Islamic Art and Culture.

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First Edition
Britannica Educational Publishing
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Kathleen Kuiper: Manager, Arts and Culture
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Introduction by Janey Levy
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Islamic art, literature, and culture / edited by Kathleen Kuiper.1st ed.
p. cm.(the Islamic world)
In association with Britannica Educational Publishing, Rosen Educational Services.
ISBN 978-1-61530-097-6 (eBook)
1. Civilization, Islamic. 2. Islamic literature. 3. Art, Islamic. 4. Islamic countries
Intellectual life. I. Kuiper, Kathleen.
DS36.8.I837 2010
700.88'267dc22
2009037976
On the cover: Visitors tour the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, United Arab
Emirates, in 2008. This mosque will be the third largest in the world when it is complete. It
contains several traditional elements of Islamic architecture and design, including ornate
wall patterns, arched columns, and a domed ceiling. Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images
Photo creidts: p. 8 www.istockphoto.com/Ugurhan Betin; p. 16 www.istockphoto.com.
Introduction 8
Chapter One:
The Varieties of Islamic Culture 17
Arabs 17
Bedouins 19
Bengalis 21
Hausa 22
Javanese 23
Kurds 24
Malays 25
Persians 26
Sundanese 28
Uighurs 28
Uzbeks 30
Chapter Two:
Islamic Arts: Introduction and
General Considerations 32
Chapter Three:
The Mortar of Islamic Culture 37
Arabic Language 37
Arabic Calligraphy 38
Chapter Four:
Islamic Literatures 43
Nature and Scope 43
The Range of
Islamic Literatures
and the West 49
External Characteristics 50
Rhyme and Metre 51
Genres 51
Imagery 54
Skills Required of the Writer 56
CONTENTS
20
29
41
Historical Developments:
Pre-Islamic Literature 57
al-Khansa 58
Poetry 58
Prose 61
Early Islamic Literature 61
Age of the Caliphs 62
Umayyad Dynasty 62
The Abbasids 64
Abu Nuwas 65
Achievements in the
Western Muslim World 69
Decline of the
Arabic Language 73
Middle Period: The Rise of
Persian and Turkish Poetry 74
The New Persian Style 74
Turkish Literature 83
Yunus Emre 84
Persian Literature: 13001500 85
Jami 88
Popular Literature 91
The Thousand and One Nights 92
The Period from 1500 to 1800 96
Decentralization of
New Importance of
Indian Literature 97
Ottoman Turkey 100
European and Colonial
Inuences: Emergence
of Western Forms 103
The Rise of Nationalism 103
Arab Literatures 104
Taha Husayn 106
Turkish Literatures 108
Persian Literatures 111
India: Urdu and
Persian Literatures 112
93
The Modern Period 113
Prose 114
Orhan Pamuk 115
Poetry 117
Mahmud Darwish 118
Chapter Five:
Islamic Visual Arts 123
Origins 127
Earlier Artistic Traditions 127
The Mosque 129
The Prohibition
Against Images 131
Early Period: The Umayyad
and Abbasid Dynasties 134
Architecture 136
Decorative Arts 158
Assessment 160
Middle Period 161
Fatimid Art (9091171) 163
Seljuq Art 169
Western Islamic Art: Moorish 181
Mamluk Art 186
Mongol Iran: Il-Khanid
and Timurid Periods 190
Late Period 199
Ottoman Art 200
Sinan 204
Safavid Art 208
Mughal Art 212
Islamic Art Under
European Inuence and
Contemporary Trends 213
Evaluation 216
Conclusion 221
Glossary 223
For Further Reading 225
Index 227
143
198
201
INTRODUCTION
9
7 Introduction 7
T
he Islamic world contains a rich tradition of extraor-
dinary literature and visual arts that stretches back
for centuries. At various times, these arts have inuenced
and been inuenced byWestern literary and artistic
traditions. Yet most Westerners know as little about
Islamic literature and visual arts as they do about Islam
itself. Popular works such as The Thousand and One Nights
and vague notions of tiled mosques or lavish palaces (fre-
quently derived from Western ction) are often the extent
of Westerners knowledge of Islamic arts. Viewing Islamic
art through the lens of such works is roughly akin to trying
to understand the full scope of Western literature and
visual arts through popular romance novels and fairy-tale
castles. The approach is neither realistic nor fair.
This unenlightened view was shattered with the tragic
events of September 11, 2001, when many Americans
replaced their naive notions of the exotic Orient with an
outright rejection of a mostly unknown religion and all its
worshippers. This attitude may be further exacerbated by
the prejudice some feel toward the arts in general, that art
has no connection to daily life and that it serves no useful
purpose. Yet if those notions are accurate, why are the arts
so intimately interwoven with human history? The truth is
that the creation and appreciation of art is an integral part
of what it means to be human. Tens of thousands of years
agolong before writing existedpeople painted pictures
on cave walls and carved small gures. Before there was
writing, there was spoken language, which storytellers used
to create an oral tradition that was an essential means of
transmitting the fundamental principles of human society
and institutions. The best among them could enthrall
audiences with long, complex tales. After the invention of
writing, many of these stories and poems were recorded,
becoming some of the rst works of literature.
7 Islamic Art, Literature, and Culture 7
10
Since that time, peoples around the world have used
an immense variety of materials to create innumerable art-
works in a myriad of forms and styles. The effort to
understand and appreciate these artworks is both a chal-
lenging and exhilarating undertaking, not only for the
sheer vastness of the task, but also because art serves dif-
ferent purposes at different times and in different cultures.
Similarity of form does not necessarily mean similarity of
purpose. Ancient Egyptians, for example, placed the
organs of the dead in vessels called canopic jars. Westerners
today may use similarly shaped vases to hold freshly cut
owers. On the other hand, strikingly different forms may
serve similar purposes. Both Quakers and Muslims, for
example, needed places to worship and desired to create
structures they believed would be pleasing to God, instruc-
tive to believers, and in keeping with the tenets of their
faith. For Quakers, that often meant plain, simple,
unadorned wooden buildings. While Muslims also often
worship in spaces without ornamentation or elaboration,
enormous, elaborately decorated mosques covered with
colourful tiles were considered just as appropriate.
Just as the purposes of art have varied over time and
among cultures, so too have the dominant modes.
Literature was the preeminent art form of early Islam, and
it has retained its high status over the centuries. There are
several reasons for this. One is that a solid foundation
existed upon which to build Islamic literature. This foun-
dation had been laid in Arabia, Islams homeland, long
before the birth of the religions founder, the Prophet
Muhammad. Arabs had developed a highly sophisticated
oral literary tradition. One reason for the attention lav-
ished on verbal arts may lie in the migratory lifestyle of the
Bedouin, the nomadic desert Arabs. A nomadic way of life
imposes certain limits on the art forms a culture develops.
Architecture, for example, does not become a major art
11
7 Introduction 7
form, and there is little motivation to create any sort of
large-scale art that would be difcult if not impossible to
transport easily. Verbal arts, however, are ideal for nomadic
cultures.
Poetry held pride of place as an expression of pre-
Islamic Arab identity and of communal history. Poets were
highly esteemed, and their performances were viewed as
powerful tools that could rouse warriors for battle or
champion their tribes virtues. Elegiespoems in praise
of the deadalso constituted a major poetic form. Prose
was important, too, particularly the rhymed prose of ora-
cles. Other prose forms included tales of adventure and
battle days. One inuential prose genre, or form, was the
nighttime conversation. In this genre, the teller devel-
oped the central theme not through storytelling but by
leading the listeners mind from topic to topic through
verbal association. Such a complex, subtle prose form
could only exist in a society in which spoken language held
an elevated status.
Another reason for literatures preeminent place among
Islamic arts is the Quranthe Muslim holy bookitself.
For Muslims, the Quran is Gods own word, recorded in
the language chosen by God (Allah)Arabic. This meant
the Quran is the supreme and inimitable expression of lit-
erary beauty, and Arabic is the vehicle for it. Such a view
esteems literature written in Arabic as the highest art
form possible.
Yet another reason for literatures dominance is that
therewas a prohibition against images in Islamic art. By
the middle of the 8th century, the prohibition had
become well-established Islamic doctrine, although the
Quran itself says nothing one way or the other about
images. While the ban on images did not, of course,
result in a total lack of visual art, it did help promote the
status of literature.
12
As Islam spread, largely through conquest, the liter-
ary traditions and forms of the conquered territories
helped to mold Islamic writing. After the Arab conquest
of Iran in 640, Persian literature inuenced Islamic lit-
erature, and Persian became a signicant language for
Islamic writings. Persian poets introduced epic poetry
such as the Shah-nameh (Book of Kings), which is a mix
of myth, legend, and history. The nest lyric poems were
written in Persian. It became traditional to use Persian
for court poems, such as robaiyat. This type of poem is
best known in the West through the rather free transla-
tions, such as The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Iran also
introduced new prose genres into Islamic writing, such as
the type known as the Mirror for Princes, which used
stories to teach rulers proper political practice. Sus
who practice a mystical form of Islamproduced a wide
range of prose writings in genres that were not part of
Arabic literary traditions, including letters, collections
of conversations by leading sheikhs, mystical commen-
taries on the Quran, treatises on mystical subjects, and
biographies. Persian literature also introduced topics
that reected the Sunni and Shiite division within Islam.
Most Muslims are Sunni. In 1501, when the Safavid
dynasty came to power in Iran, many were converted to
Islams second-largest division, Shiism. Persian writers
and poets produced works on Shiite topics, especially
the martyrdom of the twelve imams, the descendants of
the Prophet who were leaders of Shiism following the
Prophets death.
Persian culture extended beyond Iran, and Islamic lit-
erature written in Persian was produced in northwestern
India and what is now Pakistan as early as the 11th century
and in what is today Turkey by the 13th century. Islamic
writings in languages other than Persian, written by peo-
ple other than elite poets, also appeared in these regions.
13
7 Introduction 7
In parts of India, ordinary people produced folk poetry
interpreting Islamic mysticism in their native languages,
while Su poets in Turkey wrote verses in various Turkish
dialects.
As Islam spread eastward, writers in Central Asia
produced works not only in Arabic and Persian, but also
in Turkic languages such as Uzbek, Tatar, and Kyrgyz. In
East Asia, Islamic literature in Chinese has been found in
China and the Philippines. Historical and semimythical
tales of Islamic heroes form an interesting part of the
Chinese writings.
Islam also spread westward, across North Africa and
into Spain, which Muslims invaded in 711. From there,
Islamic literature inuenced the poetry of French trou-
badours as well as the romances and heroic tales of
western Europe.
Although literature was the preeminent Islamic art
form, it was not the only one. The visual arts have played
a part in Islamic culture, although their forms and impor-
tance have varied across time and across regions. Several
factorssome of which have already been mentioned
shaped the development of Islamic visual arts. One was
the previously-stated prohibition against images. This
ban was based partly on the desire to avoid idolatry and
partly on the idea that only Allah can create life and any-
one who creates images of living things seeks to rival
Allah. Another determinant was the fact that pre-Islamic
Arab culture had little art, other than oral poetry and
prose, on which to build specically Islamic visual arts.
So, over time, Muslims adapted many of the forms, styles,
and subjects of the cultures they conquered.
Wherever their religion spread, Muslims also had the
need for a clean, appropriate place for prayer. Thus it was
that architectureespecially religious architecture
became the most important Islamic visual art.
14
The original community that grew up around the
Prophet had no special structure for gathering and prayer.
Rather, they simply gathered in the Prophets house to
hear a sermon and to pray. As Islam spread, special build-
ings called mosques, or masjids, were built for the Muslim
community in each conquered area. These buildings were
more community centres than religious structures. The
faithful not only prayed in them, but also used them to
conduct social, political, educational, and religious affairs.
Little is known about these early mosques. None survive,
and descriptions exist for only a few of the larger ones.
These descriptions suggest that Muslims were forced to
create a new architectural type because no existing archi-
tectural form met their needs. The building type they
created was known as a hypostyle structurea building
that has a roof resting on rows of columns. The three most
important features of these mosques were the qiblah wall,
toward which the faithful prayed; the minbar, or pulpit, for
the imam; and the mihrab, a highly decorated niche in the
qiblah wall that probably represented the Prophets sym-
bolic presence. Where it was practical, early Muslims also
converted existing structures of other religions into
mosques. The Great Mosque of Damascus was built in the
early 700s on a site previously occupied rst by a Roman
temple and then by an early Christian church. The Roman
towers, which were still standing, were used as minarets to
call believers to prayer. While the earliest mosques were
simple affairs, over time, mosques came to be richly deco-
rated inside and out with marble, mosaics, woodwork, and
tile. Incorporated into the decoration were ornate ara-
besques, which represented the innity of Allah and had a
rigorous mathematical structure that transformed them
from images of living things into symbols. The decoration
also included calligraphy, which provides yet more evi-
dence of the primacy of the word in Islamic arts.
15
7 Introduction 7
The other major Islamic architectural form was the
palace. There were three basic palace types. The rural
complex had a residential unit composed of a square
building with an ornate entrance, a courtyard surrounded
by a portico, and two oors of rooms. There was also a
small mosque and a separate bath with an ornate entrance
and a richly decorated hall. Little is known about the
other two palace types. The urban palace functioned as
both living space and government centre. The palace-city,
the third palace type, was exactly what it sounds likean
immense complex, surrounded by a wall, that was so large
that it constituted an entire city.
While architecture is a dominant Islamic art, it is sup-
ported by a number of less immediately imposing arts.
For example, mosques contained carved wooden stands
to hold the Quran, decorated lamps and candlesticks,
and prayer mats. Muslims also produced beautiful metal-
work, glass, pottery, and carpets. Sheets of calligraphy
adorned walls of homes, and tiles containing calligraphy
of a religious nature such as the name of Muhammed
can be found on many a mosque. Perhaps surprising, in
view of the prohibition against images, is the amount of
painted imagery of people that survives. Even in Islams
early days, pictures in private dwellings were tolerated.
Later, miniature paintingthe images that adorn manu-
scriptsdeveloped in Iran and spread to India and Turkey.
Miniatures appear in books on secular topics and include
subjects such as hunts, feasts, romances, myths, and bat-
tle scenes.
Much remains to be learned and understood about
Islamic art, which became the focus of serious study as an
independent eld only in the 20th century. This guide to
the art, literature, and culture of the Islamic world will
serve readers as a useful resource for beginning to under-
stand centuries of creativity, faith, and tradition.
17
T
he peoples who have embraced Islam form what the
Armenian American scholar Vartan Gregorian has
called a mosaic, not a monolith. They are widely various,
inhabiting traditional lands, industrialized European cit-
ies, and every terrain in between. They practice business,
plant crops, and herd cattle, and they speak a multitude of
languages. Though they are unied by their belief in the
Quran and the use of Arabic in worship, they also retain
their distinct ethnic identities. This chapter discusses a
small but representative sample of groups whose popula-
tions are largely, if not wholly, Muslim.
ARABS
An Arab is commonly dened as anyone whose native lan-
guage is Arabic. Before the spread of Islam and, with it,
the Arabic language, Arab referred to any of the largely
nomadic Semitic inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula. In
modern usage, it embraces any of the Arabic-speaking
peoples living in the vast region from Mauritania, on the
THE VARI E TI E S OF
I SLAM I C CULTURE
CHAPTER 1
18
Atlantic coast of Africa, to southwestern Iran, including
the entire Maghrib (the region of North Africa bordering
the Mediterranean Sea), Egypt and The Sudan, the Arabian
Peninsula, and Syria and Iraq.
This diverse assortment of peoples dees physical ste-
reotyping, because there is considerable regional variation.
The early Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula were predomi-
nantly nomadic pastoralists who herded their sheep, goats,
and camels through the harsh desert environment. Settled
Arabs practiced date and cereal agriculture in the oases,
which also served as trade centres for the caravans trans-
porting the spices, ivory, and gold of southern Arabia and
the Horn of Africa to the civilizations farther north. The
distinction between the desert nomads, on the one hand,
and town dwellers and agriculturists, on the other, still
pervades much of the Arab world.
Islam, which developed in the west-central Arabian
Peninsula in the early 7th century CE, was the religious
force that united the desert subsistence nomadsthe
Bedouinswith the town dwellers of the oases. Within a
century, Islam spread throughout most of the present-day
Arabic-speaking world, and beyond, from Central Asia to
the Iberian Peninsula. Arabic, the language of the Islamic
sacred scripture (the Quran), was adopted throughout
much of the Middle East and North Africa as a result of
the rapidly established supremacy of Islam in those
regions. Other elements of Arab culture, including the
veneration of the desert nomads life, were integrated with
many local traditions. Arabs of today, however, are not
exclusively Muslim; approximately 5 percent of the native
speakers of Arabic worldwide are Christians, Druzes, Jews,
or animists.
The majority of Arabs continue to live in small, isolated
farming villages, where traditional values and occupations
prevail, including the subservience and home seclusion
19
7 The Varieties of Islamic Culture 7
(purdah) of women. While urban Arabs tend to identify
themselves more by nationality than by tribe, village farm-
ers venerate the pastoral nomads way of life and claim
kinship ties with the great desert tribes of the past and
present. Nationalism and the change in standards of living
that have been made possible by the expanded oil indus-
try, however, have radically altered the nomadic life.
The pastoral desert nomad, the traditional ideal of
Arab culture, makes up barely 5 percent of the modern
Arab population. Many of the remaining nomads have
given up full-time subsistence pastoralism to become
village agriculturists or stock breeders, or to nd employ-
ment with oil companies or other employers in the towns
and cities.
BEDOUINS
Called Badawi (plural Badw) in Arabic, the Bedouin
(Beduin) are an Arabic-speaking nomadic people of the
Middle Eastern deserts, especially of Arabia, Iraq, Syria,
and Jordan.
Although they constitute only a small part of the total
population of the Middle East, they inhabit or utilize a
large part of the land area. Most of them are animal herd-
ers who migrate into the desert during the rainy winter
season and move back toward the cultivated land in the
dry summer months. Although the Bedouin, as a matter of
caste, traditionally despise agricultural work and other
manual labour, many of them have become sedentary as a
result of political and economic developments, especially
since World War II. In the 1950s, Saudi Arabia and Syria
nationalized Bedouin range lands, and Jordan severely lim-
ited goat grazing. Conicts over land use between Bedouin
herders on the one hand and settled agriculturists on the
other have increased since then.
20
A Bedouin family and its camels near Najaf, Iraq. Mario Tama/Getty Images
The traditional Bedouin can be classied according to
the animal species that are the basis of their livelihood.
First in prestige are the camel nomads, who occupy huge
territories and are organized into large tribes in the Sahara,
Syrian, and Arabian deserts. Beneath them in rank are the
sheep and goat nomads, who stay mainly near the culti-
vated regions of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Cattle nomads are
found chiey in South Arabia and in The Sudan, where
they are called Baqqarah (Baggara).
Following World War I the Bedouin tribes had to sub-
mit to the control of the governments of the countries in
21
which their wandering areas lay. The tribal character of
Bedouin society continued, however, as did the patriar-
chal order in their extended, patrilineal, endogamous,
and polygynous families. Among the Arabic-speaking
tribes, the head of the family, as well as of each succes-
sively larger social unit making up the tribal structure, is
called sheikh; the sheikh is assisted by an informal coun-
cil of male elders.
BENGALIS
Bengalis form the majority population of Bengal, the
region of northeastern South Asia that generally corre-
sponds to the country of Bangladesh and the Indian state
of West Bengal. They speak dialects of Banglaas they
call the Bengali languagewhich belongs to the Indo-
Aryan group of the Indo-Iranian branch of the
Indo-European language family.
The Bengali are of diverse origins, having emerged
from the conuence of various communities that entered
the region over the course of many centuries. The earli-
est inhabitants of the region are believed to have been
the Vedda from Sri Lanka. Later the Vedda were joined
by Mediterranean peoples who spoke Indo-European
languages. In the 8th century peoples of Arab, Turkish,
and Persian descent began to enter the area. Eventually
all these groups merged to become the people now known
as Bengali.
Most of the Bengali in Bangladesh are practitioners
of Sunni Islam, while the majority of the Bengali in West
Bengal follow Hinduism. This religious difference
traces largely to the 13th century, when Muslim forces
invaded the region from the northwest. At the time, the
population of Bengal comprised a mixture of Hindus
22
and Buddhists. Following the arrival of the Muslims,
most of the residents of eastern Bengal converted to
Islam, while Hinduism became the predominant reli-
gion in the western region.
In the early 21st century the majority of the Bengali
population remained rural, in both Bangladesh and West
Bengal. Whether Hindu or Muslim, they engage in a broad
spectrum of artistic activity. Both Hindus and Muslims
share the Hindustani classical music and dance tradition,
while they also display a strong penchant for nonclassical
popular forms. The Bengali of Bangladesh, for instance,
created many unique popular music genres, such as baul
and marfati, that have remained without true equivalents
outside the country. Meanwhile, the Bengali of West
Bengal produced internationally acclaimed lms, most of
which have a prominent musical component.
HAUSA
The Hausa people live chiey in northwestern Nigeria and
adjacent southern Niger. They constitute the largest eth-
nic group in the area, which also contains another large
group, the Fulani, perhaps one-half of whom are settled
among the Hausa as a ruling class, having adopted the
Hausa language and culture. The language belongs to the
Chadic group of the Afro-Asiatic family and is infused
with many Arabic words as a result of Islamic inuence,
which spread during the latter part of the 14th century
from the kingdom of Mali, profoundly inuencing Hausa
belief and customs. A small minority of Hausa, known as
Maguzawa, or Bunjawa, remained pagan.
Hausa society was, and to a large extent continues to
be, politically organized on a feudal basis. The ruler (emir)
of one of the several Hausa states is surrounded by a
23
number of titled ofceholders who hold villages as efs,
from which their agents collect taxes. Administration is
aided by an extensive bureaucracy, often utilizing records
written in Arabic.
The Hausa economy has rested on the intensive culti-
vation of sorghum, corn (maize), millet, and many other
crops grown on rotation principles and utilizing the
manure of Fulani cattle. Agricultural activity has yielded
considerably more than subsistence, permitting the Hausa
to practice such craft specializations as thatching, leather-
working, weaving, and silversmithing. The range of craft
products is large, and trading is extensive, particularly in
regularly held markets in the larger towns. Hausa are also
famous as long-distance traders and local vendors of
Hausa-made leather goods as well as tourist items.
The Hausa have settled in cities (of pre-European
origins, such as Kano), towns, and hamlets; but the great
majority of the population is rural. A typical farm house-
hold consists of two or more men and their families
grouped in a mud- or stalk-walled enclosure of some
1,000 square feet (93 square metres) containing small
round or rectangular huts with thatched roofs and a
larger rectangular hut in the centre for the headman of
the compound.
JAVANESE
The Javanese form the largest ethnic group on the island
of Java, Indon. Their language is spoken by more than 71
million people. The Javanese are Muslim, though Hindu
traditions of an earlier era are still evident.
Traditional Javanese social organization varied in
structure from relatively egalitarian villages to the highly
stratied society of the cities, with their complex court
24
life. These differences found linguistic expression in styles
of speech that vary according to status differences between
the persons speaking: an informal style, a polite style, an
extremely polite style, and several others. These styles are
more elaborate in Javanese than in other languages of the
area and are used habitually.
KURDS
The Kurds are an ethnic and linguistic group living in the
Taurus Mountains of eastern Anatolia, the Zagros
Mountains of western Iran, portions of northern Iraq,
Syria, and Armenia, and adjacent areas. Most of the Kurds
live in contiguous areas of Iran, Iraq, and Turkeya
somewhat loosely dened geographic region generally
referred to as Kurdistan (Land of the Kurds). The name
has different connotations in Iran and Iraq, which of-
cially recognize internal entities by this name: Irans
northwestern province of Kordestan and Iraqs Kurdish
autonomous region. A sizable, noncontiguous Kurdish
population also exists in the Khorasan region, situated in
Irans northeast.
The Kurdish language is related to Persian and Pashto.
The Kurds are thought to number from 20 million to 25
million, but sources for this information differ widely
because of differing criteria of ethnicity, religion, and lan-
guage; statistics may also be manipulated for political
purposes.
The traditional Kurdish way of life was nomadic,
revolving around sheep and goat herding throughout the
Mesopotamian plains and the highlands of Turkey and
Iran. Most Kurds practiced only marginal agriculture. The
enforcement of national boundaries beginning after World
War I (191418) impeded the seasonal migrations of the
25
ocks, forcing most of the Kurds to abandon their tradi-
tional ways for village life and settled farming; others
entered nontraditional employment.
The prehistory of the Kurds is poorly known, but their
ancestors seem to have inhabited the same upland region
for millennia. The records of the early empires of
Mesopotamia contain frequent references to mountain
tribes with names resembling Kurd. The name Kurd can
be dated with certainty to the time of the tribes conver-
sion to Islam in the 7th century CE. Most Kurds are Sunni
Muslims, and among them are many who practice Susm
and other mystical sects.
The principal unit in traditional Kurdish society was
the tribe, typically led by a sheikh or an aga, whose rule
was rm. Tribal identication and the sheikhs authority
are still felt, though to a lesser degree, in the large urban
areas. Detribalization proceeded intermittently as Kurdish
culture became urbanized and was nominally assimilated
into several nations.
Kurdish nationalism came about through the conjunc-
tion of a variety of factors, including the British introduction
of the concept of private property, the partition of regions
of Kurdish settlement by modern neighbouring states, and
the inuence of British, U.S., and Soviet interests in the
Persian Gulf region. These factors and others combined
with the owering of a nationalist movement among a very
small minority of urban, intellectual Kurds.
MALAYS
The Malay are an ethnic group of the Malay Peninsula
and portions of adjacent islands of Southeast Asia. They
were once probably a people of coastal Borneo who
expanded into Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula as a
26
result of their trading and seafaring way of life. That this
expansion occurred only in the last 1,500 years or so is
indicated by the fact that the languages of the Malay
group are all still very much alike, though very divergent
from the languages of other peoples of Sumatra, Borneo,
and other neighbouring lands. In the early 21st century
the Malay constituted more than half of the population
of Peninsular Malaysia (West Malaysia) and more than
one-eighth of the population of East Malaysia (Sarawak
and Sabah).
The Malay culture has been strongly inuenced by
that of other peoples, including the Siamese, Javanese, and
Sumatran. The inuence of Hindu India was historically
very great, and the Malay were largely Hinduized before
they were converted to Islam in the 15th century. The pop-
ulation of the Malay Peninsula today includes large
numbers of Indians and Chinese.
The Malay religion is Islam of the school of Shai.
Muslim religious holidays are observed. Some Hindu rit-
ual survives, as in the second part of the marriage ceremony
and in various ceremonies of state. In rural areas the Malay
have also preserved some of their old beliefs in spirits of
the soil and jungle, which are partly Hindu in origin; they
often have recourse to medicine men or shamans for the
treatment of disease.
PERSIANS
The predominant ethnic group of Iran (formerly known
as Persia) and a signicant minority community in western
Afghanistan are Persian. Although of diverse ancestry, the
Persian people are united by their language, Persian (Farsi),
which belongs to the Indo-Iranian group of the Indo-
European language family.
27
The name Persia derives from Parsa, the name of the
Indo-European nomadic people who migrated into
southern Iranto an area then called Persisabout
1000 BCE. As the Parsa expanded their sphere of politi-
cal inuence, the entire Iranian plateau became known
to outsiders (such as the ancient Greeks) as Persia; its
various peoples were designated (collectively) the
Persians. Subsequent rulersincluding Alexander the
Greatfostered cultural consolidation.
The vast majority of Persians practice Shiite Islam.
(This form of Islam is one of the two largest branches of
the Islam faith, the other one being Sunni Islam.) Before
the Muslim conquest of Persia in the 7th century CE, most
Persians followed Zoroastrianism, based on the teachings
of the ancient prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra), who lived
during the rst half of the 1st millennium BCE. In 21st-
century Iran there remain a small number of Zoroastrians;
larger groups now live in South Asia. In addition to the
Zoroastrians, Persian adherents of the Bahai faith (which
originated in Iran) constitute a tiny minority of the popu-
lation, their religion having been strongly discouraged by
the Muslim government.
The Persian population is engaged in a broad array of
occupations, in both urban and rural settings. The tradi-
tional handwoven cloth and carpet industries for which
they are known have remained strong, despite competi-
tion from mechanized textile mills. Persian villages often
pride themselves on the unique designs and high quality
of their carpets, most of which display the typical geo-
metric gures and oral designs of Muslim visual art.
Products of the weaving industry are both used locally
and exported. The Persians are known for their intri-
cately inlaid metalwork as well as for their legacy of
extraordinary architecture. Finely decorated pre-Islamic
28
structures still stand in several ancient cities, as do spec-
tacular mosques and shrines from the Muslim era. A
number of these buildingsincluding those at Persepolis
and Chogha Zanbiland their surroundings have been
designated UNESCO World Heritage sites.
SUNDANESE
The Sundanese are one of the three principal ethnic groups
of the island of Java, Indonesia. Estimated to number
about 25,850,000 in the early 21st century, they are a high-
land people of western Java, distinguished from the
Javanese mainly by their language and their strict adher-
ence to the Muslim faith.
Historically they were rst recorded under the Indo-
Javanese Brahmanical states (8th century CE) and
subsequently accepted the Mahayana Buddhism adopted
by the Shailendra kings. Muslim trade inuenced them to
accept Islam in the 16th century, the people of Bantam
being especially fervent; however, animistic and Hindu
inuences survive.
The Sundanese village is ruled by a headman and a
council of elders. The single-family houses are made of
wood or bamboo, raised on piling. Rice culture and iron-
working, as well as marriage, birth, and death ceremonies,
conform closely to the Javanese pattern, though often
mixed with elements of Hindu origin.
UIGHURS
The Uighurs are Turkic-speaking people of interior Asia
who live for the most part in northwestern China, in the
Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang; a small number
live in the Central Asian republics. There were nearly 9
29
Muhammad Ababakari (left), a Uighur of Xinjiang, makes a musical instrument.
Musical instruments represent one of the popular handicrafts of Uighurs in this
region of China. Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images
million Uighurs in China and about 300,000 in Uzbekistan,
Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan in the early 21st century.
The Uighur language is part of the Turkic group of
Altaic languages, and the Uighur are among the oldest
Turkic-speaking peoples of Central Asia. They are men-
tioned in Chinese records from the 3rd century CE . The
group rst rose to prominence in the 8th century, when
they established a kingdom along the Orhon River in
what is now north-central Mongolia. In 840 this state
was overrun by the Kyrgyz, however, and the Uighurs
migrated southwestward to the area around the Tien
30
(Tian) Shan (Celestial Mountains). There they formed
another independent kingdom in the Turfan region, but
this was overthrown by the expanding Mongols in the
13th century.
The Uighur are, in the main, a sedentary, village-dwell-
ing people, who live in the network of oases formed in the
valleys and lower slopes of the Tien Shan, Pamirs, and
related mountain systems. The region is one of the most
arid in the world; hence, for centuries they have practiced
irrigation to conserve their water supply for agriculture.
The chief Uighur cities are rmqi, the capital of
Xinjiang, and Kashgar (Kashi), an ancient centre of trade
near the Russian-Chinese border. The groups social orga-
nization is centred on the village. Most Uighurs, especially
those of Xinjiang, are Sunni Muslims.
UZBEKS
The Uzbeks of Central Asia live chiey in Uzbekistan, but
also in other parts of Central Asia and in Afghanistan.
They speak either of two dialects of Uzbek, a Turkic lan-
guage. More than 16 million Uzbeks live in Uzbekistan,
2,000,000 in Afghanistan, 1,380,000 in Tajikistan, 570,000
in Kyrgyzstan, and smaller numbers in Kazakhstan,
Turkmenistan, and Xinjiang in China.
The Uzbek designation is thought to refer to z Beg
(Uzbek), the Mongol khan under whom the Golden Horde
attained its greatest power. The Uzbeks grew out of a
mingling of ancient, settled Iranian populations with a
variety of nomadic Mongol or Turkic tribes that invaded
the region between the 11th and the 15th centuries. The
former were ethnically similar to the Tajiks, and the latter
included Kipchaks, Karluks, and Turks of Samarkand (rel-
atively more Mongolized groups). A third element was
31
added with the invasion of Mongol nomadic tribes under
the leadership of Muhammad Shaybani Khan in the early
16th century.
The great majority of Uzbeks are Sunni Muslims of the
Hana rite, a group noted for the acceptance of personal
opinion (ray) in the absence of Muslim precedent. The
Uzbeks, especially the urban Uzbeks, are considered to be
the most religious Muslims of Central Asia; early mar-
riages for young girls, bride-price, and religious marriages
and burials are among the traditions still practiced. The
Uzbeks are the least Russied of those Turkic peoples for-
merly ruled by the Soviet Union, and virtually all still claim
Uzbek as their rst language.
32
T
he phrase Islamic arts refers to the arts practiced by
the vast populations of the Middle East and else-
where that adopted the Islamic faith from the 7th century
onward. These adherents of the faith have created such an
immense variety of arts that it virtually dees any compre-
hensive denition. In this book the subject includes the
arts created in pre-Islamic times by Arabs and other
peoples in Asia Minor and North Africa who eventually
adopted the Islamic faith. It focuses largely on literature,
calligraphy, and architecture.
Representation of living beings is prohibitednot in
the Quran but in the prophetic tradition of Islam. Thus,
the centre of the Islamic artistic tradition lies in calligra-
phy, a distinguishing feature of this culture, in which the
word as the medium of divine revelation plays such an
important role. Representational art was found, however,
in some early palaces and at the doors of the bathhouses,
I SLAM I C ARTS:
I NTRODUCTI ON
AND GE NE RAL
CONSI DE RATI ONS
CHAPTER 2
33
7 Islamic Arts: Introduction and General Considerations 7
according to later Persian poetry. After the 13th century a
highly rened art of miniature developed, primarily in the
non-Arab countries; it dwells, however, only rarely upon
religious subjects. The typical expression of Muslim art is
the arabesque , a style of decoration characterized by inter-
twining plants and abstract curvilinear motifs, both in its
geometric and in its vegetabilic formone leaf, one ower
growing out of the other, without beginning and end and
capable of almost innumerable variationsonly gradually
detected by the eyethat never lose their charm. An aver-
sion to empty spaces distinguishes that art; neither the
tile-covered walls of a mosque nor the rich imagery of a
poem allows an unembellished area; and the decoration of
a carpet can be extended almost without limit.
The centre of Islamic religion is the clean place for
prayer, enlarged into the mosque , which comprises the
community and all its needs. The essential structure is
similar throughout the Muslim world. There are, of course,
period and regional differenceslarge, wide court
mosques of early times; court mosques, with big halls, of
Iran and adjacent countries; central buildings with the
wonderfully shaped domes of the Ottoman Empire. The
implements, however, are the same: a niche ( mihrab )
pointing to Meccamade of wood, marble, mosaic, stone,
and tiles; a small pulpit for the Friday sermon; minarets,
locally differently shaped but always rising like the call to
prayer ( adhan ) that is uttered from their tops; the wooden
carved stands for the Quran, which is to be written in the
most perfect form; sometimes highly artistic lamps (made
in Syria and proverbially mentioned all over the Muslim
world); perhaps bronze candlesticks, with inlaid orna-
ments; and rich variations of the prayer mats. If any
decoration was needed, it was the words of God, beauti-
fully written or carved in the walls or around the domes.
34
At rst connected with the mosques and later indepen-
dent of them are schools, mausoleums, rooms for the
students, and cells for the religious masters.
The poetry of the Arabs consisted in the beginning of
praise and satirical poems thought to be full of magic quali-
ties. The strict rules of the outward form of the poems
(monorhyme, complicated metre) even in pre-Islamic times
led to a certain formalism and encouraged imitation.
Goethes statement that the stories of The Thousand
and One Nights have no goal in themselves shows his under-
standing of the character of Arabic belles lettres,
contrasting them with the Islamic religion, which aims at
collecting and uniting people in order to achieve one high
goal. Poets, on the other hand, rove around without any
ethical purpose, according to the Quran. For many pious
Muslims, poetry was something suspect, opposed to the
divine law, especially since it sang mostly of forbidden
wine and of free love. The combination of music and
poetry, as practiced in court circles and among the mys-
tics, has always aroused the wrath of the lawyer divines
who wielded so much authority in Islamic communities.
This opposition may partly explain why Islamic poetry
and ne arts took refuge in a kind of unreal world, using
xed images that could be correctly interpreted only by
those who were knowledgeable in the art.
The ambiguity of Persian poetry, which oscillates
between the worldly, the divine, and often the political
level, is typical of Islamic writings. Especially in Iran and
the countries under its cultural inuence, this kind of
poetry formed the most important part of literature. Epic
poetry of all kinds developed exclusively outside the
Arabic-speaking countries; Western readers look in vain
for an epical structure in such long poems (as in the case of
the prose-romances of the Arabs) and nd, instead, a rather
aimless representation of facts and ctions. A similar
35
7 Islamic Arts: Introduction and General Considerations 7
characteristic even conditions innumerable historical
works in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, which, especially in
classical times, contain much valuable information, put
together without being shaped into texts that allow the
historian or philosopher reach a comprehensive view. The
rst attempt at a philosophy of history, Ibn Khalduns
Muqaddimah (Introduction), in the 14th century, was
rarely studied by his Arab compatriots.
The accumulation of large amounts of material, which
is carefully organized up to the present, seems typical of
all branches of Islamic scholarship, from theology to natu-
ral sciences. There are many minute observations and
descriptions but rarely a full view of the whole process.
Later, especially in the Persian, Turkish, and Indo-Muslim
areas, a tendency to overstress the decorative elements of
prose is evident; and the contents even of ofcial chroni-
cles are hidden behind a network of rhymed prose, which
is difcult to disentangle.
This tendency is illustrated in all branches of Islamic
art: the lack of architectural formation. Instead, there is
a kind of carpet-like pattern; the Arabic and Persian poem
is, in general, judged not as a closed unity but rather
according to the perfection of its individual verses. Its
main object is not to convey a deep personal feeling but to
perfect to the utmost the traditional rules and inherited
metaphors, to which a new image may sometimes be
added; thus the personality of the poet becomes visible
only through the minimal changes of expression and
rhythm and the application of certain preferred meta-
phors, just as the personality of the miniature painter can
be detected by a careful observation of details, of his way
of colouring a rock or deepening the shade of a turban.
The same holds true for the arabesques, which were devel-
oped according to a strict ritual to a mathematical pattern
and were rened until they reached a perfection of
36
geometrical complicated gures, as in the dome of the
Karatay Medrese in Konya (Turkey; 1251); it corresponds
both to the most intricate lacelike Kuc inscriptions
around this dome and to the poetical style of Jalal al-Din
al-Rumi, who wrote in that very place and during those
years. His immortal mystical poems comprise thousands
of variations on the central theme of love. Although such
a perfect congruency of poetry and ne arts is not fre-
quently found, the precept about Persian art that its
wings are too heavy with beauty can also be applied to
Persian poetry. Thus, the tile work of a Persian mosque,
which combines different levels of arabesque work with
different styles of writing, is reminiscent of the way Persian
poetry combines at least two levels of reality. And a per-
fect harmony is reached in some of the miniature
manuscripts of Iran, Muslim India, or Ottoman Turkey,
which, in their lucid colours and ne details of execution,
recall both the perfection of the calligraphy that surrounds
them on delicate paper and the subtlety of the stories or
poems that they accompany or illustrate.
Drama in the Western sense did not develop in the
Islamic countries until the 19th century; and the art of the
novel is a very recent development. There was no reason
for drama: in the Muslim perception Allah is the only actor
who can do whatever he pleases, whose will is inscrutable.
Humans are, at best, puppets on a string, behind whose
movement the hand of the play master is detectable to
those with insight; neither is the problem of personal guilt
and absolution posed as it is in the West, nor is a catharsis,
or purging of emotion, needed through drama. The atom-
ist theory, widely accepted in Islam since the 10th century,
leaves no room for a dramatic movement; it teaches that
God creates everything anew in every moment, and what
is called a law of nature is nothing but Gods custom,
which he can interrupt whenever he pleases.
37
CHAPTER 3
U
nderstanding the importance of the Arabic language
in Islamic culture is central to understanding both in
its literature and its visual arts. In the 7th and 8th centu-
ries CE the Arab armies conquered for Islam territories
stretching from the shores of the Atlantic to Sindh (now
in Pakistan). Besides a religion, they brought to the con-
quered peoples a language both written and spoken. The
Arabic language was a principal factor in uniting peoples
who differed widely in ethnicity, language, and culture. In
the early centuries of Islam, Arabic not only was the of-
cial language of administration but also was and has
remained the language of religion and learning. The
Arabic alphabet has been adapted to Muslim peoples
vernaculars just as the Latin alphabet has been adapted in
the Christian-inuenced West.
ARABIC LANGUAGE
Classied as a Southern-Central Semitic language, Arabic
is spoken across a large area including North Africa, most of
the Arabian Peninsula, and other parts of the Middle East.
THE MORTAR OF
I SLAM I C CULTURE
38
Perhaps most signicantly, Arabic is the language of
the Quran and the religious language of all Muslims.
Literary Arabic, usually called Classical Arabic, is essen-
tially the form of the language found in the Quran, with
some modications necessary for its use in modern times;
it is uniform throughout the Arab world. Colloquial Arabic
includes numerous spoken dialects, some of which are
mutually unintelligible. The chief dialect groups are those
of Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and North Africa. With the
exception of the dialect of Algeria, all Arabic dialects have
been strongly inuenced by the literary language.
An Arabic word is composed of two parts: (1) the root,
which generally consists of three consonants and provides
the basic lexical meaning of the word, and (2) the pattern,
which consists of vowels and gives grammatical meaning
to the word. Thus, the root /k-t-b/ combined with the pat-
tern /-i-a-/ forms kitab book, whereas the same root
combined with the pattern /-a-i-/ forms katib, one who
writes or clerk. The language also makes use of prexes
and sufxes, which act as subject markers, pronouns,
prepositions, and the denite article.
ARABIC CALLIGRAPHY
The Arabic script was evolved probably by the 6th cen-
tury CE from Nabataean, a dialect of Aramaic current in
northern Arabia. The earliest surviving examples of Arabic
before Islam are inscriptions on stone.
Arabic is written from right to left and consists of 17
characters, which, with the addition of dots placed above
or below some of them, provide the 28 letters of the Arabic
alphabet. Short vowels are not included in the alphabet,
being indicated by signs placed above or below the conso-
nant or long vowel that they follow. Certain characters
39
7 The Mortar of Islamic Culture 7
may be joined to their neighbours, others to the preceding
one only, and others to the succeeding one only. When
coupled to another, the form of the character undergoes
certain changes.
These features, as well as the fact that there are no
capital forms of letters, give the Arabic script its particular
character. A line of Arabic suggests an urgent progress of
the characters from right to left. The nice balance between
the vertical shafts above and the open curves below the
middle register induces a sense of harmony. The peculiar-
ity that certain letters cannot be joined to their neighbours
provides articulation. For writing, the Arabic calligrapher
employs a reed pen (qalam) with the working point cut on
an angle. This feature produces a thick downstroke and a
thin upstroke with an innite gradation in between. The
line traced by a skilled calligrapher is a true marvel of u-
idity and sensitive inection, communicating the very
action of the masters hand.
Broadly speaking, there were two distinct scripts in
the early centuries of Islam: cursive script and Kuc
script. For everyday purposes a cursive script was
employed: typical examples may be seen in the Arabic
papyri from Egypt. Rapidly executed, the script does not
appear to have been subject to formal and rigorous rules,
and not all the surviving examples are the work of profes-
sional scribes. Kuc script, however, seems to have been
developed for religious and ofcial purposes. The name
means the script of Kufah, an Islamic city founded in
Mesopotamia in 638 CE, but the actual connection
between the city and the script is not clear. Kuc is a more
or less square and angular script. Professional copyists
employed a particular form for reproducing the earliest
copies of the Quran that have survived. These are writ-
ten on parchment and date from the 8th to the 10th
40
century. They are mostly of an oblong as opposed to codex
(i.e., manuscript book) format. The writing is frequently
large, especially in the early examples, so that there may
be as few as three lines to a single page. The script can
hardly be described as stiff and angular; rather, the implied
pace is majestic and measured.
Kuc went out of general use about the 11th century,
although it continued to be used as a decorative element
contrasting with those scripts that superseded it. About
1000 CE a new script was established and came to be used
for copying the Quran. This is the so-called naskhi script,
which has remained perhaps the most popular script in
the Arab world. It is a cursive script based on certain laws
governing the proportions between the letters. The two
names associated with its development are Ibn Muqlah
and Ibn al-Bawwab, both of whom lived and worked in
Mesopotamia.
Distinctive scripts were developed in particular regions.
In Spain the maghribi (western) script was evolved and
became the standard script for Qurans in North Africa.
Derived ultimately from Kuc, it is characterized by the
exaggerated extension of horizontal elements and of the
nal open curves below the middle register.
Both Persia and Turkey made important contributions
to calligraphy. In these countries the Arabic script was
adopted for the vernacular. The Persian scribes invented
the taliq script in the 13th century. The term taliq means
suspension and aptly describes the tendency of each
word to drop down from its preceding one. At the close of
the same century, a famous calligrapher, Mir Ali of Tabriz,
evolved nastaliq, which, according to its name, is a combi-
nation of naskhi and taliq. Like taliq, this is a uid and
elegant script, and both were popularly used for copying
Persian literary works.
41
Verses of the Quran are carved in calligraphy by an Iraqi on a piece of leather
in Baghdad. This ancient profession has been handed from one generation to
another for centuries. Ali Al-Saadi/AFP/Getty Images
7 The Mortar of Islamic Culture 7
A characteristic script developed in Ottoman Turkey
was that used in the chancellery and known as divani. This
script is highly mannered and rather difcult to read.
Peculiar to Turkish calligraphy is the tugra (tughra), a kind
of royal cipher based on the names and titles of the reign-
ing sultan and worked into a very intricate and beautiful
design. A distinctive tugra was created for each sultan
and afxed to imperial decrees by a skilled calligrapher,
the neshani.
There has always existed in the Islamic world a keen
appreciation of ne handwriting, and, from the 16th century,
42
it became a practice to assemble in albums specimens of
penmanship. Many of these assembled in Turkey, Persia,
and India are preserved in museums and libraries.
Calligraphy, too, has given rise to quite a considerable lit-
erature, such as manuals for professional scribes employed
in chancelleries.
In its broadest sense, calligraphy also includes the
Arabic scripts employed in materials other than parch-
ment, papyrus, and paper. In religious buildings, verses
from the Quran were inscribed on the walls for the edi-
cation of the faithful, whether carved in stone or stucco or
executed in faience tiles. Religious invocations, dedica-
tions, and benedictory phrases were also introduced into
the decoration of portable objects. Generally speaking,
there is a close relationship between these and the scripts
properly used on the conventional writing materials. It
was often the practice for a skilled penman to design mon-
umental inscriptions.
43
NATURE AND SCOPE
It would be almost impossible to make an exhaustive sur-
vey of Islamic literatures. There are so many works, of
which hundreds of thousands are available only in manu-
script, that even a very large team of scholars could scarcely
master a single branch of the subject. Islamic literatures,
moreover, exist over a vast geographical and linguistic
area, for they were produced wherever the Muslims went,
from their heartland in Arabia through the countries of
the Middle East as far as Spain, North Africa, and, eventu-
ally, West Africa. Iran (Persia) is a major centre of Islam,
along with the neighbouring areas that came under Persian
inuence, including Turkey and the Turkic-speaking areas
of Central Asia. Many Indian vernaculars contain almost
exclusively Islamic literary subjects; there is an Islamic
content in the literature of Malaysia and in that of some
East African languages, including Swahili. In many cases,
however, the Islamic content proper is restricted to reli-
gious worksmystical treatises, books on Islamic law and
CHAPTER 4
I SLAM I C
LI TE RATURE S
44
its implementation, historical works praising the heroic
deeds and miraculous adventures of earlier Muslim rulers
and saints, or devotional works in honour of the Prophet
Muhammad.
The vast majority of Arabic writings are scholarly
the same, indeed, is true of the other languages under
discussion. There are superb, historically important trans-
lations made by medieval scholars from Greek into Arabic;
historical works, both general and particular; a range of
religiously inspired works; books on grammar and on sty-
listics, on ethics and on philosophy. All have helped to
shape the spirit of Islamic literature in general, and it is
often difcult to draw a line between such works of schol-
arship and works of literature in the narrower sense of
that term. Even a strictly theological commentary can
bring about a deeper understanding of some problem of
aesthetics. A work of history composed in orid and artis-
tic language would certainly be regarded by its author as
a work of art as well as of scholarship, whereas the gram-
marian would be equally sure that his keen insights into
the structure of Arabic grammar were of the utmost
importance in preserving that literary beauty in which
Arabs and non-Arabs alike took pride.
In this treatment of Islamic literatures, however, the
denition of literature is restricted to poetry and belles
lettres, whether popular or courtly in inspiration. Other
categories of writing will be dealt with briey if these shed
light on some peculiar problem of literature.
The Range of Islamic Literatures
Although Islamic literatures appear in such a wide range
of languages and in so many different cultural environ-
ments, they are united by several commonalities, including
their intellectual and religious underpinnings.
45
7 Islamic Literatures 7
Arabic: Language of the Quran
The area of Islamic culture extends from western Africa
to Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines; but its heart-
land is Arabia, and the prime importance and special
authority of the Arabic language was to remain largely
unquestioned after the spread of Islam. The Arabic poetry
of pre-Islamic Arabia was regarded for centuries afterward
as the standard model for all Islamic poetic achievement,
and it directly inuenced literary forms in many non-Arab
literatures. The Quran, Islams sacred scripture, was
accepted by pious Muslims as Gods uncreated word and
was considered to be the highest manifestation of literary
beauty. A whole literature defended its inimitability (ijaz)
and unsurpassable beauty. Because it was Gods own word,
the Quran could not legitimately be translated into any
other language; the study of at least some Arabic was
therefore required of every Muslim. Arabic script was
used by all those peoples who followed Islam, however
much their own languages might differ in structure from
Arabic. The Quran became the textbook of the Muslims
entire philosophy of life; theology, lexicography, geogra-
phy, historiography, and mysticism all grew out of a deep
study of its form and content; and even in the most secular
works there can be found allusions to the holy book. Its
imagery not unexpectedly permeates all Islamic poetry
and prose.
Between the coming of Islam in the 7th century and
the 11th, a great deal of poetry and prose in Arabic was
produced. One branch of literature in Spain and North
Africa matured in perfect harmony with the classical ide-
als of the Muslim East although its masters, during the
11th and 12th centuries, invented a few strophic forms
unknown to classical Arabic poetry. In modern times,
North African Muslim literaturemainly from Algeria
46
and Moroccooften uses French as a means of expres-
sion, since the tradition of Arabic writing was interrupted
by the French occupation in the 19th century and has had
to be built up afresh.
Persian
In 641 the Muslims entered Iran, and Persian inuence on
literary taste becomes apparent in Arabic literature from
the mid-8th century onward. Many stories and tales were
transmitted from, or through, Iran to the Arab world and
often from there to western Europe. Soon Iran could boast
a large literature in its own tongue. Persian literature was
more varied in its forms and content than that written in
classical Arabic. Although Persian adopted many of the
formal rules of the Arabic language (including prosody and
rhyme patterns), new genres, including epic poetry, were
introduced from Iran. The lyric, elegant and supple, also
reached its nest expression in the Persian language.
South Asian
Persian culture was by no means restricted to Iran itself.
Northwestern India and what is now Pakistan became a
centre of Islamic literature as early as the 11th century,
with Delhi and Agra being of special importance. It was to
remain a stronghold of Muslim cultural life, which soon
also extended to the east (Bengal) and south (Deccan).
Persian remained the ofcial language of Muslim India
until 1835, and not only its poetry but even its historiogra-
phy was written in the high-own manner that exemplied
the Persian concept of ne style. Muslim India can further
boast a ne heritage of Arabic poetry and prose (theologi-
cal, philosophical, and mystical works).
At various times in its history the Indian subconti-
nent was ruled by princes of Turkish origin (indeed, the
words Turk and Muslim became synonymous in some
47
Indian languages). The princes surrounded themselves
with a military aristocracy of mainly Turkish extraction,
and thus a few poetical and prose works in Turkish were
written at some Indian courts. In various regions of the
subcontinent an extremely pleasing folk literature has
ourished throughout the ages: Sindhi in the lower Indus
Valley, for example, and Punjabi in the Punjab are lan-
guages rich in an emotional poetry that uses popular
metres and forms. At the Indo-Iranian border the oldest
fragments of the powerful Pashto poetry date from the
Middle Ages. The neighbouring Balochi poetry consists
largely of ballads and religious folk songs. All the peoples
in this area have interpreted Islamic mysticism in their
own simple, touching imagery. In the east of the subcon-
tinent, Bengali Muslims possess a large Islamic literary
heritage, including religious epics from the 14th and 15th
centuries and some lovely religious folk songs. The
achievements of modern novelists and lyric poets from
Bangladesh are impressive. To the north, where Islam
came in the 14th century, a number of classical themes in
Islamic lore were elaborated in Kashmiri lyric and epic
poetry. To the south, an occasional piece of Islamic reli-
gious poetry can be found even in Tamil and Malayalam.
Some ne Muslim short stories have been produced in
modern Malayalam.
Urdu, now the chief literary language of Muslim India
and Pakistan, borrowed heavily from Persian literature
during its classical period in the 18th century. In many
writings only the verbs are in Urdu, the rest consisting of
Persian constructions and vocabulary; and the themes of
traditional Urdu literature were often adapted from
Persian. Modern Urdu prose, however, has freed itself
almost completely from the past, whereas in poetry prom-
ising steps have been taken toward modernization of both
forms and content.
48
Turkish
An elaborate classical style developed in Turkish after the
14th century, reaching its peak in the 17th. Like classical
Urdu, it was heavily inuenced by Persian in metrics and
vocabulary. Many exponents of this high style came from
the Balkan provinces of the Ottoman Empire. On the other
hand, a rich and moving folk poetry in popular syllable-
counting metres has always ourished among the Turkish
population of Anatolia and Rumelia. The mystical songs of
their poet Yunus Emre contributed greatly toward shaping
this body of literature, which was preserved in the religious
centres of the Su orders of Islam. From this folk tradition,
as well as from Western literature, modern Turkish litera-
ture has derived a great deal of its inspiration.
Other Turkic Languages
A great deal of the Muslim literature of Central Asia is
written in Turkic languages, which include Uzbek, Tatar,
and Kyrgyz. Its main cultural centres (Samarkand, Bukhara,
Fergana) became part of the Muslim empire after 711.
Central Asia was an important centre of Islamic learning
until the tsarist invasions in the 1870s, and the peoples of
this region have produced a classical literature in Arabic.
Many of the most famous Arabic and Persian scholars and
poets writing in the heyday of Muslim inuence were
Central Asians by birth. Central Asians also possess a con-
siderable literature of their own, consisting in large part of
epics, folktales, and mystical words of wisdom. The rules
of prosody which hold for Arabic and Persian languages
have been deliberately imposed on the Turkic languages
on several occasions, notably by Ali Shir Navai, a master
of Chagatai poetry and prose in Herat, and by Babur, the
rst Mughal emperor in India. Tajik literature is basically
49
Persian, both as it is written today in Tajikistan and as it
existed in earlier forms, when it was indistinguishable
from classical Persian. After the Russication of the coun-
try, and especially after the 1917 Revolution, a new literature
emerged that was part and parcel of the former Soviet
Unions literature. The same can be said, by and large,
about the literatures of other Muslim Turkic peoples of
Central Asia.
Other Languages
Smaller fragments of Islamic literature, in Chinese, are
found in China (which has quite a large Muslim popula-
tion) and in the Philippines. The literary traditions of
Indonesia and of Malaysia, where the religion of Islam
arrived long ago, are also worth noting. Historical and
semimythical tales about Islamic heroes are a feature of
the literature in these areas, a fact of immense interest to
folklorists.
Contact with Islam and its written culture also
helped to preserve national idioms in many regions. Often
such idioms were enriched by Arabic vocabulary and
Islamic concepts. The leaders of the Muslims in such areas
in northern Nigeria, for example, preferred to write poetry
and chronicles in Arabic, while using their mother tongue
for more popular forms of literature. Of particular inter-
est in this connection is Kurdish literature, which has
preserved in an Iranian language several important, popu-
lar heterodox texts and epics.
Islamic Literatures and the West
Small fragments of Arabic literature have long been known
in the West. There were cultural interrelations between
Muslim Spain (which, like the Indus Valley, became part of
50
the Muslim empire after 711) and its Christian neighbours,
and this meant that many philosophical and scientic
works ltered through to western Europe. It is also likely
that the poetry of Muslim Spain inuenced the growth of
certain forms of Spanish and French troubadour poetry
and provided an element, however distorted, for medieval
Western romances and heroic tales.
Investigation by Western scholars of the literatures
that used to be termed Oriental did not begin until the
16th century in the Netherlands and England. First
attempts toward an aesthetic understanding of Arabic and
Persian poetry came even later: they were made by the
British scholars of Fort William, Calcutta, and by German
pre-Romantics of the late 18th century. In the rst half of
the 19th century the publication of numerous translations
of Arabic and Persian poetry, especially into German,
began to interest some Europeans. The poetical transla-
tions from Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit made by the
German scholar and poet Friedrich Rckert can scarcely
be surpassed, either in accuracy or in poetical mastery.
Hafez became well known in German-speaking countries,
thanks to Johann Wolfgang von Goethes enchanting
poems West-stlicher Divan (1819; The Parliament of East
and West), a collection that was the rst response to
Persian poetry and the rst aesthetic appreciation of the
character of this poetry by an acknowledged giant of
European literature.
EXTERNAL CHARACTERISTICS
In order to understand and enjoy Islamic literature, one
must study its external characteristics most carefully. The
literatures of the Islamic peoples are intellectual; in nei-
ther poetry nor prose are there many examples of subjective
51
lyricism, as it is understood in the West. The principal
genres, forms, and rules were inherited from pre-Islamic
Arabic poetry but were substantially elaborated afterward,
especially by the Persians.
Rhyme and Metre
Arabic poetry is built upon the principle of monorhyme,
and the single rhyme, usually consisting in one letter, is
employed throughout every poem, long or short. The
structure of Arabic permits such monorhymes to be
achieved with comparative ease. The Persians and their
imitators often extended the rhyming part over two or
more syllables (radif) or groups of words, which are repeated
after the dominant rhyming consonant. The metres are
quantitative, counting long and short syllables (arud).
Classical Arabic has 16 basic metres in ve groupings; they
can undergo certain variations, but the poet is not allowed
to change the metre in the course of his poem. Syllable-
counting metres, as well as strophic forms, are used in
popular, or low, poetry; only in post-classical Arabic were
some strophic forms introduced into high poetry. Many
modern Islamic poets, from Pakistan to Turkey and North
Africa, have discarded the classical system of prosody alto-
gether. In part they have substituted verse forms imitating
Western models such as strophic poems with or without
rhyme; since about 1950 free verse has almost become the
rule, although a certain tendency toward rhyming or to the
use of alliterative quasi-rhymes can be observed.
Genres
The chief poetic genres, as they emerged according to tra-
ditional rules, are the qasidah, the ghazal, and the qitah; in
52
Iran and its adjacent countries there are, further, the robai
and the masnawi.
Qasidah
The qasidah (literally purpose poem), a genre whose form
was invented by pre-Islamic Arabs, has from 20 to more
than 100 verses and usually contains an account of the
poets journey. In the classic pattern, the parts followed a
xed sequence, beginning with a love-poem prologue
(nasib), followed by a description of the journey itself, and
nally reaching its real goal by attering the poets patron,
sharply attacking some adversaries of his tribe, or else
indulging in measureless self-praise. Everywhere in the
Muslim world the qasidah became the characteristic form
for panegyric. It could serve for religious purposes as well:
solemn praise of God, eulogies of the Prophet, and songs
of praise and lament for the martyr heroes of Shiite Islam
were all expressed in this form. Later, the introductory
part of the qasidah often was taken up by a description of
nature or given over to some words of wisdom; or the poet
took the opportunity to demonstrate his skill in handling
extravagant language and to show off his learning. Such
exhibitions were made all the more difcult because,
though it varied according to the rank of the person to
whom it was addressed, the vocabulary of each type of
qasidah was controlled by rigid conventions.
Ghazal
The ghazal possibly originated as an independent elabora-
tion of the qasidahs introductory section, and it usually
embodies a love poem. Ideally, its length varies between
ve and 12 verses. Its diction is light and graceful, its effect
comparable to that of chamber music, whereas the qasidah-
writer employs, so to speak, the full orchestral resources.
53
Qitah
Monorhyme is used in both the qasidah and ghazal. But
while these two forms begin with two rhyming hemistiches
(half-lines of a verse), in the qitah (section) the rst hemis-
tich does not rhyme, and the effect is as though the poem
had been cut out of a longer one (hence its name). The
qitah is a less serious literary form that was used to deal with
aspects of everyday life; it served mainly for occasional
poems, satire, jokes, word games, and chronograms.
Robai
The form of the robai, which is a quatrain in xed metre
with a rhyme scheme of a a b a, seems to go back to pre-
Islamic Persian poetical tradition. It has supplied the
Persian poets with a exible vehicle for ingenious apho-
risms and similarly concise expressions of thought for
religious, erotic, or skeptical purposes. The peoples who
came under Persian cultural inuence happily adopted
this form.
Masnawi
Epic poetry was unknown to the Arabs, who were averse
to ction, whether it was expressed in poetry or in prose.
The development of epic poetry was thus hindered, just as
was the creation of novels or short stories. Nevertheless,
masnawiwhich means literally the doubled one, or
rhyming couplet, and by extension a poem consisting of a
series of such coupletsbecame a favourite poetical form
of the Persians and those cultures they inuenced. The
masnawi enabled the poet to develop the thread of a tale
through thousands of verses. Yet even in such poetry, only
a restricted number of metres was employed, and no metre
allowed more than 11 syllables in a hemistich. Metre and
54
diction were prescribed in accordance with the topic; a
didactic masnawi required a style and metre different from
a heroic or romantic one. The masnawi usually begins with
a praise of God, and this strikes the keynote of the poem.
Maqamah
The most typical expression of the Arabicand Islamic
spirit in prose is the maqamah gathering, assembly, which
tells basically simple stories in an extremely and marvel-
ously complicated style (abounding in word plays,
logographs, double entendre, and the like) and which
comes closest to the Western concept of the short story.
The versatility and erudition of the classical maqamah
authors is dazzling, but the fables and parables that, dur-
ing the rst centuries of Islam, had been told in a
comparatively easy owing style, later became subject to a
growing trend toward articiality, as did almost every
other literary genre, including expository prose. Persian
historiographers and Turkish biographers, Indo-Muslim
writers on mysticism and even on science all indulged in a
style in which rhyme and rhetoric often completely
obscured the meaning. It is only since the late 19th cen-
tury that a matter-of-fact style has slowly become
acceptable in literary circles; the inuence of translations
from European languages, the role of journalism, and the
growing pride in a pure language freed from the cobwebs
of the past worked together to make Islamic languages
more pliable and less articial.
Imagery
In all forms of poetry and in most types of prose, writers
shared a common fund of imagery that was gradually rened
and enlarged in the course of time. The main source of
imagery was the Quran, its gures and utterances often
55
divested of their sacred signicance. Thus, the beautiful
Joseph (sura 12) is a tting symbol for the handsome beloved;
the nightingale may sing the psalms of David (sura 21:79 a.o);
the rose sits on Solomons wind-borne throne (sura 21:81
a.o), and its opening petals can be compared to Josephs shirt
rent by Potiphars wife (sura 12:25 ff.), its scent to that of
Josephs shirt, which cured blind Jacob (sura 12:94). The
tulip reminds the poet of the burning bush before which
Moses stood (sura 20:9 ff.), and the coy beloved refuses the
lovers demands by answering, like God to Moses, Thou
shalt not see me (sura 7:143); but her (or his) kiss gives the
dying lover new life, like the breath of Jesus (sura 3:49).
Classical Persian poetry often mentions knights and kings
from Irans history alongside those from Arabic heroic tales.
The cup of wine offered by the old man of the Magians is
comparable to the miraculous cup owned by the Iranian
mythical king Jamshid or to Alexanders mirror, which
showed the marvels of the world; the nightingale may sing
Zoroastrian tunes when it contemplates the re temple
of the rose. Central scenes from the great Persian masnawis
contributed to the imagery of later writers in Persian-,
Turkish-, and Urdu-speaking areas. Social and political con-
ditions are reected in a favourite literary equation between
the beautiful and cruel beloved and the Turk: since in
Iran and India the military caste was usually of Turkish ori-
gin, and since the Turk was always considered white and
handsome, in literary imagery he stood as the ruler of
hearts. Minute arabesque-like descriptions of nature, par-
ticularly of garden scenes, are frequent: the rose and the
nightingale have almost become substitutes for mythologi-
cal gures. The versatile writer was expected to introduce
elegant allusions to classical Arabic and Persian literature
and to folklore and to know enough about astrology,
alchemy, and medicine to use the relevant technical
terms accurately. Images inspired by the pastimes of the
56
grandeeschess, polo, hunting, and the likewere as nec-
essary for a good poem as were those referring to music,
painting, and calligraphy. Similarly, allusions in poetic imag-
ery to the Arabic lettersoften thought to be endowed
with mystical signicance or magical propertieswere
very common in all Islamic literatures. The poet had to fol-
low strict rules laid down by the masters of rhetoric, rigidly
observing the harmonious selection of similes thought
proper to any one given sphere (four allusions to Quranic
gures, for example; or three garden images all given in a
single verse).
Skills Required of the Writer
The writer was also expected to use puns and to play with
words of two or more meanings. He might write verses
that could provide an intelligible meaning even when read
backward. He had to be able to handle chronograms, codes
based on the numerical values of a phrase or verse, which,
when understood, gave the date of some relevant event.
Later writers sometimes supplied the date of a books
compilation by hiding in its title a chronogram, a sentence
in which specic letters get reinterpreted as numerals and
represent a particular date when they are decoded or re-
arranged. A favourite device in poetry was the question
and answer form, employed in the whole poem, or only in
chosen sections.
One was expected to show talent at both improvisa-
tion and elaboration on any theme if one wished to attract
the interest of a generous patron. The poetry was judged
according to the perfection of its individual verses. Only
in rare cases was the poem appreciated as a whole: the lack
of coherent argument in ghazal poetry, which often puz-
zles the Western reader, is in fact deliberate.
57
It would be idle to look for the sincere expression of
personal emotion in Arabic, Turkish, or Persian poetry.
The conventions are so rigid that the reader is allowed
only a rare glimpse into the poets feelings. Yet the great
masters of poetry and rhetoric (who all have their favou-
rite imagery, rhymes, and rhythmical patterns) will
sometimes allow the patient reader a glimpse into their
hearts by a slight rhythmical change or by a new way of
expressing a conventional thought.
These are, of course, quite crude generalizations.
Only in the 20th century was a complete break with
classical ideals madesincerity instead of imitation,
political and social commitment instead of panegyric,
realism instead of escapism: these are the characteristic
features of modern literatures of the Muslim countries.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS:
PRE-ISLAMIC LITERATURE
The rst known poetic compositions of the Arabs are of
such perfect beauty and, at the same time, are so conven-
tionalized, that they raise the question as to how far back
an actual poetic tradition does stretch. A great number of
pre-Islamic poems, dating from the mid-6th century, were
preserved by oral tradition. The seven most famous pieces
are al-Muallaqat (The Suspended Ones, known as The
Seven Odes), and these are discussed more fully below. The
term muallaqat is not fully understood: later legend asserts
that the seven poems had been hung in the most impor-
tant Arab religious sanctuary, the Kabah in Mecca, because
of their eloquence and beauty and had brought victory to
their authors in the poetical contests traditionally held
during the season of pilgrimage. Apart from these seven,
quite a number of shorter poems were preserved by later
58
Al-Khansa
(d. after 630)
Tumadir bint Amr ibn al-Harith ibn al-Sharid, whose byname
was al-Khansa (meaning The Snub-Nosed), was one of the
greatest Arab poets.
The deaths of two of her kinsmenher brother Muawiyah
and her half-brother Sakhr, both of whom had been tribal heads
and had been killed in tribal raids sometime before the advent
of Islamthrew al-Khansa into deep mourning. Her elegies on
these deaths and that of her father made her the most celebrated
poet of her time. When her tribe as a group accepted Islam, she
went with them to Medina to meet the Prophet Muhammad,
but she persisted in wearing the pre-Islamic mourning dress as
an act of devotion to her brothers. When her four sons were
slain in the Battle of Qadisiyah (637), the caliph Umar is said to
have written her a letter congratulating her on their heroism and
assigned her a pension.
The collected poetry of al-Khansa, the Diwan (published in
an English translation by Arthur Wormhoudt in 1973), reects
the pagan fatalism of the tribes of pre-Islamic Arabia. The
poems are generally short and imbued with a strong and tradi-
tional sense of despair at the loss of life. The elegies of al-Khansa
were highly inuential, especially among later elegists.
scholars. An independent genre in pre-Islamic poetry was
the elegy, often composed by a woman, usually a deceased
heros sister. Some of these poems, especially those by al-
Khansa are notable for their compact expressiveness.
Poetry
The poet (called a shair, a wizard endowed with magic
powers) was thought to be inspired by a spirit (jinn,
59
shaytan). The poet defended the honour of his tribe and
perpetuated its deeds. Religious expression was rare in
pre-Islamic poetry. In the main it reects the sense of
fatalism that was probably needed if the harsh circum-
stances of Bedouin life in the desert were to be endured.
The most striking feature of pre-Islamic poetry is the
uniformity and renement of its language. Although the
various tribes, constantly feuding with one another, all
spoke their own dialects, they shared a common language
for poetry whether they were Bedouins or inhabitants of
the small capitals of al-Hirah and Ghassan (where the
inuence of Aramaic culture was also in evidence).
Arabic was even then a virile and expressive language,
with dozens of synonyms for the horse, the camel, the
lion, and so forth; and it possessed a rich stock of descrip-
tive adjectives. Because of these features, it is difcult for
foreigners and modern Arabs alike to appreciate fully the
artistic qualities of early Arabic poetry. Imagery is precise,
and descriptions of natural phenomena are detailed. The
sense of universal applicability is lacking, however, and the
comparatively simple literary techniques of simile and
metaphor predominate. The imaginative power that was
later to be the hallmark of Arabic poetry under Persian
inuence had not yet become evident.
The strikingly rich vocabulary of classical Arabic, as
well as its sophisticated structure, is matched by highly
elaborate metrical schemes, based on quantity. The rhyth-
mical structures were analyzed by the grammarian Khalil
of Basra, who distinguished 16 metres. Each was capable
of variation by shortening the foot or part of it; but the
basic structure was rigidly preserved. One and the same
rhyme letter had to be maintained throughout the poem.
(The rules of rhyming are detailed and very complicated
but were followed quite strictly from the 6th to the early
20th centuries.)
60
As well as rules governing the outward form of poetry,
a system of poetic imagery already existed by this early
period. The sequence of a poem, moreover, followed a
xed pattern (such as that for the qasidah). Pre-Islamic
poetry was not written down but recited; and therefore
sound and rhythm played an important part in its forma-
tion, and the rawis reciters were equally vital to its
preservation. A rawi was associated with some famous
bard and, having learned his masters techniques, might
afterward become a poet himself. This kind of appren-
ticeship to a master whose poetic style was thus continued
became a common practice in the Muslim world (espe-
cially in Muslim India) right up to the 19th century.
From pre-Islamic times the seven authors of The Seven
Odes, already described, are usually singled out for special
praise. Their poems and miscellaneous verses were col-
lected during the 8th century and ever since have been
the subject of numerous commentaries in the East. They
have been studied in Europe since the early 19th century.
Especially notable is the poet Imru al-Qays, of the
tribe of Kindah, who was foremost both in time and in
poetic merit. He was a master of love poetry; his frank
descriptions of dalliance with his mistresses are consid-
ered so seductive that (as orthodox Puritanism claims) the
Prophet Muhammad called him the leader of poets on
the way to Hell. His style is supple and picturesque. Of all
classical Arabic poets he is probably the one who appeals
most to modern taste. At the other extreme stands Zuhayr,
praising the chiefs of the rival tribes of Abs and Dhubyan
for ending a long feud. He is chiey remembered for his
serious qasidah in which, old, wise, and experienced, he
meditates upon the terrible escalation of war.
Also exciting for their savagery and beauty are some
poems by Taabbata Sharran and Shanfara, both outlaw
warriors. Their verses reveal the wildness of Bedouin life,
61
with its ideals of bravery, revenge, and hospitality. Taabbata
Sharran is the author of a widely translated Song of
Revenge (for his uncle), composed in a short, sharp
metre. Shanfaras lamiyah (literally poem rhyming in l)
vividly, succinctly, and with a wealth of detail tells of the
experiences to be had from life in the desert. This latter
poem has sometimes been considered a forgery, created
by a learned grammarian.
Prose
While poetry forms the most important part of early
Arabic literature and is an effective historical preservation
of the Arabs past glory, there is also a quantity of prose.
Of special interest is the rhymed prose (saj) peculiar to
soothsayers, which developed into an important form of
ornate prose writing in every Islamic country. The liter-
ary genre most typical of Bedouin life is the musamarah,
or nighttime conversation, in which the central subject
is elaborated not by plot but by carrying the listeners mind
from topic to topic through verbal associations. Thus, the
language as language played a most important role. The
musamarah form inspired the later maqamah literature.
EARLY ISLAMIC LITERATURE
With the coming of Islam the attitude of the Arabs toward
poetry seems to have changed. The new Muslims, despite
their long-standing admiration for powerful language,
often shunned poetry as reminiscent of pagan ideals now
overthrown. The Quran, in sura 26:225 ff., condemned the
poets who err in every valley, and say what they do not do.
Only the perverse follow them! The Quran, as the uncre-
ated word of God, was now considered the supreme
manifestation of literary beauty. It became the basis and
62
touchstone of almost every cultural and literary activity
and attained a unique position in Arabic literature.
Age of the Caliphs
After the death of Muhammad in 632, the time of the
Four Righteous Caliphs began. For the next 29 years,
four different rulers would lead the Islamic world as it
continued to expand and grow. It might be expected that a
new and vigorous religion would stimulate a new religious
literature to sing of its greatness and glory. This, however,
was not the case. Only much later did poets claim that
their work was the heritage of prophecy or draw upon a
tradition that calls the tongues of the poets the keys of
the treasures beneath the Divine Throne. The old, tradi-
tional literary models were still faithfully followed: a
famous ode by Kab, the son of Zuhayr, is different from
pre-Islamic poetry only insofar as it ends in praise of the
Prophet, imploring his forgiveness, instead of eulogizing
some Bedouin leader.
The desire to preserve words of wisdom is best
reected in the sayings attributed to Ali, the fourth caliph.
These, however, were written down, in superbly concise
diction, only in the 10th century under the title Nahj al-
balaghah (The Road of Eloquence), a work that is a
masterpiece of the nest Arabic prose and that has inspired
numerous commentaries and poetical variations in the
various Islamic languages.
Umayyad Dynasty
The time of the Four Righteous Caliphs ended with the
assassination of the nal caliph, Ali, in 661. With his death,
Muawiyah, the governor of Syria and a member of a clan
63
called the Bana Umayyah took over, beginning the Umayyad
dynasty. At that time, the centre of the Islamic world
moved from the Arabian Peninsula to the sophisticated
city of Damascus. The Umayyads very much enjoyed the
pleasures of life in their residence in Damascus and in their
luxurious castles in the Syrian desert. One of their last rul-
ers, the proigate al-Walid ibn Yazid, has become famous
not so much as a conqueror (although in 711 the Muslims
reached the lower Indus basin, Transoxania, and Spain) but
as a poet who excelled in frivolous love verses and poetry in
praise of wine. He was fond of short, light metres to match
his subjects and rejected the heavier metres preferred by
qasidah writers. His verses convey a sense of ease and gra-
cious living. Al-Walid was not, however, the rst to attempt
this kind of poetry: a remarkable poet from Mecca, Umar
ibn Abi Rabiah, had contributed in large measure to the
separate development of the love poem (ghazal) from its
subordinate place as the opening section of the qasidah.
Gentle and charming, in attractive and lively rhythms, his
poems sing of amorous adventures with the ladies who
came to Mecca on pilgrimage. His light-hearted, melodi-
ous poems still appeal to modern readers.
In Medina, on the other hand, idealized love poetry
was the vogue; its invention is attributed to Jamil of the
tribe Udhrah, whose members die when they love. The
names of some of these martyrs of love, together with
the names of their beloved, were preserved and eventually
became proverbial expressions of the tremendous force of
true love. Such was Qays, who went mad because of his
passion for Layla and was afterward known as Majnun
(Demented One). His story is cherished by later Persian,
Turkish, and Urdu poets; as a symbol of complete surren-
der to the force of love, he is dear both to religious mystics
and to secular poets.
64
Notwithstanding such new developments, the tradi-
tional qasidah form of poetry remained popular during the
Umayyad period. Moreover, as the satirists of Iraq rose to
fame, the naqaid (polemic poetry matches) between
Jarir and al-Farazdaq excited and delighted tribesmen of
the rival settlements of Basra and Kufah (places that later
also became rival centres of philological and theological
schools).
Prose literature was still restricted to religious writing.
The traditions of the Prophet began to be compiled, and,
after careful sifting, those regarded as trustworthy were
preserved in six great collections during the late 9th cen-
tury. Two of thesethat of al-Bukhari and that of Muslim
ibn al-Hajjajwere considered second only to the Quran
in religious importance. The rst studies of religious law
and legal problems, closely connected with the study of
the Quran, also belong to that period.
The Abbasids
It was not until a new dynasty, the Abbasids, assumed
power in 750 and settled in Baghdad, that the golden age
of Arabic literature began. The inux of foreign elements
added new colour to cultural and literary life. Muslims had
become aware of and translated ancient Greek texts, and
now Hellenistic thought and the inuence of the ancient
cultures of the Middle East, for example, contributed to
the rapid intellectual growth of the Muslim community.
Its members, seized with insatiable intellectual curiosity,
began to adapt elements from all the earlier high cultures
and to incorporate them into their own. They thus created
the wonderful fabric of Islamic culture that was so much
admired in the Middle Ages by western Europe. Indian
and Iranian threads were also woven into this fabric, and a
65
(b. c. 747762, Ahvaz, Irand. c. 813815, Baghdad)
An important poet of the early Abbasid period (750835) was
Abu Nuwas al-Hasan ibn Hani al-Hakami.
Of mixed Arab and Persian heritage, Abu Nuwas (also
spelled Nuas), studied in Basra and al-Kufah, rst under the
poet Walibah ibn al-Hubab, later under Khalaf al-Ahmar. He
also studied the Quran, Hadith (traditions relating to the life
and utterances of the Prophet), and grammar and is said to have
spent a year with the Bedouins in the desert to acquire their tra-
ditional purity of language.
Abu Nuwass initial appearance at the Abbasid court in
Baghdad met with little success; his alliance with the Barmakids,
the Abbasid viziers, forced him to seek refuge in Egypt when the
Barmakid dynasty collapsed. On his return to Baghdad, how-
ever, his panegyrics earned the favour of the caliphs Harun
al-Rashid and al-Amin, and he enjoyed great success in the
Abbasid court until his death.
The language of Abu Nuwass formal odes (qasidahs) is gram-
matically sound and based on the old Arab traditions; his themes,
however, are drawn from urban life, not the desert. His verse is
laced with humour and irony, reecting the genial yet cynical
outlook of the poet, who spent much of his life in pursuit of
pleasure. His witty and cynical verses are addressed mainly to
handsome boys; best known are his scintillating drinking songs.
His line Accumulate as many sins as you can seems to have been
his motto; and compared with some of his more lascivious lines,
even the most daring passages of pre-Islamic poetry sound
chaste. Abu Nuwas had such an incomparable command over
the language, however, that he came to be regarded as one
of the greatest Arabic poets of all time. Nevertheless, orthodox
Muslims would quote of him and of his imitators the Prophets
alleged saying that poetry is what Satan has spit out, since he
not only described subjects prohibited by religious law but
praised them with carefree lightheartedness.
Abu Nuwas
66
new sensitivity to beauty in the eld of poetry and the ne
arts was cultivated.
The classical Bedouin style was still predominant in
literature and was the major preoccupation of grammari-
ans. These men were, as the modern critic Sir Hamilton
Gibb has emphasized, the true humanists of Islam. Their
efforts helped to standardize High Arabic, giving it an
unchangeable structure once and for all. By now the inhab-
itants of the growing towns in Iraq and Syria were beginning
to express their love, hatred, religious fervour, and frivol-
ity in a style more appealing to their fellow townsmen.
Poets no longer belonged exclusively to what had been the
Bedouin aristocracy. Artisans and freed slaves, of non-
Arab origin, were included among their number.
Abu Nuwas is perhaps the most outstanding of the
Abbasid poets.
The New Style
The new approach to poetry that developed during the
9th century was rst accorded scholarly discussion in the
Kitab al-badi (Book of the Novel and Strange) by Ibn al-
Mutazz, caliph for one day, who laid down rules for the
use of metaphors, similes, and verbal puns. The ideal of
these modern poets was the richest possible embellish-
ment of verses by the use of tropes, brilliant gures of
speech, and farfetched poetic conceits. Many later hand-
books of poetics discussed these rules in minute detail,
and eventually the increasing use of rhetorical devices no
longer produced art but articiality. (Ibn al-Mutazz was
himself a ne poet whose descriptions of courtly life and
nature are lovely; he even tried to compose a tiny epic
poem, a genre otherwise unknown to the Arabs.) The
modern poets, sensitive to colours, sounds, and shapes,
also were fond of writing short poems on unlikely subjects:
a well-bred hunting dog or an inkpot; delicious sweetmeats
67
or jaundice; the ascetic who constantly weeps when he
remembers his sins; the luxurious garden parties of the
rich; an elegy for a cat; or a description of a green ewer.
Their amusing approach, however, was sooner or later
bound to lead to mannered compositions. The growing
use of colour images may be credited to the increasing
Persian inuence upon Abbasid poetry; for the Persian
poets were, as has been often observed, on the whole more
disposed to visual than to acoustic imagery.
New attitudes toward love, too, were being gradually
developed in poetry. Eventually, what was to become a
classic theme, that of hubb udhri (Udhrah love)the
lover would rather die than achieve union with his
belovedwas expounded by the Zahiri theologian Ibn
Daud in his poetic anthology Kitab al-zahrah (Book of
the Flower). This theme was central to the ghazal poetry
of the following centuries. Although at rst completely
secular, it was later taken over as a major concept in mysti-
cal love poetry. (The rst examples of this adoption, in
Iraq and Egypt, took place in Ibn Dauds lifetime.) The
wish to die on the path that leads to the beloved became
commonplace in Persian, Turkish, and Urdu poetry; and
most romances in these languages end tragically. Ibn
Dauds inuence also spread to the western Islamic world.
A century after his death, the theologian Ibn Hazm, draw-
ing upon personal experiences, composed in Spain his
famous work on pure love called Tawq al-hamamah (The
Ring of the Dove). Its lucid prose, interspersed with poetry,
has many times been translated into Western languages.
The conict between the traditional ideals of poetry
and the modern school of the early Abbasid period also
led to the growth of a literary criticism, the criteria of which
were largely derived from the study of Greek philosophy.
In the mid-10th century a new cultural centre emerged
at the small court of the Hamdanids in Aleppo. Here the
68
Central Asian scholar al-Farabi wrote his fundamental
works on philosophy and musical theory. Here, too, for a
while, lived Abu al-Tayyib al-Mutanabbi, who is in the
mainstream of classical qasidah writers but who surpasses
them all in the extravagance of what has been called his
reckless audacity of imagination. He combined some
elements of Iraqi and Syrian stylistics with classical ingre-
dients. His compositionspanegyrics of rulers and
succinct verses (which are still quoted)have never ceased
to intoxicate the Arabs by their daring hyperbole, their
marvelous sound effects, and their formal perfection.
Development of Literary Prose
During the Abbasid period, literary prose also began to
develop. Ibn al-Muqaffa, of Persian origin, translated the
fables of Bidpai into Arabic under the title Kalilah wa
Dimnah. These fables provided Islamic culture with a
seemingly inexhaustible treasure of tales and parables,
which are to be found in different guises throughout the
whole of Muslim literature. He also introduced into Arabic
the ctitious chronicles of the Persian Khwatay-namak
(Book of Kings). This was the source of a kind of pre-
Islamic mythology that the literati preferred above the
somewhat meagre historical accounts of the Arab pagan
past otherwise available to them. These activities
demanded a smooth prose style, and Ibn al-Muqaffa has
therefore rightly been regarded as the inaugurator of what
is called secretarial literature (that produced by secre-
taries in the ofcial chancelleries).
The most vigorous prose style was achieved by Abu
Hayyan al-Tawhidi, who portrayed the weaknesses of the
two leading viziers, both notorious for their literary
ambitions, in such a light that the very possession of a
copy of his book was thought to bring bad luck. This
work, like others by Tawhidi that have quite recently
69
been discovered, reveals the authors sagacity and strik-
ing eloquence.
Some time about 800 the Arabs had learned the art of
papermaking from the Chinese. Henceforth, cheap writing
material was available, and literary output was prodigious.
In those years manuals of composition (insha) were written
elaborating the technique of secretarial correspondence,
and they grew into an accepted genre in Arabic as well as in
Persian and Turkish literature. The devices thought indis-
pensable for elegance in modern poetry were applied to
prose. The products were mannered, full of puns, verbal
tricks, riddles, and the like. The new style, which was also to
affect the historians art in later times, makes a good deal of
this post-classical Arabic prose look very different from the
terse and direct expression characteristic of the early speci-
mens. Rhymed prose, which at one time had been reserved
for such religious occasions as the Friday sermons, was now
regarded as an essential part of elegant style.
This rhetorical artistry found its most superb expres-
sion in the maqamah, a form invented by Badi al-Zaman
al-Hamadhani. Its master, however, was al-Hariri, post-
master (head of the intelligence service) at Basra and an
accomplished writer on grammatical subjects. His 50
maqamahs, which tell the adventures of Abu Zayd al-Sar-
uji, with a wealth of language and learning, come closer to
the Western concept of short story than anything else in
classical Arabic literature. They abound in verbal conceits,
ambivalence, assonance, alliteration, palindromes; they
change abruptly from earnest to frivolous, and from the
crude to the most sublime.
Achievements in the Western Muslim World
The Arabic literature of Moorish Spain and of the whole
Maghrib developed parallel with that of the eastern
70
countries but came to full ower somewhat later. Crdoba,
the seat of the Umayyad rulers (by 756, the Umayyad dynasty
had died out in other parts of the Muslim world, but
Umayyad rulers would continue to rule Spain until 1031),
was the centre of cultural life. Its wonderful mosque has
inspired Muslim poets right up to the 20th century (such as
Sir Muhammad Iqbal, whose Urdu ode, The Mosque of
Crdoba, was written in 1935). Moorish Spain was a favou-
rite topic for reformist novelists of 19th-century Muslim
India, who contrasted their own countrys troubled state
with the glory of classical Islamic civilization. Moorish
Spain reached its cultural, political, and literary heyday
under Abd al-Rahman III (912961). Literary stylistic
changes, as noted in Iraq and Syria, spread to the west: there
the old Bedouin style had always been rare and soon gave
way to descriptive and love poetry. Ibn Hani of Sevilla
(Seville) has been praised as the Western counterpart of al-
Mutanabbi, largely because of his eulogies of the Fatimid
caliph al-Muizz, who at that time still resided in North
Africa. The entertaining prose style of Ibn Abd Rabbihi in
his al-Iqd al-farid (The Unique Necklace) is similar to that
of his elder contemporary Ibn Qutaybah, and his book in
fact became more famous than that of his predecessor.
Philosophy: Averros and Avicenna
Philosophy, medicine, and theology, all of which our-
ished in the Abbasid east, were also of importance in the
Maghrib; and from there strong inuences reached medi-
eval Europe. The inuences often came through the
mediation of the Jews, who, along with numerous
Christians, were largely Arabized in their cultural and lit-
erary outlook. The eastern Muslim countries could boast
of the rst systematic writers in the eld of philosophy,
especially Avicenna (Ibn Sina, d. 1037). Avicennas work in
philosophy, science, and medicine was outstanding and
71
was appreciated as such in Europe. He also composed reli-
gious treatises and tales with a mystical slant. One of his
romances was reworked by the Maghribi philosopher Ibn
Tufayl in his book Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Alive Son of Awake),
or Philosophus Autodidactus (the title of its rst Latin trans-
lation, made in 1671). It is the story of a self-taught man
who lived on a lonely island and who, in his maturity,
attained the full knowledge taught by philosophers and
prophets. This theme was elaborated often in later
European literature.
The dominating gure in the kingdom of the Almohads,
however, was the philosopher Averros (Ibn Rushd, d. 1198),
court physician of the Amazigh (Berber) kings in Marrakush
(Marrakech) and famous as the great Arab commentator on
Aristotle. The importance of his frequently misinterpreted
philosophy in the formation of medieval Christian thought
is well known. Arguably the greatest Islamic theosophist of
all, Ibn al-Arabi was Spanish in origin and was educated in
the Spanish tradition. His writings, in both poetry and
prose, shaped large parts of Islamic thought during the fol-
lowing centuries. Much of the later literature of eastern
Islam, particularly Persian and Indo-Persian mystical writ-
ings, indeed, can be understood only in the light of his
teachings. Ibn al-Arabis lyrics are typical of the ghazal,
sweet and owing. From the late 9th century, Arabic-
speaking mystics had been composing verses often meant
to be sung in their meetings. At rst a purely religious
vocabulary was employed, but soon the expressions began
to oscillate between worldly and heavenly love. The ambi-
guity thus achieved eventually became a characteristic
feature of Persian and Turkish lyrics.
Geographical Literature
The Maghrib also made a substantial contribution to geo-
graphical literature, a eld eagerly cultivated by Arab
72
scholars since the 9th century. The Sicilian geographer al-
Sharif al-Idrisi produced a famous map of the world and
accompanied it with a detailed description in his Kitab
nuzhat al-mushtaq ikhtiraq al-afaq (The Delight of Him
Who Wishes to Traverse the Regions of the World, 1154),
which he dedicated to his patron, Roger II. The Spanish
traveler Ibn Jubayr, while on pilgrimage to Mecca, kept
notes of his experiences and adventures. The resulting
book became a model for the later pilgrims manuals that
are found everywhere in the Muslim world. The Maghribi
explorer Ibn Battutah described his extensive travels to
East Asia, India, and the region of the Niger in a book lled
with information about the cultural state of the Muslim
world at that time. The value of his narrative is enhanced
by the simple and pleasing style in which it is written.
Poetry
In the eld of poetry, Spain, which produced a consider-
able number of masters in the established poetical
forms, also began to popularize strophic poetry, possibly
deriving from indigenous models. The muwashshah (gir-
dled) poem, written in the classical short metres and
arranged in four- to six-line stanzas, was elaborated,
enriched by internal rhymes, and, embodying some
popular expressions in the poems nal section, soon
achieved a standardized form. The theme is almost always
love. Among the greatest lyric poets of Spain was Ibn
Zaydun of Crdoba, who was of noble birth. Another
strophic form developed in Spain is the songlike zajal
melody, interesting for its embodiment of dialect
phrases and the use of occasional words from Romance
languages. Its master was Ibn Quzman of Crdoba, whose
lifestyle was similar to that of Western troubadours. His
approach to life as expressed in these melodious poems,
73
together with their mixed idiom, suggests an interrela-
tionship with the vernacular troubadour poetry of Spain
and France.
Historiography: Ibn Khaldun
Any survey of western Muslim literary achievements
would be incomplete if it did not mention the most pro-
found historiographer of the Islamic world, the Tunisian
Ibn Khaldun. History has been called the characteristic
science of the Muslims because of the Quranic admoni-
tion to discover signs of the divine in the fate of past
peoples. Islamic historiography has produced histories of
the Muslim conquests, world histories, histories of dynas-
ties, court annals, and biographical works classied by
occupationscholars, poets, and theologians. Ibn
Khaldun, in the famous Muqaddimah (introduction to a
projected general history, Kitab al-ibar) sought to explain
the basic factors in the historical development of the
Islamic countries. His own experiences, gained on a vari-
ety of political missions in North Africa, proved useful in
establishing general principles that he could apply to the
manifestations of Islamic civilization. He created, in fact,
the rst sociological study of history, free from bias.
Decline of the Arabic Language
Ibn Khaldun, who had served in his youth as ambassador
to Pedro I the Cruel, of Castile, and in his old age as emis-
sary to Timur, died in Cairo. After the fall of Baghdad in
1258, this city had become the centre of Muslim learning.
Historians there recorded every detail of the daily life and
the policies of the Mamluk sultans; theologians and phi-
lologists worked under the patronage of Turkish and
Circassian rulers who often did not speak a word of Arabic.
74
The amusing, semicolloquial style of the historian Ibn
Iyas is an interesting example of the deterioration of the
Arabic language. While classical Arabic was still the ideal
of every literate person, it had become exclusively a
learned language.
MIDDLE PERIOD: THE RISE OF
PERSIAN AND TURKISH POETRY
The New Persian Style
During the Abbasid period (750-1258), the Persian inu-
ence upon the Arabic had grown considerably: at the same
time, a distinct Modern Persian literature came into exis-
tence in northeastern Iran, where the house of the
Samanids of Bukhara and Samarkand had revived the
memory of Sasanian glories.
The rst famous representative of this new literature
was the poet Rudaki, of whose qasidahs only a few have
survived. He also worked on a Persian version of Kalilah
wa Dimnah, however, and on a version of the Sendbad-
nameh. Rudakis poetry, modeled on the Arabic rules of
prosody that without exception had been applied to
Persian, already points ahead to many of the characteristic
features of later Persian poetry. The imagery in particular
is sophisticated, although when compared with the man-
nered writing of subsequent times his verse was considered
sadly simple. From the 10th century onward, Persian
poems were written at almost every court in the Iranian
areas, sometimes in dialectical variants (for example, in
Tabarestani dialect at the Zeyarid court). In many cases
the poets were bilingual, excelling in both Arabic and
Persian (a gift shared by many non-Arab writers up to the
19th century).
75
Influence of Mahmud of Ghazna
The rst important centre of Persian literature existed at
Ghazna (present-day Ghazni, Afg.), at the court of
Mahmud of Ghazna and his successors, who eventually
extended their empire to northwestern India. Himself an
orthodox warrior, Mahmud in later love poetry was trans-
formed into a symbol of a slave of his slave because of his
love for a Turkmen ofcer, Ayaz. Under the Ghaznavids,
lyric and epic poetry both developed, as did the panegyric.
Classical Iranian topics became the themes of poetry,
resulting in such diverse works as the love story of Vameq
and Azra (possibly of Greek origin) and the Shah-nameh
(Book of Kings). A number of gifted poets praised
Mahmud, his successors, and his ministers. Among them
was Farrokhi of Seistan, who was the author of a powerful
elegy on Mahmuds death, one of the nest compositions
of Persian court poetry.
Epic and Romance
The main literary achievement of the Ghaznavid period,
however, was that of Ferdowsi. He compiled the inherited
tales and legends about the Persian kings in one grand epic,
the Shah-nameh, which contains between 35,000 and
60,000 verses in short rhyming couplets. It deals with the
history of Iran from its beginningsthat is, from the
time of the mythical kingspassing on to historical
events, giving information about the acceptance of the
Zoroastrian faith, Alexanders invasion, and, eventually, the
conquest of the country by the Arabs. A large part of the
work centres on tales of the hero Rostam. These stories are
essentially part of a different culture, thus revealing some-
thing about the Indo-European sources of Iranian
mythology. The struggle between Iran and Turan (the
76
Central Asian steppes from which new waves of nomadic
conquerors distributed Irans urban culture) forms the cen-
tral theme of the book; and the importance of the legitimate
succession of kings, who are endowed with royal charisma,
is reected throughout the composition. The poem con-
tains very few Arabic words and is often considered the
masterpiece of Persian national literature. Its episodes have
been the inspiration of miniaturists since the 14th century.
Other epic poems, on a variety of subjects, were com-
posed during the 11th century. The rst example is Asadis
didactic Garshasb-nameh (Book of Garshasb), whose
hero is very similar to Rostam. The tales of Alexander and
his journeys through foreign lands were another favourite
topic. Poetical romances were also being written at this
time, but these were soon superseded by the great roman-
tic epics of Nezami of Ganja, in Caucasia. The latter are
known as the Khamseh (Quintet) and, though the names
of Vis or Vameq continued for some time to serve as sym-
bols of the longing lover, it was the poetical work of
Nezami that supplied subsequent writers with a rich store
of images, similes, and stories to draw upon. The rst
work of his Khamseh, Makhzan al-asrar (Treasury of
Mysteries), is didactic in intention; the subjects of the
following three poems are traditional love stories. The
rst is the Arabic romance of Majnun, who went mad
with love for Layla. Second is the Persian historical tale of
Shirin, a Christian princess, loved by both the Sasanian
ruler Khosrow II Parviz and the stonecutter Farhad. The
third story, Haft peykar (Seven Beauties), deals with the
adventures of Bahram Gur, a Sasanian prince, and seven
princesses, each connected with one day of the week, one
particular star, one colour, one perfume, and so on. The
last part of the Khamseh is Eskandar-nameh, which relates
the adventures of Alexander III the Great in Africa and
Asia, as well as his discussions with the wise philosophers.
77
It thus follows the traditions about Alexander and his
tutor, Aristotle, emphasizing the importance of a coun-
selor-philosopher in the service of a mighty emperor.
Nezamis ability to present a picture of life through highly
rened language and a wholly apt choice of images is
quite extraordinary. Human feelings, as he describes
them, are fully believable; and his characters are drawn
with a keen insight into human nature. Not surprisingly,
Nezamis work inspired countless poets imitations in dif-
ferent languagesincluding Turkish, Kurdish, and
Urduwhile painters constantly illustrated his stories for
centuries afterward.
Other Poetic Forms
In addition to epic poetry, the lesser forms, such as the
qasidah and ghazal, developed during the 11th and 12th
centuries. Many poets wrote at the courts of the Seljuqs
and also at the Ghaznavid court in Lahore, where the
poet Masud-e Sad-e Salman composed a number of heart-
felt qasidahs during his political imprisonment. They are
outstanding examples of the category of habsiyah (prison
poem), which usually reveals more of the authors per-
sonal feelings than other literary forms. Other famous
examples of habsiyahs include those written by the Arab
knight Abu Firas in a Byzantine prison.
The most complicated forms were mastered by poets
of the very early period, especially Qatran, who was born
near Tabriz (now in Iran) and died after 1072. Through
their display of virtuosity for virtuositys sake, his qasidahs
reached the limits of articiality. Anvari, whose patrons
were the Seljuqs, is considered the most accomplished
writer of panegyrics in the Persian tongue. His verses
abound in learned allusions. His Tears of Khorasan,
mourning the passing of Seljuq glory, is among the best
known of Persian qasidahs.
78
Scholarship: al-Biruni
The Ghaznavid and Seljuq periods produced rst-rate
scholars such as al-Biruni, who, writing in Arabic, inves-
tigated Hinduism and gave the rst unprejudiced
account of Indiaindeed, of any non-Islamic culture.
He also wrote notable books on chronology and history.
In his search for pure knowledge he is undoubtedly one
of the greatest minds in Islamic history. Interest in phi-
losophy is represented by Naser-e Khosrow, who acted
for a time as a missionary for the Ismaili branch of
Shiite Islam. His book about his journey to Egypt, enti-
tled Safar-nameh, is a pleasing example of simple, clearly
expressed, early Persian prose. His poetical works in the
main seek to combine ancient Greek wisdom and Islamic
thought: the gnostic Ismaili interpretation of Islam
seemed, to him, an ideal vehicle for a renaissance of the
basic Islamic truths.
Robaiyat: Omar Khayyam
The work done in mathematics by early Arabic scholars
and by al-Biruni was continued by Omar Khayyam, to
whom the Seljuq empire in fact owes the reform of its cal-
endar. But Omar has become famous in the West through
the free adaptations by Edward FitzGerald of his robaiyat.
These quatrains have been translated into almost every
known language and are largely responsible for colouring
European ideas about Persian poetry. The authenticity of
these verses has often been questioned. The quatrain is an
easy form to usemany have been scribbled on Persian
pottery of the 13th centuryand the same verse has been
attributed to many different authors. The latest research
into the question of the robaiyat has established that a cer-
tain number of the quatrains can, indeed, be traced back
to the great scientist who condensed in them his feelings
79
and thoughts, his skepticism and love, in such an enthrall-
ing way. The imagery he uses, however, is entirely
inherited; none of it is original.
The Mystical Poem
Whereas the mystical thought stemming from Iran had
formerly been written in Arabic, writers from the 11th
century onward turned to Persian. Along with works of
pious edication and theoretical discussions, what was to
be one of the most common types of Persian literature
came into existence: the mystical poem. Khwajah Abd
Allah al-Ansari of Herat, a prolic writer on religious top-
ics in both Arabic and Persian, rst popularized the literary
prayer, or mystical contemplation, written in Persian in
rhyming prose interspersed with verses. Sanai, at one time
a court poet of the Ghaznavids, composed the rst mysti-
cal epic, the didactic Hadiqat al-haqiqat wa shari at al-tariqah
(The Garden of Truth and the Law of the Path), which
has some 10,000 verses. In this lengthy and rather dry
poem, the pattern for all later mystical masnawis is estab-
lished: wisdom is embodied in stories and anecdotes;
parables and proverbs are woven into the texture of the
story, eventually leading back to the main subject, although
the argument is without thread and the narration puzzling
to follow. Among Sanais smaller masnawis, Sayr al-ibad ila
al-maad (The Journey of the Servants to the Place of
Return) deserves special mention. Its theme is the jour-
ney of the spirit through the spheres, a subject dear to the
mystics and still employed in modern times as, for exam-
ple, by Iqbal in his Persian Javid-nameh (1932). Sanais epic
endeavours were continued by one of the most prolic
writers in the Persian tongue, Farid al-Din Attar. He was a
born storyteller, a fact that emerges from his lyrics but
even more so from his works of edication. The most
famous among his masnawis is the Manteq al-teyr (The
80
Conference of the Birds), modeled after some Arabic allego-
ries. It is the story of 30 birds, who, in search of their
spiritual king, journey through seven valleys. The poem is
full of tales, some of which have been translated even into
the most remote Islamic languages. (The story of the pious
Sheykh Sanan, who fell in love with a Christian maiden, is
found, for example, in Kashmiri.) Attars symbolism of the
soul-bird was perfectly in accord with the existing body of
imagery beloved of Persian poetry, but it was he who added
a scene in which the birds eventually realize their own
identity with God (because they, being si morgh, or 30
birds, are identied with the mystical Semorgh, who rep-
resents God). Also notable are his Elahi-nameh, an allegory
of a king and his six sons, and his profound Mosibat-nameh
(Book of Afiction), which closes with its heros being
immersed in the ocean of his soul after wandering through
the 40 stages of his search for God. The epic exteriorizes
the mystics experiences in the 40 days of seclusion.
Importance of Jalal al-Din al-Rumi
The most famous of the Persian mystical masnawis is by
Mawlana (Our Lord) Jalal al-Din al-Rumi and is known
simply as the Masnavi-ye Manavi. It comprises some 26,000
verses and is a completethough quite disorganized
encyclopaedia of all the mystical thought, theories, and
images known in the 13th century. It is regarded by most of
the Persian-reading orders of Sus as second in importance
only to the Quran. Its translation into many Islamic lan-
guages and the countless commentaries written on it up to
the present day indicate its importance in the formation of
Islamic poetry and religious thought. Jalal al-Din, who
hailed from Balkh and settled in Konya, the capital of the
Rum, or Anatolian Seljuqs (and hence was surnamed
Rumi), was also the author of love lyrics whose beauty sur-
passes even that of the tales in the Masnavi. Mystical love
81
The Mawlawiyah fraternity of Sus, known as dancing (or whirling) der-
vishes, performs the orders ritual prayers while spinning on the right foot to
the accompaniment of musical instruments. This fraternity was founded by
the great mystical poet Rumi. Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images
poetry had been written since the days of Sanai, and theo-
ries of love had been explained in the most subtle prose and
sensitive verses by the Sus of the early 12th century. Yet
Rumis experience of mystical love for the wandering mys-
tic, Shams al-Din of Tabriz, was so ardent and enraptured
him to such an extent that he identied himself completely
with Shams, going so far as to use the beloveds name as his
own pen name. His dithyrambic lyrics, numbering more
than 30,000 verses altogether, are not at all abstract or
romantic. On the contrary, their vocabulary and imagery
are taken directly from everyday life, so that they are vivid,
fresh, and convincing. Often their rhythm invites the reader
to partake in the mystical dance practiced by Rumis
82
followers, the Mawlawiyah. His verses sometimes approach
the form of popular folk poetry; indeed, Rumi is reputed to
have written mostly under inspiration; and despite his
remarkable poetical technique, the sincerity of his love and
longing is never overshadowed, nor is his personality veiled.
In these respects he is unique in Persian literature.
Zenith of Islamic Literature
During the 13th century, the Islamic lands were exposed, on
the political plane, to the onslaught of the Mongols and the
abolition of the Abbasid caliphate, while vast areas were
laid to waste. Yet this was in fact the period in which Islamic
literatures reached their zenith. Apart from Rumis superb
poetry, written in the comparative safety of Konya (Turkey),
there was also the work of the Egyptian Ibn al-Farid, who
composed some magnicent, delicately written mystical
poems in qasidah style, and that of Ibn al-Arabi, who com-
posed love lyrics and numerous theosophical works that
were to become standard. In Iran, one of the greatest lite-
rati, Mosleh al-Din Sadi, returned about 1256 to his
birthplace, Shiraz, after years of journeying; his Bustan (The
Orchard) and Golestan (Rose Garden) have been popular
ever since. The Bustan is a didactic poem telling wise and
uplifting moral tales, written in polished, easy-owing style
and a simple metre; the Golestan, completed one year later,
in 1258, has been judged . . . the nest ower that could
blossom in a Sultans garden (Herder). Its eight chapters
deal with different aspects of human life and behaviour. At
rst sight, its prose and poetical fragments appear to be
simple and unassuming; but not a word could be changed
without destroying the perfect harmony of the sound,
imagery, and content. Sadis Golestan is thus essential in dis-
covering the nature of the nest Persian literary style.
The inuence of mysticism, on the one hand, and of
the elaborate Persian poetical tradition, on the other, are
83
apparent during the later decades of the 13th century, both
in Anatolia and in Muslim India. The Persian mystic, Fakhr
al-Din Iraqi, a master of delightful love lyrics, lived for
almost 25 years in Multan (in present-day Pakistan), where
his lively ghazals are still sung. His short treatises, in a mix-
ture of poetry and prose (and written under Ibn al-Arabis
inuence), have been imitated often. While in Multan he
may have met the young Amir Khosrow of Delhi, who was
one of the most versatile authors to write in Persian (not
only in India but in the entire realm of Persian culture).
Amir Khosrow, son of a Turkish ofcer, but whose mother
was Indian, is often styled, because of the sweetness of his
speech, the parrot of India. (In Persian, it should be
noted, parrots are always sugar-talking; they are, more-
over, connected with Paradise and are thought of as wise
birdsthus models of the sweet-voiced sage.) Imitating
Nezamis Khamseh, Khosrow introduced a novelistic strain
into the masnawi by recounting certain events of his own
time in poetical form, some parts of which are lyrics. His
style of lyrical poetry has been described as powdered;
and his ghazals contain many of the elements that in the
16th and 17th centuries were to become characteristic of
the Indian style. Khosrows poetry surprises the reader
in its use of unexpected forms and unusual images, compli-
cated constructions and verbal plays, all handled uently
and presented in technically perfect language. His books
on the art of letter writing prove his mastery of high-own
Persian prose. Khosrows younger contemporary, Hasan of
Delhi, is less well known and had a more simple style. He
nevertheless surpassed Khosrow in warmth and charm.
Turkish Literature
As for the literary developments in Turkey about 1300, the
mystical singer Yunus Emre is the rst and most important
84
in a long line of popular poets. Yunus exercised a powerful
inuence on Turkish literature.
Influence of Yunus Emre
The Turkish people rightly claim Yunus as the founder of
Turkish literature proper. His poetry is considered the chief
pillar of poetry of the Bektashiyah Su order, and many
poets of this and other orders have imitated his style (though
without reaching the same level of poetic truth and human
warmth). In the 16th century, Pir Sultan Abdal (executed c.
1560) is noted for a few poems of austere melancholy. He
Sidebar Title TK Yunus Emre
(b. c. 1238, Turkeyd. c. 1320, Turkey)
Little is known about Yunus Emres life, which he probably
spent not far from the Sakarya River of Asia Minor. Though leg-
end obscures the facts of his life, he is known to have been a Su
(Islamic mystic) who sat for 40 years at the feet of his master,
Tapduk Emre. Yunus Emre was well versed in mystical philoso-
phy, especially that of the 13th-century poet and mystic Jalal
al-Din al-Rumi. The rst poet known to have caught something
of Rumis fervour, he drew heavily on the reservoir of imagery of
the great Persian writing mystics. Like Rumi, Yunus Emre
became a leading representative of mysticism in Anatolia but on
a more popular level; his classical technique did not hinder him
from introducing new images taken from everyday life in
Anatolian villages. He wrote in a straightforward, almost austere
style and mainly in the traditional syllabic metre of Anatolian
folk poetry. His ilahis (hymns), which are devoted mainly to the
themes of divine love and human destiny, are characterized by
deep feeling and probably were written to be sung at the meet-
ings of the Sus in the centres of their orders. They are still loved
by the Turks and memorized by their children.
85
was executed for collaboration with the Safavids, the arch-
enemies of the Ottomans; and in this connection it is
worth remembering that the founder of the Iranian Safavid
dynasty, Shah Esmail I, wrote Turkish poetry under the
pen name Khatai and is counted among the Bektashi
poets. His verse had a decisive inuence on later Turkish
mystics and inspired the poets of the renaissance of
Turkish national poetry after 1910.
Religious Poetry
Mystically tinged poetry has always been very popular in
Turkey, both in cities and rural areas. The best loved reli-
gious poem of all was, and still is, Sleyman elebis Mevld,
a quite short masnawi in honour of the Prophet Muhammads
birth. This type of poetry has been known in the Islamic
countries since at least the 12th century and was soon
adopted wherever Islam spread. There are a great number
of mevld written in Turkish, but it was Sleyman elebis
unpretentious description of the great religious event that
captured the hearts of the Turks; and it is still sung on many
occasions (on the anniversary of a death, for example). The
poem makes an excellent introduction to an understanding
of the deep love for the Prophet felt by the pious Muslim.
Persian Literature: 13001500
In the Iran of the Middle Ages, a vast number of poets
ourished at the numerous courts. Not only professional
poets but even the kings and princes contributed more or
less successfully to the body of Persian poetry. Epics, pan-
egyrics, and mystico-didactical poetry had all reached
their nest hour by the end of the 13th century; the one
genre to attain perfection slightly later was the ghazal, of
which Mohammad Shams al-Din Hafez is the incontest-
able master.
86
Lyric Poetry: Mohammad Shams al-Din Hafez
Hafez lived in Shiraz; his pen nameWho Knows the
Quran by Heartindicates his wide religious education,
but little is known about the details of his life. The same is
true of many Persian lyrical poets, since their products
rarely contain much trustworthy biographical material.
Hafezs comparatively small collection of workhis Divan
contains about 400 ghazalswas soon acclaimed as the
nest lyrical poetry ever written in Persian. The discus-
sion of whether or not to interpret its wine and love songs
on a mystical plane has continued for centuries. Yet this
discussion seems sterile since Hafez, whose verbal images
shine like jewels, is an outstanding exponent of the ambig-
uous and oscillating style that makes Persian poetry so
attractive and so difcult to translate. The different levels
of experience are all expressed through the same images
and symbols: the beloved is always cruel, mysterious, and
unattainable, whether a chaste virgin (a rare case in Persian
poetry!), a professional courtesan, a handsome boy (as in
most cases), God himself, or even a remote despot, the
wisdom of whose schemes must never be questioned by
his subjects. Since mystical interpretation of the world
order had become almost second nature to Persians dur-
ing the 13th century, the beloved human could effortlessly
be regarded as Gods manifestation; the rose became a
symbol of highest divine beauty and glory; the nightingale
represented the yearning and complaining soul; wine, cup,
and cupbearer became the embodiment of enrapturing
divine love. The poets multicoloured images were not
merely decorative embroidery but were a structural part
of their thought. One must not expect Hafez (or any other
poet) to unveil his personal feelings in a lyrical poem of
experience. But no other Persian poet has used such com-
plex imagery on so many different levels with such
87
harmonious and well-balanced lucidity as did Hafez. His
true greatness lies in this rather than in the content of his
poetry. It must be stressed again that, according to the tra-
ditional view, each verse of a ghazal should be unique,
precious for its own sake, and that the apparent lack of
logic behind the sequence of verses was considered a vir-
tue rather than a defect. (It may help to think of the glass
pieces in a kaleidoscope, which appear in different pat-
terns from moment to moment, yet themselves form no
logical pattern.) To what extent an inner rhythm and a
contrapuntal harmony can be detected in Hafezs poetry
is still a matter for discussion; but that he perfected the
ghazal form is indisputable. Whether he is praised as a
very human love poet, as an interpreter of esoteric lore, or,
as has been recently suggested, as a political critic, his
verses have a continuing appeal to all lovers of art and
artistry.
Parodies of Classic Forms
Hafezs contemporary in Shiraz was the satirist Obeyd-e
Zakani, noted for his obscene verses (even the most mor-
alistic and mystical poets sometimes produced surprisingly
coarse and licentious lines) and for his short masnawi called
Mush o-gorbeh (Mouse and Cat), an amusing political sat-
ire. Since few new forms or means of expression were
open to them, Obeyd and other poets began ridiculing
the classic models of literature: thus, Boshaq composed
odes and ghazals exclusively on the subject of food.
Eclecticism of Abd al-Rahman Jami
The last great centre of Islamic art in the region of Iran
was the Timurid court of Herat, where Dowlatshah com-
posed his much-quoted biographical work on Persian
poets. The leading gure in this circle was Abd al-Rahman
Jami, who is sometimes considered the last and most
88
Jami
(b. Nov. 7, 1414, district of Jamd. Nov. 9, 1492, Herat,
Timurid Afg.)
The Persian scholar, mystic, and poet Mowlana Nur al-Din Abd
al-Rahman ebn Ahmad, best known as Jami, is often regarded as
the last great mystical poet of Iran.
Jami spent his life in Herat, except for two brief pilgrimages
to Meshed (Iran) and the Hejaz. During his lifetime his fame as a
scholar resulted in numerous offers of patronage by many of the
contemporary Islamic rulers. He declined most of these offers,
preferring the simple life of a mystic and scholar to that of a court
poet. His work is notably devoid of panegyrics. His prose deals
with a variety of subjects ranging from Quranic commentaries to
treatises on Susm (Islamic mysticism) and music. His interest in
Suismhe was initiated into the Naqshbandiyah orderis clear
from his famous biographies of the Su saints (which were an
elaboration of a similar work by the 11th-century Abd Allah al-
Ansari). In imitation of Sadi, Jami also composed the Baharestan
(Orchard of Spring), written in prose interspersed with verses.
Perhaps the most famous is his mystical treatise Lavaih (Flashes of
Light), a clear and precise exposition of the Su doctrines of wah-
dat al-wujud the existential unity of Being, together with a
commentary on the experiences of other famous mystics.
Jamis most famous collection of poetry is a seven-part com-
pendium entitled Haft awrang (The Seven Thrones, or Ursa
Major). Although this collection is modeled on the works of the
13th-century romantic poet Nezami, it bears Jamis unmistak-
able mark of originality and intellectual vigour. He left no less
than three large divans, which contain work of high quality and
demonstrate his gift for inventing picturesque images. Although
his work abounds in lavishly ornamented verses, his style on the
whole lacks the perfect beauty of Hafezs lyrics and is already
tending toward the heavier, more opaque Indian style. His
inuence on the work of later poets, especially in Ottoman
Turkey, was very powerful.
89
comprehensive of the seven masters in Persian litera-
ture, since he was a master of every literary genre.
Prose Works: The Mirror for Princes
During the rst ve centuries of Modern Persian literary
life, a multitude of prose works were written. Among
them, the Mirror for Princes deserves special mention.
This genre, introduced from Persian into Arabic as early
as the 8th century, ourished once more in Iran during the
late 11th century. One important example is the Qabus-
nameh by the Zeyarid prince Unsur al-Maali Kaykaus,
which presents a miscellany of Islamic culture in pre-
Mongol times. At the same time, Nizam al-Mulk, the
grand vizier of the Seljuqs, composed his Seyasat-nameh
(Book of Government), a good introduction to the
statesmans craft according to medieval Islamic standards.
The Seyasat-nameh was heavily inuenced by pre-Islamic
Persian tradition.
Belles Lettres
Belles lettres proper found a fertile soil in Iran. The fables
of Kalilah wa Dimnah, for example, were retold several
times in Persian. The cyclic story form (in which several
unconnected tales are held together by a common frame-
work or narrator device), inherited from India, became
as popular in Iran as it had been in the Arabic-speaking
countries. The Sendbad-nameh and the Tuti-nameh (Parrot
Book), which is based on Indian tales, are both good
examples of the popular method whereby a variety of
instructive stories are skillfully strung together within a
basic running story. Anecdotes were an important fea-
ture of the biographical literature that became popular in
Iran and Muslim India. Biographies of the poets of a cer-
tain age or of a specied area were collected together.
They provide the reader with few concrete facts about the
90
subjects concerned; but they abound in anecdotes, say-
ings, and verses attributed to the subjects, thus preserving
material that otherwise might have been lost. One of the
most remarkable works in this eld is Chahar maqaleh
(Four Treatises) by Nezami-ye Aruzi, a writer from east-
ern Iran. Written about 1156, this little book is an excellent
introduction to the ideals of Persian literature and its writ-
ers, discussing in detail what is required to make a perfect
poet, giving a number of instances of the sort of poetic
craftsmanship thought especially admirable, and allowing
glimpses into the various arts in which the literary man
was expected to excel.
This tendency toward anecdotal writing, which is
also manifest in the work of a number of Arab historians,
can be observed in the cosmographical books and in some
of the historical books produced in medieval Iran.
Hamdollah Mostows cosmography, Nuzhat al-qulub
(Pleasure of the Hearts), like many earlier works of this
genre, underlined the mysterious aspects of the marvels of
creation and was the most famous of several instructive
collections of mixed folkloristic and scientic material.
Early miniaturists, too, loved to illustrate the most unlikely
tales and pieces of information given in such works.
Historical writing proper had been begun by the Persians
as early as the late 10th century, when Balamis abridged
translation of al-Tabaris vast Arabic chronicle rst
acquainted them with this outstanding piece of early
Arabic historical literature. The heyday of historiography
in Iran, however, was the Il-Khanid period (mid-13th to
mid-14th century). Iran was then ruled by the successors
of Chinggis (Genghis) Khan, and scholars began to extend
their interest back to the history of pre-Islamic Central
Asia, whence the rulers had come. Tarikh-e jehan-goshay
(History of the World Conqueror) by Ata Malek-e
91
Joveyni and Jami al-tawarikh (Collector of Chronicles)
by the physician and vizier Rashid al-Din (executed 1318)
are both outstanding examples of histories lled with valu-
able information. Although the writing of history became
a rmly established art in Iran and the adjacent Muslim
countries, the facts were unfortunately all too often con-
cealed in a bombastic style and a labyrinth of cumbersome,
long-winded sentences. This development in Persian and
Turkish prose is also reected in the handbooks on style
and letter writing that were written during the 14th and
15th centuries and afterward. They urged the practice of
all the articial tricks of rhetoric by this time considered
essential for an elegant piece of prose.
Popular Literature
Islamic literatures, however, should not be thought to
consist only of erudite and witty court poetry, of frivolous
or melancholy love lyrics full of literary conceits, or of
works deeply mystical in content. Such works are counter-
balanced by a great quantity of popular literature, of which
the most famous expression is Alf laylah wa laylah (The
Thousand and One Nights, also known as The Arabian Nights
Entertainment).
From pre-Islamic times the Arabs had recounted tales
of the ayyam al-Arab (Days of the Arabs), which were
stories of their tribal wars, and had dwelt upon tales of the
heroic deeds of certain of their brave warriors, such as
Antarah. Modern research, however, suggests that this
story in its present setting belongs to the period of the
Crusades. The Egyptian queen Shajar al-Durr and the rst
brave Mamluk ruler, Baybars I, as well as the adventures
of the Bedouin tribe Banu Hilai on its way to Tunisia, are
all the subjects of lengthy popular tales.
92
The collection of stories known variously as The Thousand and
One Nights (Arabic: Alf laylah wa laylah) and The Arabian Nights
Entertainment is of uncertain date and authorship, and its tales of
Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor have almost become
part of Western folklore.
As in much medieval European literature, the stories
fairy tales, romances, legends, fables, parables, anecdotes, and
exotic or realistic adventuresare set within a frame story. Its
scene is Central Asia, or the islands or peninsulae of India and
China, where King Shahryar, after discovering that during his
absences his wife has been regularly unfaithful, kills her and
those with whom she has betrayed him. Then, loathing all
womankind, he marries and kills a new wife each day until no
more candidates can be found. His vizier, however, has two
daughters, Shahrazad (Scheherazade) and Dunyazad; and the
elder, Shahrazad, having devised a scheme to save herself and
others, insists that her father give her in marriage to the king.
Each evening she tells a story, leaving it incomplete and prom-
ising to nish it the following night. The stories are so
entertaining, and the king so eager to hear the end, that he
puts off her execution from day to day and nally abandons his
cruel plan.
The tales collected under this title come from different cul-
tural areas; their nucleus is of Indian origin, rst translated into
Persian as Hazar afsana (Thousand Tales) and then into Arabic.
These fanciful fairy tales were later expanded with stories and
anecdotes from Baghdad. Subsequently, some narratives
mainly from the lower strata of societyabout rogues, tricksters,
and vagabonds were added in Egypt. Independent collections of
stories, such as those relating to Sindbad the Sailor, were also
included. The tales variety and geographical range of origin
make single authorship unlikely. This view is supported by inter-
nal evidencethe style, mainly unstudied and unaffected,
contains colloquialisms and even grammatical errors such as no
professional Arabic writer would allow.
The Thousand and One Nights
93
The rst known reference to the Nights is a 9th-century
fragment. It is next mentioned in 947 by al-Masudi in a discus-
sion of legendary stories from Iran, India, and Greece, as the
Persian Hazar afsana, A Thousand Tales, called by the people A
Thousand Nights. In 987 Ibn al-Nadim adds that Abu Abd
Allah ibn Abdus al-Jashiyari began a collection of 1,000 popular
Arabic, Iranian, Greek, and other tales but died (942) when only
480 were written.
It is clear that the expressions A Thousand Tales and A
Thousand and One . . . were intended merely to indicate a large
number and were taken literally only later, when stories were
added to make up the number.
Since its rst translation into French (1704), it has affected
Western perceptions of the East, helping to foster Orientalism.
By the 20th century, Western scholars had agreed that the Nights
is a composite work consisting of popular stories originally
transmitted orally and developed during several centuries, with
Robbers in a scene from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, one of
the most well-known tales from The Thousand and One Nights.
Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
94
In Iran, many of the historical legends and myths had
been borrowed and turned into high literature by Ferdowsi.
Accounts of the glorious adventures of heroes from early
Islamic times were afterward retold throughout Iran, India,
and Turkey. Thus, the Dastan-e Amir Hamzeh, a story of
Muhammads uncle Hamzah ibn Abd al-Muttalib, was
slowly enlarged by the addition of more and more fantastic
details. This form of dastan, as such literature is called, to
some extent inuenced the rst attempts at novel writing
in Muslim India during the 19th century. The epics of
Kroglu are common to both Iranian and Turkish tradition.
He was a noble warrior-robber who became one of the cen-
tral gures in folk literature from Central Asia to Anatolia.
material added somewhat haphazardly at different periods and
places. By the mid-20th century, six successive forms had been
identied: two 8th-century Arabic translations of the Persian
Hazar afsana, called Alf khurafah and Alf laylah; a 9th-century
version based on Alf laylah but including other stories then cur-
rent; the 10th-century work by al-Jahshiyari; a 12th-century
collection, including Egyptian tales; and the nal version,
extending to the 16th century and consisting of the earlier mate-
rial with the addition of stories of the Islamic Counter-Crusades
and tales brought to the Middle East by the Mongols. Most of
the tales best known in the Westprimarily those of Aladdin,
Ali Baba, and Sindbadwere much later additions to the origi-
nal corpus. The entire collection reveals several aspects of
Eastern folklore and affords, now and then, glimpses into the
court life of the various dynasties.
Among the best known of the 19th-century translations
into English is that of Sir Richard Burton, who used John Paynes
little-known full English translation, 13 vol. (9 vol., 188284;
3 supplementary vol., 1884; vol. xiii, 1889), to produce his
6-volume unexpurgated The Thousand Nights and a Night (10 vol.,
1885; 6 supplementary vol., 188688).
95
Some popular epics were composed in the late Middle
Ages, having as their basis local traditions. One such epic
had as its basis the Turco-Iranian legend of an 8th-century
hero, Abu Muslim, another the Turkish tales of the knight
Danishmend. Other epics, such as the traditional Turkish
tale of Dede Korkut, were preserved by storytellers who
improvised certain parts of their tales (which were noted
only afterward). Also, the role of the Su orders and of
the artisans lodges in preserving and transmitting such
semihistorical popular epics seems to have been
considerable.
A truly popular poetry is everywhere to be found: lul-
labies sung by Balochi, Kurdish, and Igbo mothers have
obvious similarities; workers sing little rhythmical poems
to accompany their work, and nomads remember the
adventures of their ancestors in their ballads. Such popular
poems often contain dialect expressions, and the metres
differ from the classical quantitative system. Some of these
simple verses, such as a two-line landay in Pashto, are
among the most graceful products of Islamic poetry. Many
folksongslullabies, wedding songs, and dirgeshave a
distinct mystical avour and reect the simple Muslims
love for the Prophet and his trust in Gods grace even under
the most difcult circumstances. Irony and wit are features
of the riddle poem, a favourite form among Muslims every-
where. Folk poets were also fond of humorous descriptions
of imaginary disputations between two entitiesthey
might compose dialogues between coffee and tobacco
(Morocco), between big and small mosques (Yemen),
between a cat and a dog, or between a boy and a girl. All
the Iranian and Turkic languages, too, possess a rich heri-
tage of popular poetry, which in many cases appeals more
immediately to modern tastes than does the rather cere-
bral high literature of the urban and court cultures.
96
THE PERIOD FROM 1500 TO 1800
According to Persian tradition, the last classic author in
literature was Jami, who died in 1492. In that year,
Christopher Columbus discovered America, and the
Christians reconquered Granada, the last Moorish strong-
hold of Spain. The beginning of the 16th century was as
crucial in the history of the Muslim east as in that of the
Western Hemisphere. In 1501, the young Esmail founded
the Safavid rule in Iran, and the Shiite persuasion of Islam
was declared the state religion. At the same time, the king-
doms of the last Timurid rulers in Central Asia were
overthrown by the Uzbeks, who, for a while, tried to con-
tinue the cultural tradition in both Persian and Turkic at
their courts in Bukhara. In 1526, after long struggles, one
member of the Timurid house, Babur, laid the foundation
of the Mughal Empire in India. The Ottoman Turks, hav-
ing expanded their empire (beginning in the late 13th
century) from northwestern Anatolia into the Balkans,
conquered crumbling Mamluk Egypt and adjacent coun-
tries, including the sacred places of Mecca and Medina in
151617. Thus, three main blocks emerged, and the two
strongholds of Sunni IslamOttoman Turkey and Mughal
Indiawere separated by Shiite Iran.
Decentralization of Islamic Literatures
Safavid Iran, as it happened, lost most of its artists and
poets to the neighbouring countries: there were no great
masters of poetry in Iran between the 16th and 18th
centuries. And while the Persian Shah Esmail wrote
Turkish mystical verses, his contemporary and enemy,
Sultan Selim I of Turkey, composed quite elegant Persian
ghazals. Babur, in turn, composed his autobiography in
Eastern Turkic.
97
Baburs autobiography is a fascinating piece of Turkish
prose and at the same time one of the comparatively rare
examples of Islamic autobiographical literature. The clas-
sic example in this genre, however, was a lively Arabic
autobiography by Usamah ibn Munqidh, which sheds
much light upon the life and cultural background of a
Syrian knight during the Crusades. Baburs book, however,
gives a wonderful insight into the character of this intrepid
conqueror. It reveals him as a master of concise, matter-
of-fact prose, as a keen observer of daily life, full of
pragmatic common sense, and also as a good judge of
poetry. Babur even went so far as to write a treatise in
Turkish about versication. Many of his descendants, both
male and female, inherited his literary taste and talent for
poetry; among them are remarkably good poets in Persian,
Turkish, and Urdu, as well as accomplished authors of
autobiographies (Jahangir) and letters (Aurangzeb). Among
the nobility of India, the Turkish language remained in use
until the 19th century.
In the Arab world, there was hardly a poet or original
writer of note during the three centuries that followed the
Ottoman conquest, apart from some theologians (Abd al-
Wahhab al-Sharani, d. 1565; Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi,
d. 1731) and grammarians. Yet Arabic still remained the
language of theology and scholarship throughout the
Muslim world; both Turkey and India could boast a large
number of scholars who excelled in the sacred language.
New Importance of Indian Literature
Indias share in the development of Arabic literature at
this time was especially large. In addition to the quantity
of theological work written in the language of the Quran,
from the conquest of Sind in 711 right up until the 19th
century, much philosophical and biographical literature in
98
Arabic was also being written in the subcontinent. Persian
taste predominated in the northwest of India, but in the
southern provinces there were long-standing commercial
and cultural relationships with the Arabs, and an inclina-
tion toward preserving these intact. Thus, much poetry
in conventional Arabic style was written during the 16th
and 17th centuries, mainly in the kingdom of Golconda.
There are even attempts at the epic form. A century after
the heyday of Arabic in the Deccan, Azad Bilgrami com-
posed numerous poetical and biographical works in
Persian; but his chief fame was as the Hassan of Hind,
since he, like the Prophet Muhammads protg Hassan
ibn Thabit, wrote some powerful Arabic panegyrics in
honour of the Prophet of Islam. He even attempted to
make a comparison of the characteristics of Arabic and
Sanskrit poetry and tried to prove that India was the real
homeland of Islam.
Indian Literature in Persian
Nevertheless, the main contribution of Muslim India to
high literature was made in the Persian tongue. Persian
had been the ofcial language of the country for many
centuries. The numerous annals and chronicles that were
compiled during the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as the
court poetry, had been composed exclusively in this lan-
guage even by Hindus. During the Mughal period, its
importance was enhanced both by Akbars attempt to
have the main works of classical Sanskrit literature trans-
lated into Persian and by the constant inux of poets
from Iran who came seeking their fortune at the lavish
tables of the Indian Muslim grandees. At this time what is
known as the Indian style of Persian emerged. The
translations from Sanskrit enriched the Persian vocabu-
lary, and new stories of Indian origin added to the reservoir
99
of classical imagery. The poets, bound to the inherited
genres of masnawi, qasidah, and ghazal, tried to outdo each
other in the use of complex rhyme patterns and unfamil-
iar, often stiff, metres. It became fashionable to conceive
a poem according to a given zamin (ground), in emula-
tion of a classical model, and then to enrich it with newly
invented tropes.
Yet some truly great poets are to be found even in
this period. Ur, who left Shiraz for India and died in his
mid-30s in Lahore (1592), is without doubt one of the few
genuine masters of Persian poetry, especially in his qasi-
dahs. His verses pile up linguistic difculties; yet their
dark, glowing quality cannot fail to touch the hearts and
minds even of critical modern readers. Among
17th-century Mughal court poets, the most outstanding
is Abu Talib Kalim, who came from Hamadan. Abounding
in descriptive passages of great virtuosity, his poignant
and often pessimistic verses have become proverbial,
thanks to their compact diction and uent style. Also of
some importance is Saib of Tabriz, who spent only a few
years in India before returning to Iran. Yet, of his
immense poetical output (300,000 couplets), the great
majority belongs to the stock-in-trade expression of the
Persian-speaking world. With the long rule of Dara
Shikohs brother, the austere Aurangzeb, the heyday of
both poetry and historical writing in Muslim India was
over. The main vehicle of poetry now became Urdu,
while mystical poetry ourished in Sindhi and Punjabi.
Pashto Poetry: Khushhal Khan Khatak
From the borderlands of the Persian-speaking zone, cul-
turally under the Mughal rule, one man deserves special
attention. The chief of the Pashtun tribe of Khatak,
Khushhal Khan, rightly deserves to be called the father
100
of Pashto poetry, for he virtually created a literature of
his own in his mother tongue. His skill in translating the
sophisticated traditions of Persian literature into the not
too highly developed idiom of the Pashtuns is astonish-
ing. His lively lyric poems are his nest works, reecting
that passionate love of freedom for which he fought
against the Mughals. The poems he wrote from prison in
hell-like hot India are as dramatic as they are touching
in their directness. Many members of his family took to
poetry. During the 18th century original works, both reli-
gious and secular, were composed in Pashto, and the
classics of Persian literature were translated into that
language.
Ottoman Turkey
The development of literature in Ottoman Turkey is
almost parallel with that of Iran and India. Yunus Emre
had introduced a popular form of mystical poetry; yet the
mainstream of secular and religious literature followed
Persian models (although it took some time to establish
the Persian rules of prosody because of the entirely differ-
ent structure of the Turkish language). In the religious
eld, the vigour and boldness expressed in the poems of
Nesim (executed 1417) left their traces in the work of later
poets, none of whom, however, reached his loftiness and
grandeur of expression. The 14th- and 15th-century repre-
sentatives of the classical style had displayed great charm
in their literary compositions, their verses simple and
pleasing. Sultan Cem (Jem; d. 1495), son of Mehmed the
Conqueror, is an outstanding representative of their num-
ber. But soon the high-own style of post-classical Persian
was being imitated by Ottoman authors, rhetoric often
being more important to them than poetical content. The
101
work of Bk (Baqi; d. 1600) is representative of the entire
range of these Baroque products. Yet his breathtaking
command of language is undeniable; it is brilliantly dis-
played in his elegy on Sleyman the Magnicent.
Poetry of Fuzl of Baghdad
Much greater than most of these minor poets, however,
was a writer living outside the capital, Fuzl of Baghdad,
who wrote in Arabic, Persian, and Azeri Turkish. Apart
from his lyrics, his Turkish masnawi on the traditional sub-
ject of the lovers Majnun and Layla is admirable. From
earliest times, Turkish poets had emulated the classical
Persian romantic masnawis, sometimes surpassing their
models in expressiveness. Fuzls diction is taut, his com-
mand of imagery masterly. His style unfortunately dees
poetical translation, and his complicated fabric of plain
and inverted images, of hidden and overt allusions is well-
nigh impossible for all but the initiated Muslim reader to
disentangle. Fuzl, moreover, like his fellow poets, would
blend Arabic, Persian, and Turkish constructions and
words to make up a multifaceted unit. The same difculty
is found in Turkish prose literature of the same period. It
is a major task to unravel the long trailing sentences of a
writer such as Evliya eleb, who, in an account of his
travels (Seyahatnme), has left extremely valuable informa-
tion about the cultural climate in different parts of the
Ottoman Empire.
Later Developments
Growing interest in the Indo-Persian style, particularly
in Urs qasidahs, led the 17th-century Ottoman poets to
a new integrated style and precision of diction. An out-
standing representative was Nef, whose bent for
merciless satire made him dreaded in the capital and
102
eventually led to his assassination. At the start of the 18th
century, a marked but short-lived movement in Turkish
art known as the Tulip Period was the Ottoman coun-
terpart of European Rococo. The musical poems and
smooth ghazals of Nedim reect the manners and style
of the slightly decadent, relaxed, and at times licentious
high society of Istanbul and complement the miniatures
of his contemporary Levn. Good Turkish poetry is char-
acterized by an easy grace, to be found even in such
mystically tinged poems (thousands of which were writ-
ten throughout the centuries) as those of Niyaz Misr.
The Mevlev (Mawlawi) poet Glib Dede was already
standing at the threshold of what can now be recognized
as modern poetical expression in some of the lyrical parts
of his masnawi, called Hsn u ask (Beauty and Love),
which brought fresh treatment to a well-worn subject of
Irans philosophical and secular literature. His work can-
not be properly understood, however, without a thorough
knowledge of mystical psychology, expressed in multi-
valent images.
Folk Poetry
One branch of literature, however, was totally neglected
by the sophisticated inhabitants of the Ottoman capital.
Nobody thought much of the folk poets who wandered
through the forgotten villages of Anatolia singing in sim-
ple syllable-counting verses of love, longing, and separation.
The poems of the mid-17th-century gure Karacaoglan,
one of the few historically datable folk poets, give a vivid
picture of village life, of the plight of girls and boys in
remote Anatolian settlements. This kind of poetry was
rediscovered only after the foundation of the Turkish
Republic in 1923 and then became an important inuence
on modern lyric poetry.
103
EUROPEAN AND COLONIAL
INFLUENCES: EMERGENCE OF
WESTERN FORMS
The Rise of Nationalism
For the Islamic countries, the 19th century marks the
beginning of a new epoch. Napoleons conquest of
Egypt, as well as British colonialism, brought the
Muslims into contact with a world whose technology
was far in advance of their own. The West had experi-
enced the ages of Renaissance, Reformation, and
Enlightenment, whereas the once-ourishing Muslim
civilization had for a long while been at near stagnation
despite its remarkable artistic achievements. The intro-
duction of Muslim intellectuals to Western literature
and scholarshipthe Egyptian al-Tahtawi, for example,
studied in Franceushered in a new literary era the
chief characteristic of which was to be more matter,
less art. The literatures from this time onward are far
less Islamic than those of the previous 1,000 years.
The introduction of the printing press and the expan-
sion of newspapers helped to shape a new literary style,
more in line with the requirements of the modern times,
when the patron prince has been replaced by a middle-
class reading public (Badawi). Translations from
Western languages provided writers with the model
examples of genres previously unknown to them, includ-
ing the novel, the short story, and dramatic literature.
Of those authors whose books were translated, Guy de
Maupassant, Sir Walter Scott, and Anton Chekhov were
most inuential in the development of the novel and the
novella. Important also was the ideological platform
derived from Leo Tolstoy (18291910), whose criticism
104
of Western Christianity was gratefully adopted by writ-
ers from Egypt to Muslim India. Western inuences can
further be observed in the gradual discarding of the
time-hallowed static (and turgid) style of both poetry
and prose, in the tendency toward simplication of dic-
tion, and in the adaptation of syntax and vocabulary to
meet the technical demands of emulating Western mod-
els. Contact with the West also encouraged a tendency
toward retrospection. Writers concentrated their
attention on their own country and particular
heritage, such as the pharaoic myth of Egypt, the Indo-
European roots of Iran, and the Central Asian past of
Turkey. In short, there was an emphasis on differen-
tiation, inevitably leading to the rise of nationalism,
instead of an emphasis on the unifying spirit and heri-
tage of Islam.
Arab Literatures
Characteristically, therefore, given this situation, the her-
alds of Arab nationalism (as reected in literature) were
Christians. The historical novels of Jurji Zaydan, a Lebanese
living in Egypt, made a deep impression on younger writers
by glorifying the lion-hearted national heroes of past times.
Henceforth, the historical novel was to be a favourite genre
in all Islamic countries, including Muslim India. The inher-
ited tradition of the heroic or romantic epic and folktale
was blended with novelistic techniques learned from Sir
Walter Scott. Two writers in the front rank of Arab intel-
lectuals were Amir Shakib Arslan, of Druze origin, and
Muhammed Kurd Ali, the founder of the Arab Academy of
Damascus. Each made an important contribution to the
education of modern historians and men of letters by
encouraging a new degree of awareness. An inclination
105
toward Romanticism can be detected in prose writing but
not, surprisingly, in poetry; thus, the Egyptian al-Manfaluti
poured out his feelings in a number of novels that touch on
Islamic as well as national issues.
Poetry
It is fair to say of this transition period that the poetry
being written was not as interesting as the prose. The qasi-
dahs of the Prince of Poets, Ahmad Shawqi, are for the
most part ornate imitations of classical models. Even the
Poet of the Nile, Muhammad Haz Ibrahim, who was
more interested in the real problems of the day, was none-
theless content to follow conventional patterns. In his
poems, Khalil Mutran attempted to achieve a unity of
structure hitherto almost unknown; and he also adopted a
more subjective approach to expressive lyricism. Thus, he
can be said to have inaugurated an era of Romantic
poetry, staunchly defended by those men of letters who
had come under English rather than French inuence.
These included the poet and essayist Ibrahim al-Mazini
and the prolic writer of poetry and prose Abbas Mahmud
al-Aqqad.
Prose
A major contribution to the development of modern prose
in the Arabic language was made by a number of writers
born between 1889 and 1902. One of them, Taha Husayn,
became well known in the West as a literary critic who
attacked the historical authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry
and stressed the importance of Greek and Latin for the
literatures of the modern Middle East. He is also the
author of a successful novel called The Tree of Misery, but
his best creative writing is in his autobiography, Al-Ayyam
(The Days).
106
Taha Husayns generation became more and more
absorbed by the problems of the middle classes (to which
most of them belonged), and this led them to realism in c-
tion. Some turned to erce social criticism, depicting in
their writings the dark side of everyday life in Egypt and
elsewhere. The leading writer of this group is Mahmud
Taymur, who wrote short stories, a genre developed in Arabic
by a Lebanese Christian who settled in the United States,
the noted and versatile poet Khalil Gibran (Jibran Khalil
Jibran; d. 1931). Muhammad Husayn Haykal, a leading gure
of Egyptian cultural and political life and the author of
numerous historical studies, touched for the rst time, in
his novel Zaynab (1913), on the difculties of Egyptian vil-
lagers. This subject quickly became fashionable afterward,
although not all the writers had rsthand knowledge of the
feelings and problems of the fellahin. The most fertile
author of this group was al-Aqqad, who tirelessly produced
biographies, literary criticism, and romantic poetry. The
Islamic reform movement led by Muhammad Abduh and
his disciples, which centred on the journal Al-Manar (The
Lighthouse), inuenced Arabic prose style across the
20th century and was important in shaping the religious
outlook of many authors writing in the 1920s and 1930s.
Taha Husayn
(b. Nov. 14, 1889, Maghaghah, Egyptd. Oct. 28, 1973, Cairo)
The outstanding gure of the modernist movement in Egyptian
literature was Taha Husayn (also spelled Hussein, Husain) whose
writings, in Arabic, include novels such as The Tree of Misery, sto-
ries, criticism, and social and political essays. Outside Egypt he
is best known through his autobiography, Al-Ayyam (3 vol.,
107
Sidebar Title TK 192967; The Days), which describes in simple language the life
of a blind Egyptian village boy and is the rst modern Arab liter-
ary work to be acclaimed in the West.
Taha Husayn was blinded by an illness at age two. In 1902 he
was sent to al-Azhar seminary in Cairo, the leading Sunni centre
of higher Islamic education, but he was soon at odds with its
predominantly conservative authorities. In 1908 he entered the
newly opened secular University of Cairo, and in 1914 he was
the rst to obtain a doctorate there. Further study at the
Sorbonne familiarized him with the culture of the West.
He returned to Egypt from France to become a professor of
Arabic literature at the University of Cairo; his career there was
frequently stormy, for his bold views enraged religious conserva-
tives. His application of modern critical methods in Fi al-shir
al-jahili (1926; On Pre-Islamic Poetry) embroiled him in erce
polemics. In this book he contended that a great deal of the
poetry reputed to be pre-Islamic had been forged by Muslims of
a later date for various reasons, one being to give credence to
Quranic myths. For this he was tried for apostasy, but he was
not convicted. In another book, Mustaqbal al-thaqafah Misr
(1938; The Future of Culture in Egypt), he expounds his belief that
Egypt belongs by heritage to the same wider Mediterranean
civilization that embraces Greece, Italy, and France; it advocates
the assimilation of modern European culture.
The rst part of Al-Ayyam appeared in 1929 (Eng. trans. An
Egyptian Childhood) and the second in 1932 (Eng. trans. The
Stream of Days). At age 78 he published a book of memoirs,
Mudhakkirat (1967; Eng. trans. A Passage to France), considered a
third volume of Al-Ayyam. In 1997 all three parts were published
together in English translation as The Days.
The Diaspora
A considerable amount of Arabic literature was produced
during the 20th century by numerous writers who settled
in non-Islamic countries, especially the United States and
Brazil. Most of these writers came from Christian
108
Lebanese families. A feeling of nostalgia often led them to
form literary circles or launch magazines or newspapers.
(The Arabic-language newspaper Al-Huda [or Al-Hoda,
The Guidance] established in 1898, was published in
New York City as Al-Huda Al-jadidah [Al-Hoda Aljadidah,
or The New Al-Hoda, or The New Guidance].) It was
largely because of their work that the techniques of mod-
ern ction and modern free verse entered Arabic literature
and became a decisive factor in it.
One of the best-known authors in this group was Amin
al-Rihani, whose descriptions of his journeys through the
Arab world are informative and make agreeable reading.
The fact that so many Lebanese emigrated led to the cre-
ation of a standard theme in Lebanese ction: the emigrant
who returns to his village. Iraqi modern literature is best
represented by the poet of freedom Maruf al-Rusa
and Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi, whose satire Rebellion in Hell
incurred the wrath of the traditionalists.
Turkish Literatures
The same changing attitude toward the function of litera-
ture and the same shift toward realism can be observed in
Turkey. After 1839, Western ideas and forms were taken up
by a group of modernists: Ziya Pasa, the translator of Jean-
Jaques Rousseaus mile (which became a popular textbook
for 19th-century Muslim intellectuals), was among the
rst to write in a less traditional idiom and to complain in
his poetryjust as Hali was to do in India a few years
laterabout the pitiable conditions of Muslims under the
victorious Christians. Ziya Pasa, together with Sinasi and
Namik Kemal, founded an inuential Turkish journal,
Tasvir-i Efkr (Picture of Ideas). The essential theme of
the articles, novels, poems, and dramas composed by these
109
authors is their fatherland (vatan), and they dared to
advocate freedom of thought, democracy, and constitu-
tionalism. Abdlhak Hmid, though considerably their
junior, shared in their activities. In 1879 he published his
Sahra (The Country), a collection of 10 Turkish poems
that were the rst to be composed in Western verse forms
and style. Later, he turned to weird and often morbid sub-
ject matter in his poetic dramas. He, like his colleagues, had
to endure political restrictions on writing, imposed as part
of the harsh measures taken by Sultan Abdlhamid II
against the least sign of liberal thought. Inuenced by his
work, later writers aimed to simplify literary language: Ziya
Gkalp laid the philosophical foundations of Turkish
nationalism; and Mehmed Emin, a shermans son, sang
artless Turkish verses of his pride in being a Turk, throwing
out the heavy rhetorical ballast of Arabo-Persian prosody
and instead turning to the language of the people, unadul-
terated by any foreign vocabulary. The stirrings of social
criticism could be discerned after 1907. Mehmed Akif, in
his masterly narrative poems, gave a vivid critical picture of
conditions in Turkey before World War I. His powerful and
dramatic style, though still expressed in traditional metres,
is a testimony to his deep concern for the peoples sorrows.
It was he who composed the Turkish national anthem after
Mustafa Kemal Atatrks victory in 1923, but soon after-
ward he left the country, disappointed with the religious
policies of the Kemalists.
Atatrks struggle for freedom also marks the real begin-
ning of modern Turkish literature. The mainstream of
novels, stories, and poems written during the 19th century
had been replete with tears, world-weariness, and pessi-
mism. But a postwar novel, Atesten gmlek (The Fire Shirt),
written by a woman, Halide Edib, reected the brave new
self-awareness of the Turkish nation. Some successful short
110
stories about village life came from the pen of mer
Seyfeddin. The most gifted interpreter and harshest critic
of Turkeys social structure was Sabaheddin Ali, who was
murdered on his ight to Bulgaria in 1948. His major theme
was the tragedy of the lower classes, and his writing is char-
acterized by the same merciless realism that was later to
be a feature of stories by many left-wing writers through-
out the Islamic world. The great old man of Turkish
prose, Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoglu, displayed profound
psychological insight, whether ironically describing the
lascivious life in a Bektashi centre or a strangers tragedy
in an Anatolian village. Most of the Turkish novelists of
the 1920s and 1930s concentrated on the problems of
becoming a modern nation, and in particular they reinter-
preted the role of women in a liberated society.
Literary energies were set completely free when
Atatrk introduced the Latin alphabet in 1928, hoping
that his people would forget their Islamic past along with
the Arabic letters. From this time onward, especially after
the language reform that was meant to rediscover the pre-
Islamic roots of the Turkish language, Turkish literature
followed the pattern of Western literature in all major
respects, though with local overtones. Poets experimented
with new forms and new topics. They discovered the sig-
nicance of the Anatolian village, neglectedeven
forgottenduring the Ottoman period. Freeing themselves
from the traditional rules of Persian poetry, they adopted
simpler forms from Europe. In some cases the skillful
blending of inherited Ottoman grace and borrowed French
lyricism produced outstandingly beautiful poems, such as
those of Ahmed Hasim and of Yahya Kemal Beyatli, in
which the twilight world of old Istanbul is mirrored in soft,
evocative hues and melodious words. At the same time,
the gure of Nazm Hikmet looms large in Turkish poetry.
Expressing his progressive social attitude in truly poetical
111
form, he used free rhythmical patterns quite brilliantly to
enrapture his readers; his style, as well as his powerful,
unforgettable images, has deeply inuenced not only
Turkish but also progressive Urdu and Persian poetry from
the 1930s onward.
Persian Literatures
In Iran, the situation to a certain extent resembled that in
Turkey. While the last classical poet, Qaani, had been
displaying the traditional glamorous artistry, the satirist
Yaghma had been using popular and comprehensible lan-
guage to make coarse criticisms of contemporary society.
As in the other Islamic countries, a move toward simplic-
ity is discernible during the last decades of the 19th
century.
At the turn of the century, literature became for many
younger writers an instrument of modernization and of
revolution in the great sense of the word. No longer did
they want to complain, in inherited xed forms, of some
boy whose face was like the moon. Instead, the feelings
and situation of women were stated and interpreted. Their
oppression, their problems, and their grievances are a
major theme of literature in this transition period of the
rst decades of the 20th century. The King of Poets,
Bahar, who had been actively working before World War I
for democracy, now devoted himself to a variety of cultural
activities. But his poems, though highly classical in form,
were of great inuence; they dealt with contemporary
events and appealed to a wide public.
One branch of modern Persian literature is closely
connected with a group of Persian authors who lived in
Berlin after World War I. There they established the
Kaviani Press (named after a mythical blacksmith called
Kaveh, who had saved the Iranian kingdom), and among
112
the poems they printed were several by Aref Qazvini, one
of the rst really modern writers. They also published the
rst short stories of Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh, whose
outspoken social criticism and complete break with the
traditional inated and pompous prose style inaugurated a
new era of modern Persian prose. Many young writers
adopted this new form, among them Sadeq Hedayat,
whose storieswritten entirely in a direct, everyday lan-
guage with a purity of expression that was an artistic
achievementhave been translated into many languages.
They reect the sufferings of living individuals; instead of
dealing in literary clichs, they describe the distress and
anxiety of a hopeless youth. The inuence of Franz Kafka
(18831924) (some of whose work Hedayat translated) is
perceptible in his writing, and he has a tendency toward
psychological probing shared by many Persian writers.
As in neighbouring countries, women played a consid-
erable role in the development of modern Persian
literature. The lyrics of Parvin Etesami are regarded as
near-classics, despite a trace of sentimentality in their
sympathetic treatment of the poor. Some Persian writers
whose left-wing political ideas brought them into conict
with the government left for what is now Tajikistan. Of
these, the gifted poet Lahuti is their most important
representative.
India: Urdu and Persian Literatures
Persian literature in the Indian subcontinent did not have
such importance as in earlier centuries, for English replaced
Persian as the ofcial language in 1835. Nevertheless, there
were some outstanding poets who excelled in Urdu. One
of them was Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, the undisputed
master of Urdu lyrics. He regarded himself, however, as the
113
leading authority on high Persian style and was an accom-
plished writer of Persian prose and poetry. But much more
important was a later poet, Sir Muhammad Iqbal, who
chose Persian to convey his message not only to the peoples
of Muslim India but also to Afghans and Persians.
Reinterpreting many of the old mystical ideas in the light
of modern teachings, he taught the quiescent Muslim
peoples self-awareness, urging them to develop their per-
sonalities to achieve true individualism. His rst masnawi,
called Asrar-e khudi (1915; Secrets of the Self ), deeply
shocked all those who enjoyed the dreamlike sweetness of
most traditional Persian poetry. In the Javid-nameh (1932)
he poetically elaborated the old topic of the heavenly
journey, discussing with the inhabitants of the spheres a
variety of political, social, and religious problems. Iqbals
approach is unique. Although he used the conventional lit-
erary forms and leaned heavily on the inspiration of Rumi,
he must be considered one of the select few poets of mod-
ern Islam who, because of their honesty and their capacity
for expressing their message in memorable poetic form,
appeal to many readers outside the Muslim world.
THE MODERN PERIOD
The modern period of Islamic literatures can be said to
begin after World War II. The topics discussed before
then still appeared, but outspoken social criticism became
an even more important feature. Literature was no longer
just a leisurely pastime for members of the upper classes.
Writers born in the villages and from non-privileged
classes began to win literary fame through their rsthand
knowledge of social problems. Many writers started their
careers as journalists, developing a literary style that
retained the immediacy of journalistic observation.
114
Prose
In Egypt, a great change in literary preoccupations came
about after 1952. The name of Naguib Mahfouz is of par-
ticular importance. He was at rst a novelist mainly
concerned with the lower middle classes (his outstanding
work is a trilogy dealing with the life of a Cairo family);
but afterward he turned to socially committed literature,
using all the techniques of modern ctionof which he is
the undisputed master in Arabic. In 1988 he became the
rst Arabic writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature.
The works of Yusuf Idris deal rst and foremost with the
problems facing poor and destitute villagers. In Turkey,
Yasar Kemals village story Ince Memed won acclaim for its
stark realism. During the middle decades of the 20th cen-
tury and beyond, young left-wing writers in Iraq and Syria
shared the critical and aggressive attitudes of their con-
temporaries in Turkey and Egypt and were involved in
every political issue. Most of them responded to the
works of Bertolt Brecht and Karl Marx. Freudian inu-
enceoften in its crudest formcould be detected in
many modern short stories or novels in the Islamic coun-
tries. The existentialist philosophy gained many followers
who tried to reect its interpretation of life in their liter-
ary works. In fact, almost every current of modern
Western philosophy and psychology, every artistic trend
and attitude, was eagerly adopted at some point by young
Arab, Turkish, or Persian writers during the period after
World War II. The novel gradually became more popular
in the Arab world as the 20th century wore on. Mahfouz
was probably the single most important gure in the
genres widespread acceptance. From the Turkish tradi-
tion emerged Orhan Pamuk, who received the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 2006; his novels reached a world-
wide audience.
115
(b. June 7, 1952, Istanbul, Tur.)
The Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk is best known for works that
probe Turkish identity and history.
Raised in a wealthy and Western-oriented family, Pamuk
attended Robert College, an American school in Istanbul, and
went on to study architecture at Istanbul Technical University.
After three years he dropped out and devoted himself full-time
to writing. In 1977 he graduated from the University of Istanbul
with a degree in journalism. From 1985 to 1988 he lived in the
United States and was a visiting scholar at Columbia University
in New York and the University of Iowa.
Pamuk began writing seriously in 1974 and eight years
later published his rst novel, Cevdet Bey ve ogullar (Cevdet
Bey and His Sons), a sweeping history of an Istanbul family
during and after the establishment of the Turkish republic. He
rst achieved international fame with Beyaz kale (1985; The
White Castle), his third novel, which explores the nature of
identity through the story of a learned young Italian captured
and made a slave to a scholar in 17th-century Istanbul. His
later novels, which were widely translated, include Kara kitap
(1990; The Black Book), a dense depiction of Istanbul, and the
mysteries Yeni hayat (1996; The New Life) and Benim adim kir-
mizi (1998; My Name Is Red). In Kar (2002; Snow), a Turkish
poet living in exile in Germany faces the tensions between
East and West when he travels to a poor town in a remote area
of Turkey. Istanbul: hatiralar ve sehir (2004; Istanbul: Memories
and the City, also published as Istanbul: Memories of a City) is a
partly ctionalized memoir. Masumiyet mzesi (2008; The
Museum of Innocence) investigates the relationship between
an older man and his second cousin. Thwarted in his attempts
to marry her, the man begins to collect objects that she has
touched. Pamuk replicated the titular museum in reality, using
a house in Istanbul to display a range of items amassed while
plotting the story.
Orhan Pamuk
116
Many of these works, often autobiographical and intri-
cately plotted, show an understanding of traditional Turkish
Islamic culture tempered by a belief that Turkeys future lies
in the West. Pamuk drew criticism from some in Turkey for
advocating the countrys integration into Europe and its
accession to the European Union. In 2005, after a Swiss news-
paper published an interview in which he repeated claims that
Turks had deliberately killed a million Armenians in 1915 and
30,000 Kurds more recently, Pamuk was charged with deni-
grating Turkishness and put on trial in Turkey in December.
The charges, which produced international controversy, were
later dropped.
Orhan Pamuk in 2005. Torsten Silz/AFP/Getty Images
117
Poetry
Arabic
The new attitudes that informed literature after World
War II became even more conspicuous in poetry than in
prose. Helped in part by French and English literary inu-
ences, Arabic poetry broke from classical tradition, a
profound shift that also had its roots in efforts by nations
across the Middle East to gain independence. The cre-
ation of the State of Israel also inuenced the meaning
and purpose of Arabic poetry. T.S. Eliots poetry and criti-
cism were inuential in dethroning the Romanticism that
many poets had adopted earlier, in the 1920s and 30s. One
of the rst and most important attempts at creating a
modern Arabic poetic diction was made in the late 1940s
by the Iraqi poet and critic Nazik al-Malaikah, whose
poems, in free but rhyming verse, gave substance to the
shadow of her melancholia.
Free rhythm and a colourful imagination distinguished
the best poems of the younger Arabs: even when their
poems do not succeed, their experimentation, their striv-
ing for sincerity, their burning quest for identity, their
rebellion against social injustice can be readily perceived.
Indeed, one of the most noticeable aspects of contempo-
rary Arabic poetry written during the second half of the
20th century is its political engagement, evident in the
poems of Palestinian writers such as Mahmud Darwish,
whose verses once more prove the strength, expressive-
ness, and vitality of the Arabic language. The Iraqi
modernist poet Abdul Wahhab al-Bayati combined politi-
cal engagement with lyrical mysticism. Others, without
withdrawing into a world of uncommitted dreams, man-
aged to create in their poetry an atmosphere that broke
up the harsh light of reality into its colourful components.
118
(b. March 13, 1942, Birwa, Palestine [now Israel]d. Aug. 9,
2008, Houston, Texas, U.S.)
The Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish gave voice to the strug-
gles of the Palestinian people.
After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948,
Darwish witnessed massacres that forced his family to escape to
Lebanon. A year later their clandestine return to their homeland
put them in limbo, as they were declared present-absent aliens.
Darwish left Birwa a second time in 1970 and traveled to the
Soviet Union to complete his education in Moscow. He lived in
Cairo, Beirut, London, and Paris, as well as Tunis, Tunisia, before
returning in 1996 to live in Palestine, in the West Bank town of
Ramallah. He was a member of the executive committee of the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and wrote the declara-
tion of independence issued by the Palestine National Council
in 1988, but he resigned from the PLO in 1993 to protest the
signing of the Oslo Accords by PLO chairman Yasir Arafat. In
2000 the Israeli education minister made plans to include
Darwishs poems of reconciliation in the school curriculum, but
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak vetoed the plan.
Darwish authored several books of prose and more than 20
collections of poetry. From 1981 he also served as editor of the
literary journal Al-Karmel. The power of his poetry could be
explained by the sincerity of his emotions and the originality of
his poetic images. He borrowed from the Old and New
Testaments, classical Arabic literature, Arab Islamic history, and
Greek and Roman mythology to construct his metaphors. It was
Darwishs conviction that his life in exile inspired his creative
work. He often personied Palestine itself as a mother or a
cruel beloved. In his single-poem volume Halat hisar (2002; A
State of Siege), Darwish explored the multiple reoccupations of
Ramallah and described the resulting sense of Palestinian isola-
tion. However, he foresaw a future of peace and coexistence
between Israelis and Palestinians that could be achieved through
Mahmud Darwish
119
dialogue between cultures. Darwish diverged from the political
in some of his poems, relying on symbolism to relate personal
experience. He devoted an entire collection, Jidariyya (2002;
Mural), to his brush with death following heart surgery in 1998.
Collections of his poems in English translation include The
Adam of Two Edens (2000), Unfortunately, It Was Paradise (2003),
and The Butterys Burden (2007).
Darwishs work was translated into some two dozen lan-
guages. Among his many international awards were the Lenin
Peace Prize (1983), the French medal of Knight of Arts and Belles
Lettres (1997), the wisam (order) of intellectual merit from
Moroccan King Muhammad VI in 2000, and the 2001 Lannan
Foundation Prize for Cultural Freedom. He died after undergo-
ing heart surgery in the United States.
Mahmud Darwish in 2007. Getty Images
120
Poets such as the Lebanese Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said) and
Tawq al-Saigh, or the Egyptian dramatist Salah Abd al-
Sabur, made use of traditional imagery in a new, sometimes
esoteric, and often fascinating and daring way.
Persian
Almost the same situation developed in Iran. One notable
poet was Forugh Farrokhzad, who wrote powerful and very
feminine poetry. Her free verses, interpreting the insecuri-
ties of the age, are full of longing; though often bitter, they
are yet truly poetic. Poems by such critically minded writ-
ers as Seyavush Kasrai also borrow the classical heritage
of poetic imagery, transforming it into expressions that
win a response from modern readers. Censorship exerted
by the Islamic Republic of Iran after 1979 did much to
curtail the free expression of poets.
Turkish
In Turkey, the adoption of Western forms began in the
1920s. Of major importance in modern Turkish literature
was Orhan Veli Kank, who combined perfect technique
with Istanbulian charm. His work is sometimes melan-
choly, sometimes frivolous, but always convincing. He
strongly inuenced a group of poets connected with the
avant-garde literary magazine Varlik (Existence). The
powerful poetry of the leftist writer Nazm Hikmet inu-
enced progressive poets all over the Muslim world; Ataol
Behramoglu was often considered his successor during the
latter half of the 20th century. Fazl Hsn Daglarca was
another poet with leftist views. His modernist poetry
made him one of Turkeys most inuential poets during
the postWorld War II era. The poetry of Hilmi Yavuz
melded the aesthetics of Ottoman civilization with mod-
ernist poetic forms. His interweaving of past and present
121
was typical of many Turkish poets in the last decades of
the 20th century.
General Considerations
In the Arab-speaking world, the problem of language
loomed large as the 20th century drew to a close. Classical
high Arabic remained the common literary language of
Morocco, Iraq, Tunisia, and Kuwait, although spoken
Arabic in dialectal variations was beginning to be used
but tentativelyin higher literature. It was, and still is,
more frequently employed in the popular spheres of the-
atre and cinema. But the local differences that exist in
Arabic spoken from country to country have today become
perceptible in literature; popular grammatical forms and
syntactical constructions are occasionally used in modern
poetry. A special problem arises in North Africa, where
French continues to be the chief literary language for most
writers, especially in Morocco and Algeria. Yet there is no
hard-and-fast rule: a leading member of the Senegal com-
munity, Amadou Bamba, who founded the politically
important group of the Muridis, wrote some 20,000 mys-
tically tinged verses in classical Arabic (quite apart from
practical words of wisdom in his mother tongue).
Throughout the Islamic countries, radio, television,
and other media have helped to disseminate literary works;
prizes for literary achievements have stimulated interest
in writing; and low-priced books have made the output of
a growing number of writers available to the majority
the more so since literacy among the population steadily
increases. But to what degree this means a continuation
of the cultural role that Islamic literatures have played in
the formation and education of society over the centuries
is not yet clear. Literature was never restricted to a privi-
leged high society; in olden times even the illiterate villager
122
and the uneducated womenfolk had a fund of poems,
proverbs, songs, and quotations from classical sources
that they knew by heart and to which they turned for both
pleasure and spiritual strength.
One nal issue should be noted. The introduction in
the second half of the 20th century of modern methods
of criticism , of psychology and philosophy, kindled a new
interest in signicant gures of the Islamic past. Thus, to
cite one instance, al-Hallaj (executed 922), who often
served as a symbolic gure of the martyr of love in both
classical and folk poetry after the 11th century, was made
the subject of a Turkish drama, a Persian passion play, and
an Arabic tragedy, and he plays an important role in
Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Indian Muslim lyrical
poetry. He came to be interpreted as a symbol of suffer-
ing for ones ideals, and he therefore was considered
acceptable by both to conservative Muslims and progres-
sive social critics.
123
I
n order to answer whether or not there is an aesthetic,
iconographic, or stylistic unity to the visually percepti-
ble arts of Islamic peoples, it is rst essential to realize
that no ethnic or geographical entity was Muslim from the
beginning. There is no Islamic art, therefore, in the way
there is a Chinese art or a French art. Nor is it simply a
period art, like Gothic art or Baroque art, for once a land
or an ethnic entity became Muslim it remained Muslim, a
small number of exceptions like Spain or Sicily notwith-
standing. Political and social events transformed a number
of lands with a variety of earlier histories into Muslim
lands. But, since early Islam as such did not possess or
propagate an art of its own, each area could continue, and
in fact often did continue, whatever modes of creativity it
had acquired. It may then not be appropriate at all to talk
about the visual arts of Islamic peoples, and one should
instead consider separately each of the areas that became
Muslim: Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia,
Iran, Anatolia, and India. Such, in fact, has been the direc-
tion taken by some recent scholarship. Even though
CHAPTER 5
I SLAM I C
VI SUAL ARTS
124
tainted at times with parochial nationalism, the approach
has been useful in that it has focused attention on a number
of permanent features in different regions of Islamic lands
that are older than and independent from the faith itself
and from the political entity created by it. Iranian art, in
particular, exhibits a number of features (certain themes
such as the representation of birds or an epic tradition in
painting) that owe little to its Islamic character since the
7th century. Ottoman art shares a Mediterranean tradition
of architectural conception with Italy rather than with the
rest of the Muslim world.
Such examples can easily be multiplied, but it is proba-
bly wrong to overdo their importance. For if one looks at
the art of Islamic lands from a different perspective, a totally
different picture emerges. The perspective is that of the
lands that surround the Muslim world or of the times that
preceded its formation. For even if there are ambiguous
examples, most observers can recognize a avour, a mood
in Islamic visual arts that is distinguishable from what is
known in East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan) or in the
Christian West. This mood or avour has been called deco-
rative, for it seems at rst glance to emphasize an immense
complexity of surface effects without apparent meanings
attached to the visible motifs. But it has other characteris-
tics as well; it is often colourful, both in architecture and in
objects; it avoids representations of living things; it gives
much prominence to the work of artisans and counts among
its masterpieces not merely works of architecture or of
painting but also the creations of weavers, potters, and
metalworkers. The problem is whether these uniquenesses
of Islamic art, when compared to other artistic traditions,
are the result of the nature of Islam or of some other factor
or series of factors.
These preliminary remarks suggest at the very outset
the main epistemological peculiarity of Islamic art: it
125
7 Islamic Visual Arts 7
consists of a large number of quite disparate traditions that,
when seen all together, appear distinguishable from what
surrounded them and from what preceded them through a
series of stylistic and thematic characteristics. The key
question is how this was possible, but no answer can be
given before the tradition itself has been properly dened.
Such a denition can only be provided in history,
through an examination of the formation and develop-
ment of the arts through the centuries. For a static sudden
phenomenon is not being dealt with, but rather a slow
building up of a visual language of forms with many dia-
lects and with many changes. Whether or not these
complexities of growth and development subsumed a
common structure is the challenging question facing the
historian of this artistic tradition. What makes the ques-
tion particularly difcult to answer is that the study of
Islamic art is still relatively new. Many monuments are
unpublished or at least insufciently known, and only a
handful of scientic excavations have investigated the
physical setting of the culture and of its art. Much, there-
fore, remains tentative in the knowledge and appreciation
of works of Islamic art.
Each artistic tradition has tended to develop its own
favourite mediums and techniques. Some, of course, such
as architecture, are automatic needs of every culture; and,
for reasons to be developed later, it is in the medium of
architecture that some of the most characteristically
Islamic works of art are found. Other techniques, on the
other hand, acquire varying forms and emphases. Sculpture
in the round hardly existed as a major art form, and,
although such was also the case of all Mediterranean arts
at the time of Islams growth, one does not encounter the
astounding rebirth of sculpture that occurred in the West.
Wall painting existed but has generally been poorly pre-
served; the great Islamic art of painting was limited to the
126
illustration of books. The unique feature of Islamic tech-
niques is the astounding development taken by the
so-called decorative artse.g., woodwork, glass, ceram-
ics, metalwork, textiles. New techniques were invented
and spread throughout the Muslim worldat times even
beyond its frontiers. In dealing with Islam, therefore, it is
quite incorrect to think of these techniques as the minor
arts. For the amount and intensity of creative energies
spent on the decorative arts transformed them into major
artistic forms, and their signicance in dening a prole
of the aesthetic and visual language of Islamic peoples is
far greater than in the instances of many other cultures.
Furthermore, since, for a variety of reasons to be discussed
later, the Muslim world did not develop until quite late the
notion of noble arts, the decorative arts have reected
far better the needs and ambitions of the culture as a
whole. The kind of conclusion that can be reached about
Islamic civilization through its visual arts thus extends far
deeper than is usual in the study of an artistic tradition,
and it requires a combination of archaeological,
art-historical, and textual information.
An example may sufce to demonstrate the point.
Among all the techniques of Islamic visual arts, the most
important one was the art of textiles. Textiles, of course,
were used for daily wear at all social levels and for all occa-
sions. But clothes were also the main indicators of rank,
and they were given as rewards or as souvenirs by princes,
high and low. They were a major status symbol, and their
manufacture and distribution were carefully controlled
through a complicated institution known as the tiraz.
Major events were at times celebrated by being depicted
on silks. Many texts have been identied that describe the
hundreds of different kinds of textiles that existed. Since
textiles could easily be moved, they became a vehicle for
the transmission of artistic themes within the Muslim
127
world and beyond its frontiers. In the case of this one
technique, therefore, one is not dealing simply with a
medium of the decorative arts but with a key medium in
the denition of a given times taste, of its practical func-
tions, and of the ways in which its ideas were distributed.
The more unfortunate point is that the thousands of frag-
ments that have remained have not yet been studied in a
sufciently systematic way, and in only a handful of
instances has it been possible to relate individual frag-
ments to known texts. When more work has been
completed, however, a study of this one medium should
contribute signicantly to the commercial, social, and aes-
thetic history of Islam, as well as explain much of the
impact that Islamic art had beyond the frontiers of the
Muslim world.
The following survey of Islamic visual arts, therefore,
will be primarily a historical one, for it is in development
through time that the main achievements of Islamic art
can best be understood. At the same time, other features
peculiar to this tradition will be kept in mind: the varying
importance of different lands, each of which had identi-
able artistic features of its own, and the uniqueness of
some techniques of artistic creativity over others.
ORIGINS
Earlier Artistic Traditions
Islamic visual arts were created by the conuence of two
entirely separate kinds of phenomena: a number of earlier
artistic traditions and a new faith. The arts inherited by
Islam were of extraordinary technical virtuosity and stylis-
tic or iconographic variety. All the developments of
arcuated and vaulted architecture that had taken place in
Iran and in the Roman Empire were available in their
128
countless local variants. Stone, baked brick, mud brick,
and wood existed as mediums of construction, and all the
complicated engineering systems developed particularly
in the Roman Empire were still used from Spain to the
Euphrates. All the major techniques of decoration were
still used, except for monumental sculpture. In secular and
in religious art, a more or less formally accepted equiva-
lence between representation and represented subject had
been established. Technically, therefore, as well as ideo-
logically, the Muslim world took over an extremely
sophisticated system of visual forms; and, since the Muslim
conquest was accompanied by a minimum of destruction,
all the monuments, and especially the attitudes attached
to them, were passed on to the new culture.
The second point about the pre-Islamic traditions is
the almost total absence of anything from Arabia itself.
While archaeological work in the peninsula may modify
this conclusion in part, it does seem that Islamic art
formed itself entirely in some sort of relationship to non-
Arab traditions. Even the rather sophisticated art created
in earlier times by the Palmyrenes or by the Nabataeans
had almost no impact on Islamic art, and the primitively
conceived haram in Mecca, the only pre-Islamic sanctu-
ary maintained by the new faith, remained as a unique
monument that was almost never copied or imitated
despite its immense religious signicance. The pre-
Islamic sources of Islamic art are thus entirely extraneous
to the milieu in which the new faith was created. In this
respect the visual arts differ considerably from most
other aspects of Islamic culture.
This is not to say that there was no impact of the new
faith on the arts, but to a large extent it was an incidental
impact, the result of the existence of a new social and
political entity rather than of a doctrine. Earliest Islam as
seen in the Quran or in the more veriable accounts of
129
the Prophets life simply do not deal with the arts, either
on the practical level of requiring or suggesting forms as
expressions of the culture or on the ideological level of
dening a Muslim attitude toward images. In all instances,
concrete Quranic passages later used for the arts had their
visual signicance extrapolated.
There is no prohibition against representations of liv-
ing things, and not a single Quranic passage refers clearly
to the mosque, eventually to become the most character-
istically Muslim religious building. In the simple, practical,
and puritanical milieu of early Islam, aesthetic or visual
questions simply did not arise.
The Mosque
The impact of the faith on the arts occurred rather as the
edgling culture encountered the earlier non-Islamic
world and sought to justify its own acceptance or rejection
of new ways and attitudes. The discussion of two examples
of particular signicance illustrates the point. One is the
case of the mosque. The word itself derives from the
Arabic masjid, a place where one prostrates ones self (in
front of God). It was a common term in pre-Islamic
Arabic and in the Quran, where it is applied to sanctuar-
ies in general without restriction. If a more concrete
signicance was meant, the word was used in construct
with some other term, as in masjid al-haram, to refer to the
Meccan sanctuary. There was no need in earliest times for
a uniquely Muslim building, for any place could be used
for private prayer as long as the correct direction (qiblah,
originally Jerusalem, but very soon Mecca) was observed
and the proper sequence of gestures and pious statements
was followed. In addition to private prayer, which had no
formal setting, Islam instituted a collective prayer on
Fridays, where the same ritual was accompanied by a
130
sermon from the imam (leader of prayer, originally the
Prophet, then his successors, and later legally any able-
bodied Muslim) and by the more complex ceremony of
the khutbah, a collective swearing of allegiance to the com-
munitys leadership. This ceremony served to strengthen
the common bond between all members of the ummah,
the Muslim collectivity, and its importance in creating
and maintaining the unity of early Islam has often been
emphasized. There were two traditional locales for this
event in the Prophets time. One was his private house,
whose descriptions have been preserved; it was a large
open space with private rooms on one side and rows of
palm trunks making a colonnade on two other sides, the
deeper colonnade being on the side of the qiblah. The
Prophets house was not a sanctuary but simply the most
convenient place for the early community to gather. Far
less is known about the second place of gathering for the
Muslim community. It was used primarily on major feast
days, such as the end of the fasting period or the feast of
sacrice. It was called a musalla, literally a place for
prayer, and musallas were usually located outside city
walls. Nothing is known about the shape taken by musal-
las, but in all probability they were as simple as pre-Islamic
pagan sanctuaries: large enclosures surrounded by a wall
and devoid of any architectural or ornamental feature.
Altogether then there was hardly anything that could
be identied as a holy building or as an architectural form.
To be complete, one should add two additional features.
One is an action, the call to prayer (adhan). It became, fairly
rapidly, a formal moment preceding the gathering of the
faithful. One man would climb on the roof and proclaim
that God is great and that men must congregate to pray.
There was no formal monument attached to the ceremony,
though it eventually led to the ubiquitous minaret. The
131
other early feature was an actual structure. It was the min-
bar, a chair with several steps on which the Prophet would
climb in order to preach. The monument itself had a pre-
Islamic origin, but Muhammad transformed it into a
characteristically Muslim form.
With the exception of the minbar, only a series of
actions was formulated in early Islamic times. There were
no forms attached to them, nor were any needed. But, as
the Muslim world grew in size, the contact with many other
cultures brought about two developments. On the one
hand there were thousands of examples of beautiful reli-
gious buildings that impressed the conquering Arabs. But,
more importantly, the need arose to preserve the restricted
uniqueness of the community of faithful and to express its
separateness from other groups. Islamic religious architec-
ture began with this need and, in ways to be described later,
created a formal setting for the activities, ceremonies, and
ideas that had been formless at the outset.
The Prohibition Against Images
A second and closely parallel development of the impact
of the Islamic religion on the visual arts is the celebrated
question of a Muslim iconoclasm. As has already been
mentioned, the Quran does not utter a word for or against
the representation of living things. It is equally true that
from about the middle of the 8th century a prohibition
had been formally stated, and thenceforth it would be a
standard feature of Islamic thought, even though the form
in which it is expressed has varied from absolute to partial
and even though it has never been totally followed. The
justication for the prohibition tended to be that any rep-
resentation of a living thing was an act of competition
with God, for he alone can create something that is alive.
132
It is striking that this theological explanation reects
the state of the arts in the Christian world at the time of
the Muslim conquesta period of iconoclastic contro-
versy. It may thus be suggested that Islam developed an
attitude toward images as it came into contact with other
cultures and that its attitude was negative because the arts
of the time appeared to lead easily to dreaded idolatry.
While it is only by the middle of the 8th century that there
is actual proof of the existence of a Muslim doctrine, it is
likely that, more or less intuitively, the Muslims felt a cer-
tain reluctance toward representations from the very
beginning. For all monuments of religious art are devoid
of any representations; even a number of attempts at rep-
resentational symbolism in the ofcial art of coinage were
soon abandoned.
This rapid crystallization of Islamic attitudes toward
images has considerable signicance. For practical pur-
poses, representations are not found in religious art,
although matters are quite different in secular art. Instead
there occurred very soon a replacement of imagery with cal-
ligraphy and the concomitant transformation of calligraphy
into a major artistic medium. Furthermore, the world of
Islam tended to seek means of representing the holy other
than by images of men, and one of the main problems of
interpretation of Islamic art is that of the degree of means it
achieved in this search. But there is a deeper aspect to this
rejection of holy images. Although the generally Semitic or
specically Jewish sources that have been given to Islamic
iconoclasms have probably been exaggerated, the reluc-
tance imposed by the circumstances of the 7th century
transformed into a major key of artistic creativity the magi-
cal fear of visual imagery that exists in all cultures but that is
usually relegated to a secondary level. This uniqueness is
certainly one of the main causes of the abstract tendencies
133
that are among the great glories of the tradition. Even when
a major art of painting did develop, it remained always some-
how secondary to the mainstream of the cultures development.
Both in the case of the religious building and in that of
the representations, therefore, it was the contact with pre-
Islamic cultures in Muslim-conquered areas that compelled
Islam to transform its practical and unique needs into mon-
uments and to seek within itself for intellectual and
theological justications for its own instincts. The great
strength of early Islam was that it possessed within itself the
ideological means to put together a visual expression of its
own, even though it did not develop at the very beginning a
need for such an expression.
One last point can be made about the origins of Islamic
art. It concerns the degree of importance taken by the vari-
ous artistic and cultural entities conquered by the Arabs in
the 7th and 8th centuries, for the early empire had gathered
in regions that had not been politically or even ideologically
related for centuries. During the rst century or two of
Islam, the main models and the main sources of inspiration
were certainly the Christian centres around the
Mediterranean. But the failure to capture Constantinople
and to destroy the Byzantine Empire also made these
Christian centres inimical competitors, whereas the whole
world of Iran became an integral part of the empire, even
though the conquering Arabs were far less familiar with the
latter than with the former. A much more complex problem
is posed by conversions, for it is through the success of the
militant Muslim religious mission that the culture expanded
so rapidly. Insofar as one can judge, it is the common folk,
primarily in cities, who took over the new faith most rap-
idly; and thus there was added in early Islamic culture a folk
element whose impact may have been larger than has hith-
erto been imagined.
134
These preliminary considerations on the origins of
Islamic art have made it possible to outline several of the
themes and problems that remained constant features of
the tradition: a self-conscious sense of uniqueness when
compared to others; a continuous reference to its own
Quranic sources; a constant relationship to many differ-
ent cultures; a folk element; and a variety of regional
developments. None of these features remained constant,
not even those aspects of the faith that affected the arts.
But while they changed, the fact of their existence, their
structural presence, remained a constant of Islamic art.
EARLY PERIOD: THE UMAYYAD
AND ABBASID DYNASTIES
Of all the recognizable periods of Islamic art, this approxi-
mately 400-year period encompassing Islams rst two
major dynasties is by far the most difcult one to explain
properly, even though it is quite well documented. There
are two reasons for this difculty. On the one hand, it was
a formative period, a time when new forms were created
that identify the aesthetic and practical ideals of the new
culture. Such periods are difcult to dene when, as in the
case of Islam, there was no artistic need inherent to the
culture itself. The second complication derives from the
fact that Muslim conquest hardly ever destroyed former
civilizations with its own established creativity. Material
culture, therefore, continued as before, and archaeologi-
cally it is almost impossible to distinguish between
pre-Islamic and early Islamic artifacts. Paradoxical though
it may sound, there is an early Islamic Christian art of Syria
and Egypt, and in many other regions the parallel exis-
tence of a Muslim and of a non-Muslim art continued for
centuries. What did happen during early Islamic times,
however, was the establishment of a dominant new taste,
135
Bowl from Nishapur, lead-glazed earthenware with a slip decoration; in the
Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Courtesy of the Victoria and
Albert Museum, London
and it is the nature and character of this taste that has to
be explained. It occurred rst in Syria and Iraq , the two
areas with the largest inux of Muslims and with the two
successive capitals of the empire, Damascus under the
Umayyads and Baghdad under the early Abbasids. From
Syria and Iraq this new taste spread in all directions and
adapted itself to local conditions and local materials, thus
creating considerable regional and chronological varia-
tions in early Islamic art.
From a historical point of view two major dynasties
are involved. One is the Umayyad dynasty, which ruled
from 661 to 750 and whose monuments are datable from
680 to 745. It was the only Muslim dynasty ever to control
the whole of the Islamic-conquered world. The second
dynasty is the Abbasid dynasty; technically its rule
extended as late as 1258, but in reality its princes ceased to
be a signicant cultural factor after the second decade of
the 10th century. The Abbasids no longer controlled
Spain, where an independent Umayyad caliphate had been
established; and in Egypt as well as in northeastern Iran a
number of more or less independent dynasties appeared,
such as the Tulunids or the Samanids .
Although this conclusion is less
certain than it used to be for
the Samanids and northeast
Iran, the initial impulse for
the artistic creativity of
these dynasties came from
the main Abbasid centres in
Iraq. While in detailed
136
studies it is possible to distinguish between Umayyad and
Abbasid art or between the arts of various provinces, the
key features of the rst three centuries of Islamic art
(roughly through the middle of the 10th century) are the
interplay between local or imperial impulses and the cre-
ation of new forms and functions.
It is possible to study these centuries as a succession of
clusters of monuments, but, since there are so many of
them, a study can easily end up as an endless list. It is pref-
erable, therefore, to centre the discussion of Umayyad and
Abbasid monuments on the functional and morphological
(form and structure) characteristics that identify the new
Muslim world and only secondarily be concerned with sty-
listic progression or regional differences.
Architecture
Early Religious Buildings
The one obviously new function developed during this
period is that of the mosque, or masjid. The earliest adher-
ents of Islam used the private house of the Prophet in
Medina as the main place for their religious and other
activities and musallas without established forms for cer-
tain holy ceremonies. The key phenomenon of the rst
decades that followed the conquest is the creation outside
of Arabia of masjids in every centre taken over by the new
faith. These were not simply or even primarily religious
centres. They were rather the community centres of the
faithful, in which all social, political, educational, and indi-
vidual affairs were transacted. The rst mosques were built
primarily to serve as the restricted space in which the new
community would take its own collective decisions. It is
there that the treasury of the community was kept, and
early accounts are full of anecdotes about the immense
137
variety of events, from the dramatic to the scabrous, that
took place in mosques. Since even in earliest times the
Muslim community consisted of several superimposed and
interconnected social systems, mosques reected this com-
plexity, and, next to large mosques for the whole community,
tribal mosques and mosques for various quarters of a town
or city are also known.
None of these early mosques has survived, and no
descriptions of the smaller ones have been preserved. There
do remain, however, accurate textual descriptions of the
large congregational buildings erected at Kufah and Basra
in Iraq and at al-Fustat in Egypt. At Kufah a larger square
was marked out by a ditch, and a covered colonnade known
as a zullah (a shady place) was put up on the qiblah side. In
670 a wall pierced by many doors was built in place of the
ditch, and colonnades were put up on all four sides, with a
deeper one on the qiblah. In all probability the Basra mosque
was very similar, and only minor differences distinguished
the Amr ibn al-As mosque at al-Fustat. Much has been writ-
ten about the sources of this type of building, but the
simplest explanation may be that this is the very rare
instance of the actual creation of a new architectural type.
The new faiths requirement for centralization, or a space
for a large and constantly growing community, could not be
met by any existing architectural form.
Almost accidentally, therefore, the new Muslim cities
of Iraq created the hypostyle mosque (a building with the
roof resting on rows of columns). A exible architectural
unit, a hypostyle structure could be square or rectangular
and could be increased or diminished in size by the addi-
tion or subtraction of columns. The single religious or
symbolic feature of the hypostyle mosque was a minbar (a
pulpit) for the preacher, and the direction of prayer was
indicated by the greater depth of the colonnade on one
side of the structure.
138
The examples of Kufah, Basra, and al-Fustat are par-
ticularly clear because they were all built in newly created
cities. Matters are somewhat more complex when discuss-
ing the older urban centres taken over by Muslims.
Although it is not possible to generalize with any degree
of certainty, two patterns seem to emerge. In some cases,
such as Jerusalem and Damascus and perhaps in most cit-
ies conquered through formal treaties, the Muslims took
for themselves an available unused space and erected on it
some shelter, usually a very primitive one. In Jerusalem
this space happened to be a particularly holy onethe
area of the Jewish Temple built by Herod I the Great,
which had been left willfully abandoned and ruined by the
triumphant Christian empire. In Damascus it was a sec-
tion of a huge Roman temple area, on another part of
which there was a church dedicated to St. John the Baptist.
Unfortunately too little is known about other cities to be
able to demonstrate that this pattern was a common one.
The very same uncertainty surrounds the second pattern,
which consisted in forcibly transforming sanctuaries of
older faiths into Muslim ones. This was the case at Hamah
in Syria and at Yazd-e Khvast in Iran, where archaeological
proof exists of the change. There are also several literary
references to the fact that Christian churches, Zoroastrian
re temples, and other older abandoned sanctuaries were
transformed into mosques. Altogether, however, these
instances probably were not too numerous, because in
most places the Muslim conquerors were quite anxious to
preserve local tradition and because few older sanctuaries
could easily serve the primary Muslim need of a large cen-
tralizing space.
During the 50 years that followed the beginning of the
Muslim conquest, the mosque, until then a very general
concept in Islamic thought, became a denite building
139
reserved for a variety of needs required by the community
of faithful in any one settlement. Only in one area, Iraq,
did the mosque acquire a unique form of its own, the ori-
ented hypostyle. Neither in Iraq nor elsewhere is there
evidence of symbolic or functional components in mosque
design. The only exception is that of the maqsurah (literally
closed-off space), an enclosure, probably in wood, built
near the centre of the qiblah wall. Its purpose was to pro-
tect the caliph or his replacement, for several attacks
against major political gures had taken place. But the
maqsurah was never destined to be a constant xture of
mosques, and its typological signicance is limited.
Three Great Mosques
During the rule of the Umayyad prince al-Walid I (705715),
a number of complex developments within the Muslim
community were crystallized in the construction of three
major mosques, at Medina, Jerusalem, and Damascus. The
very choice of these three cities is indicative: the city in
which the Muslim state was formed and in which the
Prophet was buried; the city held in common holiness by
Jews, Christians, and Muslims, to which was rapidly accru-
ing the mystical hagiography surrounding the Prophets
ascension into heaven; and the ancient city that became
the capital of the new Islamic empire. A rst and essential
component of al-Walids mosques was, thus, their imperial
character; they were to symbolize the permanent estab-
lishment of the new faith and of the state that derived
from it. They were no longer purely practical shelters but
willful monuments.
Although the plans of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and
of the mosque of Medina can be reconstructed with a fair
degree of certainty, only the one at Damascus has been pre-
served with comparatively minor alterations and repairs.
140
Courtyard of the Great Mosque of Damascus, Syria, built by al-Walid I, 705
715, showing the Bayt al-Mal (treasury) on the left, beyond which can be seen
one of the three towers of the rst Muslim minaret. Paul Almasy
In plan the three buildings appear at rst glance to be quite
different from each other. The Medina mosque was
essentially a large hypostyle with a courtyard. The colon-
nades on all four sides were of varying depth. Al-Aqsa
Mosque consisted of an undetermined number of naves
(possibly as many as 15) parallel to each other in a north
south direction. There was no courtyard because the rest
141
of the huge esplanade of the former Jewish temple served
as the open space in front of the building. The Umayyad
Mosque of Damascus is a rectangle 515 by 330 feet (157 by
100 metres) whose outer limits and three gates are parts of
a Roman temple (a fourth Roman gate on the qiblah side
was blocked). The interior consists of an open space sur-
rounded on three sides by a portico and of a covered space
of three equal long naves parallel to the qiblah wall that are
cut in the middle by a perpendicular nave.
The three buildings share several important character-
istics. They are all large spaces with a multiplicity of internal
supports; and although only the Medina mosque is a pure
hypostyle, the Jerusalem and Damascus mosques have the
exibility and easy internal communication characteristic
of a hypostyle building. All three mosques exhibit a number
of distinctive new practical elements and symbolic mean-
ings. Many of these occur in all mosques; others are only
known in some of them. The mihrab, for example, appears
in all mosques. This is a niche of varying size that tends to
be heavily decorated. It occurs in the qiblah wall, and, in all
probability, its purpose was to commemorate the symbolic
presence of the Prophet as the rst imam, although there
are other explanations. It is only in Damascus that the
ancient towers of the Roman building were rst used as
minarets to call the faithful to prayer and to indicate from
afar the presence of Islam (initially minarets tended to exist
only in predominantly non-Muslim cities). All three
mosques are also provided with an axial nave, a wider aisle
unit on the axis of the building, which served both as a for-
mal axis for compositional purposes and as a ceremonial
one for the princes retinue. Finally, all three buildings were
heavily decorated with marble, mosaics, and woodwork. At
least in the mosque of Damascus, it is further apparent that
there was careful concern for the formal compositiona
142
balance between parts that truly makes this mosque a work
of art. This is particularly evident in the successful relation-
ship established between the open space of the court and
the facade of the covered qiblah side.
When compared to the rst Muslim buildings of Iraq
and Egypt, the monuments of al-Walid are characterized
by the growing complexity of their forms, by the appear-
ance of uniquely Muslim symbolic and functional features,
and by the quality of their construction. While the dimen-
sions, external appearance, and proportions of any one of
them were affected in each case by unique local circum-
stances, the internal balance between open and covered
areas and the multiplicity of simple and exible supports
indicate the permanence of the early hypostyle tradition.
Other Classic Mosques
Either in its simplest form, as in Medina, or in its more
formalized shape, as in Damascus, the hypostyle tradition
dominated mosque architecture from 715 to the 10th cen-
tury. As it occurs at Nishapur in northeastern Iran, Siraf in
southern Iran, al-Qayrawan (Kairouan) in Tunisia, and
Crdoba in Spain, it can indeed be considered as the clas-
sic early Islamic type. Its masterpieces occur in Iraq and in
the West. The monumentalization of the early Iraqi hypo-
style is illustrated by the two ruined structures in Samarra,
with their enormous sizes (790 by 510 feet [240 by 156
metres] for one and 700 by 440 feet [213 by 135 metres] for
the other), their multiple entrances, their complex piers,
and, in one instance, a striking separation of the qiblah
area from the rest of the building. The best preserved
example of this type is the mosque of Ibn Tulun at Cairo
(876879), where a semi-independent governor, Ahmad
ibn Tulun, introduced Iraqi techniques and succeeded in
creating a masterpiece of composition.
143
Interior of the Great Mosque of Crdoba, Spain, begun 785. Alfonso
Gutierrez Escera/Ostman Agency
Two classic examples of early mosques in the western
Islamic world of interest are preserved in Tunisia and
Spain. In al-Qayrawan the Great Mosque was built in
stages between 836 and 866. Its most striking feature is
the formal emphasis on the buildings T-like axis punctu-
ated by two domes, one of which hovers over the earliest
preserved ensemble of mihrab, minbar , and maqsurah . At
Crdoba the earliest section of the Great Mosque was
built in 785786. It consisted simply of 11 naves with a
wider central one and a court. It was enlarged twice in
length, rst between 833 and 855 and again from 961 to 965
(it was in the latter phase that the celebrated maqsurah and
mihrab, comprising one of the great architectural ensem-
bles of early Islamic art, were constructed). Finally, in
144
987988 an extension of the mosque was completed to the
east that increased its size by almost one-third without
destroying its stylistic unity. The constant increases in the
size of this mosque are a further illustration of the exibil-
ity of the hypostyle and its adaptability to any spatial
requirement. The most memorable aspects of the Crdoba
mosque, however, lie in its construction and decoration.
The particularly extensive and heavily decorated mihrab
area exemplies a development that started with the
Medina mosque and would continue: an emphasis on the
qiblah wall.
Although the hypostyle mosque was the dominant
plan, it was not the only one. From very early Islamic
times, a fairly large number of aberrant plans also occur.
Most of them were built in smaller urban locations or were
secondary mosques in larger Muslim cities. It is rather dif-
cult, therefore, to evaluate whether their signicance
was purely local or whether they were important for the
tradition as a whole. Since a simple type of square subdi-
vided by four piers into nine-domed units occurs at Balkh
in Afghanistan, at Cairo, and at Toledo, it may be consid-
ered a pan-Islamic type. Other types, a single square hall
surrounded by an ambulatory, or a single long barrel-vault
parallel or perpendicular to the qiblah, are rarer and should
perhaps be considered as purely local. These are particu-
larly numerous in Iran, where it does seem that the
mainstream of early Islamic architecture did not penetrate
very deeply.
Other Types of Religious Buildings
The function of the mosque, the central gathering place of
the Muslim community, became the major and most origi-
nal completely Muslim architectural effort. The mosque
was not a purely religious building, at least not at the
145
beginning; but, because it was restricted to Muslims, it is
appropriate to consider it as such. This, however, was not
the only type of early Islamic building to be uniquely
Muslim. Three other types can be dened architecturally,
and a fourth one only functionally.
The rst type, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, is a
unique building. Completed in 691, this masterwork of
Islamic architecture is the earliest major Islamic monu-
ment. Its octagonal plan, use of a high dome, and building
techniques are hardly original, although its decoration is
unique. Its purpose, however, is what is most remarkable
about the building. Since the middle of the 8th century,
the Dome of the Rock has become the focal centre of the
most mystical event in the life of the Prophet: his ascen-
sion into heaven from the rock around which the building
was erected. According to an inscription preserved since
the erection of the dome, however, it would seem that the
building did not originally commemorate the Prophets
ascension but rather the Christology of Islam and its rela-
tionship to Judaism. It seems preferable, therefore, to
interpret the Dome of the Rock as a victory monument of
the new faiths ideological and religious claim on a holy
city and on all the religious traditions attached to it.
The second distinctly Islamic type of religious build-
ing is the little-known ribat. As early as in the 8th century,
the Muslim empire entrusted the protection of its fron-
tiers, especially the remote ones, to warriors for the faith
(murabitun, bound ones) who lived, permanently or tem-
porarily, in special institutions known as ribats. Evidence
for these exist in Central Asia, Anatolia, and North Africa.
It is only in Tunisia that ribats have been preserved. The
best one is at Susah, Tunisia; it consists of a square forti-
ed building with a single fairly elaborate entrance and
a central courtyard. It has two stories of private or
146
communal rooms. Except for the prominence taken by
an oratory, this building could be classied as a type of
Muslim secular architecture. Since no later example of a
ribat is known, there is some uncertainty as to whether
the institution ever acquired a unique architectural form
of its own.
The last type of religious building to develop before
the end of the 10th century is the mausoleum. Originally
Islam was strongly opposed to any formal commemoration
of the dead. But three independent factors slowly modi-
ed an attitude that was eventually maintained only in the
most strictly orthodox circles. One factor was the growth
of the Shiite heterodoxy, which led to an actual cult of the
descendants of the Prophet through his son-in-law Ali.
The second factor was that, as Islam strengthened its hold
on conquered lands, a wide variety of local cultic practices
and especially the worship of certain sacred places began
to affect the Muslims, resulting in a whole movement of
Islamization of ancient holy places by associating them
with deceased Muslim heroes and holy men or with proph-
ets. The third factor is not, strictly speaking, religious, but
it played a major part. As more or less independent local
dynasties began to grow, they sought to commemorate
themselves through mausoleums. Not many mausoleums
have remained from these early centuries, but literary evi-
dence is clear on the fact that the Shiite sanctuaries of
Karbala and al-Najaf, both in Iraq, and Qom, Iran, already
possessed monumental tombs. The masterpieces of early
funerary architecture occur in Central Asia, such as the
royal mausoleum of the Samanids (known incorrectly as
the mausoleum of Esmail the Samanid) at Bukhara (before
942), which is a superb example of Islamic brickwork. In
some instances a quasi-religious character was attached to
the mausoleums, such as the one at Tim (976).
147
The fourth kind of Muslim building is the madrasah,
an institution for religious training set up independently
of mosques. It is known from texts that such privately
endowed schools existed in the northeastern Iranian world
as early as in the 9th century, but no description exists of
how they were planned or how they looked.
Secular Architecture
Whereas the functions of the religious buildings of early
Islam could not have existed without the new faith, the
functions of secular Muslim architecture have a priori no
specically Islamic character. This is all the more so since
one can hardly point to a signicant new need or habit that
would have been brought from Arabia by the conquering
Muslims and since so little was destroyed in the conquered
areas. It can be assumed, therefore, that all pre-Islamic
functions such as living, trading, and manufacturing contin-
ued in whatever architectural setting they may have had.
Only one exception is certain. With the disappearance of
Sasanian kingship, the pre-Islamic Iranian imperial tradi-
tion ceased, and elsewhere conquered minor kings and
governors left their palaces and castles. A new imperial
power was created, located rst in Damascus, then briey
in the northern Syrian town of al-Rusafah, and eventually in
Baghdad and Samarra in Iraq. New governors and, later,
almost independent princes took over provincial capitals.
In all instances, there is no reason to assume that for an
architecture of power or of pleasure early Muslims would
have felt the need to modify pre-Islamic traditions. In fact
there is much in early Islamic secular architecture that can
be used to illustrate secular arts elsewherein Byzantium,
for example, or even in the West.
Three factors contributed to the evolution of a new
secular architecture. One was that the accumulation of an
148
immense wealth of ideas, workers, and money in the hands
of the Muslim princes settled in Syria and Iraq gave rise to
a unique palace architecture. The second factor was the
impetus given to urban life and to trade. New cities were
founded from Sijilmassah on the edge of the Moroccan
Sahara to Nishapur in northeastern Iran, and 9th-century
Arab merchants traded as far away as China. Thus the sec-
ond topic, to be treated below, will be the urban design
and commercial architecture. The third factor is that, for
the rst time since Alexander the Great, a world extend-
ing from the Mediterranean to India became culturally
unied. As a result, decorative motifs, design ideas, struc-
tural techniques, and artisans and architectswhich until
then had belonged to entirely different cultural tradi-
tionswere available in the same places. Early Islamic
princely architecture has become the best known and
most original aspect of early Islamic secular buildings.
Palaces
There are basically three kinds of these princely struc-
tures. The rst type consists of 10 large rural princely
complexes found in Syria, Palestine, and Transjordan dat-
ing from roughly 710 to 750: al-Rusafah, Qasr al-Hayr East,
Qasr al-Hayr West, Jabal Says, Khirbat Minyah, Khirbat
al-Mafjar, Mshatta, Qasr Amrah, Qasr al-Kharanah, and
Qasr al-Tubah. Apparently these examples of princely
architecture belong to a group of more than 60 ruined or
only textually identiable rural complexes erected by
Umayyad princes. These structures were each part of a
major agricultural or trade centre, some of which were
developed even before the Muslim conquest. Private pal-
aces were built, notably at al-Rusafah, Qasr al-Hayr West,
Khirbat al-Mafjar, Qasr Amrah, and Mshatta. These must
be considered as early medieval equivalents of the villae
rusticae so characteristic in the ancient Roman period.
149
Although each of these had a number of idiosyncrasies
that were presumably inspired by the needs and desires of
its owner, all of these structures tend to share a number of
features that can best be illustrated by Khirbat al-Mafjar.
This palace, the richest of them all, contained a resi-
dential unit consisting of a square building with an
elaborate entrance, a porticoed courtyard, and a number
of rooms or halls arranged on two oors. Few of these
rooms seem to have any identiable function, although at
Khirbat al-Mafjar a private oratory, a large meeting hall,
and an anteroom leading to a cool underground pool have
been identied. The main throne room was on the second
oor above the entrance. Its plan is not known but prob-
ably resembled the preserved throne rooms or reception
halls at Qasr Amrah and Mshatta, which consisted of a
three-aisled hall ending in an apse (semicircular or polygo-
nal domed projection) in the manner of a Roman basilica.
Next to an ofcial residence, there usually was a small
mosque, generally a miniaturized hypostyle in plan. The
most original feature of these establishments was the bath.
The bathing area itself is comparatively small, but every
bath had its own elaborate entrance and contained a large
hall that, at least in the instance of Khirbat al-Mafjar, was
heavily decorated and of an unusual shape. It would appear
that these halls were for pleasureplaces for music, danc-
ing, and probably occasional orgies. In some instances, as
at Qasr Amrah, the same setting may have been used for
both pleasure and formal receptions.
These palaces are important illustrations of the luxuri-
ous taste and way of life of the new aristocrats, who settled
in the countryside. This aspect of these establishments is
peculiar to the Umayyad dynasty in Syria and Palestine.
Outside of this area and period only one comparable struc-
ture has been foundat Ukhaydir in Iraq, which dates
from the early Abbasid period. A number of
150
princely residences of the Central Asian or North African
countryside are still too little known but appear not to have
had the same development. The other important lesson to
draw from them is that few of their features are original. All
of them derive from the architectural vocabulary of pre-
Islamic times, and, for as interesting as these monuments
are, they are not part of the Islamic tradition.
A second type of princely architecturethe urban
palacehas been preserved only in texts or literary
sources, with the exception of the palace at Kufah in Iraq.
Datable from the very end of the 7th century, this example
of princely architecture seems to have functioned both as
a residence and as the centre of government. This dual
function is reected in the use of separate building units
and in the dearth of architectural decoration, which sug-
gests that it reected an austere ofcial taste. Scholars do
not have sufcient information to dene these early urban
ofcial buildings of the Muslims.
Also poorly documented is a development in urban
aristocratic buildings that seems to have begun with the
Abbasids during the last decades of the 8th century. This
involved the construction of smaller palaces, probably
pavilions in the midst of gardens in or around major cities.
The third type of early Islamic princely architecture is
the palace-city. Several of these huge palaces are part of
the enormous mass of ruins at Samarra, the temporary
Abbasid capital from 838 to 883. Jawsaq al-Khaqani, for
instance, is a walled architectural complex nearly one mile
to a side that in reality is an entire city. It contains a formal
succession of large gates and courts leading to a cross-
shaped throne room, a group of smaller living units, basins
and fountains, and even a racetrack. Too little is known
about the architectural details of these huge walled com-
plexes to lead to more than very uncertain hypotheses.
Their existence, however, suggests that they were settings
151
for the very elaborate ceremonies developed by the
Abbasid princes, especially when receiving foreign ambas-
sadors. An account, for instance, in Khatib al-Baghdadis
Tarikh Baghdad (History of Baghdad) of the arrival in
Baghdad of a Byzantine envoy in 914 illustrates this point.
The meeting with the caliph was preceded by a sort of for-
mal presentation intended to impress the ambassador
with the Muslim rulers wealth and power. Treasures were
laid down, thousands of soldiers and slaves in rich clothes
guarded them, lions roared in the gardens, and on gilded
articial trees mechanical devices made silver birds chirp.
The ceremony was a fascinating mixture of a traditional
attempt to re-create paradise on earth and a rather vulgar
exhibition of wealth that required a huge space, as in the
Samarra palaces. Another important aspect of these
palace-cities is that they became part of a myth. The
walled enclosure in which thousands lived a life unknown
to others and into which simple mortals did not penetrate
without bringing their own shroud was transformed into
legend. It became the mysterious City of Brass of The
Thousand and One Nights, and it is from its luxurious glory
that occasionally a caliph such as Harun al-Rashid escaped
into the real world. Even though there is inadequate
information on the Abbasid palace-city, it was clearly a
unique early Islamic creation, and its impact can be
detected from Byzantium to Hollywood.
Urban Design
Islamic secular architecture has left considerable informa-
tion about cities, for systematic urbanization was one of
the most characteristic features of early Muslim civiliza-
tion. It is much too early to draw any sort of conclusion
about the actual physical organization of towns, about
their subdivisions and their houses, for only at al-Fustat
(Cairo) and Siraf in Iran is the evidence archaeologically
152
clear, and much of it has not yet been properly published.
In general it can be said that there does not seem to have
been any idealized master plan for the internal arrange-
ment of an urban site in contradistinction to Hellenistic or
Roman towns. Even mosques or palaces were often located
eccentrically and not in the middle of the town.
Extraordinary attention was paid to water distribution and
conservation, as demonstrated by the magnicent 9th-
century cisterns in Tunisia, the 9th-century Nilometer (a
device to measure the Niles level) in Cairo, and the elabo-
rate dams, canals, and sluices of Qasr al-Hayr in Syria. The
construction of commercial buildings on a monumental
scale occurred. The most spectacular example is the cara-
vansary of Qasr al-Hayr East, with its magnicent gate.
The concern for palaces and cities that characterized
early Islamic secular architecture shows itself most
remarkably in the construction of Baghdad between 762
and 766767 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur. It was a
walled round city whose circular shape served to demon-
strate Baghdads symbolic identity as the navel of the
universe. A thick ring of residential quarters was separated
by four axial, commercial streets entered through spec-
tacular gates. In the centre of the city there was a large
open space with a palace, a mosque, and a few administra-
tive buildings. By its size and number of inhabitants,
Baghdad was unquestionably a city; however, its plan so
strongly emphasized the presence of the caliph that it was
also a palace.
Building Materials and Technology
The early Islamic period, on the whole, did not innovate
much in the realm of building materials and technology
but utilized what it had inherited from older traditions.
Stone and brick continued to be used around the
Mediterranean, while mud brick usually covered with
153
plaster predominated in Iraq and Iran, with a few notable
exceptions like Siraf, where a masonry of roughly cut
stones set in mortar was more common. The most impor-
tant novelty was the rapid development in Iraq of a baked
brick architecture in the late 8th and 9th centuries. Iraqi
techniques were later used in Syria at al-Raqqah and Qasr
al-Hayr East and in Egypt. Iranian brickwork appears at
Mshatta in Jordan. Wood was used consistently but has
usually not been very well preserved.
As supports for roofs and ceilings, early Islamic archi-
tecture used walls and single supports. Walls were generally
continuous, often buttressed with half towers, and rarely
(with exceptions in Central Asia) were they articulated or
broken by other architectural features. The most common
single support was the basecolumncapital combination
of Mediterranean architecture. Most columns and capitals
were either reused from pre-Islamic buildings or were
directly imitated from older models. In the 9th century in
Iraq a brick pier was used, a form that spread to Iran and
Egypt. Columns and piers were covered with arches. Most
often these were semicircular arches; the pointed, or two-
centred, arch was known, but it does not seem that its
property of reducing the need for heavy supports had been
realized. The most extraordinary technical development
of arches occurs in the Great Mosque at Crdoba, where,
in order to increase the height of the building in an area
with only short columns, the architects created two rows
of superimposed horseshoe arches. Almost immediately
they realized that such a succession of superimposed
arches constructed of alternating stone and brick could be
modied to create a variety of patterns that would allevi-
ate the inherent monotony of a hypostyle building. A
certain ambiguity remains, however, as to whether orna-
mental effect or structural technology was the predominate
concern in the creation of these unique arched columns.
154
The majority of early Islamic ceilings were at. Gabled
wooden roofs, however, were erected in the Muslim world
west of the Euphrates and simple barrel vaults to the east.
Vaulting, either in brick or in stone, was used, especially in
secular architecture. Domes were employed frequently in
mosques, consistently in mausoleums, and occasionally in
secular buildings. Almost all domes are on squinches (sup-
ports carried across corners to act as structural transitions
to a dome). Most squinches, as in the al-Qayrawan domes,
are classical Greco-Roman niches, which transform the
square room into an octagonal opening for the dome. In
Crdobas Great Mosque a complex system of intersect-
ing ribs is encountered, while at Bukhara the squinch is
broken into halves by a transverse half arch. The most
extraordinary use of the squinch occurs in the mausoleum
at Tim, where the surface of this structural device is bro-
ken into a series of smaller three-dimensional units
rearranged into a sort of pyramidal pattern. This rear-
rangement is the earliest extant example of muqarnas, or
stalactite-like decoration that would later be an important
element of Islamic architectural ornamentation.
Architectural Decoration
Early Islamic architecture is most original in its decora-
tion. Mosaics and wall paintings followed the practices of
antiquity and were primarily employed in Syria, Palestine,
and Spain. Stone sculpture existed, but stucco sculpture,
rst limited to Iran, spread rapidly throughout the early
Islamic world. Not only were stone or brick walls covered
with large panels of stucco sculpture, but this technique
was used for sculpture in the round in the Umayyad pal-
aces of Qasr al-Hayr West and Khirbat al-Mafjar. The
latter was a comparatively short-lived technique, although
it produced some of the few instances of monumental
155
Dome of the mihrab in the Great Mosque of Crdoba, Spain, c. 961. Fritz
Henle/Photo Researchers
sculpture anywhere in the early Middle Ages. A variety of
techniques borrowed from the industrial arts were used
for architectural ornamentation. The mihrab wall of al-
Qayrawan s Great Mosque , for example, was covered with
ceramics, while fragments of decorative woodwork have
been preserved in Jerusalem and Egypt .
The themes and motifs of early Islamic decoration can
be divided into three major groups. The rst kind of
156
ornamentation simply emphasizes the shape or contour of
an architectural unit. The themes used were vegetal bands
for vertical or horizontal elements, marble imitations for
the lower parts of long walls, chevrons or other types of
borders on oors and domes, and even whole trees on
the spandrels or softs (undersides) of arches as in the
Umayyad Mosque of Damascus or the Dome of the Rock;
all these motifs tend to be quite traditional, being taken
from the rich decorative vocabularies of pre-Islamic Iran
or of the ancient Mediterranean world.
The second group consists of decorative motifs for
which a concrete iconographic meaning can be given. In
the Dome of the Rock and the Umayyad Mosque of
Damascus, as well as possibly the mosques of Crdoba
and of Medina, there were probably iconographic pro-
grams. It has been shown, for example, that the huge
architectural and vegetal decorative motifs at Damascus
were meant to symbolize a sort of idealized paradise on
earth, while the crowns of the Jerusalem sanctuary are
thought to have been symbols of empires conquered by
Islam. But it is equally certain that this use of visual forms
in mosques for ideological and symbolic purposes was not
easily accepted, and most later mosques are devoid of
iconographically signicant themes. The only exceptions
fully visible are the Quranic inscriptions in the mosque of
Ibn Tulun at Cairo, which were used both as a reminder of
the faith and as an ornamental device to emphasize the
structural lines of the building. Thus the early Islamic
mosque eventually became austere in its use of symbolic
ornamentation, with the exception of the mihrab, which
was considered as a symbol of the unity of all believers.
The third type of architectural decoration consists of
large panels, most often in stucco, for which no meaning
or interpretation is yet known. These panels might be
157
called ornamental in
the sense that their
only apparent purpose
was to beautify the
buildings in which
they were installed,
and their relationship
to the architecture is
arbitrary. The Mshatta
facades decoration of
a huge band of trian-
gles is, for instance,
quite independent of
the buildings archi-
tectural parts. Next to
Mshatta, the most
important series of
examples of the third
type of ornamentation
come from Samarra,
although striking
examples are also to be found at Khirbat al-Mafjar, Qasr
al-Hayr East and West, al-Fustat, Siraf, and Nishapur. Two
decorative motifs were predominately used on these pan-
els: a great variety of vegetal motifs and geometric forms.
Copied consistently from Morocco to Central Asia, the
aesthetic principles of this latter type of a complex overall
design inuenced the development of the principle of ara-
besque ornamentation.
Triangle stone relief from the facade of Mshatta in Jordan, early 8th century; in
the Museum of Islamic Art, Pergamon Museum, National Museums of Berlin.
Courtesy of the Islamisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
158
Decorative Arts
Very little is known about early Islamic gold and silver
objects, although their existence is mentioned in many
texts as well as suggested by the wealth of the Muslim
princes. Except for a large number of silver plates and
ewers belonging to the Sasanian tradition, nothing has
remained.
For entirely different reasons it is impossible to pres-
ent any signicant generalities about the art of textiles in
the early Islamic period. Problems of authenticity are few.
Dating from the 10th century are a large number of Buyid
silks, a group of funerary textiles with plant and animal
motifs as well as poetic texts. Very little order has yet been
made of an enormous mass of often well-dated textile frag-
ments, and therefore, except for the Buyid silks, it is still
impossible to identify any one of the textile types men-
tioned in early medieval literary sources. Furthermore,
since it can be assumed that pre-Islamic textile factories
were taken over by the Muslims and since it is otherwise
known that textiles were easily transported from one area
of the Muslim world to the other or even beyond it, it is
still very difcult to dene Islamic styles as opposed to
Byzantine or to Coptic ones.
The most important medium of early Islamic decora-
tive arts is pottery. Initially Muslims continued to sponsor
whatever varieties of ceramics had existed before their
arrival. Probably in the last quarter of the 8th century new
and more elaborate types of glazed pottery were produced.
This new development did not replace the older and sim-
pler types of pottery but added a new dimension to the art
of Islamic ceramics. This section treats only the most gen-
eral characteristics of Islamic ceramics.
The area of initial technical innovation seems to have
been Iraq. Trade with Central Asia brought Chinese
159
ceramics to Mesopotamia, and Islamic ceramists sought
to imitate them. It is probably in Iraq, therefore, that the
technique of lustre glazing was rst developed in the
Muslim world. This gave the surface of a clay object a
metallic, shiny appearance. Egypt also played a leading
part in the creation of the new ceramics. Since the earliest
datable lustre object (a glass goblet with the name of the
governor who ruled in 773) was Egyptian, some scholars
feel that it was in Egypt and not Iraq that lustre was rst
used. Early pottery was also produced in northeastern
Iran, where excavations at Afrasiyab (Samarkand) and
Nishapur have brought to light a new art of painted under-
glaze pottery. Its novelty was not so much in the technique
of painting designs on the slip and covering them with a
transparent glaze as in the variety of subjects employed.
While new ceramic techniques may have been sought
to imitate other mediums (mostly metal) or other styles of
pottery (mostly Chinese), the decorative devices rapidly
became purely and unmistakably Islamic in style. A wide
variety of motifs were combined: vegetal arabesques or
single owers and trees; inscriptions, usually legible and
consisting of proverbs or of good wishes; animals that
were usually birds drawn from the vast folkloric past of
the Near East; occasionally human gures drawn in a strik-
ingly abstract fashion; geometric designs; all-over abstract
patterns; single motifs on empty elds; and simple splashes
of colour, with or without underglaze sgrafto designs
(i.e., designs incised or sketched on the body or the slip of
the object). All of these motifs were used on both the high-
quality ceramics of Nishapur and Samarkand as well as on
Islamic folk pottery.
Although ceramics has appeared to be the most char-
acteristic medium of expression in the decorative arts
during the early Islamic period, it has only been because of
the greater number of preserved objects. Glass was as
160
important, but examples have been less well preserved. A
tradition of ivory carving developed in Spain, and the
objects dating from the last third of the 10th century
onward attest to the high quality of this uniquely Iberian
art. Many of these carved ivories certainly were made for
princes; therefore it is not surprising that their decorative
themes were drawn from the whole vocabulary of princely
art known through Umayyad painting and sculpture of the
early 8th century. These ivory carvings are also important
in that they exemplify the fact that an art of sculpture in
the round never totally disappeared in the Muslim world
at least in small objects.
Assessment
There are three general points that seem to characterize
the art of the early Islamic period. It can rst be said that
it was an art that sought self-consciously, like the culture
sponsoring it, to create artistic forms that would be iden-
tiable as being different from those produced in preceding
or contemporary non-Islamic artistic traditions. Although
initially some arts used or adapted other traditions, in
ceramics and the use of calligraphic ornamentation, the
early Islamic artist invented new techniques and a new
decorative vocabulary. Whatever the nature of the phe-
nomenon, it was almost always an attempt to identify itself
visually as unique and different. Since there was initially
no concept about what should constitute an Islamic tradi-
tion in the visual arts, the early art of the Muslims often
looks like only a continuation of earlier artistic styles,
forms, subjects, and techniques. Many mosaics, silver
plates, or textiles, therefore, were not considered to be
Islamic until the late 20th century. In order to be under-
stood, then, as examples of the art of a new culture, these
early buildings and objects have to be seen in the complete
161
context in which they were created. When so seen they
appear as conscious choices by the new Islamic culture
from its immense artistic inheritance.
A second point of denition concerns the question of
whether there is an early Islamic style or perhaps even sev-
eral styles in some sort of succession. The fascinating fact
is that there is a clear succession only in those artistic fea-
tures that are Islamic inventionsnongurative ornament
and ceramics. Elsewhere, especially in palace art, the
Muslim world sought to relate itself to an earlier and more
universal tradition of princely art; its monuments, there-
fore, are less Islamic than typological.
Finally, the geographical peculiarities of early Islamic
art must be reiterated. Its centres were Syria, Iraq, Egypt,
northwestern Iran, and Spain. Of these, Iraq was probably
the most originally creative, and it is from Iraq that a pecu-
liarly Islamic visual koine (a commonly accepted and
understood system of forms) was derived and spread
throughout the Islamic world. This development, of
course, is logical since the capital of the early empire and
some of the rst purely Muslim cities were in Iraq. In
western Iran, in Afghanistan, in northern Mesopotamia,
and in Morocco the more atypical and local artistic tradi-
tions were more or less affected by the centralized imperial
system of Iraq. This tension between a general pan-Islamic
vocabulary and a variable number of local vocabularies was
to remain a constant throughout the history of Islamic art.
MIDDLE PERIOD
The middle period in the development of Islamic art
extends roughly from the year 1000 to 1500, when a strong
central power with occasional regional political indepen-
dence was replaced by a bewildering mosaic of overlapping
dynasties. Ethnically this was the time of major Turkish
162
and Mongol invasions that brought into the Muslim world
new peoples and institutions. At the same time, Imazighen
(Berbers), Kurds, and Iranians, who had been within the
empire from the beginning of Islam, began to play far more
effective historical and cultural roles, shortlived for the
Kurds, but uniquely important for the Iranians. Besides
political and ethnic confusion, there was also religious and
cultural confusion during the middle period. The 10th cen-
tury, for example, witnessed the transformation of the Shiite
heterodoxy into a major political and possibly cultural phe-
nomenon, while the extraordinary development taken by
the personal and social mysticism known as Susm modi-
ed enormously the nature of Muslim piety. Culturally the
most signicant development was perhaps that of Persian
literature as a highly original new verbal expression existing
alongside the older Arabic literary tradition. Finally, the
middle period was an era of expansion in all areas except
Spain, which was completely lost to the Muslims in 1492
with the conquest of the Kingdom of Granada by Ferdinand
II and Isabella. Anatolia and the Balkans, the Crimea, much
of Central Asia and northern India, and parts of eastern
Africa all became new Islamic provinces. In some cases this
expansion was the result of conquests, but in others it had
been achieved through missionary work.
The immense variety of impulses that affected the
Muslim world during these ve centuries was one of the
causes of the bewildering artistic explosion that also charac-
terizes the middle period. Although much work has been
done on individual monuments, scholarship is still in its
infancy. It is particularly difcult, therefore, to decide on the
appropriate means of organizing this information: by geo-
graphical or cultural areas (e.g., Iran, Egypt, Morocco), by
individual dynasties (e.g., Seljuqs, Timurids), by periods (e.g.,
13th century before the Mongol invasions), or even by social
163
categories (e.g., the art of princes, the art of cities). Thus, the
ve following divisions of Fatimid, Seljuq, Western Islamic,
Mamluk, and Mongol Iran (Il-Khanid and Timurid) art are
partly arbitrary and to a large extent tentative. Their respec-
tive importance also varies, for what is known as Seljuq art
certainly overwhelms almost all others in its importance.
Fatimid art (9091171)
The Fatimids were technically an Arab dynasty profess-
ing with missionary zeal the beliefs of the Ismaili sect
of the Shiite branch of Islam. The dynasty
was established in Tunisia and Sicily in
909. In 969 the Fatimids moved to
Egypt and founded the city of
Cairo. They soon controlled Syria
and Palestine. In the latter part
of the 11th century, however,
the Fatimid empire began to
disintegrate internally and
externally; the nal demise
occurred in 1171. But it is not
known which of the obvious
components of the Fatimid
world was more signicant
in inuencing the devel-
opment of the visual
arts: its heterodoxy, its
Egyptian location, its
missionary relationship
with almost all provinces
of Islam, or the fact that
during its heyday in the
11th century it was the
Bronze grifn, 12th century; in
the Museo dellOpera del Duomo,
Pisa, Italy. Scala/Art Resource,
New York
164
only wealthy Islamic centre and could thus easily gather
artisans and art objects from all over the world.
Architecture
The great Fatimid mosques of Cairoal-Azhar (started
in 970) and al-Hakim (c. 100203)were designed in the
traditional hypostyle plan with axial cupolas. It is only in
such architectural details as the elaborately composed
facade of al-Hakim, with its corner towers and vaulted
portal, that innovations appear, for most earlier mosques
did not have large formal gates, nor was much attention
previously given to the composition of the exterior
facade. The Fatimids architectural traditionalism was
certainly a conscious attempt to perpetuate the existing
aesthetic system.
Although much less is known about it, the Great Palace
of the Fatimids belonged to the tradition of the enormous
palace-cities typical of the Abbasids. Mediterranean rather
than Iranian inuences, however, played a greater part in
the determination of its uses and functions. The whole city
of Cairo (Arabic: al-Qahirah, meaning the Victorious),
on the other hand, has many symbolic and visual aspects
that suggest a willful relationship to Baghdad.
The originality of Fatimid architecture does not lie in
works sponsored by the caliphs themselves, even though
Cairos well-preserved gates and walls of the second half of
the 11th century are among the best examples of early
medieval military architecture. It is rather the patronage
of lower ofcials and of the bourgeoisie, if not even of the
humbler classes, that was responsible for the most inter-
esting Fatimid buildings. The mosques of al-Aqmar (1125)
and of al-Salih (c. 1160) are among the rst examples of
monumental small mosques constructed to serve local
needs. Even though their internal arrangement is quite
165
traditional, their plans were adapted to the space available
in the urban centre. These mosques were elaborately dec-
orated on the exterior, exhibiting a conspicuousness
absent from large hypostyle mosques.
A second innovation in Fatimid architecture was the
tremendous development of mausoleums. This may be
explained partially by Shiisms emphasis on the succes-
sion of holy men, but the development of these buildings
in terms of both quality and quantity indicates that other
inuential social and religious issues were also involved.
Most of the mausoleums were simple square buildings sur-
mounted by a dome. Many of these have survived in Cairo
and Aswan. Only a few, such as the mashhad at Aswan, are
somewhat more elaborate, with side rooms.
The Fatimids introduced, or developed, only two
major constructional techniques: the systematization of
the four-centred keel arch and the squinch. The latter
innovation is of greater consequence because the squinch
became the most common means of passing from a square
to a dome, although pendentives were known as well. A
peculiarly Egyptian development was the muqarnas
squinch, which consisted of four units: a niche bracketed
by two niche segments, superimposed with an additional
niche. The complex prole of the muqarnas became an
architectural element in itself used for windows, while the
device of using niches and niche segments remained typi-
cal of Egyptian decorative design for centuries. It still is
impossible to say whether the muqarnas was invented in
Egypt or inspired by other architectural traditions (most
likely Iranian). Fatimid domes were smooth or ribbed and
developed a characteristic keel prole.
Stone sculpture, stucco work, and carved wood were
used for architectural decorations. The Fatimids also
employed mosaicists, who mostly worked in places like
166
Jerusalem, where they imitated or repaired earlier mosaic
murals . Many fragments of Fatimid wall paintings have
survived in Egypt. Most of them, however, are too small
to allow for making any iconographic or stylistic conclu-
sions, with the exception of the mid-12th-century
ceiling of the Cappella
Palatina at Palermo.
Built by the Norman
kings of Sicily, the pal-
ace chapel was almost
certainly decorated by
Fatimid artists, or at
least the artists
adhered to Fatimid
models. The hundreds
of facets in the muqar-
nas ceiling were
painted, notably with
many purely ornamen-
tal vegetal and
zoomorphic designs.
Stylistically inuenced
by Iraqi Abbasid
art, these paintings
are innovative in
their more spatially
aware representation
of personages and of
animals. The stunning
abstraction of the
architectural decora-
tion at Samarra tends
to give way to more
naturalistically con-
ceived vegetal and
Ceiling of the Cappella Palatina,
Palermo, Sicily. The chapel was built
by the Norman kings of Sicily and
decorated by Fatimid artists. M.
Desjardins/Realities
167
animal designs; occasionally whole narrative scenes appear
carved on wood. Another decorative trend is especially
used on 12th-century mihrabs: explicitly complicated geo-
metric patterns, usually based on stars, which in turn
generate octagons, hexagons, triangles, and rectangles.
Geometry becomes a sort of network in the midst of
which small vegetal units continue to remain, often as
inlaid pieces. Long inscriptions written in very elaborate
calligraphies also became a typical form of architectural
decoration.
A clear separation must be made between the decora-
tive arts sought by Fatimid princes and the arts produced
within their empire. Little has been preserved of the for-
mer, notably a small number of superb ewers in rock
crystal. A text has survived, however, that describes the
imperial treasures looted in the middle of the 11th century
by dissatised mercenary troops. It lists gold, silver,
enamel, and porcelain objects that have all been lost, as
well as textiles. The inventory also records that the
Coronation mantle of King Roger II of Sicily, gold embroidery and pearls on
a red silk ground, 1133; in the Hofburg, Vienna. Courtesy of the Hofburg
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
168
Fatimids had in their possession many works of Byzantine,
Chinese, and even Greco-Roman provenance. Altogether,
then, it seems that the imperial art of the Fatimids was
part of a sort of international royal taste that downplayed
cultural or political differences.
Ceramics, on the other hand, were primarily produced
by local urban schools and were not an imperial art. The
most celebrated type of Fatimid wares were lustre-painted
ceramics from Egypt itself. A large number of artisans
names have been preserved, thereby indicating the grow-
ing prestige of these craftsmen and the aesthetic
importance of their pottery. Most of the surviving lustre
ceramics are plates on which the decoration of the main
surface has been emphasized. The decorative themes used
were quite varied and included all the traditional Islamic
ones: e.g., calligraphy, vegetal and animal motifs, ara-
besques. The most distinguishing feature of these Fatimid
ceramics, however, is the representation of the human g-
ure. Some of these ceramics have been decorated with
simplied copies of illustrations of the princely themes,
but others have depictions of scenes of Egyptian daily life.
Book Illustration
Manifestations of nonprincely Fatimid art also included
the art of book illustration. The few remaining fragments
illustrate that probably after the middle of the 11th cen-
tury there developed an art of representation other than
the style used to illustrate princely themes. This was a
more illusionistic style that still accompanied the tradi-
tional ornamental one in the same manner as in the
paintings on ceramics.
In summary it would appear that Fatimid art was a
curiously transitional one. Although much inuenced
by earlier Islamic and non-Islamic Mediterranean styles,
the Fatimids devised new structural systems and developed
169
a new manner of painting representational subjects,
which became characteristic of all Muslim art during the
12th century.
Seljuq Art
During the last decades of the 10th century, at the Central
Asian frontiers of Islam, a migratory movement of Turkic
peoples began that was to affect the whole Muslim world
up to and including Egypt. The dominant political force
among these peoples was the dynasty of the Seljuqs, but it
was not the only one; nor can it be demonstrated, as far as
the arts are concerned, that it was the major source of
patronage in the period to be discussed anywhere but in
Anatolia in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Seljuq empire,
therefore, consisted of a succession of dynasties, and all
but one (the Ayyubids of Syria, Egypt, and northern
Mesopotamia) were Turkic.
A complex feudal system was established and centred
on urban areas. Cities were established or expanded, par-
ticularly in western Iran, Anatolia, and Syria. Militant
Muslims, the Seljuqs also sought to revive Muslim ortho-
doxy. Although politically unruly and complicated in their
relationships to one another, the successive and partly
overlapping dynasties of the Ghaznavids, Ghurids, the
Great Seljuqs, Qarakhanids, Zangids, Ayyubids, Seljuqs of
Rum, and Khwarezm-Shahs (considering only the major
ones) seem to have created a comparatively unied culture
from India to Egypt. The art of the Seljuq period, how-
ever, is difcult to discuss coherently both because of the
wealth of examples and because of the lack of synchroni-
zation between various technical and regional
developments. This complex world fell apart under the
impact of the Mongol invasions that, from 1220 until 1260,
swept through the Muslim lands of the Near East.
170
Characteristic Architectural Forms
The functions of monumental architecture in the Seljuq
period were considerably modied. Large congregational
mosques were still built. The earliest Seljuq examples
occur in the two major new provinces of IslamAnatolia
and northwestern Indiaas well as in the established
Muslim region of western Iran. In some areas, such as the
Esfahan region, congregational mosques were rebuilt,
while in other parts of Islam, such as Syria or Egypt, where
there was no need for new large mosques, older ones were
repaired and small ones were built.
A curious side aspect of the program of building,
rebuilding, or decorating mosques was the extraordinary
development of minarets. Particularly in Iran, dozens of
minarets are preserved from the 12th and 13th centuries,
while the mosques to which they had been attached have
disappeared. It is as though the visual function of the min-
aret was more important than the religious institution to
which it was attached.
Small or large, mausoleums increased in numbers and
became at this time the ubiquitous monument they
appear to be. Most of the mausoleums, such as the tomb
tower of Abu Yazid al-Bistami at Bastam, were dedicated
to holy menboth contemporary Muslim saints and all
sorts of holy men dead for centuries (even pre-Islamic
holy men, especially biblical prophets, acquired a monu-
ment). The most impressive mausoleums, however, ones
like the one of Sanjar at Merv, were built for royalty.
Pilgrimages were organized and in many places hardly
mentioned until then as holy places (e.g., Meshed,
Bastam, Mosul, Aleppo); a whole monastic establishment
serving as a centre for the distribution of alms was erected
with hostels and kitchens for the pilgrims.
171
Although enormously expanded, mosques, minarets,
and mausoleums were not new types of Islamic architec-
ture. The madrasah , however, was a new building type.
There is much controversy as to why and how it really
developed. Although early examples have been discovered
in Iran, such as the 11th-century madrasah of Khargird in
Iran and at Samarkand, it is from Anatolia, Syria, and
Egypt that most of the information about the madrasah
has been derived. In the latter regions it was usually a pri-
vately endowed establishment reserved for one or two of
the schools of jurisprudence of orthodox Islam. It had to
have rooms for teaching and living quarters for the stu-
dents and professors. Often the tomb of the founder was
attached to the madrasah.
An impressive development of secular architecture
occurred under the
Seljuqs. The most char-
acteristic building of the
time was the citadel , or
urban fortress , through
which the new princes
controlled the usually
alien city they held
in ef. The largest
citadels, like those of
Cairo and Aleppo, were
whole cities with
palaces, mosques, sanc-
tuaries, and baths.
Others, like the Citadel
of Damascus, were
simpler constructions.
Occasionally, as in the
Euphrates valley, single
Tomb tower at the shrine of Abu
Yazid al-Bistami at Bastam, Iran,
1313. Josephine Powell, Rome
172
Brickwork facade of the 11th-century caravansary Ribat-i Malik, Uzbekistan.
Courtesy of the General Direction of Museums and Historical
Monuments, Ministry of Culture and Arts, Tehran, Iran
castles were built, possibly in imitation of those con-
structed by the Christian Crusaders. Walls surrounded
most cities, and all of them were built or rebuilt during the
Seljuq period.
Little is known about Seljuq palaces or private resi-
dences in general. In Afghanistan and Central Asia,
however, excavations at Tirmidh, Lashkari Bazar, and
Ghazni brought to light a whole group of large royal pal-
aces erected in the 11th and early 12th centuries.
Commercial architecture became very important.
Individual princes and cities probably were trying to
attract business by erecting elaborate caravansaries on the
main trade routes such as Ribat-i Malik built between
Samarkand and Bukhara in Uzbekistan. The most spec-
tacular caravansaries were built in the 13th century in
173
Anatolia. Equally impressive, however, although less
numerous, are the caravansaries erected in eastern Iran
and northern Iraq.
The forms of architecture developed by the Seljuqs
were remarkably numerous. Since the Iranian innovations
dating from the 11th century and rst half of the 12th cen-
tury are the earliest, they will be discussed rst.
Architecture in Iran
Even though it is not entirely typical, the justly celebrated
Great Mosque of Esfahan was one of the most inuential
of all early Seljuq religious structures. Probably completed
about 1130 after a long and complicated history of rebuild-
ings, it consisted of a large courtyard on which opened
four large vaulted halls known as eyvans; the eyvans cre-
ated the compositional axes of each side of the court. On
the side of the qiblah the hall of the main eyvan was fol-
lowed by a huge cupola. The area between eyvans was
subdivided into a large number of square bays covered by
domes. The Esfahan mosque also had a unique feature: on
the north side a single domed hall positioned on the main
axis of the building was in all probability a formal hall for
princes to change their clothes before entering into the
sanctuary of the mosque.
The two features of the Great Mosque at Esfahan
that became characteristic of Seljuq mosques were the
eyvan and the dome. The eyvan was not restricted to just
mosques, but it also appears in palaces (Lashkari Bazar),
caravansaries (Rebat-e Sharaf), and in madrasahs. The
eyvan was, in other words, a unit of architectural compo-
sition that had no specic use and, therefore, no meaning.
In the mosques of the 12th century, often four eyvans
were used. This kind of composition had two principal
effects. One was to make the courtyard the centre of the
174
building. The other was that it broke up into four areas
what had for centuries
been a characteristic of
the mosque: its single,
unied space.
Whether large or
small, cupolas or domes
were used in mosques,
caravansaries, and pal-
aces. They were the
main architectural fea-
tures of almost all
mausoleums, where
they were set over circu-
lar or polygonal rooms.
Two characteristic
Iranian architectural
forms are not present in
the Great Mosque of
Esfahan but occur else-
where in the city. One is
the tower, sometimes in
the form of a minaret,
and the other, which
exists only in Esfahan in
a much-damaged state,
is the pishtaq , or a for-
mal gateway that served
to emphasize a build-
ings presence and
importance.
The minaret of Jam, Afghanistan, 11161202. Roland and Sabrina
MichaudRapho/Photo Researchers
175
Domes and eyvans indicate the central concern of
Iranian construction during the Seljuq period: vaulting in
baked brick became the main vehicle for any monumental
construction (mud brick was used for secondary parts of a
building, frequently for certain secular structures). A large
and forcefully composed octagonal base developed the
muqarnas squinch from a purely ornamental feature into
one wherein both structural and decorative functions com-
bined. In some later buildings, such as the mausoleum of
Sanjar at Merv, a system of ribs was used to vault an octago-
nal zone. Seljuq architects sought to make their domes
visible from afar and for this reason invented the double
dome. Its outer shell was raised on a high drum, while the
interior kept the traditional sequence: square base, zone of
transition, and dome. Using this structural device, there-
fore, exterior height was achieved without making the
exterior dome too heavy and without complicating the task
of decorating the interior, always a problem in countries
like Iran with limited supplies of wood for scaffolding.
Architectural decoration was intimately tied to struc-
ture. Two mediums predominated. One was stucco, which
continued to be used to cover large wall surfaces. The
other was brick. Originating in the 10th-century architec-
ture of northeastern Iran, brick came to be employed as a
medium of construction as well as a medium of decora-
tion. The complex decorative designs worked out in brick
often had a rigidly geometric effect. Especially cut shapes
of terra-cotta and brick, frequently produced in unusual
sizes, served to soften these geometric patterns by modi-
fying their tactile impact and by introducing additional
curved or beveled lines to the straight lines of geometry.
Most of the decorative designs tended to be subordi-
nated to geometry, and even calligraphic or vegetal
patterns were affected by a seemingly mathematically
controlled aesthetic. It has been suggested that these
176
complex geometric designs were a result of an almost mys-
tical passion for number theories that were popularized in
11th-century Iran by such persons as the scholar and scien-
tist al-Biruni or the poet-mathematician Omar Khayyam.
But even if the impulses for geometric design were origi-
nally created at the highest intellectual level, the designs
themselves rapidly became automatic patterns.
Architecture in Iraq, Syria, and Anatolia
In Iraq, northern Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt (after
1171), the architectural monuments do not, on the whole,
appear as overwhelmingly impressive as those of Iran,
largely because the taste of Umayyad and Abbasid times
continued to dominate mosque architecture. It is in the
construction of new building types, particularly the
madrasah, as mentioned previously, that the most origi-
nality is apparent.
The main achievement of Ayyubid, Zangid, or Seljuq
architecture in the Fertile Crescent was the translating
into stone of new structural systems rst developed in
brick. The most impressive instance of this lies in the
technically complex muqarnas domes and half domes or in
the muqarnas pendentives of Syrian buildings. Elaborate
mihrabs were also made of multicoloured stones that were
carefully cut to create impressive patterns. The architec-
ture of the Fertile Crescent, therefore, was still dominated
by the sheer force of stone as a material for both construc-
tion as well as decoration, and therefore the architecture
of these regions was more Mediterranean in effect than
was that of Iran.
This somewhat Mediterranean tendency was also evi-
dent in the 13th-century architecture of Seljuq Anatolia
(now part of Turkey). This new province of Islam was rap-
idly populated with new immigrants and consequently
177
gathered themes and motifs from throughout the Muslim
world, as well as from the several native Anatolian tradi-
tions of Byzantine, Armenian, and Georgian architecture.
The resulting assimilation of styles produced an over-
whelmingly original architecture, for each building in
Konya , Kayseri, Sivas, Divrigi, Erzurum, or on the roads
between them is a unique monument.
Functionally the buildings in Anatolia do not differ
from those in other parts of the Muslim world. All
the structural forms found in Syria and Iran can be found
in Anatolia as well, although they have often been adapted
to local materials.
Three uniquely Ana-
tolian architectural
features, however, can
be distinguished.
One was limited to
Konya at this time
but would have an
important widespread
development later
on. As it appears
in the Ince or
Karatay medrese s
(madrasahs), it con-
sists of the trans-
formation of the
central courtyard
into a domed space
while maintaining
the eyvan . Thus the
centralized aspect of
the eyvan plan
becomes architec-
Facade of the main portal of Ince Minare
at Konya, Tur., 1258, showing its sculp-
tural ornamentation and (right) the
decorative brickwork of the minaret.
Ara Guler, Istanbul
178
turally explicit. The second feature is the creation of a
facade that usually consisted of a high central portal
often framed by two minaretswith an elaborately
sculpted decorative composition that extended to two
corner towers. The third distinguishing feature of
Anatolian Seljuq architecture is the complexity of the
types of funerary monuments that were constructed.
From the point of view of construction, most of
Anatolian architecture is of stone. In Konya and a number
of eastern Anatolian instances, brick was used. Barrel
vaults, groin vaults, muqarnas vaults, squinch domes, pen-
dentive domes, and the new pendentive known as Turkish
triangle (a transformation of the curved space of the tra-
ditional pendentive into a fanlike set of long and narrow
triangles built at an angle from each other) were all used by
Anatolian builders, thereby initiating the great develop-
ment of vault construction in Ottoman architecture.
Architectural decoration consisted primarily in the
stone sculpture found on the facades of religious and secu-
lar buildings. Most Anatolian themes were original,
although some exhibit Armenian and possibly Western
inuences. In addition to the traditional geometric, epi-
graphic, and vegetal motifs, a decorative sculpture in the
round or in high relief was created that included many
representations of human gures and especially animals.
In summing up the architectural development of the
Seljuq period, three points seem to be particularly sig-
nicant. One is the expansion of building typology and
the erection of new monumental architectural forms,
thus illustrating an expansion of patronage and a grow-
ing complexity of taste. The second point is that,
regardless of the quality and interest of monuments in
the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, and Anatolia, the most
inventive and exciting architecture in the 11th and 12th
centuries was that of Iran. But, far more than
179
in the preceding period, regional needs and regional
characteristics seem to predominate over synchronic
and pan-Islamic ones. Finally, there was a striking growth
of architectural decoration both in sophistication of
design and in variation of technique.
Other Arts
Although probably not as varied as architecture, the other
arts of the Seljuq period also underwent tremendous
changes. Glass and textiles continued to be major medi-
ums during the Seljuq period. Ceramics underwent many
changes, especially in Iran, where lustre painting became
widespread and where new techniques were developed for
colouring pottery. Furthermore, the growth of tile decora-
tion created a new dimension for the art of ceramics.
Inlaid metalwork became an important technique.
First produced at Herat in Iran (now in Afghanistan) in
the middle of the 12th century, this type of decoration
spread westward, and a series of local schools were estab-
lished in various regions of the Seljuq domain. In this
technique, the surfaces of utilitarian metallic objects
(candlesticks, ewers, basins, kettles, and so forth) were
engraved, and then silver was inlaid in the cut-out areas
to make the decorative design more clearly visible.
Manuscript illustration also became an important art.
Scientic books, including the medical manuals of
Dioscorides and of Galen, or literary texts such as the
picaresque adventures of a verbal genius known as the
Maqamat, were produced with narrative illustrations
throughout the text.
All of the technical novelties of the Seljuqs seem to
have had one main purpose: to animate objects and books
and to provide them with clearly visible and identiable
images. Even the austere art of calligraphy became occa-
sionally animated with letters ending in human gures.
180
The main centres for producing these arts were located
in Iran and the Fertile Crescent. It would seem from a
large number of art objects whose patrons are known
that the main market for these works of art was the
mercantile bourgeoisie of the big cities and not the
princes. Seljuq decorative arts and book illustration,
therefore, reect an urban taste. The themes and motifs
used were particularly numerous. In books they tend to
be illustrations of the text, even if a manuscript such as
the Schefer Maqamat
(1237) sought to com-
bine a strict narrative
with a fairly naturalistic
panorama of contem-
porary life.
The main identi-
able group of miniature
painters was the so-
called Baghdad school
of the rst half of the
13th century. The group
should be called the
Arab school because the
subject matter and style
employed could have
been identied with any
one of the major artistic
centres of Egypt and the
Fertile Crescent. The
miniatures painted by
these artists are charac-
terized by the colourful
and often humorous
way in which the urban-
Discussion near a village, from the
43rd maqamah of the Maqamat
(Assemblies) of al-Hariri, minia-
ture painted by Yahya ibn Mahmud
al-Wasiti, 1237; in the Bibliothque
Nationale, Paris. Courtesy of the
Bibliothque Nationale, Paris
181
Drawing from a manuscript of the Maqamat, 1323; in the British Museum
(MS. Add 7293, f. 285v). Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum
ized Arab is depicted. The compositions, often lacking in
any strong aesthetic intent, are documentary caricatures
in which the artist has recorded the telling and recogniz-
able gesture or a known and common setting or activity. In
many images or compositional devices one can recognize
the impact of the richer Christian Mediterranean tradi-
tion of manuscript illumination.
Western Islamic Art: Moorish
The 11th to 13th centuries were not peaceful in the
Maghrib. Amazigh (Berber) dynasties overthrew each
182
The Rabat Gate, Marrakech, Mor., late 12th century, Almoravid period.
Josephine Powell, Rome
other in Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula. The Christian
reconquest gradually diminished Muslim holdings in Spain
and Portugal, and Tunisia was ruined during the Hilali
invasion when Bedouin tribes were sent by the Fatimids to
prevent local independence.
Two types of structures characterize the Almoravid
(10561147) and Almohad (11301269) periods in Morocco
and Spain. One comprises the large, severely designed
Moroccan mosques such as those of Tinmel, of Hasan in
Rabat , or of the Kutubiyyah (Koutoubia) in Marrakech .
They are all austere hypostyles with tall, massive, square
minarets. The other distinctive type of architecture was
that built for military purposes, including fortications
and, especially, massive city gates with low-slung horseshoe
183
arches, such as the Oudaia Gate at Rabat (12th century) or
the Rabat Gate at Marrakech (12th century). Palaces built
in central Algeria by minor dynasties such as the Zirids
were more in the Fatimid tradition of Egypt than in the
Almoravid and Almohad traditions of western Islam. Very
little is known or has been studied about North African
arts other than architecture because the Amazigh dynas-
ties did not foster the arts of luxury.
In North Africa the artistic milieu did not change
much in the 14th and 15th centuries. Hypostyle mosques
such as the Great Mosque of Algiers continued to be
built; madrasahs were constructed with more elaborate
plans; the Bu Inaniyah madrasah at Fs is one of the few
monumental buildings of the period. A few mausoleums
were erected such as the so-called Marinid tombs near
Fs (second half of the 14th century) or the complex of
Chella at Rabat (mostly 14th century). Architectural dec-
oration in stucco or sculpted stone was usually limited to
elaborate geometric patterns, epigraphic themes, and a
few vegetal motifs.
A stunning exception to the austerity of North African
architecture exists in Spain in the Alhambra palace com-
plex at Granada. The hill site of the Alhambra had been
occupied by a citadel and possibly by a palace since the
11th century, but little of these earlier constructions has
remained. In the 14th century two successive princes,
Yusuf I and Muhammad V, transformed the hill into their
ofcial residence. Outside of a number of gates built like
triumphal arches and several ruined forecourts, only
three parts of the palace remain intact. First there is the
long Court of the Myrtles leading to the huge Hall of
Ambassadors located in one of the exterior towers. This
was the part of the Alhambra built by Yusuf I. Then there
is the Court of the Lions, with its celebrated lion foun-
tain in the centre. Numerous rooms open off this court,
184
Court of the Lions, Alhambra, Granada, Spain, 14th century. Raffaello
BenciniScala/Art Resource, New York
185
including the elaborately decorated Hall of the Two
Sisters and the Hall of the Abencerrajes. The third part,
slightly earlier than the rst two, is the Generalife; it is a
summer residence built higher up the hill and surrounded
by gardens with fountains, pavilions, and portico walks.
The Alhambra is especially important because it is one
of the few palaces to have survived from medieval Islamic
times. It illustrates superbly a number of architectural
concerns occasionally documented in literary references:
the contrast between an unassuming exterior and a richly
decorated interior to achieve an effect of secluded or pri-
vate brilliance; the constant presence of water, either as a
single, static basin or as a dynamic fountain; the inclusion
of oratories and baths; the lack of an overall plan (the units
are simply attached to each other).
The architectural decoration of the Alhambra was
mostly of stucco. Some of it is at, but the extraordi-
narily complex cupolas of muqarnas, such as in the Hall of
the Two Sisters, appear as huge multifaceted diadems.
The decoration of the Alhambra becomes a sort of para-
dox as well as a tour de force. Weighty, elaborately
decorated ceilings, for example, are supported by frail
columns or by walls pierced with many windows (light
permeates almost every part of the large, domed halls).
Much of the design and decoration of the Alhambra is
symbolically oriented. The poems that adorn the
Alhambra as calligraphic ornamentation celebrate its
cupolas as domes of heaven rotating around the prince
sitting under them. Islamic art as such ceased to be pro-
duced in Spain after 1492, when Granada, the last
Moorish kingdom in Spain, fell to the Christians.
Most of the best known monuments of western Islamic
art are buildings, although a very original calligraphy was
developed. The other arts cannot be compared in wealth
and importance either with what occurred elsewhere in
186
Islam at the same time or with earlier objects created in
Spain. There are some important examples of metalwork,
wood inlaid with ivory, and a lustre-glaze pottery known as
Hispano-Moresque ware. The fact that the latter was made
in Valencia or Mlaga after the termination of Muslim rule
demonstrates that Islamic traditions in the decorative arts
continued to be adhered to, if only partially. The term
Mudjar, therefore, is used to refer to all the things made
in a Muslim style but under Christian rule. Numerous
examples of Mudjar art exist in ceramics and textiles, as
well as in architectural monuments such as the synagogues
of Toledo and the Alcazba in Sevilla (Seville), where even
the name of the ruling Christian prince, Don Pedro, was
written in Arabic letters. The Mudjar spirit, in fact, per-
meated most of Spanish architectural ornament and
decorative arts for centuries, and its inuence can even be
found in Spanish America.
Mudjar art must be carefully distinguished from
Mozarabic art: the art of Christians under Muslim
rule. Mozarabic art primarily ourished in Spain during
the earlier periods of Muslim rule. Its major manifesta-
tions are architectural decorations, decorative objects,
and illuminated manuscripts.
Mamluk Art
The Mamluks were originally white male slaves, chiey
Turks and Circassians from the Caucasus and Central Asia,
who formed the mercenary army of the various feudal
states of Syria and Egypt. During the 13th century the
importance of this military caste grew as the older feudal
order weakened and military commanders took over power
generally as nonhereditary sultans. They succeeded in
arresting the Mongol onslaught in 1260 and, through a
187
judicious but complicated system of alliance with the
urban elite class, managed to maintain themselves in power
in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria until 1517.
During the Mamluk period Egypt and Syria were rich
commercial emporiums. This wealth explains the quality
and quantity of Mamluk art. Most of the existing monu-
ments in the old quarters of Cairo, Damascus, Tripoli, and
Aleppo are Mamluk; in Jerusalem almost everything visi-
ble on the Haram al-Sharif, outside the Dome of the Rock,
is Mamluk. Museum collections of Islamic art generally
abound with Mamluk metalwork and glass. Some of the
oldest remaining carpets are Mamluk. This creativity
required, of course, more than wealth; it also required a
certain will to transform wealth into art. This will was in
part the desire of parvenu rulers and their cohorts to be
remembered. Furthermore, architectural patronage our-
ished because of the institutionalization of the waqf, an
economic system in which investments made for holy pur-
poses were inalienable. This law allowed the wealthy to
avoid conscation of their properties at the whim of the
caliph by investing their funds in religious institutions. In
the Mamluk period, therefore, there was a multiplication
of madrasahs, khanqahs, ribats, and masjids, often with
tombs of founders attached to them. The Mamluk estab-
lishment also repaired and kept up all the institutions,
religious or secular, that had been inherited by them, as
can be demonstrated by the well-documented repairs car-
ried on in Jerusalem and Damascus.
Architecture
Although Mamluk architecture was essentially conserva-
tive in its development of building types, more originality
is evident in the constructional systems used, although
traditional structural features continued to be employed.
188
The main innovations
are of three kinds.
First, minarets
became particularly
elaborate and, toward
the end of the period,
almost absurd in
their ornamentation.
Facades were huge,
with overwhelming
portals 25 to 35 feet (7
to 11 metres) high.
A second char-
acteristically Mamluk
feature was technical
virtuosity in stone
construction. At
times this led to a
superb purity of form,
as in the Gate of the
Cotton Merchants in
Jerusalem or the complex of the Barquq mosque in Cairo.
At other times, as in the Mamluk architecture of Baybars
and Qait Bay, there was an almost wild playfulness with
forms. Another aspect of Mamluk masonry was the alter-
nation of stones of different colours to provide variations
on the surfaces of buildings.
The Mamluks created a monumental setting for Syria
and Egypt that lasted until the 20th century. It was at its
most remarkable in architecture, and nearly 3,000 major
monuments have been preserved or are known from texts
in cities from the Euphrates to Cairo. There were only
minor modications in the typology of architecture, and
even the 15th-century buildings with interiors totally cov-
ered with ornamentation have possible prototypes in the
The courtyard of the madrasah of
Sultan Hasan, Cairo, 135662. GEKS
189
Mamluk tombs, Cairo, 14th15th centuries. H. Roger-Viollet
architecture of the Seljuqs. Yet there are formal and func-
tional features that do distinguish Mamluk buildings.
One is the tendency to build structures of different func-
tions in a complex or cluster. Thus the Qalaun mosque
(128485) in Cairo has a mausoleum, a madrasah , and a
hospital erected as one architectural unit. Another char-
acteristic is the tendency of Mamluk patrons to build
their major monuments near each other. As a result, cer-
tain streets of Cairo, such as Bayn al-Qasrayn , became
galleries of architectural masterpieces.
The third element of change in Mamluk art was per-
haps the most important: almost all formal artistic
190
achievements rapidly became part of the common
vocabulary of the whole culture, thus ensuring high qual-
ity of construction and decorative technique throughout
the period.
With the exception of portals and qiblah walls, archi-
tectural decoration was usually subordinated to the
architectural elements of the design. Generally the
material of construction (usually stone) was carved with
ornamental motifs.
Other Arts
Like architecture, the other arts of the Mamluk period
achieved a high level of technical perfection but were
often lacking in originality. The so-called Baptistre de
Saint Louis (c. 1310) is the most impressive example of
inlaid metalwork preserved from this period. Several
Mamluk illustrated manuscripts, such as the Maqamat
(1334), display an amazing ornamental sense in the use of
colour on gold backgrounds. Mamluk mosque lamps pro-
vide some of the nest examples of medieval glass. None
of these examples, however, exhibits much inventiveness
of design.
Mongol Iran: Il-Khanid andTimurid Periods
Seen from the vantage point of contemporary or later
chronicles, the 13th century in Iran was a period of destruc-
tive wars and invasions. Such cities as Balkh, Nishapur, or
Rayy, which had been centres of Islamic culture for nearly
six centuries, were eradicated as the Mongol army swept
through Iran. The turning point toward some sort of sta-
bility took place in 1295 with the accession of Mahmud
Ghazan to the Mongol throne. Under him and his succes-
sors (the Il-Khan dynasty), order was reestablished
throughout Iran, and cities in northeastern Iran,
191
The Gur-e Amir (mausoleum of Timur), Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Alex
Langley/Photo Researchers
192
especially Tabriz and Soltaniyeh, became the main cre-
ative centres of the new Mongol regime. At Tabriz, for
example, the Rashidiyeh (a sort of academy of sciences
and arts to which books, scholars, and ideas from all over
the world were collected) was established in the early 14th
century.
Existing under the Mongol rulers were a number of
secondary dynasties that ourished in various provinces of
Iran: the Jalayirid dynasty, centred in Baghdad, controlled
most of western Iran; the Mozaffarid dynasty of south-
western Iran contained the cities of Esfahan, Yazd, and
Shiraz; and the Karts reigned in Khorasan. Until the last
decade of the 14th century, however, all the major cultural
centres were in western Iran. Under Timur (13361405; the
Timurid dynasty) and his successors, however, northeast-
ern Iran, especially the cities of Samarkand and Herat,
became focal points of artistic and intellectual activity. But
Timurid culture affected the whole of Iran either directly
or through minor local dynasties. Many Timurid monu-
ments, therefore, are found in western or southern Iran.
Architecture
Stylistically, Il-Khanid architecture is dened best by
buildings such as the mosque of Varamin (132226) and the
mausoleums at Sarakhs, Merv, Rad-Kan, and Maragheh.
In all of these examples, the elements of architectural
composition, decoration, and construction that had been
developed earlier were rened by Il-Khanid architects.
Eyvans were shallower but better integrated with the
courts; facades were more thoughtfully composed; the
muqarnas became more linear and varied; and coloured
tiles were used to enhance the buildings character.
The architectural masterpiece of the Il-Khanid period is
the mausoleum of ljeit at Soltaniyeh. With its double sys-
tem of galleries, eight minarets, large blue-tiled dome, and
193
Mausoleum of ljeit at Soltaniyeh, Iran, 130513, Il-Khanid period.
Josephine Powell, Rome
an interior measuring 80 feet (25 metres), it is clear that the
building was intended to be imposing. Il-Khanid attention
to impressiveness of scale also accounted for the Ali Shah
mosque in Tabriz, whose eyvan measuring 150 by 80 by 100
feet (45 by 25 by 30 metres) was meant to be the largest ever
built. The eyvan vault collapsed almost immediately after it
had been constructed, but its walls, 35 feet (10 metres) thick,
remain as a symbol of the grandiose taste of the Il-Khanids.
194
The Timurid period began architecturally in 1390 with
the sanctuary of Ahmad Yasavi in Turkistan. Between 1390
and the last works of Sultan Husayn Bayqara almost a cen-
tury later, hundreds of buildings were constructed at
Herat, many of which have been preserved, although few
have been studied except by Central Asian scholars. The
most spectacular examples of Timurid architecture are
found in Samarkand, Herat, Meshed, Khargird, Tayabad,
Baku, and Tabriz, although important Timurid structures
were also erected in southern Iran.
Architectural projects were well patronized by the
Timurids as a means to commemorate their respective
reigns. Every ruler or local governor constructed his own
sanctuaries, mosques, and, especially, memorial buildings
dedicated to holy men of the past. While the Shah-e
Zendah in Samarkanda long street of mausoleums com-
parable to the Mamluk cemetery of Cairois perhaps the
most accessible of the sites of Timurid commemorative
architecture, more spectacular ones are to be seen at
Meshed, Torbat-e Sheykh Jam, and Mazar-e Sharif.
Major Timurid buildings, such as the so-called mosque
of Bibi Khanom, the Gur-e Amir mausoleum, the mosque
of Gowhar Shad in Meshed, or the madrasahs at Khargird
and Herat, are all characterized by strong axial symmetry.
Often the facade on the inner court repeats the design of
the outer facade, and minarets are used to frame the com-
position. Changes took place in the technique of dome
construction. The muqarnas was not entirely abandoned
but was often replaced by a geometrically rigorous net of
intersecting arches that could be adapted to various shapes
by modifying the width or span of the dome.
In the Timurid period the use of colour in architecture
reached a high point. Every architectural unit was divided,
on both the exterior and interior, into panels of brilliantly
195
Mongol warriors, miniature from Rashid al-Dins History of the World,
1307; in the Edinburgh University Library, Scotland. Courtesy of the
Edinburgh University Library, Scotland
coloured tiles that sometimes were mixed with stucco or
terra-cotta architectural decorations.
Painting
A new period of Persian painting began in the Mongol era,
and, even though here and there one can recognize the
impact of Seljuq painting, on the whole it is a limited one.
Although the new style was primarily expressed in minia-
ture painting, it is known from literary sources that mural
painting ourished as well. Masterpieces of Persian litera-
ture were illustrated: rst the Shah-nameh (Book of
Kings) by the 11th-century poet Ferdowsi and then, from
the second half of the 14th century, lyrical and mystical
works, primarily those by the 12th-century poet Nezami.
Historical texts or chronicles such as the Jami al-tawarikh
196
Bahram Gur killing a dragon, illustration from the Shah-nameh (Book of
Kings) of Ferdowsi, known as the Demotte Shah-nameh, 132060, from
Tabriz, Iran; in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Courtesy of the Cleveland
Museum of Art, Ohio, Grace Rainey Rogers Fund
(Universal History of Rashid al-Din) were also illus-
trated, especially in the early Mongol period.
The rst major monument of Persian painting in the
Mongol period is a group of manuscripts of the Jami al-
tawarikh . The miniatures are historical narrative scenes.
Stylistically they are related to Chinese paintingan
influence introduced by the Mongols during the
Il-Khanid period.
Chinese influence can still be discovered in the mas-
terpiece of 14th-century Persian painting, the so-called
Demotte Shah-nameh . Illustrated between 1320 and
1360, its 56 preserved miniatures have been dispersed all
197
over the world. Its main importance lies in its being the
earliest known illustrative work to depict in a strikingly
dramatic fashion the meaning of the Iranian epic. Its
battle scenes, its descriptions of fights with monsters,
its enthronement scenes are all powerful representa-
tions of the colourful and often cruel legend of Iranian
kingship.
The Demotte Shah-nameh is but the most remarkable
of a whole series of 14th-century manuscripts, all of which
suggest an art of painting in search of a coherent style.
A more organized
and stylistically coher-
ent period in Persian
painting began about
1396 with the Khwaju
Kermani manuscript
and culminated between
1420 and 1440 in the
paintings produced by
the Herat school , where
the emperor Baysunqur
created an academy in
which classical Iranian
literature was codied,
copied, and illustrated.
Although several Shah-
nameh s are known from
this time, the mood of
these manuscripts is no
longer epic but lyrical.
Puppet-like gures
almost unemotionally
engage in a variety of
activities always set in
an idealized garden or
Diwan of Sultan Ahmad, pastoral
border painted by Junayd, c. 1405,
from Baghdad; in the Freer Gallery
of Art, Washington, D.C. Courtesy
of Smithsonian Institution,
Freer Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.
198
Prince Humay at the Gate of Humayuns Castle, miniature painted by
Junayd for the Khamseh of Khwaju Kermani, 1396; in the British Library
(MS. Add 18113, folio 18v). 29 20.2 cm. By permission of the British
Library
199
palace depicted against a rich gold background. It is a
world of sensuous pleasure that also embodies the themes
of a mystically interpreted lyrical poetry, for what is rep-
resented is not the real world but a divine paradise in the
guise of a royal palace or garden. These miniatures easily
became clichs, for later artists endlessly repeated ste-
reotyped formulas. But at its best this style of Persian
painting succeeds in dening something more than mere
ornamental colourfulness.
Another major change in Persian painting occurred
during the second half of the 15th century at Herat under
Husayn Bayqara. This change is associated with the rst
major painter of Islamic art, Behzad. This artists interest
in observing his environment resulted in the introduction
of more realistic poses and the introduction of numerous
details of daily life or genre elements. His works also
reect a concern for a psychological interpretation of the
scenes and events depicted.
Persian art of the Mongol period differs in a very
important way from any of the other traditions of the
middle period of Islamic art. Even though Iran, like all
other areas at that time, was not ethnically homogeneous,
its art tended to be uniquely national. In architecture
nationalism was mostly a matter of function, for during
this period the Shiites grew in importance, and new mon-
umental settings were required for their holy places.
Iranian individualism is especially apparent in painting, in
which Chinese and other foreign styles were consistently
adapted to express intensely Iranian subjects, thereby cre-
ating a uniquely Persian style.
LATE PERIOD
The last period of an Islamic artistic expression created
within a context of political and intellectual independence
200
was centred in the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires.
Although culturally very different from each other, these
three imperial states shared a common past, a common
consciousness of the nature of their ancestry and of the
artistic forms associated with it. Painters and architects
moved from one empire to the other, especially from Iran
to India; Ottoman princes wrote Persian poetry, and
Safavid rulers spoke Turkish. But most of all, they were
aware that they were much closer to each other than to
any non-Islamic cultural entity. However different their
individual artistic forms may have been, they collected
each others works, exchanged gifts, and felt that they
belonged to the same world.
Ottoman Art
The Ottomans were originally only one of the small
Turkmen principalities (beyliks) that sprang up in Anatolia
about 1300 after the collapse of Seljuq rule. In many ways,
all the beyliks shared the same culture, but it was the
extraordinary political and social attributes of the
Ottomans that led them eventually to swallow up the
other kingdoms, to conquer the Balkans, to take
Constantinople in 1453, and to control almost the whole
of the Arab world by 1520. Only in the 19th century did
this complex empire begin to crumble. Thus, while
Ottoman art, especially architecture, is best known
through the monuments in Turkey, there is, in fact, evi-
dence of Ottoman art extending from Algiers to Cairo in
North Africa, to Damascus in the Levant, and in the
Balkans from Sarajevo, Bos.-Her., to Soa, Bulg.
Architecture
The grand tradition of Ottoman architecture, established
in the 16th century, was derived from two main sources.
201
One was the rather complex development of new archi-
tectural forms that occurred all over Anatolia, especially
at Manisa, Iznik, Bursa, and Seluk in the 14th and early
15th centuries. In addition to the usual mosques, mausole-
ums, and madrasahs, a number of buildings called tekke s
Exterior of the Selim Mosque at Edirne, Tur., designed by Sinan, 156975. K.
Scholz/Shostal Associates
202
were constructed to house dervishes (members of mysti-
cal fraternities) and other holy men who lived communally.
The tekke (or zeviye) was often joined to a mosque or mau-
soleum. The entire complex was then called a klliye. All
these buildings continued to develop the domed, central-
plan structure, constructed by the Seljuqs in Anatolia. The
other source of Ottoman architecture is Christian art.
The Byzantine tradition, especially as embodied in Hagia
Sophia, became a major source of inspiration. Byzantine
inuence appears in such features as stone and brick used
together or in the use of pendentive dome construction.
Also artistically inuential were the contacts that the
early Ottomans had with Italy. Thus, in several mosques at
Bursa, Tur., there are stylistic parallels in the designs of the
exterior facade and of windows, gates, and roofs to fea-
tures found in Italian architecture. A distinctive feature of
Ottoman architecture is that it drew from both Islamic
and European artistic traditions and was, therefore, a
part of both.
The apogee of Ottoman architecture was achieved in
the great series of klliyes and mosques that still dominate
the Istanbul skyline: the Fatih klliye (146370), the
Bayezid Mosque (after 1491), the Selim Mosque (1522), the
Sehzade klliye (1548), and the Sleyman klliye (after 1550).
The Sehzade and Sleyman klliyes were built by Sinan,
the greatest Ottoman architect, whose masterpiece is the
Selim Mosque at Edirne, Tur. (156975). All of these build-
ings exhibit total clarity and logic in both plan and
elevation; every part has been considered in relation to
the whole, and each architectural element has acquired a
hierarchic function in the total composition. Whatever is
unnecessary has been eliminated. This simplicity of design
in the late 15th and 16th centuries has often been attrib-
uted to the fact that Sinan and many Ottoman architects
were rst trained as military engineers. Everything in
203
these buildings was subordinated to an imposing central
dome. A sort of cascade of descending half domes, vaults,
and ascending buttresses leads the eye up and down the
buildings exterior. Minarets, slender and numerous, frame
the exterior composition, while the open space of
Interior of the Selim Mosque at Edirne, Tur., designed by Sinan, 156975. K.
Scholz/Shostal Associates
204
(b. April 15, 1489, Agrnaz, Tur.d. July 17, 1588,
Constantinople [now Istanbul])
The most celebrated of all Ottoman architects was Sinan, whose
ideas, perfected in the construction of mosques and other build-
ings, served as the basic themes for virtually all later Turkish
religious and civic architecture.
The son of Greek Orthodox Christian parents, Sinan
entered his fathers trade as a stone mason and carpenter. In 1512,
however, ofcials of the Ottoman government entered his vil-
lage for the purpose of drafting Christian youths into the
Janissary corps. Sinan was chosen, and he began a lifelong ser-
vice to the Ottoman royal house and to the great sultan Sleyman
I (reigned 152066) in particular. Following a period of schooling
and rigorous training, Sinan became a construction ofcer in the
Ottoman army, eventually rising to chief of the artillery.
He rst revealed his talents as an architect in the 1530s by
designing and building military bridges and fortications. In
1539 he completed his rst nonmilitary building, and for the
remaining 40 years of his life he was to work as the chief archi-
tect of the Ottoman Empire at a time when it was at the zenith
of its political power and cultural brilliance. The number of proj-
ects Sinan undertook is massive79 mosques, 34 palaces, 33
public baths, 19 tombs, 55 schools, 16 poorhouses, 7 madrasahs
(religious schools), and 12 caravansaries, in addition to granaries,
fountains, aqueducts, and hospitals. His three most famous
works are the Sehzade Mosque and the Mosque of Sleyman I
the Magnicent, both of which are in Istanbul, and the Selim
Mosque at Edirne.
The Mosque of Sleyman in Istanbul was constructed in the
years 155057 and is considered by many scholars to be his nest
work. It was based on the design of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul,
a 6th-century masterpiece of Byzantine architecture that greatly
inuenced Sinan. The Mosque of Sleyman has a massive central
dome that is pierced by 32 openings, thus giving the dome the
Sinan
205
effect of lightness while also copiously illuminating the mosques
interior. It is one of the largest mosques ever built in the Ottoman
Empire. Besides the place of worship, it contains a vast social
complex comprising four madrasahs, a large hospital and medi-
cal school, a kitchen-refectory, and baths, shops, and stables.
Starting with the Byzantine church as a model, Sinan
adapted the designs of his mosques to meet the needs of Muslim
worship, which requires large open spaces for common prayer.
As a result, the huge central dome became the focal point around
which the design of the rest of the structure was developed.
Sinan pioneered the use of smaller domes, half domes, and but-
tresses to lead the eye up the mosques exterior to the central
dome at its apex, and he used tall, slender minarets at the cor-
ners to frame the entire structure. This plan could yield striking
exterior effects, as in the dramatic facade of the Selim Mosque.
Sinan was able to convey a sense of size and power in all of his
larger buildings. Many scholars consider his tomb monuments
to be the nest examples of his smaller works.
the surrounding courts prevents the building from being
swallowed by the surrounding city. These masterpieces of
Ottoman architecture seem to be the nal perfection of
two great traditions: a stylistic and aesthetic tradition that
had been indigenous to Istanbul since the construction of
the Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia in the 6th century
and the other Islamic tradition of domical construction
dating to the 10th century.
The tragedy of Ottoman architecture is that it never
managed to renew its 16th-century brilliance. Later build-
ings, such as the impressive Sultan Ahmed mosque in
Istanbul, were mostly variations on Sinans architecture,
and sometimes there were revivals of older building types,
especially in the provinces. Occasionally, as in the early
18th-century Nruosman mosque in Istanbul, interesting
new variants appear illustrating the little-known Turkish
206
Baroque style. The latter, however, is more visible in orna-
mental details or in smaller buildings, especially the
numerous fountains built in Istanbul in the 18th century.
The sources of the Turkish Baroque are probably to be
sought in the Baroque architecture of Vienna and the bor-
dering Austro-Hungarian states. Throughout the 18th and
19th centuries, a consistent Europeanization of a local tra-
dition occurs in the Ottoman empire.
While mosques and klliye s are the most characteris-
tic monuments of Ottoman architecture, important
secular buildings were also built: baths, caravansaries, and
especially the huge palace complex of Topkapi Saray at
Istanbul, in which 300 years of royal architecture are pre-
served in its elaborate pavilions, halls, and fountains.
Turkish Baroque style exemplied by the Fountain of Ahmed III, Istanbul,
1728. Josephine Powell, Rome
207
Interior of the Rstem Pasa Mosque, Istanbul, showing its coloured tile deco-
ration. Ara Guler/EB Inc.
Other Arts
Architectural decoration was generally subordinated to the
structural forms or architectonic features of the building.
A wide variety of themes and techniques originating from
many different sources were used. One decorative device,
the Ottoman version of colour- tile decoration, deserves
particular mention, for it succeeds in transforming smaller
buildings such as the mosque of Rstem Pasa in Istanbul
into a visual spectacle of brilliant colours. The history and
development of this type of ceramic decoration is inti-
mately tied to the complex and much controverted problem
of the growth of several distinctive Ottoman schools of
pottery: Iznik , Rhodian , and Damascus ware . Both in tech-
nique and in design, Ottoman ceramics are the only major
examples of pottery produced in the late Islamic period.
208
Ottoman miniature painting does not compare in
quality with Persian painting, which originally inuenced
the Turkish school. Yet Ottoman miniatures do have a
character of their own, either in the almost folk art effect
of religious images or in the precise depictions of such
daily events as military expeditions or great festivals.
Among the nest examples of the latter is the manuscript
Surname-i Vehbi painted by Levn in the early 18th century.
The production of metalwork, wood inlaid with ivory,
Usak carpets, and textiles ourished under the Ottomans,
both in Istanbul workshops sponsored by the sultan and in
numerous provincial centres. The inuence of these orna-
mental objects on European decorative arts from the 16th
through the 19th centuries was considerable.
Safavid Art
The Safavid dynasty was founded by Esmail I (150124).
The art of this dynasty reached its zenith during the reigns
of Tahmasp (152476) and of Abbas I (15881629). This
phase of the Safavid period also marked the last signicant
development of Islamic art in Iran, for after the middle of
the 17th century original creativity disappeared in all medi-
ums. Rugs and objects in silver, gold, and enamel continued
to be made and exhibited a considerable technical virtuos-
ity, even when they were lacking in inventiveness.
The Safavids abandoned Central Asia and northeast-
ern Iran to a new Uzbek dynasty that maintained the
Timurid style in many buildings (especially at Bukhara)
and briey sponsored a minor and derivative school of
painting. Only the great sanctuary of Meshed was being
kept up and built up. For this is the time when Shiism
became a state religion and for the rst time in Islam there
appeared an organized ecclesiastical system rather than
209
the more or less loose spiritual and practical leadership of
old. The main centres of the Safavid empire were Tabriz
and Ardabil in the northwest, with Kazvin in the central
region, and, especially, Esfahan in the west. The Safavid
period, like the Ottoman era, was an imperial age, and
therefore there is hardly a part of Iran where either Safavid
buildings or major Safavid restorations cannot be found.
The dynasty spent much money and effort on the building
of bridges, roads, and caravansaries to encourage trade.
Architecture
The best-known Safavid monuments are located at
Esfahan where Abbas I built a whole new city. According
to one description, it contained 162 mosques, 48
madrasahs, 1,802 commercial buildings, and 283 baths.
Most of these buildings no longer survive, but what has
remained constitutes some of the nest monuments of
Islamic architecture.
At the centre of Esfahan is the Meydan-e Shah, a large
open space, about 1,670 by 520 feet (510 by 158 metres),
originally surrounded by trees. Used for polo games and
parades, it could be illuminated with 50,000 lamps. Each
side of the meydan was provided with the monumental
facade of a building. On one of the smaller sides was the
entrance to a large mosque, the celebrated Masjed-e
Shah. On the other side was the entrance into the bazaar
or marketplace. On the longer sides were the small funer-
ary mosque of Sheykh Lotfollah and, facing it, the Ali
Qapu, the high gate, the rst unit of a succession of
palaces and gardens that extended beyond the meydan,
most of which have now disappeared except for the
Chehel Sotun, the palace of the Forty Columns. The
Ali Qapu was, in its lower oors, a semipublic place to
which petitions could be brought, while its upper oors
210
are a world of pure fantasya succession of rooms, halls,
and balconies overlooking the city, which were purely for
the princes pleasure.
The Meydan-e Shah unites in a single composition all
the concerns of medieval Islamic architecture: prayer,
commemoration, princely pleasure, trade, and spatial
effect. None of the hundreds of other remaining Safavid
monuments can match its historical importance, and in
it also are found the major traits of Safavid construction
and decoration. The forms are traditional, for the most
part, and even in vaulting techniques and the use of
coloured tiles it is to Timurid art that the Safavids looked
for their models.
Painting
In the 16th and 17th centuries, possibly for the rst time in
Islamic art, painters were conscious of historical styles
even self-conscious. Miniatures from the past were
collected, copied, and imitated. Patronage, however, was
ckle. A royal whim would gather painters together or
exile them. Many names of painters have been preserved,
and there is little doubt that the whim of patrons was
being countered by the artists will to be socially and eco-
nomically independent as well as individually recognized
for their artistic talents. Too many different impulses,
therefore, existed in Safavid Iran for painting to follow
any clear line of development.
Three major painting styles, or schools, existed in the
Safavid period. One school of miniature painting is exem-
plied by such masterpieces as the Houghton Shah-nameh
(completed in 1537), the Jami Haft awrang (15561665), or
the illustrations to stories from Hafez which have not
been identied in detail. However different they are from
each other, these large, colourful miniatures all were exe-
cuted in a grand manner. Their compositions are complex,
211
individual faces appear in crowded masses, there is much
diversication in landscape, and, despite a few ferocious
details of monsters or of strongly caricaturized poses and
expressions, these book illustrations are concerned with
an idealized vision of life. The sources of this school lie
with the Timurid academy. Behzad, Sultan Muhammad,
Sheykhzadeh, Mir Sayyid Ali, Aqa Mirak, and Mahmud
Musavvir continued and modied, each in his own way,
the ideal of a balance between an overall composition and
precise rendering of details.
The miniatures of the second tradition of Safavid
painting seem at rst to be like a detail out of the work of
the previously discussed school. The same purity of colour,
elegance of poses, interest in details, and assertion of the
individual gure is found. Aqa Reza and Reza Abbasi (both
active around 1600) excelled in these extraordinary por-
trayals of poets, musicians, courtiers, and aristocratic life
in general.
In both traditions of painting, the beautiful person-
ages depicted frequently are satirized; this note of satirical
criticism is even more pronounced in portraiture of the
time. But it is in pen or brush drawings, mostly dating
from the 17th century, that the third aspect of Safavid
painting appeared: an interest in genre, or the depiction of
minor events of daily life (e.g., a washerwoman at work, a
tailor sewing, an animal). With stunning precision Safavid
artists showed a whole society falling apart with a cruel
sympathy totally absent from the literary documents of
the time.
While architecture and painting were the main artis-
tic vehicles of the Safavids, the making of textiles and
carpets was also of great importance. It is in the 16th
century that a hitherto primarily nomadic and folk
medium of the decorative arts was transformed into an
expression of royal and urban tasks by the creation of
212
court workshops. The predominantly geometric themes
of earlier Iranian carpets were not abandoned entirely but
tended to be replaced by vegetal, animal, and even occa-
sional human motifs. Great schools of carpetmaking
developed particularly at Tabriz, Kashan, and Kerman.
Mughal Art
Since the culture of the Mughals was intimately connected
to the indigenous Hindu traditions of the Indian subcon-
tinent, their art will be treated here only synoptically.
The art of the Mughals was similar to that of the
Ottomans in that it was a late imperial art of Muslim
princes. Both styles were rooted in several centuries (at
least from the 13th century onward) of adaptation of
Islamic functions to indigenous forms. It was in the 14th-
century architecture of South Asian sites such as
Tughluqabad, Gaur, and Ahmadabad that a uniquely
Indian type of Islamic hypostyle mosque was created, with
a triple axial nave, corner towers, axial minarets, and cupo-
las. It was also during these centuries that the rst
mausoleums set in scenically spectacular locations were
built. By then the conquering Muslims had fully learned
how to use local methods of construction, and they
adapted South Asian decorative techniques and motifs.
Mughal art was in continuous contact with Iran or,
rather, with the Timurid world of the second half of the 15th
century. The models and the memories were in Herat or
Samarkand, but the artists were raided from Safavid Iran,
and the continuous ow of painters from Iran to the Mughal
empire is a key factor in understanding Mughal painting.
The mausoleum of Humayun in Delhi (156569), the
city of Fatehpur Sikri (from 1569 onward), and the Taj
Mahal at Agra (163153) summarize the development of
Mughal architecture. In all three examples it can be seen
213
that what Mughal architecture brought to the Islamic tra-
dition (other than traditional Indian themes, especially in
decoration) was technical perfection in the use of red
sandstone or marble as building and decorative materials.
In Mughal painting the kind of subject that tended to
be illustrated was remarkably close to those used in Safavid
history bookslegendary stories, local events, portraits,
genre scenes. What evolved quickly was a new manner of
execution, and this style can be seen as early as about 1567,
when the celebrated manuscript Dastan-e Amir Hamzeh
(Stories of Amir Hamzeh) was painted (some 200 minia-
tures remain and are found in most major collections of
Indian miniatures). Traditional Iranian themesbattles,
receptions, feastsacquired monumentality, not only
because of the inordinate size of the images but also
because almost all of the objects and gures depicted were
seen in terms of mass rather than line. Something of the
colourfulness of Iranian painting was lost, but instead
images acquired a greater expressive power. Mughal por-
traiture gave more of a sense of the individual than did the
portraits of the Safavids.
In summary it can be said that the Mughals produced an
art of extraordinary stylistic contrasts that reected the
complexities of its origins and of its aristocratic patronage.
ISLAMIC ART UNDER
EUROPEAN INFLUENCE
AND CONTEMPORARY TRENDS
It is extremely difcult to decide when, how, and to what
extent European art began to affect the art of the tradi-
tional Muslim world. Ottoman architecture was from the
beginning affected by Western inuences. In Mughal
India, European landscapes and Western spatial concerns
inuenced painting in the 18th century; and Persian
214
painting has exhibited constant Western inuence since
the 17th century. Thus, Islamic art began to be affected by
European traditions before Europe began (in the 18th and
19th centuries) its conquests of most of the Muslim world.
Since the Ottomans ruled North Africa (except Morocco),
Egypt, Syria, Palestine, as well as the Balkans, much of the
Muslim world was rst introduced to modern European
art through its adaptation in Istanbul or in other major
Ottoman cities like Smyrna or Alexandria.
European inuence tended to have been mostly limited
to architecture. Nineteenth-century European engineers
and architects, for example, adapted modern structural
technology and decorative styles to local Islamic needs or
idioms: the Suq al-Hamidiyah bazaar in Damascus was built
with steel roong; the Hejaz railway station at Damascus
was decorated in a sort of Eastern Art Nouveau style.
During actual European occupation of Muslim terri-
tory, there was a conscious revival of traditional decorative
arts, but new techniques were often employed. This espe-
cially occurred in India and Morocco, where the retail
success of an art object depended less on the local tradi-
tion than on the taste of the Europeans. What was
romantic to a European, therefore, was no longer part of
the world of the newly enriched and Europeanized Muslim.
Much of the Europeanized architecture was drab and pre-
tentious. The only real artistic accomplishment of this
period was in the preservation and encouragement of the
traditional techniques and designs of the decorative arts.
The latter often had to be maintained articially through
government subsidies, for the local market, except in
Morocco or India, was more easily seduced by second-rate
European objects.
During the period of occupation it was questioned
whether alien techniques necessarily brought with them
new forms. This mood was clearly expressed in literature
215
but less so in the visual arts, since the quality of Muslim art
had deteriorated so much in the decades preceding
European arrival that there was no longer a lively creative
force to maintain. As various schools based on the cole
des Beaux-Arts in Paris were formed, however, the facul-
ties and the students suffered from constant uncertainty
as to whether they should preserve an art that was mostly
artisanal or revolutionize it altogether.
It is much more difcult to dene in broad terms the
characteristics of art in Muslim countries after the forma-
tion of independent countries in the 1940s and 50s.
Extensive planning programs and building projects have
been undertaken in even the poorest countries; and the
wealthy Arab states, as well as pre-revolutionary Iran,
transformed their traditional cities and countryside with
spectacular modern complexes ranging from housing proj-
ects to universities. Many of these buildings were planned
and constructed by Western rms and architects, and
some are ill-adapted to the physical conditions and visual
traditions of the Muslim world. Others are interesting and
even sensitive projects: spectacular and technically inno-
vative, such as the Intercontinental Hotel in Mecca (Frei
and Otto) and the Haj Terminal of the King Abdul Aziz
International Airport at Jidda, Saudi Arabia (the U.S. rm
of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill); or intelligent and imagi-
native, such as the government buildings of Dhaka,
Bangladesh (designed by the late Louis Kahn of the United
States), or in the numerous buildings designed by the
Frenchman Andr Ravereau in Mali or Algeria.
Furthermore, within the Muslim world emerged several
schools of architects that adopted modes of an interna-
tional language to suit local conditions. The oldest of
these schools are in Turkey, where architects such as
Eldhem and Cansever, among many others, built highly
successful works of art. Other major Muslim contributors
216
to a contemporary Islamic architecture are the Iranians
Nader Ardalan and Kemzan Diba, the Iraqis Rifat Chaderji
and Muhammad Makkiya, the Jordanian Rassem Badran,
or the Bangladeshi Mazhar ul-Islam. Finally, a unique mes-
sage was being transmitted by the visionary Egyptian
architect Hassan Fathy, who, in eloquent and prophetic
terms, urged that the traditional forms and techniques of
vernacular architecture be studied and adapted to con-
temporary needs. Directly or indirectly, his work has
inspired many young architects in the Muslim world and
has led to a host of fascinating private houses, mosques,
and educational facilities. The Aga Khan Award for
Architecture was instituted to encourage genuine and
contemporary architectural innovation in Muslim lands.
The results of dozens of new art schools and of a more
enlightened patronage than during the 19th century are
perhaps less spectacular in the other arts, and especially in
painting. In spite of several interesting attempts to deal
with calligraphy, with geometric designs, or with local folk
arts, successes so far have not been clearly identied. But
Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Pakistan, and
Indonesia all have produced talented artists.
EVALUATION
In order to evaluate and to understand a millenary artistic
tradition spread over an area extending from Spain to
India, the emphasis of this chapter has had to be on those
features that relate the monuments to each other rather
than on the myriad of characteristics that differentiate
them. A few words about the latter are essential, however,
for very soon after the formation of Islamic culture (cer-
tainly by 1000), it seems clear that the nature of aesthetic
impulses and of visual expectations began to vary. The
question is one of determining what may be called the
217
break-off points: the areas, moments, or forces that led to
differentiations. One such point is the early 14th century,
for almost everywhere in Islam artistic functions, forms,
and techniques were renewed. And it is quite easy to sepa-
rate the arts that followed the turn of the century from
those that preceded it.
Next to this chronological break-off, there are cultural
ones, one might almost say ethnic ones, even though their
ethnic association is often debatable. The clearest instance
is that of Iran, whose artists and craftsmen, almost from
the time of the rst groups of Nishapur ceramics, used
distinctive techniques, styles, and especially subjects,
many of which can be traced to pre-Islamic times. The
existence of a forceful Iranian personality in Islamic art is
self-evident, and its impact is found in almost all other
subdivisions of the culture. Although it was not a single or
even (until the 16th century) a politically or socially uni-
ed personality, it found uniqueness, possibly because it
soon became (as early as in the 9th century) strongly con-
scious of its ancient past. The fact of that consciousness
seems more important than the individual and on the
whole scarce motifs it picked up from the past. A more
curious example is that of the Ottomans and of the Arabs.
For their ethnic past, in Central Asia and Arabia, respec-
tively, played only a minor part in the formation of their
art and was often intellectually rejected. At the same time
and with notable exceptions, neither entity consistently
sought models and ideas in the pre-Islamic art of the
region they had occupied. If they succeeded in creating an
original artistic expression, it is in large part because of
their success in creating a viable social order: the Ottoman
imperial system of the 15th century, the urban order sup-
ported by military feudalism of Egypt, Syria, and North
Africa. In these areas it is less a land than a society that
provided the visual arts with their own distinctiveness,
218
and it is only in the late 20th century that Ottoman art
began to be seen as Turkish and Mamluk art as Arab. The
case of India lies somewhere between the Iranian and
Ottoman instances. Created by an imperial overlay on a
powerful alien culture, it never entirely escaped the forms
of the latter.
Thus, one can distinguish the following large cultural
entities within Islamic art: Ottoman, western Islamic,
Egypt and Fertile Crescent, Iran, India. They were all dis-
tinctive by the early 14th century.
Among the features that appear to unite these various
traditions and especially to separate them collectively
from other large artistic and cultural units is the unity of
functions. There was created, in other words, an Islamic
religious and social function that is unique to Muslim
lands. It was a diversied function, and its monuments are
not alike in their forms. But they are alike in the human
activity for which they were built. Limited in symbolic
forms (mihrab, minaret, calligraphy as decoration), the
Muslim function could be adapted to any architectural or
ornamental tradition; and it was, not only in the cultures
examined above, but in China, Indonesia, Africa
wherever Islam spread. The key concept here is that of a
community of attitudes and of the uses of forms rather
than of the making of forms.
There is a corollary to this conclusion that leads to the
second level of an attempt to identify Islamic visual arts as
a whole; namely, that, as Islam limited its system of religious
visual symbols, it developed a set of secular values. From
the very beginning there occurred a major art of trade and
of the city, as well as an art of the palace. More than any
other culture and certainly earlier than any other, the
Muslim world created a number of secular tastes and spon-
sored techniques of secular beautication. The result lies,
219
on the one hand, in a striking succession of palaces from
Khirbat al-Mafjar to the Alhambra or to Fatehpur Sikri. It
lies also in the impetus given to techniques of ceramics,
textiles, and metalwork. These all tended to be the tech-
niques of the artisan, and their importance lies not so much
in the manufacture of an occasional object of art as in the
raising of the level of quality of all industrial or decorative
arts. This particular feature of the Islamic tradition sur-
vived all political misfortunes. Remarkably beautiful
objects were made as late as the early 19th century, and the
techniques and traditions often were revived in the 20th
century with considerable success. Historically, Islamic art
became a sort of secular consciousness of artistic traditions
elsewhere. Renaissance madonnas, for instance, were pro-
vided sometimes with halos containing Arabic inscriptions;
bodies of saints were buried in Muslim cloth; Christian
princes collected objects of Islamic art; and turquerie, or
Turkish themes, lay behind one of the styles of European
decorative arts in the Baroque period of the 17th and 18th
centuries. All this was possible also because the themes of
Islamic art almost never possessed the specicity of mean-
ing that would make them unsuitable for use by others.
Ambiguous in their abstraction of subjects and of styles,
works of Islamic art tended at times to the facile multipli-
cation of known formulas. Yet again at this level, it was the
user who determined the value of the form used.
All this is not to say that Islamic art did not develop an
internal visual vocabulary with a depth of its own. From
the mosaics of the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus to the
Alhambra or to certain Persian ceramics, one can deter-
mine the existence of concrete symbolic systems, royal
and religious. It is even possible to see in the abstract ara-
besque or in certain uses of calligraphy attempts to express
an early Muslim vision of the divine, while the glorious
220
colour of Iranian mosques may reect the more complex
mystical thought of Shiism. There is no doubt that fur-
ther research will provide many more examples of a
meaningful visual symbolic system in the Muslim world.
But in most instances that have already been studiedin
particular Umayyad and Seljuq artthe remarkable point
has been that such symbols did not last and that they were
soon misunderstood or ignored. This refusal to be com-
mitted to visual symbols is reected in the little that is
known about Islamic writing on art. It is only very inci-
dentally that references are made to the value or meaning
of visual expression; there are no theories on art, and even
the religious injunctions against representations are a
minute and almost incidental aspect of religious literature.
Much more is known about individualsceramists and
metalworkers in early times, painters and architects in
later times. The emphasis has always been on their techni-
cal skill, on their ability to do visual tricks, or on the speed
and efciency with which they created. The artist was
regarded not as a prophet or a genius but as a technically
equipped individual who succeeds in beautifying the sur-
roundings of all men. It is in this manner that one can
perhaps best dene the Muslim artistic tradition: it
avoided the conscious search for a unique masterpiece,
and it did not build monuments for the eternal glory of
God. It sought instead to please man and to make every
moment of his life as attractive and enjoyable as possible.
There is a hedonistic element in Islamic art, therefore, but
this hedonism is intellectually and emotionally mitigated
by the conscious knowledge of the perishable character of
all things human. In this fashion, Islamic art seen as a
whole is a curious paradox, for as it softened and embel-
lished lifes activities, it was created with destructible
materials, thereby reiterating Islams conviction that only
God remains.
221
CONCLUSION
It is easy to respond to the beauty of Islamic art and litera-
ture, but fully appreciating the aesthetic of the Islamic
arts tradition requires a leap in understanding for those
accustomed to some of the more aggressive and represen-
tational features of Western art. In comparison with
Western literature, much of which is made up of linear
storytelling, or of poetry that expresses the personal views
or sensations of the poet, classic Islamic poetry is often
dense with ideas and images drawn from earlier sources,
arranged in an aesthetically pleasing pattern that shows
only subtle signs of the artists unique viewpoint. This
multilayered, nonlinear approach, which is derived both
from Islamic literatures long-standing tradition and from
Islamic conceptions of the way art relates to faith, can be
difcult to decode for those unfamiliar with the ele-
ments of those traditions.
Much of traditional Islamic art, too, relies on patterns,
often of calligraphic elements, which are also rich with
meaning. Because Islam had a history of trading since its
earliest days in the Arabian Desert, beautiful craft objects,
from carpets to ceramics, made their way to the farthest
reaches of the Muslim world in Africa, Europe, and Asia.
These inuenced local tastes and helped to maintain a cer-
tain consistency in Muslim artistic styles across a vast
territory. Styles of Muslim architecture also spread from
one major city to another and have inuenced architec-
ture in European cities as well.
And yet, in spite of the underlying similarities that
Muslims in diverse parts of the Islamic world shared, there
were also varying styles, sensitivities, and mores that led
to regional differences. For instance, while most Muslim
societies shunned the idea of art that showed human
beings, artists of the Mughal Empire created exquisite
222
miniatures that showed scenes of everyday life or illus-
trated popular tales and legends.
Literature, too, spread across national boundaries,
aided by the use of various lingua francas, including Arabic
and Persian, which allowed literary traditions to ow back
and forth between different regions. This aesthetic of the
Islamic world has also changed over time, in part through
contact with the West. Muslim writers have used new lit-
erary forms, such as the novel, to express realities of life in
various Muslim nations.
Finally, in considering Muslim art and literature, it is
important to be aware that one of the reasons that its
artistic traditions reached such a high level of sophistica-
tion is because of the vast wealth, power, and importance
of the Islamic world itself. Its series of major empires,
from the Umayyads to the Ottomans, straddled the cross-
roads of the civilized world, extending the reach of the
Islamic world from Indonesia, China, and India in the
east; to eastern and central Europe to the north; Spain and
the Maghrib region, including Morocco to the west; and
large chunks of both western and eastern sub-Saharan
Africa to the south. Through this vast territory owed
many of the worlds greatest treasures in a vast network of
trade, from textiles to jewels. This source of fabulous
wealth allowed cities of great sophistication to develop
and encouraged learning and innovation that kept the
spark of civilization alive, most famously during the
Middle Ages, when European cultural life was arguably at
a nadir. The artistic traditions of the Islamic world over its
extensive 1,400-year history have vastly enriched human-
ity with their beauty, creativity, and multiple layers of
meaning.
223
GLOSSARY
ambulatory An aisle or covered corridor.
apogee The highest point; climax.
arcuate Bent or curved.
belles lettres Entertaining, sophisticated light literature.
calligraphy A decorative form of handwriting, in many
societies considered the supreme visual art.
caravansary In the Middle East, parts of North Africa,
and Central Asia, an inn, usually near a court, where
caravans and other travelers could rest at night.
compendium A brief treatment of a much larger sub-
ject; a concise treatise.
contrapuntal Referring to two or more independent
melodies sounded together.
endogamy Marriage within a specic tribe or group.
ewer A pitcher in the shape of a vase.
faience Glazed pottery, especially of a ne variety with
highly coloured designs.
hagiography The writing and critical study of the lives
of saints.
hemistich A short or incomplete line in a poem.
heterodox Diverging from established or accepted doc-
trines; unorthodox.
hypostyle In architecture, an interior space whose roof
rests on pillars or columns.
madrasah A school attached to a mosque, usually for the
study of theology.
224
minaret A tower attached to a mosque with a balcony
from which the people are called to prayer.
monorhyme A poem in which all the lines rhyme with
each other.
morphological Referring to the study of form or
structure.
oscillate To move back and forth, like a pendulum.
panegryic A lofty oration of praise.
parvenu A person of newly acquired wealth or position.
pastoral Relating to life in the country.
polemic Controversial argument, often of a religious
nature.
polygynous Having more than one wife at once.
proigate Shamelessly immoral or delighting in
extravagance.
prosody The study of poetic metre and versication.
purdah The seclusion of women from the sight of men
or strangers.
qiblah The point toward which Muslims turn to pray;
toward Mecca.
quatrain A four-line poem or stanza, most frequently
with alternate rhymes.
scabrous Dealing with scandalous themes.
sheikh The leader or patriarch of a tribe.
sorghum A cereal grass bearing a dense grain used for
making syrup.
trope Any literary or rhetorical device using words in a
way other than their literal sense.
turgid Inated; overblown; pompous.
vegetal Plant-like.
zoomorphic In the form of an animal.
225
FOR FURTHER READING
Ahmed, Akbar S. Islam Today. London, England: I.B.
Taurus, 1999.
Armstrong, Karen. Islam. New York, NY: Modern
Library, : 2000.
Aslan, Reza. No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and
Future of Islam. New York, NY: Random House, 2006.
Blair, Sheila, and Jonathan Bloom. Islamic Arts. London,
England: Phaidon Press, 1997.
Blair, Sheila, and Jonathan Bloom. The Grove Encyclopedia
of Islamic Art and Architecture. Oxford, England:
Oxford University Press, 2009
Choueiri, Youssef M. Arab Nationalism: A History. Malden,
MA: Blackwell Pub., 2000.
Cooke, Miriam. Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Femin-
ism Through Literature. New York, NY: Routledge, 2001.
Daftary, Farhad. Intellectual Traditions in Islam. New York,
NY: St. Martins Press, 2000.
Dawisha, Adeed. Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century:
From Triumph to Despair. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2005.
Frangieh, Bassam K. Anthology of Arabic Literature,
Culture, and Thought from Pre-Islamic Times to the
Present. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.
Freely, John. Aladdins Lamp: How Greek Science Came to
Europe Through the Islamic World. New York, NY:
Knopf, 2009.
226
Frishman, Martin, and Hasan-Uddin Khan. The Mosque:
History, Architectural Development and Regional
Diversity. London, England: Thames & Hudson, 2002.
Graham, Mark. How Islam Created the Modern World.
Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 2006.
Gulevish, Tanya. Understanding Islam and Muslim
Traditions. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics, 2004.
Hammond, Andrew. Pop Culture Arab World!: Media, Arts,
and Lifestyle. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2005.
Irwin, Robert. Islamic Art in Context: Art, Architecture, and
the Literary World. New York, NY: H.N. Abrams, 1997.
Khalili, Nassir. Islamic Art and Culture: A Visual History.
New York, NY: Overlook Press, 2006.
Lapidus, Ira M. A History of Islamic Societies. New York,
NY: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Lewis, Bernard, and Buntzie Ellis Churchill. Islam: The
Religion and the People. Indianapolis, IN: Wharton
Press, 2009.
Mikhail, Mona N. Seen and Heard: A Century of Arab
Women in Literature and Culture. Northampton, MD:
Olive Branch Press, 2004.
Morgan, Michael H. Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of
Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists. Washington,
D.C.: National Geographic, 2008.
Reeves, John C. Bible and Quran: Essays in Scriptual
Intertextuality. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical
Literature, 2003.
Stierlin, Henri. Islamic Art and Architecture. London,
England: Thames & Hudson, 2002.
Tottoli, Roberto. Biblical Prophets in the Quran and Muslim
Literature. Richmond, England: Curzon, 2000.
227 227
INDEX
A
Abbas I, 208, 209
Abbasid dynasty, 6466, 67, 68,
70, 74, 82, 135136, 149, 150,
151, 152, 164, 176
Abd al-Rahman III, 70
Abduh, Muhammad, 106
Abdlhak Hmid, 109
Abdlhamid II, Sultan, 109
Abu Firas, 77
Abu Nuwas, 65, 66
Abu Talib Kalim, 99
Adam of Two Edens, The, 119
Adonis, 120
Ahmed Hasim, 110
Akif, Mehmed, 109
Alexander the Great, 27, 75, 76,
77, 148
Alhambra palace, 183185, 219
Ali, 62, 146
Ali, Muhammed Kurd, 104
Ali Shah mosque, 193
al-Ansari, Khwajah Abd Allah,
79, 88
Anvari, 77
al-Aqmar mosque, 164
al-Aqqad, Abbas Mahmud,
105, 106
al-Aqsa Mosque, 139142
arabesques, 33, 3536, 168
Arabic language, overview of,
3738
Arabs, society and culture of,
1719
Aref Qazvini, 112
Arslan, Amir Shakib, 104
Asadi, 76
Asrar-e khudi, 113
Atatrk, Mustafa Kemal,
109, 110
Atesten gmlek, 109
atomist theory, 36
Attar, Farid al-Din, 7980
Averros, 71
Avicenna, 7071
Al-Ayyam, 105, 106107
Azad Bilgrami, 98
al-Azhar mosque, 164
B
Babur, 48, 9697
Baghdad, construction of, 152
Bahai faith, 27
Bahar, 111
Baharestan, 88
baked brick architecture, 153, 175
228
Bk, 101
Balami, 90
Bamba, Amadou, 121
al-Bayati, Abdul Wahhab, 117
Bedouins, society and culture of,
18, 1921
Behramoglu, Ataol, 120
Behzad, 199
belles lettres, 34, 44, 8991
Bengalis, society and culture of,
2122
Benim adim kirmizi, 115
Beyatli, Yahya Kemal, 110
Beyaz kale, 115
al-Biruni, 78, 176
Brecht, Bertolt, 114
al-Bukhari, 64
Bustan, 82
Butterys Burden, The, 119
C
calligraphy, 32, 36, 3842, 56, 132,
160, 167, 168, 175, 180, 185,
186, 218, 219, 221
Cappella Palatina chapel, 166
caravansaries, 152, 172173, 174,
204, 206
Cem, Sultan, 100
ceramics/pottery, 78, 126, 155,
158160, 161, 168, 179, 186,
207, 217, 219, 220, 221
Cevdet Bey ve ogullari, 115
Chahar maqaleh, 90
Chekhov, Anton, 103
chronograms, 56
citadels, 171172, 183
Crdoba, Great Mosque of,
143144, 153, 154, 156
D
Damascus, Great Mosque of,
139142, 219
Darwish, Mahmud, 117, 118119
Dastan-e Amir Hamzeh, 213
Divan, 86
divani script, 41
Diwan, 58
Dome of the Rock, 145,
156, 187
Dowlatshah, 87
E
Elahi-nameh, 80
Eliot, T.S., 117
Emin, Mehmed, 109
Esmail I, 85, 96, 208
Evliya eleb, 101
F
al-Farabi, 68
al-Farazdaq, 64
Farrokhi of Seistan, 75
Farrokhzad, Forugh, 120
Fatimid art and architecture,
163169
Ferdowsi, 75, 94, 195
Fi al-shir al-jahili, 107
Four Righteous Caliphs, 62
Fulani, 22, 23
Fuzl, 101
G
Glib Dede, 102
Garshasb-nameh, 76
229
7 Index 7
geographical literature, 7172
Ghalib, Mirza Asadullah Khan,
112113
ghazal, explanation of, 52
Gibb, Sir Hamilton, 66
glass, 126, 159160, 179,
187, 190
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von,
34, 50
Gkalp, Ziya, 109
Golestan, 82
Gregorian, Vartan, 17
H
habsiyah, 77
Hadiqat al-haqiqat wa shariat
al-tariqah, 79
Hafez, Mohammad Shams
al-Din, 85, 8687
Haz Ibrahim, Muhammad, 105
Haft awrang, 88, 210
al-Hakim mosque, 164
Halat hisar, 118
al-Hamadhani, Badi al-
Zaman, 69
Hamdollah Mostow, 90
al-Hariri, 69
Hasan of Delhi, 83
Hausa, society and culture of,
2223
Haykal, Muhammad Husayn, 106
Hayy ibn Yaqzan, 71
Hedayat, Sadeq, 112
Hikmet, Nazim, 110111, 120
historiography, 73, 9091
Al-Huda, 108
Husayn Bayqara, 199
Hsn u ask, 102
hypostyle mosque, 137, 139, 140,
141, 142, 144, 149, 153, 164,
165, 183, 212
I
Ibn Abd Rabbihi, 70
Ibn al-Arabi, 71, 82, 83
Ibn al-Bawwab, 40
Ibn al-Farid, 82
Ibn al-Muqaffa, 68
Ibn al-Mutazz, 66
Ibn Battutah, 72
Ibn Daud, 67
Ibn Hani, 70
Ibn Hazm, 67
Ibn Iyas, 74
Ibn Jubayr, 72
Ibn Khaldun, 35, 73
Ibn Muqlah, 40
Ibn Qutaybah, 70
Ibn Quzman, 7273
Ibn Tufayl, 71
Ibn Tulun mosque, 156
Ibn Zaydun, 72
Idris, Yusuf, 114
al-Idrisi, al-Sharif, 72
Imru al-Qays, 60
Ince Memed, 114
Iqbal, Sir Muhammad, 70, 79, 113
al-Iqd al-farid, 70
Islam
branches of, 27
development and spread of,
18, 22
and prohibition against
images, 32, 129, 131134
Istanbul: hatiralar ve
sehir, 115
230
J
Jabal Says palace, 148
Jamalzadeh, Mohammad Ali, 112
Jami, 8789, 96, 210
Jami al-tawarikh, 91, 195196
Jamil, 63
Jarir, 64
Javid-nameh, 79, 113
Jawsaq al-Khaqani palace, 150
Jidariyya, 119
Joveyni, Ata Malek-e, 9091
K
Kab, 62
Kafka, Franz, 112
Kalilah wa Dimnah, 68, 74, 89
Kanik, Orhan Veli, 120
Kar, 115
Karacaoglan, 102
Kara kitap, 115
Karaosmanoglu, Yakup
Kadri, 110
Kasrai, Seyavush, 120
Kaviani Press, 111112
Kemal, Namik, 108
Kemal, Yasar, 114
Khamseh, 76, 83
al-Khansa, 58
Khirbat al-Mafjar palace, 148,
149, 154, 157, 219
Khirbat Minyah palace, 148
Khushhal Khan, 99100
Khwaju Kermani
manuscript, 197
Khwatay-namak, 68
Kitab al-badi, 66
Kitab al-ibar, 73
Kitab al-zahrah, 67
Kitab nuzhat al-mushtaq ikhtiraq
al-afaq, 72
Kufah palace, 150
Kuc script, 36, 3940
Kurdish literature, 49
Kurds, society and culture of,
2425
L
Lahuti, 112
Lavaih, 88
Levn, 102, 208
M
madrasahs, 147, 171, 176, 183, 189,
201, 204, 209
maghribi script, 40
Maguzawa/Bunjawa, 22
Mahfouz, Naguib, 114
Mahmud of Ghazna, 75
al-Malaikah, Nazik, 117
Malays, society and culture of,
2526
Mamluk art, 186190, 218
Al-Manar, 106
al-Manfaluti, 105
al-Mansur, 152
Manteq al-teyr, 7980
maqamah, explanation of, 54
Maragheh mausoleum, 192
Marx, Karl, 114
Masnavi-ye Manavi, 80
masnawi, explanation of, 5354
Masud-e Sad-e Salman, 77
Masumiyet mzesi, 115
Maupassant, Guy de, 103
231
7 Index 7
mausoleums, 146, 154, 165,
170171, 174, 175, 183, 189,
201, 212
al-Mazini, Ibrahim, 105
Medina mosque, 139142, 144
Merv mausoleum, 192
Mevld, 85
Meydan-e Shah, 209210
metalwork, 27, 124, 126, 179, 186,
187, 190, 208, 219, 220
miniature/book illustration, 33,
35, 36, 90, 102, 168169,
179181, 190, 195199, 208,
210211, 213, 222
Mir Ali of Tabriz, 40
Mirror for Princes, 89
Mongol Iran art, 190199
monorhyme, 51, 53
mosaics, 33, 141, 154, 160,
165166, 219
Mosibat-nameh, 80
Mosque of Crdoba, The, 70
mosques, 28, 33, 34, 70, 95,
129131, 136144, 147, 149,
152, 154, 156, 164165,
170171, 173174, 176,
182183, 201, 202, 204205,
206, 209, 212, 220
Mozarabic art, 186
Mshatta palace, 148, 149, 153, 157
al-Muallaqat/The Seven Odes,
57, 60
Muawiyah, 6263
Mudjar art, 186
Mudhakkirat, 107
Mughal art, 212213
Muqaddimah, 35, 73
musamarah, 61
Mush o-gorbeh, 87
Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, 64
Mustaqbal al-thaqafah
Misr, 107
al-Mutanabbi, Abu al-Tayyib,
68, 70
Mutran, Khalil, 105
mystical poetry, 7983, 85, 87, 96,
99, 100, 102
N
Nahj al-balaghah, 62
naskhi script, 40
nastaliq, 40
Navai, Ali Shir, 48
Nedim, 102
Nef, 101102
Nesim, 100
Nezami, 7677, 83, 88, 195
Niyaz Misr, 102
Nizam al-Mulk, 89
Nobel Prize for Literature, 114
Nuzhat al-qulub, 90
O
Obeyd-e Zakani, 87
ljeit mausoleum, 192193
Omar Khayyam, 12, 78, 176
Ottoman art, 200208, 212, 213,
217218
P
palace-cities, 150
palaces, 148151, 152, 161, 172, 174,
183, 204, 218219
Pamuk, Orhan, 114, 115116
panegyric, 52, 57, 65, 68, 75, 85,
87, 98
papermaking, 69
232
Parvin Etesami, 112
Pashto poetry, 47, 99100
Persian painting, 195199, 208, 213
Persians, society and culture of,
2628
Philosophus Autodidactus, 71
Pir Sultan Abdal, 8485
pottery/ceramics, 78, 126, 155,
158160, 161, 168, 179, 186,
207, 217, 219, 220, 221
prosody, 51, 100, 109
Q
Qaani, 111
Qabus-nameh, 89
qasidah, 51, 52, 53, 60, 63, 64, 65,
68, 74, 77, 82, 99, 101, 105
Qasr al-Hayr East palace, 148,
153, 157
Qasr al-Hayr West palace, 148,
154, 157
Qasr al-Kharanah palace, 148
Qasr al-Tubah palace, 148
Qasr Amrah palace, 148, 149
Qatran, 77
qitah, explanation of, 53
Quran, 17, 18, 32, 33, 34, 38, 39,
40, 42, 45, 55, 56, 6162, 64,
65, 73, 80, 88, 97, 107,
128129, 131 134, 156
R
Rad-Kan mausoleum, 192
Rashid al-Din, 91
Rebellion in Hell, 108
religious poetry, 85, 100
ribats, 145146
al-Rihani, Amin, 108
robai, explanation of, 53
Rckert, Friedrich, 50
Rudaki, 74
al-Rumi, Jalal al-Din, 36, 8082,
84, 113
al-Rusafah palace, 148
S
Sabaheddin Ali, 110
Sadi, Mosleh al-Din, 82, 88
Safar-nameh, 78
Safavid art, 208212, 213
Sahra, 109
Saib, 99
al-Saigh, Tawq, 120
al-Salih mosque, 164
Samarra palace, 150, 151,
157, 166
Sanai, 79, 81
Sarakhs mausoleum, 192
Sayr al-ibad ila al-maad, 79
scholarly writing and Islamic
literature, 44
Scott, Sir Walter, 103, 104
sculpture, 125, 128, 154155, 160,
165, 178, 183
Sehzade Mosque, 204
Selim Mosque, 202, 204, 205
Selim I, Sultan, 96
Seljuq art, 169181, 220
Sendbad-nameh, 74, 89
Seyahatnme, 101
Seyasat-nameh, 89
Shai, 26
Shah-nameh, 75, 195,
196197, 210
Shanfara, 6061
Shawqi, Ahmad, 105
Sinan, 202, 204205
233
7 Index 7
Sinasi, 108
Song of Revenge, 61
Susm/Sus, 25, 48, 80, 81, 84,
88, 95, 162
Sleyman elebi, 85
Sleyman I the Magnicent,
Mosque of, 204205
Sundanese, society and culture
of, 28
Surname-i Vehbi, 208
syllable-counting metres, 51, 102
T
Taabbata Sharran, 6061
al-Tabari, 90
Taha Husayn, 105107
Tahmasp, 208
al-Tahtawi, 103
taliq script, 40
Tarikh-e jehan-goshay, 90
Tasvir-i Efkr, 108109
al-Tawhidi, Abu Hayyan, 68
Tawq al-hamamah, 67
Taymur, Mahmud, 106
Tears of Khorasan, 77
textiles, 126127, 158, 160, 167,
179, 186, 208, 211, 219, 222
Thousand and One Nights, The, 34,
91, 9294, 151
Tolstoy, Leo, 103104
Topkapi Saray palace, 206
Tree of Misery, The, 105, 106
Tulip Period, 102
Tuti-nameh, 89
U
Uighurs, society and culture of,
2830
Ukhaydir palace, 149
Umar ibn Abi Rabiah, 63
Umayyad dynasty, 6264, 70,
135136, 139, 148, 149, 154,
156, 160, 176, 220, 222
Unfortunately, It Was
Paradise, 119
urban design, 151152
urban palaces, 15, 150
Ur, 99, 101
Uzbeks, society and culture of,
3031
V
Varamin mosque, 192
Varlik, 120
W
al-Walid ibn Yazid, 63
al-Walid I, 139, 142
western Islamic art, 181186
West-stlicher Divan, 50
Y
Yaghma, 111
Yavuz, Hilmi, 120
Yeni hayat, 115
Yunus Emre, 48, 8385, 100
Z
al-Zahawi, Jamil Sidqi, 108
Zaydan, Jurji, 104
Zaynab, 106
Ziya Pasa, 108
Zoroaster, 27
Zoroastrianism, 27, 75, 138
Zuhayr, 60

Islamic Art and Culture.

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