Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture: A Cartography of Boundaries in and of the Field 9781501341854, 9781501341885, 9781501341878

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Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture

Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture A Cartography of Boundaries in and of the Field Edited by Saygin Salgirli

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Selection and editorial matter copyright © Saygin Salgirli, 2021 Individual chapters © their authors, 2021 Saygin Salgirli has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. Cover design by Tjaša Krivec Cover image based on: Portolan chart of the Mediterranean Sea, c. 1340-1360, courtesy of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Washington D.C., USA All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-4185-4 ePDF: 978-1-5013-4187-8 eBook: 978-1-5013-4186-1 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www​.bloomsbury​.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of illustrations List of contributors

vi x

Introduction: Inside/Outside in and of Islamic art and architecture: Towards a cartographical approach  Saygin Salgirli 1 1

In and out of a local idiom: The story of a Siedlung in Yenimahalle, Ankara  Kıvanç Kılınç 33

2

Looking beyond the lens’ veil: Capturing the haram (1840–90)  Jorge Correia 61

3

Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf, whose ghosts must be summoned  Jeff O’Brien 81

4

For close observation: Tilework imagery in the architecture of Qajar Iran  Friederike Voigt 99

5

Potential worlds: On representation and mimesis in late Timurid painting (c. 1470–1500)  Lamia Balafrej 129

6

A collage of projections: Exploring an Awadhi miniature painting’s pictorial space through 3D modelling  Hussein Keshani 157

7

Private and public in vernacular Space: The abandoned Nubian villages of Bîga  Bernadeta Schäfer, Fatma Keshk and Olga Zenker 185

8

Overcoming framing devices: The Ramtā Nāth Vairāgī in Mughal painting  Anjali Duhan Gulia 221

9

The ubiquitous knot: Traces of Hercules in an unknown candleholder from the Museum of Islamic Arts in Bursa  Paschalis Androudis 253

Index

267

Illustrations

Plates 1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8

Courtyard of the Great Mosque, Damascus Detail of the ‘Good Shepherd’ mosaic Wall tile with a depiction of Bahram Gur hunting The Beggar at the Mosque Hussein Keshani et al. Screenshot of one-point perspective view (with projection lines) of digital three-dimensional model interpretation of the pictorial space of A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens with textures Distribution of functions in the village of Bîga Distribution of functions in the village of Balle Emperor Akbar and Prince Khusrau with the Nāth-s

Figures 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4–0.5 0.6 1.1–1.2

1.3 1.4a–c 1.5

Map of Istanbul in Allain Manesson Mallet Map of Constantinople in Christopher Buondelmonti Double folio view of Tabriz in Matrakçı Nasuh Views of the fortresses of Anadolu Hisarı and Rumeli Hisarı Interior with Mother and Child Original floor plan for the three-room, two-storey-type houses in Yenimahalle (1950); row houses in Levent Street built following the original floor plans House no. 36 (Cingi House) and House no. 37 (1952) The evolution of the layouts, Cingi House (1952) View of the mid-rise apartment buildings that replaced the original building stock in Yenimahalle beginning from the 1980s

2 3 9 10 12

36 40 42

46

Illustrations

Floor plans for the new apartment building, second and third floors 1.7 The loss of green and open spaces in between the new apartment buildings 2.1 Row houses, Cairo 2.2 Port of Alexandria 2.3 Citadel of Cairo 2.4 Panorama of Latakia from the south 2.5 Street in Algiers 2.6 Courtyard of the Great Mosque, Damascus 3.1 The Good Shepherd mosaic, National Museum of Beirut 3.2 Preparatory sketch for Object of War by Lamia Joreige, 2013 3.3 Detail of the ‘Good Shepherd’ mosaic 3.4 View of Object of War 3.5 Views of Museum Square 3.6 Objects damaged during the Lebanese War 4.1 Wall tile depicting an equestrian with a falcon 4.2 Wall tile with a couple on horseback in a landscape 4.3 Wall tile with a depiction of Bahram Gur hunting 4.4 Wall tile with a portrait of the Sasanian king Ardeshir I 5.1 Sultan Sanjar and the Old Woman 5.2 Sultan Sanjar and the Old Woman 5.3 The Beggar at the Mosque 5.4 Figure 5.3 with a drawing of the mastar superimposed 5.5 Detail of Figure 5.3 5.6 Album page with study sheet datable to the fifteenth century 5.7 Page of decoupage from Sultan Husayn’s Diwan, c. 1490 5.8 Detail of Figure 5.3 6.1 Faizullah?, A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens 6.2 Hussein Keshani, Perspectival representation of singular parallel projection with tilted ground plane (bird’s-eye view) 6.3 Hussein Keshani, Perspectival representation of singular perspectival projection 6.4 Hussein Keshani. Perspectival representation of multi-parallel projection with multiple viewpoint tilts and yaws 6.5 Hussein Keshani. Perspectival representation of multi-perspectival projection with multiple viewpoint tilts and yaws

vii

1.6

48 49 62 64 69 70 72 73 86 87 88 89 91 92 104 105 106 107 130 131 134 137 140 141 146 148 158 160 160 161

162

viii

6.6 6.7

6.8 6.9 6.10

6.11

6.12 6.13

7.1 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

Illustrations

Hussein Keshani. Perspectival representation of multi-projection with multiple viewpoint tilts and yaws Hussein Keshani et al. Screenshot of digital three-dimensional model interpretation of the pictorial space of A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens Hussein Keshani et al. Plan interpretation of A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens Hussein Keshani et al. Projection lines and pseudo vanishing points for A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens Hussein Keshani et al. Screenshot of one-point perspective view (with projection lines) of digital three-dimensional model interpretation of the pictorial space of A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens with textures Hussein Keshani. Perspectival representation of reflected multi-projection with various viewpoint distances and curved viewpoint and horizon planes Hussein Keshani. Identical trapezoidal prism and curved non-identical trapezoidal prism pictorial space Hussein Keshani et al. Curved non-identical trapezoidal prism pictorial space based on 3D model without page proportion corrections The basin between the two Aswân Dams and the location of the island of Bîga in the northern part of Old Nubia Topographic map of the island Bîga Overview of the village of Bîga Overview of the village of Balle Distribution of solid and loose roofs in the village of Bîga Distribution of solid and loose roofs in the village of Balle Distribution of functions in the village of Bîga Distribution of functions in the village of Balle Degrees of privacy in the village of Bîga Degrees of privacy in the village of Balle The terrace to the north of Balle Northern terrace of the house BG 06 in the village of Bîga Shared subsidiary area between the houses BG 09 and BG 16 in the village of Bîga Garden of the house BA 02 in the village of Balle Two entrance halls of the house BG 04 in the village of Bîga

163

170 171 172

173

173 175

177 186 189 191 192 195 196 200 201 202 203 204 206 207 208 211

Illustrations

7.16 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6

The inner, private courtyard of the house BG 06 in the village of Bîga Emperor Akbar and Prince Khusrau with the Nāth-s The prince embarking on his journey The Prince dressed as Ramtā Vairāgī escaping from the demon The union of Kunvar and Mirigāvatī Bronze candleholder with Hercules Knot Detail of Figure 9.1, the knot of the shaft Detail of Figure 9.1, the base of the candleholder Candleholders with Hercules Knot Detail of Figure 9.4, shaft with Hercules Knot A Byzantine (?) bronze candlestick

ix

211 222 231 235 237 254 255 256 258 258 261

Tables 7.1 Space Functions and Their Distribution in the Houses of Village of Bîga 7.2 Space Functions and Their Distribution in the Houses of Village of Balle

197 199

Contributors Saygin Salgirli is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on audience-based connectivities in the art and architecture of medieval and early modern Mediterranean. Kıvanç Kılınç is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture at Kadir Has University (KHAS), Istanbul. His current research focuses on the transnational connections and their consequences which shaped contemporary social housing practices in Turkey and the Middle East. Jorge Correia  is Associate Professor  at  the School of Architecture/University of Minho, Portugal.  His research focuses on urban narratives between early modern colonial settlements and Islamic built environments. Jeff O’Brien is an independent researcher and sessional lecturer at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on contemporary art in Lebanon and Palestine. Friederike Voigt is Principal Curator, Middle East and South Asia, and Head of Asia section at National Museums Scotland. Her research focuses on the role of crafts in Iranian society and particularly the relationship between craft production and Iran’s encounter of modernity. Lamia Balafrej is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on the arts of the medieval and early modern Islamic world, with a particular interest  in the intersection of labour, materiality and representation. She is the author of  The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting. Hussein Keshani is Associate Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on late Mughal South Asia and approaches to Digital Art History.    Bernadeta Schäfer is Assistant Professor at the Berlin Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on heritage studies in vernacular architecture and urbanism.

Contributors

xi

Fatma Keshk is Archaeologist, Heritage Outreach Expert, Storyteller and Founder/ Managing Director of The Place and the People for Heritage Education Services. Olga Zenker, MSc, is a researcher at the Berlin Institute of Technology with research focus on building archaeology. Anjali Duhan Gulia is postdoctoral Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. She teaches History of Art at the Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, India. Her research focuses on the medieval ascetical traditions of India, the visual culture of the Mughals and folk culture of Haryana. Paschalis Androudis is Assistant Professor in Byzantine Art and Archaeology at the Department of History and Archaeology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece). His research focuses on Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman art, archaeology and architecture.

xii

Introduction Inside/Outside in and of Islamic art and architecture: Towards a cartographical approach Saygin Salgirli

There is a map of Istanbul, published in 1686, in the fourth volume of Allain Manesson Mallet’s Description de l’univers, a five-volume account of the geography, customs and religions of the ancient and the modern world (Figure 0.1).1 The south-north-oriented map anticipates a viewing experience starting at the Golden Gate, the Byzantine ceremonial portal marked with the star-shaped Fortress of the Seven Towers, which Mehmed II commissioned shortly after the Ottoman conquest as part of his grand design for the imperial capital.2 The viewer’s gaze then moves through the city, its boundaries clearly defined with thick strokes indicating the city walls. On the east, as the Marmara Sea subtly joins the Bosphorus Canal, four galleons sail northward to the tip of the peninsula. On the west, a network of roads connects to the various gates of the city. The map ends in the Genoese colony of Galata and the vineyards of Pera across the Golden Horn, where more ships are sailing in and out of the natural harbour. For a seventeenth-century map of Istanbul, Allain Manesson Mallet’s choice of a south-north orientation is unusual, since from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, majority of the artists preferred Giovanni Andrea Valvassori’s eastwest orientation (before 1550), overlooking the city from the shores of Scutari in Asia. Manesson Mallet’s source was most probably the Constantinople map in Christopher Buondelmonti’s Liber Insularum Archipelagi, completed in 1420 as a manuscript, and copied and published in various editions throughout the later fifteenth century. He must have relied on the Dusseldorf copy of the Insularum, or a print based on that, since just as in the Dusseldorf map, he marks the Langa Gardens south of the Kadirga Harbor with fortifications, a detail that does not exist in other editions (Figure 0.2).3 As Ian R. Manners observes, the Dusseldorf map depicts a densely built and lively Istanbul.4 What brings the city

2

Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture

Figure 0.1 Map of Istanbul in Allain Manesson Mallet, Description de l'univers, contenant les differents systemes du monde, les cartes generales & particulares de la geographie ancienne & moderne, tome quatriéme. Paris: Jean David Zunner, 1683, 151, Fig. 65, BnF.

to life are not the painstakingly detailed and quantitatively tiring depictions of almost every single landmark or the Disneyesque crowding up of the Genoese colony of Pera, culminating in the monumental Galata Tower. They are instead the details: intercity roads, suggesting movement of people; waterfront houses deep into the Golden Horn and on the north-eastern shores of the Bosphorus; sailing and moored boats for local rather than long-distance travel; berths and jetties along the shores; cannonballs flying from the facing Bosphorus fortresses of Anadolu Hisarı and Rumeli Hisarı; and a cemetery. This is a city of living, commuting, fighting and dying people. This is a map that extends beyond its

Introduction

3

Figure 0.2  Map of Constantinople in Christopher Buondelmonti, Liber Insularum Archipelagi, 54r, MS-G-13, The ULB Düsseldorf.

frame, beyond its representational limits with expectations, anxieties, hopes and fears intrinsic to life and its experience – an extension that blurs rigid separations between inside and outside. As the map opens up to that which is external to it, the humdrum of everyday life, it simultaneously invites that who is external to Istanbul, the European viewer, to observe or even participate in the very same mundane activities. Manesson Mallet provides a strikingly different vision of Istanbul. His is the map of a void, which emerges neither from the reduction of the monuments down to a handful few nor of Galata down to its fortifications, but rather from the complete disappearance of indications of life: no more intercity roads, no more boats sailing from jetty to jetty, no more houses, no more cemeteries. . . . The only life that is suggested in the map is a transient one, lived aboard the galleons or along the roads connecting to the city gates. It is a life experienced

4

Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture

outside the city, while inside, Istanbul no longer pulsates. With its thickly stroked fortifications, the map becomes a tracing that seems to reinforce the separation between inside and outside, between image and life, between the viewer and the city. Yet, although the map turns into a void through the extraction of life, it fills that emptiness in a manner which complicates any strict separation between inside and outside. Above the vineyards of Pera are two images, hanging like tapestries loosely attached to a wall. The one on the left (or on the west) depicts what appears to be the porch and the gallery of a house, closed on two sides. The gallery rests on two columns, and a parapet with pigeon-like openings separates the two floors. Three tiny windows on the gallery and an equally small door flanked by two more windows on the porch are the only connections between the interior and the exterior of the house. The text above the image reads: face d'une maison Turque du coté du jardin. On the right (or on the east) is the opposite façade of the same house, as expectedly facing the street: face d'une maison Turque du coté de la rue. The barrel-vaulted building looks more like a caravan than a house, with two small windows opening to the street and a lateral one above its arched portal. The suggestion is obvious. The Turkish house functions as a barricade between the public life of the street and the private life of the interior, while its courtyard hides, uncannily like a theatre stage, a world completely unfathomable from the outside. The two images of the Turkish house occupy an ambiguous position. Their visual juxtaposition onto the map in the guise of hanging tapestries clearly indicates their externality. They are meant to appear as addendum to what a map should normally include. At the same time, as representations of a house, they are extracted from the empty space of the map, in a manner resembling the appearance of people in local costumes in the margins of early modern city views, most notably in Georg Braun’s Civitates orbis terrarum, published between 1572 and 1617.5 Costumes make up an important part of Manesson Mallet’s work as well, where they appear as separate full-page portraits instead of marginalia to the maps. However, among the three city maps in the fourth volume devoted to Europe, namely Moscow, Rome and Istanbul, only the latter incorporates vernacular domestic architecture as a curiosity. More importantly, the visual representation of the Turkish house significantly departs from the accompanying text, which talks about the varying heights of the houses, praises their colourful decorations and complains that the locals are unable to enjoy such a beautiful sight because of the narrow and winding streets.6 Just as the hanging images of the Turkish house, the viewer/reader is

Introduction

5

left pendent, between text and image, description and representation, mimesis and fantasy. Where do these maps take us, with their individual complications of inside/ outside relationships, of what is external and internal to a visual representation? The Dusseldorf map opens itself up to everyday life that is hardly the primary concern of a map, while Manesson Mallet’s version closes on itself and turns into the tracing of a void produced by removing any indication of urban life. At the same time, it extracts from its internal and empty space images of a Turkish house, hangs them as elements external to the map but internal to the city and visualizes an architectural opposition between private and public, inside and outside. Moreover, this opposition directly contradicts the accompanying text, hence introducing another layer of the relationship between inside and outside, namely the one between word and image. Finally, as maps drawn by European artists, for a European audience, following a convention that was once popular in Europe, they provide an outsider’s view of the Ottoman capital. As such, are we to consider them, especially Manesson Mallet’s map, as early examples of the Orientalist gaze, hence potentially exclusionary? These series of oppositions pertain to a fundamental art historical problematique. Between the latter halves of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the operative principle in the constitution of art history into an academic discipline was a dualist one. Whether in the Kantian and Fichtean thesis-antithesis-synthesis movement or in the Hegelian dialectical movement through sublation (Aufhebung), progress in thought and time always operated in a system of dualities. Whether negation required an other, as in Hegel, or operated through the negation of the self, as in the Ich-heit and Nicht-Ich tension in Fichte, oppositional movement was the main principle.7 Consequently, art history was coded into a discipline of vertical hierarchies of order and horizontal hierarchies of causality and progress. Separations between things in terms of what is and is not art, between styles, regions and periods, were determined through normative oppositions. Meanwhile, architecture as a practice was already working according to dualistic relationships (void vs solid, figure vs ground, etc.), which allowed its smooth incorporation into art history as a subject matter. In the earlier twentieth century, the still young discipline crossed paths with Oriental studies, and out of that union, Islamic art history emerged as one of the fields where dualisms are most symptomatically operative. Within art history’s vertical hierarchies of order, there was already a distinction between ornament and painting. However, when the same distinction was carried into the field of

6

Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture

Islamic art, their positions within the hierarchy switched. It was the ornament that was quintessentially Islamic, not painting, because in its application in the Islamic world painting was simply not painting. It lacked mimesis, it lacked depth and perspective, it lacked the human form and it lacked ubiquitous public presence. Therefore, while the constitutive oppositions and vertical hierarchies of art history were carried onto the field of Islamic art as similarly constitutive elements, their reconfigurations established Islamic art history as an opposition to and a negation of the European norm.8 Simultaneously, Islamic art was also situated along a horizontal hierarchy of progress, with its lifespan abruptly ending at the end of the eighteenth century, which further reinforced its externality to the European norm. It was neither compatible with modernity, perceived as a particularly European/Western phenomenon, nor capable of being the product of its own modernity.9 As Nasser Rabbat has proposed, any critical intervention into Islamic art history needs to include an equally critical intervention into the discipline of art history itself.10 The present volume takes the inside/outside dichotomy as a paradigm for the foundational contours of art history and investigates non-dichotomous ways of articulating inside/outside relationships in Islamic art and architecture. The primary concern of the volume is not to argue that separations and distinctions, insides and outsides did not exist in Islamic art and architecture, but to propose alternative ways of approaching them, even when they existed. Therefore, rather than constituting itself as an opposition, the volume proposes the smoothing of the field through a non-dichotomous perspective. In addition to an exploration of possibilities within Islamic art history, one merit of this proposal is the realignment of the field’s relation to other art histories, European and non-European alike. Connectedly, the current volume also questions the inside and outside of Islamic art, where its boundaries extend in time and space, and where its disciplinary limits reach. It has no claim to providing an extensive, all-encompassing collection of essays, but it presents its contents in an unconventional structure that fits its purpose. Rather than reasserting the temporal, geographical and medium-based divisions of the field in its structure, the volume follows a line of thought that is but one among many possible ways of relating the collected essays to one another. This is where the proposed cartographical approach enters the picture. Its concern is not limited to the mapping of the field in the manner suggested by Avinoam Shalem.11 Pushing Shalem’s suggestion even further, the mapping proposed in this volume refers to a continuous folding and unfolding of the field, itself perceived and treated as a map. In that sense, just as the inside/outside dichotomy operates as

Introduction

7

a paradigm for the foundational parameters of the discipline of art history, the maps discussed here operate as paradigms for the proposed methodology of the volume.12

Maps to mapping A map, broadly defined to include plans and city views, is always an open structure. Regardless of how limited its representational space may be, it can always be pulled in multiple directions, folded, unfolded and extended beyond its frame.13 However, any transformative folding and unfolding must begin with a principle that rejects all a priori conceptions about what the map should represent. Only then can the folds open to new assemblages in a continuous process. Consider, for instance, the medieval and early modern portolan charts. Their usefulness for navigation, hence their functions as manuals, has long been debated. Yet, it is very likely that they were never intended for practical use. Although they were possibly grounded in navigational experiences and displayed relative accuracy, portolan charts were cultural and aesthetic artefacts, reflecting a maritime and mercantile vision of the world, intended to be circulated and consumed as commodities.14 The points on the charts did not correspond to points of origin but to the intersections of multidirectional vectors of mobility, so central to that mercantile vision. In other words, rather than displaying the limits of navigation in a demarcated geography, they idealized unrestricted movement in an expansive space. Now, consider the seemingly opposite case of practically useless maps: city plans and views, such as the ones discussed earlier, or their sixteenth-century Ottoman counterparts, especially the ones from Matrakçı Nasuh’s workshop. Between 1537 and 1564, overlapping with the long reign of Suleyman I (r. 1520–66), Matrakçı Nasuh’s workshop produced a remarkably rich spectrum of city views spread over four manuscripts, each concerned with episodes from the history of the Ottoman dynasty with a particular focus on conquests. As Katherine A. Ebel convincingly argues, Nasuh’s city views, some highly schematic, others with recognizable topographic features, moved in all directions across time and space (and medium), producing both an imperial vision and the map of an idealized Ottoman geography with its ever-fluid frontiers that could be continuously expanded.15 Moreover, this multi-volume assemblage of an overlap between imperial vision and idealized geography was not the product of sultanic patronage. It was produced independently, in order to be presented

8

Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture

to Suleyman I, undoubtedly to win further favours from him.16 The intention was not to represent the sultan’s vision as such but to present the sultan with a vision. Therefore, although Nasuh’s city views were not produced for a market, as independent initiatives they were analogous to their commercially produced European equivalents. As Çiğdem Kafesçioğlu notes, a similar analogous relationship also existed in their respective representational strategies. Whether through a bird’s-eye view, or through a perspectival one, they all presented the observer with an all-encompassing and totalizing view of the urban fabric.17 Given the intended purpose of portolan charts to be circulated and consumed as aesthetic artefacts, themselves idealizing unrestricted movement in an expansive space, how can we explain their circulation around the Mediterranean and their appearance in the Ottoman Empire by looking for a source of origin, and constructing a linear narrative of influence and adaptation?18 In other words, how can we remain within a methodological state of immobility that constructs static interiors and exteriors (Ottoman vs European, or vice versa), while our very object of analysis, on the one hand, wants to move itself and, on the other, visually un-bounds movement? Similarly, does not the analogous relationship between Ottoman and European city views already embody the possibilities of a different methodology?19 Thinking through analogies instead of oppositions, it becomes possible to dissolve all previous universals that functioned as boundary markers. Neither the binary of the market-oriented independent artist versus the palace servant, nor that of the flattened bird’s-eye view versus single-point perspective can maintain their solidity anymore. A special case that highlights the importance of this point is a second manuscript that accompanies Matrakçı Nasuh’s Histories of the House of Osman (Tevârih-i Âl-i Osman, c. 1555) at the Sächsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden.20 In this incomplete volume, devoid of any text other than city names, the bird’s-eye views in all other works from Nasuh’s workshop (Figure 0.3) leave their places to perspectival depictions of primarily port cities and citadels, including the fortresses of Anadolu Hisarı and Rumeli Hisarı (Figures 0.4 and 0.5). Any explanation of this phenomenon must begin with the removal of all universals that preconceive what an Ottoman/Islamic painting should look like and how or for what purposes it should have been produced. Otherwise, the discussion remains within the parameters of a static comparison of insides and outsides that demarcate the limits of Islamic art and European art, while the images themselves are not on any static location but on a vector that defies categorizations. Whether the artist was from Nasuh’s workshop or a European collaborator, whether the intended audience was still Suleyman I or a potential

Introduction

9

Figure 0.3  Double folio view of Tabriz in Matrakçı Nasuh, Histories of the House of Osman (Tevârih-i Âl-i Osman), 197b–198a, Mscr.Dresd.Eb.391, Die Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden.

European patron, the images refuse to be confined by normative categories. They want to be set free. Therefore, the principle of a cartographic approach is the dissolution of universals. As the universals disappear, boundaries evaporate and a plane of possibilities opens up, which like the maps themselves can be folded and unfolded and stretched to multiple directions. Seemingly separate entities (maps, paintings, buildings, etc.) can come together, creating a new assemblage that encourages us to conceptually reconsider every detail about the previously distinct entity. Each new assemblage can be continuously folded and unfolded, as long as every step begins with the recognition and removal of any universal or transcendental that predetermines and limits movement. Through this process, it becomes possible to fold the hanging house in Manneson Mallet’s map back into the empty space of the city and link it to the image of Istanbul produced in Nakkaş Osman’s workshop and inserted into Lokman’s Book of Accomplishments (Hünernâme, begun 1580), where houses of various sizes depicted from multiple vantage points crowd the cityscape with a dizzying density.21 Mallet’s map no longer

10

Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture

Figures 0.4 and 0.5  Views of the fortresses of Anadolu Hisarı and Rumeli Hisarı, 11a– 11b, Mscr.Dresd.Eb.391, Bd.2, Die Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden.

remains an enclosed tracing, and Nakkaş Osman’s depiction no longer remains an isolated instance. The two images meet on the plane of possibilities as distinct and not opposing representations of the vernacular with their individual but nonetheless comparable concerns. Similarly, the cemeteries, jetties and diverse types of boats that animate Nakkaş Osman’s panorama can be connected to the Dusseldorf copy of Buondelmonti’s map. The latter too can be unfolded in multiple directions: one leading to the Dresden manuscript’s depictions of the fortresses of Anadolu Hisarı and Rumeli Hisarı, equally dominated by canons, albeit silent ones; the other leading to Matrakçı Nasuh’s bird’s-eye view of Istanbul that opens his Compendium of Stages (Mecmu’a-i Menâzil, 1537), which is itself on a vector that moves with Buondelmonti in one direction and Valvassori and Braun in the other, or even, as J. M. Rogers suggests, with Alessandro Strozzi’s drawing of Rome (1474).22 All this discussion may appear unconvincingly abstract, but let me demonstrate its concrete grounding with one last case before concluding with the introduction. What really happens when we fold Manneson Mallets’s Turkish house back into the map and link it to Nakkaş Osman’s depiction of Istanbul? We find ourselves in the streets of Istanbul, within a time frame covering the late

Introduction

11

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The second question that will make this still abstract premise concrete is: what would pedestrians have seen in the streets of Istanbul within the said time frame, whether denizens of Istanbul or travellers? Apart from a city unusually crowded for its time, and its architecture ranging from modest to monumental, they would have also encountered people, whom Metin And once termed as ‘bazaar painters’: artists working in workshops spread around Istanbul, who painted mostly by commission and primarily produced costume books for European travellers.23 In his first publication on the ‘bazaar painters’, whose practices began in the late sixteenth century but proliferated in the seventeenth century, And had a somewhat romanticized view, and he strictly separated the ‘bazaar painters’ from their counterparts in imperial workshops. Over the years, he nuanced his views, and today we have a much more complex picture.24 The most recent studies on ‘bazaar painters’ and costume books, despite differences of opinion, reveal a world of images in which all normative categories and strict separations disappear.25 The imperial atelier versus the independent workshop, the European patron versus the local patron, the dragoman artist versus the ‘Turkish’ artist, the text versus the image, the past versus the contemporary all melt into a dynamically unfolding multimedial universe, akin to how Ahmet Ersoy defined the visual culture of the late Ottoman Empire.26 Compare, for instance, the scene on folio 32r of the Cicogna Codex (c. 1660), entitled ‘An Open Caravanserai’, with the intimate interior scene in the Paris Mecmua (c. 1650) of a woman cooking before an open hearth and her child hugging her from behind (Figure 0.6).27 The first manuscript was produced within a Venetian-Ottoman diplomatic context and for a Venetian audience, the second for an Istanbulite patron and a local audience.28 Both images significantly depart from the conventions of the imperial manuscripts of the seventeenth century, and although they represent completely different themes, both employ the same perspectival/visual strategy. If we expand this network to include the Peter Mundy Costume Book (c. 1618) and the Rålamb Costume Book (1657–58), both produced in Istanbul, we find ourselves in an expansive visual universe linking Istanbul to Venice, Sweden and England, in which people from different backgrounds and of different concerns were contemplating images speaking the same visual language, albeit for different purposes. This is the plane of possibilities where worlds meet: Manneson Mallet’s map, which was in communication with costume books, European and Ottoman alike, and Nakkaş Osman’s view of Istanbul, which was in communication with the ‘bazaar paintings’, come together on a non-hierarchical, non-dichotomous plane that can be folded and unfolded in all directions.

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Figure 0.6  Interior with Mother and Child, from the Mecmua, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Turc 140, fol. 19v, BnF.

Therefore, the practice proposed here is not the construction of a linear genealogy of cartography, or of art and architecture, which can only establish new boundaries and new limits. It is the cartographical exploration of a field through a continuous process of the empirical and conceptual removal of universals. A cartographical approach does not map a terrain in order to define its limits and stabilize its markers. It maps new terrains and moves into new landscapes, and wherever a borderline (a universal, a transcendental) seems to appear, it takes that line, bends it, breaks it and pulls it to other directions. Therefore, problematization of inside/outside relationships (as the paradigm for the foundational parameters of art history) neither determines a cartographical

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methodology nor results from it. It is endemic to the practice itself. Universals (or transcendentals) are structurally essential to oppositional thinking, and their dissolution opens up the plane of possibilities on which the cartographical methodology operates; and since every movement in any given direction on the plane begins with the removal of universals, a cartographical methodology cannot help but think outside binaries.

Structure and content The present volume, like all edited collections, is composed of contributions with their individual methodologies and distinct questions. In that respect, it is neither appropriate nor just to claim that each and every one of them display the exact application of the cartographical methodology proposed here. Similarly, it is insufficient to look for the cartographical dimension of the book solely in the thematic, geographical and temporal spectrum of the contributions. Important though it may be, such a spectrum does not alone define a cartographical approach.29 Instead, the book becomes cartographical through the multitude of relationships that the reader can establish between the articles. Each contribution problematizes inside/outside relationships in its own manner, according to its own subject matter, and hence participates in a collaborative effort of removing one or another universal. This introduction concludes with a short summary of each contribution, presented according to my line of thought that connects them. But, as I have mentioned earlier, this is just one among many possible ways of mapping the essays. The readers are strongly encouraged to remap, fold and unfold the book according to their desires, which may even produce a volume that is less about inside/outside relationships in Islamic art and more about an issue, a theme that was unforeseeable to me at this moment.

A sofa in Ankara In his contribution, Kıvanç Kılınç discusses the adaptation of a modernist architectural idiom, the Siedlung, in a low- and middle-income housing project in Ankara, Turkey. The Yenimahalle (New Neighbourhood) project began in 1948, and it was largely modelled after Bruno Taut and Ernst May’s mass-housing projects in early-twentieth-century Berlin and Frankfurt. However, almost from the outset, the users began to intervene in the project, not only by minor alterations but also through their employment of local builders to come up with

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alternative plans, which significantly transformed the nuclear family–oriented Siedlung plan to layouts based on late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ottoman houses. The halls were no longer small transition and circulation spaces but large living quarters. As Kılınç argues, such alterations cannot simply be seen as proofs of a preference for the traditional over the modern or for the private over the public. Instead, in order to understand the motivation behind them, we need to set aside all our preconceptions about what the traditional, the modern, the private and the public are, including the binary separations between them.30 In other words, Kılınç’s chapter proposes us to leave Manneson Mallet’s hanging house in perpetual suspension as an early modern analogy on domestic architecture, and not as a timeless universal of Islamic architecture that can be continuously reproduced.

A camera in Cairo The articulation of Islamic architecture as a set of oppositions between interior and exterior, public and private, though no longer a dominant discourse was the product of Orientalist scholarship.31 Not the scholarly but the popular aspect of Orientalism is Jorge Correia’s focus in this volume, specifically non-staged snapshots taken by European photographers working in Morocco, Egypt and Palestine in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Along with paintings and travel accounts, European photographic representations of the Islamic world operated in a context when an ever-increasing demand for exotic commodities overlapped with concerns for scientific accuracy.32 Whether the holder of the camera, the brush or the pen was an insider or an outsider, representation always oscillated between Oriental fantasies and documentary obsessions.33 The coexistence of these two concerns meant that in a given mode of representation, there was always an element that would appear to be external, depending on which normative position one takes: too much documentary precision for Orientalism, too much Oriental fantasy for documentary factuality. Yet, this was precisely how Orientalism operated. It relied on the externalization of a homogenized East through an oppositional dualism, but the means of externalization already embodied the contradictions that challenged dualism. The East, constructed as an outside through fantasy, was already an inside through mimetic accuracy. In that vein, instead of superficially dismissing European photography in the Islamic world as Orientalist, Correia argues that the emergent technology of photography provided an outsider’s gaze that made visible a multitude of insides, from urban topographies and architectural details to interior spaces.

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A hole in Beirut Chapter 3 by Jeff O’Brien introduces another gaze, that of a sniper through a whole drilled into the Good Shepherd Mosaic in the garden of the National Museum of Beirut, overlooking the line that separated Beirut into opposing insides and outsides during the Lebanese Civil War(s). In 2013, Lebanese artist Lamia Joreige replaced the sniper’s gaze with a 180-degree camera as part of her work entitled Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf. Providing the audience with a gaze that was once the harbinger of death, she destabilized all static conceptualizations of subjectivity. Joreige’s work resonates between Avinoam Shalem’s discussion of the visible/the manifested (zāhir) and the hidden/the invisible (bātin) in Islamic philosophy/art and Jalal Toufic’s call to ‘not to remember, without forgetting’, which is not just the opening chapter of Undeserving Lebanon but a theme that runs across the book.34 Through the eye of the 180-degree camera, the audience sees nothing but the mundane. It is the once visible but now the invisible, the once present but now the absent, that triggers the reflex of not forgetting without remembering, because for most, what was once there is not a memory but history, and history can neither be remembered nor forgotten. Focusing on such questions of visibility and invisibility (both in Joreige’s works and in the National Museum of Beirut), presence and absence, remembering and forgetting, O’Brien brings a novel interpretation to inside/outside relations, as he puts under scrutiny any subject position that claims to have the ultimate say on what constitutes an inside and an outside.

A tile in Isfahan From the missing tiles of the Good Shepherd Mosaic, Friederike Voigt takes us to another world of tiles. It is almost impossible to corroborate Manesson Mallet’s description of Turkish houses as painted in many different colours, since frequent fires (one of the most devastating in 1660) destroyed the seventeenthcentury domestic buildings of Istanbul.35 However, in Qajar Iran, travellers and photographers would have seen equally colourful exterior decorations, still intact. Executed on tiles, they were not limited to floral motifs and included paintings with themes ranging from Iranian history to those based on photography and European lithographs. Moreover, they could be seen on public buildings and religious complexes as well as on private residences. Although figurative public art in Iran predated the Qajar period by roughly seven centuries, the eighteenth century saw a significant change in content, placement and intent.36 In her article,

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Voigt approaches this change as a process of double transfer: the incorporation of new themes and subjects into an old medium of representation, by way of which images that were previously for private enjoyment moved to the public realm. Voigt argues that with the externalization of the once-internal, the images directly participated in the religious and political debates of the time, and hence inside(s) and outside(s) became no longer distinguishable.

A beggar in Herat The appearance of private images in the public realm with concerns beyond mere beautification encourages one to ponder on the implications of the opposite: the appearance of figures from everyday life in manuscripts that were produced for private, courtly enjoyment. This is precisely the question that Lamia Balafrej topples with in her discussion of late fifteenth-century Timurid manuscripts, where illustrations deviated from their textual sources by including stock figures from everyday life. Balafrej is in dialogue with multiple scholars. On the one hand, she is implicitly talking to Michael Camille and his argument that marginalia figures in medieval European manuscripts were not external elements but operated in tandem with the core images and reinforced their discourses.37 On the other hand, she is participating in a more recent debate, concerning the presence of the figure of the third not as a means to reinforce the binary structure of the Western episteme but as a line that breaks away from dualistic semantics.38 In her interpretation of such images, Balafrej argues that the inclusion of extra-textual figures transformed book painting from the mere illustration of texts to a metapicture, embodying discourses of mimesis and world creation, which were not concerned with the representation of the visible and experienced world but with the presentation of potential worlds based on ideal forms and concepts.39 Hence, she problematizes a specific articulation of mimesis that for decades guarded the threshold that demarcated the externality of Islamic art.

A garden in Awadh If the figure of the third is a vector that liberates us from binary semantics and normative conceptualizations of mimesis, then the presence of the fourth in the image, not figures from everyday life but the viewers of the image themselves, is the step that moves the Islamic image from an aggregate of multiples to a multiplicity, thus revealing its potentiality for being folded and unfolded in all dimensions.

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Hussein Keshani demonstrates this by reproducing Awadhi paintings in computer-generated 3D images. His contemporary technological manipulation invites us into the palace-garden paintings of the eighteenth-century Mughal artist Faizullah. Instead of the anticipated gaze of the eighteenth-century viewer, Keshani introduces us to a multiplicity of gazes inside the painting. As shortly mentioned earlier, gaze has not only been a scholarly discussion in Islamic art history but was also a fundamental component of medieval Islamic philosophy.40 However, Keshani provides a whole new perspective, both about the gaze and on the possibilities of potential gazes. By complicating inside/outside relations in the medium of painting, and between the medium and its audiences, Keshani exposes how contemporary technology can widen our analytical lenses and allow new insights that can figuratively open up a painting and encourage the viewer to step into a new world, where distinctions between the visual and the spatial disappear.

A courtyard in Bigge Faizullah’s paintings were most probably fantasy paintings of palace-gardens and courtyards that never existed, but even if they did at some point in time in one form or another, they no longer do. The next contribution in the volume by Bernadeta Schäfer, Fatma Keshk and Olga Zenker takes us to courtyards and houses that were once occupied and used but have been long abandoned and are in the brink of being forgotten without being remembered. The authors provide a study of two Nubian villages on the Island of Bigge in Egypt, which were built after 1912 and abandoned in the 1980s. Combining architectural, anthropological and archaeological perspectives, they demonstrate that even in these small and isolated settlements, architecture showed great variety in articulating interior/exterior and public/private relationships. With their enclosed courtyard-houses and open terraced structures, displaying multiple gradations of spatial intimacy, the Bigge villages make it impossible to argue for a homogenous vernacular tradition in Islamic architecture or for a universal spatialization of inside/outside relationships in the Islamic world. In that respect, Schäfer, Keshk and Zenker are bringing into Islamic architecture what Bernard Tschumi had defined as ‘concept-form’ with regard to his own practice: [I]t is a concept that generates a form, or a form that generates a concept, in such a way that one reinforces the other. . . . there is no architecture without something that happens in it. Once an abstract form-concept is built, it is confronted with

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To translate, there is no Islamic architecture without something that happens in it. Once it is built and is in use, it is always unstable and changing, and cannot be contained within the parameters of an abstract norm of Islamic architecture.

A yogi in Allahabad The ‘concept-form’ relates to a specifically architectural problem, but it easily slips out of its confines (as it should) and finds new homes in all practices where there are commensurate relationships between concept(s) and form(s), including but not limited to visual arts. Mughal painting is one such practice (or a set of practices) that seems to be particularly susceptible to a reconsideration through a painterly understanding of the ‘concept-form’. Being assemblages symptomatic of (and not necessarily representations of) their complex social, political and cultural milieus, Mughal paintings have always occupied an ambiguous position in the scholarship, neither fully inside nor fully outside Islamic art. In order to make sense of their visual complexity, art historians have relied on terms ranging from influence and cross-culturality to hybridity.42 Broken into their individual components, paintings became sites for a detective game to trace the source and origin of each form, so as to reach an explanatory concept about their meanings, rather than being perceived as concept-forms that defy shorthand categorizations. Anjali Duhan Gulia takes that cue and discusses the appearance of Nāth yogis in seventeenth-century Mughal paintings. Often perceived to be outsiders to the Mughal court and to the Muslim community, they appeared both in the main pictorial narratives and on the surrounding frames, hence occupying a visual position that overlapped with their fluid presence in Mughal society. Instead of building her argument on a Hindu-Muslim, or elitecommoner, dichotomy, Gulia provides a nuanced account of how the inclusion of these seemingly outsider figures functioned within their historical context, especially in relation to the rivalry between Agra and Allahabad.43

A Hercules in Bursa The volume concludes with a short discussion that transports us to a different time and a different geography, where scholarship has equally focused on hybridity and cross-culturality, albeit with a different emphasis. Scholars working on

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fourteenth-century Ottoman architecture have extensively scrutinized ByzantineOttoman interchange, elaborating its nuances and multiple dimensions.44 They have demonstrated that neither hybrid nor cross-cultural are adequate enough concepts in understanding the complexities of architectural production in fourteenth-century Anatolia. However, a similar wealth and depth of research unfortunately does not exist on the material culture of the Ottoman Beylik and its connections with the Byzantine world, particularly when compared to studies on the arts of the Seljuq period.45 Such lacuna partially results from the fact that production of luxury objects significantly drops in the fourteenth century. But it also results from the difficulty of identifying and contextualizing portable objects whose sites of production and use have long disappeared and whose modes of circulation are almost impossible to determine. Paschalis Androudis introduces us to one such object that has so far received no scholarly attention. Currently exhibited at the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Bursa, this is a candelabra with a Hercules Knot, probably produced in a Byzantine workshop but found its way to a Sufi convent. Situating the object in the social and cultural milieu of late medieval Anatolia and the Eastern Mediterranean, Androudis maps out how a protective symbol of the antiquity, popularized once again in post-eleventh-century Byzantine art, might have become part of the decorative scheme of mosques and Sufi convents in the Ottoman Beylik.

Notes 1 Allain Manesson Mallet, Description de l'univers, contenant les differents systemes du monde, les cartes generales & particulares de la geographie ancienne & moderne, tome quatriéme (Paris: Jean David Zunner, 1686), Fig. 65. 2 For Mehmed II’s post-conquest building projects, see Çiğdem Kafesçioğlu, Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Park, 2009). 3 Çiğdem Kafesçioğlu, ‘Viewing, Walking, Mapping Istanbul, ca. 1580’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 56. Bd., H. 1, Littoral and Liminal Spaces: The Early Modern Mediterranean and Beyond (2014): 22, 23 and note 14. 4 Ian R. Manners, ‘Constructing the Image of a City: The Representation of Constantinople in Christopher Buondelmonti’s Liber Insularum Archipelagi’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87, no. 1 (March 1997): 72–102. 5 Georg Braun, ed., Civitates orbis terrarium (Antwerpiae: Apud Aegidium Radeum, 1572–1617).

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6 Mallet, Description de l'univers, contenant les differents systemes du monde, 82, 83. 7 On this and more, see Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 15–60. 8 See, for instance, Gülru Necipoğlu, ‘The Concept of Islamic Art: Inherited Discourses and New Approaches’, in Benoît Junod et al. (eds), Islamic Art and the Museum: Approaches to Art and Archeology of the Muslim World in the Twenty-First Century (Lebanon: SAQI, 2012), 57–75. On the problem of applying specifically European norms and concepts to Islamic art, see Christiane Gruber, ‘Questioning the “Classical” in Persian Painting: Models and Problems of Definition’, Journal of Art Historiography 6 (1 June 2012): 1–25. 9 As proponents of the 1800 termination, see Sheila S. Blair, and Jonathan M. Bloom, ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field’, The Art Bulletin 85, no. 1 (2003): 152–84. For critiques, see Necipoğlu ‘The Concept of Islamic Art’; Finbarr Barry Flood, ‘From the Prophet to Postmodernism? New World Orders and the End of Islamic Art’, in Elizabeth C. Mansfield (ed.), Making Art History: A Changing Discipline and Its Institutions (New York: Routledge, 2007), 31–53; and Mercedes Volait, ‘L’art islamique et le problème de périodisation’, Perspective: La revue de l’INHA 4 (2008): 783–6. For a discussion of the Westernization/Modernization debate in the Ottoman context, see Shirine Hamadeh, ‘Ottoman Expressions of Early Modernity and the “Inevitable” Question of Westernization’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 63, no. 1 (2004): 32–51; Shirine Hamadeh, The City’s Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008); and Ahmet Ersoy, Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary: Reconfiguring the Architectural Past in a Modernizing Empire (New York: Ashgate, 2015). 10 Nasser Rabbat, ‘Islamic Art at a Crossroads?’ in Benoît Junod et al. (eds), Islamic Art and the Museum: Approaches to Art and Archeology of the Muslim World in the Twenty-First Century (Lebanon: SAQI, 2012), 76–83. 11 Avinoam Shalem, ‘What Do We Mean When We Say “Islamic Art”? A Plea for a Critical Rewriting of the History of the Arts of Islam’, Journal of Art Historiography 6 (June 2012). 12 For the specific use of paradigm here, see Giorgio Agamben, ‘What Is a Paradigm?’ in Girogio Agamben, The Signature of All Things: On Method (New York: Zone Books, 2009), 9–32. 13 For the conceptual background of the following discussion, see Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987/2004), 3–26 and 478–82; and Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 35–60. 14 Kevin E. Sheehan, The Functions of Portolan Maps: An Evaluation of the Utility of Manuscript Nautical Cartography from the Thirteenth through Sixteenth

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17

18

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20 21 22 23

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Centuries (PhD Dissertation, Durham University, 2014); Patrick Gautier Dalché, ‘Cartes marines, représentation du littoral et perception de l’espace au moyen âge. Un état de la question’, in Jean-Marie Martin (ed.), Castrum 7: Zones côtières littorales dans le monde méditerranéen au moyen âge: défense, peuplement, mise en valeur. Actes du colloque international organisé par l’Ecole française de Rome et la Casa de Velázquez (Rome: École française de Rome and Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2001), 9–32; and Piero Falchetta, ‘The Use of Portolan Charts in European Navigation during the Middle Ages’, in Ingrid Baumgärtner and Hartmut Kugler (eds), Europa im Weltbild des Mittelalters: Kartographische Konzepte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008), 269–76. Katherine A. Ebel, ‘Representations of the Frontier in Ottoman Town Views of the Sixteenth Century’, Imago Mundi 60, no. 1 (2008): 1–22. J. M. Rogers, ‘Itineraries and Town Views in Ottoman Histories’, in J. B. Harley and David Woodward (eds), The History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 228–55. Çiğdem Kafesçioğlu, ‘Ottoman Images of Istanbul in the Age of Empire: The View from Heavens, the View from the Street’, in Koray Durak and Çağatay Anadol (eds), From Byzantion to Istanbul: 8000 Years of a Capital (Istanbul: Sakip Sabanci Museum, 2010), 314–27, specifically 316, 317. For instance, compare Svat Soucek’s earlier but more balanced approach in ‘The “Ali Macar Reis Atlas” and the Deniz Kitabi: Their Place in the Genre of Portolan Charts and Atlases’, Imago Mundi 25 (1971): 17–27 with his search for an origin in ‘Islamic Charting in the Mediterranean’, in J. B. Harley and David Woodward (eds), The History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 263–92. See Ahmet T. Karamustafa, ‘Introduction to Ottoman Cartography’, in J. B. Harley and David Woodward (eds), The History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 206–8, for his proposal for a cross-cultural methodology; and see Kafesçioğlu, ‘Ottoman Images of Istanbul’, for the application of a similar perspective. Mscr.Dresd.Eb.391, Bd.2, Sächsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden (http://digital​.slub​ -dresden​.de​/werkansicht​/dlf​/12645​/1/, accessed 6 October 2018). For this, see Kafesçioğlu, ‘Viewing, Walking, Mapping Istanbul’; and Kafesçioğlu, ‘Ottoman Images of Istanbul’. Rogers, ‘Itineraries and Town Views’, 238. On Matrakçı Nasuh’s Istanbul panorama, see also Kafesçioğlu’s works cited earlier. Metin And, ‘17. Yüzyıl Türk Çarşı Ressamları’, Tarih ve Toplum 19 (April 1984): 40–5.

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24 For a very recent collection of essays, see Tülün Değirmenci and M. Sabri Koz, eds, Ottoman Figurative Arts 2: Bazaar Painters (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2018). 25 See, for instance, Tülün Değirmenci, ‘Introduction: Evolution of the Bazaar Painting and Metin And’, in Tülün Değirmenci and M. Sabri Koz (eds), Ottoman Figurative Arts 2: Bazaar Painters (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2018), 11–42; William Kynan-Wilson, ‘“Painted by the Turks Themselves”: Reading Peter Mundy’s Ottoman Costume Album in Context’, in Sussan Babaie and Melanie Gibson (eds), The Mercantile Effect: On Art and Exchange in the Islamicate World during the 17th and 18th Centuries (London: Ginko Library, 2017), 38–50; E. Natalie Rothman, ‘Visualizing a Space of Encounter: Intimacy, Alterity, and Trans-Imperial Perspective in an Ottoman-Venetian Miniature Album’, Journal of Ottoman Studies 40 (2012): 39–80; Tülün Değirmenci, ‘An Illustrated “Mecmua”: The Commoner’s Voice and the Iconography of the Court in Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Painting’, Ars Orientalis 41 (2011): 186–218; Bronwen Wilson, ‘Foggie diverse di vestire de’ Turchi: Turkish Costume Illustration and Cultural Translation’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37, no. 1 (2007): 97–139; and Karin Ådahl (ed.), The Sultan’s Procession: The Swedish Embassy to Sultan Mehmed IV in 1657-1658 and the Rålamb Paintings (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 2007). 26 Ahmet Ersoy, ‘Ottomans and the Kodak Galaxy: Archiving Everyday Life and Historical Space in Ottoman Illustrated Journals’, History of Photography 40, no. 3 (2016): 330–57. 27 ‘An Open Caravanserai’ is reproduced in Rothman, ‘Visualizing a Space of Encounter’, 55. 28 See Rothman, ‘Visualizing a Space of Encounter’ and Değirmenci, ‘An Illustrated “Mecmua”’. 29 Here, it is important to cite three edited volumes, each employing a comparable methodology, though without designating it as cartographical and without necessarily aiming for the broadest possible geographical or thematic scope. Hence, they demonstrate that cartographical approach should be perceived conceptually, rather than literally. Respectively, the first follows an object-based approach that transgresses established field boundaries; the second, although confined to a single geography and to a limited chronology, defies cultural categorizations within its spatial and temporal scope; and the third provides a fluid description of geography and matches that description with a thematically and chronologically flexible collection of contributions. See Gülru Necipoğlu and Alina Alexandra Payne, eds, Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); Patricia Blessing and Rachel Goshgarian, eds, Architecture and Landscape in Medieval Anatolia, 1100-1500 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017); and Mohammad Gharipour, ed., The Historiography of Persian Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2016).

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30 On architecture in twentieth-century Turkey, a literature with which Kılınç is in conversation, see Sibel Bozdoğan, Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001); Bülent Batuman, ‘“Early Republican Ankara”: Struggle over Historical Representation and the Politics of Urban Historiography’, Journal of Urban History 37, no. 5 (2011): 661–79; Esra Akcan, Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey, and the Modern House (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012); and Sibel Bozdoğan and Esra Akcan, Turkey: Modern Architectures in History (London: Reaktion Books, 2012). For an overview of the repercussions of comparable tensions in art as well, see Sibel Bozdoğan, ‘Art and Architecture in Modern Turkey: The Republican Period’, in Reşat Kasaba (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 419–71. For a very recent study on social housing in the Middle East, see Kıvanç Kılınç and Mohammad Gharipour (eds), Social Housing in the Middle East: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 20019). Since Kılınç discusses the opening of an architecture that was not necessarily designed to be ‘open’, see also Esra Akcan, Open Architecture: Migration, Citizenship and the Urban Renewal of Berlin-Kreuzberg by IBA 1984/87 (De Gruyter/Basel: Birkhäuser, 2018). 31 See, for instance, Ernst J. Grube, ‘What Is Islamic Architecture?’ in George Michell (ed.), Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), 10–14. 32 One of the most thorough accounts of the overlaps between Orientalism, commodification and colonialism is still Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988). For a comparative perspective on colonialism that also includes Ottoman involvements, see Zeynep Çelik, Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830-1914 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008). 33 Such an overlap existed even in Gérôme’s paintings. See both Linda Nochlin, The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society (New York: Routledge, 1989), 33–59, where Nochlin recognizes the overlap and situates it in her discussion of Orientalism; and Jeanette Kohl, ‘Rehabilitating a Fallen Artist: JeanLéon Gérôme Revisited’, Kunstchronik 64, no. 3 (March 2011): 124–30, where Kohl emphasizes the same overlap in an effort to save Gérôme’s reputation in the context of a travelling exhibition in 2010–11. Edhem Eldem underlined the same issue as the reason behind Osman Hamdi’s positive reception in Europe. His paintings were perceived to be authentic representations of the Orient, because he was from the Orient. Edhem Eldem, ‘Making Sense of Osman Hamdi Bey and His Paintings’, Muqarnas 29 (2012): 339–83. For a comparison of insiders’ and outsiders’ photography of the Muslim world, see Michelle L. Woodward, ‘Between Orientalist

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36

37

38

Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture Clichés and Images of Modernization’, History of Photography 27, no. 4 (2003): 363– 74. For a collection of essays on a recent exhibition of photography in the Ottoman Empire, see Zeynep Çelik and Edhem Eldem (eds), Camera Ottomana: Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire, 1840-1914 (Istanbul: Koc University Press, 2015). For a different perspective on photography in the Ottoman Empire, see Wendy M. K. Shaw, ‘Ottoman Photography of the Late Nineteenth-Century: An “Innocent” Modernism?’ History of Photography 33, no. 1 (2009): 80–93. For travellers’ accounts of the Muslim world, see Mohammad Gharipour and Nilay Özlü (eds), The City in the Muslim World: Depictions of Western Travel Writers (New York: Routledge, 2015). For a collection of essays on Orientalism and visual culture that also touches upon practices of exhibition, see Jocelyn Hackforth-Jones and Mary Roberts (eds), Edges of Empire: Orientalism and Visual Culture (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005). Avinoam Shalem, ‘Amazement: The Suspended Moment of the Gaze’, Muqarnas 32 (2015): 3–12; and Jalal Toufic, Undeserving Lebanon (Forthcoming Books, 2007). For the fire of 1660, see David Baer, ‘The Great Fire of 1660 and the Islamization of Christian and Jewish Space in Istanbul’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 36, no. 2 (May 2004): 159–81. See, for instance, Layla S. Diba, ‘Infested with Life: Wall Painting and Imagery before the Qajars’, Iranian Studies 34 (2001): 5–16; and Parviz Tanavoli, European Women in Persian Houses: Western Images in Safavid and Qajar Iran (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2015). Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). It is important to note that Camille himself is in partial dialogue with Meyer Schapiro, especially his interpretation of marginal images in the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos almost as revolutionary interventions. See Meyer Schapiro, ‘From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silos’, Art Bulletin 21, no. 4 (1939): 313–74. For a critical contextualization of Schapiro’s work, see O. K. Werckmeister, ‘Jugglers in a Monastery’, Oxford Art Journal 17, no. 1 (1994): 60–4; and for Camille’s more direct engagement with Schapiro, see Michael Camille, ‘“How New York Stole the Idea of Romanesque Art”: Medieval, Modern and Postmodern in Meyer Schapiro’, Oxford Art Journal 17, no. 1 (1994): 65–75. See Beate Fricke and Urte Krass, eds, The Public in the Picture: Involving the Beholder in Antique, Islamic, Byzantine and Western Medieval and Renaissance Art (Zürich-Berlin: Diaphanes, 2015), which while providing a chronologically and geographically wide collection of essays on the appearance of spectators in images also links back to Balafrej’s discussion of stock figures. See especially, Beate Fricke and Urte Krass, ‘The Public in the Picture: An Introduction’, 7–21, for the discussion on the third; and Alberto Saviello, ‘See and Be Amazed! Spectator Figures in Persian Manuscript Painting’, 231–48, for a more direct Persian connection.

Introduction

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39 For the clear Aristotelian (form-matter) and Platonic (ideal) connotations of this argument, see also Mohammed Hamdouni Alami, The Origins of Visual Culture in the Islamic World: Aesthetics, Art and Architecture (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2015), particularly 1–19, 67–99. For different articulations of likeness/mimesis in Islamic portraiture, see Eva R. Hoffman, ‘The Author Portrait in Thirteenth-Century Arabic Manuscripts: A New Islamic Context for a Late-Antique Tradition’, Muqarnas 10 (1993): 6–20; Priscilla Soucek, ‘The Theory and Practice of Portraiture in the Persian Tradition’, Muqarnas 17 (2000): 97–108; and Christian Gruber, ‘Between Logos (Kalima) and Light (Nur): Representations of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Painting’, Muqarnas 26 (2009): 229–62. 40 In addition to Shalem’s article cited earlier see the whole issue of Muqarnas 32 (2015), which is fully dedicated to gaze in Islamic art, including its historical philosophical articulations. 41 Bernard Tschumi, Event Cities 4: Concept-Form (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2010), 14, 15. 42 See, for instance, Ashok Kumar Srivastava, Mughal Painting: An Interplay of Indigenous and Foreign Traditions (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2000); Som Prakash Verma, Interpreting Mughal Painting: Essays on Art, Society and Culture (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009); Som Prakash Verma, Crossing Cultural Frontiers: Biblical Themes in Mughal Painting (New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2011); and Valerie Gonzalez, Aesthetic Hybridity in Mughal Painting, 1526-1658 (London: Routledge, 2015). 43 For comparison with (and not in contrast to) Gulia’s essay, see Rachel Parikh, ‘Yoga under the Mughals: From Practice to Paintings’, South Asian Studies 31, no. 2 (2015): 215–36. 44 See, for instance, Robert Ousterhout, ‘Ethnic Identity and Cultural Appropriation in Early Ottoman Architecture’, Muqarnas 12 (1995): 48–62; Oya Pancaroğlu, ‘Architecture, Landscape and Patronage in Bursa: The Making of an Ottoman Capital City’, Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 20, no. 1 (1995): 40–55; Robert Ousterhout ‘The East, the West, and the Appropriation of the Past in Early Ottoman Architecture’, Gesta 43 (2004): 165–76; Suna Çağaptay, ‘Frontierscape: Reconsidering Bithynian Structures and Their Builders on the Byzantine-Ottoman Cusp’, Muqarnas 28, no. 1 (2011): 157, 93; and Suna Çağaptay, ‘Prousa/Bursa, a City within the City: Chorography, Conversion and Choreography’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 35, no. 1 (2011): 45–69. 45 To get a sense of the current state of research on the arts of the Seljuqs, see Sheila R. Canby, Deniz Beyazit, Martina Rugiadi and A. C. S. Peacock, eds, Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016). For a broader discussion on artistic exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean, see Lucy-Anne Hunt, Byzantium, Eastern Christendom and Islam: Art at the Crossroads of the Medieval Mediterranean, 2 vols (London: Pindar Press,

26

Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture 1998, 2000). For inter-medial exchanges between architecture and portable art, see Scott Redford, ‘Portable Palaces: On the Circulation of Objects and Ideas about Architecture in Medieval Anatolia and Mesopotamia’, Medieval Encounters 18 (2012): 382–412. And for the relationship between diplomacy and material culture, extending into the Ottoman period, see Maria G. Parani, ‘Intercultural Exchange in the Field of Material Culture in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Evidence of Byzantine Legal Documents (11th to 15th Centuries)’, in Alexander Beihammer, Maria G. Parani and Chris Schabel (eds), Diplomatics in the Eastern Mediterranean 1000–1500: Aspects of Cross-Cultural Communication (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 349–72.

Bibliography Ådahl, Karin, ed. The Sultan's Procession: The Swedish Embassy to Sultan Mehmed IV in 1657–1658 and the Rålamb Paintings. Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, 2007. Agamben, Giorgio. ‘What Is a Paradigm?’ in Girogio Agamben. The Signature of All Things: On Method, 9–32. New York: Zone Books, 2009. Akcan, Esra. Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey, and the Modern House. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012. Akcan, Esra. Open Architecture: Migration, Citizenship and the Urban Renewal of BerlinKreuzberg by IBA 1984/7. De Gruyter and Basel: Birkhäuser, 2018. Alami, Mohammed Hamdouni. The Origins of Visual Culture in the Islamic World: Aesthetics, Art and Architecture. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2015. And, Metin. ‘17. Yüzyıl Türk Çarşı Ressamları’, Tarih ve Toplum 19 (April 1984): 40–5. Baer, David. ‘The Great Fire of 1660 and the Islamization of Christian and Jewish Space in Istanbul’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 36: 2 (May 2004): 159–81. Batuman, Bülent. ‘“Early Republican Ankara”: Struggle Over Historical Representation and the Politics of Urban Historiography’, Journal of Urban History 37: 5 (2011): 661–79. Blair, Sheila S., and Jonathan M. Bloom. ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field’, The Art Bulletin 85: 1 (2003): 152–84. Blessing, Patricia and Rachel Goshgarian, eds. Architecture and Landscape in Medieval Anatolia, 1100–1500. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Bozdoğan, Sibel and Esra Akcan. ‘Art and Architecture in Modern Turkey: The Republican Period’, in Reşat Kasaba (ed.), The Cambridge History of Turkey, 419–71. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Bozdoğan, Sibel and Esra Akcan. Modernism and Nation Building: Turkish Architectural Culture in the Early Republic. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001. Bozdoğan, Sibel and Esra Akcan. Turkey: Modern Architectures in History. London: Reaktion Books, 2012.

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Braun, Georg, ed. Civitates orbis terrarium. Antwerpiae: Apud Aegidium Radeum, 1572–1617. Camille, Michael. Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1992. Camille, Michael. ‘“How New York Stole the Idea of Romanesque Art”: Medieval, Modern and Postmodern in Meyer Schapiro’, Oxford Art Journal 17: 1 (1994): 65–75. Canby, Sheila R., Deniz Beyazit, Martina Rugiadi and A. C. S. Peacock, eds. Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016. Çağaptay, Suna. ‘Frontierscape: Reconsidering Bithynian Structures and Their Builders on the Byzantine-Ottoman Cusp’, Muqarnas 28: 1 (2011): 157, 93. Çağaptay, Suna. ‘Prousa/Bursa, a City within the City: Chorography, Conversion and Choreography’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 35: 1 (2011): 45–69. Çelik, Zeynep and Edhem Eldem. Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830–1914. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. Çelik, Zeynep and Edhem Eldem, eds. Camera Ottomana: Photography and Modernity in the Ottoman Empire, 1840–1914. Istanbul: Koc University Press, 2015. Dalché, Patrick Gautier. ‘Cartes marines, représentation du littoral et perception de l’espace au moyen âge. Un état de la ques- tion’, in Jean-Marie Martin (ed.), Castrum 7: Zones côtières littorales dans le monde méditerranéen au moyen âge: défense, peuplement, mise en valeur. Actes du colloque international organisé par l’Ecole française de Rome et la Casa de Velázquez, 9–32. Rome: École française de Rome, and Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2001. Değirmenci, Tülün and M. Sabri Koz. What Is Philosophy? New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Değirmenci, Tülün and M. Sabri Koz. ‘An Illustrated ‘Mecmua’: The Commoner’s Voice and the Iconography of the Court in Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Painting’, Ars Orientalis 41 (2011): 186–218. Değirmenci, Tülün and M. Sabri Koz. ‘Introduction: Evolution of the Bazaar Painting and Metin And’, in Tülün Değirmenci and M. Sabri Koz (eds), Ottoman Figurative Arts 2: Bazaar Painters, 11–42. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2018. Değirmenci, Tülün and M. Sabri Koz, eds. Ottoman Figurative Arts 2: Bazaar Painters. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2018. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987/2004. Diba, Layla S. ‘Infested with Life: Wall Painting and Imagery before the Qajars’, Iranian Studies 34 (2001): 5–16. Ebel, Katherine A. ‘Representations of the Frontier in Ottoman Town Views of the Sixteenth Century’, Imago Mundi 60: 1 (2008): 1–22. Eldem, Edhem. ‘Making Sense of Osman Hamdi Bey and His Paintings’, Muqarnas 29 (2012): 339–83. Ersoy, Ahmet. Architecture and the Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary: Reconfiguring the Architectural Past in a Modernizing Empire. New York: Ashgate, 2015.

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Ersoy, Ahmet. ‘Ottomans and the Kodak Galaxy: Archiving Everyday Life and Historical Space in Ottoman Illustrated Journals’, History of Photography 40: 3 (2016): 330–57. Falchetta, Piero. ‘The Use of Portolan Charts in European Navigation during the Middle Ages’, in Ingrid Baumgärtner and Hartmut Kugler (eds), Europa im Weltbild des Mittelalters: Kartographische Konzepte, 269–76. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008. Flood, Finbarr Barry. ‘From the Prophet to Postmodernism? New World Orders and the End of Islamic Art’, in Elizabeth C. Mansfield (ed.), Making Art History: A Changing Discipline and Its Institutions, 31–53, New York: Routledge, 2007. Fricke, Beate and Urte Krass, eds. The Public in the Picture: Involving the Beholder in Antique, Islamic, Byzantine and Western Medieval and Renaissance Art. ZürichBerlin: Diaphanes, 2015. Gharipour, Mohammad. The Bazaar in the Islamic City: Design, Culture, and History. Cairoe: The American University in Cairo Press, 2012. Gharipour, Mohammad, ed. The Historiography of Persian Architecture. New York: Routledge, 2016. Gharipour, Mohammad and Nilay Özlü, eds. The City in the Muslim World: Depictions of Western Travel Writers. New York: Routledge, 2015. Gonzalez, Valerie. Aesthetic Hybridity in Mughal Painting, 1526–1658. London: Routledge, 2015. Grube, Ernst J. ‘What Is Islamic Architecture?’ in George Michell (ed.), Architecture of the Islamic World: Its History and Social Meaning, 10–14. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978. Gruber, Christian. ‘Between Logos (Kalima) and Light (Nur): Representations of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Painting’, Muqarnas 26 (2009): 229–62. Gruber, Christian. ‘Questioning the “Classical” in Persian Painting: Models and Problems of Definition’, Journal of Art Historiography 6 (1 June 2012). Hackforth-Jones, Jocelyn and Mary Roberts, eds. Edges of Empire: Orientalism and Visual Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Hamadeh, Shirine. ‘Ottoman Expressions of Early Modernity and the “Inevitable” Question of Westernization’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 63: 1 (2004): 32–51. Hamadeh, Shirine. The City’s Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth Century. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. Hoffman, Eva R. ‘The Author Portrait in Thirteenth-Century Arabic Manuscripts: A New Islamic Context for a Late-Antique Tradition’, Muqarnas 10 (1993): 6–20. Hunt, Lucy-Anne. Byzantium, Eastern Christendom and Islam: Art at the Crossroads of the Medieval Mediterranean, 2 vols London: Pindar Press, 1998, 2000. Kafesçioğlu, Çiğdem. Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Park, 2009.

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Kafesçioğlu, Çiğdem. ‘Ottoman Images of Istanbul in the Age of Empire: The View from Heavens, the View from the Street’, in Koray Durak and Çağatay Anadol (eds), From Byzantion to Istanbul: 8000 Years of a Capital, 314–27. Istanbul: Sakip Sabanci Museum, 2010. Kafesçioğlu, Çiğdem. ‘Viewing, Walking, Mapping Istanbul, ca. 1580’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 56. Bd., H. 1, Littoral and Liminal Spaces: The Early Modern Mediterranean and Beyond (2014). Karamustafa, Ahmet T. ‘Introduction to Ottoman Cartography’, in J. B. Harley and David Woodward (eds), The History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, 206–8. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Kılınç, Kıvanç and Mohammad Gharipour, eds. Social Housing in the Middle East: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Modernity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. Kohl, Jeanette. ‘Rehabilitating a Fallen Artist: Jean-Léon Gérôme Revisited’, Kunstchronik 64: 3 (March 2011): 124–30. Kynan-Wilson, William. ‘‘Painted by the Turks Themselves”: Reading Peter Mundy’s Ottoman Costume Album in Context’, in Sussan Babaie and Melanie Gibson (eds), The Mercantile Effect: On Art and Exchange in the Islamicate World During the 17th and 18th Centuries, 38–50. London: Ginko Library, 2017. Manesson Mallet, Allain. Description de l'univers, contenant les differents systemes du monde, les cartes generales & particulares de la geographie ancienne & moderne, tome quatriéme. Paris: Jean David Zunner, 1686. Manners, Ian R. ‘Constructing the Image of a City: The Representation of Constantinople in Christopher Buondelmonti's Liber Insularum Archipelagi’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87: 1 (March 1997): 72–102. Mitchell, Timothy. Colonizing Egypt. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988. Necipoğlu, Gülru and Alina Alexandra Payne, eds. Histories of Ornament: From Global to Local. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016. Necipoğlu, Gülru. ‘The Concept of Islamic Art: Inherited Discourses and New Approaches’, in Benoît Junod et al. (eds), Islamic Art and the Museum: Approaches to Art and Archeology of the Muslim World in the Twenty-First Century, 57–75. Lebanon: SAQI, 2012. Necipoğlu, Gülru. ‘The Scrutinizing Gaze in the Aesthetics of Islamic Visual Cultures: Sight, Insight, and Desire’, Muqarnas 32 (2015): 23–61. Nochlin, Linda. The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society. New York: Routledge, 1989. Ousterhout, Robert. ‘Ethnic Identity and Cultural Appropriation in Early Ottoman Architecture’, Muqarnas 12 (1995): 48–62. Ousterhout, Robert. ‘The East, the West, and the Appropriation of the Past in Early Ottoman Architecture’, Gesta 43 (2004): 165–76.

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Pancaroğlu, Oya. ‘Architecture, Landscape and Patronage in Bursa: The Making of an Ottoman Capital City’, Turkish Studies Association Bulletin 20: 1 (1995): 40–55. Parani, Maria G. ‘Intercultural Exchange in the Field of Material Culture in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Evidence of Byzantine Legal Documents (11th to 15th Centuries)’, in Alexander Beihammer, Maria G. Parani and Chris Schabel (eds), Diplomatics in the Eastern Mediterranean 1000–1500: Aspects of Cross-Cultural Communication, 359–72. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Parikh, Rachel. ‘Yoga under the Mughals: From Practice to Paintings’, South Asian Studies 31: 2 (2015): 215–36. Rabbat, Nasser. ‘Islamic Art at a Crossroads?’ in Benoît Junod et al. (eds), Islamic Art and the Museum: Approaches to Art and Archeology of the Muslim World in the Twenty-First Century, 76–83. Lebanon: SAQI, 2012. Redford, Scott. ‘Portable Palaces: On the Circulation of Objects and Ideas about Architecture in Medieval Anatolia and Mesopotamia’, Medieval Encounters 18 (2012): 382–412. Rogers, J. M. ‘Itineraries and Town Views in Ottoman Histories’, in J. B. Harley and David Woodward (eds), The History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, 228–55. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Rothman, E. Natalie. ‘Visualizing a Space of Encounter: Intimacy, Alterity, and TransImperial Perspective in an Ottoman-Venetian Miniature Album’, Journal of Ottoman Studies 40 (2012): 39–80. Schapiro, Meyer. ‘From Mozarabic to Romanesque in Silos’, Art Bulletin 21: 4 (1939): 313–74. Srivastava, Ashok Kumar. Mughal Painting: An Interplay of Indigenous and Foreign Traditions. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2000. Shalem, Avinoam. ‘What Do We Mean When We Say “Islamic Art”? A Plea for a Critical Rewriting of the History of the Arts of Islam’, Journal of Art Historiography 6 (June 2012). Shalem, Avinoam. ‘Amazement: The Suspended Moment of the Gaze’, Muqarnas 32 (2015): 3–12. Shaw, Wendy M. K. ‘Ottoman Photography of the Late Nineteenth-Century: An “Innocent” Modernism?’ History of Photography 33: 1 (2009): 80–93. Sheehan, Kevin E. The Functions of Portolan Maps: An Evaluation of the Utility of Manuscript Nautical Cartography from the Thirteenth through Sixteenth Centuries. PhD Dissertation, Durham University, 2014. Soucek, Priscilla. ‘The Theory and Practice of Portraiture in the Persian Tradition’, Muqarnas 17 (2000): 97–108. Soucek, Svat. ‘The “Ali Macar Reis Atlas” and the Deniz Kitabi: Their Place in the Genre of Portolan Charts and Atlases’, Imago Mundi 25 (1971): 17–27. Soucek, Svat. ‘Islamic Charting in the Mediterranean’, in J. B. Harley and David Woodward (eds), The History of Cartography, Volume 2, Book 1: Cartography in

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the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies, 263–92. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Tanavoli, Parviz. European Women in Persian Houses: Western Images in Safavid and Qajar Iran. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2015. Toufic, Jalal. Undeserving Lebanon. Forthcoming Books, 2007. Tschumi, Bernard. Event Cities 4: Concept-Form. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2010. Verma, Som Prakash. Interpreting Mughal Painting: Essays on Art, Society and Culture. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009. Verma, Som Prakash. Crossing Cultural Frontiers: Biblical Themes in Mughal Painting. New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2011. Volait, Mercedes. ‘L’art islamique et le problème de périodisation’, Perspective: La revue de l’INHA 4 (2008): 783–6. Werckmeister, O. K. ‘Jugglers in a Monastery’, Oxford Art Journal 17: 1 (1994): 60–4. Wilson, Bronwen. ‘Foggie diverse di vestire de’ Turchi: Turkish Costume Illustration and Cultural Translation’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 37: 1 (2007): 97–139. Woodward, Michelle L. ‘Between Orientalist Clichés and Images of Modernization’, History of Photography 27: 4 (2003): 363–74.

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1

In and out of a local idiom The story of a Siedlung in Yenimahalle, Ankara1 Kıvanç Kılınç

In 1948, just a stone’s throw from the perimeters of Ankara’s planned city centre, a new neighbourhood began to sprout on a 1-million-square-metre land. Initiated by the municipal administration to address the housing shortage in the fastgrowing capital city, the Yenimahalle Settlement has left a strong mark on the history of affordable housing in Turkey for several reasons.2 First, prior to this project affordable housing was rarely imagined beyond the narrow boundaries of small-scale residential complexes developed to accommodate government employees near public institutions. Second, Yenimahalle has since remained as one of the rare instances in the whole country where the ‘sites and services’ method in housing production was employed.3 But more importantly for the purposes of this chapter, it has exemplified the role of locality and place in the production of modern residential culture in Turkey. Catering predominantly to the needs of the lower-middle-income and middle-income groups and drafted by a group of Turkish architects, the floor plans of the type-projects displayed strong similarities with Bruno Taut’s and Ernst May’s designs for the mass-housing estates (Siedlungen) developed in Berlin and Frankfurt in early twentieth century. The interiors were imagined for small, modern nuclear families, reproducing an idealized middle-class domestic environment, widely disseminated in architectural and popular journals in 1930s Turkey, with its ‘cubic’ style and simplified furniture design.4 While most of the units were built following the original blueprints provided by the municipal government and consisted of row houses, however, some of the owners acquired alternative projects drafted by local builders shortly after the project set off in the early 1950s. These new layouts reinstated the multipurpose main hall, much similar to the sofa found in ‘traditional’ Ottoman-Turkish houses of the late

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nineteenth century, which the original architectural projects did not include.5 They were not only larger in size but included an additional floor and were suitable to accommodate extended families. In particular, I trace the personal story of one of these examples, the Cevdet Cingi House (House no. 36 at building lot 8053) at Levent Street in Yenimahalle, from the first amendments to the floor plan to its recent destruction to be replaced by a four-storey apartment building.6 My interest is focused specifically on the design and reordering of internal spaces, and the correlation between spatial organization and the social, cultural and domestic practices in the neighbourhood, including its contemporary moment. In doing so, I seek to contribute to the pool of critical writings on the social history of affordable housing in Turkey, especially from the point of view of the transformation of the interiors. I argue that each phase in the story of this building and the subsequent alterations in design are a testament to the changing values linked to the idea of modern architecture, modern house and the modern family in Ankara.

Building the lower-middle-class ideal: A social history In the 1930s Turkey did not have a significant industry, and a few examples of workers’ houses were largely limited to state-run factory complexes.7 The new neighbourhoods planned during the interwar years were imagined largely as middle-class settlements, and only an insufficient amount of affordable public housing could be produced, mostly due to lack of funds and infrastructure. Beginning in the late 1940s, European policies of the social welfare state became more pronounced in Turkey, increasing the state’s role in the production of housing.8 For instance, the Housing Law, passed in 1944, required the government to provide dwellings for civil servants.9 During the same years both official reports and popular journals repeatedly suggested that the national administration should take initiative in providing cheap land and reforming existing housing cooperatives that did not produce inexpensive alternatives.10 Such debates heralded the birth of the Yenimahalle project as a new neighbourhood and set both a conceptual and a legal framework for subsequent developments. The Yenimahalle Settlement (1948–52) was a project developed by the Ankara municipality, which expropriated large tract of lands starting from 1945. The area chosen for the project was in north-western Ankara, nearby the important Ankara-Eskişehir-Afton railroad axis, and was located outside the area of the original Jansen Plan for the city (1932).11 The Başvekalet (Prime Ministry)

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Housing Cooperative, as well as individual owners and the treasury, owned this land.12 The municipality merged the three separate parts before the construction began.13 Yenimahalle was not developed directly by the public sector, but both the central and local administration played a crucial role by enacting laws to support the project. The municipality acquired floor plans by a national architectural competition. It also provided land at affordable costs, infrastructure, easy access to building materials and long-term and low-interest credit to the 3,500 families who were selected from the many applicants.14 The selection committee was formed by Turkish nationals, including Abidin Mortaş, the influential editor of Arkitekt, a prominent architectural journal at the time. The results for the winning entries for five different types of houses and the site plan were announced in 1949 in Mimarlık, the publication of the Chambers of Architects of Turkey.15 None of the entries for the site plan, however, received a winning prize and the selection committee came up with a ‘hybrid’ solution: in Zeynep Önen’s words, they combined ‘the second and third prizes . . . bringing together the “successful site plan” of the second prize with the “advantageous number of lots” provided by the third prize’.16 The majority of lots were spared for houses while the amount of space allocated for roads, open public spaces and bazaars was 32.5 per cent.17 The municipality of Ankara supplied credits for the 3,500 families and sold the land for one Turkish lira per square metre.18 The largest building lot was 300 square metres and the average monthly income of a civil servant was 200 Turkish liras, which made even those affordable for the majority of settlers. In addition, there were long-term credit options.19 The owners could make their payments in ten instalments over ten consecutive years, with low-interest rates.20 In addition to convenience provided for payments the municipality informed the residents about the building costs. In order to make the building materials more accessible, the establishment of brickyards in the settlement area was also permitted.21 The plans for execution were finalized in 1948, construction began in 1949 and the project was completed by the end of 1953.22 Since Yenimahalle was also known as Ucuz Arsalar (cheap lands), it seems that the project has served its purpose well.23 According to Özcan Altaban, major principles of the project are still valid, addressing the housing problem today: ‘cheap land and substructure, obligatory construction and appropriate credit supplies’.24 Both the central and municipal governments played a crucial role by enacting laws to support the project. These were the laws 5218 and 5228, which passed the National Assembly in 1948.25 The former enabled the municipality to

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distribute the land in its possession to individuals provided they build homes. The latter allowed the municipality to take over land or property possessed by other public institutions to develop housing projects. The laws required that if the construction were not completed within a three-year period, the land would revert to the government.26 Başak Aysal has underlined that by enabling such measures the government ‘aimed to prevent land speculation’ as well as tackled the housing shortage in the fast-growing capital city.27 As the number of types that the plan set out to develop shows, the target group for the project was low- and moderate-income civil servants.28 According to the plan, the average-sized three-room type was going to dominate the project (1670 houses) in comparison to five-room type (228), four-room type (571) and two-room (single storey) type (481).29 It also shows that the ideal family size for the developers consisted of married couples with one child or two children. In all two-storey types, common familial spaces such as the guest and dining rooms on the first floor were separated from the bedrooms and the bathroom on the second floor. A small toilet for the guests was placed next to the entrance hall, which connected to the kitchen as well as the dining and guest rooms via another small hall around the stairwell. In the larger houses, a partial wall, and most probably a sliding-folding door, divided these two rooms, which enabled its use as a single space. In the smaller, three-room, two-storey models, the dining/ guest room was designed as a single room (Figure 1.1 and Figure 1.2). Both the hall connecting the stairs to other rooms on the second floor and the entrance

Figures 1.1 and 1.2  Original floor plan for the three-room, two-storey-type houses in Yenimahalle (1950); row houses in Levent Street built following the original floor plans. Drawing by S. Gizem Özmen after the original blueprints obtained from the Development and Construction Directorate of the Greater Municipality of Ankara, 2018. Photo by the author, 2001.

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hall were circulatory spaces and thus were by no means suitable for other uses. Living spaces were minimal or moderate; two-storey houses were 90–115 square metres and the single-storey type was 65 square metres.30 Individual units were mostly organized as twin or row houses consisting of two, four or six houses grouped according to the specifics of the site plan. The only exception was the two-storey, five-room model, which was built only as a twin house.31 The site plan envisaged a lively neighbourhood. According to Önen, creating a sense of community, providing ample green space and creating ‘sub-activity zones’ to promote common activities were the main planning principles.32 Apart from the administrative quarter, there were film theatres, shops, bazaars, a library, schools and sports grounds.33 Upon completion, Yenimahalle not only became ‘the fifth sub-center of the city’ but also ‘a prestigious area . . . as a new distinct of the city planned and realized with idealistic intentions’.34 Although only nineteen buildings were erected in 1949, just one year after the construction began the population of Yenimahalle was already equalled with that of Çankaya – the quarter that the Jansen Plan allocated for upper-class villas and ‘country houses’ to inhabit the predominantly upper-class elite. At the time of its completion the Yenimahalle Settlement was home to around 15, 000 to 20, 000 residents.35

Local trajectories: Living (in) the modern house The connection between the housing types developed for Yenimahalle and the Reihenhaustyp, BA I, of Hufeisensiedlung Britz (1925–30) designed by Bruno Taut is quite remarkable.36 Although the former was not an exact copy of the latter, the layouts followed the same planning principles and articulated movement quite similarly.37 Beyond diagrammatic similarity, Taut’s scheme was apparently one of the models followed by a team of Turkish architects in developing the project for Yenimahalle with its rationalized kitchen, simplified interiors, standardized exterior design, as well as ‘nature-bound’ planning.38 In each dwelling, similar to mass-housing quarters in Germany, living and dining rooms were imagined as places where the entire family would come together, reinforce their bonds as a family and entertain their friends. It was the largest room, which had an open view of the front yard and the street. The bedrooms were clearly separated from the living room to give the family more privacy. But the development was also designed to foster the quality of life outside the house by providing common spaces, cultural facilities and social

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services. For the owners, moving to Yenimahalle was identified with moving to a ‘modern’ life. It was characterized by its unique ‘neighbourhood culture’ and ‘peaceful social context’, as well as by the variety of social functions it provided.39 There were not many large urban parks; green spaces were distributed evenly among housing groups and the streets. The gardens were fenced but the walls were not high, and front gardens were not hidden from outside view. Önen argues that grouping the rooms used by the family and guests together on the first floor, and generating ‘a welcoming feeling of light, openness and continuity between the indoor and outdoor spaces’ encouraged social interaction.40 The idea behind choosing row houses was to save from space.41 But they also strengthened the interaction among neighbours and overall, the architecture increased the visibility of family members outside the home.42 According to architectural historian Funda Şenol Cantek, who wrote on the social history of a modernist housing project built in vicinity of Yenimahalle during the 1950s and 1960s, the scene of young men and women socially interacting was common. Girls and boys would bicycle together, hang out and chat until late hours, sitting on the walls at the end corner of streets.43 Homes were visited together, neighbours shared their tools and women usually dressed the same way, cooked similar food and decided on which vegetable and fruits to breed in their gardens together.44 The parks nearby the settlement also provided a vast array of activities for the residents. For instance, women and children would walk to the Ataturk Forest Farm (AOÇ), a major recreational area and state farm in Ankara, during weekdays, collecting flowers and herbs on the way back. AOÇ provided an environment that allowed not only different social groups but also the two genders to encounter. Both expensive and moderate-income entertainment was available.45 Since the entertainment culture for lower- and middle-income social groups at the time consisted mainly of activities that did not require much spending, such as picnicking in parks or green areas within walking distance and going to film theatres, AOÇ seemed to have offered a plenty of choices.46 Cantek writes that a couple of decades after its construction, in Yenimahalle ‘modern life’ seemed to have diminished the dominancy of traditional values although traditional gender roles were largely retained.47 Furthermore, close interaction of neighbours worked as a viewing mechanism and control such that intimacy could less easily be maintained.48 Spatial arrangement and conditions, such as narrow width of roads, lack of proper means of insulation between homes as well as their close proximity and placement of front doors directly towards the street, almost forced the residents to form closer neighbourhood relations.49

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In ‘Memur Kentinin Memur Semtiydi Yenimahalle’ (Yenimahalle was the Civil Servant District of the Civil Servant City), Seden Kozan has argued that the similarity in socio-economic backgrounds of the residents encouraged the formation of neighbourhood relations to become ‘as close as relatives’.50 Interestingly enough, the geographically diverse but socially more homogeneous patterning of the settlement was not arbitrary but was defined by the preconditions for eligibility set by the municipality to own a house. The laws 5218 and 5228 which enabled the project in the first place also brought conditions about ownership. The applicants were chosen among those who did not own a property in Ankara and who lived in the city at least for one year prior to their application. Another condition was to ‘comply with the law and orders’.51 After the law had been passed and the projects had been acquired, the municipal government added few other conditions: the applicants were to be married or were divorced with children, they would have had a regular job and their financial status should have matched the requirements.52 These criteria eliminated both the locals (namely, local tradesman and merchants) who already owned their own homes and the gecekondu (squatter settlement) dwellers, the lowest segment of the society who did not have regular paying jobs, from becoming settlers in Yenimahalle and thus narrowed down the target audience to lower- and moderate-income civil servants. The presumably social harmony of the settlers, however, did not necessarily result in a unified expression of architectural space, both on the exterior and in the interior. As soon as the constructions began, owners modified the projects while in the making. In an interview, Atıf Benderlioğlu, the mayor of Ankara in 1950–4, complained that the owners tinkered with the projects according to their interests.53 For instance, although each unit was designed to house a single family, most owners sought to profit from their property by converting basements into separate flats or adding flats to the roof and renting them out.54 Another modification was to divide the two floors of a single-family house into two separate dwelling units, which required the installation of more service spaces, such as bathrooms or kitchens.55 In some cases additional storage spaces were built in the backyards.56 In his memoirs, Benderlioğlu also wrote that Yenimahalle became a ‘laboratory’ to exercise planned urban development for the municipality in the 1950s.57 Trying to act in accordance with the overall shape of the architectural projects and the site plan, the municipality constantly tried to prevent the owners from pursuing their own agenda, who altered the projects mostly at a micro-scale, but it also provided a fair amount of flexibility to develop practical solutions instead of generating further conflict. For instance, when owners

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did not exactly follow the contours of the original blueprints, the municipality authorized some of these modifications. As a result, although the settlement consisted predominantly of identical row houses, because of the variety in window types, doors or location of stairs, a less monotonous formal expression of the settlement was attained.

Local craftsmen, new layouts: Replacing the nuclear family ideal More importantly, however, some of the inhabitants went beyond modifying their homes upon their completion. In this part of the chapter, I introduce cases where the owners replaced the original layouts for the five-room, two-storey models with new projects.58 The new homes were larger and could accommodate two separate families. The storage space on the first floor was eventually converted into a separate flat, which was usually rented out. Occupied by Cevdet Cingi, the house located on lot no. 36 in Levent Street was one such example. Cingi made three consequent modifications to the original blueprints (Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3  House no. 36 (Cingi House) and House no. 37 (1952), photo showing the green spaces in front of and between the two houses. Photo by the author, 2008.

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The story begins with the first owner following standard procedure. Cingi submitted the original architectural projects that were provided by the municipality for approval on 19 March 1950. Most probably after making sure that the blueprints were not tampered with, the committee approved the project on 22 March 1950. In addition to giving permission to the project, the committee suggested opening two small windows on the basement floor and adding a balcony to one of the bedrooms on the second floor.59 However, the records of the Ankara Greater Municipality indicate that Cingi never started building his house but submitted a second project instead on 17 May 1952.60 In the first alteration, the layout more or less retained its overall shape, but the hall became more than being a circulatory space and was now designed to be as large as the other rooms. The kitchen projected towards the backyard and the small toilet, which was originally located right beside the entrance hall, was placed at one side of the kitchen. One other significant change was that the living and guest rooms were no longer connected to each other with a double door. The layout was still more convenient as a single-family house, but the owner apparently tried to rent out the ground floor, which initially contained a laundry room, coal shed and storage space. Approving this project too, the municipality indicated on the blueprints returned to the owner that the basement ‘could not be used as residence’.61 The owner was also notified that the height of the eaves should be adjusted in accordance with other houses in the neighbourhood. Such remarks made by the committee, as well as revisions and adjustments made to the proposed architectural projects, imply that the authorities were aware of the overall tendency to convert these units into separate flats. Although on 21 May 1952 Cingi gave another petition to the Municipality stating that he had acquired the permit for construction and thus was requesting the official handover of the building lot, he submitted the blueprints of a third project on 14 June 1952.62 The date on the blueprints was 14 May 1952, suggesting that the owner acquired the architectural projects for the second and third versions of his house around the same time and he most probably had some time to compare them before coming to a final decision. Interestingly enough, the last project was not designed by an architect but was commissioned to a building foreman, who had most probably graduated from a technical school and did not receive formal architectural education.63 I would argue that the role of local craftsmanship in design clearly indicates transfer of local knowledge of construction and building practices into the overall scheme, which followed ‘international’ design principles.

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With this second revision the layouts became significantly different. The entrance was moved to the side of the building and therefore a direct view from the street was avoided. In the interior, the hall was attached to the living room via a glass partition; it was no longer an interim space linking other rooms. Because of the slope of the lot, the ‘basement’ was below the street level but was still above ground level. The project converted this basement into a smaller flat with two shops located on the front façade, which were linked to a hall, a storage space and a laundry room at the back. This version was also approved but with conditions. On the blueprints that were returned to the owner, the parts that indicated ‘shops’ were crossed out and were replaced by ‘storage space’.64 Cingi’s decision to submit a third alteration project even though previous versions passed the committee with minor revisions might

Figure 1.4  a-b-c. The evolution of the layouts, Cingi House (1952). Drawing by S. Gizem Özmen after the original blueprints acquired from the Development and Construction Directorate of the Greater Municipality of Ankara and the measurements of the flat by the author, 2018.

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Figure 1.4  Continued.

have been determined by this last project’s inclusion of shops as additional sources for revenue. In the end, neither of these modified projects was realized. The actually built project remained the latest phase of the story until it was replaced by a mid-rise apartment building in 2017, a brief account of which will be provided later in this chapter.65 This layout created separate entrances for the first and the upper floors, adding an external staircase to the building and connecting the second and third floors to each other with an internal staircase. The new schema provided the opportunity to isolate the two upper floors from the outside with a common entrance, but also connected them in the interior in a subtler way than a regular apartment building with separate flats and common service core could possibly offer. Its significance was that it enabled the use of the upper floors by occupants who preferred to live together with their parents or relatives. The hall emerged as the common gathering space (living, guest and dining room) for the family members, to which all other spaces, including the bedrooms, were

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Figure 1.4  Continued.

directly connected via a door. One should also consider here the practicality of building a central room with a stove at the centre, when centralized heating was not an option, especially considering the harsh dry winters that the capital city is well known for (Figure 1.4). As a result, the layout turned inwards, grouped around a central hall, which reversed the design principles based on Siedlungen. I would argue that this transformation represented a shift from the middle-class nuclear family ideal, imported from Western and Central European models, to a ‘curiously Ottoman formula’.66 In the vernacular houses of the Ottoman cities, the individualization of rooms and the compartmentalization of the dwelling according to function (i.e. bedroom, bathroom) were either less precise or non-existent.67 Similarly, the main hall in Cingi House forced other rooms to remain relatively less individualized and thus rendered the models of privacy targeting the modern nuclear family relatively obsolete. It seems that in similar dwellings at Yenimahalle, a more inward-oriented scheme, centred on common life spaces of the family rather than those outside the home, has won over the original plans. With such user interferences, while

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the interiors were fine-tuned to respond to more seemingly ‘traditional’ family models, the life outside continued to epitomize the fashionable, modern life that gripped the capital city in the 1960s with its urban parks, planned streets and thriving cultural life which provided mixed-gender entertainment.

The eviction of the Siedlungen: Yenimahalle after the 1980s The transition towards a more ‘introverted’ domestic life in the neighbourhood has carried on with the spreading out of new multi-storey apartment buildings in Yenimahalle, especially after the 1980s.68 The result of successive changes in the building code beginning from the 1960s was that ‘four [and later, five] floor apartment houses replaced the former low-rise ones under single ownership’.69 Developed largely by ‘small capital speculative house building contractors’70 the new buildings have been characterized by a more obvious division of the familial and the guest receiving spaces in the interior; enclosed, almost fencedoff balconies and terraces; little or almost no open spaces; and the loss of direct visual connection to the street. Since the main purpose of the building contractors has been to include as much flat as possible to a single building block, the formal aesthetics in the neighbourhood were compromised. Another drastic shift was in the diminished quality of social functions. In the last three to four decades, while the life of each tenement became increasingly more individuated, common open spaces turned into parking lots or commercial buildings.71 Beginning from the early twentieth century and until the early 1950s detached or semi-detached houses with gardens were seen superior to multi-family apartments as the most suitable form of modern housing for the emergent Turkish bourgeoisie.72 But not much after, the midsize multi-family apartment buildings began replacing the single-family home as the most popular built form of ‘modern life’ and eventually became the dominant residential culture of the middle class. During the 1960s ‘planned development’ policies and housing cooperatives further extended the perimeter to lower-income groups.73 In the case of Yenimahalle, lower-middle-income and middle-income families have played a similar role in elevating the so-called apartment buildings to the most popular housing form in modern-day Turkey. Seeking upward mobility, the social groups whose spatial history has been conspicuously left outside the parameter of mainstream architectural literature have redefined the norms of modern living.74 The contemporary flats in Yenimahalle are adaptations of a commonly repeated multi-storey apartment building typology in Turkey such that it could

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be considered anonymous: 2+1, 3+1 and 4+1, and so forth. Here ‘1’ refers to the guest room (popularly known as ‘salon’) and ‘3’ to the number of bedrooms and the living room altogether. The guest and living rooms and the guest bathroom are usually located at the ‘front’ side of the building (which mostly overlooks the street) whereas bedrooms and the bathroom are placed at the ‘back’, connected by a long corridor and a series of doors. The kitchen is usually placed at the centre of this scheme. Overall, each flat functions as a standardized compartment that carefully demarcates the boundaries between the ‘public’ and ‘private’ areas of the house.75 While the design of the interiors help maintain some privacy, economic concerns require the ramming of the maximum number of flats into one building lot, which produces just the opposite effect (Figure 1.5).76 This is where local architectural tactics have been put to use. As these concrete blocks are sizeable multi-storey buildings and each flat is owned by individuals, the layouts could not be significantly modified. As an alternative, the owners have sealed off their balconies, and rooftops if they lived at the top floor, using lighter building materials including glass and aluminium to reduce visual contact. Some owners have commissioned ‘duplex flats’ occupying the top floors of the multi-storey apartment buildings so that they could create the verticality lost to the standardized, mid-rise types. The tactics also help create a controlled

Figure 1.5 View of the mid-rise apartment buildings that replaced the original building stock in Yenimahalle beginning from the 1980s. Photo by the author, 2009.

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visibility for the house at the same time as limiting sociability to select groups of neighbours and friends. But isn’t there a contradiction here, then, in the reception of modernity by the lower-middle-income residents and especially in their divergent response to the interior and the exterior? Has ‘modern’ been simply a mask, confined to the formal language of the exterior façades and to the public realm but was resisted in the private spaces of the home? In this chapter, I have deliberately avoided identifying modern with certain architectural forms that emerged in Europe with industrial capitalism.77 Likewise, my discussion has not sought to define extended family as ‘pre-modern’, a traditional model which was then replaced by the nuclear family. I argue instead that the contemporaneity of each model depends on the particularity of the historical moment and the urban context in which they emerged.78 I also believe that the easy correlation formed between modernist forms and domestic ideologies is likely to hinder critical inquiries on housing and residential culture, since architecture is always ‘embedded in the habitual utility of social relations’,79 and as a cultural practice ‘can only exist in the unfolding of events, in the always temporal and local encounter between subject and space’.80 Likewise, the spatial categories of public and private are ‘cultural constructions’ much more than clear spatial categories, and they acquire a new meaning depending on the time period and context.81 The merits assigned to public and private also change along with the concept of the family. The family is flexible, ‘like gender, nation, and class – is a construction whose meaning is contested from within and without, during particular historical times’.82 Not surprisingly, then, the border between the formal and the intimate is even harder to pin down in the interior; what marks the ever-shifting boundaries between the two spheres are not only spatial divisions but also the types of social activities, customs and the way people act on given models.83

Conclusions: Locality, place and affordable housing in Turkey This is where I briefly and for the last time return to the story of the Cingi House, which was bought in the early 1980s by the Mutlu family and is still partially owned by them. In 2017, a new apartment building developed by a contractor replaced both the Mutlu House and the House no. 35, the other part of the original twin house arrangement. By sharing a single common entrance and a main circulation space, both buildings gained slightly more square metres for the interior spaces. With the most common arrangement existent in the housing

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market, each owner was given half of the four flats in their part of the building. They could either pick the second and third floors, which are identical in size, or first and the fourth floors. The latter somewhat reinvigorated the verticality of the previous plans with its two-storey arrangement and access to the roof terrace, whereas the first floor is the smallest unit. The family decided to keep the apartments on the second and third floors. They now live in one of them and rent out the second one. Whereas their new home is much more spacious, they now share the building with seven other tenants or owners, and their outside view consists of a significantly diminished open space in the main street and in between the apartment blocks (Figure 1.6).84  

Figure 1.6 Floor plans for the new apartment building, second and third floors. Drawing by S. Gizem Özmen based on the measurements of the flat by the author, 2018.

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Figure 1.7  The loss of green and open spaces in between the new apartment buildings. Cingi House on the left and House no. 35 on the right. Photo by the author, 2017.

The long history of transformation in Yenimahalle, different than what various layouts professed, indicates that it is necessary to reintroduce the lowermiddle class in Turkey as a separate category of analysis – separate from the middle class, although these two have much often been labelled together in architectural history writing.85 This is by no means particular to the Turkish case; the upper-income groups are usually portrayed as the driving force and central actors behind modernization.86 This chapter, however, has been written with the premise that the impact of ordinary architectures – building typologies developed and inhabited by the ‘little middles’87 of the Turkish society – on defining central discourses of modern architecture goes far beyond than what is usually being portrayed in mainstream accounts. As the story goes, when mid-rise dwellings have gradually and almost completely expelled the Siedlungen from the urban scene in Yenimahalle, the dwellers have embraced new typologies as part of their class aspirations but continued to mobilize local practices of habitation.88 I argue that because of users’ constant renegotiation of spaces, the definition of modern and the modern house has also been repeatedly rewritten. Informed by local dwelling cultures and building traditions, and reimagined through everyday adjustments to façades, balconies and the interior spaces, these ‘anonymous’ houses have already become the dominant paradigm of modern living in most Turkish cities. The changes in the personal history of the Cingi House and the overall

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transformation of Yenimahalle also demonstrate that locality and place are the main markers of architectural modernity: affordable housing typologies have been produced and consumed ubiquitously rather than simply being ‘imported’ or ‘copied’ by ‘peripheral’ contexts and are therefore products of a condition of globality, in which we all dwell today.

Notes 1 This chapter was derived from my PhD dissertation and research that followed it (‘Constructing Women for the Republic: The Spatial Politics of Gender, Class, and Domesticity in Ankara, 1928-1952’, PhD diss., Binghamton University, SUNY, 2010). I am indebted to my adviser, Tom McDonough, for his valuable support and encouragement for the development of my arguments. I would also like to thank Özlem Mutlu for helping me acquire the archival documents used in this piece, as well as our many exciting conversations for the rethinking of the contemporary moment in Yenimahalle’s development. Some of these earlier thoughts were shared with the broader academic community in our co-authored paper, ‘From the Entrance Hall to the Sofa and Corridor: The Journey of a Siedlung in Yenimahalle, Ankara’, presented at the 4th World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES) at METU in Ankara, on 18–22 August 2014. Finally, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to S. Gizem Özmen for expertly reproducing the architectural drawings of the Cingi House. 2 Yenimahalle means ‘new neighbourhood’ in Turkish. 3 For main readings on Yenimahalle, please see Peral Bayaz, ‘Renewal Program for Yenimahalle’, PhD diss., Middle East Technical University, Ankara, 1966; L. Yıldız Tokman, ‘Konut Politikaları Uygulamalarında Özel Bir Örnek: Yenimahalle’ [A Special Example in the Housing Policy Developments: Yenimahalle] (MArch Thesis, Middle East Technical University, 1979), 102–4; Zeynep Önen, ‘Yenimahalle: A Problem of Conservation in Ankara’ (March Thesis, Middle East Technical University, 1995). For the laws passed and proposals developed in preparation for the implementation of the ‘sites and services approach’ in the production of affordable housing in Turkey, please see Sümer Gürel et al., Dar Gelirli Kesime Altyapısı Hazır Konut Sunumu [Sites and Services Schemes for the Lower-Income] (Ankara: TOKİ, 1996). 4 See, for instance, Gülsüm Baydar, ‘Room for a Newlywed Woman, Making Sense of Gender in the Architectural Discourse of Early Republican Turkey’, Journal of Architectural Education 60, no. 3 (2007): 3–11. 5 The sofa, commonly defined as a central hall where guests were received and the family was entertained, was found in most upper-class houses built in the

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6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13 14 15

16 17

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Ottoman Empire until the end of nineteenth century. Although varied in type and form, it was usually located in the middle of the upper floor, to which all rooms had direct access. See Sedad Hakkı Eldem, Türk Evi Plan Tipleri [Plan Types of the Turkish House] (İstanbul: İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Mimarlık Fakültesi Yayınları, 1955). My selection of Levent Street stems mainly from the fact that it provides examples for both original layouts (some of which were slightly altered by the owners) and largely modified projects. Please see Ali Cengizkan, ed., Fabrika'da Barınmak: Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi'nde Türkiye'de İşçi Konutları—Yaşam, Mekân ve Kent [Dwelling in the Factory: Workers’ Houses in Early Republican Turkey – Everyday Life, Space, and the City] (Ankara: Arkadaş Yayınevi, 2009). Arif Şentek, ‘1940-1950 Yılları Arasında Türkiye'de Kentleşme, Konut ve Yapı Üretimine İlişkin Görüşler’ [Views on Urbanization, Housing and Building Production in Turkey from 1940 to 1950] (MA Thesis, 1979, Middle East Technical University), ii; also see İlhan Tekeli, Türkiye’de Yaşamda ve Yazında Konutun Öyküsü (1923-1980) [The Story of Housing in Life and Literature in Turkey] (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2012). Yıldız Sey, ‘To House the New Citizens: Housing Policies and Mass Housing,’ in Renata Holod and Ahmet Evin (eds), Modern Turkish Architecture (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 169. Some of these publications were İller ve Belediyeler, Karınca and Belediyeler Dergisi. Creating credit options for low-income groups and commissioning housing cooperatives or private companies to build homes were other common suggestions. See Şentek, ‘1940-1950 Yılları Arasında’, 64–6. Ali Cengizkan, ‘Discursive Formations in Turkish Residential Architecture (Türk Konut Mimarlığında Söylemsel Oluşumlar) Ankara, 1948-1962’ (PhD diss., Middle East Technical University, 2000), 101. These were 17, 45 and 46 hectares, respectively. Başak Aysal, ‘The Transformation of Yenimahalle Settlement during the 1986-1996 Period’ (MArch Thesis, Middle East Technical University, 1997), 52–4 and 59; Bayaz, ‘Renewal Program’, 14. Aysal, ‘Transformation’, 53. Bayaz, ‘Renewal Program’, 12–13. For the results of this competition, see ‘Ankara Belediyesi Ucuz Evler Proje Musabakası Neticelendi’ [The Results for the Ankara Municipality Architectural Competition for Cheap Houses Have Been Announced], Mimarlık VI, no. 1 (1949): 19. Önen, ‘Yenimahalle’, 22. Bedriye Kaba, ‘Yenimahalle, Yenirmahalle, Yenikmahalle’ [Yenimahalle That Is Eaten and Beaten], Mimarlık 95, no. 261 (1995): 50. On fourteen building lots, twenty public buildings and forty-one shops were planned to be built. See Mustafa Ceylan, Her Yönüyle Yenimahalle [Yenimahalle Inside Out] (Ankara 1986), 29.

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18 ‘Belediyemiz’ [Our Municipality], http://www​.yenimahalle​.bel​.tr​/Icerik​/ Yenimahalle​-Hakkinda​/163. 19 Seden Kozan, ‘Memur Kentinin Memur Semtiydi Yenimahalle’ [Yenimahalle Was the Civil Servant District of the Civil Servant City], Ankara Magazin 7, no. 69 (November 2007): 40. 20 ‘Belediyemiz’. 21 Murat Küçük, ‘Yenimahalle Toplu Konut Üretimi icin Örnek Olabilir miydi?’ [Could Yenimahalle Set an Example for Mass-Housing Production in Turkey?], Mimarlik 95, no. 261 (1995): 48. 22 Bayaz, ‘Renewal Program’, 12–13. 23 Kozan, ‘Memur Kentinin’, 40. 24 Özcan Altaban, ‘Cumhuriyet’ in Kent Planlama Politikaları ve Ankara Deneyimi’ [Urban Planning Policies of the Turkish Republic and the Ankara Experience] in 75. Yılda Değişen Kent ve Mimarlık [The Changing City and Architecture in 75 Years], ed. Yıldız Sey, 41–64 (Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları Tarih Vakfı Ortak Yayını, 1998), 51. 25 ‘5218 sayılı Ankara Belediyesine Arsa ve Arazisinden Belli Bir Kısmını Mesken Yapacaklara, 2490 Sayılı Kanun Hükümlerine Bağlı olmaksızın ve Muayyen Şartlarla Tahsis ve Temlik Yetkisi Verilmesi Hakkında Kanun’ (TBMM Kanunlar Dergisi 30, Ankara TBMM Basımevi, 1948, 624–5), 14 Haziran 1948 tarihinde kabul edilerek 6938 no’lu Resmi Gazete’de yayımlanmıştır [The Cabinet Decision of the Law 5218 and Its Publication in the Official Gazette in 1948]; ‘5228 sayılı Bina Yapımını Teşvik Kanunu’ 28 Haziran 1948’de kabul edilerek, 6 Temmuz 1948’de Resmi Gazete’nin 6950 no’lu sayısında yayımlanmıştır (TBMM Kanunlar Dergisi 30, Ankara TBMM Basımevi, 1948, 638–41) [The Cabinet Decision of the Law 5228 and Its Publication in the Official Gazette in 1948]; Şükrü Aslan, ‘Türkiye’de Gecekondular ve Yasalar’ [Squatter Settlements and Laws in Turkey], http://v3​ .arkitera​.com​/h30889​-turkiyede​-gecekondular​-ve​-yasalar​.html, 27 June 2008; Aysal, ‘Transformation’, 51. 26 Önen, ‘Yenimahalle’, 20. 27 Aysal, ‘Transformation’, 51; also see Tokman, ‘Konut Politikaları’, 37. 28 Önen, ‘Yenimahalle’, 69; Aysal, ‘Transformation’, 54: A survey showed that in the 1970s the settlement still preserved its original social patterning. Almost 72.4 per cent of its population consisted of middle-income civil servants, low-ranking officers, teachers and small merchants, 19.6 per cent consisted of lower-income groups such as farmers, owners of small repair shops and craftsmen, and only the remaining 8 per cent were high-rank officers, doctors, lawyers and contractors. Please see Tokman, ‘Konut Politikaları’, 102–4. 29 Ceylan, Her Yönüyle, 29. 30 Önen, ‘Yenimahalle’, 54.

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38 39

40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50 51 52

53

Ibid., 22, 24; Bayaz, ‘Renewal Program’, 13–14. Önen, ‘Yenimahalle’, 72. Aysal, ‘Transformation’, 57. Önen, ‘Yenimahalle’, 69. See ‘Belediyemiz’; Ceylan, Her Yönüyle, 29, 30. Please see Winfried Brenne, Franz Jaschke, ‘Stadtebau und Architektur bei Bruno Taut’ [Bruno Taut: Architecture and Town Planning], in Winfried Brenne (ed.), Bruno Taut, Meister des farbigen Bauens in Berlin (Verlagshaus Braun, 2005), 94–6. Five-room type has an additional room on the second floor, which projects towards the backyard. And a bathroom replaces the small balcony on the street façade. Unlike in Taut’s design, in houses built in Yenimahalle a small WC was placed next to the entrance hall. Furthermore, while in the former the houses were grouped as continuous rows of many individual units as well as multi-family urban blocks, in Yenimahalle such rows consisted of two, four or six units. Helga Schmidt-Thomsen, ‘Licht und Farbe bei Bruno Taut, Light and Color in the Work of Bruno Taut’, in Winfried Brenne (ed.), Bruno Taut, 18–25. Zerrin Taşpınar, ‘Anılar’ [Memories], in Esat Bozyiğit (ed.), Ankara’nın Taşına Bak: Türk Yazınında Ankara [Ankara in Turkish Literature] (Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay, 2000), 493–4. Önen, ‘Yenimahalle’, 72, 74, 75, 77. Kozan, ‘Memur Kentinin’, 41. Funda Şenol Cantek, ‘Sel Gider Kum Kalır, 1957 Felaketzedelerinin Mamak’tan Yenimahalle’ye Uzanan Hayat Cizgileri’ [Flood Leaves, Sand Stays: The Life Stories of Disaster Victims of 1957 from Mamak to Yenimahalle], in Cantek (ed.), Sanki Viran Ankara, 49. In the following decades the residents would define the social life in the settlement similar to one in ‘a modern European suburb’. Kozan, ‘Memur Kentinin’, 41. Cantek, ‘Sel Gider’, 84. Ibid., 50. Ibid., 81–3. Kozan, ‘Memur Kentinin’, 41. Cantek, ‘Sel Gider’, 84, 103. Ibid., 85. Begümsen Ergenekon, ‘Yenimahalleli Olmak, Yeni Bir Komşuluk . . . O da Yeni bir Güvenlik Zinciri’ [Being from Yenimahalle, a New Neighborhood . . . and that Meant Having a New Safety Net], Ada Kentliyim 1, no. 3 (August–November 1995): 105. Kozan, ‘Memur Kentinin’, 41. Ibid., 41. Ceylan, Her Yönüyle, 29.

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53 Quoted in Tansı Senyapılı, Baraka’dan Gecekonduya, Ankara’da Kentsel Mekanın Dönüşümü 1923-1969 [From ‘Shed’ to Gecekondu, The Transformation of Urban Space in Ankara 1923-1960] (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2004), 142. 54 Önen, ‘Yenimahalle’, 54; Küçük, ‘Yenimahalle Toplu Konut’, 49. 55 Önen, ‘Yenimahalle’, 24, 29, 30. 56 Tokman, ‘Konut Politikaları’, 89; Bayaz, ‘Renewal Program’, 14. 57 Ceylan, Her Yönüyle, 32. 58 Blueprints and petitions documenting alterations were obtained from Ankara Greater Municipality in 2008. Ankara Büyükşehir Belediyesi İmar Dairesi Başkanlığı Arşivi [The Development and Construction Directorate of the Greater Municipality of Ankara], Yenimahalle, Ankara. 59 Floor Plans, 19 March 1950/22 March 1950. Archival documents obtained from the Development and Construction Directorate of the Greater Municipality of Ankara in 2008. 60 The project was signed by its designer on 8 May 1952. Name or title of designer could not be identified on these blueprints. 61 Basement floor plans, 17 May 1952. Archival documents obtained from the Development and Construction Directorate of the Greater Municipality of Ankara in 2008. 62 Petition signed by ‘Cevdet Cingi, Teacher of Turkish Literature, Cebeci Secondary School, Ankara’ on 21 May 1952. Archival documents obtained from Ankara Greater Municipality, 2008. 63 A. Cavit Biçer, ‘Birinci Derece İnşaat Kalfası’ [First Class Building Foreman], Diploma no. 161. May 14, 1952. Biçer’s practice was located in Apt. No. 10-A, Maltepe, Ankara. 64 Basement floor plans, 18 June 1952. Blueprints obtained from the Development and Construction Directorate of the Greater Municipality of Ankara in 2008. 65 The built version of the project (1952) was similar to the neighbouring house in the adjoining building lot (no. 35) except that the hall was directly, and much more clearly, connected to one of the rooms. It functioned as both the living and guest room and was connected to all other rooms and a smaller hall around it. 66 I borrow the term from İhsan Bilgin (1996), quoted in Nilgün Fehim Kennedy, ‘A Comparison between Women Living in Traditional Turkish Houses and Women Living in Apartments in Historical Context’ (MA Thesis, Middle East Technical University, 1999), 100. 67 In the following decades these layouts became simpler, and the central hall eventually turned into a transitional space or short corridor. See Uğur Tanyeli, İstanbul 1900-2000, Konutu ve Modernleşmeyi Metropolden Okumak [İstanbul 19002000, Reading Housing and Modernization through the Metropolis] (İstanbul: Akın Nalça, 2004).

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68 I should note here that the prevalence of multi-family apartments in Yenimahalle was not an isolated event but was affected by larger processes of urban transformation, changing regimes of urban governance and the policies of economic liberalization in Turkey. See, for instance, Sey, ‘To House the New Citizens,’ 153–77; and Çağlar Keyder, ‘The Housing Market from Informal to Global’, in Çağlar Keyder (ed.), Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., 1999), 143–59. 69 Aysal, ‘Transformation’, 61. 70 Önen, ‘Yenimahalle’, 1. 71 Ibid., 67–9. 72 Please see Esra Akcan, Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey, and the Modern House (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012), 76–99. 73 İlhan Tekeli, ‘Türkiye Kentlerinde Apartmanlaşma Sürecinde İki Aşama’ [Two Phases in the Apartmentization Process in Turkish Cities] Çevre 4 (July–August 1979): 79. Also see Mubeccel B. Kiray, ‘Apartmanlaşma ve Modern Orta Tabakalar’ [The Apartmentization and Contemporary Middle-Income Groups], Çevre 4 (July– August 1979): 78. 74 For a larger discussion, see Sencer Ayata, ‘Statü Yarışması ve Salon Kullanımı’ [Competing for Social Status and the Use of the Salon], Toplum ve Bilim 42 (1988): 5–25; Kennedy, ‘A Comparison’, iv. 75 For a similar discussion by the author, please see Gülsüm Baydar, Kıvanç Kılınç, Ahenk Yılmaz, ‘Discrepant Spatial Practices: Contemporary Social Housing Projects in Izmir’, in Kıvanç Kılınç and Mohammad Gharipour (eds), Social Housing in the Middle East: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Modernity (Indiana University Press, forthcoming, 2019). 76 Please see Utku Balaban, ‘Büyük Anakronizm: Kentsel Dönüşüm-Göç Ilişkisinde Mimari Analizin Rolü’ [A Great Anachronism: The Role of Architectural Analysis in the Correlation between Urban Transformation and Migration], Toplum ve Bilim 115 (2009): 103–37. 77 For the significance of going beyond formal approaches in the analysis of architectural modernism and seeing buildings ‘as primarily the products of a particular political, economic, and social system, though one which has cultural variations depending on location’, see Anthony D. King, “Internationalism, Imperialism, Postcolonialism, Globalization: Frameworks for Vernacular Architecture,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture 13, no. 2, Special 25th Anniversary Issue (2006/2007): 64–75. 78 For a similar discussion by the author, please see Kıvanç Kılınç, ‘Imported but Not Delivered: The Construction of Modern Domesticity and the Spatial Politics of Mass-Housing in 1930s Ankara’, Journal of Architecture 17, no. 6 (2012): 819–46. 79 Vincent Pecora, ‘Towers of Babel’, in Diane Ghirardo (ed.), Out of Site, A Social Criticism of Architecture (Seattle: Bay Press, 1991), 46.

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80 Kirsi Saarikangas, Modern Houses for Model Families, Gender Ideology and the Modern Dwelling: The Type-Planned Houses of the 1940s in Finland, Studia Historica 45 (Helsinki, SHS, 1993), 91. 81 Jane Rendell, The Pursuit of Pleasure: Gender, Space and Architecture in Regency London (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 20; For instance, ‘western assumptions of public and private do not fit well in the Ottoman context’ since women in the harem could still be significant social, economic and political actors. For a larger discussion, see Nancy Micklewright, ‘Public and Private for Ottoman Women of the Nineteenth Century’, in Ruggles, D. Fairchild (ed.), Women, Patronage, and Self-representation in Islamic Societies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 171–2. 82 Akram Fouad Khater, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2001), 5. 83 Rendell, Pursuit of Pleasure, 23. In the Yemeni houses, for instance, everyday life of the family and privacy were regulated by ‘certain behavioural codes’, rather than physical demarcation lines, which worked as unwritten manuals for the use of spaces. See Gabriele Vom Bruck, ‘A House Turned Inside Out: Inhabiting Space in a Yemeni City’, Journal of Material Culture 2, no. 2 (July 1997): 139–72. 84 I would like to thank the members of the Mutlu family, Feride, Kasım and Özlem Mutlu, for speaking with me about their experience of leaving their old house and moving into a multi-storey apartment building. 85 Here I am referring to a group of people who more or less adopted the middle-class values but lacked necessary capital to live like one, such as lower-rank civil servants, teachers and small shop owners. 86 In Khater’s words, ‘scholars have generally looked at the discursive productions of the middle class and its own internal ideas of the ‘modern’, Khater, Inventing Home, 7. 87 I have borrowed the term from the title of an excellent book: Marie Cartier, Isabelle Coutant, Olivier Masclet and Yasmine Siblot, The France of the Little-Middles: A Suburban Housing Development in Greater Paris, trans. Juliette Rogers (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2016). 88 For the transformation of Yenimahalle after the 1950s, see Tokman, ‘Konut Politikaları Uygulamalarında’; Önen, ‘Yenimahalle: A Problem of Conservation’; Aysal, ‘The Transformation of Yenimahalle’.

Bibliography Akcan, Esra. Architecture in Translation: Germany, Turkey, and the Modern House. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012.

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Altaban, Özcan. ‘Cumhuriyet’in Kent Planlama Politikaları ve Ankara Deneyimi’ [Urban Planning Politics of the Republic and the Ankara Experience], in Yıldız Sey (ed.), 75. Yılda Değişen Kent ve Mimarlık, 41–64. Istanbul: Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları Tarih Vakfı Ortak Yayını, 1998. Ayata, Sencer. ‘Statü Yarışması ve Salon Kullanımı’ [Competition for Social Status and the Use of Salon], Toplum ve Bilim 42 (1988): 5–25. Aysal, Başak. ‘The Transformation of Yenimahalle Settlement during the 1986–1996 Period’. MArch Thesis, Middle East Technical University, 1997. Balaban, Utku. ‘Büyük Anakronizm: Kentsel Dönüşüm-Göç Ilişkisinde Mimari Analizin Rolü’ [The Great Anachronism: The Role of Architectural Analysis in the Relationship between Urban Transformation and Migration], Toplum ve Bilim 115 (2009): 103–37. Bayaz, Peral. ‘Renewal Program for Yenimahalle’. PhD diss., Middle East Technical University, Ankara, 1966. Baydar, Gülsüm, Kılınç, Kıvanç and Ahenk Yılmaz. ‘Discrepant Spatial Practices: Contemporary Social Housing Projects in Izmir’, in Kıvanç Kılınç and Mohammad Gharipour (eds), Social Housing in the Middle East: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Modernity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019. Baydar, Gülsüm. ‘Room for a Newlywed Woman, Making Sense of Gender in the Architectural Discourse of Early Republican Turkey’, Journal of Architectural Education 60: 3 (2007): 3–11. Brenne, Winfried and Franz Jaschke. ‘Stadtebau und Architektur bei Bruno Taut’ [Bruno Taut: Architecture and Town Planning], in Winfried Brenne (ed.), Bruno Taut, Meister des farbigen Bauens in Berlin, 156–65. Verlagshaus Braun, 2005. Cantek, L. Funda Şenol. ‘Sel Gider Kum Kalır, 1957 Felaketzedelerinin Mamak’tan Yenimahalle’ye Uzanan Hayat Cizgileri’ [Flood Leaves, Sand Stays: The Life Stories of Disaster Victims of 1957 from Mamak to Yenimahalle], in Funda Senol Cantek (ed.), Sanki Viran Ankara, 43–106. Istanbul: Iletisim, 2006. Cartier, Marie, Coutant, Isabelle, Masclet, Olivier and Yasmine Siblot. The France of the Little-Middles: A Suburban Housing Development in Greater Paris, trans. Juliette Rogers. New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2016. Cengizkan, Ali, ed. ‘Discursive Formations in Turkish Residential Architecture (Türk Konut Mimarlığında Söylemsel Oluşumlar) Ankara, 1948–1962’. Ph.D. diss., Middle East Technical University, 2000. Cengizkan, Ali. Fabrika'da Barınmak: Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi'nde Türkiye'de İşçi Konutları—Yaşam, Mekân ve Kent [Dwelling in the Factory: Workers’ Houses in Early Republican Turkey, Life, Space, and the City]. Ankara: Arkadaş Yayınevi, 2009. Ceylan, Mustafa. Her Yönüyle Yenimahalle [Yenimahalle Inside Out]. Ankara, 1986. Eldem, Sedad Hakkı. Türk Evi Plan Tipleri [The Turkish House Plan Types]. İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi Mimarlık Fakültesi Yayınları, İstanbul, 1955. Ergenekon, Begümsen. ‘Yenimahalleli Olmak, Yeni Bir Komşuluk . . . O da Yeni bir Güvenlik Zinciri’ [Being from Yenimahalle, a New Neighborhood . . . and that Meant Having a New Safety Net]. Ada Kentliyim 1: 3 (August–November 1995): 105.

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Gürel, Sümer, et al. Dar Gelirli Kesime Altyapısı Hazır Konut Sunumu [Sites and Services Schemes for the Lower-Income]. Ankara: TOKİ, 1996. Kaba, Bedriye. ‘Yenimahalle, Yenirmahalle, Yenikmahalle’ [Yenimahalle That Is Eaten and Beaten]. Mimarlik 95: 261 (1995): 50–4. Kennedy, Nilgün Fehim. ‘A Comparison between Women Living in Traditional Turkish Houses and Women Living in Apartments in Historical Context’, Unpublished MA Thesis, Middle East Technical University, 1999. Keyder, Çağlar. ‘The Housing Market from Informal to Global’, in Çağlar Keyder (ed.), Istanbul, Between the Global and the Local, 143–59. Lanham, Boulder, and New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999. Khater, Akram Fouad. Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870–1920. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2001. Kılınç, Kıvanç. ‘Imported but Not Delivered: The Construction of Modern Domesticity and the Spatial Politics of Mass-Housing in 1930s Ankara’. Journal of Architecture 17: 6 (2012): 819–46. Kıray, Mübeccel B. ‘Apartmanlaşma ve Modern Orta Tabakalar’ [The Apartmentization and Contemporary Middle-Income Groups]. Cevre 4 (July–August 1979): 78. Kozan, Seden. ‘Memur Kentinin Memur Semtiydi Yenimahalle’ [Yenimahalle was the Civil Servant District of the Civil Servant City] Ankara Magazin 7: 69 (November 2007): 40. Küçük, Murat. ‘Yenimahalle Toplu Konut Uretimi icin Ornek Olabilir miydi?’ [Could Yenimahalle Set an Example for Mass-Housing Production in Turkey?] Mimarlik 261 (1995): 46–9. Micklewright, Nancy, ‘Public and Private for Ottoman Women of the Nineteenth Century’, in D. Fairchild Ruggles (ed.), Women, Patronage, and Self-representation in Islamic Societies, 155–76. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Önen, Zeynep. ‘Yenimahalle: A Problem of Conservation in Ankara’. MArch Thesis, Middle East Technical University, 1995. Orkçuoğlu, Muzaffer. İlçemiz Yenimahalle [Yenimahalle Our Province]. Ankara: Orkçuoğlu Yayınları, 1976. Pecora, Vincent, ‘Towers of Babel’, in Diane Ghirardo (ed.), Out of Site, A Social Criticism of Architecture, 46–77. Seattle: Bay Press, 1991. Rendell, Jane. The Pursuit of Pleasure: Gender, Space, and Architecture in Regency London. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Schmidt-Thomsen, Helga. ‘Licht und Farbe bei Bruno Taut, Light and Color in the Work of Bruno Taut’, in Winfried Brenne (ed.), Bruno Taut, Meister des farbigen Bauens in Berlin, 18–25. Berlin: Verlagshaus Braun, 2005. Şentek, Arif. ‘1940–1950 Yılları Arasında Türkiye'de Kentleşme, Konut ve Yapı Üretimine Ilişkin Görüşler’ [Thoughts on Urbanization, Housing and Building Development in Turkey in 1940–1950]. MA Thesis, Middle East Technical University, 1979.

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Şenyapılı, Tansı. Baraka’dan Gecekonduya, Ankara’da Kentsel Mekanın Dönüşümü 1923-1969 [From ‘Shed’ to Gecekondu, Transformation of Urban Space in Ankara 1923–1960]. İstanbul: İletişim, 2004. Sey, Yıldız. ‘To House the New Citizens: Housing Policies and Mass Housing’, in Renata Holod and Ahmet Evin (eds), Modern Turkish Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984. Tanyeli, Uğur. İstanbul 1900–2000, Konutu ve Modernleşmeyi Metropolden Okumak [İstanbul 1900–2000, Reading Housing and Modernization through the Metropolis]. Istanbul: Akın Nalça, 2004. Taşpınar, Zerrin. ‘Anılar’ [Memories], in A. Esat Bozyiğit (ed.), Ankara’nın Taşına Bak: Türk Yazınında Ankara [Ankara in Turkish Literature], 493–4. Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı Yay, 2000. Tekeli, İlhan. ‘Türkiye Kentlerinde Apartmanlaşma Sürecinde İki Aşama’ [Two Phases in the ‘Apartmentization’ Process in Turkish Cities] Cevre 4 (July–August 1979): 79. Tekeli, İlhan. Türkiye’de Yaşamda ve Yazında Konutun Öyküsü (1923–1980) [The Story of Housing in Life and Literature in Turkey]. Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2012. Tokman, L. Yıldız. Konut Politikaları Uygulamalarında Özel Bir Örnek: Yenimahalle. [A Particular Example in the Housing Policy Developments: Yenimahalle]. Ankara: KentKoop Yayınları, 1985. Vom Bruck, Gabriele. ‘A House Turned Inside Out: Inhabiting Space in a Yemeni City’, Journal of Material Culture 2: 2 (July 1997): 139–72.

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2

Looking beyond the lens’ veil Capturing the haram (1840–90)1 Jorge Correia

Setting Before Fez, I had never set foot in a city, never observed the swarming activity of the alleyways, never felt that powerful breath in my face, like the wind from the sea, heavy with cries and smells. Of course, I was born in Granada, the stately capital of the kingdom of Andalus, but it was already late in the century, and I knew it only in its death agonies, emptied of its citizens and souls, humiliated, faded, and when I left our quarter of al-Baisin, it wasn’t anything to my family than Avast encampment, hostile and ruined. . . . ‘Hasan, wake up if you want to see your city!’ Coming out of my torpor, I became conscious that our little convoy was already at the foot of a sand-colored wall, high and massive, bristling with a large number of menacing pointed battlements. A coin pushed into the hands of a gatekeeper caused the door to be opened. We were within the walls.2

The character Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan, later known as Leo Africanus, narrates his trip to Morocco in the late fifteenth century. Since little is known about this true historical personality, in this chapter Maalouf plots the scenario around a captivating and exuberant urban context of a vibrant North African and Arab city. The fascination with which the author infects the novel was certainly shared by any outside traveller when approaching the mighty walls of important Islamic cities, whether Muslims or not. A few centuries later, during the 1800s, the East represented the realm of exoticism, fantasy and mystery. Literature and painting provided perfect vehicles for fertile explorations of the unknown.3 In Europe, the poetry of Victor Hugo and Gérard de Nerval or the canvases of Eugène Delacroix, among others, fashioned visions of the Oriental world.4 In

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its infant stages, photography became yet another instrument that evoked these impressions. Several photographers had travelled to the Middle East and North Africa by the latter half of the nineteenth century, bringing home images to Europe and North America. Whether in search of Nile temples, Holy Land sites or Berber costumes, whether amateurs, pilgrims, part of scientific missions or commercial photographers, they all sailed to southern Mediterranean harbours, such as Algiers, Alexandria or Tripoli, and journeyed through important cities like Cairo or Damascus (Figure 2.1). A voyage to the Orient was considered a step back in time, towards the remains and ghosts of Western history; however, critics have argued that Orientalism produced only a factory of stereotypes. ‘Orientalism’ is a term commonly used to define the study by Eurocentric scientists and intellectuals on the historical and cultural set of the so-called societies out of the European cultural context. Orientalism was dedicated to research several civilizations in the Far East, India, Central Asia, Northern Africa and the Middle East, the last two commonly referred as the Arab world.

Figure 2.1  Row houses, Cairo. John Beasley Greene, 1854. Collection Centre Canadien d'Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture. PH1991:0255.

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In the 1870s, French writer Gustave Flaubert had defined an orientalist in the figure of the well-travelled man – ‘un homme qui a beaucoup voyagé’.5 One century after Flaubert, Palestinian-American academic Edward Said proposed a much wider concept of Orientalism, defining the term as a product of the West characterized by a patronizing attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian and North African cultures, often manifested in imagery of the Islamic world.6 In Said’s analysis, the West considers these societies as static and undeveloped, thereby fabricating a view of Oriental culture that can be studied, depicted and reproduced. Implicit in this fabrication, writes Said, is the idea that Western society is developed, rational, flexible and superior. Scholarship on urban studies soon joined this thread. Orientalist tropes that came to coalesce around the notion of the ‘Islamic city’ well into the twentieth century were based on a static, unchanging type of city. This derived neither from some originating city form or representation, nor from some established set of rules or ordinances to be found in the culture. Instead, the Islamic city was a negative construction, born of the projection of otherness: what was not the Western, the modern, the capitalist. Works of revision of the orientalist approach emerged through the holding of conferences and scholarly meetings that brought together academics from different backgrounds, including from Arab and Turkic countries.7 Even earlier, Brunschvig’s seminal article ‘Urbanisme medieval et droit musulman’8 was still orientalist in the way it defined the urban form of Islamic cities as ‘irrational’, without any plan.9 Nevertheless, it signified the starting point for modern studies on the Islamic city by acknowledging that cities were consequence of the administrative organization of the Islamic society which determined modes of construction of urban forms. Still orientalist may the work of Jean Sauvaget10 on the classical legacy of Syrian cities be also considered. In fact, while underlining that Damascus old city plan gets its orthogonal performance from the Hellenistic period, this author developed scientific procedures, based on archaeological evidence. Yet, the morphological turn these previous revisionist works announced and, eventually, set did not gather sufficient scholarship in the second half of the nineteenth century. At a time when Western powers were looking to the Near East with an increasing colonial appetite, photographs helped to convey a sense of chaos and disorder, insalubrity and a lack of self-governance. A regular steamer line was established from Marseille to Alexandria in 1837 and a large number of travellers started to cross the Mediterranean in other regular lines (Figure 2.2). By the mid-1800s it was a fashionable thing to do for different groups. Amateur photographers, usually tourists that took personal travel ‘snapshots’, became a

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Figure 2.2  Port of Alexandria. Wilhelm Hammerschmidt, 1860s. Collection Centre Canadien d'Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture. PH1980:0155:002.

significant party, leading to the establishment of businesses such as Thomas Cook, were joined by artists, amazed by the exoticism of natural and urban landscapes, of live models and scenes of daily life. More oriented missions were also carried out, such as pilgrims, looking for a religious self-rebirth, and exploration or scientific parties, which would eventually extend the nostalgic detour to ancient ruins that neoclassicism had represented in Europe to the archaic antiquities of the Middle East. And, of course, there were military expeditions which signalled the political ambitions of expansionist nations like Britain or France. Generally speaking, there were two major reasons for the massive flow to the East: to escape from the pressures of daily reality and seek refuge in new and different vistas and interests.11 Photographers were mainly European and commercial photographers could be counted among the groups of enthusiasts. Soon after, several shops began to appear as Cairo and Alexandria became trade centres at first, followed by Beirut and then Jerusalem. Although all these cities were located within the Arab-Islamic geographical sphere, there were very few Muslim-owned studios. Alexandria and Beirut, as Tunis, Algiers, Oran or Tangier further West, served as reception harbours for the flow of curious and eager foreigners, also working as cultural mediators

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between the Occident and the Orient, a clash that today would be better put between the northern hemisphere and the global South. From here, by land on a stone-throw journey to Jerusalem and other Jewish or Christian landmarks, or venturing in a caravan to inland oasis or sailing down the Nile to Cairo and beyond, excursionists were able to be in close contact with the traditional built environment of villages, towns and cities.

Angle The rush towards the Orient coincided with the invention of photography in 1839. So, the history of photography and that of the Middle East, at a time of European colonial expansion, are totally intertwined. During the early decades of photography, no other area of the world excepting Europe was so thoroughly photographed as was the Middle East, particularly Egypt and Palestine. Indeed, the earliest photographic processes were being employed in the Middle East almost immediately after they were developed in Europe, such as the daguerreotype, the first process to enable production of unique images from a camera, and some of the first books to be illustrated with original photographs dealt with regions of this area. The Excursions Daguerriennes, vues et monuments les plus remarquables du globe, conducted between 1841 and 1844, proved to be a novel documentary tool of scientific exploration tool of the Middle East, recording Egyptian hieroglyphs, for example.12 Calotype was the process to follow, using paper negative, reducing significantly the length of exposure and allowing numerous positive reproductions. The first photographer to use the calotype in the Middle East was Maxime Du Camp in 1849. His prints of Egypt, Nubia, Palestine and Syria were a stunning success and the author would call himself ‘feverish’ in assembling images of palm trees, deserts or ruined temples.13 Yet, when turning to cities, its depictions enhanced the chaos, the disorder, the insalubrity of living conditions. The photographic album was given birth,14 fed by other calotypists who, enchanted by their own work of collecting, would follow the likes of French Auguste Salzmann’s trip to Jerusalem in 185315 or Louis de Clercq’s journey included in a financed archaeological expedition in 1859, resulting in the famous six volumes of Voyage en Orient, containing photographs of Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Spain. British photographers, among which one can name Francis Frith or Frank Mason Good, came in later, pursuing a fact-

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gathering, documentary style and avoiding personal interpretation of scenes and landscapes. As if in continuity with the ruins of the past, the lens of these pioneer photographers often focused on the ruined state of the visited cities. A time capsule was brought from the West to the Middle East, defining the subject of their photography and restricting it almost exclusively to the fallen grandeur of the region past civilizations, its biblical antiquities and associations, and the picturesque inhabitants of the area. The approach deliberately looked after frozen memories and imaginations of how life and the built environment must have been two millennia or more before. Most resident photographers remained in the East their entire lives such as Félix Bonfils who opened the ‘Maison Bonfils’ in Beirut, as tourism made it a profitable business. The remarks of his son Adrien typify the thoughts of many photographers who worked in the Middle East during the nineteenth century and their aim to preserve and sell an immutable configuration of the Orient:16 Costumes! Types! Customs! Everything seems fixed in this immutable Orient as if to confirm for us, even in most minute details, the authenticity and sincerity of what the Evangelists have told us . . . Civilization, penetrating everywhere, will finish by taking away from this country, . . . its character and special cachet. A day will come when this land like all the other will perish. . . . Before that happens, before progress has completely done its destructive job, before this present which is still the past has forever disappeared, we have tried to fix and immortalize it in a series of photographic views we are offering to our readers in this album.

The touristic pressure and consumption refrained, delayed and even stopped the real perception of the East and of the characteristics of the Arab-Islamic city in particular. It was much more interesting to keep up with a legendary image of the regions, its monuments and its social habits. As Elizabeth Edwards puts it, context is, as with any historical source, crucial to the interpretation of these photographs, certainly provocative and suggestive.17 In its early stage, the creation and consumption of photography were indexed to the Western perception of scenarios beyond the Mediterranean, in general, and the Balkans, the Bosphorus or even the Pyrenees, in particular. Carefully staged photos served to reinforce the impressions brought back to the West by such early travellers, most of them venturing in fashionable tours that led them to the ruins of classical Greece, the exoticism of former Constantinople, the religious monuments of Palestine and the stones of the ancient Egyptian civilization. These trips were followed by exhibitions such as the world expositions in Paris and Chicago, which flooded Western visual

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culture with exotic depictions of the East, as if going to the so-called Orient was going towards the remains and ghosts of Western own history. Since most of the photographers were foreign born, prejudices and preconceptions were mirrored in the images made during that time. So, between staging performances of the ‘other’ and claiming actions on founding pillars of European history, the extensive photographic activity was indeed an act of invasion, occupation and appropriation of those lands and part of their spiritual and physical heritage.18 In fact, the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries saw major colonial expansion and consolidation of European powers in the Middle East and North Africa. The context in which photography must be understood and perceived is not only a cultural one but also, and very importantly, a political one. Moreover, manifestations of superior theories of the race were completely intertwined with the expansion and maintenance of European colonial power. Thus, the rush of Western photographers to the Near East in the 1800s ties into the European political atmosphere of the period, the militaristic ambitions of dominant countries such as France and England, and the delicate condition of the territories under Ottoman rule. Colonization was joined by a profitable business that perpetuated just a glimpse of the local scenery and persisted on transmitting the very same imagery regarding the harem.19 Blockage forces were powerful to prevent any effort of understanding the Arab-Islamic urbanism and architecture from succeeding, if not let us read the words by Lord Cromer, British consul in Egypt between 1883 and 1907: The mind of the Oriental, on the other hand, like his picturesque streets, is eminently wanting in symmetry. His reasoning is of the most slipshod description. Although the ancient Arabs acquired in a somewhat higher degree the science of dialectics, their descendants are singularly deficient in the logical faculty.20

The pattern was set, fixed and, indeed, the main criticism that the orientalist photography has gathered exposes itself as a factory of stereotypes, copying and pasting clichés. Nevertheless, it relies on a body of re-copied images sold to travellers, sometimes as postcards, which hides a richer and more complex reality of no less important images.

Focus Relying on the same corpus of images, which proved so important for the colonial ambitions of the West, and not neglecting the rawer snapshots in favour of the most popular ones, an alternative reading was possible in order to

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contest predetermined impressions. On the one hand, the first paradox of the Oriental photograph was that it’s monochrome, when compared to the colourful textures of painting.21 Less exuberant, black-and-white still frames enabled a more neutral approach to the images and what they depict: a raw picture of the daily life and of how the built environment presented itself. Nevertheless, on the other hand, photography also allowed for the recognition of notions, models and concepts other than the known, accepted and constantly repeated ones in the Western world. From generic urban panoramas to street views, pushing towards the visualization of levels of domesticity, cameras allowed a degree of intrusion unknown until then, permitting for non-staged snapshots to be captured in the Arab-Muslim sphere. How was the visual experience of an outsider photographer? And how was the perceptive experience transmitted by the photograph? To focus on the evaluation of degrees of halal and haram in architecture and urbanism22 through early photography exposed another dimension of the scientific potential of collections and albums, not only today but interestingly back in the late 1800s. Photographers showed a particular care towards the approach of the city limits as the first boundary to interpret these so-called exotic urban morphologies then. Historically, for an Arab city, the fortified belt signalled a clear border between inner and outer spaces. Urban assemblages were characterized by a tissue that had been evolving from early medieval times till the nineteenth century and was still nowadays recognizable in many historical cores of Middle Eastern and Northern African cities. Back then, like today, the defensive perimeter constituted the first point of contact with the city for Western photographers, as for any other foreigner or visitor. The defensive system could only be penetrated through distinctively marked gates (bab). These were the only permeable elements in the city where walls imparted an image of it as not only a compact organism but also an enclosed one. Seen from the countryside, they represented divisions between the traditional city internal core (medina) and the sprawling neighbourhood outskirts (rabad) (Figure 2.3). Additions in the form of suburbia could have also been walled at a certain point in time, therefore increasing the barriers that an outsider would have to face in order to reach the urban centre. Such limits also reinforced other functional separations as early industrial activities were placed outside city walls, thus diverting noise and waste away from residential quarters. Cemeteries were located outside the walls as well, in a clear reference to the consistent zoning of the Islamic urban display. In some cases, fields of graves evolved into landmarking mausoleums. Early photographers became particularly obsessed by the

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Figure 2.3 Citadel of Cairo. Emile Béchard, 1878 or before. Collection Centre Canadien d'Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture. PH1983:0200:148.

quantity, magnificence and state of ruin of some historic royal tombs, built on the outgoing path from Cairo towards Mecca, now the northern and southern cemeteries of the Egyptian capital. So, by entering a new city on the back of a donkey, horse or a camel, an even more exotic style for a traveller, or simply by walking, a very bare and transchronological experience awaited the curious photographer. The historicity of the city that had been gathered and densified its urban character throughout centuries was presented without filters but the physical ones that have always separated the enemy from the defender, the visitor from the local, the foreign from the inhabitant. Nevertheless, contrarily to field approaches to some old Arab cities, high panoramic views offered an ideal perspective for quickly grasping the city as a whole, immediately communicating the notion of density. Indeed, photographers often chose high points to set the camera and produce global panoramas that offered a general perspective of the city’s character. As privileged instruments of propaganda, urban panoramas often translated a view of an impenetrable urban fabric composed of labyrinths, where the lack of broad avenues or boulevards confirmed the presumption of civilizational inferiority. The eyes of the intruder were trained to recognize linearity and orthogonal

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planning as the canon for a hygienic and structured street layout, blind to other displays of public space hierarchy and general organization of urban landscape. However, they also revealed concepts inherent to the study and the understanding of the challenging modes and codes of traditional Islamic city that defied preconceptions. In fact, photos show cities which were not the result of disorganized planning but rather expressed a tightly woven social network. They usually spanned around two clusters. On the one hand, and many times on a hilltop or topographically vantage point, the military and administrative sector (burj or ksar) or citadel was set, managing its surveillance and defence characteristics. Adjacent to it, yet at a lower level, and as seen before, the medina spread. These evidences of zoning were intensively captured by early photographers. Cosmopolitan and mercantile, Arab cities have long been important trade centres, and this history is key in recognizing another specific urban sector: the commercial programmes. Hubs of hustle-and-bustle affairs and movement, open-air markets (suq) and covered markets (qayssaryya) could often be located next to mosques and were particularly targeted by early processes of photographic development. Even in urban panoramas, lively concentrations of people can be detected, denouncing important trade streets or neighbouring notable buildings. Commercial areas worked as important social knots and integrated an extremely hierarchal and structured composition of the urban layout.23 Furthermore, the relevance of skyline and generic photographs can be projected in other scientific vectors of analysis. They represented fundamental tools for an even more precise explanation of the city too, rather than the subdivision between citadel and medina. Climbing over rooftops, urban photographers homed in on portraits of dense and intricate clusters of residential buildings, allowing the identification of exceptional elements appearing in the skylines, most especially minarets. Cityscapes show minarets rising from an apparently disorganized fabric that required interpretation (Figure 2.4). What minarets actually signalled

Figure 2.4 Panorama of Latakia from the south. Louis De Clercq, 1859–60. Collection Centre Canadien d'Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture. PH1980:0048.01:008 A/B.

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were compact boroughs or neighbourhoods gathered around a mosque, called ḥawma, mahalla or khitta, depending on the geographical incidence.24 Each vertical structure is its most evident physical landmark, indicating a centripetal force that commanded the ground level display of markets and residential areas aggregated to it and the limits of its congregational attraction. If several minarets would dot the skyline of a large city, such as Cairo or Damascus, a single minaret of a main mosque would be enough to oversee a smaller village. Stepping down from privileged high points and walking through the gates of a city, on to the streets and alleys of a traditional Islamic city, introduced photographers to the pedestrian movement character upon which they were formed. To understand this component is an essential chapter for the full comprehension of levels of outside and inside, of public and private, in Islamic urban arrangement and built environment and photographs were already discerning such arguments. They revealed a clear hierarchy between open public thoroughfares (shar’ or tariq) and the dead-end street or cul-de-sac (derb or hosh), capturing clearly commercial canals as well as quiet and shady little lanes. Whereas the former usually connected gates, mosques and major crossroads, the latter represented a semi-private alley, only shared by close neighbours. Despite specific historical exceptions, such as Islamic takeovers of classical planned cities like the well-documented case of the old town of Damascus25 or the establishment of royal precincts in Cairo,26 long and linear street perspectives were unusual as a way to defend against the outsider enemy and the insider curiosity. From a main street with a wider section, even if not necessarily a rectilinear geometry, to the shady doorstep of a household, an array of secondary canals mediated the social layers and the morphological aspects of a densely encoded urban assemblage. Browsing the core of historic medinas, photographers also included many blind facades, symbols of intimacy and privacy, within their quadrangular snapshots’ frame as they ventured within cities (Figure 2.5). Often, consoles hanging from upper floors were captured in pictures that saw light reduced due to their presence. Such elements derive from the concept of fina’,27 which corresponds to the space immediately adjacent to the exterior wall of a house. It is allocated for the daily temporary use of the inhabitant of the house to which it abuts, for the loading and unloading of beasts of burden and the temporary parking of such animals. Its application on the ground extended vertically, reflecting upper floors. Air-right structures (sabat) are related to the idea of utilizing both sides of the street, building a room over it, provided they do not obstruct passage on the ground floor. These two concepts, which refer to medieval traditions, are key elements to understand the usage of open spaces

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Figure 2.5  Street in Algiers. Unknown photographer, 1870s–1880s. Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture. PH1982:0373:077.

surrounding or bordering a certain house whose usage is given to the owner. The result was compact clusters of residential buildings, an image that concurred to the labyrinth perception of the urban nuclei in the Near East or North Africa. Nonetheless, once inside the city, did photographers dare to invade interior spaces? Built for pedestrian movement, traditional Islamic cities show a grading from public to private, from halal to haram as seen before. These cultural dimensions work as filters at different levels of the urban structure or the building composition. The courtyard epitomizes the private spaces of a house, its domestic haram, and it is the basic spatial unit in the traditional Islamic city and its noble buildings like mosques or madrassas. Due to its regular and geometrical shape, it became the easiest feature to apprehend in photographs that abandoned the supposed disorder of the street. Since the cultural matrix of Islam favours enclosed spaces, large courtyards of mosques are therefore the semi-public squares the city rarely possesses (Figure 2.6). Besides the technical virtue of the photograph or the scientific curiosity for the architecture of the place, photographers were also exposed to the social content of such patios

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Figure 2.6    Courtyard of the Great Mosque, Damascus. Félix Bonfils, early 1870s. Collection Centre Canadien d'Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture. PH1980:0683.03:058.

where not only hygiene was practiced for praying purposes but public encounters occurred, discussion took place and meetings were easy too. This feature is particularly evident for main or Friday mosques (jami masjid). A mosque is usually gathered around an open courtyard, as seen earlier, called sahn, where ablution rituals take place. Stepping inside the prayer hall, a hypostyle room with a wall oriented towards Mecca (qibla) was found, marked by a clear niche (mihrab). Suddenly, the apparent disorganization of the exterior of the mosque, and the maze of streets that entangled it, was replaced by an extremely organized pattern of tapestries on the floor for prayers. The location of the minbar, pulpit for the imam to deliver his sermons or lectures, as well as the maqsurah, a reserved wooden chamber or platform, confirmed the rigorous internal hierarchical display of the most important building in town, almost as if it represented an orthogonal chess board. Materials were brought together in a detailed, non-figurative décor. These luxurious and imbricated screens of marble, stucco and carved wood combinations were often object of gaze by the orientalist observer who, in gestures, acknowledged the virtue of such craftsmanship. All these factors combined pushed the photographer, and most probably the viewer of his captures at a later stage, to

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challenge their precipitated apprehension of urban factors so far. Why would the outside and the inside be so different when it came to space conformation? Would this question lead to a revision of preconceptions and prejudices? Pursuing this quest, and pushing boundaries of privacy and intimacy, from the holiest haram to the domestic haram, the quadrangular-shaped courtyard also represented the private spaces of a domestic complex. Invasive in nature, photographs depicted interiors where, once again, the display of architectural beauty prevailed. While facades were turned inward, not to the street, gathering the family nucleus and guests within an intimate frame, the diwan looked over a haven where water, and sometimes vegetation, punctuated the space. But even in domestic courtyards, the public areas, the halal, were separated from the haram, the more private rooms, by wooden lattice screens (mashrabiya). This was the very last sample of social behaviour that was and is present at all levels of urban organization in traditional Arab-Islamic tissues. Early photography, prudent yet bold, presented a black-and-white portrayal of abstract spaces where human life was almost absent, an almost scientific blank casing to be analysed from the typo and morphological point of views. At the time, photographers were walking the streets of these cities with quite an impressive amount of equipment, even if portable devices became available quite soon. Indeed, the garish factor that must have accompanied photographers in their endeavours, together with the required human resources need to transport and assist, caused a negative impact for a sociability used to elect privacy and intimacy as basic pillars. A pageant of foreigners carrying bizarre devices prevented cameras from capturing a more vivid daily life as people would take rescue in side alleys or inside homes. Furthermore, the sturdiness of the technological material made it difficult for photographers to quickly shoot towards a spontaneously gathered crowd or isolated persons against the built background of streets. This said, it is important to highlight the neutral approach of photographers who ventured the core of unfamiliar urban landscapes and resisted the temptation of repeatedly staging popular scenes. Unlike some of animated heliogravures by Leopold Carl Muller and J. R. Junghaendel,28 in which an ethnographical and anthropological input was looked for, a significant other number of pictures avoided the paparazzi effect of the curious Western for the imagined Orient. Summing up, the interpretation of photographs taken in the second half of the 1800s is broader and acknowledges the contemporaneity and timeliness of such images. A portrait of an urban reality, from bird’s-eye to ground views, that photography brought to light more than one century and a half ago.

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Processing The nineteenth century had started with one of the most positive consequences of a failed military campaign. The Description de l’Egypte, published between 1809 and 1828 as the result of the scholars who had joined the Napoleonic army, constitutes the basis for all orientalist studies later conducted. It was the starting point for the modern urban recognition of the Islamic city because besides surveys of buildings, topographical surveys of Cairo and other cities in Egypt were executed as well.29 Yet this urban and archaeological knowledge of these cities was subordinated to the cultural domination of the binomium imperialism-exoticism, words that have in common the profound incomprehension of history and cultural relations, missing one of the distinctive features of Islam. And that is the fact that it has given birth to a wide-ranging and integrated cultural system by meaningfully inserting the religious practice in the daily life of society in general and individuals in particular. While Islam did not prescribe formal architectural concepts, it moulded the whole way of life by providing a matrix of behavioural archetypes which have generated correlated physical patterns.30 Due to the strength of customs and of self-evident tacit agreements, there was no need for explicit building codes and it dispensed the need for many formal institutions. Orientalists were also very negative in this point, claiming little administration in the Muslim city, denying the existence of communities (tawa’if), of institutions such as the waqf or hubus or agents like the muhtasib or the qadi.31 In fact, when one enquires into a corpus of large Arab cities situated from Morocco to Iraq, from Syria to Yemen, the major features of urban structure appear fairly constant and exhibit a rationale such that one can speak of a ‘coherent’ urban system32 that, in many cases, still relates to the medieval period. Within the process of building and urban development, the roots of the structure and the unity prevalent in the vast Islamic world are the product of the Fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence): the mechanism interpreting and applying the value system of the Shari’a (Islamic divine law which derives from the holy Qur’an and the Sunnah).33 Hence all the cities inhabited predominantly by Muslims share an Islamic identity which is directly due to the application of Shari’a values in the process of city building. Both the vocabulary and design language and the Fiqh mechanism tended to perpetuate and sustain urban forms and the organizational/planning systems. So, nineteenth-century photographs may have well depicted that portrayal. Early photography offered already then a quite contemporary reading of a morphological turn in both architectural and urban

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studies,34 especially when it comes to looking beyond the lens and capturing the different layers of haram, the different veils that the Western camera so emphatically discovered. Architectural and urban images of mosques, tombs or streets could have also provided material for cultural and ideological scrutiny already in the 1800s and show the validity of the scientific research of such photos for the purpose of the traditional Arab-Muslim medina study, in particular for the relationship between outside and inside. From countryside, to city, to borough and quarter, to households and inner courtyards, cameras provided a knowledge that was already available at the time photographs were being produced. At a certain level, photography stopped the orientalist depiction that literature and painting allowed with no limits. However, on the other hand, both massive tourism and geostrategic political games controlled the information and the image of the Orient to be preserved, the pressure of the colonial power over a discriminated and colonized region insisted on revealing cities as having no order, nor system or rules.35 Yet, through the very same images that served colonial appetites and Western configurations of the other, a different reality was already available to challenge such preconceived readings, questioning the discussion on inside/outside or interior/exterior binomials as far as early photography’s reception and perception are concerned. Fostering a translation of encrypted urban and spatial codes, early photography might have been the decisive technological tool for the integration of an exotic realm into the globalized sphere of a diverse built environment debate.

Notes 1 This chapter is based on a research conducted at the Canadian Centre for Architecture photographic collection and an exhibition curated at the same institution in 2014 titled ‘Photographing the Arab City in the Nineteenth Century.’. 2 Excerpt from Amin Maalouf, Leo Africanus, trans. Peter Sluglett (Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, 1992), 83 (1st ed.: Léon l’African, Paris: JC Lattès, 1986). 3 On this, see the satirical quotation from the poem ‘Pierre Loti’ by Nazım Hikmet, 1925: ‘“Opium! / Submission! / Kismet! / Lattice-work, caravanserais / fountains / a sultan dancing on a silver tray! / Maharajah, rajah / a thousand-year-old shah! / Waving from minarets / clogs made of mother-of-pearl; / women with hennastained noses / working their looms with their feet. / In the wind, green-turbaned imams / calling people to prayer” / This is the Orient the French poet sees. / This / is / the Orient of the books / that come out of the press / at a rate of a million a

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5

6 7

8 9

10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17

18 19 20

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minute. / But / yesterday / today / or tomorrow / an Orient like this / never existed / and never will.’ Paul E. Chevedden, The Photographic Heritage of the Middle East: An Exhibition of Early Photographs of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Greece & Iran, 1849-1893 (Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1981), 8. Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues by Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) was published in 1913. For further considerations, see Nissan N. Perez, Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East (1839-1885) (New York: Abrams, 1988). Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). First, a colloquium in Oxford in 1965, published in 1970 by A. H. Hourani and S. M. Stern, taking a vernacular-regionalist standpoint, was followed by one organized by Robert B. Sergeant in 1980, both called The Islamic City, or the symposium held in Medina called The Arab city, its character and Islamic cultural heritage in 1982. In 1986, the seminal book by Besim S. Hakim was published, titled ArabicIslamic Cities: Building and Planning Principles, establishing the ground-breaking systematization of the knowledge so far, seeking the derivation of the urban structure of cities, still generically defined as Islamic, in Islamic law. Together with André Raymond’s 1984 publication The Great Arab Cities in the 16th to 18th Centuries, both have represented a cornerstone of urban studies on the subject. Robert Brunschvig, ‘Urbanisme médiéval et droit musulman’, Revue des Études Islamiques 15, no. 2 (1947): 127–55. For further critique, see chapter by Giulia Annalinda Neglia, ‘Some Historiographical Notes on the Islamic City’, in Salma K. Jayyusi (ed.), The City in the Islamic World (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 3–46. Jean Sauvaget, ‘Le plan antique de Damas’, Syria 26 (1949): 314–58. Perez, Focus East, 32. Chevedden, The Photographic Heritage of the Middle East, 1. Susan Slyomovics, ed., The Walled Arab City in Literature, Architecture and History: The Living Medina in the Maghrib (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2001), 13. Sylvie Aubenas and Jacques Lacarrière, Voyage en Orient (Paris: Hazan, 1999), 21. Jerusalem. Etude et reproduction photographique de monuments de la Ville Sainte, published in 1856. Chevedden, The Photographic Heritage of the Middle East, 8. Elisabeth Edwards, Anthropology and Photography, 1860-1920 (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, 1992), 5. On this comment, consult Perez, Focus East, 100. Malek Alloula, Alger: photographiée au XIXe siècle (Paris: Marval, 2001), 3. Cromer, Evelyn Baring, Earl of Modern Egypt, by the Earl of Cromer (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1908), II, 146.

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21 Aubenas and Lacarrière, Voyage en Orient, 22. 22 On the subject of these two poles, see Attilio Petruccioli, Dar al-Islam (Bruxelles: Pierre Mardaga, 1990), 38. 23 On the hesitations of the orientalist thesis to accept a reality that appears beyond argument, please read chapter by André Raymond, ‘The Spatial Organization of the City’, in Salma K. Jayyusi (ed.), The City in the Islamic World (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 47–70. 24 Paolo Cuneo, Storia dell'urbanistica: il mondo islamico (Roma: Laterza, 1986), 92. 25 Sauvaget, ‘Le plan antique de Damas’. 26 Noha Nasser, ‘Cairo Ville Crée en Islam? A Reinterpretation of an Islamicate Urban Paradigm’, in Attilio Petruccioli (ed.), The Planned City? ISUF International Conference (Bari: Union Corcelli Editrice, 2003), II, 566–72. 27 Brunschvig, ‘Urbanisme médiéval et droit musulman’. 28 Examples such as scenes taken in a street in Cairo or outdoor school in Upper Egypt, in J. R. Junghaendel, Egypt. Heliogravures after Original Views (Berlin: Cosmos, 1893). 29 Cuneo, Storia dell'urbanistica, 92. 30 Stefano Bianca, Urban Form in the Arab World: Past and Present (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), 22–3. 31 On institutions and agents, see Ibid., 30, or Torres Balbas (1985). 32 Cf. Raymond, The City in the Islamic World, 47–70. In many cases, this coherent system still relates to the medieval formation period; later, the period from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century would mean virtually an Ottoman domination for all the regions, the exception being western Maghreb and parts of the Arabian Peninsula. 33 Besim S. Hakim, Arabic-Islamic Cities: Building and Planning Principles (London: KPI, 1986), 137–8. 34 More recently, regional approaches began to tell the differences within the general abstraction of the Arab-Muslim world. Paolo Cuneo’s book Storia dell'urbanistica: il mondo islamico in 1986 represents the most systematic work on the history of the cities and different regions. One year before, Torres Balbas had indicated the way, aiming at just one region in Ciudades hispano-musulmanas, using archaeology as a source too. More recently other scholars, such as Stefano Bianca (Urban Form in the Arab World: Past and Present, 2000), are concerned with the urban renewal of Islamic cities, also adopting a socio-religious standpoint on the Middle-Eastern city, or Hicham Mortada (Traditional Islamic Principles of Built Environment, 2003) going back to the question of Middle Eastern or Arab cities as direct translations of Islamic codes and laws into physical form, excluding all other aspects of the formation of cities. Attilio Petruccioli’s 2007 book After Amnesia: Learning from the Islamic Mediterranean Urban Fabric proposed a reading of the urban fabric

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using epistemological tools developed in the field of morphological and typological studies. The following couple of years saw the partition of conference proceedings again, organized or highly indebted to names mentioned before such as The City in the Islamic World (2008), which have considerably contributed to update the state of the art. 35 On this, see note 8.

Bibliography Alter ego: Louis De Clercq, negatives, 1859. München: Galerie Daniel Blau, 2003. Alloula, Malek. Alger: photographiée au XIXe siècle. Paris: Marval, 2001. AlSayyad, Nezar. Cairo. Histories of a City. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. Aubenas, Sylvie and Jacques Lacarrière. Voyage en Orient. Paris: Hazan, 1999. Beaulieu, Jill and Mary Roberts, eds. Orientalism's Interlocutors: Painting, Architecture, Photography. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Behbad, Ali. Camera Orientalis. Reflections on Photography of the Middle East. Chicago and London: The Chicago University Press, 2016. Bianca, Stefano. Urban form in the ARAB World: Past and Present. London: Thames and Hudson, 2000. Brunschvig, Robert. ‘Urbanisme médiéval et droit musulman’, Revue des Etudes Islamiques 15, no. 2 (1947): 127–55. Cetin, Murat. ‘Contrasting Perspectives on the Arab City’, Review Article. Urban Morphology 1: 15 (2011): 79–84. Chevedden, Paul E. The Photographic Heritage of the Middle East: An Exhibition of Early Photographs of Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Greece & Iran, 1849–1893. Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1981. Cuneo, Paolo. Storia dell'urbanistica: il mondo islamico. Roma: Laterza, 1986. Edwards, Elisabeth. Anthropology and Photography, 1860–1920. New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, 1992. Gavin, Carney. Bonfils and the Early Photography of the Near East. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Library, 1978. Guidoni, Enrico. ‘Urbanística islâmica e città medievali europee’, Storia della Città 7 (1978): 4–10. Hakim Besim S. Arabic-Islamic Cities: Building and Planning Principles. London: KPI, 1986. Hillenbrand, Robert. Islamic Architecture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000. Hourani, A. H. and S. M. Stern, eds. The Islamic City: A Colloquium, held at All Souls College, 28 June–2 July 1965. Oxford and Cassirer, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970.

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Jayyusi, Salma K. ed. The City in The Islamic World. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008. Junghaendel, J. R. Egypt. Heliogravures after Original Views. Berlin: Cosmos, 1893. Khiara, Youssef. ‘Propos sur l’urbanisme dans la jurisprudence Musulmane’, Arqueologia Medieval. Porto. 3 (1993) 33–46. Mortada, Hicham. Traditional Islamic Principles of Built Environment. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. Nasser, Noha. ‘Cairo Ville Crée en Islam? A Reinterpretation of an Islamicate Urban Paradigm’, in Attilio Petruccioli (ed.), The Planned City? ISUF International Conference, vol. II, 566–72. Bari: Union Corcelli Editrice, 2003. Ozendes, Engin. From Sébah & Joaillier to Foto Sabah: Orientalism in Photography. Istanbul: YKY, 1999. Perez, Nissan N. Focus East: Early Photography in the Near East (1839–1885). New York: Abrams, 1988. Petruccioli, Attilio. Dar al-Islam. Bruxelles: Pierre Mardaga, 1990. Petruccioli, Attilio. After Amnesia: Learning from the Islamic Mediterranean Urban Fabric. Bari: ICAR, 2007. Petruccioli, Attilio and Khalil K. Pirani. Understanding Islamic Architecture. London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002. Raymond, André. The Great Arab Cities in the 16th to 18th Centuries: An Introduction. New York and London: New York University Press, 1984. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Sauvaget, Jean. ‘Le plan antique de Damas’, Syria, 26 (1949): 314–58. Serageldin, Ismail and Samir El-Sadek, Samir, eds. The Arab City, Its Character and Islamic Cultural Heritage, Proceedings of a symposium held in Medina, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, 24–29 Rabi II, 1401 AH, 28 February–5 March, 1981 AD. Arlington: I. Serageldin, 1982. Serjeant, R. B., ed. The Islamic City, Selected papers from the colloquium held at the Middle East Center, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 19–23 July 1976. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980. Slyomovics, Susan, ed. The Walled Arab City in Literature, Architecture and History: The Living Medina in the Maghrib. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2001. Torres Balbas, Leopoldo. Ciudades hispano-musulmanas, 2 vols. Madrid: Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, 1985. Youssef Hoteit, Aida. Cultura, espacio y organización urbana en la ciudad islámica. Madrid: Instituto Juan de Herrera, 1993. Zannier, Italo. Verso oriente/fotografie di Antonio e Felice Beato. Firenze: Alinari, 1986.

3

Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf, whose ghosts must be summoned Jeff O’Brien

In the series of more or less equivalent words that accurately designate haunting, specter, as distinct from ghost [revenant], speaks of the spectacle. The specter is first and foremost something visible. It is of the visible, but of the invisible visible, it is the visibility of a body which is not present in flesh and blood. It resists the intuition to which it presents itself, it is not tangible. Phantom preserves the same reference to phainesthai, to appearing for vision, to the brightness of day, to phenomenality. And what happens with spectrality, with phantomality – and not necessarily with coming-back [revenance] – is that something becomes almost visible which is visible only insofar as it is not visible in flesh and blood. It is a night visibility. As soon as there is a technology of the image, visibility brings night. It incarnates in a night body, it radiates a night light. At this moment, in this room, night is falling over us. Even if it weren't falling, we are already in night, as soon as we are captured by optical instruments which don't even need the light of day. Jacques Derrida, ‘Spectographies’.1 Situated on Damascus Street – the former green line that separated Beirut into the predominantly Christian East and Muslim West during the 1975 to 1990 Lebanese Civil War(s) – is the National Museum of Beirut. The museum (mathaf) square out front was a crucial civilian crossing point between east and west during the war, where one could traverse sectarian boundaries largely enforced through a system of checkpoints along the line. Lamia Joreige’s 2013 project Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf re-imagines the National Museum of Beirut as offering a time capsule of the intertwined, layered histories of the war. For Joreige, these ‘layers of history’ offer a ‘poetic form’.2 The Mathaf-Barbir

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crossing is one layer of history, as the site of countless kidnappings and killings during the fifteen-year war. A second, intertwined layer is the museum itself, which witnessed a revolving cast of occupiers, armies and militia groups, each vying to control the surrounding mathaf district, where Joreige lives. A small hole, intentionally burrowed through a fifth-century mosaic by a sniper, offers the third layer of history. Joreige’s project, as discussed here, consists of ten spectral, haunting photograms made – or more accurately, received – at mathaf; a sketch of the sniper’s hole and its dimensions; and a reconstruction of the inverse of the hole that takes form as a 100-kg sculpture, which Joreige terms a ‘poetic reformulation’. These intertwined histories present an account of the war that replicates the logic of a Möbius strip – without inside or outside: a history evacuated of empty, homogenous time and instead asking to be perpetually excavated. I want to open with a passage from famed Palestinian poet laureate Mahmoud Darwish who, while living in Beirut during Israel’s 1982 bombardment of the city, wrote: What’s the situation? Terrible. The conditions for withdrawal are humiliating, and we’re maneuvering, trying to buy time. At what price? At any price. With anti-aircraft guns out of ammunition. With the heroism of young men who have baffled military science and madness. For how long? Until something that can’t happen happens. Nothing has changed. We’re still alone. Will they venture into Beirut? No, they won’t. They’ll take such heavy losses that they won’t be able to bear the consequences. But they’re trying to bite off the edges of the city. They tried near the museum, and failed. The morale of the defenders is high, very high. They’re like devils. They’ve given up on help from outside. They’ve given up on any movement from the Arab world. They’ve given up on the strategic balance. Therefore, they fight as if possessed. Has talk of withdrawal reached them? Yes, but they don’t believe it. It’s only a maneuver, they say, and they fight on. And they realize that the silence now crowning the world offers them a pulpit from which to speak. Their blood, and only their blood, is what speaks these days. What shall we write in Al-Ma’raka about this talk of negotiations and withdrawal? We call for fighting and holding on; we call for holding on and fighting.3

Darwish’s words here enfold a poetics of resistance at the mathaf site. And just over thirty years later, Lamia Joreige offers the beginnings of a reply. The area surrounding the museum remains one of the more militarized areas in the northern sector of Beirut today, from across the former Mathaf-Barbir crossing

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to the Qasr al-snawbar (‘The Pine Residence’ of the French ambassador to Lebanon) and south to Horsh Beirut and the neighbouring Shatila refugee camp. Joreige’s Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf is the first part of a three-part series that explores affectual, mnemonic sites of post-war Beirut. Mathaf (‫)متحف‬, the Arabic word for museum, here names both a site, the National Museum of Beirut, and a space, the neighbourhood in which Joreige herself lives. The other two parts are Nahr (2013–16), which explores the river that separates Beirut from neighbouring Bourj Hamoud, and Ouzaï (2017–), a south Beirut neighbourhood bordering the airport. ‘Lebanon’s National Museum, containing outstanding royal treasures of the ancient city states, is a “must” for Lebanese and foreign visitors alike. It is one of the principal showplaces of Beirut’, writes Bruce Condé, in the 1955 travel guide See Lebanon. He continues: Getting off the Damascus road’s No. 2 tram at Fouad I avenue, the visitor’s attention is caught by a colonnade of exquisitely colored and richly carved marble facing the museum from the east. Probably dating from the Herodian Dynasty period of Roman Beirut period some 1,930 years ago, this fragment of the now-vanished classic city is but a single example of the archaeological treasures buried under modern Beirut. It was rescued from beneath a new building site near the Parliament by the Department of Antiquities and moved to the museum area. The museum building itself is streamlined and spacious, in modern Pharaonic architecture, symbolic of the Lebanon’s extremely ancient connection with the Pharaohs of Egypt, some of whose treasures, sent to the Lebanese city states of antiquity are preserved therein. In fact, the entire theme of the museum is to play up the earliest periods of the Lebanon’s 7,000 years-old history, so that items from the Byzantine period (ante 600 A.D.) onward are not generally featured.4

Some twenty years before the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon, Condé articulates the rather mundane, or at least unremarkable, experience of visiting a museum: a sense in stark contrast to the subsequent occupation of the museum, offering a sniper’s nest to its many visitors. Somewhat ‘presciently’, notes Joreige, the museum then had a large collection of anthropoid sarcophagi and other assorted funerary material.5 Indeed, Condé mentions that ‘in the basement are to be found the finest Phoenician, Greek and Roman sarcophagi discovered in Lebanon including that of King Ahiram’, perhaps portending what is to come. To under write is to insure, a protective promissory note against the possibility of future destruction, loss or failure. In the series Under-Writing

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Beirut, Joreige explores how a city may itself be underwritten, or under-written, in both senses of insurance and assurance, of the material, architectural stock and the persons, families, neighbourhoods housed within. That is to say, you can underwrite a house, but can you underwrite Beirut? In all its histories, constructions and destructions, iterations and erasures, what form would such a policy take? Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, assassinated in 2005, perhaps portended the under-writing of Beirut, in his anticipation of the foreclosure of Beirut – given the destruction of the fifteen-year civil war – and subsequent purchase, and demolition, of the entire city centre. For Joreige, Beirut presents a palimpsest in which layer upon layer of history is built, each inscribed over another, thus requiring a practice of excavation to exhume the below layers, a practice that may perhaps be understood as under-writing. Indeed, in terms of writing itself, that is to say, language, we find a reference to Birūta in the official correspondence of the eighteenth Egyptian dynasty, from the fifteenth century BCE, found in the Tel el-Amarna Egyptian royal archives.6 Birūta, here, refers to the freshwater below the site, itself meaning ‘water well’ in assorted Semitic languages, from ‘burtu in Akkadian, be’er in Hebrew, and bīr in Arabic’.7 Competing memories, experiences and narratives combine to evoke a poetic form that Joreige wishes to explore with the hopes of offering another understanding, another history, of the war. Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf names a space of appearance, the visible museum constructed in the pharaonic style of the Egyptian Revival between 1930 and 1937, while marking a place of disappearance, of both objects looted by its many occupants from 1975 to 1990 and civilians kidnapped and often killed here at the perilous Mathaf-Barbir crossing.8 Over the fifteen years, the museum and surrounding mathaf area was occupied by varied, sectarian groups: militaries including the Syrian Army and the Israeli Defense Forces, and militia including the Lebanese Armed Forces, Palestine Liberation Organization, Amal, Al-Mourabitoun and the Lebanese Communist Party. And etymologically, mathaf simultaneously marks a space for the ‘seat of the muses’ while offering a ‘gift’ or a ‘treasure’. One gift left offered by the Christian Phalangist militia is the graffiti ‘If the love of Gilbert was a crime, let history witness I am a dangerous criminal’, scrawled on a wall and signed by Tarzan, Katoul and Begin. Covered by Plexiglas for preservation, it should be noted that, of course, Begin is a nod to the former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who was also the head of the Irgun militia and oversaw the Israeli occupation of Beirut in 1982. It is no coincidence that the occupying IDF were aligned with Kataeb, the right-wing Christian Phalangist Party, both responsible for the massacre of approximately 3,500 Palestinians later

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that year at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in South Beirut. I offer this here as signalling but one history signed, traced and made fleetingly visible at the National Museum of Beirut, under written ghost-like visibilities that offer some clue of the previous histories of the now disappeared. ‘When excavating specific instances or locations, whether from the past, present, or projected future’, writes Joreige, ‘intertemporal continuities and ruptures surface via what persists, what has vanished, and the promise of knowing and imagining inherent in both’.9 * * * At the outbreak of war in 1975, Maurice Chehab was then director of the Lebanese Antiquities Department and responsible for the care and upkeep of the museum’s collection. ‘Lebanon was lucky to have a Maurice Chehab’, comments current curator of the museum, Anne Marie Afeiche.10 It was Chehab who had the curious, and risky, idea to conserve the museum’s collection by a combination of building false walls in front of large objects, burying others under cement and concealing smaller objects in the basement, reinforced with steel and cement. The many sarcophagi, now encased in cement, became sarcophagi for the second time over. At this point at a time of war, hidden as cement tombs yet in plain sight, every object within transformed into a funerary object, each and every simultaneously a marker of death, with the potential to come back to life postwar. Yet not all could be saved. ‘Since the outbreak of the Lebanese War in 1975’, writes Hélèn Sader, ‘looting of antiquities resumed on a large scale and headlines like the one running on the front page of the French periodical Archéologia in its July–August 1991 issue, asking whether Lebanon’s world heritage is in the process of being lost (“Liban, un patrimoine mondial en perdition”), have become daily news ever since’.11 The approximately fifth- to sixth-century Good Shepherd mosaic remained exposed through the duration of the war, its vertical orientation on a wall prohibited covering of the object, unlike other mosaics situated on the floor and easily covered under a layer of plastic and cement (Figure 3.1). ‘The story goes that when the Lebanese civil war broke out, a man snuck into the Good Shepherd’s Garden, found in the National Museum of Beirut”, writes Rabih Mroué. He hid amongst the trees, and would indiscriminately snipe any passerby, be they animal or human, through a black hole he specifically made for this purpose. The skulk wasn’t the ‘stranger’ of whom the Rahbani brothers told of in their works of art, nor was this the ‘stranger’ who valiantly fought our Lebanese right-wing. Rather, he was a sniper from our very own homeland, and his targets were his own people, and his war was a civil one, par excellence.12

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Figure 3.1  The Good Shepherd mosaic, National Museum of Beirut. Photo by the author, 2019.

In her selection of mathaf, as both a museum and neighbourhood, as constituting a potential project, I am reminded here of Joreige’s ongoing work Objects of War (1999–), in which interviewed subjects selected objects close at hand that provided some mnemonic connection not only to but through the civil war. Mathaf, as the neighbourhood in which Joreige lives, provides both the stage and the materials for Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf. Yet Joreige was rebuffed in her efforts to obtain access to objects within the museum’s collection. Whatever went missing through the occupation of both the museum and city was simply elided, or erased as it were, not just from the collection but crucially from history – at least from record. Joreige writes: ‘It seems impossible to find out which objects from the museum’s collection went missing during the wars. For various reasons – political and nonpolitical, rational and irrational, and mainly practical – it has proven impossible for me to access the museum’s post-war inventory, storage, archive of documents and photographs, and library publications, including the museum’s bulletin.’13

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There is no registration, no index, of extant objects prior to the war or, if there was an index it, too, is missing (Figure 3.2). In her attempts to respond to the site of mathaf – itself a site of preservation and death, marked by the traces left behind by artillery fire in the presence of the renowned collection of anthropoid sarcophagi – Joreige was provided with little access to the collection other than the ‘Good Shepherd’ mosaic. She speculates that she was provided access only because the mosaic was soon to go on display. ‘The meaning of the sarcophagus inevitably exceeds what one actually sees as it alludes to something that extends beyond its physical and geographical reality: the sentiment of mourning, for example’, writes Farés el-Dahdah. He continues, noting that ‘as Georges DidiHuberman has pointed out, looking at a container of death no doubt brings about the anguish that stems from being confronted with a decaying body – both whisper in one’s ear a fate identical to one’s own’.14 The Emir Chehab, lauded for his remarkable efforts in preserving much of the collection, was confronted with some difficulty in preserving the Good Shepherd mosaic given its vertical placement on a wall. Other mosaics in the National Museum of Beirut are laid horizontal on the floor, allowing for easier preservation: they were simply covered with a layer of plastic and cemented over. ‘Like a palimpsest’, writes Joreige, ‘the project incorporates various layers of time and existence, creating links between

Figure 3.2  Preparatory sketch for Object of War by Lamia Joreige, 2013. From UnderWriting Beirut-Mathaf, Catalogue, page 13. © Lamia Joreige

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the traces that record the previous realities of such places and the fictions that reinvent them’.15 The Good Shepherd mosaic went uncovered, however, through the fifteen-year war, bearing witness to a continually revolving cast of militia, while exposed and affected by their actions. In the bottom left corner of the mosaic there exists a small hole of perhaps a foot and a half wide by a foot high (Figure 3.3). This small aperture, bore through by an unknown sniper during the war, provides an open vantage point onto the Mathaf-Barbir crossing, then one of the central crossing points for civilians traversing the east-west green line. ‘Because of its strategic location along the front’, writes Joreige, ‘the crossing and its surroundings became the site of rampant killings and kidnappings as well as skirmishes between militias and various nations’ armies struggling for its control’.16 From this vantage point you or I, or a sniper, peers upon the crossing with an extended 180 Degree Garden View, both the title and content of Joreige’s short video that plays nearby. And from the negative space of the hole, Joreige constructed a cement model of the space in between the relative safety of the encased, protected sniper and the vulnerable, open civilian. Resting on a plinth across from the video, this sculptural, cement block titled Object of War exhibits the close proximity between sniper and potential victim as not one of several hundred

Figure 3.3  Detail of the ‘Good Shepherd’ mosaic. Photograph by Lamia Joreige, 2013. From Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf, Catalogue, page 14. © Lamia Joreige

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Figure 3.4  View of Object of War. 3D model by Guillaume Crédoz, Rapid Manufactory, 2013.

feet but rather only a few, at all times at the Barbir-Mathaf crossing. It is crucial to note that instead of constructing a replication of the hole from a mould, Joreige re-imagined the negative space through the use of photographs and careful measurement to create a 3D model that provided a blueprint for the reconstruction of the empty space. This process, in other words, responds to and is triggered by the ‘mnemonic monument’ capability of the National Museum as a site of loss, trauma, disappearance and death (Figure 3.4). Ex nihilo nihil fit, the space of absence technologically reconstructed and given form by Joreige, contra Parmenides, instantiates a mnemonic chain between nothing – itself indicative of not just absence in terms of loss but the disappeared too – and the imagining of being at a time of war in the here and now of the National Museum. In engaging affectively or triggering such a mnemonic chain, a process of both recollection and reconstruction, akin to the writing of history, Object of War signals Andreas Huyssen’s urban imaginary, in which a building may put ‘different things in one place: memories of what was there before, imagined alternatives to what there is’.17 Unfolding at the site of the National Museum is a curious interplay between the absent fragment of the mosaic, the presence of the ruined remainder and immaterial memories of past and desires projected onto the future, thereby offering an allegory of the various characters and militiamen occupying the site over the fifteen-year period. In other words,

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the Good Shepherd mosaic asks us to consider the relationship between the fragment, the object of war, and the whole, providing a second allegory for the writing of history itself. Walter Benjamin, in The Origin of German Tragic Drama (the Trauerspiel), writes, Just as mosaics preserve their majesty despite their fragmentation into capricious particles, so philosophical contemplation is not lacking in momentum. Both are made up of the distinct and the disparate; and nothing could bear more powerful testimony to the transcendent force of the sacred image and the truth itself. The value of fragments of thought is all the greater the less direct their relationship to the underlying idea, and the brilliance of the representation depends as much on this value as the brilliance of the mosaic does on the quality of the glass paste. The relationship between the minute precision of the work and the proportions of the sculptural or intellectual whole demonstrates that truth-content is only to be grasped through immersion in the most minute details of subject-matter.18

The residual fragments of the Good Shepherd mosaic, as ‘capricious particles’, are forever gone, likely pushed through onto the promenade many years ago. By reconstructing the wall in between the mosaic and outside world from cement, the very same material used by Chehab to hide yet preserve other pieces within the collection, Joreige calls upon the necessary gaps, absences, mis-telling, fictions and traces, in the writing of any historical narrative, let alone a history of the Lebanese Civil War. The absent tiles were not restored, just as Joreige made no attempt to recreate the tiles on her sculptural Object of War. In spite of fragmentation, we are presented here with a rather unrefined, overly didactic example of what Benjamin refers to when noting that ‘there is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism’.19 Where Object of War is a material positive of negative space – itself reminiscent of the death mask, Joreige notes – her accompanying series of ten photos, titled Views of Museum Square (2013), are negatives (Figure 3.5). The black-andwhite photograms, which are, by default, negative and thus the inverse of how we see the world, exude spectral, ghostly apparitions in the space out front of the National Museum. These fugitive, seemingly fleeting images are received, not made, upon the light-sensitive photo paper when exposed to the world, a process that recalls Man Ray’s Rayographs, as he referred to them. Yet much like the capricious particles of the mosaic that demand to be read in their minutiae, Man Ray’s Rayographs are of the micro whereas Joreige’s series is macro, an attempt to capture not the minor detail but rather the extant forms in and around the Mathaf-Barbir crossing. In presenting us with these spectral facades Joreige imagines the surrounding area as a cemetery, void of the living as marked

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Figure 3.5  Views of Museum Square. Photogram by Lamia Joreige, 2013. © Photo: Lamia Joreige/Sharjah Art Foundation.

by the withdrawal and lack of any human subjects in these photograms. The National Museum’s large collection of funerary material and sarcophagi appears to transcend and avoid containment by the museum walls. These images harken Derrida’s night visibility; the black-and-white negative of white presence on a black background simulates the visible landscape made possible by night-vision goggles. Here, the spectre of past generations of those killed and disappeared – the invisible visible, the presence of humans who are otherwise absent – is itself imprinted on the photogram paper. ‘Photography is a mode of bereavement’, writes Eduardo Cadava. ‘It speaks to us of mortification. Even though it still remains to be thought, the essential relation between death and language flashes up before us in the photographic image’.20 These blurred photograms, each of varying legibility, appear to be in a state of becoming: it is as though they are developing in this very moment in front of our eyes. They are each a latent image in privation, holding and hiding information stored somewhere within the frame, to be perhaps discovered at a later time when fully developed, and made legible. Yet we know this time will never come.

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Figure 3.6  Objects damaged during the Lebanese War, National Museum of Beirut, Photo by the author, 2019.

On 23 February 2017, I visited the National Museum of Beirut. The Good Shepherd mosaic was on view, as were some thirty-odd sarcophagi. On the upper floor, the circuit du premier etage as illustrated in the visitor’s guide, there is a vitrine on display that contains a small selection of curious deformed, discoloured, dismembered and burned objects, each twisted and torqued in its own unique way. The didactic reads: Objects damaged during the Lebanese war (1975-1991) The terrible condition of these objects as well as the fusion of metal, ivory, glass and stone are the result of high temperatures reached during a fire cause by the shelling of a storage area. (Figure 3.6)

The exhibition of these objects points towards the possibility of a slightly open door to the annals of the museum, if still extant, a door that was certainly closed at the time of Joreige’s project. Importantly, by acknowledging the existence of

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these objects the museum begins to recognize itself as a site of conflict. In a time in which post-war trauma necessitates a continual denial of reconciliation and acknowledgement of horrific crimes committed in war, the display takes on a defiant, yet hopeful, purchase of history. These objects are, in a sense, remaindered capricious particles that will, hopefully, constellate and form an Object of War that is itself a mosaic. Perhaps this display is a response to Joreige’s speculative inquiry, who asks, ‘given the absence of a notion of shared ancestry in Lebanon, how can the subject of collective history and identity be addressed?’21 In closing, I turn to Joreige to offer some final words. She writes: Today, although many of the tensions and issues that led to the Lebanese wars persist unresolved and unchanged, the landscape of the country, and particularly of Beirut, has been radically altered. Following the city’s large-scale reconstruction, what remains for us to consider or appropriate from the era of the wars, and how should it be handled? Even now, in its resemblance to its prewar form, the museum continues to be haunted by lingering traces, tormented by the layers of death it carries within its folds whose ghosts must be summoned and remains must be exhumed.22

It is thus foreseeable that historian Craig Larkin argues that ‘the haunting power of a scarred, fragmented landscape’ still persists today, in terms of sites and ruins, spatial organization and stories, all of which become normalized in everyday life. Crucially, [A]midst times of political instability and heightened tension, such spaces of imaginative connection and shared trauma are not only strengthened and reworked, sustaining prejudices and sectarian/political differentiation, but also offer protection, communal solidarity, and a sense of belonging. For those youth who do seek to distance themselves from Lebanon's destructive past, this often comes at a cost: a disavowal of history and a dislocation from the present.23

This shared experience of trauma and attempts to mitigate said experiences and shared histories by way of forgetting ought to heed the concerns of writer Elias Khoury, who warns: ‘Civil wars are not to be erased from reality or from memory. They are only reborn or reincarnated. Banished from the written, they take to the spoken. Erased from memory, they colonize the subconscious’.24 None are freed from traumas of the past, in spite of many never directly experiencing the war. The post-war, Lebanese aphorism no victor, no vanquished (la ghalib la maglub) enshrines in legal policy one concern in which the formulation of an ‘official’ historical narrative may develop in response to the public’s guilt. Instead, there is little narrative at all.

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Notes 1 Jacques Derrida, ‘Spectographies’, in María del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren (eds), The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 38. 2 Anna McNay, ‘Lamia Joreige: “Anything You Film in a Certain Reality at a Certain Moment Is a Diagnosis of a Present”,’ Studio International (31 July 2016). http:// www​.studiointernational​.com​/index​.php​/lamia​-joreige​-interview​-artes​-mundi​ -lebanon​-beirut (accessed 30 March 2019). In this chapter, I proceed with a word of caution or at least an acknowledgement of a problem outlined by Oleg Grabar: ‘But what does the word “Islamic” mean when used as an adjective modifying the noun “art”? What is the range of works of art that are presumably endowed with unique features? Is it comparable in kind to other artistic entities? “Islamic” does not refer to the art of a particular religion, for a vast proportion of the monuments have little if anything to do with the faith of Islam.’ Oleg Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973), 1. 3 Mahmoud Darwish, Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013), 67. 4 Bruce Condé, See Lebanon (Harissa, Lebanon: Belle Idée Publicitaire, 1955), 15. 5 Lamia Joreige, ‘Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf ’, TDR: The Drama Review 59, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 2. 6 Samir Kassir, Beirut (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011), 37. 7 Ibid., 37. 8 The Mathaf-Barbir crossing was the few 100-metre space in between the Mathaf checkpoint and the Barbir checkpoint. Regarding the many who disappeared, here I reproduce in full the testimony from a woman whose brother disappeared on 25 April 1976 at Barbir. My brother disappeared. [He] went to the area of Barbir in order to buy gasoline. He said goodbye to his family and that he would be back, but he never did. He used to pass through (Barbir) quite often, since his in-laws lived in Marjeyoun. He used to go all the time. I mean, he had passed through the area at least two or three times before on his way to Marjeyoun. But there hadn’t been any kidnappings or anything like that in the area before. Sadly, the day he went there to buy gasoline, the circumstances were anything but ideal. . . . The next day, his wife came and told us what had happened; He had gone to get gasoline the previous day and had not yet returned. We started rushing to look for him; asking this guy and asking that guy. Some people would confirm having seen him; others would deny having seen him. . . . I went and met with a person that could help; he was a decent and dignified man. I was able to meet him through an acquaintance. This man welcomed us with open arms, and told me to give him a picture. He also asked, in

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the case they (those who took him?) asked for money, would I be willing to pay? I told him I most definitely would; I just wanted to know what had happened. After a month or so, the same friend took me back to his man. Sadly, this friend has passed away. When the man saw me, he told me ‘we were unable to find a single clue about him. Even in the cemetery of the Palestinians, we could not find his name. Our last chance was to check if he was in Syria.’ It doesn’t feel nice at all (remembering what happened to my brother). As I told you, I saw his picture today and I started to cry, I couldn’t hold back the tears. I had previously kept his photo hidden. We phoned and contacted many political figures and while some did try to help us, it was all to no avail. I did not know that my brother had gone to the area to buy gasoline. Had I known, I would have certainly not allowed him to do so. He didn’t inform his mother or anyone else; he only told his wife. He had a little child who was supposed to start his very first school year. They waited 12 long years to have this child and disappeared when the child was only 3 years old. He gave him a piece of candy before he left and told him that he wouldn’t be long before he returned home, and that was that. He never came back. Interview conducted by Act for the Disappeared, a Lebanese human rights organization that is attempting to account for the fate of the disappeared. Act for the Disappeared, Lebanon, ‘Barbir – Thuraya,’ YouTube, https://www​.youtube​.com​/ watch​?v​=TXAtCmxMrec (accessed 30 March 2019). 9 Lamia Joreige, Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf (Sharjah: Sharjah Art Foundation, 2013), 5. 10 Samar Kadi, ‘Maurice Chehab, the Guardian Angel of Lebanon’s Cultural Heritage’, The Arab Weekly (1 May, 2015), https://thearabweekly​.com​/maurice​-chehab​-guardian​ -angel​-lebanons​-cultural​-heritage. On the importance of Maurice Chehab, Joreige notes, ‘The museum itself witnessed its share of shelling, sniper fire, and defacement, and was used as fighters’ barracks and bunkers. Despite the protective measures taken, some objects from the collection were looted or severely damaged. Others simply disappeared. Initially, emergency makeshift measures such as laying sandbags were taken, with more permanent measures adopted in instances of relative calm as the war intensified. The museum’s conservator (Maurice Chehab) and his team led the efforts. Wooden boxes were constructed around the museum’s large sculptures, stelae, and sarcophagi, and concrete was poured over them. Horizontal mosaics were made to disappear: covered in plastic bags and coated with cement. Smaller objects from the museum’s display cases were hurriedly returned to the storage areas, which were then walled up and made undetectable.’ Joreige, Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf, 7. 11 Hélèn Sader, ‘Between Looters and Private Collectors: The Tragic Fate of Lebanese Antiquities’, in Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and John Pedro Schwartz (eds), Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World (Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012), 61.

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12 Rabih Mroué, ‘The Field of War as a Museum/The Museum as a Field of War’, in Lamia Joreige, Records for Uncertain Times (New York: Taymour Grahne Gallery, n.d), 25. 13 Joreige, Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf, 3. 14 Ibid., 6. 15 Joreige, Records for Uncertain Times, 3. 16 Joreige, Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf, 7. 17 Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 7. 18 Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama (London: Verso, 2009), 28–9. 19 Walter Benjamin, ‘On the Concept of History’, in Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (eds), Selected Writings: Volume 4, 1938-1940 (Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), 392. 20 Eduardo Cadava, Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 11. 21 Joreige, Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf, 20. 22 Ibid., 9. 23 Craig Larkin, ‘Beyond the War? The Lebanese Postmemory Experience’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 42, no. 4 (2010): 631. 24 Elias Khoury, as quoted in Sune Haugbolle, ‘Public and Private Memory of the Lebanese Civil War’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25, no. 1 (2005): 203.

Bibliography Benjamin, W. ‘On the Concept of History’, in H. Eiland and M. W. Jennings (eds), Selected Writings: Volume 4, 1938-1940. Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003. Benjamin, W. The Origin of German Tragic Drama. London: Verso, 2009. Blanco, M. and E. Peeren, eds. The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Cadava, E. Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Condè, B. See Lebanon. Beirut: Harb Bijjani Press, 1960. Text reproduced by Al Mashriq: The Levant, http://almashriq​.hiof​.no​/lebanon​/900​/910​/919​/beirut​/museum​/national​ -museum​.html. Darwish, M. Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013.

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Grabar, O. The Formation of Islamic Art. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973. Haugbolle, Sune. ‘Public and Private Memory of the Lebanese Civil War’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25: 1 (2005): 191–203. Huyssen, A. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003. Joreige, L. Records for Uncertain Times. New York: Taymour Grahne Gallery, n.d. Joreige, L. Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf. Sharjah: Sharjah Art Foundation, 2013. Joreige, L. ‘Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf ’, TDR: The Drama Review 59: 3 (2015): 2–3. Kadi, S. ‘Maurice Chehab, the Guardian Angel of Lebanon’s Cultural Heritage’, The Arab Weekly (1 May 2015), https://thearabweekly​.com​/maurice​-chehab​-guardian​-angel​ -lebanons​-cultural​-heritage. Kassir, S. Beirut. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011. Larkin, Craig. ‘Beyond the War? The Lebanese Postmemory Experience’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 42: 4 (2010): 615–35. McNay, Anna. ‘Lamia Joreige: “Anything You Film in a Certain Reality at a Certain Moment Is a Diagnosis of a Present”’, Studio International (31 July 2016). http://www​ .studiointernational​.com​/index​.php​/lamia​-joreige​-interview​-artes​-mundi​-lebanon​ -beirut (accessed 30 March 2019). Mejcher-Atassi, S., and J. Schwartz. Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012.

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For close observation Tilework imagery in the architecture of Qajar Iran Friederike Voigt

European accounts of Iran during the Qajar period (1785–1925) frequently note the striking presence of images. Heinrich Brugsch (1827–94), who accompanied the German mission to Iran as a secretary in 1860, commented on the huge number of small pictures produced by painters in the bazaar and displayed in their shops.1 Others such as Comte Julien de Rochechouart (1828–97), the French chargé d’affaires, and Jakob Eduard Polak (1818–91), the Austrian physician at the Dār al-funūn, the polytechnic college in Tehran, list the figurative motifs which were applied to different materials of the industrial arts.2 With a particular interest in ceramic wall decoration, both Scotsman Sir Robert Murdoch Smith (1835–1900) and the French novelist and adventurer Pierre Loti (1850–1923) refer to a specific type of single tiles, each with a complete design reproduced on them.3 These tiles created the distinct impression of a picture through their colourful, detailed painting that was often framed by a border. European residents and travellers to Iran became keen collectors of these wall tiles, intrigued by their representations of Iranian life and customs, or so they thought. The tiles were a kind of novelty as their technique, underglaze painting, had been rediscovered by Iranian potters in the late 1860s. At that time, picture tiles were not only produced for the domestic market but also exported by art dealers and private collectors to be sold at international exhibitions; they have entered the collections of many ethnographic and decorative arts museums in the West, and their visual appeal still often gains them high prices at auctions today. From life-size portraits to illustrations in lithographic books, the art historical study of the use and production of images in Qajar Iran began to take shape in the 1960s. In his essay on court painters of Fath ‘Ali Shah (r. 1797–1834), Basil

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W. Robinson, one of the first scholars with an interest in this subject, described Qajar Iran succinctly as ‘a land of paintings more than ever before or since’.4 The exhibition ‘Royal Persian Paintings’ at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1998 was a milestone in the appreciation of Qajar visual culture, reassessing the sociohistorical significance of the dynastic imagery of the time. Over the last twenty years, an increasing number of studies with a focus on popular forms of visual art – from lacquer work to lithography and photography – have paved the way for questions about the mass-reproduction of images and their dissemination, consumption and impact on Qajar society. Hitherto, ceramic wall decoration as an alternative medium for the replication and circulation of imagery has found little attention, despite figuratively painted tiles having been frequently studied for the different subjects they display and established as a type of object and art form in their own right.5 Among the first scholars to consider tilework in the context of the impact and dissemination of courtly and popular imagery are Layla S. Diba and Peter Chelkowski in the exhibition catalogue ‘Royal Persian Paintings’, providing examples of the copying of drawings and paintings in ceramic wall decoration.6 It is therefore surprising to see that the more recent exhibition ‘Technologies of the Image’ and its accompanying catalogue, which examined specifically the mobility of images across different media, addressed figurative tilework only as a side issue.7 Ceramic wall decoration was not different from other visual material in the nineteenth century in that it aided the social mobility of imagery by copying and transferring subjects from a wide range of sources. But in addition, tiles provided a durable base material that allowed the permanent display of their images to a larger and more varying audience than was possible with paintings, book and newspaper illustrations or depictions on lacquer work objects. If copying and transferring was a mechanism to increase the circulation of imagery in Qajar society, what was the purpose of such mass production? If we understand these tiles as materialized artistic expressions of social values, understandings and attitudes, what impact were the subjects on the tiles expected to have? With the rediscovery of the technique in the late 1860s, the production of figurative underglaze painted tiles gained momentum at a time of increased political awareness that eventually led to the Constitutional Revolution of 1905 to 1911. I propose, therefore, that picture tiles contributed to this process of political change. I use the constitutional transformation as a frame to explain why picture tiles in Qajar Iran had such a presence and impact. Two aspects related to the construction of a civil society and national identity are particularly pertinent here: firstly, the role of tilework in the formation of a public sphere;

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and secondly, the reflection of Self and Other in their imagery. In both aspects an inside/outside relationship is inherent. I conceptualize these two spheres as mutually dependent, linked through the individuals who interacted with the tilework images. Picture tiles and the public sphere: The corpus of existing individual tiles undoubtedly forms a rich material basis, but their interpretation and use as a historical source, or as Aby Warburg puts it, as ‘nervous organs of perception of the contemporary internal and external life’,8 is limited by a lack of contextual information. Where the tiles were placed – whether as part of a large ensemble or alongside other similar tiles, who commissioned them, or for what purposes, for example – was almost never documented. Using tiles from collections across the world, my account demonstrates how these picture tiles were actively developed as a visual medium and consequently became a major artistic expression of their time. This analysis will be complemented by the examination of buildings with figurative tilework still in its original setting. This approach provides the basis for my conclusions on the accessibility and reception of the tilework imagery and, consequently, on their potential role in an emerging public sphere in Iran at the time they were made and used. Picture tiles and the Self/Other: The selection of a specific range of subject matter for display on the tiles from across a variety of artistic media raises the question of their particular representational value. Based on Gottfried Boehm’s reasoning that as viewers we expect to learn something extra from a genuine image, the pictorial repertoire of the tiles will be analysed and their subject  matter decoded to ascertain if they can be correlated with topics of contemporary national discourse.9 How is the process of configuring identity as a collective ‘Self ’ in relation to ‘Other’ collective identities reflected in the images on the tiles? In conclusion, I will examine the role of picture tiles in the shaping of a collective perception of Iran as the home of an Iranian nation. I interpret these picture tiles as intermediaries between the individual viewers of their images in the private and public places where they were displayed and the collective home of the developing Iranian nation. For this purpose, the collective home is perceived, with Benedict Anderson, as the dwelling of an ‘imagined political community’ whose members are ‘connected without being acquainted’.10 This allows me to locate the appearance of figurative tiles in the crystallization of the Iranian nation and place them in juxtaposition to other visual and print media that helped facilitate this process. Moreover, the notions of inside and outside are understood here not as sharply bipolar divisions but rather as intrinsically

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linked spheres. The conceptual framework of inside/outside provides a means to describe the interdependence between the increasing use of picture tiles, stimulated by the unconscious realization of their visual potential, and the role of their extended image repertoire in the process of negotiating and conceiving the character of the Iranian nation during the Qajar period.

Tilework images and the public sphere The study of picture tiles in their original architectural settings provides a basic understanding of their social relevance and public reception. How present were they in everyday private and public life and who would have seen them? Which parts of a building or wall did they occupy? Were viewers expected to engage with their depictions? The number of Qajar buildings with intact wall decoration is, however, limited. Tiles have an ephemeral character, despite the durability of their ceramic material – attached to the surface of a wall they are easily removed when taste and perception change. Before we can conclude from any observations on their use in a particular building, we therefore need to consider if they were salvaged from another structure and placed there for their preservation. Their position might also have changed as a result of a temporary removal during restoration work. These restrictions on the architectural evidence can be partly offset by including in this analysis individual tiles preserved in collections around the world. Their abundance provides an insight into stylistic changes and the varying qualities of their making. The two sources together shed light on how picture tiles developed as a display medium and how they spread within architectural spaces. Integrated into the fabric of a building, the effect of their imagery would have depended on how well they addressed the needs of their intended audiences. The more successfully they were able to attract attention and the more accessibly they were displayed, the greater would have been their impact on their viewers. In the following, I use Lisa Golombek’s concept of a favourite artistic medium to put the material in a logical sequence. Golombek established three criteria to assess if a particular material can be considered a major expression of its time: (1) the quality of the materials used in the making process; (2) the level of creativity expressed in its stylistic development; and (3) its popularity, measured through the quantity of production.11

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Quality of the material: Crucial in the emergence of figurative tiles as an artistic medium was the rediscovery of the decorative technique of underglaze painting (naqš zīr-i la‘āb) by potters in Isfahan in the late 1860s.12 Between about 1820 and 1830, underglaze painting had ceased to be used in favour of overglaze, or haft rang (seven colour) painting.13 As the master potter ‘Ali Muhammad Isfahani (fl. 1884–1902) stated in his treatise on tilemaking from 1887, he learned haft rang from his master while for underglaze painting he had to teach himself.14 When ‘Ali Muhammad and other potters began to experiment with the latter technique, it was likely that the potential for refined artistic representations motivated them to improve it more systematically. The potters modified the composition of the ceramic body paste which ultimately allowed them to make large-sized slabs that could have a height of up to one metre. The enhanced body material opened up the possibility of larger images on the tiles without compromising the quality of viewing by distributing the motif over several smaller tiles. Furthermore, the potters increased the range of stable underglaze pigments, colorants and shades, which together with the painters’ skills to achieve the finest line drawings made it possible to depict monochrome as well as polychrome imagery in a most compelling way. Last but not least, the potters purposefully applied a high-quality brilliant clear glaze that augmented the visual appeal of the underlying depictions.15 Two decades of advancing the technique in this way took the rediscovery of underglaze painting forward. As state of the art it defined the quality of production between the late 1880s and 1910s before the sophisticated use of body pastes, colours and glazes gave way to less ambitious and uninspired work. Creativity and stylistic development: A similar process can be observed in the creativity potters applied to the making of underglaze tiles. Tiles from the late 1860s demonstrate a close dependency on their models from the late Safavid period (1680–1722). The potters repeated their moulded motifs, such as an equestrian figure with a falcon or a turbaned man sitting in a garden landscape, and even maintained their small-sized format when they introduced new subjects including a woman with parasol on horseback. The motifs of this experimental period were largely discontinued by the early 1870s, except the falconer, which emerged in a distinctively Qajar rendering, suggesting that the motif had been internalized by the tilemakers. Executed with his body leaning slightly forward and his head bowed, the falconer was continued in this posture throughout the Qajar period, occasionally shown with attendants or accompanied by a woman on horseback (Figure 4.1). From about the late 1870s until the mid-1880s, production was dominated by literary subjects, garden scenes and motifs related to the hunt. Potters adapted

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Figure 4.1  Wall tile depicting an equestrian with a falcon. Iran, probably Isfahan, c. 1880. National Museums Scotland, acc. no A.1890.236, image © National Museums Scotland.

the format of the tiles to fit the requirements of these new scenes; they became larger, with a border either at the top or surrounding them (Figure 4.2). They made complex shapes such as columns or friezes, as they were required for fireplaces, for example, so that continuous surfaces could be achieved. Until the mid-1880s tiles typically showed a dark-blue background and a colour range of white, turquoise, manganese and yellow, with brown or black used for borders. In the following decade the colour palette increased; new subjects were introduced, some featuring a horizon line. Especially in outdoor scenes the ground and the sky were rendered in contrasting colours, replacing the classical monochrome blue background (Figure 4.3). New topics included historical sites, architectural monuments and subjects transferred from photographs or lithographic prints. In contrast, classical motifs such as courtly figures in landscapes became more repetitive. The expansion of the repertory continued until around 1900 to 1920 with the depiction of historical or contemporary personalities, genre scenes or views of places in foreign countries (Figure 4.4). Subsequently, the size of the tiles decreased again and the range of subjects returned to a limited variety as in the 1870s.16

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Figure 4.2  Wall tile with a couple on horseback in a landscape. Iran, probably Isfahan, c. 1880. National Museums Scotland, acc. no A.1890.238, image © National Museums Scotland.

Popularity of picture tiles: The changing demand and production of figurative tiles can be judged best from the varying extent of the wall area they covered in buildings and the number and the type of architectural structures for which they were commissioned. Written sources prove a steadily, even if initially rather slowly, growing production of underglaze painted tiles from the late 1860s. In the Journal des Arts from 1889 the French art dealer Ferdinand Méchin (fl. 1866–89) recalled that Isfahani potters began ‘to flood Iran, Turkey and the Paris markets’ with figurative underglaze painted tiles shortly after they had begun to experiment with this technique again.17 While sufficient examples can indeed be found in European museum collection, often acquired from international fairs and art dealers, Qajar buildings with these early tiles are unknown so far. The fact that potters began to make these tiles at the special request of European customers asking for imitations of Safavid models could explain the restrained local demand.18 Safavid picture tiles can still be found, for example, in the bathhouse of ‘Ali Quli Agha (erected c. 1713) in the Bīd Abād quarter in Isfahan. A frieze of moulded tiles repeating the motif of the princely falconer runs along the fronts of two raised platforms (shāh-nishīn) that flank a large swimming pool located in a room at the rear of the building. These platforms were places of honour and reserved for the local nobility.

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Figure 4.3  Wall tile with a depiction of Bahram Gur hunting. By ‘Ali Muhammad Isfahani, Iran, Tehran, 1887. National Museums Scotland, acc. no A.1888.105, image © National Museums Scotland.

Caspar Purdon Clarke (1846–1911), who likely witnessed the production of figurative underglaze painted tiles in Isfahan between 1874 and 1876, noted that they were only made in ‘very small quantities’.19 From this period we have material evidence mostly of the Qajar image of the falconer, which is shown on tiles of an improved quality. Examples are preserved in private houses in Isfahan where they frame fireplaces.20 This situation changed with the royal patronage Nasir al-Din Shah (r. 1848– 96) provided to tilemakers in relation to the extensive building programme that he pursued in his capital from 1853.21 In the early 1880s, he ordered several tilemakers, including the master ‘Ali Muhammad, to move from Isfahan to Tehran.22 Some of these tilemakers were involved in the decoration of the Gulistan Palace in the city centre as well as the palaces of Niavaran and Sultanabad north

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Figure 4.4  Wall tile with a portrait of the Sasanian king Ardeshir I. Iran, Tehran or Isfahan, c. 1900–1920. National Museums Scotland, acc. no A.1990.202, image © National Museums Scotland.

of Tehran.23 A large number of tiles is preserved in the main staircase of Kākh-i ‘Aslī in the Gulistan Palace grounds. Small polychrome figurative tiles covering the dados in the south part show literary scenes, historical subjects, hunting and court scenes such as Nasir al-Din Shah’s reception by Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle in 1889 during his third tour through Europe. The northern part of the staircase has an array of mostly large-sized octagonal, rectangular and star-shaped tiles with motifs ranging from polychrome scenes of architectural monuments in Iran, Christian subjects and views of European cities to monochrome brown portraits of contemporary Iranian politicians.24 The disjointed layout of the tiles in both parts of the staircase suggests that this is not their original setting. The group of smaller tiles can be dated to the period between 1886 and 1889 and is likely to come from Nasir al-Din Shah’s Khāb-gāh, a private palace that was built around the same time. According to Yahya Zuka, tiles with figures and landscapes in relief decorated the basement rooms. When the Khāb-gāh was pulled down under Riza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1925–

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41), some of them were saved although their whereabouts were unknown to Zuka.25 The second group of larger tiles in the rear part of the staircase might be mostly associated with Muzaffar al-Din Shah (1896–1907) and could date from his renovation of the Khāb-gāh in 1899. According to the UNESCO application for the nomination of the Gulistan Palace as a world heritage complex the tiles come from the Khāb-gāh and the Haram-khāna, the women’s quarter.26 Nasir al-Din Shah’s extensive commissions of figurative tiles were likely informed by his deep-rooted interest in the arts and especially images. An able painter and keen photographer himself, he furthered the use and circulation of imagery through the foundation of educational institutions such as the Royal Art School. The school’s lithographic workshop reproduced and distributed the court painters’ own work, illustrated court newspapers, foreign works of art and portraits on a commercial basis.27 From the 1880s, the polytechnic college Dār al-funūn included a printing house, a photographic atelier and an art studio.28 One of its teachers, the French court musician Alfred Jean-Baptiste Lemaire (1842–1909), was among ‘Ali Muhammad Isfahani’s first customers in Tehran, commissioning from him in 1884 tiles for large panels and fireplaces, many of them bearing an inscription with his name, for the college.29 With the move of the tilemakers to Tehran, the capital became another major centre for the production of figurative tiles. The greater circulation of imagery in the capital, not only through royal patronage but also through commercial photographic studios and illustrated printed publications, gave the tilemakers in turn more subjects to reproduce on their works. Private residences of the Qajar nobility in Tehran and Isfahan featured reception rooms and courtyards with dados entirely clad in underglaze painted figurative tilework.30 Rectangular panels, fashionable in the late 1880s, were built from polygonal tiles forming complex geometric patterns.31 Surrounded by floral borders, the individual images of such a large wall panel would have shown a great variety of subjects which were not necessarily linked to an overarching theme. From about the 1890s, friezes made of large polychrome and monochrome painted plaques, showing portraits, landscapes with architecture and animals, were displayed along the walls of courtyards. Travelling through Iran in 1900, the French officer and novelist Louis Marie-Julien Viaud (1850–1923), alias Pierre Loti, observed tiles painted with human figures, animals and flowers along the enclosing walls of courtyards of private houses in Isfahan.32 A series with exactly these motifs is preserved in Isfahan’s Decorative Arts Museum. Dated 1319 h.q./ 1901–2 CE and signed Muhammad ‘Ali Isfahani, it was recovered from the courtyard of a mansion situated along the river Zayanda, possibly that of the Bakhtiari chief

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Khusraw Khan Sardar Zafar (1861/2–1933/4), who is depicted on one of the tiles. Another example is the house of Qavam al-Dawla in Tehran where this type of tile was excavated in a courtyard during restoration work. A prominent Iranian politician, Ahmad Qavam al-Saltana (c. 1873–1955), had at least one of his Tehran residences furnished with large picture tiles. Today housing the Glass Museum, it was built in 1910. Some parts of a complete tile series decorating the hawz-khāna, a basement sitting room with a central water basin, were recovered during restoration work in the 1970s and are now distributed over the four walls of the room. Painted monochrome brown and about 90 centimetres in height, they originally formed a continuous dado left and right of a fireplace made in the same style. Each of the rectangular wall tiles has a raised star in the middle which provides a flat surface for the depictions of Sasanian kings, landscapes with wild animals and European genre scenes. Tiles were frequently used for portraits of historical as well as contemporary personalities. The mosque Rukn al-Mulk (built 1901–7) in the neighbourhood of Takht-i Fulad in Isfahan has two underglaze painted portrait tiles of its founder, Haj Mirza Sulaiman Khan, Rukn al-Mulk (1838–1913), an influential politician and vice-governor of Isfahan under Nasir al-Din Shah’s son, Mas‘ud Mirza, Zill al-Sultan (r. 1874–1907). Executed by Mirza ‘Abd al-Javad (no dates), the tiles copy a watercolour portrait of Rukn al-Mulk by Abu Turab Ghaffari (1863–89), dating from 1880 to 1889.33 The two portrait tiles were retrospectively placed in the elaborate haft rang decoration of the entrance portal at a height of about 2.8  metres. The entrance portal to the mosque does not face directly the street but a small courtyard in front with a second part of the mosque, containing Rukn al-Mulk’s tomb. Judging from the generous use of deep chromium green that became fashionable at that time, the two tiles were probably made in the 1890s and inserted after Rukn al-Mulk’s death in 1913. Probably a unique architectonic complex with regard to its tilework decoration was and is the Takia-yi Mu’awin al-Mulk in Kirmanshah. Especially built for the public performance of Shiite mourning rituals during Muharram, Takias were founded by individuals as a pious act. The Takia-yi Mu’awin al-Mulk comprises two courtyards, Husainiya and Abbasiya, connected by a domed chamber, Zainabiya, all named after the main protagonists of the tragic events at Karbala. Each of the three structures is entirely covered in figurative tilework, executed in haft rang and underglaze painting: there are larger panels with religious scenes in haft rang; the dados, walls, pilasters and inner side of arches are clad with portraits of religious, political and historical figures, genre scenes, technical innovations such as cars, animals, landscapes and architectural buildings. Many are monochrome painted, imitating the character

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of their photographic or lithographic sources. The iconographic programme of the Abbasiya includes a portrait tile of the founder, Hasan Khan Mu’awin al-Mulk (c. 1868–1948), painted after a photograph. The Husainiya was decorated in 1911 to 1912 while the buildings of the Abbasiya and Zainabiya date from 1918. The appearance of the Takia today is the result of a refurbishment which began in 1974.34 Another public building with figurative tilework is the Gulzar bathhouse in Rasht. Its arched entrance is framed by a frieze of portrait tiles with representations of Iranian rulers in underglaze painting. The tilework dates from 1334 h.q./1915 CE, according to an inscription above the arch.35 Figurative tilework continued to be used on the street fronts of buildings for another twenty years but drew on a different repertoire of motifs. Friezes on houses in Tehran’s Nasr Khusraw and Lalezar Streets depict scenes inspired by the pre-Islamic rock reliefs at Naqsh Rustam and reliefs in Persepolis. The frieze in Lalezar Street is dated 1351 h.q./1932 CE. As this analysis demonstrates, figurative tiles in underglaze painting were purposefully developed over several decades from the late 1860s and gained increasing presence in architectural decoration. They gradually moved from the inner – the privacy of residential houses – into collectively used inner spaces such as the courtyards of public buildings and finally to the street fronts of buildings. Until the 1870s the foreign interest in them as an authentic product of Persian craft seems to have been a driver of their production that at least equalled their local use, which initially was limited to a few mainly classical motifs set in single rows to sparsely highlight architectural features in the domestic interior.36 Their occurrence grew drastically when from about the mid-1880s potters diversified their repertoire and began to form complex panels that could cover continuous areas of wall. Unlike haft rang tilework of the Qajar period, with small images embedded in exuberant scrollwork, potters emphasized the image character of single tiles in underglaze painting: they transformed borders into frames, extended the image area, painted newly introduced motifs on flat surfaces rather than executed them in relief and increased the visual impact of a single tile by setting it on a wall next to other images. In addition, the fine detail of the paintings, protected by a shiny clear glaze, invited viewing, as did the positioning of the tiles at eye level in the lower wall areas of reception rooms and in courtyards. In buildings from the early twentieth century, picture tiles began to cover walls from the bottom to the ceiling. The pictorial qualities of the tiles clearly did not match any longer the requirements of a display space above average viewing height. There are unfortunately no direct sources which could tell us about how people responded to the imagery on the tiles that surrounded them. In rooms

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for private gatherings only a limited number of invited guests would have seen them. With their move into public spaces, access widened. Large tiles with generic portraits of Iranian men and women were reportedly used in public bathhouses; of less exquisite quality than those in the houses of the Qajar elite, they suggest a widespread use in society.37 Takias, for example, were used by all groups of society and on the outside of buildings they addressed everybody who walked past. Given that their making and display was intended to encourage visual examination, we can imagine their impact and reception similar to other media at that time that facilitated public dialogue such as newspapers. Although coffeehouses remained primarily a place for storytelling and recitations of poetry, occasionally newspapers were read there to an audience.38 Newspaper readings could be a collective experience that created rapport as a cartoon from 1907 published in ‘Kashkul’ illustrates: it depicts a man relating an appeal in ‘Nida-yi Vatan’ to the surrounding crowd who readily assures him of their support for the country. People were repeatedly called to take action, to express an opinion and to contribute solutions to problems for the sake of Iran’s progress.39 The unofficial ‘Night-Letters’ (singular shab-nāma) presented and circulated daily news in the form of discussions between individuals about the latest political developments.40 Heinrich Brugsch describes in his travelogue an actual response to imagery. In the bazaar in Tehran he witnessed women who were stopping in front of erotic scenes displayed in the painters’ shops and started to talk about them.41 These different situations suggest that the images on the tiles could have generated similar reactions. The closest visual means to the tiles is probably the peepshow, or shahr-i farang. This popular street entertainment mainly of the lower classes during the Qajar period offered the viewer an opportunity to gaze at moving images of cities and places in Iran and of European subjects, for example, while listening to the storyteller’s explanations. As Staci Gem Scheiwiller has pointed out the peepshow box created an intimate relationship between the image and the viewer, who could reflect on what they were able to see in the images and compare it with their immediate environment.42 This Self/Other comparison as well as the contribution of the tile images to Iran’s modernity are explored further in the next section.

Iranian Self/European Other Tiles with scenes from classical literature, portraits of historical figures, illustrations of Iranian street life, of events at home and abroad, of foreign subjects

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and inventions, appeared variously on the walls of wealthy urban residences and religious buildings and the street fronts of houses. How is it possible to explain coherently such a bewildering array of topics which simultaneously draw on the past and the present, the local and the foreign? Who or what informed their selection? How would people have interpreted them? Initially, the subject choice was guided by picture tiles from Safavid buildings. Some of these early motifs were soon discontinued while others were adopted into the tilemakers’ image repertoire. As part of this process the princely figure on horseback with a falcon was remodelled and given a distinctly Qajar rendering (Figure 4.1). Especially on tiles from the 1870s and 1880s the equestrian figure is shown with characteristics of male beauty as described in poetry: a tall stature, the head bent like the top of a cypress, with bow eyebrows and a narrow waist. Appearing against a dark-blue background in a garden landscape with flowers, bushes and buildings dotted around, the motif of the falconer seems an echo of paradise that according to Muslim belief is populated by beautiful young male beings (ghilmān) and their female counterparts, āhūr (singular hūr).43 European sources often identify the Safavid falconer on tiles as Shah ‘Abbas despite the fact that the tile showed a beardless equestrian yet the shah was famous for his enormous moustache. Perhaps in response to their foreign customers’ reading of the motif, the Qajar tilemakers added a moustache to their early copies of the Safavid falconer, which made the figure recognizable to them, at least, as Shah ‘Abbas. Other figures from this initial period, such as a single man kneeling in a landscape and a rider with spear, were given the same sign of a mature man.44 With the transformation of the Safavid equestrian figure into the Qajar falconer, however, the figure’s moustache is replaced by a thin grey line, indicating the growing facial hair above the lip – and as a result, the mature man was replaced by an adolescent. The shaping of the young slender Qajar prince on horseback seems to have been driven by a possibly unconscious understanding of its interpretative potential. As Afsaneh Najmabadi has pointed out in her pioneering studies of notions of love and beauty in Qajar Iran, the intensified cultural interactions with Europe throughout the nineteenth century profoundly transformed concepts of gender relations.45 Classical Persian poetry imagines the beloved mostly as male, a mirror of divine beauty and the object of an adult man’s desire. Well aware of Europeans’ views of Iranian men’s homoerotic practices, Iranian modernists often associated same-sex sexual relations with the country’s backwardness. Heterosexual amorous couples appeared more frequently in visual representations of the Zand (1750–79) and early Qajar period. According to

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Najmabadi this was an attempt to address the moral concerns persistently expressed by Europeans in their accounts of Iran and to reinforce the perception of the Iranian man as a heterosexual lover. Her approach here provides a frame to explain the striking number of tiles which represent a single beautiful young man and male/female lovers in a variety of settings. Tiles with the Qajar-style falconer were frequently bought by Europeans who took the motif at face value – a princely hunter on horseback, made in imitation of Safavid models.46 In an Iranian context, especially when these tiles were displayed in reception rooms and bathhouses in the men’s quarter, the young male beauty could have had homoerotic connotations. The falconer was not the only motif that showed individual men with signs of youthful attractiveness. Variations of a single hunter, a warrior or an equestrian with the mythical bird simurgh flying above him or carrying a parasol appeared in equally large numbers. The concrete activity of the figure seems secondary in these scenes, compared to the attention the protagonist could have attracted, with his noticeable signs of physical beauty and shyness. A version of the subject of male/female lovers was a couple standing next to each other with the man putting his arm around the shoulder of a woman playing a string instrument or holding a cup and a bottle. In early renderings of this motif the young man carries a falcon on one hand, while in later ones he holds the woman with both arms. He is invariably depicted looking straight at her, while her gaze is directed neither at her lover nor at the viewer of the tile.47 These tiles, where a man looks directly at a woman, are the most convincing depiction of heterosexual love on tiles in the Qajar period. As with the falconer, a range of different love scenes left room for alternative interpretations by European and Iranian viewers according to their respective preferences. Tiles with a male/female couple meeting in a garden landscape, each accompanied by an attendant, were often brought back by Europeans as representations of Iranian court life and entertainment. By contrast, for the Iranian viewers, the fine moustaches visible in the faces of all four figures might have delineated the young men and women equally as objects of desire.48 These garden scenes are allusions to paradise, the only place where, in the Iranian imagination, men and women could freely come together. The prince in the group of four figures usually offers the woman a cup with wine from a bottle he might carry in his other hand. He seems like a blissful boy-servant and cupbearer, one of the promised rewards for the faithful in afterlife. This would explain that though he apparently addresses the woman they do not make eye contact and the woman, holding flowers and a parasol, has no hand free to take the cup. As the representation of hūr, the paradisiac female beauty, I argue, the

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woman connects as the young man does, with the external viewer rather than communicating with the man opposite her. Other paradise scenes illustrate the heavenly pleasures much more directly: the scenery is populated with a man holding a wine glass and a bottle, with female musicians and a woman who tightly embraces a man in European trousers. The profound transformation of gender relations in Qajar Iran in the second half of the nineteenth century was thus projected on the backdrop of paradise in the tiles. The variations of courting couples in garden settings illustrate the gradual conceptualization of male/female relationships in the public sphere. This process had become possible because Iranian men, who had visited Europe since the early nineteenth century, described it as ‘paradise on earth’ in their travelogues.49 They experienced the mixing of men and women in various social situations as the complete opposite to the seclusion of their own women at home. The observation of this deep cultural difference inspired discussions about the visibility of Iranian women in public as another sign of Iran’s progress.50 Just as Iranian modernists argued against same-sex relationships among men, they also demanded that women should leave the privacy of the house and actively take part in the building of a modern Iran – or as Najmabadi aptly phrased it ‘to join the modern man in his effort to give birth – jointly – to a new nation’.51 The tile in Figure 4.3 shows the Sasanian king Bahram Gur, demonstrating his famous hunting skills while under the watchful eyes of two women in the background. One of them, who might be his favourite musician Azada, is observing the king through binoculars. This is obviously a contemporary modification of a classical story of the ‘Shah-nama’, the ‘Book of Kings’, in which Azada challenges the king’s complacent attitude, proving that practice makes perfect and that she too can accomplish extraordinary skills. Women were indeed called to take roles outside of their domestic activities and to participate in the protection of the homeland against state corruption and foreign exploitation. The many economic concessions and monopolies granted by the Iranian government to the rival British and Russian powers in the second half of the nineteenth century brought the country close to bankruptcy and under farreaching foreign control. The shah had to cancel the granting of two agreements, the Reuter Concession in 1872 and the Tobacco Concession in 1890, following popular opposition and urban riots. Women and men took part in these protests as national sisters and brothers. The conceptualization of Iran as the familial home of the nation had made the country an interior space in which women could join unrelated men in public activities.52

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A scene like Bahram Gur hunting, supplemented with two women in the background taking agency by watching what is going on in the public sphere, can be taken as an indication that their public visibility was possible to imagine. However, overall far fewer women than men are depicted on the tiles. Unlike the falconer, Safavid tiles with individual women in a landscape were not further developed. There is a singular instance of a (European?) woman on horseback holding a parasol instead of the falcon. When the motif was picked up again later, a man holds the parasol. Individually or in pairs, playing with a gazelle or carrying flower baskets, women do appear in garden landscapes on tiles from about the late 1870 or early 1880s. In the same artistic style, they are shown in campsites carrying out domestic activities. On large-sized tiles from about the 1890s courtly women in elaborate dresses, flanked by their attendants or musicians, finally gain centre stage, leaving almost no background area to paint. Literary themes became an excuse for extensive representations of female personnel: in an interior scene of Yusuf and Sulaikha this is possibly less surprising than in Farhad and Shirin where half of the scene is dedicated to the depiction of the Armenian queen and her companions, while the male hero, Farhad, seems marginalized. Europe, its culture and manners were the main terms of reference that informed Iran’s modernization project. For both Iranian and foreign viewers, tiles depicting contemporary subjects could have acted as demonstrations of the aspirations Iran’s cultural elite had for the country and as a record of the progress that had already been achieved. Photographs and prints were not only interesting as a source of current imagery for tilemakers, but their replication on the tiles also provided an opportunity to show off Iranian artists’ mastery of these techniques. While Europe was acknowledged for its perfection in these arts, this was not meant as an acceptance of superiority. When in the early 1880s Iran’s royal painter returned from Europe, where he had been sent to improve his lithographic skills, newspapers lauded him as singular with regard to his accomplishments in this art.53 The depictions of European cities, generic or specific, and technical innovations like planes and cars on the tiles need to be seen in the same way. They were displayed on the walls next to views of Tehran’s transformed centre, featuring wide avenues and tall buildings as testimonies of progress. Significant sites and monuments of historical interest as well as landmarks such as the Damavand Mountain contributed to the building of the national Self and visually reinforced Iran’s claim to a rightful place among the world’s leading nations. In addition, the tiles helped disseminate the extensive photographic documentation of the country and its people. Scenes of everyday life, domestic interiors, street

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life, crafts, trades, manners and customs invited people to look at themselves and hence increased the awareness of what it meant to be Iranian. In other cases, the tiles were used to circulate court imagery. The motifs presented a kaleidoscope of courtly life, combining classical royal activities, such as hunting, with the responsibilities of a modern ruler. Portraits of the shah and his courtiers, stately receptions at home and abroad during Nasir al-Din’s European tours, musical entertainments and military parades, all created a visual record of the shah’s official duties. Similar to state-initiated reforms, the dissemination of such imagery purposefully increased the royal presence in public life and helped to establish the image of the shah as the father of the nation.54 As Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi has demonstrated, modernist thinkers attributed Iran’s backwardness, on the other hand, to the influence of Arab-Islamic culture in its past.55 The identification of common roots with European culture and history enabled a dissociation from this heritage and paved the way for the construction of a glorious history for Iran. The ‘Shah-nama’, narrating in poetic form the mythical and heroic time periods up to the end of the Sasanian Empire (224-651 CE), familiarized Iranians with their pre-Islamic past. Storytellers recited from it in coffeehouses and private individuals commissioned illustrated manuscripts and printed copies. These initiatives increased its popularity and it became a duty for every Iranian to know and read this epic poem. It is therefore not surprising that scenes of enthroned rulers, depictions of the celebrated hero Rustam and battle scenes appear repeatedly on individual tiles and large ceramic wall panels. The desire to rediscover Iran’s ancient past inspired historical books such as ‘Nama-yi Khusravan’ (‘Book of Kings’) by Jalal al-Din Mirza (1827–72), fiftyfifth son of Fath ‘Ali Shah. Written for a general audience, it became particularly popular because of its illustrations of Iranian rulers from the mythical beginnings to the Zand dynasty. These portraits appeared in the interior decoration of Qajar houses and were favourite subjects on large tiles (Figure 4.4).56 The tiles strengthened the creation of a visual memory of Iran’s past and the pedagogical intent of the book by copying the name and dynasty of each ruler. In addition, the series in the Decorative Arts Museum in Isfahan includes a tile that depicts Jalal al-Din Mirza sitting in a European fashion at a table with his book, an image taken from the front matter of his book.57  The series of large portrait tiles in Isfahan was accompanied by a set of smaller tiles with half cartouches that seem to have framed them along the top and bottom. Another group of small tiles with full cartouches and a border probably formed a separate frieze. Invariably they show landscapes, animals and

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flower-and-fruit bouquets.  Line drawings from ‘The Naturalist’s Library’, a forty-volume series edited by Scotsman Sir William Jardine (1800–74), inspired some of the depictions of animals, such as lions and monkeys.58 Other animals including birds, stags and rats as well as landscape scenes and architectural buildings were informed by illustrations in the different editions of ‘The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne’ by English naturalist Gilbert White (1720–93). The drawings of Selborne’s wildlife, of the countryside of this East Hampshire village with its lakes, coniferous woods and surrounding hills and of the village itself with its houses and bridges were, however, not simply copied. Rather they provided the elements from which the craftsmen created imaginary landscapes, sometimes of a hybrid character. In a single image the snow-capped peak of Mount Damavand, famous for its significance in Iranian mythology, can appear combined with elements of an English landscape, for example. Drawing on Iranian and European pictorial sources simultaneously, the tiles were used as a means of visual education about Iranian history as well as local and foreign nature and culture.

Conclusion The conceptualization and construction of Iran as a nation mainly took place during the nineteenth century. The establishment of a constitutional regime for Iran that limited the shah’s authority during the Revolution of 1905 to 1911 proved that over the previous decades a modern Iranian identity had developed. From a community of Muslim believers, Iranians had transformed themselves into a people of one country, unified by shared memories, joint values and interests beyond their respective ethnicities and religious beliefs. As sovereign citizens, men and women together took care of the protection of their homeland, a duty which in their opinion the shah had failed to fulfil. How was this collective perception of an Iranian nation realized? Or to ask with Benedict Anderson, how were commonalities of the many individual actors created that helped them to identify themselves in this process of construction of an imagined community?59 Anderson suggests that newspapers provided the public space for the dialogues and discussions that were necessary to shape a collective understanding and national identity. Unlike books or other media that disseminate ideas, newspapers had a much wider circulation and publicized information more quickly. What interested him most, however, was that through their news items they initiated among the readers (or listeners to a public reader

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in the case of Iran) an awareness of each other and a feeling of connectedness – many people who do the same thing at the same time – which he reasoned stimulated the forming of a collective perception. The effective use of picture tiles in Qajar architecture, their sophisticated making and particularly the overlap of their main subjects with the social and political concerns of Iranian society in the second half of the nineteenth century suggest that figurative tiles played a comparable role to newspapers. Although mainly preserved in wealthy houses, figurative tiles were by no means limited to the cultural elite of Isfahan and Tehran.60 Centrally situated in the bazaar area, the tilemakers’ workshops were frequented by customers from all social backgrounds and produced popular street scenes and generic portraits as well as courtly imagery.61 Importantly, these motifs were not unique but evocative of something in society. A standard garden scene could have been understood as an allusion to the promises of afterlife in paradise but also as a reminder of the different public visibility of women in Europe and Iran. The rendering of the images on the tiles often followed closely the illustrations of written sources as in the cases of Jalal al-Din Mirza’s ‘Nama-yi Khusravan’ and Fursat al-Dawla’s (1854–1920) ‘Athar-i Ajam’, copying them together with the accompanying captions. The reciprocal relationship between word and image, together with the reproducibility of the images, guaranteed a shared understanding of the tiles. Their images reinforced in a visual way shared memories and values that had been created verbally. The individual experience of viewing would have followed a realization in terms of ‘we’ and ‘our’ as the tiles addressed collective topics – Iran’s history, its geographical sites and people, often in comparison with the European Other. Through their depictions the tiles fused the viewer’s individual inside world with an imagined community outside of other viewers with parallel experiences. Tilework replicated a repertoire of images similar to that of other media. The tilemakers expressed their creativity in adjusting images they sourced from different media to the specific requirements of the individual tiles rather than in inventing their own pictorial language. As this was a practice across the visual arts, similar subjects appear in different media. Male and female beauty was one of these universal themes. Heinrich Brugsch reported in 1860 to 1861 that love scenes, beautiful women, dandies and depictions of local dress and customs were the main topics of the paper and oil painting he had seen in Iranian bazaars.62 Depictions of paradise with men, women, angels, food and wine as well as interior scenes with lovers, either embracing each other or with attendants, are favoured topics in lacquer work of the second half

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of the nineteenth century.63 Motifs from the ‘Shah-nama’ were replicated in brass plaques and in stucco and used in the interior decoration of houses.64 Photographs and illustrations in printed books became new sources of inspiration. The illustrations of ‘Nama-yi Khusravan’ and ‘Athar-i Ajam’ inspired silversmiths to emboss vessels with intricate motifs derived from preIslamic sites, while painters accepted the challenge to transfer photographs on lacquer work and paper. The abundance of images circulated in nineteenthcentury Qajar Iran, many of them European prints, is often said to have been a plentiful source for Iranian artists on which they could freely draw for their works. I would argue that artists carefully selected from these sources the themes and motifs that were collectively meaningful. The repetition of motifs, often seen by European travellers as a limitation, was programmatic – their inherent messages were reinforced through their depiction in many artistic media and spheres of life, on moveable objects for private use and fixed and widely visible in architecture. The tile repertoire was broadest during the 1880s and 1890s. The technical potential of the tiles was widely exploited and the subjects addressed modernist, reformist and conservative concerns. Through their link with architecture, picture tiles make visible how, in the course of about three decades, Iran’s identity became primarily associated with a pre-Islamic past. The initial range of topics – from gender issues to educational aims – was narrowed down and the refashioning of Iran’s past became of single importance. Fursat al-Dawla’s fifty drawings of historical sites across Iran dominated the image repertoire of the tiles after the Constitutional Revolution. Depicted in courtyards and reception rooms of houses belonging to the cultural elite, investiture and throne scenes of Achaemenid and Sasanian rulers, sometimes in combination with motifs of European origin, complemented the hybrid style of Qajar architecture.65 With the beginning of the Pahlavi dynasty, pre-Islamic history became the main defining element of Iranian national identity. Published in 1895–6, Fursat al-Dawla’s ‘Athar-i Ajam’ remained the tilemakers’ most important source. Their products no longer facilitated a questioning process but were displayed as an answer.

Notes 1 Heinrich Karl Brugsch, Reise der K. Preussischen Gesandtschaft nach Persien 1860 und 1861 (Leipzig: Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1863), 93, 287.

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2 Le Comte Julien De Rochechouart, Souvenirs d'un voyage en Perse (Paris: Challamel Ainé, 1867), 235–6, 267–9; Jakob Eduard Polak, Persien: Das Land und seine Bewohner. Ethnographische Schilderungen, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1865), 181–2. 3 Robert Murdoch Smith, Persian Art (London: Chapman and Hall, 1876), 36; Pierre Loti, Nach Isfahan (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000), 196–7. 4 Basil W. Robinson, ‘The Court Painters of Fath 'Ali Shah’, Eretz-Israel 7 (1964): 96. 5 See, for example, Jennifer M. Scarce, ‘Ali Mohammad Isfahani, Tilemaker of Tehran’, Oriental Art, N.S. 22, no. 3 (1976): 278–88; Jennifer M. Scarce, ‘Function and Decoration in Qajar Tilework’, in Jennifer M. Scarce (ed.), Islam in the Balkans. Persian Art and Culture of the 18th and 19th Centuries (Edinburgh: The Royal Scottish Museum Edinburgh, 1979), 75–86; Inge Seiwert, ‘Poesie in Keramik – Betrachtungen zu einem Fliesenbild aus Isfahan’, Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde Leipzig 52 (1987): 29–41; Jennifer M. Scarce, ‘Yusuf and Zulaikha – Tilework Images of Passion’, in James Allan (ed.), Islamic Art in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 63–84; Hādī Sayf, Persian Painted Tiles (Tehran: Surūš, 1997); Agnita Van’t Klooster, ‘Iran in Europa – Europa in Iran’, Keramika 17, no. 4 (2005): 21–7; Friederike Voigt, ‘Das Bild im keramischen Architekturdekor Irans zur Zeit der Qadscharen’, Baessler-Archiv 55 (2008): 43–101. 6 Layla S. Diba, ‘Haji Mirza Sulayman Khan, Rukn al-Mulk’, in Layla S. Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar (eds), Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch, 1785-1925 (London and New York: I.B. Tauris in association with Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1998), 254–5. Peter Chelkowski, ‘Popular Arts: Patronage and Piety’, in Layla S. Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar (eds), Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch, 17851925 (London and New York: I.B. Tauris in association with Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1998), 95–7. 7 David J. Roxburgh, ‘Painting after Photography in 19th-Century Iran’, in David J. Roxburgh and Mary McWilliams (eds), Technologies of the Image: Art in 19th-Century Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museum, 2017), 111. 8 Ernst Gombrich, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (London: The Warburg Institute, 1970), 355. 9 Gottfried Boehm, ‘Die Bilderfrage’, in Gottfried Boehm (ed.), Was ist ein Bild? (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1994), 332. 10 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991), 5–6, 25. 11 Lisa Golombek, ‘Discourses of an Imaginary Arts Council in Fifteenth-Century Iran’, in Lisa Golombek and Maria Subtelny (eds), Timurid Art and Culture: Iran and Central Asia in the Fifteenth Century, Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture (Leiden, New York and Köln: E. J. Brill, 1992), 1. 12 Friederike Voigt, ‘Equestrian Tiles and the Re-discovery of Underglaze Painting in Qajar Iran’, in Gwenaëlle Fellinger and Melanie Gibson (eds), Revealing the Unseen: Essays on Qajar Art (Forthcoming).

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13 Voigt, ‘Das Bild im keramischen Architekturdekor Irans zur Zeit der Qadscharen’, 50–5. 14 Ali Mohamed, Modern Kashi Earthenware Tiles and Vases in Imitation of the Ancient (Edinburgh: Museum of Science and Art, 1888), 3, 8. 15 Ina Reiche and Friederike Voigt, ‘Technology of Production: The Master Potter Ali Muhammad Isfahani: Insights into the Production of Decorative Underglaze Painted Tiles in 19th Century Iran’, in Howell Edwards and Peter Vandenabeele (eds), Analytical Archaeometry: Selected Topics (Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2016), 502–31; Ali Mohamed, Modern Kashi Earthenware Tiles and Vases, 4–5. 16 Voigt, ‘Das Bild im keramischen Architekturdekor Irans zur Zeit der Qadscharen’. 17 Mélisande Bizoirre, ‘Les Acquisitions De Carreaux Qājārs Dans Les Collections Publiques Françaises’, Mémoire de recherche, École du Louvre, (2008): 125–6. 18 Voigt, ‘Equestrian Tiles and the Re-discovery of Underglaze Painting in Qajar Iran’. 19 Moya Carey, Persian Art: Collecting the Arts of Iran for the V&A (London: V&A Publishing, 2017), 161. 20 Karapet Karapetian, Isfahan, New Julfa: The Houses of the Armenians; a Collection of Architectural Surveys (Rome: IsMEO, 1974), fig. 224. 21 Talinn Grigor, ‘Kings and Traditions in Différance: Antiquity Revisited in PostSafavid Iran’, in Finbarr Barry Flood and Gülru Necipoğlu (eds), A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), 1092. 22 Algemeen Rijks Archief, The Hague, ‘Faiences and Porcelains’, Legatie Perzië, bundle 11, April–June 1893, no. 188. 23 Karapetian, Isfahan, New Julfa: The Houses of the Armenians; a Collection of Architectural Surveys, fig. 224a; Jennifer M. Scarce, ‘Some Interpretations of Religious and Popular Culture in Qajar Tilework’, in R. Gleave (ed.), Religion and Society in Qajar Iran (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), fig. 21.1, 433; Jennifer M. Scarce, ‘The Tile Decoration of the Gulestan Palace at Tehran – an Introductory Survey’, in Akten des VII. Internationalen Kongresses für Iranische Kunst und Archäologie, München, 07.–10.09.1976 (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1979), fig. 5. 24 Sayf, Persian Painted Tiles, figs. 50, 64–5, 74–6, 89–90, 164, 236–40. 25 Yahya Zuka, Tārikhcha-yi Sākhtamānhā-yi Arg-i Sultānī-yi Tihrān va Rāhnamā-yi Kākh-i Gulistān (Tehran: Anjoman-i Athar-i Milli, 1349/1970), 255–6. 26 Mohammad Hassan Talebian, Nomination of Golestan Palace for Inscription on the World Heritage List: Report (Tehran: UNESCO World Heritage Convention, 2012), 30. 27 Farshid Emami, ‘The Lithographic Image and Its Audiences’, in David J Roxburgh and Mary McWilliams (eds), Technologies of the Image: Art in 19th-Century Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museum, 2017), 65. 28 John Gurney and Negin Nabavi, ‘Dār al-Fonūn’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica 1993/2011, http://www​.iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/dar​-al​-fonun​-lit [Accessed 20 March 2019].

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29 Maryam Ekhtiar, ‘Harmony or Cacophony: Music Instruction at the Dār al-Fonūn’, in Elton L. Daniel (ed.), Society and Culture in Qajar Iran: Studies in Honor of Hafez Farmayan (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2002), fig. 11. See also signed tiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, accession numbers 510-1889 and 511-1889. Another example is a fireplace in Olana, the house of the American painter Frederick Edwin Church (1826–1900). 30 See, for example, the Moghadam Museum in Tehran, the former house of Ihtisab al-Mulk (d. 1927). 31 See the wall panels acquired by Robert Murdoch Smith from the workshop of ‘Ali Muhammad Isfahani in 1887, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, accession numbers 561:1 to 57-1888 and 560-1888. 32 Loti, Nach Isfahan, 196–7. 33 Diba, ‘Haji Mirza Sulayman Khan, Rukn al-Mulk’, 254–5. 34 Qāsim Ahmadī, Marammat-i Āthār-i Bāstānī-i Ustān-i Kirmānšāh wa Kurdistān (Kirmānšāh 1383/2004), 8. 35 Sayf, Persian Painted Tiles, fig. 71. 36 Carey, Persian Art: Collecting the Arts of Iran for the V&A, 161. 37 See, for example, two tiles with the portrait of a man in the Hetjens-Museum, Düsseldorf, accession numbers 1996-591 and 1996-592. 38 Edward G. Brown, The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909 (Cambridge: University Press, 1910), 143. 39 Negin Nabavi, ‘The Birth of Newspaper Culture in Nineteenth-Century Iran’, The Institute Letter (Institute for Advanced Study, Summer 2016): 10. Online https:// www​.ias​.edu​/ideas​/2016​/nabavi​-iranian​-newspaper​-culture [Accessed 5 April 2019]. 40 Negin Nabavi, ‘Journalism in Iran. I. Qajar Period’, in Encyclopeadia Iranica, 2009/2011, https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/journalism-i-qajar-period [Accessed 12 March 2021]. 41 Brugsch, Reise der K. Preussischen Gesandtschaft nach Persien 1860 und 1861, 287. 42 Staci Gem Scheiwiller, ‘Cartographic Desires: Some Reflections on the Shahr-e Farang (Peepshow) and Modern Iran’, in Staci Gem Scheiwiller (ed.), Performing the Iranian State: Visual Culture and Representations of Iranian Identity (London, New York, and Delhi: Anthem Press, 2013). 43 See, for example, Qur’an 52: 17-24. The garden, or paradise, is the dwelling place of the pious where they will enjoy fruit, meat and wine in safety. They will be served by boys as beautiful as pearls (ghilmān) and married to large-eyed hūr. 44 See https://www​.rm​-auctions​.com​/cn​/european-​-islamic​-arts​/14713​-four​-qajar​ -relief​-moulded​-tiles​-with​-falconers​-a​-soldier​-on​-horseback​-and​-a​-kneeling​ -man​-iran​-19th​-c? [Accessed 28 April 2019]. Also Voigt, ‘Equestrian Tiles and the Re-discovery of Underglaze Painting in Qajar Iran’, fig. 7. 45 Afsaneh Najmabadi, ‘Mapping Transformation of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Iran’, Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural

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48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

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Practice, 49, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 54–77; Afsaneh Najmabadi, ‘Gendered Transformations: Beauty, Love, and Sexuality in Qajar Iran’, Iranian Studies, 34, no. 1–4 (2001): 89–102. Voigt, ‘Equestrian Tiles and the Re-discovery of Underglaze Painting in Qajar Iran’. On a tile in the British Museum the couple is depicted together with an equestrian figure and simurgh (accession number 1981, 0604.2). The compatibility reinforces the interpretation that both subjects were linked. See Christie’s, Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds Including Oriental Rugs and Carpets, London, 26 April 2018, lot 111; Friederike Voigt, ‘Wandkachel. Historie’, in Tina Brüderlein, Stefanie Schien and Silke Stoll (eds), Ausgepackt! 125 Jahre Geschichte(n) im Museum Natur und Mensch (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag und Städtische Museen Freiburg, 2020), 40–1. Najmabadi, ‘Mapping Transformation of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Iran’, 63–4. Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2001), 65. Najmabadi, ‘Mapping Transformation of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Iran’, 69. Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography, 113–16 and 133. Emami, ‘The Lithographic Image and Its Audiences’, 70. Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography, 118–22. Ibid., 99. Ibid., 100. Jalal al-Din Mirza, Nāma-yi Khusrawān: Dāstān-i Pādšāhān bi-Zabān-i Pārsī ki Sūdmand-i Mardān bi-wīža-yi Kūdakān Ast. Az Āġāz-i Ābādīyān tā Anǧām-i Sāsānīyān (Ṭihrān: Dar Kār-khāna-yi Ustād Muḥammad Taqī, 1285/1868), 3. The Naturalist’s Library was a popular source for lacquer work artists. See Mary McWilliams, ‘Qajar Lacquer as a Medium of Exchange’, in David J. Roxburgh and Mary McWilliams (eds), Technologies of the Image: Art in 19th-Century Iran (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museum, 2017), 34–5. It might have also informed the motifs on the large monochrome tiles in Ahmad Qavam al-Saltana’s house in Tehran. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Tiles with the falconer in the Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts in Tbilisi, Georgia are rendered in the Qajar style but were probably made in a local workshop in Tabriz. A group of square tiles was painted with views of pre-Islamic sites enhanced by cuneiform inscriptions.

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61 Algemeen Rijks Archief. 62 Brugsch, Reise der K. Preussischen Gesandtschaft nach Persien 1860 und 1861, 93. 63 Mary McWilliams, ‘Qajar Lacquer as a Medium of Exchange’, 36, figs. 21–23, 29–30. 64 Jennifer M. Scarce, ‘Bandar-e Taheri – A Late Outpost of the Shahnama’, in Robert Hillenbrand (ed.), The Visual Language of the Persian Book of Kings (Aldershot, Ashgate: 2004), 143–54. Ulrike al-Khamis and Godfrey Evans, ‘Faint Echoes of Past Splendour – A Group of Brass Plaques from 19th-Century Qajar Iran’, in Robert Hillenbrand (ed.), The Visual Language of the Persian Book of Kings (Aldershot, Ashgate: 2004), 129–41. 65 For example the Tehran houses of Ahmad Qavam al-Saltana (mentioned earlier) and Fazl al-Iraqi (built c. 1915). See Talinn Grigor, ‘Kingship Hybridized, Kingship Homogenized: Revivalism under the Qajar and the Pahlavi Dynasties’, in Sussan Babaie and Talinn Grigor (eds), Persian Kingship and Architecture: Strategies of Power in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis (London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2015), 231. For a biography of Ahmad Qavam al-Saltana, see Abbas Milani, Eminent Persians: The Men and Women Who Made Modern Iran, 1941-1979 (Syracuse and New York: Syracuse University Press & Persian World Press, 2008), 158–64.

Bibliography Ahmadī, Qāsim. Marammat-i Āthār-i Bāstānī-i Ustān-i Kirmānšāh wa Kurdistān. Kirmānšāh, 1383/2004. Ali Mohamed. Modern Kashi Earthenware Tiles and Vases in Imitation of the Ancient. Edinburgh: Museum of Science and Art, 1888. Algemeen Rijks Archief, The Hague. ‘Faiences and Porcelains’, Legatie Perzië, bundle 11 (April–June 1893). Al-Khamis, Ulrike and Evans, Godfrey. ‘Faint Echoes of Past Splendour – A Group of Brass Plaques from 19th-Century Qajar Iran’, in Robert Hillenbrand (ed.), The Visual Language of the Persian Book of Kings, 129–41. Ashgate: Aldershot, 2004. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso, 1991. Bizoirre, Mélisande. ‘Les Acquisitions De Carreaux Qājārs Dans Les Collections Publiques Françaises’, Mémoire de recherche. École de Louvre, 2008. Boehm, Gottfried. ‘Die Bilderfrage’, in Gottfried Boehm (ed.), Was ist ein Bild?, 325–43. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1994. Brown, Edward G. The Persian Revolution of 1905–1909. Cambridge: University Press, 1910. Brugsch, Heinrich Karl. Reise Der K. Preussischen Gesandtschaft nach Persien 1860 und 1861. Leipzig: Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1863.

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Carey, Moya. Persian Art: Collecting the Arts of Iran for the V&A. London: V&A Publishing, 2017. Chelkowski, Peter. ‘Popular Arts: Patronage and Piety’, in Layla S. Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar (eds), The Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch (1785–1925), 90–9. London and New York: I.B. Tauris in association with Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1998. Christie’s, Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds Including Oriental Rugs and Carpets, lot 111. London, 26 April 2018. De Rochechouart, Julien. Souvenirs d'un Voyage en Perse. Paris: Challamel Ainé, 1867. Diba Layla, S. ‘Haji Mirza Sulayman Khan, Rukn al-Mulk’, in Layla S. Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar (eds), Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch, 1785–1925, 254–5. London and New York: I.B. Tauris in association with Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1998. Diba, Layla S., and Maryam Ekhtiar, eds. Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch, 1785–1925. London: I.B. Tauris, 1998. Ekhtiar, Maryam. ‘Harmony or Cacophony: Music Instruction at the Dār al-Fonūn’, in Elton L. Daniel (ed.), Society and Culture in Qajar Iran: Studies in Honor of Hafez Farmayan, 45–67. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2002. Emami, Farshid. ‘The Lithographic Image and Its Audiences’, in David J Roxburgh and Mary McWilliams (eds), Technologies of the Image: Art in 19th-Century Iran, 51–79. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museum, 2017. Golombek, Lisa. ‘Discourses of an Imaginary Arts Council in Fifteenth-Century Iran’, in Golombek and Maria Subtelny (eds), Timurid Art and Culture: Iran and Central Asia in the Fifteenth Century. Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture, 1–17. Leiden, New York and Köln: E. J. Brill, 1992. Gombrich, Ernst. Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography. London: The Warburg Institute, 1970. Grigor, Talinn. ‘Kings Hybridized, Kingship Homogenized: Revivalism under the Qajar and the Pahlavi Dynasties’, in Sussan Babaie and Talinn Grigor (eds), Persian Kingship and Architecture: Strategies of Power in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis, 218–54. London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2015. Grigor, Talinn. ‘Kings and Traditions in Différance: Antiquity Revisited in Post-Safavid Iran’, in Finbarr Barry Flood and Gülru Necipoğlu (eds), A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture. Blackwell’s Companion to Art History, 12, 1082–101. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017. Gurney, John and Negin Nabavi. ‘Dār al-Fonūn’, in Encyclopaedia Iranica 1993/2011, http://www​.iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/dar​-al​-fonun​-lit [Accessed 20 March 2019]. Karapetian, Karapet. Isfahan, New Julfa: The Houses of the Armenians; a Collection of Architectural Surveys. Rome: IsMEO, 1974. Loti, Pierre. Nach Isfahan. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2000. McWilliams, Mary. ‘Qajar Lacquer as a Medium of Exchange’, in David J. Roxburgh and Mary McWilliams (eds), Technologies of the Image: Art in 19th-Century Iran, 3–24. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museum, 2017.

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Milani, Abbas. Eminent Persians: The Men and Women Who Made Modern Iran, 1941–1979. Syracuse and New York: Syracuse University Press and Persian World Press, 2008. Mirza, Jalal al-Din. Nāma-yi Khusrawān: Dāstān-i Pādšāhān bi-Zabān-i Pārsī ki Sūdmand-i Mardān bi-wīža-yi Kūdakān Ast. Az Āġāz-i Ābādīyān tā Anǧām-i Sāsānīyān. Ṭihrān: Dar Kār-khāna-i Ustād Muḥammad Taqī, 1285/1868. Nabavi, Negin. ‘Journalism in Iran. I. Qajar Period’, in Encyclopeadia Iranica. 2009/2011. https://www​.iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/journalism​-i​-qajar​-period [Accessed 12 March 2021]. Nabavi, Negin. ‘The Birth of Newspaper Culture in Nineteenth-Century Iran’, in The Institute Letter, 10. Institute for Advanced Study, Summer 2016. Online https:// www​.ias​.edu​/ideas​/2016​/nabavi​-iranian​-newspaper​-culture [Accessed 5 April 2019]. Najmabadi, Afsaneh. ‘Gendered Transformations: Beauty, Love, and Sexuality in Qajar Iran’, Iranian Studies 34: 1–4 (2001): 89–102. Najmabadi, Afsaneh. ‘Mapping Transformation of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Iran, Social Analysis’, The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 49: 2 (Summer 2005): 54–77. Polak, Jakob Eduard. Persien: Das Land und seine Bewohner: Ethnographische Schilderungen. Vol. 1. Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1865. Reiche, Ina, and Friederike Voigt. ‘Technology of Production: The Master Potter Ali Muhammad Isfahani: Insights into the Production of Decorative Underglaze Painted Tiles in 19th-Century Iran’, in Howell Edwards and Peter Vandenabeele (eds), Analytical Archaeometry: Selected Topics, 502–31. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2016. Robinson, Basil W. ‘The Court Painters of Fath 'Ali Shah’, Eretz-Israel 7 (1964): 94–105. Roxburgh, David J. ‘Painting after Photography in 19th-Century Iran’, in David J. Roxburgh and Mary McWilliams (eds), Technologies of the Image: Art in 19th-Century Iran, 107–30. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museum, 2017. Sayf, Hādī. Persian Painted Tiles. Tehran: Surūš, 1997. Scarce, Jennifer M. ‘Ali Mohammad Isfahani, Tilemaker of Tehran’, Oriental Art, N.S. 22: 3 (1976): 278–88. Scarce, Jennifer M. ‘Function and Decoration in Qajar Tilework’, in Jennifer M. Scarce (ed.), Islam in the Balkans. Persian Art and Culture of the 18th and 19th Centuries, 75–86. Edinburgh: The Royal Scottish Museum Edinburgh, 1979. Scarce, Jennifer M. ‘The Tile Decoration of the Gulestan Palace at Tehran – An Introductory Survey’, in Akten des VII. Internationalen Kongresses für Iranische Kunst und Archäologie, München, 7–10 September 1976, 635–41. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1979. Scarce, Jennifer M. ‘Yusuf and Zulaikha – Tilework Images of Passion’, in James Allan (ed.), Islamic Art in the Ashmolean Museum, 63–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

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Scarce, Jennifer M. ‘Bandar-e Taheri – A Late Outpost of the Shahnama’, in Robert Hillenbrand (ed.), The Visual Language of the Persian Book of Kings, 143–54. Ashgate: Aldershot, 2004. Scarce, Jennifer M. ‘Some Interpretations of Religious and Popular Culture in Qajar Tilework’, in R. Gleave (ed.), Religion and Society in Qajar Iran, 429–48. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005. Scheiwiller, Staci G. ‘Cartographic Desires: Some Reflections on the Shahr-e Farang (Peepshow) and Modern Iran’, in Staci Gem Scheiwiller (ed.), Performing the Iranian State: Visual Culture and Representations of Iranian Identity, 33–54. London, New York, Delhi: Anthem Press, 2013. Seiwert, Inge. ‘Poesie in Keramik – Betrachtungen zu einem Fliesenbild aus Isfahan’, Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Völkerkunde Leipzig 52 (1987): 29–41. Smith, Robert Murdoch. Persian Art. London: Chapman and Hall, 1876. Talebian, Mohammad H. Nomination of Golestan Palace for Inscription on the World Heritage List: Report, 30. Tehran: UNESCO World Heritage Convention, 2012. Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad. Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2001. Van’t Klooster, Agnita. ‘Iran in Europa – Europa in Iran’, Keramika 17: 4 (2005): 21–27. Voigt, Friederike. ‘Das Bild im keramischen Architekturdekor Irans zur Zeit der Qadscharen’, Baessler-Archiv 55 (2008): 43–101. Voigt, Friederike. ‘Wandkachel. Historie’, in Tina Brüderlein, Stefanie Schien and Silke Stoll (eds), Ausgepackt! 125 Jahre Geschichte(n) im Museum Natur und Mensch, 40–1. Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag und Städtische Museen Freiburg, 2020. Voigt, Friederike. ‘Equestrian tiles and the Re-discovery of Underglaze Painting in Qajar Iran’, in Gwenaëlle Fellinger and Melanie Gibson (eds), Revealing the Unseen: Essays on Qajar Art. Forthcoming. Zuka, Yahya. Tārikhcha-yi Sākhtamānhā-yi Arg-i Sultānī-yi Tihrān va Rāhnamā-yi Kākh-i Gulistān. Tehran: Anjoman-i Athar-i Melli, 1349/1970.

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Potential worlds On representation and mimesis in late Timurid painting (c. 1470–1500) Lamia Balafrej

In the fifteenth century, a series of changes altered the visual appearance of Persian manuscript painting.1 The area devoted to the illustration of the story narrated in the manuscript shrank dramatically, while a multitude of nonillustrative forms proliferated.2 Painting became filled with figures and motifs that bore no apparent relationship to the surrounding text. Focusing on examples produced in late Timurid Herat (c. 1470–1500), this chapter examines this and other transformations in relation to conceptions of art and authorship in art historiographical writings. While this new style of painting has mainly been attributed to an interest for either realism or mystical symbolism (in ways that foreground again the illustrative function of the image),3 I would like to emphasize its reflexive, metapictorial dimensions. The new style marked a shift in the painting’s function, I argue, from an illustrative device to a metamedium, designed to interrogate the ontological boundaries of painting and to define its relationship, not to the world as we see it but to God’s creation, to the ideal forms and concepts from which reality was created. This study seeks to move away from the binaries of outside and inside, reality and representation, text and image, that have characterized the illustrative paradigm. Instead it considers Persian painting as a representation of possible, rather than actual, pre-given worlds.

Extra-textual figures Let us introduce the phenomenon of the extra-textual figures with a quick comparison.4 Each painting belongs to a copy of the Khamsa (Quintet) by the

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poet Nizami (1141–1217). They were both made in Herat, today’s Afghanistan. The first painting (Figure 5.1)5 was executed in 1431. Herat was under the rule of Shahrukh (1377–1447), son and successor of Timur, the founder of the Timurid dynasty. The second one (Figure 5.2)6 is a late Timurid production. It was made at the end of the fifteenth century, a couple of decades before the collapse of the Timurid Empire in 1506. Frequently copied and illustrated from the fourteenth century onward,7 the Khamsa contains five narrative poems, each composed of a succession of stories interspersed with moral advice. At the top and bottom of the paintings, verses from the story appear in textboxes. They recount an old woman’s plea to a king, Sultan Sanjar.8 Having been abused by an official from the court, the old woman

Figure 5.1  Sultan Sanjar and the Old Woman, manuscript painting from a copy of the Khamsa by Nizami, 1431. The State Hermitage Museum St. Petersburg, VP-1000, fol. 19b. Photograph © The State Hermitage Museum. Photo by Vladimir Terebenin.

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Figure 5.2  Sultan Sanjar and the Old Woman, manuscript painting from a copy of the Khamsa by Nizami, c. 1442–3. London, British Library, Add. 25900, fol. 18a. © The British Library Board.

asks the king for justice. The text mainly consists of the discourse of the plaintiff, introduced by a verse describing the old woman as ‘[laying] hold on the skirt of Sanjar’,9 with no details on the setting. In the earliest of the two paintings (Figure 5.1), the complainant is kneeling down before the sultan and seizing his skirt, a posture that constitutes a literal translation of the text while also offering a visualization of the verbal act of supplication. Four characters from the sultan’s retinue surround the scene, enhancing its courtly aspect. The encounter is staged in a common backdrop of Persian narrative painting: a meadow, with scattered bouquets of plants and one single tree, closing the right side of the composition. The simplicity and prevalence of the landscape focus the viewer’s attention on the main protagonists. In the second painting (Figure 5.2), we recognize the same moment, except that it is now contained in the lower part of the composition. New images have appeared in the upper half of the picture. Accompanied by a horse, a man

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collects water from a spring using a pitcher. Another character stands behind the rocks, near an encampment, while a flock of horses is spreading across the rocky landscape. These supplementary images compose a setting of transhumance. In so doing they divert the beholder’s attention away from the narrative of Nizami. Changing the courtly context into a pastoral one, they actually distort the story. Half of the painting, it seems, has been relieved from the task of illustrating the text. Instead it presents us with a range of stock figures, depicted in a variety of forms, poses and actions, with no apparent link to the story. In the course of the fifteenth century, as this comparison suggests, Persian manuscript paintings could appear filled with figures and images that threatened the illustrative function usually associated with manuscript painting. These paintings seem to emphasize an ‘outside-the-text’, to use an expression coined by Victor Stoichita about early modern European metapictures.10 Why distract the viewer from the text? And why use such generic, prosaic figures to do so? In the scholarship of Persian painting, these extra-textual figures have mainly been interpreted as either allegorical or realistic. Chad Kia has proposed to read them as Sufi symbols, as images embodying particular mystical tropes.11 For example, in another late Timurid painting,12 Kia interprets the presence of a flute player as a reference to the song of the reed, a ubiquitous image in Sufi literature symbolizing the lament of the mystic on the separation with God.13 This iconological reading, however, can only be applied to a limited number of figures and paintings. In the second Sultan Sanjar and the Old Woman, there seems to be no Sufi trope that could account for figures such as the man kneeling by the stream of water. For other scholars such as Richard Ettinghausen, late Timurid painting (to which our second example belongs) marked the emergence of a ‘realistic genre’ in the tradition of Persian book painting,14 visible, as Oleg Grabar further pointed out, through the thematic content of the pictures: ‘in the course of the second half of the fifteenth century new themes from the everyday life transform, at least partly, the epic or romantic themes into likely episodes from a real life’.15 In their landmark 1989 exhibition catalogue on the Timurids, Thomas Lentz and Glenn Lowry characterized this realism in formal and stylistic terms, noting ‘an interest for the portrait, a heightened sense of naturalism, and livelier compositions that depict the figures in a relatively animated movement’.16 Upon closer examination, one realizes, however, that the term ‘realism’ does not so easily apply to the painting. Although extracted from an everyday-life context, the extra-textual figures, I shall argue, convey a sense of abstraction rather than realism. Stylistically, it is hard to detect an interest in optical naturalism. Saturated

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with lines and colours, the painting is an opaque surface rather than a transparent window. It shows no attempt to use a single-point perspective. Rather, it displays a multifocal juxtaposition of figures, each seen through a distinct viewpoint and at the same scale, regardless of their position in the real world. What follows argues that painting’s visual density, combined with aspects of composition and facture such as the diagrammatic organization of the picture and its polished surface, suggests a departure from, rather than an interest for, symbolism or realism. Formal abundance destabilizes the picture’s illustrative function. The painting’s technical perfection, moreover, achieves an effect of allat-onceness that obscures artistic labour, raising painting beyond the laws of materiality. Severing itself from both text and reality, painting, I suggest, emulates God’s uncreated, abstract design of the world. As such, it not only proclaims its independence from any pre-given model: it also represents a potential world, a collection of the ideal concepts from which reality can be made, instead of reality itself.

From illustration to image The rest of this chapter will focus on one late Timurid example (Figure 5.3 and Plate 4). The painting belongs to the Cairo Bustan, a manuscript made around 1488 in Herat.17 Named after its current location in the National Library of Egypt in Cairo, the manuscript is a thin but lavishly illuminated codex of fifty-five folios. It contains a calligraphic copy of the Bustan (the Orchard), a long poem of some four thousand verses written in the thirteenth century by the poet Sa‘di.18 Like Nizami’s Khamsa, the Bustan offers a discontinuous collection of short stories and moral lessons.19 Four of these stories are illustrated in the Cairo Bustan (the paintings though are filled with myriad forms and details).20 In each painting, one can also find, hidden within the composition as a pictorial detail, a signature attributing the work to the famous painter Bihzad (we shall return to this point at the end of this chapter).21 The Cairo Bustan constitutes the first surviving royal copy of Sa‘di’s poem.22 Its patron was Sultan Husayn Bayqara (1438–1506), the last ruler of the Timurid dynasty. Forged by Timur (1336–1405) around 1400, initially spanning from Iraq to Uzbekistan, the Timurid Empire started breaking up around the middle of the fifteenth century, before shrinking to one tiny region, Khurasan, with its capital, Herat. There, Sultan Husayn ruled continuously for almost forty years until 1506. Despite the political decline of the Timurids, Herat remained a centre of cultural emulation.23 Bursting with poets, scholars and artists, it witnessed the production

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Figure 5.3  The Beggar at the Mosque, manuscript painting from a copy of the Bustan of Sa‘di, 1488. National Library, Cairo, accession no. Adab Farisi 22, fol. 26a.

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of major works of literature, characterized by their reflexive engagement with the history and the poetics of literature.24 Important artistic copies of literary texts were also produced, not the least of which was the Cairo Bustan. The painting under consideration seems to depict life in a mosque (Figure 5.3). At the bottom, one can see the gateway zone, with a scene of ablution and two other characters standing by the door. Opening onto a courtyard, the interior space presents a domed iwan (vaulted porch) with a mihrab (niche indicating the direction of prayer) on the right and an open gallery on the left. Jutting out from the wall, a wooden minbar (pulpit) separates both areas. Here and there, worshippers are shown praying, meditating, reading, conversing. Sa‘di’s poem is about an old beggar who, upon seeing a doorway, raises his voice and asks for charity.25 A man confronts him at the gate and refuses him entry. The beggar decides, however, to stay near the mosque, imploring God with his hands up. After a year, he is about to pass away and says, gurgling for joy, ‘Who knocks at the Generous One’s door, to him is opened.’26 The story is a Sufi allegory. The beggar stands for the disciple who seeks union with God. Patience and suffering resolve in death, the seeker dissolving into divine plenitude. The illustration of the text takes place in the lower part of the picture. Contained in a restricted zone, it is also isolated, set against the lower margin of the page. By contrast, the contextual zone, which represents the interior of the mosque, dominates the painting. There seems to be a tension between the accuracy of the illustration and the gratuitousness of the setting. In the former, gestures, clothes and spatial disposition transcribe the power relationship between the beggar, represented bare feet on the ground, wearing rags and holding out a bowl, and the guardian of the mosque, a seemingly pious man, with his white beard, turban and long stick. In the contextual zone, by contrast, figural and architectural motifs are not so tightly linked to the text. Of all elements depicted there, only the door and the mihrab are mentioned in Sa‘di’s poem. The contextual zone could be different or even removed. Despite its descriptive function, it has little or no impact on our comprehension of the story and its moral lesson. The emphasis on the mosque, in fact, contradicts the narrative of Sa‘di, since the beggar is not supposed to recognize the building, at least not before the guard reveals the identity of the site. The representation of the gaze further exacerbates the gap between context and text, image and illustration. None of the surrounding characters is looking at the main scene, no matter how poignant it is. Rather, each is immersed in a separate activity. Take, for example, the closest character to the textual scene, the man performing ablutions by the waterway. Turning his back to the beggar,

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he seems to be in a different space, as though separated from the beggar by an invisible wall blocking views and sounds. The peripheral figures also look trivial. Their degree of generality contrasts with the specific genre of the Sufi tale. Against and around a scene about death and faith, the painter has flooded the painting with insouciant characters, puppet-like figures performing repetitive gestures. The extra-textual figures constitute almost a parodic, anticlimactic counterpoint to the gravity of the poem. The integration of Sa‘di’s story within the familiar setting of the mosque dissolves the Sufi lesson into a larger picture of daily routine and appearances. Whereas Persian manuscript paintings usually privilege unity and coherence by focusing on the main scene of the text (Figure 5.1), in the Cairo Bustan, the painter has used a fragmenting device, splitting the painting into two parts. On the one hand, the painting offers the expected, traditional motives, images indeed motivated by the text. On the other hand, it displays a sheer quantity of generic figures whose presence does not readily resolve into a narrative. The motivated zone further appears limited, contained and peripheral, constantly threatened by an ever-expanding setting. Moreover, without a previous knowledge of the text, the scene of the beggar and the guardian is simply indistinguishable from the other figures, which feature similar characteristics in size, scale, randomness of placement and narrative potential. In fact, the peripheral position of the illustration and its similarity with the other figures fuse it with the rest of the picture. The painting, furthermore, conveys a sense of dispersal and randomness. There is no hierarchy of scale, no focus that would help the beholder order her gaze. Instead of a unified whole, the picture offers an assemblage of discreet, independent vignettes. One is also struck by the contrast between the visual richness of the picture and the simplicity of the iconography. The painting is filled with figures performing prosaic activities. As I would like to suggest, the figures’ generic aspect, together with other formal features, far from confining the painting to a representation of daily routine, was in fact meant to raise the art of depiction above its worldly humble status to another dimension. Several aspects indeed link these paintings to a higher design and will now be successively examined.

Ideal mimesis Forms and motifs seem to resist not only the determination of the text but also the particularities of reality. Despite variations in age, postures or clothing, human

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figures, for example, all have the same size, bodily shape and proportions. This consistency results from the application of a grid, called the mastar, composed of several horizontal lines placed at regular intervals and which correspond to the lines of the text. In the Cairo Bustan, the mastar is composed of twenty-three lines (Figure 5.4). Originally developed by calligraphers, the grid started being used by painters at the end of the thirteenth century, provoking, as Yves Porter has noted, the ‘geometric normalization’ of the painting.27 In The Beggar at the Mosque, the mastar clearly determines the size and the scale of the human figures. A face, for example, fits within one interline, while standing figures are deployed across six or seven lines. The grid has the effect of homogenizing the figures. It instantly contains the randomness and contingency of the world, herding the accidental variations of reality into balanced patterns.

Figure 5.4  Figure 5.3 with a drawing of the mastar superimposed.

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Persian painting, in other words, relies on abstraction and conceptualization, rather than mere observation. The world is not viewed empirically but platonically. By emphasizing general qualities, as opposed to incidental specificities, each pictorial form constitutes an ideal concept rather than a realistic portrait. Instead of depicting a particular face, the painter has represented its structural characteristics, focusing on its rotundity and its proportions to the body.28 The diversity of worldly reality is transformed into a consistent and harmonious scheme. Each form is a ‘sura’ (pl. suwwar), a word often used in art historiographical writings in combination with the word ‘ma‘ni’ (meaning) to designate the embodiment of an idea.29 In an often-cited quote from the end of the sixteenth century, the Mughal vizir Abu al-Fazl explains: ‘what we call form (suwwar) leads us to recognize a body; the body itself leads us to what we call a notion, an idea (ma‘ni). Thus, on seeing the form of a letter, we recognize the letter, and this again will lead us to some idea. It is similar in the case of what people term a picture.’30 A sura does not merely reflect reality: while it can lead to the identification of an actual object, it ultimately points to the idea underlining it. Bihzad, the painter of the Cairo Bustan, was described by the Timurid historiographer Ghiyath al-Din Khwandamir (c. 1475–1534) as ‘an inventor (mazhar) of new forms and a revelator (mazhar) of rare artistic manifestations’.31 The word mazhar connotes Bihzad’s ability to move beyond the illusions of reality and to unveil the essence of things. In line with the Neoplatonic conception of artistic activity as a process of mental perception,32 Khwandamir highlights the capacity of Bihzad to abstract from reality the concepts that have shaped the actual world. These ideal forms are mental forms, comparable to ‘the mold used in building, or the loom used in weaving’, to use the words of the fourteenthcentury historiographer Ibn Khaldun.33 They are models, rather than copies, representations of the ideas from which reality is made rather than reflections of what already exists. This capacity to transcend worldly reality is due to the prophetic status of the painter. In the Qanun al-Suwwar (‘Canons of Painting’), a Safavid art historiography, Sadiqi Beq realized his artistic vocation after hearing an inner voice, who ordered him to pursue the practice of art. Overwhelmed with joy, he evokes Bihzad as a saint, a divine model, whose inspiration can help him paint a world of ideal forms: “I clung to but one profound hope: to be inspired by a touch of the Bihzad. And then, bare of illusory passions, I could paint the bazaar-world of pictured things with the sole idea of drawing near to their real nature.”34 This

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‘real nature’ of things that the painter aims to approximate is not actual reality. The painter’s ambition is not to create a painting filled with likenesses of real objects but rather, to re-imagine the ideal world, to recreate the moulds from which reality was (or can be) made.

Variety and comprehensiveness Another important visual characteristic of Bihzad’s paintings is their combination of variety and comprehensiveness. In The Beggar at the Mosque (Figure 5.3), one can see at once the interior and the exterior of the mosque. Inside the mosque, both the inner courtyard and the inside chamber with its prayer niche are visible. The characters offer a comprehensive catalogue of the many activities that take place in a mosque. From hand gestures, to garments, to tilework, to arabesque scrolls, every inch of the painting proposes something different to look at. Filled with variegated shapes and images, the painting further achieves a form of omniscience. Instead of a monofocal perspective on the mosque, the painter has represented different parts of the architecture with a mix of perspectives so that the viewer can have unlimited access to the building. From bottom to top, we first look down at the gateway zone, before moving upwards to an aerial view of the tiled floor of the courtyard and down again, at the top, to a frontal view of the mosque’s interior. It is as if we were allowed an impossible perspective on the mosque, seeing all sides of the architecture at once, from its walls to its dome, from the open courtyard to the interior of the iwan, to the decoration of the mihrab. The richness of the picture invites viewers to shift the speed and the scale of their gaze, from a fast, global identifying glance to a slower, closer mode of looking. Examining the main protagonists, the beggar and the guard, the eye is drawn into the illumination surrounding doors and windows. Following the spiralling arabesques, the beholder discovers other ornamental patterns, for example, right behind the door, in the geometric decoration of the minbar’s woodwork (Figure 5.5). Overwhelmed by the minbar, the gaze moves sideways and attempts to find some rest in the seemingly monochromatic floor of the iwan, only to discover that it is in fact covered in the subtlest, almost invisible lines, composing symmetrical, concentric triangles. From extra-textual, figural elements to geometric details, the painting juxtaposes a wide variety of forms, executed in shifting levels of scale.

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Figure 5.5  Detail of Figure 5.3.

Density and minuteness are often noted in primary sources as two important aesthetic criteria, not just in painting but across a broad range of visual media and techniques. In an early sixteenth-century source, the historian Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat (1499–1551) thus describes an illuminated frontispiece executed at the end of the fifteenth century for Sultan Husayn Bayqara (who was also, as mentioned earlier, the patron of the Cairo Bustan): [Mawlana Mahmud] has prepared a frontispiece for Mirza Sultan Husayn, but it is unfinished. He labored on it for seven years and made it so intricate that in the joints of the geometric interlace patterns, each of which may be half a chickpea in size, he has made of gold a yellow cartouche such that fifty vegetal arabesques tendrils can be counted, be it that he has placed and tinted them all.35

In this close reading of the illuminations, the narrator does not describe the overall, global look of the decoration. Rather, he offers a close analysis of what he calls the mafasil – at once the articulations and the details of the composition. As in Bihzad’s painting, the eye is drawn in, marvelling at the proliferation of forms, counting and naming each motif. Intricacy and abundance fashion a scenario of visual reception where the painting elicits a feeling of awe.

Tabularity Both as a concrete object and a representational space, the painting is, moreover, characterized by what I would like to call its tabularity, the idea that it resembles a flat tablet rather than a window opened onto the world. Just as on a scientific plate, the signs have been arranged at the same scale and with enough space between them so that they can each be singled out, grasped by the eye. Even as

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the picture is filled with details, there is no overlap between them, no mixing or blurring. The painting, moreover, contains different centres, each viewed frontally. A mosaic of frontal viewpoints, it is polycentric and multifocal. The painting is like an atlas. It seems to have been conceived as a tool of monstration, as an object designed to show and indicate – in this case, a wide variety of forms. As such, the painting recalls the medium of the album, which developed at the same time. Albums preserve a mixture of paintings, drawings and calligraphies, representing different stages of the design process.36 In one of those albums, one page includes two pieces of calligraphy extracted from two different manuscripts, as well as a fifteenth-century study sheet (Figure 5.6). The study

Figure 5.6  Album page with study sheet datable to the fifteenth century. Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, H. 2160, fol. 55a.

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deploys various motifs, including animal heads, both real and fabulous, human figures wearing different attires and headgears, as well as, interspersed between them, isolated, stylized palmettes. Most figures are painted in opaque colours but some elements, such as the crane at the top left, are drawn in a monochrome technique in ink. The study thus constitutes a visual catalogue of motifs, views, colours and techniques. Interestingly enough, the motifs are oriented away from the centre and towards the outer edges of the album page, in a way that enhances the display function of the sheet. As indicated by the hands depicted at the bottom right, the viewer is invited to turn the page, as though indeed a tablet, counterclockwise, and look at each motif separately, from the page’s outer edges.

Arzhang The combination of ideal realism, comprehensiveness and tabularity evokes a legendary, ubiquitous object in Persian literature, known as the Arzhang or Arzhangi (sometimes also transliterated Artang). Associated with Mani, the third-century founder of Manichaeism, the Arzhang is often defined as a painted portable object. As Stephano Pello has shown in his recent lexicographical survey of the Arzhang in Medieval Persian dictionaries, it could designate a book of paintings or a painted textile.37 In the mid-fourteenth-century dictionary Dastur al-Afazil, Arzhang is defined as ‘a painting on a curtain where Mani the painter had drawn the images of the whole world’.38 In the mid-sixteenth century, the art historiographer and calligrapher Dust Muhammad similarly describes the Arzhang as a silk on which Mani painted ‘the likenesses (sura) of humans, animals, trees, birds, and various shapes’.39 Whatever the medium, just as an album page or Bihzad’s painting, Mani’s Arzhang proposes a broad array of forms, encompassing human, animal and vegetal elements, figural and abstract motifs. In its encyclopedic ambition, Mani’s Arzhang further intersects and overlaps with other literary tropes, as Pello has further suggested. In the Farhang-i Jahangiri, one of the most comprehensive dictionaries of Persian language composed in India in the early seventeenth century, it is compared to a book in which Tanglusha or Lusha, identified with the first-century scholar Teucer of Babylon, collected ‘likenesses, paintings, illumination motifs, geometric decorations, and other techniques and artifices invented by him in the field of drawing and painting’.40 Like Mani’s Arzhang, the book of Lusha is an anthology of the artist’s work. Mixing different techniques and motifs, it demonstrates the artist’s mastery and imagination.

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In the Sihah al-Furs, a dictionary dated to the early fourteenth century, Arzhang is also conflated with the mythical ‘picture-gallery of China’.41 Sometimes related to actual Manichean structures known as manistans, supposed to contain a room for the display of images, or to the painted caves of Dunhuang located on the Silk Road in China, the ‘picture-gallery of China’ is characterized by its comprehensiveness. As Dust Muhammad noted, it was known ‘to contain images of all existing things’,42 which might also explain why it was compared to or even confused with the Arzhang. Besides comprehensiveness, tabularity also emerges as one of Arzhang’s characteristics, especially in Timurid and Safavid art historiographical sources, wherein Mani’s work is designated as the ‘lawh-i artangi’ or the ‘Artangi Tablet’.43 One can imagine the Arzhang as a tablet partitioned into different cells, each containing a painting or a drawing. In contrast with a book and its linear, successive progression, the tablet offers the possibility to catch a glimpse of the totality of an artist’s work, thus achieving both comprehensiveness and synchronicity. In Dust Muhammad’s account, Mani’s painting is further characterized by a form of ideal mimesis. Its various shapes ‘occur only in the mirror of the mind through the eye of imagination’. Dust Muhammad further compares the Arzhang to a ‘page of possibility’.44 Like an architectural plan, the Arzhang is a design for a potential creation rather than a reflection of reality. Its mimetic quality should not be confounded with a form of realism. Rather the painting constitutes a prognostication of the future, a collection of the ideal forms from which reality can be made again. Lifting the veil on the essence of things, it was used by Mani as a miracle, as most sources indicate, to demonstrate his status as a prophet, as a mediator of Truth.

Lawh-i Mahfuz Variety, tabularity, potentiality further link Mani’s Arzhang and Bihzad’s paintings to another object: al-lawh al-mahfuz in Arabic or lawh-i mahfuz in Persian, the Preserved Tablet of God.45 This object is mentioned in a self-referential verse of the Qur’an: ‘Yet this is a Glorious Qur’an in a Tablet preserved.’46 The verse can be read in at least two different ways: either the Qur’an is preserved on an actual tablet, or the tablet serves as a metaphor highlighting the eternal, inalterable nature of the Qur’an. It is also hard to decide from this verse whether the adjective ‘preserved’ applies to the Qur’an or to the Tablet.

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The latter interpretation, however, is usually preferred and has given rise to the concept of the ‘Preserved Tablet’. A multivalent, widespread motif in exegetical and literary sources, the ‘Preserved Tablet’ can designate the preexistent, eternal version of the revealed Qur’an. The Preserved Tablet may also refer to the recordings of Creation, to a site containing all that exists and will exist. Summarizing the exegetical tradition about the Preserved Tablet, Daniel A. Madigan noted that the Tablet was thought to contain ‘the characteristics of everything created, and everything about creatures, the length of their lives, their allotted sustenance, their actions, the verdict to be pronounced on them, the eventual punishment for their actions’.47 Interestingly enough, in late Timurid and Safavid art historiographical sources, the Preserved Tablet and the medium of painting often allegorize one another. Khwandamir characterized God as ‘the painter of eternity’, and the Preserved Tablet as an ‘ever-changing workshop’, from which anything can be brought into existence.48 Dust Muhammad described God as an artist ‘using the hand of Mercy and the pen’, ‘paint[ing] masterfully on the canvas on being’.49 Conversely, painting could be compared to the Preserved Tablet. In a rare ekphrastic passage, Dust Muhammad described a painting by Sultan Muhammad, Bihzad’s rival, as a ‘tablet of vision’, on which the painter, ‘with the pen of his fingertips’, ‘has drawn a different form (tarh-i digar) at each and every instant’.50 Containing the designs of all things, the ‘tablet of vision’ resembles the Tablet of Creation.

Uncreatedness Whether preserving the Qur’an or Creation, the Preserved Tablet often appears, moreover, in discussions around the uncreatedness of God’s creation. While leading to the material world, God’s process of creation escapes both temporality and materiality. The very expression ‘tablet of creation’ embodies this paradox. Dust Muhammad also refers to it as ‘the tablet of being’, ‘the page of existence’, ‘the mirror of creation’, a ‘locus of manifestation for names and traces’.51 These expressions are ambiguous. They speak of an uncreated item in the form of a material object – a tablet, a page, a mirror. That the artist of the Cairo Bustan seeks to emulate the preserved tablet is also visible in the painting’s style and making process, which do not showcase individuality but rather use material processes to hide traces of human industry. As David Roxburgh has noted, in Bihzad’s paintings, ‘the pigment’s surface never

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gives itself away; it does not break down into a series of visible brushstrokes no matter how close the eye moves in toward it’.52 Through the skilful manipulation of the brush, the painter has produced an effect of unmadeness. After the execution of the underdrawing, the pigments were applied in a homogeneous, unmodulated way, creating a composition of flat, dense colours, enlivened by flashes of gold. The palette is dominated by primary colours, made with minerals and inorganic pigments: blue, made from lapis lazuli; vermilion red, made from mercury sulphide; and green verdigris, made from copper acetate. Pigments were also mixed to create different shades, for example for the faces or the garments.53 But whatever the colour, one cannot see through the paint. Opaque colours are characterized as jismi in Persian sources, an adjective meaning ‘corporeal’, ‘substantial’, or ‘thick’.54 Jismi colours constitute the painting’s impermeable, enamel-like surface. After the execution of the outline, applied around each block of colour as an impeccable line of black ink, the painting was finally polished with a burnisher.55 A highly controlled composition, set with a myriad of intense, brilliant pieces of colours shining like gemstones, Bihzad’s paintings appear as an epiphany, a miraculous vision, rather than a manufactured image. The painting is so polished that it almost looks self-made, or stamped onto the page, recalling the notion of the acheiropoeiton, the icon made without hands. By the end of the fifteenth century, this aesthetics of uncreatedness developed across different media and techniques of book arts. One can think, for instance, of the technique of stenciling (‘aks), used in Persian books as early as the end of the fourteenth century.56 The stencil maker uses an intermediary sheet of paper with a design cut from it, before applying pigments through the cut-out holes of the stencil onto a surface. As a result, motifs are not drawn by the hand of the artist but rather emerge from the contrast between void and colour, either negatively when the ground is coloured or positively when the ground is left blank. In primary sources, stenciling was described as a technique of painting without a brush.57 Decoupage or paper cutting is another technique that entails the removal of the makers’ bodily traces.58 One of the most astonishing examples is a late Timurid copy of the Diwan (complete poetic work) of Husayn Bayqara, made around 1490 in Herat and today partially dispersed (Figure 5.7).59 The calligraphy was made entirely from negative decoupage. The text copied by the calligrapher’s hand in a bold nasta‘liq script at seven to ten lines per page was cut out with a penknife, before the page was laid over a second sheet of coloured paper. As a result of this superimposition, the lines of text are both hollow and coloured.

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Figure 5.7  Page of decoupage from Sultan Husayn’s Diwan, c. 1490. Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, 45.4.3. Ella C. Woodward Memorial Fund.

Literally emptied from the calligrapher’s presence, the text appears as though entirely made of paper, with no trace of penwork.

Potential worlds and signature In this aesthetics of uncreatedness, painting acts as a commentary on pictorial reference. Specifically, it seems to challenge causal theories of picture, the idea that the painting, as a representational device, refers back to some pre-given, exterior meaning. In trying to convince the viewer that they are looking at a

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tablet of ideal, primordial forms, in suggesting a synecdochal relationship to God’s Preserved Tablet, the painting seeks to resemble not reality itself but the matrix from which reality was produced and can be produced again. The outside-the-text described in the first part of this chapter should thus be interpreted as an-outside-the-actual-world, or a ‘potential world’, a notion recently re-defined in literary theory in reaction to the dominant notion of mimesis, wherein representation remains subordinated to the actual world.60 For Ruth Ronen, ‘possible world’ designates ‘not a world ramifying from the actual state of affairs, but a world logically and ontologically parallel to the actual world’.61 This concept foregrounds the ability of fiction to create a plurality of fictional ontologies. Similarly, rather than pointing back at an existent reality, in its transcendental ambition, Persian painting projects a fictional world, a world parallel to the actual world and which could affect or even effect a world of reality. In asserting an analogy to divine creation, the painting also draws an implicit genealogy from God to the painter, Bihzad. This vertical connection to God raises the status of the painter to the heights of a Creator. Interestingly enough, the artist’s ambition is displayed within the second painting, in the artist’s signature, a mode of self-denomination that was rather unusual in Persian painting. At the upper left, on a book held by one of the mosque attendants, the hair-splitting gaze can pinpoint one further detail: the signature of Bihzad, inscribed on the open double folio and signalled by a reader with his index finger (Figure 5.8). The signature reads: ‘Amal al-‘abd Bihzad (‘work of the slave Bihzad’).62 Integrated into the fabric of the painting as a representation of a text on a manuscript, the signature is not a mere authenticating device. It has a descriptive value. For one thing, it connects Bihzad’s practice to the art of calligraphy. A tightly codified art form, calligraphy aims at regularity and refinement. As the Safavid writer Shams al-Din Muhammad Wasfi put it, calligraphy was defined as a form of ‘spiritual geometry that is made manifest through a corporeal instrument’.63 Subsumed into the painting in the guise of a calligraphic piece, linking painting to calligraphy, the signature describes Bihzad’s style as calligraphic (rather than autographic),64 as a style in which the hand of the artist represses individual expression in order to achieve technical perfection. The signature raises the artist’s self-representation beyond the project of individual identity, as further demonstrated by its placement. The manuscript on which the painter has inserted the sign of his authorship is not a random item. This book could well be a copy of the Qur’an, since we are here situated in a mosque (and it is the only book depicted there). The signature inscribes the name

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Figure 5.8  Detail of Figure 5.3.

of Bihzad in the painting, on a book, in a mosque, but also perhaps in the Qur’an itself. Because the book can be identified as the Qur’an and because the painting emulates God’s creation, Bihzad’s name, in fact, sits on the very Preserved Tablet, among the concepts and the forms that have engendered the world. It transforms Bihzad’s name into a concept for a potential Demiurgic painter. Just as the rest of the painting, the artist’s signature has a double, almost contradictory aspect. On the one hand, designating a historical, individual artist, it is embedded in the actual world, just as the painting is enmeshed in materiality. But on the other hand, it also portrays the artist as an other-worldly creature. Bihzad is an existing object but with a set of impossible properties that actually assume its non-existence. Among these qualities is the ontological property of Bihzad’s existence in the ideal realm (since his proper name is present on both the Preserved Tablet and a painting that emulates that very Tablet) and thus its non-existence in the actual world. Just as the concept of the Preserved Tablet, the signature bridges existence and non-existence, idealism and actuality, portraying art not as a passive illustration of reality but as a container of potential worlds, reminding us of the transformative power of representation.

Acknowledgement A subsequent version of this chapter was published as chapter 3 in the author’s book, The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting (Edinburgh University Press, 2019).

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Notes 1 Persian painting emerged and developed within the confines of the manuscript as early as the thirteenth century. One of the earliest Persian illustrated manuscripts is a copy of the romance Warqah wa Gulshah dating to the decades around 1250 (Topkapi Palace Library, Istanbul, accession no. H. 841). On this manuscript, see Assadulleh Souren Melikian-Chirvani, ‘Le roman de Varqe et Golšāh’, Arts asiatiques 22 (1970): 1–262. 2 These transformations did not occur all at once, nor did they affect the whole production of Persian painting, which remained heterogeneous and thus should neither be reduced to one single category nor put into a linear narrative. Emerging in the decades around 1400, they mainly developed in courtly sponsored manuscripts, where they appeared more or less consistently during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 3 The scholarship on the new style of painting will be addressed in the first section of this chapter. 4 The term ‘extra-textual’ has been used by Chad Kia in Image, Text, and the Discourse of Sufism in Iran, 1487–1565 (PhD diss., Columbia University, New York, 2009), 5. The changes that occurred in Persian painting in the fifteenth century have long been recognized, though. Liza Golombek, for example, had already noticed in 1979 that the Persian illustrated manuscript grew closer to an album of paintings rather than an illustrated text (Liza Golombek, ‘Toward a Classification of Islamic Painting’, in Richard Ettinghausen (ed.), Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: The Metropolitan Museum, 1972), 23. 5 St. Petersburg, Hermitage Museum, accession no. VP-1000, fol. 19b. It appears in a copy of the Khamsa of Nizami, copied in 1431 in Herat by the calligrapher Mahmud (502 fols., 237 × 137 mm, thirty-eight paintings (Adel Adamova, Persian Manuscripts, Paintings and Drawings of the 15th–Early 20th Centuries: Catalogue of the Collection of the State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg: The State Hermitage Publishers, 2010), 105–156)). 6 London, British Library, Add. 25900, fol. 18a. It appears in another copy of the Khamsa of Nizami, started in 1442 to 1443 (316 fols., 190 × 120 mm), nineteen paintings, with one painting contemporary to the calligraphic copy of the text, fourteen added in late Timurid Herat (including the painting under consideration in this chapter) and four in the Safavid period (Ebadollah Bahari, Bihzad: Master of Persian Painting (London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1996), 112–28; Norah M. Titley, Miniatures from Persian Manuscripts: A Catalogue and Subject Index of Paintings from Persia, India, and Turkey in the British Library and the British Museum (London: British Museum Publications, 1977), no. 311). 7 On this pictorial tradition, see Priscilla Soucek, ‘Illustrated Manuscripts of Nizami’s Khamsa, 1386–1482’ (PhD diss., New York University, New York, 1971).

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8 Nizami Ganjavi, Mahzan al-Asrar (First Book of the Khamsa): The Treasury of Mysteries, trans. Ghulam Hussayn Darab (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1945), v. 1106–1141. 9 Ibid., v. 1106. 10 Victor I. Stoichita, The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern MetaPainting, trans. Anne-Marie Glasheen (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), chap. 1. 11 See Kia, ‘Image, Text, and the Discourse’; idem, ‘Is the Bearded Man Drowning? Picturing the Figurative in a Late-Fifteenth-Century Painting from Herat’, Muqarnas 23 (2006): 85–106. 12 London, British Library, Or. 6810, fol. 144b: Khamsa of Nizami, copied in 1494 to 1495 in Herat, 303 fols., 250 × 170 mm, twenty-two paintings (for a reproduction of all paintings, see Bahari, Bihzad, 129–56). 13 Chad Kia, ‘Sufi Orthopraxis: Visual Language and Verbal Imagery in Medieval Afghanistan’, Word & Image 28, no. 1 (2012): 1–18. 14 Richard Ettinghausen, ‘The Categorization of Persian Painting’, in Shelomo Morag, Issachar Ben-Ami and Norman A. Stillman (eds), Studies in Judaism and Islam, Presented to Shelomo Dov Goitein (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981), 61–2. 15 Oleg Grabar, La peinture persane: une introduction (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999), 122–4. 16 Thomas W. Lentz and Glenn D. Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (Washington, DC, and Los Angeles: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989), 289. 17 Dar al-Kutub, Cairo, accession no. Adab Farisi 22: Bustan, dated 894 H./December 1488–1489 and 893 H./December 1487–1488, 55 fols., 305 × 215 mm, four paintings illustrating the Bustan of Sa‘di, and one double-illustrated frontispiece depicting the patron of the manuscript, Sultan Husayn Bayqara. 18 For a Persian edition, see Sa‘di, Bustan, ed. Ghulam-Husayn Yusufi (Tehran: Anjuman-i ustadan-i zaban va adabiyat-i farsi, 1981) and for an English translation, see Sa‘di, Morals Pointed and Tales Adorned: The Bustan of Sa‘di, trans. G. M. Wickens (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974). 19 For a compelling analysis of the Bustan, see Charles-Henri de Fouchécour, Moralia. Les notions morales dans la littérature persane du 3e/9 e au 7e/13e siècle (Paris: Recherche sur les civilisations, 1986), 311–48. 20 For reproductions, see Bahari, Bihzad, 311–48. 21 The signatures were first published in J. V. S. Wilkinson, ‘Fresh Light on the Herat Painters’, Burlington Magazine 58, no. 335 (February 1931): 60–3 and 66, 67, 69. For a summary of the sources on Bihzad, see Gottfried Herrmann, ‘Zur Biographie des persischen Malers Kamal ad-Din Bihzad’, Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 23 (1990): 261–72.

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22 A full analysis of the Cairo Bustan is provided in my book, Balafrej, The Making of the Artist. 23 Maria E. Subtelny, ‘Socioeconomic Bases of Cultural Patronage under the Later Timurids’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 20 (1988): 479–505. 24 Two literary phenomena mark the reflexive dimension of late Timurid literature: the development of biographical writings, known as tazkira which highlight the life and works of writers, artists and scholars (David J. Roxburgh, Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 122–30; Maria E. Subtelny, The Poetic Circle at the Court of the Timurid Sultan Husain Bayqara and Its Political Significance (PhD diss., Harvard University, Cambridge MA, 1979), 19–38)), and the practice of imitation, known as jawab, whereby poets would imitate older texts in order to insert themselves into the history of Persian poetry (Paul Losensky, Welcoming Fighani: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the SafavidMughal Ghazal (Costa Mesa: Mazda, 1998), 137 and 191–2; Maria E. Subtelny, ‘A Taste for the Intricate: The Persian Poetry of the Late Timurid Period’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 136, no. 1 (1986): n. 33, 62–3). 25 For the Persian text, see Sa‘di, Bustan, chapter 3, 88–9; for the English translation, see Sa‘di, Morals Pointed, chapter 3, story 47. 26 Sa‘di, Morals Pointed, v. 1803. 27 Yves Porter, ‘La Réglure (Mastar): de la ‘Formule d’Atelier’ aux Jeux de l’Esprit’, Studia Islamica 96 (2003): 67. On the mastar, also see Sarah Chapman, ‘Mathematics and Meaning in the Structure and Composition of Timurid Miniature Painting’, Persica 29 (2003): 33–45. 28 As such the painter is pushing to its limits the process of visual perception by which the world is transformed, as Rudolf Arnheim has suggested, into ‘form categories’. According to Arnheim, these categories ‘can be called visual concepts because of their simplicity and generality’ (Rudolf Arnheim, Visual Thinking (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1971), 37). 29 On this notion, see Yves Porter, ‘La forme et le sens. A propos du portrait dans la littérature persane classique’, in C. Balaÿ, C. Kappler and Ž. Vesel (eds), Pand-o Sokhan. Mélanges offerts à Ch.-H. de Fouchécour, (Tehran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 1995), 219–31, see in particular p. 220 and p. 221. 30 The English translation is from Yves Porter, ‘From the “Theory of the Two Qalam-s” to the “Seven Principles of Painting”: Theory, Terminology and Practice of Persian Classical Painting’, Muqarnas 17 (2000): 112. 31 Ghiyath al-Din Khwandamir, Habib al-Siyar fi akhbar-i afrad-i bashar, English translation in Wheeler M. Thackston, A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art (Cambridge, MA: The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1989), 226.

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32 On the significance of Neoplatonic conceptions of art and the artist in Islamic thought and culture, see Gülru Necipoğlu, The Topkapi Scroll–Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (Santa Monica, CA: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1995), chapter 11. 33 Cited in ibid., 208. 34 Sadiqi Beg Afshar, Qanun al-Suwwar, English translation in Martin Dickson and Stuart Cary Welch, The Houghton Shahnameh (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), app. 1, p. 260. 35 Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat, extracts from Tarikh-i Rashidi, ed., Muhammad Shafi’, Oriental College Magazine 10, no. 3 (1934): 169. The English translation is from Thackston, A Century of Princes, 362. 36 One of the first surviving albums was assembled during the first half of the fifteenth century (Topkapi Palace Library, Istanbul, accession no. H. 2152, see David J. Roxburgh, The Persian Album, 1400–1600: From Dispersal to Collection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 93–106). For a discussion of fifteenth and early sixteenth-century albums, see Ernst J. Grube and Eleanor Sims, ed., Between China and Iran (University of London, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, 1985). 37 Stefano Pello, ‘A Paper Temple: Mani’s Arzhang in and around Persian Lexicography’, in P. Lur’e and A. Torgoev (eds), Sogdians, Their Precursors, Contemporaries and Heirs (St. Petersburg: The State Hermitage Publishers, 2013), 252–65. On Mani in Persian art historiography, also see David J. Roxburgh, Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 174–80. 38 Pello, ‘A Paper Temple’, 255. 39 Dust Muhammad, ‘Preface to the Album of Bahram Mirza’, Persian text and English translation in Wheeler Thackston, Album Prefaces and Other Documents on the History of Calligraphers and Painters (Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 2001), 12. 40 The English translation is from Pello, ‘A Paper Temple’, 256, with minor modifications. 41 Ibid., 257. 42 Muhammad, ‘Preface’, 12. 43 As in ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 For references and definitions, see Daniel A. Madigan, ‘Preserved Tablet’, Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an, IV, 261–3. Although scholars have noted its use in primary textual sources dealing with artistic practice, the concept of the Preserved Tablet has rarely been confronted to the visual material. One exception is David G. Alexander, ‘The Guarded Tablet’, Metropolitan Museum Journal 24 (1989): 199–207.

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61 62 63 64

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The object studied by Alexander is a late sixteenth-century Ottoman breastplate with a pectoral disk bearing a Qur’anic inscription mentioning the Preserved Tablet. The verse transliterates: bal huwa qur’an majid fi lawh mahfuz [85:22]. We use the English translation of ‘Abdallah Yusuf Ali. Madigan, ‘Preserved Tablet’. Thackston, A Century of Princes, 41. Muhammad, ‘Preface’, 4. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 4. David J. Roxburgh, ‘Kamal al-Din Bihzad and Authorship in Persian Painting’, Muqarnas 17 (2000): 124. Mandana Barkeshli, ‘Paint Palette Used by Iranian Masters Based on Persian Medieval Recipes’, Restaurator 34, no. 2 (2013): 101–33. Yves Porter, Peinture et arts du livre. Essai de littérature technique indo-persane (Paris and Louvain: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran et Peeters, 1992), 100–101. On the whole process, see Porter, Peinture et arts du livre, 100–103. On this technique, see ibid., 50–1. For examples from the fifteenth century, see Roxburgh, The Persian Album, 153–7. See Porter, Peinture et arts du livre, 59. On this technique, see Barbara Schmitz, ‘Cut Paper’, Encyclopædia Iranica , accessible online at http://www​.iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/cut​-paper​-qeta​-decoupage​ -also​-monabbat​-kari​-filigree​-work​-a​-type​-of​-applied​-ornament​-documented​-in​ -persian​-manu (accessed 11 August 2016). For a brief presentation of this manuscript and a couple of reproductions, see Lentz and Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision, no. 148. This framework has been borrowed from the field of philosophy, where it has been debated at least since Leibniz. For a survey of current philosophical debates on possible-worlds theories, see Christopher Menzel, ‘Possible Worlds’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), accessible online at http://plato​.stanford​.edu​/archives​/spr2016​/entries​/possible​ -worlds/ (accessed 11 August 2016). Ruth Ronen, Possible Worlds in Literary Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 91–2. The word ‘slave’ is a common phraseological expression, widely used by artists, calligraphers, for example, to express their humble status. Thackston, Album Prefaces, 32. For the differences between a ‘calligraphic’ style and an ‘autograph’ one, see David Summers, Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism (New York: Phaidon, 2003), 70 and glossary.

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Bibliography Adamova, Adel. Persian Manuscripts, Paintings and Drawings of the 15th–Early 20th Centuries: Catalogue of the Collection of the State Hermitage Museum. St. Petersburg: The State Hermitage Publishers, 2010. Alexander, David G. ‘The Guarded Tablet’, Metropolitan Museum Journal 24 (1989): 199–207. Arnheim, Rudolf. Visual Thinking. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1971. Bahari, Ebadollah. Bihzad: Master of Persian Painting. London: I.B. Tauris Publishers, 1996. Balafrej, Lamia. The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. Barkeshli, Mandana. ‘Paint Palette Used by Iranian Masters Based on Persian Medieval Recipes’, Restaurator 34: 2 (2013): 101–33. Chapman, Sarah. ‘Mathematics and Meaning in the Structure and Composition of Timurid Miniature Painting’, Persica 29 (2003): 33–45. de Fouchécour, Charles-Henri. Moralia. Les notions morales dans la littérature persane du 3e/9 e au 7e/13e siècle. Paris: Recherche sur les civilisations, 1986. Dickson, Martin and Stuart Cary Welch. The Houghton Shahnameh. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. Ettinghausen, Richard. ‘The Categorization of Persian Painting’, in Shelomo Morag, Issachar Ben-Ami and Norman A. Stillman (eds), Studies in Judaism and Islam, Presented to Shelomo Dov Goitein. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981. Golombek, Liza. ‘Toward a Classification of Islamic Painting’, in Richard Ettinghausen (ed.), Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: The Metropolitan Museum, 1972. Grabar, Oleg. La peinture persane: une introduction. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999. Grube, Ernst J. and Eleanor Sims, ed. Between China and Iran. University of London, Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, 1985. Herrmann, Gottfried. ‘Zur Biographie des persischen Malers Kamal ad-Din Bihzad’, Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 23 (1990): 261–72. Kia, Chad. ‘Is the Bearded Man Drowning? Picturing the Figurative in a Late-FifteenthCentury Painting from Herat’, Muqarnas 23 (2006): 85–106. Kia, Chad. Image, Text, and the Discourse of Sufism in Iran, 1487–1565. PhD diss., Columbia University, New York, 2009. Kia, Chad. ‘Sufi Orthopraxis: Visual Language and Verbal Imagery in Medieval Afghanistan’, Word & Image 28: 1 (2012): 1–18. Lentz, Thomas W. and Glenn D. Lowry. Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century. Washington, DC, and Los Angeles: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989. Losensky, Paul. Welcoming Fighani: Imitation and Poetic Individuality in the SafavidMughal Ghazal. Costa Mesa: Mazda, 1998.

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Melikian-Chirvani, Assadulleh Souren. ‘Le roman de Varqe et Golšāh’, Arts asiatiques 22 (1970): 1–262. Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat, extracts from Tarikh-i Rashidi, ed. Muhammad Shafi’, Oriental College Magazine 10: 3 (1934). Necipoğlu, Gülru. The Topkapi Scroll – Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture. Santa Monica, Calif.: The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1995. Nizami Ganjavi. Mahzan al-Asrar (First Book of the Khamsa): The Treasury of Mysteries, trans. Ghulam Hussayn Darab. London: Arthur Probsthain, 1945. Pello, Stefano. ‘A Paper Temple: Mani’s Arzhang in and Around Persian Lexicography’, in P. Lur’e and A. Torgoev (eds), Sogdians, Their Precursors, Contemporaries and Heirs, 252–65. St. Petersburg: The State Hermitage Publishers, 2013. Porter, Yves. Peinture et arts du livre. Essai de littérature technique indo-persane. Paris and Louvain: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran et Peeters, 1992. Porter, Yves. ‘La forme et le sens. A propos du portrait dans la littérature persane classique’, in C. Balaÿ, C. Kappler and Ž. Vesel (eds), Pand-o Sokhan. Mélanges offerts à Ch.-H. de Fouchécour, 219–31. Tehran: Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, 1995. Porter, Yves. ‘From the “Theory of the Two Qalam-s” to the “Seven Principles of Painting”: Theory, Terminology and Practice of Persian Classical Painting’, Muqarnas 17 (2000): 109–18. Porter, Yves. ‘La Réglure (Mastar): de la ‘Formule d’Atelier’ aux Jeux de l’Esprit’, Studia Islamica 96 (2003): 55–74. Ronen, Ruth. Possible Worlds in Literary Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Roxburgh, David. ‘Kamal al-Din Bihzad and Authorship in Persian Painting’, Muqarnas 17 (2000): 119–46. Roxburgh, David. Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Roxburgh, David. The Persian Album, 1400–1600: From Dispersal to Collection. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Sa‘di, Bustan. Morals Pointed and Tales Adorned: The Bustan of Sa‘di, trans. G. M. Wickens. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974. Sa‘di, Bustan, ed. Ghulam-Husayn Yusufi. Tehran: Anjuman-i ustadan-i zaban va adabiyat-i farsi, 1981. Soucek, Priscilla. Illustrated Manuscripts of Nizami’s Khamsa, 1386–1482. PhD diss., New York University, New York, 1971. Stoichita, Victor I. The Self-Aware Image: An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting, trans. Anne-Marie Glasheen. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Subtelny, Maria E. ‘A Taste for the Intricate: The Persian Poetry of the Late Timurid Period’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 136: 1 (1986): 62–3. Subtelny, Maria E. ‘Socioeconomic Bases of Cultural Patronage under the Later Timurids’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 20 (1988): 479–505.

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Subtelny, Maria E. The Poetic Circle at the Court of the Timurid Sultan Husain Bayqara and Its Political Significance. PhD diss., Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1979. Summers, David. Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism. New York: Phaidon, 2003. Thackston, Wheeler M. A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art. Cambridge, MA: The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1989. Thackston, Wheeler M. Album Prefaces and Other Documents on the History of Calligraphers and Painters. Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 2001. Titley, Norah M. Miniatures from Persian Manuscripts: A Catalogue and Subject Index of Paintings from Persia, India, and Turkey in the British Library and the British Museum. London: British Museum Publications, 1977. Wilkinson, J. V. S. ‘Fresh Light on the Herat Painters’, Burlington Magazine 58: 335 (February 1931): 60–9.

6

A collage of projections Exploring an Awadhi miniature painting’s pictorial space through 3D modelling Hussein Keshani

In mid-eighteenth-century South Asia, a remarkable miniature painting was created in the region once known as Awadh (Figure 6.1). Probably painted by the artist Faizullah, the work A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens depicts a series of garden courts with women enjoying themselves and palaces receding into the distance. The distant landscape unfolds to further reveal more buildings, a churning river and rolling hills. The painting’s intriguing approach to representing space, one that seemingly combines the parallel projection style of Persianate-Mughal miniatures and the one-point perspective projection style inspired by Anglo-European sources, has attracted only limited scholarly interest in the past.1 It sometimes is included in larger discussions of artistic cross-cultural interactions that were taking place under British Colonial India. The use of one-point perspective style in the image is typically discussed in broad and vague terms and as an indicator of European influence. However, the Model Images2 project offers a different approach. By using three-dimensional digital modelling as an analytical method and instrument – that is as a heuristic practice and device – the representation of space in the painting can be investigated more intimately. Modelling helps one go inside the painting’s pictorial space in order to better understand its construction from outside. Rather than characterizing the painting’s pictorial space as the result of a misperformance of perspective rendering, an example of European influence on Indian painting or as an absorption of European spatial representation techniques into Indian ones, it can be additionally characterized, in more precise terms, as a unified stereo multi-projection with a pictorial space shaped like curved nonidentical trapezoidal prism due to the constraints of page proportions. The value

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Figure 6.1  Faizullah?, A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens, Faizabad or Lucknow, Awadh, India, c. 1765, opaque watercolour and paper, 45.5 × 31.8. Minature Courtesy The David Collection, Copenhagen. 46/1980. Photo by Pernille Klemp.

of arriving at this more complex and precise characterization through modelling is manifold. It enriches the narrative of cross-cultural artistic interaction beyond simply a tale of merging styles in a colonial context. It shows with specificity how painting was a site for the complex combination and integration of spatial representation systems and of conceptions of space itself. It contributes to the expansion of the methodological tools available to the discipline of art history of which the field of Islamic art history is a part of. Finally, it contributes to the emergent discipline of digital humanities a better understanding of the role three-dimensional modelling can play. Modelling can be seen as more than a descriptive, illustrative and/or synthetic process; it can be seen as a heuristic process resulting in a heuristic device that is the digital model.

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Terms and contexts Before delving more deeply into the nature of the image’s pictorial space, some key terms need to be defined, and additional context provided, that highlight some key discussions relevant to a topic that straddles many diverse fields. They include how: parallel and one-point perspective images are constructed (projections); pictorial space has been considered in Persianate-Mughal miniatures; multiperspectivalism and multi-point perspective has been discussed in Asian and European art history; paintings have been modelled three dimensionally and subsequently interpreted; and the concept of heuristic processes and devices have been deployed in art history.

Projections There is a proliferation of terms and confusion regarding pictorial space in relation to Persianate-Mughal images, so for the purposes of this chapter, it is necessary to establish a common set of terms, based on contemporary understandings of the subject in the fields of engineering and architectural graphics, visual arts, philosophy and psychology of perception and computer science (Figures 6.2 and 6.3). Pictorial space (or picture-space, or virtual reality, or virtual space) refers to the illusionary space perceived when looking at a two-dimensional image that represents three-dimensional space in some manner. The plane to which the two-dimensional image belongs is often called the picture plane (or projection plane) and the image is the picture plane image. The position of the viewer in relation to the picture plane can be called the viewpoint (or eye position, station point, vantage point, camera) and the plane to which it belongs the viewpoint(s) plane. The optical impression of the picture plane image in the human eye is the retinal image. Retinal images are then processed in the brain producing an image in the mind’s eye. The real space in which images in the picture plane and the viewpoint exist can be called normal space. The eye position can be further characterized by three angles describing the viewpoint in relation to the picture plane, which together comprise a heading. The angle when looking up or down is called tilt (or pitch), angling the head to either side is roll and the turning of the head is called yaw. The shorter the distance between the viewpoint and the picture plane, the wider the field of vision into pictorial space. The rendering of illusionary three-dimensional objects

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Figure 6.2  Hussein Keshani, Perspectival representation of singular parallel projection with tilted ground plane (bird’s-eye view). Digital drawing. 2016. © Hussein Keshani. Key: (a) normal space, (b) ground plane, (c) viewpoint, (d) yaw, (e) tilt, (f) roll, (g) picture plane, (h) picture plane image, (i) picture plane horizon line, (j) picture plane object, (k) pictorial space, (l) projection line, (m) picture plane object, (n) vanishing point, (o) horizon line, (p) horizon plane.

Figure 6.3 Hussein Keshani, Perspectival representation of singular perspectival projection. Digital drawing. 2016. © Hussein Keshani (Note: see key in Figure 6.2).

in pictorial space onto the picture plane is called a projection (or graphical projection), and the lines traced from points on the object in illusionary space, that is illusionary normal space, to their corresponding points on the picture plane are projection lines (or visual rays). Objects in pictorial space can be called pictorial space objects (or virtual objects) and their corresponding two-

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dimensional images on the picture plane picture plane objects (or rendered objects). One common type of projection is the parallel projection (or axonometric, isometric, non-diminishing, non-linear perspective), in which projection lines are parallel to one another resulting in objects on the picture plane that do not appear to recede in the distance (Figure 6.2). In viewpoints called elevations, projection lines run perpendicular to the picture plane, meaning the ground plane appears as a line on the picture plane, but if the projection lines are obliquely angled to the upper right or left, the ground plane in such images can appear tilted to the viewer resulting in a tilted ground plane, creating a bird’s-eye view. A single such parallel image technically integrates multiple viewpoints with different tilts and yaws into one. Where the ground plane intersects the perpendicular picture plane is the ground line. A plane extending from the viewpoint to the picture plane parallel to the ground plane and into pictorial space infinitely can be called the viewing plane and the line it forms at the intersection with the picture plane a picture plane horizon line. The infinitely furthermost plane in pictorial space typically perpendicular to the ground and viewing planes can be called the horizon plane. Parallelist projections are found in many traditions and are especially common in pre-modern Persianate-Mughal and East Asian paintings. It is possible to have a picture plane image composed of multiple parallel projections of the same pictorial space stacked on top of, or beside, one another resulting in a multi-parallel image, and correspondingly multiple viewpoints, which themselves each potentially have three viewpoints (Figure 6.4).

Figure 6.4  Hussein Keshani. Perspectival representation of multi-parallel projection with multiple viewpoint tilts and yaws. Digital drawing. 2016. © Hussein Keshani. Key: (a) absolute viewpoint, (b) absolute viewpoint plane, (c) viewpoint, (d) viewpoint(s) plane, (e) parallel projection, (f) picture plane, (g) horizon line, (h) horizon plane.

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The multiple viewpoints exist in a viewpoint plane perpendicular to the ground plane. Given that the views of these multiple viewpoints are consolidated into one view, the viewpoint in normal space from which an image with multiple viewpoints is regarded can be called the absolute viewpoint, which is located in the absolute viewpoint plane; although the absolute viewpoint plane and the viewpoint plane can overlap. Another well-known projection type is the focal perspective projection (or linear perspective, geometric perspective), in which pictorial space objects appear to realistically recede in the distance (Figure 6.3). Such images are rooted in medieval geometry and the science of optics. Focal-perspective projections commonly employ projection lines that converge to one or two points on the horizon line of the ground plane that are known as vanishing points. These projection types are called one-point and two-point perspective projections. Multi-point projections such as three-point perspective images have headings that are not perpendicular to their picture planes and employ an additional vanishing point located either above the horizon (zenith vanishing point) or below it (nadir vanishing point). Multiple focal-perspective projections can also be brought together into a single image resulting in a multi-perspectival projection (Figure 6.5). It is also conceivable that multi-parallel and multi-perspectival approaches can be integrated into the same image resulting in what might be called a multi-projection (Figure 6.6). When all of the projections, whether they be

Figure 6.5 Hussein Keshani. Perspectival representation of multi-perspectival projection with multiple viewpoint tilts and yaws. Digital drawing. 2016. © Hussein Keshani. Key: (a) absolute viewpoint, (b) absolute viewpoint plane, (c) viewpoint, (d) viewpoint(s) plane, (e) perspectival projection, (f) picture plane, (g) horizon line, (h) horizon plane.

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Figure 6.6 Hussein Keshani. Perspectival representation of multi-projection with multiple viewpoint tilts and yaws. Digital drawing. 2016. © Hussein Keshani. (Key: see Figure 6.5).

perspective, parallel or a combination of the two, render the same pictorial space to be perceived as one realm, it can be said to be unified. Furthermore, different combinations of multi-parallel, multi-perspectival and composite projections to render multiple pictorial spaces within a single picture plane yielding a nonunified multi-projection are conceivable. The image created by bringing together multiple projections is perhaps best conceptualized as a collage of projections.

Multi-parallel and multi-perspectival techniques and pictorial space in Persian, Mughal and East Asian paintings Pictorial space in Persianate-Mughal painting has been a recurring topic of conversation and is addressed by various authors with some of the more salient points highlighted here. Robinson draws attention to the rise of the ‘high horizon’ in fourteenth-century Persian painting as vertical image formats became common,3 meaning parallel projection images were developed with projection lines that were no longer perpendicular to the picture plane resulting in a tilted ground plane. Bronstein extensively investigates the topic with one of his key conclusions being ‘the space of Iranian painting is neither a twodimensional space, nor a three-dimensional [one], . . . it is about to become three-dimensional’.4 Roxburgh discusses the techniques of axonometry and the relevance of the term ‘monoscenic composition’, ‘which combines multiple points of perspective that deny nothing to the eye’.5 This is analogous to multi-parallel image. Graves

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points out that folios are often a composite of text and images providing, windows into pictorial space, a collage of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects (i.e. rendered pictorial space objects) on the picture plane.6 She also notes there is a spatio-temporal dimension to the representation of architectural space. Views of exteriors and interiors are presented simultaneously on the picture plane, views which in normal space could ostensibly only be experienced at separate points in time; multi-parallel images then not only integrate multiple cotemporal viewpoints but sequential ones as well. This differs from Roxburgh, who emphasizes contemporality. Carmen González considers the representation of space in Persian miniatures as a precedent to nineteenth-century Iranian photography, which she asserts is influenced by Iranian mystic culture. She argues in Iranian paintings and photographs ‘individuals become part of the whole picture, the whole surrounding space’.7 González discusses the notion of vertical perspective by which she means distance is signalled not through diminishing scale but through the vertical placement of represented objects in the picture plane; the higher an object in an image, the further away it is understood to be.8 Another way to describe this is the use of a tilted ground plane along with a stacking of parallel projections. The placement of objects along the vertical axis in pictorial space was often arranged in a zig-zag pattern to enhance drama and interest. Like Graves, González also considers how picture plane images are defined not only by projected pictorial space but by two-dimensional page composition techniques and constraints as well. In particular, grid layout schemes for pages that were either built upon the lines and columns used to write text or developed for images shaped page composition and pictorial layouts. The image on the picture plane is governed not only by spatial projection techniques but by twodimensional compositional considerations on the picture plane such as page proportions or grid systems. Abdollah and Gehi argue a spiral structure, a geometric metaphor for the soul’s journey to enlightenment, underlies the composition of many Persian miniatures and consequently results in a spiral spatial configuration.9 It is unclear whether the spiral governs the placement of people and things in pictorial space (i.e. most perceivable from a top elevation viewpoint), the twodimensional result on the picture plane, or both. Valerie Gonzalez offers a particularly important discussion of space in Persianate and Mughal painting in which she sees the Mughal-era transformation of the Persianate tradition as a kind of aesthetic hyper dialecticism and one that employs an iconic approach to spatial representation.10 She writes ‘diverse space-creating devices and depth-

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alluding patterns are inserted within the pictorial fabric generally arranged in the Persian fashion’.11 In other words, Persianate paintings in the period under consideration can be seen as a multi-projection image, a seemingly unified collage of similar and disparate spatial representation techniques with some that are more symbolic in nature; a two-dimensional image serves as a symbol of a three-dimensional space or concept. Persianate-Mughal painting owes much to East Asian traditions for which there is, arguably, a more developed discourse on spatial representation.12 Writing in 1927, March questions the assumption that linear perspective images are more true than others and sees the term ‘perspective’ as applying to ‘all devices for representing three dimensions in two, for symbolizing three-dimensional space on a plane’.13 Needham in contrast invokes the term ‘parallel’ or ‘non-diminishing’ perspective in Chinese art.14 Fong observes in the seventh and eighth centuries the rise of the use of three overlapping, vertically ascending picture plane images – high distance, flat distance and deep distance – to construct images.15 In Tang and Sung landscape examples, images are composed of several compartments of space each with its own tilted receding plane, that is, they are multi-parallel images.16 Other works make use of a single unifying tilted ground plane creating continuity between objects represented in foreground, middle ground and background. According to Watt, in the Yuan period, which was contemporary with the Ilkhanid dynasty in Greater Iran, ‘there appeared in paintings a continuous ground leading from the foreground to distant mountains’.17 Sullivan, referencing earlier writers, draws attention to the early Ch`in and Han development of diagonal recession in which an object’s placement along the diagonal indicated a deeper position in pictorial space, while the scale of objects represented remained unchanged; objects in the bottom left, for example, were understood to be closest and those on the top right the farthest.18 Other writers mention the development of diagonal recession into zig-zag compositions. Instead of continuing to build an image along the diagonal, the direction of the diagonal is reversed, likely in order to stay within the boundaries of the vertical scroll or page.19 Regarding architectural representations, Chung identifies historical discussions of parallel projections with oblique projection lines (100 lines) and viewpoint tilts but also reminds that in Tang imagery such as the mid-eighth century Illustration of the Pure Land of the West on the south wall of Cave 172 at Dunhang, projection lines are not always parallel and can converge in a perspective-like way.20 Parallel and perspectival approaches coexist in a single image resulting in a multi-projection.

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Persianate-Mughal image-making not only shares similarities with East Asian traditions of parallel image projections but is influenced by them and earlier scholars have seen Persianate incorporations of Chinese depth representation techniques as flawed, much like the reception of European perspective is often narrated as flawed. Commenting on Ilkhanid painters’ ‘poor’ grasp of Chinese depth representation techniques in the Ilkhanid Shahnama, Ettinghausen notes the folios [L]ack the impression of reality and the sense of space in depth that is found in their Far Eastern prototypes . . . [because the] perspective devices derived from Chinese landscape painting . . . are usually applied without real understanding of the artistic and optic laws involved.21

Cho, however, points out that the Ilkhanid painters may not have aspired to unchangingly emulate Chinese representational techniques.22 Sugimura suggests Chinese devices producing a sense of depth are adapted to Persian painting spatial representation methods, especially in the Ilkhanid Shahnama; these adaptations include superimposing several planes on the groundline and spreading projections out on a page horizontally much like was done with scroll painting as in the painting Alexander and His Warriors Fighting a Dragon (private collection). There is also the adoption of a bird’seye view, or tilted ground plane, as in Alexander Builds the Iron Ram-part (The Sackler Collection, Washington, DC, no. s86.0104).23 The zig-zag, or spiral, approach found in Persianate-Mughal painting likely builds upon notions of diagonal recession and vertical zig-zag composition in Chinese art history. Both traditions, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, also reckoned with Euro-American perspectival visualities. Chinese artists learned focal perspective at the Qianlong academy from Jesuit artist Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766).24 Chinese reckonings with European perspective are further addressed in a study of Chinese export paintings of Canton trading houses produced between 1760 and 1822 by Dyke and Mok, who see these works as intertwining ‘Western’ focal (one point, two point, etc.) perspective and ‘Chinese’ tilted ground plane parallel projections to create multi-perspective projections in order to avoid the loss of detail produced by a strict adherence to the former approach.25 For Dyke and Mok, pre-focal perspective Chinese painting often already employs a ‘moving or multiperspectivalism’ (more accurately multiparallelism) due to the scroll painting format. Rolling out and viewing sections of a continuous image at a time meant multiple, and often incommensurable, parallel projections were incorporated into a single scroll

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painting, an approach that would wind its ways into other genres. The export paintings then combine multi-parallel and focal-perspective approaches to create a multi-projection. In the South Asian context, the combination of Persianate parallel and European perspectival spatial representation techniques in Mughal and lateMughal-era painting has long attracted notice.26 In the Mughal art of Shah Jahan, Koch notes that traditional Mughal compositions of Shah Jahan’s Padshahnama, now held in the Windsor Library, incorporate bird’s-eye views of landscapes with tilted ground planes likely drawing on imagery supplied by Jesuit missionaries.27 Koch writes, ‘Unrestrained recession into space could occur in the backgrounds where it did not disturb the main formal figure composition.’28 Minnisale has similarly argued that Mughal uses of European artistic techniques were selective ‘creative reinventions’ rather than ‘slavish imitations’. He discusses the use of ‘stereoscopic perspective’ in Akbar’s Khamsa of Nizami but does not go beyond discussing how the scale of represented objects diminish as they approach the horizon line.29 Like Koch, Losty observes images combine horizontal and high overhead viewpoints, which in his view is problematic.30 In other words an image incorporates multiple viewpoints and combined parallel (elevational) and focalperspective projections. Like Minnisale, Sharma observes that Nidha Mal’s paintings at Delhi under Shah Alam II are noteworthy for ‘the absorption of European spatial practices into Mughal painting’.31 Specifically South Asian artists were exposed to parallel (isometric) and perspectival military engineering drawings. One consequence, according to Sharma, is that they ceased to use social hierarchy as a primary determinant for figure placement, as was common in Shah-Jahani painting, in favour of projectional logic, which could result in architecture and subordinates appearing above rulers in the picture plane. The new kinds of images were an attempt to balance ‘European volume and pictorial space’ and ‘hierarchy of traditional ceremonial scenes’. Like Koch, Minnisale and Sharma, Aitken challenges earlier narratives of perspectival imagery as failed attempts in favour of one in which perspectival techniques were incorporated into or combined with earlier spatial representation approaches. Drawing heavily on the work of the artist Mir Kalan Khan, Aitkin sees within the Persianate-Mughal tradition ‘a broader tolerance for internally divided, compartmentalized compositions of sometimes unrelated parts’.32 Vocabulary like composite effect, aggregate, pastiche, spatially disunified, agglutination, khichri are brought together under the concept of compositional parataxis, which is somewhat similar to the notion of multi-projection imagery

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but even broader. She explains ‘the paratactic aesthetic partly stemmed from the basic artistic practice of reproducing or physically cutting out and resituating existing motifs, figure groups, stylistic formations, and entire compositions’.33 The rise of Company Painting, or the Company School, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw Indian artists working for Anglo-European patrons, an important moment for the blending of Anglo-European and late Mughal Indian spatial representation techniques.

Heuristic devices and processes The notion of a heuristic device, both conceptual and visual, spans across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences and is understood to be an abstract intellectual construct that facilitates deeper investigation into a topic. Perhaps the most common type of heuristic device is the verbal metaphor but mathematical models in fields like economics are common too. Phillips usefully reminds that ‘all models are wrong. The models developed in economic theory are metaphors of reality, sometimes amounting to a very basic set of relations’ and they are ‘at best only approximately true’.34 Visual metaphors are also common devices. In evolutionary biology, for example, the tree of life – a concept often expressed as a diagram – has been a durable heuristic device to synthesize understanding and provoke new lines of inquiry.35 The tree of life is understood to be an entirely human construct and not something that exists in nature; its purpose and value lie in its capacity to facilitate inquiry. Outside of art history, in fields like architecture, engineering, data visualization, biology, physics, visual heuristic devices are commonplace as is an appreciation that they are not simply illustrative or explanatory visual works that only support an argument made with words – they are intellectual tools or instruments that embody analytical intent and processes. Conceptual verbal heuristic devices have long been used in the field of art history. Notions like kunstwollen (art drive) or stammescharakter (tribal character) were not initially understood as truths about art so much but as useful thought-provoking concepts.36 In the historiography of Islamic art history these heuristics have arguably manifested as questions like ‘What is Islamic Art?’ When Baxandall says that art historical writing involves the conversion of images into words upon which art historical interpretations and arguments are made he is arguably saying that art historians create a verbal heuristic device.37

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Though the subject of art history is often visual, the use of visual heuristic devices to study paintings appears less well understood and less commonly used though it is by no means absent. The study of visual culture requires visual methods of analysis and not merely verbal ones just as a novel cannot be deeply analysed without words. The common techniques of details or juxtaposing images to facilitate comparison is a basic two-dimensional visual heuristic embodying analytically imbued choices on what to focus upon and what to compare. More complex examples exist too. Snyder and Cohen’s analysis of Velasquez’s use of perspective in Las Meninas depends on their visual deconstruction of the image.38 Baxandall’s overlay of platonic geometric forms onto Fra Roberto’s The Nativity advances his point.39 Tomás García-Salgado uses multiple heuristic diagrams to examine the use of perspective in Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper.40 Gedo and de Duve’s use of William Conger’s perspectival diagram of Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergere reveals multiple vanishing points, different horizon levels and multiple viewing positions.41 When de Duve employs plan views to better understand Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women (1979) these too are visual heuristics integral to the formation of his arguments.42 In Persianate-Mughal painting studies by Bronstein, Abdollah and Gehi and Koch, all of the authors employ overlays to uncover and advance their arguments. It is in this context that three-dimensional modelling of two-dimensional images can be seen as a visual heuristic process and the model generated a heuristic device. They are both mathematical and visual abstractions that are approximately true based on a simplified set of relations. In computer science three-dimensional modelling has been applied to paintings in interesting ways. The aims lean more to enriching and expanding computer science techniques for rendering graphics than towards advancing art historical discourse, yet there is considerable overlap. Criminisi and his colleagues have investigated the use of perspective in Italian Renaissance paintings.43 Chu and Tai have created techniques for developing multi-perspective three-dimensional animations of Chinese landscape paintings and panoramas, employing global views with multiple local views that is a global pictorial space encompassing multiple local pictorial spaces.44 Schleiser has developed the MPI Builder program to develop multi-perspectival two-dimensional renderings inspired by Chinese landscape paintings from a three-dimensional model.45 Park, an art historian, has used modelling as a way to investigate spatial representation in Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.46 Park’s study involves the production of various two-dimensional and three-dimensional visual heuristics; the process and resulting models aid him in arriving at a richer understanding

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of spatial representation in the painting. In their quest to develop innovative software, computer science scholars are contributing to illuminating spatial representation in art. But, from an art historical perspective digital models of paintings are not an end in themselves or a means to improve software design but a means by which spatial representation, among other things, can be better understood; they are what Manovitch might call ‘representation’.47

Modelling A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens In the Model Images project, a three-dimensional digital model interpretive representation of the pictorial space depicted in A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens was created (Figure 6.7). Recurring objects in the painting, such as a column, were identified and used as a basis for reference dimensions with which the model was built. The proportions of the pictorial space objects in relation to page proportions were maintained as far as possible and not corrected to create a realistic normal space interpretation. Using the reference dimensions and

Figure 6.7 Hussein Keshani et al. Screenshot of digital three-dimensional model interpretation of the pictorial space of A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens. Digital image. 2016. © Hussein Keshani.

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other assumptions, a set of plans and sections were developed, one among many possibilities (Figure 6.8). From these a model was created and textures applied. The model was then used to investigate spatial representation in the painting. What precisely did modelling, or spatializing, a painting’s pictorial space and the resulting model reveal about the adaptation of single-point perspective imagemaking? The following two broad insights were obtained.

Figure 6.8  Hussein Keshani et al. Plan interpretation of A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens. Digital drawing. 2016. © Hussein Keshani.

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A unified stereoscopic multi-projection One preliminary step in the modelling process was the creation of a heuristic diagram of the multiple vanishing points in order to create the model (Figure 6.9). This diagram was needed in order to solve the problem of how to reportray painted space as three-dimensional modellable space. More specifically it helped form a proposition on how the represented spaces could be translated into coherent three-dimensional space as defined by the modelling program’s logic. Once the model was constructed, a one-point perspective projection was generated from the model and compared to the original painting (Figure 6.10). The comparison reveals that the painting can be characterized as two vertical stacks of parallel and one-point perspectival projections that are reflections

Figure 6.9  Hussein Keshani et al. Projection lines and pseudo vanishing points for A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens. Digital drawing. 2016. © Hussein Keshani.

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Figure 6.10  Hussein Keshani et al. Screenshot of one-point perspective view (with projection lines) of digital three-dimensional model interpretation of the pictorial space of A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens with textures. Digital image. 2016. © Hussein Keshani.

Figure 6.11  Hussein Keshani. Perspectival representation of reflected multi-projection with various viewpoint distances and curved viewpoint and horizon planes. Digital drawing. 2016. © Hussein Keshani (Key: see Figure 6.5).

of each other (Figure 6.11). In a singular parallel projection, scale remains consistent throughout, but here there are multiple scales indicating that multiple projections are of varying depths and stacked on top of one another, not unlike a series of text panels. The combination of parallel and perspectival projections is highly evident at the bottom of the image where the archways to the left and

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right of the fountain are perspectival and recede to two separate vanishing points on either side of the central axis (Figure 6.9). The projections appear to all be windows into the same unified pictorial space. Because the two stacks show the same scene from slightly different viewpoints, the ensemble is a kind of stereoscopic, or binocular, unified multi-projection.

Pseudo vanishing points and curved viewing and horizon planes In the painting, there are only a few instances of true vanishing points as mentioned earlier, but they are not aligned on top of one another as is to be expected according to European convention. Because the image is a reflected multi-projection, the points on the central axis are not true vanishing points. They are pseudo vanishing points or more accurately, points where the projection lines from the two multi-projections intersect. The points where the projection lines of the two reflected halves intersect generate pseudo vanishing points on the central axis. The distinction is important because it illuminates the predominance of multi-parallel techniques and clarifies how they are cleverly used to simulate perspectival imagery. Reflecting on Figure 6.9 further prompts the question how do the pseudo vanishing points relate to one another spatially in pictorial space? They cannot all be located on a single horizon plane perpendicular to the ground and at a uniform distance from the picture plane. If they were, then a consistent approach to scale would be expected. Instead, the multiple pseudo vanishing points appear to exist on a continuous curved line that is inclined away from the picture plane (Figure 6.11). As the picture is ascended, these irregularly spaced points are to be perceived as more distant, a continuation of the technique that equates a higher vertical placement of a picture plane object with greater pictorial space depth. Consequently, the pseudo vanishing points trace out an inclined curved axis in pictorial space resulting in a curved horizon plane (Figure 6.11). If the pseudo vanishing points trace a curved path, then it follows their corresponding viewing points should also follow an inclined curved path. The top of the painting shows a very wide horizontal vista, in contrast to a narrow vista at the bottom. This means the higher projections in the stack have a wider field of vision than the lower ones, which can be achieved by placing the viewpoint closer to the picture plane. It is like standing close to a window and being able to see more of the scene in your peripheral vision than if you stand

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far away where the view is more circumscribed. Since the field of vision of the painting expands with a higher viewpoint (a wider view of the scene is given within the same width), the viewpoints must progressively approach the picture plane, meaning the viewpoint path also forms an arc, although with various viewpoints tilts. At the middle of the image, the tilt is most pronounced while at the top and bottom, less steep tilts are in effect. Altogether the points demarcate a curved viewing points plane similar to the horizon plane. It is in this way that near and telescopic wide-angled views are brought together.

Page proportions and curved pictorial space The modelling process, and model, facilitates the exploration of another interesting question: what is the shape of the multi-projection image’s pictorial space? For a singular parallel projection, it is ordinarily a rectangular prism and for a singular perspectival projection, a trapezoidal prism. These prisms are said to be identical since the proportions of their front and back faces are the same; if they were different they would be non-identical. But what does the shape of pictorial space look like for a multi-projection like A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens (Figure 6.12)? The answer depends on whether one considers the question from the perspective of the individual viewpoints or the absolute viewpoint. The pictorial spaces of all the viewpoints altogether form an aggregate of two stacks of rectangular and trapezoidal prisms that get progressively deeper towards the top of the stack. However, it is impossible to assume the multiple

Figure 6.12  Hussein Keshani. Identical trapezoidal prism and curved non-identical trapezoidal prism pictorial space. Digital drawing. 2016.

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points of view simultaneously when looking at the image in normal space. One must view the multiple projections on the picture plane from a single absolute viewpoint, which has its own pictorial space into which the other individual pictorial spaces must be accommodated and integrated. When assuming an absolute viewpoint, the stepped viewing and horizon planes are necessarily transformed into singular perpendicular viewing and horizon planes and their attendant pictorial spaces are correspondingly transformed. The resultant pictorial space for the absolute viewpoint is a distortion of the aggregate of pictorial spaces generated from the multiple projections. The integrated pictorial space can be proposed to be a curved trapezoidal prism in which the beginning trapezoid is a vertical rectangle conforming to page dimensions and the end one a horizontal rectangle. The curved projection lines at the top are more pronounced than at the bottom and produce a wide-angled view. The projection lines have to bend between their origin points in the pictorial space objects and their end points on the picture plane in order to fit within the page frame. The page frame, then, is an important factor shaping the outcome of the final projections. From the perspective of the absolute viewpoint, the rectilinear page on the picture plane is like a funhouse mirror that warps all of the projections, more acutely at the top than at the bottom, to fit into a single image. Comparing the model to the painting has led to the production of exploratory two-dimensional visualizations to think through questions about the nature of spatial representation in the painting and arrive at these more detailed characterizations. By working backwards from the model to approximate the portrayal of space in the painting, a reverse engineering of the image so to speak, greater insights have been obtained. Overall the exercise leads to a conceptualization of the image’s pictorial space as both a composite of multiple stacked and mirrored rectangular and identical trapezoidal prisms of varied depths and a singular curved non-identical trapezoidal prism (Figure 6.13). Comparing model and painting shows that the upper projections in the painting appear horizontally compressed in order to fit them within the width of the page. The compression is achieved by shortening the viewpoint distance to the picture plane in order to widen the field of view within an individual projection. Consequently, the higher prisms have greater depth than the lower ones resulting in a stepped viewing and horizon planes that follow the path of an arc. It is in this way that near and telescopic vision are combined. Viewpoint tilts vary throughout the image too. At the middle of the image, the tilt is most pronounced while at the top and bottom similar less steep tilts are in effect.

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Figure 6.13  Hussein Keshani et al. Curved non-Identical trapezoidal prism pictorial space based on 3D model without page proportion corrections. Digital drawing. 2016.

Conclusion Modelling A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens has led to closer examination and deeper understanding of the spatial representation techniques at work. Faizullah’s response to perspectival imagery led to innovation and greater sophistication in parallel and multi-projectional image-making, an example of transcultural nature of the development of spatial representation methods. Exposure to European perspective led more to innovation in South Asian multi-projection techniques than to the adoption of perspectival methods. The image appears to be a stack of one-point perspective and parallel projections, but it is a combination of two mirrored stacks of parallel and perspectival projections with pseudo vanishing points on the mirror axis; the depth of the projections increases towards the top, representing more distant

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scenes and creating a staggered horizon plane. To better represent more distant scenes the multiple viewpoints with varying tilts get closer to the picture plane, tracing an arc and widening the field of view. Taken as a whole the pictorial space of the image assumes the shape of a curved non-identical trapezoid. Projection lines bend, especially for more distant objects so that they terminate within the frame of the image on the picture plane; the frame is like a funhouse mirror that bends the scene to fit within it. The modelling process itself resulted in the creation of multiple visual artefacts, two-dimensional digital drawings and a digital object that is an interactive threedimensional model. These artefacts themselves are simultaneously analytical instruments and products built upon sets of assumptions, they are interpretive constructs, heuristic devices, built with digital tools that have their own built-in assumptions. The value of visual heuristic processes and devices lies principally in the quality and depth of thought they provoke. The insights gleaned contribute to the narratives of incorporation and adaptation of perspective by showing with greater clarity and precision how that adaptation took place. They also help show why it is better to broaden the field of comparison beyond perspectival image-making to other multi-projectional traditions such as European Cubism or contemporary digital projects like Microsoft’s now defunct Photosynth, Google’s Streetview or drone photography software that georectifies and compiles images into orthomosaics. Even modelling software offers multi-projections ways of representing worlds. The visuality of the digital age is filled with multi-projection images and discourses, and it is useful to think of A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens in these terms; the painting is not so much an attempt to perform perspectival image-making as it is an effort to respond to it by building a new kind of collage of diverse kinds of projections for a single imagined space.

Notes 1 Stuart Cary Welch, India: Art and Culture 1300-1900 (Munich: Prestel, repr. 1999), 281. Faizullah’s other similar works have been discussed. For example, see Milo C. Beach, Mughal and Rajput Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 221. 2 The Model Images research project has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for Canada. 3 B.W. Robinson, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Persian Paintings in the Bodleian Library (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), 9.

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4 Leo Bronstein, Space in Persian Painting (New Brunswick and London: Transaction Pub, 1994), 54. 5 David J. Roxburgh, ‘Micrographia: Toward a Visual Logic of Persianate Painting’, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 43 (Spring, 2003): 12–30, esp. 30. 6 Margaret Graves, ‘Inside and Outside, Picture and Page: The Architectural Spaces of Miniature Painting’, in Margaret S. Graves and Benoît Junot (eds), Architecture in Islamic Arts: Treasures of the Aga Khan Museum (Geneva: Aga Khan Trust for Culture, 2012), 293–303, esp. 299. 7 Carmen P. González, ‘Arrangement of Space’, in Local Portraiture: Through the Lens of the 19th Century Iranian Photographers (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2012), 132. 8 Ibid., 136. Alternatively vertical placement of figures could signal social rank; the higher in the image the higher the social rank. 9 Zahra Abdollah and Hasan Bolkhari Ghehi, ‘Aesthetic of Color and Connotations of Spiral Structure: An Assessment of Medieval Persian Miniature’, International Journal of Arts 4, no. 1 (2014): 17–23. 10 Valerie Gonzalez, Aesthetic Hybridity in Mughal Painting, 1526–1658 (London: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2015). 11 Ibid., 208. 12 For an introduction, see Jan Krikke, The Corridor of Space: China, Modernists, and the Cybernetic Century (Bangkok. Original publication: Amsterdam : Olive Press, ©1998, 2017). 13 Benjamin March, ‘A Note on Perspective in Chinese Painting’, The China Journal VII, no. 2 (1927): 69–72, esp. 69. 14 Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China Vol IV.3.28 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 114. 15 Wen C. Fong, ‘Toward a Structural Analysis of Chinese Landscape Painting’, Art Journal 28:4 (Summer, 1969): 388–97, esp. 393. See also Wen Fong, Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001), 10. 16 Fong, Between Two Cultures, 393. 17 James C. Y. Watt, ‘A Note on Artistic Exchanges in the Mongol Empire’, in Linda Komaroff and Stefano Carboni (eds), The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256-1353 (New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002), 72. 18 Michael Sullivan, An Introduction to Chinese Art (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960), 86. See also Ludwig Bachofer, A Short History of Chinese Art (New York: Pantheon Books, 1946), 92. 19 Wu Hung, The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 26; Paochen Chen, ‘Time and Space

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20 21 22

23

24

25 26

27 28 29

30

31

32 33

Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture in Chinese Narrative Paintings’, in Junjie Huang and Erik Zürcher (eds), Time and Space in Chinese Culture (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 251. Anita Chung, Drawing Boundaries: Architectural Images in Qing China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), 26–7. Richard Ettinghausen, ‘World Awareness and Human Relationships in Iranian Painting’, in Highlights of Persian Art (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1979), 247. Min Yong Cho, How Land Came into the Picture: Rendering History in the Fourteenth-century Jami al-Tawarikh (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2008), 35. https://deepblue​.lib​.umich​.edu​/bitstream​/handle​/2027​.42​/61559​/mycho​_1​.pdf. Toh Sugimura, ‘CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xii. Mutual Influences in Painting’, [1991, revised 2011] in Encyclopaedia Iranica, V/5 (218), 458–60; available online at http://www​.iranicaonline​.org​/articles​/chinese​-iranian​-xii. For additional discussion, see Toh Sugimura, The Encounter of Persia and China: Research into Cultural Contacts Based on Fifteenth Century Persian Pictorial Materials (Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 1986). Cécile Beurdeley and Michel Beurdeley, Giuseppe Castiglione: A Jesuit Painter at the Court of the Chinese Emperors (Rutland, VT and Tokyo, Japan: C.E. Tuttle Co., 1971). Paul A. Van Dyke and Maria Kar-wing Mok, Images of the Canton Factories 1760– 1822: Reading History in Art (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015), 49. For example, see Stuart Cary Welch, Room for Wonder: Indian Painting during the British Period, 1760-1880 (New York: American Federationof Arts, 1978), 83; Milo C. Beach, ‘The Gulshan Album and Its European Sources’, Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts 63, no. 332 (1965): 90. Ebba Koch, ‘The Hierarchical Principles of Shah-Jahani Painting’, in Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 146. Ibid., 161. Gregory Minnisale, ‘The Synthesis of European and Mughal Art in the Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa of Nizami’, asianart​.c​om (2000). http://www​.asianart​.com​/articles​/ minissale/. Jeremiah P. Losty, ‘Towards a New Naturalism: Portraiture in Murshidabad and Avadh 1750-80’, in B. Schmitz (ed.), After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries (Bombay: Marg, 2002), 34–55. Yuthika Sharma, ‘Miniatures to Monuments: Picturing Shah Alam’s Delhi’, in Alka Patel and Karen Leonard (eds), Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 111–38, esp. 117–19. Molly Emma Aitken, ‘Parataxis and the Practice of Reuse, from Mughal Margins to Mīr Kalān Khān’, Archives of Asian Art 59 (2009): 81–103, esp. 82. Ibid.

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34 Peter C. B. Phillips, ‘Laws and Limits of Econometric Models’, COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 1397, 2002. https://cowles​.yale​.edu​/ sites​/default​/files​/files​/pub​/d13​/d1397​.pdf. 35 David P. Mindell, ‘The Tree of Life: Metaphor, Model, and Heuristic Device’, Systematic Biology 62, no. 3 (1 May 2013): 479–89. 36 Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Toward a Geography of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 75; Matthew Rampley, The Vienna School of Art History: Empire and the Politics of Scholarship, 1847–1918 (Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2013), 31–51. 37 Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 8–11. 38 Joel Snyder and Ted Cohen, ‘Reflexions on “Las Meninas”: Paradox Lost’, Critical Inquiry 7, no. 2 (Winter, 1980): 429–47. 39 Baxandall, plate IV. 40 Tomás García-Salgado, ‘The Perspective of Leonardo’s Last Supper’ e-journal, Number 3 (2005): 1–19. 41 Mary Mathews Gedo, Looking at Art from the Inside Out: The Psychoiconographic Approach to Modern Art (Cambridge, 1994); Thierry de Duve and Brian Holmes, ‘How Manet’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” Is Constructed’, Critical Inquiry 25, no. 1 (Autumn, 1998): 136–68, esp. Fig. 2. 42 Thierry de Duve, ‘Intentionality and Art Historical Methodology: A Case Study’, nonsite​.o​rg no. 6 (1 July 2012). https://nonsite​.org​/article​/intentionality​-and​-art​ -historical​-methodology​-a​-case​-study. 43 ‘Three-dimensional Analysis and Reconstruction of Paintings’. April 2000. http:// www​.robots​.ox​.ac​.uk/​~vgg​/projects​/SingleView​/article​.html.‘Creating Architectural Models from Images’, Annual Conference of the European Association for Computer Graphics (1999). See also Wai L. Khoo, Tadeusz Jordan, David G. Stork and Zhigang Zhu, ‘Reconstruction of a Three-Dimensional Tableau from a Single Realist Painting’, Conference Paper for Virtual Systems and Multimedia, 2009. VSMM '09. 15th. 9–14. DOI: 10.1109/VSMM.2009.7. http://visionlab​.engr​.ccny​.cuny​.edu​/ccvcl​/ assets​/publications​/77​/paper​/Fraser​_3Da​.pdf. 44 C. Tai and N. S. Chu, ‘Animating Chinese Landscape Paintings and Panorama Using Multi-Perspective Modeling’, Computer Graphics International Conference (CGI), Hong Kong, China, 2001, pp. 0107. doi:10.1109/CGI.2001.934664. 45 Lothar Schlesier, ‘Eastern Perspective – Multi Projection Images’ (Internship thesis, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, 2004). http://www​.divnull​.net​/projects​/ Lothar​_Schlesier​-Bachelor​-2004​.pdf. 46 Malcolm Park, ‘The spatial ambiguity of Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère’, unpublished essay. 2012. http://malcolmpark​-arthistorian​.com​/admin​/images​/ dissertation​_pdf​/2​/3​/BAR​%20TEXT​%20and​%20NOTES​%20amended​%202016​

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.07​.5​.pdf.; Malcolm Park, Ambiguity, and the Engagement of Spatial Illusion within the Surface of Manet’s Paintings (PhD diss., UNSW, Sydney, 2001). http:// www​.unsworks​.unsw​.edu​.au​/primo​_library​/libweb​/action​/dlDisplay​.do​?vid​ =UNSWORKS​&docId​=unsworks​_35870. 47 Lev Manovitch, ‘Data Science and Computational Art History’, International Journal for Digital Art History (2015): 13–35, esp. 15. http://manovich​.net​/content​ /04​-projects​/087​-data​-science​/manovich​_digital​_art​_history​.pdf.

Bibliography Abdollah, Zahra and Hasan Bolkhari Ghehi. ‘Aesthetic of Color and Connotations of Spiral Structure: An Assessment of Medieval Persian Miniature’, International Journal of Arts 4: 1 (2014): 17–23. Aitken, Molly Emma. ‘Parataxis and the Practice of Reuse, from Mughal Margins to Mīr Kalān Khān’, Archives of Asian Art 59 (2009): 81–103. Bachofer, Ludwig. A Short History of Chinese Art. New York: Pantheon Books, 1946. Baxandall, Michael. Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Explanation of Pictures. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985. Beach, Milo C. ‘The Gulshan Album and Its European Sources’, Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts 63: 332 (1965): 90. Beach, Milo C. Mughal and Rajput Painting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Beurdeley, Cécile and Michel Beurdeley. Giuseppe Castiglione: A Jesuit Painter at the Court of the Chinese Emperors. Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan: C.E. Tuttle Co., 1971. Bronstein, Leo. Space in Persian Painting. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Pub, 1994. Chen, Paochen. ‘Time and Space in Chinese Narrative Paintings’, in Junjie Huang and Erik Zürcher (eds), Time and Space in Chinese Culture. Leiden: Brill, 1995. Cho, Min Yong. How Land Came into the Picture: Rendering History in the Fourteenthcentury Jami al-Tawarikh. PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2008. Chung, Anita. Drawing Boundaries: Architectural Images in Qing China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004. de Duve, Thierry and Brian Holmes. ‘How Manet's “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” Is Constructed’, Critical Inquiry 25: 1 (Autumn 1998): 136–68. de Duve, Thierry and Brian Holmes. ‘Intentionality and Art Historical Methodology: A Case Study’, nonsite​.o​rg no. 6 (1 July 2012). Ettinghausen, Richard. ‘World Awareness and Human Relationships in Iranian Painting’, in Highlights of Persian Art. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979.

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Fong, Wen C. ‘Toward a Structural Analysis of Chinese Landscape Painting’, Art Journal 28: 4 (Summer 1969): 388–97. Fong, Wen C. Between Two Cultures: Late-Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Chinese Paintings from the Robert H. Ellsworth Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2001. García-Salgado, Tomás. ‘The Perspective of Leonardo’s Last Supper’ e-journal, 3 (2005): 1–19. Gedo, Mary Mathews. Looking at Art from the Inside Out: The Psychoiconographic Approach to Modern Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. González, Carmen P. ‘Arrangement of Space’, in Local Portraiture: Through the Lens of the 19th Century Iranian Photographers. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2012. Gonzalez, Valerie. Aesthetic Hybridity in Mughal Painting, 1526–1658. London: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2015. Graves, Margaret. ‘Inside and Outside, Picture and Page: The Architectural Spaces of Miniature Painting’, in Margaret S. Graves and Benoît Junot (eds), Architecture in Islamic Arts: Treasures of the Aga Khan Museum. Geneva: Aga Khan Trust for Culture, 2012. Hung, Wu. The Double Screen: Medium and Representation in Chinese Painting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta. Toward a Geography of Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Khoo, Wai L., Tadeusz Jordan, David G. Stork and Zhigang Zhu. ‘Reconstruction of a Three-Dimensional Tableau from a Single Realist Painting’. Conference Paper for Virtual Systems and Multimedia, 2009. VSMM '09. 15th. 9–14. Koch, Ebba. ‘The Hierarchical Principles of Shah-Jahani Painting’, in Mughal Art and Imperial Ideology. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001. Krikke, Jan. The Corridor of Space: China, Modernists, and the Cybernetic Century. Proglen Trading Co., Ltd., 2017. Losty, Jeremiah P. ‘Towards a New Naturalism: Portraiture in Murshidabad and Avadh 1750–80’, in B. Schmitz (ed.), After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Bombay: Marg, 2002. Manovitch, Lev. ‘Data Science and Computational Art History’, International Journal for Digital Art History (2015): 13–35. March, Benjamin. ‘A Note on Perspective in Chinese Painting’, The China Journal VII: 2: 69–72. Mindell, David P. ‘The Tree of Life: Metaphor, Model, and Heuristic Device’, Systematic Biology 62: 3 (1 May 2013): 479–89. Minnisale, Gregory. ‘The Synthesis of European and Mughal Art in the Emperor Akbar’s Khamsa of Nizami’, asianart​.c​om (2000). http://www​.asianart​.com​/articles​/ minissale/. Needham, Joseph. Science and Civilization in China Vol IV.3.28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965.

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Park, Malcolm. Ambiguity, and the Engagement of Spatial Illusion within the Surface of Manet’s Paintings. PhD diss., UNSW, Sydney, 2001. Park, Malcolm. ‘The Spatial Ambiguity of Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère’, unpublished essay. 2012. http://malcolmpark​-arthistorian​.com​/admin​/images​/ dissertation​_pdf​/2​/3​/BAR​%20TEXT​%20and​%20NOTES​%20amended​%202016​.07​ .5​.pdf. Phillips, Peter C. B. ‘Laws and Limits of Econometric Models’, COWLES FOUNDATION DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 1397, 2002. Rampley, Matthew. The Vienna School of Art History: Empire and the Politics of Scholarship, 1847–1918. Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2013. Robinson, B. W. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Persian Paintings in the Bodleian Library. Oxford : Clarendon, 1957. Roxburgh, David J. ‘Micrographia: Toward a Visual Logic of Persianate Painting’, RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 43 (Spring, 2003): 12–30. Schlesier, Lothar. ‘Eastern Perspective – Multi Projection Images’. Internship thesis, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, 2004. Sharma, Yuthika. ‘Miniatures to Monuments: Picturing Shah Alam’s Delhi’, in Alka Patel and Karen Leonard (eds), Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Snyder, Joel and Ted Cohen. ‘Reflexions on “Las Meninas”: Paradox Lost’, Critical Inquiry 7: 2 (Winter, 1980): 429–47. Sugimura, Toh. The Encounter of Persia and China: Research into Cultural Contacts Based on Fifteenth Century Persian Pictorial Materials. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 1986. Sugimura, Toh. ‘CHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS xii. Mutual Influences in Painting’, [1991, revised 2011] in Encyclopaedia Iranica, V/5 (218): 458–60. Sullivan, Michael. An Introduction to Chinese Art. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960. Tai, C. and N. S. Chu. ‘Animating Chinese Landscape Paintings and Panorama Using Multi-Perspective Modeling’, Computer Graphics International Conference (CGI), Hong Kong, China, 2001. Van Dyke, Paul A. and Maria Kar-wing Mok. Images of the Canton Factories 1760–1822: Reading History in Art. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2015. Watt, James C. Y. ‘A Note on Artistic Exchanges in the Mongol Empire’, in Linda Komaroff and Stefano Carboni (eds), The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256–1353. New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002. Welch, Stuart Cary. Room for Wonder: Indian Painting during the British Period, 1760–1880. New York: American Federation of Arts, 1978. Welch, Stuart Cary. India: Art and Culture 1300–1900. Munich: Prestel, repr. 1999.

7

Private and public in vernacular Space The abandoned Nubian villages of Bîga Bernadeta Schäfer, Fatma Keshk and Olga Zenker

There is nothing sacred, nothing secret, nothing personally confidential or of importance that should be protected; obviously, the matter is solely to extract as many areas and spaces of the town as possible from the responsibility and competence of the public realm.1

Introduction The island of Bîga2 belongs to the southern part of the first cataract of the Nile, lying entrapped in the basin between the two Aswân Dams, along with two other islands, El-Hisha and ʿAuwâd, both of which are still inhabited, while Bîga was abandoned about thirty years ago. On the western bank of the basin lies the still inhabited village of Tingâr; on the eastern bank Shallâl; and to the south of it, the abandoned villages of Bâb and Bugaa. To the north of Bîga lies the island Agilkia, home to the translocated temples of Philae since the 1970s (Figure 7.1). The entire area around Aswân represents the northern offshoots of the once complexly structured Nubian settlement area that originally comprised about forty-two village districts and extended for about 320 kilometres south from the Aswân Dam till the Sudanese border. The villages, called nahiya or ʿomadeya, that spread occasionally on both sides of the river and stretched for between 10 and 30 kilometres were divided into more than 500 hamlets, called nagʿ.3 Both settlements on Bîga belonged to the nahiya of Shallâl. The Nubian ethnic group is characterized by its distinctive language that does not belong to the Semitic language group but to the Eastern Sudan

Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture

Aswan

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DAM Nile Shash

BIGGE Balli

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Dongolawi

Figure 7.1  The basin between the two Aswân Dams and the location of the island of Bîga in the northern part of Old Nubia. O. Zenker 2015.

languages.4 The Egyptian part of Nubia can be divided, according to the languages spoken there, into three zones: the Kenuzi area that also comprises Bîga, where Kenzi is spoken; Wadi El-Arab located to the south of the Kenuzi area, where Arabic is spoken; and the Fedija5 area, from the Wadi El-Arab to the Sudanese frontier, where a language called Fedija, Mahasi or Nobiin is spoken. The history of the Nubian minority in Egypt during the twentieth century was determined by the erection and subsequent heightenings of the Aswân Dam. Initially intended to control the water supply for the cotton plantations, it resulted in the complete destruction of the Nubian settlement area. Between 1898 and 1902, the first dam (the Old Dam) was erected, raising the waters of the Nile more than 20 metres. Soon afterwards, from 1907 to 1912, the dam was heightened by 7 metres. After the second heightening (about 9 m), between 1929 and 1934, the Egyptian part of Nubia became inundated far into the Fedija area. The High Dam of Aswân, in the end, meant the accumulation of a permanent reservoir stretching more than 600 kilometres to the south from Aswân into the Sudan.

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The succession of the dams led to the gradual submersion of the lands and threatened the livelihood of the Nubian ethnic group. The villages and houses that had been destroyed after each heightening were rebuilt each time on higher ground. The date plantations and the agricultural land, once the main source of income, were flooded. Before the erection of the Old Dam, agriculture could still support the Nubian population; afterwards, the increasing labour migration of the men became a necessity. The building of the High Dam meant the complete erasure of Old Nubia. The vast majority of the villages were inundated; the inhabitants resettled between October 1963 and June 1964 in ‘New Nubia’, an area close to Kom Ombo, north of Aswân, in new uniform houses that had nothing in common with the traditional architecture of the old villages. The traditional vernacular architecture of Nubia has not enjoyed great scientific interest, and few works have been published on the topic, the most comprehensive being Nubian Architecture by Omar El Hakim.6 The author depicts the schemes of the traditional Nubian houses that he documented in the early 1960s as well as the topic of the Nubian resettlement. Before El Hakim, Horst Jaritz,7 Hermann Junker8 and Hassan Fathy9 published some notes on Nubian architecture. Fathy, who was fascinated by the Nubian masons’ superior mastery of mudbrick, was inspired by Nubian vernacular architecture in his designs – an idea that influences architectural design in Egypt and beyond to this day. The spatial organization of a Nubian settlement as a frame of social interaction of the village community, however, has never been the subject of research. This chapter aims to shed some light on the permeability of spatial borders in the context of private and public realms, manifested by the inclusion and exclusion of certain actions or groups in the interior and exterior spaces of a Nubian village. For the purpose of this chapter, ‘public’ and ‘private’ shall be considered primarily in their spatial, formal dimension. Eugen Wirth, who studied Middle Eastern and North African towns for forty years, defines the public realm in its spatial dimension as an area of unlimited accessibility to everyone, where social intercourse can be held without any restrictions on the background of the actors.10 More difficult to define is the private realm, since it knows many gradations and nuances. Wirth suggests characterizing it in a formal, not a contentual, way: ‘It is not important what is protected, but that some areas are actually restricted.’ The restrictions that mean the exclusion of some groups mean the inclusion of selected others. These different groups can be characterized by social cohesion

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established by any common concerns of economical or emotional kind they aim to realize within their limited, local areas of competence.11 The public and private realms of rural settlements develop on a different scale than is the case in towns, but they can still be reflected upon using similar models to those used for towns. Following the argumentation of Stefano Bianca, ‘village and town are not entirely dissolved worlds, but various manifestations of one culture of life’.12 The two settlements on Bîga are exceptionally well suited for the study of the public and private realms and their correlation with inside and outside space in a rural environment. After the flooding of Lake Nasser, only the few villages north to the Dam in the vicinity of Aswân were spared the fate of Old Nubia. They show two general types of fabric: dense construction like on Elephantine and Sehīl Islands or in West Aswân and West Sehīl, which gives the settlements an explicitly urban character, as opposed to loosely scattered construction as is the case of the villages on El-Hisha, ʿAuwâd and Bîga. Among the latter, the two settlements on Bîga are exceptional. The oldest parts of their fabric originate from the time between 1912 and 1932; both settlements were abandoned about thirty years ago. While the other ‘living’ villages undergo constant, natural changes, the two villages of Bîga preserved a unique treasure of finds that allows insights into the lost way of life of Old Nubia.13 They represent not only a unique source for investigating the traditional Nubian architecture and settlement structure in the area of Aswân, but they are also predestined to be investigated through a combined architectonical, ethnological and ethno-archaeological approach.

Living environment of the island No rural settlement should be investigated without looking at it in its entirety: the natural setting, the agricultural land, the structures consisting of dwellings and farm buildings, and commonly used service facilities in the form of buildings and open spaces. The living space of the inhabitants of the two villages on Bîga was clearly determined by the shoreline of the island. After the erection of the Old Dam of Aswân in 1902, the island shrunk considerably, the part of the land that was lost having been the most decisive for the subsistence of the inhabitants. The entire plain, fertile land and the areas suitable for building the traditionally spacious houses were gone. With this severe change of the environment, the settlement structure and architecture also had to change. The original four hamlets were reduced to two. The building fabric preserved on Bîga until today

Private and Public in Vernacular Space Shore before 1902 Shore1902-1912 is 4 - 6 m lower than today, the exact position could not be reconstructed

189

Philae

0

100 m

N

Shore 1912-1933 Shore 1933-1970 (122 m) Shore since 1970 (115 m) Pathways Vegetation today

Military Station Mud brick building

BALLE Football Field

Temple

Waterplace Cemetery I Fields

Fields

Threshing floor Football Field

BIGGE

Fields Cemetery II Football Field

Island Bigge Datum: 12.02.2016 M: 1 : 2500 Lagebezugssystem: UTM Zone 36 (WGS84) Kartenvermessung: DFG Projekt Bigge, Christian Hartlreiter und Doris Schäffler, 2015. Bearbeitet und erweitert: Olga Zenker

Figure 7.2 Topographic map of the island Bîga. C. Hartl-Reiter, D. Schäffler, O. Zenker, 2016.

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is a result of repeated destruction (1902, 1912, 1934) and rebuilding in reduced form, using the scarcely available space on the rocky slopes in the best possible way. Altogether, twenty-nine homesteads and twenty-two service buildings are clustered in the two settlements today. The larger hamlet, called Bîga as the island itself, counting twenty-one houses, stretches across the central part of the island on its eastern side, while the smaller one, Balle, with its eight homesteads lies in the north-west. Some walled storage spaces and animal enclosures scattered all over the island complement the stock of structures. Paths and tracks, open spaces between the houses, agricultural land, threshing spots, cemeteries and other commonly used areas were spread over the entire island and provided the spatial frame of life for the small, isolated community of its inhabitants (Figure 7.2). The inhabitants of the island practised three strategies of appropriation of space: one was the erection of conventional walls and the second the transformation of the natural landscape through minimal intervention, both solely using local materials. Finally, pure natural spaces were turned into frames of cultural action simply through use. As a consequence, the decisive spatial principle throughout the island became the organic, mutual intertwining of natural and man-made structures. This principle dissolves the common concept of the contradiction between architecture and nature – the landscape metamorphoses into architecture and this very architecture seems to be an inevitable consequence of the environment. This effect is emphasized by the reduced and uniform chromaticity of the rocks and buildings. Due to the seemingly natural penetration of man-made elements by topographical formations, it is not always possible to clearly differentiate a house from its environment.

The villages The majority of the houses in Bîga and Balle were built after 1935, when the second elevation of the Old Dam was realized. All of these buildings were designed and constructed by the inhabitants themselves, within a short period of time, the spatial arrangement of the villages was highly adapted to the environmental restrictions, and at the same time influenced by traditional definition of living space. When building their new houses, the inhabitants tried to deal with the difficult setting of the rocky mountain, using the materials they could find in the surrounding environment. Only a few of the buildings in the two settlements could be constructed on level ground. Most of the structures

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in both of the villages stand on steep slopes and need artificial substructures to cope with the difficult topography. Stairs, platforms, retaining walls and terraces help to conquer the significant level differences between the single areas of the village and inside the individual houses. These supporting structures are not only essential for the very existence of the architecture on the island, but they also constitute the linkage with the topography and define the organic character of the settlements and houses. In addition, the spaces between natural rocks and hills were adapted adding just the minimum of supplementary structures to transform the natural setting into a useful space. The homesteads of the village of Bîga are concentrated around the feet of the rock formation that ascends from the middle of the village; the scarce, walled agricultural areas lay to the north of the settlement. In spite of the rather modest size of the village, about 180 metres from north to south and about 130 metres from west to east, it can be seen in its entirety only from the very top of the central rock formation (Figure 7.3). The great difference in altitude (about 22 m between the highest and the lowest house) and the rock formation in the middle impede sight-lines between the individual parts of the settlement. Besides the private houses, the village also consists of public facilities: a mosque, a village guest house (khaima) and a toilet house for the men and another for the women (see Figure 7.7). The village does

Figure 7.3  Overview of the village of Bîga. M. Kačičnik, 2016.

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not have a functional centre; the apparent square in front of the mosque (house BG 08) should not be misinterpreted as an intentionally created public space, since it is located in one of the lowest spots of the settlement, at the back of an animal enclosure, and most importantly, because the house was turned into a mosque only after its former inhabitants abandoned it. The smaller village of Balle is located on a steep slope facing north in the north-western part of the island, in about five minutes walking distance from the village of Bîga. Including all structures, the area of the village is about 80 by 80 metres, and the difference in altitude is 10 metres. All houses are arranged around one central building BA 04 and oriented towards the middle of the village, creating the impression of a quite dense and almost urban settlement.  With a maximum population of thirty people, including children, the community of Balle was small and everybody was related to each other somehow. The eight residential buildings were inhabited by eight families belonging to just two lineages. Even if the number of houses was congruent to the number of nuclear families, the buildings cannot be seen as a reflection of the social distribution within the village. Some rooms of separate buildings were used by the same nuclear family, and single rooms of buildings were used by members of different families. In Balle, there are no public facilities such as the mosque or village guest house we find in Bîga. Instead there is a large open space in the north of the village which was used as a public terrace or meeting place for the whole community. There are two reasons for the lack of public facilities: the small number of inhabitants and the dense layout of the village, the latter of which necessitated efficient use of the space available. Every place in between

Figure 7.4  Overview of the village of Balle. M. Kačičnik, 2016.

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the houses is somehow related to one or more adjoining buildings, used as an extension of the houses. The spatial distribution in the village of Balle is defined by an accumulation of absolutely closed and roofed rooms and partially unroofed courtyards surrounded by more or less high walls, creating building units which are connected by a complex network of open spaces. Looking at the layout of the villages, there are two main differences between Bîga and Balle: the density and the size of the houses. Although the houses in Balle are very close to each other and more or less rectangular, every building unit is detached. In Bîga, there are large buildings with several living units fixed together in a clustered structure. In Balle, the houses are very small with a maximum of four rooms including the courtyard. Compared with the largest house in Bîga (BG 30), which consists of more than twenty-five rooms, the whole village of Balle is just slightly larger than one single house in Bîga. The fact that Balle can be considered a village and not just a large house is not related to its size but to the definition and meaning given it by the inhabitants and to the entire spatial setting.

Analysing space: Layout, use, privacy In general, the settlement structure on Bîga could be described as a system of merged and intertwined open spaces that represent diverse degrees of privacy depending on their structure, accessibility, use and visual permeability. For the purpose of this research, ‘open spaces’ are defined as spaces which are totally or partially unroofed or as spaces having a roof and less than four walls. For example, a roofed space with only two walls and no walls on the other sides is also considered an open space. The open spaces on the island of Bîga can be defined according to two main levels of information following the framework of archaeological spatial analysis defined by Roland Fletcher.14 The ‘micro level’ encompasses the spaces between the structures of a given settlement. A structure here means any kind of ‘constructed or selected structures where human activity might have taken place in the past, including natural shelters, rooms, houses, graves, granaries or shrines’.15 The ‘semi-micro level’ comprises the spaces within the whole area of the living village. Thus, the open spaces assignable to single houses and open shared spaces assignable to more than one house both belong to the ‘micro level’, and the open spaces that cannot be assigned directly to any house belong to the ‘semi-micro level’. Studying spaces in the scope of these levels of spatial analysis

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helps to evaluate the degrees of privacy of the inside and the outside domestic areas as well. In this context, the particular significance of the open spaces is obvious due to their omnipresence. Open spaces located outside the walls of the houses constitute the interior space of the village. Open spaces inside of the houses have a substantial share in their area: the proportion of walled and completely covered spaces in the houses is very low; the houses on the island consist mainly of open spaces (see Figures 7.5 and 7.6). Categorizing spaces as being ‘private’ or ‘public’ depends further on the interpretation of their layout, their location within the house and the information available about their possible functions.16 The categories of spaces discussed further and listed in Tables 7.1 and 7.2 have been defined based on the careful analysis of both settlements and all of the houses on Bîga. These observations were supported by the study of the literature available on Nubian architecture and comparative surveys in the villages in the vicinity of Aswân: two villages on Elephantine, the villages of Sehīl Island, Tingâr, West Aswân, West Sehīl and the two villages on El-Hisha. Interviews with previous inhabitants of Bîga proved indispensable, as they allowed for accurate interpretations that would not have been possible with information gained otherwise, since in many cases, there is no evidence of equipment. The spaces in both of the villages were analysed according to the categories of layout, function, location, accessibility and the degree of privacy resulting from these categories. The maps in Figures 7.5 to 7.10 illustrate these aspects in both of the villages. As degree one (I) the most public spaces of the village are described, open to the highest number of users. This level has also been assigned to the public buildings of the village (the mosque – house BG 08, the toilet for the women – house BG 02 and the toilet for men – house BG 32). Degree two (II) comprises the half-public access areas in front of the house entrances that do not show material evidence of any other use. These are rarely clearly defined by built structures, in most cases they dissolve seamlessly into the degree one (I) areas. To the degree three (III) belong the terraces in front of the houses, the entrance halls and the guest rooms for the male guests. These are the representative, most public parts of the houses, open to the highest number of persons who are not relatives of the respective family. Degree (IV) ranks subsidiary courtyards, shared baking rooms, kitchens, animal enclosures, stables and storage areas or buildings. These service areas are mostly not protected by any walls or other material limits, being located

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Vault / solid roof Flat roof, sealed / solid roof Flat roof, loose covering Roofing assumed Scale 1:1000

0

10

20

30

40

50 m

Figure 7.5  Distribution of solid and loose roofs in the village of Bîga. B. Schäfer 2016.

outside of the walls of the house. Nevertheless, they can be unequivocally identified as belonging to certain houses. Degree five (V) describes the walled, main courtyards of the houses, degree six (VI) a kind of private courtyards, often spared from the area of the main courtyard, granting more privacy to the inhabitants of the rooms adjusted to it. This type of space can only be found in the bigger houses of Bîga where the available space permits the arrangement of an extra private courtyard. The space in Balle is too limited to allow the existence of this kind of room. Finally, degree seven (VII) means the most

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BA14

BA 13

BA 17

BA 12

BA 15

BA 16

BA 06

BA 10 BA 11 BA 09

BA 05

BA 08

BA 18 BA 02

BA 04

BA 01

BA 07 BA 03 Vault / solid roof Flat roof, sealed / solid roof Flat roof, loose covering Roofing assumed Scale 1:1000

0

10

20

30

40

50 m

Figure 7.6  Distribution of solid and loose roofs in the village of Balle. O. Zenker 2016.

private, walled living spaces and kitchens that can only be approached via the main courtyard or the private courtyard, accessible only for the family inhabiting the house. The concept of the seven degrees of privacy is a possibility to distinguish different types of accessibility, use and architectural form of spaces. The differentiation of the private space is also useful to understand the spatial and social relationships in the layout of the settlements. Eventually, the arrangement

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Table 7.1  Space Functions and Their Distribution in the Houses of Village of Bîga Subsidiary service House Main area/ Private Entrance Guest number courtyard courtyard courtyard Terrace hall room Living Kitchen

BG 09B

X

shared with BG 09A and BG 16

X

X

X

shared with BG 09A and BG 16

X

Animal enclosure

Storage

Gardens

X

X

X

X X

shared with house BG BG 09B 13, shared and BG 16 with 0BG 09B and BG 16 shared with house BG BG 09A 13, shared and BG 16 with BG 09A and BG 16

X

house BG 13, shared with BG 09B and BG 16 house BG 13, shared with BG 09A and BG 16

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(Continued)

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BG 01 X X X X X X X BG 02 house abandoned, lately used as toilet for women of the village BG 03B house abandoned, lately used as subsidiary area by the inhabitants of house BG 01 BG 03A X X X X BG 04 X X X X X X X BG 05A X X X X BG 05B X X X X BG 06 X X X X X X BG 07 X X house shared by the inhabitants of houses BG 05 and BG 06 BG 08 house abandoned, lately used as village mosque BG 09A X shared with X X X shared BG 09B with BG and BG 16 09B and BG 16

Baking room

BG 20 BG 21A BG 21B BG 21C BG 21D BG 22 BG 23 BG 27 BG 29 BG 30A BG 30B BG 30C BG 31 BG 33 BG 38

Baking room

Animal enclosure Storage Gardens X X shared with shared with shared BG 09 BG 09 with BG 09

X

X

X X shared with BG 30A shared with BG 29 X

X X

X

X

X

X

X

X

X X

X X

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House number BG 10 BG 16

Subsidiary service Main area/ Private Entrance Guest courtyard courtyard courtyard Terrace hall room Living Kitchen X X X X X X X shared with X X shared with BG 09 BG 09 X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X shared with BG 30A X X X shared with BG 29 X shared with X X haima X X BG 30C X shared with X X X X X BG 30B X X X X X X X X X house abandoned, initial functions of spaces unclear

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Table 7.1  (Continued)

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Table 7.2  Space Functions and Their Distribution in the Houses of Village of Balle.

BA 01

Terrace

Entrance hall

Guest room

x

BA 02 BA 03 BA 04 BA 05

x x x

BA 06

x

BA 07 BA 08

Private courtyard

x x x

house abandoned, used for animals and storage x

Living x

x

x x x

x x x x x

x

x

Kitchen food provi­ sion by BA 03 x x x food provi­ sion by BA 04 food provi­ sion by BA 02 x

Baking room

Animal enclosure

BA 11 BA 10 BA 11 BA 11

x BA 18 x

BA 11

BA 10

Storage

BA 07

x

x

Gardens

x

Private and Public in Vernacular Space

House Main number courtyard

Subsidiary service area/ courtyard

BA 07

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200

Living space

Private courtyard

Terrace

Guestroom

Main courtyard

Subsidiary court / area

Entrance hall

Roofed open space

Shared subsidiary court / area

Kitchen Baking room

Main communication way

Stable

Secondary communication way

Scale 1:1000

0

10

20

30

40

50 m

Figure 7.7  Distribution of functions in the village of Bîga. B. Schäfer 2016.

Private and Public in Vernacular Space BA 13

201

BA 17

BA 12

BA 15

BA 16

BA 06

BA 10 BA 11 BA 09

BA 05

BA 08

BA 18 BA 02

BA 04

BA 01

BA 07 BA 03

Living space

Private courtyard

Terrace

Guestroom

Main courtyard

Subsidiary court / area

Entrance hall

Roofed open space

Shared subsidiary court / area

Kitchen Baking room

Main communication way

Stable

Secondary communication way

Scale 1:1000

0

10

20

30

40

50 m

Figure 7.8  Distribution of functions in the village of Balle. O. Zenker 2016.

of space is flexible, responding to the natural circumstances and the distinct needs of the inhabitants. In some houses (e.g. BG 09) one has to cross almost all degrees from I to VI to reach the most private living rooms (degree VII). But in other houses (e.g. BA 05, BG 23, BA 08) one can directly enter the private room (degree VII) coming from the outside (degree II). In this case the transition from public to the most private is abrupt and only possible because ‘the outside’ is part of the adopted space. In house BA 08 the only way to enter the public guest room (degree III) is to cross the ‘dirty’ space in front of the kitchen (degree IV) passing the stables and storage area in the courtyard (degree V). These parts are usually not accessible for guests. Following, the degrees of privacy shall be discussed in regard to the factors determining them: layout, roofing, location and function in the village and in the individual houses.

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I II

V

III

VI

IV

VII

Scale 1:1000

0

10

20

30

40

50 m

Figure 7.9  Degrees of privacy in the village of Bîga. B. Schäfer 2016.

Negative space: Streets, alleys and space distribution Figure 7.7 shows the distribution of open spaces and alleys within the village of Bîga, the connections between the various parts of the village and the accessibility of the houses to the ‘public’ areas and neighbouring houses. These elements belong to the most public realm of the village structure and are thus classified as

Private and Public in Vernacular Space

BA 13

203

BA 17

BA 12

BA 15

BA 16

BA 06

BA 10 BA 11 BA 09

BA 05

BA 08

BA 18 BA 02

BA 04

BA 01

BA 07 BA 03 I II

V

III

VI

IV

VII

Scale 1:1000

0

10

20

30

40

50 m

Figure 7.10  Degrees of privacy in the village of Balle. O. Zenker 2016.

the lowest degree of privacy (I). In Balle, it is not possible to observe this degree of privacy. All types of public building are absent and what seems to be an open space inside of the village is always connected to a house so that it is no genuine public space at all. The large terrace to the north of Balle could be considered its most public space. But even this place is not accessible to everybody since it has a clear entrance in the form of a narrow staircase marking the transition between the ‘outside’ and the village proper. 

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Figure 7.11  The terrace to the north of Balle. O. Zenker, 2016.

Studying the ‘streets’ and alleys helps to understand the ways inhabitants moved around in the village and how the various areas of the village are connected to each other through the network of the ‘streets’. It is also a way to understand village life outside of the houses, a way of contextualizing the ‘streets’ as a space element. ‘The street geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers.’17 The connections inside of the village of Bîga are established by the pathways and open public spaces between the structures. It would not be right to understand these pathways in our modern urban sense of ‘streets’, since they rather resemble oriented open spaces canalizing the movement between the various parts of the village. Moreover, these pathways were not planned before the houses were built. The village of Bîga grew organically without prior planning but only by respecting and following the natural hilly landscape. As Omar El Hakim noticed in the 1960s in Old Nubia, the dwellings were usually built in an inland extension of the previously inundated, older settlements, respecting the natural contours of the land.18 The pathways of Bîga follow the same principle: they consistently track the contour lines as did the people who used to live and move around on the island. Thus, the ‘streets’ mirror the routes of physical movement within the settlements. The larger pathways in the village of Bîga mostly have a north-south orientation, only few of them leading from east to west. The network

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interlinking the dwellings and open spaces is complemented by a multitude of small alleyways with no predominant orientation. In contrast to the pathways in Bîga, which reflect the natural contour lines, the pathways in Balle are almost rectangular and cross the hill in the steepest direction. When Balle was built, the pathways had to be planned or at least respected during building to ensure smooth connections in the difficult topography of the hill. In this small hamlet, it is possible to notice a highly consciously designed circulation system that consists of stairs, terraces and plateaus creating additional spaces in front of and beside the houses. Some pathways are so narrow that only one person can walk at a time, and at some points, a narrow stair offers the only possibility to bypass the fast-rising topography. Almost all private terraces are circulation areas for inhabitants of other houses, so that a separation of private open spaces and more public transition spaces is not possible. This overlaying system of informal pathways and private terraces is a result of the dense village layout and the social bonds between the inhabitants. The open ‘public’ spaces are the open spaces located in between the buildings of the village, which cannot be assigned to specific private houses but to the whole community and might have been used as meeting points or for interacting purposes, festivals and so on. In the village of Bîga, these open public spaces only exist where the gaps between the buildings are wide enough. As the village of Balle is too densely organized, these open spaces are absent. In Bîga they are concentrated in the south-eastern part of the village, between houses BG 10, BG 21 and BG 22, and between houses BG 10, BG 20, BG 21 and BG 30. In the centre, the space between houses BG 20 and BG 30 as well as the two spaces to the south and east of house BG 08 could also be regarded as open public spaces. All of these spaces are also assigned the lowest degree of privacy (I).

Private by commitment: Spaces clearly assignable to single houses and shared spaces Getting closer to the entrances of the houses, the quality of the open space changes. Seamlessly, it merges into the half-public area in front of the main entrance and sometimes also the side entrance. These areas are assigned the second degree of privacy (II), as they are not used by passers-by but only by those intending to approach a house (even if not to enter), and no other obvious function could be estimated.

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Terraces, entrance halls and guest rooms for males called mandara serve as a barrier between the public outside world and the privacy of a house. The male guests will not step further than these spaces, and the women of the house will not enter them while they are occupied by guests. This transition zone is ranked degree III.  All of the spaces described below are assigned degree of privacy IV. These are the spaces which can be assigned directly to individual houses, though this does not mean that they have to be ‘inside’ the borders of the house walls. They can also be spread across individual structures while at the same time belonging to one house, in that they are used only by the family residing in the respective house and are not intended for public use. This can be noticed in many of the houses in the village of Bîga, especially concerning the stables, animal enclosures or storage areas (BG 01, BG 06, BG 09, BG 16, BG 21, BG 30 and BG 33). Shared spaces define those open spaces which are found in the direct vicinity of individual houses, in most cases located between two or three houses, and the use of which is shared by the families of the surrounding houses. We could notice some everyday equipment scattered in these spaces, which gives the impression that they functioned as annex courtyards used for domestic activities and shared by neighbouring houses. In some cases, shared spaces also included the areas for keeping animals. This corresponds to the

Figure 7.12  Northern terrace of the house BG 06 in the village of Bîga, located in front of the entrance hall and guest room for men. M. Kačičnik 2016.

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observations made by El Hakim in Old Nubia in the 1960s.19 The examples of these shared spaces in Bîga are located between houses BG 09, BG 13 and BG 16; to the south of BG 30C and BG 30B; and between houses BG 29 and BG 27. In Balle, this kind of shared domestic space can be best observed in case of the baking units. In the village only two ovens were constructed – one for each family. The people living in the houses BA 01, BA 03 and BA 08 – all members of one large family – shared one oven, which is located in the north of the village (structure BA 10). The other large family distributed through the houses BA 02, BA 04, BA 05 and BA 06 used the oven inside house BA 11. Both ovens are located near the community terrace in the north of the village, confirming the terrace’s public character.  Each family had a piece of fertile land on the riverbank to support the provision with food. A direct spatial connection between the house and the field was not required: many agricultural areas are spread out over the whole island. Just one house in Balle (BA 02) is connected directly to the corresponding garden located on a large terrace in front of the house. The only entrance to this garden leads through the side entrance of the house. A complex water management system was implemented using two šādūfs20 and a channel system. The builder put much effort into constructing the massive retaining wall and preparing the fertile land, preferring to invest a great deal of work into building the garden in front of the house, rather than walking far every day to take care of his crops. In the village of Bîga, there are some remains of small gardens annexed to houses (house BG 33) or close to them (structure BG 19 next to house BG 21). Structures like these were documented in other Nubian villages as well, according to Mamdouh Sakr small rectangular garden precedes the dwellings in West Sehīl.21 The actual agricultural land belonging to the village stretched to the north of the settlement.  All of the subsidiary service areas are located on the southern or western sides of the housing complexes (the only exception being house BG 33 with

Figure 7.13  Shared subsidiary area between the houses BG 09 and BG 16 in the village of Bîga. B. Schäfer 2016.

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the subsidiary area on the slope to the north of the house), always outside the walls of the houses. Their location and open layout underline the necessity of investigating rural dwellings and settlements in a wider spatial context, not solely considering the conventional concept of a Nubian or Islamic house as an entity held together by the impenetrable courtyard wall. The ‘dirty’ spaces of subsidiary areas provide many clues about the course of everyday life in the houses and settlements. The house entrances represent a peculiar case. Most of the houses documented in Bîga had two entrances on two different sides: the main, representative entrance on the northern side of the house that marked the transition from the space graded two (II) to the space graded three (III) and a side entrance on any other side. As was pointed out by the local people, the side entrance was mostly used by the women of the houses22 so that they could move freely in privacy without being noticed by (mainly male) guests. This information was also confirmed by El Hakim.23 The side entrance usually gave direct access to one of the inner courtyards of the house. The courtyards are mostly unroofed but at the same time, their privacy is well kept.24 In this case the side entrance is located between two spaces ranked degree four (IV) and five (V). One significant aspect of Balle is that only five of eight houses offer an inner courtyard. In three houses, this type of space does not exist. Where the courtyard is absent, the

Figure 7.14  Garden of the house BA 02 in the village of Balle. O. Zenker 2016.

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main entrance is absent too. In these cases, there is no specific place to enter the house; each room is accessible directly from the outside, so that it is impossible to define the exact limit of the house. In the case of BA 05 and BA 08, the living rooms25 are accessible from different sides, creating a long route from one room to the other. The access to the living rooms is only possible through public space; the private and protected space for women and the daily life of the family is absent. ‘Inside’ and ‘outside’ take on a new meaning, which manifests itself in the change of use of the open spaces adjacent to private rooms – only possible if the community is so small and so closely related that this kind of privacy is not necessary.

Houses and courtyards: Inside and outside In general, all houses in the village of Bîga are oriented to the north,26 which means that the main entrance to all of the houses and the entrances to the rooms inside of the houses are located on their northern side, while the roofed living spaces lie to the south or sometimes to the west. In Balle, the main entrances of the houses are oriented towards the centre of the village, while the guest rooms are oriented to the north. The orientation of the living rooms differs in all houses. There are living rooms oriented to the north, south, east and west without any restriction or correlation. The strong connection towards the centre of the village can only be explained by the social structure: the central house BA 04 is the oldest part and the home of the oldest members of both families. In front of all the houses, a front yard is set up, either at ground level or on a terrace. All houses are designed to have a single storey; however, the steep topography made it necessary to erect them on many levels that need to be connected by stairs and terraces. Beside the entrance doors, the living spaces have only spare ventilation openings in the higher areas of the northern and southern wall that hardly allow the daylight to penetrate the inside. Even though almost all functions could be accommodated in only one room, we can define many strongly differentiated spatial elements and functional areas: entrance halls, main courtyards, guest rooms, living rooms, kitchens, baking rooms, terraces, mastabas, subsidiary areas/courts, stables, animal enclosures and storages areas. There are houses in Bîga that have only a few of these elements, and there are also buildings with some rooms of one kind while other functional entities are completely absent.

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According to María Correas-Amador, the term ‘courtyard house’ is being used to identify any house with an open unroofed space no matter of its exact position in the house plan and no matter from which time period the house originates.27 The courtyard in Nubia is the vital part of the house and most of the houses on Bîga can be called ‘courtyard houses’. However, in spite of the declared importance of the courtyard, the simplest ground plan of a house found on the island of Bîga consists of only one space that had to comprise all of the functions of daily life. This single-space house can be accompanied by a flat piece of ground in front of the entrance, a terrace or a small walled courtyard. According to information given by the former inhabitants of the island, this kind of simple house was the usual form in the past. The architectural analysis of the individual houses proved the truth of this statement. Only with time did these simple houses develop into sometimes very complex structures. The ideal, minimal type of house seems to consist of three spaces: two rooms arranged in parallel in the south accompanied by a courtyard in the north (house BG 23). This group of three can be found in many houses in Bîga and Balle (e.g. BG 10, BG 23, BA 06), sometimes assembled into a multiple-family dwelling (e.g. BG 21A, BG 21B, BG 21D). The courtyards can be divided into four main types: the entrance halls28 (degree of privacy III), the central/main courts (degree of privacy V), the private courts (degree of privacy VI) and the subsidiary areas/courts (degree of privacy IV). This categorization is based mainly on the size and location of the courts in the house, while their actual use is multifaceted. The entrance hall is located right after the main entrance, giving access to the male guest room and other inner parts of the house. These, in fact, act as a passage area and buffer zone between the outside and the inside. Most of these spaces were covered with loose roof constructions, in some of them we did not find any evidence of roofing, and in houses BG 01 and BG 04 in Bîga, the entrance hall is partially vaulted. This kind of spectacular covering can also be observed in older houses in other villages in the Aswân area. All of the entrance halls have a space for keeping drinking water and were also used for sitting with the guests.  The main courtyards are rarely located in the geometrical centre of the house: in the village of Bîga this is only the case in house BG 04, where the central courtyard is surrounded by other rooms. In all the other houses, it is invariably located to the north of the living spaces and at least one wall of the courtyard serves as a minimal border to the outside. In Balle, the courtyards are located in front of the living rooms, but as the latter are oriented towards

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the centre of the village, the courtyards also change their position according to the entrances of the rooms. These courts are the largest in size; their area is often divided by terraces or thresholds into smaller chunks of space. In all of the houses, at least a small area of the main courtyard was covered by a light, loose roof of palm leaves and branches, providing shade over the area where water was kept so that some of the domestic tasks could be carried out under the protection of the roof.  The main courtyard was ‘the heart’ of the house, where not only many of the domestic activities took place but which also served as the connecting space giving access to all the rooms. In the village of Bîga, it is usually the place where most of the furniture and household equipment left behind is found. The central courtyards served as the main place for the women to prepare food, grind the grains needed to make the bread and keep the jars of drinking water in the shade.

Figure 7.15 Two entrance halls of the house BG 04 in the village of Bîga. Left: partially vaulted entrance in the older part of the house. F. Keshk 2016. Right: detail of the second, today unroofed entrance hall with space for water jars. Originally, this entrance hall was most probably provided with a loose roofing providing shade for the water vessels. M. Kačičnik 2016.

Figure 7.16  The inner, private courtyard of the house BG 06 in the village of Bîga. Left: overview of the entire house from east; main courtyard in the centre. M. Kačičnik 2016. Right: inside of the main courtyard. F. Keshk 2016.

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The central court was also the dining space for the family of the house, while the guests were served in the guest room. On the other hand, these courtyards could also be used as semi-public spaces, where those guests, which were relatives of the family, could gather while visiting the house in order to maintain the privacy of the inner roofed rooms. During hot summer nights, central courts had a very specific function as a sleeping space for the women of the house, while the men could sleep on the outside terrace, thus maintaining the privacy of the women within the walls of the house. Although the courtyards are a very important part of a Nubian house, there is no formal restriction of scale, size or proportion. Some courtyards are rectangular; others consist solely of the negative space left between the private rooms. Some are smaller than the area of closed rooms as we can see in BA 04 and some much larger (BA 02). The formal parameters are not fixed, contrary to the private rooms, which are always rectangular in a relation of about 1:1.4. The private courts are found inside the houses, often separated from the area of the main court. They are considerably smaller than the main court and are located in front of the inside roofed rooms that are usually the living rooms and kitchens. They constitute an area of passage or a buffer zone between the main court and the inside rooms. According to the information gained from the former inhabitants of the island, these courts were built when one of the daughters of the family married and was supposed to live with her family in the same house.29 Hence, the smaller courts were installed to offer a private open space in front of the room of the newly married couple. In Balle, there are no private courtyards at all. One reason could be that the houses are too small to divide the central courtyard into two or even three parts. Instead of sectioning off an inner part of the house for a married daughter, the inhabitants of Balle had to build a new building beside the existing house. The limited space forced them to build the new houses as small as possible and without any service rooms like kitchen or stables, as we can see in the houses BA 01, BA 05 and BA 06. The daughters still living in their parents’ houses could continue using the facilities there. Most of the houses have two or more courtyards: the representative entrance hall, the main courtyard for domestic activities and private courts for the married children. The subsidiary area was usually used for the rougher, ‘dirtier’ work and for domestic cattle (mainly goats and sheep, cows being extremely rare) in the aim of keeping the main courtyard clean to be used for sitting, chatting and other family activities.30  

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Excursus: Ethno-archaeological approach – open spaces in Ancient Egypt According to Demetra Papaconstantinou, thanks to its diversity, spatial data in archaeology is an excellent model for testing some anthropological approaches and vice versa.31 The villages of Bîga represent an excellent example of a spatial setting, as it is often being found by archaeologists: abandoned, partially or totally ruined structures use of which can only be estimated by the analysis of their layout and construction, as well as of the equipment of often unclear function scattered around. The case of Bîga, however, allows in addition to the analysis of material finds also interviewing the former residents to clarify the intangible dimension of spatial and functional relations. Ethno-archaeological methods of research have confirmed some continuous traditions which are still persistent in the domestic architecture of modern and contemporary Egyptian villages and which have their roots in Ancient Egypt.32 Quoting one of the pioneer archaeologists and ethnologists, Susan Kent, ‘[e] thno-archaeology here is the formulation and the testing of archaeologically oriented methods, hypotheses, models, and theories with ethnographic data, ethno-archaeology is deemed the most appropriate and productive avenue at this point in our knowledge of how and why people use space and its manifestations in the archaeological record’.33 Mark Grahame values ethnoarchaeology as ‘the drama example’, meaning its ability to let us imagine ancient societies through an animated live example.34 In the case of the open spaces of the villages of Bîga, ethno-archaeology is thus a tool to help visualize the activities which might have been practiced in the open spaces of Ancient Egypt. Finding similarities between Ancient Egyptian domestic architecture and modern Nubian vernacular architecture is not at all surprising. The early origins of the pitched brick vaults were found in Ancient Egypt such as at Bayt Khallaf in Miniya, dating to the 3rd Dynasty or in the granaries of the Ramesseum Temple from the 19th Dynasty at Thebes (Luxor).35 A rectangular mudbrick structure that was found outside the entrance of a Middle Kingdom house in Elephantine36 may be compared to the current benches, called mastaba in modern colloquial Egyptian, that are found today, for example near the doors of the houses in present-day Nubian villages of Elephantine. In Bîga, there are two kinds of benches located next to the entrances of the houses: long mudbrick ones, called mastaba, like in houses BG 30C and BG 29, and large wooden benches,

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called dikka or dakka, remains of which are still visible in front of house BG 30B. These kind of benches were noted by Lacovara in reference to Henein as being among the ‘most significant features of the rural dwelling in modern Egypt’.37 The presence of a courtyard in Ancient Egyptian houses has been attested since the Old Kingdom Period.38 Some scholars use the term ‘courtyard house’ to describe houses with the courtyard located in the centre, while for others, the name denotes Ancient Egyptian houses with unroofed space anywhere.39 In the classification of Ancient Egyptian houses, the ‘courtyard’ has been also used as an indication for some house types, such as the ‘courtyard house’ or the ‘divided court house’.40 The courtyard or the unroofed space documented in Ancient Egyptian houses might represent the logical development of open domestic spaces that appeared in earlier periods of Egyptian civilization.41 In some cases, these open spaces seem to have functioned as an ‘outside domestic area’ annexed to some dwellings, for example some fireplaces located outside some of the oval houses in the Predynastic settlement of Maadi.42 These outdoor fireplaces might be the earliest parallels to the fireplaces sometimes found outside the houses in Nubia. Some examples of them are found in the village of Bîga, such as in houses BG 33 and BG 38. In Tell el-Farain (Buto) in the Western Delta, a large open space located in the centre of a residential area has been identified by the excavators as a ‘courtyard’ that might have been used as a common working place.43 It was dated to Naqada IIIC1/2, the early first dynasty of the Ancient Egyptian chronology. This large open space might have developed over time into open shared spaces between houses similar to the ones observed in the village of Bîga between houses BG 09 and BG 16, BG 30C and BG 30B or between BG 29 and BG 27. In later periods of Ancient Egypt, open spaces – such as courtyards, backyards or gardens – are present in the remnants of houses and palaces such as those in the New Kingdom houses of Amarna.44

Conclusion The spatial interplay of inside and outside is never definite; it rather resembles the matryoshka principle: single spatial entities can, in most cases, be considered to be both inside and outside – depending on the position or the point of view of the spectator. This fluent character of the spatial experience corresponds to the social experience of public and private, two realms that constantly overlap,

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intertwine and thus need to be constantly renegotiated and redefined but still never become unambiguous. The limits of both realms are mobile and continuously subject to modification depending on actors and on social and environmental changes. The rules defining them in a rural settlement are as complex as they are in a town. The definition of the different degrees of privacy will always lead to some confusion. In a spatial sense, the only areas that can be considered truly private are those that are completely withdrawn from the view of anyone located outside of them. On Bîga, these comprise solely rooms with solid roofing and four full walls. On the other hand, all of the guest rooms for males have solid roofs but are at the same time the most public parts of the house,45 while the heart of the house, the courtyard, being one of the most intimate parts of the dwelling, is open to sky and air. The visual permeability determined by the existence and character of the roof is essential for understanding the sense of privacy that prevailed in the villages of Bîga. The island, due to its extreme topography, is always ready to reveal surprising sights to a careful observer. In this environment, only a solid roof over four walls grants complete privacy. Thus, the roofs that partially cover the working areas of the courtyards provide protection not only from the sun but also from curious gazes from outside. But even with this measure, it is not possible on Bîga to guarantee the degree of privacy of the inner courtyard as provided in urban environment or even in other villages in the Aswân region. On the other hand, this degree of privacy may not have been necessary in the first place. Most of the inhabitants of the island were relatives to whom access to the inner parts of the houses was granted anyway. Most of the men emigrated from the island in search of employment. The remaining women depended on the help of others to cope with the harshness of everyday life, a situation favouring even closer alliances and cooperation. Both villages on the island illustrate the great range of differences possible between specific social groups creating their own environment, even though they belong to the same culture and maintain strong social bonds. The observations from the two villages on Bîga lead to the conclusion that on the one hand, the guiding principle of the house as a protected family space was both respected and, to the greatest extent financially and spatially possible, realized. On the other hand, the inhabitants had enough common sense to override the rules and to provide the necessary and convenient living and working spaces, thus creating a personal expression of spatial needs and taste.

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Notes 1 Eugen Wirth, Die orientalische Stadt im islamischen Vorderasien und Nordafrika (Mainz: Verlag Phillip von Zabern, 2000), 326. 2 The spelling of the name of the island varies in older publications: Bidge (John Lewis Burckhardt (Travels in Nubia, London: Murray, 1819)), Biğğeh (Amelia Ann Edwards, A Thousand Miles up the Nile (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1878)), Bigeh (Karl Baedeker, ed., Egypt. Handbook for Travellers (Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1892)), Bîgeh (Arthur E. P. B. Weigall, A Report on the Antiquities of Lower Nubia (the First Cataract to the Sudan Frontier) and Their Condition in 1906-7 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1907), Aylward M. Blackman, The Temple of Bîga (Le Caire; Imprimiere de l`Institut Français d´Archeologie Orientale, 1915)) or Biga (George A. Reisner, The Archaeological Survey of Nubia. Report for 1907-1908. Volume I: Archaeological Report (Cairo: National Printing Department, 1920)). Dr A. Goo-Grauer, specialist on Kenzi-Nubian, suggests the spelling corresponding to the Nubian pronunciation of the name: Bijje; the linguist M. Jaeger suggests Bicce (personal communication). Spelling of all place names used in this chapter follows the Arabic spelling as printed in the maps of Survey of Egypt, Second Edition (1949). 3 Omar El Hakim, Nubian Architecture (Cairo: The Palm Press 1999), 3. 4 Joseph Greenberg, ‘Studies in African Linguistic Classification: V. The Eastern Sudanic Family’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6, no. 2 (1950): 143–60. 5 Also the spelling of the names of the Nubian ethnic groups varies strongly. The names Fedija and Mahas used in this chapter follow Robert Fernea, ed., Nubians in Egypt, Peaceful People (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973). 6 El Hakim, Nubian Architecture. 7 Horst Jaritz, ‘Notes on Nubian Architecture’, in R. A. Fernea and G. Gerstner, Nubians in Egypt, Peaceful People (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973). 8 Hermann Junker and Heinrich Schäfer, Nubische Texte im Kenzi-Dialekt (Vienna: Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, 1932). 9 Hassan Fathy, Architecture for the Poor: An Experiment in Rural Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973). 10 Wirth, Die orientalische Stadt, 332. In strict accordance to this definition, one would have to say that there was no such thing as public space in the Nubian village, since, for example, young girls were explicitly supposed not to interact with males in any way outside the boundaries of their houses. Our referee from Bîga mentioned repeatedly that an unmarried girl who met a man outside of her house was not allowed to talk to him and had to turn towards a wall and cover her head and face with her scarf until the man walked away. For the purpose of this chapter, special aspects caused by the division of Nubian society in a male and female sphere and rigorous moral concepts shall not be considered. On the other hand, the island,

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11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24

25 26 27

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isolated by the waters of the Nile, was already by its very nature a private space for its inhabitants. Wirth, Die orientalische Stadt, 333. Stefano Bianca, Hofhaus und Paradiesgarten. Architektur und Lebensformen in der islamischen Welt (Munich: Beck, 1991), 47. Nowadays, the deterioration of the original character of Nubian culture is progressing under entirely different auspices. The few villages that remained preserved after the construction of the High Dam are undergoing constant changes in order to turn them into artificial stages meant to meet the expectations of tourists. On the other hand, they are subject to the pressures of adaptation and modernization, in which the use of industrial materials and forms alien to the traditional schemes are leading motifs. Roland Fletcher, ‘Settlement Studies (Micro and Semi-Micro)’, in D. Clarke (ed.), Spatial Archaeology (New York: Academic Press, 1977), 47–120. Ibid., 82. Roderick J. Lawrence, ‘Public Collective and Private Space: A Study of Urban Housing in Switzerland’, in S. Kent (ed.), Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: An Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 73–91; Felix Arnold, ‘A Study of Egyptian Domestic Buildings’, Varia Aegyptica, 5 (1989): 75–93. Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 117. El Hakim, Nubian Architecture, 11. Ibid., 12. Šādūf is an irrigation tool to lift water from a river onto higher land. Mamdouh Sakr, ‘Traces of a Vibrant Vernacular Nubian Architecture in Egypt’, in L. Zaharia (ed.), Petrova Maramures Romania/Ordinul Architectilor Din Romania filiala Nord Vest (Baie Mare: Ceconi, 2015), 4. Sakr, ‘Traces of a Vibrant Vernacular’, 4. El Hakim, Nubian Architecture, 12. Of course, this kind of refinement of access can only be met in the larger houses that have a courtyard in the first place. The side entrance is, however, not an absolute necessity, as house BG 23, in spite of having a courtyard, does not have a side entrance. The ‘living room’ describes a durably roofed space that could have a multitude of functions: living, eating, cooking, sitting and sleeping. This fact is connected to the prevailing, northern direction of the wind. Orienting the openings to the wind supported the ventilation of the inner rooms. María Correas-Amador, Ethno-Archaeology of Egyptian Mudbrick Houses: Toward a Holistic Understanding of Ancient Egyptian (PhD e-thesis, Durham University, Durham, 2013), 39.

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28 Entrance halls are regarded as courtyards, although many of them were provided with a roof. Their evolution from the open courtyard is obvious and the roof intended solely to provide shade. This can be best observed in the vaulted entrance halls: the vault never covers the entire roof, and substantial part of the room stays without the covering. 29 Our referee stressed the fact that on the island the parents of the women had to provide the living space (house) for the newly married couple; the married daughter stayed close to her mother´s home. 30 El Hakim, Nubian Architecture, 12. However, small animals like rabbits and poultry were also kept in enclosures inside of the main courtyard. 31 Demetra Papaconstantinou, Identifying Domestic Space in the Neolithic Eastern Mediterranean (Cambridge: British Archaeological Reports, 2006), 15. 32 Two examples of prominent studies in this research come from Nessim Henry Henein and María Correas-Amador. Henein’s work in the village of Mari Girgis in Upper Egypt (1988) can be considered the best detailed study of a contemporary Egyptian village and domestic architecture. Correas-Amador (2013) compared the houses of several contemporary Egyptian villages in the Delta and Upper Egypt to Ancient Egyptian traditions in domestic architecture. 33 Susan Kent, ed., Method and Theory for Activity Area Research: An EthnoArchaeological Approach (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 2. 34 Mark Grahame, Reading Space: Social Interaction and Identity in the Houses of Roman Pompeii (Cambridge: Archaeopress, 2000), 1. 35 El Hakim, Nubian Architecture, iv. 36 Cornelius von Pilgrim, Elephantine XVIII, Untersuchungen in der Stadt des Mittleren Reiches und der Zweiten Zwischenzeit (Mainz: Verlag Phillip von Zabern, 1996). 37 Nessim Henein, Mari Girgis. Village de Haute Egypte (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1988); Peter Lacovara, New Kingdom Royal City (London: Kegan Paul International, 1997), 65. 38 Arnold, ‘A Study of Egyptian Domestic Buildings’, 90. 39 Correas-Amador, Ethno-archaeology of Egyptian Mudbrick Houses, 39. 40 Ibid., 31. 41 Ibrahim Rizkana, ‘The Prehistoric House’, in M. Bietak (ed.), Haus und Palast im alten Ägypten (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1996), 180. 42 Rizkana, ‘The Prehistoric House’, 179. 43 Ulrich Hartung, Eva-Maria Engel and Rita Hartmann, ‘Tell el-Fara'in-Buto: 11. Vorbericht’, in Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts Kairo, 68 (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2012), 113. 44 Baldwin Smith, Egyptian Architecture as Cultural Expression: With an Introduction by Alan Gowans (New York: American Life Foundation, 1978), 206. 45 Although due to the duality of Nubian society, the women are excluded from using this most public space of the house when male guests are present.

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Bibliography Arnold, F. ‘A Study of Egyptian Domestic Buildings’, Varia Aegyptica 5 (1989): 75–93. Baedeker, K., ed. Egypt. Handbook for Travellers. Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1892. Bianca, S. Hofhaus und Paradiesgarten. Architektur und Lebensformen in der islamischen Welt. Munich: Beck, 1991. Blackman, A. M. The Temple of Bîga. Le Caire: Imprimiere de l`Institut Français d´Archeologie Orientale, 1915. Burckhardt, J. L Travels in Nubia. London: Murray, 1819. Correas-Amador, M. Ethno-archaeology of Egyptian Mudbrick Houses: Toward a Holistic Understanding of Ancient Egyptian Domestic Architecture. PhD e-thesis, Durham University, Durham, 2013. De Certeau, M. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Edwards, A. A. B. A Thousand Miles up the Nile. Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, 1878. El Hakim, O. Nubian Architecture. Cairo: The Palm Press, 1999. Fathy, H. Architecture for the Poor. An Experiment in Rural Egypt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973. Fernea, R. A., ed. Nubians in Egypt, Peaceful People. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973. Fletcher, R. ‘Settlement Studies (Micro and Semi-Micro)’, in D. Clarke (ed.), Spatial Archaeology, 47–120. New York: Academic Press, 1977. Grahame, M. Reading Space: Social Interaction and Identity in the Houses of Roman Pompeii. Cambridge: Archaeopress, 2000. Greenberg, J. ‘Studies in African Linguistic Classification: V. The Eastern Sudanic Family’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6: 2 (1950): 143–60. Hartung, U., E- M. Engel and R. Hartmann. ‘Tell el-Fara'in-Buto: 11. Vorbericht’, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts Kairo 68 (2012): 83–114. Henein, N. Mari Girgis. Village de Haute Egypte. Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1988. Jaritz, H. ‘Notes on Nubian Architecture’, in R. A. Fernea and G. Gerstner, Nubians in Egypt, Peaceful People. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973. Junker, H. and H Schäfer. Nubische Texte im Kenzi-Dialekt. Vienna: Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, 1932. Kent, S., ed. Method and Theory for Activity Area Research: An Ethno-Archaeological Approach. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. Lacovara, P. New Kingdom Royal City. London: Kegan Paul International, 1997. Lawrence, R. J. ‘Public Collective and Private Space: A Study of Urban Housing in Switzerland’, in S. Kent (ed.), Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: An Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Study, 73–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

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Massenbach, G. V. ‘Nubische Texte im Dialekt der Kunuzi und Dongolawi’, in Abhandlungen über die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft, Bd. 34, 4, Wiesbaden, 1962. Papaconstantinou, D. Identifying Domestic Space in the Neolithic Eastern Mediterranean. Cambridge: British Archaeological Reports, 2006. Reisner, G. A. The Archaeological Survey of Nubia. Report for 1907–1908. Volume I: Archaeological Report. Cairo: National Printing Department, 1910. Rizkana, I. ‘The Prehistoric House’, in M. Bietak (ed.), Haus und Palast im alten Ägypten, 175–83. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 1996. Sakr, M. ‘Traces of a Vibrant Vernacular Nubian Architecture in Egypt’, in L. Zaharia (ed.), Petrova Maramures Romania/ Ordinul Architectilor Din Romania filiala Nord Vest. Baie Mare: Ceconi, 2015. Von Pilgrim, C. Elephantine XVIII, Untersuchungen in der Stadt des Mittleren Reiches und der Zweiten Zwischenzeit. Mainz: Verlag Phillip von Zabern, 1996. Weigall, Arthur E. P. B. A Report on the Antiquities of Lower Nubia (the First Cataract to the Sudan Frontier) and Their Condition in 1906–7. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1907. Wirth, E. Die orientalische Stadt im islamischen Vorderasien und Nordafrika. Mainz: Verlag Phillip von Zabern, 2000.

8

Overcoming framing devices The Ramtā Nāth Vairāgī in Mughal painting1 Anjali Duhan Gulia

The Nāth-s are Shaivites; they follow Gorakhnāth and therefore they are also called the Gorakhnāthī-s. Their sect is a heterodox ascetic tradition of amorphous nature with its roots in medieval India.2 Vairāgī is one of the twelve principal types of these ascetics. Additionally, they also have a householder branch. Some Nāth-s, however, overcome the boundaries of renunciation and pleasure, and this in-between position that they occupy forms one of the themes of this chapter. Shown as peripatetic mendicants holding their musical instruments and singing the songs of their god/s, the Nāth vairāgī yogi (bairāgī and jogī respectively in the vernacular) captivated the fantasy of many medieval era poets who presented them as lead heroes of their romances like the Mirigāvatī (The epic love story called the Mirigāvatī), which attracted the attention of Prince Salīm, a Mughal, when he himself became an outsider by rebelling against his father, Emperor Akbar. This chapter examines the wandering Nāth as portrayed in the Salīm’s version of Mirigāvatī, a Mughal manuscript known as the Rāj Kunwar (The Prince, hereafter RK, from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, henceforth CBL) when he moves inside/outside of the realms of renunciation and household bliss in search of his beloved. Additionally, this chapter also explores how the Nāth yogis are depicted in many individual folios where they often appear both in the main pictorial space and on the surrounding frames (hāshiyā-s). On the one hand, the examination of the individual illustrated folios and the borders of the Mughal paintings reveals how inside/outside relationships were structured visually and on the other, the philosophy and religion of the itinerant Nāth clarify on what terms outsider traditions were incorporated into a Mughalized context. Before the visuals, however, it is important to understand what role these social outsiders had inside Mughal courtly circles. Why are there numerous

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Figure 8.1  Emperor Akbar and Prince Khusrau with the Nāth-s, attributed to Manohar and inscribed to Salīm [Qulī], Muraqqā‘-i-Gulshan, Ms. 1668, Folio no. 222, Mughal, c. 1600, 42.4 × 26.5 cm (folio), 25.7 × 13.8 cm (painting). © Golestan Palace Manuscript Library, Golestan Palace, Tehran, Iran.

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naturalistic depictions of these yogis in the Mughal paintings? On the basis of the evidence present in the form of primary Persian texts and innumerable visuals,3 it can be safely stated that all imperial Mughal rulers shared a personal bond with the Nāth-s to varying degrees. The Mughals visited their religious centres and places of pilgrimage, endowed grants upon them, celebrated with them their significant festivals and called them for private, nightly conversations.4 Furthermore, the Nāth-s’ esoteric knowledge and alchemical secrets played a critical role in moulding the saintly image of the emperor. It holds particular significance with respect to Akbar.5 The Mughals also acknowledged their traditional knowledge of Āyurveda and different chemicals, recognizing them as physicians.6 Significant unpublished visual evidence confirming these bonds is a painting from the Muraqqā‘-i-Gulshan (comprising works dated from 1599 to 1609 AD) preserved in the Golestan Palace Library, Tehran. Folio 222 of this album depicts Emperor Akbar and his grandson Prince Khusrau7 (Jahāngīr’s eldest son) in conversation with the Nāth yogis (Figure/Plate 8.1).8 Sitting under a pavilion on a rich carpet and supported by a bolster, the visibly aged Emperor is holding a stick that has a bird or an animal face on the top. In his other hand, he is holding a long-horn/ śṛṅgī (siṃgī in the vernacular).9 Behind him, his grandson Khusrau is also carrying a horn, and so is a courtier (perhaps Raisāl Darbārī) who is holding two of them. The implications of these royal figures holding the yogi’s insignia in their hands suggest that they acknowledged the sacredness of the Nāth-s and were impressed by their knowledge and power in spiritual matters. Akbar seems to be enquiring about the stick which he is holding in his hand, and the yogi who is sitting in front of him is possibly explaining its relevance in the presence of other yogis seated in a circle. The Emperor is shown with a three-quarter view with well-defined features. In keeping with other spiritually inclined portraits of his later years, he is wearing a white turban, a diaphanous white jāmā above a yellow payjāmī and has adorned himself with a pearl and ruby necklace. His beloved grandson, in contrast, is wearing a grand brocade jāmā and a necklace of two strands of pearls. The Nāth-s are painted with their insignia: the small horn tied around their necks, earrings inserted from the earlobes as opposed to the contemporary practice of inserting them from the middle of the ear,10 necklaces with ribbons, as well as necklaces with rosary beads.11 The ascetics can be broken down into groups according to their costumes. The ones wearing saffron-coloured clothes and turbans possibly lived on the plains, and the long-haired ones wearing darkcoloured robes (suggesting warm clothing) perhaps dwelled in the hills. One of

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them has tied his dreadlocks up above his head and covered them with a saffroncoloured cloth, and two others are wearing hats. Only one of the yogis is painted with a bare bony torso. The two figures sitting in front of the minister need further discussion. One of them is wearing a white-coloured earring possibly, of silver or ivory, both suggesting his enhanced status. Further, he is also wearing a conical-shaped turban, which is a preferred shape for the headgears of the present-day abbots of some of the monasteries belonging to the Nāth-s.12 So he might possibly be the head of this group of yogis here. Next to him sits a Nāth who is holding a book. This is one of the only two known depictions of a Nāth with a book.13 Around them are placed their appurtenances and three plates covered with cloth. Hence, they have come all prepared to quench the inquisitiveness Akbar had for these yogis and their esoteric knowledge.14 Near the doorway stands a bulky noble/figure who is identified as Fīroz Khān by John Seyller.15 From his positioning near the door, it appears he is one of the guards. This scene is possibly set inside the royal fort at Agra, as is evident from the red sandstone architecture. Mughal painters perhaps had captured in colour, a real meeting between Akbar and the Nāth-s, which might have occurred in the last few years of Akbar’s life when for some time, due to his disappointment with his only surviving son, Prince Salīm, he favoured his grandson Khusrau as a possible heir. Two Mughal painters contributed to this painting. The name of one of them is written on the begging bowl placed on the bottom left side, as ‘amal-i-Salīm. He is possibly Salīm Qulī, whose style often includes stiff figures with long faces in three-quarter views painted with thick eyebrows, thin upper eyelid extending beyond the line of the eye and long noses. His colour palette is varied with unusual tones in the background, especially in the paintings he has produced in the Salīm studio at Allahabad.16 Since he had painted scenes depicting yogis in manuscripts like the RK and Yogavāsiṣṭha (Yoga propounded by Vasiṣṭha, hereafter YV, CBL),17 he must have been assigned this painting, which similarly included yogis. The other name written on the small, inverted begging bowl/shovel is illegible. The only portion which can be read is ‘amal. However, on stylistic grounds, it can be postulated that the other painter is probably Manohar, who was trained under his father Basāvan and was part of both – the Imperial and Salīm’s atelier at Allahabad. Manohar’s services were possibly employed in this work as he was particularly skilled in executing royal portraits.18 He has painted a similar scene depicting Akbar in three-quarter profile view with Prince Khusrau, Prince Khurram and a courtier, which is preserved in the collection of CBL (In 34.2).19

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Here the figures of Akbar, Khusrau and the guard are comparable to the Tehran painting. Milo Cleveland Beach has assigned the year 1603 to (In 34.2), where Akbar seems relatively younger and Khusrau is a young boy without any traces of facial hair, whereas, in the present Gulshan folio, he is a young man with a moustache, sideburns and an arching chest. Therefore, this painting was painted after 1603 AD, possibly in the last year of Akbar’s reign,20 although, the exquisite floral border is slightly later, from Jahāngīr’s reign. The border’s golden floral embellishments punctuated by tiny renderings of coloured birds are similar to a bi-folio depicting different yogis from the Berlin Album (comprising works dated from 1608 to 1618, folio discussed later here), which was also initially part of the Gulshan Album. Salīm’s decision to insert this painting in his scrapbook (Muraqqā‘-i-Gulshan) suggests that he perhaps shared Akbar’s sentiments for the Nāth-s. This close relationship was also translated into the visual medium and can be seen in two manuscripts – the Baḥr al-Ḥayāt (Ocean of Life, hereafter BaḤ) and the RK, where the Nāth-s are the main protagonists. The former is the earliest extant illustrated yoga manual and has twenty-one miniatures, illustrating the Nāth-s in different yogic postures, typical accessories and details of asceticism. The RK documents the journey of an itinerant Nāth in fifty-one miniatures. These secular texts entered the Mughal atelier when Prince Salīm, their patron, himself became an outsider: he rebelled and went to Allahabad, where he set up a rival court to Agra. Salīm stayed at Allahabad from August 1600 till November 1604 AD.21 The prince and his painters possibly came into even closer contact with Hindu asceticism at Allahabad, which is reflected in the manuscripts produced there and subsequently also at the atelier in Agra. The loose folios similarly depicted ascetics and were inserted in the albums produced for Salīm-Jahāngīr and Shāh Jahān. The most famous of them is from the Salīm Album, preserved in the CBL (In 44.3).22 A Nāth ascetic is painted in monochromatic shades of green, with the entire yogi’s appurtenance: his trademark earring, the horn-whistle tied around the neck, a begging bowl, a small spade and a dog as his associate. Another miniature from the collection of Harvard Art Museum (2002.50.29)23 has borders similar to the CBL painting and thus may also be from the Salīm Album. It depicts a Nāth with two white dogs. He is wearing a patched ochre robe and an ochre band around his head; the black earrings and the whistle tied around his neck are signs of him being a Nāth. An intriguing set of Nāth images is also present in a bi-folio (A 117) from the Jahāngīr Album, Berlin, which was initially part of the Gulshan Album, Tehran. Both folios seem to be a collage of

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four paintings each. They depict different kinds of contemporary Hindu ascetics (Nāth-s, Rāmānandī-s and Daśanāmī-s) along with animals like cats, dogs and cows with their babies in the pastoral. The patron/painter has carefully curated these two collages selecting portions from different paintings, possibly to reflect an inclusive and idyllic Mughal Empire.24 Another miniature that portrays ‘Yogi Gorakhnath’, is attributed to Govardhan (around 1605–6 AD) is in the collection of the CBL (Ms.60.4).25 The Guru, as a solid, large form (well suited to his image in the Nāth pantheon), is painted seated under a tree. He is shown wearing the earrings, headband and fillets around his chest and is supplicated by two of his disciples. Apart from the pictures themselves, these ascetics, rather interestingly, were sometimes also placed on lavish hāshiyā-s, the opulent borders of paintings present in the Jahāngīr and Shāh Jahān albums. Salīm began collecting paintings for these albums before his accession, however, by far, the largest part of its contents was collected during his reign and then after him in Shāh Jahān’s reign. Moving away from the exclusively golden borders of Iranian manuscripts, borders in Mughal paintings became powerful and coloured studies of figures and personalities representing all aspects of Mughal life. Often, the outer frame is almost as equally arresting as the painted interiors, competing for the viewer’s attention. Even though small in size, the ascetics here are also rendered with their complete iconography and material culture – as seen in folio 100b of the Dīvān of Ḥāfiẓ (Collected Works of Ḥāfiẓ) (British Library, Or 14139), which was copied by Sultān ‘Alī in c. 1470 and its borders painted at the beginning of Jahāngīr’s reign c. 1605.26 On the top corner of this folio (calligraphy in the nasta'līq inside), a Nāth is painted in a decorated medallion.27 Dressed only in a loincloth, horn, earrings and metal rings around the arms, he is tending a fire, his blue skin tone contrasting with the opulent golden surrounding lines and ochre tones of the paper. Another painting titled Prince and Ascetics from the late Shāh Jahān Album, c. 1630, housed at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1971.79),28 has two painted areas catering to similar themes. It was removed from its previous album, inserted into this one and supplied new borders which articulately added to its meanings. The inside of the painting is a depiction of two ascetics, flanking a prince or a warrior sitting outside the cave-dwelling. On his proper left is an aged Sufi with long flowing hair. On the right, another mystic (could be either a Hindu ascetic or a Sufi) is playing his religious songs on a vīṇā. He has an expression of bliss and contentment on his face. This painting projects a harmonious Mughal setting filled with idyllic elements of nature (ducks in a tranquil water body, lush

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green tree), where the spiritual (the two ascetics, possibly from two different faiths) and the worldly (prince) powers are in perfect unification. Attributed to Govardhan, the interior of this painting reflects the strong points of his work, particularly his mastery over the line, which captured not only human anatomy but also the subtle emotions and insights of the personality without the need of adding colour. The outer margins of this folio have additional depictions of six ascetics and one noble, adding subtle layers and significance to the centre of the page. They seem to be deeply engrossed in the music played in the centre, hence blurring the distinction between the inside and the outside of the painting. Payāg is believed to have painted these yogis in monochromatic shades of yellow, gold and brown, reflecting their attributes of tawny hair and sun-burnt skin from rigorous asceticism. Both Govardhan and Payāg contributed to many paintings of the yogis in the BaḤ, RK and YV, capturing their naked bodies and simple lives with minimal belongings. Other saintly figures, belonging to the Sufi and Christian milieus, also appeared in the centres and borders of various Mughal paintings. Giving the Nāth-s a status equivalent to them convincingly postulates that Nāth ascetics, perhaps once marginal, were now of no small consequence in the Mughal worldview. Muraqqā‘-s apart, this is further borne out in the manuscripts where the Nāth-s were given similar importance and space in the royal atelier as the Christian missionaries, and their tenets became subject matter worthy of fulsome translations into Farsi. These individual paintings and manuscripts were mostly painted around the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries when the use of minimalistic colours called nīm qalam was in much fashion in the Mughal ateliers.

The Ramtā Nāth Vairāgī In the Nāth sect, the itinerant ascetic is called a ramtā.29 Its etymological root is ‘√ram’ which means to take pleasure/be engrossed, therefore, ramtā may denote the one who is being engrossed in religion and is in the quest for salvation. As is the case with ‘yogi’, this term is not exclusively used for the Nāth-s but is shared by other ascetic groups: for instance, the Rāmānandī-s call their itinerants ramte rāma.30 The two groups which had/have a membership of these ramte Nāth are the Dhajapanthī and the Bhartṛhari vairāgī (discussed here). Another body of the  Nāth  pantheon which constitutes of itinerant ascetics is the Jamāt.31

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There are two realms of Indian life and philosophical thought – pleasure and renunciation. These are opposites, and a human enters into each sphere separately depending on his/her age. However, the path of bhakti permits a conflation of these contrasting ideas by allowing the practitioner to simultaneously stay in the household and also pursue salvation by serving the god and devotedly waiting for his grace. In the scholarly circles, the Nāth-s have been predominantly discussed through the lens of only the yogi and seldom the bhogī. With respect to bhakti, in the powerful voices of Kabīr, Nānak, Sūrdās and other poetsaints they are projected as the demonized ‘other’ along with the believers of the Goddess (Śākta-s), especially in the periods between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries AD.32 In fact, the Nāth-s were active participants in the bhakti movement. Their influence was so immense that the medieval bhakti sant-s and poets actually had to use their yogic terminology and tenets to create and strengthen their own base. This can be substantiated by examining the case of Kabīr, who according to Charlotte Vaudeville ‘appears so heavily indebted to the Nāth-panthī form of Yoga that [his] sayings can hardly be understood without reference to it’.33 The ramtā jogī (vernacular of yogi) represents the emotion (rasa) of bhakti in the Nāth sect.34 Belonging to the Bhartṛhari Vairāga group, perhaps these yogis were part of the earliest known list of the religious groups (pantha-s) of the Nāth-s.35 The epitome of vairāgya within the sect is represented by the legendary figure of King Bhartṛhari who is also believed to be the founder of the Vairāga pantha. He was the protagonist of the fifteenth-century Sanskrit play by Harihara– Bhartṛharinirveda (Bhartṛhari’s Despondency), the King of Ujjain who deserted his blissful household life, which was full of material and emotional comforts.36 In the vairāgī’s version of bhakti, they lay utmost importance to the guru and worship him in its ‘distinctionless’ (nirguṇa) form. These peripatetic householders who come from a Śaiva ascetic milieu move inside and outside of the two spheres of renunciation and household bliss. They play musical instruments and sing the praise of their supreme lord, who is ‘Sinless-Flawless-Pure’ (Nirañjana), and other religious heroes. Historically, they were instrumental in connecting diverse cultural and linguistic regions and circulated the knowledge of yoga and the legends of the Nāth heroes in the Indian subcontinent. These Nāth narratives originated in the folk milieu and were sung with the aid of a string instrument (vīṇā/sāraṅgī/iktārā); their protagonists often were supported and brought into the Nāth cult by Gorakhnāth. These folk ballads were considered apotropaic in nature37 and were also vital to the development and popularity of the folk theatre traditions (Svāṅga and Nauṭaṅkī) in North India.38

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Catherine Champion has studied Bhartṛhari vairāgī jogī-s living in the province of Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. They are hereditary renouncers and yet live a household life affiliating to both Shaivism and Islam. With their dual religious identities, they move inside and outside of their roles of being Muslim householders and itinerant Nāth-s. As Muslims, they observe the five basic Islamic duties, celebrate Muslim festivals and take gifts on Eid. On the other hand, after a simple initiation often by their fathers, they also become a part of the Nāth sect. Therefore, they are possibly the most Islamized Gorakhpanthī-s. Surviving as weavers and mostly farm labourers, they are also summoned upon as performers on special religious and secular occasions where they play musical instruments and sing songs in honour of Gorakhnāth and Śiva.39 Their peripatetic status comes to the fore at those times of the year when they are no longer employed on the farms. Then they assume the garb of a Nāth, wearing ochre robes and its associated paraphernalia. For the next two months, they visit places sacred to the Nāth-s, whether Muslim or Hindu. At these shrines, they sing epics of Gorakhnāth and his disciples in Bhojpuri sprinkled with Hindi, Urdu and Avadhi terms.40 Apart from singing, they also perform the role of a healer when providing people with talismans on the way. Recognized as jogī-s, they are not restricted to the state of Uttar Pradesh but are present in all parts of North India.41 With this background of the ramtā Nāth vairāgī jogī, the following section will examine the adventure-filled narrative and paintings of the RK manuscript produced for Salīm at Allahabad, the details of which were discussed earlier. Here, the male protagonist, a wandering Nāth, in bhakti crosses vast oceans and dense forests, subjugates and tricks demons, and destroys illusions to meet the love of his life Mirigāvatī, before whom he faints and falls on the ground.

Salīm’s Rāj Kunwar The itinerant Nāth-s were pivotal figures in the religious and folk traditions of rural India. Unsurprisingly, they attracted the interest of many medieval period Muslim poets who added layers of their religion and mystical meanings to rather simple romantic narratives which featured these Nāth-s. Though illustrated versions of these romances [Candāyana (The epic love story called the Candāyana) and Mirigāvatī]42 are present in pre-Mughal styles of the fifteenth century, the Chester Beatty RK (Ms.37) prepared for Prince Salīm is the only surviving illustrated Mughal example of this literary type.

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Recognized by the name of its male protagonist, it is based on an Avadhi romantic tale by Quṭban (titled as Mirigāvatī), composed under the patronage of Ḥusain Shāh Sharqī of Jaunpur in 1503 AD. Fortunately, this manuscript has a colophon, which clearly assigns it to the Allahabad studio.43 It follows the original Avadhi text in plot and narrative; however, the original which was in verse poetry was transformed into a prose (dāstān) version (rather than maṣnavī) in Persian.44 Aditya Behl has scrupulously translated the Mirigāvatī text from Avadhi to English45 and also has incorporated sections from it in his book Love’s Subtle Magic (both edited by Wendy Doniger), where he has referred to a rich selection of primary and secondary sources. His lenses for examining the Mirigāvatī are chiefly the notion of Hindu-Muslim syncretism and the broader understanding of the cultural landscape of the medieval period, with references to Sufism. I have examined here a few sections of the Persian version of the Mirigāvatī produced for Salīm and added to Behl’s textual analysis by employing the Alakhbānī (Sayings about the Incomprehensible God)46 and Gorakhbānī (Sayings of Gorakh)47 texts, to be able to understand the protagonist’s movement in the two spheres of renunciation and pleasure. These two texts provide the clearest articulation of the ideals of the itinerant ascetic from a Nāth perspective. The previous art historical studies on the RK have been present primarily in the form of library catalogues devoted to the rich Indian painting collection of the CBL.48 Additionally, noted Mughal miniature specialists have also examined individual folios from this manuscript.49 My methodology of stylistic and thematic analysis here is ballasted by an in-depth textual study to explain the visuals and the inside/outside movement of the Gorakhnāthī and his conflated ideals in the RK text.

The story and paintings of the Rāj Kunwar Revealed in 132 folios with fifty-one paintings, the story of the RK is about a young prince or Kunvar of Candrāgirī (the moon mountain, suggesting the top moon station in the yogic body) who fell in love with a lovely princess of Kanchanpur (the city of gold, suggesting the sun station in the yogic body) named Mirigāvatī, who enticed the prince by turning into a doe. The prince managed to capture her by hiding her magic dress when she was having a bath. After five months of blissfully staying together, Mirigāvatī left the prince’s palace

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to test his love towards her. Kunvar was heartbroken50 and ‘took on the path of yoga’.51 The Persian text reads: [Kunvar] began collecting the yogi’s attire and when finished he smeared his body with ashes, wore a patchwork cloak [muraqqā‘,] which was torn at a hundred places, held in his hand the kingarī which is a musical instrument of the ascetics and renounced his house and kingdom.52

By renouncing, he diminished his past karma (deeds) and began with a clean slate in the perusal of Mirigāvatī, understood here as an equivalent to god. The painting on folio 23b (Figure 8.2) follows the Persian text. The prince is painted with his hair knotted on his head and wearing the yogi’s long dark cloak and

Figure 8.2  The prince embarking on his journey, Rāj Kunwar, CBL In. 37.23b, Mughal, 1603/1604, Salīm Studio, Allahabad, 28.3 × 17.7 cm (folio), 19 × 9.9 cm (painting), Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. © The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. Published: Leach 1995, pl. 2.53.

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sandals. His skin is deep blue from the ash bath, and carrying a kingarī over his shoulder, he embarks on his journey in search for Mirigāvatī. To increase the intensity of the prince’s separation from his beloved, the painter has intentionally painted the fox and duck in pairs in the foreground and two deer behind him. Though he has moved out of his kingdom, still its visual presence inside the painting in the background emphasizes his renunciation. There appears a town far off near the mountains, possibly suggesting Candrāgirī that he has left behind. Unlike in this painting, Kunvar in other images from this manuscript wears the horn whistle and yogi’s earrings, which are the insignia of the Nāth-s. The heroes of the romances of Candāyana, Padmāvat, Kankāvatī, Madhumālatī, Chītā, Nūr Jahān and Bhāṣā Premarasa all don the yogi’s garb with varied thoroughness.53 The only element of their paraphernalia that makes them different from the other Nāth yogis living in monasteries is the Kingarī– ascetic’s viol.54 Abu’l Faz̤l, the erudite minister of Emperor Akbar, records a stringed musical instrument named Kingara in his section on Sangīta in the Ā‘īn-iAkbarī and explains it briefly as, ‘[it] resembles the Vinā, but has two strings of gut and smaller gourds’.55 Accordingly, the instrument was painted in a manner to emphasize its importance for the Nāth vairāgī-s.56 Moreover, ample references to lovers turned ascetics playing musical instruments in separation are also present in the Indian literary sources.57 Reverting to the RK, in his journey, the ramtā Nāth prince met a wandering jangam [jaṅgama]58 who had travelled to far-off lands. He gave the news of Kanchanpur and Kunvar prostrated in reverence and touched the ascetic’s feet. Impressed by his sincerity, the jangam took the vairāgī prince to the ocean shore, where he boarded a small raft. The text further mentions that Kunvar stayed on this raft for one month fighting the waves. Subsequently, he encountered a man-eating python, which was killed by a second snake just when it was about to swallow him. Considering it as a good omen, he continued his journey and reached an orchard. There, under the pavilion, was sitting Princess Rūpman captured by a seven-headed demon. Our hero killed the fiend, and spellbound by his virtues and bravery, Rūpman tried to lure him. The Persian text reveals: O, young man! Come and sit with me, let us spend a few moments together. You be the man, and I will be your shadow and servant.59

Kunvar initially rejects Rūpman’s proposal of marriage. Her father, the king, used all tricks to persuade him, but he would not listen. This made the king furious, and he threatened to send him to prison. Pressed by his tactics, the prince married Rūpman, though in his heart he had planned to leave her after

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ten days.60 After spending some time with Rūpman as a householder, Kunvar deserted her and resumed both his ascetic identity and his search for Mirigāvatī. Here, he has overcome the frame of bhoga (both lust and luxuriance) in his yoga (perilous journey) for bhakti (complete submission) for his beloved. In this genre of romances, and as also seen in Rūpman’s episode, the peripatetic ascetic is often compared to a bee constantly moving in his yoga, attracting and breaking the hearts of the females. So, after the attendants told Rūpman and his father about the fleeing of Kunvar in the ascetic’s garb, she gradually became emaciated. The author has expressed her pain beautifully in the following words: The black bee, who was the lover of the lotus, suddenly flew away from the flower and left. He amused himself with my heart and finally deserted me. What has he seen that he created distance from me? Yes! The jogī and the bee (the one who smells flowers) both have one trait that they cannot stay at one place even for two moments. Every minute they intend to go somewhere and every time desire to travel. But my heart is tied to him, and I am fully oriented towards him. I will keep on loving him during my life, and if I will die, I will die in the longing of his love.61

Similar warnings are also present in the following verse of Alakhbānī, in which one female is disclosing her passion and pain to her friend. Here the lotus and the bee indicate the heart and the yogi respectively. Why is the lotus [the heart] shaking? O friend, listen pain has come, the bee [the yogi] has made his house in it, [and is] sitting there on the bed.62

Unconcerned by the fate of Rūpman, Kunvar continued his journey in the jungle amid dangerous wild animals for thirty days, suffering hardships and solitude. He finally reached the end of the forest, where he was captured by a cannibal herdsman in his cave. In the wake of sure death, the yogi’s ‘blood dried up with fear’, he started to lament ‘but not even one mantra occurred to him’.63Then he began meditating on the name of god and Mirigāvatī for whom he has suffered so much, and eventually he lost all fear of death and has accepted it. He said, I focus on the love of my beloved [Mirigāvatī], for whose sake I endured many sorrows on my head. The day my heart fell for her, it was a good time. And that heart which sacrifices itself on her [God’s] path is pure. And I am not distressed [by] the fear of death. If I will die on this path, I will become sinless, pure, as whoever has loved has attained both the worlds. And if one intentionally sacrifices oneself for his beloved [God], he becomes immortal for eternity.64

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The acceptance and willingness of death are integral to the Nāth philosophy and are revealed in the following lines of Gorakhbānī, which also suggest the yogis’ death, like the death of Gorakhnāth. It is akin to the Sufi ideal of fanā, the annihilation of the self before the God. Die, o yogi die, the death is sweet, die by that death, through which Gorakh has passed.65

The death of Gorakhnāth signifies both death to the world and with that the death of the self and ego.66 A similar verse is also present in the Alakhbānī.67 The episode of the cannibal is painted by the Mughal artists illustrating both the spatial views of the inside and outside of the demon’s cave on folios 50b, 54a, 55a, 56b and 57b. The first scene by Payāg68 depicts the inside of the dark lair painted flatly in grey as a round space outlined with black, where the yogi is seated away from the men previously captured by the shepherd. Also present inside is his flock of sheep and human skulls and bones signifying his cannibal status. Guarding the cave’s mouth, he sits wearing an orange loincloth, a girdle of bells and is carrying a club. Payāg has painted the rough trunks and rocks in the background with his trademark black outlines. Thereafter, the demon roasted a victim on fire, ate it on skewers and slept. The demon’s act of roasting a human body on fire is realistically painted on folio 54a by Bishandās.69 Despite the gruesomeness of the theme, the painter has created vivid details that capture the viewer’s attention. Here, the whole scene is set outside the cave. The reddish sky also reiterates the gory deeds of the cannibal. Amid this ghastly setting, the yogi has managed to have a calm expression on his face, possibly suggesting that he is reciting the name of his beloved as stated in the text. In the next scene on folio 55a, the artist has illustrated the inside of the cave, where Kunvar initiated by the two travellers blinds the demon by piercing his eyes with a pair of tongs and not the skewers as mentioned in the Persian story. Apart from the action held inside, the painter has also depicted the outside of the cave whose mouth is covered with an enormous boulder. After that, on folio 56b, Payāg has painted the vairāgī sitting with two men inside the cavern probably scheming their way out, which has been blocked by the blinded demon. The form of the devil-shepherd is restrained in demeanour now without any previously rendered bells and the weapon.70 The yogi finally escaped by covering his body with a sheep’s hind painted on folio 57b, which is attributed to Haribans (Figure 8.3).71 The cave’s mouth portion is visually cut open by the painter presenting the view of the entire structure. Both the inside and outside of the lair are pictorially connected by the body of

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Figure 8.3  The Prince dressed as Ramtā Vairāgī escaping from the demon, attributed to Haribans, Rāj Kunwar, CBL In. 37.57b, Mughal, 1603/1604, Salīm Studio, Allahabad, 28.3 × 16.9 cm (folio) and 19.2 × 10.3 cm (painting), Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. © The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. Published: Leach 1995, pl. 2.73.

a sheep which is depicted crossing its mouth. With an expression of anguish on his face, the monster is sitting at the mouth of the grotto, inspecting each sheep by his hands. The figure of the yogi, which is taking off the sheep’s hind from his arm in the foreground appears muscled but stiff in his body movement. Sitting amid blood-smeared bones two other men are rendered in conventional closed forms and the finger near the lip motif, which as a stylistic expression affiliates Haribans to a more conservative school of Mughal painting. In these paintings, the artists were challenged by the subject matter as the protagonists were present both inside and sitting on the mouth of the cave. By

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depicting multiple views of the grotto, the painters have solved this predicament and also formed a relationship between the spatial views of the inside and outside. The views of the cavern are rendered as a part of a big rocky mountain range where the interiors are usually dark organic forms enclosed by rocks, which connect them with the naturally lit exterior scenes. Eventually, Kunvar reached the city of Kanchanpur, where Mirigāvatī had become the queen after the death of her father. When he arrived at the royal palace, the prince dressed as a wandering Nāth took his viol and sang sadly of his separation. Pained and moved by his song, the entire town became troubled, and the news reached the ears of Mirigāvatī. She called him to her court. The Persian text reveals that in order to reach her court, the ascetic crossed seven doors and each door was embellished differently. The seven doors, in the Nāth understanding point to the seven centres (cakra-s) in a yogic body, six of them are pierced by Kuṇḍalinī to reach the final centre, Sahasrāra cakra, (the thousandpetaled lotus), which is the centre of ultimate bliss.72 The climax of the vairāgī’s perilous journey is painted on folio 73a, where he has fainted before Mirigāvatī, who is enthroned, and surrounded by maidservants in her golden palace. He saw the graceful sun [Mirigāvatī] blazing forth there. While witnessing the glare of her beauty, the sun’s matchless glare fell on the Kunvar, and the fire of love overpowered him so much so that he could not carry on walking even for half a step. The Kunvar fell down and fainted! . . . The maids asked him, ‘Why did you fall down unconscious in this way?’ . . . The yogi said, ‘I cannot tell you the cause of my fainting, but I saw that . . . which my body could not bear.’73

The text of Alakhbānī reveals the same emotions in the following verse: Alakh [incomprehensible] Nirañjana [flawless-pure] is my master [God], He is the one who cannot be seen, whosoever realises Him, loses his own self [one is amalgamated into the higher power]. Nobody will trust, if I proclaim this!74

The perilous journey and falling of the ramtā Nāth before the heroine reflects the passion and devotion of the protagonist towards the object of his devotion – the God who is conflated with the image of Mirigāvatī here. In his bhakti, he is completely engrossed in his devotion for the guru and the god and his falling echo the creation, longing and final return of soul and cosmos to Śiva like the bubbles arising and returning to waters. It was Ādi Śaṃkarācārya, who had used the water bubble as the metaphor to explain the relationship between the jīva and the Supreme Self in his non-dual thought.75 Subsequently, it got infused into the unorthodox religious schools like the Nāth and Sikhism.76 In these love stories,

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when the hero disguised as the Nāth itinerant falls down before the heroine, it is an indication of him being an integral part of his Supreme Self – the heroine. Finally, the two lovers were united and ‘the black bee who was the lover of the sweet smell of the flower became successful’.77 After experiencing anguish on the path of love, the ascetic left the sphere of renunciation and entered into the realm of nuptial ecstasy. Mirigāvatī invites Kunvar for the pleasure-filled night as follows: O Master, come! My reins are in your hands now, do whatever you want to do.78

On folio 77a (Figure 8.4) Kunvar and Mirigāvatī are painted embracing each other on the bed. They are looking into each other’s eyes as a prelude to their

Figure 8.4 The union of Kunvar and Mirigāvatī, Rāj Kunwar, CBL In. 37.77a, Mughal, 1603/1604, Salīm Studio, Allahabad, 28.3 × 16.9 cm (folio) and 19.2 × 10.2 cm (painting), Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. © The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.

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passion-filled night. One of the attendant girls is sleeping and the two others are busy in their work and in the foreground, the male attendant outside the wall sets a torch flame. The most striking aspect of this painting is the lavish use of gold on the pavilion, on the walls and even the floor suggesting the golden architecture of Kanchanpur (the city of gold) as well as the importance of this scene depicting the sweet union. In the previous painting too, gold is used in the pavilion under which Mirigāvatī is sitting and also on her throne. In these scenes, intricate decorative patterns on the top of the pavilion and a crisscross on the columns are created by incising lines on the golden surface with a blunt needle.79 The lovers spent a blissful household life, merrymaking for many days when one day Kunvar was kidnapped by a hideous demon. Unable to bear the pain when his love is away, the roles are interchanged between Kunvar and Mirigāvatī now. She turned into a yoginī and searches for her love, and in Persian, it reads: The queen sought the prince much. [She] searched the mountains and hills, sea and land, till the last extant of earth and large and small forests. Becoming a jogan [yoginī], she searched the dandakār, which is known as the dandakār forest.80

The Alakhbānī also voices the pain of a lover who turned into a jogan (yoginī) and is insistent on meeting her lover without whom she is neither willing to live nor to die. After renouncing this world [and] the other world [I] have myself become a jogan [yoginī], without meeting [my] beloved, O friend, [I] will not take even one world.81

In the end, Mirigāvatī was able to find Kunvar and the demon, who was suitably punished. Thereafter, the two spent their days in much peace and happiness until news from Rūpman and Kunvar’s father reached Kanchanpur. Then the royal couple, along with Rūpman, went to his native Candrāgirī, where Kunvar ruled with his two wives until his death during a hunting expedition. His body was cremated on the banks of the River Ganges. Along with Mirigāvatī and Rūpman, eighty-four ladies from the harem and many prominent people from the state burnt themselves on Kunvar’s funeral pyre. Karan Rāy, his son, was crowned as the king.82 * * * After examining the historical texts and depiction of the Nāth-s on some of the single Mughal folios, their borders and the RK manuscript, it can be safely stated that these ascetics had definitely captured the attention of the Mughals. It seems the Nāth-s were frequent visitors to the Mughal court. The latter

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considered them as spiritual masters, who formed crucial bridges between the ruler and the ruled, as these ascetics commanded immense local support from the masses. The Mughal rulers, mainly Akbar, embraced these demigods and their idioms of effective esoteric knowledge, which expanded his broad network of authority, enabling him to establish himself securely in Hindustan. Since Jahāngīr, Shāh Jahān and Aurangzeb inherited a vast and arguably stable empire, they extended the symbiotic relationship with the Nāth-s little but continued the already set norms, such as the endowment grants fixed by Akbar and granting personal meetings to the yogis. In this relationship, both the ascetics and the rulers overcame their respective boundaries to gain from each other’s positions. As patrons of the illustrated manuscripts related to the Nāth-s (RK and BaḤ), the Mughals were remarkable. Perhaps, however, the Mughals did not see the act of translation of these manuscripts as a means to explicitly patronize the sect but more as a means to satisfy their own interest. For Salīm, the RK text must have served as a romantic-adventure narrative, also carrying information and advice on various aspects of kingship. It sets up the wider cultural worldview for the Mughal Prince with information on combat, religion, music, rules of chivalry, sex and so on. This was established through the various situations the ramtā Nāth entered into or encountered in this fascinating account. Moreover, since Mirigāvatī-RK have employed yogic imagery, it is suggestive that the Sufi authors of these romances were aware of such yogic usages and adopted them in their texts. That the Nāth-s were principal models for how these concepts and narratives were translated and understood by the population is evident from the study of these paintings, where the iconography of the ramtā Nāth has been consistently employed to tell this story. Finally, the two wives of Kunvar represent the two realms of yoga and bhoga – the spiritual and the temporal-bliss in the story. The yogi moves between these two opposing spheres creating the rasa of bhakti in the text. The Nāth sect, especially in the medieval period, is believed to be positioned on the other side of the bhakti ideals. However, this chapter introduces and explicates, by employing the RK miniatures and the texts of Alakhbānī and Gorakhbānī, the peripatetic Nāth who is deeply imbued in his bhakti for his guru and the god. The examination of RK from the lens of the Nāth vairāgī has allowed us to trace his ideals – an itinerant life covering arduous journeys, bhakti for the guru and the god, his passion for suffering, singing in praise for his god, willing to die in the process and seeks, ultimately, the final union with the god that is jīvanmukti (liberation while living).

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However, somewhere down the line, the Kunvar-ascetic also comes across as an opportunist, making compromises on the way (like marrying Rūpman) and also yearning for a quality life (when he meets the shepherd, he gets excited that he will get delicious food). This runs parallel with the stories of Nāth heroes such as King Bhartṛhari and especially King Gopīcand, who are unwilling to renounce their luxuries for the hard yogic life. Gopīcand tricks his master to the extent of throwing him under tons of horse manure. Similarly, in order to achieve liberation, according to one Nāth legend Bhartṛhari tricks Gorakhnāth for granting him the boon of living liberation. The Bhartṛhari vairāgī jogī-s from Gorakhpur live a life of conveniencecompromise even now. They have fluid identities – that of a householder and of the itinerant, minor cultivator and religious bard and above all, those of being Muslim and Nāth at the same time.83 Similarly, throughout the story of RK, the ramtā prince effortlessly moves in and out of the spheres of household bliss and renunciation, culminating into a final union with his heroine – the God.

Notes 1 I would like to express my deep gratitude to Mr Robert Skelton, who shared his microfilm of the Persian text Rāj Kunwar with me. I am also grateful to Prof. Naman P. Ahuja, who supervised this research, which forms a portion of my PhD on the depiction of the ‘The Nāth-s in Mughal Miniatures: 16th–17th Centuries AD’ and to Dr James Mallinson, Dr Balram Shukla and Dr Ali Qadri for providing insightful and valuable criticism on the initial draft of this chapter. Further, I would also like to thank here Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi, and Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, which jointly financed my presence at the 42nd Annual Conference of the Association of Art Historians, held at the University of Edinburgh, April 2016. 2 The sect has its origins in sometime between the ninth and twelfth centuries AD as a non-Brahmin and anti-householder movement, with its roots in Buddhist Vajrayāna, earlier forms of Śaiva sects and the Paścimāmnāyasādhaka traditions. It is divided into twelve groups called pantha-s. For further details, see James Mallinson, ‘Nāth Sampradāya’, in Brill Encyclopaedia of Hinduism, Vol. 3, ed. Knut A. Jacobsen (Leiden: Brill, 2011), accessed at http://www. Academia.edu/1466213/ Nāth Saṃpradāya entry_in_vol._3_of_the_Brill_Encyclopedia_of_Hinduism on 15 November 2018.

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3 There are multiple representations of the ascetics in Mughal paintings present in the form of manuscripts’ illustrations and as part of albums. Numerous loose folios are also preserved in museums and private collections. 4 Bābur, Akbar and Jahāngīr visited many significant pilgrimage centres of the Nāth-s like Gor-Khatri and Ṭīlā, among others. Wheeler M. Thackston, trans. ed. and annot. and Salman Rushdie, Intro., The Bāburnāmā: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor (New York: The Modern Library, 2002), 171, 172, 282; W. H. Lowe, trans., Muntakhab-ut-Tavārīkh, or Selection from History by ‘Abd al-Qādir Badā'ūnī, Vol. II (Calcutta: The Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Baptist Mission Press, 1884), 334–6; Alexander Rogers, trans. and Henry Beveridge, ed., The Tūzuk-i-Jahāngīrī: or memoirs of Jahāngīr, Vol. I (1909, New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968), 102, 361. B. N. Goswamy and J. S. Grewal, The Mughals and the Jogis of JakhbarSome Madad-i-Ma‘āsh and Other Documents (Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1967). 5 Lowe, Muntakhab-ut-Tavārīkh, Vol. II, 334, 335. Blochmann, Ā‘īn-i-Akbarī, Vol. I (Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873), 164, 165; Harbans Mukhia, The Mughals of India (Delhi: Blackwell Publishing, Wiley India Pvt. Ltd., 2004), 47, 49. 6 Blochmann, Ā‘īn-i-Akbarī, Vol. I, 542, 544. Goswamy and Grewal, The Mughals and the Jogis of Jakhbar, 120–4. 7 Khusrau Mirzā was Jahāngīr’s eldest son and his opponent in the power struggle in the last years of Akbar’s reign. Even after Jahāngīr became the emperor in 1605, in the very first year Khusrau revolted against his father. He was captured and believed to be blinded by the orders of Jahāngīr. For detailed firsthand account of these events, see Rogers and Beveridge, The Tūzuk, Vol. I, 51–69, 122, 174. 8 Narges Safarzadeh, ‘The History of Muraqqā‘-i-Gulshan’, (PhD diss. submitted at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2014), 96, Fig. 70. 9 Śṛṅgī is a Sanskrit word which means horn and perhaps its association with yogis is rooted in the Indian myth of Ṛṣyaśṛṅga (the seer with a horn) who because of his chastity had yogic and miraculous powers. For the yogi, in the medieval times, the horn had probably served the practical purpose of announcing his incoming before a house for alms, blowing it morning and evening before praying and meditating, and a calling for food. From the Mughal paintings, it appears that the ascetics used a long antelope horn for this purpose. The Sanskrit sources, travelogues, medieval Avadhi literature and their respective illustrations also mention śṛṅgī wearing/carrying yogis who are the followers of Gorakhnāth, though they are not the only ones to carry them. For its visual depictions with the Sufis, see Anjali Duhan Gulia, ‘The Transition of the Khāksār to the Nāth yogi via Gor Khatri’, in Art and Architectural Traditions of India and Iran: Commonality and Diversity, ed. Nasir Raza Khan (India: Routledge, forthcoming). In the contemporary times, the Nāth-s call their śṛṅgī as nāda (a tiny whistle mostly

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Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture made of metal). It is tied to a sacred thread called siṃgnādajaneū along with an earring (pāvitrī) and a rudrākṣa berry. James Mallinson, ‘Yogis in Mughal India’, in Yoga: The Art of Transformation, ed. Debra Diamond (Washington, DC: The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2013), 73–5. Ibid., 73. I have come across this during my fieldwork in Rohtak and Ambala, Haryana. For more on the Nāth-s of Rohtak, see Anjali Duhan Gulia, ‘The Nāth Yogis of Bābā Mastnāth Monastery: Their Religion and Art’, in Archaeology and Heritage: Haryana – Current Trends, ed. Jagdish Parshad (New Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corp. Ltd., 2019), 255–79. Additionally, paintings of Jālandharnāth from the first quarter of nineteenth century, Mehrangarh, Jodhpur, also portray him wearing the triangular cap. The other is present in the Baḥr al-Ḥayāt (CBL In.16.20b), where the yogi performing the Anahad has a book as one of his paraphernalia. The Nāth-s are often considered coming from the lower strata of the society and are therefore illiterate. Lowe, Muntakhab-ut-Tavārīkh, Vol. II, 334. John Seyller, ‘Manohar’, in Masters of Indian Painting, Vol. I, eds. Milo Cleveland Beach, Eberhard Fischer and B. N. Goswamy (Zurich, Switzerland: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011), 142. Salīm Qulī is believed to have worked in manuscripts like the Dīvān of Amīr Ḥasan Dehalvī, Mir’āt al-quds, YV, RK and Anvār-i Suhaylī. Inscribed works of the painter are present in the British Library Anvār-i Suhaylī (Add MS18579), folios 338v and 363r, accessed at http://www​.bl​.uk​/manuscripts​/FullDisplay​.aspx​?ref​=Add​_MS​ _18579 on 15 July 2018. For attributed works of the painter, see Pedro Moura Carvalho and Wheeler M. Thackston, trans., Mir’āt al-quds (Mirror of Holiness): A Life of Christ for Emperor Akbar (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), 82, 102 and 112; John Seyller, ‘The Walters Art Museum Diwan of Amir Hasan Dihlawi and Salim’s Atelier at Allahabad’, in Arts of Mughal India: Studies in Honour of Robert Skelton, eds. Rosemary Crill, Susan Stronge and Andrew Topsfield (London: Victoria & Albert Museum; Ahmedabad: Mapin Publications, 2004), 101; Som Prakash Verma, Mughal Painters and Their Work: A Biographical Survey and Comprehensive Catalogue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 340–1. See, YV: 139b, 172a, 194a and RK: 73a. Linda York Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, Vol. I (London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995), 171, 176, 178–9, 180–1, 221, 226. For a detailed survey of works by and attributed to Manohar, see Verma, Mughal Painters, 248–59; Seyller, ‘Manohar’, 135–52. Published by Seyller, ‘Manohar’, 142, Fig. 5. Seyller also records another painting where Manohar has painted Akbar in three-quarter view receiving Mirza ‘Aziz Koka [Cincinnati Art Museum (1950.289)]. This painting is published by Terence

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McInerney, ‘Manohar’, in Master Artists of the Imperial Mughal Courts, ed. Pratapaditya Pal, 53–68 (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1991), 61, no. 9. The courtier later is identified as Raisāl Darbārī by Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, Vol. I, 302, colour pl. 43. Salīm probably ended his revolt in November 1604, after which he returned back to Agra along with his atelier (included Manohar and Salīm Qulī). There he set up an atelier with the painters who supported him in his rebellion. For details, see Asok Kumar Das, Mughal Painting During Jahangir’s Time (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1978); Asok Kumar Das, ‘Salim’s Taswirkhana’, in Allahabad – Where the Rivers Meet, ed. Neelum Saran Gour (Mumbai: Marg Publications), 56–71, Vol. 61, No. 1 (September 2009); Seyller, ‘The Walters Art Museum Diwan’, 95–110. Elaine Wright, ed., Muraqqa‘ Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library (Alexandria: Art Services International; Hanover: University Press of New England, 2008), 271. Published by Sunil Sharma, ‘The Sati and the Yogi: Safavid and Mughal Imperial Self-Representation in Two Album Pages’, in In Harmony: The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art, ed. Mary McWilliams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, 2013), 146. Debra Diamond, ed., Yoga: The Art of Transformation (Washington DC: The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2013), 223–5, Figs. 19a and b. John Seyller, ‘Govardhan’, in Masters of Indian Painting, Vol. I, eds. Milo Cleveland Beach, Eberhard Fischer and B. N. Goswamy (Zurich, Switzerland: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011), 362, Fig. 3. J. P. Losty, ‘The ‘Bute Hafiz’ and the Development of Border Decoration in the Manuscript Studio of the Mughals’, The Burlington Magazine, 127, no. 993 (December 1985): 856–60, 866, 869. Viewed at http://www​.bl​.uk​/manuscripts​/Viewer​.aspx​?ref​=Or​_14139​_fs001r. Accessed at http://www​.clevelandart​.org​/art​/1971​.79. Veronique Bouillier, ‘Kānphaṭās’, in Brill Encyclopaedia of Hinduism, eds. Knut A. Jacobsen, Helene Basu, Angelika Malinar and Vasudha Narayanan (Brill Online, 2013), 4, 5. Email communication with Dr James Mallinson, 3 June 2016. For further details, visual depictions and historical shifts in their membership in the order, see Anjali Duhan Gulia, ‘The Ramtā Nāth: in the Saṃpradāya and Paintings’, Invited talk at the Centre of Yoga Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2021. https://youtu​.be​/fJhn8t​_ZL3k. Patton E. Burchett, ‘Bhakti Religion and Tantric Magic in Mughal India: Kacchvāhās, Rāmānandīs, and Nāths, circa 1500–1750’ (PhD diss., Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University, New York, 2012), 367. Burchett articulates that during these centuries the Vaiṣṇava bhakti poets and institutions

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Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture carved out their place in the religious landscape of India in opposition to a ‘marginalized and unauthorized sphere of tantric ‘magic’’ (which according to the author represented the Nāth-s). Charlotte Vaudeville, Kabir (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 120–1. This should not be confused with the better-known tradition of the Vairāgī in Vaishnavism. Guiseppe Tucci, ‘The Sea and Land Travels of a Buddhist Sādhu in the Sixteenth Century’, The Indian Historical Quarterly VII, no. 4 (December 1931): 687. Tucci records the biography of a Nāth panthī Buddhagupta, who mentions these yogis as ‘bhe ra gi’ in his travelogue written in Tibetan in the sixteenth century. Tucci translates them as ‘Veragipanthin’. Louis H. Gray, ‘The Bhartṛharinirveda of Harihara, Now First Translated from the Sanskrit and Prākrit’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 25 (1904): 197–230. Until the last century, the story of Nihāl De was sung for one full month by two jogī-s on every night in the villages of Haryana in order to save the cattle from disease. Dinesh Chandra Verma, Haryana (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1975), 87. Kathryn Hansen, Grounds for Play: The Nauṭaṅkī Theatre of North India (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 1992), 85, 122–5, 259. The author has noted that the Nāth yogi’s lore supplied them with their narrative and symbolic corpus. Catherine Champion, ‘Between Caste and Sect: The Muslim Bhartrhari Jogis of Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh)’, in On Becoming an Indian Muslim: French Essays on Aspects of Syncretism, ed. and trans., M. Waseem (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), 281–3. Champion notes that they begin their journey by paying homage to Bhartṛhari’s Guru Jālandharipā, whose shrine is present in Badhalganj in Gorakhpur, then they visit the cave of Bhartṛhari at Chunar and their final stoppage is the Gorakh Tila, Banaras, after which they return to Gorakhpur. On their journey to Banaras, in between, they also visit many Muslim shrines like the dargāh-s of Sharīfuddīn Yāhyā Manerī at Biharsharīf and Qāsim Sulaimānī. Champion, ‘Between Caste and Sect’, 281–2. However, during my field trip in the region, I found that their numbers are fast diminishing, and I could not find any ramtā vairāgī jogī-s in the Gorakhpur city. Some of the older ones were present in the neighbouring villages especially in the areas of Sant Kabir Nagar, but the young generation does not pursue this lifestyle. Another interesting aspect which I noted is their relationship with the Gorakhpur maṭha which is complex. These Bhartṛhari jogī-s are prohibited from entering the monastery not on the account that they are Muslims but because they are householders and are considered as beggars. A Sultanate period illustrated manuscript of this story is present in the Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi. It is written in Kaithi script and is dated to circa fifteenth

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century. D. F. Plukker, ed., The Miragāvatī of Kutubana (Academisch Proefschrift, University of Amsterdam, 1981). Its paintings are discussed by Karl Khandalavala, ‘The Mṛigāvat of Bharat Kala Bhavan: As a Social Document and Its Date and Provenance’, in Chhavi: Golden Jubilee Volume 1920–1970, ed. Karl Khandalavala (Varanasi: Bharat Kala Bhavan, 1971), 19–36. It reads ‘completed in the year 1012 [11 June 1603/29 May 1604] by the pen of the poor and humble Burhān in the abode of the Sultanate Allāhābād’. Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, 189. Here, I have employed both Salīm’s Persian manuscript preserved in the CBL and the English translation of the Avadhi text by Aditya Behl to understand the intended meaning of the visual narrative. Aditya Behl, trans. and Wendy Doniger, ed., The Magic Doe: Qut̤ban Suhravardī’s Mirigāvatī: A New Translation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). The Alakhbānī (Rushdnāmā) is written by Chishti Sufī Shaikh ‘Abd al-Quddūs Gangohī who cultivated a deeper bond with the Nāth-s, where his understanding of them was not only restricted to yoga but covered their philosophical ideologies too. This text has his verses (some also in Hindavi) and some of his pīr-s, drawing parallels in Sufī beliefs based on the waḥdat al-wujūd (Unity of Being) with the philosophy and practices of Gorakhnāthi-s. Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi and Shailesh Zaidi, eds., Alakhbānī (Rushdnāmā) by Shaikh ‘Abdu’l Quddūs Gangohī (Aligarh: Bharat Prakashan Mandir, 1971). The Gorakhbānī dated between sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has Hindi verses attributed to Gorakhanāth. This text links itself with diverse yogic traditions. Pitambar Dutt Badthwal, trans. and ed., Gorakhbānī attributed to Gorakhnāth (Prayaga: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 1955). Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, Vol.I, 189–232, and Wright, Muraqqa‘, 23, 228–9. These works by Das and Seyller have been referred to in this chapter. The aforementioned themes are illustrated in the manuscript on folio numbers 6a, 8a, 9b, 12a, 15b, 16b, 19b, 20b and 22a. The prince throughout the text uses this phrase to explain his journey in search of Mirigāvatī. RK, folio 23a and b. The Avadhi text is more elaborate and reveals in detail the yogi’s attire. Behl and Doniger, Mirigāvatī, 81, verse 106. Parasurama Caturvedi, ed., Sūfī-Kāvya-Saṅgrha (Prayaga: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 1951). James Mallinson, ‘Yogi Insignia in Mughal Painting and Avadhi Romances’, in Objects, Images, Stories: Simon Digby’s Historical Methods, eds. Francesca Orisini and David Lunn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming), 9–10. H. S. Jarret, trans. and revised and annot. by Jadu-Nath Sarkar, Ā‘īn-i-Akbarī by Abū al-Faz̤l ‘Allami, Vol. III (Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1948), 269.

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56 The earliest illustrated examples of these wandering vairāgī-s are present in the Sultanate period Candāyana and Mirigāvatī manuscripts, where the lovers don the garb of these ascetics and carry horn and kingarī. Further, Bhartṛhari is always depicted playing a viol or vīṇā in paintings. 57 A few examples are in Bāṇa’s Kādambarī, a daughter of a Gandharva, Mahāśvetā, who in love and separation for an ascetic Puṇḍarīka renounced the world, adopted asceticism and played vīṇā in a temple of Śiva. M. R. Kale, ed., Kādambarī by Bāṇa (Delhi, Varanasi, Patna: Motilal Banarsidass, 1968), 176–82. Padmāvat also has the yogi taking the viol. A. G. Shirreff, trans., Padmāvatī by Malik Muḥammad Jāyasī (Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1944), 87. In the romance of Chītā and Rājārāma called Chītā, the former is trapped in the palace of Emperor Alā’uddīn. Rājārāma donned the attire of a yogi and played the flute in separation. Caturvedi, Sūfī-Kāvya-Saṅgrha, 272–4. 58 Jaṅgama-s are the North Indian version of the Southern Śaiva Lingāit-s, who are the priests of their sect. Married, they beg for alms. The Dabistān, a text from the seventeenth century, reveals that the jaṅgama-s cut their hair, rub dust on their bodies, praise Mahādeva [Śiva] and are of different classes. David Shea and Anthony Troyer, trans., The Dabistān or School of Manners, Vol. II (London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1843), 218. 59 RK, Folio 33a. 60 Behl and Doniger, Mirigāvatī, 96–9, verses 147–57. 61 RK, folio 47b. 62 Rizvi and Zaidi, Alakhbānī, 123, verse 100. 63 Behl and Doniger, Mirigāvatī, 104, verses 170, 171. 64 RK, folios 51b, 52a. 65 Badthwal, Gorakhbānī, 10, verse 26. 66 When a candidate wishes to enter the sect, he is made a novice (aughar) by shaving off his hair. Then he is made to bathe with ashes; an ochre robe, a shroud, a loincloth, a cap along with a new name are given to him. The ashes and shroud clearly signify his death to the world and a new name ending with ‘Nāth’ signifies his new birth. After six months’ probation, he becomes a Nāth, his ears are pierced and earthen rings inserted in them. 67 Rizvi and Zaidi, Alakhbānī, 117, verse 30. Die! Pandit die! The death is sweet, which was passed by Shri Gorakh, where the spirit goes after death, place there the heart while still alive, if one can experience the death by detaching one’s heart [from this world], [that] one only plays with utmost fearlessness. 68 John Seyller, ‘Payag’, in Masters of Indian Painting, Vol. I, eds. Milo Cleveland Beach, Eberhard Fischer and B. N. Goswamy (Zurich, Switzerland: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011), 325, Fig. 2. 69 Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, Vol. I, 216, Fig. 2.70. 70 Ibid., 219, Fig. 2.72.

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71 Ibid., 212, 217. 72 The seven energy centres within the yogic body are Mūlādhāra, Svādhiṣṭhāna, Maṇipūra, Anāhata, Viśuddha, Ājñā and the top one is Sahasrāra. Alternatively, in a Sufi milieu, this points to the seven stages of love as attraction, infatuation, love, trust, worship, bewilderment and finally conflation with God. 73 RK, folios 72b and 73b. 74 Rizvi and Zaidi, Alakhbānī,120, verse 62. 75 Ātmabodha, n.d. (Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1998), 33, 56. Like bubbles rising on the surface of the waters of the ocean, all the worlds arise from, stay in and resolve into the Supreme Being who is the root cause and prop of all. (verse 8) The whole objective world such as the body, is born of ignorance and transient like a bubble on water. Know the Self to be distinct from it and identical with Brahman (the Supreme). (verse 31) 76 Guru Tegh Bahādur in his Śabadi also echoes the same concept: As the bubbles in the water swell up and disappear again, So is the universe created; says Nānak, listen O my friend!. (verse 25)

77 78 79

80 81 82 83

Sahib Singh, trans., Guru Granth Sāhib (USA: Handmade Books), n.d., 1427 Śloka, Ninth Mehl. RK, folio 79b. RK, folio 76b. For further details of how gold was used in Mughal art, see Rachael Smith with contributions by Jessica Baldwin, ‘The Use of Gold in Mughal Miniatures’, in Muraqqa’, 203. RK, folios 92b and 93a. The Avadhi text is similar but also adds Vindhyā (the name of a mountain range) here. Behl and Doniger, Mirigāvatī, 142, verse 279. Rizvi and Zaidi, Alakhbānī, 117, verse 32. RK, folios 131b and 132a. In the contemporary times, these Bhartṛhari vairāgī jogī-s are not part of the twelve pantha-s of the Nāth saṃpradāya.

Bibliography Manuscript sources Baḥr al-Ḥayāt, c. 1600–1605 AD, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Persian, In.16. Rāj Kunwar, 1603–1604 AD, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Persian, In.37. Yogavāsiṣṭha, 1602 AD, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Persian, In.05.

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Primary sources Ā‘īn-i-Akbarī by Abū al-Faz̤l ‘Allami. Translated by H. Blochmann. Vols I–II. Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873. Ā‘īn-i-Akbarī by Abū al-Faz̤l ‘Allami. Translated by H. S. Jarret, revised and annotated by Jadu-Nath Sarkar. Vol. III. Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1948. Akbarnāmā by Abū al-Faz̤l ‘Allami. Translated by H. Beveridge. Vol. III. Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1910. Alakhbānī (Rushdnāmā) by Shaikh ‘Abdu’l Quddūs Gangohī. Edited by Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi and Shailesh Zaidi. Aligarh: Bharat Prakashan Mandir, 1971. Ātmabodha (n.d.). Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam, 1998. The Bāburnāmā: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor. Translated, edited, and annotated by Wheeler M. Thackston, introduction by Salman Rushdie. New York: The Modern Library, 2002. The Dabistān or School of Manners. Translated by David Shea and Anthony Troyer. Vol. II. London: Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland, 1843. Gorakhbānī attributed to Gorakhnāth. Translated and edited by Pitambar Dutt Badthwal. Prayaga: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 1955. Guru Granth Sāhib. Translated by Sahib Singh. USA: Handmade Books, n.d. Kādambarī by Bāṇa. Edited by M. R. Kale. Delhi, Varanasi, Patna: Motilal Banarsidass, 1968. Muntakhab-ut-Tavārīkh, or Selection from History by ‘Abd al-Qādir Badā'ūnī, Translated by W. H. Lowe. Vol. II. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society of Bengal, Baptist Mission Press, 1884. Padmāvatī by Malik Muḥammad Jāyasī. Translated by A. G. Shirreff. Calcutta: Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1944. The Magic Doe: Qut̤ban Suhravardī’s Mirigāvatī: A New Translation. Translated by Aditya Behl and edited by Wendy Doniger. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. The Tūzuk-i-Jahāngīrī: Or Memoirs of Jahāngīr. Translated by Alexander Rogers and edited by Henry Beveridge. Vol. I.1909. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968.

Secondary sources Ahuja, Naman P. ‘The Chandayana; One of the Earliest Illustrated Sufi Manuscripts from Hindustan’. Invited lecture at the University of Alberta, 2013. https://www​ .youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=RKj4GVB36lY [Accessed on 22 March 2016]. Beach, Milo Cleveland. Mughal and Rajput Painting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Behl, Aditya and Wendy Doniger, Editor. Love’s Subtle Magic: An Indian Islamic Literary Tradition, 1379–1545. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

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Bouillier, Veronique. ‘Kānphaṭās’. In Brill Encyclopaedia of Hinduism, edited by Knut A. Jacobsen, Helene Basu, Angelika Malinar and Vasudha Narayanan, 1–8. Brill Online, 2013. Burchett, Patton E.. ‘Bhakti Religion and Tantric Magic in Mughal India: Kacchvāhās, Rāmānandīs, and Nāths, circa 1500–1750’. PhD dissertation, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Columbia University, New York, 2012. Carvalho, Pedro Moura and Wheeler M. Thackston. Translation. Mir′āt al-quds (Mirror of Holiness): A Life of Christ for Emperor Akbar. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012. Caturvedi, Parasurama, editor. Sūfī-Kāvya-Saṅgrha. Prayaga: Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, 1951. Champion, Catherine. ‘Between Caste and Sect: The Muslim Bhartrhari Jogis of Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh)’. In On Becoming an Indian Muslim: French Essays on Aspects of Syncretism, edited and translated by M. Waseem, 279–93. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003. Das, Asok Kumar. Mughal Painting During Jahangir’s Time. Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1978. Das, Asok Kumar. ‘Salim’s Taswirkhana’. In Allahabad–Where the Rivers Meet, edited by Neelum Saran Gour, Vol. 61, No. 1, 56–71. Mumbai: Marg Publications, September 2009. Diamond, Debra, ed. Yoga: The Art of Transformation. Washington, DC: The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2013. Digby, Simon. ‘Abd al-Quddus Gangohi (1456–1537 A.D.): The Personality and Attitudes of a Medieval Indian Sufi’, Medieval India – A Miscellany 3 (1975): 1–66. Goswamy, B. N. and J. S. Grewal. The Mughals and the Jogis of Jakhbar: Some Madad-iMa‘āsh and Other Documents. Simla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1967. Gray, Louis H. ‘The Bhartṛharinirveda of Harihara, Now First Translated from the Sanskrit and Prākrit’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 25 (1904): 197–230. Gulia, Anjali Duhan. ‘The Nāth Yogis of Bābā Mastnāth Monastery: Their Religion and Art’. In Archaeology and Heritage: Haryana – Current Trends, edited by Jagdish Parshad, 255–79. New Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corp. Ltd, 2019. Gulia, Anjali Duhan. ‘The Ramtā Nāth: in the Saṃpradāya and Paintings’. Invited talk at the Centre of Yoga Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2021. https://youtu​.be​/fJhn8t​_ZL3k Gulia, Anjali Duhan. ‘The Transition of the Khāksār to the Nāth yogi via Gor Khatri’. In Art and Architectural Traditions of India and Iran: Commonality and Diversity, edited by Nasir Raza Khan. India: Routledge, forthcoming. Hansen, Kathryn. Grounds for Play: The Nauṭaṅkī Theatre of North India. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 1992. Khandalavala, Karl. ‘The Mṛigāvat of Bharat Kala Bhavan: As a Social Document and Its Date and Provenance’. In Chhavi: Golden Jubilee Volume 1920–1970, edited by Karl Khandalavala, 19–36. Varanasi: Bharat Kala Bhavan, 1971. Leach, Linda York. Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library. Vol. I. London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995.

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Losty, J. P. ‘Ascetics and Yogis in Indian Painting’. https://blogs​.bl​.uk​/asian​-and​-african​ /2016​/08​/ascetics​-and​-yogis​-in​-indian​-painting​.html [Accessed on 15 August 2016]. Losty, J. P. ‘The ‘Bute Hafiz’ and the Development of Border Decoration in the Manuscript Studio of the Mughals’. The Burlington Magazine, 127, No. 993 (December 1985): 855–70. Mallinson, James. ‘Nāth Sampradāya’. In Brill Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Vol. 3, edited by Knut A. Jacobsen, 407–28. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Mallinson, James. ‘Yogis in Mughal India’. In Yoga: The Art of Transformation, edited by Debra Diamond, 68–83. Washington D.C.: The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2013. Mallinson, James. ‘Yogi Insignia in Mughal Painting and Avadhi Romances’. In Objects, Images, Stories: Simon Digby’s historical methods, edited by Francesca Orisini and David Lunn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. McInerney, Terence. ‘Manohar’. In Master Artists of the Imperial Mughul Courts, edited by Pratapaditya Pal, 53–68. Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1991. Mukhia, Harbans. The Mughals of India. Delhi: Blackwell Publishing, Wiley India Pvt. Ltd., 2004. Pandey, Shyam Manohar. ‘Kutuban’s Miragāvatī: Its Content and Interpretation’. In Devotional Literature in South Asia: Current Research, 1985–1988, edited by R. S. McGregor, 179–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Plukker, D. F., ed. The Miragāvatī of Kutubana. Academisch Proefschrift, University of Amsterdam, 1981. Rizvi, Saiyid Athar Abbas. A History of Sufism in India: Early Sufism and Its History in India to1600 AD, Vol. I. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1978. Safarzadeh, Narges. ‘The History of Muraqqā‘-i-Gulshan’. PhD dissertation, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2014. Seyller, John. ‘Govardhan’. In Masters of Indian Painting, Vol. I, edited by Milo Cleveland Beach, Eberhard Fischer and B. N. Goswamy, 357–74. Zurich, Switzerland: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011. Seyller, John. ‘Manohar’. In Masters of Indian Painting, Vol. I, edited by Milo Cleveland Beach, Eberhard Fischer and B. N. Goswamy, 135–52. Zurich, Switzerland: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011. Seyller, John. ‘Painting Workshops in Mughal India’. In Masters of Indian Painting, Vol. II, edited by Milo Cleveland Beach, Eberhard Fischer and B. N. Goswamy, Appendix II, 799–804. Zurich, Switzerland: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011. Seyller, John. ‘Payag’. In Masters of Indian Painting, Vol. I, edited by Milo Cleveland Beach, Eberhard Fischer and B. N. Goswamy, 321–36. Zurich, Switzerland: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011. Seyller, John. ‘The Walters Art Museum Diwan of Amir Hasan Dihlawi and Salim’s Atelier at Allahabad’. In Arts of Mughal India: Studies in Honour of Robert Skelton, edited by Rosemary Crill, Susan Stronge and Andrew Topsfield, 95–110. London: Victoria & Albert Museum; Ahmedabad: Mapin Publications, 2004.

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Sharma, Sunil. ‘The Sati and the Yogi: Safavid and Mughal Imperial Self-Representation in Two Album Pages’. In In Harmony: The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection of Islamic Art, edited by Mary McWilliams, 146–55. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, 2013. Smith, Rachael with contributions by Jessica Baldwin. ‘The Use of Gold in Mughal Miniatures’. In Muraqqa‘ Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library, edited by Elaine Wright, 198–205. Alexandria: Art Services International; Hanover: University Press of New England, 2008. Tucci, Guiseppe. ‘The Sea and Land Travels of a Buddhist Sādhu in the Sixteenth Century’. The Indian Historical Quarterly VII: 4 (December 1931): 683–702. Vaudeville, Charlotte. Kabir. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974. Verma, Dinesh Chandra. Haryana. New Delhi: National Book Trust, 1975. Verma, Som Prakash. Mughal Painters and Their Work: A Biographical Survey and Comprehensive Catalogue. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Wright, Elaine, ed. Muraqqa‘ Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library. Alexandria: Art Services International; Hanover: University Press of New England, 2008.

Websites 1. http://www​.bl​.uk​/manuscripts​/FullDisplay​.aspx​?ref​=Add​_MS​_18579 2. http://www​.bl​.uk​/manuscripts​/Viewer​.aspx​?ref​=Or​_14139​_fs001r 3. http://www​.clevelandart​.org​/art​/1971​.79

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The ubiquitous knot Traces of Hercules in an unknown candleholder from the Museum of Islamic Arts in Bursa Paschalis Androudis

The Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts of Bursa, housed in the Ottoman Yeşil Madrasa (1419–24), has important collections of Ottoman, Beylik and Seljuk art.1 In one of its rooms, just opposite a collection of objects related to Bektashi Dervishes and placed in one conch, stands a bronze candleholder with the Hercules Knot (Figure 9.1). This rare object is completely unknown to art historical research, and moreover it is the only specimen of the museum without a caption. In this note, I would like to present this candleholder, try to date it and place it within a preliminary artistic and cultural context. The candleholder has a total height of 78 centimetres and is composed of: a) The main, longitudinal body (shaft), which bears an elegant decoration of the Hercules Knot (Figure 9.2), and b) The hemispherical base (height 11 cm, diameter 27 cm), which has a plain external rim (maximal diameter 46 cm) and small lobes in the perimeter of its ring (Figure 9.3). The largest part of the shaft of the candleholder is decorated with an impressive design in the form of a knot, known as the ‘Hercules Knot’, with elements formed in the shape of a prism. Around the knot, in the upper and the lower part of the shaft are small balls with engraved decorations. Every small ball is accompanied by a clepsydra-shaped compartment with highlighted lips to its two sides, which bear in their turn engraved decorations in their perimeter. Between the parts in the clepsydra form and on each side of the knot is a little space with four lozenges in relief.

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Figure 9.1  Bronze candleholder with Hercules Knot. Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts of Bursa. Photo: P. Androudis.

The hemispherical base (Figure 9.3) has a simplified engraved decoration with repeating, almost semicircular designs which could remind a stylized steamer. In the upper part of the hemispherical base, there are repeatedly concentric circles. In its perimeter there are also three floral and three other semicircular lobes. The shaft of the candleholder is composed of cast parts. It is a particular technique of Byzantine metalwork, the flourishing of which can be observed in the bronze door revetments of Italy, as well as in various candelabra, such as the ones from Meteora. These candelabra were manufactured with the use of moulds for their respective parts, that is to say, with the technique most commonly applied in Byzantine metalwork for the assemblage of various different schemes into a whole. The composition of the bronze which was used for the production of the candleholder of Bursa is difficult to determine without a special analysis.

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Figure 9.2  Detail of Figure 9.1, the knot of the shaft.

The lack of an inscription on our lighting device, of any characteristic engraved decoration, as well as of other significant stylistic elements, makes it difficult to ascertain its provenance and date of production. The unique element which could lead us to a certain direction is the presence of the Hercules Knot. The motif, known as ‘nodus Herculaneous’ or ‘Herakleiotikon hamma’, originates in Hellenistic art.2 Hercules Knot became very popular in Byzantine decorative arts,3 particularly from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries but survived until the fifteenth century. This motif is present in minor arts (especially in ivories from tenth century onwards), in monumental and architectural sculpture (knotted columns of sanctuaries, knotted columns of ciboria [canopies] and window mullions), in mural painting (especially in the representation of canopies or inside the apse of the sanctuary), as well as in illuminated manuscript paintings. The popularity of the motif in Middle and Late Byzantine art is due to the fact that the ancient symbolism of the Hercules Knot to guard, protect and keep away the evil spirits was never lost in Byzantium. One of the major proofs in

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Figure 9.3  Detail of Figure 9.1, the base of the candleholder.

favour of this hypothesis is its use on the knotted columns of the iconostasis (chancel barriers) of the sanctuaries of the Byzantine churches, as well as its use in marble mullions of the apse windows. According to Ioli Kalavrazou, the Byzantine knotted column has also specific associations with those cast bronze columns of the Judaeo-Christian tradition (called ‘Jachin’ and ‘Boaz’) which stood before the entrance to the Temple of Solomon.4 These columns served for guarding the entrance to the Solomonic sanctuary. There is no doubt that the Byzantine Church searched from its very beginnings to incorporate the Judaean Temple into its tradition. Thus, the Byzantines adopted the well-known symbol of the Hercules Knot, whose apotropaic power resembled that of the Hebraic cast columns ‘Jachin’ and ‘Boaz’, in order to underline the significance of the columns of the Temple of Solomon.5 The knotted columns with the Hercules Knot ‘guarded’ and ‘protected’ the sanctuary of the Byzantine Church from evil, just as the Hebraic cast columns did for the Temple of Solomon. In Byzantine metalwork, apart from the pair of monumental candelabra (height 1, 63 m) from the katholikon of the Monastery of Transfiguration of Meteora (Thessaly, Greece),6 we find the Hercules Knot in three other candelabra identified by Laskarina Bouras: in one candelabrum, now kept in Staatliche Museen in Berlin (height 1, 37 m),7 as well as in the pair of precious and magnificent candelabra in the northern chapel of the church of San Giorgio

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Maggiore in Venice.8 All of the afore mentioned candelabra were cast in multiple pieces. Apart from these works where the Hercules Knot is formed differently from the one in the candelabra of Meteora, we do not know any other candelabrum or candleholder adorned with this type of knot which could be ascribed to a Byzantine workshop. In my study of metalwork objects from Asia Minor, I discovered other artworks, which not only bear the motif of the Hercules Knot but also present many similarities with the shaft of the candleholder at the Museum of Bursa. These works are completely unknown and certainly unpublished and could offer important elements for a better understanding of these artworks. The first of these works is kept in the Ethnographical Museum of Ankara. It was once positioned in front of the wooden conch of a pulpit (minbar), which was transferred from the fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Taşkınpaşa Mosque in Damsaköy.9 The resemblance between the decorative elements of the candleholder of Ankara and those of the shaft of the candleholder of Bursa is quite noticeable. Secondly, the candleholder of Bursa can be compared to other candelabra which bear decorations with Hercules Knot that I encountered in two old photographs of the interior of the mausoleum of the tekke of Seyyid Battal Gazi near Eskişehir (Figures 9.4 and 9.5).10 It is obvious that when considered in light of these two works, that the candleholder of Bursa follows the established Byzantine tradition of the respective works decorated with the Hercules Knot. Two questions remain open, however: was the Bursa candleholder similarly used in a religious setting, and was its significance in Byzantine churches and monasteries carried onto or translated into its new Ottoman context? I will return to these questions by first discussing its possible date and then moving onto its provenance. When the Bursa candleholder is analysed with attention to how the Hercules Knot is articulated, it is possible to see a potential connection with one of the candelabras of Meteora. It is important to note that the technique of the formation of the knot in Meteora is made with bronze bands and is more elegant in comparison to its counterparts in Bursa, Ankara and in the tekke of Gazi Battal Gazi. Laskarina Bouras dated the candelabras of Meteora to the twelfth or thirteenth century and described them as Byzantine in manufacture. One significant point to notice is that the semicircular formations in the candelabra of Meteora have a functional purpose. There are metal bolts that pierce through them, which hold and reinforce all the cast pieces of the shaft. In contrast to such functionality, in the candleholder of Bursa, as well as in parts of the shafts of the candelabra from the tekke of Seyyid Battal Gazi, the semicircular holes are

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Figure 9.4  Mausoleum of the tekke of Seyyid Gazi Battal near Eskişehir. Candle­ holders with Hercules Knot (Photo: C. Wülzinger).

Figure 9.5  Detail of Figure 9.4, shaft with Hercules Knot.

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cast in the same piece with the rest of the shaft, without any particular use: they seem to copy older prototypes, such as those from the candelabra of Meteora, albeit without fully incorporating their technical characteristics. Nonetheless, if the dating of the candelabra of Meteora to the twelfth or thirteenth century is correct, then the candleholder of Bursa could be ascribed to the same or a later date, that is to say to the thirteenth or fourteenth century. As for the provenance of the candleholder of Bursa, the presence of the Hercules Knot could be in favour of its manufacture in a Byzantine workshop, because there is not a single metalwork (or art in general) from the Islamic world that bears this element. In favour of this opinion could be – at least in the case of the candelabra of the tekke of Seyyid Battal Gazi – the presence in these works of heteroclite elements, which seem to come from previous works and are casted into a new synthesis. The same could apply for the candlestick-candleholder of Ankara. It is also noteworthy that the tekke of Seyyid Battal Gazi is a dervish lodge which was established by Seljuq Turks for the cult of the homonym legendary Arab Gazi.11 Many dervish lodges were established over the remains of preexisting Byzantine monasteries. It seems possible that many candelabra which decorate the prayer niches of mosques originate from the liturgical equipment of the Byzantine churches. It is noteworthy that most of these candelabra were standing in front of the chancel barriers of the sanctuaries of the churches. Thus, we could possibly assume that the presence of the apotropaic Hercules Knot in the shaft of the candelabra has also the same scope of protection as the knotted columns of the chancel barriers of the Byzantine churches. If this is the case, then the knot in Byzantine candelabra is not a pure decorative motif but rather a meaningful element of religious (and also popular) belief. In my opinion, the appropriation of ‘Byzantine’ lighting devices in Seljuq and Beylik tekkes has more to do with the establishment of the tekkes on the location of older Byzantine monasteries than with an appropriation or translation of meaning. Such objects could be easily ‘recycled’ in a new context of decoration, but as I do believe, not with a particular religious symbolism. It would not be too far-fetched to presume that the religious Byzantine symbolism of the Hercules Knot was not known in an Islamic (and Anatolian Turkish) context. Anatolian Seljuq and Beylik religious art had different elements of ‘protective’ character in its thematic repertoire, the most directly related one being the Seal of Solomon. Circulation of lighting devices in both Byzantine and Islamic worlds must have been facilitated by their functional character and use, and such circulation went both ways. For instance, it is possible to find parts of bronze lighting devices of Seljuq, Mamluk or Ottoman origin which were used for lighting purposes in

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the main churches and chapels of the Orthodox monasteries of Mount Athos.12 Most of these devices were brought there as precious gifts, mainly by Byzantine princes or high-ranking officials. Moreover, although Seljuq and Persian metalworks (or those from the larger Islamic world) in Byzantium are rarely attested, their presence can be discerned from written sources, particularly in courtly or aristocratic contexts, of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. We know, for instance, the liturgical objects with oriental names (and probably shapes) figured in the Testament of the Byzantine magnate Eustathios Boilas (1059).13 Similarly, there are liturgical objects mentioned in the inventory of mobile objects from the monastery of Theotokos of Xylourgou, Mount Athos (1142).14 On the other hand, there are also other objects like the twelfth-century Byzantine silver vessels, which are now kept in Russian museums that have significant overlaps with Islamic decorative elements, particularly those found on Persian metalworks. One of the most characteristic is a silver vessel which is identical in form with the so-called Vaso Vescovali (Khurasan, c. 1200).15 This last point takes us to a short discussion on the contextualization of the Bursa candleholder. It is obvious that there is something curious about the re-appropriation of candleholders with Hercules Knots for an Islamic context. Yet, such practice cannot be fully understood without examining the wider cultural environment of Byzantium, Seljuq Anatolia and Al-Jazira, where the portability of objects could facilitate the production of such rare forms.16 It is noteworthy that the art of metalwork in Islam – with the exception of the Ayyubid metalworks with Christian images produced for Christian clients17 – does not usually borrow formal elements and symbols of Christian origin. On the contrary, objects of Byzantine and Christian metalwork have significant formal as well as decorative elements derived from Islamic art. In this group are included numerous Byzantine ‘secular’ silver vessels from the twelfth century, which are now kept in the Hermitage Museum and in other Russian collections.18 We also know that there were many objects of Persian origin in Byzantium, where they enjoyed popularity. See, for instance, the ‘Diataxis’ of Michael Attaleiates, in which it is written: ‘καμπρίον αργυρούν διάχρυσον περσικόν μετ’ εγκαύσεως ιστών’.19 Unfortunately, the actual number of surviving candleholders or shafts of candleholders with the Bursa type of Hercules Knot is very limited. They are not studied at all and thus only vaguely dated. The absence of any inscriptions on the examples of metalwork found in Anatolia with a Hercules Knot makes their attribution to known production centres and their dating a very difficult problem to resolve. If the candleholder of Bursa as well as the formally and

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decoratively similar parts of the shafts of the candlesticks in Ankara and in the tekke of Seyyid Battal Gazi were made by a Muslim workshop, then we will have some of the rarest cases of dialogic relationship between Byzantine art and Seljuq or Beylik Anatolian art. From this point of view such phenomena could also be encountered in the architecture of the Beylik and early Ottoman periods from the end of the thirteenth century to the beginning of the fifteenth century.20 In conclusion, the bronze candleholder from Bursa can be possibly dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The shaft of the candleholder, where the Hercules Knot is located (just as those of the Ankara and Seyyid Battal Gazi candleholders), is cast in one piece, which required the fabrication of a special mould. This was done either in a Byzantine workshop or in an Islamic (Seljuk, Anatolian Beylik) one, which was familiar with older Byzantine prototypes and rearticulated them, sometimes without knowing (or ignoring) the exact meaning of some of the symbolic patterns, such as the Hercules Knot. In any case, the candleholder of Bursa embodies a protective symbol which, in its

Figure 9.6  A Byzantine (?) bronze candlestick, thirteenth century (?) in Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (L. Bouras).

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Byzantine context, was believed to have power against magic. In the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, there is another candlestick (no. 6263) with a high shaft with two Hercules Knots (Figure 9.6) that are very similar to the one on the Bursa candleholder. This candlestick is ascribed to a thirteenth- or fourteenthcentury Byzantine workshop.21 If we are to rely on only the evidence of formal similarities between the two examples, then the candleholder of Bursa can easily be of Byzantine workmanship. This final observation requires me to end this chapter with a question: if the Bursa candleholder (in a manner similar to the one in the tekke of Seyyid Battal Gazi) was re-appropriated into a Sufi lodge that replaced an older Byzantine monastery, was the dialogic openness of Seljuq or Beylik art limited only to the reuse of old lighting devices in a new context; or, even if the initial act of re-appropriation was purely practical, did the protective/Solomonic significance of the Hercules Knot translate into its new Sufi context, especially given the powerful presence of the lore of Solomon in Islamic art and thought? The answer to these questions can only be found when not only the Bursa candleholder but all others with the Hercules Knot receive further scholarly attention from specialists in Byzantine art, as well as in Islamic art.

Notes 1 An early version of this chapter was presented (with Mr Georgios Orfanidis) in the 37th Symposium of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Art (Athens, May 2017). See Paschalis Androudis and Georgios Orfanidis, ‘Άγνωστος ορειχάλκινος κηροστάτης με Ηράκλειον άμμα από το Μουσείο Τουρκικής και Ισλαμικής Τέχνης της Προύσας (Bursa)’, Τριακοστό Έβδομο Συμπόσιο Βυζαντινής και Μεταβυζαντινής Αρχαιολογίας και Τέχνης. Αθήνα, 12, 13, και 14 Μαΐου 2017. Πρόγραμμα και Περιλήψεις εισηγήσεων και ανακοινώσεων, Athens 2017, 33–4. For the Museum, see Yekta Demiralp, ‘La madrasa (musée des Arts turcs et islamiques’, Genèse de l’Art Ottoman. L’Héritage des Emirs, Izmir and Aix-enProvence, 2002, 129–31. 2 The knot of Hercules is known for its use in ancient Greece and Rome as a protective amulet, principally as a wedding symbol, incorporated into the protective girdles worn by brides, which were ceremonially untied by the new groom. According to Roman lore, the knot symbolized the legendary fertility of the God Hercules. It is probably associated to the legendary Girdle of Diana which was captured from the Amazon Queen Hippolyta. Many golden bracelets, belts, diadems and jewels of the Hellenistic and Roman periods with the Hercules

The Ubiquitous Knot

3

4 5 6

7

8

9 10 11

12

263

Knot are kept in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, as well as in the Metropolitan Museum of New York. See Herbert Hoffmann and Patricia F. Davidson, Greek Gold Jewelry from the Age of Alexander (Mainz, 1965). The symbolism of the knot survived beyond its religious use. The knot was a very popular symbol in Byzantine art. See in particular Ioli Kalavrezou-Maxeiner, ‘The Byzantine Knotted Kolumn’, in SperosVryonis Jr. (ed.), Studies in Honor of Milton V. Anastos, Byzantina kai Metabyzantina 4 (Malibu, 1985), 95–103, pl. I-IV. Kalavrezou-Maxeiner, ‘The Byzantine Knotted Kolumn’, 99–101. Ibid., 101. Laskarina Bouras, ‘Δύο βυζαντινά μανουάλια από τη Μονή Μεταμορφώσεως των Μετεώρων’, Βυζαντινά 5 (1973): 132–47 and pl. 1–16. The candelabra were once kept in the liti (a short of wide narthex) of the katholikon. Bouras, ‘Δύο βυζαντινά μανουάλια από τη Μονή Μεταμορφώσεως των Μετεώρων’, 136, 139, 141 and pl. 8a (inv. no. 6263). For this candelabrum, see also Oskar K. Wolff, Altchristliche und Mittelalterliche Byzantinische und Italienische Bildwerke, t. II (Berlin 1911), 91; Klaus Wessel, Rom, Byzanz, Russland (Berlin, 1957), 146–7. Laskarina Bouras, Δύο βυζαντινά μανουάλια, 136–9, 141–2 and pl. 8b–11a. For this candelabra, see also H. R. Hahnloser, Il Tesoro e il Museo di San Marco (Firenze, 1971), 149–51 and pl. CXXXIII. Eredem Yücel, ‘Osmanlı Ağaç İşçiliği’, Kültür ve Sanat 5 (Ocak, 1977): 68. See Carl Wülzinger, Drei Bektaschi-Klöster Phrygiens (Berlin, 1913). For the tekke, see Carl Wülzinger, Drei Bektaschi-Klöster Phrygiens; Filiz Yenişehirlioğlu, ‘The tekke of Seyid Battal Gazi’, Anadolu ve Çevresinde. Ortaçağ 2 (2008): 121–64. For the Anatolian Seljuk candlesticks encountered in Mt Athos, see Ioannis Tavlakis, ‘Καταγραφή και συντήρηση κειμηλίων στο Άγιον Όρος’, Προβλήματα διάσωσης των μνημείων της Θεσσαλονίκης και διατήρησης του ιστορικού και φυσικού χώρου του Αγίου Όρους (Πεπραγμένα Συμποσίου, Θεσσαλονίκη, 2–3 Νοεμβρίου 1980) (Thessaloniki, 1982), 135; Anna Ballian, ‘Ισλαμικό κηροπήγιο με ένθετο αργυρό διάκοσμο’, Οι Θησαυροί του Αγίου Όρους, Exhibition Catalogue, Thessaloniki 1977, 322–23 (no 9.28); Paschalis Androudis, ‘Ισλαμικό κηροπήγιο από τη Μεγίστη Λαύρα του Αγίου Όρους’, Βυζαντινά 23 (2003): 294–314; Paschalis Androudis, ‘Ισλαμικά φωτιστικά από τον ελλαδικό χώρο’, in Ioannis Motsianos and Eleni Bintsi (eds), Μια Ιστορία από Φως στο Φως/Light on Light: An Illuminating Story, Exhibition Catalogue, Thessaloniki 31 October 2011- 11 June 2012 (Thessaloniki, 2011), 299–302. The Megisti Lavra candlestick was fitted at some later date (sixteenth or seventeenth century) with a one-metre brass shaft formed of onion-shaped knobs and ending in a tray with a fitting like an upturned nail to secure the candle. For the candlestick of the Monastery of Saint Paul, a composite object made of the late thirteenth or fourteenth century processional cross from Venice fixed on an earlier inscribed Seljuk bell-shaped candlestick, see

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13

14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21

Inside/Outside Islamic Art and Architecture also Nikolaos Vryzidis, Paschalis Androudis, ‘Venetian Cross Fixed on a Seljuk Candlestick: Composite Mediterraneanism at Saint Paul’s Monastery, Mount Athos’ (to be published in 2019). For the early Ottoman candlestick in the Monastery of Docheiariou, see Paschalis Androudis, ‘Πρώιμο Οθωμανικό κηροπήγιο από τη Μονή Δοχειαρίου του Αγίου Όρους’, Βυζαντινά 27 (2007): 293–303. Maria Parani, Brigitte Pitarakis J.-M. Spieser, ‘Un exemple d'inventaire d’objets liturgiques. Le testament d’Eustathios Boilas (Avril 1059)’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines 61 (2003): 143–65. See Actes de Saint-Pantéleèmôn, ed. Paul Lemerle, Gilbert Dagron, and Sima M. Ćirković (Paris, 1982), no 7. For ‘Vaso Vescovali’, see Rachel Ward, Islamic Metalwork (London, 1993), 20, 79, 82. See, for instance, Eva Hoffman, ‘Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century’, Art Bulletin 24, no. 1 (2001): 17–50. Eva Baer, Ayyubid Metalwork with Christian Images (Leiden and Boston, 1989). See in particular Vladislav P. Darkević, Svetskoe iskusstvo Vizantinii. Proizvedeniia vizantiniisk khudozh remesla v. Vost. Evrope X-XIII v (Moskva, 1975). See Laskarina Bouras, Δύο βυζαντινά μανουάλια, 144, note 66. For this perspective, see the works of Oya Pancaroğlu, Suna Cağaptay, Robert Ousterhout, Patricia Blessing, Ethel Sarah Wolper and Scott Redford. See Bouras, Δύο βυζαντινά μανουάλια, 136 and fig. 8a.

Bibliography Androudis, Paschalis and Georgios Orfanidis. ‘Ισλαμικά φωτιστικά από τον ελλαδικό χώρο’, in Ioannis Motsianos and Eleni Bintsi (eds), Μια Ιστορία από Φως στο Φως/ Light on Light: An Illuminating Story, Exhibition Catalogue, Thessaloniki 31 October 2011–11 June 2012, 299–302. Thessaloniki: Folklife and Ethonological Museum of Macedonia-Thrace, 2011. Androudis, Paschalis and Georgios Orfanidis. ‘Άγνωστος ορειχάλκινος κηροστάτης με Ηράκλειον άμμα από το Μουσείο Τουρκικής και Ισλαμικής Τέχνης της Προύσας (Bursa)’, Τριακοστό Έβδομο Συμπόσιο Βυζαντινής και Μεταβυζαντινής Αρχαιολογίας και Τέχνης. Αθήνα, 12, 13, και 14 Μαΐου 2017. Πρόγραμμα και Περιλήψεις εισηγήσεων και ανακοινώσεων. Athens: Christianiki Arhaiologiki Etaireia (Christian Archaeological Society), 2017. Androudis, Paschalis and Georgios Orfanidis. ‘Ισλαμικό κηροπήγιο από τη Μεγίστη Λαύρα του Αγίου Όρους’, Βυζαντινά 23 (2003): 294–314. Androudis, Paschalis and Georgios Orfanidis. ‘Πρώιμο Οθωμανικό κηροπήγιο από τη Μονή Δοχειαρίου του Αγίου Όρους’, Βυζαντινά 27 (2007): 293–303.

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Baer, Eva. Ayyubid Metalwork with Christian Images. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1989. Ballian, Anna. ‘Ισλαμικό κηροπήγιο με ένθετο αργυρό διάκοσμο’, Οι Θησαυροί του Αγίου Όρους, Exhibition Catalogue. Thessaloniki, 1977. Bouras, Laskarina. ‘Δύο βυζαντινά μανουάλια από τη Μονή Μεταμορφώσεως των Μετεώρων’, Βυζαντινά 5 (1973): 132–47. Darkević, Vladislav P. Svetskoe iskusstvo Vizantinii. Proizvedeniia vizantiniisk khudozh remesla v. Vost. Evrope X-XIII v. Moscow: Museum of Hermitage, 1975. Demiralp, Yekta. ‘La madrasa (musée des Arts turcs et islamiques’, Genèse de l’Art Ottoman. L’Héritage des Emirs. Izmir and Aix-en-Provence: Museum with No Frontiers, 2002. Hahnloser, H. R. Il Tesoro e il Museo di San Marco. Firenze: Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 1971. Hoffman, Eva. ‘Pathways of Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century’, Art Bulletin 24: 1 (2001): 17–50. Hoffmann, Herbert and Patricia F. Davidson. Greek Gold Jewelry from the Age of Alexander. Mainz: P. von Zabern, 1965. Kalavrezou-Maxeiner, Ioli. ‘The Byzantine Knotted Kolumn’, in Speros Vryonis Jr. (ed.), Studies in Honor of Milton V. Anastos, Byzantina kai Metabyzantina 4, 95–103. Malibu, 1985. Lemerle, Paul, Gilbert Dagron, and Sima M. Ćirković, eds. Actes de Saint-Pantéleèmôn. Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1982. Parani, Maria, Brigitte Pitarakis, and J.-M. Spieser. ‘Un exemple d'inventaire d’objets liturgiques. Le testament d’Eustathios Boilas (Avril 1059)’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines 61 (2003): 143–65. Tavlakis, Ioannis, ‘Καταγραφή και συντήρηση κειμηλίων στο Άγιον Όρος’, Προβλήματα διάσωσης των μνημείων της Θεσσαλονίκης και διατήρησης του ιστορικού και φυσικού χώρου του Αγίου Όρους (Πεπραγμένα Συμποσίου, Θεσσαλονίκη, 2–3 Νοεμβρίου 1980). Thessaloniki: Technical Chamber of Greece, 1982. Ward, Rachel. Islamic Metalwork. London: British Museum Publications, 1993. Wessel, Klaus. Rom, Byzanz, Russland. Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1957. Wolff, Oskar K. Altchristliche und Mittelalterliche Byzantinische und Italienische Bildwerke, t. II, Berlin: Verlag von Georg Reimer, 1911. Yenişehirlioğlu, Filiz. ‘The Tekke of Seyid Battal Gazi’, Anadolu ve Çevresinde. Ortaçağ 2 (2008): 121–64. Yücel, Eredem. ‘Osmanlı Ağaç İşçiliği’, Kültür ve Sanat 5 (Ocak 1977): 58–71.

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Index 180 Degree Garden View (Joreige)  88 3D digital modelling  17, 157, 158, 170 Abdollah, Zahra  164, 169 absolute viewpoint  162 absolute viewpoint plane  162 abstraction  132, 138 Abu al-Fazl  138, 232 Abu Turab Ghaffari  109 accessibility  187, 193, 194, 196, 202 acheiropoeiton  145 ĀdiŚaṃkarācārya  236 aesthetics  145, 146 Afeiche, Anne Marie  85 affordable housing  33, 34, 47–50 air-right structures (sabat)  71 Aitken, Molly Emma  167–8 Akbar (Emperor)  167, 221, 223–5, 239 Alakhbānī (Chishti Sufī Shaikh ‘Abd al-Quddūs Gangohī)  230, 233, 234, 236, 238, 239, 245 n.45 albums  141–2 alchemical secrets  223 Alexander and His Warriors Fighting a Dragon (private collection)  166 Alexander Builds the Iron Ram-part (The Sackler Collection)  166 Alexandria  64 ‘Ali Muhammad Isfahani  103, 106, 108 ‘Ali Quli Agha, bathhouse of  105 Allahabad  18, 224, 225, 229 al-lawh al-mahfuz (lawh-i mahfuz/ Preserved Tablet of God)  143– 4, 147, 148 Al-Mourabitoun  84 Altaban, Özcan  35 Amal  84 amateur photographers  63–4 Anadolu Hisarı  2, 8, 10 Anatolia  19 Ancient Egypt  213–14 And, Metin  11

Anderson, Benedict  101, 117 Anglo-European patrons  168 Anglo-European technique  168 Ankara  33, 34 Ankara municipality  34–6, 39–41 Arab-Islam city  66, 68–70, 75 culture  116 medina study  76 urbanism  67, 68 Archeologia  85 architectural space  39, 164 architectural structures  47, 105 architectural tactics  46–7 Arkitekt  35 art historiographical writings  129, 138 art history  5–7, 17, 158, 159, 168–9 Arzhang (Arzhangi/Artang)  142–3 Asar-i Ajam (Forsat al-Dawla)  118, 119 ascetics  221, 225–7, 232, 238, 239 Aswân area  188, 194, 210, 215 Aswân Dam  185, 186 Ataturk Forest Farm (AOÇ)  38 authorship  129, 147 ʿAuwâd  188 Awadhi miniature painting  16–17, 157 heuristic devices and processes  168– 70 multi-parallel and multi-perspectival techniques and pictorial space  163–8 Palace Complex with Harem Gardens, A  170–8 projections  159–63 terms and contexts  159 axonometric (isometric/non-diminishing/ non-linear perspective) projection. See parallel projection axonometry  163 Aysal, Başak  36 Āyurveda  223 Ayyubid metalworks  260

268

Index

Bahram Gur hunting  114–15 Balle village  190, 192–3, 195, 203–5, 207–10, 212 Bar at the Folies-Bergere, A (Manet)  169 Bar Baḥr al-Ḥayāt (Ocean of Life)  225, 227, 239 Barbir-Mathaf  89 Basāvan  224 Başvekalet (Prime Ministry) Housing Cooperative  34–5 Baxandall, Michael  168, 169 Bayt Khallaf, Miniya  213 bazaar painters  11 Beach, Milo Cleveland  225 Beggar at the Mosque, The  135–7, 139 Begin, Menachem  84 Behl, Aditya  230 Beirut  15, 64, 81–4 Bektashi Dervishes  253 Benderlioğlu, Atıf  39 Benjamin, Walter  90 Berlin Album (1608–18)  225 Beylik  19, 259, 261, 262 bhakti  228, 229, 233, 236, 239 Bhartṛhari (King)  228, 240 Bhartṛharinirveda (Bhartṛhari’s Despondency, Harihara)  228 Bhartṛhari vairāgī  227–9, 240 bhoga  233, 239 bhogī  228 Bianca, Stefano  188 Bîga, island of  17–18, 185 Bîga and Balle villages  190–3 ethno-archaeological methods  213–14 houses and courtyards  209–12 living environment  188–90 Nubian architecture, livelihood and settlements  185–8 private by commitment  205–9 spatial analysis  193–6, 202–3 streets, alleys and space distribution  202–5 Bîga village  190–5, 202, 204–11, 213–15 Bihzad  133, 138–40, 142–5, 147, 148 bird’s-eye view  8, 10, 161, 166, 167 Birūta  84 Bishandās  234 Boehm, Gottfried  101 Bonfils, Adrien  66 Bonfils, Félix  66

Book of Accomplishments (Hünernâme, Lokman)  9 Braun, Georg  4, 10 British Colonial India  157 Bronstein, Leo  163, 169 bronze candleholder with Hercules Knot, Bursa  253–7, 259–62 Brooklyn Museum of Art  100 Brugsch, Heinrich  99, 111, 118 Brunschvig, Robert  63 building process  75 Buondelmonti, Christopher  1, 10 Bustan (the Orchard, Sa‘di)  133 Byzantine  1 art  19, 255, 261 Church  256, 257, 259 metalwork technique  254, 256 monasteries  259 silver vessels  260 symbolism  259 tradition  257 Byzantine-Ottoman interchange  19 C. Tai  169 Cadava, Eduardo  91 Cairo  14, 64, 65, 69, 71, 75 Cairo Bustan (Bihzad)  133, 135–8, 144 calligraphy  141, 145, 147 calotype  65 Camille, Michael  16 Candāyana (The epic love story called the Candāyana)  229 Çankaya  37 Cantek, Funda Şenol  38 Canton trading houses  166 cartographical approach  6, 9, 12–13 Castiglione, Giuseppe  166 cemeteries  68, 90 ceramic body paste  103 ceramic wall decoration  99, 100 Cevdet Cingi House, Levent Street  34, 40–4, 47, 49 Chambers of Architects of Turkey  35 Champion, Catherine  229 Chehab, Emir  87 Chehab, Maurice  85, 90 Chelkowski, Peter  100 Chester Beatty Library  221, 224–6, 229, 230 China(ese)  143

Index art  165, 166 artists  166 depth representation techniques  166 devices  166 landscape paintings  169 Christian metalwork  260 missionaries  227 Christian Phalangist militia  84 Chung, Anita  165 Cingi, Cevdet  40–2 city plans and views  4, 7, 8 civil servants  34–6, 39 civil society  100 Civitates orbis terrarum (Braun)  4 Clarke, Caspar Purdon  106 Cleveland Museum of Art  226 Cohen, Ted  169 collective identities  101 Company Painting (Company School)  168 Compendium of Stages (Mecmu’a-i Menâzil, Nasuh)  10 computer science techniques  169 ‘concept-form’  17–18 conceptualization  15, 16, 114, 117, 138 Conde, Bruce  83 Conger, William  169 Constitutional Revolution (1905– 11)  100, 117, 119 Cook, Thomas  64 Correas-Amador, María  210 costume books  11 courtyard-houses  17, 210, 214 courtyards  17–18, 72–4, 108, 110, 119, 139, 194–6, 208–12, 214 covered markets (qayssaryya)  70 creativity and stylistic development  103– 4, 118 Criminisi, Antonio  169 cross-culturality  18, 157, 158 ‘cubic’ style  33 Cubism  178 cultural domination  75 curved pictorial space  175–6 curved viewing and horizon plane  174–5 daguerreotype  65 el-Dahdah, Fares  87

Damascus  63, 71 Damavand Mountain  115, 117 Dār al-funūn  108 Darwish, Mahmoud  82 Dastur al-Afazil  142 death  85, 87, 89–91 de Clercq, Louis  65 Decorative Art Museum  108, 116 decorative technique  103 decoupage  145 de Duve, Thierry  169 defensive system  68 Delacroix, Eugène  61 density and minuteness  140 Derrida, Jacques  81, 91 Description de l’Egypte  75 Description de l’univers (Mallet)  1 detached/semi-detached houses  45 Dhajapanthī  227 diagonal recession  165, 166 dialectical movement  5 ‘Diataxis’ (Michael Attaleiates)  260 Diba, Layla S.  100 Didi-Huberman, Georges  87 digital humanities  158 digital models of paintings  170 dikka/dakka  214 al-Din Shah, Muzaffar  108 Dīvān of Ḥāfiẓ (Collected Works of Ḥāfiẓ)  226 diwan  74 Diwan (Husayn Bayqara)  145–6 domestic architecture  4, 14, 213 domestic buildings  15 domesticity  68 Doniger, Wendy  230 double transfer  16 drone photography  178 dualism  5, 14 Du Camp, Maxime  65 duplex flats  46 Dusseldorf map  1–2, 5, 10 Dust Muhammad  142–4 East Asian paintings  161, 163–8 Eastern Mediterranean  19 Ebel, Katherine A.  7 economic theory  168 Edwards, Elizabeth  66

269

270 Egypt  14, 17, 65, 67, 75, 186, 187 Egyptian civilization  66, 214 Egyptian Revival (1930–37)  84 Elephantine Island  188, 194, 213 El-Hisha  188, 194 environmental restrictions  190 equestrian figure  112 Ersoy, Ahmet  11 esoteric knowledge  223, 224, 239 ethno-archaeological methods  213–14 Ethnographical Museum of Ankara  257 Ettinghausen, Richard  132, 166 Euro-American perspective  166 Europe(an)  4, 5, 8, 47, 64, 112–14, 118 art  8, 167 cities  115 colonialism  65, 67, 76 culture  115, 116 history  67 influence on Indian painting  157 lithographs  15 manuscripts  16 metapictures  132 norm  6 photography  14 prints  119 Eustathios Boilas  260 evolutionary biology  168 Excursions Daguerriennes, vues et monuments les plus remarquables du globe (1841– 4)  65 exotic commodities  14 exoticism  61, 64, 66, 67, 76 export paintings  166, 167 exterior decorations  15 exterior space  187 extra-textual figures  129–33, 136 eye position(station/vantage point). See viewpoint façades  4, 42, 47, 49, 71, 74, 90 Faizullah  17, 157, 177 fanā  234 fantasy paintings  17 Farhang-i Jahangiri  142 Fath-‘Ali Shah  99, 116 Fathy, Hassan  187 favourite artistic medium  102 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb  5

Index fina’  71 Fiqh  75 Fīroz Khān  224 Flaubert, Gustave  63 Fletcher, Roland  196 focal perspective  166 focal perspective projection  162, 165, 167 Forsat al-Dawla  118, 119 Fortress of the Seven Towers  1 friezes  104, 105, 108, 110 Frith, Francis  65 funerary material  83, 85, 91 furniture design  33 Galata Tower  2 García-Salgado, Tomás  169 garden scenes  103, 113, 118 gaze  1, 5, 14, 15, 17, 111, 113, 135, 136, 139 Gedo, Mary Mathews  169 gender relations  112, 114 geometric normalization  137 Ghehi, Hasan Bolkhari  164, 169 Glass Museum  109 Golestan Palace Library, Tehran  223 Golombek, Lisa  102 González, Carmen  164 Gonzalez, Valerie  164 Good, Frank Mason  65 Good Shepherd Mosaic  15, 85, 87–8, 90, 92 Google  178 Gorakhbānī  230, 234, 239, 245 n.46 Gorakhnāthī movement  230 Gorakhnāthī-s. See Nāth-s (Nāth yogis) Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh  229 Govardhan  226, 227 Grabar, Oleg  132 Grahame, Mark  213 graphical projection. See projection Graves, Margaret S.  163, 164 ground line  161 ground plane  161, 162 Gulistan Palace  106–8 Gulshan Album  225 Gulzar bathhouse  110 haft rang painting  103, 109, 110 El Hakim, Omar  187, 204, 207, 208

Index halal  68, 72, 74 haram  67, 68, 72, 74, 76 Haram-khāna  108 Hariri, Rafic  84 Harvard Art Museum  225 hāshiyā-s  226 ḥawma  71 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich  5 heliogravures  74 Hellenistic art  255 Henein, N.  214 ‘Herakleiotikon hamma’. See ‘nodus Herculaneous’ Herat (Afghanistan)  130, 133, 145 Hercules Knots  18–19, 253–7, 259, 260, 262, 262 n.2 Hermitage Museum  260 heterosexual love  112, 113 heuristic devices and processes  158, 159, 168–70, 178 heuristic diagram  172 hieroglyphs  65 High Dam of Aswân  186, 187, 217 n.13 ‘high horizon’  163 Hindu asceticism  225, 226 Histories of the House of Osman (Tevârih-i Âl-i Osman, Nasuh)  8 homesteads  190, 191 homoerotic practices  112, 114 horizon plane  161, 162 housing cooperatives  45 Housing Law (1944)  34 Hugo, Victor  61 hūr  112, 113 Ḥusain Shāh Sharqī  230 Huyssen, Andreas  89 hybridity  18, 19 hyper dialecticism  164 Ibn Khaldun  138 idealism  148 Ilkhanid dynasty  165 Ilkhanid painters  166 Ilkhanid Shahnama  166 Illustration of the Pure Land of the West  165 Indian artists  168 Indian philosophy  228 industrial arts  99 industrial capitalism  47 interior/exterior relationship  17

271

interior (internal) spaces  14, 33, 34, 45, 47, 49, 72, 74, 110, 114, 119, 139, 187, 194 international design principles  41 intertwined layered histories  82 intimacy  17, 38, 71, 74 introverted domestic life  45 inward-oriented scheme  44 Iran(ian)  15, 99–102, 108, 116 culture  115 identity  117, 119 men  112–14 paintings  164 photography  164 society  118 women  114 Irgun militia  84 Isfahan  15–16, 105, 106, 108, 116, 118 Isfahani potters  103, 105 Islam(ic)  75, 229, 260 city  63, 70–2, 75 identity  75 philosophy  17 society  63 Israeli Defense Forces  84 Istanbul  1, 3–4, 9–11, 15 Italian Renaissance paintings  169 iwan (vaulted porch)  135, 139 Jahāngīr Album  225, 226 Jalal al-Din Mirza  116, 118 Jamāta  227 jami masjid  73 Jansen Plan (1932)  34, 37 Jardine, William  117 Jaritz, Horst  187 Jerusalem  64, 65 jismi colours  145 jīvanmukti  239 jogī-s  229 Joreige, Lamia  15, 81–90, 92, 93 Journal des Arts  105 Judaeo-Christian tradition  256 Junghaendel, J. R.  74 Junker, Hermann  187 Kabīr  228 Kafesçioğlu, Çiğdem  8 Kalavrazou, Ioli  256 Kant, Immanuel  5 Kashkul  111

272

Index

Kataeb  84 Kent, Susan  213 Khāb-gāh  107, 108 Khamsa (Quintet, Nizami)  129, 130, 133, 167 Khan, Mir Kalan  167 khichri  167 khitta. See ḥawma Khoury, Elias  93 Khurram (Prince)  224 Khusrau (Prince)  223–5 Khwandamir, Ghiyath al-Din  138, 144 Kia, Chad  132 Kingara  232 knotted columns  256, 259 Koch, Ebba  167, 169 Kozan, Seden  39 kunstwollen (art drive)  168 labyrinths  69, 72 Lacovara, Peter  214 lacquer work  100, 118, 119 Lalezar Street  110 Larkin, Craig  93 Laskarina Bouras  256, 257 Las Meninas (Velasquez)  169 Last Supper (Leonardo Da Vinci)  169 late Timurid painting (1470–1500)  16, 129 extra-textual figures  129–33 from illustration to image  133–6 mimesis  136–9 potential worlds and signature  146– 8 tabularity  140–4 uncreatedness  144–6 variety and comprehensiveness  139– 40 ‘lawh-i artangi’ (‘Artangi Tablet,’ Mani)  143 laws 5218 and 5228  35, 39 layout of villages  192–6, 202–3 Lebanese Antiquities Department  85 Lebanese Armed Forces  84 Lebanese Civil War(s) (1990)  15, 81, 83, 90 Lebanese Communist Party  84 Lebanese War (1975–91)  85, 92 Lemaire, Alfred Jean-Baptiste  108

Lentz, Thomas  132 Liber Insularum Archipelagi (Buondelmonti)  1 lighting devices  259–60, 262 linear genealogy  12 linear perspective (geometric perspective) projection. See focal perspective projection lithography  100, 108, 115 living rooms  37, 42, 46, 201, 209, 212 living spaces  188, 190, 210 Lokman, Seyyid  9 Lord Cromer, Evelyn Baring  67 Losty, Jeremiah P.  167 Loti, Pierre. See Viaud, Louis Marie-Julien Love’s Subtle Magic (Behl and Doniger)  230 lower-middle class family  33–7, 45, 47, 49 Lowry, Glenn  132 Lusha, book of  142 Maalouf, Amin  61 Madigan, Daniel A.  144 mafasil  140 mahalla. See ḥawma ‘Maison Bonfils’  66 male/female relationships  114 mandara  206 Manesson Mallet, Allain  1, 3–5, 9–11, 14, 15 ma‘ni  138 Mani  142, 143 Manichaeism  142 manistans  143 Manners, Ian R.  1 Manohar  224 Manovitch, Lev  170 manuscript paintings  255 map, definition  7 maqsurah  73 March, Benjamin  165 mass-housing quarters, Germany  37 mastaba  213 mastar  137 materiality  133, 144, 148 material quality  102, 103 Mathaf-Barbir  81, 82, 84, 86, 88, 90

Index mausoleums  68, 257 May, Ernst  13, 33 mazhar  138 Mecca  69 Mechin, Ferdinand  105 medina  68, 71 Mehmed II  1 ‘Memur Kentinin Memur Semtiydi Yenimahalle’ (Yenimahalle was the Civil Servant District of the Civil Servant City, Kozan)  39 metamedium  129 Michael Attaleiates  260 Microsoft  178 middle-class nuclear family  44, 47 middle-class settlements  33–7 Middle East  62, 64–8 mihrab  73, 135, 139 Mimarlık  35 mimesis  5, 6, 14, 16, 136–9, 147 minarets  70–1 minbar (pulpit)  135, 139 Minnisale, Gregory  167 Min Yong Cho  166 Mirigāvatī (The epic love story called the Mirigāvatī)  221, 229, 230, 239 Mirza ‘Abd al-Javad  109 Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat  140 mnemonic monument  83, 86, 89 Model Images project  157, 170 modern architecture  34, 49 modern Egypt  213, 214 modern house  37–40, 45, 49 modernity  6, 47, 50 modernization  49, 115, 217 n.13 modern life  45, 49 modern residential culture  33, 34, 45, 47 Mok, Maria Kar-wing  166 Monastery of Transfiguration of Meteora (Thessaly, Greece)  256, 257, 259 monochrome  68, 103, 104, 107–9, 139, 142, 227 monoscenic composition  163 monstration  141 Mortaş, Abidin  35 Moscow  4 mosques  19, 70–3, 76, 109, 135, 136, 139, 147, 148, 191, 192, 259

273

motif  15, 99, 103–5, 107, 108, 110, 112, 113, 115, 116, 118, 119, 129, 135, 136, 140, 142, 144, 145, 168, 255, 257, 259 MPI Builder program  169 Mroue, Rabih  85 Mu’awin al-Mulk, Hasan Khan  110 Mughal painters  224 Mughal paintings  18, 221, 223, 226, 227, 235 Mughal society  18 Muller, Leopold Carl  74 multi-parallel image  161, 165 multi-parallel techniques  162, 174 multi-perspectival approach  162 multi-perspectivalism  159, 166 multi-perspectival projection  162, 166 multi-perspectival two-dimensional renderings  169 multi-perspective three-dimensional animations  169 multiple viewpoints  161–2, 164, 167 multi-projection  162, 165, 167, 177 multi-storey apartment buildings  45, 46 mural painting  255 Muraqqā‘-i-Gulshan (1599–1609 AD)  223–5, 227 museum collection  86, 90, 91, 105 Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, Bursa  19, 253, 257 Mutlu House  47 mystic culture  164 N. S. Chu  169 nag  185 nahiya  185 Nahr  83 Najmabadi, Afsaneh  112–14 Nama-yi Khusravan (‘Book of Kings,’ Jalal al-Din Mirza)  116, 118, 119 Nasir al-Din Shah  106–9, 116 Nasr Khusraw Street  110 nasta‘liq  145 Nasuh, Matrakçı  7, 8, 10 Nāth-panthī  228 Nāth-s (Nāth yogis)  18, 221, 223–5, 227–9, 232, 238–40 Nāthvairāgī-s  221, 232, 239 National Assembly  35

274

Index

national identity  100, 117 National Library of Egypt, Cairo  133 National Museum of Beirut  15, 81–3, 85, 87, 89, 90, 92 Nativity, The (Fra Roberto)  169 Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne, The (White)  117 naturalism  132 Naturalist’s Library, The (Jardine)  117 Nauṭaṅkī  228 Near East  63, 67, 72 Needham, Joseph  165 neoclassicism  64 Nerval, Gérard de  61 New Nubia  187 newspapers  111, 117, 118 Niavaran Palace  106 Nidha Mal’s paintings  167 ‘Night-Letters’ (shab-nāmas)  111 nīm qalam  227 Nizami  130, 132, 133 ‘nodus Herculaneous’  255 non-diminishing perspective. See parallel perspective non-unified multi-projection  163 normal space  159, 164 North Africa  62, 67, 68, 72 Nubian Architecture (El Hakim)  187 Nubian(s). See also Bîga, island of architecture  187, 188, 194, 213 culture  217 n.13 in Egypt  185–8 settlement area  185–8 Object of War project (1999)  86, 88–90 oblique projection lines  165 Old Dam of Aswân  186–8, 190 Old Nubia  187, 188, 204, 207 ʿomadeya. See nahiya Önen, Zeynep  35, 37, 38 one-point perspective projection  157, 159, 162, 172, 177 ontological boundaries  129 open-air markets (suq)  70 ‘An Open Caravanserai’, Cicogna Codex (1660)  11 open ‘public’ spaces  204–6 open shared spaces  196, 205, 206

open spaces  71, 188, 190, 192–4, 202–6, 209, 213–14 Orient/Orientalism  14, 62–8, 74, 76 culture  63 studies  5, 75 Origin of German Tragic Drama, The (the Trauerspiel, Benjamin)  90 Osman, Nakkaş  9–11 Ottoman architecture  19 Ottoman dynasty  1, 5, 7, 8, 11, 14, 67 Ouzai  83 overglaze painting  103 page proportions  157, 164, 170, 175–6 Pahlavi, Riza Shah  107–8 Pahlavi dynasty  119 paintings  6, 8, 129–31, 133. See also specific entries Palace Complex with Harem Gardens, A (Faizullah)  157, 170–1, 177, 178 page proportions and curved pictorial space  175–6 pseudo vanishing points and curved viewing and horizon planes  174–5 unified stereoscopic multiprojection  172–4 Palestine  65 Palestine Liberation Organization  84 panoramic views  69, 70 Papaconstantinou, Demetra  213 paparazzi effect  74 paper cutting. See decoupage parallel and multi-projectional imagemaking  177 parallel image projections  166 parallel perspective  165, 167 parallel projections  161, 163–7, 173, 177 Paris Mecmua (1650)  11 Park, Malcolm  169 Payāg  227, 234 pedestrian movement character  71, 72 peepshow (shahr-i farang)  111 Pello, Stephano  142 Pera  2, 4 Persianate-Mughal miniatures  157, 159 Persianate-Mughal paintings  161, 163–8

Index Persian craft  110 Persian manuscript paintings  129, 131, 132, 136, 138, 147 Persian metalworks  260 perspectival diagram  169 perspectival projections  173, 177 perspectival techniques  167 Peter Mundy Costume Book (1618)  11 pharaonic style  84 Phillips, Peter C. B.  168 photograms  82, 90, 91 photography  15, 65–8, 72, 74–6, 89, 91, 100, 115, 119 Photosynth  178 pictorial/picture-space  157, 159–61, 163–71, 174, 178 pictorial space objects  160, 162 Picture for Women (Wall)  169 picture plane  159, 164 picture plane horizon line  161 picture plane image  159 picture plane objects  161 picture tiles and Self/Other  101, 111–18 pigments  145 pitch. See tilt ‘planned development’ policies  45 Polak, Jakob Eduard  99 polychrome  103, 107, 108 popularity of picture tiles  105–11 Porter, Yves  137 portolan charts  7, 8 pre-focal perspective painting  166 pre-Islamic history  116, 119 pre-Islamic sites  110, 119 Prince and Ascetics  226–7 privacy  110, 114, 193–6, 201–3, 205, 206, 208, 209, 212, 215 private courtyards  212 private houses  106, 108, 191, 205 private life  4, 5, 102 private open space  205, 212 private realm  187, 188, 214, 215 private rooms  209, 212 private spaces  46, 47, 72, 74, 194, 196, 201, 205, 217 n.10 projection  160 projection lines  160 projection plane. See picture plane pseudo vanishing points  174–5, 177

275

public art  15 public bathhouses  111 public facilities  191, 192 public life  4, 5, 102, 116 public realm  187, 188, 202, 214, 215 public spaces  46, 47, 70, 72, 111, 117, 192, 194, 203–5, 209, 216 n.10 Qajar architecture  118, 119 Qajar period (1785–1925)  15, 99, 100, 102, 103, 105, 110–14, 119 Qajar society  100 Qanun al-Suwwar (‘Canons of Painting,’ Sadiqi Beq)  138 Qasr al-snawbar  83 Qavam al-Dawla  109 Qavam al-Saltana, Ahmad  109 Qianlong academy  166 qibla  73 Queen Victoria  107 Qur’an  143, 144, 147, 148 Quṭban  230 Rabbat, Nasser  6 race  67 RājKunwar (The Prince, Salīm)  221, 224, 225, 227–40 Rålamb Costume Book (1657–58)  11 Ramesseum Temple  213 ramtā jogī  228 Ramtā Nāth Vairāgī  227–9 Ray, Man  90 Rayographs (Ray)  90 realism  129, 132, 133, 142 reality  64, 67, 74, 76, 87, 93, 129, 133, 136–9, 143, 148 Reihenhaustyp, BA I, of Hufeisensiedlung Britz (1925–30)  37 religious art  259 religious practice  75 rendered objects. See picture plane objects residential buildings  70, 72 retinal images  159 Reuter Concession (1872)  114 Robinson, Basil W.  99, 163 Rochechouart, Julien de, Comte  99 Rogers, J. M.  10 roll and yaw  159, 161

276 Rome  4, 10 Roxburgh, David J.  144, 163, 164 Royal Art School  108 ‘Royal Persian Paintings’ (exhibition, 1998)  100 royal tombs  69 ruin  89, 93 Rukn al-Mulk, Haj Mirza Sulaiman Khan  109 Rukn al-Mulk mosque  109 Rumeli Hisarı  2, 8, 10 rural settlements  188, 208, 215 Sader, Helen  85 Sa‘di  133, 135, 136 Sadiqi Beq  138 šādūfs  207 Safavid art historiographical source  143, 144 Safavid buildings  112 Safavid picture tiles  103, 105, 113, 115 sahn  73 Said, Edward  63 Sakr, Mamdouh  207 Śākta-s  228 Salīm Album  225 Salīm (Prince)  221, 224–6, 229–30, 239 Salīm Qulī  224 Salzmann, Auguste  65 San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice  256–7 Sangīta, Ā‘īn-i-Akbarī (Abu’l Fazl)  232 sarcophagi  83, 85, 87, 91, 92 Sardar Zafar, Khusraw Khan  109 Sasanian Empire  116 Sauvaget, Jean  63 Scheiwiller, Staci Gem  111 Schleiser, Lothar  169 scroll painting  166–7 See Lebanon (Conde)  83 Sehīl Island  188, 194 self and ego  234 Seljuq  19, 259–62 semi-public spaces  212 seven colour painting. See haft rang painting Seyller, John  224 Seyyid Battal Gazi, Eskişehir  257, 259, 261, 262 Shah ‘Abbas  112

Index Shah Alam II  167 Shāh Jahān Album  226 Shah Jahan’s Padshanama, Windsor Library  167 Shahnama (‘Book of Kings’)  114, 116, 119 Shahrukh  130 Shaivism  229 Shalem, Avinoam  6, 15 Shams al-Din Muhammad Wasfi  147 Shari’a  75 Sharma, Sunil  167 Siedlungen  13, 14, 33, 44–7, 49 Sihah al-Furs  143 Sikhism  236 single-point perspective imagemaking  171 single-storey-type house  37 ‘sites and services’ method  33 Śiva  229, 236 Smith, Robert Murdoch  99 snapshots’ frame  71 sniper’s hole  15, 82, 83, 88 Snyder, Joel  169 social behaviour  74 social functions  38, 45 social history  34–7 social interaction  38, 187 social welfare state  34 software design  170 Solomonic significance  262 South Asia  157 South Asian artists  167 spaces. See also specific spaces appropriation of  190 categories of  194 Spain  65 spatial borders  187 spatial organization  34, 93, 187 spatial projection techniques  164 spatial representation techniques  157, 158, 164–71, 176, 177 spiral approach  166 śṛṅgī  223, 241 n.9 Staatliche Museen zu Berlin  256, 262 stammescharakter (tribal character)  168 stenciling (‘aks)  145 stereoscopic perspective  167 stereotypes  62, 67

Index Stoichita, Victor  132 streets and alleys  202–5 Streetview  178 Strozzi, Alessandro  10 Sufi convents  19 Sufism  132, 136, 230, 234 Suleyman I (1520–66)  7, 8 Sullivan, Michael  165 Sultanabad Palace  106 Sultān ‘Alī  226 Sultan Husayn Bayqara  133, 140, 145 Sultan Muhammad  144 Sultan Sanjar and the Old Woman (Nizami)  130–2 Supreme Self  236, 237 sura  138 svāṅga  228 Syria(n)  65 Army  84 cities  63 tabularity  140–4 al-lawh al-mahfuz (lawh-i mahfuz/ Preserved Tablet of God)  143– 4 Arzhang (Arzhangi/Artang)  142–3 Takia Mu’awin al-Mulk  109–11 Tang and Sung landscape  165 tapestries  4, 73 Taşkınpaşa Mosque, Damsaköy  257 Taut, Bruno  13, 33, 37 Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad  116 tawa’if  75 ‘Technologies of the Image’(exhibition)  100 Tehran  99, 106–8, 111, 115, 118 tekke  257, 259, 261, 262 Temple of Solomon  256 Teucer of Babylon  142 Theotokos of Xylourgou, Mount Athos  260 thesis-antithesis-synthesis movement  5 three-dimensional modelling  169 three-room, two-storey-type houses  36– 7 tile, Isfahan  15–16 tilework images and public sphere  99– 101 tilt  159, 161

277

tilted ground plane  161, 163–7 Timur  130, 133 Timurid Empire  130, 133 Timurid manuscripts  16 Timurids exhibition catalogue (1989)  132 Tingâr  194 Tobacco Concession (1890)  114 Toh Sugimura  166 Toufic, Jalal  15 tourism  66, 76 trade centres  64, 70 traditional family models  45, 47 trauma  89, 93 Tschumi, Bernard  17 Turkey/Turkish  33, 34, 45, 49 houses  4–5, 10, 15, 33 society  49 two-dimensional page composition techniques  164 two-point perspective projection  162 two-storey, five-room-type houses  37, 40 Ucuz Arsalar (cheap lands)  35 uncreatedness of God’s creation  144–6 underglaze painting  99, 100, 103, 109, 110 underglaze tiles  103, 105, 106, 108, 109 Under-Writing Beirut-Mathaf (Joreige)  15, 81, 83–4, 86 Undeserving Lebanon (Toufic)  15 UNESCO  108 unified stereoscopic multiprojection  163, 172–4 universals  8, 9, 12–14 urban development  39, 75 ‘Urbanisme medieval et droit musulman’ (Brunschvig)  63 urban morphologies  63, 68, 72, 75 urban organization  74 urban planning  204 urban settlement  192 urban topographies  14 Vairāgī  221 Valvassori, Giovanni Andrea  1, 10 Van Dyke, Paul A.  166 vanishing points  162

278

Index

Vaso Vescovali  260 Vaudeville, Charlotte  228 verbal heuristic devices  168 vernacular architecture  44, 187, 188, 213 vernacular tradition  4, 10, 17 vertical perspective  164 Viaud, Louis Marie-Julien  99, 108 viewing plane  161 viewpoints  159, 174–6, 178 viewpoint(s) plane  159 viewpoint tilts  165, 176 Views of Museum Square (2013)  90 virtual objects. See pictorial space objects virtual reality/space. See pictorial/picturespace visual artefacts  178 visual arts  18, 100, 118, 159 visual culture  11, 66–7, 100, 169 visual education  117 visual heuristic devices  168, 169, 178 visual rays. See projection lines Voyage en Orient (Aubenas and Lacarrière)  65 Warburg, Aby  101 war crimes  93 Watt, James C. Y.  165 Wen C. Fong  165 West Aswân  188, 194

Western society  63 West Sehīl  188, 194 White, Gilbert  117 Wirth, Eugen  187 women beauty  113, 118 Iranian  114 public visibility  115, 118 wooden lattice screens (mashrabiya)  74 Yenimahalle (New Neighbourhood) project  13, 34 Yenimahalle Settlement (1948–52)  13– 14, 48–50 after 1980s  45–7 building lower-middle-class ideal  34–7 living in modern house  37–40 local craftsmen and layouts  40–5 Yeşil Madrasa  253 yoga  225, 228, 239 Yogavāsiṣṭha  224, 227 Yogi Gorakhnāth  221, 226, 228, 229, 234, 240 Zand dynasty  116 zig-zag compositions  165, 166 Zill al-Sultan, Mas‘ud Mirza  109 Zoka, Yahya  107, 108

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Plate 1 Courtyard of the Great Mosque, Damascus. Félix Bonfils, early 1870s. Collection Centre Canadien d'Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture. PH1980:0683.03:058.

Plate 2  Detail of the ‘Good Shepherd’ mosaic. Photograph by Lamia Joreige, 2013.

Plate 3  Wall tile with a depiction of Bahram Gur hunting. By ‘Ali Muhammad Isfahani, Iran, Tehran, 1887. National Museums Scotland, acc. no A.1888.105, image © National Museums Scotland.

Plate 4  The Beggar at the Mosque, manuscript painting from a copy of the Bustan of Sa‘di, 1488. National Library, Cairo, accession no. Adab Farisi 22, fol. 26a.

Plate 5 Hussein Keshani et al. Screenshot of one-point perspective view (with projection lines) of digital three-dimensional model interpretation of the pictorial space of A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens with textures. Digital image. 2016. © Hussein Keshani.

Plate 6  Distribution of functions in the village of Bîga.

Plate 7  Distribution of functions in the village of Balle.

Plate 8  Emperor Akbar and Prince Khusrau with the Nāth-s, attributed to Manohar and inscribed to Salīm [Qulī], Muraqqā‘-i-Gulshan, Ms. 1668, Folio no. 222, Mughal, c. 1600, 42.4 × 26.5 cm (folio), 25.7 × 13.8 cm (painting). © Golestan Palace Manuscript Library, Golestan Palace, Tehran, Iran.