Oleg Grabar Research Articles

Re-reading of the common language of architecture of the Tabriz Kabud mosque and Sheikh Lotfullah Isfahan with emphasis on the thoughts of Titus Burkhardt and Oleg Grabar (transcendental approach)

Re-reading of the common language of architecture of the Tabriz Kabud mosque and Sheikh Lotfullah Isfahan with emphasis on the thoughts of Titus Burkhardt and Oleg Grabar (transcendental approach)

Deconstructing a Janamsakhi Illustration:

It is rightly said that “All art is in part about the world in which it emerged.” As part of a North Indian hagiographic manuscript written in the 19th century, the miniature painting analyzed in this essay depicts a miracle of the founder of Sikhism-Guru Nanak. This essay will deconstruct the visual elements in the watercolor painting and link it to different styles of miniature painting of that period. It will also attempt to answer a fundamental question formulated by French art historian and archaeologist Oleg Grabar– can a work of culture be meaningfully understood through the application of techniques developed outside of it? The dynamism of icons and symbols due to cross-cultural influences is evident through this investigative process.

A Comparative Study of Traditionalism and Historiography in the Explanation of Mosque Architecture by Focusing on the notions of Titus Burckhardt and Oleg Grabar's Model

A Comparative Study of Traditionalism and Historiography in the Explanation of Mosque Architecture by Focusing on the notions of Titus Burckhardt and Oleg Grabar's Model

Medieval Jerusalem: Forging an Islamic City in Spaces Sacred to Christians and Jews, by Jacob Lassner

In this book, Jacob Lassner sets out to re-examine the role of Jerusalem in the unfolding politics of the early Islamic period. As part of this undertaking he revisits (and generally opposes) recent explorations into the meaning of the Umayyad building project in the city. His goal in the book is to make clear the city’s evolution as a revered Islamic religious site comparable to the holy cities Mecca and Medina. The main body of the work consists of nine chapters. Chapter One engages with the ways Jerusalem and its surrounding landscape were envisioned by the Muslim conquerors, as well as discussing its sacred geography and toponymy. In its wake, Lassner addresses the book’s key question: when, and in what circumstances, did Jerusalem, a city long venerated by Jews and Christians, become a hallowed place for Muslims? In a different take (to be found in the preface of the book) he asks: when, and in what circumstances, did Jerusalem become for Muslims a sacred city comparable (italics added) to Mecca and Medina, the holy cities of Arabia? Lassner’s main argument is that Jerusalem won a unique religious status parallel with Mecca and Medina following Islamic acceptance of prevailing Jewish and Christian understandings of its sanctity during the early Islamic period. While Chapter Two follows the intricate path of connecting the Qur’ānic Masjid al-Aqṣā and Jerusalem, Chapter Three probes into Muslim sources and modern scholarship to establish that Muslims came to accept the sanctity of Jerusalem following the Muslim conquest of the seventh century CE. Chapter Four explores the role of Mu’āwiyya in the Islamisation of Jerusalem, and rules out the idea of a grand design for Jerusalem to serve as a nerve centre of Muslim political and religious activities. Chapters Five and Six revisit the generally accepted interpretation of an Umayyad plan to transform Jerusalem into an administrative centre. By conflating Islamic textual sources and post-1967 archaeological findings and their interpretations, Lassner is advocating a cautious approach to Mu’āwiyya’s activities in Jerusalem. This is the foundation for Chapter Seven, which advances S.D. Goitein’s thesis holding the Umayyads’ project in Jerusalem as part and parcel of Islamic rivalry with Christianity therein. The meaning, form and function of the Dome of the Rock and its environs are discussed in Chapter Eight. Lassner largely follows Oleg Grabar’s 1959 paper which prioritised Byzantine-Muslim contestations and not internal Islamic struggles as the background for the ostentatious building project in Jerusalem. This leads to a final discussion in Chapter Nine which narrates (and summarises the main argument of the book) how non-Islamic religious practices and ideologies regarding Jerusalem influenced Muslim common belief about the city.

Review: Pattern, Color, Light: Architectural Ornament in the Near East (500–1000)

Pattern, Color, Light: Architectural Ornament in the Near East (500–1000) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 20 July 2015–10 January 2016 In a memorable passage from his seminal 2003 essay “What Should One Know about Islamic Art?” the late Oleg Grabar reminds readers of “that true but rarely acknowledged fact that the Islamic world is the only cultural entity in the history of mankind to have borders or boundaries with almost all the cultural entities known before 1492.”1 The products of successive Islamic polities that circulated around the world from the seemingly provincial urban centers in the Hejaz have long been of interest to scholars and students of world history. Throughout the second half of the first millennium, Islamic cultures—increasingly varied, complex, and heterogeneous—were dominant in large geographic expanses from Spain to the Sindh. These hegemonies were at least partially predicated on Islam's ability to transform and be transformed by multiple cultural contacts within and beyond its ever-changing boundaries, simultaneously producing innovation, synthesis, and distinction. Significant among these transformations were the vital role performed by monumental architecture in the (re)production of statecraft and the central position of ornament in the creation of certain buildings as spectacular displays of power. In cities such as Medina, Jerusalem, Damascus, Baghdad, Samarra, and Cairo, monumental architecture actively participated in the production and reproduction of the Islamic state, forged in the crucible of the Late Antique period, with its multiplicity …

Shifting Boundaries: How to Make Sense of Islamic Art

There has been little change to definitions offered for the term “Islamic art” in the last 40 years. Alongside literary definitions, readers are presented with visual examples and sub-categories to help understand what the term might be applied to. With discussion on the understanding of Islamic art continuing to present day, we look to why ambiguity still exists. In searching for an answer we review some of the most popular definitions cited in recent literature, with a number of examples referring back to the writings of Oleg Grabar in 1973 a time when Islamic culture was still predominantly associated with Muslim lands. We also examine some of the influences on sub-categorisation within Islamic art based on these definitions and consider the validity of these in light of the contemporary Islamic art scene in places such as Britain, where there is a large and growing Muslim diaspora. We ask, who is in the position to determine whether an artwork is “Islamic?” The artist, curator, or historian? Finally, we aim to clarify ambiguities surrounding the term “Islamic art” whilst also proposing a contemporary understanding of existing definitions in light of the views from all stakeholders, including those whose views are yet to be documented – the artists.

The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach

The Byzantine-Islamic Transition in Palestine: An Archaeological Approach

In Pursuit of Shadows: Al-Hariri’s Maqāmāt

Focusing on the well-known 1237 Maqāmāt copied and illustrated by Yahya b. Mahmud. b. Yahya. b. Abi al-Hasan b. Kurriha al-Wasiti (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Ms. Arabe 5847), this essay reexamines the question of the interaction between al-Hariri’s text and al-Wasiti’s interpretation of it through a cycle of narrative paintings. The absence of such an approach can be explained by scholarly judgments going back to D. S. Rice’s essay of 1959—in which he argues that the images are a distraction—mostly restated in subsequent studies by Richard Ettinghausen (1962), David James (1974), and Oleg Grabar (1984). Grabar concluded that “the purpose and success of the story lie exclusively in its language, not in its narrative,” an assessment that gave license to the interpretation of al-Wasiti’s paintings as indices of contemporary culture and society. This essay considers the various effects of the paintings on the text and its meaning, and examines the interplay between truth and fiction, a tension that was at issue since the immediate reception of al-Hariri’s work.

Recent Work on the Monetary and Metrological History of Egypt, 868–1517 C.E.

It is a truism in the fields of Islamic history that those who study the course of Islam in Egypt are blessed with a relative abundance of surviving primary sources, whether they be literary, documentary, archaeological, or material. This is also the case for numismatic evidence. In fact, the coinages of Muslim Egypt (and of the Syrian areas controlled by dynasties based in Egypt) are the subject of one of the deepest historiographies in Islamic numismatics. From the early catalogues of the British Museum and Khedival collections edited by Stanley Lane-Poole in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to the 1982 catalogue of the Egyptian National Collection prepared by an Egyptian–American team and published by the American Research Center in Egypt, to subsections of numerous other catalogues, many specimens of Egyptian coinage have been made available for study. Using this numismatic evidence, from 1956 to 1980 the coinages of three Egyptian dynasties were analyzed in separate and significant monographs: Oleg Grabar’s The Coinage of the Tulunids (New York: American Numismatic Society, 1957); Paul Balog’s Coinage of the Mamlūk Sultans of Egypt and Syria (New York: American Numismatic Society, 1964); and Balog’s The Coinage of the Ayyūbids (London: Royal Numismatic Society, 1980). While these three works did not and do not represent the final word about these coinages, in bringing the numismatic evidence to a wider audience of scholars interested in related topics they in turn stimulated further numismatic scholarship. Until recently, however, the numismatic developments of the Ikhshīdid period (935–969) and the Fāṭimid period (969–1171) lacked focused studies aiming for comprehensive treatment of those eras. The appearance of three works published over 2006–2007 have filled this lacuna. 1 (This leaves only the Ottoman period of Egypt without its own monographic treatment. Coins minted in Egypt prior to the rise of the Ṭūlūnids are best approached as subsections of Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid numismatics.) Moreover, the recent posting of a digital resource presenting the entire holding of Islamic glass weights preserved in the Gayer-Anderson Museum provides a useful resource for those interested in the small-scale metrology of Islamic Egypt. As a result, students and scholars now have at their fingertips a chronologically comprehensive set of references to aid in their study of numismatics and wider monetary history for Islamic Egypt. Moreover, these works solidify the important roles played by Jere L. Bacharach and Norman D. Nicol, who along with Paul Balog (d. 1982) have done so much to advance the field.

OLEG GRABAR (1923–2011)

Professor Oleg Grabar, a luminary historian of Islamic visual arts and culture, died on 8 January 2011 at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was a much respected and beloved professor and mentor of generations of undergraduate and graduate students who were inspired by his generous spirit, his probing mind, and his intellectually challenging questions about the nature of culture, art, and history. He was invited to lecture widely in many countries, and he authored more than thirty books—several of which have been translated into multiple languages—as well as over one hundred essays in international journals.

Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem's Sacred Esplanade – Edited by Oleg Grabar and Benjamin Z. Kedar

Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem's Sacred Esplanade – Edited by Oleg Grabar and Benjamin Z. Kedar

Masterpieces of Islamic art: the decorated page from the 8th to the 17th century

A renowned scholar of Islamic art, history and culture, Oleg Grabar introduces in this book a wide range of illuminated manuscript masterpieces from the eighth to the seventeenth century. The heroes of grand epics such as Alexander the Great are found side-by-side with mythical monarchs, sultans, and even monsters. Illuminated manuscripts of the Koran, epic poetry, and scientific works from the Egyptian, Syrian, Persian, Mogul, and Ottoman Empires await discovery. The book opens with an essay which contextualizes the works-the originals of which reside in the Louvre, French National Library, National Library of Cairo, the British Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Topkapi Museum, the Freer Gallery of Art and the collections of the Aga Khan and Khalili families. Following is a selection of two hundred full-color illustrations accompanied by the author's insightful commentary. Including examples of some of the world's most beautiful artistic expressions, this collection of carefully chosen works not only illustrates an important period in art history but also serves as a monument to the achievements of Islamic culture.

Frontiers of Islamic art and architecture: Essays in celebration of Oleg Grabar's eightieth birthday. Edited by Gülru Necipoğlu and Julia Bailey. (Muqarnas 25). pp. x, 396. Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2008.

Frontiers of Islamic art and architecture: Essays in celebration of Oleg Grabar's eightieth birthday. Edited by Gülru Necipoğlu and Julia Bailey. (Muqarnas 25). pp. x, 396. Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2008.

Islamic Art and Beyond: Constructing the Study of Islamic Art, Volume III. * By OLEG GRABAR

Islamic Art and Beyond: Constructing the Study of Islamic Art, Volume III. * By OLEG GRABAR

Oleg Grabar. Review of "History and Ideology: Architectural Heritage of the “Lands of Rum"" by Sibel Bozdoğan and Gülru Necipoğlu.

Oleg Grabar. Review of "History and Ideology: Architectural Heritage of the “Lands of Rum"" by Sibel Bozdoğan and Gülru Necipoğlu.

Islamisches Bilderverbot vom Mittel- bis ins Digitalzeitalter (review)

Reviewed by: Islamisches Bilderverbot vom Mittel- bis ins Digitalzeitalter Richard McGregor Islamisches Bilderverbot vom Mittel- bis ins Digitalzeitalter. By A. Ibrić. Wien: LIT Verlag GmbH, 2006. Pp. 120. Islamisches Bilderverbot vom Mittel- bis ins Digitalzeitalter by Almir Ibrić is a contribution to a small but growing literature in the long-neglected area of Islamic aesthetics. The author has attempted to establish grounds for a philosophical treatment of the Islamic prohibition of images (Bilderverbot). His task is problematic, due in large part to the absence of such treatments within the tradition itself. Of course this is not to say that Islam is lacking in art, imagery, or aesthetic sensibility, but simply that a systematic reflection on the nature and function of such things is absent. Ibrić's efforts draw on material from the earliest period of Islamic history up to the contemporary digital age of the Worldwide Web. The scope is wide and the conclusions sweeping. In his introduction the author engages the methodological problem of reconstructing a philosophical discourse that is lacking from the tradition itself. He notes that although the Shia, Sufi, and mainstream Sunni theological and legal discussions have in many instances contributed to either the production of images or the censoring of such productions, the discourse of Islamic philosophy has remained largely silent on the subject. The problem, then, is how to proceed, and here Ibrić proposes several paths, all of which contribute to his final conclusion. In short, his approach is a bricolage that surveys a variety of practices and discourses, tying them back into an argument for a common and uniquely Islamic ethico-theological commitment. The first of these paths leads back to pre-Islamic Arabia. Here the stage is set for the harsh monotheism of the new Islamic revelation. The author specifies Jewish/ Abrahamic/Hanif iconoclasm as setting the ground for the Islamic prohibition of images. The identification of a monotheistic vision (tawhid) aside, the revolutionary force of this iconoclasm appealed to early Islam in its struggle to overcome the "old religions" around it. But, perhaps more importantly, this iconoclasm served to anchor the Islamic commitment centrally to an utterly abstract divinity. This move toward abstract expression is revisited later in reflections on non-figural themes in Islamic art. Another pre-Islamic carryover is the animating force embodied as the jinn. Here the implications are less clear, since the positive inspirational role played by muse-like jinn in early Islam was displaced by the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic formulations of philosophers such as al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd, who re-centered artistic inspiration and production back upon the artist. These formulations however did not displace the negative functions of jinn, which persist across Muslim culture today. In chapter 2 the author runs quickly through a number of well-known positions within the Islamic tradition relating to predestination, free will, and individual responsibility, all with an eye to what light these discussions might shed on the prohibition of images. Here a systematic comparison is laid out between the "Traditional way" of the mainstream Sunni legal/theological perspective; the "Rational way" of a [End Page 292] very wide category of philosophers and modernists; al-Ash'ari's "Liberal way," seeking to anchor responsibility within the individual while preserving God's omnipotence; al-Maturidi's tilting the scales of responsibility further toward the individual; and, finally, an amorphous "Mystical" perspective, characterized as a search for extinction of the individual into the divine—something that, Ibrić argues, simply makes the pursuit of anything but the divine a pursuit of idols. These five perspectives, presented here only in their bare bones, would each benefit from further analysis. The following chapter continues the search for insight into the prohibition of images as it turns to various dimensions of aesthetics. Beauty, mimesis, form, and artwork are themes touched upon, then followed by summaries of six strikingly different solutions that have been proposed to resolve or at least loosen the prohibition of images. These range from Oleg Grabar's modern "atomist" theory of Islamic art to Abu Hayyan's eleventh-century concept of sina'a (art, skill), which integrates the natural form with the intellect and spirit of the artist. As...

Hunting in the Borderlands (for Oleg Grabar)

AbstractIn an article now three decades old, I suggested that the Paintings of the Hall of Justice of the Alhambra used Arthurian iconography as part of a fashionable admiration for Gothic style and the language of chivalry in the Nasrid court, one which was subverted by the polarizing imagery of a Muslim and a Christian fighting. However, I failed at the time to take into full account the extraordinary hunting cycle of the Hall of Justice paintings, discrete groups of hunters and their prey that were interspersed with surprising episodes from romance narratives. These images picture Christians and Muslims as polarized and opposed. In fact, I believe it is in these very images of domination and apparent differentiation that a deep interconnectedness can be found. This study uses the painting cycle from the Hall of Justice of the Alhambra as a means of exploring, not just common styles and motives, but artistic meanings that were held in common between courts. In particular, hunting as an attribute of lordship and sovereignty is key here, in a world in which relationships between Nasrids and Castilians were still largely feudal and many meanings shared, allying the parties we once supposed to be 'other.' There, hunting as iconographic shorthand for ownership of the land appears in surprising and deflected ways. Through a discussion of the Palace of Pedro I at the Alcázar of Seville, contemporary literary evocations of the courtly tradition and of the practice and meaning of the hunt, as these were known on the Iberian peninsula, and the exploration of narrative and emblematic languages of form, I hope to reveal an imagery which suggests domination but masks a complicit, symbiotic interaction. Hunting imagery becomes the means by which both Nasrids and Castilians act out a ceremonial opposition to another with whom they are socially and culturally intertwined.

The Experience of Islamic Art on the Margins of Islam

This volume is the fifteenth publication in the Giorgio Levi Della Vida ConferencePapers series, each of which contains the lecture presented by therecipient of the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Award for excellence in Islamicstudies along with contributions by other scholars dedicated to a specialtopic. For the first time ever, in 1996 the award was presented to an art historian,Oleg Grabar, who chose “The Experience of Islamic Art on theMargins of Islam” as the theme of the fifteenth conference. 
 The crossing of boundaries by artifacts, decorative elements, or figuralsubjects from one cultural hemisphere into another, as well as the perceptionof the “inherited” monuments of other cultures, is a broad and still largelyunexplored field. While studies following the wandering of motifs are quitenumerous, the reasons for their selection and tacit integration into new contexts,along with their reshaping and revaluation, are not dealt with veryoften. Each of the five articles directs our attention to a particular border areaof Islamic culture during a particular period, ranging from the Middle Agesto the present. Each contribution also approaches the question of how(regardless of the way) acquired Islamic objects and monuments weredealt with from a specific angle. The result is a small and very diverse collectionof experiences that surely does not offer an overview of all responsesto Islamic art. However, it convincingly demonstrates how revealing researchon the cultural margins can be ...

David Carrier. Review of "Early Islamic Art, 650–1100: Constructing the Study of Islamic Art, Vol. 1" by Oleg Grabar.

David Carrier. Review of "Early Islamic Art, 650–1100: Constructing the Study of Islamic Art, Vol. 1" by Oleg Grabar.

Glimpses of an Eclipsed Heritage: Photography of Afghanistan in the Collections of the Fine Arts Library at Harvard

The photographic collections of Harvard's Fine Arts Library have benefited from a recurring interest in augmenting its holdings of the art and architecture, and, latterly, the ethnography of Afghanistan. Approximately 9,000 images reflect nearly 90 years of photography and nearly 70 years of collecting. Starting with Benjamin Rowland and his expedition to Afghanistan in 1936, a series of Harvard scholars have contributed to these collections, directly or indirectly. While the earlier contributions primarily related to pre-Islamic art and architecture, the library began actively acquiring photographs and slides of Islamic architecture from Islamic art historians and professional photographers in the 1970s after the arrival of Oleg Grabar as Harvard's Professor of Islamic Art. These have been further augmented since the founding of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture in 1979 and its Documentation Center in the Library, especially by a variety of archival collections. Most notable among these is the very large gift of photography documenting art, architecture and ethnography created by Josephine Powell. These impressive collections have never been as important as now. The devastation to Afghanistan's cultures, art and architecture caused by Soviet invasion, a prolonged war of national liberation, the subsequent civil war that devastated Kabul, and the final assault on representational art by the Taliban iconoclasts have altered these images from useful to critical documents of a past that has largely passed from view.