Islam: Religion, Art, and Culture

The mission of the Prophet Muhammad led to the establishment of Islam as a religion and as a state, which was confined to Arabia during the Prophet's lifetime. After his death in a.d. 632, Islam grew rapidly to encompass a vast area that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indus River, in what is now Pakistan. In the tenth century, this great empire disintegrated, and new forms of political authority emerged. Nevertheless, until the early twentieth century, all the states that succeeded the first Islamic empire were based on Islamic law and beliefs.

In the Islamic Middle East, as elsewhere, patronage followed power, and the ruling elite set the style in artistic production. Yet the people who commissioned, designed, and made this art were not all Muslims. Nor was the content of Islamic art necessarily religious, since it also reflected a sophisticated secular culture. "Islamic art" is therefore a broad cultural term rather than one based on an exclusively religious definition.

When the Middle East came under Islamic rule in the seventh century, artistic production did not immediately break with the past; only gradually did the region's varied artistic traditions merge into an identifiably Islamic style. The prominence given to inscriptions in Arabic helped give Islamic art its own character, as did technical advances. From the twelfth century, for example, potters painted designs under the glaze, while metalworkers executed complex and colorful patterns on the surface of brasswares using inlay in silver, copper, gold, and other materials (fig. 1). Similar skills were applied to glass vessels, which were covered with bright and well-composed ornament using enameled colors and gilding (fig. 2).

External forces brought further change. Trade with China in the eighth century reintroduced the use of ceramic tablewares to the Middle East, and in the thirteenth century, the Mongol occupation of the eastern half of the Middle East led to the adoption of East Asian imperial motifs such as the phoenix and the dragon. All these changes had a cumulative effect, so that by the fourteenth century, Islamic art had become totally distinct from the art of the pre-Islamic past.

The Written Word
Nothing is more characteristic of Islamic art than the use of inscriptions in Arabic, which appear on the walls of both palaces and mosques, and on a variety of objects. A system of proportions governing the forms of the letters and their relationship to each other was developed as early as the eighth century. Over time, the rules changed, as different styles of script became popular or fell from favor. But rules always existed, lending consistency to the art of Islamic calligraphy -- the art of "writing well" in the Arabic script.

The increased importance of inscriptions during the Islamic period is intimately connected to the nature of Islam, which is based on the revelation received from God by the Prophet Muhammad. This was the Qur'an -- the Word of God spoken in the Arabic language. Muslims in each generation made copies of the Qur'an written in the Arabic script, and this use of writing to record the very Word of God has given calligraphy its prominent status
in Islamic culture.

Quotations in elegant calligraphy from the Qur'an and other religious texts embellish Islamic buildings and works of art. They are principally used in religious contexts, as in the case of the tile frieze bearing a monumental Qur'anic inscription that once adorned the tomb of Buyanquli Khan in Bukhara, Uzbekistan (fig. 3). However, a wide range of secular inscriptions also appears, many expressing benedictions such as, "Good fortune and prosperity to the owner!" Sometimes, the names of patrons and artists are worked into the calligraphic ornament, as are quotations from the huge storehouse of Middle Eastern poetry written in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.

The Human Figure
One popular assumption is that Islamic culture does not tolerate figural imagery. This ban can certainly be seen at work in religious contexts. No human or animal figures appear in mosque decoration, and there are no illustrated Qur'ans. On the other hand, figural images were common in secular contexts, especially in works of art made for the courts of Islamic rulers. Ivory caskets from the courts of Muslim Spain, for example, are sometimes carved with images of courtiers and musicians surrounded by birds and animals in a garden setting (fig. 4), and many literary manuscripts contain figural illustrations (fig. 5).

At times, the use of imagery even extended to three-dimensional figures, although sculptures came dangerously close to the idols that God had warned Muslims not to worship. Because sculptors imitated the unique creative power of God by reproducing the outward form of His creatures, many people considered such works offensive.

Courts and Courtiers: Art and Power
Rival courts produced rival styles, as demonstrated by the contrasting art of the Ottomans and Safavids in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After their conquest of Egypt and Syria in 1517, the Ottoman Turks constructed a great empire in the western half of the Middle East, while the lands to the east, principally Iran, were united under the rule of the Safavid dynasty. As a result, most of the Middle East was divided between two great powers, each striving to assert its supremacy.

The Ottomans and Safavids shared many cultural values, and their artistic styles drew upon many of the same sources. Nevertheless, their mutual antagonism ensured that their art would develop in different ways, as reflected in their contrasting attitudes toward the use of images in the decorative arts.

Both the Ottomans and the Safavids commissioned illustrated manuscripts, but only in Safavid Iran did the figural themes explored in these manuscripts furnish designs for works in other media. A tile panel that once adorned a Safavid palace in Isfahan depicts courtly young men and women enjoying a picnic (cover), while a repeating pattern of similarly elegant youths is woven into a silk velvet (fig. 6).

By employing these designs, the Safavids may have been deliberately defying the Ottomans, since the Turks generally avoided figural imagery in the decorative arts. The closest they came to it was their use of abstract patterns based on animal pelts, such as that found on a kaftan made for a child of the Ottoman imperial family (fig. 7): the paired wavy lines derive from the stripes on tiger hides worn by ancient heroes. In avoiding the public display of human and animal figures, the Ottomans sought to present themselves as the leading advocates of Islamic orthodoxy, a status they could claim as the guardians of the most sacred Muslim sites in Mecca and Medina. The holy precinct in Mecca, which includes the cubelike stone building known as the Ka'bah, is schematically represented on a seventeenth-century Turkish tile (fig. 8).

Faith and Science
The Ka‘bah, a shrine believed to have been originally built by the prophet Abraham as the first House of God, is a focal point in the daily lives of Muslims who turn in its direction each time they pray. Calculating the direction of the Ka‘bah was therefore an important challenge that required Islamic scientists to make astronomical observations with such complex instruments as astrolabes and, in later times, specially adapted compasses. These instruments were also used for accurate timekeeping, so that daily prayers could be performed at the correct times. Knowledge of astronomy and other sciences has therefore been esteemed in the Islamic world, and medieval Muslims played a key role in preserving and developing the scientific heritage of classical antiquity. This knowledge came to be shared by Christian and Jewish people in Europe and formed the foundation from which modern science arose.

Mosque and Church
As the Ka‘bah was the focus for worship and prayer, its direction, known as the Qiblah, was important to the design of mosques. These buildings always have an empty niche, called the mihrab, in the wall facing the Qiblah, and consequently Mecca. Mosques were relatively free of furniture, although one very large piece of furniture found in the more important mosques was the minbar, the pulpit that was placed to the right of the mihrab and was used for the weekly Friday sermon (fig. 9).

Mosques and other Muslim foundations were not the only religious buildings of the Middle East in the Islamic period. Muslims regard Judaism and Christianity as "scriptural" religions based on earlier versions of the divine revelation (the Torah and the Bible), and the Islamic states protected the followers of these religions. The Christians and Jews, and in Iran the Zoroastrians, had their own places of worship, and many works of art were made for people of these faiths. As these patrons were culturally a part of the Islamic world, the objects they commissioned often differed little from those made for Muslims. Inscriptions in Arabic might be most readily associated with Muslim patronage, but the one on a medieval brass chalice, for example, tells us it was made for a Christian priest (fig. 10).

Princely Patronage
The construction of a wooden minbar was an expensive venture, especially in Egypt, where wood was a rare commodity. Rulers often covered the costs, for they usually controlled an enormous proportion of a state's wealth. Such acts of patronage signaled the rulers' piety and brought them public approval. To ensure that the patrons would be remembered, minbars and other objects made for mosques carry inscriptions stating who commissioned them. The minbar shown here (see fig. 9) bears the name of the Mamluk Sultan Qa'itbay, a great patron of the arts who ruled from Cairo from 1468 to 1496.

The patronage of powerful rulers could have a dramatic effect. In the 1460s or 1470s, the Ottoman sultan Mehmet the Conqueror began to invest in the production of ceramics for his court, which led to a steep rise in the quality of pottery available on the market. In the small town of Iznik in northwest Anatolia, craftsmen had been producing unremarkable earthenwares that were pale imitations of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. By the end of the fifteenth century, however, Iznik potters were producing fritware, a white ceramic made from finely ground pebbles and sand that resembled porcelain. This new material allowed potters to make vessels of such remarkable size and refinement that they are considered one of the highest achievements of Islamic art (fig. 11).

Artistic Exchange
Until the sixteenth century, the Middle East sat firmly at the center of the known world, and its connections with East and South Asia, Europe, and Africa made it the hub of a complex system of trade routes. One result of this far-reaching commercial traffic was that Middle Eastern artists and craftsmen had to compete with the best artisans in the world. Chinese ceramics especially spurred creativity. White Chinese porcelain had been imported into Iraq as early as the eighth century and was much in demand by the elite, which inspired Islamic potters to create imitations made of local materials for clients of more modest means. In the process, local potters invented a type of white pottery that could serve as a "blank canvas" for new types of decoration. One new method involved the use of metallic compounds, which, after firing, left gleaming designs in luster on the surface of the glaze.

Luster pottery proved popular over a long period. The large bowl depicting a ship bearing the arms of Portugal (fig. 12) shows that lusterwares were still being produced by Muslim craftsmen in Spain in the late fifteenth century. The main center of manufacture was the southern port of Málaga, which remained under Muslim rule until 1487. Luster production continued in Christian-ruled Spain for many centuries, and from there it traveled to Italy, where artists used Islamic techniques to create wares in the Renaissance style.

Objects from one culture often acquired new meaning when exported to another. An example is the enameled glass beaker known as the "Luck of Edenhall" (fig. 13), which was made in Egypt or Syria in the thirteenth century. By the fourteenth century, the vessel was in Europe and spent most of its life at Edenhall, a house in northern England, where it was used as a chalice in the Christian liturgy. Later on, its origin was forgotten and the chalice became the subject of a legend. It was said to be a magic object that had been left at a well by fairies feasting, one of whom cried: "If this cup should break or fall, farewell the luck of Edenhall." The house was demolished in 1926, yet the fragile glass vessel survives.

The international pattern of commerce sometimes fostered similar tastes in disparate lands. Ottoman velvets can be indistinguishable from Florentine or Venetian textiles; sinuous, arabesque patterns recur on inlaid metalwork produced in Egypt, Syria, and Italy; and some carved ivories are variously attributed to southern Italy or Fatimid Egypt. The wealth of artistic interaction between the Islamic Middle East and Europe was such that some works cannot be easily assigned to one culture and instead reflect a shared aesthetic.

This exhibition was organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

The exhibition at the National Gallery of Art is generously sponsored by H. R. H. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the United States.

The international tour of this exhibition has been made possible by the generosity of Mohammed Jameel, the benefactor of the V&A's Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art, which is dedicated to the memory of Mr. Abdul Latif Jameel, the late founder of the Abdul Latif Jameel Group, and his wife Nafisa.

It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

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