Ramadan begins next week. The ninth month of the Islamic calendar is a time for spiritual reflection and fasting, and the fast will be broken with a celebration that includes gifts for children, those in need and loved ones. It is just one of several occasions for gifts in a culture that promotes giving as an essential practice. ‘The Gifts of the Sultan,’ at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, uses that custom of generosity as a thematic frame for a notable exhibition of Islamic art. ‘Some of the most beautiful, the most historically important, the most original works of Islamic art were either made as gifts or recast as gifts,’ said Linda Komaroff, curator of Islamic art and head of the Art of the Middle East Department at LACMA. Islamic art is sometimes misunderstood as limited to religious art or to a specific geography, but in fact includes much secular art in a wide range of cultures under Islamic rule or influence, from Spain to Central Asia. Some people also mistakenly believe that Islamic art, which begins in the late 7th century, lacks any figural representation and focuses solely on calligraphy and decorative patterns. But in fact, the classification includes abundant examples of figural imagery (such work is only barred in the case of specifically religious ornamentation). Most exhibitions of Islamic art are arranged chronologically, by dynasty or devoted to a specific medium or collection, rather than based on a theme, Komaroff told the Palisadian-Post. Organizing a show around the notion of gifts was an entirely new idea, as gift-giving has been an area of more interest to anthropologists than art historians, until recently. But Komaroff hoped that such a universally understood concept would emphasize our shared humanity. The artworks are divided into three types of gifts: pious, personal and state or diplomatic, and the luxury items in these categories include silk carpets and richly-woven textiles; jewelry and precious metal objects; elaborately illustrated manuscripts and beautifully illuminated Qur’ans; enameled and gilded glass; and carved and inlaid wooden objects. The personal gifts, gathered together in a small octagonal room near the entrance to the exhibit, include some stunning jewelry and dramatic and vividly colorful illustrated manuscripts. The book pages are effectively paintings in miniature, an intimate art form originally intended for one or at most two people to view, Komaroff said. The scenes are highly detailed and employ the rich colors of mineral pigments such as lapis lazuli, azurite and cinnabar, as well as gold and silver. Outside the room, a small earthenware bowl from 10th-century eastern Iran sets an appropriate note. It seems decorated with a simple graphic design. But the title card explains that the bowl’s pattern is Arabic lettering which reads, ‘He who believes in recompense (from God) is generous with gifts,’ a phrase attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. The religious gifts include those donated to shrines, including highly valued objects such as the embroidered veil, or kiswa, sent each year to drape the Ka’ba, Islam’s holiest structure. Made of stone and located in the courtyard of the great mosque of Mecca, the Ka’ba marks the start and finish of the pilgrimage, or hajj, to Mecca and is the holy place that all Muslims turn toward to pray. The old kiswa is typically divided into pieces and distributed to the pious or sold as relics. Images of a long-ago pilgrimage showing the crowds and ceremony surrounding the transport of the kiswa run in a continuous loop to provide context for the importance of the artifacts and their place in Muslim life. The state and diplomatic gifts also carry much historical resonance and there is a great deal to learn from the title cards, but these gifts have the added frisson of great social and political status. The far end of the room is dominated by massive twin portraits of Fath ‘Ali Shah of 19th-century Persia (now Iran). He actively engaged in diplomacy with England, France and Russia and sent these life-size paintings as ‘expressions of Persian royal power and aspirations at a time when Britian and Russia were competing to carve out spheres of influence in Iran,’ according to the exhibition catalogue. On Britain’s first diplomatic mission to the Fath ‘Ali Shah’s court, Captain John Malcolm brought ‘watches glittering with jewels; caskets of gold beautifully enameled; lustres of variegated glass; richly chased guns and pistols of curious construction; marvels of European science, as air guns and electrifying machines; besides a diamond of great value, and the mirrors, which had been brought up with so great toil,’ according to the ‘Life and Correspondence of Major-General Sir John Malcolm.’ Persia was seen as critical to Britain’s hold over India and the empire’s commercial interests. Much of gift-giving to and from the great Islamic courts revolved around the status of the object, and texts often emphasized an object’s monetary value while providing little in the way of actual physical description. A gift could also accrue status based on prior ownership, so objects were often ‘re-gifted.’ ‘[A re-gift is] not a cast-off,’ Komaroff said. ‘That’s our perception of it today, the unattractive sweater you get from Aunt Martha for Christmas that you try and palm off on somebody who you think is less discriminating than you are. But the previous owner can add cachet to the gift. ‘There’s a text that deals with courtly etiquette that talks about gifts that the Byzantine emperor sent to one of the early Islamic rulers. One of the things that he sent was a saddle alleged to have belonged to Alexander the Great,’ Komaroff continued. ‘So it’s not only used, it’s probably a re-gift. But because the person who had used it was such a famous figure’it’s even more important.’ In addition to beautiful and rare things, animals were often given in tribute. Tens and even hundreds of working animals like horses (highly sought after by China’s Ming Dynasty), camels and donkeys could be gifted along with small numbers of more exotic species like lions, leopards, lynxes and giraffes. The medieval ‘Book of Gifts and Rarities,’ cited in the exhibit catalogue, mentions an envoy bearing ‘white partridges, peacocks, cranes, herons … huge bears that played musical instruments.’ The Ottoman Empire’s Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha demanded a white unicorn in the 16th century and it is claimed that he ultimately received one. The animals might also be re-gifted: one rhinoceros was first given as a gift by a sultan to a governor of Portuguese India, then sent to Lisbon to the King of Portugal, Manuel I, who shipped it on to Pope Leo X, but the animal died during a shipwreck off the coast of Italy. Sadly, gifts could also include human concubines and slaves, (though no Muslim could be legally enslaved). The ‘Gifts of the Sultan’ exhibit itself relies on gifts, or loans, to be more exact, from the collections of more than three dozen museums, institutions and individuals, to assemble the 225 items in the show. In an ironic twist, important loans from three Russian institutions’the State Hermitage Museum, the Moscow Kremlin and the National Library of Russia’were withheld because Russian officials said they were fearful that the artworks might be seized to enforce a judgment by a U.S. court. (That ruling ordered Russia to turn over an archive of books and religious documents called the Schneerson Library to a Chabad organization that has been fighting a court battle to regain possession for decades.) Despite assurances by the U.S. that no Russian art would be seized as collateral, a boycott of sorts ensued. As a result, neither LACMA nor the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston will display the jewel-encrusted Ottoman saddle and other Turkish and Persian gifts originally expected from the Russians. Only the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, will have that opportunity, when the exhibit moves there for its third and final stop in spring 2012. This was a disappointment, Komaroff said, ‘especially because for some of the loans’from the Hermitage, we had agreed five years prior. But it wasn’t the fault of anyone at any of the museums’it wasn’t their doing and they were embarrassed, but it was just one of those strange little things that happens sometimes. I spent a lot of time in the former Soviet Union and I think some things don’t always change and one of them is maybe Russian intractability.’ She has heard that some agreement is likely to be reached by the fall, so that exhibitions opening in 2012 scheduled to have other Russian loans will probably get them. But there are numerous other remarkable gifts in LACMA’s show. Perhaps including the gift of understanding. ‘I certainly did, as a byproduct of the show, want to give people a different impression of Islam. That it’s not a religion that’s based in war,’ Komaroff said. ‘That generosity, a concept that we can understand very well, is integrated into the religion itself and it’s a large part of the culture that was spawned by the religion. I hope that’s one of the things that people take away.’ ’Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts’ will run through September 5 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
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