Iranian artifacts on sale
iran_c...@my-dejanews.com
Souren Melikian
04/24/1999 International Herald Tribune
It is an uncanny experience. One day, you are in New York taking part in an
international symposium at Columbia University on the theme of "Who Owns
Culture?" and the subject of looting and vandalizing art in its multiple
aspects tearing up manuscripts to sell off the leaves, ripping tile
revetments off 13th-century mosques and palaces. Two days later, the scene
switches to the London sales of so-called Islamic art (from Arab Spain to
China), and so much of it looks like an illustration of the former that it
feels unreal.
A great deal of the havoc was done decades ago, but the jetsam and flotsam of
the cultural shipwreck persists, much of it from the Iranian world, which has
the longest continuous history and by far the largest production. The
proportion of objects dug up crudely from their underground caches versus
proper archaeological excavations is overwhelming, favoring a trail of
accompanying fantasies.
In the 1930s, a Metropolitan Museum team hastily conducted excavations in
Neyshapur, in eastern Iran . When they stopped in 1940, commerce took over
and thousands of ceramics were dug up to be carted off to the Western markets
up to the late 1970s.
These 10th-century ceramics often turn up at auction: "Samarkand,
Transoxiana," Christie's catalogue proclaimed Monday. Indeed, the
10th-century schools of pottery with calligraphic inscriptions in Neyshapur
and Samarkand were close. But hardly any of the Samarkand ceramics found at
the turn of the century went to the West. Small details such as color and
weight of the body, certain nuances in the calligraphy, the selection of
texts, etc., can be recognized. A large, fine bowl of the kind that could be
seen in Tehran shops made l10,925 ($17,500)
Then there were these bowls with grayish-blue motifs or inscriptions on ivory
ground, regularly ascribed to "Mesopotamia." A few shards came to light
before World War I in Samarra, Iraq, amidst fragments from various parts of
the world. By contrast, scores of pieces have been found west, east, north
and south in Iran , some in proper excavations, most dug up commercially.
On Monday at Christie's, a bowl with three palmettes resembling one in Tehran
fetched l6,325. On Thursday, at Sotheby's another bowl, better preserved, sold
for l14,950.
The distortion of cultural history is nothing, though, compared with the
mutilation of monuments. Hardly any of the 13th-century ceramic mihrabs
panels with simulated arches that tell Muslims which direction to face when
praying in a mosque or a mausoleum have survived intact the attentions of
Western collecting. Several have been dismantled and their components sold
piecemeal.
The center piece of such a mihrab, painted in golden luster with blue
lettering in the middle of the 13th century, appeared at Christie's and
fetched a gigantic l133,500.
Some bitter irony was attached to that sale. Acquired many years ago at Parke
Bernet, the mihrab tile was part of a collection formed between 1950 and 1985,
largely in the West, by Professor Ehsan Yarshater of Columbia University. The
great scholar of Persian literature donated it to the New York-based Persian
Heritage Foundation to support its scholarly publications program, including
the English language Encyclopedia Iranica and a major critical edition of the
10th-century "Book of Kings," Shah-Nameh.
The professor, who devoted his life to Persian literature, gathered here and
there debris from the thousands of Iranian manuscripts that have been cut up
since the turn of the century. At Christie's, 12 leaves from an early 14th-
century Koran, clearly copied by one of the greatest calligraphers of all
time, went for l4,600. By sheer coincidence, on Thursday at Sotheby's,
another 12 leaves from the same Koran came up. Superbly preserved, these shot
up to l27,600. We may never know the artist's name. It probably appeared at
the end of what must have been a 30-volume work.
Greater havoc still has been wrought on manuscripts of Persian romances. Tens
of thousands of pages have been torn away from their volumes to be sold
individually.
Opening folios with the title page were sought for the sake of the abstract
illumination. At Christie's on Monday, a leaf with the beginning of Nezami's
"Book of Nobility" (Sharaf-Nameh), torn off long ago from a manuscript of the
third quarter of the 16th century, sold for l920. On Thursday, at Sotheby's,
a leaf of the same period from a manuscript of Nezami's romance "Leyla and
Majnun" made l5,520. Are buyers beginning to be less enthusiastic about
maimed books? Another 16th-century leaf with part of the preface to the Book
of Kings, sold in Paris in 1975 and again in London in 1996, found no taker
this time.
Intact volumes and rarity, by contrast, galvanize attendances. The big prize
among the manuscripts consigned by Yarshater to Christie's was the third
volume of a general history by Khandamir dating from the 1590s. It is the
only surviving example of the work known to include paintings. The volume
soared to l287,500.
Three days later this was outshone at Sotheby's by an equally rare volume from
another part of the Islamic world a Koran from Arab Spain copied at Valencia,
"Balansiya" in Arabic, in 1160. Signed by a famous scribe, it is one of only
seven comparable manuscripts. At l474,500, it became the most expensive Koran
ever auctioned.
But the unique sometimes raises questions, particularly in the field of
objects. The sensation of the week was supposed to be a uniquely large oil
lamp on stand, 210 centimeters (84 inches) high, from Spain, to which
Christie's gave an 11th-century date. It was sold as "the property of a noble
European family by descent."
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MANY features in this object, which has the reddish color of copper rather
than bronze, are curious. The cock perched at the top, with its crest
engraved with a half-rosette is unparalleled, as is the treatment of the
birds enclosed in roundels on the underside of the well. The abstract
ornament is organized on the main shaft and the domed base in a way that
finds no precedent in metalwork from Spain, nor in the Islamic world at
large.
Two bidders at least were satisfied enough to run the object up to a
breathtaking l595,500. So much in it deviates from the ornamental repertoire
known so far from metalwork anywhere in the Islamic world that it is best
described as a hugely expensive gamble. Having pored over bronzes for the last
three decades, I would not put my money on it. Islam bans gambling anyway.
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