VCUarts Qatar / Visual Cultures of the Islamic World
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Diplomacy and Trade

Museum of Islamic Art Spotlight Object

Jahangir Album

Diplomacy and Trade

Page from the Muraqqa-e Gulshan or Jahangir Album
Recto: classical figure with a child
Verso: calligraphy by Mir Ali
Mughal, India
16th century
Ink, opaque watercolour, and gold on paper
42.5 × 26.5 cm
MS.157.2000
Credit: Museum of Islamic Art

022_MIA_MS.157_159 Verso

This folio is part of the famous Muraqqa-e Gulshan (or “Flower Garden Album”), also known as the Jahangir Album, compiled between 1600 and 1618. Commissioned by the Emperor Jahangir (r. 1605–27), the album reflects the ruler’s interest in illustrations of cultural traditions and events. This Mughal-era painting shows a figure depicted in a European style, demonstrating the cultural flexibility of the Mughal court and the willingness of Mughal emperors and artists to experiment with and embrace new styles of painting. Through the adaptation of Christian iconography from contemporary European prints and paintings, the artists of the Mughal atelier created an innovative visual language.

Mounia Chekhab-Abudaya
Curator for North Africa and Iberia, Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar

 

The Big Picture

Frontal view of plaque with Champlevé enamel on copper. Credit: @ Victoria and Albert Museum, London | Non-commercial use

Islam spread by both the word and the sword, but in early stages, it was considered an incoming force of tolerance, acceptance, and diversity in religious and social matters. By establishing Damascus as its first capital outside of Mecca and Medina, in a region previously under Byzantine rule, it thus recognized a diverse religious and ethnic population. Artistic styles began to merge, and diplomatic routes connected with far-flung regions. The pre-Islamic Bedouin Arabs engaged in commerce with the Persian Sassanid and Byzantine regions, setting up a foundation for a fruitful rise in diplomacy and trade as Islam expanded across political, social, economic, and geographic borders. The Islamic Golden Age, traditionally dated from the eighth to the thirteenth century, saw an increase in cultural, economic, and scientific sectors. In order to stimulate commercial activity, maritime trade routes, which pre-dated the Islamic record, were bolstered. The Silk Road offered another significant advance in Asian trade, allowing merchants from the Middle East, Europe, Central Asia, and East Asia to congregate. The Crusades were also a tremendous influence in this time period, dating from 1095–1291. Like the Pilgrim’s Canteen, countless Islamic artisanal works were brought back to Europe by the Crusaders, either as evidence of the journey, for the sake of exotic commodity, or to verify the triumphs of the Crusaders in re-Christianizing the Holy Land of the three Abrahamic faiths. Venetian traders also frequented Islamic cities in hopes of bringing back luxury goods, spices, and local materials found in the Eastern regions.

Frontal view of woven wool with appliqué in colored wool and linen warps. Credit: @ Victoria and Albert Museum, London | Non-commercial use

Vegetal patterns and use of blue pigment characteristic of Islamic contexts. Credit: @ Victoria and Albert Museum, London | Non-commercial use

Glass, gilding, and enamel with Arabic inscription on shoulder. Credit: @ Victoria and Albert Museum, London | Non-commercial use

Settlements and trading colonies for Venetian traders arose in city ports such as Tripoli, Alexandria, Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, and Istanbul. Travel diaries often provided other merchants with necessary financial details concerning tariffs, prices, and measures. During this period, the growing establishment of trade between the East and the West was in the process of refinement. By the time of the European Renaissance in the fourteenth century, diplomacy and trade with the Islamic world had flourished. The Islamic Caliphate in Spain, lasting only a century longer, accounted for an incredibly wealthy, diverse, and tolerant society, where trade of knowledge, resources, and economic goods prospered. By the 1600s, Dutch, French, English, and Portuguese merchants followed suit, attracted by the wealth that exportation could bring. Such business practices were encouraged by influential empires such as the Mughals and the Safavids, who sought to profit from a new source of stimulation for their economic and trade networks. Artistically, both the East and the West saw prolific advancements in their cultural scene. Indian, Persian, and Turkish artists appropriated Western artistic feats, evident in Persian Qajar portraiture, which assimilated the size and realism of Western portraiture. “Jahangir Presenting a Book to a Sufi” also represents this cross-cultural exchange of East and West. Diplomatic ties solidified soon after, with British representatives landing in Persia in 1622, and the French a decade later in 1638. Although Portuguese and French presence pre-dated the British, they rose to become the central authority in the Indian subcontinent, and the first trade treaty was brokered in 1615 by Sir Thomas Roe. The Ottoman Empire (1299–1922), at first self-reliant and powerful enough to enforce its own domestic trade networks, was weakening by the eighteenth century. European merchants began arriving in the commercial centers of the empire, such as Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut, and Salonica, the trade center of the Balkan region. This equitable cultural and financial exchange, however, would come to be heavily disrupted by a development that would change global relations: imperialism.

Artemis Tzioli
Art History Program, VCUarts Qatar

In Focus

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