Khita'i

de Ladan Akbarnia

The Mongol invasions of Greater Iran and Central Asia in the mid-thirteenth century marked a watershed in the history of Islamic art and architecture. The eastern Islamic world, in particular, witnessed a proliferation of elaborately illustrated and illuminated manuscripts, luxury objects, and monumental architecture displaying intricate architectural decoration. Present in much of this pre-modern visual culture was an unprecedented idiom, khita'i, an apparently Chinese or far eastern-inspired aesthetic revealed in the form of motifs such as lotuses, peonies, scrolling cloud bands, fantastical creatures like dragons and simurghs , and emphasized in eastern artistic techniques and materials. This dissertation seeks to analyze the moment the khita'i idiom was first introduced to the Islamic world, during the Ilkhanid Mongol period (1256-1353) in Iran and Central Asia, and to show how the desire to preserve their cultural memory drove the Ilkhanids to create a visual idiom that would connect them to their Mongol heritage. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Greater Iran, khita'i had become woven into the standard artistic fabric of the Persianate visual repertoire. The close relationship to its neighbors--in times of both peace and war--allowed this phenomenon to spread particularly to Seljuq Anatolia and, later, to the Ottoman world, as well as to the Ilkhanids' principal rivals, the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria. Yet, when first introduced, khita'i was not an accepted or assumed part of the visual language of the eastern Islamic world. It began as an element in a systemic socio-political relationship between Greater Iran and China, which grew into part of an Ilkhanid agenda to create a dynastic ideology that would be understood by its subjects in the entire realm of its territory. Its visual manifestations permeated a vast array of courtly objects and architectural commissions not only at the various centers of the empire, but also at the furthest reaches of its domain. As this new foreign dynasty sought to find its place in Iranian society through its adoption and appropriation of indigenous culture, the khita'i idiom reminded Ilkhanids of their greater Mongol past. Through its analysis of the khita'i phenomenon, this study concentrates on the cross-cultural transmission between China, Central Asia, and Iran, with emphasis on the effects of acculturation on Ilkhanid art and architectural decoration. It contributes to a recently growing scholarly interest in the ramifications of the relationship between China and Greater Iran during the Mongol period, but one that has not entirely addressed the issue of khita'i and its role in Islamic art as a larger, intercultural phenomenon. Through its investigation of the idiom as a phenomenon generated by the Mongol connections between China and Greater Iran, this dissertation aims to show that khita'i became part and parcel of the Ilkhanid desire to create and disseminate a dynastic visual idiom that would preserve Mongol cultural memory.