When we think of the Mongolian world, we think of that huge
swath of territory that cuts across the space of Asia, but
it had enormous impact on the economy at the time.
So after the conquest, all of basically Central Asia and
into Europe went into an economic blooming.
Because now trade was much more efficient than before.
You didn't have to go through five or six or 10 different
countries and different areas handing off your bales of silk
from one camel caravan to the other.
You could go very efficiently from the Dadu to Samarkand to
Isfahan to Europe.
The price of silk, the price of the goods that came out of
China, was now dropped because of the economic
efficiency of transport.
So you have to think of this once again as the
FedEx system of Asia--
making rapid transportation through the continent.
And the consequences were increased
economic flow into Europe.
So we see a great strength taking place, and we'll talk
about that the next time.
We know the medieval Europe of Chartres and the great
cathedrals.
And we see the flow going down also into Africa.
And then if we add to that the Tuareg, which I will hopefully
get to a little bit as well, we basically get an economic
system that stretches all the way from Beijing, if not all
the way to Japan, which is also now going pretty well,
all the way to Ghana in Africa.
So that's a tremendous economic line that's being now
produced and simplified through the Mongolian world.
Now, the losers in all this was Southeast Asia, as we
talked about last time, and South India.
Southeast Asia and South India were not beneficiaries of this
great post-Mongolian world.
But the South Indians were very canny and sophisticated
in their own way, and they figured, OK, if we can't go
around this way, we're going to go that way.
So they turned their focus from going to China through
Southeast Asia to now linking with Africa.
So we see lines of communication between South
India all the way down through East Africa all the way down
to Zimbabwe.
So they had their own small little economic world that was
being developed around 1200, 1300, as a consequence of the
loss of the trade to the north.
And that has importance for another set of architectures
that we will maybe be able to get to talk to.
So now, I'm moving to Isfahan.
So we get on our horses and we accompany our Mongolian riders
to Isfahan.
Now, Isfahan had been created by the Turks when they
originally came out of Central Asia.
They came swooping down all the way into Persia.
Wound up later in Turkey, but they set up one of their
capitals in a place called Isfahan.
Beautiful mosque-- the Friday mosque of Isfahan is what I
want to focus on.
So this mosque, as you can see, is a little different
from the mosques we've looked at before, which are like
boxes standing relatively isolated
in the urban landscape.
This mosque is really integral to the urban fabric that was
built up around it.
It consists of a very spacious, large courtyard, and
it consists of four ivans which are these very large,
gigantic doorway-type spaces, that have their origin in
local Persian architecture, maybe already
from 200 and 300 BC.
And these are usually the areas where the court would
sit in ancient times.
So we see this prototype, which is a local prototype,
but now multiplied times four.
So you create one on each of these sides of this courtyard,
facing each other around each other.
So it's a new invention, if you will.
A new type of mosque that we haven't seen yet.
We've seen the hypostyle hall mosque, which had a courtyard.
And this is basically-- you take that courtyard, but now
you add these monumental portals on the four sides.
And it's called a four ivan style of mosque.
Now the ivans are different in their importance, because
obviously the qibla one is the one off the main one.
That's the quibla wall here.
And so the qibla ivan is the one that is oriented towards
Mecca and one that's closest to Mecca.
And the others perhaps have some functional purpose, but
basically, it's an aesthetic decision.
You don't need to have these four ivans.
It's basically trying to adopt local customs and local
imagines, if you will, in order to make
the building suited.
And then in the middle, everywhere else around it, are
these columns that fill in the space for the prayer hall.
The building is designed in brick, and it's certainly one
of the great brick buildings of all time.
And you can see how absolutely wonderful the brick and its
formation and the filigree aspect of it and how the
bricks are used and the domes and so forth--
all very thoughtful and sophisticated.
Here are different shots of the interior.
The round bricks are specially produced to form piers and
things, which--
or brick.
They could be almost like Roman architecture, if you
will, in terms of the solidity of the arches.
But clearly now moving in a very different direction.
And we see the introduction here, as well as in other
places in Islamic architecture, of these
interesting vaults.
Now, the vaults are called muqarnas which is sort of like
their stalactite.
Stalactites are things that are coming down
from the cave roof.
Stalagmites are things that come up, if I remember right.
So stalactites are these things that come down.
And if we look at this, we see how these vaults, as they arch
up, become increasingly complicated.
So here we see simpler ones, and here we see now, in the
ivans, truly astonishing ones where they defy
gravity in a way.
How does this thing stand up?
Well, that's part of the mystery of these things is
that they seem to be wrong side down.
We can sort of understand it if we're looking down at this
and these things were stalagmites, but actually,
these are stalactites.
They're hanging.
And of course, it gives the illusion that in some sense,
this is defying gravity, but of course, there is the
structural reasoning behind it.
So here we see the ivan opening, and then right behind
it, as if sort of like [STRETCHING NOISE].
The opening is sort of like stretched out to reveal the
inner composition, if you will, of the body of this
building, which have these astonishing muqarnas vaults.
They come in all shapes and sizes and looks and so forth.
I'm just showing you just samples of them
from various places.
Here's another one, in another one of the ivans.
Generating from very small to some middle range to the
microscopic, almost, when you get to the center.
This is clearly a type of fractal worldview, if you
will, where the small, the middle, the large, are all
connected into a single mathematical world.
And indeed, this is all about mathematics and geometry.
And each of these constructions has its own
mathematical and geometrical principles having to do with a
regular decagon, an irregular convex hexagon, the bow-tie
hexagon, a rhomboid, a pentagon--
you name it.
If you like a geometric things, then
you will like muqarnas.
So these are some of the typical shapes, which are that
bow-tie form, the rhomboid, the parallelograms that are
all part of this.
They were drawn in great detail.
Here we see drawings a little bit later where the architect
is working out the particular scheme and is simultaneously
thinking about the color and the geometry of how these
things operate.
So these are the pieces that are what these things
represent, and trying to work with that.
And then in a more modern portrayal of how
these vaults exist--
they're simultaneously flat and vaulted.
In other words they have a plan which you can project
down on the ground.
And simultaneously, of course, they're actually a vault.
They're not a flat surface.
So this gets higher or lower depending on how this thing
moves through space.
So these are once again a flat projection here, almost like
tiles, of some of these vaults.