Richard P McClary
University of York, History of Art, Faculty Member
- Early and Medieval Islamic Art and Architecture, Medieval Islamic and Turco-Iranian world, Indo-Islamic Art and Architecture, Islamic ceramics, Archaeology of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan, and 5 moreCentral Asia, Medieval Islamic Ceramics, Persian and Indian Miniature Painting, Islamic History, and Seljuks (Islamic History)edit
- I am a senior lecturer in Islamic art and architecture at the University of York and welcome doctoral applications fr... moreI am a senior lecturer in Islamic art and architecture at the University of York and welcome doctoral applications from anyone interested in conducting research in fields related to my research.
I completed my PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2015 with a thesis entitled: The Rum Seljuq Architecture of Anatolia 1170-1220. This was published as a monograph in 2017 by Edinburgh University Press in their 'Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art' series.
I was awarded a three year Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship in 2015, based at the University of Edinburgh, to research the development of Qarakhanid funerary architecture in Central Asia. The resulting monograph is now in press with Edinburgh University Press and will be out in 2020edit - Dr. Alain Georgeedit
I am delighted to announce that my new monograph on Mina'i Ware has just been published.
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only briefly in the introduction and chapter 12. This, despite the fact that it is, as the editor makes clear, generally sidelined in scholarship on the Persian-speaking world. Tajikistan, which normally receives short shrift in histories... more
only briefly in the introduction and chapter 12. This, despite the fact that it is, as the editor makes clear, generally sidelined in scholarship on the Persian-speaking world. Tajikistan, which normally receives short shrift in histories of Persian literature, and hence could be considered marginal, is also ignored. The attempt to de-centre Persian studies when linguistic interactions in the centre remain understudied leads to another issue: the extent to which the roles of Persian in the different contexts studied here should be considered comparable. For example, does the highly proscribed use of Persian in Ming imperial edicts, studied in chapter 3, reflect the same processes as the creation of the literary network of Munīr Lāhūrī, studied in chapter 5? If a common mechanism underlies these two examples, the book does not bring it out explicitly, and as interesting as the epilogue is, it does not sift through the evidence provided in the foregoing chapters and give us a more granular idea of Persographia. Now that this volume has made the case for the domain of cosmopolitan written Persian, could the concept perhaps be refined, not on the basis of geography, but rather with other concerns in mind, such as genre, context of production, and reception? The frontiers of the Persianate world were, after all, dependent on the bearers of the culture and their intentions, rather than on any fixed point in space.
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Anatolia was home to a large number of polities in the medieval period. Given its location at the geographical and chronological juncture between Byzantines and the Ottomans, its story tends to be read through the Seljuk experience. This... more
Anatolia was home to a large number of polities in the medieval period. Given its location at the geographical and chronological juncture between Byzantines and the Ottomans, its story tends to be read through the Seljuk experience. This obscures the multiple experiences and spaces of Anatolia under the Byzantine empire, Turko-Muslim dynasties contemporary to the Seljuks, the Mongol Ilkhanids, and the various beyliks of eastern and western Anatolia. This book looks beyond political structures and towards a reconsideration of the interactions between the rural and the urban; an analysis of the relationships between architecture, culture and power; and an examination of the region's multiple geographies. In order to expand historiographical perspectives it draws on a wide variety of sources (architectural, artistic, documentary and literary), including texts composed in several languages (Arabic, Armenian, Byzantine Greek, Persian and Turkish). Original in its coverage of this period from the perspective of multiple polities, religions and languages, this volume is also the first to truly embrace the cultural complexity that was inherent in the reality of daily life in medieval Anatolia and surrounding regions.
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The two most prestigious and technically challenging types of ceramic decoration used in the Islamic world during the sixth–seventh/twelfth–thirteenth centuries were mīnāʾī and lustre. By far the rarest type of mediaeval ceramic wares are... more
The two most prestigious and technically challenging types of ceramic decoration used in the Islamic world during the sixth–seventh/twelfth–thirteenth centuries were mīnāʾī and lustre. By far the rarest type of mediaeval ceramic wares are the pieces featuring both types of overglaze decoration on the same vessel. This article examines the corpus of twenty-two sherds, including repaired and several previously unpublished examples. They are studied together to show the two main types of wares and their connection to other categories of mīnāʾī ware.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.
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This article consists of a detailed study of the decoration and inscriptions on three stylistically related carved stucco miḥrābs in ʿIrāq-i ʿAjam. The ones in Urmia and Marand are dated to the Īlkhānī period and bear the names of... more
This article consists of a detailed study of the decoration and inscriptions on three stylistically related carved stucco miḥrābs in ʿIrāq-i ʿAjam. The ones in Urmia and Marand are dated to the Īlkhānī period and bear the names of craftsmen with a connection to Tabrīz. The fragmentary remains of the third, undated, miḥrāb in Tabrīz are then studied, followed by the upper stucco inscription band in the masjid-i jāmiʿ in Urmia. The final section highlights the connections between the material in Iran and related stucco in Mamlūk Cairo. The main aim of this article is to provide as full an account as possible of the decoration and inscriptions of these examples of Īlkhānī stucco, and also to demonstrate the existence of a distinctive regional school of stucco carving centered in Tabrīz. Several newly translated inscriptions are published here for the first time, and the analysis is based on a combination of archival material and new photographs and drawings of the subject structures.
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This article examines the introduction of stereotomic ablaq marble geometric interlace into the architecture of Rum Seljuq Anatolia in the early 13th century CE. It is a study of the subsequent developments and changes to the constituent... more
This article examines the introduction of stereotomic ablaq marble geometric interlace into the architecture of Rum Seljuq Anatolia in the early 13th century CE. It is a study of the subsequent developments and changes to the constituent motifs in the following decades, before its eventual decline. Attention starts with the Zangid and Ayyubid origins of the technique, in the mihrabs of several madrasas in Aleppo, and moves on to examine the ways in which the pattern mutated and the style of execution shifted over time. A distinctively Anatolian architectural motif emerged throughout the course of the 13th century CE, primarily on monuments built in and around Konya. The possible meanings encoded within the geometric forms, and how they changed over time, are examined, as are the uses of dragon-like forms. Related figural secular examples in Iraq are studied to demonstrate the overt use of the same symbols. The article concludes with an examination of the later uses of related forms,...
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This article proposes a re-examination of the phases of construction and decoration at the shrine of ‘Abd al-Samad in Natanz and demonstrates that the core fabric and elements of architectural revetments of the shrine are datable to the... more
This article proposes a re-examination of the phases of construction and decoration at the shrine of ‘Abd al-Samad in Natanz and demonstrates that the core fabric and elements of architectural revetments of the shrine are datable to the Seljuq period (431-590/1040-1194), or slightly later. The structure was repurposed and redecorated, including the addition of extensive lustre tiles and stucco, for ‘Abd al-Samad by Zayn al-Din al-Mastari in the early years of the fourteenth century in a series of separate phases. Particular attention is focused on the nature of the original decoration of the shrine, revealed beneath the mortar which held the, now largely removed, Ilkhanid tilework in place. Scrutiny of the decorative interventions illustrates that the application of lustre revetments in the shrine also determined a major change of the function of the monument, from a simple burial structure into a pilgrimage centre in its own right.
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There has been a common theme in the display of Islamic architectural fragments. De-contextualised and alone, so often the rather opaque provenance and questions as to how the objects became detached from their original location have led... more
There has been a common theme in the display of Islamic architectural fragments. De-contextualised and alone, so often the rather opaque provenance and questions as to how the objects became detached from their original location have led to a profound disconnect between the objects and the buildings from which they came. This article proposes a new way of displaying and understanding such items, as well as confronting the issues of origin head on. The focus is on one case study; the Ilkhanid lustre tiles from the tomb of Shaykh ʿAbd al-Samad in Natanz, Iran. A number of the tiles are in major collections around the world, with little sense of the cumulative appearance of the complete composition, or the other decorative elements of the building. By using low-cost building materials and high quality printing it is possible to recreate a sense of the Ilkhanid-era appearance of the interior of the Natanz tomb. The original scale, context and epigraphic programme will become clear, and ...
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This chapter examines the phenomenon of the use of remote mountaintop locations for the construction of elite funerary structures in the context of the wider Iranian world. In order to avoid a region-specific understanding of the... more
This chapter examines the phenomenon of the use of remote mountaintop locations for the construction of elite funerary structures in the context of the wider Iranian world. In order to avoid a region-specific understanding of the phenomena, a number of tombs from the peripheries of the region during the medieval period are examined. The possible motivations and intentions of the patrons are proposed, along with analysis of the methods and motifs employed by the craftsmen who built them. Based on recent fieldwork, a number of important, but poorly published structures in Nakhchivan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey will be discussed in terms of style, form and the geomorphology of their respective locations. The focus of this research is on brick tombs constructed during the 11th and 12th centuries CE and will also examine the similarly remote locations of the Bavandid towers of Tabaristan in northern Iran. The chapter concludes with observations and hypotheses, in regard to a micro and macro understanding of the choice of remote locations for prestige tombs on the frontiers of the Islamic world in the medieval period.
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Abstract This paper is an investigation into the western extent of a regional school of funerary architecture that developed in the Ildegÿzid ruled lands of north-west Iran in the sixth/twelfth century. The formal, decorative, and... more
Abstract This paper is an investigation into the western extent of a regional school of funerary architecture that developed in the Ildegÿzid ruled lands of north-west Iran in the sixth/twelfth century. The formal, decorative, and epigraphic elements of two octagonal tombs, the Yusuf ibn Kuthayyir tomb in Nakhchivan (Azerbaijan) and the Mengilcek Ghazi tomb in Kemah (Turkey) are examined in detail. By comparing these two buildings and demonstrating the similarities and differences, elements of the dynamic nature of architectural development in Anatolia in the late sixth/twelfth century may be better understood.
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This article consists of a detailed account of the mashhad of Imām Yaḥyā ibn al-Qāsim. The square-plan building, constructed on the cliff edge above the southern bank of the Tigris in the citadel of Mosul in c. 637/1239, was destroyed in... more
This article consists of a detailed account of the mashhad of Imām Yaḥyā ibn al-Qāsim. The square-plan building, constructed on the cliff edge above the southern bank of the Tigris in the citadel of Mosul in c. 637/1239, was destroyed in an act of cultural terrorism by ISIS on 23 July 2014. This is a study of the work of earlier scholars on the building, a reassessment of the structure and its regional context, and a number of hypotheses regarding the original appearance of the tomb. In addition, the wide-ranging sources of the formal and decorative elements of the building are examined. The mashhad was the most richly ornamented of the medieval tombs in Iraq which had survived into the modern era, yet it had not been comprehensively studied in over a century. The remaining untranslated inscriptions are given in full, adding useful new information to the discussion regarding the important distinction between the ʿAlids versus Shīʿī associations of the building and its patron. Drawin...
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This article proposes a re-examination of the phases of construction and decoration at the shrine of ‘Abd al-Samad in Natanz and demonstrates that the core fabric and elements of architectural revetments of the shrine are datable to the... more
This article proposes a re-examination of the phases of construction and decoration at the shrine of ‘Abd al-Samad in Natanz and demonstrates that the core fabric and elements of architectural revetments of the shrine are datable to the Seljuq period (431-590/1040-1194), or slightly later. The structure was repurposed and redecorated, including the addition of extensive lustre tiles and stucco, for ‘Abd al-Samad by Zayn al-Din al-Mastari in the early years of the fourteenth century in a series of separate phases. Particular attention is focused on the nature of the original decoration of the shrine, revealed beneath the mortar which held the, now largely removed, Ilkhanid tilework in place. Scrutiny of the decorative interventions illustrates that the application of lustre revetments in the shrine also determined a major change of the function of the monument, from a simple burial structure into a pilgrimage centre in its own right.
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Research Interests: Archaeology and Iran
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This is a comprehensive study of the surviving monuments of the Qarakhanids – an important yet little-known medieval dynasty that ruled much of Central Asia between the late 10th and early 13th centuries. Based on extensive fieldwork and... more
This is a comprehensive study of the surviving monuments of the Qarakhanids – an important yet little-known medieval dynasty that ruled much of Central Asia between the late 10th and early 13th centuries. Based on extensive fieldwork and many hard-to-find Russian sources, the book places the surviving monuments into the wider cultural context of the region. Many photographs and new ground-plans are included, as well as detailed studies of individual monuments and the wider architectural aesthetic. These monuments serve as the link between the mostly lost Samanid architecture and the far larger and better-known monuments of the Timurids.
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-medieval-monuments-of-central-asia.html
https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-medieval-monuments-of-central-asia.html
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This chapter examines the phenomenon of the use of remote mountaintop locations for the construction of elite funerary structures in the context of the wider Iranian world. In order to avoid a region-specific understanding of the... more
This chapter examines the phenomenon of the use of remote mountaintop locations for the construction of elite funerary structures in the context of the wider Iranian world. In order to avoid a region-specific understanding of the phenomena, a number of tombs from the peripheries of the region during the medieval period are examined. The possible motivations and intentions of the patrons are proposed, along with analysis of the methods and motifs employed by the craftsmen who built them. Based on recent fieldwork, a number of important, but poorly published structures in Nakhchivan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey will be discussed in terms of style, form and the geomorphology of their respective locations. The focus of this research is on brick tombs constructed during the 11th and 12th centuries CE and will also examine the similarly remote locations of the Bavandid towers of Tabaristan in northern Iran. The chapter concludes with observations and hypotheses, in regard to a micro and macro understanding of the choice of remote locations for prestige tombs on the frontiers of the Islamic world in the medieval period.