219 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXXVI N° 1-2, Januari-April 2019 220
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219 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXXVI N° 1-2, januari-april 2019 220 encourages the reader to see North Africans as agents in the production of their own early Islamic material culture, rather than as somewhat passive imitators of what Muslims in the Islamic East or al-Andalus were doing better. Moreover, to position the Aghlabids with respect to lands to their west, reminds us of the importance of Ifrīqiya as a metropole for North Africa rather than as an errant, peripheral province of the ῾Abbāsid caliphate. In keeping with its historiographical mission, the volume brings together contributions in English and French written by a plethora of scholars from Europe, the United States, and most importantly the Maghrib itself. This is a major strength of the collection which points to possibilities for further con- versation between sometimes rather segregated academic communities. Poignantly, the book is dedicated to one of the doyens of Aghlabid scholarship, the Tunisian historian Mohamed Talbi, who was, by the editors’ own account, sur- prised and delighted by the project to bring fresh attention and energy to the study of the Aghlabids and early Islamic North Africa more generally, but passed away shortly before the collection was published. The volume commences with an introduction by the edi- tors which knits together the varied selection of contributions that follows. This is a challenging task but the editors mostly carry it off and give historical and historiographical logic to the five parts that follow, making an appeal for us to under- stand early medieval North Africa as one of the dynamic centres of the Islamic world, and Ifrīqiya as a hub, connected in multifarious ways to neighbouring regions in North Africa, and also Sicily and Iberia. The first two parts of the volume focus on Ifrīqiya and the Aghlabids themselves with a focus on nuancing previous assumptions about the dynasty. The first part, entitled ‘State-Building’, starts with complemen- tary chapters from Hugh Kennedy and Mounira Chapoutot- Remadi that use a range of Arabic primary sources to look in a broad sense at how the Aghlabids, an Arab lineage pre- viously based in Khurāsān, came to rule Ifrīqiya, their sup- port base and their construction of an autonomous emirate. The next contribution by Annliese Nef considers Aghlabid policy towards Sicily in the context of their broader political objectives and need to legitimise themselves on the North African mainland which she suggests might be the cause of their slow measured expansion into Sicily. Subsequent chapters take a material and cultural view of ISLAMITISCHE KUNST the Aghlabids, beginning with Caroline Goodson’s analysis of the topography of Qayrawān (Kairouan) and Aghlabid interventions in the monumental urban fabric. Although ANDERSON, G. D., C. FENWICK and M. ROSSER-OWEN often perceived as the ‘capital’ of the Aghlabid amirate, (eds.) — The Aghlabids and their Neighbors. Art and Goodson convincingly demonstrates that Qayrawān was the Material Culture in Ninth-Century North Africa. (HdO. site of considerable competition and sometimes conflict and Section 1: The Near and Middle East, Volume 122). that while the Aghlabids made forceful interventions such as Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden-Boston, 2017. the reconstruction of the great mosque, urban elites con- (23,5 cm, XXXVIII, 610). ISBN: 978-90-04-35566-8. structed their own monuments and sacred geography, render- ISSN: 0169-9423. € 189,-; $ 218.00. ing the city a regional centre rather than a dynastic capital, This weighty edited volume of 29 contributions, many a model relevant to other towns of the period too. drawn from an international workshop held in 2014, is an Abdelhamid Fenina’s contribution is one of two focused extremely welcome addition to the rather sparse array of on Aghlabid coinage. Through careful analysis of coinage scholarship on the history, art, architecture and material cul- from the ῾Abbāsiyya mint and Arabic texts, he gives a new ture of early Islamic North Africa. Compiled and edited by mid-eighth century dating for the foundation of al-῾Abbāsiyya Mariam Rosser-Owen, Corisande Fenwick and Glaire Ander- which reconciles the apparently conflicting evidence pro- son, a trio of scholars, known for their multi-disciplinary, vided by the Arabic sources and the numismatic evidence, multi-lingual and often revisionist endeavours in the field, it and the historiographical confusion around the subject. has a refreshingly unapologetic Maghribi perspective which Mohamed Ghodhbane provides a close study of subtle shifts 221 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — ISLAMITISCHE KUNST 222 in Aghlabid coinage design itself which remained relatively the coastal ribāṭs of the Aghlabid period, with a nuanced stable but also showed artistic changes provoked by the polit- analysis of Arabic source references and archaeology that ical crisis that marked the last years of the amirate, before shows the importance of distinguishing the role of the the Aghlabids were replaced by the Fāṭimids. This section Ifrīqiyan network of coastal forts from evolving notions of ends with a chapter by Dwight Reynolds which investigates ribāṭ as a pious practice incorporating many elements, and Arabic reports that the ῾Abbāsid singer and musician, Ziryāb, the desire of the Aghlabid dynasty itself to control the coast. sojourned in Ifrīqiya at the court of the Aghlabid amir, The five chapters in Part Three take us into the realm of Ziyādat Allāh, prior to his arrival in Umayyad Córdoba. ‘Ceramics: Morphology and Mobility’. The focus here is Although not as connected to the broader themes of the book archaeological and art historical but maintains the theme as other contributions, this is a fascinating insight into of connectivity between Aghlabid domains and other parts of Aghlabid court culture, as well as possible sensibilities on the Islamic world at the level of exchanges of technical tech- the part of Ziyādat Allāh about his maternal slave ancestry. niques and tastes. To commence, Soundes Gragueb Chatti Part Two turns to monuments and the ‘physical construc- explores the ceramic production of Aghlabid Raqqāda tion of power’, reprising and complementing Caroline Good- in relation to eastern Islamic ceramics, through the prism son’s chapter on topographies of power. The focus is very of parenté and filiation. The next two chapters move to much on the Aghlabid great mosques of Qayrawān and Tunis Aghlabid Palermo: Fabiola Ardizzone, Elena Pezzini and and particular features within them which shed light on the Viva Sacco bring to a wider audience the fruits of recent Aghlabids’ cultural and political orientations. The first four excavations and the ceramic finds which give material evi- contributions look at the great mosque of Qayrawān com- dence for movement between Ifrīqiya and Sicily in the form mencing with an intriguing comparison of archaeological of similar distinctive yellow glazes, the giallo di Palermo and textual evidence for the stages in the building and and jaune de Raqqāda. Lucia Arcifa and Alessandra rebuilding of the iconic great mosque of Qayrawān by Faouzi Bagnera’s contribution provides additional analysis of Paler- Mahfoudh which reveal the inconsistencies in the later evi- mitan wares from the ninth and tenth centuries. The focus dence provided by al-Bakrī, and the immense value of read- then moves to the western Maghrib and rare ceramic finds ing texts in terms of their context of production and along- from the Qarawiyyīn Mosque in Fes, dating to the ninth and side archaeological evidence. The importance of combining tenth centuries when the town was under Idrīsid and then archaeological and textual evidence and assessing the two Zanāta rule. Kaoutar El Baljani, Ahmed Ettahiri and Abdal- against each other is, in fact, a consistent theme of the vol- lah Fili present this fascinating material to show the inde- ume and another facet of its crossing of boundaries, in this pendent development of ceramics in this area and their lack case disciplinary rather than linguistic or national. of commonality with Ifrīqiyan wares of the same period A close analysis of the marble panels of the miḥrāb by which ran parallel to the tense political relationship between Jonathan Bloom further addresses the question of ‘influence’ the two areas, especially between the Idrīsids and the by showing that, while the miḥrāb’s lustre tiles were imported Aghlabids. In the final contribution in this section, Elena from Iraq, the marble panels were executed by an individual Salinas and Irene Montilla step back and consider the mate- from al-Andalus, whose ‘signature’ has recently been rial cultural production of al-Andalus and Ifrīqiya, noting revealed. This highlights that the Aghlabids were not simply that exchanges at the level of monumental architecture and in communication with the Islamic east but also the western decoration are well attested but that exchange was much reaches of the Islamic world, and al-Andalus in particular. more limited for domestic ceramic wares as one might The next contribution by Nadège Picotin and Claire Déléry expect. looks at the minbar and its later renovations, while Khadija In Part Four we encounter the ‘neighbors’ of the Aghlabids, Hamdi analyses a set of green and yellow tiles ‘hidden’ both those geographically contiguous and those more distant behind the miḥrāb in the final contribution to the section. and disconnected from the Aghlabid sphere. In the first chap- While adding to our knowledge of the history of the building ter, Renata Holod and Tarek