Hermitage En

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COLUMNS

PLACE

From the director

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Events

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52 Yuri Zinin on the culture of hammam

FILM COMMENT Mikhail Piotrovsky on the culture of Islam

56 Vika Smirnova on Iranian film 8 REVIEWS

COLLECTIONS

58 Chris Gordon on Abbas Kiarostami

Ada Adamova on Nizami’s ‘Khamsa’ 10 Elena Tsareva on prayer rugs 14

59 Jaakko Rustanius on Time of the Storytellers 60 Maria Korostoleva on Soviet and Nazi Propaganda

Nasser D. Khalili on the Khalili Collection 16 SPOTLIGHT ART AND MONEY

62 Stefano Carboni on Venice and Islam

Sergey Skaterschikov on investing in the art of Islam 18 PREVIEW 64 The tent of the Emir of Bukhara at the Hermitage THE WRITTEN WORD 66 Dmitry Ozerkov on the Hermitage 20/21 project Louis Werner on the m anuscripts of the Sahara 20 67 Matt Brown speaks with Charles Saatchi Sergey Kozin interviews Slavoj Zizek 24 69 Celebrating Eimuntas Nekrosius Robert Irwin on Scheherazade 26 70 Boris Godunov rediscovered Efim Rezvan on the Uthman Qur’an 28 LISTINGS ARCHITECTURE 73 International exhibitions diary Alexander Rappaport on the architecture of St. Petersburg 30

77 Important sales and events

The St. Petersburg Mosque 32 Andreas Tölke interviews Zaha Hadid 34

MY HERMITAGE 78 Oleg Grabar recalls a first visit to the Hermitage

TERRA INCOGNITA Christine Martens on Central Asian textiles 38 Polina Fomina on the whirling dervishes of Turkey 42

CHILDREN’S PAGE Anastasia Zlatopolskaya 80 on shadow theatre in Istanbul

The hat as status symbol in Anatolia 44 Maryam Rezvan on Islamic talismans 46

RETROSPECTIVE Mikhail Piotrovsky and Efim Rezvan in conversation 48 Efim Rezvan on the SOYCE expedition to Yemen

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Cover: Glazed earthenware tile, Ottoman Empire, AH 1118 (AD 1706). Courtesy the Benaki Museum, Athens. This page, from top: Loggia, Palazzo Ducale, St. Marks, Venice. Bibi Seshanbe ceremony, Bukhara, Uzbekistan photographed by Christine Martens. Zaha Hadid photographed by Steve Double. The St. Petersburg mosque photographed by Mikhail Borisov. Adam Cvijanovic, Love Poem (10 minutes after the end of gravity), detail, 2005, Flashe and housepaint on Tyvek, 426.7 x 228.6 cm. Courtesy the Saatchi Gallery, London.

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CONTRIBUTORS

GUEST EDITORS Efim A. Rezvan

Oleg Grabar

Nasser D. Khalili

Stefano Carboni

Deputy Director of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Editor-in-Chief of ‘Manuscripta Orientalia’, International Journal for Oriental Manuscript Research; Professor at the Oriental Faculty and Faculty of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University. He is the author of dozens of research works published in Russian, English, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Persian, Finnish, Uzbek and Japanese. Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in the School of Historical Studies Princeton. His research has had a profound and far-reaching influence on the study of Islamic art and architecture. His extensive archaeological expeditions and research trips have covered the vast expanse of the Islamic world in Africa, the Middle East, and Muslim Asia. Associate Research Professor, and Member of the Governing Body at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. He is a scholar, collector and benefactor of international standing and has assembled, under the auspices of the Khalili Family Trust, a number of impressive art collections in a broad range of fields including the world’s most important colletion of Islamic Art. Art historian and Oriental scholar, Curator and Administrator in Charge of the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Islamic Art

Mikhail Piotrovsky is the Director of the Hermitage Museum; member of the Russian Academy of Science; full member of the Russian Academy of Arts; Deputy Chairman of the President’s Council for Art and Culture; Professor at St. Petersburg State University; and Chairman of the union of Russian Museums. Ada Adamova is an art historian and Head Researcher of the Oriental Department of the Hermitage Museum. Keeper of the Iranian collection and author of numerous books and articles on Persian painting, she has organised several exhibitions on the art of Iran. Elena Tsareva is a scientific researcher at the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera). She is a specialist in early textiles and organiser of seminars. Louis Werner is a freelance writer and documentary filmmaker living and working in New York. Sergey Kozin is a translator and Biblical researcher, and Editor-in-chief of Germenevtika publishing house. Anastasia Grib is an orientalist, critic, journalist and playwright and creator of an Internet project dedicated to Muslim calligraphy. Alexander Rappaport is a well-known philosopher and specialist in the history of architecture. He currently divides his time between the United Kingdom, Russia and Latvia. Author of the book 99 Letters on Art, in which he examines the material of others without being bound by the strict discourse of art history, he offers new intellectual approaches and viewpoints. Mikhail Borisov is the Chief Editor of Pod Klyuch magazine, an itinerant photographer and football fan.

Robert Irwin is a writer and scholar who has taught Arabic and Middle Eastern history at Oxford, Cambridge and London universities. Irwin is the author of numerous specialised studies of Middle Eastern politics, art and mysticism as well as novels including The Arabian Nightmare. Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian sociologist, postmodern philosopher and cultural critic. He is professor at the Institute for Sociology, Ljubljana and at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Over the last 20 years Zizek has participated in more than 350 international philosophical, psychoanalytical and cultural-criticism symposiums around the world and is the author of numerous publications.

Andreas Tölke is a Berlin-based independent writer in the fields of art, architecture, and design. He is a contributor to such publications as Elle Décor, Madame, Marie Claire Maison, and Welt am Sonntag among others. Christine Martens is a NY-based independent researcher and has contributed to Hali magazine and other publications. As a 2008 Fulbright Scholar she is documenting the relationship between textiles and the Islamic oral tradition in Central Asia.

Polina Fomina is a journalist and anthropologist working in television and author of a weekly column in Vecherneye Vremya. Maryam Rezvan is an oriental scholar and researcher at the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), managing editor of Manuscripta Orientalia. Yuri Zinin is a journalist and orientalist with RIA Novosti and was the chief representative of the news agency in Algeria, Iraq, Tunesia, Israel and the UAE. Vika Smirnova is a film critic and cultural researcher who is a frequent contributor to Teatralny Peterburg and Iskusstvo Kino. Christopher Gordon is an independent curator and journalist who has worked with major museums and galleries internationally. Jaakko Rustanius is an artist, writer and curator based in Helsinki. Maria Korostoleva is head of programs and exhibitions at the Akhmatova Museum in St. Petersburg as well as an independent curator and critic. Matt Brown is a journalist and editor. Former arts editor of The St. Petersburg Times and now its deputy editor, Matt frequently appears on the international media to discuss Russian life and culture. Tatiana Fyodorova is a photographer, member of Kunstkamera expeditions and has exhibited her work in Finland, Greece and Russia. John Varoli is the arts correspondent in Russia for Bloomberg News and the Art Newspaper. Born and raised just outside of New York City, he has lived in Russia since 1992. Dmiitry Ozerkov is Curator of Contemporary Art and the 20/21 project at the Hermitage Museum and has published on such diverse topics as Freud, Miró, the Russian avant-garde, and Spanish art of the 70th century. Anastasia Zlatopolskaya is a photo-correspondednt working in Istanbul and has made films and exhibitions about Russian immigration in Turkey.

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ISLAM IS ALWAYS WITH US In today’s Europe Islam is usually assumed to be an alien and inimical power which threatens western civilisation. This image is, in the main, due to Western paranoia. Islam has long been a part of Mediterranean civilisation and today is an important part of the daily life of many countries in Europe and in America. In Russia, Islam was and is the religion and the way of life of significant parts of its population (Siberia, Volga, the Northern Caucuses). The ‘exotic’ element of Islam lends diversity to our culture but there are, in fact, fewer fundamental differences than with Buddhism or Confucianism The task of a universal museum such as the Hermitage is to help different cultures to understand each other. Mass culture also helps in this respect. Everyday Islamic culture - talismans, spells, amulets on walls in houses and on car windows - exist on the periphery of true culture, at the limits of real alchemy, and we can believe in it because it is alive and humane, it is sincere and naïve. And it can stand up to Western pop-culture because it does not adapt. It will either die or actively resist. It can offer to the world, and already does, an alternative to sushi and McDonald’s; the culture of coffee, waterpipes and traditional bathhouses - hammams. The music world is full of popular Turkish and Arabic music and Iranian films are already part of the treasure house of world cinema. All of this is combined with the drift towards the increasing role of religion in public life and policy around the world. There is as yet no solution for our recent problems but there are old traditions, including the Russian ‘recipe’. In its essence this recognizes that we have always lived, and will continue to live, closely together. We are fated to understand each other and it is possible. The museum and its magazine strive to answer this challenge. ■

Editorial Board Mikhail Piotrovsky (chairman), Derk Sauer, Geraldine Norman, Michael Maltzoff (founder) Guest editors Stefano Carboni, Oleg Grabar, Nasser D. Khalili, Efim Rezvan Executive Editor of the English version Christopher Gordon Editor Joseph Pugh Translator Alexey Moskin Managing Editor of the Russian version Anastasia Grib Assistant Editor Zoya Necheporenko Photographers Anastasia Zlatopolskaya, Tatyana Fedorova Designer Nadezhda Timofeeva Proofreader Olga Abramovich Hermitage magazine typefaces Ilya Ruderman, exclusively for Hermitage Magazine  2006 Special thanks to Nurhan Atasoy Thanks and acknowledgements Jane Lombard, Richard E. Doughty, Geraldine Norman, Liubov Kudryavseva, Annabel Fallon, Valerie Engler, Rod Macneil, Mohameden Ahmed Salem, Laetitia Sadier, Timo Vartiainen, Milla Unkilla, Nicolas Iljine, Tobin Auber, Stefania Patrini, Sawaya & Moroni spa, Roger Howie, Davide Giordano, Zaha Hadid Architects, Musei Civici Veneziani, Tatyana Fedorova, Dmitry Ozerkov, Elena Getmanskaya, Oxana Tokranova, Mikhail Borisov Founding Company The State Hermitage Museum Publishing Company OOO ‘Neva Media’ CEO Derk Sauer General Director Tatiana Turikova Production Manager Alla Kalinovskaya Commercial Director Elina Kunikeeva Advertising Manager Yana Ermakova Marketing and public relations Maria Berntseva Financial Manager Anna Kuzmina Hermitage is part of Independent Media Sanoma Magazines www.hermitagemagazine.com www.hermitagemagazine.ru Published quarterly. Circulation 25, 000. Printing Cvetprint Ltd. "ÉÓÒÛ‰‡ÒÚ‚ÂÌÌ˚È ùÏËÚ‡Ê": ҂ˉÂÚÂθÒÚ‚Ó èà ‹îë77-25064 ‚˚‰‡ÌÓ 20.07.2006 î‰Â‡Î¸ÌÓÈ ÒÎÛÊ·ÓÈ ÔÓ Ì‡‰ÁÓÛ Á‡ Òӷβ‰ÂÌËÂÏ Á‡ÍÓÌÓ‰‡ÚÂθÒÚ‚‡ ‚ ÒÙÂ χÒÒÓ‚˚ı ÍÓÏÏÛÌË͇ˆËÈ Ë Óı‡Ì ÍÛθÚÛÌÓ„Ó Ì‡ÒΉËfl. àÁ‰‡eÚÒfl ˜ÂÚ˚ ‡Á‡ ‚ „Ó‰. "The State Hermitage". Federal srevice on Supervision of Observance of the Legislation in the Sphere of Mass Communications and Safeguarding of the Cultural Heritage, registartion PI N FS-77-25064 of July 20, 2006. Address: 4 St. Isaac's Sq., St. Petersburg, Russia 190000 Tel./fax+7(812)325 6080 International mailing address: P.O. Box 8, SF-53501, Lappeenranta, Finland E-mail: [email protected] Copyright  2006. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is strictly prohibited. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. The publishers apologize for any omissions, which they will be pleased to rectify at the earliest opportunity. The views expressed in this magazine are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the editors. Copyright: Cover © The Benaki Museum, Athens, pg. 5 © The Marinksky Theatre Archive; pg. 7 © Sasha Belenky; p. 8 left © Michael Rakowitz, right © George Baselitz; pp. 9-13 © State Hermitage; pp. 14-15 © Russian Museum of Ethnography; pg. 16 © Nour Foundation; pg. 17 © Simon Butcher; pp. 20-22 © Lorraine Chittock/Saudi Aramco World/PADIA except † Mohameden Ahmed Salem; pg. 26 left © A. Zlatopolskaya, right © Helen Irwin; pg. 27 State Hermitage; pg. 28 © T. Fedorova; pg. 29 Institute of Oriental Manuscripts; pp. 30-33 © Mikhail Borisov; pg. 34 © Sawaya & Moroni spa; pg. 35 © Steve Double/TCS; pp. 36-37 © Zaha Hadid Architects; pp. 38-41 © Christine Martens; pp. 42-42 © A. Zlatopolskaya; pp. 44-45 © Christine Martens; pg. 46 top © Nasser D, Khalili Collection; pp. 50-51 © T. Fedorova; pp. 52-55 © A. Zlatopolskaya; pp. 56-57 © Arthouse.ru; pg. 58 © Abbas Kiarostami; pg. 59 © E. and V. Vorobyev; pg. 60 © Vagrius Publishing, Moscow; pp. 62-63 © museum collections; pg. 64 top L. Kulakova, bottom State Hermitage; pp. 66-68 © the artists; pg. 72 © Lwowski Collection; pg. 73 left Pierre Berge, right Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, Paris © Adagp, Paris; pg, 73 courtesy Maureen Paley © the artist; pg. 76 © Estate of Alexander Calder / ARS, New York; pg. 78-79 State Hermitage; pg. 80 © A. Zlatopolskaya

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COMMENT

GOD LOVES BEAUTY Mikhail PIOTROVSKY on the culture of Islam There are many different points of view concerning the art and culture of Islam, and many areas for discussion. Today, just as in all other periods, problems of misunderstanding remain. An educated European has less of an idea about Islamic art than they do about Japanese, Chinese or Indian art. There are many different kinds of misunderstandings, including linguistic ones, which obscure the similarities between cultures and accentuate the differences. It is for this reason that I would like to offer some suggestions towards a correction of terminology in artistic language. What do we truly know about Islam and what do we say when we talk about it? First of all, we have to become familiar with the orthography and stop writing Allah [as in the Russian tradition] with a lower case ‘a’. I participated in the composition of the book ‘Myths of the Peoples of the World’ and at that time there was a heated discussion with the publisher over the way in which the name of God - Allah - should be written. Alas, the publisher won the argument, despite the fact that the people responsible for this publication were the most qualified to decide these issues at that time. In articles about the Bible, the words God and Yahweh begin with a capital letter, but Allah starts with a small one, even though Allah is the same God as that of the Christians and the Jews. And let’s not forget that the Islamic faith descends from Abraham. Such mistakes can be found even now, though thankfully less and less frequently. The second important idea which is immediately associated with Islam is that it demands ‘complete obedience to God’. This must be revised so that it is understood rather as being humble before the creator. Thus the accent falls in a different place. These nuances are very important as they change our perception.

With the passage of time, and thanks in part to conquests and natural cultural exchange, artistic language has become the same both for Muslims and non-Muslims. The tastes of the people are defined not by nationality but by the social strata they occupy. In the Eastern Department of the Hermitage collection there are many things which demonstrate such similarities. In the first place we have the magnificent carpets of Persian, Caucasian, and Central Asian origin. These are, without a doubt, the most important component of Muslim culture yet, at the same time, they are also an integral part of European culture. Carpets occupy a central place in European painting, and sometimes are even named after painters, such as the ‘Lotto’ or ‘Holbein’ carpets. Treasures were often brought from the East and, having been transformed by this journey, entered the European aesthetic quite naturally. These objects characterize the second category. To be mentioned here is the famous goblet in the Hermitage collection in the shape of a horn, made in the Northern European style which was bought by Peter the Great. Another example is the famous Egyptian lamp made of crystal with figurative ornaments in the Mannerist style. The history of this lamp is instructive. It came to the Hermitage with all of its embellishments and remained like this for a long time. In the 1920s1930s, when Eastern studies became of great interest and the Eastern Department was developed, the lamp was taken out of its setting to be exhibited and admired before ultimately being restored to the state in which it arrived at the museum.

There is also a whole series of objects which were made for people of other faiths, mostly for Christians living in the East, that use the artistic language of Islam. The Hermitage has a remarkable Nestorian plate from 18th century. It is Nestorian only in name, in truth it was made in Syria, and is decorated with the images of saints. Like the horn-shaped goblet, which bears what are most probably the images of the four Evangelists on The language it, they are the works of one and the same culture. of Islam is less ARTISTIC LANGUAGE understandable The third category of objects is those which were made for Europeans Further, there are the issues connected with artistic language. when Eastern models were adopted by Western craftsmen who than that of Zen One can often hear it said that there is no Islamic art, but only did not know Eastern artistic language and did not differentiart made by people who profess the Islamic faith. There is some ate its symbolism. The best example is the imitation of Kufic truth in this, but Islamic culture is to a great extent defined by writing. The pattern of Kufic writings lost its original sacred religion and creates the atmosphere in which certain religious opinions must meaning and retained only an ornamental function, imitating a text. In the operate. But not everything in the Muslim world is inspired by Islam. And Hermitage there is the famous Fortuni vase whose manufacture is debated; although there is a large proportion of art which places religious ideas in the was it made by Christians or Muslims? Surely it is of Muslim production, language of images, it is incorrect to state that this is simply a reflection of relibecause the Kufic writing is easily comprehensible. Even so, today it remains gious dogma, just as surely as it is inaccurate to say that freedom of expresin the gallery of European Medieval art surrounded by Spanish ceramics emusion and anti-Islamic tendencies exist within Muslim culture. lating the same traditions and the same artistic language.

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Hermitage 8 / comment

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In the context of artistic language, some linguistic topics beauty is a hint of the magnificent life that awaits in paradise. need to be examined. And a change of terminology is also necLuxury, splendour, and order in the earthly are a direct reflecBeauty is that which essary. The notion that ‘Islamic art forbids the depiction of livtion of the paradise which the devout will enter after life. is well organized. ing creatures’ I offer to replace with the more precise term of “aniconism”. The commandment ‘Thou shalt not make for In Islamic art there are two sides. The first is the matheyourself an idol’ manifests differently in the various cultures matical, the algebraic, which is in dialogue with the stars, descending from Abraham. In the West, as well as in Russia, there is the view improves trade, and is useful in calculating loans. The second is that which that irate Muslims do not allow the depiction of living creatures. And this is a was adopted by Renaissance culture. It is the joy of life which the Greeks perfect example of the level of misunderstanding! This stricture was in fact enjoyed but which vanished in Medieval Europe. Semitic and, all the more, a Judeo-Christian cultural tendency connected with the main tenets of a monotheistic religion. One need only recall Byzantium, THE ROLE OF ISLAM where for a period spanning two hundred years, icons were systematically IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD destroyed. It is very difficult to draw a line that can separate the mutual influWe must begin to appreciate the role of Islam in contemporary society. In ence of Christianity and Islam on each other. John of Damascus1, the famous defender of icons, gives a very clear explanation of this theological situation. the 20th century Islam permeates all spheres of life, and now we are witIf God could be incarnated in man (Christ), an icon must have the right to ness to an eruption of fundamentalism which also has to be expressed in exist, and so ‘aniconism’ can be no reason for dispute. Only if the incarnation some language. The intensification of religious fervour is obvious the of God is not recognized does an icon become an idol. These fundamental world over, but in the Muslim East it is especially evident. And a decision questions arise concurrently in both Islam and Christianity and presume a true must be made as to what degree the Muslim state is obliged to be secular dialogue of cultures. Muslims are not savages! and to what degree religion must be separate from the state. The problem of the role of religion in the world today must be solved both by Russia and In the Muslim tradition, an idol is an image which prevents one from prayAmerica. France believes that it has solved these questions already ing and being devout. But if it is just an image on a floor, for example, and it is although they are still facing conflicts there. not one of the God or the Prophet, it can’t tempt you and therefore is not a sin. The masses have always been the foundation for fanaticism and fundamentalism. People are revolutionary by nature, but their revolutionary dispoORNAMENT AS THE LANGUAGE sition can be softened if an acceptable culture supersedes the enticements from OF THE 21ST CENTURY Western culture. But for now we can’t say that fundamentalism prevails in Now let’s turn to ornamentation in Eastern art. If we exchange “ornamentaIslamic culture. Fanaticism arrived from the periphery as a result of countries tion” for the term “abstraction” in Eastern art, the idea takes on an entirely difwhich became Islamic later in their history. This tendency towards the fanatferent meaning. The art of Muslims can’t be called infinitely repetitive, an art ic is secondary, and Muslim countries must remember the true precepts of of ornamentation, or an applied genre, it is a complex set of styles which have Islam. Step by step in world culture and policy Arabs are beginning to assume mystical, hidden meaning. an active role again. I think that now we are seeing the revelation of a major tendency, and the fate of world civilization depends on it. ■ There are three types of abstract art which are characteristic of Islam. The first is calligraphy which is full of mystical symbolism which reach1 John of Damascus - the famous orthodox theologian. Served at Damascus caliph es its apex in hurufism2. One need only read the ‘The Black Book’ of court, later joined to the Mar Saba monastery southeast of Jerusalem where he Orkhan Pamuk... The second type is decorative, arabesque. Symbolically died. Author of ‘Apologetic Treatises against those Decrying the Holy Images’. it mirrors the endless flow of creation, and is a reminder that Allah is con2 Hurufism (Hurufiyya) - mystical esoteric sect in Islam. Appeared in Iran in the end tinuously creating life. The arabesque is a kind of meditation for contemXIV century. Based on mystical interpretation of Arabic letters. plating Allah... The third type is geometrical. It is based on strict mathematical principals and emulates cosmic harmony. Concerning the term ‘applied art,’ which is often used in theoretical writing, in truth Muslim art is first and foremost a model of a beautiful world. It can be sensed in any object, it can be held in the hands. It is a beautiful world which can be touched, and which allegorically represents the heavenly kingdom. In the Muslim legend about Muhammad there is the famous hadis in which the Prophet says: ‘Allah is beautiful and loves beauty’. This statement is directly related to the aesthetic. Muhammad was asked if it was a sin to dress with care, if it was pride. The Prophet replied with this phrase, explaining that pride is when you demean others. I cited this quote when talking about the role of order and organization in Islamic culture. Beauty is that which is well organized, art which is functional and considered. From another aspect

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Hermitage 8 / comment

Various types of art clearly reflect the essence of Islam; that decoration, or anything beautiful echoes the magnificence of Allah and speaks of eternal life in paradise.

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COLLECTIONS

NIZAMI’S KHAMSA Ada ADAMOVA

Of all the works of poetry written in Persian, the most famous and beloved is the ‘Khamse’ of Nizami (1141-1203), the greatest lyric poet of the East. ‘Khamsa’ includes the philosophic and didactic poem ‘The Storehouse of Mysteries’, three romantic poems ‘Khusraw and Shirin’, ‘Layla and Majnun’, ‘The Seven Beauties’ and the poem ‘Eskandarname,’ a fanciful biography of Alexander the Great. One of the most important and celebrated illustrated manuscripts of ‘Khamsa’ is kept at the Hermitage. Copied by calligrapher Mahmud in 1431 in the city of Herat on the orders of sultan Shahrukh, son of Timur, the manuscript is a masterpiece of great artistic and historical value. It was created at the 15th century high point of Herat’s dinstinguished history of maunscript and minature production, a time when the city was unequalled in the region as an artistic centre. Shahrukh and his son and vizier Baysunqur were renowned both as connoisseurs and as important patrons of manuscript production. The most notable calligraphers, artists and other specialists were brought from across the Timurid state to work in special court workshops. There they created illustrated manuscripts as well as other unsurpassed masterpieces of book art and miniature painting.

Miniatures from 'Layla and Majnun'

The three romantic poems in ‘Khamsa’ are very different from one another in mood, exploring different aspects of love, brilliantly reflected in the miniatures. 10

Hermitage 8 / collections

Notes and seals on the pages of the Hermitage manuscript indicate the vagaries of its fate over the last five centuries - from the time when it was made in 1431 in the court workshop of Shahrukhuntil up to 1924, when the Hermitage received it from the former museum of Baron von Stieglitz. A note on the first page of the manuscript explains that it was bought in 1651 in the city of Hyderabad for the sultan Muhammad Qutb Shah from the son of Muhammad Ali, goldsmith, for 300 tomans. Large seals of Muhammad Qutb Shah, the ruler of Golkonda in South India, with the date AH 1020 (1611-1612) and one of his son and successor Abdallah with the date AH 1037 (1628) testify that the manuscript belonged to the Qutb Shah’s library until the conquest of Golkonda by the Great Mughal Empire in 1687.

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Other seals and annotations bear witness to the many changes in ownership this ‘Khamsa’ underwent following its removal from Qutb Shah’s library. It can be assumed that the manuscript appeared in Iran following Nadir Shah’s 1739 raids of plunder in India. According to the documents, the Stieglitz museum bought the manuscript in 1917 from an Iranian. Most likely, the owners of this illustrated copy were aware that they were in possession of a real masterpiece and so it came to the museum in very good condition. 38 miniatures illustrating the manuscript, though corrupted with later corrections and additions, reflect all the peculiarities of the first half of 15th century painting, which was the golden era of the classical style of the Persian miniature. The text in the ‘Khamsa’ of 1431 covers 502 pages with Nastalik script in three columns, and lines in the side column placed diagonally. These oblique lines are creatively significant, making the manuscript unique. The placement of the text determined the system of decoration, and in many cases affected the composition of the miniatures. In this manuscript a remarkable unity of text, ornaments and miniatures is achieved. All the pages of this small manuscript are decorated with headpieces, cornerpieces and cartouches, filled with gilded and brightly coloured ornaments. The decorations are executed with such skill and finesse, inextricably linked to the general composition of every page, and so rhythmically connected with the text that every pair of pages in the manuscript utterly charms the reader. For each poem, exceedingly beautiful illustrations interpret the mood and reflect the depth and nobility of the feelings described in the text. The illustrations are a visual fulfilment of Nizami’s poetry which is infused, like all medieval Persian poetry, with Sufic belief about the search for God and mystical love that draws man heavenward. The miniatures are imbued with the fantastic, depicting an abstract world detached from the earthly where harmony and beauty rule and the protagonists of the poems live out their lives. Resplendent colours in the most sophisticated and beautiful combinations, and the purity of line that shapes the rhythm of the pictures, together transmit the resonant emotional content of each scene.

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Hermitage 8 / collections

‘Shirin gazes at the portrait of Khusraw’

‘Heaven hath no other prayer niche but love, Without love the world is worthless. Become a slave to love, this is the course, This is the path for all pious people.’ - Nizami, from Khusraw and Shirin.

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KHUSRAW AND SHIRIN ‘Khusraw and Shirin’ relates the story of the love between the Sassanid prince Khusraw Parvez and princess Shirin. The poem is full of dramatic events which are alternated with scenes of feasts and various entertainments. The miniatures depict thin, graceful figures among rocks and flowering lawns where Shirin gazes at a portrait of Khusraw. By order of prince Khusraw the artist Shapur goes to Armenia where the beautiful Shirin lives. The artist leaves a portrait of Khusraw on the meadow where Shirin often walks with her friends. On finding it, Shirin falls in love with the young man depicted in the portrait. The scene of Khusraw observing Shirin bathing is one of the most beloved and frequently encountered in Nizami’s manuscripts. Khusraw, on his way to Armenia, sees the charming scene of a beauty in the stream and a black horse bound to a tree. In lines surrounding the miniature the beauty of Shirin is praised, which is likened to the beauty of the moon, a rose and an almond. In this miniature the artist adheres to the traditional composition of the scene while enriching its detail to achieve complex colour relationships and emotional effects. Shirin sits in the stream dressed only in a waistcloth and brushes her hair while her horse grazes beside her, her clothes lying under a tree. Near the top of the image Khusraw is seen partly concealed behind a hill.

LAYLA AND MAJNUN ‘Layla and Majnun’, the tragic story of an unhappy love affair, differs from the other poems of the ‘Khamsa’ in its greater lyricism and its depiction of the finest nuances of the main characters’ feelings. The miniatures illustrating the poem accordingly surpass the others with their delicate colouring based on combinations of the most tender green and lilac tones with a golden yellow, giving an impression of transparency. In this poem the action takes place in the Arabian desert among Bedouin tribes, which is reflected in the images. The miniatures for ‘Layla and Majnun’ are as psychologically expressive as they can be within the conventions of eastern miniature painting. The emotional impact is achieved mainly through drawing and colour. The artist is surprisingly precise in depicting the content and the mood of the verses in the miniature of Layla in the palm wood. The text describes the wonderful palm wood where Layla comes alone one spring day. Verses inscribed in the frame of the miniature tell how Layla sits alone under the cypress tree and sheds a few tears over her love, like a nightingale in spring. Then the story relates that in response to her tears Layla heard the sound of Majnun singing a ghazel somewhere in the distance. Majnun in the desert among wild animals is another of the most popular scenes in the Eastern miniature tradition. The artist who illustrated the Hermitage manuscript followed the tradition of depicting Majnun seated among animals and petting a gazelle whose eyes, as is related many times in the poem, remind him of Layla. In the next lines it is narrated that the lions, deer, wolves and foxes all revered Majnun and that he was as a king among them. Traditionally, the animals are illustrated in pairs to emphasize Majnun’s loneliness. The solitary tree blossoming in the background against a golden sky also speaks of his isolation. top: 'Khusraw observes Shirin bathing'. bottom: 'Majnun in the desert among the wild animals'. right: Miniatures from 'The Seven Beauties'.

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THE SEVEN BEAUTIES ‘The Seven Beauties’ recounts the tale of Bahram Gur, one of the shahs of the Sassanid dynasty. It tells of his love for seven princesses, daughters of the rulers of seven kingdoms. The poem describes the journey of a soul towards God and depicts the passage through the seven spiritual stages of Sufism. The story is about the marriage of Bahram Gur to the daughters of the padishahs of seven countries. The architect Shide builds palaces for the princesses in colours which correspond to the colours of the seven planets. The Hermitage ‘Khamsa’ includes miniatures of all the seven palaces which are visited by Bahram Gur with domes of different colours, which are the most beautiful in the manuscript. Just as Nizami finds unique words to describe the repeated actions of the shah (each morning he dresses in clothes of the same colour as the palace he is going to visit, travels there and feasts the whole day in the company of a princess, and when evening comes he asks her to tell him a story), so has the artist created pictures which follow a similar composition whilst differing in detail. His inventiveness in the ornamental elaboration of every interior and in the use of colour sympathies is astounding. The interiors are in the main handled in keeping with the methods developed in the previous era. The horizontal and vertical plains - the carpet on which characters sit and the wall decorated with paintings and mosaics - are shown front-on, visually reproducing each other and differing only in ornamentation. The chosen method of text placement, with its use of oblique lines in one of the columns, suggests a side wall making the symbolic depiction of interior space more convincing. At the same time, a wonderful combination of miniature, text and ornaments is achieved on each page. The miniature of Bahram Gur in the black palace is placed under an ornamental headpiece and between lines relating that on Saturday (the day of Saturn) Bahram Gur dressed in black and went to the black palace of the Indian princess (the face and hands of the princess have been repainted, and on Bahram’s face there are some added notes). Over the miniature illustrating the chapter about Bahram’s Sunday visit to the Byzantine princess, the lines report that Bahram Gur put on a golden dress and golden crown. The picture depicts the crown. Further on, the line ‘When night has come...’ is illustrated with a sleeping maid and burning candles. On Friday (the day of Venus) Bahram-Gur visits the palace of the Iranian princess which has a white dome, the colour of purity, in an image which symbolizes the harmony of love and the bliss of enlightenment. ■

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Hermitage 8 / collections

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CARPETS AND TEXTILES IN THE NASSER D. KHALILI COLLECTION OF ISLAMIC ART The Khalili Collection contains over 250 textiles and carpets from across the Islamic world, representing a geographical area stretching from North Africa to the Pacific, and spanning a period from the 7th to the 20th centuries. Among the many important pieces in the Collection are rare examples of Abbasid and Fatimid textiles, a number of outstanding court carpets from Safavid Iran, Ottoman Turkey and Mughal India, and an exceptional group of works related to the Ka’bah at Mecca. Of particular importance among the carpets in the Collection is an exceptionally well-preserved medallion carpet from Safavid Iran, dating from the 16th century. It is thought that this outstanding carpet was made at Kashan, in the same workshop as the celebrated Ardabil carpets, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Among the early textilesis a deep blue woollen tunic, dating from the 8th or 9th century AD, from Upper Egypt. The collar, shoulders and nape are decorated in tapestry-weave, with panels and roundels containing horses, human figures and fantastic beasts, and hasp-shaped elements similar to those found in the illumination of early Qur’ans. However both the cut of this garment and the technique of its manufacture are firmly rooted in those of Roman and Coptic Egypt. The Collection also contains a number of pieces which relate to the Ka’bah at Mecca. An example is an embroidered satin panel from the hizam, the inscribed band (composed of eight such panels) which encircles the upper part of the kiswah. It is embroidered with gold and silver thread, and strips of finely drawn flat gold and silver wire over a padding of yellow cotton thread. Made in Cairo during the 19th century, it would have been on the south side of the Ka’bah, and is inscribed with verses 95-97 from sura Al ‘Imran (III, ‘The family of ‘Imran’). ■ The carpets and textiles in the Khalili Collection will be published in a forthcoming volume, Textiles, Carpets and Costumes: The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art Volume XIV.

top: Panel from the hizam of the Ka'bah. Egypt, Cairo, 19th century AD, black and gold-coloured satin, embroidered with gold and silver thread with strips of finely drawn flat gold and silver wire over padding of yellow cotton thread, 590 x 90 cm centre: Woolen tunic. Upper Egypt, 8th or 9th century AD, dark blue wool with areas of ornament in woollen tapestry weave. 223 x 108 cm left: Carpet with star medallions. Ushak, western Anatolia, late 15th or early 16th century AD, wool pile, 430 x 196 cm

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Hermitage 8 / collections

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PORTRAIT OF A COLLECTION A CONVERSATION WITH PROFESSOR NASSER D. KHALILI Nasser D. Khalili photographed by Simon Butcher

The Khalili Family Trust maintains one of the most important private collections of Islamic art in the world. Founded by Professor Nasser D. Khalili in 1970, it is known for its ambitious publishing and exhibition projects, peerless academic research and exquisite catalogues. With more than 25,000 objects divided between four distinct collections, each the largest of its kind in the world, the Trust’s mission is to foster mutual understanding between cultures. Professor Khalili, could you please tell our readers about the history of your collection. When, for example, did you start collecting? I started collecting stamps when I was seven years old, so in a way you could say I have been a collector all my life. My determination to achieve stems from a dispute I had at school with one of my teachers who maintained I had no future prospects, and so to prove him wrong I decided to write a book. With only four hours sleep a night I worked for a year on a biography of 225 world geniuses which was published when I was thirteen and a half, and is still in print today. I started really collecting in 1969, two years after I left Iran. I began to collect Islamic art because, having been born in a Muslim country, it was what I was familiar with. I didn’t collect Islamic art because it was Islamic, I simply collected it because it is beautiful art. After three or four years of collecting I began to extend my interest to other fields. The Khalili Collection of Japanese Art contains some 2,000 pieces from the Meiji period (18681912) and is acknowledged to be the largest and finest in the world. In 2006, a selection of around 200 objects was exhibited at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, complemented by paintings by Van Gogh, which reflected the influence that the art of Meiji Japan had on this great master. Van Gogh commented in a letter to his brother Theo dated 15 July 1888, ‘In a way all my work is founded on Japanese art...’. In the early 1970s I branched out into Spanish damascene metalwork (18501900) and Swedish textile art (1700-1900). I also began collecting enamels and have now assembled an unprecedented collection of numerous examples from countries around the world including Russia, China, Japan, France, Middle East, Sweden, and Switzerland, to name but a few, and covering a period from 1700 to 2000. It will be published in 2008. Each of these collections is the most comprehensive in its field. You are also known for publishing magnificent catalogues... In the past 25 years the Khalili Family Trust has published over 40 volumes. The total project consists of 50 volumes, each containing 250 to 350 pages. The Islamic Collection will comprise 31 volumes in total, 17 of which have

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Hermitage 8 / collections

already been published. The cost of publishing, which is close to £8 million, has been entirely financed by the Khalili Family Trust. When it is complete the publication will be the most extensive by a single collector to date. Your collection is legendary and it is still growing. How many objects have you assembled? The total amount of objects is in the region of 25,000 pieces, out of which 20,000 are Islamic. Our Islamic collection represents 6 countries. It covers the entire history of Islam from the beginning (7th century) until the present... And obviously I’m still collecting. Without collecting my life is like a fire without a flame. What is the most valuable item in your collection? This is always difficult. The object that everybody talks about is the ‘Jami’ alTawarikh,’ (The History of the World or Compendium of Chronicles) by Rashid al-Din, dated 1314. This exceptional work is acknowledged to be the finest illuminated Muslim manuscript in the world. In 1980 it was purchased at Sotheby’s for $2 million and I bought it later for $12 million. Today, as reported recently in the International Herald Tribune, it is worth ten to fifteen times the amount it was purchased for. How does the Qur’an feature in your collection? From an academic point of view it is accepted that our remarkably comprehensive collection of Qur’ans is the largest and finest in the world. It includes a Qur’an written by Zinat al-Nisa’, the daughter of the Awrangzeb, who was the son of Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor who built the Taj Mahal. It is the only royal Qur’an that we know was written by a woman. How do you see the situation with Islamic art today? Is this market growing? Today it would be impossible to assemble such a collection even with an infinite amount of time and money. It is becoming more and more difficult to buy major Islamic objects. Do you have plans for a museum in London or elsewhere? There is a plan for a museum, but the location has not been decided. When our plans come to fruition we will probably have two museums rather than one, one for the Islamic collection, and the second for the other four collections. A museum is a great commitment, so the plan is for a specially designed building rather than to convert an existing one. However, my first priority is to finish cataloguing the collection. You have devoted your life to Islamic art. What is the driving force behind this? Muslim art has contributed a great deal to humanity and Western culture and to daily life. Through worldwide exhibitions, publications and lectures, I aim to show people how beautiful the culture of Islam is so that Islamic artists will be as recognized and celebrated as such major Western artists as Picasso and Monet. Religion and politics have their own language but the language of art is universal and there has never been a greater need for this universality. It is my belief that the real weapon of mass destruction is ignorance and this is one of the greatest problems in today’s world. ■

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ART AND MONEY

INVESTING IN THE ART OF ISLAM Sergey SKATERSCHIKOV

The ever increasing expansion of the world art market is heating up with the appearance of new investors looking for alternative ways to exploit their capital. By exploring the opportunities to be found in the art market for themselves they are looking for new niche areas in which to invest. The phenomenal growth of the Russian and Chinese art markets has for a long time been a symbol of the overall price expansion. Today the attention of professionals in the world art market is turning, little by little, towards Islamic Art. The Islamic world has for a long time been recognized as an area where special rules apply. Dozens of financial institutions around the world have already come to terms with the peculiarities of banking in Islamic countries, which demands the use of interest-free credit in place of the usual Western terms. The mechanisms of interest-free credit (but with larger commissions and sometimes significantly greater collateral requirements with allowances for the active management of these assets) is used by such banks as a way to avoid what are seen as sinful and usurious money-lending practices under Islam. The art market itself has some special rules for dealing with the Islamic sector. Many Islamic countries place restrictions on particular genres of art. And, as with any limitations, this situation gives rise to many new and inventive strategies of art production, which allow the Muslim artists to express themselves while remaining in harmony with their own culture and ideology. Thus the art market in London today has an insatiable demand for calligraphic works by the dozens of artists who create unique works of art from the suras of the Qur’an through the use

of finely composed Arabic characters and a bright Middle-eastern palette. Carpets, ceramics, manuscripts and engraved metal are also fast developing areas in Islamic art. The artists who create these works make available thousands of interesting objects which attract the attention not only of collectors cognisant of the Islamic strictures but a wide range of art lovers. The extensive variety of Islamic artists is presented, for example, on the Internet at sites like Wikipedia. At the same time, there is no consensus in the Islamic world concerning which of these artists correspond to the canons of Islamic art, because there aren’t any generally accepted standards in this area yet. Although it is certain that with the widening of the demand for Islamic art and the appearance of opinion makers from the ranks of enlightened, cosmopolitan collectors such standards will certainly be formulated. And with the appearance of its arbiters of taste, this segment will adopt more and more strictly defined borders. Among the most famous names in the field of Islamic art are Maqbool Fida Husain (who is often called the ‘Indian Picasso’ and who has achieved a record price of $774,803 for a single work) and Tueb Mehta (with another record setting price of $1.584 million). The absolute world record for a work made by an Islamic artist was achieved by the sale of ‘The Building for King Dasaratha’s Sacrifice,’ painted in 1594 by the legendary Nur Muhammad (Mughal India) and sold at auction seven years ago for £1,763,750. Higher prices for Islamic art have only ever been attained with the sale of some medieval relics like the bronze fountain in the form of a hind from the Moorish period in Spain (mid-10th century, £3.6 million), and a decorated glass vase from the Mamluk Dynasty (2nd half of the 13th century, £3.3 million) ■ The market for contemporary Islamic art is one of the fastest growing areas within the overall world art market. In the table below can be seen the rating of the 50 top sales of Islamic art (including Muslim artists from India) complied by Skate’s Art Investor Service based on auction results (in USD) from January 1985 to 15 September 2007.

Sergey Skaterschikov is the Founder and Chairman of Skate Press. A graduate in American Studies from Moscow State University he received the “Best Young Businessman of the Year in Central Europe” award from the Wall Street Journal. With Skate Press and the Art Investment newsletter, Skaterschikov and his team of experts provide individual and institutional investors around the world with reliable and unbiased information and research to support art investment decisions. Unlike art dealers and auction houses, Skate Press does not derive any income from buying or selling art and is focused entirely on enabling collectors to make well-informed art investment decisions by providing a rational method of assessing the performance of artworks and artists on the open market.

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Hermitage 8 / art and money

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No

ARTIST

TITLE

YEAR

1

Nur Muhammad

The Building for King

1594

(Mughal India)

Dasaratha’s Sacrifice

MEDIA

SAL DATE

HAMMER PRICE

Oct -00

2 250 862

PRICE INC.COMISSION 2 560 965

2

Tyeb Mehta

Mahisasura

1997 -

acrylic on canvas

21-Sep-05

1,400,000

1,584,000

3

Syed Haider Raza

Tapovan

1972 -

acrylic on canvas

29-Mar-06

1,300,000

1,472,000

4

Syed Haider Raza

La terre

1985 -

oil on canvas

21-May-07

1,234,057

1,422,144

5

Tyeb Mehta

Untitled

1993 -

acrylic on canvas

19-Sep-06

1,100,000

1,248,000

6

Tyeb Mehta

Falling figure with bird

1988 -

oil on canvas

29-Mar-06

1,100,000

1,248,000

7

Tyeb Mehta

Untitled

1987 -

oil on canvas

22-Mar-07

1,000,000

1,160,000

8

Tyeb Mehta

Untitled (Figures with bull head)

1984 -

oil on canvas

20-Sep-06

1,000,000

1,136,000

9

Jagdish Swaminathan

Untitled

oil on canvas

29-Mar-06

700,000

800,000

10

Rameshwar Broota

Captives

11

Syed Haider Raza

Tarangh

12

Akbar Padamsee

Cityscape

1959 -

oil on board

29-Mar-06

625,000

716,000

13

Tyeb Mehta

Blue torso

1973 -

oil on canvas

30-Mar-06

550,000

632,000

14

Maqbul Fida Husain

Sita Hanuman

1979 -

acrylic on canvas

30-Mar-06

500,000

576,000

15

Maqbul Fida Husain

Untitled

1960 -

oil on canvas

30-Mar-06

480,000

553,600

16

Ram Kumar

Falling bird

1968 -

oil on canvas

29-Mar-06

470,000

542,400

17

Jagdish Swaminathan

Untitled (in 3 parts)

1988 -

oil on canvas

20-Sep-06

450,000

520,000

18

Akbar Padamsee

Untitled

1967 -

oil on canvas

23-May-06

449,503

519,443

19

Syed Haider Raza

Village en Provence

1957 -

oil on canvas

22-Mar-07

414,286

504,000

20

Maqbul Fida Husain

Trial

1969 -

oil on canvas

21-Sep-05

420,000

486,400

21

Maqbul Fida Husain

Untitled

oil on canvas

19-Sep-06

420,000

486,400

22

Syed Haider Raza

Untitled

1982 -

acrylic on canvas

21-Mar-07

392,857

480,000

23

Akbar Padamsee

Mirror image (diptych)

2005 -

oil on canvas

22-Mar-07

392,857

480,000

24

Maqbul Fida Husain

Horses and blue nude

1979 -

acrylic on canvas

29-Mar-06

400,000

464,000

25

Ram Kumar

Untitled (Benares)

1964 -

oil on canvas

30-Mar-06

390,000

452,800

26

Ram Kumar

Untitled

1958 -

oil on canvas

19-Sep-06

390,000

452,800

27

Tyeb Mehta

Trussed bull

1967 -

oil on canvas

23-May-06

374,439

435,371

28

Maqbul Fida Husain

Untitled

1969 -

oil on canvas

22-Mar-07

350,000

432,000

29

C. Raja Raja Varma

Vasantasena

oil on canvas

21-Mar-07

339,286

420,000

30

Akbar Padamsee

Mirror image

oil on canvas

21-Sep-05

360,000

419,200

31

Syed Haider Raza

La terre

1980 -

acrylic on canvas

20-Sep-06

350,000

408,000

32

Arpita Singh

Bhishma

1997 -

acrylic on canvas

20-Sep-06

350,000

408,000

33

Maqbul Fida Husain

Untitled

oil on canvas

22-Mar-07

328,571

408,000

34

Akbar Padamsee

Untitled - Metascape

1978 -

oil on canvas

21-May-07

324,054

402,941

35

Ram Kumar

Untitled

oil on canvas

20-Sep-05

340,000

396,800

36

Jagdish Swaminathan

Udghosh from bird,

1974 -

oil on canvas

23-May-06

336,907

393,335

1981 -

oil on canvas

21-Sep-05

330,000

385,600

1975 -

2004 -

oil on canvas

22-Mar-07

660,000

779,200

acrylic on canvas

30-Mar-06

650,000

744,000

mountain and tree series 37

Ram Kumar

Untitled (Benares)

38

Syed Haider Raza

Les toits de la Rue St. Jacques

1950 - 1959

oil on canvas

20-Sep-06

320,000

374,400

39

Maqbul Fida Husain

Untitled

1960 - 1969

oil on canvas

30-Mar-06

320,000

374,400

40

Syed Haider Raza

Untitled

1958 -

oil on canvas

22-Mar-07

285,714

360,000

41

Syed Haider Raza

Bhoomi

1990 -

acrylic on canvas

20-Sep-06

300,000

352,000

42

Jagdish Swaminathan

Perception

1972 -

oil on canvas

19-Sep-06

300,000

352,000

43

Arpita Singh

The ritual

1989 -

oil on canvas

22-Mar-07

264,286

336,000

44

Syed Haider Raza

Earth

1999 -

acrylic on canvas

23-May-06

280,609

330,282

45

Akbar Padamsee

Untitled (Nude)

1966 -

oil on canvas

20-Sep-06

280,000

329,600

46

Jagdish Swaminathan

Untitled

1971 -

oil on canvas

21-Mar-07

242,857

312,000

47

Ravinder Reddy

Lakshmi Devi

2003 -

polyester-resin fiberglass

21-Mar-07

242,857

312,000

48

Jagdish Swaminathan

Untitled (from Bird,

1985 -

oil on canvas

21-May-07

239,403

308,131

49

Tyeb Mehta

Untitled - Nude

1961 -

oil on canvas

21-May-07

239,403

308,131

50

Jagdish Swaminathan

Untitled

1974 -

oil on canvas

20-Sep-06

260,000

307,200

tree and mountain series)

Source: Skate’s Art Investors’ Service, www.skatepress.com

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Hermitage 8 / art and money

•20-22

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THE WRITTEN WORD

†

All photographs Lorraine Chittock/Courtesy Saudi Aramco World/PADIA Except † photograph by Mohameden Ahmed Salem

SAND AND BOOKS Louis WERNER

The sands of the Sahara, where in only a matter of days the ravages of wind, sun, and heat can wipe away any evidence of human presence, is replete with that one sign of man not so easily erased- the written word. From east to west, across that unyielding belt of dune and steppe, the desert holds a rich treasure trove of Islamic manuscripts, most in Arabic, some in Ottoman Turkish, and a few rarities in Songhai, Hausa, and Tifinagh, the written language of the Tuareg. 20

Hermitage 8 / the written word

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These crumbling and faded parchment and paper pages are held dear by their owners, whether they live in what were once the Sahara’s great mercantile cities- Timbuktu and Gao in Mali, Chinguetti and Wadane in Mauritania, Agadez and Tahoua in Niger - or in the smaller stops along caravan routes, such as Timimoun village in the Touat oasis, deep in the heart of Algeria’s Grand Erg Occidental. Such was the importance of these desert routes for the spread of manuscripts that they have become known collectively as the African Ink Road. Islamic manuscripts and the need to preserve them are finally receiving the attention they deserve, both for historical value and for regional pride, and possibly for the economic revival that this ancient literary tradition may one day underwrite. “Desert library tourism”, fueled by publicity in European and American news media, is already bringing many Western visitors to the far reaches of the Sahara just to look at books. Such boosts to the local economy also pose a downside, however- that of manuscript thievery, smuggling, and inadvertent mishandling. Auction houses in London and New York sell many of undocumented, and suspected illegal, provenance. Even well-intentioned tourists cause problems by asking librarians to show them their collection, thus exposing brittle and worm-eaten pages unnecessarily to additional environmental stress. International projects have been underway in many desert libraries for some years, financed by such groups as the World Bank, France’s Bibliothéque National, and the London-based Al Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, which help local conservation organizations such as Timbuktu’s Ahmed Baba Institute, Mauritania’s Projet Sauvegarde du Patrimoine Culturel, and Algeria’s Projet Manumed. The South African government has made the most notable bilateral contribution to these efforts, financing the construction of a state-of-the-art manuscript conservation laboratory and digitization centre for the Ahmed Baba Institute, named for one of the city’s leading scholars, an exact contemporary of William Shakespeare. Says Sidi Mohamed Ould Youbba, the Institute’s deputy director, ‘he wrote more books than Shakespeare, and the only reason he is not as well known was that Europeans could not find Timbuktu, even though they searched for centuries.’ Indeed, tourists today are a far cry from the first 19th century Western travellers to seek out Timbuktu, which was not then even definitely known to exist, motivated by a 10,000 franc reward offered by the Société de Géographie in 1824 to the first European to reach the city. That honor belongs to René Caillié who arrived in 1828, following in the footsteps of other explorers not lucky enough to return with their lives. While Timbuktu and other subSaharan trade nodes were once fabled city-states of wealth and civilization dealing in valuable export goods like

21

Hermitage 8 / the written word

gold, incense, and ebony, in the last two hundred years they have fallen into the backwater of recently decolonized nation states. Says Ismail Diadé Haï dara, director of the Fondo Kati in Timbuktu and the 11th generation heir to his family’s library keeping tradition, ‘I know from my research that great cities seldom get a second chance. Yet here we have a second chance because we held on to our past.’ Leo Africanus, who wrote the first accurate geography of the Sahara, visited Timbuktu in the year 1512 and noted that the sale of books was more profitable than any other trade good. At the height of the Mali Empire, thousands of scholars from throughout the Islamic world gathered around the city’s Sankoré mosque, many having followed home the Emperor Mansa Musa, whose visit to Cairo in 1324 became legendary for his profligate gift-giving of gold. Yet Timbuktu was not the Sahara’s only place for manuscripts and those who read them. This was especially true after the year 1591, when a Spanishled Moroccan army conquered Timbuktu, then in the hands of the Songhai Empire, and put to flight its scholars and their books. The Mauritanian town of Wadane, for instance, takes its name from the dual form of the word wadi, or valley - it being said that there are two valleys there, one of palm trees, the other of scholars. In Tahoua in Niger, villagers bury their manuscripts in clay jars as if caches of gold or grain, to be unearthed only in times of need. And then there is the story of a single manuscript now in a Timbuktu collection, the Book of Healing by the 11th century Andalusian scholar Qadi Iyad. Its provenance is known from an addendum on its title page. It had been purchased in the Algerian oasis of Touat in 1468 by a man named Ziyad al Quti while emigrating from Toledo, Spain, then in Christian hands, to Bilad al-sudan, or the “Land of the Blacks” in sub-Saharan Africa, for 100 grams of gold. Yet Touat is still a place to find manuscripts - some 12,000 volumes are said to be kept in 29 private libraries there. In the oasis village of Timimoun, schoolteacher Ahmed Abdelkabir cares for his dozen manuscripts, every one a precious family possession, which he and his brother catalogued some years ago. ‘To possess a book is to possess knowledge, and thus power,’ he says, almost superstitiously, yet it is belief in the nearly supernatural power of the written word that has convinced even semi-literate owners to care for what they can barely read. One can only wonder if Ziyad had bought his manuscript from Ahmed Abdelkabir’s forefather. Ziyad himself was the grandfather of Mahmoud Kati, Timbuktu’s great 16th century scholar and chronicler, whose private manucript library, once largely dispersed, has been slowly reconstituted into the Fondo Kati and now contains 3,000 volumes. Colophons on some fine and important manuscripts contain labour contracts for their local copying.

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In the case of a 28 volume dictionary, the Muhkam of the Andalusian scholar Ibn Sidah (died 1066), a full time scribe in Timbuktu, charged with copying 142 lines per day, was paid 4 1/4 grams of gold per volume, and his verifier, or specialized copy editor, was paid half that amount for closely checking 171 lines of text per day. The copying and recompilation of manuscripts is closely associated with the desert institution of seminar education called mahadra, meaning “place of assemby”, which comes from the same Arabic root as the words “civilization” and “non-nomadic”. The itinerant mahadra teacher would gather pupils around him for short courses in poetry, theology, grammar, or jurisprudence, requiring them to recopy relevant texts in their own hand. In this way, the number of manuscripts was multiplied and spread from old owner to new owner. Because mahadra pupils were themselves often advanced students, they would add their own learned commentaries or marginal notes in a different script or ink color, and thus these Arabic manuscripts ressemble the medieval palimpsests of Europe, in which layer upon layer of historical writing could be discerned. But because this form of desert education has now largely ceased, so has the recopying of manuscripts in the laborious old fashioned method. A Mauritanian named Mohamaden Ould Ahmed Salem has studied his country’s old calligraphic styles, and has lately been working with font designers to update them for the computer. Ould Ahmed Salem has digitally adapted Mauritania’s four basic scripts - legrayda, meaning “lobed”, named for its rounded edges suitable for fast and compact copying; mushafi, an ornamental variety for title pages and first lines; mashriqi, similar to the elegant thuluth script of the Arab East; and sudani, a bold and angular student style written with wide nibs - into a format suitable for the 21st Century. What was once a painstaking process of of mixing carbonized sheep wool and pot soot, gum arabic, and sugar water to make ink, cutting

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reeds into finely shaped pens, and scavenging paper from any possible source, such as shipwrecks off the Banc d’Arguin along Mauritania’s northern coast, has now become a simple matter of typing onto an electronic keyboard and storing text in a hard drive. Ould Ahmed Salem has determined that the Legrayda script is almost identical to the Andalusi style of Moorish Spain that over the last half millenium slowly evolved into what is known as maghribi calligraphy in North Africa. ‘Look at a 12th century Andalusi manuscript,” he says, “and you will be hard pressed to distinguish it from a work copied in Mauritania even five hundred years later.’ H.T. Norris has translated a Mauritanian rihla, or travelogue, by Ahmad Ould T’wayr al-Janna, Son of the Little Bird of Paradise, that highlights just how important book collecting was and still is to many desert denizens. Ahmad had traveled from his hometown in Wadane to Mecca and back between 1824 and 1834, and, with most of his adventures behind him, he stopped last in Morocco where he found favor with the sultan and was given a book-buying stipend. But the learned men of Fez grumbled when Ahmad outbid them on the market, and the sultan had to intervene for him to complete his purchases. As he wrote, ‘when the sultan was told of the quantity of books I had bought, he was amazed, and said, God has granted you a miracle.’ And that was not all of the sultan’s largesse for the sake of scholarship - he then hired for Ahmad a thirty camel caravan to haul his books home. A single Arabic manuscript, one written in both black and red ink in different calligraphic styles, with perhaps a bit of gold leaf infilling the page headings, is a thing of beauty no matter where it might be displayed. But to see a collection of such works in an ancient mud plastered room in Timbuktu, with light filtering through high windows and the whispered prayers audible from the mosque next door, is to better understand how important the written word has been in the history of Saharan civilization. ■

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SLAVOJ ZIZEK IN CONVERSATION WITH SERGEY KOZIN ‘I want to avoid all the extremes: on the one hand, the religion of Islam as potentially proto-fascist, antidemocratic, whatever you want; and on the other hand, the false celebration of Islam, even by some leftists, as somehow more revolutionary, more resistant to capitalism, etc.’ >

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bring back memories of 9/11. Where do you put this event, historically? Zizek: I think that, contrary to what people think, 9/11 marked the end of American hegemony. I think that the 1990s were the dream of American hegemony - the new global civilization, liberal capitalism under American hegemony, and so on. It is clear that this dream is over. Partially because of historical reasons, partially because of the stupidity of American politics, but the United States is in decline. It is clear that we are moving towards a multicentric universe with China, United States, Latin America, Europe, Russia... the period is interesting and dangerous because we do not yet have the rules, the formula for new world order, we are looking for it. And this for me is the ultimate meaning of 9/11 that we don’t yet have the formula. Kozin: Does this transpire in art in any way? Zizek: I don’t know much about visual arts, but if I look at the cinema - you may disagree with me, but for me the sign of hope in popular culture is that gradually the hegemony of Hollywood is breaking up, but not as we were used to before with some modest art-house films, but even on its own terrain. For example, do you know these Chinese films, ‘The Hero’, ‘House of the Flying Daggers’, and so on? My God, the Chinese are making today better historical action films which until now were the specialty of Hollywood. And there are other countries breaking this monopoly of Hollywood on popular culture. I think this is actually a good sign: how the American colonization and total domination over popular culture is breaking... You have also bestselling authors from Germany, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Iceland (a nation of only 300,000 people!), Sweden... I find this, from my own social perspective, even more interesting than what is happening in the so-called high arts. This is very fascinating. Kozin: Do you have any comment on Islam and art then? Zizek: Of course, we all know the story about the prohibition to paint God in both the Jewish religion and Islam... but what interests me in Islam is that, as far as I know, on the one hand because of this iconoclastic tendency, you have a predisposition to more abstract decorative art. On the one hand, prohibition, of course, may oppress art. But paradoxically, I think, one can imagine how this is opening-up a new dimension of perhaps rejoining modernity, abstract art and so on. I can well imagine a surprising revolution when Islam, which is usually perceived as the most oppressive against modern art, explodes into extremely modern art. Look at Iranian cinema, Kiarostami and so on. He is not, as some Western media portray him, a Western liberal trying to survive artistically under the Islamic regime. It is clear that Kiarostami’s films are Islamic in some sense, and he is aware of it. Again, it is the same paradox. What appears to be an obstacle (the religious tradition) can also be the thing to engender very interesting phenomena, maybe even revolutionary, such as in modern art. Nobody knows what will happen, but one must see a potential in Islam. ■ >

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Kozin: How would you define Islam? Or, more precisely, how do you see it from your philosophical perspective? Zizek: My hypothesis is that every religion has a kind of unadmitted secret means that are necessary but not publicly acknowledged. It is a kind of a Freudian reading, not in the simple sense of reducing religion to some psychological trauma, but in the sense of looking for the hidden story which has to be there but is not admitted. I think that if you approach it in this way, you discover that in contrast to its well-known anti-feminist stance something very mysterious is going on; that the role of woman is crucial to the very constitution of Islam... It is clear that if you look at the so-called fundamentalist critique, what most horrifies them is the sexual freedom of women in the West. But you can read this as a reaction to the excessive role of women in the origin of Islam itself. When we look at the mythical narrative of Islam, at Abraham and his two wives, we see this reliance on a single mother, as one would call it today. We find that Islam is a non-patriarchal religion, in the precise sense that both Judaism and Christianity are family religions with God as the Father. The motif in Islam is that the original believer is an orphan and God is never called Father. I think that this accounts, in part, for the politically explosive consequences of Islam: it is a community which has to be created from zero; you don’t have any original family tradition to rely on. And so, based on this specific femininity and political content written into the very core of Islam, I try to account for some of its features today and also to offer an image which I think is ambiguous - ambiguous in the sense that, on the one hand, one can see why it is easy to twist it into fundamentalism (like the opposition to modern freedoms, anti-feminism and so on), and on the other hand, you can say that it has, maybe much more than other religions, a potentially radical political dimension (constituting a new community, or whatever). Kozin: How do women fit into this, could you elaborate? Zizek: My point is... Our standard racist myth in the West is that we are too rational, too patriarchal, too masculine, and that we should look to the East to re-establish the balance, to find the missing feminine component... This is not so much the real East but our Western mythical image of it - our gods are male, while the East is feminine, more passive, more sensitive and so on. So the idea is then, that Islam is the disturbing factor here, that Islam is somehow in-between: it is a kind of intruder which prevents perfect communication, I would almost say that world civilization is an idealized sexual relationship between East and West, femininity and masculinity. So the idea is not so much a feminist goal to rediscover some pre-patriarchal feminine goddess and so on. I think that there is no emancipatory potential in this. All these maternal religions are even more oppressive for real women. My premise is that if you scratch the surface and look at the image of the woman that Islam tries to control, you find a woman who has excessive knowledge, excessive potential... it is a much more interesting image of woman than of man. Kozin: To some, references to explosion and political consequences may

For the full text, visit www.hermitagemagazine.com

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ARABIAN NIGHTMARE ROBERT IRWIN’S SCHEHERAZADE Celebrated author and scholar Robert Irwin speaks with Anastasia Grib about his inspirations and the role of women in Islamic literature and art.

ANASTASIA GRIB: How do you view Scheherazade? ROBERT IRWIN: There is a modern trend to see Scheherazade as a story-telling therapist who in some sense redeems the bloodthirsty misogynist Shahriyar. This meets modern needs for a feminine symbol of creativity and healing. But it is false to the original texts which embrace a much stranger and nastier ethic. First, she does not create stories. As she makes explicit, she narrates stories already in existence. So we should credit her with an excellent memory rather than a fertile imagination. In this aspect she resembles Tawaddud, the learned slave girl in one of the stories of the Arabian Nights. Secondly, she does not heal Shahriyar. Rather he forgives her for the supposed sins of her entire sex. Thus the frame story of the ‘Arabian Nights’ is bleakly misogynist. GRIB: But isn’t she the inspiration for your novel? IRWIN: I think that it is not so much Scheherazade who was behind the

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women in my novel ‘The Arabian Nightmare,’ but rather the women in Dostoevsky’s novels, among them Nastasia Filippovna and Grushenka. Perhaps also the initiatory prostitute in Hermann Hesse’s novel, Steppenwolf. I also went out with an exotic looking girl very like Zuleyka back in the 1960s... GRIB: Are there any traditional female characters in Islamic literature? IRWIN: Female characters do not feature much in pre-modern Arabic literature - except in the tales of the Arabian Nights and similar works of popular literature. Many of the Nights tales feature adulterous women. In these stories I think it is the cunning of women that is celebrated, rather than their adultery being castigated. An awful lot of Nights tales are about people being wily. The other type of woman to feature frequently is the conjured up to gratify male fantasies, rather than being precursors of feminism. GRIB: How has the image of Scheherazade changed since the Middle Ages? IRWIN: Setting aside how Scheherazade actually features in the medieval story collection, it is of course true that she has become a symbol of creativity in the hands of writers like Tawfiq al-Hakim, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and Naguib Mahfouz, and of feminism in the hands of writers like Fadwa Malti-Douglas and Fatima Mernissi. The Arabic novel and short story have a relatively short history and traditionally the Arab literary elite have preferred poetry and prose non-fiction to story telling. In modern times Scheherazade has been enlisted by Arab writers as a kind of liberator to validate the powers of imagination and fantasy. GRIB: Are there any contemporary “Scheherazades” that come to mind? IRWIN: If I had to name a contemporary Scheherazade I would suggest A.S. Byatt and particularly her novella, ‘The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye’ (1994) which, though it works well as fiction, also has important things to say about feminism and storytelling. For the same sort of reasons I would suggest the novels of the late Angela Carter. GRIB: Is there any strong ideal for the woman in Muslim tradition and society - the Prophet’s wife Aisha, Fatima or Scheherazade, or Leila? And who could possibly have been a prototype for Scheherazade? IRWIN: Strong women have not featured all that much in Middle Eastern history. Aisha has been widely regarded as a stirrer up of sedition (fitna). One of the rare independent female rulers Shajar al Durr ruled very briefly in thirteenth-century Cairo, before her enemies besieged her in the Red Tower. She spent her last hours grinding her jewels to dust so that no woman after her could wear them. In the end she was fed to the dogs. I suppose one would have to go to Roxelana in 16th Turkey to find a satisfactory role model.

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eunuch, all the characters in the novel are women. The novel has been turned into a short black-andwhite film which I like very much. GRIB: How do you view the aesthetics of the harem? IRWIN: The harem in Western art and literature seems to me pre-eminently an image of idleness and boredom. It is this, rather than sexuality, that seems to me to be primary in 19th century Orientalist paintings of the harem. GRIB: Why did you choose Cairo as the setting for your novel? What’s so special about this city for you? IRWIN: ‘The Arabian Nightmare’ really says more about Oxford and London and their hippy populations in the psychedelic 60s, than it does about medieval Cairo. I chose to set my novel in Cairo, because through my studies in Mamluk history I had become extremely familiar with the layout of the medieval city. Also 19th century engravings of the city worked powerfully on my imagination. Above all I needed a city with a labyrinthine street layout to match the labyrinthine structure of the story I was going to tell. But the real origins of the story were in Tunis, where at a time I was studying Arabic at the Institut Bourguiba, I would regularly fall asleep in the afternoons to awaken in my hotel room and find that I was not alone, but that there was something malevolent close by. I would try to pray, but my lips would not open. I was completely paralysed. Then I would awaken from this nightmare only to find that I was still paralysed and the malevolent thing was still with me. Then I would awaken again and this time if I was lucky, it would be a real awakening and I would be alone in the hotel room. Such was the genesis of The Arabian Nightmare. GRIB: Did you draw on other sources? IRWIN: I was also strongly influenced by - or let us rather say I stole from - a film of Potocki’s 19th century Polish literary farrago ‘The Saragossa Anon., Woman with Scarf, Iran, Mid-19th century, Oil on canvas, 145 x 85 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, source: D.K. Petrov, 1928 Manuscript.’ Since I could not find an English version of Potocki’s novel, I decided to write my own GRIB: And what about Fatima? Is she the Nightmare? variant version. Also the science fiction novels of Philip K. Dick (many of IRWIN: In The Arabian Nightmare, Fatima the Deathly, entirely negative which feature domineering women) were an influence. and disintegrating, is nightmarish, but she is not the Nightmare. The NightGRIB: And what about the narrator? mare is a nightly experience of excruciating suffering, which is nevertheIRWIN: The narrator of ‘The Arabian Nightmare’ is not a woman, but an less totally forgotten in the morning. ape. The ape, who is me, mimics and pastiches the Arabian Nights. The GRIB: Have you ever written about the harem? Ape tells stories, which are lies and he never knows when to stop. IRWIN: The harem and the women who ruled it is the subject of my novel GRIB: Are you working on anything at the moment? Have you forsaken ‘Prayer Cushions of the Flesh’. Indeed the inspiration (if that is the word) literature to return to more scholarly pursuits? for it, came as I was walking through the Topkapi harem in Istanbul and IRWIN: I am currently working on a novel about the early German cinsuddenly had an intense sense of what it must have been like to have been ema, featuring an ageing film actress as its protagonist. I am also worka concubine shut up in such a place. The novel, which is weird and playful, ing on a novella about modern mathematics. Also a book on the camel. is a black comedy about a man who believes that he is master of his harem Also a study of artistic Orientalism, (featuring among others Pushkin, whereas he is in danger of becoming its victim. Apart from him and one Rimsky-Korsakov and Vereschagin). ■

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THE SECRET OF THE UTHMAN QUR’AN Efim REZVAN

Beginning in the late 15th century, one of the most important Qur’an manuscripts in the world was preserved in the memorial complex of the ‘Ishqiyya Sufi brotherhood in the small village of Katta-Langar, some 100 km to the south of Samarkand. There it was venerated as one of the world’s oldest Qur’ans, and given the name ‘The Uthman Qur’an’. Tradition gives Uthman a special role. It was on his orders that followers of the prophet Mohammed produced the first canonical version of the Qur’an. Until that time, the sacred words had been preserved orally, and the variety of accounts was considered to be confusing the faithful. Copies of the new, canonical version, known as the Uthman Edition, were sent to the main centres of Islam and all earlier writings were burned to avoid conflicting interpretations. The caliph kept a copy for himself. In 656 a group of conspirators invaded his home and found him reading this copy, and the blood of the murdered caliph fell upon its pages. This is the legend of the Uthman Qur’an.

The manuscript is dated to the last quarter of the 8th century when the system of the rules of Arabic grammar was being formulated. Its text serves as an aid to the development of memory.

There are, in fact, four manuscripts believed to be stained with the blood of Caliph Uthman, the third leader of the Muslims after Mohammed. They are kept in various parts of the Islamic world, from Istanbul, and Tashkent to Cairo, and are revered by Muslims in much the same way the Turin Shroud is by Catholics.

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In 1869 a manuscript from the Uthman Edition found its way from Central Asia to St. Petersburg where it was stored in the collection of the National Library. In 1905 50 copies of this manuscript were published with the larger part of the edition being given to Russia’s eastern neighbours. In 1918, by special order of Lenin, the manuscript was returned to the Muslim community. Today this precious relic is kept by the Spiritual Administration for Muslims in Uzbekistan.

A second manuscript in the form of a monumental parchment folio was bought to Russia in 1937 by I. Krachkovsky. One of Russia’s first Arabic scholars, Krachkovsky soon realised that the manuscript had once belonged to Iriney (Selim) Nauphal, a diplomat of Lebanese origin who had ended his career in the service of Russia. The woman who offered the manuscript for sale was Nauphal’s granddaughter. Krachkovsky recognized the importance of the manuscript as a part of one of the oldest

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copies of the Qur’an but, because of the political situation at the time, the manuscript was shelved away. In the 1970s the situation changed dramatically. Sensational discoveries were made in Mashhad, Cairo, Damascus, Kairawan and especially in Sana’ (Yemen) where 40,000 fragments of the Qur’an were discovered during the restoration of the main mosque there. German and French scientists working on these finds provided the field with vital new techniques. As a result, the Krachkovsky manuscript could be dated to at least the 8th century. Evidence suggests it was made following the traditions of Western Arabia and Syria. It is logical to assume that Nauphal must have brought it from Lebanon, which had historically maintained close relations with Syria.

In St. Petersburg, Katta-Langar, Bukhara and Tashkent 97 large format parchments with Qur’anic text written in the ancient Hijaz hand are carefully preserved. The pages have a history that can be traced back 12 centuries which is closely interwoven with the fate of numerous dynasties and states, cities and people, with Islamic civilization from its beginning to the moment of the collapse of communism of the former republics of the USSR.

In 1998, an unexpected discovery in a mausoleum 100 kilometres south of Samarkand uncovered 12 manuscript pages identical to those kept in St. Petersburg. Another page was discovered in Tashkent at the Institute of Eastern Studies, with two more coming to light in libraries in Bukhara. The conclusion was made that our Qur’an had arrived in Russia from Central Asia. In December 1999, with the help of French and Uzbek colleagues, I was able to visit Katta-Langar where the Petersburg Qur’an was kept from the 15th century. Not far from this village is a settlement where the people speak Arabic. Following discussions with the locals it was discovered that their distant relatives were sent to this area from Syria on the orders of Timur. So it is with near certainty that the manuscript was brought by them and given to the local Sufi sheikh. For centuries locals venerated it as the true Uthman Qur’an. It was not only Nauphal who had bought pages from this manuscript but also the son of the last Emir of Bukhara and a justice of the Bukharian Supreme Court. Both of these buyers were great collectors of manuscripts and kept detailed catalogues of their libraries. Both noted that the pages in their possession were part of the famous Uthman Qur’an. It is certain that both men were aware that a manuscript was taken to St. Petersburg in 1869 but that they believed that the Petersburg Qur’an was not one of the Uthman Qur’ans. In 1920 the last Emir of Bukhara immigrated to Afghanistan and on his way through Katta-Langar tried to take the holy manuscript with him. It is only thanks to the keepers that the book remained in Uzbekistan. In 1941 there were 143 pages of the manuscript known to exist. In 1983 that number had dwindled to 63. Following a decision by the communist party in Uzbekistan to finally do away with the last vestiges of religious culture, the manuscript was confiscated and 10 years later only 12 pages were returned. Today it can be said with certainty that the Petersburg manuscript is the oldest Uthman Qur’an. Though, in truth, it is not so important which manuscript is the true sacred object because they are all worthy of admiration as direct examples of the process of the recording of this most holy text made 14 centuries ago. Analysis of the manuscript led us to refute popular claims by western scientists that state that the complete text of the Qur’an appeared no earlier than the 9th century. The existence of the Petersburg manuscript itself stands as a testament to the earliest history of the sacred book. ■

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The scientific research and facsimile publication of the text was made in Petersburg. The leader of the project was Dr. Efim Rezvan, renowned specialist in Qur’anic research, deputy of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) and Editor-in-chief of the international scientific journal Manuscripta Orientalia. Rezvan’s book ‘The Qur’an and its World’ has received an award from UNESCO as an important contribution to the culture of peace and non-violence and dialogue between civilizations.

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ARCHITECTURE

Photo: Mikhail Borisov

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THE DREAMER’S MOSQUE Alexander RAPPAPORT The botanical pantophagy of St. Petersburg, in a certain sense, extends beyond the borders of the purely stylistic and an imperial spirit of tolerance, with time, became more influential than the dominance of any one style. This open-minded attitude influenced even the most remote areas of the county, where it was manifested in the spread of classicism. The capital, however, was open to the influence of other cultures, faiths and ethnicities, a particular example of this being the city’s mosque, designed by Nikolai Vasiliev. The architect Vasiliev, relatively young but already famous, worked alongside Alexander von Gogen on building the mosque in the first decade of the 20th century. It is hard to imagine what role young Vasiliev played in this project, although Evgeny Edel insisted that the project was entirely Vasiliev’s. What is certain is that Vasiliev left Russia for the US in 1918. Edel relates that in America Vasiliev actively participated in architectural competitions which he invariably won due to his exceptional talent. He was so successful that a group of American architects reputedly offered him a million dollars if he would only stop participating in competitions. Is this fact or fiction? The story appears to be anecdotal but here are the facts. Vasiliev died in 1948. One would think that such a brilliant, talented architect would have a celebrated place in the history of American architecture. However, one of the most prominent experts of European and American architecture of the period, Henry Russell Hitchcock, makes no mention of him in his ‘Architecture: 19th and 20th Centuries’. It is, in fact, impossible to find any references to Vasiliev from later than 1918. His mysterious disappearance may offer some support to Edel’s anecdote. What if, like Rimbaud (who gave up poetry at the height of his powers), Vasiliev accepted the offer of a million dollars and exchanged the difficult and bothersome business of architecture for the peaceful and secluded life of a dreamer? It is likely that the atmosphere of the American business world, events at the time in Russia, and the movement of architecture towards Functionalism could have conflicted with the young Vasiliev’s vision, leading to disappointment rather than enthusiasm. But this is just speculation.

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Let’s return to the Petrogradskaya side of the Neva in St. Petersburg, closer to the mosque. When I lived there I paid less attention to the things which surrounded me. It is only now, being far from the places of my childhood and youth, that am I able to look at them in detail. Despite being a mosque, glittering with ultramarine glazes, and therefore associated with southern countries, the building is in fact a perfect example of northern Art Nouveau. Northern Art Nouveau exchanged the bright whites, yellows and greens and plaster facades of classicism for grey stone, so expressively used in the mosque. It is true that bricks had been used in Petersburg Art Nouveau just as effectively, as can be seen in some of the buildings around the mosque on Bolshaya Meschanskaya. The use of stone in the mosque, though, is entirely appropriate - the broken grey granite cladding confirms its status as an important public edifice. The neighbouring building of Kshesinskaya Palace, with all its whimsy, is as different in scale as the house of Lidval which can be seen from the entrance of the mosque. Opposite the mosque on the other side of Kamennoostrovsky Prospect there is another important example of northern Art Nouveau: the monument to the battleship Stereguschy, now hidden by mature trees. At the time it was built the monument was probably part of the visual dialogue of these masterpieces. To this list of important edifices must be added the house on Kronverksky Prospect, where Gorky lived as well as the monument to Gorky, which is now considered, with its Nietzschean moustache and romantic widebrimmed hat, to complement the surrounding northern Art Nouveau. So, in place of the gardens and vegetable patches which in earlier times had covered this side of the river another kind of garden, or even forest, with northern architectural plants began to grow. The exoticism of these architectural specimens sustains the spirit of a museum or genetic restoration that was personified in the zoological and botanical gardens of the city. In other words, the utopian essence of the endlessly expanding dream, which is indicative of the entire city, was retained here. St. Petersburg, like many American cities, never had a fortified wall or moat to protect it. Walls were considered, according to the plans by Leblond, but remained on the drawing board. The Peter and Paul Fortress never protected the city from invasions, only the threat from revolutionary youth at the dawn of the 20th century. The only unyielding and, according to Akhmatova,

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‘world-class’ fence is placed around the Summer Garden. It does not deter those who are outside, but rather entices them to enter and is a rare combination of granite impregnability and cast iron filigree. A garden city - Northern Paradise! Palmyra!, Russian Venice! - not so much built as planted with care and, like the zoological garden, designed for the peaceful coexistence of the most exotic creatures, if at the cost of their freedom. In a sense, you could compare these examples of northern Art Nouveau with weeds sprung up in a planned Palladian garden. In this architectural garden, though, alongside the refined Italian borders, there also grew severe granite Egyptian sphinxes, Trezzini’s baroque and Thomon and Vallin de la Mothe’s French utopianism. The architectural cosmopolis accepted in its northern precincts the Buddhist temple and the largest mosque at this latitude as just another part of the family thanks to the city’s existing cultural ecology. Later, during the time of Stalin, the same thing occurred on Michurina Street and with the apartment house for political prisoners. The most exotic element of the mosque in the context of the architecture of St. Petersburg is its dual minarets. In cityscapes, the vertical features of bell towers and chimneys usually stand alone. Two similar minarets offer a new idea, something like the double note of jazz dissonance mentioned by Brodsky. Today, the imperial might of Russia is history, and the future of religious and stylistic variety is again in question. Recently, though, there has been talk of building a new mosque in St. Petersburg. The question is, what form will it take? Before answering this question it could be instructive to look at what is now happening around the mosque. Little by little, this area is returning to its former grandeur with new construction in the surrounding streets. Constructivism and Stalin’s monumentalism were incorporated into the location’s stylistic system without damaging the conceptual unity, and so now new High-Tech and Postmodern building are, for the most part, being reasonably well integrated. The mosque and its art Nouveau neighbours continue to sustain the atmosphere of the area. Neither the humiliations of Stalin’s empire style nor those of international functionalism have succeeded in robbing them of their vitality. International functionalism, though, has succeeded in conquering the world to a degree no empire ever could. This post-imperial hegemony was born, not of any political or religious centre, but from the virtual centres of bourgeois and technocratic rationality which outlasted the empire styles of both Stalin and Hitler. The explicit image system of industrial design was stronger than the utopian dreams of power and, like radiation, permeated all aspects of design, transforming the character of the dream. These new dreams possess a paradoxical independence from sunlight, weather and climate as if their images were everlasting. It is also a paradox that these styles, to a much greater degree than the styles of the past, are vulnerable to the effects of time. They seem to age before one’s very eyes, leaving previous styles including Art Nouveau looking younger and stronger. Functionalism has become almost irreconcilable with the images of eternity found in religious architecture. Le Corbusier, in his chapel at Ronchamp, was forced to turn away from Functionalism to Art Nouveau

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and I would say that Gibbert’s cathedral at Liverpool is the most significant failure in church design. Rare exceptions are only to be found with the Scandinavian architects who designed churches based not on architectural formulas but on their openness to the landscape. In much the same way, mosques do not fare much better than churches and Functionalism lends them a technical perfection that contrasts sharply with both their cosmic and earthly intention. The universalism of modern technology and the universalism of the traditional worldview haven’t found a point of convergence, which is why I don’t expect anything remarkable from a new mosque. The last modern architectural project which I think is a successful take on northern Art Nouveau is the design for the second stage of the Mariinsky by American architect Eric Owen Moss. I still can’t understand why the jury in charge of selecting the winner chose the banal design by Dominique Perrault. Were I to decide, I would give the project for a new mosque to Moss, who is probably the closest to being a spiritual successor of Vasiliev. But the previous reception of his work in Northern Palmyra doesn’t offer much hope. So, to conclude this small discourse on the architecture of the St. Petersburg mosque and of Vasiliev, which then became a discussion about the architectural dreams of this remarkable city, I can only end with this, ... ■ Photo: Mikhail Borisov

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MOSQUE ON THE NEVA Photographed by Mikhail BORISOV

The Mosque of the Emir of Bukhara stands a short way from the banks of the Neva looking out on the Peter and Paul Fortress and across the river to the Hermitage. Despite this important location few people outside the confession have ventured inside to experience the sublime beauty of one of St. Petersburg’s most remarkable sacred spaces.

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ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTURE’S QUEEN

.. Andreas TOLKE

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In the male dominated world of architecture, Iraqi-born Zaha Hadid stands out as the only woman to be world famous for her stunningly original designs. For many years her proposals won accolades, but were deemed too controversial to build. Now the world is seeing Hadid’s plans made concrete with projects in countless cities worldwide including Leipzig, Cincinnati, Singapore and Copenhagen. She’s been awarded architecture’s premier honour, the Pritzker Prize, and won the competition to design the new headquarters of the Architecture Centre in her adopted hometown London. In 2006, Hadid was honoured with a retrospective at the Guggenheim museum in New York and is currently the subject of an extensive exhibition at the Design Museum in London. Zaha Hadid photographed by Steve Double

Andreas Tölke: How difficult is it for you to explain your concept of architecture to building owners, investors and technicians? Zaha Hadid: It used to be difficult. They used to think what is she actually talking about? Now people understand, so they don’t ask me anymore. It’s not really about understanding, but about their perception of me as a person. Very strange. Before I could have said, “That’s grey” and they would have argued with me about it. Now when I say, “The card is grey,” then it’s “grey.” Tölke: At which point in your career did people start taking you seriously? Hadid: I’ve never been taken seriously. Now maybe I’m just being taken a little bit more seriously. Tölke: You won the ‘Nobel Prize’ for architecture, the ‘Pritzker Prize’; was that the turning point, when the public started to appreciate your work? Hadid: To be honest, the recognition began before the Pritzker Prize, already four or five years ago. But of course since the prize, I’m established now. Tölke: Why do you think you’re the only woman to have ever received the Pritzker Prize? Hadid: I don’t know, there must be something wrong with the system. It is just very difficult for women. Tölke: Architecture is a man’s world... Hadid: Not just architecture. All clients are men. But still, cultural institutions are

easier for women to get in to than private businesses like banks, for example. Men go golfing or deep-sea fishing together, that’s where deals are made. It’s a world that I as a woman will never be able to enter. It’s a man’s world, a sort of fraternity. Even when I am so respected or accepted, I will never be accepted there. That goes for the majority of private clients. A public building has a different dynamic. I’m treated totally different then. It doesn’t matter if I’m a man or a woman. Today anyway, ten years ago it would have been another matter. Tölke: Even so, it took a long time before you built your first building... Hadid: That wasn’t my choice. For a long time no one gave me a commission, so I couldn’t build. I could be wrong, but if I had been able to build my first design straight away, I probably wouldn’t have attained the same high level of complexity that I have today. Tölke: You also work in interior design, designing furniture. They look like miniatures of your architecture... Hadid: That’s true. The idea is to create landscapes with furniture and show that an interior can flow and be occupied. Organising a furniture landscape is like organising a building in an urban context. Tölke: You integrate your houses into the countryside. How important are the surroundings to you? Hadid: Everything originates out of context, especially in my early work and

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page 35 bottom: Bergisel Ski Jump, Innsbruck, Austria. Photo: Steve Double left and opposite: Performing Arts Centre, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects page 37 bottom: Nuragic and Contemporary Art Museum, Cagliari, Italy. Courtesy Zaha Hadid Architects page 34: VORTEXX Moulded fiberglass, thermo shaped acrylic, car paint and high pressure LEDs Zaha Hadid / Patrick Schumacher 2005 Photo courtesy Sawaya & Moroni spa, Milan, Italy

what I’m working on now. It doesn’t necessarily need to correlate to the surroundings, but it’s a product of the direct situation. That’s how the ideas for the scheme of the building are created. The original idea always comes from the situation. Tölke: What influence does painting have on your work? Hadid: I’ve always liked painting, but it hasn’t really influenced me. Maybe in the beginning, Malevich’s “Suprematism”, but not painting in general. I like the monochrome paintings of Malevich, Picasso or Mondrian; they play with different colour layers that shine through. I like this technique very much. Tölke: Can art and architecture be identical? Hadid: No. Tölke: Why not? Hadid: Architecture is much more complex. Tölke: Then you’re not an artist? Hadid: No. Tölke: What kind of feelings do you have when you go through a finished project for the first time? Hadid: It’s always difficult for me. I always notice the mistakes first, something that’s wrong or doesn’t function. On the other hand, it’s always a surprise, something can happen that you didn’t foresee, and that can be very nice. Tölke: Which unrealised project do you regret the most? Hadid: There are a few, but especially ‘The Peak’ in Hong Kong. Of the latest two, the Düsseldorf Harbour Project, that was just at the beginning stage. The idea was a dynamic organisation. The other is the Opera House in Cardiff. There are many unrealised, beautiful projects, but hardly any were as developed as these were. For the Düsseldorf project we worked two or three years on it and the Cardiff one, a year. Very intensively. Tölke: Are you an expensive architect? After all you do develop brand new techniques. Hadid: Of course we’re not building sheds, so I can’t sell my work for the price of a tin can. I think the complexity of the work deserves a higher price. But it’s not exorbitantly more. Of course you can get a table for 20 Euros, but it’s not the same as a table for 100 Euros. Tölke: Will your furniture designs always be a sideline next to architecture? Hadid: No, furniture is an exciting venture. In the future we should only

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work with large partners or do limited editions. At the moment it’s all a bit mixed up. Tölke: How do you live? Is it how we imagine an architect lives, very clean and minimal? Hadid: At the moment not at all. I’m in the process of moving, my new apartment isn’t finished yet and the old one is a total chaos, but most is packed already. In my new apartment I have cupboards everywhere, that means I’m going to be very, very tidy. There won’t be anything left to see. The opposite of the way it is now. My apartment also had water damage, so everything had to be moved to a dry area. Not a state anyone wishes to be in. Tölke: Do you still have ties in your homeland, Iraq? Hadid: I have to say something. Of course I followed the war on television, the bombardment and the destruction. It doesn’t matter if you’re Iraqi or not, it’s horrible in any instance. What completely shocks me now is when I see pictures of Baghdad, I don’t recognise anything. No streets, no areas, everything is destroyed. Tölke: Do you still feel like an Iraqi? Hadid: I have very strong feelings for the country and the people. I recently saw an Iraqi play on television just by chance, and it really moved me. It was the first time in years that I had heard Iraqi music; it has an energy of its own. It’s the same when I hear Lebanese music. I studied in Beirut until 1977, and the energy captures me as soon as I enter the city. It is the ultimate for tourists. The Lebanese are the masters of hospitality and service. Tölke: How do you feel when you see the violent development from Islam? Hadid: A very difficult situation. Okay, I view it as an outsider just like you. Something has happened between the Islamic-Arabs and the Western world. There has been a very strong development away from each other. If we talk about the people I knew in the Middle East, none of them were militant. They drank beer, went to the beach and wore bikinis. That’s all changed. Tölke: Why do you think the situation has escalated? Hadid: I think it’s a reaction to the Western world. For centuries, the Arabs have been ignored and not been taken seriously. Their problems weren’t solved and this is a reaction to that. Thirty to forty years ago world politics was about Socialism and Communism. But the people that others wanted to save were just imprisoned and not freed. These “saviours” were active in the

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Middle East, but no one took the Arab’s identity in to account. Tölke: But it wasn’t just the left-wing supporters that tried to gain influence over the Middle East? Hadid: Even those that were Western ideologists back then didn’t save anyone in the Middle East. Nowadays you have to say it had just the opposite effect, because Arabs only experienced that the West fought against them. Once, it didn’t make any difference whether you spoke to Christian or Muslim Arabs. Back then at least. The upbringing was an Arab upbringing, not Christian or Islamic. It’s about finding your own identity, an Arab identity. Tölke: How about your own development as an Arab? Hadid:I went to a Christian school in Baghdad. At that time, Jews, Christians and Muslims all lived together. The Jews were the first to go and then the Christians. I think this is very sad, since the Middle East is the cradle of important religion, and that Iraq nevertheless managed for a short time to have these religions living together peaceably. Islam was and is an integral part of the world, it isn’t a strange little ghetto made up of a few madmen. Tölke: How is the situation in the UK? Hadid: Unfortunately, more and more extremists are coming. The liberals simply don’t have a lobby anymore, and the more violent incidents that occur, the less likely will the liberals find an ear for balanced politics. I’ve lived over thirty years in England and no one has ever asked me if I’m Muslim, Christian or whatever I am. Then a journalist wrote a long article about me and decided I was Jewish. And to be honest, I couldn’t care less. The only stupid thing was why does someone have to mention something that’s not true? Two days ago a journalist asked me: “Are you Jewish?” No I’m not. Since I’m from Iraq, he assumed I was Muslim. Which I’m not, but I’ve also never been asked about this. Tölke: When you are in the United Arab Emirates and work in Abu Dhabi how much do you have to change to adapt? Hadid: In Iraq I never saw anyone with a burqa or headscarf. Now veiled women are always on television. It’s becoming noticeably more conservative. Also this is a reaction to the West, but I can’t explain why it’s happening. Emotionally, I can understand it. But when I’m there I wear the clothes that I wear here. Tölke: Could you imagine living there again? Hadid: Yes, but I can’t imagine at this time living in Baghdad. A person lives where their family and friends are. Beirut is really fantastic, but my friends are in London or America. In Beirut you can live very comfortably and the weather is great year round. 

NEW CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT FOR ABU DHABI One of the newest projects with which Zaha Hadid is now involved is Guggenheim Museum director Thomas Krens’ monumental plan for Abu Dhabi’s Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC). Part of the 25 billion dollar development of Saadiyat Island, it hopes to transform the capital of the UAE into the world’s top cultural tourism destination. Envisaged as the greatest concentration of contemporary cultural resources in the world1, the overall project will cover 27 square kilometres and involve a dream team of the world’s most innovative architects. Along with Hadid, buildings will be designed by Jean Nouvel, Tadao Ando and long time Guggenheim collaborator Frank Gehry. All the architects have in the past completed major museum spaces and will now turn their various talents to creating what will surely be one of the most extraordinary collections of buildings in the middle east. Hadid’s concept is a 62-metre high performing arts space covering 200,000 square meters, which will house five theatres with acombined seating capacity for 6,300. Nouvel is planning a ‘microcity’ of buildings as an outpost of the Louvre Museum under a 24,000 square meter dome, and Ghery is building the Guggenheim’s own 30,000 square meter structure. Tadao Ando, the Japanese minimalist, is weighing in with a maritime museum inspired by a billowing sail. The plans for the island also include a national museum and a biennial exhibition park made up of 19 pavilions designed by other architects including NY-based Egyptian Hani Rashid, along the banks of canals that will bring Venice to mind in miniature. Art schools and an art college are also planned. Scheduled for completion in 2018, Saadiyat Island will be developed in three phases and feature six highly individual districts that will also include hotels, marinas, golf courses, civic and leisure facilities, and housing. 1 Thomas Krens in conversation with Zvika Krieger, Newsweek International, 2007

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TERRA INCOGNITA

Today both religious life and craft traditions are resurfacing with a new intensity, and the region faces a great economic and political challenge to construct new national, cultural and religious identities. While the governments of the secular states of Central Asia attempt to foster an official Islam to compete with extremist alternatives, it is the ancient oral traditions, with their rich legends rooted in pre-Islamic beliefs, that have flourished since independence in 1991. Woven and embroidered textiles, integral elements of ‘everyday Islam,’ represent deep-seated cultural and religious values. In their many uses - as robes, hats, carpets, covers and amulets - they help to mark the rites of passage from birth until death in beautiful, moving ways. Because they contain mystical elements of Zoroastrianism, shamanism, and Sufism, these rituals are at odds with the state sanctioned Islam, although they are considered to be Islamic by the majority of the local Muslim population.

TRADITION AND TRANSFORMATION Christine MARTENS

Until the mid-19th century, textiles were the most important item of trade throughout the Islamic world. Their creation and use characterized all cultural and religious traditions but nowhere as compellingly as in Central Asia. For centuries they were inextricably linked to religious practice through guild rules that governed the prayers, rituals and behavior, as well as the manufacture, of each craftsman. Ikat weaving, a complex method of patterning warp threads through resist dyeing, stood at the forefront of this extraordinary history, particularly in the legendary cities of Bukhara, Samarkand and Margilan in present day Uzbekistan.1 During the Soviet period, these craft traditions all but faded from the landscape while formalized religion, folk traditions, shrine culture, and ancestor worship took place clandestinely. 38

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One ritual, based on a legend that relates to the origins of silk weaving, revolves around the mythical figure Bibi Seshanbe, the honorable Madame Tuesday. Devoted only to women, and derived from the powerful Zoroastrian goddess Anahita, she is the protector of fertility and water sources. Especially watchful of young girls, she often sends birds to help them. Women commemorate the Cinderella-like story in which an evil stepmother asks her child to weave lengths of fabric by morning. Realizing the impossibility of the task, Bibi Seshanbe sends a cow to chew the cocoons, spewing out silken threads for the child to weave. In return, she asks that women hold a celebration in her honor. Female mullahs, known as oyi-mullah or bibi khalife in Bukhara, otin-oyi in Uzbek or halpa in the region of Khorezm, are spiritual guides and intermediaries who have preserved these stories and continue the rituals.2 They occupy positions of honor and influence within their communities and come from all walks of life and all economic and social spheres. This is in strong contrast to Islamic communities outside Central Asia where an elevated status for women does not exist in the religious arena. Their knowledge is passed down from mother to daughter, as well as to others within the community. Viewed as healers and shamans as well as specialists in conducting ceremonies accompanying life-cycle traditions, they are considered to have the ability to solve problems, usually of a domestic nature, such as infertility, illness, and poverty. One of the strictly female rituals that honors Bibi Seshanbe, is known as Osh-i-Bibi Seshanbe or Osh-i-Bibiyon. It is conducted by the oyi-mullah while candles representing the sacred fire, a Zoroastrian influence, burn for the duration of the ceremony. The oyi-mullah sits in the center of the far side of the room and relates the Bibi story in both Tajik and Uzbek as well as the tale of Bibi Mushkul Kusho (Remover of difficulties), who turns away misfortune with religious prayers in Arabic. In Tajikistan, it is Bibi Shorshanbe, the honorable Madame Wednesday, who is honored in this way. A special milk pudding (o’moch) and flat bread fried in oil are served in addition to an abundance of fruits and variety of foodstuffs depending on the wealth of the family. The floor is covered with a new, white cloth - a sign of purity - often placed atop a variety of silken embroideries adorned with blessings and images of the Kaba. Part of the ritual includes the cleaning of raisins - separating the stems from the fruit. The stems are collected on small pieces of white cotton destined to be thrown into a swiftly moving stream or other body of water, in order to rid the participants of all debris and negativity.

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Alternately they are boiled in water to make a tea for a bride as an immunization against hardship. The raisins are then mixed with nuts and grains which are distributed to participants and neighbours at the conclusion of the ceremony. It is believed that the eating of these foods representing fertility, prosperity and health will bring blessings and grace to the mistress of the house, members of her family and the community. At the completion of the prayers, the participant who initiated the ceremony touches the white cloth and flour to her face, an action connecting her more profoundly to fertility and its origins in the earth. When the ritual is at an end, the supplicant folds the table cover so that each point of the square touches the center, places it on her head and, slowly bowing, backs out of the room facing the fire. Money, food or cloth is left as a token of gratitude for the oyi-mullah. This is the tradition of Bukhara and the Ferghana Valley with many regional variations and is likened to a pilgrimage (ziorat) but within the domestic domain.3 The shrine of Bahauddin Naqshbandi, a Sufi saint of the fourteenth century, offers another kind of pilgrimage. He is thought by many to be the patron saint of weavers, although his exact affiliation is unclear. His complex at the outskirts of Bukhara acts as a meeting place for those with difficulties as well as for those giving thanks. As families gather for meals cooked in communal kitchens and celebrate the day, women circle his tomb and pass under an old gnarled tree with the hopes of good fortune and fertility. A mullah sits under a white canopy, receiving offers of bread and coins in exchange for blessings. The actual relationship of Naqshbandi to the mythology surrounding silk and the process of ikat is unclear. The Tajik saying, however, Dilba yoru, dastba kor (heart to God, hands to work), attributed to Naqshbandi, indicates a strong connection to the crafts in general. Yusuf Sharipov, a devotee of Bahauddin Naqshbandi and guide to the small museum of relics at the complex states: ‘Some say he was a potter and drew on ceramics, some say a blacksmith. Some say he designed the patterns of the weavers, hence his name Naqshbandi (one who draws the patterns)’. A poem by the 15th century Uzbek poet, Alisher Navoi, alludes to Bahauddin, who believed in God so strongly that the name of God was drawn in patterns on his heart, and his heart beat with the name of God.4

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Dr. Golib Korbanou, Doctor of Historical Sciences at Bukhara University, researches the ancient risalas or guild rules that governed the lives, work and behavior of all Central Asian artisans. At the age of twelve, youths were apprenticed to an usta (master), where they learned the skills of the craft and Islamic law as well. He has translated, for example, a hand written Tajik risala for the textile tradition from the collection of the Bukhara State Museum. The risala, which dates from the turn of the 20th century, begins: This is your guidebook for this life and the next. Read it daily and if you are unable to read it, ask and listen to another read it. If you are able to read it, it is a sin not to have read it.

It ends with the following: If someone hurts the master, we need to cut his or her hands off. If one does not pay the master on time, he will be regarded suspiciously in the community. If one says bad things about the craft, it is a great sin. In the workshop, all should be friendly and support each other. If you follow the risala, good things will happen. This was passed on from Adam to Muhammad and developed by Bahauddin Naqshbandi. All directions are given to us from them. Each master as he begins his work must say the name of god and at completion, must give praise to God, Muhammad and the teachers who taught them.5

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Although men were once the chief dyers and weavers, entire families now run workshops in their homes. In the Ferghana Valley city of Margilan, the Mirzaahmedov family continues the ancient traditions employing thirty-seven different stages in the ikat process. In April, the government distributes 20 grams of silkworm eggs to each participating family of the region in a container the size of a matchbox. From these eggs, emerge the worms that feed ravenously on the leaves of the mulberry trees kept by each family. After about six weeks branches are brought into the home, filling three rooms and obliging the family to move into the courtyard. The silkworms spin their cocoons on these branches, eventually producing up to eighty kilograms of cocoons. The cocoons are then collected and sorted according to quality, with the best set aside for use the following year. After harvesting, the cocoons are put in boiling water to soften for several minutes, before extracting the filaments, which are wound into skeins, and then onto round bobbins to make a thicker thread before steaming, washing and dying. Because of the complexity of the process, there are specialists for each of the many phases. The design is first marked on the brilliant white silk warp with a stick dipped in charcoal, indicating the areas that must be tightly bound with strips of plastic and string by the abrbandchi (abr: cloud, band: tying) to resist the dye. After one color is dyed, the warp is unwrapped and retied in preparation for the next color - the order of dyeing being yellow, red, green

and blue. Most of the dyes are aniline, from India, Iran, Afghanistan, China, Russia and the Ukraine with walnut, madder, indigo and onion-skins the natural dyes commonly in use. A variety of surface finishes are the hallmark of certain ikat fabrics. Watery moiré patterns originally achieved by beating the silk on a domed surface with a wooden hammer are imitated today with machines that produce steam and pressure as the silk fabric is pressed between large embossed industrial rollers. Egg white and glues, no longer in use, were applied to achieve a high gloss. A pivotal figure in Ferghana Valley ikat production was Turghunboy Mirzaahmedov, a third generation weaver born in 1940, who worked clandestinely despite Soviet prohibitions. Other craftsmen did the same, with small groups of dyers, designers and weavers banding together to work co-operatively. In 1983, however, he and seventy-five others were imprisoned in Karshi for five years because of their private weaving activities. Upon his release he worked for the Yodgorlik Silk factory in Margilan where, according to his son Rasuljon, he contributed two hundred atlas ikat designs to the meager five existing patterns that were being used at the time. He continued his practice in the rooms of his expansive home and lush garden until his death in 2006. Unlike other weavers of the region, Turghunboy kept notebooks of color drawings depicting his ikat patterns and their titles, as well as yarn calculations. An uncommon practice, this archive provides an invaluable visual record of designs produced over the last fifty years, a legacy which helps both the community at large and his own family to continue the tradition. In the past, ikats were made primarily for the nobility although fragments found their way into objects of everyday life. They were seen in the coats of the aristocracy, lining reception tents, decorating walls, covering pillows and bedding in bridal trousseaus and given as prized and valued gifts to high officials and visiting heads of state. Rasuljon Mirzahmehdov, the thirty-four year old son of Turghunboy, is bringing this art to international prominence once again, as he revives the

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Thus, despite Soviet prohibitions and current religious tensions, the ancient art, once again a sought-after luxury, has returned to a significant place of glory - sustained and preserved by the richness of a long and inspiring oral tradition. ■

ancient traditions whilst preserving the traditional methods. After learning embroidery, weaving and design, first with his father and then with Ferghana Valley masters Toshtemirov Nabi and Karimov Muhammad, he was quickly recognized as a talented craftsman and natural leader by UNESCO, and now heads their large-scale training projects in both Khorezm and Boyson. Mirzaahmedov also has a presence on the world stage, producing adras (cotton and silk ikat), baghmal (silk velvet ikat) and atlas ikat (satin ikat) for the New York based fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.

1 Fitgibbon, Kate and Andy Hale IKAT Splendid Silks of Central Asia, Laurence King Publishing, 1997, P. 40 2 Fathi, H., (in press) Female Mullahs, healers and leaders of Central Asian Islam: gendering the old and new religious roles in Post-Communist societies. NEW GAMES IN CENTRAL ASIA, GREAT AND SMALL, Canfield, L. and Rasuly-Paleczek, G. (editors) M.E. Sharpe publishers. The etymology of these Turkish-Iranian words refers to the status of the women living at court. These women of high-ranking Turkish-Iranian dynasties belonged to a privileged class within the emirate of Bukhara and the two khanates of Kokand and Khiva :where they had access to a full religious education. Otin or âtûn and bibi were honorific titles that referred to educated ladies of the court. Oyi or âyî which means «Mother» in Turkish languages of Central Asia, was given to women of nobility in the Ferghana Valley. 3 personal conversation with Dr. Mahsuma Niazova - Curator of Historical Exhibitions, Bukhara State Museum, Department of History of the Bukhara Oasis, 2002 4 personal conversation with Mullah Razokov Gafurjon - Imam Khatib, Kalon Mosque and Qozi of the Bukhara Region of Uzbekistan, 2003 5 personal conversation with Dr. Golib Korbanov - Director of Historical Sciences, Bukhara University, 2002

page 38: Participant in the Bibi Seshanbe ceremony reciting blessings from Arabic text. Margilan page 39 top: Bibi Seshanbe ceremony. Bukhara page 39 bottom: Bibi Seshanbe/Bibi Mushkul Kusho ceremony. Samarkand page 40 top: Binding warp to resist dye. Margilan, Uzbekistan page 40 bottom: Turghunboy Mirzaahmedov winding bobbins on the veranda of his home. Margilan this page top: Woman's coat, silk ikat velvet. Ferghana, 1st half of the 19th century. From the Ceitnkaya Collection, Istanbul above: Rasuljon Mirzahmehdov seated in the showroom of his home where ikat fabrics are displayed and stored. Margilan far left: Oscar de la Renta, Dress, silk velvet ikat, 2007 - photo: Dan Lecca left: Oscar de la Renta, Skirt, silk velvet ikat, 2005 - photo: Dan Lecca

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Jalalu’ddin Rumi was a prolific 13th century mystic poet whose writings include some 70,000 lines of verse. Having written more than the Iliad and the Odyssey put together and twice that of Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ - he is one of the leading intellects of Sufism, Islam’s most important philosophical school. This year the world celebrates the 800th anniversary of the poet’s birth, and UNESCO has proclaimed 2007 the International Year of Rumi.

RUMI AND THE WHIRLING DERVISHES Polina FOMINA Most authorities state that Rumi was born in 1207 in Balkh (in present-day Afghanistan), and died in 1273 in Konya (now Turkey). Alternative accounts locate his birthplace in what is now Tajikistan. Birthplace aside, most encyclopaedias refer to him as ‘the great Tajik and Persian poet’. Rumi’s father was an important theologian, lawyer and Sufi mystic in his own right. Fleeing the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan, he took his family and pupils to live in the Turkish Sultanate, from where his son got the name ‘Rumi’. It means ‘from Roman Anatolia.’ After his father’s death, Jalalu’ddin began to teach at the madrasah. Being only 24, he was too young to preach in a mosque, and so left for Syria. There he spent several years at what was one of the great centres of Islamic scholarship, deeply immersing himself in Islamic theology. Returning to Konya, Rumi became the head of the madrasah there and lived as a respected scholar. He was initially uninterested in poetry, but this all changed when he met the dervish Shams-e Tabrizi. This mendicant friar unleashed passions in him he had never known existed. Rumi recognized him as his spiritual teacher and dedicated himself to study with him. At the time of this awakening, Rumi was 37 years old and his teacher was in his 60s. Legend has it that they met in the streets of Konya. Rumi’s son, Sultan Valad, described the meeting, saying how, ‘Unexpectedly Shamsiddin appeared and joined him, and in the radiance of his light, the

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shadow of Mevlana1 disappeared... He saw something which had until then been unseen and heard things unheard by others. And everything became the same for him, both high and low. He called Shams and told him: “Listen, my padishah, to your dervish. Everything your slave has, everything he can reach with his hands, from this moment forward belongs to his master. From now on this house is yours!’” The philosophers’ friendship was mysterious and secretive. For six months after their first meeting, the infatuated pupil and teacher did not leave each other’s side, barely even leaving the scholar’s house. Ingrid Schaar, in her ‘Rumi and Shams’ describes this early, intense period, ‘All conventional social differences disappeared. Rumi spent several months together with Shams in mystical union (sohbet) without seeing other people and ignoring his duties as father, husband, teacher, head of the school, and courtier, dedicating himself entirely to mutual spiritual exchange and meditation...Without this meeting millions of people, from Central Asia in the north to Arabia in the south, from Indonesia in the east to Northern Africa in the west, would today feel in a different way. For the intellectual, this day has the same significance as the day Socrates met Plato, or Schiller, Goethe...’ Russian scholar Radi Fish writes, ‘On this day Jalal ad-Din Rumi, one of the world’s greatest poets, was born.’ Legend has it that, following the murder of Shams at the hands of Rumi’s pupils, the poet went in disbelief to Damascus to search for his

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teacher and friend. Distraught with grief, Rumi was walking through the market when, on hearing the sound of goldsmiths’ hammers, he immediately began to dance. The owner of the workshop so liked Rumi’s dancing that he ordered his workers to continue hammering despite the damage it was causing to their work. What remained of their efforts was given to Rumi as a reward for his dancing. He returned to his pupils and taught them the whirling dance in which he was the Sun and they the planets. Thus the Sufi order of Mevlavi was founded, known in the West as the “whirling dervishes.” Rumi taught that communion with God was only possible if a man first of all felt love. For this, the full participation of the body was essential. Through its structure and the memory of its parts, the body is connected to the movement of the stars, planets and galaxies, and a hidden power is awakened when it spins. The dance of the dervishes of the Mevlavi order is certainly beautiful to watch, and it has rightly become one of contemporary Turkey’s foremost tourist attractions, but it is based on the wisdom of centuries. Dressed in white robes with tall conical hats on their heads, dervishes leave behind the impurity of this world and transcend its restrictions, appealing directly to its Creator.

Lost in the dance, Rumi searched the infinite sky and amongst the bright stars for his friend.

Every element of the ritual carries a symbolic meaning. The right palm of the dervish, for example, is turned toward the heavens ready to receive a blessing. The left is turned towards the earth, the dervish acting as a human conductor of God’s love and grace. This ritual movement is called the Sema and it is the source of the dancers’ greatest inspiration and ecstasy. Rumi himself said that the Sema is a rest for the souls of those who seek

love. Dervishes begin to turn slowly and, after finding their balance, extend their arms little by little, finally fully stretching them out like wings. In this wild whirling ‘around the axis of the heart’ reality itself melts away.

Rumi signed most of the poems of the ‘Diwan-e’ with the name of Shams-e Tabrizi, in honour of his beloved friend. Hussam-e Chelebi, another pupil of the great teacher and a friend of Rumi, inspired the creation of the mystical and didactical poem ‘Masnavi’, the famous ‘Rhyming Couplets of Profound Spiritual Meaning’. It is a collection of fables gathered from different sources that interpret the ayat of the Qur’an. It is also called ‘The Qur’an in Persian’ and has been studied in Islamic schools since the 18th century. ■ 1 One of the names of Rumi All photographs by Anastasia Zlatopolskaya

Rumi is recognized as the world’s greatest mystic-poet and is one of the most widely read Islamic authors after Muhammad. His poems have been recorded countless times and are recommended as a treatment for depression. Every year his adopted hometown of Konya holds a festival of whirling dervishes, which is attended by thousands of people.

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THE HAT AS INDICATOR OF POSITION AND SOCIAL STATUS IN ANATOLIA Christine MARTENS

For centuries, dress had been the most significant indicator of class in the Ottoman Empire, with the hat, in particular, indicating honour, position, and status. Men of every rank wore the turban, in its many manifestations, until it was replaced by the fez during the rule of Mahmud II in 1829, when reforms in the realm of traditional costume were instituted and the ceremonial behaviour of the court radically altered. The fez was subsequently outlawed by Ataturk in 1920 as the country moved even more strongly toward European standards. The only head covering worn today that still holds symbolic meaning is that of the dervishes, who throughout history have clung to their traditional forms. The conical, honey coloured felt head covering still in use by dervishes as part of the costume traditionally worn when performing the whirling ceremony or Sema, is the sikke. Said to originate some 200 years before Rumi in Baghdad, it was only with the dervishes that the profound spiritual content of the dance developed. In spinning, the dervishes are relinquishing the earthly life to be born in mystical union with God. Mevlana Jalalu’ddin Rumi, the great mystic, scholar, philosopher and poet of the 13th century, lived and died in the Seljuk city of Konya in central Anatolia. Around him flourished the Mevlevi Sufi order of dervishes. The Mevlana Museum located in the centre of Konya, was a Mevlevi derga (dervish lodge with attached tomb) until 1925, when Kemal Ataturk forbad all ritual practice and closed all Sufi lodges. Here one finds a collection of artefacts connected to the early history of the Mevlevi order, in addition to the sarcophagi of Rumi, his family and disciples. Each tomb can be identified by symbolic representations of turban forms wound around a felt base, symbolizing the position of the particular dervish in the hierarchy of the Mevlevi order, as well as his relationship to the line of the Prophet and/or to the line of Rumi.

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The sikke, traditionally made of the fleece of a young camel in the first year, represents the tombstone of man. The sheikh, an elder Sufi who has been authorized by the order to teach, initiate and guide aspiring murids & dervishes, wears a special turban wrapping around his sikke called destar. It is made of a length of tubular cotton that is between five and ten centimetres wide and between eight and ten meters long and can be filled with cotton batting when a dimensional effect is desired. Some say that the loose end of the destar touches the heart. When dervishes travelled long distances by foot, the destar was used as a shroud, should its owner die while travelling. Colour also plays a role. If a dervish is born into the family of Mevlana, he has the title of celebiler and the colour of his destar is green. Halifeler are dervishes who are relatives of the prophet Mohammed. The title of Postnicin is bestowed upon a dervish by the family of Mevlana and identifies him as a representative of Mevlana. His destar covers the base of the sikke completely, with no rim of felt showing at the base. Halifeler and Postnicin are permitted to wear very dark purple.1 Rumi wore white, but after the death of his great mystical friend and teacher Shams-I-Tabrizi, he exchanged it for a turban of dark purple, almost black, the duhani, that he would wear for the rest of his life.2

GRAVESTONES

All photographs by Christine Martens

According to Hans-Peter Laqueur, the custom of utilizing the sikke as an ornament crowning the gravestone became widespread in the Ottoman Empire since the headdress, which varied with rank even within a single order, could also indicate the position of the deceased within his lodge or religious grouping. In the 18th century, however, the use of the hat as an indication of rank was also used on secular graves, where various forms of the turban indicated positions within the government or military.4 The colour of the destar was originally painted on the gravestones but with exposure to the elements has worn away. Dr. Naci Bakirci, the second General Director of the Museums of Konya, explained that there is no clear-cut formula for classification, other than reading the accompanying old Turkish carved inscriptions that appeared on the stone itself. One exception was the unadorned sikke, the simple conical felt hat of the dervish. When appearing on a tomb, it signified that the deceased had not yet completed the initiatory and preparatory ‘1001 days of kitchen page 44 top: Sheikh of the Mevlevi community, Konya, Turkey Only the sheikh wears a special turban-like binding around his sikke called a destar. If the dervish is born into the family of Mevlana, the destar is green. left: Cuneydi destar, velvet covered sarcophagi of the Khorasan soldiers (13th century), Mevlana Museum, Konya far left top: Seker-aviz kafesi destar on tombstone, Istanbul far left bottom: Unadorned sikke on tombstone, Istanbul top right: The calligraphy reads "Hazrati Mevlana" (All praise to Mevlana). Mevlana means teacher, referring to Mevlana Jalalu‚ddin Rumi, the great mystic, scholar, philosopher and poet of the 13th century. From the Mevlana Museum, Konya, Turkey

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duty’, which consisted of eighteen different jobs ranging from cleaning to finding wood for the fire, as well as studying art and architecture; the intensive training for a dervish. A woman’s grave with an inscribed sikke identified her as a member of the Mevlevi family.

CALLIGRAPHY According to Annemarie Schimmel, most Turkish calligraphers were members of Sufi orders, as the Sufis always emphasized the importance of the Arabic letters and their mystical qualities. Popular also with the Mevlevis and Bektashis were blessings written to honour their sages. These calligraphic blessings in the shape of a sikke, praising Mevlana, are especially prevalent. Hazrati Mevlana (praise and honour to Mevlana) can be seen on illuminated manuscripts as well as pendants throughout Anatolia.5 ■

1 Conversation with Dr. Naci Bakirci, Konya 2003 2 Atasoy, Nurhan “Dervish Dress and Ritual: the Mevlevi Tradition”

The Dervish Lodge, Architecture, Art and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey, Raymond Lifschitz, ed., University of California Press, Berkeley, California 1992, p.254 3 La Queur, Hans-Peter, “Dervish Gravestones”, The Dervish Lodge, Architecture, Art and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey, Raymond Lifschitz, ed., University of California Press, Berkeley, California 1992, p..291, 292 4 Schimmel, Annemarie “Calligraphy and Sufism in Ottoman Turkey” the dervish Lodge, Architecture, Art and Sufism in ottoman Turkey, pp. 242, 245

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ISLAMIC TALISMANS, AMULETS AND PHILTRES Maryam REZVAN

Magic in medieval consciousness played much the same function as science does today. It helped to form people’s understanding of the natural world, and therefore also their efforts to predict and control it. As part of such a worldview, amulets were believed to grant the wearer special insights. The deep universal mysteries, which have fascinated the human mind in all ages, were made accessible by these simple objects. Talismans, amulets and charms of every description are used throughout the Islamic world, and examples can be found today in many museums and manuscript collections. Islamic talismans usually include extracts from the Qur’an inscribed on various materials; from paper and leather to ceramics and precious metals. These texts range from fragments of separate verses to the entire Qur’an written out in extraordinarily small script. Sometimes texts are even placed under the bezel of a ring. Amulets with sacred texts are said to cure both body and soul since the wearing of them is, in itself, believed to be pleasing to God. The most common Arabic term for talisman is tamima. It is thought that this word was first applied to unusual looking stones hung around children’s necks to protect them from the evil eye, bad luck or disease. Traditional Islam forbade this practice because the object’s power was not thought to have come from God. Later, tamima came to be a generic term for any kind of amulet. Formal religious approval was secured by placing the names of Allah or verses from the Qur’an (ayat) on the amulet. Most commonly, different variations of ‘To Allah I appeal’ were used. This sura alone was considered to assist with every life experience, from providing an easy birth and a painless and peaceful death to ensuring the journey on to bliss in heaven. It provided cures for all illnesses, such as fevers, swellings, aches, blindness and insanity.1

Photo: © Jasper Hermsen

The use of sacred texts for talismans dates back to Ancient Egypt where citations from the ‘Book of the Dead’ were an integral part of

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inscriptions on funeral talismans. Judaic amulets incorporated texts from the Bible and the Psalter. Belief in talismans and amulets with verses of the Qur’an inscribed on them was widespread in the Islamic world. For non-Arabic speaking Muslims in particular, any Arabic writing was considered sacred, an attribution which was extended to whatever object happened to carry the writing. Stylisations of Arabic writing can be found on jewellery whose protective function was completely supplanted by the aesthetic. There were many texts describing the rules for the creation of talismans, but such complex theoretical systems were rarely put into use. In practice, amulet makers used more straightforward and almost identical patterns. The list of materials upon which Qur’anic texts were inscribed is very long. It includes stones (agate, onyx, cornelian, schist), clay, iron, silver, copper, thin lead sheets, mother of pearl, various fabrics including cloth from Kashmir and Yemen, military banners, animals parts (the skin of unborn gazelles, camel bones, sheep shoulder-blades and neckbones), plants (olives, figs, dates) and even food (halva, candies, bread). In addition to various inks, many other liquids were used to write inscriptions such as rose water, saffron extract, honey, grape and mint juices, fat, rain and spring water. The use of protective writing was not limited to amulets but also appeared on those things which surrounded people in their everyday life and professional activities - mirrors, jewellery, clothes, medical instruments, locks, crockery, scissors, and even beehives.

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Tumars and bazubands are cases for amulets in which quotes from the Qur’an or prayers are kept. A traditional feature of adornment found across Central Asia, their use illustrates Islam’s influence on people’s consciousness, as well as their daily life. Taking a variety of different forms, they are usually magnificently decorated with authentic or stylized Arabic script. Believed to help in matters of childbirth and fertility, such amulets are worn primarily by women, especially those who are pregnant and nursing, and by children. Tumars are also one of the essential components of any wedding dress because brides are considered to be especially vulnerable to evil forces. The effectiveness of tumars is apparently determined not only by the texts they carry but also by their composition. Some examples are filled with mastic or plaster and covered with gold or silver leaf, whilst others are flat ornamented tablets.

Photo: © Maartje Jaquet

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Esteemed perhaps above all others, the five-fingered hand widely known as ‘The Hand of Fatimah’, is a common amulet across the Islamic world. The hand is usually made of silver, though other substances may also be used. Shiites believe that the five fingers represent Muhammad, his daughter Fatima, her husband Ali, and their sons Hassan and Husayn. Others interpret them as representing the five pillars of Islam. The palm of the hand is divided into sections, each of which is associated with certain letters and numbers. It is believed that a person’s character and disposition can be revealed with the help of these codes. The letters of one’s name and their numeric equivalents are noted down and deciphered by referring to special tables.

Magical texts can be used in other ways. The ink in which they are written, for example, can be rinsed away with water and then drunk. Talismans of this sort are called phylakteria, or philtre, a word taken from the Greek. Drinking water which has washed away the words of the Qur’an is believed to cure any disease, ease the delivery of children, help one avoid temptation, and bring prosperity. With time, verses from the Qur’an began to be applied directly to the drinking vessels themselves. Liquid placed in these cups would become blessed simply by being in contact with the sacred words, and the vessels could then be used indefinitely. This in turn led to the appearance of special types of medical cups. In early examples, words are often accompanied by various images and, in addition to verses from the Qur’an, the names of God, prayers, letters of the alphabet and magic squares were also used. Sometimes the purpose of a particular cup was written on its side, making them a valuable source of information about the history of diseases and the fears of the time.

page 46 top: Hand of Fatimah'. Photo by Nerissa Atkinson Courtesy the Nasser D. Khalili Collection, London

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A similar transformation occurred with talismanic tables, which contain meaningfully organized letters, numbers, magic squares, the names of suras, the names of Allah and mem-

bers of his family, and descriptions of his physical and moral qualities. Originally, it is likely that all this information was put on small sheets of paper or fabric to be folded and placed into special cases. It was often enough to simply look at these talismans on certain days of the year, or perhaps after prayer. Later, however, in order to improve the effectiveness of their protective power, these tables began to be worn on clothing. Thus in the 15th century, talismanic shirts appeared as another kind of protection again the various dark forces arrayed against humanity. ■ 1 Donaldson, “The Koran as Magic” The Muslim World,

Vol. 27, p. 258).

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RETROSPECTIVE

ACCADEMIC CLASSICS Anastasia Grib spoke with Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage Museum, and Efim Rezvan, Deputy Director of the Kunstkamera - two of Russia’s leading scholars in Arabic studies.

THE SINGULARITY OF ST. PETERSBURG ORIENTAL STUDIES Russian academic Oriental studies have from the beginning been closely connected with St. Petersburg. The first Russian collections of manuscripts and early printed books in eastern languages were assembled in the Kunstkamera. In founding the Academy of Science, Peter the Great paid great attention to Oriental studies, allowing us to consider Peter the founder of Russian Oriental studies. It was he who assembled the first collection of eastern manuscripts from Mongolia, China, Tibet and the Islamic world. In 1724 this collection became a part of the academy library and 100 years later the Asiatic Museum was created as a part of the academy with a department dedicated to the East. Until the beginning of the Soviet period, the Asiatic Museum was the only centre of academic oriental studies. In 1929 the Soviet government formalized Oriental studies. The following year, as part of the Department of Public Sciences of the Academy, a group of oriental scholars was organised in Leningrad. The Institute of Oriental Studies was founded the same year. A group of scholars was also formed in Moscow in 1943 made up of evacuees from the besieged Leningrad. In 1950, the institute was relocated to Moscow leaving only the Department of Oriental Manuscripts in Leningrad which became the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies. From this point onwards, the main focus of the branch has been the study of the philology, history, philosophy, religion, law, and manuscripts of the ancient and medieval east. The sphere of interest of the Moscow institute is the modern states of Asia, North Africa and the Pacific. The history of the Academy in St. Petersburg means it is focused on classic academism. Anastasia Grib: I would like to ask you about Oriental studies in Russia in so far as they concern Islam, with a particular focus on Arabistics. Mikhail Piotrovsky: It is possible to discern three distinct traditions in Russian orientalism. The first is the missionary, or theological. Its main aim is to prove that Islam is not a religion but a deism. This tradition is very tenacious and militant. It differs from European Ecumenism in that it holds that there can be no dialogue with the Muslim world. The followers of scientific oriental studies have never accepted this point of view. The second tradition is a practical one. Boguslavsky, Zavadovsky, and Osenkovsky who concerned themselves only with practical matters and did not concern themselves with the scientific. Minorsky is a perfect example of a practical oriental scholar. He was involved with defining the Russian borders with Persia and Turkey and through this activity became a scholar. The third tradition is the classic Petersburg school. It is connected with collections and manuscripts. The process of the formation of a scholar is built upon the mastery of a single, complex manuscript which needs to be studied exhaustively. So this tradition is entirely centred on the text. Efim Rezvan: The principal which characterises the Academy of science is that it looks slightly downward on the east. So it was unnecessary to visit the countries being studied or even to know the spoken language. Although in reality, some did know and did go. For example, Krachkovsky.

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Dr. Piotrovsky: By the way, Krachkovsky, as a member of the Orthodox Church was the greatest specialist of Arabic Christian literature. The study of the Christian East is a unique feature of the Russian school. Orthodox tendencies were very strong thanks to a connection with the Palestinian Society. All three traditions are maintained to this day. The missionary existed throughout the soviet period but became anti-religious. The practical, Moscow approach turned towards the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and St. Petersburg became the preserve of the academic with its main focus on manuscripts Dr. Rezvan: From the beginning we had a deliberate programme of collecting by the state. The ministry of foreign affairs sent instructions to the embassies to buy manuscripts which were then placed in the institute. We have Russian spies to thank for this. If you look closely, Russia demanded, even in its earliest times, not only horses and gold and treasure as reparations but manuscripts as well. By the way, there are 80 specialists in Persian language and culture in St. Petersburg now, which is half of all the specialists in the world. Dr. Piotrovsky: Exactly! It is only in St. Petersburg that Persian Miniatures are studied scientifically. And if only five people in the entire world are able to read papyruses, three of them are from here. Dr. Rezvan: It is strange but even soviet censure wasn’t able to kill off real scholarship. The scientists learned how to exist without conflict. Dr. Piotrovsky: Scholarship survived because during difficult times they created a system of succession. The word Islam wasn’t spoken but Islamic texts were published and the Qur’an was studied. Dr. Rezvan: An amazing fact is that during the Siege (of Leningrad) the 850th anniversary of Nizami, the greatest mystic poet, was celebrated. Dr. Piotrovsky: That was the other side. When national consciousness was artificially created Nizami was recognised as a great poet. His mysticism was replaced with human love. The true meanings of his texts were lost but the works of Navoiy and Nizami became a part of the school curriculum. Grib: Are Russian Oriental scholars known elsewhere in the world? Dr. Rezvan: It is a paradox. Russian contributions to Oriental studies are not considered in the west. Last year a book by the well-known English author and Oriental scholar Robert Irwin ‘For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies’ was published where he writes that Russia is a perfect example of Imperialism and imperial Orientalism. Further, when he writes about the Bolshevik period, he once again brings up the idea of state directives and imperial policy. It is disappointing that they don’t know the other side of Oriental studies in the West and that they think that our science ended at the time of Krachkovsky. Dr. Piotrovsky: Irwin is correct in saying that Russian Oriental Studies are closer than others to the state if one considers the relation between Empire and Oriental studies. In Russia, Orientalists studied themselves because of the multinational aspect of our country and the fact that the Russian Empire included Muslim lands. It is true that we are little-read in the west. For them, what is more important is that which can be contained within certain formats. Russian Oriental Studies, being outside their frame of reference, is unknown. And thank God, we can write about this phenomenon! ■

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Yemen, surrounded by sea and deserts and filled with treasures and miracles, was known in antiquity as Arabia Felix - “Happy Arabia.” It was an important part of the Biblical world, and not just because everywhere - in the temples and private homes of the Mediterranean, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, in India - Yemenese incense and myrrh were burnt for the gods. There was the Queen of Sheba, amazed by the faith, wisdom and wealth of King Solomon, Jesus’ sermon which calls the Southern Empress to witness, the vivid story in the Qur’an about the collapse of a powerful nation, the tale of the hoopoe and the appeal of the Queen of Sheba...

YEMEN: COUNTRY OF INCENSE Efim REZVAN We were very lucky. We saw the rain in Sana’a and hoopoe soaring above the ruins of the Arsh Bilqis Temple, the astounding town of Haid al-Jazil perched above the abyss, and the ‘Manhattan of the Desert,’ the famous Shibam.

Ideas about ancient Southern Arabic civilization are firmly embedded in our culture. At the same time, however, Southern Arabia is undoubtedly the least studied area of the Biblical world. Russia has indisputably made important contributions to the study of Yemen and its ancient civilization; its cultural history, archaeology and ethnography. These contributions are chiefly the results of the interdisciplinary Soviet-Yemen expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, or SOYCE. The expedition, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, was organized and led for seven years (1983-1989) by Pyotr Afanasyevich Gryaznevich, one of the most important Russian Arabic scholars and a specialist on Islam.

From the very beginning, the expedition was conceived as one of the Academy’s most important projects in the humanities. Thanks to the work of its members, important evidence was discovered of the continuous settlement of these territories through all stages of human history, and it was proven that in the south of Arabia all stages of the Stone Age were represented, from the early Palaeolithic through to the Neolithic. A study was made of the features of the civilization which became the connecting link between the main centres of antiquity, a key intermediary in the exchange of innovations in technology and religious culture, and an important link in the sea route from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.

Here the houses here are built using the same centuriesold methods, to the same plan. That is why even new houses have an archaeological memory. One walks along the streets as if among stage sets.

All photographs Tatyana Fedorova

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In April, 2007 the ‘IjmaConcord’ film crew traversed 2,500 km of the country, visiting the main sites connected with the work of SOYCE and brought back over 15 hours of video footage and more than 3,000 photographs.

On the Arabian Peninsula ancient fantasy is in harmony with modern reality. It seems that one travels back in time simply by breathing the air.

The Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), where the ethnographic collections of SOYCE are kept and most of the participants of the expedition work, has put together an exhibition called, ‘The Land of Incense. Yemen: Images of Traditional Culture’. The exhibition attempts to represent the world of the Yemenites living in cities and villages across the country which has held onto its original traditions. Yemenites follow patriarchical customs, and most of the population live in harmony with the culture and with the world. Perhaps this is why Pier Paolo Pasolini was able to film his ‘A Thousand and One Nights’ here without having to build any sets. ‘Land of Incense’ is part of the exhibition cycle ‘The Exhibitions Are Not Over’ which displays images and symbols of traditional cultures. A special feature of the project is its comprehensiveness, simultaneously displaying items of traditional culture alongside photographs and videos, precisely illustrating their real life use. The exhibition is dedicated to the anniversary of the tragic death of my teacher Dr. Gryaznevich. He used this fairy tale country to help inspire me and many of my colleagues, so beginning our life-long love affair with Arabia. ■

One valley follows another, and then suddenly one of the greatest views in the world appears. At Haid al-Jazil palaces and towers climb the unreachable heights and appear gargantuan against the sky.

Qana’ah was the final point of the trans-Arabian Incense route. Here the caravans arrived with incense for kings, priests and the fashionable women of Egypt and Babylon, for temples and private homes in Athens and Rome, and for the physicians of the Mediterranean. Purple fabrics, copper, wine and beautiful vases were brought from Greece. And visitors left this land with stories of Felix Arabia, where pleasant aromas are encountered everywhere, incense trees are used as firewood, and people dedicate their life to sweet idleness.

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PLACE

THE CULTURE OF CLEANLINESS Yuri ZININ

An intriguing sign reading ‘salon of recumbence’ brought me to a halt. It was written on the façade of an easily missed house in one of the streets of Algiers, just near an ancient wooden door with bronze rivets. No sooner had I paused than a smiling doorkeeper whisked open this aged portal. He hugged me as if I was a long lost relative and launched into an inventory of the many virtues of his Moorish bath house, or hammam in Arabic, tempting me to peek inside...

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And so it was that I found myself passing through a narrow corridor into a small room. It was covered with carpets and scattered with a number of low couches. The attendant directed my attention to a short, bare-chested man in wide-legged trousers, introducing him as a tough tayib. My tayib handed me a pair of black shorts, which must be worn for modesty’s sake in all public baths, and led me through a small shower area to the steam room. A shaft of golden daylight fell onto the marble floor, filtered through a narrow trellised window high up near the domed ceiling. All was enveloped in a hazy semi-darkness and I was able to make out taps for hot and cold water and tin scoops the size of tankards. As my eyes adjusted, several other patrons in shorts could be seen seated or half lying on the floor in absolute silence. The tayib bid me lie down on the warm marble floor, which was heated from below, and the warmth spread quickly throughout my body. The attendant himself settled next to me and began to rub a reddish paste from a small jar into my skin. As he went on to explain, it was special clay from the sacred Moroccan city of Fez and would help to open my pores. And it was true, almost immediately the sweat began to pour from my body, as the tayib began further manipulations. He started by rubbing my fingers and toes, then with strong and skilled movements warmed up every bone in my body to the top of my head. The energetic Algerian twisted my joints and almost pulled my neck out of its socket with a loud cracking sound. My body, to my great astonishment, became incredibly supple, obediently submitting to the professional stretching. Next, a rough black sponge appeared in his hands. As if with an emery board, he scrubbed away the uppermost layer of my skin leaving me smooth and soft. My red-hot skin was so clean and polished that I In the 7th Century the first wave of invasions, first of barely needed any soap. With a tap on the shoulder, he Syria and then of Egypt, brought Arabian Muslims in consent me off to take a shower. After rinsing with cool water Hammam (from the tact with Greek and Roman baths. They immediately fell I realized that this part of my Moorish bath experience root meaning ‘heat’ in under their spell. had come to an end and returned to the dressing room. Arabic) is an integral part of the everyday Well known for their ability to quickly embrace foreign cusThe attendant there led me to a couch where I lay life of all Arabs from toms, Arabs adapted the bathing tradition to their own way of down. He threw a sheet over my shoulders and brought a the Persian Gulf to life. Hammam entered the religious customs of society, well small glass of aromatic mint tea. Sipping the hot drink I Morocco. suited to the Islamic demand for ritual purity and hygiene. began to feel the full effect of the experience. Unlike a Russian banya or Finnish sauna, in the hammam the real While the Romans built spectacular thermae for large sweating happens not in the hot steam room, but in a cool amounts of bathers, Arabs preferred small, unpretentious establishments one. Here even the smallest pores of a hot and relaxed body opened to distributed across the town, some of them being annexes of Mosques. release their sweat. The heating system retained the Roman tradition of heating the floors, the stone benches, and the lower part of the walls. The attendant was barely able to keep up with changing my wet sheets as my body, released of all dirt, sunk into a state of utter relaxation or kaif, which The authorities encouraged the building of public bathhouses and it is in Arabic means delight. believed that Mohammad himself talked about the use of hot baths, pointing out that they increase fertility, an important plus for the followers of the new TRADITIONS OF ARABIC BATHHOUSES religion in the first period of Islam. Before Islam, Arabs didn’t have bathhouses because of a lack of fuel in the deserts and plains where they lived. The usual way to clean oneself The owners of baths were even exempt from paying taxes in the early was in cold, or sometimes warm, natural springs. Islamic period. Their establishments gradually became centres for social gath-

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All photographs Anastasia Zlatopolskaya

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ering which were open from the early morning to late at night. The cost of visiting a hammam was moderate. For example, one of the caliphs from ‘Thousand and One Nights’ ordered that the cost of the baths be ‘such that any visitor could afford to pay’. A visit to the baths became a ritual cure and means of revitalization. The eminent medieval Arabic doctor, philosopher and poet, Abu Ali Ibn Sina’, known in Europe as Avicenna, was a great admirer of hammam. His advice is recorded in Russian medical manuscripts of the 14th century. He considered that moderate use of the baths would help to relieve nervous disorders and insomnia. He also prescribed visiting a hammam as a cure for paralysis, spasms and many other infirmities.

described by Urqhuart also began to appear in Germany, Australia, England and the US. Public opinion was divided as to the merit of the new craze and discussions about the use of hammams took place everywhere. Some thought that they provided a panacea for all disease and illness including colds, asthma and rheumatism. Others were less enthusiastic, calling Urqhuart a charlatan.

Russia also followed the fashion and between 1850 and 1852, by order of emperor Nicolas I, Italian architect Ippolito Monighetti built a Turkish bath as a unique monument to commemorate Hammam suited the victory in the Turkish campaigns of 1828-29. Located at tenets of Islam, above Tsarskoe Selo, the bathhouse resembles a mosque with a all its demand for tall, thin minaret. The interior was decorated in the ritual purity and Moorish style and richly furnished. To construct the hygiene. A visit to the hammam was popular after returning from a bathhouse white marble architectural elements from the long trip, following release from prison, or even before buying bath of the sultan’s wife at Rumelia - the European part of new clothes. The proverb ‘Those who go to hammam forty the Ottoman Empire - were used. Some of the stone blocks Wednesdays in a row will have luck at once’ comes from this period. have lines of poetry carved in them. The building of hammams by private citizens was considered as alms and Arabic author Yusef Abdel Hadi wrote that anyone who committed a sin would be forgiven if he repented sincerely and built a bathhouse. There were an exceptional number of hammams built in Islamic Spain. 10th century Cordoba alone a boasted a staggering 3711 of them. In the 19th century, European travellers visiting the Ottoman Empire called this type of establishment ‘Turkish’ baths. Several French orientalist artists including Eugene Delacroix, Jean Leon Gérôme and Eugène Fromentin gave free rein to their romantic imagination in works depicting eastern bathhouses. In these paintings dark-skinned slaves were seen to be undressing white servants, while groups of beautiful maidens lounging near the pools and other exotic symbols of the East were clearly and lovingly depicted. The fashion for Turkish baths began to spread throughout Europe and America and in the mid-19th century Englishman David Urqhuart, who spent a great deal of time in Greece and Andalusia, wrote ‘The Pillars of Hercules’ in which he glorified the use of hammams. The author assured readers that if hammams were to be built in London, it would transform the lives of thousands of British workers. According to his assertion, such establishments would also be powerful weapons against drunkenness, immorality and other public vices. This enthusiast’s call to cleanliness found a response among the British. One of those who heeded the summons was Dr. Richard Barter, who built 10 Turkish baths in Ireland. In the 1860s, hammams based on technology

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MOORISH BATH HOUSES: A WOMAN’S VIEW The ‘Salon of recumbence’ that I visited in Algiers, as is the case with many other Moorish bathhouses, is not segregated into separate areas for men and women. Here, once the men have had their turn, at around about midday, the women’s hours begin. On leaving the hammam I saw a group of women in traditional white capes - haikas - near the door, waiting their turn. For them hammam is not simply a way to get clean but a place for social contacts in a society where the spheres of contact between men and women are strictly divided. For women who spent all their time inside their homes, bound to the hearth from ancient times, hammam was a kind of release and a window to the outside world. Ladies traditionally visited hammams in company, with those who were married only allowed to visit with the permission of husbands or heads of the families. This permission was rarely, though, withheld; it was considered such an important ritual that, according to some, if a husband stood in the way of a wife’s visits to the hammam with her friends, she could demand a divorce. Women gathered in bathhouses to exchange the latest news, to discuss various problems, and to gossip. Here they washed and showed off their new clothes and cosmetics to each other. There is also the popular belief that frequent visits to the hammam can help cure barren women.

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Women also went to the baths in large parties before important religious holidays. Typically there was a matchmaker in the company, a sharp-tongued woman with knowledge of marriage prospects in the local community. She had a good eye for young girls who were soon to reach marriageable age, and in the bathhouse was able to take stock of the physical merits of brides-to-be. It was a good occasion for both mothers and matchmakers to become acquainted with and to discuss the opportunities for future family life. Following such meetings, and depending on the fee a bride’s family agreed to pay, the matchmaker would broadcast the beauty and other merits of the potential fiancé. Thus the hammam was not just place for cleansing but the setting for events which would often play a big role in woman’s fate. Not for nothing did the hero of Alphonse Daudet’s novel ‘Tartarin de Tarascon’ go to the bathhouse in search of his Algerian ladylove. In Algeria, a visit to the hammam can quite often be part of the marriage ritual. According to tradition, the new wife goes to the bathhouse with her relatives and friends either 14 or 40 days after the wedding. There she sits on a bench in the middle of the steam room while an attendant circles her, filling all the corners of the room with incense and chanting special charms against evil spirits, who she asks to be kind to the bride and not to harm her in her new life. According to Arabic legends, the djinns who inhabit wells and caves find themselves very comfortable in the humid twilight of hammams. Those who do not wish to meet a djinn and his friends are advised not to visit the bathhouse between the last two prayers of the day, because this is the time they take their bath. But what is the faithful one to do if by chance he meets djinn in the steamy twilight? Islamic faqihs advise that he first of all say the sacred word “Bismillahir,” followed by the name of Allah to frighten away the evil spirit. This will hopefully dispel the djinn immediately. Should this not work, it is recommended that the man end his visit immediately so as not to fall victim of foul deeds. To this day, protective signs can still be found on doors of hammams.

FROM HAMMAM TO THALASSOTHERAPY Today is a very difficult time for the traditional public bathhouse because of the rise of modern conveniences within the home. Hammams continue their traditional functions in provincial towns and villages for the most part, while in the larger cities attendance has declined dramatically. In Dubai, for example, you would be hard pressed to find a public hammam. And while there are plenty of fitness-clubs and massage parlours with saunas to suit any taste, these days one can only have a massage and wash in private. A Moroccan masseur who worked in Dubai informed me that there is now not a single traditional hammam surviving. The explosion of tourism in Northern Africa, and especially in Tunisia, has lead to the construction of dozens of new luxury hotels in the Spanish Moorish style with well-appointed interior courtyards and loquacious fountains. Many of them have hammams with latticed windows, marble and rich mosaics, so that the visitor feels as if they are within the quarters of a medieval ruler.

THE NAME OF THE CITY HAMMAMET ORIGINATES FROM THE WORD HAMMAM The town of Hammamet on the Tunisian cost of the Mediterranean has been renowned since ancient times as a place for the local nobility to rest. Roman aristocrats who lived in Carthage came here to spend time in the marble thermae of the town famous for its healing climate. In spring 1943 relentless fighting between Rommel’s African Corps and Allied troops, brought many injured soldiers to the local hospital. The doctors working there noticed that their patients’ wounds healed much more rapidly than in other places. Specialists later discovered that this was due to the influence of the local microclimate and the algae found in the seawater. Tunisians seized upon this idea and built several thalassotherapy centres in Hammamet. But they are still of secondary importance and any meaningful cure still begins with the rejuvenating and restorative visit to the traditional hammam. ■

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FILM

CINEMA TO OPEN THE EYES Vika SMIRNOVA

In the 1990s European film critics started to pay more attention to world cinema. They found that it was no longer possible to speak of ‘national’ cinema, at least as the term has been widely understood. It was true that films retained elements of the local culture; the films of the East, for example, contained references to folk traditions and, more generally, registered a particularly ‘eastern’ aesthetic. What was strikingly clear, though, was that the era of directors working wholly within one national culture was over.

ABBAS KIAROSTAMI ‘I believe in a cinema which offers more possibilities and more time to its viewer - a half-made cinema, an unfinished cinema that is completed by the creative spirit of the viewer, so that all of a sudden we have a hundred films’.

Abbas Kiarostami makes films which merge the simple with the refined, the old fashioned with the contemporary, and which break with narrative with the same ease and fearlessness as Goddard and Antonioni did. Those who expect an oriental exoticism in his films are surprised by his western technique, and those who are familiar with geo-politics are astonished to find a remarkable tranquillity combined with Islamic values and humanistic spirit. European audiences also recognise Kiarostami’s reluctance to present the truth, his preference for the perusal of the image. Many find Kiarostami too ascetic and are disappointed by his concrete building yards, deserts and old jeeps. He has an intentional contempt for effects, especially when compared with the studied aesthetic frescos of Hamdamov or the overpowering opulence of Makhmalbaf. In Kiarostami’s films one simply finds everything necessary to make them easy to understand and comfortable to watch. His actors, as a rule, are not professional. His favourite images include open windows and doors, or a tree in the desert, seen vanishing into the distance through the rear window of a car. Driven by passion and impatience, his heroes travel miles of roads in order to see something. Their quarry is never revealed, but rather hinted at for a brief moment before disappearing at the end of story. In ‘The

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Wind Will Carry Us’, the character that is throughout referred to as “the engineer” turns out to be a photographer who has come to photograph a funeral. The hero of ‘Close Up’, who steals into a stranger’s house passing himself off as the famous film director Makhmalbaf, is in fact a fraud desperate to feel a part of the glamorous world of cinema. Much in Kiarostami’s work is left unsaid, unnamed, the enigmatic images rooted in Zoroastrian symbolism, ancient codes or secret signs. The symbols are in effect empty, they simply offer an invitation to share in the experience of the film. Such a cinema might be considered a simple initiation into the spectacle, a unique principal of story exposition. The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy observed that Kiarostami’s cinema has a pedagogical significance. Kiarostami began as a teacher and, because he knows that cinema changes one’s view of reality, he does not make a division between art and life. This sentiment is most clearly felt in ‘A Taste of Cherry’, the director’s most unpredictable film which was awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1997. The film’s central character, Badii, wants to kill himself. We are not told the reasons for it, just as we never find out if he succeeds. Kiarostami skips the details, and his aim is not to tell a story but to involve us in thoughts about life and death, and perhaps to keep us from suicide. The 50 year-old man travels through the mountainous suburbs of Teheran searching for someone to bury him. During a single day he meets three people: a young Kurdish soldier, an Afghani seminarian and a Turkish taxidermist, and offers all of them money for help in realizing his plan. Upon hearing his request, the soldier runs away. The student tries to change his mind with quotations from the Qur’an. It is only the taxidermist, an old man who, after long conversation and many exhortations, finally agrees because he needs the money to pay for an operation for a sick child. They agree that the man will come to the slope of a certain hill at sunrise, will call out twice, throw some stones on him to be certain that Badii isn’t simply asleep, and, if there is no reply, will fill the grave and take the money left in the jeep parked nearby. At night we see Badii lying in the prepared grave. We hear the sound of a thunderstorm, rain falling on the earth and a dog barking. The hero closes his eyes, and the screen goes black. The next episode is shot with video. In the frame is Kiarostami with his crew filming a group of soldiers running. The camera rests on some blossoming trees swaying in the breeze, then on Badii who lights a cigarette and moves off down the hill, and then onto the soldiers relaxing to the strains of Louis Armstrong. A death imaginary or real, a lurch from cinematographic illusion to the illusion of life itself, these final minutes are what make the film a genuine masterpiece. Nancy identifies this feeling as ‘a fracture passing through all Kiarostami’s movies’. It is the ambiguous place between life and death, old and new, tradition and modernity, between Iran and the

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rest of the world. It is about the mystery of a changing state; the change from certainty to its absence, from existence to death, from pregnancy to birth. In ‘A Taste of Cherry’ the main symbols of such changes are the dark screen and the grave - a calm piece of ancient ground surrounded by an ugly building yard of noisy bulldozers and cranes.

MOHSEN MAKHMALBAF Mohsen Makhmalbaf is perhaps a more populist director than his compatriot Kiarostami. His refinement and aestheticism, his penchant for rich, still-lifes and motionless textures invite comparisons with the tradition established by Soviet masters like Dovzhenko and Parajanov.

Photo: Sam Klebanov

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‘The people of the East have a deeply poetic temperament and are jacks-of-all-trades. An Iranian changes professions fifty times during his lifetime. In the West a man can spend all his life studying a single kind of art, and then others will continue his work. That is why I think that people in the West live the perfect life, and in the East they live a universal life’

Like Kiarostami, the films of Makhmalbaf have the power of initiation; they are suffused with a faith in art, in that ‘it is a lot easier to disarm a policeman with bare hands than to defeat ignorance with culture’. Though before saying these words, Makhmalbaf didn’t shrink from political activism. When he was 17, he was wounded when he attacked a policeman and spent 5 years in prison. Later, disillusioned by active politics, he became a dissident writer, writing several scripts and directing the 1985 film ‘Boycott’, his first significant movie about political prisoners.

Makhmalbaf has made more than 20 feature-length films. Of all the international prizes won by Iranian directors, he won half. Despite this, neither his status as a living classic nor his international success has influenced his creative temperament. Makhmalbaf still makes movies dedicated to vital social themes. ‘Time of Love’, for example, officially forbidden in Iran, is about adultery. ‘The Cyclist’ is about a bike-marathon, in which an Afghan refugee participates

in the hope of saving his sick mother. In ‘A Moment of Innocence’ Makhmalbaf revisits his revolutionary youth, including the scene of the disarming of the police patrol. The policeman from his past turned up unexpectedly for the screen test and was given a role. We see two young actors reproduce two versions of the scene, but after several rehearsals neither version wins. The actor playing the policeman falls in love with a girl and gives her some flowers. Life interrupts the film plot and cancels the past. The film ‘Bread and Flowers’ reveals one of Makhmalbaf’s fundamental ideas about the primal honesty of art, its ability to open eyes and surprise. This is why, despite the elegance of Makhmalbaf’s style, his films are far removed from European formalism. For him there is no pure art, and there can be no talk of pure cinema. Even in such highly stylised films as ‘Gabbeh’ and ‘Persian Carpets’, where every shot opens with the ceremoniousness of a museum display, art is not fetishised. On the contrary, it is reduced to a form of palimpsest, an endless weaving and reweaving. Cobalt and ochre, persimmon and pomegranate, pregnancy and birth, wedding and funeral - all are threads interwoven just as in the making of a carpet. The perfect work of art turns out to be an allegory of eternal incompleteness. The legend about a girl who is constantly forced to postpone her marriage ceremony is a metaphor for life’s refusal to give away fate’s secrets. The feminist undercurrents of ‘Gabbeh’ ultimately yield to the ancient mystery of patriarchy. Something inexplicable holds these women, who patiently bear the family burden. It reduces them with its demands of obedience and forces them to endure, to weave carpets, to give birth to and care for children, and to refuse the call of love. This mystery does not depend on logic. It is like the figure of the horseman with the voice of a wolf that pursues the tribe for ages and waits hopelessly for his bride Gabbeh. He always appears in the distance but never comes closer than the horizon. ■

Stills from Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 'Sex & Philisophy' (2005) top, and 'Kandahar' (2001)below. Courtesy Arthouse.Ru

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REVIEWS

MOMENT, METAPHOR AND MEMORY Christopher GORDON

Abbas Kiarostami has always been drawn to images which stand outside of time while distilling its essence. Thanks to a major exhibition of photographs and a retrospective of Kiarostami’s films organized by the Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 in New York, and seen most recently at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, fans of the director have had a wonderful opportunity to revisit the films for which he is so justly acclaimed, and a chance to discover another side of the artist that is little known. One of the world’s most critically acclaimed film directors, Kiarostami is perhaps best known for his Palme d’Or winning Ta’am-e gilas’ (Taste of Cherry, 1997) in which a man drives around the outskirts of Tehran in his car looking for someone to assist him in his planned suicide. A frequently near-wordless odyssey that offers up life’s most important questions for consideration, it uses an economical language of forms that locates its universal concerns within the confines of an automobile. Like the films, Kiarostami’s photography also features images that frequently revolve around the car, which the artist has described as his “best friend”, for its function as his office, a comfortable space, and a location for contemplation. Using a metaphor found in Persian poetry as well as Japanese haiku, the road is often glimpsed - either through the windscreen of his beloved car, blurred by the

falling rain, or as an abstract element of the landscape in a series of images the filmmaker has collected on long, solitary walks in winter to search for film sets, sometimes covering thousands of miles in the Iranian landscape.

All of the photographs on view in ‘Abbas Kiarostami, Image Maker’ convey a sense of isolation as well as an awareness of the magical, and the spectre of the wanderer - the neorealist as mystic - permeate the images. In photographs that extend and enhance the same intensity of vision as the films but in a more inherently introspective manner, each image is like a small epiphany in which Kiarostami reduces an experience to an expression of moment, memory and metaphor. Kiarostami has said that he regards photography as a purer medium than film, since it is relieved of the burden of narrative or entertainment. And while the films always make a place for reflection, in fact require it, they likewise remain in constant motion offering up 24 different frames per second using all the elements of filmic language to cut from image to image, scene to scene - or to leave viewers with their own thoughts in near total darkness. The photographs, on the other hand, allow a certain autonomy in the direction of attention permitting viewers to move between different worlds at their own pace and in their own order. Offering the possibility of an extended level of engagement with any given picture that borders on the transcendent, Kiarostami’s photography shares an intimate, interior vision of landscape and an understanding of time as the medium we all inhabit that is equalled only by that of Tarkovsky in its acute observation and sensitivity. His work acts as a compelling reminder that all art is essentially created as an offering not only to humankind but to the cosmos, to the moment, to history, and to the invisible. ■ Abbas Kiarostami: Image Maker. University of California, Berkeley Art Museum. July 8 - September 23, 2007

top left: Abbas Kiarostami, from Snow White, 2006 left: Abbas Kiarostami, from Roads and Trees, 2006 top right: Abbas Kiarostami, from Rain, 2006 All images collection of the Iranian Art Foundation, New York. Courtesy University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

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CONTEMPORARY STORYTELLING Jaakko RUSTANIUS The exhibition ‘Time of the Storytellers’ at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki presents fourteen artists from Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia and Uzbekistan. Concentrating on current topics in postSoviet contemporary art in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, it continues a theme begun by the Kiasma show ‘Faster Than History’ in 2004 by artists from the countries in the Baltic region. Many of the works in the exhibition, assembled by Moscow curator Viktor Misiano, follow the styles and techniques that can be seen in contemporary art spaces the world over.

Uniquely St. Petersburg Uniquely Renaissance

Possibly the most visually arresting work in the show is the installation of photographs (Blue Period, 2002-2005) by Elena Vorobyeva and Viktor Vorobyev (KAZ) that present an endless cavalcade of all things kok, a colour of turquoise blue with which, it seems, the locals have painted over all the formerly communist-red surfaces of their country. Kok is truly a beautiful colour. But one cannot help thinking that as nice as it might be to show one’s colours with pride, how might we get on with those people who prefer a slightly different hue? Hamlet Hovsepian’s (ARM) short film works, on the other hand, are extremely subdued. They depict, for example, a person thinking (Thinker I, 1975-76). What does thinking look like? Well, not much like anything in this case. There’s a yawn or two by the main character, but that’s about it. One wonders if the films are really about anything at all, or if they just are, without a meaning or a purpose. Nevertheless, the videos are intense and engaging in a warmly absurd and personal kind of way. Continuing the exploration of the personal, Olga Chernysheva (RUS) weighs in with the video installation ‘Windows’ (2007) featuring dozens of small LCD-screens set on three walls of a small room, glowing in the dark like the windows of a house in the middle of the night. The references to the Hitchcock classic Rear Window, the handbook of every peeping instinct, are apparent. But the intimate touch of the work also brings to mind the fragile lives depicted in the memoirs of Stalin-era dissidents. Of all the works in the show, the ones by Erbossyn Meldibekov (KAZ) are perhaps the most serious, compact and accomplished. They are also spiced with a pinch of black humour. In the sculpture called ‘Gattamelata in Hide of Genghis Khan’ the great horseman has been blown away by the winds of history: all that is left of the cavalryman’s former glory are the stiff ankles of his stallion and a rusty cannon ball. ■ top: Elena Vorobyeva & Viktor Vorobyev Blue Period, 2002-2005, installation with C-prints. Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki.

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PASS TO PARADISE Maria KOROSTELEVA Iljin, Director of Corporate Development for Europe and the Middle East at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, who assembled the team of experts and submitted his collection for historical psychoanalysis. The title of the book was suggested by former Russian deputy minister of culture Pavel Khoroshilov, who offered a pseudo-provocative name which brings to mind the original function of the leaflets which were “passes” for those who wanted to surrender as prisoners or serve in the enemy’s army. During the war, one could be executed simply for possessing such items, which is why it comes as no surprise that very few of them still exist and Iljin himself had to seek them out one by one in Russia, the Ukraine and Israel. A Russian living in Germany, Mr. Iljin is acutely aware of both sides of the matter, for the first time presenting artifacts from the propaganda divisions of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army side by side. As a result, the cynicism of the material, which becomes overwhelming when seen together, is balanced with very detailed commentaries written from an explicitly anti-fascist position. This publication is ideal material for future researchers, for whom the growing distance in time will diminish the fear associated with the subject and the taboos which often hinder rational discussion. And everyone who picks up this book should bear in mind the warning words of Dr. Klaus Kirchner, a German collector of propaganda leaflets, with which his website of the same material begins: ‘The leaflets offered here are weapons of warfare used by governments. Some of these official documents may be regarded as offensive. I do not give approval to the sentiments they present but all have to be shown and preserved because they are part of our common historic record.’ ■ An important new book from Vagrius Publishing offers a glimpse into the dark past by providing a valuable and fascinating look at the ways in which the Germans and Russians portrayed the enemy in propaganda. ‘Pass to Paradise: Super-weapon of the Last World War’ (Moscow, 2007, 232 p.) brings together Nazi and Soviet propaganda leaflets and posters from several collections to provide a visual catalogue of psychological warfare between the two countries. A portion of the material presented in the book is from the Memorial Museum of German Anti-Fascists, opened on the initiative of the GDR in 1985 in a former camp for high-ranking Soviet military prisoners at Krasnogorsk, with the remainder being found in the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History and the private collection of Nic Iljin. Historians Lev Belousov and Alexander Vatlin have classified these fascinating records by type and presented them in chronological order, providing detailed descriptions of every item. The inspiration for the project came from Nic

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SPOTLIGHT

Loggia, Palazzo Ducale, St. Marks, Venice

SERENISSIMA ARABESQUE: VENICE AND ISLAM Dr. Stefano CARBONI The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Institute du Monde Arabe in Paris have co-organized the first two venues of a major international exhibition that explores the close historical, cultural, and especially artistic relationships between Venice and the Islamic neighbouring countries. Thanks to the initiative of the Musei Civici Veneziani ‘Venice and the Islamic World, 828-1797’ is now on view in its most natural venue, the Doge’s Palace in Venice, where the location alone - the Sala dello Scrutinio overlooking Saint Mark’s Piazzetta with its large paintings telling the story of the Serenissima’s conquests also in the Eastern Mediterranean - makes a particularly poignant and visually arresting installation. The organization of the works on display, which include virtually all mediums, develops from an introductory area where the three most important reasons for such a close relationship with the Islamic world are explained through several objects: Continuous trade, intelligent diplomacy, and a pragmatic approach to religious issues. The display cases, which help creating the spatial division within the large Sala dello Scrutinio, follow a loose chronological itinerary that tells in particular the story of Venice’s links with the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria (13th- early 16th centuries); with the Safavids of Iran (16th-17th centuries); and, most of all, with the Ottomans of Turkey and Eastern Europe (15th-19th centuries). A special area is devoted to late 15th and early 16th century Venetian painting under Giovanni and Gentile Bellini and their pupils Giovanni Mansueti and Vittore Carpaccio, starting with the famous portrait of the ottoman sultan Mehmet the Conqueror made by Gentile during his two-year long visit at the court in Istanbul. Gentile is also the artist who created the portrait of doge Giovanni Mocenigo (r. 1478-85) dressed in a white coat against a gold background and wearing the corno dogale (the ‘doge’s horned hat’), which is tailored with a Venetian fabric inspired by Ottoman patterns (fig. 1). Doge Mocenigo was the Venetian ruler who, with acute diplomatic intelligence, sent Gentile as a sort of cultural and artistic attaché to Istanbul

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following Mehmet II’s request to have a ‘good painter’ at his court. The Ottoman sultan’s taste for portraiture in the late 15th century was only the beginning of an interest for this unusual form of painting in the Islamic world at the Turkish court, as proved, for example, by a series of sixteen paintings depicting all the rulers of the Ottoman House during the second half of the 16th century (fig. 2). The cycle, today in Munich but certainly commissioned by a school close to Veronese by or for the Ottoman court, possibly as a gift of the Serenissima to the sultan, includes the portraits — most of them fanciful because their likeness was obviously unknown to the Venetian painters - of the Ottoman rulers from the founder of the dynasty Uthman (late 13th century) to Murad III (r. 1574-95) who was the current sultan at the time of production of this series. Venice is world famous for its artistic glass production, so this medium plays an important part in the exhibition. Little known, and therefore explained in the exhibition, is the fact that the Venetian production of enameled and sometimes gilded beakers made for a European market at the end of the 13th century depended entirely on a technical, technological, and artistic transfer of information that came from the Islamic world, in particular from Syria and Egypt under the Mamluks. Islamic artistic glass was by far the predominant force — and the most traded — in the medieval world from the 8th through the 14th centuries, after which the Venetian glassmakers learnt many of its secrets and took over in the course of the 15th century. Mamluk enameled and gilded glass represents one of the undisputed high points in the production of artistic glass worldwide (fig. 3). Once Venice assumed the leading role in the glass business and trade and at the same the industry declined in the Near East, we can witness a reversed trend: It is Venice that exports its glass products to Cairo, Istanbul, and many other Islamic cities. A great example of this westeast trade is the so-called cesendello, a cylindrical hanging lamp often decorated with enamels and gold that was very much in demand at the Ottoman court, to the point that a specific order from 1579 includes six hundred of these lamps together with an accompanying drawing. The exhibition is so rich in content that it is impossible to mention all the most significant works of art in the brief space of this note. Two objects, however, are so exceptional that they could fill the exhibition space by themselves. One is the Cattedra di San Pietro (fig. 4), a marble chair usually installed in the Church of San Pietro di Castello, the first seat of the Venetian patriarch. A pious legend wants it to be the very chair where Saint Peter, the first patriarch, sat in Antioch but its backrest is in reality an 11th12th century tombstone inscribed in Arabic kufic script with verses from the Qur’an. Apart from its symbolic significance, this tombstone represents one of the earliest examples of Islamic art found in Venice today. The second work is also the largest and most spectacular in the exhibition: A ‘Mameluke’ carpet woven in Cairo in the mid-16th century, 9.70 meters long and 3.75 meters wide. Recently discovered, it belongs to the Arciconfraternita of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, one of the wealthiest

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Venetian confraternities throughout the centuries, which ordered it to cover a long and narrow table in the Sala dell’Albergo of the Scuola Grande, the famous room painted by Jacopo Tintoretto on the second floor of the building. The table, built to accommodate the carpet, is still in the room and one can easily picture in one’s mind its spectacular medallion patterns displayed on the side of the table in front of the viewer.

With its multiple artistic and cultural layers and its broad chronological and geographical range, ‘Venice and the Islamic World’ will hopefully contribute to a better understanding not only of Islamic art but also of the continuous and overall constructive relationship between Venice, a great European western power, and the Muslim world. ■ 'Venice and Islam 828 - 1797' is on view at the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, through November 25th. fig. 1 (top left): Gentile Bellini (Venice, 1429 - 1507) Portrait of doge Giovanni Mocenigo Venice, 1478-1479 or 1481-1485. Tempera on wood panel Museo Correr, Venice fig. 2 (left): Veronese artist or School of Paolo Veronese [attr.] Orkhan II, Mahomet I, Murad III, Bayazid II Venice, end of 16th cent. Oil on canvas Bayerische Staatgemäldesammlungen, Munich fig. 3 (opposite page): Mosque Lamp Cairo, c.1329-1335 Blown glass, with enamelling and gilding. Previously in the mosque or madrasah of Emir Qawsun. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York fig. 4 (above):The Throne of St. Peter Eastern Mediterreanean. Stele with Arabic inscription (9th-11th cent.). Piece assembled some time later. Marble and Sandstone Church of San Pietro di Castello, Venice

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PREVIEW

THE TENT OF THE EMIR OF BUKHARA From the storage rooms of the Hermitage The magnificent Bukhara tent was presented to emperor Alexander III by the Emir of Bukhara on January 4th 1893. It consists of 15 separate vertical sections with poles sewn into the panels. The ends of these poles are covered with leather and have loops made of coloured threads and wooden ‘buttons’ used to connect the different parts of the tent to the ceiling. Each part of the wall is decorated with traditional ornaments and in the centre of each wall can be found insets which imitate windows. Made using different techniques they include silk cross-stitch embroidery and a motif of four bouquets embroidered with silver and golden threads on dark crimson velvet. Two real tracery windows have holes cut from white and pink silk. From the interior of the tent the windows are covered with blue and green silk which was probably bought in Russia. In the 1880s the silk trade between Central Asia and Russia was extensive. ■ Reconstruction by L. Y. Kulakova

Svetlana ADAKSINA

The tent of the Emir of Bukhara has a unique design, being a complete, portable palace with several rooms, storage areas, courtyards and corridors. The Bukhara tent will be the chief item at the Hermitage exhibition of Islamic art due to open February 14th 2008. Never before presented in its completely assembled state, it will be installed in the Nicolas Hall of the Hermitage. Visitors will have a rare opportunity to see inside, and the rooms within will contain displays of luxurious oriental robes, jewellery and other objects made by Central Asian craftsmen of the same period. Entitled ‘In the Palaces and in the Tents. The Islamic World from Europe to China’ the exhibition is dedicated to examining the links between Islamic culture and its European and Chinese neighbours. One of the main goals of the exhibition is to show the art of Islam in all its variety as represented in the Hermitage collections. A special section will be devoted to contacts between the Islamic world and Russia, including a display of diplomatic gifts and military trophies. ■ Anton PRITULA

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HERMITAGE 20\21 Dmitry OZERKOV ‘In Russia, the old has the status of high, and the new - low. Write any rubbish in Old Russian script and it will be taken as a spiritual text, state the most interesting idea with contemporary language and you will be cursed.’ - Marat Gelman Disgusting and incomprehensible are the two most common epithets awaiting works of contemporary art wherever they are seen. The forbidden fruit of the 21st century, the average viewer often reacts to it with a mixture of fear and hidden curiosity, by turns attracted and repulsed. Art critics, along with everyone else, have long regarded it with a mixture of indulgence and condescension; inertly refusing to consider modern artists for inclusion in the same museum collections as old masters and classic Modernists. The paradox is that in today’s world, any art museum wishing to appear confident can only do so if it collects and exhibits contemporary art and the Hermitage is no exception. The most difficult question that arises is what art to show today and which principals to follow when exhibiting it. Throughout its long history the Hermitage has always collected contemporary art: Catherine the Great bought works by Hakkert and Reynolds; Nicolas I ordered portraits from Franz Kruger; and the rulers of the Soviet period collected the work of artists from other Socialist countries. In each period they were not simply contemporary artists, but names representative of mythologies that seemed to be relevant and progressive; that could be said to have a future. The aim of a museum is not the wholesale preservation and exhibition of everything which is made during a specific period, but rather the discovery and protection of those few works

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which will be precious and significant tomorrow. So it is quite logical that when collecting contemporary art a philosophy is needed as well as principals to assess the quality of the artwork, from which follows a definition of which art is good and potentially significant and which is less so. In Russia during the 1960s and 70s everything was clear: communist ideology dictated which artworks were important for the period on its journey from one phase of development to the next. ‘Bourgeois’ art was therefore worthless, while ‘non-bourgeois’ art was given the opportunity to travel into the future as a part of the museum. Today there is no unambiguously bad art just as clearly as there is no unequivocally good art. The lack of any unmistakable criterions of valuation and selection brought the state museums to a halt. And while over the past fifteen years many artists have donated work to the Hermitage - among them such outstanding names as Louise Bourgeois, Ilya Kabakov, Robert Raushenberg, and Fernando Botero - very few people understand what contemporary art is, and so there has never been a clear and accurate understanding of how great these artists actually are. In part, this is due to one of the most significant problems facing many Russian museums today; the lack of a common position from which to coordinate collection and exhibition practices in the field of contemporary art. We shut our eyes to the lack of focus and strategy, and the next day wake to find that we have lived through a dark and tenuous transitional époque. Today the Hermitage is actively developing the strategies that will be used to build and maintain 20th and 21st century collections. The place of a sweeping ideology should be taken by philosophy, because the only honest approach in the absence of any real method is to initiate a philosophical debate about what must be collected and exhibited, and why. At the beginning of the year Dr. Piotrovsky established Hermitage 20\21 to address pre-

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cisely these concerns. This autumn, the Hermitage will present the group’s first project - ‘USA Today’ - an exhibition of work by young American artists from London’s Saatchi Gallery. The Saatchi Gallery was chosen as a partner for the inaugural exhibitions because it consistently collects and exhibits the most relevant and challenging contemporary art according to a welldefined strategy. It is one of the world’s most significant galleries of young art, and, by exhibiting work from extraordinarily talented and relatively unknown young artists, it is responsible for establishing the careers of the future luminaries of world art. Like a patchwork quilt of the 50 American states, ‘USA today’ is the most recent project from the Saatchi Gallery and brings together a group of artists living and working in the USA that represents the multifaceted array of contemporary styles and tendencies. The first version of ‘USA Today’ was shown in 2006 at the Royal Academy in London. The Hermitage and the Saatchi Gallery will together present a new selection, version 2.0, including new works exhibited for the first time. The 21 artists, whose names are known today only by a select few, pay homage to

Expressionism (Dana Schutz), Pop-art (Mark Grotjhan), Feminist art (Wangechi Mutu), Installations (Yon Pylypchuk), and Photorealism (Florian Maier-Aichen). At the dawn of the 21st century, the Hermitage is presenting an exhibition of 21 of the future stars of the third millennium, offering visitors the chance to participate in a dialogue about art and thereby the creation of a new canon. ■ ‘USA Today’, The State Hermitage Museum, General Staff Building, October 24th 2007 - January 13th 2008 page 66: Adam Cvijanovic, Love Poem (10 minutes after the end of gravity), 2005, Flashe and housepaint on Tyvek, 426.7 x 228.6 cm. above left: Aleksandra Mir, Cold War, 2005, felt tip pen on paper, 305 x 483 cm. above right: Jon Pylypchuk, Hopefully I will live through this with a little dignity, 2005, mixed media, Dimensions variable. page 68 top left: Huma Bhabha, Untitled. 2006, clay, wire, plastic, paint, 114.3 x 243.8 x 152.4 cm. page 68 bottom left: Stephen G. Rhodes, Ssspecific Object, 2006, rubber, 213.36 x 91.44 x 76.2 cm. All images courtesy the Saatchi Gallery, London.

SAATCHI’S CHOICE – USA TODAY AT THE HERMITAGE Matt BROWN British art collector Charles Saatchi is one of the world’s most important supporters of emerging talent. On the eve of the upcoming ‘USA Today’ exhibition at the Hermitage, which is drawn from his collection, the reclusive collector took a moment to tell the magazine his thoughts on new art and about future projects.

When the Hermitage held an Andy Warhol exhibition in 2000, it marked a turning point for the great museum that culminated earlier this year with the creation of Hermitage 20/21, a program to show major private and public collections of recent and contemporary art in the General Staff Building.

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The new exhibition project will be inaugurated in October with ‘USA Today’, a collection of works by 40 young American artists working with post 9/11 themes. Norman Rosenthal, exhibitions secretary at London’s Royal Academy, where a different version of USA Today was shown last year, wrote that the exhibition reflects young America’s reaction to the transition from “The Iron Curtain” to “The War on Terror” and its ‘horrendous and divisive consequences.’

From “The Iron Curtain” to “The War on Terror”

‘In this selection of the work of young American artists, each confronts not only their own fundamental questions, but also global poverty, inequality and population migration, not to men-

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tion the gigantic environmental problems that confront the world as a whole,’ Rosenthal wrote. ‘Gay politics, women’s politics, Islamic politics and black politics all have their echo here.’ It is a bold vision and one that belongs to Charles Saatchi, the influential British art collector from whose collection ‘USA Today’ is drawn. Saatchi, an enigmatic figure whose voracious appetite for new art is the perfect fit for the Hermitage’s ambitious journey from the 20th to the 21st centuries, restricts his personal exposure to the media and the public, preferring his often sensational exhibitions to speak for him and his taste. Saatchi’s eager appreciation of new art caught the public eye with his patronage of the Young British Artists or YBA group in the 1990s. Saatchi’s support for and promotion of British artists took on international notoriety with ‘Sensation, an exhibition‘ from the Saatchi collection that opened at the Royal Academy in November 1997.

‘I hope the show as a whole gives an idea of how American artists are thinking,’ Saatchi said. ‘American art of this decade has a very different tone and approach to American art of the last 20 years.’ Many of the artists are unknown to Russian audiences and will be showing their work in Russia for the first time, something that gives Saatchi particular satisfaction.

In more recent years, Saatchi has turned his atten‘The artists involved are thrilled to be showing at tion to a range of themes. A cycle of ongoing exhithe Hermitage and hope that a Russian audience will ’American art is bitions called ‘The Triumph of Painting’ showcases be interested in very current U.S. art,’ he said. fundamental to all painting in all its forms, eschewing installations, culture of the last sculpture and other media. Saatchi’s discovery of a Previous exhibitions of American art at the 50 years...’ wealth of new artistic talent in China has lead to Hermitage have proved a great success with Russian ‘The Revolution Continues: New Chinese Art’. And audiences, and Saatchi says he thinks he knows why. Saatchi’s love affair with American artists, initiated with purchases of work by Jeff Koons and others at the begin‘Because American art is fundamental to all culture of the last 50 ning of his collecting career, continues with ‘USA Today’. years and has a very wide appeal and fascination,’ he said. Speaking to Hermitage Magazine, Charles Saatchi said that USA Today continues a thread of contemporary American art that began at the Hermitage with the Warhol exhibition seven years ago and followed with shows by other modern American masters such as Louise Bourgeois, Cy Twombly, Robert Mapplethorpe and Willem de Kooning.

Saatchi’s collaboration with the Hermitage is among a host of projects that he has been occupied with in recent months. Early in 2008, work will be completed on his new gallery being converted from the Duke of York’s HQ building near London’s King’s Road. Another project is Saatchi’s website: not just simply window dressing for his gallery or collection, but an interactive portal for new artists from around the world to contact each other and buyers, by registering themselves and displaying their work online. The web site features sophisticated translation software with world languages - including Russian - to enable artists and collectors to use it to cross barriers. However, the web site has yet to catch on in great numbers among Russia’s cutting-edge artists. Saatchi said he hopes that will change. ‘We have very little work from Russian artists or students on the site and hope that more will use us as a showcase for their work around the world,’ he said. Indeed, despite his reputation as a ravenous consumer of new art from all over the world, Saatchi admits that he has never bought any Russian art. ‘I know very little about Russian art or its market but I am sure there will be some exciting contemporary artists that will be emerging,’ Saatchi said, adding that he hopes the new website, which he says he monitors closely, could be his introduction to young Russian artists. Asked what he thinks of new Russian art, Charles Saatchi is as frank as ever: ‘Ask me in a year after Russian artists have had a chance to load their work on the site.’ ■

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Courtesy the Saatchi Gallery, London

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near Dresden in 1938. At the end of th secon world war, this archive was brought to Leningrad by the Soviet Army with the score eventually ending up in Yerevan. It was returned to Hamburg in 1999. Significant for being the first European opera on a Russian theme, it was written by Matheson while he was Secretary to the British Ambassador in Hamburg. He was personally involved in much of the negotiations concerning changes in the balance of power in the Baltic following Peter I’s victory over Charles XII at Poltava and Hamburg’s desire to neutralise a new threat from Denmark by promoting a new “entente” between Russia and Sweden. These alliances are reflected in the opera, which bears very little relation to events from the time of Godunov himself in the early 17th century. Presenting a virtually unknown baroque version of ‘Boris Goudenow’ in today’s Russia is a serious challenge. The figure of Boris is associated in Russian historical and social consciousness with the Time of Troubles, and the false Dmitry’s claims to the throne; and in Russian cultural consciousness, with Pushkin’s play and Mussorgsky’s opera, works which have together created a much-treasured cultural icon. The staging of

BORIS GODUNOV REDISCOVERED The Hermitage Theatre is to host the Russian premier of ‘Boris Goudenow, or the Throne Acquired Through Cunning’, an opera by German composer Johann Mattheson (1681-1764), as part of this year’s 10th International Early Music Festival. The theatre building is the oldest structure in the Hermitage and the theatre itself was commissioned by Catherine II and built between 17831785 by architect Giacomo Quarenghi. Noted for the harmony and balance of its architectural forms and as a beautiful example of late 18th century Russian Classicism, it is the perfect venue for the staging of an historically important opera which has had a long and interesting journey to the Russian stage. Composed in Hamburg in 1710, ‘Boris Goudenow’ was never performed during the composer’s lifetime and the manuscript of the opera remained in Hamburg for over 200 years, until it was transferred as part of the Hamburg rare manuscripts archive to a castle

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Photographs from the premiere of ‘Boris Goudenow’ at the St Pauli Theatre Hamburg, 2007

Mattheson’s ‘Boris’ marks a radical new departure in Russian theatre and is a challenge to both historical perceptions and contemporary theatrical expectations. The Soviet Union’s theatrical and musical life was focused entirely on academic performance of 19th and 20th century repertoire - mainly Russian. This remains true of Russia today. The rapid development of authentic performance and early music, and the spectacular baroque opera productions which have resulted from this in the West, have so far completely by-passed Russian audiences. Bringing together Russian and European musicians and dancers, the production has as its musical director Andrey Reshetin and The Catherine the Great Orchestra, with staging and choreography by Klaus Abromeit and costume and set design by Stefan

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Dietrich. The opera premiered in Hamburg this August and will also be seen in Moscow following the Russian premier in St. Petersburg on October 26th. Founded in St. Petersburg in 1998, the International Early Music festival is the principal promoter of pre-19th century music in the Russian Federation which takes place every September in St Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod and other cities across Russia. Festival concerts present the musical legacy of the Middle-Ages, Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. Singlehandedly responsible for the revival of early music in post-Soviet Russia, the festival has presented some of the most important names in the world of early music including Jordi Savall, Gerard Lesne, and Emma Kirkby. ■