Umayyad Response to the Art of the Mediterranean

Professor Robert Hillenbrand

Professor Robert Hillenbrand from the University of Edinburgh, gave a lecture, “The Umayyad Response to the Art of the Mediterranean World,” in West Hall on March 3, sponsored by the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of Fine Arts and Art History.

Hillenbrand started the lecture by quoting renowned British art critic, John Ruskin’s belief that the history of people can be read through what they have written and made. Hillenbrand said he would focus on the architecture and paintings of the Umayyad dynasty, which encompassed Syria and the whole of the Islamic world. It reached its height in the year 661 when the land of the eastern Mediterranean was replete with Greek and Roman art. Hillenbrand observed that the Umayyad people were blessed with great wealth, but they did not know what to do with it. At first, said Hillenbrand, the Umayyads resorted to frank imitation of Roman and Greek art, but as they began to add their own modifications to that art, they finally developed their own identity. This, said Hillenbrand, marked the final stage of the development of Umayyad art and architecture.

Hillenbrand illustrated his points with slides, indicating that the Dome of the Rock mosque in Palestine bears a striking resemblance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The construction of the Dome of the Rock was fashioned by the Umayyads according to the structure of the Holy Sepulcher Church, which was originally constructed under the rule of Holy Roman Emperor Constantine I in the fourth century.

Professor Robert Hillenbrand has been teaching in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Edinburgh since 1971, and occupied the Chair of Islamic Art in 1989. He has held visiting professorships at Princeton University, UCLA, Bamberg, Dartmouth College, and Groningen. In 2006 he was appointed director of the newly-established Center for the Advanced Study of the Arab World, and in 2008 he was appointed Slade Professor of Art at the University of Cambridge. His publications include Imperial Images in Persian Painting (1977).