São Paulo – From the architecture of the temples in Petra to the huge mosques in Baghdad, the evolution of art under the influence of Islamism will be discussed in the course Islamic Art, set to take place on October 6, 13, 20 and 28 in the city of São Paulo. The Institute for Arab Culture (Icarabe) organized the course and Plínio Freire, holder of a master’s degree in History at São Paulo University (USP), will the professor teaching it.
The first class will talk about the architecture of the city of Petra, Jordan. Freire points out that before the rise of Islam in the 7th century, that region was a route for desert caravans, a place of Arab culture but with a strong Greek and Roman influence. “These influences intersect in Petra, which carries Hellenistic and Mesopotamian elements. They are crucial to understand the rise of Islam”, he says.
The professor labels Petra’s architecture as “exuberant” and talks about what can be found in the city. “The columns with crooked spires [upper ends] of the Corinthian order, all within a Hellenistic culture context, with Mesopotamian and Egyptian elements, and the Assyrian houses replicas”, he says.
“The Arabs were brilliant in collecting elements from different cultures. They displayed an excellent taste and collected elements from the cultures to which they were getting in touch with”, he says.
The second class focuses on the city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia and the rise of Islam. “The city of Mecca was a large trade center and that’s why it became a large religious center. I’ll show how the religions functioned in the caravans and talk about the formation of the Arabic, which came from poets that sang the glories of the caravan tribes”, he said.
Poetry, explains the professor, had a crucial role in the creation of the Arabic. He says that when the different desert tribes met, the poets had to make use of an intermediate language among the different languages spoken in the tribes, that is, a language that could be understood by the members of several tribes that met to show off their conquests. From there came the Arabic. “That’s why it’s such a difficult language, because it was created by the poets”, he says. Besides poetry, tapestry was another highlight of the period.
The city of Damascus, Syria, and the expansion of Islam are discussed in the third class. After the death of the prophet Muhammad the division between Sunnis and Shiites take place. With the decision made by the majority of the prophet’s followers to give leadership of the religion to a caliph (word that means successor), the Islamic empire quickly expands and the center for the religious power goes from Mecca to Damascus.
“Then begins the rise of the Islamic art”, says Freire. “The first extraordinary, luxurious, sophisticated mosques are built. It’s the Islam as a political expression”, he says.
The professor recalls that the main mosque used to be placed besides the caliph’s palace. The main mosque of the period, the Great Umayyad Mosque, still standing today in Damascus, was “the first one built within this imperial context, designed as a work of art”. The place, which used to hold a Roman temple and a Christian basilica, was redecorated with marble, mosaics and luxury decoration. The Dome of the Rock mosque, in Jerusalem, was built following the same guidelines of luxury and sophistication, although in a smaller size, says the professor.
The city of Baghdad, Iraq, is the topic of the fourth class. With the fall of the Umayyad dynasty and rise of the Abbasid dynasty, the center of power is transferred from Damascus to Baghdad, the city that was artificially built in the form of circles. “The circle-shaped city means an empire, since the circle meant the whole world”, he says.
In this period, between the 8th and 9th centuries, the numbers of Islam followers increases fast and the mosques leave behind the luxury to be able to house the increasing number of followers. “The mosques leave behind the luxury profile and are now being made of bricks, but they are very large and with very large inside patios”, says the professor.
According to him, this leaves deep marks in Islam architecture, since the mosques are not luxury constructions anymore but minimalistic in the decoration with much larger areas.
Quick facts
Islamic Art course
When: October 6, 13, 20 (Thursdays) and 28 (Friday), from 7 pm to 9:30 pm.
Where: Martins Fontes Bookstore Auditorium – Av. Paulista, 509 – Tel. 2167-9900 (Brigadeiro subway station)
Prices:
General public: BRL 250 (USD 75.02); single class: BRL 65 (USD 19.5)
Icarabe’s members,students and retirees: BRL 200 (USD 59.92); single class: BRL 55 (USD 16.47).
Registration and information at cursos@icarabe.org.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani