Awards in Focus
From Damascus to China: new perspectives on early Islamic art and
architecture
Early Islamic art and architecture are
privileged witnesses not only of the aesthetic
accomplishments of their makers – which
are in themselves no small feat – but also of
their civilisation as a whole. The Arabs who
conquered the Near East in the 7th century
AD came from the remote fringes of the
civilised world. Within decades, they had
created monuments which still stand today
as masterpieces of world architecture, most
notably the Great Mosque of Damascus and
the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem; and
within another century their newly founded
capital, Baghdad, housed a population that
some estimates place near a million and
had arguably become the world’s foremost
centre of culture, science and trade.
The Great Mosque of Damascus was built
between 706 and 715 AD, at a pivotal point
in the transition between the civilisations of
late Antiquity and early Islam. By that time,
under the rule of the Umayyad dynasty, the
Islamic empire reached its maximum extent,
stretching from Central Asia and Sind in
the east to Spain in the west. In its major
cities, the ruling elite sought to assert the
enduring presence of Islam as a faith and a
political force by initiating major architectural
programmes which reached their climax
with the Great Mosque of Damascus and
the rebuilt Prophet’s mosque in Medina. Of
these two seminal buildings, only the former
remains in something close to its original
state. But its different facets – architectural
form, surface decoration, historical context
– have scarcely been considered as one
whole by modern scholarship.
The Great Mosque of Damascus was the
beating heart of the empire. Its huge open
courtyard, the largest public space in the city,
took over the functions of the classical forum
in the urban fabric, while the prayer hall
served as a stage for imperial ceremonies.
This vibrant social and spiritual life coincided
with the career of Saint John of Damascus,
one of the last Church Fathers. John wrote
treatises in defence of holy images in
response to the iconoclast crisis which raged
in Byzantium – and just as an Islamic sacred
vision that ruled out all animated creatures
(men, animals, angels) was being articulated
in the mosaics of the Great Mosque of
Damascus. The meaning of these mosaics
has been debated in scholarship, but rarely
considered in its human context, and in
conjunction with the architectural space
which they adorn. Bringing these different
dimensions together will allow us to reach
beyond the
analysis of
surfaces
and forms
towards
deeper layers
of meaning.
Baghdad
was founded
half a century
later, in 762,
by a new
dynasty, the
Abbasids. It
was laid out
according to
a remarkable
plan: a round
The Great Mosque of Damascus, mosaics © Alain George.
city with
concentric
circles of residential quarters cut by two
perpendicular axes which met at the caliph’s
palace, crowned by a magnificent green
dome and equestrian statue; adjacent to this
palace – and dwarfed by it – was the new
imperial mosque. Was this urban design
meant to be a reflection of the cosmic order
on the scale of a city, or a crude statement
of autocratic rule and domination? This
longstanding debate will be revisited with
the help of new sources and methodological
questions, while computer-generated
imagery should allow us to walk the streets
of this long vanished city.
More than a change of capital, the
foundation of Baghdad marked a shift of
outlook away from the Mediterranean and
towards Asia, the powerhouse of the world
in that era. Baghdad was thus the western
terminus of sea and overland trade routes
that connected it to India, Central Asia and
further afield, China. As Islamic civilisation
was reaching its classical phase under the
Abbasids, the T’ang era also marked a peak
in Chinese culture and imperial power, and
The Great Mosque of Damascus, courtyard and
these two parts of the world engaged in
unprecedented levels of direct exchange in mosaics © Alain George.
the 8th and 9th centuries. I intend to map
civilisation as a unique crossroads of the Old
out this broad phenomenon and present
World’s cultures, long before the advent of
case studies in the realm of manuscript, in
modern globalisation.
an attempt to start rebalancing our innate
historiographical bias towards the Greek
Dr Alain George
heritage and Europe. University of Edinburgh
These research projects, being largely
based on a common pool of material and
texts, are interconnected. Their aim is to
build up new perspectives on Islamic art and
Alain was awarded a Philip Leverhulme
Prize in 2010; providing £70,000 over 24
months.