http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/9nmm1FNXOuHaWKfkL261lQ
What a Calligraphy Tells us about an Empire
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As I was exploring through the online exhibition of the art of koran, a picture of a huge Koran caught my eyes. Unlike the other Korans, which were about the size of a normal book, this Koran was about 5.5 x 3.25 feet. It also said on the introduction that these pages were created for the founder of the Timurid dynasty, known as Timur or Tamerlane, who lived more than six hundred years ago. The fact that he established one of the largest and most powerful dynasties of the Islamic world drew my interest even more. Just as Roland Barthes said in one of the readings that we read - “one can decode the underlying political and social messages of a specific region by examining one or multiple cultural products” - I am going to learn about some aspects of the politics and culture during the time of Timur through this huge Koran that had survived hundreds of years.
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Let me start off by telling an interesting story about the creation of this Koran. First, the calligrapher tried to impress Timur by copying the Koran onto a small ring. After the king was unimpressed, he then transcribed a second Koran that was taller than a human’s height. Timur was very pleased and rewarded the calligrapher. This story helped prove that Timur had an hunger for enormity. This obsession also applied to the military field. Timur’s empire extended from Delhi in the south to Moscow in the north, from Cairo in the west through Turkey and Afghanistan, Iran and southern Russia, all the way to China. When looking at the historical evidence of his conquests, I was stunned by some of the numbers I found in the readings. Overall, he had killed 17 million people, which was about 5% of the global population at the time. Timur also had an eccentricity of using human heads to build pyramids. According to Timur’s own account of a massacre - after he conquered the city of Isfahan, the people of Isfahan rebelled against him, which he revenged by commanding a general slaughter and building a pyramid with 70,000 human heads afterwards. Timur also triggered a massacre in Baghdad, which he killed 90,000 men and built 120 columns of their severed heads. The armies themselves were immense - two hundred thousand skilled warriors were assembled for the conquest of China, and countless soldiers that were enough to cover seventeen miles were gathered for the conquest of Persia. From these evidence, we can conclude that his political regime, just as his personality, was full of cruelty and ambition. What was the culture like under this political influence? My idea on one aspect of the culture was the dehumanization of the people. Historical evidence suggests that during Timur’s march into India, he decided to put more than one hundred thousand Hindu prisoners to death, and “one of the chief ecclesiastes, who in all his life had never even slaughtered a sheep, put fifteen Hindus to the sword”. One may ask how the political objectives got transferred down to the culture. One of the methods used by Timur to make people believe in him was religion. The cruelty of Timur clearly did not match with the basic values of Islam, and what Timur did was to raise the “holy wars” in order to let people forget about the true Islam. It seemed like his association with religious groups, his pronouncements about holy war and his desire for propagation of the true faith were merely propagandist measures directed by his desire to gain and retain power.
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As I was browsing through different pieces of Arabic calligraphy, I found that there were different styles of writing. The majority of the pieces were noted for its proportional measurements, angularity, and squareness. However, there were also styles that seemed more like a piece of pure artwork than calligraphy. I asked myself: are they related? Research showed that they were closely linked. Major developments occurred in the writing system of Arabic, including the development of different styles. The style that I’ve seen the most was called the Kufic, and it was one of the earliest styles to be used to record the Koran. The style of the irregular geometric shapes was called the Tughra, and it was developed from the Kufic. The biggest difference between these two styles, besides the different shapes that could be easily recognized, was the content. Tughra was no longer the record of the Koran, it was used by Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566) of the Ottoman empire as his signature. What can this difference possibly tell us about the politics at the time? Both the Timurid and the Ottoman empire were huge, however, the former only lasted for around 137 years while the latter lasted for 600 years. One of the reasons for Ottoman to last so long was because of its political system, and Tughra played a big part in it: “administrators all over the empire need to demonstrate that they have the authority of the ruler, which is done by issuing a visible emblem that can be carried and shown to everyone. That emblem is the tughra. Suleiman the Magnificent was industrious in establishing diplomatic ties, creating a formidable civil service and promulgating new laws.” Contrast to Suleiman, Timur chose not to create a long-lasting government. He created very few laws, appointed no rulers to assist him locally, and established no bureaucracies. What happened post-conquest was not important to him - the conquest itself was the most important. Because he didn't leave behind any organised political regime that would preserve his power on these lands, Timur often found himself going back to conquer again the same territories that had once fallen to his army.
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By looking deeper into the idea of enormity, we learned about Timur’s personality and political value, and the culture that was formed under this political value. When trying to understand how soldiers got convinced to kill 17 million people, we got to know what Islam meant to Timur. By comparing between two styles of Korans, we discovered that there was a development in Arabic calligraphy, and we learned about the lack of advanced political system in Timurid. This paper proves not only Roland Barthes’s statement, but also that “religion is cultural and ever-changing”.
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