The Gate of All Nations, c. 470 BCE. Persepolis, Iran.
Therefore there is absolutely no reason to see figurative art in Islamic culture as the perpetual overcoming of a prohibition existing within the religion. On the other hand, the arrival of Islam in Iran brought about the abolition of other restrictions which had an important bearing on the development of art.
By the 8th century the Islamic state, the Caliphate, included not only the whole territory of Iran but also part of Byzantium, North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Central Asia and Afghanistan, and it subsequently extended even further; yet this state was by no means a world empire like the empires of the Achaemenids or the Sassanids. Its ruler, the caliph (from the Arabic “successor” or deputy of the prophet Muhammad), inherited from the prophet the Imamate, the spiritual leadership of the Muslim community, and the Emirate political power. According to Islamic law, he either had to be elected by the whole community (this was, of course, only in theory), or appoint a successor during his lifetime, with the approval of the faqihs (this latter requirement was also not followed in practice). And although it was considered that the power of the caliphs had been established by God, the Islamic state was theocratic but far from despotic.
In theory, the Islamic state was considered to be a state of equals and the basic confrontation within it was not in terms of estates or between the nobility and the oppressed, but in terms of Muslims and infidels. In Sassanian Iran, and this was especially noticeable towards the end of the Sassanian period, divisions in society were strictly upheld – they were specifically sanctioned by Zoroastrianism. Priests, warriors, scribes and the common people each formed separate “estates” and movement from one estate to another was impossible or at least extraordinarily difficult. In artistic terms, this social system fostered the creation not only of a hierarchy of forms and themes but also of a hierarchy of individual types of art (“prestigious” and “non-prestigious”). The Islamic conquest swept away the social system of castes and estates and in so doing significantly changed the hierarchy in subject-matter and the branches of the fine arts. The Sassanian royal and “chivalric” culture was destroyed.
Lastly, it is necessary to say something about the conception of a world culture which also suffered notable changes after the arrival of Islam in Iran. Mention has already been made here of this conception as understood by the Achaemenid and Hellenistic eras. Its character during the Sassanian period is described thus by Vasily Bartold:
The world situation of the Sassanian state in the 6th and 7th centuries clearly had an even greater effect on the success of imperialism (Bartold uses this term only in the narrow political sense of the “creation of empires”) in individual countries than did the formation of Alexander’s empire in its time. This was the period of the unification of China under the rule of the Suis dynasty (589–618 CE), followed by the T’ang dynasty (618–907 CE), with their extensive claims in Central Asia; of the might of the kings of Kannauj on the Ganges, considered to be the imperial city of India during the first centuries of Islam; of the unification under the power of a Turkish dynasty of nomads from China to India, Persia and Byzantium. These events formed the basis of the Buddhist concept of four world monarchies at the four corners of the world: the empire of the king of elephants in the south, the king of treasures in the west, the king of horses in the north and the king of people [because of the vast population of the Chinese empire] in the east. With a few alterations, this same concept was transmitted to Muslim authors: the king of elephants was also called the king of wisdom because of a fascination for Indian philosophy and science; the king of people was the king of state government and industry because of a fascination for Chinese material culture; the king of horses was the king of beasts of prey; in the west two kings were differentiated – the king of kings, that is the king of the Persians and then of the Arabs, and the king of men, because of a fascination for the racial beauty of the [Byzantine] empire’s population.[17]
The Islamic modifications are of interest here. In Sassanian Iran the conception of the “four kingdoms” manifested itself as a concept of Greater Iran as a centre of civilisation surpassing, or at least equal to, other nations in terms of its culture. Islamic “democracy”, on the other hand, stresses the differences and the specific contributions of individual civilisations towards the single world of culture created by them, for the theory was that the Islamic state should in the end become worldwide and integrate all these achievements, since, after all, the “infidels” had been conquered by the Muslims.
Thus the Islamic conquest swept away a number of restrictions within Iranian culture, and not only religious ones but also those relating to estates. The Zoroastrian or state propagandist interpretations were eliminated from all artistic forms, themes and compositions which had been developed in Sassanian Iran; kings finally became simply kings; heroes, warriors and hunters simply themselves; beasts, birds, flowers and plants simply beasts, birds, flowers and plants. And this repertory, which included a great number of images and compositions imported from other cultures, passed into the art of medieval Iran, developing along the same general lines which characterised medieval art, such as an intensification of decoration and a striving towards abstract compositions.
And yet the art and culture of Iran did not fuse into a general Islamic culture. On the contrary, after the Iranian renaissance (10th-11th centuries) the Modern Persian language became the language of Islam together with Arabic and under the influence of the Iranians, Islam itself became a multilingual, multinational culture and religion. In the words of one contemporary historian: “Iranian civilisation played the same role in the development of Islamic culture as Greek civilisation did in the formation of Christianity and its culture.”[18]
From the 7th-9th centuries the eastern province of Iran, Khurasan, was of special significance in the founding of the new culture (in the Middle Ages it encompassed the north-east of present-day Iran, the south of present-day Turkmenistan and the north-west of present-day Afghanistan).
In the 6th-7th centuries the situation there resembled that of Syria, for example, in the 2nd century, in terms of the intensity of its conflict of ideas. In the Marv region, archaeologists have discovered a Christian monastery and cemetery; there was a large Jewish community which buried its dead in day ossuaries bearing Hebrew inscriptions; a Buddhist monastery was situated there, as was one of the most ancient and revered Zoroastrian temples. In 651 CE the last Sassanid shahanshah, Yazdegerd III, met his death here whilst fleeing from the Arabs. Medieval historians relate that his death was shameful: he was robbed and murdered in his sleep, his body was thrown into a river, and afterwards he was buried by the Christian bishop of Marv, Elijah.
The Gate of All Nations, c. 470 BCE. Persepolis, Iran.
Bas-relief with Persian soldiers.
One immediate consequence of the Arab conquest of Iran was an influx of Arabs settling in many cities or setting up military camps which soon became cities. This Arab immigration was on a mass scale; in the 10th century, for example, the Arab population already constituted a majority in the city of Qum.
The second consequence was the spread of Islam and of Arabic. During the first two centuries of Islam in the territory of Khurasan, the religion of the Arabs underwent an intensive process of transformation into the religion of the entire Caliphate, whilst the language of the Koran and various Arab tribes developed into an Arab literary language; in all of this the Persians, who had converted to Islam, played no small part. It was here that Shi’ism, one of Islam’s most important movements, developed, and in particular its extreme faction, Ismailism, and other doctrines that were to serve as rallying points for many national uprisings.
Thus during the early Islamic period (under the Umayyad Caliphate), Khurasan was a stronghold of Islamic science and Arab literature. It was here too, in Khurasan, that the anti-Umayyad rising began, instigated by Abu Muslim, leader of a political and religious party supporting the Abbasid family.
The common people were widely involved in the rising: peasants, craftsmen, and also the