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Calligraphy and Islamic culture. By Annemarie Schimmel (Hagop Kevorkian Series on Near Eastern Art and Civilization) pp. xiv, 264. New York and London, New York University, 1984. \ $52.00.
Martin Lings
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society / Volume 117 / Issue 02 / April 1985, pp 199 - 200 DOI: 10.1017/S0035869X00138511, Published online: 15 March 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/ abstract_S0035869X00138511 How to cite this article: Martin Lings (1985). Review of Annemarie Schimmel 'Calligraphy and Islamic culture' Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 117, pp 199-200 doi:10.1017/ S0035869X00138511 Request Permissions : Click here

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CALLIGRAPHY AND ISLAMIC CULTURE. By ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL (Hagop Kevorkian Series on

Near Eastern Art and Civilization) pp. xiv, 264. New York and London, New York University, 1984. $52.00. This book with its four chapters perpetuates four Kevorkian Lectures given at New York University in 1982. We miss here "the great number of colour slides" which accompanied the lectures, but their absence is partly made up for by plates and also by the many calligraphic inscriptions which are lavishly scattered throughout the text. The first chapter is an informative and well documented study of the main styles of calligraphy. It is followed by "Calligraphers, Dervishes and Kings" which, as its title suggests, is mainly about persons. "Many masters apparently almost every famous calligrapher in Ottoman Turkey were in one way or another connected with a Sufi order." One of the greatest, Shaykh Hamdullah, so entitled because he was the head of an order, taught calligraphy to the Sultan Bayezid II, "who did not mind placing the cushions in the right position or holding his inkstand". Nearly two centuries later Mustafa II did the same for Hafiz Osman, who was also a Sufi; and when on one occasion the Sultan remarked: "There will never be another Hafiz Osman" the calligrapher replied: "Your Majesty, as long as there are kings that hold the inkstand for their teacher, there will be many more Hafiz Osmans" a remark not without profundity, and sad for us, because it partly accounts for the extreme artistic poverty of our day. In this chapter, however, the author is perhaps less concerned with kings as patrons than with kings as calligraphers, and she mentions royal adepts of the art not only in Turkey "where almost every other ruler is known as a calligrapher", but also in Persia and in India, as well as in the Arab Near East. Nor must calligraphy be thought of as an exclusively male prerogative, either in general or in the royal families. "One of the leading calligraphers in the Middle Ages, who formed a link between Ibn al-Bawwab and Yaqut, was Zaynab Shuhda... and if emperors are celebrated as good masters of the craft, princesses did not lag behind." Chapter III, "Calligraphy and Mysticism", opens with the seeming paradox of the importance of the Book in Islam and the unletteredness of Muhammad. "The mystics loved to dwell on the illiteracy of the Prophet; and proud as they were of the revealed Book, they also realized that letters might be a veil between themselves and the immediate experience of the Divine, for which the mind and the heart have to be like a blank page." This same idea is taken up again later in the mention of SanaTs likening of the true mystic to "the alifof bism", for the alif is the first letter of ism (name) and it experiences fana' (extinction) by disappearing when bi-ism (in the name) is contracted to bism. As to the letters in themselves, that is, when they are not "extinguished", the 10th century Sufi Niffari is quoted as saying that they are "pure otherness" in relation to God, which means that they are symbols of illusion; and the author reminds us that Yiiniis Emre defined the mystic's goal as being "to drown in the ocean, to be neither an alif nor a mm nor a ddl." The letters have none the less, as we are shown, a symbolism which transcends this "drowning"; in a poem, one of the most sublime in the poetry of the Arabs, which begins: "We were lofty letters not yet pronounced", Ibn 'Arab! refers to al-a'yan ath-thabitah, the immutable prototypes of all beings contained in the Divine Essence, prototypes which are also, as ultimate plenitudes, the supreme aim and end of mysticism. Such considerations as these however, both the transcendent and the negative, remain in the background. The chapter is mainly concerned with the unfolding of the created universe, that is, with the actualized "letters" and with the "pen" which they presuppose. "The Pen, which was able to write everything on the Tablet, is according to a Prophetic tradition, thefirstthing that God created. . . Ibn Abi Jumhur, who closely follows Ibn 'Arabrs system, considers the Divine Throne, the Pen, the Universal Intellect and the primum mobile as one and the same, whereas much earlier the Ikhwan as-Safa had interpreted 'aql (Intellect) as God's 'book written by His Hand'. . . It is therefore not suprising that calligraphers would regard their own profession as highly sacred, since it reflects in some way the actions of the primordial Pen." But in another sense the mystic is mysteriously identical with the Pen, "for the hadith says: 'man's heart is between two of God'sfingers,and He turns it as He pleases'." The author goes on to give us various Sufi interpretations of the symbolic meaning of the different letters. There is also mention of the Sufi "Golden Alphabets"; and the chapter overflows into an appendix which consists of a Chishtiyya "mystical alphabet"

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of correspondences between the Divine Names, the planes of creation which they govern, the letters, and the lunar mansions. The last chapter is "Calligraphy and Poetry," and in my opinion it is the least successful of the four. The imagery offered by script does not always lead to the best poetry, and many of the similes and metaphors are far fetched. I, for one, find it difficult to accept the letter nun as a portrayal of the eyebrow of the beloved, who would have to be standing on her head for the image to be plausible. Not that no good poetry is quoted; but whenever it is, one feels that there could and should have been more. This chapter is none the less a relevant complement to the three others. All four are remarkable for their documentation. The theme which runs throughout is summed up in the sentence: "The art of writing is an essential part of the entire culture of the Muslim world" (and it must be clearly understood that the word "art" means here what it says). If anyone presumed to disagree with the author, he would soon be battered to the ground by the onslaught of overwhelming proofs which she gives from Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto and Malayalam sources; and doubtless many of those who already agreed with her will have to admit, after reading what she quotes, that the Muslim love of calligraphy goes even further than they had supposed. "Popular stories also, not only the Arabian Nights, show the high appreciation of calligraphy even among the illiterate: the famous Turkish master Hafiz Osman had once forgotten his purse and, returning from Istanbul to Uskiidar, paid the ferryman with an artistically written waw." Admittedly a calligraphic art exists for every sacred language and for almost every liturgical language, but there are degrees in the intensity of men's interest in it and it would not be easy to find a parallel to this last anecdote in the West, or anywhere else outside the world of Islam except in China and Japan.
MARTIN LINGS

MUQARNAS: A N ANNUAL ON ISLAMIC ART AND ARCHITECTURE, VOL. 2. THE ART OF THE

MAMLUKS. Edited by OLEG GRABAR. pp. x, 181, 140 pis., 33 figs. New Haven etc, Yale University Press, 1984, 35.00 The second volume of Muqarnas consists of papers given at the symposium held in conjunction with the notable exhibition of Mamluk Art organised by Esin Atil in 1981 in Washington. These are unrelated to the papers published in the first issue and one might have hoped that they would be published in their own right as an entity leaving Muqarnas to develop a personality as a critical journal. There is a desperate need for a forum of debate in the world of Islamic Art studies where ideas could be subjected to critical analysis. It is not enough for the results of research to be embalmed in an annual shrine. Book reviews are inadequate, if not dead ends, simply because there is no space in which to develop criticism. A monthly journal might generate exchanges of ideas which an annual, itself naked of scholarly reviews or notes on work in progress, cannot achieve. Some of Dr Lapidus' strictures in this issue might then be met since nothing tautens thought better than the thrust and parry of debate. This is not to say that this issue is barren. Louise Mackie's paper on Mamluk silks is cogently argued and offers important evidence of the influence of fabric design on other decorative arts: a force which has been seriously underestimated in the past. David James' study of the Koran of Rukn al Din Baybars advances knowledge of Mamluk illuminated manuscripts and their craftsmanship while Mamluk ceramics are the subject of reports on work in progress by George Scanlon and Marilyn Jenkins. David King surveys the astronomy of the period with precisely that lively speculative approach which calls for continuing debate as when he suggests that the orientation of mosques in Tripoli could be based on that of their relatively distant models. The Cairene architectural and population papers are the result of important research but they are overshadowed by more recent publications. But Atil's own paper on late 15th-century Mamluk painting with its discussion of the importance of Turcoman artists cries out for an exchange of views even more loudly than that of David King.