The Idea Holy City in Medieval Muslim Painting.

JERUSALEM IN JEWISH, CHRISTIAN

AND ISLAMIC ART Offprint

Jewish Art

378

T H E IDEA O F T H E H O L Y C I T Y I N MEDIEVAL

MUSLIM PAINTING

Tatiana Kh. Starodoub

The idea of the Holy City (al-Kuds) was not expressed

in Islam as distinctly as in Christianity. Nevertheless,

the study of Arabic and, on the whole, Muslim

medieval art shows the deep penetration of this idea

into the conscience of Muslims as well as exceedingly

peculiar incarnations in the various images of this art.

The peculiarity of the Muslim treatment is in the

unclear and often missing visual connection between

the idea and the picture. The concealment of the

sacral meaning in the images corresponds with the

Muslim concept of the visible (zdhir) and the hidden

(batin) (Quran 31:20, 6:120, 57:3). It must be recalled

that the basically aniconic Muslim art did not create a

stable canonical iconographical system. Visual inter­

pretation of sacral ideas usually implied the sacraliza­

tion of the word and was intended for a chain of verbal

figurative associations.

The Arabic word for city, al-madina (from maddana,

which means both "to found cities" and "to civilize,"

that is, to create a cultural order), 1 comprises the idea

of the creative process. For a pious Muslim any creative

work is associated with the activity of God the Creator,

who reveals Himself in His creation. Medieval philoso­

pher and Sufi Ibn Arabi wrote in his Gems of Wisdom:

"The Almighty allowed us to look at the things that

became to let us perceive Him, and he mentioned that

here He revealed His signs to us."2 In this sense, any

representation of the city as a perfectly organized

architectural area can be read as a metaphorical image

of the Almighty or as the Holy City.

Obvious instances of such a metaphor are provided

by the famous architectural views preserved in the

upper part of the western gallery in the court of the

Umayyad Mosque in Damascus (Fig. I ) . 3 These views

are masterfully accomplished in the Byzantine tech­

nique of smalt mosaics against the golden background.

They demonstrate the methods usually used in Arab-

Muslim painting of the seventh to the beginning of the

eighth century and decorative motifs borrowed from

the practice of eastern Hellenistic, Roman, Irani-Sas-

sanian and Byzantine cultures. Fantastic and real at the

same time, they create an imaginary picture of the

ideal city-kingdom and city-garden, which may be com­

pared to the Quranic description of Paradise, al-Janna

(Quran 55:46-68, 56:28-33) , and to the apocalyptic

vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem of Saint John, who

saw the city "coming down out of heaven from God"

(Revelation 21:10, 22:1-3) .

Al-Janna, according to Muslim legends, has various

levels and several gates.4 The presence of the gates

implies a hidden inner space, in confrontation to the

outer world, as in Surah 57:13: "...and between them

[faithful and unfaithful] the wall with the gates was

erected; behind it is hidden (batin) mercy and in front

of it is visible (zdhir) punishment."

This concealed paradise clearly conveys the synonym

of al-Janna: khathiratu-l-kuds' (the fence of holiness). In

connection with architectural views decorating the walls

of religious buildings, khathiratu-l-kuds gains a meaning

similar in sense to the term dor as-salam, "the cloister of

peace" (Quran 6:127), a sense of a heavenly cloister or a

heavenly city.

Fully in harmony with this meaning is the symboli­

cal image of the city-paradise created by the mosaics,

which run like a ribbon without beginning or end

above the walls of the Beybars mausoleum in Madrasa

Zahiriya, built in 1277 in Damascus (Fig. 2 ) . The mas­

ters of the frieze obviously intended to repeat the tech-

H.K. Baranov, Arabsko-russkii slovar' (Arabic-Russian Dictionary) (Moscow, 1989), 746; Al-Munjid fi-l-lughali wa-l-a'lam (Beirut, 1992), 752. A.V. Smirnov, Velikii sheikh sufizma (The Great Sheikh of Sufism: A Sample of Paradigmatic Analysis of Ibn Arabi's Philosophy) (Moscow, 1993), 152.

Marguerite van Berchem, "The Mosaics of the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem and of the Great Mosque at Damascus," in K.A.C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture (Oxford, 1932), I, 149-252. Islam. Enlsiklopedicheshii slovar' (Islam Encyclopaedical Dictio­nary) (Moscow, 1991), 59. Al-Munjid, 612.

THE IDEA OF THE HOLY CITY 379

380 TATIANA КН. STARODOUB

niques and design of the Umayyad mosque. Having

given the representation a stylized, simplified form,

they legalized in a way and canonized both the subject

and the image.

Khathiratu-l-kuds as the designation of the Heavenly

City is naturally associated with the image of Jerusalem,

whose Arabic names point to the idea of the sacred city:

al-Kuds (the Holy), al-Bayt al-Makdis (the House of

Sanctity), al-Bayt al-Mukaddas (the House of Sanctuary

or the Holy House),6 and sometimes also al-Arlh al-

Mukaddasa (the Holy Land) (Quran 5 : 21 ) . The pictor­

ial incarnation of this idea in the solemn pathetic

architectural fantasies of the Umayyad Mosque mosaics

seems to have been inspired by the poetical images of

the City of God in St. Augustine's Confessions (t. XII, pt.

XV, 21 ; pt. XVI, 2 3 ) . However, unlike the Christian

text, the Muslim monument does not separate the

images of the Holy City and of God.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 For various versions of al-isra' wa-l-mi'rdj, see Ibn Hisham/Ibn

Fig. 3. Jibril carries Muhammad over the Mountains. Miniature

from unidentified Mi'raj-name, Tabriz, 14lh century. Istanbul,

Topkapi Saray Library, Hazine 2154, fol. 42v.

Fig. 4. Jibril about to leave the Prophet Muhammad. Miniature

of Mir Haydar's Mi'raj-name, 1438. Paris, Bibliolheque Nalionale,

Suppl. Turc 190, fol 36r.

The Arabic word al-Kuddus (the Holy), which

defines the sacral essence of the city metaphor, coin­

cides with al-Kuddus as one of the Fine names of Allah,

which defines the holy essence of God, and closes the

chain of verbal imaginary associations with the idea of

the Beautiful city as a metaphorical face of God.

Rukh al-Kuddus (the Holy Spirit) is for Muslims the

epithet and the symbol of angel Jibril (Gabriel).7

Accompanied by Jibril, who flew down from heaven,

Muhammad made his miraculous night journey out-of-

time (al-isra') from masjid al-haram to masjid al-aqsa

(Quran 17:1) and ascended the ladder, which came

down from above (al-mi'raj),H to the seven heavens and

to the throne of Allah at the tree which crowns the

world (sydr al-munlaha, "lotus of the last bound," Quran

53:14; the jujube t ree) . This legend, in several versions,

became the subject of theological disputes and led to a

great many verbal and visual poetical interpretations.

Ishak, Siyrat an-Nabi. Tahkik Muhammad Abd al-Hamid (Cairo,

1963), 268-76.

THE IDEA OF THE HOI.Y CITY 381

In Central Asian illustrations for different variants

of Mi'raj-name, Jibril is, as a rule, the main character.

Rukh al-Kuddus, accompanying or carrying Muham­

mad, depicted as a beautiful young man with a crown,

symbol of the kingdom, and wings, symbol of his heav­

enly dwelling, looks like the incarnation of the mercy

of the Lord, who sent the wonderful vision to His

prophet (Figs. 3, 4 ) .9 In this sense the miniatures on

the subject of mi'raj may be compared with the verbal

images of the Revelation: "And there came to me one

of seven angels... and brought me up in the spirit to

the great and high mountain, and showed the great

city to me, Holy Jerusalem, which was coming down

from heaven, from God" ( 2 1 : 9 - 1 0 ) .

The idea of godly favour conferred on Muhammad

concealed in the image of Rukh al-Kuddus reveals itself

in a Tabriz miniature of the fourteenth century in the

Albums of the Topkapi Saray Museum in Istanbul (see

article by Baer in this volume, Fig. 3 ) , which complete

the series of the illustrations to the unpreserved copy of

Mi'raj-name.10

This miniature is usually taken to portray

Muhammad sitting on a carpet and two characters lis­

tening to him with mistrust (the rejecting gesture),

while Jibril presents a model of the city to the teller. The

scene in the miniature coincides with the hadilh about

the vision of Jerusalem and the place where the Prophet

"was taken during the night" (Quran 17 :1) , and with

Muhammad's failure to convince the people of Mecca of

the reality of al-isra' wa4-mi'raj.n The concrete topogra­

phy and architecture of the city depicted, looking unlike

earthly Jerusalem, permitted R. Fllinghausen to sup­

pose that this scene shows the apocalyptic vision, after

which Muhammad predicted the Muslim conquest of

Constantinople.12

However, the domed rotunda in the

center and a nearby mosque leave no doubt that the

Tabriz painter tried to render al-Kuds proper.

The hadilh of a second message (a vision) to Mu­

hammad about the Holy City as one of the greatest reve­

lations o f his Lord (Quran 53:18) agrees, I believe, with

verses 13, 14 and 15 of Surah an-Najm (the Star): "and he

9 For the miniature from an unidentified 14th-century Mi'raj-

name, Tabriz, Topkapi Saray Library, Istanbul, Hazine 2154, fol. 42b, see M.S. Ipsiroglu, Paintings and Miniatures: Masterpieces from the Topkapi Museum (London, 1980), ill. II . For the miniatures of Mir Haydar's Mi'raj-name of 1438, Bibliolheque Nalionale, Paris, Suppl. Turc 190, see The Arts of the Book in Central Asia: 14lh-16lh Centuries, ed. B. Gray (Shambhala/UNESCO, 1979), ills, on pp. 161, 167.

10 Ipsiroglu, Paintings, p. 37 Г., ill. 10.

11 For this subject matter and its interpretation, see P. Soucek, "The

Fig. 5. The Ascension of Muhammad. Miniature from Nizami's

Khamsa, Herat, 1494-5. London, British library, Or. 6810,

fol. 5v.

saw him [or it(?) ] next time at sydr [the jujube tree] of the

last bound, at which is Janna, the refuge of the righteous."

Later pictorial inlet pietalions of the mi'raj are

designed on the basis of uniting the main scenes of the

legend in a dynamic composition of Muhammad's

apotheosis. In these miniatures, penetrated by Sufi

ideas, the representations of Rukh al-Kuddus are substi-

Temple of Solomon in Islamic Legend and Art," in J. Gutmann, ed., The Temple of Solomon: Archaeological Fact and Medieval Tradition in Christian, Islamic and Jewish Art (Missoula, Montana, 1976), 73-123, esp. p. 105 f.; Ipsiroglu, Paintings, 38; O. Grabar, "Jerusalem Elsewhere," in N. Rosovsky, ed., City of the Great King: Jerusalem from David to the Present (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), 333-43, esp. p. 336 f.

12 R. Ettinghausen, "Persian Ascension Miniatures of the Fourteenth Century," Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Atti XII (Rome,

1957), 360-83 .

TATIANA КН. STARODOUB

Fig. 6. The Ascension of Muhammad. Miniature from Nizami's Khamsa, Tabriz, 1539-43. London,

British Library.

THE IDEA OF THE HOLY CITY 3 8 3

Fig. 7. The Mi'raj. Miniature from Nizami's Khamsa, Tabriz, c. 1505. The Keir Collection.

tuted by crowds of fluttering angels, who praise

Muhammad ("the Praised") not as the envoy of the Lord,

but as the most perfect of His creatures, rising in his per-

fectness to the heights of godliness (Figs. 5-7) . 1 3 The vision

as the incarnate image of Holiness merges here with the

image of Muhammad, who is now the vision, but given in

the terms of the absolute belief and the absolute reality of

God. The earthly world, which seems to be real, steps

into the margins and serves only as the pictorial frame

for the events taking place in the heavens. Neverthe­

less, here also landscape and architecture fill a role of

symbol rather than of setting.

In a Tabriz miniature of the sixteenth century from

the Keir Collection (Fig. 7 ) , 1 4 Jerusalem as Bayt al-

Makdis is designated by a rock and a mosque with a

court-garden (as in khathiratu-l-kuds) adjacent to the

Mosque with the Kaaba, which is associated with al-

Ardth al-Mukaddasa (the Holy Lands) - namely, Mecca

and Medina as Muslim holy places, and of course,

Palestine. The visual merging of Palestinian and Arabi­

an holy cities in the space of one miniature shows the

symbolical merging of the sacred events, al-isra' wa-l-

mi'rdj, in the space of one time (in eternity), thus

removing the entire scene from the frames of earthly

history. Despite the recognizable external elements in

the representation of Mecca and Jerusalem, in its eso­

teric sense the miniature portrays a symbolical expres­

sion of the idea of the Holy City.

This hidden idea is present also in some groups of

Arabic, Persian and Turkish Muslim paintings depict­

ing the signs of the Zodiac, throne scenes, and others

(the framework of this presentation does not allow me

to examine them all here) and reveals itself only by

searching for key concepts and images. As we have

seen, the process of grasping the idea, with all the

diversity of subject matter and interpretation, follows

the same scheme, which compensates to a certain

degree for the absence of a canonized iconography

and creates a certain similarity in visual interpretations.

The analyses of these interpretations show the original

dependence of the visual image of the Holy City in

Muslim Caliphate painting on ready-made early Christ-

ian formulas, and its gradual Islamization" in the later

medieval monuments.

For the miniatures of Muhammad's Ascension in Nizami, Kham-sa, 1494-5, Herat, and 1539-43 , Tabriz, both in the British Muse­um, London, see E.J. Grube, The World of Islam (London, 1966), ills. 59 and 78.

14 For the miniature of Mi'raj, Tabriz, 1505, in the Keir Collection, see Islamic Painting and the Arts of the Book, ed. B.W. Robinson (London, 1976), ill. 19 (cat. no. III.207).