Who commissions art, and what shapes it

This lesson asks you to analyse the function and social impact of art works in past and present societies, and to assess the impact of political, cultural, spiritual and other factors on how they were made. The museum offers only examples from the medieval Islamic world; your class adds the examples of other societies. ¹

Ask who ordered it, where it stands, and what it reminded people of or expressed, whether power or memory.

Think of money, place, belief, and legal or social opinion. Which of these appear in the records, and which do not?

Read a patron's name on a building. The Encyclopaedia of Islam names Abd al-Malik as the builder of the Dome of the Rock ². A long inscription in gold mosaic cubes dates the building to 72/691–2, and the article adds that al-Ma'mun replaced Abd al-Malik's name in the inscription with his own ³. The book on Bayt al-Maqdis relates that the cost was drawn from Egypt's kharaj for seven years ⁴. The record gives the patron, the later caliph who altered the name, and the province that paid.

Why was it built? The Encyclopaedia of Islam says the many explanations fall into three groups, and it sets each out without a verdict. The first is the traditional pious Muslim view, which takes the Rock as the place of the Prophet ﷺ's Night Journey and ascension; the article adds that nothing of this appears in the building's own long inscription ⁵. The second, from a passage in al-Ya'qubi, holds that Abd al-Malik sought a shrine to rival the Kaaba and the pilgrimage to Mecca; the al-Kuds article says this thesis cannot be maintained, since no major historian of the ninth century hints at such an intention ⁶. The third sees a monument proclaiming the new faith in the city of the two older religions; the Dome article's author says it seems to him to fit the sources best, while stating that the debate is not closed ⁵.

The inscription is dated, but the article says the literary sources are confused and contradictory ⁵. On images, the article points to the absence of figural representation as a sign of a conscious new Muslim taste in the decoration ³. The museum's record on tasweer, taken from the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence, reports that images whose making is lawful may be ordered and hired for, while forbidden images may not be hired for, paid for, ordered or helped with, and that al-Mawardi alone allowed the maker a fair wage ⁷. Neither record says that these rulings changed what a patron commissioned.

Give a reason from the records, and answer the objection that the Dome shows no figures: do these records show that law or belief shaped what Abd al-Malik had built, or only that patrons, builders and later rulers did?

• Dome of the Rock: the inscription, the patron and the three accounts of its purpose.
• Construction of the Dome of the Rock: the dates and the cost the book reports.
• Images and picturing (tasweer): what the jurists' encyclopaedia says about making, selling and ordering images.
• Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan: the caliph the record names as builder.

Read the record on tasweer. Write a short paragraph comparing what it says about plants and about three-dimensional images with what you know of art works in another society you study.