WARISAN BUDAYA ISLAM

Islam's Cultural Legacy
15/10/2006

Amid rising Islamophobia in the West, the Italian art city of Venice is playing host to a major exhibition celebrating Islam’s contribution to Western civilization and arts. It is intended to showcase Islamic civilization in the Middle Ages and highlight its interplay with Western culture and civilization across eight centuries.

The fair, titled "Venise et l'Orient", was opened on October 3 and will end on February 18, next year. It comes as the West and the Muslim world are experiencing some of the worst periods of their relation in recent history. The event is clearly showing how Islamic civilization left its indelible mark on the West in the Middle Ages.

According to the Paris-based Arab World Institute (IMA), which is organizing the fair jointly with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, visitors are being given the chance to view some 200 objects from Venetian collections and from the great museums of the world.

Pottery, oil paintings, carpets, coins, silver plates and wooden items brought to the Republic of Venice or 'Serenissima' are among the exhibits at 'Venice and the West'.

The exhibits - about 250 objects - show how the Islamic civilization became a source of inspiration for the Venetians.

Qur`anic verses inscribed on glass lamps and ceramic plates made in Venice and sold in the East show how impressed Europe was by the Islamic calligraphy.

They chart the history of the Republic of Venice from its beginnings in the eighth century as the power of the Byzantine empire dwindled, through its rise as trading and maritime power in the Mediterranean and Adriatic in the 12th-15th centuries - when it reached its maximum power and territorial extension as probably the richest city in the world - through to its struggle against the expanding Ottoman empire in the 16th-17th centuries and its decline and dissolution in 1797 when French troops of Napoleon Bonaparte invaded the city.

The exhibition seeks to examine the artistic and cultural exchanges between Venice and the most powerful Islamic dynasties - the Mamelouks and the Ottomans - over those centuries.

From the end of the 13th century to the beginning of the 14th century, Venice flourished with palaces, carpets, silks, brocades and velvets imported from the Orient.

Eastern knowledge and techniques were in turn transmitted from the Orient to Venice in the Middle Ages, and the exhibition displays some of the luxury objects with Islamic decorations that the 'Serenissima' exported to the major capitals of the East.

The IMA said on its website, that the presence of Mamelouks and Ottomans wearing their typical garments in the paintings of the great masters of the Venetian Renaissance will convey the Venetians’ familiarity with their Mediterranean neighbours.

Marie George Nida, one of the exhibition's organizers was quoted as saying, that the exhibition highlights cross-fertilization between the West and Islam to counter war-mongering clichés that now make international headlines.

The fair's logo is a computerized photo of the masterpiece painting of Venetian artist Gentile Bellini, showing the Otto-man Sultan Mohammad II face-to-face with the Venetian duke Giovanni Mocenigo.

As part of efforts to recognize Islamic contribution to human civilization, a new wing of Islamic art is also to be inaugurated in the Louvre museum in 2009.


The long-awaited section in the world's largest museum will showcase up to 10,000 pieces, one of the greatest concentrations of Islamic art in existence.

As further proof of the importance of this cultural sector, the New York-based Metropolitan Museum of Arts and the British Museum also have departments of Islamic art.

(The Tripoli Post)