Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World

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 has 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.

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, we use architecture to crystallize our deepest

emotions and our deepest aspirations

for an understanding of our place in the world.

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.

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 we changed 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.

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.

And that, of course, makes

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.

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.

Well, there are 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 it's elegance that speaks through the centuries.

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 Koran.

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.

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 Koran,

writing becomes the central feature of Islamic culture.

And the use of the word everywhere,

from day-to-day objects to Koran manuscripts,

is the one feature that separates Islamic culture

from all others.

The earliest dated words of the Koran

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, that the shape, the arches, the techniques

of decoration would have all been

within the local Christian vocabulary.

It borrows the form

from a Byzantine martyrium.

And a martyrium is simply a building

that marks the place of a martyrdom

or perhaps the burial place of a saint.

But instead of a burial site,

the dome covers a massive rock believed by Muslims

to be the sacred place from which Mohammad ascended

to heaven on his mystical night journey

to pray with Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.

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.

The interior inscription talks constantly

about how God is the 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.

And 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 are

used for this inscription that runs around the building.

The Koran became the focus of devotion,

but it also became the focus of art.

From the earliest times on,

Muslims try to make Koran manuscripts as

beautiful as possible.

Calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing,

is considered more important than all the other arts.

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 Zachariya

finally traveled to Turkey to learn from the masters in 1983.

Basically, they 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'd never picked up a pen before,

and go through the lessons,

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.

Zachariya accepted the challenge

and began to learn his craft again,

just as the first masters had before him.

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.

And you have a tool on which you lay the reed when

you cut it and a special knife.

And people collected these tools and gathered them

in their little tool boxes.

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.

I've always had a facility for carving.

But to cut a pen, you need a knife of a certain shape

and a certain curvature in the blade.

If it isn't that curvature,

you're never going to cut a good tip.

In the seventh century,

calligraphers wrote the Koran on treated animal skins

called parchment.

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 over time is the earlier text has darkened,

and you can actually see it underneath.

Most of them-- they're readable,

or legible, or practical.

They're 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?

You know?

How did they do their reed?

How'd they cut their pen?

We don't even know what angle the pens were cut.

But it simply takes your breath away.

Islamic calligraphy was forever