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Architecture as a Source for Local History in the Mongol Period: The Example of Warāmīn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2016

SHEILA BLAIR
SHEILA BLAIR*
Affiliation:
Boston Collegesheila.blair@bc.edu
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Abstract

This article investigates the history of the Mongol period as seen from the provinces, looking not only through the historian's lens of written documents but also through the art historian's gaze on art and architecture. It focuses on the town of Warāmīn and its multiple shrines and shows how buildings and their furnishings, notable the extensive revetment in signed and dated lustre tiles, can be rich sources for writing history.

Type
Part III: The Sources
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 26 , Issue 1-2 , January 2016 , pp. 215 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2016 

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References

1 Morgan, David, “The Mongol Empire in world history”, in Komaroff, Linda (ed.), Beyond the Legacy of Genghis Khan (Leiden and Boston, 2006), p. 429 Google Scholar.

2 In addition to several articles by art historians in the collective volume cited in note 1, one should mention Aigle, Denise, Le Fārs sous la domination Mongole: Politique et fiscalité (XIIIe-XIVe s.) (Paris, 2005)Google Scholar.

3 The phrase “View from the Edge” refers to the title of another recent festschrift for a historian of medieval Iran: Yavari, Neguin, Potter, Lawrence G., and Oppenheim, Jean-Marc Ran (eds.), Views from the Edge: Essays in Honor of Richard W. Bulliet (New York, 2004)Google Scholar.

4 Sources about the town include Mustawfī al-Qazwīnī, Ḥamdallāh, Nuzhat al-qulūb, (ed.) Dabīr-Siyāqī, Muḥammad (Tehran, 1336), pp. 56, 59Google Scholar; and translated by Guy LeStrange, Gibb Memorial Series (Leyden and London, 1919), pp. 58–61, 168; Barthold, W., An Historical Geography of Iran, translated by Svat Soucek (Princeton, 1984), pp. 124–126 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and C. E. Bosworth, “Warāmīn”, EI 2.

5 Wilber, Donald, The Architecture of Islamic Iran: the Il Khānid Period (Princeton and New York, 1955 Google Scholar; reprint 1969), pp. 109–111, no. 11; ‛Uqābī, Muḥammad Mahdī: Bināhā-yi Ārāmgāhī (Tehran, 1376), pp. 362–365 Google Scholar; Ganjnameh, vol. 13/3: Emamzadehs and Mausoleums (part III) (Tehran, 2010), pp. 82–87. As I was finishing this essay, a student from Shahid Behesti University, Ḥusayn Nakh‛ī, sent me a paper he has prepared reconstructing the Imāmzāda Yaḥyā; I thank him for sharing it with me and hope that his important work will be published soon.

6 Parviz Varjavand, “Emāmzāda iii. Number, distribution, and important examples”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, gives the imām's genealogy as Yaḥyā b. ‛Alī b. ‛Abd-al-Raḥmān b. Qāsim b. Ḥasan b. Zayd b. Imām Ḥasan.

7 Dieulafoy, Jane, La Perse, la Chaldée et la Susiane: Relation de Voyage (Paris, 1887), pp. 147–149 Google Scholar.

8 Watson, Oliver, Persian Lustre Ware (London, 1985), p. 191, no. 11Google Scholar.

9 Porter, Venetia, Islamic Tiles (New York, 1995), p. 35 Google Scholar and fig. 19, notes, for example, that there are 160 known tiles. The British Museum website lists 41 examples under the search words “Varāmīn tile” and 7 more under “Veramin tile”. Some, however, are smaller and have figural decoration; they may have come from another site such as the Imāmzāda Ja‛far at Dāmghān. The V&A also has a sizeable collection of tiles said to have come from Warāmīn, of which fifteen (1837&A, C, E, F-1876, 1487–1876, 1489–1876, 1838&C, E-1876, 1077–1892, 1099&A-1892, 1100&A-1892) have been reassembled as a dado panel. Many other individual tiles are attributed to Warāmīn, as they resemble ones said to have come from the site; see Masuya, Tomoko, “Persian Tiles on European Walls”, Ars Orientalis 30 (2000), pp. 43–45 Google Scholar.

10 Loukonine, Vladimir and Ivanov, Anatoli, Lost Treasures of Persia: Persian Art in the Hermitage Museum (Washington DC, 1996), p. 150, no. 137Google Scholar; Iran v Ėrmitaže: Formirovanie kollekciji (St Petersburg, 2004), p. 136, no. 158.

11 Blair, Sheila S., “Art as text: The luster mihrab in the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art”, in No Tapping around Philology: A Festschrift in Celebration and Honor of Wheeler McIntosh Thackston's 70th Birthday (Wiesbaden, 2014), pp. 407–436 Google Scholar.

12 On the potters, see Watson, Persian Lustre Ware, Appendix I; O. Watson, “Abu Taher”, Encyclopaedia Iranica, and Grove Dictionary of Islamic Art and Architecture, “Abu Tahir”.

13 The process is described in detail in Blair, “Art as Text”.

14 Loukonine and Ivanov, Lost Treasures of Persia, p. 153, no. 143.

15 Watson, Persian Lustre Ware, p. 179.

16 Mudarrisī Ṭabāṭabāyi, Turbat-i pākān (Qum, [25]35/1976]), I, pp. 46–52. The Qum cenotaph measures 2.95 × 1.2 metres, including an outer frame band with a Qur’anic inscription 2: 255 that is not part of in the set of lustre tiles in St Petersburg.

17 Repértoire chronologique d’épigraphie arabe, (ed.) Étienne Combe, Jean Sauvaget, and Gaston Wiet (Cairo, 1931–91), no. 5222. I thank Wheeler Thackston for kindly checking the transcription and translation of this inscription. ‛Uqābī, Bināhā-yi Ārāmgāhī, p. 365, mentions that in addition to the Qur’anic verses, the inscription also contains a hadith but he does not give the text.

18 al-Dīn, Rashīd: Jāmi‛ al-tawārīkh, (ed.) Karīmī, Bahman, 2 vols (Tehran, 1362)Google Scholar; translated and annotated by Thackston, Wheeler M. as Jamiʿuʼt-tawarikh/Compendium of Chronicles, a History of the Mongols (Cambridge, MA, 1998–99)Google Scholar. These events are also recounted in Boyle, J. A., “Dynastic and political history of the Īl-Khāns”, in Boyle, J.A. (ed.), Cambridge History of Iran, V, The Saljuq and Mongol Periods (Cambridge, 1968)Google Scholar. The connection between the modern and medieval histories was not lost on David Morgan who, with his characteristic wit, dubbed Rashid al-Din's collection of chronicles “a kind of thinly disguised proto-Cambridge History of the Mongols”, see his “Persian and non-Persian historical writing in the Mongol empire”, in Hillenbrand, Robert, Peacock, A. C. S. and Abdullaeva, Firuza (eds.), Ferdowsi, the Mongols and the History of Iran: Art Literature and Culture from early Islam to Qajar Persia: Studies in Honour of Charles Melville (London, 2013), p. 122 Google Scholar.

19 Jāmi‛ al-tawārīkh, (ed.) Karīmī, pp. 789–799; translated Thackston, pp. 551–559. These events are also recounted in Boyle, “Dynastic and political history of the Īl-Khāns”, pp. 364–368, and Aubin, Jean, Émirs Mongols et Vizirs Persans dans les remous de l’acculturation (Paris, 1995), pp. 33–36 Google Scholar.

20 For the definition of the dushākha, see Thackston's translation, Jamiʿuʼt-tawarikh/Compendium of Chronicles, p. 93, n. 6. For a depiction of it, see the painting in Berlin (Staatsbib., Diez A, fol. 70, S. 19, nr. 2), reproduced in Dschingis Khan und seine Erben: das Weltreich der Mongolen (Munich, 2005), no. 280 and May, Timothy, The Mongol Art of War (Yardley, PA, 2007), pl. 5, bottomGoogle Scholar.

21 Jāmi‛ al-tawārīkh, (ed.) Karīmī, pp. 789–799; translated Thackston, pp. 551–559.

22 Jāmi‛ al-tawārīkh, (ed.) Karīmī, pp. 916–918; translated by Thackston, pp. 628–630; Aubin, Émirs Mongols, pp. 54–55 and 61–62.

23 For the corrected date and the circumstances, see Melville, Charles, “ Pādshah-i Islām: The conversion of Sultan Maḥmūd Ghāzān Khān”, Pembroke Papers 1 (1990), pp. 159–177 Google Scholar.

24 Kāshānī, Abū’l-Qāsim, Tārīkh-i Uljaytū, ed. Hamblī, Muhīn (Tehran, 1348)Google Scholar. For Kāshānī as a “research assistant” to Rashīd al-Dīn, see Morgan, “Persian and non-Persian historical writing”, pp. 122–123 and n. 4, citing Morton, A. H.'s introduction to The Saljūqnāma of Ẓahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī, (ed.) Morton, A. H. (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 23–25 Google Scholar.

25 Kāshānī, Tārīkh-i Uljaytū, p. 75. This date thus supersedes the 709/1309–10 one given by Ibn al-Fuwaṭī: see Melville, Charles, “The Chinese-Uighur Animal Calendar of the Mongol Period”, Iran 32 (1994), n. 26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Kāshānī, Abū al-Qāsim, Arāʾis al-jawāhir wa nafāʾis al-aṭāyib, ed. Afshar, Iraj (Tehran, 1345/1966–7)Google Scholar. Allan, James, “Abū’l Qāsim's treatise on ceramic”, Iran 11 (1973), pp. 111–121 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, contains an English translation and commentary of the section on lustreware.

27 Watson, Persian Lustre Ware, Chapter 10.

28 Masuya, Tomoko, “Ilkhanid courtly life”, in Komaroff, Linda and Carboni, Stefano (eds.), The Legacy of Genghis Khan: Courtly Art and Culture in Western Asia, 1256–1353 (New York, 2002), pp. 74–104 Google Scholar.

29 Vardjavand, Parviz, “La Découverte archéologique du Complexe scientifique de l’Observatoire de Maraqé”, in Akten des VII. Internationalen Kongresses für Iranische Kunst und Archäologie, München 7–10 September 1976, pp. 527–536 (Berlin, 1979), pl. 8Google Scholar.

30 Wilber, Architecture of Islamic Iran, no. 21; Ganjnameh 13/3, pp. 78–81.

31 Repértoire chronologique d’épigraphie arabe, no. 4912.

32 Dieulafoy, La Perse, la Chaldée et la Susiane, p. 147.

33 The family tree of the maliks of Warāmīn given in Aubin, Émirs Mongols et Vizirs Persans, p. 87, can be corrected on the basis of the inscription on the tomb tower: Fakhr al-Dīn's father was ‛Alā’ al-Dīn Murtaḍā (not ‛Alā’ al-Dīn Muḥammad), and Fakhr's al-Dīn's son was named Muḥammad.

34 Ibid . No source is given.

35 His tomb and khānagāh (Iranian National Monument 320) west of Simnān are ruined; Wilber, Architecture of Islamic Iran, no. 262; for old photographs, see Godard, André, “Khorāsān”, Āthār-é Īrān 4 (1949), p. 90 Google Scholar and Fig. 70 and “Voutes iraniennes”, ibid, Figs. 219, 220, and 238.

36 Golombek, Lisa, “The cult of saints and shrines architecture in the fourteenth century”, in Kouymjian, Dickran K. (ed.), Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, Epigraphy and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles (Beirut, 1974), pp. 419–430 Google Scholar; Blair, Sheila S., The Ilkhanid Shrine Complex at Natanz, Iran (Cambridge, MA, 1986)Google Scholar; Blair, Sheila S., “On giving to shrines: ‘Generosity is a quality of the people of Paradise’”, in Komaroff, Linda (ed.), Gifts of the Sultan: The Art of Giving at the Islamic Courts (New Haven, 2011), pp. 51–74 Google Scholar.

37 Blair, “Art as Text”, Table 1.

38 On the role of commodities in the Mongol period, see Allsen, Thomas T., Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles (Cambridge, 1997)Google Scholar, and Allsen, Thomas T., Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Aubin, Émirs Mongols et Vizirs Persans, p. 84, identifies ‛Izz al-Dīn; on the building, see Wilber, Architecture of Islamic Iran, no. 64 and Sheila S. Blair, “Religious art of the Ilkhanids”, in Komaroff and Carboni (eds.), The Legacy of Genghis Khan, pp. 121–123.

40 Kāshānī, Tārīkh-i Uljaytū, pp. 136, 154 and 195.

41 Morgan, “Persian and non-Persian historical writing”, and Morgan, David, “Persian historians and the Mongols”, in Morgan, David (ed.), Medieval Historical Writing in the Christian and Islamic Worlds (London, 1982), pp. 109–124 Google Scholar.