- Middle Period: the rise of Persian and Turkish poetry
Architecture in Iraq, Syria, and Anatolia
- Key People:
- Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī
- Owen Jones
- Related Topics:
- the arts
- Islamic architecture
- Islamic literature
In Iraq, northern Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt (after 1171), the architectural monuments do not, on the whole, appear as overwhelmingly impressive as those of Iran, largely because the taste of Umayyad and Abbasid times continued to dominate mosque architecture. It is in the construction of new building types, particularly the madrasah, that the most originality is apparent. The Syrian madrasahs in Damascus, like Al-ʿĀdiliyyah, Al-Ẓāhiriyyah, or the works of Nureddin, tended also to follow a comparatively standardized plan: an elaborate facade led into a domed hallway and then into a court with at least one eyvān. Most of those madrasahs were small and were fitted into a preexisting urban pattern. The use of eyvāns and the construction of the many minarets found in Mosul or on the Euphrates certainly attest to the influence of Iranian Seljuq design.
The main achievement of Ayyūbid, Zangid, or Seljuq architecture in the Fertile Crescent was the translating into stone of new structural systems first developed in brick. The most impressive instance of this lies in the technically complex muqarnas domes and half domes or in the muqarnas pendentives of Syrian buildings. Elaborate mihrabs were also made of multicoloured stones that were carefully cut to create impressive patterns. The architecture of the Fertile Crescent, therefore, was still dominated by the sheer force of stone as a material for both construction and decoration, and, therefore, the architecture was more Mediterranean in effect than were the buildings of Iran.
This Mediterranean tendency was also evident in the 13th-century architecture of Seljuq Anatolia. This new province of Islam was rapidly populated with new immigrants and consequently gathered themes and motifs from throughout the Muslim world, as well as from the several native Anatolian traditions of Byzantine, Armenian, and Georgian architecture. The resulting assimilation of styles produced an overwhelmingly original architecture, for each building in Konya, Kayseri, Sivas, Divriği, and Erzurum and on the roads between them is a unique monument.
Functionally, the buildings in Anatolia do not differ from those in other parts of the Muslim world. All the structural forms found in Syria and Iran can be found in Anatolia as well, although they have often been adapted to local materials. Three uniquely Anatolian architectural features, however, can be distinguished. One was limited to Konya at this time but would have an important widespread development later on. As it appears in the Ince or Karatay medreses (madrasahs), it consists of the transformation of the central courtyard into a domed space while maintaining the eyvān. Thus, the centralized aspect of the eyvān plan becomes architecturally explicit. The second feature is the creation of a facade that usually consisted of a high central portal—often framed by two minarets—with an elaborately sculpted decorative composition that extended to two corner towers. The third distinguishing feature of Anatolian Seljuq architecture is the complexity of the types of funerary monuments that were constructed.
From the point of view of construction, most of Anatolian architecture is of stone. In Konya and a number of eastern Anatolian instances, brick was used. Barrel vaults, groin vaults, muqarnas vaults, squinch domes, pendentive domes, and the new pendentive known as Turkish triangle (a transformation of the curved space of the traditional pendentive into a fanlike set of long and narrow triangles built at an angle from each other) were all used by Anatolian builders, thereby initiating the great development of vault construction in Ottoman architecture.
Architectural decoration consisted primarily in the stone sculpture found on the facades of religious and secular buildings. Although influenced by Iran and Syria in many details, most Anatolian themes were original, although some exhibit Armenian and possibly Western influences. The exuberance of Anatolian architectural decoration can perhaps be best demonstrated in the facades of Sivas’s Gök Medrese and of Konya’s Ince Minare. In addition to the traditional geometric, epigraphic, and vegetal motifs, a decorative sculpture in the round or in high relief was created that included many representations of human figures and especially animals. Whether this sculpture is essentially a reflection of the decorative wealth of pre-Islamic monuments in Anatolia or whether it is a vestige of a pagan Turkish art that originated in Central Asia is still an unsolved historical problem.
There are few examples of wall painting from Anatolia. Especially in Konya, however, a major art of painted-tile decoration did evolve, possibly developed by Iranian artists who fled from the Mongol onslaught.
In summing up the architectural development of the Seljuq period, three points seem to be particularly significant. One is the expansion of building typology and the erection of new monumental architectural forms, thus illustrating an expansion of patronage and a growing complexity of taste. The second point is that, regardless of the quality and interest of monuments in the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, and Anatolia, the most inventive and exciting architecture in the 11th and 12th centuries was that of Iran. But, far more than in the preceding period, regional needs and regional characteristics seem to predominate over synchronic and pan-Islamic ones. Finally, there was a striking growth of architectural decoration both in sophistication of design and in variation of technique.
Other arts
Although probably not as varied as architecture, the other arts of the Seljuq period also underwent tremendous changes. They demonstrate an extraordinary artistic energy, a widening of the social patronage of the arts, and a hitherto unknown variety of topics and modes of expression. It was as though the Seljuq period was gathering a sort of aesthetic momentum, but that effort seems to have been curtailed by the Mongol invasion. Chronologically, almost all surviving documentation and examples of those arts date from the latter part of the period, after 1150. It is unclear whether this apparent date is merely an accidental result of what has been preserved and is known through later scholarship or whether it corresponds to some precise event or series of events.
Glass and textiles continued to be major mediums during the Seljuq period. Ceramics underwent many changes, especially in Iran, where lustre painting became widespread and where new techniques were developed for colouring pottery. Furthermore, the growth of tile decoration created a new dimension for the art of ceramics.
Inlaid metalwork became an important technique. First produced at Herāt in Iran (now in Afghanistan) in the middle of the 12th century, this type of decoration spread westward, and a series of local schools were established in various regions of the Seljuq domain. In this technique the surfaces of utilitarian metallic objects (candlesticks, ewers, basins, kettles, and so forth) were engraved, and then silver was inlaid in the cut-out areas to make the decorative design more clearly visible.
Manuscript illustration also became an important art. Scientific books, including the medical manuals of Pedanius Dioscorides and of Galen, or literary texts such as the picaresque adventures of a verbal genius known as the Maqāmāt, were produced with narrative illustrations throughout the text.
All the technical novelties of the Seljuqs seem to have had one main purpose: to animate objects and books and to provide them with clearly visible and identifiable images. Even the austere art of calligraphy became occasionally animated with letters ending in human figures. The main centres for producing these arts were located in Iran and the Fertile Crescent. For reasons yet unknown, Egypt and Anatolia were far less involved. One reason may be that those two Seljuq provinces did not witness the same rise of an urban middle class as did Iran, Iraq, and Syria. It would seem from a large number of art objects whose patrons are known that the main market for these works of art was the mercantile bourgeoisie of the big cities and not, as has often been believed, the princes. Seljuq decorative arts and book illustration, therefore, reflect an urban taste.
The themes and motifs used were particularly numerous. In books they tend to be illustrations of the text, even if a manuscript such as the so-called Schefer Maqāmāt (1237; named for the French Orientalist and bibliophile Charles-Henri-Auguste Schefer [1820–98], who once owned it) sought to combine a strict narrative with a fairly naturalistic panorama of contemporary life. Narrative scenes taken from books or reflecting folk stories are also common on Persian ceramics. In all mediums, however, the predominant vocabulary of images is the one provided by the older art of princes, but its meaning is no longer that of illustrating the actual life of princes but rather that of symbolizing a good and happy life. The motifs, therefore, do not have to be taken literally. Next to princely and narrative themes there are depictions of scenes of daily life, astronomical motifs, and a myriad of topics that can be described but not understood.
While it is possible within certain limits to generalize about the subject matter of Seljuq art, regional stylistic definitions tend to be more valid. Thus, the bronzes produced in northeastern Iran in the 12th century are characterized by simple decorative compositions rather than by the very elaborate ones created by the so-called school of Mosul in Iraq during the 13th century. In general, the art of metalwork exhibits a consistently growing intricacy in composition and in details to the point that individual subjects are at times lost in overlapping planes of arabesques. Ceramic pieces of Iran have usually been classified according to a more or less fictitious provenance. Kāshān ware exhibits a perfection of line in the depiction of moon-faced personages with heavily patterned clothes, while Rayy ceramic work is less sophisticated in design and execution but more vividly coloured. Sāveh and Gurgān are still other Iranian varieties of pottery. With the exception of Kāshān ware, where dynasties of ceramicists are known, all these types of Iranian pottery were contemporary with each other. In Syria, Raqqah pottery imitated Iranian ceramic wares but with a far more limited vocabulary of designs.
The main identifiable group of miniature painters is the so-called Baghdad school of the first half of the 13th century. The group should be called the Arab school because the subject matter and style employed could have been identified with any one of the major artistic centres of Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, and very little evidence currently exists to limit this school to one city. The miniatures painted by these artists are characterized by the colourful and often humorous way in which the urbanized Arab is depicted. The compositions, often lacking in any strong aesthetic intent, are documentary caricatures in which the artist has recorded the telling and recognizable gesture or a known and common setting or activity. In many images or compositional devices, one can recognize the impact of the richer Christian Mediterranean tradition of manuscript illumination. A greater attention to aesthetic considerations is apparent in the illustrated manuscript of the Persian epic Varqeh o-Golshāh, unique in the Seljuq period.
Western Islamic art: Moorish
The 11th to 13th centuries were not peaceful in the Maghrib. Amazigh (Berber) dynasties overthrew each other in Morocco and the Iberian Peninsula. The Christian Reconquista gradually diminished Muslim holdings in Spain and Portugal, and Tunisia was ruined during the Hilālī invasion when Bedouin tribes were sent by the Fatimids to prevent local independence.
Two types of structures characterize the Almoravid (1056–1147) and Almohad (1130–1269) periods in Morocco and Spain. One comprises the large, severely designed Moroccan mosques such as those of Tinmel, of Ḥasan in Rabat, or of the Kutubiyyah (Koutoubia) in Marrakech. They are all austere hypostyles with tall, massive, square minarets. The other distinctive type of architecture was that built for military purposes, including fortifications and, especially, massive city gates with low-slung horseshoe arches, such as the Oudaia Gate at Rabat (12th century) or the Rabat Gate at Marrakech (12th century). Palaces built in central Algeria by minor dynasties such as the Zīrids were more in the Fatimid tradition of Egypt than in the Almoravid and Almohad traditions of western Islam. Almost nothing is known or has been studied about North African arts other than architecture, because the puritanical world of the Berber dynasties did not foster the arts of luxury.
In North Africa the artistic milieu did not change much in the 14th and 15th centuries. Hypostyle mosques such as the Great Mosque of Algiers continued to be built. Madrasahs were constructed with more elaborate plans; the Bū ʿInāniyyah madrasah at Fès is one of the few monumental buildings of the period. A few mausoleums were erected, such as the so-called Marīnid tombs near Fès (second half of the 14th century) or the complex of Chella at Rabat (mostly 14th century). Architectural decoration in stucco or sculpted stone was usually limited to elaborate geometric patterns, epigraphic themes, and a few vegetal motifs.
A stunning exception to the austerity of North African architecture exists in Spain in the Alhambra palace complex at Granada. The hill site of the Alhambra had been occupied by a citadel and possibly by a palace since the 11th century, but little of those earlier constructions has remained. In the 14th century two successive princes, Yūsuf I and Muḥammad V, transformed the hill into their official residence. Outside of a number of gates built like triumphal arches and several ruined forecourts, only three parts of the palace remain intact. First there is the long Court of the Myrtles, leading to the huge Hall of the Ambassadors, located in one of the exterior towers. This was the part of the Alhambra built by Yūsuf I. Then there is the Court of the Lions, with its celebrated lion fountain in the centre. Numerous rooms open off this court, including the elaborately decorated Hall of the Two Sisters and the Hall of the Abencerrajes. The third part, slightly earlier than the first two, is the Generalife; it is a summer residence built higher up the hill and surrounded by gardens with fountains, pavilions, and portico walks.
The Alhambra is especially important because it is one of the few palaces to have survived from medieval Islamic times. It illustrates superbly a number of architectural concerns occasionally documented in literary references: the contrast between an unassuming exterior and a richly decorated interior to achieve an effect of secluded or private brilliance; the constant presence of water, either as a single, static basin or as a dynamic fountain; the inclusion of oratories and baths; and the lack of an overall plan (the units are simply attached to each other).
The architectural decoration of the Alhambra was mostly of stucco. Some of it is flat, but the extraordinarily complex cupolas of muqarnas, as in the Hall of the Two Sisters, appear as huge multifaceted diadems. The decoration of the Alhambra becomes a sort of paradox as well as a tour de force. Weighty, elaborately decorated ceilings, for example, are supported by frail columns or by walls pierced with many windows (light permeates almost every part of the large, domed halls). Much of the design and decoration of the Alhambra is symbolically oriented. The poems that adorn the Alhambra as calligraphic ornamentation celebrate its cupolas as domes of heaven rotating around the prince sitting under them.
Islamic art as such ceased to be produced in Spain after 1492, when Granada, the last Moorish kingdom in Spain, fell to the Christians, but the Islamic tradition continued in North Africa, which remained Muslim. In Morocco the so-called Sharīfian dynasties from the 16th century onward ornamentally developed the artistic forms created in the 14th century.
Most of the best-known monuments of western Islamic art are buildings, although a very original calligraphy was developed. The other arts cannot be compared in wealth and importance either to what occurred elsewhere in Islam at the same time or to earlier objects created in Spain. There are some important examples of metalwork, wood inlaid with ivory, and a lustre-glaze pottery known as Hispano-Moresque ware. The fact that the latter was made in Valencia or Málaga after the termination of Muslim rule demonstrates that Islamic traditions in the decorative arts continued to be adhered to, if only partially. The term Mudéjar, therefore, is used to refer to all the things made in a Muslim style but under Christian rule. Numerous examples of Mudéjar art exist in ceramics and textiles, as well as in architectural monuments such as the synagogues of Toledo and the Alcazba in Sevilla (Seville), where even the name of the ruling Christian prince, Don Pedro, was written in Arabic letters. The Mudéjar spirit, in fact, permeated most of Spanish architectural ornament and decorative arts for centuries, and its influence can even be found in Spanish America.
Mudéjar art must be carefully distinguished from Mozarabic art, the art of Christians under Muslim rule. Mozarabic art primarily flourished in Spain during the earlier periods of Muslim rule. Its major manifestations are architectural decorations, decorative objects, and illuminated manuscripts. Dating mostly from the 10th and 11th centuries, the celebrated illuminations for the commentary on the Revelation to John by an 8th-century Spanish abbot, Beatus of Liébana, are purely Christian subjects treated in styles possibly influenced by Muslim miniature painting or book illustration. The most-celebrated example, known as the Saint-Sever Apocalypse, is in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
Mamluk art
The Mamluks were chiefly enslaved Turks and Circassians from the Caucasus and Central Asia who formed the mercenary army of the various feudal states of Syria and Egypt. During the 13th century the importance of this military caste grew as the older feudal order weakened and military commanders took over power, generally as nonhereditary sultans. They succeeded in arresting the Mongol onslaught in 1260 and, through a judicious but complicated system of alliance with the urban elite class, managed to maintain themselves in power in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria until 1517.
During the Mamluk period Egypt and Syria were rich commercial emporiums. This wealth explains the quality and quantity of Mamluk art. Most of the existing monuments in the old quarters of Cairo, Damascus, Tripoli, and Aleppo are Mamluk; in Jerusalem almost everything visible on the Ḥaram al-Sharīf, with the exception of the Dome of the Rock, is Mamluk. Museum collections of Islamic art generally abound with Mamluk metalwork and glass. Some of the oldest remaining carpets are Mamluk. This creativity required, of course, more than wealth. It also required a certain will to transform wealth into art. This will was in part the desire of parvenu rulers and their cohorts to be remembered. Furthermore, architectural patronage flourished because of the institutionalization of the waqf, an economic system in which investments made for holy purposes were inalienable. This law allowed the wealthy to avoid confiscation of their properties at the whim of the caliph by investing their funds in religious institutions. In the Mamluk period, therefore, there was a multiplication of madrasahs, khānqāhs, ribāṭs, and mosques, often with tombs of founders attached to them. The Mamluk establishment also repaired and kept up all the institutions, religious or secular, that had been inherited by them, as can be demonstrated by the well-documented repairs carried on in Jerusalem and Damascus.
Architecture
The Mamluks created a monumental setting for Syria and Egypt that has lasted into the 21st century. It was at its most remarkable in architecture, and nearly 3,000 major monuments have been preserved or are known from texts in cities from the Euphrates to Cairo. No new architectural types came into being, although many more urban commercial buildings and private houses have been preserved than from previous centuries. The hypostyle form continued to be used for mosques and oratories, as in the Cairene mosques of Baybars I (1262–63), Nāṣir (1335), and Muʾayyad Shaykh (1415–20). Madrasahs used eyvāns, and the justly celebrated madrasah of Sultan Ḥasan in Cairo (1356–62) is one of the few perfect four-eyvān madrasahs in the Islamic world. Mausoleums were squares or polygons covered with domes. In other words, there were only minor modifications in the typology of architecture, and even the 15th-century buildings with interiors totally covered with ornamentation have possible prototypes in the architecture of the Seljuqs. Yet there are formal and functional features that do distinguish Mamluk buildings. One is the tendency to build structures of different functions in a complex or cluster. Thus, the Qalāʾūn mosque (1284–85) in Cairo has a mausoleum, a madrasah, and a hospital erected as one architectural unit. Another characteristic is the tendency of Mamluk patrons to build their major monuments near each other. As a result, certain streets of Cairo, such as Bayn al-Qaṣrayn, became galleries of architectural masterpieces. The plans of those buildings may have had to be adapted to the exigencies of the city, but their spectacular facades and minarets competed with each other for effect. From the second half of the 14th century onward, building space for mausoleums began to be limited in Cairo, and a vast complex of commemorative monuments was created in the city’s western cemetery. In Aleppo and Damascus similar phenomena can be observed.
Although Mamluk architecture was essentially conservative in its development of building types, more originality is evident in the constructional systems used, although traditional structural features continued to be employed—e.g., cupolas raised on squinches, or more commonly, pendentives, barrel and groin vaults, and wooden ceilings covering large areas supported by columns and piers. The main innovations are of three kinds. First, minarets became particularly elaborate and, toward the end of the period, almost absurd in their ornamentation. Facades were huge, with overwhelming portals 25 to 35 feet (7.5 to 10.5 metres) high.
A second characteristically Mamluk feature was technical virtuosity in stone construction. At times this led to a superb purity of form, as in the Gate of the Cotton Merchants in Jerusalem or the complex of the Barqūq mosque in Cairo. At other times, as in the Mamluk architecture of Baybars and Qāʾit Bāy, there was an almost wild playfulness with forms. Another aspect of Mamluk masonry was the alternation of stones of different colours to provide variations on the surfaces of buildings.
The third element of change in Mamluk art was perhaps the most important: almost all formal artistic achievements rapidly became part of the common vocabulary of the whole culture, thus ensuring high quality of construction and decorative technique throughout the period.
With the exception of portals and qiblah walls, architectural decoration was usually subordinated to the architectural elements of the design. Generally, the material of construction (usually stone) was carved with ornamental motifs. Stucco decoration was primarily used in early Mamluk architecture, while coloured tile was a late decorative device that was rarely employed.
Other arts
Like architecture, the other arts of the Mamluk period achieved a high level of technical perfection but were often lacking in originality. The so-called Baptistère de Saint Louis (c. 1310) is the most impressive example of inlaid metalwork preserved from this period. Several Mamluk illustrated manuscripts, such as the Maqāmāt (1334) in the National Library, Vienna, display an amazing ornamental sense in the use of colour on gold backgrounds. Mamluk mosque lamps provide some of the finest examples of medieval glass. The wooden objects made by Mamluk craftsmen were widely celebrated for the quality of their painted, inlaid, or carved designs. And the bold inscriptions that decorate the hundreds of remaining bronzes testify to the Mamluk mastery of calligraphy.
