Square white tile, decorated in blue with the image of a domed, multi-storey building with two arches with tall finials on both sides. Above the two side wings are floral motifs with vines and leaves.
AKM570, Tile

© The Aga Khan Museum

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On Display
Tile
  • Accession Number:AKM570
  • Place:Syria, Damascus
  • Dimensions:20.5 x 20.5 cm
  • Date:first half of the 15th century
  • Materials and Technique:fritware, underglaze-painted
  • Large square tiles like this one in the Aga Khan Museum Collection seem to have been made only in small numbers. Decorated in a rich cobalt blue, it combines an elaborate floral design common to Mamluk tiles with architectural imagery. The origin of these architectural forms has inspired debate. On one hand, the arches of the two side buildings appear to be decorated with alternating bands of light and dark stone, a characteristic feature of Mamluk architecture. However, neither their design nor that of the central, domed building has a clear precedent. The domed structure may be interpreted as a fantastic or even paradisal pavilion, surrounded by otherworldly blooms. Yet this self-contained central building—with its large lobed dome and window grilles—may also be interpreted as a tomb. Carine Juvin has pointed out a formal similarity between the pointed shapes of the two smaller flanking structures and certain tombstones.[1] The tapering shapes of their finials might, in turn, refer to cypress trees, an evergreen closely associated with funerary and spiritual contexts in the Mediterranean world.[2]

Further Reading

 

A small number of tiles bearing closely related images of buildings surrounded by plant sprays, in blue on white, are attributed to late Mamluk Syria or Egypt. Two such tiles are held in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. One has been cut to a hexagonal shape, but the other is remarkably close to this example in both dimensions and imagery, down to the diagonal division of space seen in the lower level of the structure, possibly an abstract representation of a staircase.[3] A further tile of this type is embedded in the wall of the late 15th-century minaret of the Mosque of al-Qal’i in Damascus, and that example appears to be an explicit depiction of a mosque, with a minaret and a dome surmounted by a crescent finial.[4] The Victoria and Albert Museum also has samples of hexagonal tiles with variations on these motifs.[5]
 
At first glance, the carefully-executed yet freely drawn style of AKM570 evokes Chinese blue-and-white ceramics, which would suggest the presence of Ming Dynasty ceramics in Syria.[6] However, Lisa Golombek proposes that unidirectional plant sprays, like those shown here surrounding the building, may have arrived in 15th-century Syria tilework via Timurid painting rather than through direct contact with Chinese ceramics.[7] Golombek suggests that a large group of motifs found on the Syrian blue-and-white tiles of the 15th century can be traced stylistically to frescoes of trees and plants painted in the mausoleums of Timurid noblewomen. Such designs may have circulated through Timur’s own habit of collecting artists from the lands he conquered, and the subsequent release of those artists from Timurid Samarqand following his death in 1405. The Timurid paysage frescoes, which often include images of wavy trees flanked by cypresses, can be interpreted from their largely funerary contexts as evocations of paradise, and perhaps this reading should also be applied here.[8]

The motif of three cypress trees is also significant in the tiles of the al-Tawrizi Mosque in Damascus, built circa 1430.[9] As well, according to Golombek (expanding upon Rudolf M. Riefstahl’s studies), there are notable similarities between AKM570 and tiles produced in Edirne, especially those found in the Mosque of Murad II (1435–36).[10] Edirne became the Ottoman capital after the Empire expanded west in the 14th century. There, decorative arts from Persia exerted aesthetic influence on Ottoman tile production.[11]

Finally, a panel of hexagonal tiles currently held in the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo has a central tile with an architectural element. Arthur Millner has identified this element as a mosque building, and has likened it to the imagery found on the tile in the Aga Khan Museum Collection.[12] Clearly, AKM570 is an excellent example of cross-cultural exchange, the sharing of techniques, designs, and symbolism between Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and Syria.

 

— Filiz Cakir Phillip


Notes
[1] Sophie Makariou, ed. Chefs-d’oeuvre islamiques de l’Aga Khan Museum (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2007), 92.
[2] Barbara Brend, Islamic Art (London: British Museum, 1991), 121.
[3] John Carswell, "Six Tiles," Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. Richard Ettinghausen (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1972), 119, 122.
[4] John Carswell, "Two Tiny Turkish Pots," Islamic Art 2 (1987): 211.
[5] Victoria and Albert Museum, Inv. No. 422-1898; 423.1898.
[6] Carswell 1972, 102.
[7] Lisa Golombek gives as an example the hexagonal tile in the Damascus National Museum (Blue-and-white [tile], ca. 1430), which was found in Damascus. See Golombek, "The Paysage as Funerary Imagery in the Timurid Period," Muqarnas 10, Essays in Honor of Oleg Grabar (1993), 241.
[8] Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Architecture in Islamic Arts: Treasures of the Aga Khan Museum (Geneva: Aga Khan Trust for Culture, 2011), 94. According to Lisa Golombek, most references to Paradise in Islamic architectural decoration are either highly stylized, as in the "tree-of-life" motif, or occur in arabesque transformations of plant life. See Golombek, 248.
[9] Rudolf M. Riefstahl, "Early Turkish Tile Revetments in Edirne," Ars Islamica 4 (1937), 60; Arthur Millner, Damascus Tiles: Mamluk and Ottoman Architectural Ceramics from Syria (New York: Prestel, 2015), 73–80.
[10] Golombek, 250; Venetia Porter, Islamic Tiles (Northampton, MA: Interlink Publishing Group Inc., 1995), 96; Gerard Degeorge and Yves Porter, The Art of Islamic Tile (Paris: Flammarion, 2002), 186–93.
[11] Riefstahl, 269–70, 273. Furthermore, the Syrian wall tiles kept in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London are given as examples. Inv. No 407:1-1898; Additional examples are illustrated by Karl Wulzinger and Carl Watzinger. The shape of the leaves in some of these tiles is very similar to AKM570 (see Wulzinger and Watzinger, Damascus, die Islamische Stadt. Wissenschaftliche Veroeffnetlichungen des Deutsch-Turkischen Denkmalschutz-Kommandos 5 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1924), 28–29). Tiles at the Musée du Louvre, OA 4047/125 and 127 are square and larger than AKM570 and they have a somewhat similar design of plants. These two tiles in Paris were previously in the collection of the French architect Ambroise Baudry, who lived in Cairo between 1871 and 1886. His notes, though, mention he acquired them in Damascus. See Millner, 255.
[12] Millner, 10, 92.


References
Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Architecture in Islamic Arts: Treasures of the Aga Khan Museum. Geneva: Aga Khan Trust for Culture, 2011. ISBN: 9780987846303
Brend, Barbara. Islamic Art. London: British Museum, 1991. ISBN: 9780714114439  
Carswell, John. "Six Tiles," Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. Richard Ettinghausen. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1972, 99 –124. ISBN: 9780870991110
---. "Two Tiny Turkish Pots," Islamic Art 2 (1987): 203–16.
Degeorge, Gerard and Yves Porter. The Art of Islamic Tile. Paris: Flammarion, 2002. ISBN: 9782080108760
Golombek, Lisa. "The Paysage as Funerary Imagery in the Timurid Period," Muqarnas 10, Essays in Honor of Oleg Grabar (1993): 241–52. DOI: 10.2307/1523189
Makariou, Sophie, ed. Chefs-d’oeuvre islamiques de l’Aga Khan Museum. Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2007. ISBN: 9782350311326
Millner, Arthur. Damascus Tiles: Mamluk and Ottoman Architectural Ceramics from Syria. New York: Prestel, 2015. ISBN: 9783791381473
Porter, Venetia. Islamic Tiles. Northampton, MA: Interlink Publishing Group Inc., 1995. ISBN: 9781566565721
Riefstahl, Rudolf M. "Early Turkish Tile Revetments in Edirne," Ars Islamica 4 (1937): 249–81.  
Wulzinger, Karl and Carl Watzinger, Damascus, die Islamische Stadt. Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen des Deutsch-Türkischen Denkmalschutz-Kommandos 5. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1924.

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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