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. A. Pugachenkova, “Shakhri Syabz pri Timure i Ulugh Beke” (“Shahr-i Sabz from Tīmūr to Ūlūgh Beg”), trans. J.M. Rogers, in Iran 16 (1978), 116-25. square meters of a spectacular floor of inspire the admiration as well as the fear glazed brick and ceramic tile (Fig. 3). The of visitors. Hillenbrand’s thesis well fits his related Uzbek publication dates back to broader argument which sees in the 1985.15 Further excavations would Mshattā case study a carefully contrived certainly help to shed light on the debate. formal axial progression and an intrinsically related visitor formal The Aq Saray: looking for “models” back procession:17 the patron at Mshattā and forth wanted to emphasise the audience Robert Hillenbrand, in discussing the chamber (Fig. 5A, 5B) by incorporating desert castles of Khirbat al-Mafjar (Fig. 4) empty space. In Mshattā the layout can and Qasr al-Mshattā (respectively in be rationally divided into three blocks of today’s Palestine and Jordan) built during almost identical size, namely the the late period of the Umayyad dynasty gatehouse, the empty courtyard and the (AD 661-750), says that beyond the throne chamber with the caliphal façades there were vestibules equipped apartments; after entering the great with benches; at Khirbat al-Mafjar, central courtyard, the eye of the visitor statues of half-naked women were was drawn to the audience hall and the installed in wall niches so that the only way to access it was by means of petitioners of the caliph could agreeably walking through a quite empty space beguile the tedium of waiting.16 enclosed by cliff-like walls (Fig. 6); this Hillenbrand argues that these were made arrangement must have been intended to both for the sake of security (the vestibule make the visitor feel small, isolated and was a barrier between himself and his threatened.18 The principle of axiality was subjects) and, more importantly, to further refined by a subtle modulation of
15 See, Lentz and Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision, 64. N. N. Kouzmina et al., “Ak-Sarai v Shakhrisabze” (Aq Saray in Shahr-i Sabz), in Stroitep'stvo i arkhi-tektura Uzbekistaia (Tashkent, 1985-86). In this regard, myself having not had the chance to visit the site at Shahrisabz, I would like to thank Jordan Quill for kindly provide me with a picture of a portion of the excavated floor.
16 Robert Hillenbrand, “Islamic Art at the Crossroads: East versus West at Mshatta,” in Studies in Medieval Islamic Architecture, Vol. 1 (London: Pindar, 2003), 147-8.
17 Robert Hillenbrand, “La Dolce Vita in Early Islamic Syria: The Evidence of Later Umayyad Palaces,” in op. cit., 73.
18 Hillenbrand, “Islamic Art at the Crossroad,” 155-6. This spatial orchestration is in tune with the increasing absolutism of the caliphal ruler. pace: from the very rich tapestry of suggests a link with the Ghaznavid figural and vegetal ornament in carved palaces at Ghazna (Fig. 8 and 9) or stone which clad the façade (Fig. 7A, Lashkar Gāh (early twelve century) as 7B), the visitor entered a single well as with the quarter (an abwāb al- passageway where space was set in berr, a pious foundation) built by Rashīd motion by the narrowing and broadening al-Dīn (1247-1318), Öljeytü’s vizier, also of corridors and courtyards.19 in Sultāniyya.20 A further comparison can Axiality as a guiding principle, a be traced with the RabꜤ-i Rashīdī, the formal layout of detached of charitable foundation built always by semidetached structures arranged around Rashīd al-Dīn in Tabriz and, as in and/or a central courtyard, are features Sultāniyya’s, including a madrasa, a equally retraceable in Central Asian hospital and a khānaqāh (building for examples built well before Timur’s Aq Sufi gatherings and residence) as well as Saray. Sheila Blair, referencing the the vizier’s tomb (Fig. 10).21 Timurid historian Hāfiz-i Abrū (d. 1430), Hāfiz-i Abrū compared features of discusses the enormous palace Öljeytü, Öljeytü’s palace to the Sasanian royal the post-Mongol Ilkhanid ruler of greater palace of Khusraw at Ctesiphon (mid- Iran, built at Sultāniyya (late thirteenth - sixth century AD).22 Babur also pointed early fourteenth century). She also out that the Aq Saray portal surpassed in
19 Hillenbrand, “Islamic Art at the Crossroad,” 156-7. For detailed descriptions of Khirbat al-Mafjar and Mshattā, see K. A. C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture. Umayyads. A.D. 622-750 Vol. 1/2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 545-606.
20 Sheila S. Blair, “The Mongol Capital of Sulṭāniyya, “The Imperial”,” in Iran 24 (1986), 146. On the Qasr-i Mas'ud III at Ghazna, see Alessio Bombaci, The Kufic Inscription in Persian Verses in the Court of the Royal Palace of Mas'ud III at Ghazni (Rome: Instituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente (ISMEO), 1966); Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000),411, 413-14, 579; Edgar Knobloch, “Survey of Archaeology and Architecture in Afghanistan, Part I: The South-Ghazni, Kandahar and Sistan,” in Afghanistan Journal 8 (1981), 3-20. On the buildings at Lashkar Gāh, see Terry Allen, “Notes on Bust,” in Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies 26 (1988), 55-68; 27 (1989), 57-66; 28 (1990), 23-30; Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, 413-414, 488, 579; still the most detailed study but still untranslated into English, Jean Claude Gardin, Claude, Daniel Schlumberger, and Janine Sourdel-Thomine, Lashkari Bazar, Une Résidence Royale Ghaznévide et Ghoride (Paris: C. Klincksieck, 1963).
21 See Sheila S. Blair, “Ilkhanid Architecture and Society: An Analysis of the Endowment Deed of the RabꜤ-i Rashīdī,” in Iran 22 (1984), 67-90.
22 Blair, “The Mongol Capital of Sulṭaniyya,” 146. height and the “Kisri Arch” or Taq-i Kisra central hall.26 This very idea of space (Ayvan of Khusraw.Fig. 11A, 11B).23 arranged sequentially, also found in What still stands at Ctesiphon (near the Timur’s Aq Saray, was the architectural modern town of Salman Pak in Iraq) is translation of performative practices of indeed the parabolic arch of what once display of royal splendour (the ancient was a forty-eight meters high ayvan Persian concept of farr) through which which originally had large rooms with the ideology of kingship was made ceremonial functions on either sides. Parts manifest.27 of the southern wing six-storied brick If the Aq Saray at Shahrisabz may façade still remain.24 By virtue of its size have been indebted to earlier Central and boldness, the Taq-i Kisra was a Asian models, it does itself has to be constant challenge for Muslim architects considered a source of inspiration for and had a hold onto the imaginary of later complexes: Terry Allen, suggests a later rulers, becoming a literary topos in resemblance between the Aq Saray and the whole of the Islamic world as shown two now ruined structures built by later by Hāfi z - i A b r ū’s and Babur’s Timurid rulers and notables in Herat, comparisons.25 In front of Taq-i Kisra, namely the Bāgh-i Jahān ĀrāꜤī (“World- there was a large paved courtyard used Adorning Bāgh”) built by Sultan Husayn by the king to address his subjects. Bāyqarā (1438-1506) and the Bāghchah-i Khusraw’s throne was placed under the ꜤAlī Shīr near Gazurgah built probably entry ayvan, the king’s heavy crown by ꜤAli-Shir NavaꜤi (1441-1501), a suspended from the vault. Beyond the Timurid poet, mystic and statesman (Fig. ayvan, a narrow passageway led to a 12). The ruins of the Bāghchah-i ꜤAlī Shīr
23 Thackston, Baburnama, 49.
24 “Taq-i Kisra,” Archnet, accessed May 7, 2017, https://archnet.org/sites/5282/media_contents/5285.
25 Robert Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, 390-1.
26 “Taq-i Kisra,” Archnet, accessed May 7, 2017, https://archnet.org/sites/5282/media_contents/5285.
27 Sussan Babaie, “Introduction: Conviviality, Charismatic Absolutism, and the Persianization of ShiꜤism,” in Isfahan and Its Palaces (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), 2. reveal a loosely axial distribution of their attention. According to Margaret pavilions, reservoirs and gardens set in a Olin, conceiving the gaze (in our case, landscape ground behind a large entry subject-ruler and vice versa) as a threat, complex.28 Both complexes are called an invitation, or a communication implies bāgh (garden): if a saray (mansion) a similar conception of human relations provided inspiration for a garden, then a which may be of two kinds, either “I-it” or revaluation of the concepts of palace and “I-thou”. The former are power relations garden is very much needed. in which acknowledging someone visually is making that person part of oneself, a Aq Saray: where did Timur want us to possession, in a totalistic and hegemonic go? way (the ruler looking onto his subjects). The formal planning of Mshattā and of The latter are relations of reciprocity in other Central Asian examples, and, most which the stare-down perspective is importantly, the concept of space as replaced by the returned gaze which active medium, dictating what to see and “[r]escues the beheld’s sense of self”.29 In experience (Hillenbrand), can be used to this regard, the philosopher Martin Buber discuss Timur’s Aq Saray. (1878-1965) talked about heteroglossia, After entering the Aq Saray which is the co-existence of multiple, complex passing under the portal, those equally valid speaking voices in a who visited Timur’s court would have dialogue.30 Accordingly we might been accommodated in the gatehouse or consider Timur’s project to have set an “I- on three sides of the courtyard. The it” relation, but one which, albeit making beautifully decorated doorway which his person the object of reverence, did marked the area more closely associated not impose a barrier between the ruler with the sovereign and led to the and his subjects or attendants, but rather reception hall would have magnetised
28 Terry Allen, Timurid Herat (Weisbaden: Reichert, 1983), 51-52. For detailed description of the Bāgh-i Jahān ĀrāꜤī and of the Bāghchah-i ꜤAlī Shīr see Terry Allen, A Catalogue of The Toponyms and Monuments of Timurid Herat (Cambridge, Mass: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1981), 195-8, 221.
29 Margaret Olin, “Gaze,” in Critical Terms of Art History, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 327.
30 Olin, “Gaze,” 327. See also, Michael Zank and Zachary Braiterman, “Martin Buber,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published April 20, 2004, last modified December 4, 2014, accessed May 07, 2017, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/. invited “the guest” to an encounter. This in the Irshād al-ZirāꜤa, a horticultural encounter, nonetheless, was not meant to manual completed in Herat in 1515 by happen in the closed environment of the Qāsim ibn Yūsuf Abūnasrī. A chahār audience chamber but, more plausibly, in bāgh consisted of a rectangular walled a forth space: the multiform bāgh garden divided in four smaller parts by (garden) set beyond the screen of walkways or water channels, with pool palacios Clavijo so enthusiastically and pavilion along the main axis and described. Space was therefore Qāsim ibn Yūsuf provided a detailed understood as being at the same time description of the plant species and their gaze-regulated and body-regulated. arrangement in plots (chaman).31 From Timur prescribed rituality and these precious source we can understand separateness by making the precinct how high the sensory engagement was in which denoted his persona the constant a garden environment: even progressing focus of the visitor’s gaze, but at the of a few meters along the walkways the same time he wanted the guests to move colours smells of flowers and fruits on and to overcome the barrier changed dramatically. The pavilion itself represented by solid architecture. The was clad in vines, cucumber and gatehouse, the paved courtyard and the mulberry, making it disappear among the royal apartments were staging stations of greenery. Light was filtered by the a formal succession in which space poplars fencing the enclosure and it unfolded itself gradually, the climax covered every surface in always finally reached in the open space of the changing patterns. The sound of water garden where all senses, not just sight, was a continuous melody as well as the were overwhelmed. Ralph Pinder- calls of birds and animals which Wilson’s reconstructed a chahār bāgh populated trees and bushes. (Fig. 13) after the descriptions contained
31 Ralph Pinder-Wilson, “The Persian Garden: Bagh and Chahar Bagh,” in Studies in Islamic Art, by Ralph Pinder-Wilson (London: The Pindar Press, 1985), 284-7. See also, Maria Eva Subtelny, “A Medieval Persian Agricultural Manual in Context: The Irshād al-ZirāꜤa in Late Timurid and Early Safavid Khorasan.” In Studia Iranica 22 (1993), 167-217; Maria Eva Subtelny, “Agriculture and the Timurid Chahārbāgh: The Evidence from a Medieval Persian Agricultural Manual,” in Gardens in the Time of the Great Muslim Empires, ed. Attilio Petruccioli (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014) 110-28; Jürgen Jakobi, “Agriculture between Literary Tradition and Firsthand Experience: The Irshād al-ziraꜤa of Qasim b. Yusuf Abu Nasri Haravi, “ 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), 201-8. An effective climax presupposes, design, references nature and therefore however, an effective strategy of the luxuriant garden laid outside the anticipation, and in this regard the role of formal microcosm of the palace-stage, ornament cannot be overestimated. Olin and now in perennial dialogue with it. says the term “gaze” replaced, to a large Despite their ephemerality, extent, the twentieth century discourse of gardens required great care. The Irshād opticality according to which the visual al-ZirāꜤa completed discloses the arts had to concern themselves with the meticulousness with which botanists and optical rather than the tactile, striving for garden designers chose and combined the depiction of the immateriality of different plants with their different colours and light rather than the weight colours, smells and metaphorical and solidity of objects.32 A mirage-like meanings, in relation, for example to the appearance avoided the representation body of beloved woman.34 Solid of outlines and three-dimensionality as architecture, however, becomes the well as the straightforward ground where care and industry acknowledgement of the status of the overpower ephemerality and crystallise object (or of architectural form).33 At the sensuousness in the triumph of flowers, Aq Saray tilework revetment with vegetal tendrils, leaves (Fig. 14) the technicolour and geometric patterns becomes itself of glazes, their chromatic complexity, the architecture. If at Mshattā the visitor felt jigsaw-like quality of millions of tiles, the intimidated by the emptiness of the ways in which the intricacies of vegetal surrounding courtyard, in the Aq Saray ornamentation get entangled in the letters Timur overwhelmed the visitor by means of an inscription (Fig. 15), all rendered of splendour and excess. Ornament, with truly miraculous skilfulness. though artificial in that it is an abstract
32 Olin, “Gaze,” 318.
33 Olin, “Gaze,” 318.
34 See, William L. Hanaway Jr, “The Vegetation of the Earthly Garden,” Appendix to “Paradise on Earth: The Terrestrial Garden in Persian Literature,” in The Islamic Garden, ed. Elisabeth B. MacDougall, and Richard Ettinghausen (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, 1976), 64-7. See also, Maria Eva Subtelny, “Visionary Rose: Metaphorical Interpretation of Horticultural Practice in Medieval Persian Mysticism,” in Botanical Progress, Horticultural Innovations, and Cultural Changes, ed. Michel Conan, and W. John Kress (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2007), 13-34. Hans-Georg Gadamer discusses striving to read a Qur’anic inscriptions. the ontological foundation of the The building is oriented to north with the ornament and its connection with the result that much of the tilework is cast into phenomenology of space stating that shade and thus allowing one to while architecture creates space it also appreciate the subtleties of palette which embraces all the decorative aspects of bright sunlight would destroy (Fig. 16).36 this shaping, including ornament. Ornament was thus conceived to be Ornament, in this way, draws the contemplated and contemplation was viewer’s attention to itself to be pleasing part of those very spatial staging stations to the eye and to redirect it away from which were necessary to traverse before itself to the greater whole of the context encountering the ruler. of life which it accompanies. Gadamer, Conclusion: toward a phenomenology of following Kant, argued that ornament monuments, palaces and gardens acquires aesthetic import only in relation The role of the monument and its relation to what it decorates, its wearer, and to space and gaze was brilliantly belongs to its self-presentation: ornament discussed by the French philosopher and being part of the presentation, and sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991). presentation being an ontological event, His theories about space may provide the then ornament is representation, which critical backdrop for an understanding of for Gadamer is the condition of being a Timur’s gardens. Lefebvre analysed work of art (or of architecture).35 In historical spatialisations on three axes Timur’s Aq Saray, ornament is vital as it dialectically related and in shifting represents the first layer of aesthetic balance, namely the perceived space, the signification which will be further and conceived and the lived. The perceived fully developed in the natural setting of space (le perçu) corresponded to the the garden. We can imagine one of everyday life, commonsensical Timur’s petitioners waiting for the perception. The conceived space (le sovereign audience and withdrawing conçu) is the professional and theoretical within himself while staring at millions of view of mastermind exercising control. tiles melting in stupendous patterns, or
35 Gadamer, “The Ontological Foundation,”134-6.
36 Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture, 425. The lived space (le veçu) is where architecture as texts (see Gadamer’s l’homme totale dwells and where his approach in the introduction to this imagination is kept alive and accessible. essay), Lefebvre favoured considering This third space transcends le perçu and them in relation to texture where le conçu and finds the balance between monuments represent the nexuses of the two.37 Waving this thesis into the Aq networks and webs (namely systems and Saray discussion, we might consider the subsystems of meanings constantly garden space as mediating between the shifting hierarchy).38 Following this waiting-guest perspective whose gaze is approach, Timur’s palaces and gardens “caged” in the Court-house environment can be seen as moments of a large scale (le perçu, also representing t he performance, a concept which, by theoretical stance of most of Timurid definition, “[a]sserts embodiment and scholars who stop at the first layer of interconnection in time, space and place meaning of propagandistic as the basis of human experience, monumentality) and Timur’s who perception and representation”.39 The exploited the formality of solid world ruler, and his builders and architecture as a medium which, albeit designers, conceptualised the being immobile, referenced a mobile multifunctional space which would suit the world. This mediation was perpetrated by different needs of formal ceremonies, means of ornament which denied rituals, festivities, in both their aristocratic architecture in its solid connotation and and public forms. Furthermore, Lefebvre adhered to the natural world. called for restoration of concern for the Distancing himself from the body. He argued that architectural codifying approach of semiology which, qualities are not solely plastic but have to according to him, treats monuments and be apprehended through all senses, for
37 Rob Shields, “Henri Lefebvre,” in Key Thinkers on Space and Place, 2nd, ed. Phil Hubbard and Rob Kitchin, (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2011), 281-2.
38 Henri Lefebvre, “The Production of Space (extracts): Monument,” in Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, ed. Neil Leach (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 140. Originally published in Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. David Nicholson-Smith (London: Balckwell Publishers, 1991), 222.
39 Kristine Stiles, “Performance,” in Critical Terms of Art History, ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 75. example engaging with the perfumes and superimposition determined by the locus colours of an orchard, the sounds of of power.42 The fluidity characterising fountains and running water, even the Lefebvre’s approach fits the intrinsic birds and caged animals.40 indeterminacy of Timur’s use of space Lefebvre also identified a social which, however formally defined, dimension behind monumentality: society acquired meaning according to comes to identify itself into monumental occasional necessity. space which becomes the very site where the political and religious realms symbolically and ceremonially exchange attributes of power with the consequence of mutual reinforcement.41 In this regard it is worth mentioning the example of the Quriltay, a ceremonial assembly of Turco- Mongol clans, at Samarqand in 1404 to which Clavijo assisted. Signifier and signified became very interchangeable concepts when space came to be defined by the sudden “apparition” of tent or by means of fencing the ground using objects of daily use (vases, jars); the latter suffered a displacement, they were transferred into monumental space and were filled with signification by a vertical
40 Lefebvre, “Monument,” 142.
41 Lefebvre, “Monument,” 143.
42See, Peter Alford Andrews, “The Tents of Timur: An Examination of Reports on the Quriltay at Samarqand, 1404,” in Arts of the Eurasian Steppelands, ed. Philip Denwood (London: Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, 1978), 143-81; O’Kane, “From Tents to Pavilions,” 250-6; Roxburgh, “Ruy González de Clavijo’s Narrative of Courtly Life and Ceremony,” 136-50.