Calligraphy and Architecture in the Muslim World 9781474468428

Citation preview

Calligraphy and Architecture in the Muslim World Edited by

Mohammad Gharipour and İrvİn Cemİl Schick

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© . editorial matter and organisation Mohammad Gharipour and Irvin Cemil Schick, 2013 © the chapters their several authors, 2013 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 10/12 pt Trump Mediaeval by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Spain by Novoprint A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 0 7486 6922 6 (hardback) The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Publication of this book has been aided with a contribution by the alBaraka Türk participation bank.

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Contents

Contents

List of Figures Introduction PART A

1

SITES

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

Chapter 4 Chapter 5

PART B

v

Inscribing the Square: The Inscriptions on the Maidån-i Shåh in Ißfahån Sheila S. Blair Speaking Architecture: Poetry and Aesthetics in the Alhambra Palace José Miguel Puerta Vílchez The Arabic Calligraphy on the Ceiling of the Twelfth-Century Cappella Palatina in Palermo, Sicily: Function and Identity Hashim al-Tawil Wall-Less Walls: The Calligraphy at the Hadži Sinanova Tekija in Sarajevo Snježana Buzov The Qur’anic Inscriptions of the Minaret of Jåm in Afghanistan Ulrike-Christiane Lintz

13 29

46 67 83

STYLE VS CONTENT

Chapter 6

Multi-Sensorial Messages of the Divine and the Personal: Qur’an Inscriptions and Recitation in Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Mosques in Istanbul Nina Ergin Chapter 7 The Revival of KËfÈ Script during the Reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II Òrvin Cemil Schick Chapter 8 Calligraphy in Chinese Mosques: At the Intersection of Arabic and Chinese Calligraphy Barbara Stöcker-Parnian Chapter 9 Qur’anic Verses on Works of Architecture: The Ottoman Case Murat Sülün Chapter 10 Reading Qåjår Epigraphs: Case Studies from ShÈråz and Ißfahån Bavand Behpoor PART C

105 119

139 159 178

PATRONAGE

Chapter 11

‘The Pen Has Extolled Her Virtues’: Gender and Power within the Visual Legacy of Shajar al-Durr in Cairo Caroline Olivia M. Wolf Chapter 12 Sovereign Epigraphy in Location: Politics, Devotion and Legitimisation around the Qu†b Minår, Delhi Johanna Blayac Chapter 13 Archival Evidence on the Commissioning of Architectural Calligraphy in the Ottoman Empire Talip Mert

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217

230

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CONTENTS

Chapter 14

On the Renewal of the Calligraphy at the Mosque of the Prophet (al-Masjid al-NabawÈ) under the Reign of Sultan Abdülmecid Hilal Kazan Chapter 15 Få†imid KËfÈ Epigraphy on the Gates of Cairo: Between Royal Patronage and Civil Utility Bahia Shehab PART D

An Art Ambassador: The Inscriptions of ‘AlÈ Ri‰å ‘AbbåsÈ Saeid Khaghani Chapter 17 Mustafa Râkım Efendi’s Architectural Calligraphy Süleyman Berk Chapter 18 Yesârîzâde Mustafa Òzzet Efendi and his Contributions to Ottoman Architectural Calligraphy M. U©ur Derman Chapter 19 The Visual Interpretation of Nasta‘lÈq in Architecture: MÈrzå Gholåm Re‰å’s Monumental Inscriptions for the Sepahsålår Mosque in Tehran Sina Goudarzi

293 306

326

346

REGIONAL

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24

Chapter 25

PART F

275

ARTISTS

Chapter 16

PART E

253

Ma‘qilÈ Inscriptions on the Great Mosque of Mardin: Stylistic and Epigraphic Contexts Tehnyat Majeed The Composition of KËfÈ Inscriptions in Transitional and Early-Islamic Architecture of North Khuråsån Nasiba S. Baimatowa Space and Calligraphy in the Chinese Mosque Sadiq Javer Medium and Message in the Monumental Epigraphy of Medieval Cairo Bernard O’Kane Allegiance, Praise and Space: Monumental Inscriptions in Thirteenth-Century Anatolia as Architectural Guides Patricia Blessing Symmetrical Compositions in Pre-Ottoman and Ottoman Architectural Inscriptions in Asia Minor Abdülhamit Tüfekçio©lu

363

379 400 416

431

447

MODERNITY

Chapter 26

Writing Less, Saying More: Calligraphy and Modernisation in the Last Ottoman Century Edhem Eldem Chapter 27 The Absence and Emergence of Calligraphy in Najd: Calligraphy as a Modernist Component of Architecture in Riyadh Sumayah al-Solaiman Chapter 28 Cairo to Canton and Back: Tradition in the Islamic Vernacular Ann Shafer About the Contributors Index

465

484 499

515 521

iv

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Figures

Figures

I.1 I.2

Rubbed-out inscription on a fountain in Kuzguncuk, Istanbul Bullet-ridden inscription on a fountain at the Xhamia e Kuqe in Peja, Kosovo

1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8

Portal of the Shåh Mosque, Ißfahån, 1611–31 Portal of the Lu†fallåh Mosque, Ißfahån, 1603–19 Interior of the Lu†fallåh Mosque, dated 1025/1616–17 Foundation inscription on the portal of the Lu†fallåh Mosque Detail of the lower left side of the portal of the Shåh Mosque, dated 1025/1616–17 Dome of the Shåh Mosque with cuerda seca inscription dated 1037/1627–8 Inscription over the mi˙råb in the sanctuary of the Shåh Mosque Mi˙råb added to the Friday Mosque, Ißfahån, dated Íafar 710/July 1310

14 15 16 17 20 22 23 25

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9

The poem of the Patio of Arrayanes, verse 1 The façade of the Comares; the poem is on the wooden frieze The Mirador of Lindaraja The niche in the door of the Hall of the Two Sisters The Garden of Delight (Court of the Lions) The first verse of the poem by Ibn Zamrak in the Hall of the Two Sisters The second verse of the poem by Ibn Zamrak on the Fountain of the Lions The Tower of the Captive Examples of inscriptions in KËfÈ and cursive (naskh) scripts

30 31 33 35 37 38 39 40 42

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

General appearance of the ceiling, looking towards the throne (east side) Details of the throne side of the ceiling Details of the text inside the archivolt The Norman Palace: reconstruction of the entrance into the Cappella Palatina at the time of Roger II Details of the KËfÈ text bordering the stars on the ceiling Details of the text and images on the throne side of the ceiling Ceiling details, general view Details of the text on the ceiling, throne side Details of the KËfÈ text framing the stars on the ceiling Details of the text on the archivolt Details of figures and text on the throne side. Details of figures and text, throne side

47 48 49

3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7

Hadži Sinanova tekija, north walls Hadži Sinanova tekija, eastern walls Plan of the tekke Entrance hall The courtyard. Entrance to the semâhâne, the kahve oca©ı, and the Seal of Solomon. View from the east The Seal of Solomon Mi˙råb

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51 52 52 53 54 59 60 60 61 67 68 69 70 71 71 72

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FIGURES

4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12

Interior of the semâhâne Fragment discovered on the west wall of the semâhâne Fragment discovered on the north wall of the semâhâne South and east walls of the entrance hall Exterior view of the semâhâne, seen from the north

73 73 74 77 78

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

84 84 85

5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13

View from KËh-i Khårå, southwest, overlooking the minaret and aßr Zarafshån The Minaret of Jåm on the barren foothills of Jåm’s remote narrow valley View from KËh-i Khårå, south, overlooking the minaret and the Jåm RËd View of the Minaret of the Great Mosque of Qairawån in Tunisia in the early twentieth century Profile of the Minaret of Jåm The minaret’s exterior intricately decorated Double spiral staircase inside the Minaret of Jåm View from inside the Minaret of Jåm to the cupola above The minaret’s inscriptions executed in ornamental angular KËfÈ The Minaret of Jåm, looking south along the Jåm RËd The minaret’s upper section (cf. Inscriptions I, II and III) with wooden balconies The densest and most lavishly appointed ornaments on the minaret’s east side Foundation panel identifying the architect and date of the Minaret of Jåm

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6

Ground plan of the Atik Valide Mosque, Istanbul, completed 1596 Mi˙råb recess of the Atik Valide Mosque, Istanbul Central dome of the Atik Valide Mosque, Istanbul Ground plan of the Ni∞ancı Mehmed Pa∞a Mosque, Istanbul, completed 1589 Central dome of the Ni∞ancı Mehmed Pa∞a Mosque, Istanbul Interior of the Ni∞ancı Mehmed Pa∞a Mosque, Istanbul

7.1

KËfÈ inscriptions on the pediments of two windows in the narthex of the Mosque of Mehmed II ‘the Conqueror’, Fatih, Istanbul KËfÈ inscriptions in the prayer niche hall of the Mosque of Çoban Mustafa Pa∞a, Gebze, Kocaeli Basmala, KËfÈ inscriptions on the mi˙råb of the Aziziye Mosque, Kâ©ıthane, Istanbul Verses al-Baqara 2:43 and 2:45, KËfÈ inscriptions by Köçeo©lu Krikor Bey in the calligraphic band around the prayer hall of the Zühdi Pasha Mosque, Kızıltoprak, Kadıköy, Istanbul Verse Ål ‘Imrån 3:103, KËfÈ inscription by Köçeo©lu Krikor Bey on one of the pendentives of the Zühdi Pasha Mosque, Kızıltoprak, Kadıköy, Istanbul SËrah al-Mulk (67), KËfÈ inscription by Ebüzziya Tevfik Bey in the calligraphic band around the prayer hall of the Hamidiye Mosque, Yıldız, Istanbul Names of al-‘ashara al-mubashshara, KËfÈ inscription by Ebüzziya Tevfik Bey above the calligraphic band around the prayer hall of the Hamidiye Mosque, Yıldız, Istanbul ‘al-Óamdu lillåhi’ and ‘‘alå ni‘mat al-Islåm’, KËfÈ inscription by Ebüzziya Tevfik Bey in the drum of the dome of the Hamidiye Mosque, Yıldız, Istanbul Verses al-Najm 53:1–3, KËfÈ inscription by Ebüzziya Tevfik Bey in the dome of the Hamidiye Mosque, Yıldız, Istanbul ‘Âsâr-ı Atîka Müzesi’ (Museum of Antiquities, now the Archaeological Museum), KËfÈ inscription by Ebüzziya Tevfik Bey, Istanbul ‘Posta ve Telgraf Nezareti’ (Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, now the central post office), KËfÈ inscription by Ebüzziya Tevfik Bey, Sirkeci, Istanbul ‘Yå ˙åfiΩ’ and ‘Harbiyye Caddesi’, KËfÈ inscription on the home of the architect Vedat Tek, Ni∞anta∞ı, Istanbul ‘Wa lå ghåliba illå Allåh’, KËfÈ inscription by Ebüzziya Tevfik Bey on the mansion of the last caliph Abdülmecid Efendi, Nakka∞tepe, Istanbul Verse YËsuf 12:64, KËfÈ inscription on a private residence, Heybeli Ada, Istanbul ‘Avagimyan Han’ and ‘S. Avagimyan’, KËfÈ inscription by Ebüzziya Tevfik Bey ‘Be∞ikta∞’, KËfÈ inscription at the boat landing of Be∞ikta∞, Istanbul

7.2 7.3 7.4

7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.10 7.11 7.12 7.13 7.14 7.15 7.16

86 89 90 90 91 92 92 93 95 96 109 111 112 113 114 115

120 121 121

123 123 124 125 126 126 127 127 128 129 129 130 130

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FIGURES

7.17 7.18

8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 9.9 9.10 9.11 9.12 9.13

10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 10.9

‘Dârü’l-Muallimât-ı Âliye’ (High School for Women Teachers), KËfÈ inscription by Òsmayıl Hakkı Baltacıo©lu, Çapa, Istanbul The Cuma selâmlı©ı (sultan’s procession for Friday prayers) at the Hamidiye Mosque, Yıldız, Istanbul. Photograph by Abdullah Fréres, 1880–93

130 131

Carved handwriting of MZD, gold characters on green wooden tablet, Jinniu Mosque, Kunming (Yunnan province) 142 Hangzhou, old tombstones with Arabic inscriptions 143 Rows with names of donors engraved on a big stone tablet, situated near the main hall of the Xuncheng Mosque, Kunming (Yunnan) 144 a) Duilian at the entrance of the modern Huxi Mosque in Shanghai; b) Duilian at the pillars in front of the classroom building in the Xuncheng Mosque, Kunming. 146–7 Sini calligraphy, Mi Guangjiang, Pudong Mosque, Shanghai 148 Shanghai city cultural relic protection unit, name tablet of Songjiang Mosque, Shanghai, outside the mosque 149 Characters for ‘mosque’ plainly engraved on the inner screen wall of the Songjiang Mosque 150 Bankelou (prayer-call tower, minaret) bearing an Arabic inscription 151 Qibla wall and mi˙råb inside the main hall of the Songjiang Mosque, Shanghai 152 Qibla wall and mi˙råb inside the main hall of the Songjiang Mosque, Shanghai 153 Old graveyard of the Songjiang Mosque, Shanghai 154 Verse al-Na˙l 16:69 above the entrance to the infirmary established in 1831 at the Maltepe Barracks, Istanbul Verse Ål ‘Imrån 3:37 above the mi˙råb of the Hamidiye (Yıldız) Mosque, Istanbul SËrah al-Nås in its entirety, on a column at the Great Mosque in Bursa Some of the Most Beautiful Names of God and the Names of the Prophet in the Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Istanbul The Profession of Unity above an entrance in the Topkapı Palace, Istanbul The Verse of Light (al-NËr 24:35) in the dome of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul Verse al-A˙zåb 33:53 above the main entrance of the harem in the Topkapı Palace, Istanbul Verse al-Zumar 39:73 above an entrance to the courtyard of the Mosque of Süleymaniye, Istanbul Verse Íåd 38:50 above the entrance to the mausoleum of Sultan Mehmed V (Re∞ad), Istanbul Verse al-Baqara 2:186 on one of the massive columns in the Mosque of Sultan Ahmed, Istanbul The Throne Verse (al-Baqara 2:255) in the mausoleum of Prince Mehmed, Istanbul Rear façade of the Imperial Gate at the Topkapı Palace, Istanbul ‘And we made from water all living things.’ The Water Verse (al-Anbiyå’ 21:30) on the Fountain of Kısıklı, Istanbul Calligraphy on paper behind glass. NaßÈr al-Mulk House, ShÈråz Pillar of domed prayer hall with an epigraph containing the start date of construction. Ra˙Èm Khån Mosque, Ißfahån Pillar of domed prayer hall with an epigraph containing both the start and the end date of construction. Rukn al-Mulk Mosque, Ißfahån Epigraph on a water trough. Ra˙Èm Khån Mosque, Ißfahån Nasta‘lÈq script on paper behind glass, MushÈr Óoseiniyyeh, ShÈråz Analysis of the writing pattern of an epigraph, haft rang glazed tile, sËrah al-Nås. Eastern façade, NaßÈr al-Mulk Mosque, ShÈråz Poem by KalÈm KåshånÈ. Northern façade, Qavåm Óoseiniyyeh, ShÈråz Altar, sËrah al-Tawba, åyahs 18 and half of 19. Dated 1900, Rukn al-Mulk Mosque, Ißfahån Locations of epigraphs

160 161 163 164 165 166 169 170 170 172 173 174 175 181 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188

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FIGURES

10.10 Large altar in the domed prayer hall, calligraphed by Mu˙ammad Båqir ShÈråzÈ, dated 1843. Seyyid Mosque, Ißfahån 10.11 Building plan with the dates and locations of the epigraphs. Seyyid Mosque, Ißfahån 10.12 Epigraph of entrance Èwån, calligrapher and poet Êarab ibn Humå. Rukn al-Mulk Mosque, Ißfahån 10.13 Epigraph with two chronograms, one representing the solar and the other the lunar date. Imåmzådeh IbråhÈm, ShÈråz 10.14 The last word of the epigraph is cut in half. Dated 1905, northern façade, Rukn al-Mulk Mosque, Ißfahån 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.8 11.9

DÈnår of Shajar al-Durr, 1250, gold Dirham of Shajar al-Durr, 1250, silver Exterior, Shajar al-Durr mausoleum Plan and section of the mausoleum of Shajar al-Durr Mi˙råb and salient, Shajar al-Durr mausoleum North transition to dome, Shajar al-Durr mausoleum Detail of mi˙råb mosaic, Shajar al-Durr mausoleum KËfÈ lower band in Shajar al-Durr mausoleum, wood Creswell photograph showing painted white re-inscription above mi˙råb, Shajar al-Durr mausoleum 11.10 Exterior inscription band, Shajar al-Durr mausoleum 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 12.7 12.8

Reconstruction of the Qu†b Minår complex as it must have been by the end of the Delhi Sultanate period The GhËrid foundation text dated (5)92/1195–6 on the northern gate of the Quwwat al-Islåm Detail showing calligraphy types and decorative motifs and friezes on the partly ruined northern arched screen built under Iltutmish Undated Persian inscription on the east entrance of the GhËrid enclosure Persian inscription on a lintel in the east entrance of the GhËrid enclosure, dated 587/1191–2 The Qu†b Minår and its epigraphic courses, from the southwest Epigraphic and decorative courses under the carved balcony of the Qu†b Minår’s first floor Detail of the eastern entrance of the ‘Alå’È Darwåza

13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6

Inscriptions in the mausoleum of Mihr-i S¸âh Valide Sultan Signed mi˙råb inscription in the mosque of Hagia Sophia ‘Mu˙ammad.’ Inscription by Kadıasker Mustafa Òzzet Efendi in Hagia Sophia ‘‘AlÈ.’ Inscription by Kadıasker Mustafa Òzzet Efendi in Hagia Sophia Commemorative panel sent for the Washington Monument Medallions bearing inscriptions by Sultan Abdülmecid in the Mosque of the Holy Mantle 13.7 Inscription by Abdülfettah Efendi in the Great Mosque of Bursa 13.8 Inscription by Mehmed S¸efik Bey in the Great Mosque of Bursa 13.9 Tombstone of the treasurer S¸evk-ı Nihâl Usta in the enclosed graveyard of the mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud II 13.10 A tughra of Sultan Abdülaziz drawn by Abdülfettah Efendi 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 14.6 14.7 14.8 14.9

The Mosque of the Prophet in Medina prior to the most recent restoration in 1984–94 The names of the archangels as written by Abdullah Zühdi The names of the archangels as written by Abdullah Zühdi Portrait of Abdullah Zühdi Certificate of the Mecidiye Order of the Third Rank awarded to Abdullah Zühdi Calligraphy by Abdullah Zühdi at the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina Calligraphy by Abdullah Zühdi at the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina Calligraphy by Abdullah Zühdi at the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina Examples of the chronograms written by notables from Medina

189 190 191 191 192 200 201 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 211

218 219 220 221 221 223 224 225 231 232 234 235 237 239 243 243 245 248 254 256 257 259 261 263 263 264 265

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FIGURES

14.10 Calligraphy by Abdullah Zühdi at the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina 14.11 Calligraphy at the Båb al-Niså’ 14.12 Window latticework made by Sergeant-major Ahmed Bey 14.13 Calligraphy by Muhsin Bey on the drums of the domes at the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina 14.14 Calligraphy by Muhsin Bey on the drums of the domes at the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina

265 267 269

15.1 15.2

Båb al-Naßr Båb al-Naßr. Central stone panel with inscription on top of the main entrance on the tympanum 15.3 Båb al-Naßr. Inscription bands running across the gate 15.4 Båb al-Naßr. Decorative motifs on inscription band 15.5 Foundation panel in the Mosque of A˙med ibn ÊËlËn 15.6 Båb al-FutË˙ 15.7 Båb al-FutË˙. Inscription bands running across the gate 15.8 Båb al-FutË˙. Floriation on different letters on inscription band 15.9 Remaining inscriptions on Båb Zuwayla 15.10 Inscription panel on Båb al-TawfÈq

276

16.1 16.2 16.3

296 297

Torbat-e Jåm, stucco in KermånÈ Mosque Ißfahån province, south portal of Ardistån Mosque An early example of thulth inscription in the Persian domain: the portal of the Oshtorjån Mosque, Ißfahån province 16.4 Inscription by ‘AlÈ Ri‰å at the Ganj ‘AlÈ Khån Caravanserai, Kermån 16.5 Left to right: ‘AlÈ Ri‰å’s signatures in Kermån, QazvÈn and Ißfahån (on the portal of the Shåh (Imåm) Mosque) 16.6 Inscription by ‘AlÈ Ri‰å at the ‘AlÈ QåpË Gate, QazvÈn 16.7 Inscription by ‘AlÈ Ri‰å on the dome of Khåjeh RabÈ‘, Mashhad 16.8 Inscription by ‘AlÈ Ri‰å inside the Qadamgåh Shrine, NishåbËr 16.9 Inscription by ‘AlÈ Ri‰å on the portal of the Shåh (Imåm) Mosque, Ißfahån 16.10 Inscription by ‘AlÈ Ri‰å on the portal of the Shaykh Lu†fallåh Mosque, Ißfahån 17.1

17.2 17.3 17.4 17.5 17.6 17.7 17.8 17.9 17.10 17.11 17.12 17.13 17.14 17.15 17.16 17.17

Headstone of Òsmâil Zühdî, Mustafa Râkım’s brother, at the Edirnekapı (now Necatibey) Cemetery Tombstone of the scribe Mehmed Münif Efendi. Calligraphy by Mustafa Râkım Inscription of the Karlık (Karhâne) Fountain in Sirkeci Inscription behind the Bâb-ı Selâm (Gate of Salutation), Topkapı Palace Calligraphic band around the dome of the Nak∞ıdil Sultan Mausoleum in Fatih Tombstone of Çelebi Mustafa Re∞îd Efendi in Eyüp Short segment of the stencil prepared by Mustafa Râkım for the calligraphic band at the Nak∞ıdil Sultan Mausoleum Inscription above the Black Sea gate of the enclosed graveyard at the Nak∞ıdil Sultan Mausoleum Symmetric signature of the inscription on the fountain of the soup kitchen at the Nak∞ıdil Sultan Mausoleum Inscription of the Zevki Kadın elementary school in Fındıklı Inscription of the Zevki Kadın fountain in Fındıklı Calligraphic band stretching along the interior of the Nusretiye Mosque in Tophane The right-hand ‘camel’s neck’ around the mi˙råb of the Nusretiye Mosque Exquisite signature of Mustafa Râkım at the end of the calligraphic band in the Nusretiye Mosque Front façade of Mustafa Râkım’s mausoleum, showing the inscription bearing his signature and the date 1241/1826 Footstone of Òsmâil Zühdî, Mustafa Râkım’s brother, at the Edirnekapı (now Necatibey) Cemetery Restoration inscription in the Office of the Superintendent of the Treasury at the Topkapı Palace

270 271

277 278 279 280 281 284 285 286 286

298 299 299 300 300 301 301 302

307 308 309 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 321

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FIGURES

17.18 Inscription at the Miskinler Tekkesi leprosarium in the Karacaahmed Cemetery, Üsküdar 17.19 Inscription on the Miskinler Fountain in the Karacaahmed Cemetery, Üsküdar 17.20 Tughra of Sultan Mahmud II by Mustafa Râkım, dated 1230/1815. Bâb-ı Hümâyûn (Imperial Gate), Topkapı Palace 18.1 18.2 18.3 18.4 18.5 18.6 18.7 18.8 18.9 18.10 18.11 18.12 18.13 18.14 18.15 18.16 18.17 18.18 18.19 18.20 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 19.5 19.6 19.7 19.8 19.9 19.10 19.11 19.12 19.13 19.14 19.15

322 322 323

Unsigned inscription at the Topkapı Palace outside the Pavilion of the Holy Mantle Portrait of Yesârîzâde painted during his lifetime The last two pages of Risâle-i Îtikâdiyye, published in 1258/1842 The tombs of Yesârî Mehmed Es’ad Efendi and his son Yesârîzâde Mustafa Òzzet Efendi on the grounds of the Fatih Mosque The earliest known architectural inscription by Yesârîzâde, on the gallows at the Imperial Shipyards Stencil of the inscription in jalÈ ta‘lÈq written by Yesârîzâde in 1255/1839 for the mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud II The author in 1960, admiring the stencil of the inscription written by Yesârîzâde for the mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud II Seen from below, Yesârîzâde’s inscription for the mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud II Yesârîzâde’s inscription dated 1233/1818 at the embankment of Sultan Mahmud II at Bendler Yesârîzâde’s ‘camel’s neck’ inscriptions dated 1235/1820 at the Procession Kiosk in Gülhane Another superb ‘camel’s neck’ inscription by Yesârîzâde dated 1250/1834 at the Mevlevî lodge in Galata The latest known inscription by Yesârîzâde, dated 1264/1848, at the Sünbül Efendi Mosque One of Yesârîzâde’s very few prose inscriptions Yesârîzâde’s superb unsigned inscription dated 1235/1820 at the Chamber of the Imperial Council (Kubbealtı) in the Topkapı Palace Inscription dated 1229/1814 at the Hidâyet Mosque in Bahçekapısı Restoration inscription at the Sultan Abdülhamid I School in Beylerbeyi Inscription dated 1259/1843 at the Sublime Porte Yesârîzâde’s inscription dated 1244/1828 on the Bâyezid Fire-watch Tower Inscription dated 1250/1834 on the Selimiye lodge in Üsküdar Two couplets by Mawlånå JalåluddÈn RËmÈ, written by Yesârîzâde

328 329 330

Sepahsålår Mosque, Tehran. Street façade (super detail) Sepahsålår Mosque, Tehran. Street façade (detail) Sepahsålår Mosque, Tehran. Street façade inscription (detail) Sepahsålår Mosque, Tehran. Street façade inscription (detail) Sepahsålår Mosque, Tehran. Street façade (super detail) MÈrzå Gholåm Re‰å, siyåh-mashq, c. 1883 Sepahsålår Mosque, Tehran. Inner courtyard inscriptions, opening panel (detail) Sepahsålår Mosque, Tehran. Street façade inscription, showing variable baselines, X-heights and line weights Sepahsålår Mosque, Tehran. Inner courtyard inscriptions, opening panel (detail), ground-level view Sepahsålår Mosque, Tehran. Inner courtyard inscriptions, opening panel (detail), straight-on view Sepahsålår Mosque, Tehran. Another panel of the inner courtyard inscription (detail) Sepahsålår Mosque, Tehran. Inner courtyard (super detail), showing the adjustments made to the vertical characters Sepahsålår Mosque, Tehran. Inner courtyard (super detail), showing the adjustments made to the vertical characters Stencil (super detail), showing stroke weight added to outer edge of character The letters nËn and yå, showing modifications made to the triangular structure of the letters

347 347 348 348 349 350 351

330 331 334 335 335 336 337 338 338 339 340 340 341 341 342 342 343

352 353 353 354 354 355 355 356

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20.1 20.2 20.3 20.4 20.5 20.6 20.7 20.8 20.9

Great Mosque of Mardin, view of the minaret from the south Great Mosque of Mardin, minaret, ˙asbala, Qur’an sËrah al-Êalåq 65:3 Great Mosque of Mardin, minaret, kalima al-taw˙Èd Great Mosque of Mardin, ground plan Shåhidiya madrasa, ˙asbala, Mardin La†Èfiya Mosque, kalima al-taw˙Èd, Mardin Hisn Kayfa, citadel gate, kalima al-taw˙Èd Sultan Sulaymån Mosque, minaret, kalima al-taw˙Èd, Hisn Kayfa Sketches of minarets: Great Mosque of Mardin, al-Rizq and Sulaymån Mosques at Hisn Kayfa 20.10 Jåmi‘ al-MåridånÈ, kalima al-taw˙Èd, Cairo

364 365 366 368 369 371 372 373

21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 21.5

380 382 384 386

21.6

SayÈd house The square building in the Hulbuk Palace Dandånkån at Marv Sufi hostel at Mißriyån Schematic diagram showing the complete and reduced arrangements of the wall inscriptions in pre- and early-Islamic buildings of North Khuråsån Schematic diagram representing the arrangement of stucco inscriptions

22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4 22.5

Zhaobi, Caoqiao Mosque, Nanjing Zhaobi, Niu Jie Mosque, Beijing Entrance signboards, Zhengzhou North Mosque, Zhengzhou Entrance signboard, Nanguan Mosque, Anqing Wangyuelou signboard with Chinese calligraphy, Daxuexi Xiang Mosque, Xi’an 22.6 Wangyuelou ceiling with Arabic calligraphic inscription, Huaisheng Mosque, Guangzhou 22.7 Prayer hall, Chengdong Mosque, Zhaoqing 22.8 Prayer hall, Daxuexi Xiang Mosque, Xi’an 22.9 Houdian and mi˙råb, Jingjiao Mosque, Nanjing 22.10 Houdian and mi˙råb, Songjiang Mosque, Shanghai

374 375

388 389 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412

23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4 23.5 23.6 23.7 23.8 23.9

Mausoleum of Baybars al-JåshinkÈr Complex of Umm al-Sul†ån Sha‘bån The Nilometer, detail of inscription above arch Mosque of Ibn ÊËlËn, foundation inscription Inscription roundels Inscriptions from portals of Aslåm al-Silå˙dår Inscription above dado in the mausoleum of Sultan Óasan Detail of inscription on entrance portal of complex of Sultan BarqËq Dado of mosque of Sulaymån Påsha

416 417 418 419 420 423 424 425 426

24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 24.5 24.6 24.7 24.8 24.9

Buruciye Medresesi, Sivas, view of portal façade Reconstruction drawing of Sivas with city walls Buruciye Medresesi, Sivas, large inscription on façade, detail Buruciye Medresesi, Sivas, portal façade, foundation inscription over doorway Funerary complex of Sultan al-ManßËr QalåwËn, Cairo, foundation inscription Buruciye Medresesi, Sivas, view of courtyard from entrance Yakutiye Medresesi, Erzurum, view Yakutiye Medresesi, Erzurum, muqarnas dome over courtyard Yakutiye Medresesi, Erzurum, first part of waqf inscription

432 433 434 435 436 437 439 440 441

25.1 25.2

Symmetric composition by MÈr ‘AlÈ HaravÈ in MajmË‘a al-‘Ajå’ib Symmetric inscription at the mausoleum of Sultan Khalilullah I in the grounds of the Palace of the Shirvanshahs in Baku Symmetric inscription in the niche of the mi˙råb of the Ye∞il Türbe of Bursa Symmetric inscription at the Mahmud Çelebi Mosque in Òznik

448

25.3 25.4

450 451 452

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25.5 25.6 25.7 25.8 25.9

Detail of the symmetric inscription on the left side of the main portal of the Üç S¸erefeli Mosque in Edirne Signature of the calligrapher Ali b. Yahyâ es-Sûfî (here, Ali b. Mezîd es-Sûfî) in the frame of the Imperial Gate of the Topkapı Palace in Istanbul Symmetric inscription on the wall of the mausoleum of Mevlânâ in Konya Symmetric inscription on the Bridge of Sultan Bâyezid II in Geyve Symmetric inscription above the main portal of the Mosque of Kılıç Ali Pa∞a in Istanbul

26.1 26.2 26.3 26.4 26.5

453 454 456 457 458

Bâb-ı Hümâyûn, the main entrance of the Topkapı Palace Bâb-ı Seraskerât, today Istanbul University Gate, in 1940 Front façade of the Bâb-ı Seraskerât Rear façade of the Bâb-ı Seraskerât Building of the Ottoman Exposition (Sergi-i Umûmî-i Osmânî) on the Hippodrome, 1863 26.6 Near-identical inscriptions of the military secondary schools in Üsküdar and Sirkeci 26.7 Examples of foreign and Ottoman seals used in the nineteenth century 26.8 Documents from the Great Council of the Province of Aleppo and Supreme Council of Judicial Ordinances 26.9 Examples of Ottoman official letterheads 26.10 Examples of KËfÈ script 26.11 Medallion in honour of Talat Pasha

468 470 471 472

27.1 27.2 27.3 27.4 27.5 27.6 27.7 27.8 27.9 27.10

Entrance to the royal garage of Riyadh Aerial photograph of Riyadh, 1950 The metal plaque above the entrance of the dÈwån Plaque inside the dÈwån Portal of al-Nåßiriyyah Palace showing script in neon lights Entrance in al-Nåßiriyyah showing writing in neon lights The dome of the mosque at King Khaled International Airport The interior walls of the mosque at King Khaled International Airport The entrance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Artwork in the King Khaled International Airport

486 487 488 489 491 492 494 495 496 497

28.1 28.2 28.3 28.4 28.5 28.6 28.7 28.8

Mi˙råb, Mosque of Sultan Óasan, Cairo Mi˙råb, Imåm ‘AlÈ Mosque, Detroit, Michigan Prayer for entering the mosque, Islamic Society of Boston Prayer for making ablutions, Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn The Prophetic Tree in cross-stitch, Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn Reminder to send blessings upon the Prophet Mu˙ammad, Worcester Islamic Center The Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of Allah, Yusuf Mosque, Brighton, Massachusetts Masjid al-åkhir, Cairo

500 502 504 506 507 508 509 511

473 474 476 477 478 479 480

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Introduction

While no agreement seems to be in sight as to the parameters of such categories as ‘Islamic art’ and ‘Islamic architecture’, nor even as to whether or not they are meaningful in the first place, there can be little doubt that calligraphy is a ubiquitous feature of art and architecture throughout the Muslim world. It is, in other words, one of the most persistent ‘Islamic’ or ‘Islamicate’ elements in art and architecture. This popularity of calligraphy is often attributed to the supposed iconophobia of Islam. Yet, while representations of animate objects have indeed been shunned in religious architecture, there is evidence that similar concerns were often raised about calligraphy as well. A treatise entitled Thimår al-maqåßid fÈ dhikr al-masåjid, written in the second half of the fifteenth century by YËsuf ibn Óasan ibn al-Mibrad, contains a chapter detailing the abhorrence of any decoration on a mosque that distracts one from prayer, specifying ‘gold or silver or pictures or colours or writing’.1 Citing several authorities, ibn al-Mibrad set forth two arguments against ornamentation. The first, very much in character with the teachings of Islam in general, is that such ostentation calls for the expenditure of money that would be better spent elsewhere. In particular, he states that waqf funds must under no circumstances be spent for this purpose. This brings to mind a ˙adÈth according to which the Prophet said ‘God has not commanded us to clothe stone and clay out of the sustenance He has given us.’2 Ibn al-Mibrad’s second argument against ornamentation, particularly on the qibla wall, is that it may distract believers engaged in prayer. Once again, this echoes a ˙adÈth in which the Prophet is said to have objected to a curtain in ‘A’isha’s home because the pictures on it distracted him during prayer.3 ‘A’isha relates that the curtain was taken down, adding: ‘We made a pillow or two out of it.’4 This makes it clear that it wasn’t pictures per se that the Prophet found objectionable, but rather their prominent display, particularly in the room where he prayed. Ibn al-Mibrad was not alone. Another treatise, I‘låm al-såjid bi-a˙kåm al-masåjid, written during the fourteenth century by Mu˙ammad ibn Bahådur al-ZarkashÈ, also notes reasons not to decorate places of worship.5 As late as the nineteenth century, the fatwa office at the Ottoman Shaykh alIslåmate ruled that writing inscriptions upon places of worship was not licit.6 Yet, that same office also ruled that displaying inscriptions in mosques was a time-honoured tradition that should not be abandoned, lest the faith of visitors be weakened. And this is indeed the crux of the matter. Whatever the basic principles may be, it is clear that calligraphic inscriptions have been extremely widespread in Islamic architecture, both religious and otherwise. From Qur’anic verses to foundational inscriptions and beyond, buildings throughout the Muslim world have provided a surface onto which texts – social as well as verbal – have been inscribed. The goal of the present volume is to investigate the mutual imbrication of these two kinds of architectural inscription. That is to say, we are concerned with how architectural space has shaped calligraphy, and how, in turn, inscriptions have partaken in the construction of architectural space and its infusion with meaning. Early orientalist scholarship held that calligraphic inscriptions were primarily ornamental; that texts were often meaningless, full of errors, and/or illegible; and that those that had a discernible meaning, such as Qur’anic verses, were haphazardly chosen, formulaic, and seldom constituted a coherent epigraphic programme. As late as 1981, Erica Cruikshank Dodd and Shereen Khairallah wrote in their survey The Image of the Word: A Study of Quranic Verses in Islamic Architecture that ‘except for a few examples, . . . few general rules can be laid down for the use of particular Koranic verses. The verses chosen to decorate Islamic monuments show the greatest possible variety

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and invention both in the selection of the verses and where they were placed in relation to the architecture of the building.’7 It is not that Dodd and Khairallah’s data did not support these conclusions, but rather that the range of works they analysed was historically and geographically circumscribed, and that they failed to take this specificity into consideration.8 Other examples such as Ottoman, Safavid or Mughal architecture may have told a different story. And indeed they do. As Gülru Necipo©lu has found, religious inscriptions in mosques tend to be most highly standardised in the Ottoman context, less so among the Safavids, and virtually not at all in Mughal architecture.9 If one does not take the geographical and historical contexts into consideration, one is virtually certain to draw erroneous conclusions. In his article ‘Arabic Epigraphy: Communication or Symbolic Affirmation’, published in 1974 in the George Miles Festschrift, Richard Ettinghausen gave a marginally more sophisticated form to the old argument that architectural inscriptions were usually not meant to be read. He wrote that ‘to be effective as a communication, an inscription has to appeal to a literate person in his own language with clear, legible characters without nearby distractions . . . [I]t is at once clear that Arabic inscriptions in often highly ornate mosques and other religious buildings throughout the Muslim world cannot be communications of the same nature – to be read by all and sundry.’ Providing a large number of examples in which inscriptions were so ornate as to be virtually illegible, contained grammatical or orthographical errors, or were even missing words or entire phrases, Ettinghausen concluded that it was ‘the Gestalt of the inscription as a whole’ that was important, not its particulars and details.10 In 1991, Holly Edwards published an essay entitled ‘Text, Context, Architext: The Qur’an as Architectural Inscription’ in which she, too, stressed the wholistic, experiential aspect of religious inscriptions in Islamic architecture. She wrote, in particular, that ‘many Islamic inscriptions were not expected to be read . . . in a linear way to ascertain a discrete meaning couched in a verifiable verbal sequence . . . but rather functioned in an imagistic or symbolic manner’. Edwards argued that the ways in which inscriptions were consumed by their intended audience were very different from the way in which we, as modern scholars, tend to approach and decipher them. She emphasised orality and the talismanic nature of inscriptions over their communicative function.11 While there is some truth to the idea that architectural inscriptions in the Muslim world were not always meant to be read letter by letter by each and every member of the congregation, it is disturbing that so many arguments in the literature have been phrased in an absolutist ‘either-or’ framework. In fact, temporal and regional variability, and even the idiosyncratic nature of particular architectural projects or their patrons, have made some inscriptions clearly communicative, and others more likely intended to contribute to the Gestalt of the space in which they were placed. Indeed, it is surprising that so many commentators have failed to grasp the cultural specificity of such words as ‘read’ and ‘legible’. After all, do these words really mean the same thing for everyone, every culture, and every age? At a time when literacy was not as widespread and when the division between orality and literacy not as firmly established as it is today, an inscription would have certainly been processed differently. Many of the texts written on the walls of public buildings would have been familiar to large segments of the population, who would have been able to ‘read’ the inscriptions after recognising no more than a word or two. And even if they were not, the question remains as to exactly by whom an architectural inscription was meant to be read. Often the inscriptions were intended to be talismanic or apotropaic, and whether or not they were easy to read by the average person, their power and baraka would be upon the buildings and their inhabitants or visitors. Surely God would have had no difficulty determining the contents of the inscriptions! In his article ‘Graffiti or Proclamations: Why Write on Buildings?’ published in 2000 in the Laila Ali Ibrahim Festschrift, Oleg Grabar proposed five basic functions that can be attributed to Islamic inscriptions on buildings. He stressed, most importantly, that any given inscription may carry out one or more of these functions. Grabar mentioned first an ‘indicative’ function, in which the inscription identifies the building, its patron and/or architect, its date of inauguration, and so forth. Second, a ‘commemorative’ function in which names or declarations are placed on buildings in the belief that ‘ars longa, vita brevis’, that stone will outlive man – in other words, a way to reach out for immortality. Third, a ‘semantic or iconographic’ function, in which writing infuses the building with a particular intended meaning, and does so through evocative, connotative, symbolic and other means. Fourth, an ‘iconic’ function which encompasses those aspects of the inscription in which form dominates over content, notably calligraphy. And fifth, an ‘ornamental’ function in which inscriptions frame or fill out architectural elements.12

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The aforementioned publications notwithstanding, the role of form as an element of the polysemy of Islamic calligraphy remains understudied. Indeed, calligraphy itself is woefully neglected by art historians. What has been done so far has, for the most part, been either epigraphic, in the sense of cataloguing the texts of inscriptions; paleographic, in the sense of attempting to trace the origins of Arabic writing and/or deciphering ancient inscriptions; or hagiographic, in the sense of endlessly repeating a fixed repertoire of biographies and legends concerning the sayings and doings of famous calligraphers. Very little has been done to understand what calligraphy is, what calligraphy means, and what calligraphy does. Yet, calligraphy has played an extremely important role in Islamic architecture, in that, far from being purely ornamental, it has contributed fundamentally to infusing meaning into, and assigning use value to, constructed space. In so doing, it has played a key role in the conversion of space into place, in its humanisation and its appropriation. Moreover, it has done so not only through the literal meaning of the texts it embodies, though that was very often the case, but frequently also through its form. Calligraphic inscriptions play a fundamental and diverse role in architectural and urban contexts, where they contribute to defining spaces within buildings and sites. Architectural inscriptions constitute a three-dimensional medium that contributes to the formation of spaces and the definition of spatial qualities and practices such as circulation, pause and view. In many cases, it is calligraphy that dictates physical and visual circulation within the buildings and sites, and it serves to enforce certain types of experience within them. Inscriptions also force and help the visitor to explore spaces while keeping the experience dynamic, spontaneous and unpredictable.

* The present collection is divided into six sections, each detailing a major aspect of architectural calligraphy. The first section discusses a broad variety of sites across the Muslim world, including the seventeenth-century Maidån-i Shåh in Ißfahån, the fourteenth-century Alhambra Palace in Granada, the twelfth-century Cappella Palatina in Palermo, the eighteenth-century Hadži Sinanova Tekija in Sarajevo, and the thirteenth-century Minaret of Jåm in Afghanistan. Sheila Blair turns her attention to the role of form in determining the message of architectural inscriptions by focusing on the different scripts that were used for different purposes at the Maidån-i Shåh in Ißfahån. Long texts, both historical and religious, were typically done in thulth, edicts as well as the signatures of craftsmen in nasta‘lÈq, and short Qur’anic quotes, sacred names and invocations in bannå’È. Pious phrases were meant to be recognised as much as read, and they signified from afar the piety of the religious buildings on which they appeared. Inscriptions, according to Blair, were a major means of conveying the message behind the politics of space in Shåh ‘Abbås’s new capital of Ißfahån. José Miguel Puerta Vílchez explains the relationship between poetry, architecture and aesthetics in the Alhambra Palace, showing how text is inserted into ornamentation to form the spatial infrastructure of the edifice. His reconstruction of the aesthetic discourse expressed in the verses adorning the palace indicates how beauty was conceived through poetry and architecture at the Naßrid court, so that the Alhambra’s programme of signification would be incomplete without its inscriptions. Hashim al-Tawil’s focus is on the secular use of calligraphy on the fantastically ornate muqarnas ceiling of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, Sicily – a Norman Christian edifice whose use (or reuse) of Islamic ornamentation continues to baffle scholars. A masterpiece of Sicilian-Arab craftsmanship, the ceiling reflects mature visual traditions, employing figurative and non-figurative, geometric, floral and (Arabic) calligraphic designs, and creates a unified and stunning visual composition. Snježana Buzov discusses the graffiti-like inscriptions at the Hadži Sinanova Tekija in Sarajevo. In contrast, say, to the Maidån-i Shåh, here calligraphy was not part of the original architectural design, nor even its immediate supplement. Rather, these were the spontaneous enunciations of QådirÈ dervishes, written over an extended period and more than a century after the lodge had been built. Playful and unstructured rather than academic, the dense tissue of seemingly unconnected inscriptions constitutes a visual form of dhikr. Finally, Ulrike-Christiane Lintz discusses the Minaret of Jåm in present-day Afghanistan, indicating that its references to denunciations of idolatry in sËrah Maryam (verses 19:49 and 81) can be read as a message to the ruler’s Hindu subjects in accordance with the minaret’s importance as a ‘tower of glory’, and perhaps to commemorate his victories in the northern Indian sub-continent. The second section explores the relationship between the style and textual content of inscriptions

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in several different contexts, focusing on Ottoman, Qåjår and Chinese mosques and other religious buildings. Nina Ergin explores how epigraphy was related to other cultural and performative programmes by focusing on sixteenth-century Ottoman mosques built by Sinan. Through an analysis of waqf deeds and a comparison of the Qur’anic recitation programmes they prescribed with the actual calligraphic inscriptions on the walls and domes of the mosques, she reveals a complex in which recitations never merely repeated inscriptions, but the two sometimes complemented each other and interlocked thematically so as to present the visual and oral performance of a unified message about both the divine and the personal. Òrvin Cemil Schick sets out to explain the unexpected and entirely anachronistic re-emergence of KËfÈ script in Istanbul in the 1880s, particularly in the imperial mosque commissioned by Sultan Abdülhamid II and on a number of public buildings constructed during his reign. He argues that by conjuring the Age of Felicity, KËfÈ script bolstered Abdülhamid’s credentials as caliph and provided visual support for his pan-Islamist politics at a time when colonial aggression as well as the centrifugal forces of emergent nationalisms were tearing the empire apart. Barbara Stöcker-Parnian’s focus is on Chinese mosques and the interaction between Arabic and Chinese calligraphy there. Tracing the process whereby ‘Muslims in China’ became ‘Chinese Muslims’ through the evolution of mosque architecture and the changing roles of Arabic, Sini and Chinese writing, she analyses the calligraphy on steles and tombstones as well as the rhyming couplets and religious inscriptions in various parts of mosques, as evidence of both Sinicisation and mutual acculturation. Murat Sülün examines the practice of writing Qur’anic verses on various objects, notably buildings, in Ottoman culture. He describes the most commonly cited verses and the locations where they were generally used, and suggests a variety of functions that such inscriptions performed. Bavand Behpoor analyses 169 epigraphs from eight Qåjår-era buildings in ShÈråz and Ißfahån, arguing that there is no single way to read Islamic architectural inscriptions and that consideration must always be given to context. He explores different readings – architectural, aesthetic, semantic – and shows that an epigraph may have several functions, ranging from purely decorative through informative to performative. Rather than viewing them as straightforward signatures or date stamps, he argues, epigraphs are clues to be interpreted. Though always subordinate to architecture, they imbue the building, at various levels, with signs that can be deciphered according to the context. The third section focuses on the role of patronage in the formation and development of architectural calligraphy in Shajarat al-Durr’s Tomb in Cairo, the Qu†b Minår in Delhi, the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina and other important Ottoman buildings, and the gates of Få†imid Cairo. Caroline Olivia M. Wolf’s analysis of the mausoleum of the MamlËk-era sultana Shajar al-Durr sheds light upon female patronage and the ways in which architectural inscriptions, notably the use of both KËfÈ and naskh scripts, contributed to presenting her to the people in a manner consistent with the traditional rhetoric of rulership in medieval Cairo. While Shajar al-Durr’s patronage operated within familiar rubrics of power and expressed caliphal and divine allegiances through epigraphy, her inscriptions also departed from tradition as they contained critical gendered innovations such as the use of maternal honorifics and the strategic placement of her tomb near the graves of venerated noble women. Johanna Blayac’s focus is on the inscriptions of the Qu†b Minår complex in Delhi, through which she analyses the sovereign discourses and how their symbolic meanings were expressed through architecture. The only direct entry to these discourses unfiltered by chronicles, poems and epics, an analysis of these inscriptions in their historical context reveals such details as the evolution of the sultans’ titles, which in turn signals the evolution of the conception of power and sovereignty. Such analysis, according to Blayac, exposes the articulation between religion and its forms of discourses and effects of legitimisation, and politics and its regional social and cultural forms. Talip Mert explores the archival evidence concerning the commissioning of architectural inscriptions in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire. The documents he presents concern projects undertaken by some of the most prominent calligraphers of the time, notably Yesârîzâde Mustafa Òzzet Efendi, Kadıasker Mustafa Òzzet Efendi, Abdülfettah Efendi, S¸efik Bey and Sultan Abdülmecid himself. Hilal Kazan’s in-depth study of the archival record for the restoration of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina and its inscriptions under the patronage of Sultan Abdülmecid sheds light upon the complexities of the process and the conflicts  – among local authorities as well as between local

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authorities and the capital – concerning texts, materials, placement, and even the identities of the calligraphers. She finds evidence about inscriptions that are no longer extant, as well as tracing the efforts of the calligrapher Abdullah Zühdi Efendi, the sultan’s personal choice, through his correspondence with the fatwa office of the Shaykh al-Islåmate. Finally, Bahia Shehab discusses the inscriptions on the Få†imid-era gates of Cairo, arguing that they functioned as visual cues that communicated to the masses the programmes and social utilities of the various gates: the content of the inscriptions might be similar, she observes, but the style and layout by which the bands were inscribed were not, and conveyed messages about spatial hierarchy in the urban realm. The fourth section complements the discussion on patronage by exploring the works of four well-known artists – the Ottoman calligraphers Mustafa Râkım Efendi and Yesârîzâde Mustafa Òzzet Efendi, the Safavid calligrapher ‘AlÈ Re‰å ‘AbbåsÈ, and the Qåjår calligrapher MÈrzå Gholåm Re‰å IßfahånÈ. Saeid Khaghani’s chronological study of the Safavid calligrapher ‘AlÈ Re‰å ‘AbbåsÈ shows that while Safavid thulth was heavily indebted to its TimËrid antecedents, ornamentation was gradually reduced and ultimately replaced by the new complexity of the inscription itself. Thus, for example, ‘AlÈ Re‰å showed a preference for sophisticated multi-baseline inscriptions, making deliberate choices as to style of writing, colour, material and text based upon the position of the inscription and the type of building onto which it was to be mounted. Süleyman Berk focuses on another great innovator in monumental thulth script, the turn-of-thenineteenth-century Ottoman calligrapher Mustafa Râkım Efendi, who also gave the sultanic tughra unprecedented balance and harmony. Berk discusses many of Râkım’s extant works, showing the subtleties he introduced in both letter forms and stacked compositions. Well versed in the science of perspective, Râkım also succeeded in shaping letters and compositions in architectural inscriptions so that they would appear as perfectly as possible from down below. JalÈ thulth has not been the same since. M. U©ur Derman’s subject is the Ottoman calligrapher Yesârîzâde Mustafa Òzzet Efendi, who did for monumental ta‘lÈq script what his contemporary Râkım Efendi did for thulth. Originally identical to Persian nasta‘lÈq, ta‘lÈq script acquired a distinctly Ottoman character at the hands of Yesârî Mehmed Es‘ad Efendi and his son Òzzet Efendi, who, with more than one hundred surviving architectural inscriptions in Istanbul alone, is the most prolific epigraphist of them all. Yesârîzâde was also proficient in perspective, as is evidenced by the fact that his inscriptions intended to be seen at eye level have letters shaped differently from those of inscriptions intended to be placed at a significant height. Finally, Sina Goudarzi’s study concerns the work of the Qåjår calligrapher MÈrzå Gholåm Re‰å IßfahånÈ at the Sepahsålår Mosque in Tehran. Goudarzi argues that while nasta‘lÈq script was quickly adapted for daily use following its early development, its relationship to architecture progressed slowly as its aesthetic principles presented challenges in applying the script to architectural forms. Gholåm Re‰å was the first to write monumental nasta‘lÈq on a grand scale in the Iranian domain, and his use of perspective, as well as his adjustments to line weight and stroke weight, baseline and tracking, and the sizes of rounded letters, brought the script to unprecedented perfection. The fifth section includes chapters that address regional developments of calligraphy in architectural projects, aiming to highlight the role that local artists played in the development of architectural calligraphy. Tehnyat Majeed’s focus is on a set of ma‘qilÈ inscriptions on the Great Mosque of Mardin, which she analyses through an intra- and cross-regional comparison including comparable works in Iran, Syria and Egypt. Although such inscriptions have often been dismissed for their formulaic content and decorative qualities, Majeed argues that their scale, placement and form gave them a novel expression and injected uniqueness into their content through the angular script’s strongly iconographic quality that could transform text into symbolic image. Nasiba Baimatowa explores local traditions of calligraphy in North Khuråsån, an area geographically remote from Islamic centres, around the time the region was Islamicised. Focusing on four buildings, she analyses their KËfÈ inscriptions and ornamentation, and their symbolism, in the context of pre- and non-Islamic surrounding cultures. Sadiq Javer’s chapter discusses the spatial and formal aspects of calligraphy in Chinese mosques. Focusing specifically on historical mosques belonging to the Hui minority, he describes their architectural elements and how Arabic and Chinese calligraphy are used on them, showing that each language tends to be confined to particular sections of the mosque. Javer concludes that calligraphy

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functions to distinguish mosques from architecturally similar temples, creating a spiritual space, uniting the community, and reminding them to remain true to their faith. Bernard O’Kane’s analysis of architectural inscriptions in medieval Cairo reveals that they conveyed information in many ways, some directly by their content, others indirectly as indicators of prestige or proclamations of God’s word. They attracted attention through their size, colour, repetition, calligraphy and ornamentation. Those inscriptions whose placement made them hard to read functioned to sanctify the building on which they appeared. Paying special attention to erasures as well as changes in script, O’Kane concludes that inscriptions were of great importance in medieval Cairo, and cautions that evaluation of what was legible and what was not is risky on the basis of the evidence available today. Patricia Blessing’s focus is on thirteenth-century Anatolia. Through case studies of two SeljËk madrasas, the Buruciye in Sivas and the Yakutiye in Erzurum, she discusses the location of inscriptions on the buildings, exploring how these placements, together with the use of different scripts, materials and sizes, were part of a carefully conceived scheme to guide the viewer through the buildings. Blessing’s case studies show two distinct approaches to the self-representation of patrons in medieval Anatolia, in that although they both contain foundation inscriptions and passages from waqfÈyas, the two inscription programmes differ in the presentation of the message included in these inscriptions, in both textual and spatial terms. Abdülhamit Tüfekçio©lu traces the development of symmetric architectural inscriptions in Asia Minor during the pre-Ottoman and Ottoman periods. Arguing that the usual term muthannå (doubled) may also be rendered as mußanna‘ (artistically rendered), he discusses some of the most important symmetric inscriptions in the region and proposes a taxonomy based upon the relative positions of their original and mirrored portions. The sixth and last section of the book explores the evolving modalities of architectural calligraphy in the modern period, focusing on nineteenth-century Istanbul, twentieth-century Saudi Arabia, and contemporary diasporic Muslim communities in the United States. Edhem Eldem’s analysis of calligraphic inscriptions on Ottoman public buildings during the nineteenth century traces the emergence of a novel way in which buildings were labelled according to their functions, and reveals parallels between this trend and the new practice of using letterhead and office (as opposed to personal) seals. Pointing out that much nineteenth-century calligraphic effort was channelled not into religious uses but rather into mundane functions such as the press, publicity, paper money, stamps, street signs and political banners, he probes the meaning of architectural inscriptions in the very late Ottoman and early republican periods. Sumayah al-Solaiman shows that not only the presence of calligraphy but also its absence can be the indicator of certain changes within society and politics by focusing on the region of Najd. She shows that architectural inscriptions were all but absent there until the twentieth century, when they very gradually emerged as an aspect of new construction and urbanisation practices. It was, however, only in the late twentieth century that they gained currency as a result, paradoxically, of influences that were modernist or even western, though imagined to be traditional and local. Finally, Ann Shafer explores inscriptions in contemporary mosques in the United States in the context of ‘old world’ models from Cairo. She emphasises the generally overlooked ephemeral, ‘performative’ aspects of architectural inscriptions, which guide daily actions and engender private moments of remembrance, and thus function as catalysts in the dynamics of place. Through a comparison between the performative mosque practices of the East and the West, and between history and the present, Shafer addresses the role of tradition and innovation in evolving notions of Muslim identity and architectural form.

* Calligraphy remains one of the least understood and most neglected of the arts of the Muslim world, and this is all the more true of architectural inscriptions, whose lot it is to be mined for factual information and little else. Yet, their importance is attested by the destruction that has periodically been visited upon them, by Kemalists in Turkey, Serbs in Kosovo, and others (Figures I.1 and I.2). Architectural inscriptions construct space, appropriate it, and infuse it with meaning. And that is why they have at times been considered so threatening. The goal of the present volume is to bring together studies of architectural calligraphy that treat them as more than pure text. More specifically, the editors were interested in how form adds to

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Figure I.1 Rubbed-out inscription on a fountain in Kuzguncuk, Istanbul. © Òsmail Küçük.

Figure I.2 Bullet-ridden inscription on a fountain at the Xhamia e Kuqe in Peja, Kosovo. © András Riedlmayer.

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content, that is, in the ways in which script, composition, colour, material, dimensions, placement and myriad other characteristics contribute to the functioning of architectural inscriptions. The contributors to this volume range from historians to artists, their subjects from China to Spain, their periods of study from the dawn of Islam to the turn of the twenty-first century. To be sure, this collection is not exhaustive, as the selections were necessarily limited by availability. Still, it is the most wide-ranging investigation into calligraphy and architecture in the Muslim world published to date. The editors are particularly grateful to the contributors to this volume for their patience and cooperation over a rather long gestation period. Special thanks are due to our project assistant Gizem Tongo for coordinating visuals and permissions, a not inconsiderable task. We are also indebted to the photographers and other copyrightholders for allowing us to use their material without which this volume would not have been nearly as compelling. We thank Gizem, Yan Overfield Shaw and Didem Havlio©lu for their help with translations; Jodie Robson for successfully acquitting herself of the unenviable task of standardising the work of twenty-eight different authors and bringing them into conformity with the publisher’s requirements; and Cathy Falconer for copy editing as meticulous as it was exacting. Which brings us, last but not least, to our publishers. We are grateful to the editorial team at Edinburgh University Press, Nicola Ramsey, Michelle Houston and Eddie Clark, for their continuous support in bringing this project to a successful conclusion. Òrvin Cemil Schick, Istanbul and Boston Mohammad Gharipour, Baltimore and Ißfahån August 2012

Notes 1. YËsuf ibn Óasan ibn al-Mibrad, Thimår al-maqåßid fÈ dhikr al-masåjid, ed. Mu˙ammad As‘ad Êalas (Beirut: al-Ma‘had al-AfransÈ bi-Dimashq, 1943), pp. 170–2. 2. AbË DåwËd, Sunan, Libås 133; Muslim, Sa˙i˙, Libås wa Ziynah 128. 3. Muslim, Sa˙i˙, Libås wa Ziynah 130. 4. BukhårÈ, Sa˙i˙, Libås 165; Muslim, Sa˙i˙, Libås wa Ziynah 129, 136–40; AbË DåwËd, Sunan, Libås 133, 138; Ibn Måjah, Sunan, Libås 104. 5. Mu˙ammad ibn Bahådur al-ZarkashÈ, I‘låm al-såjid bi-a˙kåm al-masåjid, ed. AbË al-Wafå Mu߆afå alMaråghÈ (Cairo: JumhËrÈyah al-‘ArabÈyah al-Mutta˙idah, al-Majlis al-A‘lå li-al-Shu’Ën al-IslåmÈyah, Lajnat I˙yå al-Turåth al-IslåmÈ, 1984). 6. See Hilal Kazan’s contribution to this volume. 7. Erica Cruikshank Dodd and Shereen Khairallah, The Image of the Word: A Study of Quranic Verses in Islamic Architecture (Beirut: American University in Beirut, 1981), pp. 61–3. See also Robert Hillenbrand, ‘Qur’anic Epigraphy in Medieval Islamic Architecture’, Revue des études islamiques 54 (1986): 171–87. 8. Dodd writes that ‘this collection is limited to medieval inscriptions although it would have been theoretically possible to include later inscriptions and even modern examples. After the seventeenth century, Islamic art becomes subject to foreign influences and open to extraneous ideas. There are changes. This study is limited to the world of medieval Islam, when religious foundations were at their greatest strength, most vital, and found their most integrated expression’ (pp. 4–5). The claim that art in the Muslim world had somehow lost its authenticity after the Middle Ages is truly an astonishing display of orientalist narrow-mindedness. It would have surely come as a big surprise to the Ottomans or Safavids to learn that their religious foundations were weak and lacked vitality! 9. Gülru Necipo©lu, ‘Qur’anic Inscriptions on Sinan’s Imperial Mosques: A Comparison with their Safavid and Mughal Counterparts’, in Word of God, Art of Man: The Qur’an and its Creative Expressions, ed. Fahmida Suleman (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, 2007), pp. 69–104. 10. Richard Ettinghausen, ‘Arabic Epigraphy: Communication or Symbolic Affirmation’, in Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, Epigraphy and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles, ed. Dickran K. Kouymjian (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1974), pp. 299–300, 304. 11. Holly Edwards, ‘Text, Context, Architext: The Qur’an as Architectural Inscription’, in Brocade of the Pen: The Art of Islamic Writing, ed. Carol Garrett Fisher (East Lansing, MI: Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, 1991), p. 65. 12. Oleg Grabar, ‘Graffiti or Proclamations: Why Write on Buildings?’, in The Cairo Heritage: Essays in Honor of Laila Ali Ibrahim, ed. Doris Behrens-Abouseif (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000), pp. 69–76.

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Bibliography Dodd, Erica Cruikshank and Shereen Khairallah. The Image of the Word: A Study of Quranic Verses in Islamic Architecture. Beirut: American University in Beirut, 1981. Edwards, Holly. ‘Text, Context, Architext: The Qur’an as Architectural Inscription’. In Brocade of the Pen: The Art of Islamic Writing, ed. Carol Garrett Fisher. East Lansing, MI: Kresge Art Museum, Michigan State University, 1991, pp. 63–75. Ettinghausen, Richard. ‘Arabic Epigraphy: Communication or Symbolic Affirmation’. In Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, Epigraphy and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles, ed. Dickran K. Kouymjian. Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1974, pp. 299–300, 304. Grabar, Oleg. ‘Graffiti or Proclamations: Why Write on Buildings?’ In The Cairo Heritage: Essays in Honor of Laila Ali Ibrahim, ed. Doris Behrens-Abouseif. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2000, pp. 69–76. Hillenbrand, Robert. ‘Qur’anic Epigraphy in Medieval Islamic Architecture’. Revue des études islamiques 54 (1986): 171–87. Ibn al-Mibrad, YËsuf ibn Óasan. Thimår al-maqåßid fÈ dhikr al-masåjid, ed. Mu˙ammad As‘ad Êalas. Beirut: al-Ma‘had al-AfransÈ bi-Dimashq, 1943. Necipo©lu, Gülru. ‘Qur’anic Inscriptions on Sinan’s Imperial Mosques: A Comparison with their Safavid and Mughal Counterparts’. In Word of God, Art of Man: The Qur’an and its Creative Expressions, ed. Fahmida Suleman. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, 2007, pp. 69–104. al-ZarkashÈ, Mu˙ammad ibn Bahådur. I‘låm al-såjid bi-a˙kåm al-masåjid, ed. AbË al-Wafå Mu߆afå alMaråghÈ. Cairo: JumhËrÈyah al-‘ArabÈyah al-Mutta˙idah, al-Majlis al-A‘lå li-al-Shu’Ën al-IslåmÈyah, Lajnat I˙yå al-Turåth al-IslåmÈ, 1984.

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Chapter One

Inscribing the Square: The Inscriptions on the Maida¯n-i Sha¯h in Is· fahaˉn Sheila S. Blair

The great plaza known as the Maidån-i Shåh (‘Royal Square’) or Naqsh-i Jahån (‘Image of the World’), the architectural complex laid out by Shåh ‘Abbås I (r. 1571–1629) in his new capital of Ißfahån in central Iran, is considered the epitome of Safavid architectural style.1 Begun c. 999/1590, the Maidån was altered a dozen years later to include a two-storey row of shops that projected slightly into the original space, which now measures 160 × 508 metres, to encompass an area of more than 80,000 square metres.2 Bigger than any European plaza and surpassed only by Tiananmen Square in Beijing, Ißfahån’s Maidån carries great prestige not just in Iran, where it graces the reverse of the 20,000 rial banknote, but also in world architecture (it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979). We can use this imperial commission as an archetype to show how inscriptions were (and were not) used on buildings in Safavid times, examining content, form and technique to illustrate the nature of epigraphy in Safavid times and how it was used to articulate political ends.3 The long rectangular space of the Maidån-i Shåh is punctuated by four major buildings. On the north, in the centre of one of the short sides, is the entrance to the bazaar, which connected the old city with the new Maidån. The portal comprises a large Èwån with flanking wings. Opposite it on the south side of the Maidån is the congregational mosque known variously as the New ‘AbbåsÈ mosque, the Shåh Mosque, and lately the Imåm KhomeinÈ Mosque (Figure 1.1). Its monumental portal mirrors that of the bazaar on the north. While the mosque portal is aligned with the Maidån, the main block of the mosque (100 × 130m) is set at a 45° angle to face the qibla. It comprises a central court 70m across with four Èwåns, each leading to a domed chamber, with two madrasas in the corners. Some two-thirds of the way down the long sides of the Maidån sits another pair of buildings. On the east is the Lu†fallåh Mosque, whose entrance once again repeats the typical form of an arched Èwån (Figure 1.2). From it, one proceeds along a rather gloomy corridor that opens onto the single domed sanctuary (interior diameter 19m), frequently dubbed one of the most perfectly balanced and harmonious interiors in all Iranian architecture (Figure 1.3). Facing the Lu†fallåh Mosque on the west is the ‘ÅlÈ QåpË (‘Sublime Porte’ or ‘High Gate’), the entrance to the palace complex (Pers. dawlatkhåna).4 Now comprising a tower with a lower extension crowned by a columnar hall, the ‘ÅlÈ QåpË evolved from an entrance hall to an audience hall and tribune, added along with the shops along the Maidån. Two storeys of arcades around the Maidån connect these four buildings, which encapsulate the economic, religious and political functions of the Safavid realm. There are no contemporary inscriptions, or at least none left, on the Maidån walls nor on the bazaar portal and the exterior of the ‘ÅlÈ QåpË, the two secular buildings on the square.5 By contrast, inscriptions form a major element of decoration on the two religious buildings set on the east and south sides: the Lu†fallåh and Shåh Mosques. Examining them in turn shows the important role of epigraphy in Safavid times. The Lut·fallaˉh Mosque Inscriptions carpet the Lu†fallåh Mosque, the earlier and smaller of the two mosques on the Maidån. The foundation inscription rings the portal, running around the three sides of the Èwån just below the base of the stupendous muqarnas semi-dome (Figure 1.4). Done in tile mosaic, the white letters glisten against the dark blue ground. The effect was even more stunning in the building’s original condition when the sides of the portal beyond the central arched opening were plain unglazed brick; the outer underglaze-painted tiles (Pers. haft rang) were added only in the 1930s.6 The text of the

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Figure 1.1 Portal of the Shåh Mosque, Ißfahån, 1611–31. © Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom.

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Figure 1.2 Portal of the Lu†fallåh Mosque, Ißfahån, 1603–19. © Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom.

inscription comprises a single, long sentence saying that Shåh ‘Abbås ordered the founding (inshå’) of this blessed mosque (masjid). Sandwiched vertically at the end of the foundation inscription on the Lu†fallåh Mosque is the artist’s signature: ‘AlÈ Ri‰å al-‘AbbåsÈ wrote it (katabahå), with the date in numbers 1012/1603–4 sandwiched in the middle of the upper line.7 A noted calligrapher originally from TabrÈz, ‘AlÈ Ri‰å was brought by Shåh ‘Abbås from QazvÈn to Ißfahån in 1001/1593. There, the calligrapher became royal librarian (kitåbdår), adopting the epithet al-‘AbbåsÈ, and was put in charge of the inscriptions on ‘Abbås’s building projects in the new capital and elsewhere.8 ‘AlÈ Ri‰å ‘AbbåsÈ used a majestic thuluth notable for its strong sense of order and proportion. He enhanced the legibility of his long texts by dividing the inscriptions into two tiers, typically separated by the long tail of a final yå’ drawn backwards to the right. This extended horizontal stroke juxtaposes the elongated risers of alif, låm and similar tall letters. ‘AlÈ Ri‰å used the same two-tier arrangement for his signature, sandwiching the date in numbers between the two returning tails of final yå’ in the words ‘AlÈ and al-‘AbbåsÈ. This arrangement with two, clearly distinguished tiers becomes a hallmark of Safavid epigraphy. While ‘AlÈ Ri‰å ‘AbbåsÈ’s style is masterful, its execution in tile mosaic is less successful. For example, the text was clearly composed so that the ruler’s name would fall over the doorway and anyone entering the building would pass literally under the ruler’s sway. But as it stands, the shåh’s personal name AbË’l-MuΩaffar al-‘Abbås falls slightly to the right of the doorway, which is actually surmounted by the ruler’s epithets and title, al-ÓusaynÈ al-MËsavÈ al-ÍafavÈ Bahådur. Idea and realisation do not quite match. The same two-tiered style used for the foundation inscription on the Lu†fallåh Mosque is repeated in the long Qur’anic text around the base of the dome (Figure 1.2). The band, probably also the work of ‘AlÈ Ri‰å ‘AbbåsÈ, contains three short sËrahs from the early Meccan period – 91 (Shams), 76 (Dahr) and 108 (Kawthar) – followed by the verse ‘Indeed places of worship are only for God, so pray

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Figure 1.3 Interior of the Lu†fallåh Mosque, dated 1025/1616–17. © Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom.

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Figure 1.4 Foundation inscription on the portal of the Lu†fallåh Mosque, signed by the calligrapher ‘AlÈ Ri‰å al‘AbbåsÈ and dated 1012/ 1603–4. © Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom.

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not to anyone along with God’ (Jinn 72:18). The import of the text is to emphasise the responsibilities of believers. The layout of the Qur’anic inscription is even more stylised than the foundation inscription above the doorway, for the extraordinarily long tails of the final yå’ in the dome inscription provide a continuous horizontal anchor to the thuluth text, again executed in white on blue. This band below the dome contrasts with the inscriptions on the panels between the windows in the drum, which are executed in a totally different style. Each panel contains a very large invocation written in bannå’È script in white outlined in blue against a turquoise ground: ‘O Noble One’, ‘O God’, ‘O Merciful One’, ‘O Compassionate One’, with the names Mu˙ammad, Óasan and Óusayn inserted between the letters. The exhortations, which are huge and legible from afar on the Maidån, unlike the Qur’anic text, reverberate with piety. ‘AlÈ Ri‰å ‘AbbåsÈ’s hallmark two-tiered inscriptions play an even fuller role on the interior of the Lu†fallåh Mosque (Figure 1.3). Wide bands at the top and bottom of the drum frame the windows, and similar ones outline all eight of the large arched niches below. The lower band around the drum ends with ‘AlÈ Ri‰å ‘AbbåsÈ’s signature, as does the upper band, which also includes the date 1025/1616–17, thirteen years after the date of his foundation inscription on the portal. The texts around the drum include more Qur’anic excerpts as well as Prophetic ˙adÈths about the rewards for pious Muslim and believers’ duties in mosques. Lit through pierced screens, the only source of light for the interior, the inscriptions glow with holy resonance. The inscriptions around the arches of the interior are executed in the same manner, but are twice signed by an otherwise-unknown person: al-Båqir, whose name is followed the epiphet al-bannå’ (the builder). Since the inscriptions show the same formula and style used in the foundation text, even to the vertical signature using the verb katabahå (wrote it), al-Båqir seems to have been a calligrapher and a pupil of ‘AlÈ Ri‰å ‘AbbåsÈ. Texts here include more Qur’anic sËrahs – 91 (Shams), 98 (Bayyina), 82 (Infi†år) and 92 (Layl) – and ˙adÈths about the duties of Muslims but also a new element: poems in Arabic imploring the Fourteen Immaculate Ones (Mu˙ammad, his daughter Få†ima and the Twelve Imåms) to intercede in the hereafter for Shaykh Lu†fallåh, the ShÈ‘Ète scholar brought to Ißfahån by Shåh ‘Abbås to teach in the nearby madrasa and the namesake of the mosque.9 The poems were composed by Shaykh Bahå’ al-DÈn al-‘ÅmilÈ, chief ShÈ‘Ète jurist and scholar in the new capital, whose name is mentioned in one of them.10 Born to a learned family of clerics from the Jabal ‘Amila in southern Syria, Bahå’ al-DÈn came to Iran as a child. He was appointed Shaykh al-Islåm of Ißfahån in 984/1576 following the death of the previous incumbent, his father-in-law Zayn al-DÈn ‘AlÈ ‘ÅmilÈ, and continued to occupy this position for forty-five years (perhaps with a brief two- to three-year hiatus while on the pilgrimage to Mecca) until his death in 1030/1621. A mystic, philosopher and mathematician, he was most renowned as a jurisconsult and composed a treatise entitled Jåmi‘-i ‘Abbåsi on jurisprudence (fiqh) and the principles of ImåmÈ faith. Together with Shaykh Lu†fallåh, Bahå’ al-DÈn was the principal scholar in Ißfahån arguing for the resumption of Friday prayer during the Imåm’s occultation (ghayba), a key element in ‘Abbås’s programme to Persianise ShÈ‘ism. The long bands form the skeleton for the decoration on the interior of the Lu†fallåh Mosque. The flowing script encourages the viewer’s eyes to move counterclockwise around the hall. Small inscriptions written in white in bannå’È script provide visual counterpoints in the diamond-shaped panels between the arches. These texts comprise more short chapters from the beginning and end of the Qur’an – sËrahs 1 (Fåtiha), 94 (Inshirå˙), 95 (TÈn), 97 (Qadr), 104 (Humaza), 105 (FÈl), 107 (Må‘Ën) and 109 (KåfirËn). Their thick rectilinear script contrasts with the smooth thuluth of the long bands. The thrust of the inscriptions on the interior of the Lu†fallåh Mosque is to proclaim the lawfulness of Friday prayer despite the absence of the Twelfth Imåm, as well as the legitimacy of Safavid descent from Imåm ‘AlÈ, key features of the new Safavid sponsorship of ShÈ‘ism as state religion. Sussan Babaie, the leading scholar of Safavid architecture, has suggested this chapel-mosque was a creative refashioning of the traditional maqßËra in a congregational mosque as a free-standing building instead of a domed sanctuary or fenced-off area.11 Her conclusion is strengthened by the interior arrangement, for the two-storey niches inside the Lu†fallåh Mosque allude to the old congregational mosque in the city, whose exquisite but mysterious north dome is the only known building with a similar integration of the lower storeys.12 The piety of the space here at the Lu†fallåh Mosque is underscored by colour and technique, as the arches are outlined with an electric-turquoise cable binding that frames the glittering white words. The final inscription from the Safavid period on the Lu†fallåh Mosque is a signature in nasta‘lÈq inserted in two cartouches on the arabesque panel of the mi˙råb.13 The inscription reports that it is the work (‘amal) of Mu˙ammad Ri‰å, son of the master (uståd) Óusayn, the builder (bannå’) of Ißfahån, and gives the date 1028/1618–19. We do not know who this builder was, but the date, some

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sixteen years after the date on the portal and three years after that in the upper band, confirms that the building was completed at this time. Altogether, then, the inscriptions on the Lu†fallåh Mosque give us the names of several craftsmen – the calligraphers who designed the inscriptions (‘AlÈ Ri‰å ‘AbbåsÈ and his pupil al-Båqir, the builder) and the master builder (Mu˙ammad Ri‰å b. Óusayn) – and the dates of construction (1012– 28/1603–19); identify the building as a mosque for Shaykh Lu†fallåh; and place it in the context of ‘Abbås’s creation of a new capital as a centre for his newly designated state religion of Twelver ShÈ‘ism. The Sha¯h Mosque The second mosque on the Maidån in Ißfahån, the monumental Shåh Mosque, has an equally learned programme of inscriptions, writ on a larger scale. The symmetrical layout of the buildings around the Maidån suggests that they were all part of a single unified conception, although work on the congregational mosque was not begun until the spring of 1020/1611, probably because it took some time to acquire the land.14 Like the Lu†fallåh Mosque, the entrance to the Shåh Mosque comprises an Èwån with muqarnas semi-dome, but this one is huge (c. 27.5m in height), rising high above the roofline of the two-storeyed Maidån in a monumental pÈsh†åq flanked by two minarets that soar some 33.5m. As at the Lu†fallåh Mosque, the Èwån at the Shåh Mosque is framed by a turquoise cable moulding, but this one is tripled and rises from gigantic marble vases. The portal faces north so the Èwån is almost always in shadow, adding depth and solemnity to the form and making the white inscription stand out from the darkness. Like the Lu†fallåh Mosque, the Èwån portal of the Shåh Mosque bears a horizontal foundation inscription around the three sides of the Èwån below the muqarnas semi-dome (Figure 1.5). It specifies that the building (binå’) of this congregational mosque (masjid al-jåmi‘) was ordered through the private funds of the shåh and dedicated to the rewards of his grandfather Shåh Êahmåsp. Given the larger size of the Èwån, the text is about one-quarter longer than that at the Lu†fallåh Mosque, but executed in the same thuluth letters in white tile mosaic on a dark blue ground and divided into two tiers, though with fewer horizontal strokes of the returning tails of yå’. The similarity to the foundation inscription on the earlier Lu†fallåh Mosque is not coincidental, for this one is signed by the same master calligrapher, ‘AlÈ Ri‰å al-‘AbbåsÈ. He added his name in a smaller script below the end of the band, along with the date 1025/1616–17, the same year as the calligrapher’s signature on the interior of the Lu†fallåh Mosque. Perhaps he moved from designing the inscriptions on that mosque to this one. Several features show that the calligrapher (and the tile cutter who executed the inscription) had learned from the previous example. In this case, the text is better fitted to the size of the Èwån, so that the shåh’s personal name AbË’l-MuΩaffar ‘Abbås al-ÓusaynÈ al-MËsavÈ is centred over the doorway. Furthermore, unlike the previous foundation inscription, which is composed almost exclusively of pieces of white tile, here the tile cutter has added accents of colour. The shåh’s personal name is written in light blue to contrast with the rest of the text in white. The correspondence, however, is not exact, as the first penstroke of al-mËsavÈ comprising the letters alif-låm-mÈm-wåw is done in the regular white. Further coloured details include small curved strokes of light blue, often paired like the wings of a bird, and black added to fill the bowls of letters such as the heads of ßåd and ˙å’/ jÈm and the eyes of hå’ and tå’ marbuta. Highlighting the personal name of the patron in a different colour was not a new idea in the seventeenth century. Tile cutters had done so on façades constructed earlier in Ißfahån. Examples dating from the fifteenth century include the foundation inscriptions on the Winter prayer hall added to the old congregational mosque in Shawwål 851/December 1447–January 1448 by ‘Imåd b. MuΩaffar Varzana15 and on the shrine known as the Darb-i Imåm constructed in 857/1453 under the governor AbË’l Fat˙ Mu˙ammadÈ.16 This style continued in the sixteenth century under early Safavid rulers such as Shåh Ismå‘Èl, patron of the HårËn-i Wilåyat, dated to the beginning of RabÈ‘ al-awwal 918/ mid-May 1513, and the Masjid-i ‘AlÈ, dated by chronogram to 929/1522–3.17 In these examples, the patrons’ names are written in yellow, akin to the gold ink used in manuscripts to highlight a calligrapher’s royal epithet, commonly done by masters in Shåh Êahmåsp’s atelier to show that the manuscript was the product of the royal scriptorium.18 The blue used at the Shåh Mosque coordinates better with the rest of the glittering tile mosaic on the portal, echoing the bright blue used for the cable binding and elsewhere. The idea of separating a long text into the two tiers used on the thuluth inscriptions for the two

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Figure 1.5 Detail of the lower left side of the portal of the Shåh Mosque, dated 1025/1616–17. © Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom.

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mosques is also nothing new. Since at least the fourteenth century, calligraphers designing monumental inscriptions in Iran had grappled with the problem of how to fill the upper part of an inscription, occupied only by elongated verticals and therefore much lighter in weight than the lower part of the inscription. One solution was to add another inscription, running across the stems of the main inscription and distinguished by script or colour. On the façade of the Masjid-i ‘AlÈ, for example, a Qur’anic text is written in yellow across the upper part of the white foundation inscription. The link between the two goes beyond colour to text, for the upper inscription cites the twelve Qur’anic verses that contain the name Ismå‘Èl (verses 2:125, 127, 133, 136 and 140; 3:84; 4:123; 6:86; 14:39; 19:54; 21:85; and 36:48), an allusion not only to the name of the contemporary Safavid ruler Ismå‘Èl but also to his institution of Twelver ShÈ‘ism as state religion in Iran. Visual is thus linked to the verbal, as colour cements the connection written out in words. Another method of transferring some weight to the upper part of an inscription was to divide the words into tiers. Again, this had been done earlier, but the inscriptions produced under Shåh ‘Abbås by ‘AlÈ Ri‰å ‘AbbåsÈ and his successors are particularly clear in their division into two tiers, often distinguished by the long returning tail of the final yå’. The back face of the monumental Èwån on the Shåh Mosque has a second inscription in the centre over the alabaster doorway, written in two lines in a smaller version of the same script used for the main foundation text (Figure 1.5). The second inscription thus forms a pendant to the first, adding that with God’s help the construction of this mosque was achieved as a place for Friday prayer with all its rules. It also names two individuals involved in the work. The first is described as the person who took care of arranging the paving stones (tarßÈf) of its buildings (bunyån) and columns (arkån), Mu˙ibb ‘AlÈ Beg Lålå. He was the tutor of the palace slaves (ghulåms), supervisor of the royal buildings of Ißfahån (sarkår-i ‘imårat-i khaßßa-yi sharÈfa-yi ßifahån), and administrator (mutavallÈ) of the endowment for the Shåh Mosque.19 The text of the endowment to the Shåh Mosque was once written on a stone affixed to the west side of the portal facing the street, but the marble plaque has been defaced, leaving only the invocation (Basmala).20 Luckily, we know the content from a summary (rËnawisht) compiled in Sha‘ban 1023/September 1614 by Shaykh Bahå’ al-DÈn al-‘ÅmilÈ, the city’s chief theologian who is named on the interior of the Lu†fallåh Mosque.21 The endowment comprised a list of forty-eight separate properties or rights to revenue located in the city and surrounding countryside. Although the preface names ‘Abbås as the endower, fourteen of the properties (approximately thirty per cent) were donated by Mu˙ibb ‘AlÈ. The endowments were used to support seventy-seven employees, including the staff who administered the endowment, in this case Mu˙ibb ‘AlÈ and his descendants, who received five per cent of gross revenues. The endowment for the Shåh Mosque in Ißfahån was thus different from the shåh’s endowments to the shrine at Mashhad, in which he retained the role of administrator and received the standard ten per cent of gross revenues. The second person named in the lower inscription on the portal of the Shåh Mosque is the master (uståd) ‘AlÈ Akbar al-IßfahånÈ. He is described as the one who in architecture (mi‘måriya) is like the engineers (muhandisÈn) in execution [of the plan] and the unique of the age (al-nådir al-awånÈ). We do not know him from any other signed work or text. In his biography of Shåh ‘Abbås, the court chronicler and astrologer Jalål al-DÈn Munajjim names a third person involved in construction of the Shåh Mosque: BadÈ‘ al-Zamån.22 He is described as a master (uståd) and builder (mi‘mår), but he is not mentioned in the foundation inscription above the door. The American historian Robert McChesney tried to sort out the different roles of these three individuals, speculating that BadÈ‘ al-Zamån may have prepared the site but fallen from grace by the time that this inscription was erected and that Mu˙ibb ‘AlÈ may have been the contractor and ‘AlÈ Akbar al-IßfahånÈ the engineer. There is as yet no means of confirming this intriguing hypothesis. The calligrapher again added his name at the end of the foundation inscription on the Shåh Mosque: Mu˙ammad Ri‰å ImåmÈ. He seems to have been one of the pupils and successors of ‘AlÈ Ri‰å ‘AbbåsÈ, as he adopted many of the former’s trademarks, such as the two-tiered inscription with vertical signature, although the text here lacks the spaciousness of his predecessor’s work and is much more crowded. It is also executed in a single colour. Like ‘AlÈ Ri‰å ‘AbbåsÈ, Mu˙ammad Ri‰å had a long and productive career, known mainly from a long series of more than fifty inscriptions in five cities (Ißfahån, QazvÈn, Qum, Mashhad and Na†anz) ranging in date from 1038/1628–9 to 1087/1676.23 The earliest dated examples are in this mosque. This inscription, though undated, mentions the end of work, but we do not know whether it marks the end of construction of the portal or of the mosque. All the other dated inscriptions on the Shåh Mosque come from a decade later than the tile

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Figure 1.6 Dome of the Shåh Mosque with cuerda seca inscription dated 1037/1627–8. © Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom.

mosaic one on the portal of 1025/1616–17. They include two marble plaques dated 1035/1625–6 and 1038/1628–9 with decrees in the name of Shåh ‘Abbås, as well as ten tile inscriptions dated between 1035/1625–6 and 1040/1630–1, all done in the polychrome technique of cuerda seca (Figure 1.6). These dated inscriptions show that the Shåh Mosque had a similar history of construction to its predecessor, the Lu†fallåh Mosque, where there is a thirteen-year hiatus between the first inscription on the portal (1012/1604–5) and the second on the interior of the dome (1025/1616–17), with the final inscription three years later (1028/1618–19), giving a sixteen-year period of construction documented by inscriptions. Here on the Shåh Mosque, there is a ten-year hiatus between the earliest date on the portal (1025/1616–17) and the next ones on the west Èwån, the dome behind it, and the south dome (all dated 1035/1626–7), with the final inscription on the west Èwån five years later (1040/1630–1), giving a fifteen-year period of construction documented by inscriptions. The dozen dated inscriptions attesting to the addition of the tiled revetment around the interior of the Shåh Mosque in the five-year interval 1035–40/1625–31 also document an expanded cast of characters. In addition to Mu˙ammad Ri‰å ImåmÈ, the calligrapher who had signed the portal inscription, three other calligraphers are named in the long and florid inscriptions. Mu˙ammad GhanÈ signed the inscription in the dome behind the east Èwån dated 1038/1628–9. Mu˙ammad Íålih signed two inscriptions dated to the same year, one over the main mi˙råb in the sanctuary (Figure 1.7) and the other in the mi˙råb of the domed hall behind the east Èwån. The third of these calligraphers was the most prolific and also the most famous: ‘Abd al-BåqÈ TabrÈzÈ, who signed

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Figure 1.7 Inscription over the mi˙råb in the sanctuary of the Shåh Mosque, signed by the calligrapher Mu˙ammad Íåli˙ and dated 1038/1628–9. © Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom.

two inscriptions dated 1035/1625–6 in the west Èwån and the dome behind it, a third inscription dated 1036/1026–7 in the interior of the south dome, and a fourth undated inscription around the south Èwån, the longest text on the building.24 A religious scholar and notable of Azerbaijan, often known as Dånishmand, ‘Abd al-BåqÈ studied calligraphy in his home town with ‘Alå Beg TabrÈzÈ before moving to Baghdad to work with Dede Mußtafå, chief calligrapher there. Shåh ‘Abbås tried to lure ‘Abd al-BåqÈ to his new capital, but the calligrapher refused, and only after ‘Abbås’s successful campaign in Mesopotamia in 1033/1623–4 did he have the calligrapher brought to Ißfahån where he was put in charge of executing the inscriptions of the Shåh Mosque. The cuerda seca inscriptions by all four calligraphers are executed in the same style: two tiers of white thulth text separated by the returning tail of the final yå’ and set against a dark blue ground. Without the signatures, it would be difficult to distinguish their individual hands. As at the Lu†fallåh Mosque, the Shåh Mosque also contains the signature of one other craftsman: Shujå‘, son of the deceased master (uståd) Qåsim, the builder (bannå’) of Ißfahån.25 His name is found in two small cartouches over a secondary portal from the street to the southwest corner of the Sulaymaniya madrasa that is inscribed with the date 1078/1667–8 and the name of the calligrapher Mu˙ammad Ri‰å al-ImåmÈ. The signature of the builder Shujå‘ b. Qåsim parallels that of Mu˙ammad Ri‰å b. Óusayn in the mi˙råb of the Lu†fallåh Mosque in placement, form and meaning. Both are written in nasta‘lÈq script in cartouches. Both used the verb ‘amal (‘work of’). Both craftsmen are sons of Ißfahåni builders. Since this inscription is found on a portal added under Shåh Sulaymån, it is likely that Shujå‘ b. Qåsim worked only during this addition rather than during the main campaign. This basic construction campaign for the Shåh Mosque, then, took some twenty years from the beginning in 1020/1611, the date given in written sources, to 1040/1630–1, the date around the west Èwån. It continued therefore into the opening years of the reign of ‘Abbås’s successor Shåh ÍafÈ (r. 1629–42). Later additions were minor. In 1046/1636–7, for example, Shåh ÍafÈ endowed silver doors, whose poetic inscriptions compare the Ißfahån mosque with the Haram in Mecca, adding eulogies to ÍafÈ as the great sovereign of the age, who shall for his angel-like nature effortlessly attain entry into Mecca through these doors.26 In addition to the portal to the Sulaymaniya madrasa, Shåh Sulaymån added a stone trough in 1095/1683–4 with similar Persian verses extolling the ruler.27

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The enormous scale of the Shåh Mosque made it an expensive project, and increasing costs seem to have been a factor in the change of technique from the tile mosaic used on the centre of the portal to the cuerda seca used for much of the interior decoration including the inscriptions, the band around the base of the exterior of the dome, and various additions to the portal, including the inner faces, the surrounding wings that connect it to the Maidån, and the enormous and long inscription that frames the entrance Èwån (Figure 1.1). Like many of the inscriptions on the interior, this long text framing the entrance portal of the Shåh Mosque is extremely learned and well composed. It gives a representative sample of the erudition involved in drawing up these inscriptions. The text opens with the verse ‘A place of worship founded on righteousness from the first day is more worthy for the believer to stand in, for within it are men who love to purify themselves; and God loves those who purify themselves’ (al-Tawba 9:108). It continues with a ˙adÈth transmitted by Ibn ‘Abbås (d. 68/687–8), the Prophet’s paternal cousin, often reckoned the greatest scholar from the first generation of Muslims, and of course someone whose father would have been a namesake of the patron of the Shåh Mosque.28 The Prophetic ˙adÈth states that ‘AlÈ is the Prophet’s agent (waßÈy) and successor (khalÈfa), that Få†ima is his wife and the mistress of wise women, and that Óasan and Óusayn are the leaders of the people of Paradise. Next comes a ˙adÈth of ‘AlÈ that whoever hastens to mosque will receive one of eight blessings. The long inscription ends with the Prophetic ˙adÈth that, in the words of Mu˙ammad, ‘I am the city of knowledge and ‘AlÈ is its gate’. The inscription then was selected specifically for its location, not just a mosque, as suggested by the opening Qur’anic text, but precisely the gateway of the mosque, as suggested by the concluding ˙adÈth. With its references to the Prophet’s family, the text was also designed for a ShÈ‘Ète mosque. Further, it connects the patron Shåh ‘Abbås through one of its sources, the traditionalist with a related patronymic, Ibn ‘Abbås, to the earliest generation of believers, thereby strengthening the Safavid ruler’s lineage from the Prophet’s nephew and son-in-law ‘AlÈ. The specificity of the text around the portal of the Shåh Mosque also recalls the specifically ShÈ‘Ète inscription on the spectacular carved stucco mi˙råb (Figure 1.8) that had been added to the old congregational mosque in the city in Íafar 710/July 1310 under the Mongol sultan Uljaytu to mark his conversion to Twelver ShÈ‘ism, for it cites the same Alid ˙adÈth that whoever frequents a mosque will receive one of eight blessings.29 On the earlier mi˙råb, the blessings accrued to the believer are carefully enumerated: 1) a beneficial brother in God; 2) a novel piece of information; 3) an unassailable sign; 4) an awaited act of mercy; 5) a word that will save him from apostasy; 6) he will hear a word that will lead him to a good path; 7) he will desist from a sin out of fear, or 8) out of shame. Here, the ˙adÈth is shortened, undoubtedly intended as a nod to or even paraphrase of the earlier inscription, which also forms the large rectangular frame around the arched niche. The use of cuerda seca tiles for the framing inscription around the portal of Shåh Mosque means that the text cannot bevel the corners, but runs vertically up the right side, then horizontally across the top, and finally vertically down the left side. Its layout thus mimics that of the large frame around the carved stucco mi˙råb, which is also divided vertically, horizontally and vertically. By using this Alid ˙adÈth in the same location and format, the inscription around the portal of the Shåh Mosque is consciously alluding to the long but chequered tradition of ShÈ‘ism in Ißfahån.30 Given the learnedness of the texts around the portal and elsewhere on the Shåh Mosque, it is quite likely that they too were drawn up by Shaykh Bahå’È, the scholar mentioned in the Arabic poem on the interior of the Lu†fallåh Mosque and the person who drew up the endowment for the mosque. He was also responsible for determining the correct qibla direction from Ißfahån.31 As the Shåh Mosque is oriented at exactly 45° to the Maidån, the plaza must have been originally designed with the idea of a congregational mosque and all the parts of the Maidån complex must have been envisioned from the beginning before their realisation under Shåh ‘Abbås and his new slave elite.32 Conclusion Inscriptions provide the basic framework for the decoration of the two mosques on the Maidån-i Shåh in Ißfahån, outlining and defining many of the architectural forms. The content is equally important, for the texts show how epigraphy can be used to justify and support politics, in this case Shåh ‘Abbås’s programme to institutionalise ShÈ‘ism in his new capital. Inscriptions play a public, proclamatory role here, as they are found on both the exterior and the interior of these religious buildings. The key role of this epigraphy was not lost on modern patrons. The frontispiece to the second

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Figure 1.8 Mi˙råb added to the Friday Mosque, Ißfahån, dated Íafar 710/July 1310. © Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom.

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edition of Hunarfarr’s magisterial treatise on the inscriptions of Ißfahån shows the reigning shåh, Mu˙ammad Ri‰å PahlavÈ (r. 1941–79), standing in the Lu†fallåh Mosque, silhouetted against the extensive epigraphy. According to Persian inscriptions in nasta‘lÈq, his father Ri‰å Shåh (r. 1925–41) had had the mosque repaired in the 1930s. One on the dome gives the date of 1315 solar/1936–7. Another in a cartouche over the window above the foundation inscription by ‘AlÈ Ri‰å al-‘AbbåsÈ (Figure 1.4) says that the building was repaired in Åbån 1307/1930 during the reign of Ri‰å Shåh and asks God to make his kingdom and rule eternal. A third in a cartouche below it adds that the source of power lies in the service of ‘AlÈ’s descendants (måya-yi mu˙tashamÈ khidmat-i awlåd-i ‘alÈ ast), thus reaffirming the PahlavÈ’s ShÈ‘Ète lineage just as the Safavid Shåh ‘Abbås had done through his inscriptions. Ri‰å Shåh’s son Mu˙ammad Ri‰å PahlavÈ was a secular Muslim. Over the course of his nearly forty-year reign, he gradually lost the support of the ShÈ‘Ète clergy, but this photograph of the ruler standing resolutely staring towards the qibla in a royal mosque with decidedly ShÈ‘Ète inscriptions seems designed to curry their favour. The Safavid inscriptions on these two mosques in Ißfahån are notable for their erudition. Part of a carefully choreographed programme that must have been envisioned from the outset of the plan for the renovation of the area, the texts were drawn up specifically for the occasion and the site. Yet while learned, they are also playful, with visual-verbal puns between content and location, as in the text on the portal of the Shåh Mosque about ‘AlÈ being a gateway to the city of knowledge, and between context and style, as in the highlighting of the patron’s name in light blue over the doorway there. Composing the texts for these inscriptions was an art. To draft them, famous calligraphers were recruited from afar, sometimes unwillingly. Many came from TabrÈz. This was natural, as Ißfahån at the time was full of Azerbaijanis fleeing the threat of Ottoman invasion. The ghulåm Mu˙ibb ‘AlÈ, co-patron of the Shåh Mosque and overseer of its endowment, was even in charge of a housing project for such TabrÈzi refugees.33 Many of these renowned calligraphers from TabrÈz traced their lineage to the great fourteenth-century masters of the Six Pens there, the followers of YåqËt alMusta‘ßimÈ such as ‘Abdallåh ÍayrafÈ, who had begun to adapt round scripts, notably thuluth, to architecture.34 The work of these masters of the Six Pens is exemplified by the mi˙råb added to the congregational mosque in Ißfahån in 710/1310 (Figure 1.8), and both the form and content of its inscriptions provided a model for the ones used on the mosques built on the Maidån in the same city some three centuries later. In these inscriptions for the new Safavid Maidån, style and location are closely keyed to content and meaning. Long religious texts, largely but not exclusively in Arabic, frame portals and arches and ring the bases of domes. The signatures of calligraphers who composed the inscriptions are typically written in smaller script at the end, usually vertically but occasionally horizontally below the main text. The signatures are introduced by the verb katabahu (wrote it). Location and style distinguish the signature of these calligraphers from those of other craftsmen identified as builders, whose names are written in nasta‘lÈq in cartouches and introduced by the verb ‘amal (made). As these individuals are identified as the sons of master builders, the inscriptions suggest that the building trade in Safavid Ißfahån, as with many specialised craftsmen at other times and places in Iran, was hereditary.35 The inscriptions from the Safavid Maidån show that different styles of script were also used for different purposes. Long texts, both historical and religious, are typically done in white thuluth, whereas the hanging nasta‘lÈq, the typical manuscript hand, was used for edicts as well as the signatures of craftsmen. Bannå’È script, whose angular style contrasts with the flowing thuluth, was used for short quotations from the Qur’an, in the same way that the larger bannå’È was used for sacred names and invocations. These pious phrases were meant to be recognised as much as read, and they signified from afar the piety of these two religious buildings. Babaie has described the politics of space in Shåh ‘Abbås’s new capital of Ißfahån,36 and inscriptions were a major means to drive home that message.

Notes 1. Brief overview with references in Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, The Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250–1800 (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 183–92; Encyclopaedia Iranica: ‘X: Monuments’ by Sussan Babaie with Robert Haug; Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture: ‘Isfahan’; and Stephen P. Blake, Half the World: The Social Architecture of Safavid Isfahan, 1590–1722 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999), all with plans of the Maidån as well as descriptions and pictures of the individual buildings on it. 2. Eugenio Galdieri, ‘Two Building Phases of the Time of Šah ‘Abbas I in the Maydan-i Šah of Isfahan, Preliminary Note’, East and East, n.s. 20/1–2 (1970):  60–9; Robert McChesney, ‘Four Sources on the

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3. 4. 5.

6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

Buildings of Isfahan’, Muqarnas 5 (1988): 103–34, and ‘Postscript to “Four Sources on the Buildings of Isfahan”’, Muqarnas 8 (1992): 137–8. Blake’s redating of ‘Abbås’s transfer of the capital to Ißfahån in 1590 centred on the Old Maidån is not tenable; see the perceptive comments in Sussan Babaie’s review in Iranian Studies 33/34 (Summer–Autumn 2000): 478–82. A good overview of Safavid epigraphy is given in Encyclopaedia Iranica, ‘Epigraphy, iv. Safavid and later inscriptions’ by Sussan Babaie. Subject of a comprehensive study by Sussan Babaie, Isfahan and its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi‘ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008). The major historical inscriptions of the city were first recorded by André Godard in ‘Ißfahån’, Åthår-é Ïrån 2 (1937): 1–176; and then more completely by Lu†fallah Hunarfarr in GanjÈna-yi åthår-i tårÈkhÈ-yi Ißfahån, 2nd edn (Tehran: Ziba, 1350/1971), whose monumental study is one of the keystones of epigraphy in Iran. See the picture in Survey of Persian Art, ed. Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 482. The portal once had another inscription with the date 1011/1602–3, mentioned in Robert Hillenbrand, ‘Safavid Architecture’, in Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, The Timurid and Safavid Periods, ed. Peter Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 786 and n. 1 with references, but it has since been removed and is now, I am told, in the basement. The building was certainly conceived earlier, as Fazli’s Af∂al al-tåvårÈkh (Charles Melville, ‘New Light on the Reign of Shah ‘Abbås: Volume III of the Af‰al al-TåvårÈkh’, in Society and Culture in the Early Modern Middle East: Studies on Iran in the Safavid Period, ed. Andrew J. Newman (Leiden: E.  J. Brill, 2003), p. 81) dates the construction to 1002/1593–94, when ‘Abbås brought Lu†fallåh with him from QazvÈn to Ißfahån. Biography in Encyclopaedia Iranica: ‘‘AlÈ-Re‰å ‘AbbåsÈ’ by P. P. Soucek, and Sheila S. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), p. 463, n. 25. On Shaykh Lu†fallåh and the original designation of the building as a mosque for him associated with his nearby madrasa, see, most recently, Babaie, Isfahan and its Palaces, pp. 96–8. Hunarfarr, GangÈna, pp. 412–13; Babaie, Palaces, p. 111, n.  104, where she inadvertently says that the inscription is on the façade of the building. On Shaykh Bahå’ al-DÈn al-‘ÅmilÈ, see Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn: ‘al-‘Åmili, Mu˙ammad b. Óusayn Bahå’ al-DÈn’; Encyclopaedia Iranica: ‘Bahå’ al-DÈn ‘ÅmelÈ’ by E. Kohlberg; Babaie, Palaces, pp. 98–9; Devin J. Stewart, ‘A Biographical Notice on Bahå’ al-DÈn al-‘ÅmilÈ (d. 1030/1621)’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 111/3 (July–September 1991): 563–71; Andrew J. Newman, Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), pp. 58–9. Babaie, Palaces, p. 96. A point already made in Blair and Bloom, The Art and Architecture of Islam, p. 185. The exterior of the dome also bears inscriptions saying that the building was repaired in the reign of Ri‰a Shåh Pahlavi in Aban 1307/1929 and in 1350 solar/1972. Various sources, including ‘Abbås’s biographer Iskandar MunshÈ, give this date for the beginning of construction; see Robert McChesney, ‘Waqf and Public Policy: The Waqfs of Shåh ‘Abbås, 1011–1023/1602– 1614’, Asian and African Studies 15 (1981):  165–90, and ‘Four Sources’, p. 111; Babaie, Isfahan and its Palaces, pp. 86–8. André Godard, ‘Historique du Masdjid-é Djum‘a d’Ißfahån’, Åthår-é Ïrån 1 (1936):  245–6; Hunarfarr, GanjÈna, p. 121; Lisa Golombek and Donald Wilber, The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), no. 166b. Godard, ‘Ißfahån’, pp. 63–77; Hunarfarr, GangÈna, p. 341; Golombek and Wilber, Timurid Architecture, no. 170. Inscriptions in Godard, ‘Ißfahån’, pp. 63–77, and Hunarfarr, GangÈna, pp. 360–79; analysis and colour pictures in Sussan Babaie, ‘Building on the Past: The Shaping of Safavid Architecture, 1501–1576’, in Hunt for Paradise: Court Arts of Safavid Iran, 1501–1576, ed. Jon Thompson and Sheila Canby (London: Skira, 2003), pp. 27–48. She draws on the insightful discussion of the inscriptions in Hillenbrand, ‘Safavid Architecture’, pp. 761–5, where the plays on words they contain were skilfully explicated. See, for example, Shåh Ma˙mËd NÈshåpËrÈ’s signature in the copy of NiΩåmÈ’s Khamsa made for Shåh Êahmåsp and dated 946/1539, in which the calligrapher’s epithet shåhÈ is written in gold; Blair, Islamic Calligraphy, fig. 10.8. McChesney, ‘Four Sources’, pp. 122–3; Sussan Babaie, ‘Launching from Isfahan: Slaves and the Construction of the Empire’, in Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran, ed. Sussan Babaie, Katherine Babayan, Ina Baghdiantz and Massumeh Farhad (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004), pp. 89–92. Hunarfarr, GangÈna, p. 431. McChesney, ‘Waqf and Public Property’, pp. 179–80, and ‘Four Sources’, p. 123. McChesney, ‘Four Sources’, p. 123; Babaie, ‘Launching from Isfahan’, p. 174, n. 26. Douglas Pickett, ‘Inscriptions by Mu˙ammad Ri∂å al-ImåmÈ’, Iran 22 (1984): 91–102. I discount the earliest fragment in the V&A (621–1878); Pickett read the date as 1001/1593?, making it thirty-seven years earlier than the next inscription and giving the calligrapher an eighty-six-year working life. More reasonable, it seems to me, is to imagine that the tens digit could easily be missing at the top of this first inscription, especially as there is an extra wåw (‘and’) and the last syllable of the calligrapher’s epithet is missing there. Biographies in Hunarfarr, GangÈna, p. 438, n. 1, and Encyclopaedia Iranica: ‘‘Abd al-BåqÈ TabrÈzÈ, Mir’ by ‘Abd al-‘AlÈ Karang. Godard, ‘Ißfahån’, p. 113; Hunarfarr, GangÈna, p. 457.

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26. Hunarfarr, GangÈna, pp. 433–4; James Allan, ‘Silver Door Facings of the Safavid Period’, Iran 33 (1995): 130; Encyclopaedia Iranica: ‘Epigraphy, iv. Safavid and later inscriptions’. 27. Hunarfarr, GangÈna, pp. 443–4. He also gives various repair inscriptions from modern times. 28. Biography in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn: ‘‘Abd Allåh b. al-‘Abbås’. 29. The inscriptions on the Uljaytu mi˙råb are given in Hunarfarr, pp. 116–19, and analysed in Sheila S. Blair, ‘Writing about Faith: Epigraphic Evidence for the Development of Shi‘ism in Iran’, in People of the Prophet’s House, ed. Fahmida Suleman (London: Oxford University Press, 2013). 30. Nicely traced in Babaie, Isfahan and its Palaces, pp. 93–5. 31. Andrew Newman, ‘Towards a Reconsideration of the “Isfahån School of Philosophy”: Shaykh Bahå’È and the Role of the Safavid ‘Ulamå’, Studia Iranica 15/2 (1986): 181–5; Babaie, Palaces, p. 98. 32. Babaie has repeatedly made this point, e.g., ‘Launching from Isfahan’, pp. 80–113; Palaces, Chapter 3, esp. pp. 99–103. 33. Babaie, Palaces, p. 90. 34. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy, Chapter 7, esp. pp. 253–5. 35. The most famous examples are the families of Kashani potters of Saljuq times; see, most recently, Sheila S. Blair, ‘A Brief Biography of Abu Zayd’, Muqarnas 25 (2008): 155–76. 36. Babaie, Palaces, pp. 99–103.

Bibliography Allan, James. ‘Silver Door Facings of the Safavid Period’. Iran 33 (1995): 122–37. Babaie, Sussan. ‘Building on the Past: The Shaping of Safavid Architecture, 1501–1576’. In Hunt for Paradise: Court Arts of Safavid Iran, 1501–1576, ed. Jon Thompson and Sheila Canby. London: Skira, 2003, pp. 27–48. ——. Isfahan and its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi‘ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran. Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008. ——. ‘Launching from Isfahan: Slaves and the Construction of the Empire’. In Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran, ed. Sussan Babaie, Katherine Babayan, Ina Baghdiantz and Massumeh Farhad. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004, pp. 80–113, 171–80. ——. ‘Review of Stephen P. Blake, Half the World: The Social Architecture of Safavid Isfahan, 1590–1722’. Iranian Studies 33/34 (Summer–Autumn 2000): 478–82. Blair, Sheila S. ‘A Brief Biography of Abu Zayd’. Muqarnas 25 (2008): 155–76. ——. Islamic Calligraphy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. ——. ‘Writing about Faith: Epigraphic Evidence for the Development of Shi‘ism in Iran’. In People of the Prophet’s House, ed. Fahmida Suleman. London: Oxford University Press, 2013. Blair, Sheila S. and Jonathan M. Bloom. The Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250–1800. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Blake, Stephen P. Half the World: The Social Architecture of Safavid Isfahan, 1590–1722. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1999. Galdieri, Eugenio. ‘Two Building Phases of the Time of Šah ‘Abbas I in the Maydan-i Šah of Isfahan, Preliminary Note’. East and East n.s. 20/1–2 (1970): 60–9. Godard, André. ‘Historique du Masdjid-é Djum‘a d’Ißfahån’. Åthår-é Ïrån 1 (1936): 213–83. ——. ‘Ißfahån’. Åthår-é Ïrån 2 (1937): 1–176. ——. ‘Mu˙ammad Ri∂a al-ImåmÈ’. Åthår-é Ïrån 3 (1938): 267–74. Golombek, Lisa and Donald Wilber. The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Hillenbrand, Robert. ‘Safavid Architecture’. In Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 6, The Timurid and Safavid Periods, ed. Peter Jackson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 759–842. Hunarfarr, Lu†fallah. GanjÈna-yi åthår-i tårÈkhÈ-yi Ißfahån, 2nd edn. Tehran: Ziba, 1350/1971. McChesney, Robert. ‘Four Sources on the Buildings of Isfahan’. Muqarnas 5 (1988): 103–34. ——. ‘Postscript to “Four Sources on the Buildings of Isfahan”’. Muqarnas 8 (1992): 137–8. ——. ‘Waqf and Public Policy: The Waqfs of Shåh ‘Abbås, 1011–1023/1602–1614’. Asian and African Studies 15 (1981): 165–90. Melville, Charles. ‘New Light on the Reign of Shah ‘Abbås: Volume III of the Af‰al al-TåvårÈkh’. In Society and Culture in the Early Modern Middle East: Studies on Iran in the Safavid Period, ed. Andrew J. Newman. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003, pp. 63–96. Newman, Andrew J. Safavid Iran: Rebirth of a Persian Empire. London: I. B. Tauris, 2009. ——. ‘Towards a Reconsideration of the “Isfahån School of Philosophy”: Shaykh Bahå’È and the Role of the Safavid ‘Ulamå’. Studia Iranica 15/2 (1986): 165–99. Pickett, Douglas. ‘Inscriptions by Mu˙ammad Ri∂å al-ImåmÈ’. Iran 22 (1984): 91–102. Pope, Arthur Upham and Phyllis Ackerman (eds). Survey of Persian Art, from Prehistoric Times to the Present. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1938. Stewart, Devin J. ‘A Biographical Notice on Bahå’ al-DÈn al-‘ÅmilÈ (d. 1030/1621)’. Journal of the American Oriental Society 111/3 (July–September 1991): 563–71.

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Chapter Two

Speaking Architecture: Poetry and Aesthetics in the Alhambra Palace José Miguel Puerta Vílchez

From its early days, classical Arab-Islamic culture, like so many others, tended to attribute a metaphysical origin to beauty and to all artistic creation beyond the sensual world. During the jåhiliyya (the pre-Islamic period), genii (jinn) and demons (shay†ån) were thought to inspire poets and to give them a capacity of expression beyond that of other mortals. However, with the arrival of Islam, only God would be responsible for true creation, the One – the only One – able to give the gift of beauty. Creation is portrayed in the Qur’an as a work of infinite beauty and perfection through which the believer attests to and venerates divine omnipotence and wisdom. The surat al-Mulk (the Divine Domain) that is fully engraved in the dome of the Hall of Comares manifests these notions thus: Blessed be He in whose hand is sovereignty; and He has power over all things  . . . He who has created the seven heavens in harmony. You cannot see any fault in the creation of the Merciful. So look again; can you see any rifts? Then look again twice more. Your gaze will return to you weakened and worn out. And indeed we have adorned the world’s [lowest] sky with lamps and made them missiles for the devils, and we have prepared for them the suffering of flame. (al-Mulk 67:1, 3–5) Critics, theologians and thinkers of the most varied points of view, from Ibn Óazm to Ibn ‘ArabÈ and including Ibn Rushd and GhazzålÈ, all agree on this point. However, if nature’s beauty is of divine origin, the works of human beings, by way of contrast, are viewed with suspicion in the Qur’an and the ˙adÈth. They are seen as trying to imitate divine creation and therefore fall into blasphemy or idolatry. Grandiose architecture is one of the artistic activities that has suffered most from the animosity of the sacred texts of various peoples.1 This is due to the fact that human creative activity was seen as an attempt to recreate the world, to gain access to the gods’ dwelling place, to recover their lost eternity. It would, therefore, compete with divine wisdom and omnipotence. Islamic and Jewish monotheism, however, soon altered the opposition between the activity of building and pious life by presenting architecture as being in the service of religion. From its position as threatening the power of the gods, architecture was transformed into a symbol of divine power represented on earth by the builder-ruler, who, in Arab-Islamic culture, also finds a paradigmatic model in Solomon.2 In this way, the monarch himself, as we shall see, becomes a craftsman, a maker of architectural works inspired by God. However, God remains the sole and authentic origin of creation, and the One to whom the wonderful architectural edifices that pretend to evoke divine order are dedicated. The first verse inscribed into the fountain in the Patio of the Lions, located in the centre of the palace of al-Riyå∂ (the Garden), proclaims, absolutely and clearly, the divine inspiration of the constructor-sovereign: Blessed be He who gave to the imåm Mu˙ammad The ideas that embellish his mansions! Are there not in this garden wonders, Whose beauty God has made incomparable? This crucial composition by Ibn Zamrak (1333–c. 93) clearly specifies, moreover, the origin, vehicle, qualities and aspirations of the beauty present in a work of art. When one looks at them through the eyes of an aesthetician, it is of no importance that García Gómez considered this poem unnecessarily overwrought and artificial.3 Nor is it relevant that the poem itself proceeds from a longer qaßÈda.

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Figure 2.1 The poem of the Patio of Arrayanes, verse 1. Courtesy of the Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife.

On the contrary, the choice of these particular verses above all others further underlines the degree of consciousness and care with which the builders of the Alhambra wished to emphasise their symbolic messages. The aesthetic schemata of this poem, also common to others in the Alhambra, can be synthesised in the following manner: the fountain (in every sense of the word) of beauty is God, and the sovereign is its beauty’s greatest creator and artisan. The artistic work is described through the concepts of the aesthetics of light, and is presented as the sustenance and symbol of the sovereign’s rule at the service of the faith.4 The poem of the Patio of Arrayanes (Figure 2.1), which has the same metric pattern as that of the verses found on the Fountain of the Lions, opens with similar words and an identical grammatical construction. Nevertheless, instead of contemplating the aesthetic pillars, as it were, of the palaces, here, Ibn Zamrak praises the monarch as a victorious warrior: ‘Blessed be He who gave command to His servants / and to you Islam gave grace and favour!’ 5 These words are complemented by another verse, now lost, mentioned by YËsuf III as part of that poem. It reads: ‘God has given you a palace through which, before our own eyes, the radiant and full moon of Islam ascends.’ This makes even more obvious the attribution of the sovereign’s aesthetic, creative capacity to God. The sovereign merely possesses and exercises that capacity in God’s name.6 Beauty’s divine origin in relation to the works of the sultan is also alluded to by Ibn Zamrak in the fourth verse inscribed into a wooden frieze crowning the great façade of Comares Palace (Figure 2.2): ‘May God make his works as beautiful (a˙sana Allåhu lahu al-ßun‘) as are his morals and his image.’ These words are deliberately similar, both lexically and semantically, to a Qur’anic verse: ‘He who made all things that He created beautiful . . .’ (‘alladhÈ a˙sana kulla shay‘in khalaqahu’, al-Sajda 32:7).7 This further reinforces the adulatory intention of the poet. In this verse, the beauty of the sovereign’s works is compared to both the internal (bå†in) and external (Ωåhir) beauty of the sovereign himself. Thus, his ethical and physical beauties are presented as a paradigm for the beauty and bounty of his buildings, which are born of divine inspiration and are materialised for the benefit of Islam. Beauty is admitted here uniquely as an objective and transcendent value which may only emanate from God, as a concept linked with the good in classical Arabic culture.8 Once this principle is established, the main task of the panegyrist and the builder, working in tandem, consists in reaffirming the personal symbols of the sovereign, and particularly the direct authority of his works as granted by God.

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Figure 2.2 The façade of the Comares; the poem is on the wooden frieze. Courtesy of the Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife.

The sovereign as aesthetic agent Each and every chamber in the Alhambra was treated in a manner which we might describe as poetic, and, in almost all of the poems inscribed into these walls, the sultan appears in the guise of the builder and ideal creator of these spaces. This architectural relationship between the sovereign and ‘his’ creation is clearly established in the poems of Ibn al-Jayyåb of Granada, located in the Tower of the Captive and dedicated to YËsuf I. Here, the poet condenses all the metaphors of the Naßrid building into a distillation of particular intensity: ‘Honoured be the tower of the Alhambra which is raised up in the sky, and which was planned and ordered (dabbara) by the most noble imåm.’ The building is described as ‘a marvellous (badÈ‘) construction enhanced by a type of wisdom achieved by the caliph, YËsuf I, and by none other’.9 The caliph, and the caliph alone, in his capacity as sovereign, has the absolute power and freedom to build: ‘Always – blood of Naßr – in happiness and triumph / whatever he wishes, he may build as he wishes!’ In the corridor leading into the Hall of the Ambassadors, we read, yet again, the portrait of the sovereign as architect: ‘You have built (shayyadta) a palace without equal.’ And, in the same poem: ‘You have erected (shayyadta) a solemn pavilion / in the highest, and this you have done without stretching the ropes.’10 This same idea, reiterated in rhetoric and of great interest to aesthetics, is employed yet again, this time in a particularly conspicuous and significant location: the central bed chamber of the Hall of the Ambassadors. Here, this ideal portrait of the sovereign-as-architect, the sovereign-as-builder, is expressed through the following anonymous poem which declares that YËsuf I has chosen this room above all others as the location for his throne: ‘[he] has dressed me (kasånÈ) in robes of glory (malåbis fakhr) and favour (istinå’) with no confusion, making me the seat of the kingdom.’11 During the reign of YËsuf’s successor, these verses were taken up and elaborated, their signification expounded upon and made even more emphatic in the following anonymous poem: Oh sublime royal site That possesses such a wonderful form! You were open to a clear victory As well as to the work’s beauty (˙usn ßun‘) and the beauty of the craftsman (ßanÈ‘). It is a monument (athr) of the imåm Mu˙ammad Which is God’s own shadow that protects everybody.

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The portrait of the sovereign appears in these verses found on the Door of Mexuar (mashwar) with the triple signification characteristic of this courtly aesthetic. These verses contain, first, a clear allusion to the familiar ˙adÈth ‘The sultan is the shadow of God on earth’.12 The sultan is presented as the craftsman, the author of the work: he is beautiful physically and morally; he is the walÈ – the lieutenant – of God on earth and the protecting shadow of God. When Ibn Zamrak praises his patron’s prodigious constructions, the Palace of the Lions in the Mirador of Lindaraja (Figure 2.3), situated in the Throne Room of Mu˙ammad V, he actually places his panegyric on the lips of the architectural creation itself; the creation, in other words, praises its creator thus: ‘All of this is the work (ßun‘) of the imåm Ibn Naßr.’13 Thus inscribed, succinctly and clearly, the building itself proclaims the sultan an aesthetic craftsman inspired by God, a declaration reiterated, as indicated earlier, by the phrases inscribed onto the Fountain of the Lions, located at the very centre of this palace, in perfect alignment with the throne and, thus, within the direct line of sight of the sultan himself. Ibn FurkËn, the court poet of Sultan YËsuf III, again takes up this theme, paying particular attention to the image of the sultan as artistic creator. The poet commemorates his patron’s building activities in these verses, composed specifically for the rooms redesigned for YËsuf III in the Generalife: ‘My lord restored my ruins, and has completed what his ancestors had forgotten; it is YËsuf III who has created me (abda‘nÈ), as you know: This is my pride and my glory.’14 The Arabic word used to designate the act of creation in these verses is almost always abda‘, which translates, literally, as ‘to create, or to invent’; the sultan is thus considered a mubdi‘, that is to say, an artistic and aesthetic creator as much of the architectural work as of various luxury objects. Among these latter is a royal vessel inscribed with the following verses: YËsuf I, the mighty, created me (abda‘nÈ) I am so fascinating (mu‘jiba), red on blue, that, when contemplating me, you imagine (takhålu) that dawn breaks on the horizon.15 Or, on another: ‘My beauty (˙usnÈ) creates (abda‘) / whenever it appears and is manifested.’16 Here, in fact, it is none other than the sultan’s own presence which embellishes the object. The same poetic method is applied to the luxury arts and to the buildings, illustrating once more Oleg Grabar’s observation concerning the aesthetic treatment of architecture as a sumptuary object and the constant transfer of working modes among the diverse arts in classical Islamic culture. The figure of the sovereign as builder and aesthetic agent of his works casts into the shadow the names of architects and artisans in the context of official rhetoric. All the glory of creation belongs to the sovereign. The image of the architect, as is well known, appears in classical Arab literature within a polarised context: genius is opposed to its own punishment. On one hand, architects, from within their genius, create works which surpass human abilities and challenge nature’s laws as well as God. On the other hand, they are punished, in addition to bodily harm or physical death, with historical death and silence. Their traces disappear from the annals of history, if they were ever inscribed there, only to be replaced by the firm imprint of the monarch, the new Solomon.17 Manuel Ocaña Jiménez has given evidence of this in his interpretation of the Mosque in Córdoba: ‘The architects’, he affirms, ‘were considered merely good craftsmen who stood out above their colleagues, but to whom special honours were seldom given. Therefore, their names were almost always lost in anonymity.’18 The author does offer, however, a long list of bricklayers and foremen. Still, if their names have been preserved, it is only in the capacity of mere artisans, responsible for the different phases of the great Mosque’s construction. In contrast, for the time being, we know nothing of the architects and artisans who worked in the Alhambra. This is perhaps because the whole complex was conceived as a panegyric to the sultan as architect and builder, rather than a pious work dedicated to the good of the community. Whatever the reason, it is interesting that, once the relationship of loyalty between the sovereign and his courtly poet is questioned and dissolved,19 as happened between Mu˙ammad V and Ibn al-Kha†Èb, the panegyrist is easily transformed into a censor. In the following verses, Ibn al-Kha†Èb angrily lashes out at his former patron, condemning his architectural excesses: And you, Muley, you do not even notice me, because you walk below scaffoldings and ropes, among sacks of stucco and bricks and carts that bring slabs of stones for an arid, uncultivated land, before enemies –

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Figure 2.3 The Mirador of Lindaraja. Courtesy of the Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife.

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who, avid and cruel are harassing us – [You walk] as one who gathers myrtles so as to plant them in a ruinous plot and a sterile house. Do not even dream that the people are sleeping: no, their eyes are always fixed on you. Be merciful with them!20 These verses are taken from an epistle written by Ibn al-Kha†Èb as a warning to the sultan. Even though he took refuge in Morocco, Ibn al-Kha†Èb was persecuted by the Naßrid monarch and finally assassinated. In these verses, the poet assumes the speaking posture of the ascetic, invoking the economic interests of the kingdom in order to criticise the architectural passion of the builder of the Palace of the Lions who thereby relegated the defence of Islam to second place. The luminary figure of the sovereign as architect and aesthete is inverted and, in its place, the image of a vulgar builder lost in dirty manual work appears. The people (al-nås) are a lurking mass which the sultan must manipulate slyly, if he will not accord them justice.21 Somewhat ironically, the person who dared to speak this way to the monarch was himself an enthusiastic builder of palaces, such as that of Aynadamar (‘ayn al-dama‘a), which he dedicated to his own personal pleasure and for which he composed his own epigraphic poems. Aesthetic authorship is, after all, one of the essential features of the personal ‘iconography’ of the sovereign or of whoever tried to emulate him. This is the case because it is through this authorship that the creation and possession of the work are assumed. Furthermore, authors establish a symbolic connection with divinity, from which they receive inspiration, truth and beauty. This tradition comes from pre-Islamic poetry to The Arabian Nights, and from the sacred scriptures to the Maqåmåt of al-ÓarÈrÈ. It includes encomiastic poetry and classical Arabic thought in which light has to triumph over darkness, wisdom over doubt and ignorance, reason over madness, order over chaos, permanence over caducity, and beauty over ugliness. Aesthetic narcissism in architecture The Alhambra’s poems exclaim in the first person singular the sublime and incomparable beauty of the monument: ‘In my perfection and beauty (dhåt ˙usn wa kamål) / I am the dais of the bride’ (Figure 2.4); ‘All arts (ßun‘a) have given to me their beauty (jamål), granting me perfection (kamål) and splendour (bahå’)’; ‘My charms reach such extremes / that even the stars of heaven imitate them’; ‘I am the garden which beauty adorns: / you need only see it to know my rank.’ These are merely a few examples from the poems of Ibn Zamrak in the Hall of the Barca, the Mirador of Lindaraja, and the Hall of the Two Sisters. The architecture is made to speak through the poetic genre of fakhr (boastfulness or vainglory), as García Gómez has remarked. The aesthetic terms of this process may be summed up in six ways, which we now discuss. First, the application to the art work and to the sovereign himself of the familiar concepts of jamål and ˙usn. Lexicographers, commentators on the Qur’an and other thinkers defined these concepts in many different ways, even though they tended to give to the concept of jamål a more totalising and abstract sense of beauty. In contrast, they characterised ˙usn as a particular distinction within the general category of beauty, or jamål. Both terms are applied, in any case, as much to intellectual as to sensorial or ethical beauty.22 In practice, however, jamål and ˙usn are comparable and can only be differentiated through context or further definition. In classical Arabic poetry in general, and in the Alhambra’s verses in particular, these references are intentionally and specifically related to the aesthetic of light, to reflection, to chromatic contrast, and to harmony. The concept of beauty is usually associated with the idea of perfection (kamål), and it is through this association that the Alhambra reaches the zenith of self-complacency. Second, along with the concept of badÈ‘, which is very frequent in the poetic discourse of the Alhambra, further associations are introduced with the novel, the unique and, consequently, the marvellous. When al-shakl al-badÈ‘ (marvellous form) is mentioned, the poet invokes a topos of Arabic poetics and rhetoric in order to express the originality and wonders of the sovereign’s work: as already noted, this latter is himself described as mubdi‘, an artistic creator. The poem inscribed into the Fountain of the Lions proclaims: ‘Are there not in this garden a thousand prodigies (badå‘i’)?’ Ibn al-Jayyåb qualifies the Generalife in similar fashion: in his words, this structure is a ‘palace of marvellous beauty and perfection’ (badÈ‘ al-˙usn wa al-i˙sån). Similarly, in a topos frequently found in Naßrid poetry, he ponders the perfection of the walls in the Captive’s Tower, comparing their ornament to beautiful textile creations (badå‘i’ al-dÈbåj).

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Figure 2.4 The niche in the door of the Hall of the Two Sisters. Courtesy of the Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife.

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Third, the marvellous, the astonishing and the amazing may find even more appropriate expression in the terms ‘ajåb, ‘ajÈb, or its plural, ‘ajå’ib. These terms are of great importance in Arabic literature and rhetoric, as well as in the Alhambra’s verses themselves, where sometimes the term gharÈb is also deployed. In the corridor leading to the Hall of Comares, Ibn Zamrak’s composition, no longer extant, once extolled the ‘ajå’ib (wonders) and gharå’ib (prodigies) of the great mansion erected by the sultan as monument to the faith. Also, in the poem in the baths, a‘jab or ‘wondrous’ appears in the superlative; this heavenly chamber, in other words, is the greatest and most astonishing of all great wonders. Wonders and beauty are also the terms of praise in which jets of water are described in the poem of the Mirador of Lindaraja: ‘The crystal horizon manifests wonders (‘ajå’ib) / that on beauty’s page (ßaf˙at al-jamål) remain written’. Or, at the beginning of the poem inscribed onto the Fountain of the Lindaraja: ‘I achieve the greatest degree of beauty (˙usn) / and my existence is a wonder (yu‘jib) to all humanity.’ A fascinating power is, therefore, attributed to the work of art, as is, moreover, a capacity for suggestivity and visual deceit, also characteristic elements of classical Arabic aesthetics: To whosoever looks upon and contemplates my beauty (idhå mubßirun ta’ammala ˙usnÈ) Visual perception cheats his imagination (akdhaba al-˙issu bi-‘ayyån khayyålaha) because I am so limpid (shufËf ∂iyå’È) that they see the moon (badr), merrily (∂aw’ al-su‘Ëd) placing itself on me like a halo.23 Ibn Zamrak, author of these verses located at the entrance to the Mirador of Lindaraja (on the right cupboard), sings of the garden’s beauty, using the rhetorical ploy of speaking as a spectator who witnesses and contemplates the architectural wonders wrought by the monarch. The aesthetics of reflection here embodied in the fountain’s transparency and the coincidence of lunar light lead the spectator – and the poet – to believe themselves deceived. This mirage, though, also permits them to apprehend unreal wonders that transcend mere visual perception. The ensuing aesthetic illusion achieved through visual means corresponds to the function attributed by Ibn Kha†Èb to the highest and most noble category of poetry. In other words, poetry appropriates supernatural methods in order to demonstrate ‘instead of the true nature of things, their appearance and . . . their nonsense dressed as reason’.24 This idea is reflected in the famous poetic ˙adÈth: ‘Surely, there is a type of eloquence that is magic’ (inna min al-bayån la-si˙ran).25 The idea of aesthetic illusion was explained, in Arabic poetics and rhetoric, through the concept of takhyÈl, that is, fantasy or imaginary suggestion. This concept was introduced into Arabic culture at least as early as al-FåråbÈ, and received a splendid theorisation in the rhetorical treatise entitled Minhåj al-bulaghå’ by Óåzim al-Qar†åjannÈ in the thirteenth century (1211–85). Al-Qar†åjannÈ associates the Aristotelian theory of mimesis developed by the falåsifa  – particularly Ibn SÈnå (980–1037) – with the principles of Arabic rhetoric itself. According to this aesthetics, the purpose of art, and of poetry, is not to reproduce truth but to suggest fantasy, even to the point of falsifying reality, in order to give pleasure to the soul, and even to motivate it in a determined direction. Good art is that which achieves this purpose in the best of all possible ways. This is the model of aesthetics proposed by the Andalusian al-Qar†åjannÈ, who emigrated to Tunisia at the dawn of the Naßrid reign. Al-Qar†åjannÈ’s aesthetics is none other than that of light and reflection, combined with garden topoi: A beautiful imitation must be represented in verbal discourse with the most beautiful (ajmal) configurations (taßåwÈr) possible. Among them, one finds the image (taßawwur) of the brilliance of stars, of candles, and of incandescent lamps on the surface of pure, calm water in streams, rivers, tributaries and inlets. This is also the case of luxuriant trees with their fruit and leaves reflected on the surface of water, because the union of a stream’s banks with the foliage reflected on the crystalline water is one of the most wonderful (a‘jab) and pleasant (abhaj) things that may be contemplated (manΩar).26 The conceptual association of water and architecture finds its origins in the earliest historical moments of Islam, as well as in even earlier Middle Eastern cultures. As is well known, not only is this association reflected in the architecture itself, it is amply present in more or less profound manifestations in written sources from such diverse fields as philosophy, poetry, theology and aesthetics. Perhaps the written source which contains the most striking and succinct manifestations of this conceptual association is found on the very walls of the Alhambra.

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Figure 2.5 The Garden of Delight (Court of the Lions). Courtesy of the Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife.

In an alcove which is no longer extant but was originally part of the additions undertaken by Mu˙ammad V in the southern gallery of the Hall of Comares, the royal residence was described by Ibn Zamrak as follows: ‘This dwelling is a garden of immortality, where we find, joined to such delights, an array of moist foliage amidst shade, along with springs of sweet, fresh water.’27 In an identical pendant alcove, we find further formulations of a paradisiacal character, an idea of Qur’anic origin which is manifested in a comparison between the mural mosaic motifs and the garden’s flowers. These lines, crowning the splendour of ornamental beauty, bring to life the aesthetic harmony between the place and the poetic compositions which once covered the Alhambra’s walls: ‘Here is the garden of delight, radiant with splendour that no host would leave / My arabesques mirror the roses of my garden, and my whiteness matches the countenance of dawn.’ 28 The most ingenious recreation of the concept of an Islamic garden/paradise is certainly found in the Court of the Lions (Figure 2.5). It is no accident that those who conceived and built this patio gave it the name ‘Garden of Delight’ (al-Riyå∂ al-Sa‘Èd). The poems which originally adorned this impressive creation of Mu˙ammad V, long vanished from its walls, almost all referred – and in a very direct manner – to the theological-architectonic concept of the garden/paradise. First, we see

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Figure 2.6 The first verse of the poem by Ibn Zamrak in the Hall of the Two Sisters. Courtesy of the Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife.

that the majestic pavilion known as the Mirador (lookout point) of Lindaraja, where the throne of Mu˙ammad V was placed, proclaims itself the eye through which the sovereign contemplates his city from within his garden: ‘From this garden, I am the eye with the fresh gaze . . .’29 Ibn Zamrak had recourse once again to the Qur’anic concept of the garden of immortality in his description of the private living quarters of the palace, and the ineffable pleasure which the monarch drew from them. In the alcove leading into the Mirador of Lindaraja, the marvels of this same garden palace are called forth yet again. This time, however, the reference evokes the famous shimmering crystal floors spread forth by King Solomon for the Queen of Sheba (al-Naml 27:44). As observed by Emilio Lafuente y Alcántara in 1859,30 ‘I cannot be alone, for such a prodigy shows this garden as one of which none has seen the equal: it is a monument of crystal, and whoever sees it will confuse it with a tumultuous sea. Whoever craves it is struck with terror’ (left alcove, v. 2). Then, in the Hall of the Two Sisters, the verses inscribed onto the surface of its enormous cupola (al-Qubba al-Kubrå) open with lines of self-description in which the cupola presents itself as a beautiful and majestic garden: ‘I am the garden, with adorned beauty . . .’ (Figure 2.6); then, it exclaims: ‘Have we ever seen a garden offering to the eye so much sweet fragrance?’ (v. 20), ‘Through the branches, dinars of light shower down upon it, embellishing it with their elegance’ (v. 23). The alcoves in the Hall of the Two Sisters, alas long disappeared, further elaborate the same theme: ‘O alcazar (al-qaßr)! It is the Imåm Mu˙ammad who, with his own splendour, dresses you / and lays at your feet this marvellous garden where roses grant smiles when your grace allows them to blossom.’31 When at last we reach the Court of the Lions, epicentre of the Garden of Delight, the poem inscribed on the Fountain of the Lions welcomes us once again with an exaltation which pays tribute to the unequalled magnificence of the place: ‘This garden contains wonders unto which God has not permitted Beauty to find an equal’ (v. 2) (Figure 2.7). The poems which frame the palace’s principal axis heap further praises upon the image of the garden of beauty and delight in ways both direct and explicit, echoing the palace’s spatial dispositions and its elevations, recreations of words in architectural form. The transcendentally enveloped order of this courtly environment is highlighted when it is considered in relation to the Raw∂ah, the royal Naßrid necropolis, situated to the south of the Garden of

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Figure 2.7 The second verse of the poem by Ibn Zamrak on the Fountain of the Lions. Courtesy of the Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife.

Delight. Well-known ˙adÈths of the Prophet establish a link between these various concepts which most probably inspired the Alhambra’s architects. One states: ‘What is between my dwelling and my throne is one of the gardens of Paradise.’32 The relationship existing between these different terms or concepts and water, wherever it is found, is essential, and becomes doubly so each time the word ˙aw∂ is defined as the place where water flows and where vegetation grows. From a lexical point of view, ˙aw∂ is associated with an indentation, a basin, a receptacle, or with the variety of plants which compose an irrigated garden.33 Al-˙aw∂, as well as the connotations of ‘basin’ or ‘receptacle’, carries the meaning of ‘sepulchre’, even if this term in Arabic most often refers to the presence of water. Thus, it is no coincidence that Ibn Zamrak, who was himself the architect of the poetic programme of the Garden of Delight, succeeded in uniting all of these elements in the elegy he composed upon the death of his sovereign Mu˙ammad V. In the elegy, which he personally recited beside the tomb of the monarch, he said: ‘Lie for all eternity in the shade of Paradise, and in immortality; your descendants shall survive / Through the Merciful, the water from the Prophet’s basin has led to you, thanks to the Prophet who bequeathed the best of springs to those whom you succeeded.’34 In composing this elegy, Ibn Zamrak may have recalled the existence of aromatic plants, of flowers and verdant gardens, as well as the perpetual virgins (˙ËrÈ) promised in Paradise; the ˙adÈth eliciting comment, however, is stated in the tradition under various guises. In one case, it speaks of the sepulchre as being ‘. . . one of the Gardens of Paradise, or one of the abysses of Hell’.35 In another, it is interestingly expressed in this well-turned phrase: ‘My throne stands near one of the Gates of Paradise, and what lies between my throne and my chamber is one of the Gardens of Paradise.’ 36 It is noteworthy that the chamber referred to in these ˙adÈths belonged to ‘A’isha, the Prophet’s wife. It is also in that chamber that the Prophet was actually buried. As for the chamber’s location, it was situated immediately behind the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. That, of course, coincides with the site of the Naßrid Raw∂ah, situated just between the Palace of the Garden of Delight and the Great Mosque of the Alhambra, built by Mu˙ammad III around 1305. Thus, the eschatological signification which informs the totality of this spatial order is revealed to us in an extraordinarily rich and condensed manner. Through it we are given access to a multiplicity of solemnly evocative ideas haunted by the spectres of eternity and Paradise, of the perpetual irrigation of the garden-palace and of the hereafter. Most importantly of all, however, these associations weave for us implicit evocations of the Raw∂ah, the sepulchre-garden of the Prophet. Fourth, another remarkable aspect of the aesthetics of the Alhambra poems is their use of terminology borrowed from other arts in order to describe architectural elements and spaces. Verbs such as raqama (to embroider, to stitch, to decorate with dots), kaså (to dress or drape), na˙ata (to sculpt),37 ßågha (to forge), naΩama (to set, to compose poetry), naqasha and nuqËsh (engravings,

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Figure 2.8 The Tower of the Captive. Courtesy of the Patronato de la Alhambra y el Generalife.

drawings, arabesques),38 ˙allå and ta˙allå (to adorn, to decorate), and washå, as in washÈ ka al-dÈbåj (brocade, such as the textile image with which Ibn Zamrak describes a cupboard once found in the Palace of the Lions)39, relate ideal beauty, light and wonder with the more concrete elements of architecture (such as arches, columns and decorative panels). These verbs create analogies between the treatment of architecture and other cagetories of Islamic arts. In this sense, the poems of Ibn alJayyåb from the Tower of the Captive are especially significant (Figure 2.8): they describe this type of tower-palace – called Calahorra by the Naßrid – as an elevated construction (maßna‘ ‘alå’) that is grand (‘aΩÈm al-shån), military, and fiery as the lion on the outside, while inside it is a luminous (qaßrun yudÈ’ bi-nËrihi al-wahhåj) and pleasurable palace (masarra, bashå’ir). The tower itself is then presented as an ornament (zayyanat, ˙usn ˙alåhå) for the entire palace complex. The splendidness of its manufacture (badå’i‘ al-ßun‘a, bahå’) is due to the perfect harmonisation of all the components of the building, which are enumerated in the following manner: • •

Its floorings are as wonderful textiles (badå’i‘ al-dÈbåj); Its laboriously ornamented tiles (ßanå’i‘ al-zillÈj) and prodigious (badå‘i’) mural plaster work (jißß) are treated with glorious embroidery (†iråz fakhr), which presents the sultan’s name,YËsuf I, in a clear allusion to royal textile manufacture (†iråz); • The carpentry (nijåra) of its roof (saqaf) is even more beautiful (abda‘); • Direct comparisons with many other bodies of art and rhetoric (ya˙kÈ badÈ‘a al-shi‘r) are employed. Among these are simile (mujannas, or paronomasia), alterity (mu†abbaq, or antithesis), ramification (mughaßßan, or caesuras), and marquetry (muraßßa‘).40 Likewise from literary rhetoric comes the idea that the beauty of the whole is conferred by the harmonious relationship (nisba) established between its isolated, symmetrical elements (muwashsha˙ wa mußannaf), in a manner similar to a brocade which is multicoloured (muzakhraf), worked in gold thread (mudhahhab) and adorned with still other forms of ornament (ruqËm, naqsh);41 • Finally, in these verses, the sultan also is specifically accorded the attribute of luminosity. He is presented as a sum total of individual beauties (ma˙åsin), and as the willing builder of this entire aesthetic universe. Fifth, it is worth remembering the topoi of mural decoration on which I have commented elsewhere.42 Fountains, and even building materials, are treated as gems: they are compared with gold,

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silver, precious stones (jawåhir), pearls (la’ålÈ), a crown (tåj) or a pearl necklace (‘aqd). The decorative components of architecture are apprehended in a way similar to a rhetorician’s definition of poetic composition (naΩm). In other words, the individual components of mural ornament are like pieces of gold or silver because they are assembled in an infinitely harmonious composition, an infinity of perfect units rhythmic, chromatically contrasted, shining and imperishable. A succinct and accurate synthesis of wall adornment, textile aesthetics, the essential elements of the Islamic garden-palace, and the aesthetics of reflection are found in these two verses composed by Ibn al-Kha†Èb for his own palace of Aynadamar: I am the bride who wears tunics of myrtle; The pavilion is my crown, and the pond is my mirror.43 Sixth, the aesthetic self-complacency of an architecture that is pure, virginal and luminous, here evoked by Ibn al-Kha†Èb in accordance with a long tradition present in the Apocalypse and in medieval and classical Arabic literature, reaches its zenith in the characteristic of uniqueness implied in almost all of the Alhambra’s poems: ‘You have erected a palace with no equal’, or ‘My ideal methods are found in my supreme shapes (maΩåhir) / beauty (˙usn) does not even desire to find anything similar to them’. Ibn Zamrak composed these verses expressly for the vicinity of the Hall of Comares and the western chamber of the Palace of the Lions, but they do not survive in situ. Elsewhere, we read, ‘I am not alone: this prodigy was created / by my garden, whose match has never been seen by human eyes’, and ‘Are not the wonders in this orchard such that God has not allowed Beauty to find any like them?’ 44 Likewise, the words ‘A similar monument was never erected’, with which one of the poems composed by Ibn al-Jayyåb for the Tower of the Captive begins, are echoed in a verse by Ibn al-Kha†Èb from the entrance to the Hall of Ambassadors: ‘It has triumphed over all beautiful women in gala and crown.’ This rhetoric denies even the possibility of a similar or superior work. The wonders thus achieved the brilliance of a different splendour, and the perfection of a unique utopia: they are, thus, priceless. Imitation always casts doubts on the true originality of the creative act and its product, even to the point of invalidating them, hence the absolute impossibility of the supreme work’s imitation. Indeed, the Qur’an itself is characterised by a similar uniqueness, subsequently appropriated by poetry. Here, this right to unique perfection is assumed by architecture, both that which is imagined and that which is created. Faced with the menace of replication, myth and history demand the erasure of the architect. The beauty of the Alhambra’s many palaces cannot be duplicated, just as their lord can have no equal. The inimitability of the monarch’s work, therefore, leads necessarily to the narcissistic contemplation of both artist and creation in the mirror of their mutual perfection thus achieved. Styles, materials and types of inscription in the Alhambra Palace The aesthetic honour and indeed almost religious reverence afforded to the written word in Islamic culture reaches one of its highest expressions in the Alhambra, which witnessed the peak of calligraphic achievement not only in terms of the multiplicity of the contents, styles and symbolic functions of its inscriptions, but also by their systematic deployment on the walls and their own meta-architectural shapes – to the degree that the buildings themselves, if deprived of their solid fabric, would remain standing in the imagination, constructed only of words. Apart from the omnipresent Naßrid dynastic motto ‘wa lå ghåliba illå Allåh’ (there is no victor but God) and the courtly expressions of acclaim in praise of the various sultans responsible for building the Alhambra, its walls also bear a wide variety of devout inscriptions – normally of one or two words, short prayers in praise of God, His attributes and qualities – which tend to be concise phrases from the Qur’an or passages from various verses (except in the Hall of Comares, where there is a long discourse from a Qur’anic sËrah explaining the significance of the whole room), pious formal phrases in honour of the Prophet that accompany Qur’anic epigraphs and other texts, a few sententious maxims, the occasional notable inscription recording its construction, a frugal but excellent collection of regal epitaphs and some thirty poems that have survived on walls, friezes and fountains, accounting for almost half of those that were originally inscribed in the Alhambra.45 All these inscriptions are reproduced in delicate and innovative designs, in either KËfÈ or cursive script, or a mixture of both. In strict accordance with a careful spatial design in harmony with geometric and vegetal ornamentation, they cover the surfaces of the buildings in diverse materials,

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Figure 2.9 Examples of inscriptions in KËfÈ and cursive (naskh) scripts: a) ‘alghib†a al-muttaßila’ (happiness everlasting); b) ‘al-˙amdu lillåhi ‘alå ni‘mat al-Islåm’ (praise be to God for the bounty of Islam); c) ‘wa lå ghåliba illå Allåh’ (there is no victor but God); d) ‘bahå’È wa bahwÈ afra†[å] al-˙usn fÈhimå’ (my splendour and my pavilion are of the most extreme beauty); e) ‘wa lå ghåliba illå Allåh’. © Nairus Bakur and J. M. Puerta-Vílchez.

mainly stucco, but also wood, marble and, to a lesser extent, paint and ceramic. KËfÈ script owes its name to the city of KËfah in Iraq, which was famous for its production of copies of the Qur’an in the early days of Islam. It exists in two different forms, eastern and western, and soon became the calligraphic style of choice for inscriptions on stonework; it is rectilinear, angular, includes no vowels and few diacritic marks, and is distinctive for the geometric, foliated, plaited, pseudo-calligraphic and pseudo-architectural swashes and flourishes to its letters. Various modes of florid and plaited KËfÈ reach vigorous new heights of style in the Alhambra, particularly in the architectural and arboreal calligrams, which are used to compose magnificent calligraphic tableaux. Some examples appear in Figure 2.9. In particular, Figure 2.9a spells ‘al-ghib†a al-muttaßila’ (happiness everlasting). The first word is written in KËfÈ script at the bottom, while the second word is in the cartouche above it, in cursive script. Vegetal motifs adorn both ends of alghib†a, and the vertical prolongations of the left- and rightmost letters have decorative knots. In the centre is a tree of life, which is topped by an architectural arch motif rising from the KËfÈ inscription. The entire composition is crowned by two decorative apices. Another example is Figure 2.9b, which spells ‘al-˙amdu lillåhi ‘alå ni‘mat al-Islåm’ (praise be to God for the bounty of Islam) in KËfÈ script, located in the Courtyard of the Lions. It is more angular and rectilinear, with scant punctuation and no vocalisation signs, and with the usual plaiting, decorative vegetal and arboreal designs, interwoven vertical strokes with downward slanted peaks, and small arches, all forming a calligraphic tableau. The rich ground of stylised foliate motifs has been omitted here to bring out the calligraphy. The Naßrid motto ‘wa lå ghåliba illå Allåh’ in KËfÈ script appearing in Figure 2.9c features an extensive architectural composition consisting of a two-dimensional portico with three interwoven palm arches full of vegetal motifs and the word yumn (good fortune) written twice in mirror images in KËfÈ script in the spandrel above as continuations of the two small columns. Within the central arch, the motto delineates another two-dimensional, tripartite calligraphic portico, its main central arch containing a stylised axial tree, and two smaller arches mounted against it on either side. The top of the central arch merges with a circular scalloped cartouche containing a small, also architectural, KËfÈ inscription of the word baraka (blessing). This composition is repeated in the Halls of the Two Sisters and the Abencerrajes. Like the KËfÈ inscriptions, those in cursive script include numerous forms generically known as naskhÈ, a term that originally referred to a manuscript copy, but later also came to be ornamental and monumental. The Andalusian and Maghribi cursive styles are believed to have been derived from KËfÈ made somewhat more fluid by the scribes. Thus, it did not in general abide by the canons of the rigorously proportioned calligraphy (al-kha†† al-mansËb) systemised by Ibn Muqla (886–940) in the East, which, though known in al-Andalus, were rarely applied here. This does not, however, prevent some of the Naßrid cursive types of script from resembling those of thulth and oriental

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naskh. In the Alhambra there are examples of cursive script with more or less perpendicular calligraphic strokes, exaggerated rounded forms, elongated horizontal swashes at the end of final letters, variations in the shape of the individual letters, and a markedly subtle use of interlacing and enjambement of letters and complete words. Diacritical marks appear more frequently in cursive script than in KËfÈ, and, especially in poetry, vocalisation signs are added, along with some auxiliary signs of a decorative nature. Naßrid monumental cursive tends to follow the known peculiarities of Andalusian and Maghribi writing: the få’ is written with a dot below it, the qåf with a single dot above it, the hamza ‘alå nabra as yå’, and sometimes the final yå’ is elongated to the right. An example of cursive script from the Alhambra appears in Figure 2.9d. It reads ‘bahå’È wa bahwÈ afra†[å] al-˙usn fÈhimå’ (my splendour and my pavilion are of the most extreme beauty) and is the beginning of a poem in what is today the National Parador. While it resembles the cursive script of a scribe, it is also ornamental, with more rounded forms, vocalisation and plaiting, and enjambement of letters and words, and foliate designs in the background (omitted here to bring out the calligraphy). The Naßrid motto written in cursive script is in Figure 2.9e. It is inscribed in Andalusian cursive script with the second half of the phrase ‘illå Allåh’ in smaller lettering, riding upon the long swash of the last letter in the middle word, the bå’ of ‘ghålib’. The solidity of the vertical strokes and the long horizontal swashes, together with the tendency to make use of all the empty spaces, gives rise to a powerfully balanced calligraphic image, in which a sense of simple geometric structure underlies the spontaneity and movement proper to the scribe himself. The dynastic motto ends with a diminutive letter hå’ marking the undotted (muhmal) final letter of the word Allåh which, curling back underneath to the end of bå, bestows a final harmony and rhythm upon the shape of the whole composition. The ground is normally filled with beautiful foliate designs in bas-relief that adapt to the empty spaces or evolve into a finely drawn curvilinear fabric. The text itself generally includes vocalic diacritic marks, above all when it is painted, and, without losing its fundamental structure, sometimes varies in the length and the breadth of its letters, together with the height of its vertical strokes, the curvature of its letters, and the colouring which has survived exceptionally well. Conclusion The Alhambra of Granada is, literally, textual architecture. It demands to be not just contemplated but also closely read. Words are inserted into the ornamentation and become the very infrastructure of the building. At the same time, words are the signs of power inherent in the Naßrid sultanate and its aesthetic conception of architecture. This conception embraces the omnipotence of God, and terrestrial government in His name by the sovereign. The sovereign is portrayed as a light that imparts order and is powerful, generous and of noble lineage; he is the creator of edifices that represent his glory and that of Islam. The Alhambra also represents a ‘summa’ of motifs which compose what we might call literary architecture, one which contains all principle topoi infused by classical ArabIslamic culture into the courtly building. These are the key topics elaborated in the verses inscribed into the walls of the Alhambra.46 This chapter has endeavoured to reconstruct the essence of the most important elements of the aesthetic discourse expressed in these verses. The reconstruction in question has considered not only the architectural work itself, but also a way of conceiving beauty, that which is beautiful, and the arts in the context of the Naßrid court. There is here no rational, theoretical discourse on aesthetics, but a distillation that is implicit rather than explicit and that is, at the same time, quite precise about what the Alhambra’s patron and builders understood to be a courtly, beautiful space and the necessary conditions for the creation of such a space. In this sense, one might say that the Alhambra of Granada is as interesting to the art historian as it is to the historian of aesthetics. This is due to the astonishingly intimate melding of poetry and architecture into a single work of art: without its verses, the Alhambra’s programme of signification is incomplete. Likewise, the verses rely upon the ornaments that frame them and present them to an audience in order to achieve their full range of signification. In terms of both space and meaning, this union demonstrates a high degree of aesthetic self-consciousness difficult to find in any other architectural space. The palaces of the Alhambra offer a detailed aesthetic discourse inscribed into their very walls and, in a more eloquent manner than many books, one which should be read and interpreted in close detail.

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Notes This chapter is translated by Mercedes Maroto, and revised by Cynthia Robinson. 1. See Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz, ‘La envidia de los dioses’, in La leyenda del artista, trans. Pilar Vila (Madrid: Cátedra, 1982 [Vienna 1934]), pp. 78–83. 2. The figure of Solomon as builder in Biblical tradition has been studied by Juan Antonio Ramírez in Edificios y sueños: ensayos sobre arquitectura y utopía (Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 1983), pp. 36–42. On the presence of this topic in Arabic literature, see María Jesús Rubiera Mata, ‘Salomón el gran constructor’, in La arquitectura en la literatura árabe, datos para una estética del placer (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1981), pp. 45–54. 3. E. García Gómez, Poemas árabes en los muros y fuentes de la Alhambra (Madrid: Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos, 1985), p. 111. 4. During the time of the Alhambra, even the sultan and poet YËsuf III, the grandson of Mu˙ammad V and the compiler of Ibn Zamrak’s DÈwån, introduced the poem on the Fountain of the Lions as follows: ‘He proclaimed, and it was engraved in the marble basin raised over the lions, that the lions were placed there as an allegory of courage and generosity and that whoever put them there – may God favour him – has these virtues’ (DÈwån Ibn Zamrak al-AndalusÈ, ed. Mu˙ammad TawfÈq al-Nayfar (Beirut: Dår al-Gharb al-IslåmÈ, 1997), pp. 129–30). 5. García Gómez, Poemas árabes en los muros y fuentes de la Alhambra, p. 95. 6. DÈwån Ibn Zamrak al-AndalusÈ, p. 152. 7. García Gómez, Poemas árabes, pp. 92–3. 8. Umberto Eco (Il problema estetico in Tommaso d’Aquino (Milan: Bompiani, 1982 [1956]), p. 17) observes the same phenomena in the aesthetics of medieval Europe: ‘If God exists, it is not necessary, in order to enjoy an object aesthetically, to imagine it as the effect of humans’ artistic operation. It is so already, without any doubt, as the result of God’s artistic operation.’ 9. García Gómez, Poemas árabes, p. 143. 10. Ibid. p. 101. 11. Ibid. pp. 107–8. 12. Ibn ManΩËr, Lisån al-‘arab, s.v. ÛLL. 13. García Gómez, Poemas árabes, pp. 122–3. 14. DÈwån Ibn FurkËn, ed. Mu˙ammad bin SharÈfa (Rabat: AkådÈmÈyat al-Mamlakah al-MaghribÈyah, 1987), p. 272, v. 12 and 13. Cf. E. García Gómez, Foco de antigua luz sobre la Alhambra (Madrid: Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos, 1988), Appendix 5. 15. DÈwån Ibn FurkËn, p. 279. 16. Ibid. p. 280. 17. I have studied this theme in ‘El soberano constructor’, in Los códigos de utopía de la Alhambra de Granada (Granada: Diputación Provincial de Granada, 1990), IV.3.5. On this topic, see also Rubiera Mata, La arquitectura en la literatura árabe, pp. 33–7, 41–4 and 45–54. 18. Manuel Ocaña Jiménez, ‘Arquitectos y mano de obra en la construcción de la gran Mezquita de Occidente’, Cuadernos de la Alhambra 22 (1986): 55. 19. Cf. ‘Abd al-Fatta˙ Kili†o, al-Kitåbah wa al-tanåsukh: mafhËm al-mu’allif fÈ al-thaqåfah al-‘ArabÈyah, trans. Abd al-Salåm Bin-Abd al-ÅlÈ (Beirut: Dår al-TanwÈr; Casablanca: al-Markaz al-ThaqåfÈ al-ArabÈ, 1985), p. 33. 20. Trans. García Gómez, Foco de antigua luz sobre la Alhambra, p. 236. 21. Ibn al-Kha†Èb had already warned YËsuf I, for whom he worked as minister, against the threats of the people. Cf. Wilhelm Hoenerbach, ‘El historiador Ibn al-Khatîb: pueblo-gobierno-estado’, in Cuadernos de Historia del Islam (Granada: Seminario de Historia del Islam de la Universidad de Granada, 1980), p. 48. 22. Classical Arabic dictionaries normally define jamål by referring to ˙usn: ‘al-jamål is the accummulation of ˙usn’ (al-Råghib al-IßfahånÈ (eleventh–twelfth centuries), Mu‘jam mufradåt alfåΩ al-Qur’ân, s.v. JML). They also say that jamål is ‘al-˙usn both ethical and of countenance (khuluq wa-khalq)’ (al-FÈrËzåbådÈ, al-QåmËs al-mu˙Ȇ, s.v. JML). Ibn ManΩËr refers to the definition of Ibn SÈdah of Murcia (eleventh century), which coincides with the former: ‘al-jamål is al-˙usn as much in relation with countenance (khalq) as with action (fi‘l)’ (Lisån al-‘arab, s.v. JML). On the other hand, ˙usn is defined in many different ways. Al-Råghib al-IßfahånÈ considers that ‘al-˙usn is more frequently employed by the common people with the sense of something that is pleasant to watch (al-musta˙san bi al-baßar) and it is said: a beautiful man (˙asan, ˙ussån), or a beautiful woman (˙asnå’, ˙ussåna). However, when the Qur’an refers to ˙usn it means whatever is pleasant to the mind (al-baßÈra)’ (Mu‘jam mufradåt alfåΩ al-Qur’ân, s.v. ÓSN). For Ibn Óazm, the concept of ˙usn is used to indicate the supreme degree of beauty, which he considers supernatural and only possible to convey in terms of light (Risålah fÈ Mudåwåt al-NufËs, in Raså’il Ibn Óazm al-AndalusÈ, ed. I˙sån Abbås (Beirut: al-Mu’assasah al-‘ArabÈyah, 1980–1), vol. 1, pp. 375–6.) The use of ˙usn and ˙asan with ethical connotations is equally present in classic Arabic culture. 23. García Gómez, Poemas árabes, pp. 121–2. My translation is closer to the literal sense of the original. 24. Ibn al-Kha†Èb, Libro de la magia y de la poesía, ed. and trans. J. M. Continente Ferrer (Madrid: Instituto Hispano Arabe de Cultura, 1981), p. 40. 25. BukhårÈ, Êibb 51, Nikå˙ 47; Muslim, Juma‘a 47. 26. Óåzim al-Qar†åjannÈ, Minhåj al-bulaghå’ (Beirut: Dår al-Gharb al-IslåmÈ, 1986), pp. 127–8.

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27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

DÈwån Ibn Zamrak al-AndalusÈ, p. 156, v. 1 and 2. Ibid. p. 157, v. 1 and 2. Ibid. p. 126, v. 3. Emilio Lafuente y Alcántara, Inscripciones árabes de Granada: precedidas de una reseña histórica y de la genealogia detallada de los reyes Alahmares, ed. María Jesús Rubiera Mata (Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2000 [Madrid 1859]). DÈwån Ibn Zamrak al-AndalusÈ, p. 127, v. 4 and 5. Muslim, Sa˙È˙, ‘al-Óajj’, IV, 123. Ibn ManΩËr, Lisån al-‘arab, s.v. RWÎ. DÈwån Ibn Zamrak al-AndalusÈ, p. 388, v. 36 and 37. TimhidhÈ, Sunan, no. 2384. Ibn Óanbal, Musnad, no. 8970. García Gómez, Poemas árabes, pp. 105, 107, 112. DÈwån Ibn Zamrak al-AndalusÈ, pp. 121 and 122, from two cupboards which were located in the southern wing of the Patio of Arrayanes but have since disappeared. Ibid. p. 128, no. 95. García Gómez has already studied this vocabulary; see his Poemas árabes, pp. 44–6. This idea agrees with al-Taw˙ÈdÈ’s notion of calligraphic beauty: ‘The beautiful style (texture) is based on its balance, much as its ornamentation is based on its figure, its splendor on the harmony of black and white, and its beauty in the maintenance of difference within unity.’ See ‘AbË Hayyån at-TawhÈdÈ on Penmanship’, ed. and trans. Franz Rosenthal, Ars Islamica 13–14 (1948): 23. Los códigos de utopía de la Alhambra de Granada, vol. 1. Ibn al-Kha†Èb, DÈwån al-ßayyib wa-al-jahåm wa-al-må∂È wa-al-kahåm, ed. Mu˙ammad al-SharÈf Qåhir (Algiers: al-Sharikah al-Wa†anÈyah li al-Nashr wa al-TawzÈ, 1973), pp. 330–1. By Ibn Zamrak, for the entrance of the Mirador of Lindaraja and the Fountain of the Lions, respectively. See my book Reading the Alhambra: A Visual Guide to the Alhambra through its Inscriptions (Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife, Edilux, 2011). I have studied these in greater detail elsewhere; see especially my Los códigos de utopía de la Alhambra de Granada.

Bibliography ‘Abd al-Fatta˙ Kili†o. al-Kitåbah wa al-tanåsukh: mafhËm al-mu’allif fÈ al-thaqåfah al-’ArabÈyah, trans. Abd al-Salåm Bin-Abd al-ÅlÈ. Beirut: Dår al-TanwÈr; Casablanca: al-Markaz al-ThaqåfÈ al-ArabÈ, 1985. ‘AbË Hayyån at-TawhÈdÈ on Penmanship’, ed. and trans. Franz Rosenthal. Ars Islamica 13–14 (1948): 3–30. DÈwån Ibn FurkËn, ed. Mu˙ammad bin SharÈfa. Rabat: AkådÈmÈyat al-Mamlakah al-MaghribÈyah, 1987. DÈwån Ibn Zamrak al-AndalusÈ, ed. Mu˙ammad TawfÈq al-Nayfar. Beirut: Dår al-Gharb al-IslåmÈ, 1997. Eco, Umberto. Il problema estetico in Tommaso d’Aquino. Milan: Bompiani, 1982 [1956]. García Gómez, E. Foco de antigua luz sobre la Alhambra. Madrid: Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos, 1988. ——. Poemas árabes en los muros y fuentes de la Alhambra. Madrid: Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos, 1985. Hoenerbach, Wilhelm. ‘El historiador Ibn al-Khatîb: pueblo-gobierno-estado’. In Cuadernos de Historia del Islam. Granada: Seminario de Historia del Islam de la Universidad de Granada, 1980. Ibn al-Kha†Èb. DÈwån al-ßayyib wa-al-jahåm wa-al-må∂È wa-al-kahåm, ed. Mu˙ammad al-SharÈf Qåhir. Algiers: al-Sharikah al-Wa†anÈyah li al-Nashr wa al-TawzÈ, 1973. ——. Libro de la magia y de la poesía, ed. and trans. J. M. Continente Ferrer. Madrid: Instituto Hispano Arabe de Cultura, 1981. Kris, Ernst and Otto Kurz. ‘La envidia de los dioses’. In La leyenda del artista, trans. Pilar Vila. Madrid: Cátedra, 1982 [Vienna 1934], pp. 78–83. Lafuente y Alcántara, Emilio.  Inscripciones árabes de Granada: precedidas de una reseña histórica y de la genealogia detallada de los reyes Alahmares, ed. María Jesús Rubiera Mata. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2000 [Madrid 1859]. Ocaña Jiménez, Manuel. ‘Arquitectos y mano de obra en la construcción de la gran Mezquita de Occidente’. Cuadernos de la Alhambra 22 (1986): 55–85. Puerta Vílchez, José Miguel. ‘El soberano constructor’. In Los códigos de utopía de la Alhambra de Granada. Granada: Diputación Provincial de Granada, 1990. ——. Reading the Alhambra: A Visual Guide to the Alhambra through its Inscriptions. Granada: Patronato de la Alhambra y Generalife, Edilux, 2011. al-Qar†åjannÈ, Óåzim. Minhåj al-bulaghå’. Beirut: Dår al-Gharb al-IslåmÈ, 1986. Ramírez, Juan Antonio. Edificios y sueños: ensayos sobre arquitectura y utopía. Málaga: Universidad de Málaga, 1983. Risålah fÈ Mudåwåt al-NufËs. In Raså’il Ibn Óazm al-AndalusÈ, ed. I˙sån Abbås. Beirut: al-Mu’assasah al‘ArabÈyah, 1980–1. Rubiera Mata, María Jesús. ‘Salomón el gran constructor’. In La arquitectura en la literatura árabe, datos para una estética del placer. Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1981, pp. 45–54.

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Chapter Three

The Arabic Calligraphy on the Ceiling of the TwelfthCentury Cappella Palatina in Palermo, Sicily: Function and Identity Arabic Calligraphy of the Cappella Palatina

Hashim al-Tawil The twelfth- century royal chapel known as the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, Sicily, continues to elicit interest and raise challenges for scholars and especially art historians. Its date and architectural construction, the iconography of the mosaic decoration, and the original function of the monument as a court and chapel are among its intriguing aspects. However, the painted muqarnas ceiling in the chapel is perhaps the most fascinating and challenging part of the building. The inclusion of Arabic text and pictorial decorations on the ceiling makes it unprecedented in the history of Christian visual decoration. Building on earlier primary research, along with my own field examination and analysis of the ceiling, this chapter investigates the Arabic text in the building in relation to the function of the space. Two questions are addressed. First, why did an official twelfth-century Norman Christian royal chapel, built and decorated with typical Byzantine Biblical narratives, contain a ceiling representative of contemporary Arabic Islamic visual art complemented with an elaborate programme of Arabic text? Second, why is the ceiling devoid of any reference, visual or literary, to the builder, presumably King Roger II?1 The analysis of the Arabic text on the ceiling points to an obvious lack of coordination between the ceiling and the rest of the building. Hence the research presented here considers the premise that the ceiling alone may have been produced in the pre-Norman era during which it was part of a different secular structure, possibly a reception court – the dÈwån or majlis of the Arab amÈr in the former Qaßr al-Imårah of Palermo – a structure that continued to function in the original location long after the Norman invasion and occupation of the city in 1072. Furthermore, the original architectural and functional characteristics of the building and its physical location relative to the rest of the royal palace, along with the presence of the throne and balcony, strongly suggest the possibility that the Normans adopted and employed the earlier space for similar functions, before it was ultimately converted to the chapel we know today; the ceiling, however, was retained for its visual splendour, with certain necessary modifications. The Cappella Palatina and its ceiling According to common accounts, the Cappella Palatina was built under the patronage and authority of the Norman king Roger II in the years following his assumption of the royal title in 1130. Construction took some time to finish, but the accounts suggest that it must have been completed before his death in 1154.2 Architecturally, the chapel comprises a nave and two aisles divided by tall pointed arches topping reused older pillars. The interior is decorated with a mosaic decoration programme that includes Biblical narratives from both the Old and the New Testaments, along with two renderings of a typically Byzantine Christ Pantocrator. The ceiling is built of local, Sicilian wood3 in a genuinely Arabic Islamic style. It covers the three sections of the chapel – the nave and the two flanking aisles (Figure 3.1). The entire three-part ceiling is covered with stunning decorations: figurative representations, geometric, floral and non-figurative decorations, and Arabic calligraphy in various KËfÈ sub-styles and a naskh-like cursive script, along with calligraphic designs. The pictorial composition programme on the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina consists of depictions of a variety of genre subjects: seated dignified figures with attendants, figures in niches and in windows, figures drinking from cups and goblets, pairs of young men playing chess (or some similar game), male and female musicians under palm trees playing the flute, the ‘Ëd, the drum, the tambourine and many other musical instruments, and images of dancers, singers and poets

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Figure 3.1 General appearance of the ceiling, looking towards the throne (east side). © James B. Kiracofe.

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Figure 3.2 Details of the throne side of the ceiling. © Hashim al-Tawil.

reciting poetry. There are scenes of pleasure, love, fun, various pastimes, hunting, fighting, entertainment, fairy tales, travel narratives, and a variety of scenes from daily life. There are depictions of the interiors of royal tents, thrones, mythological images reminiscent of St George in the Christian tradition or perhaps al-Khi∂r in the Islamic, and a variety of other scenes including some of an enigmatic nature such as the charioteers on the throne side of the muqarnas ceiling (Figure 3.2). Along with this rich pictorial vocabulary, there is an even richer programme of geometric and floral design framing, surrounding and connecting the figurative representations within the structural form of the muqarnas ceiling. The third and most interesting aspect of the ceiling decorations is the Arabic calligraphic text that complements, entertains and unifies the entire composition of the ceiling in one connected and well-balanced work of art. It chants short phrases and words of blessing, support, magnificence, grandeur, beauty, protection, might, safety, happiness, victory, triumph, good health, well-being, beatitude, vivaciousness, permanence, good omen and prosperity (Figure 3.3). The ceiling is autonomously suspended at the centre of the chapel, embracing its own beauty, clinging affectionately to the four walls beautifully decorated with Biblical narratives in mosaics. However, the ceiling decoration does not show any conventional artistic connection to the walls or the space underneath. The architectural design, the iconography of its paintings, and the symbolism have been the subject of numerous studies, monographs and research by scholars over nearly a century.4 The ceiling’s iconography has been interpreted as a reflection of royal power and the luxury of the royal milieu associated with the court of Roger II. It has also been read as a reflection of the Islamic conception of Paradise, a symbolic representation of cosmological nature, and a negotiated subject between Christian Biblical and Islamic Qur’anic passages. Another topic that has been discussed is the identity of the artists who worked on the ceiling: it has been suggested that they may have been Få†imid Egyptians,5 local Sicilians, Arab Christians influenced by Byzantine art,6 and traditional Muslim artists working within a long tradition of pictorial narration which is reflected in the art of al-Andalus.7

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Figure 3.3 Details of the text inside the archivolt. © Hashim al-Tawil.

The origin of the Cappella Palatina The Cappella Palatina lies at the heart of the Palazzo dei Normanni, the seat of the Sicilian Regional Government in present-day Palermo. The Arab fortress-palace Qaßr al-Imårah, which was probably built in the same location as the palace of the Byzantine governor, had previously been the seat of the Arab rulers for most of the period of Arab reign prior to the Norman invasion of Palermo in 1072. Arab sources refer to such a place which was, according to the travellers Ibn Óawqal and Ibn Jubayr, in the same location as the later Norman royal palace.8 By the time Roger had reached the age of seventeen, the palace of the amÈr had been gradually modified and incorporated into the new Norman seat of power, thus establishing continuity with its former Arab function and location.9 Historical sources report that the chapel was founded in 1131 and consecrated in 1140 under the first Norman king of Sicily, Roger II. As for the muqarnas ceiling, neither the Arabic nor the European sources mention anything about its construction. The date of its construction, therefore, remains unclear regardless of the standard claim that it was built during the reign of Roger II (1130–54). There is simply no plausible evidence supporting that dating.10 This issue is extremely important in the light of the Arabic inscription on the ceiling and the original function of the space under it. The palace of the amıˉr in Palermo References in Arabic sources to the palace of the Arab amÈr (Qaßr al-AmÈr) in Palermo are crucial and can help in reconstructing the picture of the royal residences in the city during Arab-Muslim rule as well as in the later Norman period. Accounts by Ibn Óawqal, al-IdrÈsÈ, Ibn al-AthÈr, Ibn Jubayr and other historians reveal important details about the location of Qaßr al-AmÈr. Echoes of the royal palaces of the Arab amÈrs can be heard throughout the various sources on the history of the Arabs in Sicily, and, more to the point, can be seen in many ruins around the island and especially in Palermo. The most important of these monuments is the palace of the Arab amÈr in Palermo located

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in al-Óalqah, which would become known as the Norman Palace. Hugh Falcandus, a Sicilian contemporary of William I and William II (second half of the twelfth century), writes of the royal palace in Palermo in his Liber de Regno Sicilie.11 He describes the royal chapel as follows: On entering the palace from the side facing the city, the Royal Chapel is to be seen. This has a very magnificent floor and walls faced with precious marbles in their lower parts, in their upper parts, by illustrations of stories from the Old and New Testaments, carried on in mosaics partly polychrome and partly in gold. The wooden ceiling is decorated by carvings of singular elegance and by a wonderful variety of paintings and the shining splendour of gold.12 Arab sources locate the palace of the Arab amÈr in Sicily in al-Óalqah, the same location as the later Norman palace, and in all probability the Norman royal palace in Palermo where the Cappella Palatina now stands must have been the former amÈr’s palace. This latter was very possibly constructed in the Maghribi tradition as a royal and military garrison palace similar to Qal‘at BanÈ Óammåd in Algeria or the fortified buildings in Tunisia and Morocco.13 An interesting and unique account of royal Arab etiquette in Palermo comes from a native of Syracuse named Theodosius who was taken captive, brought to Palermo along with Archbishop Sophronius in 883 after the fall of Syracuse to the Arabs, and ransomed in 885. In particular, he relates that when they were presented to the amÈr, this latter was ‘seated under a portico and hidden behind a curtain out of tyrannous pride’.14 This account precedes Ibn Óawqal by about one hundred years. Unfortunately, our ninth-century eyewitness does not provide further details about the place where the amÈr was seated, though it matches the setting of a dÈwån or majlis. Another important visual testimony concerning the Qaßr al-AmÈr comes from a contemporary of Roger II, al-IdrÈsÈ, who was commissioned by the king to produce a map and a book on geography.15 He wrote the book Kitåb nuzhat al-mushtåq fÈ ikhtiråq al-åfåq, also known as al-Kitåb al-RujarÈ, in Palermo under the roof of the Palazzo dei Normanni, that is, the former Qaßr al-AmÈr, during the years 1154–7. Al-IdrÈsÈ mentions the Palace of King Roger II as collocated with the former palace of the amÈr and sharing its grandeur and potency. He writes: The aforementioned palace – the palace demesne – is the most fortified and formidable of all, unreachable and unconquerable. At its peak, there sits a fortress built specially for King Roger II, constructed with dry gems [mosaic tesserae] and carved giant stones, well designed and supported with high pillars, reinforced minarets, and defensive turrets [with arrow-slits] and escapements; and its palaces and dÈwåns were perfectly constructed with well-built structures, embellished with the most wondrous of exotic methods of decoration, and equipped with marvelous aspects. Travellers have attested to its magnificence, and visitors have described it with praise and proclaim its [Palermo’s] buildings to be the most wonderful of all, and no place is better than its residential quarters; its palaces are the noblest, and its realm is the most pleasant of all.16 The above account refers to the former Qaßr al-AmÈr and its later modification and enlargement as the Norman palace of King Roger II. The reconstruction of what the building must have looked like at the time of Roger II appears in Figure 3.4. An interesting early-nineteenth-century account of the royal palace and chapel comes from the Instructive Guide by Gaspare Palermo: This palace traces its origins to the Saracen Adelcamo and was built as a well-defended fortress in the same place and over the ruins of the stronghold of such Roman magistrates who took up their residence in this city . . . this same king [Roger II] was also responsible for building the Royal palatine Chapel of St Peter on the site of the mosque Adelcamo which rose above the vault of the palace dungeons.17 The reference to a former mosque in this paragraph is unclear, and the name Adelcamo also sounds unfamiliar; in any case, it is not mentioned by Arab historians. It may be a corruption of a proper name such as ‘Abd al-? or perhaps a reference to one of the last amÈrs in Palermo before its surrender to the Normans. We can safely assume that the Qaßr al-AmÈr must have had many sections, facilities and pavilions. In that complex, there must have been a dÈwån, mudhÈf or majlis, or a combination thereof, since a royal court was important for receiving dignitaries, ambassadors and foreign officials, for discuss-

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Figure 3.4 The Norman Palace: reconstruction of the entrance into the Cappella Palatina at the time of Roger II. After Guido Di Stefano, Monumenti della Sicilia normanna, 2nd edn, Palermo: Flaccovio, 1979, pl. 52, fig. 86, cited in William Tronzo, The Cultures of his Kingdom: Roger II and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, fig. 16.

ing legal issues and strategic plans, and for listening to public petitions. The dÈwån would also accommodate other functions as a place for entertaining guests and the royal members of the house of the amÈr with music, singing, dancing and poetry recitation along with other performances and the exotic display of luxury objects complemented by lavish service of food and drinks. The dÈwån would have been an essential part of the palace of the amÈr, and there is a strong possibility that the dÈwån of Qaßr al-AmÈr was at or near the location of the later Cappella Palatina. The Arabic text on the muqarnas ceiling The bulk of the Arabic text is a composite of rhyming prose and short phrases of blessing, praising, glorifying, addressing with reverence, praying for well-being, wishing good health, fortune, prosperity, strength and power, and the like. However, there is no mention of the specific name or honorific title of a ruler. Common among many studies on the subject is a misinterpretation of images and an incorrect reading of the text as referring to Roger II.18 The Arabic phrases on the ceiling are all non-religious (non-Qur’anic, non-Biblical) in nature. Rather, they are secular, courtly and official, addressing the reader formally as opposed to individually or privately. There is no immediate or direct connection or relationship between these phrases and the images to which they are adjacent. The Arabic text in the Cappella Palatina is concentrated on the muqarnas ceiling, primarily inside the borders of eighteen of the twenty stars – the first two being devoid of text. There is also Arabic text in the muqarnas frames surrounding the twenty stars, inside the twenty-four archivolts, on the lower concaves, and on the upper concaves. There is also cursive Arabic script derived from naskh on the southern aisle between the fifth, sixth and seventh panels, as well as another inscription, in KËfÈ script, in the form of a circular relief bronze cutout; this surrounds the knob of a wooden door which is located on the south side, past the midpoint of the nave and towards the altar. Other Arabic text that has been associated with the building, though without concrete evidence, is on the water clock commemorative plaque and on two marble pillars or slabs supposedly found within the complex. All the inscriptions in question contain expressions of praise, reverence, exaltation and good wishes (Figure 3.5).

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Figure 3.5 Details of the KËfÈ text bordering the stars on the ceiling. © Hashim al-Tawil.

Figure 3.6 Details of the text and images on the throne side of the ceiling. © Hashim al-Tawil.

The Arabic text on the Cappella’s ceiling is executed mainly in KËfÈ script, with variant sub-styles. There is the traditional simple angular KËfÈ known as al-KËfÈ al-basȆ, and the traditional Andalusian KËfÈ also called Få†imid KËfÈ. This calligraphic style is used in the text that fills the borders of the eighteen monumental stars on the nave ceiling (Figure 3.6). Another variant is the intertwined,

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Figure 3.7 Ceiling details, general view. © Hashim al-Tawil.

braided KËfÈ (muta‘åniq, mutashabbik, ma∂affar) (Figure 3.7). There are also the stylised foliated and floral KËfÈ (muwarrad, muzahhar, muwarraq) (Figure 3.8). Beside the KËfÈ inscriptions, there are also those in a modified cursive derived from naskh in two places including an almost concealed text of what could be poetry couplets on two panels on the south aisle. Other Arabic texts on the ceiling are cursive free-style inscriptions of three enigmatic words scattered among the figural representations, and the pseudo-KËfÈ semi-decorative text found in many locations, especially on the armbands of the seated drinking figures on the two aisles. Overall, there are thirty-five or so words repeated in various forms, alone or in combination with others. They are listed alphabetically in the Appendix, along with their Arabic linguistic roots and meanings. As mentioned earlier, the nature of the text is secular and nonspecific.19 The phrases are not addressed to any specific person, nor do they allude to specific figures. Some words are repeated more than others, which raises the question of the significance of the choice, location and frequency of repetition of these words. For instance, the word al-yumn (prosperity) is repeated eighty-five times, al-kamal (perfection) sixty, al-‘izz (might) fifty-seven, al-sa‘d (good fortune) thirty-nine, al-salamah (safety) thirty-five, al-naßr (victory) thirty, al-Ωafr (triumph) twenty-one, and al-iqbål (forwardness) nineteen. The use of these words in the form of either nouns or adjectives is also common on everyday objects throughout the Muslim world, as far back as the tenth century, on pottery and metal dishes and bowls, jewellery, textiles, ivory and wooden boxes, and other privately owned objects. What characterises this category of objects is that they are basically non-religious and utilitarian. Significantly, most of the phrases found on the muqarnas ceiling are in this category, echoing and sometimes matching similar phrases on contemporaneous objects produced in Iran, Iraq and Egypt. The Arabic text found on theses plates, bowls and dishes contains phrases such as: ‘power, prosperity and perpetuity’; ‘power, prosperity and dominion’; ‘prosperity superabundant, victory triumphant, power rising, . . . dominion; happiness, safety, generosity, favour and grace’.20 Such phrases are usually associated with praise for their owner, whose name is sometimes cited on the dish or bowl. A twelfth-century Få†imid plate reads: ‘perfect blessing and complete favour and prosperity

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Figure 3.8 Details of the text on the ceiling, throne side. © Hashim al-Tawil.

and happiness and safety and . . . good health and complete joy to the owner’.21 Another plate reads: ‘perpetual might, utmost bravery, winning victory and enduring power and seriousness . . . and dominion, happiness, dignity, bounty and might’.22 The text on these objects has functions similar to that of the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina. This is, in a way, a continuation of the ancient Arab culture that predated Islam by centuries, the Arab tradition of poets praising kings and of panegyrists exalting amÈrs and powerful figures in dÈwåns, whose works have been preserved in the extensive body of Arabic literature. That literary tradition of praise (mad˙, thanå’) and flattery (itrå‘) evolved into an established visual form in which calligraphic inscriptions of words of praise and flattery adorned objects and buildings.23 It is perhaps surprising that the text of the muqarnas ceiling of the Cappella Palatina echoes that kind of praise. More puzzling yet is the absence of the name or honorific title or attributes of the patron, owner or benefactor of the building. Early studies suggested that these words of praise were directed towards King Roger II or God,24 but that is not necessarily the case. All this brings to mind several questions. Was this ceiling originally built for the chapel? If so, why does neither the text nor the imagery allude to the nature of the chapel as a religious structure, or to the identity of the builder? The characteristics of the Cappella Palatina’s painted and inscribed ceiling Although there is no other surviving example of a wooden muqarnas ceiling similar to the one in the Cappella Palatina, the high quality of its workmanship suggests an established tradition of painted ceilings in Palermo and throughout Sicily.25 We already know of at least two slightly earlier but nearly contemporaneous muqarnas ceilings in Morocco, those of the Mosque of al-QarawiyyÈn in Fez (815, rebuilt 1135) and the Great Mosque of Tinmel (1153–4). As for the aisles, we can look at the wooden aisles of the Great Mosque of Qayrawån (670).26 The quality of the pictorial images and the Arabic text, along with the architectural muqarnas design, shows an accomplished artistic tradition in these crafts. Unfortunately, no other Arab

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building in Sicily has survived that would have allowed us to study and analyse the development of visual arts during that period. However, we can reasonably assume that a tradition of constructing and decorating ceilings was already in place by the beginning of the twelfth century not only in Palermo but in the other cities of Sicily as well. We already have an excellent example of the spread of that tradition in the painted ceiling of the twelfth-century Cathedral of Cefalù.27 Another example is at the Cathedral of Nicosia in the province of Enna, which was built in the fourteenth century over a pre-existing Norman edifice that may itself have been built over the former great mosque of that city. The cathedral still has a wooden painted ceiling similar to that in Cefalù, which is now covered.28 The Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri in Palermo is an early fourteenth-century palace whose grand hall (sala) has a painted ceiling that echoes the same tradition.29 It is this secular and luxurious lifestyle that we see reflected on the ceiling, which must have mirrored the activities and events that took place underneath it: receptions and entertainment of guests and dignitaries, public performances, poetic and literary readings. Such spaces, known as dÈwån, are well known to Arabic culture, and have existed in various regions from the pre-Islamic era to the modern. A few examples will serve to illustrate this point. In pre-Islamic times, we have records of dÈwåns in palaces such as al-Khuwarnaq, Ghatfan, al-Ablaq, Qaßr Båriq and DhË al-Shurufåt.30 The Umayyad caliphs continued the tradition and their dÈwåns are still standing in Syria, Jordan and Palestine in such palaces as Khirbat al-Mafjar, Qußayr ‘Amra and many others. There are references to dÈwåns in the ‘Abbåsid, Få†imid and later periods with similar secular settings and activities.31 This tradition was also alive and strong in al-Andalus, with dÈwåns still standing – though, alas, in ruins – in the Alhambra complex, inside the Palace of the Lions and the Hall of the Kings, and in MadÈnat al-Zahrå’ near Cordoba, with the dÈwån of caliph ‘Abd al-Ra˙mån III.32 The secular nature of the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina The Arabic inscriptions on the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina further confirm the secular nature of the space it covers. On the south aisle and above the pulpit area is a pair of Arabic lines, perhaps a couplet, perhaps the only survivors among many others that were repainted long ago. The text, in a modified version of naskh script, is difficult to read. The first line contains the words ‘layta al-naßra wa al-sa‘da wa al-iqbål wa al-salåma wa al-baqå’ . . . wa al-kifåya . . . wa . . .’ (may victory [triumph] and good fortune and prosperity and safety and survival . . . and sufficiency . . . and . . .). The second line reads ‘yib bayna al-kamål wa al-jamål wa al-‘izz wa al-sa‘åda wa al-iqbål al-då’im . . .’ (between perfection and beauty and glory and happiness and everlasting prosperity . . .).33 The Arabic text on the muqarnas ceiling and the south aisle, along with their designs, were rendered by professional scribes fluent in Arabic and executed by native Sicilian Arab artisans/ calligraphers. Planned, designed and executed by learned men fluent in Arabic, the epigraphic programme would have been intended to be consumed by a public similarly fluent in Arabic. That is to say, the artists, scribes, calligraphers and master designers of the ceiling would have conceived the Arabic text on the ceiling with the understanding that their patrons or clients were highly learned Arab officials, be they amÈrs, qå’ids (community leaders) or members of the aristocracy. The characteristics of the visual imagery on the ceiling and its text do not directly relate to the Norman king and his cabinet. We already have Arab panegyrists like ‘Abd al-Ra˙mån al-ButhayrÈ who composed poetry praising Roger by name, and we also have Arabic poetry inscribed on marble slabs meant for Roger’s palaces in Messina and Palermo by anonymous poet(s) glorifying the king by name.34 Why, then, would the Cappella’s ceiling be silent on the subject? And if this point is apposite, where did the ceiling come from? Was it brought from another building or another part of the palace? Or does it belong to the former dÈwån of the palace of the amÈr? In other words, is it possible that the ceiling was already there before it was decided to build a church within the former palace of the amÈr? Was it in place before 1130? Another interesting question is whether or not this ceiling is the only example of such construction? Could there have been other similar ceilings that did not survive? The answer to these questions may have to await the discovery of further literary and archaeological evidence. The fact that several Arab royal palaces did exist in Palermo, according to historical accounts, and that some of their ruins are extant – as in the case of the palace of the Kelbite amÈr in the Favara complex and the palace of Uscibene, and others – further supports the possibility that such royal buildings may have existed.

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The amıˉrs of Palermo The Arabs were settled in Palermo for well over two hundred years, during which the city was the capital and administrative centre, and Dår al-Imårah was what would later become the Norman palace. There would have certainly been a dÈwån in that complex; could it be that the ceiling was already there, covering the dÈwån, by the time the Normans conquered Palermo? From historical sources, we learn that when the Normans arrived in 1072, they found a city with an overwhelmingly Arab-Islamic culture and population. To facilitate their conquest, they gave the Muslim Arab population a sort of autonomy, a self-governing status with religious judges (qå∂È) and community leaders (qå’id) chosen from among the people but headed by a governor loyal to the Normans. After 1072, the first appointed amÈr of Palermo was a Norman knight named Robert. His successors were two important figures of Arab origin, Christodulus and George of Antioch. Adelaide del Vasto and her son Roger moved their seat of power from Messina to Palermo in 1112–13. During that time, the governor of Palermo was the loyal amÈr Christodulus or Christodoulos. He was appointed by Countess Adelaide when she was regent and entrusted with the education of young Roger. Arab sources suggest that Christodulus was probably a Muslim convert to Christianity and thus call him ‘Abd al-Ra˙mån al-NaßrånÈ (Slave of the Merciful, the Nazarene/the Christian). Christodulus held a position equivalent to prime minister and was amÈr of Palermo by 1107. He was given the titles Ammiratus Ammiratorum (amÈr of amÈrs) and AmÈr al-Ba˙r (admiral) and put in charge of the navy. He also held the titles protonobilissimus and protonotary, a high-ranking court notary.35 Before the Normans moved their seat of power to Palermo and took over Qaßr al-AmÈr, the Norman-appointed Christodulus must have lived in that complex, and if he did, he must have had a dÈwån – possibly inherited from the last Arab ruler. Could that dÈwån have been in the same location as the future Cappella Palatina? If so, was that dÈwån covered by a wooden muqarnas ceiling? It quite possibly was, for it seems probable that such a ceiling would have been decorated with a secular iconographical programme of pictorial art characterised by representations of luxury, entertainment and fine living. Typical, too, is that such a pictorial decorative programme would have been complemented by Arabic text distributed over the ceiling, with words and concepts of praise and good wishes. The whole repertoire points to a sophisticated and well-developed tradition of decorating secular space with such a visual vocabulary. It would seem reasonable, then, to assume that – as happened with other Arab fortresses and palaces throughout Sicily – the Norman authorities took Qaßr alAmÈr in Palermo, modified its details, adjusted certain aspects, and transformed the complex to serve their own needs. Along that slow process, many of the palace’s original characteristics would have been changed or lost as new features were added. This perspective is also plausible when we take into account the unusual function of the chapel with its throne setting on the west side. In the pre-Islamic Arab tribal tradition, later transmitted to Islamic culture, a bureaucratic authoritarian system existed and was presented visually and physically in the setting of the dÈwån. The throne constitutes an important part of the dÈwån where the highest authority resides, be that the tribal leader, amÈr, king or sultan. The dÈwån is connected to the rest of the palace with private access for women and palace personnel who can witness the proceedings in the dÈwån through screen walls, balconies and windows. The original plan of the Cappella Palatina included such a balcony and screen window that leads to an adjacent extension – traces, now blocked, can be seen on the north wall of the north transept. This balcony was originally connected to a passage that leads to the royal apartments of the palace, now called the Norman Stanza. Along the wall of the balcony, there was a window and two slits of unknown function.36 This part, together with the so-called Torre Pisano (Pisan Tower) dating from the mid-twelfth century, reveals an interesting architectural affinity with the early-eleventh-century Audience Hall at Qaßr al-Manår in the fortress of the Hammadis, Qal‘at BanÈ Óammåd. Scholars have also argued that the Torre Pisano was originally an Arab dÈwån structure which may have been influenced by the Andalusian Êå’ifa structure such as that of BanË HËd – Qaßr al-Ja‘fariyyah in Saragossa, built in the middle of the eleventh century.37 The muqarnas in the Pisan Tower is comparable to that of the Cappella Palatina and alQarawiyyÈn Mosque in Fez, Morocco. This structure is also functionally and stylistically related to the later (1370) Hall of the Ambassadors in the Comares Tower of the Alhambra in Granada.38 A possible interpretation: the pre-Norman origin of the muqarnas Upon thorough examination of the Arabic text and the pictorial narratives on the muqarnas ceiling, it seems possible that the ceiling was designed and built independently of the rest of the chapel, or

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that it was already there with its decorations and text when the chapel was built and was simply adopted and incorporated into the new, converted space that was inaugurated as a chapel around 1140. The absence of solid evidence that the muqarnas ceiling was built and decorated during the reign of Roger II lends support to this hypothesis. There is no convincing evidence to suggest that the pictorial programme on the ceiling, including its many portraits, alluded even remotely to Roger II. No names or epithets identify these portraits in the inscriptions and the many dignitaries and royal figures illustrated may simply be general representations of guests, ambassadors, envoys and visitors to the palace dÈwån. Scholars have attempted to identify some of these images as, or at least associate them with depictions of, Roger II based on physiognomy, hair style, seating postures, facial features and complexion, but nothing solid has been established.39 Most of these portraits are accompanied by Arabic text next to or on top of the image – in KËfÈ except for one case where the style is cursive underneath a haloed figure holding what appears to be two crosses or possibly daggers. If the absence of images of and textual references to Roger II in the rest of the chapel decorations is because the chapel was considered a religious space unsuitable for such secular references, then one would have expected to see them on the secular ceiling, but none exist there. Roger II led a confident and effective life which was recorded in his deeds and diplomatic communications and reflected in the writings of Arab and non-Arab historians. His name and portrait have been recorded on many occasions. In particular, visual depictions of Roger II appear on the famous mosaic at the Martorana, and in the book Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis by Peter of Eboli, written and illustrated in Palermo in 1196, which includes an illustration showing Roger II riding his horse and armed with spear and shield.40 Other visual depictions of Roger II may be found on gold tarìs. It is rather difficult, therefore, to understand the absence of his name and image on the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina. If the ceiling had been built during his time, around 1143–7, it can be assumed that Roger’s most important aide, the loyal amÈr of amÈrs George of Antioch, would certainly have overseen the progress of the construction. Immediately after the death of Christodulus, George of Antioch assumed power in Palermo and became amÈr of amÈrs. An Arab Christian of the Greek Orthodox faith, he was given the title Ammiratus Ammiratorum, filling the position of Christodulus after the latter’s death in 1130. Fiercely loyal to Roger II, and possibly antagonistic to the local Muslim population, he quickly became an important and influential political figure in the Norman Kingdom in Sicily, assuming control of the navy, and leading many military campaigns against the North African Muslims. He was also in charge of the dÈwån in Palermo, a high administrative position. In 1143, he patronised the construction of a church known as Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio – the Martorana, which may have been constructed on a former mosque.41 George served as ambassador to the Få†imid court in Egypt. His military exploits expanded Sicilian power towards the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, reaching and occupying many cities in North Africa including al-Mahdiyyah in 1147–8. Domestically, he was in charge of court affairs in the palace, as well as being governor of Palermo. It was during his governorship that the Cappella Palatina was built, and it is very unlikely that he would have allowed the decorations of its ceiling not to make any reference to the Norman king, if only in the text. In the Martorana, he had been behind the idea of inscribing the text of an old Greek hymn in elegant angular Arabic KËfÈ script in white on a black background, embellished by golden floral motifs.42 George was an Arab Christian, fluent in Arabic and versed in Arabic culture. Had he supervised the construction of the Cappella Palatina as he did that of the Martorana, surely he would have imposed a particular iconography on the Arab-Muslim artisans, selecting an Arabic text that would have praised Roger II by name, in addition to the Biblical texts or prayers? It is in the Martorana, situated only a few hundred metres from the Cappella Palatina, that we find the most famous image of Roger II, being crowned and blessed by Christ in the Byzantine tradition.43 The mosaic tesserae of that portrait were being laid on the wall at the same time that the Arab-Muslim artists were supposed to be painting the Cappella Palatina ceiling. It is very difficult to imagine that George would have endorsed the Cappella ceiling’s iconography without dictating a narrative or text of his own. Furthermore, as a devout Christian at a time of religious wars, George was not particularly friendly with, nor sympathetic to, the dwindling Muslim population in Sicily. His outright antagonism to Muslims in North Africa is evidenced in his military campaigns. Internally, we learn from the historical record that he endowed land and ten ‘Saracen’ (Muslim) serfs to the Martorana.44 Why then would he allow a totally Arabic Islamic secular style of decoration to be painted on the ceiling

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of a Christian church? Why would he not have demanded that the image of Roger II, or at least his name, be included in the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina? Documenting the Arabic name of Roger II If the depiction and pictorial decorations on the muqarnas ceiling of the Cappella Palatina had been done at the behest of Roger II, supposedly the patron of the edifice, it would have been natural for his name to appear there. There are contemporaneous occasions where his name is clearly mentioned in connection with events, objects and monuments: 1. On his coronation mantle; 2. In the introduction to al-IdrÈsÈ’s Kitåb nuzhat al-mushtåq fÈ ikhtiråq al-åfåq, where Roger II is addressed as al-mu‘tazz billåh, that is, the Norman king who is empowered by Allah; 3. On the trilingual (Latin, Greek and Arabic) commemorative marble plaque of the hydraulic clock commissioned by Roger II in 1142, where the Arabic text mentions Roger and his royal titles; 4. In the works of numerous Arab Sicilian poets who praised Roger II by name, notably ‘Abd alRa˙mån al-ButhayrÈ, al-Qå’id AbË al-FutË˙ ibn al-Qå’id BadÈr al-MaklåtÈ, AbË Mu˙ammad al-Qåsim ibn ‘Abd Allåh al-TamÈmÈ, ‘Abd al- Ra˙mån Rama∂ån al-MaltÈ, ‘Umar ibn Óasan alNa˙wÈ al-SiqillÈ and AbË al-Îaw’ Siråj al-Kåtib; 5. On the many Sicilian coins that bear Roger’s name and titles; 6. In anonymous poetry carved and inlaid into marble slabs, now preserved in museums, which are believed to have adorned the façade or the frame of the gate of Roger’s palace in Messina, and possibly the entrance of the Cappella Palatina according to more recent interpretations; 7. In documents known as jarå’id (lists of Muslim men and their family members seized by the Norman church as serfs), where Roger’s name, epithets and titles are mentioned. In view of this plenitude, one may once again ask why neither the name nor the titles of Roger II appear on the Cappella’s ceiling. In fact, the Arabic text is devoid of references to any specific person, family or dynasty; rather, it contains words expressing praise and good wishes, or extolling, acclaiming and honouring the occupants of the place. Even the KËfÈ text on the church door does not refer to or identify Roger II. The KËfÈ inscription surrounding the knob of the door close to the altar, a door dating from the twelfth century, reads as follows: ‘ni‘mah shåmilah wa baqå’ wa barakah li-ßå˙ibihi’ (total bounty, subsistence, and blessing to its owner). The Arabic language continued to be the language of literature beyond the Norman conquest of Sicily. When the newly arrived Normans found an established culture on the island, developed by the Arabs for over two hundred years, they adapted and employed it, and the Arabic language was officially used, beside Greek and Latin, in the records of the dÈwån and in literature.45 Norman kings acquired Arabic titles and attributes (‘alåmåt) and used honorific titles imitating the contemporaneous rulers of Få†imid Egypt or al-Andalus. There is a great deal of evidence of such borrowing of titles; for example, a gold tarì from Palermo or Messina bearing the name of Roger II as king has the obverse inscription ‘al-mu‘tazz billåh al-malik RËjjår al-mu‘aΩΩam’ (empowered by God, king Roger the magnificent). Another gold tarì, this one from Amalfi, bears the inscription ‘al-malik GhËlyåm al-thånÈ al-musta‘izz billåh’ (King William II the desirous of power through God).46 These titles are also recorded in the jarå’id dating from the reigns of Roger II and William II.47 The absence of literary – calligraphic – references to Roger II or to Norman authority in the Arabic text on the ceiling, coupled with its iconography, indicates that it does not correlate with the Christian narratives elsewhere in the church interior. It seems very strange to have such an Arabic Islamic painted wooden muqarnas ceiling on top of a Christian church in the late RomanesqueByzantine style. It is probable that the ceiling was already in place as part of the pre-Norman structure, possibly covering a space in the former Arab palace. Supporting evidence for this hypothesis is the fact that the pictorial programme and text on the ceiling and its sloping joints on the four walls seem to culminate dramatically at the west end – that is, the throne side – where the pictorial depictions are more elaborate and complicated in subject matter than on the rest of the ceiling. Unfortunately, many original images on this side are missing or have been altered. There are repainted areas resulting from water damage, bad restoration and, in a few instances, deliberate defilement in the form of inserting an unrelated figure into the scene or changing the identity of a figure or symbol. Such retouching occurs at more than one location on the throne side. Nevertheless, and relative to the eastern, or altar, side of the ceiling, one notices the

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Figure 3.9 Details of the KËfÈ text framing the stars on the ceiling. © Hashim al-Tawil.

emphasis on the throne side in terms of pictorial scenes and text. The two stars near the throne side contain words emphasising victory, triumph, support, perfection, good fortune, prosperity, might, bravery and security, while the two stars on the east side have no text. Additionally, the two stars on the throne side have been completely repainted with images of seated figures and portraits. These repainted images do not relate to the original design, for which we have no independent information, but can be assumed to have been figurative portraits of some sort. If it were possible to have access to even traces of the original paintings, we could learn more about their iconography, but so far this has not been possible. In comparison, the two stars on the east side are decorated with basic floral designs. The text on the upper concaves on the throne side also emphasises and repeats the words perfection, good fortune, prosperity, victory, triumph and might. Of the two archivolts on this side, we see the words ‘everlasting might and good fortune’ on one, and ‘might and safety’ on the other. The text on the throne side appears to be continuous chanting and reiteration of power, might and victory for the person seated on the throne (Figures 3.9–3.12). The emphasis and choice of words, along with the iconographic selection of images and scenes on the throne side, indicate its role as the focal point: it was the seat of the amÈr and, later on, King Roger II. In short, it is obvious that the orientation of the ceiling is such that the important end is the throne side and not the altar one, as it would have been if the ceiling had been decorated for the church. A reasonable explanation for this discrepancy is that this ceiling must have been there before the Cappella Palatina was built. Conclusion The muqarnas ceiling of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo is without doubt a masterpiece of Arab Sicilian craftsmanship and artistry. Though it appears to be the only surviving ceiling of its kind in Sicily, it represents a well-developed tradition of architectural innovation based on scientific and mathematical construction. It also reflects a mature visual tradition of employing figurative and non-figurative, geometric, floral and Arabic calligraphic designs to create a unified and startling

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Figure 3.10 Details of the text on the archivolt. © Hashim al-Tawil.

Figure 3.11 Details of figures and text on the throne side. © Hashim al-Tawil.

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Figure 3.12 Details of figures and text, throne side. © Hashim al-Tawil.

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visual composition. The ceiling is a rare example of secular Arab-Islamic art that must have prevailed in Sicily and especially Palermo from the tenth century and continued beyond the Norman invasion in 1070. The secular nature of the iconography and text on this ceiling, the absence of the image, name, epithet or title of the presumed patron, Roger II, or his court, and the emphasis on the west (throne) side of the ceiling rather than the east (altar) side strongly suggest that this ceiling must have existed before the inception of the Cappella Palatina and very possibly before Palermo became the Norman capital. As the Norman authorities continued the dÈwån system, Roger II – who grew up in a strong ArabIslamic environment – must have initially used the space as such. When he decided to construct a chapel, he would have simply converted the dÈwån space into a chapel. He must have contemplated doing so some time after he and his mother moved to Palermo around 1112. At that time, the former palace of the amÈr was still being used by the governor of Palermo, apparently Christodulus – ‘Abd al-Ra˙mån al-NaßrånÈ – who must have kept the original function of the dÈwån, as did George of Antioch, the amÈr of amÈrs of Palermo, after him. It is interesting to note that very little is known about the years spent by Roger II in Palermo between the time when he reached the age of seventeen in 1112 and his coronation as king in 1130, but it was during these years that he acquired the former Qaßr al-AmÈr and converted it into his own palace. During this process, he must have also utilised the former dÈwån, initially for its original function. Later, some time before 1130, he must have decided to convert it into a court chapel, probably for political reasons, and to consolidate greater religious authority in himself. He must have decided to leave the former beautiful ceiling in place, to cover the modified new space. The evidence discussed here supports this hypothesis, but definitive proof must await further, and especially archaeological, research. Appendix: Alphabetical list of all the Arabic words on the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina and their linguistic roots root

word(s)

meaning(s)

a-y-d b-r-k b-q-a j-l-l j-m-l ˙-f-Ω ˙-m-a d-‘-a d-w-m r-‘-a s-‘-d

al-ta’yÈd/ta’yÈd barakah baqa’ al-ijlål/ijlål al-jamål/jamål al-˙ifΩ al-˙imåyah/˙imåyah al-di‘åyah/di‘åyah al-då’im/al-dåyim/då’im/dåyim ri‘åyah al-sa‘d/sa‘d al-sa‘ådah/sa‘ådah al-salåmah/salåmah shåmilah al-Ωafr/Ωafr al-‘åfiyah/‘åfiyah al-‘izz/‘izz al-ghib†ah/ghib†ah al-ghinå al-af∂ål/af∂ål (sing. fa∂l) al-qåyim/al-qå’im/qåyim/qå’im al-iqbål/iqbål qådim for al-iqdåm al-kifåyah/kifåyah al-kamål/kamål kåmilah from kåmil al-majd minnah al-naßr/naßr

endorsement, support, backing blessing, benediction survival, subsistence, long life majesty, magnificence, grandeur beauty, attractiveness conservation, retention, safekeeping protection, safeguarding promotion, support everlasting, perpetual care, custody, trust, sponsorship, aegis good fortune, prosperous, fortunate happiness, felicity, jubilation, rejoicing safety, soundness, security, integrity, intactness comprehensive, total, inclusive, omnipotence victory, triumph, being victorious good health, well-being power, might, honour, glory envy, contentment, beatitude, bliss, exultation wealth, riches, opulence favour, good service existing, lasting, permanent, vivacious bravery, forwardness, attendance boldness, bravery, attendance sufficiency, ability, efficacy perfection, integrity perfect, complete, full, flawless, entire glory, magnificence gift, award, present, bestowal from God victory, triumph, assistance, aid

s-l-m sh-m-l Ω-f-r ‘-f-y ‘-z-z gh-b-† gh-n-a f-∂-l q-a-m q-b-l q-d-m k-f-a k-m-l m-j-d m-n-n n-ß-r

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n-‘-m n-w-l w-ß-l y-m-n

al-ni‘mah/ni‘mah al-in‘åm/ni‘am (sing. ni‘mah) manål al-mutawåßilah/mutawåßilah al-yumn/yumn

blessing, bounty, comfort of life blessing, bounty, comfort of life gift, bestowal, sought-after goal, desirable goal unceasing, perpetual, continuing fortune, good omen, prosperity

Notes 1. The author expresses his gratitude to the Fulbright Scholar Program for a senior research grant in spring– summer 2007 which made it possible to travel and conduct field research on the Cappella Palatina ceiling while it was undergoing major restoration. The author would also like to thank the Institut d’Études Avancées de Nantes (IEA) for a fellowship in 2011 that allowed this research to be completed. Thanks are also due to the Henry Ford Community College for facilitating both trips. 2. See, for example, Ernst J. Grube and Jeremy Johns, The Painted Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina (Genoa: Bruschettini Foundation for Islamic and Asian Art; New York: East-West Foundation, 2005), pp. 3–9; Ernst Kitzinger, ‘The Mosaics of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo: An Essay on the Choice and Arrangement of the Subjects’, The Art Bulletin 31/4 (December 1949): 269–92. 3. See M. Romagnoli et al., ‘Wood Identification in the Cappella Palatina Ceiling (12th century) in Palermo (Sicily, Italy)’, IAWA Journal 28/2 (2007): 109–23. 4. There are many studies on this subject. See, for example, Ugo Monneret de Villard, Le pitture musulmane al soffitto della Cappella Palatina in Palermo (Rome: La Libreria della Stato, 1950); Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina; William Tronzo, The Cultures of his Kingdom: Roger II and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Michele Amari, Biblioteca Arabo-sicula, ossia Raccolta di testi arabici che toccano la geografia, la storia, le biografie e la bibliografia della Sicilia (Lipsia: F. A. Brockhaus, 1857); Richard Ettinghausen, Arab Painting (Geneva: Skira, 1962); Mirjam Gelfer-Jørgensen, Medieval Islamic Symbolism and the Paintings of the Cefalù Cathedral (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986); Nora Nouritza Nercessian, ‘The Cappella Palatina of Roger II: The Relationship of its Imagery to its Political Function’, PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1981; Oleg Grabar, Studies in Medieval Islamic Art (London: Variorum Reprints, 1976); Annabelle SimonCahn, ‘Some Cosmological Imagery in the Decoration of the Ceiling of the Palatine Chapel in Palermo’, PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1978; Staale Sinding-Larsen, ‘Plura ordinantur ad unum: Some Perspectives Regarding the “Arab-Islamic” Ceiling of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (1132–1143)’, Acta ad Archeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 7 (1989): 55–96; Erica Cruikshank Dodd, ‘Christian Arab Sources for the Ceiling of the Palatine Chapel, Palermo’, in Arte d’Occidente: Temi e Metodi: Studi in onore di Angiola Maria Romanini, ed. Antonio Cadei et al. (Rome: Ed. Sintesi Informazione, 1999), pp. 823–31. 5. See Richard Ettinghausen, ‘Painting in the Fatimid Period: A Reconstruction’, Ars Islamica 9 (1942): 112–24. 6. See Slobodan C´ur¥ic´, ‘Some Palatine Aspects of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987): 125–44. 7. Besides sources mentioned in previous notes, see Jonathan Bloom, ‘Islamic Art and Architecture in Sicily: How Fatimid Is It?’, in Atti del convegno I Fatimidi e il Mediterraneo. Il sistema di relazioni nel mondo dell’Islame e nell’area del Mediterraneo nel periodo della da’wa fatimide (sec. X–XI). Istituzioni, società, cultura. Palermo, 3–6 Dicembre 2008 (Palermo: Accademia Libica, 2008), pp. 29–43; David Knipp, ‘Images, Presence, and Ambivalence: The Byzantine Tradition of the Painted Ceiling in the Cappella Palatina, Palermo’, in Visualisierungen von Herrschaft. Frühmittelalterliche Residenzen: Gestalt und Zeremoniell. Internationales Kolloquium 3.–4. Juni 2004 in Istanbul, ed. Franz Alto Bauer (Istanbul: Ege Yayınları, 2006), pp. 283–328; David Knipp (ed.), Art and Form in Norman Sicily. Proceedings of an International Conference, Rome, 6–7 December 2002 (Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2005), pp. 34–6; Jeremy Johns, ‘The Bible, the Quran, and the Royal Eunuchs in the Cappella Palatina’, in Die Cappella Palatina in Palermo: Geschichte, Kunst, Funktionen. Forschungsergebnisse der Restaurierung, ed. Thomas Dittelbach (Künzelsau: Swiridoff Verlag, 2010). 8. See Tronzo, The Cultures of his Kingdom, pp. 6–7. For a summary of the early Arab incursion in Sicily, see Dionisius A. Agius, Siculo Arabic (London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1996), pp. 23–8. For a comprehensive survey of Arabic sources for the history of Arabs/Muslims in Sicily, see Aziz Ahmad, A History of Islamic Sicily (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1975). For Arabic sources that record the early Arab incursion during the Umayyads and the final invasion of Sicily, see A˙mad ibn Ya˙yå BalådhurÈ, FutË˙ al-Buldån, ed. ‘Abd Allåh AnÈs Êabbå’ (Beirut: Dår al-Nashr lil-JåmiÈyÈn, 1957) and its English translation, The Origins of the Islamic State, Being a Translation from the Arabic Accompanied with Annotations, Geographic and Historic Notes of the Kitâb futû˙ al-buldân of al-Imâm abu-l ‘Abbâs A˙mad ibn-Jâbir al-Balâdhuri, trans. Philip Khuri Hitti (Beirut: Khayats, 1966); Izz al-DÈn Ibn al-AthÈr, al-Kåmil fÈ al-tårÈkh, ed. AbË al-Fidå Abd Allåh al-Qå∂È (Beirut: Dår al-Kutub al-IlmÈyah, 1987). Amari compiled Arabic sources on Sicily in his Biblioteca Arabo-sicula.

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9. More research is needed on the conversion process to draw a clear picture of that cultural transformation. See Hubert Houben, Roger II of Sicily: A Ruler between East and West, trans. Graham A. Loud and Diane Milburn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 25–7. See also Simon-Cahn, ‘Some Cosmological Imagery’, p. 17. 10. Most publications on the Cappella Palatina state this without a convincing explanation. See, for instance, Grube and Johns, The Painted Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina, p. 3; Kitzinger, ‘The Mosaics of the Cappella Palatina’, pp. 269–70. 11. Cited in Cecilia Wærn, Mediaeval Sicily: Aspects of Life and Art in the Middle Ages (London: Duckworth & Co., 1910), pp. 78–80. He also mentions an Arab palace, Qaßr al-Jawhariyyah. See also Stefano Giordano (ed.), The Palatine Chapel in the Norman Palace, trans. Arthur Oliver (Palermo: Edizioni Poligraf, 1977), Introduction. 12. Quoted in Giordano, The Palatine Chapel in the Norman Palace, Introduction. 13. For the architectural and topographical characteristics of, and similarities between, Sicilian and North African palace garrison structures, see Simon-Cahn, ‘Some Cosmological Imagery’, pp. 16–17. 14. Cited in Wærn, Mediaeval Sicily, pp. 18–19. 15. AbË ‘Abd Allåh Mu˙ammad al-IdrÈsÈ al-Qur†ubÈ al-ÓasanÈ al-SabtÈ (1099–1165) was a Muslim Arab geographer, traveller and cartographer. He was born in al-Andalus and died in Sicily. 16. My translation from the Arabic text from al-IdrÈsÈ, Kitåb nuzhat al-mushtåq fÈ ikhtiråq al-åfåq (Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqåfah al-DÈnÈyah, 2002), p. 591. See also Wærn, Mediaeval Sicily, p. 52. 17. The publication is Guida Istruttiva, first published in 1816 by the Royal Printing Press under Ferdinand di Borbone. Quoted in Giordano, The Palatine Chapel in the Norman Palace, Introduction. 18. There is a common misconception that the text on the ceiling is in praise of Roger II, but this is unfounded. See for instance John Julius Norwich, The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130–1194 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 76. 19. These words and other details will be the subject of numerological analysis and the science of jafr in my forthcoming monograph on the subject. 20. See Esin Atıl, Ceramics from the World of Islam (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1973), nos 13, 22, 24, 28, 35, 38, 39–43, 45, 48, 51, 57, 71. See also Wency Waldron, Calligraphic Ceramics from Eastern Iran: Early Islamic Pottery from the Collection of Ulfert Wilke, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, November 7 through December 15, 1974 (Iowa City, IA: The Museum, 1974), nos 3, 4, 28, 31, 32, 34. 21. See Atıl, Ceramics from the World of Islam, no. 57 on p. 129, and the image on p. 128. 22. See Atıl, Ceramics from the World of Islam, no. 39 on p. 91, and the image on p. 90. 23. Details and images of such objects are found in major publications on Islamic art. See, for example, Atıl, Ceramics from the World of Islam; also Esin Atıl, Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1981). 24. See, for example, Edmund Curtis, Roger of Sicily and the Normans in Lower Italy, 1016–1154 (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912), p. 303. 25. See Wærn, Mediaeval Sicily, pp. 25–7. 26. See Henri Terrasse, La Mosquée al-Qaraouiyin à Fès (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1968), pp. 76–81; Lucien Golvin, Le Magrib central à l’époque des Zirides: Recherches d’archéologie et d’histoire (Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1957), pp. 199–233. 27. Gelfer-Jørgensen, Medieval Islamic Symbolism. For colour illustrations of the painted ceiling of the Cefalù Cathedral, see Francesco Gabrieli and Umberto Scerrato, Gli Arabi in Italia: Cultura, contatti e tradizioni (Milan: Scheiwiller, 1979), figs 238–43. 28. I visited the cathedral of Nicosia in 2007 and was shown colour photographs of the old ceiling before a second ceiling had been constructed to cover the original and its paintings. 29. For the history and an illustration of this ceiling, see Ferdinando Bologna, Il soffitto della Sala magna allo Steri di Palermo e la cultura feudale siciliana nell’autunno del Medioevo (Palermo: S. F. Flaccovio, 1975). See also Gabrieli and Scerrato, Gli Arabi in Italia, fig. 156. 30. See Hashim al-Tawil, ‘Early Arab Icons: Literary and Archeological Evidence for the Cult of Religious Images in Pre-Islamic Arabia’, PhD dissertation, University of Iowa, 1993, pp. 255–60, for archaeological sources on pre-Islamic Arabia. 31. Information on secular dÈwåns is found throughout major Arabic historical work. See for example AbË al-Faraj al-Ißfahåni, Kitåb al-AghånÈ; A˙mad ibn al-RashÈd ibn al-Zubayr, Kitåb al-Dhakhå’ir wa al-Tu˙af; A˙mad ibn ‘AlÈ al-MaqrÈzÈ, al-Mawå’iΩ wa al-I’tibår; A˙mad ibn Mu˙ammad al-MaqarrÈ, Naf˙ al-ÊÈb min GËßn al-Andalus al-Ra†Èb; A˙mad ibn Mu˙ammad ibn ‘IdhårÈ al-MarråkashÈ, al-Bayån al-Mughrib fÈ Akhbår al-Andalus wa al-Maghrib. 32. Antonio Vallejo Triano, ‘Madinat Al-Zahra: Transformation of a Caliphal City’, in Revisiting al-Andalus: Perspectives on the Material Culture of Islamic Iberia and Beyond, ed. Glaire D. Anderson and Mariam Rosser-Owen (Boston: E. J. Brill, 2007). 33. A comprehensive account of all the Arabic texts and images in the Cappella Palatina will be included in my forthcoming monograph on the subject. 34. See the section below on the name Roger II in Arabic texts. 35. For details on the identity of Christodulus, see Curtis, Roger of Sicily, pp. 113, 124, 144–6, 254, 257, 415. See also Houben, Roger II of Sicily, pp. 25–6; A. Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), pp. 121, 124–6; Agius, Siculo Arabic, p. 35.

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36. For details of the interior of the Cappella Palatina, see William Tronzo, ‘The Medieval Object-Enigma, and the Problem of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo’, in Late Antiquity and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World, ed. Eva R. Hoffman (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), pp. 367–88. 37. David Knipp argues that the Pisan Tower is originally an Arab dÈwån structure: ‘The Torre Pisana in Palermo: A Maghribi Concept and its Byzantinization’, in Wissen über Grenzen: arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter, ed. Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006), pp. 745–74. 38. Knipp, ‘The Torre Pisana in Palermo’. For images of the muqarnas at Torre Pisano, see Gabrieli and Scerrato, Gli Arabi in Italia, fig. 25; and for a comparison between the plans of Torre Pisano and Qaßr alManar, see p. 326. 39. See Houben, Roger II of Sicily, p. 127; also Johns, ‘The Bible, the Quran, and the Royal Eunuchs’. 40. Petrus de Ebulo, Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis: Codex 120 II der Burgerbibliothek Bern. Eine Bilderchronik der Stauferzeit, ed. Theo Kölzer and Marlis Stähli, trans. Gereon Becht-Jördens (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1994), pp. 38–9. 41. For details of the life and activity of George of Antioch, see Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy, pp. 126–8. 42. For the text and its translation, see Michele Amari, Le Epigrafi Arabiche di Sicilia, vol. 1 (Palermo: Virzi, 1875–9), pp. 112–17. For an illustration, see Gabrieli and Scerrato, Gli Arabi in Italia, fig. 118; also Wærn, Mediaeval Sicily, p. 151. 43. For illustrations of the mosaics, see, for instance, Ernst Kitzinger, The Mosaics of St. Mary’s of the Admiral in Palermo (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990). See also Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy, p. 148. 44. George Dennis and John Murray, A Handbook for Travellers in Sicily, Including Palermo, Messina, Catania, Syracuse, Etna, and the Ruins of the Greek Temples (London: J. Murray, 1864), p. 49. 45. For details of the role of the Arabic language in Norman Sicily, see Agius, Siculo Arabic; Karla Mallette, The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100–1250 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). See also Jeremy Johns, Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal DÈwån (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 46. For images of these coins and similar others, see the Fitzwilliam Museum online at http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk (last accessed 17 April 2013). 47. For the Arabic text of the jarå’id, see Salvatore Cusa, I Diplomi Greci ed Arabi di Sicilia (Palermo: Stabilimento tipografico Lao, 1868–82), vol. 1, p. 36; vol. 2, pp. 472–3.

Bibliography Agius, Dionisius A. Siculo Arabic. London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1996. Ahmad, Aziz. A History of Islamic Sicily. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1975. A˙mad ibn Ya˙yå BalådhurÈ. FutË˙ al-Buldån, ed. ‘Abd Allåh AnÈs Êabbå’. Beirut: Dår al-Nashr lil-JåmiÈyÈn, 1957; The Origins of the Islamic State, Being a Translation from the Arabic Accompanied with Annotations, Geographic and Historic Notes of the Kitâb futû˙ al-buldân of al-Imâm abu-l ‘Abbâs A˙mad ibn-Jâbir alBalâdhuri, trans. Philip Khuri Hitti. Beirut: Khayats, 1966. Amari, Michele. Biblioteca Arabo-sicula, ossia Raccolta di testi arabici che toccano la geografia, la storia, le biografie e la bibliografia della Sicilia. Lipsia: F. A. Brockhaus, 1857. ——. Le Epigrafi Arabiche di Sicilia, vol. 1. Palermo: Virzi, 1875–9. Atıl, Esin. Ceramics from the World of Islam. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1973. ——. Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1981. Bloom, Jonathan. ‘Islamic Art and Architecture in Sicily: How Fatimid Is It?’ In Atti del convegno I Fatimidi e il Mediterraneo. Il sistema di relazioni nel mondo dell’Islame e nell’area del Mediterraneo nel periodo della da’wa fatimide (sec. X–XI). Istituzioni, società, cultura. Palermo, 3–6 Dicembre 2008. Palermo: Accademia Libica, 2008, pp. 29–43. Bologna, Ferdinando. Il soffitto della Sala magna allo Steri di Palermo e la cultura feudale siciliana nell’autunno del Medioevo. Palermo: S. F. Flaccovio, 1975. C´ur¥ic´, Slobodan. ‘Some Palatine Aspects of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo’. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987): 125–44. Curtis, Edmund. Roger of Sicily and the Normans in Lower Italy, 1016–1154. New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912. Cusa, Salvatore. I Diplomi Greci ed Arabi di Sicilia, vols 1 and 2. Palermo: Stabilimento tipografico Lao, 1868–82. Dennis, George and John Murray. A Handbook for Travellers in Sicily, Including Palermo, Messina, Catania, Syracuse, Etna, and the Ruins of the Greek Temples. London: J. Murray, 1864. Dodd, Erica Cruikshank. ‘Christian Arab Sources for the Ceiling of the Palatine Chapel, Palermo’. In Arte d’Occidente: Temi e Metodi: Studi in onore di Angiola Maria Romanini, ed. Antonio Cadei, Marina Righetti Tosti-Croce, Anna Segagni Malacart et al. Rome: Ed. Sintesi Informazione, 1999, pp. 823–31. de Ebulo, Petrus. Liber ad honorem Augusti sive de rebus Siculis: Codex 120 II der Burgerbibliothek Bern. Eine Bilderchronik der Stauferzeit, ed. Theo Kölzer and Marlis Stähli, trans. Gereon Becht-Jördens. Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1994.

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Ettinghausen, Richard. Arab Painting. Geneva: Skira, 1962. ——. ‘Painting in the Fatimid Period: A Reconstruction’. Ars Islamica 9 (1942): 112–24. Gabrieli, Francesco and Umberto Scerrato. Gli Arabi in Italia: Cultura, contatti e tradizioni. Milan: Scheiwiller, 1979. Gelfer-Jørgensen, Mirjam. Medieval Islamic Symbolism and the Paintings of the Cefalù Cathedral. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986. Giordano, Stefano (ed.). The Palatine Chapel in the Norman Palace, trans. Arthur Oliver. Palermo: Edizioni Poligraf, 1977. Golvin, Lucien. Le Magrib central à l’époque des Zirides: Recherches d’archéologie et d’histoire. Paris: Arts et métiers graphiques, 1957. Grabar, Oleg. Studies in Medieval Islamic Art. London: Variorum Reprints, 1976. Grube, Ernst J. and Jeremy Johns. The Painted Ceilings of the Cappella Palatina. Genoa: Bruschettini Foundation for Islamic and Asian Art; New York: East-West Foundation, 2005. Houben, Hubert. Roger II of Sicily: A Ruler between East and West, trans. Graham A. Loud and Diane Milburn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Ibn al-AthÈr, Izz al-DÈn. al-Kåmil fÈ al-tårÈkh, ed. AbË al-Fidå Abd Allåh al-Qå∂È. Beirut: Dår al-Kutub alIlmÈyah, 1987. al-IdrÈsÈ. Kitåb nuzhat al-mushtåq fÈ ikhtiråq al-åfåq. Cairo: Maktabat al-Thaqåfah al-DÈnÈyah, 2002. Johns, Jeremy. Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: The Royal DÈwån. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ——. ‘The Bible, the Quran, and the Royal Eunuchs in the Cappella Palatina’. In Die Cappella Palatina in Palermo: Geschichte, Kunst, Funktionen. Forschungsergebnisse der Restaurierung, ed. Thomas Dittelbach. Künzelsau: Swiridoff Verlag, 2010, pp. 560–70. Kitzinger, Ernst. ‘The Mosaics of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo: An Essay on the Choice and Arrangement of the Subjects’. The Art Bulletin 31/4 (December 1949): 269–92. ——. The Mosaics of St. Mary’s of the Admiral in Palermo. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990. Knipp, David. ‘Images, Presence, and Ambivalence: The Byzantine Tradition of the Painted Ceiling in the Cappella Palatina, Palermo’. In Visualisierungen von Herrschaft. Frühmittelalterliche Residenzen: Gestalt und Zeremoniell. Internationales Kolloquium 3.–4. Juni 2004 in Istanbul, ed. Franz Alto Bauer. Istanbul: Ege Yayınları, 2006, pp. 283–328. ——. ‘The Torre Pisana in Palermo: A Maghribi Concept and its Byzantinization’. In Wissen über Grenzen: arabisches Wissen und lateinisches Mittelalter, ed. Andreas Speer and Lydia Wegener. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006, pp. 745–74. —— (ed.). Art and Form in Norman Sicily. Proceedings of an International Conference, Rome, 6–7 December 2002. Munich: Hirmer Verlag, 2005, pp. 34–6. Mallette, Karla. The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100–1250. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Metcalfe, A. The Muslims of Medieval Italy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. Monneret de Villard, Ugo. Le pitture musulmane al soffitto della Cappella Palatina in Palermo. Rome: La Libreria della Stato, 1950. Nercessian, Nora Nouritza. ‘The Cappella Palatina of Roger II: The Relationship of its Imagery to its Political Function’, PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1981. Norwich, John Julius. The Kingdom in the Sun, 1130–1194. New York: Harper & Row, 1970. Romagnoli, M., M. Sarlatto, F. Terranova, E. Bizzarri and S. Cesetti. ‘Wood Identification in the Cappella Palatina Ceiling (12th century) in Palermo (Sicily, Italy)’. IAWA Journal 28/2 (2007): 109–23. Simon-Cahn, Annabelle. ‘Some Cosmological Imagery in the Decoration of the Ceiling of the Palatine Chapel in Palermo’, PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1978. Sinding-Larsen, Staale. ‘Plura ordinantur ad unum: Some Perspectives Regarding the “Arab-Islamic” Ceiling of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (1132–1143)’. Acta ad Archeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia 7 (1989): 55–96. al-Tawil, Hashim. ‘Early Arab Icons: Literary and Archeological Evidence for the Cult of Religious Images in Pre-Islamic Arabia’, PhD dissertation, University of Iowa, 1993. Terrasse, Henri. La Mosquée al-Qaraouiyin à Fès. Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1968. Triano, Antonio Vallejo. ‘Madinat Al-Zahra: Transformation of a Caliphal City’. In Revisiting al-Andalus: Perspectives on the Material Culture of Islamic Iberia and Beyond, ed. Glaire D. Anderson and Mariam Rosser-Owen. Boston: E. J. Brill, 2007. Tronzo, William. The Cultures of his Kingdom: Roger II and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. ——. ‘The Medieval Object-Enigma, and the Problem of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo’. In Late Antiquity and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World, ed. Eva R. Hoffman. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007, pp. 367–88. Wærn, Cecilia. Mediaeval Sicily: Aspects of Life and Art in the Middle Ages. London: Duckworth & Co., 1910. Waldron, Wency. Calligraphic Ceramics from Eastern Iran: Early Islamic Pottery from the Collection of Ulfert Wilke, The University of Iowa Museum of Art, Iowa City, November 7 through December 15, 1974. Iowa City, IA: The Museum, 1974.

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Chapter Four

Wall-Less Walls: The Calligraphy at the Hadži Sinanova Tekija in Sarajevo Snježana Buzov

Situated on the hillside street of Sagrdžije (Turk. Sa©ırcılar) in the residential neighbourhood (mahalle) of the Sara¥ (Turk. Sarrâc) Ali Mosque, north of Sarajevo’s Baš¥aršija (Turk. Ba∞ Çar∞ı), the large building complex of the Hadži Sinanova tekija (Turk. Hacı Sinan Tekkesi)1 does not dominate the area. Outwardly, it is a ‘silent’ structure of simple features that do not disclose its Sufi affiliation, nor perhaps any sacral function at all. With the exception of the building material (stone), its outward appearance and even its structure follow the pattern of Sarajevan upper-class residential complexes of the seventeenth century. Indeed, the residential complex next to it and to the south, known as the house of Alija Gjerzelez, shares the same L-shaped structure situated within the rectangular walled property with two courtyards (‘male’ and ‘female’) and several small auxiliary buildings (Figures 4.1 and 4.2).2 What distinguishes this building complex is not its architectural composition, but the rich calligraphic work of its courtyard and inside the semâhâne (ceremonial hall). The extensive calligraphic inscriptions covering the walls of the courtyard and semâhâne of the Hadži Sinanova tekija in Sarajevo represent a peculiar case of affinity between the building and calligraphic art on one hand, and the rapport between Sufis and the invocations and devotional texts recorded on the walls, on the other. The calligraphic inscriptions in this tekke were not executed as a part of the architectural plan, or its immediate supplement. The artists who rendered them came in the 1740s, more than a century after the tekke was built, and the inscribing was an activity of Figure 4.1 Hadži Sinanova tekija, north walls. © Tarik Jesenkovic´.

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Figure 4.2 Hadži Sinanova tekija, eastern walls. © Tarik Jesenkovic´.

long duration. These were not commissioned artists but QådirÈ Sufis whose work was spontaneous. For its appearance, spontaneity and playfulness, this long artistic project could be defined as graffiti, although there is nothing illicit about it (unless working against the architectural canons is considered as such). In spite of its uniqueness, this calligraphy is hardly surprising in the given context: most of the content of what is written on the walls consists of dhikr – invocations of and prayers for the Prophet Mu˙ammad and the eponym of the order, ‘Abd al-Qådir GÈlånÈ, as well as the QådirÈ awrad (litanies). The analysis presented in this chapter focuses on artistic, historical and devotional aspects of the calligraphic inscription in the tekke. What emerges as the main and common feature of the calligraphic inscriptions in this tekke is the evident lack of concern for the main architectural element: the wall. The analysis focuses on interpreting both the spiritual and physical-spatial aspects of what appears as a wall-less wall, that is, a wall that largely fades into the background of the text. Thus, the questions this chapter poses emerge from the absence of the architectural significance of the calligraphic inscriptions to explore its other meanings, and possible other canons, outside architecture, that define them. Following a short survey of the tekke’s history and the content of the texts, I will explore the artistic provenance, as well as the structure and function, of the tekke’s calligraphy by situating it in the historical, religious, artistic and Sufi context of the Ottomans, and the particular locale, that is, Sarajevo and this QådirÈ tekke itself. The building complex The Hadži Sinanova tekija, or Silâhdar Mustafa Pasha’s tekke as it is called in documents, is the oldest among a very small number of QådirÈ tekkes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.3 A single recorded narrative links its construction to the year 1638, and the conquest of Baghdad by the Ottoman Sultan Murad IV.4 In the court register of Sarajevo dated 1705, a petition (‘arz) to the sultan is recorded, written by the members of the Sufi order (†arÈqah) in Sarajevo and asking him for financial aid to cover the costs of the restoration and repair of the tekke following the Austrian attack in 1697, when general Eugene of Savoy sacked and burned the city.5 In this text the story is told of Sultan Murad IV’s recovery and restoration of the tomb of ‘Abd al-Qådir GÈlånÈ6 and his conversation with his sword-bearer (Silahdâr) Mustafa Pasha. The pasha was a native of Sarajevo and the son of a prominent Sarajevan merchant named Sinan A©a – hence the popular name of the tekke. According to this

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Figure 4.3 Plan of the tekke. Source: Mehmed Mujezinovic´ and Mato Biško, ‘Konzervacija Hadži Sinanove Tekije u Sarajevu’, Naše Starine 7 (1959): 164.

account, the pasha was already a member or affiliate of the QådirÈ order. He insisted to the sultan that a tekke be built for those who followed the path of ‘Abd al-Qådir GÈlånÈ in Bosnia since none existed at the time. He took it upon himself to realise the project in Sarajevo. The narrative continues with the recent events where ‘our enemy occupied Saraybosna (Sarajevo) and completely burned and destroyed the city. The poor dervishes were left on the bare ground and deprived of a place to gather and perform the dhikr.7 Just as this splendid endowment was built by the sultan’s swordbearer, we ask for your support because you ceaselessly help the poor, and your name is known for your good deeds.’ Further in the petition, the sultan was informed that the walls of the tekke were still standing, but everything else had been destroyed.8 The next entry in the court register is another petition to the sultan, this time asking for additional support after 1,200 kuru∞ had been spent for the repair of the tekke by the Bosnian governor Ali Pasha.9 In this petition, the shaykh of the tekke asked the sultan to reward the work of the main overseer of the reconstruction, the footman (Çokadar) Mehmed.10 This text also contains the description of the reconstruction, from which we learn about the structure of the tekke. In addition to the semâhâne (mescid) and next to its door, seven rooms were built for the dervishes. The text mentions another room with a storage area, and a kitchen with two storage rooms. A large room above the entrance is described as the place for gathering and sohbet (conversation), with another small room beside it. The reconstruction works also included building a fountain across from the main entrance.11 The description ends with the statement that everything was made as it had been before the destruction. According to a chronogram and a record in the eighteenth-century chronicle of Sarajevo by Mulla Mustafa Ba∞eski (who was a member of this Sufi order), some further repairs were made in 1774.12 The current state of the building complex fits the early-eighteenth-century description with the exception of some functional and technological changes, mostly in the kitchen area and lavatories (where a modern abdest-hane – fountain for ritual ablutions – has been added). The tekke complex is built in a reverse L shape, one part consisting of the semâhâne (Figure 4.3, area A; for the external view, see Figure 4.12), the coffee maker’s room (Bos. kahve odžak, Turk. kahve oca©ı) (Figure 4.3, area C), the meeting room (Bos. mejdan oda, Turk. meydan odası) (Figure 4.3, area D), and the entrance hall (Figure 4.3, area B, and Figure 4.4), with the kitchen and storage room (Figure 4.3, area G) to the north and additional storage rooms and lavatory to the south (Figure 4.3, areas H and I). To the west of the semâhâne is an adjoining building consisting of a kitchen, two rooms and a storage room (Figure 4.3, area E). It is assumed that this building housed an infirmary for the mentally ill, to which the chronicler Mulla Mustafa Ba∞eski refers in one of his entries for the year 1780.13 Within the courtyard there is a large garden with a number of tombs of the shaykhs and prominent members of the †arÈqah.

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The calligraphic inscriptions As stated earlier, this building complex is distinguished by unusual, and perhaps unique calligraphic work that covers its inner walls. Most of the calligraphic inscriptions are situated on the walls of the large entrance hall (Figure 4.4), while some are also found in the semâhâne. From the dates on several texts of litanies it is possible to conclude that most of the calligraphy was inscribed in the mid-eighteenth century. The largest and most beautiful calligraphic piece preserved is a unique rendering of the hexagramic figure known as the Seal of Solomon (Turk. mühr-i Süleyman, Ar. khåtam Sulaymån), situated on the outer wall of the kahve oca©ı, to the east of the semâhâne entrance (Figures 4.5 and 4.6). The calligraphy in the tekke consists of the QådirÈ daily litanies (Turk. vird, Ar. wird) in Arabic, poetry in Ottoman Turkish and Persian,14 supplications (du‘å’) and single words and phrases in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish  – mostly invocations of God, the Prophet and ‘Abd al-Qådir GÈlånÈ. With regard to form, the calligraphy can be divided into texts on the one hand, and pictorial and symbolic representations on the other. The styles represented are thulth, KËfÈ, ta‘lîk (Ottoman nasta‘lÈq), jalÈ thulth and naskh. One daily litany, the Saturday wird, is preserved in its entirety.15 It is recorded in two lines and covers the upper part of the south, east and north walls of the entrance hall. It is written in thulth script. A significant portion of this wird is replicated on the edges of the mi˙råb in the semâhâne (Figure 4.7 and 4.8). Two fragments uncovered from under a layer of plaster indicate the existence of other daily wirds, as well as other devotional texts – supplications and ˙izbs (recitals) – on the walls of the semâhâne. The fragment on the west wall of the semâhâne, signed by ‘shaykh Seyyid Feyzullâh’ and dated 1161 h/1748, contains the final phrase of the Thursday litany. It also contains a fragment of a supplication (Figure 4.9).16 Inscription of the daily litanies was certainly an organised project of the mid-eighteenth century. In addition to the above date, the name of another shaykh, Ahmed, and the year 1158/1745–6 are recorded, both following the Saturday litany on the north wall of the entrance hall and on the fragment on the north wall of the semâhâne (Figure 4.10). Some of the inscriptions, such as the invocation written on the arch of the main entrance door (Figure 4.4), and a QådirÈ hymn in Ottoman Turkish on the north wall of the entrance hall, following the Saturday litany, display similarity in style and composition. The invocation, which reads,

Figure 4.4 Entrance hall. © Tarik Jesenkovic´.

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Figure 4.5 The courtyard. Entrance to the semâhâne, the kahve oca©ı, and the Seal of Solomon. View from the east. © Tarik Jesenkovic´.

Figure 4.6 The Seal of Solomon. © Tarik Jesenkovic´.

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Figure 4.7 Mi˙råb. © Tarik Jesenkovic´.

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Figure 4.8 Interior of the semâhâne. © Tarik Jesenkovic´.

Figure 4.9 Fragment discovered on the west wall of the semâhâne. © Leila Elaqad.

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Figure 4.10 Fragment discovered on the north wall of the semâhâne. © Leila Elaqad.

Yå qu†bu RabbånÈ, yå gawthu ßamedånÈ, pÈrunå wa sayyidunå wa sanadunå al-shaykh a‘Ωam sul†ån mu˙y al-dÈn ‘abd al-qådir gÈlånÈ qaddasa Allåhu sirrahu. (O divine cardinal pole, O supreme helper of the Protector, our pÈr, our master, and our interceder, the great shaykh, sultan, the reviver of the Faith, ‘Abd al-Qådir GÈlånÈ, may God sanctify his secret.) achieves a decorative effect while also accentuating the shape of the arch which would otherwise remain hardly visible due to its architectural simplicity (Figure 4.4). The QådirÈ hymn in Ottoman Turkish, consisting of thirty-three verses with a single rhyme, follows the same proportions as the Saturday litany. The effect of the similar proportions and continuity of these two texts is achieved by framing. However, the two texts are written in different calligraphic style, with the litany in thulth and the poem in ta‘lîk, some of its verses written in yellow. The entire calligraphic composition, framed with red lines, fills a large portion of the walls with horizontal lines of text interrupted by red vertical lines defining the rhythm of recitation. The horizontal and vertical lines that frame the text thus serve the dual purposes of expressing the oral aspect of recitation and delineating their space on the wall. Most of the verses in the hymn express the attributes of the QådirÈs with expressions such as ‘we are’, ‘we became’ and ‘ours is’. For example: S¸âh-ı ‘a∞ka gâh bende gâh vezir-i ∞ânıyüz (We are now slaves to the Shåh of love, now his majestic viziers) Mâsivâ-yı nefs-i emâre de©ildir fikrimiz (The worldly concerns of the self that lead one astray are not in our thoughts) Biz ki derd-i ‘a∞k-ı dildârla me’nûs olmı∞üz (We who have become accustomed to the pain of love for the Beloved) Bir tabîb-i cân ü dil mihr[ine?] mahsûs olmı∞üz (We have become subjected to the love of a doctor of the soul and heart) The following verses are repeated seven times in the poem, mostly, but not exclusively, following the quatrains:

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Biz gedâyüz sûretâ, emmâ cihân sultânıyüz Sâlikân-ı Abdülkadir Gîlânîyüz (Our appearance is that of beggars, but we are sultans of the world We are travellers on the path of ‘Abd al-Qådir GÈlånÈ) The rest of the tens of calligraphic inscriptions are mostly invocations, with some couplets and short poetic forms in Persian and Ottoman Turkish. Unlike the litanies and supplications, they display a variety of calligraphic styles and pictorial calligraphy, executed freely on the walls. Some of these calligraphic pieces are ‘brought into order’ by red framing added later, while some remain unframed, testifying to sudden inspiration or to the way in which hüsn-i hatt (Ott. calligraphy) performed the simple service of recording emphatic utterances invoking God, the Prophet or the QådirÈ pÈr ‘Abd al-Qådir GÈlånÈ. Among the latter are inscriptions made by skilful hands, yet with no obvious artistic ambitions. Seemingly random ‘yå qayyËm’ (O Self-Sustaining One), ‘yå ˙ayy’ (O Ever-Living One) or ‘yâ hazret-i sultân ∞eyh Muhyiddîn Abdülkâdir Gîlanî’ (O exalted shaykh, sultan, the reviver of faith ‘Abd al-Qådir GÈlånÈ) grace the walls of the tekke alongside masterful renderings of the same or similar invocations as calligraphic compositions. Among these randomly placed yet beautiful inscriptions, one poem in ta‘lîk script is particularly interesting for its placement in a small section of the wall next to the entrance, expressing a welcoming message to ‘comers and goers’: Gelen gelsün sa‘âdet ile Giden gitsün selâm ile Bu cây âbâd ola her dem Gelen giden sehavetle (May those who come, come with happiness May those who go, go in peace May this place always prosper With the generosity that comes and goes) The seemingly random placement and the spontaneity of a significant part of the invocations becomes clear in light of calligraphic renderings of the same or similar content. The distinction is conspicuous. One does not need to juxtapose and compare these inscriptions. They are already placed next to each other on the walls of the tekke, sometimes crowded and overlapping. Their authors obviously used available space with no particular plan. Yet, both kinds of inscriptions  – pictorial compositions of various proportions, as well as single invocations or larger texts – reflect a certain spontaneity, whether in the absence of concern with a larger or a smaller space, or both. The rendering of a complicated, often pictorial, composition certainly required preparation. The process involved outlining the calligraphic composition before its execution in black, yellow or red paint. On the other hand, the recording of single words or poetic or narrative texts without apparent concern for space and artistic representation was the work of a moment. Many of the invocations, as well as single couplets (beyit), Basmalas and shahâdas, are framed in red. The frames are often of irregular form, following the shape of the calligraphy or simply the available space on the wall. Some of these compositions follow the well-known models of the imperial cipher (tughra), flowers and lamps, often using the technique of mirror-image composition (Ott. müsennâ, Ar. muthannå). It is worth noting here that the framing of these inscriptions should not be confused with the framing of well-known Ottoman calligraphic panels (Ott. levha, Ar. lawha). Such items began to appear during the eighteenth century, and their distinctive features include materials (pasteboard, fabric) and function. In other words, from the late eighteenth century onwards, calligraphic compositions that had been limited to the pages of manuscripts began to be transformed into calligraphic boards to be framed and hung on the wall.17 The main element of the apparent similarity between the levhas of the late Ottoman Empire and the calligraphic inscriptions of the Hadži Sinanova tekija is framing. However, it is evident that in the case of the calligraphic compositions in the tekke, the function of the frames – or, to be more precise, the framing – is not motivated by aesthetics; it represents not an artistic but rather a spatial definition of the works framed. Before qualifying the entire work as rebellious against the architectural canon and traditions, it should be noted that in some instances, the calligraphy in the tekke shows respect for, and complies with, the architectural forms. In addition to the arch above the entrance hall mentioned earlier,

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the calligraphy within the niche of the mi˙råb and on its edge is identical in shape, size and style (thulth) to the other litanies and supplications executed on the courtyard walls and in the semâhâne. It accentuates the inner space of the niche while the calligraphy on its edge follows its shape, emphasising not only the spatial relationship between the inner space of the niche and its outer frame but also the unusual – elongated and narrow – proportions of the mi˙råb. Apart from several framings in white and vermilion, and the muqarnas painted in these colours, it is the calligraphy that decorates the mi˙råb. Moreover, white calligraphy in the ta‘lîk style, reading wa ßallÈ ‘alå khayr al-bariyyati A˙mad anå ‘Abd al-Qådir shaykh kulli †arÈq (And grant blessings to the best of creatures, Ahmad. I am ‘Abd al-Qådir, shaykh of every path) is situated in the upper part of the mi˙råb, which is the part most often decorated with calligraphy. The mi˙råb is often highly decorated in mosques and Sufi lodges, and the Hadži Sinanova tekija is not an exception. However, even in this highly defined element of Islamic architecture, the usual restrictions governing the content of the calligraphy do not apply to the Hadži Sinanova tekija. While calligraphy here can be defined as architectural in both its symbolic and functional roles, its content is once again QådirÈ litanies and supplications instead of the conventional Qur’anic texts. The Saturday litany decorates the arch, the niche lends its space to a supplication, and the white calligraphy on its upper part is another QådirÈ recitation.18 This calligraphy and most of the other calligraphic inscriptions in the tekke show that the calligraphers were proficient in the techniques of mural calligraphy. Another, most dominant work in the tekke bears witness to the presence of an artist who was capable not only of executing a work of large proportions but also of a calligraphy using the technique of frescoing. This work, superseding all others in its proportions, creativity, elaboration and mastery, is placed in an ‘ordinary’ space: in the courtyard, on the outside wall of the kahve oca©ı. The mühr-i Süleyman (Seal of Solomon) A large (three metres in diameter), uniquely elaborate and complicated rendering of the figure known as the Seal of Solomon dominates the courtyard wall near the entrance of the semâhâne. The term Seal of Solomon applies to compositions based on a hexagram. This geometric shape is frequently used in Islamic decorative art and sometimes includes calligraphy, notably in manuscripts and metal work. According to Nihad ‡engic´, who recently restored this work, the composition in the Hadži Sinanova tekija is based on a drawing engraved into fresh plaster. Three evenly intersected squares formed from the lines of two hexagrams are the basis of this composition. The twelve intersections then develop into twelve symmetric fields into which the Muslim profession of faith ‘Lå ilåha illå Allåh, Mu˙ammad RasËl Allåh’ (There is no god but God, Mu˙ammad is the Messenger of God) has been inscribed, in alternating red and black colour, in ma‘qilÈ script. Prolonged låms function as chords dividing the circle into twelve fields and forming an interlocking design with other låms and alifs of two hexagrams and twelve-point stars. There are thirteen concentric circles engraved in the plaster, some of which form the basis for the decorative framing of the composition while others, intersecting with parallel lines (alifs and låms), form a web of small quadrangles wherein the text is inscribed.19 Unlike other calligraphic compositions, the mühr-i Süleyman is not centred. The relationship between the composition and the wall is not architecturally defined, and no concern for symmetry, proportions or any other aspect of defining its position is evident. The same is true of the geometrical elements that form this composition: none of its triangles, squares, hexagrams and twelve-point stars are centred, as if their axis is elsewhere, in some other space, not on the wall. The complicated geometric structure of this composition is better understood on the largely monochrome rendering of the same idea situated on the south wall of the entrance hall (Figure 4.11). This other Seal of Solomon, of smaller proportions (45cm in diameter), was obviously a study for the larger one. The central, basic structure is coloured yellow, while the rest of the composition is in black. The points where shapes overlap are thus not obscured by the alternations of colour. The south wall hosts two inscriptions in ma‘qilÈ script, perhaps by the same artist or group of artists. They both contain the profession of faith: one is a single rendering of the Shahåda, while the other is a rectangular composition with a quadrangular basis in the centre wherein the text of Shahåda is repeated eight times. These inscriptions provide an explanation of the artistic context of the large Seal of Solomon: its maker was obviously not a commissioned artist brought in to decorate the walls of the tekke, but an individual, or group of individuals, who were associated with the tekke and

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Figure 4.11 South and east walls of the entrance hall. © Tarik Jesenkovic´.

developed the idea spontaneously, working on it over a period of time. However, a broader artistic tradition behind this unique work is not immediately discernible. The story of the Seal of Solomon is well attested in literature. It is related in many sources including the Thousand and One Nights, and especially in works on talismans. The core legend elaborated in these works describes a magic ring, which Solomon received from God, consisting of seven signs (of which one is the hexagram) and containing the greatest name of God. The Qur’anic text mentions the ring indirectly, when Belqis, the Queen of Sheba, recognises the Seal of Solomon on a letter and reads the text on it which mentions the name of God.20 This hierohistorical event links it firmly with Islam and validates it as a subject further elaborated in literature.21 In architecture, the figure appears as an abstract ornament, while its other renderings, which often include inscriptions, appear mainly on objects serving as talismans.22 The calligraphy in the Hadži Sinanova tekija cannot be easily classified as belonging to either of the two categories, although the protective power of the seal as well as its decorative value is selfevident. As a calligraphic work it can be linked only to the tradition of calligraphic seals (including the Seal of Mu˙ammad and the Seal of God) appearing as illustrations in manuscripts.23 Within the QådirÈ tradition, this composition can be linked to the Kadirî gülü (rosette), one of the distinguishing marks of the order that can be found on QådirÈ tombstones and – as an architectural ornament – on buildings associated with the order. One such ornament, a QådirÈ gül in relief on the façade of the O©lanlar Tekkesi in Aksaray (dated 1870), clearly resembles the composition in the Hadži Sinanova tekija. The similarity is only visual, however, and the structure on the O©lanlar Tekkesi is much simpler. The composition relies on a simple geometry of repetitive patterns of rays around a circle framing the central pentagram.24 Moreover, this ornament dates from a later period and remains an abstract symbol with no added text. Formally, the unique character of the composition in the Hadži Sinanova tekija can be explained as a successful experiment in uniting the tradition of ma‘qilÈ rendering of the Shahåda and the hexagramic forms in architectural design. The question, however, still remains as to the more specific traditional, cultural and artistic context of this and other calligraphic pieces in the tekke. Novelty, tradition, inspiration As already stated, the calligraphic works in the Hadži Sinanova tekija do not readily evoke any artistic context or tradition. In that respect, they seem to evade the view according to which ‘every genuine work of art is at once new and bound to tradition’, appearing new and unfamiliar to its contemporaries because they are blind to tradition, and familiar to later generations who easily place

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Figure 4.12 Exterior view of the semâhâne, seen from the north. © Tarik Jesenkovic´.

them within tradition.25 The few contemporary authors who were associated with the Sufi order in Sarajevo neither comment on nor even mention it. Beyond the walls of the tekke, this calligraphy has no echoes. No other walls of Sarajevo, Bosnia or elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire provided space for a similar artistic endeavour. If this work was an artistic revolution, it was a silent one. Later generations, including the few modern scholars who have studied it, continue to value this calligraphy for its uniqueness, creativity and genuine character. Thus this artistic work seems to contradict the above statement regarding ‘genuine art’: its contemporaries (for all we know) were indifferent to it, and later generations were unaware of a tradition from which it may have emerged. The calligraphy in the Hadži Sinanova tekija can certainly be seen as a turn away from decorative art – that is, if there were decorative calligraphy to turn away from. Ottoman architecture, however, seldom employed calligraphy as pure decoration. Thus, in order to unlock the mystery of the unique character of the calligraphy in the Hadži Sinanova tekija, it is necessary to try to identify the tradition, or reconstruct the historical, cultural and artistic context in which it appeared. In the context of eighteenth-century Ottoman literature, the diverse body of inscriptions in the tekke begs comparison with the then-booming form of literacy known as the miscellany mecmua (Ar. majmË‘a).26 Just as individual Ottomans recorded, in a single volume  – sometimes in orderly, sometimes in disorderly manner – the knowledge, information and beauty that they wanted to remember and use in their daily lives, so did the members of this †arÈqah. Just as miscellany mecmuas, as a form of literacy, opened a space for individual expression and the free recording of one’s preferred content – whether samples of poetry, short stories, daily praying rituals, documents, letters, letter samples or simple information – so did the members of the †arÈqah, using the white walls of the tekke in the way the authors/owners of the mecmuas used paper.27 To turn to the position of the observer, reader or recipient, it can be said that even though the names of the authors/owners of the mecmuas are often unknown, posterity can nevertheless see clearly what mattered to these individuals, and what their preferences were. And the same can be said about the inscriptions in the tekke. They represent the daily rituals, preferred poetry and lives of the members of the †arÈqah. And finally, to return once again to the question of novelty and originality, in the mecmuas, free form resulted in recording things that had not been recorded before – vernacular literature, stories and anecdotes, and various trivia – but most importantly it resulted in recording without regard to the requirements of genres and scholarly disci-

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plines, making individual selection of what needs to be recorded the only criterion of content. As with most miscellany mecmuas, there is hardly anything new or unknown in the contents of the inscriptions in the Hadži Sinanova tekija. The writings on its walls contain well-known litanies, supplications and invocations, and poems often recited and sung by †arÈqah members. What is new is the choice of inscribing outside the architectural canons, using freely the white space on the walls. The form and medium are new, and this novelty provided the grounds for several instances of creative outburst. This brings us to the question of the artistic aspect of the inscriptions. The calligraphy of the Hadži Sinanova tekija cannot be defined as decorative art for a number of reasons. The large body of text placed on the walls does not follow the rationality and discipline of decoration. First, it is evident that this calligraphy originated from the arts of the book rather than those of architecture. The tradition into which this calligraphy should be placed is therefore the manuscript tradition. Second, while beauty remains the imperative embedded in, and defined by, the sacred character of the text, the understanding of writing as an act of piety, and the specific Sufi appreciation of the inner meanings of the shapes and lines that form letters,28 the beauty of the letters is not only a silent beauty of images imbued with inner meaning symbolised by shape. Their beauty is also of the sound: the chanting of litanies in unison, individual utterings of invocations, and finally endless, timeless cycles of rhythmic remembrance (Ar. dhikr) of the Greatest Name represented in the tekke’s masterpiece, the Seal of Solomon. The sound of rhythmic chanting is visually represented by lines of litanies and poetry, with red rules marking the rhythm. The sounds of spontaneous individual cries and invocations were ‘recorded’ rather carefully, planned and executed. Finally, the visual representation of the aural and motional aspects of the mühr-i Süleyman is achieved by a lack of visible axis and centredness. The circular form and its hexagramic and dodecagonal shapes and texts appear to turn freely, without being tied to the wall. Thus the only calligraphic composition that is actually engraved in the wall is in fact the one visually least tied to it. Conclusion Certainly the calligraphic work in the tekke may be testimony to the existence and activity of a calligraphic school among the QådirÈ Sufis and perhaps other Sarajevans who frequented the tekke in the eighteenth century. The epigraphic work of at least one calligrapher and member of the tekke, the Sarajevan poet Mehmed Meylî Gûrânî (d. 1781), who was exceptionally proficient in ta‘lîk script, can be attested on a number of ni∞ans and buildings from the eighteenth century.29 However, the question remains as to why the calligraphic skills and artistic expression of the members of this school remained confined to the tekke. During the period in question, the mid-eighteenth century, the city outside of the walls of the tekke was in ruins, and Sarajevans were trying to gather their resources to rebuild most of its institutions. Like the tekke, the city had lost most of its written memory.30 As with the rest of the city, this was a period of recovery for the tekke too. After obtaining funds to rebuild the tekke, its members also sought to recover and preserve the †arÈqah’s daily devotional practices. To return to Bašeski’s records, this period was marked by the strong leadership of Shaykh Muhammad bin Hasan (1732–77), whose lectures at the tekke were well attended. According to Bašeski, the shaykh was fluent and learned in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian, and had travelled extensively, including a visit to India. His appointment by YåsÈn b. ‘Abd al-Razzåq was recorded on the south wall of the tekke in simple writing. The proportions of the letters are small, as if written on paper. According to legend, this YåsÈn b. ‘Abd al-Razzåq was a shaykh from Baghdad who visited the tekke in 1732 in order to appoint its new shaykh. During his stay he never spoke, spending his time in silent meditation. Only before leaving did he make the appointment, in writing, and the inscription on the south wall is this handwritten appointment.31 The other two calligraphers  – Shaykh Ahmad and Shaykh Sayyid Feyzullah – who wrote the daily wirds on the walls of the courtyard and semâhâne were clearly not the shaykhs of this tekke but most probably visitors who contributed to the restoration of its activities. Choosing the walls instead of paper to create a QådirÈ mecmua, a collection of texts that were otherwise orally transmitted, testifies to the extraordinary circumstances in the aftermath of Eugene of Savoy’s devastating attack. Thus, the meaning behind the diverse (in styles and proportion) multitude of calligraphic inscriptions in the Hadži Sinanova tekija may be related to the renewal of the †arÈqah. Seen in this light,

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the apparent lack of structure, or rather the incongruence between the architectural shapes and the calligraphic shapes, reflects the new function of the entire complex. Rather than being defined by its symbolic and functional role in the architectural context, calligraphy here uses the walls as a means of restoring the sacred time of endless devotions and the memory of the †arÈqah. The calligraphic texts do not just represent the †arÈqah, they turn the silent building into one that performs the dhikr, chants Sufi hymns and supplications, and invites visitors: a building of sounds recorded after a prolonged silence and forced abandonment.

Notes 1. Tekke is one of the terms used in Ottoman to denote a Sufi lodge. 2. The very next building to the south of the same street, another seventeenth-century residential complex known as the house of Gjerzelez Ali (Gurz Òlyas), displays the same basic structure and similar proportions. Only the building material, as is the case in almost all residential architecture in Bosnia, is mud bricks. 3. According to the Bosnian scholar Džemal C´ehajic´, there were only three other QådirÈ tekkes in Bosnia: in Zvornik, Jajce and Travnik. The tekke in Zvornik was most probably built in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, while those in Jajce and Travnik can be dated to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries respectively; Džemal C´ehajic´, Derviški redovi u jugoslovenskim zemljama sa posebnim osvrtom na Bosnu I Hercegovinu (Sarajevo: Orijentalni Institut, 1986), pp. 132–5. 4. Murad IV (re)conquered Baghdad in December 1638. Sinan A©a, Silâhdar Mustafa Pasha’s father who, according to local oral tradition, oversaw the construction of the tekke, died in Ramadan 1049 (between 26 December 1639 and 24 January 1640). Therefore the construction of the tekke can be dated to 1639 or 1640. 5. This Sarajevo court register is preserved in a Bosnian translation by Abdullah Polimac: Oriental Institute, inv. no. 97, pp. 144–6. 6. Mu˙yi al-DÈn AbË Mu˙ammad ‘Abd al-Qådir GÈlånÈ (also GeylånÈ, Jîlânî and Kîlânî), d.  561/1166, a renowned scholar and the eponymous figure of the QådirÈ Sufi order. 7. Literally ‘remembrance’, in Sufi terminology dhikr denotes a ritual consisting of chanting God’s names and reciting Sufi litanies. Its content and techniques differ according to specific Sufi orders’ devotional practices. 8. Quoted from Amina Šiljak-Jesenkovic´ and Samir Beglerovic´, ‘Saraybosna’daki Kadirilerin Sı©ına©ı: Hacı Sinan Tekkesi’, in Òznikli Gönül Adamı E∞refo©lu Rûmî, ed. Bilal Kemikli (Òznik: Uluda© Yayınları, 2010), p. 118. 9. A calligraphic panel containing a versified account of this repair, praising the governor (vâlî) and containing the chronogram, is located above the entrance to the semâhâne; Mehmed Mujezinovic´ and Mato Biško, ‘Konzervacija Hadži Sinanove Tekije u Sarajevu’, Naše starine 7 (1959): 162–3. 10. We learn from this text that Çokadar Mehmed was a member of the team led by Hasan A©a, whom the sultan appointed to examine the damage to the city following the Austrian attack. 11. Polimac, p. 253. See also Šiljak-Jesenkovic´ and Beglerovic´, ‘Saraybosna’daki Kadirilerin Sı©ına©ı’, pp. 119–20. 12. The amount of 500 kuru∞ for repairs was secured by the Bosnian governor Muhamad Pasha Muhsin-zade (Polimac, p. 163). The tekke was severely damaged during World War II. In 1952 and 1956–7, the State Institute for the Protection of the Cultural Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Zemaljski zavod za zaštitu spomenika kulture), supported by the government and the Committee of the Waqf Council (Vakufski saborski odbor), undertook the project of repairing the damage to the buildings, as well as some limited intervention aimed at preventing further decay of the calligraphic inscriptions. The project and its results are described in Mujezinovic´ and Biško, ‘Konzervacija’. The entire complex underwent thorough restoration, especially of the interior and the calligraphic inscriptions, in 1997. On the restoration of the calligraphy, see Nihad ‡engic´, Likovni fenomen Hadži Sinanove tekije I njegova konzervacija (Sarajevo: Sarajevo Publishing, 2009). 13. The chronicler related the case of a certain young man, ‘the crazy Mu’min ba∞ı’, who was treated in the timârhâne of the Hadži Sinanova tekija, in Mula Mustafa Bašeskija, Ljetopis, trans. Mehmed Mujezinovic´ (Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1968), p. 259. 14. One prominent text in Persian is a couplet inscribed on the south wall of the entrance hall. It reads: Ka‘batu’l-‘ushshåqi båshad Èn maqam Har ke nåqis åmad Ènjå shod tamåm (This place is the Ka‘ba of the lovers Whoever comes deficient here becomes complete) 15. The QådirÈ manual al-FuyË∂åt al-rabbåniyya (Emanations of Lordly Grace), compiled by Ismå‘Èl Mu˙ammad Sa‘Èd al-QådirÈ, prescribed a weekly cycle of seven wirds attributed to ‘Abd al-Qådir GÈlånÈ. The text in the Hadži Sinanova tekija is almost identical (with one alteration) to the Saturday wird in the published text of this manual. See al-FuyË∂åt al-rabbåniyya fÈ al-ma’åthiri al-awrådi al-qådiriyya. Jam‘

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16.

17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25.

26.

27.

28. 29.

30.

31

wa tartÈb al-‘årif al-qutb al-rabbånÈ sayyidÈ al-shaykh mu˙yi al-dÈn ‘abd al-qådir al-jaylånÈ, qaddasa Allåhu sirruhu (Cairo: al-Maktaba al-azharÈyya li al-turåth, 2000), p. 98; Shaikh ‘Abd al-Qådir al-JÈlånÈ, Emanations of Lordly Grace (al-FuyË∂åt al-rabbåniyya). Also including: Glad Tidings of Good Things (Bashå’ir al-khayråt), ed. Ismå‘Èl Mu˙ammad Sa‘Èd al-QådirÈ, trans. Muhtar Holland (Fort Lauderdale: Al-Baz Publishing, 2000), pp. 290–2. A fragment of the supplication reads: ‘Allahumma na‘Ëdhu bika min al-dhulli illå laka wa al-hawfi illå minka’ (O God, we seek Your protection from submitting to anyone but You, and from fear of anyone but You). Sheila S. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp. 500–1. Most of the calligraphic inscriptions on the mi˙råb were covered under layers of later decorations. Much of the original, eighteenth-century calligraphy and decoration was uncovered in 1957 during a restoration project led by Mehmed Mujezinovic´ and Mato Biško, and the restoration was completed in 1998 by Nihad ‡engic´. For a detailed analysis of the artistic technique and complicated geometric patterns, see ‡engic´, Likovni fenomen, pp. 33–8. J. McG. Dawkins, ‘The Seal of Solomon’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2 (1944): 145–50. ‘Behold, it is from Solomon and it says: In the name of God, the Beneficent and Merciful’ (al-Naml, 27:30). On the legend and its various renderings, see http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=8 95&letter=S&search=seal of Solomon#ixzz1Y8B50IjL (last accessed 17 April 2013). For the Ottoman context, including a historical overview of the previous period, see Christiane Gruber, ‘A Pious CureAll: The Ottoman Illustrated Prayer Manual in the Lilly Library’, in The Islamic Manuscript Tradition: Ten Centuries of Book Arts in Indiana University Collections, ed. Christiane Gruber (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), pp. 137–42. One such example of a series of seals, including the Seal of Solomon, is in the Ottoman prayer book in the Lilly Library in Indiana University (see previous note). M. Baha Tanman, ‘Settings for the Veneration of Saints’, in The Dervish Lodge: Architecture, Art and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey, ed. Raymond Lifchez (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992), p. 141. Hermann Broch, ‘Hugo von Hofmannsthal and his Time: Art and its Non-Style at the End of the Nineteenth Century’, in Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age (New York: Counterpoint, 2002), p. 152. Mecmua is a term used for manuscript volumes containing a number of texts, and can be translated as ‘collected volume’. Mecmuas could be collections of poetry, musical lyrics or treatises on the same topic serving as readers. Miscellany mecmuas were private notebooks in which their owners/authors recorded whatever they found interesting, important or useful, sometimes in a careful hand, sometimes in simple cursive. It is worth noting here that two eighteenth-century members of the tekke prominent for their authorial work in literature and calligraphy, Mulla Mustafa Ba∞eski (d. 1804) and Mehmed Meylî Gûrânî (d. 1781), composed some of the most extraordinary examples of the miscellany mecmuas. Ba∞eski’s mecmua, composed mostly in vernacular Turkish, contains a unique set of records of the daily life of eighteenth-century Sarajevo and the role of Sufis there, and some of the earliest recorded examples of folk poetry in Bosnian written in Arabic script (Gazi Husrev Beg Library, inv. no. 3001; for the published Bosnian translation, see note 11). Meylî, who was a renowned epigrapher and calligrapher, recorded the works of local poets in his mecmua, thus preserving them for posterity. Another interesting corpus are the samples of correspondence by prominent local authors including Sufi figures. Most of the records are written in a beautiful ta‘lîk (Gazi Husrev Beg Library, inv. no. 3002). For the relationship between calligraphy and Sufism, see Annemarie Schimmel, ‘Calligraphy and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey’, in Lifchez (ed.), The Dervish Lodge, pp. 242–52. Mehmed Mujezinovic´’s research on this poet and calligrapher shows fifty chronograms (târîh) by him on tombstones and various buildings from that period; Mehmed Mujezinovic´, ‘Epigrafika i kaligrafija pjesnika Mehmeda Mejlije’, Naše starine 4 (1957): 131–68. The manuscripts and documents forming the archive of the tekke are today housed in the City Archive of Sarajevo (Arhiv Grada Saeajeva) and do not contain any written record for the period before the mideighteenth century. ‡engic´, Likovni fenomen, p. 28.

Bibliography Archival sources Mehmed Meylî Gûrânî. Mecmua. Gazi Husrev Beg Library, inv. no. 3002. Mulla Mustafa Ba∞eski. Mecmua. Gazi Husrev Beg Library, inv. no. 3001. Sarajevo court register (sicil) from 1705 (translation to Bosnian by Abdullah Polimac), Oriental Institute, inv. no. 97.

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Literature Abd al-Qådir al-GÈlånÈ. al-FuyË∂åt al-rabbåniyya fÈ al-ma’åthiri al-awrådi al-qådiriyya. Jam‘ wa tartÈb al-‘årif al-qutb al-rabbånÈ sayyidÈ al-shaykh mu˙yi al-dÈn ‘abd al-qådir al-jaylånÈ, qaddasa Allåhu sirruhu. Cairo: al-Maktaba al-azharÈyya li al-turåth, 2000. ‘Abd al-Qådir al-GÈlånÈ, Shaikh. Emanations of Lordly Grace (al-FuyË∂åt al-rabbåniyya). Also including: Glad Tidings of Good Things (Bashå’ir al-khayråt), ed. Ismå‘Èl Mu˙ammad Sa‘Èd al-QådirÈ, trans. Muhtar Holland. Fort Lauderdale: Al-Baz Publishing, 2000. Blair, Sheila S. Islamic Calligraphy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006. Broch, Hermann. ‘Hugo von Hofmannsthal and his Time: Art and its Non-Style at the End of the Nineteenth Century’. In Geist and Zeitgeist: The Spirit in an Unspiritual Age. New York: Counterpoint, 2002, pp. 141–210. C´ehajic´, Džemal. Derviški redovi u jugoslovenskim zemljama sa posebnim osvrtom na Bosnu I Hercegovinu. Sarajevo: Orijentalni Institut, 1986. ‡engic´, Nihad. Likovni fenomen Hadži Sinanove tekije I njegova konzervacija. Sarajevo: Sarajevo Publishing, 2009. Dawkins, J. McG. ‘The Seal of Solomon’. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2 (1944): 145–50. Gruber, Christiane. ‘A Pious Cure-All: The Ottoman Illustrated Prayer Manual in the Killy Library’. In The Islamic Manuscript Tradition: Ten Centuries of Book Arts in Indiana University Collections, ed. Christiane Gruber. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010, pp. 116–53. Mujezinovic´, Mehmed. ‘Epigrafika i kaligrafija pjesnika Mehmeda Mejlije’. Naše starine 4 (1957): 131–68. —— and Mato Biško. ‘Konzervacija Hadži Sinanove Tekije u Sarajevu’. Naše starine 7 (1959): 161–6. Mustafa Bašeskija, Mula. Ljetopis, trans. Mehmed Mujezinovic´. Sarajevo: Veselin Masleša, 1968. Schimmel, Annemarie. ‘Calligraphy and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey’. In The Dervish Lodge: Architecture, Art and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey, ed. Raymond Lifchez. Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992, pp. 242–52. ‘Seal of Solomon’, Jewish Encyclopedia. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=895&letter=S&se arch=seal of Solomon#ixzz1Y8B50IjL (last accessed 17 April 2013). Šiljak-Jesenkovic´, Amina and Samir Beglerovic´. ‘Saraybosna’daki Kadirilerin Sı©ına©ı: Hacı Sinan Tekkesi’. In Òznikli Gönül Adamı E∞refo©lu Rûmî, ed. Bilal Kemikli. Òznik: Uluda© Yayınları, 2010, pp. 118–28. Tanman, M. Baha. ‘Settings for the Veneration of Saints’. In The Dervish Lodge: Architecture, Art and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey, ed. Raymond Lifchez. Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992, pp. 130–71.

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Chapter Five

The Qur’anic Inscriptions of the Minaret of Jaˉm in Afghanistan Ulrike-Christiane Lintz

Archaeologists often ask whether spiritual, religious, political or economic movements are reflected in the structure and decorations of monuments. Focusing on this basic question, this chapter attempts to shed light on the historical and cultural movements reflected in the Minaret of Jåm, that unique relic of the GhËrid dynasty (1148–1215 ce). Described in detail by several scholars,1 this monument has often been characterised as a ‘tower of glory’ commemorating a victory2 under the GhËrid overlord, Ghiyåth al-DÈn Mu˙ammad b. Såm (d. 1203),3 over the Ghuzz nomads at Ghazna in 1173,4 or perhaps the elevation of his brother Mu‘izz al-DÈn Mu˙ammad b. Såm (d. 1206) to the sultanate (r. 1203–06),5 rather than later victories on the northern Indian sub-continent.6 The term ‘tower of glory’ applied to similar monuments, such as the victory towers in Ghazna or the GhËrid Qu†b Minår in Delhi, suggests that they were built to proclaim the greatness and legitimacy of the ruler; this cannot be precluded entirely, but it must be critically questioned. A more likely context regarding the minaret’s physical expression (for instance, its function in religious, architectural and philosophical terms) seems to be evident. Thus, a dialogue between archaeology and history is very important. Should archaeological studies reveal results which differ from those of historical studies, both disciplines would have to investigate and challenge their sources anew, and determine whether or not the material at their disposal is as informative as it was originally suspected to be. It is possible that there are a variety of contradictions within the sources – contradictions that could be resolved through critical investigation. Material culture supplies archaeologists with much data worthy of interpretation.7 As to the findings, inscriptions on monuments may have a central role in bearing witness to cultural developments. We should consider that ‘an archaeological context can be understood materially as completely built up of finds or described structurally as an arrangement of features’.8 Indeed, object and text cannot be defined as equivalent semantic signs as they follow their own principles and cannot be deciphered in the same manner. Objects are tridimensional, non-linear and composed of an unlimited number of predefined signs in order to reproduce the spoken word. Regarding the object in a discursive context, on the other hand, we might observe that material culture is directly created through text, a kind of constructive perspective. Whereas the image reflects a write-up of the oral tradition or text, iconography is formalised.9 The Minaret of Jåm (see Figure 5.1) can be contextualised using two different methods discussed by Ian Hodder, one of the pioneers of post-processual theory in archaeology: A more precise definition for the context of an archaeological attribute is the totality of the relevant environment, where ‘relevant’ refers to a significant relationship to the object – that is, a relationship necessary for discerning the object’s meaning . . . Context can be taken to mean ‘with-text,’ and so the word introduces an analogy between the contextual meanings of material culture traits and the meaning of words in a written language.10

The Minaret of Jaˉm Historical context The World Heritage listed11 Minaret of Jåm (Figure 5.2) has some of the most extensive Qur’anic inscriptions on any monument ever raised.12 According to the archaeologist David C. Thomas, ‘the

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Figure 5.1 View from KËh-i Khåra, southwest, overlooking the minaret and Qaßr Zarafshån. Courtesy of David C. Thomas.

Figure 5.2 The Minaret of Jåm on the barren foothills of Jåm’s remote narrow valley. Courtesy of Werner Herberg, 1970.

date of the construction of the minaret is less clearly preserved’ in the brickwork of the foundation panel. The Arabic words for seventy (sab’Èn) and ninety (tis’Èn) are ‘virtually indistinguishable in the absence of diacritics’. Thomas tells us that Sourdel-Thomine dated the tower to 570 ah (2 August 1174 to 21 July 1175 ce), disagreeing with Pinder-Wilson, who prefers Maricq and Wiet’s reading of 1193/94.13 The tower, the second tallest (64.6m)14 brick minaret after the Qu†b Minår, has an octagonal base diameter of 9.14m, and stands on the south bank of the HerÈ RËd in a remote narrow valley amidst the impressive Central Mountains geographical region in GhËr,15 Shahrak District (Figure 5.3). The most important GhËrid-era site, Jåm was inimitably investigated by David Thomas in the Minaret of Jåm Archaeological Project (MJAP). It is located 215km to the east of Heråt, some 1,900m above sea level, with nearby mountains rising to almost 3,500m.16 The World Heritage site is also very important for the discovery of a nearby Jewish cemetery at the KËh-i Kushkak, which

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Figure 5.3 View from KËh-i Khåra, south, overlooking the minaret and the Jåm RËd. Courtesy of David C. Thomas, MJAP 2005.

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Figure 5.4 View of the Minaret of the Great Mosque of Qairawån in Tunisia in the early twentieth century. Postcard from 1900 (anonymous).

KAIROUAN -Minaret de Ia Grande Mosquee

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contains some ninety-one Judeo-Persian tombstones dating to the period 1012–1220.17 Thought to be FÈrËzkËh, an ancient and vibrant GhËrid centre of sophisticated urban life under Ghiyåth al-DÈn Mu˙ammad b. Såm,18 the city was completely destroyed by the Mongol armies under Genghis Khan’s son, Ögedey, in 1222, after which it was abandoned and never re-occupied.19 The minaret: a ‘gate from heaven to earth’ The earliest mosques were built without minarets and the call to prayer was performed elsewhere, for instance from a hill, or from the roof of the house of the Prophet Mu˙ammad, which doubled as a place for prayer. A minaret, however, can be seen as a symbolic ‘gate from heaven to earth’ – in reference to the disconnected letters of the Qur’an, the ‘ayat’ (åyåt), its shape is a monumental representation of the letter alif,20 a straight vertical line pointing to the sky. The square-plan tower of the oldest standing minaret, the Great Mosque of Qairawån in Tunisia (Figure 5.4), consists of three sections – base, shaft and gallery – with a decreasing size reaching 31.5m and is considered the prototype for minarets of the western Islamic world. This minaret stands in the middle of the north portico of the courtyard. The geographer and historian AbË ‘Ubayd ‘Abd Allåh b. ‘Abd al-‘AzÈz b. Mu˙ammad al-BakrÈ (1014–94) attributed its construction to the reign of the Umayyad caliph Hishåm ibn ‘Abd al-Målik (r. 724–43), but most archaeologists are convinced that it is the work of Ziyådat Allåh I (r. 817–38).21 According to the architectural historian K. A. C. Creswell (1879–1974), the idea of a minaret first arose under the Umayyad dynasty in Syria, where the Muslims came in contact with Syrian church towers.22 They soon adopted these towers, spreading them throughout the lands they conquered. The first minarets, which were built in 673 as four-square structures, were inspired by the four watchtowers at the Roman temenos in Damascus.23 Such square structures were erected on the roof at the four corners of the Mosque of ‘AmrË ibn al-‘Ås in al-Fus†å†, the first capital of Egypt (905–69). This hypostyle mosque was founded in 641–2 by the Muslim conqueror of Egypt and was rebuilt and enlarged in 673 during the reign of Mu‘åwiyah ibn AbÈ Sufyån (602–80), the first Umayyad caliph, who added a minaret to each of its four corners.24 Creswell believed that these early minarets were called ßawma‘a as they were likened to the small square cells used by the Christian monks of Syria. Later, the square minarets followed Umayyad expansion into North Africa and Spain. Throughout medieval times, the minaret was regarded as the majestic tower ‘in its lofty height and magnificent formation’.25 During this period, as they came into contact with other tower traditions, Muslims developed various regional minaret types.26 During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a series of about sixty brick minarets were erected in eastern Islamic lands, either attached to a mosque or free-standing. Like the Minaret of Jåm, a number of these towers, such as the SeljËk-era minaret at Dawlatåbåd (1108–09) and the GhaznawÈd minarets of Mas‘Ëd III (r. 1099–1115) and Bahråm Shåh (r. 1117–52) at Ghazna, are regarded by some as free-standing ‘victory towers’.27

The region of Ghuˉr The beginning of Islamisation At the end of the tenth century, GhËr’s population was for the most part non-Muslim.28 One of the most important medieval Persian geographers and cartographers, AbË Is˙åq IbråhÈm b. Mu˙ammad al-FarÈsÈ al-IstakhrÈ (d. 957),29 gives a vivid description of GhËr as an ‘abode of the infidel’ (dår alkufr) and states that GhËr was the largest pagan enclave within the borders of Islam.30 According to the anonymous author of the ÓudËd al-‘ålam (The Limits of the World, c. 982):31 ‘In the days of old this province of GhËr was pagan (kåfir); now actually most of the people are Muslims.’32 Contact with Ghazna, Heråt and other important hubs of the intellectual Muslim world slowly changed the religious complexion of GhËr and its surroundings, which lacked urban life until relatively late. After several decades, three main centres in the valley of HerÈ RËd came into prominence: FÈrËzkËh, the capital of the ShånsåbånÈd dynasty, Jåm, and Chisht.33 The Karråmiyya Central Asia was of great significance as regards the origin of sects in Islam, the appearance of popular movements, the crystallisation of religious trends and attitudes, and different religions and

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philosophical schools – notably Nestorian Christians, Manichaeism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, as well as Sufism and even heterodox sects – with great influence on the masses. Religion and politics were inextricably intertwined.34 The codification of law and the development of Islamic theology gave a new impetus to spiritual life. In early Islamic Persia, some popular trends furthering political objectives in practice were camouflaged by religious masks.35 The theological and legal movement of the Karråmiyya36 was a ‘pietistic and ascetic form of SunnÈ Islam’37 following the thoughts and doctrines of AbË ’Abd Allåh Mu˙ammad b. Karråm (d. 869), referred to as the ‘leader of the ascetics’ (imåm-i zåhedån). The Karråmi doctrine is primarily known through their opponents and the polemical writings of their disputants.38 The Karråmiyya was strongly represented in Afghanistan’s province Khuråsån between the tenth and thirteenth centuries. Their leaders competed for patronage, material resources and spiritual adherents with various representatives of other SunnÈte legal schools, among them the Óanafites39 and Shåfi‘ites.40 The impressive and rapid spread of the Karråmiyya in Iran and Afghanistan during Ibn Karråm’s time, with about 70,000 followers in the east, is clearly described by the geographer Shams al-DÈn AbË ‘Abd-Allåh MoqaddasÈ (d. 990).41 In GhËr the Karråmiyya was primarily supported by the ruler Sebuktegin (d.  997), a Karråmi himself, and his son Ma˙mËd-i GhaznavÈ, followed by the Shansabani sultans Ghiyåth al-DÈn Mu˙ammad b. Såm and Mu‘izz al-DÈn Mu˙ammad b. Såm. The sultans took a keen interest in this movement, making substantial endowments for pious purposes (waqf) to favour the Karråmiyya in the early decades before they ended their relationship in 1199.42 The intellectual central point of the movement was NÈshabËr, followed by Heråt. This relationship is best testified to by a very important four-volume commentary on the Qur’an (tafsÈr) completed in 1189,43 which originated from AbË Bakr ‘Atiq b. Mu˙ammad al-SËråbådi (d. c. 1101), one of the leading figures of NÈshabËr’s Karråmi elite. Commissioned by Sultan Ghiyåth al-DÈn Mu˙ammad b. Såm, the text was written in Persian with the aim of appealing to a wider readership. This fact suggests that the manuscript comprised a Shansabani bequest to a Karråmi foundation. The manuscript bears the signature of a scribe confirming the territorial surname (nisba) ‘NÈshåbËrÈ’ (see Inscription VII).44 In the first decades the Shansabani sultans’ favourable relationship and promotion of the Karråmiyya’s doctrinal position seems to have followed a well-thought-out plan to support it as a catalyst of Islamisation, with Karråmiyya’s effective missionary activity from NÈshåbËr playing a leading role in converting the local population to Islam.45 A great part of the local population acclaimed Karråmism and lived under Karråmi GhËrid rulers. The huge influence of this theological and legal movement with its wide following in Khuråsån and Afghanistan from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries is visible in GhËrid art and architecture, and is most strikingly exemplified in the outstanding programme of religious inscriptions on the Minaret of Jåm.46 Theologically the Karråmiyya were notorious for teaching that a verbal profession of faith (see Inscriptions I–II below) is enough to render one a believer. They vigorously defended their position, which appeared to situate God in place and time (Inscription VI). Their opponents characterised the Karråmiyya’s adherents as anthropomorphists, even accusing them of literalism and support of quasi-Christian beliefs, such as the idea of an embodied Godhead (as in the central Inscription V). The adherents of the sect were emphatic over their tenet that God is ‘body’ (jesm), placing Him either on His ‘throne’ (‘arsh), the greatest of his creations, or in a spatial relation to it, teachings that implied His corporeality. Furthermore, they even accepted that changes might take place in the very being of God as He acted in this world (Inscription VI), a view that undermined God’s immutability.47 Various outstanding figures in Islamic theology and religious science and famous SunnÈ theologians and philosophers were dominant for their vehement rejection of the Karråmis’ allegedly anthropomorphic ideas. Among these opponents were AbË ‘Abd Allåh Mu˙ammad b. ‘Umar b. al-Óusain Imåm Fakhr a-DÈn al RåzÈ (1149/50–1209), an adherent of the Shafi’i law school and the theology of Ash’arism, and AbË Óåmed Mu˙ammad b. Mu˙ammad al-≈hazålÈ (1058–1111).48 This antagonism was the second vantage point for the conversion of large numbers of Christians and Jews to Islam, where, especially in Afghanistan’s province Khuråsån, Karråmi preaching and polemic skill might assist in converting the infidel and largely heathen population to Islam.49 In GhËr, Ghårchistån, Båmiyån and Khuråsån, where the Karråmiyya dominated the religious scene, the teachings of ‘Abd al-Qådir al-GÈlånÈ (d. 1166), a very important figure in the annals of Islamic mysticism (see Inscription VI) who spoke both Arabic and Persian, might be all-important for the rejection of their allegedly anthropomorphic ideas.50 ‘Abd al-Óaqq Mu˙addith DihlawÈ (1892) reports that GÈlånÈ converted large numbers of Christians and Jews to Islam. Moreover, he seems to have

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Figure 5.5 Profile of the Minaret of Jåm. Courtesy of Werner Herberg, 1971.

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