The Safavids and the Ottoman Turks

The Timurids continued to rule in Khurasan until the beginning of the sixteenth century, but former Timurid territory in the west - that is Iran and Iraq - passed into the hands of various nomadic Turkoman dynasties in the fifteenth century, before being occupied by the Safavids in the first decade of the sixteenth century. The eponymous founder of the fortunes of the Safavid dynasty, Shaykh Safi al-Din (d.1334), had been head of a Sunni Muslim Sufi order, but his descendant Shah Ismail (r.1501-24)took power at the head of a Shia movement and he and his successors ruled over the greatest Shia empire since the suppression of the Egyptian Fatamid caliphate in the late twelfth century.
   The Ottomans (from Osman or Uthman I, 1259-1326) had originally been the paramount clan in a raiding tribe of Turks who began about 1300 to establish a permanent territory in Asia Minor. Taking advantage of the break-up of Mongol territories in the area, they began to make raids against Byzantine settlements as well. Ottoman forces first invaded Europe in 1345, and in 1453, after repeated Turkish assaults, finally captured the ancient Byzantine capital of Constantinople. The city's conqueror, Mehmed II (r. 1451-81), endowed all sorts of foundations to promote Islam within the conquered city and, as was the case with many Muslim patrons, his artistic sponsorship was part of a wider programme for the promotion of the Islamic faith and social welfare generally. Thus, from the early sixteenth century onwards the Middle east was divided between two rival empires, that of the Shia Safavids of Iran and that of the Ottoman Turks.

Sufism and Islamic Art

Understanding the writings and aesthetics of Sufism is essential to any study of Islamic art. Not only were Sufis sometimes involved in craft guilds and practices, but their writings can be used to give valuable indications of the role the arts were seen to play within the Islamic world.
   Sufis were found of quoting a saying attributed to the Prophet, "God is beautiful and loves beauty," and beauty played an important part in Sufi thinking.
   The inner beauty of artists was made manifest in the external beauty of the works of art they produced.
   Islamic romances are sometimes given a mystical gloss by Sufism that offers important insights into the role of their imagery.
   The details of a miniature painting might be taken to represent the soul trapped in the world, a tress of hair id figuratively Divine net that entraps the lover of beauty, a cypress alludes to the Paradise fountain of Kawthar, a gate is potentially an entrance to Paradise, and so on.



Islamic Art
Robert Irwin