Islamic Art

Islamic Art

Islamic art and architecture

Islamic art and architecture refers to artistic achievements in those lands where, from the 7th century on, ISLAM became the dominant faith. The Islamic tradition encompasses the arts of the Middle East, North Africa, Spain, Anatolia and the Balkans, Central Asia, and northern and central India, from the time each of these areas became Muslim as early as AD 622 in parts of Arabia and as late as the 15th century for Istanbul, parts of the Balkans, and central India. Generally xcluded from consideration in this context are the arts of sub-Saharan and eastern Africa,Indonesia,Malaysia, the Philippines, and Muslim parts of China. These areas did not adopt Islam until relatively late, generally after the 16th century, and by that time the artistic creativity of the central Muslim lands had weakened; their arts tend to be closer to local traditions.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

During the most creative millennium in Islamic art (about 650-1650) certain key features emerged that came to characterize the Islamic style of art and architecture. These shared characteristics appeared despite the differences in environment between such diverse lands as Mediterranean Spain, steppic Central Asia, mountainous Algeria, arid Arabia, and the subtropical Indus Valley, and despite cultural diversity of such distant ethnic groups as Arabs, Berbers, Persians, Turks, and Indians. The developing Islamic tradition drew on complex artistic inheritances that included Late Roman art, Early Christian art of the Byzantines and the Copts, and Sassanian art of Persia, and on lesser influences from Mongol, Central Asian, and Indian sources.

Function of Art:

From its inception Islamic art was an art created for the setting of daily life. Most religious architecture, notably the MOSQUE and the MINARET, was built less as a testimonial to Allah than as a place where people could best express their piety and learn the precepts of the faith. In addition to that used to decorate buildings, Islamic painting developed primarily in the form of book illustration and illumination. Such painted works were generally created not as ends in themselves but to help explain a scientific text or to enhance the pleasure of reading history or literature.

In the field of the decorative arts the Islamic style is distinguished by the novelty and extraordinary quality of techniques used in the making of utilitarian objects. These techniques include the application of lustrous glazes and rich colors in ceramics and glassware; intricate silver inlays that transform the surfaces of bronze metalwork; lavish molded stucco and carved wood wall panels; and endlessly varied motifs woven into textiles and rugs. In nearly all instances the objects decorated-whether ewers, cooking cauldrons, candlesticks, or pen cases-served fundamentally practical purposes; their aesthetic effect was aimed above all at making the daily activities or architectural setting more pleasurable

The Court of lions, one of two main courtyards located in the 14th century Alhambra Palace, Granada, Spain, is one of the most articulate examples of Islamic architecture. The elaborate interior decoration includes a profusion of delicate muqarna work.

Sources of Patronage. The vast majority of surviving examples of Islamic art reflect the patronage of a wide social spectrum, most of the patronage coming from the urban world of the great Islamic cities. From Cordoba in Spain to Samarkand in central Asia, the cities were the Centers of Islamic learning and of mercantile wealth. Of the thousands of ceramic objects excavated in the Persian city of Nishapur, the celebrated lusterwares from Fatimid Cairo, or the many inlaid bronzes from Herat (Afghanistan) or Mosul (Iraq), most were made for the bourgeoisie of the cities. The styles of these objects reflect the preferences of these urban dwellers; the variations in quality presumably reflect local variations in price and standards of appreciation.

In addition to the arts created for the urban strata of the Islamic world there was a splendid art of kings and emperors. Little has been preserved of this regal art, however, and only with imagination is it possible to reconstruct the secluded life of the 9th-century imperial palaces at Samarra, or the pleasure pavilions of the Safavids in Iran, such as the 17th-century Ali Qapu and Chehel Stun in Isfahan. An exquisitely ornamented and rare rock-crystal ewer, preserved in the San Marco Museum, Venice, provides a hint of the richness oh 10th – and 11th – century fatimid art in Cairo, the countless treasures in the Topkapi palace museum, Istanbul, Attest to the enormous wealth of the Turkish Ottomans.

Decorative character of Art.

A fundamental characteristic of much Islamic art is Its is powerfully decorative ornamental quality. A variety of arbitrary geometric, floral, or other types of designs – such as the swirling, interlaced arabesque - tend to predominate over a specific motifs taken from nature or from an idealized version of the natural world. Although there are exception the fast majority of motifs, decorating everything from architectural monuments to manuscript borders, do not seen to bear direct relation to a visually perceived reality even CALLUGRAPHY the art of beautiful handwriting, often seems removed from the meaning of the words depicted; it functions instead more as an element in the overall decorative design in this decorative tendency Islamic art contrasts sharply with the representational art of the West in which precise iconography meanings are attached to most artistic form .

Whether in fact the Muslims world may also have sought to transmit concrete message through its abstract forms is a subject of debate among scholars several possibilities have been suggested .One is that the Muslims tended to reject the representation of the visible in their art of emphasize that visible reality is but an illusion and that Allah alone is true abstraction thus became a way to make a very specific theological point. Another theory holds that an art which sought above all to enhance the setting of human activities rather than to order human behavior or beliefs, was by necessity compelled to develop abstract forms rather than forms with a single obvious meaning.

this 12th century bronze incense burner from Gurgan, Iran, is representative of the highly decorative metalwork of the Seljuk period. Kufic inscriptions, such as that encircling the animal’s chest , are common embellishment to all forms of Islamic artistic expression. (Archaeological Museum, Tehran.) (Below) This relief tilework from a late 14th century mausoleum at Fathabad, Uzbekistan, typifies the articulation of architectural inscription of the Timurid period. (Victoria and Albert Museum, London)

An excellent example of the difficulty involved in even defining this problem lies in the muqarnas (sometimes called the honeycomb or stalactite motif), a form of ceiling decoration composed of small, three-dimensional units invented in Iran In the 10th century and eventually found everywhere from Spain to India. The muqarnas appears at first glance to he an arband strictly ornamental architectural motif. In Iranian domes of the late 11th and 12th centuries, however, the muqarnas ceiling carries a structural significance, in which the parts of the design are carefully aligned with support thrusts from the dome. In the intricately faceted ceilings of the Moorish ALHAMBRA outside Granada or the Cappella Porlatina (Palantine Chapel) in Palermo, inscriptions and the particular sequence of designs indicate that the muqarnas ceiling was meant to symbolically represent the dome of heaven. Other existing examples show that many seemingly abstract motifs in Islamic art carried subtle layers of meaning discernible either through their context or through an inscription.

IconocIastic Tendency.

Another characteristic of Islamic art is what is generally called its iconoclasm, or rejection of the representation of religious images and other living beings. In many ways the term iconoclasm is not an appropriate one be cause no formal doctrinal statement against such representations appeared in the Koran but only in the Hadith (traditions), a later writing. Even there the statements are incidental and partial (the decoration of baths or floors, for example, are exempted from the prohibition). Nevertheless, it is true that early Islamic art modified the art of previous centuries by tending to avoid the representation of humans and animals. Whether this reluctance was derived from a still undetected religious prohibition or from a search for a cultural identity distinct from the identities of other traditions remains a matter of scholarly debate.

Primacy of Calligraphy.

The art of calligraphy played a pre-eminent role throughout the world of Islam. Because of its association with the divine revelation, the Arabic alphabet become the vehicle for such diverse languages as Persian and Turkish. In addition, Islamic culture in general was highly verbal, therefore, unusual attention was given to the transformation of writing into a visually appealing expression of aesthetic forms. From the sharp angles of early Kufic to the flowing rhythms of later Persian shekasteh script or to the formal compositions of an Ottoman tughra (imperial emblem), many different systems of proportions between letters, relationships between parts of letters, and arrangements of words were developed. The impact of a fascination with writing appeared throughout the Islamic world: ceramics, metal objects, textiles, and architecture all acquired calligraphic forms as a universally appreciated means of decoration.

A leaf from a Koran manuscript (c.900)) displays the angular Kufic script used for sacred texts until the 11th century. The Islamic emphasis on literature led to the development and perfection of vigorous and remarkably decorative calligraphic styles. (Nelson Gallery of Art and Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo.)

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

Although no universally accepted chronology of Islamic art and architecture exists, the following three major periods are generally recognize the Formative period (650-l000), MiddIe period (1000-1250), and Late period (1250 on).

The Formative Period.

From about 650 to 1000-under the Umayyad and early Abbasid CALIPHATES as well as of the first local dynasties in Spain, Egypt, and eastern Iran-the Muslim world created its own identifying forms, from mosques to the abstract design known as the arabesque. Major monuments from this period are found throughout the Islamic world- the Mosques of Cordoba, Ibn Tulun in Cairo, Damascus, Samarra, and Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, private places like khirbat-al-Mafjar in Palestine. royal places like Samarra in Iraq the Urban architecture of Baghdad . tin-glassed ceramics in Iraq ,Egypt ,and northeastern Iran, would work and Rock and crystal carving in Egypt ,carved ivories in Spain .However the most influential and perhaps most creative area was Iraq which remained the center of the Muslim world until the early part of the 11th century . Although some of the more imaginative ceramics have been found in Nishapur in eastern Iran, it was probably in Iraq that the technique of lusterware originated (9th century) along with other uniquely Islamic forms of decorative art.

The Qubbat al-Sakhra, or Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem, is one of the earliest and most important Islamic shrines. Constructed (697) by the Umayyad caliph Abd-al-Malik, the octagonal structure more closely resembles Christian architecture than it does Islamic. A double Colonnade of Corinthian columns divides the interior into two concentric ambulatories focusing on the al-Sakhra, or Holy Rock, significant to Islamic, Judaic, and Christian tradition. The interior is lavishly decorated with quartered marble and naturalistic glass mosaics; the mosaics originally covering the exterior surfaces were replaced by ceramic decoration during the 16th century The double-timbered dome is covered at present with sheets of gilded aluminum.

The Middle Period.

The year 1000 marks the beginning of the Middle period of Islamic art. During this brilliant period, cut short by the Mongol invasion during the early 13th century, a large number of local styles were formed. Eastern Iran, western Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Anatolia (newly conquered by the Seljuks), North Africa, and Spain all acquired their own stylistic and iconographic peculiarities, which corresponded to political and social differences between provinces and the weakening of central authority. Cairo, Nishapur, Herat, Isfahan, and the Anatolian Center of Konya rivaled the early Islamic capital city of Baghdad in cultural and artistic importance. Yet common threads were maintained in the art of these diverse centers. In almost all Islamic cities an architecture of citadels and city walls rather than of palaces reflected the new power of a military elite. Next to the single mosques were built small private mosques, mausoleums for holy men, and madrasahs (schools of law and theology) or khanqahs (semimonastic establishments for holy men and women). This proliferation of architectural complexes in Islamic cities illustrates the growing complexity of the Muslim religious system during this period. Throughout the Muslim world a new emphasis was given to external forms of architecture (minarets, gates, and domes) as well as to the muqarnas.

New or reinvented techniques in the decorative arts-minai, or enameling in ceramics, luster painting in glass, and silver inlays in metalwork-made it possible to increase the number and character of illustrated topics. Quite suddenly in the latter part of the 12th Century, during this period of in tense artistic Creativity, books began to be illustrated. The reasons for this proliferation of new forms of representation are difficult to assess. In part it reflected new contacts with other cultures (India and the Christian West), but it probably also reflected an internal need for more complex expressions of a richer culture. The Middle period was also an era when mysticism began to affect all aspects of Muslim piety and when local cultural traditions, especially those in Iran, began to reassert themselves.

This manuscript page (c. 1250) from the Abbasid period, depicting a fanciful representation of the archer associated with sagittarius positioned between the moon and Jupiter, reflects the interest in astrological science that thrived In Islamic civilization from the 8th to the 13th century. Scientific treatises constituted a large part of the manuscript tradition of the Abbasid period. (Bibloiotheque Nationale,Paris)

Late Period:

After the devastating Mongol invasions of 1220-60 the Muslim world become more strictly divided both politically and culturally .The separate geopolitical entities that emerged tended to remain independent of each other although still frequently subject to common influence .West to east ,the area comprising Egypt ,Palestine, and Syria ;the Ottoman Empir;Iran ; and Muslim India.

In the Muslim West, Islam slowly disappeared from Spain, culminating in the fall of Granada in 1492, but was maintained in North Africa. Moorish art is distinguished primarily by brilliant geometrical ornamentation adorning mostly private, interiorized, architectural monuments. This striking decorative tradition was maintained by the Mudejars, Moors remaining in Spain after its reconquest by the Christians, and exerted a strong influence on later Spanish styles of craftwork and architectural decoration. Except for the unique masterpiece of the 14th-century Alhambra palace, however, most of western Islamic art tended to be ative and repetitive, with limited novelties in the art of objects.

(See MOORISH ART AND ARCHITECTURE.)

From 1258 to 1517 the area comprising Egypt, Palestine, and Syria was ruled by the unique system of military slaves known as the MAMELUKES. Its major artistic achievement was in architecture, as attested by the multitude of Mameluke monuments still extant in the cities of Cairo, Jerusalem, and to a lesser degree, Damascus and Aleppo. For complex economic and social reasons the affluent classes invested in vast architectural projects that transformed these cities. The buildings are traditional in function, but their forms and techniques- superb stonework, brilliantly decorated gates and minarets, complex domes-display a level of sophistication and quality hitherto unknown in the Islamic world. A characteristic example, ranked among the masterpieces of world architecture, is the immense madrasah of Sultan Hasan in Cairo. Built around a square court surmounted by four lofty cross vaults, it houses the mausoleum of the sultan, crowned by a huge cupola.

A Syrian enamelled flask (c.1300; British Museum, London) features the lavish Arabesques and geometric patterns Produced under the highly sophisticated art produced under the Mamelukes, as the elegant lines (left) of the Masjid-I shah mosque (1612-38), Isfahan, Iran, epitomize the symmetrical architecture of the Safavids
	This miniature (1485), by the Herat calligrapher and artist Mirak Naqqash, illustrates a scene from the "Khusrau and Shirin" segment of Nezami's Khamseh, a 12th-century dramatic poem. Naqqash's work, in its precise execution and unified design, exemplifies the Herat style of manuscript illumination. (Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.)

The Ottoman dynasty, having begun in western Anatolia, conquered the Balkans and took Constantinople in 1453 and nearly all Islamic lands around the Mediterranean by 1520. A strong, centralized state, the Ottoman Empire concentrated its creative energies on the development of a uniquely logical mosque architecture. As early as the 14th and 15th centuries, in Bursa and lznik, the Ottomans chose to use the single dome as the focal compositional element of their monuments. This fascination with the cupola was in large part inspired by the Byzantine church of HAGIA SOPHIA (which was converted into a mosque) and culminated in the 16th-century masterpiece of the Suleiman (Suleymaniye) mosque in Istanbul. Its architect, SINAN, created numerous monuments in [dime and Istanbul, which in turn became types adapted for use from Yugoslavia to Egypt. Ottoman decorative art, especially ceramic objects and tiles, and miniature painting are largely derivative of other traditions, although many examples are noteworthy for the exceptional precision of their execution.

Of all the Islamic lands Iran was most strongly affected The Mongol invasions, but this traumatic experience led to a rejuvenation of the arts, despite continuous political upheavals. Under the Ilkhanids (1280-1136), the Timurids (1370-1502), and Safavids (1502-1712), and several other minor dynasties Persian architecture exhibited a whole gamut of styles ranging From the grandiloquent monumentality of the Sultaniyah mosque to the intense Piety of Samarkand’s mausoleums, to the colorful brilliance of the monuments around Isfahan’s Masjid-i-Shah mosque. It was an imaginative, inventive, accretive tradition remarkably attuned to the composition of Persian religious thought. Especially impressive is the development of Persian painting. From the ShahNama (Book of kings) to lyrical poems of Nizami, Persian literature was illuminated through a striking array of painting styles – rough and brutal in the early part of the 14th century pre-poetically complex in the 15th century, and marked by precisely observed details of everyday life in later times.

(See Persian Art And Architecture.)

Farther east, after several centuries of rule by various military dynasties, Islamic India reached its apogee under the MOGULS (1526-1707).

Their architecture was often inspired by Persia but rapidly acquired its own identity through the use of local materials and techniques. The Mogul achievements in architecture are most impressive in such celebrated buildings as the Tag Mal or the urban complex of Fatehpur Sikri. The Persian influence was also strongly felt in painting in the early years, but soon Mogul art became uniquely inspired by the remarkable precision and human insights apparent in native Indian traditions of painting.

(See Mogul Art And Architecture.)

Bibliography:

Arnold, Thomas W., Painting in Islam (1928; repr. 1965); Aslanapa, Oktay, Turkish Art and Architecture (1971); Ettinghausen Richard, Arab Painting (1962) and, as ed., Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum (1972); Goodwin, Godfrey, A History of Ottoman Architecture (1971); Grabar, Oleg, The Formation of Islamic Art (1973); Gray, Basil, Persian Painting (1930; repr. 1971); Grube, Ernest J., The World of Islam (1967); Hoag, John D., Islamic Architecture (1977); Kuhnel, Ernest, Islamic Art and Architecture (1966); Lane, Arthur, Early Islamic Pottery (1957) and Later Islamic Pottery, 2d ed. (1971); Rice, David T., Islamic Art (1965); Welch, S. C., Persian Painting (1976); Wilkinson,Charles K., Nishapur: Pottery of the Early