An Introduction to Islamic Archaeology by Marcus Milwright

Author:Marcus Milwright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

7

Crafts and industry

Islamic culture is justly famous for its achievements in crafts which include the making of textiles and carpets, the carving of wood, ivory, stone and stucco, and the manufacture of vessels in ceramics, glass, and metal. Given the high reputation of Islamic craftsmanship among modern audiences, it is perhaps surprising to find that the makers of the diverse artefacts exhibited in major public and private collections were seldom accorded much status in their own societies. While Islamic law has quite a lot to say about the regulation of craft practices in urban markets (a body of literature known as hisba), jurists and other scholars generally held craftspeople in low esteem. This happened despite the admission, made by the North African polymath Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) and echoed in other sources, that the crafts (sina‘a in the singular) were essential to the maintenance of urban life. It is striking that so few artefacts – apart from manuscripts – bear the names of the artisans responsible for their manufacture, and these men and women are almost completely absent from the voluminous biographical dictionaries produced in the medieval Islamic world. Only scribes and, from the sixteenth century on, the best manuscript painters appear to have enjoyed a more privileged social status.1 While valuable information concerning craft practices, the economics of manufacturing, and the lives of artisans can be gleaned from contemporary written sources (including a few manuals written by craftsmen) and from inscriptions on artefacts, it is the objects themselves and the archaeology of manufacturing practices that remain the foundations for research.

Some comments are needed concerning the wider context of manufacturing in the Islamic world and the areas where archaeology has had a more limited impact on our understanding of craft practices. The three sections that make up the bulk of this chapter are concerned with the manufacture of artefacts in inorganic media, ceramics, glass and metal. The restriction is not meant to imply that artefacts in these media were necessarily the most important products from the urban workshops of the Islamic world; for instance pre-modern Arabic, Persian or Turkish written sources illustrate that fine textiles were valued much more highly than glazed pottery.2 What dictates the choice of inorganic materials is the extent of the contribution made by conventional archaeological practices. Two factors are relevant in this context: first, inorganic artefacts, and particularly ceramics and glass, survive in much greater numbers in excavated contexts; and, second, the requirement for architectural infrastructure (such kilns and furnaces) and the application of intense heat means that ore smelting installations and the workshops of potters, metalworkers and glassworkers are more readily identifiable in the archaeological record.

That said, the study of epigraphic evidence and of physical evidence from other media does provide some important avenues of interpretation, as well as highlighting the complex nature of patronage and craft organisation in Islamic societies. For instance tiraz bands bearing the names of caliphs or sultans appear on numerous textile fragments (Fig. 7.1), and there is abundant textual evidence for the existence of workshops operating under some degree of state control.

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