Disolución: La bestia

Emmanuel Fremiet (1824-1910): Gorila raptando a una mujer, segunda versión, 1887 (la primera versión, rechazada por el Salón de París: 1858). Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts


Cartel de Homer Davenport contra el «crokerismo» (influencia de Richard Croker)
que dominaba Nueva York, 1898

Cartel del film americano Armenia violada (1919)

Ilustración de Aubrey Beardsley (1894-1895) para Los asesinatos de la rue Morgue, de Poe (1841)

Journal des Voyages, 31 de enero de 1909. (Un nº anterior, de 1885, aquí, y su modelo –una de las fuentes más importantes para la fascinación gorilesca del s. XIX– aquí y aquí).


«¡Acabad con esta bestia loca! ¡Alistaos en el ejército americano!» Poster anglo-americano anti-alemán, 1917-1918 (Versión australiana de Norman Lindsay, de 1918 aquí)

«¡Destruid a la bestia alemana!» Foto de Nikolai Khaldogin, Leningrado, sitiada, diciembre 1941 – febrero 1942. El cartel original no ha sobrevivido, pero en 2011 se preparó esta versión coloreada para una película.

Gino Boccasile: Sello de propaganda fascista que representa a un soldado americano raptando a la Venus de Milo, y el mismo sello estampillado en un sobre de la Italia del norte ocupada por los alemanes, 1944, de aquí



Dissolving: The beast

Emmanuel Fremiet (1824-1910): Gorilla carrying off a woman, second version, 1887 (the first version, rejected by the Paris Salon: 1858). Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts


Cartoon by Homer Davenport against the “Crokerism” (Richard Croker’s influence) dominating New York, 1898

Poster of the American film Ravished Armenia (1919)

Aubrey Beardsley’s illustration (1894-1895) to Poe’s The murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)

Journal des Voyages, 31 January 1909. (An earlier issue of 1885 here, and its model – one of the most important sources of 19th-century gorilla madness – here and here).


“Destroy this mad brute! Enlist US Army” Anti-German Anglo-American war poster, 1917-1918 (Norman Lindsay’s Australian version of 1918 here)

“Destroy the German beast!” Nikolai Khaldogin’s photo, Leningrad, blocade, December 1941 – February 1942. The original poster has not survived, but its colored version was prepared for a film shooting in 2011.

Gino Boccasile: A Fascist propaganda stamp representing an American soldier dragging away the Venus of Milo, and the same stamp pasted on an envelope in Northern Italy occupied by the Germans, 1944, from here



Astrolabes, astronomers, observatories

Aboû Moḥammad al-Qâsim ibn ʿAlî al-Ḥarîrî, Maqâmât, 13th century. MS Arab 3929. Paris, Bnf.

With his staff in the hand, he walks under the stars. Somewhere in the yellow desert of the page, two dogs attacked him. This manuscript of Aboû Moḥammad al-Qâsim ibn ʿAlî al-Ḥarîrî’s Maqâmât dates of the thirteenth century, it traveled extensively, has lost many of its pages, and has suffered its fate as a book – being passed from hand to hand and being widely read.

Aboû Moḥammad al-Qâsim ibn ʿAlî al-Ḥarîrî, Maqâmât, 13th century. MS Arab 3929. Paris, Bnf.

Aboû Moḥammad al-Qâsim ibn ʿAlî al-Ḥarîrî, Maqâmât, 13th century. MS Arab 5847. Paris, Bnf.

What I have found about that so discreet meridian of Tonnerre, has ultimately left me with a feeling of incompleteness. All these medieval images, quadrants, astrolabes and the well of Eratosthenes always recall me the same erudite exposition on Arab science, six or seven years ago, in the Institute of the Arab world in Paris – which also left me with a feeling of incompleteness. It was obvious to me that it is impossible to speak about the ancient sciences without making a detour by the Arab-Muslim world – but the knowledge of this world does not easily let itself discover.
It is time to resume whatever we know.

1. Eratosthenes had established a first network of coordinates which made possible the development of cartographic projection techniques. He was not alone: Marinos of Tyre in the late first century AD also sought to measure the Earth, but in drawing his map he relied on measures other than those of Eratosthenes. Fifty years later his map became the model of Ptolemy’s Geography. Both Marinos and Ptolemy started from a prime meridian off West Africa in drawing a network of meridians and parallels of equal distance and forming rectangles, which gave a correct projection at the 36° parallel, that of the island of Rhodes, and around which they organized all the known world from the Atlantic coast to China.

Al-Isthari (?-951), Treatise of geography. 16th-c. MS. Paris, Bnf. The map follows Ptolemy’s projection, north is in the top in this copy.

Claudius Ptolemy, Cosmographia, Jacobus Angelus interpres. Paris, Bnf.
This representation of the world according to Ptolemy, designed in Florence between 1451 and 1500, includes a layout of meridians.

2. Both Marinos of Tyre and Ptolemy were repeatedly translated in Arabic from the second half of the 8th century. The work of the latter was rediscovered in Europe in the twelfth century under the name of Almagest. Both were important references of the great 10th-century geographer al-Masûdʿî.
From around the same period, princely book collections and more modest private libraries started to grow alongside the “Houses of Wisdom”, like the one founded by Harun al-Rashid in the late eight century, and the institutions of higher education that will be the madrasas beginning with the Seljuk era.


All these texts, as the Almagest, with their translators and erudite commentators, wandered all over the Muslim world.


3. The Arabic and Persian astronomers made great efforts to measure the Earth and to measure the time.
They drew maps and sometimes also meridians. They criticized Ptolemy’s strategies of observation, and developed the instruments which would then be taken over by our European astronomers: instruments of large dimensions for more precise measurements, and planispheric astrolabes improved as compared to the Greek model, with the purpose, in a Muslim context, to exactly know the direction of the prayer (qibla). The same religious requirements were at the origin of a new discipline, that of measuring the time (ʿilm al-mîqât), which led to the realization of sundials. These developments of observation, as well as the mathematical models they involved, led to the criticism of Greek astronomy, especially of the Almagest, and thereby prepare the Copernican revolution of the sixteenth century.


And finally, we also find, if not the drawing of a meridian on the ground, but that of a sundial, essential to set the time for prayers.

And the meridians?
The society of astronomers, geographers and mathematicians is of a traveling sort. Arabic, Persian, Turkmen, Kurdish, Turkish Mongolian scholars all wander on their ways, from Damascus to Soltaniyeh, from Rey to Samarkand. They travel, they meet, they talk, they observe.

Aboû Moḥammad al-Qâsim ibn ʿAlî al-Ḥarîrî, Maqâmât, 13th century. MS Arab 5847. Paris, Bnf.


To trace a meridian, it is often necessary to start by building an observatory.
Before the use of the camera obscura, the observation of the movement of the stars was made possible by the use of wells. Not as Eratosthenes did, to measure the sun’s shadow, and then to calculate the extent of the meridian, that is, the circumference of the Earth, but in order, say, to observe the movement of the celestial bodies in broad daylight, without being bothered by the light.

Taqiy al-Din ibn-Maruf, The azymuthal observation well of Istanbul: Instruments of observations for the tables of the Shahinshah, Turkey, 1580. Paris, Bnf.

Ulugh Beg (1394-1449), grandson and second successor of Tamerlane, remained in the historical memory less for his role as a prince of Samarkand than as an astronomer, a mathematician and builder of one of the oldest observatories in the Muslim world.
This observatory was equipped with fixed astronomical instruments, and employed at least sixty, perhaps even a hundred astronomers at one time. Their observations were carried out over a long period, between 1420 and 1437. They defined the exact length of the solar year – 365 days, 6 hours, 10 minutes and 8 seconds –, and established a catalog of 1012 stars.

The grandson of Temur Beg, Ulugh Beg Mirza, built another large building: a three-storey observatory built on the hillside of Kuhak, used for compiling astronomical tables. Thanks to this observatory, Ulugh Beg Mirza designed the Tables of Köregen, which are now in use worldwide. Now they rarely use any other astronomical tables, whereas previously they used the Tables of Ilkhan, designed in Maragha by Khaja Nasir Tusï, under Hülegü Khan, called Ilkhan. They probably did not prepare more than seven or eight astronomical tables in all the world. One of them is the work of Caliph Mamun, called Tables of Mamun. Ptolemy also designed one.
Babur, Memoirs of the events of the year of 903 AH (1498), Babur-Nama

The Samarkand observatory consisted of a monumental cylindrical building of a height of 30 meters and a diameter of 46, with a huge marble sextant, the “Sextant of Fakhri”, of a radius of about 40 meters, allowing a very high precision in the astronomical measurements during the passage of the Sun, the Moon or the planets along the meridian. This arch of 60° included staircases on each side to allow the assistants carrying out the measurements to move.




Today partly buried, the sextant is well preserved while the other instruments have disappeared. Ulugh Beg himself was killed by his own son.

For the sake of this world, which passes in five days, he killed such a wise and old man as was his father. The chronogram of Ulugh Beg Mirza’s death is the following:

Ulugh Beg Mirza, ocean of science and wisdom
Who was the support of the world and religion
Tasted by Abbas the honey of martyrdom
These letters are his chronogram: Abbas killed me.


Babur, Memoirs on the events of the year 903 AH (1498), Babur-Nama.

Just one object to finish. This is not an astrolabe, even if its spherical and intersected by a moveable pointer, an alidade. This is a mathematical representation of the Muslim world to identify the great cities and to define one’s position to Mecca. Mecca is in the center, and the positions of the hundred and fifty cities are indicated by their coordinates. By moving the alidade one can determine for each city the direction and distance of Mecca, thanks to the scale around the central piece. A compass was also added at the bottom of the object. The instrument is based on the astronomical tables compiled from the observations of Ulugh Beg in Samarkand. Of this map – since this object is a veritable map – there exist only two copies, the first discovered in 1989 and the second in 1995.

Map of the Muslim world centered on Mecca. Iran, 17th century. Kuwait, al-Sabah Collection, Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah.

Astrolabes, astronomes et observatoires

Aboû Moḥammad al-Qâsim ibn ʿAlî al-Ḥarîrî, Maqâmât, XIIIe siècle. Manuscrit arabe 3929. Paris, Bnf.

Son bâton à la main, il chemine sous les étoiles. Quelque part dans le désert jaune de la page, deux chiens l’ont attaqué. Ce manuscrit des Maqâmât d’Aboû Moḥammad al-Qâsim ibn ʿAlî al-Ḥarîrî date du XIIIe siècle, il a beaucoup voyagé lui aussi, il a perdu plusieurs de ses cahiers et souffert son destin de livre — être passé de mains en mains et avoir été beaucoup lu.

Aboû Moḥammad al-Qâsim ibn ʿAlî al-Ḥarîrî, Maqâmât, XIIIe siècle. Manuscrit arabe 3929. Paris, Bnf.

Aboû Moḥammad al-Qâsim ibn ʿAlî al-Ḥarîrî, Maqâmât, XIIIe siècle. Manuscrit arabe 5847. Paris, Bnf.

Tout compte fait, ce que j’avais trouvé à propos de ce si discret méridien de Tonnerre m’avait laissé un goût d’inachevé. Toutes ces images médiévales, ces quadrants et ces astrolabes, tout comme le puits d’Eratosthène, me ramenaient toujours au même souvenir d’une savante exposition sur les sciences arabes, il y a six ou sept ans, à l’Institut du monde arabe à Paris — souvenir au goût d’inachevé lui aussi. Qu’il soit impossible de parler des sciences anciennes sans faire un détour par le monde arabo-musulman, voilà qui me semblait évident — mais ce savoir ne se laissait pas découvrir sans mal.
Il était donc temps de reprendre.

Un — Eratosthène avait établi un premier réseau de coordonnées permettant d’élaborer des techniques de projection cartographique. Il n’est pas seul : Marinos de Tyr, vers la fin du 1er siècle après J.C., chercha lui aussi à mesurer la Terre mais s’appuya sur d’autres mesures que celles d’Eratosthène pour dresser une carte. Celle-ci sera à son tour le modèle de la Géographie de Ptolémée, cinquante ans plus tard. A partir d’un méridien d’origine au large de l’Afrique occidentale, Marinos comme Ptolémée tracent un réseau de méridiens et de parallèles équidistants formant des rectangles donnant une projection correcte au niveau du 36° parallèle, celui de l’île de Rhodes, et autour duquel s’organisent les terres de la côte atlantique jusqu’à la Chine.

Al-Isthari (?-951), Traité de géographie. Manuscrit du XVIe siècle. Paris, Bnf. La carte reprend la projection de Ptolémée, le nord en haut sur cette copie.

Claude Ptolémée , Cosmographia, Jacobus Angelus interpres. Paris, Bnf.
Cette représentation du monde selon Ptolémée, dessinée à Florence entre 1451 et 1500 intègre le tracé des méridiens.

Deux — tout comme Ptolémée, traduit de nombreuses fois en arabe dès la seconde moitié du VIIIe siècle et dont l’œuvre est redécouverte en Europe à partir du XIIe siècle sous le nom d’Almageste, Marinos de Tyr est l’objet de traductions en arabe. Tous deux constituent l’une des références du grand géographe du Xe siècle, al-Masûdʿî.
Les bibliothèques princières comme les plus modestes bibliothèques privées se multiplient parallèlement aux « Maisons de sagesse », telle celle que fonde Hârûn al-Rashid à la fin du VIIIe siècle ou les institutions d’enseignement supérieur que seront les madrasas à partir des Seljoukides.


Ces textes, comme l’Almageste, avec leurs traducteurs et commentateurs, les savants, tous circulent à travers le monde musulman.


Trois — les astronomes arabes et persans, à leur tour, se sont attaqués aux mesures de la Terre et aux mesures du temps.
Ils tracent des cartes et parfois des méridiens. Ils critiquent les stratégies d’observation de Ptolémée et développent ces instruments que reprendront nos astronomes européens : instruments de grande dimension pour des mesures plus précises et astrolabes planisphériques perfectionnées par rapport au modèle grec afin, dans un contexte musulman, de connaître la direction de la prière (qibla). Les mêmes exigences religieuses sont à l’origine d’une nouvelle discipline, celle de la mesure du temps (ʿilm al-mîqât) qui aboutit notamment à la réalisation de cadrans solaires. Ces développements de l’observation comme les modèles mathématiques qu’ils entrainent conduisent à la critique de l’astronomie grecque et en particulier de l’Almageste, et par là, préparent la révolution copernicienne du XVIe siècle.


On retrouve enfin, non pas le tracé d’un méridien sur le sol, mais celui d’un cadran solaire, essentiel pour régler l’heure des prières.

Et les méridiens ?
La compagnie des astronomes, géographes et mathématiciens est voyageuse. Arabes, Perses, Turkmènes, Kurdes, Turcs, Mongols, ils s’en vont sur les routes, de Damas à Soltaniyeh, de Rey à Samarcande. Ils voyagent, ils se rencontrent, ils discutent, ils observent.

Aboû Moḥammad al-Qâsim ibn ʿAlî al-Ḥarîrî, Maqâmât, XIIIe siècle. Manuscrit arabe 5847. Paris, Bnf.


Pour tracer les méridiens, il faut souvent commencer par bâtir un observatoire.
Avant l’usage de la camera obscura, l’observation du mouvement des étoiles a certes pu se faire par l’utilisation des puits, non pas comme le fit Eratosthène pour mesurer l’ombre du soleil et de là, calculer la mesure du méridien donc la circonférence de la Terre, mais afin, dit-on, de pouvoir observer le mouvement des étoiles même en plein jour sans être gêné par la lumière.

Taqiy al-Din ibn-Maruf, Le puits d’observation azimutal d’Istanbul : Instruments d’observation pour les tables de Shâhinshâh, Turquie, 1580. Paris, Bnf.

Ulugh Beg, (1394-1449), petit-fils et second successeur de Tamerlan, est resté dans les mémoires moins pour son rôle comme prince de Samarcande qu’en tant qu’astronome, que mathématicien et bâtisseur de l’un des plus anciens observatoires du monde musulman.
Cet observatoire était équipé d’instruments astronomiques fixes et qui employait pour fonctionner une soixantaine d’astronomes au moins, jusqu’à cent peut-être. Leurs observations furent menées sur une longue période, entre 1420 et 1437. Elles ont défini la durée exacte de l’année solaire — 365 jours, 6 heures, 10 minutes and 8 secondes — et établi un catalogue de 1012 étoiles.

Le petit-fils de Temür Beg, Ulugh Beg Mirza, fit bâtir un autre grand édifice : l’observatoire à trois étages construit sur le flanc de la colline de Kuhak et qui est utilisé pour dresser des tables astronomiques. Grâce à cet observatoire, Ulugh Beg Mirza a dressé les Tables Köregeniennes qui sont maintenant en usage dans le monde entier. On utilise rarement d’autres tables astronomiques. Auparavant, on se servait des Tables Elkhaniennes dressées à Maragha par Khaja Nasir Tusï, sous Hülegü Khan qu’on appelle Elkhan. On n’a probablement pas dressé dans le monde plus de sept ou huit tables astronomiques. L’une d’elles est l’œuvre du Calife Mamun, on les appelle Tables Mamuniennes. Ptolémée en dressa aussi.
Babur, Mémoires des événements de l’année 903 (1498), Babur-Nama,
traduction de J.-L. Bacqué-Grammont.

L’observatoire de Samarcande était constitué d’un bâtiment monumental cylindrique, d’une hauteur de 30 mètres pour un diamètre de 46, équipé d’un sextant gigantesque en marbre, le « Sextant de Fakhri », d’un rayon de près de 40 mètres, permettant une très grande précision dans les mesures astronomiques lors du passage du Soleil, de la Lune ou des planètes dans le méridien. Cet arc de 60° comportait des escaliers de chaque côté pour permettre aux assistants chargés des mesures de se déplacer.




Aujourd’hui en partie enterré, le sextant est bien conservé alors que les autres instruments en revanche ont disparu. Ulugh Beg, quant à lui, fut assassiné par son fils.

Pour ce monde qui passe en cinq jours, il assassina un homme aussi savant et âgé que l’était son père. Le chronogramme de la mort d’Ulugh Beg Mirza est le suivant :

Ulugh Beg Mirza, océan de science et de sagesse
Qui fut le soutien du monde et de la religion
A goûté par Abbas le miel du martyre
Ces lettres sont son chronogramme : Abbas a tué.


Babur, Mémoires des événements de l’année 903 (1498), Babur-Nama.

Juste un objet pour finir. Ce n’est pas un astrolabe même s’il est sphérique et traversé d’une réglette mobile, une alidade. Il s’agit d’une représentation mathématique du monde musulman qui permet de repérer les grandes villes et de situer par rapport à La Mecque. La Mecque est au centre et les positions de cent cinquante villes sont indiquées à partir de leurs coordonnées. Le déplacement de l’alidade permet de fournir directement pour chacune de ces villes la direction de La Mecque grâce aux graduations qui entourent la pièce. La distance entre chaque ville et La Mecque est également marquée. Une boussole a été ajoutée au fond de l’objet. L’ensemble repose sur les tables astronomiques compilées à partir des observations d’Ulugh Beg à Samarcande. Il n’existe que deux exemplaires de ce type de cartes, car cet objet est bien une carte, retrouvées celle-ci en 1989 et la seconde en 1995.

Carte du monde musulman centrée sur la Mecque, Iran, XVIIe siècle. Koweit, collection al-Sabah, Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah.

Cutting all trees

On Saturday civilians organized a protest demonstration on the Római Part (Roman Bank, named so after the ancient Roman settlement of Aquincum that extended here) in the north of Budapest, where the Danube enters the city. This tree-covered bank of the Danube is a natural floodplain for the annual flooding of the river, but in the last twenty years more and more investors have built houses and even hotels here illegally and with the tacit complicity of the district government. Now, as the head of this latter became Mayor of Budapest, he announced that a hundred million euro of public money will be poured in the building of a dam all along the Római for the protection of the same illegally built investments, which will lead to a total destruction of this last natural river bank within the city.

Those who do not know the Hungarian capital, will be probably surprised to notice that in a city with such a large river there is hardly any possibility to approach the coast. Even this last remnant  is rather neglected, nevertheless, along with so many others, I really love the Római.
Here you can walk down to the Danube, teach the kids to dap the stones, look for snail houses and shells, walk and swim the dog, go in kayak or canoe, meet friends, eat fried fish, dance in the music gardens, have a beer or a wine in a sun bed down at the coast, in the night watch the reflections of the illuminated boats, listen to the ensemble of Albert Márkos in the open restaurant Fellini, or mostly just watch the big, slow water. At once inside and outside the city, an easily available entertainment, even on a simple weekday evening.
Lots of recreation facilities, with which such a powerful river enriches the inhabitants of the settlements along its coasts. Budapest has always taken a very poor advantage of what other cities, which manage their natural endowments in a smarter way, would just leap at.

We say thanks to the several thousands of people who indicated with their presence that they do not want this popular natural coastline being transformed as designed by the Major’s office in the interest of the properties built on the floodplain.


Literature on the topic, in Hungarian, non-exhaustive, and in the belief that the story is far from over:

– Facebook page of the Picnic for the Római Coast event, organized by the Protect the Future Association, the City and River Blog, and the Association of Hungarian Landscape Architects
– The community supporting the survival of the natural coastline: Let the trees rest in the Római
– A video of the portal Index on the demonstration (and counter-demonstration) of March 2
– A summary of the Danubian Islands blog on the demonstrations pro and against the building of the dam
– “A floating trunk can destroy the dam” – an article in NOL on the problems of the planned mobile dam
– Sándor Bardóczi’s article Requiem for the Római Coast in the Architects’ Forum
– A commentary on Mayor István Tarlós’ press conference, again by Sándor Bardóczi


Update: Recent developments on the Protect the Future Association’s site – the Mayor, three days after (!) passing the decision on the building of the dam promised that the city would nevertheless have prepared the still missing impact studies. I don’t think we are wrong to believe that this step was also influenced by the inhabitants of Budapest called together by the civil organizations.

Merry-making


at the bridge of the Yaselda, next to the already mentioned Malecz, on March 3, 1918, at the news of Russia’s withdrawal from the war.

both images are nicely zoomable