Parisian vantage points

As part of its "oriental season," the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF), the French national library, has had the good idea of dusting down a selection of Arab treasures from its archives and putting them on public display, writes David Tresilian from Paris
Three exhibitions, the first on the 12th Century Arab geographer Al- Idrisi, the second on 19th Century European photographers in the Middle East and the third on the art of Arabic books, all drawing on the rich collections of the BNF, will run until January 2002.
Born in Morocco around 1100 and a student in Cordoba in Muslim Spain, Al-Idrisi wrote the work for which he is best remembered, Kitab Nuzhat Al-Mushtaq fi-Khtiraq Al-Afaq (An Entertainment for all those Fascinated by Travel), his Geography or Kitab Rujar (Roger's Book), while in the service of the Christian King of Norman Sicily Roger II. Drawing on Greek and Arab tradition, as well as on interviews with travellers and oral reports, Al-Idrisi drew up a picture of the known world as it appeared from a Mediterranean vantage point in the middle of the 12th Century.
In Al-Idrisi's projection, which appears in six of the surviving ten copies of the Geography, the Mediterranean, Egypt and the Arabian peninsula are given pride of place, with the vast bulk of Asia stretching leftwards out of the picture and a small, withered Europe occupying a diminished space below. Unlike the projections in use today, Europe appears at the bottom of Al-Idrisi's picture and a larger, more detailed North Africa and Arab World above, reflecting the greater economic and cultural importance of these regions. The BNF exhibition, held in the magnificent setting of the new Tolbiac- François Mitterand building, designed by Dominique Perrault and one of the largest and almost certainly the most modern and best- equipped library in the world, presents as its centrepiece the Bodleian Library (Oxford) copy of Al-Idrisi's Geography, made in Cairo in 1456, together with material explaining the background and significance of this text.
Also at the Tolbiac building is an exhibition devoted to 19th Century European photographers in the Middle East, Voyage en Orient, photographies: 1840 -- 1880, while the former French national library building, built by Napoleon III in the 19th Century and now a depository for rare books and an exhibition space, houses an exhibition of Arabic books from early copies of the Qu'ran to contemporary artists books by artists concerned to draw upon Arab traditions of book production and calligraphy.
Highlights of the former exhibition include early calotypes and daguerréotypes of the kind of Egyptian, Palestinian, Syrian and Turkish scenes and individuals thought likely to appeal to 19th Century European audiences hungry for images of the Middle East. There are images of Pharoanic and Greek and Roman ruins, as well as of street pictures and portraits, which, the exhibition catalogue explains, were designed both to produce a mysterious image of the Middle East for European spectators, as well as to reinforce European preconceptions that this was indeed the case. The French writer Théophile Gautier, recovering from a sprain on the terrace of Shepherd's Hotel in the Cairo district of Ezbekiyya in 1869, ironically noted in his diary that among the "typical individuals" to be seen then filling the streets of the Egyptian capital was the figure of the photographer hoping to stumble upon some new manifestation of native typicality that could be snapped up and sent back home.
Highlights of the third exhibition, The Art of the Arabic Book, include the BNF's own copy of Al-Idrisi's Geography, dating from 1300 and made in Cairo, as well as exquisite examples of illustrated Arab texts dating from the mediaeval period and beyond and exemplifying their interrelation of calligraphy and coloured ink illustration. Among the exhibits are three illustrated copies of the Maqamat (Scenes) by Al-Hariri (1054 -- 1122), one of the best- known of all early Arab story-collections, which recounts the picaresque adventures of narrator Al-Harit and vagabond hero Abu Zayd something in the manner of the later 16th Century Spanish author Cervantes' Don Quixote.
Early copyists would choose to illustrate different episodes from the Maqamat, displaying the virtuosity of these usually anonymous artists. The BNF exhibition includes a 13th Century Syrian copy of the work, one made in northern Iraq around 1240, and, most spectacularly, a further copy from Iraq made in 1237 and illustrating the work of the well-known artist Al-Wasati, who was unusual in that he was named the author of the illustrations to Al-Hariri's text.
Al-Idrisi: une vision du monde méditerranéen au XII siècle & Voyages en Orient, photographies: 1840 -- 1860, Bibliothèque nationale de France -- site François Mitterand, Quai François Mauriac; L'art du livre arabe, du manuscript au livre d'artiste, BNF Site Richelieu, all until 13 January 2002.
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