Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom

Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field’, originally published in The Art Bulletin, 85(1), 2003, 152-84.

Abstract

A survey of the definition and historiography of ‘Islamic art’ and the various approaches to studying it.

Bios

Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom share the Norma Jean Calderwood University Professorship of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College and the Hamad bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University. A wife-and- husband team of scholars, they are the authors, singly and together, of more than a dozen award-winning books and several hundred articles on all aspects of Islamic art.

Keywords

Islamic art; Islamic architecture

AUTHOR PREFACE

In the fall of 2001, after the horrific events of 9/11, Perry Chapman, the editor of The Art Bulletin, approached us about writing an article on Islamic art for the Bulletin’s series, The State of the Field. We initially refused because we did not want to antagonize our colleagues, particular in a small field where everyone knows everyone else, but she was very persuasive, arguing that art historians were increasingly interested in Islamic art and needed a judicious guide to negotiate the rapidly-expanding literature about it. As we had written several surveys and edited the section on the subject for The Dictionary of Art, she thought we had a broad perspective that would be appropriate for the intended readers, principally those outside the field. Our first draft was somewhat more light- hearted, but we were instructed that we needed to be more critical and that humour was not ‘done’ in The Art Bulletin. Our initial concerns were realized: although many readers told us how useful our overview was, a few colleagues took offense. None was intended. The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field

Sheila S. Blair; Jonathan M. Bloom

The Art Bulletin, Vol. 85, No. 1. (Mar., 2003), pp. 152-184.

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http://www.jstor.org Tue Jan 15 08:13:35 2008 The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field Sheila S. Blair and Jon,athan M. Bloom itlen we started studying Islamic art some thirt!. years ago, rial? Does a religiously based classificatio~lsene us better there were no good introductoly textbooks that undergrad- than geographic or ling~tisticones, like those used for much uates could read. i1%en we started teaching the subject nearly of European art? To begin to answer these questions, we must a decade later, there were still none, and Ice had to make do first review how the subject is defined, how it got to be that with stacks of photocopied articles and chapters assigned way, and how it has been studied.-' from one book or another in an attempt to present students with a coherent narrative. So little survey material existed that The Definition and Historiography of Islamic Art even graduate students had difficulty getting a grasp on the Islamic art is generally held to be "the art made by artists or whole field and had to resort to obscure and uneven publi- artisans whose religion xvas Islam, for patrons ~vholived in cations. For example, K.il.(:. C:resl~-ell'smassive tomes im- predominantly hfuslirn lands, or for purposes that are re- plied that Islamic architecture ended in 900 ( .E. except in stricted or peculiar to a Sluslirn population or a hfuslim Egpt, where it suddenly stopped four hundred >.ears later in setting."" It therefore encompasses much, if not most, of the the middle of the Bahri Marnluk period, although the hfarn- art produced over fourteen centuries in the "Islarnic lands," luk sequence of sultans persisted until 1517 and there was usually defined as the arid belt covering much of West Aia ample evidence for a glorious tradition of Islamic architec- but stretching from the Atlantic coast of North Africa and ture in many lands besides Egypt.' The venerable S~irciqof' Spain on the west to the steppes of Central Asia and the P'ursinrz Art, originally published in five massive volumes in the Indian Ocean on the east. These \$-erethe lands where Islam 1930s, continued to define that field although man!- of the spread during the initial conquests in the seventh and eighth chapters were I$-oefully orit of date ~vhenthe series was re- centuries c..E. Other regions where Islam flourished in later printed, fkutr de mi~ux,in the 1970s.' In short, despite the centuries, such as tropical Africa, eastern Europe, southern exponential growth of interest in the Islamic lands generated Russia, veste ern China, northern India, and southeast Asia, by the oil boom and crisis of the 1970s, Islamic art remained are marginalized by this definition and thereby treated as a rather esoteric special? field taught in a few elite institu- peripheral to the main stor-)., even though they have huge, tions. and some majority, lluslim populations. Indonesia, for ex- Toda!- the situation could not be more different. (hurses ample, norv has more Jluslims (almost 200 million) than all in Islamic art are regularly offered at dozens of colleges and the traditional Arab countries combined. India, now consid- universities in North America, and many university depart- ered a largely Hindu countn, has almost 150 million hlus- ments of art histoly mint doctoral candidates in the specialty. lims, virtually the same number living in the neighboring General art histo17 sluvey books and courses, though still hfuslim co~mtr-).of Pakistan. Yet rarely does the Islamic art of heavily iyestern and chronological in orientation, often in- the Indian subcontinent, let alone that of Indonesia, play any clude one or two chapters or lectures on Islamic art, alvk- role in traditional courses on Islamic art, principally beca~tse wardly inserted some\vhere between the periods of late an- it takes so long to get there if you have to start at the Kaaba tiquit) and earl! medied and the geographically defined in seventh-centun Arabia. '1s hluslirn populations have emi- fields of India, China, and Japan. There are no\\. several grated in the t~ventiethcentul? from their traditional home- introductory texts devoted exclusively to Islamic art, and lands to Western Europe and the .%mericas, one call even specialist books and articles proliferate to such a degree that begin to investigate the art of an Islamic diaspora." As an scholars and graduate st~tdentscannot possibly keep up wit11 academic discipline, however, the study of Islamic art is nor- everything published in the field. It is, perhaps, a measure of mally restricted to the "core" Islamic lands between Egypt the popularity of Islamic art that the Pelican Histon of .%rt and C:entral Asia from the seventh to the eighteenth centun, volume on the subject, commissioned in the 1950s and pub- with occasiollal forays illto Spain, Sicily, and India or later lished in 1987. has already been reissued in a new and periods. expanded edition.' The horrific events of September 11. Despite its name, the academic field of Islamic art has only 2001, have only increased public curiosit) for all things con- a tenuous and problematic relationship with the religion of nected to Islam, art included. Islam. i\'hile some Islamic art may have been made by M~ts- '1s the course listings, surve! texts, and specialists' articles lirns for purposes of the faith, much of it \$-asnot. il mosque on Islamic art proliferate, scholars of the subject have put the or a copy of the Koran clearly fits everybody's definition of fundamental definition of their field under close scrutiny. Islamic art, but \+-hatabout a n+-elfth-centul? Syrian bronze From the vantage point of the earl!, twenty-first centur? of the canteen inlaid xvith kabic i~lscriptiollsand Christian scenes? Common Era (or the early fifteenth centul? after M~~ham- .% carpet bearing a design of a niche containing a lamp and mad emigrated with a srnall company of believers from Mecca laid on the ground in the direction of hfecca is clearly Islamic to hfedina), we may no~vask: Tl'hat exactly is Islamic art? HO~L- art, but ~vhatabout a technicall?- identical but iconogr-aphi- \$-elldoes this catego1)- se1-r.e the understanding of' the mate- cally different carpet used simply to cover and soften the THE hllRA(:E OF IS1 $511C ART 153 floor Some historians have attempted to solve these prob- rent in the Indian subcontinent, the Ottoman Empire, Iran, lems by creating new adjectives such as "Islamicate" to refer the Levant, and southern Spain. Such all-embracing terms as to the secular culture of Islamic civilization, but these un- "Mahommedan" or "Mohammedan," "Moslem" or "Muslim," wieldy neologisms have not found widespread accep~ance.~ and "Islarnic" came into favor only when twentieth-century Rather, most scholars tacitly accept that the convenient if scholars began to look back to a golden age of Islamic culture incorrect term "Islamic" refers not just to the religion of that they believe had flourished in the eighth and ninth Islarn but to the larger culture in which Islarn was the dorn- centuries and project it simplistically onto the kaleidoscopic inant-but not sole-religion practiced. Although it looks modern world. In short, Islamic art as it exists in the early similar, "Islarnic art" is therefore not cornparable to such twenty-first century is largely a creation of MJestern culture.I0 concepts as "Christian" or "Buddhist" art, which are normally This all-embracing view of Islarn and Islarnic art was a understood to refer specifically to religious art. Christian art, by-product of European interest in delineating the history of for example, does not usually include all the art of Europe religions, in which the multifarious varieties of human spiri- between the fall of Rome and the Reformation, nor does tual expression were lumped together in a normative notion Buddhist art encompass all the arts of Asia produced between of a single "Islam," which could be effectively juxtaposed not the Kushans and Kyoto. This important, if simple, distinction only to heterodox "variants" such as "Shiism" and "Sufism" is often overlooked. but also, and more importantly in the Western view, to And what about art? Islamic art is generally taken to en- equally normative notions of "Christianity" or ']udaism." This compass everything from the enormous congregational t~l-entieth-centuryview, enshrined in countless books, is all mosques and luxun manuscripts commissioned by po~l-erful the odder considering that there is no central authority that rulers from great architects and calligrapher-painters to the can speak for all Muslirns, although many might claim to do inlaid metalwares and intricate carpets produced by anony- so. No matter what newspapers-and many books-say, there rnous urban craftsmen and nomad wornen. Hoxcever, much never was, nor is, a single Islam, and so any attempt to define of what many historians of Islamic art normally study-inlaid the essence of a single Islamic art is doorned to failure." metalwares, luster ceramics, enameled glass, brocaded textiles, and knotted carpets-is not the typical purview of the To the 1970s historian of JYestern art, who generally considers such hand- Western views of Islam and its culture were fornmed in the icrafts to be "minor" or "decorative" arts cornpared with the crucible of colonialism, as foreign powers expanded econom- "nobler" arts of architecture, painting, and sculpture. While ically and politically into the region during a period when architecture is as important in Islamic culture as it was in traditional local powers-notably, the Ottoman Empire in Western Europe or East Asia, visual representation, which the eastern Mediterranean and the Mughals in northern plays such an enormous role in the artistic traditions of India-were weakening. Colonialism was not limited to West- Europe and Asia, is a relatively rninor and limited component ern European imperialists. In the nineteenth centuiv the of Islamic culture, and sculpture is virtually unknown. Chinese and the Russians absorbed the Sluslim khanates of In sum, then, the term "Islamic art" seems to be a conve- Central Asia. The Chinese province of Xinjiang (literally, nient misnomer for everything left over from everyw~here "New Territories") was carved out of Silk Road oases con- else. It is most easily defined by what it is not: neither a trolled for the last millennium by Muslirns. The Russians, who region, nor a period, nor a school, nor a movernent, nor a sought warm-water ports, pushed south into Central Asia, dynasty, but the visual culture of a place and time when the Iran, and Afghanistan. Colonial expansion, which was initially people (or at least their leaders) espoused a particular reli- motivated by a desire for r-a~v materials and markets for gion. man~lfact~lredgoods, was enormously complicated in the Compared with other fields of art history, the study of twentieth century by the discovery of huge deposits of petro- Islamic art and architecture is relatively new. It was invented leum throughout the region, from the Algerian Sahara at the end of the nineteenth century and was of interest through Kurdistan and the Arabian Peninsula to Sumatra, primarily to European and later American ~cholars.~Unlike and its consequent development as the world's major source the study of Chinese art, which Chinese scholars have pur- of energy. s~ledfor centuries, there is no indigenous tradition in any of These global events had several ramifications for the study the Islamic lands of studying Islarnic art, with the possible of Islamic art. For at least a millennium, European travelers exception of calligraphy, which has enjoyed a special status had brought back souvenirs of Islamic handicraft and given since the seventh century, and by extension book painting, them new meanings. ~tiennede Blois, commander of the which was collected since the sixteenth." There is no evidence First Crusade along with his brothers Godefroy de Bouillon that any artist or patron in the fourteen centuries since the and Baudoin, returned to France and became patron of the revelation of Islam ever thought of his or her art as "Islarnic," abbey of St-Josse near Caen. He apparently brought back with and the notion of a distinctly "Islamic" tradition of art and hirn the glorious sarnite saddlecloth rnade in northeastern architecture, eventually encompassing the lands between the Iran for the cornrnander Xbu Mansur Bakhtegin in the late Atlantic and the Indian oceans, is a product of late nine- tenth century (Fig. l),for it was used to wrap the bones of the teenth- and twentieth-century Western scholarship, as is the saint when he mias reburied in 1134." The spectacular rock- terminology used to identify it. Until that time, European crystal ewr made in Egypt for the Fatirnid caliph al-Aziz (r. scholars used such restrictive geographic or ethnic terms as 975-96) must have had a similar history before it became a "Indian" ("Hindu"), "Persian," "Turkish," "Arab," "Sarace- prized relic in the treasury of' S. Marco.'Wuring the sack of nic," and "Moorish" to describe distinct regional sqles cur- C6rdoba in 1010, Catalan mercenaries probably looted the 154 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2003 VOLUME LXXXV NUMBER 1

1 Samite cloth known as the Suaire de St-Josse, eastern Iran, before 961. Paris, MusCe du Louvre

exquisite ivory box made in 1004-5 for the Andalusian war- lord Abd al-Malik ibn al-Mansur and took it to the Benedic- tine monastery of S. Salvador de Leyre in the Pyrenees, where it was used to store the relics of the virgin sisters Nuniloiia and A16dia before it was eventually transferred to the treasury of the cathedral in Pamplona.14 Europeans prized these exotic objects, but they certainly were not considered Islamic art until they became objects collected in European museums.15 The earliest collections of Arab, Persian, and Turkish art objects in the West were formed in the nineteenth century. One of the first belonged to Pierre-Louis-Jean-Casimir, duc de Blacas d'Aulps (1771-1839), an ultraconservative politi- cian who furthered the restoration of French royal properties following the Revolution and became patron of Jean-Baptiste Greuze, J.-A.-D. Ingres, Eugcne Delacroix, and many other 2 Inlaid bronze ewer known as the Blacas ewer, Mosul, 1232. artists. Amassing an extraordinary collection of objets d'art, London, British Museum (photo: courtesy of the Trustees of The British Museum) many of which are now in the British Museum (Fig. 2), he hired scholars to research his collection, and the French Orientalist J. T. Reinaud's Monumarabes, persans et turcs, du cabinet de M. k duc de Blacas et d'autres cabinets (Paris, 1828) is Eastern languages and antiquities, Orientalism, and the his- the first catalogue of an entire collection of Islamic decora- tory of art, came together in a new field of inquiry. The tive arts. modern study of Islamic art can be traced to the work of the European colonialism increased interest in the arts of the Swiss scholar Max van Berchem (1863-1921). The scion of a Islamic-and formerly Islamic-lands, and many great mu- wealthy Genevan family, he was educated as a philologist and seum collections of Islamic objects were formed in this pe- historian at several European universities. After traveling to riod, from Edinburgh to Tblisi.lG The British Museum and Egypt, Palestine, and Syria in 1889, he returned to Geneva, British Library, for example, amassed a superb and encyclo- where he developed the idea of l'archt?ologie arabe. For him this pedic collection of Islamic art. The British Museum already was the historical study of "monuments," by which he meant owned a few Islamic items when it opened to the public in architecture, painting, decorative arts, inscriptions, coins, 1759, and Islamic artifacts entered the museum in increasing seals, or manuscripts made in the lands where Arabic was numbers from the late nineteenth century, so that the joint spoken. He saw these "monuments" not as isolated examples collection is now one of the world's most comprehensive, of art but as historical documents that would reveal the true with particular emphasis on manuscripts and manuscript history of the Islamic lands.17His major work, still one of the illustrations, metalwork, and ceramics. These include the six fundamental reference tools for the study of Islamic art, is his hundred ceramics amassed by the collector Frederick Du- magisterial Math-iaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionurn Arabicarum cane Godman (1834-1919) and the three hundred manu- (MCIA), a multivolume study that not only catalogued histor- scripts and printed books acquired by Sidney Churchill ical inscriptions from various regions but also placed them in (1862-1921), second secretary to the British legation in their historical and social contexts.l8 Tehran. The center of European scholarship on Islamic art, how- At the end of the nineteenth century several European ever, was Berlin, and the outstanding intellectual personality intellectual traditions, including the study of ancient Near for the study of Islamic art throughout the first half of the THE MIRAGE OF ISLAMIC ART 155

3 Fac :ade from the palace of Mshatta, befo~.e 749, as installed in the Museum fiir islamische Kunst, Berlin (photo: authors, 1992)

twentieth century was the German archaeologist and histo- twentieth century. In sharp contrast, at the beginning of the rian Ernst Herzfeld (1879-1948). Trained as an architect, he twenty-first century, the field of Islamic art seems quite pe- participated in the German excavations at Assur in Mesopota- ripheral to the central concerns of the majority of art histe mia before embarking on a long career in which he pre- rians, who tend to view it as a curious anomaly because it fits sented Islamic culture as but one period in the long and none of the standard categories of art history. It is neither a brilliant history of civilization in the lands of the Near East. period nor a style, it is not restricted to one country or region, His most important contribution to Islamic studies was his and it studies things not normally considered art. excavation of the Abbasid capital at Samarra, the center of In addition to lively debates in scholarly journals, the early Islamic civilization in the ninth century, in the years before twentieth century saw great international exhibitions, which World War I. In his subsequent publications of the excava- had replaced the universal expositions of the nineteenth tions, Herzfeld's archaeological and philological preoccupa- century. The 1910 exhibition of Islamic art in Munich is tions tended to define the canon for a later generation of primarily remembered today for its monumental catalogue of scholars. "masterpieces," but it also defined a new type of exhibition.22 The period before World War I was a time of great excite- It brought together scholars and the general public, includ- ment and exponential growth in Islamic studies: van ing European painters who were inspired by what they saw.Z3 Berchem's Corpus and the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of The London exhibition of Persian art held at Burlington Islam had begun to appear,lg and a critical mass of informa- House two decades later was another great landmark in the tion, particularly visual, was now available to central Euro- field.z4Organized by the American entrepreneur Arthur Up pean scholars such as Alois Riegl and Joseph Strzygowski. ham Pope, "the P.T. Barnum of Persian art" in the wry words They were tackling such thorny questions as the nature of of Stuart Cary Welch,Z5 and held under the patronage of King ornament and the origins of the arabesque. Islamic art, which George V and Reza Shah, the newly minted Pahlavi ruler of they saw as standing between both ancient and medieval and Iran, it not only gave the new Iranian regime international Eastern and Western art, was uniquely positioned to offer a legitimacy but also spurred publication of the Suruey ofPersian wide range of pertinent examples for their in~estigations.2~ Art at the end of the decade.Z6 For example, the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum in Berlin ac- Although some European scholars had already come to the quired the facade of the palace at Mshatta in Transjordan United States in the 1920s, the rise of Fascism and National (Fig. 3) to serve as the culmination of its series of great Socialism in the 1930s forced migrations that reconfigured facades beginning with ancient Mesopotamia. It was installed the intellectual map of Europe. Maurice Dimand (1892- on the second floor as an example of late antique architec- 1986), who had studied under Strzygowski in Vienna, arrived ture, but the young Herzfeld, in a brilliant article published at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1923 to in the first volume of the journal Der Islam (1910), upset the catalogue Coptic textiles. Two years later he was put in charge apple cart by proving that the facade was not late antique but of the newly created subdepartment for Islamic art in the Islamic.Z1 Department of Decorative Arts, and in 1933 he became cu- The story of the Mshatta facade underscores how central rator, a position he held until his retirement in 1959. Meh- the study of Islamic art was to the theoretical activities of met Aga-Oglu, a Turk who had trained in Moscow, Istanbul, leading European art historians in the first decades of the and Berlin, immigrated to the United States in 1929 and 156 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2003 VOLUME LXXXV NUMBER 1

settled at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he for introducing Islamic art to many Americans in the postwar became the first permanent professor of Islamic art in the years. Unlike the European-trained scholars of Islamic art, United States. He also established the Seminary in Islamic Art such as Dimand and Ettinghausen, who spent most of their at the University of Michigan and founded the journal Ars careers working with objects in museums, Grabar has been Islamica, which was published until 1951. In 1954 it was more interested in architecture, archaeology, and the theo- succeeded by Ars Orientalis, a journal devoted to the arts of all retical issues raised by Islamic art. Asia and still being published today. More scholars came to the United States in the 1930s. From the 1970s Richard Ettinghausen, who had been an assistant to Ernst The study of Islamic art changed dramatically in the 1970s, Kfihnel (1882-1964) in Berlin, taught at Michigan from 1938 largely because of global events. American interest in the to 1944 before moving to the Freer Gallery of Art in Wash- Middle East had been growing steadily in the decades after ington, D.C. (where he served until 1967), the Metropolitan World War 11, as the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948 Museum of Art (1969-79), and the Institute of Fine Arts, New focused world attention on the region and the world econ- York University (1967-79).27 There he secured an endow- omy came to rely increasingly on petroleum, much of which ment for research in Islamic studies from the legacy of Hagop was produced there. The dramatic rise in world oil prices in Kevorkian (1872-1962), one of the many dealers in Islamic the 1970s led to an unprecedented shift in wealth from art active in New York before and after World War 11. Europe and North America to the oil-producing countries of Kevorkian, along with Kirkor Minassian and Dickran Garabed the Middle East, and all aspects of Middle East studies Kelekian (1868-1951), had emigrated from the town of Kai- seemed to follow the scent of money. Fellowships became seri in central Turkey. Kelekian was the major supplier to readily available for graduate work in virtually any aspect of Henry Walters (1848-1931), whose collection of 22,000 Middle Eastern or South Asian studies, which in the generous works, including many important examples of Islamic art, view of the United States Department of Education encom- formed the basis of the Walters Art Museum.28 passed virtually all the lands from Morocco to Indonesia. Following World War 11, the United States emerged, as in This increased interest in the Middle East was marked in many other fields, as the leading center of scholarship in the United States by the opening of the splendid new Islamic Islamic art. The most prominent scholar of Islamic art galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in October 1975 trained in the United States following World War I1 is Oleg (Fig. 4). Under the curatorship of Ettinghausen, the museum Grabar (b. 1929). Born in France and educated in Paris and introduced the largest permanent exhibition of Islamic art at Harvard and Princeton, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1955, ever seen in the United States.30 It comprises about a dozen Grabar was initially interested in the early Islamic periods, galleries arranged chronologically and regionally that though in his long career he has published on virtually every present the full panoply of Islamic art, from earliest times in aspect of Islamic art from the Alhambra to Persian miniature Egypt and Syria to the eighteenth century in India. The ~ainting.2~Along with Ettinghausen, Grabar was responsible culmination of the visitor's experience is the display of the THE MIRAGE OF ISLAhlIC, ART 157 museum's unsurpassed collection of Persian miniatures and gram brought dozens of visiting architects, planners, design- carpets. In many ways, the galleries were-and remain- ers, and scholars to Cambridge, Massachusetts, from around intellectually conservative, for they essentially re-created the the world. Perhaps its most enduring contribution to the fabled exhibit of Islamic art that had been mounted in the study of Islamic art has been Il.luqarnas, an annual devoted to Kaiser-Friedrich Museum of Berlin at the beginning of the the arts of the Muslim world named after the distinctive type century. As a result of World War I1 and the Cold War, the of Islamic architectural ornament, and a series of supplemen- German objects, which had been stored in mines or taken to tal monographs." By virtue of the pioneering efforts of Et- the Soviet Union during and after the war, were split between tinghausen and Grabar and their students, the study of Is- museums in East and West Berlin until the city was reunified lamic art has burgeoned in the United States and Canada in 1990, so the Metropolitan's encyclopedic display was over the last three decades. Many, if not most, of the people unique in its time."' Such a concentrated display of master- occupying full-time positions in Islamic art at some thirty pieces naturally privileges the arts of the court, although universities, colleges, and museums from Massachusetts to some sense of context is provided by the small gallery on one British Columbia can trace their intellectual genealogy to side of the entrance, which shows many of the small objects either of these great teachers and scholars. found during the museum's excavations at the Iranian city of In Europe the study of Islamic art also witnessed a recovery Nishapur in the 1930s, and the one facing it, which re-creates after World War 11, and there are now about a dozen full-time a Damascene interior of the eighteenth century. academic positions in major cities there. By contrast, there European interest in Islamic art was equally strong in the are very few positions teaching "Islamic art" in the Islamic 1970s. The Musee du Louvre, Paris, ~nountedmajor exhibi- lands themselves, where professors and students largely study tions of Islamic art from French public collections in the the arts of their own countries. Thus, one is far more likely to Tuileries and the Grand Palais," but the zenith of this inter- encounter Egyptians studying and teaching Egyptian art in est came in London in 1976, with the Festival of Islam. This Egypt, Turks studying and teaching Turkish art in Turkey, or was the most ambitious loan exhibition of Islamic art since Iranians studying and teaching Iranian art in Iran. In other the Munich exhibition of 1910. More than six hundred ob- words, the concept of a universalist "Islamic art" remains jects from two dozen countries in Europe, North America, specific to the West. Despite what we may read about pan- and the Middle East were gathered for the show, curated by Islamic and pan-Arab identities in the Muslim world, nation- specialists and arranged by media."" In the wake of the festi- alist sentiments remain strong. Art history is no exception to val-and certainly capitalizing on public interest in Islamic the general rule, and it is only recently that some new muse- art-various publishers issued a range of books on Islanlic art ums in the Gulf region have begun to collect a broad range and civilization." The festival also marked the emergence of of "Islamic" art.%? London as the central market for Islamic art; by the early Furthermore, as elsewhere in art history, a division has 1980s it had replaced New York, as wealthy collectors-many arisen between the academy and the museum. Ettinghausen from the Middle East-began to flock to its auction houses was one of the last scholars of Islamic art to have a foot in and galleries. both, senling simultaneously as professor at the Institute of World events over the next two decades affected the study Fine Arts and consultative chairman at the Metropolitan and display of Islamic art in some striking and often painful Museum of Art. Such dual roles are rare today, as the con- ways. Beginning in the 1970s, conflicts within and between cerns of collectors, curators, and professors increasingly di- countries turned much of the region into a war zone, and the verge. Nevertheless, many museums remain centers of schol- Iranian revolution of 1979, the Russian invasion of Afghani- arship on Islamic art, particularly through the medium of the stan, and the Iran-Iraq War made many parts of the Middle scholarly exhibition, and exhibition catalogues will be a ma- East and Central Asia inaccessible to scholars and inhospita- jor feature of the following discussion, especially since muse- ble to research. Dissertation topics shifted dramatically from ums collect so much of what constitutes Islamic art. The studies of Iranian architecture and settlement patterns to Metropolitan, the Freer and Arthur M. Sackler Galleries of museum studies, as well as to regions once considered pe- the Smithsonian Institution, the Los Angeles County Mu- ripheral to the central concerns of Islamic art, such as North seum of h-t, and the Haward University Art Museums are the Africa and Spain and South and Southeast Asia. As in the most prominent in the United States. As in other fields, nineteenth century, when Westerners had flocked to the museum exhibitions of Islamic art have become major vehi- Alhambra for a taste of the "exotic Orient," late twentieth- cles for advancing scholarship, and subjects range from the century scholars began looking with new eyes at the legacy of Islamic arts of Spain to the heritage of the Mong01s.~~ Islamic culture in Spain, which was now more conducive to European museums have not had the acquisition budgets intellectual inquiry following the death of Francisco Franco of their American counterparts, and many of the great col- in 1973. lections of Islamic art there-such as the British Museum/ Another sign of the expansion of the field and its global- British Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum in Lon- ization was the creation of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic don, the Royal Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh, the Architecture at Harvard and MIT in 1979. The program grew Louivre in Paris, the Museum fur islamische Kunst in Berlin- out of interest by the Aga Khan, leader of the Ismaili branch were largely formed in earlier times, with acquisitions limited of Islam, in improving the quality of modern architecture in to a few objects that round out particular collections. One Islamic lands, and its emphasis on architecture continues to major exception is the David Collection in Copenhagen, this day." In addition to training Ph.D. students in the history which has amassed a spectacular group of objects seemingly of Islamic architecture and art at both institutions, the pro- out of nowhere." Other major players on the field include the Iranian-born private collector Nasser David Khalili in topics, such as taste, guilds, and literary evidence. Ir-ivin raises London, Shaykh Nasser and Shaykha Hussah al-Sabah of many issues that challenge the received wisdom of the Islamic Kuwait, and Shaykh al-Thani of Qatar. These glamorous new art establishment, but the somewhat quirky approach makes collections may overshadow such venerable collections as the book difficult to use as an expository text, and it is better Topkapi Palace and the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art read in conjunction with a more traditional survey or after in Istanbul or the Islamic museums in Tehran and Cairo, but one has absorbed the material in the latter.*' these institutions, although perennially strapped for cash and Exhibitions of Islamic art and their catalogues can be somewhat down-at-the-heels, have unparalleled breadth and similarly all-encompassing, showing everything from Umay- depth in some very specific areas. yad tablewares to Mughal jade dagger^.^' Whether in books All of this interest means that there are now many ap- or exhibitions, this universal approach to Islamic art has to proaches to studying and writing about Islamic art, ranging cover much more ground than is typical for other equivalent from the universalist to the particular, the deductive to the fields, such as Western medieval or Chinese art, and it comes inductive. Each offers its own advantages and raises its own at the cost of a certain shallowness. To a greater or lesser questions, as it tries to cover a subject of massive geographic degree, this approach implies that there is a commonality and chronological range and to address recent issues of art between, say, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (begun in history and regional studies ranging from context(s) to con- 692) and the Taj Mahal in Agra (completed in 1647) that can noisseurship, m~iltic~ilturalismto transnationalism. best be explained through the common religious beliefs of the patrons and builders (who may or may not have been Universalism Muslims). The universalist approach to Islamic art sees all the arts \\'bile some authors might strongly challenge any such produced by Muslims eve~~whereas reflecting the universal assumption, pointing out that the notion of a single Is- verities of Islam,just as God's ineffable unity encompasses the lam-or Islamic art-is strictly a twentieth-century concept, infinite diversity of his creation. Such a universal perspective, others go so far as to make explicit claims about what that originating in the classic handbooks on Islamic art,-"' has common feature is. The Iranian philosopher Seyed Hossein been continued recently in several suneys, from the two Nasr, for example, has claimed that it is spirituality: art, in his volumes on Islamic art in the Pelican History of Art to the view, is an external manifestation of the inner reality that is single-volume primer.ll The Pelican volumes follow the tra- Islam.14 Titus Burckhardt, a Swiss scholar and convert to ditional format used throughout the series, in which archi- Islam, believed that all the arts produced by Muslim peoples tecture is separated from the other arts. This creates some reveal an underlying common language rooted in Islam.-'" problem areas: wall painting and tile revetment, for example, These seductive ideas have been readily taken up by other are usually discussed separately from manuscript painting writers because they set Islamic art apart from other art and ceramics, though they may have been the work of the traditions by maintaining that God's revelation to Muham- same artists. The t~vovolumes differ in their approaches, as mad in se\-enth-centuryArabia affected all aspects of human befits the nature of the material; the first deals more with existence. For example, the Iranian architects Nader Ardalan archaeological evidence and is divided regionally (perhaps and Laleh Bakhtiar applied these concepts to architecture, xvith some overemphasis on the western Islamic lands), while others have applied them to the geometric patterns so whereas the second treats more individual masterpieces, usu- prevalent in Islamic art and architecture or to calligraphy, the ally under dynastic rubrics, and gives special emphasis to the art form that most distinctly sets Islamic art apart from all arts of Iran. Both volumes offer useful summaries of the other~.~"Worksof this type, many of which were published in historical settings for each period and provide the latest 1976 as offshoots of the Festival of Islam, are almost always by bibliography on many subjects. Along with the articles on Muslim authors, whether native-born or converts from other Islamic art in the Iliclio~zaryof Art, the Pelican volumes pro- faiths. Many, if not all, of these authors are also followers of vide the best introduction to the field for scholars in other the mystical approach to Islam known as Sufism. Such uni- fields, though the coverage ends, in accordance with the versalist ideas are especially attractive to contemporary visual traditional definition of Islamic art, with the year 1800. artists, who can freely adopt concepts and motifs detached Four recent handbooks are, naturally, somewhat less so- from their historical contexts, but their value is limited for phisticated, as they fit all of the material from this vast area historians of art who \rant to understand the dynamic pro- into a single volume and have to introduce readers to often cesses of change and development and whose interests and unfamiliar history, techniques, and modes of inquiry. Three expertise often lie in earlier centuries.17 of the four handbooks cover Islamic art chronologically, but from different vantage points: Barbara Brend concentrates Regions on works from the British Museum (which commissioned her Scholars who have accepted that one need not-or cannot- book); Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair divide the material deal with the entire? of Islamic art have tried to find more into three periods and then by media (architecture, arts of meaningful categories. One common approach is to deal the book, textiles, and arts of fire); and Robert Hillenbrand with Islamic art diachronically as the art of one period in a focuses his scope on the region between Spain and the particular region. In this view, the broad spiritual classifica- western frontier of India, leaving aside such masterpieces as tion "Isla~nic"art becomes less meaningful than more fo- the Taj Mahal. The fourth work, by Robert Inrin, himself a cused regional terms such as "Iranian," "Turkish," or "Egyp- novelist and historian of the Mamluk period, has a short tian" art, and Islam is seen as but another thread in a historical introduction but is arranged mainly by themes and complex tapestn of regional art history. Perhaps the most THE MIRAGE OF ISLAMIC ART 159

5 Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Cairo, courtyard, 868 and later (photo: authors, 1977)

recent-and splendid-example of the genre is N. Pourja- strange arguments: an otherwise reliable scholar such as vady's deluxe three-volume set of books on the arts of Iran Aptullah Kuran barely acknowledges that Ottoman architects from earliest times to the present, in which volumes two and were profoundly inspired by the Byzantine church of Hagia three cover the architecture and decorative arts of the Islamic Sophia, although most other scholars are far more gener- period, with brief chapters on individual subjects by a host of 0us.51 scholars, largely Iranian.48 This survey is organized typologi- The larger issue is important to define: To what extent cally, with separate chapters on tombs and minarets, glass and does the Islamic art and architecture of a particular region carpets, miniatures and jewelry, but other examples of the owe its distinct qualities to religion, ethnicity, or geography? type are organized chronologically. The extraordinary splen- In other words, should Ottoman architecture be seen as an dor of these volumes conceals their restricted geographic Islamic and Turkish architecture or as an Anatolian and Medi- scope, which is limited to the modern political entity of the terranean one? Is the great Ottoman court architect Sinan Islamic Republic of Iran. Thus, the dazzling Iranian architec- more like the Timurid architect Qivam al-Din Shirazi or the ture of the Timurid period-now largely in Afghanistan and Italian Filippo Brunelleschi? There is no one answer to such Uzbekistan-is ignored, as are many works of art in collec- questions, for the answers depend on what we want to find tions outside Iran. out. Iranians claim-rightly or wrongly-to have maintained Similar problems of geographic definition pertain to many cultural continuity over millennia despite repeated invasions if not all of the countries in the region, as the political from abroad, and the persistence and development of the boundaries created by imperialism and colonialism in the Persian language is the strongest evidence in support of this nineteenth and twentieth centuries scarcely conform to his- contention. In contrast, the study of the art and architecture torical circumstances. Historically, Syria can be as small as of neighboring Turkey reveals some of the pitfalls of regional today's Syrian Arab Republic52 or as large as the ancient studies, as some Turks trace the origins of their culture to Roman province of that name, which encompassed present- Central Asia, while others trace them to Catal Hiiyiik, Ephe- day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel, as well as parts of sus, or the Arabian Peninsula. These different-and often Turkey and Iraq. Political historians of medieval Islam now contradictory-views of Turkish identity surface in the myr- refer to the region gingerly as Bilad al-Sham, which is histor- iad of books published on "Turkish" art and architecture. ically correct but meaningless to most students and the gen- Some present the arts of Turkey as the arts of Anatolia-the eral public. At the opposite end of the Mediterranean, the landmass now occupied by the Republic of Turkey-with Strait of Gibraltar divides Spain from Morocco, although chapters on the Islamic periods following chapters on the during much of the medieval Islamic period the two regions prehistoric, Roman, and Byzantine era~.~gOthers take a com- shared a common culture. Books and exhibitions that treat paratively racial view, following the arts of the Turkish peo- the art of only one of them, as wonderful as they may be, ples as they wandered from the Asian steppes to India, Iran, leave out half the story.53 IS there a discrete art of Uzbekistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and eventually Turkey itself, thereby in- Afghanistan, or Pakistan, as some recent books imply?54 Does cluding many buildings that one might never expect to find India include the entire subcontinent (including Bangladesh as examples of Turkish art, such as Cairo's mosque of Ibn and Pakistan) or just the Republic of India? Does Yemen Tulun (Fig. 5).50A nationalist approach has the potential to include all of South Arabia?55At the other end of the scale, reveal unexpected continuities, but it can also result in some what didactic or polemic purpose is served by bringing to- 160 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2003 VOLUME LXXXV NUMBER 1

implausible title, Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks, suggested, or at least implied, that the Mamluk period marked either a rebirth of Islamic art or something comparable to what was happening in contemporary Italy.59 This type of exhibition continues to be popular; a few years ago the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris mounted an exhibition on the arts of the Fatimids, Shii rulers of parts of North Africa, Egypt, and Syria from 909 to 1171, to commemorate the bicentennial of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 1798, and important works were lent by a variety of sources.60It is far simpler to mount anexhibition of works chosen from a single collection, but few collections are sufficiently encyclopedic to encompass a dynastic exhibition. One exception was the peripatetic exhibition on Ottoman art from the extensive Khalili collection, which traveled to nine venues in the United States alone.61Despite the Egyptian and Turkish subjects of the three exhibitions just mentioned and the persis- tent political difficulties American museums have in dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iranian art has domin- 6 Tomb of Sultan Sanjar, Merv, Turkmenistan, ca. 1157 ated the dynastic scene, and exhibitions on the arts of the (photo: authors, 1995) Timurids in fifteenth-century Iran and Central Asia and on the Qajars in nineteenth-century Iran have been followed by one on the art of the Ilkhanids, rulers of Iran and Iraq from gether all the arts (Islamic included) of a continent such as 1250 to 1350.62 Africa?56 As in other fields of art history, exhibitions of the arts of Such regional exhibitions can show scholars and the public Islamic dynasties mounted during the last two decades took things they have never seen before, but they can also vindi- on a life beyond their venues through their massive cata- cate nationalist ideologies for chauvinists. They also reinforce logues. As the catalogues got bigger, so did the list of authors, ignorance or neglect of work outside modern borders. For and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, most cata- example, one of the major cities of Iran in the medieval logues have become cooperative ventures, with joint editors period was Mew, now in southern Turkmenistan, but the and a half dozen essays by different scholars. While this is tomb of Sultan Sanjar there (Fig. 6), one of the glories of certainly a trend across art history, the marginal position of medieval architecture, has been largely unknown to Iranians Islamic art exacerbates the problem: market pressures de- of the last century because it lies across a border that was mand that every catalogue be both introductory and compre- virtually impossible to cross until the fall of the Soviet Union. hensive, for no audience can be expected to have prior While some scholars in Iran and Central Asia are working to knowledge of the subject. Some of these catalogues are orga- erase these artificial boundaries to scholarship, it often falls nized by media; others chronologically; still others themati- to those based outside the region, whether individual schol- cally, with sections on the arts of the court, religion, and ars or institutions such as the British Institute of Persian other such categories. Many of these exhibitions were accom- Studies (which is conducting multidisciplinary research at panied by scholarly meetings whose papers were published, Mew) ,57to bridge these gaps. either as a special issue of a journal, a special monograph in a series, or a separate publi~ation.~~ Dynasties Dynastic exhibitions easily present the decorative or "por- Another way of dividing Islamic art is dynastically, and exhi- table" arts that characterize so much of the Islamic art in bitions and books on the arts of particular dynasties have museums, but like all museum exhibitions they have difficulty been popular in recent years. They avoid many of the pitfalls incorporating architecture, arguably the major form of artis- of nationalism, since medieval Muslim dynasties had no need tic patronage by most dynasties. Some have tried to deal with to respect the niceties of modern political boundaries. Some- the problem by including architectural fragments or decorat- times scholars write about the art of a dynasty without the ing the walls with photomurals, while others commission benefit of an accompanying exhibition.58 For dynastic exhi- essays by architectural historians for the accompanying cat- bitions, loans have to come from diverse sources, so such alogue. Neither solution seems particularly felicitous, but shows are more difficult to assemble and prepare, but they occasionally-whether by choice or by accident-parallel rest on firmer intellectual foundations than those organized monographs covering the architecture of a particular dynasty along modern geographic boundaries. have appeared at roughly the same time as the exhibition and One of the first such dynastic exhibitions, mounted in the provide a nice companion to the catalogue.64 early 1980s, treated the art of the Mamluks, military rulers of Together, these catalogues of splendid exhibitions, pro- Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517. The show included ev- ceedings of international conferences, and monographs re- erything from glorious manuscripts of the Koran commis- inforce one another and can provide a reasonably compre- sioned for mosques to mundane ceramic tablewares used by hensive and nuanced picture of the artistic production soldiers. As wonderful as the exhibition was, its catchy but during the reign of particular dynasties. This focus on dynas- THE MIRAGE OF ISLAMIC ART 161 ties, however, posits that artistic (and social and political) change was generated from the top, as indicated by the recurrent use of such words as "princely," "courtly," "empire," and "sultans" in the titles of these exhibitions and books. They tend to focus on masterpieces, treasures, and jewels, which often outweigh examples of purely religious art (almost exclusively manuscripts of the Koran) and assimilate examples of more popular and common types of Islamic art, such as metalwork, pottery, or glass, thereby linking them subtly, if inaccurately, to the rulers and their courts. Only two fragmentary dishes, for example, out of the thousands and thousands of Fatimid luster shards known (Fig. 7), can actually be connected to the patronage of the court, yet these lusterwares are routinely exhibited as masterpieces of Fatimid (not "Fatimid-period") art. Furthermore, the emphasis on dynasties with glorious artistic legacies leaves other, perhaps equally important, dynasties out in the cold. The arts of the Umayyads (r. 661-750), the first Islamic dynasty, or the Ab- basids (r. 749-1258), the longest-lived, have never received 7 Fragment of lusterware bowl attributed to the Fatimid the same level of scholarly attention, because fewer of their period, Egypt, 11th century. Cairo, Museum of Islamic Art masterpieces have come down to us. (photo: authors)

Rulers, Patrons, and Artists Exhibitions and publications, whether related or indepen- known about individual artists in the Islamic lands, but lack of dent, often focus even more narrowly on the arts produced knowledge does not mean that individuals did not create under a specific Muslim princely patron. Rulers, especially works of art. Historians of Islamic art have dealt with the role charismatic ones who had splendid capitals, are particularly of the individual in several ways. Some have simply ignored it, popular. Major exhibitions over the past several decades have whether to emphasize God's all-encompassingrole as Creator been devoted to the Safavid shah Abbas (r. 1587-1629) and or to highlight general trends in society. Some have tried to the arts of his capital city at Isfahan; the Mughal emperor trace the role of artists through signatures, which occur not Akbar (r. 1556-1605), who founded the short-lived city of only in paintings but also in many other media from archi- Fatehpur Sikri (Fig. 8); and the Ottoman sultan Siileyman tecture to metalwork, in part because of the great significance the Magnificent (r. 1520-66), who reigned from his capital writing has played in Islamic culture.71 Other scholars have at I~tanbul.~~Another is planned around the patronage of focused on the few personalities that emerge from the shad- the Safavid shah Tahmasp (r. 1524-76), although the fate of ows of history, whether the fifteenth-century Persian painter this long-awaited exhibition is in limbo in the current inter- Kamal al-Din Bihzad (Fig. 9), the seventeenth-century painter national climate, as it is impossible to secure government Reza, or the sixteenth-century Ottoman court architect Si- insurance for loans from states that our government has nan.72 Few of these figures, however, have left written sources designated as lying on the "axis of evi1."'j6 in sufficient quantity or quality to allow scholars to write Not surprisingly, these great figures of later Islamic history authoritative biographies, and much of what has been written are all roughly contemporary, and many splendid (and not so about these artists is based on stylistic analysis and more or splendid) objects survive from their reigns. As with the dy- less informed guesswork. For example, Stuart Cary Welch has nasties, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to write books relied exclusively on meticulous stylistic analysis to identify or mount comparable exhibitions on the art of earlier-and the hands of more than a dozen named or unnamed "mas- arguably greater-figures, whether the Umayyad caliph Abd ters" who worked on Shah Tahmasp's copy of the Shah- al-Malik, patron of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (692), nama.73 His identifications are not universally accepted, how- or the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun, founder of the House of ever, in part because our knowledge of workshop practice Wisdom in ninth-century Baghdad, because so little sur- and the role of the individual in producing the larger work of vive~.~~That is not to say that little or nothing was made for art-whether a painting or a manuscript-is still rudimen- such rulers, for contemporary texts enumerate the fabulous tary. baubles owned by medieval Muslim potentate^.^^ Such exhi- Surprisingly, there has never been a major exhibition de- bitions have their appeal for wealthy private collectors.6g Even voted to any individual artist from the Muslim world. Yet such more specialized are exhibitions devoted to a particular mean exhibition could have great impact: by amassing under dium under a particular dynasty, such as the fabulous carpets one roof all the works attributed to Bihzad or Reza, viewers made under the Mughals, or a particular medium under a could begin to judge for themselves how meaningful such particular patron, such as the manuscripts produced for the attributions really are. Safavid shah Tahmas~.~O In Western art the individual artist is a key figure, and The Individual Monument books and exhibitions are regularly devoted to examining Some monuments or works of Islamic art deserve-and some- artists' careers. This is not the case in Islamic art. Very little is times receive-monographic treatment. Most deal with im- 162 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2003 VOLUME LXXXV NUMBER 1

- 8 Portal known as the Buland Darvaza to the congregational mosque in Fatehpur Sikri, India, 1573-74 (photo: authors, 1992)

portant buildings, such as the Dome of the Rock, the first one particular time or on one particular aspect of it. Hence, work of Islamic architect~re,?~or fine manuscripts, especially many of the greatest masterpieces of Islamic art, whether those made for the Safavids or M~ghals.?~Despite the pivotal major buildings such as the Dome of the Rock, the Alhambra, role of the "decorative" arts in Islam, only a few books deal or the Taj Mahal, or major manuscripts such as the Cairo with works of art in other media, such as the extraordinary Bustan (which has several paintings actually signed by Bihzad) , minbar made in C6rdoba in 1137 for the Almoravid mosque have not been the subject of full monographs. Despite all the in Marrake~h.?~A book on a single example of Islamic wood- glossy publications and interpretative articles, we still do not or metalwork is unfortunately now the exception rather than have a single serious work containing plans, sections, inscrip the rule.'? tions, and interpretations of the Dome of the Rock from its Most monographs zero in on the individual work of art at construction in 692 to its emergence as the symbol of Pales- THE MIRAGE OF ISLAMIC ART 163

9 Kamal al-Din Bihzad, The Seduction ( YusuJ; from a manuscript of Saadi's Bustan, Herat (Afghanistan), 1488. Cairo, National Library (photo: Los Angeles County Museum of Art)

tinian nationhood in the twenty-first century. Likewise, the examples of the type, whether buildings or manuscripts, but Alhambra, perhaps the most popular tourist attraction in rather with the bestdocumented ones that, it is hoped, can Spain, lacks a solid interpretative mon~graph.~~Often, the serve to represent the whole. This is the case with several most basic information, such as materials and dimensions, is studies of modest architectural complexes erected around unavailable. For example, a sourcebook about the Taj Mahal the graves of Sufi saints (Fig. and with a group of small and an exhibition catalogue about its legacy exist,79but when copies of the Shahnama, the Iranian national epic, produced one of us recently wanted to know exactly what type of stone about 1300.82 Almost all of these publications grew out of the was used for the beautiful (and lengthy) calligraphic inscrip authors' dissertations, and perhaps as a legacy of the process, tions on the building-extensively analyzed in a celebrated authors treat the monument at only one moment in time article published in this very journalso-it required several rather than as an enduring entity. This is true of major appeals to colleagues and e-mails to India to find out that it monuments as well. We have recent and detailed studies of was black marble! Topkapi Palace, the Ottoman royal seat, in the fifteenth and Many of the most useful and provocative monographs deal sixteenth centuries; the Cairo citadel in the Mamluk period; neither with the most important nor even the most beautiful and the Great Mosque in Damascus in the Umayyad period.83 164 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2003 VOLUME LXXXV NUMBER 1

10 Shrine complex at Gazur Gah, Afghanistan, west portal, 1425 (pho authors, 1977)

site understandably, these works concentrate on the glori- in such an innovative way that the nonspecialist is encour- ous moments when these buildings flourished and mention aged to dip in. present conditions only as unwelcome interventions that ob- Authors are thus caught in a double bind: while their scure the historical record.84 Yet the impact of such a focus colleagues and deans demand increasingly specialized studies on the glorious historical moment is cumulative, for it serves that will earn them the respect and approbation of their to relegate Islamic art to the distant past and minimize any peers, publishers want general works that will sell to a relevance these enduring historic monuments might have to broader audience. This leaves unplowed a wide swathe of the people who live around them today.85 middle ground, which could be fruitfully planted with some- We ourselves have been guilty of such sins. Twenty years thing between the general surveys and the specialized mono- ago one of us co-authored a monograph on the Great Mon- graphs just mentioned. Topics might include a comprehen- gol Shahnama, which discussed the creation of the manu- sive history of the Great Mosque of Damascus, from Roman script in fourteenth-century Iran and its dismemberment in temple to modern Syrian monument, or the manuscript of twentieth-century Paris.86It did not even occur to the authors Nizami's Khama (Quintet) made for Shah Tahmasp, possibly to think about what had happened to the manuscript in the illustrated with paintings taken from other manuscripts, ex- intervening six centuries, although subsequent research has tensively refurbished in the seventeenth and nineteenth cen- revealed several important stages in the manuscript's history turies, and now in the British Library (Or. 2265). So far, that shed light not only on the work itself but also on its scholarly articles haven't really filled the gap; although they reception in the nineteenth cent~ry.~'In other words, schol- can earn one great respect from colleagues, they often leave ars of Islamic art, like those in other disciplines of art history, the larger public unimpressed or mystified. If they are in a are (belatedly) taking up the question of what happened to specialized journal like Muqarnas, they are ignored by readers works of art after they were made.88 outside the field. If they are in a prestigious journal like the As in all fields, cost is one of the problems in producing Art Bulletin, they are usually ignored by specialist colleagues monographs on single works of art. Sometimes private pa- abroad, and authors must devote much of their efforts to trons will pay to have their own works published or to publish introduction and exposition of basics to satisfy the needs of an important work of art associated with their favorite mu- the audience. seum, as was the case of the minbar from Marrakesh.89 Mu- seums will sometimes raise funds to pay for an unusually Museums and Private Collections splendid book on an uncommonly splendid work of art from Another way of looking at Islamic art is through catalogues their collection, such as the Freer's Haft Awrang. But mostly it and publications by museums and private collections. Since is difficult to get such specialized works in print, primarily so much of what historians of Islamic art study consists of because publishers believe they cannot sell enough copies to collectable works of "decorative" art, some of the most im- recoup their costs. Only a few of these specialized mono- portant recent work on Islamic art is to be found in cata- graphs deal with such important subjects or treat the material logues. But if the publishers of specialized monographs find THE MIRAGE OF ISLAMIC ART 165 it difficult to attract a clientele, the publishers of catalogues find it impossible, and scholars are often at a loss to know what museums actually have without spending weeks going through the collections piece by piece. Faced with financial constraints, museums have tried a variety of novel ap proaches. Twenty years ago, the Museum fiir islamische Kunst in Berlin began an ambitious program of publishing loose-leaf catalogues of their unpublished examples of glass and metal?O but the future of such time-consuming and expensive efforts, which seemed so promising at the time, has already been rendered moot by the potential-if not the realization-of on-line catalogues. Compared with the pressures museums face to put their other collections, such as Impressionist paintings, on-line, there has been little drive to do the same for Islamic art. Furthermore, Islamic art can be more difficult to catalogue because objects of different scales and materials may be stored in different places. Continuing a venerable British tradition pioneered by the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum has produced a series of readable handbooks on Islamic metalwork, Persian and Mughal painting, Islamic tiles, and Ottoman ceramic^.^^ These inexpensive volumes offer good introduc- tions to the various media, with solid historical background and numerous illustrations, many in color, although such guides cannot provide detailed analysis of individual works of art. The collections of Islamic art in major American museums have not fared nearly as well. Despite the venerability and prestige of the Islamic collection at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is still difficult to find out what the museum actually owns. To do so, one has to consult a wide variety of sources, including special issues of the museum's bulletin; catalogues of single media, such as Oriental carpets, jewelry, and tiles; books designed to accompany loan exhibitions; and a volume in the museum's series on world c~ltures.~2Despite this apparent wealth of information, major parts of the museum's enormous Islamic holdings remain inaccessible, notably, its superb collection of works on paper, for which there 11 Firdausi in the Bathhouse, painting added to the Spencer is still no general publication apart from a slim volume on Shahnama in the 19th or 20th century. New York Public Persian and Indian drawings.g3 The problem may soon be Library Pers. ms 2, fol. 5 ameliorated, as plans are afoot to put the entire collection on-line.94 The smaller but still extensive collections of the Freer and exception is the catalogue of Arab and Persian painting at Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Institution, including Harvard, whose annotated checklist is a model of clarity.g7 some of the finest examples of metalwares and ceramics, are One reason for the dearth of museum catalogues is finan- more readily accessible through exhibition catalogues.95 In cial, for museums have a mandate to serve the general public 1986, the Smithsonian acquired the Vever collection, an as well as the scholarly world. They also find it easier to sell extraordinary group of Persian and Mughal works on paper fancy exhibition catalogues of masterpieces than dull descrip amassed in the early twentieth century by a Parisian jeweler tions of entire classes of objects, many of which are of lesser that had disappeared after his death in 1942. This coup was quality and interest. Some private collectors have commis- soon followed by the publication of a two-volume introduc- sioned glossy catalogues of their holdings. Edmund de Unger tion and checklist.96 The publication is remarkable in con- was one of the first to assemble a constellation of scholars to taining not only discussion and illustration of the nearly five catalogue and publish his comprehensive Keir collection in hundred objects, with color reproductions of the finest, but London. Volumes on the individual media written in the also an all-too-rare technical analysis of some Islamic works 1970s were followed by a multi-author volume with entries on on paper. One hopes that there will someday be a complete the objects added to the collection in the subsequent de- catalogue for the remaining manuscript leaves and paintings ~ade.~~They provide useful surveys of the field at that partic- in the two galleries. Small museums rarely have the opportu- ular time, though the value of the individual volume rests on nity or funds to publish their smaller collections; one notable the abilities of the individual scholar and the depth of the 166 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2003 VOLUME LXXXV NUMBER 1

12 Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, Shah-i Zinda cemetery, Samarkand, ca. 1910 (photo: Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii collection, album: Section IV, Samarkand, Lot 10338, no. 72; modern digital color rendering made by WalterStudio, 2000-2001)

individual collection. Such productions, however, invariably authors tend to be more enthusiastic than critica1.Io0Never- raise questions about their reliability, given collectors' inter- theless, these volumes provide the finest illustrations of the est in enhancing the value of their objects. finest objects of Islamic art that have been on the market in The most stunning publications of recent times are the recent decades. One could do far worse. splendid catalogues underwritten by Nasser David Khalili of The publication of manuscripts in library collections is the vast collection in his Nour Fo~ndation.~~The volumes are more even. The venerable B. W. Robinson, who decided to written by experts, and some, such as Frangois Deroche's study Persian art after the redoubtable scholar, traveler, and volumes on early manuscripts of the Koran, contain the historian Brigadier-General Sir Percy Sykes took him to the distillation of years of research, while others, such as the Burlington House exhibition in 1931, has been the pioneer volumes on later manuscripts of the Koran, are the first in the field, writing invaluable catalogues of the major col- surveys of their particular fields. The series is not without its lections in Britain as well as of countless individual manu- shortcomings, however. No technical analysis or provenance scripts.lOlAlthough officially associated with the department is given for any of the works, some of which are unusual, to of metalwork at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, Rob say the least, and the collection, following the origins of the inson worked doggedly over the last half century to map the owner, is heavily weighted toward Iranian material. Further- history of Persian manuscript painting and define its histor- more, as with the catalogues of most private collections, the ical periods and the characteristics of each style. His method THE MIRAGE OF ISI.AhIIC ART 167 has been mainly taxonomic, but his material provides the formal analysis with a deep and subtle understanding of foundation for Inany interpretative studies and analyses.lo2 Islamic history and culture.107 MTriting such catalogues is a labor of love, because all Despite the popularity of Islamic architecture, few authors museums and libraries have as much dross as gold, and the since Creswell, Pope, and Georges Mar~aishave attempted to cataloguer has to include both. This does not usually make write architectural surveys of a particular region.lo8There are scintillating reading, and few publishers are willing to com- a few partial exceptions. Two volumes in the NPW Cambridg~ mit funds and energy to such projects, Nevertheless, the Histo? of India, for example, cover aspects of Indian Islamic results can be unexpectedly revealing. One of the most fa- architecture (and art) .")Watherine Asher's book on the mous Persian manuscripts in the New York Public Library, architecture of the Mughal period is especially noteworthy as the Spencer Sf~ahnurna,for example, is a 1614 copy of the she includes buildings erected by non-Muslims during the Persian national epic illustrated with scenes that earlier schol- period of Mughal rule, thereby expanding the definition of ars had characterized as a conscious revival of fifteenth-cen- "Islamic art." One problem with the book-and the series-is tury styles (Fig. 11). Barbara Schmitz's meticulous research the small and dim photographs. Ebba Koch's slim but useful with library consel-vators showed, however, that the illustra- survey of Mughal architecture is graced by illustrations more tions had to have been fakes added to the manuscript in the likely to engender some enthusiasm for the sub~ect."~ nineteenth or twentieth centurv, and that the supposed "re- Most authors have concentrated on specific provinces or vi~al"of earlier styles was merely a figment of the art historical cities, usually within a limited period. For example, in addi- imagination!")" Schmitz's work shows the crucial importance tion to Lisa Golombek and Donald MTilber'sstudy of Timurid of technical examination to supplement stylistic analysis, yet architecture, there is a fine examination of Timurid architec- since technical analysis is rarely done, it remains difficult to ture in the Iranian part of the province of Khurasan and a establish how much a particular object varies from the norm. two-part analysis of the contemporary city of Herat, once part of the same province but now in Afghanistan.l1I These stud- Media ies, with their concentration on cataloguing, provide impor- Another popular way of looking at Islamic art is by medium. tant documentation, which can be used, especially when The hierarchy of rnedia in Islamic art differs from that of combined with the work of literary and cultural historians, to other artistic traditions: architecture and manuscript illustra- develop broader theories about regional styles and cultural tion play roles comparable to those in other traditions, but developments. Although scholars such as Max van Berchem the "minor," "decorative," or "portable" arts-all these terms and Ernst Herzfeld had underscored the crucial role of phys- seem somewhat pejorative but no substitute springs readily to ical evidence for the writing of history, few contemporary mind-play a more important role in Islamic art, whereas historians incorporate this kind of information into their sculpture is virtually nonexistent, and painting on canvas or work. Some notable exceptions are Maria Subtelny, who has panel is a relatively late and restricted phenomenon. In this plumbed the written and visual sources to write cultural sense, Islamic art provides a useful corrective to the catego- histories of Central Asia, and Anne-Marie EddC, who has ries developed to study MTestern art. For example, Muham- exhaustively studied the Syrian city of Aleppo during the mad ibn al-Zayn was so proud of his work on the splendid period of Ay!ubid rule."" inlaid bronze basin in the Louvre known as the "Baptistere de Some authors focus on individual types of buildings, fol- Saint-Louis" that he signed it in many different places.lo4 lowing the path charted by Hillenbrand in his survey of Similarly, the pair of matched "Ardabil" carpets in London Islamic architecture. The mosque, surely the most important and Los Angeles, covered with intricate scrolling vines and type of Islamic religious building, is naturally the subject of flowers, were designed by the master Maqsud of Kashan and many studies. These range in approach and coverage; some comprise millions of knots tied by teams of weavers.105Why are global and typological, discussing the variety of mosque should the basin, probably made for catching water after types from Africa to China.I1" Others are limited to specific washing hands, or the rugs, designed to fit the floor of a regions or periods.l14 Some deal with particular parts of shrine, be considered any less of a work of art than a painting mosques, such as minarets and mihrabs; others deal with or sculpture? Just because it was useful? related buildings, such as the theological college, or madrasa, Most examples of Islamic art are now in museums, librar- and the tomb.ll"uite naturally, religious buildings would ies, and private collections, so catalogues of the type already tend to define the history of Islamic architecture, but as discussed provide a natural point of access to them. In addi- religious structures they are, as a group, remarkably conser- tion, scholars are investigating a range of other avenues to vative, and one must remember that Islamic culture and present the individual media. religion are not necessarily coextensive. These studies, there- Architecture is undeniably the most important medium of fore, tend to emphasize continuity over change, tradition Islamic art, and the most important recent book on Islamic over experiment. Secular architecture potentially offers architecture is Robert Hillenbrand's magisterial sul-vey.ln6 much more variety, but it was far less likely to be preserved, so Arranged typologically, it treats each category-mosque, min- it is more difficult to write global histories of building types aret, mausoleum, to name a few-chronologically and re- such as the palace, the market, or the caravanserai, which gionally, although it omits such "peripheral" regions as trop- tend to fall into regional or temporal groupings.116 ical Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. The book not only Space restricts us to discussing briefly two unusually inter- replaces earlier warhorses and picture books, it also moves esting aspects of Islamic architecture's setting: urbanism and the subject to a far higher intellectual plane, because the the garden. Contrary to stereotypes, Islam is not a culture of author succeeds in combining judicious and often incisive desert nomads but the product of cities, and the question of the Islamic city or. more specifically, its nature. has been the advantages of unfamiliarity with the script, if not the lan- subject of numerous conferences and Some ap- guage. and coming from a culture that confers greater im- proach the subject from a theoretical perspective, such as the portance on the representation of human form or nature long and dense book by the late Paul M'heatley. which deals than on that of the word. Even for those I'Vesterners who with the Islamic city from the perspective of historical geog- come to appreciate the formal and abstract values of Islamic raphy and has little to do with the actual physical remains.lI8 calligraphy. such a one-sided appreciation trivialires the se- Most scholars. however, fall back on regional categories. The mantic content of the message. Arab Islamic city, notably from the sixteenth centul?, has For many, particularly Westerners, the Persian tradition of long been the focus of research by the French scholar Andre book illustration epitomizes Islamic art. opening a window Raymond, whereas others limit their 11-ork to the Iranian into a magical, bejeweled world of choreographed combats city.' By fbcusing on a narrower scope, scholars can move and enchanted gardens in which languid youths and maidens be!.ond platitudes, such as an Islamic ci~is distinct because it stroll, heedless of the monsters lurking behind the rocks. has a congregational mosque, to consider broader economic Pious Muslims would question whether this art had anything and ecological factors, such as water supply, agricultural hin- to do with Islam. as would Iranian chauvinists, who would say terland, trade routes, and the like. exactly the same thing for totally different reasons! Apart The Islamic garden has also been the subject of much work from the ninet)-page section in the I)ictiona~yofArt (section 3 from a ~.arietyof approaches. ranging from sober regional or of "Islamic art"). there is still no comprehensive survey of the temporal studies to glorious picture books.12"Since a garden Islamic arts of the book. Several recent works. many collabo- is quintessentially ephemeral, changing through the times of rative. make reasonable stabs at the subject from different day. seasons, and years, it is extremely difficult to study his- directions, although they sometimes fail to discern the forest torically, and many works, especially exhibition catalogues, for the trees. I?-' fall back on the cliche that the Islamic garden was always an Some scholars hale begun studying the physical aspects of earthly paradise.'" Recently, scholars of garden history have the Islamic book. (:onsidering that the Islamic lands were begun to question this rather vapid idea and develop more responsible for the transfer of paper and papermaking from concrete and specific notions about the agricultural uses of China, where it was invented. to Europe, paper is a ven the garden and its role as a signifier of political power, important subject. but until ven recently, it went unstudied. particularly by applying techniques of archaeology and tech- Helen Loveday has examined Islamic papers from a technical nological history, as well as by reading agricultural treatises perspective, and several French scholars have begun the ar- and contemporal? poetry. duous task of dating and identifying Islamic papers (which, As architecture cannot travel easily (the Mshatta facade in unlike IVestern ones. are never watermarked) by their phys- Berlin is the clear exception), researchers must travel to ical characteristics.'?' Bloom has ventured from the world of examine it, and the ~icissitudesof world events often make Islamic art into intellectual histon to show how paper played the study of Islamic architecture exceptionally difficult. a seminal part in the development of classical Islamic civili- whether for locals, who cannot travel to adjacent countries. ati ion, arguing specifically that the introduction of paper had or for foreigners, ~1-110cannot get to the region. These travel a crucial role on the making of art, as drawing replaced restrictions can lead to insularity and encourage nationalist memon as a repository for visual ideas.'2i3Other scholars views that obscure the larger picture of architectural devel- have examined book bindings. which are quite different from opment. They call also change overnight: (:entral Asia, for I'Vestern examples.I5 Some scholars have mined the literal? years an inaccessible backwater of the old Soviet LTnion, is sources about books and bookmaking, although they date again in the mainstream as the Silk Road has become "hot." mainly from later Persian and India11 mi1ie~s.I~~One partic- Yet as scholarly interest in C:entral Asia grows. as it undoubt- ularly fruitful approach is codicologv, in effect, the archaeo- edly will in the coming years, following the scent of money logical examinatioil of the book. (:odicological techniques and politics, the major task of scholars will be to distinguish have been used to localize and reconstruct many types of the real from the restored, for Soliet-style megalomaniacal manuscripts, ranging from the many unsigned and undated restoration continues unchecked. The nationalist regimes of folios fi-om early parchment mailuscripts of the Koran to the new (:entral ,hian republics have created hero cults albums and illustrated manuscripts of the later period.l'" around the memon and monuments of such figures as Ta- As we have said, calligraphy is the only form of visual art merlane. and archives of old photographs (Fig. 12) and plans universally admired by Muslims, and its ubiquity is the one are consequently taking on great importance in helping to feature that distinguishes Islamic art fi-om other artistic tra- sift the wheat from the chaff. Their publication on IVebsites ditions, yet there is still no comprehensive sun.ey of the is a welcome new tool for scholarship.''' subject, and glossy picture books do not adequately fill the Manuscript5 and book illustratioil comprise the second gap.'"" Much coilfusioil has arisen because many names for most important medium of Islamic art, as the central role of scripts hale been used over long periods in many places, but the Koran in Islam led in early times to a universal appreci- the same names do not always designate the same scripts. ation of the word, writing. and books. It is also the medium Several recent \vorks have tried to connect the development about ~ihichthe 1-iews of Muslims and non-llluslims are most of Arabic calligraphy and epigraphy with religious and polit- divergent: LIuslims accord the highest rank to calligraph). ical developments, but such polemical explanations, based the art of writing God's word, and have collected and studied on idiosyncratic selection of the relevant evidence, are not the work of the finest calligraphers for centuries. Mhen it widely accepted.'-" comes to calligraphy, LYesterners begin with the double dis- A more nuanced-and art historical-approach to under- THE MIRAGE OF ISLAMIC ART 169 standing the origins of Arabic calligraphy was initiated by the late Estelle Whelan, who started with a very close study of the visual characteristics of the surviving manuscripts, through which she discovered much about their history and meaning.132 In contrast to the approach of other scholars, who often used art to illustrate history or politics, Whelan began with the works of art themselves and then drew revolutionary conclusions about their dating, localization, and attribution. For example, she was the first to point out that the study of individual letter forms, a methodology inherited from Clas- sical paleography, was insufficient to explain the develop ment of Arabic script, in which individual letters change their form and shape depending on their position in a word. Moreover, she demonstrated that analyzing the changing spaces between unconnected letters and individual words could shed light on developments over time. The study of Arabic calligraphy is vital to understanding 13 Ahmad Karahisari, double frontispiece to a calligraphic the visual world of Islamic art and how it differs from other album, Istanbul, ca. 1550. Istanbul, Museum of Turkish and traditions. For example, Arabic script reads from right to left, Islamic Art (photo: authors) so it seems logical to imagine that people regularly "read" images in the same direction. In addition, utterances usually begin with the invocation to God (basmala), so that is where that show all the paintings, such as the one of the fifteenth- the sequence of images probably starts. Yet many scholars century Mirajnama, usually give no idea how the painted ignore this basic rule. Virtually every publication of the C6r- pages fit into the entire manu~cript.l3~Few authors have doban ivories, such as the pyxis made for al-Mughira in 968, attempted-or been able-to deal with the book as a com- presents the sequence of images from left to right, beginning plete work of art comprising binding, paper, calligraphy, in the middle. Moreover, most current books on Islamic illumination, and illustration, as well as studying the relation calligraphy simply assume that the willing reader will appre- of text to image and frame to subject.l38 From the scholar's ciate its beauties and do not explain why or how to do so. point of view, this surely is the way to go, although publishers Ahmad Karahisari's frontispiece (Fig. 13) juxtaposes two ex- might think otherwise. tremes of the calligrapher's art: the two examples of "chain" Other media important in the Islamic lands include met- script show how a master could exert total control over the alwork, ceramics, glass, textiles, wood, ivory, and rock crystal. flowing line, while the two diamonds of square script show Metalwork is the best served, as there are several recent books how he could ingeniously fit a complicated text into a rigid about it, ranging from general surveys to studies of technol- grid without leaving any extraneous spaces. ogy, from the quotidian objects found during excavation to In contrast to calligraphy, there is a long Western tradition expensive silver~ares.~3~With a few exceptions, most of these of writing about book illustration, especially that of Iran. The works relate to the early period.140 Used in conjunction with first monograph on the subject was published nearly a cen- catalogues of public and private collections, these works give tury ago, and interest in the subject remains strong, even to a reasonably good technical and historical overview of the the senior scholar in our field.l33 In the intervening years, subject, despite a tendency to concentrate on luxury wares many scholars have approached the subject historically, as from the Iranian world.141 with the classic works by Basil Gray, Ettinghausen, and Norah Ceramics, although more prominent in museum and pri- Titley, all unfortunately out of print.lS4Some scholars have vate collections, are less well covered. Nothing has yet been tried different approaches. Basil Gray edited a volume that written to update the classic handbooks by Arthur Lane, once combines historical and media-centered essays on the book keeper of ceramics at the Victoria and Albert.142 As with arts of Central Asia, although the chapters are somewhat metalwares, the most expensive types of ceramics, notably uneven in content. Oleg Grabar studied the various illustra- lusterware, have received the most scrutiny,143and most tions of a single literary work, al-Hariri's Maqamat (Assem- books concentrate on Iranian or Egyptian wares with figural blies), but the publisher's experiment with putting the hun- decoration. One exception is a multidisciplinary, multi-au- dreds of illustrations on microfiche made the pictures quite thor study of Iranian ceramics of the Timurid period, which unusable. Eleanor Sims adopted a novel thematic approach, deals with a range of types by presenting both stylistic and treating battles and combats, demons and dragons, land- technical analyses and giving a broad picture of multiple scapes and lovers in her new book on Persian painting across ceramic centers.144The book shows the advantages of com- the centuries.135 bining different expertises, though the different voices do Most authors of books about painting have been forced to not always add up to a harmonious choir. One of the authors, select only one or two pages from each manuscript for illus- Robert Mason, has also written a series of provocative articles tration, for few publishers are willing to produce facsimiles of based on his microscopic analysis of the constituent materials either manuscripts or albums.lS6Furthermore, the illustra- ("petrofabric") of various types of Islamic ceramics. His work tions in most books about painting are usually cropped to may revolutionize the traditional study of Islamic ceramics, as remove "extraneous" text and margins. Even publications it casts doubt on many of the stylistic criteria used rather 170 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2003 VOLUME LXXXV NUMBER 1

very simply, there are two types of carpets: those one puts on the floor (of a house) and those one puts on the wall (of a museum). Similarly, the literature on rugs falls into two types, most of it written by dealers anxious to promote their wares; only a little is written by scholars, and much of that is incom- prehensible to those uninitiated in the language of twists, knots, and depressed warps. A useful guide to help the novice bridge the gap is Walter Denny's handbook,l5l which is both amusing and sensible. In this field, as in others, new means of technical analysis, particularly dating by radiocarbon analysis, promise to revolutionize the study, though it is still necessary to establish a standard against which these technical studies can be gauged.152 14 Riser from the minbar formerly in the Kutubiyya Mosque, From these various sources one can put together reason- Marrakesh, Morocco, 1137. Marrakesh, Badia Palace Museum able overviews of the history of metalwork, ceramics, and (photo: authors, 1997) textiles in the Islamic lands, but other media fare poorly. For example, there is still no survey of Islamic woodwork, although the medium's scarcity in the Islamic lands gave it cavalierly by earlier generations of scholars, although the jury unusually high prestige, and woodworkers developed some of is not yet in on his work. the most innovative techniques to exploit it. Analysis of the For whatever reason, Islamic glass has received much at- Kutubiyya minbar (Fig. 14) showed, for example, that the tention lately. The whole history of Islamic glass from its fretsaw, previously thought to have been invented by Italian origins to its imitators has been the subject of a recent woodworkers in the Renaissance, was already used by Muslim exhibition and a catalogue of a private c01lection.l~~As with craftsmen in Spain several centuries earlier. To study Islamic the other arts, scholars lean toward the fanciest type of Is- ivory, one must return to K~hnel'smassive corpus,153whose lamic glass, such as relief-carved ware or glass with gilded and scarcity. puts it out of the reach of most scholars and libraries. enameled decoration,l46 but-as with ceramics-new means A corpus of Islamic rock crystals has been long awaited. of technical analysis, especially of glass found in archaeolog- Altogether then, a tremendous amount of work has been ical contexts, promise to shed new light on an old subject. done on the individual media of Islamic art, but it is widely Textiles were the mainstay of the medieval Islamic econ- scattered and often difficult to access. Only in recent years omy, yet relatively little has been written about them, proba- has a thorough grounding in Islamic history, culture, and bly because they were literally worn to shreds. Maurice Lom- languages become an essential skill for all scholars in the bard's magisterial survey, written posthumously from his field, and much older work is more descriptive than analytic lecture notes at the College de France, remains an essential or interpretative. In addition, new techniques of analysis- historical overview, though it relies entirely on literary including radiocarbon dating, thermoluminescence, PIXE, sources and illustrates no surviving e~amp1es.l~~Patricia Bak- and petrography-may revolutionize the study of Islamic art er's attractive and readable introduction combines history as they revolutionize the study of other artistic traditions, but and technique with glorious color pictures.148Few individual many scholars have yet to integrate successfully new scientific scholars can amass the technical, linguistic, historical, and art discoveries with the products of traditional visual analysis to historical skills that a thorough understanding of textiles calls situate works of art in their broader historical and cultural for, so a team approach often works well, if slowly. The contexts. long-awaited book on Ottoman brocades and velvets shows not only how beautiful they are but how important they were Islamic Art in the Cross-Cultural Perspective in Islamic societies, though it, too, concentrates on the fan- Another way of looking at Islamic art-or one facet of it-is ciest-and most photogenic-types.149 by placing it in a larger regional, continental, global, or One of the more challenging problems bedeviling scholars chronological context. This was the premise of an interna- of Islamic textiles concerns the splendid silks woven with gold tional exhibition in Berlin, which focused on the long rela- thread that have emerged on the market in recent years, tion between Europe and the "Orient," from the ancient perhaps as a consequence of the opening (or looting) of Near East and Egypt to the modern Islamic lands. Oddly Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, where many of them are said enough, however, few, if any, Islamicists were involved in its to have been preserved for centuries. Debates about the 0rganization.15~It was also the premise of an international textiles' original provenance are heated, and attributions exhibition in Washington, D.C., celebrating the five-hun- have ranged from Anatolia to Central Asia. A variety of tech- dredth anniversary of Columbus's "discovery" of America. niques, ranging from stylistic analysis of the addorsed animals Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration presented a "snapshot" in roundels to technical analysis of how and with what the of the world's art at the end of the fifteenth century, includ- gold thread was made, has yet to lead to consensus, but it ing the Islamic lands, just at the moment when the Islamic bespeaks a vigorous debate.150 lands would lose their central position in intercontinental Most people who come to Islamic art are attracted by trade.155 The Washington exhibition, in contrast to the Berlin Persian miniatures or Oriental carpets, the latter probably one, had the benefit of informed input from several promi- because they have been so collectible in the West. To put it nent scholars of Islamic art. THE MIRAGE OF IXLAhllC ART 171

There are several natural points of intersection between the eyes of many art historians, a somewhat disturbing trend, the study of the arts of Islam and those of the West; both, for since our field developed in part out of the study of Islamic one thing, share common roots in the world of late antiquity. archaeology. Perhaps as a result, Islamic archaeology is be- Yet this intriguing topic, explored in many works by such coming a more specialized field increasingly distinct from scholars as Peter Brown, Glen Bowersock, and Oleg Gra- Islamic art history. As long as the field of Islamic art encom- bar,'" has never been the focus of a major exhibition. Studies passes both the early and late periods, there must be a of the "Classical Revival" in Islamic art also remain relatively healthy middle ground that can utilize any approach that obscure.'j7 By contrast, several exhibitions and books have helps us better understand the past. been devoted to cultural interactions at the time of the More positively, interest in the written sources has pro- Crusades, although only a few give sufficient weight to the pelled scholars to translate and publish a variety of texts. Islamic perspective. The exhibition at the University of Mich- There is still no comprehensive sourcebook for the study of igan in 1981 and the associated symposium showed the ben- Islamic art comparable to those available in many other efit of using a team of scholars specializing in both East and fields, perhaps because Islamic art covers notjust one period West.Ex Carole Hillenbrand's book on the Crusades from the and one country but fourteen centuries in nearly forty coun- Islamic perspective, although not strictly a book about art, tries. It might be possible to compile such a book by carefully uses art as a historical source and is copiously illustrated."" culling published works; indeed, one publisher recently pro- Contacts between the Islamic lands and neighboring cul- posed such a project, although the funding failed to materi- tures in Europe and Asia again proved strong from the alize. fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries. The late Spiro Naturally, translations often fall into categories based on Kostoff was one of the first mainstream architectural histori- the source language. Most sources are translated by linguists. ans to juxtapose contemporary Istanbul and Venice in his The star in this field is undoubtedly Wheeler M. Thackston, introductory survey of architectural history.'" In the last two who has translated an astonishing range of Persian sources decades a host of other scholars has pursued the varied and having particular relevance to art, ranging from an eleventh- complex relations in a variety of media, whether paintings, century traveler and spy to seventeenth-century Mughal portrait medals, crowns, architecture, textiles and decorative chroniclers, and virtually everything in between.lG' By con- arts, or court dress.1fi1 trast, far fewer of the earlier Arabic sources on art have been The number and splendor of these recent publications collected, much less translated.'" Most of the works trans- shows the enthusiasm of publishers and their audiences for lated from Arabic, Persian, or Turkish are chronicles, histo- such cross-cultural treatments. As Islamicists, we are not in a ries, and travelogues, from which the art historian can cull position to judge the sophistication and accuracy of our bits of information, and there are only a few treatises related Islamicist colleagues' interpretation of European materials, directly to art, most of which date from the later periods. although it appears sound to us. We are, however, in a better Good models are the two Ottoman treatises on architecture position to judge how well non-Islamicists deal with the Is- ably translated by Howard Crane.lG4Only a few scholars have lamic material, and we often find troubling weaknesses in the linguistic expertise, time, and willingness to translate research and interpretation that we-and other Islamicists- entire texts, but several recent works on Islamic art also make are often reluctant to criticize because we are so pleased to extensive use of written sources, such as Yves Porter's study of have been invited to the table at all. Given the vast amounts the materials and methods of Persian painters, Giilru Neci- of material to cover, the collaborative approach seems the poglu's monograph on the geometric ornament used in the best path, as it is increasingly impossible for a single scholar Topkapi Scroll, and D. Fairchild Ruggles's work on Spanish to control all the pertinent information in a field, let alone Islamic gardens.'" These works show both the advantages one that crosses the traditional boundaries of scholarship. It and limitations of this approach, as the written sources do not also seems to us that we historians of Islamic art have a duty always correspond to the visual record, and the historian has to make our specialized work more, rather than less, accessi- to do some fancy footwork to bring them together. There is ble so that it can be understood and assimilated by an audi- no reason to believe that the literate milieus that produced ence beyond specialists in our own field. texts were identical to those that produced works of art; indeed, in many cases it seems that works of Islamic art can Sources provide glimpses into aspects of society-women, illiter- Historians of Islamic art, like those in many other fields of art ates, or popular piety-otherwise ignored by the scribbling history, eagerly participate in the current fashion to privilege classes.'66 the text over the work of art itself. Art historians, perhaps in appropriate reaction to the wilder speculations of former generations of aficionados and connoisseurs, have turned to Larger Issues the written word to solve all their problems. This trend has The final method of studying Islamic art that we will discuss had several ramifications. The emphasis of research has in this essay is a problem-oriented approach to larger issues, shifted to the later periods, principally because more docu- in which authors transcend the boundaries of geography, mentary evidence is available for them. It is far easier, for chronology, dynasty, personality, and medium. Many of the example, to use texts when writing about Ottoman art of the monographs we have already discussed deal with larger is- eighteenth century than it is about Abbasid art of the eighth. sues, but these studies are by definition confined to a specific Conversely, archaeology, which is more important for under- example or type, whether a scroll with geometric designs in standing the earlier periods, has become less important in Istanbul or the architecture of Iran and Turan. In the following section we will discuss works that do not easilb fit In an\ of of later periods and other regions. Outside the confines of our other categories. the survey textbook, it seems an insuperable task to try to A convenient starting point for recent work is Oleg Gra- identi5 any group of ideas that would apply equally to the art bar's seminal study of the development of Islamic art, in of India during the period of Mughal rule and the art of which he tried to answer the question of how Islamic art-if Morocco under its contemporary Saadian rulers. it exists at all-eme~-ged.I(>~He explored the historical, intel- Many others approached the large questions of Islamic art lectual, functional, aesthetic, theoretical, and formal con- in different ways from Grabar and his students. Despite the cerns at work in the creation of new art forms associated with widespread prevalence of aniconism in Islamic religious art, the emergence of the religion of Islam ancl their relations to many scholars, especially those treating the decorative arts, the arts of Byzantium ancl Sasanian Iran. Given as a series of have been attracted to the area of iconography. This meth- lectures at Oberlin College in 1969, his answer consists of a odolog, initially developed for the study of Christian art, group of essays on such topics as the land and its symbolic seems particularly applicable to the field of Islamic decorative appropriation, Islamic attitudes toward the arts, religious art, for many ceramics and metalwares are decorated with versus secular art, and decoration, all limited to the period lively figural scenes and single figures, rnost of which have before the thirteenth century, and particularly to the years escaped explanation. The dean of this approach was Etting- before 1000 c..~.. Although extraordinarily provocative to an hausen, riho tirote a pioneering riork on the unicorn in 1950 entire generation of students and scholars who had never and cast his net far wider in many later ~vorks.~~~Ettinghaus- read anything quite like it, Grabar's essay was nevertheless en's work has been follo~vedby many scholars in an enor- criticized by some as cavalier and selective in its use of sources mous number of books and articles, ranging frorn studies of and examples. Indeed, the author's enthusiasm for his sub- sphinxes and harpies in many media to animal symbolism in ject and the lecture form in which it originated sometimes a single manuscript, from studies of Bahram Gur, the semi- obscure the coherence of the argument.ll'" rnythical Persian hunter-king, to representations of the family Grabar's prose style is characterized by a liberal use of of the Prophet.I7y Iconographic studies are often popular rhetorical questions, and one of his former students, Terry with a general audience because they can provide pat answers Allen, audaciously attempted to anslier sorne of thern in a to complex questions. book of essays exarnirlirlg the characteristic features of Is- In our view, however, iconographic studies in Islamic art lamic art in the period before 1300. In this provocative work, have met with a degree of success in inverse proportion to Allen discusses what is distinctive about Islamic art, how it their scope. Some artistic traditions have developed from came into being, and what mechanisms lay behind its appar- religious or political institutions that were able to maintain ent unity.""' Perhaps rnost engaging is Allen's elegant discus- rneanings and interpretations over long periods and great sion of aniconism, the avoidance of figural irnagen that is so distances, but the Islarnic world tias not one of them. It is all characteristic of much Islamic art. Rather than link it simply but impossible to prove that any form or rnotif had the sarne to iconoclasm, the conscious destruction of images that pre- meaning in Al~basid Baghdad and Ottoman Istanbul, let occupied the Christian world at the tirne when Islam alone in nineteenth-century Java, and so iconographic argu- emerged, Allen drew a careful distinction between religious ments often end up as tautologies. and secular art, showing that a librant tradition of represen- Part of the problem lies in the broad and unriieldy defini- tation continued until the eleventh centul?. Basically self- tion of Islamic art, which encompasses the arts produced over published, this challenging if quirky work never received the a millennium halfway round the globe. In the hands of riidespread attention it deserved. masters like Ettinghausen, iconographic studies can be won- Grabar's book also inspired Yasser Tabbaa to investigate derfully illuminating, if open-ended, but in lesser hands they specific characteristics of Arab-Islamic art in the two centuries can resemble the unchallengeable universalist approaches after 1000, and he linked the emergence of specific forms, discussed earlier. Abbas Daneshvari's ~neticulousstudy of such as the use of cursive writing, geometric ornament, and animal symbolism in a single manuscript is a case in point. the rnzlqnmns, to the reaction by Arab Sunnis against the The author convincingly de~norlstratesthat rabbits rnean this perceived onslaught of Shiis, riho ruled in Espt and occa- and crows mean that in Persian culture, but as this rnanu- sionally el~ewhere.'~')In contrast to Allen, whose point of script-probably copied in mid-thirteenth-century Anato- departure is rigorously formal and deductive, Tabbaa follo~vs lia-is unique, how does one move beyond the individual a more inductive approach. His focus on the Arab lands in case to the larger picture? Does every representation of a this tumultuous period, in which invasions by Turkish tribes rabbit or a mouse mean the sarne thing? More successfully, were followed by European Crusaders, tends to skew the scholars have shown that the many pictures of the Prophet larger picture, for the arts of the traditional heartlands of and his family that have sunived frorn early fourteenth-cen- Arab Islam rvere being molded by tastes developing in Iran tun Iranian manuscripts can be linked to the increased and Central Asia. As we write, the new and exciting archae- veneration of the Prophet, particularly by the Shia, in this ological discoveries being made in remotest Central Aksia period."'+ promise to reshape our understanding of the emergence and The absence of figural representation in much Islamic art developrnent of Islamic art in this period. and the development of sophisticated modes of ornament As current opinion finds it increasingly difficult to identie have intrigued scholars since the time of Riegl and Strzy- a single concept of Islamic art in later periods and regions gowski. Sir Ernst Gornbrich, who studied in Vienna and once farther from the early centers of Islamic culture. it seems prepared a seminar report on Riegl's StiIfrngen, touched on unlikely that scholars will attempt similar studies for the arts Islamic ornarnent in his I)\-rightsmanLectures on decorative art. Islamic ornament tias the focus of Oleg Grabar's Mellon ested in Iran, perhaps as a legacy of Henri Corbin, the Lectures of 1989, in which he tried to use the example of historian of Iranian mysticism, and his disciple Seyyed Hos- Islamic ornament to meditate on larger issues of the percep- sein Na~r.l~~Melikian-Chirvani has often followed this path in tion, utilization, and fabrication of visual forms."" Orna- a series of very learned books and articles in which he finds ment, he argued, is a subset of decoration that does not mysticism in most forms of Iranian art, from ceramics and appear to have any other purpose than to enhance its carrier. tilework to manuscripts. He reveals mystical significance es- Ornament is found in every artistic tradition, but it is partic- pecially in the seemingly random combination of letters and ularly prevalent in Islamic art, and he hypothesized that an strokes that often fill out inscription bands on inscribed explanation of the phenomenon within the Muslim context metal~vares.~~~W'hile no one would deny the great role played would be of intellectual and hermeneutic value for under- by mystics in Iran, not all Iranians followed the mystic path, standing decoration everywhere. The examples he chose and Melikian-Chirvani's erudite scholarship is not universally were drawn from writing, geometry, architecture, and nature. accepted by those with a more earthbound bent.180 As with his earlier book on the development of Islamic art, In a welcome desire to find meaning in art, but perhaps in Grabar's performance was universally praised as dazzling, reaction to the popularity of the mystical approach, other pyrotechnic, and stimulating, but he was also criticized for scholars have developed sectarian interpretations of Islamic being somewhat inconsistent and careless in his approach to art, hoping to see reflections of the many varieties of Islam in sources. The more one knows about any single sul~ject the many varieties of Islamic art. One of the first articles in treated in this far-reaching and provocative book, the more this vein was Grabar's study of early commemorative struc- questions it raises in one's mind, and it is no surprise that it tures, in which he suggested that tombs, which were prohih was reviewed more often by scholars outside than inside the ited by the Prophet and frotined on by many early Muslims, field of Islamic art.l7Wevertheless, with this book Grabar may have become increasingly popular in conjunction with single-handedly put Islamic art back, if briefly, stage center, the growing importance of the Shia. Other scholars have where it had stood nearly a century before. explored the role of Shii Islam in the architecture of Fatimid Grabar had criticized earlier studies of Islamic ornament, Egypt and the development of funerary architecture there, including Gombrich's, for being taxonomic. Taxonomy, how- though their interpretations have been sharply criticized by ever, has its uses, particularly in helping to place undated and Christopher Taylor, who himself ignored the physical re- largely anonymous works of art-which make up the bulk of mains while relying on texts to interpret the veneration of the what historians of Islamic art actually encounter-in histori- dead as a Sunni phenomenon.l8I cal contexts. The taxonomic treatment of Islamic ornament Such controversies show that many if not most political and was taken by Eva Baer, a scholar deeply involved in the study social historians do not yet accept visual evidence when it of the individual object and its decoration. In her orin rnono- conflicts with written texts. One exception is Richard Bulliet, graph on the subject, she serially discussed motifs and their who followed up his historical study of sectarianism in the transformation, the formation of order and the creation of medieval Iranian city of Nishapur with an essay suggesting repeat patterns, the meaning of ornament, and the principles that the different types of ceramics excavated there (notably, and concepts that lay behind it.176Together, these two studies bowls decorated with sophisticated calligraphic designs and reveal hori two senior scholars of Islamic art could approach others with rather crude figural representations or sgraffito the same subject at the same time from diametrically opposite decoration) could be associated with the adherents of the positions with entirely different methodologies. Apart from different schools of Sunni law that played such an important everything else, they underscore the enormous variety of role in the history of this city.lR2Although this rather simplis- scholarship encountered in the field of Islamic art. tic hypothesis has enjoyed some renown among historians of Postmodern analysis would suggest that the act of looking Islam, it is quite unconvincing to historians of Islamic art, reveals the concerns of the investigator more than those of who might have begun any such study by first examining the investigated, and so some studies of larger issues in these ceramics for differences in body and manufacturing Islamic art can be, quite frankly, ideologically driven. Some technique. obvious examples of nationalist ideologies have already been The Fatimids were the only major Shii dynasty to rule in discussed in relation to regional studies of Islamic art in medieval Islamic times, and as such they have exerted a Egypt, Turkey, Iran, or India. While it may be perfectly fascination on modern historians in excess of their actual appropriate to see the spread of Chinoiserie and Persian sway. It is quite unclear what role their particular type of motifs after the Mongol conquests of much of West Asia Shiism played in their art, though some scholars have tried- through Iranian-tinted glasses, it is quite farfetched in the unconvincingly, in our opinion-to reveal a Shii component case of something like the Pisa Griffon, the large bronze in many of their arts, from ritual processions to monumental statue that used to stand on the roof of the Pisa duomo. calligraphy.18" In reaction to this emphasis on Shiis, who tend Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani, an Iranophile scholar, to dominate the art and politics of the eleventh century, would like to see it as Persian, but most others say it was made other scholars have looked for an artistic equivalent to the somewhere in the Mediterranean lands, although an exact Sunni political reaction in everything from calligraphy and localization to Spain, North Africa, or Egypt has not yet been geometric designs to architecture.18" estatlished.177 Sectarian ideas were clearly important in premodern Is- Scholars, particularly those with a mystical or Sufi bent, can lamic times, when the ulema (religious scholars and theolo- also find mystical meanings in everything they examine, This gians) devoted much time and energy to debating them, but approach has become popular with scholars based or inter- modern sectarian studies presuppose that the people riho made art were the same as the ulema and were inspired to do sions, for which one can honestly speak of an Islamic civili- so by their sectarian ideas. Sectarian studies, like those by zation and art. This rvas a rvc~rld,as the saying goes, in which modern Sufis, often tell us more about the investigator than a check written in Cordoba could be cashed in Samarkand. the investigated. As tie have already noted with regard to the Despite significant regional variations, there is enough simi- interpretation of texts, there is little evidence to help deter- larity between the art and architecture of one region and mine the social and educational level of artisans in medieval another in the early period that one can best understand, for society. Despite the great quantities of Islamic art that fill example, the development of the mosque of CGrdoba in museums and galleries around the world, medieval Muslim tenth-century Spain or the mosque of Isfaharl in eleventh- audiences had surprisingly little to say about the lisual arts. century Iran with reference to what happened in Damascus The "scribbling classes" in medieval society seem to have in the early eighth century.1xxSimilarly, one can best under- been far more corlcerned with writing about religion, litera- stand the development of potten in tenth- and eleventh- ture, and the responsible acts of individuals, producirlg copi- century Egypt by studying what had happened in ninth- and ous accounts on these subjects. For example, the Princeton tenth-century Iraq. historian Michael Cook has recently trawled through an ex- For the period after the Mongol imasions in the thirteenth traordinary range of medieval sources to produce an ac- centun, however, it becomes more difficult to speak of any claimed eight-hundred-page scholarly tome on the subject of single Islamic art, and the arts of the Maghrib and Spain, right and wrong in Islamic thougl~t.'~~Comparable sources Egypt and Syria, Turkey, Iran and Central Asia, and India are simply do not exist for the visual arts. Nevertheless, scholars often as different as they are alike, or even more so. The ranging from the great Ettinghausen to Doris Behrens-Abou- tradition of book painting that developed in Iran from the seif and Valerie Gonzalez have not hesitated to rnirle these fourteenth century tias eventually carried to Mughal India meager sources in an attempt to establish and define an and Ottoman Turkey, so it would be foolish to study the overarching aesthetic of Arab and Islamic art.lRi development of the Mughal or Ottoman arts of the book Recently, some historians of Islamic art have been attracted riithout recourse to what had happened earlier in Iran. But by the theoretical approaches popular in other fields of art Ottoman architecture has very little, if anything, to do with history. Irene Bierman, for example, has suggested that the Iranian architecture, and much more to do with local build- Fatimid rulers of Egypt (969-1171) were the first to use ing traditions. Similarly, it really is ven difficult to find any writing on buildings and textiles ("the public text") to meanirygful similarities behveen the Alhambra and the Taj present their orin distinct ideolo~to the diverse members of Mahal. They are as much alike as Versailles and Varanasi. Cairene society. Her semiotic approach is audacious and The suitability of the term "Islamic art" for encompassing novel, but it is based on a selective use of the facts. Eva the earlier, but not the later, periods in the central Islamic Hoffman has explored the nature of the frame and framing lands is really no surprise, since the field developed around in her article on a well-known set of ivor~plaques rvith the study of these places and times, only gradually expanding remarkable figural imagery attributed to the Fatimid period. to include later periods and peripheral regions. Many histo- She ingeniously concludes that they must ha\-e sened as a rians of Islamic art, particularly those trained before the book cover but neglects to identifi any known type of text for lSSOs, were trained initially as medievalists in the broadest which such a cover might have been used. Similarly, Gonzalez sense, and many feel intellectual kinship with their colleagues has taken up the idea of the word as sign and object, dealing rvho study Chartres or The Book of Kells. As scholars of Islamic specifically with the type of word picture in which artists art have exparlded their field of vision, they see their intel- assemble words to form pictures of objects, animals, and the lectual affinities with the arts of Renaissance or even Baroque like. Her argument is weakened, however, by the absence of Europe, with which artists and patrons of the great Muslim primary data: she provides only a rough sketch of the object empires of the period after 1500 interacted fruitfully. Few under coilsideration, the calligraphic representation of a scholars, however, would see themselves as having much in minbar, and she admits that the number of stairs, squares, common with those who study the art of Xuguste Rodin or and dirnensiorls in her sketch do not necessarila correspond 17ncent van Gogh, let alone Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or to the original.'" IM'e do not suggest that it is inappropriate Jackson Pollock, because few of the tools and methods used to apply theoretical methods to the study of Islamic art; in the study of "modern" art are appropriate to the earlier indeed, we think they are a promisirlg and much-needed periods, for \vhich \vritten documents are rarely available. supplement to traditional methods. We do believe, however, Recent developments, ranging from economic and politi- that theoretical approaches, like all others, must begin with a cal changes in the Islamic lands to immigration patterns to thorough krlowledge of the works of art themselves and the Europe and the United States, have encouraged historians of circumstances in which they were produced. Islamic art to broaden their scope even further and tackle sul~jectson the boundaries of the traditiorlal canon, such as The Challenges of the Field t~ventieth-centuryart and architecture in the Islamic lands, At the dawn of the hventy-first centun of the Common Era, the gendering of space, or contemporary art by Muslims in the field of Islamic art faces several challenges. In conclusion, Europe and America. Interest is moving away from the re- we would like to discuss four. The first is that of definition. It mote early periods in the central Arab lands that once were ~villhave become quite evident from the preceding pages that the staple of courses on Islamic art toward more recent rve think that "Islamic art" is a poor name for an ill-defined periods and regions from which newly assimilated arld immi- subject. The definition works better at certain times and grant students trace their roots. places, particularly in the centuries before the Morlgol inva- Yet this attitude engages a paradox. There is no reason why anyone trained to study the "Islamic" art of eighth-century to learn something about all the worlds of Islamic art than to Syria or even fourteenth-century Iran or seventeenth-century learn nothing at all. India should be any more interested or able-apart perhaps The unwieldy definition of Islamic art contributes to the from knowledge of a relevant language-to expound on the significant gap benveen what colleagues expect scholars of art of contemporary Kuwaiti women or Iranian filmmakers Islamic art to study and what they themselves want to study. than a specialist in the work of Georgia O'Keeffe or Orson Historians of Islamic art are expected to have a thorough Welles. Such notions of the unchanging East smack of Ori- grounding in art history and be equally conversant with entalism and unwittingly imply that through Islam, artists in everything from pre-Islamic Arabian ceramics to mosque ar- contemporary Kuwait or Iran should have more in common chitecture in twenty-first-century Europe and America, speak with seventh-century Syrians than they do with twenty-first- several unfamiliar languages, and maintain subspecialties in century Americans. Our point again is not that these subjects Orientalism, terrorism, and the role of women, in addition to should not be studied, but rather that they need not be being able to appraise Aunt Millie's threadbare Persian car- relegated to Islamic art. Let us guard against unwary assump- pet! Few departments would expect their specialist in the tions about what is appropriate to whom. New York School, apart from teaching the survey, to teach One solution to the problem would be to dismantle the classes in the decorative arts of the American colonies, let field of Islamic art entirely and give over its bits and pieces to alone be able to appraise a Shaker chair. Yet-apart from a the adjacent historical and geographic fields, such as medi- few research institutions-any historian of Islamic art is ex- eval Mediterranean art or the arts of the Indian subcontinent. pected to be reasonably well versed in all the visual arts This would mean that all medievalists would have to be produced in one-quarter of the world over fourteen centu- responsible not only for the Gothic in France and Germany ries. but also for the mosque of CGrdoba and Mamluk architecture Specialists in Islamic art want to study limited subjects, like in Egypt and Syria. Experts in Indian art would have to be as Egyptian art of the period between the tenth and twelfth well versed in mosques as they are in temple sculpture. Al- centuries or the Persian painting tradition in West Asia be- though someone with an interest in "Islamic" art might tween the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, and to have choose to specialize in the art of a particular city, region, or enough time to read deeply in contemporary religion, his- period-say, Egypt or Delhi in the thirteenth century-one tory, and literature. They will find it difficult to convince would then be expected to be professionally competent in colleagues that they really have nothing profound to say the "medieval" or "Indian" canon. This solution, however, about the Alhambra or the Taj Mahal, let alone the prover- would radically minimize not only the role of Islam in art, but bial Persian carpet. Yet the decision to study a subject like also the presence of "Islamic" works of art in the larger story. Islamic art, horiever it may be defined, seems to bring along It riould also, quite naturally, foster nationalist and ethnic a responsibility to both specialize and generalize. In the attitudes. Western world, tihere any knowledge of Islamic civilization is Another solution would be to subdivide the field of Islamic better than our current state of abysmal ignorance, historians art into a group of principalities, where the kingdom of Early of Islamic art must pitch in. Islamic Art was bordered by the duchies of Mamluk Egypt, For the moment, then, it is essential that all students of Later Iranian Art, Turkish Art, and Indian Art of the Mughal Islamic art, at whatever level and from whatever background, Period. This solution, however, would tend to marginalize have a basic familiarity with the full range of the visual arts many regions, such as North Africa, Syria and Mesopotamia, encompassed by our field, from the glorious mosaics of the and Arabia, that were not large or strong enough to exist on Dome of the Rock to the exquisite painted and varnished pen their own. Where would the Alhambra fit in? Repeatedly boxes of Qajar Iran. This is not to say that students should not cited as our best surviving example of an "Islamic" palace, this be allowed to cut their teeth on a single topic in their splendid structure, built by a minor dynasty holding out in dissertation research, be it a particular building, patron, southern Spain, would fall outside the new canon. Further- manuscript, or group of pots, but we do ourselves a great more, it is difficult enough to generate sufficient support at disservice when we fail to understand and articulate the place colleges, universities, and museums for one position in Is- of our individual work in the larger picture. It was only as a lamic art, let alone three or four. Both of these solutions result of working for the Dictionary of Alt about ten years after seem worse than the disease, for they promise to kill the receiving our doctoral degrees that we began to realize how patient in the search for a cure. little we actually knew about the larger field of Islamic art and In the absence of a complete reassessment of how we in the how great were the gaps between the little bits we did know. M7est see the multifaceted worlds of Islam and its histories, We should have learned that much earlier. not to mention other "foreign" cultures, there seems to be A second set of challenges is created by the uneasy rela- little that we can do about redefining or replacing the term tionship between the study of Islamic art and the religion of "Islamic art." As long as our society persists in seeing Islam Islam.As we stated at the beginning of this essay, the problem and Islamic civilization as a monolith, there is simply no way might not exist if the subject were called something else, yet that art historians alone will be able to stem the tide and it isn't, and most students and readers will expect the histo- convince the world that the category has little meaning. M7e rian of Islamic art to be able to present and explain Islam as can do our part and help our students learn that the Alham- well as the historical setting in which the art was produced. bra has little if anything to do with the Taj Mahal or that the Complications arise not only because Islam is a living and eighth century in Syria was very different indeed from the vibrant religious tradition-unlike, say, Greek paganism- eighteenth century in Iran. It is still far better for our students but also because Islam figures so prominently in many of 176 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2003 VOLUME LXXXV NUMBER 1

should study Degas? Or that you have to be Japanese to appreciate Hiroshige? That said, we who are not Muslims have a responsibility to be sensitive to the beliefs of others. To take an extreme example, a few years ago we read some signage in a major American museum displaying its superb collection of Koran manuscripts and folios. The otherwise informative text said that when Muhammad wrote the Koran he incorporated many Jewish and Christian beliefs current in seventh-century Arabia. To a twentieth-century atheist or non-Muslim, this may well make sense, but such an apparently innocuous statement, written from the best of motives, runs counter to one of the most deeply held tenets of Islam-namely, that the Koran is God's word miraculously revealed in Arabic to his prophet Muhammad. How does the nonbeliever honestly deal with such issues? Do we say, "Muslims believe that the 15 Muhammad Receives the Revelation through the Angel Gabriel, Koran was revealed. . . ." to show our good faith? But in that from Rashid al-Din's Compendium of Chronicles, Tabriz (Iran), case how do we know that what some Muslims believe today 1314-15. Edinburgh, University Library Arab. ms 20 is the same as what people believed in seventh-century Ara- bia? Such problems are not merely hypothetical. In several of today's major news stories. Students and readers look to our recent books and films we have included images taken scholars of all aspects of Islamic civilization to help them from a fourteenth-century world history made in northwest- understand not only what happened in the past but also what ern Iran. A few of the illustrations, which scholars rank is going on today. among the most important and finest examples of four- When we began studying Islamic art in the 1970s, we and teenth-century book painting, depict scenes from the life of our fellow students were virtually all white, non-Muslim the prophet Muhammad (Fig. 15), a subject some Muslims Americans who had caught the Middle East "bug" from roam- today deem sacrilege. While we respect the right of those ing, a roommate, or a romance. A few of our fellow students Muslims to consider making images of the Prophet blasphe- had come to the United States as visitors from the Islamic mous, these paintings show that Muslims in other times and lands, intending to get an education and return home to places did not feel the same way. In several instances our work. This is not the case today. White non-Muslims are publishers and producers have chosen to remove these im- becoming less dominant in the field, and many students are ages from books and movies for fear of reprisal from partic- either Americanized descendants of Middle Eastern and Mus- ularly zealous individuals and organizations that might be lim immigrants who are searching out their parents' roots or offended by seeing them.la9 Following the fatwa issued in Middle Eastern and Muslim students from abroad whose 1989 by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran against the Bombay-born plans for the future are uncertain, given the frequent politi- British novelist Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses, cal storms that sweep through this troubled region. This new we are all aware of the potential consequences of perceived diversity of experience and expectation is welcome indeed, blasphemy. What should one do? As historians, should we say but it also raises complicated issues about who is doing what that such images were not made or refuse to illustrate them for whom. The interests and opinions of those seeking to in our books? To remove these images from the canon of understand their own heritage can be very different from Islamic art is to rewrite history, validate certain sectarian those who are seeking to understand and explain something interpretations of Islam, and reaffirm popular misconcep they consider somewhat distant in time and space. It is one tions about Islamic culture and the role of images in it. thing, for instance, to study the Dome of the Rock because it It is a truism of postmodernism that everything the histo- is the superb example of late antique architectural ideas rian studies has as much, if not more, to do with the present transformed to suit the needs of new Muslim patrons and than the past, yet the intrusion of contemporary religious and another to study it because it is the most prominent visual political issues into the study of Islamic art seems more symbol of a thwarted Palestinian nation. difficult to ignore than in other fields of art history. How can While we admire students' eagerness to understand what one write or talk about the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem they identify as their own heritage and appreciate their will- without discussing why it was built or what it means? Yet ingness to use linguistic skills they may already have, we are virtually every interpretation can be taken to validate or deny concerned that this approach transforms the study of Islamic the conflicting claims of present-day Israelis and Palestinians art, once a branch of the humanistic study of art history open to its sacred site.lgOThe Taj Mahal is surely a landmark of to all, into one of many fields of area and ethnic studies, world art and perhaps the most famous Islamic building in sometimes organized along national or ethnic lines. It is, in India, if not the world. Built by a Muslim patron as a tomb for our view, a sorry commentary on our field that at the gradu- himself and his wife, the building is objectionable to Hindu ate level most students from Iranian backgrounds study Per- nationalists, who see it as a symbol of centuries of Mughal sian art and students from Turkish backgrounds study Turk- oppression. They want to erase history and remake India as ish art. Can one imagine thinking that only French students an exclusively Hindu country where the dead are cremated THE 41IRAGE OF ISLAMI(: ART 177 and their ashes scattered in the Ganges. To do so, they are ing's Woman III, a painting of a nude woman acquired by the even willing to argue that it is not a Muslim building at all. shah's wife but deemed offensive by the new government.lY3 Oddly enough, the Taj Mahal is also objectionable to some Virtually every week we also read about the willful destruc- Muslim fundamentalists, who view the construction of tombs tion of historical monuments in India, the former Yugoslavia, and the commemoration of the dead as an intolerable impi- and elsewhere. In December 1992, Hindu extremists razed ous inn~vation.~"~ the sixteenth-century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya because they A third set of challenges involves access. Much of what claimed that the Mughal emperor Babur had built it on the historians of Islamic art study is in European and American site of a temple dedicated to Rama; in November 1993, libraries and museums, but much more of it, notably archi- Bosnian Croat forces blew up the sixteenth-century bridge at tecture, remains in situ. The current political situation in Mostar because this Ottoman structure symbolized the Mus- many of the Islamic countries from North Africa to Central lim presence in the region. How will it be possible to write an and South Asia can make securing research permission and accurate account of provincial Mughal or Ottoman architecture when so much of it is being destroyed?l9-l access to monuments especially difficult, particularly for Another problem of access is created by the nature of many Americans. Few Americans would, for example, choose re- of the things that comprise Islamic art-small bowls, jugs, search topics taking them to rural Algeria or Afghanistan manuscripts, small paintings, carpets, and other immensely because of reasonable concerns about personal safety. Some- collectible items easily displayed in a domestic setting. They times the obstacles are less physically dangerous but no less are highly portable, they were made in multiples and are frustrating. Non-Muslim European and American scholars do largely generic, and they often appear on the art market very little work on North African architecture, not because seemingly out of nowhere, whether from unknown private they are uninterested in the subject or because there isn't collections or clandestine excavations in war-torn countries much to study, but simply because it is virtually impossible for such as Afghanistan or Iraq. As in all fields of art history non-Muslims to enter mosques in Tunisia, Algeria, and Mo- where it is possible for individuals and institutions to buy and rocco. How can one write about something one cannot see? sell works of art, cozy relationships sometimes develop be- It remains difficult to get research permits allowing one to tween dealers and collectors and art historians, the latter enter, let alone work in, Egyptian, Turkish, or Iranian librar- routinely asked to provide expertise; some art historians cross ies, so most European and American scholars find it easier to a line by becoming collectors themselves. This seems to be a work on manuscripts and objects already in European and greater problem in Britain than anywhere else, perhaps be- American collections. Yet any synthesis of a subject like fif- cause the major sales of Islamic art are held in London, and teenth-century Persian painting has to remain tentative until auctioneers there regularly seek advice from underpaid aca- we have a far better grasp on what manuscripts actually demics. One of the great scandals of Islamic art in the early survive. Unfortunately, these challenges serve to reinforce 1990s involved the respected scholar and keeper of manu- Orientalist stereotypes, as many scholars are forced to con- scripts at a Dublin library, who merrily sold uncatalogued centrate on what they can see in Western collections. We folios from the library resenres to a host of eager buyers until cannot see any easy solution, apart from joint publication, he was caught trying to peddle folios to the Metropolitan though the results are often an uneasy compromise.19* Museum of Art. He was unmasked by an American researcher The mutilation and destruction of monuments poses an- who had meticulously studied-and recorded-some of the other problem of access, for once they are destroyed, access uncatalogued manuscripts in the library resen7es.lg5 Such is impossible. No one can do anything about the truly acci- extreme cases are gratift.lngly rare, but we need to remain dental shattering of a priceless Fatimid rock-crystal ewer in vigilant that glittering temptations do not lead us astray. the Palazzo Pitti, recently dropped by a careless curator, but Our fourth and final challenge is to make our work accessible. As we have said, thanks to the many introductory books we can protest when manuscripts are cut up so that the now available, it is far easier to grasp the shape of Islamic illustrated pages can be auctioned off separately to the high- art-whatever it may be-than it was when we were students est bidder (Fig. 16). For example, Shah Tahmasp's splendid three decades ago. These new introductory sunreys reflect a copy of the Shahnnmn, commissioned in the early sixteenth variety of approaches and levels of interest and can be used century, survived as a two-volume book until the 1960s, when effectively alone or juxtaposed. MTe now need books and Arthur A. Houghton Jr., its owner, decided to have it cut up. articles people can read affer they have read a survey but long He eventually gave 78 of its 238 paintings to the Metropolitan before they decide to write dissertations. These works need to Museum of Art, where he served as chairman of the board of be synthetic and addressed to a broad audience, not sermons trustees, and offered the remaining manuscript to the shah of preached to the choir. They can be monographs, but they Iran for $28 million. The deal fizzled and Houghton began have to place the subject-whether a manuscript or a mau- selling the remaining paintings at Christie's London. During soleum-in a larger context that a broader audience can the first sale, on November 17, 1976, one page fetched the appreciate. then-staggering sum of $464,800, not only filling the owner's That context need not be limited to "Islamic" art. Since pockets but also establishing a value for the remaining pages their makers did not think of their creations as examples of in his collection. In 1994, after Houghton's death and the "Islamic" art, there is no reason why we should look only to Iranian revolution, his heirs swapped the remains of the "Islamic" art for comparative material. The famous copy of manuscript-501 text pages, 118 paintings, and the bind- the Koran penned and illuminated by Ibn al-Bauwab at Bagh- ing-with the Islamic Republic of Iran for Willem de Koon- dad in 1000-1001, for example, is routinely compared with 178 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2003 VOLUME LXXXV NUMBER 1

16 Afiasiyab and Siyavush Embrace, from the copy of the Shahnama made for Shah Tahmasp, Tabriz (Iran), ca. 1535. Cambridge, Mass., Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard Univer- sity Art Museums, the Norma Jean Caldenvood Collection of Islamic Art, inv. no. 2002.50.13 (photo: HUAM)

earlier and later manuscripts of the Koran, but it is never history, history, religion, medieval studies, transnational stud- compared with contemporary European manuscripts of the ies, gender studies, and the like. Such diversity surely adds Bible. Why not? Are we not thereby putting our subject in a great richness to our field, but the multiplicity of purposes ghetto? and audiences also threatens to pull our field apart so that In addition, our language and thought have to be made there will be nothing left at all. Given the increasing interest accessible. This challenge is not unique to Islamic art, but it in Islamic art, whatever it may actually be (or not be), and the is particularly important because many of the languages used many approaches and methodologies it can offer to art his- to study it. Arabic, Persian, and Turkish have sounds without torians in other fields, that would be a great pity indeed. exact equivalents, and they all have large specialized vocab ularies. Not only can transcription systems and terminology seem arcane to the nonspecialist reader, but they can also privilege one language or culture over another. Does it really Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan 1M. Bloom share the Norma Jean aid understanding to call a type of Persian ceramic mina'i or Calderwood University Professorship of Islamic and Asian Art at a Turkish design motif hatayi when there are perfectly good Boston College. A wif-and-husband team, they have written over a English-language equivalents? dozen books and several hundred articles on many aspects of Islamic Such challenges reflect the continuing ambiguity of our art, rangingfrom the Dome of the Rock to the history of paper [Fine position as historians of Islamic art, standing like a centipede Arts Department, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Mass. 02467-4809, with many feet in many fields, including art and architectural [email protected] or jonathan. [email protected]. ~\.frdsiual Church Treasuries of the Latin TVrst, Ars Faciendi: Beitrage zur Kunst- Notes geschichte (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1997). 16. Stephen Vernoit, "Islamic Art and Architecture: An Overview of Schol- This article is dedicated to the memory of Margaret Bentley Sevtenko (1930- arship and Collecting, c. 1850-c. 1950," in Vernoit (as in n. S), 1-61. 2002), longtime managing editor of the journal Mtiqamas and a dear friend 17. Max van Berchern, "Notes d'arch6ologie arabe: Monuments et inscrip- and mentor to many art historians. We are gratefill to Perry Chapman, editor tions fatirnites," Jounlal Asiatiqtie, 8th ser., 18 (1891): 46-86, English trans. in of The Art Bulletin, fbr inviting us to mite this article and offering gracious and Jonathan M. Bloom, ed., Earb Islanzic Art andilrchitecture, the Formation of the timely editorial comrnents that kept us going when the task seemed irnpossi- Classical Islamic World (Adershot: Ashgate/Variorum, 2002), 1-6. ble. Two anonymous readers held us to the straight and narrow. Marianne IS. Van Berchem completed only parts of the MCL4 befbre his death, those Barn~cand,Robert Hillenbrand, Linda Komaroff, and Lawrence Nees read dealing with Egypt (Max van Berchem, ~Vathiatixpour un Corpus Insoiptronum this essay in draft and provided welcome advice and support. In addition, Arabicnt-unz I: Eapte, rol. 1, Memoires de la Mission Arch6ologique Fran~aise Robert Hillenbrand, Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, Linda Komaroff, Sophie au Caire, 19 [Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1894-190311, Asia Minor (Max van Makariou, Ma13 >IcWilliams, Venetia Porter, and Jeff Spurs helped us secure Berchern and Halil Edhem, JlatPriaux pour un Corpus Inscriptiontcm Arabicnrunz photographs. III: -4sie ,Mineure, vol. 1, hI6moires de I'Institut Fran~ais;\rcheologique du 1. K.X.C. Creswell, Earb ~\.fuslzm Architecture, vol. 1 (Oxfbrd: Clarendon Caire, 29 [Cairo: Institut Fran~aisd';\rchi.ologie Orientale, 1910-17]), and Press, 1932: 2d ed., 1969); and vol. 2 (1940); and idem, Th~!MuslzmArchitrcttire Jerusalem (Max van Berchem, ~VatPriauxpour un Corpus Inscriptiontcm Arabica- of Egyp, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952-59). runz II: Syrie dti Sud. M6moires de 1'Institut Francais hch6ologique du Caire, 2. A. Ll. Pope and P. Ackerman, eds., A Suruq of Persia??Art fronz Prehistoric 43-45 [Cairo: Institut Francais d3Asch6010gieOrientale, 1920-22]), but the Tinzes to the Presrnt (London: Oxford University Press, 1938-39; reprint, Teh- series was continued by such scholars as Gaston Wiet and Ernst Herzfeld. For ran: Soroush Press, 1977). an introduction to the ,MU4 and its cornplex workings, see Sheila S. Blair, 3. Richard Ettinghausen and Oleg Grabar, The Art and Arcizitecttire of Islam: Islamic Inscriptions (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), 207-13. 650-1250 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987); and Ettinghausen, Grabar, and 19. E. J Brill's First Encyclopardia ofIslanz, 1913-1 936, ed. >I. Th. Houtsma et RIarilyn Jenkins-Madina, Islamic .Art and Architecture 650-1250 (New Haven: al. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987). Yale University Press, 2001). The title was changed by the publisher, which 20. Alols Riegl, Problems of Style: Foundntions for a Histoty of Oinament, trans. wanted to put the keyword "Islamic" up front. Evelyn Kain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).Later scholars were 4. The massive bibliography in the enormous field of Islamic art has forced less interested in such general questions, as they increasingly dealt with the us to focus our discussion on books and catalogues, since the periodical minutiae of particular periods, sites, or objects. For one notable exception, literature has grown to unmanageable proportions. To give some graphic idea see Oleg Grabar, Tiir l\.lrdration of Ornament (Princeton: Princeton IJniversity of its present size, the standard bibliography of Islamic art, KA.C. Creswell, A Press, 1992), discussed below. Bil~lio~graph?of tiir Architrctnrr, Arts and Cra/ts of Islam to 1st Jan. 1960 (Cairo: 21. Ernst Herzfeld, "The Genesis of Islamic Art and the Mshatta Problem" American University in Cairo Press, 1961; reprint, 1978) contains some 15,850 (Die Genesis der Islamischen Kunst und das Mshatta-Probleme), trans. Fritz entries. The first supplement, by Creswell, Supplument Jan. 1960 to Jan. 1972 Hillenbrand and Jonathan R.1. Bloom, in Bloom (as in n. 17). (1973), contains an additional 4,000 entries to the end of 1971, while the 22. See Friedrich Sarre and F. R. Martin, Dk .4usstrllung von ~\.leistt.,werken second supplement, by J. D. Pearson, Michael hleinecke, and George T. mz~izammrdanzscherKunst in Miinchen 1910 (Munich: Bruckmann, 1912); and Scanlon, Second Supplrmmt Jan. 1972 to Dec. 1980 (iuitii Omissions from Prrvious Daxid J. Roxburgh, "ALI Bonheur des Amateurs: Collecting and Exhibiting I'rars (1984). which co\.ers only eight years, contains an additional 11,000 Islan~icArt, ca. 1880-1910," Ars Orientalis 30 (2000): 9-38. entries. The changes de~nonstratethe phenomenal growth of interest in 23. Henri Matisse and his friend Albert hIarquet visited the exhibition in Islamic art in the 1970s. Boston College Libran is preparing a Tvebbased October 1910 just before it closed. hIatisse's Tizr Paznter's Family (the Hermit- third supplement covering the years 1981 to the present. Even in its current age, St. Petersburg), painted the follolving spring, was surely inspired by very incompletr state, thr third supplement contains well over 12,000 elec- Persian miniatures and carpets. See Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan hI. Bloom, tronic records, at http://ecs100.bc.edu:4345/ALEPH/-/start/bclO4. The .irt and Architecture of Islam, 1250-1800, the Pelican History of Art (New 9.This definition is taken from the introduction to the multi-author article Haven: Yale University Press, 19941, 308. "Islamic Art," in The Dictionary of Art, ed. Jane Turner (London: Macmillan, 24. B. U'. Robinson, "The Burlington House Exhibition of 1931: A Mile- 1996),vol. 16, 94ff. There are many discussions about what Islamic art is and stone in Islarnic Art History," in Vernoit (as in n. 8), 147-55; and Barry D. isn't. For a convenient start and bibliography, see Oleg Grabar's thoughtful \\hod, " 'A Great Symphony of Pure Form': The 1931 International Exhibi- introduction to the Dictionaq of Art article on Islamic art, vol. 16, 99-102. tion of Persian Art and Its Significance," Ars Orientalis 30 (2000): 113-30. 6.Jerrilynn D. Dodds, Sew I'ork 'Masjid: The IZI~~qt~rsof .VBO Ywk City (Xew 25. Stuart Cary Welch, "Private Collectors and Islamic Arts of the Book," in York: PowerEd5 Press, 2002). Treasures of Islam, ed. Toby Falk (London: Sotheby's/Philip Wilson, 1985), 7. Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The l'rntorr of Islam (Chicago: Universit), of 26-31. Chicago Press, 1974). For one notable, and important, exception, see Phillip 26. Pope and Ackerman (as in n. 2). Pope's charismatic career is thor- B. MBgoner, " 'Sultan among Hindu Kings': Dress, Titles, and the Islamiciza- oughly limned in the hagiographic Surveyors of Persia,l Art: -4 Documenta~y tion of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagara," Journal of Asian Studies 35 (Nov. 1996): Biography of Arthur Cpham Pope and Plz?llis ilckernian, ed. Jay Gluck and Noel 831-80. Siver (Ashiya: SoPA; Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda, 1996). The loans to the 8. Stephen TTernoit,ed., Discor~eringIslamtc ilrt: Scholars, Collectors and Coll~c- Burlington House exhibition were extraordinay, to judge from the monu- tions, 1850-1 950 (London: I. B. Taurus, 2000). mrntal catalogue of paintings: Laurence Binyon, J.V.S. MTilkinson, and Basil 9. Some recent scholarship is even calling into question thr notion of a Gray, Persian ,\.liuiature Painting (1933; reprint, New York: Dover, 1971). single "Chinese" art. See Craig Clunas, ilrt in China (Oxford: Oxford Univer- Reprinted as an inexpensive paperback in the 1970s, this book sellred until sity Press, 1997). On the early collecting of calligraphy, see Joseph Msop, Tile recently as the standard handbook for Persian painting. Reza Shah "encour- Rare ilrt Traditions: The H~stoqofilrf Collecting and Its Linked Plzenomena (Prince- aged" the libran of thr great Shii shrinr at llashhad to lend many manu- ton: Princeton Universitv Press, 1982), 233-55. For the later collecting of scripts, virtually all of them never brfore seen in the MTrst, according to calligraphy and painting in albums, see David J. Roxburgh, Prqaczng the Iinagr: Robinson (as in n. 24). It may not have been entirely coincidental that there The Tliiting ofilrt Histor) in Sixteenth-Cmtu~~Iran, Supplements to ~\.luqarnas, soon emerged a bustling international bazaar in objects of Persian art, some no. 9 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001). genuine and others not so genuine, as, for example, the "Buyid" silks dis- 10. For the drvrlopment of European attitudes to studying Islam, see cussed in Sheila S. Blair, Jonathan R.1. Bloom, and Anne E. Wardwell, "Re- Edward tV. Said's classic Oiientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978); for a more evaluating the Date of the 'Buyid' Silks by Epigraphic and Radiocarbon nuanced virw of the subject with particular reference to the arts, see John M. Analysis," ilrs O~ientalis23 (1993) : 1-42. MacKenzie, O?irntalism: Histoq, Theoq and the Alts (blanchester: Manchester 27. Robert Hillenbrand, "Richard Ettinghausen and the Iconography of University Press, 1995). Islamic Art," in Vrmoit (as in n. 8), 171-81. 11. For a convenient introduction to Islamic civilization in its first thousand 28. Marianna Shreve Simpson, " 'A Gallant Era': Hrnry MBlters, Islamic Art, years, with a distinct emphasis on the arts. see Jonathan Bloom and Sheila and the Kelekian Connection,'' Ars Orirntalis 30 (2000): 91-112. Blair, Islam: '4 Tizousand Years of Fazth and Powe,; rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale 29. Grabar's extensive publications before 1993 are listed in his Festschrift, University Press, 2002). The concept of various coexisting forms of Islam, long published in Muqamas 10 (1993). For a recent update, see Oleg Grabar, acknowledgrd by scholars, has not made it into modern political conscious- "From the hIuseum to the University and Back," in Eleventh Prese?ztation of tlze ness. See most rrcently Edward M'. Said, "Impossible Histories," Harper's 305 Charles Lang FM lZIedal (lvashington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, Frerr (July 2002): 69-74. Gallery of Art and Asthus hI. Sackler Gallery, 2001), 9-30. 12. M. Bernus, H. hlarchal, and G. Vial, "Le suaire de Saintjosse," Bulktin 30. See Oleg Grabar, "An htof the Objrct," Artjortrm 14 (1976): 36-43; de I,iaison du Centte International d'litndw drs Textiles Ancieus 33 (1971): 1-57. and i\my Goldin, "Islamic ht: The Met's Generous Embrace," ilrfforu?n 14 13. Giovanni Curatola, Ertdzta dell'lslam ([TTenice]:Silvana, 1993). no. 62. (1976): 44-50. Readers may be interested to know that the Islamic galleries 14.J. A. Harris, "R.Iuslim Ivories in Christian Hands: The Leire Casket in will close in the spring of 2003 for two to three years while the surrounding Context,'' Art Histon 18, no. 2 (1995): 213-21; and Sophie Makariou, galleries and offices are remodeled. h small Islamic "presence" will be main- "Quelques reflexions sur les objrts ail nom de 'Abd al-Malik ibn al-Manscr," tained in onr section of the balcony of the Great Hall. ilrchdologie Islamiqur 11 (2001): 47-60. 31. The Berlin galleries were reunited in the 1990s, and the Louvre galler- 15. On the process and meaning of collrcting Islamic artifacts in medieval ies, previously inaccessible most days of the week, were prominently rein- Europe, see Avinoam Shalem, Islam Ciiristianizrd: Islamzc Portabk Objects in the stalled as part of the Grand Louvre project. Other museums in the United States haw mounted similar. if somew.hat smaller. chronolog~caldlsplals: a Hen.Su)hin: From Ihp .-igf>of /u~tiizimiz to thp Pr~sf~nt(Cambrtdgr: Cambridge good example is the extensive onr in thr Los Angeles Count\-SIusrum of .Art. L-niversit! Press. 1992). For a brirf introductton to the collrction. see Linda Komaroff. Islnmic Art nt .52. .k\ in. for example. Johannrs hlter. Margareta Palaloi. and hlaria the Lus .ingelrs Count> .\lusrirrn of .4rt (Los hngrles: Los Angeles County hlu- Zrrmickel, .C>r7en: Jlosaik eines Kulturrnumrs (Stuttgart: Hansjorg SIayrr in seum of Art. 1998). Zusammenarbeit mit dem Linden-hluseum Stuttgart. 1991). 32. .4rts de l'Isln?n des oiigi~rrsb 1700 dons les ~olle~tzo~isp~~bliqi~esi)%llrir(~~srs. exh. .53. For rxamplr. the arts of Islamic Spain. Dodds (as in 11. 38). or the cat.. the Tuileries. 1971 (Paris: hlinistere des iVfdirrs CLI~~LII-elles:Rk~union des exhibitton of six thousand yrars of Iloroccan ~rtplanned for. but nexer hlusee Nattonaux. 1971): and I.'IJl(iin dmis Irs cull~~ctio~~snationnles, exh. cat.. actually held at. the Petit Palais. Dr l%mn/~irrromnimz nu* :wlles im)&lnles: 6000 nns Grand Palais. Paris. 1977. dhrt nu .Alniur (Paris: Sluhke du Petit Palais. 1990). 33. The hand\ catalogne of the exhibition. l%e,-lrts ofI~ln?ii([London): Arts .i4. The catalogue lJ/~el?;sfnn:E!beii iirr-Serdenstin~se,rd.Johaiiiirs hlter and Council of Great Britain. 1976). which ~vouldbe considerrd rxtraol-dinaril\ Margareta Palaloi (Stuttgart: Hansjorg hlayrr in Zusammenarbeit mit dem modest b\ current musrum standards. remains an rssential reference tool for Linden-Museum Stuttgart. 1995) suggests that therr is. as doe? &mil Khan scholars. Sot onlv did e\en possible institution lend its brst works, but the hI~unta7.An-hitert~~rein Pnkisinn (Singapore: Concept Media. 1985). catalogue providrs reasonable-if onlv black-and-\\hit?-ill~~strations. dimell- 5.5. \\'ernrr- Daum. ed.. I~meri:3000 Ierirs ofA,t arid Cir~ilisntzonr?z .irnbzn Fr/ih sions. accrssion numbers. transcl-ibed and translated inscriptions, bibliogra- (Innsbruck: Pinguin: Frankf~lrt:Umschau. 1988). ph!. and brief drscriptions of \irtuallv rven object in the qholr. 56. Tom Phillips. ed.. 14j-ict~:Tile ,477 (;o?ztinrut (London: Prrstel. 1993) 34. These range from thr splrndid multidisciplinar7: volume on the Ye~nrni .57. Georgina Her~nannrt al., Jlonumiiits of .Afm~(London: BI-itish Institute citv of San'a'. R. B. Serjeant and Ronald Leucock. eds.. ,Yon'a2: ,in .4,nbziin of Persian Studies. 2002) Islnmzr Ct7 (London: 1)-orld of lslam Frsri~alTrust. 1983) to modrst pict~tre 58..\nna Contadini wrote Fnlimiii irt nt the lirtoi-in nnd .ilbrrt Mus~iim books on Iranlan and North .African architect~~re.such as .Antoil! Hutt. .\-or.lh (London. Victoria and .Albert ?.luseum. 1998) when shr was a research fellolt- .iJi7m (1.ondon: Scorpion. 1977) at the museum. .Vthough thr book appeared simultaneouslv with the exhi- 9.5. The .Aga Khan Prograni \\as initial15 dlrrcted b\ Oleg Grabar and bition in Paris. tt !\as conceived quitr indrpendrntly. Jonathan Bloom is IVilliarn Pot-te~.dedn of the architecture school at MIT. both of whom had completing another monograph on Fatirnid art, which \rill br published in served on the board of the Aga Khan .A~\ardfor Architrcture. 2003 b\: the Instit~~teof Ismaili Studies in London. 36. The first two issues of .Llurjnmas (1983. 1984) \\ere published bv Yale 59. Esin .Atll. Krrzni,snnre of Islam: irt of flip .\.Inmlak~, exh. cat. (I'Vashington. L7nivrrsit\ Press: m~bsequrntvolumes have been published b! E. J. Brill. All D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. 1981). Bringing together an extraot-di- the articlrs in a score of xol~~mesand all the monographs were edlted bv the na1-v collection of rnastrrpirces In mail\ media from Egvpt, Stria. Europe. and latr Margaret Bentley ~r~i-rnko.who tried to trach an entire generation of art Sorth .America, thr rxhlbition tra\eled extensil-elv throughout the Unitrd historians how to \\.rite. Sratr,. 37. The mort norable arc the al-Sabah (:ollrction !Dar al-Athas al-Islamikxa, 60. 7'ri.sors fntimiries du Cairi. (Paris: Institut du Ilonde Arabr. 19'38). formrrl!- housed in thr K~~\raitNational SIusrum complex in K~nraitCin, and 61.J. 11. Rogers. Emi~i~-rof tlir Sultnns: Ottoinail ilrifroin tile Khnlili Collection. the ne\v collectiol~bring atnassrd b\ Shalhh al-Thani of Qdcar for a nexv 4th ed. (.Vexandria. \-a,: Art Srnices International: London: Sour Founda- rnuyrum of Islanlic art in Doha. tion. 2000) 38.Jei-rill-nn D. Dodds. ed.. .A1-.411dnlas: I7ir l~tof Islnmir Ypai?z (Neu York: 62. Thomas I\-.Lent7 and Glrnn D. Lo~v17..Timilrand thi~Pi7rzrrljI'isioiz (Los Iletropoliran hfusrum of ~\l:t, 1992); and Linda Ko~naroffand Strfdno Car- \ngele?: Los .\ngeles Count) Iluseum of .kt, 1989). This ?ho\\ on the arts of boni. eds.. 7%~Lrgacp of (;rng/ils liilun: Courth .i~tnnd (:ultio~~i?i Ilijsto-11 .isin, the Timuridh. mo~untedin 1989, !\a? partlculal.l\ glamorous, not onlv because 1256-1373 (Sev Haven: Yale Cnixerhitr Press in aqqociation \iith the SIrtro- of the un?urpassrd beaut\ and trchnlcal qualit! of the objrcts but alho politan SIu?eum of .Art, 2002). because of the organilrl-\' uncann\ abilitx- to securr difficult loans. Layla S. 39. Kjeld 1,011Folsach. Islnnrir Art. Thp Dal'id Coll~rfion(Copenhagrn: Daxid Diba, ed.. Row1 I'prslnn Pnititings: 7%~Qnpr Epoch 178.7-1925, with Ilanam C:ollection. 1990): and idem, 'iit from tlir Il~~lriof Islnnr: 7%~Dnz'7d (;ulli~ction Ekhtiar (Selv York: Brookl!n SIuseurn of .Art. 1998). This li\rly rxhibition (Copenhagen: David Collection. 2001). rrlealed ho~vthe traditional pictorial languagr of Prrsian painting !\as trans- 40. Classic handboohs \\.ere published bv such scholars as h1. S. Dimand. ;l formed under the Qajars. Iio~naroffand Carboni (as in 11. :18); tlie exhibition, Hnridbook of .\lohn?rirnednn Drrurniii~r~.ii~s(Kc\$ York: Ilrtropolitan hluseum of ~\hichran in Sew York in the wintry of 2002-3 and .i\,illrun in Lo? Angeles in .Art, 1990); and Ernst Kiihnel. Tlir Jlzrior .iris of I~ln?!r,trans. &thrrine \\-atson tlie spring of 2003, covrrs the ax-ts produced in Iran undrr tlie descendants of (Ithaca. N.Y.: (:ori~ellL'niver?itv Press, 1971). the great hlongol conqueror Genghi? Khan from 1250 to 1:150. 41. Tllc tu.o volume5 in the Prlican Hihtol? of .kt are Ettinghausen and 63. Selected paprr\ from a conference on the \lamlukh. "Renaissance of Grabar (as in 11. 3) and it5 updating. Ettinghausen et al. (a?in n. 3): and Blair Islam: Art of the hlamluks," and sponsored by thr Sational Gallei-v of hrt, and Bloom (as in n. 23). Singlr-xolume primrrs include Barbara Brend. Centrr fol- .Adranced St~td~of tlie \'isual :\its. and Frrer Gallri~of .Art in I\lnmir .At (I.ondon: British hluse~unPrrss: Cambridgr, Mass.: Hanard Lni- \Vasliington. D.C.. in 1981. \\el-e publishrd as volume 2 (1984) of .Aluqonln~, 1-ersirx PI-ess. 1991):Jonathan Bloom and Shrila Blair. Islamir .-iris (London: \\-hilr selrctrd paper., from a conference on the Timurid, held in Toronto in Phaidon. 199i): Robert 11:~vin.Islornic .41/ in Coiilrxt: .ir?, .irrliifirturr, unil the 1989. for example. \\?re publislled as a supplement to .\luqu~iias. See Lisa I.iteru~j ITh,ld (Sen Yorh: Harn N.Abrams, 1997): and Robert Htllenbrand. Golombeh and Maria Subtrlnv. eds.. Timurid .Art and Cultu~i:Iron and Cijtitrul Idninir- .41/ nnd .Irchilr~iurr~(London: Thames and Hudson. 1999). .isin in flieFifteent11 Cmtur>, Supplenlents to Jluqnmns, no. 6 (Leiden: E. J.Brill. 42. In a papet- pl-esentcd at the hxmposium "Suneying Ihlamic Art and 1992). SIariannr Barrucand. ed.. 1,Eflptr fntiinzde: Son art et ~o?zhz\tozre (Pal-is: Arcliitect~~l-e."sponsored b! the .lga Khan Program at Hanard and SIIT and Presses de I'LFnivrrsitt- de Paris-Sol-bonnr. 1999). appeal-ed indrprndrntl\:. hrld at the :bnel:ican hcadrmy ofrts and Scirncrs on SIa\ 17-18.2002. Inriri 64. The late SIichael Meinecke's magisterial work on Ilamluk architrcturr explained that Inan\ of the pecl11ia1-features of h~shook. as it final11 ap- in Ep-pt and SII-ia. D7r ,2Ianrluki~rhu irclzztrktto- 7n .lapim und Si'17rrr (Gliick- peal-rd. \Yere the pl-oduct of the publisher's intenention in an attempt to stadt: ,J.,J. ;\~~g~~stin.1992). appeared a drcadr aftel- the Slarnluk rxhihition. make it a mot-r usefi~l-and salahlr-"textbook." \vhilr Lisa Golornhek and Donald 1iilber's inxaluahlr hook on Timurid 43.. fine esarnple of the genre is the catalog~tcto the 1976 Ha!\ral:d architecture. Thr Ti?nurid rirrhilr(inr~of [inn arid Turali (Princeton: Princeton Galler~exhihition. 77i~.l).t\ IJ I\lliiri (as in 11.33), i\.l~eiethe 11nivr1-salclairns to l~ilivr~-sit\Press. 1988)-rn\isioned as a sequel to IVilher's monograph on a unit\ of Islamic al-t are iinplicit in the fact of the exhihition itself. thr architecture of the Ilkhanids. Tht ;lrcIiiln/urr of 1,lntizir Irnn: Thr I1 KIz7nlid 44. Sr\?ed Hossein Sasl-. Isla~ni(Ali niirl .S,hiiifi~nlil~(;\lhanl: State Cni\-ersin I+r~od (New IGIrh: C;l:eem\-ood, 1969)-carne out \vhrn the Tirnurid exllihi- of Sew hrk PI-ess. 1987). tion was rnol~nted. 45. Titus Burckllai-dt. .hi of Islam: I,aiig?tng(, ri1zi13I~nniiig (London: I\-orld of 65, hnthon\ \Velch. Shah '.ibbns and thr .4rt, of Irfnlinn (c:a~~lhridgr.Mass.: Islam Festi~al.1976) Fogg I-thluseurn: Srx\.Yo~-h:.kia Societ>-.1973). Slichael Brand and Glenn 16. Sadvr .h-dalan and Laleh Bakhtiar. T/rt S121isrof lni!~:Tlic 514 Tra(fi1inn D. L0u.n. ikhnr's Iilrlra: .lrt from fhr .\Ii~,qlial CzIj of l'icto~(Sew YEI-h:.kia iri Pr~-ciniz.irrliitct/i~w (('hicago: Cnivrl-sit) of (:llicago PI-ess, 1973); lieit11 Society Gallrries. 1985). Thr exhihit~onrvas accompanied by a soul-crhooh, Critchlo\v. Islnin~(Pallen, (Set,. \.(Irk: Schochen Books, 1976): Issarn El-Said hlicllarl Brand and Glenn D. Lowi?. eds., Falrhp~ir-Sikr7:.l Soi~rrrDook (Cam- and re Pal-man. (;(,onrrtri( Conri.l,ts in IsIairii( drl (London: \\-o~-ldof Islain bridge. Slass.: Aga Khan Program fol- Islamic hrcllitectnre at Han-ard L-ni- Festi~alTrust and Scot-pion. 1976): and Xhdelkrbil- Iihatihl and hlohammrd Y~I-sin.and the Slassachusetts Institute of Trchnolop. 1985). and a \olurne of Sijelmassi, Tlip ~Splc!idou~~,SI~larnzrCnllignphp, trans.,J.Hughes and E.J. Emon. collrctrd essa\s fi.0111 an accornpanving conference. Micllael Brand and I-?\. ed. (London: Tharnes ant1 Hudson. 1995) Glrnn D. L~\\I?,eds.. Fat~hpu~Sikl-1(Bornbav: hlal-g. 1987). Esin ht11, Tlic .l,qr 17. See also thr criticisms of the uni\ersalist appl-oach b! Oleg GI-ahar. I,S Si~lin?~Sulqnian file .\lngn7ljc~rif (MBshington. D.C.: National Gallen; of Art. "Reflections on the Stlid1 of Islarnic .AI-t." Jluqniiia~1 (1983): 1-14. 1987). The caralogue I\-as rr~rl-ittenfor the London vrnue. J. 51. Rogers and 48. S. Poul:ja\adx, ed.. 7%r Sf~l~rriinz~iI>/ Imiz (London: Booth-Clihhorn. R. h1. \lard. Sulflmnii th~.\lapzzjrr?~i (London: British Slusrum. 1988). and 2001). the exllibition was accoinpanied hy the publication of the sultan's illustrated 49. Ehrrm .Ahul:gal. c:! r~lIfango. and Richal-d Ettingha~~sen.I.PS treso~sOr chi-onicle. Esin \tll. Sul31izn~inain~:Tlzr Ill~isf~ntrdHi,ior? of Siilnmnrr flip .\I(l,q- Titrqu~:L:i?inloli~ rip, prrrniers einpu?,. Bpznnr~. IPS siP(lr', ii~I'I~lnm (Geneva: izzfic~tlt(11-ashington. D.(:.: National Gallen. of Art, 1986). S~II-a.1966): Ekrrm .Ah~u-gal,rd.. TIZP.irl n~iri.irc/izi~tfarr of Turk3 (Se\\.Yo~.k: 66. The rxhihition "Hunt for-Pal-adisr: Court ;\rts of Safavid Iran. 1501-76,' Rirzoli, 1980). had heen planned hv Sheila Canby of the BI-itishSlusrum for hlilan. London. 50. Oktar .Aslanapa. 7uiki~h.4rt niid .lr(Iizie(tarr (Sev Yorh: Praegrl-. 1971). and Sr'rlr Yorh. but thr BI-itis11hlusenm has had to cancel its sho~\ingbecause 31. .Apt~lllahKuran. Tlir Jlo\qi~rin L~I!YOlinv~a?~ .4rr/zzfecti~rr(C:hicago: of its drficit. It is st111 scheduled t~ npprar at the Asia Socirtv (October ~el-sit~of (:hieago Pi-rss, 1967): and Robert \lark and .ih~netS. C:akrnah. eds.. 2003-Januan 2004) and rhr Poldi Pe7roli \Iuseum iFvhruar7-hlav 2004). THE bIIRAGE OF ISL.iSIIC ART 181

Sheila Canby and Jon Thompson are still writing the catalogue, to he puh- 78. It has heen the subject of a short and popular book by a scholar (Oleg lished hy the British Museum Press in the fall of 2003, and Sheila Canby also Grabar, The Alhambra [Camhridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 19781) wrote a preliminary study on the arts of the Safavids, The Golden Age ofPert,ian and a lavish one illustrated with reprints of Owen Jones's 19th-century plates Art 1501-1722 (London: British Museum Press, 1999). (Antonio Fernandez-Puertas, The dlhambra [London: Saqi Books, 19971). 67. The value of a hero's name is particularly important; when the Institut 79. W. I-. Begley and Z. A. Desai, Taj,Mahal: The Illumirzed Tomb (Camhridge, du Monde Arahe in Paris recently put together a show on the arts of the Mass.: Aga Klran Program for Islamic Architecture, 1989); and Prarapaditya period of Saladin, the Muslim hero who repulsed the Crusaders in the 12th Pal et al., Romance of the Taj '\laha1 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County hluseum century, barely a single object in the exhibition had a demonstrable connec- of Art; London: Thames and Hudson, 1989). tion to the central figure himself. L'On'ent deSaladin: L'art des Ajjottbide, (Paris: 80.M'aye E. Begley, "The Myth of the Taj blahal and a New Theory of Its Institut du Slonde Arahe/Gallimard, 2001) Symholic Meaning," Art Bulbttn 61 (1979): 7-37. 68. See, for example, the unique sunixing example of a medieval hook of 81. Lisa Golombek, The Tirnuiid Shiine at Gazur Gah (Toronto: Royal On- gifts hy Ibn al-Zubayr, now available in a rvorkmanlike translation hy Ghada tario Museum, 1969); idem, "The Cult of Saints and Shrine Architecture in al-Hijja~uial-Qaddumi, Book of Giftt, arzd Rarities: Kitdb al-Hadaj8 wa'l-Tuhaf the Fourteenth Century," in AYearEastern ~Vumit,matio,Iconography, Epipph) (Camhridge, hlass.: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Hanrard Universih, and Histoiy: Studies in Honor of George C. .Miles, ed. Dickran Iiouymjian (Beirut: 1996). American University of Beirut, 1974); and Sheila S. Blair, The Ilkhanid Shiine 69. It doesn't take a great leap of irnagination to connect the traveling Complex at Satanz, Iran (Cambridge, Mass.: Haward University Center for exhihition cor~lmernoratedin Esin Atll, Islamic Art and Patronage: Treasuresfrom Middle Eastern Studies, 1986). Kuwait (xew I'ork: Harry N. ,413rams, 1990), with the munificent Kuwaiti 82. Marianna Shreve Simpson, The Illustration of an Epic: The Ea~liestShah- collectors who assembled the oljects shown. World events intervened, as they nama ~\lanusoipts (New l'ork: Garland, 1979). In a similar vein, John Se>-ller, often do: that exhibition was held in Leningrad during the Iraqi invasion of \%'arkshop and Patron in ~MuglzalIndia: The Freer Rrimajana and Other Illustrated Iiuwait in 1990; its subsequent peregrinations throughout the United States lclarzuscripts of 'Abd al-Rahim (Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 1999) investigated a during the Gulf War were orchestrated to maxinlum political advantage by a Persian copy of the Ramayana produced not for the emperor himself but for Washington, D.C., public relations firm. a high-ranking nohle at the hlughal court. 70. Daniel Walker, Flowers Underfoot: Indian Caqets of the ~MughalEra (New 83. Giilru Necipoglu, Architecture, Ceremonial, and Power: The Topkapi Palace York: Metropolitan Museum of .kt, 1997); and Stuart Gary Welch, bVonders of in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Camhridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991); the .ige: Masterpieces ofEa,4 .Safavid Paintzng, 1501-1576 (Camhridge, Mass.: Nasser 0. Rahbat, The Citadel of Cairo: A LVwIntnpretation of Royal Alaml~tk Fogg Art Museum, 1979). Architecture (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995); and Finbarr B. Flood, The Great Mosque 71. Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, "Signatures on FVorks of Islamic ofDamascus: Studies on the Makings of an Lrmayjad T'lsual Culture (Leiden: I-. J. Art and Architecture," Domaszener hfitteilungen 11 (1999): 49-66. Brill, 2001). 72. Ebadollah Bahari, Bihzad, ,'blaster of Perszan Paintirzg (London: I. B. 84. See Oleg Grabar's thoughtful review of The Great Mosque of Damasczts: Taurus, 1996); Sheila R. Canh>-, The Rebellious Refonnm: The Draruings and Studies in the Makings of an Vmapad \isual Culture, by Finbarr Barry Flood, Patntings of Rizayi 'Abbasi of Iqahan (London: Azimuth, 1997); and .Aptullah Jo~lrrzalof the Society ofAirchitect~tralHistoria?as 60, no. 4 (Dec. 2001): 506-8. Kuran, Sinan: The Gr-and Old master of Ottoman Architecture (Washington, D.C.: 85. R. Stephen Humphreys, "2001 Presidential Address: The Destruction of Institute of Turkish Studies; Istanbul: Ada Press, 1987). Cultural Memory,'' ,Middle East Studies Associatiort Bulktin 36, no. 1 (summer 73. Martin Dickson and Stuart Carey Welch, The Houghton Shahnameh, 2 2002): 1-8. vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981). 86. Oleg Grabar and Sheila Blair, Epic Images and Contemporay Histoy: The 74. The Dome of the Rock was the subject of one of the first major works Illustrations of the Great ~\fongol Shahrzama (Chicago: University of Chicago hy Oleg Grahar ("The Umayad Dome of the Rock in Jen~salem,"Ars Oripn- Press, 1980). talis 3 [1959]: 33-62), in which he set the huilding in its late antique and early 87. Aholala Soudavar, "The Saga of AbuSa'id Bahador Khan: The Ahu- Islamic contexts. The building still draws attention; it has heen discussed in at Sa'idnama," in The Coltrt OftheIl-Khans 1290-1340, ed.Julian Raby and Teresa least two recent hooks, Oleg Grahar, The Slzape of the Hob: Earl) Islamic Fitzherhert, Oxford Studies in Islamic ,kt, vol. 12 (Oxford: Oxford University Jerusalem (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), and Said Nuseiheh, Press for the Board of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Osford, The Dome of the Rock (New York: Rizzoli, 1996), and many articles, including 1996), 95-218; Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, "Epic Images and Lhnikam Elad, "I\lly Did 'Abd al-Malik Build the Dome of the Rock? A Contemporary History: The Legacv of the Great hlongol Shahnama," Islamic Re-Examination of the hluslim Sources," 33-58, Sheila S. Blair, "FVhat Is the Art 5 (2001): 41-52; Sheila S. Blair, "Rewriting the History of the Great

Date of the Dome of the Rock?'' 59-88, and Josef van Ess, " '.%bd al-Malik and Mongol Shahnama," and Jonathan 1st. Bloom, "The Great hlongol Shahnama the Dome of the Rock: .4n Examination of Some Texts," 89-104, all three in in the Qajar Period," both in Shahnama: The Visual Language of the Persian Book Bajt a1,Clnqdis: 'Abd al-Alalik iJerusalem, Pait One, ed. Julian Raby and Jeremy of Kings, ed. Robert Hillenbrand (Edinburgh: Xrarie, in press). Johns, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the 88. See also the series of papers presented at a conference in Bamberg in Board of Facul~of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, 1992); Nasser 1992 and published as Barbara Finster, Christa Fragner, and Herta Hafen- Rabbat, "The Dome of the Rock Revisited: Some Remarks on al-M'asiti's richter, eds., Rpieptzon in der islamischerz Kunst (Beirut: Franz Steiner, 1999). Accounts," ~Jfuqarnas10 (1993): 67-75; and idem, "The Meaning of the 89. Sheila S. Blair, A Compe~~diumoj Ch~onicles:Rashid al-Dink Illusfrated Umayad Dome of the Rock," Aluqamas 6 (1989): 12-21. Histo?) of the IITorld (London: Nour Foundation in association with Azimuth --13. The finest manuscript of the 16th century, the two-volume copy of the Editions and Oxford University Press, 1995); and Bloom et al. (as in n. 76). Shahnama made for the Safavid Tahrnasp, was the subject of a massive mo- 90.Jens Kroger, Berlin, Staa#liche musee en Preussischer Kultu,-besitz, ,Museum fur volume publication by Dickson and Welch (as in n. 73), but its astronomical islamisc/ze Kunst: Glas (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1984); and Almut Haupt- price put it out of reach of all but a few. The rest of us made do ~vitha mann von Gladiss and Jens Kroger, Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kul- handsome, if light, book illustrating some of the manuscript's pages, Stuart turbesitr, ,Museum fur islamische Kunst: 1VIetal1, Stein, Stuck, Holz, Evenbern, Stofe Cary IVelch, A King? Book of Kmgs (New York: l~fetropolitanMuseum of .kt, (hlainr: Philipp von Zabern, 1985). 1972). A luxurious illustrated manuscript commissioned by Prince Ibrahim 91. Rachel M'ard, Islamzc Aletalruol-k (n'ewl'ork: Thames and Hudson, 1993); Mirza, Tahmasp's nephew, is the subject of a recent monograph, Marianna Sheila R. Canby, Persian Paintirzg (NewYork: Thames and Hudson, 1993);J. hI. Shreve Simpson, Sultan Ib~ahim~Jfinak Hnft Awrang, a Prince/+ ,Manuscript from Rogers, 1Jfz~ghal,2linzatures(New York: Thames and Hudson, 1993); Venetia Sixteenth-Centztq Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Porter, Islamic Tiles (n'ew York: Interlink Books, 1995); and John Carswell. Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1997), pro- Iznik Poftq (London: British Museum Press, 1998). duced at a much more affordable price and with a spinoff picture book of all 92. Richard Ettinghausen and Marie Lukens Swietochowski, dfet~opol~tan the paintings, designed for the general public, Marianna Shreve Simpson, Museum of Alt Bulletin 36, no. 2 (1978); Marilyn ,Jenkins, "Islamic Potten.: A Persian Poetp, Paznfing and Patronage: Illlrstmtions in a Sixteenth-Centuly lblaster- Brief History," LMetropolitan~Vluseum of Art Bulletin 40, no. 4 (spring 1983); piece (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of .kt, Smithsonian Institution, 1998). idem, "Islamic Glass: A Brief History," ,2letropolitan LMuseum of Art Bulletin 44, The publication and exhibition of a spectacular imperial hIughal manuscript no. 2 (1986); M. S. Dimand and Jean hlailey, O?-rentalRugs in the 1Vletropolitan from the Royal Library, M'indsor Castle (lsfilo Cleveland Beach and Ebba lbluseum of Alt (n'ew York: l~fetropolitan l'fuseum of Art, 1973); Marilyn Koch, King of the Mbr-ld: The Paclshahnama, an Imperial ,Mugizal ,2lanuscript from Jenkins and hlanuel Keene, Islamic Jezvelv in the Aletropolitan Aflrseum of Art the Royal Lzb~a?g,Windsor Castle [Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution/ (New York: l~fetropolitanMuseum of Art, 1982); Stefano Carboni and To- L4zirnuth,19971) was made possible by the need to unbind it for consemation. moko hlasuya, Persian Tiles (n'ew York: Metropolitan Museum of .kt, 1993); Perhaps the most recent example of the genre is the 2002 exhibition and Stuart Cary FVelch, Islamiscize Kunst: 1Vlezsturwerke azrs dem ,2lefropolifan ,Zlusrum of catalogue devoted to reassembling some of the pages from a dispersed Art, .\'m York/The Alts of Islam: ~Jfasfe$iecesfrom the ,Metropolitan 1Vluseum of Art, hlughal manuscript, John Seyller, The Adventures of Hamza, Painting and Sto- .ko Yo?-k (Berlin: Staatliche Isfuseen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, 1981); Arte ?gtelling in rCltrghalIndza (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Islbmico del lbluseo 1Met1-opolitano de Arfe de ,Vurva hrk ([hlexico]: Consejuo Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in association with Azimuth, 2002). Nacional para la Cultura y las .ktes, 1994);hletropolitan Museum of .kt, The 76.Jonathan $1. Bloom et al., The ~Vlinbarfiomthe Kutubzjja lblosque (New Islamic IITorlcl (n'ew York: Metropolitan hluseum of Art, 1989). York: RIetropolitan Museum of ,kt, 1998). 93. Marie Lukens Swietochowski and Sussan Babaie, Persian Draurings in the 77. This was not always the case, as D. S. Rice published two splendid 121etropolitanAfuseum of Ait (New York: hletropolitan Museum of ,kt, 1989). monographs on masterpieces of metalwork: The Baptlstkre de Saint-Louis (Paris: 94. As we write this, fifty masterpieces with excellent details are viewable at Chtne, 1953); The Wade Cup in the Chreland ~Jfuseum?f Art (Paris: ChEne, l~ttp://~+~+~~-.~netmuseum.org/collections/departnent.aspdep= 14. 1955). 95. These include books by Esin htil on Islamic ceramics, Cemmicsjom the

THE MIRAGE OF ISLAhilC ART 183 filigranes utilises au Proche-Orientjusqu'en 1450, essai de typologie," Journal what idiosyncratic views of a collector and dealer: La chramique islamique: Le Asiatique 286. no. 1 (1998): 1-54. guide du connaisseur (Fribourg: Office du Livre. 1985). 126.Jonathan 31. Bloom, Papw before Print: The Histoiy and Impact ofPaper in 143. Oliver Watson's book Persian Lustre Ware (London: Faber and Faber, the Isla,nic llbrld (New Eaven: Yale University Press, 2001). 1985) gives an excellent chronological overview and can be supplemented by 127. Gulnar Bosch, John Carswell, and Guy Petherbridge, Islamic Bindings Alan Caiger-Smith's book on the luster technique, Lustre Pottq: Technique, and Bookmaking, exh. cat., Oriental Institute, Universin of Chicago. 1981; Tradition anrl Innovation in Islam and the Western World (London: Faher and Duncan Haldane. Islamic Bookbindings in the I'ictoria and Albeit ?Museum (Lon- Faber, 1985). Earlier lustem-ares, especially Iraqi and Egyptian opes, are don: World of Islam Festival Trust in association with the Victoria and Albert presented in Helen Philon, Earb Islamic Curamics: Xinth to Late Twelfth Cpntu- Museum, 1983); and Julia11 Rahy and Zeren Tanlndl, Turkzsh Bookbinding ofthe ries, Catalogue of Islamic hrt/Benaki Museum Athens, 1 (London: Islamic Art 15th Centziv: TheFoundntzons ofnn Ottoman Court SLyle, ed. T. Stanley (London: Publications, 1980). Azimuth Editions on behalf of l'hsociation Inter~iationalede Bibliophilie, 144. Lisa Golornbek, Robert B. hlason, and Gauvin A. Bailey, Tanwrlane's 1993). Tabhare: A "eu Approach to the Chinoiselie Ceramics ofFz9eenth- and Sixteenth- 128.Yves Porter, Painters, Paintings nnd Books: An Essr~y on Inrlo-Persian Cmtu~Iinn (Costa Mesa, Calif.: hlarda in association with the Royal Ontario Technical Litprature, 12th-19th Centuiies, trans. Mrs. S. Butani (New Delhi: Museum, 1996). Manohar, Centre for Hurnan Sciences, 1994); and Roxburgh (as in n. 9). 143. Stefano Carboni and David \$%itehouse, Glass of the Sultans (New York: 129.See, rnost recently, Fran~oisDeroche, ~Zlanuelde codicologie des manu- Metropolitan \luseum of Art, 2001); and Stefano Carboni, Glassfiom Islamic sciits rn 4critui-e arabe (Paris: Bibliotheque Nationale de France, 2000), with Lands (New York: Thames and Hudson in association with the al-Sahah extensive bibliography. collection, Dar alAtllar al-Islarniyya, K~lwaitNational Museum, 2001). 130. Khatibi and Sijelmassi (as in n. 46). Sheila Blair is at work on a new 146. Rachel Ward, ed., Gilded and Enamelled (;lass from the Midrlle East: suney, intended as a companion to her survey of Islarnic inscriptions (Blair Origins, Innovations (London: British 31useurn Press, 1998). [as in n. 181). which is intended to fill this gap. 147. Maurice Lombard, Les textiles dans le monde musulman VIIe-XIIe ssicle 131. Yasser Tabbaa, "The Transfolmation of Arabic Writing, Part 1: (Paris: Mouton, 1978). Qur'inic Calligraphy," Ars Orientalis 21 (1991): 119-48; idem. "The Trans- 148. Patricia L. Baker, Islamic Textiles (London: British Museum Press, formation of Arabic LYriting, Part 2: The Public Text," Ars Orientalis 24 (1994): 1995). 119-47; and Irene A. Bierman, 14?itzngSzgnc: The Fatzmzd Public Text (Berkeley: 149. Nurhan Atasoy et al., Ipek: The Qrccent and the Rose: Imperial Ottoman Universit) of California Press, 1998). Silks and Velvets (London: Azirnuth Editions on behalf of TEB A. S., 2002). 132. Estelle '\$%elan, "Mtiting the TtTordof God: Some Early Qur'an hlanu- 150.The historical setting has been presented by Thomas T. Allsen, Con- scripts and Their Milieux, Part 1," Ars Onentalis 20 (1990): 113-48. modity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cziltural Histo? of Islantic Textiles 133. F. R. Martin, The ~ZliniaturePainting and Painters of Persia, India and (Cambridge: Cambridge Universih Press, 1997), again without illustrations. Turkey front the 8th to the 18th Centu~(London: Quaritch, 1912); and Oleg Most of the technical work has been done by Anne Wardwell; see, for Grabar, ~Mostl) Mznzatures: An Introductzon to I'erszan I'aintzng (Princeton: example, Anne E. Wardwell, "Panni Tartarici: Eastern Islarnic Silks Woven with Princeton University Press, 2000). Gold and Silver (13th and 14th Centuries) ," Islamic Art 3 (1988-89): 95-173; 134. Basil Gray, Pmsian Painting (Geneva: Skira, 1961); Richard Etting- and James C. Y. TtTattand Anne E. XVardwell, When Silk 14'as Gold: Central Asian hausen, Arab Painting (Geneva: Skira. 1962); and Norah M. Titley, Persian and Chinese Textiles (New York: Metropolitan Museurn of Art with the Cleve- ~MlniaturePalnting and Its Inz7uence on the Art of Turk9 and Indla: The British land hluseurn of A-t, 1997). Lrbraq Collections (1983; reprint, Austin: University of Texas Press in cooper- 15l.Walter B. Denny, The Sotheby's Guide to Oriental Carpets (New I'ork: Simon and Schuster. 1994). ation with the British Library, 1984), Aboulala Soudavar used the same 152. For example, in 1990 the Metropolitan Museum acquired a rare approach for the catalogue of his stupendous family collection, now on example of an "animal" carpet, one of the earliest types known. A similar rug long-term loan to the Smithsonian (Soudavar, Art of the Persian Cozr7tS: Selections is depicted in an early 15th-century Sienese painting, The Marriage of the Virgin front thr Art and Histo?? Trust Collection [New I'ork: Rizzoli, 1992]), and so do (National Galleql, London, inv. no. 1317), but radiocarbon analysis initially the various authors of the catalogue of an exhibition frorn the Libra~of the suggested an implausible date in the 12th century, and the carpet is now St. Petersburg Acaderny of Sciences Kuri A. Petrosyan et al., Pages ofPerfrction: attributed to the early 14th century. See "An Early Animal Rug at the Islamzc Paintzngs nnd Calligr.aphj front the Rzusian Academy of Sciences, St. Peters- Metropolitan Museum," Halz 53 (Oct. 1990): 134-35; and http:// buq [Lugano: .ARCH Foundation/Electa, 19951). www.met~nuseum.org/collections/viewl.asp?dep=14&f~11l=O&item= 135. Basil Gray, ed., The Arts of the Book in Central Asia: 14th-16th Centuries 1990%2E61 (Boulder, Colo.: Shambhala/UNESCO, 1979); Oleg Grabar, The Illustratzons 153.Ernst Kuhnel, Die Islamrschen Elfenbeinskulpturen, 'CIII,-XIII. Jahrhunderf of the ~Zlaqamat (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984); and Eleanor (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag fur Kunstwissenschaft, 1971). Sims, I'eerless Images: I'prsian I'aznting and Its Sources, with Boris I. hlarshak and 154. Gereon Sievernich and Hendrik Budde, eds., Eziropa und der Orient Ernst J. Gruhe (New Haven: Yale L'niversin Press, 2002). (Berlin: Bertelsmann Lexikon, 1989). 136. Exceptions include the Khalili portion of Rashid al-Din's Compendium 155.Jay A. Levenson, ed., Circa 1492; Art in the Age of Exploration (Washing- of Chronicles (Blair [as in n. 891 ) and the St. Petersburg Alhurn (Francesca von ton, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1991). Habsburg, The St. Petersburg Muraqqa': Album of Indzan and Persian ~\.liniatures 156. The most recent is G. W. Bowersock, Peter Broan. and Oleg Grabar, from the 16th through the 18th Centuy and Specimens ofPursian Callipphj by 'Imad Intqeting Late Antiquity, Essays on the Post-Classical 14'orld (Cambridge, Mass.: al-Hasani [Milan: Leonardo Xrte, 19961). TtTehave recently heard of a won- Haward University Press, 2001). derful project to reconstruct on CD-ROM the manuscript of the Shahnama 157. Terry Allen, A Classical RPviual in Islamic Architecture (Miesbaden: Dr. made for Shah Tahmasp. Ludwig Reichert, 1986). 137. Marie-Rose Seguy, The ,Vliractiloti~Jounz of iIlahomct/iZlircij~Van~eh(New 158. Christine Verzir Bornstein and Priscilla Parsons Soucek, The ~Zleetingof thrk: George Braziller, 1977). Two IVorlds: T~PCrusades and th~M~diterranean Context (Ann Arbor: University 138. Simpson (as in n. 75). of Michigan Museum of Art, 1981); and Wadimir P. Goss and Christine Verzir 139. The best place to begin is the survey by Eva Baer, .Metalwork in .Mvdirr~al Bornstein, eds.. The ,Il?eting of Two VIiorlds: Cliltzrral Exchange betu~~enEast and Islamic Ait (Albany: State University of New thrk Press, 1983).James Allan has West during the Period of the Cnlsades (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute written about Pel-sian metal technology and the metal objects excavated by Publications, Western Michigan University, 1986). the Metropolitan Museum at the site of Nishapur in northeastern Iran: James 159. Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islanzic Perspectives (Edinburgh: Ed- JV. Allan, Persian ~ZletalTechnologl: 700-1300.4D (London: Ithaca Press fol- the inburgh Universih Press, 1999). Faculty of Oriental Studies and the ,khmolean Museum, University of Ox- 160. Spiro Kostoff, A Histmy of Archit~ctzrr?:Settings and Ritliak (New I'ork: ford, 1979);and idem, ,Vishapui: 12letalw11rkof theEar1~Islamic Period (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1985). Metropolitan hfuseum of .Art, 1982). Boris hfarshak deals with the curious 161.Julian Raby, Venice, Diiier and the Onrntal ~tlode(London: lslalnic Art silver objects, often called postSasanian, from neighbol-ing Central Asia: Publications, 1982);idem, "Pride and Prejudice: hfehmed the Conqueror and Marschak [hlal-shak],Silberschatze d~sOrients: M~tallkunstdes 3.-13. Jahihzrnderts the Italian Portrait Medal," in Italian lIledals, ed. Graham Pollard (Washing- zrnd ihre Kontinuitat, trans. I.. Schirlner (Leiprig: T'EB E. A. Seemann, 1986). ton, D.C.: National Gallev of Art, 1987), 171-94; Gi~lruNecipoglu, "Siiley- 140. Among the exceptions are Linda Komaroff s study of Timurid metal- man the Magnificent and the Representation of Power in the Context of work, The Gold~nDrsk of Heaven: ,2.1Ptalwoik of Timlirl'd Iran (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Ottoman-Hapsburg-Papal Rivalry," Art BulLtin 71 (1989): 401-27: Deborah Mazda, 1992); and James Alan and Brian Gilmour's suntey of Persian steel, Howard, T'enic~and th~East (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2000); and Persian Steel, the Tana7~oliCollection, Oxford Studies in Islamic Art, 15 (Oxford: Rosamond E. Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Tmde and Italian Art, 1300-1600 Oxford University Press, 2000). (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). Interactions in India are 141.Aw.dullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani, Islamic ~Zletalwoikfrom the Iranzan discussed by Wagoner (as in n. 7). World 8-18th C~ntun~s(London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1982);At11 et 162. These include W. R.1. Thackston Jr., trans., Xasn-e Khosmwk Book of al. (as in n. 95);James W.Allan, Islamic hletalruork: The ,%had Es-Said Collection Trnvels (Safarnama) (NewYork: Bibliotheca Persica, 1986);Wheeler M. Thack- (London: Sotheby's, 1982); and idem, lIletalwork ofthr Islanzic IT'orld: The Arorz ston, "Treatise on Calligraphic Arts: .I Disquisition on Paper, Colors. Inks and Coll~ction(London: Sotheby's, 1986). Pens by Simi of Nishapur," in Intellectzial Studies on Islanz: Essays VIiritten in Honor 142. Arthur Lane, Earb Islanzzc Potter) (London: Faber and Faber, 1947); oflIlalti7i B. Dickson, Profess~~rofPersran Studies, P~l'nc~tonC'nizfnsity. ed. Michel and idem. Later Islamic Pottq (London: Faber and Faber, 1957). Jean hf. Mazzaoui and \'era B. Moreen (Salt Lake City University of Utah Press, Soustiel's handsome, indeed, luxurious survey in French reflects the some- 1990), 219-28; fiwandamir. Hahihzr's-Sijar Tonze Thme trans. and ed. M'. hl. Thackston, Sources of Oriental Language? and Litel-atures (Cambridge. 178. Nasl- (as in n. 44). Mass.: Department of Nral- Eastern 1.anguages and Literatures. Hanard 179. See, for example, the follo\\ing h> l\sadullah Souren hlelikian- chi^: Universit!., 1994): \%'heeler XI. Thackston, trans., ed.. and annot.. The Bnbt~r- vani: "The Sufi Strain in the Art of Ikshan," Onentnl Alt, n.s., 12 (1966): iinnra: ~\lvmoirs ofBnhzrr, Prince and Einpnor. (\Vashington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of 251-58: "1.e ShBh-nfinze, la gnose soufie et le pouvoir mongol." Jourirnllsintiq11i~ Art, Arthur M. Sackler Gallen. Smithsonian Institution; New York: Oxford 222 (1984): 249-338; "Le liv-e des rois. mil-oir du destin. I." Studin Ir-n?li(a 17, Lnirersity Press. 1996); idem, mans. and ed., The Jahanpf-naina: "di~moir.~o/ no. 1 (1988): 7-46; and hlelikian-Chir~ani(as in n. 141) Jnhnrrgir, Emjjeror of Indza (New York: Oxford Cniversitv Press in association 180. See, for example. the trenchant criticisms of his approach to metal- with the Freer Gallery of Art and the Sacklel- Gallen. Smithyonian Institution. work by Terry .Illen, "Review of Books on Islamic hletahrork, AI-chitectul-e. XVashington, D.C.. 1999); idem. .Album P?-e/(rcvs and Othur Dorrcments 011 the and Archaeology." Irs Orie7ltnlzs 15 (1985): 149-54. Histo? o/ Cnllrgr(rphrrs and Pnintris, Supplement? to iMrcqn~~ns,10 (Leiden: E. J. 181. Oleg Grahal-. "The Earliest I~lamicCommemorative Structures." -4,s Brill. 2001): and idem. A Ce~itzi? of Pi-r~rres:Souwes 011 Timzi~idHisto? and .ivt Orientalis 6 (1966): 7-46: Jonathan R.1. Bloom, "The R.1osque of al-Hakim in (Cambridge, Mass.: Aga Khan Progl-am for Islamic .kchitecture, 1989). (:ail-o." ~\luqni?lns1 (1983): 15-36: idem (a? in n. 166): Caroline I\llliams, 163. Sharhil Daghir. Al-Fann al-islilnii /?'I-musildri nl-'nrnbzjja: $iizci'nt nl-zzjr,n "The Cult of '.Alid Saints in the Fatinlid Monuments of Cairo, Part 1: The wn'l-jnnzfil (Islamic art in Arabic ?ou~-ces)(Kuwait: Dal- al-Athal- al-Islami>)ah, Mosque of al-.Iclma~-.".\lrcqni~rns 1 (1983): 37-52: idem. .,The Cult of ';Uid 1999). Saints in the Fatimid Ilonumenrs of Cairo. Part 2: The Mausolea." .\luqnr~tas 164. Ho~ral-dCrane, Risillv-I ini'mil~.(sje:Ari End) Si.ijentee?ith-(;et1t111y Ottoman 3 (1985): 39-60: and Christophel- S. Taylol-. "Reevaluating the Shi'i Role in Ti~ntisror1 Arrhitij(turv. Supplements to iMzcqnrnns, 1 (Leiden: E. J. Brill. 1987); the Delelopment of Monumental Funerary .%I-chitecture:The Case of Eg~pt," and idem, tl-ans. and ed., The Cnidv~iof the .\losquus: Hrjiz Hiisqzn al-.4roan- iMuq(r}:~las9 (1992): 1-10. snrn)T)is Grcidr to the ~tluslinr ,\.lo~~urnvnts of Ottoman Istanh~tl. Supplements to 182. Richard \%'.Bulliet. "Potten St>le? and Social Statur in Medieval .Vluqnrrins, 8 (Leiden: BI-ill.2000). .I feu sources on Islamic art and spiritualitv Khul-asan," in .irrhneolo~g?.. iiniznlvs. and b!thnohistor>, ed. 1.Bernal-d happ are also translated in John Renard. ed.. IT7ndozi's on thr Horcsv o/ Islam: dlrcslinr (Cambl-idge: Cambridge L11ive1-?inPress. 1992), 75-82. Soro~e~on \;l,f}:tt~in/ih and Xrligiozrs I.i/u (Berkelel: Yniveriity of California Press. 183. Paula Sanders. Ritual. Polztir~.and the Cifj zri Fatinrid Cairo (.Albany: State 1998). Univers~t)of Ne\\ Yo'ork Press. 1994): and Biel-man (as in n. 131). 165. Porter (as in 11. 128): Gdlru Secipoglu, Thu To)knj)z Scroll-Geoineti? nnd 184. Tabhaa, 1991. 1994 (as in 11 131);Necipoklu (as in n. 163): Tabbaa (a? Ornnnie~itin L~lninirl}:~hifec/~~~-v(Santa Monica. Calif.: Gettv Center and Oxford in 11. 170). University Pres?. 199.3): D. Fairchild Ruggles. "Gal-den? and Landscaping: 185. Slichael (.oak. (,'omninndr~ig liight arid I'urhidd~?rg 1l.f-f~ngi~i I.~lninr[ Traditio~lalForms." In The 0xJo1-d E~irjrlopedin(I/ the .\lodurii Islnnii~Iloild. ed. Thought (Cambl-idge: Cambridge Cniversit! Press. 2001). John I.. Esposito (New brk: Oxfol-d Lni\e~-sityPres?. 1995). vol. 2. 43-49. 186. Richard Ettinghausen. ";U-Ghauali on Beaut)-." in Art nnd Thought, Geol-ge Saliba's trenchant review of Necipoglu's book. .'.Irtisan? and hIathe- Iyszied 02 Honor- (f Dn Ann~idnK Cooinnr-nswn~rzj011 thu Ocmsion (I/ Hz\ 70th maticians in Medie\al Islam," Jourrrnl o/ the linuriran OI-I~IItal So(iet) 1 19 (1999): Birthdn~,ed. K. Bharatna I!el- (London:I.u7ac, 1947). l(i0-65; Dol-is Behl-ens- 637-45. shows why art historians should work as a team \\ith scholal-s in other Abouseif, Benu!\. zn Irabrc (.'~iltuiv (Princeton: Slarcus Wiener, 1999): and fields rather than trying to go it alone. Valkrie Gon7ale7, Rvautj arid Iclririi: iiesthvtirs in Islninz( iivt nnd iii(hilr(tuir 166. See, fol- example, the elidence fol- the popular piety of women pro- (London: 1. B. Tauris in association \\-ith the Institute of Ismaili Studies, vided by a corpus of medieval Euptian tombstones In Jonathan LI. Bloom. 2001). "The Slosque of the Qarafa in [:ail-o." Jlrcqn~nn~4 (1987): 7-20. 187. Biel-man (as in 11. 131): Eva F. Hoffman, "A Fat~midBook Cober: 167. Oleg Grabar. The Forir~cltto~io/ I~lnmfr.Ar/ (Nen Haven: Yale rniversit! Framing and Re-Framing. Cultural Identitv in the Mediela1 Sleditel-ranean Press, 1973). IVorld," in Barrucand (as in n. 63). 403-19; and TTalkrie Gon~aler.',The 168.See the \~tuperative-and not complete11 fail-re\-ie~v hv J. M.Rogers, Double Ontology of I~lamicCalligraphl: A IVosld-Image on a Folio from the "Oleg GI-ahar. The F07~rzntio11o/ I~lninicArt," Kun~tdey Orirnt~9 (1973-74): XIu?eum of Raqqada (Tunisia),"in JI. CzurDerinnn I'est.~(hr.ift,ed. Irvin Schick 13-66, (Iytanbul: Sahanci L-ni~ersitv,2000). 313-40. 169. Terr~.Illen, Frve E~s(r>\on I~kiniz(11-1 ([Sehastopol. (>alif.]: Solip5ist 188.Jonathan 51. Bloom. "The Revi\al of Earl) I\lam~cArchitect~11-e by the Pres\, 1988). Uma~~adsof Spain," in 7'hu .\Iedim'al .\Ieiirt~rrn~r~nn:Ciosy-Cultuial Corrtnct~,ed. 170.Yasser Tabhaa. 7%e I'rarr~j)r-inationo/ Iylainir .Art dunng the Su~r~iihz~ionl Maril\n J. Chiat and Kathwn L. Keyel-?on (St. Cloud. hlinn.: North Star Pres? (Seattle: Univel-sit\ of \Vashington Pres?. 2001). of St. Cloud. 1988): and Sheila S. Blail-. ?'he .Jlonrcmentnl In~~riptions/ram En?* 171. Richard Ettinghausen, Studze.~i~i~JlrislirnIronog~n)/zj. 101. 1, The L 71iroi.11, I~lainirIinr1 and linrr\oxinnn. Supplements to .JJuqnr-nns, 5 (Leiden: Brill, Freel- Gallel? of .Art Occasional Paper? (\Vashington. D.C:.: Smithsonian In- 1992). 160-63. stitution. 1050). Slanx of his later essals on iconograph\. as well as manv othel- 189. The edition of Blair and Bloom (as in 11. 23) published h\ Mapin, Nel\- topics are included in a ~olumeof his collected works. Ri(haid Ettr1igharc~e11. Delhi, for distribution in India and Pakistan. is missing several images. For a Islrririi<.4r/ niid .if-rhnvolop. (:ollerted Pnj)ns, ed. Sl>riam Rosen-.lvalon (Berlin: similar case on .&neriran tele\i?ion. see John Maynard. ".Ute~-Request, I'BS Gebriider \lann. 1984). Edit? 'Islam.' " 12hshz1igo1r I'osl, Ma\ 8, 2001. (3. 172. E\a Baer, Ophinxrs nrld Hn~p~rsit1 .\lrdzi.iul Islami