A new dynasty, a new art

The Orient of Saladin, at the Arab World Institute, casts light on the artistic production of an immensely fertile period, writes David Tresilian from Paris
Salah Al-Din Youssef Ibn Ayyub, Saladin to Western historians, the military commander who retook Jerusalem in the name of Islam in 1187 AD after nearly a century of Crusader rule, has lent his name to The Orient of Saladin: The Art of the Ayyubids, an exhibition of 12th and 13th century Syrian and Egyptian artifacts which opened last week amid the glass and steel of the Arab World Institute in Paris and runs until March 2002. Though the exhibition does not directly celebrate Saladin's achievements, which also included ending Fatimid rule in Egypt, founding a new dynasty, the Ayyubids, which ruled over Syria and Egypt for much of the following century, and building the Citadel on the Muqatttam hills, it does aim to present a sketch of the art and civilization of the period he dominated.
In this it has largely succeeded, presenting a fascinating selection of Ayyubid ceramics, glassware, metalwork and other objects. These, the exhibition suggests, are expressions of a common style reaching from Egypt to Syria, being the products of workshops in the main centres of Ayyubid power -- Cairo, Damascus and Aleppo -- and sometimes having been made for the relevant Ayyubid sultan or for powerful individuals at his court.
In presenting such objects, which have been lent for the exhibition from some 40 museums and collections in Europe, the United States and the Arab World, the organisers of The Orient of Saladin have not, however, sought entirely to deflect attention away from Saladin himself, and nor could they have done so. They are, therefore, presented against a background of almost continual war and territorial reconquest, as Saladin, born in 1138 the son of the Kurdish military governor of the fortress town of Takrit in Upper Mesopotamia, first inherited his father's career in the service of Nur Al-Din, the Turkish ruler of Syria, and then found himself de facto ruler of Egypt on the death of the last Fatimid Shi'ite caliph in 1171, having been sent to the country as head of a Syrian army bent on restoring Sunni Islam.
Having inherited the country in this way, Saladin first introduced a series of internal measures designed to strengthen state and administration, including the decision to build a new fortress, the Citadel, on the hills above Cairo. Securing his power base in Egypt, he then turned his attention to Syria, where, following the death of Nur Al-Din in 1174, the latter's 11-year-old son had been installed as ruler of Aleppo. Saladin, taking over Nur Al-Din's aims for the region, which included the territorial unification of Egypt and Syria and the driving out of the crusader kingdoms installed in Jerusalem and elsewhere, took over first Damascus, and then northern Syria and Mesopotamia in a war lasting 10 years. Having thus brought the region under unified rule, he turned his attention to Jerusalem, defeating the crusader kingdom first at Hattin in July 1187, before occupying the principle towns of Nazareth, Beirut, Gaza, Hebron, Acre, and, finally, Jerusalem in October 1187.
In this way, Saladin established an area of Ayyubid rule that stretched from Yemen in the south to Mesopotamia and what is now southern Turkey in the north, taking in Egypt, Syria and reconquered Palestine.
Saladin himself did not live to enjoy his successes, dying in Damascus in 1193 following a series of defeats at the hands of the Third Crusade led by the English king, Richard the Lionheart. Divided between his sons upon his death, the area that Saladin had successfully unified soon fragmented into a series of principalities, each one around a major urban centre. For this reason, different members of the Ayyubid dynasty ruled simultaneously in cities in Syria, as well as in Cairo, over the next century. According to the exhibition catalogue, this led to the dynasty's history being composed mostly of "family intrigues, political rivalries and sometimes open hostilities, which eventually led to its downfall."
In Egypt, this happened in 1250 with the assassination, at the hands of the Sultan's own Turkish slaves, or mamelukes, of the last Ayyubid sultan and the foundation of mameluke rule in Cairo. The Ayyubids lasted longer in Syria, Sultan Al-Nasser Youssef of Aleppo, and later of Damascus, being executed by the invading Mongols in 1260 AD. By this date the threat to Ayyubid rule came less from further Crusader incursions than from the invading Mongol armies that had sacked Baghdad in 1258, before going on to do the same to Aleppo and Damascus, ending the Ayyubid dynasty in Syria.
For a brief, strikingly fertile period, however, lasting some three-quarters of a century and following on from Saladin's spectacular military successes, members of the Ayyubid dynasty ruled Egypt and Syria, fostering a climate in which the arts could flourish and enjoying generally good relations with the neighbouring Abbasid dynasty in Baghdad, seat of the Muslim caliphate. The quality and sophistication of the artwork that the period produced is well represented at the exhibition, which includes celebrated objects such as the "Barberini Vase", a spectacular inlaid bronze vase incorporating hunting scenes made for the last Ayyubid sultan of Aleppo, Salah Al-Din Youssef, that passed through the collections of the Egyptian mameluke Sultan Al-Zahir Baybars (1260 -- 1277) and of Pope Urban VIII Barberini (d. 1644), and is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris, as well as examples of the period's ceramics, textiles, glassware, architectural decoration and book production.
The illustrated books on display are particularly interesting, since the exhibition includes works chosen both to illustrate aspects of everyday life and commerce under Ayyubid rule, as well as works illustrating the period's unavoidable military campaigns. Among examples of the former, there is a 17th century copy of the 13th century Liber Pactorum, a Latin compendium of trade agreements signed between Ayyubid Aleppo and the Doges of Venice, showing that relations between the two states could often be amicable and mutually beneficial. Among examples of the latter, there are illustrated editions of various historical works dwelling on the theme of Crusader incursion and repulse, including a contemporary copy, dated to 1199, of Mohamed Imad Al-Din Al-Isfahani's Kitab al-Fath al-Qussi fil-Fath al- Qudsi (Book of the Capture of Jerusalem), describing Saladin's campaigns in Syria and Palestine between 1187 and 1193.
From an opposing perspective, a small decorative map of Jerusalem included in the exhibition and dated to 1170 features a tiny cross on the city's ramparts, above which a Latin inscription reads hic capta est civitas a francis (here the Franks took the city), referring to Jerusalem's capture by the Crusaders at the time of the First Crusade in 1099 AD. An illustrated version of William of Tyre's Histoire d'Outremer, produced in Acre in 1287, describes the history of the Crusader states until 1183. In this history, written at the request of the king of Jerusalem, William, a native of Jerusalem and later Archbishop of Tyre, nevertheless describes his enemy Saladin as "a man of ardent spirit, valiant in warfare and generous in everything".
The exhibition catalogue, co-produced by the Arab World Institute and the French publishers Gallimard, in addition to including full descriptions of the objects on display, also includes a series of learned articles on various aspects of the Ayyubid dynasty, from their relations with the Crusaders, their military and civil organisation, their architectural innovations, external relations and commerce, and their important reorganisation of education, particularly in Egypt with the introduction of a system of Sunni madrasas to replace Fatimid schools.
A further series of articles describes Ayyubid glassware, metalwork, ceramics and spiritual life. In his introduction to the volume, Nasser El- Ansari, Director of the Arab World Institute, stresses that in the period of relative calm following Saladin's death in 1193 and the establishment of the Ayyubid dynasty, "the intensification of exchanges between East and West, across an area linking Libya with Yemen, the Sudan and Upper Mesopotamia, allowed the State to replenish its finances and the population to develop traditional productive activities." Egypt under the Ayyubids thus became "one of the principle centres of international commerce."
It is his hope, El-Ansari says, that the exhibition will be seen, "through the quality and diversity of the works of art on display.... as a vibrant call for dialogue and for mutual comprehension."
Finally, Oleg Grabar, in his epilogue to the exhibition catalogue entitled Art under the Ayyubids has elected the difficult task of summarising the "aesthetics of Ayyubid Art". "Was it," he asks, in fact "a properly Syrian art that was then transmitted to Palestine and Egypt...; or was it an art belonging to the Mediterranean region of the Muslim World that should be understood in parallel with the contemporary art of Sicily and of Andalucia" in Spain? Whatever the answers to these questions may be, Grabar writes that "the art of the Ayyubids offers an equilibrium between a fixed number of forms and basic techniques.... and the firm and thoughtful treatment of these," differentiating it from the "inventive exuberance" of the artwork of the Egyptian Fatimids, for example, and from that of the later mamelukes, the latter, by contrast, being wedded to a more "systematic and monumental coherence."
"There is nothing extravagant about Ayyubid art," Grabar writes, .... Ayyubid architecture is sober and rational, the decoration on Ayyubid bronzework clear and immediately accessible. It is an art that succeeds in making itself understood and admired, even loved, by all those who approach it."
L'Orient de Saladin. L'art des Ayyoubides, Institut du monde arabe, 1, rue des Fossés Saint Bernard, Paris. From 23 October 2001 to 10 March 2002
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