Deniz Beyazit

Archaeopress Archaeology www.archaeopress.com Archaeopress Le décor architectural artuqide en pierre de Mardin placé dans son contexte régional contribution à l'histoire du décor géométrique et végétal du Proche-Orient des XIIe-XVe siècles Deniz Beyazit Beyazit Le décor architectural artuqide en pierre de Mardin Les Artuqides comptaient parmi les nombreuses dynasties successeurs (« successor states ») qui sont arrivées simultanément au pouvoir à la suite de l'invasion des Turcs Seljuqides dont les armées avaient conquis, au cours des XI e et XII e siècles, de vastes territoires s'étendant des limites de la Chine occidentale à la Méditerranée orientale. Bien que le pouvoir politique des Artuqides fût limité à une petite région, le Diyar Bakr-au nord de la Jazira correspondant à la Turquie du sud-est-l'héritage artistique qu'ils ont légué est pourtant remarquable. Les nombreux monuments artuqides et leur décor architectural, créés sur une période de trois siècles (du début du XII e au début du XV e siècle), témoignent de la maîtrise de la sculpture et de la taille de pierre qui se reflète dans des motifs et compositions complexes. Mardin, à l'instar des autres centres artuqides d'Amid, Mayyafariqin et Hisn Kayfa, se situe dans une zone englobant diverses traditions artistiques chrétiennes et musulmanes. Ce livre détermine le contexte artistique de Mardin par rapport aux autres centres artuqides, ainsi qu'aux zones voisines comprenant l'Anatolie, le Caucase, l'Iran, l'Iraq, la Syrie et l'Egypte. Durant la période artuqide, un style original se développe à Mardin ainsi qu'au Diyar Bakr. Ce style puise lui-même sa source dans une école locale bien établie de tailleur de pierre. Bien qu'étant liée aux précédentes traditions chrétiennes du Tur 'Abdin syriaque et à la Syrie de l'Antiquité tardive, la décoration se compare également avec les monuments de l'Arménie et de la Géorgie, et résonne avec les traditions artistiques observées dans les régions contrôlées par les pouvoirs régionaux musulmans de l'époque : les Zangides, Ayyubides, Mamelukes, Grands Seldjuqides, Seldjuqides d'Anatolie et les Ilkhanides. Les monuments artuqides reflètent l'esprit d'une époque durant laquelle la Jazira était une sorte de plateforme artistique qui favorisait la circulation d'idées aboutissant à de nouvelles inspirations, et où souverains et mécènes curieux et réceptifs à de nouvelles créations encourageaient les efforts créatifs des architectes, des tailleurs de pierre et des artisans. Les monuments décorés témoignent aussi de la richesse économique et de la volonté de la classe dirigeante d'investir cette fortune dans la construction de monuments sophistiqués dans le but de s'élever socialement et d'accroître son pouvoir politique.

Few texts are more ubiquitous in manuscript collections and libraries throughout the Sunni world than Muḥammad b. Sulaymān al-Jazūlī's (d. 870/1465) Dalāʾil al-khayrāt wa-shawāriq al-anwār fī dhikr al-ṣalāt ʿalā al-Nabī al-mukhtār (Proofs of Good Deeds and Brilliant Burst of Light in the Remembrance of Blessings on the Chosen Prophet). The exact date of the work is unclear; however, studies have shown that al-Jazūlī started compiling the Dalāʾil and recruiting disciples either in the 1430s or, more likely, in the 1450s.1 To this end, al-Jazūlī drew on renowned ḥadīth collections and devotional texts and prayers (ṣalawāt).2 Over the following centuries, illustrations of the Rawḍat al-Mubārak (Blessed Garden) and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, for which the work is known, were added to manuscript copies of the Dalāʾil.3 These illustrations have become the most visible element of the work in scholarly and popular publications alike. Despite its ubiquity and popularity, the history of the Dalāʾil, its manuscript and print productions, its transregional circulation, and its diverse compositions have not been extensively studied and are not well understood.4 This state

This book is a compilation of selected papers presented at a conference held in Istanbul in May 2007, treating history, coinage, architecture, and art of the book. It gathers new scholarship about the remote, previously less researched eastern parts of modern Turkey, from the final decades of Ilkhanid rule to the eve of the Ottoman empire. This is a very complex period and the lack of sources creates a serious handicap for its understanding. Much of the difficulty in dealing with the history of this region originates from its extreme political fragmentation and the rise of numerous local dynasties following the collapse of Mongol power in the mid-14th century. This book shows that cultural life flourished at various local centres despite long periods of political instability and discord in eastern Anatolia as it became embroiled in the ongoing conflicts between such states as the Mamluks and Ilkhanids, and later, the Timurids and Ottomans.

This region, with its fertile lands and wealthy provincial centers, attracted the attention of the greater regional powers based in Egypt-Syria, Iran and western Anatolia. But the mountainous, somewhat harsh topography and considerable geographical distance from the centres of empires made it an area difficult to control from afar. Thus, local rulers and principalities, dependent, semi-dependent, and sometimes autonomous vassals thrived. Except where the Turkmen Aqquyunlu rulers managed to create their own empire, this area was never in the hands of a single dynasty. This picture of various factions is reflected in the artistic material which has no uniform and homogenous artistic style. Various traditions co-exist, so the area might best be defined as a cultural and artistic platform, where ideas circulated, emerged and interacted.

Rising from humble origins as Turkish tribesmen, the powerful and culturally prolific Seljuqs—an empire whose reach extended from Central Asia to the eastern Mediterranean—dominated the Islamic world from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs examines the roots and impact of this formidable dynasty, featuring some 250 objects as evidence of the artistic and cultural flowering that occurred under Seljuq rule. Beginning with an historical overview of the empire, from its early advances into Iran and northern Iraq to the spread of its dominion into Anatolia and northern Syria, Court and Cosmos illuminates the splendor of Seljuq court life. This aura of luxury extended to a sophisticated new elite, as both sultans and city dwellers acquired dazzling glazed ceramics and metalwork lavishly inlaid with silver, copper, and gold. Advances in science and technology found parallels in a flourishing interest in the arts of the book, underscoring ...

This article discusses The Met’s unpublished Dalāʾil al-khayrāt—2017.301—(MS New York, TMMA 2017.301), together with a group of comparable manuscripts. The earliest known dated manuscript within the corpus, it introduces several iconographic elements that are new to the Dalāʾil, and which compare with the traditions developing in the Mashriq and the Ottoman world in particular. The article discusses Dalāʾil production in seventeenth-century North Africa and its development in the Ottoman provinces, Tunisia, and/or Algeria. The manuscripts illustrate how an Ottoman visual apparatus—among which the theme of the holy sanctuaries at Mecca and Medina, appearing for the first time in MS New York, TMMA 2017.301—is established for Muhammadan devotion in Maghribī Dalāʾils. The manuscripts belong to the broader historic, social, and artistic contexts of Ottoman North Africa. Our analysis captures the complex dynamics of Ottomanization of the North African provinces of the Ottoman Empire, rema...

This article analyzes a little-known painting of the sanctuary at Mecca in the Uppsala University Library, Sweden—one of the most sophisticated depictions of its kind. Datable to ca. 1700 and attributable to Cairo, the painting is among the earliest known depictions of the Holy Places in an illusionistic style with a bird’s-eye view, composed according to linear perspective. With minutely rendered details accompanied by more than seventy inscriptions, the work functions as an early map of Mecca. The Uppsala Mecca painting exemplifies the complexity of artistic exchange between Europe and the Ottoman world, which yielded highly original results. This discussion sheds light on the long, hybrid journey of Ottoman art towards realism, applied to a large-scale topographic landscape composition. The work marks a turning point in the history of Mecca painting and served as a model for European prints, through which the imagery spread all the way to East Asia. This study attempts to unravel...