The Glory and Splendor of Islamic...

“The Art and Architecture of Islam” is yet another in a series of affordable Penguin books on the art and architectural histories of the world that is familiar to students as well as to most interested readers. While in the past the series has included histories of most major art traditions, a book on the history of the art and architecture created by the various Islamic cultures of Asia, Africa and Europe was long overdue.

This particular volume, therefore, is all the more welcome, even though it covers only the early period (650-1250) of Islamic civilization. Presumably, a second volume will follow, though this is not indicated either in the preface or in the publisher’s blurb on the back cover.

The volume has been gestating for a little less than two decades, during which one of the two eminent authors, Dr. Richard Ettinghausen, has passed away. There is no way to determine how much was written by him, but no matter. The co-author, Oleg Grabar, is an equally well-known authority, especially on the early Islamic art and architecture, and it would have been difficult to find two greater scholars of Islamic art to pool their expertise.

The book is a broad survey of the art and architecture created by and for a wide variety of peoples living in a vast geographical region stretching from Spain to India, including all of what is known as the Middle East, Soviet Central Asia, Egypt and northern Africa. With few exceptions, the creators, the patrons and the users of the books, the objects and the buildings had Islam in common, even though linguistically, ethnically and culturally they were different peoples. While this common denominator did impose a sense of homogeneity, the aesthetic manifestations are as richly varied as is the landscape of the regions covered. The task of achieving a comprehensive as well as a comprehensible survey within the limitations of a volume small enough to be easily picked up and even read in bed is to say the least daunting. In this, the authors have admirably succeeded.

Considering the complexity of the subject, the book is coherently and sensibly organized. The first part covers the first three centuries (650-950) of the rise and expansion of Islam under the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates when the caliph was the central authority in the Islamic world. The second part is somewhat less cohesive in that there are both chronological and historical overlaps, but it is not incoherent.

Apart from discussing the Islamic arts of Spain and North Africa, this part concentrates on the great Fatimid period (910-1171) of Egypt and lucidly discusses the synthesis of Pan-Islamic culture of the Arabs and the ancient and spectacular heritage of Iran during the period of the Islamicization of that country and neighboring Central Asia. The third part is organized by national entities such as Iran, Iraq, Syria and others that will have a more familiar ring to today’s readers.

Within each part, the material is organized first by architecture, divided further by the three major types of buildings, the mosque, mausoleum and structures for secular use, and second by the principal forms of Islamic art, viz. textile, ivory carving, ceramics, metalwork, and the art of the book, which includes both calligraphy (especially prized in the Islamic world as expressing both truth and beauty) and painting.

The chapters on architecture are particularly well-written and informative, providing us not only with discussions of their forms and aesthetics but also their decorative material and techniques. Mosques are, of course, the best-known of all Islamic structures and they have their counterparts in the Christian church and the temple of the Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and other religions. More interesting, however, are the mausoleums, which mushroomed in the Islamic world from about the 10th Century and have remained, if not unique, certainly a distinct manifestation of the visual heritage of Islam.

Although they recognize the sudden emergence of the cult of the dead, the authors do not discuss the phenomenon at length. “Why,” they state, “the earliest consistent group of Islamic mausoleums should appear in 10th-Century Iran is not altogether clear. Dynastic pretensions, heterodox movements, worshiping the burial places of descendants of Ali, and attempts to attach a Muslim meaning to traditional holy sites must all have played a part in a phenomenon which may well have spread westward from Iran, where it took permanent root, especially to Fatimid Egypt.”

It is somewhat ironical that the phenomenon should have traveled from Iran to Egypt, which was celebrated from antiquity for its architectural “requiems” for the dead. Moreover, the practice also spread east to India, which possesses the best-known mausoleum in the world, the Taj Mahal. One might wonder whether the custom of the Buddhists in Central Asia of entombing the mortal remains of their holy men in Stupas did not contribute to the concept of the mausoleum in Islamic cultures.

It is not often that publishers’ claims for their books are justified. But in this instance, one must on the whole agree that “the history, culture and arts of the period are here for the first time integrated, and allowed to shed light upon one another.”

In a sense, the belated birth of this book is just as well, for had it been published in the mid-’60s, it might have had a limited audience. As it is, Islam now looms alarmingly large on the political horizon of mankind, and this book could not have made a more timely appearance. Apart from those interested in Islamic art, the book should also be read by Western art historians and architects, for its relevance to the visual heritage of Europe.

“The Art and Architecture of Islam” is complete with all the standard scholarly apparatus one has come to expect from Penguin histories: maps, index, extensive bibliography, annotative drawings and more than 400 illustrations. Unfortunately, however, as is the case with all these books meant primarily to suit the pockets of poor students (though it is doubtful if all students today, at least in Europe and North America, are indigent), the illustrations are in black and white. This is all the more sad since much of Islamic art, with the brilliant tiles of its buildings, its richly hued ceramics and its splendid book illuminations, depends a great deal on colors for its dazzling aesthetic impact. Provision of some color illustrations would not necessarily make the costs prohibitive.

This is where one welcomes the two volumes on the collections of the famed and fabled Topkapi museum in Istanbul. The third and fourth in a series of five volumes devoted to the extraordinary treasures collected over four centuries by the Ottoman sultans, these two volumes introduce selections of carpets and a miscellany of furnishings, arms and armor, jewelry and assorted objets d’art. All objects are reproduced in full color, of excellent quality. The volumes will be most useful for those interested in Islamic art and will make handsome gifts for art lovers no matter what their tastes.