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Seeing the Light: Enacting the Divine at Three Medieval Syrian Shrines

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Seeing the Light: Enacting the Divine at Three Medieval Syrian Shrines chapter 5 Seeing the Light: Enacting the Divine at Three Medieval Syrian Shrines Stephennie Mulder One of the most challenging issues in Islamic art is insight has been gained from these studies, and the question of meaning. Beginning in the 1980s they have made rich contributions to our under- and continuing through the early 2000s, scholars standing of Islamic art and its semiotic and sym- of Islamic art frequently approached the issue of bolic world. However, it is rarely remarked that the presence of symbolic or socio-cultural mean- these systems of interpretation were initially ings using two distinct methods: either traditional developed for understanding Western, typically iconographic analysis, which ultimately traces its European, visual culture, and their adoption out- roots to the work of Erwin Panofsky—or semiotic side of that context has not often been questioned analysis, whose intellectual genealogy derives by scholars in the field of Islamic art.2 Intuitively, it from various modes of structuralist linguistics in would seem, for example, that semiotic interpreta- the tradition of Ferdinand de Saussure, usually via tion might work differently when applied to Ernst Gombrich. Using such approaches, research- non-representational art, and that a system of ers have, over the past thirty years, generated a meaning developed for the interpretation of the copious tradition of iconographic and semiotic analyses that engage a broad range of objects, from Irene Bierman, Writing Signs: The Fatimid Public Text early Abbasid lusterware and Fatimid architec- (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). For later tural decoration to Timurid illustrated manu- periods and other localities in the Islamic world, recent scripts and Safavid painted tiles.1 Much critical scholarship includes Gülru Necipoğlu, The Topkapı Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (Santa 1 An impressively comprehensive bibliography of studies Monica, Calif.: Getty Center for the History of Art and the on iconography can be found in Robert Hillenbrand, Humanities, 1995), esp. 217–23; Yasser Tabbaa, The ed., Image and Meaning in Islamic Art (London: Altajir Transformation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival World of Islam Trust, 2005). Studies employing semiotic (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001); and a sophis- approaches include Caroline Williams, “The Cult of ticated rethinking of semiotic theory as a process of transla- ʿAlid Saints in the Fatimid Monuments of Cairo, Part I: tion can be found in Finbarr B. Flood, Objects of Translation: The Mosque of al-Aqmar,” Muqarnas 1 (1983): 37–52; Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter Caroline Williams, “The Cult of ʿAlid Saints in the Fatimid (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009). Monuments of Cairo, Part ii: The Mausolea,” Muqarnas 2 A similar critique was made many years ago with respect 3 (1985): 39–60; and Doris Behrens-Abouseif, “The Façade to European art, especially regarding the way its study was of the Aqmar Mosque in the Context of Fatimid shaped predominantly by the art history of a single time Ceremonial,” Muqarnas 9 (1992): 29–38. For an elaboration and place—the Renaissance in Italy. See Svetlana Alpers, of similar themes with respect to Fatimid ritual, see Paula The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century Sanders, “From Court Ceremony to Urban Language,” in (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Oleg Grabar The Islamic World from Classical to Modern Times: Essays in often questioned these methods, albeit rather indirectly. Honor of Bernard Lewis, ed. C.E. Bosworth et al. (Princeton, See his “Symbols and Signs in Islamic Architecture,” in N.J.: Darwin Press, 1989), 311–21; and Paula Sanders, Ritual, Architecture as Symbol and Self-Identity, ed. Jonathan Katz Politics, and the City in Fatimid Cairo (Albany, N.Y.: State (Philadelphia: Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1980), University of New York Press, 1994), chaps. 2 and 3; and 25–32. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.����/������4������_��� Seeing the Light 89 predominantly representational art forms of The past decade has seen a turn toward increas- Europe such as sculpture, or paintings on wood or ingly sophisticated modes of analyzing this inter- canvas, might not transfer seamlessly to Islamic art action, drawing attention to the ways not just forms such as ceramic glazed tiles, calligraphy, or patrons, but also viewers and recipients of visual textiles. But for the most part, scholars of Islamic culture themselves possess agency and are dynam- art have simply adopted the semiotic model, rarely ically engaged in the process of meaning-making, questioning its methodological value or limita- and emphasizing the recipient’s critical role in gen- tions when applied in a non-European context.3 erating fluid meanings over time and geography.6 One problem that arises from the use of such Going a step further, anthropologists have argued models is that when specific symbolic or semiotic that the work of art itself can be proposed as a kind meanings have been assigned to works of art from of active social catalyst, engaged in the process the Islamic world, they are frequently limited by of continuous and shifting creation of significance. what Oleg Grabar called their “low symbolic In this reading, a subtle shift in emphasis occurs: charge.” By this, he meant that objects that may instead of the traditional art-historical focus on have had a “highly intense meaning… provided for aesthetics and symbolism, attention is paid to the time of their creation—all lost their specific action: to “agency, causation, result and transfor- meaning soon thereafter.”4 While this is true, to mation,” and art is defined not as primarily an some degree, of all works of art, Islamic art seems aesthetic system but as “a system of action intended particularly difficult to pin down when it comes to to change the world, rather than encode symbolic meaning, and those meanings that can be assigned propositions about it.”7 This approach, first put seem especially transient, changeable, or often forward by Alfred Gell in the late 1990s and now deliberately ambiguous. A classic example, the developed into a body of scholarship loosely Dome of the Rock, is a case in point: probably created to convey a specific message of a religio- 6 Already in the 1960s, Ernst Gombrich spoke of the “behold- political character, it later lost these associations to er’s stare,” the stock of images stored in the viewer’s mind become the site of the miracle of the Prophet’s which he/she brings to the interpretation of art. See Ernst Ascension—the miʿrāj—through a process that is, H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of as yet, little understood.5 Thus, a central challenge Pictorial Representation (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), of using these methods for defining meaning pt. 3. In the past two decades, art historians, particularly in Islamic art is that any such definitions are not Donald Preziosi, have challenged the primacy of aestheti- fixed, and are instead shifting, varied, and socially cism and iconography. See his Rethinking Art History: nuanced. Their apprehension and perception are Meditations on a Coy Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). Many of these scholars have been concerned dependent on a myriad of factors, including time with reception theory and the performative aspects of elapsed from creation, the attitudes of artists, art. See David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies patrons, and later caretakers, and their reception in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University by the viewer, all of which shift profoundly between of Chicago Press, 1989); Hans Belting, Likeness and individuals and over time and space. Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Jaś Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from 3 Since it was as a student of Renata’s that I first began to the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge think about the complex multivalency of Islamic visual University Press, 1995); W.J.T. Mitchell, “What Do Pictures culture, a deeper exploration of the issue of meaning Really Want?,” October 77 (1996): 71–82; and Richard H. seems an appropriate subject for this volume. Davis, Lives of Indian Images (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton 4 Grabar, “Symbols and Signs,” 27. University Press, 1997). 5 Nasser Rabbat, “The Meaning of the Umayyad Dome of 7 Emphasis added. Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An the Rock,” Muqarnas 6 (1989): 12–21. Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 6..
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