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Sunday, May 19, 2002 6:35AM EDT
By MAX HALPEREN, Correspondent
RALEIGH - The coincidence was unusual enough, that so much Islamic art was
on display last fall. The Metropolitan Museum of Art alone had two
exhibitions, of Islamic metalwork and glass, and a third of jewelry on the
way. In Greenwich, Conn., just 30 miles away, the Bruce Museum was host to
its own major exhibition: "Empire of the Sultans: Ottoman Art From the
Khalili Collection."
And then came the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, followed by a surge of
interest in Islamic culture.
Eight months later, "Empire of the Sultans" arrives at the N.C. Museum of
Art in Raleigh. Scheduled two years ago, it is the first large show of
Islamic art and Islamic objects ever to hit the state. Unlike other shows
at NCMA, this one suggests the vast and varied nature of an entire
culture, particularly as it was revealed in the world immediately
surrounding the court of the sultans.
Nevertheless, the show of about 200 objects is a tiny sampling of the
collection of Nasser D. Khalili, a practicing Jew (the "D" stands for
David) who was born in Iran and who co-founded Maimonides Foundation to
promote peace and understanding between Muslims and Jews. Over the course
of three decades, Khalili has amassed more than 20,000 pieces.
"The beauty of the collection is that only a few Muslim countries have
museums of Islamic art -- you can probably count them on your fingers,"
Khalili told EuroBusiness magazine last fall. "What I have done is make
the Islamic collection as comprehensive as possible by ensuring that it
represents the artistic cultures of all Muslim countries."
"Empire of the Sultans" fills NCMA's main exhibition galleries with
brilliantly decorated Korans, highly prized calligraphy, cloths that may
have decorated Mohammed's tomb, rugs, pottery and tiles, silver and gilt
metalwork, armor and implements of war, documents, maps, compasses and
astrolabes. Displaying it created unusual challenges for NCMA's design
team, led by Doug Fisher. NCMA chief curator John Coffey says the
designers "put together the most successful exhibition of objects ever
held by the museum, showing great sensitivity to the needs of the
collection, creating cradles for the Korans, special mounts, special
cases."
It's certainly the most elaborate show, and the most heterogenous, that
the museum has ever mounted, with a focus on the Ottoman Empire's six
centuries of influence. At its height in the 16th century, the empire
reached clear across North Africa, down to Egypt, into Arabia, around the
Black Sea, and through the Balkans to the gates of Vienna. In 1453
Constantinople had fallen and ultimately became the Ottoman capital,
Istanbul, a city larger than any in Europe or Western Asia at the time.
Reduced to present-day Turkey, the empire once held an enormously varied
collection of peoples and cultures. And as Coffey points out, it should
come as no surprise that Ottoman work synthesized traits from any number
of sources, both in and out of the empire. For instance, a room of bright
tiles and pottery at NCMA shows the influence of blue and white Chinese
porcelain mingling with Ottoman forms.
Vigorous strokes
To the Western eye it may seem strange that much of the art -- wall
plaques, hangings, Korans -- consists not of paintings or sculpture, but
of elaborate calligraphy, and we may also be distanced by the fact that it
is in a language and an alphabet entirely foreign to most of us. But as we
examine a series of round plaques hanging on an entrance wall, we do not
need to know more than what the wall label tells us -- that they refer to
Allah, Mohammed and the caliphs who followed him -- to feel the power of
the vigorous, almost haunting, strokes that flash and curl around the
surface.
When a 19th-century sultan repaired a portion of the Ka'bah (the chief
destination of Muslim pilgrimages), a proud record of the event appears in
swirling, interpenetrating letters that look for all the world like
intense abstract expressionist gestures. They reveal why Ottoman
calligraphers became famous and, according to Coffey, even revered, and
why sultans might take instruction in the art. One sultan is described as
spending hours holding the ink pot of Seyh Hamdullah (1436-1520), an early
and famous calligrapher who created a near-dynasty of calligraphers and a
tradition that lasted down the centuries. Wealthy families boasted albums
of various forms of script by various well known hands.
The Korans at NCMA are handwritten, and extraordinary. Bright gold, blues
and reds gleam from a roomful of cases harboring Korans going back to the
15th century, the words of the Islamic holy book surrounded by intricate
designs that match anything in contemporary European bookmaking, despite
the lack of images. The Koran itself does not forbid images, Coffey says,
but a later interpreter, perhaps wishing to distinguish the elaborate
interiors of Christian cathedrals from the relatively spare interiors of
the mosque, may have set the tradition afloat.
Interlacing floral patterns, gold on blue, fill a cruciform center of one
15th-century page, a center that opens on to a lozenge shape filled with
gold on white, all framed in a square of more gold on blue. Rectangles
above and below hold inscriptions that blend with reddish brown stems, the
whole framed and held in broad margins. Enormously inventive, the
designers of these pages -- usually someone other than the calligrapher --
could balance their gilded patterns so that they pointed outward from the
page and inward to the words, often boxed in the center.
Colorful flourishes
The show's catalog says that even as late as the 19th century, when
Ottoman decoration was influenced by European taste, it was able to adapt
to the traditional canon. But that doesn't quite seem to fit some of the
late 18th- and 19th-century pages on display. They are filled with
flourishes and rosettes, flowers that appear in bouquets, and otherwise
yield to the dreadful taste of the time.
The colors in these Korans seem not at all faded. They were, after all,
seen as objects of art, rarely to be propped open and read. A volume
scripted by Seyh Hamdullah or his followers would be prized beyond price,
particularly if given as a gift by a sultan or a court official.
An Arabic inscription on a legal handbook, probably written by Seyh
Hamdullah, asserts that the book was presented to a scholastic institute
by the Sultan Bayezid II, and it is marked by the sultan's imperial
monogram or "tugra." On the facing page, a later sultan, Ahmed I, placed
his tugra, while a note signed by a librarian claims that Ahmed ordered
that it be placed there, where it would stand in the company of his
ancestor and the writing of Hamdullah.
Sultanic tugras took a traditional shape so that they could be easily
identified. A long double line turned into a graceful oval; three lines
and three S-shaped curves emerged at right angles; and below them the
sultan's name usually appeared. Here again, the ability of Ottoman
designers to play with a given form reveals itself.
Beyezid's seal is in relatively simple gilt and blue, while Ahmed's is
filled with patterns that turn it into a suitably imperial work of art.
The tugra as an art form appears more than once in the show, sometimes to
mark documents, sometimes to act as a bookplate, as it did on a work of
"prophetic medicine" when it entered the library of Suleyman the
Magnificent, whose tugra appears twice.
Invoking the mosque
A separate room is given over to Ottoman ceramics, including a group of
superb tiles in blue, white, green and red. They are reminders of the most
important art form in Islam: architecture.
Visitors to Islamic mosques will remember the bright gleam of tiles that
cover the walls, lead up through domes and sometimes create trompe l'oeil
windows opening into gardens. An act of imagination is required to see the
striking floral tiles at NCMA repeated in patterns across walls and over
archways. Among the sprays of flowers, leaves and buds that decorate the
pottery, the most striking example is a 16th-century flask. Alternating
red and blue buds emerge from the bottom; the pattern is broken by
geometric forms where one would grasp the flask; the flowers reemerge at
the narrow neck.
Textiles -- silks and rugs -- will no doubt prove popular among visitors.
But among them are reminders that the Ottomans for centuries were in a
state of constant warfare, with sultans leading their armies into battle.
A long, horizontal wall hanging might have been used as the wall of a
campaign tent. There are banners proclaiming that the armies were fighting
under the signs of Islam; gorgeously decorated daggers, swords and
flintlocks; armor, including chain mail; and an iron and steel war mask.
Because it is separated from everything that once held it, the mask has a
mysterious presence.
There is also a talismanic shirt to be worn beneath armor and containing
prayers, Koranic verses, and the names of God. According to the catalog, a
letter from the wife of Suleyman the Magnificent tells him that she is
sending a shirt "made by a holy man on the orders of the Prophet in a
dream, bearing sacred names which would turn aside bullets."
In an empire so widely spread, noting the times of day for prayers and
finding the direction of Mecca were absolute necessities, so that the show
contains compasses, astrolabes, calendars and almanacs. The Ottomans
became mapmakers. Some of the more interesting pieces in the show are
pages from "The Book of the Sea" by the Turkish admiral and cartographer
Piri Reis. Among other items they have topographic views of Istanbul,
Venice and Cairo.
Collecting a cultural heritage
Khalili, meanwhile, has traveled far and built something of an empire of
his own. After completing his national service in 1967, he left Iran,
spent 12 years in New York, then moved to London, where he acquired a
Ph.D. at the University of London. He started buying art in his 20s.
Khalili has endowed a chair of Islamic art at the School of Oriental and
African Studies at the University of London as well as a research
fellowship in Islamic Art at Oxford University. In 1996, he was given the
honorary title of Trustee of the City of Jerusalem. A year earlier he
helped create the Iran Heritage Foundation. In addition to Islamic
objects, he collects Japanese art, Indian and Swedish textiles, and Near
East Antiquities.
The journey of "Empire of the Sultans" is scheduled to continue through
2005. Khalili would like to see these works -- along with the rest of his
collection -- in a museum, perhaps one that his family trust would
establish.
"When you collect, you try to bring together pieces now scattered all over
the world," Khalili told EuroBusiness. "Each piece individually has its
artistic merits, but collectively they have a strong identity representing
a great cultural heritage."
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