by Tahir Shah
Los Angeles, Dallas, Boston and Phoenix have all spawned their own G. G. splinter groups. Dozens more have appeared around the world as far afield as Mexico City, Berlin and Melbourne as well. And, as the subversive masked feminist message spreads like wildfire, newer and more radical pseudo Guerrilla Girl units are being born.
Back in New York the original movement is challenging the system with ever more political rhetoric. And, as the neo-radical branches of the Guerrillas defame officialdom, the unique poster art of the Guerrilla Girls is being snapped up by collectors. In a strange and unlikely irony, those eager to pay top dollar for the sorority’s art, are the New York Public Library, The Spencer and The Whitney Museums – all of which have been scourged by the Girls in the past.
FIFTY-ONE
The Khalili Collection of Islamic Art
DAVID NASSER KHALILI was born to collect.
As the son and grandson of dealers in carpets, lacquerware and other art in Isfahan, one of the greatest cities of ancient Persia and now Iran’s second city, Khalili himself maintains that from age fourteen he dreamed of amassing one of the greatest art collections in the world.
It is a dream which took decades, a discerning eye and a fortune to realize, but a dream that came true nonetheless. The result, the Khalili Collection embraces virtually every known area of craftsmanship ever pursued in Islamic lands. There are illuminated copies of the Qur’an, rare manuscripts and miniatures, papyri, calligraphy, ceramics, metalwork, talismans and seals, carpets and textiles, gems, coins, glass, jewel-encrusted daggers and medieval armour, astrolabes, maps, padlocks, stirrups and even more, all of it packed in vaults and warehouses around the world, awaiting a permanent home.
In many areas, the Khalili Collection is regarded as world class. The illuminated copies of the Qur’an number more than five hundred, compared to the British Library’s modest fifty, and they comprise one of the largest groups of fine Quranic manuscripts in private hands anywhere. The collection, that has grown exponentially since the early 1970s now lists more than twenty thousand items.
But all this is more than just a private indulgence. Nasser’s ultimate vision is that the collection will further spur the world’s appreciation of the artistic contributions of Islamic cultures. To this end, he insists that in his collecting he has not been ‘mesmerized by objects made for kings and queens’, and has attended also to the products of craftsmen made for everyday life.
Honorary curator of the Khalili Collection, Professor Michael Rogers, says Khalili’s achievement has been to buy in areas in which there’s been little interest to buy before. He’s not merely interested in the beautiful or the exquisite, but in the curious as well.
‘As a result,’ Rogers says, ‘the collection has shed a completely new light on practically every aspect of Islamic art. For the first time it will be possible to see the whole history of the cultures of Islam from the beginnings right up to the nineteenth century.’
The Khalili Collection, he adds, ‘is far more systematic and historical in approach than the collections of either the Victoria and Albert Museum or the British Museum.’
David Khalili himself is soft-spoken yet confident, in the manner of one whose seemingly impossible success has come as no grand surprise to himself. Sitting straight-backed at his north London research centre, he tells a little of the story of his passion. Beside him, an expert works meticulously on the restoration of a tenth-century rose-tinted cameo-glass bowl.
‘I grew up in Iran,’ he begins gently, ‘a country of Islamic culture which played a major role in the development of Islamic art. My father loved Islamic art, so I was brought up to appreciate it. Dealing in art and collecting is our family tradition; it was only natural that I should follow in my father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. I was drawn at first to Islamic lacquer. I was amazed by the quality of the painting and the absolute mastery that the craft required.’
In 1967, Khalili left Tehran bound for New York. Having earned a bachelor’s degree in computer sciences, he was by the early 1970s ready to begin building on the foundations of his father’s and grandfather’s trade.
For any serious collector of Islamic art, the world’s best marketplace is not in the Middle East. It is in London. During the centuries of Empire, a great many Islamic antiques made their way – legitimately and illegitimately – to England.
The thriving Islamic art market of the 1970s captivated Khalili. On trips from Iran, he began to frequent Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips’, the three leading auction houses at the time. His initial purchases were narrowly focused. From the outset, he bought Persian lacquerware, his first love in Islamic art, which, until the 1980s, was also regarded as undervalued. In 1978, when prices in much of the Islamic art market fell, setting off panic, Khalili kept on buying. This raised a few eyebrows, and earned the newcomer a measure of respect from London’s established old-timers.
It was also in 1978 that Khalili, seeking to buy a gift, walked into a jeweller’s shop on Bond Street. The woman across the counter was Marion Easton. Khalili proposed, and the two married later that year.
In 1980, they moved to London for good, and it was then that David Khalili began to buy on an unprecedented scale. Throughout the early 1980s, he bought and sold out of a gallery in London’s fashionable Mayfair.
Many art dealers maintain that Khalili achieved the status and credibility of a serious collector upon his purchase of the fabled manuscript of Jami’ al-Tawarikh, the ‘Universal History’ of Rashid al-Din, produced in Tabriz in 1314. Full of illustrations from the life of the Prophet Muhammad, it is widely considered the finest medieval manuscript ever produced in East or West. It was at the time the most expensive of its kind ever sold.
Khalili’s low-profile, unassuming manner enabled him to purchase an enormous number of objects without attracting commensurate public attention. But by the mid-1980s, however, he was buying such sensational quantities, at equally sensational prices, that the art world began to run with rumours. Khalili missed no opportunity, and scooped up many of the finest pieces in every gallery and every auction house. He no longer focused entirely on Islamic art, either, and went on to create another important collection, Meiji-period Japanese art.
The most discussed – and least answerable – question of all was, where did Khalili get his money? On this point he has always remained silent, maintaining that it is his private affair. Khalili continued buying – and buying – and replied to the press in only the most general of terms: His wealth, he said, was the result of successful business dealings in sugar and coffee, on the options market, in real estate in the British Isles and abroad, and, of course, in works of art.
The announcement that Khalili was in fact purchasing for the Nour Foundation (the name means ‘Light’), owned by the Khalili family trust, came as a surprise to many in the trade who had assumed all along that Khalili was actually buying on behalf of another collector.Khalili had, after all, written a catalogue of the Islamic art collection belonging to the Sultan of Brunei. ‘The Nour Foundation,’ Khalili says, ‘was formed many years ago by my father, to promote an understanding and appreciation of the great heritage of Islamic art.’
In the mid-’eighties, Khalili began work on a doctoral dissertation at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). In 1988, he presented his research on eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Persian lacquerware, his enduring love in Islamic art. Like almost no other student before him, Khalili was able to study largely within his own collection.
Not long afterward, he underwrote a $1 million chair of Islamic art at SOAS and a research fellowship in Islamic art at the University of Oxford. The University of London named him an honorary fellow and appointed him to its governing body. Khalili found a donor to give $16 million for a new Islamic Centre at the University of London, which complements Khalili’s endowed professorship, mounting exhibitions of Islamic art and provides a centre for research.
Today, Khalili is buying less and p
reparing more for the research and display dimensions of his collection. On this, he is straightforward: ‘The plan has always been first to conserve and document the collection in its entirety, publish it, and then to house it in a museum.’
Almost every item in the vast collection has been catalogued on a scale befitting the collection’s value. A single, overall catalogue of the greatest masterpieces was authored by Rogers, at the time that Khalili was Professor of Islamic Art at SOAS. But this volume was only a prelude.
A full series of thirty catalogues was produced, huge tomes that contained comprehensive scholarship and study. Directed not only to the academic and the collector, but to lay people as well, the catalogues include essays on particular themes in Islamic art. To assist him in organizing, drafting, and producing the catalogues, Khalili hired the world’s leading authorities in each field of study. More than thirty specialists were contracted along with a full editorial team, an in-house illustrator, a photographer, and one of the world’s most distinguished book designers, Misha Anikst.
In selecting scholars, Khalili comments, ‘I am also keen on introducing new blood into the system. Some of the young scholars, many of whose names have not been familiar to most, have actually made valuable contributions to the catalogues. These will combine both scholarship with visual splendour.’
Produced in a large format on acid-free paper, the photographs were complemented with technical drawings, to reveal delicate details so characteristic of Islamic art. ‘We are not cutting any corners,’ says Khalili, ‘but are aiming at the highest standards.’ He adds that the books, published by the Nour Foundation in association with Azimuth Editions, cost far more to produce than the profits made by sales. Such subsidization, he believes, will give them the wider readership they deserve.
Dr. Julian Raby, general editor of the catalogues and lecturer in Islamic art at the Oriental Institute at Oxford, was taken by surprise by the scale of the publishing task. ‘When I began,’ he says, ‘I didn't realize what I was taking on. I knew it was big, but didn't really have a sense of just how big. Indeed, I think there are only a handful of people working on the collection who do.’
Working closely with Khalili and designer Anikst, Raby has encouraged authors to highlight and emphasize what they, as individual art historians, are excited about in the collection. This spotlight approach, focusing on an object, a group of objects, or a particular issue, has resulted in a series of essays intended as a contribution to the scholarship of the subject. Since some of the catalogues consider overlapping areas of the collection, certain items will be studied from one or more viewpoints.
‘Where the Khalili Collection differs,’ Raby says, ‘is that it’s so large that it can be reconfigured in different ways. It’s not telling a simple story. It has not got one simple vision. Two traditions determine the make-up of most private collections today. One is that of the connoisseur, with a few select items chosen for their aesthetic merit. The other is the philatelic approach, where the emphasis of the collector is on assembling complete series of objects. The Khalili Collection is remarkable in that it belongs, as it were, to the heroic age of collecting, for it combines both these traditions within an overall scheme of providing a synoptic vision of the arts of the entire Islamic world. What I particularly enjoy about the collection,’ he says, ‘are some of the more quirky, whimsical sequences. ‘I said to one of the authors who is writing the Science, Tools and Magic volume, “We have some padlocks you might like to put into this part of the collection.” He asked, “How many?” I said, “Three hundred and forty-seven!” Since then, it’s grown by another six hundred!’
In addition to the catalogue series, the Nour Foundation embarked on a series of books focusing on specific areas of Islamic art. Entitled Studies in the Khalili Collection, this second series was aimed at students and academics. The first volume in the series, a supplemental study of thirty-six papyri titled Arabic Papyri, was published in 1992. Along with its main volume, Letters, Bills and Records: Arabic Papyri From Egypt, the book offers an unprecedented look at writing in the first three centuries of Islam.
Science, Tools and Magic covers astrology, astronomy, medicine and magic. Included was the collection's large number of astrolabes, globes, quadrants, scientific manuscripts and geomantic devices. In addition, it features practical items like padlocks, scissors, tweezers, spoons and weights and balances.
Since the written word is a central feature of Islam, calligraphy is of particular importance. Respected scholar Dr. Nabil Safwat says the volume on calligraphy ‘has been written from the calligrapher's point of view.’ It focuses on the collection’s vast cache of exceptional calligraphic pieces. And, in a selection of accompanying essays, Dr. Safwat highlights central themes in Islamic calligraphy that until now have been almost unknown to readers of the English language – such as muraqqa’.
From the Arabic root ruq’ah, muraqqa’ translates as ‘patch’, or a patch-work of pieces of exemplary calligraphy. Whether a complete volume or a single page, such manuscripts acted as calligrapher’s source books.
The collection houses various examples of the finest muraqqa’ever made; pride of place goes to the so-called Royal Muraqqa’ that combines the work of several grand masters of Islamic calligraphy – Shaykh Hamdullah, Hafiz Osman and Mehmet Rasim – on a single sheet.
In a third series of publications, the Nour Foundation also produced a selection of unabridged facsimile manuscripts. The first, says general editor Raby, was a reproduction of the work of the sixteenth-century Ottoman cartographer Piri Reis, whose 1513 world map included information derived from a map by Christopher Columbus that has never been found. Another provides a facsimile edition of the illustrated Jami’ al-Tawarikh manuscript, the Universal History, which includes detailed studies of the miniatures as well as a translation and critical analysis of the text.
‘Collecting,’ Khalili says, ‘is a fairly private activity. And it is my belief that, even if someone owns the greatest collection of art in the world, that collection is of no consequence so long as it is hidden from public view. There is a Persian proverb that is often used to decorate works of art: “Ultimately, all possessions are God’s alone; we are but custodians.”‘
As chairman of the Nour Foundation, Lord Young of Graffham negotiated with the British government in the hope of establishing a London museum to house the Khalili Collection. The foundation’s offer to lend the twenty thousand-piece collection for an initial period of fifteen years was met, however, with the skepticism.
In Britain there was no precedent for such a loan, and the cost of constructing a new museum was deemed too considerable. The offer was rejected.
All that is certain now, Khalili says, is that a museum will be built. But where is still a question. ‘You will have a museum with more than twenty thousand items which have been fully restored, conserved, catalogued, photographed and published even before it has opened its doors. We will be giving Islamic art the credit it deserves, perhaps for the first time on this scale.’
And what a scale it will be.
The collection’s Qur’anic manuscripts stretch from the first century of Islam until the late 1800s. Almost every type and subtype of Umayyad and Abbasid script categories is represented, often in rare complete manuscripts. Among them is the giant Baysunghur copy of the Qur’an, written for Timur Leng (Tamerlane) by the calligrapher ’Umar Aqta. The story goes that, in trying to impress the great Timur, ’Umar produced a copy of the Qur’an so small that it could slip beneath the signet ring of the great ruler. When Timur remained unimpressed, ’Umar went away and produced another copy, this one so huge it had to be wheeled into court on a cart.
The collection also houses the only copy of the Qur’an from twelfth-century Valencia known to be in private hands. Other copies of the Qur’an, originating from as far afield as Sicily and India, include one measuring a mere forty-seven by thirty-seven millimetres (1.85” by 1.45”), thought to have been written in fourteent
h century Iraq.
As well as numerous astrolabes, the Khalili Collection houses some of the finest celestial globes in existence. One example was crafted by Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Tabari in 1285 and 1286, and inlaid with more than a thousand silver dots indicating the major stars of various constellations. It is the original of an almost identical globe in the Louvre in Paris.
Khalili’s Islamic coins number over eight thousand, forming one of the most voluminous numismatic collections of its kind in private hands. Nearly ten per cent of them are either unique or unpublished, and more than twelve hundred are gold. Coins appear from across the Islamic world, from Africa to Asia. Of particular interest are the earliest Arab gold coins from North Africa, which bear Latin inscriptions. Others include a rare Abbasid dinar struck in the year 750, two more Abbasid dinars issued by Harun ar-Rashid in 787 and 788, and a variety of exquisite gold Qajar tomans.
No less diverse is a wide range of figures and figurines. Fashioned to function as door knockers, incense burners, jugs, and other useful objects, they demonstrate that the prohibition of portraying figures in Islam has, historically, often been ignored.
Dr. Sabiha Khemir, the author of the volume entitled Figures and Figurines: Sculptures of the Islamic Lands, points out that the Qur’an warns explicitly against the worship of idols. One of the most intriguing figures in the collection is that of a kneeling, bearded man thought to portray the Seljuk ruler Tughril Beg at prayer. It was produced in Kashan, Iran, under the Mongols in the thirteenth century.
The ceramics’ collection illuminates a thousand years of Islamic pottery. The two thousand items include an unparalleled collection of twelfth-and thirteenth-century Afghan pottery, rare Iznik pieces, early lustre-painted bowls and an extremely rare polychrome painted Persian bowl from the tenth century, incorporating a representation of the Prophet’s steed, Buraq.
The more than a thousand pieces of metal-work range from an early Islamic silver ewer in the Sassanian style to a rare thirteenth-century jazirah casket that once had an unusual combination lock, and an Ottoman silver fountain ladle dated 1577 or 1578.
