The Dark Ages: Islamic Empire

Scattered across this great Syrian desert are the remains of fantastical Umayyad palaces, filled once with beautiful mosaics and marvellous colonnades. What tangible sensuousness you find here in this first Islamic art.

These eighth century desert palaces must once have been filled with the accoutrements of pleasure – vases, hangings, plates and cups, almost all of which have disappeared.

Qusayr Amra Bathhouse

But in 1986, here in Jordan, they dug up this. It’s an eighth century Islamic brazier and it gives us a tiny hint of what life was like in the Qusayr Amra bathhouse. The brazier was used to heat up the Princes room and for burning incense. Originally there were wheels on it and it could be wheeled around from room to room to fill them with sweet smells.

It’s made of iron and bronze and at the front here, as you can see, there are these arches a little bit like the ones in Qusayr Amra, and inside the arches are scenes of lovemaking and couples canoodling, and it’s all so atmospheric and so beautifully done. Look at these eagles at the bottom, the way they’ve been shaped, their wings, their feathers. This is metalwork of the highest quality.

At the four corners, four cuddly nudes prepared to release a small bird into the incense-filled air above them. And there’s a floaty feeling to this marvellous metalwork. What a beautiful thing. And the figurative sculptures you see here, the female figures are, again, very surprising because this is an aspect of Islamic art that was there at the start, that is very traditional, at which a modern Islam often forgets.

The beautiful brazier was an object of private delectation. It had no religious purpose. But it’s important to remember that sensuality played a role in the art of these times.

In the beginning, this was Islamic art too, and this, and this.

When joy was called for, Islamic art inspired great joy. And when sobriety was more appropriate, it achieved great sobriety.

Mosque of ibn Tulun

This is the finest early mosque in Cairo, the mosque of ibn Tulun. I like everything about it, but most of all I admire its architectural seriousness. The way you know, as soon as you step in here, that this is a space devoted to important understandings. Ahmed ibn Tulun who founded this mosque in 879 A.D. was the son of a Turkish slave, who became governor of Egypt. Originally the mosque stood at the centre of a new city that ibn Tulun also founded, the city of Al-Qatta’l. But Al-Qatta’l was destroyed in the 10th century. This is all that’s left of it.

They say ibn Tulun chose this site because this is where Noah’s Ark came to rest. There was certainly water here, that Dome to creation in the centre is the ablutions fountain, where all Muslims must wash themselves before prayers.

All mosques, not just this one, are based on the very first mosque which was the prophets own house in Medina. It was a typical mud brick dwelling, with a courtyard, and in that courtyard the prophets followers would gather to hear him speak. So, all these great courtyards of Islam, all of them, are descended directly from the prophets own courtyard.

Their evocative sparseness is an echo of their origins. Their sun-baked simplicity has been there from the start.

The walls that encircle you here arelike the walls of the prophets own courtyard. Their task is to keep the outside world at bay, and here at ibn Tulun there’s actually two sets of walls, a kind of double glazing that separates you from the hustle and bustle out there.

I like these playful crenulations arranged along the top as well. They look like paper cut-outs, something my daughter might have made.

To protect his followers from the sun the profit built a simple shelter at the end of his courtyard with a roof made out of palm branches and leaves. That simple shelter was the inspiration for these great arcades which still protect the prophet’s followers from the sun.

The shelters in his courtyard were also used as somewhere to meet and discuss community affairs. And that marvellous communal atmosphere of a space with many purposes is something else that survives to this day in the Islamic mosque.