the israeli academic center in cairo ¯È‰˜· Èχ¯˘È‰ ÈÓ„˜‡‰ ÊίӉ Hana Taragan HISTORICAL REFERENCE IN MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC ARCHITECTURE: BAYBARS’S BUILDINGS IN PALESTINE Hana Taragan is a lecturer in Islamic art at Tel Aviv University, where she received her Ph.D. in 1992. Her current research concerns Umayyad and Mamluk architecture in Eretz Israel in the medieval period. She is the author of Art and Patronage in the Umayyad Palace in Jericho (in Hebrew) and of numerous articles in the field of Islamic art. In the year 1274, al-Malik al-Zahir also changed a structure’s function Baybars, the first Mamluk ruler of from church to mosque, as he did Palestine (1260–1277), ordered the in Qaqun.5 addition of a riwaq (porch) to the Baybars’s choice of Yavne may tomb of Abu Hurayra in Yavne.1 be explained by the ruin of the The riwaq, featuring a tripartite coastal towns, or by Yavne’s loca- portal and six tiny domes, had two tion on the main road from Cairo arches decorated with cushion to Damascus. However, it seems to voussoirs and one with a zigzag me that above and beyond any frieze (Figure 1). Baybars also strategic and administrative con- installed a dedicatory inscription siderations, Baybars focused on naming himself as builder of the this site in an attempt to exploit riwaq.2 The addition of a portal to Abu Hurayra’s tomb as a means of the existing tomb structure typifies institutionalizing the power of the Baybars’s building policy in Pales- Mamluk dynasty in general and tine. He rarely constructed new providing a basis for the legit- religious edifices, preferring rather imization of his own rule in partic- to restore and refurbish existing ular. buildings, as he did at Maqam Abu Hurayra had been revered Nabi Musa near Jericho and with since the beginning of Islam, par- the tombs of the patriarchs in Figure 1: Yavne, Tomb of Abu Hurayra / ticularly within its Sunni division, 3 Hebron ; or he added units, as with Rabban Gamliel, north façade, with as a Companion of the Prophet, the tomb at Yavne.4 At times he friezed arches. with the claim to fame of having 31 BULLETIN passed on 3,500 hadiths authored sultans, and especially Baybars as tecture – may be seen as a meta- by Muhammad. For the Muslim the first of their line, were singu- phorical isnad. population, the proliferation of larly ill equipped to legitimate By establishing an affinity tombs of the Prophet’s Compan- their rule. His path to legitimacy between past ideas and present ions (sahaba) and other holy men was by way of presenting himself events, Baybars made conscious, meant that specific sites on the as a devout defender and exalter of shrewd use of historical references map gained the status of holy Islam who was conducting a jihad in Palestinian architecture. Imme- places, so that visiting them en- against the infidels. Baybars diately after the conquest of Safed, dowed the pilgrim with their indeed served as the sultan of for example, Baybars built a blessing. Abu Hurayra, the mythi- Islam and the Muslims. He was the hypostyle mosque there, the so- cal friend of the prophet, was par- first to dispatch the mahmal (the called Red Mosque, al-Jami’ al- ticularly venerated during the covering of the Ka’ba) to Mecca in Ahmar (1274–1275; Figure 2).9 The Mamluk period, both in popular 1266/6646; he brought the Abbasid construction of mosques of this lore and among the rulers. By Caliphate to Cairo7; he appointed type predominated in the adding the porch, the domes, and qadis to the four legal schools in Umayyad period, with the Great the lofty foundation inscription to that city8; and, most importantly, Mosque of Damascus constituting the tomb, Baybars created a sort of he waged intrepid war against the a likely prototype. The hypostyle reliquary shrine, thus associating Crusaders and the Mongols. It is mosque soon attained symbolic the memory or cult of Abu thus of little wonder that his dedi- status, and throughout the Middle Hurayra with himself. Never mind catory inscription in Yavne dubs Ages mosques in this style were that Abu Hurayra was actually him Abu l’fath (father of conquest). erected wherever Islam made a buried in Medina. That we find a new conquest and its victorious tomb bearing his name in Yavne Allusion to historical referents is presence was to be declared for all epitomizes Baybars’s exploitation common in many cultures, but it is to see. of Muhammad’s illustrious com- particularly meaningful in Islamic The same applies to the Mam- panions – and of military comman- culture. The notion of isnad, or luks’ revival of the Byzantine ders, heroes of the early period of sanad, from the root s-n-d, means conquest, and biblical patriarchs “to lean” or “to rely on.” It gener- like Abraham and Moses – to ally refers to a chain of authorita- establish a clear link between the tive sources on which a certain glorious past and the consolidated piece of information or knowledge, Muslim identity associated with mainly from the textual “tradi- his own figure and his new tions” (hadith), is based. This chain dynasty. of transmission or reference often We should bear in mind that al- begins with the founding genera- Malik al-Zahir Baybars al-Bunduq- tion, mainly with the Prophet and dari, founder of the Mamluk his Companions, or in the first dynasty, was not a born Muslim. Umayyad dynasty, which shaped Like all the Mamluks, he was the state and its institutions. The bought as a slave, converted to acts and sayings of all these Islam, and conscripted into the authorities have a unique signifi- army. Some of the Mamluks rose cance as models for subsequent in the ranks, assuming official generations. In Islamic art and lit- posts and even ascending to the erature, this form of historicism throne. Thus, military slavery did and its derivatives (eclecticism, not preclude career possibilities archaism, revival, continuity, and social status, but in a world in copying etc.), in which models which slaves were nobodies, and from the past give validity and Figure 2: Safed, the Red Mosque lineage – especially illustrious lin- canonical status to present events – (al Jami’ al-Ahmar), constructed by eage – was an asset, the Mamluk including works of art and archi- Baybars in 1274–1275. 32 the israeli academic center in cairo ¯È‰˜· Èχ¯˘È‰ ÈÓ„˜‡‰ ÊίӉ frieze became a canonic model for future churches.10 However, Clermont-Ganneau, at the end of the nineteenth cen- tury, found a more direct model for the cushion voussoir in the Abu Hurayra riwaq.11 Yavne alternated between Muslim and Crusader rule until its ultimate Muslim con- quest in 1244. In the early twelfth century, a Crusader church was built on the tell opposite the tomb of Abu Hurayra, and one of its doors was adorned with a cushion voussoir. The appearance of the cushion voussoir both in impor- Figure 3: Damascus: Mosaic panel on the northern wall of the Qubba al-Zahiriyya. tant Crusader buildings and in Baybars’s structures, including the mosaic technique used to adorn the cushion voussoir frieze, dating addition to Abu Hurayra’s tomb in the walls of the Umayyad Dome of from the beginning of the twelfth Yavne and the great mosque in the Rock in Jerusalem, as well as century, on the south façade of the Cairo (Figure 5), indicates that those of the Great Mosque in Dam- Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem Baybars borrowed this motif from ascus. Both the technique and the (Figure 4), where it framed the Christian architecture. For him, it images were used for Baybars’s doors and the double windows of was a spolia, a trophy taken from own tomb, erected in Damascus in the first and second stories. In the the Crusader churches. The 1280 (Figure 3). In this way, to my Holy Sepulcher, this motif was façades of Muslim and Crusader mind, the Mamluk victory over the invested with a site-specific signif- buildings in medieval Palestine Crusader Christians was put on a icance. Like the ground plan and thus visually reflect the struggle par with the Umayyad victories other elements of the building, the for power between the two over the Byzantine Christians. Here, again, the legitimacy of Mamluk rule was consolidated by connecting the present with the glorious past, in this case by trans- mitting the aura of the Umayyads to the Mamluks. Islamic art forms generally were not interpreted in writing in medieval times, and it is therefore not certain why Baybars adorned the arches in his addition to Abu Hurayra’s tomb with the cushion voussoir, or what this motif con- veyed. We can venture an answer to this question only on the basis of a close reading of the work of art itself, by decoding its specific imagery and formal language with reference to its artistic models. We Figure 4: Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulcher, south façade, doors and windows adorned find a significant early example of with cushion voussoir. 33 BULLETIN historical reference. Although such Notes appropriation was “legitimated” 1. L.A. Mayer, J. Pinkerfeld, and J. W. by the basic Islamic concept of Hirschberg, Some Principal Muslim isnad, it was not, of course, specific Religious Buildings in Israel, Jerusalem 1950, pp. 21–24. See also to Baybars and Medieval Islam. H. Taragan, “Politics and Aesthet- In the region once ruled by Bay- ics: Sultan Baybars and the Abu bars – from which I myself hail – Hurayra/Rabbi Gamliel Building in two cultures were deadlocked in a Yavne,” in A.