Pine beam of rectangular form, the face carved with a single line of strong kufic interlaced with tendrils terminating in split palmettes and single leaves, plain white stripe below.
AKM631, A monumental Almohad poetic inscription

© The Aga Khan Museum

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On Display
A monumental Almohad poetic inscription
  • Accession Number:AKM631
  • Place:Spain
  • Dimensions:313 x 30.8 cm
  • Date:ca. 1160–1250
  • Materials and Technique:pine, carved, painted, and gilded
  • This rare carved beam contains a part of a secular, pre-Islamic poem attributed to the 6th-century Jewish poet Samaw'al ibn 'Adiya. [1] Responding to a mocking woman, the poem speaks to the exceptional courage of the poet’s tribe. The only full verse to appear on the beam reads: “our souls flow on the edge of the swords, on nothing but the swords they flow,” alluding to the tribe members’ desire to find violent death on the battlefield.[2] A similar beam containing the part of the poem directly preceding this one was sold by Christie’s in 2003 (Lot 50). [3] The format and the length of the two beams—a little more than three metres long each—suggest that they were placed on two perpendicular walls beneath a ceiling or a dome in a square room measuring around nine square metres. This room was likely in a palace rather than a mosque or madrasa, given that the poem excerpt is not from a religious text such as the Qur’an.

Further Reading

 

Arabic poetry was originally shared and experienced through a vibrant oral tradition. In its written form, it was recorded in such texts as Abu Tammam’s Hamasah, a 9th-century anthology of Arabic poetry. The poem excerpted here is called Lamiyah since each of its verses end with the Arabic letter ل lam (equivalent to the letter “L” in the English alphabet). Interestingly, the beam’s version of the Lamiyah alters the order of verses as they appear in the Hamasah: on the beam, verse number ten from the Hamasah appears after verse number eleven. These variations raise questions regarding the survival and dissemination of poetry across the medieval Islamic world. Moreover, the fact that a classical Arabic poem from the 6th century rather than a newer poem was chosen for this much later beam points to the particular cultural conservatism that characterized Al-Andalus.

 

The face of the beam is divided into two unequal framed rectangular registers. The top narrow register presents a series of hexafoils while the main register presents the inscription and vegetal ornament. The letter bodies of the Kufic script are concentrated at the bottom, giving space to prominent elongated letter stems. Similar script can be found on a tombstone from Palma de Mallorca [4] and a tombstone from Badajoz, [5] as well as on a wooden beam (45.90) and tombstone (85.6.1) dated to 611H/1214AD in the Batha Musuem, Fez. [6]

 

Both the Kufic script and the vegetal decoration (whose leaves resemble chili peppers) use a restrained and not overly ornate style. Together with the relatively “unused” space at the background, the overall impression is austere and monumental. This style is characteristic of the art of the Almohads (1130–1269), a fundamental dynasty strongly opposed to manifestations of excess. 


 

This beam shares similarities with woodwork from Fez, [7] six sections of a wooden calligraphic frieze in the V&A’s collection (378 to D-1907), [8] and a wooden calligraphic frieze from the David Collection (D 12/1986). [9] It is also reminiscent of the decoration of Bab Agnaou, Marrakesh, and the Sura headings in a dated Qur’an manuscript from 1202–3 (Topkapi Saray Museum Library, R.33). [10] The concentration of similar objects in Morocco led scholars to believe the beam could have been produced there. However, the conservative choice of the poem and, even more convincingly, the fact that the beam is made of pine rather than cedar (commonly used in Moroccan woodwork), points to Al-Andalus as a more probable provenance. The aesthetic references to artistic centres such as Fez and Marrakesh can be explained by the well-documented phenomenon of migration of artisans between Iberia and North Africa during the Almohad period.

 

— Doron Bauer


Notes

[1] On the beam, see Sophie Makariou, ed., Chefs-d’œuvre islamiques de l’Aga Khan Museum (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2007), 192–93 ISBN: 978-8874394425; Los mundos del Islam en la colleción del Museo Aga Khan (Barcelona: Fundación La Caixa, 2009), 101. ISBN: 978-84-9900-013-8

[2] For the original and a translation of the poem into Hebrew, see Asher Goren, Ancient Arabic Poetry (Jerusalem, 1970), 62–65; A more recent Hebrew translation: Johnathan Nadav, “Lamiyah,” Haaretz, January 19, 2014; A German translation: Franz Delitzsch, Jüdisch-Arabische Poesien aus vormuhammedischer Zeit: ein Specimen aus Fleischers Schule als Beitrag zur Feier seines Jubileums (Leipzig: Dörffling und Franke, 1874); A somewhat archaic translation into English: Charles James Lyall, Translations of Ancient Arabian Poetry, Chiefly Pre-Islamic, with an Introduction and Notes (London: Williams & Norgate, 1930), 20–22. ISBN: 978-0830500420

[3] See A Carved and Painted Almohad Calligraphic Wooden Beam, Morocco or Spain, 12th or early 13th Century. Christies, Lot 50, Islamic Art and Manuscripts, London, 29 April 2003.

[4] See Guillermo Rosselló Bordoy, Corpus Balear de epigrafia Arabe, Trabajos del Museo de Mallorca 18 (Palma de Mallorca, 1975), 27–29.

[5] Evariste Lévi-Provençal, Inscriptions arabes d’Espagne (Leiden: Brill, 1931), no. 45. 

[6] Catherine Cambazard-Amahan, Le décor sur bois dans l’architecture de Fès: époques almoravide, almohade et début mérinide (Aix-en-Provence: Institut de recherches et d’études sur le monde arabe et musulman, Éditions du CNRS, 1989), 105–8. ISBN 9782222041443

[7] Cambazard-Amahan, Le décor sur bois. ISBN 9782222041443

[8] Rosemary Crill and Tim Stanley, eds., The Making of the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: V&A Publications, 2006), 70–73, 109–1 ISBN: 978-1851774852 and http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O82010/frieze-unknown/

[9] Kjeld von Folsach, Art from the World of Islam in the David Collection (Copenhagen, 2001), 268, n. 430. ISBN: 87-88464-21-0

[10] Jerrilynn D. Dodds, ed., Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992), 309. ISBN: 978087099636

Note: This online resource is reviewed and updated on an ongoing basis. We are committed to improving this information and will revise and update knowledge about this object as it becomes available.

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