Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art

Introduces Iranian art from classical to contemporary media, showing how art can be a source for history and politics

• Takes a broad view of the Persianate world
• Opens a traditional field in new directions
• Presents a combination of senior scholars and younger voices, and includes perspectives from Asia, Europe and the USA
• Combines views from the academy, the museum and the laboratory, ranging from the practical to the theoretical

Linda Komaroff, long-time curator of the Art of the Middle East at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), has pioneered in the study and exhibition of Islamic art to include contemporary works. Her interests have long focused on the arts of Iran. With this volume her friends and colleagues celebrate her broad scope with essays exploring many new areas.

These 13 essays examine different media, including architecture, manuscripts, portable arts and textiles, as well as the contemporary arts of painting, photography, printmaking and video, from the early Islamic period to the present. In addition to traditional approaches to art-historical scholarship, such as textual analysis, connoisseurship, design, technical and material analysis, and archaeology, the contributors take on such newer themes as gift giving, the diaspora of Iranian art, political art, the relationship of the present to the past or vice versa, and the connections between Iranian art and the arts of the West. Some essays also deal with music and dance.

Examines the production, distribution, reception and repair of mina’i ware

• Addresses an important but still poorly understood type of medieval Iranian ceramic
• Defines the true scope of the extant corpus, and demonstrates the incredible diversity of styles, with an entirely new taxonomic classification system
• Utilises the unimpeachable unaltered corpus of unrestored archaeological fragments
• Highlights the importance of mina’i ware for the understanding of the development of Persian miniature painting
• Beautifully illustrated with over 160 images

Mina’i, or polychrome overglaze, ware was made in Iran between the late 12th and the early 13th centuries. However, most pieces in museums have in fact been rebuilt, often from pieces of multiple different vessels with extensive plaster fill and modern overpaint. Only by closely examining unrestored archaeological sherds – genuine fragments of pots – can we build an authentic picture of what mina’i ware actually looked like.

In this innovative book, Richard P. McClary studies sherds in collections around the world to help us to understand the production, decoration and distribution of the wares. He then examines the increased popularity of mina’i ware from the late-19th to the mid-20th century, with a focus on the dealers, collectors and curators, as well as the various types of faking, restoration, repair and conservation that has occurred over the last century.

Showcases the best recent research on epigraphy across the medieval Islamic world

• Explores Islamic epigraphy from a wide range of perspectives and geographical areas, from the Maghreb to India and Central Asia and beyond
• Covers the period from the rise of Islam to the 15th century
• Details 20 case studies of inscriptions found on a wide range of objects from coins, pen cases, textiles, tiles, pottery and wall paintings to public buildings, monuments, tombs, minarets, monasteries and madrasas
• Beautifully illustrated with 200 colour photographs of inscriptions on buildings and objects
• Includes contributions from some of the leading experts in the field including Jonathan Bloom, Robert Hillenbrand, Sheila Blair, Doris Behrens-Abouseif and Carole Hillenbrand

This volume offers an overview of the state of the field, and shows the importance of Islamic inscriptions for disciplines such as art history, history and literature. The chapters range from surveys to detailed exploration of individual topics, providing an insight to some of the most recent cutting-edge work on Islamic inscriptions. It focuses on the period from the rise of Islam to the fifteenth century, ranging across the Islamic world from the Maghreb to India and Central Asia, and inscriptions in Arabic, Persian and Turkish.

The five sections of the book draw together some of the principal themes: ‘Royal Power’ investigates the role of sultanic patronage in epigraphy, and the use of inscriptions for projecting royal power. ‘Piety’ examines the relationship between epigraphy and religious practice. ‘Epigraphic Style and Function’ explores the relationship between the use of specific epigraphic styles and scripts and the function of a monument. ‘Inscribed Objects’ moves from monumental inscriptions to those on objects such as ceramics and pen-cases. The final section considers the interplay between inscriptions and historical sources as well as the utility of inscriptions as historical sources.

Explores the aesthetic dimensions, cultural significance and ideological power of Maghribī manuscripts

• Exposes the richness and sophistication of Maghribī manuscript culture, including parchment- and papermaking, calligraphy, illumination, bookbinding and chancery practices
• Approaches social and cultural history through the study of manuscripts as artefacts
• Demonstrates that calligraphy and scribal practices were a key element in the construction of political and identity discourses
• Includes a catalogue of 252 dated manuscripts in Maghribī round scripts (including Qurʾāns and chancery documents), the majority of which are unpublished
• Features 135 colour images

This book traces the history of manuscript production in the Islamic West between the 10th and the 12th centuries. It interrogates the material evidence that survives from this period, paying special attention to the origin and development of Maghribī round scripts, the distinctive form of Arabic writing employed in al-Andalus (Muslim Iberia) and Northwest Africa.

More than 200 dated manuscripts written in Maghribī round scripts – many of which have not previously been published and are of great historical significance – are presented and discussed. This leads to a reconstruction of the activity of Maghribī calligraphers, copyists, notaries and secretaries, creating a better understanding of the development of their practices.

Using a blend of art historical methods, palaeographic analyses and a thorough scrutiny of Arabic sources, the author paints a comprehensive and lively picture of Maghribī manuscript culture, from its beginnings under the Umayyads of Cordova until the heyday of the Almohad caliphate. He lifts the veil on a glorious, yet neglected season in the history of Arabic calligraphy, shedding new light on a tradition that was crucial for the creation of the Andalusī identity and its spread throughout the medieval Mediterranean.

Explores how Islamic art and architecture were made: their materials and their social, political, economic and religious context

• Explores previously neglected practice-based approaches to Islamic art: architecture, painting and the decorative arts
• Looks at Islamic art from the craftsman’s rather than the patron’s viewpoint
• Covers not just the Islamic heartlands from Spain to Iran but extends to India and China, underlining the global presence of Islamic art
• Presents material and sources which are usually overlooked in discussions of Islamic art
• Revises conventional wisdom in fields as disparate as woodwork and ceramics
• Illuminates the interface of modern politics and Islamic art

In their own words, Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair espouse ‘things and thinginess rather than theories and isations’. Its many insights, firmly anchored in artistic practice, are supported by ample technical know-how. The range is wide – mosques becoming temples; how religious buildings reflect politics; Yemeni frescoes and inscriptions; domestic Syrian 18th-century ornament; Egyptian bookbinding techniques; recycling and repair in Damascene crafts; conservation versus restoration; narrative on ceramics; metalwork with architectural motifs; lost buildings reconstructed; how objects speak; Muslim burials in China; the role of migrating potters; Mughal painting; stone carpet weights; the use of metals in Islamic manuscripts, calligraphy and modern artists’ books.This book’s practical, down-to-earth dimension, expressed in plain, simple English, runs counter to the current fashion for theoretical explanations and their accompanying jargon when exploring the world of Islamic art. This bottom–up approach differs radically and refreshingly from that of much top-down contemporary scholarship. It privileges the maker rather than the patron.

Studies illustrated 16th-century Ottoman manuscripts of a major hagiography of Rumi and his spiritual descendants

• Includes 70 colour images, showing all of the paintings from the three manuscripts, accompanied by a summary of the text illustrated in each picture
• Focuses on the specific relationships between literary narrative and its visual representation in late medieval Islamic art
• Provides Anatolian and Ottoman historical background as context for the life story of Rumi and the Mawlawi Sufi order

Picturing the life story of Jalal ad-Din Rumi, a premier Muslim mystic and the original Whirling Dervish, the images in three extant manuscripts of Aflaki’s Wondrous Feats of the Knowers of God provide a unique way to interpret the text.

Part One: History and Context provides the medieval Anatolian historical setting; the broad contours of literary and artistic works of Islamic Hagiography; and the specific details of the three manuscripts to be explored. Part Two: Text and Image proposes a method for interpreting a hybrid literary–visual document as a grand narrative of the Family Rumi at the inspirational and ethical core of a virtuous community – flourishing within a complex Muslim society under divine providence.

The images in the three manuscripts were produced by studios of painters under the patronage of major late 16th-century Ottoman sultans. The result of their efforts is a kind of ‘visualised hagiography’ uniquely capable of suggesting distinctive and often surprising twists on the narratives, enhancing the text with images of striking beauty and rich detail.

Studies the surviving pre-Mongol monuments of Islamic architecture in Central Asia

• The first complete overview of the corpus of Qarakhanid monuments, with a detailed overview of the extant Soviet-era literature and a study of the inscriptions
• Includes archival images from Soviet-era publications showing the buildings prior to loss or reconstruction
• Integrates the monuments into the wider region, transcending the nationalist approach of much of the earlier scholarship
• Includes an easy-to-use gazetteer to facilitate finding the monuments
• Features extensive colour images of many previously unpublished details of the buildings
• Integrates the extant structures and the extensive but hard-to find archaeological evidence
• Examines the links between architecture and smaller-scale material culture, especially the epigraphy seen on coins
• Includes detailed studies of the major Qarakhanid monuments including the Shah Fazl tomb in Safid Buland, the three tombs in Uzgend and the Kalan minaret in Bukhara

This is a comprehensive study of the surviving monuments of the Qarakhanids – an important yet little-known medieval dynasty that ruled much of Central Asia between the late 10th and early 13th centuries. Based on extensive fieldwork and many hard-to-find Russian sources, the book places the surviving monuments into the wider cultural context of the region. Many photographs and new ground-plans are included, as well as detailed studies of individual monuments and the wider architectural aesthetic. These monuments serve as the link between the mostly lost Samanid architecture and the far larger and better-known monuments of the Timurids.

Renowned scholars present key new thinking on art, sciences, belief and history in the Seljuq period

• Draws on new and updated use of historical sources
• Opens new paths in the research on magic beliefs, religion, astronomy, the concept of craftsmanship versus artistry, interaction between rulers and elites, ethno-religious and ethno-cultural diversity and emigration of people
• Case studies on the treatment of art objects (the oldest extant Shahnama, and a unique stucco panel) show innovations in conservation practices and set new strategies in dealing with restored objects
• Includes a comprehensive comparison of Seljuq and Ghaznavid titulature: a key tool for any kingship-related research in the fields of history, epigraphy, archaeology and art history

Rising from nomadic origins as Turkish tribesmen, the powerful and culturally prolific Seljuqs and their successor states dominated vast lands extending from Central Asia to the eastern Mediterranean from the eleventh to the fourteenth century.

Supported by colour images, charts, and maps, this volume examines how under Seljuq rule, migrations of people and the exchange and synthesis of diverse traditions – including Turkmen, Perso-Arabo-Islamic, Byzantine, Armenian, Crusader and other Christian cultures – accompanied architectural patronage, advances in science and technology and a great flowering of culture within the realm. It also explores how shifting religious beliefs, ideologies of authority and lifestyle in Seljuq times influenced cultural and artistic production, urban and rural architecture, monumental inscriptions and royal titulature, and practices of religion and magic. It also presents today’s challenges and new approaches to preserving the material heritage of this vastly accomplished and influential civilization.

Contributors

• Viola Allegranzi
• Deniz Beyazit
• Patricia Blessing
• Sheila Canby
• Roberta Giunta
• Margaret Graves
• Carole Hillenbrand
• Robert Hillenbrand
• Renata Holod
• Lorenz Korn
• Stefan Masarovic
• Leslee Michelsen
• Andrew Peacock
• Scott Redford
• Martina Rugiadi
• Yasser Tabbaa
• Deborah Tor
• George Saliba
• Rustam Shukurov
• Alessandro Sidoti
• Mario Vitalone

The first in-depth survey of illuminated manuscripts from Anatolia before the rise of the Ottoman Empire

Winner of the 2021 Dionisius A. Agius Prize for a distinguished first book in the field of Medieval Mediterranean Studies from the Society of the Medieval Mediterranean

• Meticulously analyses 15 Persian and Arabic manuscripts including the Mas̲navī of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (1278), the Qaramanid Qur’an (1314-15) and the Dīvān-i Kabīr of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (1368)
• Translates new and unpublished primary sources on the cultural history of the period, including manuscript colophons, dedications and endowment notes
• Includes a comprehensive catalogue of key manuscripts
• Fully illustrated in colour with many unpublished or hard-to-find images

Between the Mongol invasions in the mid-13th century and the rise of the Ottomans in the late 14th century, the Lands of Rūm were marked by instability and conflict. Despite this, a rich body of illuminated manuscripts from the period survives, explored here in this extensively illustrated volume. Meticulously analysing 15 beautifully decorated Arabic and Persian manuscripts, including Qur’ans, mirrors-for-princes, historical chronicles and Sufi works, Cailah Jackson traces the development of calligraphy and illumination in late medieval Anatolia. She shows that the central Anatolian city of Konya, in particular, was a dynamic centre of artistic activity and that local Turcoman princes, Seljuk bureaucrats and Mevlevi dervishes all played important roles in manuscript production and patronage.

A beautifully illustrated study of Al-Qazwini's 'Wonders of Creation' and the first-ever translations of the text into English

The subject of this book is the so-called London Qazvīnī, an early 14th-century illustrated Arabic copy of al-Qazvīnī’s The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Existing Things, which was acquired by the British Library in 1983 (Or. 14140). As is commonly the case for copies of this text, the London Qazvīnī is lavishly illustrated, with 368 extant paintings out of the estimated original ca. 520.

Its large format, ambitious illustrative cycle and the fine quality of many of the illustrations suggest that the atelier where it was produced must have been well-established and able to attract craftsmen from different parts of the Ilkhanid area. It also suggests that its patron was wealthy and curious about scientific, encyclopedic and 'ajā’ib literature, and keen to experiment with the illustration of new texts like this work, which had been composed by the author only two or three decades earlier. The only centre that was capable of gathering such artistic influences ranging from Anatolia to Mesopotamia appears to have been Mosul.

The London Qazvīnī is an important newly surfaced document for the study of early illustrated Arabic copies of this text, representing the second earliest known surviving manuscript, as well as for the study of Ilkhanid painting. In a single and unique manuscript are gathered earlier Mesopotamian painting traditions, North Jaziran-Seljuq elements, Anatolian inspirations, the latest changes brought about after the advent of the Mongols, and a number of illustrations of extraordinary subjects which escape a proper classification.

Key Features

• Offers a stylistic analysis and discussion of the manuscript's miniatures
• Includes the first ever translations of sections of the 'Wonders of Creation' into English
• Beautifully illustrated with over 400 colour images

The first exploration of how artists represented artistic work and authorship in Persian painting

In the absence of a tradition of self-portraiture, how could artists signal their presence within a painting? Centred on late Timurid manuscript painting (ca. 1470-1500), this book reveals that pictures could function as the painter’s delegate, charged with the task of centring and defining artistic work, even as they did not represent the artist’s likeness. Influenced by the culture of the majlis, an institutional gathering devoted to intricate literary performances and debates, late Timurid painters used a number of strategies to shift manuscript painting from an illustrative device to a self-reflective object, designed to highlight the artist’s imagination and manual dexterity. These strategies include visual abundance, linear precision, the incorporation of inscriptions addressing aspects of the painting and the artist’s signature. Focusing on one of the most iconic manuscripts of the Persianate tradition, the Cairo Bustan made in late Timurid Herat and bearing the signatures of the painter Bihzad, this book explores Persian manuscript painting as a medium for artistic performance and self-representation, a process by which artistic authority was shaped and discussed.

Key Features

• The first book-length study of artistic self-reflection in Islamic art
• Expands artistic self-representation beyond self-portraiture to consider how the artist could be represented through the symbolic possibilities of the medium
• Explores the relationship between Persian painting, historical modes of visual experience at the majlis and conceptions of authorship in art historiographical writings
• Examines a series of hitherto unstudied features of Persian painting, including the representation of epigraphic inscriptions and the painter’s signature
• Provides the first complete analysis of one of the most important manuscripts in the history of Persianate book arts, the Cairo Bustan

An interdisciplinary study of one of the most important monuments in Islamic art

Finalist for the 2019 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award

The Nasrid builders of the Alhambra – the best-preserved medieval Muslim palatial city – were so exacting that some of their work could not be fully explained until the invention of fractal geometry. Their design principles have been obscured, however, by the loss of all archival material. This book resolves that impasse by investigating the neglected, interdisciplinary contexts of medieval poetics and optics and through comparative study of Islamic court ceremonials. This reframing enables the reconstruction of the underlying, integrated aesthetic, focusing on the harmonious interrelationship between diverse artistic media – architecture, poetry and textiles – in the experience of the beholder, resulting in a new understanding of the Alhambra.

Key Features

• Illustrated in colour throughout
• Takes an inter-medial approach integrating the study of poetic inscriptions, textiles and court ceremonial into the discussion of architecture
• Inter-disciplinary, combining art history, optics and literary studies
• Case studies explore specific, relatively neglected spaces within the Alhambra
• Informed by both medieval and contemporary theory
• Considers the most recent technical analyses to distinguish clearly original elements

Explains how the worship requirements of the mosque and the Chinese architectural system converged

Received an honorable mention at the 2016 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize

What happens when a monotheistic, foreign religion needs a space in which to worship in China, a civilisation with a building tradition that has been largely unchanged for several millennia? The story of this extraordinary convergence begins in the 7th century and continues under the Chinese rule of Song and Ming, and the non-Chinese rule of the Mongols and Manchus, each with a different political and religious agenda. The author shows that mosques, and ultimately Islam, have survived in China because the Chinese architectural system, though often unchanging, is adaptable: it can accommodate the religious requirements of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and Islam.

Key Features

• Includes case studies of China’s most important surviving mosques, including approximately 70 premodern mosques, the tourist mosques in Xi’an and Beijing, and the Uyghur mosques in Kashgar
• Aims to build an understanding of the mosque at the most fundamental level, asking what is really necessary for Muslim worship space
• Presents Chinese architecture as uniquely uniform in appearance and uniquely adaptable to something as foreign as Islam
• Explores the social and political aspects of China’s architectural system, and the challenges faced by religious construction in premodern and contemporary Asia

Studies the key monuments built for the Rum Seljuq sultans, 1170-1220

This lavishly illustrated volume presents the major surviving monuments of the early period of the Rum Seljuqs, the first major Muslim dynasty to rule Anatolia. A much-needed overview of the political history of the dynasty provides the context for the study of the built environment which follows. The book addresses the most significant monuments from across the region: a palace, a minaret and a hospital are studied in detail, along with an overview of the decorative portals attached to a wide array of different building types. The case studies are used to demonstrate the key themes and processes of architectural synthesis and development that were under way at the time, and how they reflect the broader society.

Listen to author Richard McClary and Dr Alison Otha (Director of the Royal Asiatic Society) discuss the key monuments built for the Rum Seljuq sultans

Key Features

• Presents buildings never previously published in English: the Kilij Arslan II palace kiosk in Konya, the minaret of the Sivas Great Mosque, and the nearby ʿIzz al-Din Kay Kawus I hospital and tomb complex
• Covers the whole region, rather than the buildings of just one city or one ruler
• Gives a clear and concise history of the period 1170-1220
• Includes c170 line drawings and photographs, many in colour

A new interpretation of the Dome of the Rock based on an analysis of its inscriptions

Located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock was constructed at the end of the seventh century by order of caliph ‘Abd al-Malik. This seminal structure has been much studied but no definitive interpretation yet exists of the meanings conveyed by the Dome at the time of its completion. The recovery of meaning is complicated by the paucity of primary written sources relating to the construction phases of the building and the motivations of its patron. This book concentrates on the most important surviving primary text, the long mosaic inscription running around the interior. Comprising a dedication and date (72/691-92) and material of a religious nature, the mosaic inscription provides vital evidence for the reconstruction of the meanings and functions of the Dome of the Rock. The detailed study of the mosaics helps to place them in the context of Late Antique monumental writing, particularly in Greek. The book makes use of contemporary Islamic coins, graffiti, and other inscribed objects in order to examine the Dome of the Rock in the relation to the ideological concerns of the Umayyad elite during and after the second Civil War.

Key Features

• Close examination of the Umayyad inscriptions of the Dome of the Rock
• Discusses the Late Antique heritage of the Dome of the Rock
• Places the Dome in the political and cultural historical context of the 680s and 690s
• Lavishly illustrated, including an accurate drawing of the complete mosaic inscription running around the outer and inner faces of the octagonal arcade

• Marcus Milwright introduces his new book The Dome of the Rock and its Umayyad Mosaic Inscriptions on www.mizanproject.org

The first illustrated, architectural history of the ‘Alid shrines, increasingly endangered by the conflict in Syria

The ‘Alids (descendants of the Prophet Muhammad) are among the most revered figures in Islam, beloved by virtually all Muslims, regardless of sectarian affiliation. This study argues that despite the common identification of shrines as ‘Shi’i’ spaces, they have in fact always been unique places of pragmatic intersectarian exchange and shared piety, even - and perhaps especially - during periods of sectarian conflict.

Using a rich variety of previously unexplored sources, including textual, archaeological, architectural, and epigraphic evidence, Stephennie Mulder shows how these shrines created a unifying Muslim ‘holy land’ in medieval Syria, and proposes a fresh conceptual approach to thinking about landscape in Islamic art. In doing so, she argues against a common paradigm of medieval sectarian conflict, complicates the notion of Sunni Revival, and provides new evidence for the negotiated complexity of sectarian interactions in the period.

• Beautifully illustrated with over 120 colour images
• The first study of Syrian ‘Alid shrines as critical sites of Islamic pious practice in some of Islam’s most important cities
• Uses architecture to present a more nuanced understanding of the history of sectarianism
• Utilises an unusually wide range of source materials including medieval Arabic textual sources, spatial and architectural analysis, archaeological investigation, epigraphy and GPS survey

Winner of Honourable Mention, Saidi-Sirjani Book Award 2008-9, International Society for Iranian Studies

The Mongol invasion in the thirteenth century marked a new phase in the development of Islamic art. Trans-Eurasian exchanges of goods, people and ideas were encouraged on a large scale under the auspices of the Pax Mongolica. With the fascination of portable objects brought from China and Central Asia, a distinctive, hitherto unknown style – Islamic chinoiserie – was born in the art of Iran.

This illustrated book offers a fascinating glimpse into the artistic interaction between Iran and China under the Mongols. By using rich visual materials from various media of decorative and pictorial arts – textiles, ceramics, metalwork and manuscript painting – the book illustrates the process of adoption and adaptation of Chinese themes in the art of Mongol-ruled Iran in a visually compelling way. The observation of this unique artistic phenomenon serves to promote the understanding of the artistic diversity of Islamic art in the Middle-Ages.

Key features

• Covers various media of decorative and pictorial arts from Iran, Central Asia and China
• Deals with a diverse range of issues related to the East-West artistic relationship in the Middle-Ages
• Includes in-depth studies of style, technique and iconography in Iranian art under the Mongols

Winner of the Houshang Pourshariati Iranian Studies Book Award 2009

This beautifully illustrated history of Safavid Isfahan (1501–1722) explores the architectural and urban forms and networks of socio-cultural action that reflected a distinctly early-modern and Perso-Shi‘i practice of kingship.

An immense building campaign, initiated in 1590-91, transformed Isfahan from a provincial, medieval, and largely Sunni city into an urban-centered representation of the first Imami Shi‘i empire in the history of Islam. The historical process of Shi‘ification of Safavid Iran and the deployment of the arts in situating the shifts in the politico-religious agenda of the imperial household informs Sussan Babaie’s study of palatial architecture and urban environments of Isfahan and the earlier capitals of Tabriz and Qazvin.

Babaie argues that since the Safavid claim presumed the inheritance both of the charisma of the Shi‘i Imams and of the aura of royal splendor integral to ancient Persian notions of kingship, a ceremonial regime was gradually devised in which access and proximity to the shah assumed the contours of an institutionalized form of feasting. Talar-palaces, a new typology in Islamic palatial designs, and the urban-spatial articulation of access and proximity are the architectural anchors of this argument. Cast in the comparative light of urban spaces and palace complexes elsewhere and earlier—in the Timurid, Ottoman, and Mughal realms as well as in the early modern European capitals—Safavid Isfahan emerges as the epitome of a new architectural-urban paradigm in the early modern age.