B A R A K A 0 B
mankind
Words
and clay form
a natural pairing in the arts of Islamic lands.
Writing and clay are primordial agents in
Muslim traditions concerning the Creation;
the first thing God created was the pen, which
He then commanded to write everything
that would be until the Day of Judgment. On
Saturday, the first day, God created clay,from
which He fashioned the earth on Sunday. On
Friday, the last day of Creation, God shaped
L E S S
out of clay.
The use of the
pen is an attribute
of God, and the ability
to understand writing sepa-
rates mankind from the rest of
creation: "And thy Lord is the Most
Generous, who taught by the pen, taught
Man what he did not know" (Qur'an 96:4-5).
Writing and clay hold a preeminent place in
traditional Islamic cosmology. The physical
world and all that happens in it flow from
God's creative employ-ment of words and clay.
What we broadly call "Islamic art" is a com-
plex visual tradition that developed largely
in response to words - specifically, the words
of God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad
I N G S
(570-632).
The divine
revelation,
known as the
Qur'an, came in oral
form: it was spoken
by the angel Gabriel to
Muhammad, who memorized it and
recited it to his followers, who also memo-
rized it. Muhammad was the perfect vessel to
receive God's word, for he is said to have been
unlettered, hence uncontaminated by literary
traditions.
Not long after Muhammad's death in 632,
his followers set the Qur'an in writing. In a
sense, this pivotal action created Islamic art.
Because of its divine origin, the text of the
Qur'an is obviously charged with a certain
I N C L
W bara-
ka, or bless-
ing power, and because Arabic letters were
used to record, preserve, and disseminate the
word of God, they too came to partake of this
spiritual force. To write the words of God
beautifully was an act of worship that con-
veyed blessings and forgiveness to the believ-
er. In a culture that fused aesthetics and piety,
the quality of one's writing was considered a
reflection of one's soul.
A Y
OPPOSITE:
Fig. i. Small
bowl with deer and
W inscriptions: "blessing"
(baraka) Iraq (Basra),ninth
"century.Earthenwarewith luster
paintingover opaque tin glaze (5.6 x
r6.2 cm). 2002.50,71.
THIS PAGE: Fig. 2. Bowl with inscrip-
tion and birds. EasternIran(Nishapur)
or Uzbekistan (Samarkand),late ninth
- tenth century. Earthenwarewith
painting in slip underglaze (5.9 X20.7
cm). 2002.50.92. Both bowlsfrom
HarvardUniversity Art Museums,
The Norma Jean Calderwood Collection
ofIslamic Art. Photographscourtesy
ofPresident and Fellows ofiHarvard
College.
RIGHT: Fig. 3. Large bowl with
two inscriptions:"Modesty is a branch
offaith, andfaith is in Paradise."(black)
"Greedis a sign ofpoverty. Peace."
(red). Uzbekistan (Samarkand),late
ninth - tenth century. Earthenware
with painting in slip underglaze
(9.6 X 26.9 cm). 2002.5o.88

OPPOSITE PAGE: Fig. 4. Plaquein the

shape of a mihrab with inscription:
"Say,He is God, the One, the Only
God, the Eternal,the Absolute. He
begetteth no4 nor is he begotten. And
there is none like unto Him." (Qur'an,
12). Iran, late i i oos. Fritware,
molded with turquoise glaze. (3.97 x
25.72 cm). HaruardUniversity Art
Museums. Gift ofFrancisLee Friedman.
1955.89. Photographscourtesy of
Presidentand Fellows ofHarvard
college.

Arabic script became the most revered
visual art form in Islamic culture, its presence
alone evoking the faith. Non-Semitic lan-
guages, such as Turkish and Persian, adopted
its graphemes. Over the centuries, Muslim
calligraphers strove to improve the legibility,
beauty, and expressiveness of the script. Proof
of their success is the omnipresence of Arabic
script in Islamic art, appearing in all lands, all
centuries, and all media.
Potters have long been among the most
accomplished and prolific of Muslim artists.
Although largely anonymous, the history
of Islamic ceramics is one of inexhaustible
creativity and continual experimentation,
driven by a delight in colorful surface deco-
ration. No matter their ethnic or linguistic
group, Muslim potters have continually
turned to Arabic script, finding ever-new
ways to employ its kaleidoscope of forms.
Arabic script serves as one of the principal
motifs in the earliest Islamic ceramics that
can be considered luxury wares. The bowl
with a fat-tailed deer in FIGURE i is an example
of these wares. It was made in the town of
Basra, in southwestern Iraq, sometime in the
ninth century, at a time when the capital city
of the Abbasid empire (750-12 58) was just
up the Tigris River in Samarra. Appearing
in front of and below the deer is the Arabic
word barakca or "blessing." There is a curious
harmony between the lean legs of the deer
and the wiry writing. Letters and legs are
about the same thickness and, because Arabic
is written from right to left, both terminate in
triangular "hooves."
This small bowl represents one of the most
influential innovations of the Basra potters:
luster painting. Inspired by white-bodied
stonewares appearing from China, Basra pot-
ters covered their earthenware vessels with
a tin glaze that turned white upon firing. To
Muslim potters, the resulting white surface
offered a blank sheet awaiting decoration. In
simplest terms, the luster technique involved
painting powdered metal oxides (usually sil-
17

Fig. 5. Bowl with courtly couple and
Persian inscriptions.Iran (Kashan),
ca. 12oo. Fritwarewith lusterpainting
overglaze and splashes of turquoise
(d. 35.cm). IsabellaStewart Gardner
Museum, C15w0o.
ver and copper, mixed in solution with clay
particles) onto a tin-glazed ceramic surface
that had already been fired once. The second
firing took place at a lower temperature in
a kiln with a reduced oxygen atmosphere.
When the ceramic was cool, it was buffed
with a cloth to reveal an iridescent stain.
Blessings can take many forms: Encircled
by wide-eyed birds, the word barakaholds the
center of the bowl in FIGURE 2. With its green-
ish design painted over a white ground, scal-
loped rim, and prominent inscription, this
bowl imitates the luster bowl, with which
it is roughly contemporary. But luster tech-
nique was a closely guarded trade secret, so
the potter has painted his birds and inscrip-
tion by different means: using colored clays
in slip form. The pinkish earthenware body
was blanketed with a white slip, the design
painted in greenish clay, and the whole cov-
ered by a clear glaze. The bowl with birds
was made at the eastern edges of the Abbasid
empire, during the reign of the Samanid
dynasty (875-999), whose princely realm
included northeastern Iran and Uzbekistan.
Slip-painting was only one of the tech-
niques used by Samanid potters, but with it
they created some of the most majestic exam-
ples of Arabic calligraphy in Islamic art. The
large, deep bowl in FIGURE 3 is a superb exam-
ple of the so-called Samanid epigraphic wares.
The two-color inscription is written in an
angular and stately form of script popularly
known as Kufic, which by the Samanid era
had become the preferred script for transcrib-
ing the Qur'an. Except for the central dot in
this bowl, the script is the only ornament. By
exaggerating the horizontal sections of the
letters, the calligrapher has created a balanced
design, carefully distributing the verticals,
which ascend toward the center. By avoiding
symmetry, he has preserved the counterclock-
wise movement of the writing.
Even without knowing the content of
the inscription, the austere power of this
vessel communicates its authority and spiri-
tual force. In fact, the inscription records
sayings attributed to two of the most influen-
tial figures in Islamic history, the Prophet
Muhammad and Ali b. Abi Talib, his son-in-
law and Islam!s fourth orthodox caliph.
The quote from Muhammad holds the rim:
"Modesty is a branch of faith and faith is in
paradise." The quote from Ali is written in
the slender, red letters: "Greed is a sign of
poverty." At the end of this short statement,
the potter has written an appeal for "Peace."
These inscriptions are extracts from a
vast body of knowledge known as Hadithor
Tradition literature, comprised of sayings
attributed to the Prophet Muhammad and
his early Companions, as well as narratives
of their actions. Assiduously collected and
catalogued in the decades following the
death of the Prophet, Hadith is second only to
the Qur'an in sacred authority and spiritual
power. More long-lived than paper or parch-
ment, pottery vessels such as this bowl pre-
serve the earliest written examples of Hadith.
Easy to break but difficult to get rid of,
there is little in this world more durable than
pottery. What, then, could be more natural
than to fashion out of clay the eternal words
of God as revealed in the Qur'an? On the
bright turquoise plaque in FIGURE 4, the words
of the I I2th chapter of the Qur'an are mod-
eled in relief and run around three edges:
"Say, He is God, the One, the Only God, the
Eternal, the Absolute. He begetteth not, nor
is he begotten. And there is none like unto
Him." This short chapter sets out the funda-
mental principles of the unity of God (tawhid),
differentiating Islam from Christianity. The
small plaque is in the shape of a mihrab,the
focal point in a mosque that marks the direc-
tion toward Mecca. It may have been used in a
shrine or mausoleum to indicate the direction
for prayer.
Not all writing on Islamic ceramics is of
a sacred nature, as demonstrated by the large
luster plate made in Iran around the year 1200
(FIGURE 5). On this luxurious plate, Persian
poetry is written in Arabic script, reflecting
the revival of Persian as a literary language
after centuries of Arabic domination. On the
cavetto, the inscription is written in a spidery
script known as naskh in brown luster against
the white ground; on the everted rim, it is
scratched through a band of luster to reveal
the white ground below. The poetry on the
rim expresses the anguished longing of sepa-
rated lovers:

The heart is branded on its soul with

the grief of your love;
Separation from you makes the world
a prison;
The heart that has not the patience for
union with you,
Alas that it can suffer through separation.
At the center of the plate is a courtly couple
whose round, haloed faces and Asian features
represent an ideal of physical beauty brought
to Iran by the Saljuqs, a Turkic people who
initially arrived in eastern Islamic lands as
mercenaries. Rising to power in 1037 in Iran,
the Saljuqs, and their successors the Atabegs,
sponsored a brilliant era for art, literature, and
science that was brought to a sudden close by
the coming of the Mongols in the 122os. The
widespread destruction caused by the Mongol
conquests - palaces and libraries burnt, and
treasuries looted - is blamed for the loss of an
incalculable number of manuscripts. In many
instances, the Persian poetry written on
ceramic vessels such as this plate has been
preserved nowhere else.
For centuries Muslim potters have carved,
painted, and molded Arabic letters into their
work, endlessly inspired by the script's artistic
potential and the power ascribed to its pres-
ence. Made by Iraqi artists more than a thou-
sand years apart, the vessels in FIGURES 2 and
6 both repeat the word baraka,an appeal for
Denevoience ot cilvme ongin. Pig. t. blessings and Peace: Desert
The plate in FIGURE 6 was fashioned in Storm. Wasma'a Chorbachi,7993.
White stoneware, highfire soda glaze,
1993 by an Iraqi-born artist at the Radcliffe
iron oxide, Oribe blue glaze rim,
Ceramic Studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts. low fire gold luster (d. 35.56 cm).
It employs inventive and modern ceramic Cambridge,MA, 1993. Harvard
techniques to express a timeless grief. Titled University Art Museums. Purchase
Blessings andPeace: DesertStorm, the plate elo- through the generosity ofNeil and
Angelica Rudenstine, Warren and
quently expresses the artist's anguish caused
Jane Shapleigh and Mrs. Robert B.
by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the Newman in honorof James Cuno and
American response. Its dark brown and tan through the generosity of Corinaand
textured surface shimmers with subtle luster DavidSilich von-Schultess, 2003.7.
tints, evoking the fiery haze and scorched
earth caused by the burning of the oil fields.
The horizon is suggested by a string of script
stretched across the earth. The word baraka
is carved into the surface over and again, an
appeal not only for God's blessing, but also
a reference to the despoiled blessings of the
earth. The endnote, written just below the
horizon, is a plea for peace (salam).
'9
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TITLE: Baraka: Blessings in Clay

SOURCE: Studio Potter 35 no2 Summ/Fall 2007

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