Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T21:08:08.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sovereignty and the Materiality of Caliphal Encounters

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Glaire D. Anderson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This essay focuses on two tenth-century bronze objects, a basin and a bowl, inscribed with an epigraphic band that can be read as the repetition of the Arabic word for sovereignty, al-mulk. These objects were probably made in the area that now comprises Iran and Central Asia, an artistic, intellectual, and commercial center of the Islamic lands in the ninth and tenth centuries. Bronzes like these, luxury commodities that would have appeared gold when new, are rarely found outside Iran and Central Asia (Allan; Baer). Yet those I discuss here were discovered far from their likely region of origin—indeed, at opposite ends of the Islamic territories of Eurasia. The large bronze basin was discovered in Inner Mongolia, while the small bronze bowl was unearthed in Córdoba, in southern Spain. These inscribed objects hint at a transhemispheric cultural-political history that has implications for reigning narratives of modernity, including for those that relate to medieval studies.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 130 , Issue 2 , March 2015 , pp. 393 - 401
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Abu-Lughod, Janet L. Before European Hegemony: The World System, A.D. 1250-1350. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Allan, James W. Nishapur: Metalwork of the Early Islamic Period. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Anderson, Glaire. The Islamic Villa in Early Medieval Iberia: Architecture and Court Culture in Umayyad Córdoba. Farnham: Ashgate, 2013. Print.Google Scholar
Baer, Eva. Metalwork in Medieval Islamic Art. Albany: State U of New York P, 1983. Print.Google Scholar
Bennison, Amira. The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the ʿAbbāsid Empire. London: Tauris, 2009. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blair, Sheila. The Monumental Inscriptions from Early Islamic Iran and Transoxiana. Leiden: Brill, 1992. Print. Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture.Google Scholar
Carey, Moya, and Graves, Margaret S., eds. Islamic Art Historiography. Spec. issue of Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012). Web. 28 Oct. 2014.Google Scholar
Caskey, Jill, Cohen, Adam S., and Safran, Linda. “Surveying the Borders of Medieval Art.” Introduction. Medieval Encounters 17.1 (2011): 1–10. CrossRef. Web. 27 Apr. 2014.Google Scholar
Christys, Ann. “The Queen of the Franks Offers Gifts to the Caliph al-Muḳtafī.” The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. 149–70. Index Islamicus. Web. 20 Oct. 2013.Google Scholar
Cooke, Edward S. Jr. “Modern Crat and the American Experience.” American Art 21.1 (2007): 2–9. JSTOR. Web. 28 Oct. 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doyle, Laura. “Inter-imperiality: Dialectics in a Postcolonial World History.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 16.2 (2014): 159–96. Taylor and Francis Online. Web. 11 Nov. 2013.Google Scholar
Flood, Finbarr Barry. Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009. Print.Google Scholar
Grabar, Oleg, et al. The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Hobson, John M. “Provincializing Westphalia: The Eastern Origins of Sovereignty.” International Politics 46 (2009): 671–90. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, Marshall G. S. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization. 3 vols. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ibn al-Zubayr, Aḥmad. Book of Gifts and Rarities / Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa al-Tuḥaf: Selections Compiled in the Fifteenth Century from an Eleventh-Century Manuscript on Gifts and Treasures. Trans. Ghādah al Ḥijjāwī al-Qaddūmī. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Hugh. The Court of the Caliphs: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty. London: Weidenfeld, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
The Koran. Trans. Mohammed Marmaduke William Pickthall. Al-Quran. N.p., 2014. Web. 5 Aug. 2014.Google Scholar
Michailidis, Melanie. “Samanid Silver and Trade along the Fur Route.” Medieval Encounters 18.4-5 (2012): 315-38. CrossRef. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.Google Scholar
Nainar, S. M. “Sovereignty in Early Islamic History.” Professor K. V. Rangaswami Aiyangar Commemoration Volume. Madras: n.p., 1940. 641–47. ProQuest. Web. 4 Oct. 2014.Google Scholar
Pancaroğlu, Oya. “Serving Wisdom: The Contents of Samanid Epigraphic Pottery.” Studies in Islamic and Later Indian Art from the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University Art Museums. Cambridge: Harvard U Art Museums, 2002. 59–75. Print.Google Scholar
Philon, Helen, et al. Early Islamic Ceramics: Ninth to Late Twelfth Centuries. London: Sotheby, 1980. Print.Google Scholar
Qazi, Saeedullah. “The Concept of Sovereignty in Islam.” Research Journal RJIC 1.2 (1991): 64–71. ProQuest. Web. 4 Oct. 2014.Google Scholar
Ramírez-Weaver, Eric. “Islamic Silver for Carolingian Reforms and the Buddha-Image of Helgö: Rethinking Carolingian Connections with the East, 790-820.” Wong and Heldt 171–86.Google Scholar
Schafer, Edward. The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics. Berkeley: U of California P, 1963. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shalem, Avinoam. “What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Islamic Art‘? A Plea for a Critical Rewriting of the History of the Arts of Islam.” Journal of Art Historiography (2012): 1–18. Web. 27 Oct. 2014.Google Scholar
Shaw, Wendy M. K. “The Islam in Islamic Art History: Secularism and Public Discourse.” Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012): 1–34. Web. 27 Oct. 2014.Google Scholar
Shen, Hsueh-man. Gilded Splendor: Treasures of China's Liao Empire (907-1125). Milano: Five Continents, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Tuotuo. Liao shi. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983. Print. Wong, Dorothy C., and Gustav Heldt, eds. China and beyond in the Mediaeval Period: Cultural Crossings and Inter-regional Connections. Intl. ed. New Delhi: Cambria, 2014. Print.Google Scholar
Yatiban, Aminurraasyid. “The Muslim Concept of Sovereignty: Islamic Jerusalem during the First Muslim Conquest as a Case Study.” Journal of Islamic Jerusalem Studies / Majallat dirāsāt Bayt al-Maqdis 6.1 (2005): 43–82. ProQuest. Web. 4 Oct. 2014.Google Scholar
Yücesoy, Hayrettin. “Justification of Political Authority in Medieval Sunni Thought.” Islam, the State, and Political Authority: Medieval Issues and Modern Concerns. Ed. Afsaruddin, Asma. New York: Palgrave, 2011. 9–33. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yücesoy, Hayrettin. Tatawwur al-Fikr al-Siyasi ʿinda Ahl al-Sunna: Fatrat al-Takwin (“The Development of Sunni Political Thought: The Formative Period”). Amman: Dar al-Bashir, 1993. Print.Google Scholar