DIEDL/EVAL ART IN EGYPT.*
MR. LANs-POOLE defends his use of the term " Saracenic" in preference to " Mahomedan," in relation to the decorative art of mediseval Egypt, on the ground that many of the workers were not Mahomedans. But neither were they Saracens ; indeed, it is probable that more of them were Mahomedans, in outward observance at all events, than Saracens, who were Muslims of Oriental race only. The characteristics, again, of the art of the Saracens were purely Mahomedan in nature and origin, from Spain to Bengal ; and, on the whole, the subject of this volume would be more exactly described as " Mediaaval Mahomedan Art in Egypt," than as the " Art of the Saracens " in that country.
The question is not merely one of nomenclature. The term " Saracen" has no ethnic signification, whatever its etymology may be nor had it originally any Islamitio connotation, for it was used by Pliny long before Mahomed was born. Nor could the art of mediaeval Egypt be called Arab art, for the Arabs had
• The Art of the Sarum. in Egypt. By Stanley Lane-Poole. Illustrate& Published for the Committee of Council on Education by Chapman. and Hall. 1886. as little art as they had literature of their own. They, or rather the inheritors of the Judaso-Christian religions and political system of which Arabia saw the birth and first developments, and who were by no means all, or even in majority, of Arab blood, em- ployed the language of the peninsula to create a literature which was largely Greek in spirit, and adopted an art which in all its main motives and methods was Orientalised Greek. The history of Egypt, which is of special importance in relation to Mahomedan art, shows how little it owed, or could owe, either to the indigenous occupiers of the Delta or to their Muslim conquerors. From the conquest by 'Amr in A.D. 639, to that by the Fstimy Khalifs in A.D. 969, the year of the foundation of Cairo, Egypt was little more than a pashalic of the Khalifs of Damascus and Bagdad,—always excepting the brilliant period of the Talon dynasty. The Fitimy rulers, who succeeded, rivalled their Turcoman predecessors of the Tulare line in their appreciation of art ; but it was under the sway of the Mamluks, who held Egypt in a dire bondage from A.D. 1250 to A.D. 1516, that the art of Islam attained its highest and final development. Like their foregoers, the Mamluk occupiers of the Cairene palaces were Turks or Circassiane, mere barbarians, who brought with them no notions of art ; while throughout the whole course of Egyptian history under Mahomedan rulers, the life of the nation was suppressed, and all intellectual movement arrested. Mahomedan art, then, was the creation neither of Mahomedan rulers nor of Mahomedan peoples, whether of Semitic or Turanian race ; it was simply Orientalised Greek art, limited by the conditions imposed upon it by the Islamitic prohibition derived from the Judaic horror of what might subserve the purposes of idolatry,—the delineation of all forms of life. Its patrons were Turks, Kurds, Circas- sians, Tartars, the proselytes rather than the followers of Islam ; and its practitioners, who, while recording the names of their patrons, seldom mentioned their own, were probably for. the most part of Greek or Slavonic origin. The great development of Mahomedan art that took place under the Mamlnks is not altogether easy of explanation. These white non-Semitic slaves, who were chiefly of Tartar race—Mr. Lane-Poole gives an interesting and instructive list of many of their names, with explanations of their meaning by Mr. Redhouse—formed a kind of Praetorian Guard, from whose ranks the Amirs, or barons, by a sort of natural selection, rose into power, furnishing in their turn, by a repetition, or rather continuance, of the same process, the successive tenants of the Cairene throne. The Sultan was, in fact, merely the most powerful of the Amirs for the time being, and each of the latter bad his own court and state modelled upon that of Cairo. Like the Italian despots, they were of necessity, if not of choice, active rulers of men, and anxious to give illustration to a reign of the precarious nature of which they were well aware. Hence arose a rivalry in magnificence to which the presence of the versatile Greek element in the Levantine population gave an artistic character, and in medimval Egypt we see the same strange con- trast of barbaric militarism and high artistic connoisseurship which amazes the student of the Renaissance period in Italy.
It is often said—and Mr. Lane-Poole repeats the accusation —that Mahomedan architecture shows poverty of conception. But this is not a just view of the matter. Mahomedan architecture mast be considered and judged as a whole—that is, together with its decoration—and so judged, it will not be found wanting, for architecture and decoration are, as the author of the present volume admits, in exact accordance with each other; and if the latter be worthy of admiration, so equally must the former merit it when both are in combination. It is in architec- tural decoration as.exhibited in the mosques and mausoleums of Cairo that Mahomedan art is seen under its strictest religions limitations, and especially in the buildings of the Mamluk Sultan Kilt Bey.(1468-96). Mr. Lane-Poole gives some excellent illustrations of the exquisite arabesque and geometrical work of this period, from which all delineation of animal life is rigidly excluded, and even floral motives are but sparsely, and, so to speak, ander the mask of convention, intro- duced into the design. In other art-systems, scroll-work of the highest merit is to be found ; but the very limits- tions imposed upon the stucco, stone, and wood-sculptors of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries forced them to carry geometrical decoration to a point never reached before or since. Of such truly wonderful work as that which lends an unrivalled beauty to the pulpits of Barka and Kilt Bey—to select a couple of typical examples—the delicate and subtle thought
must be reached by an attentive examination of the whole design, and of each detail, before the absolute perfection of the decoration can be appreciated, and the marvellous variety evolved from the play of simple lines, combined with that balanced nnsymmetry so characteristic of Eastern art generally, suffi- ciently perceived and understood.
But, as Mr. Lane-Poole reminds us, it would be a mistake to imagine that the prohibition against the representation of living things was always observed. There can be no doubt that Islam sat lightly enough upon the consciences both of its earlier followers and its newly acquired converts. The Tartars especially were slow in coming fully under the influence of the Islamitic spirit. The Kurdish and Tartar princes who ruled Mesopotamia in the thirteenth century adopted the figured coinage of their predecessors, whose coins bore the heads of Byzantine saints. The pious Saladin carved his own totem, an eagle, on the wall of the citadel of Cairo. The earlier Mamlnks continued to live, though men and animals were chased on their drinking-cups and bowls ; and on the panels of the doors of the /Seriatim, or mosque-hospital, of Sultan Ralson (thirteenth century) Persian hunting-scenes, comprising deer, eagles, waterfowl, ducks, &c., may be still seen admirably sculptured. It is instructive in this connection to learn that Kalauu was a Tartar slave from Kipchak, and that his name in Tartar speech meant " duck." But art of this kind was heretical at Cairo, which has always been the true centre of Islam, and in the course of time public opinion enforced a stricter observance of the Islamitic law upon the Mamlnk Sultans and nobility. Before the close of the fourteenth century, pictorial representa- tions had wholly disappeared from Egyptian art. The cele- brated Mdsil, or Mesopotamian, metal-work of the thir- teenth century flourished rather in spite, than by favour, of Mahomedanism. This branch of art was doubtless handed down from Assyrian times by the Persian conquerors of the great Mesopotamian Empire. Its oldest extant examples show a decoration resembling the designs of Assyrian bas-reliefs. But in the earlier days of Islam, the piety of the people compelled the Khalifs to enforce the regulation of Mahomed against pictorial art, and the craft of the metal-workers ran imminent risk of becoming a lost form of artistic industry. Then, fortn- tunately for art, an immigration of Turkish hordes took place in the wake of the Tartar guards introduced by the Khalifs to assure their own security. The Turks were Mahomedans, but of lax faith, and at once took to minting coins bearing the figures of men, saints, and princes, and even of Christ and the Virgin. The revival of metal-work soon followed, and in the silver inlay of the thirteenth and later centuries, we have, according to Mr. Lane-Poole, "the highest development of the Saracenic art of the East." Bat, strictly speaking, this form of art was as little Saracenic as it was Mahomedan. It was an antique Oriental art that had never wholly died out, and that revived under the favouring conditions induced by the Turkish immigration. Many good examples of it are to be seen at South Kensington, to which and to Mr. Lane- Poole's excellent descriptions we must perforce refer the reader.
Among the remaining chapters of this carefully prepared and admirably illustrated handbook, one of the most remarkable is the chapter dealing with Saracenic glass. In this, as in almost every other branch of artistic work, "the Saracens, while they had to begin with no art of their own, and learned all their iestbetic training from their subjects, 3 et contrived to introduce some element of distinctive originality," and in shape, style, and decoration, the Cairene glass lamps of the fourteenth century are absolutely unique, as are the stained-glass windows of Cairene mosques. " The oldest glass in the world," adds Mr. Lane-Poole, parenthetically, "belongs to Egypt," for we have green and blue glass of the age of the Pharaohs. But here, again, mere description is comparatively useless, and the examples of Egyptian medimval glass at Bloomsbury and at South Kensington should be studied, with the aid of the present volume. The chapters on textiles and illuminated manuscripts are too brief to give more than an idea of the wealth of Mahomedan art in these departments, and the chapter on pottery might have been omitted altogether. The aim of the book may be taken to be in the main the promotion of aesthetic culture ; and its educational value in this direction especially in combination with study at the museums, it is hardly possible to over-estimate.
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