The Architecture of the Elementary School in Persianate Painting of the Fifteenth to Sixteenth Centuries

Abstract

The essay begins with a brief introduction to the early Persianate institutions of learning whose buildings have since vanished, because they were erected using short-lived construction materials. However, a large number of Persianate manuscript paintings of the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, which depict the practice of teaching in architectural settings, has survived. Is it possible to describe these places where the teachers and children gathered as they are presented in the illustrations? Were they mosques, madrasas, or private residences, or did the artists invent these architectural settings? The article explores twelve selected images, and proposes an explanation of these representations of the elementary schools (maktabs), including the construction methods, and the techniques of inner and outer decoration of these buildings.

Notes

¹ The term Persianate, Persianate society, or Persified society (Farhang-e Pârsi-Zabânân), refers to a society that is either based on or influenced by the Persian language, culture, literature, art, and/or identity. See S.A. Arjomand, “Social Sciences and the Appropriation of Persianate Historical Memory,” Studies on Persianate Societies 3 (2004/1383): 6.

² Mehdi Nakosteen, History of Islamic Origins of Western Education A.D. 800–1350 With Introduction to Medieval Muslim Education (Boulder, CO, 1964), 46.

³ Ahmad Tafazzoli, Sasanian Society (New York, 2000), 25–7.

⁴ S. Hornblower, “Asia Minor,” The Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge, 1994), 6: 215; M. Dandamaev, “Education in the Achaemenid Period,” Encyclopedia Iranica (Costa Mesa, CA, 1997), 8: 178–9.

⁵ A noble education also included singing and learning to play musical instruments and games like chess and backgammon, and general information about wines, flowers, women, and riding animals. A. Tafazzoli, “Education in the Parthian and Sasanian Periods,” Encyclopedia Iranica (Costa Mesa, CA, 1997), 8: 179.

⁶ Ta'rikh Baghdad is a collection of biographies of scholars compiled by the famous scholar of Hadîth al-Khatîb al-Baghdâdî (d. 463/1070–71). Munir-ud-Din Ahmad, Muslim Education and the Scholars' Social Status up to the 5th Century (11th Century Christian Era) in the Light of Ta'rikh Baghdad (Zurich, 1968), 42.

⁷ Bayard Dodge, Muslim Education in Medieval Times (Washington, DC, 1962), 1–3.

⁸ Ziauddin Alavi, Muslim Educational Thought in the Middle Ages (New Delhi, 1988), 2–3.

⁹ V. Danner, “Arabic Literature in Iran,” The Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge, 1975), 5: 568–9.

¹⁰ J.M. Landau, “Kuttab,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden, 1982), 5: 567–9; A.K. Mirbabaev et al., “The Development of Education: Maktab, Madrasa, Science and Pedagogy,” History of Civilizations of Central Asia (Paris, 2000), 4.2: 33–35.

¹¹ Ahmad Shalabi, History of Muslim Education (Beirut, 1954), 16–22; Nakosteen, History of Islamic, 44; George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh, 1981), 9–14.

¹² Abdul Latif Tibawi, Islamic Education: Its Traditions and Modernization into the Arab National System (London, 1972), 2.

¹³ Historically, the residential areas may have had various forms; they were located among urban streets and were crossed by narrow alleys and culs de sac. These small communities consisted of the local mosque, minaret, maktab, bathhouses, small markets, shops, houses, and public water reservoirs. Galina A. Pugachenkova, Zodchestvo Tsentral'noi Azii, XV vek [Architecture of Central Asia, 15th century] (Tashkent, 1976), 65; G.A. Pugachenkova et al., “Architecture,” History of Civilizations of Central Asia (Paris, 2003), 5: 478–9.

¹⁴ Dodge, Muslim Education, 5–6; M.M. Shorish, “Traditional Islamic Education in Central Asia Prior to 1917,” Passé Turco-Tatar Présent Soviétique (Paris, 1986), 317.

¹⁵ Arthur S. Tritton, Materials on Muslim Education in the Middle Ages (London, 1957), 140–43; Ahmad, Muslim Education, 45.

¹⁶ Aleksandr A. Semenov, Abu Ali ibn-Sina (Avicenna) (Stalinabad, 1955), 24–5; William Gohlman, The Life of Ibn Sina: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation (Albany, NY, 1974), 19.

¹⁷ At the age of eighteen Ibn Sina gained much authority among the physicians of Bukhara, and was enrolled in the service of the Samanid Nûh ibn Mansûr. Semenov, Abu Ali, 26; Gohlman, The Life, 34–5.

¹⁸ Ibn Sina dedicated his treatise to the Samanid Nûh ibn Mansûr. A. Imamkhodjaeva, “Maloizuchennii traktat Ibn Sini o dushevnikh silakh” [Ibn Sina's little known treatise on mental power], Obshchestvennie Nauki v Uzbekistane [Social sciences in Uzbekistan], 7 (1982): 53–4.

¹⁹ Mirbabaev et al., The Development, 34.

²⁰ Ibid., 34.

²¹ Ibid., 34–5.

²² Sir John Chardin's Travels in Persia. An abridged English version of the author's Voyages du chevalier Chardin, en Perse, et autres liex de l'Orient (reprinted London, 1927 and New York, 1972), 188; A Journey to Persia: Jean Chardin's Portrait of a Seventeenth-century Empire, trans. Ronald W. Ferrier (London and New York, 1996), 130–31.

²³ Baked brick was known in the Parthian Empire since the third–second century BCE. The Square Hall of the king's palace in the Parthian capital Nisa (South Turkmenistan) was erected using baked brick. G.A. Pugachenkova, “Arkhitekturnie pamiatniki Nisy” [Architectural monuments of Nisa], Trudy Yuzhno-Turkmenistanskoi Arkheologicheskoi Kompleksnoi Ekspeditsii [Works of the South Turkmenistan Archaeological Complex Expedition] (Ashkhabad, 1949), 1: 202–8; S. Khmelnitskii, Mezhdu samanidami i mongolami: arkhitektura Srednei Azii X1–nachala XIII vv. [Between the Samanids and the Mongols: architecture of Central Asia of the 11th^–the beginning of the 13th centuries] (Berlin-Riga, 1996), 1: 47–51.

²⁴ G.A. Pugachenkova et al., “Urban Development and Architecture,” History of Civilizations of Central Asia (Paris, 2000), 4.2: 509.

²⁵ Lisa Golombek and Donald Wilber, The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan (Princeton, NJ, 1988), 1: 34–5.

²⁶ Study of mud-brick houses in an old quarter of Isfahan showed that none were likely to be more than 150 years old. L. Golombek and R. Holod, “Preliminary Report of the Isfahan City Project,” Akten des VII. Internationalen Kongresses für Iranische Kunst und Archäologie (Munich, September 1976), Archäeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran (Berlin, 1979), 582.

²⁷ Such mosques can be seen even in the present day in the Muslim world. Danner, “Arabic Literature,” 570.

²⁸ Terry Allen, A Catalogue of the Toponyms and Monuments of Timurid Herat (Cambridge, 1981), 98; Akhror Mukhtarov, Balkh in the Late Middle Ages, trans. Robert D. McChesney (Bloomington, IN, 1993), 42.

²⁹ K.S. Kriukov and N.M. Lukinskaya, “Guzarnie mecheti Bukhari” [Local mosques of Bukhara], Arkhitekturnoe Nasledstvo [Architectural heritage] 19 (1972): 192; Galina A. Pougatchenkova, Chefs-d’œuvre d'architecture de l'Asie Centrale XIV^e–XV^e siècle (Paris, 1983), 148–78; Bernard O'Kane, Timurid Architecture in Khurasan (Costa Mesa, CA, 1987), 207–9; Golombek and Wilber, The Timurid Architecture., 1:46.

³⁰ Mirbabaev, et al., The Development, 34.

³¹ Bahman Sohrab Surti, Shahnama of Firdaosi in English Prose (Bombay, 1986), 2: 160–61; 5: 870; Ferdowsi, The Legend of Seyavash, trans. Dick Davis (London, 1992), 7.

³² A.E. Khairallah, Love, Madness, and Poetry: An Interpretation of the Magnun Legend (Beirut, 1980), 11–14; Julie Scott Meisami, Medieval Persian Court Poetry (Princeton, NJ, 1987), 158–65.

³³ Evgenii E. Bertel's, “Layla i Majnun” [Layla and Majnun], Izbrannie trudy [Selected works] (Moscow, 1965), 4: 419–20; Oleg Grabar, Mostly Miniatures: An Introduction to Persian Painting (Princeton, NJ, 2000), 104–5.

³⁴ Edward Granville Browne, A Literary History of Persia (London, 1906) 2: 406; The Story of Layla and Majnun, trans. Rudolf Gelpke (Oxford, 1966), 220.

³⁵ Sixty-seven imitations of the poem Majnun and Layla have been written. E.E. Bertel's, Nizami, tvorcheskii put' poeta [Nizami, A Creative Path of the Poet] (Moscow, 1956), 147–53; Alokhon Afsakhzod, Dzhami [Jami] (Leningrad, 1978), 31, 138–47; K. Talattoff, “International Recognition of Nizami's Work: A Bibliography,” The Poetry of Nizami Ganjavi: Knowledge, Love, and Rhetoric (New York, 2000), 189–204.

³⁶ The poet-mystic Shams al-Din Muhammad ‘Assar Tabrizi was a famous astronomer and prominent literary critic. I. Stchoukine, “Un Manuscrit de Mehr et Moshtarì illustré a Heràt, vers 1430,” Arts Asiatiques, 8 (1961): 85.

³⁷ The thirteenth-century poet Shaikh Sa‘di Shirazi is recognized not only for the depth of his social thinking and the quality of his writings in the fields of mysticism, metaphysics, logic, and ethics, but he is also known as a great poet of love songs. His most renowned works are a lyric poem, Bostân (The Orchard), written in 1257, a collection of prose and poetry, Golistân, in 1258, and books the ghazals. All his works, especially the Golistân, were standard school texts for reading Persian language and literature. For the best survey of the material, see Homa Katouzian, Sa‘di: The Poet of Life, Love and Compassion (Oxford, 2006).

³⁸ Up to the present these stories and verses are almost the sole sources for the study of the main periods of the poet Sa'di's life and his activity. Sa'di, Gulistan, trans. Rustam Aliev (Moscow, 1959), 46–7; The Gulistan (Rose Garden) of Sa'di, trans. Wheeler M. Thackston (Bethesda, MD, 2008), 115.

³⁹ Thomas W. Lentz and Glen D. Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the Fifteenth Century (Los Angeles, CA, 1989), 287–99.

⁴⁰ Badriddin Hilali Astrabadi (1470–1529) lived in Herat during the rule of the Timurids and the Safavids. He wrote his three poems: Layla va Majnun, Sifatu-‘l Âshiqin (The Attributes of Lovers), Shâh va Darvish or Shâh va Gadâ (The King and the Beggar), and Diwân of ghazals there. Fanatical Uzbek ruler Ubaydolla-khan assassinated the poet for being of a member of Shi‘a sect in Herat in 1529. Edward Granville Browne, A History of Persian Literature in Modern Times (A.D. 1500–1924) (Cambridge, 1924), 234–5; J. Becka, “Hiloli,” History of Iranian Literature (Dordrecht, 1968), 500–501.

⁴¹ R. Milstein, “Sufi Elements in the Late Fifteenth Century Painting of Herât,” Studies in Memory of Gaston Wiet (Jerusalem, 1977), 359.

⁴² B.W. Robinson, “Murakka,” The Encyclopedia of Islam VII (Leiden and New York, 1993), 7: 602–3; David J. Roxburgh, The Persian Album, 1400–1600, from Dispersal to Collection (New Haven, CT and London, 2005), 32–5.

⁴³ Oleg F. Akimushkin and Anatolii A. Ivanov, Persidskie Miniaturi XIV–XVII vv. [Persian miniatures of the 14th–17th centuries] (Moscow, 1968), 6–10; E.J. Grube, “The School of Herat from 1400 to 1450,” The Art of the Book in Central Asia (Paris, 1979), 147–8; R. Hillenbrand, “Exploring a Neglected Masterpiece: The Gulistan Shahnama of Baysunghur,” Iranian Studies 43, no. 1 (2010): 97.

⁴⁴ Norah M. Titley, Persian Miniature Painting and Its Influence on the Art of Turkey and India: The British Library Collections (London, 1983), 79–80, 88–9; Adel T. Adamova, Persian Painting and Drawing of the 15th–19th Centuries from the Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg, 1996), 74–5.

⁴⁵ These chosen manuscript paintings are documented as to date and place of their execution by scholars. The images are painted in opaque watercolor, gold, and ink on paper. The description of each miniature starts with the name of the miniature, the title of the MS, the name of the author of the MS, the place and date of the miniature's execution, the city and the name of museum or library where the MS is located.

⁴⁶ Michael Barry, Figurative Art in Medieval Islam and the Riddle of Bihzad of Herat (1465–1535) (Paris, 2004), 14–15.

⁴⁷ R. Hillenbrand, “The Uses of the Space in Timurid Painting,” Timurid Art and Culture: Iran and Central Asia in the Fifteenth Century (Leiden, New York, and Cologne 1992), 77–8.

⁴⁸ Also, the bird's nest with the eggs seems to be a symbol of innocent new life untouched. A. Gill, “Bihzad's Visual Grammar and the Construction of Meaning: The British Library Nizami of 1494–5,” Persica 23 (2009–10): 46.

⁴⁹ T.W. Lentz, “Changing Worlds: Bihzad and the New Painting,” Persian Masters: Five Centuries of Painting (Bombay, 1990), 52.

⁵⁰ Lazar’ I. Rempel’, Dalekoe i blizkoe. Bukharskie zapisi [Far and near: Bukhara notes] (Tashkent, 1982), 143.

⁵¹ A canonical form of the minaret had already become firmly established in the ninth to tenth centuries and to a considerable degree its origin was local. Sergei Khmelnitskii, Mezhdu samanidami i mongolami: arkhitektura Srednei Azii XI–nachala XIII vv. [Between the Samanids and the Mongols: architecture of Central Asia of the 11th–the beginning of the 13th century] (Berlin and Riga, 1996), 1: 128–9.

⁵² V.L. Voronina, “Estetika form v monumental'nom zodchestve Srednei Azii” [Aesthetics of forms in Central Asian monumental architecture], Arkhitekturnoe Nasledstvo [Architectural heritage] 29 (1981): 159.

⁵³ Lazar’ I. Rempel’, Arkhitekturnii Ornament Uzbekistana [Architectural ornament of Uzbekistan)] (Tashkent, 1961), 412.

⁵⁴ Ayvân and tâlâr were significant elements of pre-Islamic architecture in Iran, Khurasan, and Transoxiana. These ancient systems, thanks to their lightness and suitability to seismic conditions, continued to be in use in the courtyards of mosques, mausoleums, madrasas, palaces, dwellings, and gardens which remain to the present in these lands. V.L. Voronina, “Formi i detaili dereviannogo ordera Srednei Azii” [Forms and details of the wooden order of Central Asia], Voprosi teorii arkhitekturnoi kompozitsii [The problems of the theory of architectural composition] (Moscow, 1958), 2: 83; Georgina Herrmann, The Iranian Revival (Oxford, 1977), 35; Sergei Khmelnitskii, Mezhdu arabami i turkami [Between the Arabs and the Turks] (Berlin and Riga, 1992), 61; M. Alemi, “The Royal Gardens of the Safavid Period: Types and Models,” Gardens in the Time of the Great Muslim Empires: Theory and Design (Leiden, 1997), 72–4.

⁵⁵ With the exception of a few paintings, for instance the illustration A Beggar Refused Admittance to a Mosque from Bûstân of Sa‘di, attributed to Bihzad, Herat, 1488 (Cairo, General Egyptian Book Organization, Adab Farsi, no. 908), or the illustration Bahram Gur in the Yellow Palace from Khamsa of Nizami, Bukhara, 1648 (St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, Persian New Serial 66, fol. 147b).

⁵⁶ Scholars have analyzed the form, artistic type, and symbolism of the column and have concluded that the shape of the column in its entirety embodies a holy tree and represents one of the honored elements of Zoroastrianism—the earth or a bouquet of flowers in a vessel as an emblem of blossoming, abundance, and fertility. Ananda K. Coomarasawamy, Yaksas (Washington, DC, 1931), 2:13, 18, figs. 27, 28, 32; Veronika L. Voronina, Konstruktsiya i khudozhestvennii obraz v arkhitekture Vostoka [Construction and artistic image in architecture of the Orient] (Moscow, 1977), 90–94.

⁵⁷ Akimushkin and Ivanov, Persidskie Miniaturi, 17; Ol'ga V. Vasil'eva, A String of Pearls: Iranian Fine Books from the 14th to the 17th Century in the National Library of Russia Collections (St. Petersburg, 2008), 86.

⁵⁸ The masjed-e Bâlâ-ye Howz was built in 1712. G.A. Pugachenkova, “Vostochnaya miniatura kak istochnik po arkhitekture XV–XVI vv.” [Oriental miniature as a source on architecture of the 15th–16th centuries], Arkhitekturnoe Nasledie Uzbekistana [Architectural heritage of Uzbekistan] (Tashkent, 1960), 135; Irina F. Borodina, Central Asia, Gems of the 9th–19th-Century Architecture (Moscow, 1987), 144–5.

⁵⁹ G.A. Pugachenkova, “Kolonni XV v. iz Turkestana” [Columns of the 15th century from Turkestan], Pamiyatniki arkhitekturi Srednei Azii epokhi Navoi [Architectural monuments of Central Asia of Navoi's epoch] (Tashkent, 1957), 65–6; Pugachenkova et al., “Architecture,” 543.

⁶⁰ K.A.C. Creswell, “The Mosque of Al-Hâkim,” The Muslim Architecture of Egypt (New York, 1978), I: 84, fig. 30; Richard Ettinghausen, Oleg Grabar, and Marilyn Jenkins-Madina, Islamic Art and Architecture 650–1250 (New Haven, CT, 2001), 61, 92–4.

⁶¹ Rempel’, Arkhitekturnii Ornament Uzbekistana, 336–72.

⁶² Liudmila I. Kirillova, Mashtabnost’ v arkhitekture [The scale in architecture] (Moscow, 1961), 22; V.L. Voronina, “Estetika form v monumental'nom zodchestve Srednei Azii” [Aesthetics of forms in monumental architecture of Central Asia], Arkhitekturnoe Nasledstvo [Architectural heritage] XXIX (1981): 155–6.

⁶³ Oleg Grabar, The Formation of Islamic Art (New Haven, CT, 1987), 206–9.

⁶⁴ Lentz and Lowry, Timur and the Princely Vision, 361; Ebadollah Bahari, Behzad, Master of Persian Painting (London and New York, 1996), 83.

⁶⁵ An example of this illustration, Layla and Majnun at a School, like the whole manuscript Khamsa of Nizami that was executed for Mirza Baysanghur in 1432, became the subject of admiration and imitation in the Turkmen court. Shaikh Mahmud Pir Budaqi and Fakhriddin Ahmad copied the manuscript in 1461–76 in Shiraz (?) (Istanbul, Topkapi Saray Museum, H.716, 309 fols., H: 30.7 cm; W: 20.2 cm). D.J. Roxburgh, “The Timurid and Turkmen Dynasties of Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, c. 1370–1506,” Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600–1600 (London, 2005), 200, 251, 430–31.

⁶⁶ L. Golombek, “Some Representations of Architecture in the Istanbul Albums,” Islamic Art: An Annual Dedicated to the Art and Culture of the Muslim World (New York, 1981), 1: 130.

⁶⁷ Rempel’, Arkhitekturnii ornament, 194; I.F. Borodina, “Lokalizatsiya dekorativno-stroitel'nikh priemov sredneaziatskoi arkhitektury” [Localization of decorative and building methods of Central Asian architecture], Arkhitekturnie Nasledstvo [Architectural heritage] 35 (1988): 157.

⁶⁸ S. Rahmatullaeva, “Samarqand's Rigestân and its Architectural Meanings,” Journal of Persianate Studies 3 (2010): 176–80, figs. 8, 11, 13, and 14.