15.0: Chapter Introduction

Introduction: Dramatic Storytelling

In 1262, the Armenian T’oros Roslin wrote and illuminated an exquisite Gospel manuscript, featuring 15 full-page miniatures as well as dozens of smaller illustrations, and gleaming with gold and vivid, expensive colors. Today it is held in the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Armenians treated Gospel Books with the reverence Byzantium reserved for icons and the Latin church for reliquaries. But unlike icons, which are expected to be copies of older images, and reliquaries, whose power derives from the relics inside, Gospel Books are meant to transmit the story of Jesus. Roslin was a master storyteller.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): T’oros Roslin, Herod’s Banquet and the Burial of John the Baptist, Ms. W. 539, fol. 66, 1262. Ink and pigments on parchment, folios 30 x 21.5 cm. Walters Art Museum. (Photo: Walters Art Museum, CC0)

The painting inscribed “Herod’s Banquet” recounts the Gospel story of how King Herod, capitulating to his stepdaughter Salome’s request, has John the Baptist beheaded. Drama, anxiety, and a unique expressiveness infuse the scene. Herod sits on the left, looking downward; the Gospel text just behind him—on the previous page, and written, like the rest of the book, in Armenian—says he “was dejected.” Behind his half-round table set with gold and fine glassware stand his guests, their number suggested by a cluster of heads. Although the crowd obscures most of the faces, two show reactions to the murder. The man closest to Herod inclines his head toward the guilty king, his furrowed brow suggesting his sorrow and perhaps pity. The next face registers shock or anger, with arched brows and eyes boring into Herod.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): T’oros Roslin, Herod’s Banquet and the Burial of John the Baptist (detail showing the painted figures at the bottom of the page), Ms. W. 539, fol. 66, 1262. Ink and pigments on parchment, folios 30 x 21.5 cm. Walters Art Museum. (Photo: Walters Art Museum, CC0)

Also behind the table, but turning away from Herod’s banquet, the very serious, well-dressed Salome carries John’s head on a golden platter. Her eyes turn sharply upward out of the picture towards the text that reads, “the girl gave it to her mother.” The folding screen behind her head extends into the margin between two columns of text, neatly dividing the page in half. The right half of the miniature illustrates the six lines of text directly above it: “And John’s disciples came and took the body and buried it.” The two, one rather baby-faced and the other gray-bearded, exchange a serious look as they carry the body (wrapped but still bleeding at the neck) into a blue arch suggesting a tomb. From the disciples struggling under the weight of the headless corpse to the man standing behind Herod, holding his bloody sword, this miniature typifies Roslin’s dramatization of Gospel texts.

A Precarious Situation

Roslin worked at a scriptorium in Hromkla, an Armenian fortress on the Euphrates River. The location of the small, Christian, Armenian kingdom of Cilicia on what is now the southeast coast of Turkey placed it at a crossroads between Europe and the Middle East: visited by (and often aligned with) European Crusaders, as well as subject to incursions by their Islamic neighbors, especially the Turkic Seljuks and the Egyptian Mamluks. Just four years before the manuscript was created, Cilicia had allied with the Ilkhanid Mongols in the destruction of the Abbasid capital of Baghdad.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, 1199-1375. (Map: Sémhur, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Led by the formidable general Genghis Khan, the Mongols had swept from their homeland in Mongolia across Asia, adding territories and quickly becoming the most-feared force on the continent. Cities were offered the options of either submitting to Mongol rule and paying tribute or facing utter destruction. Cilicia began paying tribute to the Ilkhanid Mongols in 1243, but their own alliances had rarely been stable, as their Christian and Islamic neighbors battled one another for land and power. The Mongols added a confusing element since they explored Christianity and Islam as possible replacements for the shamanistic belief system of Mongolia until the Ilkhanid Khan Gazan adopted Islam in 1294.

Manuscripts and the circulation of information

Manuscripts contain information in both written text and imagery, and represent an incredible investment of the makers’ time, skill, and fine materials. Combined with their often relatively portable size, manuscripts are unique vessels for communication. Roslin seems to have painted King Herod as if he were an Ilkhanid prince. He wears the gold crown with a wide brim around a dome and a jewel or a peak on top, an elaborately-patterned robe, and pointed red boots usually seen in Ilkhanid illustrations of rulers. His round face, thin mustache and long, dark hair, appear in many Ilkhanid paintings.

The same features appear in a manuscript of the Jami‘ al-Tawarikh, or Compendium of Chronicles, a book conceived of as a history of the known world up to that point. Commissioned by Ghazan Khan, and written by the powerful court advisor Rashid al-Din, it aims to legitimize Mongol rule not only through scholarship and an emphasis on monotheism, but imagery. Figures from the biblical Old Testament to the pre-Islamic Iranian kings to the Prophet Muhammad himself reflect the characteristic Mongol representation (Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\)).

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Noah’s Ark, from The Jami‘ al-Tawarikh (Compendium of Histories) of Rashid al-Din, MSS 727 Folio 45a, 1314-15. Ink, translucent and opaque watercolor, gold and silver on paper, folios 14 x 25.5cm. (Photo: The Kalili Collections, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Both T’oros Roslin’s sacred Gospels and the secular Compendium of Histories demonstrate the flow of ideas, culture, and styles during this time, in a world that was still volatile but connected by routes of trade, pilgrimage, conflict, and Crusade. In the artworks introduced in this chapter, influences as diverse as Classical sculpture and Chinese painting meet on the page, wooden panel, and glittering mosaics.

Historiography

As noted in Chapter 13, this book presents an alternative way of examining the Middle Ages. Many traditional textbooks center the Middle Ages in England, France, and Italy—a view which pejoratively sets aside two major cultural groups, Byzantium and Islam. Instead of segregating Byzantium and Islam, this chapter once again extends the boundaries of the traditional “Survey of Western Art.” Outside of Gothic Europe (the subject of Chapter 16), the major cultural groups of the Late Medieval world were the Byzantine Empire, Mamluk Egypt, and the Mongols of central Asia and Iran. Though its power and territory were shrinking, the Byzantine Empire was heir to a prestigious Greek, Christian Roman tradition going back to 333. Perhaps the greatest military and economic power in the Mediterranean was Mamluk Egypt. The Mongols ruled the largest land empire in the history of the world, so large that this chapter does not attempt to include its easternmost part, Yuan China; the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia; nor the Golden Horde, which ruled much of what is now Eastern Europe and Russia.

As a reminder, this is the way the three Medieval chapters are broken down:

Content in Chapters 13-15

Chapter	13	14	15
Title	Medieval I: The Reorganization of the Roman World & the Rise of Islam	Medieval II: Contested Empires, Christian and Islamic	Medieval III: Reorganization of the East
Dates	333-843	843-1260	1260-1453
Material covered	Early Byzantium Introduction/the lives of Jesus and Mary Manuscripts and ivory miniatures The Migration Period Anglo-Saxon Vikings Insular The Early Islamic World Introduction to Islam Mosque architecture Umayyad Abbasid The Islamic West Carolingian	Fractured Islam Fatimid Seljuk Ghaznavid The Islamic West, cont. The Latin West Vikings, cont. Ottonian Pilgrimage Romanesque Byzantium from the End of Iconoclasm to the Latin Conquest Icons, frescoes, and mosaics Macedonian Renaissance Medieval Nubian Kingdoms Kievan Rus’ Norman Sicily	Ilkhanid Timurid Mamluk Late Byzantine Christian East Africa

Nationalism

Nationalism colored a fascination with the medieval that arose in the 18th century and continues to this day. European conceptions of the Middle Ages focused on their own countries: for the British, the height of medieval architecture was the English perpendicular Gothic style, (revived by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin for the Houses of Parliament 1840-18760) and for the French novelist Victor Hugo, the center of the medieval world was Paris, France (as in his 1831 The Hunchback of Notre-Dame). Sergei Eisenstein’s Medieval epic film Alexander Nevsky (1931) stages the struggle between civilization and barbarism in Novgorod, Russia, where the locals defend themselves against invading knights of the Holy Roman Empire.

This chapter presents cultures that were dominant in the Middle Ages, but tend to be less celebrated as a focus of national pride. Modern Greece preserves and values its Byzantine past—but gives precedence to a classical Greek one. Although it is a predominantly Muslim country, Egypt prides itself on its Pharaonic buildings and artifacts. The former Shah of Iran promoted art of the fifth-century BCE Persian Empire, and although the Islamic Republic of Iran greatly values its Islamic and pre-Islamic past, it rejects many aspects of Ilkhanid and Timurid Persia, including the role of foreigners and the prestige of Islamic figural images. The Slavic countries impacted by Mongol rule (e.g., Russia, Ukraine, Serbia) celebrate achieving independence from “the Mongol Yoke.” By including the Mongols in the survey, this chapter continues the stories of art in Syria, Iraq, and Iran, even as they were ruled by those with roots much farther east. The focus is on the Ilkhanids and the Timurids, whose capitals were in Persian-speaking areas, but maintained vital trade and intellectual connections to the wider Mongol Empire.

Terminology

This chapter does not attempt to deal with all the Islamic groups active from 1260-1453 in the eastern Mediterranean, much less in Africa and the Indian Ocean, and instead focuses on just the two largest groups: the Mamluks and the Mongols. “Mamluk” is an Arabic word meaning “one who is owned,” that is, enslaved. It refers to enslaved warriors, on which many Islamic rulers depended for personal protection and for their armies from the ninth to the nineteenth century. “The Mamluks” generally refers to the rulers of Egypt who arose from the military to claim power in the chaos following the unsuccessful Crusader invasion of Egypt in 1250. “Mongol” refers to people from Mongolia. There were two major waves of Mongol conquest, one begun in 1207 under Genghis Khan, which created the largest contiguous empire in history, reaching from Hungary to Korea. His heirs divided the Mongol Empire into smaller units, creating the Yuan Dynasty in China, the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia, the Golden Horde north of the Black Sea (including most of Russia), and the Ilkhanate in Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, on which we focus. The second wave was led by Timur, who took advantage of the decline of Ilkhanid power to expand his rule over Persia and surrounding areas.

Chapter Overview

The Byzantines, Ilkhanids, Timurids, and Mamluks

Three artistic cultures dominate this chapter: those of the Byzantine Empire, the Ilkhanate, and the Mamluk Sultanate. Much divides them. Christian Byzantium spoke Greek; the Ilkhanids adopted Farsi (the language of Persia) as their administrative language; and the Mamluks used Arabic. Though the Ilkhanids and the Mamluks were both Muslim polities, they battled each other over control of the eastern Mediterranean.

The Byzantine Empire regaining control over Constantinople after expelling Crusader occupation provides the opening date for this chapter, 1261. In a remarkable parallel, the Mamluk Sultanate arose when Egyptian armies soundly defeated the forces of the seventh Crusade and captured the French King Louis IX in 1250. An equally meaningful start could be 1260, when a Mamluk army defeated the Ilkhanids near Jerusalem—the first major defeat of a Mongol force by non-Mongols since Genghis Khan.

Asserting Legitimacy

Byzantium traced its legitimacy back to the founding of Constantinople in 333, whereas Ilkhanid and Mamluk rulers alike felt the need to assert their rights to rule. The Ilkhanids distanced themselves from their heritage as Mongol conquerors by embracing Islam in 1295, and having Persian poets write them into world history. Artists, many of them captured in war, illustrated these histories with miniatures that not only told Old Testament, Islamic and Persian stories, but did so in styles that displayed Ilkhanid command of styles with roots across Mongol lands, from Yuan China to Ilkhanid Syria. The stable trade routes that Mongols supported not only brought them riches, but encouraged a lively exchange of artistic ideas. Ilkhanid architecture draws on traditions from central Asia and Persia, including palaces meant to overwhelm and mosques that display full support of Islam. After Timur led a second Mongol invasion of Iran, he and his successors made similar use of Islamic architecture and Persian books (Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\)) to support their rule.

Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): "Journey of the Prophet Muhammad," folio from the Timurid Majma al-Tavarikh (Compendium of Histories), c. 1425. Ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper, folios 42.8 x 33 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain) From the Metropolitan Musem: "This is a leaf from a dispersed manuscript entitled the Majma' al Tavarikh, produced for the Shah Rukh in Herat. Although simple in style, many of the paintings are effective in their straightforward presentation. Here the Prophet, perched atop the exaggerated hump of his dromedary, dominates the composition. His position and that of his two footmen in the foreground emphasize their importance in the scene."

The Mamluks were known to their contemporaries as Turks or Circassians, although slavers brought Arabs, Georgians, Armenians, Slavs and many others to man the Egyptian army. Their formal claim to legitimacy was through their allegiance to distant and relatively powerless caliphs. (The term “sultan” referred to a subordinate of the caliph, similar to an emir or a vizier.) The material wealth provided by Egyptian control of sea routes to India and China supported the production of impressive Qur’ans and endowed madrassas and mosques, all in support of the Mamluk claim to be the defenders of Islam.

Salvation

Although Byzantium prided itself on its long and proud history, its power waned after the empire regained Constantinople. Seljuk and then Ottoman Turks occupied most of its former lands, and the Mongol Golden Horde had taken over most of its Slavic dependencies. Genoese merchants controlled trade out of the Black Sea. The empire’s search for military support led it to reach out to the Pope, despite the disaster of the fourth Crusade. The exchange of scholars and texts played an important role in sparking the Italian Renaissance, but did not result in assistance against the Turks. Alliances with the Mamluks proved more practical, but did not prevent the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

In the still-rich capital, aristocrats seem to have focused on their own salvation, building monasteries where monks would pray for their souls. The surviving programs of images in such monasteries are dramatic evidence of their hopes and fears.

Christians Beyond Byzantium

In surveying Christian art in the Middle Ages, this book has simplified a complex history, focusing on the Latin church and the Byzantine church. A very different Christian tradition exists in Armenia, represented here by T’oros Roslin’s dramatic narrative images, and, in northeast Africa, here represented by Gospel Books and icons painted in a distinctive colorful style stressing bold patterns on flat surfaces.

Objects Overview

This chapter includes medieval art often omitted from surveys. Mamluk and Mongol patrons supported palaces, mosques and madrassas. Ilkhanids and Timurids sought to create Mongol-centered world histories by means of illustrated manuscripts. In the Byzantine Empire, church buildings showcased the piety and wealth of aristocrats. Ethiopia is included as one example of the many forms of Christianity that made art beyond the borders of Byzantium.

In this chapter, readers will encounter:

Architecture intended to impress:

• The Ilkhanid Mausoleum of Sultan Oljetu in Soltaniye, Iran, with its huge blue-tiled dome
• The Timurid Gur I Amir Mausoleum at Samarkand, Usbekistan, featuring colorful tile of the haft-rangi technique (also called cuerda seca, or dry cord technique)
• The massive Mamluk Sultan Hasan’s Mosque, Mausoleum and Madrassa complex, its exterior enhanced with stone carvings, its interior with stucco and colored marble
• The Chora Monastery in Constantinople, with an exterior enlivened by multi-colored brickwork

And paintings with a point to make:

• The illuminations of Sultan Baybar’s Qur’an, so extensive that the book could hardly have been used except for display
• The illustrations of Mongol world histories in the Great Mongol Shahnama
• Illustrations of Nizami’s Persian poetry in Timurid books
• Dramatic visions of Christian salvation in the frescoes and mosaics of the Chora Monastery

By the time you finish reading this chapter on the Late Medieval Near East, you should be able to:

• Explain how Ilkhanid and Timurid illustrations tell the stories in the manuscripts that hold them
• Compare Mamluk and Ayyubid metalwork
• Compare how frescoes and mosaics from the Chora Monastery are both traditional and unusual in their depiction of Christian imagery and connection to the liturgy
• Discuss the styles of Late Byzantine and Solomonic Ethiopian religious painting

Want to know more?

• Sultan Baybars’ Qur’an (see every page in the seven-volume manuscript), The British Library
• Helen C. Evans (ed.), Byzantium: Faith and Power, 1261-1557, for the Met Museum
• Stefano Carboni and Komaroff, Linda (eds.), The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256–1353, for the Met Museum
• Stefano Carboni and Qamar Adamjee, Folios from the Great Mongol Shahnama (Book of Kings), for the Met Museum
• Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire (overviews of the history and geography related to the Mongol Empires), for Khan Academy
• National Museum of Asian Art, Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), an introduction (The Mongol Dynasty in China), for Smarthistory
• Maria Evangelatou, “Textile Mediation in Late Byzantine Visual Culture: Unveiling Layers of Meaning through the Fabrics of the Chora Monastery,” in Catalogue of the Textiles in the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection, ed. Gudrun Bühl and Elizabeth Dospěl Williams (Washington, DC, 2019).
• Professor Nasser Rabbat, Religious Architecture of the Timurids (course notes)
• Thomas F. Mathews and Alice Taylor, The Armenian Gospels of Gladzor: The Life of Christ Illuminated