The oddities of existing things

CHRIS HATZIS
Eavesdrop on Experts, a podcast about stories of inspiration and insights. It’s where expert types obsess, confess and profess. I’m Chris Hatzis, let’s eavesdrop on experts changing the world - one lecture, one experiment, one interview at a time.

How is Greek literature, Chinese art, and Ghengis Khan’s army linked to medieval Islam? Well, I couldn’t tell you - but Doctor Stefano Carboni could.

Stefano Carboni is the former director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and a recognised curator and scholar of Persian and Islamic art. Several years ago, Stefano was working as a curator in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, getting ready to unveil a new exhibit of Islamic Art, when the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened. He was left with an uncomfortable question: should the exhibit still take place when safety wasn’t guaranteed and Islamophobia was at its peak?

Dr Stefano Carboni recently visited the University of Melbourne to deliver the Macgeorge Fellowship Lecture on “The Wonders of Creation and the Oddities of Existing Things”, an encyclopedia of the natural world written by the 13th century physician and astronomer Zakariya ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini. Andi Horvath sat down to talk with Stefano about his life and his work, and the many decisions that led the Italian scholar to finally settle in Australia.

ANDI HORVATH
The medieval Islamic world was a hive of activity. Take us back in time to what was going on.

STEFANO CARBONI
Oh, well, this is a very long interview then [laughs]. It’s - well, one of the most important things to say is that the - if you think of a new city like Baghdad that was founded in 750AD. Baghdad became the centre of the Caliphate - of the Abbasid Caliphate and it became one of the most literary cities in the world, together with Andalucía at the time, which was also under Muslim domination at the time.

Baghdad became the centre where all the Greek treatises - the philosophical and scientific treatises were translated. It was the centre of translation. Then, of course, once all the texts were translated into Arabic, the local intelligentsia and academia actually thrived and so a lot of additional information, additional research and philosophical studies happened. It was only through the Islamic world that then it re-entered, basically, Europe in the medieval period.

If we talk from the eighth century through the twelfth, thirteenth century, that’s when Islamic literature and Islamic thinking was really at its best.

ANDI HORVATH
So, it was a vibrant community of intellectual thinking and infection of ideas, even back to Europe. Tell me about a scholar, who you’ve been studying, that wrote “The Wonders of Creation and Oddities of Existing Things.” I must admit, that’s a great title.

STEFANO CARBONI

[Laughs] Yeah, the title is actually much better in Arabic.

ANDI HORVATH
Oh, yeah, say it.

STEFANO CARBONI

In Arabic, is - it has a nice rhyming to this as they used to do quite often. The Arabic is Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa ghara'ib al-mawjudat. So you can hear the rhyming, which translated into English is, the wonders of creation and the strange things - or the oddities - of the existing things. It’s a bit of a mouthful in English, but in Arabic, it’s great. This is a text that was compiled by a very interesting character. His name was Zakariya ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini, meaning that he was originally from the town of Qazwin in central Iran, kind of west of Tehran. He was young - he was only 18 when the Mongols arrived in 1220, more or less. He was born at the very beginning of the thirteenth century.

ANDI HORVATH
Right, so the Mongol hordes were starting to invade that area?

STEFANO CARBONI
Yeah, the Mongols were sweeping through that area and so Qazwin, the city, was attacked and have destroyed. Zakariya ibn Muhammad came from a literary family. He - no, his father was a legal scholar and so what they did, they sent Muhammad to a law school in Mosul, which is in northern Iraq. Obviously, the boundaries weren’t the same at the time. He spent most of his formative years a scholar in Mosul in northern Iraq. He met with a lot of philosophers, a lot of the big names like Ibn ‘Arabi and others at the time and then he became - he had two jobs, basically. He was hired as the chief qadi, or chief judge in an area south of Baghdad, Wasit and Hillah. He was the qadi until the very end of his life - he died in 1283 - and he was also a teacher. A professor of law and religion and many other things in one of the Madrasas - one of the schools - religious schools in Wasit.

That was his life and he survived, actually, the change because it was in 1240 - about - that he became judge and professor. This was at the end of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad and the Mongols actually took Baghdad in 1253. There was a huge change of political life and everything else. But actually, for Zakariya ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini, didn’t really change much because they kept him in the same position. He was part, of course, of the literary circles in Iraq and he was an advisor, actually, to the Mongol Governor of the area. He wrote two major works and one of these is the Wonders of Creation, which is a kind of compilation of the knowledge of the universe…

ANDI HORVATH
Wow.

STEFANO CARBONI
…trying to organise it in a proper way. Starting from the outer spheres where the throne of God is found and then coming down to the spheres of - the sphere of the angels, the fixed stars, the planets, the sub-lunar sphere and then everything that happens on earth. That includes the sphere of air, so all the phenomenon - the atmospherical phenomenons that happen in - on our sky - in our skies.

ANDI HORVATH
Sure, so it was life, universe and everything?

STEFANO CARBONI
Exactly. What is really good about what it does is that obviously, he was a compiler, he was looking at all these sources and put the names. Say, and Al-Biruni said that the lightning happens this way. It’s not that he was kind of claiming any particular new theory. But what he did, he organised everything in alphabetical order, in the various sections, which was an innovation at the time. The main thing is that, in his kind of introduction to the text, he very clearly states his philosophy towards what he’s about to write about. He was really a neoplatonic, he was following Aristotle so he had read all of this - the Greek philosophers. He explained exactly what he means with the four words that formed the title and, in the end, the reader shouldn’t be surprised of all the strange things that are in the world, like the fish with three heads and whatever that is being reported by the geographers and...

ANDI HORVATH
This guy was a lover of lists and ideas and happenings and observations?

STEFANO CARBONI
Yeah.

ANDI HORVATH
He was a compendium builder?

STEFANO CARBONI

Exactly, yeah.

ANDI HORVATH
Yeah, now, tell me about some of those observations that he collected, like you mentioned things like three-headed fishes, or encounters with giant whales - I think is in this book.

STEFANO CARBONI
Yes, mm-hm.

ANDI HORVATH
Also, in this book are shipwrecks.

STEFANO CARBONI
Mm-hm.

ANDI HORVATH
People living in trees.

STEFANO CARBONI
Yep.

ANDI HORVATH
Dog-headed people - you’re going to have to explain that one.

STEFANO CARBONI

Yep [laughs].

ANDI HORVATH
Giant birds and things like that.

STEFANO CARBONI
Yeah.

ANDI HORVATH
Explain some of these oddities. They sound fascinating.

STEFANO CARBONI
Oh, yeah, there is - especially in the section on the oceans. On the - in the sphere of water, the theory that is taken from all the geographers, starting from even Pliny. Obviously, it’s a chain of transmission of these reports that sailors brought back from the far reaches of the ocean. The theory is that we don’t know what the boundaries of earth are because there is a surrounding ocean.

ANDI HORVATH
Sure, yeah.

STEFANO CARBONI
We don’t know the boundaries of the surrounding ocean, but we know that this ocean has a number of gulfs that are called the Sea of China, the Sea of Persia, the Red Sea, the White Sea which is the Mediterranean, the Caspian Sea. He starts to describe the various gulfs of the surrounding ocean and saying that these oceans have innumerable islands that are - some of them are inhabited and some of them are uninhabited. This is what is being reported as to the island that is very close to what is today’s Java, which was very, very far away. There are these reports of people who have their head on their chest, or people living on the trees and being winged and being cannibals. The cynocephaly, the-dog headed people…

ANDI HORVATH
That’s what I was going to ask about.

STEFANO CARBONI
Actually, this is a group of people living on one of the islands of the Sea of China, basically, that are cannibals. What they do when people arrive at their place, they would make them prisoners, they would keep them in a place, they would feed them with very nice things and in the end, when they are fat enough, they would have a meal. But this, the cynocephaly, is actually already reported in the Greek sources so it’s a transmission of information that comes for a couple of millennia. Or - no - some of the things that are mentioned in Homer’s Iliad are picked up, also, by the Arab geographers.

ANDI HORVATH
This is an extraordinary collection and sort of audit of our planet.

STEFANO CARBONI

Mm-hm, exactly, yeah.

ANDI HORVATH
In the sort of middle of the thirteenth century.

STEFANO CARBONI
Exactly, yeah. We are in - no, 1280, basically, he finished his work, yeah.

ANDI HORVATH
Yes. Now, he was part of the Mongol Empire at this stage?

STEFANO CARBONI

Mm-hm, yeah.

ANDI HORVATH
Was that the era of Genghis Khan?

STEFANO CARBONI
Yes. The Mongols obviously - the Mongols are an incredible phenomenon in the history of the world because they came out of northern China, basically, from what is today Mongolia. In the space of just a couple of decades, with Genghis Khan being the leader and having this vision that he was supposed to rule the world, they obviously took advantage of the fact that the Chinese Empire was not united and quite weak on the military side. The Mongols were fabulous riders, of course, having these almost pony horses - very small horses that were incredibly resilient and they were particularly adapted to warfare on horses. It was relatively easy at the beginning to just jump into China, move south, realise that it was much better place, less cold and where they could settle and really rule. But Genghis Khan has this kind of mission to become the world conqueror, basically.

ANDI HORVATH
Which he kind of did for a while.

STEFANO CARBONI

Which he did. Well, if you think, the Mongol Empire didn’t really last for a very long period. About a century all together, over 130, 140 years. But as of today, it’s the largest empire that was ever built in the world. If you think from the Sea of Japan - from the eastern border of Asia, all the way to raids in Europe basically. So, the border west was with the Mamluk Empire - so, Syria, Iraq - that was the border. But then, the golden horde conquered - one of the branches of the Mongols, conquered what is today Caucasus and Russia.

ANDI HORVATH
Yes, the Caucasian Basin there, yep.

STEFANO CARBONI
Exactly and they got into Hungary as well, so, yeah, exactly.

ANDI HORVATH
Yes, I know. Yes, they certainly made it all the way passed the Caucasian mountains.

STEFANO CARBONI

Mm-hm.

ANDI HORVATH
He would have probably - I’m going to try and channel Genghis Khan.

STEFANO CARBONI

Mm-hm.

ANDI HORVATH
I’d be thinking, if I was a world dominator, these intellectuals are useful to me. They can record my grandeur…

STEFANO CARBONI
Yep.

ANDI HORVATH
…my political prowess and that actually, a vibrant culture is good. It’s healthy.

STEFANO CARBONI
Exactly, yeah.

ANDI HORVATH
It has wellbeing. So, I get why he kept Muhammad.

STEFANO CARBONI
Yeah, well, these are the successes of Genghis Khan, of course. The empire was established and in 1256, one of his sons had conquered Persia. So, they moved into an area that obviously had a very long-standing tradition, not only Islamic - Muslim tradition, but obviously much older because the Persians, still today, they feel that they have - they are one of the oldest civilisations on earth. What happened within the space of just a few decades, the Il-Khanid Dynasty was established, which was - literally, the meaning of Il-Khanid is lesser khan, which means that they reported to the main house in Beijing - was the Yuan Dynasty, basically. But they established themselves as the ruler over Iran. They converted to Islam, which was a good move of course. Whether it was sincere, or not, we don’t know. But in the 1290s they converted.

ANDI HORVATH
It’s the Arab equivalent of when in Rome, do what the Romans do.

STEFANO CARBONI
Exactly, yeah, exactly. As a kind of propaganda way of looking at the reality of the situation, they sold themselves as the Persian ruler over a Muslim area. They developed - after - I mean, I am not saying that the Mongols didn’t destroy, because they made tabula rasa over a lot of cities and really, it was quite bad for a while.

ANDI HORVATH
They made a mess.

STEFANO CARBONI
They made a mess. But by the end of the century in the area - in Iran - Tabriz in north western Iran had become one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, with merchants from Europe, Venetian merchants, Genovese, Pisa - from Pisa and from France, they were there. Of course, the connection with China was incredibly strong because they were reporting, basically, to the Emperor. So, we have this mix of different traditions, ideas, visual clues that allowed an incredible expanse of the arts and culture.

ANDI HORVATH
Let’s talk about that.

STEFANO CARBONI
Yeah.

ANDI HORVATH
Let’s talk about the artworks that are part of this amazing treaties and text The Wonders of Creation and its longer title, because this is really what you homed in on with your research and analysis.

STEFANO CARBONI
Mm-hm, yep.

ANDI HORVATH
What - give us a little bit of an introduction to the artwork that was part of this work.

STEFANO CARBONI
Well, I think that it’s important. The Wonders of Creation is one of the aspects of this and perhaps not even a very central one because it was considered more of an encyclopaedia of natural history, than a kind of philosophical work. But as part of the legitimisation of the Mongols to be in Iran, the vizier of the Il-Khanid sultan - his name was Rashid al-Din and he was actually a converted Jew who converted to Islam. He was the mind behind the cultural developments in Tabriz and in the empire. If you think that he founded a place - a kind of - it’s called a kitabkhana which is basically an atelier. An atelier of production of culture in Tabriz in 1310. The idea was that they would produce, every year, a new text which was a history of the world - in Persian it’s called the Jami' al-tavarikh.

He set up to create one copy in Persian and one in Arabic that would be produced every year and would be distributed to the libraries of the empire, including, of course, being sent to China - because the history of the world included the history of everything that was known…

ANDI HORVATH
Power.

STEFANO CARBONI

…from the Chinese Emperors, to the Franks, to the Farang - the foreigners there in Europe. This is the very first history of the world, in the world, that was ever conceived - Tabriz, 1315. You can imagine the type of intellectual life that was going on in Tabriz at the time and this thanks to the Mongols, basically - yeah.

ANDI HORVATH
This is an audio interview but give us a sense of one of your favourite images that you like to share with people, the artwork of the time.

STEFANO CARBONI
Oh, it’s a bit difficult to say, of course, in a radio interview. But one of the great moments in the history of the development of Persian painting. When the kind of general public think about miniature painting, they think of these Persian miniatures that are incredibly beautifully refined with a lot of gold and all the arabesques and beautiful compositions. Very flat as well. In the Mongol period, it was a very exciting moment because it’s a kind of formation of what will come in the next centuries. It’s the integration of what had been done before and in a more strictly speaking Arab rather than Persian environment. The tradition of illustration - because we are talking only about illustrations in books, that’s what developed in this area - it was very much - before the arrival of the Mongols, was very much related to the Byzantine tradition.

The majority of books would be illustrated scientific manuscripts, or even works of Arabic literature that looked very much in the tradition of late Byzantine art. The Mongols arrive and they bring with them the Chinese tradition. At some point, we have this kind of awkward integration of an almost Byzantine looking scene with - I don’t know - there is, at some point, a tree that is a hybrid between a peony and a pomegranate. It is in the frontispiece of a book produced in 1280 I - no, 1290.

ANDI HORVATH
So, east and west?

STEFANO CARBONI
Yeah, east and west without even understanding how to do it. But within 20 years, then you have a full integration of all these Chinese clouds and Chinese rock formations and peonies and all the visual tradition of China that arrived through, obviously, scrolls but also textiles and moveable objects, integrated in a new idiom that was entirely Persian as well. It’s an incredibly important period in the formation of the - of art history, basically, in Iran.

ANDI HORVATH
Doctor Stefano, I want to talk a little bit about you.

STEFANO CARBONI
Yes.

ANDI HORVATH
You’re an interesting character in yourself. Born in Italy?

STEFANO CARBONI
Yes.

ANDI HORVATH
In Venice?

STEFANO CARBONI
Mm-hm, yep.

ANDI HORVATH
What happened next? You then moved?

STEFANO CARBONI
Yes.

ANDI HORVATH
How did you get into medieval Islamic art?

STEFANO CARBONI
My trajectory is - yeah, maybe a bit unusual, if you wish. But I grew up in Venice. Venice is my hometown. I literally grew up at the Lido, which is the island that separates the lagoon from the sea, it’s the place where the film festival takes place, where you go to the beach. So, I’m kind of part-time beach boy in many ways during the summer, of course. I was interested in languages - in studying languages and I felt, when you have to decide what you do when you’re grown up - when you go to university - Venice is a city that, because of its history, has also a good school of Oriental languages. That was established already in the seventeenth - eighteenth century and it’s been one of the good places to study Oriental studies and Oriental languages. I felt that I needed some kind of challenge and I didn’t want to study English, or French, or German because I felt that, well, - also, if I want to be an academic, the competition is going to be ridiculous and all these kind of things.

I went to see what courses were taught at the Oriental side of languages and I was kind of captivated by the idea of giving to try to study Arabic because I felt that - even if I didn’t have any connection whatsoever that I knew about, I felt that it was geographically close enough for me to - if I was interested, to get more to the cultural side in addition to the language side. I enrolled in the Arabic courses and because there were a number of courses that were taught, one of these was Islamic art. The teacher was a very well-known scholar in the field who used to be at the Metropolitan Museum. A German, who had married an Italian who was teaching at the university as well, and so he was at least temporarily in Venice. Venice is a place where you are exposed every day from ancient, to medieval, to non-Western, to contemporary through the Biennale. Obviously, it was in my - always in my kind of background.

I still remember the first lesson I went to by Professor Grube and I said, wow, what is this? I decided - almost the second year, I became one of his students and he mentored me through the years. I decided very early on to put my language skills in the service of art history, rather than the other way around. That’s how I moved on. I left Italy because the academic path would be really very slow. There were only a couple of academic positions and my generation would be - probably be left out.

ANDI HORVATH
You ended up in New York?

STEFANO CARBONI
Well, I ended up New York. I moved to London first because I got a fellowship - a grant to do a post-graduate course. My PhD is from SOAS - the School of Oriental and African Studies of London University, in Islamic art and archaeology. I spent about a year and a half in Cairo. That was a very formative period, of course, in my life because it was being exposed to the living culture and language in an Arab country. Just when I was about to finish my PhD, I was offered a position of Junior Curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That’s when I moved.

ANDI HORVATH
To New York?

STEFANO CARBONI
To New York and I grew in the Metropolitan Museum as a Curator and as a Scholar and...

ANDI HORVATH
The rest is history.

STEFANO CARBONI
The rest is history. I was in New York for 16 years. I used to teach courses of Islamic art as well at different colleges in New York. Then, for many different reasons, I felt that I could give to a museum more than my curatorial expertise, because the Met prepares you in many ways for higher office. Also, because of family related reasons - my wife grew up in Australia, actually. Even if she’s a bit complicated - she’s a Chinese-born Russian who emigrated to Australia when she was very young. We felt that, with two young children, probably moving to Australia would be a good thing - leaving New York.

ANDI HORVATH
I agree.

STEFANO CARBONI

That’s how I ended up being the Director and CEO of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, which is most - yeah, modern and contemporary museum with not a single work of Islamic art, of course. But that was a very different job that I was doing. As I said, I just finished my tenure there a month ago.

ANDI HORVATH
Doctor Stefano Carboni, I really appreciate talking to you. In some ways, you’re actually the voice and mouth piece for that wonderful thirteenth century author because the continued reflection of the history of the world, and what the Arab Islamic world added to our cultural understanding of where we’d been and where we’re going, is still living through you.

STEFANO CARBONI

Oh, that’s so nice. Yes, definitely one of the things that kind of propels me into and really motivates me into studying Islamic art is that it’s an educational mission as well. Both when I was a Curator and as a teacher - as a lecturer, I think it’s very important to show that history and the perception of history can be modified - can be changed. The current perception of what the Muslim world is, that is very monolithic and quite negative in many ways. There are so many nuances and it has to be put into a perspective.

ANDI HORVATH
Because there is an awkward relationship with Muslim culture, do you think, perhaps, art is the way in?

STEFANO CARBONI

Mm-hm, yeah, absolutely. Well, I can mention just one example. When I was at the Metropolitan Museum, obviously, I was in New York the day of 9/11, which was, in many ways, a moment that changed the world. But from the professional point of view, apart from the fact that we were all like living in a film - living in a movie and it was really so, so surreal, what happened. But from the practical point of view, I had organised, together with - direct with the Corning Museum of Glass - Corning is a beautiful museum about four hours drive north - north of New York - we had organised a significant major exhibition of Islamic glass. It was called Glass of the Sultans and the exhibition had three venues. The first one was Corning, the second was the Metropolitan Museum of Art and then it would go to Athens - the Benaki Museum in Athens.

The venue in Corning had closed in late August, so September 11 was the day when all the trucks were supposed to leave Corning, to come to New York, and then we would install the exhibition in New York. When the news came in the morning of something is going on in New York, we had to stop everything - all the couriers, everyone, all the lenders - we had something like 27 different lenders. We didn’t know what to do and certainly, it wasn’t a priority because, oh my god, what’s happening in the world? But it was the day after that we had to face some kind of solution and try to work out whether it was too dangerous to do an exhibition of Islamic art at the Met because, are they going to hit us again?

Or as I suggested to my Director and to the Board of Trustees, don’t you think that an exhibition that shows beautiful works of art that we’re creating during the medieval period, that talk to a civilisation that is wonderful and it’s scholarly and it’s not, certainly, in any way controversial - don’t you think that it could be a point of solace for the New Yorkers and the visitors? I left it that way and I was incredibly happy when the board decided there’s no reason why we shouldn’t do it. I remember working the phone with the Director of the Corning Museum, because we wanted to make sure that all the lenders were comfortable with this, because after all, they were their objects. Not a single one refused to lend it to the Metropolitan Museum venue. We had the exhibition and that’s a way, really, you try to put art in the service of humanity - in, literally, of humankind. It was, actually, understood as a very good thing that we did.

ANDI HORVATH
That’s a beautiful message to think about next time we look at some Islamic art.

STEFANO CARBONI

Wonderful.

ANDI HORVATH
Thank you, Doctor Stefano Carboni.

STEFANO CARBONI
And thank you so much, Andi, for having me here. It was a pleasure to be, actually, affiliated with the University of Melbourne, with the Macgeorge Fellowship and I hope there will be other opportunities.

ANDI HORVATH
It’s our pleasure.

CHRIS HATZIS
Thank you to Dr Stefano Carboni, former director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia, and curator and scholar of Persian and Islamic art. And thanks to our reporter Dr Andi Horvath.

Eavesdrop on Experts - stories of inspiration and insights - was made possible by the University of Melbourne. This episode was recorded on September 5, 2019. You’ll find a full transcript on the Pursuit website. Audio engineering, by me, Chris Hatzis. Co-production - Silvi Vann-Wall and Dr Andi Horvath. Eavesdrop on Experts is licensed under Creative Commons, Copyright 2019, The University of Melbourne. If you enjoyed this episode, drop us a review on Apple Podcasts and check out the rest of the Eavesdrop episodes in our archive. I’m Chris Hatzis, producer and editor. Join us again next time for another Eavesdrop on Experts.