In Soghd, a one-time Achaemenid province beyond the Oxus, which reverted to the Sasanians for a century and a half, between the fall of the Kushan Empire and the invasion of the Hephthalites – elements of Iranian architecture and art appear heavily mixed with Indian Buddhist and, to some extent, nomadic influences. Thus the Soghdian kushk, or fortified country house or palace, was probably not much different in design from its Parthian or Sasanian counterpart, but its decoration would be considerably different in style, as the frescoes of Balalyk-Tepe, Varakhsha, Pendzhikent and Afrasiyab have shown.
Some other examples of the composite character of the Kushan Empire – which included Soghd, Khorezm, Bactria and other provinces – are given by Frumkin:19 the Indian-style Kara-Tepe, with Iranian sculptures and Hellenistic features, was Buddhist; Khalchayan, with its Hellenistic sculptures and wall paintings, was not. The Kushan Toprak-Kala was a huge Khorezmian castle, the temple of which was neither Buddhist nor apparently devoted to any of the major religions, but probably connected with dynastic worship. Liyavandak (Bukhara) showed Hellenistic features, but there is no reason to believe that it was Buddhist. The same applies to Afrasiyab and Tali-Barzu. Whereas a small building of Surkh-Kotal was a Buddhist shrine, the main shrine was presumably devoted to dynastic worship.
The influence of Buddhism was weakened but not eliminated by the Hephthalite conquest. The decline of Buddhist art, however, as manifested by the sites ranging from Bamiyan to Tepe Sardar, is obvious, Colossal-sized statues replaced sophistication of form and attention to detail. Static postures, crude composition and cheap materials confirm the picture of general decadence.
With the disintegration of the Hephthalite Empire, the Iranian influence became stronger, in particular where the local princelings fell under the suzerainty of the Sasanians. It was, however, less pronounced south of the Oxus than north of it. Secular works of art such as the Soghdian frescoes of Pendzhikent, Varakhsha or Balalyk-Tepe, or secular building of the kushk type, have no counterpart on Afghan territory. The rock paintings of Dokhtar-i Nushirwan remain an isolated manifestation of the Iranian spirit in a country that was still dominated by Buddhist traditions.
The Buddhist sites of Ak-Beshim and Adzhina-Tepe, in the Chu and Vakhsh valley, respectively, which seemed to thrive until the seventh or eighth centuries, indicate that Buddhism was very much alive north of the Oxus, even under the Turks, who succeeded the Hephthalites in the sixth century. The evidence of Bamiyan, the greatest Buddhist centre, is inconclusive, but it seems that it remained Buddhist until the ninth century, and perhaps even later.20
It may be concluded, therefore, that although weak and artistically decadent, Buddhism survived in the eastern parts of Afghanistan and Transoxiana until the arrival of the Arabs. The Hindu (Brahmin) presence in eastern Afghanistan (as documented by the excavations at Khair Khane in eastern Afghanistan) was not properly secured for Islam until the end of the ninth, or more probably the tenth, century.21 The rest of the country, Khorassan and Siistan, were already Islamised in the seventh century.
Early Islamic
The Iranian architectural principles, such as the apadana, the iwan, the arch and the dome, were all, one way or another, incorporated in early Muslim architecture (though there is no agreement as to the extent and the timing of these developments).
After the arrival of Islam the towns retained most of their characteristics from the previous period. There was the fortified citadel with its palace, prison and military quarters. The commercial activities and the homes of the wealthy were concentrated in the shahristan (medina), which was surrounded by a wall. Outside lay the outer suburbs (rabads) where most of the people had their homes, gardens, orchards etc. Sometimes the rabads were also protected by a second belt of walls.
The Arab hypostyle mosque, for example, may have been a simple imitation of the Prophet’s house; but it also may have been inspired by the apadana.22 It had a flat roof supported by rows of columns or arcades, arranged either perpendicularly or parallel to the kibla wall.
The other type, the four-iwan mosque, may have had its origin in the fire temple, which, as we have seen, was a square building with four wide arches covered by a dome, to which sometimes hypostyle halls were added.23 In the Seljuk period this structure was combined with the four-iwan courtyard already known from Iranian palaces since Bishapur. One iwan was in the middle of each side of the rectangular courtyard. The iwan opposite the entrance, which was usually rather shallow, opened into the domed chamber in front of the mihrab.
There is, however, no uniformity of views about the original position or function of the iwan. Thus Vogt-Göknil24 argues persuasively that in ancient Iran the iwan as an audience hall was oriented towards the outside (to the façade) and not into the courtyard. An analogy in Christian architecture would be the crossing of the transept, a sort of ‘throne room’ of Christ. In the mosque, its function was that of a threshold, lieu de passage, analogous with the portal of a cathedral. In a madrasa it served as an auditorium, while in a caravanserai it was used as a common room by the travellers. Its function as an entrance, or entrance hall, came as late as the Safavid period (sixteenth century). Earlier, the entrance was behind the iwan, any one of the four, but most frequently behind the northern one. The same author also maintains that the concept dominating the design of the façades and the iwans was that of the courtyard, and not the interior arrangement of the mosque. The courtyard was more important than the mihrab room.
As against the sobriety and simplicity of the North African mosques (for example Ibn Tulun), the Persian mosque displayed an undeniable quest for beauty and grandeur.
However, large congregational mosques were not the only places of worship. Small sanctuaries destined for private devotion no doubt existed alongside, and the fact that we know little about them may be due simply to the fact that they were built of lighter and cheaper material and did not survive. Some mosques of that kind, with wooden ceilings, columns and wooden arcades on the outside, still exist, dating from the sixteenth century or later (for example the Masjid-i Baland in Bukhara), and there is nothing to suggest that this was a late Islamic innovation.
Other religious buildings constructed on the same principles as the mosque were the madrasa and the khaniga (khanga). The former was a religious college, the latter more a kind of monastery destined for meditation. In a madrasa, the arcades surrounding the courtyard were transformed into one- or two-storey buildings housing lecture rooms and living quarters for teachers and students. The model for such a courtyard lined with cells may have been taken from Buddhist monasteries.
The caravanserais, particularly those built in open country, were often built like fortresses, with protective towers in the corners, bastions etc. Their courtyard was much larger, in order to accommodate animals, and the domed chamber was often missing. The outer walls were usually bare and blind, though there are some cases of architectural decoration (pilasters, blind arches) being used.25
The mausoleum was either a square domed chamber or a tomb tower, which could be round, square or polygonal. Such towers were topped by a round or conical cupola. Over the chamber was an inner dome, and there was often a mihrab inside. The tomb was placed on the floor of the chamber or in a crypt below. At a later stage an ornamental portal or iwan was added to the original structure. According to Grabar,26 the mausoleums were among the first buildings to acquire monumental gates.
The minarets were of various shapes and heights, ranging from the circular and conical Transoxanian types to the star-shaped towers of Ghazni or the three-storey gigantic minaret of Jam. In the West, in Samarra and Fustat, spiral minarets were no doubt built on Sasanian models going back to the Babylonian ziggurat. They were either free-standing or connected with the mosque. In Seljuk times, two minarets were used to flank the entrance gate. In some places in Iran, Anatolia and Egypt, the function of the minaret was fulfilled by a small baldachined platform on the roof of the mosque.
Building in brick was an old
tradition in the East, whereas stone buildings belong rather to Anatolian, in particular Armenian traditions. Stone-built Seljuk mosques may have been built by Armenian master builders.27
Various types of vault were used for roofing. Iwans had been roofed by barrel vaults since Parthian times, and in the early mosques the same system had been used to cover the bays behind the court arcades. Square or rectangular premises in the corners of the court posed certain problems, and new types of vaulting had to be devised, most of them structural variations of the barrel-vault principle.
Another ancient type of roofing that passed into Islamic architecture was the dome or cupola. The single dome was a direct development of the Sasanian dome. Some time in the twelfth century the double dome appeared, but it became widely used in the Timurid period only.
The squinch, which was also known from Parthian and Sasanian times, now became used in an astonishing variety of shapes and forms. In principle, it was an arch built across each corner of the square, thus providing a zone of transition and reducing the square to an octagon. If necessary, small arches could be further built to bridge its corners, thus producing a sixteen-sided figure that nearly approximated the ring of the dome. In the earliest examples of this type of construction, the squinch was rather crude and compressed, and the arch created a small trumpet-shaped hollow in each corner of the angle, which had to be filled or masked. Various ingenious ways were devised to do this.
The mukarnas, or stalactite vault, may have had a structural function in the early period, but later became a purely decorative device. It consisted of clusters and tiers of cells that softened and enriched the broad expanses and simple contours of buildings. It became used almost universally, although, in Pope’s words, it was difficult to describe or record, and its planning was a baffling task. Briefly, it was formed by ‘rows of superimposed out-curving panels, generally miniature quarter-domes, the apexes apparently leaning on empty space, the point of each support being the dividing line of the row above’.28
Architectural decoration in carved stone goes back to Achaemenid times, but it was more often designed to fill the surface of the wall than to become part of its fabric. Brick decoration, on the other hand, was more likely to achieve the result that the decorated surfaces became parts of architectural volumes (walls, towers, arches) of brick constructions. Variations in brickwork could emphasise architectural lines and distinguish surfaces that were to be decorated. Decorative designs could be obtained by the way in which bricks were laid. According to Grabar,29 brick decoration spread from Central Asia to Iran and Anatolia.
10 Khiva (view from the Kunya Ark)
11 Kalta Minar, Khiva
12 Tash Hauli Palace, Khiva
14 Mausoleum Gur Emir, Samarkand (front view)
13 Mausoleum of Sultan Takesh, Kunya Urgench
15 Madrasa Tilla Kari, Samarkand (restored)
16 Mosque Bibi Khanum, Samarkand (under restoration)
Stucco was used to fill gaps between bricks, and stucco panels were eventually used as parts of brick ornaments. Stucco was known in pre-Islamic times (for example in the palaces of Ctesiphon, Varaksha etc.), and early Iranian motifs were used on Umayyad palaces.30
Pre-Islamic motifs can also be discerned on the decorative slabs from the early eleventh-century palace of Termez, on some of the ninth- to tenth-century panels from Afrasiyab (Samarkand) and in the eleventh-century mausoleum Nasr ben Ali in Uzkend, as well as on the mosques of Samarra, Nayin and No Gumbad.
The technique of terracotta – ceramic fragments formed to fit certain areas or to form patterns – was also known in Central Asia in Parthian times. Its motifs were no doubt inspired by stucco patterns. According to Grabar, it reappeared in Uzkend and Bost.31 It further developed into mosaic faience, which became widely used from the fourteenth century onwards, when ‘stucco and brick began to lose their effectiveness’.32
It was manufactured in the town of Kashan, in Iran, with the use of cobalt, sulphur, arsenic and metallic oxides. Originally, small glazed bricks were used to form inscriptions or inscriptional friezes. The earliest of these is believed to be in Damghan (eleventh century). This technique was suitable for Kufic inscriptions and geometrical patterns, but for inscriptions in Naskhi or Thulth, and for vegetal ornamental patterns, a different technique was required. It was found in larger ceramic tiles, or panels, with under-glaze painted or carved decoration. Whole surfaces could then be filled with ornamental designs. The first large surface decorated in mosaic faience dates from the mid-thirteenth century and is on the Sircali Madrasa in Konya.
Up to the Mongol invasion, architectural decoration was strictly monochrome, with few exceptions just mentioned. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the use of colour became virtually universal, with an ever increasing range. The first colours were turquoise, royal blue and white. The peak was reached in the Timurid period in Samarkand, Herat and Balkh, after which a decadence set in, the quality deteriorated and the range of colours shrank again.
The two main parts of religious buildings to be decorated in this way were the mihrab and the entrance gate. Bands of decoration, ornamental or inscriptional, were used on minarets from earlier times (Jam, Kalan-Bukhara, Vabkent, Dawlatabad, Ghazni etc).
The ornamental motifs were classified by Grabar33 in five categories. Human and animal features were rare. Some stucco figures exist in museums only; there seemed to be a limited range of figural wall paintings, and many more appeared in manuscripts, thus responding both to the Iranian and Indian traditions. At a later stage, some highly stylised bird and animal shapes appeared, probably under Chinese influence, on some buildings in Samarkand and elsewhere. Architectural elements, columns, pilasters, blind arches, cornices, capitals and bases were more frequent. The mukarnas, mentioned earlier, would fall into this category. Geometrical ornaments consisted first of simple forms and patterns, usually combinations of squares, triangles and circles. More sophisticated ornaments in the form of knots (girikh) appeared later. Calligraphy, first Kufic and later Naskhi and Thulth, was frequently used and was generally of a very high standard. Indian influences can be found in some decorative elements in inscriptions, for example on the tomb of Mahmud of Ghazna, and later on the tombs of the Sultans Masud and Ibrahim. Floral and vegetal ornament on its own was rare before the Mongol period. Vegetal motifs were mainly used as a background to inscriptions, and only at a later stage they formed independent panels and patterns. Finally, some abstract designs may be discerned, in particular in the form of medallions, sometimes incorporating pre-Islamic symbols and signs. Three-dimensional abstract designs composed of bevelled curved lines were first used in the ninth century in Iraq to carve in stones, stucco and wood. Later they were also used in Iran and Central Asia.34 There was, no doubt, a close connection between ornamental motifs used in architecture, in carpets, in book illumination and in various other crafts, such as pottery, metalware etc., although it is not easy to determine their mutual influence. It seems that in certain periods arichitectural decoration was inspired by motifs used in carpets or pottery, whereas in others the inspiration went in the opposite direction.
Very few wall paintings have survived, but in those from Lashkar-i Bazar Schlumberger finds a strong influence of Buddhist art.35
Wood carving was, no doubt, extensively used, but only a few specimens survived, among them the famous ‘Somnath door’ at Agra, and some of the columns in the Djuma mosque in Khiva.
Although all artistic activity on the territory of Afghanistan was interrupted by the Mongol invasion, the Seljuk (Ghaznavid, Ghorid) architectural tradition lived on in India under the rule of the sultans of Ghor. A series of remarkable buildings were erected in Delhi, in particular, which provide an interesting blend of Iranian Muslim and local Hinduistic features.
Timurid and Late Islamic
In the first half century or so after the Mongol invasion, hardly any new buildings were erected. In two generations of inactivity, specialised skills and crafts tend t
o disappear or to deteriorate. It was therefore natural that when some activity was resumed towards the end of the thirteenth century, the leading craftsmen should come from Shiraz and other cities in Southern Iran, a part of the country that escaped destruction and where at least some building, however limited, had continued. In Transoxania the gap was longer, and in Afghanistan, longer still. In Transoxania, there were a few edifices from the middle of the fourteenth century, but in the last quarter of the century, building activity was already in full swing under Timur’s personal patronage. In Afghanistan with the exception of the reconstruction in the early fourteenth century of the Great Mosque in Herat, virtually no monumental building was carried out until the reign of Shah Rukh at the beginning of the fifteenth century. (It seems that the Eastern Islamic outpost in the sultanate of Delhi, where some remarkable monuments were constructed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, had little to contribute to the artistic revival of Afghanistan.) Local craftsmen had, therefore, to bridge a gap of nearly two centuries, and it is safe to assume that most of Shah Rukh’s architects and craftsmen came either from Iran or from his father’s Samarkand. Many of them would again be from Shiraz, given the fact that Timur occupied that city in 1393 and deported all its artists and craftsmen to Samarkand. The ideas and the models came with these architects, masons and decorative artists. Thus the architecture of fourteenth-century Iran, which was itself a continuation of a pre-Mongol Seljuk architecture, became an inspiration for the construction of Timur’s Samarkand, which, in turn, served as a model for Shah Rukh’s Herat.
Architectural forms remained more or less the same as in the pre-Mongol period. The double dome now became frequently used. The two domes usually had different profiles. As a rule, the outer one was much higher than the inner one, to enhance the outside effect of the building. To increase this effect still further, the outer dome was given a bulbous shape and was raised on a high drum. The drum, which in earlier times was hardly more than a zone of transition between the base and the dome, now helped to enlarge the interior covered by the dome. The drum as such was well known in Buddhist architecture, where it was used to raise the cupola of the stupa, but in Islamic architecture it acquired real significance only in the Timurid period.
Treasures of the Great Silk Road Page 8
