Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World (Muqarnas)

285 Pages·2003·16.35 MB·English

by  Gulru Necipoglu

title 1
Offprint from:
MUQARNAS
An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World
Volume 20 (2003)
LEIDEN
BRILL
2003
muq-omsl-20.pmd 1 9/2/2003, 3:41 PM
contents i
MUQARNAS
muqarnas-20.pmd 1 9/30/2003, 2:31 PM
ii contents
This page intentionally left blank
muqarnas-20.pmd 2 9/30/2003, 2:31 PM
contents iii
MUQARNAS
AN ANNUAL ON THE VISUAL CULTURE
OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD
EDITED BY
GÜLRU NEC~PO²LU
VOLUME 20
LEIDEN—BRILL—2003
muqarnas-20.pmd 3 9/30/2003, 2:31 PM
iv contents
MUQARNAS
Sponsored by:
The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Editor:
Gülru Necipo¯lu
Founding Editor:
Oleg Grabar
Managing Editor:
Julia W. Bailey
Consulting Editors:
Peri Bearman
András Riedlmayer
Editorial Board: Ali Asani, William Graham, Wolfhart Heinrichs, Eva Hoffman, Cemal Kafadar, Roy Mottahedeh, Afsaneh Najmabadi,
Nasser Rabbat, David Roxburgh, Wheeler Thackston, Heghnar Watenpaugh, Irene Winter
Advisory Board: Catherine Asher, Marianne Barrucand, Ülkü Bates, Irene Bierman, Sheila S. Blair, Jonathan Bloom, Zeynep Çelik,
Howard Crane, Giovanni Curatola, Walter Denny, Jerrilynn Dodds, Massumeh Farhad, Heinz Gaube, Lisa Golombek, Robert
Hillenbrand, Renata Holod, Stephen Humphreys, Machiel Kiel, Nuha Khoury, Thomas Leisten, R.D. McChesney, Bernard O’Kane,
Scott Redford, J. Michael Rogers, Priscilla Soucek, Maria Subtelny, Anthony Welch
Note to Contributors: Muqarnas will consider for publication articles on all aspects of Islamic visual culture, historical and contempo-
rary. Articles submitted for publication are subject to review by the editors and/or outside readers. Manuscripts should be no more
than 40 double-spaced typed pages of text (not including endnotes) and have no more than 15-20 illustrations (both graphics and
black-and-white glossy photographs; color prints or slides are not acceptable). Exceptions can be made for articles dealing with
unpublished visual or textual primary sources, but if they are particularly long, they may be divided into two or more parts for
publication in successive volumes.
Both text and endnotes must be double-spaced; endnotes should conform to the usage of the Chicago Manual of Style. Illustra-
tions should be labeled and accompanied by a double-spaced caption list. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to
reproduce copyrighted illustrations and for supplying the proper credit-line information.
For the transliteration of Arabic and Persian, Muqarnas uses the Encyclopaedia of Islam system, but with the omission of subscript
bars and the substitution of q for _ and j for dj; for Ottoman Turkish, authors are given the choice of the EI system or modern
Turkish orthography. All transliterated words and phrases in the text and transliterated author’s names and titles in the endnotes
must follow this system. Exceptions are proper nouns (names of persons, dynasties, and places) and Arabic words that have
entered the English language and have generally recognized English forms (e.g., madrasa, iwan, mihrab, Abbasid, Muhammad);
these should be anglicized and not italicized; placenames and names of historical personages with no English equivalent should
be transliterated but, aside from {ayn and hamza, diacritical marks should be omitted (e.g., Maqrizi, Fustat, San{a). A detailed style
sheet and further information can be obtained from the editorial office. Write to the Managing Editor, Aga Khan Program, Sackler
Museum, 485 Broadway, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 02138. E-mail: [email protected]; fax: [phone].
ISSN 0732-2992
ISBN 90 04 13207 4
© Copyright 2003 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission
of the publisher.
printed in the netherlands
muqarnas-20.pmd 4 9/30/2003, 2:31 PM
in memoriam margie v
CONTENTS
Alain Fouad George, The Geometry of the Qur}an of Amajur: A Preliminary Study of
Proportion in Early Arabic Calligraphy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Anna Contadini, A Bestiary Tale: Text and Image of the Unicorn in the Kit¸b na{t
al-¥ayaw¸n (British Library Or. 2784) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Persis Berlekamp, Painting as Persuasion: A Visual Defense of Alchemy in an Islamic
Manuscript of the Mongol Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Stefano Carboni, The Painted-Glass Decoration of the Mausoleum of Ahmad ibn
Sulayman al-Rifa{i in Cairo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Marcus Milwright, Modest Luxuries: Decorated Lead-Glazed Pottery in the South of
Bilad al-Sham (Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Heather Ecker, The Great Mosque of Córdoba in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries 113
Deborah Howard, Death in Damascus: Venetians in Syria in the Mid-fifteenth Century . . . 143
Zeynep Yürekli·, A Building between the Public and Private Realms of the Ottoman Elite:
The Sufi Convent of Sokollu Mehmed Pasha in Istanbul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Ahmet Ersoy, A Sartorial Tribute to Late Tanzimat Ottomanism: The Elbise-i {Osm¸niyye
Album . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Kishwar Rizvi, Religious Icon and National Symbol: The Tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini in
Iran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
Mary McWilliams, Collecting by the Book: The Shaping of Private and Public Collections 225
Valérie Gonzalez, The Comares Hall in the Alhambra and James Turrell’s Space that Sees:
A Comparison of Aesthetic Phenomenology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
muqarnas-20.pmd 5 9/30/2003, 2:31 PM
the geometry of the qur}an of amajur 1
ALAIN FOUAD GEORGE
THE GEOMETRY OF THE QUR}AN OF AMAJUR: A PRELIMINARY
STUDY OF PROPORTION IN EARLY ARABIC CALLIGRAPHY
This short study of a Qur}an from the ninth century then the Basran (baªrº), then the Kufan (k¢fº). As re-
shows that it is based on numbers revered by the gards the Meccan and Medinan, there is in its alifs a bend
Ancients and reveals a geometric dimension of early to the right-hand side, and an elevation of the vertical
Arabic calligraphy that has so far gone unnoticed. strokes (al-aª¸bi{, “the fingers”); and in its form, there
Modern scholarship on the subject, which stretches is a slight inclination.3
back over two centuries, has until recently focused
In the 1940s, Nabia Abbott attempted to identify
primarily on letter forms. But the Greeks, probably
manuscripts that corresponded to Ibn al-Nadim’s
beginning with Pythagoras, saw a spiritual dimension
description. As she said, she wished to understand
in certain numbers and the proportions related to
“the entire matter of the evolution and classification
them, which they studied in theory and applied in
of scripts as the Moslem scribes and calligraphers
the arts. It appears that three of these proportions
themselves saw and understood it.” But she did not
are at the basis of the script and layout of the Qur}an
reach conclusive results. More recently, Estelle Whe-
of Amajur, dated 262 (876).
lan published an article to criticize the study of merely
The study of early Arabic calligraphy in Europe
the forms of letters in such scripts.4 “The position of
started in 1780, when J. G. C. Adler published some
a given letter,” she wrote, “…must be taken into ac-
Qur}anic folios, which he called “coufique” after Arab
count with its body form.”5 She suggested that such
sources.1 Since then, a succession of authors has tried
features as format, liturgical divisions, the elongation
to classify early Qur}ans by script and to study Arab
of the tail of some letters, the width of line spacing,
texts about them; these authors include de Sacy in
and the regularity of strokes should be considered.
the early nineteenth century, Amari in the 1850s,
This method had the advantage of utilizing more of
Ahlwardt three decades later, von Karabacek in the
the information contained in the Qur}ans she con-
early twentieth century, and Bergstrasser in the 1930s.
sidered, but it did not yield significant results. Finally,
Little by little, they came to terms with such prob-
since the 1980s, François Déroche has been engaged
lems as the scarcity of dated items and the difficulty
in an effort to classify early Qur}ans systematically by
of determining places of origin. Minovi, in addition,
the shape of six pivotal letters.6 Déroche has rejected
investigated forgeries.2 The method of classification
the recourse to Arab sources because of their laconism
was progressively refined. Bergstrasser imposed a strict
and lack of precise descriptions. He has created six
palaeographical study of key letters. The generic name
main categories of styles, labelled A to F, with sub-
“Kufic” came under criticism, first by Amari and then
categories, e.g., C.III. or F.I. Being something of a
repeatedly, as it became apparent that it encompassed
table of elements for early scripts, his work already
a vast number of angular scripts. Amari introduced
constitutes a standard reference in the field.
another important element in 1857: he discovered
Neither he nor his predecessors, however, have
the chapter on calligraphy in the Fihrist of Ibn al-
considered the proportions of early Qur}anic manu-
Nadim, an index of all the knowledge of its time,
scripts in detail. Déroche is well aware of their po-
published in 377 (987–88). In it, Ibn al-Nadim cata-
tential importance, noting, “The dimensions of the
logues twenty-six different types of early script. The
text area indicate that, in some cases at least, the space
Meccan and Medinan, he writes, are the two earliest,
was constructed according to the rules of geometry…A
and he decribes the shape of their alif:
group of manuscripts in the B.II. style show a strong
Muhammad ibn Ishaq said: the first Arabic scripts were tendency for the length of the text area to be two-
the Meccan (makkº) and after that the Medinan (madanº), thirds of the width.” He adds, “The quotient of the
Brill/Muqarnas20/conv/150503/010903
muq-20-1.pmd 1 9/2/2003, 4:01 PM
2 alain fouad george
width divided by the height is 1.5, which is that of against Christian doctrines of the Holy Trinity. This
the geometric figure known as the double rectangle strong Umayyad policy of forging a distinctive iden-
of Pythagoras.”7 He also notes that “a group of folios tity, embodied by the language of the Qur}an, might
in D.III. …have a text area in the form of a double also have included calligraphy.
square…and a predilection for the formula (a) × (a) Under Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–809), Khalil b.
× (√3) is apparent in folios in E.”8 He suggests that Ahmad al-Farhudi (718–91), a lexicographer, pho-
there must be in these Qur}ans a geometry that has nologist, grammarian, and musicologist, reformed
never been studied: anew the scriptural rules of Arabic. His work super-
seded that of al-Du}ali. During the same reign, Greek
Geometric formulae similar to those set out above were
works still available in late antiquity began to be trans-
employed in more recent periods, and we can only sup-
lated extensively, first from Syriac and then directly
pose that they were already in use in the ninth century
into Arabic.12 The caliph al-Ma}mun (r. 814–33) sys-
A.D., even if the texts do not provide any information
tematically obtained further Greek manuscripts from
in this regard. The archaeology of early Qur}ans has
the Byzantines, and founded the Bayt al-Hikma (House
revealed two factors that may provide support for this
hypothesis. One is the importance of geometry in the of Wisdom) in Baghdad. Euclid, Plato, Aristotle,
preparation of the illumination. The other is the pos- Ptolemy, Galen, Plotinus, Proclus, and a wide array
sibility that letter forms were not the only criterion used of ancient authors and minor commentators were read
in defining a particular style of script, for the dimen- and studied.13 Like their Greek predecessors, the
sions of the script seem to have played a role. It there- learned men of the ninth century were versed in many
fore seems logical that calligraphers who seem to have areas of science but made their own contributions in
established a link between scripts and their dimensions specific fields. Al-Khwarazmi (ca. 780–850) founded
would have widened this concept to take in the page modern algebra. He was probably the first mathema-
as a whole by defining the written surface in terms of a tician to systematize a concept derived from Indian
set of proportions... [Therefore] the calligraphers of the
sources: the use of zero as a place holder in nota-
Abbasid period must have been using a form of ruling
tion; he also wrote astronomical and geographical
which has left no visible mark on the parchment.9
treatises.14 Al-Kindi (801–73), in addition to being
Déroche’s hypothesis is right: there was a geometri- the first Muslim philosopher in the Greek tradition,
cal basis to these Qur}ans, beyond what we had imag- also wrote about arithmetic, geometry, optics, and
ined. music.15 Hunayn ibn Ishaq (808–73) set high philo-
When the Muslims conquered the Near East in the logical standards of translation and was also an im-
mid-seventh century, its cities remained largely hel- portant mathematician. The Sabian Thabit ibn Qurra
lenized; Greek culture also continued to exert a strong (821–901), a scientific translator, mathematician, me-
influence on the Sasanian empire. Alexandria, in chanical theoretician, and astronomer, wrote, among
particular, had succeeded Athens as a major scholas- other works, a book on the composition of ratios that
tic center during the Christian era.10 How far the applied arithmetical operations to geometrical con-
Umayyads used the Greek sources of knowledge within structions, a procedure unknown to the Greeks; his
their empire is little known, except for some frag- conception of numbers followed that of Plato.16 At
mentary indications,11 but they were concerned with least since the time of Mughira (d. 737), a gnostic
issues of learning, as dictated by the needs of their for whom letters were elements of the body of God,
new faith and state. At an early stage, Abu al-Aswad the word had been central to Islamic mysticism.17 Al-
al-Du}ali (d. 688) codified Arabic grammar and the Kindi also used the Qur}anic {ilm al-a¥ruf (“science
Arabic script. He is credited with, among other things, of letters” through numbers) together with astrology
the introduction of diacritical marks and their col- to foretell the duration of the Arab empire.18
ors, which two of his students made into a uniform One of the most influential works by Plato in the
system by order of the governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj b. ninth-century Islamic world was the Timaeus, his cos-
Yusuf al-Thaqafi (r. ca. 694–714). In the same pe- mological dialogue, which seems to have responded
riod, during the reign of {Abd al-Malik (685–705), to concerns of the age, and which, as in late antiq-
Arabic became the official language of the adminis- uity, was read perhaps more widely than the Laws or
tration and a distinctive Umayyad coinage appeared. the Republic.19 Its summary with numerous quotations
Muslim theology also took shape, to some extent by Galen, which is otherwise lost, survives in Hunayn
muq-20-1.pmd 2 9/2/2003, 4:01 PM
the geometry of the qur}an of amajur 3
ibn Ishaq’s translation, Jaw¸mi{ kit¸b Tºm¸¢s fº al-{ilm 692)27 was based upon φ in plan, facade, and eleva-
al-«abº{º. We also possess part of Hunayn’s version of tion.28 The Elements is also among the first Greek works
the commentary on the Timaeus by Proclus, Yahya known to have been translated into Arabic, by al-Hajjaj
ibn {Adi’s translation of Plutarch’s commentary on in the late eighth century. 29
the same work, and a commentary on Plutarch’s com- Despite this converging evidence, the sacred num-
mentary by al-Razi.20 In the Timaeus itself, Plato com- bers of the ancients have hardly ever been studied in
pares letters to physical elements, a comparison directly modern writings about Islamic art (with the excep-
echoed by passages of the ninth-century alchemical tion mentioned above).30 We will now show that three
corpus of Jabir ibn Hayyan, as shown by Paul Kraus.21 of these numbers are used consistently in one of the
Plato’s passage about the genesis of the universe is best documented early Qur}ans, the Qur}an of Amajur.
worth quoting at length: The Qur}an in question is an oblong manuscript
with three lines to the page. At the top of every other
Now anything that has come to be must be corporeal, page, we can read awqafah¸ am¸j¢r or waqqafah¸ am¸j¢r
visible, and tangible: but nothing can be visible without
(“Amajur made it a waqf”). Amajur governed Syria
fire, nor tangible without solidity, and nothing can be
for the {Abbasids between 870 and 878. His revolt
solid without earth. So God, when he began to put to-
against his masters some time before 873 was repressed
gether the body of the universe, made it of fire and earth.
by Ibn Tulun, the governor of Egypt, who invaded
But it is not possible to combine two things properly
Damascus in 878 before asserting the autonomy of
without a third to act as a bond to hold them together.
his own provinces vis-à-vis the caliphs of Samarra.31
And the best bond is one that effects the closest unity
A waqf is the inalienable property of a religious
between itself and the terms it is combining; and this
is best done by a continued geometrical proportion. For institution. By an extraordinary chance, the waqfiyya
whenever you have three cube or square numbers with (deed) of this Qur}an, which gives the details of the
a middle term such that the first term is to it as it is to legal procedure, has been partly preserved. It states
the third term, and conversely…22 that the manuscript was made a waqf in the city of
Sur, in modern Lebanon, in 876, without giving the
The Timaeus is the oldest preserved Greek work of
name of the recipient religious institution.32
cosmology, and like other Greek writers23 Plato relates
Scattered around the world, at least 251 folios from
the creation of the universe to numbers and propor-
this Qur}an have survived. Two hundred and forty-
tions, which are a projection of the eternal realm of
two in Istanbul have been published in a short article
the Creator onto matter. These proportions rule every-
by Déroche, who also mentions one in Dublin; one
thing from celestial bodies to the human body. Among
in Cairo; one in Cambridge, England; and one possibly
other numbers, Plato devotes some attention to 3/2,
in Riyad. A further folio, which was originally published
4/3, and, in his discussion of triangles, √2 and √3,
in Tokyo by Kordachi Shirotori, is reproduced in a
values to which the Pythagoreans also attributed deep
book on calligraphy by Naji Zayn al-Din. I have found
spiritual meaning.24 But perhaps most fascinating of four more: one at Oxford and three in Damascus.33
all is the Golden Ratio. Like π for the circle, it is the
Let us look at the double folio from Oxford in more
geometrical basis of the pentagon and the decagon.
detail (figs. 1 and 2).
Arithmetically, it is an irrational number, with an Although it is austere in appearance, a closer look
infinite, non-repeating series of numbers after the reveals a fascinating harmony and rhythm to the script.
decimal point, approximated by 1.618.25 Its modern It is written in thick, brown, angular strokes, and its
mathematical symbol, φ (phi), is the initial of Phidias, epigraphy places it in the D.I. category of Déroche’s
the Greek sculptor who, with the architects Ictinos classification.34 The space between letters within words
and Callicrates, based the proportions of the Par- is as large as that between words. There are no dia-
thenon in Athens upon it. It may have been studied critical marks, and vocalization is only partly indi-
by Pythagoras and was an object of fascination for cated.35 Thus, the text can hardly be understood by
his followers, whose symbol was a pentagonal star. someone who does not know the Qur}an by heart,
Its earliest extant mathematical construction is that which reminds us that these early manuscripts were
by Euclid (ca. 325–265 b.c.), in the Elements, possibly only written as aides-mémoire for the educated reader.
under Platonic influence.26 In a brief article, Doron Mashq, the elongation of letters, is used repeatedly,
Chen has shown that the Dome of the Rock (built in so that the ductus of each line suggests an invisible
muq-20-1.pmd 3 9/2/2003, 4:01 PM