Magnificent Islamic Artists' Books at the BNF

by Stephen J. Gertz

Binding, Egypt, late fourteenth century on Koran, XXI juz '.
BNF, Oriental manuscripts (Arabic 5845)

Islamic binding has a rich history. The most sumptuous early bindings featured starred polygons or central motifs and were made to order for the Mameluke sovereigns.

Binding, Egypt, between 1382 and 1399. On Koran XXVI juz '.
BNF, Oriental manuscripts (Arabic 5846)

Under the Ottomans, the mandorla, an almond-shaped central design, was adopted.

Binding, Turkey, late sixteenth century. To 'Umar ibn al-Farid, Diwan
(Collection of poems).
BNF, Oriental manuscripts (Arabic 3151)

Let us now alight on a magic carpet and ride into the late twentieth century to view a sampling of modern Islamic artists' books.

Hasan Massoudy, calligraphy. Lithograph, 1992.
BNF, Prints and Photographs (Cf1 twentieth century gd ft 4)

Massoudy Hasan, born in Iraq in 1944, learned calligraphy in Baghdad. From 1969 to 1975 he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He lives in France, where he leads workshops and writes books on Arabic calligraphy. The handwritten sentence at lower edge is a quote from Andre Gide: "Wisdom is not in reason but in love. "

Ghani Alani, Iqra '- the bi-Qalam ("Lily" - By the pen "), 2000.
Calligraphy and illumination. Private Collection.

Ghani Alani was born in Baghdad where he studied calligraphy. He has lived in France since 1969.  The text contains verses from the Koran (ICVI, 1-4): "Read in the name of your Lord who created! He created man from a clot of blood. Read! For thy Lord is Most Generous who educated man through the read." The writing styles used are thuluth and Kufic, illumination is associated with calligraphy.

Mehdi Moutashar, Variations on seven letters of the Arabic alphabet.
Silkscreen and collage, 1996. Portfolio containing seven double boards.
Arab World Institute (CA 96-1)

Moutashar Mehdi, born in 1943 in Hilla (Iraq), and studied in Baghdad and Paris, where he now teaches. Here the divine name al-Rahman is on a page and the letter Nun resumed at the next page. Each letter uses eight items from the cutting of a square. The artist cites the origin of this work "a world of mystical geometry" opened by the opening of Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240).

Mohammed Dib, Rachid Koraïchi, Abdelkader Boumal,
L'enfant jazz. Alger, Mustapha Orif Gallery, Isma, 1998.
Lithographs. Private Collection.

In the above book, twenty-eight pages of calligraphy of the poem, "Jazz Baby," alternate with lithographs by Rachid Koraïchi, compartmentalized as images that evoke the North African collections of prayers and magic squares which held the divine names. The general shape is similar to  Tibetan books.

Detail.

Detail.

Detail.

Adonis, poet; Ziad Dalloul, engraver. Kitab al-mudun
(The Book of cities). Poems translated from Arabic by
A. Minkowski and J. Wade Berque with the collaboration
of the author (2 booklets, 9 engravings, a watercolor).
Paris, UNESCO Publishing, The Dying, 1999.
BNF, Reserve of Rare Books.

The above book contains nine pieces on Paris, Sanaa, Beirut, Marrakech and Fez, Cairo, Damascus, Petra, New York and Granada, each accompanied by an engraving of a watercolor by Dalloul, and a silkscreen of a manuscript by Adonis, who, in 1982, wrote from Beirut for The Times.  Syrian artist and engraver Ziad Dalloul lives in France.

   
The voluptuousness of death.The tale of Ali b. Bakkar and Shams-Nahar.
Translated by Jamal Eddine Bencheikh.
Original serigraphs Nja Mahdaoui. Lyons, P. Mabboux, 1992.
BNF, Rare Book Reserve (Res. Atlas Y2-43).

The above, a tale from the Thousand and One Nights previously unpublished in French, tells in fourteen Nights of an impossible love between two young people. Illustrations by Tunisian artist Nja Mahdaoui punctuate the text movements of large black columns, similar to  Arabic letters but meaningless.

Hamid Tibouchi, Fountain, 1996. The book as sculpture,
here a  telephone directory worked in acrylic and vegetable dyes.
Private Collection

Etel Adnan, handwritten copy of a poem by Aliya Mamdouh,
watercolor. 1985. Arab World Institute (CA-86-74)

Born in 1925 in Beirut, Etel Adnan is also a poet and writer. Part of his work focuses on the plastic relationship between writing poetry and vision: to give a visual reading of poetry. As for the choice of Japanese book form, the artist emphasizes the unfolding, which requires the will of the viewer, brings into play the element of time and introduces rhythm and movement.

A salaam alekim! Or, as we of the only other surviving Semitic tribe on the face of the earth say shalom alechem.

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All images courtesy of the Bibliothéque National France, with our thanks.

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Lawrence of Arabia, Postage Stamp Designer

by Stephen J. Gertz

Titlepage (r).

While he was going quietly nutty as a desk jockey in Cairo  attached to Britian's  Egyptian Survey in 1916 during World War I, T.E. Lawrence, not yet the legendary Lawrence of Arabia, worked on a project that became the symbolic first shot fired in the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire.

He designed and printed postage stamps.

Titlepage (l).

The stamps were collected in a limited edition book in 1918, A Short Note on the Design and Issue of Postage Stamps Prepared by the Survey of Egypt for His Highness Husein Emir & Sherif of Mecca & King of the Hejaz. One of the most respected and desirable volumes of philatelic literature, it has become an extremely rare book; no copies have come to auction within the last thirty-five years.

While Lawrence is not overtly named within this slim volume,  E.M. Dowson, British Director-General  of the Survey of Egypt, takes note in the text to “El Emir ‘Awrunis of the Northern Armies of his Highness the King of the Hejaz at whose suggestion this work was undertaken."

Quarter Piastre
Half Piastre
One Piastre

Lawrence and Col. Ronald Storrs did the initial research on design. Of Storrs Lawrence wrote, "The first of all of us was Ronald Storrs, Oriental Secretary of the Residency, the most brilliant Englishman in the Near East, and subtly efficient, despite his diversion of energy in love of music and letters, of sculpture, painting, of whatever was beautiful in the world's fruit... Storrs was always first, and the great man among us" (Seven Pillars of Wisdom).

T.E. Lawrence.

 In his memoir, Orientations (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1937) Storrs recalled the stamp project:

"Shortly after the Arab Revolution [i.e. when the Arabs declared their independence] we found that its success was being denied or blanketed by Enemy Press .., and we decided that the best proof that it had taken place would be provided by an issue of Hajaz postage stamps, which would carry the Arab propaganda, self-paying and incontrovertible, to the four corners of the earth. Sir Harry  MacMahon [1862-1949], High Commissioner Egypt [1914-1916] was quick to approve, and the Foreign Office approved him. I had corresponded with King Hussein on the project, and he sent me by return of mail a design purporting to typify Islamic architecture, but to the layman indistinguishable from the Eddystone Lighthouse. I felt that this would never do, and wandered around with Lawrence round the Arab  Museum in Cairo collecting suitable motifs in order that the design in wording, spirit and ornament, might be as far as possible representative and reminiscent of a purely Arab source of inspiration. Pictures and views were avoided, for these never formed part of Arab decoration, and are foreign to its art;  so also was European lettering.

"It was quickly apparent that Lawrence already possessed or had immediately assimilated a complete working technique of philatelic and three-color reproduction, so that he was able to supervise the issue from start to finish." 

Endpaper.

The stamps were issued in September of 1916, just prior to Lawrence's assignment to join the Arab revolt  as British military liaison in October of that year. Not only were the stamps beautiful  to the eye, they were, apparently, tasty on the tongue. Lawrence circulated a story, perhaps apocryphal, that he had used a strawberry-flavored glue which created a problem as the Arabs were buying  the stamps simply to lick them.

"These were the first stamps to be produced by the Survey of Egypt and they clearly offered new challenges in their production. In 1918 this achievement was marked by the Survey printing and publishing one of the most attractive items in philatelic literature [our emphasis]. It describes aspects of the production process including paper, watermark, printing inks and cancellations. It continues with some of the associated correspondence with Hejaz and reprinted essays, proofs and color trials on twelve plates. A two page title page decorated in Arabesque designs, has affixed examples of all nine designs of stamps. E.D. Bacon (1860-1938) in a review [The London Philatelist, vol. 28, pp. 271-271, Dec. 1919] says 'The volume is unique in its way, inasmuch as it is, we believe, the first instance of an authentic and carefully prepared history of the production of a set of stamps being compiled and published by  the actual makers thereof'" (Beech, David R. Survey of Egyptian Book 1918, p. 1).

Limitation-Presentation Leaf.

These stamps remain a poignant reminder of a dream lost in highly politicized sand. An assertion of Arab independence and desire to be rid of foreign influence - going postal, if you will, against the Ottomans before actual hostilities broke out - they remain a strong visual symbol of short-lived Arab unity, and of the subsequent betrayal by the British of their promise to respect the aspirations of the Arabs after the war was won.

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[LAWRENCE, T.E. (stamp designer and printer); Sir E.M. Dowson (text)]. A Short Note on the Design and Issue of Postage Stamps Prepared by the Survey of Egypt for His Highness Husein Emir & Sherif of Mecca & King of the Hejaz. El Quahira [Cairo]: [Survey of Egypt], 1918. First and only edition, limited to 200 numbered copies, this copy being no. 48. Quarto. 22 pp. White boards decorated in green. Decorative endpapers. Twelve plates. Text states "E.M.D./Winter 1917" on p. 22.

The primary philatelic references to Lawrence and these stamps are:

HAWORTH, W.B. and H.l. Sargent. The  Postage Stamps of the Hejaz. London: Junior Philatelic Society, 1922.  64 pp.

BEECH, David R. Hejaz: The First Postage Stamps of 1916 and T.E. Lawrence (The London Philatelist, vol. 114, pp. 323-327, Nov. 2005.

BEECH, David R. Hejaz: The First Postage Stamps of 1916 and T.E. Lawrence: Additional Information (The London Philatelist, vol. 116, pp. 38-40, March 2007.
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Images from book courtesy of Peter Harrington. who is currently offering this volume for £6,500 ($10,355). Image of three stamps courtesy of Dropbears.

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