Friday, April 25, 2014

MAUSOLEUM OF MEMORY



Mausoleum of Memory

Turn left into the sombre silence, and dead air:
The good room; laid out for a wake thirty years,
That, for the carpenter, has finally come.

A nod, a look, touching the wood, an exhaled sigh;
The fragrant corpse, the room itself, the fixed smile of both,
And a mausoleum of memory.

Flocked damp-patched patterned wallpaper,
A Sacred Heart benediction and three ducks migration;
Flying between the Johns, towards the Proclamation.

In the corner, his master’s voice, beside a cold fire,
Where polished bamboo struts, and chipped orphan ware,
Compete with porcelain hues.

And yet I remember, late night entry with Maura,
Fumbling fingers, wet with anticipation and innocence,
A cat-walk of shrieks and floorboard squeaks.

JFK and Pope John, and the carpenter, all gone now;
And memories of Maura fading too, leaving

Just the lovelorn ducks, ascending for eternity.


©R Derham 2014

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Rihla (Journey 43): The Cloisters, Manhattan, NY, USA – Crusaders, The True Cross and Free Frenchmen




Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355 CE) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian, Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.

This rihla is about The Cloisters, Upper Manhattan, New York, USA.


A 16th Century German glass panel depiction of Hell in
vitreous paint and silver stain in The Cloisters, Manhattan. 

God allowed himself to be tortured on the cross,
He will tell us on the day of reckoning:
“You who helped me carry my cross,
Go and find my angels!
You will see me there, and Mary my mother.
But you who denied me help,
You will all descend to the depths of Hell.”
Chanson de croisade 1239
Thibaud IV of Champagne (Le Chansonnier), King of Navarre,
Leader of Baron’s Crusade 1239-41


It is that time of year when Easter ceremonies around the world in the Christian faith remember the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, events that were to shape and continue to shape the history of the Levant and Near East, the Holy Land. I thought it apt therefore for this rihla, this journey, to recall an encounter with a 13th century crusading knight (or at least his effigy).

There have been times when travelling when I have had the pleasure of encountering a man-made edifice that is so out of context with my own expectation, so surprising in its actual existence, that all you can feel is a sense of wonderment. I think of the effervescent Palatine Chapel in the drab surrounding of the Norman Castle in Palermo, Sicily, the vicious medieval torture frescos of the churches of the Armenian New Julfa quarter in Isfahan, Iran or going way back in time the extraordinary 10,000 BCE temple complex on a brown-parched hill in Gobekli Tepe, in Turkey. Into this august company I add The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, situated at the very upper end of Manhattan in New York city. It took me entirely by surprise, and I love that sensation!

Location of The Cloisters at very south-west end of Manhattan


In 1935 following the acquisition and amalgamation of a number of estates in the Hudson and Washington Heights areas of Manhattan, John D. Rockefeller Jr. commissioned the architect Charles Collens to design, to source extra artefacts in Europe, to incorporate the extraordinary medieval architectural ‘surplus’ horde of George Grey Bernard (a horde brought from Europe that included effigies, altarpieces, near complete parts of abbey cloisters) and to amalgamate a Gothic and Romanesque medieval fragmentary past into a harmonious 20th century whole. 

Floor Plan of the Cloisters

The building work began in 1935 and the ‘new’ museum opened to the public on May 10, 1938, three years and nine centuries in the making. It contained in addition to Bernard’s collection, and Rockefeller’s own, choice pieces from the Metropolitan’s medieval collection.

Reconstructed Chapter House with differing column styles in The Cloisters

After the 40-minute ride from downtown Manhattan on the express subway to 190th street and the ride up an attended elevator to street level you enter Fort Tyron Park and skirt around the perimeter. Ahead of you on the highest point in Manhattan rises an ochre-coloured, sienna tiled, Occitan-towered, ramparted medieval abbey for all-the-world like a small abbey found high in the Pyrenees straddling the pilgrim’s route to Santiago de Compostela. The sense of a mountain retreat or remoteness is enhanced visually by the Palisade Cliffs to the west and in my imagination it reminded me so much of travels undertaken in the Cathar region of southern France.

The Cloisters garden. Gothic church to left.

Within The Cloisters museum building, in a small Gothic church on the lower level, next to the abbey garden with its Black Mustard planting, is a sarcophagus bearing the effigy of a crusader knight of France, Jean de Alluye. In typical fashion he is depicted praying, with exquisite detailing of his costume, armour and sword, legs resting on an lion footstool. I was immediately drawn to the effigy and as the information supplied was sparse have tried tracking down his story since.

Gothic Church and sarcophagus of Jean II d'Alluye
The Cloisters, Manhattan

Jean II d’Alluyes b.1180CE was the great-great-great-great-great grandson of Hughes I d’Alluyes, first Seigneur d’Alluyes in 978CE in the Barony of Touraine on land granted to the Bishop of Chartres by Charles the Great in 880CE. By 1239, when he joined the Baron’s Crusade to the Holy Land, Jean II d’Alluyes was Seigneur of Château-La-Vallière, Saint Christophe, Chenu et Noyant townlands to the east side of the road between Tours and Angers.

Jean d'Alluye's territory in Angers-Tours area of France

He was a Knight Banneret of Touraine (higher in rank than a Knight Bachelor) who could fight under his own square-shaped banner (rather than that of a liege lord) and had a complicated coat-of-arms drawn up in 1231 described as:
 


“Papelonné d’azur, a trois fasces ondées argent, les 3 faces d’argent charges chacune de trois besants d’azur, surcharges chacun d’une fleur de lys d’or, les deux faces du bas charges enoutre de quatre losanges couchés accostant les besants.”


In July 1239 Jean II d’Alluyes joined 1000 other knights and nobles at Lyon to embark, in defiance of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (called by his contemporaries Stupor Munde, or wonder of the world; the multi-lingual grandson of the great Norman King of Sicily Roger II) and Pope Gregory IX, on the Baron’s Crusade to the Holy Land. This crusade had originally been called for by Gregory to be in situ in the Holy Land when the Sixth Crusade agreement of 1229 between Frederick and the Ayyubid Sultan al-Kamil was due to expire. The crusade was made possible by a massive taxation on France’s Jewish population.



On arrival in Syria in the Autumn of 1239 the Barons elected Thibaud IV of Champagne and King of Navarre as their leader at Acre. Thibaud was far better known as a song-writer (quoted above) than as a military strategist and the Barons’ crusade from a military perspective was wrecked by disunity and a disaster from the start. However with an element of luck and timing brought about by difficulties in the Ayyubid Empire Thibaud, and in particular his immediate replacement in September 1240 by Richard of Cornwall (Son of King John and subsequently King of Germany from 1257) the Barons were able to negotiate the return of most of the southern Outremer lands lost to Saladin back into the control of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.


Richard returned back to Europe in 1241 and although it is stated that Jean II d’Alluyes was a crusader until 1244, there is a notation of Jean selling of a reliquary of the “True Cross”, to the Cistercian Abbey of La Bossière in 1241 for 533 livres tournois. In order to have been present to sell on the relic in 1241 Jean must have returned with either Thibaud or Richard.

There is something not quite right about the accepted story of Jean being given the relic of the “True Cross” as a 'present' by a Greek Bishop in Crete. Ever since the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine ‘discovered’ the “True Cross” in Jerusalem in 326CE (and founded the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the site of the find) a veritable forest of fragments of the “True Cross” found their way in the Eastern Orthodox tradition into relics made in the form of a double Byzantine-type cross-pieced Patriarchal cross. These were highly valuable and treasured and why should Jean, a passing crusading tourist be given such a present by a Greek bishop in Crete, unless there was money involved or something more devious.

In any event as soon as Jean got home, he decided to cash-in on his 'luck' and sold the relic to the Cistercians. The presence of the relic of the ‘True Cross” in La Bossière soon became such a draw for pilgrims that the monks commissioned an income generating stand-alone Chapel to house it to the west of the Abbey. This became known as the Chapel of the Foreigners and almost certainly repaid their transaction with Jean a thousand-fold.

Jean was to die in 1248 (succeeded by his son Hughes VI) and was interred in the Abbey of Le Clarté-Dieu near Tours, which was partly destroyed in the 100 Years War. The sarcophagus lid with Jean’s effigy was used, turned upside-down, for many years as a footbridge before being rescued by a Paris dealer and sold to George Grey Barnard to begin its journey to The Cloisters.


Jean d'Alluye's sword


The very striking “Chinese” design of Jean’s effigy sword has prompted much speculation and interest ( most likely bought in a Seljuk inspired and Damascus or Konya-supplied shop) but for me it was the continued story of Jean II d’Alluye’s bartered relic of the “True Cross” that intriqued me more.

In 1356 the Count of Anjou removed Jean's relic, from the care of the Cistercians in La Bossière to the Castle of Angers for ‘safe-keeping’ where a knightly order was created with the cross as its loadstone. In 1420 Duke Rene of the House of Anjou inherited, through his wife Isabella, the Duchy of Lorraine and in commemoration of the fact he incorporated Jean II d’Alluye’s double cross relic into the Arms of Lorraine and subsequently the Cross of Lorraine became the symbol of that Duchy.



It is interesting to note a Lorraine coin of the 1500s showing on the reverse the patriarchal cross.



In 1940 Admiral Muselier (from Lorraine) of the Free French Navy suggested that the Cross of Lorraine on a Tricolour become the flag of all Free French Forces in World War II. By a proclamation of the 5 June 1941, signed by Charles deGaulle it was adopted.



By a best estimation Jean d’Alluye was more of a crusading tourist than belligerent, collecting and selling on Holy Land relics. In an ironic twist his actions were very similar to those of Bernard, the medieval architectural scavenger whose collection and earlier museum construction near the 190th st subway exit was to be the impetus for the development of The Cloisters. Bernard sold his relics, including that of Jean's tomb, and his great idea to Rockefeller and like the Cistercians of La Boissière building a chapel to house Jean's relic in 1246 John D. Rockefeller Jr. was to build his own 'Chapel of the Foreigners' in Manhattan for pilgrim tourists.



Although his bones are long lost the spirit of Jean d'Alluye, Crusader and Free Frenchman, lives on in the still silence of a Gothic Chapel in Manhattan.


Friday, April 11, 2014

Rihla (Journey 42): Qalhãt, Oman – The Tears of Maryam





Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355 CE) book written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian, Ibn Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.

This rihla is about Qalhãt, Oman.

I had a place to stay among those departing,
It was far away and time destroyed it.
Those departing left sadness behind for me;
What a wretched friend is Sadness.
(Tãrîkh al-Mustabsir)

The core behavioural attribute of the Arabic psyche, of old and new, is the notion of respect: respect for clan affiliations and respect for precedent in terms of genealogy, hierarchy and agreements made; be they personal, political, judicial or religious.  In the past the primary vehicle used to transmit that notion of respect was a nomadic love of storytelling and this spilled over into an abundance of secular Arabic literature, a long time before widespread literacy was established in Europe. 

The 13th century traveller and businessman Ibn al-Mujãwir (Abu Bakr b.Muhammad b.Mas’ud b.’Ali b.Ahmed Ibn al-Mujãwir al-Baghdadi al-Nisaburi
) from Khursan province (a Persian province in what now would be an area covering the intersection of NE Iran, southern Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and western Afghanistan) quoted the stanza above when writing about his visit to Qalhãt, Oman in 626 AH or 1229 CE (the year the Papacy formally established the Inquisition).



Qalhãt is a storytellers dream and for me, it provided an opportunity to visit a place where the hero of my rihlas, Ibn Battuta and other travellers such as Marco Polo had come previously. 

The ‘Sadness’ that had descended on Ibn al-Mujãwir's Qalhãt holds true to this day however, and the old coastal Omani capital is now, largely, a disconsolate backwater off to the side of the new motorway from Muscat to Sur in Oman. There is a sign on the road pointing out the turn-off to the ancient and historical city but not many people remember the extent of that history and the particular importance of Qalhãt as the launching pad for the Arab colonisation of Oman or how it later attracted sailors, merchants, journeymen and thieves to its shores. Qalhãt was once the capital of Oman and as a consequence in many of the early European maps of Arabia, Qalhãt (Calyate) is one of the few consistently place-names described.



Recent French excavations suggest the foundation of the city ( or at least a city with mortar and stone preserved) to be sometime in the early 12th century but if Arab history, and a fair degree of storyteller's licence, is to be believed then the city is far older than that.





Around 50BCE the South Arabian or Qahtanite tribe of Azd, nomadic Arabs of the southern Sarawat mountains in today’s northern Yemen became subject to the Kingdom of Himyar after that kingdom’s defeat of the Saba (Sheeba) in 100BCE and were moved to the plateaux around the famous Marib Dam. The earthwork and stone faced dam, in existence for 1000 years, had had a major breach in its structure while the Kingdoms of Raydan and Saba were at war around 145BCE and this breach provided the opportunity for Himyarite kingdom to attack and conquer.



Perhaps the Azd were forced into providing maintenance for the dam but when an opportunity arose late in the second century CE, when a resurgent Saba and Himyar resumed hostilities, the Azd tribe under the four sons of Amr b.Muzaquiya decided en mass to migrate out of Yemen. One group under Jafna b.Amr headed north to Syria founding the kingdom of the Ghassenids. The next under Thalabah b. Amr settled in Yathrib (Medina) and the third group under Haritha b.Amr settled on the northern part of the Hejaz coastline.

The fourth group under Imran b.Amr split into two sections. The northern section led by Imran and Amr b.Fahm headed northeastwards for al-Bahrayn but the southern section lead by Malik b.Fahm migrated through the Ramlat al-Sab’atayn to the Hadraumat and as far as the old port of Qana. At this point Malik b.Fahm decided that he was going to confront the Persians and there must have been good reason for this gamble.



In 660BCE there is documentary evidence of the Assyrian King Ashurinpal receiving tribute from the King of Qadé, resident in Iskie, the still extant town of Iski on the western side of the Heggar mountains in north-eastern Oman. The Oman region, known for millennia in Old Persian as Maka, in Elamite as Makkash, in Akkadian as Makkan and Sumerian as Magan came under the direct control of the Achaemenid empire under Darius the Great (c.510BCE).

Ibn-al-Kalbi the Arab historian dated the Azd incursion into Oman to the time of Darius III, the Achaemenid King defeated by Alexander the Great in 330 BCE but this is a ‘storyteller’s’ invention. A more accurate assessment would be to the early 2nd century. At this time the Parthian Empire’s direct Iranian control of the Oman was from the province of Fars and the governor, a man called Haftanboxt (from the Achaemenid title hafta(x)uwa-patar or guardian of the seventh part of a province) was defeated by Adashir I, around 220CE during his rise to be the founder of the Sasanian Empire five years later.



It was the notion of a weakened Parthian state and control of the Oman coast that almost certainly encouraged Malik b.Fahm around 220CE to transport his clansmen by sea in order to surprise the Parthians. Rounding the Ras al-Haad headland at the entrance to the Gulf of Oman Malik’s ships, made of Indian teak with coconut fibre caulking, made landfall at the safe harbour of what was subsequently to be called Qalhãt.

The Azd brought, it is said, about 6,000 tribesmen to the area and came to an arrangement, after a brief stand-off, with the local Persian wali to gather themselves before moving on. Malik b.Fahm decided that once a foothold had been gained to head further into Oman and he subsequently defeated a Parthian army at the Battle of Sulat. As a consequence Qahtanite presence was firmly established in Oman. Subsequently Malik b.Fahm joined up with his brother Amr and fellow tribesmen in al-Bahrayn to form the Tanukh confederation which then migrated further northwards to establish an Arab presence at the top of the Persian Gulf and near Basra.

In true storytelling fashion Ibn al-Mujãwir relates two stories concerning the naming of the town one being that the name Qalhãt was derived from the practice of Malik b.Fahm trying to drum up trade for his new town by wandering along the shoreline and shouting to the crews of a passing ship to ‘bring her in’ or qul hat in Arabic.

By 1200CE the Oman coast was under the control of the Khwarezm Shah’s and the Governor of the Kirman province stored silk and horses in Qalhãt. Al-Mujãwir reports that the walls of Qalhãt were built around 1219CE. Following the Mongol invasions of Persia refugees established a new colony on the island of Hormuz off the Iranian coast. Subsequently the history of the Oman coastline and Qalhãt in particular were to be linked to the new Kingdom of Hormuz.



Early in the 12th Century, around the time the walls of the town were built, Qalhãt became the nominal capital of Oman. In 1291, 60 years after al-Mujãwir visit, Marco Polo docked in Qalhãt (Kalayati) on his voyage home from China. He reported (in his Book of the Marvels of the World dictated to Rustichello da Pisa while in prison in Genoa in 1298) that Qalhãt was a large exporter of horses and often became the bolthole of the King of Hormuz whenever there was conflict with the King of Kirman on the Iranian mainland.

Even today when you travel on bitumen roads through the harsh landscape of the south-eastern corner of Oman you wonder at the logistical effort it would have taken in the 10-16th centuries to herd thousands of Arabian horses across Oman, through the al-Heggar mountains, for marshalling and transport to Iran and India. 

In 1331, 40 years after Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta (who also was to later dictate rather than write himself his travel stories) another famous traveller arrived in Qalhãt…on foot after an expected short walk from Sur turned into a very difficult journey. Ibn bemoaned that his feet were so sore that he had to rest up for six days in the town. He reports that there was an ‘exceedingly’ beautiful mosque in the town, decorated with Qashani tiles and which ‘occupies a lofty situation overlooking the town and the harbour’.



On the 15 August 1507 the Portuguese naval commander Afonso de Albuquerque’s ships anchored off the port of Qalhãt (Calayate). De Albuquerque sent a small boat ashore to try and determine the ‘lie of the land’. Through an interpreter Gasper Rodriques De Albuquerque was informed that Qalhãt was the gateway to Hormuz. The Portuguese came to an agreement with the local governor and no pillage or massacres (unlike shortly afterwards in Curiat and Muscat) took place. De Albuquerque’s commentaries described Qalhãt as a good harbour with many old edifices, which had been partly destroyed by an earthquake.

The following August 1508 Qalhãt was not so lucky. De Albuquerque returned and with a smaller force decided to sack the city despite efforts of the local commander to come to an agreement. After two days of fighting the local forces were defeated (including a Pedreanes Lamprea who had deserted from the Portuguese forces in Hormuz six months previously) and after plundering all they could De Albuquerque ordered the city razed including the beautiful sea shore mosque which he described as having seven naves all covered with tiles and porcelain, an arcaded entrance and a terrace that looked out towards the sea as well as cutting off the noses and ears of all surviving prisoners. I suspect Lamprea was not so lucky and his fate as a captured renegade, although not reported, was particularly brutal.

In Qalhãt today the city walls and the foundation of the sea-shore mosque have been rediscovered by the efforts of a French archaeological team. It is interesting to see the aerial plan of their work and compare it to the map of al-Mujãwir of 700 years ago.




The one edifice that still partly stands on the high ground in an added enclosure to the west of the old city walls is a mausoleum built by Bahuddin Ayez, a native of Qalhãt and second King of Hormuz, in honour of his wife Bibi Maryam in 1312. You will note from the maps above that this second triangular enclosure at the apex of the aerial modern map does not appear on al-Mujawir's map as he had visited before it's construction. The mausoleum was the ‘mosque’ noted by Ibn Battuta on a ‘lofty’ setting and is built in a Seljuk Khanid style and its rare architectural squared footprint sophistication has earned it UNESCO citation.



The beautiful sea-shore Friday mosque must have been built at a later date as it was not noted by Ibn Battuta. The mosque and the town completely gutted by De Albuquerque was never to recover and all Qalhãt’s administrative functions moved to Muscat.


The horses had bolted and the Sadness of al-Mujawir had descended, leaving just the Tears of Maryam.