Writing Signs: The Fatimid Public Text - Hardcover

Bierman, Irene A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520208013 ISBN 13: 9780520208018

Verlag: University of California Press, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

Irene Bierman explores the complex relationship between alphabet and language as well as the ways the two elements are socially defined by time and place. She focuses her exploration on the Eastern Mediterranean in the sixth through twelfth centuries, notably Cairo's Fatimid dynasty of 969-1171. Examining the inscriptions on Fatimid architecture and textiles, Bierman offers insight into all elements of that society, from religion to the economy, and the enormous changes the dynasty underwent during that period. Bierman addresses fundamental issues of what buildings mean, how inscriptions affect that meaning, and the role of written messages and the ceremonies into which they are incorporated in service of propagandist goals. Her method and conclusions provide a pioneering model for studying public writing in other societies and offer powerful evidence to show that writing is a highly charged and deeply embedded social practice.

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Irene A. Bierman is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Director of the University's Gustav E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies.

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Writing Signs: The Fatimid Public Text

By Irene A. Bierman

University of California Press

Copyright © 1998 Irene A. Bierman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0520208013
Initial Considerations

“Public text” names the Fatimid practice of writing signs in Arabic.1 It was, I shall argue, a socially and politically intensified use of writing in contrast to the practices of other societies in the eastern Mediterranean. In fact, the Fatimids made writing a significant public art. This study of the art of the public text explores how the Fatimid ruling group extended the use of writing in their capital of Cairo (969–1171 C.E. / A.H. 386–567) to support their political and hegemonic interests. It demonstrates how that extended range of writing signs became a visual legacy continually reiterated by ruling groups within a restricted area of Cairo.

For the Fatimids, every written sign in the public space was a public text: an officially sponsored writing addressed to a public audience which continuously reminded the viewers of the official Fatimid position. The phrase “Fatimid practice” also encompasses the new ways in which Fatimid patrons used writing as a visually significant sign on the interiors of the sectarian buildings they sponsored. For a period of almost two hundred years in Cairo, writing signs was a Fatimid gesture: Fatimid power, Fatimid community, Fatimid territory.

Because the time in which the public text flourished and the places where it was displayed were relatively limited, and because the buildings on which the writings were displayed and the cloths into which the messages were woven have not survived as well as one could wish, the idea of the public text may seem too well argued from too narrow a base. I think not. But the limitations make desirable some initial considerations of terms and ideas that create a conceptual framework enabling one to see and appreciate the power and uniqueness of the Fatimid public text.

First among these is the idea of space, public and sectarian spaces, and of what was included and what was rejected from the writings extant or known to have existed in each space. This study looks closely at the messages displayed in each to see if and how they changed over time. Next, after considering the corpus of these writings and understanding the nature of the spaces in which they were displayed, we need to consider the objects and materials on which the writing was presented. Third, we come to the central idea of this interpretation—how these writings made their meanings. These writings consisted primarily of Qur’nic quotations, secular salutations, names and titles of sponsors, and similar simple and familiar short passages. What is important is the paradigm used to explore the possible meanings these group-addressed writings conveyed to the observers.

Finally, as part of the discussion of meaning, I explore briefly the idea of “contextual literacy,” important to understanding how the Fatimids were able to address the diverse populations of Cairo with their systematic displays of writing in Arabic. These initial considerations make possible the close analysis of writing in Arabic and other languages in the eastern Mediterranean of which the Fatimid public text is the special focus.

In the eastern Mediterranean for millennia before the Fatimids came to Cairo in 969, writing was used for a variety of purposes.2 Embedded in specific social institutions, writing was sponsored by various groups. Lists, tables, and business records helped commerce thrive. Notation systems stored mathematical and scientific knowledge. Essay-texts were developed to record philosophy, history, and myth. And Roman authorities put writing on the entablatures of the central buildings of the fora, and displayed letters on banners and standards in military processions.3 That the Fatimids used writing in the extensive networks of their social organization was clearly not of itself a new practice in the eastern Mediterranean.

But to the eyes of Cairene beholders, the writing on the exterior of the minarets of the mosque of al-H?akim in the year 1002/393 (fig. 1) presented a significant departure in the conventional uses of writing because it was used to address a group audience in public space. Writing in Arabic was displayed on this structure in a highly visible format and on stone and marble, permanent and expensive materials, in contrast to the limited uses of writing in public space by previous and contemporary Muslim and Christian rulers in the eastern Mediterranean for some four hundred years and, in fact, even with the earlier Fatimid practice itself.4 Generally speaking, before the change signaled by the writing signs on the mosque of al-H?akim, those in authority displayed writing in public spaces only in limited fashion, placing them at urban thresholds and on lintels over the entrances of some major buildings. Those who passed the exterior of the mosque of al-H?akim in 1002/393 witnessed some of the significant first steps taken by the Fatimid ruling group to use written signs actively to define urban spaces and to convey meaning to public audiences in the Fatimid capital area of Egypt.

In addition to this display of writing in the public space, Muslim beholders, especially those who were part of the Fatimid ruling group, witnessed another change in the use of writing—one that occurred inside the same mosque, an Isma‘ili Muslim sectarian structure. Those who entered the mosque of al-H?akim saw displayed on its interior writing larger in scale than that in other mosques in the capital area (fig. 2). But size was not the sole factor that signaled the change in the use of writing. The format, or the manner of display, set it apart from writing on the interior of earlier structures. In the interior of the mosque of al-H?akim, writing relatively large in scale for the practices of the time and place framed the architectural features almost unencumbered by other design elements, whereas in the interior of the earlier Fatimid mosque in Cairo, al-Azhar, writing small in scale framed depictions of plants and trees (fig. 3). In addition, the writing in the interior of the mosque of al-H?akim differed from the display of writing in the mosque of Ah?mad ibn T?ulun, the large congregational mosque built in the ninth/third century in al-Qat?a’i‘,, south of the Fatimid royal city. There, writing had been used in a limited way in the mihrab area of the sanctuary, but not to fill the ornamental border running around the architectural features of the mosque (fig. 4).

The choice of the mosque of al-H?akim as the site for a manifestation of this shift in the uses of writing related in very direct ways to the structure itself and to the political and hegemonic features of Fatimid society of the time. These specific relationships are taken up in chapter 3. But what is relevant here is an understanding that writing outside and writing inside the mosque addressed different, and overlapping, audiences. The kind of group that could be addressed in a public space by the writing on the exterior of the mosque of al-H?akim, or in the public processions the Fatimids sponsored, was critically different from the group addressed inside the sectarian space, the Isma‘ili mosque. In this study, the two adjectives “public” and “sectarian” are used to denote spaces of contrasting accessibility.

Public space, as distinct from sectarian space, is where anyone—or...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of California Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1998
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0520208013
• ISBN 13: 9780520208018
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 214
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar