A SENSE OF GEOGRAPHY

The Middle East has played a pivotal role in human civilization for thousands of years, and during its long and fascinating history it has repeatedly produced art that still has the power to engage us today. Before the twentieth century, the Middle East was a land of empires, and among the greatest of these was the state established by the first Muslims in the seventh century AD. Palace and Mosque is devoted to some of the outstanding art works produced in the Muslim world over the following 1200 years. This art is a testimony to the gusto and talent of its makers, and it demonstrates how, during that long period, the Middle East retained a central place in the world, both as a forum for exchange and as a focus of piety.

The prophetic mission of Muhammad, who died in AD 632, led to the foundation of Islam as a religion, and it simultaneously gave rise to a new state that grew rapidly under Muhammad’s successors, the caliphs. By the middle of the eighth century, its territories stretched from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the banks of the Indus and the borders of China in the east. The political unification of this vast domain was eventually followed by an increasing degree of religious and cultural coherence, which survived the disintegration of this first Islamic empire. Its political unity, weakened in the ninth century, was broken altogether in the tenth. From this time, the universal caliphate was replaced by a shifting pattern of lesser states (some of which were nevertheless very large). Despite political disintegration, a form of unity was maintained, since all the entities that succeeded the caliphate took a form of Islamic law as their organizing principle. In the Middle East this tradition was maintained until the early years of the twentieth century.

Drawing Boundaries

Artistic production in the caliphate’s successor states also had a great deal in common -- at least, it is similar enough to make it worth discussing as a whole, and it is diverse enough to make this discussion interesting. For this reason, a very broad view has been taken here, of the Middle East as a geographical unit, including within it all the territories held by the Islamic caliphate around AD 750, with some changes over time. Under discussion come artefacts made in the core of the region, in the lands between Egypt and Iran. Also discussed are objects made in what is now Afghanistan and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia, in the Caucasus, in North Africa and even in Spain, which formed part of the Islamic world from the early eighth century until the fall of Granada in 1492. Other boundaries were fluid, too. From the end of the eleventh century, Asia Minor gradually came under Muslim Turkish rule. By the mid-fifteenth century, the Turks had entirely replaced the Byzantine empire, both there and in southeast Europe. The art they made in these regions also takes its place in this account.

The occasional changes in the boundaries of the Islamic Middle East were insignificant compared with their permeability to the flow of goods, people and ideas. From the foundation of the Islamic empire in the seventh century, the enormous wealth that accrued to its rulers from booty and taxation allowed them to import whatever they wished from any other part of the Old World. In doing so, they were able to reflect the claim to universal dominion.

The Middle East became a great mart that dealt in goods from every quarter, whether raw materials or finished wares. Luxury industries flourished, often continuing Middle Eastern traditions of the pre-Islamic period. One was glass production, which was based on locally available materials. Another was the carving of imported rock crystal. In some cases, demand rose, but local production was overtaken by imports of superior quality. The best understood example is the introduction of high-fired ceramics from China. The challenge from the superior Chinese wares forced Middle Eastern potters to make radical changes in the way they worked, and this happened not once but repeatedly over a period of a thousand years. Middle Eastern luxury wares made their way in the opposite direction, too, and a group of early Islamic glass objects, for instance, has been found buried intact as an offering in the foundations of a ninth-century temple at Xian in China.

This was not, however, a story of unending prosperity and seamless progress. Invasions, plagues, famines and earthquakes all played their part in the ups and downs of artistic production. Centres of production moved. Patterns of trade changed. The creation of the Frankish empire by Charlemagne around AD 800 was followed by a gradual improvement in economic conditions in Christian Europe, which then grew in importance as a market for Middle Eastern exports. But these changes also created a new rival for the Middle East in both the military and economic spheres.

At the end of the fifteenth century, as the Middle Ages drew to a close, the Middle East lay at the centre of a pattern of commercial routes that linked Europe and the Mediterranean world in the west with eastern and southern Asia. It also drew raw materials and slaves from the less developed regions to the north and south. In this period, before the European discovery of the Americas, the Middle East truly lay at the centre of the world. The art made there reflected this fact, helping to give it a universal relevance.

Looking at it in this way, we might expect the Middle East to have lost its identity in a sea of cosmopolitanism. There was one enormously important factor that acted against this, and that was the religion of Islam. Far from losing its distinctive character because of the intensity and multiplicity of its interregional contacts, the Middle East was, and still is, the source of a strong spiritual force that has radiated out over surrounding regions. Sometimes it was borne there by might of arms. Sometimes, though, it was transmitted along trade routes by peaceful means -- through the preaching and personal example of missionaries and merchants.

In the Middle Ages, Islam spread to sub-Saharan Africa, to India, to Southeast Asia, to the great port cities of China, to the steppes of Kazakhstan, to towns along the Volga and to the mountains of Bosnia. In all those places, on every day of their lives, the observant among the Muslim population turned back towards the Middle East to say their prayers. In this sense, too, the Middle East was truly the centre of the world, and it remains so, even for Muslims in lands as far away as America and Australia, in which they have settled relatively recently.

Sacred Geography

The Middle East is the focus of Muslims’ prayers because it contains the city of Mecca, situated in western Arabia, and, more precisely, the structure known as the Ka‘bah, which stands at the centre of the city. This cube-like stone building had been a religious shrine long before the Prophet’s time, and the Qur’an tells us that it was originally built by the Jewish patriarch Abraham as the first House of God. Later it fell into the hands of idolaters, and it was Muhammad’s role to restore it to its proper use, by worshippers of the One True God.

Muhammad was born in Mecca, and it remained his home until AD 622, when he and his followers were forced to leave for the city of Medina, 300 kilometres or so to the north. Although he later gained control of Mecca, Muhammad continued to live in Medina until his death, and he was buried in the corner of his domestic compound there, now the mosque of the Prophet. Muhammad’s move from Mecca to Medina, known in Arabic as the Hijrah, marks the beginning of the Islamic era, while his point of departure in Mecca and his point of arrival in Medina became the Two Noble Sanctuaries -- they are the holiest places in Islam, from which all non-Muslims are excluded.

After the Hijrah, a break was made with Jewish (and Christian) practice when, following a divine revelation on the matter, Muhammad changed the geographical focus of Muslim ritual from the holy sites in Jerusalem to the Ka‘bah in Mecca. Henceforth believers turned towards this city to perform their daily prayers. This orientation, known as the Qiblah, is therefore an important factor in the life of Muslims, and it has affected their art and architecture in many ways. An obvious example is the layout of mosques and other religious buildings. Since the time of the Prophet, all mosques have been aligned towards Mecca, and the main wall at right angles to the Qiblah is set with one or more empty niches, known as mihrabs. From their presence the believer automatically knows in which direction to pray.

When Muslims perform their prayers in mosques or other locations, they often use rectangular mats decorated with a bold arch motif -- a two-dimensional representation of the mihrab -- that can be oriented in the direction of prayer. The most familiar of these were made as pile carpets, but many were produced in other techniques, such as embroidery.

In some circumstances, Muslims may also need a means for establishing where the Qiblah lies. In the past, this could be done by a variety of methods, some far from precise. Indeed, finding the direction accurately was a complicated problem that could only be addressed by scientists. Over time, these men of learning were able to supply the rest of the population with data in tabular or graph form, which allowed them to find the Qiblah more easily when used in conjunction with instruments adapted or specially developed for the purpose. The magnetic compass, introduced from China in the Middle Ages, was an element in many Qiblah finders, including a type produced in some numbers in nineteenth-century Iran. The brass cases of these instruments are densely engraved with a gazetteer that gives the geographical co-ordinates of the Qiblah at many cities in the Islamic world, similar to that found in books of tables.

Telling the time accurately is also important for the correct performance of the five daily prayers, but the times of the prayers are based on a division of night and day into twelve hours each. Except at the equinox, these hours are unequal, and their length changes with the seasons. This means that mechanical clocks, which operate on a cycle of twenty-four equal hours, are of limited use for prayer times. When they were eventually introduced from Europe, such timepieces could only be used in conjunction with calendars that gave the prayer times for each day according to the twenty-four-hour clock. Today these methods for finding the Qiblah and calculating the times of the prayers have been supplanted by digital instruments controlled by satellite.

If they have the financial resources, all Muslims are expected to go to Mecca as pilgrims at least once in their lifetime. The main pilgrimage, the Hajj, occurs once a year, at the time of the Feast of Sacrifice, and the elaborate rites on this occasion culminate in visits to the Ka‘bah in the Noble Sanctuary, which is often depicted on the certificates and mementos the pilgrims acquired to record their pious journey. In the version shown here, the sanctuary in Mecca is represented diagrammatically as though seen from the northeast. The various structures within the surrounding arcades are labelled, and the space immediately above the diagram is filled with a relevant quotation from the Qur’an (surah III, verses 96–97), which enjoins the performance of the Hajj on all believers who can afford it.

Orientation towards the Qiblah was required in many activities associated with ritual purity, such as the reading of the Qur’an and the slaughter of animals for food. It also governed burial practices: graves are dug so that the deceased will face the Ka‘bah when they rise up on the Day of Judgement. The marking of Muslim graves has varied enormously with time and place. In Iran in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the resting-places of many religious figures were renovated using splendid moulded tiles in which designs in lustre were applied over coloured glazes. The basic outline of the design is provided by an arch motif, augmented by a hanging lamp and framed by a familiar Qur’anic quotation (surah CXII); this "mihrab" indicated that the deceased had been buried in the alignment prescribed by Islamic law and would be among the saved on the fateful day at the end of time.

A Complex Legacy

All the artefacts discussed so far can be associated with the sacred geography of Islam, but their uses and significance do not necessarily stop there. The two tiles were restricted to religious functions, which is signalled by the presence on them of Qur’anic inscriptions, but the prayer mat is a different case. The simple arch motif it bears was never restricted to Muslim religious contexts. In the same period, for example, a very similar design was used to decorate the walls of imperial tents. Nor were the calculations made with an astrolabe confined to calculating the times of the five daily prayers and finding the Qiblah. The instrument could also be employed in mundane activities such as surveying, as well as in astrology.

The two astrolabes illustrated represent a type made in Isfahan during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, while it was the capital of the Safavid shahs, and the survival of many fine specimens from this period has been attributed not to religious enthusiasm but to the reliance of the Safavid court on the prognostications of astrologers. Indeed, so great was the reliance on their advice that in 1667, Shah Safi II re-enacted his accession ceremony and took a new name, Shah Sulayman, following his astrologers’ advice. They told him he had ascended the throne on an inauspicious day.

As the uses of the arch motif and of the astrolabe show, the story of art in the Islamic Middle East is not a simple one. Although we call it "Islamic" art, it is not so much the art of a body of believers as the art of a broad and complex culture. How, then, do we justify this name? How do we define "Islamic art"?

Excerpted from Palace and Mosque: Islamic Art from the Victoria and Albert Museum, by Tim Stanley with Mariam Rosser-Owen and Stephen Vernoit, published worldwide by V&A Publications, ISBN 185177 430 0. The book is distributed in hardcover in North America by Harry N. Abrams Inc., ISBN 0-8109-6562-3.

General Information

The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden are at all times free to the public. They are located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, and are open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Sunday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. The Gallery is closed on December 25 and January 1. For information call (202) 737-4215 or the Telecommunications Device for the Deaf (TDD) at (202) 842-6176, or visit the Gallery's Web site at www.nga.gov.

Visitors will be asked to present all carried items for inspection upon entering the East and West Buildings. Checkrooms are free of charge and located at each entrance. Luggage and other oversized bags must be presented at the 4th Street entrances to the East or West Building to permit x-ray screening and must be deposited in the checkrooms at those entrances. For the safety of visitors and the works of art, nothing may be carried into the Gallery on a visitor's back. Any bag or other items that cannot be carried reasonably and safely in some other manner must be left in the checkrooms. Items larger than 17 x 26 inches cannot be accepted by the Gallery or its checkrooms.

For additional press information please call or send inquiries to:

Press Office
National Gallery of Art
2000B South Club Drive
Landover, MD 20785
phone: (202) 842-6353 e-mail: pressinfo@nga.gov

Deborah Ziska
Chief of Press and Public Information
(202) 842-6353
ds-ziska@nga.gov

If you are a member of the press and would like to be added to our press list, click here.