Islamic Arts and Crafts: An Anthology

273 Pages·2017·10.601 MB·English

by  Marcus Milwright

Islamic Arts and Crafts
An Anthology
Marcus Milwright
Islamic Arts and Crafts
An Anthology
Marcus Milwright
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Contents
List of figures v
Acknowledgements vi
Notes for the reader viii
Image and text acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
PART 1 FOUNDATIONS
1. Theoretical formulations 19
PART 2 HUMAN DIMENSIONS
2. The organisation of labour 29
3. Rituals, songs and poems 40
4. Biographical information 49
5. The lives of artisans and artists 57
PART 3 RESOURCES
6. Raw materials I: minerals 65
7. Raw materials II: plants 72
8. Raw materials III: animals 75
9. Mining and metal preparation 81
10. City descriptions 86
PART 4 INORGANIC MEDIA
11. Copper 95
12. Iron and steel 101
13. Other metals: gold, silver and tin 107
iv islamic arts and crafts
14. Pottery 113
15. Glass 122
PART 5 ORGANIC MEDIA
16. Wood 129
17. Basketry and matting 136
18. Leather 141
19. Spinning, bleaching and dyeing 146
20. Weaving 152
21. Rugs, carpets and felt 157
PART 6 WRITING AND PAINTING
22. Papyrus and paper 165
23. Calligraphy 170
24. Painting 178
PART 7 ARCHITECTURE AND ENGINEERING
25. Building techniques 189
26. Vaulting and architectural decoration 199
27. Engineering 205
PART 8 ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS
28. Recycling and repair 215
29. Crafts in an age of competition and change 222
Glossary 232
Names of craft activities in Arabic and Persian 237
Bibliography 239
Index 254
Figures
I.1 Map of the main towns and cities of the Middle East and Central Asia 5
2.1 Plan of the city of Baghdad and the surrounding areas in the early Abbasid
period 31
4.1 ‘Bobrinsky Bucket’. Cast brass vessel inlaid with silver and copper, Herat,
Afghanistan, 559/1163; a) view; b) last section of the dedicatory
inscription on the rim 50
6.1 Creating jewellery with turquoise in Nishapur, Iran, 2015 66
8.1 Bedouin grazing sheep and goats on stubble after the harvest, near Lake
Assad, Syria, 2001 76
10.1 Pressed clay pilgrim tokens (muhr) from the Pa Minar Mosque in
Zavareh, 2001 87
11.1 Design for a doorway. Simplified version of drawing in a manuscript of
al- Jazari, Kitāb fī maʿrifat al- ḥiyal al- handasiyya, Diyarbakir, 1206 96
12.1 Captain Massalski’s diagram for the manufacture of a gun barrel (1841) 105
16.1 Mother- of- pearl inlaid wooden clog, Damascus, Syria, nineteenth century 130
19.1 Interior of a dyeing workshop in Kashan, Iran, 2015 147
24.1 ‘Damascus Room’, Syria, eighteenth century 179
25.1 Aerial view of Shibam, Yemen, taken c. 1966 190
26.1 Muqarnas vault inside the tomb of ʿAbd al-S amad, Natanz, Iran, 1299–1312 200
27.1 Diagram showing a mechanism for pumping fresh air into wells, from
Banu Musa, Kitāb al- ḥiyal 208
29.1 Brass platter inlaid with silver and copper in the ‘Mamluk Revival’ style,
Cairo, 1914 223
Acknowledgements
I have long been interested in researching the traditional manual crafts of the Islamic world. It
is a topic I have addressed from the perspectives of archaeology, art history and the study of
primary texts. Craft practices also form part of my teaching at the University of Victoria, and I
am grateful to my graduate and undergraduate students for their continued interest and insight-
ful observations relating to this rich area of study. These fruitful interactions have informed
both the presentation and approach taken in this book.
Having collected numerous written descriptions of craft activities over the years, it seemed
timely to bring them together in a single volume. This process of collection has involved many
pleasant hours in the McPherson Library at the University of Victoria, and I would like to
thank the staff of the library for their assistance in locating books and arranging for interlibrary
loans. I am also grateful to Nicola Ramsey for her encouragement to publish this anthology.
She and Ellie Bush have given me much wise advice in the preparation of the text. I also ben-
efited from the comments and critiques of the anonymous reviewers. My thanks to Elizabeth
Welsh for her meticulous copy- editing of the book.
Most of the work on this book was done in piecemeal fashion, during lunch breaks and
between lectures. I was, however, able to devote a more sustained period of time to the writing
and collation of the chapters during a research leave in 2013. Texts on the crafts cannot be
studied in isolation, of course, and I have gained greatly from time spent with objects in public
and private collections of Islamic art from Stuttgart to Hawaii. It is a pleasure to acknowl-
edge the kind, gracious help that I have received during these visits from Mariam Rosser
Owen, Moya Carey, Venetia Porter, Fahmida Suleman, Zeina Klink-H oppe, Annette Kraemer,
Mohammad Khaleeq, Keelan Overton and Dawn Sueoka.
This book is reliant upon this vast body of scholarship, and I am indebted to each and every
scholar, living or dead, whose work appears on the following pages. I am most grateful to the
following, who have allowed their field observations and translations to be reproduced in this
book: James Allan, Terry Allen, Adel Allouche, Aisha Bewley, Carmela Baffioni, Ronald
Buckley, Amnon Cohen, Jim Colville, Salma Samar Damluji, Randi Deguilhem, Willem
Floor, Robert Hoyland, Mahmood Ibrahim, Jane Jakeman, Nazif Mohib Shahrani, Parviz
Tanavoli, Wheeler Thackston, A. L. Udovitch and Stephen Vernoit. Thanks also to Doris
Behrens- Abouseif, Sheila Blair, Peter Miglus, Michael Morony, Jennifer Scarce and Helga
Seeden for their help. Copyrighted material has also been reproduced courtesy of numer-
ous publishers, and these are listed and acknowledged accordingly. Other assistance relating
acknowledgements vii
to copyright requests was provided by Svetlana Adaxina, James Black, Robin Bligh, Perry
Cartwright, Sharla Clute, Yi Deng, Yasmine El Hajjar, Christiane Gruber, Andrea Johari,
Evyn Kropf, Hans- Jeorg Mayer, Nancy Micklewright, Anastasia Mikliaeva, Alice Orton,
Pamela Quick, Fran Roper, Marlis Saleh, Kalpana Sharma, Melinda Jane Tomerlin, Charles
Watkinson and Tara Woolnough. My thanks to Seyedhamed Yeganehfarzand for checking the
Persian terminology employed in the main text and for making numerous additional observa-
tions about craft activities. Several new translations were produced specifically for publication
in this book, and I particularly thank Wesley Thiessen for his contributions. Mary Milwright
read and commented on a draft of the complete text.
As ever, my research has been supported by my wife, Evanthia, and my children, Loukas
and Clio. This book is dedicated to my mother, Mary.
Notes for the reader
This book includes accounts largely drawn from the Arabic- and Persian- speaking areas of
the Middle East and Central Asia. In the texts that accompany the primary source materials
(i.e. the introduction, the opening notes to each of the following chapters and the glossary) I
have followed the transliteration system adopted in the International Journal of Middle East
Studies and the third edition of the Encylopaedia of Islam. Personal names and toponyms are,
however, given without the dotted consonants and the macrons over the long vowels. ‘Ayns (ʿ)
and hamzas (ʾ) have been maintained in most cases. I have also employed these conventions
in the new translations from Arabic that are included in this anthology. Arabic and Persian
words that are in use in English (such as hajj) are left un-i talicised. Places are always given in
the form they are best known in English language publications (Jerusalem, Mecca, Medina,
Cairo, Aleppo and so on).
The source texts in this anthology come from a wide variety of sources written over a long
period of time. Many writers seek to render Arabic and Persian terms into Latin script. The
conventions employed in this process are, predictably enough, highly varied, and in numerous
instances there is insufficient information to be able to reconstruct the original given Arabic or
Persian word with any certainty. This problem is compounded by the fact that dialect words
used to describe aspects of craft practices and the rituals associated with guilds are not well
represented in published dictionaries. In some cases authors have given their own approxi-
mated transcriptions of oral testimony. Hence, it would be perilous to offer a definitive trans-
literation, let alone an English translation. As a result, I have not attempted to regularise the
Arabic and Persian words or phrases recorded in the source texts. They have been left largely
as they appear in the original publications (the only exception being the replacement of special
characters, such as č, ġ, š and z·, with ones that accord with the transliteration system employed
in this book). There are some differences in the transliteration of Arabic and Persian vowels
and diphthongs, the feminine ending (tāʾ marbūṭa) appears as −a, −ah and −eh and the Persian
izāfa appears both as −i and −e (and −yi / −ye). A glossary has been provided at the end of
the book as a means to clarify the meanings of commonly occurring craft terminology. Where
necessary, I have included the variant spellings that appear in the source texts.
All of the source texts have been translated into English. The translators are given in the
endnotes associated with each source text. In cases where no name is given, the translation
was done by the present author. The source texts originally written in English have been
reproduced as they were first published. I have, however, made some minor editorial changes
notes for the reader ix
(for example, to italicisation and capitalisation), in order make them appear relatively consist-
ent throughout the anthology. Missing words are contained in square brackets and clarifica-
tions regarding the meanings of words or expressions are contained in parentheses. Ellipses
indicate a section of the original text that has been omitted (usually because the section is not
germane to the topic under discussion or simply repeats information already provided).
Unless stated otherwise, the dates are given according to the Common Era. Hijrī dates are
sometimes noted in translations of inscriptions and Arabic primary sources.