text, and others purporting to give the genealogies of prominent Circassian beys in Egypt, aided in the process of forming group identities, perpetuating factional rivalries, and indoctrinating raw recruits (often drawn from many regions and ethnicities) into the political structures of this major Ottoman province.54

LITERARY CONTEXT Thevet addressed the question of the capture and execution of Tuman Bay in two works prior to the publication of Les vrais pourtraits. His first brief comments appear in La cosmographie de Levant (1554); he simply notes the mistreatment of an unnamed sultan of Egypt by Selim.55 Coming in the aftermath of his own visit to the Mediterranean and Middle East between 1549 and 1552, it is surprising that the event did not capture his imagination at this time. The second volume of the Cosmographie universelle (1575) contains a more extensive description, as well as a woodcut illustration (fig. 11.7).56 Following an account of the last battle between the Mamluks and the Ottomans, and the death of Yunus Pasha, Thevet relates that the Turks went in pursuit of Tuman Bay. Captured after hiding in some reeds (roseaux), [11] the Mamluk sultan and ‘three hundred or more of the bravest captains of his army’ were taken back to the city of Cairo. This event was evidently ‘of great regret to the people of Egypt and Arabia.’ Thevet continues: The next day, and for three consecutive days, they asked him [Tuman Bay], in order for him to confess where the treasures were; that which he never wanted to confess. And this is why Selim was asked to drive him on an old camel (that Arabs call 54

Hathaway, ‘Mamluk “revivals” and Mamluk nostalgia,’ pp. 404–406. See also comments in Peter M. Holt, ‘The exalted lineage of Riḍwān Bey: Some observations on a seventeenth-century Mamluk genealogy,’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 22.1 (1959): 221–30. 55 André Thevet, Cosmographie de Levant, facsimile edition, annotated by Frank Lestringant (Geneva: Librairie Droz S.A., 1985), p. 110. 56 Thevet, Cosmographie universelle, I, fol. 37v.

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MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS semel) around the whole city of Cairo, tied up and gagged (garrotté), with his turban on a spear and his scimitar carried by a Turk, up in the air. At his front and back walked on foot six of his most favoured captains, tied up in the same manner, just as you can see them on the picture presented here. So faced with the fear of death, this poor king (roy) Tomambey passed six days in an upright position, with his hands tied behind his back, to be mocked by all, dressed in a green robe, worn out and torn, exposed to everyone’s ridicule, and to become shamed and disgraced in the eyes of the people of Egypt. When these six days had gone by, as he had withstood the suffering, he found himself ready outside the doors of Babe-Nansré [Bab al-Nasr], having around as witnesses a hundred thousand men. Looking at the confusion and disorder of the people, this fortunate (fortuné)57 king was driven to the house of a butcher, at the orders of a Pasha, and right on the spot where the cattle are killed and skinned, he was made to climb down from the camel and strangled (estranglé) on the thirteenth day of April, the year 1517. This is the respect that the Turkish emperors, when victors, show to kings and princes, their enemies, and that is what little I could find from Mamluks and Arabs, of the times and tragedy of this great warrior, who resided in Egypt. It is since then that the Turk has become king of the kingdoms of Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Phoenicia, Judaea, and numerous other provinces subject to his majesty.58

As might be expected, Thevet’s recounting of the capture and execution of Tuman Bay diverges in many ways from the description of these events in the chronicle of Ibn Iyas. Thevet’s narrative also includes a new theme, the questioning of Tuman Bay regarding the whereabouts of the treasures of his predecessor, Qansawh al-

57 Perhaps a typographical error in the text? Infortuné would make more sense in the present context. 58 Translated by Athamadia Baboula.

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Ghawri.59 For Thevet, it is Tuman Bay’s unwillingness to divulge this information that prompts the Turkish sultan to order his public humiliation and execution. Thevet must have instructed his artist to illustrate the dramatic moment of Tuman Bay and his six favourite captains being led through the streets of Cairo. The turbans in the image suggest a passing familiarity with Turkish headgear, but the same cannot be said about the other details. The architectural backdrop appears largely invented, and the musical instruments being played at the head of the procession are of European design. The Mamluk sultan and his captains are shown bareheaded to indicate their reduced status. What is unclear, however, is why they all sport long hair tied in a topknot. This same hairstyle is occasionally employed in European images of Turks.60 Much of Thevet’s colourful account is, in fact, drawn from the writings of Paolo Giovio. Chapters XVII and XVIII of Giovio’s Historiarum sui temporis appear to have been Thevet’s main source for the end of the Mamluk sultanate (he perhaps consulted the French translation published in Lyon in 1552). Giovio also included excerpts from the relevant sections of the Historiarum in his entry on Tuman Bay in the Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium.61 Giovio’s discussion of the rise and rule of the Turks enjoyed a wide readership in Europe, both in its original form and [12] in translations. These include the abridged A shorte Treatise vpon the Turkes Chronicles, translated by Peter Ashton, and published in London in 1546. The brief relation of the death of Tuman Bay distills the theme of hero59 The Ottomans certainly removed valuable items from

Cairo following the conquest, though the written sources dwell mainly upon the collections of Chinese pottery (Arabic: ṣīnī) assembled by members of the Mamluk elite. See Marcus Milwright, ‘Pottery in written sources of the Ayyubid-Mamluk period (c. 567-923/1171-1517),’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 62.3 (1999): 504–518 (see p. 515). 60 For an example, see Strauss, The German Single-Leaf Woodcut, I: pl. 122. 61 Paolo Giovio, Historiarum sui temporis (Florence: In officini Laurentii Torentini dvcalis typographi, 1550–52), I, book xviii, 300-301; Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium, pp. 225f. For an Italian translation of the latter, see Giovio, Elogi degli Uomini illustri, pp. 748–50. On Thevet’s plagiarism, see Dwyer, ‘André Thevet and Fulvio Orsini.’

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ism in the face of unyielding destiny (the variant spellings are left as they appear in the original text): Selimus not verye longe after that he myght take from the people theyr heade, and all hope and occasion, wherby they myght rebelle, commanded Tomoinbeyus to be sette on a moyle, and lead through the citie of Alcayre with an halter abowte his necke, and after thys to be hanged, the eleventh daye of Apryll, besyde the gate of Bassuella [Bab Zuwayla], everye man bewayling thys woful and cruell syghte, and iustlye cursynge unryghteouse fortune, whyche of late called up Tomombeyus for hys singuler vertue and wisdome, to beare great rewle, and so sone after brought hym doune to the mooste myserye and wretchednesse, that ever anye kynge or prince, at anye tyme sustayned.62

Two features are worth emphasising in this passage: first, the qualities of virtue and wisdom supposedly possessed by Tuman Bay; and second, that despite these qualities he was still reduced to a state of misery and wretchedness. Tuman Bay is not the only Muslim ruler whose fall from power fascinated European writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; for example, the fate of the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I Yildirim (r. 1389–1402, d. 1403) is discussed in numerous historical treatises. Although Bayezid is not portrayed in European writing as a virtuous and tragic hero, he too is seen as a victim of fate, being on one day a powerful monarch and the next a helpless captive (fig. 12.3).63 In the cas-

62 Paolo Giovio, A shorte Treatise vpon the Turkes Chronicles, trans. Peter Ashton (London: Edwarde Whitchurche, 1546), fol. lxxxxiiir. 63 Fuat Köprülü, ‘Yildirim Beyazıd’ın esareti ve ıntıhari hakkinda,’ Belleten. Türk Tarıh Kurumu 1.2 (1937): 591–603; Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula, ‘Bayezid’s cage: A re-examination of a venerable academic controversy,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, ser. 3, 21.3 (2011): 239–60 (see pp. 242–45). Also Michele Bernardini, ‘“Tamerlano e Bayezid in gabbia.” Fortuna di un tema storico orientale nell’arte e nel teatro del Settecento,’ in U. Marazzi and A. Gallotta, eds, La Conoscenza dell’Asia e dell’Africa in Italia nei secoli XVII e XIX, a c, vol. III.2 (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1989), pp. 729–60.

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es of both men, the wheel of fortune had turned, stripping them of political power and material wealth.64 Thevet returned to the capture and death of Tuman Bay in Les vrais pourtraits. The last part of the entry devoted to the Mamluk sultan reads as follows: So leaving aside the errors of [Nicholas] Nicolay65 I return to the poor and miserable Tomombey, who, was thought to be hiding in a small cave (?) (grottesque), but that did him no good, however, as he could not escape being captured, to the great regret of the whole people of Egypt and Arabia, along with three hundred of the bravest and oldest captains of his army. Most of them put up a defence, seeing what was to happen to them, wishing better to lose their lives [in battle] than die being ridiculed. The others were made to follow Tomombey to the city of Cairo. The next day, and for three consecutive days, Selim, forgetting all royal clemency and just humanity, that one could reasonably extend in front of the eyes of his cruel heart, acted inhumanely against him, in order that he might confess where the treasures were that he had inherited from Campson [Qansawh al-Ghawri], [and] for three times he asked the question. But he [Tuman Bay] did not ever want to confess anything. Selim wanted to see him, interrogate him, and talk to him, [but] he stayed in his room closed and constant [in his refusal to confess], just as he had always been. After having been made disFor example, George Whetstone (d. c. 1587) remarks of Bayezid in An English Myrror (1578): ‘But such was God’s will…and a notable example of the uncertaintye of worldly fortune: Baiazeth, that in the morning was the mightiest Emperor on the world, at night, and in the residue of his life, was driuen to feed among the dogs, and which might most grieue him, he was thus abased, by one that in the beginning was but a poore shepherd.’ Quoted in Battenhouse, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, p. 147. On the concept of the wheel of fortune, see Ernst Kitzinger, ‘World map and fortune’s wheel: A Medieval mosaic floor in Turin,’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117.5 (1973): 344–73. 65 Nicolas de Nicolay (d. 1583) was a French geographer and author of books, including Les navigations, peregrinations et voyages faicts en la Turquie (Antwerp: G. Silvius, 1576). 64

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MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS gracefully to get on his camel, he had his throat cut (esgorgé) on the spot where people kill and skin the cattle and sheep on the thirteenth day of April, the year 1517, being sixty-five years old. He was not publicly hanged (pendu), as some have been allowed to write, among others Paul Iove [Paolo Giovio] and Munster [Sebastian Münster].66

Thevet’s treatment of this episode in Les vrais pourtraits differs from that in the Cosmographie universelle in both content and emphasis. Gone are details of Tuman Bay’s green robe and his six days strapped onto the saddle of a camel, and Thevet also changes the means of the sultan’s execution. While the accompanying illustration in Les vrais pourtraits makes no obvious reference to the interaction between Selim and Tuman Bay, Thevet evidently decided to provide the reader with a simpler, more psychologically engaging image than the one in the Cosmographie universelle. The drama of the street scene, the camel, the sultan’s turban and scimitar, the Mamluk captains, and the crowd of onlookers are excised. Notably, he no longer wears the tattered robe and is kitted out in a jacket befitting a sultan. Ibn Zunbul’s narrative offers an extensive treatment of the capture and subsequent execution of sultan Tuman Bay. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to deal with these episodes in detail, though it is worth noting the way in which the author employs reported speech as a means to animate the text. This includes speeches placed into the mouth of the sultan himself, during battles and other scenes of dramatic tension.67 Ibn Zunbul chooses, however, to eliminate the sultan’s personal voice from the final stage, his execution at Bab Zu66 Thevet, Les

vrais pourtraits, fol. 640v. Translated by Athamadia Baboula. On Sebastian Münster (d. 1552) and his Cosmographia (1549), see Günther Wessel, Von einem, der daheim blieb, die Welt zu entdecken – Die Cosmographia des Sebastian Münster oder Wie man sich vor 500 Jahren die Welt vorstellte (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2004). A facsimile edition was published under the title, Cosmographei, with an introduction by R. Oehme (Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1968). 67 For example, see the exchange given by Ibn Zunbul, Wāqiʿat al-sulṭān alGhawrī maʿa Salīm al-ʿUthmān, pp. 141–42.

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wayla. In this part of the narrative, the events are recounted by others. The last part of the preceding section creates the tone, emphasising the wretched condition of Tuman Bay and the Mamluk elite: And there was one from the Rūmī (Turkish) army who called out to the Egyptian man and said to him ‘This man on the mule, is he the sultan Tuman Bay or another man?’ Then the Egyptian said, ‘it is him.’ And it was an ill-omened day for the people of the Mamluks (ahl al-mamlūkiyya), and on [this day] many widows and orphans were created.68

The next section is entitled, ‘The Resistance (ṣulb)69 of Sultan Tuman Bay at Bab Zuwayla.’ The following is a translation of the opening paragraphs: The narrator (al-rāwiya)70 said: Then they arrived at Bab Zuwayla and they presented him with the slack rope (al-ḥabl markhiyya; i.e. the rope that had not yet been used) and quickly dismounted him from the [female] mule. They did not allow any further delay. After that they stopped and then moved in a line to the tomb (literally, ‘dome’; qubba) of Sultan Qansawh alGhawri. The qāḍī (judge), Asil al-Tawil washed him and dressed him in the clothes sent to him by Sultan Selim, [made] from the finest Mosuli fabrics. He prayed also with the qāḍī, made his will, and used the fountain of the aforementioned tomb. And sultan Selim donated three sacks (kīs, pl. ākyās) of silver [coins] for the giving of alms to them [the crowd]. [13] The narrator said: he [Selim] was present at the prayers said for sultan Tuman Bay, and after that the sacks were divided with a 68 Ibid., p. 173.

69 This can be translated as strength or backbone. 70

The identity of the narrator/transmitter is not indicated at this point in the text. It could be a written source such as Ibn Iyas or some form of oral transmission. My thanks to Seyedhamed Yeganehfarzand for his observations on this question.

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MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS portion of it [the silver coins] for the people. Other shares were counted, and three gifts of handfuls of silver were made, and qāḍī Asali was given also something like that. And the portion given to the people was from other than these shares. The narrator said: then came the time ordered by sultan Selim in which sultan Tuman Bay with courage was brought before the Amir Sharbak al-Aʿur (‘the one eyed’). And he ordered the breaking of his [the sultan’s] neck, and then they cut off his head.71

The account continues by noting the reduced state of Tuman Bay’s family and servants (ghulām). The body was taken to the Madrasa of Baybars for washing and the recitation of prayers, before being buried nearby. Ibn Zunbul describes these events as ‘the last act of the Circassian era.’72

CONCLUSION While sultan Tuman Bay II’s brief rule is little more than a footnote in the history of the Middle East, he enjoyed a remarkable afterlife in both Europe and the Ottoman empire.73 His image appears and his deeds are recounted in prominent European biographical encyclopaedias and histories.74 The European engagement with Tuman Bay is certainly of lesser importance than the extensive literary and visual production that was generated about Timur (Tamerlane) and Ot-

71 Ibn Zunbul, Wāqiʿat al-sulṭān al-Ghawrī maʿa Salīm al-ʿUthmān, pp. 173–74 72 Ibid., p. 175. 73 He even endures to the present day in the form of a radio drama on BBC Radio 4. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z2tjf (last consulted 11 February 2016). 74 For an English play on his life (probably never performed), see George Churchill and Wolfgang Keller, ‘Die lateinischen Universitäts-Dramen Englands in der Zeit der Königin Elisabeth,’ Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft 34 (1898): 221–323.

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toman sultans such as Bayezid I, Mehmed II and Süleyman,75 during their lives and in later decades and centuries. The comparison between Tuman Bay and Bayezid is instructive for it illuminates European attitudes towards the themes of capture and debasement.76 Stories concerning Bayezid’s treatment by Timur start to appear in the late 1420s or early 1430s.77 The full elaboration of this narrative – replete with degrading details such as the feeding of the sultan beneath the table and his employment as Timur’s footstool when the latter mounted his horse – occurred during the second half of the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Thus, one can correlate the growth of a literary legend, and of its visual and dramatic counterparts, with the military successes and imperial expansion of the Ottoman sultanate.78 The humiliations

Walter Denny et al., Court and Conquest: Ottoman Origins and the Design of Handel’s Tamerlano at the Glimmerglass Opera (Kent OH: The Kent State University Museum, 1999); Milwright and Baboula, ‘Bayezid’s cage,’ p. 244. Although the majority of the European images of Süleyman stress his imperial qualities (whether in a positive or a negative light), there is one attempt to show him submitting to the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor. See Bart Rosier, ‘The victories of Charles V: A series of prints by Maarten van Heemskerck,’ Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 20.1 (1990–91): 24–38. 76 The preoccupation with images of humiliation is not restricted to European images of Muslims. Popes and Roman emperors were also shown in this manner. For example, see W. Brown, ‘Marlowe’s debasement of Bajazet: Foxe’s Actes and Monuments and Tamburlaine, Part I,’ Renaissance Quarterly 24 (1971): 38–48. For other surveys of this issue, see Stephen Eisenman, The Abu Ghraib Effect (London: Reaktion, 2007); Marcus Milwright, ‘Imprisonment and humiliation: A comparative examination of the representations of Saddam Hussein and Sultan Bayezid I,’ International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 5.1 (2011): 113–30. 77 For example, Poggio Bracciolini, De varietate fortunae, ed. and commentary by Outi Merisalo, Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian Toimituksia. Annales Academicae Scientiarum Fennicae. Series B, no. 265 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1993), book 1, ll. 643–44 (p. 108). 78 See the treatment of this episode written by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II) a few years after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. See Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Opera quae extant omnia (Basle: Hen75

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inflicted upon Bayezid provided some comfort to embattled Europeans, and were given an ethical basis in the claims that they were divine retribution for his past sins, including the mistreatment of Christians. Timur himself assumes the role of a scourge of God (flagellum dei).79 By contrast, Tuman Bay was the victim of Ottoman expansionism, and the receives more sympathetic treatment in European sources. In the case of the engraved image made for Thevet’s Les vrais pourtraits, there is a distinct sense of pathos in the pose and expression of the helpless sultan. As noted above, the upturned eyes, opened mouth, and perhaps also arrangement of his hands, seem to draw on the vocabulary of Christian martyrdom. It is clear from the accompanying text that the author maintains an admiration for the sultan’s fortitude and dignity during his captivity.80 It is intriguing in this respect that a similar point could be made about Ibn Zunbul’s depiction of Tuman Bay’s last days. One can imagine a scenario in which the well-travelled Thevet would have learned something about Tuman Bay’s doomed resistance to Ottoman power. The texts of the shadow plays on the subject are lost, though Ibn Zunbul’s narrative probably gives ric Petrina, 1571), pp. 313, 394–96. Discussed in Milwright and Baboula, ‘Bayezid’s cage,’ p. 242. 79 Battenhouse, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, passim; Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel,’ pp. 333–35. 80 Maria Loh explores the concept of ‘faciality,’ noting that: ‘Portraits, in short, were not about preserving truthful likenesses, they were about bodies being transformed into data through significance and subjectification. These faces reterritorialise the bodies attached to them – luminous face / regal body, anxious face / neurotic body – which in turn naturalises the construction of these “individuals” along similar terms.’ Maria Loh, ‘Renaissance faciality,’ Oxford Journal of Art (Special Issue. Mal’Ochhio: Looking Awry at the Renaissance) 32.3 (2009): 341–63 (see p. 349). On the practice of ‘reading’ and categorizing faces in printed texts, see Bronwen Wilson, ‘Learning how to read: Giovanni Battista della Porta, Physiognomy, and printed portrait books,’ Visual Knowledges Conference, The University of Edinburgh, 17-20 September 2003. Pdf available at: http://www.iash. ed.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/wilson.pdf (last consulted: 2 March 2016).

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some clues about their dramatic content and characterisation.81 In common with Ibn Zunbul, Thevet’s textual and visual representations concentrate on the human dimensions of the events rather than the wider political implications. In both the Cosmographie universelle and Les vrais pourtraits French author invites his readers to empathise with Tuman Bay as he faces his impending execution. This last point perhaps gives some clues as to why Thevet would have chosen to depict Tuman Bay in a manner so strikingly different from the portraits of Mamluk and Ottoman sultans in the publications of European scholars such as Giovio and Boissard. As noted in the introduction, Les vrais pourtraits extends beyond the political and military spheres to encompass scholars, among them the martyr, St Justin (fig. 11.12).82 Emotive paintings and prints of martyrdoms were ubiquitous in sixteenth-century Europe. This visual production was matched by a wealth of martyrologies, written by Catholic and Protestant scholars, and often giving graphic accounts of the deaths of saints. For example, David Freedberg observes that the visceral paintings of suffering saints made in Antwerp in the later 1580s and are matched by the tone of broadly contemporary Counter Reformation writings on martyrdom. Notably, Johannes Garetius, in his De Sanctorum Invocatione Liber (1570), quotes Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394) about the value of picturing the virtuous actions of the saint, their sufferings, and ‘the savage acts of the tyrants.’83 81

It should be noted, however, that shadow plays of the Mamluk period often employed extremely coarse language and a striking disrespect for figures of authority. See Li Guo, The Performing Arts in Medieval Islam: Shadow Play and Popular Poetry in Ibn Dāniyāl’s Mamluk Cairo. Islamic History and Civilization. Studies and Texts 93 (Leiden and Boston: Brill 2012), pp. 123–30, 155–220. Also Paul Kahle, ‘The Arabic shadow play in medieval Egypt (old texts and old figures),’ Journal of the Pakistan Historical Society (April 1954): 85–115 (his partial translation of Ibn Daniyal’s, Ṭayf al-khayāl (The Phantom) appears on pp. 98–115). 82 On his martyrdom, see Thevet, Les vrais pourtraits, book 1, fol. 8v. 83 Freedberg, ‘The Representation of martyrdoms,’ pp. 136–38 (quoted section on p. 137). On the production of sixteenth-century martyrologies, see

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While Thevet’s image of the suffering Tuman Bay, a victim of Turkish ‘tyranny,’ can be seen, in part, to be a product of this highly charged environment, the decision to show a Muslim ruler in this distinctly Christian guise is probably made more comprehensible when one considers the rather fluid nature, at a popular level, of the concept of martyrdom in late Medieval and early Modern Europe. Pertinent in the present context is that the status of martyr could extend even to those who had been condemned to public execution for their crimes. The most important component of this public spectacle was way in which the person faced his or her impending execution. Acts of repentance, pleas for absolution, prayers, and spontaneous singing of hymns could evoke deep feelings of pity from onlookers, while the sufferings caused by extended execution methods, such as breaking on the wheel, could be likened to the pain experienced by true martyrs.84 If such qualities could be found in the last moments of those who had committed heinous crimes, is it possible that this sense of ‘compassionate immersion in the sufferings of the prisoner’85 could have extended to the noble way in which death was apparently faced by Tuman Bay? Such a reading is encouraged by [14] Giovio and Thevet’s accounts of the Mamluk sultan’s execuLuc Racaut, Hatred in Print: Catholic Propaganda and Protestant Identity during the French Wars of Religion (Aldershot and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 115–29; Nikki Shepardson, Burning Zeal: The Rhetoric of Martyrdom and the Protestant Community in Restoration France, 1520– 1570 (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2007). For examples of painted martyrdoms in Counter-Reformation Italy, see Kelley Magill, ‘Reviving martyrdom: Interpretations of the catacombs in Cesare Baronio’s patronage,’ in John Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, eds, Death, Torture, and the broken Body in European Art, 1300-1650 (Farnham and Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 87–115. 84 Mitchell Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press and Reaktion, 1999), pp. 152–57; Richard van Dülmen, Theatre of Horror: Crime and Punishment in early Modern Germany, trans. Elizabeth Neu (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), pp. 60–61. 85 The phrase is taken from Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel, p. 152.

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tion, and finds powerful visual expression in the portrait contained in Les vrais pourtraits.

CHAPTER 12. REPRESENTATIONS OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINATION AND

IMPRISONMENT OF SADDAM HUSSEIN1 It was an Ozymandias moment, one of great optimism for Iraq, for the whole region, and for the world. Whatever the problems since, one must never forget that April 9 marked the removal of one of the most vile dictators in modern history. It could not have been done any other way.2

These words about the toppling of the monumental statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdaws Square, Baghdad on 9 April 2003, the symbolic culmination of the invasion of Iraq, were written by William Shawcross in his book, Allies: The U.S., Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq. Searching for a deeper meaning in this apparently spontaneous popular expression of hatred for Iraqi dictator, Shawcross evokes Percy Bysshe Shelley’s (d. 1822) 1818 poem, Ozymandias. Long entrenched within the British school curriculum, countless schoolchildren have learned this sonnet, and even in adulthood can recite sections from memory, particularly the supposed inscription on the fallen statue of the Egyptian pharaoh: ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:/ Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!’ 1 Marcus Milwright, ‘Imprisonment and humiliation: A comparative examination of the representations of Saddam Hussein and Sultan Bayezid I,’ International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 5.1 (2011): 113–30. 2 William Shawcross, Allies: the U.S., Britain, Europe and the War in Iraq (London: Atlantic Books, 2003), pp. 157–58.

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No less striking are the remaining lines of Shelley’s poem: ‘Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/ Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/ The lone and level lands stretch far away.’ Shawcross was certainly not alone in seeing the fall of Saddam Hussein’s statue as a watershed in the Iraq war. Jack Coughlin, Casey Kuhlman and Donald Davis, authors of Shooter: The Autobiography of the top-ranked Marine Sniper, entitled the chapter of their book dealing with this event, ‘Our Iwo Jima moment.’3 A small volcanic island between Japan and the Marianna islands, Iwo Jima was the location of one of the fiercest battles of the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Between 19 and 26 February 1945, American and Japanese forces fought for possession of the island, and particularly the vantage point of Mount Suribachi. What made this battle so iconic in subsequent decades was neither the military engagement itself, nor the strategic value of Iwo Jima island in the wider campaign; rather, it was the taking of a photograph by Joe Rosenthal (d. 2006) of the second raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi on 23 February. Capturing the efforts of five Marines and one Navy Corpsman, ‘Raising the flag on Iwo Jima,’ became one of the most famous photographs of the twentieth century, winning the Pulitzer prize for photography in 1945, featuring on posters for the seventh war bond drive in the USA, and finally being reproduced in the form of a sculpture by Felix de Weldon (d. 2003) for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington DC (begun in 1951 and officially dedicated in 1954). There is an unintended irony in the linking of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s statue and the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi. Considerable doubts have been raised about the alleged spontaneity of the toppling of the statue in Baghdad,4 while Joe Rosenthal’s epic image has been dogged by (probably unjustified) accusations that the soldiers Jack Coughlin, Casey Kuhlman and Donald Davis, Shooter: The Autobiography of the top-ranked Marine Sniper (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2005), pp. 257–67. 4 For example T. Rall, ‘The statue spectacle. We wanted it to be true but it wasn’t.’ Reprinted in Danny Schechter, ed., Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception. How the Media failed to cover the War on Iraq (Amherst NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), pp. 228–29. 3

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had been posed for the photograph and that the actual second raising of the flag had occurred shortly beforehand. More interesting, however, is that the authors of both books mentioned above felt it necessary to add to a veneer of grandeur to the rather chaotic events of 9 April 2003 in Firdaws square through reference to well-known cultural markers – Shelley’s sonnet, Rosenthal’s photograph, and the Marine Corps War Memorial – whose significance would require little elucidation to British or American readers. A more temporally and chronologically apt parallel could perhaps have been sought in the toppling of the statue of Reza Pahlavi (r. 1925–41, d. 1944), [115] father of the last shah of Iran, in Shahyad Square in Tehran on 16 January 1979. This act of destruction certainly took on an iconic character during a period of ‘regime change,’ though it would hardly help to support the uplifting message of Western liberation that Allies and Shooter both sought to convey. More recently, monumental statues of Russian Communist leaders have suffered similar fates during the dismantling of the Eastern Bloc and the collapse of the Soviet Union. This chapter addresses another set of events in the Iraq war: the capture, medical examination, and subsequent captivity of Saddam Hussein. There can be no doubt that the photographic and televised images of the capture and display of the former Iraqi leader had a huge impact both in Iraq and the rest of the world. The political, legal, and sociological ramifications of these events and the representations of them have been extensively discussed in newspapers, online sites, and academic articles. The production of the images of the captive Saddam Hussein and their reception in Western media has been little studied from the perspective of art history, however. The first section assesses the iconography of these images in the context of selected contemporary (English language) textual sources. In the second section I discuss the wider historical context for the creation of Western (in this case specifically European) images of the capture and humiliation of Muslim rulers, with particular reference to the case of the Ottoman sultan, Bayezid I Yıldırım (r. 1389–1402, d. 1403).

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CAPTURE AND CAPTIVITY: IMAGES AND THEIR RECEPTION At 8.30pm on 13 December 2003 Saddam Hussein was found in a camouflaged dugout – often described, somewhat inaccurately, using the US military slang, ‘spider hole’ (a term that apparently owes its origins to the Vietnam war) – and taken without a struggle. His heavily bearded and unkempt head was photographed as he was dragged by a soldier from the entrance to the dugout. This picture, and others taken during his subsequent medical examination became the main stories for television news channels and newspapers in the subsequent days. Among the more memorable headlines were: ‘Saddam captured “like a rat” in raid’ (Fox News) and ‘We got the rat!’ (New York Newsday).5 His apprehension was the culmination of an operation code-named ‘Red Dawn.’ According to Robin Moore, author of Hunting down Saddam: The inside Story of the Search and Capture, the name itself was taken from a 1984 film directed by John Milius and starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen in which a group of teenagers from a midwestern town, calling themselves ‘the Wolverines,’ successfully repel a Soviet invasion. In honour of the film the Special Operations troops entrusted with the mission were split into two groups named Wolverine 1 and 2.6 Moore relates that following his arrival in Baghdad Saddam Hussein was ‘stripped naked and examined like any other prisoner.’7 Where this procedure diverged from usual practice, however, was in the highly unusual decision to film the examination for the purposes of public broadcast. As the man ultimately responsible for the decision to make public images of the captured Iraqi leader ambassador L. Paul Bremer III’s recollections of events in his memoir, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to build a Future of Hope, are worth recalling. In the book Bremer quotes his own words in which he offers a justification for breaching international law regarding the treatment of prisoners of war: 5

Collected in Allan Antliff and Marcus Milwright, ‘The public humiliation of Saddam Hussein,’ Anarchist Studies 13.1 (2005): 79. 6 Robin Moore, Hunting down Saddam: The inside Story of the Search and Capture (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2004), p. 249 7 Moore, Hunting down Saddam, p. 256

CHAPTER 12. REPRESENTATIONS OF SADDAM HUSSEIN 427 ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I understand it’s important for the M[ilitary] I[ntelligence] folks to exploit Saddam for whatever intel[ligence] we can get. But it’s [116] vital we find a way, Geneva Convention or not, to persuade the Iraqis we finally have him.’8

Figure 12.1. Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, Coalition Provisional Authority Administrator, presents video of Saddam Hussein going through a medical examination shortly after his capture in Tikrit, Dec. 13, 2003, during a press conference at the Iraqi Forum in Baghdad, Dec. 14, 2003. Photo: Staff Sgt. Steven Pearsall, U.S. Air Force.9 Presumably, any footage taken after his capture would have sufficed for this purpose. It was, however, the video footage of Saddam Paul L. Bremer III, with Malcolm McConnell, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to build a Future of Hope (London and New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), p. 251. 9 Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_031214-F-1093 P003_Ambassador_L._Paul_Bremer,_Coalition_Provisional_Authority_Ad ministrator,_presents_a_video_of_Saddam_Hussein_going_through_a_ medical_examination.jpg (Last consulted: 26 September 2019). 8

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Hussein’s medical examination that was chosen for broadcast at a press conference held by ambassador Bremer, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez and Adnan Pachachi, acting president of the Iraqi Governing Council, on 14 December (fig. 12.1). Although they are not specified in My Year in Iraq, the provisions of the third Geneva Convention violated by disseminating images of the medical examination of a military prisoner are: article 3.c (forbidding ‘outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment’), a section of article 13 (‘Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity’) and perhaps also a section of article 14 (‘Prisoners of war are entitled in all circumstances to respect for their persons and their honour’). These protections are to be afforded to all prisoners regardless of rank.10 The justifications offered by Bremer for broadcasting footage of the medical examination are similar to those given for the release of photographs and [117] video footage of the corpses of Qusay and Uday Hussein, following their deaths in a raid conducted by US forces near Mosul on 22 July 2003. Following the broadcast to the press corps of the bullet-ridden bodies of the two men, Donald Rumsfeld drew a parallel with the execution of Nicolae Ceauşescu in 1989. Rumsfeld asserted that it was only when the people saw the body of the Romanian dictator that they believed that they were rid of him, and further claimed that the graphic images of the sons of Saddam Hussein was necessary ‘to bring closure and so the Iraqis could believe that these two vicious members of the regime are, in fact, dead.’11 No qualms concerning the treatment of Saddam Hussein were expressed by world leaders following news of his capture; all appear to have concentrated their attention upon the benefits this event 10

International Committee of the Red Cross (n.d), Geneva Conventions. http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/genevaconventions (last consulted: 10 October 2009). 11 Judith Sylvester and Suzanne Huffman, eds, Reporting from the Front: The Media and the Military (Lanham and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), pp. 196–97.

CHAPTER 12. REPRESENTATIONS OF SADDAM HUSSEIN 429 would have upon the lives of the inhabitants of Iraq.12 Among the public pronouncements made immediately afterwards one voice of dissent came from a representative of the Vatican, the President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, cardinal Renato Martino. He remarked that he had felt pity watching the video of ‘this man destroyed, [the military] looking at his teeth as if he were a beast.’13 The same man also pleaded for clemency when the death sentence was passed on Saddam Hussein.14 The legality of this notorious broadcast of the medical examination and the role played by the medical staff were soon being debated by journalists and academics. Some interesting contributions appeared in medical journals; the (presumably willing) involvement of military physicians in the filming of a captive being perhaps one reason for the concern shown by members of the medical profession. In a short letter to the British Medical Journal published in January 2004, Ian Roberts, professor of Epidemiology and Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, contended that the decision to use footage of the medical examination was a deliberate attempt to humiliate that violated the Geneva Conventions.15 His position was supported by several other letters in later issues of the journal. Writing in the American Journal of Bioethics in the same year, Jonathan Moreno reached similar conclusions, suggesting that the 12

BBC News, ‘World reaction in quotes,’ 15 December 2003. http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3317971.stm (last consulted: 9 August 2010); CTV News, ‘World leaders welcome capture of Saddam Hussein,’ 15 December 2003. http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20031215/ blair_hussein_031214?hub=OttawaBin (last consulted 8 August 2010). 13 BBC News, ‘Vatican slams handling of Saddam,’ 16 December 2003. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3324631.stm (last consulted: 9 August 2010). 14 Catholic News Agency, ‘Vatican opposes Saddam’s death sentence,’ 6 November 2006. http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vatican_ opposes_saddams_death_sentence/ (last consulted: 7 August 2010). 15 Ian Roberts, ‘Saddam Hussein’s medical examination should not have been broadcast,’ British Medical Journal 328 (3 January, 2004): 5.http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/328/7430/51-b (last consulted: 15 October 2009).

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broadcast succeeded in its propagandist goals because it underlined the vulnerability of the former leader exhibiting him ‘as a filthy beggar having his orifices inspected by a physician.’ Moreno’s chief concern, however, was how this apparently unprecedented employment of a medical examination eroded both the ethical foundations of wartime medical practice (for example, as enshrined in the US military’s Uniform Code of Military Justice) and the fundamental principle of privacy in the doctor-patient relationship.16 Tom Koch’s editorial in the Journal of Medical Ethics also concerned itself with the role of physicians during the wider ‘War on Terror,’ with specific reference to the breakdown of doctor-patient confidentiality at US interrogation centres.17 He points out that the activities of health personnel in these centres had contravened UN Resolution 37/194. Relevant to the case of the broadcast of Saddam Hussein’s medical examination is the general statement in this resolution that health personnel have a duty to protect ‘prisoners and detainees against torture, and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment.’18 Ambassador Bremer recalls in his memoir the first time that the video of the medical examination of Saddam Hussein was publicly broadcast on 14 December. He writes: [118] That footage was replaced by a close-up video of Saddam Hussein undergoing his initial medical exam in captivity. The instant Saddam’s haggard face came up on the screen, there were again shouts, cries and weeping from the Iraqis. Here at last, after thirty-five long, cruel years, was proof that this awful man – whose

Jonathan Moreno, ‘The medical exam as political humiliation,’ The American Journal of Bioethics 4.2 (2004): W20. http://bioethics. net/journal/j_articles.php?aid=102 (last consulted: 20 October 2009). 17 Tom Koch, ‘Weaponising medicine: “Tutti fratelli,” no more,’ Journal of Medical Ethics 32.5 (May, 2006). http://www.ncbi.nlm.gov/ pmc/articles/PMC2579407/ (last consulted: 20 October 2009). 18 United Nations n.d. UN Resolution 37/194. Principles of medical ethics http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/37/a37r194.htm (last consulted: 20 October 2009). 16

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brutality had touched virtually every Iraqi household – was no longer free. An army medic with rubber gloves shone a flashlight into Saddam’s mouth, his head starkly framed against a shabby background of chipped white institutional wall tiles. When several other pictures of the prisoner were flashed on the screen, emotions in the audience boiled up again. Several Iraqi reporters were back on their feet, shouting. ‘Death to Saddam!’19

Bremer captures what was evidently a highly charged moment as he stood looking at the footage of the medical examination with an audience of officials and reporters. He focuses upon what is perhaps the most visually arresting moment; the shining of a flashlight into the prisoner’s open mouth in order to take swabs (used to confirm his identity through DNA tests). Bremer’s recollection of the ‘chipped’ tiles in the background appears faulty given that no damage is visible to the tiles behind Saddam Hussein’s head in the published photographs. He makes another memorable comment in his discussion of the initial interrogation of the captive: ‘I suddenly thought of Hitler in his bunker in April 1945, living in a dreamland, ordering non-existent armies to destroy the Soviet juggernaut encircling Berlin.’20 One can only speculate as to whether this comparison did indeed occur to Bremer at the time of his witnessing the interrogation or in retrospect as he penned his memoir. Robin Moore also reflects on Saddam Hussein’s spectacular fall from power at the end of his account of the military operation ‘Red Dawn.’ He writes: In his final days of freedom, The Glorious Leader, Direct Descendant of the Prophet, The Lion of Babylon, was reduced to a poor, dishevelled has-been living in a mud hut. The lasting image he left on the Iraqi people is that of a broken, haggard man found living in a hole.21

19 Bremer with McConnell, My

Year in Iraq, p. 255. Year in Iraq, p. 259. 21 Moore, Hunting down Saddam, p. 257. 20 Bremer with McConnell, My

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The public thirst for undignified images of the former Iraqi leader continued in the months after the broadcast of his medical examination. For example, the British tabloid newspaper, The Sun, obtained illicit photographs of Saddam Hussein dressed only in his underwear and washing his laundry. Published in the 20 May 2005 issue of the newspaper, the photographs and accompanying story appeared on the front page under the awkwardly phrased headline, ‘Tyrant’s in his Pants.’ The New York Post (another title owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation) also ran the prison photographs as their cover story under the punning title, ‘The Butcher of Sagdad.’ More lurid was the coverage provided by the popular American magazine, the Weekly World News. In issues published prior to his capture the Weekly World News had regularly devoted front cover stories to Saddam Hussein. Prior to his capture on 13 December 2003, the stories tended to dwell upon the Iraqi leader’s sexuality, and his supposed intimate relationship with Osama bin Laden. Examples of this genre include: ‘Saddam and Osama in love’ on 18 February 2003; Saddam and Osama’s gay wedding’ on 24 June 2003; and ‘Found: Saddam and Osama’s gay home movies’ on 9 December 2003.22 While the first group of headlines all sought to neutralise the heterosexual masculinity of the Iraqi leader, the Weekly [119] World News did at times seek to emphasise his cruelty and his potential threat to non-Muslims. For example, the headline of the issue of 18 February 2003 carries the striking claim that, in the manner of a pagan Roman emperor, ‘Saddam feeds Christians to lions.’23 The tone of the stories changes during the period of Saddam Hussein’s imprisonment; questions of sexuality remain, but they were now framed in a more violent fashion. The issue of 6 December 2004 carries the headline ‘Saddam castrated in prison.’ The story itself is entitled, ‘Spayed and neutered: Saddam castrated. The unkindest cut of all ensures dictator will produce no heirs!’ Another subheading remarks that, ‘From now on he will be singing soprano like a choirboy!’24 In an issue for 10 January 2005 the main headline Weekly World News, vol. 24, no. 23, vol. 24, no. 41, vol. 25, no. 13 Weekly World News, vol. 24, no. 23 24 Weekly World News, vol. 26, no. 13. Inside story is pp. 8-9. 22 23

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on the front cover is ‘Saddam beaten by gal in prison.’ The subheading reads, ‘Once proud dictator treated like a dog’ (arms of the figure are raised like those of a begging dog), while an additional caption to the photograph noted that he was wearing a diaper. The photograph itself is an ugly montage, pasting the bearded and bruised face of Saddam Hussein onto the body of semi-naked kneeling adult male restrained by a dog collar and leash held by masked woman wearing a bikini.25 The visual vocabulary adopted in this photograph is that of sadomasochistic pornography, though uncomfortable parallels might also be drawn with the photographs taken of Iraqi inmates being mistreated by American guards at Abu Ghraib prison.26 In particular, the Weekly World News cover image brings to mind the photograph taken of Lynndie England with a prostrate and naked male prisoner. Again, the leash and collar are prominent components of the image. Other modes of humiliation have been employed. Saddam Hussein’s gender was brought into question by the Weekly World News in the headline from the issue of 16 August 2004: ‘Saddam’s sex-change shocker – And your tax dollars are paying for it.’ The cover of the magazine and the inside story carried a photograph with his head topped with coiffured blond hair and pasted onto a buxom female body. The story claimed that the surgery and other procedures to change his gender were being paid for by the American authorities as part of a deal to reveal the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The magazine further asserted that Saddam Hussein was using the sex-change as a ploy in order to be able to offer an insanity plea at his upcoming trial.27

25 Weekly

World News, vol. 26, no.18 Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel, eds, The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 172– 226; Steven Strasser, ed., The Abu Ghraib Investigations: Official Reports of the Panel and the Pentagon on the shocking Prisoner Abuse in Iraq (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), pp. 36–40. 27 Weekly World News, vol. 25, no. 49. Inside story is on pp. 23–24. 26

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CAPTURE AND HUMILIATION: HISTORICAL PARALLELS Should we take seriously photo-montages produced in a piece of sensationalist entertainment like the Weekly World News? At one level, surely not; for example, the issue carrying the story about the alleged beating of Saddam Hussein boasts contributions about a mummified Pokémon doll, extra-terrestial beings, and a plan to transform surgically George W. Bush’s cabinet into midgets.28 To state the obvious: this magazine does not present (and does not claim to present) a well-informed view on the political life of the Middle East. It is meant purely for popular entertainment. As a tabloid newspaper, The Sun has a greater responsibility to report accurately, though it caters primarily [120] for an audience with only a limited interest in foreign events, and a much greater appetite for sports coverage, national news, and celebrity gossip. Therefore, we can regard these publications as part of a continuum of image production – in film and television, in newspapers, magazines and journals, and on the internet – ranging from low-brow, but sometimes influential entertainment to quasi-historical memoirs of the types discussed above and more serious academic contributions. In the previous sections I emphasised two main points in the analysis of the textual and visual representations of Saddam Hussein. First is the desire to establish historical or literary analogues for such iconic events as the toppling of the statue in Firdaws Square and the capture and detention of Saddam Hussein. Although these may seem no more than literary flourishes, such allusions can conceal other intentions. For example, there is the desire to recast episodes as pivotal moments in a larger narrative of liberation from tyranny. As Robin Greeley and Michael Orwicz note in their discussion of the reception of the photographs from Abu Ghraib, specific events may be tranformed into a ‘spectacle,’ which is suitable for passive consumption. Relevant in the present context is their assertion that ‘as the spectacle gives an illusion of coherence to the disjointed and fragmentary reality of everyday life, reality finishes by transforming itself into images that ultimately convert the subject into a mere spec28 Weekly

World News, vol. 26, no. 18

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tator/consumer/citizen.’29 The creation of the ‘spectacle’ effectively circumscribes future discourse and deflects attention away from more significant political and economic issues. The second point is the need to go beyond a purely military victory by seeking to humiliate those apprehended during the initial invasion and in the subsequent occupation (and to photograph or film those acts of humiliation). Reports concerned with the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and in Afghanistan found a consistent employment of techniques meant to induce feelings of shame and humiliation, including the removal of clothing, the placing of women’s underwear over the heads of male detainees, and sexual provocation by female interrogators or prison guards.30 The broadcast of the medical examination of Saddam Hussein has been interpreted as a deliberate attempt to humiliate (see above). The Sun and New York Post newspapers both devoted their front covers to photographs of Saddam Hussein dressed only in his underwear, while the Weekly World News created fictional accounts of sexualised assault, castration, and gender transformation. Stephen Eisenman argues in The Abu Ghraib Effect (2007) that the representations of humiliation are a recurrent theme in art, which can be traced back to ancient monuments such as the architectural friezes of ancient Greece. He questions the associations often made between the Ahu Ghraib photographs and depictions of tortures or ritualised humiliations created by artists such as Leon Golub, Ben Shahn, and Francisco Goya, observing that these artists are using their art to criticise abusive regimes. By contrast, a survey of ‘Western’ art produced in earlier centuries reveals a substantial corpus of paintings and statuary designed to serve the requirements of the state. Eisenman argues that art could be employed to depict the ene29 Robin Greeley and Michael Orwicz, ‘Abou Ghraib et le spectacle de la guerre,’ Savoir, Agir 3 (March, 2008): 119–27 (quote translated above appears on p. 124). See also Bill Nichols, ‘The terrorist event,’ in Mark Franco, ed., Ritual and Event: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 93–108. 30 Physicians for Human Rights in Falk, Gendzier and Lifton, eds, Crimes of War, pp. 354–55.

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mies of the state as less than human. Prisoners were sometimes represented as both deserving and accepting of the punishments meted out to them. Drawing upon Aby Warburg’s concept of Pathosformel, Eisenman remarks that ‘the internalization of [121] chastisement, self-alienation, and even the eroticization of suffering’ are consistent characteristics of the representation of captives.31 Eisenman discusses only briefly the role of Orientalism in the production of this genre of art,32 though this topic merits further attention. Notably, many of the humiliations inflicted on the inmates of Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities appear to have been intentional violations of Muslim socio-cultural values regarding gender separation, ritual impurity, and personal privacy. This sort of aggressive engagement with Islam, and specifically with the rulers of Muslim polities, is not new. While it is certainly the case that the interactions between Christian Europe and the Islamic world were not always marked by animosity, and that intellectual and artistic cultures of both domains were hugely enriched as the result of prolonged contact through the Medieval and Early Modern periods, it would be a mistake to minimise the enduring influence of denigrating representations of the ‘Other’ produced by Christians and Muslims. From the time of first Arab conquests to the Ottoman incursions into Europe it is possible to trace in the writings of Christian scholars many negative portrayals of Islam and of Muslims, stressing such features as the supposedly idolatrous character of the religion and the sexual depravity and bellicosity of its followers.33 Muslim

Stephen Eisenman, The Abu Ghraib Effect (London: Reaktion Books, 2007), p. 54. 32 Ibid., pp. 108–110. 33 Robert Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others saw it: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian Writings on Islam, Studies in Late Antiquity and Islam (Princeton NJ: Darwin Press, 1997); contributions in John Tolan, ed., Medieval Christian Perceptions of Islam: A Book of Essays, Garland Medieval Casebooks 10 (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1996). 31

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‘idolatry’ was also the subject of theatrical performances, poetry, and visual art in the Medieval period.34 The growth of printmaking in the sixteenth century greatly increased the availability of ‘portraits’ of the Ottoman sultans and others from the Turkish elite.35 Many of these were simply rather neutral representations showing these men in their formal costumes, but there also exist prints carrying more violent messages; for example, the title page an anonymous book published in Venice in 1575 (entitled, Lamento et ultima disperatione di Selim Gran Turco) contains a composition which subverts the conventional notions of Ottoman grandeur. In despair sultan Selim II (r. 1566–74) rends his garment to expose his chest, while a devil stands to right offering him a noose with which the Turkish ruler might end his life. The malevolent nature of the scene is further signalled by a flying demon carrying a dead body, and another nude male impaled on a spike.36 Such an image should be seen in the context of the ongoing military and economic competition between Venice and the Sublime Porte in the aftermath of the battle of Lepanto in 1571. Sultan Bayezid I’s defeat at the hands of the Central Asian warlord, Temür (also known as Timur-i Lang or Tamerlane, r. c. 1370– 1405) was given extensive attention in European scholarship from the second half of the fifteenth century onward. His defeat at the battle of Ankara in 1402 was indeed comprehensive; the Ottoman forces were routed, Bayezid himself was captured and died in captivity the following year, and his former empire was greatly weakened by a Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art, Cambridge New Art History and Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 129–64. 35 Julian Raby, ‘Opening gambits’ and ‘From Europe to Istanbul,’ in The Sultan’s Portrait: Picturing the House of Osman (Istanbul: Işbank, 2000), pp. 80–91, 138–61; Gülru Necipoğlu, ‘Süleyman the Magnificent and the representation of power in the context of Ottoman-Hapsburg-papal rivalry,’ Art Bulletin 71 (1989): 401–27. 36 Nebahat Avcioğlu, ‘Ahmed I and the allegories of tyranny in the frontispiece to George Sandy’s Relation of a Journey,’ Muqarnas 18 (2001): 207–208, fig. 8; Bronwen Wilson, ‘Reflecting on the Turk in late sixteenth-century Venetian portrait books,’ Word and Image 19.1-2 (2003): 39–40, fig. 4. 34

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decade of civil war.37 The abject final months of his life stand in huge contrast, however, the success of his expansionist policies prior to 1402. From the point-of-view of European observers the most significant events were the sultan’s victory at the battle of Nicopolis in 1396 and his siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1403. The parlous situation of the Byzantine state even stimulated the emperor, Manuel II Palaeologos (r. 1391–1425), to undertake a tour of Europe between 1396 and 1402 in search of military support. The Byzantine [122] capital may well have fallen had Bayezid not been forced to divert his attention toward the Timurid army to the east. It is known that Bayezid was captured following the battle of Ankara, and was brought bound or shackled into the presence of Temür. The nature of his treatment from the time of his first interview with his captor through to his eventual death is difficult to reconstruct with certainty, however. The problem is not with a paucity of relatively early written sources dealing with the events, but with the irreconcilable differences between the Persian historians (who claim that Temür treated his captive with dignity and intended to reinstate Bayezid as a vassal ruler) and the Arabic, Turkish, Greek, and Western European writers who dwell, to a greater or lesser extent, upon the mistreatments inflicted upon the defeated Ottoman ruler. The historiographic issues are complex, but of the many humiliations listed in sources of the fifteenth and early sixteenth century only two – that Bayezid was locked in a cage and that he was forced to witness the undignified treatment of his harem at the court of Temür – cannot be explained simply as later fabrications.38 More important in the present context is the question of how these events were represented – in writing, visual art, and drama – in Dimitris Kastritsis, The Sons of Bayezid: Empire Building and Representation in the Ottoman Civil War of 1402–1413, The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage 38 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007), pp. 44–78. 38 Mehmet Fuad Köprülü, ‘Yildirim Beyazıd’ın esareti ve ıntıhari hakkinda,’ Belleten. Türk Tarıh Kurumu 1.2 (1937): 591–98; Marcus Milwright and Evanthia Baboula, ‘Bayezid’s Cage: A Re-examination of a venerable academic Controversy,’ Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, ser. 3, 21.3 (2011): 239–60. 37

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Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. European writers of the early years of the fifteenth century make no mention of the mistreatment of Bayezid, beyond the basic facts of his captivity and death, but this changes within a few decades. Writing in the early 1430s, the Italian humanist, Poggio Bracciolini (d. 1459) is perhaps the first European to claim that Bayezid was locked in an iron cage.39 This story was further elaborated by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II, r. 1458–64) in his influential historical treatise, Asiae Europaeque elegantissima descriptio (written in the late 1450s and early 1460s, and first published in 1509). In addition to the iron cage, Piccolomini claims that the Temür fed scraps to the Ottoman sultan under the table like a dog, and that he used Bayezid as his mounting block when he climbed onto his horse.40 These details recur in most of the later accounts of the captivity published in the sixteenth century. Further refinements to the story included the claim that Bayezid was bound, rather impractically, in chains made of gold.41 The emigré Greek scholar, Theodore Spandounes (also Spandugino, d. after 1538) makes the same claim, but also introduces an explicitly sexual component to the humiliation of the sultan and his harem. In the final version of his text, completed in 1538 and first published in 1550, Spandounes relates that at a great assembly of Timurid nobles, Temür summoned Bayezid’s wife (Despina) into his presence and then ripped her garment open as far as her navel. In this condition she was required to serve food to Temür’s guests. Bayezid witnessed this violation of Muslim codes of female modesty, and his sense of Poggio Bracciolini, De varietate fortunae, ed. and commentary by Outi Merisalo, Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian Toimituksia. Annales Academicae Scientiarum Fennicae. Series B, no. 265 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1993), p. 108 [book 1, ll. 643–44]. 40 Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, Opera quae extant omnia (Basle: Henrich Petri, 1571), pp. 313, 394–96. The relevant passages are quoted in the editor’s introduction to Bracciolini, De varietate fortunae, p. 194. 41 For example, Andrea Cambini, Two very notable Commentaries, One of the Originall of the Turcks and the House of Ottomano…and thother of the Warre of the Turcke against George Scanderbeg, trans. John Shute (London: R. Hall for H. Toye, 1562. Reprinted Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, 1970), pp. 4–5. 39

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shame at his inability to protect his wife led him to commit suicide by banging his head upon the bars of his cage. Even Spandounes is led to comment that Temür’s actions were ‘out of keeping with his grandeur and noble character.’42

Figure 12.2. Sultan Bayezid in a cage from Philip Lonicer, Chronicon Turcicorum (Frankfurt, 1578). Bodleian Library: H.5.2.Art., fol. 12v. Reproduced courtesy of the Bodleian Library. Woodcut illustrations of these events are relatively rare in the printed works of the sixteenth century. The portrait of Temür (‘Tamerlanes’) in the 1575 edition of Paolo Giovio’s (d. 1552), Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium contains the schematic drawing of a caged figure being transported on a horse-drawn cart in the landscape background (fig. 9.3).43 Interestingly, the portrait of sultan BaTheodore Spandounes, On the Origins of the Ottoman Empire, trans. Donald Nicol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 23–24. 43 Paolo Giovio, Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium (Basle: Peter Perna, 1575), p. 102. Also illustrated and discussed in Marcus Milwright, ‘So 42

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yezid I [123] in the same book contains no hint of his humiliating final months in captivity (though this is described explicitly in chapter devoted to the sultan).44 More ambitious are the illustrations in Philip Lonicer’s (d. 1599), Chronicon Turcicorum (1578), which include woodcuts of Bayezid within his cage and the sultan employed as Temür’s mounting block (figs. 12.2 & 9.12). Both images are notable for their anachronistic and inappropriate details, ranging from the presence of firearms, and the slightly adapted Ottoman headgear sported by Temür and the attendant troops.45 Clearly it would have been very difficult for European scholars and artists to obtain accurate information about the proper costumes employed by members of the Timurid military classes, but it seems likely that the veracity of the images was of little importance to the intended readership. What was required was an appropriate degree of ‘Oriental’ exoticism to locate the scene in a non-European context. Equally fantastic are the surviving paintings at the Neues Palais in Potsdam (by Andrea Celesti) and Schloss Eggenberg near Graz (by Carl Franz Caspar or Andreas Raemblmayer).46 The sultan’s fate was also depicted on a set of seventeenth-century tapestries produced in Antwerp.47 The number of sixteenth-century European readers able to afford lavish illustrated books by the likes of Giovio or Lonicer was probably small. Likewise, palatial paintings and tapestries were seen only by a select few. The conflict between Bayezid and Temür was given visual form for much larger audiences through theatrical performances, particularly plays though there were also operas, includdespicable a vessel: Representations of Tamerlane in printed books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,’ Muqarnas 23 (2006): 332–34, fig. 4. 44 Giovio, Elogia, 70–72. 45 Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel,’ pp. 330–31. 46 Anton Mucchi and C. Della Croce, Il pittore Andrea Celesti (Milan: ‘Silvana’ Editoriale d’Arte, 1954), p. 86, fig. 29; Walter Denny et al., Court and Conquest: Ottoman Origins and the Design of Handel’s Tamerlano at the Glimmerglass Opera (Kent OH: The Kent State University Museum, 1999), p. 6, fig. 6. 47 Erwin Neumann, ‘Tamerlan und Bajazet: Eine antwerpener TapisserienSeries des 17. Jahrhunderts,’ in Jozef Duverger, ed., Miscellanea Jozef Duverger (Ledenberg: Gent, 1968), II: 819–35.

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ing one by Frederick Handel, and a ballet.48 Although almost forgotten today Nicholas Rowe’s (d. 1718), Tamerlane, a Tragedy, was one of the most enduringly [124] popular works on this theme being performed regularly between 1701 and 1815. A potent subtext of this play for English audiences was the equation of Bayezid with the hated concept of Catholic monarchy (and the linking of Tamerlane with the Protestant William of Orange, r. 1688–1702).49 Of greater note in literary terms is Tamburlaine the Great, written in two parts by Christopher Marlowe (d. 1593). Again, broadly contemporary political themes could be explored in the representation of the captivity and treatment of the Ottoman sultan; for example, Marlowe’s decision to have Bayezid function as the footstool of the ‘Scythian’ conqueror’s throne was probably drawn from the frontispiece illustration to the 1570 edition of John Foxe’s (d. 1587) Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days (also known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs). In this woodcut it is Pope Clement VII (r. 1523–34) who suffers the indignity of crouching beneath the feet of the seated figure of Henry VIII (r. 1509–47).50 Marlowe alludes to the anti-Catholic propagandist imagery produced a couple of decades earlier, but other themes in sixteenthand seventeenth-century writing refer back to more distant events. Most important in this respect was Bayezid’s employment as a mounting block; this motif is clearly drawn from the example of emperor Valerian (r. 253–60). Captured after a battle against the army of Shapur I (r. 240–72), the unfortunate Roman emperor was never released from captivity. Third-century rock reliefs at Tang-i Chogan near Bishapur in Iran show Valerian on his hands and knees beneath the victorious Shapur’s horse. Further rock reliefs depicting the vicDenny et al., Court and Conquest; Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel,’ p. 317 and notes. 49 Donald Clark, ‘The source and characterization of Nicholas Rowe’s Tamerlane,’ Modern Language Notes 65.3 (1950): 145–46. 50 William Brown, ‘Marlowe’s debasement of Bajazet: Foxe’s Actes and Monuments and Tamburlaine, Part I,’ Renaissance Quarterly 24 (1971): 38– 48. Also illustrated in Michael Hattaway, ed., A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), p. 369, pl. 2. 48

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torious Shapur with the submissive figures of the Roman emperors Philip the Arab (r. 244–49) and Valerian appear at Naqsh-i Rustam.51 Valerian’s fate was the subject of much commentary, particularly among Christian writers of the Late Antique and Medieval periods. Most influential [125] for writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the presentation of this event in Giovanni Boccaccio’s (d. 1375), De casibus virorum illustrium (1355–74). This work, and the English translation produced by John Lydgate (d. c. 1451) entitled, The Fall of Princes (completed in 1438–39) sometimes also carried illustrations. Both works circulated widely in manuscript form and later as printed editions.52 There is clearly a moralising dimension to these writings; the inglorious fates of some of the pagan Roman emperors of the third century were often represented in Medieval literature as just retribution for the persecution of Christians. In addition, there was a fascination with the ways in which an individual’s life might be transformed by fate or divine will. Pursuing this latter theme George Whetstone (d. c. 1587) remarks of Bayezid in An English Myrror (1578): But such was God’s will…and a notable example of the uncertaintye of worldly fortune: Baiazeth, that in the morning was the mightiest Emperor on the world, at night, and in the residue of his life, was driuen to feed among the dogs, and which might most grieue him, he was thus abased, by one that in the beginning was but a poore shepherd.53

The rapid fall from power to the status of a captive is also remarked upon by Robin Moore in his reflections on the apprehension of Saddam Hussein (see above), but Whetstone and other writ51

For photographs, see: The Circle for Ancient Iranian Studies (n.d.) http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/virtual_museum/sasanian/sasanian.htm (last consulted: 18 September 2010). 52 Milwright and Baboula, ‘Bayezid’s cage.’ 53 Quoted in Roy Battenhouse, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine: A Study in Renaissance moral Philosophy (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1941), p. 147.

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ers of the sixteenth century also saw these events from moral and theological standpoints. Thus, Bayezid’s fate could be seen as divine punishment for his past sins (such as the murder of his siblings or his abuse of his Christian subjects) with Temür fulfilling the complementary role of the ‘scourge of God’ (flagellum dei).54 The reversal of their roles – a ‘shepherd’ becoming a ruler and a sultan reduced to little more than a dog – and the uncertainty of earthly power could be conceptualised within the Medieval notion of the ‘wheel of fortune.’ Notably, woodcut prints and manuscript paintings of this theme often depicted kings strapped to the mechanism, their crowns falling from their heads as they passed from the apex to the downward cycle of the wheel.55

CONCLUSION One might legitimately ask whether it is necessary to engage in the art-historical analysis of photographs, photographic montages, and video footage that are so evidently lacking in aesthetic sophistication. Beyond considerations of their immediate propagandist potential, it seems unlikely that the creators and distributors of such images were much concerned with issues of composition, content, and iconography. Neither is it plausible that those responsible for propagating the images of Saddam Hussein knew of the temporally distant precursors discussed in the previous section of this chapter. Furthermore, art history might seem rather irrelevant given the ongoing political, economic, and social difficulties being experienced by the people of Iraq. Acknowledging that art history has a relatively limited role to play, I argue that there are good reasons for dwelling upon the production of representations of Saddam Hussein following his capture by American forces on 13 December 2003. [126] Those responsible for distributing this visual material, and those who subsequently wrote about it in the United States, and to a Battenhouse, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, pp. 100–110; Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel,’ pp. 333–35. 55 Battenhouse, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, pp. 89–92; Ernst Kitzinger, ‘World map and fortune’s wheel: A Medieval mosaic floor in Turin,’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 117.5 (1973): 361–69. 54

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lesser extent Britain, often relied upon rhetorical strategies – justification through historical references, attacks upon personal dignity, sexual and gender allusions, and fantasies of violence – many of which can be identified in the earlier European reaction to the capture and imprisonment of sultan Bayezid. Violent and humiliating images were employed in the ongoing engagement between Europe and the Ottoman empire, and one can also see similar themes manifested in the representations of other perceived enemies, including the indigenous peoples of the Americas in the decades after 1492. Catholicism also comes under attack in Protestant woodcut illustrations made in sixteenth-century Germany and England.56 This sense of threat – whether real or simply perceived – is a significant factor in establishing the tone of the representations of the ‘Other.’ In the case of sultan Bayezid, it was the fall of Constantinople to Turkish forces in 1453 (some half a century after his death) that gave fresh energy to the stories of his imprisonment and apparent humiliation. The increasingly detailed and savage descriptions were, in the sixteenth century, sometimes accompanied by illustrations, while Bayezid’s final days were also given visual form for wider audiences in theatrical performances of plays by Marlowe and others. The moral dimensions of his fall from power were the subject of much commentary, while allusions to such figures as the Roman emperor Valerian allowed the reader to locate the Ottoman sultan’s fate within a wider historical perspective. With the reduction of the Ottoman threat following the lifting of the siege of Vienna in 1683 there was a gradual change in the characterisation of the Turkish sultan’s captivity.57 No longer a symbol of a potent political threat on

Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); R. W. Scribner, For the Sake of simple Folk: Popular propaganda for the German Reformation, Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 148–89. 57 Milwright, ‘So despicable a vessel,’ pp. 336–37. 56

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the border of Christian Europe, Bayezid could be invoked by John Dryden (d. 1700) as no more than a metaphor for a caged bird.58 Parallels between the representations of Bayezid in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and Saddam Hussein in the twenty-first century are going to be inexact. It is notable, however, that historical, literary, and cinematic references have been employed to lend greater credibility to the sometimes rather unedifying events of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This same process can be identified in sixteenth-century European writings about the Ottoman empire. Islam continues to be perceived by many as challenging core Western values, and this sense of threat has only intensified with the terrorist atrocities in the United States, Britain, and Spain, and the launching of the global ‘War on Terror.’ Commonalities may be identified in the vocabulary of ritualised humiliations employed in the representations of these two Muslim rulers. Stripped of their political authority and subjected to (real or imagined) punishments, both Bayezid and Saddam Hussein become objects to be viewed. The representations of other captives – including those at Abu Ghraib and the Palestinians photographed with Israeli Defence Force reservist, Eden Aberjil59 – employ hoods or blindfolds to deny the subjects their sense of individuality. For these reasons it seems worthwhile to place the photographs, videos, and writings about Saddam Hussein discussed in this chapter into a longer historical context; consideration of earlier examples of this genre helps to isolate the types of social, political and cultural factors that consistently inform the creation of such disturbing representations of captivity and humiliation.

Samuel Chew, The Crescent and Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 469. 59 Anshel Pfeffer, ‘Web abuzz with soldier’s photos with bound, blindfolded inmates,’ Haaretz, 17 August 2010: https://www.haaretz.com/1.5101028 (last consulted: 2 December 2019). 58

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INDEX Locations

Austria, 250 ʿAydhab, 168 Ayla, 170, 171 Azerbayjan, 79

Abu Ghraib prison, 433, 434, 435, 436, 446 Abyssinia, 137 Acre, 208, 212, 216 Afghanistan, 80, 284, 435 Albania, 228 Aleppo, 5, 79, 174, 178, 184, 185, 188, 193, 211, 214 Halawiyya madrasa, 5, 6, 214 Alexandria, 212 Americas, 26, 382, 445 Anatolia, 12, 79, 140, 143, 144, 146, 162, 221, 284, 286, 368, 373 Ankara, 29, 247, 284, 338, 343, 367, 371, 373, 375, 437 Çubuk Ovasi, 343 Antioch, 78, 107, 207, 210, 216 Antwerp, 350, 441 Apamea, 214 Arabia, see Arabian Peninsula Arabian Peninsula, 4, 128, 174, 409, 413 Aral sea, 284 Armenia, 315 Asia, 266, 284, 297, 315, 337, 338 Ascalon, 6, 27, 168, 187, 188, 189– 90, 191, 192, 193 Aswan, 221

Babylon, 431 Baghdad, 28, 38, 79, 80, 81, 82, 104, 107, 140, 202, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 423, 424, 426 Firdaws square, 423, 425, 434 Iraq Military College, 229, 232–34 Karkh, 66 Bahnasa, 401 Baʿlabakk, 184, 188 Balikh river, 36 Balis, 79, 100 Basel (Basle), 248, 303, 380, 386 Basra, 6, 80, 231, 238 Beersheva, 240 Beirut, 79 Belgrade, 338 Berlin, 57, 431 Islamic Art Museum, 57 Bilad al-Sham, see Greater Syria Bishapur, 442 Bombay (Mumbai), 238 Brazil, 381 Britain, 35, 219, 445, 446

517

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MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS

British Empire, 244 Britium (Britio), 342 Brunswick, 269, 270 Bursa, 343, 368 n. 67 Cairo, 10, 48, 168, 169, 185, 186, 189, 190, 203, 401, 405, 406, 407, 408, 409, 410, 411, 413 Bab al-Nasr, 410 Bab Zuwayla, 402, 403, 405, 408, 412, 414–15 Barqiyya, 10 Bayt al-Dhahab, 137 Citadel, 138 Eastern palace, 186, 189 Fustat, 10, 189 Inbaba, 403 Īwān al-Ashrafī, 138 Madrasa of Baybars, 416 Madrasa-tomb of al-Ghawri, 403, 408, 415 Saffron Tomb (Turbat alZaʿfarān), 185 Cambridge, 262, 309 Corpus Christi college, 262 Canada, 228, 229, 230 Caspian sea, 4 Central Asia, 11, 32, 281, 283, 290, 292, 296, 336 Chertsey abbey, 262, 263 Chichester, 209 China, 1, 17, 79, 143, 144, 148, 149, 198, 285 Chios, 120 Cilicia, 213 Cincinnati, 223 Cologne, 275 Como, see Lake Como Constantinople, see Istanbul Ctesiphon, 5

Cyprus, 254, 306, 390 Damascus, 6, 40, 110, 122, 123, 126, 130, 133, 135, 153, 184, 187, 188, 200, 201, 212, 214, 215, 224, 253, 272, 320, 330, 332, 385 Great Mosque, 122, 123, 126, 130, 133, 184, 200, 272 Madrasa-Mausoleum of Baybars, 200 Maristan of Nur al-Din, 215 National Museum of Syria, 40 Damietta, 253 Dazzamar, 79 Dead Sea, 177 Delhi, 234, 307 Dresden, 268 Dujaila, 234, 237 Dur, 230, 231 Eastern Bloc, 425 Eden, Garden of, 231–32, 234 Edessa, 147, 342 Edfu, 221 Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, 208 Egypt, 33, 79, 108, 178, 203, 212, 222, 251, 253, 256, 258, 260, 262, 273, 275, 276, 277, 280, 382, 390, 400, 401, 403, 406, 409, 410, 413 England, 286, 291, 350, 445 Erzincan, 100, 343 Euphrates river, 75, 80, 100 Europe, 1, 7, 13, 15, 25, 27, 29, 173, 184, 204, 205, 248, 262, 280, 281, 283, 288, 292, 313, 317, 338, 342, 343, 344, 349, 360, 390, 411, 416, 419, 420, 436, 438, 439, 446

INDEX Fez, 382 Florence, 248, 267, 294, 301, 304 Galleria degli Uffizi, 250, 251, 304, 326 Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, 267 France, 172, 203, 207, 234, 252, 261, 287 Frankfurt, 313, 317, 318, 319, 321 Fustat, see Cairo Gallipoli, 221 Gaza, 122, 224 Genoa, 343 Germany, 25 Ghumdan, palace of, 14, 130 Giza, 402 Glasgow, 228 Gourna, 87 Graz, 350, 441 Schloss Eggenberg, 250, 304 n. 52, 350, 441 Greater Syria, 135, 167, 191–92, 204, 221 Greece, 120, 266, 382, 435 Gulf of Suez, 169, 170, 171 Hanna, 234 Hattin, 163, 164, 213, 251, 262 Hell, 15, 268, 327 Hertford Castle, 209 Hijaz, 132, 169, 170, 225 Hilla, 77 Hindiyya, 218 Hira, 37, 49, 68 Hiraqla, 85, 88 Hisn Kayfa, 138 Holy Land, 210, 252, 286, 315 Hungary, 328 Iberia, see Iberian Peninsula

519 Iberian Peninsula, 15, 16, 32, 137 India, 1, 6, 8, 13, 23, 239, 284 Indian Ocean, 170 Iran, 8, 277, 284 Iraq, 26, 29, 75, 77, 80, 108, 114, 139, 143, 162, 221, 229, 284, 425, 429, 435, 446 Isfahan, 320 Isna, 221 Istanbul, 7, 121, 160, 279, 314, 342, 343, 344, 345, 359, 363, 382, 403, 437, 438, 445 St Sophia (Hagia Sophia), 121 Topkapı Sarayı, 153, 154, 155, 159, 160, 274 Italy, 25, 143, 252, 264, 292, 327 Iwo Jima, 424 Mount Suribachi, 424 Jabal Bishr, 79 Jabal Hamrin, 229 Jabal Harun, shrine of Harun, 176 Japan, 424 Jerash, 122 Jericho, 224 Jerusalem, 5, 122, 123, 128, 130, 174, 221, 222, 224, 243, 253, 268, 280, 385 Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, 223–24 Dome of the Rock, 3, 5, 59, 123, 130, 200, 385 Haram al-Sharif, 126, 128, 174 Herodian Temple, 127 Holy Sepulchre, church of the, 122, 253, 385 Jaffa Gate, 223 Temple Mount, see Haram al-Sharif

520

MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS

Templum Domini, see Dome of the Rock Jidda, 169 Jisr Manbij, 79 Jordan, 27, 163, 167, 170, 174, 175, 176, 193, 264 Judaea, 410 Kallinikos, see Raqqa Karak, 165, 170, 171, 174, 175, 176, 190 Karbalaʾ, 187 Kashan, 80 Khirbat al-Mafjar, 136 Khurasan, 38 Khworezm, 284 Kingdom of Armenia, see Armenia Kingdom of Jerusalem, 27, 163, 172, 174, 181, 187, 204, 208, 253 Kingston, Ontario, 228 Kirman, 79 Kurdistan, 75 Kut al-Amara, 234, 235, 239 Lake Balkash, 284 Lake Como, 248, 303, 304 Latakiyya, 78, 99 Lepanto, 373, 437 Limoges, 269 London, 232, 266, 286 n. 10, 298, 309, 411 British Library, 320 Leicester Square, 236 London School of Hygiene and Medicine, 429 Victoria and Albert Museum, 218 Westminster Cathedral, 208

Westminster Hall, 209 Lyon (Lyons), 247, 300, 411 Madr, palace of, 128 Mahalla, 406 Mahdiyya, 186 Mainz, 384 Mansuriyya, 185 Manzala, 274, 275, 404 Marianna Islands, 424 Maʿrib dam, 14 Marj Dabiq, 400 Mayyafariqin, 256, 257 Mazar, 177 Mecca, 123, 163, 169, 170, 173, 183, 184, 186, 188, 400, 403 Bayt al-Ḥaram, see Kaʿba Black stone, see Kaʿba Kaʿba, 123, 125, 128, 130, 131, 132, 152, 173, 183, 184, 186 Maqam Ibrahim, 186 Medina, 122–23, 164, 169, 170, 171, 174, 188, 191, 400 Mosque of the Prophet, 122– 23 Mediterranean, 26, 119, 146, 382, 409 Memphis, 273 Menin, 221 Merv, 188 Mesopotamia, 12, 26, 28, 71, 78, 83, 106, 115, 138, 162, 234–38, 241, 243, 245, 257 Middle East, 5, 6, 9, 15, 26, 27, 28, 32, 78, 119, 122, 142, 166, 169, 172, 178, 199, 217–45, 255, 256, 274, 283, 290, 292, 315, 336, 349, 384, 390, 406, 409, 416 Mina, 169 Moldavia, 356

INDEX Monemvasia, 373 Moosomin, Saskatchewan, 228 Morocco, 248, 382 Moscow, 307, 308 Moscovie, see Moscow Mosul, 75, 76, 77, 228, 258, 428 Mshatta, 57, 59, 200 Muʾta, 176–77, 178 Nahr Dujayl, 79 Nahr ʿIsa, 79, 100 Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, 229 Naples, 373 Naqsh-i Rustam, 351, 443 Nicopolis, 438 Nile Delta, 406 Nile river, 79, 203 Nocera, 248 North Africa, 33, 188 North America, 29 Nottingham University, 35 Nuremberg, 268 Oultrejourdain, see Jordan Oxford, 131, 268 Bodleian Library, 208 Oxus river, 284 Pakistan, 48 Palermo, 186 Cappella Palatina, 186 Palatine Hall, 186 Palestine, 5, 122, 168, 178, 184, 188, 190, 193, 204, 223, 244, 410 Paradise, 130, 186 Paris, 235, 263, 264, 290, 310, 314, 316, 346, 376, 381 Paros, 120 Parthia, 299, 300 Peloponnese, 373

521 Persia, see Iran Petra, 174, 176 Phoenicia, 410 Phokis, Monastery of Hosios Loukas, 8 Potsdam, Neues Palais, 356, 441 Qalʿat Ayla (Ile de Graye), 168 Qasr al-Hayr West, 135–36 Qayrawan, 125 Qualicum Beach, Vancouver Island, 229 Qurna, 231–32, 234 Qus, 168 Qusayr ʿAmra, 136, 148 Rabigh, 169 Raqqa, 26, 31–60, 79, 188 Kallinikos, 36 Mishlab, 33 Rafiqa, 26, 36, 37, 38, 49, 59 Raqqa al-Muḥtariqa, 39 Raqqa Archaeological Museum, 50 Tal Abu ʿAli, 44 Tal Aswad, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36– 55, 56, 58, 59 Tal Fukhkhar, 44, 45 Tal Zujaj, 37, 39, 44 Ravenna, St Vitale, church of, 121 Rawda, Nilometer, 202 Raydaniyya, 401 Red Sea, 27, 79, 163, 164, 166, 168–69, 170, 171, 174, 190, 191, 193 Rome, 144 Rum, see Anatolia Rusafa, 204 Russia, 305

522

MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS

St Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai, 175, 176 St Petersburg, Hermitage Museum, 57 Samarquand, 284, 285, 287, 296, 345, 354, 361 Gur-i Amir, 285 Samarra, 26, 35, 49, 51, 55, 61–117, 229, 230, 240, 242, 243 ʿAskariyya shrine, 242 Bab al-ʿAmma, 93, 95, 114 Bab Qatun, 243 Balkuwara, 90 Dar al-Khilafa (or Jawsaq palace), 75, 116 Istabulat, 103, 105, 107, 229, 242, 243 Kamil, al-, 127 Qadisiyya, 80 Shariʿ Abi Ahmad, 244 Shariʿ al-Aʿzam, 244 Shariʿ al-Khalij, 243 Sanʿaʾ, 122 Qalis church, 122, 123, 125 Sarafa, 177 Sawad region, 81, 107 Schloss Ambras, near Innsbruck, 250, 304 n. 52, 350 Scythia, 327, 347 Serbia, 348 Shallal, 221 Shawbak, 175 Sicily, 187, 188 Ṣīn, see China Sinjar, Guʾ Kummet, 138 Sivas, 286, 343 Southeast Asia, 13, 144 Soviet Union, 425 Spain, 204, 205, 446 Sublime Porte, see Constantinople

Sub-Saharan Africa, 1, 11 Surra Man Raʾa, see Samarra Syria, 26, 33, 40, 79, 85, 86, 88, 90, 91, 100, 108, 139, 143, 162, 178, 181, 184, 201, 203, 207, 211, 254, 258, 262, 272, 284, 382, 400, 401, 410 Syro-Palestine, see Syria Tabaristan, 4 Tang-i Chogan, 442 Tehran, Shahyad square, 425 Thessalonica, 292 Tigris river, 74, 75, 79, 138, 231, 237, 239, 242 Tihama, 186 Tikrit, 229, 230, 240, 427 Transoxiana, 284 Trebizond, 266, 325 Tripoli, 201 Tunis, 248 Turkey, 139, 349, 368 Tyre, 122 Ulm, 291 Umm al-Brahm, lake, 237 United Kingdom, see Britain United States, 244, 444, 446 University of Victoria, McPherson Library, 28, 218, 220, 222, 224–44 Upper Egypt, 73, 170, 221 ʿUzayr (Ezra’s tomb), 231 Vatican, 429 Venice, 121, 256, 267, 270, 272, 279, 301, 320 n. 80, 374, 385, 395, 437 St Mark’s cathedral, 121

INDEX Scuola S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni, 385, 393, 395 Verona, 325 Vienna, 139, 338, 445 Vietnam, 426 Volga river, 13 Wadi al-Mujib, 174 Washington DC, 424 Freer Gallery of Art, 215, 257, 259 Marine Corps War Memorial, 424, 425 Wittenberg, 267 Yazd, 122, 131, 228 Yemen, 122, 131, 228 Ypres, 221

People ʿAbd al-Malik, caliph, 123, 125 ‘Abd al-Malik ibn al-Samit, 146 Aberjil, Eden, 446 Abgar IX, Lucius Aelius Septimus Megas, 342 Abgar of Edessa, 147 Abul Hamid II, sultan, 227 Abu Bakr, caliph, 146, 151 Abu al-Qasim, 79 Abu Salih the Armenian, 125 Abu Tahir, Qarmati leader, 173 Abu Zayd, 139 Abraha, king, 122 Adam, 146, 300 Adhemar of Le Puy, 206 ʿAdid, al-, caliph, 252 ʿAdil, Abu Bakr Sayf al-Din, sultan, 254 Agatha, saint, 394 ʿAʾisha bint Abi Bakr, 179

523 Alexander the Great, 146, 149, 209, 210, 277, 278, 332 n. 112, 337 Alexandrescu-Dersca, MarieMathilde, 369 ʿAli ibn Abi Talib, 185, 276, 391 Allenby, Edmund H. H., General Sir, 223, 244 Amir bi-Akham Allah, caliph, 137 Angiolello, Giovanni Maria, 254, 291 Anquetil-Duperron, AbrahamHyacinthe, 361 Antichrist, 268 Apollo, 15, 174 Argentine, Reginald, 209 Argentine, Richard, 209, 210 Aristotle, 267 Arnold, Thomas, 137, 149 Artin, Yacoub, 195 Ashikpashazade, 362, 397 Ashley-Cooper, Anthony, first earl of Shaftesbury, 362 Ashraf al-Khalil, al-, sultan, 138, 212 Ashton, Peter, 411 Atabalipa (Atahualpa), 392 Attila the Hun, 303, 327, 328, 329, 330, 332, 333, 337, 339 Aubert, David, 263 Avni, Gideon, 5 Ayalon, David, 401 Aybak al-Turkmani, sultan, 196 Azdi, Abu al-Mutahhar Muhammad b. Ahmad al-, 112 ʿAziz, al-, caliph, 185 Azraqi, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah al-, 123 Babinger, Franz, 365, 366

524

MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS

Badr al-Din Luʾluʾ, 139, 258 Badr al-Jamali, 188 Bajazet (Baiazeth), see Bayezid I Yıldırım, sultan Bakri, Abu ʿUbayd ʿAbdallah al-, 125 Baldung Grien, Hans, 397–98 Baldwin III, king of Jerusalem, 189, 191 Baldwin IV, king of Jerusalem, 164, 165 Barbara, saint, 213 Barbarossa, Ottoman admiral, 248 Barquq, Malik al-Zahir Sayf alDin, sultan, 275 Basil I, emperor, 145 Basil II, emperor, 156 Baxandall, Michael, 143 Baybars al-Bunduqdari, sultan, 138, 200, 202, 211, 261 Baybars al-Mansuri, 211 Bayhaqi, Abu Bakr Ahmad b. Husayn, 146 Bayezid I Yıldırım, sultan, 29, 30, 247, 252, 284, 285, 286, 289, 290 n. 21, 295, 300, 306, 322, 334, 341–78, 412, 417, 418, 425, 437–44, 445–46 Bede, Venerable, 341 Beham, Sebald, 311–12 Bellini Gentile, 7, 8, 266, 392, 393 Bernardini, Michele , 369 Bhabha, Homi, 24 Bilqis, queen (Queen of Sheba), 126 Bin Laden, Osama, 432 Biruni, Abu Rayhan al-, 125 Bitlisi, Idris, 367 Blomeley, Cyril, 232

Boccaccio, Giovanni, 252, 253, 351, 443 Boissard, Jean-Jacques, 295, 355, 388, 389, 390, 419 Boniface IX, pope, 293 Boucicault, Jean, Marshal, 291, 348 Boucicault Master, 319 Bracciolini, Poggio, 345, 360, 439 Bremer III, L. Paul, 426–28, 430–31 Brilliant, Richard, 142 Buhturi, al-Walid b. ʿUbayd Allah al-, 127 Burgkmair, Hans, 311 Burtasi, ʿIsa ibn ʿUmar al-, 201, 205 Bush, George W., 434 Butler family, 209 Cambini, Andrea, 293, 294, 326, 332 Candler, Edmund, 28, 219, 228– 44 Caorlini family, 279 Cantemir, Demetrius, Voivode of Moldavia, 335–36, 356 Carline, Richard, 218, 241, 242 Carline, Sydney, 218 Carpaccio, Vittore, 272, 384, 390, 393 Caspar, Carl Franz, 350, 441 Catherine, saint, 175 Ceauşescu, Nicolae, 428 Celesti, Andrea, 350 Chalcocondylas, Laonicus, 289, 310–13, 330 n. 104, 332, 336, 348, 371, 372 Challis, Keith, 38 Charles, duke of Burgundy, 334

INDEX

525

Charles VI, king of France, 287 Chesney, Francis Rawdon, 99 Chinggiz Khan, 284, 326, 362 Christ, Jesus, 18, 146, 147, 148, 203, 213, 328, 394 n. 31, 397 Clauser, Conrad, 239 Clavijo, Ruy González di, 287, 338, 345, 348 Clement VII, pope, 351, 442 Coecke van Aelst, Pieter, 313, 314, 322 Comte d’Artois, 212 Constantine of Ostrovica, 291 Constantine 1, emperor, 13 Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, 65 Corvinus, Johannes, 328 Coughlin, Jack, 424 Critovoulos of Imbros, 371 Cureau de la Chambre, Marin, 334–35 Curia, Coelius, 294 Cyrus the Great, 333, 337

De Raconis, Balarin, 347 Despina, 347, 348 n. 16, 372, 439 De Vigenère, Blaise, 310–13 De Weldon Felix, 424 Dhahabi, Shams al-Din al-, 197 D’Herbelot de Molainville, Barthélemy, 352, 353–55, 356, 360, 366, 377 Di Giovanni, Bertoldo, 266 Dinawari, Abu Hanifa ibn Dawud, 146, 147, 151 Diocletian, emperor, 155, 341 Dioscorides, Pedanios, 14, 140, 157 Diyarbakri, Husayn ibn Muhammad al-, 122 Doukas (Ducas), Michael, 289, 310 n. 63, 348, 371, 376 Dozy, Reinhart, 363–64 Dryden, John, 446 Du Bec, Jean, 295, 326 Duc de Berry, Jean, 319 Dürer, Albrecht, 272, 311, 385, 397

Da Cremona, Girolamo, 267 Da Lezze, Donado, 254, 255, 306, 390 Dante Alighieri, 15, 327 Darius the Great, 337 David, king, 146 Davis, Donald, 424 De Bruyn, Abraham, 309, 313 n. 66 DeLaine, Janet, 93 De Lannoy, Gilbert, sir, 212 De la Primaudaye, Pierre, 294 De la Wich, Richard, bishop of Chichester, 209 Dell’Altissimo, Cristofano, 250, 251, 252, 264, 270, 278, 304 De Mignanelli, Bertrando, 338

Eisenman, Stephen, 435–36 Eleutherius, pope, 341 Elijah, prophet, 224 Ellis-Fermor, Una, 370 England, Lynndie, 433 Erasistratos, 157, 159 Ernoul, 165 Ettinghausen, Richard, 137, 150, 199 Eusebius of Caesarea, 293 Eve, 300 Evelyn, John, 334 Evliya Çelebi, 362 n. 53, 408 Fakhr al-Din b. Sadr al-Din alShaykh, 211, 212

526

MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS

Falcon de Toul, Nicole, 315 Fathy, Hasan, 87 Fatima bint Muhammad, 185 Flood, Finbarr, 23 Flöthner, Peter, 267 Fortescue, Thomas, 294 n. 33, 332 Foxe, John, 351, 442 Franceschi, Domenico de’, 322, 323 Frederick I Barbarossa, emperor, 333 Frederick II emperor, 211, 216 Freedberg, David, 419 Frescobaldi, Leonardo, 203 Fuess, Albrecht, 260, 272, 274, 275, 277 Galen, Claudius, 14 Garetius, Johannes, 419 Gaudier, Johannes (Spiegel), 355 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 341 George, saint, 325, 384–85, 393, 395 Gerbier, George, 309 Gerung, Matthias, 268, 312 Ghazali, Abu Hamid al-, 181, 182 Gibbon, Edward, 337, 353, 359– 62, 366, 368, 377 Gibbons, Herbert, 363, 366 Giovio, Paolo, 18, 19, 28, 247–57, 264, 270, 273, 274, 278–80, 291 n. 26, 294, 296, 298, 301, 302–308, 317 n. 76, 324, 326, 328, 329, 331, 335, 336, 349, 380, 381, 382, 386, 387, 389, 411, 419, 420, 440, 441 Goddard, Brian Maurice, 217, 225–28 Goddard, Francis, 225 Goodard, Maud, 225

Godfrey of Bouillon, 253 Golius (Gool), Jacob, 376 Golombek, Lisa, 131 Golub, Leon, 435 Gonzaga, Isabella, 304 Gorringe, George Frederick, Lieutenant General Sir, 237, 239 Goya, Francisco, 435 Gozzoli, Benozzo, 267 Grecu, Vasile, 374 Greeley, Robin, 434 Gregory of Nazianzos, 145 Gregory of Nyssa, 419 Guerricus, metropolitan of Arabia, 175 Guy de Lusignan, 168, 190, 207, 263 Hadidi, 367 Hafiz Abru, 368 Hamdani, Abu Muhammad alHasan al-, 128, 130 Hamilton, Bernard, 164, 168 Hammad al-Rawiya, 110, 111 Handel, George Frederick, 281, 442 Hannibal of Carthage, 332, 337 Harawi, Abu al-Hasan ʿAli ibn Abi Bakr al-, 177, 189 Hariri, Abu Muhammad alQasim al-, 139 Harith, al-, 139 Harris, M. M., 223 Harun al-Rashid, caliph, 38 Hasan al-Murʿi, 402 Hathaway, Jane, 408 Helms, Mary, 22–23 Henderson, Julian, 35 Henry III, king of England, 208

INDEX Henry III of Castille, 287 Henry VIII, king of England, 351, 442 Heraclius, emperor, 146, 147 Hero of Alexandria, 141, 152 Herod, king, 333 Herodotus, 327 Herzfeld, Ernst, 90, 92 Hetʿum, prince of Korghos or Korikos (Heythoum), 288 n. 15, 314–17, 323–24, 370 Hisham ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, caliph, 110, 123, 136 Hitler, Adolf, 431 Hoca, Saʿd al-Din Efendi, 362, 367 Hookham, Hilda, 369 Husam al-Din Luʾluʾ, 169, 170 Husayn ibn ʿAli, 27, 187, 188, 189–90, 192, 193 Hussein, Qusay, 428 Hussein, Saddam, 29, 423–24, 425, 426–35, 443, 444, 446 Hussein, Uday, 428 Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih, Ahmad ibn Muhammad, 132 Ibn al-ʿAdim, Kamal al-Din Abu al-Qasim, 214 Ibn ʿAqil, Abu al-Wafaʾ ʿAli, 182, 183 Ibn ʿArabshah. Ahmad ibn Muhammad, 285, 287, 337, 353, 360, 362, 363, 364, 368, 369, 374, 375, 376, 377 Ibn al-ʿAsakir, ʿAli ibn al-Hasan, 153 Ibn ʿAziz, 150 Ibn Bakhtishuʿ, Jibril, 158, 159, 160, 161

527 Ibn Fadlan, Ahmad, 13 Ibn Ghanim al-Maqdisi, 201 Ibn Hanbal, Abu ʿAbdallah Ahmad b. Muhammad, 182 Ibn Hisham, Abu Muhammad ʿAbd al-Malik, 17 Ibn Haniʾ, Muhammad, 185 Ibn Iyas, Muhammad b. Ahmad, 275, 276, 368, 400, 404, 405, 406, 408, 410 Ibn Jubayr, Abu al-Husayn Muhammad, 61, 128, 129 Ibn al-Kalbi, Hisham, 130 Ibn Kemal (Kemalpashazade), 289 n. 17, 367 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Shams al-Din Abu ʿAbdallah, 183 Ibn Rushd (Averroës), Abu alWalid Muhammad, 267 Ibn Rustah, Ahmad, 14, 15, 125 Ibn Sasra, Muhammad b. Muhammad, 126, 130 Ibn Shaddad, ʿIzz al-Din, 185 Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Abu ʿAli, 14, 15, 154, 267, 382 Ibn Taghribirdi, Jamal al-Din Yusuf, 196, 364, 375, 376, 408 Ibn Taymiyya, Taqi al-Din Ahmad, 182, 183 Ibn Tulun, Ahmad, 137 Ibn al-Zayn, Muhammad, 258, 260, 261 Ibn al-Zubayr, ʿAbdallah, 123 Ibn Zunbul, Ahmad b. ʿAli, 406–409, 414, 418, 419 Ibrahim al-Nasrani, 49 Ibrahim Sultan, 306 ʿImad al-Din al-Isfahani, 169 Imam Malik ibn Anas, 179 Irwin, Robert. 350, 401, 407

528

MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS

Isfahani, Abu al-Faraj al-, 139, 258 Ismaʿil, shah, 339 n. 129 Jahiz, Abu ʿUthman ibn Bahr alKinani al-Basri al-, 11, 145, 151, 155 James II, king of Britain, 350 Jarir, governor of Tabaristan, 4 Jazari, Abu al-ʿIzz ibn Ismaʿil ibn al-Razzaz al-, 140, 162, 258 Jean of Sultaniyya, 348 Jesus, see Christ Joachim of Fiore, 268 John the Baptist, 184 John of Piano Carpini, 286 n. 12, 325, 326 Johns, Jeremy, 186 Joinville, Jean de, 207, 369 Jones, Richard, 299, 323 Justin, saint, 399, 419 Justinian I, emperor, 122, 155 Kahle, Paul, 274 Kamil, sultan al-, 216 Kenner, Friedrich, 273 Khadija bint Khuwaylid, 130 Khatib al-Baghdadi, al-, 66 Khumarawayh, Tulunid ruler, 137 Khusraw I Anushirvan, 137, 148 Khusraw II Parviz, 137 Khvandamir, Ghiyath al-Din, 353, 358 Kitbugha b. ʿAbdallah alMansuri, 196, 197 Klinger, Linda, 306 Knobler, Adam, 370 Knolles, Richard, 295, 355, 388, 390 Koch, Tom, 430

Köprülü, Mehmet Fuad, 352, 366–69 Konevi’im, Muhammad b. Haci Halil, 367 Kuhlman, Casey, 424 Lactantius, 351 Lamb, Harold, 369 Lane, Edward, 363–64 Lane-Poole, Stanley, 195 Lat, 183 Lawrence, Thomas Edward, 225 Lazarević, Stefan, Despot of Serbia, 348 Le Bon, Philippe, 263 Leiser, Gary, 164, 168, 169, 171 Leo, pope, 331 Leonardo da Vinci, 333 Leunclavius, Johnannes, 349, 354 Locke, John, 362 Lokman, Sehnameci, 369 Lomazzo, Paolo Giovio, 333 Lonicer, Philip, 295, 312, 313, 314, 321–23, 324, 350, 440, 441 Louis VII, king of France, 253 Louis IX, king of France, 203, 207, 212, 216, 253, 369 Louis XIV, king of France, 350, Lucius, mythical king of the Britons, 341, 342 Luke, saint, 18 Lutfi Pasha, 367 Lydgate, John, 351, 442 M., Adèle, 219 M., J., 217, 219–24, 225, 244 Maccabee, Judah, 273 Maguire, Henry, 151 Mahmud Pasha, 406 Malik al-ʿAdil, 169

INDEX Mantegna, Andrea, 393 Manuel II Palaeologos, emperor, 286 n. 10, 287 n. 13, 345, 438 Mansel, Simon, 211 Mansueti, Giovanni, 272, 386 Mansur, al-, caliph, 66, 82 Maqrizi, Taqi al-Din Abu alʿAbbas, 135, 150, 189, 190 Mark, saint, 272 Marliani, Giovanni, 328, 331, 333 Marlowe, Christopher, 281, 293 n. 31, 296–99, 331, 350, 351, 370, 442, 445 Marozzi, Justin, 352 Marquet de Vasselot, 270 Martin V, pope, 345 Martino, Renato, cardinal, 429 Martinovitch, Nicholas, 365–66 Mason, Robert, 32–33 Master of the Greenville Tondo, 396–97 Maʿsudi, Abu al-Hasan ʿAli, 61, 68, 69, 123, 147, 151, 152 Maxwell, Sir John, 225 Mayer, Leo Aryeh, 196 Mayer, Lucas, 268 Medea, 333 Medici, Catherin de’, 381 Medici, Cosimo de’, 250, 254, 304 Mehmed II Fatih, sultan, 7, 65– 66, 263, 266, 276, 291, 332 n. 111, 343, 368 n. 67, 371, 373, 392, 393, 417 Melissenos, Makarios, metropolitan of Monemvasia, 290 n. 22, 373–74 Meri, Josef, 181 Messina, Antonello da, 395 Mexía, Pedro, 294, 332

529 Mikhailović of Ostrovica, Constantine , 347–48 Milius, John, 426 Mirkhvand (Muhammad ibn Khavand Shah), 353, 357, 358 Möngke Khan, 326 Montaigne, Michel de, 282–83, 332 Montesquieu (Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu), 361 Moore, Robin, 426, 431, 443 Moreno, Jonathan, 429–30 Morgan, David, 359 Moses, 146, 148, 152 Muʿawiya ibn Abi Sufyan, caliph, 130, 135 Mubashshir ibn Fatik, Abu alWafaʾ, 153–54, 155, 159 Muhammad, Prophet, 15, 17, 27, 130, 131, 132, 146, 148, 151, 152, 153, 164, 171, 174, 177, 179, 180, 185, 191, 276, 391, 431 Muhyiddin, 367 Muʿizz, al-, caliph, 185 Münster, Sebastian, 414 Muntasir, al-, caliph, 152 Murad II, sultan, 360, 368 n. 67, 373 Murdoch, Rupert, 432 Muʿtasim, al-, caliph, 61, 65, 78, 81, 82, 107, 244 Mutawakkil, al-, caliph, 61, 68, 81, 82, 107, 244 Nasir-i Khusraw, 125, 128, 132, 138 Nasir li-Din Allah, caliph, 202 Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun, al-, sultan, 213, 261

530

MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS

Nasir Muhammad ibn Qaytbay, al-, sultan, 276–77, 400 Negus of Abyssinia, 137 Nelli, Niccolò, 301 Neshri, Mehmed, 289 n. 17, 362, 363, 365, 367 Nero, emperor, 334 Nicolay, Nicholas, 413 Nizami, Jamal al-Din Abu Muhammad, 149 Noah, 148, 152 Nöldeke, Theodor, 365 Northedge, Alastair, 242, 244 Nur al-Din b. ʿImad al-Din Zangi, 5, 214 Oates, David, 71 Orwicz, Michael, 434 Orsini, Fulvio, 382 Ortelius, Abraham, 305 Osman I, sultan, 247, 373 Ozymandias, 423 Pachachi, Adnan, 428 Pagan, Matteo, 322 Page, George Shaw, 228, 229 Page, Herbert Vero Shaw, 28, 217, 228–44 Page, Ivy, 229 Palmerius, Matteo, 293, 294 Paris, Matthew, 262 Parrhasios, 150 Partridge, Bernard, 223 Paul the Silentiary, 121 Perna, Peter, 250, 301 Perondino, Petrus, 294 Pétis de la Croix, Alexandre, 355– 56, 357 Philip the Arab, emperor, 443 Philo of Byzantium, 141

Phrantzes (Sphrantzes), George, 290, 348, 360, 368, 371, 373– 74 Piccolomini, Aeneas Silvius (Pope Pius II), 288 n. 15, 292, 294, 327, 336, 338, 346, 417 n. 78, 439 Pierce, Lydia, 228, 229 Pisanello, Antonio di Puccio, 325 Pliny the Elder, 120, 150 Polemon of Laodicea, 155, 157, 161 Pollaiuolo, Piero del, 345 Polo, Marco, 319 Prawer, Joshua, 164 Prester John, 286 Price, David, 357, 358 Prisse d’Avennes, AchilleConstant-Théodore-Émile, 195 Procopius, 155, 156 Psellus, Michael, 156 Ptolemy of Alexandria, 14, 327, 336 Qalawun al-Salihi, sultan, 197 Qansawh al-Ghawri, sultan, 248, 270, 273, 276, 277, 278, 279, 381, 388, 400, 401, 405, 410– 11, 413, 415 Qara Arslan, 138 Qasir, 150 Qaytbay (Qaʾit Bay), Abu alNasr Sayf al-Din, sultan, 248, 273, 276, 381, 400 Qubilai Khan, 326 Rabbat, Nasser, 137 Raby, Julian, 272, 274 Racine, Jean, 281 Raemblmayer, Andreas, 350, 441

INDEX Razi, Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al-, 14 Rees, T. W., 230 Reuwich, Erhard, 384, 385 Reynald of Châtillon, 27, 163–72, 174–76, 178–79, 190–93, 263–64 Reza Pahlavi, 425 Richard I, king, 207, 208, 223 Richier, Christopher, 294, 326 Roberts, Ian, 429 Roderick, Visigothic king, 137 Roger II, king of Sicily, 187 Rosenthal, Joe, 424, 425 Rouillé, Guillaume, 247, 300– 301, 322, 323 Rowe, Nicholas, 281, 350, 442 Rumsfeld, Donald, 428 Sacchi de Platina, Bartholomaeus, 293, 393 n. 30 Sagundino, Nicola, 291, 295 Saladin (Salah al-Din, Yusuf ibn Ayyub al-Nasir), 28, 163, 165, 169, 170, 171, 213, 247–80, 306, 380, 389, 390 n. 22 Salah Talaʾiʿ b. Ruzzik, 190, 193 Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub, sultan, 196, 215, 216 Sanchez, Ricardo, Lieutenant General, 428 Sanders, John, 369, 375 Sansovino, Francesco, 301, 322 Saphandino, see ʿAdil, Abu Bakr Sayf al-Din, sultan Sayf al-Din Tughtukin, 170 Scanderbeg, George, 338 Scarlatti, Alessandro, 281 Schatz, Boris, 224 Schedel, Hartmann, 296, 299, 323

531 Schiltberger, Johannes, 290, 317– 20, 338, 343 Schlumberger, Gustave, 164 Schoen (Schön), Erhard, 267, 305, 308, 380 Schrader, Lorenz, 304 Sebastian, saint, 395, 396 Şehzade Mustafa, son of the Süleyman I, 382 Selim I, sultan, 276, 333, 400, 401, 403, 406, 407, 409, 412, 414, 415, 416 Selim II, sultan, 437 Serini, Nicholas, 338 Sforza, Bianca Maria, 328 Shahn, Ben, 435 Shahrukh, 358 Shami, Nizam al-Din, 368 Shams al-Din Abu al-Fadaʾil Muhammad, 142 Shams al-Din Aqsunqur alFaraqani, 211 Shapur, Sasanian shah, 351, 442, 443 Sharbak al-Aʿur, 416 Shawcross, William, 423, 424 Sheen, Charlie, 426 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 423, 424, 425 Shirawayh, Sasanian shah, 152 Sibt ibn al-Jawzi (Shams al-Din Abu al-Muzaffar Yusuf ibn Kizoglu), 169 Silenus, 120, 121 Silvestre de Sacy, Antoine Isaac, 361 Socrates, 159, 160 Solomon, 267 Solon, 154, 157, 159, 160, 161 Spandugino (Spandounes), Theodore, 289, 295, 347, 368, 439, 440

532

MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS

Sphrantzes, see Phrantzes Stephanie of Milly, 174 Stephen, saint, 395 Stimmer, Tobias, 248, 249, 250, 252, 253, 264, 270, 280, 301, 302, 304, 306, 309, 317 n. 62, 326, 335, 380 Strabo, 336 Sudun Dawadari, 406 Sukrullah, 367 Sulayman (metalworker), 58 Sulayman ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, caliph, 188 Süleyman I Qanuni, sultan, 247, 266, 279, 313, 322, 324, 334, 382, 392, 417 Sunami, ʿUmar b. Muhammad al-, 179–80 Swayze, Patrick, 426 Tabari, Abu Jaʿfar Muhammad ibn Jarir al-, 122, 130 Tahir al-Husayn, 38 Tahmasp, shah, 248, 303 Tamerlane (Timur-i Lang or Temür), 18, 19, 28, 29, 30, 247, 248, 252, 255, 281–340, 342, 343, 344, 347, 348, 350, 352, 354, 358, 360, 361, 362, 363, 365, 370, 371, 372, 374, 375, 376, 377, 381, 416, 417, 437–42, 444 Tancred, prince of Galilee, 207. 208 Tankiz al-Husami al-Nasiri, 201 Tarkhan, Sayyid Ahmad, 358 Temür, see Tamerlane Tervagant, 15, 174 Tha‘alibi, Abu Mansur, 144, 145, 151

Thevet, André, 29, 264, 265, 295, 298, 309–310, 324, 326, 331, 332, 379, 381, 383, 390, 391, 394, 396, 399, 400, 409–411, 413–414, 418, 419, 420 Thietmar, 175, 176 Timur-i Lang (Timur or TimurBec), see Tamerlane Thucydides, 327 Trevisan, Domenico , 276 Tryman, Barbara, 225 Tudsbery, Marmaduke, 232 Tumanbay II, al-Ashraf, sultan, 29, 248, 273, 274, 379–421 ʿUbayd Allah, caliph, 186 ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab, caliph, 180, 276, 391 Ursula, saint, 331 ʿUruj b. ʿAdil, 365, 366, 367 ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan, caliph, 122, 173 Uzun Hasan, 248, 303 ʿUzza, 183 Valerian, emperor, 350–51, 442, 443, 445 Van der Goes, Hugo, 267 Van Groeningen Gerhard, 312 Varro, Marcus Terentius, 120 Vasilii III, Grand Prince of Moscow, 308 Vattier, Pierre, 376, 377 Vecellio, Cesare, 270 Vespasian, emperor, 155 Virgin Mary, 7, 18, 140 Vivaldi, Antonio Lucio, 281 Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), 358–59, 361, 377 Von Breydenbach, Bernard, 281

INDEX Von Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph, 353, 362, 363, 366, 377 Von Harnack, A., 342 Von Karabacek, Joseph, 202 Von Thurocz, Johannes, 326 Von Tirol, Ferdinand, 254, 304 Wake, Sir Hugh, Lord of Bourne, 6 Walid ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, caliph Walid I, 122, 123, 131, 132, 184 Walid ibn Yazid, caliph Walid II, 136 Warburg, Aby, 436 Ward, John, 229 Ward, Rachel, 261 Waruppe family, 209 Wathiq, al-, caliph, 61 Wavell, Archibald, earl Wavell, 219, 224–28 Weil, Gustav, 363 Whetstone, George, 413 n. 64, 443 White, Joseph, 361 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 223 William of Orange (William III), 350, 442 William of Rubruck, 286, n. 12 William of Tyre, 163, 165, 191, 207 Wilson, Woodrow, president, 223 Yaʿqubi, Ahmad ibn Abi Yaʿqub al-, 79, 82 Yahya b. Zakariyyaʾ, see John the Baptist Yazdi, Sharaf al-Din, 287, 306, 307, 337, 353, 355, 357, 358, 360, 367, 368 Yazid b. Muʿawiya, caliph Yazid I, 187

533 Yazid ibn Walid, caliph Yazid II, 152 Yazuri, 150 Yunus Pasha, 409 Yushaʿ b. Nun, 177 Zen, Pietro, 385 Zeus-Amun, 277 Zeuxis, 150

Dynasties, Groups, and Events Abbasid caliphate, 57, 83, 111, 202 Apocalypse, 311 Artuqid atabaks, 138, 140, 143, 257 Ayyubid sultanate, 143, 198, 213, 215, 216, 248, 253, 260, 262, 280, 390 Barlas, clan, 284 Banu Nasr (Nuʿman dynasty), 68 Bedouin, 170 Black Sheep Turkomen, 343 British Indian Army, 228 Byzantine empire, 1, 24, 146, 285, 343, 390 Chaghatay, ulus, 284 Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, 35 Die Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches, 240 Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie), 7

534

MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS

Egyptian Expeditionary Force, 221 Enlightenment, 377

393, 402, 406, 407, 409, 416, 445, 446 Outram Rifles, 228

Fatimid caliphate, 185, 187, 188, 189, 258

Pacific Campaign, 420 Palestine Campaign, 223 People of Magog, see Massagetae

Golden Horde, 284 Great War, see World War I Hamidiye cavalry, 227 Hanbali school, 182 Huns, 328 Israel, Children of, 148 Macedonian Renaissance, 145 Mamluk sultanate, 27, 28, 32, 126, 137, 138, 195, 198, 199, 200, 213, 216, 260, 262, 266, 273, 274, 277, 384, 385, 388, 392, 393–94, 400, 402, 406, 407, 408, 409 Bahri Mamluk period, 196, 200 Burji (Circassian) Mamluk period, 260 Massagetae, 313, 330, 337 Mesopotamian Campaign, 28 Mongols, 204 Mudros, Armistice of, 218 Mughal sultanate, 361 Napier Rifles, 228 Naqshbandi Sufi order, 285 Osmanlı Tayyare Bölükleri, 239 Operation Red Dawn, 426, 431 Ottoman sultanate, 28, 29, 338, 342, 349, 363, 379, 380, 384,

Qarmatians, 173 Quraysh, 147 Raqqa Ancient Industries Project, 35, 36, 44, 46 Reconquista, 15 Renaissance, 18, 281, 283, 284, 377 Royal Flying Corps, 241, 242 Royal Regiment of Artillery, 219 Rūsʾ, see Vikings Safavid dynasty, 248 Sasanian empire, 4, 56, 115, 317 Scythians, 302, 326, 327, 330, 333, 337, 339, 346, 371 Second Crusade, 253 Seventh Crusade, 253, 369 Tartars, 325, 326 Trojans, 329 Tulunid dynasty, 137 Umayyad caliphate, 57, 135, 200 Umayyad caliphate of Andalus, 258 Vietnam War, 426 Vikings, 13 World War I, 28, 217–45 World War II, 424

INDEX Zangids, 140, 257

Terminology adab, 143, 162 ahl al-kitāb, 12 bidʿa, 179, 182 börk, 322 bunduqdār, 196 dār al-ḥarb, 12 dār al-Islām, 12, 146 dār al-ṣulḥ, 12 dawādār, 272, 273, 274 ekphrasis, 27, 121, 129, 146, 162 fals (pl. fulūs), 256–57 firāsa, 154, 155, 407 flagellum dei, 313, 327, 331, 338, 377, 418, 444 furūsiyya, 401, 407 futuwwa, 202 ḥajj, 183, 184 ḥisba, 179 isnād, 378 jāhiliyya, 14, 130 jamdār, 196 jāshnikīr, 196 jūkandār, 196 kaffār, 12 khanja, 196 khāṣṣakiyya, 195, 196, 198 khuṭba, 188, 401 madīna, 26

535 Mandylion, 147 mashhad, 188 miṣr (pl. amṣār), 3 muḥtasib, 179 nāʾib al-salṭana, 272, 385 nāʿūra, 272, 276, 278, 385, 386, 390 Orientalism, 25 Pathosformel, 436 polis, 3 qanāt, 242 qafaṣ (qafes), 362–64, 375 rank, 138 Rūm, 11 sāqī, 27, 195, 196, 198, 200, 202, 203, 210, 216 Scourge of God, see flagellum dei sharbūsh, 260–61 shirk, 12 tāj, 263, 322, 385, 388 takhfīfa kabīra, 272, 275, 276, 278, 385, 390 takhfīfa ṣaghīra, 275, 276, 277 ṭāqiyya, 272, 285 terra sigillata, 33, 55, 56 Translation Movement, 14 waqf (waqfiyya), 133 yasa, 362 zamṭ, 272, 276 ziyāra, 181–82, 183, 192

536

MIDDLE EASTERN ENCOUNTERS

Selected Primary Texts, Archives, and Objects Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days (Foxe’s Book of Martyrs), 351, 442 Asiae Europaeque elegantissima descriptio, 292, 346 Baptistère de Saint Louis, 138, 258, 260, 261 B. E. F. Times, 239–40 Bibliothèque orientale, ou dictionaire universel, 352, 353 Cairo Geniza, 48 Chronicon Tarvisinum, 345 Chronicon Turcicorum, 321–23, 324, 350 Decameron, 252 De Casibus virorum illustrium, 351, 443 De Varietate Fortunae, 345 Divine Comedy, 327 Ecce Homo, 397–98 Ein wunderbarliche uund kurtzweilege History, 317–20 Elogia virorum bellica virtute illustrium, 247–55, 270, 276, 278–80, 294, 301, 302–308, 309, 317 n. 62, 328, 329, 380, 381, 382, 386, 387, 388, 389, 411, 440 Exodus, 223 Geneva Convention, 427, 428, 429 Gesta Tancredi, 174

Ḥadīth, 16, 162, 178, 180, 192, 276, 378, 391 Hekhaloth, 127 Histoire de Timur-bec, 355 Historia Turchesca, 254, 291 Historiarum sui temporis, 294 Institutes of Timour, 361–62 Isaiah, 223 Kitāb al-ʿajāʾib al-maqdūr fī akhbār Tīmūr, 353, 374, 376 Kitāb al-diryāq, 139 Kitāb al-hadāyā wa’l-tuḥaf, 148 Kitāb al-infiṣāl dawlat al-awān wa ittiṣāl dawlat Banī ʿUthmān, 406–409 Kitāb al-ishārāt ilā maʿrifat alziyārāt, 177 Kitāb fī maʿrifat al-ḥiyal alhandasiyya, 140–41, 258, 259 Kitāb al-mawāʿiẓ wa’l-iʿtibār bidhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa’l-āthār, 189–90 Kitāb naʿt al-ḥayawān, 158 Laṭāʾif al-maʿārif, 144–45 Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustrés, 264, 265, 309–310, 382–84, 394, 397, 399, 409, 413–414, 418–419, 421 Liber Pontificalis, 341–42 London Gazette, 228 Malachi, 224 Mesopot., 233–34 Mesopotamian Alphabet, 234–40 Monforte Altarpiece, 267 Mukhtār al-ḥikam wa-maḥāsin al-kilam, 153, 155, 159

INDEX New York Post, 432, 435

537

Qurʾan, 16, 162, 173, 179, 403

Tamerlane, a Tragedy, 350, 442 The Bystander, 223 The generall Historie of the Turkes, 355, 388–89 The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 337, 353, 359–62 The Long Road to Baghdad, 28, 219, 228–44 The Palestine Campaigns, 219, 224–28 The Sun, 432, 434, 435 Travels of Sir John Mandeville, 19 True Cross, 213, 250, 262, 280

Ravages of the Turks, 305, 380 Reception of the Venetian Ambassadors, 270–72, 385, 389 Revelation, 268, 311

Uniform Code of Military Justice, 430 UN Resolution 37/194, 430 ʿUthmanic Qurʾan, 173

Sensuyuent les fleurs des hystoires de la terre dorient (Les flors des histoires), 314–17, 323–24, 370 Ṣīrat al-Ẓāhir Baybars, 407–408

Weekly World News, 432–33, 434, 435

Old Testament, 267 Peregrinatio in terram sanctam, 384 Peri ilis iatrikis (De Materia Medica), 140, 157 Promptuarium iconum, 247, 300–301, 322 Psalms, 222 Punch, 223

Tamburlaine the Great, 293 n. 31, 296-99, 324 n. 86, 333 n. 114, 350, 370, 442

Ẓafarnāma (Histoire de Timurbec), 306, 307, 355, 362, 367