The Art of the Saljuqs in Iran and Anatolia: Proceedings of a Symposium in Edinburgh in 1982.

• Author: Wolper, Ethel Sara
• Position: Review

Edited by ROBERT HILLENBRAND. Costa Mesa, Calif.: MAZDA PUBLISHERS, 1994. Pp. xxvii + 319.

Robert Hillenbrand's publication of the proceedings from the Edinburgh conference on the art of the Saljuqs in Iran and Anatolia reminds us of the need for further international and interdisciplinary studies of the Saljuq achievement. The cultural tradition associated with both the Saljuqs of Iran and Anatolia was so complex and, at the same time, so creative that it is a shame to see Saljuq topics lost in monographs and collections on broader fields. At a very basic level, combining the traditions of the Saljuqs of Iran and Anatolia provides a testament to the large number of important topics and scholars in the field. Saying this does not alter the fact that the one question that should lie at the center of these inquiries - the similarity between the Saljuqs of Iran and Anatolia - remains largely unaddressed.

A summary of this collection on the art of the Saljuqs in Iran and Anatolia reinforces the notion that the historical sources and artifacts from both dynasties have been unevenly preserved and published. This state of affairs makes the precise degree and nature of the cultural interchange between Iran and Anatolia difficult to determine. For, no matter how closely the Saljuqs of Rum based their bureaucratic and literary traditions on practices formalized by the Great Saljuqs of Iran, their encounter with the political and cultural activities of Byzantines, Armenians, and Georgians affected everything from their system of government to their building programs. Finally, within the field of art history the term Saljuq art is more often than not applied to ceramics, architecture, and manuscripts which had very little to do with either Saljuq court.

Robert Hillenbrand organized the 1982 conference on the Saljuqs in the hopes that a focus on specialized topics would stimulate a more refined definition of this formative period in Islamic art. The edited volume, appearing in 1994, contains short essays by thirty-six well-published and deeply respected scholars. The majority of these focus on specific areas in either the arts from Iran or from Anatolia. Only two essays in the volume, those by Basil Gray and Howard Crane, explicitly address the relationship between the arts of Iran and Anatolia. By contrast, there are a number of studies that examine the close interrelationship between different mediums, such as manuscripts and metalwork or between...