The third of the three largest groups of Nishapur's glazed earthenware

is decorated in black only. The pigment painted on a white engobe and

covered with a transparent is usually colourless lead glaze. The designs,

for the most part simple and well placed, are sometimes delicate,

sometimes bold. In both there is a feeling of vitality. All in all, the black

on white is one of the most attractive of the wares found predominantly

in Nishapur.

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The notion of performativity in relation to epigraphic pottery has not yet

been addressed by scholars. This essay argues that instructive inscriptions

are meant to act as performative instructions, where words mean certain

righteous actions and later transform into actions through the use of a

piece of epigraphic pottery. The essay draws on Austin's lectures that

were compiled into a book How to Do Things with Words.

 

Historical background 

The tenth-century slip-painted ceramic wares with elegant Arabic

inscriptions painted in black on a white ground belong to the Samanid

period. These are often unearthed in Nishapur, Iran and Samarqand,

Uzbekistan. In addition, the ware has been found in Tashkent, Gurgan,

Merv, and Lashkari Bazar, which indicates it was used in all the cities

of importance in the eastern part of the Islamic empire from the ninth

century to the eleventh century.

 

The Samanid dynasty originated with Saman Khuda, an 8th century

member of the Persian land-owning class who had converted from

Zoroastrianism to Islam. His grandsons become rulers of several

cities in Transoxiana as a reward from the Abbasid Caliph al-Mamun

after helping him quell a rebellion. One of these grandsons, the ruler

of Fergana Ahmad ibn-Asad, slowly took over and

consolidated territories from his brothers until becoming ruler of

Transoxiana and Khwarizm - rich and fertile lands straddling the

Amu-Darya river, including the major cities of Samarkand and Bukhara.

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The Samanid rulers saw themselves as the champions of Sunni Islam on

the one hand, and the heirs of the cultural inheritance of their Persian

ancestors on the other. Along with the military expeditions to the East,

another factor in the conversion to Islam of the population in the

Samanid lands was the first translation of the Quran into Persian,

completed in the 9th century.

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The origin and significance of Arabic calligraphy 

The special importance that Islam accorded to its sacred volume, the

Qur'an, placed writing and books at the centre of the religious and

cultural life of the Islamic community. It is the prestige attached to

writing which appears to have encouraged the development of

calligraphy or modes of writing in which the formal aspects of a script

are given an equal, or at times greater, weight than other more

practical concerns such as ease of execution or even legibility. The

Islamic calligraphic tradition is characterised by the concurrent use of

different styles of writing in which the Arabic alphabet is written

according to consciously articulated formal paradigms. The strokes

from which the letters are formed can be thin, thick or variable in

width. Individual letters and words may be broadly or closely spaced,

overlapping or intertwined. The resulting hands run the gamut from

severely rectilinear to fluid and curvilinear.

 

Calligraphers are the most highly regarded artists in Islamic culture.

The art of calligraphy was passed down from master to student, often

within the same family. In order to become a master calligrapher and

acquire a formal license, a student had to train for years by copying

models to perfect their skills.

 

From the ninth through the early thirteenth century Nishapur was one of the greatest cities of medieval Iran. Located in the eastern province of Khurasan and well-situated along the trade route across which goods were exchanged between the Far and the Near East, Nishapur was an important political, commercial, and cultural center. 

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Owners and uses of epigraphic pottery

In his 'Patricians of Nishapur' Richard Bulliet had theorised that the early

converts became in the Islamic era a kind of Nishapuri elite. The later

converts, on the other hand, represented formerly influential Persian

families who had initially resisted the new faith, and the new power

structure that went with it.  However, now that they had belatedly

become Muslims, they wanted to reclaim their former positions of

high status. Bulliet makes the case that these two groups favored

different types of pottery-the "early Islamic elite" favoring a

black-on-white ware usually decorated with bold Arabic calligraphy,

while the later converts favoured a polychrome ware that was often

decorated with traditional Persian motifs of the Sasanian era.

 

Richard Bullet also proposed that the difference between buff ware

that is made of fine and almost white clay, and the epigraphic ware

lay in the different social groups for which they were made - the

epigraphic wares, with their moralising inscriptions in Arabic, being

made for the politically dominant minority of Arab immigrants and

Iranians who were early converts to Islam, while the buff ware, with

an Iranian and pre-Islamic Sasanian iconography, was made for

resurgent Iranian nationalists as part of the revival of Iranian culture,

language and customs. 

 

Bullet suggests that even the difference in shapes is significant, and indicates a difference in cuisine; the large platters of the epigraphic ware being created for Arab cuisine, and the smaller buff-ware bowls for traditional Iranian stews and soups. However, the archaeological evidence is not strong enough to support his chronological and topographical argument, and the cultural argument rests on assumptions that cannot be tested.

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The debate continues, Oya Pancaroglu has proposed in a series of articles perhaps the most sensible and plausible contexts for these wares. Arabic was still the appropriate language for many uses, even among Iranian nationalists and especially for the kind of moralistic aphorisms and blessings found on the pottery. No social group limits its taste to one aesthetic alone; different kinds of decoration are traditional and appropriate to different materials and functions. 

 

The performativity of epigraphic wares

Now that we have outlined the historical background and social context of

the use of these wares, let us turn to the notion of performativity. The term

'performativity' presupposes the interdependence between words and

actions. This term was introduced by the theorist J.L. Austin in his 1955

book How to Do Things with Words. In it, the word performative describes

a sentence that is an action at the same time. An example of such a

sentence would be a judge declaring a verdict.

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In this respect, a proverb attributed to Imam 'Ali that reads 'Planning

before work protects from regrets, patience is key to comfort' is not

simply instructing but through subvocalisation helps the reader of this line

act through words. Another performative aspect is the fact that these

dishes or bowls would be used to hold food and, therefore, used in daily life

or during festive seasons.

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Conclusion

This essay discussed the historical and social context of epigraphic pottery

from Nishapur and Samarkand during the 10th century which corresponds

to the Samanid period. It briefly discussed the notion of performativity 

in relation to the proverbs calligraphically written on the dishes and bowls.

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