iSLAM MEDENiYETiNDE

(MEDİNETÜ'S-SELAM) ULUSLARARASI SEMPOZ\'UM

7-8-9 KASIM 2008

_ı~ ~ ' iLAtıiYA'J: S:~T:.ı:o. Ümraniye FAK:ULTESI ARAŞTIRMAMERKEZI Belediyesi Marmara Üniversitesi, İlah!)'at Fakültesi, islam Tarihi ve Sanatlan Bölümü

Marmara University, Faculty of Theology. Department of Islami c History and Arts

& islam Konferansı T~kilatı, İslam Tarih, Sanat ve Kültür Ara§tırma Merkezi (IRCICA)

- Organisation of lslamic Conference, Research Centre for Islamic History. Art aı'ıd Culture

İSLAM MEDENIYETINDE BAGDAT

1\ •• A (MEDINETU'S-SELAM) ULUSLARARASI SEMPOZVUM

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD (MADINAT ai-sAIAM) IN THE ISLAMI C CIVILIZATION

7-9 Kasım 1 November 2008 Bağlarba~ı Kültür Merkezi Üsküdar- İSTANBUL TÜRKİYE

PROGRAM Ümran!}'e Beled!}'esi'nin katkılar!Yia Sponsored by Umran!}'e Municipalio/ THE IDEOLOGY OF MADINAT AL-SALAM AND THE CONCEPT OF BAGHDAD INARAB CULTURE

Prof. Oliver Leaman·

The city in the Islamic world The city in Islamic culture has always had a crucial status. 1 Ibn Khaldun points out in his remarkable work on the dynamic nature of Muslim society that the city often represents a parucular crystallization of social forces that defines a culture.2 Cities are important for him precisely because they establish a culture, and only a city is wealthy enough and sedate enough, in his terms, to allow for superfluous activities which ilre embodied in material objects like ceramics, lavish architecture and public works in general. Yet cities and the cultures they embody are merely temporary repositories of culture since they bear within theı:İıselves the seeds of their own destruction, and in a sense the bigger they are, the harder they fall, since they give rise to envy externally and corruption and softness internally, two forces that inevitably work in tandem to bring a city down. Although Islam started in the desert, we are told, it did in fact rapidly embody itself in cities, the cities of M edinalı and Mecca. It is worth noting that ' . 1 the dating of the Islamic calendar starts with the year that Medinah, the ~~ty of Medinah, offered sh el ter to the nascent Muslim community. It could ··have been regarded as having started earlier when the revelations commenced, for

University ofKentucky 1 Abu-Lughod, J. 'The Islamic City-historic myth, Islamic essence, and contemporary relevance', International Journal ofM idEastern Studies, 19, 2 (1987), pp.155-76. Ibn Khaldun The Muqadimmah, trans. F. Rosenthal, Princeton, 1967. 196 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMI C CIVIUZATION instance, or later when the community moved onto Mecca, but the initial emi­ gration to Medinah represented the fust time the community lived in a city, aİıd so was defined as a politically significant group. This emphasis on cities certainly did not stop with the two holy cities, but has continued ever since in the individual characters of the major Islamic cit­ ies, and not only those in the Arab and Persian world. Cairo, Beirut, Istanbul, Isfahan, Kuala Lumpur, Sarajevo and so on are all major cities with fascinating histories and dramatic changes of fortune, and these cities have often served as symbols of the contemporary state of Islamic culture. There is nothing like the destruction of a city, its rebirth, its prosperity or decline, to symbolize the cul­ ture as a whole. This is not the place to compare the Islamic city with those elsewhere, but it is worth just mentioning that cities outside of the Islamic world rarely take on such a large symbolic meaning. London is not Britain in the way that the Islamic city is often taken to represent its country. There is a reason for this, of course, and it rests on the extreme forces of centralization and authority that tended to operate in many Islamic countries, whether un­ der colonial or independent government.3

Baghdad as madinat al-salam The idea of Baghdad as madinat al-salam is often credited to its original layout by Caliph Mansur, to the circular structure of the boundaries of the original city, and to what the circle means in terms of balance, harmony, and a 4 certain concept of perfection • As we know, this ideal was not matched by re­ ality for most of the time, as tends to happen with ideals, and this will pe dis­ cussed later. Wlıat is important is what it says about the cultural meaning that Baghdad came to have, a meaning that has remained remarkably constant over a very extensive period. Authority, composure, self-eontrol and a high regard for the works of the intellect came to be associated with Baghdad, not in the sense that they were always to be found there, but in the sense that there was a feeling that they ought always to be fo und there. W e could look at the philosophical, theological, artistic and scientific doctrines that arose in the city, and these have often been described, but it is more significant to point to what might be called the madinat al-salam style of intellectual work, because this reveals a good deal of what ways of working are traditionally associated with the city. Of course, when one links a style with a city it is not being

3 M. Morony, Iraq after the Muslim conquest, Princeton, 2005. 4 Lassner, ]. "The caliph's personal domain: the city plan of Bagdad re-examined", The Islamic City, ed. A. Hourani and S. Stern, Oxford: Cassirer, 1970, 103-17. IDEOLOGY OF MADIM4T AL-SALAM AND THE CONCEPT OF BAGHDAD INARAB CULTURE 197 claimed that everyone in the city worked in that way, or that no-one else from other places shared in that approach, but rather that many important thinkers were encouraged to work in a certain way, and this methodology came to achieve a certain prominence. I am going to start looking at the concept of Baghdad inArab culture by starting with very modern works of art and poet­ ry, to develop a working model of what might be called the coıicept of Bagh­ dad as it exists taday, and then work back from that concept to much earlier times and different forms of thought to try to establish what this concept is, how it is used aesthetically and what significance it has.

Madinat al-salam in modern art and poetry In his art Dia·al-Azzawi has produced aset of mixed media works which he,links with Baghdad and a boxed set of lithographs5 entitled "Homage to Baghdad". As with much modern Iraqi art, a theme is often represented of the links with pre-Islamic civilizations, in particillar the Sumerians as well as ab­ stract shapes, highly coloured surfaces with sharp contrasts drawn between the colours, and the use of Arabic calligraphy in a gigantic form, so that letters are displayed often at randam across the image, although closer inspection reveals the combinations of letters that produce words such as Baghdad. The litho­ graphs have a sculptural form, with a large dark background and a colurnn of colour in the foreground, as though representing ancient sculptures from the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia. In his "Oriental scene"6 the letters do not make up a word, but here represent the alleyways and thoroughfares of the city, with vibrant colours carefully arringed and in particular a large vocabu­ lary of black being employed. Al~Azzawi says that he sees black as one of the basic colours of Iraqi culture, given its tragic quality. However, black does not occur in all his work, and the " Blessed Tigris"7 which could well be talcen to be a reference to Baghdad, is a colurnn of overwhelmingly bright colours with the verse going araund the base, and the verse is in a totally different mood from the visual artefact. There are certainly same features we can link, like the green and the blue, reminiscent of the references to growth and nature and water, alJ. · aspects of the idea of peace in traditional Arab culture. But the poem refers to the darker si de of life, and in particular to the darker side of Iraqi lifei;. ')'hile"" the image is irretrievably cheerful. The peaceful motif runs throughout the poem until the eırd, where the resignation of the poet at the absence of peace

al-Azzawi, Dia Hamage to Baghdad, Boxed set of 10 lithographs, 1982. 6 Venetia Porter, Word into Art: Artists of the modern Middle East, London, 2006, p.73. 7 Porter, Word into Art, p.S. 198 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISlAMIC CIVIUZATION is expressed, and we find no reference to this in the image. So we should per­ haps conclude that the image is designed to work as a contrast with the words, an· ironic representation of a perfect realm of peace which is nonetheless vol­ cano-like in its shape and dynamic in structure, revealing how even within the most calm representation of peace the possibility of conflict is implicit and potentially destabilizing. Had the calligraphy been in black, which it could eas­ ily have been, the contrast between the image and the words would have been too obvious, but having the letters in desert sandy brown integrates them into the object as a who le and encourages us to link them with the structure of the . poem and its references to earth. The role of Baghdad as the madinat al-salam makes it possible to draw ar­ tistic rnileage through challenging the real with the ideal. The real at almost every period since the creation of the city of Baghdad has been difficult. The city was the headquarters of the Sunni 'Abbasid regime, and so was often seen as the headquarters of evil by the Shiites. It was comprehensively destroyed on several occasions, most notably in 1258 by the Mongols, and under the Otto­ mans became little more than an administrative centre. The British and the subsequent Iraqi state continued with centering power in Baghdad, and it then became the symbol of a particular kind of Arab politics, and more recently it became a city in the eye of many storms, This is all reflected in culture and in particular in poetry and art. In "A personal song" by Saadi Youssefl we have as a refrain the famous lines by Badr Shakir al-Sayyab (1926-64) "Iraq, Iraq, nothing but Iraq" (from the Unshudat al-matar- Rainsong) 9 and this is linked with Tahrir Square in Baghdad, and a reference to paradise in terms of McDonalds and KFC, a nice turning around. of the garden aspects of Baghdad as the madinat al-salam. Muzaffar al-Nawwab refers in his "Wine and grief' 10 to the banks of the Tigris, a very common way of referring to Baghdad, and to the washing of her beauty with dew, and the breaking of the perfect image of peace is poignant. Mahmud Darwish in his "A horse for the stranger" brings in what is often a theme in contemporary verse and art, and that is the venerable age of Baghdad and what it represents in the Arab mindin the sense of cul­ tureıı. So there are several references to pre-Islami c Iraq, and in particular to the gardens of Babylon, to the Tigris and the Sumerians. He raises the ques-

8 Saadi Youssef, "Personal Song" al-Ahram Weekly, 17-23 April Ô003). 9 · De Young, T. Placiııg the Poet, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and post-colonial Iraq, Albany, 1998. 10 M. al-Nawwab, "Wine and Grief', al-Ahram Weekly, 17-23 April (2003) 11 Darwish, M. "None other but Iraq", trans. E. Haikal, al-Jadid, 9, 44 (Summer). (2003) IDEOLOGY OF MADINATAL-SAlAM AND THE CONCEPT OF BAGHDAD INARAB CULTURE 199 tion "W as it right for Baghdad to take its past for granted?" just after it is listed with a range of antagonistic cities like New York, London, Paris and Rame (this wasVIritten in Paris in 1991). The language of the poem is again very ru­ ral, playing on the madinat al-salam idea, with the invading forces set on de­ stroying that calm. In one of the most direct references to Baghdad Adonis' "Salute to Baghdad" 12 (Adonis, 2003) we do not leave the emphasis on nature. He refers ironically to "carrying the water of life, from the banks of the Hud­ son and the Thames so that it may flow into the Tigris and the Euphrates". Yet this is a war against water, against nature and against Baghdad which is re­ ferred to as having i ts sides pierced, again an evocation of the shape of the city being invaded and violated, yet anather attack on what originally was Gilga­ mesh and Sumeria, both named in the poem. Peace once shattered can never be recovered and the poet calls on resistance to restore dignity and voice to ' the suffering land and its people. Salalı al-Hamdani 's "Baghdad mybeloved"13 is profoundly areligious, pouıing scorn on all the main faiths and their claims to links with the city, and also on the secular Baathist regime of Saddam. He refers to the name of the city as madinat al-salam, and suggests that nature is destroyed by what is part of it, human beings, who use its force for life to at­ taek it.

Madinat al-salam and realism One of the intriguing issues to ask is why Baghdad, with its tumultuous history, has been identified as the madinat al-salam. Even a cursory glimpse at Arab history suggests it is the very opp;site. The fo unding of Baghdad and the aspirations for it were ambitious, and remain so, in the sense that the idea of a great city at the heart of what was supposed to be a united empire, an empire indeed ofbelievers, should have taken on an extraordinary character of perfec­ tion. Cities do not emerge artificially, of course, and the position of Baghdad and in particular the Tigris placed within and near it some lovely countryside, . and then there is the centrast of the urban wealth, both natural and physical, · and the poverty of the countryside, and the rural desert It is worth mention-,· ing that even the Tigris, such a potent symbol of Baghdad and its continuin_$ significance, has in the past been a dangerous neighbour for the citJ, ',and 14 when it flooded districts were destroyed and many citizens drowned • In W estern imagination Baghdad was up to the nineteenth century the exotic

12 Adonis "Salute to Baghdad" Al-Ahram Weekly, 17-23 April. (2003). 13 al-Hamdani, S. "Baghdad my beloved", Literature from the "Axis ofEvif', ed. A. Ma­ son et al, New York, 2006. 14 H. Metz, H. (ed.) Iraq: A Countıy Study. Washington, 1988. 200 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMIC CIVIUZATION source of romantic tales and great treasure, but the colonial experiences of both the Ottomans and the British gave rise to a more accurate view of a city that was well past its former glories, and a long way alsa from its glorious past as the centre of an empire, and in the pre-Islamic period as the centre of civili­ zations. Yet Baghdad stili elicited respect in the W estern imagination, as in the Arab world cities are associated with cultures, and capitals with civiliza­ tions, so Baghdad came to typi:fy a significant Arab city, but certainly not an 15 especially beautiful nor even peaceful place • Baghdad as a symbol is crucial in Arab culture, and the poems we have· discussed so far bring this out nicely. If it was regarded as the natural site for conflict there would be little point in making such an aesthetic issue about the absence of peace in the city. A place that is regarded as prone to violence is hardly worth being shocked by when in a violent state, which is probably how most of the Middle East is nowseenin the United States and Europe. But in Arab culture linking places with certain characteristics is useful when we try to use dramatic contrasts in art. This is very much the flavor of the images we discussed linked to Baghdad, the colors are bright, the words powerful and uncompromising, the structures are strong and the physicality of the work uncompromised. This is because the artists are dealing with the idea of a fall from paradise, and that is a very patent idea creatively. It sets parameters for the subsequent work, and that enables and indeed encourages the artist to push against those limits and subvert them. W e can certainly see that in much of the art of Dia al-Azzawi, which often eschews a concentration on the gloomier themes that might have seemed appropriate and produces an efflo­ resence of colour and canfidence to contrast with the grimmer reality that lies beneath.

Madinat al-salam and style One of the criticisms that might be made of much Arab art and poetry is that whereas in the past it was distinct from European art and poetry, in mod­ ern times it has become almost indistinguishable. The use of Arabic and Per­ sian calligraphy in modern times only adds to the problem, since in most cases this is just a heavy-handed ticking of an aesthetic box, making an obvious ref­ erence to the background of the artist, and perhaps to the anticipated market. Often the calligraphy is pretty and provides a delightful decoration to adorn a · wall, or it is poignant and makes an obvious reference to an idea, like the work

15 Maxwell, D. A Dweller in Mesopotamia: Being the adventures of an official artist in the garden ofEden, London, 1921. THE iDEOLOGY.OF MADINAT AL-SALAM AND THE CONCEPT OF BAGHDAD INARAB CULTURE 1 201 of Hassan Massoudy, for instance, which is very obvious in its linking of the 16 shapes ofl€tters and emotions like love, fear and so on • That is certainly also the case With so me of the recent poetry and art about Baghdad, but it could be argued that the madinat al-salam concept tends to rescue this work from that sort of straitjacket. That is because the madinat al-salam principle is such a problematic one in a whole range of ways which we have already outlined that it forces artists to strain their vocabulary lıi order to do justice to it. The madinat al-salam ideal is so distinct from reality for so much of Baghdad's history that it has come to imply a series of dichotomies, which are like the dichotomy between madinat al-salam and Baghdad. These include now/then, death/life, the Other/us, West/Arabs, barbarity/civlization, ugli­ ness/beauty, strength/weakness and so on. W e have here a complete artist's paiette of emotional colours. They can be applied heavily or with sensitivity, and it has to be said that the tendeney is for artists to be so close to recent events that they are unable to distance themselves aesthetically in order to produce a calm and balanced work. W e can certainly see this in much of the poetry, it is often clear who are the villains, although not so clear about who the heroes are (perhaps because there are no heroes), and is angry in is con­ demnation of what has happened to Iraq, symbolized by the city of Baghdad, the madinat al-salam which has been so often violated and destroyed. One feature about this Baghdad poetry and art is that it is hugely secular. There are not many religious references, and many favourable uses of pre­ Islamic histarical markers. This is entirely fitting, since Baghdad has never been an important religious centre in Islam, although it has been the head- . quarters of a particular kind of Sunnism during the 'Abassid period. The madinat al-salam is actually also very much a secular concept, despite the reli­ gious tone of same of the language surraunding it. The beauty of the natural surroundings, in particular the gardens and the rivers, find an echo in the Qur'an's account of paradise, but it is not obvious whether this is an originally "' religious idea either, or a reflection of an earlier Middle Eastern canception of_ 17 how things ought to be in the best of all possible worlds • Given the increasl 1 ingly religious nature of the Middle East in the early 2lst century one. might ,. ' raise the question of how representative the work of the artists and poefs we have been discussing really is. Yet these forms of artistic creativity have always been linked in the Middle East with the wider world and so are essentially see-

16 Porter, Word into Art, p.21. 17 Stefan Wild, "Paradise" in The Qur'an: an encyclopedia, ed. O. Learnan, London, 2006, pp. 486-8. 202 ı INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMI C CIVJUZATJON ular. Modern Arabic poetry owes far more to modern European poetry thal to the classkal tradition, and most modern art has little local to call on, sine{ ·the forms of art in the Arab world that existed in the past are very distinct on~ the· whole from what is done today, and represent an entirely different per­ spective on the world. This is nicely explored in Orhan Pamuk' s "My name is Red" where the artists who follow the Renaissance forms of representation are being murdered by those who regard this as an attack on religion. Why did they think that the European forms of perspective were irreligious? It was not just because they were different, but because they represent the world as we see it, and not by implication as it might be seen by God, not from a partictılar point of view. In traditional manuscript illumination, for instance, we often get a calleetion of images with no attempt at replication of a normal visual perspective, and the theological justification for such a form of representation is that God sees the world synchronically and so for him its objects constitute. more of a list that is always and completely present rather than a view which changes over time. There is a wonderful map of Baghdad in the Istanbul Uni­ versity Library by MatrakÇY Nasuh which brings out its paradisiacal nature in Middle Eastern culture, an image which al-Sayyab tries to shock us out ofwith his 1960 poem "Al-Mabgha" which starts: Baghdad is a great whorehouse, and the next verse starts: Baghdad is a ·nightmare,

while the fınal verse runs Is this Baghdad? Or has Gomorrah Returned ... ? This only works in shocking us if the image that is being challenged is a very positive one, and we can see this nicely in the Nasuh map. The green and blue of nature, the grand buildings of a noble empire, the orderliness of a city that makes sense, this is Baghdad the ideal city, the city of heaven come to earth, as it were, and exemplified in the culture of its inhabitants and what they have to contribute to culture as a whole.

Madinat al-salam as a hermeneutic principle Let us examine in some depth the poem "O blessed Tigris" by Muham­ mad Mahdi al-Jawahiri which is illustrated by a sculpture "Blessed Tigris" by THE IDEOLOGY OF MAD!NAT AL-SALAM AND THE CONCEPT OF BAGHDAD INARAB CULTURE 1 203

18 al-Azzawi in the British Museum exhibition "Word into Art" in 2006 • 11,,,.~--- by Hussein Hadawi goes thus: 'I gre~t you from afar, O greet me back 0 blessed Tigris, river of gardens green. I greet your banks, seeking to quench my thirst Like doves between water and day aflutter seen. 0 blessed Tigris, oft have I been forced to leave To drink from springs which didn't my thirst l'elieve. o blessed Tigris, what inflames your heart Inflames me and what grieves you makes me grieve O wanderer, play with a gentle touch ' Caress the lute softly and sing again That you may soothe a volcana seething with rage 19 And pacify a heart burning with pain • It could be argued that this verse embodies the madinat al-salam idea. One of the meanings of peace that we often tend to forget is that of balance, and here we find it in full force. The first line calls for reciprocation from the river, when it is greeted it should respond similarly. The Tigris is often identified with Baghdad, and there is no reason to think that is not the case here. The second line links the nature of the place to paradise, as do the next two which refer to its role in nurturing the poet. So the first four lines are highly evocative and deseribe the luxuriant nature of the peaceful environment of the Tigris. The fifth and sixth lines introduces a negative note when there is a reference to exile, and to sur­ viving elsewhere without really being satisfied. The seventh and eighth lines are mo re directly destabilizing and yet the problems of the Tigris are matched by the feelings of the poet. Then the next four lines are quite remarkable and urge the artist to respond to negative events in a calm and soft manner, to act, · in an emollient faslıian and reject anger. It is not that the status quo ante is restored, after all, the exile is stili an exile, but the situation is not allawed to"" J get out ofhand.

The very antithesis of al-Jawahiri's message is Adorıis' "Salute to Bagh­ dad"20, which is completely unbalanced. The war he deseribes is not just a war

18 Porter, Word into Art. 19 Porter, Word into Art, p.S. 204 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION against a regime but against water and trees, birds and children, a war that destroys nature, and he uses the image of volcanoes spitting their la va, by con- ·trast with al-Jawahiri's phrase "volcano seething with rage". But instead of soothing the volcano, Adonis tries to repliqı.te it, denouncing again and again the invaders and their assault on civilization. The only response is violence since "the killer has eaten the bread of song" so there is no way of protesting against what is happening except through physical confrontation and retalia­ tion. Al-Jawahiri calls on the poet to "sing again" and there is no suggestion that the scope for language to continue and challenge the enemy has come to an end. Adonis contemplates a land taken over with silence, a land with no name, where .the efforts of the poet are vacuous. Al-Jawahiri's poem is struc­ tured in terms of what might be called the madinat al-salam ideology, the principle that balance in eyerything is worth preserving and even in difficult conditions needs to be established. This approach runs through his poem, a ju.xtaposition of possible reactions to tragedy is resolved by the recommenda­ tion that the exile remains calm and collected, and continues with his role as an abserver and a commentatar on the events in his country. He is resigned, and accepts the constraints under which he has to operate, and refuses to dis­ solve into cheap emotionality or into making a stock political response. Now, this should not be taken asa criticism of Adonis' poem, which has real power and authenticity, and represents very nicely the feelings of the moment, feelings that resonated with many people who heard or read the po­ em at the time. As so often with Adonis, the poem is dramatic and uncom­ promising, and represents a way of using language that gives no hostages to fortune. Adonis takes huge risks in his verse, as in so much else, and sorne­ times what he tries comes off and sametimes it is less successful, but it is al­ ways impressive. His "Salute to Baghdad" really moves at a great pace and de­ velops a complex picture of the enemy with its multi-faceted sources and kin ds of force. You never really know where the po em is go ing to go, although towards the end the reader appreciates that Adonis would fınd it difficult if not impossible to conclude with a more moderate demand. Yet with al­ Jawahiri there isa rejection of the emotionality of modern poetry towards the principle that underlies the classkal tradition of Arabic poetry, the idea that balance must be established over all the components of the verse. Of course, when we are talking about the cultural status of Baghdad we are talking about two kinds of balance, the balance of the idea of the madinat al-salam, and the balance of the kinds of adab which arose in that city. It is not

20 Adonis, "Salute to Baghdad" Al-Ahram Weekly. THE IDEOLOGY OF MADINATAL-SALAtH AND THE CONCEPT OF BAGHDAD INARAB CULTURE 1 205 difficult to imagine that artists are particularly interested in the idea of balance when discussing Baghdad, and this can be seen nicely in the sculpture by al­ Azzawi tliat accompanies al-Azzawi's poem, made from fibreglass and with the 21 poem at the base • The sculpture has the colors one would expect, the green of the gardens in the poem, the blues of the water, and the brown, yellaw and ochre for the banks of the river and day, and the white for the· doves. It has the shape of a volcana and its effusion, and even some steps going up it to give the idea that what we see is a human-ınade phenomenon, notanatural and inevitable event. Yet the puzzle is that there are .no blacks. In his "Oriental

Scene"22, for instance, almost every color is tinted with at least some black, since in the words of the artist tragedy is never far from Iraq, and this work is like Baghdad's alleys and roads, which we might add makes them appear dark, coı;ıvoluted and not really connecting up with each other. I suggested earlier that in the sculpture the black might have been thought to be unnecessary since the poem at the battom represents the black, the tragic in Iraqi history, and so there is no need for any actual black. Madinat al-salam and its histarical cantext W e are coming to an idea here of madinat al-salam as not just the name of a place but alsa the name of a style, a style well represented by Baghdad as the centre of adab, a place where people of different backgrounds and cultures originally mixed and lived amicably with each other, and whose rulers collect­ ed documents from all over the world and spent considerable resources in translating them and making them more generally available, however awk­ ward those texts might be for the established religion. The bayt al-hikmah, es­ tablished by the caliph al-Ma'mun in the third/ninth century was a notable achievement, and the intellectual wealth that flowed into Baghdad from all over the world has played a role in preserving the classkal world that stili 23 waits to be sufficiently appreciated • This is not to say that everything was sweetness and light, that debates were orderly and resolved issues, and that people were tolerant of alternative . views. Al-Ma'mun defended a particular theological position, that of th~' Mu 'tazilah, and persecuted those with different views, Ahmad ibn Hat}J:>ş.l i:h particular, who was thrown into prison and tortured because of his theoİ~gical views. When a bit later on the theological fashion changed then it was the turn of the Ash'arites, the enemies of the Mu'tazilites, to become the official doc-

21 Porter, Word into Art, p.S. 22 Porter, Word in to Art. p.73. 23 Learnan, O. An introduction to classical Islamic philosophy, Cambridge, 2002. 206 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION trine in Baghdad and return the favor. Ever since then Aslı' arism has been the doctrine shared by most Sunnis. Events in Baghdad certainly had an influence · throughout the Islamic world in the past, but the argument here is that a more pervasive influence is not so much actual doctrines but ways of creating those doctrines, a particular intellectual style. Here we should look not to theology but to philosophy, to adab. The main contribution that Baghdad made to cul­ ture does not only consist of cultural artifacts, but rather cultural ways of 24 working, and the se have continued to be associated with the city • What are these ways of working? It would be ridiculous to argue that eve..: ryone in Baghdad has ever since it was founded followed a common way of working, and it will not be argued here. What will be suggested is that the madinat al-salam identity of Baghdad does represent a method of operation that was often followed by those who lived there, or who saw themselves as imbued with i ts spirit, and that it has distinctive features, not all of which are positive. First of all we should notice the idea of peace, the no tion of an origi­ nal paradise almost which represents how things ought to be if they are set up properly, and to which we ought to endeavour to return. W e have noted this in much of the modern verse and the art we have considered, it plays very much with the idea that when bad things happen to Baghdad it is as though an earthly paradise is being attacked and disrupted, and much of the political rhetoric surraunding the city and the country of Iraq it.self looks back rather than forward, quite naturally given the significance of a religion in which the past is important in explaining the present and in which different interpreta­ tions of the past are vital in justifying the existence of different religious groupings.

S ome negative consequences of the madinat al-salam ideology When peace is destroyed, when equilibrium is disturbed, it is natural to complain and to look to a solution to what has occurred. This is a very potent idea aesthetically, since a work of art also of course has a balance and a struc­ ture that needs to be preserved, and much of the time the artist toys with the forces of disequilibrium to make his achievement at bringing everything to­ gether in the end even more remarkable and dramatic. As we have seen, this idea, what I have called the madinat al-salam principle, plays a significant role in the aesthetic discourse surraunding Baghdad. When we look at from a dif-

24 Kraemer, J. Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam, Leiden, 1988. Leaman, O. "Isla­ mic humanismin the fourth/tenth century" in History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. S. Nasr & O. Leaman, London, 1996. THE IDEOLOGY OF MAD!NATAL-SALAM AND THE CONCEPT OF BAGHDAD IN ARAB CULTURE 1 207 ferent perspective, though, it becomes to look a bit more suspect, since we have here an idea that is essentially fictitious, since there was no madinat al­ salam in the sense of the concept we are being asked to accept, and lo oking to the past is often not useful in working out what to do in the present. For ex­ aınple, what is the relevance of Babylon and Sumeria to Baghdad taday? Or the original constitution of the Abbasid Empire? These past gloties are often used in art and poetry, and very effectively, but the sart of pride that may arise as a result of such comparisons might not always be very helpful in more prac­ tical parts of life. Anather aspect of the madinat al-salam approach is the idea of the indi­ vidual as balanced and secure in his knowledge of who he is. This is very much a theme of the ada b literature, and carries over with a· good de al of the classkal Greek idea of the gentleman, the person who has a high opinion of himself 5 and who is entitled to have a high opinion ofhirnse1f2 • It resultsina theory of education in which emulation becomes irnportant, and one of the highest cri­ teria of value is skill in the use of language. This is one of the main ways that we distinguish between philosophy or hikmah and adab, the former is more concerned with the matter of concepts while the latter is taken up with the form of those concepts. The way in which people express themselves becomes crucial in whether they are respected or not, as does their behaviour and role in society. This may result in people giving more weight to public persona ra­ ther than to the substance of what lies behind what is said and what seems to be the case. Appearance comes to be more significant than reality, a teliing • phrase more highly regarded than an awkward fact. In particular, language acquires a huge status in society, ,and perhaps is not always used in a way that justifies such a role. The proponents of the madinat al-salam idea were well aware of these negative directions that could easily be taken. It runs through the poem we earlier considered by al-Jawahiri, for instance. He could have spoken bitterly of the humiliations of exile, for instance, and the rage he feels at the way things have gone in his life and in his country. These are frequent topicsin his: work, but here he points to the importance of balaneing the very real anger w~ feel in life at the vagaries of fortune with the necessity to present an ae~tlıeti­ cally appropriate formula for presenting that emotion. It is difficult to restrain oneself and think how to present an emotional state objectively, but that is the challenge that the madinat al-salam principle throws out to artists.

25 Leaman, 0., "Secular friendship and religious devotion", in Friendship East and West: Philosophical perspectives, ed. O. Leaman, Surrey, 1996, pp, 251-62. 208 INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION W e see this principle working through the sculpture also that goes along with the poem. It incorporates many of the natural features deseribed in the poem like day, water, sand ete. and it has a sort of volcana shape, yet the child-Iike cheerful colors contrasts nicely with the rage to which the poem re­ fers. In this it matches well the sentiments of the poem, the suggestion that rage needs to be controlled and channeled into something more productive and that pain can be assuaged by using it to explore a range of possibilities rather than allowing it to boil over into violent action or expression. That is why the volcana looks so frozen, the po int is to transform anger and pain in to· something else, like changing the malten lava from a volcana into something solid, something indeed that can be used productively by farmers, eventually, as a source of fertility. W e don't have here the empty posturing of the artist intent on just producing a work that wears its heart on its sleeve. On the con­ trary, the artifact is carefully composed in order to refer to a situation that makes us thinkabout it and how we should thinkabout it. Using cheerful col­ ours to illustrate something sad does that. This is a characteristic of al­ Azzawi's work. Even in his boxed set of lithographs "Homage to Baghdad" 26 from 1982 , which do use a good deal of black and are gloomier than "Blessed Tigris", the bright colours and the composition exhibit a degree of self-eontrol and harmony that exemplify the madinat al-salam approach. A good example here is his "Old Bagdadi door" (1983) which isa virtual harmony of restrained 27 and do ur shades • W e are offered in sh ort a variety of perspectives in each picture, a facet of the whole Baghdad, not just in the past but in what al­ Azzawi took to be present and future, and with the drama and perspicacity of each image we get the idea that what is produced is part of a series of views, no one of which is anymore privileged than 'any other. The madinat al-salarn idea of the circle that was taken to encapsulate the original Baghdad is of a perfect shape, something that as a whole is beautiful and something that to be understood needs to be seen as a whole. But for us to see it as a whole is not always easy, especially in the case of a city, and it is necessary to examine the different parts of it and struggle to find an account that pulls them altogether. That is what al-Jawahiri and al-Azzawi are suggesting in their work. Let us forego the easy sloganizing and the extreme reactions to what happens. The madinat al-salam approach is to try to put things together carefully and calm­ ly, re-establish patterns that have been disrupted and accept the existence of

26 al-Azzawi, Dia, Hamage to Baghdad, Boxed set of 10 lithographs, 1982. 27 al-Azzawi, Dia Dia Azzawi, Paris, 2001, p.21. THE IDEOLOGY OF.MADINAT AL-SAlAM AND THE CONCEPT OF BAGHDAD INARAB CULTURE 1 209 ~oints ofview. That is the.great achie~ement ofBaghdad asa cultur- . and it- is as relevant to day as ıt ever was ın the past. al ıcon ._ References and Bibliography Abu-Lughod, J. 'The Islamic City - historic myth, Islamic essence, and con­ temporary relevance', International Journal of M idEastern Studies, 19, 2 (1987), pp.155-76 Adonis Un poete dans le monde d'aujourd'hui 1950-2000, Paris, 2000 _____ "Salute to Baghdad" Al-Ahram Weekly, 17-23 April. (2003) Ali, S. Arabic literary salons in the Islamic Middle nges, Notre Dame, IN. 2008 Ali, Wijdan Coni:emporary art from the Islamic world, Essex, 1987 al-Azzawi, Dia Romage to Baghdad, Boxed set of 10 lithographs, 1982 ------(Dia Azzawi, Paris, 2001 ,Blair, Sheila Islamic calligraphy, Edinburgh, 2006 Darwish, M. "None other but Iraq", trans. E. Haikal, al-Jadid, 9, 44 (Sum­ mer) .(2003) "A horse for the stranger" al-Ahram Weekly, 17-23 April, (2003) De Young, T. Placing the Poet, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and post-colonial Iraq, Albany, 1998 Faraj, M. (ed) Strokes ofgenius, contemporary Iraqi art, London, 2001 al-Haidari, B. "The influence of Arab culture on contemporary Arab artists', UR, (1981) 10-27 al-Hamdani, S. "Baghdad my beloved", Literature from the "Axis of Evil", ed. A. Mason etal, New York, 2006 Jayyusi, S. (ed) (1987) Modern Arabic poetry: an anthology, New York, 1987 ------(ed) Anthology of modern Pale!tinian literature, New York, 1992 Ibn Khaldun The Muqadimmah, trans. F. Rosenthal, Princeton, 1967 Khatibi, A. L'art contemporain arabe, Paris, 2001 Kraemer, J. Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam, Leiden, 1986 Lassner, J. "The caliph's personal domain: the city plan of Bagdad re- examined", The Islanıic City, ed. A. Hourani and S. Stern, Oxford: Cassi­ rer, 1970, 103-17 Leaman, O. "Islamic humanism in the fourth/tenth century" in History of Is­ lanıic Philosophy, ed. S. Nasr & O. Leaman, London, 1996 ----- "Secular friendship and religious devotion", in Friendship East and West: ' 1 Philosophical perspectives, ed. O. Leaman, Surrey, 1996, pp, 251-62 .. #- •· ' ------An introduction to classical Islanıic philosophy, Cambridge, 2002 ·· ' Maxwell, D. A Dweller in Mesopotamia: Being the adventures of an official art- istin the garden of Eden, London, 1921 H. Metz, H. (ed.) Iraq: A Country Study. Washington, 1988 M. Morony, Iraq after the Muslim conquest, Princeton, 2005

M. Nasuh "View of Baghdad" Beyan-ı menazil-ı sefer-i Irakeyn-i Sultan Süleyman Han, Istanbul University Library, (1537) T5964 210 INTERNATIONAl SYMPOSIUM ON BAGHDAD IN THE ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION M. al-Nawwab, "Wine and Grief', al-Ahram Weekly, 17-23 April (2003) O. Pamuk, My name is Red, trans. E. Göknar, London, O. 2001 V. Piacentini, "Madina/Shahr, Qarya/Deh, Nahiya/Rustaq. The city as politi­ cal-administrative institution: the continuity of aSasanian mod­ el,"Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 17, (1994) pp.SS-107. Venetia Porter, Word in to Art: Artists of the modern Middle East, London, 2006 N. Shabout, Modern Art art: formatian ofArab aesthetics, Gainesville, FL, 2007 C. Wendell, "Baghdad: Imago Mundi and Other Foundation Lore," Interna­ tional Journal ofM idEastern Studies 2 , (1971), pp. 99-128. Stefan Wild, "Paradise" in The Qur'an: an encyclopedia, ed. O. Leaman, Lon­ don, 2006, pp. 486-8 Sa'adi Youssef, Without an alphabet, without a face. Selected poems, trans. K. Mattawa, St Pau1, MN: 2002 . ------(2003) "Personal Song" al-Ahram Weekly, 17-23 April