Back to Art H 280 table of contents
The History of Art Survey
Lecture 20
Early Islamic and Arabic Court Art
Gardner 358-371
A Islam
B Historiography
C Art Historiography
Style : Islamic culture: 622 - 1250
1 Dome of the Rock, 687-692, Jerusalem
2 Interior, Dome of the Rock, 687-692, Jerusalem
3 Great Mosque, courtyard, 706-715 Damascus
* Worship (Agra or Bijapur)
* Plan of the Synagogue at Dura-Europus, 245-256
4 Great Mosque, Mosaic decoration, 705-715 Damascus
5 Umayyad Palace, plan, Mshatta, 740-50 Jordan
6 Umayyad Palace, frieze, Mshatta, 740-50 Jordan
7 Umayyad Palace, reconstruction of facade, Mshatta, 740-50 Jordan
8 Great Mosque, Qayrawan, c 836-875 Tunisia
9 Great Mosque, plan, Qayrawan, c 836-875 Tunisia
10 Malwiya minaret, Great Mosque, Samarra, 848-852, Iraq
11 Mausoleum of the Samanids, Bukhara, early 10th c, Uzbekistan
12 Mosque of Córdoba, Prayer hall, 8th-10th c, Cordoba
13 Mosque of Córdoba, Maksura, 961-965, Cordoba
14 Mosque of Córdoba, mihrab dome, 961-965 Cordoba
15 Confronting lions and palm tree, silk fragment, 8th c, Uzbekistan
16 Sulayman, Ewer in form of a bird, 796
17 Quran page beginning of 18th surahal-Kahf (The Cave), 9th-early 10th c
18 Muquarnas dome, Hall of he Two Sisters, Alhambra palace, Granada, Sp
Expansion of Islam
The map on page 358 shows the Islamic world of around 1500 CE, or around 900 H, that is 900 of the Hijra era, the Islamic era that begins with Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina. Because our book has no imagery from east of India, they have omitted Southeast Asia and so two of the most populous Islamic nations, Bangladesh and Indonesia, among others.
Islamic history begins with Muhammad’s revelation in around 610 CE, and
takes official shape with the flight to Medina, the Hijra, of 622, year 1 of
the Hijra era. (Before Christianity became its state religion, Romans dated
their lives by the era beginning with the founding of Rome in 753 CE.) The Islamic
calendar has remained a lunar one of 354 days, so exact conversion of dates
is not convenient.
The expansion of the Arab armies, imbued with the new faith of Islam was amazing. The conventional understanding of it as an expansion or Islam has some truth, but not what most people seem to believe. Regions were conquered, but all the people of those regions were not converted to Islam either by force or any other impulse. Take North India, included in our map. It was never all Muslim or even majority Muslim. In fact it most of the conversion to Islam in North India came after the period in which our map depicts it, several hundred years after the conquest of North India by Islamic warriors.
The lands the Arab armies conquered from the Byzantine empire, for example was not a land made up entirely of Christians who were then converted to Islam. They were lands ruled by a Christian elite that were then conquered by an Islamic elite. A good percentage of the people in those lands were neither Christian before the coming of Islam or Muslims afterward. A good number of the Christians in those lands remained Christians after the Arab conquest and continued to worship openly in their own churches.
Religion of Islam
Muhammad is the founder and Prophet of Islam (submission to god). He
is the author of the Quran, in the sense that he wrote it down, but he claims
only to have recorded what was dictated to him by the Archangel Gabriel, beginning
in 610 CE. He rejected the polytheistic religion of Arabia of his day and put
forth this revelation as a continuation of the two previous Semitic traditions
of Christianity and its rooted source Judaism. They see Abraham as their common
ancestor. Allah, the god of the Quran is the same monotheistic universal being
recognized by the Jews and Christians, though Muhammad’s full revelation
interprets these two traditions differently than they interpret themselves.
Still, Islam holds Christianity and Judaism in a special place as its predecessor,
and the followers of those religions to be, as “People of the Book,”
closer to Islam than any other non-Muslims. The Quran (Book of Recitations)
was codified in the reign of the Sultan Uthman, 644-656 CE. It contains 114
Surahs (chapters).
The faith includes 5 binding obligations: faith in Allah, prayer 5 times daily
(facing Mecca), giving alms to the poor, fasting during daylight hours in the
month of Ramadan, and making a pilgrimage at least once in one’s life,
if possible, to Mecca. There is a second collection of the Prophet’s sayings
and anecdotes and exemplary deeds seen as supplemental to the Quran, as a source
of guidance. The reward for remaining faithful to the creed is Paradise.
With the other two monotheistic Abrahamic religions, Islam condemns idol worship,
and takes several Old and New Testament figures as Prophets who have preceded
Muhammad. Muhammad is not attributed with miracles. [Though he is said to have
leaped to heaven on his favorite horse, at the end of his life.] Muslims worship
god without any hierarchy of rabbis, priests, or saints acting as intermediaries,
unlike the other two faiths. In that way all individual Muslims are seen as
radically equal in a way that the other two faiths do not consider their followers.
According to our book: “In Islam, as Muhammad defined it, religious and secular authority were united even more completely than in Byzantium.” This is not so, as I understand it. Muhammad expected a good Muslim to follow the authority of the nation within which they lived, not just nations with Islamic rulership, but all. He declared it best to live in a nation under Islamic rule, but he did not advocate disobeying the authority of the nation, if it was not under Islamic rule.
Muhammad advocated the submission of all to his revelation in any case, and
this led him and his successors to establish a Muslim ruled universal state.
The Caliphs (successors) who followed him ruled the region conquered
by the Arab armies for the next many centuries, expanding their rule west to
the Atlantic and East to the Indus river in South Asia within the first century
after the Prophet’s death. The expansion of Arab rule included Syria,
Palestine and Iraq by 640 CE, Egypt by 642, Iran by 651, North Africa by 710,
a foothold in southern Spain in 711, and reached its high point in western Europe
at Poitiers in 732, and the lower Indus Valley in 712. They were a major power
in the Iberian peninsula up to 1031 and were not driven out of the region until
1492.
Turkish, in contrast to Arabic, armies spread into eastern Europe in the 14th
century, taking Constantinople and the Byzantine empire’s last remnant
in 1453, and reaching their furthest extent at the outskirts of Vienna in 16??.
The remnants of those Islamic regimes include the modern nations of Albania
and Kosovo in the Balkans and numbers of Muslims throughout the region. The
two major impacts of Islam on Europe were the control over the trade between
Europe and Asia, over which they fought continuously, and the interruption of
the Christianization of Asia that was preceding before the rise of Islam. A
third, commonly cited impact is said to be the Arabic scholarship of the classical
world, including such important sources of all later European thought as Aristotle
and other Greek thinkers, that were suppressed by the Christian churches and
rediscovered in later times mainly through their Arabic translations.
I repeat my earlier point. Calling it an Islamic conquest is a mistaken proposition in many ways, though Muslims as well as Christians have considered it just that. Which is not to say that the contention between the followers of the two faiths was not a major issue in these conquests. Do you see the European conquest of North America as a Christian conquest of the Native Americans? Many do, but is that really what happened?
Islam is broken into several sectarian strains. The most common is the Sunni, or Orthodox, who came out of the civil war between the direct descendants of the Prophet and the Umayyad Caliphs, who claimed legitimacy but not descent. There next largest group are the Shia, who follow leaders in a direct line of descent from Muhammad, and are found most extensively in Iran, southern Iraq and India. There are many smaller groups too.
Early Islamic Art
The first Islamic monuments grew out of the different regions they conquered,
not out of the Arabic culture that produced the Quran. It was the conquest of
the Sasanian and Byzantine empires that gave the Arabs their first involvement
with artists capable of monumental traditions. The Umayyad rulers of Syria and
the Fertile Crescent (661-749 and the Iberian Peninsula 756-1031 drew upon the
culture existing at their arrival for their monumental artistic styles. and
so on.
* The first major monument of Islam i s the Kabba in Mecca, a giant cube, as its name explains. This great geometric box is a survival of the Idolatrous polytheism that Islam suppressed at Mecca. It’s geometric plainness may be of importance for this faith that followed more scrupulously, and possibly more eccentrically, the Second Commandment of the Old Testament, against the employment of “graven images.” The orthodox Islamic interpretation has been to have no figurative imagery of any sort associated with religious art and monuments, and often with any artifacts at all.
1 Dome of the Rock, Haram al-Sharif, 687-692 Jerusalem
The first major monument of Islam is the Dome of the Rock. Jerusalem is a city
holy for the Muslims as it is for Christians and Jews. The rock at the center
of the “dome” is said to be the one upon which Abraham was to sacrifice
Isaac, and also the one from which Muhammad leaped to heaven on his stead at
the end of his life, as recounted in Surah 17 of the Quran. It is said to mark
the burial place of Adam. Jews believer the temple of Solomon, destroyed by
the Romans in 70 CE, was near this spot. The entire table top of stone upon
which it stands in the center of Jerusalem is called the Haram al-Sharif (the
Noble Enclosure).
The structure takes the form of an eastern Mediterranean tomb or martyrium.
We have seen similar structures at the Mausoleum of Constanta (11-9 & 11-10)
and Diocletian’s palace (10-75). Indeed Constantine’s, 4th century,
Holy Sepulcher —marking the spot of Christ’s temporary burial—
had a similar shape at its apse end. It is a great hexagonal, central-planed
structure, with a 25 meter in diameter, metal-sheathed, wooden dome raised 40
meters at from at its center. Domed structures were to become the characteristic
mark of Islamic architecture throughout the world. (The handsome covering of
brilliant tiles on its exterior is the work of Ottoman craftsmen, in the 16th
century and later.) It thus contrasts strongly with the austerity of contemporary
structures of the Eastern Roman, Byzantine Empire.
2 Interior, Dome of the Rock, 687-692, Jerusalem
On the inside the structure includes a handsome arcade beneath its clerestory
drum, surrounding “the rock.” The entire interior is finished in
handsome mosaics featuring depictions of architectural fantasies, brimming pots
and fruit trees, but no people or animals.
Our text goes on to say that the interior gives us an idea of what the exterior looked like, because “Islamic practice does not significantly distinguish interior and exterior decor.” I am not sure exactly what they intend by this. Possibly it is that handsome colors can go both in and outside the structure. But it cannot be taken literally. The same materials may be used in and outside of structures. There was no Early-Christian-style plain brick outside and glorious mosaic inside. But there was no ambiguity between the designs of insides and outsides in Islamic buildings.* Plan of the synagogue, Dura-Europos, c 245-256 CE
The plan of the synagogue at Dura-Europos shows an inner hall preceded by a porticoed courtyard, and two outer rooms. The inner room, which is covered with paintings, has a small niche at the center of its back wall, for the placement of the Torah. The niche is a miniature apse, semi-circular in plan, and roofed by a semi-dome. It is framed by a pair of pillars that project out into the room, preceded by a pair of risers. The entire hall is surrounded by a bench that is interrupted by this projection. Next to the niche is a short stair case of five risers that reach almost to the level of the niche.* Great Mosque, plan, 706-715, Damascus
The earliest mosque (place of prostration) recorded was the courtyard of the Prophet Muhammad’s house in Medina, where a simple, more or less rectangular, courtyard had some sheltering porticos added, to provide shade. By the time of the Great Mosque at Damascus the plan of the mosque had been codified as a strictly rectangular court, oriented toward Mecca, with the qibla wall, on the side facing Mecca, marked at its center by a mihrab niche, marking the direction. Most comonly the courtyard had porticos providing shelter from the elements on the qibla side as well. The total may draw somewhat on the synagogue layout, as seen at Dura, with a porticoed courtyard preceding the congregational hall and an architectural niche marking the center of the wall orienting the congregation. Though in the case of the mosque it is a mihrab at floor level, in the shape of a symbolic passageway, rather than a raised niche to hold scriptures.
The Great Mosque at Damascus also contains a raised central aisle leading toward the mihrab. This feature may be a residual element of the church that was formerly on the site. In any case it is not a characteristic repeated elsewhere.
3 Great Mosque, courtyard, 706-715 Damascus
The Umayyads transferred their capital from Mecca to Damascus in 661. A giant
new mosque was built there in 706. Like the Dome of the Rock, its design “owes
much to the Greco-Roman and Early Christian East.” (363)
What this sounds like, and appears to mean, is that the designers of this mosque looked at or copied classical designs. This is plainly untrue, since we know of no Roman or Early Christian designs that this could “copy.” What it can mean is that this design is a continuation of patterns that can be traced to designs in the classical tradition. That is, it was not “copied” but invented, on the basis of the same or related principles. That would be reasonable. Another way to put this would be to say the design is based on the requirements of a mosque (orientation to Mecca, and presence of a mihrab niche to direct the worshippers in that direction) and built in the existing local monumental tradition.
The structure’s outline is defined in part by a Roman temenos which had
been converted to a Christian church in 379, and later built upon to form this
structure. The building itself is a mosque. It is a rectangular structure 157
x 100 meters, lined up on the cardinal directions. The northern half is an open
courtyard surrounded by a pier-based arcade on all four sides. The southern
section is composed of three covered aisles. At the center of the southern wall
there a small mihrab niche to orient prayer specifically, as the southern
arcade does more generally, toward Mecca, which is due south of Damascus. There
are three minaret towers, two at corners and one central one opposite the central
aisle. They are the earliest in Islam to survive and actually little more than
alterations of the surviving Roman bastion towers.
In the center of the courtyard arcade, on the axis with the mihrab, is a domed-prayer-hall
with a pedimented facade. A good number of details have been scavenged from
previous projects.
Looking across the mosque courtyard we may now note that it was the architects of Islam who followed the Romans —chronologically if not esthetically or consciously— in developing designs that set-off and articulated space. The mosque courtyard is usually given some sort of rational articulation trough surrounding arcades and by focusing decoration on the qibla side marking the axis of orientation toward the mihrab and Mecca.
* Worship in the Mosque (Agra or Bijapur)
The essential act of the Muslim prayer involves a series of recitations combined
with a regime of bowing and prostration in the direction of Mecca, the location
of the founding of the faith. In the mosque at the appointed hours this is done
by a congregation in unison as a shared ritual. It is this sharing that requires
a large enclosed space, to establish the congregation, and indication of the
direction of Mecca, to orient the congregation. Though there is an Imam to coordinate
the prayer, there is no separate role or location for clergy as there is in
a Christian church service.
4 Great Mosque, Mosaic decoration, 706-715 Damascus
Here, as in the major Byzantine churches of the day, the interior is covered
with mosaics, and as in the Dome of the Rock these are composed of architectural
fantasies and plant forms: arcaded pavilions and conch niches. Structures are
shown in “classical perspective.” [?] Our author claims evidence
of Byzantine mosaicists doing the work. They were the ones who knew how. Once
again no fauna is represented, as required by Islamic “law” of sacred
locations. They represent the images of paradise described in the Quran: gardens
with groves of trees and running water.
5 Umayyad Palace, plan, Mshatta, 740-50 Jordan
A rural palace are not only residences, but working complexes including provision
for economic production: agriculture, hunting. Mshatta in Jordan preserves such
a rural complex. The layout is said to owe much to Roman fortified camp, as
we have seen in Diocletian’s palace at Split: a bastioned-square with
its audience hall and open courtyards on the central spine of the design. The
fortified wall is clear enough. We can see the location of the complex mosque
in the room with the mihrab niche in its southern, qibla (Mecca facing)
wall.
Our text sees a bath model here as well. This is a Roman cultural form that
died out in the Christian period. These were a social amenity, not for hygiene.
The presence of paintings of people found in similar bathing rooms in other
Umayyad palaces indicate that the prescription against images of people was
confined to the design of the mosque, and not all cultural forms.
7 Umayyad Palace, reconstruction of facade, Mshatta,
740-50 Jordan
6 Umayyad Palace, frieze, Mshatta, 740-50 Jordan
The exterior wall at Mshatta is stone carved in a very rich decorative pattern.
It is a single band, 16 feet high, divided by moldings into a series of triangles
with a great rosette in the middle of each cell. The entire surface is worked
with cut-out, two-level, relief, rendering an effect like monumental lace. The
design mixes the forms of geometric moldings with the organic fill-in of vines
and leaves growing from thin stalks and branching out to fill the space, which
is inhabited with birds and other animals. Every inch of the band is variegated
by this vegetal detail, even the moldings. Every triangular cell of the design
is different. In the one we see close up, there are heraldically-opposed lions,
drinking from a fountain bowl. Similar decorative compositions can be found
in Sassanian and Byzantine art of the eastern Mediterranean. The animal figures
are eliminated from the sections of the wall that border the mosque on the interior.
The covering of a surface with dense and intricate patterns is an important and highly characteristic element of Arabic and then Islamic art in subsequent times, that one may trace to this region of the eastern Mediterranean and Fertile Crescent.
The Historiography of Conquest in the Ancient World
The Abbasid, who claimed descent from Abbas, an uncle of Muhammad, overthrew
the Umayyad caliphs in 750, and set up their capital near the old Sasanian city
of Ctesiphon, at Madina al-salam (the City of Peace), which we know as the modern
city of Baghdad in 762. It was a planned city, designed in a round plan a mile-and-a-half
in diameter, with the caliph’s palace at the center. For the next three
centuries it was the “hub of Arab power and of a brilliant Islamic culture.
(366) The Abbasids carried out the conquests that spread Islam to its vast first
century reach. They had diplomatic relations with the states they didn’t
conquer, such as Charlemagne at Aachen in Germany.
I began earlier to use the well-recorded, and so well-known history of the Jews movements about the eastern Mediterranean as an example of communities with distinct cultures moving about and being moved about from place to place. First we know of them in the region south of the Phoenicians and east of the Egyptians. Later they tell us of their transportation in Egypt and their “exodus” from that place back to their former home region, and then their transportation to Babylon and their return from there to the region of Jerusalem, where they built their great temple. Finally we know of their conquest by the Romans and the suppression of their revolt, the destruction of their great temple and their dispersion throughout the Mediterranean world.
In just such a manner we read the history of the ancient world throughout the movement of distinct cultural communities, composed of people with a shared language and cultural habits, usually including distinctive religious orientation around particular deities. These aren’t genetic races, though they certainly share more biologically among their members than they do with the surrounding cultural communities, because they interact more with those closest to themselves. Still, just as unquestionably, they interact in all manner of ways with the people of all the communities around them.
The Arabs are just such a cultural community. We define them most effectively by the language they speak, though we also associate them with the region they have occupied since the beginning of our history. The explosion of the Arabs into their great conquests of the mid-6th to the mid-7th century, from the desert trading cities of the Arab peninsula to an empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Indus, is much like the expansion of many empires that preceded them: the Persian empire, the empire of Alexander, the Roman empire. Each of these vast military conquests of other people was for the purpose of plunder and exploitation. In each case a military elite defeated the armies of ruling elites in other regions and took over the taxing of the peoples they had conquered. And in each case the conquerors spoke different languages and worshipped different deities than those of the peoples they had conquered.
When the Romans conquered a province they took over the administration of whatever economic and legal institutions existed before them, and they built their own temples, to demonstrate that they were in charge. When the suppressed the Jews revolt in Palestine in 71 CE, they destroyed the Second Temple, on the mount in the center of the city of Jerusalem, and built a temple there. When Constantine converted to Christianity he sponsored the construction of Christian churches over the important sites.
The point of this brief outline of conquest patterns in the ancient world is to orient our consideration of the spread of Islamic art. What hegemonic historians describe too often as the Islamic conquest was not a religious conquest at all. It was an Arab elite military conquest for economic exploitation, justified and legitimized to a significant extent by the ideology of Islam. But it was a secular effort not a religious one. Like the Roman suppression of the Jews or Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire, the goal was material conquest. The fact that the conquering rulers brought their religions with them and sponsored their flourishing and that local elites then changed their spiritual allegiance to maintain their social and economic status was an important result, but not the root cause of the conquest.
8 Great Mosque, Qayrawan, c 836-875 Tunisia
9 Great Mosque, plan, Qayrawan, c 836-875 Tunisia
The hypostyle mosque, which we can see plainly in the Great Mosque at Qayrawan
in Tunisia, closely reflects the earliest mosque origins. It is a great rectangle
oriented to the direction of Mecca, with a covered prayer hall at one end and
an open courtyard facing it. There is a mihrab niche in the middle of the wall
on the Mecca side, which is called the Qibla wall. There is a tower from which
the faithful can be called to prayer at the five appointed hours.
The Great Mosque at Qayrawan is a vast precinct 450 feet by 260 feet, built
of stone within a well-buttressed, fortified wall. On the inside it is entered
through the great open courtyard, which is surrounded by arcaded aisles and
oriented toward the qibla side by taller structures there, marking the central
axis and the direction of prayer. We see the domes built over the entrance to
the covered portions of the mosque. The first dome is there to mark the direction,
the second is to embellish the area closest to the mihrab, that is the psychological
focus of the design.
The covered portions of the mosque are the most comfortable and protected from
inclement weather. They may be carpeted and decorated. Prayers are usually set
here. When there are greater crowds , or nicer weather, worshippers spill out
into the open courtyard. The qibla wall, on the side facing Mecca, is regularly
given enhancing decoration, the most important focus being the mihrab niche.
There is also often special decoration, such as a dome, at the bay preceding
the mihrab, enhancing that spot. It is here that there is also constructed a
pulpit (mimbar), from which the Friday noon proclaimation can be read.
The minaret, or minar, is a tower set up to dignify the faith and to
give the one calling out the time for the prayer a platform.
Since prayer is communal at the five established times, it is desirable to have a wide space where people can join together. Because the prayers involve a series of postures from standing to prostration, there is no furniture to interfere with freedom of motion. In the mosque the prayer is lead by an imam, so that the faithful can move in unison. But there is no sermon or preaching that accompanies it, except at noon on Friday, when there is a message that includes a greeting from the temporal ruler in the major public mosques. Thus there is no organization such as the nave and altar arrangement of the Christian church or Jewish synagogue, for a congregation and a priesthood. Indeed anyone can lead the prayer. With the exception of the encouragement to join with others in the noon prayer on Friday, there is no particular reason to go to the mosque at all, and prayer at home or anywhere else is just as appropriate.
All that is necessary for a mosque to exist is a demarcation between the region of gathering and the area outside it, and an orientation of the area toward Mecca. The wall. that is the usual mark of all early monumental scaled mosques, is not a necessary element. But a massive fortified wall is in fact the universal fact. The first mosques were all bastions of embattled conquerors, and as such protectively inward facing. We don’t get handsome mosque exteriors until we have a more settled and safely occupied Islamic world.
“The three-story minaret of the Qayrawan mosque is square in plan and
believed to be a near copy of a Roman lighthouse.” (367)
Our volume seems intent upon tracing everything possible to the Romans, and uses this means as a means of robbing too many creations of their own values. It is as if someone didn’t know you and had to introduce you, so pointed out that you would be speaking in English, the language inherited from the first Europeans to come to the New World. The Qayrawan minar’s towering form of one box over another, toped by a small dome is also the design normally attributed to the Pharos of Alexandria, one of the famous seven wonders of the ancient world. This shape here is more properly seen as a local tower design.
10 Malwiya minaret, Great Mosque, Samarra, 848-852, Iraq
The Great Mosque at Samarra is immense in size. It was the largest constructed
in the ancient world. Its minar has a striking malwiya (snail shell) design,
a spiral ramp leading to its peak, nearly 165 feet up. Like the mosque it is
connected to, the minar is constructed in brick.
Though the conventional explanation of the minaret, or minar, is that it is a tower for calling the faithful to worship. It doesn’t take long to realize that few will be heard from a distance of 150 feet above the ground. More recent studies of Islamic architecture have recognized the consecution of great towering minars more as celebratory towers of triumph, and expressions of the power of the local rulers and of the faith. The smaller towers attached to mosques, like the bell towers of Christian churches, may be functionally useful for notifying the nearby populace of the moment of prayer, but many of these towers were more monumental than functional.
11 Mausoleum of the Samanids, Bukhara, early 10th c, Uzbekistan
The Saminids were a local ruling dynasty in Uzbekistan on the east of the Iranian
plateau, at Bukhara. The monumental brick tomb they constructed for the dynasty’s
rulers in the early 10th century are a Central Asian regal tradition, not known
in the early period of Islamic or Arabic culture. “Muhammad was
opposed to elaborate burials and instructed his followers to bury him in a simple
unmarked grave. In time, however, he Prophet’s resting place in Medina
was enclosed by a wooden screen and covered by a dome. By the ninth century,
Abbasid caliphs were laid to rest in dynastic mausoleums.”
Indeed the injunction of the Quran is that one should be buried in a grave open to the rain and the sun. What we have here, and what subsequently grew into on of the major elite traditions of the Islamic world, is another example of how any culture grows by adopting and adapting ideas and designs from the cultures within which it develops.
That in this case the development, with its obvious attractions to the governing elite, grew even in the face of an apparent contradiction with the theology it has later been taken to exemplify. As with the temporal powers of many institutionalized religions, we have here an example of how the ruling powers may shape a religion.
The tomb of the Saminids is the earliest surviving example of such a tomb from
the Islamic world. Its form, a cube surmounted by a dome. Its brick construction
may explain its sides being slightly battered. It certainly explains the rich
decorative texture that articulate its form into a set of handsome and structurally
rationalizing patterns.
The form of the cube surmounted by a dome was the standard form of the Iranian fire temple that was an imortant shape in previous times. The arched openings on each side come from the same source. Oleg Grabar, who calls this design the canopy tomb suggests the development of structures at Karabala and Najaf by the Shia followers of the Imam Ali may have been another source. The mass of the cube is given cylindrical corner bastions and an upper row of blind arcades. The wall is divided into lower and upper panels and particularly articulated around the handsomely arched doorway. A set of diminutive mounds stand at each corner, softening the transition to the rise of the dome, which has a miniature lantern a its peak. This articulation is carried out by rhythmical placement of the bricks, some of which were cast in special shapes to conform to the design. The inside is as handsomely decorated as the exterior.
I will note, in passing, this arched doorway, since we will come back to its form a number of times. The arch is not the standard half round favored exclusively by the Romans, but a pointed arch, which can be traced here as a structural form and earlier as a decorative form across the Hindu Kush in the Indus region.
12 Mosque of Córdoba, interior, 8th-10th c, Córdoba
If we shift our gaze from the far east to the far west of the Islamic cultural
sphere, we can look at the gigantic covered mosque at Córdoba in southern
Spain constructed under the Spanish Umayyad dynasty. The Arab armies took Spain
from the Visigoths in 711. (The Visigoths were German-speaking somewhat heretical
Christian barbarians who took over the Iberian peninsula as the Roman empire
was crumbling.) The three century Umayyad reign in Spain brought it Islamic
culture that nearby Christians were to draw upon with great interest.
The great mosque begun in 784 was to be enlarged several times in succeeding
centuries. The vast hall’s roof is supported on 36 piers and 514 columns.
The standard support for the (originally timber) roof was a uniquely double
arched arcade. The stone columns, with their playful variation on the Corinthian
capitals, were tied together by arches free-flying arches which they rose above
to a second arch that supported a continuous wall supporting the roof.
The result is a hypostyle hall of slim columns and a good deal of light and air between the columns and the supporting structure of the ceiling. The same effect of airiness, —necessary in a spacious interior to avoid a feeling of claustrophobia from too low a ceiling— could have been accomplished by taller columns, but apparently these either weren’t available or the designers preferred this richer, more unique solution.
Typical of the rich decorative effects found throughout the Islamic sphere, the arches are composed of alternating red and white voussoirs giving the entire interior a vividly striped effect. Besides being free-flying, the lower arches are given small decorative heels at their bottoms which creates a horseshoe profile for the arch form. This is a striking decorative effect.
Our text comments that the horseshoe shape is “a form perhaps adapted from earlier Near Eastern architecture or of Visigothic origin.” (369) By this point we get the idea that it is difficult to talk about anything unfamiliar without trying to trace its source somewhere else. Why don’t we assume that it is a product of local creativity? Indigenous creativity is, after all, the source for most imagery everywhere.
13 Mosque of Córdoba, Maksura, 961-965, Córdoba
Additions to the mosque in the mid-10th century brought the intricately interwoven
cusped arches seen in figure 13--13 to separate the maqsura area, segregated
from the hall for the protection of the caliph. The maqsura also had a separate
entrance so the Caliph could move to the mosque from his palace safe from assassination.
It is a more complex development of the flying-arch, in which one arch is balanced
upon another and in which decorative cusps (like the heels used to simulate
the horseshoe shape) are added to the structure. The effect is highly decorative
and transforms the usual rationality we expect from architectural decoration
into a sort of decorative phantasmagoria. These developments were intended to
produce visual splendor. They had no structural significance. This decorativeness
is enhanced by plaster, mosaic and veneer marble work, some imported all the
way from Constantinople.
14 Mosque of Córdoba, mihrab dome, 961-965 Córdoba
The mihrab dome is probably the most highly decorated spot in the composition,
fitting the importance of its location. In all there were four domes leading
to the mihrab, along the axis of the mosque. This is an eight pointed rib vault
of extremely decorative geometric complexity, clad on the interior with sparkling
mosaic tesserae from Constantinople, applied by artists from the same place.
If it seems like an example of esthetic overkill, we can attribute that to the wealth of the patrons and their desire to both entertain and to impress.
15 Confronting lions and palm tree, silk fragment, 2’ 11”.
8th c, Uzbekistan
The prescriptions against graven images led to an almost total lack human figures
and even animal life in much of the visual imagery of the Islamic world. Though
in secular settings there was no real reason to be so careful. It place of animals
and people we get elaboration of interest in calligraphy, vegetal forms and
in pure and impure geometry in forms often termed arabesques. Such
patterns sometimes cover entire surfaces.
There is a problem here of considering the Islamic cultural sphere with the region of Arabic speakers and omitting all the regions of Southern Europe, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.
This bit of faded silk has been preserved in Nancy, France’s Toul Cathedral,
because it was used to protect and transport the Christian relics of Saint Amon
here in 820. This fact alone should give us an idea of how international the
world of arts and commerce were, at least as far as the luxury trades, this
long ago. The silk, which probably comes from China, was decorated in Zandana,
near Bukhara on the edge of Central Asia. It shows confronted lions flanking
a palm tree. Other animals run freely outside the rondel. Whether for decorative
effect or because of the general disinterest in empirical observation, the animals
are highly stylized.
The text at this point offers some generalizations about Islamic art. “This
ornamental system offers a potential for unlimited growth, as it permits extension
of the design in any desired direction. Most characteristic, perhaps, is the
design’s independence of its carrier. Neither its size (within limits)
nor its forms are dictated by anything but the design itself. This arbitrariness
imparts a certain quality of impermanence to Islamic design, a quality that
may reflect the Muslim taste for readily movable furnishings, such as rugs and
hangings.” (370)
It took me several re-readings of this decipher its meaning. This is a repeatable decorative fabric motif. Its functional purpose, like the largest percentage of designs for wall hangings, or clothing yardage is to be infinitely repeatable. As many as half the people reading this sentence, or hearing it in class, will be wearing fabrics with similar repeatable patterns, checks, stars, little boats, peace symbols. Why try treat this as peculiarly important or unusual? And then I shifted my interest to the generalization drawn from the point. “This arbitrariness imparts a certain quality of impermanence to Islamic design," “Islamic design,” is there any such thing? One of the major goals of our book, of any survey of anything book, is to discern trends and patterns to help us understand the subject. So, the chapter on the art of the Roman world seeks to offer us a means of identifying Roman as opposed to Greek design and to explain to some extent the difference between ancient Romans and Greek cultures, as shown in those differences. The Romans developed the arch and dome in ways that allowed them to create vast interiors that the Greeks couldn’t and coming together in such enclosures was characteristic of the Romans, who ruled vast regions and gathered together in numbers that the citizens of Greek city states couldn’t imagine. Or we saw the inclusion of women in Roman painting and funerary imagery that indicated the greater place of women in Roman public life.
So the point of the comment was to tell us that there was something we could call Islamic design in the way there was something we could call Roman design, and that “This arbitrariness imparts a certain quality of impermanence to Islamic design.” How does this repeatable design, something fabric design in every culture uses freely offer us an insight about Islamic designers?
That is made clear, finally in the last part of the sentence. It shows “a quality that may reflect the Muslim taste for readily movable furnishings.” Our text’s author sees Muslims as having tastes that have evolved from their experience as desert peoples who have lived in tents and impermanent structures. Which seems plausible enough when you think of Muslims as we tend to most often. A Muslim in the American media is likely to be an Arab with a camel. We know Arabs live in cities today, but also that many of their ancestors lived in the desert in tents.
Our text goes on to amplify just this point: “Wood is scarce in most of the Islamic world, and the kind of furniture used in the West—beds, tables, and chairs—is rarely found in Muslim structures. Architectural spaces, therefore, are not defined by the type of furniture placed in them. A room’s function (eating or sleeping, for example) can change simply by rearranging the carpets and cushions.” (370) And this is the point: Muslims are different from Westerners.
It seems like a reasonable point at first. People who live in moveable tents live in a different manner than those who live in more permanent wood and brick houses. It is absolutely obvious. But it is also terribly misleading. To begin with Arabs make up only ??% of the Muslim world. The average Muslim is no more likely to be an Arabic speaker that he or she is to live in a tent. Most Muslims today are Iranians, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Indonesians. Or Senegalese, or Nigerians. Or to go back to the early period of Islam’s formation, the 8th century in which our fabric was decorated with its repeat design, the elite who ruled the Arab world, lived in well appointed permanent palaces, not desert tents.
The point of the innocuous seeming generalization about a repeatable fabric design was to frame the discussion of Islamic art as different from “Western” art or “Christian” art, as Christian is one of the major associations with “Western.” The point turns out to be extremely significant, in a world where many find, or want to find, a permanent opposition between the “East” and the “West.” Muslims really are different than “Westerners” they don’t even use furniture.
I am not arguing that the life of desert dwelling had no impact on Arab culture, or that Arab culture did not have a formative impact on Islamic culture. I am pointing out how, in seeking to understand that impact, we can caricature our subject and distort it by holding on to misleading stereotypes.
Can you take a bit more of this discussion of cultural difference? The morning I first wrote this I had two Turkish exchange students staying with me, and asked them to read the paragraph. Their response was that indeed they too still grew up in homes where there was little furniture and, for instance, they ate meals not on tables but on the floor. This fits the generalization in Gardner’s statement far better than I would have guessed. So what does that tell us? Certainly that there is more to learn than what we’ve encountered this far.
On the other hand, I know from my experience in India, that South Asians generally eat on floor level rather than tables also. That is why we take our shoes off entering homes over much of the world. Because the floors there are used for more clean functions that in European and American homes. Eating is not done directly on the floor, of course. Mats are put down for sitting and for placing the plates one eats from. But it is still a style without furniture. But, then, it is the style in India, which is not a Muslim country, though there is a large Muslim minority there.
16 Sulayman, Ewer in form of a bird, 1’ 3”, 796
“The furnishings of Islamic palaces and mosques reflected a love of sumptuous
materials and rich decorative patterns.” (370) Handsome, ornate metal
objects are among the great treasures of art created in the Islamic world.
Is there a problem in considering the culture produced throughout the region of our map as the Islamic world ? The two previous chapters on Early Christian and Byzantine art were devoted exclusively to religious imagery. The imagery of this chapter is both secular and religious. To suggest that everything the region of the Islamic religions importance is Islamic or is of a homogeneous esthetic would be quite misleading. The Turkish speakers of Uzbekistan and the Greeks who produced the vault mosaics at Córdoba in Spain may have had less in common with the Arabic speaking artists who decorated the Mshatta palace in Jordan than that a characterization like “Islamic world” suggests.
A Ewer is a vessel for holding water. This very fine zoomorphic ewer was the
work of an artist important enough to sign his work, as we have seen before
in the painted ceramics of the ancient Greeks. The designer’s name was
Sulayman. [As you have undoubtedly noticed, few artists of the ancient world
had the prestige to have their names recorded. So the presence of those who
do suggests serious interest in the creative and craft skills of those who do.]
The place he worked, is not legible in the inscription today. The work is a
free standing piece of sculpture. As a functioning water jug, it could not be
misconstrued as an idol.
The ewer is made of brass with silver and copper inlays to pick out details.
Etched lines are used throughout for the light surface texture marking the feathers,
the rosette on the neck, the medallion on the breast and the inscription around
the collar.
17 Quran page beginning of 18th surahal-Kahf (The Cave), 9th-early
10th c
In the Islamic world calligraphy was one of the most revered arts. If figurative
painting was discouraged in many places at different times, beautiful hand written
Qurans were always in vogue. Quotations from the Quran were used to decorate
buildings and all manner of objects as well. See 12-5, for the great medallions
that were hung in Hagia Sophia during the period that it was a Mosque, and 13-2
for the inscriptions inside the Dome of the Rock.
“Only in China does calligraphy hold so supreme a position in the arts.”
(371) Arabic script is written right to left, with a base line used to connect
some letters. The oldest preserved Qurans date to the eighth century. Most of
these ones are written in Kufic (the script of the city of Kufah). Kufic is
an angular script with a strong angle between the baseline and uprights. As
with Hebrew and other Semitic scripts, only the consonants are written, with
vowels added in below the base optional, and sometimes in color, as in this
example. The decorative band, with the palm tree finial on the right, includes
some inscription in gold.
So much more valued was the calligrapher, than just about any artist, that the name of the calligrapher whose verses from the Quran decorating the Taj Mahal were well recorded at the time of its creation, while the identify of the main architect has taken years of research to detect.
We should remember that writing of any sort in the ancient world was a hoarded rather than a shared art, restricted largely to the elite and its servants. Relatively few were allowed to learn either to read or write. It was more a sacred elite code than a means of common communication. This was a true of the Christian church as it was of Islam. Thus hand written books were works of art throughout the world at this moment. A Christian example can be seen in 16-7.
18 Muquarnas dome, Hall of he Two Sisters, Alhambra palace, Granada,
Spain,
Umayyad of Spain fell to a Berber dynasty, from North Africa in early 11th century.
Córdoba fell to Castile in 1236. Our book says it “fell to the
Christians.” (302) Religious affiliation, if not religious doctrine was
certainly an issue. The Islamic courts of Spain were liberally multi-cultural,
with Jews as well as Christians holding offices and flourishing culturally and
economically. Jews also had a viable place in Catholic Spanish culture up to
the Castile’s union of Catholic regions that forced the Islamic elites
out of the Iberian peninsula in 1492.
Muquarnas are stalactite-like extensions of decorative stucco arch
work in dome interiors. They can be traced throughout the Islamic world from
Persia to Spain. The example in the dome of the Hall of the Two Sisters in the
Alhambra palace, is one of the most ornate and elaborate. The intention of such
rich encrustation of lace-like forms was to throw flickering, dazzling light
in all directions—as the poet’s verses that decorated the Alhambra’s
walls said—to have the effect of ”the heavenly spheres whose orbits
revolve.” (372)
For my own modernist taste this seems achieve a level of over elaboration here that boggles the mind without enlivening it or the senses. But then, I only know this material through pictures, I have never been there. And I’d indeed like to learn what you think if you ever visit. I accept post cards documenting your travels and responses on any of the things we see in this course.