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[music playing]
NARRATOR: The narrative of human history
is punctuated by war and conquest,
triumph and catastrophe.
But in the end, what endures?
It is not the struggle that has lasting in our consciousness
and treasured in our museums.
It is the outpouring of creativity and intelligence
that is civilization's greatest gift.
The true legacy of Islamic culture
is revealed in the nuance and ingenuity
of its art and architecture.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: That feeling
of the encounter with majesty,
the encounter with monumentality,
it transcends culture.
It transcends history.
It is a kind of universal human experience of the arts.
We use art, we use architecture to crystallize our deepest
emotions and our deepest aspirations
for an understanding of our place in the world.
NARRATOR: These monuments and artifacts
continue to inspire us.
They herald the finest qualities of Islamic culture
and show us the best of individual achievements.
Each contributes a crucial part in the ascent
of world civilization.
[music playing]
The seventh century was a turning point in history.
In Europe,
the Germanic tribes that had overrun the Roman Empire
struggled for supremacy as they shaped their feudal kingdoms.
To the east, the once great empires of Byzantium and Persia
were weakened by centuries of mutually destructive wars.
At that moment, the tribes of Arabia
began one of history's greatest revolutions
in power, religion, culture, and wealth,
united under the new faith of Islam.
From its birth in the Arabian Peninsula,
Islam spread across the basin of the Mediterranean Sea,
eventually we changed from Indonesia to Spain.
And from this diverse civilization,
and the extraordinary wealth of its rulers,
came an outpouring of artistry.
Objects and buildings, gardens and paintings
reflect how this new culture grew
in a varied and complex world.
RUBA KANA'AN: It's not only about beautiful things.
It's not only about looking at specific techniques
or how a beautiful object looks in a museum.
It's more like a window on a culture.
Islamic art is a reflection of the people and the context
in which it was produced.
AFSHAN BOKHARI: And that, of course, makes
art even that much more important because
it is a reflection of who we are,
and what we are, and
will be memorialized in the years to come.
NARRATOR: The themes that emerged as Islamic art developed
show us the similarities in our common cultures,
how our techniques and styles are shared and transformed.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: Well, there are aspects of art and architecture
that are universal, that you don't need to learn
to appreciate to get it.
So I might have to learn Arabic to read the inscriptions,
but I don't have to read Arabic to appreciate
the purity of simple black script
on a white background on a plate.
It is elegance,
and it's elegance that speaks through the centuries.
NARRATOR: In Muslim tradition,
Islam began in 610
in a cave in Mecca,
where an angel came upon the prophet Muhammad
and revealed to him the words of the Koran.
In the first revelation, God proclaimed himself the creator
and said, "Read, for your Lord is the most generous,
the one who taught the use of the pen,
taught man what he did not know."
More than poetry, more than a holy book,
it was the very word of God.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: For Christians, God's gift was his son.
He sent down his son to save mankind.
For Muslims, god sent down a revelation.
So the parallel is between Christ and an oral revelation.
Because God's gift to mankind in Islam is the Koran,
writing becomes the central feature of Islamic culture.
And the use of the word everywhere,
from day-to-day objects to Koran manuscripts,
is the one feature that separates Islamic culture
from all others.
NARRATOR: The earliest dated words of the Koran
are found in a stone building in Jerusalem,
one of the most sacred and politically charged cities
in the world.
Built in 692, it is called the Dome of the Rock.
JONATHAN M. BLOOM: The Dome of the Rock
would have been a familiar building in terms of form,
that is, that the shape, the arches, the techniques
of decoration would have all been
within the local Christian vocabulary.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: It borrows the form
from a Byzantine martyrium.
And a martyrium is simply a building
that marks the place of a martyrdom
or perhaps the burial place of a saint.
NARRATOR: But instead of a burial site,
the dome covers a massive rock believed by Muslims
to be the sacred place from which Mohammad ascended
to heaven on his mystical night journey
to pray with Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.
JONATHAN M. BLOOM: The thing that
makes this a uniquely Islamic building is
the Arabic inscription that runs around it.
That is, in effect, the sign that says,
this is from a new culture.
This isn't just somebody putting up words.
This is somebody who cares.
This is carefully composed.
This is beautiful writing, calligraphy.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: The interior inscription talks constantly
about how God is the one not three.
And this is clearly a rebuttal to Christianity
where the primary focus is that God sent down his son
and God is tripartite.
And for Muslims, this is anathema.
God is one, not three.
So clearly there is some kind of response
to the Christian presence in the city.
That inscription is made in gold cubes.
They're small glass cubes with gold foil on them.
They are by far the most expensive kind of cube.
And in Christian buildings often are used for halos
or used behind the figure of Christ.
In the Dome of the Rock, they are
used for this inscription that runs around the building.
NARRATOR: The Koran became the focus of devotion,
but it also became the focus of art.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: From the earliest times on,
Muslims try to make Koran manuscripts as
beautiful as possible.
Calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing,
is considered more important than all the other arts.
NARRATOR: Today, one of the most well-respected
Muslim calligraphers in the world
is a convert from California.
After teaching himself Arabic, and working for over 20 years
to perfect his art, Mohamed Zachariya
finally traveled to Turkey to learn from the masters in 1983.
MOHAMED ZAKARIYA: Basically, they made a deal.
They said, if you want to start all the way from the beginning,
if you want to forget everything you learned about calligraphy
for a while and sort of go from blank from start, just
like you'd never picked up a pen before,
and go through the lessons,
we'll be behind you all the way with this thing and help you out.
But if you can't do that, have a nice time in Istanbul.
[laughs]
NARRATOR: Zachariya accepted the challenge
and began to learn his craft again,
just as the first masters had before him.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: Traditionally Muslims always
wrote with a reed pen.
So you went out and you had reeds or you imported reeds.
Trimming the pen is even more important.
Cutting the nib is even more important
than actually the reed itself.
And you have a tool on which you lay the reed when
you cut it and a special knife.
And people collected these tools and gathered them
in their little tool boxes.
NARRATOR: Decorated with geometric designs
and calligraphy, these toolboxes alluded
to the practical use of the box,
as well as the mystical power of the pen.
MOHAMED ZAKARIYA: I've always had a facility for carving.
But to cut a pen, you need a knife of a certain shape
and a certain curvature in the blade.
If it isn't that curvature,
you're never going to cut a good tip.
NARRATOR: In the seventh century,
calligraphers wrote the Koran on treated animal skins
called parchment.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: The parchment was
so important and so expensive that sometimes they
even reused it.
And they scraped away an earlier text
and rewrote on top of it.
And what's happened over time is the earlier text has darkened,
and you can actually see it underneath.
MOHAMED ZAKARIYA: Most of them-- they're readable,
or legible, or practical.
They're very, very interesting.
But they don't rise to the level of art.
But every now and then you see one of them,
and you look at it
and say, how on earth could this guy have done that?
You know?
How did they do their reed?
How'd they cut their pen?
We don't even know what angle the pens were cut.
But it simply takes your breath away.
NARRATOR: Islamic calligraphy was forever
altered by a new invention from the east, paper.
AMY LANDAU: Paper was introduced into the Islamic world
in the eighth century due to interaction between China
and the Islamic caliphate.
So the technique of paper making and actual paper makers
were transported from China to Islamic lands.
And paper just takes off in an Islamic context.
NARRATOR: Just as important as the pen,
the paper must be specially treated and prepared
for calligraphy.
MOHAMED ZAKARIYA: The man who taught me paper making or paper
prep took me aside one day and said,
I'm going to show it all to you.
The paper is rubbed with a rag that has a bit of soap on it.
The soap is dry rubbed on the rag.
It's a wool felt, and it's rubbed all over the paper
to give it lubrication.
Otherwise, the burnisher would snag the-- the surface
and digress the heck out of it.
You want to have it smooth so the pen will
glide across the surface.
But you also don't want it slippery.
You want to have the paper have a grab to it, just enough so it
holds the pen.
Doesn't slip.
The ink sits undersurface, doesn't penetrate.
NARRATOR: For the calligrapher, the process
of copying the words of the Koran
is, in itself, a meditation, a prayer,
as God speaks through the pen.
MOHAMED ZAKARIYA: And when you write, it just writes itself.
Your own connection with it feels minimal
because your concentration is concentration without
thinking about it being concentration.
It's what the old Arabs used to call [arabic],
which is the ease that comes from practice that
makes the hard thing look easy.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: Now, it is impossible
if you are writing with a reed pen to write more than two
or three letters with one pen stroke.
You have to recharge your pen.
You have to dip it back into the ink.
But the point with calligraphy is to not see those strokes,
to not see the difference between one and the next,
to imagine that it was written with an unending pen.
MOHAMED ZAKARIYA: The old guys used
to hold their breath under the theory
that if you hold your breath when the pen is in motion,
the breath goes down into your hand, through the pen
and into the paper.
And that's what would give it that life,
and the, or breath, as they would call it.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: You are not looking
to see any human interaction.
You are looking to see the divine.
When you see a manuscript that has all these little marks
on it, that's a later manuscript because it's
meant to be used by someone who's actually reading the text
not just using it to recall what he already had memorized.
AMY LANDAU: We also have chapter headings that are illuminated.
Illumination is a very important art form
in the production of Islamic manuscripts.
It serves to navigate the reader through the different sections
of the text.
MOHAMED ZAKARIYA: Because calligraphy basically
is for reading, you know?
It's not really about paper, pens, ink, and stuff like that.
It's about meaning.
And in my case, you know, I'm an American.
Obviously, wherever I go, you know, I'm the pink on,
you know?
And, uh-- you see a photograph of all the calligraphers,
you know?
And I'm in there, you know.
It's-- that guy looks really funny, you know?
But it's-- what am I doing with it?
So I try to-- I try to bring it out what it means.
And for me, that's absolutely the number one thing.
I have access to this material, and I have to pass it on.
NARRATOR: It is that divine presence embodied
in the word that appears throughout Islamic art
as writing becomes ornament.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: I am always
moved when I hold a plate or a ceramic object or a metal pen
case, and think of myself, I'm holding the same thing
that someone 1,000 years ago or 600 years ago held.
I'm repeating the experience.
I'm in a different place, a different moment in history.
I'm a different human being.
Everything about my world is different except that object.
And that object comes forward intact.
That's very moving.
NARRATOR: Many buildings in the Islamic world
are imbued with the voice of God as elaborate inscriptions speak
from their stone walls.
They really are beautiful to look at.
Even if one doesn't understand them,
one can always appreciate their beauty.
RUBA KANA'AN: And those inscriptions are usually
in places that you cannot really read.
You're not expected to read.
But you expect to relate to them because you
know what's going to be there.
You just know what sorts of verses of the Koran
are used, for example, in certain buildings
or in the case of Alhambra it's the beautiful poetry.
NARRATOR: The Alhambra was built in the 14th century
by the last Muslim rulers of Granada, Spain.
Part fortress, part palace, the Alhambra
provided a princely refuge from the ravages
of the fading empire.
OLEG GRABAR: In order to feel Alhambra,
to know what was meant,
you have to go slowly and read
the poetry that is written just at eye
level inside the building.
I could spend hours standing by a window,
reading an inscription, looking at this.
That's what it was made for.
It is meant to be lived in.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: In some cases, some of the writing actually
is as if the building is speaking about itself.
You have the dome or the wall or the fountain
talking to the viewer and telling you what it's about
and how it functions or how it's set within the building itself.
NARRATOR: The water basin whispers.
Melted silver flows through the pearls which it resembles
in it's pure, don beauty.
Water and marble seem to be as one.
GARY VIKAN: The calligraphy as it melds into ornament,
the boundary between the two is so subtle
that they become so extraordinarily
good at just weaving shapes in and out of one another.
Are these zoomorphic?
Are they-- do they come out of vegetable life?
You know, you can't really tell, and it
doesn't make any difference.
Because they arrive at a place that totally
masks and has left the place from which they came.
NARRATOR: The cities of the Muslim world,
extending across three continents,
are as diverse as their people.
But the fundamental human need for shelter is common to all.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: We put tremendous effort
in what we build.
And therefore, they reflect a great deal about us,
about our values-- economic values, social values,
cultural values.
You have mosques.
You have palaces.
You have very impressive military architecture,
and you have the whole spectrum of buildings
that cover what people use.
NARRATOR: The first mosques were made from simple unadorned mud
brick.
Hearing the call to prayer, Muslims
gathered in open courtyards all facing the side
of the mosque closest to Mecca.
Later, direction is shown by niche
in the wall called the mihrab.
RUBA KANA'AN: Other than the mihrab, in real terms,
there is no other standard element that
has to be in a mosque.
The mosque is one of the elements that are
ubiquitous to Muslim societies.
Yet, it is built, expressed in very different ways,
historically.
NARRATOR: One of the oldest surviving
mosques is in Damascus, Syria.
Finished in 715, it was built a little over 100 years
after the birth of Islam.
The Great Mosque of Damascus reveals
how Islamic architecture quickly adapted to the changing
needs of a growing religion.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: More and more specialization
develops within mosque spaces.
You have special places for the prints
and special places for ablution and special places
for the call to prayer.
It becomes more hierarchical.
NARRATOR: A pulpit called a minbar
was added for the reading of the Friday sermon,
making the speaker visible to the entire congregation.
In order to create a large enough space
to house the city's entire Muslim population for Friday
prayer, the great mosque of Damascus
was built in the hypostyle form.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: The hypostyle mosque simply
is the idea of a series of columns built along a grid.
So what you end up with is a forest
of columns, an infinite space.
So you look and just see column after column after column.
It's a very spiritual experience.
And you find it very often in the mosques
that were built during the first three, four
centuries of Islamic history.
NARRATOR: Outside in the mosque courtyard,
glass mosaics sparkle in the sunlight,
evoking a protected and sacred natural space within the stone
walls of the mosque.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: It incorporated
the largest service of mosaics ever created anywhere
in the world.
You have rivers and houses and trees
and some have read that as an expression of Damascus,
a city that is known for its Barada river
and also for its orchards.
Another was that this is a representation
of what paradise would be like.
So you have that reading of the mosque,
which is very interesting.
NARRATOR: But the leaders of the dynasty that
created the wealth and power of Damascus
would perish later in the eighth century.
After a violent political rebellion,
a young Syrian prince named Abd al-Rahman
was forced to flee Damascus, narrowly
escaping a certain death at the hands of his family's rival.
Abd al-Rahman made his way to North Africa
and on to Cordoba, Spain, seeking refuge
in the struggling European outpost of the Islamic empire.
There, the prince founded a dynasty of his own.
His subjects called him al-Dakhil, or the immigrant.
But Abd al-Rahman made Cordoba his home.
As he set out to create a great mosque for his new capital,
he used the hypostyle mosque of Damascus
as his blueprint, longing for the Syrian homeland
to which he could never return.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: Abd al-Rahman I
who built one of the masterpieces
of Islamic architecture and world architecture.
He had access to older Visigothic columns
that he found in Spain.
These were relatively short columns.
They didn't have a sense of monumentality
that we could find in an earlier building such as the Great
Mosque of Damascus.
So what he did is he put two rows of arches
on top of each other to raise the ceiling
and get a higher building.
And it actually created this wonderful spatial effect.
And whenever the building was expanded,
that system was maintained.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: One of the extensions
was to add this fabulous mihrab, which
is right now on the qibla wall.
And it's done in the same technique of mosaic that had
been used earlier in Damascus.
NARRATOR: Added 200 years after the mosque was
first constructed, the mosaics required a skill unknown
to the artisans of Cordoba.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: They had to write to the Byzantine Empire
and say, send us a mosaicist and the glass cubes
so we can learn how to do this.
JONATHAN M. BLOOM: You make sheets
of glass in different colors, and then you
cut it up into little pieces, little cubes.
And then you set them in plaster to make designs.
NARRATOR: Mixing Byzantine and Roman techniques
with Islamic style, the great mosque of Cordoba
created a striking juxtaposition of old and new.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: You take a look at the arches
as opposed to the round arches that are
used in Damascus in Syria.
We have slightly horseshoe arches.
So there's a little bit of a local tradition.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: Islamic architecture
has this ability to absorb the best, the kind of the solutions
that are already on the ground in these regional areas,
and to realize what is in fact a continuous tradition
of a mosque in all of those different areas using
different adaptive techniques.
NARRATOR: By the 14th century, Muslim Spain
had developed its own distinct style of architecture,
shown nowhere more magnificently than in Grenada's Alhambra
Palace.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: Palaces express another aspect of life,
more a life of luxury, a life of refinement.
There is spirituality even in those buildings.
In many ways, they also express the power of the ruler
partly in terms of how space is manipulated, how as a visitor,
you have to go through a certain series of spaces to enter it.
But you see, I think, how there is a sense of refinement
and sophistication in the use of visual form
and natural resources in those buildings.
NARRATOR: Courtyards open to the sky, but still
inside the palace walls blend the interior with the exterior,
creating a varied and vast domain.
RUBA KANA'AN: But also, there is the light and how it plays,
the color, even the smell.
And of course, architecture embodies that.
NARRATOR: In 1453, the Islamic world and beyond
was forever changed when the Muslim Ottomans captured
Constantinople from the Christian Byzantines.
The conquest signaled a new era of expansion and empire
for the Ottomans who would reach eventually
into North Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Arabian Gulf.
Their capital became known as Istanbul.
To display their increasing preeminence,
the Ottoman sultans created the Topkapi Palace,
an expansive court exemplifying royal life
for the powerful Islamic empire at its peak.
Its most famous resident, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent,
easily outshone his 16th century European counterparts
in wealth and influence.
The Ottoman Empire was very hierarchical
and so is the space in Topkapi, that you
are moving linearly in toward the most restricted space,
which is where the sultan was.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: Palaces, of course,
were only for the elite.
They were for the delectation of the prince and his court
and whoever visited him there.
So it's part of that elite world of art.
NARRATOR: A great cultural patron,
Suleiman also wrote poetry, espousing the traits
of a benevolent prince.
"Do not sleep.
Be awake on your throne.
Our strong hands hold the fate of the world."
OLEG GRABAR: 16th century is a time of princes
all over the world making beautiful things in order
to compete with each other.
Sultan Suleiman was the first sultan
who realized that he was not just continuing old empires,
but he was creating a new empire.
NARRATOR: Suleiman was named for the wise King Solomon,
and his signature graces many of his creative endeavors,
including the Topkapi Palace.
His vision for the new empire was far reaching and even
extended into Jerusalem to the venerated site
of the Dome of the Rock.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: Originally it was covered with mosaics,
and the dome was not gold leafed.
I think it was just lead covered.
Under the Ottomans in the 16th century,
the mosaics had deteriorated, so basically ugly stars
were put in its place.
JONATHAN M. BLOOM: The renovations,
instead of thinking of them as changes,
what I love to say about it is it
shows how meaningful the building remains.
That is, people always thought it was
worth redoing and repairing.
NARRATOR: Suleiman asserted his power
across the Ottoman Empire, but his legacy
endures most in Istanbul.
Completed in 1558, Suleiman's imperial mosque,
the Suleymaniye, represents the coming together
of a great patron and a great architect, Mimar Sinan.
The son of a Greek stonemason, Sinan
rose in the ranks of the Ottoman court,
becoming a military architect before designing the greatest
monuments of the Ottoman Empire.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: Sinan was trained as an engineer.
And you can see his engineering ability
come to the fore in buildings like the Suleymaniye.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: What you have is
a large, dominating, overwhelming dome that
just defines an enormous space beneath it.
And the Ottoman, especially imperial Ottoman architecture,
has always emphasized that.
JONATHAN M. BLOOM: The structure is very, very clear.
And the ornament is used in a very, very restrained way
to emphasize the structure but not overwhelm it.
NARRATOR: Perhaps the greatest source of inspiration for Sinan
was the nearby dome of the Byzantine church
of Hagia Sophia, built in the sixth century
and converted to a mosque by the Ottomans.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: We know from written documents
that Sultan Suleiman and his architect Sinan
tried to outdo what was there before.
So the dome is slightly larger than the dome in Hagia Sophia.
It's much better proportioned.
The spaces are opened up much more.
There are all kinds of better and more adventuresome
things in it.
But it is clearly within the same tradition.
NARRATOR: Whether domed or hypostyle, plain or ornamented,
all mosques serve the same purpose.
RUBA KANA'AN: They reflect how people perceived and understood
prayer.
And they expressed that from different places
and different ideas in different ways.
JONATHAN M. BLOOM: The differences
between their very simple mosques and the very complex,
highly engineered buildings have to do
with local cultural traditions, the availability of materials,
and of course the availability of money and technologies.
NARRATOR: In the West African Muslim country of Mali,
the buildings of Djenne evoke the simplicity
of early Islamic architecture.
Settled between the Niger and Bani rivers,
Djenne survives despite the torrents
of monsoons and flooding.
Shelter has always been made from what is locally available.
And during the rainy season, Djenne
is rich in water and earth.
The Great Mosque of Djenne celebrates
these natural resources.
[non-english speech]
INTERPRETER: It unique, made entirely of mud brink.
I have traveled to many places and seen many mosques,
but none look like the mosque of Djenne.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: In some ways, it
redefines our conception of what a mosque is.
And it emphasizes the fact that diversity is a very important
issue to keep in mind whenever thinking about the architecture
of the Islamic world.
NARRATOR: Rebuilt many times on its original 13th century
site, the massive mud structure's shape
comes from a millennia old West African tradition
not Islamic design.
RODERICK J. MCINTOSH: However different the outside may be,
the inside has all the elements that a Muslim coming
in from Iraq or Saudi Arabia would find familiar.
NARRATOR: The hypostyle mosque's flat roof
is supported by 99 columns, one for each
of the 99 names of God.
RODERICK J. MCINTOSH: And these pillars go up three stories.
They're not shaped like the pillars
of the Greek temple that gives you the image of soaring space.
They are quite squat.
But still, there's this sense that you're in a force,
that the light is streaming through, being broken up
by those network of pillars.
It's a very different light.
It's a very different use of light and space
than you find in your everyday life.
NARRATOR: For Muslims entering the mosque to pray,
its towering space is informed by their faith,
the mystical branch of Islam called Sufism.
RODERICK J. MCINTOSH: The West African brand of Sufism
is very, very tolerant.
And the tolerance comes from the fact
that everyone is allowed to have--
within certain boundaries-- but everyone
is allowed to have their own experience
and to celebrate their own experience with God.
It's something about we humans that we
need to make space where we can be alone with our own thoughts,
with the knowledge that we're only
a very small speck in this larger universe.
RUBA KANA'AN: The Great Mosque of Djenne
doesn't have what people think of as mosque architecture,
the big dome, the tall minarets.
But it is local and that it's the same architectural style
as the mosque in the village next door.
And there is the sort of intimate picture,
which is how the space is used by people in and around Djenne.
It is a reflection of how people perceive their place of prayer.
NARRATOR: In the hands of skilled craftsmen,
threads become stars, words, and arabesques,
repeated endlessly over colorful textiles.
Patterns, intricate and interwoven,
transform ceilings into the cosmos overhead.
In these complex designs, Muslims
can see the very possibility and promise of heaven.
AFSHAN BOKHARI: When Prophet Muhammad comes down
from the mountain with God's message,
he tells these potential believers, here's
what happened looks like.
And he uses every flora, fauna aspect
that is not in the landscape of these desert dwellers,
starting with trees, water, shade, fruit, and, of course,
what would you do if you had no concept of the afterlife
and at that point you were just a pagan
worshipping idols of your ancestors?
It seems like a pretty provocative message
and also promise.
So this idea of heaven, you know, the afterlife and what's
in there, in terms of the vegetable, floral abundance
is emblazoned in the minds of most Muslims.
JONATHAN M. BLOOM: What's interesting is
the patterns and the leaves and the tendrils
and the vines that were used in previous artistic traditions
to frame more important things in Islamic art
become the subject itself.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: And I think
there is the idea of infinity there, the idea of an ending.
And what is it that is an ending?
It is that abundance, the fertility
of the earth, the ability to not just survive
but to survive well.
NARRATOR: The stunning effect of these patterns
reflects Muslims' deep interest in geometry.
OLEG GRABAR: Geometry is a very tricky, very difficult thing
because it's something which to us seems
on the whole rather boring.
And they've managed to transform to something quite different.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: And of course, geometry
was very central to Islam because there are so
many religious and social practices that
are dependent upon geometry.
For example, they have to orient their mosque
by looking at the stars and making calculations
based on geometry to know the proper direction of prayer.
They need geometry to determine the times of prayer.
They need geometry to navigate as they
move through the Mediterranean or through the deserts
of Arabia.
So geometry is a survival technique.
Geometry is important to religion.
And it becomes aestheticized in the arts.
NARRATOR: Ordinary, everyday objects
are made extraordinary, embellished
with geometric and vegetal designs.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: Some of the objects that
are most delightful to look at today
were made for utilitarian purposes,
so plates, bowls, pitchers for pouring water,
that may take very fanciful forms,
may have a little bird on it or an inscription
around the outside.
Or it may have a surface that is completely
filled with vegetative ornament, you
know, this kind of leafy vine scroll ornament or geometrical
ornament.
These things were made for use.
It was an elite patron who used it.
It wasn't the ordinary person on the street
who could afford a beautiful metal ewer to pour water.
They would have used a clay jug.
But it was in the princely environment,
in the palace environment, something
that would have been used.
NARRATOR: Enjoying the tremendous luxury
their wealth afforded then, Muslim rulers
were major players in the international world of princes
and adopted many of the same practices
of their contemporaries.
OLEG GRABAR: The king was glorified and glorified
not so much by the victories he won, [inaudible],
but by the treasures he had.
That was what counted.
KJED VON FOLSACH: Muslim princes wanted
to compare themself with Christian princes
or Buddhist princes and so on.
And they have wonderful sculptures
of roaring lions and flying eagles.
And so wanted the Muslim princes.
We have a very nice example of an incense
burner in the shape of a lion.
But if you look at the body of the lion,
it consists of plant ornaments instead of,
you know-- had it been a European incense burner,
you would see the hairs of the fur.
And you will see the claws, and you will see
a lot of naturalistic details.
The Muslim artist is kind of more creating
an idea of a lion not necessarily an image
which you would recognize-- an animal which you
would recognize from the zoo.
NARRATOR: Depictions of animals or people
are surprising, as one of the greatest misconceptions
about Islamic culture is that figurative art does not exist.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: If you look at this line
because throughout the ages, in many parts
of the Islamic world, figurative art and sculpture
is very common, whether it is painting,
whether it's sculpture, animals, human beings, and so on.
It's very common, in fact.
We even have pictures of Mohammad
unveiled in manuscripts made by Muslims for Muslims.
But they are not idols, and they are not meant to be worshipped.
NARRATOR: Because early Muslims feared idolatry, in the mosque
the divine presence is portrayed only
through non-figural designs and the holy words of the Koran.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: Figural imagery,
images of people and animals, is really confined to the secular
world, the sort of ordinary world
where religion does not dominate,
is not the primary interest.
I think by denying that there are images
and refusing to show images,
you try to
project the image that there were no differing
views in Islam, where it's perfectly
clear from the historical record that we have images
and that different Muslims felt differently
at different times in different places.
And this is one of the great things about Islam.
It is such a large religion, and it has so many adherents.
Over the past 1400 years, the people
saw things in different ways.
NARRATOR: One of the most striking artifacts
of figurative imagery in Islamic art
is a small ivory box from Spain meant to hold
precious objects like perfume.
KJED VON FOLSACH: Our quart of an ivory box
belongs to a very small and select group of objects which
were made for the caliph in Cordoba
and the circle very close to him--
his wives, his viziers, the princess.
So they are works made for the court.
NARRATOR: The box was made and kept
here in the caliph's palace, Madinat az-Zahra.
Built in the 10th century but now in ruins,
the palace set a new standard of luxury and prestige,
proclaiming the caliph's supremacy to all who saw it.
KJED VON FOLSACH: The iconography or the images
on the objects reflect that.
They are kind of princely animals.
They are falcons.
They are griffins.
They are lions.
NARRATOR: Cut from a single tusk,
the ivory is delicately carved, giving the illusion
that the figures are emerging from this small case.
JONATHAN M. BLOOM: What's really extraordinary about it is it
shows us a whole other aspect of the artistic culture
of the time.
We have to look at the mosque and this box and say,
these are the poles.
One of them represents the religious public aspect
of the artistic culture and then the box
represents something that was meant
for precious materials, that was meant
for very private consumption rather than public display.
NARRATOR: In Spain's Alhambra Palace, the ornament of the box
is turned inside out, hidden inside plain stone walls.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: It's like a pearl in some ways.
You have a shell around it.
But then you go to the inside, and what you
have is just a very delicate arrangement of decoration.
You enter into some of the domed rooms in the Alhambra,
such as the Hall of Abencerrajes,
and you see these wonderful [inaudible]
vaults, these [inaudible], honeycomb walls which
short of hover over the person.
You can get a sense of immateriality,
as if you're watching the stars or the constellations.
OLEG GRABAR: They used all kinds of ways
of covering the walls that used stucco
to make it look like textiles, so that in fact,
as has been recently argued, the Alhambra tries to imitate
a tent, a series of tents.
So there is an aspect of it which
is like a fairy tale, the fairy tale created
by an ornament, which I think the fact that the ornament is
so dependent on textile patterns, I think,
is rather important too.
NARRATOR: All over the Islamic world, textiles
evoked a life of comfort through their sumptuous
materials and bright colors but also through their decoration.
AFSHAN BOKHARI: And often rulers who went to desolate areas
in their military campaigns, they
had to recreate that magnificence
that they were accustomed to.
Textiles are portable for those purposes,
to recreate this concept, this idea,
of a heavenly, abundant, lush, luxurious environment.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: You have to imagine
that textiles are the furniture of the Islamic lands.
Tables and chairs are used in the European and American
tradition to get you off the ground, which is cold and damp.
In the Islamic lands, it's fairly warm and it's dry.
So you just need something that separates you
from that dirt on the ground.
The rug is the perfect item.
You can roll it up and carry it.
You can sit on it.
You can sleep on it.
You can put another one on top of you, and you have a blanket.
NARRATOR: The ancient skill of carpet weaving
was perfected in Persia, as specialized dyes and techniques
led to a thriving textile industry in Iran.
During the 16th century, Persian textile designs
spread into India with their descendants,
the Mughal dynasty.
In modern-day India, weavers make carpets by hand
as their Mughal ancestors did centuries before,
using a special hooked knife for cutting the thread.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: Weaving is always done on a loom.
You set up vertical threads.
That's called warping the loom.
And then you weave in and out horizontally with the weft.
So it creates a grid like pattern.
Weaving is basically a geometric technique.
So it's very hard to weave a circle.
You can knot a circle just like you
can do it on a computer screen by making the knot so small.
And in fact, this is one of the reasons
that people invented what's the so-called Persian knot that's
open only on one side because you could pack more of them
together, and therefore, execute circles,
or curves, or arabesques, or scrolls more easily.
AFSHAN BOKHARI: The Mughals were particular in showing florals,
especially to a botanic precision,
and also to show-- I'd like to think-- the transience of life
by showing flowers in their various stages of birth
and death.
In the Koran, God says to Muslims, "To know me,
know my creations."
And of course, you can't see God.
God is never represented in Islamic art.
But this sort of instruction to look at his creations
deeper and at their essence will get us that much closer to God
is another imperative, another objective for representing
flora and fauna in Islamic art.
That's what makes it all so very dramatic,
you know, that here is a textile that
is dated 300 years from today.
And yet, still sort of is moving, that you're almost
catching it in a moment of transition,
that it's not static, and it's not still
but sort of speaks of the life that God had put into it.
NARRATOR: Today India's diverse heritage
is revealed in its art and architecture as well
as day-to-day life.
In workshops in Agra, India, Muslim artisans
still practice an ancient Roman technique
of stone inlay called pietra dura, first adopted
by the Mughals in the early 17th century.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: So in India
we have, again, that display of a willingness
to borrow, and eclecticism, and a kind
of cultural intermingling that I think
must have been one of the artistic strengths
of Islamic art.
NARRATOR: Using hand-powered machines
as they have for centuries, craftsmen
cut and shaped tiny semiprecious stones.
Then, with astonishing precision,
they fit them together, creating arabesques and other floral
and geometric patterns.
The Mughals' colorful pietra dura designs cover every wall
of Agra's tomb of I'timad-ud-Daulah,
commissioned by Emperor Jahangir for his father-in-law in 1622,
the building is made from marble inlaid with Carnelian lapis
lazuli, onyx, jasper, and topaz.
But it is the building's form that
reveals the most about the Mughals, a dynasty with Persian
as well as local Indian heritage.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: It looks Persian in some respects,
and it fits the end of a four square garden
called the Chahar Bagh-- these are Persian art forms--
but that has these little corner umbrella-like cupulas that
are called [inaudible] that are, in fact,
borrowed from Hindu architecture.
NARRATOR: Nearby, one of the most magnificent monuments ever
created in Islamic art appears against the sky
like a heavenly pearl, the Taj Mahal.
A colossal mausoleum, it was built
by Mughal Shah Jahan for his beloved wife,
Mumtaz Mahal in 1628.
AFSHAN BOKHARI: Mumtaz Mahal, first of all,
is of Persian heritage and not Indian or mixed
Indian heritage.
So she hails from a Persian legacy.
She wasn't his first and only wife.
But he favored her, and he had the most children by her.
Whether it was because she was beautiful above all or not
is still up for question.
But love transcends all.
And I think that's a very powerful symbol of it
and continues to be.
OLEG GRABAR: He buried her very young,
and she died, and he was so in love
with her that he built her this beautiful mausoleum.
And he mourned her forever and ever.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: The fact that she
was buried in the central position
under the summit of the tomb's dome is very telling.
And it says something about certainly his respect for her
and the importance that was accorded to her that she would
have a monument of that size and that she
would get that central spot.
NARRATOR: Shah Jahan spent 10 years overseeing
its construction, using an all white marble as well as pietra
dura but refining the technique to achieve a rare subtlety
and grace.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: The Taj Mahal is a very delicately
ornamented building.
In some ways, to me, it's the material
that dominates the decoration not the other way around.
So when the light falls at a certain way,
the decoration emerges in a certain way.
The delicacy of the marble absorbs the light.
And so at sunset, you'll experience it
in a very different way than you would at sunrise
or in summer you would experience it very differently
than you would at winter.
AFSHAN BOKHARI: You're suddenly imbued
with that perception of heaven.
You feel you've entered an other worldly
realm with a monument completely encased in marble, reflecting
its ulterior identity in the pool in front of it,
showing both realms, heavenly and earthly.
And he basically models the entire complex
on what the vision of paradise and heaven is.
NARRATOR: In West Africa, the simplicity
of Mali's small village mosques stands in stark contrast
to the heavily decorated buildings in the East.
Their minimal design of mud and timber
is echoed even in the more urban city of Djenne.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: You look at the mosque of Djenne
where there is no applied ornamentation.
But you have something different.
There, the scaffolding is actually
built into the building.
And that is done for a very practical reason, which
is that these mud buildings, these dried mud buildings,
need constant maintenance.
RUBA KANA'AN: These beams protrude enough
to make a pattern on the wall.
So when you look at it, you're not looking only
at the plain earth building.
When you're looking at it, you're
looking at a building that has lines on it.
And those lines are making different patterns, mostly
in diagonal lines or herringbone pattern.
But this pattern changes.
It's sort of alive.
It reflects the sun in its movement.
On the interior, you have almost no ornament at all.
The ornament there, if we can call it that,
is the play of light through the lightwells
and how light is reflected on these huge columns that
formed the corridors inside.
RODERICK J. MCINTOSH: That's what the Djenne mosque is all
about to the communicants who go there.
They have an experience with God, an unornamented experience
with God.
NARRATOR: Bereft of water and scorched by the unrelenting
sun, the urban landscapes of the traditional Islamic heartlands
were mostly dust colored, made from the surrounding earth.
In its scarcity, vivid color became
a treasure used to celebrate and elevate more
than buildings and objects.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: Imagine if you're coming on your camel,
and you come across this plain, and you see a mosque from afar.
And Mohammad, sometimes Ali or Ya Allah
are written in glazed tile.
They are like neon.
They glow.
And you've got another 20 miles to go,
and you're plunking along.
And so you start reciting sacred names, prayers, Koranic verses,
and it's a way of encouraging you.
It's a way of bringing you on.
It's a way of enveloping you into the community.
One of the ideas was to make life, as everywhere,
as pleasant as possible.
So you perfume things and you colored them.
You colored your food.
You colored the clothes you wore.
The weaving of different colors is possible
because you can dye silk, particularly also
wool and cotton in many different colors.
And many different dyes from saffron, from crocuses,
to various kinds of blues, and reds,
were all available and accessible
and easily transportable in the Islamic lands.
And color becomes so important that people often
made color and things that are difficult to color.
Take, for example, metalwork.
RUBA KANA'AN: There was everyday use metalware.
Then there was metalware that was perceived of as,
at the time, not only from our perspective as art objects,
objects to be appreciated because of their beauty.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: One of the highlights of metalware
that's made in the Islamic lands is the inlaying
of one metal into another.
So you have a bronze object, and you put silver and gold pieces
into it to make it colorful.
And just doing that shows you that people valued color
because why bother otherwise?
NARRATOR: This small painted wooden table
from the 11th century was discovered only
recently hidden away for hundreds of years
in a cave in Afghanistan.
KJED VON FOLSACH: This little piece of secular furniture
is an extraordinary survivor.
We hardly have any secular furniture
from the Islamic world at all from the medieval period.
The color combinations of the table-- reds, blue,
kind of greenish colors, black, and then
the color of the wood itself, where the layer of paint
has been cut through-- gives it an extremely lively
nearly garish appearance to the object.
It is stunning.
NARRATOR: Colorful paints, enamels,
and glazes are readily available today.
But historically, they were extracted
from the natural environment and given life
by the artist's hands.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: One of the ways you make color
is by grinding up pigments.
Often metallic pigments, so you can grind up copper,
and you can get green.
For tiling, and blue and white ceramics, you need cobalt.
And the biggest sources of cobalt, traditionally,
were in Iran.
So we think today of Chinese blue and white ceramic.
That cobalt and the idea of blue and white ceramic
actually comes from Iran.
NARRATOR: The Iranian city of Isfahan,
poised between the East-West trade
routes became a burgeoning center of ceramic arts
in the 16th and 17th century.
Isfahan's Sheikh Lotfollah mosque
with its striking blue tiles an ornamental dome
was built in 1618 by the great Persian ruler, Shah Abbas.
Used only as a private mosque for the Shah's royal court,
it wasn't until centuries later when
the building was open to the public
that its magnificence was revealed to the world.
The ornament is some of the most colorful and complex tile
work ever created.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: They would take tiles and break them
and then rearrange them so that you
would have a more intricate, rich play of light and color.
And you see that in this mosque.
Where in some ways, the building is dematerialized completely.
You no longer see the building as a special form
or special space but more as basically
an overwhelming surface of color and light.
Just enough light comes in to bring the mosaic tiles to life.
While if there was more light coming in,
it probably would overwhelm them,
and you would lose that effect of the tiles.
But here, the right amount of light only is let in.
NARRATOR: Faced with the labor of cutting each mosaic tile
by hand, the mosque's architects adopted
a more efficient glazing technique that allowed
designs to be painted directly onto the tile.
RUBA KANA'AN: They were thinking of how to transfer ideas.
They were experimenting.
They were what we-- they were the daring artists of the time.
Because they're introducing new ideas and new techniques.
NARRATOR: In this new technique, potters
paint in an outline of the design
with a mixture of mineral pigment and grease
before filling it in with colored glazes.
Once fired, the grease would burn off,
leaving a thin line to separate the colors.
Inside their private palaces, like the Chehel Sotoun,
the shahs of Iran used color in a very different way,
with figurative paintings of epic tales
from their own history.
This fresco commemorates the Battle of Chaldiran,
when the Persians bravely faced the Ottoman army in 1514.
Outnumbered and fighting only with traditional weapons
against the firearms of the Ottoman soldiers,
the Persians suffered a devastating defeat,
losing more than 5,000 men.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: In the secular environment,
in bathhouses, in palaces, in the private tradition
of manuscripts that are not Korans, not prayer books,
but rather story books or historic or epics,
or historical narratives, or scientific manuals,
for example, there are lots of images of people.
OLEG GRABAR: These were made in the court,
and they were not made-- this is important point-- they were not
made with the same obvious externalization that
happen in Western art.
This was not for a public.
The public probably didn't even know of the existence
of these paintings.
NARRATOR: With high drama and emotion,
illustrated narratives tell the tales
of the princes' distant ancestors,
linking them symbolically to the wise rulers of the past.
The greatest most famous of these
is the Persian epic poem by Ferdowsi called the Shahnameh,
or Book of Kings.
Mythical figures like Rostam are recounted
as heroes, cloaked in animal skins,
slaying demons, and saving humanity
from the evils of the world.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: The imagination runs wild.
And heroic exploits are depicted on the page-- not just
human beings but also super human animals,
and monsters, and angels.
NARRATOR: Rostam's rival, the valiant knight, Esfandiyar,
must face his own supernatural enemies
before he can meet Rostam in battle.
After wisely wounding the ferocious beast
with his blade covered horse, Esfandiyar
delivers the last fatal blow by hand.
OLEG GRABAR: You have the monster with its striking wings
and color and the clouds that look like the monster.
And this is where the talent of the composition
comes in, where details repeat itself,
echo each other in the image.
Here, you have very slowly to start looking,
and then you start drowning within those images.
NARRATOR: Finally, after much bloodshed,
Rostam is able to conquer the invincible
Esfandiyar, by discovering his only weakness, his eyes.
One double-pointed arrow silences his opponent forever.
AMY LANDAU: The Shahnameh recalls great battles
of the pre-Islamic past.
It also recounts great love stories.
It has a certain sensitivity to the human condition,
much like we see in the work of Homer, for example.
NARRATOR: The Shahnameh was so beloved
that other characters like the fifth century Persian prince
Bahram Gur took on new life in romantic epics.
In the poem "Seven Beauties" by Nizami,
Bahram Gur asks an architect to build
seven pavilions for the seven princesses
he admires from afar.
As he visits each one, the pavilions' colors
are used to illuminate the prince's own spiritual journey.
Poetry, like art, is a mirror reflecting the invisible world
of the human spirit.
AMY LANDAU: The central part of this beautiful poem
is his entering seven pavilions and being entertained
by a princess in each pavilion.
And each pavilion is identified, distinguished
by a certain color.
And these colors are related to a progression
of going from a point of just thinking about oneself
and not being enlightened to enlightenment.
NARRATOR: These Persian art forms spread,
as Islam blossomed in India under the Mughals.
AMY LANDAU: There was a lot of strong contacts
and interest between Iran and Mughal India in this period,
and we have a lot of interaction,
a lot of movement of poets and artists
going between these two empires.
And that's how ideas are transmitted.
That's how techniques are transmitted and goods.
NARRATOR: By the 17th century, under the reign
of Emperor Jahangir, Mughal art and architecture
was flourishing.
The monuments built during his reign
reveal how Islamic heritage took new forms, influenced by trade.
Janhangir himself admired and collected European and even
Christian art.
AFSHAN BOKHARI: And that probably
has a lot to do with the Portuguese,
the Jesuits, who had already come to India in Jahangir's
reign, bringing gifts.
Along with gifts, they're bringing illustrated Bibles.
And, of course, in the hopes to-- they're
proselytizing, hopefully converting these great emperors
of this great empire.
And, of course, the emperors are accepting these gifts.
They're very gracious.
They're very thankful.
So the reservoir, then, becomes quite rich from where
the artist is drawing.
NARRATOR: Here, a Mughal painter experiments
with the Western concepts of perspective and shading,
while using local materials.
AFSHAN BOKHARI: The colors are all
derived from pigments, natural pigments, and even
semi-precious stones.
The blue, especially, is from lapis lazuli,
which comes from Afghanistan.
But most of the reds, the yellows, the white
is all naturally derived and is indigenous to the place
in which the painting was created.
AMY LANDAU: Indian yellow is a mixture
of the urine of cows that are fed on Mango,
and that's bound with water and also a gum arabic.
And mixed together, and it creates this incredibly vibrant
yellow.
NARRATOR: It is in Jahangir's illustrated memoir
that the growth and sophistication of Mughal
painting is most clearly seen.
AFSHAN BOKHARI: In this work, he's shown with a halo.
And that links him to Western art,
and specifically Christian art.
He is above everyone.
Even though everyone is dressed in their finery
and they are individualized, that beautiful blue basically
winds us back to our primary focus, which should
be the emperor and nobody else.
And colors in Islamic art are very moving.
They're very sumptuous, lush, almost supernatural colors
that transport you to another place that is not earthly.
NARRATOR: Water gives life in barren lands.
It changes its surroundings.
It moves.
It reflects.
It is also a simple element that ties us to our past in a way
that nothing else can.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: Water is one of those elements
that we take for granted.
But when I see water in a pool in a tomb or in a palace,
I'm often struck by the fact that it's actually
the same water that flowed when the palace was built.
Because water doesn't go away.
It evaporates, and then it falls back on the earth.
And it evaporates, and it falls back down again.
It's the same water.
It's the Roman water.
It's the Islamic water.
It's, you know, water from all stages of history.
It's continuous.
And so for that moment, I am in that place,
not just in my imagination but literally,
materially, I'm part of that same environment.
NARRATOR: Though appearing effortless,
the water that ran for centuries into the reflecting pools
and garden beds of the Islamic world
traveled a difficult journey, one involving a complex system
of engineering and labor.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: A number of parts of the Islamic world
do suffer from scarcity of water.
They have very little rainfall.
Some of them might have large sources of water,
but you have to move the water to other locations.
NARRATOR: Perched on the edge of the Orontes River, the city
of Hama, Syria once had as many as 30 water wheels in service,
bringing water from the source to the people.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: You have these wonderful, enormous water
wheels, which could be 20 meters in diameter
or 60 feet in diameter.
And they would carry the water from the bottom
from the river up to the top of the water wheel.
And then from there, it would be transferred
to aqueducts or to canals.
And then it would feed various other parts
of the city, whether for agriculture
or for residential use and so on.
There's a very important verse in the Koran that
often is repeated, which is that God has made
everything alive through water.
So it's actually a very even simple and basic principle,
which is water is life.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: Through irrigation, an otherwise dry
landscape is made doubly productive in that it
is-- you can grow crops through the summer.
You can grow crops through a time of the year
when you wouldn't ordinarily have
any crops at all because of this ability to manage water.
NARRATOR: In more arid climates like Iran,
the challenging desert topography spurred innovation.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: One of the wonders
engineering feats of this part of the world
is the subterranean aqueduct called, in Persian, a qanat,
in Arabic a Khettara, Probably invented in Iran
already in the fourth century BCE,
but certainly developed in the Islamic period
and brought from Iran all the way to West Africa
and then in fact to the new world.
NARRATOR: From above, qanats appear
as a series of large crater-like holes in the earth.
Workmen were lowered into these access points,
some as deep as 150 feet, to tap the water's source
in the heart of a mountain.
Then, by hand, they cut through the earth
to create a long tunnel.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: You bring this water 25 miles underground
on a slightly sloping path, and then you
bring it out whenever you want to water your field.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: The management of that water
requires a very careful understanding of slope.
Because the cardinal rule about water is it flows downhill.
If it flows too fast, you lose your water
because it spills over the edges.
If it flows too slowly, you have a stagnant pool,
and it doesn't go where you want it to go.
NARRATOR: In Kairouan, Tunisia, water flowed from aqueducts
into massive reservoir basins.
Built in the ninth century, these highly sophisticated
collection pools provided water that
was both fresh and filtered.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: They're quite sizable.
You have a small pool and then a large pool.
The idea is that the water, which
is brought in from another location,
goes into the small pool.
There, the sediments basically settle.
And then it moves into the larger pool
where it's stored for the use of the residents of the city.
NARRATOR: Once inside the city walls,
water played an important religious role,
as all Muslims are required to wash before prayer.
JONATHAN M. BLOOM: Washing involves
a symbolic and practical cleansing of one's self
before approaching God.
And so it is a way of putting yourself
in the right mental framework for approaching the divine.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: You have the section for ablutions
in the mosque, and often these are very beautiful elements
within the mosque.
Sometimes you find them in the middle of the courtyard.
Sometimes you find them outside the mosque.
You find them in different locations.
But they do have an architectural presence
in the mosque.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: Water takes on this sacred association
in many cases.
But at the same time, it has a day-to-day connotation,
and you can't separate the two.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: Water is actually
a very complicated substance because it does not
hold its own shape.
It has to be given form.
It's very heavy, and therefore very heavy to lift.
And any time you work with water,
any time you manage water or carry water,
you actually need a container for it.
You need a vessel for it.
NARRATOR: Decorated ewers, or pitchers,
carried drinking water and could be
used for washing before meals.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: Someone would come out and pour the water,
and you would rub your hands over it.
And the wastewater would go into the basin.
But water was so precious you wouldn't just
let it run away on the floor.
You would take that basin of dirty water
and pour it on your garden.
RUBA KANA'AN: Water is about so many things.
It's not only about cleanliness.
It's not only about produce.
It's not only about beauty.
It's all of that.
NARRATOR: In palaces like the Chehel Sotoun in Iran,
called the Palace of 40 Columns, water
magnified the ruler's majesty, making it as valuable as gold.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: Water has the ability
to enhance the architecture around it--
the architecture that contains it
or the architecture that it surrounds.
So if you think of the Chehel Sotoun, the Palace the 40
Columns in Isfahan, it doesn't have 40 columns.
Its columns are in fact doubled by being
reflected on the body of water that sits in front of it.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: It's a very nice poetic interpretation
of the building.
But it also shows, again, that water always
plays an element in how the popular imagination sees
a building.
NARRATOR: In the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain,
water spouted upward from an alabaster basin
and poured from the mouths of 12 marble lions.
A poem carved on the basin echoed its physical form.
"The fountain is the sultan who showers all his subjects
and land with grace, just as water wets the gardens."
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: The fountain
is nothing more than the mechanism of extracting water
from the earth, turned into a celebration.
Every time water enters into a palace environment,
it enters through some kind of theatrical effect.
It enters through the mouth of a lion
or the mouth of a bronze deer so that the animal
seems to come alive.
And this is the only way of creating animation
in this world.
And it must have had an enormous effect on viewers.
It must have been-- it must have excited the imagination
to see something like that.
NARRATOR: Now covered in pebbles,
the Alhambra's Court of Lions was once a four-part garden
fed by the channels of water, representing
a microcosm of the irrigated landscape outside.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: The ultimate expression of water
is, of course, in the garden.
Because none of the gardens in the Islamic world
would exist if they didn't have a man-made,
an artificially introduced, source of water.
NARRATOR: The Generalife, Granada's 14th century summer
estate, was a pleasure palace, decorated with lush gardens
and whimsical fountains.
They evoke, on the one hand, the garden that
is the garden that grows food.
But they also evoke the gardens of paradise and the very word
"paradise" comes from the Persian "paradeisos" which
means a walled park or garden.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: Islamic gardens are typically
walled enclosed spaces, and the reason for that
is that by enclosing the space, you
are creating a box in which fragrant flowers,
fragrant fruit trees, are contained and made
more available to the nose.
You can smell them.
They are close at hand.
They are meant to be something that you have
almost physical contact with.
SHEILA S. BLAIR: You also should think of water
in the context of sound, because water
provides a pleasing sound.
So most gardens, like the Alhambra or the Generalife,
have running water because it's this babbling noise behind you
that screens out other noise but also brings quiet and calm.
NARRATOR: During Mali's long dry season,
water is an even greater luxury.
In the mud villages outside the city of Djenne,
people persist and thrive without rain,
grinding the millet grown before the floodwaters slowly recede.
In the hands of an artist, water becomes a medium
for creativity, used to shape and build
the world around them.
For over 4,000 years, people have used the sun, the earth,
and water to create mud brick or adobe buildings.
The word "adobe" itself comes from the Arabic word for mud,
"at-tub."
The city of Djenne is actually an island
in a vast flood plain.
Here, water is both a blessing and a curse.
And here, the buildings tell a story
of survival and community.
RODERICK J. MCINTOSH: This part of West Africa
has a very long dry season and a short wet season,
rainy season, only about two and a half, sometimes
three and a half months.
But the rains are monsoonal rains,
so they come in torrentially.
[non-english speech]
INTERPRETER: Mud architecture needs constant repair
because these rains wear way the plaster walls.
NARRATOR: The Great Mosque of Djenne
is the largest adobe structure in the world.
RODERICK J. MCINTOSH: You see the mosque,
and there are very few sharp corners.
Everything is softed.
Everything is rounded.
That's in part a good protection.
But it's a tribute, if you will, to the force of the rains
and the force of nature in that-- in that sense.
INTERPRETER: This mosque is very important
not only for me but for all the Malians
because it shows how creative and how
ingenious our masons are.
NARRATOR: The masons of Djenne mix
earth and water with a vegetable fat
called shea butter to shape the cylindrical mud
bricks which form the skeleton of the mosque building.
RODERICK J. MCINTOSH: There is a very long
archeological tradition that goes
beyond a millennium of dealing with these traditional mud
bricks.
And the traditional mud bricks are
the signature of the barey ton or the masons of Djenne.
They are cylindrical bricks.
They're about 20 centimeters high.
And they're laid vertically in rows,
but they're extremely hard.
NARRATOR: In order to protect them from erosion
during the heavy rains, mud plaster
is continuously applied to the traditional bricks
by masons who scale the timber scaffolding.
INTERPRETER: The timbers not only serve as decoration.
They also serve as a tool to create, to build a mosque,
to plaster it, and to make repairs on the mosque.
RODERICK J. MCINTOSH: They let this mud and the grain
and the butter ferment for weeks.
It's really foul smelling, but it's-- once it's put
on, it's as hard as regular Portland cement.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: The Mosque of Djenne
is eternal in a different sense, and it
is in the act of rebuilding and renewing and replenishing it
that it's importance is found.
NARRATOR: The legacy of Islamic art
is intertwined with the very fabric of world civilization.
In a deep and meaningful way, it is part of who we are today.
OLEG GRABAR: It's not that Islam has suddenly
appeared in our lives now.
We've been involved with Islam for centuries.
AFSHAN BOKHARI: I think that Islamic art puts
a face on a lot of the uncertainties Western society
has about Islamic culture.
And also it sheds light on some shared histories
between Western culture and Islamic culture
and shows a continuity rather than a break.
GARY VIKAN: To anchor ourselves in the past
as a way of giving ourselves, I think,
an anchor in a world that is in such enormous and threatening
flux.
Art, I think, is something that is the most human thing.
It's what makes us human.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: Sometimes material objects
can be the bridge between one world and another.
That translucent glass is beautiful
regardless of your religious background.
Mosaic sparkles and dazzles the eye, regardless
of what time in history you are in.
Monumental, tall domes that stretch overhead
like the heavens themselves are awesome whoever
you are, whether you walk in there to pray or walk in there
with a camera as a tourist.
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