Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

made Mashhad the Rome of the Shi'a sect. There the worshipers of

Imam Riza, in the course of thirty generations, have accumulated an

architectural ensemble of arresting splendor: graceful minarets,

dominating domes, archways faced with luminous tiles or with plates of

silver or gold, spacious courts whose blue and white mosaic or faience

return the greeting of the sun: here, in an overwhelming panorama of

color and form, Persian art has wielded all its magic to honor a saint

and awe the pilgrim into piety.

From Azerbaijan to Afghanistan a thousand mosques rose in this age

out of the soil of Islam, for the poetry of faith is as precious to

man as the fruits of the earth. To us of the West, imprisoned in the

provinces of the mind, these shrines are but empty names, and even

to honor them with these curt obeisances may weary us. What does it

mean to us that Gawhar Shad received for her chaste bones a lovely

mausoleum at Herat; that Shiraz rebuilt its Masjid-i-Jami in the

fourteenth century; that Yazd and Isfahan added resplendent mihrabs to

their Friday Mosques? We are too far away in space and years and

thought to feel these grandeurs, and those who worship in them have

little taste for our Gothic audacities or the sensual images of our

Renaissance. Yet even we must be moved when, standing before the ruins

of the Blue Mosque at Tabriz (1437-67), we recall its once famed glory

of blue faience and golden arabesques; and we are not unmindful that

Mohammed II and Bajazet II raised at Constantinople (1463, 1497)

mosques almost rivaling St. Sophia's majesty. The Ottomans took

Byzantine plans, Persian portals, Armenian domes, and Chinese

decorative themes to form their mosques at Brusa, Nicaea, Nicomedia,

and Konia. In architecture, at least, Moslem art was still in apogee.

Only one art- a David before Goliath- dared stand up to architecture

in Islam. Perhaps even more honored than the makers of mosques were

the masters of calligraphy and the patient miniaturists who

illuminated books with the infinitesimal calculus of the brush or pen.

Murals were painted, but from this period none survives. Portraits

were painted, and a few remain. The Ottomans publicly obeyed the

Biblical and Koranic prohibition of graven images, but Mohammed II

imported Gentile Bellini from Venice to Constantinople (1480) to

make the likeness of him that now hangs in the London National

Gallery. Copies exist of alleged Portraits of Timur. In general the

Mongol converts to Islam preferred the traditions of Chinese art to

the taboos of the Mohammedan faith. From China they brought into

Persian illumination dragons, phoenixes, cloud forms, saintly halos,

and moonlike faces, and mated them creatively with Persian styles of

limpid color and pure line. The mingling modes were closely kin.

Chinese and Persian miniaturists alike painted for aristocrats of

perhaps too refined a taste, and sought rather to please the

imagination and the sense than to represent objective forms.

The great centers of Islamic illumination in this age were Tabriz,

Shiraz, and Herat. Probably from the Tabriz of the Il-Khans come the

fifty-five leaves of the "De Motte" Shah-nama - Firdausi's Book of

Kings - painted by divers artists in the fourteenth century. But it

was at Herat, under the Timurid rulers, that Persian miniature

painting touched its zenith. Shah Rukh engaged a large staff of

artists, and his son Baisunkur Mirza founded an academy devoted to

calligraphy and illumination. From this school of Herat came the

Shah-nama (1429)- a miracle of glowing color and flowing grace-

now so carefully hidden and religiously handled in the Gulistan Palace

Library at Tehran. To view it for the first time is like discovering

the odes of Keats.

The real Keats of illumination- the "Raphael of the East"- was Kamal

al-Dim Bihzad. He knew in life, and reflected in art, the terrors

and vicissitudes of war. Born at Herat about 1440, he studied at

Tabriz, then returned to Herat to paint for Sultan Husein

ibn-Baiqara and his versatile vizier Mir Ali Shir Nawa'i. When Herat

became the center of Uzbeg and Safavid campaigns Bihzad moved again to

Tabriz. He was among the first Persian painters to sign their works,

yet his art remains are literally few and far between. Two

miniatures in the Royal Egyptian Library at Cairo, illustrating

Sa'di's Bustan, show some theologians debating their mysteries in

a mosque; the manuscript bears the date 1489, and the colophon

reads: "Painted by the slave, the sinner, Bihzad." The Freer Gallery

in Washington has a Portrait of a Young Man Painting, copied from

Gentile Bellini and signed "Bihzad"; the fine hands reveal the two

artists- portrayer and portrayed. Less certainly his are the

miniatures in a British Museum copy of Nizami's Khamza, and in the

same treasury a manuscript of a Zafar-nama, or Book of the

Victories of Timur.

These relics hardly explain Bihzad's unrivaled reputation. They

reveal a sensitive perception of persons and things, an ardor and

range of color, a vivacity of action caught in a delicate accuracy

of line; but they can hardly compare with the miniatures painted for

the Duke of Berry almost a century before. Yet Bihzad's contemporaries

felt that he had revolutionized illumination by his original

patterns of composition, his vivid landscapes, his carefully

individualized figures almost leaping into life. The Persian historian

Khwandamir, who was near fifty when Bihzad died (c. 1523), said of

him, perhaps with the prejudice of friendship: "His draughtsmanship

has caused the memory of all other painters in the world to be

obliterated; his fingers, endowed with miraculous qualities, have

erased the pictures of all other artists among the sons of

Adam." `063048 It should chasten our certitudes to reflect that this

was written after Leonardo had painted The Last Supper, Michelangelo

the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and Raphael the Stanze of the Vatican,

and that Khwandamir had probably never heard their names.

The art of the potter declined in this epoch from its finesse in

Seljuq Rayy and Kashan. Rayy had been laid in ruins by earthquakes and

Mongol raids, and Kashan devoted most of its kilns to tiles. New

ceramic centers, however, rose at Sultaniya, Yazd, Tabriz, Herat,

Isfahan, Shiraz, and Samarkand. Mosaic faience was now a favored

product: small slabs of earthenware, each painted in one metallic

color, and glazed to a brilliance that only needed care for

permanence. When patrons were opulent, Persian builders used such

faience not only for mihrabs and decoration, but even to cover large

surfaces of mosque portals or walls; there is an arresting example

in a mihrab- from the mosque of Baba Kasin (c. 1354)- in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The metalworkers of Islam maintained their skill. They made bronze

doors and chandeliers for mosques from Bokhara to Marraqesh, though

none quite matched Ghiberti's "gates to paradise" (1401-52) in the

Baptistery of Florence. They forged the best armor of the age- helmets

conically shaped to deflect descending blows, shields of shining

iron encrusted with silver or gold, swords inlaid with golden

lettering or flowers. They made handsome coins, and such medallions as

that which preserves the pudgy profile of Mohammed the Conqueror,

and great brass candlesticks engraved with stately Kufic script or

delicate floral forms; they cast and adorned incense burners,

writing cases, mirrors, caskets, braziers, flasks, ewers, basins,

trays; even scissors and compasses were artistically chased. A like

superiority was conceded to the Moslem artist-artisans who cut gems,

or worked with precious metals, or carved or inlaid ivory or wood. The

textile remains are fragmentary, but the miniatures of the time

picture a vast variety of beautiful fabrics, from the fine linens of

Cairo to the silken tents of Samarkand; indeed it was the illuminators

who designed the complex yet logical patterns for Mongol and Timurid

brocades, velvets, and silks, and even for those Persian and Turkish

rugs that were soon to be the envy of Europe. In the so-called minor

arts Islam still led the world.

VIII. ISLAMIC THOUGHT

-

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

++++++++++

In science and philosophy the glory had gone. Religion had

won its war against them, just when it was giving ground in the

adolescent West. The highest honors now went to theologians,

dervishes, fakirs, saints; and scientists aimed rather to absorb the

findings of their predecessors than to look nature freshly in the

face. At Samarkand Moslem astronomy had its last fling when the

stargazers in the observatory of Uleg Beg formulated (1437) astronomic

tables that enjoyed high esteem in Europe till the eighteenth century.

Armed with tables and an Arab map, an Arab navigator piloted Vasco

da Gama from Africa to India on the historic voyage that ended the

economic ascendancy of Islam. `063049

In geography the Moslems produced a major figure in this age. Born

at Tangier in 1304, Muhammad Abu Abdallah ibn-Batuta wandered

through Daru'l-Islam- the Mohammedan world- for twenty-four years, and

returned to Morocco to die in Fez. His itinerary suggests the

immense spread of Mohammed's creed: he claims to have traveled

75,000 miles (more than any other man before the age of steam); to

have seen Granada, North Africa, Timbuktu, Egypt, the Near and

Middle East, Russia, India, Ceylon, and China, and to have visited

every Moslem ruler of the time. In each city he paid his respects

first to the scholars and divines, only then to the potentates. We see

our own provincialism mirrored in him when he lists "the seven

mighty kings of the world," all Moslems except one Chinese. `063050 He

describes not only persons and places, but the fauna, flora, minerals,

food, drinks, and prices in the various countries, the climate and

physiography, the manners and morals, the religious rituals and

beliefs. He speaks reverently of Jesus and Mary, but takes some

satisfaction in noting that "every pilgrim who visits the church [of

the Resurrection in Jerusalem] pays a fee to Moslems." `063051 When he

returned to Fez and related his experiences, most of his hearers put

him down as a romancer, but the vizier ordered a secretary to record

Batuta's dictated memoirs. The book was lost and almost forgotten

until it was discovered in the modern French occupation of Algiers.

Between 1250 and 1350 the most prolific writers on "natural history"

were Moslems. Mohammed ad-Damiri of Cairo wrote a 1,500-page book on

zoology. Medicine was still a Semitic forte; hospitals were numerous

in Islam; a physician of Damascus, Ala'al-din ibn-al-Nafis,

expounded the pulmonary circulation of the blood 270 years (c. 1260)

before Servetus; `063052 and a Granada physician, Ibn-al-Khatib,

ascribed the Black Death to contagion- and advised quarantine for

the infected- in the face of a theology that attributed it to divine

vengeance on man's sins. His treatise On Plague (c. 1360)

contained a notable heresy: "It must be a principle that a proof taken

from the Traditions" of the companions of Mohammed "has to undergo

modification when in manifest contradiction with the evidence of the

senses." `063053

Scholars and historians were as numerous as poets. Always they wrote

in Arabic, the Esperanto of Islam; and in many cases they combined

study and writing with political activity and administration.

Abu-l-Fida of Damascus took part in a dozen military campaigns, served

al-Nasir as minister at Cairo, returned to Syria as governor of Hamah,

collected an extensive library, and wrote some books that in their day

stood at the head of their class. His treatise on geography ( Taqwin

al-Buldan ) outranged in scope any European work of the kind and time;

it calculated that three quarters of the globe were covered with

water, and noted that a traveler gained or lost a day in going

westward or eastward around the world. His famous Abridgement of

the History of the Human Race was the chief Moslem history known to

the West.

===========================================================

==========

-

But the great name in the historiography of the fourteenth century

is Abd-er-Rahman ibn-Khaldun. Here is a man of substance, even to

Western eyes: solid with experience, travel, and practical

statesmanship, yet familiar with the art and literature, science and

philosophy of his age, and embracing almost every Moslem phase of it

in a Universal History. That such a man was born in Tunis (1332) and

raised there suggests that the culture of North Africa was no mere

echo of Asiatic Islam, but had a character and vitality of its own.

"From my childhood," says Ibn-Khaldun's autobiography, "I showed

myself avid of knowledge, and devoted myself with great zeal to

schools and their courses of instruction." The Black Death took his

parents and many teachers, but he continued his studies until "I found

at last that I knew something"- `063054 a characteristic delusion of

youth. At twenty he was secretary to the sultan at Tunis; at

twenty-four, to the sultan at Fez; at twenty-five he was in jail. He

moved to Granada, and was sent as its ambassador to Peter the Cruel at

Seville. Returning to Africa, he became chief minister to Prince Abu

Abdallah at Bougie; but he had to flee for his life when his master

was deposed and slain. In 1370 he was sent by the city of Tlemcen as

envoy to Granada; he was arrested on the way by a Moorish prince,

served him four years, and then retired to a castle near Oran. There

(1377) he wrote the Muqaddama al-Alamat, literally Introduction

to the Universe. Needing more books than Oran could supply, he

returned to Tunis, but he made influential enemies there, and

removed to Cairo (1384). His fame as a scholar was already

international; when he lectured in the mosque of el-Azhar students

crowded around him, and Sultan Barquq gave him a pension, "as was

his wont with savants." `063055 He was appointed qadi malekite, or

royal judge; took the laws too seriously, closed the cabarets, was

lampooned out of office, again retired to private life. Restored as

chief qadi, he accompanied Sultan Nasir ad-Din Faraj in a campaign

against Timur; the Egyptian forces were defeated; Ibn-Khaldun sought

refuge in Damascus; Timur besieged it; the historian, now an old

man, led a delegation to ask lenient terms of the invincible Tatar.

Like any other author, he brought a manuscript of his history with

him; he read to Timur the section on Timur, and invited corrections;

perhaps he had revised the pages ad hoc. The plan worked; Timur

freed him; soon he was once more chief judge at Cairo; and he died

in office at the age of seventy-four (1406).

Amid this hectic career he composed an epitome of Averroes'

philosophy, treatises on logic and mathematics, the Muqaddama, a

History of the Berbers, and The Peoples of the East. Only the last

three survive; together they constitute the Universal History. The

Muqaddama or Prolegomena is one of the high lights in Islamic

literature and in the philosophy of history, an amazingly "modern"

product for a medieval mind. Ibn-Khaldun conceives history as "an

important branch of philosophy," `063056 and takes a broad view of the

historian's task:

-

History has for its true object to make us understand the social

state of man, i.e., his civilization; to reveal to us the phenomena

that naturally accompany primitive life, and then the refinement of

manners... the diverse superiorities that peoples acquire, and which

beget empires and dynasties; the diverse occupations, professions,

sciences, and arts; and lastly all the changes that the nature of

things can effect in the nature of society. `063057

-

Believing himself the first to write history in this fashion, he

asks pardon for inevitable errors:

-

I confess that of all men I am the least able to traverse so vast

a field.... I pray that men of ability and learning will examine my

work with good will, and when they find faults will indulgently

correct them. That which I offer to the public will have little

value in the eyes of scholars... but one should always be able to

count on the courtesy of his colleagues. `063058

-

He hopes that his work will help in the dark days that he foresees:

-

When the world experiences a complete overturn it seems to change

its nature in order to permit new creation and a new organization.

Hence there is need today of an historian who can describe the state

of the world, of its countries and peoples, and indicate the changes

in customs and beliefs. `063059

-

He devotes some proud pages to pointing out the errors of some

historians. They lost themselves, he feels, in the mere chronicling of

events, and rarely rose to the elucidation of causes and effects. They

accepted fable almost as readily as fact, gave exaggerated statistics,

and explained too many things by supernatural agency. As for

himself, he proposes to rely entirely on natural factors in explaining

events. He will judge the statements of historians by the present

experience of mankind, and will reject any alleged occurrence that

would now be accounted impossible. Experience must judge

tradition. `063060 His own method, in the Muqaddama, is first to

deal with the philosophy of history; then with professions,

occupations, and crafts; then with the history of science and art.

In succeeding volumes he gives the political history of the various

nations, taking them one by one, deliberately sacrificing the unity of

time to that of place. The true subject of history, says

Ibn-Khaldun, is civilization: how it arises, how it is maintained, how

it develops letters, sciences, and arts, and why it decays. `063061

Empires, like individuals, have a life and trajectory which are

their own. They grow, they mature, they decline. `063062 What are

the causes of this sequence?

The basic conditions of the sequence are geographical. Climate

exercises a general but basic influence. The cold north eventually

produces, even in peoples of southern origin, a white skin, light

hair, blue eyes, and a serious disposition; the tropics produce in

time a dark skin, black hair, "dilatation of the animal spirits,"

lightness of mind, gaiety, quick transports of pleasure, leading to

song and dance. `063063 Food affects character: a heavy diet of meats,

condiments, and grains begets heaviness of body and mind, and quick

succumbing to famine or infection; a light diet, such as desert

peoples eat, makes for agile and healthy bodies, clearness of mind,

and resistance to disease. `063064 There is no inherent inequality

of potential ability among the peoples of the earth; their advancement

or retardation is determined by geographical conditions, and can be

altered by a change in those conditions, or by migration to a

different habitat. `063065

Economic conditions are only less powerful than the geographical.

Ibn-Khaldun divides all societies into nomad or sedentary according to

their means of getting food, and ascribes most wars to the desire

for a better food supply. Nomad tribes sooner or later conquer settled

communities because nomads are compelled by the conditions of their

life to maintain the martial qualities of courage, endurance, and

solidarity. Nomads may destroy a civilization, but they never make

one; they are absorbed, in blood and culture, by the conquered, and

the nomad Arabs are no exception. Since a people is never long content

with its food supply, war is natural. It is war that generates and

renews political authority. Hence monarchy is the usual form of

government, and has prevailed through nearly all history. `063066

The fiscal policy of a government may make or break a society;

excessive taxation, or the entry of a government into production and

distribution, can stifle incentive, enterprise, and competition, and

kill the goose that lays the revenues. `063067 On the other hand, an

excessive concentration of wealth may tear a society to pieces by

promoting revolution. `063068

There are moral forces in history. Empires are sustained by the

solidarity of the people, and this can be best secured through the

inculcation and practice of the same religion; Ibn-Khaldun agrees with

the popes, the Inquisition, and the Protestant Reformers on the

value of unanimity in faith.

-

To conquer, one must rely upon the allegiance of a group animated

with one corporate spirit and end. Such a union of hearts and wills

can operate only through divine power and religious support.... When

men give their hearts and passions to a desire for worldly goods, they

become jealous of one another, and fall into discord.... If,

however, they reject the world and its vanities for the love of God...

jealousies disappear, discord is stilled, men help one another

devotedly; their union makes them stronger; the good cause makes rapid

progress, and culminates in the formation of a great and powerful

empire. `063069

-

Religion is not only an aid in war, it is likewise a boon to order

in a society and to peace of mind in the individual. These can be

secured only by a religious faith adopted without questioning. The

philosophers concoct a hundred systems, but none has found a

substitute for religion as a guide and inspiration for human life.

"Since men can never understand the world, it is better to accept

the faith transmitted by an inspired legislator, who knows better than

we do what is better for us, and has prescribed for us what we

should believe and do." `063070 After this orthodox prelude our

philosopher-historian proceeds to a naturalistic interpretation of

history.

Every empire passes through successive phases. (1) A victorious

nomad tribe settles down to enjoy its conquest of a terrain or

state. "The least civilized peoples make the most extensive

conquests." `063071 (2) As social relations become more complex, a

more concentrated authority is required for the maintenance of

order; the tribal chieftain becomes king. (3) In this settled order

wealth grows, cities multiply, education and literature develop, the

arts find patrons, science and philosophy lift their heads. Advanced

urbanization and comfortable wealth mark the beginning of decay. (4)

The enriched society comes to prefer pleasure, luxury, and ease to

enterprise, risk, or war; religion loses its hold on human imagination

or belief; morals deteriorate, pederasty grows; the martial virtues

and pursuits decline; mercenaries are hired to defend the society;

these lack the ardor of patriotism or religious faith; the poorly

defended wealth invites attack by the hungry, seething millions beyond

the frontiers. (5) External attack, or internal intrigue, or both

together, overthrow the state. `063072 Such was the cycle of Rome,

of the Almoravids and Almohads in Spain, of Islam in Egypt, Syria,

Iraq. Persia; and "it is always so." `063073

These are a few of the thousands of ideas that make the

Muqaddama the most remarkable philosophical product of its

century, Ibn-Khaldun has his own notions on almost everything but

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.