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REGIONALITY LOOKING FOR THE LOCAL

IN THE ARTS OF ISLAM

HISTORIANS OF ISLAMIC ART ASSOCIATIONFifth Biennial Symposium,

20 - 22 October, 2016The Courtauld Institute of Art,

University of London

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Regionality: Looking for the Local in the Arts of Islam

Fifth Biennial Symposium 20-22 October, 2016

PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME SCHEDULE

All panels and keynote talks will take place at the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre (KCLT) at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

www.historiansofislamicart.orgwww.courtauld.ac.uk

Thursday, 20th October 2016

5.30 - 6.15 pm

6.15 - 6.30 pm

6.30 - 7.30 pm

7.30 - 8.30 pm

Registration

Welcome Remarks Deborah Swallow, Professor and Director, The Courtauld Institute of Art Sheila Canby, HIAA president

Introduction of keynote address 1 Sheila Canby

Finbarr Barry Flood, New York University; Images Incomplete: Prescriptive Piety as Material Practice in Islamic Art

Drinks reception

The Courtauld Institute of ArtStrand, London WC2R 0RN, UK

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Friday, 21st October 2016

10.00 - 12.00 pm

12.00 - 2.00 pm

2.00 - 3.30 pm

3.30 - 4.00 pm

Object viewing sessions at the British Museum, British Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum

Lunch break and return to The Courtauld

PANEL 1 (KCLT)Responses to the Antique World in Islam

Chair: Simon O’Meara, School of Oriental and African Studies

Nadia Ali, University of Oxford; Early Islamic Art, Local Micro-Identities and Everyday Religiosity in the pre-Modern Syrian Countryside

Lindsay Allen, King’s College London; Contested Ruins: The Stratigraphy of Islamic Marginalia at Takht-i Jamshid/Persepolis

Lev Arie Kapitaikin, Tel Aviv University; A Sense of Place and Grace: The Great ‘Zitouna’ Mosque of Tunis, a Font of Tunisian Architecture

Discussant: Antony Eastmond, Courtauld Institute of Art

Tea & Coffee

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4.00 - 5.30 pm

6.00 - 7.00 pm

7.00 - 8.00 pm

PANEL 2 (KCLT) Locality of Style in Turco-Persian Manuscripts

Chair: Zeynep Yürekli-Görkay, University of Oxford

Cailah Jackson, University of Oxford; The Illuminations of Mukhlis ibn ‘Abdullah al-Hindi: A Local Style of Late Thirteenth-Century Konya

Alya Karame, University of Edinburgh; The Illumination of the Imperial Ghaznavid Qur’ans: A Distinct Local Style

Jaimee K. Comstock-Skipp, Fulbright Scholar, Dushanbe, Tajikistan; Heroes of Legend, Heroes of History: Militant Manuscripts of the Shaybanid Uzbeks in Transoxiana

Discussant: Elaine Wright, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

Introduction of keynote address 2 Marianna Shreve Simpson, University of Pennsylvania Jeremy Johns, University of Oxford; ‘Fings ain’t wot they oughto be’: Making Things & the Art History of Early & Medieval Islamic Societies

Drinks Reception

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Saturday, 22nd October 2016

9.30 - 11.00 am

11.00 - 11.30 am

11.30 - 1.00 pm

PANEL 3 (KCLT)State Control of City and Landscape

Chair: Julia Gonnella, Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin

Stéphane Pradines, Aga Khan University; Regional Patterns in Fatimid Military Architecture

Paul Wordsworth, University of Oxford; Styling the saray: Central Asian Traditions in Early Seljuq Architectural Grammar

Abbey Stockstill, Harvard University; Under the Atlas: Visibility and Materiality in the Landscape of Almohad Marrakesh

Discussant: Scott Redford, School of Oriental and African Studies

Tea & Coffee

PANEL 4 (KCLT)Local/Translocal Dialogues through the Arts of the Book

Chair: Anna Contadini, School of Oriental and African Studies

Jake Benson, Leiden University; The Qit’at-i Khushkhatt Album and Mir Muhammad Tahir

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1.00 - 2.30 pm

2.30 - 4.00 pm

4.00 - 4.30 pm

Keelan Overton, Independent Scholar, Santa Barbara, CA; Between Herat, Bijapur and Mysore: The Timurid Qur’an of Abu Sa‘id

Melis Taner, Harvard University; An Illustrated Genealogy Between the Ottomans and Safavids

Discussant: Ünver Rüstem, Johns Hopkins University

Lunch provided

PANEL 5 (KCLT)Mediated Identities in Early Modern South Asian Architecture

Chair: Ebba Koch, University of Vienna

Munazzah Akhtar, University of Victoria, Canada; Identity in Death: Expression of Identities in Samma Monuments of Makli Necropolis at Thatta

Fatima Quraishi, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University; Banna’i, Chinoiserie and Carved Sandstone: Mediating Between East and West in Early Modern Sindh

Peyvand Firouzeh, Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin; Scribing and Inscribing for the Sufis: Calligraphy, Sufism, and Dynastic Identity in Fifteenth-Century Bidar

Discussant: D. Fairchild Ruggles, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Tea & Coffee

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4.30 - 6.00 pm

6.00 - 6.15 pm

6.15 - 7.00 pm

7.00 - 7.30 pm

7.30 - 9.00 pm

PANEL 6 (KCLT)The Specificities of Modernity

Chair: Ruba Kana’an, Aga Khan Museum

Margaret Graves, Indiana University; Markets, Makers and Anxious Administrators: Ceramics and Craft Fidelity in Early Twentieth-Century Morocco

Holly Shaffer, Dartmouth College; ‘The Sky is so Profusely Illuminated’

Alex Dika Seggerman, Smith College; What is Egyptian Modernism?

Discussant: Mercedes Volait, CNRS, Paris

Short break

Introduction of keynote address 3 Renata Holod, University of Pennsylvania Talinn Grigor, University of California Davis; Modernism as (a)Politics: Religious Minorities and the Discourse on Architecture in Pahlavi Iran

Celebrating Prof. Doris Behrens-Abouseif Sussan Babaie, Courtauld Institute of Art

Concluding Remarks

Drinks and Tapas Reception at Fernandes & Wells, Somerset House

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Sunday, 23rd October 2016

10.00 - 3.00 pm Special visit to the Sarikhani Collection Registration required, limited availability,

or self-organized visit to

Exhibition: Power and protection: Islamic art and the supernatural, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; 20 October 2016 - 15 January 2017

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In the study of the late antique legacy in early Islamic art, scholars have tended to focus on the push and pull of competing traditions, be they Roman, Persian Christian, or Islamic. This focus has often led to the neglect of the local contexts of production of works and their receptions. In an attempt to complicate this trend within the Syrian rural context, I have chosen to assess the restored paintings of Qusayr ‘Amra-a bath and audience hall built by the Umayyad caliph al-Walid II (r.743-744), with attention to the continuity of local workshops and regional cultures. I begin by examining the construction of Qusayr ‘Amra’s programme and the identities and formations of the artists. In identifying the contributions of local craftsmen, I aim to offer a reading that abandons the usual questions of eastern/western origins and patron’s intentions. The second part of my argument explores the viewers’ responses to Qusayr ‘Amra’s images as mediated by local affiliations and everyday religiosity. It is important to understand that the pre-modern religious culture of the Syrian countryside did not adhere to any systematic dogma and practice was sharply defined by local differences across the various districts. Shedding light on these aspects, I shall argue that this specific religious and agrarian context can provide an alternative framework for the interpretation of the programme, especially its uncanny combination of caliphal imagery with depictions of water cults, sacred trees, divine birth, saints and prophets. Ultimately, my goal is to question the grounds for our assumptions in creating the generalization of ‘early islamic art’ as real category of visual production in Late Antiquity with specific and discrete audiences and constituencies of patrons and producers.

Early Islamic Art, Local Micro-Identities and Everyday Religiosity in the pre-Modern SyrianCountryside

Nadia Ali, University of Oxford

PANEL 1 | Responses to the Antique World in Islam

ABSTRACTS

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Graffiti on the Palace of Darius, the most prominent spot among the ruins of Takht-i Jamshid or Persepolis, records repeated interaction with this pre- Islamic space across six centuries. All biographers of the site, from Curzon to Mousavi, recognise the accumulated ‘symbolic significance’ of this memorialising activity, but with repetition this idea has come be portrayed as a nebulous reverence. This paper examines the stratigraphy of marginalia and overwriting of meaning on ancient stone by distinguishing the temporal horizons of graffitied conversations and their spatial relationships. I argue that a cessation of annotation in the Safavid period is connected to a redeployment of spolia from Takht-i Jamshid in elite building, and to an alleged episode of iconoclasm in the mid-seventeenth century. This shift coincided with the emergence of Takht-i Jamshid as ‘Persepolis’ in European travel accounts. The ruins therefore went through a revolution in conceptual translation, from introspective, comparatively regional memorialisation to an externalised, virtualised global existence.

The paper thus seeks to offer a specific and nuanced case study of the ‘local’ construction of material and geographical memory in the Persianate world, and of its increasing interaction with the global.

Contested Ruins: The Stratigraphy of Islamic Marginalia at Takht-i Jamshid/Persepolis

Lindsay Allen, King’s College London

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The Great Mosque of Tunis-City – locally known as “the Zitouna” (Olive-Tree) – was barely noticed in scholarship, in contrast to its famous counterpart, the Great Mosque of Kairouan. This is all the more perplexing since “the Zitouna” ranks only second in Ifriqiya in importance, after the Kairouanese mosque and even surpasses it in architectural coherence and grace. Just like the Kairouan Mosque, the Mosque of Tunis was also utilized as a famous religious university, and has enjoyed a continuous patronage of the ruling dynasties: the Aghlabids, the Fatimids, the Zirids, the Khurasanids (1062-1128 and 1148-59) and the Hafsids (1228-1574). Especially the two latter local dynasties transformed it into their own dynastic shrine. The bahou dome added in the late tenth century to the prayer hall along with a few Khurasanid portals present a spectacular ablaq striped décor – the earliest dated of its kind in the Maghrib.

Instead of picturing the Great Mosque of Tunis as “poorer relative” of the celebrated mosques of Kairouan and Cordoba (as the founders of Tunisian archaeology, Lucien Golvin and Slimane Mostafa-Zbiss have done), I argue that “the Zitouna” and related Khurasanid monuments of Tunis embody a crystallization of local architectural tradition persisting into the premodern era. The graceful architectural style of Tunis-City was engendered not by contacts with faraway al-Andalus, but by the encounter with nearby ruins of ancient Carthage. The Andalusi geographer al-Bakri writes in 1068: “the doors of all the houses [in Tunis] are framed by beautiful marble…the marble in the [ruins] of Carthage is so abundant, that were all the inhabitants of Ifriqiya to be assembled in order to remove its blocks from there and to transport them elsewhere, they could have never accomplished that task.” Practical, historical, prestigious, and magical associations were attached to North-African Antique monuments by indigenous Berbers and their rulers, for whom they served as landmarks of place, identity, and pride; which is why they, naturally, wished emulating them in “the Zitouna” city-shrine.

A Sense of Place and Grace: The Great ‘Zitouna’ Mosque of Tunis, a Font of Tunisian Architecture

Lev Arie Kapitaikin, Tel Aviv University

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Research concerning the artistic life of medieval Anatolia has made many welcome advances in recent years. Scholars have evaluated the contexts within which the academic field emerged, and questioned the frameworks and terms that formerly dominated the literature. Consequently, more nuanced and inclusive understandings of material culture have been formulated. Such understandings acknowledge both the ethnic and religious diversity of the region and the fractured nature of political authority at the time. Published works to date, however, have not yet addressed the late medieval Anatolian arts of the book in their fullest cultural contexts. This rich body of material remains relatively neglected in broader surveys of Anatolian material culture, and in histories of Islamic art and manuscript studies. This paper seeks to partially address this gap by discussing illuminations that were produced by Mukhlis ibn ‘Abdullah al-Hindī, one of the two named illuminators active in late medieval Konya. The manuscripts that form the core focus of the paper are a small Qur’an and a large copy of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī’s Masnavī. Both were decorated by Mukhlis in Konya in 677/1278. This material has not been published in detail or studied within its cultural milieux. Following a presentation of the distinctive visual styles of these two manuscripts, a third manuscript will be proposed as a previously unknown work of the same illuminator. In this complex period, which saw the disintegration of Seljuk rule and the partial absorption of the region into the Ilkhanid realm, Konya was hardly isolated from its neighbours and was evidently an active centre for the patronage of the arts of the book. The subsequent analysis will therefore briefly discuss the environment within which these manuscripts were produced and highlight the artistic legacy of Mukhlis in illuminations from early fourteenth-century Konya and late fourteenth-century Mamluk Cairo.

PANEL 2 | Locality of Style in Turco-Persian Manuscripts

The Illuminations of Mukhlis ibn ‘Abdullah al-Hindi: A Local Style of Late Thirteenth-Century Konya

Cailah Jackson, University of Oxford

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The imperial Qur’ans produced in Khurasan during the Ghaznavid dynasty (c. 977-1186 CE) exhibit an idiosyncratic style of illumination. This local visual language is a reflection of the multi-cultural identity that was formed by the mobility of people and manuscripts through Khurasan. At the end of the 10th century CE craftsmen moved from western and central Iran to build Ghazna, the capital of the dynasty, while Persian manuscripts filled its libraries and mosques. Sultan Mahmūd (r. 998-1030 CE) had also brought architects from the newly conquered lands east of Ghazna and used spoils from his Indian military campaigns to enrich its architecture. This movement of artisans, spoils and manuscripts from the west and east of Khurasan through Ghazna played a major role in shaping the local decorative scheme in Qur’ans as much as in architecture. Considering these aspects, this paper will first identify the elements that characterize the illumination in the imperial Ghaznavid Qur’ans. Some of these elements are present in architectural decoration, drawing parallels between the rich Qur’anic illumination and the highly decorative Ghaznavid architectural program. Second, the paper will highlight the appearance of these motifs in Qur’ans from western Iran and the Jazira copied in the 12th and 13th centuries CE. It was due to the westward movement of craftsmen from Khurasan that the once local aesthetic became a transregional one. By defining the illumination in Qur’ans commissioned by the Ghaznavid court, the paper will illustrate how this visual repertoire, reflects a distinct style of illumination that belonged to a wider network of artistic production and geographic interactions.

The Illumination of the Imperial Ghaznavid Qur’ans: A Distinct Local Style

Alya Karame, University of Edinburgh

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This study examines Mawarannahr manuscript arts of the Abulkhayrid branch of the Shaybanid Uzbeks (1500-1598), a Turko-Mongol tribal confederation that occupied sixteenth-century Central Asia. This group is commonly given a peripheral position always in relation to Safavid Iran. Prior research created the category “Bukharan School” to label certain single-page specimens from the Shaybanid realm, and to privilege subject matter with romantic themes at the expense of others. These readings have ignored the wider array of materials, subjects, and styles coming out of multiple centers at the same time. My approach is to shift the characterization of the Central Asian zone and its materials often phrased as being at the margins of the Iranian empire, and to nuance notions of center/periphery inherent in the term “Persianate.” The paper augments studies of the Shahnama that focus on Iran and Iranian cultural heritage by making Central Asia, specifically Bukhara, a sustained focus of study.

In this paper the Shaybanids are examined instead as a politico-religious realm and not just as enemies of the Persians, and looks at select Shaybanid “militant manuscripts” that blend mythical heroes with historical figures. Whether it is an historical chronicle like the Shaybanināma or a collection of myths and legends within the Shāhnāma, the artists insert Shaybanid leaders into the chronology of descendants of Chinggis Khan, noticeably disregarding the preceding Timurid dynasty whom the Shaybanids conquered. It takes an alternate position than that which has been published in articles on Safavid perceptions of Shaybanids to date, such as Robert Hillenbrand’s study of Tahmasp’s Shāhnāma and B.W. Robinson’s statement that the artists of Transoxiana seldom illustrated the Shahnama. The paper instead theorizes that the Safavids were not so much averse to Shaybanid Turkification as to Shaybanid Mongolification, and explores visual articulations of group identity and political legitimacy in select Shaybanid manuscripts.

Heroes of Legend, Heroes of History: Militant Manuscripts of the Shaybanid Uzbeks in Transoxiana

Jaimee K. Comstock-Skipp, Fulbright Scholar, Dushanbe, Tajikistan

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Since 2000, an archaeological mission writes the history of Cairo through the study of the city walls. This project is supported by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) and the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO). Recent discoveries have highlighted several Fatimid and Ayyubid city walls. Some of these fortifications were built of limestone, others of mud bricks, and finally for the oldest, the rammed earth (pisé) was used. It is not a simple diachronic succession of techniques and materials connected to a certain period. Excavations have shown that the reality was much more complex and certainly reflected the diversity of the populations of medieval Cairo. We have been able to prove that the stone and earth were used for the sameperiods: earth was used to build the walls and stone was reserved for the construction of the prestigious city gates. Based on the study of sources describing the Fatimid society, we have proposed a scheme ofinterpretation of the architectural technologies used. This scheme is not based on natural resources, and not onlyaccording to the chronology, but according to the ethnicity of the different corps composing the Fatimid army.We were able to identify three groups at the origin of these technologies: the Berbers, the Nubians and theArmenians. It is this new history of the military architecture of Cairo 969-1092 CE; that I would like to present for the Conference

PANEL 3 | State Control of City and Landscape

Regional Patterns in Fatimid Military Architecture

Stéphane Pradines, Aga Khan University

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Of the early Turkic saray, or palace, academic focus has largely rested on Anatolian examples of the Rum Seljuqs; not unreasonably given how little monumental architecture survives from their earlier cousins in the eastern Islamic world. The available evidence of large Central Asian buildings from the eleventh and twelfth centuries has been somewhat patchily analysed, in no small part owing to the comparatively poor preservation of these structures made from unfired earth. Mud is nevertheless an outstandingly versatile material. Enduring expertise of earthen construction and decoration led to its continuous regional use, which in turn produced a distinctive, arguably local, character in building style.

This paper considers the evidence for saray-type monumental buildings of Northern Khurasan, bridging the division of ‘caravanserais’ and ‘palaces’, to explore whether it is possible to define a new architectural grammar developed under Seljuq rule. The roots of the palatial layout in greater Persia, in particular the four-iwan plan, have been traced by some scholars to the Abbasid period, possibly even drawing upon earlier Sasanian models. Considerable innovations can be seen from the late tenth century onwards, however, particularly in the details of room arrangement and monumental decoration. A markedly new style emerges, contemporary with the rise of the Seljuqs, which self-consciously speaks to local continuity while presenting an entirely new concept of public architecture. Re-evaluating the context of these buildings, ranging from urban citadels to remote outposts, it is possible argue that a watershed transformation took place in eleventh century Khurasan, whereby an increasing number of buildings gained a more visible public role. Furthermore, the creation of an architectural ‘template’ for caravanserais continued to influence the design of these structures well into the early modern period.

Styling the Saray: Central Asian Traditions in Early Seljuq Architectural Grammar

Paul Wordsworth, University of Oxford

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Out of the flat basin known as the Haouz that extends northwards from the Atlas Mountains rises the city of Marrakesh. Originally of Almoravid origin, it was their successors, the Almohads, who turned a seasonal village into an urbanized capital of political and cultural significance. Patronized by the first Almohad caliph ‘Abd al-Mu’min, as well as his son and grandson to a lesser extent, Marrakesh features all the hallmarks of a Mediterranean city that catered to an Islamic populace. And yet the Almohad city is inseparable from its locality near the Atlas Mountains, the site of the dynasty’s ancestral homeland and continually referred to through the manipulation of landscape.

This paper will explore the importance of Marrakesh’s siting and how the built environment created under the Almohads emphasizes the city’s connection to the Atlas Mountains. By mediating the visibility of urban landmarks to those that referenced the Almohads’ ethnic heritage as Berbers, a heritage shared by a majority of Marrakesh’s non-elite inhabitants, the dynasty created a distinctive cityscape that was inextricable from its circumstances.

By discussing Almohad Marrakesh in relation to its surrounding landscape, this paper grants agency to the architectural contributions of the North African dynasty, incorporating ongoing archaeological work and an interdisciplinary methodology. Such an approach will allow scholars of the western Mediterranean to move away from a top-down model of cultural and artistic influence (in which trends from better-studied urban centers are passively received by more provincial ones) and towards a sphere-based model in which the potential for non-Mediterranean influence is given equal weight.

Under the Atlas: Visibility and Materiality in the Landscape of Almohad Marrakesh

Abbey Stockstill, Harvard University

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An album dubbed Qit‘at-i Khushkhatt, “Specimens of Fine Calligraphy” (University of Edinburgh Or.Ms. 373) casts valuable new light on the history of the art of paper marbling in the Islamic world. Relatively intact, each page opening features vividly coloured, matching marbled borders (known as abrī, “clouded” in Persian), in a range of consistently fashioned, distinctly different patterns. Replete with a Persian preface, it only names one artist, Muhammad Tahir, adding that “…among the refinements of this album are the abrī borders,” inferring that they are his work. Unfortunately, neither when, where, nor for whom the album was assembled is explicitly indicated in its preface or other content. Writing to Muhammad Tahir from Ardabil in circa 1600, artists Khalil Veqqari and Yahya Qazvini vaguely indicate he had emigrated from Persia to India, praise his innovative form of abrī, and yet mention no specific place or patron. So to determine provenance, the album’s physical structure and contents encompassing European prints, tinted drawings, manuscript pages, signed compositions of famous masters, unsigned poems, as well as 327 fragments written in Persian, Arabic, and Chaghatay Turkish were examined for possible clues. While the striking colouration of the outer borders understandably elicits questions over their age, a close inspection found many were the underlying page supports, proving they are part of the album’s original construction. Furthermore, one detached leaf now in the National Museum, New Delhi (55.45, fol. 8a [p. 15]) bears a curious fragmentary accession note to the jāmadārkhāna, or “wardrobe”. Probably alluding to Sultan Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II (r. 1580-1626) of Bijapur, this provenance is also suggested by several tinted drawings and other content within the album. So taken together, the evidence in Or.Ms. 373 and related leaves indicates that Muhammad Tahir revolutionised the art of marbling in ‘Adil Shahi Bijapur in circa 1600.

PANEL 4 | Local/Translocal Dialogues through the Arts of the Book

The Qit’at-i Khushkhatt Album and Mir Muhammad Tahir

Jake Benson, Leiden University

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This paper presents ongoing interdisciplinary research between the presenter (Overton), Kristine Rose (book conservator, Chester Beatty Library), and Bruce Wannell (independent scholar, York) on the Qur’an copied by Muhammad Mu’min b. ‘Abdullah Murvarid now preserved in the University of St Andrews. Included in two important exhibitions – the British Library’s The Qur’ān (1976) and Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (1989) – this illustrious codex has been long recognized by Islamicists and South Asianists alike as the only known Qur’an ostensibly made for Abu Sa‘id (r. 1458-69) and later owned by Tipu Sultan of Mysore (r. 1782-99). This paper will reinvestigate the colophon and offer an alternative explanation for the overwhelming majority of the manuscript, save for its famous illuminated incipit pages. It will also explore how the book’s refurbished binding illuminates an earlier and lesser-known sojourn in the Subcontinent: the court of Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II (r. 1580-1627). The latter will investigate how, why, and via whom volumes of the highest pedigree made their way to Bijapur and will position the Deccani city as an important Indo-Persian cultural entrepôt, despite its physical location in a region often deemed “peripheral” (at least in contrast to the Mughal, Ottoman, and Safavid “centers”). The ultimate goal is to investigate the St Andrews Qur’an as a mutable object in aggregate and parse through its many layers, lives, and users over the course of four centuries between Greater Iran and India.

Between Herat, Bijapur and Mysore: The Timurid Qur’an of Abu Sa‘Id

Keelan Overton, Independent Scholar, Santa Barbara, CA

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This paper focuses on an early seventeenth-century illustrated genealogy (Museum of Ethnography Ankara, No. 8457), which is stylistically attributable to Baghdad, and which is iconographically and textually pro-Safavid at a point when Baghdad was under Ottoman rule. Taking the format of the illustrated genealogy, which was widespread in the Ottoman realm from the mid-sixteenth century onwards, the Ankara manuscript adapts the Ottoman genealogical tree tradition to give it a particularly Safavid tenor. In its immediate visual graspability and use of the genealogy as a methodological tool to claim legitimacy, this manuscript represents contested identities in the frontier province of Baghdad. Often described as “eclectic,” and merging elements from Ottoman and Safavid attire and architectural forms, the corpus of paintings from early modern Baghdad also allow us to raise the question of whether our definitions or descriptions of “Ottoman” or “Safavid” manuscripts are too rigid.

In the late sixteenth-century, Baghdad became a center of production of illustrated manuscripts, among which are nearly a dozen genealogies. The majority of these genealogies are composed in Ottoman Turkish. The Ankara manuscript, on the other hand, is in Persian. This corpus of illustrated genealogies produced in late-sixteenth- early-seventeenth- century Baghdad raise several issues: graphic portrayals of legitimacy and competition that utilizes the methodology used for certification and authentication; the popularity of summary universal histories as well as popular religious stories; the audience/readership/ownership or the market for these short but heavily illustrated manuscripts; and the relations between the Istanbul and the provinces.

In terms of content, the illustrated genealogies in Baghdad take part in the interest in universal dynastic histories produced at the Ottoman court. However, their originality in terms of being illustrated, is undeniable. In the liminal geography of Baghdad, where identity is at best murky, and perhaps not unlike the appearance of diagrammatic genealogies after the Mongol conquest, the outburst of illustrated genealogies makes a claim to Sunni Ottoman identity. In this context, the Ankara manuscript clearly stands apart, and turns the genre on its head, by placing the Safavids as the culmination of universal history.

An Illustrated Genealogy Between the Ottomans and Safavids

Melis Taner, Harvard University

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Modern scholarship on South Asia allocates distinct cultural identities to historic sites and artifacts, generally based on geography and/or religion. Thus, a site patronized by a Muslim ruler is defined as “Islamic” and a Hindu temple becomes “Indic”. Such monolithic terms fail to acknowledge the complexities of intercultural interactions and undermine our understanding of artifacts that simultaneously epitomize multiple cultures. The necropolis of Makli, a UNESCO world heritage site located in the city of Thatta (in present-day Pakistan), presents an opportunity to examine this key methodological issue. Scholars classify Makli through the lens of its Muslim religious orientation and categorize it as “Islamic” in character, although the site also contained secular structures.

Makli established as a cultural center and a royal cemetery at the end of the fourteenth century, under the Samma dynasty of Sindh (1351-1524). In this paper, I will examine the architecture and ornamentation of select monuments built in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, to demonstrate that the overall artistic programs of Samma tombs do not reflect any single culture, region, or religion. The hybrid nature of these tombs even led nineteenth century scholars to suggest that they were built using spolia from Hindu temples. I will trace the political and socio-cultural environment of contemporary Thatta to argue that these culturally hybrid structures were not composed of looted materials, but rather they may have been designed deliberately to express state ideologies, religious values, and dimensions of communal identity. Furthermore, the site also acted as a key place of mediation between the co-existing multi-faith and multi-cultural inhabitants of historic Thatta. I will therefore re-examine if its label as an “Islamic” site overly restrictive?

PANEL 5 | State Control of City and Landscape

Identity in Death: Expression of Identities in Samma Monuments of Makli Necropolis at Thatta

Munazzah Akhtar, University of Victoria, Canada

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In 1522, Shah Beg invaded Sindh, where the Samma dynasty (1352—1520) had been ruling independently since their victory over the Delhi sultan Muhammad ibn Tughluq (r. 1324—51). Shah Beg was of the Arghun tribe, which claimed descent from Arghun Khan, the fourth Ilkhanid emperor. Beg’s victory, coinciding with the Mughal emperor Babur’s (r. 1526—1530) successful invasion of northern India, ushered new aesthetics into the architecture of southern Sindh. This aesthetic was demonstrated through glazed ceramics and new ornamental motifs. Prior to the sixteenth century, monumental architecture in southern Sindh had primarily been built in sandstone with carved Indic ornament, reflecting close ties with the architecture of the neighboring region of Gujarat and Rajasthan in India. This preference was adapted in the sixteenth century through the introduc.on of banna’i (the combination of glazed tiles and unglazed bricks to form geometric ornament) in cobalt, turquoise and white glazes and swirling arabesque designs applied in tandem with carved sandstone to produce a unique architecture. This paper presents the brick and .le architecture around the thriving trade emporium of Tha_a in order to analyze the effect of the arrival and entrenchment of Turkic policies in Sindh upon architectural practices. In particular, it will closely examine the Dabgir mosque of Thatta (1588), which the epitomizes the complex dialogue between multiple aesthetic vocabularies. In doing so, this paper sheds light on broader processes of circulation and exchange where local circumstances intersect with geographically dispersed aesthetic modes to produce distinctive aesthetic styles.

Banna’i, Chinoiserie and Carved Sandstone: Mediating Between East And West in Early Modern Sindh

Fatima Quraishi, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

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Around the middle of the fifteenth century, two calligraphers with Shirazi and Qazvini nisbahs were responsible for the inscriptions in two adjacent buildings in Ashtur, a village situated about five kilometres to the east of Bidar (Karnataka, India), the capital of the Bahmani dynasty (1347-1528) from ca. 1423. Both connected to the Ne‘matollahi Sufi order– founded in Iran in the fourteenth century and influential in the Deccan in the first half of the fifteenth – the first is the mausoleum of the son of the order’s founder, and the second is the tomb of the Bahmani ruler, Ahmad Shah I (r.825-839/1422-1436), who was also a disciple and patron of the Ne‘matollahis.

The calligraphic agenda of these monuments, along with textual evidence confirming the link between Sufism and calligraphy at the capital of the Bahmanis gleaned from a significant calligraphical treatise entitled the Tuhfat al-Muhibbin, shape the theoretical framework of this presentation. Compiled by Siraj al-Shirazi, the famous scribe connected to the court of Ibrahim Sultan, the Timurid governor of Fars, the treatise claims to be on methods of calligraphy and mysticism, and is dedicated to the leading Ne‘matollahi descendant in Bidar at the time.

By making use of the above examples – as well as the connected network of monuments and manuscripts – the aim of this presentation is to argue, based on the socio-politically-connected triangle of Sufis, calligraphers, and the court, how calligraphy was used as a means to create a “local” and dynastic identity for the Bahmanis in the fifteenth century. Further, this paper questions the “local” in the Deccan by looking into the cultural as well as cross-cultural particularities that shaped buildings, texts, and objects in Bahmani Bidar.

Scribing and Inscribing for the Sufis: Calligraphy, Sufism, and Dynastic Identity in Fifteenth-Century Bidar

Peyvand Firouzeh, Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin

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Following the establishment of the French Protectorate in Morocco in 1912, an artisanat model was initiated and encouraged in Moroccan ceramic production by the office des arts indigènes, created by the French Resident-General Marshal Hubert Lyautey and headed by Prosper Ricard. Based in part on traditional urban practices and with an emphasis on the division of labour, this model was intended to improve productivity while also ensuring the survival of ancient craft techniques. Driven by scholar-bureaucrats active in French North Africa, most notably Alfred Bel, the artisanat reforms were promoted as a means of saving an indigenous tradition, with the implication that they could also cleanse Moroccanceramic production of foreign influences that had crept in during the previous century. In Alfred Bel’s seminal Les Industries de la Céramique a Fès (1918), the author criticizes the Moroccan potters of the nineteenth and early twentieth century for debasing their craft in response to foreign markets. Yet the artisanat system established under Ricard, still in operation, now produces revivalist pieces aimed largely towards a tourist market that was already in evidence in the early twentieth century. This paper will consider the contradictions inherent in paternalistic workshop reforms in Morocco in the early part of the twentieth century, and what they meant for the finished product and its place in the world. This case study represents just one instance of the many imposed attempts to both revitalize and purify craft production in the Islamic world (and beyond) during the modern era. Ultimately predicated on the existence of an imagined, “authentic” mode of production to which debased industries could be returned, such models are as fascinating as they are fallacious, and speak directly of the anxieties and aspirations of modernity.

PANEL 6 | The Specificities of Modernity

Markets, Makers and Anxious Administrators: Ceramics and Craft Fidelity in Early Twentieth-Century Morocco

Margaret Graves, Indiana University

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“The sky is so profusely illuminated with fireworks that night is able to face day as an equal,” wrote the Urdu poet Ghalib in 1865 while in the North Indian region of Awadh. The night, and its illumination through fireworks, candlelight, and photography, reshaped the arts of Awadh in the nineteenth century. In this paper, I examine the relationship between art and light by focusing on a ragamala – a series of paintings that personify the Indian classical music system, which are now in the Yale University Art Gallery. Painted in the early nineteenth century, this album reveals a dark, moody aesthetic motivated by the candle’s refracting light. Participating in a tradition of Mughal nocturnal images, these paintings also reveal a citywide fascination with light. Belgian glass lamps proliferated in structures as a sign of fashion and technological modernity, as did pyro-technics. However, lights were used to effect brilliant, overwhelming illumination particularly in religious and pleasure contexts, which I relate to an 1822 Urdu manuscript in the New York Public Library titled Id ki Tahniyat, the artist Sita Ram’s watercolors of Lucknow in the British Library, the photographic albums of King Wajid Ali Shah, and religious buildings related to the Shia Muslim mourning ceremonies of the elite.

‘The Sky is so ProfuselyIlluminated’

Holly Shaffer, Dartmouth College

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This paper seeks to define Egyptian modernism in art. The specificity in this paper will lie in the terminology employed to characterize this moment of visual production. Rather than using “modern” to define a temporal, geographic, or stylistic art movement, I argue that Egyptian modernism refers to a particular way in which artworks work to create meaning. In so doing, the paper will embed this art movement within the regional particularities that engendered this distinctive aspect. Because of its agricultural, economic, and strategic significance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Egypt represents a rich field for enquiries into modernity. Egypt rose to importance first as an Ottoman territory ruled by an independent dynasty (1805-1882), then as a semi-colony under British Occupation and a local monarchy (1882-1952), and finally to an Arab-Socialist republic under the charismatic leader Gamal Abdel Nasser (r. 1954-1970). Imperialism, colonialism, and post-colonialism impacted visual production in Egypt tremendously, overhauling institutions of art education and consumption as well as ethno-cultural codes of visual reference. Despite these drastic political, economic, and social shifts, Egyptian modernism in art maintained a consistent characteristic: its artworks’ self-reflexive visualization of transnational networks. The artworks may appear nationalistic, but they knowingly engage with multiple, international image traditions that demand the viewer’s active participation in decoding the referents. I will present three key artworks that exhibit the continuity of this defining characteristic despite major shifts in structures of production. At the paper’s conclusion, I will pose the question: how does this continuity challenge our assumptions about the ruptures in “Islamic” art?

What is Egyptian Modernism?

Alex Dika Seggerman, Smith College

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Programme CommitteeLadan Akbarnia, Sussan Babaie, Moya Carey, Scott Redford, Mariam Rosser-Owen

Mrs. Zinat Iravani, for her unrestricted and generous support of HIAA 2016

The Sarikhani Collection, for their generous support of the keynote speakers and hosting a special visit to the collection

The Barakat Trust for generous support of the participants

The Gingko Library for the generous offer to host the reception to celebrate the conclusion of the conference

The Symposia Iranica Trustfor their kind extension of support of the early career speakers

WE ARE GRATEFUL TO THE FOLLOWING FOR THEIR GENEROUS SUPPORT

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#HIAA2016

HISTORIANS OF ISLAMIC ART ASSOCIATIONThe Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London

www.historiansofislamicart.orgwww.courtauld.ac.uk

For Membership to the Historians of Islamic Art Associationwww.historiansofislamicart.org/Membership.aspx

For registrationhttp://courtauld.ac.uk/event/regionality-looking-local-arts-islam

Front Image: Metalwork bag, brass with silver inlay Ilkhanid, early 14th century, Mosul, Northern

Iraq. The Courtauld Gallery: O.1966.GP.209