nur al-din, the qastal al-shu{aybiyya, and the “classical revival” 289

JULIAN RABY

NUR AL-DIN, THE QASTAL AL-SHU{AYBIYYA, AND THE “CLASSICAL REVIVAL”

Enter the medieval walled city of Aleppo by its principal we might dub the Revivalists and the Survivalists. gate on the west, the Bab Antakiyya, and you are almost Until a publication by Yasser Tabbaa in 1993, “clas- immediately confronted by the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya. sical” in this context was often indiscriminately used to The present structure, which is of modest size, consists refer to two distinct architectural expressions in Syrian of little more than a facade comprising a sabºl-type foun- architecture: what we may briefly refer to as the Greco- tain and the vaulted entrance to a destroyed madrasa (figs. 1, 2).1 This facade is crowned by a disproportion- ately tall entablature that has made the Qastal a key monument in the debate over the “classical revival” in twelfth-century Syria. Michael Rogers featured the Qastal prominently in a major article published in 1971 in which he discussed numerous occurrences of the redeployment of classical buildings—and the less frequent copying of classical decoration—in Syria and Anatolia in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. I offer the following thoughts on the Qastal in admiration of just one aspect of Michael’s unparalleled erudition. Michael Rogers entitled his article “A Renaissance of Classical Antiquity in North Syria,” and argued that the “localisation of the classicising decoration…and its restriction to a period of little more than fifty years suggests very strongly that it was indeed a revival.”2 The suggestion I would like to propose here is that we need to distinguish more exactly between adoption and adaptation; that there are only very few structures with ex professo evocations of the classical past, and that the intention behind these evocations differed widely—in short, that we are not dealing with a single phenome- non, but with a variety of responses that call for more nuanced readings. The term “renaissance” used in the title of Rogers’s article is so semantically loaded that Terry Allen, in his book A Classical Revival in Islamic Architecture, pub- lished in 1986, opted for the less contentious term 3 “revival.” Nevertheless, problems remain in the in - Fig. 1. Aleppo, Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya, 1150–51. Photograph by terpretation of both components of the phrase “clas- Ernst Herzfeld showing the addition over the fountain and sical revival.” First, what is meant in this context by the partially blocked-up entrance to the porch. (Photo: Ernst “classical,” and second, are we in fact dealing with Herzfeld Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler revival or with survival? The answer to the first may Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Gift help resolve the dispute over the second, between those of Ernst Herzfeld, 1946. Photo file 15, vol. 1, no. 147) 290 julian raby

Fig. 2. Aleppo, Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya, 1150–51. Reconstruction drawing of the facade by Ernst Herzfeld. (After Herzfeld, Maté- riaux, pl. LXXXVIIIb)

Roman pagan tradition of orders, in which elements the decoration of the Aleppo minaret as “antique”? The were superimposed to create hierarchy and monumen- answer lies in the contrast he wished to draw between tality, and the Early Byzantine Christian tradition of late-eleventh- and twelfth-century Syrian architecture North Syria, which made use of largely unencumbered, and the architecture of Iran, Iraq, and Mosul in the planar surfaces enlivened by continuous moldings.4 In same period. He makes the point clearly: the Aleppo one the moldings are massed; in the other they are, as it minaret belongs to an architecture that “is the prod- were, inscribed. The first is what we might rightly term uct of Mediterranean civilisation.”7 Herzfeld’s “antique” “classical” or “antique,” the second Early Byzantine or, is less a chronological descriptor than a regional char- in Ernst Kitzinger’s parlance, “sub-antique.”5 acterization. Although there are major gaps in the surviving evi- While Herzfeld and Tabbaa fall into the Survivalist dence, Yasser Tabbaa has made a good case for assum- camp, there are others who are Revivalists. The “clas- ing a continuity of tradition and craftsmanship from the sical revival” argument develops in two forms. One, as sixth-century North Syrian churches to the late-eleventh- advanced by Michael Rogers, is a less coherent phenom- century Muslim monuments of Aleppo, most notably the enon and lacks a guiding concept. The instances of clas- minaret of the Great Mosque—a conservatism that was sical adoption and even adaptation, drawn from Anato- “an entirely localized phenomenon, centered mainly in lia and Syria, are presented as largely adventitious. Terry the region between Aleppo and Edessa….”6 Allen’s “classical revival,” by contrast, is more complex, Ernst Herzfeld also regarded the sculptural handling for he identifies two sequences of buildings. of the Aleppo minaret as a survival, yet at the same time The first comprises four buildings, all in Aleppo and he referred to it as “antique.” A closer look at his word- all erected within a short time period on the orders of ing makes Herzfeld’s intention clearer: “Despite all the the Zangid ruler Nur al-Din (r. 1146–74) and his asso- transformations it has undergone, this architecture is ciates: 8 The portal of the Madrasa al-Hallawiyya, dated essentially antique….” The extent of this transforma- 544 (1149–50); the Madrasa and Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya, tion is obvious from the comparison Herzfeld makes dated 545 (1150–51) (figs. 1, 2); the Maristan of Nur a few lines later, in which he suggests that if one were al-Din, dated 543–49 (1148–55); and the Madrasa al- to draw out the four facades of the lower stories of the Muqadamiyya, portal dated 564 (1168–69), but redated Aleppo minaret the result would resemble the facade of a by Allen to the 1150s.9 Venetian, presumably Gothic, palace. Given such heavy Allen acknowledges that the only one of these monu- modifications, what did Herzfeld intend by referring to ments with an expressly classicizing feature is the Qastal nur al-din, the qastal al-shu{aybiyya, and the “classical revival” 291

Fig. 3. Cairo, Bab al-Futuh, exterior entrance, 1087. (Photo: the Fig. 4. Cairo, Bab al-Nasr, exterior entrance, 1087. (Photo: the Creswell Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. 3622) Creswell Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. 3433) al-Shu{aybiyya, which has a rich Corinthian-style entab- Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya, 545 (1150–51); the east facade of lature to which I shall return shortly. The Qastal con- the courtyard of the Great Mosque in Diyarbakir, 559 sists of two principal architectural elements—the entab- (1163–64) (fig. 12, a and b); and the Great Mosque lature and porch vault. The first is overtly classicizing; of Harran (1170s). the second is not. Yet it is the portal, with its flat lintel, There is, he argues, a “progressively closer approach discharging arch, and cross vault, that links the Qastal to the antique and other pre-Islamic sources in this to the other three buildings in Aleppo and to a final sequence of buildings.” At the same time, though, he building in Allen’s sequence, the Madrasa al-{Adiliyya detects a progressively freer use of antique decoration, in Damascus, which was begun by Nur al-Din but fin- as illustrated by the work in Harran. ished much later. They reveal the same taste for neatly Interweaving these two sequences produces a mis- cut, plain ashlar, restrained decoration, and complex leading impression of widespread classicism. The two stereotomy. After this madrasa the Ayyubid style proper groups are seemingly linked by the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya, begins, with its emphasis on muqarnas and color.10 but this is deceptive, because it is the Qastal’s porch Allen’s second sequence is wider ranging in time that links the building to the first group and its entab- and place, and the patronage is more diverse:11 the lature that relates it to the second. In terms of “classical gates of Fatimid Cairo, 1087 (figs. 3, 4); the minaret revival” there are difficulties with both sequences. of the Great Mosque in Aleppo, 1089 (fig. 5, a and b); If we remove the Qastal’s entablature from the first the west facade of the courtyard of the Great Mosque group, there is nothing expressly classical in its archi- in Diyarbakir, 1117–18 and 1124–25 (fig. 11, a and b); tecture. In architectonic and decorative terms this first 292 julian raby

a. b.

Fig. 5, a and b. Aleppo, minaret of the Great Mosque, third and fourth stories, 1089. Photographed by Ernst Herzfeld between 1908 and 1930. (Photos: Ernst Herzfeld Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Insti- tution, Washington, DC. Gift of Ernst Herzfeld, 1946. Photo file 15, vol. 1, nos. 114, 113) group represents an evolution from the late-fifth- and tectural remains in North Syria to the continuance and sixth-century traditions of North Syrian church archi- evolution of this tradition in the intervening five hun- tecture in its taste for plain masonry enlivened with dred years. This was a living tradition that found new moldings. Among a host of connections, such as jog- energy in the extensive building campaigns of the gled voussoirs,12 one can cite the use of continuous twelfth century. moldings, of cusped moldings, of moldings that termi- Allen’s second list is also problematic, as it is ques- nate in spiral loops, and even of large looped mold- tionable whether the buildings really cohere as a group, ings over arched windows. The last is a feature found let alone a sequence. It begins with almost contem- at the North Church in Brad, dated 561, and appears porary structures in Egypt and Syria—the gates of to be the ultimate source for the elaborate marble fac- Fatimid Cairo and the minaret of the Great Mosque ings over mihrab niches that are such a distinctive ele- in Aleppo—that grow out of the sub-antique tradition ment in thirteenth-century Aleppo.13 of North Syria. In both Cairo and Aleppo the archi- In other words, this first group is not “classical” but tects were from “Syria,” and they used the telltale sig- derived more directly from what Howard Crosby But- natures of Early Byzantine Syrian architecture—neatly ler defined as the “pseudo-classic tendency” of sixth- cut ashlar, continuous moldings and modillions, and, century North Syrian architecture. Nor is it revival, for in Cairo, arcuated lintels, joggled voussoirs, and arches there are pointers among the scant post-Umayyad archi- with stepped extrados, to name a few (figs. 3, 4).14 The nur al-din, the qastal al-shu{aybiyya, and the “classical revival” 293

Fig. 6. Aleppo, Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya, 1150–51. Part of the Kufic inscription. Drawn by Ernst Herzfeld between 1908 and 1930. (Ernst Herzfeld Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Gift of Ernst Herzfeld, 1946. D-19) conched cornice used in the upper story of the minaret has precedents in the sixth-century churches of Qalb Lauzeh, Qalat Siman, and Arshin (fig. 5a).15 There are sixth-century parallels for the framing of the windows between the second and third stories of the minaret, and for the corner pilasters on the third.16 The fourth story has a series of round window openings framed by hexafoils in high relief (fig. 5b) that recall the six- lobed rosettes, also in high relief, on the facade of the basilical hall of the Umayyad palace of Mshatta, where the wall and arches are framed by a continu- ous molding.17 The fourth story has engaged columns with capitals and bases, but the “leaves” of the capital are closer to muqarnas prisms than to acanthus cauli- coli, and the arches they support have effloresced into scalloped fantasies of a quite unclassical character (fig. 5b).18 In short, the connection is with Syrian architec- ture of the sixth to eighth centuries, and there is no significant antique influence. On the Cairene gates there are elements, such as tri- angular corbels (fig. 3), that can be found in Greco- Roman architecture, but the aesthetic as a whole owes more to the “sub-antique” than the antique.19 The cor- nice on the Bab al-Nasr, it has been suggested, shows “a clear acquaintance with a tradition of classicising decoration.”20 It is true that it includes a recognizable ovolo and modillions, but the ovolo is wrongly posi- tioned, taking the place of the corona on a Corinthian cornice, and the modillions are stiff fronds.21 This sug- gests that the cornice lies towards the end of a progres- sive line of deformation, and is not a revival based on Fig. 7. Aleppo, Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya, 1150–51. Entrance porch the direct copying of antique models. showing projection of the entablature. (Photo: the Creswell Remove the Cairene gates and the Aleppo minaret Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, neg. 5664) 294 julian raby

a. b.

Fig. 8a. Entablature of the Corinthian order. (After Sir William Chambers, Treatise on Civil Architecture [London, 1759]) Fig. 8b. Aleppo, Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya, 1150–51. Profile drawing of the entablature by Ernst Herzfeld. (Ernst Herzfeld Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Gift of Ernst Herzfeld, 1946. D-19) from Allen’s second sequence, and we are left with the other buildings, by contrast, “sobriety reigns.”22 only two, arguably three, buildings that echo a classical Where Allen placed the Qastal at the beginning of sense of composition and proportioning: the Qastal al- a sequence through the 1150s, Herzfeld placed it at Shu{aybiyya—and there only in the entablature—and the end of a tradition. He regarded the Qastal as a the courtyard wings of the Great Mosque in Diyarbakir. continuation—in both sculpture and calligraphy—of Harran is a more hybrid and problematic case, but in an aesthetic best represented by the Aleppo minaret, the other two instances a classical idiom was adopted a tradition brought to an abrupt halt by Nur al-Din’s with discerning and intention. The first part of this arti- insistence in the 1150s on a sober manner that reflected cle deals in some detail with the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya, an “extreme puritanism” (figs. 6, 7).23 the second, more cursorily, with Diyarbakir. The inten- Herzfeld connected this new architectural sobri- tion is to show that the adoption of the classical idiom ety with epigraphic changes introduced by Nur al-Din in these two buildings was motivated by very specific in the 1150s. These included changes to protocolary local issues, that the intentions differed widely, and that titles—Nur al-Din abandoning Persian forms and Turk- we should be cautious about assuming that we are deal- ish totemic names—and to script, with a move from flo- ing with a uniform phenomenon. riated Kufic to the vocalized “Nurid thulth.”24 In short, for Herzfeld the architecture that tells us about Nur al- THE QASTAL AL-SHU{AYBIYYA Din’s intentions is the architecture that comes after the construction of the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya in 1150. The Far from linking the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya to the architecture of the Qastal, on this reasoning, belongs other three monuments in Allen’s first sequence, the to a local lineage that was adopted without attention entablature distinguishes it. In Herzfeld’s words, the to its implications. Qastal displays “exuberant richness of decoration”; in This argument founders on several points. I would nur al-din, the qastal al-shu{aybiyya, and the “classical revival” 295

Fig. 9. Aleppo, Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya, 1150–51. Detail of the decoration of the entablature. Drawn by Ernst Herzfeld between 1908 and 1930. (Courtesy of Ernst Herzfeld Papers, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Gift of Ernst Herzfeld, 1946. D-78) argue, first, that the entablature of the Qastal al- script, and, on a minor point, the ovolo between the Shu{aybiyya is more classicizing than any of its sup- dentils and the modillions has been omitted.28 The dec- posed antecedents, and does not simply belong in a oration of its components is Islamic: there are Fatimid direct line of descent from the Aleppo minaret;25 sec- echoes in the underside of the cornice, and scrollwork ond, that the Qastal’s inscriptions indicate a distinct on the cyma recta and the fascia that prefaces early agenda; and third, that the “classicizing” sculptural Ayyubid carving (fig. 9).29 style of its entablature is consonant with its inscrip- Substantial as they are, these alterations have been rel- tional messages. atively well integrated. The structure of the entablature, At the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya we find the superim- in the sequence and proportions of the elements, sug- position of elements to create an entablature in the gests direct copying. With the exception of the inscrip- Corinthian manner, complete with, in Michael Rog- tions, what strikes one first about the entablature is its ers’s words, “scotia, oblique fillet, cavetto, dentils and evocation of an antique model and its dominant size modillions, crowned by cyma recta with rich vine and in relation to the facade (fig. 7). From a Greco-Roman palmette scrolls between narrow uncarved fillets” (fig. standpoint, this gigantism might be read as a mark of 8, a and b).26 In concept and in the treatment of some ineptitude. From the standpoint of Muslim architecture of the components it is so classicizing that it deceived in twelfth-century Syria, it can be read as an emphatic Jean Sauvaget and others into thinking it was a reused, statement about the conscious adaptation of a classi- albeit reworked, classical sculpture.27 The tripartite cor- cal language of architecture. nice differs, however, from a classical prototype in sev- Two explanations have been advanced for this clas- eral respects. First, the architrave projects at an inclina- sicism. The first is that it was prompted by the loca- tion. Second, the frieze is treated as a cavetto. Third, tion of the Qastal just inside the Antioch Gate, near Hellenistic figural decoration or Roman scrolls have which there was an arch with a Greek inscription that been replaced by a monumental inscription in Kufic survived until as late as at least 411 (1020).30 The sec- 296 julian raby ond is that the form of the Qastal portal and the classi- [Qur}an 9:108, Repentance]. And the places of worship cal style of its entablature were prompted by the victo- are only for Allah, so pray not unto anyone along with ries Nur al-Din had just enjoyed over several Crusader Allah [Qur}an 72:18, The Jinn]. He only shall tend Allah’s forces, including those of Raymond of Antioch on June sanctuaries who believes in Allah and the Last Day and 29, 1149, and by the “vocabulary” of the Roman ruins observes proper worship and pays the poor-due and fears 35 at a site such as Apamea.31 none save Allah [Qur}an 9:18]. The first explanation appears somewhat inert, but The quote from Qur}an 9:18 is very common on reli- the “arch” may have been a tetrapylon that, as Jean gious buildings in the eleventh and twelfth century AD Sauvaget suggested, was transformed into the earliest and appears twice on the minaret of the Great Mosque mosque in the city. Indeed, it is possible that the form in Aleppo, for example, among forty-five recorded of the Qastal’s porch was a reminiscence of this origi- instances from these two centuries. Qur}an 72:18 is nal structure. This mosque had been renovated in the also relatively common.36 By contrast, the longest pas- early tenth century by a Shiite of Aleppo, Abu ’l Hasan sage, from Sura 9:108, is recorded in just four other al-Ghadairi (d. 313 [925]),32 and in 545 (1150–51) Nur examples, only one of which is on a near-contemporary al-Din converted it into a Shafi{i madrasa for the Anda- building, as we shall see.37 Sura 9:108 juxtaposes two lusi faqih and ascetic Shaykh Shu{ayb, as part of his pol- themes: the mosque founded on piety, and purity. Both icy of promoting Sunni orthodoxy. At the same time, relate to the site known as Quba}, about three kilome- Nur al-Din added the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya. The expro- ters southeast of the Prophet Muhammad’s Medina. priation of a Shiite mosque was a highly provocative act, We shall return to the theme of the mosque founded converting it to a madrasa doubly so. What is more, on piety later. the entrance to the madrasa took the form of a pro- The second element—purity—also connects with jecting portal. Rather than echoing directly a Roman Quba}, as it was there that Muslims learned to purify triumphal arch, the projecting portal was an architec- themselves with water as well as stones. From {Uwaym tural device especially favored by the Fatimids, perhaps b. Sa{ida, a Companion, it was related that the Prophet because it played on the importance of the concept of asked the congregation in the Quba} mosque about the the b¸b in Isma{ili ideology.33 cleanliness for which God praised them in the verse, The notion of the Qastal as a form of victory monu- and they replied that they had learned abstersion— ment has some merit, but is not fully supported by the with water—from their Jewish neighbors.38 inscriptions, which occur on two bands, the upper one For those who failed to recognize the historical back- religious in character, the lower for the most part his- ground of the twin elements of this Qur}anic verse, the torical. These carried a complex of messages, of which connection with water was made explicit by the location jihad against the Crusaders was only one. The primary of the inscription: the passage was immediately above message was a sectarian polemic against the city’s pre- a sabºl-type fountain or qas«al. Nur al-Din undertook dominantly Shi{i population. the repair of the ancient aqueduct that came in from Earlier sectarian tension had flared in Aleppo when the north of the city from Hailan via the Bab Arba{in, the Mirdasid Rashid al-Dawla Mahmud had had the and he built a new branch, which took water past the khutba read in the name of the Abbasid caliph, which Great Mosque to the west of the city, and another to aroused the hostility of the local population, most of the south. As part of this canalization, Nur al-Din intro- whom since the time of the Hamdanids were Imami duced water-fed latrines with small cubicles at the Great Shiites.34 As we shall see, the construction of the Qastal Mosque.39 al-Shu{aybiyya took place at a moment of heightened The Qur}anic passage does more than just proclaim tension between Sunni and Shi{a in Aleppo. Nur al-Din’s public works. The passage on purity can The religious inscription on the Qastal (fig. 6) be read as an anti-Shiite polemic. The only other reads: known occurrence of 9:108 on a medieval building is In the name of God… Never stand (to pray) there! There on the mosque of al-Juyushi near Cairo. The founda- is a mosque whose foundation was laid from the first day tion inscription of this mashhad is located above the on piety; it is more worthy that thou should stand to main entrance, and it opens with 72:18 followed by pray there. In it are men who love to purify themselves. 9:108—exactly the combination, though in a different Allah loves those who make themselves pure (mu««¸hirºn) sequence, that occurs at the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya.40 nur al-din, the qastal al-shu{aybiyya, and the “classical revival” 297 As the mosque of al-Juyushi stands on the Muqattam with its more recent history: its conversion to a mosque hills, the reference there was hardly to water in any in 1124 was ordered by a Shiite notable, the Uqaylid literal sense. The passage seems instead to expand on qadi Abu ’l Hasan Muhammad b. al-Khashshab.47 The the frequent use of the word «¸hir in Shiite inscrip- mosque was almost certainly a major center of Shiite tions to refer to the family of {Ali, including the Shi- activity and lay immediately to the west of the Great ite imams,41 and, among the Isma{ili Fatimids, to the Mosque. It is surely no coincidence that the first pro- Fatimid caliphs, as in the phrase extolling the ances- fessor appointed by Nur al-Din to head his new Hanafi tors of the Fatimid imam: “Pure ancestors and most madrasa was the person who encouraged him to sup- magnanimous descendants.”42 press the Shiite call to prayer.48 The choice of 9:108 for Nur al-Din’s Qastal seems Nur al-Din introduced a succession of restrictive mea- highly pointed, for it would have had a special reso- sures against the Shiite population of the city.49 He for- nance for the Shiites of Aleppo. It had a precedent in bade public displays of Shiism, all insults against Com- Fatimid usage but was not used in any other known Zan- panions of the Prophet were to be severely punished, gid or Ayyubid structure. Appropriated and recontex- and from Rajab 543 (November–December 1148) he tualized, it was placed in prominent fashion on a struc- forbade the Shiite call to prayer that had been recited ture whose location ensured maximum visibility, whose from the minarets of Aleppo for almost two centuries. purpose was provocative to the Shiite population, whose In the same month, perhaps by way of concession, he portal echoed a favored architectural formula of the allowed pious gatherings in the Great Mosque, which Fatimids, and whose construction occurred at a time the Shiites had controlled since 1114. Disputes ensued, of marked sectarian tension. however, among the different allegiances, and within a The Madrasa al-Shu{aybiyya was the second madrasa month or two, in Sha{ban 543 (January 1149), gather- Nur al-Din founded in the city, the first being the Hanafi ings in the mosque were banned and recalcitrant Shi- Madrasa al-Hallawiyya, which he converted from what ite leaders arrested. Some were deported, others fled. was almost certainly another Shiite structure, the The inscription on the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya is dated mosque of the Sarrajin, in either 543 or 544.43 These 545 (1150–51), somewhere between eighteen and thirty two madrasas, founded a year or two apart, were the months after the crackdown on the leaders of the Shiite first madrasas established in Aleppo since the fateful population.50 Nur al-Din’s restrictions against the Shi- attempt to build the Madrasa al-Zajjajiyya in 1116, when ites of Aleppo were lifted by his brother Amir-i Amiran a Shiite crowd broke in on the construction site and in 554 (1159), when Nur al-Din was taken almost fatally tore down the walls. Unlike Damascus, where numer- ill,51 and by his son al-Salih Isma{il in 1174.52 ous madrasas were built in the first half of the twelfth The location of the Qastal, the function of its century, the introduction of a madrasa in Aleppo was madrasa, and the circumstances immediately preced- so contentious that work finally finished on the Zajja- ing its construction suggest a deliberate anti-Shi{a tenor. jiyya in 1123, and then only with the intervention of The stroke of genius was to juxtapose the inscription the authorities.44 with a cascade of water, and thus to recontextualize a Sectarian tension in Aleppo became enflamed again Qur}anic extract that in a Fatimid setting had a quite in 543, at about the time Nur al-Din appropriated what different resonance. is now known as the Hallawiyya. The core of this build- It seems highly probable that the original inscription ing was the remains of the sixth-century Syriac cathedral of the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya was considerably longer.53 of the city, and it was recognized in medieval Aleppo The Qastal and entrance porch were appended to a to have ancient origins.45 In 1124 it was converted into a madrasa that disappeared long ago. The complex lay mosque in retaliation for the Crusader desecration of at the western end of an architectural “island,” at the the Mashhad al-Muhassin, the principal Shi{i shrine of fork of two roads, so that it originally had three street Aleppo in this period, which lay on the Jabal Jawshan facades, on the west, the north, and the south. outside the Bab Antakiyya.46 Nur al-Din, in turn, con- The religious inscription on the western, fountain verted the mosque into a Hanafi madrasa. Although facade continues around all three sides of the project- Nur al-Din’s action took place soon after major victories ing portal. It ends where the north wall of the portal over the Franks of Edessa and Antioch and the armies met the main wall of the madrasa, though, most curi- of the Second Crusade, it had, I would suggest, less ously, the last phrases of the religious inscription are to do with the Christian origins of the building than demoted from the “frieze” to the lower and smaller 298 julian raby “fascia” that carries the historical inscription; in fact, the Masjid al-Dirar. For the literate Muslim the “pres- they come after the date of 545.54 In other words, the ence” of 9:107 was real enough; the question is whether inscription did not continue along the northern facade it was a mnemonic presence or a physical reality on the of the madrasa. southern facade. In the latter case verses 107 and 108 The opposite seems to be the case on the southern would have formed a continuous sequence along two facade. The first inscriptional block on the western sides of the building.58 The presence of 9:107, implied facade begins with the basmala and a vertical border or actual, was as harsh a condemnation of Nur al- to mark the beginning of the inscription, but it is cut Din’s religious opponents as a Qur}anic extract would off in the middle of the word All¸h (fig. 9). The next allow. Given the historical circumstances the Qastal al- block begins {al¸ taqw¸… from 9:108, which means that Shu{aybiyya can be read as a tropaeon over the Shiites. the first six words of the verse are missing. The inscrip- But that was not all. tion must, then, have begun on the southern facade, The inscription on the main facade then continues and the block inscribed with the basmala have been with a reference to “the mosque founded on piety.” moved at a later date. The significance of this reference will become clearer Changes in the masonry indicate that the south- after we have looked at what little remains of the histor- ern facade of the now demolished madrasa originally ical inscription. All that Herzfeld could see of this was extended some 17 meters along the qaªaba that devel- “amºr al-mu}minºn {Umar bin al-Kha««¸b […] in the year ops into the Suq al-Hawa}. This southern street consti- 545.” The reference to {Umar was appropriate on one tutes the principal thoroughfare from the Bab Antakiyya level because it was during his caliphate that Aleppo to the Great Mosque and the Citadel; it was in Nur al- was seized from the Byzantines in AD 636 and the very Din’s day the main artery of the city, and in the twelfth first mosque erected inside the Bab Antakiyya, on the century many of the more important monuments were spot where the Qastal and Madrasa al-Shu{aybiyya were constructed or refurbished in this sector.55 An inscrip- to stand.59 “The mosque founded on piety on the first tion on the southern facade would have announced day” may refer then to the first mosque of Aleppo, but the building to those coming from the direction of to assume this was all is to ignore the standard exege- the Great Mosque. sis of this passage. There is no evidence as to what might have been As we have seen, the “mosque founded on piety on inscribed on the southern street frontage, but an excel- the first day” was asserted by some to be the mosque at lent candidate would be the verse that precedes 9:108, Quba}60 and that was how it was identified to visitors in which would have neatly fitted the available space.56 this period, such as Ibn Jubayr in 1183.61 According to Qur}an 9:107 reads: one strand of traditions, it was at Quba} that news was first announced that the Prophet had received a reve- And there are those who put up a mosque by way of lation ordaining Mecca as the new qibla, after which it opposition (¤ir¸ran) and infidelity—to disunite the believ- became known as the Masjid al-Qiblatayn (the Mosque ers—and in preparation for one who warred against God of the Two Qiblas). During the first year and a half of and His Apostle aforetime. They will indeed swear that the hijra, Jerusalem appears to have been the qibla, so their intention is nothing but good; but God does declare that they are certainly liars. that embedded in the verses selected for Nur al-Din’s Qastal is a reference to the Masjid al-Qiblatayn and an The theme here is the Masjid al-Dirar, which was a implicit reference to Jerusalem.62 Jerusalem, occupied tribal mosque erected in or near Quba} in AH 9 by mem- by the Frankish crusaders, was the ultimate goal of Nur bers of the Banu {Amr b. {Awf for the hanºf Abu {Amir. al-Din’s jihad, and he supported his military efforts with The Prophet Muhammad was asked to lead prayer there a highly developed propaganda campaign.63 but received a revelation in consequence of which the According to the arguments of Max van Berchem mosque was destroyed, probably by fire. Henceforth, it and others, Nur al-Din expressed his desire to recap- was known as the Mosque of Opposition.57 ture Jerusalem by commissioning in Aleppo a minbar There is no proof that this was the passage chosen that he intended to place in the Aqsa Mosque.64 The for the southern frieze, but the quotation would have minbar was ordered in 564 (1168–69). A few years been apt for several reasons. The opening phrase of later, and shortly before his death, Nur al-Din made the inscription on the entrance facade—“Never stand major changes to the Great Mosque in Mosul, and frag- (to pray) there!” (9:108)—presumes the reference to ments of an inscription from the Nuri mosque suggest nur al-din, the qastal al-shu{aybiyya, and the “classical revival” 299 that it included a Qur}anic reference to Jerusalem.65 Explicitly and implicitly, the references were to the In neither of these instances, though, was a historiciz- earliest days of Islam, to the hijra when Muhammad ing style used, and both were commissioned twenty and his followers faced opposition, to the first conquests years or more after the Qastal. The late date does not, when they established their right to occupy Syria, and however, rule out a jihad message at the Qastal al- to an era before the emergence of the Shi{a. What bet- Shu{aybiyya, as the earliest extant inscription in which ter setting in which to enunciate such sentiments than Nur al-Din uses the title al-muj¸hid was in the Hallawi- an architectural frieze that echoed the past? Is this, yya, dated to February–March 1149—a year before his then, the explanation for the classical idiom adopted construction of the Qastal.66 for this building? The retardataire styling of the entab- The Qastal is intriguing for several features. It incor- lature provided a visual evocation of a past summoned porates a Qur}anic quotation that was not common on literally in the inscription. buildings, and that can be read in both a historical and The Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya was a liminal building a contemporary framework. It includes a long-deceased astride a threshold, as it were, of the city, on the historical personality—{Umar—in the documentary sec- route to the very heart of Aleppo itself. In size, elabo- tion of the inscription where Nur al-Din’s name must ration, and, of course, inscription, its entablature was also have been included. And stylistically the Qastal declaratory. In form, it was archaizing, an exhortatory juxtaposes a classicizing entablature with a vault in the evocation of the era of the R¸shid¢n. But exhortation new Zangid style. On several levels, then, an interplay was created between past and present. Its principal religious quotation referred to the ear- liest days of Islam: explicitly, to the Mosque of Opposi- tion, to the Mosque Founded on Piety, and to purifica- tion, and also to {Umar b. al-Khattab; implicitly, then, to the Masjid al-Qiblatayn and to Jerusalem, which had capitulated to {Umar, and also to the first mosque built after Aleppo submitted to {Umar. {Umar’s name occu- pies a key sector of the frieze, and the monument can be viewed in part as a testimony to his character and achievements.67 These historical themes all had contemporary reso- nances: purification in Nur al-Din’s new water supply and the play on the Shiite and Isma{ili usage of the word «¸hir; the Mosque of Opposition in Nur al-Din’s fierce opposition to the Shiites; and the Masjid al-Qib- latayn in the cherished recapture of Jerusalem. The Qastal and its madrasa offered material and religious sustenance to the orthodox, while its inscriptions com- bated the twin enemies of Nur al-Din’s jihad, the Shi- ites and the Crusaders.68 The juxtaposition of Nur al- Din’s name with that of {Umar invited a comparison, however humbly phrased, between the Zangid ruler and a Muslim paradigm. The comparison was one that continued to form part of Nur al-Din’s image. Histori- ans of the period noted his piety and often compared Nur al-Din to both {Umar b. al-Khattab and {Umar b. {Abd al-{Aziz.69 Ibn al-Athir’s obituary of Nur al-Din 70 likens him to the R¸shid¢n, while a short biogra- Fig. 10. Damascus, Maristan of Nur al-Din, 1154. Main entrance phy written sometime between 1171 and Nur al-Din’s showing reused classical pediment and muqarnas semi-dome death in 1174 by Ibn {Asakir noted that he wished to (Photo: the Creswell Archive, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, imitate the salaf.71 neg. 5497) 300 julian raby was accompanied by admonition. The content of the inscription, as well as the confiscation of the mosque for a Shafi{i madrasa, were a rebuke to the Shi{a of Aleppo. The message, then, was Sunni, and distinctively Nur al-Din’s. But the voice was one familiar to the local population, for the floriated Kufic of the inscription, and much of the decorative carving, continued the tra- dition of the minaret of the Great Mosque in Aleppo (figs. 5a, 9).72 This argument assumes that Nur al-Din and his advis- ers appreciated the manner in which Qur}anic inscrip- tions could be used to reflect and elaborate on a build- ing’s overt function. Proof that they did comes from the choice of Qur}anic passages in the iwans of Nur al- Din’s Maristan in Damascus (1154), which refer, appro- priately for a hospital, to God’s role in sickness and in healing.73 The argument also implies that Nur al-Din and his advisers were conscious of the semiotics of style. On one level this emerges from the changes he made to his titulature, from his avoidance of the title of sul«¸n to his ultimate adoption of epithets such as faqºr and in particular z¸hid, perhaps also from the even more reduced titles he used in the three holiest cities of Islam: Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.74 The contemporane- ous adoption of a new “ethical” titulature and an overtly sober architectural style was surely intended to convey a moral imperative.75 On another level, Nur al-Din’s appreciation of the force of appearance is reflected in his choice of simple, coarse garments. Fig. 11a. Diyarbakir, Great Mosque, detail of the west facade of The argument further implies that Nur al-Din had a the courtyard, first story, between the third and fourth columns sense of historicism. That this was so, even in the face from the south, dated to 1117–18, showing reused sculpted entab- of practicality, is shown by his decision to oblige his lature and capital of the sixth or seventh century AD. (Photo: G. Koch, courtesy of Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Photographs troops to use the baldric. Nur al-Din’s elder brother, and Fieldwork Archives, Washington, DC) Sayf al-Din Ghazi b. Zangi, ordered every one of his cavalry to wear his sword girded about his waist. Nur al-Din took a quite different policy: he ordered his comparable statement? The pedimented doorway was troops to hang their swords from their shoulders— a classical remnant of the type of which Syria was full; in other words from a baldric—because, according to the muqarnas dome was an innovation in Syrian archi- Abu Shama, he had heard that the Prophet Muham- tecture, an importation from Iraq and the Jazira.77 mad, following Arab custom, used to hang his sword I would like to suggest that whereas in the Qastal from a shoulder belt.76 al-Shu{aybiyya the use of a classicizing entablature had Nur al-Din evidently had a keen sense of the signif- a temporal significance, the use of a classical pediment icance of style and appearance. What, then, are we to at the Maristan carried a geographical denotation. make of the Maristan in Damascus (AD 1154), a build- It was surely not there because it belonged to the ing whose facade is dominated by the visually awkward pagan past, but because it symbolized Syria. The pedi- juxtaposition of a classical pediment with a stucco muqar- ment of the Maristan echoed in minute form the pedi- nas dome and semi-dome (fig. 10)? The Qastal was one mental gable of the Damascus mosque, so it stood of the first buildings he erected in Aleppo and was used as a shorthand for the most recognizable building of to make a statement. The Maristan was the first major Damascus, as well as a more generalized reference to structure Nur al-Din put up in Damascus. Did it carry a the architectural past of Bilad al-Sham.78 nur al-din, the qastal al-shu{aybiyya, and the “classical revival” 301

Fig. 11b. Detail of the entablature of the first story of the west façade, sixth or seventh century AD. (Photo: G. Brands, courtesy of Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Photographs and Fieldwork Archives, Washington, DC)

Was this highly visible marriage of Syrian and Iraqi western wing is, with the exception of the inscriptions architectural components a visual metaphor of Nur and the arches, ancient, taken from a building of the al-Din’s new conciliatory policy or a symbol of the sixth or seventh century AD. This facade carries two combined resources of the Zangids, the resources of dates—equivalent to 1117–18 on the lower section and both Syria and the Jazira? Nur al-Din had united Syria to 1124–5 on the upper (fig. 11, a and b). for the first time in centuries, and in 544 (1149) his The east wing is dated some forty years later, to 1163– brother Qutb al-Din, ruler of Mosul, conceded Syria 64, and most of the carving, apart from the columns to him, granting him, what is more, the entire trea- and capitals, is imitative of the work on the west wing sure amassed by Zangi in Sinjar for the jihad Nur al- (fig. 12, a and b). Above all, the eastern facade reflects Din was conducting.79 the compositional scheme of the western facade, though Neither at the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya nor at the there are differences in the treatment of the arcades Maristan in Damascus was a classical idiom adopted and in the rendering of details.81 Thus, in one court- expressly for its Greco-Roman associations. The same yard we have spoliated sculpture of the sixth or seventh was true in Diyarbakir. century and an imitation of the mid-twelfth century. The inscriptions provide a clue to the motives behind THE GREAT MOSQUE IN DIYARBAKIR the imitation, though what prompted the construction of the eastern facade has to be deduced from circum- The courtyard of the Great Mosque of Diyarbakir is stantial evidence. flanked by two wings with majestic facades.80 Both fa- The mosque was apparently damaged by fire in either cades have two stories, each punctuated by nine arches 1115, according to Michael the Syrian, or 1119, accord- framed by pairs of free-standing columns with capitals ing to Ibn al-Azraq. The earlier date could explain the and tall consoles supporting a full entablature incorpo- need to reconstruct the courtyard riw¸qs, though nei- rating bands of floriated Kufic inscriptions. Both facades ther author expressly states that they were damaged. make use of antique columns, those on the ground story But the fire cannot explain why the western riw¸q was being hyperextended and fashioned from sections of built in such an archaizing manner, and in a style that two or more columns. The sculpted decoration on the bore no aesthetic relationship to the mosque. The prov- 302 julian raby enance of the sculpture is a clue. According to Josef Strzygowski, the spolia dated from the fourth to the sev- enth century; recent research has refined the param- eters to the sixth or seventh century, but no one has doubted that the entablature and many of the col- umns, in particular those with the elaborate shafts on the second story, came from a Christian structure— if not a church, then perhaps an ecclesiastical palace. A candidate is the ecclesiastical complex believed to have stood in the area of the mosque. The mosque is in the center of the city, at the crossing of the former Cardo and Decumanus, a site that was probably first occupied by the principal pagan temple of the city, and subsequently by the cathedral. If the remains used for the west facade were from the former cathedral complex, their large-scale reassembly as an adjunct of the mosque would have been construed as a deliber- ate affront. In the early twelfth century the metropol- itan of Amid/Diyarbakir guided his see from Antioch,

R Fig. 12a. Diyarbakir, Great Mosque, detail of the east facade of the courtyard, first story, third column from the north; the capital reused, the entablature newly carved in 1163–64. (Photo: G. Koch, courtesy of Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Photographs and Fieldwork Archives, Washington, DC)

Fig. 12b. Detail of the entablature of the first story of the east facade (Photo: G. Brands, courtesy of Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Photographs and Fieldwork Archives, Washington, DC) nur al-din, the qastal al-shu{aybiyya, and the “classical revival” 303 which had fallen into Crusader hands in 1098, and eastern facade, not to refer to a Roman or Christian which Count Roger was using as a base for expansion. past, but as a comment on current, intra-Muslim pol- In 1115 Roger inflicted a major defeat on the forces itics in the city. of Seljuq Sultan Muhammad at the battle of Danith. Any suspicion of collusion between the metropolitan HARRAN and the Frankish crusaders would have provided jus- tification for appropriating the remains of the cathe- There are still questions over the date and patronage dral. The circumstances require more investigation, but of the extensions to the Great Mosque at Harran. The a polemical intent seems feasible. prayer hall of the Umayyad mosque was enlarged with The west facade was constructed on the orders of the the addition of two arcades on the north and a new Inalid ruler of Diyarbakir, vassal of the Great Seljuqs, courtyard facade. The result was appropriately described reference to whom was made in the inscriptions of by Ibn Jubayr in 1184 as “old [and] new.”86 In the 1117–18 and 1124–25. The eastern facade too was put northeastern corner of the third arcade one of the up under Inalid rule, but power had shifted dramati- capitals is dated 570 (1174–75). There is an inscription cally in the intervening forty years. While the nominal dated 588 (1192) on the eastern gate of the complex; ruler was an Inalid, real power lay in the hands of the whether Saladin was involved in completing the mosque, viziers, the Banu Nisan. The shift in power was signaled as Herzfeld and Creswell believed, is unclear.87 The in an inscription on the eastern sector of the entrance date of 570 (1174) means that construction may be facade of the mosque dated 550 (1155–56).82 This was due to Nur al-Din, but as he died on May 15, 1174, a counterpoint to the inscription of 484 (1091–92) in the nominal patron may have been his son (al-Malik the name of Malikshah on the other side of the main al-Salih) Nur al-Din Isma{il (r. 1174–81). entrance to the mosque, but the 1155 inscription made In other instances, though, Isma{il merely completed no reference to any Seljuq overlord, and, most signif- work initiated by his father. Thus, in 570 (1174–75) he icantly, the first name it contained was that of the “finished” the minbar (tam¸mahu) in the Great Mosque Nisanid vizier, Mu}ayyid al-Din Abu {Ali al-Hasan b. in Aleppo commissioned by Nur al-Din in 564 (1168– Ahmad, the second that of the Inalid lord. This was 69), the minbar, incidentally, that Saladin later appro- an inversion of standard protocol, but some deference priated for the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Isma{il was was observed. Titles were reserved exclusively for the only eleven years old on his accession, and he relied Inalid.83 The Nisanid al-Hasan died in the following on the support of a group of courtiers, mostly based year and was succeeded as vizier by his son Jamal al- in Damascus, though the governor of the Aleppo cit- Dawla Kamal al-Din Abu ’l Qasim {Ali b. al-Hasan. He adel, Shadbakht, an Indian slave who owed his free- made no such gesture of deference in the inscriptions dom to Nur al-Din, played a key role.88 “The young on the western wing of the courtyard. al-Salih, surrounded by a self-interested court, was in Here the Nisanid Abu ’l Qasim {Ali places his name no position to exercise authority.”89 Shadbakht’s role first, arrogates the title of isfahs¸l¸r previously assumed in expediting, in the name of Isma{il, the completion by the Inalids, and grandiloquently announces that he of work begun under Nur al-Din is illustrated by the has undertaken the construction of the eastern por- Lower Maqam on the citadel of Aleppo. An inscrip- tico (ªuffa) “from its foundations to its elevation,” and tion to the right of the entrance is dated 563 (1167– of the entire upper maqª¢ra, from his own finances 68); another, in the name of Malik al-Salih Isma{il and (min m¸lihi).84 This was a blunt declaration of Nisanid dated 575 (1179–80), expressly states that Nur al-Din financial and political superiority, especially in view of ordered the work, and that it was completed under the the princely associations of the maqª¢ra. What is more, supervision of Shadbakht (tawallº).90 Nisanid dominance over the Inalids was echoed in the Elaborately carved antique columns were incorpo- emblematic animal sculpture on this facade.85 rated into the new main entrance of the mosque in In short, then, the eastern was a purposeful imi- Harran.91 A Syriac chronicle refers to the demolition tation of the western facade—rivalry through mime- of the sixth-century Cathedral of St. Sophia in Edessa sis. Its classicism was highly specific, a proclamation in a passage that comes between mentions of Nur al- of the shift in local power in Diyarbakir. Spolia were Din’s death and Saladin’s accession, which suggests a used on the western facade in what may have been an date of about 1174, and it seems likely that the col- anti-Christian polemic. Imitation was adopted on the umns came from there.92 Adjacent work was in a clas- 304 julian raby sicizing style, complete with elements such as ovolo, the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya, was used to refer to an ancient dentils, and modillions. past, though this time to a Patriarch rather than one In the circumstances, it seems unlikely that the eleven- of the R¸shid¢n. Here, as at the Qastal, we can sense year-old Isma{il would have ordered such a major exten- the hand of Nur al-Din. sion to the Harran mosque in the first year of his rule. Nur al-Din, however, may have envisaged the work as a Allen’s first group of monuments, those commissioned tribute to his son’s coming of age, for in May 1174, ten under Nur al-Din in Aleppo, represents neither classi- days before Nur al-Din’s death, festivities were held for cism nor revival, if we exclude, as I have argued, the Isma{il’s circumcision. The city of Harran was notorious entablature of the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya. These buildings for its pagan past, but it was also, as Ibn Jubayr empha- were the product of a living tradition that had its roots sized, intimately associated with the prophet Abraham.93 in the fifth-and-sixth-century structures of the limestone Nur al-Din had already demonstrated in Aleppo his inter- massif of North Syria. That tradition had morphed over est in sites associated with Abraham,94 but there could time to become a distinct expression. The etymology of have been no better place than Harran in which to pro- some of its vocabulary may have originated in Greco- claim the ascendance of Islam, to memorialize Abra- Roman architecture, but the language had evolved. In ham the founder of monotheism, and by extension to genealogical terms, paternity lay in the sub-antique, commemorate Isma{il, who is identified in the Qur}an even if the ultimate ancestry of components can be (2:127) as helping Abraham to found the Ka{ba. traced back earlier. This reading is highly speculative, but it would help Allen’s second group better merits the terms “revival” explain the use of classicizing decoration, which, as at and “classical,” but the list as a whole is misleading. It

Fig. 13. Konya, the city walls (After Léon de Laborde, Voyage de l’Asie Mineure [Paris, 1838]) nur al-din, the qastal al-shu{aybiyya, and the “classical revival” 305 should include neither the gates of Fatimid Cairo nor was select and purposeful. The intended point differed the minaret of the Great Mosque in Aleppo, as these according to the political context, but the more sur- belong to the architectural lineage of the first group, prising conclusion is that the frame of reference dif- even if the expression is more embellished and flamboy- fered. ant than the sober style subsequently adopted under Nur The Maristan of Nur al-Din in Damascus may be a al-Din. The remaining structures in the list—the Qastal, rare instance in which an antique element was used to Diyarbakir, and Harran—span a relatively short period evoke a sense of place rather than of time. The refer- of 20 years but do not form a developmental sequence. ence to Syria enfolded its Greco-Roman past, but in a There are connections in patronage and historicizing generalized rather than a specific way. The Qastal al- intent between the Qastal and the mosque in Harran, Shu{aybiyya, by contrast, was intended to evoke a sense but the building of the Nisanid wing of the mosque of of time, in this case the earliest decades of Islam, not a Diyarbakir was motivated by mimetic rivalry, not histor- pagan past. In neither instance, though, was a Greco- icism. And there are differences in their employment Roman referent used per se. The same held true for of classical motifs. By and large, the structure and pro- Diyarbakir and Harran. portions of the entablatures of the Qastal al-Shu{aybiyya These Syrian and Mesopotamian examples thus and the east wing at Diyarbakir are correct, even down reflect a situation different from that in Konya, where to the use of a fillet on the Qastal cornice, a feature Alaeddin Keykubad rebuilt the city walls between 1219 so minor that it argues for direct copying. At Diyarba- and 1221 (fig. 13). Alaeddin included a Roman statue kir the composition recalls that of a scenae frons. Little of Hercules, funerary reliefs, and a Roman sarcopha- of the ornament at the Qastal is classical, however; in gus alongside newly commissioned statuary of angels, a Diyarbakir some is, echoing that on the west side of the seated monarch, animals, and mythical beasts, and an courtyard. At Harran, by contrast, there are citations equally heterogeneous mixture of inscriptions compris- from classical ornament, yet with errors in sequence and ing extracts from the Qur}an, Prophetic Hadith, and sizing that suggest they were not taken directly from an the Sh¸hn¸ma as well as maxims and proverbs and, pre- antique model but were liberal interpretations. sumably, royal protocols. This was an art of “quotation,” Masons in Diyarbakir and Aleppo created sculptural both literally and figuratively, a sententiousness akin to ensembles that were classical in proportion and scheme. that of the “Mirror for Princes” literature. The mixture That they did so rarely is telling: they could when they conveyed the multiplicious roots of Rum Seljuq court wanted. This is proven by Hibetullah al-Gurgani, the culture—Turkic, Persian, and Arab, religious and sec- architect of the east wing of the courtyard of the Great ular. It commingled the mythic and recent history of Mosque in Diyarbakir (1163). Eight years earlier, in 550 the city and its region: there were images of Crusader (1155–56), he had rebuilt the east wall of the main foot soldiers, perhaps those who sacked Konya in 1190, sanctuary facade, but in a style that echoed the west while the statue of Hercules, according to Ibn Sa{id, wall of the same facade, which bears an inscription in who visited the city in 1261, was believed to represent the name of the Great Seljuq Malikshah and the date Plato, the alleged founder of the city.96 of 484 (1091–92).95 Within eight years, then, he built Whereas Nur al-Din Zangi adopted classical elements two adjacent structures in completely different styles. or a classical idiom to convey the antique, Alaeddin One was classicizing, one was not, but in both cases he Keykubad was exceptional in making a specific refer- achieved symmetry with an earlier construction on the ence to the city’s Greco-Roman past, as befitted a dynast western half of the site. We might deduce from this who prided himself on being Sul«¸n al-R¢m, “The Sul- that the aesthetic of symmetry was the guiding princi- tan of Rome.”97 ple, but the inscriptional evidence makes it clear that the patron had more in mind. The point is the abil- Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian ity of architects and their chantier to adopt different Institution, Washington, DC styles when called for. The Oriental Institute, University of Oxford The Nurids used classical or classicizing elements in three buildings—the Qastal, the Maristan in Damascus, NOTES and the Great Mosque in Harran, whereas they erected a host of other structures with no hint of classical theme. 1. On the meaning of qas«al as a sabºl, see Heinz Gaube and This suggests that the choice in these three instances Eugen Wirth, Aleppo: Historische und geographische Beiträge zur 306 julian raby

baulichen Gestaltung, zur sozialen Organisation und zur wissen- d’or” de Sib« ibn al-{Ajami, Matériaux pour servir à l’histoire de schaftlichen Dynamik einer vorderasiatischen Fernhandelsmetropole, la ville d’Alep, tome 2, ed. J. Sauvaget (Damascus, 1950), pp. Beihefte zum Tübinger Atlas des Vorderern Orients ser. B, 135–36, says that the portal of the church that Ibn al-Muqad- no. 58 (Wiesbaden, 1984), p. 159. dam made into a madrasa was in the Darb al-Kharraf, but that 2. J. M. Rogers, “A Renaissance of Classical Antiquity in North it was changed to be in the Darb al-Hattabin (Allen, Classical Syria,” Annales archéologiques arabes syriennes (1971): 347–56, Revival, p. 20, n. 37). It is worth considering, then, whether esp. 354. the present portal dates from this change. 3. Ibid. In fact, in his text Rogers uses the term “revival” rather 10. On the Madrasa {Adiliyya, see Allen, Classical Revival, pp. 93ff.; than “renaissance.” Cf. Terry Allen, A Classical Revival in Islamic Herzfeld, “Damascus: Studies in Architecture–I,” Ars Islamica Architecture (Wiesbaden, 1986), pp. 88–91. 9 (1942): 1–53, esp. 46–49. 4. Yasser Tabbaa, “Survivals and Archaisms in the Architecture 11. Allen, Classical Revival, pp. 86–89. of Northern Syria, ca. 1080–ca. 1150,” Muqarnas 10, Essays in 12. Cf. Allen, Classical Revival, pp. 29–35, with Tabbaa, “Surviv- Honor of Oleg Grabar (1993): 29–41, esp. 33–34. See H. C. But- als and Archaisms,” pp. 34–35. Allen himself cites the gate ler, Early Churches in Syria, Fourth to Seventh Centuries, Prince- in Harran built by the Numayrids in 1059: see Allen, Classical ton Monographs in Art and Archaeology, 6 vols. (Princeton, Revival, pp. 35–37. 1929); Christine Strube, Baudekoration im nordsyrischen Kalkstein- 13. Butler, Early Churches, ill. 235. massiv, 2 vols., Damaszener Forschungen Bd. 5, Bd. 11 (Mainz 14. K. A. C. Creswell, Muslim Architecture of Egypt, I: Ikhshids and am Rhein, 1993–2002). Strube emphasizes that following the Fatimids, A.D. 937–1171; II: Ayyubids and Early Bahrite Mamluks, construction of Qalb Lauzeh in the late fifth century the build- A.D. 1171–1326 (Oxford, 1952–60), vol. 1, pp. 210–16. The ings in the Syrian limestone massif displayed, for a generation Harput Gate in Diyarbakir, built under the Abbasid caliph al- or two, a marked increase in classicizing vocabulary, especially Muqtadir in 297 (909–10), provides some precedent for those in the treatment of capitals; cf. R. Krautheimer, Early Christian in Cairo: see Max van Berchem, J. Strzygowski, and G. L. Bell, and Byzantine Architecture (Harmondsworth, 1965), pp. 105– Amida (Heidelberg, 1910), pp. 16–19, 21–22. 16. 15. Ernst Herzfeld, Matériaux pour un Corpus inscriptionum Arabi- 5. E. Kitzinger, Early Medieval Art in the British Museum (London, carum, deuxième partie, Syrie du nord: inscriptions et monuments 1940, 5th repr. 1969), pp. 8, 11ff. d’Alep (Cairo, 1954–56), vol. 2, pl. LXII; Butler, Early Churches, 6. Tabbaa, “Survivals and Archaisms,” p. 33. From the allegedly p. 223, ills. 133 and 231b; cf. Van Berchem, Amida, p. 217, abb. limited geography of this phenomenon, Tabbaa thus makes the 133. opposite deduction from Rogers: Tabbaa sees it as local con- 16. Butler, Early Churches, p. 222; Strube, Baudekoration, vol. 2, pl. servatism while Rogers sees it as evidence of a “revival.” Both, 81f: Ruweiha, Tomb of Bizzos. however, largely ignore the evidence of Jerusalem, where we 17. K. A. C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecure, 2nd ed., vol. 1, pt. 2 have a late efflorescence of Corinthian-style capitals in the Aqsa (Oxford, 1969), p. 585, fig. 639. Mosque in the eighth century (R. W. Hamilton, “Some Capi- 18. See Creswell, Muslim Architecture of Egypt, vol. 1, p. 215, for tals from the Aqsa Mosque,” Quarterly of the Department of Antiq- a brief discussion of the architectural comparanda for such uities in Palestine 13 [1948]: 103–20), as well as evidence of a arches. See figs. 4, 5a, and 5b for the use of an inner frame local masonry tradition alongside the imported brick architec- of cusped moldings on the Bab al-Nasr and on the minaret of ture in the rebuilding of the Holy Sepulchre under Constan- the Great Mosque in Aleppo. tine Monomachos between about 1042 and 1048; see also the 19. Modillions continued to be used in the Early Byzantine period, Monastery of the Holy Cross (1038–56): Robert Ousterhout, as is evident from the modillion cornices on the sixth-cen- “Rebuilding the Temple: Constantine Monomachus and the tury church at Qalb Lauzeh in North Syria: see Butler, Early Holy Sepulchre,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Churches, p. 223. For the use of modillion cornices in Aleppo 48 (1989): 66–78. in the Ayyubid period, see Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, 7. Ernst Herzfeld, Matériaux pour un Corpus inscriptionum Arabi- pp. 247, 250. carum (Cairo, 1903) vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 164, and fig. 61 on p. 162; 20. Cf. Rogers, “Renaissance,” p. 349. cf. idem, “Damascus: Studies in Architecture–II,” Ars Islamica 21. Creswell, Muslim Architecture of Egypt, vol. 1, p. 168, pl. 51; 10 (1943): 13–70, esp. 32, and Tabbaa, “Survivals and Archa- Herzfeld, “Damascus: Studies in Architecture–II,” figs. 47, 49, isms,” pp. 33–34. 50. 8. Tabbaa, “Survivals and Archaisms,” p. 40, n. 10, with criticism 22. Cf., re sobriety and the emphasis on good craftsmanship, Herz- of Allen, Classical Revival, esp. p. ix. feld, “Damascus: Studies in Architecture–II,” p. 44; Ernst Herz- 9. Ibn Shadd¸d, in La Description d’Alep d’Ibn ³add¸d: Édition cri- feld, “Damascus: Studies in Architecture–III,” Ars Islamica 11– tique d’al-{A}l¸q al-Kha«ºra, ed. D. Sourdel (Damascus, 1953), p. 12 (1946): 1–70, esp. 11, 37, 38. 116, says that {Izz al-Din {Abd al-Malik al-Muqaddam founded 23. Herzfeld Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 216. this madrasa and that construction began in 545 (1150–51). 24. Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 210–16, which owes much An inscription on a tablet over the door records an endow- to Max van Berchem, “Inscriptions arabes de Syrie, VI: Les ment to the madrasa in the year 564 (1168–69) by Shams al- inscriptions de Nûr al-Dîn et l’origine du caractère arrondi Din Muhammad b. {Abd al-Malik b. Muhammad al-Muqaddam. dans l’épigraphie syrienne 541–569 H.,” Mémoires de l’Institut Herzfeld (Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 235) dated the entire por- Égyptien 3 (1897): 450–55. But for a cautionary voice, see Yas- tal to 564, but Allen (Classical Revival, p. 12) believes the build- ser Tabbaa, Constructions of Power and Piety in Medieval Aleppo ing’s association with the other three constructed in the 540s (University Park, PA, 1997), esp. pp. 143ff. (1150s) warrants the earlier date. Sib« b. al-{Ajamº, “Les Trésors 25. Yasser Tabbaa, “Monuments with a Message: Propagation of nur al-din, the qastal al-shu{aybiyya, and the “classical revival” 307

Jih¸d under N¢r al-Dºn (1146–1174),” in The Meeting of Two be pointed out, however, that there was considerable tension Worlds: Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period between the Imami Shiites and the Ismailis in Aleppo, which of the Crusades, ed. V. P. Goss (Kalamazoo, 1986), p. 228, like- resulted in a massacre of Ismailis by the qadi Ibn al-Khashhab wise sees the entablature of the Qastal as “a rare example of in 508 (1114): see Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 293; purposeful imitation”; see also Tabbaa, “Survivals and Archa- Nikita Elisséeff, N¢r ad-Dºn, un grand prince musulman de Syrie isms,” p. 39. au temps des Croisades (511–569 H./1118–1174), 3 vols. (Damas- 26. Rogers, “Renaissance,” p. 352. Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. cus, 1967), p. 428. 1, p. 227, claims the entablature “garde la disposition ionique 34. Sauvaget, Alep, p. 95, n. 280; p. 98, nn. 290–92, on Isma{ilis intacte,” but Sauvaget (Alep, pl. ix.4) terms it “Corinthian,” and Shiites in Aleppo. surely more correctly in view of the modillions. I am most 35. Translation from Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glo- grateful to Judith McKenzie for her observations on the “clas- rious Koran (New York, 1953), adapted with that of Ali (Ahmed sical” material from Aleppo, Diyarbakir, Harran, and Cairo. Ali, Al-Qur}¸n: A Contemporary Translation [Karachi, 1984]). 27. Sauvaget, Alep, no. 113, pp. 74–75; Jean Sauvaget, “Notes sur 36. Erica C. Dodd and Shereen Khairallah, The Image of the Word: quelques monuments musulmans de Syrie à propos d’une A Study of Quranic Verses in Islamic Architecture, 2 vols. (Beirut, étude récente,” Syria 24, fasc. 3–4 (1944–45): 211–31, esp. 1981), vol. 2, pp. 43ff. For the use of Qur}an 9:18 on the min- 223; Elisséeff, “Les monuments de N¢r ad-Dºn: Inventaire, aret of the great Mosque in Aleppo, see Allen, Classical Revival, notes archéologiques et bibliographiques,” Bulletin d’études orien- p. 24. tales 13 (1949–51): 5–49, see p. 9. Tabbaa, “Monuments with a 37. Dodd and Khairallah (Image of the Word, vol. 2, p. 59) cite an Message,” pp. 227–28 and 238, n. 21), suggests that Michael inscription from Almeria dated 531 (1137) as the third medi- Rogers (“Renaissance,” p. 350) claimed the entablature was eval instance of the use of this Qur}anic passage. This appears antique, but this is a slip, because Rogers was here referring to be an error: cf. E. Combe, J. Sauvaget, G. Wiet, eds., Réper- to the courtyard wings of the mosque in Diyarbakir. toire chronologique d’épigraphie arabe (Cairo, 1931–), vol. 8, pp. 28. Herzfeld, “Damascus: Studies in Architecture–II,” pp. 31–32; 203–4, no. 3082; M. Ocaña Jimenez, Repertorio de Inscripciones Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 227; Tabbaa, “Monuments Arabes de Almeria (Madrid and Granada, 1964), pp. 75–77, no. with a Message,” pp. 227–28, who also notes the fact that the 79 (the inscription records an extension to a minaret). masonry of the entablature is “perfectly in accord with the 38. Michael Lecker, Muslims, Jews, and Pagans, Islamic History and arches below, whose pointed profile can only be medieval.” Civilization, Studies and Texts, vol. 13, series ed. U. Haarmann 29. Herzfeld, “Damascus: Studies in Architecture–II,” p. 32, com- (Leiden, 1995), p. 63; {Uwaym was reported by one source to paring a frieze from the Mashhad al-Husayn in Aleppo built be the first Muslim to use water to wash his posterior. under Saladin’s son in 586 (1190–91); see also Herzfeld, Maté- 39. On Nur al-Din’s canalization, see Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. riaux, vol. 1, p. 222, fig. 73, and vol. 2, pl. LXXXVIIIa. 14, 111, 113, 224, 226; Allen, Classical Revival, p. 9; Elisséeff, 30. On the inscription, see Ibn al-Shi¥na, “Les Perles Choisies” d’Ibn N¢r ad-Dºn, vol. 3, pp. 848–53. On the canalization of medieval ach-Chihna, Matériaux pour servir à l’histoire de la ville d’Alep, Aleppo in general, see D. Sourdel, “Esquisse topographique tome 1, transl. Jean Sauvaget (Beirut, 1933), p. 11–12. Sauvaget d’Alep intra-muros à l’époque ayyoubide,” Annales archéologiques believed the entablature was actually from the triumphal arch de Syrie 2 (1952): 109–33, esp. 130–33; S. Mazloum, L’ancienne that had been converted into the first mosque (Sauvaget, Alep, canalisation d’eau d’Alep (Le Qan¸yé de Ýail¸n) (Beirut, n.d. pp. 74–75; cf. Jean Sauvaget, “Inventaire des monuments musul- [c.1935]); Gaube and Wirth, Aleppo, pp. 178–80, and fig. 42. mans de la ville d’Alep,” Revue des Études Islamiques 5 (1931): The latrines installed by Nur al-Din in numerous monuments 76; Sauvaget, “Notes,” p. 223; see also Allen, Classical Revival, in Aleppo, Damascus, and elsewhere are notable: Jean Sau- p. 17, n. 12; Tabbaa “Monuments with a Message,” pp. 227– vaget, “Deux sanctuaires chiites d’Alep,” Syria (1928): 319–27, 28. Sauvaget (Alep, p. 47) even claimed that the arch had fig- pp. 321–22; Herzfeld, “Damascus: Studies in Architecture–I,” ural reliefs, which he deduced from one of the names of the p. 5; Elisséeff, N¢r ad-Dºn, vol. 3, p. 850; Elisséeff, “Les mon- mosque—Masjid al-Atras, “The Mosque of the Bucklers.” Sau- uments de N¢r ad-Dºn,” esp. 7, 10, 20, 32; Gaube and Wirth, vaget knew the accounts relating that this was where the Muslim Aleppo, p. 157. conquerors of the city laid down their shields, but he dismissed 40. Max van Berchem, “Une mosquée du temps des Fatimites au them as “historiettes sans valeur historique”: Ibn Shadd¸d, La Caire: Notice sur le Gâmi{ el Goyûshi,” Mémoires de l’Institut Description d’Alep, p. 44, after al-{A¬ºmº (AH 483–ca. 538); cf. Égyptien 2 (1888): 605–19; Caroline Williams, “The Cult of Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 222; Ibn al-{Adºm, Zub- Alid Saints in the Fatimid Monuments of Cairo. Part 1: The dat al-Ýalab min t¸rºkh Ýalab, ed. S¸mº al-Dahh¸n (Damascus, Mosque of al-Aqmar,” Muqarnas 1 (1983): 37–52, esp. 39–40; 1951), p. 28. Bloom, Minaret, p. 140. 31. Tabbaa, “Monuments with a Message,” pp. 226–28; Finbarr 41. The key Qur}anic passage is 33:33: “O People of the House, B. Flood, “The Medieval Trophy as an Art Historical Trope: God only desires to put away from you abomination and with Coptic and Byzantine ‘Altars’ in Islamic Contexts,” Muqarnas cleansing to cleanse you.” See Williams, “Cult of Alid Saints,” 18 (2001): 41–72, p. 71, n. 75. p. 44. For its use in twelfth-century Egypt and Syria, see Dodd 32. Ibn Shadd¸d, La Description d’Alep, p. 105; Tabbaa, “Monu- and Khairallah, Image of the Word, vol. 2, pp. 96–97. It also occurs ments with a Message,” p. 227. in Iran in the early twelfth century, on the Imamazade Yahya 33. Projecting portals occur, for example, at the Fatimid mosque of b. Zayd at Sar-i Pul: see Sheila Blair, The Monumental Inscrip- al-Mahdiyya, possibly the mosque of al-Azhar, and the mosque tions from Early Islamic Iran and Transoxiana (Leiden, 1992), of al-Hakim in Cairo: see Jonathan Bloom, Minaret: Symbol of cat. 75, pp. 198–201. Islam (Oxford, 1989), pp. 102, 129–130, 132, fig. 75. It should 42. In general, see Max van Berchem, “Épigraphie des Assassins 308 julian raby

de Syrie,” Journal asiatique, 9th ser., 9 (1987): 453–501, esp. 50. Elisséeff, N¢r ad-Dºn, pp. 429–30; Elisséeff, “Un Document con- 491; cf. the inscription from an Imami Shiite shrine in Balis- temporain,” p. 128. Meskene: D. Sourdel and J. Sourdel-Thomine, “Un sanctuaire 51. Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 217; cf. Ibn al-{Adºm, His- chiite de l’ancienne Balis,” in Mélanges d’Islamologie: Volume dédié toire d’Alep, trans. E. Blochet (Paris, 1900), p. 23. à la mémoire de Armand Abel par ses collègues, ses élèves, et ses amis, 52. D. E. P. Jackson and Malcolm Lyons, Saladin: The Politics of the ed. P. Salmon (Leiden, 1974), pp. 247–53, esp. pp. 249–50. Holy War (Cambridge, England, 1982), p. 87. 43. Allen, Classical Revival, p. 22, note 41. 53. The Qastal occupies the western end of an architectural “island” 44. Ibn al-Shi¥na, Perles Choisies, p. 108; Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. that lies in the center of the old Hellenistic street that led from 1, pt. 2, p. 254; Tabbaa, Constructions of Power and Piety, pp. the Antioch Gate towards the tell that is now the site of the 126–27. It was to the Zajjajiyya that Zangi brought the remains Citadel. The “island” divides the broad Hellenistic street into of his father in 1128. On the introduction and patronage of two. On the urban location, see Gaube and Wirth, Aleppo, p. madrasas in twelfth-century Syria, see D. Sourdel, “Réflexions 80. On the gate itself, see Gaube and Wirth, Aleppo, pp. 141– sur la diffusion de la madrasa en Orient du XIe au XIIIe siè- 42, 344–45, and p. 163 for a list of its inscriptions. cle,” Revue des Études Islamiques 44 (1976): 165–84. 54. The last block of the main religious inscription has a vertical 45. M. Écochard, “Note sur un édifice chrétien d’Alep,” Syria 27 band on the left side, marking the end of the inscriptional (1950): 270–83. On the ancient identification see, for example, frieze; it is equivalent to the vertical band on the right of the Ibn al-Shi¥na, Perles Choisies, p. 120, where it is identified as basmala block, which marked the beginning of that frieze. a construction by Helen, the mother of [Emperor] Constan- 55. Sibt al-{Ajami begins his list of the city’s streets with this thor- tine. oughfare: see Sourdel, “Esquisse,” p. 115, and pp. 128–29 on 46. The Mashhad Imam Muhassin (also known as the Mashhad the importance of this street, and, by contrast, Gaube and al-Dikka) was founded in 351 (962) by Sayf al-Dawla after he Wirth, Aleppo, p. 277 on the north route being a neglected suq, saw a miraculous light on the spot where he built the shrine: at least in modern times. On the importance of this southeast M. Sobernheim, “Das Heiligtum Shaikh Mu¥assin in Aleppo,” sector, see Sauvaget, Alep, pls. LIV and LVIII. in G. Maspero, Mélanges Hartwig Derenbourg (Paris, 1909), pp. 56. Verse 108 occupies most of the fountain facade and the south 379–90; Sauvaget, “Deux sanctuaires chiites d’Alep,” pp. 319– side of the portal—a stretch of approximately 7.75 meters. The 327; Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 194; Tabbaa, Con- full verse 108 has 86 letters, but an initial section of some fif- structions of Power and Piety, pp. 109–10. teen letters must have been placed on the southern facade, as 47. Tabbaa, “Monuments with a Message,” pp. 224–26, claims the there is no room for them on the western. Thus there are sev- purpose was “to symbolically assert Nur al-Din’s subjugation enty-one letters over some 7.75 meters. The southern facade of and victory over the Christians.” It is certainly true that was over twice the length, and could have accommodated the this building sees the first extant occurrence of the title al- 116 letters of verse 107, the eighteen of the full basmala, and muj¸hid in Nur al-Din’s inscriptions, but Tabbaa’s important the fifteen letters from the beginning of verse 108—a total of article somewhat underplays, I would suggest, the anti-Shiite 149 over some 17 meters. Expressed in ratios, this amounts to message in this early stage of Nur al-Din’s career in favor of 1:9.2 on the western facade compared to 1:8.7 on the south- an almost exclusively anti-Christian message. In fact, in 1149 ern, though it must be emphasized that the measurements are Nur al-Din was defeated by a combined force of Franks and very approximate. Assassins at Yaghra, west of Ma{arrat al-Nu{man, and Elisséeff 57. Lecker, Muslims, Jews, and Pagans, chap. 4, pp. 74ff. The Mas- (N¢r ad-Dºn, p. 428) has suggested that this defeat may have jid al-Dirar was built, Lecker demonstrates (see p. 95 esp.), in encouraged the Isma{ilis and Shiites of Aleppo, and in turn opposition to the Mosque at Quba}; cf. J. Pedersen, EI2, vol. prompted Nur al-Din’s actions against them in 543 (1149). 6, p. 646b, s.v. “Masdjid,” but see Lecker, Muslims, Jews, and 48. On Burhan al-Din {Ali b. al-Hasan al-Balkhi and his influence, Pagans, p. 90, note 52 for a misinterpretation by Pedersen. see the account by Ibn al-{Adim cited by Herzfeld, Matériaux, 58. Starting the main inscription at the southern end was perhaps vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 216; cf. Elisséeff, N¢r ad-Dºn, p. 429. Ibn al-{Adim unusual. claims that there was a marked increase in Nur al-Din’s piety 59. See above, n. 30. and asceticism in reaction to a defeat by the Crusaders in 548 60. Lecker, Muslims, Jews, and Pagans, pp. 78–80. There were two (1153): Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 217; cf. Tabbaa, rival claims, depending largely on tribal affiliations: the Aws “Monuments with a Message,” pp. 229–30. claiming it was the Mosque at Quba}, the Khazrajis that it was 49. On these measures, see Elisséeff, N¢r ad-Dºn, p. 429; Nikita the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, which was on Khazraji soil. Elisséeff, “Un document contemporain de N¢r ad-Dºn: sa The implied reference in the inscription to Quba} is a point notice biographique par Ibn {As¸kir,” Bulletin d’études orien- noted, but not pursued, by both Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, tales 25 (1972): 125–40, esp. pp. 128 and 137, ll. 11–13. How- pt. 1, p. 223, and Allen, Classical Revival, p. 4. ever, one of Nur al-Din’s first acts on assuming control in 61. Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr Edited from a MS. in the Uni- Aleppo was to add water facilities to the Mashhad al-Muhassin, versity Library of Leyden, ed. W. Wright, 2nd ed. rev. by M. J. de a shrine that had also received attention from both his grand- Goeje, E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series (Leyden and London, father, Aqsunqur, who added a cistern or reservoir, and his 1907), p. 197, l. 7. father, Zangi: see Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 194– 62. An account derived from al-Baladhuri is explicit that the first 96; Tabbaa, Constructions of Power and Piety, p. 109. It is notice- muh¸jir¢n built a mosque in Quba} and prayed in it in the direc- able that neither the Mashhad al-Muhassin nor the Mashhad tion of Jerusalem for one year; the Prophet led prayer there al-Husayn have central pools (cf. Tabbaa, Constructions of Power when he first arrived: see Lecker, Muslims, Jews, and Pagans, and Piety, pp. 151–53). On the latrines added by Nur al-Din, p. 79; A. J. Wensinck, A Handbook of Early Muhammadan Tra- see above, note 39. dition: Alphabetically Arranged (Leiden, 1927, repr. 1972), s.v. nur al-din, the qastal al-shu{aybiyya, and the “classical revival” 309

“Kuba”; see above, n. 57. According to another tradition (Bay- 70. Ibn al-Athir in his necrology of Nur al-Din lauds him for being dawi, on Sura 2:13), Muhammad was in the mosque of Banu “like the khulafa}, the Rashidun.” (Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, Salima when he changed the direction of his prayer: cf. W. Bar- pt. 1, p. 243). thold, “Die Orientierung der ersten muhammedanischen Mos- 71. Elisséeff, “Un document contemporain,” pp. 125–40, esp. cheen,” Der Islam 18 (1929): 245–50, who disputes the supposi- p. 139, l. 26, and p. 132. On the salaf, see E. Chaumont, s.v. tion that Jerusalem was the first direction of Muslim prayer at “(al-)Salaf wa ’l-KHalaf,” EI2, vol. 8, pp. 900a–b. the beginning of the hijra, in part on the fact that Ibn Jubayr 72. It would be wrong to assume that the Kufic of the Qastal al- describes the mosque in Quba} as having a sole entrance on Shu{aybiyya was deliberately archaizing. It may look so to us, the west side. because of the rapid changes that occurred with the introduc- 63. Emmanuel Sivan, L’Islam et la Croisade (Paris, 1968); Carole tion of “Nurid thulth.” But that is with the benefit of hind- Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Chicago and sight. (For the changes, see Van Berchem “Inscriptions arabes London, 1999), pp. 117–67. de Syrie, VI”; Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 210.) 64. Max van Berchem, Matériaux pour un Corpus inscriptionum Ara- 73. Dodd in Dodd and Khairallah, Image of the Word, vol. 1, pp. bicarum, tome 2, Jérusalem, “Haram” (1920), pp. 293–402; Tab- 35–41. baa, “Monuments with a Message,” pp. 232–35; Hillenbrand, 74. Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 214–15; Tabbaa, “Monu- The Crusades, pp. 150–61. The ex voto argument is generally ments with a Message,” pp. 224–26. On the issue of his avoid- accepted, but there are some reasons to question it; I hope ance of the title of Sultan, see Moritz Sobernheim, “Die ara- to return to the subject elsewhere. bischen Inschriften von Aleppo,” Der Islam 15 (1926): 161–210, 65. Hillenbrand, The Crusades, pp. 160–61. I am most grateful to esp. 199–200, which also includes his use of faqºr in his work Carole Hillenbrand for drawing my attention to the signifi- on the Lower Maqam Ibrahim in 563 (1168). On his inscrip- cance of this inscription. Yasser Tabbaa, by contrast, has not tions in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, see Herzfeld, Matéri- played up this interpretation: “The Mosque of N¢r al-Dºn in aux, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 211. Mosul 1170–1172,” Annales Islamologiques 36 (2002): 339–60, 75. See, for example, Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 212– esp. 349. I would like to thank Teresa Fitzherbert for drawing 13. this article to my attention. 76. Leo A. Mayer, Mamluk Costume (Geneva, 1952), p. 45. See also 66. Tabbaa, “Monuments with a Message,” pp. 224–26. On the F. W. Schwarzlose, Die Waffen der alten Araber (Leipzig, 1886), development of jihad titulature prior to Nur al-Din, see Car- p. 55 on early Arab custom; cf. D. G. Alexander, The Arts of ole Hillenbrand, “Jihad Propaganda in Syria from the Time War: Arms and Armour of the 7th to 19th Centuries, The Nasser of the First Crusade until the Death of Zengi: The Evidence D Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, vol. 21 (London, 1992), of Monumental Inscriptions,” in The Frankish Wars and Their pp. 13–14. Influence on Palestine: Selected Papers Presented at Birzeit Univer- 77. Ernst Herzfeld, “Damascus: Studies in Architecture–I,” pp. 1– sity’s International Academic Conference Held in Jerusalem, March 53, esp. pp. 2–40; cf. Tabbaa, Constructions of Power and Piety, 13–15, 1992, ed. Khalil Athamina and Roger Heacock (Birzeit pp. 144–50. University Publications, Mediterranean Studies Unit, 1994), 78. On the Great Mosque of Damascus as a model for later mosques pp. 60–69. in the city, see Herzfeld, “Damascus: Studies in Architecture– 67. Three inscriptions on the west face of the portal, which was IV,” Ars Islamica 13–14 (1948): 118–38. the principal entrance arch from the street leading from the 79. Elisséeff, N¢r ad-Dºn, p. 442 on Qutb al-Din of Mosul conced- Bab Antakiyya, were arranged, it would seem, to emphasize a ing this to his brother Nur al-Din. Jerusalem, anti-Crusader message that would complement the 80. Van Berchem, Amida; A. Gabriel, Voyages archéologiques dans anti-Shiite message of the passage over the fountain. The main la Turquie orientale avec un recueil d’inscriptions arabes de J. Sau- inscription (Qur}an 72:18) was a condemnation of shirk; the vaget, Institut Français d’Archéologie d’Istamboul, 2 vols. (Paris, center of the historical inscription below contained the name 1940), pp. 190–94; Rogers, “Renaissance,” p. 351; Marlia Mun- of {Umar b. al-Khattab; and the roundel in the keystone prom- dell Mango, “The Continuity of the Classical Tradition in the inently displayed the name of the architect, who was of Jeru- Art and Architecture of Northern Mesopotamia,” in East of salem origin, Sa{id al-Muqaddasi. It was perhaps the impor- Byzantium: Syria and Armenia in the Formative Period: Dumbarton tance of coordinating these three themes over the entrance Oaks Symposium of 1980 (Washington, DC, 1982), p. 128. See arch that forced the unhappy solution of relegating the end also Allen, Classical Revival, for discussion of problems with of the religious inscription to follow the date in the historical references to the eastern and western porticoes in the inscrip- band. For the architect’s roundel, see Herzfeld, “Damascus: tions. Studies in Architecture–II,” p. 31; Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, 81. Mango, “Continuity of the Classical Tradition,” p. 128. pt. 1, p. 224. 82. Van Berchem, Amida, p. 61, insc. no. 21. 68. A well-known example of a message directed against twin ene- 83. Ibid., p. 62. mies is the later inscription and figural sculpture of the Talis- 84. Ibid., pp. 63–65, insc. no. 22. The titulature of the Inalid man Gate in Baghdad: M. van Berchem in E. Herzfeld and F. Mahmud replaces isfahs¸l¸r with al-m¸lik al-{¸dil, which Van Sarre, Archäologische Reise im Euphrat- und Tigris-Gebiet, 4 vols. Berchem also interprets as a downgrading. See also his discus- (Berlin, 1911–20), vol. 2, pp. 151–56. sion of the temporal signifiers, fº wil¸ya in place of fº dawla (cf. 69. Tabbaa, “Monuments with a Message,” pp. 229 and 239, n. 30, Max van Berchem, Inschriften aus Syrien, Mesopotamien und Klein- with references to Abu Shama and Ibn al-Athir, who claims asien gesammelt in Jahre 1898 von Max Freiherrn von Oppenheim: that Nur al-Din was knowledgeable in Hanafi jurisprudence I. Arabische Inschriften, bearbeitet von Max van Berchem, Beiträge and ascetic in his personal life (Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. zur Assyriologie und semitischen Sprachwissenschaft, VII. 1 1, pp. 212–13). [Leipzig and Baltimore, 1909], p. 98). 310 julian raby

85. The Inalid bull protome was used on the western facade, with, “Continuity of the Classical Tradition,” pp. 115–34, esp. pp. in at least one case, a ring in the bull’s mouth. On the east- 119–20, 128. Marlia Mango’s claim that stones were removed ern facade the bull head reappears, but so does an image of from the church of St. Sophia in 1183 is contradicted by Allen, a lion. On both the eastern, entrance side and the western, Classical Revival, p. 55. courtyard side of the central arch a lion is shown dominating a 92. The columns are of fourth-century date, which accords with bull. The emblematic aspect of these animals is confirmed by the fact that the cathedral was originally built in 313–20 and the sculpture on the Aleppo Gate, erected after control of the rebuilt as a Melkite cathedral: Mango, “Continuity of the Clas- city passed to Saladin and his vassal allies the Artuqids. Here sical Tradition,” p. 119. the Artuqid bird of prey is shown above a bull protome with a 93. Ibn Jubayr, Travels, ed. W. Wright, p. 281. On Harran and ring in its mouth: Van Berchem, Amida, p. 78. On the uncon- Abraham, see Seton Lloyd, W. Brice, et al., “Harran,” Anato- scionable wealth of the Nisanids, see Van Berchem, Inschriften lian Studies 1 (1951): 77–111; J. B. Segal, Edessa and Harran: aus Syrien, pp. 91–99. An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on 9 May 1961 (London: School 86. The Leiden manuscript used by Wright reads wa-huwa {atºq jadºd: of Oriental and African Studies, 1963). See Genesis 28:11, 28: Ibn Jubayr, Travels, ed. W. Wright, p. 246. Wright emended 17, and 28:19. the passage to wa-huwa {atºq mujaddad; cf. Ibn Jubayr, Voyages, 94. Ibn al-Shi¥na, Perles Choisies, pp. 8, 73–74; Herzfeld, “Damas- annot. and trans. Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes, 4 vols. cus: Studies in Architecture–II,” pp. 47–49; Herzfeld, Matériaux, (Paris 1949–65), vol. 3, p. 283, where the text is translated as vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 117; Gaube and Wirth, Aleppo, p. 74; Tabbaa, “antique mais restaurée.” Constructions of Power and Piety, pp. 106–8. 87. Allen, Classical Revival, pp. 41–46. 95. Van Berchem, Amida, p. 61, insc. no. 21: cf. insc. no. 18. 88. Jackson and Lyons, Saladin, pp. 78–79; Tabbaa, Constructions 96. Alessio Bombaci, “Die Mauerinschriften von Konya,” in For- of Power and Piety, p. 37. Shadbakht’s loyalty to Nur al-Din’s schungen zur Kunst Asiens: In Memoriam Kurt Erdmann, 9. Sep- memory is evident in the inscription on the madrasa he built tember 1901–30. September 1964, ed. O. Aslanapa and R. Nau- in Aleppo in 589 (1193), where, almost twenty years after Nur mann (Istanbul, 1969), pp. 67–73; Scott Redford, “The Seljuqs al-Din’s death, he describes himself as his {atºq. of Rum and the Antique,” Muqarnas 10, Essays in Honor of Oleg 89. Jackson and Lyons, Saladin, p. 80. Grabar (1993): 153–55. I am especially grateful to Scott Red- 90. Moritz Sobernheim, “Die arabischen Inschriften von Aleppo,” ford for allowing me to see his unpublished article on the walls pp. 198–202; Herzfeld, Matériaux, vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. 119ff., 128– of Konya and Capua. 29, inscription nos. 60 and 62; Tabbaa, Constructions of Power 97. P. Wittek, “Le Sultan de R¢m,” Annuaire de l’Institut de Philologie and Piety, p. 37. Shadbakht was involved with Harran as he et d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves 6 (1938): 361–90. More work is built a kh¸nq¸h there: Tabbaa, Constructions of Power and Piety, needed to understand what prompted the Artuqid Timurtash p. 37. to adopt portraits on Greek and Roman coins as models for 91. Allen, Classical Revival, p. 416; Tabbaa, “Survivals and Archa- the image of the sovereign: see Nicholas Lowick, “The Reli- isms,” p. 40. On the antique material used in the mosque, gious, the Royal and the Popular in the Figural Coinage of see D. S. Rice, “From Sºn to Saladin: Excavations in Harran‘s the Jazira,” in The Art of Syria and the Jazºra, 1100–2500, Oxford Great Mosque, with New Light on the Babylonian King Naboni- Studies in Islamic Art, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 159–74. He dus and His 104-Year-Old Mother,” Illustrated London News 231 began the practice in 542 (1147–48), the year he allied him- (1957): 466–69; Allen, Classical Revival, p. 55, n. 61; Mango, self in marriage with the Inalids of Diyarbakir.