The International Herald Tribune, France
April 28, 2012 Saturday
A peek into the mystery of history
Auction of Islamic art shines a light on rare glories of the Middle East
by SOUREN MELIKIAN
LONDON
ABSTRACT
Islamic-art auction at Sotheby’s shines a light on some rare glories
of the Middle East.
FULL TEXT
The accelerating surge of interest in history came out spectacularly
at the auction scene on Wednesday. It was reflected in the three
highest prices at Sotheby’s, where the subject was art from the
Islamic world.
The ultimate rarity of the session was a 13th-century bronze basin
with a beautiful shape but only remains of its erstwhile silver and
gold inlay, which sold for £361,250, about $584,000.
The importance of the Arab vessel lay in the monumental inscription
that runs around the sides and two tiny inscriptions engraved on the
rim more than 100 years after the piece was made.
The large inscription spells out the titles and name of a sultan of
Turkic stock, Abu’l-Harith Qara Arslan ibn Il-Ghazi, descended from
the 12th-century Artuq Shah. Qara Arslan, who from 1261 to 1293 ruled
a large area around the city of Mardin, now in southeast Turkey, had
no mean opinion of his own persona. The titulature, introduced by a
set phrase found on 13th- and 14th-century royal objects, glorifies
the sultan in traditional bombastic eulogies. Qara Arslan is hailed as
”Our Lord, the Sultan, the King, the Pride of the World and Religion,
the Master of Kings and Sultans” and lots more of that ilk.
This wording suggests that the basin was commissioned when the ruler
mounted the throne, which appears to be confirmed by the exclusive
role of the inscription in the decorative scheme, excepting a band of
arabesques at the bottom.
No other vessel to the name of Qara Arslan has been recorded. The
mastery of the execution tells us that Qara Arslan, ”The Black Lion”
in Turkish, was prosperous enough to attract great bronze makers and
calligraphers. That is useful historical information.
But what makes the basin unique is the addition of two inscriptions
engraved on the rim by his descendants.
One names ”Amir” Dawud ibn Malik al-Salih (1368-1376). The title
”amir” that Dawud gives himself instead of ”sultan” proves that
his father, al-Malik al-Salih, who died in 1368, was still alive and
ruling. Al-Malik al-Salih, possibly aware of his nearing end, passed
on to his son Dawud the splendid basin as part of the dynasty’s regal
possessions. This provides tangible evidence of the existence of
dynastic chattels in the Near East.
Eight years later, Dawud’s successor, Majd Ad-Din ‘Isa (1376-1406),
ordered an inscription to be engraved on the rim. His titles ”The
Lord, the King” prove that he had ascended to power.
The verified use of the basin for more than a century explains why so
much of the inlay is gone, as on so many other royal bronzes.
The history of Qara Arslan’s basin does not stop there. In 1406, the
Mardin-centered Artuqid sultanate was overrun by another Turkic
dynasty, the Qara Qoyunlu. It was soon defeated by the Ottoman
sultanate of central Anatolia that kept conquering ever larger swaths
of territory, and with that begins part two of the history of Qara
Arslan’s basin.
Mercury gilding was added inside to cover the loss of inlay in a large
rosette on the bottom, erased by wear. The gilding, typical of
16th-century Ottoman fashion, indicates that the basin was still
treasured. It got worn, in turn.
Part three of the basin’s history begins in 1845. Michelangelo Lanci,
an Italian scholar who collected Arabic texts on monuments and
objects, saw the basin in Rome at the hands of the jeweler and
antiquarian Alessandro Castellani. Lanci published the inscriptions in
Volume 2 of his ”Treatise on Arab Symbolical Representations and
Various Categories of Islamic Inscriptions Wrought on Different
Material Supports.” Written in Italian, it was published in Paris
with a subsidy from King Louis Philippe.
Lanci’s reading included minor mistakes and one huge error. The
inscriptions naming three sultans were merged into one, as if they
concerned a single ruler. The great French Arabist Gaston Wiet
recorded the inscriptions in his 1934 general repertory of Arabic
inscriptions, amending them as best he could without having seen the
actual object.
Part four of the object’s history resumes in 1965 when the basin
surfaced at the Hôtel Drouot, the Paris auction house. I was able to
study it briefly and publish the exact text of the inscriptions in the
1968 volume of the Revue des études islamiques, the French journal of
Islamic studies. The vessel then vanished until its appearance this
year at Sotheby’s.
Perhaps the most telling revelation it provides about the past of
Middle Eastern cultures is the mix of influences that prevailed in the
area where southeast Turkey, northwest Iraq and northeast Syria
converge.
Three Artuqid dynasties ran the area. The Mardin Artuqids were
connected to Syria, as the basin’s calligraphy shows, but also to Iran
as demonstrated by a continuous scroll carrying the stylized animal
heads on the flat edge of the rim, which looks Iranian not Syrian.
The Artuqids of Khartpirt, a city in the southeast of historic
Armenia, Harput in modern Turkey, are represented by one royal piece
now in a Munich museum. This is a bronze mirror to the name of Sultan
Artuq Shah. The seven planets represented by seven busts cast in low
relief, in a Byzantine-derived style, are in turn surrounded by the 12
Zodiac signs depicted according to Iranian convention, but
stylistically unique with their well rounded low relief.
A third royal object to the name of an Artuqid ruler from the branch
based in Hisn Kaifa in historic Syria, now Hasankeif in Turkey, is the
great enigma of Middle Eastern art in the 12th century.
The footed cup has an enameled decoration combining the champlevé
technique, typically west European, and the cloisonné technique used
in Byzantium, as in Georgia. The shape is paralleled in French
medieval vessels in champlevé enamels, as is the color scheme. A long
inscription in Persianate Arabic inside the vessel names Suqman
(modern Turkish Sökmen) son of Dawud and gives him a number of Persian
titles alongside Arabic ones. A Persian poem written on the outside
confirms a strain of Persian literary influence, but at that period,
this gives no clue to the regional provenance – Persian was the state
language of the Seljuk Sultanate in Anatolia.
Its highly distinctive decoration is uniquely archaistic. Some
elements are derived from the Hellenistic past, such as Alexander’s
chariot elevated into the sky by winged griffins, others from early
Islamic iconography in Iran, like the scrolls carrying palmettes, or
from Umayyad Syrian iconography in the seventh to eighth century, like
the palm trees appearing inside between some circular medallions.
Years may go by before we begin to understand the ramifications of
artistic currents in the Artuqid domain.
Qara Arslan’s basin, estimated to be worth £300,000 to £500,000 plus
the sale charge, matched the low estimate with the £361,250 telephone
bid, believed by professionals to have been made by the museum at Doha
in Qatar.
For a bronze that has lost so much of its inlay, the price is
considerable if measured by today’s standards. It might soon come to
be seen as a bargain – historic objects from the Middle East are
incomparably rarer than, say, historic objects with imperial marks
from China, now going for millions.
This much is indeed suggested by the first two highest prices paid
Wednesday by the same bidder simply identified as ”L0052.”
One was a page that was torn out of a royal manuscript of the
”Shah-Nameh” (Book of Kings), which was ripped apart in the early
20th century by the French dealer George Demotte. The manuscript was
reputedly commissioned by Shah Isma’il II in 1577 – the pages
providing the information are now missing. Estimated to be worth from
£60,000 to £80,000 plus the sale charge, the page sold for £1.39
million.
The second highest price went to the portrait of a court lady with the
royal aigrette stuck into her head band. It is signed by the famous
artist Mohammed-e Yusof who dated it 1052 (April 1, 1652, to March 21,
1653). At £433,250, the drawing in pen and ink brought six times the
high estimate.
In a session where bidders let 47 percent of the works on offer drop
dead, those phenomenal figures say all about the craze for works
sealed in the concrete of history.