Islam and Marble from the Origins to Saddam Hussein

Abstract

This monograph stems from a long-standing interest in the re-use of Roman antiquities during the Middle Ages and later in the West. While such antiquities—spolia—were sometimes to be found close at hand, it is often evident that the artifacts came from afar, usually in Roman times, but sometimes transported on (for example) Venetian or Pisan galleys. Comparing maps of the Mediterranean during the Roman and mediaeval centuries, and studying (scarce) mediaeval accounts of how they collected spolia makes it clear that any study must range much further than the Italian peninsula, not least to Byzantium. But maps show that a large proportion of once-Roman sites in North Africa, Spain and Syria, and then increasingly in Anatolia and the homelands of Byzantium, were under Islamic control. Indeed, a quick survey of early Islamic monuments demonstrates a devotion to marble spolia at least as profound as that in the Christian West or Byzantine East. Clearly, then, any consideration of mediaeval re-use of the antique architectural heritage (of which much more survived then than now) has to look at Islam as well as at Byzantium. Taking such a broad perspective of this once-Roman “lake”, it is nonsense to write of the ramifications of the “classical tradition” without considering how Islam dealt with the gifts of Hellenism and of Romanitas—the more so because there is evidence that Muslims and Christians competed for the best pieces, which became ever scarcer as the centuries passed. In what follows, while heartened by a broad range of translations into European languages, I am hampered by my lack of Arabic or Turkish; archives and books in both languages surely have much to offer in this area. As Franz Rosenthal wrote (1968, VII), this work represents the very imperfect execution of what I feel was a very good intention.