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The Arts of the Mamluks in Egypt and Syria Compressed 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 1 Mamluk Studies 2 3 4 5 6 Volume 1 7 8 9 10 11 Edited by Stephan Conermann 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Editorial Board: Thomas Bauer (M ünster, Germany), Albrecht Fuess 34 (Marburg, Germany), Thomas Herzog (Bern, Switzerland), Konrad 35 36 Hirschler (London, Great Britain), Anna Paulina Lewicka (Warsaw, 37 38 Poland), Linda Northrup (Toronto, Canada), Jo van Steenbergen 39 (Gent, Belgium) 40 41 1 Doris BehrensAbouseif (ed.) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 The Arts of the Mamluks in Egypt 9 and Syria – Evolution and Impact 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 With 150 figures 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 & 37 V R unipress 38 39 Bonn University Press 40 41 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek 22 23 The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; 24 detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. 25 26 ISBN 978-3-89971-915-4 27 28 Publications of Bonn University Press 29 are published by V &R unipress GmbH. 30 31 Sponsered by the Barakat Trust and the Fondation Max Van Berchem for illustrations 32 and editoral works. 33 34 Copyright 2012 by V &R unipress GmbH, D-37079 Goettingen 35 All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this work may 36 be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including 37 photocopying, microfilm and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, 38 without permission in writing from the publisher. 39 Printed in Germany. 40 Cover image: Detail of a painted wooden door at the mausoleum of Sultan al-Ghawri in Cairo. 41 Printing and binding: CPI Buch B ücher.de GmbH, Birkach Contents Editorialnote.................................. 7 Acknowledgement ............................... 9 Foreword .................................... 11 Doris Behrens-Abouseif (SOAS, University of London) The Arts of the Mamluks in Egypt and Syria: An Introduction . .... 13 Nasser Rabbat (MIT, Cambridge/MA) In Search of a Triumphant Image: the Experimental Quality of Early MamlukArt .................................. 21 Sophie Makariou and Carine Juvin (both: Département des arts de l’Islam – Musée du Louvre, Paris) The Louvre Kursi : Function and Meaning of Mamluk Stands . 37 Rachel Ward Mosque Lamps and Enamelled Glass: Getting the Dates Right . .... 55 Roland-Pierre Gayraud (Laboratoire d’Archéologie Médiévale Méditérranéenne (LAMM) – CNRS Aix-en-Provence) CeramicsintheMamlukEmpire:AnOverview. 77 Rosalind A. Wade Haddon Mongol Influences on Mamluk Ceramics in the Fourteenth Century . 95 Jon Thompson (Oriental Institute, University of Oxford) LateMamlukCarpets:SomeNewObservations . 115 Ellen Kenney (American University in Cairo) A Mamluk Monument Reconstructed: an Architectural History of the Mosque and Mausoleum of Tankiz al-Nasiri in Damascus . 141 6 Contents Bernard O’Kane (American University in Cairo) JamesWildandtheMosqueofBashtak,Cairo . 163 Julien Loiseau (Université Montepellier 3) The City of Two Hundred Mosques: Friday Worship and its Spread in theMonumentsofMamlukCairo . 183 Iman R. Abdulfattah and Mamdouh Mohamed Sakr (The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, Cairo) Glass Mosaics in a Royal Mamluk Hall: Context, Content, and Interpretation.................................. 203 Julia Gonnella (Museum für Islamische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin) InsideOut:TheMamlukThroneHallinAleppo . 223 J. M. Rogers (The Nour Foundation) CourtWorkshopsundertheBahriMamluks . 247 Zeren Tanındı (Sabancı University, Sakıp Sabancı Museum) Two Bibliophile Mamluk Emirs: Qansuh the Master of the Stables and YashbaktheSecretary . 267 Mehmed Baha Tanman (University of Istanbul) Mamluk Influences on the Architecture of the Anatolian Emirates . 283 Doris Behrens-Abouseif (SOAS, University of London) MamlukPerceptionsofForeignArts . 301 ListoftheMamlukSultans . 319 MapoftheMamlukEmpire. 323 SelectBibliographyofMamlukArtStudies . 325 Glossary..................................... 339 Index ...................................... 343 Editorial note In order to keep the main text of this book clear and easy to read also to the non- specialised reader, no diacritic signs have been used for foreign terms except in the bibliography, the glossary and the footnotes, where transliteration has been used for citations, names of authors and titles of publication at their first occurrence in the article. For the same reason, italics have been kept to a minimum; current foreign terms in Islamic art literature such as minbar, mihrab, muqarnas, or terms that can be found in English language dictionaries are not italicised; terms with varying mean- .ings according to regions such as qa ֒a and khanqah are Most foreign and unknown technical terms are explained in the main text at their first occurrence, those relevant to the study of Islamic art are listed in the glossary. The transliteration follows the system current in academic literature written in English. Acknowledgement Although this book is based on the conference The Arts of the Mamluks in Egypt and Syria held at SOAS in 2009, it is not a “proceedings” publication. Yet the book is indebted to the conference for the stimulation of fruitful exchanges and lively debates among scholars and between speakers and audience, which inspired the authors of this book with fresh ideas, and drew attention to problems to be solved and efforts still to be made. This is a good opportunity to repeat our thanks to the sponsors whose contributions made the conference possible: The Barakat Trust, The British Academy, The British-Egyptian Society and Professor Nasser D Khalili. The authors of this book also thank the Barakat Trust and the Fondation Max Van Berchem for their financial support in covering the costs of the editorial works and the illustrations of the manuscript. I thank Mehreen M. Razvi and Rosalind W. Haddon for helping me with the proofreading. Foreword ThisbookisthefirstcollectivepublicationdedicatedtoMamluk art to appear since 1984, when the papers of the first conference on Mamluk art, held three years ear- lier in Washington, D.C. were published in the periodical Muqarnas . The confer- ence accompanied an exhibition on the same subject organised by Esin Atıl at the Freer Gallery, together with her invaluable book on the Mamluk decorative arts, Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks. At that time Mamluk art was described as a new field. Since then, individual studies have been published on many, but not all, aspects of Mamluk art. A number of topics still have not received the schol- arly attention they deserve, in particular the art of the Circassian Mamluk period with its various phases. Calligraphy, illumination, metalwork and ceramics of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries still await focused research, as does a rare illustrated manuscript made for an Emir Khushqadam in the 1460s. Some ques- tions may never receive a definitive answer, such as, for example: to what extent can Mamluk artifacts be attributed to either Egypt or Syria? The most extensively researched subject in the last decades has been Mamluk architecture and its patronage in Egypt and Syria. While studies of the arts of the book, glass, and metalwork have dealt with individual objects and issues, they have not, however, addressed the bigger issues of workshops and production patterns, patronage, style and interdisciplinary connections. 1 The present book and the con- ference on the Arts of the Mamluks held at the School of Oriental and African Studies in September 2009, on which it is partly based, are a response to the urgent need for an updated view of the subject on individual issues and as a whole. The necessity of a new exhibition on Mamluk art is still to be met. This book cannot answer all questions or cover all aspects of Mamluk art in Egypt and Syria. However, in pursuit of a better documentation of the different aspects of the artistic and material culture of the Mamluk period, the contribu- tions in this book take a variety of approaches and present new research and ideas, inevitably also diverging opinions, in response to the challenges of a complex and great subject that occupies an important place in medieval world history. 1 See the select bibliography at the end of this book Doris Behrens-Abouseif The Arts of the Mamluks in Egypt and Syria: An Introduction The arts of the Mamluks have been enthusiastically described as a “Renaissance of Islam.” 1 Indeed, they embody the last artistic flourishing of the pre-modern Arab civilisation, before the rise of the great empires of the Safavids, Ottomans, and Mughals. However, when the Mamluk sultanate was eclipsed, it was still displaying much of the artistic brilliance that had enhanced its golden age. The arts of the Mamluks continued to flourish under political decline because they had a major function to fulfill, in particular when the damaged image of the political power needed to be restored. Although this may apply to all regimes and the arts, the very nature of the Mamluk regime required continuous testimony to its legitimacy. The Mamluks, whose history began as an elite corps in the army of the last Ayyubid sultan al-Salih Najm al-Din (r. 1240–49), were purchased on the slave market in the Black Sea and the Caucasus. Using the vacuum left by al-Salih’s death to seize power in Egypt and Syria, their unconventional and bold choice of a woman, Shajar al-Durr (1250), al-Salih’s widow, as the first Mamluk sultan, was a most obvious expression of their emphasis on allegiance to their Ayyubid master. Continuity and tradition are also emphasised in the Mamluks’ allegiance to the institution of the Abbasid caliphate, which they perpetuated after the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, with a symbolic caliph in Cairo.
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