BLINDING ISLAMOPHOBIA

Was it synchronicity or serendipity? Because our flights did not connect up conveniently, we had an overnight stay at Glasgow. Because we arrived early, the stopover was really a day and a night, so, instead of staying out at the airport as we had done on previous occasions when the break was not so long, we decided we would stay in a hotel in the centre of Glasgow. We chose the Premier Inn at the top of Buchanan Street because of its core location. This would allow us to explore the city and enjoy civic life during our break.

What we thought was a new hotel, turned out to be a newly refurbished place that came with all the compromises an existing infrastructure imposes onto new uses. The entry from the taxi drop-off point led us to a set of stairs that had a bag lift off to one side that looked like a poor compromise and a sad apology. Both proved inconvenient; we chose to drag the bags up the flight rather than grapple with gadgetry. We were not amused, because, after this awkward struggle, we discovered that the hotel reception was not even on this level, but two stories up. We had only experienced this unusual inconvenience at a hotel in Fraserborough, where one had to similarly go deep into the hotel and travel to an upper level just to get to the entry area.

We went up in the lift, only to step out and squeeze into a crowded, dimly lit corridor with a queue of people waiting to check in. The reception area was somewhere down the passage and around to the left. When this space was eventually revealed, we saw an arrangement of freestanding computers with a staff member standing beside each one. This was the reception/check-in area that looked like the new version of banking chambers.

After going though the formalities, we had to retrace our path back along the crowded passageway to the lifts. Having successfully negotiated the various obstacles presented to us, we arrived at the appointed floor and the room number. The room was a pleasant, standard space with good views across Glasgow.

We decided we needed a coffee, so retraced our path down in the lift, down the unwelcoming stairs, and out into Sauchiehall Street. It is always a pleasant street to be in, with its spacious busy-ness that generates a pleasant, interesting ambience. The coffee shop was nearby, and crowded, but we found a table. Packed places never bother us; in fact, we prefer this as one knows that the service, and food and drink are good.

After the break, we started the stroll up the street, passing a general store where we remembered we needed some tape to repair the damaged bag: such are airports. The stroll continued as a browse. Looking along Sauchiehall Street, the eye caught the Waterstones sign: the pace quickened. We had been in and enjoyed this store before, so were keen to be there again.

Entering the bookshop reminded one of its complexity sprawling across various levels; eventually we found the art/architecture section. The array of publications was interesting; the perusal started. Various titles were assessed as being interesting enough to jot down for future review, but one publication caught the eye. Was it the title or the striking cover: both? The book was picked up and flicked open. One knew immediately that this was going to be purchased. It was a subject that held a message as clear as that gained from the title of the CD purchased some time ago: Lullabies from the Axis of Evil. The title was Stealing from the Saracens: How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe. One knew what the subject would be, and what its intent was. The research looked thorough; one’s interest in Islamic art and architecture was stirred. It was an obvious ‘must read.’

The book was carried down to the sales desk and purchased. It was not only a book that looked good; it felt good to hold. The book had been published by Hurst Publishers, London, 2020.#

It was placed into a large paper bag, and we left the store. There was no need to look any more. The stroll down Sauchiehall Street towards our hotel took us past a luggage store. Might we find a new bag? Well, no, but we did get a backpack that was cleverly designed and would be a convenience on our journey.

We strolled on, and assessed the local restaurants to decide where we might eat that night. There was fine curry house nearby. We retreated to our room and took the opportunity to have a rest and browse the new book. It had been some time since such an exciting read had been anticipated in this way. The book was not to disappoint.

Diana Darke was the author. She had studied Arabic and now lived in Damascus, a location that gave her ample opportunities to travel and explore the region with its ancient buildings in some remote places away from the beaten tourist tracks. It was also a regon that has become increasingly subject to the impacts of wars. The thesis was simple: much of what we think of as ‘western’ architecture had its roots in the ‘east.’ It was a situation that western thinking has ignored in favour of stories rooting these ideas in its own genius, or schematically, simplistically, noting that something, some general notion, had come back with the Crusaders, as if this was a mere aside rather than any revelation.

Whatever this might have been, the story was that the west had really been the one that had developed this germ into a flowering of genius. Alas for this bravado: Darke seeks to prove things are otherwise - that our Islamophobia has blinded us to the beginnings of much of our architecture that we consider to be the pinnacle of western brilliance. She proves her thesis methodically, point by point, until it is clear that an awful of of the Gothic world is pure Islamic in its origin. Bannister Fletcher has a lot to answer for, not only by blindly promoting western architecture, but by ignoring its beginnings, by presenting the cliché of the Egypt, Greek, Roman, etc. sequence; even by seemingly reluctantly including only a couple of buildings under the title of the Islamic world, as if this work might be inferior, or an irrelevant aside in history, when it is really much more.

Darke makes it clear that things ‘Gothic’ existed in Islamic architecture hundreds of years before these forms, structures, and decorations appeared in the west; and that the route to Europe was not only via a few, ad hoc Crusaders, but that the ideas arrived by various trade routes, with pilgrimages, and via the work of scholars; and with the arrival of new materials and craftsmen too. Darke reports that, instead of the schisms we see between religions and beliefs in our age, there was a time when people were happily integrated: with Jews, Christians, Arabs all living and working together. It was a period that has proved to be critical in many matters, with Arabic translations of lost ancient Greek texts being the only source for translations into English, opening up critical scholarship that would otherwise never have be known.

Darke exposes the architectural sources with a simple deliberateness. The book is a delight to hold and read. The pages are crisply fine with a pleasant, quality sheen; the text is delicately defined on this paper. If one chose to be critical, it is that there could be more illustrations; and those that have been included in the text, could have been more carefully placed so that there is an easy conjunction for the reader between the understanding and the seeing. Matters get disturbed, disrupted, when the illustration anticipates the text by a couple of pages; or becomes revealed sometimes after the reading that begs for an illustration of the point being made. To have references that seem important presented with no illustration is disappointing, making one reach for a Google Image search just to see what the words are trying to express.

There is also a problem with repetition. There are various matters that get repeated throughout the text, with the notations under the photographs doing likewise, offering nothing new or different; they are just edited extracts taken directly from the text that the photographs illustrate. It is a shame, because a more careful awareness of this repetition and its avoidance would have removed this jarring, seemingly careless hiccup.*

These are really just little annoyances in a publication that surely has to become a ‘must read’ for all architects, just to right the wrong that has been perpetuated over the years. This text might also help us overcome the great gap and distrust that we have been encouraged to promote between our faiths that are becoming more and more extreme in their declarations of division, to the point of hate and anger. Surely we have to do better than this?

The Darke book could help in enlightening our minds and opening up our perceptions. Gosh, even the word tabby as in tabby cat comes from the Arabic. We need to be both more respectful and humble as we discover and acknowledge our origins. This book could act as the germ to start this change, and may even stimulate, rejuvenate our lost interest in decoration in architecture, its values and meaning.

#

HURST PUBLISHING

https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/stealing-from-the-saracens/

Stealing from the Saracens

How Islamic Architecture Shaped Europe

Diana Darke

A revealing history of Islamic architectural influence on Europe’s cathedrals, palaces and monuments.

‘Spectator’ Book of the Year 2020, chosen by William Dalrymple.

‘BBC History Magazine’ Best Book of 2020

Shortlisted for the A+C Book Award 2021

*

8 DEC 24

PONDERINGS

The repetitions feel like a recapping, a deliberate revision for students who may not have been paying attention. This reiteration degrades the text, giving it the hint of a text book when it is much better than this. One gets the notion that the book could have been improved, made a little sharper, more exquisite, with some subtle editing.

One is happy to say that no errors were found in this publication. It is something special in these times that are careless of spelling, grammar, and punctuation while concentrating on a misguided idea of ‘expression.’

The book has a slight naivety about it; a rawness that reads as an innocence, with texts referring to futures and pasts in the reading, tempting one to flick forwards and backwards to confirm and understand what is being alluded to, disrupting the concentrated flow of its experience.

The power and beauty of the subject prevails and makes this such an important book in this age of certain uncertainty, brazen in its centredness that is determined to express the self alone, with all of its mental health issues – defining a bland world devoid of decoration; of embellished depth with beginnings; of roots - determined to discover and reveal something of ME in the void, as self- congratulatory praised nothingness that delights in ever-new, bespoke distortions and distractions.

HORIZONS OF ASTONISHING BEAUTY: BARRY LOPEZ

The Guardian

14 Mar 2019 — ‘Horizon’ is magnificent; a contemporary epic, at once pained and urgent, personal and oracular. It is being described as Lopez's “crowning achievement”.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/14/horizon-by-barry-lopez-review

After publishing a much acclaimed book, it appears to be difficult to reproduce the same outcome in another publication. Arctic Dreams, (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York,1986), was read years ago, and is one of the few books of which duplicates were purchased so as to have the book in different locations - to never be without it.+  

On a recent flight via Doha on a Qatar Airways journey, Arctic Dreams turned up as an audiobook on the entertainment system. Unfortunately, it was not the whole book, just edited portions of it that had been carefully selected for their poetic expression; these extracts might be called the expressive ‘gems.’ The audiobook was a five-part series, with each section being about twenty minutes long. It was read beautifully by Kyle Soller and produced by BBC Radio 4 as a podcast that, strangely, disappointingly, is no longer available, either online or the BBC store. One wonders why?

One remembers the book by its original impact, as a text with beautiful, astute, personal observations punctuating factual reporting, pieces that recorded history, daily life, and information both descriptive and explanatory, all highlighting the extraordinary qualities of the everyday. While the whole was admirable writing, the personal pieces were always the most rich and sensitive portions of the publication with their intricate, careful observations and delicate descriptions. These formed the Qatar audiobook that was played and replayed, with each hearing revealing more and more subtlety. To listen to the audiobook was a true, inspiring delight that didn’t deserve the categorisation as ‘entertainment’ beside the usual ad hoc mix of popular music and movies.

When one later discovered the latest Lopez book, Horizon, published in 2019 by Vintage, London, the book was ordered, well anticipated, and eventually read – quickly devoured and much savoured.

The book took a similar form to that of Arctic Dreams in its parts. It was a collection of six pieces,** half a dozen stories about travels, each shaped around a particular journey that had its own unique ramifications in science, personal relations, observations, and thoughtfulness that might be labelled by a librarian as ‘ecological philosophy.’

The strange experience was how phrases, words, and ideas first revealed in Arctic Dreams, turned up here in a different but similar guise. Horizon never reaches the stunning power and clarity of Arctic Dreams, but remains a wonderful, engaging read, dancing in and out of ideas, thoughts, and observations that open up a world of wonder, a wonderful world that needs to be understood, respected and cared for. It is what one could describe as a beautiful book, so it is awkward to sound critical of a few parts.

Lopez frequently describes colours as he did in Arctic Dreams, as if this strategy had become a style, or part of the scheming of writing developed as a technique for being seen to be sensitive to wonder. He notes in one part, Shraeling Island, that he was reading Eva Figes Light, (1983/2007),# so may have been inspired by her, or inspired to continue, as Lopez appears to always record the quality of light in his observations that include the carefully noted colours and forms in the landscape that also, it seems, appear to be described as a matter of course. Have things become too formulaic?

Other ideas and expressions that recall the Arctic Dreams text are: the experience of the wild, its latent power and grandeur that raises the questions: where has it been; where is it going; what am I really seeing?, noting the point that there is a before and after any intervention that we must be aware of. Lopez again raises the matter in Horizon of how beauty amazes; and once more describes life as being ‘fearful,’ without any reference to this comment. In Arctic Dreams, he noted that the idea of living in fear was an indigenous response to his question: “What do you believe?” - “We don’t believe; we fear.” In Horizon fear is now accepted as a general way of being.

Arctic Dreams also told the beautiful story of an arctic sky being described magically as ‘the interior of an abalone shell,’ with this statement being referenced to a traveller of old; in Horizon, Lopez uses this as his description of the sky with no source identified. Have beautiful and memorable pieces remained even in the author’s imagination and memory over the years, arising again, and perhaps again, subconsciously? One can say “No” with some irony given the emotive complexities that Lopez engages with: Lopez is in total control of his expression; he knows; he can articulate and discriminate. Is this the older man reaching out, trying to touch the inspiration of youth, revisiting the remembrance of things past, a past much praised? Or might he be seeking to communicate the spirit of the ideas yet again, wanting to emphasise the observation, to maintain its descriptive authority? Sadly, repeats do not work in our era; they generally weaken the initial authority. Our era sees repetition as a boring lack of originality, ever seeking things new and different, and being quick to call out plagiarism when it so desires: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2022/06/plagiarism-creativity.html. We define ownership with copyright, and see repetition as a weakness when it could be that these matters do need repeating to centre their strengths. Still, one pauses at these places in the text.

It is not as though one has studied the text critically and noted these repeats just to score points in some manner. On the contrary, many lines of the Lopez text have been recorded to use as potent quotes in the various subjects being written about at present. One recalls these few repetitions - there may be more - because of their astonishing impact when first read in Arctic Dreams. They are memorable ideas with surprising sources or intriguing encounters.

These specific repeats that pop up in the text touch on the suggestive idea of a potboiler; but Lopez is better than this. In spite of this feeling arising from the recalling of significant depictions first noted in Arctic Dreams, Horizon is much better than a hack’s publication. It is a book that holds a richness in ideas and emotion with a sincerity and commitment rarely seen in writing that is explained in the blurb on the cover as coming from: the greatest nature/travel writer in the world. The work is engaging, in parts stunning; Arctic Dreams is really an impossible act to follow, even after after 33 years, with the work shaped by the same man, the same eyes, the same hands, the same intentions, with greater experience. Why should ideas vary when things are seen and considered with such honest rigour? Why should Lopez not confirm his stance, thus making it more important with this emphasis?

One wonders: did Lopez know this book, Horizon, published 2019, would be his last? Lopez died on 25th Dec 2020, aged 75 - see the Lopez obituary: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/obituaries/barry-lopez-dead.html. Lopez will be missed, but his writings will live on. One hopes that the very world of progress of which he was so critical - social tyrants lingers as a description, just as walking in a missed stair-step fashion in a blizzard does - does not stride on with its bolshie rudeness rooted in self-interest to claim attention for things quirky, new, and different as it demeans and abuses everything else. Arctic Dreams, (1986), might appear ‘old fashioned’ in time, old news, with the “We’ve moved on over 38 years with internet and astonishing strides in technology and knowledge” - and our blunt certainty.

Lopez noted how self was nothing in this world: . . . that the world acquiesces before strong men is delusional. The world outside the self is indifferent to the fate of the self. (Horizon, p.484).

These words recall Ananda Coomaraswamy’s writing on traditional art, that noted how personal expression was a deformation, a perversion, rather than an expression of bespoke genius. Here, in this publication, one can sense the greatness of otherness that we ignore in our self-centred, arrogant times that Lopez sought to diffuse and change with his expressions of beauty, wanting us to just look around. It is a world that he describes in Arctic Dreams as being: so beautiful it would make you cry . . . so beautiful, it would make you afraid; expressions repeated in Horizon without any attribution. The words were first spoken by a colleague.

Martin Lings wrote about this phenomenon in relation to Islamic art, as being something about which one could not marvel enough. This is Lopez’s subject that remains with us today as a lingering enigma that we ignore to our own detriment.

Some contemporary art, art that is not about itself or about the artist, offers perspectives that conceivably could release us from the daily tyranny of depressing news, from the meretriciousness of decisions that commit us to the inevitability of environmental catastrophe.

(Horizon, p.160)

#

The book, Horizon, has revealed Eva Figes Light, a publication praised not only by Lopez, but by John Berger too: it is another must-read. It was ordered immediately and read after Horizon was finished. As one reads it, one walks through the sunny garden, into the house, along the verandah, and, of course, around Monet’s lily pond. No one ever tells anyone that the garden and the pond are separated by a highway - see: https://voussoirs,blogspot.com MONET'S GARDEN, HOUSE, HIGHWAY & LILY POND - SEEING IS BELIEVING (21 February 2015).* Prompted by Figes’ descriptive images, one can ignore this fact, envisage Giverny, and retrace the day visit, with thoughts stimulated by the experience of being there, as well as those gained by seeing Monet’s paintings over the years. Place has never been so carefully observed and recorded in this short novel, as the experience of space, time, and light. One can understand why Lopez loved the book which he shared with his Arctic colleagues who were studying light.

Figes’ book is initially disappointing in one way as it skims fuzzily over life maybe just too lightly, but one slowly develops a regard for this text which is gentle and observant, both of light and human experience. Figes does not get carried away with Monet; she engages in the experience of all household members, adults and children, and guests, describing the most unexpected experiences with a remarkable awareness; e.g. the child being observed by an adult; and many more simple occasions of everyday engagement and response that have been shrewdly recorded. It is this authority with subtlety that envelopes the reader and enhances one’s understanding and perception of Monet’s inspiration, giving it subtle substance with a diaphanous depth. Little wonder that the book is so admired by Lopez and Berger, both of whom engage in seeing the world in this way, but differently, exposing the wonder, spirit, and intrigue inherent all life.

*

Puzzlingly, a Google search will not recognise this blog. It is as if one is not allowed to point out that there is a highway between Monet’s garden and his pond. The aerial view makes it clear.

Aerial view of Monet's garden, house, highway and lily pond.

The pond or 'water garden' is accessed from the bottom left-hand corner of the main garden area under the highway.

The D5 highway Google Earth.

The proximity of the highway challenges the visions of peace and serenity

promoted by the selected images of the paintings and photographs.

NOTE: The blog can be searched by the date in the Blog Archive.

+

The other books include:

Fiona McCarthy Eric Gill Faber & Faber, London, 2011

Kenneth White Open World: Collected Poems 1960–2000 Edinburgh: Polygon, 2003

Ian Tait Shetland Vernacular Buildings 1600-2000 The Shetland Times, 2012

Kathleen Raine William Blake Longmans, Green, London, 1951/65/69

Keith Critchlow Islamic Patterns, Thames and Hudson, London, 1976.

**

The six collected pieces are:

CAPE FOULWEATHER

SHRAELING ISLAND

PUERTO AYORA

JACKAL CAMP

PORT ARTHUR TO BOTANY BAY

GRAVES NUNATAKS TO PORT FAMINE ROAD