The first depictions of Muslim flags as examples of Early Orientalism
I’m currently reading Edward Said’s book, Orientalism. Admittedly, a complex read for someone who has no finer academic background in history and sociology. Truth is, some passages fly high above my head
Nevertheless, I keep going. I reached a section in Said’s book that really resonated with my interest in flags and shone a new light upon the development on flags and the representation of early Muslim and Turkish states
A few word on Orientalism
One of Said’s main point in his 1978 writings was that Orientalism was a reduction of greater ensemble. It was — and still is — a digestible representation by the West of the Great Other. It helped Europe make sense of complex geographical, political and religious entities by grouping them in sets and subsets
Regardless of their relevancy, truthfulness and adequacy, these reductions were a tool to understand, grasp, seize, tame and control these “Barbaric” lands and their cultures.
The height of Orientalism in arts, academia and politics, according to the author, was reached in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Said highlights and analyses the rhetoric of the British dominion in Egypt to justify their presence and mission. He quotes several times Arthur Balfour, a Conservative PM (1902–1905), who believed that British rule in Egypt was justified by the decline of the previous prestigious dynasties, by the “backwardness” of modern Egyptians and by their lack of interest in their own history. All of these ailments that afflicted Egypt, the British Empire could and should heal — so believed Balfour.
The quest for knowledge of the East acted as the bedrock for Europe’s “mission” in the East; these are backward places whose inhabitants have lost their way and only Europeans can access the deeper and older knowledge of their culture, language and society. Europeans could understand the East better than those who live there:
On August 17. 1787, [William Jones] wrote unassumingly to Lord Althorp that “it is my ambition to know India better than any other European ever knew it.” Here is where Balfour in 1910 could find the first adumbration of his claim as an Englishman to know the Orient more and better than anyone else.
The phrase oft repeated in Game of Thrones; “Knowledge is Power” actively applies to the Orientalist mindset. Not only does knowledge consolidate power, it very much as well allows the knowledge-holder to control that which they study. In other words, when in a situation of cultural dominance, knowledge is enjoying the privilege of controlling the narrative of others.
Knowledge of others — or The Other — turns what is outside of the observer’s categories and structures into something that can be understood and stored in these pre-existing boxes.
Early flags of Muslim polities
This phenomenon undoubtedly applied to the first flags of Muslim polities in the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean. Flags have a long and complex history but vexillologists generally agree that the first standards and flags were waved in China and slowly spread westward. These early forms of flags are nowadays called vexilloloids.
Though Europe is one of the earliest places to heavily regulate and standardise the use of flags, their symbolic charge, value and usefulness were inherited from Eastern societies.
While Europe put a lot of emphasis on the correct use of flags — influenced by the heavy heraldic tradition — the eastern Mediterranean polities didn’t as much. When Europeans and “Easterners” met, it was predominantly during violent clashes on the battlefield, it was rarely via diplomatic canals. When diplomatic canals actually arose, it was much later, thus the European vision of Muslim imagery had long been cemented.
Paintings recounting the events of such battles required both sides to be easily identifiable with distinctive symbols. While the early Muslim dynasties used solid colours (black, white, red, yellow sometimes accompanied by the inscription “There is only one God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God”), the war banners featured crescents and stars.
The crescents and stars have a complex history. Though deeply tied to Islam nowadays, its origins and associations with Islam is not as straightforward as it is for the cross and Christians. Sir Hassan Suhrawardy, in a 1941 conference given in Caxton Hall (London) — transcribed in the February 1942 issue of The Islamic Review — explained that the association of the crescent and star with Islam originates from erroneous interpretations by Europeans of Ottoman and Muslim imagery:
When the Ottoman Turkish Sultan, Muhammad the Conqueror, captured Constantinople, the crescent was on his flag, and by confusion of names it became associated with Muhammad the Prophet. Like the Crusaders, the Christians of Europe were misled into a belief that the crescent was the religious symbol of Islam. Whenever a Christian nation conquered a Turkish province, the first thing they did was to replace the crescent by the cross.
While the crescents and stars were interpreted by Europeans as religious symbols equivalent to the Christian cross, culturally, these symbols carried far less religious weight than Westerns thought. It was, according to Sir Hassan Suhrawardy, merely military symbols.
In the top left corner of the illustration from the 10th century account Tarikhnama, we can indeed see the use of a crescent and star sitting atop a military banner.
These two pages from the 14th century Castillan Book of knowledge of all the kingdoms, lands, and lordships (English translation from 1912) illustrate 1) the need to convert Islamic symbols into European models 2) Crescents have indeed been associated with Islam for a long time.
Acculturation through vexillological change
Michel Pastoureau (1993:102–106) echoes Sir Hassan Suhrawardy’s 1941 comment, explaining that as early as the 11th century, Christian Europe inadvertently contributed to the growth in importance of the crescent and stars symbols in Islam. Furthermore, Pastoureau goes into detail about the process of “westernising” Muslim flags:
“Everything is “westernised”: Quranic inscriptions are removed, the contours become rectangular (like banners) or scutiform (shaped like coat of arms), figures foreign to the European coat of arms repertoire are replaced by others, and last but not least, the religious and political colours of Islam are used reorganised according to the strict rules of western heraldry. As such, red can’t be in contact with neither green or black, and has to be separated by white or yellow. Something that is unknown to vexillological practices in Islam.”
This process of replacing a culture’s symbols by other — deemed more appropriate — is a clear example of acculturation. A culture changes — by choice or by force — upon prolonged contact with another. In the case of flags, Muslim vexillological traditions, semiotics and symbolism have been re-imagined by foreign powers and, due to the West cultural and military dominance, reflected this manufactured perception back to the original cultures. This is exemplified in the Ottoman Empire “auto-correction” of their own banners and flags based on European interpretation.
Pastoureau adds that the acculturation phenomenon has always been a one-way process; “Europe imposing on Islam — and the rest of the world — its own system of values and symbols.” It started with war, then commerce and diplomacy. Europe’s cultural dominance led to the re-evaluation of Islamic symbols by Muslim-majority countries.
Bearing in mind Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism, it becomes more obvious how the modifications brought by Europeans on Muslim flags match this tradition of instrumentalising knowledge of others to fit into one’s own pre-existing system of values and symbols.
Sources
- Genèse du drapeau. Etats, couleurs et acculturation emblématique autour de la Méditerranée, Michel Pastoureau (1993)
- World Religions — Their Contrasts and Resemblances, Sir Hassan Suhrawardy in The Islamic Review (1942)
- Orientalism, Edward W. Said (1978)
- Flags: Through The Ages And Around The World, Whitney Smith (1975)
- Second volume of a Tarikhnama (Book of history) by Bal’ami (died ca. 992–997)
- Robert II at the Siege of Antioch, painting by J.J. Dassy, 1850
- Book of knowledge of all the kingdoms, lands, and lordships that are in the world, and the arms and devices of each land and lordship, or of the kings and lords who possess them, Markham, Clements R. (Clements Robert), Sir, 1830–1916; Jiménez de la Espada, Marcos, 1831–1898
- Fleur des histoires de la terre d’Orient. by Winfrite Hayton (1301–1400)
