Recreating the Medieval Globe: Acts of Recycling, Revision, and Relocation 9781641894265

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Recreating the Medieval Globe

THE MEDIEVAL GLOBE The Medieval Globe provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars of all world areas by focusing on convergence, movement, and interdependence. Con­ tributions to a global understanding of the medieval period (broadly defined) need not encompass the globe in any territorial sense. Rather, TMG advan­ces a new theory and praxis of medieval studies by bringing into view phenomena that have been rendered practically or conceptually invisible by anachronistic boundaries, categories, and expectations. TMG also broadens dis­cussion of the ways that medieval processes inform the global present and shape visions of the future. The mark of The Medieval Globe was designed by Matthew Peterson and draws on elements derived from six different medieval world maps.

Executive Editor Carol Symes, University of Illinois at Urbana-​Champaign

Editorial Board

James Barrett, University of Cambridge Kathleen Davis, University of Rhode Island Felipe Fernández-​Armesto, University of Notre Dame Monica H. Green, Independent Scholar Robert Hymes, Columbia University Elizabeth Lambourn, De Montfort University Yuen-​Gen Liang, Academia Sinica, Taiwan Victor Lieberman, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor Elizabeth Oyler, University of Pittsburgh Christian Raffensperger, Wittenberg University Rein Raud, Tallinn University & Freie Universi ät Berlin D. Fairchild Ruggles, University of Illinois at Urbana—Champaign Julia Verkholantsev, University of Pennsylvania Alicia Walker, Bryn Mawr College

Editorial Assistant Meg Cornell

Volume 6

Recreating the Medieval Globe: Acts of Recycling, Revision, and Relocation Edited by JOSEPH SHACK and HANNAH WEAVER

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. © 2020, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds

The authors assert their moral right to be identified as the authors of their part of this work.

Permission to use brief excerpts from this work in scholarly and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is an exception or limitation covered by Article 5 of the European Union’s Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC) or would be determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act September 2010 Page 2 or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copy­ right Act (17 USC §108, as revised by P.L. 94-553) does not require the Publisher’s permission.

ISBN (HB): 9781641894258 eISBN: 9781641894265 www.arc-humanities.org

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi

Introduction to Recreating the Medieval Globe: Acts of Recycling, Revision, and Relocation JOSEPH SHACK and HANNAH WEAVER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Self-​Revision and the Arabic Historical Tradition: Identifying Textual Reuse and Reorganization in the Works of al-​Balādhurī RYAN J. LYNCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

When Curtains Fall: A Shape-​Shifting Silk of the Late Abbasid Period MEREDYTH LYNN WINTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Salvaging Meaning: The Art of Recycling in Sino-​Mongol Quanzhou, ca. 1276–​1408 JENNIFER PURTLE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge on the Prussian–​Lithuanian Frontier, ca. 1380–​1410 PATRICK MEEHAN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Meubles: The Ever Mobile Middle Ages ELIZABETH EMERY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Reflection DANIEL LORD SMAIL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 2.1. Two versions of al-​Balādhurī’s narrative.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Figure 3.1. The so-​called “robe of Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah,” shown in its current state of preservation.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Figure 3.2. Late Abbasid Dynastic and Chronological Chart.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Figure 3.3. Hypothetical reconstruction of the Buyid-​era curtain (sitr).. . . . . . . . . 34 Figure 3.4. Reconstruction of the Seljuk-​era robe and the placement of its inscriptions.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Figure 3.5. “Abu Zayd and his son before the Qadi,” from The Maqāmāt of al-​Ḥarīrī (634/​1236–​37), painted by al-​Wāsiṭī.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Figure 3.6. Iranian, Figure of a Courtier from a Palace Frieze, between 1150 and 1250, painted stucco.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Figure 4.1. Unknown artisan(s), under the direction of Benhong (fl. early–​mid thirteenth century): Cow-​herding girls offer milk (Mu nü xian [ru]mi), from base of the East Pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Figure 4.2. Xinbian duixiang siyan [New Edition of the Facing Illustrations, Four-​Words(-​in-​a-​Group Primer)] (China, 1436?), pages 1a–​b.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Figure 4.3. Brahmanic relief depicting a sacred cow and Śiva lingam, Quanzhou, Yuan dynasty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Figure 4.4. Gravestone with Arabic text, 1335.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Figure 4.5. Gravestone for the Lady Martha Terim (d. 1331?), Quanzhou.. . . . . . . 67 Figure 4.6. Christian gravestone, Quanzhou, Yuan dynasty.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Figure 4.7. Gravestone of Andrew of Perugia (d. 1332).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Figure 4.8. Detail of East Pagoda Base, Quanzhou, Fujian.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Figure 4.9. Brahmanic reliefs of Simha and Narasimha, salvaged from an unknown temple, ca. 1281(?); installed in the main courtyard of the Kaiyuan si temple, Quanzhou.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Figure 4.10. Brahmanic narrative relief installed at the Airavatesvara temple in Thanjavur, Darasuram, Tamil Nadu, ca. mid-​twelfth century.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 4.11. Quanzhou gu Yisilanjiao Xumizuo jitanshi shimu (Ancient Islamic Mount Sumeru-​base, altar-​shaped stone grave marker from Quanzhou).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 Figure 4.12. Heavenly Longevity Pagoda (Tianzhong wanshou ta), dated 1059. Xianyou county, Fujian.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Figure 4.13. Sanskrit-​inscribed dhāraṇī sūtra-​style pagodas, erected at the site of the Wan’an Bridge, dated 1059.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Figure 4.14. Li Jie (1065–​1110) et al., Jieji diese zuo jiaozhu (Stepped-​ and-​stacked-​base square column), from Li Zhongming Yingzao fashi ([Treatise on] State Building Methods) (Zijiang, 1925), Supplemental Images, page 29:7b: a lost 1103 edition reconstructed from a Song dynasty Shaoxing era (1131–​1362) manuscript edition and printed in the format of the Song dynasty Chongning era (1102–​1106).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Figure 4.15. Citrakhaṇḍa pillars salvaged from an unknown temple, installed in the rear exterior corridor of the Kaiyuan si temple, Quanzhou, Fujian.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Figure 4.16. Manuel Dias (1574–​1659), Tang jingjiao bei song zhengquan (Orthodox interpretation of Nestorian stele paean) (China, 1644), 9b–​10a. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Figure 4.17. Brahmanic architectonic module depicting Kali, now worshipped as Guanyin, in Quanzhou, thirteenth to fourteenth centuries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Figure 6.1. The “Cathedral-​Corner” of Montesquiou’s apartment at 41, Quai d’Orsay (before 1888). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Figure 6.2. The François Ier room of the Hôtel de Cluny. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Figure 6.3. Another view of the François Ier room of the Hôtel de Cluny.. . . . . . . .131

Figure 6.4. “Twelfth-​Century Castle Bedroom.”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132

Figure 6.5. “Fifteenth-​Century Castle Bedroom.”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Figure 6.6. Etching of the Oak Gallery of Hauteville House.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Figure 6.7. The Oak Gallery.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 Figure 6.8. Etching of the Vestibule at Hauteville House. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Figure 6.9. “La Collection Spitzer.”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Figure 6.10. Right side of the “Medieval dining room” in Loti’s Rochefort home.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

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INTRODUCTION TO  RECREATING THE MEDIEVAL GLOBE: ACTS OF RECYCLING, REVISION, AND RELOCATION JOSEPH SHACK AND HANNAH WEAVER On December 2, 2019, a Danish court ruled against a group of timepiece entrepreneurs who had planned to cut up the painting Paris Chic, by the Israeli artist known as Tal R (Tal Rosenzweig), to make faces for a limited-​edition release of wristwatches. While Danish copyright law allows the owners of artworks to destroy them at will, the artist’s lawyers successfully argued that the proposed wristwatches would alter rather than destroy the work—​and thus contravened the law.1 The court thus deemed that the involuntary creative reuse of an artist’s work and name is unlawful. In today’s legal and cultural cli­ mate this decision might seem reasonable—​even ordinary. Before the advent of copyright law, however, repurposing objects and texts that had aesthetic or ideological value was a widespread practice. Were Tal R a medieval artist, his painting might well have been cut up and used to make religious pendants or even jewellery, at almost any time up until the twentieth century. Our concep­ tion of fair use has radically shifted. This volume of The Medieval Globe transcends disciplinary and geographical boundaries to enable a wide-​ranging examination of creative reuse in (and of) the global Middle Ages, through practices of recycling, revision, and relocation. The essays gathered here are united, not by a single methodology or field of inquiry, but by synchronic and diachronic consideration of renegotiated meanings. Their authors analyze how a range of historical actors—​from writers to craftsmen to warriors—​reinterpreted the old in new sociocultural contexts. In the process, they elucidate how reuse was a truly global practice throughout the interconnected Middle Ages, and how medieval objects continued to be reused by post-​medieval generations. The multivalence of reused objects and ideas, whether pillaged or scavenged, written or carved, was the topic of a symposium held at Harvard University in 1  Orange, “Danish Court Rules Artist’s Work Cannot be Cut Up to Make Watches.”

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February of 2018, which generated sufficient interest to impel us to take our collective research further. We had originally asked ourselves: what could new versions and contexts of artifacts accomplish that the original ones could not? What role did time and/​or physical (dis)location play in the reception of events or artifacts? Why and how did medieval works endure and remain relevant in cul­ tural contexts far removed from those in which they were first made? What socio­ cultural factors account for the popularity of objects and texts in particular places at particular times? Presentations traversed the medieval globe and encompassed thirteen centuries of repurposing. Despite the temporal and spatial diversity of responses, the significance of creative reuse emerged as a shared theme of all communications. Recycling, revision, and relocation are capacious concepts that speak to the creative potential of re-​engagement with pre-​existing materials. Each bears its own set of critical resonances; together, they triangulate among different modes of creative reuse. In previous scholarship, recycling has often been applied to unpacking the changing contexts of objects and their afterlives. The archeologist Michael Schiffer has subdivided this process into three different activities: lateral cycling, when an object changes hands but not purposes; recycling, when materials are reused to make a different object; and secondary use, when an object stays in the same form but is used in a way not initially intended.2 The motivation behind recycling can be merely utilitarian (a former wine vat now holds another liquid) or more significant (a column from one religious establishment is integrated into another, with the intent of transferring some of its previous talismanic proper­ ties). The productive potential of recycling practices is recuperated by some of the essays in this volume, as Elizabeth Emery weighs varieties of medievalist reuse and Jennifer Purtle and Meredyth Winter approach recycling in the Chinese and Islamic contexts, respectively. Within his three categories of recycling, Schiffer assumes that the object in question had a singular or specific purpose in its original context, but this is not always the case. Revision, too, might seem to imply the existence of a stable core: to revise, there must be a pre-​existing textual entity that remains to some extent recognizable even after its transformation. But at its Latin root, revision means seeing again (re-​visio), or with new eyes. It thus testifies to the signifi­ cance of the reviser’s motivation, the impetus behind the act of reshaping. In con­ trast to recycling, then, revision implies a sustained engagement with a text and 2  Schiffer, “Archaeological Context and Systemic Context”; see also Smail, Pizzorno, and Hay, “Recyclage et l’ontologie de l’objet.”

RECREATING THE MEDIEVAL GLOBE

a desire to refashion it toward another end. In this volume the generative poten­ tial of “seeing again” is investigated by Patrick Meehan, who considers the trans­ formation of text and landscape through revisions provoked by new cultural contexts and interactions. Ryan Lynch’s contribution, meanwhile, deals with revi­ sion in its most colloquial sense, the process through which an author revisits and reforms his own material. The final element of our triad, relocation, is the most ample category of all. As texts, objects, and ideas circulate, their relocation(s) allow them to take on meanings and values—​ideological, aesthetic, functional—​that had not accrued to them in their past lives. New contexts generate novel interpretive possibilities. While scholars have often used the words spolia (“spoils,” booty) and spoliation to denote such objects and their relocation, we regard these terms as simultan­ eously too narrow and too broad. The term spolia was borrowed from classical Latin by humanist scholars in the sixteenth century to describe a process by which materials were forcibly removed from their initial sociopolitical contexts and subsequently redeployed in composite constructions.3 Stricto sensu, the term referred only to the reuse of statuary and architectural material from antiquity in later constructions. An oft-​cited example of spoliation in this restricted sense is the Arch of Constantine, which commemorated the emperor’s victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge by incorporating earlier works from the periods of Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius.4 In recent years, however, spoliation has exceeded these bounds and become disassociated from the original connotations of violent extraction. New schol­ arly analyses have broadened the concept of spolia to indicate any reuse of costly materials, whether plundered or not. This has, in turn, prompted other scholars to ask whether spoliation is an appropriate descriptor for objects that might have been given as gifts or procured as souvenirs,5 and even to suggest that it has lost its critical valence entirely and become synonymous with “reuse.”6 A symptom­ atic manifestation is the recent collection Reuse Value, edited by Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, which moves beyond spoliation to consider the broader category 3  For an excellent discussion of the etymology of spolia and related terms, see Kinney, intro­ duction to Brilliant and Kinney, Reuse Value, 4–​5; a concise historiographical overview of spoliation is found in Kinney, “Rape or Restitution?,” 51–​55. 4  For a recent study of the arch, see Wilson Jones, “Genesis and Mimesis.”

5  See, for example, Shalem’s discussion of Islamic treasury objects in medieval Europe in Islam Christianized.

6  Greenhalgh, for example, argues that to referring to objects as spolia includes all of the con­ ceptual baggage and prejudices inherent to the term; “Spolia: A Definition in Ruins,” 78–​80.

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of appropriation.7 It includes chapters on non-​European contexts, post-​antique/​ medieval architecture, and the reuse of entire buildings for functions beyond the purview of their original intent.8 Yet the collection still restricts its inquiry to the appropriation of objects and architectural elements; the reuse of texts and ideas does not enter the discussion. By offering a triad of critical terms, we therefore map the terrain of cre­ ative reuse along two axes of inquiry: “texts and things” and “places and spaces.” Through “texts and things,” the essays delve into historical writing (Lynch) and the transferred authority that inheres to ceremonial objects (Winter). Via “places and spaces,” our authors travel from medieval China to Lithuania to analyze the cre­ ation of holy sites (Purtle), the navigational recreation of an occupied landscape (Meehan), and the legacy of medieval objects in the nineteenth century (Emery). Finally, Daniel Lord Smail offers a reflection on the article as a whole. In the first essay on the “texts and things” axis, Ryan Lynch exploits the possi­ bilities of digital humanities to locate and examine the self-​revision of the Muslim historian al-​Balādhurī in his two surviving works, The Book of the Conquests of Lands and The Lineage of Nobles. Though covering roughly similar time periods, each text embodies features of disparate literary genres; juxtaposing these texts demonstrates the malleability of historical material in the hands of an adept medi­ eval compiler. Next, Meredyth Lynn Winter treads the line between text and textile, investigating how an Abbasid patron refashioned a curtain from ca.1000 into a silk robe while retaining the authorizing value of the curtain’s original inscription. Considering the textile within late Abbasid intellectual contexts, she explores how an object, despite significant alteration, could inhere political power and bureau­ cratic significance. Along the “places and spaces” axis, Jennifer Purtle comes from the vantage point of East Asian art history to situate medieval Quanzhou within the global cir­ culation of religions and their concomitant architectural elements. She argues that interconfessional salvage resulted in a “formal, material, and salvific patois,” and that this explains the specificity of Quanzhou’s architectural hybridity in a period when the city was one of the biggest ports in the world. The second essay on this axis, by Patrick Meehan, investigates the creation and transfer of knowledge about the “wilderness” during the Baltic crusades. He considers the possible motives and outcomes that governed the construction of the navigational texts known as the 7  Brilliant and Kinney, Reuse Value.

8  Examples include Kalakoski and Huuhka who, citing the broadening perspective posited in Reuse Value, advocate the extension of the concept of spolia to contemporary architecture as a means of exploring the experiential value of sites that utilize reclaimed parts: “Spolia Revisited and Extended.”

RECREATING THE MEDIEVAL GLOBE

Wegeberichte, while acknowledging the problems that come along with the reuse of indigenous knowledge for violent ends. Considering the movement of medieval objects beyond the Middle Ages, Elizabeth Emery focuses on the various ways that medieval furniture circulated within the cultural context of nineteenth-​century France. The uses of furniture to create “medievalizing” spaces becomes a valuable lens through which to examine contemporary attitudes toward the medieval, more generally. In sum, this volume demonstrates the broad importance of medieval re-​ creations. Moving past traditional critical categories, the authors consider the gen­ erative possibilities of medieval reuse and offer a new critical vocabulary for the discussion of recycling, revision, and relocation in a global context.

Note on the Transliteration of Arabic In this volume, Arabic has been transliterated with appropriate diacritical markings, except in the case of certain common proper nouns (e.g., Abbasid). At the same time, only terms that would be unfamiliar to most non-​specialists have been italicized (e.g., sitr).

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Bibliography

Brilliant, Richard, and Dale Kinney, eds. Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine. London: Routledge, 2011. Elsner, Jaś. “From the Culture of Spolia to the Cult of Relics: The Arch of Constantine and the Genesis of Late Antique Forms.” Papers of the British School at Rome 68 (2000): 149–​84. Greenhalgh, Michael. “Spolia:  A Definition in Ruins.” In Reuse Value:  Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, edited by Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney, 75–​95. London: Routledge, 2011. Kalakoski, Iida, and Satu Huuhka. “Spolia Revisited and Extended: The Potential for Contemporary Architecture.” Journal of Material Culture 23 (2018): 187–​213. Kinney, Dale. “Rape or Restitution of the Past? Interpreting Spolia.” In The Art of Interpreting, edited by Susan C.  Scott, 53–​67. University Park:  Papers in Art History from the Pennsylvania State University, 1995. Orange, Richard. “Danish Court Rules Artist’s Work Cannot be Cut Up to Make Watches.” Guardian, December 2, 2019 (www.theguardian.com/​world/​2019/​ dec/​02/​danish-​court-​rules-​artist-​work-​cannot-​be-​cut-​up-​to-​make-​watches-​ tal-​r). Schiffer, Michael B.  “Archaeological Context and Systemic Context.” American Antiquity 37 (1972): 156–​65. Shalem, Avinoam. Islam Christianized:  Islamic Portable Objects in the Medieval Church Treasuries of the Latin West, 2nd rev. ed. New York: Lang, 1998. Smail, Daniel Lord, Gabriel Pizzorno, and Nathaniel Hay. “Recyclage et l’ontologie de l’objet dans les textes du bas Moyen Âge: l’exemple de Marseille.” In Actes du congrès de la Société d’archéologie médiévale, moderne, et contemporaine de Bayeux, edited by Yves Henigfeld, Philippe Husi, and Fabienne Ravoire, 393–​ 401. Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2020. Wilson Jones, Mark. “Genesis and Mimesis: The Design of the Arch of Constantine in Rome.” Journal of Society of Architectural Historians 59 (2000): 50–​77.

RECREATING THE MEDIEVAL GLOBE

Joseph Shack ([email protected]) is a PhD researcher in English and Celtic Literatures and Languages at Harvard University. His current project examines the origins and reception history of gnomic poetry in England and Wales during the early medieval period. Hannah Weaver ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where she is working on a book about the revisionary practice of interpolation. She received her PhD in Romance Languages from Harvard University.

Abstract The creative reuse of materials, texts, and ideas was a common phe­ nomenon in the medieval world. The essays in this volume offer a synchronic and diachronic consideration of the receptions and meanings of events and artifacts, analyzing the processes that allowed medieval works to remain relevant in socio­ cultural contexts far removed from those in which they originated. In the process, they elucidate the global valences of recycling, revision, and relocation throughout the interconnected Middle Ages, and their continued relevance for the shaping of modernity. Keywords circulation, global studies, medieval studies, recycling, reuse, spoliation

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SELF-​REVISION AND THE ARABIC HISTORICAL TRADITION: IDENTIFYING TEXTUAL REUSE AND REORGANIZATION ˉ DHURIˉ IN THE WORKS OF AL-​BALA RYAN J. LYNCH THE PRE-​MODERN ISLAMIC historical and literary tradition is massive, on a scale that many historians of other regions and linguistic traditions may find surprising. To quote the modern scholar of Islam, Josef van Ess: “We have about two million Arabic or Persian manuscripts in the world. There are more than 500,000 in Istanbul alone. Only a small percentage of the texts—​perhaps six or seven percent—​are known and printed.” Millions of Arabic manuscripts survive in collections—​both public and private—​around the world; but until recently, the growth in pre-​modern Islamic historical studies has been slow in comparison to the activity of our colleagues who work in other branches of global medieval studies. When Van Ess made that original comment in 1973, he also stated his opinion that “Islamic studies are one century behind Latin medieval studies; there are only a few Arabicists.”1 Although the landscape of pre-​modern Islamic studies and history has cer­ tainly changed since then, the core of Van Ess’ comment is worth reflecting upon. In other fields that revolve around the classical and medieval Mediterranean, source criticism and the literary analysis of textual traditions have been ongoing for hundreds of years, as has the editing of corpora in languages such as Greek and Latin. In some cases, this has been aided by the paucity of sources—​the sur­ viving collection of ancient Greek texts, for instance, is dwarfed by the massive size of what exists in Persian alone, let alone in other languages such as Arabic and Turkish. And even with the growth of Islamic studies across the world over the last fifty years, there is still a great deal that we have yet to learn about the compilation of these texts and the authors-​cum-​compilers behind that work.

1  Van Ess, “The Beginnings of Islamic Theology,” 110–​11.

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The study offered here deals with just one small part of the Arabic historical tradition as it developed up to the ninth century CE/​third century AH.2 The corpus of surviving literary material from this period is substantially more limited than the medieval Arabic tradition at large, and for that reason it affords an opportunity to further our understanding of these earliest surviving texts, their authors, and their re-​use. Specifically, this article provides a comparative analysis of the two surviving works created by a single Muslim author:  Aḥmad b.  Yaḥyā b.  Jābir al-​ Balādhurī (d. ca. 892 CE/​279 AH), a secretary (kātib) serving the Abbasid admin­ istration in Baghdad during the middle of the ninth century CE. It builds upon a technique I  introduced in the final chapter of my monograph, in which I used computer-​mediated textual reuse analysis of medieval Arabic historical works to identify which materials from his Kitāb Futūḥ al-​buldān (The Book of the Conquest of Lands) had been reused in later Arabic books by other authors, and how; and whether analysis of that textual reuse could allow me to say anything about the sustained utility and/​or popularity of al-​Balādhurī’s work among successive generations of Muslim scholars.3 When I originally began the process of ana­ lyzing the extensive passages of reuse that were identified by this method, I was struck by a noteworthy overlap between The Book of the Conquest of Lands and al-​Balādhurī’s other surviving work, the massive genealogical compendium The Lineage of Nobles (Ansāb al-​Ashrāf ). In this article, I accordingly consider how this shared material is positioned within both of al-​Balādhurī’s surviving books, and why it was reused at all. My intent is to reveal more about his own authorial agency in the gathering and reshaping of historical traditions in two such very different books, while advan­ cing our understanding of how early Islamic works were compiled. This is par­ ticularly valuable given that the early Islamic tradition’s emphasis on chains of transmission and the verifiability of information often suggests to the reader that this material was immutable when transmitted by “trustworthy” authorities. More broadly, I hope to engage the larger community of global medievalists interested in textual reuse and to show how the study of Islamic historiography can help us to rediscover pre-​modern practices of authorial self-​revision.

2  The “AH” dating system refers to the traditional Muslim calendar and stands for Anno Hegirae or “After the Hijra”: that is, the emigration of Muḥammad and his community from their home in Mecca to the city of Yathrib (Medina) in the year 622 CE. The days of the year within the Muslim lunar calendar are fewer than those in the reformed Gregorian calendar. 3  Lynch, Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography, 189–​221.

Self-Revision and the Arabic Tradition

Notes on the Arabic Historical Tradition and Its Source Materials

The overwhelming majority of the information contained in al-​Balādhurī’s two surviving books does not pertain to events that were contemporary with the author’s lifetime; rather, both books cover the foundational period of Islamic his­ tory: the events that occurred during the career of the Islamic Prophet Muḥammad (d. 632 CE/​11 AH), his immediate successors, and the reign of the first Muslim dyn­ asty, the Umayyads (r. 661–​750 CE/​41–​132 AH). Al-​Balādhurī lived and worked in an era when the Arabic historiographical tradition was still in its infancy, and when most information—​legal, historical, or otherwise—​was transmitted orally from master to student. Meanwhile, the developing Islamic legal tradition began to place an intense emphasis on verifying the sources of information by tracing the isnād, or chain of transmission, particularly with respect to traditions such as ḥadīth: working backward from direct citation of the immediate informant all the way back to the person who had (ideally) witnessed the original event. Isnāds trad­ itionally take the form of “I was informed by Person A, on the authority of Person B, on the authority of Person C, who witnessed the following. He said …” Many of the narrative historical sources from the earliest period of Arabic Islamic writing include these chains of transmission, albeit inconsistently. Al-​Balādhurī’s two books were thus constructed at a crossroads between the methods of the narrative historians—​who employed isnāds sparingly—​and those of the jurists, who almost exclusively used them. His books, therefore, will some­ times inform the reader directly of his sources; but at others times, information will be introduced only indirectly, via such locutions as “they said” (qālū) or “it was said …” (qāla). Much of the work al-​Balādhurī does in the creation of these texts, then—​in his role as author—​is through the reuse, reshaping, reorganization, and assembly of historical material from a wide variety of sources. This is, of course, true of other medieval textual traditions. But this early Arabic historian’s fre­ quent reliance on chains of transmission can accordingly provide unique insight into networks of historical scholarship that might otherwise be obscured.4 In the case of al-​Balādhurī’s texts, to be sure, the mixture of detailed citation with more abstract reportage means that the reader receives an uneven understanding of his sources. 4  There are numerous studies of these chains of transmission and the networks of ḥadīth transmitters connected by them, from the isnād-​cum-​matn analysis promoted by Harald Motzki and others to the modern digital analysis of scholarly networks derived from bio­ graphical dictionaries, by Maxim Romanov and others.

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The forms of al-​Balādhurī’s two works are markedly different from one another. The Book of the Conquest of Lands is a much more concise text, organized geographically, that focuses on the establishment and development of the first Islamic states. It shares features with a wide variety of contemporary subgenres of Arabic historical writing, including administrative geographies, books of law, and conquest literature (futūḥ). The Lineage of Nobles, by contrast, is massive, com­ prising some 1.7 million Arabic words, making it not much smaller than the magis­ terial and universally celebrated History of the Prophets and Kings (Ta’rīkh al-​rusul wa-​l-​mulūk) by Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-​Ṭabarī (d. 923 CE/​310 AH), a well-​known Muslim jurist and arguably the medieval Islamic world’s most famous historian.5 Unlike The Book of the Conquest of Lands, The Lineage of Nobles is really a sub­ stantial biographical dictionary of the ṭabaqāt subgenre, which Chase Robinson has described as “compilations of biographical material organized chronologically, according to a more or less flexible measure of what constitutes a generation.”6 The majority of its entries are genealogical, varying in detail based on the import­ ance of the person or tribe being discussed. Although both books cover a similar time period, they have different forms and foci. Both harken back to the earliest centuries of Islam: to the time, places, and people that played such a major role in forming the Abbasid state as al-​Balādhurī knew it; they also serve, in part, as lieux de mémoire, recounting the circumstances and eulogizing people that had defined Islam and the Islamic state in its formative period.7 But The Book of the Conquest of Lands places more emphasis on the former, The Lineage of Nobles on the latter. Both texts also touch on events that occurred during the early Abbasid period, but their primary attention remains fixed on earlier times.8 My discussion here relies on a fairly major assumption: namely, that the man known to scholars as al-​Balādhurī is the author of both The Book of the Conquest of Lands and The Lineage of Nobles as they currently survive. This begs the question of what we know about the process of early Arabic book publication and the idea of authorship in this period. With respect to many of the earliest surviving Arabic narrative texts, this assumption would be a dangerous one because scholars still 5  Kennedy and el Sakkout, “Book Review: The Ansāb al-​Ashrāf,” 410–​13. See note 12. 6  Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 29–​35.

7  On the idea of a “site of memory,” see Nora, “Between Memory and History.” On its applica­ tion to Islamic history, specifically, see Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir, especially 179–​228; and Borrut, “Remembering Karbalā’.” 8  On the general contents of The Lineage of Nobles, see Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought, 58–​61; Duri, The Rise of Historical Writing, 61–​64; and Goitein, “The Place of Balādhurī’s Ansāb al-​Ashrāf,” 603–​6. On The Book of the Conquest of Lands, see Lynch, Arab Conquests, 103–​50; Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought, 67–​68.

Self-Revision and the Arabic Tradition

debate the meaning of a “book” (kitāb), especially when this term appears in bio­ graphical dictionaries to describe the output of medieval Muslim authors.9 For it is unclear whether a “book” always meant knowledge in textual form, or whether it meant a body of knowledge collected by a teacher and imparted to his students through personal instruction. It is also unclear whether such “books” were committed to writing before or after the deaths of the authors to whom they were attributed. With respect to al-​Balādhurī’s authorship, I rely on Gregor Schoeler’s characterization of these texts as his “finalized, published written works.”10 Moreover, the evidence we have suggests that al-​Balādhurī actually produced these books himself, or that they were compiled shortly after this death. As I dis­ cuss at greater length elsewhere, the three surviving manuscripts of The Book of the Conquest of Lands display no major variations in format or content. My analysis of a previously unpublished version of the text suggests that it is the earliest of these manuscripts, perhaps dating from the tenth century CE, as it bears a note on the title page reading “this portion by the hand of al-​Farghānī, the author of the appendix of al-​Ṭabarī (hādhā al-​ḥadd bi-​khaṭṭ al-​Farghānī ṣāḥib dhayl al-​Ṭabarī),” suggesting that the copy was produced by Abū Muḥammad ‘Abd Allāh b. Aḥmad b. Ja‘far (d. 972–​973 CE/​362 AH), a student of al-​Ṭabarī.11 This manuscript shows no noticeable variation from the other, later manuscripts of the text. This strongly suggests that The Book of the Conquests of Lands had already attained a finalized written form less than a century after al-​Balādhurī is said to have completed it.12 When considering The Lineage of Nobles, we may be on even firmer ground: the Andalusi scholar Ibn al-​Abbār (d. 1260 CE/​658 AH) mentions that he used an auto­ graph copy of Lineage as a source for his own work.13 All of this evidence indicates 9  An important discussion, along with a summation of the early debate surrounding Arabic writerly culture, can be found in Schoeler, Oral and the Written, 33–​37. 10  Schoeler, Genesis of Literature, 1.

11  New Haven, Yale University Landberg MSS 33, folio 2a. Al-​Farghānī’s appendix to al-​Ṭabarī’s history does not survive. For a discussion of the manuscripts, see Lynch, Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography, 25–​32.

12  This might mean that al-​Balādhurī completed and “published” The Book of the Conquest of Lands orally, after which it was recorded by one of his succeeding generations of student redactors. But given al-​Balādhurī’s secretarial position at the court for at least a period of his career, he would have been both a skilled scribe and likely to have been interested in committing his own material to writing. On “oral publication,” see Schoeler, Genesis of Literature, 69–​71; Schoeler, Oral and the Written, 28–​35. 13  Ibn al-​Abbār, Kitāb al-​Ḥulla al-​siyarā’, 173: “I read in the writing of Aḥmad b.  Yaḥyā b. Jābir al-​Balādhurī, in his Book of the Lineage of Nobles, from his own writing …” (Qara’tu bi-​khaṭṭ Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā b. Jābir al-​Balādhurī fī Kitāb Ansāb al-​ashrāf min ta’līf …).

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that both books attributed to al-​Balādhurī were circulating in a consistent form by a date not long removed from his lifetime, if not before his death. Additionally, we can say something about the order in which al-​Balādhurī produced both of his books. Based on the form and content of The Book of the Conquest of Lands, Norman Calder and I have posited that it was composed during the later part of the “anarchy at Sāmarrā’ ” which defined the tumultuous period of Abbasid rule during the 860s CE.14 With al-​Balādhurī’s suggested date of death ca. 892 CE, this leaves the better part of two decades in which he is likely to have turned his attention to The Lineage of Nobles. Within Lineage, there are also sev­ eral instances where he appears to reference his earlier work: the Book of Lands (Kitāb al-​Buldān) almost certainly refers to The Book of the Conquest of Lands.15 This is further evidence that it was completed before he turned his attention to The Lineage of Nobles, to which he refers the reader for additional information.16 This also means that the reuse of material is very likely to have gone one way: the material that was already compiled and emplotted in Conquest was then duplicated and redacted for Lineage.17 However, the bulk of this reused material is not made explicit; there are only a few such references to his previous work.

Author and Compiler—​Compiler as Author But how should al-​Balādhurī and other early Islamic authors be described and categorized?18 As I have already noted, the early Arabic historical and legal traditions relied heavily on oral transmission during the majority of the first two centuries of Islamic history. Traditions were recited aloud, memorized, and repeated back to the teacher in order to certify that students had learned them to a satisfactory degree. The Muslim scholars working with this material—​narrative historical accounts (akhbār) and the ḥadīth which became vehicles for legal 14  Calder, Studies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence, 150; Lynch, Arab Conquests, 9–​10.

15  Ansāb, vol. 10, 208; vol. 11, 20; vol. 13, 233 and 247. This was previously noted by Athamina, “Introduction,” 8.

16  For instance, al-​Balādhurī briefly mentions the achievements of the Arab general Khālid b. al-​Walīd in the Ridda Wars and in the conquest of Syria without elaboration, before writing “I have mentioned reports of it in The Book of Lands”: Ansāb, vol. 10, 208. 17  Here, I reference Hayden White’s definition of emplotment as a historical narrative created through the organization (and reorganization) of evidence: Metahistory, especially 11–​13.

18  The concept of authorship when applied to the earliest classical Islamic texts is a topic that has invited surprisingly limited research. The many contributions to Concepts of Authorship, ed. Behzadi and Hämeen-​Anttila, are helpful, but there is still much more work to be done.

Self-Revision and the Arabic Tradition

precedents—​began a process of oral compilation and codification in both formal and informal settings through recitation, repetition, and imitation, from the sev­ enth century CE through the end of the eighth and early ninth centuries.19 By then, the process of selecting, organizing, and committing this information to writing had begun, although certainly not without controversy.20 In the mid-​ninth century, then, al-​Balādhurī’s method of reusing and reshaping historical material that had already been in circulation for decades was not par­ ticularly unique—​especially for an author interested in the first two centuries of Islam’s embryonic history. Much of the historical tradition surrounding this period survived by the way of scholarly intermediaries who continued to be vital sources of information for those working in al-​Balādhurī’s day and after, although whether these intermediaries ever committed anything to writing themselves is a question we cannot firmly answer. This means that, for scholars of al-​Balādhurī’s gener­ ation, the creation of written texts emerged at the intersection of authorship and compilation. The bulk of al-​Balādhurī’s surviving works consist of small segments of historical tradition (akhbār; singular:  khabar) transmitted to him by those scholarly intermediaries and then stitched together and rearranged.21 Patricia Crone has described this transmission process as “atomistic,” for these akhbār could be as brief as a single line or two of text: “isolated sayings, short accounts of people’s acts, brief references to historical events and the like.”22 However, the study of oral transmission has increasingly shown that while these “atoms” were indeed malleable, many maintained a great deal of consistency over long periods of time. Early Muslim authors such as al-​Balādhurī were bringing together thousands of traditions—​in some cases, disparate or contradictory—​which had been in circulation for decades, if not centuries. According to al-​Ṭabarī, their role in this process was to “merely report it as it was reported to us.”23 Or, as Robinson has 19  This process of teaching through oral/​aural means is discussed at length by Schoeler, Genesis of Literature and Oral and the Written in Early Islam; and Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 171–​86.

20  For some scholars—​transmitters of ḥadīth in particular—​there was an apparent distrust of those who needed to rely on writing rather than memory. In other instances, the recording of these traditions was regarded as the most practical way to enable more students to receive and engage with them. This ambiguity is perhaps best embodied by the ḥadīth transmitter al-​Zuhrī (d. 742 CE/​124 AH), who purportedly “blamed” the Umayyads for the new reliance on writing:  “We disproved of writing down knowledge until these rulers [the Umayyads] compelled us to do it. Then we were of the opinion that we should not prohibit any Muslim from doing so.” See Schoeler, Genesis of Literature, 47–​50; Judd, Religious Scholars, 56–​57. 21  Leder, “The Literary Use of the Khabar,” 277–​315. 22  Crone, Slaves on Horses, 5.

23  Al-​Ṭabarī, The History of al-​Ṭabarī, vol. 1, 17.

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put it, “ ‘authorship’ turned less on the quality of one’s prose, originality of one’s vision, or depth of forensic research, than it did upon the judiciousness or com­ prehensiveness of one’s material and the narrative organization in which all the accounts were placed. The operating principles of authorship thus lie somewhere between what we would regard as ‘writing’—​that is, ‘composing’—​and ‘editing’ or ‘redacting’.”24 In selecting their materials, author-​compilers were thus breathing new life into old traditions, and their very selection of material on the authority of some transmitters necessitated omitting others. Where and how they chose to organize (and reorganize) and deploy this material was an act of creation. Al-​Balādhurī, in particular, intentionally diversified the sources he used in the composition of his books:  he relied on an assortment of teachers from throughout the ninth-​ century Abbasid realm, men with a variety of interests from whom he had learned directly. He also utilized the nascent Arabic written tradition to borrow directly from the works of others—​often those who predeceased his scholarly career. This amalgamation of older, established traditions into new shapes was the work of “authors as actors,” in the words of Konrad Hirschler.25 This process of repetition and redaction was a defining feature of the early Arabic historical tradition and the foundation of Islamic historiography. Yet, at the same time, this mode of transmis­ sion, compilation, and creative reuse was common across regional and linguistic traditions in the medieval world.26

Detecting Textual Reuse via Computer-​Mediated Analysis My computer-​mediated textual analysis of al-​Balādhurī’s texts relied on an algo­ rithm called Passim, which enables researchers to compare a base text with other works in a defined corpus, in order to identify shared material.27 Passim and other algorithms perform “a step-​by-​step reduction of a text in a natural language to a machine-​readable abstraction, which is then followed by the analysis of shapes, relations, and structures.”28 Computer-​mediated analysis has not been performed 24  Robinson, “Islamic Historical Writing,” 248. 25  Hirschler, Medieval Arabic Historiography.

26  For example, the creation of miscellanies and anthologies in contemporary Christendom: see e.g. Pratt et al., The Dynamics of the Medieval Manuscript. 27  Passim was developed by a team of researchers at Northeastern University: see Smith et al., “Detecting and Modeling,” especially 184–​85; Smith and Cordell, “Text Reuse.” 28  Romanov, “Algorithmic Analysis,” 227–​28.

Self-Revision and the Arabic Tradition

without controversy, and it has led to instances of authorial misattribution.29 However, the tools of the digital humanities, when used judiciously, hold enormous promise for those working on pre-​modern texts. As Matthew Jockers has written, “new methods of analysis allow us to extract new forms of evidence” and “to go beyond what we are capable of reading as solitary scholars.”30 My study is part of the larger Arabic textual reuse project known as KITAB (“Knowledge, Information Technology, and the Arabic Book”) based at Aga Khan University and supported by the European Research Council. While still in an early stage, it is being developed to assist researchers in applying the Passim algorithm—​along with others—​to the unique language and script of Arabic and Persian and the massive corpora of pre-​ modern texts in those languages.31 The first major step in this process has involved assembling a digital corpus of machine-​readable texts, which is no small feat on its own.32 Applying Passim to this huge body of texts enables researchers to locate “all pairs of passages that share some minimum amount of text and to cluster these pairs of passages into larger textual traditions.”33 In my current research, the algorithm within the KITAB database has been used to identify “syntactic text reuse” in the works of al-​Balādhurī and has yielded numerous examples of verbatim and near-​verbatim reuse of common material.34 Verbatim text reuse occurs when many characters—​and, indeed, the majority of words in a sentence—​appear in precisely the same form and order with no variation. In essence, this is a form of quotation where the location (and, often, 29  Most notably Donald Foster’s misattribution of “A Funeral Elegy” to William Shakespeare using computer-​mediated means. Ultimately, through traditional literary analysis, Gilles D.  Montsarrat came to identify the poem as written by John Ford (d. 1640)  and Foster conceded his error. In many ways, however, the example of “A Funeral Elegy” helps to empha­ size that the growing field of the digital humanities is intended to enhance the training and work of our individual disciplines, not to completely supplant it. See Neiderkorn, “A Scholar Recants”; Montsarrat, “A Funeral Elegy,” 186–​203. 30  Jockers, Macroanalysis, 10, 27.

31  On this corpus, see Belinkov et al., “Shamela.”

32  Smith et al., “Detecting and Modeling”; Vesanto et al., “Applying BLAST”; Romanov et al., “Important New Developments.” As I observed above, the number of surviving Islamic texts still in manuscript form is enormous, which means that they are not accessible via these databases. Moreover, the Arabic and Persian texts found online are often the most popular or those considered most relevant for a modern audience, which skews databases such as al-​Maktaba al-​Shamela toward Sunni texts. However, group efforts like the Open Islamicate Texts Initiative (OpenITI) are working to address many of these issues: see Miller, Romanov and Savant, “Digitizing the Textual Heritage,” 103–​9. 33  KITAB Project, “About Passim.”

34  For a general discussion of textual reuse and its identification through digital means, see Franzini, Franzini, and Büchler, “Historical Text Reuse.”

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the context) of the shared material has been either “recycled” or even “laterally cycled,” but the wording itself has not been altered even if its purpose has.35 Near-​ verbatim text reuse occurs when there is some variation in the structure or form of a reused sentence or paragraph: in the case of Arabic texts, this takes the form of a change in word order where the vocabulary is otherwise the same, instances when certain joining words or prepositions may vary (the use of the Arabic fa-​instead of wa-​, for instance), and the occasional case where only a few words in a paragraph have been removed or altered. These changes may sometimes alter the meaning of a text, yet they can also be highly nuanced. The examples discussed below reveal that al-​Balādhurī’s reuse of material across his two books exhibits far more subtle contextual shifts than large-​scale changes.

Recycled Material from The Book of the Conquest of Lands in The Lineage of Nobles Given the relative brevity of The Book of the Conquest of Lands, a researcher could be forgiven for assuming that the vast majority of its materials would be recycled in the larger and later work. However, the extent of the reused material is actually quite limited in scope. The majority of the longer excerpts reused in The Lineage of Nobles are single khabar found in many disparate places within the earlier work which, as noted above, is organized geographically by region. This means that al-​Balādhurī did not choose, for instance, to reuse only information about Syria and North Africa while ignoring Persia. Instead, my analysis shows that he was excerpting materials that highlighted the qualities and personal characteristics of early Muslim leaders—​the first converts to Islam during the lifetime of Muḥammad, the Companions of the Prophet36—​and the subsequent generals, gov­ ernors, and other administrators who followed, in keeping with the very different focus of the later work. The first extended example of reuse appears in a chapter entitled “Reports of the Apostasy of the Arabs During the Caliphate of Abū Bakr.” Here, al-​Balādhurī recounts a particularly troubling episode that occurred during the tenure of the famed military commander Khālid b.  al-​Walīd (d. 642 CE/​21 AH). Immediately 35  Here, I reference the reuse of physical materials discussed by Michael B. Schiffer, where lateral cycling is defined as “the termination of an element’s use (use-​life) in one set of activ­ ities and its resumption in another, often with only maintenance, storage, and transport intervening.” See Schiffer, “Archaeological Context and Systemic Context,” 158–​59, and Shack and Weaver, “Introduction,” 2–3.

36  On the Companions of the Prophet and their memorialization in the early Islamic histor­ ical record, see Tayob, “Ṭabarī.”

Self-Revision and the Arabic Tradition

following the Prophet’s death and the proclamation of Abū Bakr as his first successor (caliph, khalīfa), a number of prominent Arab tribes that had aligned with Muḥammad and his community had purportedly forsaken their earlier alliances and commitment to Islam and returned to their home territories, with some going as far as to proclaim themselves prophets, too. The caliph is said to have sent a number of loyal Muslim tribesmen to contest this perceived apostasy, which resulted in a conflict known as the Ridda (Apostasy) Wars. Among those Muslim generals sent to quell this perceived rebellion was Khālid, who appears in the historiographical tradition as travelling throughout Arabia combatting apos­ tasy and breaking down Arab resistance to Islam.37 When Khālid arrived in cen­ tral Arabia to confront the tribe of Tamīm, the conflict led to the death of Mālik b. Nuwayra, a Companion of the Prophet and chief of another Arab tribe, the Banū Yarbū’, who was accused of apostasy.38 Mālik was executed by Khālid although (according to al-​Balādhurī) he had declared, “By God, I did not apostatize!” Mālik’s brother, the poet Mutammim b. Nuwayra, later lamented these events during a discussion with Abū Bakr’s successor, ‘Umar b.  al-​Khaṭṭāb (r. 634–​644 CE/​13–​23 AH). The passage below is a verbatim quotation of material previously included in The Conquest of Lands but here recycled as relevant to The Lineage of Nobles. The only additions to the previous text are marked in bold. It is reported (ruwiya) that Mutammim b. Nuwayra came to see ‘Umar b. al-​ Khaṭṭāb who asked him, “How far did your grief (wajd) over your brother, Mālik, reach?” Mutammim responded, “I wept over him for one year, until my healthy eye envied the one that had gone, and I do not see fire without feeling as if my grief were strong enough to kill me, because he always left his fire burning until the morning lest a guest should come and fail to locate his home.” ‘Umar said:  “describe him to me,” and Mutammim said “He would ride an unruly steed…. His face was like a fragment of the moon.” ‘Umar asked: “Recite for me from your verses about him.” And so he recited for him his lament, in which he said: “For a long time we were boon companions, like the two fellow drinkers of Jadhīma, The people said, ‘they will never be separated.’ ” And so ‘Umar replied “If I could write good poetry, I would have written a lament for Zayd, my brother.” But Mutammim said “It is not the same mis­ fortune, oh Commander of the Believers. Your brother was killed by an unbeliever (kāfir). If my brother had died the same death your brother

37  Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, 82–​90; Hoyland, In God’s Path, 31–​39. 38  Landau-​Tasseron, “Mālik b. Nuwayra.”

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did, I would not have eulogized him nor mourned him.” ‘Umar then said “No one consoled me as well as you have consoled me.”39

The appearance of this anecdote in both texts, and the slight changes in its hand­ ling, are revealing. In The Conquest of Lands, its source remains obscure; al-​ Balādhurī writes at the outset only that it was “according to other transmitters (wa-​qāla ba’ḍ al-​ruwā).”40 In The Lineage of Nobles, he includes information about its chain of transmission: “I was informed by ‘Abbās b. Hishām al-​Kalbī,” a major source for both books.41 Because ‘Abbās’ own works do not survive independently, and may not have been written down at all, it is only through the comparison of these two texts that we can identify his reuse by al-​Balādhurī, although it is still not clear why he chose to name his informant only in the later work. Had only the account in Conquest survived, we would assume that this was an amalgamation of anonymous accounts (ikhtiṣār).42 Moreover, each book uses this anecdote in unique ways. In Conquest, it is framed by the narrative of the Ridda Wars and the campaigns of Khālid b. al-​Walīd within a larger description of the Arabian conquests of Arabia. In this context, the story of Mālik’s questionable execution by Khālid would remain also a conten­ tious issue for subsequent generations of Muslims when considering the general’s legacy.43 In Lineage, however, this version of the story does not appear in the entry on Khālid, and Mālik does not have his own entry in the book. Instead, it appears in the entry on ‘Umar b. al-​Khaṭṭāb because it portrays the second caliph as caring about the concerns of his community while expressing his emotions over the loss of his own brother. In Conquest, by contrast, the juxtaposition of the conversation with the story of Mālik’s execution exacerbates the tragedy and stresses the ques­ tionable nature of Khālid’s actions. The second significant example of textual reuse concerns another Companion of the Prophet, al-​Mughīra b.  Shu‘ba (d. ca.668–​671 CE/​48–​51 AH), who is 39  Futūḥ, 117–​18 (trans. Hitti in Origins, vol. 1, 150–​51); Ansāb, vol. 10, 333.

40  On the use of this term by al-​Balādhurī, see Athamina, “The Historical Works of al-​ Ṭabarī and al-​Balādhurī,” 147. Athamina argues “it can be unequivocally established that al-​Balādhurī uses this formula to transmit information from a written source.” I  find this statement unconvincing, and Athamina does not offer any evidence as to why he believes this aside from continuing that “the use of these terms is not particularly frequent in comparison with other terms of transmission from this category,” which is true.

41  On ‘Abbās as well as Hishām, his father, as sources for al-​Balādhurī, see Khālidi, Arabic Historical Thought, 59. On the general sources al-​Balādhurī used in Lineage, see Athamina, “The Sources of al-​Balādhurī’s Ansāb al-​Ashrāf,” 237–​62. 42  Athamina, “The Historical Works of al-​Ṭabarī and al-​Balādhurī,” 152–​53. 43  Shoshan, Arabic Historical Tradition, 94–​97.

Self-Revision and the Arabic Tradition

remembered in many accounts as a notorious lecher.44 A number of his fellow Muslims suspected that he was having an affair with the wife of a man from the tribe of Thaqīf, and so they followed him closely until they found him in flagrante delicto. The material recycled in the later work begins with the report of al-​Mughīra’s adultery and continues to describe his trial. Variations in the texts are marked in bold for Lineage and underlined for Conquest: And when al-​Mughīra reached [the caliph] ‘Umar, the witnesses were gathered between them both. And so Nāfi’ b. al-​Ḥārith said “I saw him on the belly of the woman, thrusting into her, and I saw him inserting and withdrawing his penis (lit., “what is with him,” mā ma‘ahu) like the kohl pencil in the kohl container.”45 Then, Shibl b. Ma‘bad gave the same testi­ mony. Then, Abū Bakra. When Ziyād b. ‘Ubayd came as the fourth witness [required for conviction], ‘Umar looked at him and said “Truly, I see the face of a man through whom I hope one of the Companions of the Messenger of God, blessings of God and peace be upon him,46 will not be stoned to death through his testimony and by whose testimony he will not be disgraced.” For al-​Mughīra had come from Egypt to convert to Islam, and he was present at the battle of al-​Ḥudaybiyya together with the Messenger of God, blessings of God and peace be upon him. And Ziyād said, “I saw a shameful sight and I heard intense breathing, but I do not know whether he had inter­ course with her or not.” It is also said that he did not give any testimony. Thus, ‘Umar ordered that the three witnesses be flogged, which was done. Shibl then said, “You order those who bear witness to the truth flogged, and render punishment meaningless?” And after Abū Bakra was flogged, he said “I testify that al-​Mughīra is an adulterer.” ‘Umar said “Punish him.” But ‘Alī b. Abī Ṭālib said “If you admit this [repetition] as [the fourth] witness, then have your companion stoned.” Abū Bakra swore he would never

44  Lammens, “al-​Mug̲ẖīra b. S̲ ẖuʿba.”

45  Ansāb: al-​mulmūl; Futūḥ: al-​mīl. There are multi-​layered euphemisms in this comparison of intercourse to the continual dipping of a cosmetic applicator into a container of cosmetic eyeliner. However, al-​Mulmūl, as discussed in Kazimirski’s Dictionnaire Arabe-​Français, is also the word used for the penis of certain animals, including the fox—​an animal known for its cunning in many traditions. It is clear that the witnesses against al-​Mughīra were making a point in their testimony!

46  Both texts include the standard honorific of the Prophet, even though such honorifics do not often appear in the surviving text of the Futūḥ. It is clear that the transmitter—​or perhaps al-​Balādhurī—​was emphasizing the gravity of the situation and the standing of al-​Mughīra.

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speak to Ziyād again, even though he was his brother through his mother Sumayya. Then, ‘Umar sent them back to their city.47

In the later work, this anecdote is placed within the biographical entry dedicated to al-​Mughīra. In the earlier work, it appears at the end of “The Conquest of the Districts of the Tigris,” after an account of Abū Mūsā al-​Ash‘arī’s appointment as governor of Basra (now in Iraq): a region which al-​Mughīra had previously been involved in conquest. Its function in this text, then, is to explain how Mughīra lost that post to Abū Mūsā. For when the caliph ‘Umar is informed of Mughīra’s affair, ‘Umar purportedly tells Abū Mūsā that “I wish to send you to a country where there is a nest of Satan (al-​shayṭān),” appointing him governor while having him send Mughīra back to him for an audience. In Conquest, therefore, al-​Balādhurī connects these two events and the two traditions detailing them to create a new narrative in order to explain how, as a result of his adultery, Mughīra was relieved of his position and forced to face trial. While Conquest concludes this chapter with an account of Basra’s governance that has nothing to do with Mughīra, in keeping its focus on Islam’s geographical expansion, the biographical entry in Lineage continues with other versions of this story that do not appear in al-​Balādhurī’s earlier work.48 This sheds further light on the author’s creative process: he chose not to include all of the materials to which he had access in Conquest because he merely wanted to provide an explanation for Mughīra’s removal from Basra.49 In Lineage, by contrast, the life and personality of Mughīra are the centerpiece of the entry, along with ‘Umar’s handling of a challen­ ging situation. However, it is noteworthy that al-​Balādhurī still includes the infor­ mation about Abū Mūsā being sent to Basra as part of Mughīra’s story, suggesting either that he viewed Abū Mūsā’s role as integral or that he was unwilling to edit the contents of the khabar. As a final example, I adduce an extended passage from the concluding section of al-​Balādhurī’s Conquest which was re-​used in Lineage (Figure 2.1).50 In the 47  Futūḥ, 423–​24 (trans. Murgotten, Origins, vol. 2, 58); Ansāb, vol. 10, 387–​88. 48  Ansāb, vol. 10, 388.

49  Alternatively, it demonstrates that al-​Balādhurī continued to seek additional material after completing Conquest.

50  Murgotten’s decision (Origins, vol. 2, 235–​74) to label the thematic final chapters of the Futūḥ as “appendices” is misleading, since it implies that they were added as an afterthought or, perhaps, at a later time. Quite the contrary, I would argue that this material was placed in a separate section because it did not have a single geographic focus, and perhaps because it was most valuable to readers as a reference chapter. None of the three surviving manuscripts suggests that these final chapters were added later, although this by itself is not definitive evidence.

Self-Revision and the Arabic Tradition

Figure 2.1. Two versions of al-​Balādhurī’s narrative.

former, this material appears in the third thematic chapter, entitled “The Matter of the Seal”; in the latter, it is part of the biographical entry devoted to ‘Umar. This tradition discusses the machinations of Ma‘n b. Zā’ida, who had counterfeited the official seal of the caliph and used it illegally to extort tax money (kharāj) from the Iraqi city of Kufa. ‘Umar learned of Ma‘n’s misdeeds and wrote to none other than al-​Mughīra, ordering him to apprehend Ma‘n. Variations in the texts are again marked in bold for Lineage and underlined for Conquest: Then [al-​Mughīra] said to the messenger [from ‘Umar]: “The Commander of the Believers ordered me to obey your order concerning it,51 so command me with what you will.” And so the messenger said: “Bring to me a binding, in order that I might bind him by his neck.” And so it was done (fa-​fa’ala)/​ And so he brought him a binding and he placed it around his neck, and he tied it very tightly. Then he said: “Detain him until the order of the Commander of the Believers arrives to you.” And so it was done. The prison was, at that time, made of reeds, and so Ma‘n schemed to escape, and he sent [word] to his family: “Send to me my camel, my servant,

51  The phrase “concerning it” (fī-​ha) as I have translated it is present in both versions of the text, it simply has its order shifted to before or after the word “your order.”

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and my cotton cloak.” And so they did. He escaped at night, and his ser­ vant followed him. And so he traveled until he feared that the dawn would reveal him. He made his camel kneel and he tied her. Then, he hid until the search passed by him.52

This near-​verbatim episode of reuse continues to recount the complete story of Ma‘n’s punishment by the caliph and his eventual release from prison. At the outset of each account, al-​Balādhurī traces a similar chain of transmis­ sion, but names two different informants. In Conquest, he records that “Hannād informed us”; in Lineage, the informant’s name is given as ‘Affān.53 In both cases, though, the information was transmitted to them on the authority of al-​Aswad b. Shaybān, by way of Khālid b. Sumayr. What should we make of this divergence? It seems that al-​Balādhurī had two slightly different versions of this account at his disposal, presumably received orally, one from Hannād and one from ‘Affān. A tradition received from a certain ‘Affān b. Muslim, in fact, opens the chapter on the counterfeiting of the caliph’s seal in Conquest. This makes the author’s citation of Hannād as his informant, only six akhbār later, further evidence of the two sep­ arate informants.

Conclusions Opportunities to trace the movement and reuse of material between texts have been greatly expanded by the development and application of digital resources. The material from the early Arabic historical tradition which I have highlighted here could have been identified through a close reading of both texts, but only after a significant commitment of time; however, the work of analyzing these instances of reuse must still be carried out by the researcher. As I have shown, the creative agency of early Arabic authors can be discerned in their sophisticated compilation, redaction, and recycling of traditions. However, these authorial methods are rarely revealed in any direct way, and the regular citation of chains of transmission has the effect of obscuring this creative work. The repetition of previously circulating information in al-​Balādhurī’s The Book of the Conquest of Lands and The Lineage of Nobles is, therefore, valuable evidence of the author’s praxis. They also show that al-​Balādhurī had a specific interest in employing materials that described the characteristics of prominent early Muslim figures. Despite their differences in 52  Futūḥ, 567–​68 (trans. Murgotten in Origins, vol. 2, 257); Ansāb, vol. 10, 365–​66.

53  This Hannād is likely Hannād b. al-​Sarī (d. 864 CE/​250 AH), while ‘Affān is almost cer­ tainly ‘Affān b. Muslim (835 CE/​220AH).

Self-Revision and the Arabic Tradition

length and purpose, both texts thus share a common focus: the eulogizing of the formative period of Islam and the people who defined that era. The later work was devoted to biographical accounts of the figures that had established the Islamic state, while the earlier had described the formation of that state through conquest and the establishment of institutions. The contexts in which shared information was emplotted varied, and could thus shift the emphasis placed on a given trad­ ition, or even its meanings, depending on the author’s varying goals. This process of self-​redaction was not, however, straightforward or direct. On the rare occasions when al-​Balādhurī cites his previous work in the later, he does not copy material verbatim. In the three most significant examples of reuse that I have identified, moreover, he does not cite himself as a previous redactor of those accounts. The subtle variations in his use of materials—​both the contextual shifts and, in two of the cases, differences in the citation of informants—​demonstrates that he was working with a variety of sources. It also firmly suggests that he was working on these books in isolation from one another, having completed The Book of the Conquest of Lands before he turned his attention to The Lineage of Nobles. It is ironic that researchers today, with the aid of digital resources, may be able to detect these instances of reuse more easily than he could, himself. But like al-​Balādhurī and other early author-​compilers, I and my colleagues in the Open Islamicate Texts Initiative remain dedicated to creating a “transparent intellectual supply chain, not use without attribution.”54

54  Miller, Romanov, and Savant, “Digitizing the Textual Heritage,” 104–​5.

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Bibliography Arabic Sources

Al-​Balādhurī. Ansāb al-​ashrāf. Edited by Suhayl Zakkār and Riyāḍ Ziriklī. Beirut: Dār al-​Fikr, 1996. ——​​. Kitāb Futūḥ al-​buldān. Edited by Ṣalāḥ al-​Dīn al-​Munajjid. Cairo:  Maktabat al-​Nahḍa al-​Miṣriyya, 1956–​57. ——​​. Kitāb Futūḥ al-​buldān. Translated by Philip Khuri Hitti as The Origins of the Islamic State: Being a Translation from the Arabic Accompanied with Annotations Geographic and Historic Notes of the Kitāb Futūḥ al-​Buldān of al-​Imām Abu-​l ‘Abbās Aḥmad b. Jābir al-​Balādhurī, vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press, 1916. ——​​. Kitāb Futūḥ al-​buldān. Translated by Francis Clark Murgotten as The Origins of the Islamic State: Being a Translation from the Arabic Accompanied with Annotations Geographic and Historic Notes of the Kitāb Futūḥ al-​Buldān of al-​Imām Abu-​l ‘Abbās Aḥmad b. Jābir al-​Balādhurī, vol. 2. New York: Columbia University Press, 1924. Ibn al-​Abbār. Kitāb al-​Ḥulla al-​siyarā’. Edited by M. J. Müller in Beiträge zur Geschichte der westlichen Araber. Munich: 1866. Al-​Ṭabarī. The History of al-​Ṭabarī. Vol. 1, General Introduction, and from the Creation to the Flood. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. Secondary Sources

Athamina, Khalil. “The Historical Work of al-​Ṭabarī and al-​Balādhurī: The Author’s Attitude Towards the Sources.” In al-​Ṭabarī: A Medieval Muslim Historian and His Work, edited by Hugh Kennedy, 141–​55. Princeton: Darwin, 2008. ——​. “Introduction.” In Ansāb al-​Ashrāf, vol. 6B, edited by Khalil Athamina, 7–​18. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993. ——​. “The Sources of al-​Balādhurī’s Ansāb al-​Ashrāf.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 5 (1984): 237–​62. Belinkov, Yonatan, Alexander Magidow, Maxim Romanov, Avi Shmidman, and Moshe Koppel. “Shamela:  A Large-​Scale Historical Arabic Corpus.” In Proceedings of the Workshop on Language Technology Resources and Tools for Digital Humanities (LT4DH), edited by Erhard Hinrichs, Marie Hinrichs, and Thorsten Trippel, 45–​53. Osaka:  COLING 2016 Organizing Committee, 2016. Borrut, Antoine. Entre mémoire et pouvoir: L’espace syrien sous les derniers Omeyyades et les premiers Abbassides (v. 72–​193/​692–​809). Leiden: Brill, 2011.

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——​. “Remembering Karbalā’: The Construction of an Early Islamic Site of Memory.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 42 (2015): 249–​82. Calder, Norman. Studies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. Concepts of Authorship in Pre-​Modern Arabic Texts. Edited by Lale Behzadi and Jaakko Hämeen-​Anttila. Bamberg: University of Bamberg Press, 2015. Crone, Patricia. Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Donner, Fred McGraw. The Early Islamic Conquests. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Duri, ‘Abd al-​Aziz. The Rise of Historical Writing Among the Arabs. Translated by Lawrence I. Conrad. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. The Dynamics of the Medieval Manuscript:  Text Collections From a European Perspective. Edited by Karen Pratt, Bart Besamusca, Matthias Meyer, and Ad Putter. Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2017. Franzini, G., E. Franzini, and M. Büchler. “Historical Text Reuse: What Is It?” eTRAP: Electronic Text Reuse Acquisition Project. Accessed February 20, 2019. https://​web.archive.org/​web/​2 0170814033900/​h ttp://​w ww.etrap.eu/​ historical-​text-​re-​use/​. Goitein, S. D. “The Place of Balādhurī’s Ansāb al-​Ashrāf in Arabic Historiography.” In Atti del XIX Congresso Internazionale degli Orientalisti, 603–​6. Rome: Tipografia del Senato del Doit G. Bardi, 1938. Hirschler, Konrad. Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors. London: Routledge, 2011. Hoyland, Robert G. In God’s Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Jockers, Matthew L. Macroanalysis:  Digital Methods and Literary History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013. Judd, Steven C. Religious Scholars and the Umayyads: Piety-​Minded Supporters of the Marwānid Caliphate. London: Routledge, 2014. Kennedy, Hugh, and Ihab el Sakkout. “Book Review: The Ansāb al-​Ashrāf, vol. 6B, by Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā b. Jābir al-​Balādhurī, edited and annotated by Khalil Athamina.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland 5 (1995): 410–​13. Khalidi, Tarif. Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. KITAB Project. “About Passim.” Accessed February 23, 2019. https://​web.archive. org/​web/​20190222183225/​http://​kitab-​project.org/​about-​passim/​. Lammens, H.  “al-​Mug̲ẖīra b.  S̲ ẖuʿba.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition. Leiden: Brill. Landau-​Tasseron, Ella. “Mālik b.  Nuwayra.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition. Leiden: Brill.

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Leder, Stefan. “The Literary Use of the Khabar: A Basic Form of Historical Writing.” In The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, vol. 1, Problems in the Literary Source Material, edited by Averil Cameron and Lawrence I. Conrad, 277–​316. Princeton: Darwin, 1992. Lynch, Ryan J. Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography:  The Futūḥ al-​ Buldān of al-​Balādhurī. London: Tauris, 2020. Miller, Matthew Thomas, Maxim Romanov, and Sarah Bowen Savant. “Digitizing the Textual Heritage of the Premodern Islamicate World: Principles and Plans.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 50 (2018): 103–​9. Monsarrat, G. D. “A Funeral Elegy: Ford, W. S., and Shakespeare.” Review of English Studies 53 (May 2002): 186–​203. Neiderkorn, William S.  “A Scholar Recants on his ‘Shakespeare’ Discovery.” New York Times, June 20, 2002. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations Special Issue: Memory and Counter-​Memory 26 (1989): 7–​24. Robinson, Chase F. “Islamic Historical Writing, Eighth through the Tenth Centuries.” In The Oxford Dictionary of Historical Writing, vol. 2, 400–​1400, edited by Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson, 238–​66. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. ——​​. Islamic Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Romanov, Maxim. “Algorithmic Analysis of Medieval Arabic Biographical Collections.” Speculum 92 (October 2017): 226–​46. Romanov, Maxim, Matthew Thomas Miller, Sarah Bowen Savant, and Benjamin Kiessling. “Important New Developments in Arabographic Optical Character Recognition (OCR).” al-​‘Uṣūr al-​Wusṭā 25 (2017): 1–​11. Schiffer, Michael B.  “Archaeological Context and Systemic Context.” American Antiquity 37 (April 1972): 156–​65. Schoeler, Gregor. The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read. Translated by Shawkat M.  Toorawa. Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 2009. ——​​. The Oral and the Written in Early Islam. Translated by Uwe Vagelpohl. Edited by James E. Montgomery. London: Routledge, 2006. Shack, Joseph, and Hannah Weaver. “Introduction to Medieval Re-​Creations: Acts of Recycling, Revision, and Relocation.” Medieval Globe 6 (2020): 1–6. Shoshan, Boaz. The Arab Historical Tradition and the Early Islamic Conquests: Folklore, Tribal Lore, Holy War. New York: Routledge, 2016. Smith, David A., and Ryan Cordell. “Text Reuse.” In Textual Criticism as Language Modeling. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019. Accessed October 20, 2019. https://​manifold.umn.edu/​read/​untitled-​883630b9-​c054-​44e1-​ 91db-​d053a7106ecb/​section/​c030c4c4-​e2ac-​4a54-​b5ea-​30a70d274a61.

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Smith, David A., Ryan Cordell, Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Nick Stramp, and John Wilkerson. “Detecting and Modeling Local Text Reuse.” In Proceedings of the 14th ACM/​IEEE-​CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 183–​92. Piscataway: IEEE, 2014. Tayob, Abdelkader I. “Ṭabarī on the Companions of the Prophet: Moral and Political Contours in Islamic Historical Writing.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 119 (April–​June 1999): 203–​10. Van Ess, Josef. “The Beginnings of Islamic Theology.” In The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning: Proceedings of the First International Colloquium on Philosophy, Science, and Theology in the Middle Ages—​September 1973, edited by John Emery Murdoch and Edith Dudley Sylla, 87–​111. Boston: Reidel, 1975. Vesanto, Aleksi, Asko Nivala, Heli Rantala, Tapio Salakoski, Hannu Salmi, and Filip Ginter. “Applying BLAST to Text Reuse Detection in Finnish Newspapers and Journals, 1771–​1910.” In Proceedings of the NoDaLiDa 2017 Workshop on Processing Historical Language, 54–​58. Linköping:  Linköping University Electronic Press, 2017. White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-​Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.

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Ryan J. Lynch ([email protected]) is the Assistant Professor of the History of the Islamic World in the Department of History and Geography at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. He completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the earliest centuries of Islam and the Arabic historical tradition and, in particular, the materials surrounding the early Islamic conquests and the first Islamic states. He is the author of Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography: The Futuh al-​buldan of al-​Baladhuri (2020).

Abstract While there is growing historiographical analysis of the reuse of circu­ lating narrative materials in medieval books from various textual traditions, there have been fewer studies of the late antique and early medieval periods that have considered the process of authorial self-revision. This is especially the case with early Arabic/Islamicate texts. This study is a discussion of the historical material that is reused in the two surviving Arabic works of the Muslim author al-Balādhurī (d. ca. 892 CE/279 AH), material which appears in his Kitāb Futūḥ al-buldān (The Book of the Conquest of Lands) and that was apparently reused in his Ansāb al-Ashrāf (The Lineage of Nobles). In discussing how al-Balādhurī recycled this information and emplotted it in verbatim and near-verbatim forms, it shows how shifting the location of these shared traditions demonstrates the different goals of his two books and also showcases his work as an author: in the former, he places an emphasis on the creation of early Islamic institutions; in the later, he eulogizes the character and qualities of Islam’s earliest leaders. Additionally, all of the reused material discussed here was identified through computer meditated analysis, so this study also highlights how the tools of the digital and computational human­ ities demonstrate immense promise in enhancing and expediting the research of scholars across the medieval globe. Keywords al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-Ashrāf, Arabic historiography, computermediated analysis, digital humanities, early Islamic history, Futūḥ al-buldān, text reuse

WHEN CURTAINS FALL: A SHAPE-​SHIFTING SILK OF THE LATE ABBASID PERIOD MEREDYTH LYNN WINTER THE FRAGMENTS OF a steely blue silk “jacket,” now at the Textile Museum in Washington, DC, once bore a woven inscription referring to the Buyid emir of Iraq, Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah (r. 988–​1012 CE) (Figure  3.1). Originally, it was woven in two registers across the surface of a larger textile. However, the parts of this inscription that specifically identified the emir, as well as his father, were cut away and lost during the eleventh century when the silk was reused and made into this garment, sometime during Seljuk rule in the region (1037–​1194 CE). The altered inscrip­ tion left only the name of a treasurer in Buyid service, for whose use the silk was originally made, along with fragments of Buyid titles.1 Today, the fragments are displayed in such a manner as to privilege the reading of these Kufic remnants as they would have appeared in the Buyid period, erasing the Seljuk garment through which the text was re-​configured to convey a different message (Figure 3.1). As a result, the silk’s reconfiguration as a jacket and the earlier textile to which its inscription corresponded are at odds, eliding the Buyid official’s proof of author­ ization and its later reuse in the Seljuk period as a courtly garment. Further inten­ sifying the disconnection between the two is the fact that, in its museum context, the piece is neither a means of extending a ruler’s authority to his subordinates, nor is it a tactfully repurposed garment. Rather, the twentieth-​century emphasis on the inscription and its denotative value has made the textile into a text: a histor­ ical document, and a partial one at that.

1  Comparing the title fragments to historical chronicles and numismatic inscriptions, historians have been able to determine that the missing fragments referred to Bahāʼ al-​ Dalwah and his father, ‘Aḍud al-​Dawlah. See Combe et al., Répertoire chronologique, sec. 15. The tripartite distribution of power under the Buyid dynasty of Muslim Iran and Iraq, which assigned governance of different regions to brothers or nephews, makes the history of this period particularly complicated. For the overlapping reigns of the Buyid emirs, see the chart in Figure 3.2.

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Figure 3.1. The so-​called “robe of Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah,” shown in its current state of preservation. Washington, DC, The Textile Museum, 3.116. Acquired by George Hewitt Myers in 1927.

The material evidence, however, tells a very different, un-​modern story of pres­ ervation achieved through alteration, whereby elites of the late Abbasid period (950–​1250 CE) maintained both the textile and their social standing when faced with changing political fortunes. In an effort to recover the discarded details—​ historical and material—​of this story, this study follows the silk once bearing the name of Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah through the late Abbasid transition from Buyid to Seljuk rule in the eleventh century.2 It posits that the silk was once an official Buyid curtain (sitr), and that the descendants of the original owner altered it in the eleventh cen­ tury, under Seljuk rule, in order to highlight their family’s prestige while simultan­ eously disassociating themselves from the politically defunct Buyids. By exploring the physical alteration of the silk and the motivations behind these interventions, we can better understand how the reuse and recycling of material goods played a part in preserving social identity despite the many political upheavals of this era. 2  During this period, the Abbasid caliphs maintained their influence over the Islamic com­ munity within their empire, but local governance was usurped in quick succession by the Buyids then by the Seljuks.

When Curtains Fall

Figure 3.2. Late Abbasid Dynastic and Chronological Chart. © Meredyth Lynn Winter.

Furthermore, we may come to appreciate how alteration facilitated the preserva­ tion of such objects by rendering them licit.

Reconstructing the Silk Fragments The first step in tracing this history is to understand how the remaining fragments of the silk fit together. Images from the time when it was acquired, for the collection of George Hewitt Myers in 1925, clearly show that it once took the form of a small jacket: the inscription was divided among the cuffs wrapping around the two sleeves and in two straight lines across a fringed back-​flap.3 Recognizing the titles inscribed on the sleeves as belonging to Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah, however, curators made the decision to realign these fragments along a single axis, coin­ ciding with the way they were originally woven. The body of the jacket, which was in better condition, was then laid flat behind the inscription, to provide support for the more damaged, inscribed portions.4 The reunited pieces of the inscription extended roughly 115cm in the horizontal, or weft, direction, but it was clear that elements of the titles that most clearly identified the piece with Buyids—​most notably the “Bahāʼ” from Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah and his father’s primary title, ‘Aḍud 3  A photograph of the piece’s reverse when it was still assembled as a jacket is reproduced in Shepherd, Medieval Persian Silks, 102, fig. 11. 4  I extend special thanks to Sumru Krody at the Textile Museum, for sharing her institutional knowledge of this piece, as well as providing access and support throughout this project.

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Figure 3.3. Hypothetical reconstruction of the Buyid-​era curtain (sitr). Illustration by Stephanie Vecellio. © Meredyth Lynn Winter.

al-​Dalwah—​were missing.5 By calculating the width of each letter from the text of the missing inscription, and adding this to the extant width, we can envision that the original inscription band would have stretched to roughly 180cm, or just shy of six feet (Figure 3.3). Since no selvedges are preserved, and neither is the bismillah, or customary invocation of God that precedes most Islamic inscriptions, it is probable that several more inches are missing.6 The loom on which this piece was woven, therefore, must have exceeded six feet (two metres) in width. This calculation of the textile’s size, however, considers only the larger of the two lines of inscription. The smaller inscription, as well as two rosettes, were in all likelihood centered within the original design, which would have required 5  Strictly speaking these “names,” too, are titles, but they are the ones by which the rulers were most directly identified; all rulers of the Buyids were granted a title relating to the tem­ poral realm of the Abbasid empire, “al-​Dawlah.”

6  This observation was first made in 1951 by Day and Wiet, “[Review of] Soieries Persanes,” 235–​36n8.

When Curtains Fall

the piece to be even wider.7 The missing portions of the inscription, the absent selvedges, and the high likelihood of its symmetrical design means that the total width of the textile could have been at least eight feet (2.5 metres), implying at least an equal length.8 Extant medieval compound silks closest to this size come from court-​controlled Byzantine workshops, and so it stands to reason that this piece, too, might have been woven as an official commission by textile workers in the employ of the Buyids.9 Given the fact Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah ruled from Baghdad, a workshop in Baghdad is the most probable place of production.10 While these dimensions remain estimates, it is clear that the original scale of the piece would have been far more significant than that of the fragments which survive today.

The “Draped Universe” of Buyid Administration The sizeable dimensions of the original woven silk beg the question of its use and context in the Buyid period (934–​1062). As Lisa Golombek has shown in a landmark article, textiles played an extraordinarily important role in the “draped 7  Estimates are based on measurements taken by myself and Sana Mirza during our internships at the Textile Museum in 2012.

8  Admittedly, while there is no structural reason why a textile could not have been woven wider (weft direction) than it is long (warp direction), textiles from this era are gener­ ally at least as long as they are wide. While not quite an exception, a silk double cloth, also documented from the finds at Rayy and currently held by the Abegg-​Stiftung Collection, Riggisberg, Switzerland (Inv. Nr. 1143), comes close being square at 152cm in length and 117cm in width. An all-​silk ṭirāz from Rayy, now at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Museum in Washington, DC (Acc. No. BZ 1926.2), is a rare example of a textile wider than it is long (66 × 120cm), but whose more generic inscription suggests that it was made for a high-​ranking bureaucrat, may have had truncated dimensions given its comparatively modest cost. Furthermore, the ṭirāz fabric employs a tapestry weave, for which technique there would have been no complicated loom set-​up. By contrast, drawloom-​woven silks like TM 3.116 were very costly because it could take a month to prepare the pattern harnesses, particularly for a piece like this one, with no apparent repeats. 9  The nature of official weaving workshops in the Islamic world has been most heavily researched in relation to so-​called ṭirāz fabrics, which originally carried embroidery and, later, tapestry-​woven inscriptions conveying information about official protocols. This shorthand term, however, causes confusion. It ignores that there existed non-​textile objects called ṭirāz and that the term applied also to official sites of production, called ṭirāz or dār al-​ṭirāz. Likewise, it subsumes all inscribed textiles under the term ṭirāz. See, for example, the discussions in Sokoly, “Ṭirāz Textiles,” and “Towards a Model”; also his contributions to Ekhtiar, Masterpieces, no. 26, and to Flood and Necipoğlu, A Companion.

10  Baghdad appears to have had weaving workshops either within or around the city, although situating them has proven difficult. See Lassner, Topography of Baghdad; Le Strange, Baghdad.

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universe” of the Islamic world.11 And given its original size—​at least eight feet square—​we may posit that this silk was a type of curtain, especially since its inscription would not be legible unless its entire width were visible. Unlike other textiles of these proportions which we know were made as wall hangings, such as Byzantine tapestries or Islamic silk double cloths, the Textile Museum silk is very thin, making it a less effective insulator. However, the ubiquity and various uses of curtains and the qualities of the textile central to this study strongly suggest that it was as an official curtain (sitr) which would be hung behind a civil servant to invoke the ruler’s authority. It is certainly indisputable that the weavers did not anticipate the silk’s use as the garment it became: the costly and complex weaving process would only have been worth the trouble unless the cloth were to remain, and be displayed, whole. This silk samite features a complementary weft weave with twill interlacing, an additional warp for patterning, so that the inscription is incorporated into the weave of the fabric itself. The seamless effect of employing the same weave for the inscription as for the rest of the fabric would have given the silk a perfectly uniform surface texture. Any cutting of the samite would run the risk of fraying the inscription and would also negate the effects achieved by its time-​and labor-​ intensive weaving process. Had the silk been intended at the outset for a garment, the more elegant solution would have been to weave narrower bands of fabric, or to add embroidery to the finished piece. This sort of weaving need not have taken place on a loom any wider than one person’s arm span, and would not have required a team of workers. We can therefore assume the original silk was woven with the intent that it should remain intact. The reconstructed inscription provides additional indications of its creative context and designated use. The upper, larger line of text would have read: […Glo]ry and prosperity to the King of Kings [Bah]a’ al-​Dawlah—​Light of the People, Strengthener of the N[ation, Father of Victory—​son of ʿAḍud al-​ Da]wlah—​Crown of the People, may his life be long.

The largely intact line below it, in a smaller script of the same color, specifies: [For the] use of Abu Saʿid Zadanfarrukh b. Azādmard, the Treasurer.12

11  Golombek, “Draped Universe.” As she also shows, associating extant textiles with those evoked in written sources is rife with difficulties. Recent decades have seen some pro­ gress: e.g., Stillman, “Textiles and Patterns.” Nevertheless, the majority of textiles evoked in contemporary sources (many of which were collected and interpreted by Serjeant, Islamic Textiles) cannot be matched with extant examples.

12  […muʿiz]z wa’l-​iqbāl li-​mālik al-​mulūk … [Bah]ā’ al-​Dawlah wa Ḍiyāʾ al-​Milla wa-​ghiyāth al-​U[mma, Abū Naṣr bin ʿAḍud al-​Da]wlah wa tāj al-​milla tāla ʿamruhu | [li’]istiʿmāl Abū Saʿīd

When Curtains Fall

The textile, then, was clearly made for Ibn Azādmard, a civil servant who also served as an envoy of Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah at the turn of the eleventh century.13 Presumably woven in an official workshop, it has, in the past, been identified as a khil‘ah, most commonly translated as “robe of honor.” These textiles, which were often (but not always) garments, were said to be taken from the back of the ruler himself, thus carrying with them his blessed essence (barakah) and bestowing upon their recipients those heavenly honours usually reserved for the caliph.14 So famed were these robes that late generations often depicted them in historical chronicles, as in a fourteenth-​century image of Mahmud of Ghazna (r. 999–​1030) receiving a khil‘ah from the caliph.15 To date, no medieval khil‘ah has been identi­ fied among extant Islamic textiles, but the garment in the Textile Museum, with its reference both to a ruler and a recipient, has long made the so-​called “robe of Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah” an unofficial candidate. However, Ibn Azādmard’s stated position as treasurer (khāzin) did not rise to the level of dignity associated with the gift of a khil‘ah in the late Abbasid period; at the end of tenth century, the khilʿah was reserved for top-​level appointments.16 Even the Buyid vizier al-​Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād (d. 385/​995), dubbed by modern scholars as “a king-​maker,” did not receive a khilʿah for his official duties.17 To be sure, a treasurer Zādānfarrūkh ibn Azādmard, al-​Khāzin. The bracketed text has been supplied by Wiet [see Combe et al., Répertoire chronologique, sec. 15.]. My translation has been slightly adapted for accuracy and to read more easily alongside the reconstructed textile in Figure 3.3; it is based on that given by Blair and Bloom, Islamic Arts, 228–​29.

13  He is recorded as such in Hilal al-​Sabi’s Taʼrīkh (al-​Juzʼ al-​thāmin) in year AH 391/​1001 CE. See Ibn Miskawayh, Rūdhrāwardī, and al-​Ṣābī, Kitāb tajārib al-​umam, vol. 4, 386–​409; translated in Amedroz and Margoliouth, Eclipse of the ʽAbbasid Caliphate, vol. 3, 401.

14  The root in Arabic comes from khil‘, meaning “to take off” or “disrobe.” The laudatory connotation of the “robe of honor” or khilʿah (pl. khila‘), is even preserved in the English word gala, possibly entering via the Italian “robe of state” (vestito di gala). Not all khil‘ah textiles were necessarily garments, but the root idea stems from a garment. See note 19.

15  “Maḥmūd of Ghazna donning a khilʿah sent by the caliph al-​Qāhir in A.D. 1000,” in the Jamiʿ al-​Tawārikh of Rashīd al-​Dīn (1314/​5, Tabriz):  Edinburgh, University Library MS Or. 20, fol.121r.

16  The status of individuals upon whom the khil‘ah was bestowed would change drastic­ ally after the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols and with the rise of the Mamluks in the thir­ teenth century. The latter were not caliphs as the Abbasids had been, but stewards whose rule was justified by the significantly weakened Abbasids; under the Mamluks, the practice of bestowing the khil‘ah would become more widespread. See Diem, Ehrendes Kleid; Stillman, “Ḵẖilʿa”; Huart, “Ḵẖilʿa”; Mayer, Mamluk Costume, 56–​64. 17  Pellat, “Al-​Ṣāḥib Ibn Abbād,” 99. Instead, Ibn ‘Abbād wore a black ceremonial robe called a qabāʾ, whose deep colour would have been extremely costly to produce, in addition to allying him visually with the “Abbasid black,” which “attested to his place in the vizierate” (taḥaqquqan bi’l-​wizārah): Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-​udabāʾ, 2:703. See Sourdel, Le vizirat ʻabbāside,

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was a civil servant entrusted with significant responsibility, such as accounting for taxes paid in kind and currency, as well as outstanding debts.18 He would not, how­ ever, have been accorded a robe of honour. Robes of honour, which literally brought independent rulers into the fold of the Abbasid empire, were thus the testament of an exchange between, if not equals, at least individuals with the resources and status to enter into such an agreement freely.19 Instead, Ibn Azādmard’s rank was here acknowledged through the proximity of his name in relation to that of the rulers. As the reconstructed drawing of the textile and its current state show, Ibn Azādmard’s name began just below the end of Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah’s. A detail found within an open letter composed by the vizier Ibn ‘Abbād provides an alternative to the khil‘ah theory and demonstrates that other textiles had the power to transmit authority during this period. Addressed to the newly appointed head judge, or qāḍī al-​quḍāt, in the city of Rayy, the letter offers counsel on proper conduct and was intended to be read by the people.20 Indeed, it was nailed to the pulpit of the main congregational mosque in this royal capital, so that the vizier’s comments were understood, not as advice to his protégé, but as a covenant making the newly minted civil servant accountable to the public at large.21 At times, Ibn ʿAbbād addresses the public directly, as when he assures them that they will find their new judge “appropriately curtained” (wa man alfāhu satīran sadīdan).22 vol. 2:686–​8. Viziers’ garments are described as being like robes bestowed on princes “except that they have no golden adornment”: Ṣābī, Rusūm Dār Al-​Khilāfah, 77.

18  The position of treasurer (khāzin) took many forms, as attested in Bosworth, “Khāzin.” Given the lack of qualifiers, however, we should be inclined to treat Ibn Azāmard as either keeper of revenues (bayt al-​māl), as attested in Fatimid accounts, or as in charge of the ruler’s privy purse (māl al-​khaṣṣ):  al-​Imad, The Fatimid Vizierate, 124; Sourdel, Le vizirat ʻabbāside, 82.

19  Diem emphasizes a similar point in relation to the tashrif and khil‘ah, described by al-​ Ṣābiʼ, when Aḍud al-​Dawlah is granted the title “al-​Taj al-​Millah,” Diem, Ehrendes Kleid, 83–​87.

20  Ibn ‘Abbād served as chief administrator of western Iran and advisor to several Buyid emirs, including Mu’ayyid al-​Dawlah (r. 367–​373/​977–​983), Fakhr al-​Dawlah (r. 373–​387/​ 983–​997), and ‘Aḍud al-​Dawlah (r. 368–​373/​978–​983): three brothers who ruled more or less concurrently in various regions of the Abbasid empire as the second generation of the Buyid dynasty, which governed in the place of the weakened caliphs from roughly 934–​1062 CE, their power being greatly reduced after 1048. On Ibn ‘Abbād’s correspondence, as well as the art and role of letter-​writing in late Abbasid culture, see Gully, Culture of Letter-​Writing, 76, 93, 124. 21  The administration of Buyid government was divided principally into three regions, each with its own capital: Iraq (Baghdad), Fars (Shiraz), and Jibāl (Rayy). Ibn ‘Abbād served pri­ marily in Jibāl and the royal city of Rayy. Pomerantz, “Licit Magic”; and Pellat, “Al-​Ṣāḥib Ibn Abbād.” 22  Ṣāḥib al-​Ṭālqānī, Risālah fī al-​Hidāyah wa-​al-​ḍalālah, 44.

When Curtains Fall

Although this odd turn of phrase may seem little more than reassurance that the qadi would “look the part,” in fact, it points to the ties which bound the ruler and the ruled. This is because the appointment and the accompanying authority it licensed—​though brokered by the vizier and entered into by the judge—​required the confirmation of the Abbasid caliph and the sanction of the de facto ruler, the Buyid emir, in order for it to be accepted by the people.23 As Ibn ʿAbbād’s letter continues, it becomes clear that these layers of authority and authorization were quite literally woven together in the form of a curtain. Speaking of the qadi’s office, he says, “for should one be dubious in his man­ date (aʼmr) or suspect in his curtain (sitr) […] then shall he be seen as counter­ feit, for which slander God would bind him to idolatry, for he said [in the Quran 22:30]: ‘Shun the filth of idolatry and falsehood.’ ”24 It was possession of this cur­ tain that, alongside his official mandate, authorized an otherwise private citizen to conduct himself as a Buyid judge.25 So while Ibn Azādmard’s position as treasurer did not merit the khil‘ah, it is highly probable that the inscription of his name on the textile means that it was originally deployed on a curtain and paired with a now lost certificate of his mandate (aʼmr).26 Hence, the curtain served a wholly different purpose from courtly gifts or the khil‘ah: it was both proof of Ibn Azādmard’s office and the medium by which he became the virtual presence of the sovereign.27 The sitr also suggests the ruler’s participation in the divine power of conceal­ ment, reflected in the divine name al-​Sattār (“the veiler”), to whom true sovereignty belongs. More concretely, it alluded to the civil servant’s role as stand-​in for the 23  Although the Abbasid caliphs are sometimes regarded as figureheads in the late Abbasid period (ca. 950–​1250), the relationship between the “deputy of God” (khilāfat Allāh) and the military dynasties to whom they delegated governance was constantly being renegotiated. For more on the evolution of this balance of power, see Hanne, Putting the Caliph in His Place.

24  Ṣāḥib al-​Ṭālqānī, Risālah fī al-​Hidāyah wa-​al-​ḍalālah, 44:  “wa man artāb fī aʼmrihi wa imtirā fī satrihi [wa qif bi-​bābihi ilā an yanḥasir wajihi artiyābihi] faqad qarn illāhi qawl al-​ buhtān bi-​ʿibādat al-​awthān.” While I have preserved the modern editors’ choice to vocalize sitr as satr, perhaps in keeping with satīran (hidden or “shielded” from view), it is clear from context that the word is evoking the qadi’s openness and accessibility, as well as the common practice of “shielding” the caliph’s presence from view through the use of a curtain.

25  Tillier, “Qadis,” 138. By the eleventh century, there was a distinct acceptance of the idea that Qadis should have a private person and an official person, not unlike Kantorowicz’s idea of the king’s two bodies. In the presence of others, he must always be the Qadi, and not the individual.

26  Although the size of the silk may have been sufficient for a standard, this too—​as an item which accompanied the khil‘ah in the same way that a mandate (aʼmr) accompanied a curtain (sitr)—​was beyond the rank of Ibn Azādmard. 27  Rustow, “The Fatimids.”

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ruler, shielded from view behind the caliphal curtain (sitārah).28 The precious silk and its finely woven inscription were of the highest quality, then, not because Ibn Azādmard equalled the ruler, but because in the course of his duties he exercised the ruler’s authority. The curtain communicated the nature of Ibn Azādmard’s pos­ ition through its “appropriate” appearance, and it also projected the image of the sovereign, extending his presence to every corner of the late Abbasid world. Its user was no longer a mere individual when standing beneath it: he had become a stand-​in for the ruler and, even more importantly, for the sovereignty of the greater Islamic community (al-​ummah) entrusted to the ruling class. The silk’s woven inscription also recalls the mandate outlined by Ibn ʿAbbād’s open letter; as in the case of the head judge, the curtain served first and foremost to render its bearer recognizable and accountable. The inscription begins in a first line of large yellow Kufic lettering. Although fragmentary in its present state, the silk still preserves the language which sanctioned the treasurer Ibn Azādmard in his duty and authorized his actions. With the letters of the treasurer’s name in close proximity—​if smaller size—​to those of Bahāʾ al-​Dawlah’s, Ibn Azādmard was transformed from a private citizen into a physical manifestation of the Buyid emir’s authority whenever the textile was displayed. Any actions undertaken beneath the suspended curtain were no longer those of Ibn Azādmard, but those of the legatee of the emirate and, by extension, of the Abbasid caliphate, which officially sanctioned the Buyids to administer their empire. Furthermore, if we are to take the Ibn ʿAbbād’s letter at its word, we should understand the curtain not merely as authorization but as a priori absolution and sanctioning of any action taken by Ibn Azādmard in his official capacity. The curtain kept him from being “suspect in his mandate” and thus freed from the snares of idolatry, so that his actions would be entirely trustworthy. But rather than granting the treasurer individual dispensa­ tion, the curtain and the caliphal mandate it represented, was understood to safe­ guard the community: it guaranteed to the public the fidelity and righteousness of the administrators with whom they interacted. All were, like the inscription itself, woven tightly into the same rich fabric.

The Enduring Power of the Sitr in the Late Abbasid Era The quasi-​sacred role of caliphal legatee which the curtain bestowed on its user played a central role in late Abbasid culture. Even after the declining Buyid dyn­ asty gradually ceded its administration of the Abbasid empire to the Seljuks in the middle decades of the eleventh century, the significance of the curtain would 28  Tyan, Le califat, 498–​501.

When Curtains Fall

Figure 3.4. Reconstruction of the Seljuk-​era robe and the placement of its inscriptions. Illustration by Stephanie Vecellio. © Meredyth Lynn Winter.

have continued to hold sway. A similar, if sardonic, scene to the one evoked by Ibn ‘Abbād unfolds in the eighth “session” of al-​Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt (Assemblies). Written not long after the transition from Buyid to Seljuk rule, it satirically highlights the power that the silk curtain once symbolized.29 In it, the story’s anti-​hero Abu Zayd appears before a judge with a child whom he presents as his son. This fictional judge represents all that an actual judge, with a mandate and curtain, meant for late Abbasid society: an extension of the caliph, God’s shadow on earth, he was a symbol of goodness and truth. As such, the judge becomes a foil for the cunning Abu Zayd who, in each carnivalesque episode of the Maqāmāt, passes himself off as sincere and worthy of respect to an unsuspecting public, perverting the justice of the late Abbasid world with his antics. A century later, the artist al-​Wāsiṭī completed a painted of this story which reveals the lasting association between curtains and the just behaviour of civil servants. In this manuscript image, now at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, we see al-​Ḥarīrī’s judge seated before a suspended curtain and upon an inscribed textile as he receives the public he serves in his official capacity (Figure 3.5). The artist represents the judge as compositionally magnified in relation to the other figures, including the protagonist Abu Zayd. The deep, Abbasid black of the cur­ tain lends the figure of the judge an air of gravitas, and his central place in the 29  For an analysis of the narrative devices and themes of the Maqāmāt, see Roxburgh, “In Pursuit of Shadows.”

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Figure 3.5. “Abu Zayd and his son before the Qadi,” from The Maqāmāt of al-​Ḥarīrī (634/​1236–​37), painted by al-​Wāsiṭī. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Arab 5847, no 8.

When Curtains Fall

composition dominates those of figures more important to the story. This com­ positional hierarchy would have been obvious to the late Abbasid viewer, as would the significance of the curtain.30 Although al-​Wāsiṭī’s illumination of the Maqāmāt dates to 1237 CE—​just before the fall of the Abbasid empire during the Mongol conquests—​it demonstrates that the official curtain, and what it represented, still held sway, no matter which dynasty was in power. Its meaning was also safeguarded by the broader Muslim community, which, as Fred Donner has put it, was “defined in part by its adherence to particular social and ritual practices.” What he calls “cult and administration” enabled the “establishment and survival of such practices.”31 Because the state was presented as the guardian and political embodiment of the Islamic community, the continuation of both the caliphate itself and the administrative practices of the state were tantamount to an expression of the community’s continued existence, even though many of these admin­ istrative practices were not in any sense distinctively “Islamic.”32

This same “cult of administration” imbued these official textiles with meaning and ensured the longevity of their use. That is why the threat of societal inver­ sion through deception, as depicted in al-​Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt, provoked the dismay of those in power and incited violent criticism of the author’s irresponsible auda­ city. Indeed, the trickster Abu Zayd is repeatedly described as donning garments to conceal his true nature, or otherwise using textiles with fixed meanings to sell his ruse.33 This textual and visual evidence reveals how symbols of trust and authority, like the silk curtain of Ibn Azādmard, continued to be revered in the late Abbasid society. Since the curtain served as mediator in the metonymical relationship between the civil servant and ruler, its authenticated and authenticating presence was the vehicle for conferring the God-​given truth of the Caliph on the speech and deeds of the user. Without it, as Ibn ʿAbbād had warned, there would be “idolatry” 30  Another representation of a curtain as demarcating a person’s official status is included in a manuscript of the De materia medica, dated 621 AH/​1224 CE, in which a physician treats a blindfolded man:  Washington, DC, Sackler Gallery of Art S1986.97, fol. A.  The flattened representation of the curtain behind the judge is similar to that of the curtains hung within doorways, such as represented in “Preparing Medicine from Honey,” from a dispersed manu­ script of an Arabic translation of De materia medica of Dioscorides (621 AH/​1224 CE) Metropolitan Museum, New York, 57.51.21. 31  Donner, Narratives, 166–​67. 32  Donner, Narratives, 166–​67.

33  Roxburgh, “In Pursuit of Shadows,” 202, 205.

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and “falsehood.” And yet there was a problem. Although the silk curtain maintained its authenticating power, ultimately derived from the caliphs, throughout the late Abbasid era and into the period of Seljuk rule, that power had been explicitly authorized by a member of the politically defunct Buyid dynasty. So, by the mid-​ eleventh century, a change was in store for the Buyid curtain.

From Buyid Curtain to Seljuk Robe By the time it entered the tombs at Rayy, as we have seen, the silk curtain of Ibn Azādmard had been cut down and re-​assembled into a garment.34 As part of this alteration and reuse, the titular elements that explicitly identified the Buyid emirs Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah (r. 998–​1012 CE) and his father ‘Aḍud al-​Dawlah were excised from the woven inscription, effectively effacing the dynasty which had originally sanctioned the civil servant in his duties. As a result, scholars have overlooked the fifty or more years during which the silk advertised its status as the official curtain of a Buyid civil servant and have erroneously dubbed it the “robe of Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah.” Why, then, was it altered? The “appropriate curtain” had been crucial to the treasurer’s office and the integrity of the community. The robe, by contrast, appears to be little more than a derivative thing. Its making not only compromised the physical integrity of the original Buyid silk, but obscured its original use and meanings. The true silk—​according to a conventional interpretation—​receded into obscurity at the moment of its alteration. However, if we approach this not as an act of destruction, but as an act of deconstruction aimed at preserving a family legacy, we may understand how the Seljuk era necessitated a new shape for a silk whose associations with the deposed Buyids had made it, not only useless, but a liability because it bore the taint of a dynasty fallen from power. Cutting away the names of the Buyid emirs made the silk “appropriate” once more, this time according to the standards of the Seljuk period. Its alteration also saved it from potential destruction, and as such should be seen as an act of preservation. To restore these Seljuk-​era changes to their own context, we first must come to terms with twentieth-​century interventions. Only after its discovery in 1925 would the silk, in its iteration as a robe, be reconnected to Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah when the Seljuk robe was disassembled and its fragments reorganized to reconstruct the 34  Although the piece was verifiably among the textiles discovered in the graves of the tomb towers at Rayy in January 1925, the authenticity of the various textiles associated with the site have been repeatedly called into question. See my forthcoming dissertation “Silks Withdrawn: A Recontextualization of the Rayy Corpus,” as well as King, “The Textiles Found near Rayy”; and Mackie, “Silks of Splendor,” in Symbols of Power.

When Curtains Fall

Buyid inscription.35 Ironically, then, by making the silk into a fragmentary histor­ ical document, twentieth-​century actors nullified the Seljuk-​era alterations which had removed the Buyid emirs’ names. As a result, the unique syntax devised to render it appropriate to a later era and to suit its reused form was overlooked. Nevertheless, a distinct logic informed the reorganization of the silk’s inscription. Whereas originally, the inscription occupied two registers on the curtain—​with the letters parallel to one another and to the weft—​the robe gave the inscription multiple planes upon which to announce its message. The fragments that appear now, in the modern, reconstructed textile, constitute the original inscription’s beginning (“… [mu’iz]z w’al-​iqbāl li’m | alik al-​mulūk”) and the end of the first line (“… wlah wa tāj al-​milla | ṭāla ‘amruhu”).36 These sections of fabric were cut out, rotated, and folded in half to form sleeves, while the portions contiguous to these were discarded. The inscribed portions of the rearranged fragments became armbands reading “glory and prosperity” on the right arm and “may his life be long” on the left. Isolated, the words became benedictions and, in a fashion similar to what has been observed in Egyptian graves of the same period, they focused the beneficent phrases upon the wearer.37 When viewed from the back, the garment bore a flap with two lines of inscrip­ tion, one larger and one smaller, in what is now the center portion of the modern reconstruction. The smaller inscription included the name of Ibn Azādmard for whose use, it states, the silk was woven. In this context, the laudatory phrases inscribed on the armbands might also seem to apply to Ibn Azādmard and, by extension, to the wearer. As such, the words of the Buyid era were literally deconstructed and, in their new assembly, put to an altogether new, seemingly apotropaic use. In addition to clothing the wearer in praise and blessing, they also promoted a family’s prestigious history of civil service—​while playing down its ties to the defunct Buyids. In its iteration as a curtain, the woven inscription had placed Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah’s title directly above Ibn Azādmard’s name. Once it became the robe, part of the emir’s title was cut out, leaving only the generic honorific “al-​ Dawlah.” Someone merely concerned to rehabilitate the Buyid-​era silk would have cut away all reference to the emir, effacing the connection entirely. But in 35  The identities of Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah and his father were disclosed to scholars through their titles as recorded on their coinage and in historical sources: Combe et al., Répertoire chronologique, sec. 15. 36  | indicates the points at which sleeves were folded in half: see Figure 3.4.

37  In Egyptian graves, benedictory inscriptions of textiles were positioned over the deceased’s eyes, creating an index between the wearer and the holiness of the names or ideas invoked. See Sokoly, “Between Life and Death.”

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Figure 3.6. Iranian, Figure of a Courtier from a Palace Frieze, between 1150 and 1250, painted stucco. Detroit Institute of Arts, City of Detroit Purchase, 25.64.

this case, the alteration was an intentional effort to preserve Ibn Azamard’s name, positioned just below “al-​Dawlah,” and so prevented the title’s complete excision. This suggests that the robe remained in his family and that, despite the ebb and flow of political fortunes, the descendants of Abū Saʿīd b. Azādmard had indeed been “born into happiness” and continued to prosper in later generations. In his many works on Iran under the Seljuks during the eleventh century, David Durand-​Guédy posits a dichotomy between the nomadic rulers and urban elites, demonstrating how elite families controlled lands and awqāf (charitable endowments, or assets in trust) and how they signalled their status within their patrician circles and ruled cities as if by oligarchy.38 Similarly, many institutions of 38  Durand-​Guédy, Iranian Elites and An Emblematic Family.

When Curtains Fall

prior centuries had persisted throughout the Abbasid period, despite the chan­ ging of de facto rulers. The character of the offices sometimes changed, but overall the families who held these positions remained constant.39 Since Ibn Azādmard was active around the year 1000 CE, as noted above, this was roughly the moment when the silk was woven into a curtain. To fix the date of alteration, we may turn to representations of garments, such as those seen on stucco figures associated with the Seljuk court. For example, the phrases inscribed on the armbands of a figure now in the Detroit Institute of Arts have been read as referring to “the believers” (al-​muʾminīn), a word that often appeared in caliphal titles of the period (Figure 3.6). Both the silk robe and the stucco garments also feature a blue ground and contrasting armbands. Several aspects of their construction also appear similar: the jacket’s shape, the button band with loop closures, and the positioning of the bands at the upper arm. Numerous stucco figures of this type have been dated between roughly 1050 and 1150 CE on epigraphic grounds, and many of them have provenances which would suggest that they, too, come from Rayy.40 These stucco figures, it is now believed, originally formed part of courtly scenes ornamenting the ephemeral pavilion palaces of the Seljuks. According to this theory, championed by Stefan Heidemann, Jean-​François de Lapérouse, and Vicki Parry, in their comprehensive study, the headwear sported by these figures correspond to their rank, a theory that we can likewise extend to our highly similar robe.41 Taking these two dates, then, of Ibn Azādmard’s appearance in the sources and the period roughly allied with the reign of the Seljuk Sultan Sanjar, the alter­ ation of the silk could have taken place anywhere from fifty to 150 years after the weaving of the curtain, from 1050 to 1150 CE. In theory, it was against cultural mores to cut a specially woven textile. The manuals (ḥisāb) composed for Islamic market inspectors heavily discouraged the cutting of fabrics, as it was seen to compromise the integrity of the garment and, by extension, the wearer.42 Wholeness equalled wholesomeness, and in this proscrip­ tion we hear again an echo of Ibn ʿAbbād’s admonition that “appropriate curtains” ought to “shun the filth of idolatry and falsehood.” That said, while the cutting of silk carried negative connotations, cutting words was in many ways a high art. Contemporary poetry abounded in the dissection and reassembly of revered 39  Wittman, “The Muḥtasib.”

40  Heidemann, de Lapérouse, and Parry, “The Large Audience.” 41  Heidemann, de Lapérouse, and Parry, “The Large Audience.”

42  Studies of ḥisāb, such as al-​Shayzarī’s The Book of the Islamic Market Inspector, have been undertaken by Ghabin in Hịsba and “The Quranic Verses.” The relationship between the rules recorded in these texts and actual practice requires additional study.

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words. It was a mark of high style to paraphrase or duplicate elements of sacred texts so as to shift meaning within a given context. Most famously, the work of the renowned poet al-​Mutanabbī (d. 354/​965), whose name may be translated as the “imitation prophet,” sought to borrow and parse the language of sacred scripture as revealed to the true Prophet, and the praise he received shows that effective recycling of even sacred language was regarded as commendable. More specific­ ally, as A.  M. Zubaidi has shown, an elevated source elevated the alteration.43 In an example from Abu Nawas’ Diwan, a couplet culls two phrases from a surah of the Qurʼan: “[You have] God’s gifts to prosper” (7:69) and “To God belong the most beautiful names” (7:180). The poet echoes these quotations to say: “Praise the wine for its gifts, and call it by its most beautiful names.”44 So too does the robe parse and repackage the language of, if not God, then the ruler—​the “king of kings” no less (malik al-​mulūk)—​to repurpose its essential meaning and elevate to semi-​divine status what was otherwise commonplace or vulgar. In addition to sharing borrowed and repurposed cuttings, the poem and the garment also share a courtly context. Different rules applied at court, the private residence of the ruler, and therefore not subject to the same scrutiny as the public sphere. A shared aes­ thetic of allusion and creative reassembly may have informed the reuse of the silk curtain turned garment, just as it did the court’s poetry. But even as a picture emerges of a politically savvy family cutting apart an heir­ loom in order to conform to Seljuk courtly attire and the tropes of Abbasid belle-​ lettrés, there are two final pieces of evidence to consider. First, the robe measures less than five feet from tip to tip, and only about two feet in length.45 Caftans like those worn by the stucco figures were meant to reach beyond the hands and down to the knees. The implications are clear:  this robe was meant for a child. Furthermore, the robe was reportedly recovered from a tomb complex at Rayy, where other purpose-​built funerary garments were also found.46 This places new emphasis on the words of the inscription: “Glory and Prosperity,” “May his life be long.” The phrases grafted into the garment and their apotropaic implications did not refer to prosperity in this life. Rather, the careful alterations and effort that

43  Zubaidi, “The Impact of the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth on Medieval Arabic Literature,” 331.

44  Dīwān, 13, as qtd. in Zubaidi, “The Impact of the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth on Medieval Arabic Literature,” 327.

45  The sleeves were each 50.5cm long and the back was 45.8cm wide, for a maximum arm span of 146.8cm. Furthermore, sleeves were worn pushed up, so that the wearer could pull them over and past the hands as needed. 46  Merritt, “Archaeological Textiles,” no. 194. See Canby et al., Court and Cosmos, 297.

When Curtains Fall

repurposed such a valuable object reveal that the cherished length of silk was not so dear to the family as the small body it must once have enrobed.

Reflecting on Alteration and Reuse in the Late Abbasid World In the so-​called “robe” of Bahāʼ al-​Dawlah, a single woven object becomes three objects of study. In its original iteration, around the year 1000 CE, the silk was woven into a curtain and intended for a treasurer by the name of Ibn Azādmard. It functioned as a sort of portable office, so that the administrator could effectively perform his duties under the aegis of the ruler in Baghdad while remaining recog­ nizable in far-​flung corners of the Abbasid empire. Within a few generations, the silk was altered: a garment was fashioned from lengths of the curtain which, cut down and reassembled, would eventually accompany its wearer to the grave, prob­ ably towards the end of the eleventh century.47 Most recently, in 1925, an art dealer unearthed the silk from tombs at the controversial site of Rayy, near modern-​day Tehran.48 It was sold to the collector George Hewitt Myers, who would put it in his newly founded Textile Museum in Washington, DC, and the Seljuk robe would be disassembled to facilitate reading of the woven inscription as it had been in the Buyid period. The goal was to prevent further deterioration and highlight its his­ torical value. The silk is thus preserved as neatly arranged and precious fragments of an illustrious past. As such, the modern interpretation of the silk is caught between its two medi­ eval iterations, so that use and reuse blend into one another. It is at once the robe of a deceased member of an elite family in the Seljuk period and the official seal a Buyid emir conferred upon his treasurer. These two periods, though in many ways diametrically opposed, are thus conflated. The silk object must either be cast within the narrative of an innovative flowering of Seljuk art or placed within the tricky territory of the Buyid period’s art, whose study is hindered by forgeries and historiographical fallacies.49 The continuities between the medieval avatars of the 47  References to the piece have focused on the garment iteration, despite applying the Buyid date, most notably in Blair and Bloom, Islamic Arts, 227f.; Mackie, Symbols of Power, sec. “Silk Splendor, 950–​1300.”

48  The specific circumstances in which the so-​called “Buyid” silks were exported and sold, as well as the numerous forgeries that appeared on the market from 1931 onwards, have been the subject of multiple studies including King, “The Textiles Found near Rayy about 1925”; and Shepherd, Medieval Persian Silks in Fact and Fancy.

49  Blair, Bloom, and Wardwell, “Reevaluating the Date”; Mackie, Symbols of Power; and Kessler, “Gefälschte Persiche Textilien.” On the broader field of Buyid art, which comprises both the calligraphic masterpieces of Ibn al-​Bawwāb and patent forgeries, see Bloom, “Fact and Fantasy.”

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silk and their positions within the variable landscape of the late Abbasid period are occluded within such a framework. What is more, the two physical states of the Textile Museum silk—​as curtain and as garment—​are conflated. This article has sought to reunite the silk’s many forms under a broader con­ struction of late Abbasid art and to interpret its transformations and reuses as the most effective means each period had at its disposal to maintain and preserve what was, and continues to be, a priceless treasure. Even so, there is a disconnect between the two medieval objects and the silk version of them that remains to the present day. Our efforts to preserve the past in the modern era focus on the preser­ vation of an object in a static state. The most authentic evidence of the past is often perceived as that which has changed the least. In this case, the historical value of an inscription, however incomplete, preserved one aspect of its history and use that most accorded with twentieth-​century priorities. As a result, the generations of use and reuse in the medieval period recorded by the textile’s alterations were reduced to a single moment, that of its initial production. Faced with a similar conundrum, as he struggled to preserve cultural patri­ mony in turn-​of-​the-​twentieth-​century Vienna, the art historian and theorist Alois Riegl equivocated, wondering whether, by taking historical edifices out of the romantically decrepit state they had achieved in preceding generations, he would take away a public’s passion for them.50 He, too, struggled to evaluate the authen­ ticity of historical objects and understand what aspects of these material vestiges resonated with the present moment, or might in the future. It is a conundrum that continues to challenge the trustees of patrimony and culture. An analogous pro­ cess has been at work on the silk at the Textile Museum. The different levels at which meaning was constituted in the Buyid curtain were, by the Seljuk period, overwhelmed by a politically defunct written message. In order to restore the piece to its previous standing, the owners altered it so that its form and message once again coherently expressed the precious nature of its bearer. Transformed into a Seljuk-​era burial garment, it lay preserved for centuries. The process continued into the twentieth century, with the historical value of its epigraphic content leading scholars to accord it high value and a collector to acquire it. Even by correcting our understanding of the silk, as the present study has endeavoured to do, we prolong the cycle of reuse and re-​envisioning that ensured its preser­ vation and, with it, the memory of cultures and peoples now vanished from view.

50  Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Origin (1903),” first published 1928, and reprinted in Schwartz and Przyblyski, The Nineteenth-​Century Visual Culture Reader.

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When Curtains Fall

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When Curtains Fall

Meredyth Lynn Winter ([email protected]) is based in Middle Eastern Studies and the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. Her research explores the ways in which medieval Islamic material culture facilitated social interaction and identity in the late Abbasid world (ca.950–​1250 CE). The present article draws upon her dissertation, which focuses on the textiles associated with medieval Rayy, to consider a particularly telling silk from the Rayy corpus. Abstract A silk intended for administrative use under the Buyids—the dynasty which ruled on behalf of the Abbasid caliphs from roughly 934 to 1062—was deconstructed under their successors, the Seljuks of Iran (1038–1194), so as to efface its associations with the defunct dynasty. When twentieth-century scholars re-established the piece’s connection to the Buyids, linking the piece directly to the emir Bahāʼ al-Dawlah, they ironically overlooked the Seljuk alterations and their implications. Following the silk through its several iterations, this article argues that, for late Abbasid-era elites navigating a changing political terrain, re-use became a means of maintaining their standing in society, as well as an act of pres­ ervation for the silk itself. Keywords alteration, historical value, Islamic silk weaving, material culture, medi­ eval textiles, preservation

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SALVAGING MEANING: THE ART OF RECYCLING IN SINO-​MONGOL QUANZHOU, CA. 1276–​1408 JENNIFER PURTLE* TO SALVAGE IS to rescue things from contexts in which their worth is not fully realized, and subsequently to employ them, thereby actualizing or amplifying their value. At a site inhabited by people of many cultures, salvage may, in add­ ition to its usual practices, include the cross-​or intercultural recycling of bodi­ less forms and material objects. Indigenous media, local techniques of working them, and the native forms produced by the interplay of culture, embodied knowledge, and materiality establish the foundational possibilities for artifacts. The material cultural needs of expatriates, however, redefine local production of things. Such needs create conditions for the salvage of figures and artifacts between various indigenous and expatriate cultures. Moreover, they facilitate the re-​mixing of culturally unrelated techniques of building and modes of visual communication. To address local, indigenous, and adaptive quotidian forms of a pre-​modern multicultural site in postglobal terms is also to commit to a form of rescue and repurposing. Specifically, such a methodological approach opposes a “global” art history predicated on the anachronistic projection of contemporary glo­ balization onto the historical past and rejects models of contact and exchange firmly rooted in globalization-​defining technologies and media produced in the West in the twentieth and twenty-​first centuries.1 Objects have always moved as widely and quickly as possible. Postglobal art histories are therefore committed to recovering knowledge of these phenomena in indigenous, historically spe­ cific terms. In this essay, a postglobal approach seeks to prevent the fashion­ able Western art-​historical notion of the “global” from overwriting the history of artifacts from sites in the pre-​modern, non-​Western world in which long-​distance *  Many thanks to Rick Asher, Abigail Balbale, Irene Malfatto, Karen Overbey, Joseph Shack, Eugene Wang, Hannah Weaver, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their helpful comments; and to Ryan Whyte for his photographic expertise and excellent companionship on multiple trips to Quanzhou. 1  McLuhan, Gutenberg Galaxy, 31.

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communication and migration, multigenerational expatriate experience, and lin­ guistic and religious difference were both commonplace and yet incommensurate with contemporary Western notions of globalization linked to modernity and narratives of the nation.2 This essay argues that before, during, and just after Mongol colonial rule, expatriate residents of Quanzhou 泉州 recycled salvaged artifacts that were products of locally available technologies and media to build meaning across cultures. Following a brief account of the city and its relocations, through four lines of inquiry this essay shows how bricolages of serviceable, locally produced components manifest the interplay of diverse and disparate cultures. First, this essay examines the reuse of imagery in stone monuments of various functions made for different religions; second, it probes the repurposing of iconography, notably on stone gravemarkers, to facilitate the communication of beliefs across religions; third, it analyzes the creative use of reproductive modules, decorative architectonic cladding purpose-​made in the idiom(s) of one or more religions for incorporation into the monument of another religion; and fourth, it investigates reinstalled components, architectural detritus from defunct religious buildings, that were salvaged and subsequently used as decorative and/​or structural elem­ ents in buildings of other religions. By tracing the mobility of imagery, iconography, and decorative idioms across religions in Quanzhou, this essay demonstrates how the salvaging of material artifacts between religions deemed equivalent under Sino-​ Mongol administrative policy literally built a local visual and religious culture from the sum of its available parts, first absent and then because of ethnic conflict.

Relocating Quanzhou: The Site, Its Inhabitants, and Their Religious Institutions The origins of Quanzhou, and the ethnicities of its early inhabitants, are obscure. The Buddhist temple that would become the cultural heart of the city, known from 738 as the Kaiyuan Temple (Kaiyuan si 開元寺), was founded ca. 686, approxi­ mately twenty-​five years before the walled prefectural capital of Wurongzhou 武榮州 moved to the present site of Quanzhou in 711 where a county named Jinjiang 晉江 (lit. “Jin River”), because of its proximity to that river’s banks, was established.3 The political administrative counterpart of the Kaiyuan Temple lay within the walls of Jinjiang. In 878/​9, the rebel Huang Chao 黃巢 (835–​884) 2  Purtle, “Double Take,” 72–​73.

3  Xianxi zhi 1:1a–​b; Quanzhou fuzhi 24:17a; Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi, Jianzhi: 1a–​b; Quanzhou gu jianzhu, 8–​9.

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attacked the city; given Huang’s documented slaughter of foreign merchants along the South Chinese coast ca. 875 to 880, the fact of his attack is often interpreted as evidence of an expatriate community in Quanzhou at that time.4 Following Huang’s attack, building flourished in Quanzhou. The local govern­ ment rebuilt and enlarged the walls in construction campaigns of 893, 906, and 964.5 In 917, after its enclosure within the new city walls, the Kaiyuan Temple acquired a second wooden pagoda that joined an earlier one first built in 866, thus enhancing the visibility of the temple on the skyline.6 Whereas Quanzhou’s old walls conformed to traditional Chinese urban planning paradigms, namely recti­ linear walls aligned with the cardinal directions, the new walls assumed a non-​ normative, roughly trapezoidal shape.7 The transformation of the city plan existed in symbiotic relationship to expatriate habitation patterns and the placement of foreign religious institutions. The earliest text to indicate a South Asian presence in the city, Record of All [That Is] Foreign (Zhufan zhi 諸蕃志), notes that ca. 984–​988, an Indian priest known in Chinese as Luohuna 羅護那 (possibly Rāhula) arrived in Quanzhou; Luohuna converted gifts from foreign traders into funds to buy land in the southern suburb of the city—​the foreign quarter—​upon which he built a “Buddhist” shrine (foshe 佛舍) known as the Baolin yuan 寶林院 (“Precious Grove Monastery”).8 Given local slippage in the usage of the term fo 佛, literally “Buddha,” to refer to deities from other foreign religions, whether the Baolin yuan was indeed an Indian Buddhist temple or a Brahmanic temple is unknown.9 Ostensibly a target of Muslim missionary activity as early as the seventh cen­ tury, Quanzhou may have had a Muslim community before Huang Chao attacked the city in 878/​9, and certainly it had one by the eleventh and twelfth centuries when expatriate populations and state-​sponsored foreign trade came to define the city.10 The ruins of the Shengyou Temple (Shengyou si 聖友寺, “The Saint’s Friends’ Temple”), which was first built in 1009 outside the Tumen Gate of the old city 4  Abu Said, Relation des voyages, vol. 1, 1:65; Zhu, Fujian shigao, vol. 1, 138–​41. 5  Quanzhou fuzhi 4:1a–​b; Quanzhou gu jianzhu, 8–​13.

6  Quanzhou fuzhi 24:17b; Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi, Jianzhi:  6b–​7a, 8a–​9a. These pagodas were rebuilt in stone in 1228 and 1238, respectively. 7  Quanzhou gu jianzhu, 9.

8  Zhao, Zhufan zhi, 1:23a; Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade, 181. The term “Precious Grove” (Chinese: baolin; Sanskrit: ratna-​yaṣṭi) is found in the Pure Land sutras. 9  Purtle, “Far Side,” 193–​94. 10  Min shu 7:21a.

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walls, documents the presence of this community, its name a Chinese translation of the Arabic “Companions of the Prophet Mosque” (Masjid al-​Aṣḥāb).11 Further mosque building indicates the expansion of this community: in 1131, the Qingjing Temple (Qingjing si 清凈寺, “Peaceful [and] Quiet Temple”) was built in the far south of the city; it was followed at an unspecified date during the Song dynasty (960–​1127) by a third mosque, the Yemeni Temple (Yemenjiao si 也門教寺), built to the southeast of the walled city.12 The building of at least three mosques and one South Asian temple (whether Buddhist or Brahmanic) outside the old city walls suggests that these extra­ mural neighbourhoods served as the focus of religious practice for expatriates under Chinese rule before the Mongol conquest of 1276. However, neither the siting of these places of worship nor Chinese law prevented practitioners of for­ eign religions from living inside Quanzhou’s city walls. Fu Zide 傅自得 (1116–​ 1183), who served as vice-​prefect of Quanzhou in the late twelfth century, was unsympathetic to this commingling. Wrote Fu: “[As for] these people [from] out­ side China, [by] law [they] ought not to live [within] the city walls [as they do in Quanzhou]” (Shi Huawai ren, fa budang chengju 是華外人、法不當城居).13 Circa 1200, Fu’s position was reiterated by the officials Lou Yue 樓鑰 (1137–​1213) and Liu Kezhuang 劉克莊 (1187–​1269).14 Following the Mongol conquest, the status of expatriate foreigners in Quanzhou and elsewhere rose under the Mongol quadripartite system of preferential racial discrimination that placed “assorted people” (semu ren 色目人), people neither Chinese nor Mongol, second only to Mongols (ranked first) and above those Chinese who had lived under alien rule (ranked third), and those who had not (ranked fourth).15 In Quanzhou the impact of this policy was visible in the pre­ ponderance of foreign names on the civil service lists (many transliterated from Persian and Arabic), the building of three more mosques on the southern and eastern margins of the walled city, and the renovation of the existing mosques.16 Given political in-​fighting among the Mongol khanates, the Yuan state also sought to strengthen the links of Quanzhou to South Asia in order to sustain maritime 11  Quanzhou fuzhi 24:20b; Inscription, “A7,” in Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, 15–​16, 312–​13; Wu, “Zailun Quanzhou Qingjing si”; Steinhardt, China’s Early Mosques, 35–​57. 12  Zhuang and Chen, “Quanzhou Qingzhen si,” 102–​14; Purtle, “Production,” 621.

13  Zhu, Zhu Wengong wenji, 98:2b; Clark, Community, Trade, and Networks, 129, 227n39; Li, Quanzhou, 169.

14  Lou, Gongkui ji 91:16a; Liu, Houcun daquanji, 62:10a; Clark, Community, Trade, and Networks, 129, 227n39; Li, Quanzhou, 169. 15  Haw, “Semu ren.”

16  BaMin tongzhi 30:15a–​24a; Zhuang and Chen, “Quanzhou Qingzhen si,” 102–​14.

Salvaging Meaning

communication with the Mongol Il-​khanate state in Persia when overland routes were unreliable.17 In material terms, this policy created conditions for the con­ struction of at least one—​and perhaps two or three—​Brahmanic temples, now known through surviving sculptures, architectural modules, and an inscription. These were located in the southern suburbs and included a Śiva temple built with imperial patronage in 1281.18 Additionally, three churches of the Latin (Roman) rite—​a cathedral, a parish church, and a hermitage—​were built within the city at that time, the hermitage funded by the Sino-​Mongol imperium.19 Where once Chinese law and the officials charged with implementing it had attempted to use the city walls to segregate Chinese and expatriates, by the thir­ teenth century resident imperial scions profited from the lucrative opportunities of maritime trade and the centre of the city shifted southward to make the for­ merly extramural foreign quarter the new heart of Quanzhou.20 Marco Polo, who visited the city ca. 1292, described it as “one of the two ports in the world with the biggest flow of merchandise.”21 Modern scholarship corroborates this observa­ tion: Quanzhou was the entrepôt at the eastern reaches of what Janet Abu-​Lughod has described as the “world system, ca. 1250–​1350.”22 The relocation of muni­ cipal centrality to the foreign quarter thus inscribed both the power of expatriates within the city under Sino-​Mongol rule and the importance of the city’s extensive trading networks on its urban form.

Reusable Imagery: Picturing Natural and Supernatural Worlds in Stone Idiosyncratic to Quanzhou, and to coastal Fujian more broadly, is a culture of stone carving and stone building, the origins of which are unknown. Such techniques perhaps originated locally, in Chola India (848–​1279), in the Southeast Asian 17  Sen, “Yuan Khanate,” 303–​4.

18  Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy, 228; Lee, “Constructing Community,” 3; Guy, “Lost Temples,” 296–​99. Sen and Lee indicate the existence of one temple; Guy’s analysis of surviving materials suggests the existence of two temples, one dedicated to Śiva and one to Viṣṇu. Violent conflict over the building of a new Brahmanic temple in the 1360s perhaps suggests the existence of a third temple. Zhuang, “Yuanmo waizu panluan”; Pearson et al., “Quanzhou Archaeology,” 29. 19  Iohannes, “Relatio,” 536; Peregrinus, “Epistola,” 367–​68; Andreas, “Epistola,” 375; Purtle, “Production,” 631–​38.

20  On the urban morphology of Quanzhou, see So, Prosperity, Region, 161–​85; on Song aristocrats and Quanzhou-​based maritime trade, see Chaffee, Branches of Heaven, 234–​42. 21  Polo, Travels, 237; Olschki, Marco Polo’s Asia, 29.

22  Schotenhammer, Emporium of the World; Abu-​Lughod, Before European Hegemony, 3–​40.

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Chola diaspora, or in some combination thereof.23 In coastal Fujian, numerous bridges and Chinese-​style pagodas erected during the tenth and eleventh centuries manifest these techniques, and these monuments are coeval with the growth of expatriate populations in Quanzhou.24 Their Chinese styles and patronage, how­ ever, suggest the existence of an indigenous stone-​working culture able to assimi­ late and adapt knowledge from abroad. An affinity for stone existed across cultures in Song dynasty Quanzhou, each reusing the pictorial language of Chinese relief sculpture to render visions of their natural and supernatural worlds. A program of forty Buddhist narrative relief sculptures on the base of the Zhenguo Pagoda (Zhenguo ta, 鎮國塔) of the Kaiyuan Temple, made under the supervision of the Buddhist monk Benhong 本洪 (fl. early-​mid thirteenth century) ca. 1238, defined this pictorial language.25 “Cow-​herding girls offer milk” (Mu nü xian [ru]mi 牧女獻麋: Figure 4.1), the ninth relief, exemplifies these reliefs. Illustrating the moment when Prince Siddhārtha (ca. 563/​480–​ca. 483/​400 BCE)—​aka the historical Buddha Śākyamuni—​ended his six years of austerity, from right to left (the viewing convention established by handscrolls and the directionality of Chinese writing) the relief pictures: a cow, the two young, female cow-​herds, a lotus flower, Śākyamuni, the tree under which he sits, numinous clouds mingling with the tree branches, and foliage.26 The Zhenguo Pagoda reliefs served as a lexicon of sculptural forms, their pic­ torial schema resonant with those likely propagated in illustrated, printed primers of the Song dynasty, now lost and known through their Ming dynasty successors.27 One such primer, the Xinbian duixiang siyan 新編對相四言 (New Edition of the Facing Illustrations, Four-Words[-in-a-Group Primer], contains many of the schema used in the Zhenguo Pagoda reliefs. The relief of “Cow-​herding girls offer milk,” for example, adapts primer conventions to represent clouds, lotus, and cow (Figure 4.2: right-​hand column, second from top; third column from right, second from top; left-​hand column, fourth from bottom, respectively). The reliefs thus reproduced established pictorial conventions, the one-​to-​one correspondence of primer convention to sculpted element rendering each object intelligible in almost logographic terms. In thirteenth-​ or fourteenth-​century Quanzhou, expatriate Brahmanic monuments reused pictorial conventions similar to those of the Zhenguo Pagoda 23  Asher, “India Abroad,” 162.

24  Zhongguo wenwu ditu ji: Fujian, vol. 1, 344–​51, 356; vol. 2, 361. 25  Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi, Jianzhi: 7a.

26  Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas, 47–​48; Purtle, “Pictured in Relief,” Appendix II. 27  Internal evidence from the text suggests Song antecedents.

Salvaging Meaning

Figure 4.1. Unknown artisan(s), under the direction of Benhong (fl. early–​mid thirteenth century): Cow-​herding girls offer milk (Mu nü xian [ru]mi), from base of the East Pagoda, Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou, ca. 1238. Carved stone, approximately 27 cm × 104 cm. Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, Quanzhou. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2019.

Figure 4.2. Xinbian duixiang siyan [New Edition of the Facing Illustrations, Four-​Words (-​in-​a-​Group Primer)] (China, 1436?), pages 1a–​b. Monochrome woodblock print, ink on paper; h: 26.7cm. National Palace Museum, Taipei.

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Figure 4.3. Brahmanic relief depicting a sacred cow and Śiva lingam, Quanzhou, Yuan dynasty. Carved stone, 68 cm × 43.5 cm × 25 cm. Current whereabouts unknown. After Wu Wenliang, Quanzhou zongjiao shike [Stone Religious Carvings in Quanzhou] (Beijing, 1957), 48.

reliefs (and perhaps other lost sources) to picture the world of their worshippers, natural and supernatural, in broadly comprehensible imagery. Extant architec­ tural modules, reliefs, and free-​standing sculptures document the pictorial idiom associated with these now-​lost Brahmanic temples.28 An image of a Śivaite saint (Figure  4.3), perhaps Caṇḍeśa or Thiramular, from the twelfth-​century Śivaite Tamil poem the Periyapuranam, exemplifies this idiom.29 Although clearly related to similar, contemporaneous images from Tamil temples, the cow and tree of this relief are not so different from “Cow-​herding girls offer milk” and perhaps would have been mutually intelligible:30 the viewer of one relief would likely have been able to understand the visual content of the other. 28  Asher, “India Abroad,” 162.

29  Coomaraswamy, “Hindu Sculpture,” 10–​11; Schomerus, Śivaite Heiligenlegenden, 104. The image may also portray Thiramular. Guy, “Lost Temples,” 298; Lee, “Constructing Community,” 169–​70. 30  For Tamil temple parallels, see Lee, “Constructing Community,” 169–​70, figs. 4.30, 4.31. The sixteenth relief of the Zhenguo pagoda base depicts a cow in a more Indic fashion. Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas, plate 35: E base 16.

Salvaging Meaning

Figure 4.4. Gravestone with Arabic text, 1335. Carved stone, 61.5 cm × 39 cm × 7.5 cm. Shengyou si Mosque Museum, Quanzhou. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2019.

Expatriate Islamic monuments similarly reused the imagery of illustrated, printed primers and the Zhenguo Pagoda reliefs. Although responses to Islamic pro­ hibitions against figuration varied, in Quanzhou extant stone-​carved gravestones, tombmarkers, and decorative architectural panels made for use by Muslims are aniconic, ornamented with Arabic calligraphy, floral motifs, or full-​moon-​and-​ clouds imagery. Such objects are exemplified by a gravestone (Figure  4.4) that memorializes a woman originally from Tehran who died in Quanzhou in 1335.31 While the iconographic meaning of the full-​moon-​and-​clouds imagery is not defini­ tively known, it may represent Islam by picturing a poetic line attributed to the first caliph, Abu Bakr (ca. 573–​634), about his son-​in-​law, the Prophet Muḥammad (ca. 31  “A59,” Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, 79–​81.

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570–​632), “He shines like a full-​moon when it is far from dark [clouds].”32 Despite this possible foreign origin for the full-​ moon-​ and-​ clouds imagery, the carved clouds of this stone resemble those of “Cow-​herding girls offer milk,” albeit in more linear form like those of the Xinbian duixiang siyan (Figure 4.2: right-​hand column, second from top). Indeed, the gravestone reuses the imagery of sun-​ and-​clouds (the sun shown as a circle) as moon-​and-​clouds (the moon normally rendered as a crescent), imagery presumably current during the Yuan dynasty (1271–​1368; in Quanzhou: 1276–​1360), and included in the Xinbian duixiang siyan (Figure 4.2: right-​hand column, fifth and sixth from the top, respectively).33 Thus this gravestone and monuments like it reused established pictorial conventions current in illustrated, printed primers and visible in the Zhenguo Pagoda base reliefs, to depict Islamic content using local materials and stone-​carving techniques.34

Repurposed Iconography: Communicating Beliefs between Religions In Quanzhou, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the repurposing of common iconographies facilitated communication between religions and confessions. The co-​presence in a single monument of iconographic markers from different religions and/​or confessions conjoined their meanings. Such iconographic combinations not only recycled iconographic elements but thereby connected them to build new meanings from the sum of their parts creating bricolages that could in turn be repurposed. The gravestone for the Lady Martha Terim (d. 1331?, Figure 4.5), the wife of an Eastern Syriac Christian with a Mongolian name resident in Quanzhou, exempli­ fies this phenomenon.35 Like a Christian gravestone (Figure 4.6), the Lady Martha stone bears relief-​carved imagery of a Nestorian cross and a lotus flower; addition­ ally, two flying angels flank this motif on the Lady Martha stone, which also bears a Turkish inscription in Old Uighur script.36 The Lady Martha Gravestone thus 32  Abu Bakr, Sealed Nectar, 318.

33  In the third relief of the Zhenguo Pagoda base, this motif also is figured in the full moon of Queen Maya’s white elephant dream, in which she conceived the Buddha. Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas, 44, plate 32: E base 3.

34  The Xinbian duixiang siyan and the Kuiben duixiang siyan zazi both contain internal evi­ dence of Yuan dynasty precursors.

35  The inscription states: “In the Year of the Sheep, the second day of the full moon (man) period of the month of fasting [i.e. the twelfth month, = 31st December 1331 CE?] the Lady [i.e. wife] of the Christian Qupluɣ Xuβilgan, Martha Terim, fulfilled the commandment of God [and] descended to the divine heaven.” Transcription and translation by A. van Tongerloo in From Palmyra, 268; on the Mongolian name of Martha Terim’s husband, see From Palmyra, 220. 36  On the Roman origins of this iconography, see From Palmyra, 240.

Salvaging Meaning

Figure 4.5. Gravestone for the Lady Martha Terim (d. 1331?), Quanzhou. Carved stone, 66 cm × 29 cm. × 14 cm. Original formerly in the collection of the Xiamen University Anthropology Museum, Xiamen; current whereabouts unknown. After Wu Wenliang, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, 2005, page 384.

Figure 4.6. Christian gravestone, Quanzhou, Yuan dynasty. Carved stone, 50.5 cm × 52.8 cm. Fujian Museum, Fuzhou. Photo © Jennifer Purtle, 2019.

reprises the iconography of lotus-​flower-​and-​Nestorian-​cross used by Eastern Syriac Christians in China not later than the ninth century, an iconography exem­ plified by a stone mortuary column made for Sogdian Christians from Bukhara dated 815/​829, and inscribed with a Chinese-​language Eastern Syriac scripture, the DaQin jingjiao xuanyuan zhi benjing 大秦景教宣元至本經 (Syriac Christian

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Sutra on the Origin of Origins).37 Used widely from the eighth to fourteenth cen­ turies at sites ranging from modern Iraq in the West to Mongolia in the East, and as far south as southern China, this iconography repurposed the lotus flower, which in the Pure Land sect of Buddhism served as a surrogate womb from which a believer’s soul was reborn to eternal life in the Western Paradise, in order to connote the idea of everlasting life in a Christian paradise.38 Coupling the lotus with the cross superimposed the connotations of a paradis­ iacal afterlife in the Pure Land tradition to the cross and its promise of resurrection and everlasting life in the Christian tradition. The meaning of the cross—​new and less familiar, if not unknown, in Quanzhou—​was thus explained to Chinese and non-​Christian expatriate viewers through proximity to its repurposed Buddhist counterpart, the lotus.39 Moreover, the reusable imagery of the Zhenguo Pagoda base reliefs, including lotus flowers (noted above) and supernatural flying beings, enhanced the intelligibility of this repurposed iconography, thereby increasing its ability to communicate across religions.40 Indeed, the lotus and clouds rendered on the gravestones also reused the pictorial imagery found in “Cow-​herding girls offer milk” and other reliefs on the base of the Zhenguo Pagoda, the same imagery represented in printed, illustrated primers.41 Even as pictorial schema migrated across religions, iconography was repurposed between rival confessions in Quanzhou during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The gravestone of Andrew of Perugia (Andreas de Perusia, d.  1332; Figure  4.7), a Franciscan priest who served as the third of five Rome-​ appointed bishops (r. 1323–​1332) of Zayton (as Quanzhou was known in Latin and Persian) exemplifies this phenomenon.42 Although the top of the stone is damaged, its Latin inscription remains legible;43 its relief-​carved imagery includes 37  Nicolini-​Zani, “Tang Christian Pillar,” 117. 38  Purtle, “Far Side,” 184–​89.

39  Purtle, “Far Side,” 186; Steinhardt, China’s Earliest Mosques, 56.

40  Apsaras and other flying beings are depicted in the thirty-​third and thirty-​sixth reliefs of the Zhenguo pagoda base. Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas, 59–​60, 61–​63, plate 40: E base 33, E base 36; From Palmyra, 240–​43. 41  Printed architectural treatises, e.g., Yingzao fashi may also have served as sources for such imagery. Li Zhongming Yingzao fashi, Supplemental Images, 33:9a–​14b. 42  Purtle, “Production,” 632–​33.

43  The inscription states: “Here [in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit] is buried Andrew of Perugia [consecrated (lit. ‘[who took] the vows [to serve]’) as Bishop of Zayton] of the Order [of the Minorite Friars, that is, the Franciscans], Apostle [of Jesus Christ … deceased on … day and … month in the Year of our Lord] One Thousand [Three Hundred twenty plus] ten [i.e., thirty]-​two.” “HIC [IN PATER FILII ET SPIRITUS SANCTI] SEPULTUS EST

Salvaging Meaning

Figure 4.7. Gravestone of Andrew of Perugia (d. 1332). Carved stone, 54 cm × 45 cm. Quanzhou Museum of Maritime History. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2019.

a lotus-​flower-​and-​Nestorian-​cross flanked by two flying angels, just like those of the gravestone for Lady Martha, who had died in the previous year. Rather than create a new, uniquely Latin/​Roman rite iconography of everlasting life, Andrew’s gravestone repurposed established Eastern Syriac iconography, despite doctrinal differences. Moreover, the shape of Andrew’s gravestone presumably adapted the pointed arch common in Islamic gravestones from Quanzhou (e.g. Figure 4.4). ANDREAS PERUSINUS [DE VOTUS EPISCOPALUS CAYTON] ORDINUS [FRATRUM MINORUM … IESU CHRISTI] APOSTOLUS … [IN MENSE … A.D.] M [CCC XX] X II.” Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, 373; Purtle, “Production,” 642–​45.

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The reasons for such interconfessional repurposing are unknown. Eastern Syriac Christianity flourished in Quanzhou well before it became a centre for Franciscan missionary activity with the support of the Sino-​Mongol imperium.44 Identified as targets of this missionary activity, Eastern Syriac Christians were numerous, the majority of recovered gravestones with both Christian iconography and inscribed text from Quanzhou belonging to members of this community.45 Thus, even as primary sources indicate that the Franciscans flourished in Quanzhou—​ their mission included three foundations with bells (campanas), a bath (balneum) and warehouse (fundacum)—​recovered stone monuments suggest that they were perhaps forced to articulate their confession in the re-​purposed iconography of Eastern Syriac Christianity so as to communicate clearly with potential converts.46

Reproductive Modules: Re-​purposing and Replicating Salvaged Stone In Quanzhou during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, reproductive archi­ tectonic modules replicated ornamental idioms associated with one monument for incorporation into another, such modules used across religions. The Zhenguo Pagoda base, rebuilt in stone under the auspices of Benhong circa 1238, framed its Buddhist narrative reliefs with decorative cladding (Figure 4.8). This cladding contains a variety of ornamental modules, notably, vertical, semi-​ cylindrical modules separating the pictorial reliefs; a horizontal register of cladding carved with foliate decorative forms installed below the reliefs; horizontal modules carved with floral scrolls; and, horizontal modules in the form of a foliate-​arch apron with scallop shell feet. When viewed as part of the larger corpus of extant stone modules from thirteenth-​ and fourteenth-​century Quanzhou, this cladding shares similarities with examples from Brahmanic and Islamic monuments that postdate the con­ struction of the Zhenguo Pagoda. On the base of the pagoda, the vertical modules resemble those found locally in Brahmanic carvings (Figure 4.9) and other Indic monuments constructed in the region not later than the mid-​eleventh century.47 The horizontal, foliate registers—​nominally lotus leaves—​resemble those of Chola 44  Peregrinus, “Epistola,” 367; Andreas, “Epistola,” 375; Purtle, “Production,” 629–​62. 45  Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, esp. 377–​401, passim.

46  Malfatto, Le digressioni, 9; Iohannes, “Relatio,” 536; Purtle, “Production,” 636–​37.

47  These include the Heavenly Longevity Pagoda in Xianyou, discussed below, and numerous Asoka pagodas. On the latter, see, for example, Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, 545–​46, 566–​67.

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Figure 4.8. Detail of East Pagoda Base, Quanzhou, Fujian. Photo © Jennifer Purtle, 2014.

temples, for example, those of the Airavatesvara temple in Thanjavur, Darasuram, built by Rajaraja Chola II (r. 1146–​1173, d.1173) during his reign (Figure 4.10). Numerous surviving examples of Brahmanic decorative cladding of unknown date, perhaps circa 1281 (see Figure 4.9), indicate that both types of module were replicated in Quanzhou.48 The two lower horizontal bands of carved cladding on the Zhenguo pagoda base, the floral scrolls and foliate-​arch, scallop shell footed-​ apron (see Figure 4.8), lack an earlier source in Quanzhou; a century later, how­ ever, such cladding appeared repeatedly in Christian and Islamic gravemarkers, as represented in line-​drawings of their archetypal forms (Figure 4.11).49 The resemblance of the Zhenguo Pagoda base to later Brahmanic, Islamic, and Christian monuments belies early local fabrication of Indic styles by Quanzhou artisans on salvaged stone. In theory, the earliest extant monument in Fujian to include all of the cladding types subsequently reproduced on the Zhenguo Pagoda base is the Heavenly Longevity Pagoda (Tianzhong wanshou ta 天中萬壽塔; Figure 4.12) in Xianyou 仙遊 county, Fujian, putatively dated 1059.50 48  Lee, “Constructing Community,” 155, 166–​69, figs. 4.23, 4.24, 4.25, 4.26.

49  On such tombs see Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, 160–​217; Quanzhou Yisilanjiao shike, plates 87–​131.

50  On official recognition of this date for the pagoda, linked to the establishment of a con­ comitant administrative Unit for the Preservation of a National Key Cultural Relic (Quanguo zhongdian wenwu baohu danwei 全國重點文物保護單位), see Zhongguo wenwu ditu ji: Fujian fen ce, vol. 1, 345. Younger Chinese scholars, e.g., Yan Aibin 闫爱宾, dispute this date, but have yet not published a revised chronology. Yan, “Reintegration, Shifts in Meaning, and Transformation.” Modular components similar to those of the Heavenly Longevity Pagoda are associated with the site of the Stone Bamboo-​Shoot Bridge (Shisun qiao 石笋橋) in Quanzhou. See, for example, Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, fig. E44.6, 581.

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Figure 4.9. Brahmanic reliefs of Simha and Narasimha, salvaged from an unknown temple, ca. 1281(?); installed in the main courtyard, Kaiyuan si temple, Quanzhou. Photo © Jennifer Purtle, 2019.

Figure 4.10. Brahmanic narrative relief installed at the Airavatesvara temple Thanjavur, Darasuram, Tamil Nadu, ca. mid-​twelfth century. Photo © Alamy Stock Photos, 2019.

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Figure 4.11. Quanzhou gu Yisilanjiao Xumizuo jitanshi shimu (Ancient Islamic Mount Sumeru-​base, altar-​shaped stone gravemarker from Quanzhou). After Wu Wenliang, Quanzhou zongjiao shike (Beijing, 1957), 37.

Located approximately sixty kilometres from Quanzhou, Xianyou was the birth­ place of the official Cai Xiang 蔡襄 (1012–​1067), during whose second appointment as Prefect of Quanzhou (1057–​1060) the building of the Wan’an Bridge (Wan’an qiao 萬安橋)—​a twelve-​hundred meter-​long stone bridge crossing the Luoyang

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river to the north-​east of the walled city—​was completed in 1059.51 It is said that Cai salvaged surplus stone from the bridge-​building project and transported it to Xianyou, where Quanzhou stoneworkers erected this pagoda that reproduced and elaborated the forms of Indic dhāraṇī sūtra-​style pagodas (Baoqie yin ta 宝篋印塔; Japanese:  Hōkyōintō)—​small-​scale, Sanskrit-​inscribed examples of which were erected at the site of the Wan’an Bridge (Figure 4.13).52 Using allegedly re-​purposed stone, the Heavenly Longevity Pagoda reprised an “Indic” architectural idiom associated with the WuYue (907–​978) kings who had briefly ruled parts of Fujian (including counties adjacent to Xianyou but not Xianyou itself), as well as the Min (909–​945) kings who had briefly ruled Fujian (including Xianyou): thus establishing this “foreign” and politically-​charged orna­ mental vocabulary in the Quanzhou hinterland.53 Top-​to-​bottom, following two tiers of Buddhist figures, the horizontal modules of decorative cladding include carved pictorial relief panels separated by vertical, semi-​cylindrical modules; Chola-​style lotus leaves; geometricized floral vine; and a foliate-​arch, scallop shell footed-​apron. In the middle of the pagoda, below this footed-​apron, successive modules repeat, top-​to-​bottom:  geometricized floral vine; lotus leaves; pictorial reliefs of dragons; lotus leaves; geometricized floral vine; and a final foliate-​arch, scallop shell footed-​apron. Whether or not the Heavenly Longevity Pagoda inaugurated the architectural form of the dhāraṇī sūtra-​style pagoda in the Quanzhou hinterland, its Mount Sumeru base (Xumi zuo 須彌座) underscored its Indic associations. By 1103, when Li Jie’s 李誡 (1065–​1110) [Treatise on] State Building Methods (Yingzao fashi 營造法式) was first published, these forms, whatever their origins, were naturalized as “Chinese” and transformed into the components of a Stepped-​and-​ stacked-​base square column (Jieji diese zuo jiaozhu 階基疊澀坐角柱; Figure 4.14) containing similar horizontal registers of geometricized flowers, lotus leaves, and foliate-​arch aprons.54 Indeed, when this formal idiom appeared in thirteenth-​ century Quanzhou, as we have seen—​visible in the decorative modules of the Zhenguo Pagoda base and the Brahmanic, Islamic, and Christian monuments for­ mally related to it—​its Indic origins had first been assimilated as Chinese and sub­ sequently refashioned as alien.55 51  Cai, “Wan’an du shiqiao ji,” 20:19b–​20a.

52  Xianyou xian zhi, 6:1b; Wu, “Riben chutude WuYueguo,” 104.

53  Putatively associated with Qian Liu 錢鏐 (852–​932, r. 904–​932), founder of the WuYue Kingdom, this form flourished during the reign of the last WuYue ruler, Qian Chu 錢俶 (929–​988; r. 948–​978). Wang, “Baoqie yinjing ta”; Wu, “Riben chutude WuYueguo.” 54  Li Zhongming Yingzao fashi, Supplemental Images, 29:7b.

55  The twenty-​second and twenty-​fourth Zhenguo pagoda base reliefs contain examples of similarly Indic pagodas, associated with King Aśoka (304–​232 BCE). Ecke and Demiéville,

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Figure 4.12. Heavenly Longevity Pagoda (Tianzhong wanshou ta), dated 1059. Xianyou county, Fujian. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2019. Twin Pagodas, plate 37:  E base 22, E base 24. Other Indic pagodas were found at the site of the Wan’an bridge, the Stone Bamboo-​Shoot Bridge and in the courtyard of the Kaiyuan temple. Zhongguo wenwu ditu ji: Fujian, vol. 1, 348; Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, 545–​49 (Kaiyuan), 579–​80 (Shisun).

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Figure 4.13. Sanskrit-​inscribed dhāraṇī sūtra-​style pagoda, erected at the site of the Wan’an Bridge, dated 1059. Photo © Ryan Whyte, 2019.

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Figure 4.14. Li Jie (1065–​1110) et al., Jieji diese zuo jiaozhu (Stepped-​and-​stacked-​base square column), from Li Zhongming Yingzao fashi ([Treatise on] State Building Methods) (Zijiang, China, 1925), Supplemental Images, page 29:7b: lost 1103 edition reconstructed from a Song dynasty Shaoxing era (1131–​62) manuscript edition and printed in the format of a Song dynasty Chongning era (1102–​1106). Monochrome woodblock print, ink on paper; height: 33.3 cm. Cheng Yu Tung East Asia Library, University of Toronto.

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The modules of decorative cladding installed in the Zhenguo Pagoda base appear to reproduce Indic forms first replicated locally in salvaged stone, their dimensions indicating different possible relationships to salvage and recycling. The lengths of the horizontal cladding modules, both those carved with lotus flowers and those with floral scrolls, indicate that salvage from pre-​existing monuments—​ and re-​cutting to fit the Zhenguo Pagoda base—​is possible, though not likely. Despite consistent proportions (approximately 8:3), the size of the vertical, semi-​ cylindrical modules of the base (approximately 32 x 12  cm) varies significantly from extant Brahmanic temple modules (approximately 18 x 6.5 cm), indicating that they could not have been salvaged and recycled from known Brahmanic ruins; this does not preclude recycling from Brahmanic (or other) sources now unknown. Finally, the dimensions, the fact of slabs cut to span different pagoda façades, and the symmetrical fit of the lowest register of horizontal cladding within the envelope of the Zhenguo Pagoda base indicate that the foliate-​arch apron with scallop shell feet was purpose-​made for this site. Standardization of size (and the possibility of re-​cutting), form, and function thus indicates both when recycling salvaged modules was possible, and when it was not.

Re-​installable Components: Architectural Detritus as Structural Element In Quanzhou, circa 1400, the salvage of stone architectural components from one religious institution and their subsequent re-​installation in an institution of another religion physically translated the building blocks of one religion into the material culture of another. Predicated on the mobility of architectonic elements across monuments and religions made possible by the materiality and scale of the repro­ ductive modules themselves, this re-​installation of detritus consolidated the aes­ thetic value and salvific efficacy of the forms found both in structural components and decorative cladding for adherents of different religions. Where once the co-​ presence in a single monument of iconographic markers from different religions and/​or confessions might conjoin their meanings, such re-​purposed architectural detritus compounded iconographies:  new iconographic meanings were literally built from the sum of their parts. Most spectacularly, architectural components from one or more Brahmanic temples were re-​installed as structural elements of Buddhist and Daoist temples in Quanzhou. Following the burning of the Purple Cloud Hall (Ziyun dian 紫雲殿, i.e. the Main Hall) of the Kaiyuan temple, during the Zhizheng era (1341–​1360) of the Yuan dynasty, it was rebuilt in 1398 by the monk Huiyuan 惠遠 (fl. ca. 1389). Then, in 1408, the monk Zhichang 至昌 (fl. ca. 1400) added a stone terrace, and

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extended the eaves on its front and back façades.56 Both parts of Zhichang’s project incorporated salvaged components from at least one Brahmanic temple: the stone terrace incorporated decorative cladding with pictorial reliefs of predominantly leonine Brahmanic deities, both lions (siṃha) and human-​headed, lion-​bodied creatures (narasiṃha; see Figure 4.9).57 The back porch, over which the extended eaves were presumably built, incorporated two citrakhaṇḍa pillars, chamfered and ornamented with images in roundels and carved in low relief (Figure 4.15) as structural, weight-​bearing components of the building.58 Not simply recycled, these building materials were re-​installed in contexts that approximated their original ones. The relief-​carved decorative cladding was used in the Main Hall base as though in a contemporaneous Chola temple (e.g. Figure 4.10), an installation that also resonated formally, aesthetically, and archi­ tectonically with the base of the Zhenguo Pagoda. Furthermore, the columns—​the only ornamented ones on the back porch of the Main Hall—​are placed at the centre of that façade,59 a practice used later (perhaps coincidentally) in Vijayanagara (1336–​1646) architecture, for example at the Vitthala temple at Hampi.60 This recycling of Brahmanic relief facings, decorative cladding, and columns as dec­ oratively and structurally integral components of the Main Hall of the Kaiyuan Buddhist temple indicates the aesthetic congruence of Brahmanic and Buddhist forms in Quanzhou and suggests the transfer of salvific efficacy from one religion to another, without committing heresy.61 56  Quanzhou fuzhi 24:17a; Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi, Jianzhi: 3a; Wang, “Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery,” 29 n.40, 42, 44, 176–​77; Lee, “Constructing Community,” 152–​53n52, 156, 167.

57  Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, 493–​95; Lee, “Constructing Community,” 152, 154.

58  Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, 453–​61; Lee, “Constructing Community,” 154, 176–​81.

59  On the incorporation of these columns in the 1408 renovation, see Wang, “Quanzhou Kaiyuan,” 44; Lee, “Constructing Community,” 156. Nichols believes that these columns became structural components of the Main Hall in a later renovation of 1637 when all the columns were replaced by stone. Nichols, “History,” 107–​8. Given local Quanzhou building practices that integrate stone and wooden columns, Nichols’ hypothesis is likely not correct. 60  Filliozat, Hampi, figs. 2, 7.

61  Scholars variously speculate on the possible motivations for installing Brahmanic reliefs in a terrace below the Kaiyuan temple. Sen suggests that because the scholar Zheng Qiao 鄭樵 (1104–​1162), a native of neighbouring Putian 莆田 county, confused Tamil and Sanskrit text, Quanzhou natives perhaps assumed that the Brahmanic reliefs were Indian Buddhist ones. Sen, Buddhism, 229–​30. This seems unlikely given the presence of Sanskrit inscriptions in Quanzhou (Figure 4.13) and the inclusion of Sanskrit text in Yuan dynasty printed books (e.g., Shushi huiyao). Shushi huiyao 8:5b–​7a. Nichols suggests that their installation below the floor level of the Purple Cloud Hall subordinates these reliefs, and thus the religion for which they were created, to Buddhism; this is also unlikely. Nichols, “History,” 98, 288–​89.

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Figure 4.15. Citrakhaṇḍa pillars salvaged from an unknown temple, installed in the rear exterior corridor, Kaiyuan si temple, Quanzhou, Fujian. © Jennifer Purtle, 2019.

In the larger iconographic context of the Kaiyuan temple, this literal Brahmanic support for Buddhist structures may have given material form to a contemporan­ eous understanding of the establishment of Buddhism on a foundation of Brahmanic

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beliefs and practices, an ideology that appears repeatedly in the Zhenguo Pagoda base reliefs. The first two reliefs recount stories of the pre-​Buddhist incarnations of Śākyamuni, known as Jātaka tales:  in the first relief, the future Śākyamuni is a brahmin who sacrifices his body to an ogre (actually Indra); in the second, he is a brahmin student who offers flowers to the Buddha Dīpaṃkara.62 The latter part of the narrative program (reliefs twenty-​nine to thirty-​nine) also showcases Jātaka tales, again underscoring the importance of the incarnations of Śākyamuni in the Brahmanical world of pre-​Buddhist India.63 The reliefs of the Zhenguo Pagoda indicate that Buddhist monks active at the Kaiyuan temple knew of the foundational link between Brahmanic religion and Buddhism through texts and their illustrations, perhaps using the re-​installation of salvaged Brahmanic archi­ tectonic components in a Buddhist context to underscore this relationship. Numerous acts of salvage and reinstallation occurred, a phenomenon facilitated by the use of standard sizes to produce the monuments of all religions and furthered by a shared pictorial lexicon that permitted imagery to be clearly understood, its meanings either sustained or redefined. At an unknown date, perhaps in a reno­ vation of 1406, citrakhaṇḍa pillars were installed in the Palace of the Heavenly Consort (Tianfei gong 天妃宮), the Quanzhou temple to Mazu 媽祖, the patroness of seafarers. Here, the pillars also flanked the central bay of the back porch, as they did in the Main Hall of the Zhenguo Pagoda;64 however, whether the Mazu temple columns were salvage or reproductive modules is unclear.65 Buddhist temples salvaged Christian gravemarkers, notably two examples recorded by the Portuguese Jesuit Manuel Dias the Younger (Chinese:  Yang Manuo 陽瑪諾, 1574–​1659): one from the site of the old Dongchan temple (Dongchan si 東禪寺) and the other from the Shuilu temple (Shuilu si 水陸寺), the latter a private residence by the

62  Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas, 43–​44, plate 32: E base 1, E base 2; on the icono­ graphic sources, see Purtle, “Pictured in Relief.”

63  Ecke and Demiéville, Twin Pagodas, 58–​65, plates 39–​41: E base 29–​E base 39; on the iconographic sources, see Purtle, “Pictured in Relief.” 64  On the date of the renovation, see Quanzhou fuzhi, 24:21b; “D11-​12,” Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, 462–​63; Lee, “Constructing Community,” 155–​56.

65  The Mazu Temple columns lack Brahmanic iconography, and display only floral orna­ ment. Consequently, Coomaraswamy and Ray believe the columns to be later Chinese (Ming dynasty?) reproductive modules. Coomaraswarmy, “Hindu Sculpture,” 7; Ray, “Indian Settlements,” 74. Lee finds no evidence to corroborate speculations about a possible later date for the columns, finding them to be originals of ca. 1281. Lee, “Constructing Community,” 155–​56.

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Figure 4.16. Manuel Dias (1574–​1659), Tang jingjiao bei song zhengquan (Orthodox interpretation of Nestorian stele paean) (China, 1644), pages 9b–​10a. Monochrome woodblock print, ink on paper; height: 22.5 cm. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

late Ming period (Figure  4.16).66 In 1910, the Spanish Dominican missionary, Father Serafin Moya (1872–​1948; Chinese:  Ren Daoyuan 任道遠), found a third example in a Buddhist temple the name of which he did not record.67 Strikingly, a Brahmanic architectural module representing the goddess Kali came to be wor­ shipped as the female Buddhist deity Guanyin 觀音 (Figure 4.17) in a tiny shrine in Chidian village 池店村, in the Quanzhou hinterland.68

66  Yang, Tang jingjiao bei song zheng quan, 9b–​10a; Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi, Jianzhi, 17b–​ 18a; Nichols, “History,” 104. 67  Moule, Christians in China, 80; Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, 366–​67. 68  Guy, “Quanzhou,” 158–​78; Lee, “Constructing Community,” 156.

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Figure 4.17. Brahmanic architectonic module depicting Kali, now worshipped as Guanyin, Quanzhou, thirteenth to fourteenth centuries. Carved stone with polychromy, 48 cm × 65 cm. Location: Xingji shrine, Chidian village, Chidian township, Jinjiang county, Fujian. Photo © Jennifer Purtle, 2019.

Saving Grace: Fabricating Tolerance from the Modularity of Difference Standardization of local stone-​working practices in Quanzhou and Sino-​Mongol governmental strategies of categorizing and managing alterity in the forms of race/​origin and religion underpinned the four processes of salvaging visual and material artifacts of meaning between religions in Quanzhou explored above. Under Song rule, aggregating labels, such as the terms “foreign” (fan 蕃) and “out­ sider” (wai 外), consolidated all resident aliens and their religions. Then, under Mongol rule, the classification of all non-​Chinese and non-​Mongols as one cat­ egory of “assorted people” (semu ren) artificially constructed a unified “race” of ethnically and culturally distinct resident aliens, originally natives of different states, speakers of diverse languages, and believers in various religions.69 Beyond “race” thus defined, governmental administration of all foreign religions by a 69  See, for example, notes 14–​15.

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single official, the Supervisor of Manicheanism, Eastern Syriac Christianity, Et Cetera [i.e., other foreign religions] for All Circuits of Jiangnan (Guanling jiangnan zhulu Mingjiao Qinjiao deng 管領江南諸路明教秦教等), effectively classified non-​ Chinese resident aliens resident in Jiangnan 江南 (“[China] South of the [Yangtze] River”) by religion, thus imposing administrative and cultural solidarity on non-​ Chinese religions and their practitioners.70 Parallel to the modularity of architectonic forms and components, and coin­ cident with the development of ‘Phags-​pa script, a script able to transliterate the languages of the Mongol empire into a uniform alphabet, these Sino-​Mongol methods of managing alterity equated, and thus made interchangeable, incom­ mensurable “races” and religions.71 Architectonic, linguistic, racial, and religious standardization facilitated the substitution of one race/​religion/​language/​script/​ form/​module for another. In the case of architectonic modules, standardiza­ tion of size and type of cut stone defined the physical parameters of recycling between religions, while linguistic and cultural slippage served as catalysts to such practices. For in Quanzhou, where the term fo (“Buddha”) also represented Mani, a Brahmanic deity, and possibly Christian holy figures with halos,72 and where the term sheng 聖 (“saint” or “holy”) described the Prophet Muḥammad, Christian saints, and Buddhist holy figures, slippage in verbal language likely gave way to slippage in visual language, enabling the recycling of imagery, iconography, cladding, and structural components between religions and cultures. Despite policies of religious tolerance as well as racial and political administra­ tive practices that sought to consolidate and promote non-​Chinese, non-​Mongolian expatriates, ethnic tensions nonetheless mounted in Quanzhou. Khubilai Khan (r. 1260–​1294) and his extended family supported foreign religious institutions dir­ ectly (including as patrons of the Quanzhou Franciscan hermitage and the Śiva temple) and indirectly (promoting Islam through the recruitment of Muslims into the Quanzhou civil service). Local expatriates, however, did not always emulate the religious tolerance practiced by influential Mongols.73 Circa 1342–​53, Franciscan priests active in Quanzhou installed bells “in the middle of the Muslim quarter” (in medio sarracenorum), violating Islamic prohibitions on the use of bells and thus sullying the sonic landscape of the quarter previously defined by the call to 70  Wu and Wu, Quanzhou zongjiao shike, 395–​403; From Palmyra, 264–​65; Purtle, “Production,” 627–​29. 71  On ‘Phags-​pa script, see Yuan shi, 202:4518; Coblin, Handbook, 1–​22. 72  See notes 10, 12.

73  Andreas, “Epistola,” 375; Purtle, “Production,” 637–​38; Guy, “Lost Temples,” 299; see also notes 19, 20. Texts indicate imperial patronage of the hermitage and Śiva temple, but not the identities of their patrons.

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prayer.74 Then, roughly a decade later, a dispute between Brahmanists and Muslims erupted over the question of whether a prime site would be used for a new temple or a mosque, igniting the Ispah insurrection (Yisibaxi bingluan 亦思巴奚兵亂, 1362–​1366). This failed effort of expatriate Persians to establish an independent state nonetheless ended Mongol rule in the region, precipitating the destruction of foreign temples and city walls alike.75 Ultimately, the synergies of tolerance and modularity—​the substitution, within a category, of specific objects or qualities for each other—​permitted an image of religious and ethnic tolerance to be built from the ruins of their conflict. Local expatriate cultures had, for centuries, been forced to negotiate the production of meaning with materials and media available locally; such adaptation had led to the non-​exclusive use of motifs and modules by disparate religions which shared a local pictorial lexicon, materials, and artisanal techniques and thus communicated content fluidly across a spectrum of indigenous and expatriate beliefs. Thus, when the Ispah rebellion ravaged the city, with religious and ethnic conflict ruining foreign temples, salvage and reinstallation of their disassembled components sustained established local habits of the reuse of imagery, repurposing of icon­ ography, and the making of reproductive modules. Just as their patrons had lived among people unlike themselves, foreign deities found themselves rehomed in religious institutions other than those for which they had first been produced and where, resident in new bricolages of recycled components, their salvific power presumably remained intact.

74  Malfatto, Le digressioni, 9; Iohannes, “Relatio,” 536; Purtle, “Production,” 636–​37. The hadith, words and actions attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad, state prohibitions against bells, e.g., “Hanging Bells,” Sunan Abu Dawud, vol. 3, 196. Elsewhere, the text notes that among the reasons why the call to prayer (Adhan) is vocalized is because Jews used the horn and Christians bells to call their believers to worship: Sunan Abu Dawud, vol. 1, 107–​8. 75  Zhu, Fujian shigao, vol. 1, 371–​84; Zhuang, “Yuanmo waizu panluan”; Pearson et  al., “Quanzhou Archaeology,” 29.

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Bibliography

Abu Bakr (ca.573–​634). The Sealed Nectar: Ar-​raheequl makhtum, Biography of the Noble Prophet Sallá Allāh ʻalayhi wa-​sallam. Translated by Safiur-​Rahman Al-​ Mubarakpuri. Riyadh: Darussalam, 2011. Abu-​Lughod, Janet. Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–​1350. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Abu Said (fl. ca. 915). Relation des voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l’Inde et à la Chine dans le IXe siècle de l’ère chrétienne, 2 vols. Translated by Joseph Toussaint Reinaud. Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1845. Andreas de Perusia (d. 1332). “Epistola.” In Sinica Franciscana, 2 vols. Compiled and edited by Anastasius van den Wyngaert. Ad Clara Aqua:  Collegium S. Bonaventura, 1929–​36, vol. 1, 373–​77. Asher, Frederick. “India Abroad: Evidence for Ancient Indian Maritime Activity.” In The Indian Ocean Trade in Antiquity: Political, Cultural and Economic Impacts, edited by Matthew Adam Cobb, 157–​68. New York: Routledge, 2018. BaMin tongzhi 八閩通志 (Gazetteer of the Eight Min [i.e., Fujian]). Compiled by Huang Zhongzhao 黃仲昭 (1435–​1508). Reprint of Hongzhi era (1488–​1505) edition. Beijing: Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–​19. Cai Xiang 蔡襄 (1012–​1067). “Record [of] the Stone Bridge [at] the Wan’an [Endless Peace] Ford” (Wan’andu shiqiao ji 萬安渡石橋記). In Puyang jushi Caigong wenji 莆陽居士蔡公文集 (Literary Anthology of Master Cai [i.e., Xiang], Scholar of Puyang). Reprint of Song dynasty (960–​1127) edition. Beijing: Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–​19. Chaffee, John. Branches of Heaven: A History of the Imperial Clan of Sung China. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 1999. Clark, Hugh R. Community, Trade, and Networks: Southern Fujian Province from the Third to the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Coblin, W. South. A Handbook of ‘Phags-​pa Chinese. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007. Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. “Hindu Sculpture at Zayton,” Ostasiatsche Zeitschrift 9 (1933): 5–​11. Ecke, Gustav, and Paul Demiéville. The Twin Pagodas of Zayton: A Study of Later Buddhist Sculpture in China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935. Filliozat, Pierre-​Sylvain, and Vasundhara Filliozat. Hampi-​Vijayanagar: The Temple of Viṭhala. New Delhi: Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Scientific Research, 1988. From Palmyra to Zayton: Epigraphy and Iconography. Edited by Iain Gardner, Samuel Lieu, and Ken Parry. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Guy, John. “The Lost Temples of Nagapattinam and Quanzhou:  A Study in Sino-​ Indian Relations.” Silk Road Archaeology 3 (1993/​4): 291–​310.

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Guy, John. “Quanzhou: Cosmopolitan City of Faiths.” In The World of Khubilai Khan, edited by James C. Y. Watt, 158–​78. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010. Haw, Stephen G. “The Semu ren in the Yuan Empire: Who Were They?” Ming Qing yanjiu 18 (2014): 39–​63. Iohannes de Marignolli (fl. 1338–​53). “Relatio. Fr. Iohannes.” In Sinica Franciscana, 2 vols. Compiled and edited by Anastasius van den Wyngaert. Ad Clara Aqua: Collegium S. Bonaventura, 1929–​36, vol. 1, 524–​60. Kuiben duixiang siyan zazi 魁本対相四言雑字 (Principal edition of the facing illustrations, four-​words[-​in-​a-​group] assorted characters [primer]). Reprint of 1371 Jinling Wang shi Qingyou shutang new printing. Tokyo: Yoneyamadō, 1920. Lee, Risha. “Constructing Community: Tamil Merchant Temples in India and China, 850–​1281.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 2012. Li Donghua 李東華. Quanzhou yu woguo zhonggde haishang jiaotong 泉州與我國中古的海上交通:  九世紀末——​十五世紀初 (Quanzhou and my country’s medieval maritime transport, late ninth to early thirteenth cen­ turies). Taipei: Taibei xuesheng shuju, 1986. Li, Tang. “Sorkaktani Beki:  A Prominent Nestorian Woman at the Mongol Court.” In Jingjiao: The Church of the East in China and Central Asia, edited by Roman Malek and Peter Hofrichter, 349–​55. Sankt Augustin:  Steyler Verlagsbuchhandlung, 2006. Li Zhongming Yingzao fashi 李明仲營造法式 (Li Zhongming’s [i.e., Lie Jie’s Treatise on] State Building Methods, reconstruction of the lost 1103 edition from a Song dynasty Shaoxing era [1131–​62] manuscript edition, printed in the format of Song dynasty Chongning era [1102–​6] printed books). Li Jie 李誡 (1065–​1110), reconstructed and edited by Tao Xiang 陶湘 (1871–​1940), Zhu Qiqian 朱啓鈐 (1872–​1964). Zijiang, Guizhou: Buxu lou, 1925. Liu Kezhuang 劉克莊 (1187–​1269). Houcun daquanji 后村先生大全集 (Master Houcun’s [i.e., Liu Kezhuang’s] Major [and] Complete Works). Reprint of Sibu congkan ed. Beijing: Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–​19. Lou Yao 樓鑰 (1137–​1213). Gongkui ji 攻媿集 ([Master] Gongkui’s [i.e., Lou Yao’s] Collected Works). Reprint of Song dynasty (960–​1279) ed. Beijing:  Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–​19. Malfatto, Irene. Le digressioni sull’Oriente nel Chronicon Bohemorum di Giovanni de’ Marignolli. Florence: SISMEL e-​codicibus, 2013. McLuhan, Marshall. Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967. Min shu 閩書 (Gazetteer of Min [Fujian]). Compiled by He Qiaoyuan 何喬遠 (1558–​1632). Reprint of Chongzhen era (1627–​44) edition. Beijing:  Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–​19.

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Moule, Arthur C. Christians in China before the Year 1550. London:  Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1930. Nichols, Brian J.  “History, Material Culture and Auspicious Events at the Purple Cloud:  Buddhist Monasticism at Quanzhou Kaiyuan.” PhD diss., Rice University, 2011. Nicolini-​Zani, Matteo. “The Tang Christian Pillar from Luoyang and its Jingjiao Inscription: A Preliminary Study.” Monumenta Serica 57 (2009): 99–​140. Olschki, Leonardo. Marco Polo’s Asia:  An Introduction to His “Description of the World” Called “Il Milione.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960. Pearson, Richard, Min Li, and Guo Li. “Quanzhou Archaeology:  A Brief Review.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6 (2002): 23–​59. Peregrinus de Castello (d. 1323). “Epistola.” In Sinica Franciscana, 2 vols. Compiled and edited by Anastasius van den Wyngaert. Ad Clara Aqua:  Collegium S. Bonaventura, 1929–​36, vol. 1, 365–​68. Polo, Marco. The Travels. Translated and with an introduction by Ronald Latham. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958. Purtle, Jennifer. “Double Take:  Chinese Optics and their Media in Postglobal Perspective.” Ars Orientalis 48 (2018): 71–​117. ——​​. “The Far Side:  Expatriate Medieval Art and Its Languages in Sino-​Mongol China.” Medieval Encounters 17 (2011): 167–​97. ——​​. “Pictured in Relief: Iconography and Iconology in the ‘Global Middle Ages,’ ca. 1186–​ca. 1238.” Forthcoming in Iconography Beyond the Crossroads: Image, Meaning, and Method in Medieval Art, edited by Pamela A. Patton and Catherine A. Fernandez. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021. ——​​. “The Production of Painting, Place, and Identity in Song-​Yuan Fujian.” PhD diss., Yale University, 2001. Quanzhou fuzhi 泉州府志 (Gazetteer of Quanzhou Prefecture). Compiled by Yang Siqian 陽思謙 (jinshi 1595). Reprint of Ming dynasty, Wanli era (1572–​1620) edition. Beijing: Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–​19. Quanzhou gu jianzhu 泉州古建筑 (Ancient Architecture in Quanzhou). Edited by Quanzhou lishi wenhua zhongxin. Tianjin: Tianjin xueshu chubanshe, 1991. Quanzhou Yisilanjiao shike 泉州伊斯蘭石刻. Edited by Chen Dasheng 陈达生. Fuzhou: Fujian renmin meishu chubanshe, 1984. Quanzhou Kaiyuan si zhi 泉州開元寺志. (Gazetteer of the Kaiyuan Temple of Quanzhou). Compiled by Yuanxian 元賢 (1578–​1657). Reprint of a 1927 reprint of Ming dynasty edition with a preface dated 1643. Taipei: Mingwen shuju, 1980. Ray, Har Prasad. “Indian Settlements in Medieval China:  A Preliminary Study.” Indian Journal of Asian Studies 1 (1989): 68–​82. Schomerus, Hilko Wiardo. Śivaitische Heiligenlegenden:  Periyapurāṇa und Tiruvātavūrar-​purāṇa. Jena: Diederichs, 1925.

Salvaging Meaning

Schottenhammer, Angela. The Emporium of the World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000–​ 1400. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Sen, Tansen. Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade:  The Realignment of Sino-​Indian Relations, 600–​1400. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003. ——​​. “The Yuan Khanate and India:  Cross-​Cultural Diplomacy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,” Asia Major 19 (2006): 299–​326. So, Billy. Prosperity, Region, and Institutions in Maritime China: The South Fukien Pattern, 946–​1368. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000. Steinhardt, Nancy Shatzman. China’s Early Mosques. Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 2015. Sunan Abu Dawud: The Third Correct Tradition of the Prophetic, 5 vols. Translated by Mohammad Mahdi al-​Sharif. Beirut: Dar al-​Kotob al-​Ilmiyah, 2008. Tao Zongyi 陶宗儀 (fl. 1360–​8). Shushi huiyao 書史會要 (Outline History of Calligraphy). Reprint 1929 Tao shi yi yuan reprint of Ming dynasty, Hongwu era (1368–​98) edition. Beijing: Zhongguo shudian, 1995. Wang, Chen-​shan. “Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery: Architecture, Iconography, and Social Contexts.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2008. Wang, Li 王力. “ ‘Baoqie yinjing ta’ yu WuYue dui Ri wenhua jiaoliu” ‘宝箧印经塔’与吴越国对日文化交流 (Dhāraṇī sūtra-​style pagodas and cultural exchanges between the WuYue Kingdom and Japan). Zhejiang daxue xuebao 浙江大学学报 (Zhejiang University Journal) 32 (September 2002): 33–​7. Wu, Tianyue 吴天跃. “Riben chutude WuYueguo Qian Chu zaotong Ayuwangta ji xiangguan wenti yanjiu” 日本出土的吴越国钱俶造铜阿育王塔及相关问题研究 (Research on a bronze Ashoka stupa cast by Qian Chu of WuYue excavated in Japan and related questions). Yishu sheji yanjiu艺术设计研究 (Art and Design Research) 2 (Summer 2017): 98–​105. Wu, Wenliang 吴文良. “Zailun Quanzhou Qingjing si de shijian shiqi he jianzhu xingshi” 再论泉州清净寺的始建时期和建筑形式 (Further discussion of the founding period and architectural form of the Quanzhou Mosque). In Quanzhou Yisilanjiao yanjiu lunwen xuan 泉州伊斯兰教研究论文选 (Selected papers on research into Islam in Quanzhou). Edited by Quanzhou haijiaoshi bowuguan, 83–​101. Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1983. Wu Wenliang 吴文良. Quanzhou zongjiao shike 泉州宗敎石刻 (Religious Stone Carvings from Quanzhou). Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1957. Wu Wenliang 吴文良 and Wu Youxiong 吴幼雄. Quanzhou zongjiao shike, zengding ben 泉州宗敎石刻增訂本 (Religious Stone Carvings from Quanzhou, revised and expanded edition). Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 2005. Xianxi zhi 仙溪志 (Gazetteer of Xianxi county). Compiled by Zhao Yumi 趙與泌 (fl. ca. 1254). Reprint of 1257 edition. Beijing: Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–​19.

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Xianyou xian zhi 僊遊縣志 (Gazetteer of Xianyou county). Compiled by Wang Chun 王椿 (act. 18th cent.). Reprint of 1873 reprint of Qianlong era (1736–​96) edition. Beijing: Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–​19. Xinbian duixiang siyan 新編對相四言 (New edition of the facing illustrations, four-​ words[-​in-​a-​group primer]). [China]: publisher unknown, 1436?. Yan Aibin 闫爱宾, “Reintegration, Shifts in Meaning, and Transformation:  Three Junctures in the Morphological Changes of Casket Seal Stupa-​Tower” (整合·转义·变型——​​中国宝箧印塔形制流变的三个节点), paper presented at the conference “Site and Sight:  Chinese Pagoda CAMLab International Conference.” Harvard University, November 16, 2019. Yang Manuo 陽瑪諾 [Manuel Dias the Younger] (1574–​1659). Tang jingjiao bei song zheng quan 唐景教碑頌正詮 (Orthodox commentary on the “Ode to the Tang dynasty Nestorian stele”). Wulin [Suzhou]: Tianzhu tang, 1644. Yuan shi 元史 (History [of] the Yuan [Dynasty]). Compiled by Song Lian 宋濂 (1310–​81) et al. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1976. Zhao, Rugua 趙汝适 (1170–​1231). Zhufan zhi 諸蕃志 (A record of all [that is] foreign). Reprint of Qingxue jintao edition. Beijing:  Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–​19. Zhongguo wenwu ditu ji: Fujian fen ce 中国文物地图集: 福建分册 (Atlas of China’s Cultural Relics: Fujian), 2 vols. Compiled by Guojia wenwu ju. Fuzhou: Fujian sheng ditu chubanshe, 2007. Zhu Weigan 朱维幹. Fujian shigao 福建史稿 (History of Fujian), 2  vols. Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 1985–​1986. Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–​1200). Hui’an xiansheng Zhu Wengong wenji 晦庵先生朱文公文集 (Literary Anthology of Master Hui’an, [aka] Literary Master Zhu [Xi]). Reprint of Sibu congkan, Ming dynasty, Jiajing–​era (1507–​ 67) edition. Beijing: Beijing Erudition Digital Research Center, 2001–​19. Zhuang Weiji 庄为玑. “Yuanmo waizu panluan yu Quanzhougang de shuailuo” 元末外族叛乱与泉州港的衰落 (Rebellion of foreign ethnic groups at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the decline of the Quanzhou port). Quanzhou Wenshi 泉州文史 (Quanzhou literary history) 4 (December 1980): 19–​26. Zhuang Weiji 庄为玑and Chen Dasheng 陈达生. “Quanzhou Qingzhen si shiji xinkao” 泉州清真寺史迹新考 (A new examination of the historical site of Quanzhou’s mosque). In Quanzhou Yisilanjiao yanjiu lunwen xuan 泉州伊 斯兰教研究论文选 (Selected papers on research into Islam in Quanzhou). Edited by Quanzhou haijioashi bowuguan, 102–​14. Fuzhou:  Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1983.

Salvaging Meaning

Jennifer Purtle ([email protected]; PhD, Yale) is Associate Professor of Chinese and East Asian Art History in the Department of Art History and the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. Her major publications include:  Peripheral Vision:  Fujian Painting in Chinese Empires, 909–​1646 (forth­ coming); Reading Revolution: Art and Literacy during China’s Cultural Revolution (2016); and essays in various journals; she served as Principal Investigator of the Getty Foundation Connecting Art Histories Project “Global and Postglobal Perspectives on Medieval Art and Art History” (2014–​17). She is completing a book-​length manuscript, “Forms of Cosmopolitanism in the Sino-​Mongol City.”

Abstract This essay argues that expatriate residents of medieval Quanzhou recycled objects to create meaning across cultures. By tracing the mobility of imagery, iconography, and decorative idioms across belief structures, this essay demonstrates how the salvaging of artifacts between religions literally built a local visual and religious culture from available parts. Keywords Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, cross-cultural, Eastern Syriac, Fujian, intercultural, Islam, maritime silk road, Middle Ages, postglobal, Quanzhou, recycling, Roman rite

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RECONTEXTUALIZING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE ON THE PRUSSIAN–​LITHUANIAN FRONTIER, CA. 1380–​1410 PATRICK MEEHAN Gedutte von Wargin offers to serve as a guide along these routes in the wil­ derness toward Merken; he knows that area well.1

THIS ADVERTISEMENT OF Gedutte’s expertise introduces one entry in a series of texts called Wegeberichte:  brief navigational “route reports” outlining fron­ tier raiding itineraries. Dated between 1384 and 1402, the Wegeberichte were commissioned and compiled by the Teutonic Order, a German crusading institu­ tion that exercised lordship over much of the Baltic during the later Middle Ages. The reports regularly begin by promising the reliability of one or more guides (leitsleute) before describing the waypoints and landscapes of the route (or routes) for which they claim responsibility.2 The entry above, for example, goes on to extend Gedutte’s realm of familiarity, ultimately encompassing several thousand square miles in the southeastern corner of modern-​day Lithuania—​ part of a landscape that Teutonic records referred to as “the wilderness” (die wildnis). Tracing a wide arc from northwestern Belarus to the Baltic Sea, the wildnis largely comprised vast wetlands and dense forests that impeded the Order’s efforts to incorporate Lithuania and its predominantly pagan popula­ tion into its Baltic territories. But where the Order feared to tread, the leitsleute ranged freely.

1  Hirsch, “Die littauischen Wegeberichte,” 689 (W. 56). In this article, I have cited Hirsch’s edition of the Wegeberichte when referencing content specific to one or more of the entries it comprises (see below for discussion of the texts’ organization). I have cited manuscript folios in the case of significant divergence from Hirsch’s edition, or when specific codicological and paleographic features are relevant. All translations are my own.

2  Personal names and place names in the Baltic have been subject to intense politicization. I have chosen here to remain as close to the original German texts as possible as a matter of consistency and convenience. On the first mention of major places, I have included modern names in parentheses.

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Historians have tended to cast the conflict-​laden relations between the Teutonic Order and indigenous Lithuanians as a dramatic contest between two great powers, culminating in the Order’s decisive defeat by the united forces of Lithuania and Poland in 1410.3 Many prewar German narratives bemoaned the unravelling of the Order’s military strength, economic power, and moral authority after its Lithuanian crusades, while Lithuanian scholars identified recurring wars with the Order as the crucible of their statehood and national self-​consciousness.4 But despite contemporary conflicts, the contours of political loyalty and religious identity were blurred in the ongoing exchange of supplies and services along the Prussian–​Lithuanian frontier. Lithuanian nobles commonly reached across the border to form mutually beneficial diplomatic relationships with Teutonic officials, and treaties brokered safe passage to merchants, even if trade with a pagan enemy carried a tinge of illicitness.5 Of the commodities circulating through the frontier, expertise in navigating the wilderness was particularly valuable to the Order. This article argues that the Wegeberichte offer a window into the recontextualization and repurposing of local knowledge as a tool of Teutonic lordship, illustrating a late medieval example of two entwined processes: the generative collaboration of indigenous people with a colonial polity, and that polity’s efforts to gain control over, and ultimately divest itself of, reliance upon a group it came to fear as dan­ gerously destabilizing. Broadly speaking, the Wegeberichte are a product of recycling. More precisely, the reuse of knowledge seen here shares qualities ascribed to two paradigms outlined by archaeologist Michael Schiffer:  lateral cycling (by which an object changes its user while retaining its form and function) and secondary use (by which an object assumes a new use without extensive modification in form).6 Reuse processes arise from the general motive of lengthening the lifespan of an 3  A classic (and theatrical) example is Tumler, Der Deutsche Orden. A collection of sem­ inal studies, translated into English, has recently been edited by Polish scholars: Czaja and Radzimiński, The Teutonic Order. Objective overviews of the Order’s history in German include Boockmann, Der Deutsche Orden; and Militzer, Die Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens.

4  For an illuminating survey of politically charged German Ostforschung, see Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards. On the historiography of medieval Lithuanian–​Prussian relations specifically, see companion pieces by Ekdahl, “Die preußisch-​litauischen Beziehungen”; and Nikžentaitis, “Litauisch-​preußische Beziehungen.” On the role of medievalism in the forma­ tion of modern Lithuanian national identity, see Davoliūtė, Soviet Lithuania, especially 27–​30.

5  For illustrative examples of elite diplomatic ties, see Petrauskas, “Frieden im Zeitalter”; on the adaptivity of Lithuanian diplomatic procedure, see Rowell, “A Pagan’s Word.” Rasa Mažeika’s study of frontier trade relations reveals a wide range of attitudes and exchanged commodities: “Cabbages and Knights.” 6  Schiffer, Formation Processes, 29–​35.

Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge

object.7 Preservation comes with a caveat, however: by distancing an artifact from the context of its creation, intervening alterations in ownership, form, and function may obscure their original character. The reuse of abstract entities like knowledge is all the more problematic, but the Wegeberichte—​as both constructed texts and physical objects—​carry traces of the collaborative exchanges underlying their creation and transmission. Still, such cooperative means belie the violent ends of these logistically informed raiding itineraries. The reports depict the redistribu­ tion of people as prisoners, refugees, or converts to sustain Western settlement; the plundering of goods from local villages to supply crusaders; and the remaking of landscapes to facilitate the passage of armies over decades of periodic conflict.8 In its reuse by the Order, local knowledge allowed the violent reconfiguration of frontier demography, economy, and geography.9 Interactions between the Teutonic Order and the leitsleute nevertheless reveal something more compelling than a binary of Western aggressors and indigenous victims. Anthropologist Nicholas Thomas has discredited such a paradigm—​in which indigenous and Western societies stand as stably distinctive, inherently opposed domains—​for oversimplifying contact between cultures. Drawing on his study of exchanges between Westerners and Pacific islanders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Thomas figures colonial encounters as ongoing historical dialectics of mutual exchange and dependency, or “entanglement.”10 Framing the appropriation of artifacts, practices, and ideas as the prerogative of each entangled group entails a dynamic symmetry, without disregarding imbalances of power. Creative “recontextualization,” through which part or all of an artifact’s original identity is superseded by new uses and meanings, attends processes of exchange under amicable and violent conditions alike.11 Whether in the spirit of appreciation 7  Historical records come into being often only through “conservation processes,” which Schiffer categorizes as a subset of secondary use.

8  As early as the 1880s, local Prussian historian Alfred Thomas observed that the frontier wildnis was not unpopulated, but depopulated through frontier violence. Litauen nach den Wegeberichten, 85–​89. 9  “Local knowledge” as an interpretive concept is often attributed to Clifford Geertz, who frames it as the confrontation of accepted or expected norms, Local Knowledge, esp. 167–​234 passim. I use it here to encompass knowledge generated and possessed outside the purview of the state. 10  Thomas, Entangled Objects, 1–​6. Archaeologist Ian Hodder has more recently mobilized the concept as a framework for the dependency between “the social world of humans and the material world of things”: Entangled, esp. 88–​112, here 89.

11  “Creative recontextualization and indeed reauthorship may thus follow from taking, from purchase or theft.” Thomas, Entangled Objects, 5. Of course, even if such re-​authorship signals the character of the exchange, subsequent owners or audiences engage in further reiterative processes of interpretation.

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or collaboration, the Western appropriation of indigenous artifacts is therefore inherently politicized. Thomas relates the example of Fiji’s British governor in the late nineteenth century, who successfully facilitated cooperation among the island’s chiefs and selectively incorporated their rituals into state ceremonies. Repurposed as elements in a new paradigm of colonial sovereignty, Fijian customs retained sig­ nificance, but assumed new meanings that ironically denied the authority of their native context.12 The fluidity of recontextualization readily lends itself to the creative possibilities of reuse, with the corollary that, once exchanged, objects—​or practices or ideas—​“are not what they were made to be, but what they have become.”13 Products of recontextualization themselves, texts like the Wegeberichte afford valuable insights into the exchanges between a Western polity and indigenous agents, revealing how ostensibly distinct religious identities, political alignments, and ethnic backgrounds could coalesce and just as soon diverge. All participants, moreover, were aware of this fluidity—​its possibilities and its limitations.

Lithuania and the Wegeberichte When the Teutonic Order arrived in Prussia, it encountered a chaotic state of affairs. Although Christian (d. 1245), the Cistercian bishop of Prussia, had spent over two decades since his appointment to the new see, in 1212, establishing a strong eccle­ siastical presence and brokering alliances with local pagan elites, his capture by native Prussians in 1233 effectively undid his diplomatic efforts. Already several years into a methodical campaign of conquest against the Prussians in cooperation with the Polish duke Konrad of Mazovia (r. 1199–​1247), the Order capitalized on Christian’s absence between 1233 and 1239 to expand its territory in Prussia, to which it laid claim through a series of papal and imperial privileges. Despite several uprisings over the next fifty years by Prussia’s native people against the newcomers, the Order established a stable presence in the region, where it oversaw extensive settlement, the contentiously forceful conversion of indigenous people, and the administration of a diverse population and a burgeoning economy. After a temporary relocation to Venice following Acre’s fall to Muslim armies in 1291, Teutonic headquarters moved permanently to the castle of Marienburg (now Malbork) in 1309. From here, it operated an efficient and sophisticated bur­ eaucracy for over 150 years.14 12  Thomas, Entangled Objects, 170–​74. 13  Thomas, Entangled Objects, 4.

14  On the Order’s thirteenth-​century crusades and colonization in Prussia, see Boockmann, Der Deutsche Orden, 66–​114.

Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge

Following the last major Prussian rebellion, in the early 1280s, the Order shifted its attention toward its powerful Lithuanian neighbours.15 The relatively new political coherence of Lithuania’s regional tribes was itself largely the result of a coordinated response, under the leadership of the Lithuanian ruler Mindaugas (r. 1236–​1263), to the threat of Teutonic invasions in the mid-​thirteenth century. But by 1350, Lithuania’s confederation of regional nobility stretched from the Black Sea to the Baltic, while its cadre of diplomats and chancery scribes courted foreign powers in all directions and in multiple languages. Armed with far-​reaching administrators and skilled cavalrymen, the Lithuanians were a powerful adversary.16 Projecting a self-​image as the Christian bulwark against this great pagan threat, the Order accessed the ideological and military power of the crusading movement.17 For over a century, it relied on a continuous flow of Western nobles who took on exorbitant expenses for the opportunity to win honour in the Order’s crusades, the so-​called Reisen. Organized by the Order’s Grand Marshal in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad), these expeditions into Lithuania garnered such cultural pres­ tige as to draw European elites to far-​flung Baltic forests, from kings and dukes to Chaucer’s adventurous Knight.18 The Reisen continued even after 1386, when the dynastic union between the Lithuanian Grand Duke Jagiełło (r. 1377–​1434) and the young Polish monarch Jadwiga (r. 1384–​1399) marked Lithuania’s offi­ cial conversion to Roman Christianity, bringing the moral legitimacy of the Reisen under intense international scrutiny.19 Over the next forty years, the manoeuvres of Jagiełło and his cousin Vytautas (whose frustrated dynastic pretentions were eventually outweighed by the practicality of an alliance with his cousin) exemplify the ruling Lithuanian elite’s exceptional success in adapting exogenous political structures, ideas, and cultures in order to assert their sovereignty.20 It is out of this 15  For an overview of thirteenth-​century Lithuanian political history, see Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 49–​81.

16  On the adaption of Western military technology to Lithuanian tactics, see Baronas, “Kontext der litauischen Kriegskunst.” 17  Nora Berend has written of medieval Hungary’s similar profile on a Central European religious “frontier” between 1000 and 1300: At the Gate, 23–​41.

18  See Paravicini, Preußenreisen, 1:118–​19, 143–​58; and on pilgrims’ strategies for affording the ventures, Preußenreisen, 2:163–​82. 19  The grand dukes leveraged their potential for conversion as a diplomatic tool in dealings with both Western and Eastern Christians: see Mažeika, “Bargaining for Baptism”; Rowell, Lithuania Ascending, 189–​228.

20  The Lithuanian process of state-​building resembles Pekka Hämäläinen’s indigenously oriented paradigm of colonial and imperial sovereignty in his study of the Comanche people of the American southwest. The Lithuanians offer a compelling comparative case to Hämäläinen’s subjects: unlike the Comanche, the Lithuanians adapted foreign administrative structures and ultimately outlasted one Western rival by allying with another: Comanche Empire, 1–​17.

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ambiguous context of exchange, adaptation, and hostility that the Wegeberichte emerged. Scholarly analysis of these texts has largely addressed two principle prerogatives. On the one hand, they have furnished evidence on the planning and execution of the Reisen.21 On the other, local nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century historians of East Prussia approached the texts as navigational aids whose ono­ mastic and topographic details could furnish evidence for the reconstruction of otherwise irrecoverable landscapes.22 Representing this marriage of historical and geographical methods, the historian Gertrud Mortensen and her husband, the geographer Hans Mortensen, shared an interest in the wildnis that sustained years of collaboration during the 1920s and 1930s. Their research culminated in a sweeping (and controversially unfinished) study of settlement and migra­ tion patterns from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries in the Prussian–​ Lithuanian wildnis, which they ultimately understood as a space with concrete political and topographic features shaped through settlement.23 In recent years, Stefan Striegler has operationalized a framework of “mental mapping,” hinting that the Wegeberichte may have encoded the spatial perceptions of illiterate Baltic leitsleute.24 All studies of the Wegeberichte are indebted to Theodor Hirsch (1806–​ 1881), whose edition of the texts as an appendix to Wigand von Marburg’s late fourteenth-​century chronicle first sparked the interest of local historians and made the texts available to them. Hirsch described the texts as “reports elabor­ ating, with varying degrees of comprehensiveness, the distances, waypoints, campsites, route characteristics, and notable difficulties, as well as the means to overcome them.”25 Despite their common vocabulary and texture of detail, how­ ever, precisely defining and schematizing the Wegeberichte as a genre is more 21  See, for example, Paravicini, Preußenreisen, 2:88–​95.

22  Representative studies include Müller, “Örtlichkeiten”; Lemke, “Wo die ‘Leitsleute’ führten”; and [Ahlemann], “Die litauischen Wegeberichte.”

23  Mortensen and Mortensen, Besiedlung, 1937. The Mortensens’ work was, at least in part, driven by the national socialist conviction that Germany had rights to land beyond the Memel river:  Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards, 128–​31, 248; but compare Jähnig, “Litauische Einwanderung,” who more sympathetically argues that the Mortensens were caught between their scholarly pursuits and the insistent demands of a Nazified publication sector. 24  Striegler, “Kognitive Karten.” The article stems from the author’s master’s thesis on the Wegeberichte, “Die littauischen Wegeberichte.”

25  Hirsch, “Die littauischen Wegeberichte,” 663. Scholars have generally agreed on Hirsch’s catch-​all definition. Cf. Jähnig, “Quellen,” 14 and Ivinskis, “Litauische Wegeberichte,” 352.

Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge

vexing than Hirsch initially conveyed.26 The manuscript (MS A186) from which Hirsch worked in the former Preußisches Staatsarchiv Königsberg, now existing as two companion manuscripts held in Berlin’s Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz (GStA PK), is an early sixteenth-​century compilation of sundry medi­ eval administrative texts—​a “Register of various miscellany and other items from the time of the Order” according to its early modern frontispiece.27 It was the work of many different late fourteenth-​ and early fifteenth-​century hands (eight are detectable in the first twenty-​seven folios alone) and features at least eleven different watermarks across its eighty-​one total folios. Hirsch divided the contents into three categories: regionally organized dispatches; miscellaneous fourteenth-​ century inventories, letters, and treaties; and the Wegeberichte themselves. With few exceptions, the Wegebericht genre is unique to this compilation.28 Most of the text entries, however, are not themselves unique, appearing in mul­ tiple versions across sixty-​three folios.29 Hirsch resolved minor discrepancies among duplicate or triplicate texts by collating corresponding copies into com­ posite entries, which he labelled Wege numbered 1–​100.30 Insofar as the indi­ vidual reports formed a compilation, each discrete Wegebericht constitutes a single “entry” essentially corresponding to one of Hirsch’s hundred composite Wege.31 Entries outline one or more “routes,” the multi-​day itineraries between 26  For an overview of the Wegeberichte as texts, see Päsler, Sachliteratur, 326–​39.

27  GStA PK, XX. HA, OF 1 and 1a. Henceforth OF 1-​1a. Cf. Päsler, Sachliteratur, 329.

28  Single Wegeberichte (in letter form) and documents with some similar content (but different forms) are scattered through other extant collections (e.g., GStA PK, XX. HA, OBA 438, 649, 1306, and 2973). 29  Not including blank folios. All but twenty-​two of Hirsch’s one hundred composite “Wege” exist as two or more copies. Entries also appear in at least six formatting schemes, from paragraphs to columns to lists, employing a variety of symbol and punctuation systems to visually distinguish constitutive segments.

30  Hirsch evidently missed an entry on fol. 295v (the folio was presumably added later), which I have incorporated into his organizational scheme as W. 101. This scheme was geo­ graphically oriented, beginning in the northwestern region of Samogitia, then moving south­ east toward modern-​day Belarus. It is not my prerogative here to critique Hirsch’s editorial praxis, which reflects the geographic interests of early scholars, but his organization of the Wegeberichte has invited some reproach and his footnotes have occasionally been revised or refuted. See, for example, Päsler’s disagreement with his hypothesis that all entries likely originated in the same epistolary form exemplified by W. 39 (OF 1 221v, OF 1a 275v) and W. 57 (OF 1a 250v, 275r; OBA 438). Päsler suggests, instead, that the so-​called abbreviated form was actually the norm, extracted into the lengthier format only on request: Sachliteratur, 329–​30. 31  The ontological alignment between the original compilations’ entries and Hirsch’s Wege (composites of matching entries) is not precise, but variation in the texts’ actual content is negligible.

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two terminuses.32 “Routes,” in turn, comprise a series of “segments” between waypoints, each generally corresponding to one day’s journey. While variations in orthography, script, and form offer insights into the technical process of textual transmission, this simplified vocabulary captures the basic structure of the texts and eases most discussion. These reports emerged out of the collaboration between Teutonic officials and indigenous leitsleute. Besides the threat of hostile armies, the wooded and watery landscape of the wildnis posed a considerable challenge to raiding armies. As scouts and guides, the leitsleute informed the planning of the Reisen, providing invalu­ able logistical insight for invading armies to move quickly, inconspicuously, and decisively. Directives “to clear” (rumen) or “to cross” (brucken) obstacles appear with regularity amounting almost to a form of punctuation.33 Clearance, on the one hand, simply meant the removal of forest underbrush. Only “minor” (eyn wenyng) clearance might be needed in one place, and “in several places” (an etzlichen enden) elsewhere.34 Crossing, on the other hand, referred to the more complicated passage through watery areas, if these could not be avoided altogether. Swampy ground could easily ensnare men, horses, and supply trains even in relatively open, oak-​dominated woodlands, the distinctively Baltic dameraus—​so frequently bog-​ like that dry (truge) exceptions warranted special mention.35 Waterways posed additional challenges. Reisen were planned to take advantage of seasonal rhythms of water levels and currents—​typically low and sluggish in summer and frozen solid in winter—​and if conditions were not right, they risked cancellation (to chivalric chagrin).36 Occasional references hint at the existence of bridges along the highways connecting Lithuania with neighbouring regions, but Wegeberichte routes intentionally bypassed them. Instead, the reports indicate the availability of timber as an index for the ease with which Teutonic armies could construct makeshift crossings away from conventional roads.37 Forging paths through 32  A route is rarely so straightforward. It may also indicate alternative routes, add a return route along a different path, or split off toward two or more destinations.

33  W. 78 and W.  90 furnish particularly detailed examples:  Paravicini, Preußenreisen, 2:89–​90. In contrast, “open” or “unobstructed” areas (gerume lant) allowing “easy passage” (gut weg) are comparatively rare. 34  For example, W. 5.

35  For example, W. 12. The damerau (from Polish dąbrowa) was of special interest to Hans Mortensen, who remarked with ironic dryness that he knew “Dameraus [sic] in East Prussia today that are soggy indeed”: “Bedeutung,” 136. 36  On weather and wayfaring, see Paravicini, Preußenreisen, 2:85–​87. 37  For example, W. 90.

Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge

pathless places was not just a deliberate strategy; it entailed the remaking of local topography.38 Beyond the practical application of facilitating mobility, changes in topography served as physical evidence of a more abstract reconfiguration of geography. Contemporary sources attest to a special affinity between the Baltic environment and its people. Peter von Dusburg (fl. 1326), the major chronicler of the Order’s first century in Prussia, explained Baltic religion as a false equation of the nat­ ural with the supernatural: lacking sufficient reason to conceptualize the Christian God, Baltic pagans chose wild animals and celestial bodies as their deities, and revered the land itself as their temple. Forbidden from ploughing its fields, fishing in its waters, or cutting down its forests, the Baltic’s indigenous inhabitants were thus mired, by Peter’s estimation, in a static culture of impoverishing non-​ development.39 Sacred groves, which occasionally appear as waypoints in the Wegeberichte, emblematized this intersection between pagan practices and wild spaces, evoking especially sinister associations in the Western imagination. Recounting his patron’s deeds on crusade in “Prusse,” for example, one French chronicler described “the so-​called holy woods of pine, where [the Lithuanians] burn the bodies of their dead, making sacrifice of them.”40 Besides their religious significance, however, sacred groves evidently served as landmarks. By repur­ posing these sacred spaces as navigational aids for invading armies, the leitsleute aided the Teutonic Order in its self-​assertion to be the rightful ruler of pagan lands and peoples.41 The Order’s more immediate goal in reconfiguring local topography, how­ ever, was the seizure of spoils. The Wegeberichte reveal that the wildnis was not a dead space only prowled by beasts and brigands, or sporadically inhabited by trappers and beekeepers; it was, in many places, settled and cultivated.42 Many routes name strings of villages or well-​settled areas as lucrative destinations, 38  On the environmental impact of the Order’s colonization of Prussia more broadly, see Pluskowski, Archaeology, 294–​336.

39  Peter von Dusburg, Chronicon terrae Prussiae, III.5. Peter’s assessment bears remark­ able resemblance to eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century colonial perceptions of indigenous Pacific religions: Thomas, Entangled Objects, 147–​51.

40  Jean Cabaret d’Orville, Chronique, 65. Teutonic chroniclers also considered living Christians, in addition to the pagan dead, viable candidates for immolation to foreign gods. Wigand von Marburg narrates one particularly graphic example of horseback immol­ ation: Cronica nova prutenica, chap. 147. 41  Sacred groves appear in W. 7, W. 23, and W. 51.

42  As early historians of settlement attested:  see note 8 above and Mortensen and Mortensen, Besiedlung, 22–​26.

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frequently indicating where there is “plenty to plunder” (czu heeren genuk).43 Frontier inhabitants were not only robbed of supplies by raiding armies; they were themselves captured as prisoners.44 Although the Wegeberichte are less direct than contemporary chronicles in conveying the regularity of prisoner-​taking, the targeting of populated areas is nonetheless apparent. One entry assures that “they [the leitsleute] have designated very good and secure paths … [and] have also found many people in the wilderness, and many houses.”45 Another relates that “at Karsov one finds a certain structure to which all the land flees,” a metonymy aligning land and people in a haunting image of destruction and displacement.46 As summaries of viable raiding routes and logistical advice pertinent to their success, the Wegeberichte illustrate the violent effects of repurposing native know­ ledge and orienting it toward the Order’s military objectives along its frontier. Local landscapes, populations, and economies were permanently reconfigured over the course of the Prussian–​Lithuanian conflict.47 The complicity of indi­ genous leitsleute in the devastation of areas with which they were intimately familiar raises questions about the motives underlying their entanglement with the Teutonic Order. Although they say little directly about the shadowy identities of the people responsible for their creation, the Wegeberichte afford clues that, taken together, tell a story of pragmatism, mobility, and the mercurial politics of assimilation.

The leitsleute Prosopographic analysis of the leitsleute named in the Wegeberichte is a first step toward investigating their involvement with the Teutonic Order.48 One-​hundred-​ and-​thirty-​three individual leitsleute appear across the OF 1-​1a compilation.49 In addition to personal names, scattered details like kin relations, status, or title also 43  W. 37 even outlines a list of specific homesteads.

44  A list of captives scrawled on the reverse of a copy of W. 100 (OF 1a, 293v) attests to the relationship between path-​making and captive-​taking: see Nikžentaitis, “Prisoners of War”; and Ekdahl, “Treatment of Prisoners.” 45  W. 57.

46  W. 25 (emphasis added).

47  Mortensen and Mortensen, Besiedlung, 32ff. 48  As Päsler has suggested: Sachliteratur, 335.

49  In collating the attestations of individuals into a prosopographic database, I have assumed a relatively limited number of leitsleute. On this premise, I tracked the certainty with which two or more attestations match, based on criteria including name, associates, places travelled, and context. Highly probable matches are counted as the same individual.

Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge

provide starting points for investigating identities, relationships, and networks. To begin, the leitsleute came from and were associated with places themselves, and the Wegeberichte are in fact quite informative in this regard. Of the 133 named leitsleute, twenty-​one have recognizably Germanic (Dietrich, Hans, Heinrich) or Slavic (Pavel) names, while the remaining 112 have distinctively Baltic names (Eykint, Eysütte, Zada). More than half are identified at least once with either a toponymic (e.g., “of [or from] Balga” [von der Balge]) or a place of provenance (e.g., “from the area of Balga” [us dem gebite czur Balge]).50 Almost 90 percent of the leitsleute with toponymics have Baltic names. Toponymics do not reliably align with origins, however. The prominence of Baltic names and, more broadly, the prized familiarity with frontier places suggests the leitsleute originated from or dwelt along the frontier. Plotting their given toponymics reveals locations almost exclusively within Teutonic Prussia, however, suggesting that the Order identified its leitsleute by the places they lived currently—​administrative finding aids rather than elements intrinsic to indigenous identities.51 Several are said to inhabit a particular area, such as the pair Wyssegaude and Lubenne, who “reside in the area around Brandenburg.”52 Ten leitsleute, moreover, are attested with multiple toponymics. A certain Briole appears three times, linked to three different settlements in close proximity.53 The places with which the leitsleute were associated thus fail to identify origins or even fixed residences, illustrating instead a considerable degree of mobility. This flu­ idity is, in fact, crucial to understanding the relations between the leitsleute and the Order. Toponymics were assigned (and reassigned) as a means of identifying and tracking the members of the itinerant group. 50  Ethnic or socio-​linguistic categorization based on personal names is thorny and poten­ tially misleading at best. Categories like “Prussian” and “Lithuanian” themselves entail problematic aggregations of indigenous identities, while Christian names imply neither background (a Baltic convert could take the name of a Western sponsor) nor religious affili­ ation (baptism could be for purely practical reasons, and conversion temporary). Reinhold Trautmann’s foundational Die altpreußischen Personennamen catalogs Baltic names from Teutonic sources, but categorizes them according to unsound principles (of OF 1-​1a, for example, he mentions only Prussians and Scalovians, not Lithuanians). Modern Lithuanian onomastic studies’ focus on post-​medieval sources, on the other hand, limits their rele­ vance: Ivoška, “Litauische Personennamen.” 51  Sixty-​four total toponymics net thirty-​five individual places, twenty-​eight of which can be geolocated. The only two places outside of Prussia are Garthen and Seymen in modern-​day Belarus and Lithuania, respectively. The Mortensens formulated a similar hypothesis in their brief discussion of the leitsleute. Besiedlung, 1937, 2:19–​22. 52  W. 78.

53  Namely, Pliwisken (W. 39), Insterburg (W. 42), and Colenen (W. 58). That this is the same person is clear from context.

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The rationale behind the Order’s attempts to fix the locations of the leitsleute in official record must be found in its heavy reliance on them, and not only as guides. Leitsleute were assimilated into the Order’s administrative structures in capacities spanning the social spectrum:  they appear in the Wegeberichte as diener (laymen employed by Teutonic officials to serve military, diplomatic, and courtly services), witinge (free-​status indigenous men responsible for a range of administrative and custodial duties in the Order’s convents), and tolke (high-​ status Baltic and Slavic translators acting as intermediaries in legal and diplomatic negotiations).54 Scouting activities themselves entailed a combination of naviga­ tion, reconnaissance, and espionage. In a letter to the Marshal, the Commander of Rhein alternately refers to his men as leitsleute and as “brigands” (struethir), although he claims to have urged them to obtain information about the area around Garthen (now Hrodna) “doing harm to no one they come across.”55 In the end, his men bring back a Rus’ artisan and his son from outside Garthen, who offer compelling information about two Lithuanian dukes’ activities. Whether the Rus’ inhabitant and his son came willingly to Lyck as the Komtur requested, or were coerced into acting as informants is not clear. Nevertheless, the report as a whole suggests how, in carrying out their orders, the leitsleute were accustomed to lever­ aging at least a threat of violence. Similarly, one Wegebericht, after describing the routes that Gedutte and his “company” (geselleschaft) had just safely finished scouting, concludes with information about settlements and population density in the area, as well as the recent movements of Lithuanian troops.56 And another leitsmann’s tip that the hagen (barricades and hideaways fashioned from under­ brush and debris) had just recently been disturbed or destroyed in a certain loca­ tion illustrates the dynamic role the leitsleute played as the Order’s eyes, ears, and even hands in frontier operations.57

54  diener: W. 15, W. 17; witing: W. 47; tolk: W. 3. Reinhard Wenskus’ study of the “non-​German population of Prussia” remains the best survey of indigenous statuses under the Order’s lordship:  “Nichtdeutsche Bevölkerung des Preußenlandes.” See also Thielen, Verwaltung, 115; Ekdahl, “Strategic Organization,” 231–​32; Vercamer, Komturei Königsberg, 294–​95, 295n1855; and, most recently on the diener specifically, Jóźwiak, “Dieners.” Vercamer proposes that markers of segregated status, such as the requirement that witinge occupy a separate table at meals, conveyed prestige rather than lowliness. Ralph Päsler suggests that the Order hired land surveyors from the same demographic as the leitsleute: Sachliteratur, 312, 334n5. 55  OBA 2973. 56  W. 57. 57  W. 32.

Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge

The Order was acutely aware, moreover, that the invaluable skills and know­ ledge of its indigenous agents were potentially disastrous in the wrong hands. Contemporary chronicles describe leitsleute leading armies into trouble or getting lost. The herald and chronicler Wigand von Marburg (fl. 1400) tells the story of a Teutonic army that, failing to find a ford across the Memel (now Neman) River, in order to enter the region around Garthen, fatefully chooses to follow a leitsmann: all but six men drown in attempting to cross at the place he designates.58 Stereotyped anxiety about the changeability of indigenous people—​and the consequent effort to secure their loyalty and fix them in place, whether by force or by friendship—​ is a hallmark of colonial power structures that scholars must avoid reifying.59 Mobility need not imply endemic native capriciousness, nor even state oppression. It can, conversely, be a means by which indigenous people selectively engage in colonial projects.60 The leitsleute exercised considerable agency in selectively lending information and guidance to help or hinder the Order. At the same time, the Wegeberichte also illustrate Nicholas Thomas’ argument that, once indigenous knowledge has been exchanged and creatively recontextualized as colonial prop­ erty, new uses and meanings effect a permanent shift in power relations between Western consumers and native purveyors. Leitsleute origins, in any case, must be sought beyond politicized toponymics. While any number of individual circumstances could have prompted relocation across the frontier, evidence in the Wegeberichte points to three principle causes. The first entails a shift (at least temporary) of loyalty, particularly among regional Lithuanian nobles. A leitsmann named Clawsigail zu Girmau, for example, offered to stop at his brother Mynnegail’s hoff (estate) along the way to a destination about forty miles west of Vilnius.61 Properties belonging to the Lithuanian elite appear as frequent waypoints, but who was friend or foe at the moment of the route’s

58  Cronica nova prutenica, chap. 156. Losing the way did not always strictly entail negative consequences, however. Peter von Dusburg relates in the Chronicon terrae Prussiae (III.308) how the error of certain guides leading an army astray for two days is actually divinely inspired, since the army ends up catching its target at an opportune moment.

59  Heather Roller, for example, warns against this in her work on eighteenth-​century Portuguese Amazonia, where Amazonian communities were constantly on the move, yet rooted by strong senses of local identity: Amazonian Routes, 6–​11. Tiffany Shellam has simi­ larly characterized the mobility of nineteenth-​century Nyungar as fluid yet “grounded” by the networks in which they were situated: “Nyungar Domains.” 60  As Roller argues of the relations between Indian crewmen and white canoe directors during long forays into the jungle interior: Amazonian Routes, 57–​91, 127–​64. 61  W. 74.

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reporting is not always clear.62 Clawsigail, for one, does not indicate whether he intended to lead Teutonic armies to plunder the property of his brother, or his brother’s neighbours. Either way, such active kinship ties spanned the frontier, and leitsleute could leverage their relationship with the Order as a tool in disputes back home. Other leitsleute were themselves the victims or descendants of frontier vio­ lence. One entry identifies a group of four men well-​acquainted with the wildnis south of Vilnius as “old (alte) Scalovians.”63 The Scalovians were not, in fact, from the southeast, but from a northwestern border region of Prussia. Their long his­ tory of resistance to Teutonic lordship in the thirteenth century shaped later perceptions of them. Peter von Dusburg’s story of Girdilo—​a well-​established and trusted Scalovian who tricks Teutonic officials into granting him a large army that he subsequently leads into a deadly trap—​activates a Scalovian stereotype through a sensationalized act of treachery that conveys deep-​seated anxiety about Baltic assimilation.64 Over a century after the year that Peter claims the last Scalovians had converted, emigrating to Prussia and leaving behind a land bereft of inhabitants, these four leitsleute appear in the Wegeberichte.65 Whether their service was coerced or voluntary, their relationship to the frontier was rooted in a history of violence.66 From similar circumstances, leitsleute designated specifically as “refugees” (vlier, flyer) constitute a third attested origin. In October of 1387, a refugee named Mikal from southern Lithuania came directly before the Marshal to offer his services, claiming to “[know] a ford that is good passage over the Merkys river, where a hundred men can ride side-​by-​side.”67 Like Clawsigail, Mikal

62  A “royal hall” is a common waypoint in a number of routes (e.g., W. 81), which Hirsch and others have assumed to be holdings of the grand dukes. But Lithuanian titulature easily precipitated confusion. The German term könig was frequently and misleadingly mapped onto the indigenous status of kunigas, which Wenskus interpreted as a primarily martial castellan lordship that gradually attained a sacerdotal dimension from the association between strongholds and holy places, especially sacred groves. See “Sozialordnung” and “Beobachtungen.” Wenskus’ mastery of Baltic languages and sources notwithstanding, his extrapolation of pan-​Baltic customs from a Prussian-​centric perspective affords a critical eye. 63  W. 61.

64  Chronicon terrae Prussiae, III.226.

65  “Sicque terra illa fuit sine habitatore multis annis”: Chronicon terrae Prussiae, III.188.

66  Hirsch assumed they were prisoners, although his reasoning is vague: “Die littauischen Wegeberichte,” 691n17. 67  W. 80.

Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge

evidently recognized an opportunity in the Order’s dependence on his expertise, and sought to profit from its intervention in the region he had fled.68 From high-​profile nobles to displaced exiles, the leitsleute comprised a diverse group. In exchange for payment and status, they transferred a body of know­ ledge shaped by their origins and relationships to the lands and peoples beyond Prussia.69 The Order’s officials framed their reports to account and adjust for variations and limitations, accordingly attesting to their informants’ knowledge of particular routes or areas and ignorance of others.70 By identifying Mikal the refugee’s knowledge of a “good” ford and close familiarity with the area from which he had come, the Teutonic administrator who created the report vouched for both the logistical usefulness of his highly specialized contribution, as well as his reliability as a guide. Other routes attribute specific segments to respectively expert guides, dividing responsibility according to individual specializations.71 Occasionally, the Wegeberichte indicate liminal points beyond which the know­ ledge of the leitsleute became less reliable, or disappeared altogether.72 A rather contradictory entry advertises its guide, Dietrich, as well-​acquainted in all places once he crosses the Memel River, before abruptly noting that beyond a given way­ point, Dietrich could continue in one direction but not another.73 In sum, the for­ mation of networks among leitsleute of differing specializations, cooperating along certain routes, demonstrates how the mutable edges of indigenous knowledge could coalesce, such that entanglement with a colonial power precipitated new configurations of indigenous relations and practices. 68  From the outset of the Reisen, the Order imagined itself the rightful lord of Lithuania—​a fictive lordship it projected as the legal basis of a number of charters concerning property in Lithuania. It was not uncommon to grant Lithuanian refugees property in Prussia, on the condition that they reclaim their property in Lithuania as soon as the region was subjected to Teutonic rule; the reclamation could additionally entail giving up the new Prussian prop­ erty. See, for example, two documents issued to vlier in 1291 and 1303: OF 112, 13v and 8r, respectively.

69  A number of leitsleute appear as recipients of payments in the ledger of Order’s central treasury surviving from 1399 to 1409, the so-​called Tresslerbuch: Joachim, Das Marienburger Tresslerbuch, 14–​15, 68, 180–​81, 200, 215, 232, 241, 317, 336, 359, 398, 494, 511, 534, 549–50, 577–​78, 580. 70  Three verbs are especially prominent: wissen, sich bekennen, and sich verweisen. While all three occupy a similar semantic register, wissen tends to be used for discrete topographic features (“he knows a ford”) while the reflexive verbs indicate familiarity with a route or a certain region (“he knows his way to Vilnius”; “he is familiar with the Šalčininkai region”). 71  W. 7 is divided among no less than nine leitsleute, for instance. 72  W. 9.

73  W. 72.

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Recontextualizing Knowledge Seeking to harness this kinetic channel of indigenous knowledge as a stable and reliable resource, the Teutonic Order devised a hierarchical system for tracking, verifying, and cataloging their informants and the knowledge they purveyed, beginning along the waterlogged routes themselves and ultimately ending within the watermarked pages of the archive. At the top of the hierarchy, the Grandmaster acted in some capacity as a supervisor in this process, but it was the Marshal in Königsberg who emerged as the more active and central figure in managing the leitsleute. A short report which the Marshal addressed to the Grandmaster around 1400 lends some insight into the administrative structures he oversaw. The Marshal relates that he had summoned his leitsleute and several commanders to convene in Königsberg, along with the commanders’ own delegations of leitsleute. He explains that a separate slip (now lost) enclosed with the report detailed two routes that had been drawn up in this gathering, along with measurements of the current thickness of the ice.74 The Marshal’s report not only illustrates a key mechanism by which the leitsleute directly informed planning in Königsberg, but indicates that officials at other Commanderies actively oversaw local companies of leitsleute. Local officials, like those whom the Marshal summoned, played a role beyond supervision and coordination:  they also acted as primary gatekeepers of the information flowing upwards through the command hierarchy. Some Wegeberichte specify that an official promised first-​hand confirmation that his leitsleute were providing trustworthy and useful information. In response to the Marshal’s query as to whether certain routes were reliable or not, one fron­ tier castle’s administrator dispatched the particularly informative report that the few “bad” stretches could be managed or circumnavigated, adding that he could personally attest to the routes’ viability since he had ridden along them himself.75 Teutonic officials were sensitive to their reliance upon information and guidance provided by the leitsleute in formulating logistical decisions, as attested by the Marshal’s own letter. Moreover, latent anxieties regarding the physical and social mobility of the leitsleute could only have exacerbated the tension. Vetting procedures were consequently effected as active measures to gauge the quality of information at its source, through official agents appointed 74  OBA 649.

75  W. 39. Wigand von Marburg nicely illustrates this chain of command as well, describing how Insterburg’s Pfleger (Lat. prefectus) rode out “into the wilderness (ad deserta) against the pagans” after sending ahead eight men “to test out the routes” (ad experiendum vias): Cronica nova prutenica, chap. 69.

Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge

to frontier posts. While higher-​ranking officials like Pflegers and Commanders appear to have been priority candidates, lower-​ranking members of the Order could stand in if needed. One report even attests to a local priest’s accompani­ ment of three leitsleute into the frontier region along Prussia’s southeastern border in 1396.76 As the first step in the process of reuse, this careful evaluation was a prerequisite for the recontextualization of intellectual property held to be potentially destabilizing. Following these initial stages, scribes acting on behalf of local officials generated a report, which then travelled along the Order’s postal routes for use by the Marshal or other high-​ranking officials. This commitment to paper was itself a critical step in the recontextualization process, representing the translation of colloquial knowledge into written record. Teutonic scribes accordingly employed language that framed the reports as abstractions of face-​to-​face communications. Among the reports’ most common formulations is the verb czeichnen, a difficult term to define precisely.77 In its most concrete sense, czeichnen could denote the etching of distinctive marks into trees, stones, or other objects, as was common in the marking of boundaries.78 This meaning does not fit the verb’s usage in the Wegeberichte, however. In contrast to boundary clauses documented in regional grants and privileges, there is no mention of specific landmarks like individual trees, while one entry states that the routes had been “marked” only after the officials and leitsleute had gathered together in Königsberg.79 Others employ a secondary passive construction denoting that the leitsleute “had [a route] marked,” rather than marking it themselves.80 Altogether, the term’s usage in the Wegeberichte is more abstract and more oral—​the quasi-​narrative outlining of routes and landscapes in the presence of scribes.81 76  W. 62. The identification of this official as a priest is primarily based on his distinctive title (Herr) and three-​part name (Kuncze von der Vesten), which matches the profile of a priest appearing in a list of witnesses to a property grant in the southeastern border village of Aweyden in June of the following year. OBA 544.

77  The heading of W. 43, for example, indicates that the entry’s contents were geczeichnit at Labiau on December 4, 1384.

78  German Grenze (boundary, limit) is in fact a loanword from Polish granica, whose proto-​ Slavic root-​word referred to the sharp tools used in the etching of boundaries. 79  W. 39.

80  E.g., W.  51:  “Dese wege hat Sqwabe von Lawkisken unde Gastart von Labiow lassin czeich[n]‌en” (emphasis added).

81  Direct verbs of speech—​namely sagen (to state, say) and, especially, sprechen (to speak)—​ likewise reflect the orality of exchanges taking place in a cloud of languages and dialects.

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Names of people and places potentially strange or unknown to Teutonic scribes (and also likely subjects of divergence among the leitsleute themselves) were among possible complications in this communication. One report surviving in three different versions—​a freestanding original letter and two later copies—​offers an example. The report mentions the movement of Lithuanian armies toward a certain lake called Zereens, which the original letter designates as “den zee zereens azer[…].”82 The phrase presents several paleographic peculiarities across all three versions. In the original, the scribe initially wrote “die zee” (which he corrected to “den zee”) and appended an ambiguous abbreviation to the end of the last word, “azer.”83 Both later copies, moreover, rendered this final word as “Mer[…]” rather than “azer[…].”84 Two explanations seem most likely for this orthographic divergence. First, it could be an error on the part of the later scribes. Initial m’s can closely resemble the az ligature in contemporary hands, and while the original scribe did not form m’s this way, the later copyists did. An accusation of carelessness may be overly hasty, however, especially since the later scribes (assuming that at least one worked from the original) should have noticed how m was formed elsewhere in the original, as in the word “Memel” closely preceding the phrase. It seems more likely, then, that the divergence stems not from scribal error (at least, not a careless one) but from linguistic differences. The original word, “azer,” is most likely a rendering of the Lithuanian word “lake” (modern ežeras) that Gedutte, the guide, had used in conveying the report’s information, either himself or through a translator. The rather awkward abbreviation may reflect the scribe’s unfamiliarity with the term (he had, after all, already written the term in German) or perhaps an uncertainty how to decline the borrowed word. When the report was copied, subsequent scribes’ unfamiliarity with Lithuanian (and with the distant frontier landscape) may have been the cause of a misreading. Alternatively, how­ ever, the “azer” could have been read as “mer” because this was a word for “lake” or “sea” in other, more familiar, regional languages (mer in Livonian, for example)—​ evidence for a diverse array of contact vernaculars.85 Whatever its cause may have been, the divergence illustrates the detachment of first-​hand knowledge from its original context in the process of its transmission. From the first moment of com­ munication to the last copy made years or decades later, Gedutte, whose noted 82  OBA 438.

83  Hirsch transcribed the trailing abbreviation as an x.

84  OF 1, 250v; OF 1a, 275r (emphasis added). The incongruence did not escape the notice of Hirsch, who remarked on the similar forms of az and m, but eschewed further explan­ ation: “Die littauischen Wegeberichte,” 690nc. 85  I am grateful to Carol Symes for pointing out this linguistic connection.

Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge

familiarity with the wilderness began this article, was alienated from the record in whose genesis he had conspired, even if the record retained some of the imme­ diacy of contact between the leitsleute and Teutonic administrators. Language explicitly framing the Wegeberichte as speaking documents, along­ side other unintentional traces of their orality, begin to illuminate what is argu­ ably the most crucial, and the least recoverable, point in the flow of information from leitsmann to Wegebericht. In their consignment to written record, pathways through fickle waterways and tenebrous forests became fixed into the self-​assured permanence of ink, and the living knowledge of indigenous people became abstracted as the concrete, archived property of the state. With each copy of the original oral reports, this alienation between institu­ tional knowledge and its original indigenous context grew more pronounced. The composition of the OF 1-​1a manuscript illuminates this longer history. MS A186, the progenitor of OF 1-​1a, was assembled as a single register during Prussia’s tran­ sition from Teutonic territory to secular duchy after 1525.86 Rather than seeking to distance themselves from the records and structures of the religious order they were supplanting, the early dukes instead sought to organize and preserve its rich archives. Despite attaining its most enduring form in the early sixteenth century, however, the register’s contents had clearly been copied with the intent of assembly over one hundred years earlier.87 Some editorial headings group together multiple entries that sometimes span multiple folios.88 Still other entries only make sense in reference to others: a scribe noting, for example, “the same” leitsleute (or, even simply “he”) instead of repeating names. The leitsmann Merune is implicitly noted on OF 1a, 241r (W. 68) by a pronoun alone, referencing his named appearance in a route on the opposite folio, 240v (W. 67). Another implicit mention on 230r (W. 82), however, has no such reference point:  the preceding folio is blank on both sides. An archival logic evidently underlay the documents’ copying and assembly, but they appear largely fragmented and haphazard in their current state. The manuscript’s curious compilation prompts the question of why the Wegeberichte were copied and assembled in the first place. Their existence (and survival) attests to the value they evidently held for the Order as its relation­ ship to the Lithuanian frontier began to fundamentally change around 1400. The 1398 Treaty of Salinwerder brought the Lithuanian wars to a seemingly favor­ able close, with the duke Vytautas acknowledging the Order’s eternal rights 86  On Prussia’s transition from crusader state to secular duchy, see Forstreuter, Vom Ordensstaat zum Fürstentum. 87  Cf. Päsler, Sachliteratur, 329.

88  OF 1a, 283r groups five entries (W. 47, W. 32, W. 33, W. 34, W. 49) under a single heading.

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to Samogitia, the coveted western Lithuanian lowlands bridging Prussia with the Order’s northern holdings in Livonia. Peace, however, was tenuous, and the Order’s refusal to extinguish its territorial ambitions galvanized Lithuanian resist­ ance on both local and regional scales. In 1402, the Order pillaged the important stronghold of Garthen and the region south of Vilnius; just a few months later, a destructive uprising in Samogitia targeted the Teutonic Commandery of Memel. Vytautas sided with the rebels, while the Lithuanian nobleman Switrigail took the opportunity to enlist the Order’s help in his own bid for power. A familiar pattern of frontier conflict arose in which the Order sought to stabilize lands and peoples resistant to its lordship; and the leitsleute—​and with them, the Wegeberichte—​therefore remained critical resources. By 1409, the Order’s erst­ while ally Vytautas sided with his cousin Jagiełło (wearer of the Polish crown since 1386), and united Polish and Lithuanian forces crushed Teutonic troops in July of the following year, permanently reconfiguring Baltic power relations. In this atmosphere of rebellion and shifting loyalties, anxieties about the trust­ worthiness of Baltic allies and subjects must have intensified:  hence the func­ tional logic of the Wegeberichte. As Päsler has observed, the texts do not seem to have served any practical navigational use. Without discounting the possibility that they served as templates for producing copies, as needed, for consultation by outgoing armies, their content was simply not detailed enough to be of much use to anyone except those already intimately familiar with the lands traversed.89 They betray no signs of wear to indicate frequent consultation, in any case; nor do they conform to any regular organizational scheme. Päsler’s reservations about whether the “discontinued and incomplete collection” served any function at all in its surviving form, however, likely arises from the mistaken assumption that such a function could only be navigational.90 While the documents certainly record spatial information, their primary purpose as original letters was to assure the account­ ability of particular leitsleute offering to serve as guides to particular destinations. In this sense, the letters functioned more as contracts or testimonials than as navi­ gational devices. When it came to organizing the Reisen, the Marshal could consult incoming Wegeberichte to choose reliable leitsleute whose routes had already been vetted by local officials on the border. The later compilation of these letters, then, gestures to a slightly different motive. By 1402, the resistance of local populations jeopardized the Order’s con­ trol of a region it had finally conquered after over a century of conflict. Wishing to secure its hold over Samogitia, to continue expanding its territorial lordship over 89  I agree with Päsler on this point: Sachliteratur, 336. 90  Sachliteratur, 338–​39.

Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge

the frontier, and to stabilize the indigenous agents upon whom it relied for both objectives, the Order began to archive information about both people and places. As Randolph Head has argued, late medieval and early modern states derived power not just through the active use of documents per se, but through the organ­ ization and management of records.91 In this way, the knowledge and expertise of indigenous people were recontextualized once again as tools of lordship. Halted by the crises of 1410 and its aftermath, the Order’s experiment never quite reached fruition. But at an anxious moment of near triumph, the Wegeberichte represent the vestigial traces of a late medieval state’s effort to fortify its lordship through the epistemological stability of its archives. What final form the Wegeberichte may have taken if the Order had been successful in its experiment remains an open, and likely unanswerable, question.

Conclusion The commitment of oral traditions and embodied knowledge to written record has long been seen as a distinctive hallmark of the paper-​hungry administrative culture of the later Middle Ages. With the rising availability of paper and trained bureaucrats, late medieval states exercised authority through archives. M. T. Clanchy’s study of high medieval literacy and documentary culture operationalizes the Weberian dictum that administration is effectively a form of knowledge-​based control—​a paradigm closely matching the Order’s efforts to position itself as, in the Mortensens’ ironic turn of phrase, “lord of the wilderness” (Landesherr der Wildnis).92 Proceeding from its exchange with the Baltic’s indigenous people, however, the Order’s collection and compilation of knowledge extends beyond the norms of medieval statecraft. This undertaking pre-​dated cartographically oriented colonial powers’ reconfiguration of indigenous geographies into maps designed to render foreign landscapes as legible subjects. Force was not always necessary in this later process, even if the threat of its deployment was always present. In the shadow of extreme violence on the nineteenth-​century Australian “fringe,” for example, peaceful encounters opened a space in which Aboriginal people, seeking advantageous relationships with colonists, offered geographic information to soldiers and officials in often informal conversational contexts. Colonial minutes relaying these encounters reflect the language, gestures, and even illustrations that Aboriginal informants used to describe their relationships 91  Head, “Knowing Like a State,” especially 747–​53.

92  Clanchy, Memory to Written Record, 66–​67, 154–​84; Besiedlung, 2:55–​66.

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to local people and places, in turn inscribing these relationships into the written record.93 Like the Australian colonizers, the Teutonic Order’s documents retained traces of their indigenous sources’ original context. Rather than maps, however, the Order—​in close collaboration with the leitsleute—​generated reports retaining the narrative contours of the information they assembled. In this sense, then, the Wegeberichte arose from shifting power dynamics and webs of exchange as the dialectic precipitate of entanglement. Somewhere between indigenous spatial perceptions and Western geography, they muddied the boundaries of these categories even as the Order strove to render them more distinct. A  distinctly new and fluid form of knowledge gradually materialized—​ before falling from use, just years after its genesis, as the calcified miscellanea of a debilitated state.

93  Shellam, “Nyungar Domains” and Shaking Hands, esp. 27–​48.

Bibliography

Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge

Archival Collections GStA PK, XX. HA, Ordensfolianten (OF): 1, 1a. GStA PK, XX. HA, Ordensbriefarchiv (OBA): 438, 544, 649, 1306, 2973. Edited Sources

Hirsch, Theodor, ed. “Die littauischen Wegeberichte.” In Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum 2:662–​711. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1863. Jean Cabaret d’Orville. La chronique du bon duc Loys de Bourbon. Edited by Alphonse M. Chazaud. Paris: Librairie Renouard, 1876. Joachim, Erich, ed. Das Marienburger Tresslerbuch der Jahre 1399–​1409. Königsberg: Thomas & Oppermann, 1896. Peter von Dusburg. Chronicon terrae Prussiae. In Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum, edited by Max Töppen, 1:21–​219. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1861. Wigand von Marburg. Cronica nova prutenica. In Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum, edited by Theodor Hirsch, 2:453–​662. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1863. Secondary Sources

[Ahlemann]. “Die litauischen Wegeberichte.” Zeitschrift der Altertumsgesellschaft Insterburg 18 (1935): 54–​58. Baronas, Darius. “Der Kontext der litauischen Kriegskunst des 13. Jahrhunderts und die militärischen Innovationen von der zweiten Hälfte des 14. Jahrhunderts bis zum Beginn des 15. Jahrhunderts.” In Tannenberg—​ Grunwald—​Z̆algiris 1410:  Krieg und Frieden im späten Mittelalter, edited by Werner Paravicini, Rimvydas Petrauskas, and Grischa Vercamer, 159–​73. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012. Berend, Nora. At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims, and “Pagans” in Medieval Hungary, c. 1000-​c. 1300. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Boockmann, Hartmut. Der Deutsche Orden:  Zwölf Kapitel aus seiner Geschichte. Munich: Beck, 1994. Burleigh, Michael. Germany Turns Eastwards: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Clanchy, M. T. From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–​1307. 3rd edition. Malden: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2013. Czaja, Roman, and Andrzej Radzimiński, eds. The Teutonic Order in Prussia and Livonia:  The Political and Ecclesiastical Structures, 13th–​16th C. Cologne: Böhlau, 2015.

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Davoliūtė, Violeta. The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War. New York: Routledge, 2013. Ekdahl, Sven. “Die preußisch-​litauischen Beziehungen des Mittelalters. Stand und Aufgaben der Forschung in Deutschland.” In Deutschland und Litauen. Bestandsaufnahmen und Aufgaben der historischen Forschung, edited by Norbert Angermann and Joachim Tauber, 31–​44. Lüneburg: Institut Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1995. ——​​. “The Strategic Organization of the Commanderies of the Teutonic Order in Prussia and Livonia.” In La Commanderie: institution des ordres militaires dans l’Occident médiéval, edited by Anthony Luttrell and Léon Pressouyre, 219–​42. Paris: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 2002. ——​​. “The Treatment of Prisoners of War during the Fighting between the Teutonic Order and Lithuania.” In The Military Orders 1: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick, edited by Malcolm Barber, 263–​69. Burlington: Ashgate, 2008. Forstreuter, Kurt. Vom Ordensstaat zum Fürstentum:  geistige und politische Wandlungen im Deutschordensstaat Preußen unter den Hochmeistern Friedrich und Albrecht, 1498–​1525. Kitzingen: Holzner, 1951. Geertz, Clifford. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic, 1983. Hämäläinen, Pekka. The Comanche Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Head, Randolph. “Knowing Like a State: The Transformation of Political Knowledge in Swiss Archives, 1450–​1770.” Journal of Modern History 75 (December 2003): 745–​82. Hodder, Ian. Entangled: An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things. Malden: Wiley-​Blackwell, 2012. Ivinskis, Zenonas. “Litauische Wegeberichte.” In Encylopedia Lituanica, 3:352–​53. Boston: Juozas Kapočius, 1973. Ivoška, Darius. “Litauische Personennamen in den Ordensdokumenten.” Acta Linguistica Lituanica 73 (2015): 38–​54. Jähnig, Bernhart. “Litauische Einwanderung nach Preußen im 16. Jahrhundert. Ein Bericht zum ‘dritten Band’ von Hans und Gertrud Mortensen.” In Zur Siedlungs-​ , Bevölkerungs-​und Kirchengeschichte Preußens, edited by Udo Arnold, 75–​95. Lüneburg: Institut Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1999. ——​​. “Die Quellen des historischen Staatsarchivs Königsberg zur Geschichte der deutsch-​litauischen Beziehungen in der Zeit der Ordensherrschaft und des Herzogtums Preußen.” In Deutschland und Litauen. Bestandsaufnahmen und Aufgaben der historischen Forschung, edited by Norbert Angermann and Joachim Tauber, 9–​20. Lüneburg: Institut Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1995. Jóźwiak, Sławomir. “Dieners in the Service of the Teutonic Order in Prussia in the Second Half of the 14th Century—​the First Half of the 15th Century: The Group Size, Maintenance, Accommodation.” Zapiski Historyczne 83 (2018): 7–​35.

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Lemke, Paul. “Wo die ‘Leitsleute’ durch die Memelniederung führten.” Prussia 27 (1927): 58–​61. Mažeika, Rasa. “Bargaining for Baptism: Lithuanian Negotiations for Conversion, 1250–​1358.” In Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, edited by James Muldoon, 131–​45. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997. ——​​. “Of Cabbages and Knights: Trade and Trade Treaties with the Infidel on the Northern Frontier, 1200–​1390.” Journal of Medieval History 20 (1994): 63–​76. Militzer, Klaus. Die Geschichte des Deutschen Ordens. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005. Mortensen, Hans. “Die landschaftliche Bedeutung der Ausdrücke Wildnis, Wald, Heide, Feld usw. in den Quellen des deutschen Nordostens.” In Vom deutschen Osten: Max Friederichsen zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Herbert Knothe, 127–​ 42. Breslau: Verlag von M. & H. Marcus, 1934. Mortensen, Hans, and Gertrud Mortensen. Die Besiedlung des nordöstlichen Ostpreußens bis zum Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts. 2 vols. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1937. Müller, H.  “Über die Örtlichkeiten der ‘Wegeberichte’ innerhalb der heutigen Landesgrenze.” Altpreußische Forschungen 4 (1927): 43–​64. Nikžentaitis, Alvydas. “Litauisch-​preußische Beziehungen im Mittelalter. Der litauische Forschungsstand.” In Deutschland und Litauen. Bestandsaufnahmen und Aufgaben der historischen Forschung, edited by Norbert Angermann and Joachim Tauber, 21–​30. Lüneburg: Institut Nordostdeutsches Kulturwerk, 1995. ——​​. “Prisoners of War in Lithuania and the Teutonic Order State (1283–​1409).” In Der Deutsche Orden in der Zeit der Kalmarer Union 1397–​1521, edited by Roman Czaja and Zenon Hubert Nowak, 193–​208. Torun: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika, 1999. Paravicini, Werner. Die Preußenreisen des europäischen Adels. 2 vols. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1989–​95. Päsler, Ralf G. Deutschsprachige Sachliteratur im Preußenland bis 1500: Untersuchungen zu ihrer Überlieferung. Cologne: Böhlau, 2003. Petrauskas, Rimvydas. “Der Frieden im Zeitalter des Krieges. Formen friedlicher Kommunikation zwischen dem Deutschen Orden und dem Großfürstentum Litauen zu Beginn des 15. Jahrhunderts.” Annaberger Annalen 12 (2004): 28–​42. Pluskowski, Aleksander. The Archaeology of the Prussian Crusade: Holy War and Colonisation. New York: Routledge, 2013. Roller, Heather F. Amazonian Routes: Indigenous Mobility and Colonial Communities in Northern Brazil. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. Rowell, Stephen C. Lithuania Ascending: A Pagan Empire within East-​ Central Europe, 1295–​1345. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. ——​​. “A Pagan’s Word: Lithuanian Diplomatic Procedure 1200–​1385.” Journal of Medieval History 18 (1992): 145–​60. Schiffer, Michael B. Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987.

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Shellam, Tiffany. “Nyungar Domains: Reading Gyalliput’s Geography and Mobility in the Colonial Archive.” In Conflict, Adaptation, Transformation:  Richard Broome and the Practice of Aboriginal History, edited by Ben Silverstein, 80–​95. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2018. ——​​. Shaking Hands on the Fringe: Negotiating the Aboriginal World at King George’s Sound. Crawley: UWA Press, 2009. Striegler, Stefan. “Die ‘Littauischen Wegeberichte’:  Kognitive Karten und die Kommunikation geografischen Wissens im Mittelalter.” Studia Maritima 25 (2012): 205–​17. ——​​. “ ‘Die littauischen Wegeberichte’:  Rekonstruktion und Konstruktion eines historischen Grenzraumes, 1384–​1402.” Master’s thesis, Universität Greifswald, 2016. Thielen, Peter G. Die Verwaltung des Ordensstaates Preußen vornehmlich im 15. Jahrhundert. Cologne: Böhlau, 1965. Thomas, Alfred. Litauen nach den Wegeberichten im Ausgange des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts. Tilsit: Reyländer, 1885. Thomas, Nicholas. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991. Trautmann, Reinhold. Die altpreußischen Personennamen, 2nd edition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974. Tumler, Marian. Der Deutsche Orden im Werden, Wachsen und Wirken bis 1400 mit einem Abriss der Geschichte des Ordens von 1400 bis zur neuesten Zeit. Vienna: Panorama, 1955. Vercamer, Grischa. Siedlungs-​, Sozial-​ und Verwaltungsgeschichte der Komturei Königsberg in Preußen (13.-​16. Jahrhundert). Marburg: Elwert, 2010. Wenskus, Reinhard. “Beobachtungen eines Historikers zum Verhältnis von Burgwall, Heiligtum und Siedlung im Gebiet der Prußen.” In Ausgewählte Aufsätze zum frühen und preußischen Mittelalter: Festgabe zu seinem siebzigsten Geburtstag, edited by Hans Patze, 299–​316. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1986. ——​​. “Der Deutsche Orden und die nichtdeutsche Bevölkerung des Preußenlandes mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Siedlung.” In Ausgewählte Aufsätze zum frühen und preußischen Mittelalter: Festgabe zu seinem siebzigsten Geburtstag, edited by Hans Patze, 353–​74. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1986. ——​​. “Über einige Problemen der Sozialordnung der Prußen.” In Ausgewählte Aufsätze zum frühen und preußischen Mittelalter: Festgabe zu seinem siebzigsten Geburtstag, edited by Hans Patze, 413–​34. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1986.

Recontextualizing Indigenous Knowledge

Patrick Meehan ([email protected]) is a PhD researcher in History at Harvard University, where he is finishing a project on the colonization of Prussia during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—​how it was conceptualized, justified, and carried out; and how local inhabitants responded. He has become particularly interested in using written sources to explore colonial encounters from both Western and indigenous perspectives. His primary research is rooted in a broad interest in the cultural and environmental history of later medieval Europe. Abstract This article analyzes a compilation of navigational texts produced by the Teutonic crusading order around 1400, arguing that the recontextualization of geographic knowledge—from local guides to written records—illuminates a spec­ trum of encounters and exchanges, both violent and collaborative, between indi­ genous people and Western colonizers in northeastern Europe. Keywords Baltic crusades, colonial encounter, knowledge transmission, leitsleute, local knowledge, medieval colonization, native guides, Preußenreisen, Teutonic Order, Wegeberichte

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MEUBLES: THE EVER MOBILE MIDDLE AGES ELIZABETH EMERY MEUBLE, THE FRENCH word for furniture, stems from the Latin mobilis, movability being the defining characteristic of these domestic items. Relocated from castle to castle and transferred from one family member to another after the Middle Ages, furniture took on new life after the French Revolution as former family heirlooms and ecclesiastical furnishings—​many of them from the medieval period—​flooded the marketplace as collectibles. In this essay, I examine examples of the preser­ vation, recycling, and repurposing of medieval meubles within a nineteenth-​cen­ tury French context in order to raise broader questions about the temporal and geo-​spatial valence of the “Middle Ages.” Filtered through the taxonomies of reuse proposed by archaeologist Michael Schiffer,1 a first section focuses on new “con­ servatory processes” such as the “collecting behavior” that prompted figures such as Alexandre Du Sommerard, Eugène-​Emmanuel Viollet-​le-​Duc, and Albert Jacquemart to preserve medieval furnishings while transforming their use value through display. A second section engages with what Schiffer calls “recycling”: the “remanufacture” of medieval furniture for new purposes, a process enacted by figures including Victor Hugo, Pierre Loti, and Frédéric Spitzer. A  final section considers the secondary reuses of medieval furniture as emblematic of modern attitudes to the “Middle Ages” itself.

Conservatory Processes: Sacrilege and Worship J.-​K. Huysmans’ 1884 novel À rebours contains one of the best-​known and most scandalous examples of nineteenth-​century creative reuse of medieval furni­ ture: his protagonist, Des Esseintes, subverts the original function of the eccle­ siastical “relics” he has salvaged from Parisian and provincial antique stores and flea markets, repurposing medieval choir stalls and a pulpit to preach 1  Schiffer, “Toward a Unified Science,” summarized with added precision in Schiffer, Downing, and McCarthy, “Waste Not, Want Not,” 68.

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sermons about style.2 Readers found Des Esseintes’ practices sacrilegious and slipped the book into Britain in a yellow cover. They promoted it as the “bre­ viary of the Decadence.”3 As fictional as the installation may seem, Des Esseintes’ reappropriation of medieval ecclesiastical furniture derives from the real-​life “cathedral corner” of Baron Robert de Montesquiou de Fezensac, composed of seventeenth and eighteenth-​century pieces (Figure  6.1). The nobleman later recalled having dismantled the blasphemous ensemble, donating individual pieces to a devout female friend.4 How should one account for readers’ outrage over Des Esseintes’ repur­ posing of medieval ecclesiastical furniture when so many other contempor­ aries were engaged in similar activities, from transforming choir stalls into coat racks and umbrella stands, altarpiece panels into secular wall decorations, and chasubles into ladies’ coats?5 It testifies, above all, to the esteem medi­ eval artifacts enjoyed in France by 1884. Appreciation of the Middle Ages had developed markedly since the first years of the nineteenth century when the “Gothic” was still used as a synonym for “barbaric” and the “Middle Ages” as a disparaging term to validate the “Renaissance” and neo-​classical aesthetics.6 After the French Revolution, however, writers and artists from Romantic, Catholic, and nationalist movements claimed the Middle Ages in support of their own varied agendas, finding common ground in elevating French medi­ eval artworks above those of other nations (notably after the discovery that the Gothic style was French and not German).7 By 1884, the French considered 2  Huysmans, À rebours, 15. Tom Stammers evokes the widespread circulation of Old Regime artefacts during the post-​Revolutionary period in “Bric-​A-​Brac.” 3  Symons, Colour Studies, 255, 265.

4  See Emery, “Misunderstood,” for an analysis of Montesquiou’s home decorating practices and legends about them passed from Mallarmé to Huysmans and then to the public. What Montesquiou himself presents in his memoirs (Les Pas Effacés) as a Louis XV sculpted oak pulpit, three or four choir stalls of indeterminate date, and six sculpted angel heads purchased in Munich (possibly by Caspar Pfaff), become, in Huysmans’ retelling, “medi­ eval.” Montesquiou recounts having gifted his “coin de cathédrale” to a “dévote que j’aimais” (2:119–​20). 5  These examples of reuse of ecclesiastical items are those cited by Proust in his 1904 “Mort des cathédrales.” 6  Matthews, Medievalism, provides a careful reading of the evolving terminology used to define the medieval period.

7  Emery, Romancing the Cathedral, and Emery and Morowitz, Consuming the Past, show how raging post-​Revolutionary cultural competition to claim different aspects of medieval art and history paradoxically enhanced the value of the French Middle Ages as a whole.

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Figure 6.1. The “Cathedral-​Corner” of Montesquiou’s apartment at 41, Quai d’Orsay (before 1888). Photographer unknown. BnF MSS NAF 15037, fol. 128.

medieval remnants so worthy of preservation that Des Esseintes’ secular appro­ priation of choir stalls shocked readers less as religious sacrilege than as a lack of respect for architectural heritage. Viollet-​le-​Duc captures this shift in appreciation of French national patrimony as he attempts to define “Restoration” in 1866 for his Dictionnaire raisonné de

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l’architecture du XIe au XVIe siècle (a handbook of architectural principles). He stresses the fact that cultural sensitivity to collection, preservation, and restor­ ation are resolutely “modern” values: It is only since the first quarter of the present century that the idea of restoring buildings of another age has been entertained […] We have said that both the word and the thing [restoration] itself are modern; and, in fact, no civilization, no people of bygone ages, has conceived the idea of making restorations in the sense in which we comprehend them.8

While Viollet-​le-​Duc begins by speaking specifically of architecture—​of how builders in Asia (all time periods), ancient Rome, and medieval Europe modi­ fied defective or crumbling buildings using the style of their own day—he also addresses attitudes to the preservation and repair of other objects from the past, like furniture. He notes that objects from what we now consider the medi­ eval period (fifth to the fifteenth century) were considered raw materials to be reused and repurposed. Today, scholars study the ways in which furniture was transformed into firewood and illuminated manuscripts used to stuff rifles, dec­ orate walls, serve as children’s craft books, or stiffen clothing. Even in the fifteenth century, builders reused structures such the pre-​existing Gallo-​Roman bath com­ plex into which the Musée de Cluny was constructed.9 Such practices conform to what Schiffer terms “recycling”—​transforming or reusing original materials to create new items for new purposes—​and “secondary reuse”—​when “an unmodi­ fied item is employed in a different activity.”10 The development of a new mentality that preserves material artifacts rather than recycling them has, Viollet-​le-​Duc notes, occurred during his own lifetime: Our age has adopted an attitude towards the past in which it stands quite alone among historical ages. It has undertaken to analyze the past, to com­ pare and classify its phenomena, and to construct its veritable history, by

8  Viollet-​le-​Duc, “Restoration,” 11.

9  The Getty museum explored the reuse of medieval manuscripts in an exhibit entitled “Untold Stories: Collecting and Transforming Medieval Manuscripts” (February 26 to May 12, 2013:  www.getty.edu/​art/​exhibitions/​untold_​stories/​) while the use of recycled liturgical texts in fabrics has been explored in Klack-​Eitzen, Haase, and Weißgraf, Heilige Röcke. Nora Wilkinson reproduces a number of images from this volume in a blog post for the Bodleian Library (“Text and Textiles”). The concept of spolia—​more closely associated with conquest and competition—​is explored in the introduction to this volume. 10  Schiffer, “Toward a Unified Science,” 68.

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following step by step the march, the progress, the successive phases of humanity.11

In essence, he posits that his contemporaries’ relationship to the material culture of the past has moved from a praxis of recycling and new construction and toward an appreciation of antique structures as historical documents that record shifting human taste. As such, French society now considers the material culture of the past worth preserving in the form it originally took. This “collecting behavior” (Schiffer) or “conservation mentality,” as Françoise Choay has termed it, prompted debates about how best to preserve architectural structures that, unlike moveable furniture, could not easily be placed in a museum context even when it was pos­ sible to identify a single “original” style.12 The concept of “restoration” was so new that Viollet-​le-​Duc wanted to resolve some of its “ambiguity” by defining it in his dictionary. He does so in the sentence that has subsequently clouded his reputa­ tion as a restorer of medieval monuments:  “To restore a building is not to pre­ serve it, to repair, or rebuild it; it is to reinstate it in a condition of completeness which could never have existed at any given time.”13 With this sentence, he is, in fact, reflecting on the fact that most structures have no “original” complete form to “restore” because of the centuries of additions that have taken place; he acknow­ ledges the inherent paradoxes in any attempt at “restoration” (the return to a past state). “Preservation,” “repair,” and “rebuilding” are different because they all priv­ ilege modern techniques. I will not linger on the much-​debated issue of Viollet-​le-​Duc and his work as restorer, which has come to dominate discussion of the “Restoration” article to the detriment of other important points he makes. In “Restoration,” he provides valuable examples of the tensions between what Schiffer terms “recycling” and “collecting behavior,” notably through discussion of Alexandre Lenoir, who saved medieval statuary, sculpture, and furniture from destruction during the French Revolution by displaying them in Le Musée des Monuments français (1795–​1816). Viollet-​le-​Duc admires Lenoir for preserving these elements, and especially for 11  Viollet-​le-​Duc, “Restoration,” 11.

12  Viollet-​le-​Duc, “Restoration,” 9–​13. Françoise Choay has described this process as the development of a “conservation mentality” and evokes its spread in nineteenth-​century France in The Invention of the Historical Monument. Schiffer considers “collecting behavior” as a specialized subset of secondary use marked by the preservation of the object’s form, but not its original use: such “conservatory processes” often take place in museums. 13  Divested of his discussion of historical practices, this sentence reads as if a restorer could simply use his imagination, which was not Viollet-​le-​Duc’s intent. For cogent discussions of Viollet-​le-​Duc’s actual beliefs and practices of renovation see Murphy, Memory and Modernity, and Bressani, Architecture and the Historical Imagination.

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creating a display that convinced government administrators to value the his­ torical and artistic merit of medieval sculpture. He nonetheless condemns his predecessor’s techniques, which he characterizes as guided by “imagination.” He takes particular issue with Lenoir’s construction of a tomb (now in Père Lachaise) for the famed medieval lovers Abelard and Heloise. Like Lenoir’s later tomb for Blanche of Castile, it was an independent work of art (“bricolage” as Mary Shepard calls it) made up of medieval fragments from various eras assembled from disparate religious structures including the churches of Saint-​Denis and Saint-​Germain. They were set alongside elements Lenoir himself had invented.14 Viollet-​le-​Duc similarly criticizes Lenoir’s mixing of furnishing and statuary from different historical periods within the Musée des Monuments historiques: It was thus that the statues of Charles V and Jeanne de Bourbon from the tomb of St. Denis [that is, from the church of Saint-​Denis] were placed on wainscoting of the sixteenth century, taken from the chapel of the Château de Gaillon and surmounted by a canopy of the close of the thirteenth century; in the so-​called hall of the fourteenth century was decorated with arcading from the rood-​screen of the Sainte Chapelle and the thirteenth-​century.15

Viollet-​le-​Duc continues his diatribe against these historical “mixtures” [mélanges] in order to reinforce his earlier point about the damage done by older practices of salvage and reconstruction. In spite of a turn toward “collecting behavior,” Lenoir significantly complicated subsequent understanding and preservation of the basilica of Saint-​Denis. He had replaced or removed so many pieces without documentation that he unintentionally confused those tasked with restoring the church, including Viollet-​le-​Duc.16 The newer scientifically based imperatives to preserve, classify, and document might result in significant alterations to a struc­ ture (as they did at Saint-​Denis), but at least those choices were discussed and documented. Lenoir thus serves as his strawman, becoming, in this retelling, a “recycler” (in Schiffer’s sense), who modifies both form and function according to his own personal aesthetic rather than conserving the originals according to data-​driven choices. 14  Mary Shepard has published pendant articles describing Lenoir’s process, goals, sources, and bricolage in “A Tomb for Abelard and Heloise” and “Alexander Lenoir’s Tomb for Blanche of Castile.” 15  Viollet-​le-​Duc, “Restoration,” 32–​35.

16  He poignantly describes Saint-​Denis as an “anatomical subject on which artists who first entered on the path of restoration made their first essays in restoration.” Viollet-​le-​Duc, “Restoration,” 34–​37.

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Ten years later, Albert Jacquemart’s Histoire du mobilier demonstrates that the trend toward preservation, study, and classification advocated by Viollet-​le-​Duc had become the norm. He highlights the precarious situation of medieval meubles in the introductory pages of his 1876 text, one of the first histories of furniture. He laments the disappearance of examples of medieval furnishings from most periods other than the fifteenth century, particularly those crafted in less durable materials than oak. He considers them the “remnants” or “wreckage” of the past (les épaves du passé), precious “relics” to be preserved in museum galleries. He goes farther than Viollet-​le-​Duc as he lashes out at the “barbarity” of contemporaries who have committed the aesthetic “sacrilege” of disfiguring medieval furniture by altering it for modern purposes (as had the fictional Des Esseintes or the real-​life Lenoir). Jacquemart similarly laments those who create modern imitations to fill gaps in chronological collections, explaining that his contemporaries are unable to tell the difference between original and imitation. Composite “new” constructions made from medieval fragments—​like Lenoir’s—​were frequent, and they took their place in the nineteenth-​century market  alongside antiques, composite works created from bits of medieval furniture, “neo-​Gothic” inventions, modern replicas, and fake antiques whose patina was purposefully modified to convince treasure seekers of their authenticity.17 Jacquemart also admits that the dearth of true medieval furnishings in nineteenth-​century Paris stems not just from the difficult economic conditions and forced emigration that accompanied the French Revolution (during which many of the oldest French furnishings were acquired by British antiquarians), but also and especially from a longtime lack of histor­ ical appreciation by the French themselves. As if to confirm Viollet-​le-​Duc’s points about the conservation of national heritage as a concept recently imported from Britain and Germany, he reminds readers that those who collected antique furnishings in France before the 1850s had been mocked as madmen.18 It was the 1858 publication of the first volume of Viollet-​le-​Duc’s Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français—​dedicated to medieval furniture and directed to a broad 17  “Quelques personnes ont songé, il est vrai, à transformer les meubles anciens pour les adapter aux exigences actuelles; c’est là une barbarie contre laquelle protesteront tous les hommes de sens. Respectons les épaves des temps passés et gardons-​nous d’y porter une main sacrilège. C’est à ce prix que des reliques précieuses peuvent conserver leur prestige et rehausser les galeries des heureux qui les possèdent.” Jacquemart, Histoire, 8. Art historians such as Anne Dion-​Tenenbaum and especially Manuel Charpy have discussed some of the nineteenth-​century strategies used to recuperate, reinvent, or falsify “medieval” furniture. See, for example, Alcouffe, Dion-​Tenenbaum, and Lefébure, Le mobilier du musée du Louvre, 158–​61, and a remarkable chapter of Charpy’s “Le théâtre des objets” that assesses different techniques employed to make new objects look old (545–​69). 18  Jacquemart, Histoire, i–​ii, 8.

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popular readership including set designers and artists—​that had spawned new interest in the preservation of medieval antiques. Even so, notes Jacquemart, in 1876 the French appreciation of medieval furniture was still considered a recent phenomenon, linked to the rise of nationalism.19 Like Viollet-​le-​Duc, Jacquemart praises Alexandre Du Sommerard (1779–​ 1842) as one of the earliest French collectors to inscribe medieval furnishings into a historical and nationalist context that reified them as important cultural relics. Les Arts au Moyen Âge, begun in 1832 and completed by his son, Edmond, was lauded as the “school” at which subsequent collectors such as Jacquemart learned to be collectors and to respect medieval and Renaissance furniture for their his­ torical value, as “relics” of the past.20 Explicitly acknowledging the influence of the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott, Du Sommerard acquired rooms in the fifteenth-​century hôtel de ville formerly owned by the abbots of Cluny in 1832 and installed his collections in them as a way of educating the French public about its medieval history and culture.21 His attention to evocative historical display—​ to arranging utilitarian and decorative objects in period rooms associated with renowned figures of French history—​brought the Middle Ages to life for viewers, much as had Lenoir’s chronologically themed Musée des monuments français.22 The primary difference between the two, as Stephen Bann has noted, is that Du Sommerard’s insistence on including representative home furnishings and details from everyday life (like the knights playing chess at right in Figure 6.2), seemed to fix the room at a specific time and place rather than loosely assembling sculptural objects from an entire century, as had Lenoir.23 Although Du Sommerard had attempted to keep ecclesiastical objects within rooms—​notably a chapel—​mirroring their use value, the emerging interest in French heritage created a new secular cult of history that conferred sacred reson­ ance even to objects as functional as furniture. This is why Jacquemart writes so reverently about the necessity of preserving “precious relics,” these “ruins” of “past times” and why Des Esseintes’ repurposing of medieval choir stalls and pulpits in a 19  The anonymous author (in reality Hugo’s son, Charles) of a book dedicated to Victor Hugo’s home decorating on the island of Guernsey makes a similar point: it was only in the 1830s that medieval art began to be considered seriously rather than as “vulgar” or “bar­ baric” (vulgaire ou barbare). Chez Victor Hugo, 23–​24. 20  Jacquemart, Histoire, 1.

21  Du Sommerard, Les Arts au Moyen Âge, 1:iii.

22  Du Sommerard’s choices have been the subject of many scholarly works, among them Francis Haskell’s History and its Images and Stephen Bann’s The Clothing of Clio, which focus primarily on the historical inspiration behind Du Sommerard’s furniture arrangements. 23  Bann, “Nomadic,” 210.

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Figure 6.2. The François Ier room of the Hôtel de Cluny. Chapter 2, Plate 2 of Du Sommerard, Les Arts du Moyen Age. 1840.

commercial context—​to “preach sermons about style” to his suppliers—​seemed so blasphemous to contemporaries.24 By 1884, the notion of “sacrilege” had extended from religion to history and aesthetics. Du Sommerard’s accompanying text further created the illusion of tem­ poral specificity by associating rooms with historical figures. Mary Tudor (“la reine blanche”), sister of Henry VIII, had lived in the “bedroom” of the Hôtel de Cluny (visible in Figures 6.2 and 6.3) after the death of her husband, King Louis XII, in 1515. Although initially linked to the English-​born queen in his text, as Du Sommerard filled the room with sixteenth-​century furniture he changed its name (as in captions such as Figure  6.3) to acknowledge a French mon­ arch: François Ier.25 This example reveals both the increased interest in a particu­ larly French history and the often arbitrary nature of the French medieval and 24  “C’est à ce prix que des reliques précieuses peuvent conserver leur prestige et rehausser les galeries des heureux qui les possèdent.” Jacquemart, Histoire, 8. Bercé, Choay, and Poulot have written extensively on the French development of what Choay calls a “conservation mentality.” 25  “La première de ces deux vues de la chambre de la reine Blanche ou de François Ier, donne en même temps l’ameublement tel qu’il est aujourd’hui, cette salle étant devenue dans la collection de l’auteur celle affectée aux objets mobiliers et autres du temps de François Ier; c’était dans cette chambre que s’était retirée Marie d’Angleterre, sœur de Henri VIII, veuve de Louis XII (1515).” Du Sommerard, Les Arts, 5:10.

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Renaissance divide. The sixteenth century is now generally considered to belong to the Renaissance (it is not insignificant that Leonardo da Vinci spent his last years at the French court), yet many furnishings created at this time still signi­ fied “medieval” for nineteenth-​century audiences. At a time where museal peri­ odization was still developing, what was presented as “medieval” to the public was as often as not an atmospheric theatrical assemblage of “antiquities”; the many suits of armour and gisant tomb visible in Figure  6.3, for example, were hardly the accoutrements of a bedroom, much as the “medieval” interiors of trou­ badour paintings by Pierre-​Henri Révoil or François Fleury-​Richard consisted of amalgams of elements from different historical periods.26 In short, during the Romantic period, the concept of the “medieval” tended to carry aesthetic rather than historical resonance. Elements from the thirteenth, sixteenth, or fourteenth centuries could be mixed and matched indiscriminately to produce a “medieval effect” as in Lenoir’s museum or his tombs for Abelard and Heloise and Blanche of Castile. Furthermore, Du Sommerard himself identified a collection that ranged from the tenth to the seventeenth century—​consisting of armour, sculpted oak furniture, tapestries, enamels, and reliquaries—​as “the art of the Middle Ages” in the title of his five-​volume catalogue.27 Viollet-​ le-​ Duc, who designed medievalizing theatrical sets early in his career, responded visually to the densely packed interiors of Du Sommerard’s installations in his own illustrated study of medieval furniture, published in the first volume (1858) of his Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français (dedicated to “Meubles”).28 In his imagined sketches of the private life of medieval nobles from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, Viollet-​le-​Duc justifies his choices by citing specific historical and literary texts from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries (Figures  6.4 and 6.5). The particularity of bedrooms from the twelfth century onward, he notes, was the flexibility of their “provisional dispositions.” Lighter and more luxurious materials and fabrics inspired by trips to the Orient during the Crusades invited the creation of infinitely variable small “encampments,” comfortable smaller spaces arranged within cavernous castle rooms in order

26  See Bann, The Clothing of Clio, for more about such creative interpretations of the “medieval.”

27  See, for example, an anonymous book review (“Les Arts du Moyen Âge”) of the first volume of Du Sommerard’s eponymous work published in La Revue française in 1838. Here, the term “medieval” is repeated ad nauseum to evoke a museum whose catalog shows that it featured objects made from the tenth to the seventeenth centuries. For more about Du Sommerard’s Romantic ethos see Bann, The Clothing.

28  Martin Bressani (Architecture) has shown the importance of Viollet-​le-​Duc’s formative work as creator of theatrical sets and as a draftsman working for Prosper Mérimée and for Baron Taylor (notably the Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France series).

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Figure 6.3. Another view of the François Ier room of the Hôtel de Cluny. Chapter 2, Plate 3 of Du Sommerard, Les Arts du Moyen Age. 1840.

to respond to shifting needs such as the arrival of unexpected guests, changes in temperature, or receptions.29 Each of his five plates envisions representative furnishings from a particular century based on the texts, drawings, and remnants he had encountered during his restoration projects. He thus illustrates a shift from relatively straightforward collapsible and transportable accommodations of the twelfth century (Figure  6.4)—​bedroom nooks furnished with beds, benches with cushions, carpets and tapestries, candelabras inspired by Middle 29  “Ce qui donnait alors aux appartements un aspect particulier, c’étaient ces dispositions provisoires, ces sortes de campements que l’on établissait au milieu des pièces immenses, pour les distribuer suivant les besoins du moment; puis ce mélange de services domestiques et d’habitudes de luxe.” Viollet-​le-​Duc, Dictionnaire, 1:356. On the influence of travels to the Orient on the luxurious nature of furnishings see 1:359. He acknowledges that he begins with the twelfth century largely because he lacks access to solid information about the practices of earlier periods.

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Figure 6.4. “Twelfth-​Century Castle Bedroom.” Viollet-​le-​Duc, Dictionnaire du mobilier français. Plate 12.

Eastern models—​to the sculpturally dense decorative schemes of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when castles began to introduce private chambers and “immoveable” pieces (Figure 6.5). The frequently varied textiles that had covered the simple furniture of the earlier centuries gave way to permanent decorative elements sculpted directly into the heavy oak furniture,30 which explains the dis­ appearance of the more fragile textile elements.31 Like Jacquemart, Viollet-​le-​Duc emphasizes his contemporaries’ interest in sculpted oak; those pieces that survived into the nineteenth century did so not only because of the durability of their component materials (oak could withstand the con­ stant moving from one royal residence to the next), but also and especially because sculpture (unlike weaving and embroidery) was a valued nineteenth-​century

30  Viollet-​le-​Duc, Dictionnaire, 1:351–​52. He also provides a historical and architectural rational and describes the colour schemes not visible in the black-​and-​white illustrations reproduced in the volume (1:364–​65).

31  There were so few remaining fabric elements that Viollet-​le-​Duc created workshops to train nineteenth-​century workers to make up for gaps in conservation. They produced facsimiles of missing or damaged stained glass, sculpture, wall coverings, and furniture. For examples of the strategies employed by Viollet-​le-​Duc in establishing these workshops and sourcing materials that complemented the originals see Timbert, Matériaux.

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Figure 6.5. “Fifteenth-​Century Castle Bedroom.” Viollet-​le-​Duc, Dictionnaire du mobilier français. Plate 15.

artistic medium.32 In 1882, Edmond Bonnaffé proclaimed French woodworking a “national art,”33 thus exemplifying this section’s overview of the growing French appreciation of medieval artifacts not just as materials to be recycled, but as objects meriting respect for their historical and aesthetical importance.

“Furniture Worthy of an Enchanter’s Palace”: Restoration, Renovation, or Recycling? Victor Hugo, who knew both the Musée des monuments français and the Musée de Cluny, served as a founding member (1835) of the Comité historique des arts et monuments (alongside Prosper Mérimée, Lenoir, and Du Sommerard). Known for defending Notre-​Dame de Paris in his eponymous 1831 novel, he promoted a 32  “La plupart étaient en chêne; il ne fallait rien moins que cette matière résistante unie par les robustes assemblages des charpentiers, pour affronter les transports continuels et les chocs sans nombre […] C’est au moment où l’art se manifeste que l’intérêt commence.” Jacquemart, Histoire, 54.

33  Bonnaffé, “Meubles,” 247. Although Du Sommerard collected a variety of everyday items from shoes to playing cards, enamels to ironwork, very few of the richly coloured fabrics described by Viollet-​le-​Duc had survived.

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“medieval” aesthetic even in his private life.34 During his political exile from France (1851–​1870), Hugo embarked upon the creation of elaborate “Gothic” rooms in the home he decorated on the island of Guernsey. “Hauteville House,” now a museum, can be visited today; it is preserved largely as it was at Hugo’s death in 1885.35 An anonymous 1864 text entitled Victor Hugo chez lui (“Victor Hugo at Home,” in reality penned by his son, Charles), publicized the faraway house for Hugo’s readers in France and abroad. It proclaimed Hugo a leader of the conser­ vation movement (through works such as Notre-​Dame de Paris and Voyages sur les bords du Rhin) and a modern-​day Du Sommerard who “surrounds himself with, seeks out, and purchases antique furniture; he wants to live in the past.”36 A trans­ lation of this text published in the American Art Journal in 1866 proclaimed the house as containing “furniture worthy of an enchanter’s palace.”37 Closer examination of the “medieval” sections of Hugo’s house (which also combined Dutch, Japanese, and Chinese elements) reveals that his “conservation” methods differed dramatically from the preservation and cataloging practices of Du Sommerard or Viollet-​le-​Duc; they were, in fact, closer in practice to the imagina­ tive repurposing of Alexandre Lenoir.38 Because the Hugo family had to auction their Paris belongings in 1852 in order to avoid government confiscation, they sought new “inexpensive” furniture for their Guernsey home.39 Hugo welcomed 34  The windows of one of Hugo’s childhood apartments looked onto the courtyard of the Musée des monuments historiques. See Savy, “Victor Hugo,” 15–​18. Hugo’s penchant for old chests, tapestries, and swords was well-​documented by visitors to his home at the rue Royale, now the Maison Victor Hugo on the Place des Vosges, whose website documents the décor of the apartment before 1852:  www.maisonsvictorhugo.paris.fr/​en/​museum-​collections/​ place-​des-​vosges-​paris/​visit-​place-​des-​vosges-​apartment-​it-​was-​victor-​hugos-​time.

35  The website “La Maison de Victor Hugo à Guernesey” (http://​hautevillehouse.com/​) provides a remarkable guided virtual tour (lavishly illustrated and commented) of the house as it stands today. The decorative scheme of Hauteville Fairy, which Hugo decorated for his mistress, Juliette Drouet, exists only in the panels now on display at the Maison Victor Hugo in Paris. For an illustrated analysis of both houses see Charles, Visions.

36  “Il se complaît au milieu des meubles anciens, il les recherche, il en achète toujours; il veut vivre dans le passé … On ne déjeune pas chez Lucullus, mais chez Du Sommerard.” Chez Victor Hugo, 25, 38.

37  “The Home of Victor Hugo,” 90. This translation was published anonymously under this title and with no information linking it to the French original. I will use this translation unless otherwise noted. 38  For a reading of Hugo’s techniques in Guernsey as bricolage see Chu, “Victor Hugo.”

39  Poet Théophile Gautier commemorated the Paris apartment at 37 Rue de la Tour d’Auvergne in an article for La Presse, lamenting the dispersion of Hugo’s “poème domestique,” and encouraging the public to buy pieces of it not as “meubles,” but as “relics.” Reprinted in Escholier, Victor Hugo, 275–​80. Hovasse describes the conditions surrounding the auction, its overwhelming popular interest, Madame Hugo’s recriminations against her husband’s

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the opportunity to embark upon “treasure hunts” that he chronicled in notebooks, roaming the island in search of pirate’s booty: the abundant sculpted oak pieces from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries allegedly brought from the mainland by Channel Island smugglers. He, family, and friends assembled choir stalls, wood panels, and some sixty oak chests, to which he gave descriptive names such as “the trunk with apostles” (coffre aux apôtres) or “trunk with blue painted Gothic panels” (coffre à panneaux gothiques peint en bleu).40 Those who collaborated with him, such as woodworker Thomas Gore, recollected that “Whenever the oppor­ tunity presented itself he would purchase antique [oak] chests … He acquired many specimens in the country parishes of Guernsey, rescuing some from barns, stables, and cowsheds at the cost of a few francs. These chests he afterwards care­ fully renovated.”41 Gore’s choice of the word “renovation” rather than “restoration” to describe the “perfect forest of sculpted oak” (une véritable forêt de chêne sculpté)42 in the “Oak Gallery” on the second floor of Hauteville House (Figures 6.6 and 6.7) reflects Viollet-​le-​Duc’s characterization of the new tendency to differentiate historically motivated “restoration” (respecting the stylistic vernacular of a past moment) from “renovation” (rebuilding or updating using modern techniques).43 Quite unlike Du Sommerard, who saved, catalogued, and purchased space in a fifteenth-​century mansion in which to display surviving medieval furnishings, Hugo salvaged them as raw materials to be disassembled and rebuilt as new objects (chairs, buffets, armoires, or decorative pillars) according to designs of his own fantastic invention. “Furniture worthy of an enchanter” aptly describes the result.44 Corinne Charles, a specialist of medieval furniture, has described and documented the ways in which Hugo maintained sculptural elements of the ori­ ginal chests of drawers, sideboards, and wall panels; he reassembled them into new creations:  the enormous mantelpieces, ceiling-​length cabinets, benches, chairs, armoires, and bedframes visible in Figures 6.6 and 6.7. In addition, he sketched love of old decorative objects rather than “real” furniture, and Hugo’s own sorrow about losing these furnishings, which he called “the visible form of one’s souvenirs” (la forme vis­ ible de vos souvenirs) (Victor Hugo, 49–​53). 40  The nine agendas from Guernsey have been published in Victor Hugo’s Oeuvres complètes edited by Jean Massin (Paris: Club français du livre, 1967–​70), vols. 10, 12, 13, and 14. 41  Wack, Romance, 41.

42  “The Home,” 107; Chez Victor Hugo, 58.

43  “Rebuilding, in the style then prevailing.” Viollet-​le-​Duc, “Restoration,” 11.

44  Corinne Charles, a specialist of medieval furniture, has carefully analyzed the ways in which Hugo interacted with these salvaged materials to create new artistic products of his own design.

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Figure 6.6. Maxime Lalanne. Etching of the Oak Gallery of Hauteville House. Chez Victor Hugo, between pages 30 and 31.

new sculptural motifs to surround the older ones, hiring local woodworkers to execute them from his drawings (he occasionally sculpted elements himself).45 The forest effect in the “Oak Gallery” is produced by the Renaissance columns and elab­ orate oak candelabra made to Hugo’s specifications. Despite his son’s claims of an interest in conservation and a desire to live in the past, it is clear that Hugo did not practice “collecting behavior” (he did not wish to surround himself with authentic, unadulterated medieval furniture as did Du Sommerard). Instead, he wanted to live in the “medieval” past of his imagination, a fictional projection rationalized as “authentic” and in which, like Lenoir’s “medieval” tombs, disparate elements were mixed and matched, pieces of sculpted furniture whittled down and incorporated into an aestheticized personal ensemble. Hugo’s Hauteville House is not a museum but a new artistic installation. The entire house is, as Charles Hugo put it, “a work of art whose very materials are works of art.”46 45  Charles, Visions, 24–​48.

46  Chez Victor Hugo, 22. Hugo’s bricolage, although seemingly iconoclastic, is not far removed from the practices of Alexandre Lenoir who, as Mary Shepard has shown, often made similar artistic assemblages from medieval fragments as in the case of his “Tomb for Abelard and Heloise.”

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Figure 6.7. The Oak Gallery. Photograph by an unknown artist reproduced in Wack, The Romance, between pages 38 and 39.

While Schiffer would classify such nineteenth-​century modifications as recyc­ ling (“remanufacture” of the object for use in another product), their myth-​making function brings them closer to the concept of bricolage as defined by Claude

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Lévi-​Strauss in The Savage Mind (1962).47 Hugo imbued his new creations with legendary resonance by linking them to evocative Biblical or Latinate inscriptions reinforced by the visual motifs employed in the original sculptures.48 A prime example is the “seat of the ancestors” (le fauteuil des ancêtres) in the dining room, a high-​backed canopied chair resembling a fifteenth-​century choir stall (“la stalle des pères,” as Hugo called it in his agenda), which bears the words “Absentes adsunt” (the absent are here). A golden plaque figures Christ, the Good Samaritan, and underneath it a black Virgin followed by the coat of arms of the Hugos of Lorraine and the writer’s motto, “Ego Hugo.” Placed in the shadows under the words “CELLA PATRUM DEFUNCTORUM” (the sanctuary of fathers), a chain prevented living visitors from sitting on it. A  further inscription, “Hic nihil alias aliquid” (Here nothing, elsewhere something), fuses past with present, honoring the dead among the living.49 In dismantling pieces from different eras without documenting the state in which he found them, Hugo destroyed the scientific value they would have held for archaeologists and art historians such as Viollet-​le-​Duc and Jacquemart.50 Paradoxically, however, Hugo’s recycling did respect some aspects of “collecting behavior”; he preserved antique sculpted furniture that would otherwise have been recycled as firewood. He thus “restored” aspects of these pieces by embed­ ding their original sculptural motifs within new functional works of art described as “medieval” by Hugo’s family and visitors. It is important to remember, as Norman Cantor has noted, that nineteenth-​century people knew much less about the historical period from the fifth to the fifteenth century than we know today.51 As a result, Hugo’s confections looked “medieval” to his readers, whose major reference point for the Middle Ages was the theatrical brand of Gothic 47  Schiffer varies term depending on whether the original material has changed shape.

48  Petra Chu has provided just such a reading of his reuse of Chinese elements in “Victor Hugo.”

49  Charles described this seat in detail, linking its inscriptions (particularly the “Ego Hugo”) to his need to leave his mark. A  colour photograph of this seat is accessible here: https://www.maisonsvictorhugo.paris.fr/fr/oeuvre/stalle-des-peres/fauteuil-des-ancetres [consulted January 25, 2019]. Chantal Brière discusses at length Hugo’s fascination with the past’s manifestation in the present and provides a rich mythological reading of the different motifs he included in this work (508–​9).

50  Greenhalgh discusses many similar provincial stories of salvage and repurposing in Destruction. The recycling of old materials into new creations is precisely what angers Viollet-​le-​Duc in Lenoir’s Musée des monuments historiques: it created additional challenges for his restoration work at Saint-​Denis. 51  Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages, 11.

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medievalism publicized in his 1831 novel Notre-​Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-​Dame). Set in 1482, the text, illustrations, and staged performances were full of references to late medieval furnishings.52 The Notre-​Dame de Paris portal of Hauteville House (Figure 6.8), for example, is modelled upon Célestin Nanteuil’s frontispice to the novel and it creates, as Charles notes, a “meandering path through Hugolian thought.”53 Although the Notre-​Dame de Paris portal—​ like Du Sommerard’s book title (Les Arts du Moyen Âge)—​overtly places such creative experimentation under the aegis of the medieval, the artistic motifs visible in Hauteville House cross the globe and reveal the extent to which the concept of the “medieval” has always absorbed a range of exotic and temporal elements signifying “old” or “exotic.” Before it was proven that the Gothic style developed in France, the “medieval” was closely linked to the “Oriental” (the Levant). Figures like Lenoir widely diffused the idea that Crusaders had imported the Gothic style from Syria.54 Hugo’s Notre-​Dame de Paris similarly links Europe to Andalusia and the Middle East. Although set in Paris, it introduces characters who have travelled the world, from the former Saracen-​descended gypsies who kid­ napped Esmeralda in Reims as a baby (they are said to have travelled from Algeria, Egypt, and Spain to Poland, Germany, and France) to Esmeralda herself, described alternatively as “Andalusian,” “Roman,” and “Egyptian.” She sings a medieval Spanish romance about a richly decorated treasure chest discovered in Hercules’ forbidden temple by Don Rodrigo, the last of the Gothic kings—​“Un confre de gran riqueza/​[…] Alarabes de cavallo/​Sin poderse menear”—​while accompanied by gypsies playing African instruments.55 Similarly, at Hauteville House, Hugo’s medieval and Renaissance furniture did not stand alone in period rooms. Pieces were situated within a display featuring items from around the 52  See, for example, chap. 5, “Le Retrait où se dit ses heures Monsieur Louis de France,” with its dense ekphrasis. Ségolène Le Men has productively explored the numerous illustrated versions of the novel (La Cathédrale illustrée).

53  “La viste offre en réalité un parcours à travers les méandres de la pensée hugolienne.” Charles, “Moyen Âge,” 198. 54  The Arab Court of the Musée des monuments historiques constitutes just one example. See Shepard, “L’Oeuf sacré.”

55  See, for example, the chapters of Notre-​Dame de Paris entitled “Besos para Golpes” where Gringoire first describes her in detail and “Histoire d’une galette” where readers learn of her kidnapping. The choice of Esmeralda’s Spanish song, with its emphasis on Don Rodrigo’s dis­ covery of an ornate chest featuring Arabic soldiers on horseback was not incidental; Hugo’s older brother Abel had translated the Romanceros into French in 1822: Romances historiques traduites de l’espagnol.

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Figure 6.8. Maxime Lalanne. Etching of the Vestibule at Hauteville House. Chez Victor Hugo, between pages 12 and 13.

world:  eighteenth-​century French and Dutch tapestries, furniture, and Delft china; Indian, Japanese, and Chinese tapestries, screens, and ceramics; and Hugo’s own painted and sculpted wall panels inspired by the pieces he had

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collected.56 Despite his son’s claim that he liked to live in the past, the use of the word “medieval” to characterize his home in Guernsey served less as a temporal reference than as a global marker of alterity. Ironically, at the very moment Hugo deployed his expansive Romantic vision upon the decoration of Hauteville House (1857–​1862), colleagues in Paris were arguing that contemporaries should emulate the Germans in applying scientific methods to collecting and display, and that they should classify extant objects by “school” or artist, time period, and regional provenance. In the inaugural issue of La Gazette des Beaux-​Arts (1859), founder Charles Blanc appealed to nationalism in developing more rational French curatorial strategies than simply “pleasing the eye” (Lenoir’s and Hugo’s aesthetic). Contributors to this publication regularly praised Du Sommerard for the prescience of his efforts at conservation, which had allowed the next generation of scholars to perform systematic studies of the objects displayed in what became, after his death in 1842, a national museum. In an 1882 article about sculpted wooden furniture, for example, Bonnaffé praises the collection of Frédéric Spitzer (1815–​1890), a Vienna-​born art dealer and collector living in Paris since 1852, as having continued and perfected Du Sommerard’s ini­ tial collecting practices by forming complete “series” of representative samples from different periods, schools, and geographical regions. He displayed them to friends and colleagues in a specially constructed mansion near the Bois de Boulogne (Figure 6.9).57 Spitzer’s collection, while not open to the general public, was the subject of many illustrated articles during his lifetime, including Bonnaffé’s essay for the Gazette des Beaux-​Arts, in which he relied on the “completeness” of Spitzer’s collection to propose that it was possible to establish a medieval “geography of furniture.” Bonnaffé traces the passage of itinerant Flemish woodcarvers as they moved through France, Venice, and on to Spain, drawing conclusions about the regional practices of different artisans, the teaching of their “schools,” and the 56  Most scholars focus on the medieval elements of Hauteville House, as does Charles (“Moyen Age et Romantisme”). Petra Chu has recently expanded studies of the house to examine the intersection between the Chinese and the Gothic in Hugo’s design scheme for Hauteville House and Hauteville-​Fairy. Colour photographs at the Hauteville House web site give a sense of the striking visual dimension of this juxtaposition of oak furniture with Chinese ceramics. http://hautevillehouse.com/category/iii-4-deuxieme-etage/#.

57  Bonnaffé, “Meubles,” 247–​50. At his death in 1890, Spitzer’s collection contained some 4,000 objects organized in forty “series” of objects (from ivories, tapestries, and enamel to stained glass, bronze, and sculpted wood), most from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. When no single international organization could amass the vast sums necessary to acquire the collection as a whole (described as “the eighth wonder of the world”), it was dispersed at auction in 1893. See Stammers, The Purchase of the Past, chap. 6.

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Figure 6.9. La Collection Spitzer, reproduced in Bonnaffé, Le Musée Spitzer, between pages 10 and 11.

recognizable national features of the work they produced, with special emphasis on the excellence of French woodcarving of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen­ turies. Such information, marshaled in support of cultural supremacy, inflamed transnational debates about the origin of the Gothic (French), the superiority of certain types of medieval art (like French wooden furniture of the fifteenth and sixteenth century), and the national affiliation of medieval artists (the Primitifs as French rather than Flemish or Italian).58 Such disputes retrospectively imposed nineteenth-​century notions of nation-​states on a period whose allegiances and borders fluctuated dramatically over the thousand years of medieval history. Hugo, despite his early commitment to preservationism through articles such as “Guerre aux démolisseurs,” and his long service on the Comité historique des arts et monuments, did not, as we have seen, share Spitzer’s or Bonnaffé’s interest in classification by material, school, dates, or function. He could have dedicated a room to the sixty oak chests he collected, transforming them into scientific specimens, but he did not. Instead, he chose to preserve their artistic interest by

58  For an overview of the international competition to “claim” painters such as Van Eyck, see Passini, “Pour une histoire,” and Emery and Morowitz, Consuming the Past.

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incorporating the most interesting sculptural motifs into new functional objects serving the needs of his family and his own mythological constructions: whimsical beds inscribed Nox et Lux, mantelpieces, armoires, and chandeliers. The desire to recycle medieval and Renaissance furnishings in order to experi­ ence a temporally flexible and exotic “Middle Ages” of one’s own design was shared by fellow novelist Pierre Loti (pseudonym of naval officer Julien Viaud) in his house in Rochefort (on the Atlantic coast of France).59 Although well-​known for his Oriental-​themed rooms (a Turkish salon, a mosque, and Japanese pagoda), he also created adjoining “Gothic” and “Renaissance” rooms in which he could lounge in modern attire (Figure  6.10) or recreate medieval feasts, replete with period food, utensils, and costumes, in which characters representing North Africans, Middle Easterners, and French nationals consorted.60 Like Hugo, Loti salvaged and repurposed (“recycled”) materials from construction sites: the “Gothic dining room” visible in Figure 6.10, for example, incorporated five flamboyant bays taken from a demolished bell tower and milled to fit the dimensions of the room. The monumental fireplace was assembled from stones from a fifteenth-​century church and fifteenth-​ and sixteenth-​century wood panels.61 Visitors described every bit of the room as “purely fifteenth century” and evoked the illusion of having been transported back five hundred years.62 Others, like those who visited Hugo’s Hauteville House, likened the experience to “enchantment,” particularly during the costumed reenactments Loti organized in these rooms: “the effect comes from magic and dream, giving the illusion of a marvelous palace where one enters an astounding and never-​before-​witnessed feast.”63 59  The Maison de Pierre Loti has created an application offering a virtual 3D visit while the museum is under renovation:  https://www.maisondepierreloti.fr/visite-virtuelle. The his­ tory of these rooms and their design can be consulted in Liot, Maison, a richly illustrated text that also includes images of the costumes and tableware that Loti created for his 1888 Gothic dinner.

60  One of the first scenes during the dinner was the pardon granted a “Sarrasin” captive. See Emery, “Pierre Loti’s ‘Memories’.”

61  Loti claimed that the bays for his “salle à manger gothique” came from Marennes, but others, notably Marie-​Pascale Bault, have disagreed, proposing Saint-​Just as the correct loca­ tion. See Liot, Maison, 49. A journal entry by Loti from January 6, 1887 indicates a transfer of sculpted stones from the Marennes belltower to Rochefort. Loti, Journal, 40.

62  “Il n’y a pas une pierre, pas une boisierie, pas un détail d’architecture, d’ameublement ou d’ornementation qui ne soit du plus pur quinzième siècle. Dès le seuil, on se sent rajeuni—​ vieilli serait peut-​être plus juste—​de cinq cents ans.” Parisis (pseudonym of Emile Blavet), “Festival Louis XI,” 2.

63  “Et tout cela tient déjà de la féerie et du rêve, donne l’illusion d’un palais merveilleux où l’on entre, préparé à quelque fête étonnante, jamais vue […].” Sémézies, 214.

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Figure 6.10. Dornac, Nos Contemporains chez eux. Right side of the “Medieval dining room” in Loti’s Rochefort home. La Revue Illustrée, 1 March 1893.

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In positioning themselves as collectors, set designers, and interior decorators, Hugo and Loti claimed to transport visitors to the past through contact with his­ torical “relics”:  objects having truly existed in the medieval period. The rooms they created are at once “medieval” (because some of the furniture is in part authentic, even if heavily transformed in form and function) and “enchantments” (because of the sensation they produce of travelling through time and space). They mixed objects synchronically and diachronically, and yet these rooms nonethe­ less fostered public enthusiasm for what had come to be understood as “medi­ eval,” whether historically accurate or not. In both homes, rooms furnished with fifteenth-​ and sixteenth-​century meubles became stand-​ins for the thousand-​year medieval period: infinitely flexible in the ways in which its component parts could be arranged or manipulated.

The Ever Mobile Middle Ages The nineteenth-​century admiration of the constructed “medieval” rooms of Du Sommerard, Hugo, Spitzer, and Loti returns to the condemnation of Des Esseintes’ use of medieval choir stalls for preaching sermons about style. Why were Hugo and Loti praised for their “preservation” and “renovations” (and compared to Du Sommerard) when, as we have seen, they were just as cavalier (if not more so) as Des Esseintes in recycling and repurposing these materials? One cannot simply blame Des Esseintes’ secular reuse of ecclesiastical architecture since both Hugo and Loti incorporated choir stalls into the fabric of their interiors (Du Sommerard had tried to separate the two by keeping his Salle François Ier for largely secular objects and dedicating a chapel to ecclesiastical remnants). In looking more closely, such condemnations appear to stem not from their actual treatment of medieval furniture, but from rhetorical framing: the ways the “renovators” spoke of their work. Those who voiced no respect for the archaeological or historical value of the medieval materials they repurposed were described as sacrilegious “barbarians” for treating these “relics” as decorative elements within purely modern installations.64 Those like Lenoir, Jacquemart, Du Sommerard, Hugo, and Loti, on the other hand, overwhelmingly repeated words like “treasure,” “relic,” “restoration,” “preservation,” “resurrection” with regard to the objects from the past they manipulated. They displayed a reverent approach to collection and dis­ play even when dramatically altering the original pieces in the service of new artistic agendas. Their explicit historical appreciation and their goal of creating 64  See Jacquemart quoted above. These examples of reuse of ecclesiastical items are those cited by Proust in his 1904 “Mort des cathédrales.”

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an atmosphere calculated to further visitors’ positive impression of medieval cul­ ture thus allowed Hugo and Loti to take their place in contemporaries’ eyes as latter-​day Du Sommerards. Their “period” rooms were no less fanciful than Des Esseintes’, but the veneer of historian use value conferred by descriptions of their creative reuse made such modifications conceptually palatable during a period actively engaged in building French history into a secular cult.65 Although Hugo’s and Loti’s houses initially survived because of the perceived historical and aesthetic interest of the objects they collected, their “medieval rooms” exist today as creative extensions of their literary work: formerly mobile furnishings now serve as fixed material reflections of their multivalent artistic imaginations. Furthermore, the value that they—​as celebrities—​placed on the artistic potential of medieval furniture reinforced its value for contemporaries, encouraging new acts of conservation by fans, like those who purchased objects from the Hugo sale of 1852 not because of a historical value they did not neces­ sarily know how to gauge, but as “relics” of the great author.66 In spite of recycling activities diametrically incompatible with conservational processes as we know them today, Hugo and Loti ultimately ensured—​through their celebrity—​the pres­ ervation of medieval remnants that might otherwise have disappeared. Specialists now inventorying and restoring the Loti museum, for example, continue to make surprising discoveries, such as rare early modern Ottoman textiles imported by Loti to France for his Turkish salon.67 Petra Chu has recently surmised that some of the Chinese textiles in Hauteville House may well be antique silks purchased by Hugo from the looting of Yuanming Yuan (often called the “Summer Palace”) in 1860.68 Du Sommerard’s atmospheric curation, on the other hand, has largely vanished from the present-​day Musée national du Moyen Âge (though his nation­ alist focus has not). The most valuable of the objects he collected continue to be presented and rearranged in new exhibits, much as objects from the Spitzer collection, dispersed by auction after his death, are now displayed in collections around the world. A rereading of Hugo’s and Loti’s reuse of medieval materials as bricolage—​ user-​based tactics cobbled together to circumvent the inflexibility of institutional 65  The distance of Guernsey and Rochefort from Paris no doubt also helped reinforce the legend of their homes’ “enchantments”; they were known primarily through visitors’ admiring prose. The development of a nineteenth-​century cult of history is traced by the majority of authors who contributed to Pierre Nora’s edited collection, Lieux de mémoire (“Realms of Memory”). 66  Hovasse, Victor Hugo, 51.

67  www.maisondepierreloti.fr/​les-​collections. 68  See Chu, Victor Hugo, 164.

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structures and strategies (De Certeau)—​casts the two writers’ personal choices in a more complex light.69 Their emphasis on reactivating or “resurrecting” antique objects in the modern world, on transforming furniture into magical vehicles per­ mitting travel to a medieval past where cross-​cultural sharing was the norm, may well have constituted an attempt to circumvent the increasing rigidity of science-​ driven and nationalist-​inspired classificatory systems that led some to compare museums to morgues.70 Spitzer, after all, was known primarily for having constructed the rooms of his home to emphasize differences in national cultural production:  a “French room” displayed a variety of works in different media, while the room dedicated to silver and gold works served as the “theater of great battles between the knights of French art and the burghers of German art.”71 The six-​volume catalogue of the 4,000 items Spitzer had collected by his death, classified by material and national “schools,” made visible for contemporaries the remarkable cultural production of France during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Hugo and Loti, in contrast, consciously blurred tem­ poral and national distinctions in their more cosmopolitan and emotionally appealing decorative installations where antique Chinese or Japanese sculptures mixed with medieval sculpted wood (Figure 6.7) or where French nationals reenacted a medieval event at which North Africans, French, and Italians shared a feast.72 Their spaces of “enchantment” presented a flexible and more inclusive alternative to the nationalist classifications increasingly advocated by scholars, a configuration still all-​to-​frequent in the public’s tendency to consider the Middle Ages as Eurocentric. The French art establishment and collectors such as Bonnaffé were devastated when the French government could not raise the funds to acquire the Spitzer collection as a whole: they considered it a “national treasure” because it had been painstakingly assembled from so many individual collections from all over Europe and Russia.73 The high-​profile auction, which took place over a three-​month period, re-​dispersed the medieval and Renaissance objects throughout the world. 69  De Certeau, The Practice, xviii–​xix.

70  Carrier provides many examples in Museum Skepticism.

71  “La salle de l’orfèvrerie est le théâtre des grandes batailles entre les chevaliers de l’art français et les burgraves de l’art allemand … Chacun défend ses théories favorites.” Bonnaffé, Le Musée Spitzer, 15.

72  Their claim to a more global Middle Ages seems prescient in the light of Ulrich Beck and Edgar Grande’s Cosmpolitan Europe, which argues for the importance of moving beyond the now traditional, yet rigid definitions of nation-​states and to establish more porous definitions of borders and identities. 73  Others such as Arsène Alexandre and Alphonse de Calonne felt, as Tom Stammers has pointed out, that its “industrial” and largely pedagogical nature made it less worthy of pres­ ervation than more creative works of art. Stammers, The Purchase of the Past, chap. 6.

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Today, the allegedly perfect group of “series” collected by Spitzer and so revered by contemporaries like Bonnaffé has been exposed as an illusion:  Spitzer occa­ sionally worked with talented modern artisans to create and disseminate histor­ ical fakes to “complete” his collection.74 Unlike Viollet-​le-​Duc, who acknowledged putting teams together to replicate missing medieval elements he needed for res­ toration projects, Spitzer presented his “discoveries” as perfectly preserved since the Middle Ages. The creative “restoration” of damaged articles from the fourteenth century or outright new production of “medieval relics” exposes the self-​referentiality of seemingly sound “scientific” theories such as Bonnaffé’s “geography of furni­ ture.” Motivated by a nationalist desire for French primacy, he based his study on objects in a collection established precisely to create the illusion of distinct national traditions.75 The organization and interpretation of medieval furniture as a reflection of personal and institutional objectives was not, then, so very far removed from Hugo’s and Loti’s creative reuse of medieval remnants, which they placed in the service of a less nationalistic and more globally inclusive vision of the Middle Ages. In The Social Life of Things, Arjun Appadurai emphasizes the importance of the societies in which things circulate, insisting that we must follow “the things themselves, for their meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses, their trajectories” and it is these “things-​in-​motion that illuminate their human and social context.”76 Although Appadurai explicitly refers to the exchange of “things,” such exchanges rely upon humans to set them into the motion that ultimately illuminates their context. This is an activity common to all the figures I  have examined in this essay: they reused, recycled, and relocated medieval objects for use in their own particular context and for their own purposes. Blatant creative reuse such as Hugo’s and Loti’s invites questions about original value, about what medieval furniture might have been when it was built and how its use shifted over the years.77 Flagrantly inauthentic popular culture manifestations of interest in the Middle Ages—​from the use of everyday medieval objects in Renaissance Faires

74  Cordera, La Fabricca, traces the afterlife of many objects acquired at auction, especially on 135–​45. 75  See Cordera, La Fabbrica, especially 53–​63, and Truman, “Jewelry.” 76  Appadurai, Social Life, 5.

77  Corinne Charles’ work on Hauteville House is particularly interesting in this regard because she juxtaposes photographs of Hugo’s creations with medieval furniture on display in European museums.

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and movies—​generate similar questions about the “real” Middle Ages. They often draw the uninitiated to medieval studies in ways that scholarly works—​presented as “complete” and impermeable, like Spitzer’s collection—​do not.78 And yet, even such institutionally approved and complete series may prove—​with the passage of time and better knowledge—​to be instances of creative scholarly reuse. This is as much the case for Spitzer’s “perfect” collection and Bonnaffé’s erroneous theory of the “geography of furniture” as it is for Gaston Paris’ invention of “courtly love.”79 The Middle Ages is, in reality, a concept-​in-​motion, the organization, placement, and interpretation of its component pieces very much like the assembly of the period rooms I have discussed here. Speaking of the “medieval” at any given time involves choosing and piecing together fragments of a thousand-​year history as one might arrange furniture in the rooms of a house. There is no single “Middle Ages,” but rather a series of elements from specific periods that move among a broad range of cultural associations related to memory, aesthetics, economics, religion, and cultural heritage, constantly recycled or renovated and fixed in new configurations to serve the argument of the person assembling them. The organization of different parts in particular ways—​like the rearrangement of meubles—​exposes, above all, the presentist preoccupations of those who reuse and reinterpret aspects of the period known as the Middle Ages.

78  See Cramer, “Reenactment.”

79  Matthews discusses this tendency of medieval studies to be received as medievalism with the passage of time (Medievalism: A History, 176–​78), as do the contributors to Emery and Utz (Medievalism: Key Critical Terms).

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Bibliography

Alcouffe, Daniel, Anne Dion-​Tenenbaum, and Amaury Lefébure, eds. Le mobilier du musée du Louvre. Dijon: Editions Faton, 1993. Appadurai, Arjun. The Social Life of Things. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2011. “Les Arts au Moyen Âge,” La Revue française (December 1838): 140–​43. Bann, Stephen. The Clothing of Clio: A Study of the Representation of History in Nineteenth-​ Century Britain and France. Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1984. ——​​. “A Nomadic Investment in History: Pierre Loti’s House at Rochefort-​sur-​mer.” In Writer Houses and the Making of Memory, edited by Harald Hendrix, 207–​20. New York: Routledge, 2011. Beck, Ulrich, and Edgar Grande. Cosmopolitan Europe. Translated by Ciaran Cronan. Cambridge: Polity, 2007. Bercé, Françoise. Des Monuments historiques au patrimoine, du XVIIIe siècle à nos jours. Paris: Flammarion, 2000. Bonnaffé, Edmond. “Meubles et bois sculptés.” Gazette des Beaux-​Arts (January 1882): 246–​68. ——​​. Le Musée Spitzer. Paris: Ménard, 1890. Bressani, Martin. Architecture and the Historical Imagination: Eugène-​Emmanuel Viollet-​le-​Duc, 1814–​1879. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Brière, Chantal. Victor Hugo et le roman architectural. Paris: Champion, 2007. Cantor, Norman. Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century. New York: Morrow, 1991. Carrier, David. Museum Skepticism: A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. Charles, Corinne. “Moyen Âge et Romantisme: Le Mobilier de Victor Hugo.” Revue suisse d’art et d’archéologie 54 (1997): 197–​206. ——​​. Visions d’intérieurs, du meuble au décor/​Interior Visions: From Furniture to Decoration. Paris: Éditions des Musées de Paris, 2003. Charpy, Manuel. “Le Théâtre des objets:  Espaces privés, culture matérielle et identité bourgeoise. Paris, 1830–​1914.” Unpublished PhD thesis, Université François-​Rabelais de Tours, 2010. Chez Victor Hugo. Paris: Cadet et Luquet, 1864. Choay, Françoise. The Invention of the Historic Monument. Translated by Lauren M. O’Connell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

MEUBLES

Chu, Petra ten-​Doesschate. “Victor Hugo and the Romantic Dream of China.” In Beyond Chinoiserie: Artistic Exchange between China and the West during the Late Qing Dynasty (1796–​1911), edited by Petra ten-​Doesschate Chu and Jennifer Milam, 149–​77. Leiden: Brill, 2018. Cordera, Paola. La Fabbrica del Rinascimento: Frédéric Spitzer mercante d’arte e collezionista nell’Europa delle nuove nazioni. Bologna:  Bononia University Press, 2014. Cramer, Michael. “Reenactment.” In Medievalism: Key Critical Terms, edited by Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz, 207–​14. Cambridge: Brewer, 2014. Emery, Elizabeth. “Misunderstood Symbolism:  Rereading the Subjective Objects of Montesquiou’s First Maison d’un artiste.” In Symbolist Objects:  Materiality and Subjectivity at the fin de siècle, edited by Claire O’Mahony, 18–​43. High Wycombe: Rivendale Press, 2009. ——​​. “Pierre Loti’s ‘Memories’ of the Middle Ages: Feasting on the Gothic in 1888.” In Memory and Commemoration in Medieval Culture, edited by Elma Brenner, Meredith Cohen, and Mary Franklin-​Brown, 279–​98. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. ——​​. Romancing the Cathedral: Gothic Architecture in Fin-​de-​Siècle French Culture. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001. Emery, Elizabeth, and Laura Morowitz. Consuming the Past: The Medieval Revival in Fin-​de-​siècle France. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Emery, Elizabeth, and Richard Utz. Medievalism: Key Critical Terms. Cambridge: Brewer, 2014. Escholier, Raymond. Victor Hugo raconté par ceux qui l’ont vu. Paris: Stock, 1932. Greenhalgh, Michael. Destruction of Cultural Heritage in 19th-​Century France: Old Stones versus Modern Identities. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Haskell, Francis. History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. “The Home of Victor Hugo.” American Art Journal 6 (May 31, 1866): 90–​91 and 6 (June 7, 1866): 107–​8. Hovasse, Jean-​Marc. Victor Hugo, vol. 2. Paris: Fayard, 2008. Huysmans, J.-​K. À rebours. Paris: Crès, 1922. Jacquemart, Albert. Histoire du mobilier. Recherches et notes sur les objets d’art. Paris: Hachette, 1876. Klack-​Eitzen, Charlotte, Wiebke Haase, and Tanja Weißgraf. Heilige Röcke. Kleider für Skulpturen in Kloster Wienhausen. Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2013. Latour, Bruno. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Translated by Steve Woolgar. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013. Le Men, Ségolène. La Cathédrale illustrée du Hugo à Monet: Regard romantique et modernité. Paris: CNRS, 2008.

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Liot, Thierry. La Maison de Pierre Loti à Rochefort, 1850–​1923. Chauray: Éditions patrimoines et médias, 1999. Loti, Pierre. Journal, 1887–​1895. Edited by Alain Quella-​Villéger and Bruno Vercier. Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2012. “Maison de Pierre Loti.” Accessed January 5, 2019. www.maisondepierreloti.fr/​ la-​maison. “Maison de Victor Hugo à Guernesey.” Accessed January 5, 2019. http://​ hautevillehouse.com/​. Matthews, David. Medievalism: A Critical History. Cambridge: Brewer, 2015. Montesquiou, Robert de. Les Pas Effacés, 2 vols. Paris: Émile-​Paul Frères, 1923. Murphy, Kevin. Memory and Modernity: Viollet-​le-​Duc at Vézelay. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1999. Nora, Pierre, ed. Les Lieux de mémoire, 3 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1997. Parisis (Émile Blavet). “Festival Louis XI.” Le Figaro, April 14, 1888, 1–​2. Passini, Michela. “Pour une histoire transnationale des expositions d’art ancien:  Les Primitifs exposés à Bruges, Sienne, Paris et Düsseldorf (1902–​ 1904).” Intermédialités 15 (2010): 15–​32. Poulot, Dominique. Patrimoine et modernité. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998. Proust, Marcel. “La Mort des cathédrales.” Le Figaro, August 16, 1904. Reprinted in Contre Sainte-​Beuve, 782–​83. Paris: Gallimard, 1971. Savy, Nicole. “Victor Hugo et le Musée des Monuments français:  les effets d’une enfance au musée.” Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 95 (1995): 13–​26. Schiffer, Michael. “Toward a Unified Science of the Cultural Past.” In Research Strategies in Historical Archeology, edited by Stanley South, 13–​50. New York: Academic, 1977. Schiffer, Michael, Theodore Downing, and Michael McCarthy. “Waste Not, Want Not:  An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Reuse in Tucson, Arizona.” In Modern Material Culture: The Archaeology of Us, edited by Richard Gould and Michael Schiffer, 67–​86. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2014. Sémézies, Marcel. “Chronique de Rochefort. Fête Louis XI.” La Nouvelle Revue 52 (May–​June 1888): 214–​18. Shepard, Mary. “Alexandre Lenoir’s Tomb for Blanche of Castile.” In The Power of Place: A Festschrift for Janet Goodhue Smith, edited by Robert Timothy Chasson and Thomas J. Sienkewicz, 41–​50. Chicago: Associated Colleges of the Midwest, 2012. ——​​. “L’Oeuf sacré:  Alexandre Lenoir’s Cour arabe and the Pointed Arch.” In Medieval Art and Architecture after the Middle Ages, edited by Janet Marquardt and Alyce Jordan, 149–​70. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009. ——​​. “A Tomb for Abelard and Heloise.” Romance Studies 25 (2007): 29–​42.

MEUBLES

Sommerard, Alexandre du. Les Arts au Moyen Âge, 5 vols. Paris: À l’Hôtel de Cluny, 1838–​46. Stammers, Tom. “The Bric-​A-​Brac of the Old Regime: Collecting and Cultural History in Post-​Revolutionary France.” French History 22 (September 2008): 295–​315. ——​​. The Purchase of the Past: Collecting Cultures in Post-​Revolutionary Paris. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Symons, Arthur. Colour Studies in Paris. Paris: Dutton, 1918. Timbert, Arnaud. Matériaux et techniques de construction chez Viollet-​le-​Duc. Paris: Centre des monuments nationaux, 2012. Truman, Charles. “Jewelry and Precious Objects.” In Decorative Arts in the Robert Lehman Collection, 96–​101. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. “Untold Stories:  Collecting and Transforming Medieval Manuscripts.” Exhibit at the Getty Center, February 26–​May 12, 2013. Accessed January 8, 2019. www. getty.edu/​art/​exhibitions/​untold_​stories/​. Viollet-​le-​Duc, Eugène-​Emmanuel. Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français, 8 vols. Paris: Bance, 1858–​75. ——​​. “Restoration.” Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, vol. 8. Paris: 1866. Translated by Benjamin Bucknall as On Restoration. London: Sampson Low, 1875. Wack, Henry Wellington. The Romance of Victor Hugo and Juliette Drouet. New York: Putnam’s, 1905. Wilkinson, Nora. “Text and Textiles: Finding Manuscripts in Unusual Places.” Blog post for the Bodleian Library. Accessed January 4, 2019. http://​blogs.bodleian. ox.ac.uk/​theconveyor/​2014/​06/​06/​texts-​and-​textiles-​finding-​manuscripts-​ in-​unusual-​places/​.

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Elizabeth Emery ([email protected]) is Professor of French at Montclair State University (New Jersey, USA) where she teaches medieval and nineteenth-​century French literature and culture. She is the author of books, articles, and essay anthologies related to the reception of medieval art and archi­ tecture in nineteenth-​century France and America (e.g., Consuming the Past: The Medieval Revival in Fin-​de-​Siècle France, 2003). Recent works explore the links among early photography, journalism, and celebrity culture and the Western interest in Japanese art (Reframing Japonisme: Women and the Asian Art Market in Nineteenth-​Century France, 2020). She serves as Book Review coeditor for the journal Nineteenth-​Century French Studies.

Abstract Medieval furnishings preserved in aristocratic estates and ecclesiastical institutions took on new life in the nineteenth century as the turmoil of the French Revolution reactivated their use value, transforming them into collectibles, fuel, or raw materials for new building projects. This essay relies on the taxonomies of reuse proposed by archaeologist Michael Schiffer to evaluate the preservation, recycling, and repurposing of objects such as medieval choir stalls, chests, and beds by conservators, architects, artists, and collectors Alexandre Du Sommerard, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Albert Jacquemart, Victor Hugo, Pierre Loti, and Frédéric Spitzer. These prominent figures’ repurposing of antique furniture mirrors nineteenth-century constructions of the medieval period itself. Keywords bricolage, cultural preservation, interior decoration, medievalism, monuments, multicultural Middle Ages, museum display, nationalism, patrimony, restoration, vandalism

REFLECTION DANIEL LORD SMAIL THE PREMONSTRATENSIAN ABBEY of Dryburgh, located on the banks of the River Tweed just a few miles downstream from Sir Walter Scott’s home at Abbotsford, is a hauntingly beautiful site in the late autumn when the leaves are changing colour. Like its sister abbeys in the Scottish Borders—​Kelso, Jedburgh, and nearby Melrose—​Dryburgh was burned and sacked at regular intervals over the cen­ turies by English troops engaged in cross-​border raids. Following the sack that took place in the mid-​sixteenth century, at a time when the Scottish Reformation made sources of patronage scarce, the monks simply gave up. Today, Dryburgh is a romantic old ruin, the roofless nave of the abbey church now a beautiful and ver­ dant lawn. Given the extent of the decay, it is surprising how little remains in the way of rubble. Some explanation for this is provided by way of a plaque, mounted next to the western portal, which makes an apology for the sorry condition of the adjoining façade. At some point in the past, much of the original facing had been “robbed,” leaving only the rough-​hewn and much-​eroded local sandstone that you now see. Only in the eyes of today’s resentful conservator is it possible to speak of the thrifty and practical reuse of worked stone as a kind of robbery. As any early medi­ eval archaeologist can attest, the bricks and stones that once comprised the fabric of the Roman world were removed and distributed across the landscape, where they were fitted into homes and barns and kilns.1 Much the same happened to Dryburgh and its sister abbeys, and indeed with worked stone virtually every­ where. For the time being, Dryburgh is safe: Historic Scotland frowns on the recyc­ ling of stone at sites ranging from great abbeys to the old crofts that still litter the Scottish highlands. The policy is well intentioned. It has had the unfortunate effect, however, of preserving one element of the past at the expense of dispara­ ging another: namely, the ancient practice of recycling. The reuse of worked stone or brick is one of an innumerable array of processes that make it possible to prolong the lifespan of elements of the material world. The explanations for human reuse are over-​determined, the cultural meanings of the 1  Smith, “Early Recycling”; in general, see Fleming, “Recycling in Britain.”

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practice so tightly entwined with simple thriftiness and economic good sense that it is impossible to separate them. Reuse and recycling are ubiquitous in the natural and physical world as well, for many living organisms, such as fungi and hermit crabs, recycle elements of their world in ways that bear an uncanny resemblance to the way in which people recycle. It is a conceit to imagine that human intention­ ality renders patterns of reuse different in any fundamental way. Following the archaeologist Michael Schiffer, to whose thought-​provoking studies we owe much of our taxonomy of the patterns of reuse, we can classify some of the major strategies of reuse under four broad headings:  recycling or the recovery of raw materials; lateral cycling; secondary use or repurposing; and finally, conservatory processes or other forms of symbolic reappropriation, an especially interesting form of secondary use.2 The first of these is exemplified in the medieval European practice of melting down and reforging scrap iron. Thanks to a new technique that has made it possible to carbon-​date iron through the minute quantities of carbon left in the metal, a team of scholars has shown how the iron fittings in later medieval European cathedrals were sometimes made from metal that had been forged centuries earlier.3 A classic instance of lateral cycling can be seen in the custom whereby late medieval Burgundian courtiers would dis­ tribute yesterday’s clothing, scarcely worn, to beggars at the doorstep. Secondary use or repurposing can be seen in the custom of using old barrels to line the walls of small pits or wells. The lusterware bacini that were mortared into the walls of Pisan churches, finally, offer an unusual and interesting instance of a conservatory process where the meaning or symbolism of a given object is subtly changed in the act of its being set aside. The nomenclature developed by Schiffer and others, of course, is by no means the last word; it is common to find patterns of reuse that do not quite fit into this typology of processes or that demonstrate subtle variations of them. “Salvage,” as used by Jennifer Purtle in this collection, strikes me as a very useful contribution to the vocabulary of reuse. Typically, the recycling of raw materials and the act of repurposing worn-​out goods invites us to think about the fates of certain kinds of objects that have reached the end of one life phase and are moving on to another, often as a result of the deliberate intention of the former owner. Salvage, by con­ trast, operates on objects that have metaphorically died, wholly by-​passing the recycling phase and going straight to the grave. In the case of the facing stone of the abbey church of Dryburgh, salvage best describes how most or all the worked stone was carefully removed from the dead edifice in the decades or centuries 2  Schiffer, “Archaeological Context” and Behavioral Archeology. 3  Leroy et al., “Consolidation or Initial Design?”.

Reflection

following the final sack. Nearly identical processes of salvage are detectable in Quanzhou, where stone architectural components were lifted from one religious institution and installed in another, where they were put to work in the service of another religion. Intriguingly, Purtle suggests that salvage in Quanzhou proceeded from a respect for the antecedent monument and a desire to benefit from any lingering salvific power inherent in the material. Something very different seems to have been going on in the case of the Buyid curtain, in Meredyth Winter’s plausible interpretation, that was reworked as a funerary robe for a child. The cutting-​down of something to make something else, often closely related, is a type of reuse or reworking that adds yet another dimension to the standard typology (old bedsheets that have been cut down the middle to remove the worn bits and resewn sides-​to-​middle offer a classic example). The reworking of the Buyid curtain had clearly been executed with great care so as to preserve the inscriptions that could subsequently be read on the sleeves. This much is similar to the borrowing of salvific meaning described by Purtle, although it is striking that the Arabic words thereby preserved may have been repurposed to a very different end. The fact that the curtain had been cut at all, not to mention that the resulting robe was reportedly recovered from a tomb, makes the act appear like an unusual kind of damnatio memoriae delivered by the arriving Seljuks against their superseded rivals. Although the typology of reuse appears to identify processes that are isolated from one another, the canvas of reuse is made from a small palette of processes that can be mixed and matched in myriad ways. At first blush, this seems a rather odd thing to say. If an old bronze cauldron is being recycled, surely it cannot be in the process of being repurposed as well. But the salvaging of old stone in Quanzhou cannot be wholly distinguished from conservatory processes that preserved the old stone for a new use, perhaps being repurposed in the process. In addition to the possibility that strategies of reuse can layer on top of one another, our sense of what is happening in any given instance can change with shifts in the scale of observation. The stones of Dryburgh Abbey, seen from a distance, are comparable to linen fibres that have been pounded out of old bedsheets or tablecloths in order to make paper, or to atoms of metal that are melted down and reforged. In this sense, it is possible to say that substantial parts of the fabric of Dryburgh have been recycled. But when you zoom in more closely and think about the process from the perspective of the worked stone, things look different. Here, the removal and reuse of the facing stone is an instance of lateral cycling. If a piece of facing is subsequently reused as flagstone, what you have is repurposing. Finally, zooming out, Dryburgh Abbey as a whole has been subject to a conservatory process, having been repurposed for a wholly new system of meaning-​making, that of tourism. For

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that matter, ancestors of Sir Walter Scott repurposed the north transept as a family mausoleum, and tourists go there now to see Scott’s grave. Like most stretches of human time, the global Middle Ages was an era saturated with habits of reuse.4 In such a world, is it any wonder that the stance that people adopted toward rather less tangible things was also inflected by the habit of reusing material? This important question is addressed by several of the contributions to this volume. If the practices of reuse enumerated by Schiffer describe processes that can happen to any thing, regardless of how tangible it is, then we may be able to find analogues to patterns of reuse in the domain of ideas, representations, texts, and landscapes. To think about reuse in this expansive way could well have a positive recursive effect, suggesting processes or patterns we may have missed by thinking about reuse primarily in the domain of the material. Following Ryan Lynch, let us consider the “atoms” of Arabic that cycle from manuscript to manuscript. An atom is an indivisible unit of text, often just a few words or lines, that appears over and over again in different texts. Though experts have long been familiar with the existence of these atoms, digital techniques make it possible to identify their presence and distribution across large corpora. The atoms behave in a way that makes them strikingly analogous to the indivisible units of worked stone or molecules of metal alloy that are moved from one entity to another during the process of recycling. When the text is used for more or less the same reason as was originally intended—​say, as an exemplum—​the process involved is lateral cycling. But in much the same way that stone can be put to work in different forms of architecture, or that the molecules once composing a bronze cauldron can end up in a belt buckle, atoms of Arabic can be worked into different arguments or different narratives. In this case, the atom experiences a type of repurposing. Characteristically, analogies become particularly interesting at the moment when they begin to fail. Working along this boundary, Joseph Shack and Hannah Weaver suggest that revision and relocation are better suited than the conven­ tional language of reuse for describing the creative reuse of spaces, texts, and ideas. The contributions here, as a whole, provide much food for thought along these lines. To be clear about that which is probably only too obvious, the analogy begins to fail because things like stone and metal have several important perform­ ance characteristics, including the fact that they are finite and eventually wear out. When you sell your old piece of linen to the ragpicker so that its fibres can return to life as paper, you recycle the fibre but lose the linen. Texts and templates of every description, in contrast, can be endlessly multiplied and endlessly recycled, given 4  See the section on recycling practices in Henigfeld, Husi, and Ravoire, L’objet au Moyen Âge.

Reflection

that the original store of letters, phonemes, motifs, or patterns is inexhaustible. Thus, when an atom of Arabic, a figure of speech, or a decorative motif is taken from its original context and put to work in a different one, the original does not disappear. In the eucharistic theology of medieval Christendom, this is a bit like the idea that the body of Christ is never diminished no matter how many wafers are consumed. The case of the Wegeberichte described by Patrick Meehan stretches the ana­ logy in other ways. Here, the Wegeberichte once existed only in the form of cogni­ tive maps. Unlike motifs or textual atoms, the entities originally had no material underpinnings apart from the synaptic connections of which they were made. In the course of being cycled laterally and/​or repurposed by the Teutonic Order, the maps also underwent a transmutation of form, ending up as glyphs on parchment. This raises the question of whether our understandings of reuse should pay attention to skeuomorphism, where an existing form is preserved in a manner similar to a conservatory process though in a different substrate whose material properties or symbolism changes the form in a subtle way. By definition, reuse is a potentially endless cycle, especially given the fact that everything human is eventually recycled by natural processes. All that has been recycled, salvaged, repurposed, or laterally cycled will produce a thing or a material that is susceptible to those very same processes. We see this in the Wegeberichte, for although the manuscripts once formed part of a system that may have served to authenticate the expertise of guides, as Meehan suggests, they were later repurposed as archival documents. In the conservatory processes that subsequently took over, those documents, at one point, said something to the antiquarians of the sixteenth century and beyond. Now, they say something else to historians. In a similar way, the wood that once formed the trunks and limbs of trees and was subsequently repurposed or perhaps recycled by medieval craftsmen as furniture was later salvaged as useful firewood or, as Elizabeth Emery describes, was in some lucky cases re-​salvaged and subjected to peculiar conser­ vatory processes. Thinking about how the stones in Quanzhou were reused in a way that preserved their salvific efficacy, a similar sort of medieval aura clearly attached itself to furniture that was de-​pieced and reassembled in wholly different forms. By the later nineteenth century, Emery describes the emergence of a “new mentality” that promoted preservation and collection rather than recycling, marking a shift from recycling processes to conservation processes. The trans­ formation in attitudes to the past described here illuminates another important point, namely that the rate of reuse, the target of the processes, and the process invoked can change over the decades or centuries. Reuse may be ubiquitous but it is not a historical constant.

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As Emery discusses, material from the European Middle Ages, up until the nineteenth century, was sometimes recycled in fairly brutal ways, much like the broad Buyid curtain that was cut down to make the child’s robe. Manuscripts were chopped up and sold to people for something pretty to frame and hang on the wall. Enormous quantities of the paper produced and used in later medi­ eval Europe have long since vanished, and in some cases we know that pieces of paper were mushed together to make cardboard which in turn, rather ironically, was used to stiffen the covers of books. Working in the other chronological direc­ tion, I have found eighteenth-​century French playing cards sewn into the bindings and covers of late medieval registers to repair weak spots. These cases raise the interesting question of whether repair is a form of recycling or reuse. According to Schiffer, repair is best understood as a maintenance process, much like cleaning or washing. This is certainly true in many instances of repair. Yet repair can also take forms that resemble practices of recycling. Some types of repair, for example, involve the use of a piece of something embedded in something else, such as a patch sewn onto a worn area of an article of clothing. From the point of view of the worn clothing, this is an instance of repair, but seen from the point of view of the patch, the process is one of recycling or perhaps even lateral cycling. To return to the analogy above, these repairs have some resemblance to atoms of Arabic that are patched into longer texts and perform a kind of supportive work. As the systems theorist Gregory Bateson argued many years ago, analogies and metaphors are good to think with, inasmuch as they spark creative thought.5 As the contributions in this volume suggest in thoughtful and thought-​provoking ways, we can learn much by applying the typology of material reuse to the texts, landscapes, and ideas of the global Middle Ages.

5  Bateson, “Experiments in Thinking.”

Bibliography

Reflection

Bateson, Gregory. “Experiments in Thinking about Observed Ethnological Material.” Philosophy of Science 8 (1941): 53–​68. ——​​. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine, 1972. Fleming, Robin. “Recycling in Britain after the Fall of Rome’s Metal Economy.” Past & Present 217 (November 1, 2012):  3–​45. https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​pastj/​ gts027. Henigfeld, Yves, Philippe Husi, and Fabienne Ravoire, eds. L’objet au Moyen Âge et à l’époque moderne: fabriquer, échanger, consommer et recycler. Caen: Presses Universitaires de Caen, 2020. Leroy, Stéphanie, Maxime L’Héritier, Emmanuelle Delqué-​Kolic, Jean-​Pascal Dumoulin, Christophe Moreau, and Philippe Dillmann. “Consolidation or Initial Design? Radiocarbon Dating of Ancient Iron Alloys Sheds Light on the Reinforcements of French Gothic Cathedrals.” Journal of Archaeological Science 53 (January 1, 2015): 190–​201. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.jas.2014.10.016. Schiffer, Michael B.  “Archaeological Context and Systemic Context.” American Antiquity 37 (1972): 156–​65. https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​278203. ——​​. Behavioral Archeology. New York: Academic, 1976. Smith, Terence Paul. “Early Recycling:  The Anglo-​Saxon and Norman Re-​Use of Roman Bricks with Special Reference to Hertfordshire.” In Alban and St Albans: Roman and Medieval Architecture, Art and Archaeology, edited by Martin Henig and Phillip Lindley, 111–​17. Leeds: Maney, 2001.

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Daniel Lord Smail ([email protected]) is Professor of History at Harvard University, where he works on deep human history and the history and anthro­ pology of Mediterranean societies between 1100 and 1600. His current research approaches transformations in the material culture of later medieval Mediterranean Europe using household inventories and inventories of debt collection from Lucca and Marseille, and he is also embarking on a study of slavery in later medieval Provence. His books include Legal Plunder: Households and Debt Collection in Late Medieval Europe (2016); On Deep History and the Brain (2008); and The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity, and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264–​1423 (2003).

Abstract This contribution responds to the many insights about reuse and recyc­ ling generated by the contributors to this collection. Patterns of reuse are well known in archaeological and material-cultural circles and have been defined by a taxonomy of practices. As this collection suggests, however, it can be rewarding to apply these ideas beyond the material domain, and to think how they might help us understand the lives and afterlives of ideas, representations, texts, and landscapes. To think about reuse in this expansive way highlights processes or patterns that we may have missed by thinking about reuse primarily in the domain of the material. Keywords analogy, lateral cycling, Michael Schiffer, recycling, reuse, revision, sal­ vage, secondary use

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INDEX

À rebours, 121–​23, 127–​28, 145–​46. See also Huysmans, J.-​K.

Abbasids, 4, 10–​12, 14, 16, 32, 34–​35, 37–​50

Abelard, 126, 130

Abū Bakr, 18–​19, 65–​66 Abu Zayd, 41–​43

Abu-​Lughod, Janet, 61 adaptations, 85, 98

Africa, 18, 139, 143, 147

Asia, 4, 124. See also South Asia antiquity, 3, 9, 124

Airavatesvara Temple, 71–​72

akhbār, 14–​15, 24

alterations, 1, 4, 18, 31–​33, 44–​50, 95, 126–​27, 145, 157

alterity, 83–​84, 141

authority, 4, 11, 24, 16, 31, 36–​41, 43, 94, 96, 113

authorizations, 31, 39–​40, 44

authorship, 12–​16

Baghdad, 10, 35, 37–​38, 49

al-​Balādhurī, Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā b. Jābir, 9–​25

Baltic Crusades, 4 Baltic Sea, 93

Bann, Stephen, 128, 130 Belarus, 93, 99, 103

Benhong, 62–​63, 70 Black Sea, 97

Blanche of Castile, 126, 130

Bonnaffé, Edmond, 133, 141–​42, 147–​49

Andalusia, 13, 139

Book of the Conquest of Lands, 4, 10,

anthropocentrism, 156

Brahmanism, 59–​64, 70–​72, 74, 78–​85

Appadurai, Arjun, 148

Brilliant, Richard, 3–​4

Andrew of Perugia, 68–​69

Ansāb al-​shrāf, 4, 10, 12–​14, 18–​25 antiquarians, 121–​27, 159

apotropaism, 45, 48

appropriations, 4, 95–​96, 123

Arabia, 18–​20

Arabic, 11–​25, 60–​62, 157–​60

archaeology, 2, 18, 48, 94, 101, 121, 138, 145, 154–​56

architecture, 3–​4, 57–​91, 123–​25, 145, 157

archives, 108, 111–​13

Assemblies, 41–​43. See also al-​Ḥarīrī, Maqāmāt

assimilation, 62, 74, 102, 104, 106

12–​14, 18–​25. See also al-​Balādhurī,

Kitāb Futūḥ al-​buldān

bricolage, 58, 66, 85, 126, 134, 136–​37, 146

Britain, 122, 127, 155

Buddha Dīpaṃkara, 81

Buddha Śākyamuni, 62, 66, 81, 84. See also Siddhārtha

Buddhism, 58–​60, 62, 68, 70, 74, 78–​82

Bukhara, 67

burial culture, 44–​45, 48–​49, 58, 65–​71, 73, 81, 126, 130, 136, 156–​57.

See also grave stones, tombs

Buyid(s), 31–​35, 37–​50, 157, 160

Byzantium, 35. See also Roman Empire

164

164

INDEX

Cai Xiang, 73–​74

culture(s) and cultural exchange, 1–​59,

Cantor, Norman, 138

curtains, 4, 31–​32, 34, 36–​50, 157, 160.

children, 41, 48, 124, 157, 160

al-​Dalwah, Aḍud, 33–​37, 44

Choay, Françoise, 125, 129

Daoism, 78

Calder, Norman, 14

caliph(s), 18–​24, 32, 37–​47, 65 de Certeau, Michel, 147

Charles, Corinne, 135, 139, 148 China, 4, 57–​91

Chinese language, 59–​60, 62

Chola Dynasty, 61–​62, 70–​71, 74, 79

Christianity, 66–​71, 81–​82, 84, 96–​97, 101, 109, 121–​22, 138, 159

38, 40, 47, 50, 57–​85, 95–​97, 101,

113, 124, 128, 143, 146–​49, 155

See also sitr

al-​Dawlah, Bahā’, 31–​33, 36–​38, 40, 44–​45, 49

DaQin jingjiao xuanyuan zhi benjing 67–​68. See also Syriac Christian

Sutra on the Origin of Origins

chronicles, 31, 37, 98, 100–​102, 105, 135.

deconstruction, 44–​45

churches, 61, 126, 143, 156

die wildnis (the wilderness), 93–​94,

Clanchy, M. T., 113

disassembly, 44, 49, 85, 135, 138, 159

Cluny. See Musée de Cluny, Hôtel de Cluny

Dryburgh Abbey, 155–​57

See also historiography

Chu, Petra, 138, 141, 146

circulation, 3–​5, 14–​15, 24, 94, 148 classicism, 3, 9, 14, 122

clothing, 31–​50, 124, 128, 139, 156, 160. See also textiles

collections and collecting, 121, 124–​26, 128, 136, 138, 141–​48, 159

colonies, 54, 94–​97, 101, 105, 107, 113 community, 10, 19–​20, 32, 40, 43–​44, 59–​61, 64, 70–​71, 79, 81–​82

compilations, 4, 9–​10, 12–​16, 24–​25, 93, 99, 102, 111–​13

computer-​mediated manuscript analysis, 10, 16–​17

conservation, 95, 121, 125–​27, 129, 132, 134, 136, 141, 146, 155, 157, 159

copying, 13, 25, 99, 102, 110–​12 counterfeits, 23–​24, 29

creative reuse, 1–​2, 4, 16, 48, 58, 95–​96, 105, 121, 135, 146, 148–​49, 158. See also recreation, recycling

crusades, 4, 130, 139

Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture du XIe au XVIe siècle, 123–​24, 127, 130

98, 100–​13

digital humanities 4, 11, 17, 24–​25, 158 documents, 110–​14, 125, 159 Dongchan Temple, 81 duplicates, 14, 48, 99

Durand-​Guédy, David, 46

Eastern Syriac Christianity, 66–​68,

69–​70, 84. See also Chrsitianity

embodiment, 4, 39, 43, 57, 79, 101, 113 entanglement theory, 95–​96, 101–​2, 107, 114

Eurocentrism, 57–​58, 147

expatriates, 57–​62, 65–​68, 84–​85

Emery, Elizabeth, 2, 4–​5, 121–​54, 159–​60

Egypt, 21, 45, 139

ethnic difference, 58, 84–​85, 96, 103. See also foreign influence, race

Europe, 3, 17, 61, 97, 124, 139, 147–​48, 156, 160

165

INDEX

fakes. See forgeries

Heavenly Longevity Pagoda 70–​71, 74–​75.

forgeries, 49, 127, 148

Henry VIII, 129

Fiji, 96

Fleury-​Richard, François, 130

foreign influences, 59–​61, 66, 74, 83–​85, 97, 101, 113

France, 5, 12, 121–​54

Franciscans, 68–​70, 84

François I, 129, 131, 145

French Revolution, 121–​22, 125, 127 Fu Zide, 60

Fujian, 59, 61–​62, 67, 71, 74–​85 furniture, 5, 121–​54, 159 Garthen, 103–​5, 112

La Gazette des Beaux-​Arts, 141 Gedutte von Wargin, 93, 110. See also leitsleute

German, 103–​6, 110–​11

Germany, 93–​94, 98, 122, 127, 139, 141, 147

global processes, 1, 5, 9–​10, 57–​58, 139, 157–​60

Golombek, Lisa, 35–​36

Gothic style, 122, 127, 134–​35,

See also Tianzhong wanshou ta

Heloise, 126, 130, 136

Hirsch, Theodor, 98–​99 Hirschler, Konrad, 16

Histoire du mobilier 127. See also Jacquemart, Albert

historiography, 3–​4, 9–​25, 94–​98, 122, 124–​48, 160

History of the Prophets and Kings, 12. See also al-​Balādhurī, Ta’rīkh al-​rusul

wa-​l-​mulūk

Hôtel de Cluny, 128–​29, 131. See also Musée de Cluny

Huang Chao, 58–​59

Hugo, Charles, 128, 134, 136 Hugo, Victor, 121, 133–​35, 138–​43, 145–​48

Huiyuan, 78

Huysmans, J.-​K., 121–​23, 127–​28, 145–​46. Ibn ‘Abbād, 37–​38, 40–​41, 47

Ibn Azādmard, 37–​40, 44–​47, 49 iconography, 58, 64–​85

138–​39, 141–​43

India, 59, 61–​62, 64, 79, 81, 140

156–​57. See also burial culture,

indigenous peoples, 5, 57, 62, 85, 93–​119

grave stones, 44–​45, 48–​49, 58,

65–​71, 73, 81, 126, 130, 136, tombs

Greek, 9

Guanyin 82–​83. See also Kali

Guernsey, 128, 134–​35, 141, 146

ḥadīth, 11, 14, 48, 85 Hadrian, 3

al-​Ḥarīrī, 41–​43

Hauteville House, 134–​37, 139–​41, 143, 146

Head, Randolph, 113

Indic architecture, 70–​78. See also architecture

indigenous knowledge, 5, 93–​119. See also knowledge

inscriptions, 32–​36, 39–​41, 44–​45,

48–​50, 61, 68, 76, 79, 138, 157

intellectual property, 109

interior decoration, 121–​54. See also furniture

Iran, 31, 38, 46. See also Persia Iraq, 22–​23, 31, 38, 68

Islam, 2, 9–​24, 31–​50, 59, 65, 69–​71, 84–​85, 96

165

16

167

166

INDEX

Islamic historiography, 10, 16

Lenoir, Alexandre, 125–​28, 130, 133–​34,

Istanbul, 9

Les Arts au Moyen Âge, 128–​29,

isnād, 11. See also transmission Ispah insurrection, 85

Jacquemart, Albert, 121, 127–​28, 132–​33, 138, 145

136, 138–​39, 141, 145

Leonardo da Vinci, 130 130–​31, 139

Lévi-​Strauss, Claude, 137–​38 Li Jie, 74, 77

Jadwiga, 97

Lineage of Nobles, The, 4, 10, 12–​14,

Jedburgh Abbey, 155

literacy, 98, 113

Jagiełło, 97, 112 Jātaka tales, 81 Jiangnan, 84

Jinjiang, 58, 83

Kaiyuan Temple, 58–​59, 62–​63, 72, 75, 78–​82

Kali, 82–​83. See also Guanyin Kelso Abbey, 155

khabar, 18, 22. See also historiography

Khālid b. al-​Walīd, 18, 20

khil’ah (robe of honor), 4, 32, 37–​39, 41, 44–​48, 157, 160

Khubilai Khan, 84 Kinney, Dale, 3–​4

KITAB, 17–​18

Kitāb Futūḥ al-​buldān, 4, 10, 12–​14,

18–​25. See also al-​Balādhurī, The

Book of the Conquest of Lands

knowledge, 57, 62, 93–​114, 149 Königsberg, 97, 99, 104, 108–​9 Konrad of Mazovia, 96 Kufic lettering, 31, 40

de Lapérouse, Jean-​François 47

languages and linguistic exchange, 9,

16–​17, 48, 58, 62, 68, 83–​85, 103,

106, 110–​13

lateral cycling, 2, 18, 94, 156–​60 Latin, 2–​3, 10, 68–​69, 121, 138

leitsleute (guides), 93, 95, 98, 100–​114, 159

18–​25. See also Ansāb al-​shrāf, al-​Balādhurī

literary genres, 4, 9–​25

Lithuania, 93–​94, 96–​115 Livonia, 110, 112

looting. See plunder

Loti, Pierre, 121, 143–​48 Luoyang River, 73–​74

Lynch, Ryan J., 3–​4, 9–​30, 158 Mālik b. Nuwayra, 19–​20 Mani, 84

Manuel Dias the Younger (Yang Manuo), 81–​82

Maqāmāt 41–​43. See also Assemblies, al-​Ḥarīrī,

Marcus Aurelius, 3

Marienburg, 96, 107

manuscripts, 9–​25, 93–​114, 124, 158–​60 material culture and materiality, 2–​5, 32, 50, 57–​58, 95, 124–​47, 155–​60

Mazu Temple, 81

medievalism, 5, 22, 94, 139, 130, 148–​49

Meehan, Patrick, 3, 93–​118, 159 Melrose Abbey, 155

Memel River, 98, 105, 107, 110, 112. See also Neman River

Mérimé, Prosper, 130, 133 Merkys River, 106

Milvian Bridge, battle of, 3 Ming Dynasty, 62, 81–​82

167

missionaries, 68–​70, 84

Paris, 1, 42, 82, 121–​54

Mongolia, 43, 58, 60–​61, 66–​70, 83–​85

Päsler, Ralph, 104, 112

mixtures, 11, 57, 126, 130, 136, 145, 147, 157

Mongolian, 66

monuments, 50, 58, 62, 65–​66, 70–​71, 74, 78, 81, 125–​26, 128

Mortensen, Gertrud, 98, 101–​3, 113 Mortensen, Hans, 98, 100–​103, 113

Paris, Gaston, 149 Parry, Vicki, 47

patrimony, 50, 123

Persia, 9, 17–​18, 33, 49, 60–​61, 68, 85 Persian, 9, 17, 60

Periyapuranam, 64

Peter von Dusburg, 101, 105–​6

Al-​Mughīra b. Shu‘ba, 20–​22

plunder, 3, 93, 95, 100–​102, 106,

Musée de Cluny, 124, 133. See also Hôtel

Polo, Marco, 61

Muḥammad, 11, 18–​19, 65, 84

Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-​Ṭabar, 12 de Cluny

Musée des monuments français, 125–​26, 128, 133

museums, 31, 37, 49, 50, 127, 134, 141, 146–​47

Myers, George Hewitt, 32–​33, 49 Nanteuil, Célestin, 139

nationalism, 93–​98, 122–​23, 127–​28, 141–​42, 146–​48

Neman River, 98, 105, 107, 110, 112. See also Memel River

New Edition of the Facing Illustrations, Four-​Words[-​in-​a-​Group Primer], 62–​63, 66. See also Xinbian

duixiang siyan

networks, 11, 60–​61, 103–​7 nomads, 46, 103, 105, 128

Nôtre-​Dame-​de-​Paris, 133, 139. See also Hugo, Victor

Old Uighur script, 66

orality, 11, 13–​15, 24, 98–​111 pagans, 93–​94, 96–​97, 101

Palace of the Heavenly Consort, 81. See also Tianfei gong

INDEX

146, 155

Poland, 94, 96, 112, 139

postglobal art history, 57

preservation, 32–​33, 44, 50, 95,

121–​23, 124–​28, 134, 138, 142, 145–​46, 159

priests, 59, 68, 84, 109

Prophet, the. See Muḥammad Prussia, 94, 96–​115

Pure Land Buddhism, 59, 68. See also Buddhism

Purple Cloud Hall, 78–​79

Purtle, Jennifer, 2, 4, 57–​91, 156–​57

qabāʾ, 37

Qingjing Temple, 60

Quanzhou, 4, 57–​74, 157, 159 Qurʼan, 39, 47–​48

race, 58, 60, 83–​85, 96, 103. See also ethnic difference

raiding. See plunder

Rayy, 35, 38, 44, 47–​49

reappropriation, 122, 156

reassembly, 47–​49, 135, 159

reconstruction, 33–​45, 77, 98, 126

recontextualization, 94–​96, 105, 109, 113 recreation, 4–​5, 143. See also creative re-​use

167

168

169

168

INDEX

recycling, 1–​2, 5, 18–​20, 24, 32, 48, 57,

78–​79, 84–​85, 94, 121, 124–​26, 133,

137–​38, 143, 145, 148–​49, 155–​60. See also creative re-​use

Reisen (routes), 97–​98, 100, 107, 112. See also travel

relic(s), 121, 127–​28, 134, 145–​46, 148. See also remnants, spolia

relocation(s), 1–​3, 5, 58, 61, 96, 105, 121, 148, 158

remnants, 31, 123, 127, 131, 145–​48. See also relics, spolia

Renaissance, 122, 128, 130, 136, 139, 141, 143, 147–​48

renovation, 60, 79, 81, 133, 135, 145, 149

reorganization, 9, 11, 14–​16, 44–​45

repair, 124–​25, 160

Rosenzweig, Tal. See Tal R Russia, 147

sacking. See plunder, spolia

sacrality and sacrilege, 40, 48, 64, 101, 106, 121–​45

sacrifices, 81, 101

salvaging, 4, 57–​85, 126, 143, 156–​57,

159. See also plunder, recycling, etc.

salvific efficacy, 4, 78–​79, 85, 157, 159 Sāmarrā’, anarchy at, 14 Samogitia, 99, 112

Sanjar, 47

Scalovians, 103, 106

scavenging. see plunder, spolia

Schiffer, Michael, 2, 18, 94–​95, 121,

124–​26, 137–​38, 156, 158, 160

Schoeler, Gregor, 13, 15

repurposing, 1–​2, 48–​49, 57–​58, 66, 68,

Scotland, 155

restoration, 124–​25, 131, 133, 135,

scriptures, 48, 67–​68

70, 85, 94, 96, 102, 121–​22, 124,

143, 145, 156–​59

138, 147–​48

reuse, 2–​5, 10–​11, 14–​16, 18–​19, 22,

24–​25, 32, 44, 49–​50, 65–​68, 95, 109, 121, 124, 146–​46, 148–​49,

155–​60. See also creative reuse, repurposing, etc.

Reuse Value I, 3–​4

revision, 2–​3, 5, 158

Révoil, Pierre-​Henri, 130

Ridda Wars, 14, 19–​20 Riegl, Alois, 50

robbing. see plunder

Robinson, Chase, 12, 15–​16 Rochefort, 143–​44, 146 Roman Empire, 35, 124

Roman Church, 61, 68–​69, 96, 121–​22, 128, 145

Scott, Sir Walter, 128, 155, 158 scripts, 36, 66, 100

secondary use, 2, 94–​95, 121,

124–​25, 156. See also creative reuse, reuse, etc.

self-​revision, 9–​25

Seljuks, 31–​32, 40, 44, 46–​50, 157 Shack, Joseph, 1–​7, 18, 57, 158 Shengyou Temple, 59

Shepard, Mary, 126, 136, 139 Shuilu Temple, 81

Siddhārtha, 62, 81, 84. See also Buddha Śākyamuni

silk, 4, 31–​50, 146

Silk Roads, 60–​61, 69

Sino-​Mongol rule, 58, 61, 70, 83–​84

sitr, 31, 36–​50. See also curtains Śiva, 61, 64, 84

Smail, Daniel Lord, 4, 155–​60

169

INDEX

Du Sommerard, Alexandre, 121, 128–​31,

tradition, 5, 9–​25, 59, 61, 147–​48

South Asia, 59–​61

transformation, 2–​3, 40, 50, 59, 71, 74,

133–​36, 139, 141, 145–​46

Song Dynasty, 60, 62, 77, 83

souvenir(s), 3, 135. See also plunder, relics, spolia

Spain, 139, 141

Spitzer, Frédéric, 121, 141–​42, 145–​49 spolia 3–​4. See also plunder, relics, remnants

statuary, 3, 125

stereotypes, 105–​6

Striegler, Stefan, 98

Syria, 14, 18, 139

Syriac Christian Sutra on the Origin of Origins, 68. See also DaQin jingjiao xuanyuan zhi benjing

[Treatise on] State Building Methods 74, 77. See also Yingzao fashi

Tal R (Tal Rosenzweig), 1 Tamil, 64, 72, 79

Tehran, 49, 65

Terim, Lady Martha, 66–​67, 69 temples, 58–​85, 101, 139

Teutonic Order, 93–​94, 96–​97, 99–​114, 159

textile(s), 4, 31–​50, 124, 132, 146, 157

Trajan, 3

transferal, 2, 4, 79, 107, 122, 143

121–​22, 124, 127, 145, 147, 159

translation, 23, 37, 48, 60, 78, 93–​114, 134, 139

transmission, 10–​11, 14, 16, 20, 24, 95, 100, 110

travel, 19, 24, 61, 93–​114, 139, 145–​47 Tudor, Mary, 129

Turkey, 9, 66, 143, 146 Tweed River, 155

‘Umar b. al-​Khaṭṭāb, 19–​23 Umayyads, 11, 15

Van Ess, Josef, 9 Venice, 96, 141

Vienna, 50, 141

Vilnius, 105–​7, 112

Viollet-​le-​Duc, Eugène-​Emmanuel, 121, 123–​28, 130, 132–​35, 138, 148

Vytautas, 97, 111–​12

Wan’an Bridge, 73–​76 al-​Wāsiṭī, 41–​43

Weaver, Hannah, 1–​7, 18, 57, 158

textual reuse, 10, 16–​17, 20, 158. See also

Wegeberichte, 5, 93–​96, 98–​114, 159

Tianfei gong, 81. See also Palace of the

Wurongzhou, 58

manuscripts, reuse, etc.

Thomas, Nicholas, 95–​96, 105 Heavenly Consort

Tianzhong wanshou ta, 70–​71, 74–​75.

See also Heavenly Longevity Pagoda

tombs, 44–​45, 48–​49, 58, 65–​71, 73, 81, 126, 130, 136, 156–​57. See also

burial culture, grave stones

toponymics, 93, 103–​5 trade, 59–​61, 91

Wigand von Marburg, 98, 101, 105, 108

Winter, Meredyth Lynn, 2, 4, 31–​55, 157

Wyssegaude 103

Xianyou, 70–​71, 73–​75

Xinbian duixiang siyan, 62–​63, 66. See also New Edition of the

Facing Illustrations, Four-​Words [-​in-​a-​Group Primer]

169

170

1

170

INDEX

Yemeni Temple, 60

Zereens Lake, 110

Yuan Dynasty, 64, 66–​67, 78–​79

Zhichang, 78–​79

Yingzao fashi, 74, 77. See also [Treatise on] State Building Methods

Yuanming Yuan, 146

Zhenguo Pagoda, 62, 64–​66, 68, 70–​71, 74, 78–​81