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ROCCO-CUAJ-PDF.Compressed.Pdf The career of Timur (1336-1405) as Amir its construction is evidence of a building of Central Asia was marked by an campaign carried out first and foremost in ambitious quest for power and legitimacy pursuit of competition in traditional terms within two traditions: the Chaghataytid, with past examples: the subsequent Turco-Mongol one, and the Islamic.1 residences Timur erected were gardens Scholars have long agreed that a part of studded with pavilions which therefore this enterprise of legitimisation was preserved a nomadic flavour, tents for pursued by means of architectural accommodation being erected and the patronage.2 Others have posited that delights of nature fully enjoyed.4 Timur’s choice to establish Samarqand as A ruined monumental ayvan – a a capital city was evidence of him giving span of some twenty-two meters and a up the Mongol nomadic principle of height of over thirty metres, the largest mobility and his recognition of the extant Islamic ayvan – is all that has importance of sedentariness to imperial survived from the Aq Saray (Fig. 1A, 1B rule.3 In the city of Shahrisabz or Kesh, and 2A, 2B). By definition, an ayvan is a an important centre already under the large vaulted hall which may be walled ancient Sogdians (sixth to eleventh on three sides and opening directly on century BC) and close to his birthplace, the outside on the fourth. The side Timur built the Aq Saray (literally, “White opposite to the one opening to the Palace”, probably denoting its noble, outside can present, like it seems it was royal nature). It has been suggested that the case in the Aq Saray, a narrow 1 Beatrice Forbes Manz, “Tamerlane and the Symbolism of Sovereignty,” in Iranian Studies 21 (1988), 105-122. 2 Thomas Lentz, “Memory and Ideology in the Timurid Garden,” in Mughal Gardens: Sources, Places, Representations, and Prospects, ed. by James L. Wescoat Jr., and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1996), 33. 3 Monika Gronke, “The Persian Court between Palace and Tent: from Timur to ꜤAbbas I,” in Timurid Art and Culture: Iran and Central Asia in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Lisa Golombek, and Maria Eva Subtelny (Leiden and New York: E.J. Brill, 1992), 19. 4 Bernard O’Kane, “From Tents to Pavilions: Royal Mobility and Persian Palace Design,” in Ars Orientalis 23 (1993): 253. passageway leading to a successive meaning laid by a work of art and of space. Two truncated cylindrical towers, architecture.7 originally sixty to seventy metres high, This essay takes its departure from flank the ayvan.5 Scholars dealing with Gadamer’s stance and argues that Timurid arts and architecture have taken scholars would have come to different the Aq Saray as exemplary of the conclusions on the Aq Saray if they had technological innovations in tilework not categorised the complex as “palace” revetment of buildings which occurred and had instead focused on its relation to under the Timurids but have been making the concept of “garden”. This essay aims up a history of Timur by emphasising the to re-evaluate the concepts of “garden” megalomania of his architectural and “palace” and to prove that practices projects.6 In other words they have of “enunciation of kingship” shaped the considered a single monument as a configuration and the understanding of historical document one simply consults. space and place.8 If, as we shall see, This was the least privileged path of neither the formal layout of the Aq Saray historical investigation by the German nor the first layer of meaning ascribed to philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer it must have significantly departed from (1900-2002) who instead saw the job of earlier models, Timur’s mind envisaged a historian as a quest for the very models in new synthesis: residential palaces and the past which may elucidate the claim to gardens did not work as autonomous entities having meaning on their own but 5 “Aq Saray Palace,” Archnet, accessed May 07, 2017, https://archnet.org/sites/2481/media_contents/ 1582. See also, Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 423-6. For a definition of “Ayvān”, see Oleg Grabar, “Ayvān,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, published December 15, 1987, last modified August 18, 2011, accessed May 07, 2017, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/ayvan-palace. 6 Thomas W. Lentz and Glenn D. Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989), 42-5. 7 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Ontological Foundation of the Occasional and the Decorative,” in Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, ed. Neil Leach (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 127. Originally published in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London: Sheed and Ward), 127-142. Gadamer acknowledged that this backward-looking approach can counter the claim to meaning made by the work of art itself and that the models discovered could not have been recognised by the observer contemporary to the work’s production. 8 I borrow the expression “enunciation of kingship” from Sussan Babaie who coined it and made use in her Isfahan and Its Palaces (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008). functioned as an ensemble which came to According to Clavijo, “these great embody dynastic preoccupations such as palaces” (he always expresses himself conquest, legitimacy, authority, with the plural form palacios) had a long identification, mythology and entrance (a very deep ayvan) marked on separateness.9 Timur devised formal and the two opposite sides by high gateways. visual strategies through which this 10 The first, colossal one, looking north presentation took place, namely the idea onto the city Shahrisabz, towards the of spaces and places as progressive mountains and the city of Samarqand. stages of access to royal precincts and The second was smaller and, according to the role played by architectural ornament Clavijo, led to a great stone-paved in prefiguring the “natural” setting whose courtyard with a pool in the middle and use was Timur’s privileged to address his surrounded by richly decorated subjects. doorways (continuous arches). He further notes that beyond the courtyard a very The Aq Saray in Clavijo’s and Babur’s broad and lofty doorway ornamented words with glazed tiles in blue and gold There are two main early textual sources patterns led to a reception hall which also on the Aq Saray complex: one is by Ruy had tiled walls and gilded ceiling. Clavijo González de Clavijo, the Spanish envoy goes on describing rooms and to the court of Timur who visited apartments (cameras and apartamientos) Shahrisabz in 1404; the second is by the – presumably on a second level founder of the Mughal Empire and surrounding the courtyard – made to be Timur’s descendant, Babur (1483-1530), occupied by Timur and his wives. Most who, about a century later, gives a interestingly Clavijo describes a great description in his book of memoirs, garden with shade-bearing and fruit trees Baburnama. and water channels and tanks situated in 9Lentz, “Memory and Ideology,” 31. 10 For a discussion about Clavijo’s use of Spanish terms, see David Roxburgh, “Ruy González de Clavijo’s Narrative of Courtly Life and Ceremony in Timur’s Samarqand, 1404,” in The ‘Book’ of Travels: Genre, Ethnology, and Pilgrimage, 1250–1700, ed. Palmira Brummet (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 124-7. front of a square chamber (quadra) set to two smaller halls might also be a hint apart by Timur for feasting and eating at two more lateral ayvans, a formula we with his women.11 know from both domestic and religious Babur refers to a great arched hall architecture, which therefore would make where Timur sat with his Commander- the entire complex fit into the scheme of a begs and Divan-begs on his right and left. standard four ayvans plan: the halls to He also talks about two smaller halls built host high-ranking guests, the small for those attending the court and small recesses for lesser guests or occasional recesses for petitioners on the four sides petitioners. of the Court-house.12 This could match Calvijo’s and Babur’s descriptions Clavijo’s account when, referring to the have triggered a debate about the nature long entrance, he describes arches of of these impressive but proportionally brick covered with glazed tiles with scanty remains: is the richly decorated various patterns and colours as forming structure what is left of the pishtaq lying small recesses without doors and with in front of the north ayvan of the court tiled floor where visitors sat waiting for (Clavijo) or rather the centrepiece of the Timur to receive them.13 The doorways complex behind which the reception hall opening up on the courtyard Clavijo once stood (Babur’s arched hall)?14 Lentz mentions for their fine workmanship could and Lowry reference an excavation have served the same purpose as Babur carried out by Soviet archaeologist which seems also to suggest. Babur’s reference brought to light nearly four hundred 11 Ruy González de Clavijo, Narrative of the Embassy of Ruy González de Clavijo to the court of Timour, at Samarcand, A.D. 1403–6, trans. Clements R. Markham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 124-5. 12 Wheeler M. Thackston, ed. and trans., The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor (New York: The Modern Library, 2002), 49. 13 Clavijo, Narrative, 124. 14 For details on the discussion, see Lisa Golombek, and Donald Wilber, The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), 271-5. Also, M.E. Masson, and G.
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