December 11 -- Second Visit to the Islamic Museum of Art (Roger)

Today was the first full day of what I call my white diet.  I’m not supposed to eat dark food for several days after the  teeth-whitening process, but that matches up reasonably well with the Roma’s typical breakfast.  The guys here were nice enough to substitute warm lemon water (ugh!) for the usual Nescafe and to add some Arab bread to the usual breakfast rolls.  But it’s gonna be a long three days.

Lou covered some 10 walking miles yesterday while my teeth were getting whiter, so while his feet and legs recovered today, I headed down for my own visit to the Museum of Arabic Art.  I’d made it there briefly on another visit and wanted to go back.  It’s a one-floor collection with a very open display area that reminds me of the space in mosques or in the general public room in Middle Eastern homes.  In one half of the museum, you walk though art that’s historically organized from the earliest Islamic dynasties through the Ottomans, and probably because we’re in Cairo, the strongest part of the collection is the Mamluk pieces.  I’m fascinated by the Mamluk era, not only for its amazing artistic creations but for its social structure and geo-political role.

The Mamluks were slaves imported by the last sultans of the Ayyubid dynasty for personal protection.  This practice started in the mid-1200’s, and the Mamluks became numerous, created their own class and eventually took power.  Collaborating with Venice, the Mamluks taxed East/West trade, and their military prowess led them to conquer much of the southern and eastern sides of the Mediterranean.  Despite having so much wealth, individual Mamluks couldn’t leave estates or titles to their families, so the powerful rulers invested vast sums into art and public works for their legacy.  And it shows.  Mamluk is my favorite art and architecture in Cairo’s history.  

The museum has a lot of smaller Mamluk art, but the tile work is among my favorite.  It’s rich and ornate,  and the Mamluk rulers lined their constructions with its beauty.  In addition to the tiles, there is a lot of Mamluk work in wood in the collection that shows the same love of elaborate ornamentation.  I was struck by this single, lavish ceiling tile for the al-Azhar Mosque, imagining what a high ceiling would look like that consisted entirely of these.  And marveling more than a little about so much investment in one of the less-prominent elements of and wide, open mosque.  

From the chronologically-organized part of the collection, I walked over to the side dedicated to the eastern Islamic world, which focused mostly on Iran and Northern India.  Iran had been a significant East/West trading route for a millennium before Islam came there, and its cosmopolitan influences show in its Islamic art.  Iranian work embraces figural forms more than other other Islamic art traditions, and the forms have a clear Eastern influence.  I especially liked the little piece of a 12th century Persian tile that has two warriors from a traditional story.

Further east, the Muslim Mughal emperors created an environment for a major flourishing of Islamic art.  While the Taj Mahal is probably the best-known of this work, the museum has many smaller examples of Mughal work, including one fine little piece showing a minister, Akbar-nama presenting a manuscript.  The work is very fine and the colors vibrant.

I was pretty tired by the time I got to the calligraphy section of the museum, though I knew that calligraphy was an important art form in the Middle East.  It was very worth spending some time here despite my museum fatigue.  And as though that wasn’t enough, as I was heading to the door, I came to an area dedicated to scientific and medical instruments.  I knew that the Arab world had preserved and expanded the knowledge of the Classical world while the West was going through the Dark and Middle Ages, but the detail and beauty of some of these scientific instruments was still striking.  I spent a good minute looking at this 16th-century, copper planetarium engraved with the Arabic constellations.

When I finally slouched out of the museum, I headed back to the hotel to meet Lou for lunch and, I hoped, a nap.  Walking through the part of the market dedicated to musical instruments and furniture, I happened on Groppi’s bakery and decided, since this was a white food day, to snag a merengue for us as a snack.  Melt-in-your-mouth delicious, of course.  And didn’t take long for Lou and I to get to a table so I could order hummus (light-colored), cream of chicken soup (light-colored) and a chicken pot (light-colored).  And 7-Up, which tastes like tonic water here and is similarly light-colored.  Very satisfying for the dietary limits I’m dealing with.

The rest of the day was mostly uneventful.  We had a nice midday rest, after which I went out browsing store fronts while Lou went in search of peanuts (light-colored) and a shave.  We both found what we were looking for and met back at the hotel.