This special issue comprises four studies presented at the international conference, Inscribed Objects in the Islamic World: Aesthetics, Adab, Societies, organised in Paris on 24 November 2017 by the above editors and co-financed by the Musée du Louvre and the Collège de France (Hugot Fondation). The conference was conceived as an extension to the documentation project of inscriptions on objects kept in the Department of Islamic Arts, Musée du Louvre (including objects deposited by the Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris). This project was initiated in 2013 to gather published and unpublished data related to these inscriptions, describe them in a standardised way, and integrate them into the Musée du Louvre collection database, which has been accessible online since 2020. Among the many institutions holding Islamic art collections worldwide, the documentation of inscriptions on objects remains uneven, and their systematic and standardised online publication in their original alphabet remains problematic. However, the contribution of museum institutions to making portable inscriptions available to both the public and researchers alike is essential. Eventually, the integration of online documentation under the banner of the Thesaurus d’Epigraphie islamique (Thesaurus of Islamic Epigraphy) – until recently predominantly oriented towards monumental and funerary epigraphy, which only considers published inscriptions1 – would make it possible to constitute a formidable research and knowledge tool for the history of the material and immaterial culture of the Islamic world. The study of portable inscriptions is indeed an important issue for the cultural and historical contextualisation of preserved objects, the knowledge of art and material culture, and more generally, the history of the Islamic world through the centuries.
The special importance devolved to writing and its aesthetic variation, calligraphy, is a characteristic of Islamic art that has long been emphasized and commented on by art historians and palaeographers (notably Grohmann, 1967–71; Ettinghausen, 1974; Welch, 1979; Kühnel, 1986; Blair, 1998). This pre-eminence meant that the objects themselves, much like architecture, were invested with inscriptions from the early Islamic period, their ornamental aspect being coupled with a carefully chosen message. In addition to conveying multiple meanings, Arabic writing has become a visual marker of identity and an essential aesthetic element. The intensive practice of inscribing objects and all types of supports is attested from the first centuries of Islam among the Abbasid urban elites, evidenced by texts such as the Kitāb al-Muwaššāʾ by al-Waššāʾ in the fourth/tenth century (al-Waššāʾ, 2004), and by numerous preserved objects. Among the latter, a small fine ceramic drinking vessel discovered during excavations in Susa, attributable to the second–third/eighth–ninth centuries, bears a love correspondence inscribed in brown ink, exceptionally illustrating this practice.2
What do we mean by the object and the inscribed object? According to current definitions, an object is: “a thing that can be seen and touched, but is not alive,”3 or more precisely “a solid, manageable thing, generally manufactured […] having its own unity, which is a matter of external perception, belongs to current experience and responds to a certain destination.”4 Therefore, very diverse, unique, or serial things can enter the spectrum of inscribed objects: everyday objects of common use, precious and collectable objects, furniture objects, utilitarian objects, instruments of action or objects of contemplation and meditation. However, a distinction can be made between those with only an initial vocation to carry a written message (documents, manuscripts, tablets, tombstones,5 etc.) and those which have another primary utility despite bearing an inscription – although the former category can receive “secondary inscriptions,” not linked to the first “text.” Only objects of the second category will be discussed in this special issue.
We must emphasize here the importance of portability, which makes the object eminently linked to social practices and favours its insertion into transcultural phenomena. This facilitates interactions – the recipients and the contexts of reception (daily life, religious and profane rituals, practice of power, etc.) are multiplied and uncontrolled – and allows the dissemination of forms, ideas, and practices. The inscription adds to the object a function, a meaning, or an additional value, which can evolve and be modified according to the context of reception. For historians, the last (for the moment) unforeseen recipients, inscribed objects constitute an essential key.
In the Islamic world, objects inscriptions are various. They can have an attributive value when they mention a manufacturer, a patron, a recipient, a date, a destination, or a place of manufacture. They can bear a cultural reference: literary and sapiential quotations (poetry, rhymed prose, wisdom sayings, etc.) or original compositions, religious quotations (Quranic verses, Hadith, Beautiful Names of God, prayers, etc.). Inscriptions can also be autonomous, or in direct relation to the object itself, or else linked to its use in a religious, therapeutic, magical or divinatory, convivial, political or social affirmation context.
The inscriptions can be approached according to different criteria: the study of the techniques involved in their making, an anthropological, functional, stylistic, or typological approach, or the study of informative sources. Faced with an inscribed object, many initial questions can be asked: 1) why to inscribe this object, 2) where to place the inscription, 3) which writing and which aesthetic to choose, 4) who decides and who executes it, 5) how does the aesthetic research, the shape of an inscription, connect the object to its environment, a place and time, 6) can a calligraphic style also convey meaning, and 7) how does the style fit the object? The same questions apply to the content of the inscription: 1) who decides, 2) what meaning does it have for the producer, patron, and recipient, and 3) what is the link between style and content?
Therefore, inscriptions can offer precious and precise insights into the context of production for the object and allow us to reconstruct or at least approach its cultural dimension, its “cultural and social life” or what Igor Kopytoff has called “the cultural biography of things” (1986). Inscriptions are one of the means of discerning the social meaning of the object, or the object as social mediation, from an anthropological perspective: “the agency of objects” (Appadurai, 1986), that is to say, the role of objects as mediating agents. This question of the mediating object or social subject arises within a given society between its different groups or actors, but also from one society to another in a dimension of interculturality of circulation and possibly of the transcultural identity of the objects understood through their inscriptions.
Pioneering epigraphers, namely Max van Berchem, Leo A. Mayer, Gaston Wiet, or following them, David S. Rice, were primarily interested in the attributive and historical value of inscriptions insofar as they contained dates, names, and toponyms, allowing us to locate the objects in space and time, and confer on them a document status. This laid the essential and necessary basis for a historical construction of the evolution of artistic production (Berchem, 1904; Berchem, 1909; Wiet, 1929; Wiet, 1932; Mayer, 1933; Rice, 1952; Rice, 1953a–c). However, far from exhaustion, this aspect of epigraphical research must continue in order to refine and revise the geographical, historical, and sociological production frameworks.
The stylistic developments and the aesthetic function, rather neglected by the pioneers, interested the next generation. Studies have thus focused on studying the morphological and ornamental evolution of inscriptions on objects, most often restricting themselves to a well-defined field of investigation, and compared portable and monumental inscriptions (Flury, 1938–9; Marzouk, 1942; Volov, 1966; Grohmann, 1967–71.). More rarely, the question of the chosen style of script and a cultural or political interpretation of this choice has been raised.6
During the last decades, an increasing number of publications have focused on other types of inscriptions, particularly esoteric or magical (see notably Saif et al., 2020; Porter et al., 2017), but above all literary contents, sometimes attempting to place them within a cultural and social context, where the objects constitute an emanation or even become actors (according to the concept of the “speaking object”).7 Among these attempts, often in a very limited field and too numerous to be listed here, can be mentioned the various contributions for the Persian field, of Asadullah S. Melikian-Chirvani (1973; 1982), Leon T. Gyuzalian,8 and Abdullah Ghouchani (notably 1986; 1992), and for the medieval Near East, of David S. Rice (1957), James Allan (1969; 1971), and Doris Behrens-Abouseif (2005; 2006; 2010).
More in-depth research has been carried out recently by Oya Pancaroğlu on certain groups of inscribed ceramics and their connection with the surrounding literate culture (2002; Pancaroğlu and Bayani-Wolpert, 2007). These include a large group of fine ceramics with lustre and underglaze painted decoration, attributable to Kashan, between the end of the sixth/twelfth and the beginning of the seventh/thirteenth centuries, whose poetic or sapiential inscriptions, not only in Persian but also in Arabic, reflect the atmosphere of the Iranian majālis (sing. majlis, assembly of scholars). A number of these poetic fragments appear in literary works and anthologies gathered in the Iranian world during the sixth/twelfth and early-seventh/thirteenth centuries, including Nuzhat al-Maǧālis by Ǧamāl-al-Dīn Ḵalīl Šarvānī (Pancaroğlu and Bayani-Wolpert, 2007, pp. 96–149; 154–5; see also Ghouchani, 1987).
The decipherment, identification, and interpretation of poetic inscriptions constitute a broad field of research for future scholarship. The alliance between poetic literature and objects, attested from the first centuries (al-Wašāʾ, Kitāb al-Muwaššāʾ, 2004), actually seems to strengthen from the seventh/thirteenth century, both in the Near East and Persianate world.9 The increasing volume of poetic inscriptions attests not only to the diffusion of literary tastes among urban elites but also to the proximity of ornemanists involved in the production of fine ceramic tableware, inlaid metal, or enamelled glass objects within the scholars’ milieu and their libraries. Some poetic verses seem to have been composed specifically for the objects displaying them and have no identified author to date. This is particularly common with certain repetitive inscriptions on metal objects from the Mamluk period (especially late Mamluk) (see Rice, 1957; Melikian-Chirvani, 1969; Allan, 1969; 1971; Behrens-Abouseif, 2005; 2006; 2010; Juvin, 2021). These metal objects suggest a serial production, repeatedly using a “repertoire” of poetic verses offered by the workshops to their customers. The group of ceramics studied by O. Pançaroǧlu corresponds to the same type of serial process (with the possibility of a choice between several available formulae), while some other objects with a very specific poetic excerpt seem to indicate a truly bespoke order. They echo the collections then in circulation, whether poetic anthologies or one of the many historical and biographical works sprinkled with poetry. A few Egyptian or Syrian objects from the seventh–eighth/thirteenth–fourteenth centuries may bear witness to personal orders. The enamelled glass beaker with a throned prince scene, known as the Palmer Cup,10 is decorated with wine poetry verses by the poets Kušāǧim (d. c.350/961) and Ibn al-Muḥtasib (d. 598/1201) (Contadini, 2017). An enamelled and gilded glass-footed bowl kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,11 probably made in Damascus around 699/1300, is inscribed with a poetic excerpt by Ǧaʿfar ibn Muhammad ibn Muḫtār (543–622/1148–1225), later quoted in the biographical work by al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363), al-Wāfī bi-l-Wafayāt.12 A large ceramic vase in the Louvre Museum attributable to Egypt or Syria in the early-eighth/fourteenth century13 is adorned with a rare poetic fragment by Abūʾl-Ḥasan al-Baḫarzī, an Iranian poet and anthologist (d. 467/1075), part of which is quoted in the Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ of the Syrian historian and scholar al-Ḏahabī (d. 748/1348). The diffusion of literary culture in mediaeval portable epigraphy is also occasionally illustrated in funerary epigraphy (see Diem and Schöller, 2004). A particularly interesting example is a tombstone, from the cemetery of al-Maʿlā, Mecca, in the name of a young man who died in 595/1199. His epitaph contains a quotation from a poem by the Maliki jurist of Elvira (Spain) Ibn Abī Zamanīn (d. 399/1008).14 The production of this poet seems to have later spread to the Near East.15 Nevertheless, the direct source for this epitaph is revealed exceptionally through the biographical dictionary of the Meccan historian al-Fāsī (d. 832/1429).16 He devotes a biographical note to the Maliki imam Ǧamāl al-Dīn Muhammad b. Futūḥ al-Maknāsī, coming from the Maghreb, who became the imam of the Maliki maqām in the Mecca Ḥarām during 588/1192. This same year, he deposited as a waqf a diwān in six volumes of Ibn Abī Zamanīn in the Maliki, Shafiʿi, and Hanafi maqām-s. The use of this poet’s verses seven years later on the aforementioned tombstone, which is stylistically attributable to the workshop of the main lapicide and learned scholar ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Abī Ḥaramī al-Makkī,17 (who signed the tombstone of the imam al-Maknāsī himself)18 constitutes a rare testimony of these transmission processes.
Therefore, approaching inscriptions through a meticulous examination of different historical and literary sources will deepen our understanding of their meaning and cultural environment. Despite numerous publications, inscribed objects remain a vast field of research still to be investigated, and finally, no work has endeavoured to encompass the occurrence of inscribed objects collectively. In her Islamic Inscriptions, Sheila Blair (1998) devoted a chapter to “portable objects,” providing a first general overview, although it is organised according to object materials, and not the content of the inscriptions, offering more descriptive rather than analytical results. The volume of essays The Aura of Alif addresses all together bookish, monumental, and portable calligraphy (Frembgen, 2010), while a recent work devoted to calligraphy in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Ekhtiar, 2018) integrates some inscribed objects but only allocates to them a secondary place, compared to the handwritten pages.
This special issue does not intend to offer an exhaustive overview of this broad phenomenon but wishes to illustrate, through different case studies, the importance and the impact of such a corpus, and to approach possible lines of research: morphological and semiotic aspects, relations to functionality, cultural setting, social study, and interculturality.
The Power of Curves revisits the development of angular and curvilinear North African scripts, addresses both the morphological aspect of inscriptions, through the example of ṯuluṯ Maghribi and explores the complex relationships between book hands, and inscriptions on monuments and objects, while raising the question of choosing a specific script in a given context.
The Epigraphic Program of Mamluk Minbars, based on a large survey, sets out to study the epigraphic program of an emblematic piece of furniture in religious buildings, the minbar, focusing on the numerous pulpits produced during the Mamluk Sultanate. This study offers a new contribution to the subject of the use of religious inscriptions, previously more investigated in a monumental context. It addresses the particular choices made for the inscriptions of these “monumental objects,” and in doing so, the link between epigraphy and the practical and symbolical functions of the objects.
The Merchant’s Lamp and the Sufi’s Drum illustrates, through the cases of two inscribed objects from mediaeval Syria, that research can still be undertaken to identify recipients mentioned on objects, who have hitherto remained obscure. The result, when fruitful, leads not only to the precise dating and geographical attribution, but also to a new interpretation for the use of these objects and their social meaning. In these cases, they are linked to the milieu of civilian elites, less well circumscribed and explored by researchers than princely circles. It illustrates how one can encounter the social and anthropological dimension of objects through a more “classical” consideration of historical attribution.
Finally, The Lady’s Property explores the “reverse” of inscribed objects and highlights “secondary” inscriptions – chronologically “secondary,” but not in informative terms – constituted by graffiti quickly engraved on metal objects, which associate the latter to princesses of the Yemeni Rasulid dynasty. These inscriptions, devoid of aesthetic interest and discreetly affixed, have thus far been little studied. However, they can contain data of high historical and social value relating to the destiny or “biography” of the objects, the meaning(s) they may have assumed, and the individuals and social groups mentioned.
These contributions focus on the mediaeval Arab world, from the Maghreb to Yemen, a spatiotemporal era that today seems somewhat relegated to the benefit of the Persianate area and the margins of the Islamic world, and having been the concentration for a large part of the research during the twentieth century, could be mistakenly perceived to have little more to reveal to present scholars. On the contrary, these contributions here attest to the extent of the avenues still to be investigated and also valid for other cultural eras, from understanding the visual power and meaning of the inscriptions to deciphering their particular stories.
About the Authors
François Déroche is a member of the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and a professor at the Collège de France. An expert in Arabic manuscripts with a particular interest in the early transmission of the Quranic text, his research and publications focus on codicology, the history of Arabic manuscripts, and Quranic manuscripts from early Islam.
Carine Juvin is curator for the Mediaeval Near and Middle East at the Musée du Louvre, Islamic Art Department. She also taught Islamic art history at Ecole du Louvre, Paris, and Strasbourg Universities. Her research focuses on Arabic epigraphy and calligraphy and the material culture of the mediaeval Near and Middle East.
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Notes
The work was recently started under the supervision of Frédéric Bauden based on published data. An overview of epigraphy under the Mamluk Sultanate, published in the proceedings of an inaugural conference of the School of Mamluk Studies in Bonn (2011), had previously drawn attention to this shortcoming and recalled the importance of portable inscriptions for both historians and art historians (Juvin, 2013a).
Paris, Louvre Museum, inv. no. MAO S. 673.
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary online (accessed 10/12/2021).
CNRTL, portail lexical //www.cnrtl.fr/definition/objet (accessed 10/12/2021).
If we follow the categorisation of Sheila Blair, who includes tombstones in the “portable objects” category (Blair, 1998).
For the transition from Kufic script to curvilinear script in the Near East, see Tabbaa (2001).
For this concept, see Shalem; for an example of a speaking object combining poetic inscription and self-referential iconography on a sixth/twelfth-century Iranian inkwell, see Taragan (2005).
See Adamova (2003) for his bibliography (mainly in Russian).
This impression is undoubtedly reinforced by the higher proportion of objects preserved from the late mediaeval and modern periods.
The British Museum, inv. no. WB.53.
Inv. no. 91.1.1538.
Reading by A. Ghouchani, see the museum collection database online: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/444717?ft=91.1.1538&offset=0&rpp=40&pos=1 (accessed 15/12/2021).
Inv. no. MAO 618, reading and attribution by Abdallah Cheikh-Moussa; see Juvin (2012).
Jedda, Qaṣr Ḫizām Museum, inv. no. 411A-B: see André-Salvini (2010, pp. 512–3, no. 295), where the poetic quote was deciphered and identified by Cheikh-Moussa.
According to Cheikh-Moussa, these verses are notably found again in the Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ of al-Ḏahabī.
al-Fāsī 1958–1969, vol. 2, pp. 74–5 no. 227.
For this tombstone maker, see Juvin (2013b, pp. 158–60).
He died in 592/1196, and his tombstone is kept in the Riyadh National Museum, inv. no. 666; see its publication by C. Juvin in André-Salvini (2010; pp. 514–5 no. 296).
