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NARRATOR: The narrative of human history
is punctuated by war and conquest,
triumph and catastrophe.
But in the end, what endures?
It is not the struggle that is lasting in our consciousness,
and treasured in our museums.
It is the outpouring of creativity and intelligence,
that is civilization's greatest gift.
The true legacy of Islamic culture
is revealed in the nuance and ingenuity
of its art and architecture.
D. FAIRCHILD RUGGLES: That feeling of the encounter with majesty,
the encounter with monumentality,
it transcends culture, it transcends history,
it is a kind of universal human experience of the arts.
We use art and architecture to crystallize our deepest emotions,
and our deepest aspirations,
for an understanding of our place in the world.
NARRATOR: These monuments and artifacts continue to inspire us.
They herald the finest qualities of Islamic culture
and show us the best of individual achievements.
Each contributes a crucial part in the ascent of world civilization.
NARRATOR: The seventh century was a turning point in history.
In Europe, the Germanic tribes that had overrun the Roman Empire
struggled for supremacy as they shaped their feudal kingdoms.
To the east, the once great empires of Byzantium and Persia
were weakened by centuries of mutually destructive wars.
At that moment, the tribes of Arabia
began one of history's greatest revolutions
in power, religion, culture and wealth,
united under the new faith of Islam.
From its birth in the Arabian Peninsula,
Islam spread across the basin of the Mediterranean sea,
eventually reaching from Indonesia to Spain.
And from this diverse civilization
and the extraordinary wealth of its rulers,
came an outpouring of artistry.
Objects and buildings, gardens and paintings,
reflect how this new culture grew
in a varied and complex world.
RUBA KANA'AN: It's not only about beautiful things,
it's not only about looking at specific techniques,
or how a beautiful object looks in a museum,
it's more like a window on a culture.
Islamic art is a reflection of
the people and the context in which it was produced.
AFSHAN BOKHARI: And that, of course, makes the art even that much more important,
because it is a reflection of who we are,
and what we are,
and will be memorialized in the years to come.
NARRATOR: The themes that emerged as Islamic art developed
show us the similarities in our common cultures,
how our techniques and styles are shared and transformed.
RUGGLES: There are some aspects
of art and architecture that are universal,
that you don't need to learn to appreciate to get it.
So I might have to learn Arabic to read the inscriptions,
but I don't have to read Arabic
to appreciate the purity of simple black script
on a white background on a plate.
It is elegance. And its elegance that speaks through the centuries.
NARRATOR: In Muslim tradition, Islam began in 610,
in a cave in Mecca, where an angel came upon the prophet Muhammad,
and revealed to him the words of the Quran.
In the first revelation, God proclaimed himself the creator and said,
"Read, for your Lord is the most generous,
"the one who taught the use of the pen,
"taught man what he did not know."
More than poetry, more than a holy book,
it was the very word of God.
SHEILA BLAIR: For Christians, God's gift was his son,
he sent down his son to save mankind.
For Muslims, God sent down a revelation.
So, the parallel is between Christ and an oral revelation.
Because God's gift to mankind, in Islam,
is the Quran, writing becomes the central feature of Islamic culture,
and the use of the word everywhere,
from day to day objects to Quran manuscripts,
is the one feature that separates Islamic culture from all others.
NARRATOR: The earliest dated words of the Quran
are found in a stone building in Jerusalem,
one of the most sacred and politically charged cities in the world.
Built in 692, it is called the Dome of the Rock.
The Dome of the Rock would have been a familiar building in terms of form,
that is, the shape, the arches, the techniques of decoration,
would have all been within the local Christian vocabulary.
RUGGLES: It borrows the form from a Byzantine martyrium,
and a martyrium is simply a building,
that marks a martyrdom or perhaps the burial place of a saint.
NARRATOR: But instead of a burial site, the dome covers a massive rock,
believed by Muslims, to be the sacred place from which Muhammad ascended to heaven,
on his mystical night journey to pray with Abraham, Moses and Jesus.
JONATHAN BLOOM: The thing that makes this a uniquely Islamic building,
is the Arabic inscription that runs around it.
That is, in effect, the sign that says,
this is from a new culture.
This isn't just somebody putting up words,
this is somebody who cares, this is carefully composed,
this is beautiful writing, calligraphy.
BLAIR: The interior inscription
talks constantly about how God is one, not three,
and this is clearly a rebuttal to Christianity,
where the primary focus is that God sent down his son, and God is tripartite.
For Muslims, this is anathema, God is one, not three.
So clearly, there is some kind of response to the Christian presence in the city.
That inscription is made in gold cubes.
They're small glass cubes with gold foil on them.
They are, by far, the most expensive kind of cube,
and in Christian buildings, often are used for halos,
or used behind the figure of Christ.
In the Dome of the Rock, they're used for this inscription,
that runs around the building.
NARRATOR: The Quran became the focus of devotion,
but it also became the focus of art.
BLAIR: From the earliest times on,
Muslims tried to make Quran manuscripts as beautiful as possible.
Calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing,
is considered more important than all the other arts.
NARRATOR: Today, one of the most well-respected Muslim calligraphers in the world,
is a convert from California.
After teaching himself Arabic,
and working for over 20 years to perfect his art,
Mohamed Zakariya finally traveled to Turkey
to learn from the masters in 1983.
ZAKARIYA: Basically, the made a deal, they said,
if you want to start all the way from the beginning,
if you want to forget everything you learned about calligraphy for a while,
and sort of go from blank from start,
just like you've never picked up a pen before,
and go through the lessons,
he says, we'll be behind you all the way with this thing and help you out,
but if you can't do that, have a nice time in Istanbul.
(LAUGHS)
NARRATOR: Zakariya accepted the challenge,
and began to learn his craft again,
just as the first masters had before him.
BLAIR: Traditionally, Muslims always wrote with a reed pen,
so you went out and you had reeds, or you imported reeds.
Trimming the pen is even more important,
cutting the nib is even more important than actually the reed itself.
You have a tool on which you lay the reed when you cut it with a special knife.
People collected these tools and gathered them in their little tool boxes.
NARRATOR: Decorated with geometric designs and calligraphy,
these toolboxes alluded to the practical use of the box,
as well as the mystical power of the pen.
ZAKARIYA: I've always had a facility for carving,
but to cut a pen, you need a knife
of a certain shape with a certain curvature of the blade.
If it isn't that curvature, you're never gonna cut a good tip.
NARRATOR: In the seventh century,
calligraphers wrote the Quran on treated animal skins called parchment.
BLAIR: The parchment was so important and so expensive,
that sometimes they even reused it and they scraped away an earlier text,
and rewrote on top of it.
And what's happened is over time the earlier text has darkened,
and you can actually see it underneath.
ZAKARIYA: Most of them are readable or legible or practical
or very, very interesting,
but they don't rise to the level of art.
But every now and then you see one of them,
and you look at it and say, how on earth could this guy have done that?
How'd they do their ink? How'd they cut their pen?
We don't even know at what angle the pens were cut.
It simply takes your breath away.
NARRATOR: Islamic calligraphy was forever altered by a new invention from the East,
paper.
AMY LANDAU: Paper was introduced into the Islamic world in the eighth century,
due to interaction between China and the Islamic Caliphate.
So, the technique of paper-making and actual paper-makers,
were transported from China to Islamic lands,
and paper just takes off in an Islamic context.
NARRATOR: Just as important as the pen,
the paper must be specially treated and prepared for calligraphy.
ZAKARIYA: The man who taught me paper-making, or paper prep,
took me aside one day and said, I'm gonna show it all to you.
The paper is rubbed with a rag that has a bit of soap on it.
The soap is dry rubbed on the rag,
it's a wool felt,
it's rubbed all over the paper to give it lubrication,
otherwise the burnisher would snag the surface and just scratch the heck out of it.
You want to have it smooth so the pen will glide across the surface.
You also don't want it slippery.
You want to have the paper have a grab to it.
Just enough so it holds, the pen doesn't slip,
the ink sits on the surface, doesn't penetrate.
NARRATOR: For the calligrapher,
the process of copying the words of the Quran is
in itself, a meditation, a prayer,
as God speaks through the pen.
ZAKARIYA: And when you write, it just writes itself,
your own connection with it feels minimal,
because your concentration is concentration without thinking about
it being concentration.
It's what all the Arabs used to call Assahl Al Mumtanih,
which is, the ease that comes from
practice that makes the hard thing look easy.
BLAIR: Now it is impossible, if you are writing with a reed pen,
to write more than two or three letters with one pen stroke.
You have to recharge you pen, you have to dip it back into the ink.
But the point with calligraphy is to not see those strokes,
to not see the difference between one and the next,
to imagine that it was written with an unending pen.
ZAKARIYA: The old guys used to hold their breath, under the theory that
if you hold your breath when the pen is in motion,
the breath goes down into your hand, through the pen, and into the paper,
and that's what would give it that life,
or breath, as they would call it.
BLAIR: You are not looking to see any human interaction,
you are looking to see the divine.
When you see a manuscript that has all these little marks on it,
that's a later manuscript because it's meant to be used
by someone who's actually reading the text,
not just using it to recall what he already had memorized.
LANDAU: We also have chapter headings that are illuminated.
Illumination is a very important art form
in the production of Islamic manuscripts.
It serves to navigate the reader through the different sections of the text.
ZAKARIYA: Because calligraphy basically is for reading,
it's not really about the paper, pens, ink, and stuff like that,
it's about meaning.
And in my case, I'm an American, obviously,
wherever I go, I'm the pink one.
You see a photograph of all the calligraphers you know,
and I'm in there, that guy looks really funny.
But it's, what am I doing with it?
So I try to bring it out, what it means.
For me, that's absolutely the number one thing,
I have access to this material, I have to pass it on.
NARRATOR: It is that divine presence embodied in the word
that appears throughout Islamic art,
as writing becomes ornament.
RUGGLES: I'm always moved when I hold a plate,
or a ceramic object or a metal pen case,
and think to myself,
I'm holding the same thing
that someone 1,000 years ago, or 600 years ago, held.
I'm repeating the experience.
I'm in a different place, a different moment in history,
I'm a different human being, everything about my world is different,
except that object, and that object comes forward intact.
That's very moving.
NARRATOR: Many buildings in the Islamic world are imbued with the voice of God,
as elaborate inscriptions speak from their stone walls.
They really are beautiful to look at.
Even if one doesn't understand them, one can always appreciate their beauty.
KANA'AN: And those inscriptions are usually in places that you cannot read,
you're not expected to read,
but you expect to relate to them,
because you know what's going to be there,
you just know what sorts of verses of the Quran are used,
for example, in certain buildings,
or in the case of Alhambra, it's the beautiful poetry.
NARRATOR: The Alhambra was built in the 14th century by
the last Muslim rulers of Granada, Spain.
Part fortress, part palace,
the Alhambra provided a princely refuge from the ravages of a fading empire.
OLEG GRABAR: In order to feel the Alhambra, to know what was meant,
you have to go slowly,
and read the poetry, that is written just at eye level, inside the building.
I could spend hours standing by a window,
reading the inscription, looking at this,
that's what it was made for, it is meant to be lived in.
MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD: In some cases, some of the writing actually is
as if the building is speaking about itself.
You have the dome, or the wall, or the fountain talking
to the viewer, and telling you what it's about,
and how it functions or how it's set within the building itself.
NARRATOR: The water basin whispers,
"Melted silver flows through the pearls, which it resembles in its pure dawn beauty."
Water and marble seem to be as one.
AL-ASAD: The calligraphy, as it melds into ornament,
the boundary between the two is so subtle,
that they become so extraordinarily good
at just weaving shapes in and out of one another,
are these zoomorphic? Did they come out of vegetable life?
You can't really tell and it doesn't make any difference,
because they arrive at a place
that totally masks and has left the place from which they came.
NARRATOR: The cities of the Muslim world,
extending across three continents,
are as diverse as their people.
But the fundamental human need for shelter is common to all.
AL-ASAD: We put tremendous effort in what we build,
and therefore they reflect a great deal about us,
about our values, economic values, social values, cultural values.
You have mosques, you have palaces,
you have very impressive military architecture,
you have the whole spectrum of buildings that cover what people use.
NARRATOR: The first mosques were made from simple, unadorned mud brick.
Hearing the call to prayer, Muslims gathered in open courtyards,
all facing the side of the mosque closest to Mecca.
Later, direction is shown by a niche in the wall called a mihrab.
KANA'AN: Other than the mihrab, in real terms,
there is no other standard element that has to be in a mosque.
The mosque is one of the elements that are ubiquitous to Muslim societies,
yet it is built, expressed, in very different ways, historically.
NARRATOR: One of the oldest surviving mosques is in Damascus, Syria.
Finished in 715, it was built a little over 100 years after the birth of Islam.
The Great Mosque of Damascus reveals how Islamic architecture
quickly adapted to the changing needs of a growing religion.
RUGGLES: More and more specialization develops within mosque spaces,
so you have special places for the prince, special places for ablution,
and special places for the call to prayer,
it becomes more hierarchical.
NARRATOR: A pulpit called a minbar was added for the reading of the Friday sermon,
making the speaker visible to the entire congregation.
In order to create a large enough space
to house the city's entire Muslim population for Friday prayer,
the Great Mosque of Damascus was built in the hypostyle form.
AL-ASAD: The hypostyle mosque simply is the idea of a series of columns built along a grid.
So what you end up with is a forest of columns, an infinite space.
So you look and just see column after column after column.
It's a very spiritual experience,
and you find it very often in the mosques that were built
during the first three, four centuries of Islamic history.
NARRATOR: Outside in the mosque courtyard,
glass mosaics sparkle in the sunlight,
evoking a protected and sacred natural space
within the stone walls of the mosque.
AL-ASAD: It incorporated the largest service of mosaics
ever created anywhere in the world,
you have rivers, and houses, and trees,
and some have read that as an expression of Damascus,
a city that is known for its Barada River and also for its orchards.
Another was that this was the representation of what paradise would be like.
So you have that reading of the mosque which is very interesting.
NARRATOR: But the leaders of the dynasty that created the wealth and power of Damascus
would perish later in the eighth century.
After a violent political rebellion,
a young Syrian prince named Abd al-Rahman was forced to flee Damascus,
narrowly escaping a certain death at the hands of his family's rival.
Abd al-Rahman made his way through North Africa and on to Cordoba, Spain,
seeking refuge in the struggling European outpost of the Islamic Empire.
There, the prince founded a dynasty of his own.
His subjects called him al-Dakhil, or the immigrant,
but Abd al-Rahman made Cordoba his home.
As he set out to create a great mosque for his new capital,
he used the hypostyle mosque of Damascus as his blueprint,
longing for the Syrian homeland, to which he could never return.
AL-ASAD: After Rahman I, who built one of the masterpieces
of Islamic architecture and of world architecture,
he had access to all the Visigothic columns that he found in Spain.
These were relatively short columns,
they didn't have the sense of monumentality that we could find in an earlier building,
such as the Great Mosque of Damascus.
So what he did is, he put two rows of arches on top of each other,
to raise the ceiling and get a higher building,
and it actually created this wonderful spatial effect,
and whenever the building was expanded, that system was maintained.
BLAIR: One of the extensions was to add this fabulous mihrab,
which is right now on the qiblah wall,
and it's done in the same technique of mosaic that had been used earlier in Damascus.
NARRATOR: Added 200 years after the mosque was first constructed,
the mosaics required a skill unknown to the artisans of Cordoba.
BLAIR: They had to write to the Byzantine Emperor and say,
"Send us a mosaicist and the glass cubes, so we can learn how to do this."
BLOOM: You make sheets of glass in different colors,
and then you cut it up into little pieces, little cubes,
and then you set them in plaster to make designs.
NARRATOR: Mixing Byzantine and Roman techniques with Islamic style,
the Great Mosque of Cordoba created a striking juxtaposition of old and new.
BLAIR: You take a look at the arches,
as opposed to the round arches that are used in Damascus, in Syria,
we have slightly horseshoe arches,
so there's a little bit of a local tradition.
RUGGLES: Islamic architecture has this ability to absorb the best,
the solutions that are already on the ground in these regional areas,
and to realize what is, in fact, a continuous tradition of a mosque,
in all of those different areas, using different adaptive techniques.
NARRATOR: By the 14th century,
Muslim Spain had developed its own distinct style of architecture,
shown nowhere more magnificently than in Granada's Alhambra palace.
AL-ASAD: Palaces express another aspect of life,
more a life of luxury, a life of refinement,
and there is spirituality even in those buildings.
In many ways, they also express the power of the ruler,
partly in terms of how space is manipulated,
how, as a visitor, you have to go through a certain series of spaces to enter it.
You see how there is a sense of refinement and sophistication
in the use of visual form and natural resources in those buildings.
NARRATOR: Courtyards, open to the sky but still inside the palace walls,
blend the interior with the exterior,
creating a varied and vast domain.
KANA'AN: But also, there's the light and how it plays,
the color, even the smell,
and, of course, architecture embodies that.
NARRATOR: In 1453, the Islamic world and beyond was forever changed
when the Muslim Ottomans captured Constantinople from the Christian Byzantines.
The conquest signaled a new era of expansion and empire for the Ottomans,
who would reach eventually into North Africa,
Eastern Europe, and the Arabian Gulf.
Their capital became known as Istanbul.
To display their increasing preeminence,
the Ottoman sultans created the Topkapi Palace,
an expansive court exemplifying royal life,
for the powerful Islamic empire at its peak.
Its most famous resident, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent,
easily outshone his 16th century European counterparts
in wealth and influence.
The Ottoman Empire was very hierarchical,
and so was the space at Topkapi
that you are moving linearly in towards the most restricted space,
which is where the sultan was.
RUGGLES: Palaces, of course, were only for the elite,
they were for the delectation of the prince and his court and whoever visited him there,
so it's part of that elite world of art.
NARRATOR: A great cultural patron, Suleiman also wrote poetry,
espousing the traits of a benevolent prince.
"Do not sleep. Be awake on your throne. Our strong hands hold the fate of the world."
GRABAR: The 16th century is a time of princes, all over the world,
making beautiful things in order to compete with each other.
The sultan Suleiman was the first sultan
who realized that he was not just continuing old empires,
but he was creating a new empire.
NARRATOR: Suleiman was named for the wise King Solomon,
and his signature graces many of his creative endeavors,
including the Topkapi palace.
His vision for the new empire was far-reaching and even extended into Jerusalem,
to the venerated site of the Dome of the Rock.
Originally, it was covered with mosaics
and the Dome was not gold leaf, but it was just lead-covered.
Under the Ottomans in the 16th century, the mosaics had deteriorated.
So, basically, glazed tiles were put in its place.
BLOOM: The renovations, instead of thinking of them as changes,
what I love to say about it is it shows how meaningful the building remains.
That is, people always thought it was worth redoing and repairing.
NARRATOR: Suleiman asserted his power across the Ottoman Empire.
But his legacy endures most in Istanbul.
Completed in 1558, Suleiman's imperial mosque, the Suleymaniye,
represents the coming together of a great patron and a great architect,
Mimar Sinan.
The son of a Greek stonemason, Sinan rose in the ranks of the Ottoman court,
becoming a military architect
before designing the greatest monuments of the Ottoman Empire.
BLAIR: Sinan was trained as an engineer,
and you can see his engineering ability come to the fore
in buildings like the Suleymaniye.
AL-ASAD: What you have is large, dominating, overwhelming domes
that just defines an enormous space beneath it.
And Ottoman, especially imperial Ottoman architecture, has always emphasized that.
BLOOM: The structure is very, very clear
and the ornament is used in a very, very restrained way
to emphasize the structure, but not overwhelm it.
NARRATOR: Perhaps the greatest source of inspiration for Sinan
was the nearby dome of the Byzantine church of Hagia Sophia,
built in the 6th century and converted to a mosque by the Ottomans.
BLAIR: We know from written documents
that the sultan Suleiman and his architect, Sinan,
tried to outdo what was there before.
So the dome is slightly larger than the dome in Hagia Sophia.
It's much better proportioned, the spaces are opened up much more.
There's all kinds of better and more adventuresome things in it.
But it is clearly within the same tradition.
NARRATOR: Whether domed or hypostyled, plain or ornamented,
all mosques serve the same purpose.
KANA'AN: They reflect how people perceived and understood prayer.
And they express that from different places,
in different ideas, in different ways.
BLOOM: The differences between the very simple mosques
and the very complex, highly engineered buildings
have to do with local cultural traditions,
the availability of materials and of course the availability of money and technologies.
NARRATOR: In the West African Muslim country of Mali,
the buildings of Djenne evoke the simplicity of early Islamic architecture.
Settled between the Niger and Bani rivers,
Djenne survives despite the torrents of monsoons and flooding.
Shelter has always been made from what is locally available
and during the rainy seasons, Djenne is rich in water and earth.
The Great Mosque of Djenne celebrates these natural resources.
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
TRANSLATOR: It is unique, made entirely of mud-brick.
I have traveled to many places and seen many mosques,
but none look like the Mosque of Djenne.
AL-ASAD: In some ways it redefines our conception of what a mosque is
and it emphasizes the fact that diversity
is a very important issue to keep in mind
whenever thinking about the architecture of the Islamic world.
NARRATOR: Rebuilt many times on its original 13th century site,
the massive mud structure shape comes from a millennia- old West African tradition,
not Islamic design.
RODERICK MCINTOSH: However different the outside may be,
the inside has all the elements that
a Muslim coming in from Iraq or Saudi Arabia would find familiar.
NARRATOR: The hypo style mosque's flat roof is supported by 99 columns,
one for each of the 99 names of God.
MCINTOSH: And these pillars go up three stories.
They're not shaped like the pillars of the Greek temple
that gives you the image of soaring space. They are quite squat.
But still, there's a sense that you're in a forest.
The light is streaming thru, being broken up by this network of pillars.
It's a very different light. It's a very different use of light and space
then you find in your everyday life.
NARRATOR: For Muslims entering the mosque to pray,
its towering space is informed by their faith,
the mystical branch of Islam called Sufism.
MCINTOSH: The West African brand of Sufism is very tolerant.
And the tolerance comes from the fact that
everyone is allowed to have, within certain boundaries,
but everyone is allowed to have their own experience
and to celebrate their own experience with God.
It's something about we humans
that we need to make space where we can be alone with our own thoughts
with the knowledge that we're only a very small speck
in this larger universe.
KANA'AN: The Great Mosque of Djenne
doesn't have what people think of as mosque architecture,
the big dome, the tooled minarets.
But it is local. It is the same architectural style
as the mosque in the village next door.
And there is the sort of intimate picture,
which is how the space is used by people in and around Djenne.
It is a reflection of how people perceive their place of prayer.
NARRATOR: In the hands of skilled craftsman,
threads become stars, words and arabesques,
repeated endlessly over colorful textiles.
Patterns, intricate and interwoven,
transform ceilings into the cosmos overhead.
In these complex designs,
Muslims can see the very possibility and promise of heaven.
BOKHARI: When prophet Muhammad comes down from the mountain with God's message,
he tells these potential believers, "Here's what heaven looks like."
And he uses every flora, fauna aspect
that is not in the landscape of these desert dwellers,
starting with trees, water,
shade, fruit.
And, of course, what would you do
if you had no concept of the afterlife
and at that point you were just a pagan worshiping idols of your ancestors.
It seems like a pretty provocative message
and also promise.
So, this idea of heaven, the afterlife, and what's in there
in terms of the vegetal, floral abundance,
is emblazoned in the minds of most Muslims.
BLOOM: What's interesting is the patterns and the leaves
and the tendrils and the vines
that were used in previous artistic traditions
to frame more important things in Islamic art become the subject itself.
RUGGLES: And I think there is the idea of infinity there, the idea of unending.
And what is it that is unending? It is that abundance.
The fertility of the earth, the ability to not just survive,
but to survive well.
NARRATOR: The stunning effect of these patterns
reflects Muslims deep interest in geometry.
Geometry is a very tricky, very difficult thing because it's something which
to us is, on the whole, rather boring.
And they've managed to transform it to something quite different.
RUGGLES: And, of course, geometry was very central to Islam
because there are so many religious and social practices
that are dependent upon geometry.
For example, they have to orient their mosques by looking at the stars
and making calculations based on geometry
to know the proper direction of prayer.
They need geometry to determine the times of prayer.
They need geometry to navigate as they move through the Mediterranean
or through the deserts of Arabia.
So, geometry is a survival technique, geometry is important to religion
and it becomes aestheticized in the arts.
NARRATOR: Ordinary, everyday objects are made extraordinary,
embellished with geometric and vegetal designs.
Some of the objects that are the most delightful to look at today,
were made for utilitarian purposes.
So, plates, bowls,
pitchers for pouring water that may take very fanciful forms,
may have a little bird on it, or an inscription around the outside.
Or it may have a surface that is completely filled with vegetive ornament,
this kind of leafy, vine scroll ornament or geometrical ornament.
These things were made for use.
It was an elite patron who used it.
It wasn't the ordinary person on the street who could afford
a beautiful metal ewer to pour water.
They would've used a clay jug.
But it was in the princely environment, in the palace environment
something that would've been used.
NARRATOR: Enjoying the tremendous luxury their wealth afforded them,
Muslim rulers were major players in the international world of princes
and adopted many of the same practices of their contemporaries.
The king was glorified and glorified not so much by the victories he won,
but by the treasures he had. That was what counted.
KJELD VON FOLSACH: Muslim princes wanted to compare themselves
with Christian princes or Buddhist princes, and so on.
And they have wonderful sculptures
of roaring lions and flying eagles.
And so would the Muslim princes.
We have a very nice example of an incense burner in the shape of a lion.
But if you look at the body of the lion, it consists of plant ornaments
instead of, had it been a European incense burner,
you would see the hairs of the fur
and you will see the claws and you will see a lot of naturalistic details.
The Muslim artist is kind of more creating an idea of a lion,
not necessarily an image
which you would recognize or an animal which you would recognize from the zoo.
NARRATOR: Depictions of animals or people are surprising
as one of the greatest misconceptions about Islamic culture
is that figurative art does not exist.
AL-ASAD: If you look at Islamic art throughout the ages,
in many parts of the Islamic world, figurative art and sculpture is very common.
Whether it is painting, whether it is sculpture,
animals, human beings and so on, it's very common, in fact.
We even have pictures of Muhammad unveiled
in manuscripts made by Muslims for Muslims.
But they are not idols and they are not meant to be worshiped.
NARRATOR: Because early Muslims feared idolatry,
in the mosque, the divine presence is portrayed only through non-figural designs
and the holy words of the Quran.
Figural imagery, images of people and animals is really confined
to the secular world, the sort of ordinary world
where religion does not dominate, is not the primary interest.
I think by denying that there are images and refusing to show images,
you try to project the image that there were no differing views in Islam,
where it's perfectly clear from the historical record that we have images
and different Muslims felt differently at different times in different places.
And this is one of the great things about Islam.
It is such a large religion and it has so many adherents over the past 1400 years
that people saw things in different ways.
NARRATOR: One of the most striking artifacts
of figurative imagery in Islamic art
is a small, ivory box from Spain meant to hold precious objects like perfume.
VON FOLSACH: Our Cordovan ivory box belongs to a very small
and select group of objects
which were made for the Caliph in Cordoba
and the circle very close to him, his wives,
his viziers, the princes.
So, they are works made for the court.
NARRATOR: The box was made and kept here, in the Caliph's palace, Madinat al-Zhara.
Built in the 10th century but now in ruins,
the palace set a new standard of luxury and prestige,
proclaiming the Caliph's supremacy to all who saw it.
The iconography or the images on the object reflect that.
They are kind of princely animals.
They are falcons, they are griffons, they are lions.
NARRATOR: Cut from a single tusk, the ivory is delicately carved,
giving the illusion that the figures are emerging from the small case.
What's really extraordinary about it is it shows us a whole other aspect
of the artistic culture of the time.
We have to look at the mosque and this box and say, "These are the poles."
One of them represents the religious, public aspect of the artistic culture.
And then the box represents something that was meant for precious materials,
that was meant for very private consumption rather than public display.
NARRATOR: In Spain's Alhambra Palace,
the ornament of the box is turned inside-out,
hidden inside plain stone walls.
AL-ASAD: It's like a pearl in some ways.
You have a shell around it, but then you go to the inside
and what you have is this very delicate arrangement of decoration.
You enter into some of the domed rooms in the Alhambra,
such as the Hall of the Abencerrages,
and you see these wonderful muqarnas vaults, these stalactite, honeycomb vaults
which sort of hover over the person,
giving you the sense of immateriality,
as if you're watching the stars or the constellations.
GRABAR: They used all kinds of
ways of covering the walls
that used stucco to make it look like textiles.
So that, in fact, as we recently argued,
the Alhambra tries to imitate a series of tents.
So, there is an aspect of it which is like a fairytale.
The fairytale created by an ornament
which I think, the fact that the ornament is so dependent on textile patterns,
I think is rather important, too.
NARRATOR: All over the Islamic world,
textiles evoked a life of comfort through their sumptuous materials
and bright colors.
But also through their decoration.
BOKHARI: Often rulers who went to desolate areas in their military campaigns,
they had to recreate that magnificence that they were accustomed to.
Textiles are portable for those purposes.
To recreate this concept,
this idea of a heavenly, abundant,
lush, luxurious environment.
BLAIR: You have to imagine that textiles
are the furniture of the Islamic lands.
Tables and chairs are used in European and American tradition
to get you off the ground which is cold and damp.
In the Islamic lands, it's fairly warm and it's dry.
So you just need something that separates you from that dirt on the ground.
The rug is the perfect item.
You can roll it up and carry it,
you can sit on it, you can sleep on it,
you can put another one on top of you and you have a blanket.
NARRATOR: The ancient skill of carpet weaving was perfected in Persia
as specialized eyes and techniques
led to a thriving textile industry in Iran.
During the 16th century, Persian textiles design spread into India
with their descendants the Mughal Dynasty.
In modern day India, weavers make carpets
by hand as their Mughal ancestors did centuries before
using a special hooked knife for cutting the thread.
BLAIR: Weaving is always done on a loom.
You set up vertical threads, that's called warping the loom,
and then you weave in and out horizontally with the weft
so it creates a grid-like pattern.
Weaving is basically a geometric technique,
so it's very hard to weave a circle.
You can knot a circle, just like you can do it on a computer screen
by making the knot so small.
And, in fact, this is one of the reasons that people invented
the so-called Persian knot that's open only on one side,
'cause you could pack more of them together
and, therefore, execute circles, or curves,
or arabesques, or scrolls more easily.
BOKHARI: The Mughals were particular in showing florals,
especially to a botanic precision.
And also to show, I'd like to think, the transience of life
by showing flowers in their various stages of birth and death.
In the Quran, God says to Muslims,
"To know me, know my creations."
Of course, you can't see God. God is never represented in Islamic art.
But this sort of instruction, to look at His creations deeper
and at their essence will get us that much closer to God,
is another imperative, another objective for representing
flora and fauna in Islamic art.
That's what makes it all so very dramatic.
You know, that here is a textile that is dated 300 years from today
and yet, still sort of is moving.
That you're almost catching it in a moment of transition.
That it's not static and it's not still,
but sort of speaks of the life that God had put into it.
NARRATOR: Today, India's diverse heritage is revealed
in its art and architecture,
as well as day-to-day life.
In workshops in Agra, India,
Muslim artisans still practice an ancient Roman technique
of stone-inlay called pietra dura,
first adopted by the Mughals in the early 17th century.
In India we have, again, that display of willingness to borrow, an eclecticism,
and a kind of cultural intermingling
that I think must've been one of the artistic strengths of Islamic art.
NARRATOR: Using hand-powered machines, as they have for centuries,
craftsman cut and shape tiny semi-precious stones.
Then, with astonishing precision, they fit them together,
creating arabesques and other floral and geometric patterns.
The Mughals' colorful pietra dura designs
cover every wall of Agra's tomb of Itimad Ud-Dawlah.
Commissioned by Emperor Jahangir for his father-in-law in 1622,
the building is made from marble inlaid with carnelian,
lapis lazuli, onyx, jasper, and topaz.
But it is the building's form that reveals the most about the Mughals,
a dynasty with Persian, as well as local Indian heritage.
RUGGLES: It looks Persian in some respects,
and it sits at the end of a four-square garden called the Char Bagh.
These are Persian art forms,
but that has these little corner, umbrella-like
cupolas that are called chhatris,
that are, in fact, borrowed from Hindu architecture.
NARRATOR: Nearby, one of the most magnificent monuments
ever created in Islamic art
appears against the sky like a heavenly pearl,
the Taj Mahal.
A colossal mausoleum, it was built by Mughal Shah Jahan
for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal in 1628.
BOKHARI: Mumtaz Mahal, first of all, is of Persian heritage
and not Indian or mixed-Indian heritage.
So, she hails from a Persian legacy.
She wasn't his first and only wife.
But he favored her, and he had the most children by her.
Whether it was because she was beautiful above all, or not, is still up for question.
But love transcends all.
And I think that's a very powerful symbol of it and continues to be.
GRABAR: He buried her very young, and he was so in love with her
that he built her this beautiful mausoleum.
And he mourned her forever and ever.
RUGGLES: The fact that she was buried in the central position,
under the summit of the tomb's dome,
is very telling.
And it says something about certainly his respect for her and the importance
that was accorded to her that she would have a monument of that size
and that she would get that central spot.
NARRATOR: Shah Jahan spent ten years overseeing its construction
using all white marble as well as pietra dura,
but refining the technique to achieve a rare subtlety and grace.
AL-ASAD: The Taj Mahal is a very delicately ornamented building.
In some ways, to me, it's the material that
dominates the decoration, not the other way around.
So, when the light falls in a certain way, the decoration emerges in a certain way.
The delicacy of the marble absorbs the light.
At sunset you're experiencing it in a very different way than you would at sunrise,
or in summer you would experience it very differently than you would at winter.
BOKHARI: You're suddenly imbued with that perception of heaven,
you feel you've entered an otherworldly realm
with a monument completely encased in marble,
reflecting its ulterior identity in the pool in front of it,
showing both realms, heavenly and earthly.
He basically models the entire complex on what the vision of paradise and heaven is.
NARRATOR: In West Africa, the simplicity of Mali's small village mosques
stands in stark contrast to the heavily decorated buildings in the East.
Their minimal design of mud and timber is echoed even in the more urban city of Djenne.
AL-ASAD: You look at the mosque of Djenne
where there is no applied ornamentation.
But you have something different.
There, the scaffolding is actually built into the building.
And that is done for a very practical reason,
which is that these dried mud buildings need constant maintenance.
KANA'AN: These beams protrude enough to make a pattern on the wall.
So when you look at it, you're not looking only at a plain, earth building.
When you're looking at it, you're looking at a building that has lines on it,
and those lines are making different patterns
mostly in diagonal lines or herring-bone pattern.
But this pattern changes. It's sort of alive.
It reflects the sun and its movement.
On the interior you have almost no ornament at all.
The ornament there, if we can call it that,
is the play of light through the light wells
and how light is reflected on these huge columns that form the corridors inside.
MCINTOSH: That's what the Djenne mosque is all about
to the communicants who go there.
They have an experience with God,
an unornamented experience with God.
NARRATOR: Bereft of water and scorched by the unrelenting sun,
the urban landscapes of the traditional Islamic heartlands
were mostly dust-colored, made from the surrounding earth.
In its scarcity, vivid color became a treasure
used to celebrate and elevate more than buildings and objects.
BLAIR: Imagine if you're coming on your camel
and you come across this plane and you see a mosque from afar.
And Muhammad, sometimes Ali or Allah are written in glazed tile.
They are like neon. They glow!
And you've got another 20 miles to go and you're plunking along.
And so you start reciting sacred names, prayers, Quranic verses.
It's a way of encouraging you. It's a way of bringing you on.
It's a way of enveloping you into the community.
One of the ideas was to make life, as everywhere, as pleasant as possible.
So you perfumed things and you colored them.
You colored your food, you colored the clothes you wore.
The weaving of different colors is possible because you can dye silk particularly,
also wool and cotton, in many different colors.
And many different dyes.
From saffron, from crocuses,
to various kinds of blues and reds
were all available and accessible,
and easily transportable in the Islamic lands.
And color becomes so important
that people often made color in things that are difficult to color.
Take, for example, metalwork.
KANA'AN: There was everyday use metal ware.
Then there was metal ware that was perceived of as,
at the time, not only from our perspective, as art objects,
objects to be appreciated because of their beauty.
BLAIR: One of the highlights of metal ware made in the Islamic lands
is the inlaying of one metal into another.
So you have a bronze object and you put silver and gold pieces into it
to make it colorful.
And just doing that shows you that people valued color, 'cause why bother otherwise?
NARRATOR: This small painted wooden table from the 11th century
was discovered only recently.
Hidden away for hundreds of years in a cave in Afghanistan.
VON FOLSACH: This little piece of secular furniture
is an extraordinary survival.
We hardly have any secular furniture from the Islamic world at all
from the medieval period.
The color combinations of the table,
reds, blue, kind of greenish colors, black,
and then the color of the wood itself where the layer of paint has been cut through,
gives an extremely lively, nearly garish appearance to the object.
It is stunning.
NARRATOR: Colorful paints, enamels and glazes are readily available today.
But historically they were extracted from the natural environment
and given life by the artist's hands.
One of the ways you make color is by grinding up pigments.
Often metallic pigments, so you can grind up copper and you can get green.
For tiling and blue and white ceramics you need cobalt.
And the biggest sources of cobalt, traditionally, were in Iran.
So, we think today of Chinese blue and white ceramic,
that cobalt and the idea of blue and white ceramic actually comes from Iran.
NARRATOR: The Iranian city of Isfahan,
poised between the east-west trade routes,
became a burgeoning center of ceramic arts in the 16th and 17th century.
Isfahan's Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque,
with it's striking blue tiles and ornamented dome,
was built in 1618 by the great Persian ruler, Shah Abbas.
Used only as a private mosque for the Shah's royal court,
it wasn't until centuries later, when the building was opened to the public,
that its magnificence was revealed to the world.
The ornament is some of the most colorful and complex tile work ever created.
AL-ASAD: They would take tiles and break them
and then rearrange them so that you would have
a more intricate, rich play of light and color.
And you see that in this mosque.
Where, in some ways, the building is dematerialized completely,
you no longer see the building as a special form or a special space,
but more as, basically, an overwhelming surface of color and light.
Just enough light comes in to bring the mosaic tiles to life.
While if there was more light coming in, it probably would overwhelm them
and you would lose the effect of the tiles.
But, here, the right amount of light only is let in.
NARRATOR: Faced with the labor of cutting each mosaic tile by hand,
the mosque's architects adopted a more efficient glazing technique
that allowed designs to be painted directly onto the tile.
They were thinking of how to transfer ideas. They were experimenting.
They were the daring artists of the time
because they're introducing new ideas and new techniques.
NARRATOR: In this new technique,
potters painted an outline of the design with a mixture of mineral pigment and grease
before filling it in with colored glazes.
Once fired, the grease would burn off, leaving a thin line to separate the colors.
Inside their private palaces, like the Chehel Sotun,
the shahs of Iran used color in a very different way
with figurative paintings of epic tales from their own history.
This fresco commemorates the Battle of Chaldiran
when the Persians bravely faced the Ottoman army in 1514.
Outnumbered and fighting only with traditional weapons
against the firearms of the Ottoman soldiers,
the Persians suffered a devastating defeat, losing more than 5000 men.
RUGGLES: In the secular environment, in bath houses, in palaces,
in the private tradition of manuscripts that are not Qurans, not prayer books,
but rather storybooks, or historic, or epics, or historical narratives,
or scientific manuals, for example,
there are lots of images of people.
GRABAR: These were made in the court and they were not made,
this is the important point, they were not made with the same
obvious externalization that happens in Western art.
This were not for a public.
The public probably didn't even know of the existence of these paintings.
NARRATOR: With high drama and emotion,
illustrated narratives tell the tales of the prince's distant ancestors,
linking them symbolically to the wise rulers of the past.
The greatest and most famous of these is the Persian epic poem by Ferdowsi
called the Shahnameh, or Book of Kings.
Mythical figures like Rostam are recounted as heroes
cloaked in animal skins, slaying demons
and saving humanity from the evils of the world.
The imagination runs wild and heroic exploits are depicted on the page.
Not just human beings but also super-human
animals and monsters and angels.
NARRATOR: Rostam's rival, the valiant knight Esfandeyar,
must face his own supernatural enemies before he can face Rostam in battle.
After wisely wounding the ferocious beast with his blade-covered horse,
Esfandeyar delivers the last fatal blow by hand.
GRABAR: You have the monster, with it's striking wings and color
and the clouds that look like the monster.
This is where the talent of the compositions comes in,
where details repeat itself, echo each other in the image.
Here you have very slowly to start looking.
And then you start drowning within those images.
NARRATOR: Finally, after much bloodshed,
Rostam is able to conquer the invincible Esfandeyar
by discovering his only weakness, his eyes.
One double-pointed arrow silences his opponent forever.
LANDAU: The Shahnameh recalls great battles of the pre-Islamic past.
It also recounts great love stories.
It has a certain sensitivity to the human condition
much like we see in the work of Homer, for example.
NARRATOR: The Shahnameh was so beloved
that other characters like the 5th century Persian prince Bahram Gur
took on new life in romantic epics.
In the poem Seven Beauties by Nezami,
Bahram Gur asks an architect to build seven pavilions
for the seven princesses he admires from afar.
As he visits each one,
the pavilions' colors are used to illuminate the prince's own spiritual journey.
Poetry, like art, is a mirror reflecting the invisible world of the human spirit.
LANDAU: The central part of this beautiful poem
is his entering seven pavilions
and being entertained by a princess in each pavilion.
And each pavilion is identified, distinguished by a certain color.
And these colors are related to a progression, a going from
a point of just thinking about one's self and not being enlightened to enlightenment.
NARRATOR: These Persian art forms spread
as Islam blossomed in India under the Mughals.
LANDAU: There was a lot of strong contacts and interest
between Iran and Mughal India in this period.
And we have a lot of interaction, a lot of movement
of poets and artists going between these two empires.
And that's how ideas are transmitted,
that's how techniques are transmitted and goods.
NARRATOR: By the 17th century, under the reign of the emperor Jahangir,
Mughal art and architecture was flourishing.
The monuments built during his reign reveal how Islamic heritage took new forms.
Influenced by trade, Jahangir himself
admired and collected European and even Christian art.
BOKHARI: And that probably has a lot to do with the Portuguese, the Jesuits,
who had already come to India in Jahangir's reign, bringing gifts.
Along with gifts, they're bringing illustrated Bibles.
And, of course, in the hopes to, you know.
They're proselytizing, hopefully, converting
these great emperors of this great empire.
And, of course, the emperors are accepting these gifts.
They're very gracious, they're very thankful.
So, the reservoir then becomes quite rich, from where the artist is drawing.
NARRATOR: Here a Mughal painter experiments
with the Western concepts of perspective and shading, while using local materials.
BOKHARI: The colors are all derived from natural pigments, and even semi-precious stones.
The blue, especially, is from lapis lazuli, which comes from Afghanistan.
But most of the reds, the yellows, the white, is all naturally derived,
and is indigenous to the place in which the painting is created.
LANDAU: Indian yellow is a mixture of the urine of cows that are fed on mango.
And that's bound with water and also a gum, Arabic.
And mixed together, and it creates this incredibly vibrant yellow.
NARRATOR: It is in Jahangir's illustrated memoir
that the growth and sophistication of Mughal painting is most clearly seen.
BOKHARI: In this work, he is shown with a halo, and that links him to Western art,
and specifically Christian art.
He is above everyone,
even though everyone is dressed in their finery, and they are individualized.
That beautiful blue basically winds us back
to our primary focus, which should be the emperor, and nobody else.
And colors in Islamic art are very moving.
They've very sumptuous, lush, almost supernatural colors
that transport you to another place that is not earthly.
NARRATOR: Water gives life in barren lands.
It changes its surroundings.
It moves, it reflects.
It is also a simple element that ties us to our past in a way that nothing else can.
RUGGLES: Water is one of those elements that we take for granted.
But, when I see water in a pool, in a tomb, or in a palace,
I'm often struck by the fact that it's actually the same water
that flowed when the palace was built.
Because water doesn't go away. It evaporates, and then it falls back on the earth.
And it evaporates, and it falls back down again.
It's the same water. It's the Roman water, it's the Islamic water.
It's, you know, water from all stages of history.
It's continuous. And so for that moment, I am in that place.
Not just in my imagination, but literally, materially,
I'm part of that same environment.
NARRATOR: Though appearing effortless, the water that ran for centuries
into the reflecting pools and garden beds of the Islamic world,
traveled a difficult journey.
One involving a complex system of engineering and labor.
AL-ASAD: A number of parts of the Islamic world do suffer from scarcity of water.
They have very little rainfall. Some of them might have large sources of water,
but you have to move the water to other locations.
NARRATOR: Perched on the edge of the Orontes river,
the city of Hamah, Syria, once had as many as 30 water wheels in service,
bringing water from the source to the people.
You have these wonderful enormous water wheels,
which could be 20 meters in diameter, or 60 feet in diameter.
And they would carry the water from the river up to the top of the water wheel.
And then, from there, it would be transferred to aqueducts,
or to canals, and then it would feed various other parts of the city,
whether for agriculture or for residential use, and so on.
There's a very important verse in the Quran that often is repeated,
which is that God has made everything alive through water.
So, it's actually a very even simple and basic principle, which is water is life.
RUGGLES: Through irrigation, an otherwise dry landscape is made doubly productive,
in that you can grow crops through the summer, you can grow crops
through a time of the year when you wouldn't ordinarily have any crops at all
because of this ability to manage water.
NARRATOR: In more arid climates, like Iran,
the challenging desert topography spurred innovation.
One of the wondrous engineering feats of this part of the world
is the subterranean aqueduct, called in Persian a quanat ,
probably invented in Iran already in the 4th Century BCE,
but certainly developed in the Islamic period and brought from Iran
all the way to West Africa, and then, in fact, to the New World.
NARRATOR: From above, quanats appear
as a series of large, crater like holes in the earth.
Workmen were lowered into these access points,
some as deep as 150 feet to tap the water's source in the heart of a mountain.
Then, by hand, they cut through the earth to create a long tunnel.
You bring this water 25 miles underground, on a slightly sloping path,
and then you bring it out whenever you want to water your field.
RUGGLES: The management of that water requires a very careful understanding of slope
because the cardinal rule about water is that it flows downhill.
If it flows too fast, you lose your water because it spills over the edges.
If it flows too slowly, you have a stagnant pool,
and it doesn't go where you want it to go.
NARRATOR: In Kairouan, Tunisia,
water flowed from aqueducts into massive reservoir basins.
Built in the 9th Century, these highly sophisticated collection pools
provided water that was both fresh and filtered.
AL-ASAD: They're quite sizable. You have a small pool, and then a large pool.
The idea is that the water which is brought in from another location
goes into the small pool.
There, the sediments basically settle.
And then it moves into the larger pool,
where it is stored for the use of the residents of the city.
NARRATOR: Once inside the city walls, water played and important religious role,
as all Muslims are required to wash before prayer.
BLOOM: Washing involves a symbolic and practical cleansing of oneself
before approaching God.
And so it is a way of putting yourself in the right mental framework
for approaching the divine.
AL-ASAD: You have the section for ablutions in the mosque,
and often these are very beautiful elements within the mosque.
Sometimes you find them in the middle of the courtyard.
Sometimes you find them outside the mosque.
You find them in different locations, but they do have
an architectural presence in the mosque.
Water takes on this sacred association in many cases,
but at the same time, it has a day-to-day connotation, and you can't separate the two.
RUGGLES: Water is actually a very complicated substance
because it does not hold its own shape, it has to be given form.
It's very heavy, and therefore very heavy to lift.
And anytime you work with water, anytime you manage water, or carry water,
you actually need a container for it, you need a vessel for it.
NARRATOR: Decorated ewers, or pitchers, carried drinking water,
and could be used for washing before meals.
Someone would come out and pour the water and you would rub your hands over it,
and the waste water would go into the basin.
But water was so precious, you wouldn't just let it run away on the floor,
you would take that basin of dirty water and pour it on your garden.
KANA'AN: Water is about so many things.
It's not only about cleanliness, it's not only about produce,
it's not only about beauty, it's all of that.
NARRATOR: In palaces, like the Chehel Sotun in Iran, called
the Palace of Forty Columns, water magnified the rulers' majesty,
making it as valuable as gold.
RUGGLES: Water has the ability to enhance the architecture around it,
the architecture that contains it or the architecture that it surrounds.
So, if you think of the Chehel Sotun, the Palace of Forty Columns, in Isfahan,
it doesn't have 40 columns. Its columns are in fact doubled
by being reflected on the body of water that sits in front of it.
It's a very nice, poetic interpretation of the building.
But it also shows, again, that water always plays an element
in how the popular imagination sees a building.
NARRATOR: In the Alhambra palace, in Granada, Spain,
water spouted upward from an alabaster basin,
and poured from the mouths of twelve marble lions.
A poem, carved on the basin, echoed its physical form.
"The fountain is the sultan,
"who showers all his subjects and land with grace,
just as water wets the gardens."
RUGGLES: The fountain is nothing more than
the mechanism of extracting water from the earth,
turned into a celebration.
Every time water enters into a palace environment,
it enters through some kind of theatrical effect.
It enters through the mouth of a lion,
or the mouth of a bronze deer,
so that the animal seems to come alive.
And this is the only way of creating animation in this world.
And it must have had an enormous effect
on viewers, it must have excited the imagination, to see something like that.
NARRATOR: Now covered in pebbles,
the Alhambra's court of lions was once a four-part garden
fed by the channels of water,
representing a microcosm of the irrigated landscape outside.
RUGGLES: The ultimate expression of water is, of course, in the garden.
Because none of the gardens in the Islamic world would exist if they didn't have
a man-made and artificially
introduced source of water.
NARRATOR: The Generalife, Granada's 14th century summer estate,
was a pleasure palace
decorated with lush gardens and whimsical fountains.
BLAIR: They evoke, on the one hand, the garden that is the garden that grows food,
but they also evoke the gardens of paradise.
And the very word, paradise,
comes from the Persian paradisos,
which means a walled park or garden.
RUGGLES: Islamic gardens are typically walled, enclosed spaces.
And the reason for that is that by enclosing the space,
you are creating a box, in which fragrant flowers,
fragrant fruit trees, are contained,
and made more available to the nose.
You can smell them, they are close at hand.
They are meant to be something you have almost physical contact with.
BLAIR: You also should think of water in the context of sound,
because water provides pleasing sound.
So most gardens, like the Alhambra or the Generalife,
have running water because it's this babbling noise
behind you that screens out other noise,
but also brings quiet and calm.
NARRATOR: During Mali's long dry season,
water is an even greater luxury.
In the hands of an artist,
water becomes a medium for creativity,
used to shape and build the world around them.
For over 4,000 years,
people have used the sun, the earth, and water
to create mud brick or adobe buildings.
The word adobe itself
comes from the Arabic word for mud, altoup.
The city of Djenne is actually an island in a vast floodplain.
Here, water is both a blessing and a curse.
And here, the buildings tell a story of survival and community.
MCINTOSH: This part of West Africa has a very long dry season,
and a short wet season, and rainy season, only about two and a half
sometimes three and a half months.
But the rains are monsoonal rains, so they come in torrentially.
(SPEAKING FRENCH)
TRANSLATOR: Mud architecture needs constant repair
because these rains wear away the plaster walls.
NARRATOR: The great mosque of Djenne
is the largest adobe structure in the world.
MCINTOSH: You see the mosque, and there are very few sharp corners.
Everything is softened, everything is rounded.
That's, in part, a good protection.
But it's a tribute, if you will, to the
force of the rains and the force of nature, in that sense.
TRANSLATOR: This mosque is very important, not only for me,
but for all the Malians, because it shows how creative
and how ingenious our masons are.
NARRATOR: The masons of Djenne mix earth and water with a vegetable fat,
called shea butter,
to shape the cylindrical mud bricks
which form the skeleton of the mosque building.
There is a very long archeological tradition that goes beyond a millennium,
of dealing with these traditional mud bricks.
The traditional mud bricks are the signature
of the barey ton or the masons of Djenne.
They're cylindrical bricks, they're about 20 centimeters high,
and they're laid vertically in rows, but they're extremely hard.
NARRATOR: In order to protect them from erosion during the heavy rains,
mud plaster is continuously applied to the traditional bricks,
by masons who scale the timber scaffolding.
TRANSLATOR: The timbers not only serve as decoration,
they also serve as a tool to create, to build the mosque,
to replaster it, and to make repairs on the mosque.
MCINTOSH: They let this mud, and the grain and the butter ferment,
for weeks, and it's really foul smelling,
but, once it's put on, it's as hard as regular Portland cement.
RUGGLES: The mosque of Djenne is eternal in a different sense.
And it is in that act of rebuilding and renewing and replenishing it
that its importance is found.
NARRATOR: The legacy of Islamic art
is intertwined with the very fabric of world civilization.
In a deep and meaningful way,
it is part of who we are, today.
GRABAR: It's not that Islam has suddenly appeared in our lives now.
We've been involved with Islam for centuries.
BOKHARI: I think that Islamic art puts a face on a lot of the
uncertainties Western society has about Islamic culture.
And, also, it sheds light on some shared histories
between Western culture and Islamic culture.
And shows a continuity rather than a break.
To anchor ourselves in the past, is a way of giving ourselves, I think, an anchor
in a world that is in such enormous and threatening flux.
Art, I think, is something that is the most human thing.
It's what makes us human.
Sometimes material objects can be the bridge
between one world and another.
That translucent glass is beautiful regardless of your religious background.
Mosaic sparkles and dazzles the eye regardless of what time in history you are in.
Monumental tall domes that stretch overhead like the heavens themselves
are awesome whoever you are,
whether you walk in there to pray or walk in there with a camera as a tourist.