|
DYNASTIC VISIONS - THE FOUR
TURKIC EMPIRES
Four experts focus on each of the successive empires that
swept from Asia through Anatolia and the Balkans over a period
of a thousand yearsChristian Tyler on the nomadic beginnings of
the Turks
Uighurs
Christian Tyler on the nomadic beginnings of the Turks
|
Uighur
mural painting of a Siddha,
7th-9th centuries, a Buddhist who practised magic and
asceticism |
Among the thousands of faces painted in the Buddhist
cave temples of western China, there are some distinctly
un-Chinese features. One fragment shows a nobleman
holding a flower. Although he is drawn in the style of
Chinese Buddhist art (an iconography derived from
northern India) there is something unusual about him. He
has a full black beard. Another fresco shows a swarthy
figure with topknot and worry beads. Neither man is
Chinese; both are Turks – in the eyes of the
smooth-skinned Han Chinese, barbarians. But barbarians
they were not. For these people are Uighurs, leaders of
a Turkic tribe which emerged in the eighth century from
the scrum of nomads along China’s northern border to
create an empire rivalling the Tang dynasty of China.
Their princes, or khans, made capital and court at
Karabalghasun on the River Orkhon in present-day
Mongolia. Like the Chinese emperor, who had to call on
these ‘barbarians’ twice to save his throne, they
believed in their divine appointment.
They took Chinese princesses as wives and charged
exorbitant prices in silk, grain and tea for their
horses (a trade the Chinese tried to disguise as
‘tribute’).
Originating in Mongolia and Siberia, the Turks had
begun to mobilise in the sixth century, long before the
Uighur ascendancy. |
In 568, for example, a Turkic ambassador had been dispatched
to Constantinople. By 744 their rule reached from Mongolia to
the Caspian. For most of the next thousand years they were to
dominate not only Central Asia and Xinjiang (formerly known as
Chinese Turkestan) but also the Caucasus and Anatolia.
The name ‘Turk’ came to stand for unity and a common
language: variants of Turkish are still spoken from the Balkans
to Yakutia (present-day Siberia). These early Turks were
sky-worship-pers who consulted shamans and magic pebbles. The
Uighur kings converted to Manichaeism, the ‘religion of light’,
imported by refugees from the Middle East. In 840, perhaps too
used to easy living, they were driven out to settle in their
former lands of Xinjiang and Gansu, with a new capital, Kucha,
near Turfan in western China.
Kucha became a cultural and religious powerhouse, as the German
archaeologist Albert von Le Coq found when he excavated the city
and the nearby Bezeklik cave shrines in 1904. Some of his
trophies will be in the exhibition. Here the Uighurs converted
to Buddhism, devoting themselves to riding and archery. Many
carried musical instruments everywhere they went; the Uighurs
are still reputedly the finest musicians in Central Asia.
A rich literary inheritance was established for them by Mahmud
al-Kashghari, the eleventh-century Turkic poet and scholar. By
his time, the Uighurs had abandoned their quasi-runic script of
38 characters, which was not deciphered until the late
nineteenth century, for a modified Sogdian script of seventeen
letters, derived from Iranian. This they bequeathed to Genghis
Khan and his invading Mongols, their ethnic cousins, for whom
they acted as administrators. With the arrival of Islam from the
West, Arabic script prevailed.
The Uighur khanate in eastern Xinjiang survived until the 1930s.
‘Uighur’ is a generic name for all the Turkish Muslim people of
Xinjiang, whether descended from the Uighurs of Turfan or not.
Still essentially Turkic, their language and way of life are now
under threat.
Seljuks
Oya Pancaroglu on the development of the human figure in
Seljuk visual arts
|
Illustration from Kitab al-aghani
(Book fof Songs), 1216-20,
by Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani,
a collection of songs by
famous musicans and Arab poets |
Six serene figures with luminous countenances grace
the inside of an Iranian lustre-glazed bowl (1211–12).
We do not know who they are, but their identity is
perhaps less important than their composure and
stylistic attributes. The inscription of Persian verses
on the topic of love on the inside and outside of the
bowl suggests that this enigmatic group may be an
idealised image at a musical or poetic performance. The
bowl’s composition of text and image reflects the
sensibilities of medieval Persian poetry, which
typically explored the aesthetic and emotional qualities
of love from the point of view of the plaintive lover.
The interplay between audience and verse takes us to the
very heart of the artistic legacy of the late Seljuk
world in Iran and beyond as it demonstrates the affinity
of the visual arts with literary culture that prevailed
at the time.
This fusion not only informed the literary qualities
of visual culture but also led to a proliferation and
transformation of figurative representation in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A key motif from this
period is the uniform and unisex aesthetic of the ‘moon
face’ (mâh-rû in Persian) featured on this bowl. |
This facial type was extolled in medieval Arabic and
especially Persian poetry, where it is associated with the
Turkic identity and Asian features of the aloof yet beguiling
beloved. The essence of the moon face as depicted in the visual
arts – a round visage with delicate features – is ultimately a
sign of the shifting demographics of the medieval Islamic world
and the irreversible entrance of Central Asian Turkic peoples
into the culture of the Near East.
Another group portrait of moon-faced figures appears on the
manuscript page (left). Eight attendants frame an enthroned
figure who holds a bow and arrow. The static and symmetrical
placement of the figures and their relative sizes, point to a
strict adherence to the requirements of social hierarchy by the
artist. The central figure is thought to be an idealised
representation of Badr al-Din Lu’ lu’, the military commander
who ruled Mosul (in northern Iraq) in the early thirteenth
century. This frontispiece painting, dated to the second decade
of the thirteenth century, introduces a volume of the Book of
Songs, a colossal tenth-century Arabic work, describing songs,
musicians and musical gatherings performed in courtly settings
of the early Islamic period. The enthronement scene may depict
the ceremonial court reception of a performance, linking the
image to the content of the Book of Songs. In doing so, it
conceptually unites the image of authority with the ambience of
courtly pastimes, presenting the commander and his entourage
enjoying the cultivated pleasures of the visual and performing
arts.
Visual interpretations of literary culture and performances
such as these became increasingly prevalent following the
political disintegration of the Great Seljuk dynasty, which led
to the emergence of multiple centres of artistic patronage. The
Great Seljuks, the first Turkic dynasty to make its mark on the
central lands of the medieval Islamic world, gave rise, in the
second half of the twelfth century, to a host of rival successor
states from eastern Iran to the eastern Mediterranean. The
resulting competition for cultural prestige and legitimacy and
the absence of an imposing central power encouraged the mobility
of artists and poets and provided the impetus for creative
cross-fertilisation and innovation.
Perhaps the most remarkable artistic outcome of this fluid
environment was the transformation and expansion of figurative
representations which embellished the architecture, portable
arts and coinage of the period. This new emphasis on figuration
also led to a flowering in the production of illustrated
manuscripts from the thirteenth century onward. Building on the
secular tradition of figurative representation in Islamic visual
cultures, the late Seljuk period witnessed the rise of a new
human image in arts and letters which was a product of the
prevailing humanist notions about mankind’s potential to achieve
a noble nature.
Timurids
Justin Marozzi on Tamerlane, the Turkic Genghis Khan
A mosaic panel
with inscription, c.1405-15, from the mausoleum Gur-i Amir,
Samarqand, where Timur is buried. The white script reads:
'The grave of the Sultan of the World, Emir Timur Guragan.
May Allah accept his loyalty and allow him entry to Paradise. By
order of the Sultan...'
One afternoon in August 1401, on a
day so hot that the defenders of Baghdad had reportedly propped
their helmets up on sticks behind the ramparts, abandoned their
positions and gone home, the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur
(better known in the West as Tamerlane) rode serenely in and put
the city to the sword. The siege had lasted six weeks and he had
lost a significant number of his men. Retribution was swift,
inevitable and devastating.
Every soldier was ordered to bring him at least one head. Men,
women and children were cut down where they stood. Many jumped
into the foaming Tigris, as recorded in this miniature (below),
from a fifteenth-century copy of the Zafarnama (an illustrated
book of Timur’s conquests), only to be killed by Timur’s waiting
archers, the backbone of his armies. The great river, said the
chronicles, flowed red with the blood. ‘The astonished
inhabitants no longer looked upon their city as the house of
peace [Dar al-Salam, as Baghdad was formerly known], but as the
palace of hell and discord.’ When the rout was finished, 22
towers rose from the plains. They contained 90,000 skulls.
|
Two
pages from a copy of the Zafarnama, 1436, a history of
Timur by Sharaf Al-Din Ali Yazdi, showing Timur
conquerign Baghad in 1401 |
 |
 |
For all his violence, executed on a
breathtaking scale unmatched in history either by Alexander the
Great or Genghis Khan before him, Timur was a powerful creative
force. Fascinated by art and architecture, he was a prodigious
patron of the arts. At its crudest, such patronage took the form
of forcing artists and artisans, miniaturists, poets and
calligraphers, glass-blowers, silversmiths and weavers, not to
mention the population of scholars and holy men from each
ransacked city of the East, to relocate to his imperial capital
Samarqand.
‘When he had laid waste a great
city,’ wrote the fifteenth-century Syrian chronicler Ibn
Arabshah, ‘in all its gardens he built a palace and in some of
these palaces he had depicted his own assemblies and likenesses,
now smiling, now austere, and representations of his battles and
sieges and his conversations with kings, and lords, wise men,
and magnates, and sultans offering homage to him and bringing
gifts to him from every side and his hunting-nets and ambushes
and battles in India, Dasht and Iran and how he gained victory…’
Such art portrayed the astonishing
opulence of courtly life and conveyed in bold and vivid colours
the sheer majesty of Timur, the ambition of his architectural
projects and the audacity of his vision. From the blood and
pillage of the Turco-Mongol’s conquests issued a cultural
achievement that bore his name and would never be forgotten.
Kindled by the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur, the fires of
Timurid culture flamed through Asia to create one of the most
important epochs in Persian history. Although he was not
Persian, Timur adopted sophisticated Persian court culture as
his own to glorify his rule.
Though Timur’s empire proved
short-lived, his cultural legacy was more enduring. The blue
domes of Central Asia, the exquisite paintings of Bihzad (the
illustrious Persian artist from Herat who ushered in a new era
of naturalism) and the lyrical romanticism of the poet Jami all
paid tribute to the ravishing vision of an unlettered warrior of
the steppes, one of the most remarkable men who ever lived.
Ottomans
Robert Irwin on the splendours of the sultan’s court
|
A
sixteenth-century
Ottoman sword with
leather and gold handle |
Stubborn in his purpose, and bold in everything, he
aspires to no less fame than that of Alexander the
Great. He has read to him by two Italians in his service
the histories of Rome and other nations. He speaks
Turkish, Greek and Slavonic. Eager for information about
the Western world, he possesses a map showing the realms
and provinces of Europe… he declares that there must be
but one empire in the world, one faith, one monarchy –
and that to realise this unity there is no place more
worthy than Constantinople.’
That was how Languschi, an Italian contemporary,
described Mehmed II (reigned 1451–80) as he was soon
after his accession to the Ottoman Sultanate at the age
of nineteen in 1451. In 1453 Mehmed commanded the
Turkish armies in the conquest of Constantinople. There
had been twelve previous attempts by Muslim armies to
capture that city and in the course of the centuries a
considerable body of prophetic literature had developed
which promised that the Byzantine capital would fall to
Islam before the End of the World. Often these
prophecies linked the fall of Constantinople to the fall
of Rome.Mehmed’s capture of Constantinople established
his reputation as a warrior in the service of Jihad –
the ‘holy struggle’ to spread the faith among hostile
unbelievers – the traditional role of the Ottoman
sultans.‘ |
The origins of the Ottomans are obscure, but they first
appear in history in Bursa, western Anatolia, at the beginning
of the fourteenth century. They commanded tribesmen who attacked
Greeks and other Christians for the promise of booty or, failing
that, martyrdom in the service of Jihad. By the mid-fifteenth
century the Ottoman Empire included most of Anatolia and a large
area of the Balkans. But as long as Constantinople remained in
Christian hands, that empire was vulnerable, with Venetian and
Genoese fleets having the power to cut Turkey in Europe off from
Turkey in Asia. Though the Byzantine fortifications of
Constantinople had proved a formidable obstacle, the place that
Mehmed and his troops entered in 1453 was a ghost city. Large
areas within the walls had become a wilderness. The Sultan set
about repopulating and Islamising the city. Citizens were
conscripted from more heavily populated parts of the empire. An
enormous mosque complex known as the Fatih (Conqueror) was
constructed. Mehmed shunned the ruined palaces of his
predecessors, which he believed to be haunted by djinns (spirits
which assumed human and animal forms) and started the complex of
buildings that was known as the Yeni Saray (New Palace) and
later, in the nineteenth century, as Topkapi Saray (Gun Gate
Palace). He also had a vast and characteristically Islamic
bedesten (covered market) constructed. Mosques and religious
teaching colleges sprang up throughout the city.
| As Languschi’s report suggests, Mehmed was steeped
in classical culture. His spectacular conquest
encouraged him to think of himself as a new Alexander
and as heir to the Caesars. As a Homer enthusiast,
Mehmed also claimed that the Turks (Turci) were the
descendants of the Trojans (Teucri) and that the capture
of Constantinople was belated revenge for the sack of
Troy. He employed Greek and Italian advisers. He asked
the Venetians to send him a painter. They sent him
Gentile Bellini, who produced portraits of Mehmed and
other Turks, and painted erotic frescoes in one or two
pavilions of the new palace. Mehmed commissioned
portrait medals from a number of Italian artists, of
whom the most distinguished was Constanzo da Ferrara. He
corresponded with Ferrante of Naples, Sigismondo
Malatesta of Rimini and other Italian princes.
Mehmed’s interest in classical culture and in
contemporary western art had no precedent among his
ancestors and no legacy among them either, until the
nineteenth century at least. But his importance as a
cultural mediator between East and West was limited.
Much of the interest that Mehmed took in things
Italian seems suspiciously utilitarian and even
predatory. He was very interested in the geography of
Italy, most probably because he was planning to invade
it and sack Rome in fulfilment of the ancient
prophecies. |
A
fifteenth-century finial, an ornamental top for a
turban, over 20 cm high |
After Mehmed’s death, his son and successor, Bayezid II
(reigned 1481–1512) sold off the Italian paintings and probably
destroyed the erotic frescoes. The great innovations in Ottoman
arts and crafts owed nothing to the example of Renaissance
models. Rather it was the building of the Yeni Saray and the
Fatih mosque, as well as numerous smaller mosques, religious
teaching colleges and palaces that provided a massive stimulus
to Islamic crafts. Iznik tiles, which must be counted among the
finest examples of Islamic ceramics, were produced in vast
quantities and to an unprecedented high standard to cover the
walls of the new buildings. Similarly it seems probable that the
large and expensive medallion Ushak carpets were first produced
in Mehmed’s reign. Almost certainly made to order from the
court, their layout was perhaps modelled on bookbindings from
the imperial library. Mehmed and his courtiers, theologians,
designers and craftsmen looked to the East and to Persian
culture of the Timurid territories for their cultural models.
The visual culture of the Ottomans in the late-fifteenth century
was a branch of the ‘International Timurid style’ with its
decorative stylised foliage, lobed leaves and cloud bands.
Samarqand, Bukhara, Herat and Tabriz – not Florence or Venice –
were the real sources of inspiration for Ottoman art in the late
fifteenth century. As for Italy, though Mehmed sent an invasion
force to southern Italy in 1480, he died the following year with
his dream of conquering Rome unrealised.
An
Iznik late, c.1550, decorated with tulips and hyacinths
bound together with lotus flowers, showing the distinct
Cninese influence of Iznik pottery |
His puritanical successor, Bayezid II, favoured the
austere and Quran-related art of calligraphy. He
regarded Shaykh Hamdullah, the man who had taught him
calligraphy, with such reverence that he would stand and
hold the inkstand while his teacher worked. Bayezid’s
grandson, Süleyman the Magnificent (reigned 1520–66) was
also an esteemed calligrapher, following the Ottoman
tradition of princes mastering an art or practical skill
such as calligraphy, woodwork or gardening. But
Süleyman’s artistic patronage extended much further than
calligraphy. The vastly increased resources of the
Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, as well as the
skill of Süleyman’s chief architect Sinan, meant that
the great mosque complex of the Süleymaniye in Istanbul
outstripped Mehmed’s Fatih mosque in size and in
boldness of design. |
Though Sinan worked within a tradition of architecture that
was distinctively Ottoman, other artists and craftsmen continued
to look back on the culture of fifteenth-century Central Asia
under the Timurids for their inspiration. Albums of Persian
miniatures rather than European canvases furnished Ottoman
painters with their chief models. Eastern foliage and a Persian
form of Chinoiserie continued to provide much of the decorative
repertoire of Ottoman textiles and ceramics. Most of the
European art that Süleyman acquired came to him not through
individual commissions, but rather as loot from campaigning in
the Balkans. The sack of the Hungarian capital of Buda in 1526,
in particular, brought vast quantities of manuscripts, statues,
jewels and other precious objects to Istanbul. Süleyman’s reign
was simultaneously the military and cultural zenith of the
Ottoman Empire.
|
:
