Islamic Art at LACMA: Qur'an Leaves and Ancient Ewer

Introduction

One of the strengths of the collections at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is its holdings of works from the ancient Near East. This paper examines two of those artifacts, discussing both their aesthetic properties and the historical, political, and cultural context in which each was created. These works — although they provide only the barest glimpse into the complexities of the cultural and religious dynamics of the region — nevertheless help us understand the intimate and powerful way in which religion and culture remain linked even today in the Middle East.

Islamic Calligraphy and the Abbasid Caliphate

The first work consists of two leaves taken from the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, produced during the Abbasid Caliphate during the ninth or tenth century. Even for a viewer who cannot read Arabic and who knows little about the tenets of this faith, the manuscript is beautiful. It is certainly no coincidence that Islamic art places particular emphasis on calligraphy as a form of artistic expression, given that the realm of creative art is constrained by the Islamic proscription against the depiction of human or natural forms. While lesser artists may have been stymied by this prohibition, greater artists have used it as a challenge they have risen to meet.

Calligraphy and other forms of artistic expression during the Abbasid Caliphate reflected the fact that, for the first time in this dynasty's history, the boundaries of the Caliphate were no longer contiguous with Islam itself. As Wiet (1971) describes, during this dynasty the Arab world became more splintered to some extent. This fracturing of political power might also have fractured religious authority, but in fact the opposite was generally true during this second major dynasty of the caliphate. As the capital moved to the then-new city of Baghdad, the bonds among citizens of the caliphate became increasingly grounded in membership in a community of faith rather than in any shared Arab nationality. This tended to produce an increase in the orthodoxy of belief as expressed in art.

Peterson (1995) argues, quite convincingly, that the two single most important aspects of Islamic art are calligraphy (including calligraphic ornamentation) and the form of the mosque as it evolved across different time periods. Museums are relatively limited in their ability to include mosques in exhibitions — though they may display photographs of mosques or architectural elements from structures that have been dismantled. They are, however, free to exhibit Muslim and Arabic calligraphy, and the LACMA Near Eastern collection includes beautiful examples — such as this selection of pages from the Qur'an — of the ways in which the holy word of Allah is made beautiful through the calligrapher's art.

The Role of the Qur'an in Islamic Art

Although many world religions are centered on a written text or series of texts, the relationship between Islam and the Qur'an is especially close. This results in beautiful — though never lavish — manuscripts, as well as the incorporation of texts copied from the Qur'an as a key form of ornamentation across a wide range of artistic forms, from the decorative elements of architecture to pottery to mosaics (Zakariya 19).

Conclusion

The use of Qur'anic scripture on a pitcher is in many ways no different from copying the Qur'an itself: each object within the world of the observant Muslim has the potential to reflect the holiness of the universe, and the design of the humblest object — like the life of the humblest person — can be fashioned to reflect the glory of the divine. Together, these two artifacts from LACMA's Near Eastern collection demonstrate how thoroughly religious meaning permeated every dimension of artistic production in the medieval Islamic world, from the sacred manuscript to the kitchen shelf.

Works Cited

Allan, James. Islamic Ceramics. Oxford: Ashmolean, 1995.

Peterson, Andrew. Dictionary of Islamic Architecture. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Wiet, Gaston. Baghdad: Metropolis of the Abbasid Caliphate. Norman: U of Oklahoma, 1971.

Zakariya, Mohamed. The Calligraphy of Islam: Reflections on the State of the Art. Washington, DC: Center for Contemporary Arabic Studies, 1990.

Artifact Details

Two Leaves from a Manuscript of the Qur'an
Abbasid Caliphate, ninth to tenth century
Ink and gold on parchment
5¾ × 18⅛ in. (14.5 × 46 cm)
The Nasli M. Heeramaneck Collection, gift of Joan Palevsky (M.73.5.499)
Artist/Place: Greater Iran, Nishapur or Samarqand

Ewer
Greater Iran, 10th century
Earthenware, underglaze painted
10¼ × 6¾ in. (10.8 × 17.15 cm)