Satire in the Paintings of “Mohammad-e Siāh Qalam”

Abstract

A considerable amount of scholarship has been produced on just over sixty paintings of humans and demons, many of which bear ascriptions to the unidentified artist Mohammad-e Siāh Qalam, and which are now mostly housed in albums H.2153 and H.2160 in the Topkapı Palace Library. Although methods of formal comparison have led to general agreement that the paintings can be dated to either the fourteenth century or the fifteenth, strikingly little attention has been paid to the question of what these images depict. This paper studies the paintings within the context of documentary, legal and literary material in Persian and Arabic, and identifies a set of common motifs shared between the Siāh Qalam paintings and a number of later images. While it has been supposed by several scholars that the paintings document life in a marginal geographical environment and faithfully reflect the practices of a syncretic culture, this paper suggests that they engage with a field of satirical ideas which were widespread in the Islamic world in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and which parodied common types of behavior that were deemed by some observers to be illicit or absurd.

Keywords:

• Mohammad-e Siāh Qalam
• painting
• Sufism
• Qalandars
• intoxicants
• the demonic
• Ibn Taymiyya
• ʿObeyd-e Zākāni

ORCID

James White http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3385-6134

Notes

1 A condensed bibliography of studies on these paintings includes: Grube, Sims, and Carswell, Islamic Art 1, where a full list of secondary scholarship until 1980 is also provided; Haydaroğlu et al., Ben Mehmed Siyah Kalem; Karamağaralı, Muhammad Siyah Kalem’e aftedilen minyatürler; İpşiroǧlu, Siāh Qalem; Rogers, Review of Siyah Qalem; Rogers, “Siyah Qalam”; Cahill, “Some Alternative Sources”; O’Kane, “Siāh-Qalam”; O’Kane, “Siyah Kalam”; Gillard, “Siyah Qalam”; Çağman, “Glimpses”; Canby, “Siyāh Ḳalem”; Blair and Bloom, “Siyah Qalam”; Shatzman Steinhardt, “Siyah Kalem.” A facsimile of albums H.2153 and H.2160 was reported to be forthcoming in late 2016, but at the time this paper was finalized in July 2017 it appeared to be as yet unpublished. Until a facsimile is produced, İpşiroǧlu, Siyah Qalem, and Çağman, “Glimpses,” provide the clearest color images of the paintings. As Grube et al. provide the most comprehensive catalogue of images, however, I have linked paintings not reproduced here to that work, using the abbreviation IA1 fig.

2 For a survey of the “signatures” of Mohammad-e Siāh Qalam, see Grube, Sims, and Carswell, Islamic Art 1, fig.15. Scholars have taken different stances on the relationship between the polychrome paintings and the scenes of humans and demons. For example, while Rogers has argued that paintings such as the “Wedding” scroll (H.2153 ff.3b–4a) were produced before the scenes of humans and demons, Roxburgh and Çağman have suggested the reverse. See Rogers, “Review of Siyah Qalem,” 173 and Roxburgh, Turks, 148–89; 252 (cat. nos. 216–18); 254 (cat. no. 219). H.2153 f.131b, the “Monastery” scene, contains a chronogram in verse which dates the painting to 810/1407–8. See White, “A Sign of the End Time.”

3 One such later image is the response to H.2153 f.65a attributed by Topsfield to the Deccan or Rajasthan, late seventeenth century. Topsfield, Visions, 114, cat. 46. See also Welch, Gods, 25–6, where the author argues that there is a connection between Aq-qoyunlu Tabriz, Golconda and Kotah in the circulation of some of the paintings, and Welch, “A Matter of Empathy,” 94ff. Another painting was once in the collection of Henri Vignier, and was subsequently sold at Sotheby's New York in May 1982. See Grube, Sims, and Carswell, Islamic Art 1, fig.295, and Sotheby Parke Bernet Sale 4867Y, Fine Oriental Miniatures, Manuscripts and Islamic Works of Art, York Avenue Galleries, May 19, 1982, cat. no. 114. A third painting of Ottoman provenance, depicting a single demon, is dated 957/1550, and was sold through Christie's in 1996 (Sale 7297, July 25, 1996, lot 316). A number of “Siāh Qalam” images in albums H.2153 and H.2160 themselves were evidently produced some time after the initial group, such as H.2160 f.52a. See Grube, Sims, and Carswell, Islamic Art 1, fig.292. There is also the image now in the Freer Gallery of Art (37.25), generally recognized as an inversion of H.2153 f.112a, or vice versa. A hypothesis concerning this painting is offered in Çağman, “Glimpses,” 155–6. For an approach to the use and copying of images in the Topkapı and Diez albums, see Tanındı, “Repetition of Illustrations.”

4 Various positions are summarized in Grube, “Problem of the Istanbul Album Paintings.” A useful counter to the notion that material in the albums only reflects the “influence” of art from China is Necipoğlu's “Persianate Images.”

5 See, for example, İpşiroǧlu, Siyah Qalem, 25; and Esin, “Siyah Qalam.”

6 İpşiroǧlu, Siāh Qalem, 25; Esin, “Siāh Qalam”; Watson, “Chinese Style.”

7 Çağman,“Glimpses,” 151, where it is also stated that the sampled paper was made using the floating mould technique. It should be noted that paper described as Khetā’i, conceivably meaning of (Northern) Chinese origin, is described in Soltān ‘Ali Mashhadi's poem on calligraphy. See Minorsky, Calligraphers and Painters, 113. The floating mold technique is not an exclusively East Asian one, since it is mentioned by Ibn Bādīs, writing in North Africa. It was also employed by the Damascene artists who produced Teymur's giant Qur’an in Samarqand, as a means of creating larger sheets of paper. See Bloom, Paper, 67–8.

8 The Qipchaq “thesis” was formulated by Anet in 1913, and was subsequently taken in a different direction by Togan. See Togan, “Topkapı Sarayında dört cönk.” The Transoxanian “thesis” is developed in Çağman, “Glimpses.”

9 As far as I am aware, the sole piece of evidence from Xinjiang is a fragmentary pen and ink drawing of a demon, of questionable date. See Roxburgh, Turks, cat. no. 15. The horned, furry demons of the Siāh Qalam paintings bear closer comparison with the Persian illustrative tradition.

10 Rogers, “Review of Siyah Qalem,” 172–3.

11 Carboni, Il Kitāb, 58; and Rogers “Review of Siyah Qalem,” 173.

12 Rogers, “Review of Siyah Qalem,” 173. The most recent study of the Freer Divān is Farhad, “The Dīvān of Sultan Ahmad,” which studies the manuscript's marginal ink drawings within the context of the material in the Diez and Saray albums.

13 Rogers, “Review of Siyah Qalem,” 173.

14 Gillard, “Siyah Qalam,” 113.

15 Topsfield, Visions, 114, cat. 46; and Welch, Gods, 25–6. Further images occasionally emerge for sale at auction. For a general overview of migration between Iran and the Deccan, see Ansari, “Bahmanid Dynasty.” For a specialized study of connections between the Turkmen and the Deccan, see Minorsky, “The Qara-qoyunlu.”

16 The conference proceedings were published as Grube, Sims, and Carswell, Islamic Art 1

17 Compare Esin, “Siyah Qalam”; Çağman, “Glimpses”; Rogers, “Siyah Qalam.”

18 See, for example, Sakisian, “Some Sino-Persian Monsters”; Anet, “Exhibition of Persian Miniatures,” 16, Plate II, E.

19 See Esin, “Siyah Qalam”; Karamağaralı, “The Siyah Qalam Paintings”; Çağman, “Glimpses.”

20 See Gulaćsi, Medieval Manichaean Book Art, 4; Lieu, “Manichaean Remains in Jinjiang,” 62ff.

21 Çağman, “Glimpses,” 153ff. See Fraser, Performing, 77ff. and chapter 5, “Performance: Orality and Visuality,” 159–96. A slightly garbled reference to the Topkapı albums is provided in the discussion of design circulation: 126.

22 Esin, “Siyah Qalam,”97. See also Fehérvári and Denwood, “Metal and other Objects,” 154–5.

23 Fehérvári and Denwood, “Metal and other Objects.”

24 Fuad Köprülüzade was an important advocate of the thesis, expounded in his Influence, 8ff. For recent writing on the topic, see Amitai-Preiss, “Sufis and Shamans,” in addition to DeWeese, Islamization. The lack of attention paid by historians of art to these developments in the field of historiography has impaired the study of the Siāh Qalam paintings to a considerable degree, even though J. M. Rogers warned of such methodological issues in 1990. See Rogers, “Siyah Qalam,” 27.

25 Znamenski, Shamanism I: lii; Amitai-Preiss, “Sufis and Shamans.”

26 DeWeese, Islamization, 243. For a comparable study focusing on recent religious practices, see Bellér-Han, “Making the Oil Fragrant.”

27 Lane, Lexicon, janna.

28 Ibid., ghāla.

29 Ibid., shaṭana.

30 The classic study of hashish is Rosenthal, The Herb, although this work is exclusively focused on texts in Arabic. The consumption of intoxicants in Safavid Iran is studied in Matthee, The Pursuit, while Ergin's “Rock Faces, Opium and Wine” discusses the consumption of intoxicants in (primarily) Timurid courtly culture. Information on the preparation of hashish is covered in Rosenthal, The Herb. See also Omidsalar, “Dūġ-e Waḥdat.”

31 Marino, Raconter, II: 68, 71.

32 De Sacy, Chrestomathie, Arabic text I: 85; see also I: 86. French trans. I: 219; see also I:220.

33 Despite arguing that the Siāh Qalam paintings reflect an environment tinged with Buddhism and Shamanism, Emel Esin noted that a number of (Muslim) commentators compared the violent and the intoxicated to the jinn. See Esin, “Siyah Qalam,” 99.

34 The identification of the cannabis plant is made, without further discussion, in Barry, Figurative Art, 159.

35 Karamağaralı, “The Siyah Qalam Paintings,” 106.

36 For common and imagined methods of preparation, see Rosenthal, The Herb, 56–9.

37 Vrolijk, Bringing a Laugh, 17. See also Marino, Raconter, II: 38–9.

38 See the cases discussed in Mart, “Effects.”

39 Ibn Taymiyya, Majmūʿ fatāwā, 442.

40 For evidence of how legal opinions forbidding intoxicants and music were practically enforced on the street, in this case in a Hanafi context, see Dien, Theory and Practice, 43, 55, 99.

41 See Rosenthal, The Herb, 58.

42 The Kotah image is discussed in Habighorst et al., Love for Pleasure, 114.

43 See Kinsley, “Through the Looking Glass,” 277.

44 The painting could also be interpreted as a satire on the man frenetically whipping a horse, who is depicted in H.2160 f.50b.

45 See Rosenthal, The Herb, 77. For the symptoms of cannabis intoxication, including conjunctival injection, see American Psychiatric Association, DSM-5, 516.

46 Vrolijk, Bringing a Laugh, 18, 131.

47 See Fattāhi, Divān-e asrāri, 432, 438, 444, 445, 452, 453, 454, 458, 459, 461, 463, 465, 479.

48 Fattāhi, Divān-e asrāri, 445.

49 For a color reproduction, see Sotheby Parke Bernet Sale 4867Y, Fine Oriental Miniatures, Manuscripts and Islamic Works of Art, York Avenue Galleries, May 19, 1982, cat. no. 114.

50 The American Psychiatric Association notes distorted sensory perception among the symptoms of cannabis intoxication. See American Psychiatric Association, DSM-5, 516.

51 See Roxburgh, Turks, cat. no. 100, pp. 157 and 403.

52 A number of these paintings and drawings have been studied in an organized fashion by Barbara Schmitz. See Schmitz, Islamic and Indian Manuscripts, 129. The bundles of fabric being wrung by the men in H.2153 f.8b can be compared with the bundle held by a female figure in H.2153 f.152a. Whatever the bundle depicted in H.2153 f.152a contains, it appears to be a cause of consternation for the male figure to the left of the composition, given his look of horror.

53 Grube, Sims, and Carswell et al., Islamic Art 1, 63.

54 Dehkhodā, “ʿAli Akhbar and Mohammad Moʿen.”

55 There is, of course, a small number of images in a similar style, which are ascribed to the same artist but depict groups of people not seen in the other paintings. One such image is H.2160 f.84a, which represents a group of hunters with a dog. While the subject is unrelated to the main group, its tenor may not be. That the men and their dog hurry intently by while two leopards—presumably their quarry—gaze at them nonchalantly, suggests that this painting is again intended to be comical.

56 See, in particular, Shafiʿi Kadkani, Qalandariyyeh, 340–44. For narratives relating the discovery of hashish to Qotb al-Din Heydar, founder of the Heydari Sufi movement, see Karamustafa, God's Unruly Friends, 46.

57 Shafiʿi Kadkani, Qalandariyyeh, 282, 430.

58 ʿObeyd-e Zākāni, Collected Works, 329. This example, and several others that follow here, are mentioned in Gronke, “La religion,” 213.

59 ʿObeyd-e Zākāni, Collected Works, 327.

60 ʿOwfi, Lubāb, 178–9.

61 BnF Supplément persan 1630. Text in Persian and Uyghur. The farmān is transcribed and studied in Qazvini, “Farmān”; and Qaemmaqami, “Farmān.” See also Gronke, “La religion,” 213.

62 Ebn Bazzāz, Safvat al-safāʾ, 218.

63 Ebn Bazzāz, Safvat al-safāʾ, 869–70.

64 The maqāma I have in mind is the Mawṣiliyya, in which ʿĪsā b. Hishām and al-Iskandarī defraud two sets of villagers before hightailing it out of the sticks.

65 See Paul, “Forming a Faction.”

66 Gillard argues convincingly that these two figures recall Gothic images of Christian saints. Gillard, “Siyah Qalam,” 106.

67 Çağman, “Glimpses,” 152.

68 Al-ʿAynī, Al-Qawl al-sadīd, 53.

69 For a reproduction, see Sims, Peerless Images, 260, no. 175.

70 For reproductions, see Ibid., 252, no. 168; 118, no. 34.

71 Fattāhi, Divān-e asrāri, 431, 454. See also the chapter “Yek zajal-e qalandari,” 142–5. In that context the skin belongs to a sheep. Such aspects of the dress of antinomian Sufis, as well as of condemnatory descriptions of their behavior, can be seen in texts extending over a large area and a significant period of time. For the case of nineteenth-century Xinjiang, for example, see Jarring, Dervish and Qalandar, 8–9.

72 These are: H.2153 f.38b (dervishes with pouches); H.2153 f.141b (construction); H.2153 f.37a (demons in Sufi clothing); H.2153 f.64a (a fight); H.2153 f.23b (the hat is worn by the child); H.2160 f.59a (a figure with a bowl); H.2160 f.32a (a figure with a hammer); H.2153 f.92b (three men); H.2160 f.52a (two men with a Catherine wheel); H.2153 f.27a (a sitting figure); H.2153 f.105a; H.2160 f.52b (a man and a woman with bells); H.2160 f.69b (figures with bells).

73 Compare the hats with those presented in Sâlih el-İstanbulî, Tarikat kıyafetleri. The orders, of course, do not necessarily represent Sufi groups in Iran during the period of enquiry.

74 For a critical discussion connecting this painting with the patronage of Yaʿqub Beg, see Lowry and Beach, Annotated and Illustrated Checklist, Checklist no. 237, 206–13, Reproduction p. 237. For a color reproduction, see Barry, Figurative Art, 277.

75 For textual descriptions, see Karamustafa, God's Unruly Friends, 19–20.

76 Ibid., 68.

77 Rogers, “Siyah Qalam,” 33–4.

78 Clavijo, Embassy, 235.

79 See Paul, “Forming a Faction.” For an account of Safi al-Din's involvement in a building project, see Ebn Bazzāz, Safvat al-safā’, 872. For a reference to a Sufi who had been a goldsmith, see Ibid., 868

80 The argument that the paintings should be seen in the context of performance was partly formulated by İpşiroǧlu: Siyah Qalem, 34.

81 Çağman, “Glimpses,” 153.

82 The most recent proponent of this thesis is Çağman, “Glimpses,” 152.

83 See Kahle, “Islamische Schattenspielfiguren I” and “Islamische Schattenspielfiguren II.”

84 See Marr, “Koe-chto o Pehlevan kechele,” Plate.

85 These sketches are discussed in Vrolijk, Bringing a Laugh, 36–8.

86 Vrolijk, Bringing a Laugh, Arabic text 158–62.

87 Ibid., 76–9.

88 Ibid., 155–8.

89 See Moreh, Live Theatre, 114ff.

90 The main narrative of al-Maʿarrī's Risālat al-ghufrān consists of interviews between the protagonist, Ibn al-Qāriḥ, and dead poets who inhabit Paradise and Hell. In addition to interviewing the jinni Abū Hadrash, Ibn al-Qāriḥ also encounters Satan and his followers. One of the text's primary concerns is a satirical investigation of heresy.

91 See Rowson, “Ibn Dāniyāl.”

92 ʿObeyd-e Zākāni, Collected Works, 237.

93 See Moreh, Live Theatre, 109.

94 Navāʾi, Vozlyublennyi serdets, 38.

95 See Boshāq, Divān-e Mawlānā Boshāq.

96 Çağman, “Glimpses,” 155. While I cannot claim any detailed knowledge of inner Asian story-telling traditions, it appears to me that there are significant generic differences between representations of demons and the demonic in such narratives and the manner and function of their appearance in the Siāh Qalam paintings. For example, one narrative, concerning Idige and a sea-maiden, involves a cast of two protagonists, one human and one demonic, in a variety of locations, sometimes on land and sometimes underwater. The tone of the story is largely sincere and its purpose hagiographical (see DeWeese, Islamization, 428–9). The Siāh Qalam paintings, by contrast, feature a cast of tens, can each be read as an independent vignette treating an overall set of themes, and contain a great deal of wry humor.

97 For the qaṣā’id sāsāniyya see Bosworth, Underworld. Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Ḥillī purportedly wrote his for a friend. See Bosworth, Underworld, I: 140. The fragment by al-ʿUkbarī, who was himself a beggar but who was patronized, alongside Abū Dulaf, by Al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād (d. 385/995), the great poetic patron of the Buyid age, is given in al-Thaʿālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr 3: 137. Comparison can also be broadened out to later texts such as al-Shirbīnī's (seventeenth century) Hazz al-quḥūf, which satirizes the language and behavior of people in rural Lower Egypt. Provincial Sufis, labeled by al-Shirbīnī as the khawāmis, or “fifths,” receive a great deal attention in this text. Their impropriety is linked on several occasions to possession by the jinn or demonic intoxication (al-sakrat al-shayṭāniyya), and their way of being is likened to the way of the Devil (ṭarīq al-shayṭān).

98 Bosworth, Underworld II, 44–5 vv.10–11 (Arabic text); 295 vv.10–11 (English trans.).

99 De Sacy, Chrestomathie Arabic text I: 86–7; French trans. I: 221. It may be objected that the word nās is meant here in the sense of awlād al-nās, the Mamluk military elite. As the term is used in the passage in parallel with ahl, “the populace,” I have interpreted it in its non-technical sense of “the people.” Maqrīzī employs the anecdote concerning Soltān Ahmad Jalāyer in the context of a discussion of use of the drug by the urban poor (al-fuqarāʾ), in order to explain why it was consumed by the people despite sporadic attempts to prohibit it.

100 For more on the blurred boundaries between “elite” and “popular” culture in the case of Mamluk Egypt, see Shoshan, Popular Culture.

101 Al-Ghiyāth al-Baghdādī, Al-Taʾrīkh al-ghiyāthī, 93, 245. See also Shafiʿi Kadkani, Qalandariyyeh, 283–6; and Jawād et al., Baghdād, 61.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James White

James White is a DPhil candidate in the field of pre-modern Arabic and Persian literature at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, UK. He is grateful to the anonymous reviewer(s) for their comments on this piece, and to the Editor for suggesting additions to the bibliography after the manuscript had been accepted. He would also like to express his thanks to the Topkapı Palace Library, The British Museum, and the MFA, Boston, for providing permission to reproduce images of works in their collections, and to Sotheby’s for granting permission to reproduce copyrighted material.