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;i I I e n b r a n d
Boston Public Library
 Robert 1 lillenbrand
was educated at the universities
of Cambridge and Oxford. Since [97] he has taught .it the
University of Edinburgh, and in [989 was made Professoi of
Islamic Art there. He has travelled extensively throughout tl

Islamic world from Morocco to Southeast \sia, and has held

visiting professorships at Princeton, 1 os Angeles. 1 Dartmouth
and Bamberg. He is the author of over a hundred publications,
including books on Persian painting
and Islamic architecture.

<£*
WORLD OF ART
This famous series
provides the widest available
range of illustrated books on art in all its aspe< ts

If you would like to receive a complete list

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No le-

the I

gale of

1
ft
 Robert Hillenbrand

Islamic Art
and Architecture
2jo illustrations, So in color

THAMES AND HUDSON

For Margaret and Ruthie,
with love and thanks for years of encouragement

frontispiece Rustam lassoing Kamus. Firdausi. Shaknama, probably

Tabriz, c. 1505; attributable to Sultan Muhammad. Rustam. the hero
of the Shahnama, the Persian national epic, is distinguished bv the tiger
skin that he wears over his body armour and his leapaid's-head casque
crowned by a mighty seven-fold plume. Note the floating text panels

and concealed grotesques in the landscape.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT I owe a Dr Barbara Brend. who read

great deal to
the text with painstaking care and unstinnnglv provided main |

suggestions for its improvement. The book is much the richer for her
efforts.

Any copy of this book issued by the publisher as j paperb.uk is sold

subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be

lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it

is published and without a similar condition including these words being

imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

© 1999 Thames and Hudson Ltd. London

First published in paperback in the United States of America U

by Thames and Hudson Inc.. SOO Firth Avenue. New York.
New York I o1 1

EB BR
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number NA380
^A380
isbn 0-500-20305-9 H52
.H52
.

1999x
All Rights Reserved No pan of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and
retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher

Printed and bound in Slovenia

Contents

Introduction

CHAPTER ONE
The Birth of Islamic Art: the Umayyads 10

CHAPTER TWO
e
The Abbasids

CHAPTER THREE
The Fatimids 6l

CHAPTER FOUR
The Saljuqs B6

CHAPTER FIVE
The Age of the Atabegs: Syria, Iraq and Anatolia, i 100-1300 1 1 1

CHAPTER SIX
The Mamluks [38

CHAPTER SEVEN
The Muslim West [67

CHAPTER EIGHT
The Ilkhanids and Timurids [96

CHAPTER NINE
The Safavids 226

CHAPTER TEN
The Ottomans 2$ 5

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPin - s '

( OSS ARY
I

sol R is 01 Mil STR ATIONS

(

INI) I X
THE ISLAMIC WORLD FROM ANATOLIA TO CENTRAL ASIA
 KHURASAN Bukhara * Samarqajul

Men RANSOXIANA
vr >
l'<y, Tinnidh

Sarakhs
»Ti
• Mashhad C; A R S T A N
M . J I

.^^ Nishapur-
.

Sultaniy; ^amgnaj ,

,
Sangbast
Qazvm Tehran •Simnan
• Zuzan Kabu]
Raw
~7J Khargird
#X araniin
Herat
Q umm» Ghazna
Kashan* •Tab.
• Natanz
Zavara •
•Ardistan

Isfaha
Introduction

Any attempt to make sense of Islamic art and architecture as a whole

while retaining a chronological framework runs the risk of distor-
tion. Bias of several different kinds is hard to avoid. It is simply not
possible to be equally well informed and equally interested in all
aspects of the subject. The need to consider in some detail the early
centuries of Islamic art is made imperative by the major impact
which work of this period had on later art. But a great deal of this
early art has perished, and to do justice to what survives in the
context of its own
time and of subsequent periods demands a closer
and more detailed focus than is appropriate for the more numerous
examples of later art. Some degree of over-balance is therefore
inevitable.
Certain forms such as calligraphy or textiles continued to be
art
produced most parts ot the Islamic world from early times, but
in
they are not of equal significance in each area or period. Thus the
absence of a discussion of, say, Tulunid woodwork, Maghribi pottery,
Timurid textiles, Spanish metahvork or Ottoman Qur'ans should
not be interpreted as a signal that they did not exist, have not sur-
vived or are of peripheral interest. It is simply that it seemed best to
reserve a discussion of certain media for those periods m which pro-
duction was of the most significant scale and quality Similarly, the art
of entire dynasties - Ghaznavid, Turcoman, the beyliks of Anatolia,
the muluk al-tawa'if of medieval Spain - is virtually ignored. Such
omissions are dictated by the rigorous word limit and the need to see
the wood rather than the trees. In other words, the option of trying
to say something, however little, about almost everything, and thus
writing a rather bland and trivial text, was rejected. It seemed prefer-
able to single out key objects and monuments for relatively detailed
scrutiny, in the hope that they would provide a means of entry into
the school or style that produced them. This book, then, is more a
study of the peaks than of the valleys; its colours are intended to be
bold and primary.
 S

A secondary aim has been to sot the various schools and types of
Islamic art in a reasonably full historical context so that the images
are not, so to speak, trapped in limbo. Specialists will have to console
themselves with the thought that this hook waf not written with
them in mind. It is truly no more than an introduction to vast field. .1

Moreover, the very (act that hook with the .ill inclusive tide of
.1

Islamic Art and Architecture can be written whereas the hooks on

western European art in the Work! of Art series are of a very much
more specialized kind, and are often devoted to single school, or .1

even artist - is reminder that the volume of scholarship consecrated

.1

to this field is tiny in comparison with that available foi uropean I

art. Basic guides to the territory therefore still have their function.
But it would be a serious mist. ike to assume from that disparity that
there is any less 'going on' in Islamic than in European art. You just

have to dig rather deeper for it.

N OT 1 CONCERNING D AT E

For the sake of simplicity and consistency, year dates are shown m
accordance with the Gregorian calendar, but with occasional men
tions of their equivalents in the Muslim calendar (based on the lunai
Iy< le) in on nee tion with spec it u ally dated buildings Or works of art.
c

Muslim years are < al< ulated Mom the date of the hijra the Prophet's
journey from Mecca to Medina in |uK 1
 rrri ^

-•-V~: i

i The pivot of Islam. The Ka'ba in the Masjid al-Haram, Mecca: principal Islamic shrine and the goal of
Muslim pilgrimage. Frequently restored, it contains the Black Stone, the directional focus for Muslim
prayer, and is covered - like a bride' according to medieval
poets - with the kisica, a silken veil, now black
but formerly in many colours.
 CHAPTER ON]

The Birth of Islamic Art: the Umayyads

The genesis of Islamic art is customarily linked with, indeed often

attributed to, the whirlwind military conquests of the Arabs follow-
ing the death of the Prophet Muhammad in ad 632. Such an idea is
plausible enough. The creation of a world empire, the proclamation
of a new faith, the formation of an art that bears its name - all seem
to belong together. But do they? Is there a causal connection, and -
if so - what is the exact chronological sequence? Dazzling and excit-

ing as the spectacle of the Arab conquests is, it in fact has relatively
little to do with the early years of Islamic art. Yet the formative

nature of those early years is plain. What, then, is the precise

connection between the seismic political events of the seventh
century and the earliest Islamic art?
The answer to such questions demands a refinement of the
chronological and geographical focus. To view early Islamic art as
even approximately representative of an empire that stretched from
the Atlantic to India and the borders of China is grossly to misunder-
stand its context. In the two generations which saw the Arabs flood
out of their desert homeland and overrun all of western Asia and
North Africa there was, it seems, neither the desire nor the time to
foster artistic expression. That was to be the achievement not of the
first conquerors themselves but of their grandchildren. At all events,

no major building or artefact survives from these early years. This

sluggish start may owe something to the fact that in this period the
nascent Muslim state was being ruled from Arabia, an environment
in which the visual arts, though by no means absent - as recent
excavations at Qaryat al-Faw (frescoes of royal scenes) and elsewhere
(figural sculpture) have shown - nevertheless had no very significant
role, though architecture flourished. Arabia certainly lagged far
behind the Levant. Similarly, there can be no question of a 'universal'
Islamic art at this early stage. The horizons of that art were
effectively limited to Syria. The rest of the Islamic empire might as
well scarcely have existed .it all, except insofar .is works oi art or

1 1
craftsmen from outside Syria were active within that province and
on the art produced there.
thus exerted external influence
These remarks might lead one to expect a somewhat parochial
quality in the earliest Islamic art. and also a certain timidity or lack of

purpose. Yet this is not so. Such characteristics might well have
marked the verv first monuments which the Muslims erected, for
example in Fustat. Basra and Kllfa - although there is no way o\
clinching this, for they have not survived But if Islamic art was slow
to start, it was quick to gather speed. Certainly the first major monu-
ment to survive, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, radiates assur-
ance. A new arrived It established itself quickly and, for all
art has
that numerous experiments and changes of mind can he detected
during the rule of the Umavvad dynast) 66] ~so). the pervasive
confidence of the age remained undimmed.
This confidence, one of the most striking features of Umavvad art,
was founded on several interrelated factors. Chief among them,
perhaps, was the astonishing military si;, the Arabs in their
foreign campaigns. To their enemies they must have appeared to bear
charmed lives, their winning streak seeming unassailable for much o\
the Umayyad period. Decade after decade the borders of the dor al-
islam steadily expanded, until m ~;^ exactly a century after the
Prophet's death - the Arab defeat at Poitiers m central France sig-
nalled (though only with the hindsight of history) the end of sub-
stantial territorial gams for some centuries. But the splendid
confidence ot the Umayyads was not based entircK on military
success abroad; it was founded also on the ability of the new dynasty
to survive numerous challenges from within. Such challenges were at
their most dangerous m the first thim years of Umayyad rule. It mav
be no more than a coincidence that this same period was singularly
barren so far as the production of works of art was concerned. Yet it
is probable that the outburst of building activity which followed the

consolidation of Umavvad power and the dynasty's triumph over its

internal enemies should be seen at least partly in a political light - in
this particular ease, as a celebration of" Umayyad dominance. This
propaganda dimension was frequently to reappear in Islamic art,
especially in architecture, although it tended to be ot secondary
rather than primarv significance.
Allied to the understandable confidence generated b\ spectacular
military successes at home and abroad was a confidence based on a
sense of secure dynastic power. The Umayyads had abrogated the
primordial Islamic notion o{ an elective succession to the caliphate
and replaced it by the dynastic principle. The internal political
turmoil of the later seventh century was in large measure caused -
and maintained - by that action. Once victorious over their enemies,
however, the Umayyads were able to indulge a heady consciousness
of family power for which history can offer few parallels. For several
c

caliphs - notably Abd al-Malik', al-Walid and al-Wahd II - this

I

sense of dynastic pride found its most public expression in ambitious

building campaigns. The caliphs Sulaiman and Hisham were not far
c

behind, and other princes of the royal family, such as al- Abbas b. al-
Walid and Ghamr b. Yazid, followed suit. Indeed, to judge by the
quantities of religious and secular buildings erected in Syria between
690 and 750 under the direct patronage of the Umayyad royal house,
architecture speedily became a family business. The immense
financial resources of the Islamic state, whose exchequer was swollen
by the accumulated booty of the Arab conquests and by the taxation
revenue which came pouring in thereafter, were at the disposal of
c
the Umayyad builders. Thus Abd al-Malik was able to set aside the
tax revenues of Egypt for seven years to pay for the Dome of the
Rock, while his son al-Walid I devoted the entire tax revenue of
Syria for seven years to the building and embellishment of the Great
Mosque of Damascus. There was thus both the will and the means to
embark on grandiose building projects.
Enough has been said to account for the superb self-confidence
which triggered and then fuelled the massive building programme ot
the Umayyads. Yet the geographical location of these buildings also
requires explanation. Given that they are to be found, with very few
exceptions, exclusively in Syria, how was an undue parochialism,
peculiarly inappropriate to a world empire, avoided? The answer is
three-fold. First, Syria under the Umayyads was beyond compare the
most favoured land in the Islamic empire. Its inhabitants enjoyed
privileges and concessions denied to those from other provinces. Its
principal city, Damascus, was from 661 the capital of the empire.
Here was established the Umayyad court and administration, when
these were not to be found toiling in the wake ot semi-nomadic
caliphs. The massive caliphal investment 111 agricultural installations
canals, dams, wells, gardens and so on, culminating in the planned
but abortive diversion of the River Jordan itself- made Syria perhaps
even exceed Iraq .is the richest province m the empire. Thus abun-
dant wealth complemented its politic. il prestige.
Parochialism in Umayyad art was further discouraged by the prac
rice of conscripting labour and materials from other provinces. his 1
custom ensured that Syrian material culture would be metropolitan.
The caliphs could dip at will into an extensive labour pool within
their owndomains, and could supplement this by importing still
more craftsmen and materials from outside the Islamic world,
notably from Byzantium. The chance survival of a cache of papyri
from Aphrodito in Upper Egypt documents the workings of an
Islamic corvee system - essentially the leiturgid practised by Rome
and Byzantium - in the early eighth century. The local governor,
one Qurra b. Sharik, was responsible for sending a specified number
of men to work on the Damascus mosque, and he had to provide
money to cover their living expenses too. Such documentary proof
of the corvee system can be supplemented by literary references - for
example, al-Taban mentions the activity of Syrian and Coptic
workmen in the building of the mosque at Medina - And, above all,
by the evidence of the buildings themselves. Stucco sculpture of
Persian type, Iraqi techniques of vault construction, mouldings from
south-eastern Anatolia, a hgural style closely paralleled in Coptic
sculpture — all furnish unmistakable evidence that the style and build-
ing practice of Syria was enriched by ideas and traditions from much
further afield. There was no danger that the local Syrian craftsmen
would cling to their own traditions and thus risk stagnation.
Finally, the position of Syria, both geographically and politically,
militated against parochialism. The province was uniquely placed to
draw inspiration from the major cultures newly yoked together to
form the Islamic empire, lb die north, west and south west lav lands
in which Graeco-Roman culture was dominant and which were
either Byzantine or, like Egypt and North Africa, had recently been
wrested from Byzantine rule, [b the south was Arabia, which at this
early stage in Islamic history was still by no means a spent force in
religious, cultural or political terms. lb the east lav Mesopotamia and
Persia, comprising the accumulated heritage of Assyria and Babylon,
and of the Achaemenids, Parthians and Sasanians. Here the tradition
of world empires died hard, though the horizons of these Middle
Eastern states were appreciably narrower than those of the
Umayyads.
Within the Umayyad empire, then, which stretched from France
to the Indus, Syria was ideally placed to act as a central point from
which metropolitan influences radiated to the outlying provinces.
No other region of the Islamic world combined such a deeply rooted
Hellenism with an openness to the ancient cultures of the Near East.
By virtue ot its geographical position and its political pre-eminence,

H
 i Standard mosque types

[above) The enlarged house of

the Prophet Muhammad,
Medina, 624: the inspiration for

much mosque architecture.

[right) The Great Mosque of

Kufa, original form, 638: note

the hypostyle sanctuary.

[above) The Friday Mosque of

Zivaratgah. Herat, [482: a

standard Iranian 4-iuwN layout.

[right) The Uc Serefeli Mosque

Edirne, 144" an example of
the domical emphasis in
Ottoman mosque architecture.
Syria was a natural bridge between east and west, north and south. It
was only to be expected that under the Umayyads its art should
reflect this unique situation. The tact that those same Umayyads
were not a family of local Syrian notables but the representatives of
the greatest empire in the contemporary world gave their art a
mission of the utmost seriousness. It had a public, an imperial, role.
In the immediately pre-Islamic period Syria had perforce been con-
strained to yield centre stage to Constantinople and even Alexandria,
and was thus to a certain extent an eastern appendage of a
Mediterranean-centred empire. The emergence of Islam as a world
power decisively changed all this and brought Syria its scant century
of glory. Umayyad art was the public expression of that glory.
So far as the future of Islamic art was concerned, this was a
crucial century, in which the face of the Mediterranean world and
the Near East was permanently redrawn. This century established
the principle that Islamic art, tar from being intrinsically universal,
could have (as it certainly began by having) a well-defined regional
and dynastic character, a feature which it consistently retained in
later centuries. The Umayyad period also ensured that the funis
and ideas of classical art. which were much better understood m
Syria than in the lands further to the east, would enter the blood-
stream of Islamic art. As a result. Islamic architecture tends to feel

familiar to a Western observer; it employs, after all. the familiar

vocabulary of column and capital, pointed arch and dome, rib and
vault. It was under the Umayyads, too. that a distinct iconography
of princely life, centring around the formal, ceremonial activities of
the monarch and his leisure pursuits, was developed and refined.
This set of images was to become a leitmotif of secular art through-
out the Islamic world. Similarly, the success of Umayyad solutions to
many problems of religious and secular architecture ensured that the
building types evolved during this period repeatedly recurred in one
guise or another in subsequent centuries. This readiness of Liter
generations to copy Umayyad prototypes was at least partly due to
the unique glamour which invested this, the first and most powerful
of Islamic dynasties. As already noted, too. the Umayyads recog-
nized the propaganda dimension inherent in splendid buildings and
symbolic images; this also was to remain a constant of later Islamic
art. Yet this same development was viewed with some mistrust .it

first, and Mu'awiva. the first Umayyad caliph, when challenged

about his taste for ostentation on the Byzantine model, defended
himself by asserting that 'we are at the frontier and desire to
I

16
rival the enemy in martial pomp, so that he may be witness to the
prestige of Islam'.
Finally, the Umayyads' choice of Syria as their power base had
tremendous consequences for later Islamic art, since the generative
impact of Syria was greater than that of any potential rival among
the other provinces in the Islamic empire. Islamic art would have
developed in a very different fashion if the Umayyads had settled.
tor example, in Arabia, in Spain or in India. At the same time, lest
too much be claimed tor the art of this period, it is worth remem-
bering that some of the media which were later to become most
typically Islamic, such as glazed pottery, metalwork, carpets, book
painting and textiles, are either totally or virtually absent from art of
this period.
What, then, are the principal expressions of Islamic art under
Umayyad dominion? The so-called 'minor arts' are quickly disposed
of. the textile fragment which, if its attribution to Marwan II is

correct, would be datable to c. 750, and whose arabesques and flgural

style would readily suggest Coptic work but for the Arabic inscrip-
tion; some ivories for which Coptic and Byzantine as well as
Umayyad provenances have been suggested, a controversy which
itself sheds much light on the intrinsic nature of Umayyad art; and a
little metalwork, much ofof disputed date and provenance.
it also
The so-called Cairo may be late Umayyad or early
'Marwan ewer' in
c

Abbasid; but its date, and indeed its provenance, is less important
than its form, which is prophetic of much of later Islamic metalwork
in that it typifies the preferred Islamic response to the sculpture of
living creatures. The body of the ewer is occupied principally by a
continuous arcade enclosing rosettes and animals, all lightly incised.
A pair of dolphins in high relief support the handle; but the piece de
resistance is the fully three-dimensional crowing cockerel, craning

forward eagerly with his beak open in full cry, who perches on (and
then himself forms) the spout of the ewer. The utilitarian function of
such sculpture may well have sufficed, from the standpoint of strict
orthodoxy, to justify its otherwise impiously mimetic quality. Several
similar but less ornate pieces testify to the popularity of this model.
A new chapter in Umayyad metalwork was opened with the discov-
ery in [985, at the ancient site of al-Fudain, of a square bronze
brazier on wheels. At each corner stands a naked girl, sculpted 111 the
round and holding bird; along the only complete side is a set of
.1

panels with erotic images and scenes of revelling. The piece bean
close affinities to the sculptures ofKhirbat al Marjar (see p.
 3 (lefty Engraved base metal ewer
aseribod to the caliph Marwan II,
_
s . found in Egypt. Its blind
arcades (here with solar rosettes)
recur m sura dividers m early
Qur'ans, ungjazed clay lamps and
jars, and Umayyad architecture; they

may. like the cockerel, symbolize

light - and even boundaries or
protection. Sasanian and 1 lellenistH
elements combine with a

distinctively Islamic aesthetic of

all-over decoration.

4 (/>«7eiD Private taste. Bronze and

iron brazier from al-Fudain, Jordan,
before 750. Probably <. ast by the lost-

wax method Ceremonial braziers

occur on Assyrian reliefs, but the
griffins with outstretched wings
which form the feet recall Sasanian
metarwork, while the frank sensuality
of these pneumath figures owes
much to Coptic art and the corner
figures recall the Syrian goddess
itlS.

A
 <atlKia

s Economic interdependence. Money scarcely existed m the Arabia of Muhammad. For tins reason, and to
maintain economic stability, the Muslims long forbore to replace the existing coinage. They contented
themselves with unobtrusive tine tuning, adding Arabic inscriptions and removing religious symbols.

Another significant expression of Umayyad art deserves brief

mention here: the coinage of the period. To a quite remarkable
degree this coinage mirrors and encapsulates the artistic tendencies
traceable in the much more complex field of architecture. Umayyad
coins faithfully reflect the long fallow period which preceded the
serious involvement of Umayyad patrons with ambitious works of
art. The significant innovations in coinage are almost exactly con-
temporary with the Dome of the Rock (completed in 691). As in
architecture, so in coins the evolutionary trend is clear: an initially
slavishdependence on classical models gives way to an increasing
preference for themes and techniques inherited from the ancient
Near East, and the resultant period of experiment produces some
unexpected reworkings of old ideas in new contexts. Finally an orig-
inally and distinctively Islamic solution is fashioned from these
heterogeneous elements. This entire process of acculturation and
innovation was, it seems, telescoped into little more than a decide;
perhaps the limited physical scope offered by coinage resulted m
Islamic forms being introduced at an accelerated pace. The evolution
of coins therefore epitomizes a process which 111 other media,
notably architecture, occurred much more slowly and tentatively.
In Iraq, Persia and areas even further east, Sasanian silver coins
were copied with virtually no alteration. The favourite design tea- s

tured on the obverse a head of Khusrau II. one of the last

portrait
S.is.inian rulers before the Islamic conquest of Persia, and on the
reverse a tire altar with attendants. Even the name ot the Sasanian

ruler in the Persian Pahlavi characters was retained, as were the

[Q
Pahlavi mint marks, while the date was given successively in the two
Sasanian calendars and then in the Islamic or Hijra reckoning. When
the Muslim governor's name was given, it was also written in Pahlavi
characters. The only distinctively Islamic feature was the addition of
pious expressions in Kufic script, such as 'in the name ot God' or
'praise be to God'. Thus presumably Persian die makers continued to
work under the Muslims. These Arab-Sasanian coins, then, show the
willingness of the Muslims to maintain the status quo.
In Syria, with the of a weakened but unconquered
spectre
Byzantine north of the border, the situation was different
state just
Here the Arabs naturally encountered not Sasanian but Byzantine
coinage. They were already familiar with this, since the words dinar
and dirham (from denarius and drachma respectively occur in the
Qur'an. Despite the Greek derivation of its name, the dirham men-
tioned in the Qur'an, in the chapter ofJoseph, is probably a Sasanian
coin since this was by tar the most widespread silver com in the Near
East - the dollar of late antiquity. The Sasanian economy was based
on silver iust as that ot Byzantium was based on gold. Under the

'

VWIV

'r,

•
W?IY( ^
6 A
language of symbols. Lace yth-century coins.
(a) Caliph (?) at prayer with attendants. Muslim
adaptation of a standard Sasanian type. Silver dirham
minted by Bishr b. Marwan. 692-3.
(b) Bar-less cross on altar steps. Syrian gold dinar,

c. 692. The cross was modified, by letters, as here

(RI: Rex Ishmaelorum. "King of the Ismaelites'?), or

by a circle, thus creating a Greek phi.

(c)Standing caliph with the Muslim creed around

the rim. Syrian gold dinar minted by 'Abel al-
Malik. 696—7. A response to Byzantine gold issues.
(d) Aniconic epigraphic gold dinar, Syrian. 696-7.
The forerunner of almost all later Muslim coinage.

7 God's caliph. Silver dirham, probably Damascus

692. The niche, common in classical and
as*?
c.

Christian art. here prefigures the mihrab dnd

contains the Prophet's lance. The caliph is also
metaphorically present through his title.

caliph Umar I, for example, the Syrians paid their taxes in gold
while the Iraqis paid theirs in silver. The Arabic copper coin, the fab,
is Greek fottis in disguise; here, too, the Byzantine designs were
the
copied. At first Byzantine types were used without any alteration;
this was sound economic sense, for the Arabs had long been familiar
with these coins in commerce. Indeed, a Syriac chronicle records
that when in 661 the caliph Mu'awiya minted gold and silver 'the
populace did not accept it as there was no cross on it'. Several well-
known Byzantine types were copied, some of single standing imper-
ial figures, others showing the emperor Heraclius and his two sons.

Soon, however, tiny but momentous changes were introduced; on

the reverse, the cross on a stepped podium lost its horizontal bar, the
monogram denoting Christ was deprived of its initial letter and
hence its meaning, and the crosses surmounting the imperial crowns
were removed. The intention behind these changes was clearly to
de-Christianize the coins, but to do so as unobtrusively as possible.
retaining their Byzantine look.
By degrees embarked on bolder innovations, replac-
the Muslims
ing for example the Byzantine ruler with orb and sceptre by .1

recognizably Arab figure, bearded, wearing the traditional Bedouin

headdress, and clasping a sword - a pose evocative ot' the caliph
delivering, as his office demanded, the khutba or bidding prayer at
the congregational mosque on Fridays. In other experimental issues
this 'standing caliph' was replaced by other images with ,111 even
more unmistakably Islamic religious significance, such .is the caliph

j 1
8 (below) Imagery of the afterlife. Dome of the Rock:
polychrome and mother-of-pearl mosaic. Motifs of
secondary importance in Byzantine tradition are now
greatly enlarged and promoted to centre stage. Jewelled
vases and celestial plants glorify the Rock and create an
other-worldly ambience, employing new symbols of
power and Paradise.

V>-
 M

[slam triumphant )ome of I

the Rock. Jerusalem, completed in 691.

limit on the platform formerly occupied
bv Solomon's Temple, it reinterprets .1

standard type of Byzantine centralized

commemorative building intended for
pilgrimage Its central mi k evokes
Arabian litholatrv. associations of the
Creation and the Last Judgment, and
Muhammad's Night fourney t<> Heaven
rilework replaced the external mosaics
w
bet e en s^s and
1 1

me «>t the- l<o. k three

dimcnsioii.il cutaway viev« revealin
underlying geometry <>i the plan
 flanked by attendants and with his hands raised in prayer, or a mihrab
enclosing the Prophet's lance. Finally, in a far-reaching currency
reform which extended to most of the Islamic world and was carried
out between 695 and 697, all figural images were expunged, to be
replaced by the quintessential Islamic icon: Qur'anic epigraphy. In
these coins, which were minted in their millions, inter-confessional
rivalries took on a new and explicit edge. A direct attack on the
Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity can be seen in
the words emblazoned on the field of these coins: 'There is no god
but God; Muhammad is the Messenger of God. He has no associate;
He does not beget, nor was He begotten.' Seldom in world history
has the propaganda potential of coinage been so fully exploited.
Despite the unquestioned significance of Umayyad coins as histor-
ical documents, and the curiosity value of the minor arts datable to
this period, there can be no doubt that the intrinsic nature of
Umayyad art can be gauged only by means of the architecture of the
time. Sadly, some of the finest Umayyad mosques have vanished, like
the Mosque of the Prophet at Medina, constructed in 707 on the site
of his house (see p. 15) as part of a far-sighted programme of major
mosques at sites of key importance: in its time this must have rivalled
the very finest of Umayyad religious monuments. Others have been
totally rebuilt, like the Great Mosque of Aleppo, built by the caliph
Sulaiman, or the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, possibly founded by al-
Walid I. Nevertheless, two supreme masterpieces of religious archi-
tecture do survive. They show that, while early Islamic art was still in
the thrall of the Byzantine and classical heritage, the Muslims were
already developing their own visual language and were well able to
use inherited forms for their own ends. These buildings confidently
proclaimed that the new faith had come to stay in the formerly
Christian strongholds of the Near East.
10 The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was completed after a turbu-
lent decade in which the Umayyads briefly lost control of the Hijaz,
and with it the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and survived
further serious challenges from religious opposition groups. This
particular historical background has prompted some scholars to
explain it as a victory monument and even as a place of worldwide
Muslim pilgrimage to supplement, if not to supplant, Mecca itself.
Yet its site and its form also suggest other interpretations. It stood on
what was incontestably the prime plot of real estate in all Jerusalem -
the vast high platform on which Solomon's Temple had rested,
shunned by Jew and Christian alike since the destruction of that

M
Temple by Titus in AD 70. It marked an enigmatic outcrop of rock
traditionally associated with the Creation itself and with the near-
sacrifice of by Abraham, the prelude to Clod's covenant with
Isaac
man. Later Muslim belief identified this as the place of the Prophet's
Ascent to Seven Heavens (his mi'raj) in the course of his miraculous
Night Journey. In form the building is a domed octagon with a
double ambulatory encircling the rock; 111 essence, then, centralized .i

structure ot' a type long familiar in Roman mausolea and Christian

martyria. The choice ot' form probably stems from a desire to
upstage the nearby domed church of the Holy Sepulchre, perhaps
the most sacred shrine of Christianity, also built over a rock; the
diameters of the two domes
by only a centimetre.
differ
Nevertheless, the earlier building was confined within the urban
fabric of Jerusalem, while the Dome of the Rock enjoyed, as it still
does, a matchlessly uncluttered and highly visible site. In much the
same way, the qumtessentiallv Byzantine medium of wall mosaic was
used to decorate the interior and exterior ot the Dome of the Rock
on a scale unparalleled in any surviving earlier Byzantine church.
The pervasive motifs of jewelled plants, trees and chalices have been
interpreted as references to Muslim victory, Solomon's Temple and
Paradise while the earliest epigraphic programme 111 Islamic
itself,

architecture comprises lengthy Qur'anic quotations exhorting

believers and attacking - as did contemporary coins - such Christian
doctrines as the Trinity and the Incarnation.
The Great Mosque ot Damascus (705-1 s) offers the natural 11-14
pendant to this great building - again. foundation occupying
.1 royal
the most public and hallowed site in its city. Here too its topograph

ical dominance has clear political overtones. It too is ot' impressive

size and splendour, and uses Qur'anic inscriptions (now unfortu-
nately lost) for proselytizing purposes. The caliph al-Walid Ipur-
chased the entire comprising the walled enclosure of the temple
site,

of Jupiter Damascenus and the Christian church of St. John the

Baptist within it. and forthwith demolished that church and ever)
other structure within the walls. The revered model of the Prophet's
house m Medina - the primordial mosque ot' Islam as refined b\

mosques built 111 the garrison cities of Iraq and else-

slightly later
where, seems to have inspired much of what now followed. An open
courtyard tilled most of" the rectangle created by this wholesale
demolition, with the covered sanctuary of the mosque on its long
south side. Yet this arrangement is not entnvK Muslim. It boldk
recast the standard components ot .1 typical Christian basilica to
 1 1 Mosque of Damascus:
Great
isometric view. The superstructure ot
the minarets is Mamluk and later. An
original entrance to the north is now
blocked.

\2 Christian architecture [slamicized. Great Mosque

of Damascus, completed in ^ i s by the caliph
al-Wahd I In the foreground, the treasury I he
sanctuary facade and dome were rebuilt after the
catastrophic fire of' in<>?; the original arcade would
have been much lighter.

SI i
si^ lijj
i.
}

3 5S"'
i
W\
3
mm y it

"*-- T.
•:•.' «>i" C5—..-9-—

a
•.

- n
icMain

13, The new Rome- Great Mosque of Damascus, mosaic on west wall. This fantasy architecture
14 (ofoiv)
uses - no doubt for political purposes - a Roman, not a Byzantine, vocabulary, {be loir) A world
transfigured. Drawing ot the landscape panorama in the Great Mosque, showing its hill context.
secure a new emphasis in keeping with the needs of Islamic
lateral
worship. The remained, but the direction of prayer ran at
three, aisles
right angles across them and was marked in elevation by a towering
domed gable which clove through the pitched roof to form a central
transept. Its facade was a free variation on the standard west front of
Syrian churches. This T-shaped partition of the sanctuary was des-
tined to have a long posterity in the mosques of the western Islamic
world (see p. 186).
Carved marble window grilles with elaborate geometrical patterns
loosely inspired by late antique wall mosaics presage the enduring
geometric bias of much Islamic ornament. Quartered marble, so cut
that the veining oi the stone continues from one slab to the next,
formed dados in typical Byzantine fashion. Above them unfolded
the glory of the mosque: hundreds of square metres of wall mosaic in
the predominantly green and gold tonality already encountered in
the Dome of the Rock mosaics. The caliph seems to have obtained
artists and materials from Byzantium itself for this great work; cer-

tainly the technical standard of the mosaics is beyond reproach.

Along the inner wall ot the ancient enclosure, above a continuous
golden vine-scroll (now lost) winch functioned like a religious cordon
sanitaire tor the entire mosque, is unveiled vast panoramic land-
.1

scape. Along the banks ot a river regularly punctuated by gigantic

trees rises a fantasy architecture of villages and palaces m endless pro-
fusion. The link with Roman wall-paintings of the type found at
Pompeii is unmistakable; but here the idea is put to new and unex-
pected use, for it strikes the dominant note in a huge monument of
religious architecture. Some of these multi-storey structures also
evoke South Arabian vernacular architecture. Human and animal
figures are conspicuously absent, indicating - as at the Dome of the

Rock - that a distaste for hgural ornament m a religious context had

already taken root. Despite the obvious success of these mosaics as
pure decoration, main meanings have been proposed for them:
topographical references to Damascus or to Syria in general, wish-
tulhlling depictions of a world at peace under Islamic sway, or evoca-
tions of Paradise itself. Perhaps Mich ambiguity is intentional.
Clearly, these two buildings belong together as a considered
Muslim response to the splendours of classical and Christian archi-
power and presence of
tecture around them, and an assertion of the
the new faith. The same messagefrom the much more numer-
ismics
ous desert establishments founded under royal patronage. The
Umayyad princes - chafing under the moral and physical restraints of
city life, apprehensive o\ the plague which recurrently menaced
those cities, and perhaps atavisticaHy drawn to desert life - moved
restlessly from one of these desert residences to another. With a few-

exceptions - among them

khan or travellers' lodging place at Qasr
a

al-Hair al-Gharbi and perhaps one at Qasr al-Hair al-Sharqi too, and i
S
c
a miniature city at Anjar laid out on a Roman grid plan - these
foundations fall into a well-defined category. Here, too, pre-Islamic
forms are pressed into service.
Yet much more than mere imitation is involved. Where the Dome
of the Rock sedulously copied Christian martyria and the Damascus
mosque reworked the Christian basilica, the desert residences radi-
cally refashioned inherited forms. They combined two familiar
building types whose origins are Roman, not Byzantine - and this

association with the remoter but more prestigious imperium (rather

than its still unconquered successor) is surely significant. The two
building types in question - the villa mstica and the frontier fort - are
intrinsically unrelated and are thus quite naturally segregated in their
parent culture. This unawaited combination springs from the need.
peculiar to this group o\ patrons, to integrate two essentially dis-
These residences served at once as the nerve centre
similar functions.
of a working agricultural estate, in which the caliph was - so to
speak - lord of the manor, and as outward symbols o\ conspicuous
consumption and political power. The shell of the Roman frontier

1 5 Roman authority. Qasr al-Hair al-Sharqi, main gate of caravansarai or palace(?), c. 728. The projecting
towers, arcuated lintel and alternation of stone and brick are all Roman; the central machicolation copies
local models.
 16 Rustic idyll. Qusair 'Amra, hunting lodge and bathing establishment, early Nth
century. Vault fresco with human ,\nd animal figures in a lozenge pattern adapted from
classical floor mosaics.

fort, complete with salient gateway, corner towers, battlements, and

even its favoured Roman dimensions, was retained. But now it was
shorn of virtually all us functioning defensive devices, and con-
tained both luxury royal apartments and service quarters grouped
in two stories around a central courtyard. Qasr al-Hair al-Gharbi,
Usais and Khirbat al-Minya all attest this type.
A rather different kind of establishment is represented by a pair of
c

sites north-east of Amman in the Jordanian desert - Qusair Amra

£
16
and Hammam al-Sarakh. These also make free with a classical build-
ing type — in this case, the bath. In approved Roman fashion, cold,
warm and hot rooms, all variously vaulted, succeed each other. The
novelty lies in adding a ceremonial vaulted hall, complete with royal
niche, to this humble ensemble and thereby exalting it to a new
c

dignity. Qusair Amra is especially notable for its matchless series of

wall-paintings, the most extensive sequence of true frescoes to have
survived from the late antique and early medieval world. Shot
through with techniques and iconographical allusions of classical
origin, they celebrate the pleasures of wine, women and song - to

30
i" Concert hall? Khirbat al-Matjar. bath
hall. c. 740. The 21 vaulted spaces gave
this chamber a magnificent acoustic; its

patron. al-Walid II. loved to hear

performances of poetry and music. he 1

cross-in-squarc format and the vaulting

system are taken directly from Byzantine
church architecture; some parody may
be intended.

is The Umayyad world view Khirbat

al-Matjar. mosaic in diwan (retiring
room) of palace, (". ~ao. A hunting scene
linked to late antique rloor mosaics b\
theme and technique alike is

transformed into a powerful allegory oi

a world divided between Muslim and

infidel. Here presumably sat the caliph,

dispensing justice: reward on his right,
punishment on his left.

^" "'T
I l'i ! <" ,
'
"• —> r — 1 •*
 say nothing of the dance, the bath and the hunt - in a remarkably
uninhibited idiom. Among several images in a more serious vein,
some of them with Solomonic echoes as at Khirbat al-Mafjar (see
below), a scene of six kings in submissive pose, identified by inscrip-
tions as the monarchs of the earth, is especially notable. It symbolizes
the entry of the Umayyads into the exclusive club of world leaders,
and implies the dominant role of their dynasty in that club. The epi-
curean lifestyle conjured up by the main body of frescoes has to be
seen within the context of this overt bid for imperial status. Thus
political concerns infiltrate even the carefree atmosphere of this
remote hunting lodge, to which the anonymous prince occasionally
repaired for a few days of recreation - there was no provision for
him to live at this site permanently.
At the very end of the Umayyad period, in response to the
increasingly extravagant ambitions of the playboy caliph al-Walid II,
17, 18 greatly enlarged multi-functional palaces were built. Khirbat al-
Mafjar (unfinished; before 743) is a five variation on the loosely
planned agglomeration of discrete units found m the Roman and
Byzantine pal. ices of Tivoli, Piazza Armerina and Constantinople.
Here, in the fertile valle\ of Jericho, and linked by little more than
their proximity within an enclosing wall, are disposed a palace, a

mosque, an underground bath with shower, a courtyard with an

imposing central tholos (a circular colonnaded structure) over a foun-
tain, and finally the jewel of the site a huge domed and vaulted

bath hall, a precocious forerunner of the Byzantine cross-in-square

church. A peerlessarray of thirty-nine adjoining panels together
create the largest single floor mosaic to survive from the medieval or
indeed the ancient world, and provide a fitting match tor the spatial

subtleties ot the elevation. Other amenities include a bathing pool, a

plunge bath which held wine, a luxurious royal retiring-room
perhaps used for private audiences, for banqueting or as a tribunal,
and finally a splendidly appointed latrine designed to accommodate
some thirty-three visitors at a time, Fresco and tempera paintings
and, above all. stucco carving ot unexampled vigour and resource
complemented the splendours ot" the architecture and floor mosaic.
The sculptures of athletes and serving girls in particular seem to
epitomize the joie de vivre which the entire establishment exudes.
19, 20 Mshatta is altogether more sober, not to say gloomy Its size -
144 111 (472 ft) per side - is unprecedented among Umayyad palaces
and greatly accentuates its sombre, dominating impact. Though it
was never finished, enough survives to reveal the basic principle of its

32
iy Totalitarian architecture.
Ground plan of the palace of
Mshatta, Jordan, c. 744. The side

tracts are a speculative

reconstruction.

20 A petrified textile. Filigree

ornament is at odds with the

fortified air of the Mshatta palace

facade. Solar rosettes - a Sasanian
theme - stand proud o\\\ thicket

of classical vine-scroll ornament

compartmentalized by a zigzag
moulding adapted from Christian
Syrian architecture.
layout — a sequential subdivision into three parts on an ever-dimin-
ishing scale. An iron logic governs the working out of this scheme.
While the caliph's own quarters, at the far end of the central tract,
were no doubt as lavishly appointed as their counterparts in other
Umayyad palaces, they are not enough to explain the overwhelming
scale of the ensemble; indeed, they are sufficiently small to underline
the fact that this was no mere pleasure palace. The key to the build-
ing, therefore, must lie in the side tracts, which were scarcely begun
when work on the whole complex was abruptly stopped. Their huge
size suggests that Mshatta, unlike the other Umayyad residences, was
intended to accommodate large numbers of people - perhaps the
entire Umayyad court complete with administration and bodyguard,
or even pilgrims returning from the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca,
though this is less likely since it would happen only once a year. If
Mshatta really was a palace city it would be the natural precursor to
the Round City of Baghdad, built barely a generation later (see pp.
40—1). Whatever its function, there can be no doubt that Mshatta
draws inspiration from the tradition which produced Diocletian's
palace at Split, itself no villa but the apotheosis of the castrum or
Roman military camp. Once again, then, the source is Roman
rather than Byzantine. Yet Mshatta is no mere copy. Its tightly regi-
mented square design is subtly orchestrated to assert the absolute
power of the monarch; the language of military architecture is made
to serve the ends of propaganda. Not even the celebrated
political
carved facade which extends along the outer face of the central or
royal tract, and that tract only, can mask this grim political message.
What conclusions as to the nature of Umayyad art can be drawn
from the material surveyed in this chapter- Three consistent
characteristics can be isolated: it is eclectic, experimental and propa-
gandist. The eclecticism is easily explained. The fact that Umayyad
art developed in Syria meant that it was open to the influence not
only of the local school of late antique art but also to the art of con-
temporary metropolitan Byzantium. Coptic Egypt and Armenia, and
of course imperial Rome, whose monuments were ubiquitous.
Borrowings from the East - Mesopotamia. Sasanian Iran, Central
Asia, even India - waxed as classical influences waned in response to
the increasingly definitive alignment of the Umayyad state towards its
eastern territories. Given the relatively primitive stage of artistic
expression which characterized much of the Arabian peninsula in
pre-Islamic times, there was no question of the Umayyads importing
their own ready-made indigenous Arabian art into Syria. Thus they

34
i\ Conspicuous consumption. Q.im- al-Hair al-Gharbi, detail of floor fresco,
Regimented and abstracted floral frame three scenes: a beribboned prince
rosettes
hunting gazelles, using stirrups and a compound bow; a flautist and lutanist; and a groom
in a game park (not shown). All this reflects Sasanian roek reliefs and silverware, with
their iconography of pleasure, and the increasingly Eastern orientation ofUmayyad art

had perforce to adopt the initially alien styles of the people they had
conquered. Their practice of conscripting labour from provinces
outside Syria ensured the meeting of widely divergent styles.
This helps to account tor the second hallmark of L'inawad an
its experimental nature. Virtually limitless funds were set aside for
.irehiteetur.il projects; and the speed with which they were com
pleted shows th.it large teams of workmen laboured side b\ side.
Naturally they learned horn, and competed with, each Other. It i^
 thus scarcely surprising that, in the heady atmosphere created by a
continuous building spree, and in response to the urgings of patrons
who delighted in all-over decoration, the sense of restraint integral to
classical art and its descendants was soon thrown off. Experiment
became the watchword. It has its serious side, as shown m the austere
geometric wall-paintings of Hisn Maslama. an Umayyad residence
and settlement on the Euphrates in Syria. But in general one is
struck by the infectious gusto of Umayyad decorative art. especially
its figural stucco and painting, where the effect is heightened by

bold, even garish, colours. Unshackled by convention, open-

minded, endlessly inventive, artists delighted to turn old ideas to new
account, equally ready to trivialize important motifs by dwarfing
them and to inflate essentially minor themes so as to lend them an
unexpected significance. Umayyad artists were far less inhibited than
their contemporary counterparts elsewhere in the Mediterranean
world. Hence they freely combined themes and media which tradi-
tion had hitherto kept apart: at Mshatta, for example, brick vaults o\
Sasanian type are found a tew teet away from a classically-inspired
triple-arched entrance in cut stone. Transpositions are equally
common: cornice designs are used for plinths, epigraphy overruns
both capital and shaft o\~ a column and patterns normally created by
quartered marble are imitated in plaster. In this high-spirited and
often vulgar art. parody is never far away.
Yet alongside this robustness, this often wayward originality,
Umayyad art consistently strikes a more serious note. Virtually all the
significant buildings to survive were the result of royal patronage, and
their political and proclamatory dimension cannot be ignored.
Sometimes, as in the references to Paradise in the lost inscriptions of
the Damascus mosaics, or in the frontal attacks on Christianity in the
inscriptions of the Dome ot the Rock and later Umayyad coinage,
the message is religious. More often it is political, asserting - as in the
ground plan of Mshatta - the lonely pre-eminence of the caliph, or as
21 in the floor frescoes ofQasr al-Hair al-Gharbi - Umayyad dominance
over east and west alike. The apse mosaic m the diwan at Khirbat al-
Mafjar goes further still in its unmistakable warning of the sudden death
which awaits the enemies of Islam. It is peculiarly fitting in this context
that it should be Umayyad Syria, not Rome or Byzantium, that can
claim the most extensive programme ot wall mosaics and the largest
single floor mosaic to survive from ancient or medieval times. From
c
Abd al-Malik onwards, the masters of the new Arab imperium needed
no instruction in the prestige value of such glamorous decoration.

36
 i^9dUIXIJIY

4JL WUU
%&jz4tw^$tm^d

W &'M \*J rfix^^'JlF ^

^Aj5^Ti
22 Types of Islamic writing (top to bottom): simple Kufic; foliated Kufic; floriated Kufic
naskhi; thulth; and nasta'liq.

The and geographical sorting of Umayyad art made it

historical
inevitable that some of the
directions it took turned out to be dead
ends. Such classical or Byzantine borrowings as figural sculpture and
wall mosaic, for example, struck few chords in later Islamic crafts-
men. Yet it was the Umayyad period which integrated the classical
tradition into Islamic art. which devised some of the basic types of
mosque and palace destined to recur repeatedly in later generations,
which established the sovereign importance of applied ornament
geometric, rloral and epigraphic in Islamic art, and finally which
showed that a distinctive new style could be welded together from
the most disparate elements. In so doing moulded the future
it

development of Islamic art.

CHAPTER TWO

The Abbasids

The Umayyad ruling class had been a tiny Arab minority maintained
in power only by its military strength and riven internally by reli-
gious and tribal disputes which hastened its downfall. Tolerance of
other religions and dependence on mawali,non-Arabs who had
turned Muslim, were therefore political necessities. Victimized by
illegal taxation, reduced status in the army and the racialist scorn of

the Arabs, the mawali manifested their social and economic griev-
ances by participating in a series of uprisings that m 749 culminated
in a brilliantly orchestrated revolution that toppled Umayyad power
and championed the cause of those descended from the Prophet's
c
uncle, al- Abbas. The new 'Abbasid dynasty vaunted these blood
links with Muhammad and claimed to usher in the true Islam based
on universal brotherhood irrespective of race.
Politically the change of dynasty marked the eclipse of Syria and a
consequent weakening of Creek Influence in the burgeoning Islamic
culture. It also signalled the end of purely Arab dominion. The
foundation of a new capital. Baghdad, at the eastern extremity of the
Arab-speaking world, epitomized this process. Its site near two major
rivers suitable for sea-going traffic - the Tigris and Euphrates - made
Baghdad a much greater mart than )amascus had ever been, and its
1

huge volume o\ trade opened it to very diverse influences, from

China to black Africa. Such trade benefited from the adoption of
Arabic as a lingua franca throughout the empire. Nearby, there still
stood the palace of Ctesiphon, the Sasanian (ancient Persian) capital
whose legendary splendours were now arrogated to Baghdad. Persian
costume became fashionable at the 'Abbasid court, the Persian New
Year was celebrated and Baghdad became an intellectual centre
where the philosophical and scientific heritage of the ancient world
was to be translated into Arabic, the prime language of culture as of
religion, and thence transmitted via Muslim Spain throughout
Europe. Such features of Sasanian government as the court execu-
tioner, the intelligence service and the formal periodic review of the

38
army were now introduced. The new Persianized administrative
system hinged on the vizier, a post which was often hereditary and
gradually came to erode the caliph's power. But in the first century
of 'Abbasid rule that power was absolute, as the chilling anecdotes of
contemporary chronicles testify. To the Western world, the figure of
Harun al-Rashid - who sent his contemporary Charlemagne an ele-
phant - has always symbolized the oriental potentate, and it is the
golden prime of eighth-century Baghdad that is celebrated in the
Arabian Nights. There can be no doubt of the immense cultural
superiority of the Muslim East over western Europe at this time.
Court life attained an unequalled peak of sophistication and luxury
m manners, costume, food and entertainment.
This gilded world was underpinned by a complex financial
machine to which capital investment, liquidity and long-term credits
were familiar concepts. As late as the eleventh century a Saljuq vizier
could pay a boatman on the Oxus with a draft cashable in Damascus.
Wars of conquest had now ceased, along with their attendant booty,
but the resultant Pax Islamica allowed the collection of revenue and
the expansion of trade to proceed smoothly. Perhaps the major dis-
tinguishing feature of the early 'Abbasid empire was thus the
immense wealth that it commanded. Btit this idyll was short-lived.
Squabbles over the succession pinpointed much deeper rifts, for
example between Arab and Persian, and between the various reli-
gious groupings. Gradually the extremities of the empire - in Spam,
North Africa, Central Asia and Afghanistan - gained autonomy. Iran
in particular saw a blossoming of national sentiment which found
expression in literary controversies with the Arabs, in heterodox reli-
gious movements and - under the Samanid dynasty in particular
(8 1
9— 1005) - in a revival of pre-Islamic Persian culture. Meanwhile,
m Baghdad the caliphs* increasing reliance on slave troops of Darkish
stock caused so much local unrest that in 836 they moved then-
capitalnorthwards to Samarra. a move which led to their eventual
domination by these Praetorian guards. This situation was formalized
m 945 when the Persian Buyid dynasty, whose Shi ite rulers func-
tioned as mayors of the palace, dealt cahphal prestige a catastrophic
blow by assuming direct control of the state. Nevertheless, a cos-
mopolitan Islamic civilization had been made possible by a basic
unity of language, faith and religious institutions which exists in large

measure to this day, transcending ethnicity and diverse political

systems. It was only after 94s that the political divisions of the
Islamic world between east and west began to take final shape.

\9
 The shift in the centre of gravity- from Damascus to Baghdad
involved not merely a geographical adjustment of five hundred miles.
It had potent repercussions in politics, culture and art. Baghdad

became, in a way that Damascus had not, an Islamic Rome. It

absorbed and influences from the East - from the

ideas, artefacts,
Iranian world, India, China and the Eurasian steppe, and then
exported them, transformed, throughout the Islamic world, stamped
with its own unique cachet and glamour. Nine-bay mosques in
Afghanistan and Spain. Baghdadi textiles laboriously copied in
Andalusia, even down to the inscription identifying the piece as
'made in Baghdad', Iraqi stucco forms in Egypt and Central Asia -
allattest the unchallenged cultural dominance of Baghdad. The
cumulative gravitational pull exerted by the eastern territories broke
the grip of Mediterranean culture, and specifically ot Graeco-
Roman and its Byzantine Christian descendant, on Islamic
classicism
art. forms can still be dimly discerned on occasion - the
Classical
c
triumphal arch underlies the portals of Abbasid palaces, and all
three styles of Samarran stucco are foreshadowed in early Byzantine
art — but they have undergone a sea-change. New contexts and new
functions transform them.

21 The caliph as cosmocrator.

Round City of Baghdad. 762:
reconstruction drawing. The
c
9th-century historian al-Ya qubi
calls Iraq 'the navel of the earth'
and Baghdad 'the centre of
Iraq'; at its heart was the
caliph's palace.

In architecture, the process of change is exemplified in the Round

City of Baghdad, founded in 762. This concentric circular design
was probably derived from such Sasanian models as Firuzabad,
Darabjird and Merv. Housing for the citizens occupied the outer
perimeter while the caliph's palace, oriented to the four points of the

40
l,,
"»*Sba.

24 From
c
villa to palace-city. Fortified residence ofUkhaidir, Iraq, c. — 5 6, probably built by the governor
ofKufa, Isa b. Musa. Desert now surrounds but extensive traces of cultivation explain
it, its name of'the
c
little green one". It betrays a typically Abbasid obsession with security and ceremonial; its design looks
both to Syrian and Iranian traditions tor inspiration.

compass and dwarfing the Friday mosque beside it - Caesar took

precedence to God here - was located at the dc.xd centre of the city
and girdled by a Largely empty precinct. This powerful symbol of
cosmic dominion and royal absolutism owed little to the Graeco-
Roman world but had a long pedigree in the ancient Near East. All
this splendour has left not a wrack behind.
For surviving 'Abbasid architecture in Iraq one must turn to the
palace ofUkhaidir, generally dated c. 775-6. Flamboyandy isolated, it
evokes in equal measure the despotic and the pleasure loving charac-
ter of" the dynasty. Despite the palace's gigantic size (175 169 m, •

574 554 ft
•
its living quarters are cramped, therein
. perpetuating
Arab tradition: but its luxurious amenities and ceremonial aspect
are strongly Persian in flavour, notably in the interplay oi iwatts and

1
25, 26, 27 An Islamic aesthetic: all-over decoration. Samaria, stucco wall panels, yth century. Three styles
occur contemporaneously, despite differences of conception and technique. The hrst (top) uses a broadly
naturalistic classical vocabulary of five-lobed vine Leaves and tendrils arranged in rows or circles. The
second (above left) flattens, abstracts and geometricizes this idiom. The third (above right), now moulded,
not hand-carved, has a quilted and sculptural quality: its abstract, tactile forms are at once suggestive and
ambivalent. In all three, equal attention is given to precise rendering of detail and to the overall design.

large courtyards, and ornamental brickwork, numerous

in the use ot
small domes and ingenious Although this palace embodied
vaults.
such advanced military features as continuous machicolation and a
portcullis, the difficulties of supply and an inherent inefficiency of
design make it hard to imagine how it actually functioned. This
concept of the palace-city was perpetuated in the following century
at Samarra, with its numerous sprawling official residences laid out in

42
ribbon development and galvanized by remorselessly axial planning,
tor example by the use of the familiar three-tract design borrowed
from Umayyad palaces (see p. 34). Proportional ratios (often 3:2) and
striet axiality hold these structures together. Interior building materi

als principally mud-brick - are disguised by lavish revetments, and

-
lessimportant wall surface were covered at top speed with stUCCO.
lliese palaces were rendered independent of the outside world by
integrating gardens, domestic housing, military and administrative
quarters and royal compound within a single but vast walled enclosure.
It was at Samana that Islamic art came of age, and from that centre
it Muslim world, also mtln
spread virtually throughout the entire
encing local Jewish and Christian art. The new aesthetic is perhaps
best expressed by the wall decoration most fashionable in Samarra in -s-27
palaces and houses alike: polychrome painted stucco, both carved
and moulded. Three major styles have been isolated: their
chronological order is disputed, but their roots m the transformation
ot classical naturalism and in the two-dimensionality o\ early
Byzantine art is plain. In the first, the surface is divided mto polygo-

nal compartments, with borders of pearl roundels. Each compart

ment is filled with vine stems bearing lobed leaves or with fancifully

curved vegetal elements too stylized to equate with any actual pi. int.
In the seeond style, this tendency is accentuated to the point where
recognizably natural tonus disappear. The borders become plain and
the compartments themselves more varied. The Chinese motif of yin
and yung appears frequently. Finally, in the third style, the decoration
is not painstakingly carved by hand but is rapidly applied by moulds

in a rigorously abstract bevelled style capable (like wallpaper) ot

indefinite extension. The motifs themselves are more loosely and
riowmglv arranged, and are more varied - spirals, lobed designs,
bottle-shaped forms and other motifs no longer dependent on
vegetal life. This style established itself rapidly and was still full of life
five centuries later. The labour-saving properties ot the moulded
bevelled style were ideally suited to the mushroom growth ot
Samarra. and the humble mud-bnek of which even the palates were
mostly built was cheaply and effectively disguised by this mass
produced decoration. Its abstraction and its even patterning fitted it
for any number of architectural contexts walls, columns, an lies,
window grilles and the 'Samarran stvle*. especially 111 the bevelled
technique, soon penetrated the so ailed 'minor arts' too
c

The Samarran palaces show how the secluded, relatively small

scale splendours of the classically inspired I in.iv v.id desert residem es

M
 ^
£

till!
28 Courtyard of mosque of Ibn Tulun. Cairo, 876-9 (the foreground dome
dates from .296) Its essence is
Iraqi: outer enclosure, brick construction,
piers with engaged columns, crenellations, stucco
ornament and
minaret. The pointed arch serves as a leitmotif. The mosque
was connected by a broad read to its natron's
palace. '

raLed I 71 "V'f'V""'*
'""'", MoSqUe °f Qainwan Tum ^-
- »* »*« «*. aerial view. The

* " *3 ™™" ™«
hW^rH it " '""P 1 J "J 'he huge axial nnnaree derive
 gave way to vast urban palaces, or rather palace-cities, conceived on
the Perso-Sasanian model, where massive scale is the dominant
factor.Gigantic scale also characterizes many of the major mosques
(Samarra - the largest mosque in the world - and Abu Dulafin Iraq;
Ibn Tulun in Egypt: Tunis and Qairawan in western North Africa).
Powerful bastions militarize the mosque, which can even be inter-
preted (as in the case of Qairawan) as an emblem of jihad. Nor is this -<;

the only symbolism at work. Recent research has revealed that

certain columns looted from predominantly Christian buildings and
reused in Qairawan mosque were colour-coded and so pi. iced
the
that the red and blue columns respectively outlined in simplified
form the ground plans of the Dome of the Rock and the Aqs.i
mosque, the major religious sanctuaries of Umayy.id Greater Syria.
Thus in the Tunisian capital worshippers could make a regular sym-
bolic pilgrimage to some of the holiest spots m the Islamic world.

30 The interplay between metropolis and province. Hajji Piyada Mosque. Balkh, Afghanistan, probably
yth century. This diminutive nine-bayed multi-domed mosque without courtyard may reflect
.1 lost Iraqi
.1

prototype: certainly us abundant stucco decoration faithfully mirrors the idiom of Samarra. I he stumpy
piers have Sasanian antecedents.

<il£

'

r
 c
In some instances, Abbasid mosques are surrounded by
these
further enclosure* which to mediate between sacred and
serve
profane space. Typically, they were built on the sites of new Islamic
towns and thus catered for the whole population - hence their great
size, which often brings monotony and repetition in its train.

Monumental minarets proclaim the Islamic presence but they often

assert an axial and qibla emphasis and serve as reminders of royal
power. The forms of these minarets have a complex heritage; some
derive from Graeco-Roman lighthouses, others (e.g. Harran) from
Christian campaniles, and yet others from ancient Mesopotamian
ziggurats or temple-towers. They demonstrate both the absorptive
c

and the creative transforming power ot Abbasid art. These building

c

projects were huge; the historian al-Ya qubi notes that over 100,000
men were recruited for the construction of Baghdad, and the city of
Ja'fariya near Samarra. whose rums cover [7 square kilometres (6.5
square miles), was completed in a single year (AD 859). Schemes of
this magnitude could only have been organized by a corvee system
(see p. 14). This system had a significant by-product: native craftsmen
learnt the traditions of their imported fellow -workmen. Forms of
varied foreign origin were at first juxtaposed and then, within the
course of one or two generations, blended. This blend was in turn
exported by the new generation throughout the Islamic world.
30 Hence the basic similarity of Style which underlies provincial varia-
tions in early Islamic art.
31 The figural iconography of Samarran palaces such as [ausaq al-
Khaqani attests the gradual consolidation and refinement of cycle .1

of princely pleasures - music, banqueting, hunting, wrestling,

dancing and the like. These are to be interpreted not literally but as a
sequence of coded references to a luxurious royal lifestyle that was
summarized by the eleventh-century Persian poet Manuchihri in the
rhyming jingle sharab u rabab u kabab - "wine and music and meat'.
c
This cycle was assiduously copied by Abbasid successor states or
rival polities from Spain (Cordoba and Jam. and Sicily (Cappella
i<

Palatina, Palermo, see pp. 68-72) to Armenia (the palace chapel at

c
Aght amar) and Afghanistan (the palaces o\~ Lashkar-i Bazar). It
occurs on marble troughs and ivory boxes, on brass or bronze
buckets and ceremonial silks, on the exteriors and interiors of
Christian churches, and ot course in numerous palaces. The figural
type popular in these paintings - characterized by pop-eyes, over-
large heads, curling love locks, scalloped fringes and minuscule feet —
had an equally wide dissemination.

46
ii Th<
le courtly ethos. Restored wall painting from thejausaq al-Khaqani palace, Samarra,
he early 'Abbasid period saw the apogee of wine poetry (khamriyya); many such
I

poems praise the cup-bearer. The kiss-curl, the scalloped fringe and the agitated hem find
parallels m Central Asian art possibly brought to Iraq by Turkish slave troops.

The immense financial resources of the early 'Abbasid empire

generated luxury arts galore. Rock crystal workshops flourished in
Basra. Gold and silver vessels with figural decoration including
hunting scenes and dancing girls .ire described m the Bacchic poetry
of the court laureate Abu Nuwas. Surviving wares, mostly m the
form of plates, dishes, jugs and ewers - mainly of base metal alloy
such as brass or bronze but sometimes silver, and occasionally even
gold - display somewhat degenerate Sasaman iconography of tabu
.1

prmccK hunters. Some important

lous beasts, royal diwan scenes and
bronze sculptures (serving tor example as aquamaniles or incense
burners; depict birds and beasts of prey Medieval texts mention
 22 (left) The princely cycle.
Silver-gilt dish, Iran, perhaps yth
century. Details such as the piled-
up cushions, bench throne,
musicians, putto, ribbons, and the
courtier with hands crossed on his
chest, his face masked so that his
breath does not pollute the royal
presence, derive from Sasanian art
but are already coarsened.

}} (below) The word as

benediction. Ikiit cotton cloth with
applied gilt decoration, Yemen,
ioth century. The text reads 'Glory
isfrom God. (?) In the name of
God. And the blessing of God be
upon Muhammad". Such striped
cottons (bitniil) were a Yemeni
speciality: the Persian i ith-century
traveller Nasir-i Khusrau wrote
of San V that 'her striped coats,
stuffs of silk and embroideries
have the greatest reputation".

presentation gold medals of prodigious size minted by the Buyids,

but the surviving pieces are much smaller. Their iconography,
however, is significant: it includes images of princes seated cross-
legged and entertained by musicians, portrait busts of rulers wearing
crowns of pseudo-Sasanian type, mounted horsemen and the ancient
royal motif of the lion bringing down a bull. Some bear Pahlavi
inscriptions and use the ancient Persian title Shahanshah, 'King of

Kmp'. All this indicates a radical departure from the aniconic norms
of Muslim numismatics.
But the art form par excellence was textiles. Byzantine ambassadors j
j

marvelled at the 38,000 precious hangings displayed to them in a

caliphal palace. Such textiles played a key role in architecture, tor

e word as official

livery. Part of the St Josse silk.

Khurasan, before 961. The
inscription wishes 'glory and
prosperity to the qa'id Abu Marour
Bukhtegin, may Chk\ prolong I I

favours to him?)'. he two small I

ns crouching at the feet of the

elephants evoke China, the camels
inian ribbons, and the
patron is .1 lurk: a remarkable
mixture of sources

I / ;utr vulgarisation. Slip-

painted bowl from Nishapur, Iran,

man \ilverv.

favoured hunting scenes; that

theme is much reduced here, and
barely makes sense, thanks to the
•
leopard, the fal< on ami the
riptions. |i

nimals that till the

Bui a distant
iblc
 they were used not only as wall decoration which could be regularly
changed and so transform the spaces thus hung, but also to partition
rooms, to curtain off private spaces, and to bedeck key areas like
entrances. They formed a crucial element in public ceremonies and
parades. Above they were a form of liquidity thanks to their port-
all,

ability and sometimes prodigious cash value. Copious literary

their
references testify to the hundreds of different centres throughout the
length and breadth of the Islamic world which specialized in given
types of textiles and indicate that this was the most prestigious art
form of the time.
Palace and other government-run workshops known as tiraz pro-
duced textiles (also called tiraz) bearing laudatory or benedictory
inscriptions with the name of the ruling caliph, making the courtiers
who wore them walking advertisements for their monarch - an
Islamic form of livery. Other silks were pictorial, like the so-called
34 St Josse silk woven in Khurasan before 960 for the Samanid amir Abu
Mansur Bukhtegin. Affronted elephants whose aberrant form betrays
Chinese rather than Indian influence take up the field, while
Bactrian camels and cockerels pace the borders, supplemented by a
benedictory Kufic inscription in lapidary style. This silk is typical of
many formal pictorial silks from Sasanian and Islamic Iran, Iraq, Syria
and Byzantium which found their way westward and were preserved
in church treasuries because they were used to wrap relics. Foremost
among the themes of such Islamic pieces were heraldic images m
roundels, among which lions and eagles took pride of place.
Moulded cameo glass with relief inscriptions and lustre painting typ-
ified the technical advances achieved by Islamic craftsmen. Nearly all
the objects in precious materials such as ebony, ivory and alabaster

described in medieval texts have vanished, but they must be home in

mind in reconstructing the ambience of 'Abbasid art. Thus it is all
the more regrettable that the fullest sequence of any imperial
Abbasid art form should survive in the humblest material of .ill -
c

35 pottery - which thereby, fault de mieux, takes on a defining role in

modern perceptions of 'Abbasid art. This assuredly leads to a grossly
c
distortedview of what courtly Abbasid art was really like, yet this
material does provide a paradigm o\ the radical innovation which
characterized this period.
Indeed, the ninth century sees the beginning of the long and dis-
tinguished tradition of Muslim ceramics. Strangely enough, there is

no teeling ot hesitation 111 these early styles; the technique and

decoration are equally assured, and several major varieties of ceramics

50
are encountered in this first century. This immediate maturity is puz-
zling. true that the rather earlier Nabatean painted pottery of the
It is
c
Levant does have some striking connections with Abbasid wares (as
in the use of the 'peacock's eye' motif), and that lead-glazed wares
had already been made in Egypt for a millennium. But the virtual
absence of tine Umayyad pottery, together with the fact that glazed
pottery - which accounts for most quality medieval ware - though
known in ancient Egypt and Parthia, did not achieve the status of a

tine art in the ancient world, underlines the lack of immediate prece-
dents tor these wares. The earliest Arab pottery, being simply for
domestic use. continued this utilitarian bias and was sparsely deco-
rated with simple incised or relief designs.
c

Under the Abbasids, pottery was suddenly promoted to an art

form. Why? The impact of Chinese ceramics seems to have been the
galvanizing factor. Ample literary references testify that pottery was
imported in quantity from China, both overland through Persia - by
the celebrated Silk Road - and by the sea route via India; and
imported Chinese wares have been found in nearly all excavations on
Islamic sites. In the early centuries of Islam, Chinese art had a pecu-
liar cachet: Severus ibn al-MuqanV wrote The Chinese are a nation

of artists but they have no other merits', while al-Baihaqi reports th.it
the governor of Khurasan in eastern Iran sent the caliph Harun al-
Rashid 'twenty pieces of Chinese imperial porcelain, the like of
which had never been seen in a caliph's court before', together with
two thousand other pieces of porcelain. The latter were no doubt the
product of the Chinese export industry; as is usual in China, the
finest pieces are the ones made for home consumption. In the field
of ceramics, then, China was held to be supreme. There alone
pottery had been cultivated for many centuries as a fine art. Given
the prestige attached to Chinese wares, it would be natural tor the
'Abbasids to supplement the always insufficient imports o( choice
pottery by establishing a local industry. Hence, perhaps, the sudden
explosion of the ceramics industry in the ninth century. Theological
prohibitions might also have contributed in slight measure, for
various hadiths (sayings of the Prophet) condemn the use of gold and
silver vessels. The development of pottery with a sheen imitating
precious metals lends some credence to this view. Finally, the advent
nt~ much-reduced output in certain
[slam led to a well established
media - notably sculpture - which depended on figural motifs.
Perhaps the burgeoning quality-ceramic tradition was an attempt,
conscious or not, to develop an alternative means o! expression for

s i
36 (above) The lore of the stars.
Lustre bowl found in Samarra,
9th century. It depicts Cygnus
(the swan), a fixed star from the
constellations of the northern
hemisphere. The subject-matter
implies a cultivated patron. The
bird has been transformed into a
vegetal design; the busy hatched
and squiggly background is typical
of lustreware.

37 (lift) Images of light. Great

Mosque of Qairawan, 836: four c.

of the 139 surviving monochrome

and polychrome lustre tiles
decorating the mihrab. Literary
evidence indicates that a craftsman
from Baghdad was partially
responsible for them; perhaps the
remainder were made locally. The
mihrab itself and the minbarweve
also Baghdadi imports.
 c
this type of subject matter. In all Abbasid pottery - whose secular
bias requires emphasis - the intention of the potter is clearly to
devise colourful and stimulating surface decoration. le was able to
1

use hgural motifs, often with a pronounced courtly flavour, as well as

geometric designs, epigraphy and a whole range o\' vegetal orna-
ment. With this embarras de choix in the field of decoration, it is not
surprising that his interest is not focused on technical refinements of
body or glaze or on the shape of the pottery itself".
Among apparent imitations of Chinese ware, the most common
perhaps because it was also the cheapest is the so-called splashed

ware that recalls the mottled decoration of certain Chinese ceramics

of the contemporary T'ang period and also Liao wares (907 [125).
The connection is. however, uncertain because fang mottled wares
seem to have been reserved for funerary use. One must therefore
reckon with the possibility of an independent invention on the part
of Muslim potters, even though the parallels with Chinese pieees
seem to be too close for coincidence. This lead-glazed ware is also
known as 'egg and spinach' after its predominant colours; sometimes
it was lightly incised. Chinese celadon, much prized because it was
thought to shatter when poisoned food was placed in it, was also
widely imitated. Hut Islamic potters were spurred above all to
emulate white Chinese porcelain. Lack o\~ suitable raw material

;^ Poetry on pottery. Glazed lustre

relict" dish from Hira. Iraq, mid-oth
century The Kufk inscription is .1

couplet by Muhammad b. Bashir

al-khanji (d. Nam: \)o not

abandon the hope, long though the

quest may endure. That you will
find ease of heart, it" but to patience
you ding.'
 c
locally meant that Abbasid potters could not reproduce its
the
stone-hard body, but they copied this much-admired and coveted
monochrome ware by applying an opaque white glaze to ordinary
earthenware. Typically, they did not rest content with this, but began
to decorate such tin-glazed ware, which was painted and glazed in
one firing. In this technique, the colour is absorbed into the glaze
and spreads like ink in blotting paper. This running of the glaze
betrays a lack of technical expertise, a deficiency here turned to good
account. But the potters were soon able to devise glazes that would
not run and so allowed a controlled precision in the application of
paint. Much more complex designs were therefore made possible.
The Chinese emphasis on form. body, touch - even the sound a
piece made when struck - was replaced, at least in part, by applied
decoration not encountered in the prototype. This change of
emphasis lays bare the profoundly different priorities of Muslim taste.
The major technical breakthrough in this period is the develop-
ment of a difficult technique entirely new to ceramics (and to glass) —
that of lustre. A fragment of Egyptian lustred glass datable as early as
772 suggests that the technique may even have been known in
Umayyad times. In such pottery, sulphur and metallic oxides are
combined with ochre and vinegar and the mixture is painted on to
an already glazed vessel. It is then lightly fired in a reducing kiln in
which the metal oxides dimmish on
to an iridescent metallic sheen
the surface, reminiscent of the splendour of precious metals. Such
democratization or vulgarization of more expensive art forms and
materials became characteristic ot Islamic art. The lustre process was
difficult: the vessels were liable to overnre, undernre, or crack during
c
the second firing. Ahbasid lustre has been found as far afield as
Samarqand. Sind, Egypt, Tunisia (where over one hundred lustre tiles
37 decorate the mihrab of the Great Mosque of Qairawan) and Spain;
presumably it was usually the pottery that was exported rather than
the craftsmen. The commonest colours are brown and yellow, and at
first decoration is extremely simple, consisting mainly of spots,
squares and dashes. But after about 900, animal and human figures
with a dotted background enclosing the central design become
popular. These figures are often grotesquely, almost fnghteningly,
distorted; often they employ royal or magical themes.
Probably the outstanding achievement of Iranian potters at this
time is the Samanid ware associated with Samarqand and Nishapur,
though similar wares have been found at numerous other sites in
Central Asia. Iran and Afghanistan. The hallmark of this slip-painted

54
19 Restraint. Pish covered
with white slip and painted
with brown kiitic
inscription; Samarqand,
9th-ioth century. In the
centre, the Chinese tai-kt

motif. The text is in Arabic,

not Persian (the language ot~

dailv life) and reads:

ledge: its taste is

bitter at first, but in the end

sweeter than honey. C^^A
health (to the owner].'

ware is its stylish, often virtuoso epigraphy, which unfolds in majestic 19

rhythm around the surface of the dishes. The inscriptions are all in
Kufic, and this choice ot~ hand itself imparts a certain formality to
these pieces, implying that they were intended to be displayed as
serious works ot art. The numerous varieties of script encountered
often point unambiguously to profession.d calligraphers. lint the
urge to decorate is at war with the desire to inform. 1 hese inscrip-
tions share an almost wilful complexity, as if they were meant to
elude ready decipherment. The oracular, gnomic quality of" the
aphorisms that they express is thus entirely appropriate, though man\
are of a Shfite tenor. As decorative ensembles, these wares are
remarkable m their appreciation of void space as a positive factoi of
the design. Human figures are never found, and birds and animals
occur only m severely stylized form. A comparable austerity usually
restricts the colour range to cream and dark brown, purple or red.
thereby heightening the starkness of the inscriptions. A clue to the
origin of this decorationmay be sought in Chin imics
and m
contemporary Qur'ans. hese dishes apparently
I offer th
examples in Islamic art of Arabi< scrip! being used .is die n
 element in surface decoration, if one excepts coins, where the epig-
raphy has a mainly utilitarian function. In the stark simplicity of
these inscriptions one may recognize at once a minimalist aesthetic
and beauty of a highly intellectual order.
Other contemporary work at Nishapur did not share this cerebral
quality. Of outstanding interest is a group of wares distinguished by
sprawling, cluttered compositions and violent colour contrasts,
which usually glory in a bright mustard-yellow. Here the designs are
simplified almost to the limit of recognition, but they maintain the
directness and vitality of an unsophisticated folk art. Birds, rosettes
and scattered Arabic inscriptions that seem to call down a hail of
blessings on the owner are all used as space-fillers. Sometimes the
design is a bastard survival of the Sasanian royal iconography of the
banqueting scene or the hunt, and astrological themes are also found.
Such pottery belongs to the so-called 'ceramic underworld of Islam',
a category represented by wares from numerous provincial centres.
Thus, Sari may have been the centre of production for a type of ware
closely akin to folk art in the primitive vigour and garish colouring
of its stylized animal drawing. But the commonest category of pro-
vincial wares is the sgraffito type, so called after the technique of
incising the design into the body before or after glazing. It is found

40 The word as icon. Qur'an leaf with sura heading m gold; parchment, perhaps yth-ccntur\ Iraq. Rc<.\
dots indicate vowelling, thin black strokes (made with another pen') diacritical marks. Spacing between
individual letters, sequences and whole words can be very wide and therein privilege certain syllables.

JL4L
 widely distributed throughout north-west Iran. Its decoration fre-
quently apes metalwork, even to the use ot the incised lines to
prevent colours from running. A particular class of champlevi ware, in
which the white slip is gouged away to form the design, is associated
with the Garrus area in Kurdistan. These varied provincial schools
were independent of influences from the court and from abroad,
though reminiscences of Sasanian iconography were common. Their
subject matter favours single figures of animals and monsters or bold
abstract designs.
The other art form which has survived in substantial quantity is

calligraphy. It is exercised above Qur'ans - the major illustrated

all in
secular manuscript of the period is a copy of al-SufYs astronomical
treatise (Bodleian Library, Oxford), dated 1009 and probably pro-
duced in Baghdad, with drawings of constellation images in mixed
Central Asian and Samarran style. Under 'Abbasid patronage the
somewhat haphazard penmanship of the early Hijazi Qur'ans,
expressed in irregular letter forms, skewed lines of text, spasmodic
illumination and a general indifference to visual effect, was replaced
by a solemn discipline appropriate to holy writ and redolent of epig-
raphy on paper. Horizontal parchment sheets often accommodated
40 no more than four lines of text, thus leading to prodigally expensive
Qur'ans of thirty or even sixty volumes. The script would be so
spaced, and with letter forms subject to such extremes of Stylization,
as to slow- down recognition ot' the words themselves: an objective

correlative to the awesome enigmas found in the text itself. A supple.

flexible system of extension and contraction allowed calligraphers to
balance words on a page with the utmost finesse and thus to create
striking visual harmonies. Symmetries and asymmetries, echoes,
41,42 repetitions, and a seemingly endless variety of patterns and rhythms
abound. Clearly, therefore, the scribes had ample licence to experi-
ment and were not constrained to limit themselves to a text block
characterized by regular, even spacing.
A major benchmark of new developments is the Qur'an on paper
which, according to its probably reliable colophon, was copied by
Ibn al-Bawwab, the most renowned contemporary master, and
written in the naskhi (cursive) script which he allegedly invented, in
Baghdad in 1000-1 (Chester Beatty Library. Dublin). Its diminutive
size cannot mar the well-nigh endlessly varied splendour of its orna-
mental palmettes. its frontispieces and finispieces conceived like the
leaves of doors and structured with a ponderous, recondite rhythm
around a theme of interlaced semicircles, perhaps intended to have

58
i^^— <m* » ^1 L ,— ^J I -i_J L

jO-i^^JI >0^>ll fllll jOOLJ

v
4; name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate'. Almost every sura in the Qur'an begins with
"In the
this known as the bismillah from its opening three words. Often displayed by calligraphers, in
phrase,
popular belief it has special power as an amulet. Here it is executed 111 some major Qur'ank hand
from top) early Kufic. square Kufic. eastern Kufic, iluilih: (right,jrom top) naskhi, muhaqqaq, rihani, taliq.

an apotropaic effect. It should be noted that in manuscripts the so-

called 'Kufic' types of script (named after the town of Kuta m Iraq)
were restricted to Qur'ans, although they could be used for head-
ings, captions and the like in other manuscripts. This style spread, it
seems, throughout the 'Abbasid dominions with only minor local
variations. It thus typifies the prestige and paramount authority
enjoyed by the art of Baghdad: a fact of life epitomized by the
courtier Ziryab, who imported the lifestyle of the Iraqi capital 111
food, language, clothing and art to far-off Cordoba, the capital of
Umayyad Spam, in the tenth century (see p. [75 .

In the Abbasid period Eastern - including Central Asian, Turkish

and Chinese - motifs, techniques and themes begin to infiltrate
Islamic art. The political and economic background tor this is the
shifting of the capital from Damascus to Baghdad, which brought
with it a rush of Iranian ideas; the importation of furkish soldiers
who gradually usurped supreme power; and the rapid growth ol

59
long-distance trade with lands to the east, both overland and by sea.
Islamic art now largely severed its connections with the classical
world, and turned its back on the Mediterranean. In architecture,
Sasanian forms were dominant for city plans, palaces and mausolea.
Baked brick, mud-brick and even stamped earth often replaced
stone. Classical ornament of foliate inspiration became ever more
abstract and this abstraction - which led, among other motifs, to the
arabesque in its final form - became the basis of much later Islamic
art. Such classical materials as carved stone and mosaic were largely
rejected in favour of stucco, which was to become the decoration par
excellenceof eastern Islam. The unusually yielding quality of stucco
made an excellent testing ground for new techniques and designs.
it

In certain fields such as Kufic Qur'ans and epigraph ic pottery - and

perhaps also lustreware — the achievements ot the 'Abbasid period
were to remain unrivalled; but still more important was the full
elaboration of the thematic cycle of court life begun under the
Umayyads and destined to be eagerly taken up by later Islamic
dynasties. Thus from the point of view of materials, techniques and
c
subject matter, Abbasid art was to offer
richer quarry for a much
later generations than Umayyad be found over an
art. It is also to
incomparably wider geographical area. Moreover, it ^till enjoyed the
same advantage of a corvee system which, by making craftsmen
mobile, disseminated the latest developments over a wide area.
Within the empire, there were no frontiers, a fact which can be
explained by a basic unity of faith and political institutions. The divi-
sion of the Islamic world between East and West was not to become
definitive until the Saljuq period.

60
 ( MAIM 1 R I UK! 1

The Fatimids

From the death ot the Prophet onwards, a body of Muslim opinion

held unswervingly - though with main internal divergences of
opinion - that supreme power m the Islamic state could be vested
solely in a member of the Prophet's own family. The first and
£
obvious such candidate was Muhammad's cousin Ali, who by mar-
rying the Prophets daughter Fatima also became his son-in-law.
c

All's claims to the caliphate were pressed by the so-called 'party of

'AH' {shi'at 'AH - whence the term ShTite), but after his assassination

in 66] the caliphate passed to the Umayyad family. Thereafter,

despite frequent and bloody Shfite insurrections (of which the most
significant, historically speaking, was that of the Prophet's grandson
al-Husam, who was killed at Karbala in 6So). a pattern th.u Listed for
centuries was established: no ShTite ruler wielded enough power to
disturb the political status quo. Shi'ite principalities in the Yemen,
the Caspian region and elsewhere were protected but also impris-
oned by their remoteness.
All this changed with the advent of the Fatimids, who took their
name (and claimed descent) from the Prophet's daughter, and who
held the belief that the authentic line of imams or rightful rulers had
ceased with the death o\" Isma'il, the seventh Imam. This belief
caused them to be dubbed [sma'ilis. The
dynasty was founded by a
certain 'Ubaidallah who proclaimed himself the Chosen One (.//-
mahdi) and from obscure beginnings m eastern Algeria took over the
central Maghrib within a few years. In 921 he set the seal on his con-
quests by founding a city on the Tunisian coast which he named al-
Mahdiya after himself. His successors consolidated their hold on the
eastern Maghrib before turning their eyes further afield to Egypt.
Eventually they conquered its capital, Fustat, and founded their own
capital - al-Qahira. 'the victorious' nearby, in 969. In so doing they
hastened the dismemberment of the 'Abbasid state which had begun
with the loss of Spain to the Umayyads ot Cordoba in
But the Fatimids were interested in more than merely winning
their independence from Baghdad; they sought to supplant the
Abbasids altogether and to establish a Shi'ite hegemony in the
c

Islamic world. It was this grandiose aim which differentiated them so

markedly from the numerous other (and minor) successor states
which broke off allegiance to the caliphate of Baghdad in the course
of the ninth and tenth centuries. The Fatimids sought to achieve
their goal of pan-Islamic domination under the banner of [sma'ili
Shi'ism not only by military expansion, especially into Syria and
Arabia, but also on the ideological plane. Hence their creation of a
corps of missionaries (da'is) who were sent throughout the orthodox
Islamic world to preach their doctrines in secret. These sma'ili doc-
I

trines offered hope to the disenfranchised and to political dissidents,

while their mystical and esoteric flavour exerted a widespread appeal.
Not surprisingly, some of the religious zeal of the Fatimids can be
detected in their art, especially their architecture, and it has left its

unmistakable imprint in over four thousand tombstones of the ninth

and tenth centuries whose cumulative evidence suggests that Fatimid
missionaries were active in the cemetery area of Fustat and that many
of their sympathizers and converts were women (see p. 77). The
same zeal found expression, but unfortunately only m an imperma-
nent form, in the royal ceremonies and processions so characteristic
of Fatimid court life. These celebrated, for example, the tour Fridays
of Ramadan, numerous Shi'ite holidays (especially the birthdays of
the Prophet's family), the New Year, which coincided with the high-
water mark of the Nile, the circumcisions of the royal children, and
the Breaking of the Dike, which symbolized the beginning of the
agricultural year.
From theart-historical point of view the importance of the
Fatimids due both to geography and chronology - for the art of
is

this dynasty forms a bridge in time and space between east and west
in the Muslim world, between the pervasive influence of first
c
Umayyad and then Abbasid art and the rather different art of the
eastern Islamic world which developed in the wake of the Saljuq
invasions of the eleventh century. It was the Fatimids who dominated
the southern Mediterranean world, with its millennial heritage of
Hellenism, and whose contact with the Christian powers to the
north brought fresh ideas into Islamic art. The metropolitan status of
Cairo, probably the major Muslim city of the eleventh century, can
only have accentuated this internationalism.
Discussion of the evolution and even to some extent the nature of
Fatimid art - though not the architecture of the period - has been

62
bedevilled by the extreme scarcity of datable (not to mention actually
dated) objects. Only two ceramics, three rock crystals and two
woodcarvings are securely datable. The great exception is the tiraz
textile production of the period, but these pieces are principally of
interest for the history of epigraphy Happily the ceiling of the
Cappella Palatina in Palermo, Sicily, which is of immense value .is a
guide to Fatimid art. can be dated securely between 1140 and [50;
1

nevertheless, its paintings contain significant European elements

which have yet to be sufficiently disengaged from their othcrw ise
Islamic context. The essential danger in dealing with Fatimid art,
therefore, is the absence of dated objects to act as landmarks.
In 106S the Fatimid palace treasury was pillaged by troops whose
arrears of pay had driven them to mutiny, an event which brought
the contents into the public eye and - even more to the point - the
open market. While recent research has raised some doubts about
earlier theories which proposed that the dispersal of the objets d'art in
the Fatimid treasury triggered a democratization of the minor arts, so
that an affluent bourgeoisie began to adopt (and, by degrees, to
debase) courtly themes, it cannot be denied that the events of 106N

brought into the public domain thousands of objects which had

hitherto been kept secluded in the royal collections. Medieval
accounts of the tabled contents of this treasury prove beyond doubt
that the surviving legacy of Fatimid art is a very pale shadow of its
original splendour and multiplicity. But this information has to be
used with care. It so happens that the description by al-Maqrizi is
more detailed and circumstantial than any other medieval Islamic
account of objects of virtu in royal collections. That is why it is so
frequently quoted. But it should not be interpreted to mean that
such collections were confined to the Fatimids. On the contrary, dis-
jointed snippets of information indicate that the 'AbbasuK of
Baghdad and the Umayyads of Spain - to name only two dynasties
also amassed staggeringly rich collections of precious works of art.
Similarly, the preference for courtly themes among patrons appar-
ently unconnected with the court is by no means confined to
Fatimid art; this tendency is, for example, equally characteristic of
the Saljuq period.
Other aspects of Fatimid art, too, require rc-cv. dilation. The
much-vaunted realism of Fatimid lustreware, tar from being an
innovation of this period, has been shown to have much deeper roots
in the arts of the Copts and even in the Hellenized late antique
world of the eastern Mediterranean than previous scholarship had
recognized. Finally (thanks to some crucial re-attributions), a much
larger body of Fatimid metalwork is now available for study than was
previously the case. Pride of place must go to the numerous small-
scale animal sculptures. They include camels, lions, cats, gazelles,
rabbits, ibexes, goats and even parrots - the latter functioning as
ornaments for hanging lamps. Many such pieces were cast and were
therefore presumably made for a mass market.
From the time of the Muslim conquest onwards,
a series of inde-

pendent settlements had been built at intervals of about a century

c
around the site of modern Cairo — Babylon, al- Askar, Fustat and al-
Qita'i. Al-Qahira supplanted all of these and became the nucleus first
of medieval and then eventually of modern Cairo. Its foundation
should be seen, like that of Baghdad, al-Mutawakkiliya, al-Mahdiya
or Madinat al-Zahra, as an expression of renal aspiration and pomp;
an action to be expected of a powerful ruler. That same political
dominance was reflected in the location of the court within a ten-

44 The Gate of Victories in the City of Victory. Bab al-Futuh. Cairo, [087. One of
three Fatimid gates built by three Armenian brothers from Edessa, and incorporating the
very latest defensive devices, this fortification belongs to a Ja/iran tradition best illustrated
by the walls of Diyarbakr. It was one of many gates m the palace-city wall.
4.s Recreation .is ceremony.
Carved ivory, Egypt,
nth- 1 2th century. Perhaps
a Fatimid book (.over.

ultimately derived from a

Byzantine five-part ivory

>.'o\cr. The unbroken
continuity of these images
aptly suggests the formalized
ritual of court life,

encompassing both business

and pleasure. This is a visual
equivalent of the "delight of
days and nights, without
surcease or change'
mentioned in contemporary
textile epigraphy.

gated enclosure walled orT from the rest o\ the city; the palace area j 1

inside was cordonned off by chains and still further distanced by a

huge cleared space constantly patrolled by guards. The two palaces

themselves were a byword for ostentatious splendour, with then- 1$

gilded marble cloisters, their gardens prinked out with artificial trees

of precious metal on which perched clockwork singing birds, then-

chambers crammed with luxury textiles and above all the great
golden filigree screen behind which the caliph sat to enjoy court fes-
tivals. C)t all these splendours only some fragments of woodcarving

remain. They depict scenes of revelry and are in the standard Islamic
idiom favoured for such subject-matter (see p. 68 ,

Textual sources alone preserve the memory of some of the most

spectacular Fatimid treasures, such.is a world map woven of blue silk

with every feature identified in gold, silver and silk writing. Mecca
and Medina, the ultimate goals o\~ fatimid ambition, were given
special prominence. Made in 964, it allegedly cost 22,000 dinars. he I

surviving and similarly coloured Star Mantle of the ( )ttonian

emperor Henry II. made in the early eleventh century in a south
Italian milieu saturated with Islamic influence, perhaps gives some
idea of this tour deforce. Another vanished masterpiece is the shamsa
(solar rosette) made
for the Ka'ba at the order of the caliph al-Mu'izz
in 973. It sun-shaped object stuffed with powdered musk, con-
was a
taining openwork golden balls which themselves each held fifty
pearls the size of doves' eggs — and the whole object was appropri-
ately surrounded by verses from the Surat al-Hajj executed 111 eme-
ralds with the interstitial spaces in the writing 'filled with pearls as
big as could be'. These treasures, which often had a curiosity as well
as a purely monetary value, could serve a political role as diplomatic
gifts and as instruments for the display of royal power. In Byzantium,

too, precious objects were sometimes put to the same uses - for
example, the marriage contract of the princess Theophanou, who
was despatched from Constantinople in 970 to marry the German
emperor, was drawn up in gold lettering on purple-tinted vellum.
From much the same time dates the celebrated though now
dismembered 'Blue Qur'an', probably made c. 1020 in Qairawan -

66
46, 4~ A
religion of the book. Leaves from the 'Blue Qur'an'; parchment dyed indigo; perhaps Qairawan,
i. Qur'an folios dyed saffron, salmon-pink and pale yellow are also known, and presumably derive
1020.
ultimately from Byzantine 6th-eentury purple codices. The absolute control of the text block, and the
overall symmetry to which individual variations of script are subordinated, bespeak the professional scribe.

though Cordoba has also been suggested - whose gold Kufic script
unfolds against a background of indigo-dyed vellum. It is the only 6, r
such Qur'an known. An almost musical sensibility controls the
expansions and contractions of the letters, an aesthetic device here
carried to its highest point. Whether these visual rhythms were
intended to correspond to the way the text was recited or chanted is
a matter tor future research. Unfortunately, as yet there is no wa\ of

placing the Blue Qur'an securely m its contemporary and probably

Fatinnd context, given the near-tot. il absence of Qur ans dated or
datable to the Fatinnd period.
In painting, as with so much else m Fatimid art. the ruh literary
sources underline how incompletely the tew survivals reflect either
the splendour or the variety of contemporary produ< tion he aliph I ^

al- Ainir, for instance, had a belvedere bedecked with paintings o(

 notable poets, each portrait accompanied by quotations from that
poet's works. And a competition organized by the vizier of the caliph
al-Mustansir in the 1050s between a local artist and an Iraqi rival
hinged on their mastery of illusionistic techniques dependent on
strong colour rather than three-dimensional space. Both had to
depict a dancing girl, but the local man (who won) was to show her
entering a niche while the Iraqi tried to show her coming out of it.
Al-Maqrizi's account of this incident suggests that one master relied
on line while the other preferred to exploit blocks of colour - evi-
dence, perhaps, that at least two quite distinctive styles of painting
flourished in Fatimid Egypt. Painted lustre pottery tells the same
story. A similar mastery ot lllusionism is implied by al-Maqrizi's
description of a fountain which decorated a mosque.
None of the paintings which graced the Fatimid palaces has sur-
vived, but by a curious freak of chance a wonderfully complete cycle
- almost a thousand pictures - of royal images. 111 all probability basi-
cally of Fatimid origin, though overlaid at times by influences from
southern and western Europe, is preserved on the ceiling of the
Cappella Palatina in Palermo. The subject matter ranges widely and
is somewhat unfocused. It gives the impression o\~ an originally
coherent cycle of images rendered incoherent by repetition, and
diluted by the introduction o\ non-courtly and even non-Islamic
subjects. Nevertheless, the core ot the Iconographic programme is
clear enough: it is the fullest rendition extant of the cycle of courtly
pursuits that is known in the medieval Islamic world - though the
intention may have been to enrich that general theme by others with
paradisal and astrological overtones. Wresders, dancers, seated rulers
with and without attendants, grooms carrying game or birds, nobles
playing chess or backgammon, exotic animals or birds, hunting and
jousting scenes, processions, animal combats, men wrestling with
animals, races, drinking, music-making - all are promiscuously inter-
mingled. Other scenes plainly do not fit into this courtly category
but have apparently zodiacal significance (such as the scene of
Aquarius at the well) or are clearly mythological m content, such as
the image of the eagle with outspread wings bearing a human figure
aloft, or the numerous fantastic beasts: sphinxes, gnrhns, harpies and

animals with two bodies but only one face. Such images draw on a
millennial Middle Eastern heritage. Scenes which seem to derive
48, 49 from western sources include one of a man grappling with a lion
(Samson), an old man holding a bird (Noah?) and a Norman knight
engaged in close combat with a Muslim cavalier. Apparently, then,

68
the ransacked the entire repertoire of images available to them,
artists

relevant and not so relevant, and used it to cobble together a pro-

gramme of sorts. The inconsistencies already noted thus fall into
place as a necessary consequence of a visual cycle forced to expand
tar beyond its normal confines.

The honeycomb vaulting of the ceiling's muqarnas form ensures a

constant variation m the size, shape and angle of the painted surface.
But what renders the entire scheme so distinctively Islamic is the way
that every inch of the ceiling is painted, to the extent that there is no
toil of plain framing bands or of empty Banking niches or spandrels

images are crammed into the avail-

for the larger designs. Instead, the
able surfaces irrespectiveof whether they fit naturally into them or
not. In this respect, the images on the Cappella Palatina roof are
treated in a dramatically different way from those of the normal
princely cycle, in which each image is given the same emphasis as
the next. The form ot the ceiling decisively forbids this and imposes
on the painters an iconographically uneven handling of their
material. Thus on occasion minor elements may be accorded more
space than major ones. Even the narrow bands which separate the
stars at the apex of the ceiling are made part of the decorative

scheme: they bear elaborate Kufic inscriptions invoking benedictions

- presumably on the Norman king. Roger If for whom the chapel
was built between 1 132 and 1 140. Just as at the Armenian church of
Aghfamar two centuries earlier, and in a comparable context of a
Christian monarchy trying to come to terms with a much more
powerful Muslim neighbour, a palace chapel is the setting tor a

diplomatic visual acknowledgment of the Muslim presence. In both

cases the Muslim cycle is set well above the Christian images at the
outer limit of visibility, and in both cases it is emphatically secular m
tone. This suggests, perhaps, that the prestige of Muslim court lite
was such that it became the natural target for emulation even by
non-Muslim princes who were geographically within the orbit of
Muslim power. Much the same process can be traced continuously
tor centuries m Spam.
What of the style of the paintings m Palermo' Its hallmark is its
unbroken fluency. The smooth line is complemented by a capacity
to reduce torm into rounded masses which rlow easily into each
other. Simplification is the key to this way of seeing. Often it results
in mirror symmetry, but zigzag or diagonally emphasized composi
tions are also common, features such as sealloped fringes, large eyes,
kiss-CUrls by the ear all point to the influence <>t unpen. il 'Abbasid
 I

Vt) A ( "hristi.in story retold W.ill

painting from nave roof, ( !appella I'al.itm.i.

Palermo, Sicily, mid- 12th century. The
equestrian dragon-slayer probably derives
from Byzantine or Coptic images of Saints
George or rheodore, though Saljuq Turkish
sculpture and even the Shahnama offer further
parallels, sometimes with cosmic or
astrological implications, .is the dragon's
Coiled tail suggests.

49 {left) The Byzantine saint secularized. Man

with beaker, Cappella Palatina. The haggard,
cadaverous figure framed by his halo clearly
derives from a Byzantine source, and the
seated posture is Western. Despite religious
prohibitions, ritual drinking on the Sasanian
Persian model often marked medieval Islamic
court life. The space-filling jug and pot
accord with the subject-matter.
50 (right) A pluralistic society.
Section of nave roof. Cappella
Palauna. This, the most highly
evolved surviving Islamic wooden
roof of its time, in unmistakably
Muslim despite its eeeleM.istic.il

setting - perhaps, together with

the Byzantine mosaics below .1

metaphor for religious tolerance.

Its trilohed. keel-shaped and
tegmental arches echo Fatimid
and Saljuq architecture.

51 (below left) Courtliness

commercialized. Wall painting
from a hath outside Cairo, pre-
1 10 s". depicting a youth seated in

Islamic pose- (unlike 49) with a

beaker Nearby are depicted
affronted birds and a scarf dancer,
whose damaged state may reflect
the edict of al- Hakim in 1 o 1
3—
1

itch out depictions of

women in public baths.

52 (below right) Soldiers of the

Prophet. Outline o\\\ Fatimid
design (woodblock print?). 1 ith
century The tree with birds
derives from textile design. An
inscription (half-complete?)
wishes 'glory and ^oo<.\ fortune to
the leader Abu Man[sur]'-
blessings partially repeated on the
I Note the chain mail, two-
horned helmet and accoutrements
of rank hanging from the belt.
. m (5.5 x s.s in).

'V-
'
'
i

<: v. v-V»
 art as developed at Samarra. A textbook case of this influence is pro-
vided by the seated cross-legged monarch whose pose - even to his
tiny feet - seems" to owe much to images ot the Buddha. That a
secular king should be depicted by Islamic artists in a Far Eastern
religious manner in a Christian church at the very centre of the
Mediterranean highlights in the most telling way the international
quality of medieval Islamic art.
It must be conceded that virtually no echo of this rich cycle of

images has been found in Fatimid Egypt proper, with the minor
exception of a hammam excavated at Fustat, whose painted decora-
51 tion included a seated youth and affronted birds - scenes roughly
comparable with those on the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina. It is
true that many single leaves have been found, notably one now m
the British Museum showing a fortress being besieged, and a wood-
52 block print depicting a foot soldier: but for the most part these
works are of coarse quality indeed, some are mere scrawls) and
suggest that manuscript painting was still relatively underdeveloped at
this period. But a few of these leaves, of which the largest group is
that m the private Keir Collection in Surrey, England, illustrate not
c

so much Abbasid manner as a familiarity with Byzantine art,

an
which during the Macedonian Renaissance (especially m the tenth
century) had developed an extraordinarily fresh and natural remter-
pretation ot the techniques ot Graeco-Roman iUusionism by means
of modelling And sketchy line.

Too little Fatimid religious architecture is preserved to permit reli-

able generalizations about it. and the mosques built b\ the Sunni
majority in this period have almost entirely disappeared. But the tew
surviving major monuments ot the dynasty do encourage some
interesting speculations, lor example, the absence of minarets in the
mosques is noteworthy, the major exception being the lakim I

53 mosque, remarkable also for its elaborately articulated facade, in

which broad stairways played a significant part, and even more for
the enormous size of its courtyard. Perhaps this absence reflects a dis-
taste for the minaret as a culpable innovation, and the converse
emphasis on large-scale projecting portals (as at al-Mahdiya) may be
linked with a desire to give the call to prayer from them, in a deliber-
ate return to the primordial Islamic practice established by the
Prophet himself. On the other hand, a distinctive genre o\~ brick
minarets (possibly reflecting Hijazi prototypes) attained popularity in
Upper Egvpt during this period eg. at Luxor and Esnaj.
It is plain enough from the major differences between the few

~-
Fatimid mosques which do survive that it is no Longer possible to
identify the nature of the typical mosque of this period. Some strik-
ing innovations may be noted. These include the use of towers as
corner salients on the facade of the Hakim mosque - a device which
gave them a new and crucial articulating function - and the high-
lighting of the area in front of the mihrab by placing domes at the two
corners of the qibla wall. Such corner domes serve .is pendants to the
more familiar dome over the mihrab (Azhar and Hakim mosques). 54

we) A fortress tor the faith.

The mosque of al- Hakim, Cairo,
yyo-1013. develops themes
encountered earlier m the mosques
of Samaria and oflbn Tulun. Cairo
nil. 28). The degree of emphasis on

the mam facade is. however, new.

Oenellations and towers lend it a
military flavour. The triple-arched
portal copies palace architecture.

'
The world's oldest
university. The much rebuilt And
constantly enlarged A/har mosque.
Cairo, founded in 070-2 and
intended also as .1 centre of learning
and of Isma'ili propaganda. Note
such trademarks of Fatimid
architecture as radiating roundels
and niches, keel-shaped arches
and clustered columns.
 This idea is closely related to the creation of a T-plan in mosque
sanctuaries - that is. using .1 central axial nave which leads up to the
mihrab at end. and similarly picking out the transverse aisle
its tar

along and immediately in trout of the qibla - a device which was 10

have a long history in the Maghrib. Sikh show a bold and
features
intriguing readiness to conceive of .1 mosque modular terms. ike
111 1

the triple entrance to the mosque perhaps feature which the

.1

Fatimids derived from palace architecture these ideas suggest that

the use ot the mosque tor royal ceremonies, a custom well docu
mented in the literary sources tor the Fatimid period, encouraged .1

fundamental rethinking ot its layout. Hence, presumably, the intro-

duction of features already long familiar in palaces.
To judge b\ surviving public structures, mausolea occupied an
especially honoured place in Fatimid architecture, rhey certainly
survive in much greater abundance than any other building type. In
Cairo alone, fourteen funerary structures ot the period survive, .is
against five mosques. Of Still greater significance numerically and
structurally - though not from a religious or political viewpoint - are
the fifty-odd mausolea probably of eleventh—twelfth century date .it

S5i 5<5 Aswan in Upper Egypt. They form an entire necropolis. custom of .1

course already established in Egypt for millennia. Since this city was
a major departure point for pilgrim caravans, it is likely enough th.it
the original tenantsof" these mausolea were pilgrims, though some

could aKo have fallen in holy war. since Aswan was on the Nubian
border .md therefore faced infidel lands. Although - or perhaps
because - main of these structures are of mud-brick, they demon-

-4
 : -4 *^
•-

53 (above) Tombs for martyrs, i ith-

century necropolis at Aswan. Upper
I he Prophet forbade all

ostentation in funerary ceremonies;

nevertheless, mausolea quickly became
>nable. Among the various
justifications devised for them was - as
here - the desire to honour ghazis or
mujahidin (warriors tor the faith).

$6 [right) Legal or illegal? Interior of

an i ith-century tomb. Aswan. The
orthodox ban on mausolea might be
circumvented if the burial spot was
open to the wind and the ram. Hence
the popularity of lavishly fenestrated
chambers like this one.

strate degree of fantasy and playfulness quite unusual in Islamic

a

mausolea. and this was intensified by their plaster rendering, which

lent an extra sharpness to mouldings and other details. The contrast
between flat and curved planes: between the heavy cubic mass of the
lower chamber and the diminutive, almost frolicsome, domed
aedicule perched a incongruously upon it; between die pro-
trifle

nounced, eccentric rhythms of the transition /ones, with then-

swooping concave volumes, and the austere simplicity of the areas
above and below - all this makes these monuments consistend)
appealing, a satisfying exercise in solid geometry. Their interiors have
a curious dimension of surprise: domes spangled with star shaped
openings, the muscular contraction and expansion ot their squinch
zones, and above all the innate sculptural sense expressed in the

strong articulation of the wall surface, scooped out as it were by a

giant hand. Such devices ensure continual variation from one mau-
soleum to the next. Some of the detailing - e.g. the ribbed domes,
the busy articulation of the drum, the serried pilasters in the transi-
tion zone — recall Coptic or even mid-Byzantine architecture. The
chronology of these buildings is now hard to retrieve because the
dated tombstones which they once contained have been removed,
mainly at the end of the last century, without any record being made
of their exact provenance in the necropolis. Aswan provides the earli-
est example of such clusters of mausolea in the medieval Islamic
world but others survive in Cairo, Fez. Raw (near modern Tehran),
Samarqand and Delhi.
Some basic types can be identified. They include 'canopy' tombs.
open-plan with an entrance on each side: the same, but with one
wall closed to house a mihrab; tombs with all tour sides closed and a
single entrance; tombs with added courtyard or sanctuary; and
adjoining tombs which create a continuous vaulted space. All these
types are continually overlaid and obscured by variations which,
however minor in themselves, still change the essential aspect of
these buildings. In both Aswan and Cairo, a type of mausoleum not
found in Egypt after the Fatimid period makes its appearance: the
mashhad (literally 'place of martyrdom'). It comprises a domed square
encompassed on three sides b\ an ambulatory. Important examples of
the type are the mashhads ofYahya al-Shabih and Qasim Abu fayyib.
Another type of mashhad (such as that ofal-Guyushi in Cairo and
another in Aswan) comprises a triple-bayed sanctuary with a dome
over the central bay, therein creating a compact cluster of buildings.
The Fatimid emphasis on mausolea was a major innovation in the

Arab world and it is surely no coincidence that a similar emphasis

can also be detected in contemporary Buyid architecture in Iran.

c
Shi ism seems to be the connecting thread in this development. he I

Fatimid caliphs themselves continued the traditional custom of house

burial, though in a dynastic tomb situated in the Eastern Palace
later dubbed 'The Saffron Tomb' (turbai al-zajaran) because of the
custom of anointing it regularly with that perfume. Perhaps this
building was intended to rival the 'Abbasid family tomb .it Samarra,
the Qubbat al-Sulaibiya. The great majority of Fatimid tombs in
Cairo, however, which date from the later Fatimid period, were
erected to commemorate Shfite saints and martyrs, perhaps m an

76
attempt to create a funerary cult that would support the caliphal
c

family, which of course claimed descent from Ali. The tombs in the
Qarafa cemetery especially became centres for weekend outings,
with the faithful spending the night in their vicinity, circumambulat-
ing them and hoping for answers to prayers through the intercession
of these personages, and. more generally, to profit from the baraka or
spiritual power associated with these tombs. The forms of such m.ui
lolea are very much more modest than those of contemporary funer-
ary structures in the eastern Islamic world, for the most part they
comprise small square chambers, largely plain not only externally
except for the occasional fluted dome) but
also inside, apart from
their monumental sometimes disposed in groups of
mihrabs, the latter
five (Sayyida Ruqayya) or three (Ikhwat Yusuf). Most were dedi
cated to members of the Prophet's family; several honour martyrs for
the Shi'ite cause; and the prominence of women among their tenants
is quite remarkable - perhaps a reflection of the key role in popular

piety played by women and expressed also in the area of the Qarafa
cemetery (that centre of female piety) by the unusually high propor-
c

tion of tombstones honouring Shi ite women.

Perhaps the most striking feature of these mihrabs is their use of
ribs radiating outwards from a central boss - the very image of light.
It was a tenet of Isma'ili belief that the Holy Family existed m the

form of light even before the world was created. The Qur'anic
inscriptions in these tombs frequently contain references to the sun.
the moon and the stars, and these were interpreted to connote the
Shi'ite Holy Family. Any name on the central roundel (significantly
termed shamsa in Arabic, from the word shams, 'sun') would most
naturally be interpreted as the source of light, and it is exclusively
' c

'Allah', 'Muhammad' or Ali'. The latter two names are again found

at the centre of a star in the dome of the mashhad of al-Guyushi, sur-

rounded by a Qur'anic quotation which includes the words 'It is le 1

who appointed you viceroys in the earth". In the highly charged

Fatimid context, light had the specific extra connotation of ttOSS (the
explicit statement whereby legitimacy was conferred on an imam,
often interpreted as divine light). Hence the repeated literary associa-
tions between, example. Husain - the son of 'Ah - and light. Not
for
for nothing, perhaps, was one of the names for the Hakim mosque
c
'The Mosque of Lights' (jami al-anwar), jus\ as a contemporary tomb
was known as the Shrine ofl ight. And the Aqinar mosque, whose
very name means 'The Moonlit', has its facade festooned with radi
' c

atmg designs, with Ah' at the centre of the largest, direcd) over the

77
 L

!v.^ Mfe^'H^ A^!a^'^3>tiliJ

l ,

57 A religious and political manifesto. The Aqinar mosque m Cairo was erected in 12s beside the eastern i

Fatimid caliphal palace, and was perhaps intended as a court oratory, tea Jung institution and tomb tor al-
1
Husain, the Prophet's grandson. Its inscriptions implore God to give the caliph 'victory over all Infidels
(presumably the Crusaders and schismatics) and exalt the family of 'Ah by quoting Qur'an 33:33.

entrance — presumably a reference to the well-known saying that Ali

is the Gate of the City of Knowledge; 'let those who want to acquire
knowledge approach it by its proper gate*. The entire facade of the
57 Aqmar mosque functions .is ,1 gigantic qibla articulated by mihrabs
large and small - an allusion that would have been tar clearer in
Fatimid times, when the standard mihrab had precisely the form of
the blind niches on that facade. Indeed, the use of three great mihrabs
on the original facade (though that facade was not orientated to the
qibla, being skewed relation to the rest o\~ the mosque) seems to
in
1 have been echo of the layout of the contemporary kiswa,
a deliberate
the cloth draped over the Ka'ba in Mecca. Pierced window designs,
stars and carved representations of lamps are further references to

light (and specifically as it is described in Sura [Qur'anic chapter]

24:35) in this iconographically dense facade, in which - as in other
Fatimid monuments - numerical symbolism hinging on the numbers
3, 5 and especially 7 (Isma'ilis being Sevener Shmtes) is also at work.

78
 Fatimid pottery is dominated by lustrewares. Their origin is dis
puted; some argue that the earlier lustrewares of Samaria provided
the direct inspiration, as indeed similarities of graphic style suggest,
while others seek its source in glass (see p. 54). Hut the key point is

not the source of the technique but the fact o\~ that the importance
Fatimid lustrewares extends tar beyond Egypt, since they usher in the
rust consistent attempt in the medieval Islamic world to make luxury
ceramics say something in visual terms. Not that they are the firs!

Islamic wares to carry images -

Samaria and Nishapur. to name
at

only the two most important centres of production, wares in various

techniques had already used hgural designs. Hut the number and
variety of such themes and motifs expanded dramatically 111 atimid 1

lustreware - although most pieces bore abstract and vegetal designs.

half-palmettes being especially popular. Not surprisingly - perhaps
because this was indeed a time o\ experimentation - many o\' the
themes are new to pottery, and some even to Islamic art. A groom
leads a giraffe, an elderly man tends a cheetah, men squat on their
haunches absorbed in a cockfight, porters carry heavy loads, a lad\ n^

scrutinizes herself in a mirror while a maidservant hovers nearby,

wrestlers strain against each other, men tight with sticks, a C "optic
priest swings a censer, falconers or mailed cavaliers ride richly S9»6°
caparisoned horses - there is image of Christ in true
even an
Byzantine manner. Animals abound: whether commonplace (hares,
dogs, ibexes, fish, birds), exotic (lions and elephants) or fantastic
(griffins and harpies). Some scenes involve energetic action, such as ,1

dog biting the leg of another animal. A courtly ambience pervades

scenes of banquets, dancers, seated drinkers and lutanists (both male
and female) who serenade them.
The various hgural images can indeed be taken at face value as
genre or courtly scenes, but they could equally well (and simultane-
ously) operate on a deeper level as symbols (e.g. of love or tempta-
tion, harmony or fellowship) or as deliberate copies of classical

themes - forof course Egypt had been one of the major centres of
Hellenistic art, and was a country where the sense of an immemorial
p. ist was stronger and more pervasive than elsewhere in the Near

last. Moreover, through its ("optic minority which had preserved

much of the Hellenistic heritage - Egypt was more open to these
themes than other areas of the Islamic world. A tew examples will
put these remarks into perspective. Some of the banqueting figures,
whose setting could be interpreted .is a garden, may refer to I'. u.ulise

and may derive from classical images of heroization. Several of the

58 Fatimid lustre bowl. uth-i2th century, with cock-fighting scene. Hie tradition
of such images whuh
typically contrast a bearded older man and a youth, stretched back to ancient
Greece .md carried assoria!
tions of warlike spirit, virility and homosexuality. Diam. 2

59 The survival of other faiths. Early 12th-century lustre bowl. ^n.-A bv the Muslim potter Sa'd, whuh
shows a Coptic priest swinging a censer; a gigantic ankh hieroglyph denotes 'life'. Ham. 2
I 1
.9
111 < (8.6 in).
60 'Good health and
complete joy to the
owner, may he be saved
from evil' runs the
inscription around this

lustre plate depicting

mounted falconer.
.i

The iconography is
international, but this
piece of so-called Fustat
ware is inscribed 'well
made in Egypt'. H. 7 cm
(2.8 m». diam. 38.3 cm
(is in).

animals depicted on Fatimid lustreware have been interpreted as

lunar, solar or astrological symbols. Some pieces depict dragons or
snakes, perhaps a reference to Jawzahar, the eclipse monster regarded
by medieval Muslims as the antagonist of the sun and the moon. A
linkwith the Tree of Life and with water is suggested by trees or fish
on some of these pieces, though apotropaic or mystical overtones
could also be present. Sometimes, as m the plate depicting a giraffe
being led by a groom, a reference to contemporary royal processions
may well be intended - a medieval equivalent to the Coronation or
other souvenir mug.
Polychrome lustrewares are usually decorated with geometric or
vegetal motifs, though a few depict birds and - as noted above
dragons or snakes. Some pieces are entirely covered with cross
banded inscriptions. The considerable differences in style and execu-
tion between the major groups o\~ Fatimid lustreware especial!)
between the monochrome and the polychrome types drive home
the tact th.it fatimid Egypt was open to ideas and influences trom all
over the Mediterranean and beyond, and that one should not there
fore expect an integrated style. Fatimid painting tells the same sn>i\.

8l
 It is Fatimid period above all that potters' signatures come
in the
into their are admittedly encountered earlier - for
own. Signed wares
c

example, in Abbasid blue-and-white pottery, in glazed relief wares

and in yet others found at Madmat al-Zahra in Spain - but they are
rare. Over seventy Fatimid pieces are signed, and the names of some
twenty-one potters have been recorded. Chief among them is a
certain potter called Muslim, whose name appears on a score of sur-
viving pieces. Many of the signatures include the information that
the ceramic was made in Misr (probably meaning Cairo, though pos-
sibly Egypt). Specialization was well advanced in Fatimid times, as
the Geniza records - a cache ot medieval Jewish commercial docu-
ments - show: thus mention is made of the qaddar who produced
pots, the kuzi who made spoutless water jugs and the ghaza'iri who
made translucent porcellaneous dishes. Perhaps the painters o\'
ceramics were equallv specialized and were distinct from those who
produced the pottery shapes themselves. Epigraphic evidence on two
lustre pieces indicates that they were made to order - one for a high
official, the other conceivably for the caliph himself- and thus prove
the existence of high patronage tor at least some pottery produced in
this period. Frequently these wares carry benedictory inscriptions;
forty-six of them are inscribed >\m/. 'good luck", though this could
also be the name ot the potter.
The colours o\ the monochrome lustrewares vary from golden-
yellow through copper to dark brown and the design is usually
painted in silhouette, though occasionally it is reserved in white
against a lustre ground. The body is coarse and sandy. Shapes vary
considerably, though bowls, dishes and cups predominate. Other
wares of the period include glazed relief coloured glazed and incised
types - the latter apparently owing something to ( Ihinese celadons.
Indeed many lustre pieces derive their forms directly or indirectly
from Chinese prototypes. The floruit of Fatimid lustre seems to have
been the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, though production
continued in Egypt (and possibly Syria) until the fill of the dynasty
in 1 171. It seems possible that at least some Fatimid lustrew.ire
specialists thereupon migrated to Iran, where powerful Shi'ite
minorities offered a degree o\ security conspicuously absent under
the aggressive orthodoxy of the Ayyubids.
The presence ot many Fatimid ceramics walled as ornaments into
the exteriors of churches in Italy (e.g. at Pisa, Rome, Ravenna and
Ravallo) and even in France and Greece has been explained as the
result of Crusaders bringing back souvenirs from the East. Whether

82
thisor just plain trade was the source of such wares, they give a valu-
able indication ot the type of luxury pottery produced in the late
Fatimid period. The style of these pieces is so varied that it seems
reasonable to look for several quite different sources of inspiration.
Sometimes the trick of painting the
of the piece,
face, or the exterior
is connection is incontestable.
so like that o\ Iraqi lustre that a close
But other pieces have the vivacity and freedom o\' [ellenistic art .is 1

developed at Alexandria, and yet other images recall Coptic textiles.

The figures often have a marked illusionism in the way that their
movement is suggested by cross-hatching. But the unpredictable play
of light which is so integral to the whole effect of lustre is inimical to
such nascent realism, since it abstracts form rather than defining it.

Thus hue and colour are at war.

Most specialists attribute the great majority of the i So-odd surviv-
ing medieval Islamic rock crystal objects to Fatimid Egypt and to the
period before c. 1060. The raw material apparently came from the
Maghrib and latterly the Red Sea, though the Basra school was sup-
plied from Madagascar, Kashmir and the Maldives, and perhaps these
areas also supplied Egypt. Although expertise in hardstone carving
was required to work rock crystal satisfactorily, the artists obviously
learned much from wheel-cut carving on glass. Al-Maqrizi cites
detailed evewitness accounts describing the rock crystal objects held

6l Frozen light. Rock crystal

ewer naming the Fatimid caliph
al-'Aziz bi'llah (975-06),
venerated as a source ot divine
light. The ibex perched by the
run embodies the conceit that
the animal is drinking from the
ewer, a theme rooted in pre-
Islamic religious rituals and
common metarwork. Rock
in
crystal was believed to be a form
of ice, but also to concentrate the
sun's rays; the goblets of paradise
are from this material (Qur'an
- II [8 cm - .
1 in).
 <)2Cut-price luxury. (ilass
beaker with cut relief ornament,
resembling precious stone;
probably Egypt or Syria, [2th
century. Veste Coburg, Germany;
formerly owned by Martin
Luther. Sixteen such objects,
known .is Hedwig glasses (from
the tradition that St Hedwig
changed water into wine in one
of them), survive. he thi< k
I

walled, smoky topaz glass bears

highly abstract motifs ultimately

ot Samarran origin II. c. 12.7 cm

in the Fatimid treasuries in the 1060s - even their size and market
value were noted, and a group ot pieces bearing the name ot the
c
61 caliph al- Aziz were singled out for special attention. I he total

number of rock crystal vessels in this treasury alone was then i,Xoo.
The only three inscribed rock crystals bearing the names ot notables
were clearly made 111 Egypt; they mention the caliphs al-'Aziz and
al-Zahir, and al-Hakim's generalissimo, Husain b. Jauhar. The luxury
nature of the craft emphasized by the technique itself; the ewers,
is

for example, were made by patiently hollowing out a solid block ot

crystal until the walls had been reduced to extreme thinness. The
themes of the six closer) related ewers which illustrate Fatimid roek
crystals at their best are uniformly large palmettes (perhaps intended
to represent the Tree o\ Life) flanked by various animals: lions,
ostriches, hawks, moufflons and gazelles. Some of these animals also
62 appear on the heavy monumental 'Hedwig' beakers which mimic in
glass the technique of rock crystals. None of these have turned up in
the Islamic world, which has siiL^ested to some scholars that they are
of European (perhaps South Italian or Sicilian; provenance; but they
could also have been made in Eiwpt or Syria for a European market.

84
 M

) oil
6j From Muslim robe of honour to
church treasury. Linen cloth made in
Damietta, Egypt, and bearing tapestry
ornament depicting birds, addorsed
jw£S\
iphinxes and other animals. Known as
'the veil of St Anne",

caliph al-Musta
al-At'dal.
li
it

dated 1096-7 mentioning the Fatimid

c
bi'llah
Apt. Vaucluse. France;
has inscriptions

and his vizier

SI
probably booty 60m the First Crusade.
Detail ofcopy made in 1850.
310 x 150 cm (122 x 59 in).
it
it ^
<*j 11

Their presence in church treasuries is an argument in favour of an

Islamic origin, for this is where most of the finest medieval Islamic
textiles and rock crystals have been preserved, usually because they
had fallaciously acquired some sacred Christian association. Many
rock crystals were used as containers for relics believed to be drops of
Christ's blood or associated with the Last Supper or the Crucifixion.
Hence the elaborate European ecclesiastical mountings in which so
many of them are set.
The surviving Fatimid textiles do not measure up to those known
from literary sources - for example, the hundreds of textiles men-
tioned by al-Maqrizi with pictures of rulers and other celebrities, .ill

identified by name and accompanied by some commentary. Most of

the surviving pieces are tiraz products whose sole ornament is their
epigraphy. Sometimes they are very close imitations of 'Abbasid te\
tiles from Baghdad - for example, a tiraz of al-Mu'i// which copies
one of the 'Abbasid caliph al-Mutf. A few are of silk but most are of
humbler materials such as linen and cotton. Their epigraphy is far 61
more varied than that of Fatimid inscriptions in other matt-rials;
some may ape Styles of pen-made writing confined to chain er\ use.
CHAPTER FOUR

The Saljuqs

Arab dominion of the eastern Islamic world came to an end in 945

when the caliphs were forced to surrender their temporal authority to
their army commanders, who belonged to the Persian Buyid family.
Henceforth the caliphs preserved only the forms and not the sub-
stance of power. For the next century, political control of this huge
area passed to various dynasties, principally of Persian origin, among
which the Buyid family was pre-eminent. One dynasty alone broke
this mould: the Ghaznavids, who controlled Afghanistan, much of the
Punjab and parts of eastern Iran. They had begun as Turkish military
slaves but had assimilated Perso-Islamic ways. This Turkish hegemony
became definitive under the Great Saljuqs, whose followers - known
as Turcomans - were Turkish nomads and marauders who had
recently converted to Islam. The Saljuqs dispossessed the Ghaznavids
and Buyids alike, took over Baghdad m loss and thereafter began a
fundamental reshaping of the body politic.
For the first time since the seventh century, nomads ruled the
Middle East - for the Saljuq lurks expanded westwards to the shores
of the Mediterranean, controlling Anatolia, Iraq and parts of Syria as
well as the Iranian world, from obscure pagan beginnings in their
Central Asian homeland on the fringes of the Islamic world they had
risen in three generations to become the greatest Muslim power of
the day. No contemporary written Turkish sources describe this
process, which can therefore be studied only through the medium of
much later Arab and Persian historians, whose perception of events is
essentially Muslim. It is clear, however, that m their rise to power the
Saljuqs had preserved intact their ethnic and tribal identity, and with
it their military strength. Henceforth many traditions of steppe
society infiltrated the Muslim world. Among these was the principle
of clan ownership, with no clearly defined hereditary succession.
Territory was often partitioned among a ruler's male relations.
Another custom decreed the appointment of a guardian or atabeg for
a prince in his minority - and such atabegs tended to be military

86
commanders who often usurped power. Turkish traditions like these
clashed with Muslim norms and destabilized Islamic society.
Yet this Turkish element was counterbalanced by more ancient
ones. Guides to good government ('Mirrors tor Princes') were
written for the Saljuq rulers, in which the Sasanian tradition of the
divine right of kings was modified by the principle that the monarch
must obey the law as defined by Muslim jurists. ike the Ghaznavids,
I

the Saljuqs acknowledged the caliph's sphere of influence and gener-

allyoperated within the existing political framework, tor example by
having their names mentioned alongside the caliph's m the Friday
sermon at Baghdad and on coins. Even their regnal titles stressed the
word din ('religion'). These various strands are symbolized in the
name of the greatest Saljuq ruler. Sultan Malikshah, which blends
the contemporary royal titles of Arab, Persian and Turk.
Saljuq administration struck a similar balance between Turkish and
Islamic ways. A tripartite system developed m which the Turkish
military aristocracy was supported by Persian high officials and a
Persian or Arab religious class. Moreover, the revival o\' orthodoxy
which had begun in Baghdad as a politico-religious response to the
Shi'ism of the Buyids was consolidated under the Great Saljuqs.
Through their high officials the Saljuqs gave vigorous impetus to the
building of madrasas - colleges where the orthodox Islamic sciences
were taught and the administrators of the regime were educated.
They favoured Sufism or Islamic mysticism - indeed, some o\' the
sultans and their officials adopted notable Sufis as their private
mentors, and encouraged the movement to become part o( official

orthodox Islam, with organized fraternities. It was under the Saljuqs

that the pivotal figure of al-Ghazali, the leading Muslim intellectual
and theologian of the Middle Ages, formulated his synthesis o\~
Sufism and Sunnism, thereby introducing a moderate mystical
element into orthodoxy. The Saljuqs also took vigorous measures
against the extreme Shfites. The greatest of Saljuq viziers, Nizam al-
Mulk. in his work 'The Book of Government' (c. 1090). advised his
master the sultan not to employ them, and they were cursed from
the pulpits. Shfite mosques, madrasas and libraries were pillaged.
This repression was in part prompted by powerful resurgence of the
.1

extreme branch of the Shfites. the Isma'ilis. who terrorized the

Middle East by the weapon of assassination indeed, they are better
known m the West .is the Assassins.
Yet the apogee of the Great Saljuq state was short lived. Indeed,
after the death of Sultan Muhammad in 111^ tin- Saljuq empire
split;the long reign of Sultan Sanjar (d. 1 1 57) ensured stability in
the east, but the western territories were riven with discord. By
degrees landed property became so devalued that the entire
landowning class, the dihqans - who had survived nearly five cen-
turies of Islamic rule - was wiped out by the early thirteenth
century. The bureaucracy was top-heavy; offices were bought and
sold, nepotism flourished (the twelve sons of the great vizier Nizam
al-Mulk were honoured as if they were religious leaders), and
officials shared the fate of their disgraced masters. The fissiparous

system of family and clan ownership, the institution of the atabeg

and the uncertain succession all combined to create periodic crises
in the ruling house. A corrupt system of tax-tanning led to a loss of
central control as the military class gamed power at the expense of
the state. At a lower level, the nomadic element in Saljuq society
was profoundly destructive. The Turcomans were resentful of the
'Persianization' of their chiefs: their prune aim was plunder and they
resisted settlement. New waves of nomads, notably the (muzz tribes
which in the 1150s captured Sultan Sanjar himself and his eonsort,
created further havoc. The last Saljuq sultans followed each other in
quick succession and ruled steadily diminishing territories until
Tughril II, the last of the line, was killed in battle m 104.
1

While remarkably little in the way of the visual arts has survived
from pre-Saljuq Iran, under the Saljuqs this situation is dramatically
reversed, and for the first time 111 Islamic Iran the flavour of a period
can be captured adequately by studying a mass of its artefacts. I his
period, like that of the Umayyads, witnessed a prodigious expansion
in the forms, techniques and ideas of the visual arts.
The heritage of the Saljuqs political, religious and cultural - can
scarcely be exaggerated. The contrast between the pre-Saljuq and
the post-Saljuq periods is striking. The tenth and eleventh centuries
had seen minor Persian and Arab dynasties throughout the eastern
Islamic world flourish at the expense of the enfeebled caliphate. The
unity of the faith had disintegrated, although Arabic was still the
predominant language. By the late twelfth century the situation had
changed decisively: orthodox Islam was now much stronger, having
absorbed some heterodoxies and defeated others. This was princi-
pally due to the Turkish dynasties of the Ghaznavids and the (ire.it
Saljuqs. The caliph had regained his theoretical power by allying
himself with the sultan, and was about to recover actual political
strength too. The Turks now dominated the Middle East; certain of
the territories which they controlled, such as Anatolia, north-west

88
Iran and Central Asia, have remained Turkish-speaking ever since.
Theirs was in some senses a disruptive influence; they represented a
pastoral economy immemorially opposed to agriculture. One con-
temporary historian remarked wryly that tax-farming was 'the only
way to interest Turks in agriculture'. They constituted a recurrent
political threat because certain tribes could with impunity flout the
authority of the sultan. Plunder was the only aim of many of the
tribesmen and this could not always be channelled into holy wars.
But the Saljuq leaders quickly adapted themselves to the Persian \\,i\
of life. Under their aegis Persian became widespread throughout the
empire and Iran itself became an artistic centre of the first impor-
tance. Above all. the centre o\~ gravity in the Islamic world had
shifted from the Arab territories to Anatolia and Iran. The tradi-
tional centres o\ Islamic power in the Middle East - )amascus and 1

Baghdad - had now to some extent been supplanted by such Saljuq

capitals as Merv, Nishapur, Rayy and Isfahan - every one of them in
the Iranian world. This dominance of eastern Islam, together with
the rule of the Shi'ite Fatimids in Egypt and sometimes Syria, made
final that break between the eastern and western parts of the Islamic

Near East which has endured virtually ever since.

The area within which Great Saljuq art flourished is often Loosely
taken to be that of modern Iran, but more of it was m fact outside
those political boundaries than within them. Modern scholarship has
not progressed far enough to identify the full range of local schools
inside the Iranian world with confidence, though it is clear that the
arts of Syria and Anatolia had their own distinctive character.
Similarly, the chronology of 'Saljuq' art is hard to correlate with
political events: the rhythms of stylistic development are not those ol
dynasties. Typically Saljuq work is found in the early eleventh as m
the early thirteenth century, and thus outside the time-span of Saljuq
political power. And extremely similar work in various fields
notably architecture - was practised under the dynasties that coex-
isted with or succeeded the Saljuqs proper. Nonetheless, this chapter
will confine itself to the output of the Saljuq period m Iran, tor that
was the centre of Great Saljuq power; and while some Saljuq rulers
extended their authority far to the west, and to the north-east, then-
hold on this territory was more tenuous. Moreover, the visual arts in
Syria and Iraq in this period followed their own path, in which local
traditions played a major role.
The importance of Saljuq art within the broader context of

Islamic art as a whole lies m the way that it established the dominant

80
 position of Iran; one may compare the pivotal role of late-medieval
Italy in European art. It also determined the future development of
art in the Iranian world for centuries. In its own time its impact was
felt, either through the agency of the Saljuqs themselves or through

their successor states, from Syria to northern India. The period

1 000-1220 set benchmarks in various media, from pottery and met-

alwork to the arts of the book and architecture. However, the overlap
between Saljuq art and that of the Buyids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids,
Qarakhanids and Khwarizmshahs — to name only some of the major
stylistic groupings of the time — is such that these dynastic labels are

often unhelpful if not downright misleading. The basic fact to bear

in mind is the existence of an artistic koine in the eastern Islamic
world between iooo and 1220. That dialect, moreover, was at its
most vigorous in the years of Saljuq decline and after the fall of the
dynasty in 1194, and it owed much to the political unity imposed by
the Saljuqs on eastern and western Iran. It is to this later period that
the major technical advances of Saljuq art can be attributed, though
in the fields of architecture and Qur'anic manuscripts consummate
masterpieces were produced long before then. Still, the trend is clear.
66 The second half of the twelfth century (the liobrinski bucket of 163 1

in the Hermitage provides a convenient point o\ departure) saw an

unprecedented expansion of hgural decoration, whether in the form
of narrative scenes (taken for example from the Shahnama of
Firdausi), pictures of courtiers, animals, zodiacal themes, and images
from the princely cycle featuring hunting, banqueting, music-
making and the like. Long benedictory inscriptions m Arabic
64 become the norm in the portable arts. Sculpture in stucco, ceramic
and metal now takes on a new importance.
The sheer productivity of these centuries m the visual arts repre-
sents, in comparison with the output of earlier centuries, a quantum
leap forward. With this increased quantity - which is helped by a
standardization of shapes - comes an expansion 111 patronage, which
now not only operates at court level but also has a new popular
dimension, perhaps an expression of widespread urban wealth deriv-
ing from a buoyant economy. This art, then, reveals a cross-section
of contemporary society and its tastes: luxury and utility Qur'ans;
large royal and small provincial mosques; expensive lustre or minai
(overglaze-painted) pottery and coarse glazed ware reminiscent of
folk art; elaborately inlaid metalwork and virtually plain cast pieces.
One can identify numerous local schools, for example in architec-
ture and ceramics. A natural by-product of this intense activity was a

90
 << i
.

64 Pomp and circumstance, Turkish style. Stucco relief from Raw. late 12th century It depicts the
enthroned Saljuq sultan Tughril (II?; d. [94) surrounded by his officers. Direcdy beneath his feet is written
1

"the victorious, just king' and in the panel above are his titles, interrupted atypically by the sultans personal
name placed directly over his head.

wide range of technical and innovations. It must be remem-

stylistic

bered, however, that the picture skewed, especially in the fields of

is

pottery and metahvork, by the massive scale of illegal excavations m

Iran over the past hundred years. In other countries of the Islamic
world most of the comparable material is still in the ground. And
the paucity of detailed monographic studies of key objects and
buildings means that much basic information is still either unavail-
able or inadequately contextuahzed.
Thus the originality of Saljuq art is apt to be exaggerated. In many
cases the artists of the Saljuq period (it is misleading to speak of 'the
Saljuqs' in this connection) consolidated, and indeed at times per-
fected, forms and ideas that had long been known. In architecture
one may cite the cruciform \-iwan plan, the domed s.mctuarv pavil
ion in the mosque, and the tomb tower; in Qur'ank calligraphy, the
apotheosis of what has been termed the 'New Style' oi Kulic. now
integrated with lavish illumination; in metalwork, the technique of
inlay using several metals; and in painting, the development of the
frontispiece. Above all. there is surprisingly little tor which .1 source
right outside the Iranian world can be posited. Although the Saljuqs
themselves were lurks, it is hard to point to .inv specifically Turkish
 elements in the art of Iran and its eastern provinces in the period
under review, with the possible exception of the moon, or Buddha,
face in figural depictions. This seems to point to the dominance of
Iranian artisans in the visual arts. Parenthetically one may note that

the picture in Anatolia, where people of Turkish extraction formed a

larger proportion of the population, is distinctively different; there,
references to pagan Turkish religious beliefs, funerary customs and
royal ceremonial are frequently encountered.
What of patronage? Only two pieces of Saljuq pottery made for
persons of high rank, one an amir, the other a vizier, are known, and
the situation is little better in the case of metalwork. The over-
whelmingly rich and varied production ought presum-
in these fields
ably, therefore, to be attributed to patronage exercised at a lower
level of society, such as merchants, members of the learned class and
professional people. Most likely, much of it was made for the market,
though this would not exclude its use by those o\ high rank.
Architecture, involving as it did much larger sums o( money, is a
different story altogether. Inscriptions m mosques and mausolea
mention the Saljuq sultans themselves, tor example Mahkshah and
Muhammad, or viziers such as Nizam al-Mulk or Taj al-Mulk.
Turkish chieftains are named in the tomb towers of khanaqan, army
commanders at Urmiya. and numerous amirs, tor example at
Maragha, Mihmandust. Qazvin and Abarquh.
Problems of provenance have bedevilled the study of the decora-
tive arts in the Saljuq period. These problems have been exacerbated
by the fact that most o\' the known material has not been
scientifically excavated and lacks inscriptions yielding solid informa-
tion on provenance. Confusing and contradictory information on
this topic proliferates. The very tew securely provenanced items per-
force act as a peg on which to hang all manner of other pieces, and
their evidential value is simply not enough to justify this practice. It

is now generally accepted that virtually and mina'i wares -

all lustre
65 the most expensive ceramics of the period - were made m Kashan
(though the distinctive heavy red body ot" lustre tiles found in the
Kirman area suggests local production there), and sherding studies
suggest that this luxury ware was widely traded. Conversely many
other slightly less luxurious but still tine wares cannot be securely
associated with any one city or area, and they might therefore have
been produced in several places independently (like the Samanid epi-
graphic ware ot the tenth century which was produced in both
Samarqand and Nishapur, and apparently in Merv too).

65 Ceramic sculpture. Lustre mihrab re-used in the Masjid^i Maidan. Kashan. It is dated 1226. inscribed
with the names of the Twelve Shi ite [mams and signed by al-Hasan lbn Arabshah. Its many components
c

were separately fired and fitted together. The contrast of buff and blue mimics the palette of contemporary
architecture. H. 2.84 m (9.3 ft).
 f%
IS^m^^y
B£
mi
U;
66 Bobrinski bucket and the jug
Similarly, the fact that the celebrated
of 1 182 now both bear an inscription stating that they were
in.Tiflis
made in Herat indicates that fine inlaid metalwork was produced in
that city. The craftsmen's names, which are traditionally supple-
mented by their place of origin (nisba), indicate Khurasani cities -
Herat, Merv, Nishapur - and thus confirm the important role of this
province in metalwork. But it is not enough to justify the wholesale
attribution to Herat of wares that merely share some of the features
found on work from that city. This is particularly unlikely for metal-
work that is technically simpler than the inlaid pieces, since the
demand for such cheaper work must have been too widespread to be
catered for by a single production centre. But exactly where these
other Iranian workshops were located must be determined by future
research. The astonishing range of forms encountered in Saljuq
metalwork (including many derived from architectural forms) also
points to numerous centres of production. It seems likely that some
of the best craftsmen travelled widely to execute commissions, and
that fine pieces (e.g. of Kashan tilework) were shipped over long dis-
tances. There is evidence too of a division of labour in metalwork

*~'-'\ 1

<><> I he ultimate pilgrimage

'
accessor) he 'Bobrinski
I

bucket*, technicolour t .1st and

inlaid bronze; possibly for ntu.il
ablution during the hajj. Six
long inscriptions mention die
makers (caster and decorator,
of equal rank); provenance
and dai II rat, Muharram

559 )ecember 1163); and me

I

inflated titles of its patron, .1

pious merchant from far-off

Zanjan. Note the human-
headed letters (the earliest dated
examples known) and the scenes
of leisure pursuits H 18 cm
(7.1 in).
and Lustreware that ensured a higher level of quality overall. But the
key question remains: scholarship has not yet established whether the
pockets of intense activity in a limited geographical area have a wider
significance tor pan-Iranian production or whether they reflect a
well-developed specialization confined to a given area.
Laboratory examination has yet to be used in a systematic way on
Saljuq metalwork; the evidence that it would provide on alloys, for
instance, could then be correlated with other factors shape, tech
nique. decoration - to create a more nuanced picture of the various
known types. In the current state of knowledge it is sate to say that
wares constructed from sheet metal were made of brass while most
others were of a four-part alloy; true bronzes are uncommon. A
twenty per cent tin bronze was also used but traditional low-tm
bronzes are unknown.
The very tew pieces ot Saljuq metalwork in silver point to a r,s

serious shortage o\ that metal which became more critical as the

eleventh century advanced. It was perhaps in part result o\~ the .1

practice followed by the Viking traders travelling along the great

Russian rivers, who hoarded the Islamic silver coins with which they

67 Latent iconophobia?
Signed open-work
roomorphic incense-
burner, bronze inlaid with
silver. North-east Iran.
1 1 th century. The
btheness and ferocity of
this creature are much
exaggerated, the body
itself dematerialized and
reduced to an inscribed
and decorated surface.
Thus the artist avoids
usurping God's prerogative
ot creating lite. Compare
Ibn 'Abbas advising a

painter: "You must

decapitate animals so that
1 not seem to be
alive .md trv to make
them look like flowers*.
•
 .4JJIW

68 (right) Luxury tableware. Silver rose-

water sprinkler with cap: repousshind
chased, with niello decoration and gilding.
Rose-water was used to scent the beard
before eating, for washing hands, perfunung
clothes and carpets and flavouring food.
The rose was the favourite Muslim flower
and figured largely in Persian love and
mystical poetry. H. 24.9 cm (9.8 in), body
diam. 12 cm (4.7 in).

69 (below) The courtly ethos. Polychrome

painted minai bowl with confronted
horsemen and peacocks (symbols of
Paradise), a design derived from textiles.

Iran,probably early 13th century. The

androgynous figures follow contemporary
fashion with their Turkish caps and long
plaits. The fit palmettes echo Qur'anic
illumination. Diam. 21. 5 cm (8.5 m).
were paid for slaves, firrs and amber and who thus took the coins out
of circulation. The gradual cessation of the minting of silver coins m
the Iranian world and Anatolia m this period, and their replacement
by copper dirhams, provides incontrovertible evidence of this trend,
anecdotal evidence of the survival or use of individual silver objects
notwithstanding. Base metal had perforce to fill the £A\\ but its value
was greatly enhanced by the practice of inlaying it with copper.
Silver,gold and a bituminous black substance, the whole giving an
effect of polychrome splendour. 71ms tine craftsmanship did dut\ for
precious metal. This technique, with its plethora of detail, lent itself
to the creation of elaborate figural scenes; even inscriptions took on
human and animal form. These inlaid objects survive in large quanti-
ties, probably because their metal content (unlike that of silver and
gold objects) was not sufficiently valuable to be worth melting them
down, whereas the intrinsic value of their top-quality craftsmanship
was obvious.
In ceramics, the earliest dated underglaze-pamted. lustre and
mina'i wares are respectively placed by their inscriptions to the years 69
i [66, i 179 and 1 1 So, and therefore all postdate the death of the last

in 1157. Conversely, in metalwork

Great Saljuq ruler. Sultan Sanjar,
between 1063 and 14N - i.e., from in
there are several dated pieces 1

the Saljuq period. The frequency of dated ceramics (and many are
signed) argues a higher status for fine pottery than had previously

70 A clue to lost Saljuq

book painting. Moulded
lustre plate made in 12 10
by Sayyid Shams al-Din
al-Hasani tor a military
commander. A royal groom
sleeps by a pool, oblivious
of the monarch's entourage,
and dreams of a water-
sprite. The fish, water.
woman and horse all relate
to Sufi mystical metaphors.
H. 3.7 cm .5 mi. di.un.
.Vs. 2 cm [3.9 no.
1
 obtained. A new light body known as stone-paste or fritware was
devised, though whether this was a Saljuq or a Fatimid invention
remains unclear. It was made largely from ground quartz, with small
quantities of ground glass and fine clay, presumably an attempt by
Islamic potters to imitate the body of Chinese porcelain. (The dis-
covery of Ding and Ch'ing-pei wares at Gulf coast sites provides
some of the necessary evidence ot trade with China.) Such pieces
were mostly moulded. Others belonged to categories known as sil-
houette and double-shell wares. In these, as m sgraffito wares, much
of the decoration was incised with a knife or a pointed object. In the
silhouette type the design was often scraped through a black slip
under a turquoise glaze. Such incised wares continued a fashion w ell-
72,73 established before the Saljuq period. Underglaze painting in blue and
black was also popular, as was a type of translucent white ware, often
pierced for greater effect. Main
ot the more expensive wares bear
hurried cursive inscriptions or Persian love poetry, mostly indifferent

71 (below left) A wedding present' Overglaze-painted beaker in mina'i or hafi rang (seven-colour) technique.
Iran, early 13th century. The narrative, in strip cartoon format, recounts the love storv ii\ Bizhari and
Manizha, a highlight of Firdausi's Shahnama. This beaker long predates manuscript illustrations of the storv
and proves that a well-developed Shahnama iconography existed by c. 1200. H. 12 cm (4.7 in).

72 (below right) The arts were interdependent. Spouted jug, painted black under a transparent turquoise

glaze. Kashan, early 13 th century. The elaborate perforated shell transfers to the fragile medium of ceramics
a technique first developed in metalwork. and better suited to that material.
73 The world of magic. Peep green bowl, in champlevi technique (i.e. with large areas of
slip cut away). Western Iran, i ith century. The sphinx has apotropaic, paradisal and astro
and is also often deputed with the griffin, thereby symbolizing the
logical associations,
journey through the heavens. The rosettes echo this theme. The facial features
sun's
conform to the contemporary ideal of beauty Diam. 25 cm (9.8 in).

m quality, and praise the maker of the piece. Scientific analysis of

pottery has successfully differentiated between the original ceramic
and modern repairs to body and decoration alike, a crucial distinc-
tion since, apart from a cache of lustre wares found at Gurgan, virtu-
ally no medieval pieces have remained intact.
A close connection existed between the most elaborate Saljuq
ceramics and book painting, including - in the case of abstract orna-
ment - Qur'anic illumination, as shown by figural types, narrative
stripsand numerous stylistic features, while many details of the shape
and decoration of Saljuq ceramics handles, stepped teet. Imitation
chains, incising, gilding, fluting derive from metalwork. Similarly,

>>')
 the ornamental sheen and decorative motifs of Saljuq metalwork
reveal close familiarity with manuscript illumination. All this points
both to the interdependence of the arts in this period and to the
existence of hierarchies within the visual arts, since the cheaper arts
copy the more expensive ones — never vice versa.
The recent demonstration that the majority of textiles once
thought to be Buyid or Saljuq are in fact of modern manufacture
has made it imperative to submit all so-called Saljuq silks to
scientific tests, and proper renders premature any art-historical
enquiry into them.
The principal centre of book painting in the twelfth and thir-
teenth centuries was Iraq, which was then under the control of the
newly renascent caliphate (see pp. 125-32). But this painting often
has marked Iranian features, suggesting the existence of an earlier
pan-Saljuq school of painting in which distinctions between Iraq and
Iran were perhaps not very significant. The most likely candidate to
represent the largely vanished art of Saljuq book painting is the verse
romance Varqa va Gulshah ('Varqa and Gulshah'), written in Persian
c c
by the poet Ayyuqi and signed by the painter Abd al-Mu nun al-
Khuyi. This suggests a provenance in north-west Iran, but Anatolia is
a distinct possibility too. The manuscript (in the Topkapi Saray
74 Library in Istanbul) has seventy brightly coloured illustrations in strip
format against a plain coloured or patterned ground, with figural
types of the kind familiar in minax pottery. The paintings have a
strong narrative drive enriched by a complex iconography in which
the animals which figure in many of the pictures take on symbolic
meaning, connoting for example watchfulness, fidelity, treachery and
courage. A fragment of al-Suffs Kitdh Suwar al-Kawakib al-Thabita
('Treatise on the Fixed Stars') in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Or.
133), undated and unprovenanced but probably of the thirteenth
century, might be of Iranian origin. But for all the paucity of the
surviving material, the clear dependence of both fine ceramics and
fine metalwork on manuscript painting and illumination shows
clearly enough the high profile which the arts of the book enjoyed in
the Saljuq period.
Several fine Saljuq Qur'ans have survived. They include dated
examples in Mashhad (466, i.e. 1073 ni tne Christian calendar),
Tehran (485/1092 and 606-8/ 1 209-1 1), Philadelphia (559/1164;
produced in Hamadan) and London (582/1186), as well as examples
which slightly predate the advent of the Saljuqs (London, 427/1036
and Dublin, 428/1037). There are also numerous undated but proba-

100
bly Saljuq examples in Dublin. Paris, Istanbul. Tehran and London,
to say nothing of parts of Qur'ans or individual leaves in dozens of
collections throughout the world. Saljuq Qur'ans are notable for
their magnificent full-page or double-page frontispieces and
colophon pages, often ot pronounced geometric character, with
script in panels taking a prime role. They are known both in naskhi 76
and in 'New Style' (or 'East Persian') Kufic. There is substantial
.1 75
variation in scale - from small one-volume Qur'ans measuring only
[2 > 10 cm (4." X 4 in) to large ones of 41 28 cm (16 > 11 in),
•

and in some the limited amount of text per page resulted in Qur'ans
o( thirty or sixty parts, large and small, each part with its own
frontispiece. The diversity of size and layout extends to the number
of lines per page, which varies from two to twenty, and to the scale.
quantity and placing of illumination. The task o\~ establishing dates
and provenances tor this ample material, and devising working cate
gories for it. has only just begun.
In architecture even more than in other fields the dividing line, so
far as style is concerned, between what is defmably Saljuq and what

precedes that period is very hard to draw, though the Mongol inva-
sion and the architectural vacuum that followed mean that there is a
distinct break in continuity after c. 1220. A few examples will make
this clear.The characteristic minarets of Saljuq type - lofty, cylindri-
cal, on a polygonal plinth and garnished with inscription bands
set

and geometric brick patterning - are known from at least as early as

the 020s (for example at Damghan and Simnan). Of the two Stan-
1
77
dard types of Saljuq mausoleum, the tomb tower perhaps reached its
apogee 111 the Gunbad-i Qabus, dated 1006-7, while the other type, 78
the domed square, had already been brought to a pitch of perfection
in the so-called 'Tomb of the Samanids' in Bukhara, datable before -<>

943. That building also exhibits a highly developed style of brick and
terracotta ornament. Similarly, such standard features of Saljuq archi-
tecture as the trilobed squinch and the pishtaq or monumental portal
are already to be encountered in the tenth century, for example in
the mausoleum of Arab-ata at Tim. The same phenomenon can be
detected in other art forms, for example in sgraffito potter) ^v the
continuity o\~ ring and dot decoration from pre Saljuq to Saljuq
metalwork; and while the quantity and range of architectural tile
work is indisputably a 'Saljuq' phenomenon, its roots 111 Islamic
monuments he as far back as Abbasid Samaria.
The distinctive Saljuq contribution lies rather in tin- final

establishment of several of the J.issu fin ins ot Iranian architecture

^p^^-^1 \\JV> J +>

'\£}gj&±W&> J^ V

-4 {above) Anmi.il symbolism.

Varqa, recuperating m bed from
his travails, asks the maul where
his beloved Gulshah is. Vbrqa w
Gulshah, perhaps Anatolia, inid-
13th century. The clog with his
catch metaphor for Varqa's
is a

persistent and successful son h

tor Gulshah. he narrative moves
I

from left to right.

Saljuq Kufu Qur'an,

1 i
Ran hment Qur'ans were
j6
typically oblong, paper ones
vertical. Note the suprahnear
and sublinear flourishes which
add an expressive dynamism to
the calligraphy. In general, red
dots Add vowelhng; in some
manuscripts, green dots indicate
primary variant readings, while
yellow and blue ones represent
specific orthographic elements or
sounds, or secondary and tertiary
variants in the text. 33.5 x 23.H
cm (13.2 x 9.4 in).
 , Saljuqnos/WnQur'an Copied and illuminated by
Mahmud b ,1 I lu,„., ..I I-

nent inscription
u'itc, in Hamadan in .164. it also has u
st.llhls
headings arc in Kufic; note the interlin,
'

out: it has five lines of text, not the usual

 A tire temple in
Islamic dress. Bukhara, 'tomb
of the Samanids', before 943.
A precocious masterpiei c in
brick, integrating compa t

monumentality with refined

all-over geometric ornament
(derived from basketwork?).
The pre-Islamic open-plan
domed square is enlivened by
engaged columns, gallery
and corner domes.
— (opposite left) Damghan, minaret of Tan
Khana mosque, built at the order of the
chamberlain (hajib) Abu Harb Bakhtiyar m
1026. Typically built ofbaked brick, many
such minarets survived the mud-brick
mosques which they adjoined. This minaret,
now 26 m (85.3 ft) high, probably had an
upper gallery for the muezzin, f

posite right) Syncretism. Gunbad-i

Qabus, [006—7. This tower crowns an
artificial mound and dominates the
'
w\
surrounding countryside; it is > m if>~

II
1
| .;
•

ft) high. Ten knife-edge flanges girdle the

central cylinder in a strikingly modern and

minimalist design. The glass coffin was
suspended under the roof oriented towards
the rising sun. a non-Islamic burial practice
with Zoroastnan associations.

Mausoleum o\~

Ju
So {right) Marital devotion.
the princess Mu'mina Khatun. 'Chastity ot~
Islam and the Muslims". Nakhchivan. 1 1 so. .

builtby her husband, the amir Ildegiz: a

landmark for the use of glazed ornament in
Iranian architecture.

and the capacity o\ Saljuq architects to draw out the utmost

in
variety from these types. Mosques with one. two. three or tour iwans
are known, and the \-iu\m plan receives its classic formulation m
association with an open courtyard and a monumental domed
chamber; a hierarchy ot size distinguished major iwans from minor
ones. The Friday Mosques of Zavara, Ardistan and above .ill Isfahan s I

are outstanding examples of this trend. Saljuq domed chambers are

characterized by external simplicity, with a frank emphasis on the
exterior zone of transition, now reduced to powerful contrasting
geometric planes. The interior of the dome chamber is dominated
by a highly elaborate transition zone (in the Isfahan area this made a
leitmotif of the trilobed arch) whose depth, energy and rhythmical
movement has as its foil the austere, low-relief articulation ot the
lower walls and the inner dome itself Hut other Saljuq mosque
types, such as the free-standing domed chamber or the arcaded hall.
:lso known.
mausolea, the pishtaq was developed from a simple salient porch
In
re.it screen which conferred a grandiose facade on the building

behind it. as at Tus and Sarakhs. he originall) simple formula ot the

I

domed square underwent other major changes too, not.ihk 111 the
8i {above and right) Community
centre. Friday Mosque, Isfahan, 10th century onwards. Successive genera-
and extended this mosque, which was engulfed in the city's bazaars and served
tions embellished, repaired
many functions. The two Saljuq dome chambers mark the principal axis, {right} Beneath the myriad small
domes resembling molehills which encircle the courtyard lies an endlessly varied scries of vaults, many of
them unique. The best of them date to loth— I2th centuries.
 tsite) Tents tor the afterlife. Tomb
towers built in open country at Kharraqan,
western Iran, by the same architect in 1067
and 10S6 for Turkish chieftains. Many details
of Structure and ornament evoke the yurt or
tent of the Turkic nomads. The later tower.
a torn it force of decorative brickwork, has

almost 70 different patterns.

>ht) A lance aimed at the infidel.

Minaret of Jam. Afghanistan, 1 190. Built by
Sultan Muhammad of Ghur, hammer of the
Indians and the local pagans, it bears
quotations from the Qur'anic sura of Victory
and the whole of the sura of Maryam.
traditionally used as an instrument of religious
conversion. Its three tiers rise to a height ot
c. 60 m (197 ft)-
 development of a gallery zone (Sangbast), engaged corner columns
(Takistan and Hamadan), and double dome (the mausoleum of
Sultan Sanjar at Merv). Lofty tomb towers proliferated across north-
82 ern Iran, many of them built as secular memorials for amirs and
others of high rank, though some have mihrabs and therefore served
at least in part a religious purpose. Their form varied: some were
square, cylindrical or flanged, but most had 7. 8, 10 or 12 sides, with
inner domes crowned by conical or polyhedral roofs. Their form was
well suited to the development of brick ornament, for it ensured a
constant change of plane and therefore much variety in the play of
80 shadow. Here, too, are found some of the earliest surviving examples
of glazed tilework.
The impressive sequence of some forty Saljuq minarets com-
prises all manner o\ structural variations, including single or double
staircases with or without a central column. Baring corbelled bal-
conies, three-tier elevations, shafts articulated by Manges and
engaged columns, and - an innovation destined to have a long
history in Iranian architecture - the double minaret Hanking a
portal, whether this was the entrance to a building or the qibla
iwan. Many a symbolic rather than a strictly liturgical role.
have
83 Minarets occur as highly visible free-standing monuments
also
unrelated to Other buildings, and 111 such cases seem to have func-
tioned as land-locked lighthouses.
No Saljuq palaces survive in good condition, though excavations
have revealed the ground plan of the 4-iwan palace at Merv and the
palatial kiosk ofQaTa-yi Dukhtar in Azerbaijan still stands despite its

ruined Hut the palaces of Tirnndh. Ghazna and Lashkar-i

state.

Bazar, all yielding abundant decoration, belong to much the same

cultural sphere even though they are linked to Samanid and
Ghaznavid rulers respectively. The same situation applies in the case
ot the madrasa, a particularly serious deficiency given the unambigu-
ous testimony of the literary sources to the effect that such buildings
were erected throughout the Saljuq empire. Controversial rem. 11ns
surviving at Khargird, Tabas, Raw. Samarqand, and near Sayot in

Tajikistan (Khwaja Mashhad) permit no clear statement .is to the

form of the madrasa in Saljuq tunes. The luxuriously embellished and
largely ruined Shah-i Mashhad ot' 175-76 in Garjistan, identified by
1

its inscription as a madrasa, is a Ghurid foundation, while the build-

ing at Zuzan, dated 615
[218—19 2Uid also identified epigraphically as
a a governor of the Khwanzmshahs. Taken
madrasa, was erected by
together, their awesome scale and magnificence suggest that the

10S
M Massive monumentality Central Asian caravansarais of the tith and [2th centuries, though built for
trade,owe much to earlier local fortified manor houses. The Rabat Malik of 1078, in Uzbekistan, now
i

mostly destroyed, has a stark power and sense of volume which is strangely modem in feeling.

madrasas of the Iranian world in this period far outshone those from
other Islamic territories.
Several caravansarais (lodging places for travellers and their ani
in. lis 1 datable to Saljuq times are known; four of them - K1b.1t 1

Malik. Daya Khatun, Ribat-i Main and Ribat-i Sharaf bear lavish M
decoration. Indeed. Ribat-i Sharaf (probably built 1114 is. repaired
1154—55), Wltn lts huge double courtyard plan (repeated AJccha .it

Qal a m Turkmenistan) is a museum of contemporary decorative

techniques. Such splendour, when linked to its location astride the

main ro.id from Mere to Nish.ipur. 111. ikes it plausible th.it this build

ing served as .1 royalstopover Must Saljuq caravansarais, however, are

built tor use rather than display, with rubble masonry, strong
 fortifications and minimal comfort. In many of these buildings the
prescriptive power of the \-iwan plan made itself felt.

The Great Saljuqs, then, ushered in the last major period ot

ferment inmedieval Islamic art. The innovative power ot this era in
virtually all media cannot be gainsaid - though too little is known ot
the immediately preceding centuries to allow the Saljuqs to be hailed
as the absolute inventors o\\\ given feature or technique. The role of
the Saljuq ruling class was in any case that ot' a catalyst rather than
85 thatof an originator, though influences from steppe society can fre-
quently be detected in Saljuq art. and helped to fashion its distinctive
character. That character had a decisive impact on the art not only of
Iran but of the numerous Saljuq successor states. These close connec-
tions, and thus the full canonical power of Saljuq art. are obscured by
the tendency ot modern scholars to think in terms of watertight
chronological and geographical entities. The key concept here is that
the Saljuq synthesis left its mark on all later Islamic medieval art from
Egypt eastwards.

'Ai'>y *5
85 royal hum of the sun. Stone reli
The lestan. 12th century Hunting here
takes on cosmic overtones, tor the animals forming .1 wheel design (itself found on
ancient Mesopotamian cylinder seals, and especially popular in the J.i/ira. the Caucasus
and north-west Iran at this time) are a solar symbol, representing the full astral cycle
across the heavens.

10
 (MAIM 1 R I IVI

The Age of the Atabegs: Syria, Iraq and Anatolia,

1100-1300

Between the eleventh and the early thirteenth centuries Anatolia and
the Levant experienced something of a power vacuum. Neither the
c
ailing Abbasid caliphate nor the Fatimids were able to extend then-
writ to all these areas, some of them remote from their own home
base, and even tor the Great Saljuqs these regions were peripheral.
c

Thus, while from time to time Abbasid, Fatimid or Saljuq hege-

mony was recognized in some of these territories during the period
under discussion, the norm was for power to be wielded over a
limited area by a local warlord. The political orientation of such
rulers was decisively to the east, however, the focus of orthodoxy and
the Sunni revival, rather than to the ShTite state of Fatimid Egypt.
They tended, for example, to be more involved in the power politics
of Iraq, where the gradually resurgent 'Abbasid caliphate, shorn of its
pan-Islamic power, was attempting to assert itself territorially. This
situation became still more pronounced after about 100. when the I

power of the Great Saljuqs waned just as the Crusaders arrived in the
Near East.
The contemporary power vacuum made it much easier tor the
Crusaders to establish bridgehead and then several fully-
first a

fledged independent states. It became the steadfast aim of the more

important Great Saljuq successor states in the area of Syria, Anatolia
and the Jazira (northern Mesopotamia) - Artuqids, Zangids, Saljuqs
of Rum (Anatolia), Ayyubids - to crush the Crusaders, and the
gradual build-up of Muslim religious fervour to this end. culminat-
ing in full-scale jihad (holy war), can be traced throughout the
twelfth century. But they were scarcely less keen to tight each other,
and the boundaries of their mini-states were m continual flux, espe-
cially .is they practised the ruinous system of divided inheritance, as
had the Great Saljuqs before them. Thus the Rum Saljuq sultan Kilij
Arsl.in partitioned his empire between his eleven sons, bequeathing
them a legacy of envy and strife. The situation was complicated still
further by the rise to power of Still lesser dynasties usually based o\\ a

I I I
single town, such as, in Anatolia, the Shah-i Annan at Ahlat and the
Mengjukids at. Divrigi. Ethnically, these new rulers were neither
Arabs nor Persians but Turks or Kurds, and this added a new element
to the political complexion of the time.
De facto power and the Jazira was now
in the Levant, Anatolia
vested in warlike Turcomans whose tribal and nomadic heritage
inevitably placed them at loggerheads with the peasantry and the
urban populations whom they ruled. They had entered the Islamic
world as the shock troops of the Great Saljuqs, and, proving difficult
for the sultans to control, had been despatched to the outskirts of
Saljuq territory. They had wrested much ot Anatolia from Armenian
and Byzantine hands and had also infiltrated the long-Islamized
territories of northern Iraq and Syria. In the process, they had en-
countered not merely urban and rural Muslims but also Christ-
ians of various confessional allegiances - Orthodox, Armenian and
Jacobite. Similarly, the Ayyubids in the Levant ruled a large popu-
lation of Christians, mostly oriental but some from western Europe.
All this made for a pluralistic, multilingual, multi-ethnic society in-
stinctively hostile to the imposition of orthodoxy. Nevertheless, there
are frequent references in the sources to measures taken against the
indigenous Christians: tor example, destroying churches, refusing
permission to have them rebuilt, or converting them to mosques.
Much of the interest ot~ the ait o\ the Atabeg polities derives pre-
cisely from the wined accommodations which they fashioned with
non-Muslim traditions. They frequently employed non-Muslim
artists. Equally interesting is the undertow o\~ Persian modes m
Anatolia and of Arab ones in Syria and the Jazira. though a Turkish
military elite wasdominant m all three areas.
The Turcomans' version of [slam seems to have had a distinctive
character, involving as it Jul animistic and folk elements absent from
orthodox interpretations of the faith. Hut this did not prevent rulers
of Turkish stock from parading themselves as paragons of orthodoxy.
The political gams of such a stance in the long-drawn-out wars
against the Crusaders were obvious. In the case of the later Zangids
and early Ayyubids. moreover - especially Nur al-Din and Saladin -
the personal piety ot certain rulers is harder to doubt and must have
imparted an extra charge of energy to their prosecution of jihad and
their hostility to the Isma'ilis. The titulature of these rulers reflected
precisely these concerns. Many of these rulers also treated members
c
ol the ulama (religious with special and public marks of dis-
classes)
tinction. They were also great builders of religious foundations.

I 12
Others lavished honour on Sufis and founded special establishments
(khanqahs) for them.
It is extraordinarily difficult to define a significant degree of
homogeneity - politically, ethnically or culturally - in these areas
during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, even though they were
contiguous geographically and experienced similar tonus of govern-
ment. In some ways the period constitutes an interlude' sandwiched
between epochs that were dominated by more powerful dynasties.
Moreover, in the visual arts the inherited tradition differed markedly
from one region to the next, and this alone effectively forbade the
creation of a single style. But the vigour of contemporary art gives
no clue to the uncertain political complexion of the times; .is so
often, the rhythms of art and polities do not synchronize. Not
surprisingly. Ayyubid art continues Fatimid modes. Nurid art m
northern Iraq is clearly a province of the Saljuq art of (ire. iter Iran.
while the Saljuqs of Rum owed much to Armenian architecture.
Hence the difficulty of understanding the place of each of these very
different styles within the composite picture o\~ contemporary art.
Accordingly, to lump them together m a single chapter may smack of
manipulating historical realities. What do Ayyubid Syria and Saljuq
Anatolia have in common? Perhaps what most links them is the fact
that all of them could be described as Saljuq successor sutes - and
that not only because they followed the Saljuqs chronologically but
also because they maintained similar traditions o\~ Sunni orthodoxy
and governmental practice, and were shot through with Turkish
customs and habits of thought.
Saljuq Anatolia was the most long-lived of these polities.
Culturally speaking, it was in many respects a province of Iran. This
situation had its roots in political realities, for the area was originally
overrun by Turcomans from Iran, and the ruling dynasty from sc> i i

was related by blood to the Great Saljuqs of Iran. Soon after the line
of" the Great Saljuqs had been extinguished, the Mongol invasion of

Iran brought in its tram not only unprecedented carnage but also a
new state, major Upheavals in religious practice, and new cultural
priorities. These factors caused a stream of Iranian refugees to seek
asylum in the safer, more familiar and congenial atmosphere o\

Saljuq Anatolia. Persian poets, mystics and men of letters like Kuim
and Nasiral-1 )m Tusi received a warm welcome m court circles,
where the language of cultural interchange was Persian, where
viziers of Persian origin Hike the Pcrvanc. Bunijirdi and the Jmaini
brothers; wielded power and the court hromclei's dike Ibn Ihbi a\\A
(

i i
I
Aqsarayi) wrote in Persian. was the same story in the visual arts.
It

Persian architects and tileworkers left their names and those of their

home towns on Anatolian buildings from Konya to Divrigi. Much

Anatolian luxury pottery favoured and continued the themes and
techniques of Saljuq Iran (as at Qubadabad), as did the local metal-
work (e.g. the basin known as the Nisan Tasi). Even Anatolian mau-
solea replicated, though on a smaller scale and in stone rather than in
brick, the forms of Iranian Saljuq tomb towers.
A Saljuq Anatolian provenance has been proposed for the earliest
surviving illustrated Persian manuscript, the romantic epic Varqa va
Gulshah (see p. ioo). By far the closest parallels to the style and
format of its cartoon-strip pictures are provided by the so-called
1

'small Shahnamas ('Books of Kinds' whose provenance has long

i.

been disputed. This is because they do not tit easily into the evolu-
tion of book painting in Iran proper during the fourteenth century,
in which the influence of ideas derived from China is ubiquitous.
True, these Shahnamas contain occasional references to Mongol
costume and armour, but that is entirely appropriate in view of the
imposition of Mongol rule in Anatolia after the battle of Kose Dagh
in 1243. Given the close kinship of the hgural types of the small
Shahnamas with those of lustre and mina'i pottery, given too the
Iranophile and Iranophone nature of the court culture of the Rum
Saljuqs, and finally given the remarkable fondness for archaic
Shahnama names evinced by successive Rum Saljuq rulers
Kaikhusrau. Kaika'us, Kaiqubad - it does seem at least tenable to see
these small Shahnamas as a kind of refugee .in and thus to consider .is
a possible provenance later thirteenth-century Anatolia, with its per-
vasive fashion tor all things Iranian, even though - or perhaps
because - the area was Mongol protectorate. The choice o( text
.1

would then evince a st.umch patriotic commitment to the home

country - temporarily down, but emphatically not out. That said,
equally strong arguments could also be marshalled for a provenance
in Iran itself.
The absence ot a major Islamic power in the region ot Syria,
Anatolia and the Jazira meant that each dynasty tended to establish its

own court, and ot' course these local "courts', if th.it is the right
word, varied size and sophistication. It was the Saljuqs of Rum
in
whose was the most ambitious and lavish of all; they were at
lifestyle
pains to model their court ceremonies on those of the (Jre.it Saljuqs,
and their chronicler Ibn Bibi provides detailed descriptions of the
protocol followed at public audiences, banqueting, the hunt and

114
16 The classical afterglow. Alexander the Great - a powerful and mythic totem tor last and West alike
ascending to heaven. Detail of bronze plate inlaid with 7-colour cloisonne enamel hearing the name of the
Turkish Artuqid prince Da'ud (reigned 1114-42). This object is thoroughly international. It bean nisirip
dons in Arahic and Persian: its technique is Byzantine; and its iconography has Byzantine, Georgian and
Islamic connections.

Other activities. Whether it is strictly accurate to speak in terms of an

Artuqid court, on the other hand, is another matter. These rulers
were campaigning tor most of the year and were therefore constantly
on the mow. and - unlike the situation under the Great Saljuqs
they did not have an established bureaucracy to back up political and
They had their palatial
military control with administrative authority.
residences m their - examples have survived m Mardin,
citadels
Mosul. Diyarbakr, Aleppo and smaller castles hke Sahyun and they
would at tunes commission works of art such .is doors and automata.

1 1 s
 illustrated manuscripts and enamelled metalwork. It is even possible
that by the end of the twelfth century palace workshops were main-
tained on a regular basis.
But by far the major expression of was religious
royal patronage
architecture. In this respect the ruling class was conforming to an
ancient Islamic ideal which dictated that the ruler should build
widely for the public good. Thus it was standard practice for amirs to
build madrasas, usually with their own tombs attached, as soon as
they had the means to do so - and it was this custom above all, more
than any government-sponsored building programme, that ensured
the rapid spread of these institutions of learning throughout the Near
East in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Large cities like
87 Damascus and Aleppo had scores of such monuments, while in
Saljuq Anatolia the tally ran to several hundred in the thirteenth
century alone. Indeed, it is here that the early architectural history of
the madrasa institution can best be traced. The function did not
require any particular form. Domed madrasas focused on a single
large chamber with adjoining cells and occasionally a courtyard may
perhaps have catered for a reduced clientele of students, while the
more ambitious 2-iwatl or \-iwan madrasas, which were often graced
88 with imposing 2-minaret facades as at Kayseri, Sivas or Erzurum)
could house substantially larger numbers. In some larger cities
competition between viziers seems to have generated increasingly
elaborate buildings.
Mausolea proliferated even more, becoming the favoured means of
conspicuous consumption m architecture. In Syria the standard form
was a domed square, relatively plain inside and out, with the all-
important identification of the tenant, complete with genealogy and
titulature. on a panel over the door. Much of the appeal of such
buildings lies in their stonework. Egypt preferred something bigger
and grander, with a much more elaborate /one of transition incorpo-
m the tomb of al-Shaffi. In
rating multiple tiers of squinches, as
northern Iraq rather squat square tombs with pyramidal roofs and
facades m decorated and glazed brick were the rule 'for example
those of Imam 'Awn al-Dm and Imam Yahya b. al-Qasim). Further
south the muqamas dome reigned supreme, with a sculpted many-
tiered sugarloaf on the exterior matched by an inner dome like a fit-
fully illuminated honeycomb (asin the tombs of Sitt Zubaida and
e
Umar al-Suhrawardi in Baghdad); the fashion spread briefly to
Damascus as can be seen in the funerary madrasa and maristan of Nur
al-Dm). But it was in Anatolia that the mausoleum genre was

SS {opposite) College tor the religious elite. Erzurum. Qiftc Minare Medrese, before 1242. This, the largest
madrasa in medieval Anatolia, accommodated perhaps a hundred studentv A mausoleum was added 1284, c.

perhaps by Padishah Khatun. the wife or" two Mongol khans. The building is of local volcanic stone, except
for the two Iranian-style fluted brick towers with dazed ornament.
 B7 [above) The teaching of the law Al-Firdaus Friday Mosque and madrasa, Aleppo. 123 s f>. limit byI>.ufa

Khatun. the wife of the local ruler. Sultan al-Malik al-Zahir - it was a tunc of lavish female patronage of
religious buildings - it illustrates a newly fashionable type, the funerary complex. The marble floor with
geometric designs is a local speciality.

I
— M -

's$t-n

E
89, 9° The pervasive Middle Eastern fashion tor m.uisolca dates from the ith century onwards and took
i

many forms. At Gevas {left) in eastern Turkey the tomb tower of Hahma Khatun. 1335, has clear Armenian
connections in material and design; the mausoleum ot Sitt Zubaida {right), built c. 1200, has a standard
Iranian lower half, decorated with geometric brickwork, but is crowned by a conical muqamas dome whose
external form has ancient Mesopotamia!! associations.

explored with the greatest energy and ingenuity The preferred type
So was the tomb tower, as it had been m Iran tor the preceding two

centuries: a circular or polygonal lower chamber (often with an

90 underground crypt for the body) crowned by .1 conical or polyhedral
roof.Yet now. probably under the impetus ^\ ideas drawn from
Armenian church architecture, the articulation of the facade by
medallions, animal sculpture, blind arcading and multiple mouldings
— all executed in stone - transformed the Iranian model. Brick mau-
solea of authentic Iranian type were common in eastern Anatolia,
while to the west and south forms cognate with the Syrian tradition
flourished. Iranian modes, expressed in cylindrical brick minarets
(Raqqa and QaTat Ja'bar) and decorative brickwork (Raqqa Gate)
were also briefly fashionable in the later twelfth century in eastern

91 (opposite) The mosque as dynastic memorial. Congregational mosque of 'Ala al-Din, built intermittently
between ns> and 1220. in Konya. the Rum Saliuq capital. Its hypostyle or Arab plan, with re-used
columns, includes a dome chamber in the Damascus manner, and two royal mausolea. It shows the use of
carpets not only for the comfort of the worshippers but also to inject colour into the interior.
 «$ \

92 Entrepot for the slave trade. Dock at Alanya 'Ala'ivva. a city founded m I22fl by the Saljuq sultan 'Ala
al-Din Kaiqubad and exceptionally named after him. It wax a summer resort and a fortified seaport of
strategic importance, with an artificial harbour. In this rare example of Islamic naval architecture, with five
brick-vaulted galleries some 40 m (131 ft) deep, large ships could be built safely and secretly.

Syria, while Damascus and Aleppo saw a brief classical revival which
manifested itself in astonishingly accurate renditions ot classical

mouldings, and the like.

capitals
More than any other contemporary dynasty, the Sal]iic)s of Rum
concentrated their patronage of the arts into the medium of architec-
ture. And it was not only in the genre o\~ mausolea that they com-
bined their own ideas with others taken from Syria and Iran to
91 fashion a new style. The architecture of the mosque, tor example,
experienced an absolute transformation. The gable type popularized
by the Damascus mosque, the ancient Arabian hypostyle, the Iranian
\-iwan schema - all found a place in the Anatolian world, but all
were subtly changed by a new emphasis cm an integrated domed
space. It may well be that the germ of Ottoman religious architecture
is to be sought here. As in the case of madrasas and mausolea, the

sheer number of mosques is as remarkable as their variety. The

cumulative impression is unmistakable: there was no building tradi-

20
93 Castles of commerce. Caravansaiai at Tercan, eastern Anatolia, early i.uli century Ik- plan is th.it of a
I

madrasa with two iwans (hays) m its living accommodation, hut it has additional lateral halls, which served as
stahles. Such buildings, usually financed by the state, punctuated the major overland routes .it intervals
o\\\ day's journey.

tion m the entire Near East to rival that of the Saljuqs of Rum in the
thirteenth century. This was partly due to the geographical position
of their territories, which made them open to ideas from east, west
and south; but a consistent commitment to architecture by the ruling
elite made it possible for local schools to flourish mightily, so that
even minor Anatolian towns can often boast major monuments in
this period - most of them constructed in finely dressed stone.
The consistent state involvement in architecture is seen to best
advantage in the network o\~ kluiuswhich
or caravansarais criss- 93
crossed the country. Many of them have fortifications on a scale
better befitting a castle than a stopover tor the caravan trade. he\ I

could often hold scores of travellers and hundreds of animals. Ornate

and stately portals give on to an open, arcaded courtyard, rrequend)
furnished with a central raised kiosk to serve as mosque. Cells tor .1

travellers lie behind the arcades. On the axis of the entrance there
may be .1 lofty three-aisled extension oi ecclesi.istu.il aspect. I his
 94 (kft) The click of castanets.
Dancer on a gilded glass (wine?)
bowl with the title of the Atabeg
Zangi (reigned 1127-46). Cliches
of Islamic (and Byzantine) images
of dancers include the raised right
foot indicating a dance step, the
three-quarter depiction of the
head, the frontal torso, and the
tree. Dancers, like musicians, were
regarded as children of Venus and
thus under the influence of that
planet.

9> {opposite) The Turkish image

of power. Group of cross-and-star
tiles, palace of Qubadabad. 13th
century. The disposition of tiles

and the firing technique are

Iranian, but the iconography draws
on pre-Islainu Turkish snuru
tombstones) from Inner Asia I he
cobalt used for the blue colour was
worth its weight in gold and was
doled out carefully to selected
potters from the royal treasury

space was used tor stables. Chains of Saljuq caravansarais serviced

particular trade routes. Thus the slave trade from the Black Sea ports
used north—south artery departing from Sinop and terminating at
a
Alauva. where the ample docking facilities helped in the trans-
shipment ot the slaves to Mamluk Egypt. Net other routes hooked up
with the long-haul traffic from Iran and points east, and also with
Syria and Iraq. About a hundred of these caravans, irais have survived,
perhaps a quarter ot" the total originally built - telling testimony to
the administrative efficiencyof the Rum Saljuq state.
This Saljuq architecture, built tor the most part of well-dressed
stone and sometimes employing ornamental marble inlays which
suggest Syrian workmanship, has a wonderfully varied decorative
repertoire. The traditionally Muslim predilection tor geometric and
vegetal themes is enriched by Armenian interpretations ot such
motifs - for in the largely Christian hinterland of eastern Anatolia,
Armenian architecture was m full flower. Figural carving abounds, m
flat defiance of standard Muslim practice, and is found on religious

and secular monuments alike. Its themes sometimes reflect Armenian

influence, but the dominant impression is of a pagan Turkish

\22
thought-world rather than an Islamic one. especially m the images of
lions, eagles and bulls. L3ut elements from the ancient Near East
isolar images, fish motifs, the lion/bull combat) and the East Asian
animal calendar also appear, as do the astrological and planetary
images so popular throughout the Middle East in this period Glazed
and plain brick ornament of Iranian type, often executed by Iranians,
was also popular; in fact glazed tilework, perhaps developed with the
help of Iranian craftsmen fleeing from the Mongols, reaches a level of
design and technique unequalled in Iran for another century or so.
Figural tiles - mma\ lustre and above all underglaze-painted in blue 95
and white - were used lavishly in the Saljuq royal palaces at Konya,
Qubadiye and Qubadabad.
Iraqi architecture of this period is uneven in quality, though its
decoration - whether in carved stucco, terracotta or polychrome
inlaid marble - is often splendid. In the area of Mosul there flour-
ished, from the later twelfth century onwards, a school of figural
carving which decorated khans (Sinjar), palaces (Sinjar and Mosul).
c

mausolea (Mosul), bridges (Jazirat ibn Umar) and city gates .it Mosul
and 'Amadiya. Sometimes the themes .ire ceremonial .it Sinjar, for 96
example, tiers of the ruler's mamluks, each bearing an emblem of
office, flank a throne niche - but animal themes dominate, including

griffins, lions, serpents and dragons, .ill of which seem to have served
an apotropaic function, as on the appropriately named Halisman Gate
at Baghdad. Similar designs, augmented by heraldic and astrological

motifs th.it often refer in punning fashion to the ruler himself, appear

1 2
 96 The sultan's slaves. Royal niche from
(left)

Sinjar.northern Iraq, before 1240. A small

baldachin above the apex of the arch marks the axis
of sovereignty; in the remaining niches plant motifs
alternate with images of beardless figures in military
dreNs holding emblems of office. These are specially
selected slaves destined for high office.

97 (below) Sympathetic magic. Apotropaic relief

at the apex of the now destroyed Talisman Gate,

Baghdad. 1221-2. Like its accompanying magic-

saturated inscription, it underlines the role of the
caliph al-Nasir as sole divinely appointed head of
the Muslim community; it symbolizes his victory
over two internal enemies: the Grand Master of the
V- tssins and the Khwarizmshah Muhammad, both
of whom died around this time.

c language of power. Mustansiriya

madrasA, Baghdad, Inscription dated 63 i_.;_ 3

commemorating the building of the 'noble madrasa

tor the students of wisdom, which brings happiness
to 1 and us) an illuminated path in the
alb creation
eye of God' by the ruling caliph and calling down
God*S blessings on him. The text is replete with
Our'anic echoes

on Atabegid coins. The same visual language is to be found in con-

temporary Syriac churches in the Mosul area (Mar Behnam and Mar
c

Shem'un), and in the Yazidi shrine at Ain Sifiii nearby.

The Friday Mosque ofNur al-Din at Mosul, completed in 1172,
is notable for a major dome over the mihrab surrounded by a battery

of vaults in the sanctuary. Several contemporary madrasas are known

in Mosul and Wasit, but these pale before two masterpieces of" the

98 genre in Baghdad: the Sharabiya and the Mustansiriya of 1232. The

latter was built by the eponymous reigning caliph on a massive scale
as an instrument of politico-religious propaganda, as shown by its
huge external riverside inscription extolling the caliph in letters
almost a metre high. It was designed to serve all four major schools

of Islamic law - a major innovation which turned it into a symbol of

Muslim unity and resurgent caliphal power. No standard plan was
followed in these structures, though all those in central Iraq are on
two floors and feature monumental portals and rooms opening off a
central courtyard, itself often furnished with iwans. The Sharabiya
(formerly known as the 'Abbasid palace)
is notable for its narrow
corridors crowned by multiple of steeply stilted muqamas vault-
tiers

ing arranged in diminishing perspective towards a distant vanishing

point. These vaults exploit illusionistic devices m an entirely novel
way They are covered in lacy terracotta carving of remarkable preci-
sion and intricacy whose closest parallels lie. intriguingly enough, in

Central Asia.
The thirteenth century witnessed the first golden age of Islamic
book most of it produced m Syria and Iraq, where the
painting,
major centres were Mosul and Baghdad. The reasons for this sudden
flowering are obscure. That it soon spread very widely - to Iran.
Egypt, even Spam - is beyond doubt. To be sure, earlier Islamic
painting on paper exists, but the rubbish-heaps ofFustat have yielded
only individual sheets with illustrations ofmosdy indifferent quality,
while high-grade illumination was confined to Qur'ans. itcrar\ 1

references prove conclusively that illustrated manuscripts were pro

duced .it the 'Abbasid and Samanid courts, and that examples of
Sasaman book painting were carefully preserved in southern Iran in
the tenth century. Moreover, astronomical texts had been illustrated
for centuries - the earliest surviving version ol al Sufi's realise on '
I
99 The old gods die hard. Apotropaic frontispiece to 77i<- Treatise on Snakebite, 1199. his bod I

written during an eclipse, which was perhaps thought to nuke its recipes tor snakebite more
effi< a. ious.
In popular belief, eclipses happened when the monster Jawzahr swallowed the sun or moon; hence the
personification of the moon (of Babylonian origin) is within the serpents' stomachs. Note the echoes of
Buddhist iconography. 2 1 \ 1 4
 vN*4Vr"*i

i
Mark ol nw nership rontispiei e if I

.1book from 2< volume set ol the

i
'

Kitab al-Agham ('Book ol Songs') m. ide

fbi the >iimi oi Mosul. Badi )in .il I

I ii'ln', [217 [9 he patron, whose

I

name appears on Ins .h tnbands, is

resplendent in moiri silk and sable in > hat

.mil. ii) .m unusual adaptation oi stan dard
enthronement u onography, towers i >vei

Ins .nit like i oui tiers. I lying angels (

Ol

Yu hold an honorifi< canopy ovei

ioi ies)

his head. E< hoes ol Byzantine at l

abound

the Fixed Stars' was produced .it Baghdad in [009. No claim can
therefore In- entertained tor the chronological primacy ol thirteenth
century painting. But it docs seem likely th.it hook Illustration was
onU sparsely practised in earlier centuries in tin- [slami< world, .mil
th.it this .it least m
part due to the severely practical and didactic
was
function to which was confined. The notion th.it illustrations to
it .i

text could be inn seems to have dawned on [slami< .utists only

during the thirteenth entury. i

Sunt- few ol the extant illustrated manuscripts are dated, and fai
fewei still .m- provenanced, the detailed history ol tins school oi
painting has occasioned lively debate. he m rem scholarly nuistMi I <

mis favours Iraq .is the prin< ipal ( entre ol production, with ateliers .it

Mosul and Baghdad, and secondary Syrian school based .i it

Damascus. Production srnns to have tailed oil dramatically after the

s.u k ot Baghdad by the Mongols iii 1258.
The debut of this vigorous and inventive school oi painting is

cK-c idedly low key. Byzantine influent es .in- dominant both in the
choice ot texts, the- subject in.ntei oi whuh is largely botanical and

127
 pharmaceutical, and in the didactic and diagrammatic style favoured
for the illustrations. In this tradition, which continued that of the
world, the picture was the handmaiden of the text, although
classical
in some cases - such as the very popular Automata manuscripts, o\
which fifteen copies are known - the pictures were needed to make
sense of the text. There was no question of giving them an elaborate
background or frame - indeed, the plain colour of the paper serves as
the background - or of allotting a full page to An illustration.
One important exception to this rule, however, must be noted. In
accordance with classical and Byzantine precedent, the frontispiece
used a full-page painting to honour either the author or the patron
of the manuscript - or even both. This practice had classical roots,
themselves reworked in the Byzantine evangelist portraits which may
have been the immediate source of the Islamic version. Hence the
omission of the author's muse: hence, too, the gold background and
the white highlights on the drapery. The Islamic contribution is .it
first limited to details of costume and architecture. By degrees the

range of options widened to include visual references to the content

99 of the work (Paris Kitab al-Diryaq, "Treatise on Snakebite', 1199;
Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa, 'The Epistles of the Sincere Brethren'. 12N7;
MukliLir al-Hikam wa Mahasin al-Kalim, 'Choicest Maxims and Best
Sayings') or to the activities o( court life (Vienna Kitab al-Diryaq\
1

100 Kitab al-Aghani, 'Book of Songs .

Byzantine influence makes itself felt even in the layout of some o\

these frontispieces, which mimic the division of space used in ivoi\
polyptychs. Lavish application of blue and gold, imitating Byzantine
enamelwork and chrysography, to say nothing of iconographic motifs
such as angels or victories and the symbolic use of drapery, lend
some ot these frontispieces an unmistakably Byzantine flavour. So
too do drapery conventions and details of costume. Nor is this sur-
prising, given that the Islamic paintings associated with northern
Mesopotamia were produced in a predominantly Christian milieu,
and that Jacobite painting had a strong impact on them. Where the
manuscript was rounded off with a fmispiece, the design would be
identical to that of the frontispiece (Kitab al-Diryaq, 199; Mukhtat al-
1

Hikam u\i Mahasin al-Kalim), perhaps following the example of

Qur'anic design. The layout of all these frontispieces quickly became
the vehicle for quite complex messages which had to do with sub-
jects as diverse as talismanic protection, the royal lifestyle or scholarly
activity, whether co-operative or confrontational. Yet for .ill their
Byzantine flavour, these paintings also looked to the East. Some

[28
facial types, for example, with their slant eyes and heavy jowls, are
familiar from Saljuq lustre pottery, while other figures are best paral-
leled in mina'i work.
Alongside the practical treatises, which maintained their popular-
ity throughout the thirteenth century and even later to some extent,

and which gave Arab painting such a potentially wide range, con-
temporary taste also favoured works of literature or belles-lettres whose
entertainment value was paramount. Two works in particular enjoyed
widespread popularity: the Maqamat ('Assemblies') ot al-Hariri (d.
1 120) of which more than a dozen illustrated thirteenth-century ver-
sions survive, and the collection of animal fables known as Kalila wa
Dimna ('Kalila and Dimna'). The text of the Maqamat consists of fifty
episodes m the career of a con-man, one Abu Zaid, whose trickeries
depend on his surpassing mastery ot the Arabic language. Al- Hariri
was a wordsmith who fashioned each maqama so as to exploit the full
resources ot the language. Virtuoso linguistic display is thus the
keynote ot the text, which is peppered with quotations, allusions,
puns and obscure vocabulary. It is essentially a thesaurus oi curious
and recondite terms in which action, narrative and drama are of dis-
tinctly secondary importance, and so it gave minimum encourage-
ment to the artist. In a sense, text and image are at cross purposes.
But the picaresque framework presented illustrators with the chance
to produce some remarkably varied settings, often with a strongly
realistic flavour but occasionally of a fantastic nature too, such as the

images illustrating the adventures of Abu Zaid in the Eastern Isles.

The crowning masterpiece of the school is the Maqamat copied
and illustrated by Yahya b. Mahmud al-Wasiti in 1237, now in Pans. 101

Its illustrations with vitality Husbands and wives bicker,

throb
plaintiffs harangue judges, drunkards carouse in taverns to the strum-
ming of lutes. The artist favours scenes ot intrigue, fraud, disputa- 102
tion: he loves to group his many figures in tight bunches and is at his
best in depicting processions. He relies on precise draughtsmanship
and bright colour rather than on modelling or an elaborate land-
scape. The action is always crammed into the frontal plane while the
background is the neutral colour o\~ the paper itself. Architectural
settings are rendered with a notable precision although without any
attempt at perspective. Indeed, laborious spatial devices .ire consis-
tently avoided. A few do duty tor
fleshy plants landscape and the
.1

sky is rarely indicated. The scene shifts from the slave market to a
village, from a Bedouin encampment to formal parades or pilgrims

departing tor Mecca.

1 .:<;
 indiloquence rewarded.
This is of die
die message
Maqamat, whether the speaker
performs in a secular context or
in .1 religious one (as here, m a

Baghdadi manuscript of
Here, however, the usual
oratorical posturing; of the
disreputable hero. Aim Zaid,
atypicalry serve piety rather
than self-interesl Spotlighted
on a hill, he harangues an
audience of pilgrims, which (in

satirical vein?) even includes

camels Mu< h depends on

gesture and the glance m the
•
-
;
mtexl is deftly delineated
\ well worn landscape
props Note the mahmal or
palanquin, typically used by
noble ladies tor the Pilgrimage

Such illustrations Jo not depend on any earlier pictorial tradition,

and among the main hundred Maqamat pictures of this period no
consistent iconographic cycle can he recognized. All this suggests
that the artists held up a mirror to daily lite and found out ot then-
own resources an appropriate visual equivalent tor what the\ s.iw
though they might haw been inspired, tor example in their choice <>t
103 the silhouette mode, by the contemporary shadow theatre. Hut older-
Near Eastern traditions also make themselves felt in the Strong
outline drawing, theexaggeratedly large eyes and the interest 111
surface patterning which here expresses itself in the technique ot
rendering drapery in convoluted scrolling folds. Given the atrocious
difficulty of the text couched in rhyming prose) one may wonder
whether the t\ood of illustrations (about a hundred in some manu-
scripts), which resulted in a picture for every two or three pages on

30
102 Literacy begins early. This
Maqamat image (possibly
Damascus; the tablet held by
the boy in front states that the
manuscript was executed in
1222—3) shows Abu Zaid in the
guise of a schoolteacher. He
holds a split cane, the
traditional instrument of
correction. Undeterred, his
motley class crowds around
him. with most of the boys
holding a tabula ansata (the
form of which replicates the
writing slate of classical times)
covered with Kufic writing, not
the cursive script one would
expect. The teacher's authority-
is suggested by his greater size,

his stately turban and the

honorific arch underneath he
alone sits.

average, was the result of a specific trend in patronage. Clearly it was

fashionable to possess a copy ot this most popular of contemporary
texts m the field of light literature; and those patrons whose literary
accomplishments were too slight to profit from the text itself could
nevertheless derive enjoyment from the pictures. These, then, arc
some of the earliest coffee-table books.
Much the same could be said of the illustrated versions of the
Kalila wa Dimna, a text of Sanskrit origin which had already been
translated frequently into the languages of Europe and western Asia.
Here the purpose of the text is only incidentally entertainment. Its
real purpose is to provide a 'Mirror for Princes' through the medium

of animal stones whose anthropomorphic quality is only thinly dis-

guised. As with the Maqamat, then, the attractiveness of such manu-
scripts was two-fold. Ancient Indian, 'Abbasid, Sanunid and south

1 1
\
 +***i*GC&eO!Sl

4lfcSv9y

103 Popular culture. Egyptian river boat of painted leather. Mamluk Egypt, 1 sth century.
Prop tor a shadow play; the styie recalls MaqanuA
Hie articulated figures were
painting?.
backlit against a white wall. The contemporary historian Ibn Khaldun noted of the lurks
that they place their archers 'into three lines, one placed behind the other h I

shoot from a squatting or kneeling position.'

Italian illustrated cycles of these stones cither survive or arc recorded

in literary sources and itis therefore no surprise that in the Syrian

and Iraqi versions, too, specific iconographic cycles can be recog-

nized. Bright colours, strong, dramatic profile poses, simple symmet-
rical compositions all combine to push the narrative along. 1 ater
Mesopotamian painting petered out in a stale imitation of the style in

vogue 1240. though court painting

c. in the Persian manner was
occasionally practised in Baghdad.
Speculation has abounded as to the patrons who called this school
of painting into being. The short and unhelpful answer is that none
of these manuscripts specifically names the patron who ordered it,
though the ruler who figures m the frontispieces of the surviving
volumes o( a luxury Kitab al-Aghani "hook of Songs*) wears tiraz
bands with the name of" Hadr al-Din L.u'lu'. The popular nature of
the most trequentlv illustrated texts perhaps encourages the notion
that they were produced either directly for members of a well-to-do
middle class - that very class whose life is mirrored so accurately in
the Maqamal manuscripts - or that they were intended for sale in the
open market. 111 the certain knowledge that a steady demand for such

13-
works existed. Such bourgeois patronage would contrast sharply
with the courtly milieu in which almost all the host Persian painting
was to be produced (see pp. 205-12).
In no area of the visual arts is the flux of cultures represented 111
thejazira and neighbouring areas in the twelfth-thirteenth centuries
more apparent than in coinage. Here a decisive break was made with
the long-established Muslim tradition that coins should bear inscrip-
tions only, and not images. The Artuqid and Zangid rulers minted
literally drawn from
scores ot different figural types bewildering a

farrago of sources. This phenomenon remains basically unexplained.

The aberrant issues were confined to large copper coins and were
thus intended for local circulation; gold and silver denominations
the latter comparatively rare) would have travelled further afield and
thus perhaps remained strictly orthodox in design and content.
Since the copper coins were of substantial size (up to 36 [1.4 mm
in] in diameter), they could accommodate quite elaborate designs.

Their reverses customarily bore confidently executed Arabic inscrip-

tions. Figural themes include more or less maladroit copies of the
busts of dozens of specific Greek, Seleucid, Byzantine, Sasanian and
contemporary Turkish rulers, standing or enthroned figures of Christ
or the Virgin, and planetary and astrological images such as Libra,
Virgo, Jupiter in Sagittarius, Mars in Aries, figures seated 0.1 a lion 104
(Mars in Leo?) or a serpent (the constellation Serpens?), the lion and
the sun, and holding a crescent, a representation of
a seated figure
the moon. Such
images referring to the heavenly bodies are
common in the other arts of the Jazira and were accessible not just to
Muslims but also to people of other faiths. This pervasive fascination.
bordering on obsession, with astrological imagery may well reflect, as

104 Malignant planets. Artuqid

coin, Mardin, 1 199-1200,
depicting Mars. Detailed familiarity
with astrological concepts was
expected of a man of culture and is

a stock-in-trade of medieval Islamic

literature, especially Persian poetry.

Reporting on the arrival of the

Crusaders on the Levantine coast
in 1096. al-'A/uni adds laconically

'Saturn was in Virgo': in other

words, disaster was imminent.
recent research suggests, the abnormal frequency of eclipses and
other celestial phenomena in this area and period, which must have
struck dread into the hearts of those who experienced them. Other
themes include horsemen; double-headed eagles; angels and Victo-
ries; and affronted or addorsed heads, sometimes crowned with

eagles. On occasion Roman and Byzantine models turn up on the

same coin, or a borrowed type is altered for no clear reason - thus
Herachus has his beard shaved off. Some of the prototypes were well
over a millennium old. which armies some antiquarian interest on
the part of the mint-master: others were recent Byzantine issues.
They share an indifference to the accurate rendering ot the model;
hence their frequently grotesque proportions. Other designs rnajj
have been copied from seals or other small objects, and would thus
have had to be reworked for use on a com.
What characterizes this body of coins above all is the random,
jackdaw interest m the disjecta membra of the past a past which had

been inherited by virtue of conquest. Sometimes the design refers in

punning fashion to the ruler himself In that sense these unns could
be interpreted as a formal pi \\\A. ancient non Islamic

coins provided a ready-made numismatic source for royal iconogra-

phy - so perhaps the Turcoman rulers adopted these ancient imperial
busts as self-poitraitS. The Christian themes of SO man\ of these
coins can be explained by the tact that the population in these terri-
tories was largely Christian and had long been accustomed to exclu-
sively Christian copper coinage. As with funerary and architectural
of these coins is that m a Iurkish
sculpture of figural type, the lesson
context the hand of Islamic orthodox) la) rather lightly, and that
artists were accustomed to look very far afield for inspiration.

Medieval twelfth- and thirteenth-centur\ Syrian ceramic wares

include fine specimens of lustre and of undergla/e. the latter typically
m turquoise and black :ns has yielded the most distinctive
'

group, and several glazed apothecaries' jars can be associated with

Damascus, but the exact localization of the numerous no ailed i

'Raqqa' wares, with their trademark silhouette style, is still disputed.

Unglazed barbotine ware in this period, seen to best advantage in the
habb or storage jar. often draws on a remarkably tenacious repertoire
ot pre-Islamic mystical and apotropaic images. Syria also produced
quantities ot glazed three-dimensional ceramic sculpture in this
period - animals, horsemen and even nursing women.
Metalwork reached new heights of technical sophistication in the
thirteenth century. It is now generally agreed that some of the artists
 r@E%

105 /eic washing the hands; made for the libertine Avvubid
de vivre. Brass basin, inlaid with silver, used for
sultan al-Malik al-'Adil; datable [238-40 and signed by Ahmad al-Dhaki al-Mausili. The upper images,
reading left to right, depict a striding falconer, dancing monkeys, acrobatic dancers (one a nude female.
unique in Islamic metalwork); man killing lion; below, man spearing winged quadruped, two moufflons
affronted, bull attacked by winged lion; man fighting bear. H. 19 cm (7.5 in), diam. 4-. 2 cm (18.6 in).

who westward from Khurasan during the Mongol invasions

fled
settled in and that they included metalworkers. The principal
Iraq
centre of production was Mosul in northern Iraq, but the industry
c
also flourished at Damascus and Siirt (Is ird) in eastern Anatolia.
Mosul was tamed throughout Muslim lands for its inlay work in red
copper, silver and even gold, though the technique had been
employed in the Iranian world since the first half of the twelfth
century, as had many of the favoured Mosul themes. The names of
several craftsmen have survived in a sequence of some thirty signed
or dated pieces which can be attributed to the city and which extend
over the entire thirteenth century. Foremost among them was one
Ahmad al-Dhaki who flourished in the 1220s. A hallmark of Mosul ns
work is the intricate background of interlocking T-shapes, while ani-
mated scripts in both Kufic and naskhi scripts proliferated in narrow
hands which compartmentalized the densely worked surface. Other
bands were crammed with figural cycles depicting scones from court
lite - music, banqueting, the hunt, mounted combats, enthrone-

ments; or similar motifs occupied lobed medallions set against geo-

metrical ornament or interlace, as m the Blacas ewer in 1 ondon.

1 ;s
 Bowls, vases, ewers and candlesticks predominated in Mosul metal-
work. The coming of the Mongols enfeebled and eventually killed
the industry in its home city: but local craftsmen took their skills
elsewhere, notably to Damascus and Cairo, to such effect that it is
sometimes hard to distinguish between authentic Mosul production
and that of these other centres.
One short-lived specialization associated especially with Damascus
is represented by a group of eighteen surviving inlaid brasses of
106 extremely elaborate workmanship depicting New Testament narra-
tive scenes alongside the standard cycle of princely amusements. This
suggests less the activity of Crusader patrons though th.it is also pos-
sible) than a new readiness to make such decoration reflect the con-
temporary culture m .ill its diversity - a culture in which native
Christians had acclimatized themselves and m which refugees from
the East were .inning m ever greater numbers. Such mixtures of
Muslim and Christian images are also known in Armenia and Sicily,
areas where Muslim and Christian lived in close proximity. Certainly
many Latin Christians developed, like the Normans of Sicily before
them, a taste tor the luxuries of local life; as a certain lonelier
remarked. 'We who are occidentals have now become orientals'. It
1

would be wrong to interpret such 'Christian metalwork as intended

purely tor Christian patrons, partly because of the strong Islamic
tenor ensured by their Arabic inscriptions and bv scenes from the
Klainic princely cycle, and partly because of the very way that the
Christian themes are treated. The) contain numerous iconographic
solecisms and their layout, with its frequent emphasis on sing)
paired figures m arcades, suggests that visual symmetry counted tor
more than meaning. Thus the Christian themes were rendered more
decorative and less meaningful and their iconographic charge was
defused. The absence of images of the Crucifixion and the
Resurrection is a pointer in the same direction These ke\ event!
were not part of Muslim belief and their absence helped to make
such objects acceptable to the Muslim majority. I his metalwork may
even have connoted the subject status of the Christians under
Muslim rule, as the details of hierarchical placing suggest. Such
works ot art had something to say to Crusaders, local Christians and
Muslims alike: and. although three of the most splendid were dearly
made tor Avvuhid rulers or dignitaries, the majority were perhaps
produced not to order but tor the market.
Damascus, along with Aleppo, was also a major centre tor the rel.i-
tivelv new and technically demanding craft of enamelled glassware.

[
36
106 Pluralism. Brass hanging canteen inlaid with silver and black organic material. The
form derives from pilgrim flasks; its design features units of three. Muslim ornament and
inscriptions alternate with Christian themes: the central Madonna and Child, and the
Nativity, Presentation and Entry into Jerusalem in the outer /one. Their iconography
reflects Christian Syriac manuscript illustration. Diam. 36.9 cm
( 1
4 s in).
.

Here too, alongside the inscribedmosque Lamps produced in large

quantities tor the Muslim market, beakers and goblets - and occa- 94
sionally larger pieces like the Cavour vase, midnight blue in hue, and
the Corning Museum candlestick - found their way into European
ownership. Their decoration of hunting and battle scenes, sometimes
enlivened by topographic.il themes, all executed 111 style akin to the .1

Irani. m mina'i wares, ensured them an 1nten1.1t1011.il success.

'
I
CHAPTER SIX

The Mamluks

In a narrow political sense the Mamluk dynasty began in i:s

direct continuation of Ayyubid rule m Egypt and the Levant, with
the significant difference that power now passed into the hands of
employed by the Ayyubid sultans the Arabic word
the slave soldiers
mamluk means 'owned' Yet while the notion of loyalty to one's
.

master rather than to one's family was theoretically fundamental to

Mamluk society, the reality often contradicted this, and occasional
short-lived family dynasties wielded power in the Mamluk state.

Court life revolved around the sovereign, who like his officers -
had begun his career as the military slave of some powerful amir.
Fresh supplies or such slaves were procured at regular intervals,
mostly from the Eurasian steppe via the great markets .it the Black
Sea ports. The majority ol these slaves were ethnic lurks. hus for I

two and a half centuries the central Arab lands •

and the
Levant were under non-Arab control.
 ioy {opposite) Nascent orientalism?
Anonymous Venetian 'Reception qj
the Ambassadors' , after 14SS. set in

Damascus. Tins symbol of East- West

interface is crammed with accurate

architectural, heraldic and sartorial

detail: the lure of exoticism makes

itself felt in the emphasis on

extravagant headgear (note the sultan's

spoked turban) and on non-European
animals like the monkey, camels and
gazelles.

10S [right) "Seek the bounty of your

Lord by trading' (Qur'an 2:199) ~ the
Prophet Muhammad was himself a
merchant. Lithograph by David
Roberts. [849. Bazaar of the silk
merchants in Cairo, sandwiched
beween the towering funerary
complex of Sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri,
1".
504. High windows leave ample
I

room for stalls below. Such

foundations, deliberately over-
endowed for investment purposes
(see ill. 111). effectively legalized
self-interest.

On Mamluks achieved spectacular

the broader political scene the
successes. Above all, it was they who turned back the seemingly irre-
sistible tide of Mongol conquest and decisively prevented a Mongol

takeover of the entire Near East. Beginning with the first major
c
defeat inflicted on the Mongols by an Islamic army - at Ain Jalut
(Goliath's Spring) in 1260 - they maintained a steady and successful
defence for more than half a century against repeated Mongol incur-
sions in Syriaand the Hijaz. At the same time they flushed out the
Crusaders and the Armenians of Cilicia from their remaining strong-
holds and thereby established a grip on the Levant which was not to
be broken until the Ottoman conquest in 1517. Thus they were able
to present themselves to the rest of the Muslim world as the succes-
sorsof S.iladin and the upholders of Islamic orthodoxy. In the process,
they confirmed and extended the Egyptian dominance of the Near

139
East begun in the Fatimid period. In the field of art and architecture,
this entrenched primacy of Egypt was Mich as to inhibit the develop-
ment of separate, individual styles in the Levant, and to eclipse Iraq.
Indeed, when the Mongol invasions created a widespread refugee
problem, Cairo was the obvious haven for the displaced craftsmen
from Iraq and Iran. Hence, it seems, the sudden flowering of metal-
work in Egypt and the introduction of glazed tilework, high drums
and ribbed domes into Cairene architecture. Only in the far west o\
the Islamic world, sundered from Egypt by thousands of miles of sea
and sand, did an Arab art independent of Egypt continue to flourish.
The key to Mamluk art is the city ot Cairo. This was quite simply
the greatest Islamic metropolis of the Middle Ages, and reduced to
provincial status even such renowned cities as Damascus. Jerusalem
and Aleppo. It had inherited not only the prestige o\ HA^hddd. but
also - because it now housed the 'Abbasid caliph, even though he
was no more than a puppet - the religio-pohtical authority that was
inseparably linked to the institution of the caliphate. In that respect
Mamluk Cairo was able to play the central role tor orthodox
Muslims which had been denied to it as the capital ot' the Shfite
Fatimids. Cairo was better placed geographically than was Baghdad
to be the pivot of the Arab world, but by the same token it was o\~
course further removed from the Iranian sphere and the lands still
further east. Nevertheless, its favoured location meant that its hori-
zons opened on to the Mediterranean and thus the Christian cultures
to the north, as well as on to the \KcA Sea and so the trade with India
and South-East \sia Mamluk trading interests embraced the Italian
city-states, notably Florence; southern Russia and the Eurasian
steppe, the source ot the slaves on which the M.unluk elite
depended; and the trade spues and other luxuries with India and
in
points east. For all these products Cairo was the natural mart. This
far-flung international trade helped to make Cairo the most cos-
mopolitan Muslim city of its tune. As such it provided the perfect
setting tor the tales of the Thousand and One Nights, a text which
took shape in the Mamluk period, although its milieu purports to be
thatof early 'Abbasid Baghdad. It says much tor the glamour of late
medieval Cairo that it could take on the mantle of the most pres-
tigious o\~ Islamic cities.
That glamour was in large measure created and sustained by the
public pomp and circumstance which distinguished the Mamluk
court. An anonymous Venetian artist working in the late fifteenth
century captured the pageantry ot a Mamluk procession in a painting

140
(now in the Louvre) entitled The Reception of the Ambassadors. [07
Gorgeous turbans, heraldic blazons, festive hangings and stately
steeds all play their part in a carefully stage-managed spectacle. That
same theatricality permeates Mamluk architecture, which of course
provided the setting for so much of public life. The emphasis on
facades is especially telling in this respect. Paradoxically, the sheer
quantity of surviving Mamluk buildings seems to haw deterred
scholars (with the exception ot Meinecke) from tackling the archi-
tecture of this period as a whole. Individual monuments have
attracted close study, but a few detailed monographs are a poor
exchange for a full general survey. The last two centuries of Mamluk 1 m
rule in particular - in other words, most of the period in question -
have been especially neglected. This means that no general picture
has yet emerged of how Mamluk architecture changed in the course
of almost three centuries.
One major factor in these changes was the sheer density of urban
development in medieval Cairo. Given that space was at a premium
(and this was equally true in, say, Jerusalem), architects not only had
to think in terms of gap sites, with all the shifts and compromises
which that entailed, but also were almost forced to develop their
buildings vertically rather than horizontally. The canyons of modern
Manhattan were foreshadowed in the great thoroughfares of
medieval Cairo, especially in Bain al-Qasrain, effectively an extensive
open-air gallery where the buildings ot one royal patron after
another vied for space. The resultant emphasis on facades often con-
flictswith the basic need for a qibia orientation. Solutions to this
problem became a deliberate aim pursued with increasing sophistica-
tion in a wide range of buildings; and often the aim is to ensure not
that the building should proclaim its Mecca orientation from afar but
rather that the facade should blend smoothly into context, leaving
accurate qibla orientation for the interior alone, safely out of sight.
The same emphasis on outward appearance dictates that minarets
are subtly designed so as to yield their best only at root level and
above. Open loggias or belvederes break out atsecond-storey level.
In dome chambers, bulks-eye windows - single, double or in groups
- lighten the zone below the cupola; powerfully sculptural roll
mouldings accentuate the chamfer th.it marks the extern. /one ot il

transition. Narrow portals streak upwards to explode as in the

Sultan Hasan madrasa - some 25 111 (So ft) up in a vault of sunburst

design. Homes are set on high drums and develop a vocabulary all ot
their own. full ofarchitectur.il fantasy: a high stilt, rippling ribs like

1
\\
fefcjjll
military men Small wonder that their domes resembh
helmets. The larger doi (
liro, fittingly
symbolizes his wealth and status. Its interlocking networks ofstellai and arabesque design
synchronize to perfect* in three dimensioi

organ pipes, networks or arabesques or of geometric designs. I hey

became a natural focus of attention and the architects consistently
exploited the fact that they were visible from .ill skies, lower walls
are kept deliberately plain so that they function visually as sheer dirts.
If they are given articulation, the effect is again to emphasize their
height - whether by minor salients, pilasters or mouldings.
Although the almost continuous building boom, and its

concentration on three or tour building types, imposed a certain

* w-H
sameness on the architectural forms themselves, the architects had
plenty of room for manoeuvre in the choice, the type and the
placing of ornament. Certain architectural features in particular
:
became the focus for decoration. F lat lintels with shallow relieving
arches above proved consistently popular, with the individual stones
or voussoirs of either lintel or arch, and occasionally both, taking
ever more complex and baroque forms. Eventually these interlocking
voussoirs were executed in marble of different colours. The motif of
the radiating shell niche, originally Fatimid device, was definitively
a

removed from its earlier preferred context of the mihrab, though the
keel arch in use for some time. Instead, during the Bahri
continued
period (1250— 1382) the shell motif was widely employed all over the
exterior of a building and now developed into a multi-framed
flattened muqarnas composition.
Fenestration takes on a new importance. Mamluk architects
favoured long narrow windows with gridded screens to provide
external articulation and also to reduce and modulate the play of
light within. Windows animated, for example, the base of a dome
and the zone of transition. In a single building - such as the itinerary
khanqah of Baibars al-Gashankir - they can vary continuously

110 'The best protection tor the community's money

community itself said the Prophet. lence the
is the ' I

small domed treasuries in some mosques, as Mosque at llama. Syria, originally a church
here in the Great
(8th— 14th centuries). This example - probably Umayyad - employs re-used Byzantine columns. The
square minaret derives from local pre-IsLmiic Christian bell-towers.
 l I l {left) The sultan's turrets.
Funerary madrasa of Salar and Sanjai

m al-Jauli,
complex,
Cairo, 1303-4.
a charitable
served to keep wealth in the family;
The funerary
endowment,

thus relatives tilled key posts and

shared in surplus revenues. The
Mamluk obsession with rank and
status resulted in domed private
mausolea hijacking the public
madrasas which were ostensibly the
purpose of such foundations.

posite above) Luxury flats tor

medieval merchants. The wakala or
khan of the Mamluk sultan Qansuh
al-Ghuri, Cairo, IS04.-S. Its revenues
serviced his funerary madrasa next
.ivH>r he lower two stories served as
1

warehouses and workshops, with a

gallery for easy circulation; the upper
part consisted of apartments tor rent,
each on three fk»

posite below) Antiquarianism

with an agenda Mausoleum of
Sultan Qala'un, Cairo, 1284 s his I

interior, opulent even by Mamluk

standards, echoes the porychromy
and varied media and textures of the
id monuments of >amas< us I

and Jerusalem, and quotes from them

the octagonal plan, vine scroll baud
and arcaded mihrab Is Qala'un
claiming something *>t their san< titv
and thereby legitimizing his dynasty?

in both scale and shape. Some o( their tonus - such .is the double
Lancet window with crowning oculus - may evolve from contem-
.1

porary European st\les. Aside from their function of providing light

and ventilation, they operate .is black voids in blank external wall,
.1

and thus animate otherwise dc.u\ space. This contrast between a plain
expanse and some form of articulation is favoured device of
.1

Mamluk architects. It can best be appreciated in the densely carved

openwork medallions which so frequently garnish Mamluk facades,
such as that of the funerary madrasa ofSunqur Sa'di. New forms of
window grille, usihl: the time-honoured vegetal and geometric
modes, made their appearance as in the mosque ^\ Baibars or the
1 13 Qala'un complex), often framed by inscription bands. Similar
epigraphic friezes girdle the bases of domes and even of columns.

U4
 ll
Ml 'III]
 In the Burji period (1382-15 17), however, it became common
practice to employ the wall as a neutral surface for panels of elaborate
ornament like pictures in a gallery. Since much of the colour in
Mamluk interiors was provided by polychrome marble inlay and not
principally by more perishable materials, its effect can be measured to
115 this day. Integral to the overall impact was the use of ablaq (literally
'piebald'): marble used in bands of contrasting colours, for example
horizontally along a wall or vertically in the sorhts or undersides of an
arch. It was handled with consummate virtuosity in mihrabs to
produce explosive radiating designs, and was ideally suited to parade
the complexities of interlocking voussoirs. Fresco, mosaic, enamel
and stained glass widened still further the range of colour and texture.
Mamluk architectural decoration is distinguished not merely by its
strong sense of colour but also by its pervasive sculptural quality This
finds expression, for example, in multiple mouldings with intricate
and profuse detailing, but most of all in the enthusiastic application
of honeycomb muqarnas vaulting to surfaces suitable and not so suit-
able: portal domes, niche hoods, squinches, mihrabs, and tier upon
tier of cornices on minarets. Whereas m other Islamic traditions, tor

114 A mosque in miniature. Minbar

in die mosque ofQijmas il Ishaqi,
Cairo. 1479 si rhe doors serve ai
entrance portal, the steps as die
principal qibU axis, the arch at the
top a miniature mtlimb surmounted
by an elaborate muqamas domical
construction I Ik- imagery o( Light,
suggesting spiritual illumination, is

pervasive ivory, gilding, steUai and

sunburst designs, and lamps galore.

1 1 > I hieves stealing from thieves'

was how the i sth-i/enturv historian
1/1 des< ribed 1 ontemporar)
( lairene patrons of an hitecture; the
dearth of line materials forced them
to rans.uk earlier buildings. Here,
the salient facade of the nunlhhii.
mosque, mausoleum and khanqah of
Sultan Barquq, 1386, employs two-
tone marble veneer and a bronze
oculus grille.
:#***** p m p> m •' » * •
n6 In the shadow of the pyramids. The Egyptian obsession with death resurfaces in new guise under the
Mamluks. The funerary complex (mosque, mausoleum, nuuhusa, khanqah) of Sultan Inal. 1 4. s1
— < in the so-
« .

called City of the Dead in Cairo, flouts the Prophet's insistence on modest burial.

example in Iranian nlework or Iraqi carved terracotta, the applied

ornament within the individual muqamas cells in of major visual
importance, in Mamluk buildings their sculptural role, intensified by
of light and shade, is paramount.
stark contrasts
The presence of so main major buildings in Mich a small space is

not confined to Bam al-Qasrain. It is repeated in the area of the

Eastern Cemetery and. on a lesser scale, in other parts of Cairo.
More to the point, perhaps, it recurs m
Damascus, Jerusalem
Tripoli.
and Aleppo. The sheer quantity of Mamluk architecture tells its own
story. Buildings tend to make
their impact en masse rather than indi-
vidually. Each draws on neighbours - in tact they frequently blend
its

into each other. Altogether more than a thousand buildings of

Mamluk date survive in the Near Fast, and they pose insistently the
question 'why?' For all that such buildings perform a notional func-
tion - prayer, burial, teaching, accommodation - the fact that time
and again they cluster close together in areas where they can be
assured ot the greatest public exposure (notably the area of the
Haram al-Sharif and its surrounding streets 111 Jerusalem) betrays
quite another motivation. This building activity was fundamentally
competitive. Of course it also had an economic function, in that it
allowed an amir to sink his money in an enterprise whose charitable
status protected it from confiscation or a later takeover, but which

148
could nevertheless benefit his descendants as well as serving the
wider public. Above all, though, the building of such monuments
was expected of a member of the Mamluk elite once he had reached
a certain position. By so doing he joined the club. And he was also
playing his part in ensuring that the dominance of the Mamluk elite
was well understood by the average citizen.
Hence, perhaps, the emphasis in Mamluk architecture on those
individual elements of the design that have the most direct impact:
domes, portals and minarets. Again and again it is these elements that
dictate the entire aspect o\\\ building, as if the rest of the monument
were of merely secondary importance. This may help to explain the
modular nature of so much Mamluk architecture and why the more
interesting monuments are those specifically designed for an unusual,
often prestigious site or purpose, or those m which the architect has
had to grapple with an unfavourable setting - say site - or has
a gap
tried to accommodate in one structure the divergent axes o\~ the
street and the qibla.

The obsession with hierarchy and status was carried further in

Mamluk society than anywhere in the medieval Islamic world.
Presumably it had much to do with the thorough militarization of
the ruling elite. Whatever the reason for it, the result was to per-
meate the art of the period with references to official rank. At one
level this was achieved by epigraphy Mamluk calligraphers found an
ideal objective correlative to the class-conscious and rank-dominated
court in the mannered script which they developed for official
inscriptions. Form matches content to perfection. The inscriptions
which unfold so majestically and rhetorically across the surfaces of"
hundreds of metal bowls and dishes, ceramic vessels, glass lamps and.
ot course, buildings, often list a lengthy protocol of titles held by
even quite minor officials. Their impact is intentionally cumulative,
and this again is as true visually as it is of their meaning. Formality
and discipline are of the essence, and are indeed taken to extremes.
These inscriptions seem so designed that their massed uprights stand
at attention like soldiers on parade - no mean teat w hen one consid-

ers the uneven distribution of vertical letters in a given piece of

Arabic prose. It is a and resource of' the
tribute to the flexibility
Arabic alphabet th.it it cm express such rhythmic power. The effect
could be likened to a drum roll or a fanfare of trumpets. Moreover,
the nouns and epithets which constitute these titles .ire carefull) bal
anced not just for their meaning but also tor rhyme and rhythm,
assonance and alliteration. A typical sequence might read and it

[Q
 helps to utter the words in Arabic, so as to transmit at least some
c
flavour of their grandiloquence: \zz li-maulana al- sultan al-Malik al-
c e
Nasir, al- alim, al- amil, al-mujahid, al-murabit, al-muthaghir, Nasir al-

Dunya wa'l-Din ('Glory to our Lord the Sultan, the victorious king,
the learned, the diligent, the holy warrior, the warrior on the fron-
tier, the guardian of the frontiers, the protector of the world and of
the faith'). Such inscriptions are of course intended not merely to
117 inform. They boast. They assert ownership. They advertise power,
and often - if the object they decorate has a religious purpose - piety
as well. And they naturally function as ornament too. Not surpris-
ingly, such inscriptions were widely copied - in Nasrid Spain, in
Central Asia, southern Iran and even Sultanate India.
Rank was expressed in Mamluk times not only by inscriptions - as

had long been standard practice in the Islamic world - but also by a
new device: the blazon. Like the distinctively-styled official Mamluk
epigraphy, blazon functioned as a logo of possession and
the
identification, and was almost as pervasive. Indeed, within half a
century of the appearance of the first such blazon in Egypt, its stan-
dard form - a circular medallion with a thick horizontal strip at the
centre — had already been adapted to carry epigraphic messages. The
commonest of these was 'Glory to our Lord the Sultan', but it soon
became common practice to tit into this same format an abbreviated
version of the sultan's titles or a reference to him by name. Thus was
developed the epigraphic blazon, perhaps the single most defining
characteristic of Mamluk art
The blazon, then, tunc tioned as a kind ot livery and was encoun-
tered very widely m the Mamluk domains, and even beyond. Thus
the Mamluk amir Qarasunqur. who suffered political disgrace and
had to seek asylum in Iran, nevertheless saw to it that his mausoleum
in Maragha bore the emblem of his long-defunct rank as polo-
master. Not all of the symbols employed have been fully explained,
but there is general agreement on the meaning ot most ot' them —
not, as it happens, because ot detailed explanations in literary
sources, but because a given blazon is often accompanied by an
inscription identifying the official in question. The remarkably rich
and detailed historical sources covering the Mamluk period make it
possible to put together quite a full biography of many high officials,
and both to trace and to date the various promotions of their careers.
Coins are a very useful check to such sources, since they are strictly
contemporary documents, and many of them bear blazons.
Considerations ot ready legibility, easy reproduction and symbolic

150
expressiveness ensured that the designs of these blazons were kept
simple. It is instructive to note that these blazons postdate the first

European coats of arms, which the Muslims may well have encoun-
tered as early as the First Crusade (109s onwards). By the early
twelfth century European powers were using .is emblems the lion,
the fleur-de-lys and the eagle. Certain similarities of design, such as
the round or shield-shaped cartouche which enclosed the emblem
proper and made it a blazon, and the division of the field into separ-
ate segments, seem to support such a connection, as does the use o\'

certain animals, for example the lion that was the personal totem oi
Sultan Baibars, or the double-headed eagle associated with Nasir al-
Din Muhammad. Similarly, a rosette was used for two centuries as
the dynastic emblem of the Rasulids in the Yemen. A high-stemmed
cup indicated the butler, a napkin the jamdar or master of the
wardrobe, paired polo sticks the polo-master, a bow the bunduqdar or
bowman, a sword the silahdar or sword-bearer, a fesse (a plain three-
fielded shield) the courier, a crescent or horseshoe the stable-master,
a ewer the quartermaster, a round table the royal taster and a pen-

box the secretary. Other devices included the mace, the banner and
the drum, all connoting specific offices.
These logos are almost exclusively the preserve of the nobility; the
sultan himself used an inscribed roundel or shield as his emblem.
However, neat as these definitions seem, they should not be taken .it
face value, for the evidence of Mamluk copper coins and ceramics
demonstrates beyond question how indiscriminately these images
were employed - whether as emblems of authority (e.g. the eagle
with wings displayed), as specific blazons, or as mere decorative
motifs. The random way in which they are combined points to the
same conclusion. A similar debasement can be traced in this period
in the use of titles, so much so that the lengthier and more high-
sounding the title is, the lowlier the rank of the person who claims
it. What is new in these devices is that blazons were used as emblems

and identification tags of official rank - the office rather than the
man. As such it was appropriate for that blazon to be used for every-
body and everything within the household of the amir in question.
Hence the sheer ubiquity of blazons in Mamluk art - and their effect
was no doubt intensified by the importance allotted to colour in
their design (indeed, the Arabic term for blazon is rank, meaning
'colour'). Sometimes the enclosing shield is subdivided and holds
Several emblems, thus functioning as a composite blazon. Sometimes
such blazons were used collectively by all tin- slaves or mamluks ot .1

I si
sultan. These various distinctions all reveal a society obsessively con-
cerned with rank and status.
Aside from architecture the major art form in the Mamluk period
was unquestionably metalwork. Many hundreds of pieces are known;
probably the social system of the Mamluk military elite, which
favoured a complete service of objects as part of the appropriate
ambience of an amir, offered a powerful impetus for their produc-
tion, and ensured a steady demand. Hence, no doubt, the predomi-
nance of pieces bearing lengthy official titulatures. The sudden
efflorescence of elaborately executed metalwork m a region which
appears earlier to have lagged well behind the best work of the age,
as exemplified principally by the schools of Herat and Mosul, sug-

gests that strong influences from abroad revolutionized the local

situation. To what extent this change was wrought through imported
techniques or through an influx of large numbers of actual craftsmen
from Iraq and Iran is a matter of some dispute.
When Mamluk metalwork is considered as a whole, the immedi-
ate impression is one of mass production, and thus inevitably of a
decline in quality in comparison with earlier metalwork in the
eastern Islamic world. This impression is based on a scries of inter-
connected changes, embracing shape, material and technique, as well
as the sheer quantity of surviving pieces. In comparison with
twelfth-century metalwork. the range of shapes is now drastically
reduced. This is not to deny that a wide variety of tonus can be
found m Mamluk metalwork. but the overwhelming majority of
pieces falls into a tew well-defined categories: lamps, basins, candle-
sticks, dishes, h now became common practice for the more popular
pieces to be cast. The material changed too. From the thirteenth
century, brass began to replace bronze. In this might not be
itself",

regarded as a significant concomitant veering of

innovation, but a

fashion away from inlay work resulted in a much reduced chromatic

range. In place ot multicoloured inlay work, metalworkers turned to
engraving and thus produced monochrome metalwork.
It seems probable that short cuts were taken in technical matters

too. The preference tor huge inscriptions as the principal decorative

accent, their relatively uniform style, and the tact that most of them
comprise formulaic sequences, probably encouraged the use of tem-
plates, whether in thin metal, paper, leather or other materials. Thus
quite elaborate objects could be executed m a relatively short time.
But it was also inevitable that the metahvorking industry would
succumb to staleness and repetition, especially at the lower end of

i s:
the market. Here thin-walled single-metal wares prevailed, then-
vegetal or geometric engraved ornament of somewhat restricted type
setting off the dominant inscription band. Sometimes this ornament
adopted Far Eastern motifs like the lotus or the peony, a reminder
that the Mamluk domains provided a ready haven tor refugees from
the East. But these were little more than cosmetic changes; they did
not herald a thorough sinicization of Mamluk decorative vocabulary
The best Mamluk metalwork is ot course an entirely different
matter and is a worthy continuation of" the Mosul school. Such
pieces as the incense-burner ot Muhammad b. Qala'un, the pen-box
of Mahmud b. Sunqur, the mirror made for Amir Altunbugha, and [19
above all the three works signed by or attributed to the craftsman
Muhammad b. al-Zain - notably the Baptistere de St Louis - invite 11.x

comparison with the very best of Islamic metalwork. Such pieces,

made for sultans or high amirs, display dazzling technical skill, fre-
quently innovative shapes and above all a capacity to cram the
worked surface with all manner of designs. In the works of
Muhammad b. al-Zain, the technique of inlay is pushed further than
ever before and placed at the service ot a wonderfully fluid and
ingenious pictorial composition. Hunters, grooms, animals and
vegetal scrolls intermingle and overlap with no sense of strain.
Surfaces are carefully differentiated by modelling and hatching -
birds' feathers, animal tun the scroll-folds ot a tunic. Preternaturally
elongated salukis, leopards and other animals prowl along narrow
borders. Facial features are rendered in sufficient detail to allow
ethnic distinctions to be made, and figures adopt a variety of poses:
they turn to speak to each other, bend their backs to shoulder a
burden, look up or down - and all this in the context of music-
making, banqueting or taking part in a ceremonial procession.
In such pieces, metalwork begins to take on the lineaments ot"
painting. The purpose of the design is apparently to capture the spirit

of court life rather than to tell a particular story; as such, it replaces

the benedictory inscriptions so often contained within similar bands.
Whether a pun is intended - whether the serried upright
deliberate
figures acting out their privileged lifestyle are intended to evoke the
rhythmical sequence of upright letters m inscriptions referring to
that same lifestyle - must remain a matter of speculation. It is perhaps
more likely that the manipulation of epigraphy to create succession .1

of tightly massed uprights deliberately conjured up the image oi a

protective hedge surrounding the property of an amis or a sultan, tor
all the world like verbal bodyguard. Earlier animated inscriptions
.1
117 (kfi) Epigraphic overload. Brass
hexagonal table inlaid with silver, dated
1328 and made (presumably in Cairo) by
Muhammad al-Sankan (?). As full of
official inscriptions as ill. 1 18 is empty of
them, it is a tour deforce of epigraphy, with
the words 'Glory to our Lord the Sultan,
al-Malik al-Nasir Muhammad' repeated
DO less than $4 times.

118 (below) The supreme masterpiece of

Mamie metalwork? Syrian?, 1300; brass c.

inlaid with silver and gold. Proudly signed

six times by its maker Muhammad b. al-

Zain, the 'Baptistere de St Louis' was

employed until 1856 to baptize infants of
the French royal family. With remarkable
narrative flair, the roundels show rulers
hunting or righting, while Hanking panels
show the aftermath of each activity. Soon
inscriptions replaced these witty and lively
figural scenes.

•
posih I he ruler as cosmocrator.
Bronze mirror with gold and silver inlay
made by Muhammad al-Waziri for 'Ala'
al-Din AJtunbugha (d. J42), viceroy of 1

Syria and cup-bearer to Sultan Nasir al-

Din Muhammad It symbolizes the

universe note the planetary and zodiacal

signs ruled over by the sultan, w hose-

central epigraphic 'image* and radiating

inscription have solar associations, like the
rosettes and outermost r.i\ I
indicate that the visual connections between animal or human bodies
and the lettersof the alphabet had been thoroughly exploited a hill
century earlier. Such puns would not be the only imaginative use of
inscriptions in this period. In later Mamluk times, tor example, the
severity of the tightly-packed thulth inscriptions was offset and light-
ened by changes in the upper epigraphic storey, for example by
devising pincer-shaped terminations for the shafts, or intercalating a
second inscription half-way up the forest of shafts. The radiating
inscriptions found on some of the best Mamluk mctalwork irre-
sistibly evoke the image of the sun, an ide.i driven home by the use
ot gold inlay for the letters. And the phrase 'Glory to our I ord the
1
Sultan at the centre of the sunburst harnesses such solar imagery to
the glorification of the ruler.

I ss
 Yet other pieces employ a well-worn visual vocabulary of solar,
lunar, astral, planetary and astrological images of talismanic intent.
The lavish use ot gold and silver inlay not only renders such pieces
more precious but is also singularly appropriate for such themes. It is
characteristic of these more ambitious pieces that they operate on
several different levels both visually and intellectually, with for
example both Luge and small inscriptions on the same piece, or
major and minor themes.
The Mamluk metalworking industry by no means followed a con-
sistent development. On the contrary, it had its full share of ups and
downs. One may cite the sudden fall in the production ot brasses
between c. 13S0 and c. 1450, or conversely the lavish output under
Sultan Qa'itbay (1468—96). Economic factors may have played a

significant role here - shortages ot' the more expensive metals, a

ruthless quarrying ot precious materials from earlier buildings, a new

ingenuity in making a little metal ^o a long way (for example,
designing doors so that they contain roundels and other isolated ele-
ments in expensive metals which are attached to cheaper materials).
The increasing scarcity ot copper and silver meant that objects and
accoutrements in these metals and ot" course gold) disappeared
almost entirely, and the metalworking industry also suffered exten-
sively as a result of continuous inflation which peaked between c.

1394 and c 141C); its effects were exacerbated by armed conflicts

between rival Mamluk groups, [amines, plagues and disastrous tires.
and by the Mamluk government's insatiable demand tor silver and
copper to mint the coins needed to buy new mamluks when war was
decimating their supplies of manpower.
Mamluk glass is closely related to contemporary metalwork in the
vocabulary of its decoration: it favours the same heraldic motifs and
epigraphic style. At the top end of the market, namely enamelled
glass, most of the known production was ot mosque lamps - with

the odd exceptions provided by beakers, perfume bottles, bowls or

candlestick bases. Here Qur'anic inscriptions - especially 9:18, 'Only
they enter (iod*s sanctuaries who observe the poor due', the
shall
verse which occurs more frequently than any other in Islamic archi-
tecture - supplement the usual parade of titles. Once again, piety and
120 propaganda converge; tor when lit, these lamps would have blazoned
forth not only the word of God but also the names and titles of the
greatand the good. In this medium too. patronage was effectively
confined to the ranks ot sultans and amirs. In form and technique
Mamluk glass follows traditions established in the Ayyubid period. A

156
particular speciality was dark blue or purple glass with trailing designs
in brilliant white.
Easily the largest body of late medieval Islamic textiles are those
from Mainluk Egypt. This need not necessarily reflect the actual rate
of production - for example, the historian Abu'1-Fida mentions that
c
Abu Sa id, the Mongol ruler of Iran, sent the Mamluk sultan a) Nasir
Muhammad seven hundred precious textiles in 1323, which argues a

well-established luxury textile industry 111 Iran at that time, as indeed

contemporary literary sources confirm. The Mamluk textile industry
was under constant pressure from abroad. Until the late fourteenth
century, it dominated the Mediterranean market, but a mere fift\
years later, undercut by the products of Spanish. Italian and ( hinese
weavers, it had suffered irreversible decline. Yet the fact that these
weavers copied Mamluk textiles so closely is a incisure o\~ the high

international status ot the Mamluk textile industry In Europe, for

instance, with Arabic inscriptions - no matter what those
textiles
inscriptions actually said- were honorific objects. As such they are
frequently encountered in early Renaissance paintings; thus the robe
of the Virgin Mary or the haloes of saints bear official Arabic titula-
ture. This is also why so many ot the finest Mamluk textiles have
been preserved in Western cathedral treasuries, and were used tor the
shrouds European monarchs and for ecclesiastical vestments.
ot
Europe also provided a ready market for Mamluk damasks, probably
made (as the name indicates) at Damascus. Such terms as fustian,
cashmere, mohair, organdy, taffeta, tabby and muslin also point to the
Islamic (sometimes Mamluk) origins of these fabrics.
The single overriding problem in the study of Mamluk textiles is
that of determining whether a given piece was actually made 111 the
Mainluk domains, and if so whether .it Cairo or at other major
centres of production such as Asyut, Alexandria or Damascus. Yuan
textiles made for the Mamluk market have irreproachably accurate
and appropriate Arabic inscriptions but may reveal their Chinese
origin by motifs like chi'lins, dragons, phoenixes and turtles.
Otherwise they can be recognized as Chinese only by their different
style and technique. They may even be signed by craftsmen (such as
c c
a certain Abd al- Aziz) with Muslim names. line textiles were
widely used as a 111. irk of rank or office - for example, a different
textile was hung behind the seat of each member ot the council ot
state - and were often used to drape objects m other materials, and
to decorate or partition architecture and its spaces. Promotion within
the Mamluk hierarchy was often rewarded b\ the gifi o( .1 set ot
iii 'Patience is the blessing of al-Nasir; everything has its appointed end' proclaims this block-printed

linen. Egypt. 14th century. Its decorative repertoire of epigraphy, whirling rosettes and stars is all derived
from more prestigious metakvork.

garments, and elaborate ceremonies involving complete change of

a

wardrobe, literally from head to toe (for both

caps and silk slip-
silk

pers with royal titles have survived), marked the beginning of spring
and of autumn.
The range of patterns and motifs was very wide, but certain types
recur with such frequency that they can be taken as a trademark of
the period - for example, ogival or otherwise curvilinear lattice
designs, sometimes made up of inscriptions, multicoloured sequences
of narrow horizontal bands or vertical stripes containing inscriptions,
floral motifs, or roundels with animals and repeated tear-shaped blos-

soms often alternating with lotuses, peonies or other Far Eastern

flowers. Blazons are often separately sewn on to otherwise finished
textiles. A remarkably high number of of fine Mamluk textiles bear

inscriptions mentioning sultans or amirs, often woven separately in

thin strips and then applied to garments such as sashes or turbans.
The migration of courtly themes to humbler milieux is illustrated b\
the popularity of block-printed linens and cottons (a technique 1^1

perhaps borrowed from India) decorated with the ihuhli Inscriptions

that were so popular elsewhere 111 Mamluk art. for the most part

lis lght is as a im he wherein is

I I a Ian : reads the ins, ription on the ne» k ol

lamp with enamelled decoration mad

this glass quzrimur al-Han
of Sultan Muhammad b Qala'un Hisbla im as the cu|
 these inscriptions refer to rulers or high officials, or are benedictory,
but sometimes they spell out proverbs ('Patience is blessed with
success and everything is rewarded') or apostrophize the viewer (To
whoever looks, am the moon'). Similar sentiments are encountered
I

in contemporary Nasrid textiles in Spain. Indeed, it seems very pos-

sible that textiles were the source for certain design conventions
found in other media. Mich as the division of the field into bands
as found in metalwork. glass and ceramics. The repeat textile patterns

137 found on metal animal sculpture such as the Pisa Griffin exemplify
this. Here, then, is further evidence tor the primacy of the textile

industry in medieval Islamic art.

Finally, Mamluk Egypt tamed tor a unique type of rug whose

is

production can be documented only for the very end of the period
and may have been introduced by refugees from the Qaraqoyyunlu
court in Iran after i4/>~. Their colouring of crimson, lime green and
pale blue is unmistakable, as are their designs, usually dominated by a
123 central radiating stellar form within an octagon, with further
octagons wheeling around the periphery. The kinship of such
compositions with the astral character o\ the frontispieces to Mamluk
Qur'ans or mosque doors leaps to the eye. The binders are usually
taken up by linked circular or oval cartouches, a disposition familiar
in Iranian Qur'ans. Two of the known Mamluk carpets bear blazons,
but none are inscribed, a minor curiosity given the dominance of
epigraphy in Mamluk art generally. Their manufacture continued
long after theOttoman conquest.
Mamluk pottery has remarkably little in common with its Fatimid
predecessors. I ustrebecomes much rarer, though there was a strong
demand tor it in western Europe until production ceased around

1400. Instead, contemporary fashion favoured underglaze wares of

predominantly blue and white tonality, broadly derived from Chinese

.on domestic pottery

reflected the obsession with st.itus.

This coarse, heavy red-bodied ware

was covered with white engobe,
incised with bold, somewhat
playful tludtli inscriptions, painted
in coloured slips And finally glazed
- here, m yellow. An Egyptian
Speciality, it copied metalwork
shapes and often bore annral
blazons and titles.
 firmament on the floor Mamluk carpet, late 15th century The lustrous
•
silk and sheep

I, the dominant intense red palette and the radiating solar and stellar designs
which find parallels in
Mamluk marble fl< ns and stoi md also Buddhist mandalas ch
carpets generally
 porcelain, as in the many Burji Mamluk hexagonal tiles also made in
Syria. Frequently the wares are divided into radiating segments, while
vertically striped or multitoil designs are also common. Creatures
borrowed from the Chinese repertory, such as geese and ducks, also
make their appearance, and Yuan celadons were widely copied in the
Bahri period. The impact of Chinese Ming ceramics waxed ever
stronger in the later Mamluk period. A popular category of glazed
yellow and brown sgraffito wares, presumably mimicking the more
122 prestigious metalwork of the time, was mass-produced for the amiral
market and displayed blazons and inscriptions giving official titles.
These seem to have been made m sets. The Fatimid penchant for
signing ceramics continued apace; some thirty signatures have been
found on Mamluk wares. >amascus, it seems, bade fair to rival Cairo
I

as a centre of production, especially tor underglaze wares. The work-

shops there, to judge b\ style and the references to Tabrizi craftsmen,
seem to have derived inspiration from Iran, as did the masters respon-
sible for the tilework in early Ottoman Bursa at the same tune. In no
medium of Mamluk art is the evidence tor the strength and consis-
tency of the trade links with the Far East clearer than it is in ceramics.
The art of the book m Mamluk times presents a fascinating
paradox. Secular book illustration languished. No single text cap-
tured the imagination ot contemporary patrons in the way that the
Maqamat had done in thirteenth-century Iraq see pp. \z^ ;i or
thatthe poems ot Firdausi and Ni/ann were to do m [ran 'see
p. 224). Mamluk painting b\ and large is the neglected handmaiden
of the didactic text which it accompanies, whether that text is eon
cerned with military exercises fumsiya), annual lore or automata.
Admittedly, some Maqamat textswere illustrated in Mamluk tunes,
but they are cleark at the tailend of the artistic ferment which had
earlier generated the Iraqi school of painting, and the same goes tor

ne, women and song. Islamic

u ene (defying the Islamii
prohibition of alcohol) from the Maqamat
probably made
'

types reflect the

fashion tor Far Eastern ideals of beauty.

tocrati< leisure.
Frontispiece to the Maqamat of al-Hariri,
1337 Produced tor one N.isir al-Din
Taranta'i, probably in Egypt, its

iconography is of Persian derivation

(compare the 1307 Kalila wa Dimna double
frontispiece), and implies (lost) facing
.1

page with an enthroned monarch. Note

the tamed cheetah leaping from the
hunter's horse before chasing the prey.
Female musicians perform below.
 jsy*'*

illustrated versions of the Kalila wa Dimna. A peculiar stiffness invests

Mamluk figural painting and even the depiction of annuals betrays a
quality of rote not entirely disguised by bright, cheerful colours. In
secular painting, then, the Mamluk realms can fairly be described as
a backwater; this work significantly lacks that Far Eastern element
which energizes Liter Mamluk pottery and tnetalwork and which
was of course so consistent an Inspiration for Iranian painters.

[63
 Yet side by side with this uninspired, run-of-the-mill work was
produced the most consistently superlative sequence of illuminated
Qur'ans in the history of Islamic art. This contrast speaks volumes
about the nature ot patronage m the Mamluk period. The manu-
scripts containing secular paintings are for the most part anonymous.
The Qur'ans, on the other hand, very frequently bear the names o\
26 sultans and high amirs. Like so much of Mamluk art, then, this
patronage had a public dimension - for such Qur'ans were com-
monly donated to mosques where they could be displayed. Indeed,
such was their size - often more than a metre in height - that they
could only be read when displayed on a lectern. It was customary,
moreover, for a patron to endow a religious foundation with an
appropriately splendid Qur'an, and given the building boom in
Mamluk times this ensured a steady demand for such luxury copies
of the sacred text. Like so much Mamluk architecture, they served to
proclaim the patron's piety. Some sultans gamed still further renown
by copying out the Qur'an m their own hand. While most Qur'ans
were transcribed m a single volume or m two-volume sets, it was
common practice at this time tor the text of the grandest Qur'ans to

'
 fit

126 opposite) Sultan 'Sha'ban . . .

mm
has bequeathed all this Noble
Qur'an as a legal true bequest to
find favour with his Lord' reads the r

colophon to this single-volume

Qur'an. Illuminated by Ibrahim al-
- -Ml

mxm
Anndi. Cairo, \,~2. Subtly
distorted axes ensure that this
portion of an apparently infinite
pattern fits harmoniously into the
available space. The overall effect
recalls contemporary enamelled
glassware.

ight) The Opening. In the

1372 Qur'an. the first double-page

spread of text incorporates all of
Sura i . the Fatiha, written roughly
twice as large as the rest of the text.

There are three lines to the page.

in black muhaqqaq jali script
outlined in razor sharpness with
gold, and gold roundels as verse
dividers.

be transcribed in thirty volumes; often each page of text contained

no more than three lines. These would be enclosed by cloud-like
tonus which themselves were sandwiched between vegetal scrolls;
and this entire field would then be enclosed by a continuous braided
gold band, with Kufic captions in elaborate cartouches at the top and
bottom of the page. Additional roundels or extra borders animated
the outer edge. All this elaborate ornament would be laid upon an
otherwise empty page; indeed, sometimes more than sixty per cent
of a given page would be empty. Thus the ornament, with its pre-
ponderance of gold and blue, would gam maximum eclat from the
dull ivory of its setting.
These Qur'ans, however, also epitomize the art of the- period in
their formality and conservatism, and in the way that they echo other

16<
 crafts and techniques. Their great frontispieces and finispieces, for
example, are less carpet pages than great doors which swing open to

reveal the sacred text and which solemnly close the book. Their
design is often essentially identical to that of mosque doors in metal-
work or inlaid wood. But the predominant theme of these pages is
almost always a geometric framework of centrifugal designs which
explode with astonishing energy from the central figure. It is hard
not to read such designs as references to the heavenly bodies, espe-
cially in view of the prevalence of gold and lapis lazuli, and the sacred
nature of the text. That text itself frequently employs a stately thulth

127 or muhaqqaq script developed m

a manner akin to the inscriptions on

metalwork, while Far Eastern flower motifs proliferate, as the) do on

fourteenth-century Mamluk metalwork. Occasionally the colours
mimic the tones and the effect of contemporary enamelled glass.

Since such steady, long-term patronage was available from the

highest in the land, it is not surprising that several schools developed
and that the careers of certain craftsmen, such as Sandal, can be
traced in detail. The first such school was that created by the patron-
age of Sultan Nasir al-Din Muhammad, who ruled intermittently
from [293 to [341. Seven calligraphers signed major Qur'ans pro-
duced between [304 and 1372, and the signatures of three illumina-
tors are known from the same period. This suggests the prestige
attached to working on Qur'ans and incidentally indicates that the
calligraphers enjoyed a higher status than the illuminators. Some o\~

these artists also turned occasionally to the illumination of ("optic

Gospel books, winch are thoroughly in the Mamluk idiom. By
degrees a standard format evolved, with a frontispiece comprising a

double-page spread followed by a double page of illumination pre-

ceding the text itself The same arrangement operated m reverse at
the end of the volume.
Sometimes a patron would donate several Qur'ans to a single
foundation; thus in 142s Sultan Barsbay endowed his madrasa with
single-volume, double-volume and thirty-volume Qur'ans. Just as
generations of Mamluk amirs vied with each other to erect buildings.
so too did the competitive spirit - a reflection on the artistic plane o\~

the endless and ruthless jockeying for power m court life - extend to
the production and embellishment of Qur'ans. And this same emula-
tion may itself account for the co-existence of several different styles
of illumination.

166
 ( 11 API ER SEVEN

The Muslim West

The of the Muslim world west of Egypt (the Maghrib) was

art
conditioned to a remarkable extent by its geography. Sundered from

the rest of the Islamic world by the extensive deserts of Libya and
western Egypt, its maritime communications with the East frequendy
threatened by hostile Christian powers, the Maghrib was compelled
as early as the eighth century to turn its focus inwards. This process

was sealed after 1050 with the invasion of the Banu Hilal and other
nomadic Bedouin tribes who, travelling westwards from Egypt.
overran the eastern Maghrib like locusts. Their flocks devastated
good agricultural land, bringing in their wake economic ruin and
permanently destroying the ecological balance of the whole terri-
tory. Sedentary lite contracted; towns and villages, deprived of then-
agricultural hinterland, decayed. The break between eastern and
western Islam proved irreparable. Not surprisingly, this physical isola
tion entailed a gradual but destructive intellectual and cultural isola-
tion. In most fields of Islamic learning, Maghribi scholars were either
unproductive or lagged far behind their colleagues to the east. It is
true that many of them travelled eastwards in search of knowledge;
but this was one-way traffic. By the later Middle Ages, an occasional
luminary like the philosopher-historian Ibn Khaldun stands out by
hisvery rarity.
For some three centuries Muslim Spam, whose history begins
with the Arab invasion in 711, constituted an honourable exception
to this trend. Yet the gradual erosion of its territory as a result of
unremitting pressure from the Christians to the north put an increas-
ingly forseeable term to this intellectual flowering. Even so. certain
cities of Muslim Spam, notably Cordoba and Toledo, were important
centres of scholarship in the secular sciences, such as medicine,
astronomy and mathematics. In Toledo, after the Christian recon-
cjuest and under the rule of Alfonso VI (from mSs) and some of his
successors, these works were translated into 1atm and thence made
their way throughout Europe. Thus Muslim Spam served as the
conduit for mtern.ition.il scholarship to travel tmin east to west.
THE MUSLIM WEST
 But for good reason the Muslims of Spam could not match the
self-confidence of their co-religionists to the east. They lacked the
landsand the wealth, and - less tangibly - the security that came
from being surrounded by a vast and successful community of the
faithful. It is no accident that Spam is more richly endowed in
medieval Islamic castles and fortified settlements - from cities to
villages - than any territory of comparable size in the Muslim world.
For most of its existence - an existence eked out to the threshold of
the modern age, for Granada tell in 1492, the year that Columbus
discovered America - Muslim Spain had a beleaguered mentality,
especially after the tall Umayyad caliphate of Cordoba in 1031
of the
mk\ the consequent proliferation of some forty minor dynasties (the
so-called Even at the height ot its power it was still only a
taifas).

small principality sandwiched between the aggressively encroaching

Christian presence to the north and the Berber-dominated territory
to the south, whose restrictive cultural and religious orthodoxies
were in many ways profoundly at variance with those of Andalusia.
In this relationship. North Africa, for all its vastly greater physical
extent, was undoubtedly the junior partner in most respects, contin-
ually looking northwards for inspiration. This is not to deny that the
lands now subsumed 111 the modern states of Morocco, Algeria and
Tunisia did indeed produce great empires, notably those of the
Almoravids (1 054-1 147) and the Almohads (1 130-1269), which even
ruled briefly in southern Spain. But these states were short-lived and
the activity of their rulers as patrons of art was limited to religious
architecture. This lack of a dynamic or even useful hinterland threw
Muslim Spain back on its own resources. Small wonder that it
looked ever more obsessively back to a golden past.
For indeed the art of the Muslim West cannot be understood
without reference to the Umayyads of Syria. The tantalizing
memory of that dynasty, of its fabulous wealth and power, is the con-
stant subtext of the art of the Muslim West, particularly of Spain, and
of the rest of its culture too. The sole Umayyad prince to escape the
c

massacre of his ruling house by the Abbasids in 750 had. after many
adventures, made his way to Spam, where he had set about recreating
the lost glories of Umayyad Syria in an alien kind. Hence, tor
example, the deliberate rejection of that imperial 'Abbasid art whose
various manifestations infiltrated the rest of the Islamic world, surfac-
ing as far west .is Oairawan in Tunisia. Conceivably this rejection
brought in its tram a corresponding reluctance to develop such major
c

Abbasid art forms as pottery, metalwork and the arts of the book

1 6q
fields which (illuminated Qur'ans apart) are represented in only mar-
ginal form in the Muslim West. Or one could attribute this reluc-
tance to the fact that the Umayyads of Syria did not seriously practise
these arts. Yet another possibility would be to see the key factor as
religious, specifically the dominance of the ultra-conservative Maliki
madhhab, a school of Islamic law whose strong puritanical streak
made it hostile to the arts m general. None of these explanations is

entirely satisfactory, though the fact that they can allbe entertained
might suggest that all these factors played their part. But the absence
of several key art forms practised enthusiastically by Muslims further
east had the effect of concentrating attention on those fields of artis-
tic endeavour that did enjoy popularity, such as textiles and ivories.

In such cases it is Muslim Spam, not North Africa, that produced

work of quality. Similarly, in architecture, the absence of building
types which were commonplace further east, notably mausolea and
khans (the latter absent perhaps because most land-based trade was
with the sub-Saharail regions, and followed routes for which kham
were impracticable would have treed the energies of the medieval
1

Maghribi builder (and the resources of patrons and communities)

mainly for religious architecture. Net cumulatively these various
lacunae would have resulted m an environment in which the visual
arts could nut have had the same impact as they had in the Muslim
East. In some respects, one might even say, the Maghrib might have
struck a visitor from the East as provincial.

The well-nigh crippling mental dependence of" the art of

Umayyad Spam on that of L'mavvad Syria ruled out the constant
replenishment of" forms b\ others from outside that magic
traditional
circle. Thus there is no western Islamic world for the
parallel in the
major change of direction between. s.i\. Saljuq and Ottoman archi-
tecture in Anatolia (in which Byzantium was the alien factor) or the
Chinese element in the painting and minor arts of the medieval
Mashriq - the eastern Islamic lands - or the constant and fruitful
interplay between the various media in Iranian art. It is true that
Islamic ideas and motifs transformed certain aspects of medieval and
even later art in Spam and the Spanish dominions overseas, but there
was no comparably strong reciprocal current of Christian influence
in the medieval art of western Islam. Tradition exerted a vice-like
grip on the visual arts which, despite their distinctive character and
some significant innovations, favoured the mutation of earlier modes,
expressed tor example m a preference for archaizing compositions
made up of confronted or addorsed figures or animals.

170
 The high-water mark of western Islamic art is synonymous with
Cordoba, already .\n ancient city when it was selected as the
Umayyad capital in 756. Andalusia was quickly colonized by Syrian
refugeeswho brought their dialect, their tribal rivalries, their place
names and even their plants with them. It was therefore natural that
the memory o\ the Umayyad architecture of Syria should also be
kept alive. This memory expressed itself in various ways. Tradition
asserts that the Great Mosque of Cordoba, like its predecessor 111
Damascus, was built on the site ot\\ Christian church bought and
then demolished by the Muslims. For centuries, the model of the
Damascus mosque was copied more faithfully in the Maghrib than
anywhere else in the Muslim world. It was the Muslim West and no
other area that adopted as canonical the lofty square minaret tradi-
tionally associated with Syria. The Cordoba mosque used a vocabu-
lary of horseshoe-shaped arches and two-tiered arcades first found at
Damascus, and there too Byzantine craftsmen were called in to
execute mosaic decoration.

128 The Great Mosque. Cordoba. The minaret, like the Giralda in Seville, be.irs an
christian vandals.
elaborate Christian Baroque superstructure. But it was the intrusive chapel inserted into the heart of the
structure in 1523 (tor triumphalist motives?) that really disfigured the mosque Gothic vertuahtv versus
Islamic horizontally - and called down the wrath of the Emperor Charles V upon the local clergy.
 1
2v. 130, [31 Royal precinct
Great Mosque. Cordoba: maqsura,
96] % White columns and arches,
like the .>><> oil lamps, would only

partially have reduced the

claustrophobic gloom in the vast
low sanctuary, often uncomfortably
dose and warm. Amidst this
relative darkness the lavishly
fenestrated and vaulted royal
enclosure around the mihrab stood
out. 1 ight flickered off its golden
mosaics, metaphor of spiritual
a

illumination to which the caliph,

as the prayer leader according to
Islamic law, subtle staked his own
claim as he stood framed in the
rayed mihrab on Fridays. I he mihrab
was the work of a t raftsman
specially brought with his
materials - from Constantinople, a

tribute to the pan-Mediterranean

culture of the time.

Yet these Syrian echoeswhich could be multiplied) do not give

the measure of Islamic art in Spam - often termed Moorish or
Hispano-Moresque. The Great Mosque of Cordoba in particular
developed over the centuries its own distinctive architectural and
decorative vocabulary. In the course o\~ tour expansions in less than
three centuries - a vivid illustration of the additive nature of the
mosque in general - it grew to become one of the largest mosques of
all.This gigantic size seems to have encouraged its architects to
explore subtleties of lighting, repetition and rhythm to a degree rare

1--
m mosque architecture. They
repeatedly employed the vanishing
point to suggest concentration of ornament to exalt the
infinity, and a

area around the mihrab. Yet all these visual effects were, so to speak,
incidental to a major structural innovation called forth by the need to
roof a vast area even though only short columns were available. Extra
height was imperative and was secured by building broad block-like
piers resting on these columns and braced by strainer arches. These
arches were illusionistically lightened by the use of alternating red and
white voussoirs. but the contrast between airy, freely circulating space
in the lower elevation and a relatively dense thicket above was unmis-
takable. In the area around the mihrab, as rebuilt from 96] onwards,
the notion of a forest - an analogy already suggested by the files o\
living trees planted in the courtyard, which would have merged
smoothly with the sanctuary arcades - is intensified. A roval enclo-
sure defined b\ a network ot interlacing multifoil arches with
arabesque decoration creates a blooming petrified garden in which
honorific and paradisal undertones mingle - and from which the
congregation was excluded. A remarkable sequence of ribbed
at large
domes ot gre.it and complexity technologically far beyond
variety
anything known in the rest ot Europe at this time) provides a fitting
culmination for these splendours, and indeed intensifies their impact
by a nexus of interrelated solar and celestial references. his .uv.i of I

the mosque abutted dircctlv on the royal palace and provided a fitting
environment for a monarchy which had only recendy 928 claimed
the numinous title of caliph. The princes o( ( ordoha thus challenged
c

the Abhasids .is the divinely-ordained rulers of the Muslim world,

and their mosque was part of that challenge.
So too. perhaps, is the palace-cit\ of" Madmat ab/ahra outside
Cordoba for it is highly likely that rumours of the fabled luxury of
Samarra soon filtered back to Spain and lost nothing in the telling.
Its marvels included ponds of quicksilver and jasper floors, while the
statue of a Roman Venus over the main entrance was reminder o\~ .1

the Mediterranean heritage o\~ Isfnn. Most of this material was

looted within a ccntur\ of the city's foundation, but excavations haw-
revealed audience halls with columns of many colours and. above all,
abundant carved stu oration with arabesque ornament so deli-
cate that it is almost finicky. This is the authentic idiom of the
Mshatta facade see p. ;;> but somewhat reduced in scale so that it
.

belongs with the minor arts rather than with architecture. Indeed,
the striking absence o\ major buildings at Madmat al-Zahra tells its
own story. Main of the standard hallmarks of royal pomp .ire duly
there -the ceremonial triple-arched portal, the lavish use of water,
the use of axial emphasis to exalt the monarch - but the vital dimen-
sion of scale was missing. Madinat al-Zahra was large enough in all
conscience, but it was apparently innocent of any integrated overall
plan. Its buildings ramble, and none of them is of substantial size.
The will to power expressed so unmistakably in the architecture of
Samarra is just not there. Here if anywhere m the Islamic world was
a pleasure capital.
And this is entirely appropriate, for Cordobaprime had no
in its

peer in Europe for the amenities of civilized houses were

life. Its

bountifully supplied with hot and cold running water, its streets were
lit at night, its royal library - if one may trust the chroniclers - had
400.000 volumes at a time when the major libraries m western
Europe scarcely reached a thousand. In this metropolis, moreover,
Muslim, Christian and Jew lived together with a degree of harmony
rare in the Middle Ages, while Berbers, negroes and Slavs formed
the caliphal bodyguard. Cordoba owed much of its sophistication to
this multicultural and multi-confessional environment.

Yet the rapturous reception accorded to a flashy visitor from

Baghdad, the singer Ziryab. who quickly became the arbiter elegan-
tiarum on matters of taste, costume and etiquette, suggests that main
Cordohans were uneasily aware of their isolation from the rest of the
Islamic world. Indeed, there survives a medieval Spanish silk whose
inscription fraudulently claims that it was made in Baghdad. A similar
dependence on the art of Iraq can be detected in the only known
illustratedmanuscript of non-scientific character from Muslim Spam,
HaMrh Bayad wa Riyad ('The Story of Bayad and Riyacf). a tale of
courtly love. The manuscript is generally attributed to the thirteenth [32
century. The poses and gestures of its figures, often in silhouette.
have a studied intensity which seems to owe something to the art of
mime, do contemporary illustrated Maqamat ('Assemblies') manu-
as

scripts from Iraq. Both schools also share a love for the antithetical
placing of figures in the interests of dramatic storytelling. Yet both
the courtly atmosphere of the Spanish manuscript - so at variance
with the robust, rapacious, street-wise world of the Maqamat paint-
ings - and its ambience of gardens, watcrw heels, polylobed arches,
square towers and luxury pavilions faithfully evoke the spirit oi
medieval Andalusia, the land of the lute and the lyric, rather than
Iraq. The prominence given to women here, which reflects their
roles as scribes, musicians, librarians and poets 111 Muslim Spam, is
also foreign to the male-dominated society pictured in the Maqamat.

i-s
 ^.'yi J, j j
: i
-j* :
u^= ^>}i ;a^»«*l$c<$>
132 Courtly love. The storj of Bayad and Ri\ s ;th century ["his type of romance originates
. 1

in the Udhri poetry of ancient Arabia: idealized, melancholic and unfulfilled. Here the machinating go-
between tries to inject some backbone into the lovelorn youth.

A distinctive style of Qur'anic illumination developed in the

Maghrib and Muslim Spam. The bonks are small, usually about 20
cm (8 in) square The script itself was decidedly different from all the
styles that prevailed further east, tor instance in the tonus of certain
letters, the placing of some diacritical marks and the preference for

the horizontal rather than the diagonal in vocalization. Hut the

prime trademark of this style was the extravagant looping of terminal
flourishes, creating a tangled thicket of lines. Sura or chapter head-
ings are in archaic Kufic unmistakably of Syrian Umayyad
which is

origin, even though this was many centuries out of date. The letters
are usually in gold and are set within ornamental panels. his was I ,1

profoundly conservative style and it continued with relatively little

change almost until modern times. Equally conservative was the
135 preference tor vellum right up to the fourteenth century, at a time
when the rest of the Islamic world had long switched to paper tor
illuminated Qur'ans. As with Qur'ans from Egypt and points east,
there are examples of pages with only tour lines of text, and the

176
words so widely spaced that there is room for no more than a dozen
of them; equally, there are very closely written Qur'ans with over
twenty lines per page. Extreme elongation (mashq) is used here, ax in
Qur'ans produced elsewhere in the Muslim world, for visual, rhvth
line and perhaps spiritual effect. Little progress has been made with
the identification of the individual schools in this tradition. One
major centre for this art. however, was Valencia in the later twelfth
and early thirteenth centuries, where the craftsmen specialized in
full-page square polygonal designs of dynamic, indeed explosive,
character, cunningly interspersed with inscriptions. These composi-
tions, placed at the beginning of a volume and mirrored in the
binding itself, may have had apotropaic intent.
In the minor arts, the glory of the Cordoban caliphate is its ivory
carving. The intense it short-lived concentration on working this

costlv material finds a parallel in the rock crystals made for the eon-
temporary Fatimid court in Egypt. As befits the nature of ivory, the
objects themselves are small, principally caskets, cosmetic cases, i.u- n>
pyxides and the like, which held perfumes, unguents or
Their jewels.
inscriptions mention high-ranking personages of the court such as
the princess Subh, the prince al-Mughira or the chief o\ police.
Ziyad b. Arlah. Recent research has revealed that main such items
were intended as presents to ladies who had given birth to an heir-
apparent, and thus their splendour had a major politic. dimension. ll

Cross-references with architecture may sometimes be detected, as in

[33 leaf from multi-volume

Qur'an in gold on vellum.
Probably Spam. 1 ith century.
The reed pen is produce
cut to
letters of even thickness, unlike
the dramatic alternations o\~

thick and thin found in eastern

Kufic hands. Maghribi scribes
were taught, says Ibn Khaldun.
by writing complete words, not
individual letters. i~ x 22 cm
(10.6 x 8.7 mi.
 and even the celestial associations
cylindrical boxes with domical lids,
of such forms can be exploited, for example by depicting on the lid
eagles whose outstretched wings bear a raved solar rosette. On the
bodies of such objects, affronted creatures such as camels, deer, goats.
and more often those of royal symbolism - usually griffins, elephants,
lions, peacocks and eagles - parade against a backcloth ot densely
carved arabesque which again has affinities with Umayyad
close
work in Svria. Many o\ these animals may have been intended as
references to the royal game park. The grander dimensions thus
implied lend an impressive monumentality to these little objects.
Other images include ruler figures seated in majesty on elephants,
hunting, jousting or banqueting scenes, musicians and wrestlers - in
other words, images derived from the princely cycle first established

in Islamic art by the Umayyads of Syria see p. ;>2 The amount of

detail crammed into such a diminutive space is quite remarkable.
This intricate carving, formerly embellished by bright colours, is
especially appropriate for such precious material and subtly under-
lines the association with jewelry.

musk, .. imphor and

ambcTy;- is the inscription
M i>v|iu- mother
'
the caliph .il I lakam II

Arch.t include the cpigraphu

A the vir ill

•ii.il hunt 1 dated

the
,;l i»t huntei itta< Iced by

•
l.
 hove) Worn by St Thomas-a-
Becket? Made in 16 in Almena.
1 1

the centre of the Spanish textile

industry, this is the earliest Islamic
. embroidery inscribed with both date
and provenance. It was refashioned

into a chasuble and, tradition says,

owned by the saint, a sharp dresser.
Its light-blue silk is embroidered in
gold thread with some 40 roundels
depicting animals, birds, mythical
creatures and courtly scenes.

137 {right) "Talisman. The Pisa

Gnrfm. Probably Spanish. 1 ith
century; the largest Islamic bronze
figure, though much smaller than
some ancient Near Eastern.
classical,

medieval Italian or Chinese bronzes.

Essentially a fantasy assembled from
bits and pieces of many creatures, its

exaggeration betrays very little

feeling tor sculpture. Perhaps one of

a pair, displayed with apotropaic
intent on a pedestal by a fountain or
gateway. H. 107 cm (42.1 in), 1. 87
I
in;.
 Most of these scenes are enclosed within heavily outlined pearled
roundels or rosettes which are joined by knots. This is clearly a bor-
rowing from textiles, and indeed such textiles survive in abundance
from slightly later periods. Tiraz factories operated in Seville and
Cordoba; later, Almena and Malaga became celebrated for their silks,
and indeed at Malaga mulberry groves provided the raw material on
the spot. Fabulous beasts Mich as griffins, double-headed eagles,
basilisks, harpies and sphinxes, plus exotic creatures like lions, ante-

136 lopes, and birds galore - strutting peacocks, eagles and ducks -
formed the repertoire tor such silks. Their rarity or other-worldliness
made them apt ideological symbols of majesty. Many themes,
however, expressed the theme of royal power more explicitly,
whether by inscriptions which gave royal titles or by symbols such as
the lion-strangjer or the eagle seizing its prey Some of these themes
137 turn up 111 the stone sculptures of the Cordoban caliphate, for
example in the troughs now atjativa, Granada and Marrakesh. Others
turn up in metalwork. The bronze griffin in Pisa, triumphantly dis-
played for centuries on the facade of the towns cathedral, was proba-
bly captured as booty m one ot several campaigns against the Muslims
around the turn of the eleventh century. At 1.07 m (3.5 ft) in height, it
is the largest piece of animal sculpture in Islamic metalwork, and
represents a formidable technical achievement. Net its hybrid form
and overall patterning, both markedly anti-naturalistic, betray the
residual unease which Muslim artists felt tor representational sculp-
ture. It may originally have guarded, perhaps as one ot" a pair, the
entrance to a palace or throne room. Its back bears textile patterning
which, like the style of its epigraphy, suggests a Spanish source.

[] ten oiumt.-nt.il
connections, [bledo,
Mosque >>t Bab Mardum,
I -.r. uted in

humble bri< k and rubble,

and later re used as a

( Ihristian c hurch, it

type of nine-
illustrates a

bayed mosque, probably

derived from a Baghdad]
prototype, thai bail spread
throughout much of the
Islamic world by this time.
Here mterlac ed and
horseshoe arches lend it

Spanish character.
139 Islamic rococo. Aljaferia,
Zaragoza; southern portico, after
ioso. This palace of the Banu Hud
dynasty, completed in ioSo. now
autonomous Aragonese
s the
parliament. Note the tiny columns,
stripped of structural function.
marooned in a thicket of interlace
ornament. Partly mathematical
theorem, partly geometry as
contemplation, this is made
deliberately hard to read because
only a small section ot a much larger
design is shown.

The authority- and prestige of the art of Cordoba was such that it
imposed itself on the various lesser Muslim principalities of Iberia,
and continued to do so long after the tall of the Cordoban caliphate,
when the whole country became split into numerous warring states.
Thus the mosque of Bab Mardum at Toledo, dated 999, is in some [38
respects a miniaturized version of the Great Mosque at Cordoba,
complete with a facade of interlaced arches (presumably a toned-
down version ot the sanctuary facade at Cordoba) and a set of nine
patterned ribbed vaults, each one different. Interlaced arches are
again a leitmotif at the palace of the Banu Hud at Zaragoza, known
as Aljaferia (10S0), but they are now earned to dizzy heights ot 39
complexity, especially in the area of the audience hall and the
oratory. The latter building, a kind of pocket Venus in architectural
and decorative terms, is a lineal descendant of the mihrab ba\ at
Cordoba. As for the palace itself, which acquires extra importance
because it documents the art of a period from which very tew
significant remains survive in Spam, and thus provides a link between
Madinat al-Zahra and the AJhambra, it demonstrates yet again how
thoroughly Islamic Spam was m the thrall of Umayyad Syria. he I

multi-bastioned exterior with its single centrall) placed monumental

IM
 140 Islamic baroque. Marrakoh. Qubbal al-Harudivvm. between \l<><> and 1142, inte-
riorof dome. The heritage ofCoidoban vaulting (cf. 1//. 130) in enriched by burgeoning
ornament and a new lightness and aspiration derived from the open -plan design.

gateway quite clearly derives from the desert residences of the eighth
century. Numerous other Spanish Muslim castles echoed this form;
but they did so principally with military intent, where. is in North
Africa (as at Ashir or Raqqada the association with palatial architec-
ture persisted. More generally, the architectural vocabulary of
Andalusia - horseshoe arches, roll mouldings, rib vaults, interlacing
arcades - infiltrated the Christian architecture of the north and even
crossed the Pyrenees, leaving its mark on the Romanesque churches
of south-western France in particular, as .it L.e Puy, where even the
cathedral door bears debased Kuflcizing inscriptions.
The political vacuum left by the demise of the Cordoban caliphate
was soon filled, and from an unexpected quarter. )eep in the newly
I

Islamized territory of western Africa, in what is now Senegal, .1

puritanical movement was gathering momentum. Its members were

141 The Islamic counter-offensive. Rabat. Mosque of Hassan, tower; 1199. Unfinished, but probably
planned to reach 85 m (279 ft) including its lantern. This gigantic size was a symbolic response to the
advancing Christian reamquista of Spain. The exterior is of stone; the interior, with its succession of six
vaulted chambers, is of brick.
#> :-

mT
S
m
s

Hi
 dedicated to the ideals of jihad (holy war), which they waged from
fortifiedcamps (ribats) along the frontier. Hence their dynasty bore
the name Almoravid (al-murabitun - the men ot the ribat). Their
brand of ferocious piety appealed to the Berbers of North Africa,
whose overwhelming support enabled them to storm into Spain and,
for a space, recover most of the long-lost Muslim territory in the
peninsula. Yet it is precisely their puritanical fervour which helps to
explain why they produced so little in the visual arts. Their religious
foundations in Spam have vanished completely, and the seriousness
of that loss can be gauged by the sparse surviving evidence of their
work elsewhere in the Maghrib, comprising principally the Great
Mosques of Algiers (1097 onwards) and Fez (mainly 113s) and a
140 kiosk (presumably a fountain) once apparently part of the Great
Mosque of Marrakesh.
The last two monuments m particular testify to the remarkable
vigour and imagination with which Almoravid architects trans-
formed the time-honoured motifs ot interlaced arch and rib vault
which they had inherited from Andalusia. Whereas in Spam itself the
heritage of Cordoba was dissipated m increasingly finicky A\id small-
scale ornament in which spatial values played a diminishing role (as
instanced by the Aljaferia palace at Zaragoza), the buildings in Fez
and Marrakesh. instinct with a formidable energy, are triumphantly
three-dimensional. This dynamic manipulation of space combined
themes earlier kept apart - ornamental arch tonus and decorative
vaults - to produce a distinctively Maghribi version of the muqamas.
The hallmark of these niHi]artLi> systems - m contrast to contempo-
rary Iraqi and Syrian versions of such themes - is that the exterior
yields no hint of the internal configuration. At Fez, moreover - as in
the almost contemporary Cappella Palatina at Palermo and the QaTa

or the Banu Hammad in Algeria the muqamas vault is built up over

a rectangular space and is therefore not interpreted as a dome.
Instead, it works visually like a suspended ceiling. It is significantly
more evolved in design and complexity than contemporary examples
in the eastern Islamic world. In the Mosque of the Dead attached to
the Friday Mosque o\~ Marrakesh fountain, variously
Fez. as in the
lobed and crinkled arch forms executed with truly sculptural verve
are used to build up powerful contrasting rhythms. Thus architec-
tural forms, not applied decoration, animate the building.
The coming of the Almohads brought a new impetus to religious
141 architecture, as shown by the huge congregational mosques which
they built in Seville, Rabat and Marrakesh. Their keynote is a

184
14- The long shadow of Spain.
Tlemcen, Great Mosque, mihrab,
mntlhir and dome, 1135—6. Dwarf
arcades; cusped, interlaced and
borseshoe arches; ribbed dome; and
two-tone masonry all underline the
defining role of the Cordoba mosque
m Maghribi religious architecture;
the patron. 'Ah b. Yusufb. Tashfin,
brought craftsmen from Andalusia to
work in Tlemcen. However, cheap
painted stucco now replaces
expensive glass mosaics.

puritanical simplicity of design, unexpectedly relieved on the qibla

axis by voluptuously lobed arch profiles. These mosques tend to
enlarge the covered sanctuary at the expense of the courtyard, which
shrinks dramatically. They all make much of the measured repetition
ot a single unit such as a bay or an arcade to create directed vistas and
a sense of illimitable space; while their plain exteriors, articulated by

little more than niches, exude a comparable austerity. All the more

remarkable, then, is the contrast provided by the towering square

minarets of these three mosques, all decorated with overwhelming
richness, all dated to the last decides of the twelfth century, and all of
them lllusionisticallv rendered more gigantic still by the contrast with
the low expanse of the mosque itself. In all three cases, each face of
the tower is elaborately fenestrated (their interiors comprise a scries

of superposed vaulted chambers linked by a ramp) and bears a differ

cut set ot latticed designs in raised stonework.

is
 1

143 Dynastic mosque. In Tmnial. the Almohad capital, the self-appointed 'caliph 'Aba" al-Mu'mm built .1

bijou version of the Cordoba mosque in 1 1 $3. It measures just 4* X 43 m (157.5 141

But the masterpiece among these Almohad mosques, and indeed

143 of later Maghribi architecture, is the mosque of Tinmal, the
Almohad capital near Marrakesh. Here, too, the juxtaposition o\'
plain and ornate is breathtaking; the eye moves from huge expanses
of plain wall to intricately carved capitals - indeed, the Almohad
Kutubiya mosque 111 Marrakesh has perhaps the most complex capital
in all of Islamic architecture. Among other noteworthy features at
Tinmal is the location of the minaret behind the mihrab, strongly
salient from the back wall of the mosque 'a major innovation, soon
to be copied at the mosques ot Algiers and Sale), with two sets of
three projecting lateral portals and the three domed bays marking the
corners and the centre of the qibla wall. This is part of the character-
istically Maghribi T-shape, which is created by the junction of the

central nave (wider than all the others) with the transverse aisle abut-
ting the qibla wall. The vaults o\~ this aisle run parallel to the qibla
wall, not perpendicular to it like those elsewhere in the sanctuary.
The area constituting the T is singled out from the rest of the
mosque by a sudden quickening of the decorative tempo, evident in
applied ornament, arch profiles and vaulting.

186
 I

& '

<r 'v.
« /|S
V-. 'is •

D. %ff /•>. >•' #\ •*** '1

;,.,.; ,-»j;,'/.- , *!, :iJ/,>

toll.

144 'Orient pearls at random

rung'. Fez. Madrasat al-
'
Attar in. 1325. The wall
(including the tiled dado
below) in conceived as a kind
of picture gallery, a series of
individual panels of changing
scales, media, designs,
textures, tones, colours and
depth: little care has been
taken to integrate them into
a single composition.

The demise of the Almohads left the way open for the creation of

smaller principalities, of which three dominated the later Middle

Ages m the Maghrib - the Marinids of Morocco (1217-1465). the
Zayyanids of western Algeria (1236-1555) with their capital at
Tlemcen. and the \ [afsids of eastern Algeria and Tunisia ( 229
1

All three dynasties concentrated their patronage on architecture, and

most other arts - such as pottery, textiles and mctalwork h.ireK rose
above the artisanaJ level in this period. The madrasas of the Marinids 1
11

deserve particular attention: these buildings reflect the orthodox

Mam. propagated by a conservative religious elite, thai flourished
M
m cities like Fez, Taza and arrakes h, rather than the populai Islam
18
 of the countryside which expressed itself through the veneration
of saints, religious brotherhoods and descendants of the Prophet,
and through countless modest shrines and mausolea of indeterminate
date. Most of the madrasas, by contrast, are firmly dated and are
extravagantly embellished with glazed tilework, carved wood and
145 intricate stucco ornament. The standard design featured an enclosed
courtyard with a pool and two-storey facades. The lower floor served
for lecture rooms and a prayer hall; while in the upper storey, quite
removed from all this visual splendour, lay bare, comfortless and
overcrowded cells for the theological students themselves.
From the sixteenth century onwards, most o\' the Maghrib fell
under Ottoman rule and lost much of its local character.
Nevertheless the grand public Ottoman mosques like the
Fishermen's Mosque in Algiers were complemented by domestic
architecture of an altogether lighter atmosphere, with fountains;
painted and fretted woodwork screens, doors and fretted wood
(mash tab yd) windows; and garish tilework.
i

The later medieval history of Muslim Spam, and of its art, is rather
different. The Christian victory at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa

tllege life. Fez, Madrasat al-

'Attarin: founded, started

and
endowed m J2J by the Marinid
1

sultan Abu Sa'id, who was present

when the foundations were laid. The
origins of many madn tsas in the
teacher's own house are reflected
here m the intimate domestic flavour
and small stale he contrast
I

between the imposing and glamorous

public face and the austerity of the
students" quarters, safely out of sight,
is striking.

1
;v

&V5&C
14'- afterlife of Samarran ornament. Marble capital from the unfinished Marinid
Hie
palace al-Mansuriya, Algeria; early 14th century Such capitals of expensive stone echo
at

the bevelled style (cf. ill. 27) and Almohad modes in then lavish carving and whimsical
curvilinearity This recalls the Maghribi fascination with exotic arch tonus.

in 1 2 12. with the consequent loss of Cordoba and Seville, was a

catastrophe for the future of Islam in Spam. Yet Muslims continued

to practise their arts under Christian patronage, as shown
and crafts

by the Alcazar by Pedro the Cruel in [364), in

at Seville (rebuilt
many ways a reduced version ot~ the Alhambra, and by the lustre
pottery of Manises. Against all the odds, moreover, one Muslim
principality managed to survive the general collapse by dint of the
humiliating accommodations it reached with its Christian neigh
hours: the Nasrids of Granada (1232-1492). They maintained Islam
and its civilization, together with the Arabic language. 111 Spain for
over two and a half centuries. A\)d with such panache and success
that, according to an Arabic saying. "Paradise is that part oi the
heavens which is above Granada'.
This emirate, despite its small size and constandy threatened posi
tion. took in refugees from elsewhere in Muslim Spain and its court
welcomed historians and scientists, philologists and geographers, and
above all poets. Some of the Islamic city's streets, baths, inns. \ ill. is.

madrasas, markets even converted mosques and minarets

- still

survive. The wealth of the realm rested p.utK on its agriculture and

|8<;
 147 (left) Symbol ofjihad. 'In God I find
refuge from Satan' proclaims this
Almohad banner. 1212-50. The
inscriptions contain Qur'an 61:10-12,
with its promises of Paradise to the
faithful in holy war. The iconography
features a central talismanic star and
other celestial motifs, much like
contemporary Qur'anic frontispieces.

\i<uc) A Muslim monopoly

under Christian control. Valencian lustre
dish with abbreviated Arabic inscriptions
repeated 'good health'), early 14th
century. Royal, ducal and other
inventories, itemized orders and
contemporary paintings indicate how
coveted this ware was throughout
Europe. The Muslim craftsmen worked
predominantly m Christian territory;
thus in 14SS certain Juan Murci was
.1

executing orders for 200.000 tiles to be

supplied to rulers in Naples and
Valencia. The shields ret all the armorial
function of much V.ileiu 1.111 ware.

partly on such products as textiles and lustre pottery. The range ot

Granadine art. which includes several objects and techniques not
found elsewhere in medieval Islamic art, is quite remarkable. It
includes writing desks, doors and caskets of marquetry work in wood
and ivory, carved ivory and silver pyxides, jewelry, bridles, parade
helmets, scabbards and swords decorated with cloisonne enamel,
metal openwork mosque lamps and a spectacular array of textiles:
147 hangings, pillow-covers, capes, rugs, banners, mantles and curtains.
These provide abundant proof that the textile industry of Muslim
Spain maintained its vitality and its capacity to innovate right to the
end, seemingly unaffected by the loss of almost all its earlier centres
of production. The motifs tend to emphasize not the heraldic beasts
that were the stock-in-trade of luxury textile designs across the
Mediterranean world in previous centuries but instead defiantly pro-
claim their Islamic origins: interlocking motifs suggesting infinite

190
patterns,crenellations, and Arabic inscriptions with mottoes like
'Power belongs to God' and 'Glory to our Lord the Sultan', as well
as more light-hearted messages, like 'I am made for pleasure, for
pleasure am [\ The wide distribution of these luxury textiles can be
deduced from the frequency of their appearance in medieval
Spanish and Portuguese paintings of Christian content. To the very
end. then. Islamic textiles maintained their ancient associations with
wealth and authority.
Spanish lustreware had similar associations. It was made, often for 1 ifl

Christian patrons, with western coats of arms and Christian Inscrip

tions such as 'Ave Maria', at various centres including Manises,
Paterna and Malaga (hence 'majolica'), and was widely exported,
form of great dishes and apothecaries' jars (albarellos).
especially in the
Pride of place this technique, however, must ^) to
in speciality
.1

apparently unique to .ranada

( the so called Alhambr.i v.iscs. huge

101
 amphora-like containers more than 1.20 in (4 ft) high, decorated in
lustre or lustre and blue, and furnished with decorative handles.
Some bear apotropaic motifs Mich as the khams or sacred hand, sug-
gesting that their contents (wine? oil? perfumed water?) required
149 protection. For the potter, their size alone posed a daunting technical
challenge; the firing of lustrewares was a tricky operation at the best
of times, and a kiln capacious enough
to hold pieces this big would
not generate constant heat. Hence the traces of uneven firing which
they bear. Well do some of them bear the single word 'power' (.//-
mulk - also the title or" a Qur'anic sura or chapter) repeated like a
mantra in a closed circuit around their bodies. Other vases are
inscribed with wishes • : health, good fortune, prosperity,
pleasure, or with the motto "Power belongs God'. C V they may to
apostrophize themselves in flattering popular convention in
terms, a

later Moorish art. There is a certain irons and pathos in the tact that
these, by tar the largest and most spectacular examples of all Islamic
luxury wares, were produced in a tiny principality situated on the
outer fringes of the Muslim world and doomed to rapid extinction.

!
he .trust's hand has embroidered
me like 1 r»>K- of silk' Wing-handled
''

! ik luu\ tun- I he gold

and blue palette typical of Spanish lustre

tided' .nut 'silvered' m

i
he Ar.ibu
I
cions, >>t different scale, type .nut
I
'
;/' ,1111111

tttune nut prosperity'

r I ile below the
affronted animals lise.

M 135 en

f
 Much the same can be said of the Alhambra itself, the only large-
scale medieval Islamic palace to survive, admittedly much repaired
over the centuries. It is not so much a palace as a torn tied royal city
set athwart a mountainous outcrop dominating Granada, with the

River Darro below and remote vistas of the Sierra Nevada beyond.
The complex originally contained six palaces, of which five remain,
plus numerous subsidiary buildings and gardens. Like much of
Nasrid art it is delicate, even over-refined, and of fastidiously choice
execution. The literary sources speak of Moorish landscape archi-
tects; this is their handiwork. The Alhambra brings the forces of

1 nature into play at

running, cascading, spurting

every turn:
- or
water
still,
in movement -
in tranquil
trickling,
expanses; carefull)
harbered trees and bushes; sunken flower beds; sudden glimpses of
mountains or gardens framed in a casement, or, more ambitiously,
miradors and belvederes cunningly placed to exploit sight lines over
an entire landscape; and, above all, light. The Alhambra studiously
manipulates contrasts of light and dark, with bent entrances, shafts of
sunlight angled into shadowy interiors, dim passageways suddenly
opening into a courtyard open to the blazing sun, and light reflected
from placid ponds or walls clad in glistening tiles.
Frequent destruction and new buildings (which have come and
gone as architectural fashions change) have wrecked the original
carefully planned processional sequence which channelled petitioners
to the royal quarters. The principal elements are largely datable
between c. 1333 and c. 1391. Two of these stand out. First in date is
the Comares palace. Its entrance facade evokes a vast petrified Nasrid
hanging, its complex yet still two-dimensional ornament
staggeringly
articulated by doors to left and right and multiple windows. Blank
walls on either side focused attention on the centre, where the sultan
sat on his throne, itself raised on three steps, to deliver public judg-

ment. To the east lay the Hall of the Ambassadors, a private audience
chamber whose lacy insubstantial architecture is paradoxically
encased in a huge bastion, its unadorned walls an unmistakable meta-
phor of brute strength. The ceiling within represents m schematic
form the seven heavens oi the Islamic cosmos, above which is the
throne of God Himself, whose protection thus extended to the ruler.
God's earthly deputy, enthroned below, (lose by this hall were the
private quarters of the sultan, plus four apartments tor the tour wives
permitted by Islamic law; each apartment was two-storey, with suites
for summer and winter. Hut the largest and most scenic feature ot the
Comares pal. ice is the Court of the Myrdes, focusing on a sheet of

[01
 '

s If-advertiscment
'Incomparable is this

basin! Allah, the Exalted

t >ne, desired I h.it it

should surpass everything

in wonderful beaut)
( lourt nt the Lions,
Alhambra, r. 1375 I he
lions are taken from an
ith-century p.il.u e; they
1

spouted water, restful .1

sound in this secluded

spot In the rising and
tailing rhythms of these
delicate penc il like ringed
columns, an hitecture
melts into nuisii

water bordered by aromatic shrubs. It lends an axial emphasis to the

complex while its water serves both as a cooling device and to reflect
the surrounding structures.
The most famous element of the Alhambra is the Court of the
150 Lions, set at right angles to the Court of the Myrtles. It is essentially
a classical villa tor the private recreation o\' the monarch, with a
shaded portico and a garden courtyard. The latter is divided into four
quadrants, perhaps to suggest the seasons, perhaps to suggest in mini-
ature the world itself: at the centre stands the Fountain of the Lions.

194
 /

£1L

151 'It Zamrak of this muqarnas vault, the Dome of the I\\n
surpasses the stars in the heavens' wrote Ihn
Sisters in theAlhambra; c. 1380. The 23 stanzas of his poem inscribed here evoke a rotating heavenly dome
which mirrors the changing constellations and the eternal cycle of day and night. They also touch on other
interrelated themes - fertility, gardens, money, victory, service, textiles, jewels and divine protection
thereby revealing contemporary attitudes to the building.

a theme with resonances of the Solomonic Temple. Four halls, again

axially grouped, served for private entertainment such as music -
hence their acoustic ceilings - and official functions. The master-
piece here is the Dome of the Two Sisters, a muqarnas composition 1 si

involving over five thousand cells; the structure bears an inscription

by the local poet Ibn Zamrak linking it to the constellations. This
conceit is taken up by the multitude of reflections caused by the play
ot light on this honeycombed surface, which evokes the revolving
heavens mentioned in the inscription. The emigration ot artisans
from Muslim Spain ensured that echoes ot the Alhambra and its
decoration persisted in North Africa for centuries, though none of
its many descendants rivalled it as .1 machine for gracious living.

i«;s
( HAPIKR EIGHT

The 1 1 khan ids andTimurids

The robbery and murder of a caravan of merchants from Mongolia in

1 Muslim customs officials in Central Asia unleashed a deadly
21 7 by
retribution. From 1219 the Iranian world was devastated by repeated
invasions of Mongol hordes, originally commanded by Genghis
Khan and later by members of his family. These campaigns culmi-
nated m the sack of Baghdad and the extinction of the 'Abbasid
caliphate 111 1:0. The whirlwind nature of the Mongol conquests
compounded the sheer terror caused by their apparent invincibility,
by their awesome cruelty and by their essentially alien nature - they
were, after all. a people who
were not Muslims, spoke no Islamic lan-
guage and for whom norms of Islamic culture and society were
the
foreign. All this left an indelible mark on their victims. Moreover, this
was not mere conquest. The Mongols waged total war and inflicted
on much ot Iran an eco-catastrophe from which it never recovered.
Canals were destroyed, orchards felled, wells blocked up. fields sown
with salt: the \er\ cats and dogs were killed. After the s.ick of the
great cn\ ot Merv. die Mongols forced a muezzin to give the call to
prayer and then slaughtered the survivors as they crept out of their

hiding places. Altogether, the loss of life amounted to genocide. Only

artisans were spared, to be sent back to Mongolia where no trace of
then- activity remains. Vast areas, especially in north east Iran and
Central Asia, were depopulated, and refugees streamed westwards. In
the held of the visual arts, this brought to Egypt and the evant ideas I

and techniques from the area between Iraq and Afghanis!. m.

Gradually a new political order arose from these rums. At first it
had little in common with the past. Iran was relegated to a mere
province in a pan-Asiatic empire which at its height comprised much
ot the Eurasian land mass from Korea to east Germany - .111 empire
whose continuous extent is unparalleled m world history. Karakorum
m Mongolia, and later Peking, where the Great Khan resided, was
the new centre of power, and the Golden Horde (covering much of
Russia^ and the Qkhanid realm comprising Anatolia. Iraq, Iran and

06
Central Asia) were its sub-states. The Pax Mongolica imposed on

of land, and maintained by fearsome penalties inflicted

this vast tract

On wrongdoers, dramatically facilitated communication between East

and West. For the first time m history, it was safe to travel overland
from Europe to China. Merchants like Marco Polo took full advan-
tage of the opportunity, and Christian missionaries trekked to the
Great Khan's court bearing messages from the Pope, leaving vivid
accounts of their journeys.
The Christian powers, who at first equated the Mongol ruler with
the legendary Prester John, a Christian monarch believed to rule in
the heart of Asia, saw the new order heaven-sent opportunity to
as .1

give the death-blow to Islam, and initiated diplomatic moves to this

end. For their part, the Mongol khans, especially in [ran, maintained
an active correspondence with European rulers, principally with an
alliance against the Ayyubids and Mamluks, who ruled Egypt and
Syria, in mind. They saw these European monarchs as suppliants and
the language oi their letters is arrogant and high-handed. Western
hopes ot converting the Mongols were in any event ill-founded. In
religious matters they showed a tolerance remarkable in the medieval
period; they themselves practised by turns their ancestral shamanism.
Buddhism. Christianity and eventually Islam, of both the Sunni and
the Shi'ite persuasion. This tolerance created a golden age for
Christians and Jews, who repeatedly rose to high administrative
office. There can be no doubt that this openness to other cultures
and beliefs was a key element in the formation of Ilkhanid art. Hut
the Mongols also imposed their own civil code, the yasa first pro-
mulgated by Genghis Khan, which had little in common with the
shari'a code that had traditionally governed Muslim lite.
The centre of Ilkhanid power was in north-western Iran, whose
fertile uplands were a potent attraction to the still-nomadic Mongol

elite. Here Abaqa Khan (1265-82) built a palace on the rums of a

spot already sacred to the Sasanians, Takht-i Sulaiman (* The Throne

of Solomon'), centred on a perpetual lake 111 the crater ot an extinct
volcano. These ancient resonances were deliberately exploited - and
enriched by theological undertones - by some ot the leading Persian
intellectuals of the time when the site was refurbished. Lengthy and
carefully chosen quotations from the Persian national cp\c. the
Shahnama ('Book of Kings'), are incorporated into an iconography ot
markedly Chinese character, in which animal and landscape themes
of Far Eastern origin - trees, clouds, grass and fabulous beasts like

phoenixes and dragons predominate. Yet lakht 1 Sulaiman. tor .ill

[9
its size and complexity, its free-standing kiosks and its technical
innovations in muqamas vaulting, is still exceptional in its time; it

took some eighty years before the arts of Iran had recovered from the
destruction wrought by the Mongol invasions.
That they did recover was in large part due to the greatest of the
Ilkhanid rulers, Ghazan Khan (ruled 295-1304). He established his
1

capital at Tabriz, which briefly became perhaps the major inter-

national metropolis of the rime, a magnet for ambassadors, mer-
chants and artists from most of the known world, where Persians and
Mongols mingled with Arabs, Turks, Chinese, Armenians,
Byzantines and western Europeans. The Italian republics, notably
Venice, Genoa and Pisa, maintained a\\ especially high commercial
profile. It was Ghazan. an energetic and far-sighted ruler, who took
the momentous decision to embrace Islam and thereby to anchor his
own people in Iranian life and culture. This conversion, in which the
Mongol ruling class participated, only confirmed the growing power
of the Iranian bureaucracy and triggered an explosive expansion o\
output in the visual arts, m which a revival of national sentiment and
of Islamic piety arc unmistakable. Hie balance of power had shifted.
Ghazan founded a suburb m Tabriz named after himself where, in
the shadow of his own gigantic tomb tower, institutions of learning
proliferated. He commissioned his vizier, Rashid al-Din, a physician
ofjewish extraction, to write though perhaps 'editing' would better
describe the actual process) a history of the Mongols in the context
of a much larger history of the world. Parts ol this great enterprise
 pposite) Sheer mass. Mosque of the vizie

'Ah Shah. Tabriz, r. 1315; the qibk wall. Its

monumentaliry. echoed in other imperial
Dkhanid buildings, stimulated rival Mamluk
buildings in Cairo. The vanished entrance
portal was built to eclipse the Sasanian palace
arch Ctesiphon near Baghdad - evidence
at

that this symbol of pre-lslamic majesty

remained a touchstone eight centuries Liter.

Iran's Taj Mahal Mausoleum of

Oljeitu, Sultaniya, [304-15. Hiis complex

building, echoing both the Dome of the Kock

in its vast empty precinct) and nomadic
'

ngol tents, tits into a long line of

royal mausolea in the eastern Islamic world.

:n A numinous space. Interior

•
ot

mausoleum of Oljeitu. This overwhelmingly

volumetric interior soars to <; m i~-

inscriptions are ot politico religious ini

ingthe Abrahamk Ka'ba and the co
•

ind more indirecdy M

lerusalem, the three holiest cities <»t Mam
 155 Stucco as sculpture. Mihrab in the Friday Mosque, Isfahan, [310. Its inscriptions
stand proud of floral motifs which recall an undulating bed of water-lilies ]'he\ are
signed by Haidar, a pupil of the celebrated Yaqut al-Musta'simi, and mention the twelve
Shi'ite imams, thus reflecting Oljeitu's conversion to Shi'ism.

have survived, perhaps because Rashid al-I )in ordered multiple illus-

trated copies of his work to be distributed at regular intervals to the

major cities of the Ukhanid realm. Simultaneously, Ghazan reformed
the yasa to bring it closer to the shari'a and embarked on an ambi-

tious building programme, which was designed to provide every

village in the country with its own mosque, financed by the revenues
of the bath (hammam).
His brother and successor. Oljeitu, was an equally lavish patron of
architecture, even founding a new city, named Sultaniya ('The
153 Royal'), to act as capital. Its cynosure was the mausoleum of Oljeitu
himself, still one of the finest buildings in Asia. Structurally it was at
154 the forefront of building technology, with its vast pointed dome
rising, it seems, directly from the octagonal chamber below but with
the intermediary ot\\ spectacular vaulted gallery. Recent research has
highlighted its similarity to Brunelleschfs Duomo in Florence. It can
be seen as one of a long line of Islamic reinterpretations of the essen-
tial schema of the Dome of the Rock and as another indication of

200
the desire ot the later Dkhanids to identify themselves with then-
adopted culture. Craftsmen from many areas of the [lkhanid domains
were conscripted to contribute to this \ast project, which invoked a
tuge precinct with numerous subsidiary buildings, and they dis-
seminated the latest fashions and techniques on their return home.
A veritable building boom, at its height between [300 and 1

especially in such central Iranian cities as Qumm, Isfahan, Ya/d and

Abarquh. but continuing tor decades thereafter, was triggered by
and Sultaniya. Existing mosques
these vast imperial projects at Tabriz
were expanded and enriched, as shown by the prayer hall, mihrab and
madrasa .\ddcd to the Friday Mosque of Isfahan. As tor new mosques, 155
the Mongols favoured established types, such as the \-iwan plan, .is .it
c
Varamin and Hafshuya; the covered sanctuary, as at the Masjid-i Ali, [56
Quhrud and the recentlv destroyed Friday Mosque at Barzuk; and
the isolated dome chamber, as at Kaj, Dashti and A/iran. The
c
mosque of Ali Shah at Tabriz is atypical, tor it consists only of a 152
courtyard and a qibla iwan. Like the tombs ofGhazan and Oljeitu, it
illustrates the huge scale ot some Mongol foundations. The Mongol
contribution lay principally in a refining and attenuation of Saljuq
tonus: one may compare the relation ot Gothic to Romanesque.
Twin-minaret portals best expressed this new trend. The elaborate
articulation of Saljuq transition zones was toned down, while 111
decoration the emphasis gradually shitted from brick patterning to
glazed tilework. which brought a dramatic infusion ot colour to
Iranian architecture. New accents such as saffron and green enriched
the palette ot" the craftsmen, and tile mosaic with floral, geometric
and epigraphic decoration became widespread. So too did wall
painting, especially in mausolea; the designs were often stencilled and

rfarcrical Iranian mosque. Friday Mosque, Varamin, [322 6 Generously proportioned (according
to the 2:5 ratio familiar since 'Abbasid tunes, and based on a grid of equilateral triangles), this traditional
4-nrjM structure stresses the longitudinal axis by a deep portal and a mighty dome at opposite ends

in d
157 'There is no God but He. the Mighty, the Wise (Quran 3:6) proclaims the text on these tour huge
executed lustre tiles. Kashan. c 1300. Each tile 57 \ 4-
flawlessly cm (22.4 x is.s in).

owed much to Qur'anic illumination, .is a group o( mud-brick

buildings in Yazd and Abarquh show.
The Mongol period saw a major shift of emphasis in the building
of mausole.i. with most tomb towers being built to serve religious
(specifically Shi'ite) purposes rather than secular ones, and often dee-
orated internal}) with lustre tiles. The concomitant popularity o(
religious shrines, often of Sufi character, as the focus tor local as well
as imperial patronage can be seen m such sites as Natanz, Bastam,
Linjan and Ardabil, with their pronounced welfare function. These
shrines, continually added to over the centuries, both depended on
and fostered and they also had an important role in the
local piety,
local economy through the land they owned.
Mongol ceramics are dominated by lustre tiles, which were pro-
157 duced in great quantities - especially in Kashan. where, as inscrip-
tions show, the tradition was sometimes handed down from father to
son for generations. Several entire mihrabs composed of these
rectangular tiles have survived. The production o\ such tiles seems
actually to have increased during the Mongol period, though even in
this area a hiatus of about twenty-five years (c. 1230—55) is apparent
and was presumably caused by the chaotic aftermath of the Mongol
invasions. Lustre tiles of star or cross shapes, often with interlocking
monochrome glazed tiles to act as a foil, created huge shimmering
dados in religious buildings and palaces. Very often the individual
tiles would each bear a Persian inscription rendered in a hurried

202
 ;r) The fashion for the Far Fast. Pottery
bowl with lobed sides. Sultanabad type, early
14th century. The roundel depicts two Mongols
of high rank. The panels feature a running fox,
arabesques and foliage of Chinese inspiration.

159 (below) Textiles: portable wealth, portable

propaganda. Silk and gold-thread slit tapestry
roundel, early 14th century, perhaps a royal table
Cover. Images such as the tortoise and crane by a

fishpond and the lotus and the overall

scroll,

aesthetic link it to tapestry weaving (kesi) from

Chinese Turkestan and thus to Uighur culture.
But most of the iconography is Islamic, as are the
Benedictory inscriptions.

scrawl all along its outer edge. Floral or animal motifs are the staple
decoration of these tiles. Some Qur'anic inscriptions on these tiles,
in defiance ot orthodox Islamic practice, have a background in
which birds feature among arabesque scrolls. In the larger rectangular
tiles m which living creatures dominate the design, an effective
combination of relief and lustre paintingwas devised.
 While many other wares ot Saljuq type continued to be made
under the Ilkhanids, two major new types of pottery appear.
Lajvardina is a 'simplified successor of the mina'i technique. The
courtly scenes of the earlier ware are replaced by geometric and epi-
graphic themes and by Far Eastern mythical creatures. Gold over-
painting set against a deep, royal blue glaze makes lajvardina ware one
of the most spectacular ever produced in Persia. The other new
Ilkhanid ware is dowdy by comparison. Traditionally associated with
the Sultanabad region, it is heavily potted and makes frequent use of
a grey with thick outlines, while another type displays black
slip

painting under a turquoise glaze. The drawing is of indifferent

quality but the ware as a whole has a special interest as a classic

158 example of the way Chinese motifs invaded the Persian ceramic
tradition. Earlier, Chinese techniques and shapes alone had inspired
the Persian potter: but from now on his iconographic repertoire
drew widely on Chinese sources. Dragons, phoenixes, mandarin
ducks, cloud bands, peonies and lotuses are all standard Ilkhanid
themes, and they are treated with a new naturalism also inspired by
China. Such Chinese elements are equally marked in the relatively
159 few surviving Ilkhanid textiles.
In metalwork as m ceramic production, the Mongol invasion fatally
disrupted a flourishing industry. The ravaged province of Khurasan,
in particular, never again supported a major mctakvorkmg industry.
After a ^\p in production of almost a century, which can be paralleled
closely 111 architecture and painting, the industry revived - but in new
centres. One was m Central Asia; another was in Azerbaijan, the
principal centre ot Mongol culture; but it was southern Iran th.it
really came to the tore. This area had been spared Mongol devasta-
160 tion. but was. of course, open [o Mongol Stylistic features. Hence
there appear in the metalwork ot Fan such features as the peony, the
lotus, flying ducks, ju-i heads a tri-lobed motif) and Chinese
phoenixes. The figures, slim and narrow-waisted, have something of
the elegance that characterizes the figures of late fourteenth-century
Persian painting, a link that extends also to their costume. A general
readiness 10 adopt alien fashions would explain the presence of geo-
metrical patterning of Mosul type and of the bold elongated thulth
inscriptions that were the hallmark of contemporary Mamluk metal-
work. But this same school seems to haw popularized the use of
Persian poetry on metalwork. and its epigraphic formulae celebrating
Solomon and Alexander are rooted deep in the Persian tradition.
In the field of the arts, apart from architecture, pride of place in

204
160 Women m authority. Detail
of a candlestick made tor the
Inju ruler of Fars, Abu Ishaq
(reigned (341-56). This, one
of four decorative roundels with
enthronement scenes derived
from contemporary manuscript
illustrations, presumably depicts
hiN queen, who wears .1 version
of the baqtaq, the headdress worn
bv married Mongol women; her
presence on two of the tour
roundels corresponds to the
conspicuous honour paid to royal
women in Mongol iconography

the Ilkhanid period goes to the art of the book. Ilkhanid senbes and
illuminators, especially those of Mosul and Baghdad, rivalled the best
Mamluk work and may indeed have
the foundations for it.
laid
Characteristic of this school is of very large sheets (up to
the tise

72 x 50 cm, 2(S x 20 in) of Baghdad paper and correspondingly large

scale scripts, especially muhaqqaq. The vaults m the gallery ofOljeitu's
tomb owe much to the designs in the frontispieces and carpet pages
of these Qur'ans. of which a good two dozen have survived.
Among the various traditions of Islamic manuscript painting
Arab. Persian. Turkish and Indian - Persian painting, which
effectively begins with the Ilkhamds and attained its classic style
tinder the Timurids. must take precedence on several scores. For
diversity without parallel in Islam; for sheer output it rivals even
it is

India; and while the Arab world can boast slightly earlier work, it
cannot match the continuity of the Persian tradition. he origins of I

that tradition are probably destined to remain obscure, though

textual evidence establishes the continuity ot this art from the
Sasanian period. Iranian book painting tor the first five centuries of
Islam is thus an almost total blank adA must be reconstructed with
 161 The Garden - and die tire ho Chronology of Ancient Nations by the nth-century
I

polymath al-Biruni discusses all the calendrical systems known to him, often with an
Islamic slant. But the Zoroastrian storv of the evil spirit Ahrmian tempting Misha and
Mishyana. the first man and woman, reflects Genesis iconography Perhaps Habriz, 1307.

the help of painted pottery, and a tew wall paintings from Samanid

Nishapur and Ghaznavid Lashkar-i Bazar, as well as the probably

Saljuq manuscript of Varqa va Gulshah ('Varqa and Gulshah'; see
p. 100). The first really useful clues are provided b\ the late Saljuq

painting practised in Iraq see pp. i_s -32). This probably reflects
contemporary Persian work, to judge by the painted Persian pottery
161 of the time, just as the paintings of al-Biruni's al-Athar al-Baqiya
('Chronology of Ancient Nations'), dated 1307, echo the style of the
Baghdad school. From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, both
Iran and Iraq were frequently part of the same political unit, so these
close links are to be expected; and indeed, both Tabriz and Mosul
have been suggested as the provenance tor this manuscript. Its
emphasis on calendrical systems, which caters to the same interests as
Hulegu Khan's great observatory in Maragha (125S), testifies to the
Mongol interest 111 science, also manifest in illustrated bestiaries and

:o6
 eligious pragmatism. The images ofRashid al-Din's World History are multi-confes-
sional; f . 1 5 b illustrates Qur\m
2:26] (cf. The Valley of the )ry Bones, Ezekiel 37:1-14),
I

which tells how Cod causes man to die and be resurrected, along with his donkey and
.1

1 century later. Note the Chinese conventions tor tree and stream. Tabriz, I] 14.

encyclopaedias such as the Mu'nis al-Ahrat fi Daqa'iq al-Ash'ar ('The

Free Men's Companion of Poems') by al-Jajarmi.
to the Subtleties
The Biruni manuscript is a fortunate survival, for it documents the
invasion of the established pictorial idiom of cistern Islam by totally
alien influences, especially from the Far East. Hut the resultant
degree of Mux in fourteenth-century painting is. nevertheless, sur-
prising. Several distinct styles flourished, some of them owing little
to each other and quite remote in spirit and m style from the pre-
Mongol traditions. The Biruni manuscript, with its emphasis on
non-Islamic heresies and faiths, especially Christianity, its astrological
content, and its choice of key ShTite themes, is case in point. he ,1 I

Manafi-i hayavan ('On the Usefulness of Animals', produced in the

1 290s m Maragha), essentially a bestiary, and the manuscripts illus-
trating Rashid al-Din's Jam? al-Tawarikh ('World History*) share the
stress on Biblical themes. In content, 'On the Usefulness of Animals'
 [6j Chinese art Islamized. On the
Usefulness ofAnimals, Maragha, 1290s.
"The Simurgh, found in inaccessible
islands ... is fearless beyond all other
animals. He can carry off exceedingly
large animals like the elephant and
the rhinoceros. . .
.'
Muslims, like
Europeans, had their 'Marvels of the
Hast* literature, part fantasy, part
This gaudy bird echoes the
reality.

Chinese phoenix.

- of which several other contemporary versions arc known - belongs

firmly within the orbit of those practical treatises long popular in
Mesopotamia and issuing from an ancient Byzantine and classical

tradition. But world from that of its

this bestiary inhabits a different

Arab equivalents. The clue lies in the artists' partiality for drama.
They invest essentially undramatic subjects with a portentous power
wholly at variance with the stirt". woodenly articulated animals o\
Arab bestiaries. Some of the painters obey the formulae o\
Mesopotamian painting tor details of plants, landscape, drapery and
facial features. Other miniatures are infused with a new Chinese

spirit expressed in the treatment of landscape details and especially 111

the overlapping planes that lend depth to a composition. Hut, .is in

164 'They came, they sapped, they burnt, they slew, they plundered, they departed *
I he Mongols at

work, as described m the World History of Rashid al-Din. |

later times. Persian painters were never fully attuned to the artistic
conventions that underlie Chinese painting. They preferred to
borrow, and frequently to use out of context, eye-catching individual
motifs such as exotic creatures (the phoenix [often representing the
mmurgh, the bird oi Persian legend], giraffes, elephants), plants
ipeonies. lotuses), blossoming trees, and the conventions for render-
ing water, and clouds.
fire

The manuscripts of the "World History' of Rashid al-Din are on

an altogether different scale. Their provenance in the cosmopolitan
cit\ of Tabriz guaranteed the paintings a remarkably mixed ancestry

in which Chinese, Byzantine and Uighur (Eastern Turkish) elements

mingle with Persian and Arab strains. The large oblong format
usually employed for these paintings allowed the artists ample scope
for scenes expressing the savage lust o\~ battle as well as for solemn
tableaux of enthroned monarchs. Their ferocious battle scenes, full of [64
authentic Mongol military detail, mirror the invasions that had trau-
matized the Persian psyche a century earlier and whose memory was
dearly still green. Conversely, their scenes from the Old and New-
Testaments, the Buddha cycle and - for the first time in Islamic art
the life ot Muhammad reflect the Mongol curiosity about religion.
One manuscript, in London, is prefaced by dozens o\~ stereotyped
royal portraits that are pastiches of Chinese models even to details of
dress and pose. The same obedience to formula governs the many
court scenes in a contemporary codex o\~ the Diwan ('Collected
Poems') of Mu'izzi. But whether the scenes depicted are inventive or
merely routine, the hybrid style associated with the atelier ofRashid
al-Din is instantly recognizable. So united are the tones and so domi-
nant the role of line that many paintings resemble tinted drawings.
Some impressive court scenes were produced 111 this style, and it
lingered for several decades. By 1330, the fashion for illustrated

Shahnamas bulked large in southern Iran, tinder the Inju dynasty. lere \

national sentiment was fostered, perhaps because the area was not
tinder direct Mongol rule. The dating and provenance of the so-called
"small' Shahnamas pose a different set of problems, linn data have 165
proved hard to establish and ii^ood cases have been made for attributing
these manuscripts to Baghdad and Tabriz; even Anatolia is a possibil
iry. At all events it is a Shahnama th.it is the undisputed masterpiec e ot

the List years of Mongol rule. This is the incomplete Great Mongol
Shahnama, whose scale may reflect the growing commitment ot the
Mongols to the land th.it they were governing. It is presumably a royal
manuscript made tor the last Ilkhamd ruler. Abu Sa'id l}l6
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16s (above) Pre-nuptial festivil '•' ins riding an elephant celebrate, according to the caption, 'the
physical union ofZal with Rudabah*. 'Small' Shaimama, provenance uncertain, 1300 Firdausi's c. I

the event in Kabulistan (modern Afghanistan), where there was indeed an [th-century elephant park
1

too" (opposite above) The resurgence of Iranian myths. In the (ireat Mongol Shahnama (Tabriz, c. 1 -

taleof Bahrain (mr. legendary lover and hunter, in reinterpreted as a moral evolution from irresponsible
playboy to just ruler. When, at his lover's request, his arrow pins together a gazelles head, ear and hind leg,
she reproaches him for his demonic spirit h\k\ he tramples her to death.

pposite below) The M ry of death. The bier of Iskandar. from the (ireat Mongol Shahnatm

The unrestrained expression of grief flouts Muslim norms but mirrors Mongol practice and European art.
The lavish appointments match literary accounts of the mausoleum of the Ukhan ( iharan.
 Fifty-eigfit of its original two hundred or so illustrations are known.
In certain painting? ambition and execution do not fully coincide; this
is is notable especially tor the dense design and spatial
a style in flux. It

complexity of many ofits paintings, their subtle gamut of colours, and

a marked predilection for drama and violent action. Full of elements

from China and western Europe alike, alive with contemporary allu-
sions, and of an emotional power never recaptured in later versions o\
this text, it expresses at every turn millennial Iranian ideas of royal

1 66 legitimacy, and is therefore an apt metaphor for the resurgence of

Iranian national sentiment in later Ilkhanid tunes. So by the end oi
this period, as in the case of Greece and Rome many centuries before,

captive Iran had made captive its conqueror. The Great Mongol
\<- Shahnama is thus an appropriate envoi to the whole period, ushering
in the dissolution o\ the Mongol state and the re-establishment of
native Iranian centres of power in much of the couir
After the collaps entral authority in i ; j6, Iran disin-
tegrated into several independent political entities, each with Us own
geographical centre of gravity. Of these the most important were the
Jala'irids who ruled western Iraq and Iran and the Muzarfarids who
controlled central and southern Irai Both devoted their m
patronage to architecture and to painting l.ila'ind architecture is best
[68 represented bv the madnsa and khan of Amir Mirjan in Baghdad,
both built in the Lite the style ofintri >>tt.i

ornament and bold transverse vaulting first developed in late

>f their spatial subtlet\ is the triple

domed prayer hall in th< i the full) operational set of
rooms in the u; I the khat
design echoed in
illery, a Maaamai illustratioi
.»

book painting tin- Jala irids took over the mande <>r Mongol
In
imperial pan Timenting both with new messages tor
familiar texts and with new relationships between text and mi.
The later fourteenth century saw the incubation of the rimurid
'classical* style which lominate Persian painting for over two
centuries. The ids built energetically in Isfahan where
several maus* I minarets datable i

in Yazd. which develope painted ornament closely

I

allied Qur'anic illuminati

to the Mums!
ries ofmausolea
and in Kirman, as in the portals of the Friday
.

Mosque and the Masjid-i r. which display a transitional style

betweei M both in structure and in such

decorative details as ible mouldings ind tile mo
i
bon ups s rto ~
-
m iw I h cvenucs
..
i i

The last two decades ol the fourteenth centur) say ilu^ rist

power ol conqueroi scarcer) less fearsome than lus anccsto

-i

Genghis Khan. Hmui the Lame, whose target than lite mentor)
'Tamburlaine') galvanized tlu imagination ol Renaissance Europe,
N

was an illiterate tribal chieftain who gradual!) built up contedcra »

tion ol riirco Mongol tribes from Centra) \m.» and beyond, launch
ing them on a series ol victorious campaigns that lasted until lus
death in 1405 rhese frenetu conquests proved transitory; theit
memory was theii heritage rhe Iranian world* India, Anatolia, Syri%t
.ill fell to him, with horrendous destruction and loss ol lite evi

though he posed as pious Muslim Craftsmen were spared from

.»

these massacres and transported to Ins capital Samarkand, which the)

beautified vs ith spe< ta< ulai buildings, in< luding now \ inished pal u cs
with wall paintings depicting I imur*s victories I
he) ilso worked in

1 ;
 other Central Asian cities like Kish and Yasi. This empire tell apart
on his death as the standard Turkish practice of dividing the patri-
mony among the various sons asserted itself.
None of his successors had his military genius, but they applied
themselves with equal fervour to the arts oi peace, and rapidly
acquired shown by the pocket antholo-
a taste for Persian culture, as
gies of classic Persian poetic texts which they ordered for their per-
sonal use. Samarqand under Ulugh Beg became renowned as a
scientific centre; the gigantic quadrant ot his observatory still sur-
vives and the astronomical tables he drew up were m use at the
University o\ Oxford as as K>r>s.late Shahrukh
and his son
Baisunqur, ruling at devoted themselves to literature and
Herat,
painting respectively; the 1420s saw an ambitious attempt to com-
1

plete the 'World History of Rashid al-I)in by bringing it into con-

temporary times, and histories ofTimur were written and illustrated.
Painting also flourished under Iskandar Sultan in Isfahan and Shiraz,
and later under his cousin Sultan Ibrahim in the latter city. Each o{
these princes established his own court and kept an eye on what his
relatives were doing in the cultural as well as the political sphere.
Thus emulation was constant spur to achievement. Yet the cultural
.1

values espoused b\ these Timurid princes were not exclusively

Persian; Chaghata) or Eastern Turkish was spoken at court, poetry
was composed in that tongue and the famous Mi'rajttama ('hook o\
the Ascension*) ot [436 deputing the Prophet's journeys to Heaven
and Hell has its primary text in Chaghata) with abbreviated cribs in
Persian and Arabu
The fifteenth century s.iw the Timurids consistently losing ground
to their enemies, notably the Aqqoyunlu or 'White Sheep'
Turcomans who dominated central and western Iran and eastern
Anatolia from the u;><>s. while in the last years of the dynasty the
Uzbek Khans encroached on their Central Asian territories.
Eventually the Timurid 'empire' had shrunk to Herat and its sur-
roundings, and the much reduced revenues available to royal and
aristocratic patrons sufficiently explain why there are tew paintings in
the great manuscripts and win the decoration of the major buildings
is concentrated at a few points only. Yet at the last moment this self-
consciously exquisite civilization produced vet .mother adventurer,
Babur, whose dreams of empire were destined to be realized in India,
where he founded the Mughal (i.e. Mongol) dynasty in 1526.
As with the Dkhanids, so with the Timurids architecture and the
arts of the book take pride of place over other art forms. With the

169 Here lies 'the Scourge of God*. Gur-i Amir, the tomb ofTimur, Samarqand. from 1404. The high
drum, stilted and fluted melon dome and glazed bricks spelling out sacred messages (such as 'God is
Eternal") and the names of Allah and Muhammad all serve to transform the familiar schema of the domed
square. By degrees this became a dynastic mausoleum.
 irruption ot Timur and his hordes into Iran at the end of the four-
teenth century, the desolation ot the Mongol conquest repeated
itself.Craftsmen were once again transported, but this time to
Transoxiana. where the signatures ot men from Isfahan and Tabriz
have survived in architecture and metalwork.
Imperial Timurid architecture reflects political realities m that its

centre of gravity is squarely within the north-eastern Iranian world.

Thus the areas ot Khurasan and Transoxiana replace north-western
and central Iran as the source ot' major innovations in design as in
structural and decorative techniques. Yet the continuity ot Ukhanid
and Muzarfand modes is manifest, helped no doubt by the voluntary
or enforced migration of craftsmen from central and southern Iran to
the centres ot Timurid power, and by the tact that Timurs cam-
paigns were less destructive m these areas than elsewhere.
The Timurid period marks the apogee ot colour in Iranian archi-
tecture, both in sheer technical expertise and in the astonishing
variety of designs and textures. Colour transforms exteriors and
interiors alike, yet it is not allowed to run amok. Most linund I

buildings project solid sense ot the structural skeleton itself, which

.1

the use ot' colour enhances but does not overwhelm. This delicate
balance was apt to be lost in subsequent centuries. The equilibrium
between structure and decoration meant that brick, the basic build-
ing material, was available to serve as a toil, both in colour and in
texture, to the applied ornament. The designs themselves, tor
example medallions and arabesques, can often be matched in other
media and many ma\ well have originated in the royal ateliers, to be
circulated later tor use in bookbindings, carpets, textiles, manuscript
illumination, potter) and woodwork as well as architectural orna-
ment. Hence, perhaps, the tendency tor general decorative schemes
-applied on an architectural facade, say, or a vault to be subdivided
into individual and seemingly unrelated panels si) that the overall
144 effect is that ot a picture gallery with paintings ot varying size hung
at different levels. Arabic and Persian poetry, felicitously described as
'orient pearls at random strung', suggests itself as an intriguing
parallel.Sometimes the decorative scheme is strongly sculptural, as in
the use of glazed medallions standing proud from a glazed surface, or
the multiple levels of Timurid vaults. More common, however, is a
contrast ot texture, for example glazed terracotta juxtaposed with
smooth glazed tiles, or carved stucco set against painted plaster, or
contrasts of marble and glazed tilework, wood and ivory. Yet the use
ot snow-white muqamas domes or bottle-green dados reveals

21(5
Timurid craftsmen experimenting with the potential of a single
colour to dominate an interior.
Colossal size is some of the most chanu
the defining feature of
istic - the Rigistan and Gur-j Amir in
imperial Timurid buildings
Samarqand and Timurs own palace at Shahr-i Sabz, whose iwan
apparently soared to 40 m (131 ft). Indeed, the portal now takes on
major significance as the cynosure of a facade, often dwarfing the
actual building behind it. as at Anau. At the shrine of Gazur Gah
near Herat, it may symbolically suggest entry to the hereafter.
Flanking minarets placed behind the tomb at the far end o\~ the
building make some of these iwans illusionistically still more lofty
Many such portals function as huge screens or hoardings inscribed
with religious or political messages, but others are proudly salient
and of spatially adventurous design. Perimeter walls, too. take on a
new importance which is reflected in the overall brick and glazed
ornament which they These are buildings meant to be experi-
bear.
enced round, not designed with a single viewpoint 111 mind.
in the
The popularity of ribbed domes, high drums and multiple minarets [69
(as in the Bibi Khanum mosque 111 Samarqand and the madrasas o\~

Herat) again reveals Timurid architects to haw been fully alert to the
scenic dimension of their buildings.
Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century drawings found 111 Istanbul and
Tashkent contain, among much other material, detailed notations for
the layout of ground plans and the construction of muqarnas vaults.
Their use of gridded paper and modular units provides independent
documentary evidence for what could be deduced from the monu-
ments themselves — that a mastery of geometrical concepts and of
proportional relationships was needed to control these vast spaces and
to order them into harmonious, symmetrical designs. It is size above
all empowers such factors as axiahty. rhythm, repetition.
that
anticipation and echo to yield their full effect. Thus in the \-iwan
courtyard madrasa ofUlugh Beg in Samarqand (141 7). the compo-
nent parts are all interdependent and logically related to each other,
while at - a necropolis largely intended, it seems.
the Shah-i Zinda 171, [72
for Timurid princesses - the individual mausolea are not sited hap-
hazardly but operate m concert, forming a processional way towards
the tomb of the eponymous saint. A long monumental staircase
of expectancy and ensures th.it from the outset
creates a suitable air
pilgrims are channelled towards the tomb along the desired route. It
is textbook case of the capacity of Timurid architects to think big
,1

and to exploit space to the full. The whole site seems to have been
deliberately designed as an open-air gallery displaying the latest dec-
orative techniques. Perhaps there was a certain competitive edge too.
It is no major Timurid artists such as Qawwam al-Din
surprise" that
Shirazi were figures of consequence at court.
A fascination with the expressive potential of vaulting can be
sensed in the more experimental Timurid buildings. Gone now is
the Saljuq and Ilkhamd preoccupation with the tripartite elevation of
a dome chamber - base, transition zone, dome - and in its place
there reigns a much more fluid transition from one plane to the next.
Typically a network of small vaults, often of rhomboidal form, cloaks
the upper reaches o\\\ building (with simpler, sturdier vaults behind
them doing the actual work); these give way eventually to the dome
itself, which rises serenely above the apparent contusion below. The

polychrome vaults ofKhargird and Herat, instinct with dynamic ten-

sion, create a vortex of frantic pyrotechnic energy which constantly
teeters on the brink of chaos. Vet this explosive power is of course
entirely controlled, as can be understood at once from a plan of such
a vault. The heaven!) associations oi domical vaults, complete with
fixed and shooting st.irs and a central solar motif, are unmistakable.
Relatively little high-quality metahvork has survived, though
miniatures of the period whose obsessive detail makes them an
excellent guide to contemporary luxury objects) show that ewers
with long curved spouts were developed at this time. A few spectac-
ular but isolated survivals give a clue to this largely vanished industry.
Thev include a candlestick base formed by knotted dragon heads, tall

m
170 (opposite) The holy man as

asource of authority'. The

shnnc complex of Shaikh
|anul al-Din, Anau. [455-6.
The buildings apparently
comprised a mosque, madrasa
and convent (khanqah), all
domed, plus accommodation
tor visitors, dervishes and
pilgrims around the courtyard;
a loth portal featured spandrels

hearing images ot dragons,

presumably as talismans.

1-1 {right) Gateway to death

and life. Entrance to the Shah-i
Zinda complex. Samarqand,
mainly c. 1350-1450; dedicated
to the cult of the saint Qutham
c

h. al- Ahbas. a cousin of the

Prophet. He allegedly met

Khizr (guardian of the Water of
tint] > * ;,.'.: TTPI tmTPlTn
?rft *
I ife) and continued to live m

splendour under his own tomb.

",

frrinnniiin*
Mir) City of the i.k\\d.
General view of the complex of
Shah-i Zinda, Samarqand. The
desire to develop an expressive
skvlme explains the emphasis
on hill-top sites and
exaggeratedly high drums.
 tubular candlesticks with a succession of bold annular mouldings, and
173 a pair of massive bronze cauldrons, now in St Petersburg and Herat
respectively, both made in the 1390s. The closest analogies for these
impressive vessels, which are virtually undecorated apart from their
inscriptions, are in the metalwork ofDaghestan in the Caucasus. In
most Timurid metalwork. the Saljuq and Mongol motif of a figural
scene within a cartouche seems to have been definitively superseded
by closely knit floral designs. A new style heavily dependent on
manuscript illumination is found on Khurasani inlaid metalwork in
the later fifteenth century, while the same province generated
simultaneously a style ot~ engraved metalwork that leads without a
break into the Safavid period. Persian poetry is a staple feature o\
the decoration o\ much Timurid metalwork; it often has Sufi over-
tones. The inlaid brass jugs that were a speciality o\ Herat shortly
before 1500 illustrate these features.
Recent research has demonstrated that the talk' of surviving
Timurid ceramics is not nearly .is meagre as it was once thought to
be. The vogue for chinoiserie continued unabated. Indeed, side In-
side with such traditional techniques as lustre, the quality of which
was appreciably lower than in earlier centuries, the Persian potter

173 Amassing credit tor the hereafter. Bronze basin intended to serve water to pilgrim*
of the Sufi shaikh Ahmad Yasavi. Inscriptions on the basin state that
visiting the shrine
Timur ordered it in 1399 for this shrine; they also quote the particularly relevant Sura
9:19 and the Prophetic hadith 'He who builds place for drinking for hol\ purpos
.1

will build tor him a pool in Heaven' I)iam 2 ;

now produced blue-and-white wares inspired by imported porcelain
ofMing type. The ultimate origin of these wares is disputed, but
reciprocal influences between China and Persia are certain. Timurid
copies of this Chinese porcelain body are also known. Quite difTer-
ent in style is a category of pottery made in northern Iran from at
least the 1460s until the seventeenth century.These ceramics were all
found Caucasian village of Kubachi, a famed metalworking
in the
centre; presumably they had been exchanged for local metalwork.
The earlier pieces of this school are painted in black under a bluish-
green glaze and eschew figural designs in favour of floral cartouches
or scrollwork and epigraphic motifs.
The origins of Timurid panning are mysterious. The exact nature oi
the debt it owes to the early Jala'irids, whose activity in this held was
mentioned above (see p. 212). is still a matter of lively dispute, and the
potted history of earlier Persian painting with which the librarian Hist I

Muhammad prefaced the muraqqa 1 (album) o\~ the Safavid prince

Bahrain Mirza in S44 is tantahzmgly incomplete and obscure in its
1

treatment of the fourteenth century. The backbone o\ his account is

not chronology but sequence of masters and pupils, and it is no easy
a

matter to match their reported output with the fragments that now
survive in Istanbul and Berlin. But there is no doubt that whole series .1

of key decisions had been made by the time that the Mathnavis (poems
m rhyming couplets) ofKhwaju Kirmani was painted for Sultan Ahmad
fala'ir at Baghdad in 1396 by a certain Junaid, the first Persian painter oi
the new age whose signature survives on his work. Hence the sheer
assurance and the dazzling virtuosity of this masterpiece. The size of the
book has decreased; paintings are much fewer 111 number: text is some-
times whittled down to a brief two-line panel placed at will in the
picture space: and the full-page illustration has now come to stay. \

high rectangular format with correspondingly high horizon permits

a

an uncluttered arrangement of numerous spatially distinct figures, hue.

the emotional range has been toned down and the sense of drama evap-
orated in a dreamlike fantasy world. But the technical skill of the artist is

now staggering.embraces the preparation of the surface, the appli<

It 1

tion of paint, the purity of colour, the balancing of hues, the effects ot
crescendo and diminuendo in the composition and in the distribution
of colour, and the pinpoint accuracy of the smallest detail. Moreover,
while the paintings are often physically no smaller than the greatest
Dkhanid paintings, they contain \er\ much more. I his is truK mini
ature painting. Everything is calculated; these an- images that demand a

gre.it deal of the viewer, and they <\" not yield up then sc< rets lighdy.
 s*Cf} !ls> >JP^Si ijrjlfisjl *j£f\3 >/ u

r s

m
<.>-

174 A minor tor princes. Dimna visited in prison by Kalila. from Kalila wo Dimna, a collection of
animal tables with moral and political applications. Herat.
1429 (f. 6a). The calculated technical
5
perfection so characteristic of Baisunqur's atelier led to a certain stiffness
in the treatment of figures
and landscape, though new accommodations are forged between
written and painted surface.
175 Hunting: the quintessciui.il royal pastime. This double frontispiece of'.. 1470 may depict the then ruler
of western Iran. Uzun Hasan. It shows a grand battue, or mass hunt, in which the game is driven tor many
days until trapped m the constricted killing fields. Plunging vistas and the semi-circle of spectators draw thi-
eve to the frenzied slaughter at the heart oi the painting. Leering grotesques people the to*, ks

Persian painting had now found and henceforth generations

itself
of artists strove to achieve perfection Important centres
in this style.

60m c. 1390 to c. 1420 included Baghdad and Shiraz, the Litter espe-
cially under the rule of lskandar Sultan, but this style unquestionably
reached its peak in the work of the academy founded .it Herat by the
celebrated bibliophile Prince Baisunqur b. Shahrukh (1397-1433),
who in the intervals of the dissipation that plunged him into an early
grave found time to oversee the production oi fastidiously choice
illustrated copies of the gre.it classics of Persian literature. Some fort)
artists were active m his atelier, including not only painters but also

scribes, illuminators, gilders, tent-makers, designers, bookbinders,

leatherworkers and sculptors; sour- were proficient at several crafts.
Moreover, their status had risen to the extent that some were boon
companions of the prince himself The great masterpieces ot this
174 Herat school that survive include two copies of the Kalila wa
c
Dimna, an Anthology, a Gulistan ('Rose Garden') of Sa di (1426) and
at least one Shahnama (1429), for which Baisunqur - who had
commissioned a new edition of Firdausfs masterpiece - himself
wrote a preface. This had a tenth of the illustrations of the Great
Mongol Shahnama (see pp. 21 1-12). and that difference alone betrays
the new aesthetic. Imperial Timurid painting was produced for con-
noisseurs, so the painters took care to load every rift with ore.
Several other quite distinct styles developed in the fifteenth
century. One was a simplified recreation of the manner (including
the format) of the Rashid al-Din manuscripts, which was used for
primarily historical texts produced at Herat for Timur's son
Shahrukh (ruled 1405-47). Another was a vigorous, bold, minimalist
style whose keynote is action, featuring huge indexible figures
woodenly disposed within a ruthlessly simplified landscape: this was
developed under the patronage o{ Ibrahim Sultan, a brother o\~
Baisunqur, at Shiraz. The same city was later a major centre for a
third style commonly dubbed Turcoman after the ruling dynasty of
17s western and southern Iran. Commercial production predominated;
its hallmarks were a revelling m picturesque it fanciful landscape
detail in an astonishing range of greens, and squat, jowly figures with
rosy cheeks. These features were heightened and enriched in court
Turcoman painting after about 14V*. especially under Sultan Ya'qub
in Tabriz, in several fragmentary Nizami and Shahnama manuscripts.
These attain a psychedelic exuberance of colour allied to complex,
multi-planar compositions often with a sense of illimitable distance
not hitherto encountered in Persian painting. The scale and ambi-
tion of these pictures explains clearly enough why the projects of
which they were part remained unfinished (see frontispiece).
The patronage of" the last Iimund prince. Sultan Husain b.

Mansur b. Baiqara reigned 1468—1506), was on a scale to rival that

of his contemporary Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence. Herat flour-

ished asnever before and main believe that here Persian painting
reached apogee. In these decades the names and achievements of
its

painters - such as Qasim b.'Ali. Aqa Mirak and. above all, Bihzad -
begin to attract the notice of" chroniclers. Yet these .ire perhaps not
the competing geniuses of" Renaissance Italy but might rather be seen
as colleagues and courtiers in a royal atelier, pooling their talents,
developing an increasingly accomplished and seamless house style
and maybe even working together on a picture. Often, therefore,
Western scholars bent on attributing this or that painting to a given
Ij6 The ruler rebuked. In this scene
from Sa'di's Bustan, copied in Hor.u
in [488 for Sultan Husain Baiqara,
the prince, who has lost his way
while hunting, comes across his own
horsemaster and. not recognizing
him, strings his bow to shoot. His
unthinking aggression disrupts the
peaceful, ordered scene. I'he

horsemaster knows his own charges

by sight and fearlessly tells the prince
to follow his example.

seem to be chasing a will-o'-the-wisp. Moreover, the nature of

artist

Timurid connoisseurship is difficult to pin down, for the critical

vocabulary it uses has no unambiguous set of western equivalents.
What defines this late Herat school? Once again, the pictures are few
innumber in any one manuscript, and thus each one matters. The
singular intensity of colour and vibrant chromatic contrasts owes
much academy, but the delight in spatial complex-
to the Baisunquri
ities, variegated poses and individual types is new. None of this
amounts to realism; these painters, like their predecessors, customar-
ily favoured the general at the expense o\~ the particular, and their

paintings testify as much to intellectual abstraction as to patient

observation. Figures are sharply differentiated, but the sense ot .1

living, unique personality is generally absent. Quite apart from these

factors, however, is a new spirit reflected both 111 what is chosen for
illustration and in what is omitted, as well .is m the manner ot stor\
telling. It seems that a democratic spirit was 111 the air, a quietly sub-
versive set of values that exalted the common man and his daily t.isks
and made him a mirror for the selfishness of his 'betters'. Heme an 1-0

unprecedented emphasis on daily lite on a building site, in a bath.

at pasture, in a cemetery - with people buying and selling, cooking,

digging, cutting wood and ploughing. Often these humble scenes are
.1metaphor for the spiritual realities ot the Sufi path hus form and I

content combine in profoundly satisfying synthesis.

.i
 CHAPTER NINE

The Saf avids

The dynasty that made its ancestor and took

Iran Shfite venerated as
name from a saintly
its but not Shi'ite shaikh, Safi al-Din (d. 1334),
the head of a sectarian Sufi order based at Ardabil in north-western
Iran. The masters ot this order exercised gradually increasing reli-
gious and political authority, until by the late fifteenth century they
were a force to be reckoned with in eastern Anatolia and north-
western with several charismatic leaders. F or almost two cen-
Iran,
:

turies after the fall of the Dkhanids m [336, apart from the meteoric
career ofTimur (see pp. 213 14 Iran had lacked cohesiveness or rel-
.

atively fixed boundaries. This period was also one o\ religious

ferment which witnessed a flowering t»t folk Islam, Sufism and
extreme Shi'ism. I he Safavids combined these three elements,
turning the order at Ardabil into a revolutionary and at times mes-
sianic Shfite movement originally dominated b\ Turkish tribesmen
(the qizilbash or 'red-heads* from eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan,
and creating a successful political system which from soi was 1

quickly imposed b\ Bat and terror on the country as a whole. A

Turcoman military aristocracy held power under the authority of the
shah himself", though their internal clan feuds, their rebellions and
their antipathy to the Persian bureaucracy continually shook the
body politic. Yet the shah needed both the 'Men of the Sword" and
the 'Men ot~ the Pen"; and the second Safavid shah. Iahmasp
(1524—76) eventually created a third force at court, a corps ofghulatttt
(slaves) comprising Georgian, Armenian and Circassian converts to
Islam, to stabilize the situation.
The Safavids taught that their legitimacy depended on their
descent from the family ot" the Prophet Muhammad, on their
authority as masters of' on the divinely
the order at Ardabil and
ordained office of shah as the shadow of God on earth. These ideas
were propagated by a hastily assembled body of theologians, many of
them from the Levant, Iraq and Bahrain, who with Iranian converts

177 The Masjid-i Shah (now Masjid-i Imam), Isfahan, largely 1612-30. This spectacular hlue-uled mosque
epitomizes one era. one style and one man - Shah 'Abbas, the greatest Safavid ruler. Though its portal ter-
minates the long axis of the great mmdan or piazza, the rest of the mosque is set at an angle from it so as to
be correctly oriented towards the qibla. Thus sacred and secular geometry diverge.
iVi ^ 1

% ...

s
^
from Sunnism created a new religious establishment. It was for such
teachers of religious law (mujtahids) to exercise their personal judg-
ment (ijtihad) until the ultimate return of the Mahdi, the Hidden
(and twelfth) Imam. In later Safavid times their power at court grew
significantly. The regime was thus thoroughly theocratic. By making
Shi'ism the official religion the Safavids forged an ideology that not

only strengthened the state but also helped to create a new sense of
national identity and so enabled Iran to escape being absorbed into
the empires of the neighbouring superpowers - although its borders
were frequently contested and the shah had to fight a war on two
fronts. It was the Safavids who made Iran (with the old Shi'ite
centres ot Iraq) the spiritual bastion of the Shi'a against the
onslaughts of orthodox Sunni Islam, and the repository o\ Persian
cultural traditions and self-awareness. They largely lVrsiamzed a
country whose Turkish. Arab and Kurdish elements had hitherto
been stronger, and to some extent they ruptured the cultural as well
as religious ties that had earlier bound Iran to the Islamic common-
1
wealth. At long last Shfism had round a 'national home.
Yet for the indigenous Iranian population Twelver Shi'ism was at
first alien, and powerful Opposition manifested itself", especially in the

east of the country In much the same way the rule of the Ottomans
in Anatolia, the Near East and North Africa, and perhaps even of the
Uzbeks m Central Asia and the Mughals m the Indian subcontinent,
can be interpreted as an imposition of religious conformity which
coincided with a hardening of political, national and even religious
boundaries. This. then, was the age of the Islamic superpowers; and,
significantly, all ot them shared the same Turco-Pcrsian rather than
Arab culture. bus Islam, like Europe, emancipated itself from its
1

medieval heritage by creating larger political groupings. The rulers n\~

these superpowers were keenly competitive, alert to match claims
(e.g. to the caliphate with counter-claims. Their horizons were
c

wide. Isnu il. the first Safavid shah, bore the title of Persian Emperor
(Padishah-i Iran) with its implicit notion of an Iranian state stretching
from Afghanistan as far as the Euphrates, and from the Oxus to the
Persian Gulf.
The long reign o\~ [sma'iTs son Tahmasp helped to establish Iran's
role vis-a-vis neighbours, to tone down religious extremism and
its

to control the power of the clergy. Hut it fell to Tahmasp 's grandson,
Shah "Abbas ruled [587- [629
1 to set the country on the road to
.

greatness by creating au efficient standing army (in which the role of

the qizilbash was much reduced and that of the ghulams strengthened)

22s
and a centralized administration, and therein- to lay the foundations
of the modern Iranian state in its political, religious and geographical
aspects. And that state he regarded in some sense as his personal
property, which he governed (and milked) through the hierarchical
administrative apparatus of his court, headed by the Grand Vizier
and the Intendant (nazir), the latter functioning in effect as treasurer.
It is under the Safavids that one can trace more clearly than ever
before the stirrings of a national sentiment that would eventually
become, centuries later, a fully-fledged nationalism, and tor which
the territorial integrity established by the Safavids was a necessar)
precondition.
The Safavids continued the attempts of the Ilkhanids to foster
closer diplomatic ties with the European powers, as evidenced by the
frequent exchange of embassies with the various courts of Europe in
order to cement alliances against the Ottomans. Similarly, they were
alert to the political and economic implications of the opening of the
sea route to the Far East in [496, which diverted Ottoman pressure
away from Iran to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean; the Dutch,
the English and the Portuguese were permitted to establish trading
posts on the Persian Gulf, where Indian merchants also settled. For
the Iranians, this meant revenue from customs dues, while for the
European powers such posts were essential if they were to control the
increasingly lucrative East India trade. The inevitable clash of inter-
ests, however, resulted in frequent hostilities, especially with the
Portuguese. Attempts were also made to avoid Ottoman customs
dues by relocating the silk and spice routes to the north across
Russia. Much Safavid silk reached Europe, especially the labsburg I

domains and Scandinavia, in this way (see p. 250). Indeed, some tex-
tiles and carpets were made specifically for the West, and bear (not

always accurately) the arms of royal and noble houses. Conversely,

Europe exported muskets, mail shirts, clocks, Italian paintings.
Chinese porcelain, Japanese screens and even plants, fruits and veg-
etables unknown in Iran, and Shah 'Abbas had several Europe ins 111
his permanent service. The dramatic increase 111 commercial tnd
diplomatic relations with the European powers was fostered by 1

tolerant and multi-racial society 111 Iran. Colonies of Armenians.

Georgians and Hindus were settled in villages or key towns, while
western orders such as the Augustinians. Carmelites and Capuchins
rounded religious houses m Isfahan and other major centres as part oi
.1world-wide missionary campaign which also embraced China.
Japan and the Americas at this time.
 i-r-i

178 'Isfahan is half the world' runs the Persian proverb. This enormous open rectangle the iinuJdii was
the nerve centre of a capital to which visitors flocked from Fast and West

179 An Islamic invention. Portal arch. Masjid-i Imam. Isfahan. The muqamas or honeycomb vault has many
functions in Islamic architecture: it articulates a curved space, dissolves surfaces, bridges contrasting spaces,
and creates a frame for related but discrete motifs .see 1// 50). I Erectly over the door is the Shah's name.

The principal achievements of the Safavids were architectural.

Pride of place goes to the expansion of Isfahan masterminded by
c

Shah Abbas from [598 onwards; it is one of the most ambitions

I

and novel sehemes of town planning 111 [slamic history. This resulted
178 in the famous maidan, which, with its measurements of 512 x [59 m
(i6(So x 523 ft), is perhaps the largest piazza in the world; the Chahar
Bagh esplanade and royal quarter linking the maidan with the river
(the Zayandarud); and the huge covered bazaar. It may be no coin-
cidence that a mere two decades earlier the Mughal emperor Akbar
had built a sumptuous new capital from scratch at Fathpur Sikri.
The Masjid-i Imam, the Masjid-i Shaikh Lutfallah and the inter-
dependent complex ofmadrasa, khan and bazaar built by Shah Sultan
Husain are the finest public buildings of the time.
Yet it would be a mistake to regard any of them as fundamentally
original buildings. The Lutfallah mosque (1602-19) and the Masjid-i

230
>£*
 Shah (1612—30), each repeat a familiar schema - the domed square
chamber and the+4-iwan plan respectively. Their exceptional size and
179 splendid decoration make it easy to overlook their essential conser-
vatism. In the Masjid-i Shah (now renamed the Masjid-i Imam) this
huge scale allows the incorporation of dome chambers behind the
subsidiary iwans, a rectangular pool which serves as the focal point of
the courtyard, ample facilities for ablution, a winter prayer hall and
madrasas flanking the main prayer chamber. Yet visually all is sub-
ordinated to the sheer bulk of the portal and qibla iwan and the prin-
cipal dome chamber. As tor the Lutfallah mosque, the structural
complexities of earlier domed squares have been toned down
dramatically, leaving a vast and minimally articulated inner space
which is organized mainly by its ornament - for example, the bright
blue cable mouldings which define the pendentives or the two-
dimensional honeycomb ornament of the inner surface of the dome.
Exterior and interior alike accord a major role to plain unglazed
brick, which serves as a background to sparingly applied glazed tile-
work in floral and geometric patterns; the interplay between these
two accents seems illusionistically to confer a glazed sheen on the
plain brick. The facades of both mosques open on to the great
maidan, which was the centre of the new city, and both have bent
entrances, so that the mosques themselves are correctly orientated
but do not compromise the regularity of the facades defining the
square. Those facades are kept low so that the major buildings which
punctuate them stand proud of their surroundings. Here, as in so
much Safavid architecture, one may detect an innate sense of theatre
and a delight m the grand scale.
The high officials of the Safavid court, often in response to direct
pressure from the shah, built widely m Isfahan, including several
mosques (e.g. the Masjid-i Hakim . group these do not
but as a

display any marked originality. The complex of Shah Sultan Husain

on the Chahar Bagh [706—15) is a resounding coda for Safavid
Isfahan: deeply traditional in its core plan - this is one of the largest
Iranian madrasas- spacious throughout, its key are. is (and those
alone) richly decorated with glazed rilework, and the whole creating
an agreeable sense ot~ rus in urbe with its pools, trees and gardens.
Moreover, the complex worked in economic as well as aesthetic
terms, for it comprised a huge caravansaraj and bazaar adjoining the

madrasa, and the revenues of the secular establishments funded the

religious foundation. Indeed, such complexes flourished throughout
Iran in Safavid times, whether these were shrines (Ardabil, Qumm,

^3±
 1

1S0 The hub of commerce. Caravansarai built by Shah Sultan Husain with adjoining madrasa and bazaar;
Isfahan. 1706-15. Spacious and austerely practical, it could accommodate hundreds of animals and theii
loads, while the two-storied arcades held living chambers.

Mashhad and Mahan - many of them comprehensively remodelled

in this period) or institutions that were both religious and secular (for
c

example the foundation of Ganj Ali Khan at Kir man).

Isfahan is notable for its secular architecture too, especially the royal
c
palaces like Ali Qapu, Chihil Suttm and Hasht Bihisht.
the
Embowered m
gardens and embellished with verandahs, wall paint-
ings and fanciful muqamas vaults, they expressed to perfection the
c

luxurious of the court. The Ali Qapu ('Sublime Porte') is an

lifestyle
arched portico crowned by a flat-roofed balcony with wooden
columns, from which the shah and his entourage could watch specta-
cles 111 the maidan below. Like several other Safavid palaces, it was
designed to be seen frontally or at an angle, not from behind. The
formal gardens and watercourses into which it leads were once scat-
tered with courts, two-storey open-plan kiosks, and pavilions, of
which one. the Chihil Sutun ('Forty Columns'), has a Bat-roofed
portico with wooden columns, following pre-Islamic Persian practice.
This precedes the shah's throne room. The sculpture in the surround
ing garden may also be intended to evoke ancient imperial memories.
The Chahar Bagh (Tour Gardens'), an avenue lined with trees.
streams and the palaces of the nobility (evocatively named after roses,
mulberries, nightingales and Paradise itself') gave access to the capital
from the south - a curtain-raiser nearly a mile long Massive bridges,
such as the Pul-i Allahvardi Khan with its thirty three arches, or the |S|

Pul-i Khwaju featuring not only sluice gates but also pavilions tor the
 royal party which served as vantage points from which to watch regat-
tas and other water sports, linked Isfahan with some of its suburbs.
In secular architecture network of
the khans, or caravansarais
erected across the country by Shah 'Abbas I deserves special note.
Most of them follow a \-iwan plan, with the space in the corners
serving for stables while the entrance and domed vestibule define the
major axis. Features common to many caravansarais include a single
massive portal, with an entrance high enough to admit a loaded
camel; kitchens in the corners; and adjoining enclosures for tether-
ing animals. Caravansarais in the open country were often built at
intervals of journev - about 2$ km (16 miles) - along the
a day's
major trade routes. Those in the towns (often very numerous;
so Isfahan, for example, had nearly two thousand in the seventeenth
century) served not only to house and teed travellers, but also as
warehouses and centres tor a particular trade or group of merchants.
However. Safavid art has tended in modern scholarship to be
c

dominated by the undeniable glamour of the Isfahan of Shah Abbas,

to the detriment ot the Iranian art produced m the previous century
under less charismatic rulers. The penalty tor this over-exposure has
been a seriously distorted perspective ot early Safavid art, in which it

181 A Sasanian tradition revived. The Allahvardi Khan bridge, Isfahan, stretches 300 in (984 ft) Designed
to carry traffic and regulate flooding with its massive buttresses; u also has pleasure pavilions.
 S indarwood and ivory sarcophagus of the dreaded Shah Isma'il I. founder of the Shi'ite Safavid state
'on seeing him. outsiders would prefer to turn to stone' at the shrine of Shaikh Sari, Ardabil, .. sj
i
i

isunderestimated and seen merely as a curtain-raiser tor what was to

come. The surpassing quality of book painting and of carpets in the
early sixteenth century suggests that such an attitude is a cardinal
mistake, and that it would be worth investigating other media in an
attempt to redress such an injustice. The lack of substantial art-
historical research on the reign of Shah Isma'il has been a major
barrier in this respect. So too has thepoor survival rate of the build-
ingsproduced under his patronage, and the fact that Axdabil, the first
major centre of Safavid power and art, has been unaccountably oxer-
looked by art historians - except tor its architecture. The shrine has,
of course, been comprehensively pillaged over the last two centuries
and the process continues to this day. What survives comprises not
only architecture but metalwork (including several standards or
Warns), carving in wood and stone, and tilework. The constellation
of talent seen displayed in the decorative arts of Ardabil makes re .1

assessment of early Safavid work imperative. It is worth noting that.

despite Shah [sma'il's disastrous defeat b\ the C >tttnn.u is ( haldiran .it

in is 14 and the consequent loss of eastern Anatolia, he did mana

 to bring under his control all of Iran including much of Afghanistan
and some of the -neighbouring territories north of the Oxus and the
Araxes rivers. This gave him a far more extensive financial base than
had been enjoyed either by the Timunds or by the Turcoman dynas-
ties, and it therefore allowed him correspondingly greater latitude in

his patronage of the arts.

The Ardabil material in architecture and the minor arts is also of
vital importance in highlighting the continuity between late Timurid
and early Safavid work; if that continuity is not recognized, the
c
transition to the mature Safavid style under Shah Abbas is lost, and I

instead one is faced with an abrupt and perplexing juxtaposition of

two essentially unrelated styles. Finally Ardabil is important in that,
for the most part, it is a kind of time capsule in which the arts of
early Safavid Iran are displayed side by side and medium by medium,
to create an ensemble in which, for once, the decorative arts cm be
seen in context, enhancing each other and almost bandying themes
across the space of the shrine.
182 The sarcophagus of Shah Imii.i hi 1 has the traditional rectangular
form, but is of quite special splendour. Timurid imperial woodwork,
as demonstrated by the doors m the Gur-i Amir and the shrine of
Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi, had effectively marked the technical limits of
fine, filigree carving in wood. At Ardabil the carvers struck out in
another direction, drawing inspiration from work on a much smaller
scale, such as boxes inlaid with ebony and ivory. The geometric

strapwork which forms the skeletal structure of the decoration is

familiar enough: but its interstices are ornamented with grace notes
applied almost parsimoniously at key points, in black-and-white
marquetry. Tiny spots of green probably stained bone or ivory) add
an extra touch of luxury. The borders are marked by further clusters
of marquetry in a sprightly dancing rhythm.
Many doors in the shrine are entirely silver-plated, and some are
183 gilded too. A common design is a curvilinear lattice work whose
slight and dips m plane create an undulating quilted effect.
rises

Multiple mouldings constitute the only added ornament, so that

these doors project a powerful sense of harmony and serenity - an
excellent foil for the more assertive accents of tilework, carpets and
carved wood.
Ardabil also sets the scene tor subsequent developments in the
visual arts,which continued to cluster around the capital city as the
court removed first to Qazvin and finally to Isfahan, ever further
distant from the sensitive frontier with the Ottomans. In this respect

236
the Safavids continued and consolidated a process which can alread)
be detected under the Timurids, wherein most art of top flight
quality in the principal media was produced in the immediate orbit
of the court. In practice this spelled the disappearance of.provincial
ateliersof the first rank, though it did not exclude occasional lavish
patronage on the part ot a provincial governor, tor example at

Mashhad or Kirman.
The Safavid capture of Herat in so~ meant that the lmund i I

library and its craftsmen, including Bihzad, tell into Safavid hands
and were eventually transported to the new capital ot Iabn/. under
the patronage ot Shah Isma'il I. His successor. Shah Tahmasp, himself ivj
a painter, even expanded the royal atelier. Early Safavid painting

combined the traditions of Timund Herat and Turcoman labia/ to I So

reach a peak ot technical excellence and ot emotional expressiveness
which for many is the finest hour oi Persian painting. The master-
piece of the age is the Shahnama-yi Shahi ("The Kind's Hook ot
Kings*, formerly known as the Houghton Shahnama) which, with its
258 paintings, was the most lavishly illustrated Shahnama recorded in
all of Persian history and which monopolized the resources ot the

1
s
3 a ) Opener of Doors!' is .111

inscription commonly associated with

gateways and doors m the 1 s th and [6th
centuries, rhe reference is to God; and
the notion ot\i saintly person .is .1 gate was
commonplace - 'Ali. tor example, was
called the Gate to the City of Knowledge.
Such associations enrich these and other
silver-faced and gilded doors at the
Ardahil shrine. 161 1-12. Each door leaf
has .1 carpet-inspired ogival lattice design
of 1 14 blossoms, one tor each sura of the
Qur'an.
 m/
K-r/

IXTT
-V
^
±£*
iSj Pastoral idyll. Everyday rustic occupations rendered bv Muhammadi, 1578, in minimalist .1 aesthetic
employing the unusual technique of tinted drawing and the play of light and dark accents

ix yields to love. Royal Turcoman Shahtuma, Tabriz. v

s
I he single romantic episode in the
600-year life of the Shahtamas greatest hero, Rustam.

royal atelier tor a generation. Itson the war

pictures lay special stress
between Iran and may thus reflect contem-
and Turan (Central Asia)
porary political concerns. It has justly been termed 'a portable art
gallery' because all the most illustrious painters of the time contrib-
uted to it. Its lissom, eternally youthful figures are apparently an orig-
Perfection proved hard to sustain, and before long artists
inal creation.
were overreaching themselves, lor in some works of this school
the Khamsa or 'Quintet' ofNizami in the British I ibrary, dated 1 >;<>

and 1543) st> much detail iscrammed into the composition that its
fastidious precision tails to make its full effect. Similarly, the colour
range may be so kaleidoscopic that the very richness confuses th

A dream world -

natural dantv with an other

erousry lured to h
It could be argued that the manuscript page had too limited a scope
to accommodate the increasing complexity of these compositions.
In his middle years. Shah Tahmasp became a religious extremist,
which resulted - among many other, more significant, changes - in
his losing interest in painting and disbanding the royal atelier. The
court style associated with Qazvin, which became the capital m
1548, is marked, despite certain exceptions (like the Haft Aurang, the
'Seven Thrones', of Jami in Washington), by a palpable decline in
quality. Compared with the best Tabriz work, landscape becomes
simpler, with large areas given up to a single colour (as in the
c

Shahnama of Isma il II, 1576). Figures tend to increase in size and

they exhibit a curious stiffness. Yet m courtly tableaux, youths and
maidens are rendered with a consistently suave line. No trace remains
of the vigorously differentiated types of the school ofBihzad, and the
earlier obsession with detail gradually disappears. In the later six-
teenth century, the enforced change of patronage, which meant that
the day of the luxury book was effectively over, led the best artists
(such as Muhammadi, who specialized in figure studies and tinted
drawings of carefully understated scenes c>\ peasant life) to produce
single Leaves that were eagerly collected by connoisseurs and bound
into albums. Figure studies of pages, prisoners and princes, among
others - were a popular subject tor such leaves, which became the
forte o\' the Qazvin school. Their subjects came to include genre
scenes of utmost delicacy, with pastel shades enhancing the
the
composition. The sequence of drawings, paintings, ornament and
specimens of calligraphy is carefully calculated so that facing pages
contrast with, complement or mutually enrich each other, A\)d it is
possible to recognize the development of themes. It is therefore mis-
leading to regard such an album (muraqqa*)as a scrapbook. There is

nothing random about it. This sea-change brought artists out of the
court and into the public market, a process which accelerated the
break with tradition.il anonymity and the rise o\ the artist - for
example Sadiqi Beg or Siyavush - as a personality.
It is hard to account for the radical change in taste and style in
seventeenth-century painting. Technically it is easy enough to point
to the fashion both tor single-leaf paintings and for tinted drawings
in the later sixteenth century; but while presaging the divorce of

painting from book illustration, neither of these developments fully

implied the shape of things to come. Some time around the end of
the sixteenth century - and the timing accords too well with the
change of capital to Isfahan in 1597 to be coincidental - a massive

240
and apparently unofficial deregulation of the traditional codes of
practice governing book painting took place. It is not clear whether
this was market-led - precipitated perhaps b\ a tennm.il turn for the
worse in official patronage for illustrated books or whether the
pressure for change came from the painters themselves, or .it least
from a tew strong-willed radicals among them. Hut the results are
perfectly plain to see. They govern execution, subject matter,
output, patronage and expense. As with all such revolutions m taste,
the pace ot change was uneven, with some able painters stubbornly
hanging on to traditional ways. Hut the logic of the new style was
inexorable. It brooked no rivals. Hook painting as it had been under
stood tor the previous thousand years was now finished, tor the most
part relegated to the bazaar.
For centuries, paintings had served to illustrate and explain the
great classics of Persian poetry. Now. that increasingly elaborate,

refined symbiosis had been shattered, and Persian painting lost its t.ip
root. And once the tradition had been broken it could not simply be
reinstated. Hence some ot the best Iranian paintings ot" the later
Safavid period and thereafter that are produced in the context of
still

the luxury book remain stubbornly divorced from a continuous

text; they serve as frontispieces or are inserted into earlier volumes
like the Hntish Library Nizami o\ [543. Some painters turned to [87
other media, experimenting with book-covers or (under European
influence) with full-length oil -paintings. Lacquerware, too. devel-
oped significantly in the Safavid period, being used principally for
secular book covers, and drawing on the lyric and epic themes
created by book painters. Hut lacquer doors and boxes are also
known and these have a wider repertoire, including tor example
audience scenes, (dearly, later Safavid painting will not tit neatK
into pigeon-holes.
The principal change inpamtmg on single leaves concerns subject
matter. That sense of an intellectual construction, a hard-won and
hard-edged abstraction of reality, that stamps earlier Persian painting
and prevents it from disintegrating into a self-indulgent dream world,
has gone. The subject-matter on which it had traditionally been
exercised is no more. Perhaps new style had ot necessity to be fash
.1

ioned to match the new subject matter. Hitherto the Persian painter
had come to terms with the world around him by miniaturizing it.
by viewing it .is it were from the wrong end o( a telescope, and then
Decomposing selected elements of what he saw 111 his minds
Now he holds a distorting mirror 10 reality Sometimes he ma\
187 The past as myth. Nizami, Khamsa, Tabriz. 1539-43. In this icon of imperial majesty
drawing on pre-Islamic Persian legend. Khusrau and his consort Shirin spend the evening
listening to stories told by her maids. The scene evokes Scheherezade and the 1,001 nights.
 [88 A taste nf Ecstasy- Using techniques recalling marbled paper, this hallucinatory image ol a mystical
journey evokes the swirling rhythms of a cosmic dance. It celebrates the unity of being (wahdai al-wujud), a
concept elaborated by Ibn al-'Arabi and variously described .is monism or pantheism. Thus created tonus
dissolve into each other. The composition suggests infinity, for the frame cannot confine it.

capture the exaltation and ecstasy of a mystical vision. More often, [88
tar from keeping his own and forcing us to keep ours, he
distance,
thrusts his discoveries right under our noses. More than a hint of the
fairground freak can be sensed in some of the images served up by
seventeenth-century painters. Studies of single figures dominate, and
they are decidedly unheroic. Seedy dervishes, Sufi shaikhs, bagpipers,
grooms, beggars, ageing painters, ne'er-do-wells, merchants - a
whole gamut of portraits of the middle and lower reaches oi society
(for the grandees of the court are not depicted) meets the eye. Their
likenesses are seized with formidable accuracy and speed, a notable
achievement for an art form that, minor exceptions apart, had tor
centuries disdained portraiture. Yet despite the searching realism of
some of these portraits, perhaps a juster term would often be carica-
tures - for, while serious portrait studies oi profound psychological
insight. o\ intimacy and tenderness, are not lacking, the main body
of this material has an altogether minister tone, and is frequently
downright coarse. Satire and knockabout humour are the driving
forces behind most of the images. Hence the unsparing focus on
drunken, pot-bellied holy men, or on dervishes built like storks,
smoking pipes of opium and wearing fur h.its tilted at rakish angles.
1fence too the unHattenngK exaggerated length of nose or chin.
 No-one could gainsay the bite and individuality of these mainly
Some of
low-life character studies. Yet they are only half the story.
the self-same an altogether different genre
artists lent their talents to

of painting, at once vulgar and louche: the high-gloss pin-up. Pert

189 androgynous pages with inviting smiles and thighs of awesome girth
subside gracefully onto clumps of grass, proffering cups of wine. Or
they pose smirking for their portraits, dressed in
height of the
European fashion, from the saucy feather in their hats to the jewelled
buckles on their kid boots, and holding some newfangled import
from the West, such as a turnip. Their poses are often of a coy and
studied awkwardness. Their faces - full moons with rosebud mouths,
as contemporary would have seen them - exhibit perhaps the
taste
final degradation of the Buddha image in Persian painting. All con-
crete sense of the individual human form is dissipated in these spine-
less, indeed altogether boneless, forms, mere confections of elegant

line. More rarely the theme is definitively a girl, or a pair of lovers,

sometimes depicted in explicitly erotic poses, with wraps of filmy
lawn incompetently veiling their nakedness. Thus cloying sweetness
alternates with startling grossness. This again marks a new departure
in Persian painting.
The execution ot these leaves is as novel as their themes, and is

intimately related to the scale o\~ their output. The same coldly
efficient, mannered, economically linear style is employed through-
out. Once again, and here in the most unexpected context, the
Islamic capacity to geometricize forms finds expression. The very
large quantity of these pin-ups to survive has done much to skew
modern understanding of Safavid art. and it should caution against
evaluating them very highly. It proves, of course, that they were
extremely popular - but no more. Indeed, close inspection suggests
that they were produced almost mechanically. Colouring is flat and
simplified, laid on in broad washes. Expressions are of a uniform sim-
pering blandness. The background setting for the figures is as exigu-
ous as it well could be. a clear indication that it was regarded as being
of no importance. And the virtuoso mastery of line cannot disguise
that the lines themselves are remarkably few. Here, then, was a way
to make a lot of money with minimum effort. The attraction is on
the surface: what you see is what you buy. The conservative nature
of public taste in this genre explains why it is difficult to tell the
work of the various masters apart; but that same similarity reveals
also how much each of them subordinated his own individuality to
T

the dictates of fashion. Many such leaves were inscribed with the

244
 f

^_: - j
•

^^P
1 N

f 1.

. wir*
-

I he androgynous centrefold. Note, for example, the disproportionately tiny feel

'.7i slv humour. Inscribed 'He [is God]. Portrait ofNashmi the Archer Completed on ruesday, j

Rabi' II 103 1 [10 January [6j |

Work of the humble Rida' yi 'Abbasi' Ins dishevelled characti
I

his cadaverous race and one stocking .it half-mast, h.ts dearly fallen on evil times.

name of the artist, the place and date of execution and the identity of

the and the works of certain masters

sitter; Sadiqi Beg, Rida' yi
'Abbasi, Minn Musawwir, Muhammad Qasim, Habiballah were
eagerly sought after. Contemporary gossip pounced on their person
alities and eccentricities. Sometimes the) worked at home.

What of the patrons who bought these leaves, and the prices they
paid tor them- An anecdote about Sadiqi Beg reveals him using two
of his drawings in part payment for poem written and rented in Ins
.1

honour, and asserting that each work could be sold to merchants foi
 3 tumans (worth £7 in English seventeenth-centurymoney — a very
considerable sum). It appears from this story that there was a market
for his work as far afield as India - and indeed many Persian special-
ists in the various arts of the book found a good living both at the
Ottoman and the Mughal courts.
Carpet fragments of thirteenth-century date from Saljuq Anatolia,
and even earlier survivals from Islamic Egypt, show that this art was
well developed in some parts of the medieval Muslim world, and
literary sources amply corroborate this, mentioning dozens of carpet
types and production centres of which no tangible evidence survives.
Persian paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with their
close focus on detail, flesh out this picture and reveal the remarkable
range of contemporary carpet types. But the Safavid period is the
earliest from which a critical mass of physical evidence has survived -
enough to allow the history of this art form in Iran from 500 to 1

1700 to be written. The reason, perhaps, is that the Safavids turned a

c
cottage industry into a national one. Shah Abbas founded carpet I

factories at Isfahan and Kashan. The weavers, who sometimes sign

their work (e.g. Maqsud Kashani or Ghiyath al-Din Jami), display
consummate technical mastery across a wide spectrum of materials -
silk, wool, gold and silver thread - and techniques, from flat weaves

(zilus and kilims) to pile carpets knotted coarsely or so closely as to

total eight hundred knots per square inch. Red, white, yellow and
blue are by fir the most popular colours, irrespective of the design.
Gigantic carpets were produced; 111 [539—40, the Ardabil shrine was
graced, at the behest of Shah Tahmasp, with a pair of carpets, the
191 larger and better preserved one comprising some thirty-three million
knots and measuring c. x 5.40 m (36 x 18 ft).
1 1

As in the Timurid period, no significant barriers operated

between most media in the matter of design, and thus many of the
motifs and themes encountered in carpets can be paralleled in con-
temporary tilework, wall painting, lacquer, metalwork, manuscript
illumination and illustration, and so on. So close are the analogies
with contemporary Safavid book painting, in particular, that some of
the most complex carpets can be regarded as paintings executed in a
different medium. This has its disadvantages, as can be seen with
modern rugs bearing portraits of statesmen - for the language and
range of expression natural to a carpet is being ignored, indeed sup-
pressed. What, then, made the design of carpets distinctive? Perhaps

191 A woven Paradise. The larger Ardabil carpet (1539-40), of superlative technical quality, is saturated
with the imagery of heavenly light. At its dead centre is a pond with floating lotus blossoms - perhaps the
Qur'anic Pool of Kauthar.The carpet bears verse- by the poet Hafiz and a signature: 'Except for thy haven
there is no refuge for me in this world;/Other than here, there is no place for my head. /Work of a servant
of the court, Maqsud of Kashan. 946'.
 i
I

&>4

H ,/:•<
more than in any other art form, carpet design manipulates multiple
levelsof pattern, .sometimes five at a time, using colour as the princi-
pal means of distinguishing the different schemes. The designs are
often predicated on constantly shifting viewpoints, which add
further complexities and lend the ensemble extra dynamism. As with
many panels of tilework, moreover, the design is deliberately not
complete but is only a portion of an unimaginably large but thor-
oughly disciplined composition. Hence the viewer receives intima-
tions of infinity, even eternity all the more affecting because they are
not explicit.
Various major categories of design may be distinguished, though
they continually overlap - for example, borders comprising car-
touches with animal scenes enrich otherwise abstract designs. Garden
carpets perpetuate a type known as far back as the Sasanian period,
when the rug known as 'The Springtime ot Khusrau' was a national
treasure. This was divided into tour plots, each representing one of
the seasons and depicting appropriate flora, all executed in gold and
silver thread and precious jewels. Safavid garden carpets seem to
reflect simultaneously a side view and a bird's-eye view, though dras-
tically schematized, ot water-channels stocked with fish, flower-beds,
terracing, pavilions, ponds and fountains. The poems inscribed on
them compare them to roses and tulips. Sometimes peacocks and
lesser birds, lions, leopards, hares and deer can be glimpsed in the
foliage: their colours as in Safavid tilework) may bear no relation to
nature. The other-worldly associations ot the garden theme are
always subliminally present. A second category
of hunting consists
scenes conceived as a sequence ofloosely linked vignettes, with the
border sometimes depicting an alfresco royal reception, lutanists and
even angels (major examples survive in museums in Boston and
Milan, the latter dated [522—23). The so-called animal rugs, in
which creatures of various species frolic or attack each other, can be
classified alongside the hunting rugs. A third type can be described
rather inadequately as a medallion carpet because its centrepiece is
usually a huge circular or oval medallion with numerous smaller
medallions orbiting around it. The Ardabil carpets are the most dis-
tinguished examples of this variety, and display the extra refinement
of a mosque lamp hanging from the inner circle of smaller satellite
medallions - all silhouetted against a ground ot deep indigo which
makes the carpet like a window on Milky Way. Placed on the
to the
floor directly beneath the dome, evoked that dome and thus the
it

heavens. Further themes m these two carpets contain references to

248
Paradise as described in Islamic tradition; other carpets depict angels
or houris. Quite another type is the vase carpet, in which vases
o(
various sizes form the leitmotif of the composition. A last major
category is represented by the floral rugs, in which multiple
flowering sprays of various sizes, linked by thin tendrils, spill across
the field.
These carpets, though essentially conn mi. were actually made in
numerous manufactories throughout the Safavid realm, though opin
ions differ over allocating types of rugs to specific places, labia/.
Qazvin, Kashan, Isfahan. Herat and Kirman were all major centres.
though it was common for a single centre to produce several different
types of rug. The finer carpets represented a considerable investment
in time and money, and it is therefore not surprising that they bear
quite full inscriptions; the London Ardabil carpet is signed by one
Maqsud Kashani, who styles himself Servant of the court", and bears
the date [539—40. A carpet 111 the Najaf shrine was donated, s.ivs the
inscription, "by the dog of this shrine, 'Abbas' (Shah 'Abbas I). he I

strongly pictorial character of so main Safavid carpets plainly owes

much to Safavid book pamtmg. a borrowing which extends even to
the concept ot pictorial space, as m the adoption of the high horizon
and stepped planes and the plethora of small-scale detail; but it has .1

much more marked anti-naturalistic quality (for example in the

choice ot colour), which suggests that even figural images were seen
in some sense as abstract motifs, and the roster of Chinese motifs far
exceeds the norms of contemporary painting. Cloud collars, undulat-
ing cloud bands, cranes, phoenixes, dragons, lotuses, peonies and
numerous fabulous creatures (as in the Sanguszko carpet in New
York) - all are grist to the mill, though their context owes very little to
C )hina. Nor is it certain whether they retain their C Ihinese significance

or whether they have acquired new symbolic meanings (the

dragon phoenix combat, for example, emblematic ot happiness in
China, may now refer to dualist beliefs). This obsession is still imper
fectly explained in current scholarship; not even Safavid pottery is so
saturated in Chinese motifs. On the other hand, many ot the finest
carpets were made as presents tor foreign potentates or tor commercial
export to the West. The horizons of the Safavid carpet industry were
therefore very wide. Hut while it did not ignore the immemorial past
of carpet production in the Ne.n East the abstract, usually geometri<
designs of tribal weavers - its supreme masterpieces bear very differ .1

ent kind of iconography. As .1 had no root in the medium

result, they

itself; for all their splendour and majestic scale, they were an intrusion.
 Architecture, painting and carpets may fairly claim to represent the
principal achievements of the Safavids in the visual arts, but this was
a productive period in many other media too. Textiles were pro-
duced in various materials - printed cotton, silk, shorn velvet,
reversible brocades in gold and silver thread, and embroidery - not
only in Isfahan but also in Yazd and Kashan. Similarly, textile fac-
tories were established by royal command all over the realm, from
Shirvan to Isfahan, Yazd, Kashan, Mashhad and Rinnan, each with
orders to 'weave in its own manner'. Here too much of the produc-
c
tion was for export, and notable painters like Rida'-yi Abbasi were
co-opted to provide designs. Velvets, brocades and block-printed
cottons were made in huge quantities. 'They last forever', as Chardin
said. Hence they survive in great quantity, and they too were
exported — an entire room in Rosenborg Castle in Denmark was
hung with them. Their designs bear once again the unmistakable
imprint of book painting, with themes like dallying lovers, winsome
pages, picnics, horsemen leading prisoners of Turkish stock, hunts-
men on mounted, animal combats, Moral patterns and the
foot or
familiar episodes of Nizami and Firdausi. The absence o\^ serious
themes of religious or political iconography is noticeable. Reds and
yellows are especially favoured colours. While some of these textiles
were intended as hangings and tent decoration, most were garments
naturally intended for the wealthy, and advertised the luxury o\
the Iranian court. They attracted admiring notice when worn by
Iranian ambassadors abroad, and were often sent as gifts to European
potentates.
The last decades of the sixteenth century saw a vigorous revival of
the pottery industry in Iran, which despite occasional fine - even
dated - pieces had been m the doldrums. Safavid potters developed
new types of Chinese-inspired blue-and-white wares, due perhaps to
the influence of the three hundred Chinese potters and their families
settled m Iran by Shah 'Abbas I. and indeed some of the vases made
in Kirman and depicting swirling dragons are passable pastiche of
.1

Chinese work, a comment that applies equally to their semi-

porcelain body. Much of this 'chinoiserie' pottery was produced in
response European demand. More typically Iranian designs,
to
however, appear on such pieces. Subtler references to Chinese
also
originals include the so-called Gombroon ware, which depends for
its effect on distinction of form and on its white translucent body, to

which celadon slip may be added. Lustre enjoyed a revival under

c
Shah Abbas and was produced in great quantity, but it has a rather

250
 11
m
V
m
:

^3fi
.^v

'v' •-. ftfll

eniury 1"' I K1U h

.
He 16th «
1

sk£j^s^£=s= "" wi
 brassy sheen which, combined with an emphasis on underglaze blue,
results in pieces, inferior to earlier lustre in aesthetic quality. The
decoration is Polychrome ware was pro-
restricted to vegetal motifs.
duced in great quantities in Kirman. Figural designs on such Safavid
pottery as eschews chinoisene echo the mannered style of the
c
painter Rida'-yi Abbasi, whose idiom in fact dominates all later
Safavid figural art; they also recall, more generally. Safavid carpets
and textiles. Later Kubachi ware has a much wider and brighter
193 colour range and often has a central medallion enclosing an engaging
portrait bust executed with rapid strokes in typical late Safavid style.
The Safavid pictorial manner lingered long after the tall of the
dynasty and. in an enfeebled state, remained the staple of Qaiar
potters. This staleness, combined with the widespread popularity of
cheap European ceramics from the eighteenth century onwards,
brought about the final demise ot fine wares in Iran, though
Mashhad and Kirman. the major centres ot Safavid production
(neither city being noted for its pottery m earlier times) continued to
194 produce blue-and-w hue ware with black outlines into the nine-
teenth century. Only in architectural tilework did the Safavid tradi-
tion continue withundiminished vigour after the fall of the dynasty
with new colour schemes favouring yellow and pink, an unprece-
dented emphasis on relief and themes of European origin.
.

Ait thexB-«M
 In metalwork, the engraved technique developed in Khurasan in
the fifteenth century retained its popularity well into Safavid times,
and indeed that province, now supplemented by Azerbaijan, contin-
ued to be a major centre for this medium. It is curious that Safavid
metalwork has been so long neglected even though it produced
significant innovations in form, design and technique. They include
a type of tall octagonal torch-holder on a circular plinth, a new type
of ewer of Chinese inspiration, and the almost total disappearance of
Arabic inscriptions in favour of those containing Persian poetry,
c

often by Hafiz and Sa di. The content of these verses is frequently

religious and is apt to have a strong Sufi tinge. Dense arabesques and
floral designs were more to contemporary taste than figural motifs,
even though such motifs dominated the other visual arts of the
period. Perhaps they would have coexisted somewhat uneasily with
the huge fields of epigraphy which are the major visual accent on
these pieces, and which find their ideal foil in the low-key vegetal
background which expands effortlessly to till the remaining available
space. Inscriptions .ire now allotted a greater surface than ever before,
in bold zigzags and cartouches as well as the more familiar encircling
bands. A few commissioned by Armenian patrons juxtapose
pieces
lines from Persian mystical poets with Armenian inscriptions.
Armenian architecture and pottery produced m Iran proper uses
Iranian modes m just the same unselfconscious manner even though
their iconographic message is unmistakably Christian: a silent testi-
mony to the religious tolerance practised by the Safavid state.
Safavid brasses were apparently often tinned to simulate silver,
195 though the most luxurious metalwork, of which only a few pieces
are known, was inlaid with gold and incrusted with jewels. Other
lost types of Safavid metalwork can be reconstructed with the help of
ceramic copies. Hut some o\~ the best Islamic armour extant -
stirrups, shields, battle-axes fashioned in iron and especially steel,

was produced Important pieces include a group of

h\ Safavid smiths.
scimitars {shamshirt) from Khurasan, as well as steel banners inlaid
1
with Twelver Shi'ite invocations. 'Damascening (watering and gold
overlay or gold inlay and openwork were the most common decora-
tive techniques used for such objects, which often bear lengthy
inscriptions. Safavid metalwork, like so main of the other visual arts,
remained the standard for subsequent artists, and Zand and Qajar
work perpetuates its shapes and decorative conventions, though the
execution tends to lose itself in a meaningless intricacy.

254
 ( II API I \t I I \

The Ottomans

The Ottoman empire began modestly, .is a principality at the western

vanguard of the Turkish campaign to [slamize Anatolia and bring
down the Byzantine empire. A melee of small and often mutually
antagonistic emirates (beyliks) had arisen to till the political vacuum
in Anatolia after the final fall of the Saljuqs of Rum in 1308 and the
decline of Mongol authority soon afterwards. The Ottomans gradu-
ally consolidated their position in western Anatolia and expanded
their territories at the expense both of Byzantium and their Muslim
neighbours, changing their capital in the process from [znik right
on the Byzantine frontier- to Bursa, further south. A scries ofambi
tious and able rulers in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth cen-
turies enabled them to survive a catastrophic defeat by Imiiir in 1402
and to expand into Europe, first via Greece and then the Balkans.
The noose around Constantinople tightened inexorably and in retro
spect it is remarkable how long the city was able to survive. It fell to
the charismatic young sultan Mehmed II, after .1 prolonged and
gallant defence, in 1453. The name Qustantmiva continued on the
coinage, but Istanbul now claimed much of the thousand-year her-
itage of the Byzantine empire - a message driven home by the sil
houettes of the mosques which quickly dominated the city's skyline.
The psychological boost provided by this victory can be said to
haw launched the Ottomans on the road to a world empire; in the
course of the next century they had established themselves not just as
the principal Islamic- state but .is a superpower - the only medieval
polity both to achieve this distinction and carry it into the modern
age. Neither their Nafavid nor their Mughal contemporaries could
match them tor power or territory or perhaps even wealth, for two
centuries and more after the fall of ( Constantinople this was an empire
on the move, transforming much of the Mediterranean into a [iirkish
lake, its persistent encroachment into Europe fmalK turned back as
late as [683 .it the Siege of Vienna. So powerful was its grip on (In-

lands it had a< quired that even the long dec line- ot the eighteenth and
 early nineteenth centuries saw only minor losses of territory. Even
when Turkey began to be described as 'the sick man of Europe',
later,

Ottoman possessions in Asia remained firmly within the empire.

What was the secret of this success? Several answers can be pro-
posed. First, this was
thoroughly militarized state; yet, far more
a
than its it was open to technological advance, a
Islamic predecessors,
true gunpowder empire. Second, it presented itself as the consum-
mate Islamic state, fully integrating government and Islamic law (the
shari'a). The Ottomans took over from the Mamluks the mantle of
the leadership ofSunni [slam and the Ottoman sultan subsumed into
his own titles those of the caliph, thus ending the shadow 'Abbasid
caliphate that had survived m Cairo until [517. Yet the Islam propa-
gated by the Ottoman state was not only that of the 'ulama, the men
of theological learning, which was apt to become and and legalistic;
for the sultans also sponsored certain Sufi orders and were on intim-
ate terms with their leaders. Thus they had a tap-root to popular
piety, and the flourishing of the dervish lodge (tchhc) in their domin-
ions is clear proof of this. Thirdly, this was not only a militarized but
also a quintessential^ bureaucratic state, with well-established hierar-
chies in all the affairs of government. The Ottoman millet system
formalized and protected the position of non-Muslim minorities in
the body politic; the devshirme policy systematically uprooted young
Christian boys from their native lands and brought them to the
capital for service in the palace or in crack regiments. The Ottoman
archives, which survive in abundance, document the workings of this
bureaucracy, tor example the way that the Iznik potteries were run
and financed, or how building campaigns were managed. Fourthly,
the Ottomans were Staggeringly wealthy. Their empire stretched
from Hungary to the Yemen, from Algeria to Iraq. With such taxa-
tion revenues to draw on. it is Little wonder that the Ottomans did
not - though to their ultimate cost - evince serious interest in the
Americas. India, the Far East or the burgeoning of mternation.il
seaborne trade. Finally, they wielded the weapon of propaganda most
effectively. They were thoroughly international, as witnessed, say, by
the contents of the Topkapi Saray (see p. 280) or by their welcome of
Western experts in art. the sciences and military techniques. Yet they
also represented the culmination of five centuries of Turkish rule in
11 the Islamic world, and that heritage manifested itself culturally,
socially and numerous ways. Brit they also stood for the
politically in
whole ot the Islamic world, for example as guardians of the Holy
Places of Mecca. Medina And Jerusalem. They were the very image

2s6
of the infidel so far as Europeans were concerned, and their pomp
and ceremony was recorded with a sense of awe In European an
sadors and travellers.
Ottoman art is in a category of its own within the wider world of
Islamic art. It certainly has us own distinctive character in the
major
media such as architecture, ceramics, book painting and
and textiles,
its products hear witness to the massive financial resources of the
most powerful empire of its time. Net the remarkable uniformity o(
much of the Ottoman visual arts gives one pause. On the technical
side, much that was produced attained the highest standard of excel

lence. But this superlative execution is liable to be offset at times b\ a

cold, rational formalism that drams the lite out of the work. I he
perfection itself has a somewhat forbidding, hard-edged quality.
t'ascs in point are the austerity of so much architectural decoration
or the combination of high-gloss surface and a rather restricted dec
orative repertoire in Izmk wares.
seems permissible to suggest, on
It

the basis both of the relatively static nature of much Ottoman art and
of its high technical quality, that government control had a consistent
and decisive impact on the art of the period. On the credit side, this
kept very large numbers of artists occupied and ensured that their
work met the most exacting standards. Hut there was a price to \\\\.
most evidently in architecture, where the existence ot centrally pro
duced blueprints is well documented, but plainly in other fields too
- in a word, standardization. Top-flight artists paradoxically had less
freedom of manoeuvre than less able ones; they were palace emplo\
ees rather than subject either to their own preferences or to t he-

demands of the open market.

Ottoman architecture is unique in the Islamic world tor its

unswerving fidelity to a single central idea - that ot the domed

square unit. This basic theme announces itself on a tiny scale at the
wry beginning of the Ottoman period, in the mosque ot Ertughrul
at Soghut, datable to the early fourteenth century Over the next five
centuries it was developed with a singular intensity ot purpose. It is.

so to speak, the spinal cord running through the body ot Ottoman

architecture: it controls every major development ot that style .\n<\ its

influence can be felt even m peripheral areas. I he intrinsic simplicity

of the domed square unit as a structural form made it ideally suited
to function on any scale, large or small, without sacrificing clarity 01
monumentality. It readily accommodated, too, numerous appurte-
nances - domed buttresses, semi-domes, porticoes, domed cloi
courtyards and minarets. Possession of this solid structural
 -

196 The seed of greatness. Haci

Ozbek mosque. Iznik, 1333. This
is the earliest Ottoman mosque

dated by inscription. Ottoman

Islamic power began in the tar
west of Anatolia and this mosque
isan early symbol of that
sovereignty, appropriating former
Byzantine territory. The
cloisonne masonry (stone trained
by brick) is a technique nt~

Byzantine origin.

enabled Ottoman architecture to retain its quintessential character

intact, independent of superficial local detailing m materials or
decoration, throughout the many provinces of the empire. From
Algeria to Iraq, from Syria to the Yemen, a distinctively Turkish
Ottoman architecture effortlessly imposes its presence.
This feat is all the more impressive when one recalls that the
domed square unit had already had a long history in Islamic architec-
ture even before the coming of the Ottomans. But in, for example,
the Iranian tradition between, say, Soo and 1700, for all that the
domed square recurs repeatedly for many centuries and in most
major building types, it never acquired the exclusive status which it
enjoyed in Ottoman times. The same could be said of Syria, Egypt,
the Maghrib or India. Instead, the domed square is merely one of
several equal and mutually dependent architectural forms: the portal,
the iwan, the hypostyle hall, the two-tier facade and so on. Ottoman
architecture, however, somehow suppresses these other forms,
though without discarding them completely, and in so doing elevates
the domed square to premier rank. It fashions a new balance of com-
ponent parts, arranged according to a much more explicit hierarchy

258
than before. And the domed square tends to invade areas from which
it was formerly excluded, and swamp them. Thus high courtyard
facades give way to shallow arcades covered by a succession o(
domes, becoming effectively a sequence of domed square units; the
same is true ofhypostyle halls.
This consistency does haw its drawbacks. It can lead to a certain
inflexibility, a tendency to apply a rote solution, devised at the
drawing board, irrespective of the peculiarities of the site. he I

degree of centralization necessitated by so vast an empire encouraged

a Strong bureaucratic input into architectural design, .1 process
formalized by the creation o\ a special department ofst.n
with preparing blueprints for repeated use. his swem effectively
I

tied the hands of provincial architects and imposed a perhaps unde

sirable uniformity on their work. They could choose it was only
practical that they should do so - whether to use naked brick or to
coat it with plaster, whether to have their masonry plainly dressed or
striped. They had a comparable freedom with applied decoration.
But in the crucial matter of managing space - which of course lies .it
the heartof all architecture - they clearly had to work within para-
meters imposed from outside. Thus the vigorous local traditions
which had characterized the Islamic lands bordering the
Mediterranean, and beyond, tor almost millennium, suffered a
a

serious decline. Pre-Ottoman most of these areas had

traditions in
positively benefited from the absence o\~ central governmental
control, in that individual provinces, and often even individual
towns, had managed to develop their own distinctive styles of archi-
tecture. No doubt this phenomenon had much to do with political
independence. But whatever caused it. the fact of this diversity is
undeniable; strong local roots nurtured it; and its vitality had ensured
continuous change and evolution across a broad front encompassing
form, structure and ornament. Regrettably, the Ottoman conquest
put a damper on this process. More than that, it brought Ottoman
architectural forms to places where they simply did not beloi
building like the Fishermen's Mosque in Algiers stands out like a

sore thumb, a metropolitan Turkish import into a solidly Maghribi

landscape. The political implications .ire just as inescapable as those
attached to the architecture of the British Kaj in India. I his was cul
tural imperialism work.
at

Ottoman architecture could fairly In- termed mosque driven. Hie

unchallenged prestige- of the mosque made it the natural foCUS o(
royal patronage. h us it became the- most public showcase foi
I
 innovation, ensuring that new ideas were disseminated quickly and
that they had the. imprimatur of the most venerated building type of
all. Moreover, virtually all the significant stages in the evolution of

196 mosque design were accomplished in the capital — first Iznik, then
197 Bursa, finally Istanbul - which naturally conferred on them a metro-
politan glamour. And the extremely large size of so many of the
imperial Ottoman mosques, with their courtyards, made them
perhaps unexpectedly useful models for quite different building types
such as caravansarais. madrasas and elements of kulliyes, foundations
centring on a mosque but comprising multiple buildings. Indeed, the
core forms of Ottoman architecture, domes and courtyards, are basi-
cally interchangeable; a domed square with a vaulted two-bay porch
can as easily be a mausoleum as a mosque. But it is the dome that
dominates. Hence the various illusionistic devices adopted to
magnify the size ot the dome - such as the low roorline of the
adjoining cloister, porch or sanctuary, or the siting o\" the climactic
dome at the highest point ot a sloping site.

197 Calligraphy writ large. Interior of Ulu Cami, Bursa, [396 9. Huge calligraphic panels used as wall
decoration are an Ottoman speciality, as is mirror writing. Here the central panel reads 'The Guide' (<//-
hadi), one of the 99 names of God. Note the multi-domed interior.
 Theconcentration of major mosques in Istanbul can be explained
in terms as part of a sustained attempt to transform the
political
visual aspect of the ancient Christian city of Constantinople au<\ to
give it a new Islamic identity as Istanbul. In the rough!) contempo
rary Safavid and Mughal empires, too. the capitals Isfahan,
Delhi - were given massive face-lifts by means oi ambitious building
programmes, and the resultant architecture had an unmistakably
scenic purpose. Hut the well-nigh obsessional focus on huge
mosques which characterizes Istanbul tor the century or so after the
conquest of the city - it is even recorded that a detailed model ot the
Suleymaniye was on a show in a public procession held in 582 is 1

noticeably absent in these lands. Of course major mosques were

erected, but palaces, bazaars, mausolea and piazzas account tor much
of the new building in India and Iran. And the demographic pies
suies caused by an influx of Muslims into a previously Christian cit\
can only partially explain this frenzied building campaign.
Competition between successive sultans must also be taken into
account. And given that the first great mosque erected by Mehmed
the Conquerorin Istanbul was itself a very substantial building, the
sultans who
succeeded him had little option but to follow him down
the same path. For that simple hum. 111 reason the imperial mosques
o\~ Istanbul are unreasonably large and plentiful. Presumably the
expansion ot the city beyond its Byzantine walls meant that there was
less premium on space and that architects were able to spread them-

selves. Moreover, since there was plainly no overriding liturgical

need for so main large mosques, their architects designed them to
serve additional functions. Hence the kiilliye or composite found.
tion saw anunprecedented expansion in this period.
other factors also encouraged the rapid evolution of a
Several
dynamic innovatory style in sixteenth-century Istanbul, for example,
architects paid close attention to the work of their rivals, identifying
the weak improving on them in their own
spots in their designs and
work. The increasingly compact and concentrated silhouette ot
mature Ottoman mosques owes much to the intelligent observation
of failure. That visually satisfying sense of interdependence between
component parts, that carefully staggered sequence of supporting
elements, which lend these mosques their .111 of confident, tour
square stability, is a prune example of this pragmatic approach
n\' course each new variation on the familiar theme could be
convenicntlv examined at Jose quarters, because virtuall) .ill the
major mosques were in Istanbul, \nother contributor) factoi was
IS* "..,

Ill
the creation of a government department, a kind o( Ministry of

Works, to oversee the continuous building campaigns bunched by

the sultans. This created a pool of administrative expertise which
greatly facilitated the rapid completion of these complex projects.
One should remember, too, that the Ottomans constituted the
largest and most dreaded power m Europe and western Asia, control
ling as they did an area of almost a million square miles. It was only
fitting that their architecture should reflect tins fact, Foreign
embassies Hocked to Istanbul and reported back admiringly on the
scale and magnificence of the new buildings there. Thus the propa
ganda dimension ot these mosques was an integral part of their con
temporary context; and the colossal financial resources of the
Ottoman empire allowed the sultans to exercise patronage on a scale
perhaps unmatched since the high days of the 'Abbasid caliphate.
The increasing size of these mosques brought daunting technical
problems m its train. Hence the introduction o\~ ever more refined
Systems of buttressing, experiments with semi clonics, more lavish
fenestration with a consequent
of the adjoining reinforcement
masonry, and so on. Since the self-same process lud taken place m
early Christian and Byzantine architecture it is not surprising that
Ottoman architects happened independently on many of the same
discoveries - though for obvious religious reasons their buildings did
not incorporate the cruciform element so important to Christian
architects. Yet the catalyst was undoubtedly the conquest ot
Constantinople, which brought Ottoman architects fate to face with
the greatest of Byzantine monuments, Haglna Sophia, and the
various churches related to or developed from it. This encounter,
moreover, took place at a cusp ot history when the Ottoman state
enjoyed boundless self-confidence and was expanding its boundaries,
when revenues were ample and when the new masters ot Bwantium
were laying claim to its ancient heritage. The tune was. in short,
perfect for propaganda gestures, and architecture was the obvious
medium. It was entirely natural for Turkish architects to study
Haghia Sophia intensively, learn from it and resolve to outdo it. Thus
all major Ottoman mosques in Istanbul were built in tull awareness ot

the challenge posed by Haghia Sophia, and they were in some sense
m its shadow.
Yet for .ill the indisputable similarities between I laghia Sophia and
the great Ottoman mosques from the- Lmh (ami i
\
onwards

ie apogee of Ottoman powei Interioi <>t Sul '• the dome, \n!

(26 <> n half its height, • ' Allah,

Muhammad and tin- tour Righth, < i

r.iptu-r ot the time he mosqiI

s ;nm Warn
tor\ ot die sultanate and the alipl 1
 tiered elevation, grouped windows, cascading volumes, prominent
semi-domes and 'domed turret-like buttresses - the differences are
manifest; and it must also be recalled that such features also occur in
earlier Ottoman buildings, though in a less developed form. Where
Haghia Sophia exploited mystery and ambiguity, the Ottoman style
put a premium on clarity and logic. While the exterior of the great
Byzantine church is treated largely as a shell for the interior,
Ottoman mosques maintain a scrupulous balance between the two.
199 Where Haghia Sophia visually plays down the mechanics whereby
the great dome is supported, partly by dim lighting and partly by
198 decoration, such mosques as the Sehzade, the Suleymaniye and the
Bayezid Cami are flooded with light and glory in their great free-
standing piers which carry the central dome; the spatial divisions are
muscular and clear-cut. The decoration of the vaults, in which
designs familiar from manuscripts and carpets (but now vastly
inflated) predominate, further emphasizes these divisions by virtue of
being concentrated in selected spots. A totally different aesthetic
governs the way that the billowing volumes of Haghia Sophia flow
into each other with little perceptible transition. Where the
Byzantine church suggests, its Ottoman successors display.
The central figure in sixteenth-century Ottoman architecture is

Sinan 1491-1588), probably a Greek convert to Islam; he rose

(c.

to become Chief Architect (effectively Master of Works) and was

responsible for something over one hundred buildings in his excep-
tionally long working life. He is the most famous of Islamic archi-
200 tects, both for his own work - crowned by the Selimiye mosque in
Edirne, finished in 1575 when he was over eighty - and for the plans
generated by his office, which were exported throughout the
Ottoman empire and were duly executed by his subordinates or by
local builders using local detailing. Here, if anywhere, is an Islamic
equivalent to Sir Christopher Wren; and, like Wren, Sinan placed
hisstamp on an entire city. He it was who fleshed out the rather
starkand unadorned external elevation of Ottoman mosques with a
whole battery of articulating devices: single- or double-entrance
porticoes, porches, gates, fountains, windows, turnform buttresses,
grilles, variegated fenestration, and, above all, the interlocking
volumes of the domes and semi-domes clustering around the great
central cupola, with a new type of slender, pencil-shaped minaret of
great height (up to 70 m or 230 ft) defining the key points of the

199 The challenge. Haghia Sophia. Constantinople, founded 537. Following a common
Interior of
Muslim practice, Mehmed II commemorated
his capture of the city by turning its great church into a
mosque. The 15th-century historian Tursun Beg specifically notes that this same sultan 'built a Great
Mosque based on the design of Haghia Sophia, which not only encompassed all the arts of Haghia Sophia,
but moreover incorporated modern features constituting a fresh new idiom unequalled in beauty'.
 ;
«.
*:
200 Triumph - in Europe. Selimiye mosque, fdirnc. 1569-75. This, the masterpiece ofSinan, the greatest
Ottoman architect, has the firstMuslim dome whose diameter equals that of Haghia Sophia.

perimeter. His finest mosques are great grey mountains of masonry,

but as complex and coordinatedas a fugue. This is truly architects'

architecture. The of mouldings, two-tone voussoirs, embra-

details
sures, muqamas hoods, door-frames and the like reveal a fastidious
attention to detail, but they are placed parsimoniously and scarcely
counteract the prevailing tone of austerity. The knife-edge sharpness
of the stonework is its own ornament. The interiors are more
colourful, with floral and geometric designs painted red, blue and
205 yellow, calligraphic roundels, stained glass and Iznik tiles, the latter

266
201 The end of the toad. Complex of Sultan Ahmed (the Blue Mosque), Istanbul,
I
609 i
17 Nm.m's stu
dents worked in Ins idiom but could not match his vision; this mosque is noted tor its 21, ... l/mk tiles

sometimes used, .is at the Rustem Pasha mosque, to cover most of

the interior. This balance between structure and decoration was
gradually lost after the Sultan Ahmed complex of [609 17; thereafter
Turkish architecture baroque phase- which emphasized
entered .1

loftiness, profuse seulptur.il detail and a restless curvilinearity

The sterling craftsmanship, the confidence in marshalling huge

spaces, the long experience in working with modular designs easil)
adaptable to different functions, the- structural know how accumu
lated m the course of building campaigns throughout the- empire
 all this gives Ottoman architecture its distinctive stamp. It is manifest
in the chains of c-aravansarais
along the major trade and pilgrim
built
routes, in joint foundations and above all in the great kulliyes for
which the vast revenues of the Ottoman state were available. Some of
these complexes are on a scale without parallel in Islamic architec-
202 ture, like the Bayezid II complex at Edirne or the Suleymaniye,
where the mosque is merely the centrepiece of a congeries of build-
ings which include an asylum, medical college, boys' school, kitchen,
hostel, cistern, hammam, two mausolea and four madrasas.
The largest complex of all is mainly secular in character, namely
203 the Topkapi Saray - more a royal city than a palace and thus a dis-
tinctive Turkish version of a building type also known in Nasrid
Granada, Safavid Isfahan and the Mughal capitals of Delhi, Agra and
Lahore. Hadrian's palaceat Tivoli shows how ancient this tradition

was Mediterranean world. The scores of buildings scattered

in the
over the many courts of the Topkapi Saray were erected over a
period of some four centuries, and many were repaired again and

202 Welfare institution. Complex of Bayezid II. Edirne, begun 14N4. It included a hospi-
tal with attached medical college and a separate section for the insane; the Islamic

medical tradition led the world m the Middle Aces.

- jNerve-centre of the empire. Bird's-eye view of the tbpkapi s.ir.iv palace, Istanbul, s h 19th cen
i i

tunes. Despite its huge si/c. much of it h.is an intimate, domestic atmosphere. It borrows from the
Byzantine imperial palace the notion m~ city within
.1 city,
.1 ["he informal layout gives little him of the
extreme luxury of its interiors.

again. They housed an army of servants and retainers; the royal

harem and the various corps of eunuchs; and of course soldiers and
civil servants. The absence of grand structures of imposing scale, on

the lines of contemporary European palaces, is noteworthy. Indeed.

many of the buildings arc diminutive and are not articulated into an
owrall design of any pronounced a\ialn\ or symmetry. he atmos I

phere is by turns formal and domestic, which is entirely appropriate

since the Tbpkapi Sara) ministered to hod) the public and the private
aspects of the sultan's lite.

It is ironic th.it the most famous and populai <>i .ill Ottoman art

forms - Iznik potter) and tilework was executed in .1 cheap and

 .

204 (fc/f) Ceramic innovation.

Izmk dish, later 1 6th century.
The factories at Iznik rose to
prominence just before 1 soo when
the Ottoman court began to
oversee their management, and
steadily increased the range, quality
and quantity of their output over
the next century. The palette was
consistently modified, notably with
the introduction o\\\ brilliant
tomato red after I 560. Roses.
carnations, tulips and hyacinths
predominate.

humble material. This is the best-known and most coveted of all

Muslim ceramic wares. /ink wares owe their name not only to their
I

intrinsically high aesthetic and technical quality, but also to the fact
that very great numbers of tiles and individual
these wares, both
pieces, survive, often in excellent condition.Moreover, if a compari-
son is made, saw with the Iranian world between 1000 and 1200 - a
period which saw at least a score of different types of glazed wares
being produced - the difference clearly lies in the way that Ottoman
potters concentrated their efforts m a single direction. Here the
dominating influence o\\\ government-sponsored and government-
financed industry can be recognized immediately. Iznik pottery was
an official enterprise whose gigantic output required much bureau-
cratic supervision and financial control. Production quotas were
enforced, salaries were pegged at levels judged appropriate to the
particular skills of the workmen, designs created by the palace studio
in Istanbul were sent to the potters' workshops for transfer on to
pottery and tiles. The wares - a royal monopoly - were exported
throughout Europe, and although the heyday of Iznik was the six-
teenth century, the style, and its various provincial derivatives in
Syria and elsewhere, lasted at least another century. As in the case of
public architecture, this strong government interest tended to
standardize production and to reduce variety while maximizing

205 Divine illumination. Mihrab of mosque of the vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, built by Sinan in 1 571
The white marble, the hanging lamp, candles, sunburst inscriptions and battery of windows above the
mihrab all harp on the theme of light. Indeed, the Sufis developed around the Light Verse (Qur'an 24:35),
traditionally associated with mihrabs, an intricate language for describing mystical experience.
 output. And while Iznik became the main centre for high-quality
glazed pottery, ot-her provincial production centres declined or were,
indeed, completely eclipsed. But of course the concentration of
ceramic production in a single centre was nothing new in Islamic art.
Recent research has pinpointed the evolution ot the characteristic
Iznik motifs and compositions and has developed a basic chronology.
Although some pieces bear double- or triple-decker Qur'anic
inscriptions, representations of ships, birds and snakes, as well as geo-
metric or chinoisene designs, the favoured subject-matter for Iznik
wares, especially tiles, was floral motifs and the distinctive feathery

204 saz scrolls. Carnations, hyacinths, tulips and other flowers recur in
endless combinations. Set 111 apses m a qibla wall, they turn a mihrab
into a paradise garden. The palette is limited and extremely dis-
tinctive:white, light and dark blue, purple and a vivid tomato or
oxblood red. Most ot these tones are used tor foreground and back-
ground alike. The best Iznik ware owes its reputation to the purity
and strength of these colours, and the decline of the industry can be
detected in the gradual tailing ofl ot colour rather than design.
The of the book in Ottoman times drew their initial inspira-
arts

tion predominantly from those of Iran under the Timurids and their
rivals, the Turcoman Aqqoyunlu, m the later fifteenth century. In
some of the associated specialities - for example, in most Qur'anic
illumination and in the illustration of verse romances - they did not
progress significandy beyond this heritage. But for the most part they
struck out on their own. In the field ot book painting, for instance,
entire cycles ot" religious images were devised, almost for the first
time in Islamic art. This involved the creation ot literally hundreds ot
new images. The Anbiyaname Hook of the Prophets') of 155N is an
early attempt at this genre, but pride ot place naturally goes to the

six-volume illustrated life ot" the Prophet Muhammad, the Siyar-i

Nebi (1594), whose images of the founder of Islam, with a white veil
and a gigantic flame halo, sometimes attain a visionary intensity.
Illustrated guides to Jerusalem and to the Holy Cities of Arabia, enti-
tled Futuh al-Haramain, became popular during the sixteenth century.
Despite their strongly abstract nature, expressed for example in the
simultaneous adoption ot' multiple points ot' view and in their
indifference to accurate spatial relationships, they have the bright
colour and lively directness ot a cartoon strip.
In secular painting, too, which accounts for most of the illustrated
manuscripts o\ the period, there were important developments,
inspired perhaps by a desire for realism - a quality pursued more
consistently than ever before in Islamic art. he thirteenth-centun
I

illustrationsof the Maqamat ofal-Hariri had held up a satirical mi

to daily life; the Timurid Zafamama ('Book of Victories' and
1
perhaps the lost Qkhanid Chingiznama (*Book of Genghis Khan ) had
chronicled military exploits in a loosel) epic style. But Ottoman
painters, when they reverted to tins subject matter, approached it in
the spirit ot\\ diarist or journalist, and inflated it to a m. nor artistic
genre. The process began modestly enough with the versified
Selimname o\\\ [525, but by c. [558 it reached its apogee with the
Suleymanname of 'Arifi. This history in verse has more in common
with a newsreel as it patiently chronicles the ups and (occasionally)
the downs ot the sultan's
campaigns. Its great set pieces of sieges and 206
battles oftenextend over two pages. Sometimes an illustrated manu-
script was devoted to a detailed prose account of a single campaign,
such as that ofSzigetvar (written [568—69) or the one in Iraq and
western Iran between [534 and [536, the subject of a manuscript
produced in [537 by Matrakci Nasuh and containing 128 largely
topographical paintings - essentially a traveller's guide. The same
painter recorded Sulcvmans Hungarian campaign and that of his
admiral Barbaras, both occurring in [543; here again there are tie
quent representations of cities. These works may owe something to
the widespread contemporary European fashion for topographical
woodcuts of major cities. Hut they are also remarkably up-to-date:
elaborate and richly illustrated accounts o\~ the imperial campaigns
were produced as soon as possible after the fighting had ended.
Illustrated prose histories of entire reigns, such as those of Have/id
II.Suleyman the Magnificent. Selnn and Murad 111. were also pro
duced; so too were illustrated portmanteau histories of the Ottoman
dynasty. In much the same vein were the books describing the
various public festivals which enlivened Ottoman society, such as the
Surname (1582). Yet for all the colour and detail of Ottoman paint
ing, and the often panoramic scope of individual pictures, something
is missing. The earnestly literal bent o\ Ottoman painters (which
may explain the popularity of elaborate maps m Ottoman painting)
was fundamentally .it odds with the conventions within which they
were operating. Constant!) refined through long use in Persian
painting, those conventions were designed to keep the real world .it .1

distance, and to transform nature mt<> art. ttius Persian painters

appealed to the imagination to decode their images Most >>f these
linages were transferred wholesale into Ottoman painting, but in the
proeess they lost much of the inner relationship between the figures,
 206 (left) The Ottoman threat to Europe.
The imperial army besieging Vienna in 1529.
Loqrnan, Htinername, 1588 (£2570). The
architecture, with its fanciful palette, reflects
atone remove tot) many the influence ot
European topographica] engravings, but the
portable pomp of the great scarlet tent,
complete with its flimsy battlements, is
vigorously rendered

207 (right) The sultan relaxes. Ahmed HI

watches darners .iiul comedians at the
uppodrome at Istanbul. Sumame-yi \hb\,
\ I

[720 32, illustrated by evni. The festivities

I

to celebrate the cir<. unu lsion of the sultan's

tour sons m 1720 lasted fifteen days ami
nights, and included guild processions,
firework displays, regattas, mock battles,

magic shows and acrobatic performances

including tightrope walkers. I he variations
111 the scale of figures reflect social hierarchies.

or between figures and landscape or buildings, which had given the

original its depth and nuance. The densely populated images of
Ottoman painting describe the surface of things, and they cover a
great deal of ground. But they are scarcely exploratory.
Compositions manipulate groups of buildings or people or even
colours en bloc, and these busy scenes, tor all their overwhelming
detail, lack finesse and attest a bask inflexibility. There is a sense of
painting by the yard. Yet at its best, Ottoman painting - profiting, it
seems, from the example of Italian Renaissance artists such as
Costanzo da Ferrara and Gentile Bellini, who painted a memorable
likeness of Mehmed the Conqueror as a brooding, self-contained
intellectual - produced a series of excellent portraits which owe vir-
tually nothing to the Persian tradition. Here a mastery of line and a
series of happy inspirations in pose and colour evoke both the public
and the private faces of royalty.

274
 208 Thirst for learning. Back
doublure ot Commentaries on the
Maqasid of al-Taftazani, made
for Prince Bayezid. Amasya,
1477. Several Ottoman sultans
were bibliophiles; itwas a
tradition tor members of the
elite to have libraries, and
respect for knowledge found
expression in luxuriously
appointed manuscripts with
fine bindings. Ottoman scholars
wrote copiously if not
originally on many topics,
especially historiography and
the religious sciences.

Turkish bindings, and specifically those datable between c. 1430

and c. 1 5 10, from most of their Arab and even
are distinguished
Persian counterparts, both contemporary and earlier, by their visual
aesthetic, which is dominated by an intense appreciation of colour
and its possibilities. The imperial Ottoman binders in this period
definitively forsook the all-over geometrical and vegetal designs of
earlier tradition in favour of a field comprising a central medallion
and cornerpieces. While the size of the field is allowed to vary
dramatically according to the scale of these elements and of the
borders, the dominant feature of many bindings is a serene expanse
of empty space. Its strong colour ensures that this space is never
neutral. Set into it at precisely determined points are the cartouches
or medallions and corner-pieces which animate it. All is controlled,
as in Ottoman architecture, by a matchless sense of interval, the fruit

of long observation and experiment. Perhaps this instinctively satis-

fying placement o\ decorative features is the result of mathematical
calculation - it may have been governed by proportional ratios of
the kind seen in so much Islamic architecture and book painting.
While some ot the basic stock-in-trade of these Ottoman binders
came from Iran - the use of coloured leather, filigree, cartouches -
they managed by dint of extreme concentration, and by setting up an
imperial scriptorium on Iranian lines, to fashion their own style from

276
these elements. Perhaps, like the Fatih mosque in [stanbu
unprecedented scale by Ottoman standards, and the earliest Ushak
rugs, whose complexity represents a quantum leap forward in
Turkish carpet design, the suceess of this ateltei owed something to
the euphoria generated by the tall of( Constantinople, Some ninety
manuscripts dedicated to Mehmed II survive, .1 record total an
Islamic rulers, and this remarkable number provides context tor the
.1

rapid evolution of a distinctive imperial style, fhese original dated or

datable bindings of the period 14 so 500 also offer precious clues t..
1

other apparently contemporary artefacts, especially in view of the

total dearth df Ottoman textiles, ceramics or metalwork that
period. The spirit and structure of" the decoration found m these
bindings, as well as their detail, is therefore a benchmark tor the
definition of Ottoman art in the key generation after [453. I he
classic balance, the seemingly effortless harmony, the chaste detailing
(so curiously prophetic, despite the different idiom, of' the spirit of
Robert Adam) and the subdued luxury of contrasting colours and
textures confer a unique eclat on these bindings.
Ottoman textiles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
survive in considerable numbers and. what is more, in the form of
complete items of" clothing. While Islamic textiles of' the pre
Ottoman period do survive m reasonable quantity, they are nearly .ill

incomplete. Thus, while they offer plentiful data on textile design

and technique, their evidential value tor the history of costume is
very limited: the wider context o\~ these fragments has gone. his I

depressing picture changes dramatically in the imperial Ottoman era.

thanks to the holdings of the Topkapi Sarav. Even entire tents have
survived. The sultan's silk robes were used only once and then stored
in the treasury, and a wardrobe-master was
charged with specifically
this task. Official protocol changes of* apparel,
dictated frequent
thereby ensuring that these clothes did not wear out. so that the
principal threat to their survival lay in the conditions of
Naturally, museum standards of conservation did not prevail, but the
range of clothing still preserved is gratitvingh tull though very
clearly not all items were stored to begin with, and the collection
would require frequent sifting. Over ^.S"<» textiles remain.
1,000 of them kaftans. These were woven not just tor rovil use but
also,following an ancient Islamic custom, for distribution
foreign dignitaries and potentates or is means of honouring high .1

officials.Hut the Topkapi collections also contain a wonderfully

varied assortment <>t embroidery work applied to obje< ts as disp
 as leather boots, sjiarkskin boxes, bookbindings and tankards, hand-
kerchiefs galore, headbands and kerchiefs for the royal ladies, gloves,
sashes, purses, quilt covers, portfolios for documents or Qur'ans,
cushions, and military or hunting equipment such as saddlecloths,

shields, and bowcases. The more expensive embroidery

quivers
employing gold thread (zcrduz) was made by specialist teams working
in the palace; other types of embroidery were often produced by
women in their own homes. Floor coverings comprised not merely
rugs, traditionally capable of withstanding heavy wear and tear, but
also brocaded satins and velvets, and sometimes silk was spread along
a prince's route for him to ride over — a true 'red carpet treatment'.
Thrones, and the like also featured elaborate textiles.
sofas, litters
Such was the scale of the textile industry that from early Ottoman
times, while the capital was still at Bursa, it required close govern-
ment supervision. This extended well beyond the control of import,
production and pricing of silk, for fine Ottoman textiles were
exported in large quantities to Europe and were thus of importance
to the Ottoman economy and state. Quality control was therefore
vital. Tailors, weavers, silk-spinners, textile designers, producers of

metallic thread and similar specialists were organized in guilds and

their salaries were fixed by the bureaucracy. Nor was it only the
court workshops that were subject to imperial control. Punishments
were inflicted on those found guilty of cheating: in 1564 an imperial
edict decreed that two-thirds of the looms then functioning in
Istanbul for the production o\ textiles using gold and silver thread
were to be shut down tor that very reason. Lists of palace expenses

209 A tented palace. Ottoman tent. 17th century. Textile architecture, with its immemorial nomadic asso-
ciations, played a vital role in Ottoman lite, as can be gauged from its frequent appearance m contemporary
painting. The fictive arches here themselves evoke textiles - m this ease, prayer rugs.

EL*

-
: Portable mosque. Silk
prayer doth, i~th century It

depicts .1 triple mihrab with

form
stylized finials in the
and date palms.
of tulips
openwork mosque lamps and
outlines tor the worshipper's
feet- which contain further
palms, a theme taken up again,

but in lusher form, in the

border: it may have paradisal
asstK iations.

specify how much craftsmen were paid in cash and kind, and even
the costs of the materials they used rhese were not
.ire recorded,
independent craftsmen or even self-constituted teams operating a
COttage industry: artists serving these gigantU State enterprises were
in effect civil servants. And of course the\ had to conform ( leark
there was house Style to he followed, and while it developed
.1

certain motifs to a pitch of elegant assurance the hatayi (Cathayan,

1

i.e. ( Chinese) or 'reed pen or 'red flower' style with its serrated
./

leaves, rumh 'Greek spiralling arabesques), chintamam motifs i

combination of stripes and three dots>, multiple ogives it dis

couraged experimentation <>n broad front..1

 Textiles, moreover, were only one element among many specialist
luxury crafts.Every last accessory of the royal wardrobe displayed the
same love for expensive, often outre materials and for fastidiously del-
icate detail. It is entirely possible that the Ottoman artefacts of this
kind, farfrom expressing a distinctively Ottoman taste for such
objects, were typical of earlier Islamic dynasties too and that it is the
uniquely privileged status of Istanbul as an imperial Islamic capital
that was never sacked which accounts for the sheer quantity of sur-
vivals - because, of course, such objects would be the very first to be
looted. The lack of parallels, not only in the narrow chronological
and stylistic sense, but in the most general typological way makes it
very hard to evaluate this Ottoman Prachtkunst. How can one tell -
other than by stylistic analysis - what is distinctively Ottoman about
the mother-of-pearl belts, turban ornaments, Qur'an boxes, leather
canteens, quivers, wickerwork shields, gold-inlaid steel mirrors,
bejewelled gold maces, ivory buckles, jade tankards and a host of
other luxury objects, from masterpieces to elegant knick-knacks?
Yet this is not the main issue. The wider significance of this material,
representing both Ottoman production and centuries' worth of gifts
from other Islamic states, is that it provides an unequalled visual
context for the life and ceremonial o\\\ Muslim court.

211 Royal logo, of Suleyman the Magnificent. The form is a standardized

liighra
emblem of the and was used for centuries, but is personalized in that it accommo-
ruler,
dates his own name. Its origins have been variously interpreted as an inky handprint or a
bow with the ruler's name written beneath it. It authenticated chancery documents and
appeared on coins and banners; its misuse was a capital offence.
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282
Glossary

Abd servant, slave (used in mam Muslim names in MuJ book

combination with one ol tin- names ol God, as in'Abd il kuti.
Malik. 'Servant oi the Kuil:" kullty, 1 typically Ottoman foundanon comprising multiple
ablaq literally 'piebald'; used especially of two tone marble buildings, . entred on 1 mosqui !"•;

decoration edu< ational Ol Welfare IhiiI

Abu father (of); used in mam Muslim names in combination m*4hh*b sc ho.. I ,.t law
with name of the first-bora son
tlu- tttaditta . IIS

amir commander, prince mmmm in institution tor the stud) oi the ortl
arabesque geometricized vegetal omamenl s. hih es
atabeg guardian of a prince; often .1 governor Maghrib tin Muslim
b. son of (Arabic 'ibn*, 'bin'] in. lulling I uiiisia

biib gate .iIno used in

.
spiritual sense .1 fri.iiJ./M open puhlii square >>i plaza; central
baraka 'blessing'; .1 quant) ol divine grace dispensed In ( .>>d m.imluk i often aho used of manumitted
and by those whom He selects HMfian 1 private enclosure in the mi
bismillah 'in the name of God' rulei
caliph the name given to leaden of the Muslim communit) mathkai mausoleum ol 1 1

(from Arabic khalifa, 'successor' to Muhammad mafhrabiya window grilll Ol

end Frida) Mosque rurkish; the Arabic form is jam! with geonieliu al or iiiterl.u ed designs
caravansarai lodging place for travellers, men hants and masjid mosque literal!) 'plac< ofprostrarj
their goods; often fortified and situated on trade route .1 masjid-i jami Persian term tor the rida) mosqui I

chinoiserie decorative motifs derived trom Chinese sources

dinar cold coin mihrab arched niche, usuaO) concave but sometin
dirham silver coin later copper indicating the direction of qikta :iiuis..t M
diujn government office or ministry; royal reception pra\ er
chamber; collection of poems ffiiru 1 potter) m which Colours are applied both u
Fatiha opening chapter of the Qur an over the gla/e
ghazi warrior tor the faith mm a ret the lower oi a mosque trom w hi. h the faithful are
gunbad dome 1 ailed to prayer
hadiths collective body of traditions relating to Muhammad minbar stepped pulpit in a mosque, used lor the
and his Companions; they constitute one of the sources of pronouncement >>t the khuib.i
guidance for Muslims mi raj the as. ent ol the Prophet Muhammad into h
hajj the pilgrimage to Mec ( .1 mosque a pl.u e where Muslims worship
hammam steam baths; bathing establishment tor the public mukaqfuq a majestic Our .mi. cursive script
hijra (hegira) Muhammad's emigration trom Mecca to muqanias honeycomb or stalactite vaulting mule up .<t

Medina in <>zz. the date which marks the beginning ol the individual . elk or small ar. lies

Muslim calendar mur.j././.i m album ot pictures

hypostyle having a roof supported by multiple columns a Muslim 1 person who follows the n
standard type ofmosque MM 1 book ot writii P
ibn see b. ttttfhhi ursive style oi \rabi< script; 1 scnbal hand
Ilkhan a Mongol mler. subordinate to the Great Mongol masta Kq
Khan loops P
imam spiritual leader, prayer leader, descendant ol phhtaq loft) irch framii fa*** monumental
Muhammad's son-in-law leader oi the Shi ite ommunit\
. 1 portal

Islam submitting oneself to the will oi Allah .j.i.li uall) m matters ot 1 i\ il law
Isma Seveners member- of a Shi'ite group who
ilis or /.j-r

bebeve that the legitimate su Imamt ncludes ./!/./.

the seventh imam Ismail, son oi the inum Ja'far al-Sadiq in M

{MM ..red or Hat-rooted hat! open at one end; often used .juhh.i lomc
to mean simpU a covered hall 111 (hir .111

i.imi the great mosque in which the communal I

lied nh.il

llll.ld uUtm
khamsa prim S»\«iurs Isma ills

i-h.in i prim e Skshmmma

khanjjh Suti htional
tunerar\ ftu thtikh SuB
khutb.i
Shi'a (hence Shi'ite) generic term for a series of sects not thulth a formalized and elongated version ot naskhi
regarded as part of orthodox Islam: they all re'cognize 'All script

(cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet as the first tiraz inscribed fabrics made in state workshop and often
legitimate caliph presented by the ruler to those he wished to honour
simurgh mythical bird like a phoenix tughra monogram ot the sultan (Turkish)
squinch an arch spanning the corners of a square chamber Twelvers the most numerous branch of Shi'ites in modern
and acting as a support for the dome tinier they believe that the legitimate succession of imams
Sufi Islamic mystic ended with the twelfth imam Muhammad al-Mahdi
sultan ruler, king ulama those who possess knowledge': scholars of Islamic
Sunni orthodox Muslim (see Shi'a) theology and law clerics; the learned class
:

sura chapter of the Qur'an vizier minister

Sources of Illustrations

Department of Antiquities. Amman 4. [6; Courtes) Hillenbrand 1S9; Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum,
Cathedral Treasury, Apt 63; Al Arabv Magazine I; James Innsbruck 86; Museum ot I urkisli and Islamic Art. Istanbul
Allan 160, 182, S3; Aga Khan Visual Archives, Ml
1 208; I opkapi Sarav Palace Museum. Istanbul 1 19. 206, 207,
Denny (1984) 81b; Collection Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan Jones 78; Ilie Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,
1 >alu

189; Press Broadcasting and Tourist Department. Ankara 92: Kansas City, Missouri (Purchase Nelson ["rust) 19s; A. F.
Architectural Review Photograph by Sheridan Cantacuzino 87; Kersring 28, 44- s4. 109, 114. 116; K.irtav Madrasa Museum.
Azimut S.a.s. 136; Directorate General of Antiquities. Konya 45; Jonas 1 ehrman 14s. Grassimuseum,
Baghdad 90, 96, 168; RoloffBenv National Archi Leipzig Museum Kunsthandwerk: frontispiece.
fiir [86;
Canada/PA-i9S936. by permission ofNickle Arts Museum. Lawrence Lockhardt 178, 181; B\ permission of the British
University of Calgary 82; Staadiche Museen zu Berlin - Library, London 187; Copyright C British Museum. I ondon
PreuBicher Kulturbesitz Museum fur Islamische Kunst, C s. 6 ngl $7; ( onw.n I lbr.iry .

bpk 20, 25, 26, 27. 31, 36, 4.5, 65, 103: Sheila Blair and Courtauld Institute of Art. University ofl ondon ss. rorn 1 I

Jonathan Bloom 140: Helen <x Alice Colbura Fund. ban Group bbrary. First published in The Qur'an
Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts. Boston 33; Boudot-Lamottc and Calligraphy, ondon. Bernard Quariu
I td, catalogue li I

200; Barbara Brend 12; Courtesy ot the Byzantine Institute . ; 17; V eV A Picture I ibrary, London
199; DAI, Cairo 113; Picture by kind permission of the :- 8,191, IV2, 193, 194. -04; Mllseo
Egyptian Publishing Company - ongman. Cairo 3. i~.1 1 Arqueoi Madrid 54. Mas 128, 131. j8, 1 1

Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo si. 121; National Library, 139. 14a, 147; Viktoria Meinecke-Berg in, ii2;(.
Cairo 126, 127, 176; Courtesy of the Arthur Sackler M Mott 130; American Numismack Society, New York 7;
Museum, Harvard Universm An Museums, Cambridge. Courtesy, rrustecs ot the Pierponl Morgan Library, New
MA 166 (gift of Edward W. Forbes boh 1 . York 163; Bernard O'Kane 13. jo, ss. 56, S7. 77. ns. 129.
Strong, Francis H. Burr and Friends of the Fogg An 141. 151, is''. i"4. 1
—
198; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 6,

Museum Funds), 190 (Bequest of the Estate of Abbs Aldnch bottom left); I he Bodleian ibrary, University of Oxford I

Rockefeller); J.
Carswell 1 10: Kunstammlungen der Veste .sell Archive. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford s, 24. 1

Coburg, Gennany 62; Photo AC Cooper 73; he David 1 98; Museo de Navarra, Pamplona 135; C Bibhotheque
Collection, Copenhagen, photo Ole Woldbyc 159 Nadonale de France. Pans 99. 101. 102. Musee du louvre.
State Collection of Art, Cracow 209; after K.A C CresweD Pans 34. 39; Philadelphia Museum of Art f>4; Umversit\ ot
Early Muslim Architecture, vol. (1969) 2 top 14; Abbas
I Pennsylvania Museum. Philadelphia 76; Josephine Powell 79,
Daneshvan 74; J. E. Dayton 153. 169: Photo Jean Dieuzade 93, 143. 144. 1-2. 79, 201; Photo
1
' RMN 105,
197; Reproduced by kind permissionof the Tnistces of the 107, Il8; National I lbrarv of Russia, courtes) B N
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin 40. 41. 75, 133: Edinburgh Robinson 175; Photograph by J. Rock and A J. Sutherland
University Library 161. 162. 164; Olga Ford 91. [j 4*. so: The State Hermitage Museum. St Petersburg 32, 94.
Godfrey Goodwin 195; Alhambr.i. Granada 149: 1" 73; I ) Talbot Rice
S4: Mine. Th. Ullens de 1

Grube The World of Islam 1196-" 53; Soma Halhdas Schooten 1S2; Foto Bibhoteca Vatican? 132; Treasury of St
Mark's. Venice 61; Osterreichisches Museum fur
1

Photography 8 (Photo by Jane Taylor ). 9. 203: after Robert

Hillenbrand Islamic Architecture. Fonn. Function and Meaning angew mdte Kunst. Vienna 23; Osterreichische 1

(1994) 2 (except top left); Keir Collection. Ham. England 58; Nationalbibhothek. Vienna 124; Photo Roger-Viollet 170;
after R.W. Hamilton Levant I. 1969 17; after R.W Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of An. Smithsonian
Hamilton Khirbat .1/ Mqfiar (1959) 8; R. Hillenbrand Islamic
1 Institution. Washington. D.C. 60, 6X, 70, 71, 106, 165, 167;
Architecture, Form, Function and Meaning 1,1994) 81; Robert Edouard Widmer 202; Roger Wood/Corbis 29. 37.

284
Index

Numbers in italics tefei to •\ra\rs rivei ;

illustrations Ardabil 2

235 f, 246 \i blazon

Abarquh >^. io\-z Bobrinski bu •

'Abbas 1 -_f>. 228-30, 234, Ardistai bookbind

236, -4"- -4 Anti 273
'Abbasids 1
7, 38-9, 41 Armenia 46, ''4. '>; bru k onumi 1
•

46-7, jo-i, $3 4. $9. ti8, 1 j j. 1 ;r<. 1

39
61-3, f»;. 72, 76, v 229 212
101. in, 125, 131, . armour 114, 254
[69, 1-4. IV'. 201, »I2, \rtuqicb m, 1 1
5, i Buddh
256, 263 Assassins 8 Buddhism 1 j'>. 161
'AM al-Mu'min isf» *W\ na 14.1 s
Bukhai 1

Abraham :>. i<>>; astrology 56, 68, 7 .

s 1 . <><>. Bukhtegin, Abu Mansui -
mbul
Abu Ishaq :ih, 160 [23, 1
13, 1
$6
Abu Said 57, 1 ; astronomy 125, 167 Bursa
Abu Zaid 129-31 Aswan 197
Afghanistan ;<j 4 ,4s 6, •\v\UI I
57 Burujirdi 1
3
~. III-2, 12.
54, B6, 24
v
i< 1
-
j S \ I I

236 automata lis. 1.^. [62 Buyids in,

Aght'amar 40. <n, •\\\ubkb 82, III |, 135-6, I0O
Agra 261, 268 ;v [97
1 Byzandum m ( teupl
Ahmad lala'ir. Sultan 11 1
'
Ayyuq
Ahmed III 274, -v- Azerbaijan 204, 226,
Ala al-Dm Kayqubad 1 1 Et, 'A/i/ bi'llah. al ^ ; 4 1 lire . damai
I )..in.i-

Ala al-Dm Altunbugha Hah al-1 Utuh f>4. 44 I 4'>. 1 }V 1

i
i

Bab Mardum mosque [64, 2

Alanva 120, 1::. jj 1

\8 candlesti< ks 13
Aleppo ^4. 1 1 5-7, 1 2 Baby Ion 14. 1 2<>

140. 1 . Baghd .'. $2, 1 aravansarai 29

Alexander the Great n s. v- 9, 62 4 s 7,
s v. 1 if'. .
damask
i arpets 1
7, 96, 118, •
I

Alexandria \<>. ($3, 157 175, 1 80, 196, 199 216, 229
Algeria 61, 169, [84, >
s ~- 2 1 2, 22 1 , 22 I Kiln
papei -•<. 191 I >haki al Mausili, Al
Algiers 184, i8t Baibars 144- 151 castanets \n.
Alhambra vases 1 «v 1 - — - '4^ Baibars al-Gashankir 14 ( au< asiu
Ah J7.6I, 77 •
Bain al Qasrain 14 1
1 eladon $3, 8;

Ah b Yusufb lashtiu 185 Baisunqur b Shahrukh 214, ( entral \sia .

.•
. 114
Aljaferia 181-2, 1 B4, 1 <^ .

Allah 77, iv4- -14 263 Balkh 4-

Allah vardi Khai bannen 151, 1

Abneri 1
( hah U !

Ahnohads 169 Banu Hud 1

-

Bapnsterc de Saini I <>uin

Abnoravids iti . 1 >4

Barquq 14''. 1
5

97, 100, 102, III ; Barzul I

Anau - chinou
Andjh. ;

I
 8 6 .

122, 125, 132, I3 8 -40, Hakim, al- 71, 84; mosque 105-6, 200-1, 81, 155; Khurasan 49-51,94, 135,
148, ISO, 157, 159-60, 72-3, 77, 53* Masjid-i Imam (Shah) 204, 216, 220, 254
162, 167, 176-7, 196-7, Hahma Khatun 1 1 226. 230, 177, 179 khutba 2 1

246, 258 Hama 143, 110 Iskandar Sultan 214. 223 Khwanzmshahs 90, 108, 97
Erzurum 116-7, 88 Hamadan 100, 103, 108 Ismail I, Shah 235, 237, 182 Kirman 92, 212, 233, 237,
Euphrates 36, 38, 228 hammam 72, 200, 268 Isma'U II, Shah 228. 240 249-50, 252
Europe 137, 144, IS*. '57- Haram al-Sharif 148 Isma'ihs 61-2, 73, 77-8, 87, Konya 91, 1 14, 118, 123
160, 174-5, r 90, 197-8, Hariri, al- 129, 162, 273 1 12 Kose Dagh 14 1

208, 212-3, 22 9, 241, 244, Harran 46 Istanbul 100. 21-. 221 Kubachi 221. 252-3, ioj
250, 252, 255-7, 263, 266, Harun al-Rashid 39, 51 255, 260-1, 263-70. 2-4. Kut'.i 12, 41, 57, 59, 2

269-70, 273-4 Hedwig glass 84-5, 62 277-80, 198-9, 201. Kufic 20, 37, 50, 53, 55,
ewer 17, 18, 47, 83-4, helmets 142, 190 203, 205, 20-; see ol<o 59-60, 67, 69, 91, 101-3,
135-6, 151,218,253-4 Herachus 21, 134 Constantinople 131, 135, 165, 176-7,22,
Herat 94- >>2. 214. 217-8, Italy 66. S4, 90. 132, 140, 43
Fars 204-5 220, 222-5. 2 37. 249. 2 157. 179. 198, 210. 224. Kurds i 12. 22N
Fatima 61 hieroglyphu S Bo 229, 2-4
Fatimids 61-5, 67-8, 71-2, Hijaz 24, 58, 72. 1
39 ivory 17. 46. 50, 57. 65, lacquer 241 . 246
74, 76-85, 89, 98, in, Hira 53. 38 28, 146. 1-0. 177-8. 190,
1 lamps 18, 64, 78, 137, 146,

113, 140, 143, 162, 177 holy war ^4. >•';. 111: see 2 16. ^ ;N-r,. 281 .
4J, / ,•-/-_> 149, 152. 156, 172, 190,
Fez, 76, 184, 187, 144-5 also jihad ium 91. 105, 108-9, 16, 1 24S, 270, 279, 120, 210
Firdausi 90, 98, 162, 210, Hulegu Khan 206 120-1, 125. 201. 21-. 232. 1 .ishk.ir-i Bazar 46. 108,
224, 250 Hunemame 2-4. 206 234, 258 206
fire altar 19, 21 Hungary 256. 273 I/mk 255-S. 260. !<•< leather 132, 152, 223, 280
Firuzabad 40 hunting ji-2, 15, 46-749, -:. 1 jo. 204-3 light symbolism 52, 57,
folk art 56, 90, 187 56. 90, 110. 114. 135, 77-8, 146, [56, 172. 19s.
fountains 32, 68, 179, 184, 137, I 53-4. 162. 1
ft '
46 246
188, 194-5, 2 48, 264 223. ::v 250, 278, 1
$5, Jala'irids 212. 221 lustreware 50, 52-4, 60, 63,
Fudain 17-18 135, 175 |.im 1 68, 79-83, 90, 92, 95, 97,
Fustat 12, 61-2, 64,72, 81, hypostyle 120, 2 Jativa v 99. 114. 123. 129, 134,
125 |aus iq il Khaqani 4'' 1 60, 189-92, 202-3, 220,
Ibn 'Abb.:s 95 jawzabi Bi, 1 1<< 250, 252, J6-7, 58-60, 65,
Garjistan 108 Ibn al-'Arabi 243 |j/ir,i 64, 1102, 114. 133 -,\ 148-9, 157
Genghis Khan 196-7, 213 Ibn al-Bawwab $7 9 Jericho \i
Georgia 115, 226, 229 Ibn Bibi 113. 114 Jerusalem 1 2. Madinat al-Zahr.i 64, 82,
Gevas 118, 8g Ibn Khaldun 1 32. 167, 177 144. 148, 199. *56. 272 174-v l8l
Ghazali, al- 87 Ibr.ilnm Suit. in 224 jewels :n. 66, 177-8, 190. madrasa 87, 108, 16-7, 1

Ghazan Khan 198, 200, 201 Qkhanids 196-201, 204-5, 195. -44. -;• I20-I, 124, 144. 166.
Ghaznavids 8, 86-8, 90, 2cx;. 212. j 14. 216, 2 1 v Jews 24. 43, B2, 175, 197-8 187-9, 201, 212-3, 217,
108, 206 221. 226. 229, 273 jihad 4s. 111--:. S4. 19c 1 2 19, 230, 2}2-i, 260, 268
Ghiyath al-DinJami 246 illumination 90- 96, 1 . Jordan 1 B, 50. 33 Maghrib 8, 44, 61, 74, 83,
Ghur 107 99-101. 103. [25, 164-6, ni-i he 1 167, 170, 176-7, 184-9,
Ghunds 90, 108 170, 176. 202. 205. 212. Junaid 221
glass 50, 54, 79, 83-4, 122, 216. 220. 223. 246, 270. magic 54, 99, 124, 156, 274,
136-7, 149, 156-7, 40-I, 4-. \2t K.rb 1
99, /
73
159-60, 165-6, 94, 120 Inal 14S. 1 [6 Kabuhstan 210 M.luli 228
Gothic art 171, 201 incense burners 4-. <;s. h;. Kaiqubad 114. 120 M.iluliv.i,
tl- 61 64, 72 ,

Granada 169, 180, 181, 67 Kahla urn Duma 129. 131. maidan 226, 230, 232-3, 178
189-91, 193, 268, 150-1 India 11. 1-. 34, 40. 50-1, [62-3, 222. 224, 1-4 Malaga 180, 191 -2
Great Khan 196-7 90, 107, 131. 140. 1
50, K.irb.il.i 61 M.dik .il-Adil, al- 135
Greece 21, 38, 80, 82, 133, 159. 20s. 213-4. -- -
k.ishan 92. 94. V s . 202, 246. Malik al-Nasir Muhammad,
212, 255, 264, 279 246. 256, 258-9, 261 249-51; lustreware 202-3, al- 154, 157
Gunbad-i Qabus 101, 105, Inju 205. 209 Mahksh.ih 87, 92
78 Iraq 13-14. 19. 21. 25, 40-1. 1 1 mamluk 123, 138, 151, 1 56
Gur-i Amir 214, 217, 236, 44- v 4-. SO, 56. S9> 68, Klhim>j 239. 242 Mamluks 26, 122, 132, 138-
i6g 83, 86, 89, 100, khan 29. 121. 123. 144, 170, 44, 146, 148-53, 155-7,
Gurgan 99 111-3. 1 16. 122-5. '2~. 212. 230, 234 159-64, 166, 197, 199,
Guyushi, al- 76-7 132, 135. 140. 1S2. 162. Khan Mirjan 213, 168 204-5, 25C)
175, 184, I96, 206. 2 12. khanqjlt 113. 143. 146. 1
4H, Manises 1 89, 191
hadith 51, 220 226-7, 256, 258, 273 219 Mansur, al- 178
Hafiz 246, 254 Isfahan 89, 200- 1 , 212. 214. Khargird 108, 218 Mansunya, al- 189, 146
Hafsids 187 216, 226, 229-30. 232-4. Kharraqan 92, 107, 82 maps 65, 273
hajj 34, 94 236, 240, 246, 249-50. Khirbat al-Mafjar 17, 31-2, Maqamat 129-32, 162, 175,
Hakam II, al- 178 261, 268; Friday Mosque 36. 17-18 212, 273, 101-2, 124-5

286
Maqnzi. .il- 63, 68, 83 1 J7, [96 •>. 1 1 .212. audit)
146 214. 210. 22.
Maqsud Kashani 24(1, -49 moon 77, S 1 , .;j, 1 :(, 1 ; ;_ Nurida 1 1 ;

nttqmn 72 1 1 s<>. 160, 244.

Marag^ia v2. 1
5 Mora 1 o 169, 1
s •
observatoi
marble 28, j6, 46, 65, 1
17, mosaics 21-3 c Njeitu, tomb ol j

122-3. '43. '4 f '. l6l, 1 ^v. |6 7, 71, u fi . 1

M
2i(>. . 8, 12-14, •*• '
''•' ' orthodV
Maidin 115, 1 .;.; Mosul 1 1 s. 1 2 ; j .11 ;

Marinids s ~\ is f>. nJ
1 1
B9 1 1
I 169, IS
Mairakeao 180, 18a, 185, Mshatta 1 taomam B, mi il I >m Mi
1
s-. Great Mosque 1 B4 19-20 •

Marwan II 17, 18, ; Mu'awiya k>. 21 5 61,

Mashhad 100, 1 Mu'izz, il <<<>. ^\

ISO, 2S2 llHKV/lll |Os. [96

—
.

HMSfttj 1 Mughal 214 l >\u 6

Matrakci Nasufa 273 2ss. 26l, 268 Qljmai il Kli.i.ji 1 4'

mausolea 2s. ~4 s 92, 101 Muhammad (Prophet Pahl i\ Qubadabad

105. 10S. 1 14. 1 if. B n-12. 19, 21.2; j Palermi Qubadr)
123. 144. 1 jo, [70, i
s v 4V M. "I Qubbal il Barudiy)
•
1 a, 210. 212. j 14. -
1
|9, 143, 18! Paiadn /'

217, 2iv. 260- 1 . 268 214. 22o. 2-2. 2 Qunun 1

: 14, 65, 75, Muhammad, Sultan S 189 9 Qui an

78, 12V. 141. IVV. 2So. I Muhammad b il Zain is;. T ss 6
Medina 14. -4 s - 65, 199, it8 fHj. 10/

256, -'
Muhammad b. Qala'un Parthia 14, 51
Mehmed II .: s s . :m. 2^4. 153, is-; pugrin 1
J9 I :

274, 277 Muhammadj 2 ;v 40, i<Tj

Men 40. s.;. t)i. V4 muhaqqaq sv. k><>. 20s. ./

,-. .

196 127 Pisa Ba, 108; Pisa < rriffin

Mesopotamia 14. 34. 4f>. uniforms f>v. 116, 1 in. i 2s. IJJ
1 10-1. ii^. 128, 1
143. '46. 148. |S t- 195. pishtaq 101, 103 Qusaii •\1111

metalwork B, 17-18, 47, 4v. ivV 2 K. 7, 219, .'.''

planets 122 \, ij
SI. jJ .
•
1 >-2, 233, 263 I s'>. /.'./. I 10 Rabat is.v 184, 1*1

I, 114. 134-7. I4O, Murad III 273 poetry to, |i, |

Rabat 1 Mahl
14V. I S2-f>. 1
-
musk jo- 1 .
1
-

K 1111 i.l.in 62
if>2-3. 166, 169, 1 122, I2v. 1 is. it >$, 189, K.ii|i|.i

1
87, lOO, 2<> 4 . 216, 21 B, 142. 1
$3, 162, i-s. 17X. IVs Rashid il I

220-1. 23s. 2 4 r>. 25; . I

'. 248, -' f 's 214 | U '<

2-- '. ioy Must.nisir. il '>* Rasulka 1 si

t. 117-9, if.'. 1 Muzaftarids 212. i\(< Poitien 12 Ray) '

195, 195 mystic ism 62, Bi, B7, 96 7, pon eJain si

mihrjh 21 . 24. s. 113 162, Pvenaa 1

I
poftah
I46, i-2. 1-4. l8l I 2 s. 141. U''- 149 K10.1 m M'l 1 1

200-2, 270, 272, 275 N.ikln hivan 1 1

86, 9 1

2*5, J is Nasii il I )in Muhammad -

n/i.ifii

mtrui: K), I SI. I s4. 166 portrait rock a

114. 12;. i2v. 1 ruskh J7, $7,
-
Portugal 191
-
potter]
miiur-
105. 107 V IIV 1;

1 4<V UV. 171, I

s Russia
2 12. J

trnnhat 21 . s2. 1 4'.. -

Ming 162, 221

Nizam il-Mull
•
.-214 N1/.11111

mirror ;io.

1 !•/.
S.ili il I
'
 1 : 1 ! 1 . .

Saljuq 39, 60, 62-3, 70-1, Solomon 22. 24-5. 32, 195. tilework 101. 105, [08, 1 14. wall paintings 1 1. 28. 30,
86-92, 94-5, 97. 99-103, [97.204 * 1 16-7, 122-3. UO. U s -
32. 35-6,47. 67-72. U6.
105-6, 108-15, 129, 170, Spain B, 1-. 3 s -40- 4<'>-
54. 162. 187-8, 190, 193. 201. 199. 201. 206. 2 12-3. 233.
201, 204, 206, 218, 220, 59, 61. 63, 69. >>2. 125. 212. 214. 216--. 226. 232. 246. 26s. It. 31, 48-Sl
-
246 150, 157, 160. 167, 236. 246. 24^. 2S2. 265. women 32, 4-. 62. 68, i

Saljuqs of Rum 1 1 1 , 11 3-4, 169-70. 1-2. 1-4--. 77, 79. 97- 102. 105. 1
1-.

1 16, 1 18, 120-3, 2 55 1-'/ 18-93 Timur 213-4. 216--. 220. 130. 134-5. 162. [75, 1—
Samanids 39, 50, 54, 92, sphinx 68, B5, 99, 180 224. 226. 255 193. 205, 240, 244. 278,
108, 125, 131, 206 stan ---v 1
59, 190. 195, Timund B, 205. 212. 214. 4. 19,31-2, 45, -0-1. -4.

Samarqand 54-5, 76, 92. 202. 2 1 S: stellar designs 216-v 220-1. 224-j 94, goj, 105-6, 125, 1
>'-'•

108, 213-4, 217, 219 142. 146. 1 60- 246, 2-2-3 ito-i. 166-7, '.s'e-~. igi
Samarra 39-40, 42-3, 45~7. steel 253-4. 2 No. ig> Tinmal j woodblock prints -1-2. 52

52, 58, 72, 76, 79, 101, Suhh 1

— lira: 50. 63. N5. 132. 1 So woodwork B, 57, 63, ft5,
174-5, 189,25-7,5; Sublime Porta . Tlemcen 185, [87, 142 166. 1 SS. 190. 2 16.

San'a' 48 Sufi, al- 58, 100. 125 Toledo ft-. No- 1. 138 1 1
235-6, 42, 182
Sanjar 87, 97, 108 SufisDl s_ . 9". I 13. -02. Tomb of the Samamds 101. World History 207-9, 214.
Sanskrit 131 225-6, 243. -53-4- 256, 162, 164
Sasanians 14, 18-21, 34-6. 270: see also uiysticimi tomb towers 91-2. 101. wrestling 46, 79, [78
38, 45, 47-50, 56, 58, 60. Sulaiman 13. 24 writing. Islamic 40-1. 43,
70, 87, 125, 133, 197. Suleyman the Magnificent tombstones 62, 76-7, 122 4". 75-6, 1 1-. 1 19. 12-.

199, 205, 234, 248 263. 27 ropkapi Sara. 133, [69, [73.179. '
s --

Sayyida Ruqayya 77 Suleymaniye complex 261. ;. Library 100 205, 210, 22

sculpture u, 14, 17, 32, 37, 98 1 rransoxiana 216
47, 51, 64. 70, 90, 92. Suleymaniuune i~\ Ya'qub, Sultan 224
118, 122-3. 134, 160, Sultan .1: Ya'qubi, al- 4
179-80, 223, 233 Sultamva 199-201. Tughnl I yasa 197, 200
Selimname 273 Sunnism -2. B7, 111. 113. Tulumd B Yazd 201 -2. 2 1

Senegal 182 19-. 22 -

Tunis, dreat Mosque 4s Yemen 4s . 61 . 1 s 1 .
256,
Severus b. Muqaffa' 5 1 Surname 2 Tunisia 44. S4. 6|.
Seville 171, 180. 1K4. 1
89 Syria 1 1-14. 16-17, - I ur.u Yuan 1
J7, 162
sgraffito 56, 98, 101, 162 34. J6, ;v 41. 4^ I UICOI 12-?.
shadow theatre 130. 132. B4, v '' BO-OO, 111-2. 114. Zafanum
103 1 16. us. rao, 1:2. 125, /.ingi 122. >)4

Shah Sultan Husain 230, 12-. [32, 139, I<4. 1"2. I urkmctmt.ir /.ingids 1 1 1 -2. [33
232-3, 180 169-72, 1-6. i-v 181, Tursun 1 Zanjan 94
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2 Syria* 21 . 124. 1
37 Lighur : Zavara, I nd.is Mosque 105
Shahnama 70, 90. 98, r 14. Ukhaidir 4 1 . 24 /.iw.inids 187
197, 209-10, 224. 23-. Tabriz [62, [98 iilatita 1 i
] /iggur.its 46
239-40. 1, 165, 166-7, lAfi 206--. 209, 216. jj . Uhigh Beg 214. 217 Ziryab $9
186 'Umax 21 I Zryaratgah 1
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7, 19. zodiac 68, 90, S4 1

Shaikh Safi 235 /oro.istn.inism 21.1

shamsa 66, 77 Taj al-Mulk 92
shari'a 197, 200, 256 Taj Mahal 199
Shi'ites 39, 55, 61-2. 76 B, Tajikist Uzbek 2 .

82, 87. 89, 92, 103, 111. Takht-i Sulaiman i<;~ L'/un \ \

140, 197. 200. 202. 20-. ta liq 59, 4 Valencia 1 77, I

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Siyar-i Nebi 272 33-4, 63, 121. Vienna
slaves 39, 4-. 86. 120. 122. 139. 192, 200.-10 in 143. 146. !

124. 129. 13S. 140. 151. dntlth 3-. 59, 155. 1

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2 26 166. 204. 22. 4} Walidl.al- 3. 24-6

Soghut 25- Tirlis 94 Wahd II, al-

288
•^ WORLD OF ART
Islamic Art and Architecture

Robert Hillenbrand. 270 illustrations, 80 in color

Embracing a thousand years of history and an area

stretching from the Atlantic to the borders of India and
China, Robert Hillenbrand - a world authority on
Islamic art and architecture - has written an unrivaled
new synthesis of the arts of Islamic civilization. From the

death of the Prophet Muhammad to the survival of the

Ottoman empire well into the modern age, Hillenbrand

traces the evolution of an extraordinary range of art forms,

including architecture, calligraphy book illumination,

painting, ceramics, glassware, textiles and metalwork.

Complete with maps and glossary, this is au accessible and

definitive guide to the arts o\\\ vastly accomplished

civilization.

Thames and Hudson

On the cover:
ISBN 0-500-20305-9
Detail from a late

i-th-eenrurv panel 90000

of tiles in the harem.

Topkapi Sara\

Museum. Istanbul.

Printed m Slovenia

$I6.9S 9 780500"203057'