Mughal dynasty
India [1526-1857]
Mughal dynasty, Mughal also spelled Mogul, Persian MughÅ«l (“Mongol”), Muslim dynasty of Turkic-Mongol origin that ruled most of northern India from the early 16th to the mid-18th century. After that time it continued to exist as a considerably reduced and increasingly powerless entity until the mid-19th century. The Mughal dynasty was notable for its more than two centuries of effective rule over much of India; for the ability of its rulers, who through seven generations maintained a record of unusual talent; and for its administrative organization. A further distinction was the attempt of the Mughals, who were Muslims, to integrate Hindus and Muslims into a united Indian state.
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The dynasty was founded by a Chagatai Turkic prince named BÄbur (reigned 1526–30), who was descended from the Turkic conqueror Timur (Tamerlane) on his father’s side and from Chagatai, second son of the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan, on his mother’s side. Ousted from his ancestral domain in Central Asia, BÄbur turned to India to satisfy his appetite for conquest. From his base in Kabul (Afghanistan) he was able to secure control of the Punjab region, and in 1526 he routed the forces of the Delhi sultan IbrÄhÄ«m LodÄ« at the First Battle of Panipat. The following year he overwhelmed the Rajput confederacy under Rana Sanga of Mewar, and in 1529 he defeated the Afghans of what are now eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states. At his death in 1530 he controlled all of northern India from the Indus River on the west to Bihar on the east and from the Himalayas south to Gwalior.
BÄbur’s son HumÄyÅ«n (reigned 1530–40 and 1555–56) lost control of the empire to Afghan rebels, but HumÄyÅ«n’s son Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) defeated the Hindu usurper Hemu at the Second Battle of Panipat (1556) and thereby reestablished his dynasty in Hindustan. The greatest of the Mughal emperors and an extremely capable ruler, Akbar reestablished and consolidated the Mughal Empire. Through incessant warfare, he was able to annex all of northern and part of central India, but he adopted conciliatory policies toward his Hindu subjects and sought to enlist them in his armies and government service. The political, administrative, and military structures that he created to govern the empire were the chief factor behind its continued survival for another century and a half. At Akbar’s death in 1605 the empire extended from Afghanistan to the Bay of Bengal and southward to what is now Gujarat state and the northern Deccan region (peninsular India).
Akbar’s son JahÄngÄ«r (reigned 1605–27) continued both his father’s administrative system and his tolerant policy toward Hinduism and thus proved to be a fairly successful ruler. His son, Shah JahÄn (reigned 1628–58), had an insatiable passion for building, and under his rule the Taj Mahal of Agra and the JÄmiÊ¿ Masjid (Great Mosque) of Delhi, among other monuments, were erected. His reign marked the cultural zenith of Mughal rule, but his military expeditions brought the empire to the brink of bankruptcy. JahÄngÄ«r’s tolerant and enlightened rule stood in marked contrast to the Muslim religious bigotry displayed by his more orthodox successor, Aurangzeb (reigned 1658–1707). Aurangzeb annexed the Muslim Deccan kingdoms of Vijayapura (Bijapur) and Golconda and thereby brought the empire to its greatest extent, but his political and religious intolerance laid the seeds of its decline. He excluded Hindus from public office and destroyed their schools and temples, while his persecution of the Sikhs of the Punjab turned that sect against Muslim rule and roused rebellions among the Rajputs, Sikhs, and Marathas. The heavy taxes he levied steadily impoverished the farming population, and a steady decay in the quality of Mughal government was thus matched by a corresponding economic decline. When Aurangzeb died in 1707, he had failed to crush the Marathas of the Deccan, and his authority was disputed throughout his dominions.
á¹¢afavid art
The á¹¢afavid dynasty was founded by IsmÄÊ¿Ä«l I (ruled 1501–24). The art of this dynasty was especially noteworthy during the reigns of ṬahmÄsp I (1524–76) and Ê¿AbbÄs I (1588–1629). This phase of the á¹¢afavid period also marked the last significant development of Islamic art in Iran, for after the middle of the 17th century original creativity disappeared in all mediums. Rugs and objects in silver, gold, and enamel continued to be made and exhibited a considerable technical virtuosity, even when they were lacking in inventiveness.
The á¹¢afavids abandoned Central Asia and northeastern Iran to a new Uzbek dynasty that maintained the Timurid style in many buildings (especially at Bukhara) and briefly sponsored a minor and derivative school of painting. Only the great sanctuary of Mashhad was being kept up and built up, but, like many of the other religious sanctuaries of the time—Qom, Al-Najaf, KarbalÄÊŸ—it is still far too little known to lend itself to coherent analysis. This was the time when ShÄ«Ê¿ism became a state religion, and for the first time in Islam there appeared an organized ecclesiastical system rather than the more or less loose spiritual and practical leadership of old. The main centres of the á¹¢afavid empire were TabrÄ«z and ArdabÄ«l in the northwest, with Kazvin in the central region and, especially, Eá¹£fahÄn in the west. The á¹¢afavid period, like the Ottoman era, was an imperial age, and therefore there is hardly a part of Iran where either á¹¢afavid buildings or major á¹¢afavid restorations cannot be found. The dynasty spent much money and effort on the building of bridges, roads, and caravansaries to encourage trade.
Architecture
The best-known á¹¢afavid monuments are located at Eá¹£fahÄn, where Ê¿AbbÄs I built a whole new city. According to one description, it contained 162 mosques, 48 madrasahs, 1,802 commercial buildings, and 283 baths. Most of those buildings no longer survive, but the structures that remain constitute some of the finest monuments of Islamic architecture.
At the centre of Eá¹£fahÄn is the MaydÄn-e ShÄh (now MaydÄn-e EmÄm), a large open space, about 1,670 by 520 feet (510 by 158 metres), originally surrounded by trees. Used for polo games and parades, it could be illuminated with 50,000 lamps. Each side of the maydÄn was provided with the monumental facade of a building. On one of the smaller sides was the entrance to a large mosque, the celebrated Masjed-e ShÄh (now Masjed-e EmÄm). On the other side was the entrance into the bazaar or marketplace. On the longer sides were the small funerary mosque of Shaykh Luá¹f AllÄh and, facing it, the Ê¿AlÄ« QÄpÅ«, the “Lofty Gate,” the first unit of a succession of palaces and gardens that extended beyond the maydÄn, most of which have now disappeared except for the Chehel SotÅ«n (“Forty Columns”), a palace built as an audience hall. The Ê¿AlÄ« QÄpÅ« was, in its lower floors, a semipublic place to which petitions could be brought, while its upper floors were a world of pure fantasy—a succession of rooms, halls, and balconies overlooking the city, which were purely for the prince’s pleasure.
The MaydÄn-e EmÄm unites in a single composition all the concerns of medieval Islamic architecture: prayer, commemoration, princely pleasure, trade, and spatial effect. None of the hundreds of other remaining á¹¢afavid monuments can match its historical importance, and in it also are found the major traits of á¹¢afavid construction and decoration. The forms are traditional, for the most part, and, even in vaulting techniques and the use of coloured tiles, it is to Timurid art that the á¹¢afavids looked for their models. The Persian architects of the early 17th century sought to achieve a monumentality in exterior spatial composition (an interesting parallel to the interior spaciousness created at the same time by the Ottomans); a logical precision in vaulting, which was successful in the Masjed-e EmÄm but rapidly led to cheap effects or to stucco imitations; and a coloristic brilliance that has made the domes and portals of Eá¹£fahÄn justly famous.
Painting
In the 16th and 17th centuries, possibly for the first time in Islamic art, painters were conscious of historical styles—even self-conscious. Miniatures from the past were collected, copied, and imitated. Patronage, however, was fickle. A royal whim would gather painters together or exile them. Many names of painters have been preserved, and there is little doubt that the whim of patrons was being countered by the artists’ will to be socially and economically independent as well as individually recognized for their artistic talents. Too many different impulses, therefore, existed in á¹¢afavid Iran for painting to follow any clear line of development.
Three major painting styles, or schools (excluding a number of interesting provincial schools), existed in the á¹¢afavid period. One school of miniature painting is exemplified by such masterpieces as the Houghton ShÄh-nÄmeh (completed in 1537), the JÄmÄ« Haft owrang (1556–1665), and the illustrations to stories from កÄfeáº. However different they are from each other, those large, colourful miniatures all were executed in a grand manner. Their compositions are complex, individual faces appear in crowded masses, there is much diversification in landscape, and, despite a few ferocious details of monsters or of strongly caricatured poses and expressions, these book illustrations are concerned with an idealized vision of life. The sources of this school lie with the Timurid academy. BehzÄd, Sulá¹Än Muឥammad, SheykhzÄdeh, MÄ«r Sayyid Ê¿AlÄ«, ÄqÄ MÄ«rak, and MaឥmÅ«d Muá¹£avvÄ«r continued and modified, each in his own way, the ideal of a balance between an overall composition and precise rendering of details.
The miniatures of the second tradition of á¹¢afavid painting seem at first to be like a detail out of the work of the previously discussed school. The same purity of colour, elegance of poses, interest in details, and assertion of the individual figure is found. RezÄ Ê¿AbbÄsÄ« (active in the late 16th and early 17th century) excelled in these extraordinary portrayals of poets, musicians, courtiers, and aristocratic life in general.
In both traditions of painting, the beautiful personages depicted frequently are satirized; this note of satirical criticism is even more pronounced in portraiture of the time. But it is in pen or brush drawings, mostly dating from the 17th century, that the third aspect of á¹¢afavid painting appeared: an interest in genre, or the depiction of minor events of daily life (e.g., a washerwoman at work, a tailor sewing, an animal). With stunning precision, á¹¢afavid artists showed a whole society falling apart with a cruel sympathy totally absent from the literary documents of the time.
While architecture and painting were the main artistic vehicles of the á¹¢afavids, the making of textiles and carpets was also of great importance. It is in the 16th century that a thitherto primarily nomadic and folk medium of the decorative arts was transformed into an expression of royal and urban tasks by the creation of court workshops. The predominantly geometric themes of earlier Iranian carpets were not abandoned entirely but tended to be replaced by vegetal, animal, and even occasional human motifs. Great schools of carpet making developed particularly at TabrÄ«z, KÄshan̄, and KermÄn.
Mughal art
Because the culture of the Mughals was intimately connected with the indigenous Hindu traditions of the Indian subcontinent, their art will be treated only synoptically in this article. (For a more-detailed account, the reader should see the sections on Mughal art in the visual arts of the Indian subcontinent portion of the article South Asian arts, notably Islamic architecture in India: Mughal style and Indian painting: Mughal style).
The art of the Mughals was similar to that of the Ottomans in that it was a late imperial art of Muslim princes. Both styles were rooted in several centuries (at least from the 13th century onward) of adaptation of Islamic functions to indigenous forms. It was in the 14th-century architecture of South Asian sites such as Tughluqabad, Gaur, and Ahmadabad that a uniquely Indian type of Islamic hypostyle mosque was created, with a triple axial nave, corner towers, axial minarets, and cupolas. It was also during those centuries that the first mausoleums set in scenically spectacular locations were built. By then the conquering Muslims had fully learned how to utilize local methods of construction, and they adapted South Asian decorative techniques and motifs.
Mughal art was in continuous contact with Iran or, rather, with the Timurid world of the second half of the 15th century. The models and the memories were in HerÄt or Samarkand, but the artists were raided from á¹¢afavid Iran, and the continuous flow of painters from Iran to the Mughal Empire is a key factor in understanding Mughal painting.
The mausoleum of HumÄyÅ«n in Delhi (1570; in 1993 designated a UNESCO World Heritage site), the city of Fatehpur Sikri (founded 1569; in 1986 designated a World Heritage site), and the Taj Mahal at Agra (1631–53; in 1983 designated a World Heritage site) summarize the development of Mughal architecture. In all three examples it can be seen that what Mughal architecture brought to the Islamic tradition (other than traditional Indian themes, especially in decoration) was technical perfection in the use of red sandstone or marble as building and decorative materials.
In Mughal painting, the kind of subject that tended to be illustrated was remarkably close to those used in á¹¢afavid history books—legendary stories, local events, portraits, genre scenes. What evolved quickly was a new manner of execution, and this style can be seen as early as about 1567, when the celebrated manuscript DÄstÄn-e AmÄ«r កamzeh (“Stories of AmÄ«r កamzeh”) was painted (some 200 miniatures remain and are found in most major collections of Indian miniatures, especially at the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.). Traditional Iranian themes—battles, receptions, feasts—acquired monumentality, not only because of the inordinate size of the images but also because almost all of the objects and figures depicted were seen in terms of mass rather than line. Something of the colourfulness of Iranian painting was lost, but instead images acquired a greater expressive power. Mughal portraiture gave more of a sense of the individual than did the portraits of the á¹¢afavids. As in a celebrated representation of a dying courtier in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Mughal drawings could be poignantly naturalistic. Mood was important to the Mughal artist; in many paintings of animals there is a playful mood, and a sensuous mood is evident in the first Muslim images to glorify the female body and the erotic.
In summary it can be said that the Mughals produced an art of extraordinary stylistic contrasts that reflected the complexities of its origins and of its aristocratic patronage.
Islamic art under European influence and contemporary trends
It is extremely difficult to decide when, how, and to what extent European art began to affect the art of the traditional Muslim world. Ottoman architecture was from the beginning affected by Western influences. In Mughal India, European landscapes and Western spatial concerns influenced painting in the 18th century, and Persian painting has exhibited constant Western influence since the 17th century. Thus, Islamic art began to be affected by European traditions before Europe began (in the 18th and 19th centuries) its conquests of most of the Muslim world. Because the Ottomans ruled North Africa (except Morocco), Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, as well as the Balkans, much of the Muslim world was first introduced to “modern” European art through its adaptation in Istanbul or in other major Ottoman cities such as Smyrna (now Ä°zmir) or Alexandria.
European influence tended to have been mostly limited to architecture. Nineteenth-century European engineers and architects, for example, adapted modern structural technology and decorative styles to local Islamic needs or idioms: the Sūq al-កamīdīyah bazaar in Damascus was built with steel roofing; the Hejaz railway station at Damascus was decorated in a sort of Eastern Art Nouveau style.
During actual European occupation of Muslim territory, there was a conscious revival of traditional decorative arts, but new techniques were often employed. This especially occurred in India and Morocco, where the retail success of an art object depended less on the local tradition than on the taste of the Europeans. What was romantic to a European, therefore, was no longer part of the world of the newly enriched and Europeanized Muslim. Much of the Europeanized architecture was drab and pretentious. The only real artistic accomplishment of this period was in the preservation and encouragement of the traditional techniques and designs of the decorative arts, which often had to be maintained artificially through government subside.
During the period of occupation it was questioned whether alien techniques necessarily brought with them new forms. This mood was clearly expressed in literature but less so in the visual arts, because the quality of Muslim art had deteriorated so much in the decades preceding European arrival that there was no longer a lively creative force to maintain. As various schools based on the Ãcole des Beaux-Arts in Paris were formed, however, the faculties and the students suffered from constant uncertainty as to whether they should preserve an art that was mostly artisanal or revolutionize it altogether.
It is much more difficult to define in broad terms the characteristics of art in Muslim countries after the formation of independent countries in the 1940s and ’50s. Extensive planning programs and building projects were undertaken in even the poorest countries, and the wealthy Arab states as well as prerevolutionary Iran transformed their traditional cities and countryside with spectacular modern complexes ranging from housing projects to universities. Many of those buildings were planned and constructed by Western firms and architects, and some are mere copies of European and American models, ill-adapted to the physical conditions and visual traditions of the Muslim world. Others are interesting and even sensitive projects: spectacular and technically innovative, such as the InterContinental Hotel in Mecca (designed by German architects Rolf Gutbrod and Frei Otto) and the Hajj Terminal at the King Abdulaziz International Airport at Jiddah, Saudi Arabia (designed by the U.S. firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill); or intelligent and imaginative, such as the government buildings of Dhaka, Bangladesh (designed by American architect Louis I. Kahn), or the numerous buildings designed by Frenchman André Ravereau in Mali and Algeria. Furthermore, within the Muslim world emerged several schools of architects that adopted modes of an international language to suit local conditions. The oldest of those schools are in Turkey.
Major Muslim contributors to a contemporary Islamic architecture include the Iranians Nader Ardalan and Kamran Diba, the Iraqis Rifat Chaderji and Mohamed Makiya, the Jordanian Rasem Badran, and the Bangladeshi Mazharul Islam. A unique message was transmitted by the visionary Egyptian architect Hassan Fathy, who, in eloquent and prophetic terms, urged that the traditional forms and techniques of vernacular architecture be studied and adapted to contemporary needs. Directly or indirectly, his work inspired many young architects in the Muslim world and led to a host of fascinating private houses, mosques, and educational facilities. The Aga Khan Award for Architecture was instituted to encourage genuine and contemporary architectural innovation in Muslim lands.
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