Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art

Onur Öztürk, Xenia Gazi, Sam Bowker, Onur Öztürk, Xenia Gazi, Sam Bowker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000555950
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art addresses how researchers can challenge stereotypical notions of Islam and Islamic art while avoiding the creation of new myths and the encouragement of nationalistic and ethnic attitudes.

Despite its Orientalist origins, the field of Islamic art has continued to evolve and shape our understanding of the various civilizations of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Situated in this field, this book addresses how universities, museums, and other educational institutions can continue to challenge stereotypical or homogeneous notions of Islam and Islamic art. It reviews subtle and overt mythologies through scholarly research, museum collections and exhibitions, classroom perspectives, and artists' initiatives. This collaborative volume addresses a conspicuous and persistent gap in the literature, which can only be filled by recognizing and resolving persistent myths regarding Islamic art from diverse academic and professional perspectives.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, museum studies, visual culture, and Middle Eastern studies.

Part 1Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art in Scholarship

1Deconstructing the Myths and Mysteries of the MosqueWest African Marginality, Transculturation, Vernacularization

Cleo Cantone¹

DOI: 10.4324/9781003170525-3

The mosque lies at the heart of Islamic material, spiritual, and geopolitical identity. From Java to Morocco, Samarkand to Sana’a, from Zaria to Zanzibar,² Muslim communities have built places of prostration (Ar. masājid, sing. masjid) to accommodate the faithful in order to perform their daily and Friday prayers. Generally agreed to conform to the Prophet’s mosque in Medina, subsequent mosques followed this prototype consisting of a single-story, enclosed space with a demarcation in the wall (qibla) orientating worshippers towards Mecca. Other constituent parts included a spacious courtyard for the overflow of worshippers and a shaded ẓulla (ظله) which would later become a portico. Like the kiswa that envelops the Ka’ba,³ the mosque clothes its worshippers with its seasonal, regional, and cultural apparel so that its appearance acts as and morphs into an extension of their identity:

Although there is a world in the face of the beloved,

There is another world in the garment of the desired one.

Beauties are glorified by sumptuous and ornamented garments.

They wish to reveal themselves in a different mode.

[Cafer Efendi Agha, biographer of architect Mehmet Agha (1540–1617)]⁴

But on a macrocosmic level, the Qur’an states: “I have created jinn and mankind only that they might worship Me”⁵ The universe is the sanctuary par excellence while on the ‘lower sphere’ of jinn and mankind is where “there be everywhere places of worship.”⁶

Through the ages, and even at the time of the Prophet, the form, appearance, and function of the mosque had to be created, and therefore the imagination played a role in its formulation. Like the master masons of Mali (West Africa) who trace the shape of their buildings, including mosques, in the sand, the primordial mosque had to be ‘conceived’ (صور).⁷ As we shall see, mosque-making is a matter that involves several ‘invisible’ and, therefore, mysterious aspects tied to memory and identity that are carried in the builder’s imagination, an architecture without architects.⁸ Thus, the pilgrim who travels to Mecca from the far-flung corners of the Muslim world returns chez soi, and either paints scenes of the holy places on the walls of his⁹ home (e.g., Egypt, Sudan)¹⁰ or he imports elements from the holy mosques and incorporates them in the building of his local mosque (e.g., by quadrupling of minarets).¹¹ In the case of the repatriated slaves from Brazil, as discussed below, the concept of mosque traveled in the slaves’ memory from Africa to the Americas and back to Africa, adding layers of artistic inspiration and know-how acquired by a process of transculturation.

Part of the aim of the deconstruction of the mosque is to demystify its image as a recognizable monument.¹² The mosque as monument, in fact, has not been the case in all places and at all times: rather its origins are inherently humble (the case of the Prophet’s mosque in Medina).¹³ In its practical aspect, – especially in less prominent urban and rural settings – has shown close connections to vernacular domestic architecture. The minaret, often perceived as the prime symbolic and architectural marker of the mosque, was a later addition and one that has not been uniformly adopted. Up to the nineteenth century, in regions as diverse as Seljuk Anatolia, Australia, and Sudan, for instance, few mosques possess them, and generally, little differentiates places of prayer from “other flat [roofed] mud buildings.”¹⁴ Thus the interconnectedness of built form – whatever its function – results ultimately from experiments with various configurations of habitat:

Architecture is neither a purely artistic nor an exclusively technical activity. Its aim is to provide a material frame for the major part of human life: for work and rest, for religious, social, and artistic activities. (…) Finally, it must satisfy a demand always inherent in the human mind, for aesthetic satisfaction; for that elusive, precious quality called beauty.¹⁵

For the purpose of this chapter, I will focus on the cross-fertilization between colonial domestic architecture and mosques in West Africa. The result was a highly original, syncretic, Mediterranean-domestic meets Yoruba-traditional architecture adorned with a dose of Baroque in a trans-Atlantic ‘entanglement’ formed in Brazil and transported back to Africa. The phenomenon of repatriated slaves from Brazil to West Africa is primarily the subject of academic studies, however, their creative output in the form of domestic and religious architecture has recently come to the attention of the wider public.¹⁶ More than twenty years ago, Nigerian-born Majorie Alonge wrote her thesis on the Afro-Brazilian architecture of Lagos.¹⁷ Carrying out fieldwork across three continents, specifically in Brazil, England, and Nigeria, Alonge undertook a painstaking study making a case for the conservation of these quasi-extinct gems whose dwindling existence bears witness to a rich multi-cultural heritage.

In the nineteenth century, Lagos and Badagry received immigrants of African descent. ‘Afro-Brazilians’ (also referred to as Aguda, a Yoruba word for Catholic, Amaro, and Nago), were originally slaves predominantly from Angola and the Gulf of Benin. They were repatriated to West Africa between 1820 and 1890, following civil unrest when they were faced with the choice between persecution and repatriation.¹⁸ These Afro-Brazilian communities settled in Lagos in a neighborhood known as Popo Aguda. Saros, on the other hand, descended from the Yoruba in south-western Nigeria. Their ancestors had been enslaved in the Americas (including Cuba) as well as the United Kingdom. With the abolition of slavery, they were, for the most part, resettled in Sierra Leone. The majority of Afro-Brazilian Agudas were Catholic (unlike their Sierra Leonian counterparts who were Anglican) but a considerable number were Muslim. As Muslims were deemed responsible for the Malé slave Revolts of 1835, the Bahian authorities arranged the deportation of many slaves back to Africa, alighting in the Bight of Benin and settled in the Yoruba-speaking regions from whence they came.¹⁹

Saros and Agudas communities lived side by side in the so-called Brazilian quarter of Lagos and among them were skilled artisans, craftsmen, and master-builders who transformed the urban environment by building in a style informed by their African and Luso-Brazilian roots. Nevertheless, the first mosques built by returnees were simple: “mud-walled, thatched-roofed, unadorned and usually rectangular in plan,” writes Alonge. Their only distinguishing features were elaborate windows and verandas. Later, skilled craftsmen – master masons, bricklayers, carpenters, painters – the likes of João Baptista Costa, Lazaro Borges da Silva, and Francisco Nobre became in demand to build public monuments such as the Holy Cross Cathedral (in Neo-Gothic style) and the Ottoman-Baroque Shitta-Bey Mosque.²⁰ Simpler, smaller mosques in Lagos consisted of a raised pediment with a scalloped gable, sometimes with vegetal and star motifs to mark out windows and no minarets.²¹

Stripped of their ‘Baroque’ incarnation, Afro-Brazilian mosques betray their humble origins in the casa bandeirista (or bandeirante),²² which were the houses built by black slave populations during the early Portuguese colonization of Brazil in the fifteenth century particularly associated with São Paulo. Building in rammed earth arose from a lack of suitable materials for mortar, masonry, and lime construction but the layout, usually consisting of a U-shape around a central veranda, most likely derives from the so-called casas saloias in the south of Portugal. The word ‘saloia’ originates from the Berber sahroi or ‘inhabitant of the desert’ or in the Lisbon dialect, ‘casa de camponês’ (farmer’s house).²³ The veranda (alpendre, in Portuguese) is the most distinguishing aspect of casas bandeiristas and it also features in the church of Santo Antonio built in around 1640 in São Roque in the state of São Paulo.²⁴ Located near the ‘Casa Grande,’ this church was also built with the rammed earth technique except for its bell tower made of stone covered in mud rendering. A wooden screen separates the porch from the nave, creating the same play with light as claustra in the mud (and later concrete) mosques of West Africa.

Similarly, rural mosques in Guiné-Bissau, retain the same format as domestic dwellings with a central living space surrounded by a veranda supported by bamboo posts on which rests a thatched roof. Supporting walls are sometimes reinforced with adobe. Additionally, mosques are distinguished by a protruding mihrab and no minaret.²⁵ In the neighboring highlands of Fouta Jallon, Guinea, under the Muslim Fulani influence, a square, earthen mosque lies beneath a huge domed protective thatch creating a circular ambulatory or transitional space similar to the ziyāda.²⁶

This essentiality of design, form, and function goes some way to deconstruct the prevailing image of the mosque, largely conceived as a material monument. Yet, the role of myth must not be totally discounted for it can play an important part in the making of the mosque particularly in its foundational stories. From the Aghlabid mosque Sidi ‘Uqba mosque of Qairawān (c. 670AD) down to a small nineteenth-century mosquée du quartier in Thiès, Senegal, the reason for building a mosque in a certain place is customarily connected to a mystical encounter in a dream²⁷ or on a semi-legendary journey, translating the vision from a memorial imprint into built form.²⁸

Figure 1.1 The Viva Brasilia House, Niodior, Senegal. Photograph: Cleo Cantone, 2005.

Les Iles du Saloum – A Reflection of the Afro-Brazilian Diaspora in West Africa

Situated in the Sine-Saloum Delta, between the Petite Côte and the Gambian border, this series of islands form a green labyrinth separated by snake-like rivers and defined by intricate capillary mangroves reachable by pirogue. In my quest to find two syncretic mosques whose existence was only documented in a handful of photographs in Senegal’s National Archives, I came across, instead, a distinctive type of domestic architecture and a series of exuberantly painted mosques decorated by a local mason.²⁹ The houses on the island of Niodior ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1 Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art in Scholarship
• Part 2 Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art in Museums and Classrooms
• Part 3 Deconstructing the Myths of Islamic Art in Contemporary Art Practice
• Index