Paradise Found (Islamic Culture Documentary) | Timeline

today is the 9th of July 2005 I'm in Mali in West Africa where I've come to see the biggest mud building in the world the great mosque of djenne a an astonishing sight driving up here yesterday the mobile phone rang and I heard that seven bombs had exploded in London that morning hundreds were injured scores were dead the handiwork probably of al-qaeda among the stations that were bombed was the one my daughter uses to go to school I spent a horrible couple of hours battling with lousy phone connections finding out she was alright you think dark things at moments like that and I fretted about this film was it right to be making it it's about the wonders of Islamic art but was that still an appropriate subject I knew the answer long before I arrived here and saw that I had just spent months and months Criss crossing the Islamic world and everywhere I'd be I'd seen fascinating and beautiful things some of the most fascinating and beautiful things I had ever seen made by fascinating beautiful people who had never shown me anything but kindness friendship and hospitality not to have made this film would have been utterly dishonest [Music] there's something over there I wanted to show you we're coming at it from an unusual angle from the back but you'll recognize it straightaway when you see it it's a beautiful example of Islamic art perhaps the most beautiful example of all rather like a typical Islamic work of art the real story of Islam is sparkling fascinating complicated and gorgeous and the best way to tell it is not with scary interviews in politics that's just news the winds of time will blow all that away the truest evidence that any civilization ever leaves behind about itself is its art art never lies it didn't lie about the Greeks it didn't lie about the Romans and it certainly doesn't lie about Islam the Taj the most beautiful building in the world of course it is so beautiful and so so Islamic they're very stylistic features to enjoy about the tars that make it typically Islamic the love affair that's going on here with simple gleaming geometry no other religion has ever trusted geometry as profoundly as this the sense of Perpetual decoration of saying it with flowers and all this sensuous calligraphy words turned into art quotations from the Quran an Islamic speciality but there's something else something that unites all Islamic art from nation to nation across the centuries like a super glue I'm going to give it a name I'm going to call it the atmosphere of paradise you can see what I mean immediately it's that air of delicate god-given perfection of dreams fulfilled and divine tranquility its unmissable and so so desirable [Music] how this land developed this addictive appetite for paradise when where and why it was developed is quite a story it's our story [Music] Islam emerged in some of the world's hottest and least hospitable places its creators were desert people its moods were desert moods and to get a feel for its art I suggest we consider the desert dwellers relationship to an oasis Islam has its own calendar day one of this calendar marks the departure of the Prophet Mohammed Islam's founder from Mecca where he was born and his arrival at the oasis of Medina where he settled and built himself a very significant house the Prophet didn't select the exact spot for his new house himself he left the choice to his camel which guided by Allah stopped at some open land owned by two orphaned brothers the Prophet purchased this land and on it he built his new dwelling when asked to explain this simple choice he said the man is where the saddle of his camel is the land had some palm trees on it which Muhammad cut down had he marked out a typical Arabian darf a walled courtyard made of mud bricks much like these except a lot bigger it was square 50 meters by 50 meters and it had these humble dwellings along the edges and the walls were about 10 11 feet high like these are on the edge of the courtyard the Prophet built some Hut's for his wives modest mud brick structures with palm roofs at the center he dug a well later when his followers complained of sitting in the exposed Sun he gave them shelter a simple portico of palm tree columns covered with palm leaves the first mosque every mosque that came afterwards is descended architectural II from this simple rustic arrangement of the prophet's house in Medina and there's something else that the house in Medina bequeathed to all subsequent mosques and that's its communal air these Middle Eastern courtyards have so many roles that's where the animals are tethered is where the washings done it's where food is cooked it's where the Prophet preached to his followers and where sometimes the followers would stay overnight in the shade of the portico in this sense of a community going about its business behind protective walls was another of the great gifts to the future of the prophet's dwelling [Music] the mosque began it's marvelous and busy history not as a temple or a daunting place of worship but as a home [Music] originally had prayer times the community would turn to pray in the direction of the holy city of Jerusalem but then one momentous night the angel Gabriel came to the Prophet in a dream and showed him Mecca he actually saw the city through a miraculous gap in the Vista and from that moment the orientation of every mosque was changed and turned to Mecca the direction of Mecca is marked by the myth Rab anish in the Qibla wall sometimes simple sometimes gorgeous sometimes plain sometimes filled with the flowers of paradise but the myth RAB is always turned to Mecca so let's see is paleontology and archaeology sociology America and that forum the medieval map of the Islamic world it's pretty accurate but can you see where you live on it no that's because in these medieval maps of the Islamic world north and south are the other way round North is at the bottom and South is at the top but if I turn this upside down on it all becomes more familiar there's Italy Sicily the Mediterranean there's Spain North Africa and Islam began on the Arabian Peninsula here where Muhammad was born in Mecca in around 570 ad that's five hundred and seventy years after the birth of Jesus Christ but this brand-new religion spread across the world at an astonishing speed within a century the Islamic Empire stretched from Spain over here all the way across North Africa through Central Asia right up to the Chinese borders it was the most explosive expansion that any religion had ever mounted at first with all this conquering going on there wasn't much time for art but that changed when the Islamic capital was moved from Mecca here southwards or northwards as we'd call it to this great city here Damascus the world's oldest inhabited city they say and one which used to be notoriously beautiful [Music] today the entire city has turned to face an electronic mecha called to prayer by the satellite dish but in less trashy times Damascus worshipped better deities with more glorious consequences it's written that Mohammed on a trip from Mecca got as far as the outskirts of Damascus and then he stopped he refused to go any further when asked why he explained that man should only enter paradise once and that one time was on the day he died [Music] famed internationally for its luxuries and its fertility Damascus was such a desirable Oasis so full of many precious things that everybody wanted it the Phoenicians were here Hittites Assyrians Babylonians Greeks Romans Christians they all lent Damascus their ear and right here there was a pagan temple to the aramean God Haddad now that was taken over by the Romans see the Corinthian columns there and that large chunk of pediment that's what's left of one of the largest temples to Jupiter in the whole of the ancient world and it looked rather like that see here the entrance gate were the columns still are and they're in the middle the sanctuary with a famous statue of Jupiter stood [Music] when the Romans converted to Christianity with Constantine when the Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire this became a Christian Church a basilica in which were preserved some very precious relics because it was said that buried here was the head of John the Baptist and when the Muslims conquered Damascus around these precious remains was built this huge mosque for nearly a century after they arrived here Muslims shared this space with Christians the Christians would worship at the west end here and Muslims would worship at the east end it was a working religious timeshare but eventually the caliphs Muhammad's successors who'd moved their capital from Mecca to Damascus realized they needed a place of worship of their own and so here on the former temple of Jupiter that had become a Christian Church they said about inventing the Islamic mosque the land was actually purchased from the Christians who owned it by the Umayyad caliph al walid the first for who money was never an object his mosque was built in a decade at stupendous expense seven years of taxes from the whole of Syria were spent on it before it was finished in 715 not only is it the earliest surviving mosque but to this day it remains amongst the most spectacular the chief treasures of this damascus mosque are its mosaics in twinkling grass and gold there's been so much argument about what the golden walls are showing us what is this fantastic architecture imagined here where are these rivers where are those trees some say these are perfect evocations of Damascus itself beautified and watered others believe the mosaics represent the Muslim conquests that al-walid the first was showing the world what Islam now possessed personally I just don't believe any of that this doesn't feel at all aggressively possessive and it doesn't look anything like Damascus what you feel with these luxurious trees so bounteous and green the rippling waters the fantastic palaces is a sense of somewhere perfect and peaceful somewhere like paradise this is what Muhammad wanted to see once and only once even the colors of those mosaics that luscious green the sumptuous gold those are the colors described in the Quran of paradise but look there's no one there yet no people no animals it's ready but it's empty and waiting for us all we have to do is lead the right life do the right things and follow the right guard I've seen wall-to-wall imaginings of paradise like these before in Buddhist fresco cycles if you go to India or China and of course the traders of Damascus were famous for such travels you'll find painted caves filled with visions of paradise palaces rivers bridges gold trees so Islam took all these ingredients bits of the Christian Basilica pieces of the Roman temple visions of paradise from the Buddhists and it mix them all together and came up with something completely unmistakable and Islamic something the world had never seen before yet how clearly you sends here the basic arrangement of Muhammad's simple courtyard a covered hall to shelter the faithful from the Sun a fountain at the center to wash out and purify yourself the sense of a meeting place to which everyone is invited having settled on this basic arrangement for its first Great Mosque Islam liked it so much it stayed with it for a thousand years and beyond I wanted to show you this unusual structure it's where the treasures of the mosque were kept an early Islamic bank vault set high up on these Roman columns that don't quite fit now up here look carefully there's a sundial that was used to calculate the times of the call to prayer when every Muslim was expected to turn to Mecca now that's a very easy thing to say that the call to prayer you turn to Mecca but how exactly with somebody living in 8th century Damascus know where Mecca was it's relatively easy here Mecca isn't that far away but what did you come from West Africa from Timbuktu or Samarkand in Central Asia or Genghis Khan country well you begin by inventing some helpful instruments like these astronomy mathematics geometry Arabians science was far ahead of the West in all of them and such exquisite instruments were fashioned by Islamic craftsmen to make simpler the difficult task of knowing exactly where Mecca was [Music] the desert palace of kid Bataan maha was probably built by Alwaleed ii the Playboy of the Umayyads this was his pleasure ground in the Judean Desert far from Damascus where Alwaleed ii could let his hair down which he did [Music] Alwaleed ii was a famous lover of hunting and this desert palace was built on the banks of a fertile wadi and was originally surrounded by a huge hunting park meanwhile the insides leave you in little doubt that Alwaleed ii enjoyed other pleasures too curvy and topless dancing girls busty and brazen lined the walls here to ceiling height and set a mood for the palace that was most unlikely the desert palace had a special room for playing music and this spectacular bathroom which now hides a secret floor so Hal done you're in charge of their mosaics here and when you walk into this space which was the giant bath of the callee before yeah you don't actually see any mosaics on the ground but if I come if I rub the sand here yeah where I find mosaics where everywhere you will fail you will open you will find them was I yeah because we covered the sand is protective sand yeah yeah to protect them yeah we would stand and let you dig for a bit yeah let me I'll rub this yeah so this is the famous scene here yeah of the knife with the the fruit that's right I think now you can say well you discover something I discovered the lost fruit symbolism yeah of the Umayyad caliphs well it does look very striking the knife yeah the leaf representing the Sun or paradise perhaps here and this big juicy fruit it's beautiful yeah the most famous mosaic here is in the guest room where the Caliph would entertain his guests yeah can we see that now yeah sure which is known by three over the life The Tree of Life yeah [Music] the famous mosaic of the lion attacking a gazelle perhaps had an erotic context the actual word gazelle which Arabic gave to English is also the Arabic for love poetry and since ancient times mighty rulers of Alwaleed type her thought of themselves as all conquering lions in Arabic poetry and indeed in the poetry of al-walid ii for he was a poet too the Gazelle is invariably a female presence with its bigg staring eyes and it's long sensuous neck it's a graceful animal equivalent of the beautiful virgins who await the good Muslim in Paradise many people believe that figures are banned in Islamic art actually they're not nowhere in the Quran does it say that an artist cannot depict or paint figures what is frowned upon is the showing of idols in a religious context and that's for obvious reasons it's all down to the ten commandments the second commandment you may remember says thou shalt not make any graven image of anything that is on earth or on the sea below and Islam like Christianity inherited that commandment from the Jews now these three great religions which all arose in the same place have chosen to interpret this commandment in three different ways Judaism has always frowned upon the making of any images Christianity has always ignored the commandment and Islam well Islam has swung this way and that way depending on the fashion at the time [Music] it looks as if it was Jewish converts to Islam who introduced this notion that images were taboo Islam and Judaism here and elsewhere had so much in common above all they shared this fierce antipathy to the ways of the Christians but this distrust of images just wasn't there in the beginning and it was never Universal though it did have the most potent implications it led to a lot of abstraction it led to new ways of understanding geometry it led to renewed faith in the word [Music] no one is certain we're a thousand and one Arabian Nights was written probably here in Cairo the atmosphere certainly right the streets here team with Rascals smooth talkers and clowns it's intoxicating but also edgy [Music] all religions attract conflict as well as stability with destiny to play for there's always room for differing opinions and Islam is no different the big split in Islam is between Sunni and Shiite someone once explained it to me as the equivalent in Christianity of the difference between Methodists and Catholics with the Shiites as the Catholics and it's true Shiite art is usually more ornate and florid and Sunni but sometimes it's the other way around with Islamic art you never quite know where the journeys going to finish but the reasons for the Sunni Shiite split her plain enough it was a dynastic dispute an argument over who should lead Islam the Shiites believed only those descended directly from the Prophet himself family members could claim to be his successor the Sunnis meanwhile insisted that caliphs should be chosen for their organizational talent their suitability not their bloodline so was it reason or emotion the brain or the blood this is the shrine of hussein the prophet's grandson and son the Fatima Muhammad's favorite daughter Fatima was married to Ali who was chosen as caliph one of Muhammad's successors and then assassinated his son the same went to war against the Sunni Umayyads to right this wrong that he too was killed and his family murdered thus blood entered the equation lots of it and in these parts that's not quickly forgotten the Shiites were marginalized by the Sunni caliphs and became the poverty of rebels and minorities the disaffected turned to them they were the Robin Hood's of Islam and learned to be utterly ruthless fated to remain a minority in the early Islamic world the Shiites only claimed one major territory for themselves and that was here in Cairo when the Fatimids arrived [Music] the fatimids took their name from Fatima Muhammad's favorite daughter the mother of Hussein they too claimed descent from the Prophet and these Fatimids built cairo from scratch there was nothing here when they arrived and apparently they called their new capital al Kyra the Conqueror after the planet Mars which was in the ascendancy when they got here some would say the planet Mars has been in the ascendancy around here ever since [Music] the Fatimids were a revolutionary force in Islamic art they changed many things here at the as our mosque bang in the heart of Cairo they built a cluster of colleges devoted to the pursuit of knowledge it was the world's first University founded in 972 yes 972 the Fatimids were particularly keen on education as a way of spreading the Shiite theology and gaining extra converts in secret it's a different route to power and some still employ it see these arches keels shaped they're called those were a fad amid invention Cairo is particularly good for arches that mosque with the spiral minaret has pointed arches superb pointed arches they weren't an Islamic invention the sassanids had used them already but Islam developed and popularized the pointed arch and then passed it westwards so that the Gothic age could happen gothic owes so much to Islam I love these spaces these forests of columns this is called the hippo style type of mosque which basically means that it has lots and lots of columns supporting a flat roof it's a very simple way of building descended directly from that portico in the prophet's courtyard where the palm trees and the thatch gave his followers somewhere to shelter from the Sun this does exactly the same [Laughter] [Music] but see here when the myth Arab is a small dome now widening because almost despite itself Islam was developing a need to mark its most holy wall more grandly it's a tendency will be keeping an eye on because this need to rise up to dizzy heights becomes one of the key issues in Islamic architecture among the most famous of all Quranic verses is the one inscribed most often on mosque lamps it's called the light verse surah 24 35 God is the light of heaven and earth the simul - dove his light is a niche in the wall the glass appears as if it were a shining star we know this Israel it was made for certain by cook the Egyptian ruler we know the date this is about 1885 its greatest war tent or not we know we know when he ruled that's why we know the date and this would hang just Envy in the mosque or in the house but they call it mask lab because that is the description that was given but it was produced but didn't mean that it was specifically used in the mosque it was probably was used in probably homes and palaces - and that every change coming from here holding this and most of the time they had the ball which was like an ostrich egg sitting on the top of the lab and there was always a question how come they needed to have ostrich shape glass ball sitting between the chain that connected the land to the ceiling and usually obviously they had condemned inside the lizard was that they didn't want to have animals folding into it I say you so we encourage the Flies maybe mice they fall out outside of the lab rather than folding in turns excellently practical yeah can you imagine this though with a candle inside flickering Egypt has a special relationship with precious stones you know those stories of Cleopatra's fabulous emerald mines well then our stories Cleopatra really did have fabulous emerald mines and she was an ancient Egyptian connoisseur of the sparkling gemstone as were the FATA myths the most precious and magical of all fatimids treasures were actually made from the most abundant mineral on earth scientists who have their own miraculous ways of calculating these things tell us that 12 percent of the Earth's crust is made of quartz and quartz in its clearest form is called rock crystal they don't mind it around here anymore but they used to it was as common in the deserts of Egypt as sand actually it basically was sand silicon dioxide but the craftsmen have the Fatimids worked great magic with rock crystal they took blocks of it much larger than this and carved away the insides and to the walls of their rock crystal Ewers and drinking glasses were as thin as paper [Music] crystals like these are of course what crystal balls used by fortune tellers used to be made from the crystals always had this otherworldly aspect the actual word comes from the Greek crystal oz which means ice and the ancients believed this really was divine ice trapped in the mountains waiting to be revealed and all this superstitious history this magic air brought extra Sparkle to the rock crystal masterpieces of the Fatimids for something else about rock crystal something even more pertinent than its delicate beauty and its mystical air according to the Quran the goblets passed around among the faithful in Paradise are also carved of rock crystal [Music] we've changed countries we're in Iran or Persia as it used to be known and if you're ever assailed by doubts about Islam's contribution to the arts if anyone ever asks you what of the Muslims done for us get yourself here on a sunny day hunt down a taxi and head for gone bad a caboose asked there for the tomb of a mole caboose Abner washing gear you can't possibly miss it [Music] when do you think that was built 1950s 30s the 18th century the 15th century the 13th actually it was finished in 1006 it's a thousand years old when this was built William the Conqueror hadn't even been born the chief religion around here before the coming of Islam was Zoroastrianism it's still the oldest surviving faith in the world the Zoroastrians built these tall towers for their dead on which vultures would swoop and pick clean the corpses bones two highly efficient avian hygiene and these Zoroastrian death towers influenced the look and the mood of some extremely unlikely Islamic architecture that's dotted all along the Caspian coast [Music] this spectacular and unlikely tomb was built by a formidable local Renaissance man Amir caboose Abner Vashem gear poet scholar calligrapher astrologer chess player than ruthless regional warlord evolution gear ruled gone bad for 40 years and when he began to suspect that his time might be up he built this great mausoleum for himself here on the edge of the takumin step it was built to be indestructible it's 170 feet tall and there's another 35 feet hidden from sight underground in the foundations it's a masterpiece of unexpected minimalism so sparse those razor-sharp edges flanges they're called go all the way around the building they're made from desert bricks and they cut the shadows up into thin stripes and then spend the whole day rearranging them that's all that goes on here but it's enough and I like that cheeky conical cap that tops it off so perfectly Evon the Vashem gear was assassinated six years after his great tower was finished his enemies tied him up in the snow a nearby Gorgan and watched him freeze to death but he was buried as he wanted to be his body suspended from the tower roof in a see-through coffin made of rock crystal there's a tiny window up there and every time the Sun rose a shaft of light would penetrate the darkness of the tower and illuminate epimer fashion gears crystal coffin I'm not sure I can think of a more exciting way to die I'm still in Iran where I've come to the tomb of the Ayatollah Khomeini to gather my thoughts and set myself some priorities if you can't gather your thoughts here where can you gather them this film has a simple proposition that Islam has given the world some of its most beautiful things returned these days to forget that we tend to let transient stuff like politics elbow out the ancient truths so I wanted to read some poetry in here British soldiers used to recite this to themselves in the First World War as they march to their deaths on the Western Front and our grandparents used to know large chunks of this by heart it's by the 11th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam and it captures so perfectly the fragility of crayons times indeed of everyone's times strange is it not that of the myriads who before us passed to the door of darkness through not one returns to tell us of the road which to discover we must travel to yesterday this day's madness did prepare tomorrow's silence triumph or despair drink for you know not whence you came nor why drink for you know not why you go nor where life is short Sultan's presidents and ayatollahs come and go but there's a beauty out there that can always be relied upon a bigger beauty that Islamic art wants always to reflect and match this film is about that quest [Music] the trouble is that like so many things in Islam this elusive beauty keeps changing the Islamic empire was packed with far too many different types of international creative ever to arrive at a consensus Isfahan on the hot edges of the Persian desert was a particularly busy trading city which everyone tried to grab for 200 years it was controlled by the cell jerks they lost it to the Mongols then the Timur it's took over finally its fahan fell to the Safavids who ruled here in the 16th century and whose artistic achievements were surprisingly frisky [Music] the Safavids built half a dozen of these ambitious and charming bridges across the Zion de river these high walls protected the incoming camel caravans from sand storms and vicious desert crosswinds the Safavid bridges had two levels underneath the camel level there's a chain of tea rooms stretching across the river where visitors and locals alike have spent 500 years sheltering from the heat smoking hookers quoting Omar Khayyam sipping tea and keeping their heads down it's usefully out of sight down here the tea rooms have special compartments for rent we're all sorts of mildly illicit things go on I've just seen the chap and his girlfriend ensconced in one and she was puffing away merrily at her hooker which in modern Iran is rather naughty of her in Isfahan since the time of the Safavids a certain amount of Islamic rule breaking has always gone on and not just in the tea rooms the Safavids were the first Shiite rulers of Persia and their taste in art had about it the transgressive air a Shiite or neatness the showers of the Safavids were you feel instinctive pleasure seekers free thinkers and rule breakers dancing girls a pair of them who would have thought it you find them hidden around various corners of Isfahan because the Safavids tore up the old islamic rule book han wrote themselves a new one having made Isfahan their capital they built it quickly into the grandest city in Persia [Music] this Safavid square out here Imam square is the second largest square in the world only Tiananmen Square in Beijing is bigger than this and the entire perimeter is ringed with great architecture two mosques a palace and over there the entrance to the infamous Isfahan bazaar were only a brave man should ever venture this gigantic pleasure Piazza was laid out by the most ruthless and dynamic of the Safavid char's Shah Abbas the great he used to sit up on that balcony and watch military parades passing by and for 400 years the square was also used as a polo pitch and these were the two gold posts opposite his balcony Shah Abbas constructed a gorgeous mosque for the ladies of his harem you enter it through a secret passage that winds you round and round to be pointed in the right direction and face Mecca our cameraman Simon has been complaining about coming in to these gorgeous Persian spaces he says it's too dark in here and it's true the camera can never see what I can see and it can never fall in love with Persian darkness in the way the human eye can and must don't don't ask me where anything ends in here or anything begins I just can't tell you the tile work doesn't really favor solidity it rises up up up and when it gets to the dome it becomes extra miraculous can you see how the lozenges get smaller and smaller and create a tiled whirlwind that sucks you up the man who designed and calculated this Dhamma chol effect had phenomenal hand to eye coordination and an extreme sense of geometry [Applause] what an Iran where a woman cannot show her hair or her forearms where the morality police can forcibly remove your nail varnish and submit to you to a virginity test but had to reach a difficult accommodation with the art of the Safavids these treasures of Isfahan attract too many moneyed visitors to be locked away but as you wonder amongst them I swear you can sometimes hear an angry Ayatollah going tut tut the most perfectly preserved of the Safavid Pleasure Gardens is the Chehalis Otton palace it's gorgeous it twinkles it's a man-made paradise with birds flowers and a sense of enclosure this is where the Safavid char's welcomed foreign visitors and set out to impress them the glass in the portico was imported expensively from Venice and it attempts many Islamic tricks with reflections but it's in here in the Great Hall of the Safavids that the most surprising spectacle awaits you a monumental Islamic fresco cycle now that is a turn up the Safavids waging battles the Safavids throwing ostentatious banquets lounging around listening to music drinking wine it's the Persian miniature writ huge and given monumental ambition this was surprising enough but then I went in here and I found a painted harem in 1979 when the Islamic Revolution erupted in Iran some fanatics stormed this palace and tried to attack these frescoes but loyal palace workers stood in front of them and refused to budge because of course this is Islamic art - as authentic as dazzling as traditional as the sacred geometry like all the great art traditions of the world there's more than one color more than one tone - Islamic art is surah 76 from the Quran verses 11 to 22 and because they were patient and constant he will reward them with a garden and garments of silk and amongst them will be passed round vessels of silver and goblets of crystal and they will be adorned with bracelets of gold and the Lord will give them to drink of a wine pure and holy verily this is a reward for you and your endeavour has accepted and recognized [Music] all the colors you see here is natural color that's why because they use natural colors it's state it didn't fade away for normal colors phenomenal what you see in front of you here is probably one of the finest 16th century Safavid carpets in the world the description that you see around it is a Persian poetry which shall relates to the design of the conference it talks about flowers talks about birds it talks about the beauty of nature would it be true to say that this is an evocation of paradise in the Quranic sense that I mean it'll have said almost all carpets have as an ambition this needs to convey some of the sensations of paradise the pleasures of paradise the mood of paradise yes people say that you could say that I'm in as Becky Stan deep in Central Asia dodging the trucks it's hairy but I like it because I know what lies at the end of the journey [Music] an amusing tale is told about the arrival of the Arabs in Samarkand I find it amusing anyway there were three Arab missionaries who stopped here and decided to let Allah decide their fate by cutting up and boiling a large sheep the first missionary reaches into the pot and he pulls out the sheep's heart and he knows that he must return to Mecca the heart of Islam the second missionary he reaches in and pulls out the sheep's head and he knows he has to stay here in Samarkand the third missionary he reaches in and he pulls out the sheep's arse and he knows that he must leave immediately for Baghdad which he does but me I'm staying here Samarkand now there's a name to conjure with the mirror of the world they called it the pearl of the East the jewel of Islam but then they also call it the city of famous shadows and that's because it's haunted by so many ghosts summer cams an oasis on the edge of the Kissel Combe desert the trouble with being an oasis is that everybody wants your water and they all know where you are this programs too short for me to list all the conquerors and warriors and nomadic cutthroats who'd moved out of the desert to take Samarkand Alexander the Great Attila the Hun Genghis Khan they've all had it Sathya no Gian's white hands black hands Arabs ghaznavids Mongols Bolsheviks this was everyone's favorite Oasis but only tamerlane held on to Samarkand for long enough to transform it tamerlane was a Mongol who'd been Turki sized and converted to Islam he claimed some sort of descent from Genghis Khan but you'd expect that around here all the ruthless warrior conquerors claimed descent from the Great Khan his real name was Tim more common name which means iron and tamerlane is an English corruption of Tim or the lame he had a disfigured leg to an old archery wound Tamlyn was a genius at his trade the ruthless and conscience free conquest of anywhere he could reach he personally conquered an empire that stretched from Moscow to Delhi from modern Turkey to the outer edges of Russia when it came to choosing a capital Tamerlane picked somewhere just around the corner from where he was born Samarkand this fabulous crossroads on the Silk Route which Tim or the lame transformed into this architectural gem in the desert Tim or the lame is one of the few mortals who's given his name to a style of architecture and this timurid architecture is one of the glories of Islam the city of domes is another of Samarkand names they glitter here on every horizon and give Samarkand a permanent shimmer as if the Mirage can never settle [Music] domes have always had an obvious relationship with the heavens people used to think of the sky itself as a giant dome covering the earth and dimmer it architecture makes this connection entirely explicit the buildings lower halves are fashioned out of these desert bricks so brown and earthy have the ground around here and then rising above them these celestial domes usually colored and evocative turquoise the timber it's specialized in this blue their architecture is excellently color-coded for instant legibility the domes are blue the buildings are brown the message on the walls could hardly be bigger or clearer or more insistent out here in the desert on the edges of the empire in the middle of nowhere you need to spell it out the word minarets is derived from the Arabic word menara which means lighthouse originally these timurid minarets were intended to be literally lighthouses in the desert you have to imagine them rising like steeples in this hot and flat land visible from all angles and thirsty camel traders trudging along the Silk Route seeing one of these in the distance and knowing that here they would find water and hope God Allah Allah Allah it says on this one Muhammad Muhammad Muhammad it's a brilliant piece of religious advertising perfectly positioned in the desert to bring in the client so the dusty Silk Road trader is lured to this gorgeous oasis by the lighthouses the domes tempt him closer and he finds himself in here a perfect garden in which a million flowers seemed to be blossoming at once so colorful so intense a paradise in the desert created artificially with the slow flicker of timurid tilework can you hear the water deeper can you feel the shade beckoning who wouldn't choose a religion that promises this I was looking forward to coming here Shah is in de reputed to be Samarkand most moving architectural site it's a timurid necropolis a street of the dead in which tamerlane buried his female relations they say the earliest examples of timurid architecture are found in here or at least they used to be because look what they're doing to them [Music] this is a UNESCO site an official world treasure but in Uzbekistan today not nearly enough respect is shown for the great Islamic art of the past as far as I can see Shari's inda is being vandalized this isn't restoration it's really a tion they're determined to complete this by it was Becca strands Independence Day which is coming up this is their idea of working quickly to finish the job it's like a construction site at a very ugly shopping center look at this brickwork oh look what they've done to the tiles [Applause] [Music] there are men up there hacking away of irreplaceable 15th century timurid domes with 4-inch chisels and 10-pound mallets and occasionally leaving precious fragments of original tile work behind [Applause] if you like buildings and you like timurid architecture which everyone in their right minds should because it's one of the most inventive and unmistakable architectural traditions in our civilization and don't come here you'll just want to cry [Music] call to prayer distant bull the spears summoned first one voice then three in a hundred to there's no getting away from it and in the first few centuries of this one the call was made from wherever was handy an open window parapet about for me so the minaret relatively late addition to islamic architecture and today the loudspeaker such a key ingredient of the mosques identity but you can't really see anyone phasing them out istanbul minarets are extra thin super pointy like sharpened pencils but it's not really this quiver of pointy minarets that defines the islamic contribution to this relentlessly exciting city the shape that best captures the spirit of istanbul is of course the dome nothing in architecture it's quite as awe-inspiring as an impossibly lofty dome defying gravity floating miraculously and Istanbul is packed with them the greatest ensemble of extra large domes in existence every one of them trying to be the biggest in the center of Istanbul at the heart of the city there is this great standoff between two macho domes glaring across at each other like a pair of heavyweight boxers that are way in the sense of confrontation here is so obvious it's almost amusing in the red corner we have aya sofya a Christian Church originally built in the 6th century and with its height its ambition the conquest here of physics this is without a shadow of doubt one of the four or five most significant buildings ever erected to have achieved this in the 6th century defies belief but then in the other corner you have the Blue Mosque built a thousand years later by the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed the first but determined you sense to out dome aya sofya to match the ancient Christians and indeed to beat them yes the Ottomans you are wondering when we'd get to them weren't you even the most chronic sufferer from dynasty fatigue were always stir at the sound of the Ottomans these conquerors of Istanbul was such showy showman [Music] I was 18 or so studying art history I came here on an official student trip and in front of this thing the famous topkapi dagger I suffered an attack a stent house syndrome it's a proper illness an actual physical reaction diagnose by doctors if you're dizzy disorientated some people actually faint and fall over literally knocked out by the power of art in my experience Islamic art encourages this heavy weight dizziness more fiercely than any other artistic tradition and the strong room of the Topkapi Palace where the treasures of the Ottomans are kept is a dangerous place for the stent house sufferer [Music] this is the Torah the official signature of the grandest of the Ottoman Sultans Suleiman the Magnificent there's a world within a world in there the cosmos within a cosmos a garden within a garden not bad eh for a king's autograph [Music] they say Istanbul is built on seven hills but that wasn't enough for the Ottomans so they added these other ones it took a hundred years for an architectural hero to emerge in Istanbul capable of taking on the early Christians a dome building and beating them his name was Minar Sinan they say he was born in 1493 in Christian Armenia taken forcibly as a slave converted to Islam which he then embraced so keenly Allah repaid sin and faith in him by letting him live to be a hundred he worked for three ottoman sultans and was staggeringly productive he built at least a hundred mosques in Istanbul and around 30 of them are still standing this is the mightiest of Sinan's istanbul mosques started in 1550 on the excited orders of Suleiman the Magnificent the Suleymaniye mosque was finished in just seven years it's more of a landscape feature than a building a man-made cluster of mini mountains rising rising rising to that Everest in the middle [Music] it isn't just the size of this mosque that fills you with or it's the mood to it makes you feel all floaty as if your hearts been pumped up with helium it's a narcotic experience you're high on the art of the Ottomans their domes are very different from European domes st. Paul's in London or st. Peter's in Rome go like that there melons shaped but these Ottoman domes a much flatter they're like the top of a flying saucer they make the whole space enclose you and seem somehow circular as if the entire building is one gigantic dome [Music] to pay for its upkeep the great mosque was given the income of 217 of suliman's villages and a couple of his islands and Suleiman also had sinned and build a selection of funding enterprises around the corner including a Turkish bath in which Suleiman had his own cubicle and so did Sinan the Ottomans built a hundred and fifty or so Turkish baths so many they created a citywide water shortage cleanliness was a fetish so potent in Ottoman Istanbul that it had a special school of poetry devoted to it I'm afraid my Turkish isn't up to translating it for you instead a few words from Philip Larkin seem appropriate if I were called in to construct a religion I should make use of water going to church would entail affording to dry different clothes my liturgy would employ images of Southsea a furious devout drench and I should raise in the East the glass of water where any angled light would congregate endlessly [Music] left or right I can never be sure I think it's this way to the right easy to get lost in these streets I'm looking for the boost and Pasha mosque built in honor of Suleiman the Magnificent's longest-lasting grand vizier from stamp Pasha and sedan who designed it fitted to this awkward in cramped city's face and these shops underneath them about specially to provide income for the month which was balanced on top of them and they still pay taxes to sustaining [Music] someone a platform about the city and as you can see the outside of it is plastered with an amazing sequence of iznik tiles but that is only a taster of what lies within because they're lost and pasha mosque probably features the finest collection of islamic tiles in the world what a sight see man went slightly mad in here it's an experiment with tiles that he never repeated anywhere else they're everywhere my crab tiles back tiled gallery's tiles dome tiles wall-to-wall iznik tiling every single piece in here every square inch of this is the finest quality is Nick [Music] the limited range of colors classic is Nick lots of blue of course which everyone loves but another color that I like most colors everywhere in here it's that so with tomato colored brown red it's called Anatolian Bowl and nobody to this day knows exactly where they found it or how they did this with it if you run your finger over it it's lumpy when you put it in the kiln it rose and it gives it an extra sparkle to this very day they haven't been able to reproduce that exact color we've tried everyone's tried the Anatolian Bowl of the is Nick's is beyond them you'll recognize this shape here it's a cliche of is Nick tile work the Turkish tulip they're actually discovered not far from here in the hills above Anatolia and from Turkey the tulip arrived in Europe where it caused mayhem became so popular but the Turks themselves reclaimed their own tulip rather belatedly who didn't appear in his linked I'll work until well into the ottoman period but once it had appeared there it made up for it certainly because it began appearing everywhere absolutely everywhere [Music] there's a chance a very vague chance that you don't know what is Nick tiles are so I've mounted an arduous expedition from Istanbul to find out [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hello hello it's nice of you to see us I came to find out more about is m'q tiles how they're made you are one of the few craftsmen who still use the old techniques yes this colors is important in reason because metal box it is metal oxide copper copper copper oxide copper green green green and the other copper is turquoise turquoise so the ethnic tiles with years yes will use turquoise is from side copper yes so what about this Anatolian ball the red red color in snake play this is not this is the famous is Natura Peter you deep play yourself here do you know yes you find the place I found yes oh you have a secret secret secret people say it's very very very difficult now you get the same color yes why same play because the person of the fifth color so when you when you actually put it in the kiln yes to make it 50% of it gets lost yes I see so it's not very efficient so they don't use it now but you use it yes beautiful color look maybe we can show people their tomato red yes beautiful [Music] some think Islam's an inflexible religion fixed unsmiling doctrinaire and in some places these days it is but the story told by its art the true story of Islam is one of extreme nimbleness and constant change well across the Sahara and plunged into the deserts of West Africa when it got to here Marley look how superbly it adapted to local conditions all the larger mosques around here are exactly a day's journey apart they're like mystic petrol stations spaced carefully along the trade routes this is the biggest of them the great mosque of djenne a it looks ancient doesn't it venerable but actually it was built in 1907 this is a 20th century building jennae is the oldest known city in the whole of the sub-sahara it's even older than Timbuktu its sister city further at the niger GNA they tell us was settled in the 3rd century BC but Islam only reached here in the 14th century brought by the Arab traders that cross the Sahara and decided quite understandably not to return legend has it that the first king of Jenay who converted to Islam knocked down his palace to build a mosque instead not this actual building an earlier one on the same site which survived here for 500 years before crumbling back into desert just this particular version of it was built when the French were here and it's the largest mud structure in the world in all of the old books about it you'll read that the French were responsible for its planning and its construction but that's a typical piece of colonial rewriting it's simply not true the latest research agrees that from the baked and holy ground it stands on to those dinky tips of its minarets this is an entirely African construction [Music] if French engineers had measured out this courtyard they'd surely not have come up with the creative parallelogram followed by this ground plan this is not a shape that exists in European geometry fantastical looming unlikely no European imagination could ever have come up with this its outlines its colors its sheer inventiveness are so obviously from around here great mosque of djenne a is a giant tribute to an unmistakeably local look [Music] it's made entirely from mud bricks this entrance to the courtyard is said to look like a giant mask you go in through the mouth and see those minarets with the ostrich eggs spiked into the top they're said to symbolize purity and fertility and they also protect the tips of the towers at their most vulnerable point against the enemy which all these mosques of Mali most fear reign thus the great mosque of djenne a combines the needs of Islam with more ancient and endemic needs of the local population inside is cool and dark in the preferred jennae manner star-shaped holes in the roof create a charming internal sky we had to use a local cameraman to get our shots of the inside Westerners aren't allowed in anymore in 1996 a French fashion magazine filled the mosque with half-naked models showing off some latest designs I suppose I better not name that disgraceful magazine but it's habitually and crudely interested in the latest Vogue's every village in the area has a mini mosque featuring fabulous variations on the GNA style they're all different of course but they share a common enemy water every time the rains come once a year huge slabs of exciting moss are washed away opportunity plastering party to make new mud and splatter it about and in this village too everyone joins in annually for this splendid replastering the bear mosque it's a giant mud vino and looks fun but it also signals an interesting ly different architectural attitude a just a glorious trust in incompletion none of the mosque oil here has ever considered truly finished all of them are ongoing projects living buildings because every year their repast 'red from scratch every year is seen as a new beginning the fresh start and that is an excellent architectural approach I love the mud beauty of Marley it's such a pared down form of Islam and shows so clearly how adept Islam wars at adapting to different terrains as it poured across the world gathering up huge armfuls of new international converts so I love the mud mosques but I wouldn't call them representative not in the way this is representative [Music] we've seen so much money heavenly on our journey around the Islamic world the Ottomans of Turkey the timurid of Samarkand these were some of the richest rulers the world has had but even the unimaginable wealth of the Ottomans or the Tim raids would have seemed like small change to the most lavish of all the Islamic super dynasties the Mughals India the Mughals ruled India for three centuries after the first of them a minor Timur it princeling called BABOR managed to conquer Delhi in 1526 and found himself in possession of an enormous heap of riches the boar has left behind a coruscating diary in which he records his first impressions of India its victims of Canali rude the people are not handsome he complained they have no skill in architecture no good horses no good meat no grapes or musk melons no good food or bread no baths or colleges no candles no torches not a candlestick yes but they did have diamonds as big as chicken eggs gold emeralds rubies and that was enough to persuade the Mughals to put up with the heat and the dust and the lack of musk melons and to make India theirs and the Mughal dissatisfaction with what they found here became an unexpectedly productive force in the absence of an actual earthly paradise they set about constructing one for themselves out of art and architecture the Taj Mahal is always said to be a monument to love the tale is endlessly repeated of how Baba's heartbroken descendant Shah Jahan built the Taj as a tomb for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal who died giving birth to their 14th child that famous photo of Princess Diana sitting up here on her own with no Charles beside her looking so lonely what made it particularly poignant is this famous story that's told of Shah Jahan's momentous royal love for Mumtaz Mahal unfortunately the latest thinking on the subject is that Shah Jahan actually built the Taj for himself as his mausoleum it's a much less romantic tale but much more likely when you come here to Agra and witness this sort of splendor the Mughals displaying their inordinate wealth there's a tendency to see it as nothing more meaningful than the scattering of rupees very tasteful but still loads a money sort of behavior but underpinning the Mughal spending lust was a set of specific Islamic ambitions that aren't commented upon enough or noticed enough professor khalida you very kindly brought out a few of your possessions this is only a tiny smattering of what you have in your collection can I just make a small correction before I go further you call these objects on the table my position nothing belongs to anybody at the end of the day everything is created by Almighty and it belongs to him well I would very much like to be the temporary custodian of this there is a beautiful story about this box it's made out of 93 floorless emeralds at the Indian Air Hogs Indian Indian emeralds so that's extremely extremely rare and probably belonged to shorty on its of his period so they didn't make these sort of things is for anybody who's probably the royalties so the creator of the Taj Mahal he has heard about everything that he created he must have been one of the greatest patrons there's ever been anywhere no there were a few I mean he was definitely one of the greatest patrons in India this would have been used as a jewel box with it or probably a box to put jewelery or stones or emeralds but it was definitely a part of the court below me the Koran is many things an instruction book a history a guide to life but it's also an architectural manual anyone who reads it properly which architectural historians seem bafflingly unwilling to do must be struck by the similarities between the descriptions of paradise given in the Koran and the gorgeous worlds constructed for themselves by the Mughals surah 55 details the pleasures of paradise there will be two Gardens dark green in color from plentiful watering in them will be springs pouring forth water in continuous abundance and fruits and dates and pomegranates they will recline on carpets whose inner linings will be of rich brocade like rubies and coral then which of the favours of your Lord will ye deny the gorgeous world of the Mughals isn't just a display of spending it's never godless or merely greedy fountain for fountain palace for palace garden for garden all of it as an attempt to imagine the Islamic paradise and an effort to fulfill the Islamic obligation to build that paradise on earth you must have noticed that you never see ugliness in Islamic art or neurosis or personal problems or any of that dark stuff that so obsesses Western artists lamech art always always tries to look as beautiful as it can why because it recognizes that the problems of the artists are just storms in a teacup utterly irrelevant in the wider scheme of things in the end all that matters is the beauty of God and the artists task is always to reflect that beauty to do otherwise to fret about yourself to go all dark and miserable in your art is to waste your artistic time [Music] you

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 714,123

Rating: 4.4798293 out of 5

Keywords: History, Documentary, Documentary Movies - Topic, BBC documentary, 2017 documentary, stories, Channel 4 documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Full length Documentaries, Documentaries, history documentary, documentary history, real, Full Documentary

Id: XdOxBCpk39c

Length: 102min 5sec (6125 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2017