{"id":32114,"date":"2024-03-18T09:14:15","date_gmt":"2024-03-18T07:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=32114"},"modified":"2024-03-18T17:36:46","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T15:36:46","slug":"dining-with-the-sultan-at-lacma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/dining-with-the-sultan-at-lacma\/","title":{"rendered":"Dining with the Sultan at LACMA"},"content":{"rendered":"
The appetites of museumgoers in Los Angeles are enlivened by the exhibition <\/span>Dining with the Sultan: the Fine Art of Feasting<\/span><\/i><\/a>, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until August 4th, 2024.<\/span><\/h5>\n

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Philip Grant<\/span><\/h4>\n

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The 10th-century historian al-Mas<\/span>\u2018<\/span>\u016bd\u012b reported, toward the end of his monumental <\/span>Meadows of Gold<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/i>that one day his contemporary in Baghdad, the Abbasid caliph al-Mustakf\u012b (r.944-46), ordered his guests to recite poetry about food. In the Iraqi historian\u2019s narrative, there follows a succession of poems which so delight the caliph that after each recitation he commands that the dish so lovingly described be straightaway prepared and brought. When one guest recites Kush\u0101jim\u2019s poem about asparagus, the caliph responds that something of that description is not to be found in Iraq in this season, and they should write to his governor in Damascus to have some sent. The poem ends:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0fa-law ra\u02be\u0101h\u0101 \u02bf\u0101bidun aw mujtahid
\n<\/span><\/i>af\u1e6dara mimm\u0101 yashtah\u012bh\u0101 wa-sajad<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

And were an ascetic to see it, or a mujtahid
\n<\/span>So much would he desire it, he would break his fast and prostrate himself<\/span><\/p>\n

Another poem, attributed simply to \u201ca recent writer\u201d praises <\/span>har\u012bsah \u2014<\/span><\/i> the ancestor of the porridge known by that name in the contemporary eastern Arab-majority countries and Armenia, rather than the spicy Tunisian condiment \u2014 although this is a rather grand version, including a plump goose, almonds, chickpeas, butter, tail fat, kidneys, and galangal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

wa-yashtah\u012bh\u0101 l-ahlu wa-\u1e0d-\u1e0d\u012byf\u0101n
\n<\/span><\/i>lah\u0101 \u02bfal\u0101 a\u1e0dr\u0101bi-h\u0101 s-sul\u1e6d\u0101n<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Familiars and guests alike desire it,
\n<\/span>While the sultan delights in all the forms it comes in.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once again, we hear that someone fasting will scarcely be able to contain themselves when confronted by the sight of this dish. The poet also declares that it was invented by none other than Sasan, eponym of the by then long defunct Sasanid dynasty of the Late Antique Iranian Empire, as well as enjoyed by the king who epitomized just rule in medieval Arabic and Persian literature, Khosrow Anushirv\u0101n. And in a rare reference to the actual labor that made these splendid dishes, we are told it is best if it is:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026har\u012bsatun ya\u1e63na\u02bfuh\u0101 n-nisw\u0101n
\n<\/span><\/i>la-hunna \u1e6d\u012bbu-l-kaffi wa-l-\u012bq\u0101n\u00a0 \u00a0 yujma\u02bfu f\u012b-h\u0101 a\u1e6d-\u1e6dayru wa-l-\u1e25uml\u0101n<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u2026 <\/span><\/i>a harisa women make
\n<\/span>With goodly, skilful hands; in it are gathered birds and lambs<\/span><\/p>\n

We are made hungry by the exhibition <\/span>Dining with the Sultan: the Fine Art of Feasting<\/span><\/i><\/a>, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until August 4th, 2024, just as al-Musktaf\u012b was by his courtiers\u2019 recitations. In our case, a rumbling stomach is provoked by objects in glass cases, not by poems. Around some of these dances an aura, stemming less from their unreproducible character as from the combination of their sheer antiquity and their eminent breakability. I have been researching the Zanj Rebellion (869-83CE) in Iraq and Iran for a little while now, meaning that those objects that join me to the world that ends with the unfortunate gourmand al-Musktaf\u012b are those that have the most urgent pull on me. Tripod dishes from 9th-century Iraq and Iran (cats. 64b, 67a, 67b); a multiple compartment dish from 8th-century Iraq (64a);\u00a0 lusterware bowls from 9th and 10th-century Iraq (68a, 68d), specifically one from Basra (68c), which I imagine occupying its rightful place on the <\/span>sufrah<\/span><\/i> of some notable of that great city, sitting with his guests, picking over the bones of one of their failed sorties against the nascent Zanj uprising as it took shape along the many canals on the outskirts of the town. Or, if we are already astonished at how something as fragile as a handblown glass bottle has survived since it was first manufactured in 12th or 13<\/span>th<\/span>-century Iran, we are all the more amazed to see two of them (cat. 13b, c), and stupefaction sets in when confronted with an Egyptian or Syrian glass bottle (13a) that is contemporary with the Umayyad caliphs, five or six centuries before.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A Banquet Scene with Hormuz, folio from a dispersed manuscript of the Shahnama of Firdawsi, Iran, Shiraz, c. 1485\u201395, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Nasli M. Heeramaneck Collection, gift of Joan Palevsky (photo \u00a9 Museum Associates\/LACMA).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If aura is the product of age and fragility, it seems here to attain its maximum, yet this is by no means the oldest object in the exhibition. Objects from the first Islamic centuries rub shoulders with their Sasanian predecessors, reminding us of the many continuities between Late Antique Iranian courtly culture and the Abbasid courts of Baghdad and Samarra, where the ghosts of exemplary Sasanian monarchs were never far from the scene, including in matters culinary: <\/span>Ibn al-Sayy\u0101r al-Warr\u0101q\u2019s 10th-century compendium of recipes<\/span><\/a> has a number of dishes whose genesis was attributed to Sasanian imperial command. Silver gilt bowls (cat. 60b, c) and a flask (60a) with dancing female figures from the Sasanian period stand next to two, large silver gilt forks (63a, b) attributed to some time between the 8th and 11th centuries. And yet\u2026 scarcely recovered from my encounter with the 8th-century glass bottle, I happen upon a cabinet with two pieces of Sasanian glassware, a transparent blown and facet-cut cup with geometrical and arch patterns, used for wine drinking (61b, 4<\/span>th<\/span> to 7th centuries), and an opaque green bottle with polished hexagonal facets (61a, 4<\/span>th<\/span> to 6th). I want to remonstrate with my fellow visitors. \u201cBut how is it possible\u2026 you see\u2026\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

There is no uninfluenced culture. The catalogue notes that the difficult facet-cutting technique (cutting designs onto the surface of the cold glass vessel) was earlier practiced by the Romans, while Sasanian ceremonial and techniques would shape Abbasid court culture as well as material production. Abbasid ceremonial, including feasting practices, would in turn have a profound influence on sultans and other rulers and notables across the Islamic world and beyond for centuries to come. If the narrator of our banquet reports, rather sadly, that al-Mustakf\u012b, delighted with how it went, rewarded all his guests, singers, and musicians handsomely, despite the depleted state of his treasury, yet that there would be no such gathering at his court again (deposed, replaced by a cousin, and then blinded, he died in imprisonment in 949), plenty of other powerful patrons would take up the reins of hospitality in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Much of the material on display was designed to invoke a sense of wonder through its patterning, its colors and their luster, through its simultaneous presentation and effacement of the technical mastery this required. Artisans were anything but members of the elite, and it is not hard to imagine the amazement of the guests in western Iran or Iraq who, sometime around 1220CE, washed their hands using an exquisite brass ewer, inlaid with silver, gold, and copper (cat. 34a), even as they likely had no more idea how to manufacture one than most of us could assemble the computer I am currently writing on. And if the guests were impressed, and perhaps determined to emulate or surpass their host with a commission of their own, how should we imagine others\u2019 responses to it? Might the servants who cleaned and polished and filled it have been astonished and fascinated? Proud of their attachment to so glorious a house? Sometimes envious, or rather contemptuous? Sick of the sight of it?<\/span><\/p>\n