Britain and the Arab Middle East
Page 17
Altogether, Bell showed a fascination with Baghdad, past and present, and her visit to this city did much to revive her spirits and strengthen her resolve to know and document Mesopotamia as only a few other Western travellers had done before her. Going back to her first eager visit in 1909, however, it would be impossible to predict how all-consuming the affairs of Baghdad and its country would become for Bell later in her life. Baghdad would witness her greatest achievements and her darkest sorrows. Ultimately, it would know her in death and be her final resting place.
Fig. 4.10 Bell’s photograph of the British Residency in Baghdad in 1911, with a paddle steamer in front, from across the Tigris River. Bell stayed with the Consul General and his wife here in both 1909 and 1911, finding her accommodations luxurious and comfortable.
Samarra
Bell departed Baghdad on 12 April 1909 and, having rejoined her servants and caravan, headed out of the northern side of the city, following the Tigris upstream. The natural countryside was flat and treeless above Baghdad, and a blustery wind made Bell think back wistfully to the comforts of the British Residency whence she had come. But there was much to divert her attention in the way of artificial mounds marking the places of ancient towns and villages. Bell's training in ancient history had made her aware of some of the momentous events that were believed to have taken place in these parts in pre-Classical and Classical Antiquity. These included the Battle of Opis, which brought an end to the Neo-Babylonian empire in 529 BCE, and the retreat of the emperor Julian's Roman army shortly before his death, in 363 CE.58
But another, later, era of antiquity was about to consume all of Bell's attentions, its traces already beginning to reveal themselves in the form of decorated Islamic period pottery sherds strewn thickly over the surface of heaped earthen mounds. Crossing to the other side of the Tigris on a kelek at Balad on 14 April,59 and then passing over the dry cutting of an ancient canal, the Nahr el Kaim, Bell found herself surrounded by the vast ruin fields of the great city of Samarra, once the dazzling capital of the Islamic Abbasid dynasty in the ninth century CE, where ‘bazaars and palaces stretched uninterruptedly along the east bank of the Tigris for a distance of twenty-one miles’.60 Based on the history of Samarra – much of which was reported by ninth-century Islamic historians – it is known that the city had enjoyed only a brief period of magnificence, beginning with the caliph al-Mu‘tasim (833–42), who founded a new city that would accommodate not only the Abbasid court but the increasingly powerful and numerous Turkish army corps.61 Four of al-Mu‘tasim's successors would continue to inhabit Samarra, adding ‘market to market, palace to palace and pleasure-ground to pleasure-ground’.62 Finally, in 892, the caliph al-Mu‘tadid returned to Baghdad, and the city declined rapidly thereafter:
Fig. 4.11 Bell’s photograph of the thirteenth-century Bab Talisman in Baghdad, taken in 1909. When she returned in 1911, she took additional photos of this gate with a telephoto lens, capturing nicely the image above the doorway – a pair of winged serpent-dragons with a human figure sitting cross-legged between them. Bell’s photographic record of the gate is valuable, as the Bab Talisman was completely destroyed by the Ottoman army when they withdrew from Baghdad in 1917.
the walls of Samarra crumbled back into the desert from which they had arisen, and like the rose-scented clay of Sa'di's apologue when the fragrance had vanished, became once more the dust they had been. A glory so dazzling, so abrupt a decline, can scarcely be paralleled on any other page of history.63
The city of Samarra had been magnificent in its time, its massive piles of heaped earth that covered some 57 square km – probably the largest ruin field in the world – providing testimony to its once caliphal grandeur and extravagance.64 While on the ground it only seems to feature shapeless masses of piled earth and broken bricks, from the air one can clearly discern the outlines of vast cantonments for the huge army corps, streets and broad avenues, horse-racing tracks and polo fields, congregational mosques and, above all, palaces with their monumental enclosure walls, numerous gateways, residential courts and grand audience halls.
Bell herself would have been aware of the existence of Samarra on the Tigris before the start of her Mesopotamian trip and would have ensured that she was generally apprised of any current knowledge of the site. Her preparations would have made her familiar with Islamic writers such as al-Ya‘qubi and al-Tabari, who had recounted Samarra's history, and her more recent study of the early Islamic city of Raqqa and her discovery of Ukhaidir – the latter of which had many architectural parallels to Samarra – would have made her especially attuned to the site's distinctive details of construction.
Of recent archaeological investigations at Samarra, Bell seems to have known about those made by a French general by the name of Lucien de Beylié, who had visited Samarra in 1907 and had published his results in the same year.65 Bell was also carrying with her a copy of a short book on the history and architecture of Samarra, which had been recently published by a young German scholar by the name of Ernst Herzfeld.66 Herzfeld would go on to have a famed career because of his astounding achievements, especially in the fields of Iranian archaeology, history and religion. But in 1909, Herzfeld was still a young and relatively unknown 30-year-old Oriental scholar with a promising academic future. This would be an important year for Herzfeld, as he completed his masterful work on the desert palace of Mshatta, located south of Amman in present-day Jordan.67 This article would present his controversial but correct opinion that Mshatta was an Islamic Umayyad construction of the eighth century, thereby overturning earlier arguments for its Sasanian, Ghassanid or Lakhmid dates, asserted by Strzygowski and others.68 Even today, Herzfeld's Mshatta article, published in 1910, is considered a masterpiece among studies of Umayyad art because of its clear methodology, persuasive argument and broad frame of reference.69
Bell, with her own archaeological experience and confidence, felt entitled to criticize Herzfeld's efforts at Samarra. Upon arriving there and inspecting the Great Mosque, she wrote the following in a letter to her father:
Now Samarra is the most important place in the world for early Mohammadan buildings. Two people have worked here, a Frenchman and a German. The good old Frenchman (he's a general with a taste for archaeology) published a short paper after a still shorter visit and gave some very interesting information. The plans were not so good because he confessed that had lost his notes before drawing them out – rather an innocent admission!70 The German published a monograph with a great flourish of trumpets and was particularly pleased because he said his labours proved Strzygowski to be all wrong.71 I confidently expected to find all the things he had done could not be improved on; I have only seen one of them as yet (one of the originals) and Herzfeld's plan, except as to the general outlines, is the creature of his fancy. I shall therefore have to do this one over again and I rather fear that the same will apply to the rest of his work. He's an architect. How an architect could spend an hour in that mosque and not see the extraordinarily interesting details of construction which escaped his notice, I can't imagine. Sometimes when I have occasion to go closely over the work of professional archaeologists, I think I'm something of an archaeologist myself – but of course that's going too far! At any rate one can always have enough respect for the things one is studying to reproduce them as they really are. And that's half the battle.72
In another letter a few days later, Bell wrote:
As I feared, all Herzfeld's work has had to be redone and I have been at it hard for 3 days and a half. However, it's all finished now and I don't regret it because one learns more about buildings when one goes over them brick by brick with the measuring tape than in any other way. Also (but this is an unworthy consideration!) I shall have a merry time showing up Herzfeld. He deserves it however.73
The letters demonstrate that Bell found the recent studies of Samarra's architecture, especially Herzfeld's efforts, to be lacking in detail and accuracy, and felt compelled to produce her own, authoritative
architecture study, complete with photographs, descriptions and carefully prepared plans. As it turned out, the Great Mosque at Samarra was not her only objective. Bell was ambitious and seems to have been intent on making a record of several of Samarra's Islamic period monuments during the days of her visit in 1909. Thus, between 15 and 18 April, she set out to make plans, descriptions and photographs of the site of Qadissiyya (Fig. 4.12) and the ruins that constitute the famous Dar al-Khilafa, or the Palace of the Caliphate, a residence and principal place of caliphal government in Samarra (Figs 4.13 and 4.14).74 On the opposite, western side of the Tigris, where there were additional ruins of Samarra, Bell planned and photographed the Qubbat al-Sulaybiyya (her Kubbet es Slebiyeh) – an octagonal building whose function is still debated – and further to the north, Qasr al-‘Ashiq, a well-preserved palace of fired brick and gypsum, which was probably built by the caliph al-Mu‘tamid sometime between 877 and 882 CE (Fig. 4.15).75
Bell seems, however, to have spent most of her time recording the formidable remains of the Great Mosque of Mutawakkil, this lying beyond the modern walled town of Samarra.76 Constructed by the caliph al-Mutawakkil between 848 and 852 CE, this mosque was intended not only to serve the growing number of the faithful gathered in prayer in the midst of the city, but also to provide a grand stage for the caliph's entry during prayers on Fridays and major holidays.77 The mosque featured numerous rows of brick and marble supports for the roof (long since removed), all enclosed within an immense rectangle of bastioned walls of fired brick, producing the largest mosque in the world.78 It is perhaps one of the most famous Islamic mosques in Iraq, for its enormous size but also for its distinctive spiral minaret, known as the Malwiye, which stands to the north of the mosque. The Malwiye's cylindrical tower is distinguished by a sloping ramp that winds round the tower to the top, 50 m above the base. It provides a commanding view over the Great Mosque and the medieval city of Samarra beyond.79
Bell found Herzfeld's published plan of the Great Mosque ‘woefully bad’ and so set out to produce her own. The plan (Fig. 4.16) (reproduced in her book Amurath to Amurath) improves upon Herzfeld's 1907 effort, which included several notable errors. Bell was also careful to take good photographs, which provide interesting and important details of the architectural features she observed in the mosque and associated minaret (Fig. 4.17).
Heading north from Samarra along the east bank of the Tigris on 19 April, Bell encountered many other extensive Islamic period ruins and passed through the ruins of what was known in the Abbasid period as the southern sector of al-Mutawakkiliyya, the city that the caliph al-Mutawakkil set about constructing immediately to the north of Samarra around 859. The new city was intended to replace Samarra as the Abbasid capital and may additionally have satisfied some of al-Mutawakkil's kingly pride and voracious appetite for building.80 Alas, al-Mutawakkil was to enjoy only nine months of glory before being assassinated by his Turkish generals during a nightly drinking bout in the palace that he had built for himself at the northern end of the city. Upon his death, much of al-Mutawakkiliyya was pulled down and demolished, and it was never again occupied.81
Travelling past the remains of many of the city's buildings, comprising broad avenues, houses, military cantonments, markets and musallas (open spaces for public prayers during festivals), Bell was most interested in reaching the mosque of Abu Dulaf, which she ended up spending almost five hours measuring and photographing. Once more, Bell had been dissatisfied with the reports of earlier visitors, especially in this case with those of General de Beylié, and felt compelled to produce her own detailed and complete record.82 Like the earlier mosque of al-Mutawakkil in Samarra, Abu Dulaf was a congregational mosque and possessed a similar layout and accompanying spiral minaret (Fig. 4.18). In place of the mudbrick interior supports of the Great Mosque, which had either disintegrated or been removed in their entirety, the interior of the Abu Dulaf mosque was well preserved, its internal rows of rectangular and square piers having been built entirely with fired brick. In contrast, the exterior wall was constructed of mudbrick, and its consequent deterioration over the centuries made precise recording of details difficult.83 Nonetheless, Bell made a valiant attempt to record the mosque, and her resulting photographs, description and plan are commendable for their accuracy and details.84
Fig. 4.12 Bell’s 1909 photograph of the massive octagonal enclosure of Qadissiyya from the south-east at Samarra, showing the remains of its round bastions. The site, which appears never to have been inhabited, probably marks the place of an unfinished city started by the caliph Harun al-Rashid in the eighth century.
Moving beyond the northern limits of al-Mutawakkiliyya, Bell reached the town of Dur, where she stopped to visit and record a mausoleum, known as the Imam al-Dur, dedicated to a Shi‘ite holy man and built by a prince of Mosul during the dynasty of the ‘Uqaylids in the eleventh century.85 Striking in form and decoration, the mausoleum was topped by a muqarnas dome of five superimposed octagonal zones of squinches, decreasing in height towards the top (Fig. 4.19). The interior of the tomb featured an elaborate honeycombed stucco decoration, typifying the Samarran ‘rococo’ style that appeared in Iraq under the ‘Uqaylids.86
Fig. 4.13 Bell’s 1909 photograph of the triple-vaulted Bab al-Amma Gate of the palace of Dar al-Khilafa at Samarra, c.836 CE. It lay on the main axis of the southern palace, the Dar al-Amma, which ran from west to east. This was the formal gatehouse through which visitors, coming up from the river to the palace, would arrive. According to the textual sources, the Bab al-Amma was also a location for public punishments and executions.
Bell relates that upon arriving at the Imam al-Dur, she noted an Arabic inscription engraved on a marble slab by the doorway of the shrine, where she read the date 871 AH (1466 CE) after a villager had scraped away some of the whitewash that covered it at the bottom. This date would become the source of some disagreement between Bell and Herzfeld; Herzfeld had inspected the inscription in 1908 but had not seen the date. The ensuing correspondence between Bell and Herzfeld between 1909 and 1911 contains much discussion of this Imam al-Dur inscription, over the course of which the eminent Arabic philologist Max van Berchem also weighed in on the issue.87
Fig. 4.14 Bell’s 1909 photograph of fragments of stucco work, presumed to come from the Dar al-Khilafa at Samarra, collected and placed outside Bell’s tent. The stucco pattern seen here is of the so-called Samarra ‘Style C’, which developed in the ninth century CE. A copy of this photograph can be found among Herzfeld’s papers, now housed in the Freer and Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. It was probably enclosed in a letter that Bell sent to Herzfeld in 1910.
This controversy among Bell and her colleagues in the early twentieth century, however, seems trifling compared to the recent reports that the Imam al-Dur mausoleum was blown up and completely destroyed by the Islamic State (IS), probably in October 2014. This act was part of IS's aggressive destruction of Shi'a monuments and material culture.88 The beautiful mausoleum, with its remarkable dome – the first of its kind in Iraq – which was respected and untouched by both Sunni and Shi'a Muslims alike for almost one thousand years, exists no more.
With her copious notes, plans and photographs, Bell no doubt wanted to make something of her days at Samarra, aspiring to publish her findings together with her work on Raqqa and Ukhaidir. These ambitions are expressed in a letter that she wrote in April 1909:
I'm planning a book now; it's to be called ‘Khethar, Samarra and Rakka: a study in Mesopotamian architecture.’ What do you think of that? And all the pottery fragments and the plaster work and the Rakka pots will come in too. It would be wonderfully interesting to write, but it will take a long time. I feel very much excited about it however. The only drawback is it won't pay! but don't mention that to Heinemann – nor to my bankers.89
Fig. 4.15 Bell’s 1909 view of the brickwork on the western side of the northern façade of the Qasr al-‘Ashiq at Samarra, believed to have been built by the cal
iph al-Mu’tamid c.877–82 CE. Blind niches and polylobed arches were set between semicircular buttresses. The niches were partially blocked with bricks at a later date, since their back walls were too thin and had collapsed.
Her ambition to publish Samarra in a big way seems to have continued upon her return to England later in the year, for she began to probe further the state of research on the site, gathering additional information about each monument that she had inspected. Through such probes, she learned that a French scholar by the name of Henri Viollet had been to Samarra in 1908 and had recorded the remains of the Dar al-Khilafa, the Great Mosque and the Qasr al-‘Ashiq, publishing his work in 1909.90 It seems that Viollet also had plans to return to Samarra the following year to carry out excavations, the eventual outcome of which would be his further report on some of the details of the Dar al-Khilafa.91
Fig. 4.16 Bell’s 1909 plan of the Great Mosque of Samarra (c.847–61 CE) and its spiral minaret (the Malwiye), which was included in her monograph Amurath to Amurath. With this effort, Bell sought to improve upon an earlier plan of the mosque published by Ernst Herzfeld. Herzfeld would himself produce a muchcorrected plan of the mosque in the same year.
Fig. 4.17 Bell’s 1909 photo of the surviving brickwork of the entrance to the Dar al-Imara on the south side of the qibla wall of the Great Mosque of Samarra, next to an outer semicircular tower. It matches well the description provided by Herzfeld, who reports a brick frame that formed part of the entrance to the Dar al-Imara on the west side; this was removed in the course of the post-war restoration of the mosque and stabilization of the qibla wall. Bell’s photograph of the unusual brick pattern of five horizontal layers alternating with one layer of vertically set bricks remains the best visual record of this now vanished feature.