PUBLICATION NEWS

James W. Allan

The Art and Architecture of Twelver Shi'ism:

Iraq, Iran and the Indian Sub-Continent.

Biennial Ehsan Yarshater Lecture Series, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (January 11–16, 2007), Azimuth Editions, London, 2012.

"This book arose from the exhibition Pilgrimage: The Sacred Journey, held at the Ashmolean Museum in 2006, curated by Dr Ruth Barnes. Those of us involved in it discovered that, amongst the many tens of books on the art and architecture of the Islamic world, there are none in which to look up the art and architecture associated with Twelver Shi'ism. This is the dominant faith in southern Iraq and Iran, and has also had a major historical role in India, in particular in the Deccan and in Lucknow. This book attempts to correct the situation, and is the first in its field.

It looks first at the history of the great Shi'i shrines of Iraq and Iran, a subject almost completely untouched in the standard works on Islamic architecture; on the role of Shi'i and, unexpectedly, Sunni (orthodox Islamic) patronage in their development; at the collecting of relics, and the use of inscriptions and symbols to identify religious buildings; and at the way in which different Shi'i religious buildings (e.g. tekiyehs, ashur khanehs and kerbalas) appeared in Iran and in India.

It then turns to the impact of Shi'ism on the craft industries, highlighting in particular the role of shrines in promoting art, the likely importance of Shi'ism in the development of Iran's steelworking industry, the use of inscriptions to identify objects as Shi'i, and the rise of figural art to communicate Shi'i faith – in the arts of the book, in paintings of the Kerbala drama, and, since the Islamic Revolution, on Iranian banknotes and stamps.

Finally, it turns to the impact of the art of Shi'ism on the annual Muharram processions, with their magnificent steel and brass standards ('alams), and highlights the syncretism characteristic of Shi'i art and architecture in the subcontinent."

Luke Treadwell

Craftsmen and coins: signed dies in the Iranian world (third to the fifth centuries AH)

The engravers' signatures discussed in this book were inscribed over a thousand years ago on the metal surfaces of coin dies which measured no more than three and half centimetres in diameter. Although not a single signed die has survived to the present day, a small number of the many thousands of coins made from them remain in coin collections all over the world. What do these tiny marks have to tell us about the early medieval Islamic world?

In fact they tell us a great deal about the working lives of two metalworking craftsmen, Mujib and ?asan, who made dies for mints in Afghanistan and Iran (293/905 to the 360s/970s). The signatures allow us to identify a number of dirham dies that can be attributed to each engraver. By comparing the style of these signed dies with unsigned dies of the same period we can build up a corpus of objects that can be attributed to each craftsman. The die corpus provides a pool of evidence upon which to base a detailed study of the engraver's working practices. It allows us to see how he manufactured these objects, what kind of tools he used, the styles of script he chose and even the mistakes he occasionally made.

Our engravers' working environment was very different to that of the caliphal period which preceded it. When the unitary caliphal state fragmented into numerous successor state polities, the highly regulated centralised caliphal die workshop disappeared. Since there were no trained dirham die engravers in the successor states, the new rulers were forced to employ craftsmen who had learned their profession as metalworkers or gemcutters in the bazaar, whence they brought their signing practice into the mint. The signing phenomenon, though short-lived, illustrates the momentous changes caused by the collapse of the caliphal monetary system.

For further details see here.

Jeremy Johns

New studies on the Islamic painted ceilings and Arabic inscriptions of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo

'Le pitture del soffitto della Cappella Palatina' and 'Iscrizioni arabe nella Cappella Palatina' 

La Cappella Palatina a Palermo (Mirabilia Italiae 17), the first comprehensive study of the 12th-century Cappella Palatina – the chapel and royal hall built for the Norman King Roger in his palace in Palermo – was launched on 15th November 2010. The four volumes, edited by Beat Brenk with contributions by an international team of leading scholars, include more than 1,000 colour plates covers all decorative media – mosaics, painted ceilings, sculpture, pavements and epigraphy.

Jeremy Johns contributes studies on the Arabic inscriptions and the Islamic painted ceilings, illustrated by more than 800 colour plates each accompanied by a catalogue entry – amounting to a total of more than 200,000 words.

For further information, see: http://www.cappellapalatina.it/en/ Download an article on the launch from La Repubblica (16th Nov. 2010) here. View video of TV Siciliauno programme on the launch (15th Nov. 2010) here.

'The Bible, the Qurʾān and the Royal Eunuchs in the Cappella Palatina'

In Thomas Dittelbach (ed.), Die Cappella Palatina in Palermo - Geschichte, Kunst, Funktionen. Forschungsergebnisse der Restaurierung Hg. im Auftrag der Stiftung Würth, Künzelsau: Swiridoff Verlag 2011, pp.198–216 (German), pp. 413–23 (Italian), pp.560–70 (English). One of twenty new studies by international scholars (including Jonathan Bloom, Beat Brenk, Slobodan Ćurčić, David Knipp, Valentino Pace, Dorothée Sack, William Tronzo, Vladimir Zorić) of various aspects of the Cappella Palatina, collected in a single volume and translated into German, Italian and English.

For further details see here