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Studying Islamic Architecture: Challenges and Perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Robert Hillenbrand
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Extract

Opportunities to attempt a bird’s-eye view of a field are rare, and my thanks go to the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain for providing the forum for just such an exercise. Most scholars, after all, spend the research part of their academic careers doing what seems best suited to their tastes and abilities and hoping to make a good job of it. There is little time for navel-gazing; and besides, most people have little time for it. Certainly scholars will consider the kind of methods to follow in order to bring their research to a successful conclusion: the ‘how’ in both practical and intellectual terms. But unless they are naturally of a theoretical turn of mind, they are more likely to spend their time with the what than with the why, let alone the whence and the whither. It is those issues that will form much of the substance of this paper. There is no intention here to peddle some theory; instead, the focus will be on how work on Islamic architecture and its history has been, is being and should be done. The approach will thus be more practical than theoretical.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 46 , 2003 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2003

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References

Notes

1 For the most recent ambitious attempt of this kind see Blair, Sheila S. and Bloom, Jonathan M., ‘The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field’, The Art Bulletin, LXXXV, no. 1 (March 2003), 152ftCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 That forum was their invitation that I should deliver the Society’s annual lecture in 2001. The present paper deliberately tries to preserve something of the lecture format, and to that end references have been kept to a minimum. The intention of those references is principally to enable readers to investigate in more detail how Islamic architecture has been studied.

3 This figure is taken from the cover of the latest reprinting (already the sixth) of the sixteenth edition, published in 1995. The quotations from the text itself used in this paper are taken from the first edition.

4 By the US News & World Report (again quoted from the cover of the latest reprint).

5 Some 3,318 words.

6 It has recently been replaced by another image from the Alhambra, this time reproduced in colour, which depicts — rather than a complete building as is the norm for the other chapters of the book — an architectural detail of massed columns. Is it perhaps significant, too, that the one monument chosen to represent Islam happens to be in Europe, even though only very few pre-modern Islamic buildings survive in that continent?

7 If it be argued that the system which the author had chosen to adopt for the book limited him to one example of architecture per chapter, the idea that the image of the Alhambra could in any sense ‘represent’ China and Japan is not worth considering. Yet his own words on the purpose of the architectural illustrations in the book are worth recalling here: ‘… the story of art as here conceived could not be told without a reference to the architectural background. While I had to confine myself to discussing the style of only one or two buildings in each period, I tried to restore the balance in favour of architecture by giving these examples pride of place in each chapter’ (The Story of Art, p. 3). The Oriental’ chapter was an obvious place to include two illustrations of architecture.

8 The Story of Art, p. 2.

9 Compare the flatness and blandness of this title with the upbeat, exciting titles of so many of the other chapters: ‘The Realm of Beauty’, ‘The Conquest of Reality’, ‘Harmony Attained’, ‘The New Learning Spreads’ and ‘Vision and Visions’.

10 ‘It was only after a new contact with the achievements of Western art in the eighteenth century that Japanese artists dared to apply the Eastern methods to new subjects. We shall see how fruitful these new experiments also became for the West when it first got to know them’ (The Story of Art, p. 108).

11 These criticisms would be irrelevant (if not entirely unfounded) had Gombrich entitled the book The Story of Western Art. But perhaps such a title would have sold much less well than The Story of Art has done.

12 Note in particular the series entitled Architectural Transformations in the Islamic World published by The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (Cambridge, Mass., 1978 onwards). These studies deal principally with modern architecture — for example, the first volume is entitled Toward an Architecture in the Spirit of Islam — but they often bring into the discussion the buildings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

13 Hence the remark made by the President of the Royal Asiatic Society, Sir Gerard Clauson (himself a lonely pioneer in the obscure field of Altaic linguistics) when in 1950 he presented the Society’s Triennial Gold Medal to Archibald Creswell, the founding father of the study of Islamic architecture: ‘Professor Creswell has not only got to the head of his profession; he has created it’ ( Hamilton, R. W., ‘Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell’, Muqarnas, VIII [1991], p. 128 Google Scholar).

14 This can be illustrated by the fact that no serious general history of Islamic architecture organized on chronological or geographical principles, as distinct from popular books on the subject, or histories of Islamic art which extend their remit to architecture, is in print. Some treatments of Islamic architecture are conceived thematically, such as Architecture of the Islamic World, ed. Mitchell, G. (London, 1978)Google Scholar, or my Islamic Architecture. Form, Function and Meaning, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 2000). But the only chronological survey of any length is that of Hoag, J. D., Islamic architecture (New York, 1977)Google Scholar, while the only detailed geographical survey is that by R. A. Jairazbhoy, , An Outline of Islamic Architecture (Bombay, 1972)Google Scholar. Many other books boast titles that promise a treatment of Islamic architecture as a whole, but they fail to deliver.

15 In striking contrast to this situation, there are very few photographic collections of Islamic architecture available in the public domain to interested scholars. The best of these is the photographic collection built up under the auspices of The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard; in Britain, pride of place goes to the collection at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, whose core is the Creswell archive.

16 The reading of architectural inscriptions is the obvious exception here. A good example of what has been achieved by local scholars in this field are the series Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica (from 1907), and its successor, Epigraphia Indica, Arabic and Persian Supplement, in which the Muslim inscriptions of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent are systematically recorded.

17 Since Egli’s, Ernst monograph Sinan, der Baumeister osmanischer Glanzzeit (Stuttgart, 1954)Google Scholar, biographies have proliferated. A study of the master by Professor Gülru Necipoglu, which promises to be definitive, is in preparation. Yet despite the vigour of the Sinan industry, the field still awaits detailed biographies of other great Ottoman architects. Meanwhile, see two important translations by Crane, Howard: Risate-i Mi’mariyye. An Early-seventeenth-century Ottoman Treatise on Architecture (Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture. Supplements to Muqarnas I) (Leiden, 1987)Google Scholar, and The Garden of Mosques: Hafiz Hüseyin al-Ayvansarayî’s Guide to the Muslim Monuments of Ottoman Istanbul (Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture. Supplements to Muqarnas, 8) (Leiden, 1999).

18 Wilber, D., ‘Qavam al-Din ibn Zayn al-Din Shirazi: A fifteenth-century Timurid architect’, Architectural History, 30 (1987), pp. 31–44 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 See Mayer, L. A., Islamic Architects and their Works (Geneva, 1956)Google Scholar. His list of 318 architects could easily be doubled as a result of subsequent research — for example, an unpublished list of Persian craftsmen drawn up by the late Douglas Pickett and extending to well over a hundred closely typed pages.

20 Grabar, O., The Dome of the Rock (London, 1998)Google Scholar, passim.

21 For typical examples, see Blair, S. S., Islamic Inscriptions (Edinburgh, 1999), p. 50 Google Scholar, pl. 4.19 and p. 211, pl. 15.86.

22 As in the case of Jerusalem; see especially Salameh, K., ‘Aspects of the Sijills of the Shari’a court in Jerusalem’, in Ottoman Jerusalem. The Living City: 1517-1917, ed. Auld, S. and Hillenbrand, R. (London, 2000), pp. 103-44Google Scholar.

23 Bothmer, H.-C. Graf von, ‘Architekturbilder im Koran. Eine Prachthandschrift der Umayyadenzeit aus dem Yemen’, Pantheon, XLV (1987), pp. 4–20 Google Scholar, and Grabar, O., The Mediation of Ornament (Princeton, 1992), pp. 155-93Google Scholar.

24 Necipoglu, G., The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (Santa Monica, Cal., 1995)Google Scholar.

25 al-Gailani, A. R., ‘Islamic art and the Role of China’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1973, 1, pl. 103BGoogle Scholar after p. 150.

26 Examples not specifically mentioned below include the bath or hammam, the wayside inn or caravansarai, and even, on occasion, city plans.

27 An early example is the Great Mosque of Damascus (c. 705-15), where a simple re-alignment of the atrium, west front and focus of worship of a standard early Christian basilica — with no alteration of the actual form involved — is enough to transform the model almost beyond recognition. Given the overwhelmingly Christian local environment at that time and place, and the long-established authority of the basilica as a building type, this is an impressive example of (literally) lateral thinking.

28 For the most up-to-date and focused discussion of the origins of the form of the minaret or mosque tower, see Bloom, J. M., Minaret. Symbol of Islam (Oxford Studies in Islamic Art, VI) (Oxford, 1988), pp. 9–20 Google Scholar.

29 For the intellectual background to this connection, see Makdisi, G., The Rise of Colleges (Edinburgh, 1980)Google Scholar, and idem, The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West (Edinburgh, 1990).

30 For a brief treatment of this connection, see Hillenbrand, R., Studies in Medieval Islamic Architecture, 1 (London, 2001), pp. 154-55Google Scholar (‘Islamic Art at the Crossroads’).

31 This is the one architectural form which has an entirely Islamic origin and development. Typically enough, there is still no comprehensive study of this intriguing and protean feature. Meanwhile, see Harb, U., llkhanidische Stalaktitengewölbe. Beiträge zu Entwurf und Bautechnik (Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Iran. Ergänzungsband IV) (Berlin, 1978)Google Scholar; Notkin, I.I., ‘Decoding Sixteenth-Century Muqarnas Drawings’, Muqarnas, XII (1995), pp. 148-71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yaghan, M. A. J., ‘Decoding the Two-Dimensional Pattern found at Takht-i Sulaiman into Three-Dimensional Muqarnas Forms’, Iran, XXXVIII (2000), pp. 77–95 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, ‘The Islamic architectural element ‘Muqarnas’: Definition, Geometrical Analysis, and a Computer Generation System’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Tsukuba, 1997. The bibliography assembled in this latter study (pp. 286-97) is the fullest so far assembled on the subject.

32 Meinecke, M. et al., Die Restaurierung der Madrasa des Amirs Sabiq al-Din Mitqal al-Anuki und die Sanierung des Darb Qirmiz (Mainz, 1980)Google Scholar.

33 Schmid, H., Die Madrasa des Kalifen al-Mustansir in Baghdad. Eine baugeschichtliche Untersuchung der ersten universalen Rechtshochschule des Islam. Mit einer Abhandlung über den sogenannten Palast in der Zitadelle in Baghdad (Mainz, 1980)Google Scholar.

34 Borouiba, A., L’art religieux musulman en Algérie (Algiers, 1973)Google Scholar.

35 al-Janabi, T. J., Studies in Medieval Iraqi Architecture (Baghdad, 1982)Google Scholar.

36 Said, E., Orientalism (New York, 1978)Google Scholar remains the classic statement of the subject; see also his Culture and Imperialism (London, 1993). For a recent overview of the problem, see Macfie, A. L., Orientalism. A Reader (Edinburgh, 2000)Google Scholar.

37 See, for example, J. Freely and R. Burelli, Sinan. Architect ofSüleyman the Magnificent and the Ottoman Golden Age (n.p., 1996); Öney, G., Türk Çini Sanati (Istanbul, 1976)Google Scholar, and Aril, E., Levni and the Surname. The Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Festival (Istanbul, 1999)Google Scholar. The latter two books were published by Yapi ve Kredi Bankasi and Koçbank respectively.

38 The extent of the information explosion in Turkish art in recent decades may be gauged from the fact that the number of listings in the First Supplement of Creswell’s, K. A. C. A Bibliography of the Architecture, Arts ana Crafts of Islam (Cairo, 1973)Google Scholar — 69 columns in total — far exceeds that listed in the parent volume (A Bibliography of the Architecture, Arts anã Crafts of Islam to 1st Jan., 1960 [Cairo, 1961]) for the entire period to 1960 (39 columns), even though for the most part it covers only thirteen years.

39 Qusair ‘Amra in Jordan, an Umayyad hunting lodge-cum-bath-house of the early eighth century with a cycle of fresco paintings of the utmost rarity — the major cycle of fresco painting in the Mediterranean world between Pompeii and twelfth-century France and Italy — has been comprehensively wrecked by hundreds of graffiti, almost all of them post-dating the ‘discovery’ of the building by a Czech scholar in 1898. For the extent of the damage, see Almagro, M., Caballero, L., Zozoya, J., and Almagro, A., Qusayr ‘Amra: Residencia y baños omeyas en el desierto de Jordania (Madrid, 1975)Google Scholar.

40 The damage sustained by the almost equally rare body of early Islamic carved stucco at the Friday Mosque of Na’in, in central Iran, datable to the tenth century, where thieves have removed much of the stucco in the mihrab, has forced the authorities to cordon off this area, thus rendering it inaccessible to study at close quarters. Yet this stucco is the principal draw of the mosque to visitors.

41 The scale of the damage inflicted on the environment of the shrine in the course of two campaigns of destruction in 1975 and 1977 can best be appreciated in an aerial photograph. See A General Study On Urbanization & Urban Planning in Iran, 1, ed. Kiani, M. Y. (Tehran, 1986), colour pl. on 479 Google Scholar. A less dramatic case is the celebrated ‘Tomb of the Samanids’ at Bukhara, datable to the tenth century, which when first studied in detail by Western scholars was set in an ancient graveyard, surrounded by deeply sunken tombstones. The whole area has now been levelled and transmogrified into a concrete plaza. The loss of context makes the building harder to understand and emphasizes that it is now primarily a tourist attraction.

42 As in the portal inscription of the tomb of Jalal al-Din Húsain, dated 1187, at Uzgend in Kirghizstan. For an earlier view of this inscription, see Cohn-Wiener, E., Turan. Islamische Baukunst in Mittelasien (Berlin, 1930), pl. XV Google Scholar (top).

43 Hence the telling title of a Soviet-era book on Khiva: Man’kovskaya, L. Y., Khiva. A Museum in the Open (Tashkent, 1982)Google Scholar. See also Pugachenkova’s, G. A. book of the same title: Muzei pod otkritim nevom (Tashkent, 1981)Google Scholar.

44 As in the early eleventh-century Samanid mausoleum of al-Mustansir, known as the Alamberdar tomb, at Kerki in eastern Turkmenistan ( Pilyavskii, V., Pamyatniki arkhitekturi Turkmenistanu [Leningrad, 1974], pp. 235-40Google Scholar).

45 Those which publish in Western as well as Islamic languages and whose prime emphasis is archaeological include Atlal (Saudi Arabia), Bastan Chenassi va Honar-e Iran (Iran; defunct after the Islamic Revolution); Sumer (Iraq), Annales Archéologiques de la Syrie, Libya Antiqua, Afghanistan (defunct after the Soviet invasion), and the journal of the Department of Antiquities, Jordan.

46 The case of the Yemen is perhaps the best known; scores of medieval buildings still in use within their local communities, but hitherto totally unknown to the scholarly world, have been ‘discovered’ in the last quarter-century. It will take decades before this material has been studied in the requisite detail and incorporated into the mainstream of scholarship. Its preliminary presentation is largely the work of Barbara Finster; by way of introduction, see her article ‘An Outline of the History of Islamic Religious Architecture in Yemen’, Muqarnas, ix (1992), pp. 124-47.

47 Hamilton, op. cit., p. 129.

48 For the context, see n. 14 above.

49 Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe, Procès verbaux des séances. Rapports de la Deuxième Commission, 32 vols (Cairo, 1882-1951).

50 See in particular The Muslim Architecture of Egypt, 1 (Oxford, 1952), and 11 (Oxford, 1959).

51 Wilber, D. N., The Architecture of Islamic Iran. The llkhanid Period (Princeton, 1955)Google Scholar.

52 Golombek, L. and Wilber, D., The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan, 2 vols (Princeton, 1988)Google Scholar.

53 Although here the material is still very scattered, with a quite disproportionate emphasis on a few buildings: the Alhambra, the Aljaferia in Zaragoza and the Great Mosque of Cordova.

54 Such as Shahr-i Zahhak and Shahr-i Gulghula; for colour pictures of all three, see Mazahéri, A., Les Trésors de l’Iran. Mèdes et Perses. Trésors des Mages. La renaissance Iranienne (Geneva, 1970), pp. 210-11Google Scholar, 213-16.

55 For the city walls of medieval Islam, see Bloom, J. M., ‘Walled cities in Islamic North Africa and Egypt with particular reference to the Fatimids (909-1171)’, in City Walls. The Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective, ed. Tracy, J. D. (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 219-46Google Scholar, with further basic bibliography in n. 1 on p. 219; C. B. Asher, ‘Delhi walled: Changing boundaries’, ibid., pp. 247-81; S. Pepper, ‘Ottoman military architecture in the early gunpowder era: A reassessment’, ibid., pp. 282-316; and S. S. Blair, ‘Decoration of city walls in the medieval Islamic world: The epigraphic message’, ibid., pp. 488-529.

56 For the city walls of Konya as they appeared in the early nineteenth century, see Basgelen, N., Bir Zamanlar Konya (Istanbul, 1998), frontispiece and pp. 4–5 Google Scholar.

57 See Greenlaw, J.-P., The Coral Buildings of Suakin. Islamic Architecture, Planning, Design and Domestic Arrangements in a Red Sea Port (London and New York, 1995)Google Scholar. It is ironic that the most evocative record of how Suakin used to look is to be found in the film The Four Feathers, an adventure story based on the novel by A. E. W. Mason and shot in technicolour in 1939.

58 Happily the Courtauld Institute holds an excellent archive of photographs of the city taken by T. E. Lawrence before the First World War.

59 Champault, D., Yemen, trans. Campbell, A. (Paris, 1997), pls on pp. 8–9 Google Scholar, 215 and 220.