The Transformation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival / Edition 1

by Yasser Tabbaa

Overview

The transformation of Islamic architecture and ornament during the eleventh and twelfth centuries signaled profound cultural changes in the Islamic world. Yasser Tabbaa explores with exemplary lucidity the geometric techniques that facilitated this transformation, and investigates the cultural processes by which meaning was produced within the new forms. Iran, Iraq, and Syria saw the development of proportional calligraphy, vegetal and geometric arabesque, muqarnas (stalactite) vaulting, and other devices that became defining features of medieval Islamic architecture. Ultimately, the forms and themes described in this book shaped the development of Mamluk architecture in Egypt and Syria, and by extension, the entire course of North African and Andalusian architecture as well.

These innovations developed and were disseminated in a highly charged atmosphere of confrontation between the Seljuk and post-Seljuk proponents of the traditionalist Sunni revival and their main opponents in Fatimid Egypt. These forms stood as visual signs of allegiance to the orthodox Abbasid caliphate and of difference from the heterodox Fatimids. Tabbaa proposes that their rapid spread throughout the Islamic world operated within a system of reciprocating, ceremonial gestures, which conveyed a new and formal language that helped negotiate the gap between the myth of a unified Sunni Islam and its actual political fragmentation.

In subject matter and approach, The Transformation of Islamic Art during the Sunni Revival makes original contributions to the study of art, revealing that this relatively neglected sector of medieval art and architecture is of critical importance for reevaluating the entire field of Islamic studies. It challenges the essentialist and positivist approaches that still permeate the study of Islamic art, and offers a historical and semiotic alternative for exploring meaning within ruptures of change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295981338
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	07/01/2002
Series:	Publications on the Near East
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.48(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Yasser Tabbaa , who specializes in Islamic art and architecture, teaches in the Department of Art at Oberlin College in Ohio.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Sunni Revival

2. The Transformation of Qur'anic Writing

3. The Public Text

4. The Girih Mode: Vegetal and Geometric Arabesque

5. Muqarnas Vaulting and Ash'ari Occasionalism

6. Stone Muqarnas and Other Special Devices

7. Conclusion: The Mediation of Symbolic Forms

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Annemarie Carr

This is a very useful book, both as history and as interpretation.... I have used it in a seminar on Islamic Art of the Period of the Crusades, and expect to use it next year in a course on the arts of Islam. Since I am in and out of the Crusader world, I expect I’ll call on it recurrently. Thank you for publishing it. Tabbaa’s work is valuable.

Editorial Reviews

[This volume] provides a detailed description of calligraphical, ornamental, and architectural developments during this period. It also establishes concrete links between the transformations in form and meaning experienced by these art forms and the contemporaneous political and religious rivalries.

-- "American Journal of Islamist Social Sciences"

Tabbaa deserves much credit for successfully bringing history back into the study of the architecture of the near and Middle East in this amply illustrated and elegant book.

-- "Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians"

From the Publisher

[This volume] provides a detailed description of calligraphical, ornamental, and architectural developments during this period. It also establishes concrete links between the transformations in form and meaning experienced by these art forms and the contemporaneous political and religious rivalries.

American Journal of Islamist Social Sciences

Tabbaa deserves much credit for successfully bringing history back into the study of the architecture of the near and Middle East in this amply illustrated and elegant book.

Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

Calligraphy and geometry, two of the most characteristic aspects of much Islamic art, receive full attention in this lucid analysis of the shifts in artistic practice of the 11th and 12th centuries that occurred throughout the Islamic world. Tabbaa, a specialist on the 12th-century leader and art patron Nur al-Din, has taught Islamic art and architectural history at MIT and the U. of Michigan. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews