Al-Wasseti: Miniatures mark an age of cultural prosperity
Regional, Culture, 6/23/1998

Yahia Bin Mahmoud Bin Yahia Bin Abul Hassan was born in the city of Wasset between Basra and Kufa in Iraq in the first half of the 13th century. Historians say that Wasset, built in AD 702, remained the administrative center of the whole Iraqi region during the Umayyad's rule. It was .

Painter Yahia al-Wasseti was the leader of the school of decoration, calligraphy and embellishment in the 13th century. He was famed for his pictorial representation and sketches of well-known Arabic literary pieces like the Maqamat of al-Hariri (the Maqama is a genre of Arab rhythmic prose). One of the original copies of al-Hariri's Maqamat contains 97 miniatures.

These Maqamat (singular is Maqama) includes more than fifty Maqamas dealing with literary, social, linguistic and rhetorical issues. Added are also satire, jokes, criticism, proverbial sayings and verses from the Holy Koran. Yahia al-Wasseti was the most prominent among those who worked in the book industry and the art of miniature pursued to promote marketing books. Writers of importance at that time like Yaqut al-Hamwi, Ibn al-Atheer, al-Qurtubi and others worked as painters and calligraphers.

Al-Wasseti was an experienced man in selecting certain stanzas or couplets from each Maqama to serve as themes of his miniatures. Human faces, animals, birds and plants on one hand, Arabic calligraphy on the other make the contents of al-Wasseti's paintings, sketches and miniature. Art was not for the sake of art in al-Wasseti's opinion. Through his paintings al-Wasseti aimed to and, in fact, he succeeded in conveying a true picture of people's life with its pleasures, agonies and expectations.

His miniatures are historical documents of great importance. Through these miniatures al-Wasseti carries us from a wine-shop to an orator, from a farm where peasants struggle to earn their living to some musicians and singers enjoying the beauty of nature, etc. He excelled in drawing the crowded pilgrimage, observing Ramadan (Muslims' month of fasting) and seeing off a deceased prominent figure. Realism and expressionism are clear from al-Wasseti's pictures of people, landscapes and animals. Islamic architecture is also represented in those pictures.

Art critics described al-Wasseti's miniatures as one of the most beautiful Islamic arts. He did not bow to the rules and the traditional art of the Christian or the Sassanid art schools. He was the godfather of realism in Islamic painting. This realism was not in the minute details of things painted by al-Wasseti nor his control of the complexities of life but his depiction of psychological conditions of peoples.

Previous Stories:
  Vocational unionist activities in old Arab history   (6/19/1998)
  Averroes 800th anniversary celebrated, Arabs awaken Europe from Dark Ages   (6/8/1998)
  Arab historic personalities in science   (5/26/1998)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search