DRAGONS ON MONUMENTAL SETTINGS IN REGIONS WEST OF IRAN
Carved friezes or high-relief sculpture on stone-
to its availability as wel as the local builders’ mas-
work of the medieval Islamic period, very often
tery of stone masonry, a skill which was naturally
figural in nature and including a repertory of
made use of by their new rulers, the Saljuqs The
animals and fabulous beasts, were portrayed in
subjugated local population was largely Christian,
particular on architectural monuments These
who only gradually converted to the faith of their
could include the gates, archivolts and doorways
rulers, and not only employed their traditions of
of secular monuments such as city walls, palaces
stone-carving, woodwork, stucco and tile-mosaic
and caravanserais, as wel as religious monuments
but also their decorative repertoire 5
like mosques, madrasa s and funerary structures
It is evident that dragon motifs were not lim-
Among the mythical creatures depicted on
ited to Islamic monuments or portable objects,
medieval Islamic monuments, the dragon occu-
but were used equally by Christian artists and
pies a significant place 1 However, while the ico-
the artists of other faiths The iconography of the
nography is entirely absent from Western Central
dragon clearly enjoyed cross-cultural popularity
Asian monumental art until the fifteenth century,2
in the medieval era In fact representations of the
it is characteristic of the area to the west of Iran
motif on stone-carved architectural reliefs in the
As noted earlier, this is due to the fact that no
predomi nantly Christian Transcaucasian realm
figural sculpture is associated with the brick archi-
(that is most of present-day Armenia, Georgia and
tecture of the Iranian world from about 1000 to
Azerbaijian) precede its first known depictions
1200, whereas the dragon motif is conspicuous
in neighbouring eleventh- and twelfth-century
on portable items from the greater Khurasan
northern Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia In
region, where the motif has a very ancient his-
particular in the Armenian and Georgian regions
tory Its appearance on the architecture of elev-
this type of imagery can be found from about
enth- and twelfth-century northern Mesopotamia,
the ninth century onwards, especially the dragon
the Jazīra, Syria and Anatolia,3 may on the one
combat motif (the earliest depictions of which
hand be due to depictions in the so-called “minor
may be datable to the seventh century), which
arts” whose very nature is their potential for por-
will be examined in chapter 7
tability, allowing for the long-distance diffusion
Often depicted in mirror image, dragon themes
of motifs 4 This may be compounded by another
appear above or around entrances and portals
reason which may be sought local y The principal
which represent the boundary between the exte-
building material employed for the architecture
rior and interior The placement reflects the sen -
of these regions is cut-stone with brick playing a
sitivity of the threshold (Lat limen) as both a
minor role The preference for this material is due
metaphor for the monument it protects and the
1 For dragon imagery on Islamic architecture, see in
archnet org; ArchNet Image ID ICW0120 For a discussion of
particular the monograph by Öney, 1969a, as well as the
the Anau dragon motif, see Pugachenkova, 1956, pp 125–9
research of Otto-Dorn, 1978–9, esp pp 25–36
Dragons also appear in the spandrels of a fifteenth-century
2 Two large yellow dragons set against a blue back-
mosque at the shrine-complex of Turbat-i Sheikh Jām halfway
ground in mosaic faience were shown in the tympanum
between Mashhad and Herat in Khurasan; see Daneshvari,
of the portal arch of Abu ’l-Qāsim Babur’s mosque dating
1993, pl I, fig 1
from 848/1444–5 situated in the shrine complex of Jamāl
3 It is also noteworthy that the dragon motif was not
al-Ḥaqq wa ’l-Dīn at Anau near Ashgabat in Turkmenistan,
introduced into Egypt and the Maghrib until Mamlūk times,
which was destroyed when the area was struck by an
when this transmission probably took place through Mosuli
earthquake in 1948 Some of the dragon mosaic has been
craftsmen Ibrāhīm, 1976, pp 12, 15–6
r ecovered and is now housed at the Fine Arts Museum of
4 Cf Hoffman, 2001, pp 17–22
Ashgabat The portal was photographed by the German
5 I would like to thank Professor Robert Hillenbrand
art historian Ernst Cohn-Wiener in the 1920s, whose col-
for drawing my attention to this point Cf Meinecke, 1976,
lection of photographs taken in west Turkestan is kept at the
vol 1, pp 5–6
British Museum and published online in the digital library of
22