Last year, thousands of people watched in shock, disbelief and despair as the fire engulfed the beacon of Western civilization, the Notre Dame Cathedral. The ultimate symbol of French cultural identity, the very heart of the nation, was disappearing in smoke and flames. But the expert for Biscay East, Diana Dark, thought differently.
She knew that the roots of this magnificent Gothic edifice did not lie in the refined annals of European Christian history, but as many believed, in the deserts of Syria, more precisely in a village located west of Aleppo.
"The architecture of Notre Dame, like all Gothic cathedrals in Europe, derives directly from the fifth-century Syrian Kalb Lozeh church," Dark tweeted on the morning of April 16, as the dust settled in Paris.
"Crusaders brought the concept of twin towers around rose-shaped windows to Europe in the 12th century," she added and pointed out that ribbed ceilings, pointed arches, and even the recipe for stained glass also came from the Middle East.
So the point of the story is that Gothic architecture as we know it owes much more to Arabic and Islamic traditions than to the wild Goths.
"I was shocked by the reactions to that tweet. I thought a lot more people knew that, but it turns out we have an ocean of ignorance when it comes to the history of cultural appropriation. With Islamophobia on the rise, I thought it was time someone corrected that narrative." , said Dark in an interview with "Guardian".
The occasion is her new book "Stealing from the Saracens", a meticulous research that reveals centuries of borrowing, which traces the roots of some of the most famous European buildings, from the British Parliament and Westminster Abbey to Chartres Cathedral and the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice, right down to their Middle Eastern inspirations.
It is as much a story of political power, wealth and fashion as it is of religion, with tales of crusaders who stole everywhere, fashion-conscious bishops and white-world merchants discovering new styles and techniques that they brought back to their homelands.
"Today there is this division between East and West, but it didn't exist back then. Cultural exchanges were dominant and usually moved from East to West, with little going in the opposite direction," asserts Dark.
Given their ubiquity in the great cathedrals of Europe, it is not strange to think that the pointed stone arches and high ribbed ceilings are of Christian origin. But these first come from the Jerusalem Islamic shrine of the seventh century, and the second from the mosques of Andalucia (Spain) from the tenth century. In fact, the first known example of a ribbed ceiling still stands intact. Visitors to the mezquita in Córdoba can admire its intersecting arches in the form of masterpieces of geometry and decorative structure, without knowing anything about its thousand-year existence.
The part of the mosque where the caliph was housed is designed so that the light falls on the leader of the caliphate, but the official leaflet will tell you little about the Islamic origins of this building, probably because it was converted into a Catholic church back in 1236.
The pointed arch, on the other hand, was a pragmatic solution to the problem faced by the masons working on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. It is one of the holiest places in the world for Muslims. It was built by the ruler of the first Islamic empire in 691. There you can also see the trefoil arches that will later cover almost every European cathedral, adapted to symbolize the Holy Trinity.
"I'm shocked at how many of these things we think are essentially Christian and European, all due to ignorance and misinterpretation of older Islamic forms," says Dark, and in particular points out the huge influence the Dome of the Rock had on medieval crusaders, who thought it was Solomon's. the temple.
They used this circular, domed design as a model for Templar churches, such as the Temple Church in London. They even copied decorative Arabic inscriptions that openly criticize Christians for believing in the Holy Trinity instead of the unity of God. Pseudo-Kufic calligraphic inscriptions were thus found on French cathedrals, because no one knew what they meant.
The confusion was extended by the first printed map of Jerusalem, which was published in the German city of Mainz in 1486. It not only misinterpreted the Dome of the Rock as Solomon's Temple, but also depicted the building as an arched dome, a pure Orientalist fantasy from the mind of a Dutch woodcut artist. Erhard Rojvih. The book became a bestseller, went through 13 reprints and was translated into several languages, thus causing numerous churches to spring up throughout Europe in the 16th century. This tale of mistaken identity and unintended consequences is worthy of a Monty Python skit.
The transfer of Islamic motifs to the West was not always so simple. The pointed bows arrived by a circuitous route. So Dark follows their path from their popularization to Cairo, where they were seen by an enthusiastic merchant from the rich Italian port of Amalfi, who took his revelation to the eclectic 10th-century basilica there. This exotic building attracted the attention of Abbot Desiderius, during his visit to Amalfi in 1065, where he came to trade rare luxury goods and decided to use pointed arches and stained glass windows in his monastery in Monte Cassino.
The windows were copied by the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny in France, then the largest church in the world. Abbé Schuger, advisor to Kings Louis VI and VII, liked how this design brought more light into the building, so he applied it to the Saint-Denis Basilica in Paris, which is considered the first true Gothic structure. Its architect then worked on Notre Dame.
"Everyone copied her. These were the most powerful churches in Europe, so it became a trend. Everyone wants to copy powerful people," explains Dark.
The list goes on endlessly. The city hall in Florence and the church of St. The stamps in Venice are also copies from the East, while Dark points out that Venice is more Arabic in appearance than European with its narrow passages and houses with courtyards and roof terraces, the Islamic ornamentation on the Doge's Palace which is inspired by the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and the dome at the church of St. Brand. All these are the results of Venetian traders who traveled to the Middle East, whose influence was even transmitted to fashion: women in Venice were covered in public and dressed in black from head to toe.
Diana Dark's book came out at a tense time when Western architecture is being mobilized by right-wing groups to reinforce their vision of a "pure" European identity, while numerous social media sites promote messages of white supremacy hidden behind the cloak of heritage. Diana Dark's work breaks down that ignorant propaganda by showing how the monuments idealized by the right come from the very culture they are so suspicious of.
The very name of her work is full of irony. In the Middle Ages, "Saracen" was a pejorative term for Arab Muslims, against whom the Crusaders waged their "holy wars". The term comes from the Arabic word "saraqa" which means "to steal", because the Saracens were then considered robbers and thieves, regardless of the fact that the crusaders on their travels plundered Europe, Jerusalem and Constantinople, stole the wonders of Islamic architecture, hiding the origin of the loot along the way .
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