It’s harder than ever to teach Islamic art — but never more important
How do we talk about architecture and poetry in a time
of misinformation and war?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/06/its-harder-than-ever-to-teach-islamic-art-but-never-more-important/?utm_term=.df0de99bb222
By Kishwar Rizvi January 6
Kishwar Rizvi teaches the history of Islamic art and
architecture at Yale University. She is a Public Voices Fellow with the Oped
Project.
Every year, I take the
students from my Islamic architecture course to visit the Islamic art
collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York so they can see the cultural
artifacts we’ve discussed in class. In 2013, we stopped to look at an aerial
photograph of the 9th-century Great Mosque of Samarra, taken by the British
Royal Air Force 100 years ago. The black-and-white image shows the vast scale
of the mosque, renowned for having one of the tallest minarets in the world, at
approximately 170 feet.
Someone remarked, “Wasn’t this
the minaret that was installed with American snipers fighting Iraqi rebels in
2005, and blown up later?” Silence dropped over the group, and we moved on.
Teaching Islamic
art and architecture can feel like walking through a minefield. Long before
“war on terror” was a common phrase, the sites I lecture on were contentious,
the evisceration of cultural heritage already underway. In my first class, on
Islam’s holiest site, the Kaaba in Mecca, I couldn’t avoid showing images of the
sacred monument overshadowed by towering hotels. Old photographs and verbal
descriptions have to stand in for the hundreds of Ottoman and early Islamic
sites destroyed by the Saudi
government to make way for ambitious commercial ventures. The
hardest segment is on Iraq; some years I skip the Abbasids, as I am unable to
talk about the historic city of Baghdad or the holy shrines in Najaf and
Karbala, popular pilgrimage sites that have been targeted in sectarian wars,
without tears in my eyes.
Now, with devastating images
of human suffering from Mosul and Aleppo filling the news, ancient sites
reduced to rubble, and rampant misinformation and anxiety about Islam, it’s
more difficult than ever to tell the stories of places as old as civilization
itself.
The news we receive of Iraq
and Syria focuses on military incursions, bombings and the horrific loss of
life. In my class, we instead discuss the cultural flowering that took place in
the great universities of medieval Baghdad, known as the City of Peace, and the
incredible works of literature and science composed there. We are not just
surveying the form of buildings or noting their dates of construction; rather,
we discuss their political circumstances and the rituals that gave life to
them. I want my students to understand that while the Middle East today may be
defined by war and strife, not long ago, it comprised great cities, home to
poets, artists and craftsmen. And I want them to know that these places are
worth saving.
By the time my
students arrive at the Damascus Room at the Met, the group has already passed
through almost 1,000 years of history, exemplified by ornate tiles, intricately
painted manuscripts and resplendent carpets. The room is serene, a “winter
quarter” decorated in carved and inlaid wood. Poetic verses are written along
the walls, making the room appropriate for entertaining or sitting alone
reading a book. I’m transported to Damascus, which I visited for the first and
last time in 2010, a few months before Syria’s civil war began. It had snowed
that winter, and everyone was out celebrating. The majestic villas in the old bazaar
— built in the 18th century by Jewish, Muslim and Christian elite — had been
converted to cafes, their courtyards graced with orange trees and jasmine. It
is difficult to re-create for my students the grandeur of Damascus, with its
layers of Roman, Umayyad and Ottoman architecture. The city is now divided into
sectarian zones and in a permanent state of emergency.
The loss of life in Syria and
Iraq is unimaginable; millions have been displaced and perhaps will never
return home. But what do we make of the thousands of stories that are erased
every time a neighborhood is razed to the ground, every time a historical
monument is riddled with sniper fire? We bear witness, we document, we try to
educate.
Teaching the architectural
history of Iraq and Syria, thousands of miles away and under siege, I am often
addressing students who have no links to the Middle East but who bring their
curiosity and willingness to see beyond political rhetoric. Buildings can evoke
universal responses, and students imagine serene gardens on a hillside, the
feel of cool mosaic floors in an ancient palace, the smell of incense wafting
through a shrine. Studying the architecture and culture of a society allows us
to recognize the essential humanity in each other, even in those far removed by
time and geography.
My classes also
include Muslim students who sometimes know the tenets of their religion but not
its history or complexity. A few find themselves at first confused (“There are
figurative images of the prophet Muhammad!”) and then awe-struck. Their eyes
light up when I talk of the architectural achievements that tell the story of a
diverse Muslim faith, spanning from Cordoba to Delhi, from Samarkand to Ghana.
They need to know this history most of all, so that they do not succumb to the
reactionary propaganda of the Islamic State and others who aim to annihilate the past. They need to know that there
is power in building things and that history remembers those who make objects
of beauty, not those who destroy them.
The history of Islam, like
that of any religion, has never been an easy one. Yet its cultural legacy
describes a faith that spans at least three continents and almost two
millennia. I speak about the great automatons designed by medieval
mathematicians and engineers; of the vibrant literary and artistic culture of
Mosul, where Christian and Muslim artists created beautiful works of
calligraphy and painting; of the fine-arts academies in Damascus; and of the
architectural commissions that lured Frank Lloyd Wright to Baghdad. For the 50
minutes we spend together, my students and I are transported to a world of
possibilities. It is an important lesson, of what one day these students will
have to rebuild.
Kishwar Rizvi teaches the history of Islamic art and architecture at Yale
University. She is a Public Voices Fellow with the Oped Project.
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