Star and Cross Tiles,
overglaze luster-painted fritware, Iran, late Thirteenth
Century. The Trustees of the British Museum, London.
LOS ANGELES, CALIF. - The saga of Genghis Khan and the Mongols
has long appealed to the Western imagination. Beginning in the
late Middle Ages, first-hand traveler accounts, such as those of
Marco Polo, helped create a place in the popular consciousness
for the Mongols that continues to this day.
While the Mongols achieved their empire through war and conquest,
extends well beyond the front line. For more than a century his
descendants ruled an often loosely united Mongol Confederacy in
which the promotion of pan-Asian trade, an avid taste for luxury
goods and the practice of relocating artists combined to produce
an unprecedented cross-fertilization of artistic ideas throughout
Eurasia.
To retell this story, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905
Wilshire Boulevard, has organized ": Courtly Art and Culture in
Western Asia, 1256-1353," the first exhibition to explore
artistic and cultural achievements that occurred in the Iranian
world in the aftermath of the Mongol invasions. The exhibition,
on view April 13-July 27, focuses on the Ilkhanid dynasty founded
by Genghis Khan's grandson Hulegu.
This dynasty ruled in an area encompassing Iran, Iraq, western
Afghanistan, southern Russia and eastern Turkey and maintained a
relationship with China's Yuan dynasty, established by another
grandson, Khubilai Khan. It was a period of brilliant cultural
flowering, as the Mongol masters sought to govern their disparate
empire and in the process sponsored the creation of a bold new
visual language.
Textiles were among the luxury goods especially coveted by the
Mongols. "Cloth of gold" -- silk woven with gold-wrapped thread
-- was used by the Mongols for clothing and even tents. The
Persian historian Juvayni, writing in the mid-Thirteenth Century,
illustrated the Mongols' rise to power by noting that before
Genghis Khan, they wore clothing made "from the skin of dogs and
mice."
Because of their portability, textiles played a crucial role in
the transmission of artistic ideas from east to west Asia. The
hybrid style that developed under Mongol rule is represented by a
splendid textile, woven in gold on a silk foundation, whose
decoration includes rows of back-to-back griffins and medallions
enclosing similarly paired lions.
"" will reflect both the temporary and permanent settings of
Ilkhanid courtly life. As nomads, the Mongols migrated
seasonally, a practice continued by their Ilkhanid descendants
even after they built palatial residences. Enormous tents were
used for ceremonial occasions and could hold as many as 2,000
men. Museum visitors will be able to stand within a
reconstruction of the interior of a fabulous tent comprised of
actual late Thirteenth Century textiles.
These spectacular tent panels, woven of silk and gold, are so
remarkable in their structure, materials and design that they
must have been made for a royal patron.
The permanent courtly setting will be represented by gilt and
lustered tiles that once decorated the sole excavated palace of
the Ilkhanid period. The tiles will be shown in a special gallery
that reflects the octagonal form of some of the actual rooms of a
palace at the site known today as Takht-I Sulaiman (Throne of
Solomon). Some of the tiles are decorated with dragons and
phoenixes -- mythic beasts that were motifs imported from China
and associated with royalty. Other tiles bear heroic figures and
quotations from the Iranian national epic, the Shahnama
(Book of Kings).
The Mongols recognized that the establishment of stable forms of
government would be to their advantage and built upon existing
institutions and systems or developed new ones. For example, to
facilitate communication, they established a postal-courier
network that allowed for the swift transmission of royal orders
from one end of the empire to the other (Marco Polo wrote that
messengers could travel 200-300 miles a day along this network.)
To suggest the complexities involved in administering the vast
Mongol empire, the exhibition includes gifts of tribute from one
ruler to another, an official document, paper money and gold
coinage and passports. One beautifully crafted cast-iron and
silver-inlaid metal passport, that allowed its owner to travel in
safety, bears an inscription that reads in part: "By the strength
of eternal heaven, an edict of the Emperor. He who has no respect
shall be guilty."
The Mongols were practitioners of shamanism but as they
transformed from nomadic warriors into leaders of a great empire,
they came into close contact with other systems of belief. While
their brethren in China converted to Buddhism, the Ilkhanids made
Islam their official state religion in 1295.
In a special gallery devoted to art in the service of Islam, the
exhibition visitor will see sumptuously illuminated manuscripts
of the Koran, furnishings that include a remarkable carved wood
Rahla or Koran stand and architectural decorations, notably a
large and splendid glazed tile mihrab, or prayer niche.
Perhaps the most profound impact of the Mongol invasion on the
arts of Iran was in the new role of manuscript illustration,
which became a significant and influential forum for courtly
patronage. Beginning in the early Fourteenth Century, the main
focus of Ilkhanid patronage was historical works and epic poems.
Histories were written expressly to glorify the achievements of
the dynasty, as in the Jami' al-tavarikh (Compendium of
Chronicles) -- the first world history encompassing not only the
Mongols but the ancient Iranian and Arabian kings, the prophet
Muhammad and the caliphs, the Chinese, the Indians and the Jews.
Epics represent the continuation of an existing genre,
exemplified by the Shahnama (Book of Kings), which tells
of the pre-Islamic kings and heroes of Iran. Large sections of
both manuscripts will be reunited specifically for this
exhibition and displayed as single or double folios.
Early Fourteenth Century versions of the Shahnama were
copied and illustrated in Tabriz, the Ilkhanid capital, as well
as Baghdad and Shiraz, in southern Iran, recasting ancient
Iranian kings as contemporary Mongol sovereigns.
Politically, the invasion of western Asia brought to a decisive
end the long period of Arabo-centric dominance, underscored in
1258 by the Mongols' termination of the Abbasid caliphate, which
had ruled from Baghdad for more than 500 years. Culturally, the
Mongol invasions and the so-called Pax Mongolica (Mongol Peace)
helped infuse and energize Iranian art with novel forms, meanings
and motifs that were further disseminated throughout the Islamic
world.
An illustrated catalog, published by The Metropolitan Museum
of Art and distributed by Yale University Press, will accompany
the exhibition. It will be available at LACMA's museum store and
at www.lacma.org.
