Aleppo room

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Glance into the Aleppo room

The Aleppo room is the paneling of a reception room from a residential building in Aleppo from the beginning of the 17th century and thus the oldest completely preserved wall paneling from the areas of the Ottoman Empire . Paintings and inscriptions testify to a common Islamic - Christian culture in Aleppo at the beginning of the 17th century. The Aleppo room is next to the stone facade of Mschatta the showpiece of the Museum of Islamic Art in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin .

history

The room comes from the Wakīl house . This private house still stands in the predominantly Christian district of the Syrian city ​​of Aleppo , al-Gudaida . The client of the wall paneling, a Christian merchant named Isa b. Butrus ("Jesus, son of Peter") is mentioned in an inscription. In an inscription he is called a simsar . These were brokers who made sure that merchants found buyers for their goods.

The paneling of the Aleppo room is of particular importance, as the figural paintings are inscribed and dated to the years 1600/01 and the cornice was completed in 1603. It is the oldest wall covering from the areas of the Ottoman Empire . Most of the paneling that still exists today comes from later times, the 18th and early 19th centuries, such as the Damascus Room of the collector Herbert M. Gutmann in Potsdam .

The entire painted wooden paneling of the room was purchased by the museum in the person of Friedrich Sarre in 1912 and exhibited first in the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum , later in the Islamic Museum in the Pergamon Museum. After the end of the Second World War, parts of the room were initially transferred to the Soviet Union, but later returned and reassembled in the Pergamon Museum.

Architecture and design

The paneling comes from the Qaʿa , a representative reception room for guests. The room is a rectangular, flat-roofed building with a dome . Inside, it is divided into a square threshold area ( ʿataba ), which was laid out with colored marble slabs, and three raised seating areas ( ṭazar ). In the middle of the threshold area was a well that still exists in the house in Aleppo today.

Paintings

The wood paneling is 35 m long and 2.5 m high. It enclosed the lower part of the walls. The paneling is interrupted by 14 wooden doors (entrances, windows and cabinet doors). The structure is strictly symmetrical. The middle seating areas are particularly elegantly furnished and painted.

The total of around five hundred different decorative elements of the paneling are mostly vegetal - only occasionally do the tendrils merge into geometric patterns and nets. Particularly in the star medallions of the main panels there are prominent figurative representations. There are scenes from the Old Testament , depictions of rulers and saints, literary motifs and mythical creatures. The biblical scenes are not icons , not devotional images, but part of the decoration of a secular festival room.

The Christian motifs were chosen so that they did not contain any conflicting material for Muslim guests, for example Mary with the baby Jesus or St. George with the dragon. The sacrifice of Isaac is particularly noticeable in its ambiguity, since Christians as well as Muslims and Jews have this scene in their tradition. The representation in the Aleppo room follows the Muslim tradition: there is no wine and bread on the sacrificial table, symbols of sacrifice in the Christian Eucharist , but a lamb, the usual sacrificial animal of Muslims. In the paintings there are no themes such as the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus, which represent the actual core of the Christian faith, but which could have offended Muslims.

According to the inscriptions, the creator of the painting was an artist named Halab Sah b, who probably came from Persia . Isa. Not only the art style, but also the spelling mistakes in Arabic speak for the Persian origin . However, simpler paintings seem to have been done by assistants.

Inscriptions

The Arabic and Persian inscriptions not only reproduce artists and clients, but also psalms , proverbs and poems in which the subjects of learning and love are addressed, for example:

  • “O apartment, over whose rooms morning falls smiling, laughing showing its white teeth! How many days have I been happy in your rooms, withdrawn with everyone to science and art talk. While my rights were safe from their blows of fate. And in my left hand was the juice of the grape chilled by the north wind. "
  • “God is with the generous. Those who are generous reap generosity. "
  • It is said several times: "The healing of the heart is the encounter with the beloved."
  • "Man's salvation lies in guarding the tongue."
  • "Complacency is an indication of the weakness of the mind."

The text visible on the entrance wall contains formulations that, like the paintings, refer to paradise .

All the inscriptions speak little of faith and contain no clearly Christian statements. Even when they speak of God , it does not refer to Christ , but to the monotheistic Allah . The text of the inscription, which is on the right side of the door of the main sofa , can be read both as an invocation of the Christian Trinity and in the sense of the Muslim Basmala . This ambiguity of the inscriptions is an indication of the integration of the socio-political minority of the Christians of Aleppo in the Islamic majority society.

literature

  • Julia Gonnella: A Christian-Oriental house of the 17th century from Aleppo (Syria). The 'Aleppo Room' in the Museum of Islamic Art , Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-8053-1973-8
  • Julia Gonnella , Jens Kröger (Ed.): Angels, Peonies, and Fabulous Creatures. The Aleppo Room in Berlin. International Symposium of the Museum for Islamic Art - National Museums in Berlin 12. – 14. April 2002. Rhema, Münster, Westphalia 2008, ISBN 978-3-930454-82-2 .
  • Christian Ewert : The Aleppo room. Structures and decorative elements of the paintings in the Aleppo room of the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin. In: Research on Islamic Art History. New series, No. 1, 2006, ISBN 3-88609-564-9 .
  • Claudia Ott : The inscriptions of the Aleppo room in the Berlin Pergamon Museum , in: Le Muséon 109 (1996), No. 1–2, pp. 185–226.

Web links

Commons : Aleppo room  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Volkmar Enderlein: The paintings of the Berlin Aleppo room. In: Museum für Islamische Kunst: Angels, peonies and fabulous creatures: The Aleppo room in Berlin: International Syposium of the Museum für Islamische Kunst - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 12.-14. April 2002. Berlin 2008, pp. 31-38, p. 31.
  2. ^ Museum of Islamic Art. Retrieved June 28, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e Bernhard Heyberger: Inscriptions and paintings of the Aleppo room. In: Museum für Islamische Kunst: Angels, peonies and fabulous creatures: The Aleppo room in Berlin: International Syposium of the Museum für Islamische Kunst - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 12.-14. April 2002. Berlin 2008, pp. 87-90, p. 87.
  4. ↑ Volkmar Enderlein: The paintings of the Berlin Aleppo room. In: Museum für Islamische Kunst: Angels, peonies and fabulous creatures: The Aleppo room in Berlin: International Syposium of the Museum für Islamische Kunst - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 12.-14. April 2002. Berlin 2008, pp. 31-38, p. 35.
  5. ↑ Volkmar Enderlein: The paintings of the Berlin Aleppo room. In: Museum für Islamische Kunst: Angels, peonies and fabulous creatures: The Aleppo room in Berlin: International Syposium of the Museum für Islamische Kunst - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 12.-14. April 2002. Berlin 2008, pp. 31-38, p. 38.

Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '15 "  N , 13 ° 23' 49"  E