L'Orient de Saladin, Part des Ayyoubides (Institut du Monde Arabe. Paris, till 10 March 2002)
Serpents and sphinxes
Nicholas Powell
Another Osama, surname ibn Munqidh (L095-1188), a famed Syrian courtier, diplomat and poet, celebrated in verse the Crusaders' forced and final departure from Jerusalem in 1187. Islam, he wrote, had re-embraced the Holy City like a spouse, after being separated from her for 100 years. A regular recipient of ibn Munqidh's correspondence, which he also composed in verse. was Saladin (1138-93), a.k.a., in full, Salah al-Din, uniter of much of the Arab world, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty and hammer of the Franks.
Saladin (who was in fact not an Arab but a Kurd — at that time such ethnic distinctions counted for little) has been a hero ever since, his valour and exceptional magnanimity chronicled by contemporaries and described by later Arab historians. Informed during the siege of a Crusader castle that a Frankish couple had just got married, for example, Saladin gave instructions not to bombard the tower in which they were spending their wedding night. The next morning, he sent them sherbets.
L'Orient de Saladin, l'art des Ayyoubides comprises well over 200 beautifully displayed works of art and documents. For all its political weight, the Ayyubid dynasty possessed neither particular cultural cohesion nor stable geographical unity. This exhibition thus covers the beauty and diversity of the art forms developed in the Arab world during the 12th and 13th centuries, a sophistication at which the marauding West could only marvel. Ayyubid metal work perfume burners, basins, candlesticks and caskets in hammer-wrought copper alloy, engraved and frequently encrusted with silver — was particularly fine and coveted by Europeans.
Decoration was habitually a mix of geometric design, calligraphy and figures, Christian scenes being very popular with both rich Christian and Muslim clients (Christ on his donkey entering Jerusalem on a Syrian or Northern Mesopotamian cylindrical box, around 1225-125(1, for example). One magnificent basin (now in the Louvre), probably brought back by a Crusader, ended up in the possession of the French royal family and was used by Napoleon HI as a baptismal font to christen his son, the Prince Imperial, in Notre Dame cathedral.
Animals real and mythological, floral designs, human figures and calligraphy feature on textiles, ceramics and glassware. One miraculously preserved 13th-century Egyptian goblet swarms with dolphins, painted in gold and edged in enamel. Also on show in Paris are three astonishing 12th-century fountain heads, discovered at Raqqa in eastern Syria. In glazed ceramic, complex in both form and colour, they represent a fantastic cockerel, its tail in the shape of a griffin; a sphinx surrounded with writhing serpents; and a helmeted, swordwield ing horseman.
To ward off the Franks (who, urged on by the Pope, kept coming back after the fall of Jerusalem hut never managed to stay for very long). Arab armies perfected fine chainmail and crossbows to penetrate it. Saladin built the battering-ram-proof citadels of Damascus and Aleppo, which are still standing today, ensuring they had battlements wide enough to park catapults. The weapons — illustrated and with complete working instructions in a Syrian manuscript written for Saladin and shown at the Institut du Monde Arabe — fired, among other things, a daisy-cutter mixture of burning sulphur, saltpetre and coal tar. The Crusaders never worked out the recipe.
Historical chronicles and literary works abounded, even if the calligraphy in which they were couched had not reached the heights of decorative sophistication accomplished by the Mamluks shortly afterwards. Osarna ihn Munqidh, for example, composed 20 books of poetry, rhetoric, history and theology, half of which have survived. One, Kitab al-manazil wal diyar, is a compilation of more than 1,000 extracts of poems by some 200 poets from throughout the Muslim world. The Book of the Capture of Jerusalem by Muhammad Imad al-Din al-Isfahani (1125-1201) gives a first-hand account, John Simpson-like, of the fighting and subsequent celebrations. The Europeans, too, recorded the Crusades. Guillaume de Tyr illustrated his Histoire d'Outremer (about 1287) with pictures of Crusaders massacring the residents of Antioch in 1097. Evidently fed up with crusading. Guillaume concluded: 'The Franks have become lost sons, scoundrels and betrayers of the Christian faith.'
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