Islamic Art (original) (raw)
Related papers
ISLAMIC ART VI 2009: Studies on the Art and Culture of the Muslim World
Ernst Grube and Eleanor Sims, eds, Serpil Bağcı, Manijeh Bayani, Nahla Nassar, assistant editors. Distributed worldwide by Saffron, Islamic Art is published by The Bruschettini Foundation for Islamic and Asian Art, Genova, and The East-West Foundation, New York. Editors' Note (excerpt): Preparing our customary Editors’ Note for this sixth volume of Islamic Art, we are struck by the many developments that have shaped the issue you hold in your hands. To begin with, it is not the volume so long intended. What had been envisioned as an already-large component of Volume VI instead grew so large that the wiser course seemed to publish it separately: the first supplement to Islamic Art, The Painted Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina, by Ernst J. Grube and Jeremy Johns, appeared in 2005. A detailed examination of the complex iconographical content of the paintings which decorate the celebrated ceilings of this building, erected by order of the Norman King of Sicily around 1140, it seeks to identify the multitudinous sources of these paintings. They range from the Ancient Near East and the Classical world to Romanesque Europe but are overlaid by myriad Islamic forms and manners, especially those developed in the Maghrib and Fatimid Egypt. Unique as a pictorial cycle, the ceilings of the Cappella Palatina may now be seen as an extraordinary and unique fusion of Eastern and Western traditions taking place near the very edge of the Western Islamic world. If Supplement I to Islamic Art focuses on the medieval period in the Muslim West, Volume VI looks primarily toward the Muslim East.
During the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish traditions of decorating pottery vessels emerged as they developed new patterns and designs, which were heavily influenced by Chinese culture. Chinese porcelains were recognized for their unique design, called “Blue and White.” The influence of the “Blue and White” Chinese porcelain transformed the patterns of traditional Turkish designs in profound ways. Turkish designs evolved into decorative patterns that clearly show a relationship between Turkish pottery and Chinese “Blue and white” designs. An excellent example is, “Dish Depicting Two Birds among Flowering Plants” which provides visible evidence of the cultural relationship between China and the Islamic World, demonstrating that there was a design adaptation rather than an imitation.
The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field
The Art Bulletin, 2003
When we started studying Islamic art some thirty years ago, there were no good introductory textbooks that undergraduates could read. When we started teaching the subject nearly a decade later, there were still none, and we had to make do with stacks of photocopied articles and chapters assigned from one book or another in an attempt to present students with a coherent narrative. So little survey material existed that even graduate students had difficulty getting a grasp on the whole field and had to resort to obscure and uneven publications. For example, K.A.C. Creswell's massive tomes implied that Islamic architecture ended in 900 C.E. except in Egypt, where it suddenly stopped four hundred years later in the middle of the Bahri Mamluk period, although the Mamluk sequence of sultans persisted until 1517 and there was ample evidence for a glorious tradition of Islamic architecture in many lands besides Egypt.' The venerable Survey of wieldy neologisms have not found widespread acceptance.7 Rather, most scholars tacitly accept that the convenient if incorrect term "Islamic" refers not just to the religion of Islam but to the larger culture in which Islam was the dominant-but not sole-religion practiced. Although it looks similar, "Islamic art" is therefore not comparable to such concepts as "Christian" or "Buddhist" art, which are normally understood to refer specifically to religious art. Christian art, for example, does not usually include all the art of Europe between the fall of Rome and the Reformation, nor does Buddhist art encompass all the arts of Asia produced between the Kushans and Kyoto. This important, if simple, distinction is often overlooked. And what about art? Islamic art is generally taken to encompass everything from the enormous congregational mosques and luxury manuscripts commissioned by powerful rulers from great architects and calligrapher-painters to the inlaid metalwares and intricate carpets produced by anonymous urban craftsmen and nomad women. However, much of what man)y historians of Islamic art normally study-inlaid metalwares, luster ceramics, enameled glass, brocaded textiles, and knotted carpets-is not the typical purview of the historian of Western art, who generally considers such handicrafts to be "minor" or "decorative" arts compared with the "nobler" arts of architecture, painting, and sculpture. While architecture is as important in Islamic culture as it was in Western Europe or East Asia, visual representation, which plays such an enormous role in the artistic traditions of Europe and Asia, is a relatively minor and limited component of Islamic culture, and sculpture is virtually unknown. In sum, then, the term "Islamic art" seems to be a convenient misnomer for everything left over from everywhere else. It is most easily defined by what it is not: neither a region, nor a period, nor a school, nor a movement, nor a dynasty, but the visual culture of a place and time when the people (or at least their leaders) espoused a particular religion. Compared with other fields of art history, the study of Islamic art and architecture is relatively new. It was invented at the end of the nineteenth century and was of interest primarily to European and later American scholars." Unlike the study of Chinese art, which Chinese scholars have pursued for centuries, there is no indigenous tradition in any of the Islamic lands of studying Islamic art, with the possible exception of calligraphy, which has enjoyed a special status since the seventh century, and by extension book painting, which was collected since the sixteenth.9 There is no evidence that any artist or patron in the fourteen centuries since the revelation of Islam ever thought of his or her art as "Islamic," and the notion of a distinctly "Islamic" tradition of art and architecture, eventually encompassing the lands between the Atlantic and the Indian oceans, is a product of late nineteenth-and twentieth-century Western scholarship, as is the terminology used to identify it. Until that time, European scholars used such restrictive geographic or ethnic terms as "Indian" ("Hindu"), "Persian," "Turkish," "Arab," "Saracenic," and "Moorish" to describe distinct regional styles current in the Indian subcontinent, the Ottoman Empire, Iran, the Levant, and southern Spain. Such all-embracing terms as "Mahommedan" or "Mohammedan," "Moslem" or "Muslim," and "Islamic" came into favor only when twentieth-century scholars began to look back to a golden age of Islamic culture that they believe had flourished in the eighth and ninth centuries and project it simplistically onto the kaleidoscopic modern world. In short, Islamic art as it exists in the early twenty-first century is largely a creation of Western culture.10 This all-embracing view of Islam and Islamic art was a by-product of European interest in delineating the history of religions, in which the multifarious varieties of human spiritual expression were lumped together in a normative notion of a single "Islam," which could be effectively juxtaposed not only to heterodox "variants" such as "Shiism" and "Sufism" but also, and more importantly in the Western view, to equally normative notions of "Christianity" or "Judaism." This twentieth-century view, enshrined in countless books, is all the odder considering that there is no central authority that can speak for all Muslims, although many might claim to do so. No matter what newspapers-and many books-say, there never was, nor is, a single Islam, and so any attempt to define the essence of a single Islamic art is doomed to failure.1' To the 1970s Western views of Islam and its culture were formed in the crucible of colonialism, as foreign powers expanded economically and politically into the region during a period when traditional local powers-notably, the Ottoman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean and the Mughals in northern India-were weakening. Colonialism was not limited to Western European imperialists. In the nineteenth century the Chinese and the Russians absorbed the Muslim khanates of Central Asia. The Chinese province of Xinjiang (literally, "New Territories") was carved out of Silk Road oases controlled for the last millennium by Muslims. The Russians, who sought warm-water ports, pushed south into Central Asia, Iran, and Afghanistan. Colonial expansion, which was initially motivated by a desire for raw materials and markets for manufactured goods, was enormously complicated in the twentieth century by the discovery of huge deposits of petroleum throughout the region, from the Algerian Sahara through Kurdistan and the Arabian Peninsula to Sumatra, and its consequent development as the world's major source of energy. These global events had several ramifications for the study of Islamic art. For at least a millennium, European travelers had brought back souvenirs of Islamic handicraft and given them new meanings. Itienne de Blois, commander of the First Crusade along with his brothers Godefroy de Bouillon and Baudoin, returned to France and became patron of the abbey of St-Josse near Caen. He apparently brought back with him the glorious samite saddlecloth made in northeastern Iran for the commander Abu Mansur Bakhtegin in the late tenth century (Fig. 1), for it was used to wrap the bones of the saint when he was reburied in 1134.12 The spectacular rockcrystal ewer made in Egypt for the Fatimid caliph al-Aziz (r. 975-96) must have had a similar history before it became a prized relic in the treasury of S. Marco.'3 During the sack of C6rdoba in 1010, Catalan mercenaries probably looted the
On the Tradition of Islamic Figural Sculpture to 1300
This article outlines the tradition of Islamic figural sculpture from the early 8 th c. to 1300, citing both surviving examples and the record of those many examples that no longer survive from areas as diverse as Syria-Palestine, Iraq, N. Africa, Afghanistan, Iran, Andalusia and Anatolia, in relief and in the round, figurines and larger sculptures in a variety of materials. Attention is drawn to the 'statue of the lancer figure' that was placed on top of al-Qubbah al-Khadra, the hall of audience of the Caliph, Abu Ja'far al Mansur, in Bagdad and which remained in-situ until 941 and which was recorded by Ibrahim b. 'Ali al-Khutabi in the 10 th c. as, 'the crown of Bagdad, a guidepost for the region and one of the great achievements of the Abbasids'. A clearly visible landmark sculpture and a Caliphal model for Islamic rulers in the use in public, as well as in private spaces, of sculpture. Özet: Bu makale, erken VIII. yüzyıldan XII. yüzyılın sonlarına değin İslami figüratif heykeltıraşlık geleneğini antik kaynaklar ışığında inceleyerek, Suriye-Filistin, Irak, Kuzey Afrika, Afganistan, İran, Endülüs ve Anadolu gibi farklı coğrafyalardan günümüze ulaşabilmeyi başaran ya da kayıtlara geçen örnekler ışığında ele almaktadır. Özellikle Bağdat'ta halife Abu Ja-far al Mansur'un kabul salonunu örten al-Qubbah al Khadra'nın (Yeşil Kubbe) tepesine konuşlandırılan ve X. yüzyılda yaşayan İbrahim bin Ali al-Khutabi tarafından " Bağdat'ın tacı, bölgenin sembolü ve Abbasilerin gerçekleştirdiği en önemli eserlerden biri " olarak kabul edilen 'atlı mızraklı süvari' 941 yılına kadar yerinde in-situ şeklinde durmuştur. Bu yönüyle İslami yöneticilerin halife örneğinde de izlenebildiği üzere, kamu alanlarında olduğu kadar özel alanlarda da halk tarafından görülebilen nirengi noktalarında heykellerinin yer aldığı iddia edilmektedir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Erken İslamik Heykeller, Kabartmalar, Abbasi haraketli heykelleri
Islamic art: Restrictions and figural representations
The initial influence of Islam on art was not profound, however its impact became conspicuous in the ways that artists began to create art within the frame of Islamic theocracies. From the earliest beginnings of Islam, there have been rules and obligations regarding the depiction of human body in illustration and painting in general. After the coming of Islam, the interest of artists in religion and art with religious references make a substantial part of artistic production by using Quran and its verses in their works in different innovations. Those Islamic approach influence art and has been used for centuries including illuminated calligraphic texts, geometric and vegetal patterns, and figural representations between or around the verses of Quran, miniatures, ceramic tiles, etc. This paper examines if Islamic obligations led artists to be more creative while trying to find their way around the restrictions of using figural representation. While arguing if it's appropriate to accept religious values as a norm of art.
LIBRI: Kitap Tanıtımı, Eleştiri ve Çeviri Dergisi, Journal of Book Notices, Reviews and Translations, 2019
Perhaps the earliest of European terms employed to describe the religious art-the works of Islam, Islamic Art, describes through this term a work as having been made, (In the manner of ) The Lord. The term employed from the 14th c. onwards in a variety of forms include: Rabb-esco, Ar-Rabb-esco, Orabesco, Rabask/Rabesk/Rebesk, Arabesk, Arabeschi, Rabesca, Rabescato, Rabescare, Rabeschi, Rabesci, Rabiscu, Rabbesco, Rabbiscu, Rabesch, today, most frequently written, Arabesque. This term records an Arabic word which was brought into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Sicilian, and a word which directly relates the name of this type of work to the Arabic word Rabb, meaning Lord, and which was then combined with the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese suffix- esco, hence, with the Arabic article, ar-rabb+esco, or, without the article, rabb+esco, today the term, Arabesque. In consequence, to state as Blair and Bloom do, that, “There is no evidence that any artist or patron in the fourteen centuries since the revelation of Islam ever thought of his or her art as “Islamic”, and the notion of a distinctly “Islamic” tradition of art and architecture, eventually encompassing the lands between the Atlantic and the Indian oceans, is a product of late nineteenth-and twentieth-century Western scholarship, as is the terminology used to identify it." is a statement that is simply incorrect. It was a term employed by Muslims to describe to others those works that were made "in the manner of the Lord", meaning in the manner prescribed by the Almighty, through the expression of iktisāb, that is, Islamic Art. For a different modern opinion concerning the term ""Arabesque" see: Met. Museum. N.Y., Department of Islamic Art. “Vegetal Patterns in Islamic Art. "It was not until the medieval period (tenth–twelfth centuries) that a highly abstract and fully developed Islamic style emerged, featuring that most original and ubiquitous pattern often known as “arabesque.” This term was coined in the early nineteenth century (sic.) following Napoleon’s famed expedition in Egypt, which contributed so much to the phenomenon of Orientalism in Europe and later in the United States. Arabesque simply means “in the Arab fashion” (sic.) in French, and few scholars of Islamic art use it today (sic.)."” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/vege/hd\_vege.htm (October 2001) As also, “The first is the identification of the “arabesque” (a term coined in early modern Europe) (sic.) not only as the epitome of Islamic art but also as the epitome of the ornamental.” In the Ed(s): Finbarr Barry Flood; Gülru Necipoğlu. Companion to Islamic Art of 2017, Vol. 1, page 26. file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/Frameworks_of_Islamic_Art_and_Architectu.pdf Dini sanatları, İslami eserleri ve İslam Sanatını tanımlamak adına kullanılmış belki de en eski Avrupa terimleri, bu terim aracılığıyla bir eseri Tanrı’nın yolunda yapılmışçasına tanımlar. Terimin 14. yüzyıldan itibaren farklı kullanılış biçimleri ile karşılaşılır: Rabb-esco, Ar-Rabb-esco, Orabesco, Rabask/Rabesk/Rebesk, Arabesk, Arabeschi, Rabesca, Rabescato, Rabescare,Rabeschi, Rabesci, Rabiscu, Rabbesco, Rabbiscu, Rabesch ve günümüzde sıklıkla kullanıldığışekli ile Arabesque. Bu terimin Portekizceye, İspanyolcaya, İtalyancaya ve Sicilya dilinegeçmiş Arapça bir kelime ile birlikte, bu türden bir eserin ismini Arapçadaki Rabb, Tanrı, kelimesi ile ilişkilendiren bir başka kelimenin, İtalyanca, İspanyolca ve Portekizcedeki ‘-esco’sonekiyle birleşerek, Arapça bir artikel ile birlikte ar-rabb+esco, veya artikelsiz rabb+escoşeklinde oluştuğu, günümüze de Arabesque (Arabesk) şeklinde geldiği görülür. Sonuç olarak, Blair ve Bloom’un yaptığı gibi, “On dördüncü yüzyılda herhangi bir sanatçının veya haminin İslam’ın ortaya çıkışından bu yana kendi sanatının ‘İslami’ olduğunu düşündüğüne yönelik hiçbir kanıt yoktur; ve giderek Atlantik ile Hint okyanusları arasındaki topraklara yayılan ‘İslami’ sanat ve mimari geleneği kavramı, bunu tanımlamak için üretilen terminoloji ile birlikte geç on dokuzuncu ve yirminci yüzyıl Batı akademisinin bir ürünüdür” demek en yalıntabir ile yanlıştır. Bu terim, Müslümanlar tarafından başkalarına her şeye kadir/Allahtarafından emir buyurulan minval anlamına gelen, iktisāb, yani İslam Sanatının dışavurumuaracılığıyla ‘Tanrı’nın yolunda’ yapılmış eserleri açıklamak için kullanılmıştır.
PATTERNS OF BEAUTY: SPECIFICS REGARDING THE UNITY OF ISLAMIC ART WITH IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION
In recent centuries, we Muslims have been taught to despise the arts, both those of the visual (or seen) and the aural (or heard) variety. In fact, it would. not be an overstatement to say that the field of art is a "disaster area" today in M~slim education and Muslim life. Many of us grew up in the Muslim World . with the lesson that poetry was mere "play on words", that the visual arts distracted from prayer and meditation, and that music was a stimulant to fornication. This disdain for the arts came from two sources.
In Umayyad art the conflict between east and west, between the millennial traditions of the ancient Orient and those of Mediterranean classicism, was slow to announce itself. The earliest surviving Umayyad buildings of high quality are the products of a culture which was apparently still not fully certain of its visual symbols and therefore inclined to copy what was nearest at hand. Umayyad power was based on Syria, and that country was most richly endowed with Roman, early . Christian and Byzantine monuments. It is therefore scarcely surprising that the Dome of the Rock should be in some ways an almost slavish copy of Christian architecture. The Damascus mosque, with its mosaics, its three aisles and its sanctuary fa~ade, continues this dependence.