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Sinan and the Competitive Discourse of Early Modern Islamic Architecture

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Sinan and the Competitive Discourse of Early Modern Islamic Architecture Challenging the Past: Sinan and the Competitive Discourse of Early Modern Islamic Architecture Author(s): Gülru Necipoğlu Source: Muqarnas, Vol. 10, Essays in Honor of Oleg Grabar (1993), pp. 169-180 Published by: Brill Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1523183 Accessed: 22-12-2015 19:05 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1523183?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Brill is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Muqarnas. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 140.247.86.241 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 19:05:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions GULRU NECIPOGLU CHALLENGING THE PAST: SINAN AND THE COMPETITIVE DISCOURSE OF EARLY MODERN ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE Oleg Grabar compared architecturein the formativepe- As Spiro Kostofnoted, "The veryfirst monument of the riod of Islam, with its novel synthesisof Byzantine and new faith,the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem,was a pat- Sasanian elements,to "a sortof grafton other livingenti- entlycompetitive enterprise" thatconstituted a conspic- ties." "The Muslim world," he wrote, "did not inherit uous violation of the Prophet's stricturesagainst costly exhausted traditions,but dynamic ones, in which fresh buildings. The Dome of the Rock and other Umayyad interpretationsand new experimentscoexisted withold imperial projects not only challenged the modest archi- waysand ancient styles."'In thisstudy dedicated to him I tecture of the early caliphs stationed in Medina, but at would like to show that a similar process continued to the same time inviteda contestwith the Byzantinearchi- informthe dynamicsof later Islamic architecturewhose tecturalheritage of Syria,the center of Umayyadpower. historyin the early-modernera was farfrom being a rep- A well-known passage by the tenth-centuryauthor etition of preestablished patterns constitutinga mono- Muqaddasi identifies the competition with Byzantine lithic traditionwith fixed horizons. The "formation"of architecture,a livingtradition associated withthe great- Islamic architecture(s) was a process thatnever stopped. est rival of the Umayyads,as the central motive behind Its parameters were continuallyredefined according to the ambitious building programsof CAbdal-Malik (685- the shiftingpower centers and emergent identities of 705) and al Walid I (705-15):" successive dynastieswho formulateddistinctive architec- tural idioms accompanied by recognizable decorative The Caliphal-Walid beheld Syria to be a countrythat had modes. Novel architectural that both long been occupiedby the Christians, and he notedthere syntheses thebeautiful churches still to so enchant- remained rooted in a shared Islamic and self-con- belonging them, past inglyfair, and so renownedfor their splendor as are the fromit created a tension be- sciouslydeparted perpetual Churchof theHoly Sepulcher and the churchesof Lydda tween tradition and innovation, often articulated and Edessa.So he soughtto build for the Muslims a mosque in through pointed references to the past that endowed Damascusthat should be unique and a wonderto the monuments withan intertextualdimension. world.And in thelike manner, is it notevident that his fa- therAbd al-Malik, the ofthe of the semiotic of withrefer- seeing greatness martyrium Though charging buildings theHoly Sepulcher and itsmagnificence was moved lest it ence to specific architecturalpasts had its roots in the shoulddazzle the minds of the Muslims and henceerected formativeperiod of Islam, it came to play a particularly abovethe rock the dome which is nowseen there? important role in the intertextual architectural dis- course of the early-modernera, extending roughlyfrom The Umayyadsand the earlyAbbasids, who were the only the sixteenth through the eighteenth century.This pe- caliphal dynastiesto have unifiednearly the whole world riod representing the "adolescence of modernization" of Islam, effectivelycompeted withthe past in construct- was characterized by its growingindependence fromtra- ing their imperial architecturalimage. Aftertheir cultu- ditional culture, but at the same time its reluctance to ral hegemony had ended, the smaller states that sever ties from the past.2 My essay will identifya shared emerged oftensought to legitimizetheir dynastic claims early-modernpreoccupation with challenging the past by making allusions to the prestigious monuments of without rejecting its heritage, firstby focusing on the these two early caliphates. For example, architectonic programs of Sinan's imperial mosques and then by sit- and decorative elements fromthe eighth-centuryUmay- uating theircompetitive discourse withina broader spec- yad Great Mosque of Damascus were selectivelyquoted trum of examples chosen from the Uzbek, Safavid,and in the tenth-centuryGreat Mosque of Cordoba built by Mughal realms. the exiled Spanish Umayyadswho wished to establishan The competitiveness of Islamic architecture can be iconographic link with their imperial ancestral past to traced back to the imperial ambitions of the Umayyads. support their own claims to the caliphate.4 A similar This content downloaded from 140.247.86.241 on Tue, 22 Dec 2015 19:05:25 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 170 GUfLRU NECIPOLU claim was made through the Fatimid caliph al-Mansur's As forthe Madrasaof Sultan Hasan, thisedifice has no round of with its obvious equivalentin thewhole world. It wasreported that Sultan tenth-century city Mansuriyya, Hasan, whenhe orderedits construction, summoned all reference to the round of eighth-century city Baghdad, the architects(muhandisin) from all the countriesand the ultimate symbol of caliphal authoritybuilt by the asked them:Which is the highestbuilding in the world? Abbasid caliph al-Mansur. He was told:Iwan KisraAnushirwan. So he orderedthat The monumental south dome (1086-87) of the Great the iwanshould be measuredand revised(yuharrar) and thathis madrasa should be 10 cubits thanit, and it in Isfahan,which to have been higher Mosque appears inspired was constructed....Iwan Kisra has but one iwan, this that of the Great in by fire-damagedUmayyad Mosque madrasahas four!6 Damascus (rebuilt bya Seljuq vizierin 1082), can be read as yet another allusion to the royal authorityof the Timurid architectureshowed a similarpreoccupation Umayyads. Coupled with the palatial element of the with height,monumental scale, and spectacular effects. iwan, Malikshah's dome projected the prestigeof his sul- The unprecedented scale of Timur's Great Mosque in tanate which provided support to the weakened caliph- Samarqand (1398-1405) represented its patron's ambi- ate of the Abbasids who no longer enjoyed royal power. tion to build one of the most colossal mosques of the The numerous domed maqsuras it engendered in Iran Muslim world in a capital he regarded as its microcosm. and in the smaller mosques of the splintered Seljuq suc- According to the historianSharaf al-Din CAliYazdi, with cessor states of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia its soaring height "rubbing against the heavens," Tim- reflecteda resurgence of royalsymbolism at a timewhen ur's mosque proclaimed the verse frequentlycited by independent princelysuccessor states,who perpetuated fourteenth-and fifteenth-centuryhistorians: "Verily our the Sunni revivalof the Great Seljuqs, were establishing monumentswill tell about us, so look to our monuments themselvesin a Middle East no longer unifiedby colossal afterwe are gone!"7 When the fourteenth-centuryhisto- imperial caliphates.5 rian Ibn Khaldun wrote that "the monuments of a given The reverence towards the past seen in these exam- dynastyare proportionate to its original power," he ples fromthe middle period of Islam differsfundamen- noted that those of the Umayyads,Abbasids, and Fati- tallyfrom the referencesfound in early-modernmonu- mids surpassed the ones built by the "less important ments. They more frequentlyallude to the past in order dynasties"of his own time,among which he singled out to challenge it and to affirmthe superiorityof theirown the "Turksof Egypt" (Mamluks) and Timur (withwhom time. This competitiveattitude first emerges in the post- he had several meetings) as the two most powerfulrul- Mongol era in the fourteenth-and early-fifteenth-cen-ers.8 tury architectural projects of the Ilkhanids, Timurids, The competitivestreak that emerged in the architec- and Mamluks, whose domineering monumentality ture of these two late medieval dynastieswas to culmi- stands out from the modest structuresof their immedi- nate in the early-modernera withthe ambitious imperial ate predecessors, which had abandoned the ambitious projects of the Ottomans, Safavids,and Mughals. These scale of the early imperial caliphates. It is embodied in empires shared the same self-consciousattitude toward such monuments as the colossal domed mausoleum of the vast accumulated heritage of Islamic architecture the Ilkhanid sultan Uljaytuat Sultaniyya(d. 1316) whose that
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