EVA R. HOFFMAN BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: THE WALL PAINTINGS OF SAMARRA AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF ABBASID PRINCELY CULTURE the wall paintings of samarra and the construction of abbasid princely culture 107 Be of good health, Commander of Believers, clad in the garments of one whose hands are divinely aided, one made victorious; Take up a new life in the splendour of the new palace, and its exquisite beauty… You came to it, and alighted at the most fortunate of halting-places; you observed it, and saw the most beautiful prospects: Flourish there, (enjoying ) long life and blessings whose cheerfulness will endure throughout the ages. —al-Buhturi, celebrating the completion of the Ja{fari palace at Samarra 1 The inspiration for this essay is Oleg Grabar’s ground- breaking The Formation of Islamic Art. 2 While new mate- rial has come to light since this work was published, it is a great credit to its author that his main argu- ments are as creative and thought provoking today as they were in 1973. The questions that he poses there continue to inspire my students to study Islamic art, much as they inspired me then. This essay will grapple with questions, first introduced in Grabar’s book, concerning the development of the early Islamic palace and the “princely cycle.” 3 In particular, it will focus on the wall paintings of the so-called ¥arºm in the palatine complex at Samarra, founded in 836 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mu{tasim. Previously called the Jawsaq al-Khaqani, this complex is referred to in the most recent literature as the Dar al-Khilafa (figs. 1–8, 10–11, 15–16). 4 I will not analyze the specifics of the full program of wall paintings but rather will focus on strategies for studying these paintings: first, on the position of the Samarra paintings in Abbasid art and second, on their broader implications for Abbasid art and their role in the formation of early Islamic art. As my conclusions will demonstrate, The Formation of Islamic Art has stood the test of time exceptionally well. Adding relevance to this tribute article is the consideration of the 1912–13 documentation of the wall painting by the renowned scholar and excavator of Samarra, Ernst Herzfeld, whom Grabar has named as a mentor in his own intellectual journey. 5 This is therefore in every sense a study of continuities. The palatine city of Samarra has loomed large in both medieval and modern times, occupying a place between history and mythology. 6 It served as the Abbasid capital for only fifty-six years, between 836 and 892, after which the Abbasid caliphs returned to Baghdad. Despite the short-lived ascendance of Samarra, how- ever, its ambitious size and breathtaking achievement became the yardstick by which to measure all other imperial projects undertaken in the Islamic realm and beyond. The excavation and documentation of the site, begun in earnest in 1911 and having continued for nearly a hundred years, not only inform us about Samarra itself but also suggest what the legendary pal- aces of Baghdad may have looked like and contained. The palaces of Samarra, furthermore, have been pro- posed as the visual equivalents of the mythical palaces described in The Thousand and One Nights. 7 Regardless of its difficult and complex excavation history and the fragmentary condition of its remains, which are widely dispersed throughout museums of the world, the site of Samarra is critical in defining Abbasid art. 8 The art of the Abbasids in Baghdad and Samarra is widely perceived by scholars as a watershed. The familiar narrative, often repeated in the scholarship and in surveys, goes as follows: early Islamic art came into being as a convergence, in varying degrees, of the pre-Islamic visual sources of the conquered terri- tories—Western, Greco-Roman “classical” sources on the one hand, and Eastern, “oriental” sources on the other. The art of the first Umayyad dynasty is viewed as synthesizing these traditions while always retaining its strong local Mediterranean roots. With the reloca- tion of the Islamic imperial capital under Abbasid rule from the Umayyad Mediterranean center of Damascus to the Mesopotamian center of Baghdad, the Abbasids, according to the generally accepted view, broke with