- Middle Period: the rise of Persian and Turkish poetry
Middle period
- Key People:
- Owen Jones
- Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī
- Related Topics:
- the arts
- Islamic architecture
- Islamic literature
The middle period in the development of Islamic art extends roughly from the year 1000 to 1500, when a strong central power with occasional regional political independence was replaced by a bewildering mosaic of overlapping dynasties. Ethnically, this was the time of major Turkish and Mongol invasions that brought into the Muslim world new peoples and institutions. At the same time, Imazighen (Berbers), Kurds, and Iranians, who had been within the empire from the beginning of Islam, began to play far more effective historical and cultural roles, short-lived for the Kurds but uniquely important for the Iranians. Besides political and ethnic confusion, there was also religious and cultural confusion during the middle period. The 10th century, for example, witnessed the transformation of the Shiʿi heterodoxy into a major political and possibly cultural phenomenon, while the extraordinary development taken by the personal and social mysticism known as Sufism modified enormously the nature of Muslim piety. Culturally, the most significant development was perhaps that of Persian literature as a highly original new verbal expression existing alongside the older Arabic literary tradition. Finally, the middle period was an era of geopolitical expansion in all areas except Spain, which was completely lost to the Muslims in 1492 with the conquest of the kingdom of Granada by Ferdinand II and Isabella. Anatolia and the Balkans, the Crimean Peninsula, much of Central Asia and northern India, and parts of eastern Africa all became new Islamic provinces. In some cases this expansion was the result of conquests, but in others it had been achieved through missionary work.
The immense variety of impulses that affected the Muslim world during those five centuries was one of the causes of the bewildering artistic explosion that also characterizes the middle period. Although much work has been done on individual monuments, scholarship is still in its infancy. It is particularly difficult, therefore, to decide on the appropriate means of organizing this information: by geographical or cultural areas (e.g., Iran, Egypt, Morocco), by individual dynasties (e.g., Seljuqs, Timurids), by periods (e.g., 13th century before the Mongol invasions), or even by social categories (e.g., the art of princes, the art of cities). Thus, the five following divisions of Fatimid, Seljuq, Western Islamic, Mamluk, and Mongol Iran (Il-Khanid and Timurid) art are partly arbitrary and to a large extent tentative. Their respective importance also varies, for what is known as Seljuq art certainly overwhelms almost all others in its importance.
Fatimid art (909–1171)
The Fatimids were technically an Arab dynasty professing with missionary zeal the beliefs of the Ismāʿīlī sect of the Shiʿi branch of Islam. The dynasty was established in Tunisia and Sicily in 909. In 969 the Fatimids moved to Egypt and founded the city of Cairo. They soon controlled Syria and Palestine. In the latter part of the 11th century, however, the Fatimid empire began to disintegrate internally and externally; the final demise occurred in 1171. But it is not known which of the obvious components of the Fatimid world was more significant in influencing the development of the visual arts: its heterodoxy, its Egyptian location, its missionary relationship with almost all provinces of Islam, or the fact that during its heyday in the 11th century it was the only wealthy Islamic centre and could thus easily gather artisans and art objects from all over the world.
Architecture
The great Fatimid mosques of Cairo—Al-Azhar (started in 970) and Al-Ḥākim (c. 1002–03)—were designed in the traditional hypostyle plan with axial cupolas. It is only in such architectural details as the elaborately composed facade of Al-Ḥākim, with its corner towers and vaulted portal, that innovations appear, for most earlier mosques did not have large formal gates, nor was much attention previously given to the composition of the exterior facade. Fatimid architectural traditionalism was certainly a conscious attempt to perpetuate the existing aesthetic system.
Although much less is known about it, the Great Palace of the Fatimids belonged to the tradition of the enormous palace-cities typical of the Abbasids. Mediterranean rather than Iranian influences, however, played a greater part in the determination of its uses and functions. The whole city of Cairo (Arabic: Al-Qāhirah, “The Victorious”), on the other hand, has many symbolic and visual aspects that suggest a willful relationship to Baghdad.
The originality of Fatimid architecture does not lie in works sponsored by the caliphs themselves, even though Cairo’s well-preserved gates and walls of the second half of the 11th century are among the best examples of early medieval military architecture. It is rather the patronage of lower officials and of the bourgeoisie, if not even of the humbler classes, that was responsible for the most interesting Fatimid buildings. The mosques of Al-Aqmar (1125) and of Al-Ṣāliḥ (c. 1160) are among the first examples of monumental small mosques constructed to serve local needs. Even though their internal arrangement is quite traditional, their plans were adapted to the space available in the urban centre. These mosques were elaborately decorated on the exterior, exhibiting a conspicuousness absent from large hypostyle mosques.
A second innovation in Fatimid architecture was the tremendous development of mausoleums. This may be explained partially by Shiʿism’s emphasis on the succession of holy men, but the development of these buildings in terms of both quality and quantity indicates that other influential social and religious issues were also involved. Most of the mausoleums were simple square buildings surmounted by a dome. Many of these have survived in Cairo and Aswān. Only a few, such as the mashhad at Aswān, are somewhat more elaborate, with side rooms. The most original of these commemorative buildings is the Juyūshī Mosque (1085) overlooking the city of Cairo. Properly speaking, it is not a mausoleum but a monument celebrating the reestablishment of Fatimid order after a series of popular revolts.
The Fatimids introduced, or developed, only two major constructional techniques: the systematization of the four-centred keel arch and the squinch. The latter innovation is of greater consequence because the squinch became the most common means of passing from a square to a dome, although pendentives were known as well. A peculiarly Egyptian development was the muqarnas squinch, which consisted of four units: a niche bracketed by two niche segments, superimposed with an additional niche. The complex profile of the muqarnas became an architectural element in itself used for windows, while the device of using niches and niche segments remained typical of Egyptian decorative design for centuries. It still is impossible to say whether the muqarnas was invented in Egypt or inspired by other architectural traditions (most likely Iranian). Fatimid domes were smooth or ribbed and developed a characteristic “keel” profile.
In the use of materials (brick, stone, wood) and structural concepts, Fatimid architecture continued earlier traditions. Occasionally, local styles were incorporated, among them features of Tunisian architecture in the 10th century or of upper Mesopotamian in the late 11th century.
Stone sculpture, stuccowork, and carved wood were utilized for architectural decorations. The Fatimids also employed mosaicists, who mostly worked in places like Jerusalem, where they imitated or repaired earlier mosaic murals. Many fragments of Fatimid wall paintings have survived in Egypt. Most of them, however, are too small to allow for making any iconographic or stylistic conclusions, with the exception of the mid-12th-century ceiling of the Palatine Chapel at Palermo. Built by the Norman kings of Sicily, the palace chapel was almost certainly decorated by Fatimid artists, or at least the artists adhered to Fatimid models. The hundreds of facets in the muqarnas ceiling were painted, notably with many purely ornamental vegetal and zoomorphic designs but also with scenes of daily life and many subjects that have not yet been explained. Stylistically influenced by Iraqi Abbasid art, these paintings are innovative in their more spatially aware representation of personages and of animals. Very similar tendencies appear also in the stucco and wood sculptures of Fatimid decoration. The stunning abstraction of the architectural decoration at Sāmarrāʾ tends to give way to more naturalistically conceived vegetal and animal designs; occasionally, whole narrative scenes appear carved on wood. Another decorative trend is especially used on 12th-century mihrabs: explicitly complicated geometric patterns, usually based on stars, which in turn generate octagons, hexagons, triangles, and rectangles. Geometry becomes a sort of network containing small vegetal units, often as inlaid pieces. Long inscriptions written in very elaborate calligraphies also became a typical form of architectural decoration on most of the major Fatimid buildings.
A clear separation must be made between the decorative arts sought by Fatimid princes and the arts produced within their empire. Little has been preserved of the former, notably a small number of superb ewers in rock crystal. A text has survived, however, that describes the imperial treasures looted in the middle of the 11th century by dissatisfied mercenary troops. It lists gold, silver, enamel, and porcelain objects that have all been lost, as well as textiles (perhaps the cape of the Norman king Roger II is an example of the kind of textiles found in this treasure). The inventory also records that the Fatimids had in their possession many works of Byzantine, Chinese, and even Greco-Roman provenance. Altogether, then, it seems that the imperial art of the Fatimids was part of a sort of international royal taste that downplayed cultural or political differences.
Ceramics, on the other hand, were primarily produced by local urban schools and were not an imperial art. The most-celebrated type of Fatimid wares were lustre-painted ceramics from Egypt itself. A large number of artisans’ names have been preserved, thereby indicating the growing prestige of these craftsmen and the aesthetic importance of their pottery. Most of the surviving lustre ceramics are plates on which the decoration of the main surface has been emphasized. The decorative themes used were quite varied and included all the traditional Islamic ones—e.g., calligraphy, vegetal and animal motifs, arabesques. The most-distinguishing feature of these Fatimid ceramics, however, is the representation of the human figure. Some of these ceramics have been decorated with simplified copies of illustrations of the princely themes, but others have depictions of scenes of Egyptian daily life. The style in which these themes have been represented is simultaneously the hieratic, ornamental manner traditional to Islamic painting combined with what can almost be called spatial illusionism. Wheel-cut rock crystal, glass, and bronze objects, especially animal-shaped aquamaniles (a type of water vessel) and ewers, are also attributed to the Fatimids.
Book illustration
Manifestations of nonprincely Fatimid art also included the art of book illustration. The few remaining fragments illustrate that probably after the middle of the 11th century there developed an art of representation other than the style used to illustrate princely themes. This was a more illusionistic style that still accompanied the traditional ornamental one in the same manner as in the paintings on ceramics.
In summary it would appear that Fatimid art was a curiously transitional one. Although much influenced by earlier Islamic and non-Islamic Mediterranean styles, the Fatimids devised new structural systems and developed a new manner of painting representational subjects, which became characteristic of all Muslim art during the 12th century. Neither documentary nor theoretical research in Islamic art, however, has developed sufficiently to clearly establish whether the Fatimids were indeed innovators or whether their art was a local phenomenon that is only accidentally relatable to what followed.
Seljuq art
During the last decades of the 10th century, at the Central Asian frontiers of Islam, a migratory movement of Turkic peoples began that was to affect the whole Muslim world up to and including Egypt. The dominant political force among those Turks was the dynasty of the Seljuqs, but it was not the only one; nor can it be demonstrated, as far as the arts are concerned, that it was the major source of patronage in the period to be discussed anywhere but in Anatolia in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Seljuq empire, therefore, consisted of a succession of dynasties, and all but one (the Ayyūbids of Syria, Egypt, and northern Mesopotamia) were Turkic.
A complex feudal system was established and centred on urban areas. Cities were established or expanded, particularly in western Iran, Anatolia, and Syria. Militant Muslims, the Seljuqs also sought to revive Muslim orthodoxy. Although politically unruly and complicated in their relationships to one another, the successive and partly overlapping dynasties of the Ghaznavids, Ghūrids, Great Seljuqs (Turkmens of the Iranian plateau), Qarakhānids, Zangids, Ayyūbids, Seljuqs of Rūm, and Khwārezm-Shahs (considering only the major ones) seem to have created a comparatively unified culture from India to Egypt. The art of the Seljuq period, however, is difficult to discuss coherently, both because of the wealth of examples and because of the lack of synchronization between various technical and regional developments. This complex world fell apart under the impact of the Mongol invasions that, from 1220 until 1260, swept through the Muslim lands of the Middle East.
Characteristic architectural forms
The functions of monumental architecture in the Seljuq period were considerably modified. Large congregational mosques were still built. The earliest Seljuq examples occur in the two major new provinces of Islam—Anatolia and northwestern India—as well as in the established Muslim region of western Iran. In some areas, such as the Eṣfahān region, congregational mosques were rebuilt, while in other parts of the Islamic world, such as Syria or Egypt, where there was no need for new large mosques, older ones were repaired and small ones were built. The latter were partly restricted to certain quarters or groups or were commissioned by various guilds, particularly in Damascus.
A curious side aspect of the program of building, rebuilding, or decorating mosques was the extraordinary development of minarets. Particularly in Iran, dozens of minarets are preserved from the 12th and 13th centuries, while the mosques to which they had been attached have disappeared. It is as though the visual function of the minaret was more important than the religious institution to which it was attached.
Small or large, mausoleums increased in numbers and became at this time the ubiquitous monument they appear to be. Most of the mausoleums, such as the tomb tower of Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī (died 874) at Basṭām, were dedicated to holy men—both contemporary Muslim saints and all sorts of holy men dead for centuries (even pre-Islamic holy men, especially biblical prophets, acquired a monument). The most impressive mausoleums, however, like the one of Sanjar at Merv, were built for royalty. Pilgrimages were organized and in many places hardly mentioned until then as holy places (e.g., Mashhad, Basṭām, Mosul, Aleppo); a whole monastic establishment serving as a centre for the distribution of alms was erected with hostels and kitchens for the pilgrims.
Although enormously expanded, mosques, minarets, and mausoleums were not new types of Islamic architecture. The madrasah (school), however, was a new building type. There is much controversy as to why and how it really developed. Although early examples have been discovered in Iran, such as the 11th-century madrasah of Khargird, and at Samarkand (now in Uzbekistan), it is from Anatolia, Syria, and Egypt that most of the information about the madrasah has been derived. In the latter regions it was usually a privately endowed establishment reserved for one or two of the schools of jurisprudence of orthodox Islam. It had to have rooms for teaching and living quarters for the students and professors. Often the tomb of the founder was attached to the madrasah. Later madrasahs were built for two or three schools of jurisprudence, and the Mustanṣiriyyah in Baghdad was erected in 1233 to be a sort of ecumenical madrasah for the whole of Sunni Islam.
In the Seljuq period there occurred a revival of the hostel-like ribāṭ inside cities. Khānqāhs (monastic complexes), monasteries, and various establishments of learning other than formal madrasahs were also built.
An impressive development of secular architecture occurred under the Seljuqs. The most characteristic building of the time was the citadel, or urban fortress, through which the new princes controlled the usually alien city they held in fief. The largest citadels, like those of Cairo and Aleppo, were whole cities with palaces, mosques, sanctuaries, and baths. Others, like the citadel of Damascus, were simpler constructions. Occasionally, as in the Euphrates valley, single castles were built, possibly in imitation of those constructed by the Christian Crusaders. Walls surrounded most cities, and all of them were built or rebuilt during the Seljuq period.
Little is known about Seljuq palaces or private residences in general. A few fragments in Konya or in Mosul are insufficient to give a coherent idea about urban palaces, and it is only in Anatolia and in Central Asia that an adequate idea of other types can be obtained. Anatolian palaces are on the whole rather small villa-like establishments, but, in Afghanistan and Central Asia, excavations at Tirmidh, Lashkarī Bāzār, and Ghaznī have brought to light a whole group of large royal palaces erected in the 11th and early 12th centuries.
Commercial architecture became very important. Individual princes and cities probably were trying to attract business by erecting elaborate caravansaries on the main trade routes, such as Ribāṭ-i Malik, built between Samarkand and Bukhara in Uzbekistan. The most spectacular caravansaries were built in the 13th century in Anatolia. Equally impressive, however, although less numerous, are the caravansaries erected in eastern Iran and northern Iraq. Bridges also were rebuilt and decorated like the one at Cizre in Turkey.
The forms of architecture developed by the Seljuqs were remarkably numerous and varied considerably from region to region. Because the Iranian innovations dating from the 11th century and first half of the 12th century are the earliest and, therefore, probably influenced all other areas of the Seljuq empire, they will be discussed first.
Architecture in Iran
Even though it is not entirely typical, the justly celebrated Great Mosque of Eṣfahān was one of the most influential of all early Seljuq religious structures. Probably completed about 1130 after a long and complicated history of rebuildings, it consisted of a large courtyard on which opened four large vaulted halls known as eyvāns; the eyvāns created the compositional axes of each side of the court. On the side of the qiblah (which indicates the direction of the sacred shrine of the Kaʿbah, faced by the faithful during prayers), the hall of the main eyvān was followed by a huge cupola. The area between eyvāns was subdivided into a large number of square bays covered by domes. The Eṣfahān mosque also had a unique feature: on the north side a single domed hall positioned on the main axis of the building was in all probability a formal hall for princes to change their clothes before entering into the sanctuary of the mosque.
The two features of the Great Mosque at Eṣfahān that became characteristic of Seljuq mosques were the eyvān and the dome. The eyvān was an architectural element known already in Sasanian architecture that had been used in residential buildings from Egypt to Central Asia before the 11th century. In fact, the use of the eyvān was not restricted to just mosques; it also appears in palaces (Lashkarī Bāzār), caravansaries (Rebāṭ-e Sharaf), and madrasahs. The eyvān was, in other words, a unit of architectural composition that had no specific use and, therefore, no meaning. In the mosques of the 12th century, four eyvāns were used, at least in the clearly definable architectural school of western Iran (e.g., Ardestān, Zavāreh). This kind of composition had two principal effects. One was that the eyvāns centralized the visual effect of the mosque by making the courtyard the centre of the building. The other effect of this composition was that it broke up into four areas what had for centuries been a characteristic of the mosque: its single, unified space. The reasons for those developments are still speculative.
Whether large or small, cupolas or domes were used in mosques, caravansaries, and palaces. They were the main architectural features of almost all mausoleums, where they were set over circular or polygonal rooms.
Two characteristic Iranian architectural forms are not present in the Great Mosque of Eṣfahān but occur elsewhere in the city. One is the tower. Those narrow and tall (up to about 150 feet [50 metres]) were minarets, of which several dozen have been preserved all over Iran and Central Asia (such as the one at Jām). Shorter and squatter towers were mausoleums. Those were particularly typical of northern Iran. The other characteristic architectural type exists only in Eṣfahān in a much-damaged state. It is the pīshṭāq, a formal gateway that served to emphasize a building’s presence and importance.
Domes and eyvāns indicate that the central concern of Iranian construction during the Seljuq period was vaulting in baked brick, which became the main vehicle for any monumental construction (mud brick was used for secondary parts of a building, frequently for certain secular structures). A large and forcefully composed octagonal base developed the muqarnas squinch from a purely ornamental feature into one wherein both structural and decorative functions combined. In some later buildings, such as the mausoleum of Sanjar at Merv, a system of ribs was used to vault an octagonal zone. Seljuq architects sought to make their domes visible from afar and for that reason invented the double dome. Its outer shell was raised on a high drum, while the interior kept the traditional sequence: square base, zone of transition, and dome. Using this structural device, therefore, exterior height was achieved without making the exterior dome too heavy and without complicating the task of decorating the interior, always a problem in countries like Iran with limited supplies of wood for scaffolding. Domes along the eyvāns were another factor that contributed to the growing separation between the exterior and the interior view of a building. The construction of tall circular or polygonal minarets and high facades also indicate an emphasis on visibility from a distance.
Architectural decoration was intimately tied to structure. Two mediums predominated. One was stucco, which continued to be used to cover large wall surfaces. The other was brick. Originating in the 10th-century architecture of northeastern Iran, brick came to be employed as a medium of construction as well as a medium of decoration. The complex decorative designs worked out in brick often had a rigidly geometric effect. Especially cut shapes of terra-cotta and brick, frequently produced in unusual sizes, served to soften those geometric patterns by modifying their tactile impact and by introducing additional curved or beveled lines to the straight lines of geometry.
Paintings were used for architectural decoration, especially in palaces. From the second half of the 12th century, coloured tiles began to be utilized to emphasize the contour of a decorative area in a structural unit; tiles were not used to cover whole walls, however. There are also examples of architectural sculpture of animals and people.
Most of the decorative designs tended to be subordinated to geometry, and even calligraphic or vegetal patterns were affected by a seemingly mathematically controlled aesthetic. It has been suggested that those complex geometric designs were a result of an almost mystical passion for number theories that were popularized in 11th-century Iran by such persons as the scholar and scientist al-Bīrūnī or the poet-mathematician Omar Khayyam. But even if the impulses for geometric design were originally created at the highest intellectual level, the designs themselves rapidly became automatic patterns. Their quality was generally high, but a tendency toward facility can be observed in such buildings as Rebāṭ-e Sharaf.
