abbasid caliphateabbasid caliphate
Samarra Wall Paintings (c. 836–883 CE)
Wall paintings from the Abbasid imperial palaces at Samarra (modern Iraq), c. 836–883 CE. Discovered by Ernst Herzfeld during excavations (1911–1913). The fragmentary paintings depict dancing women, musicians, and animals; they constitute the principal surviving evidence of Abbasid figural painting. Fragments held at the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, and the Iraq Museum, Baghdad.
Scholarly Significance
Type-example node for the Samarra wall paintings, representing the Abbasid figural painting tradition of the 9th century — virtually the only surviving large-scale Abbasid secular painting.
Notes
- ·Samarra was the Abbasid capital from 836 to 892 CE, built by Caliph al-Mu'tasim as a new imperial city north of Baghdad on the Tigris river.
- ·The palace complex (Dar al-Khilafa / Jawsaq al-Khaqani) contained extensive painted rooms; Herzfeld's excavations recovered fragments from multiple rooms.
- ·The paintings show dancing women in diaphanous garments, sometimes identified as slave girls or entertainers; stag hunts; and animals in roundels. The style relates to late Sasanian and Central Asian traditions.
- ·The Samarra stucco ornament (three distinct carved stucco styles, Style A/B/C) is equally important for Islamic art history; the 'bevelled' Style C became the first truly international Islamic decorative style, spreading from Central Asia to Iberia.
- ·The paintings are one of the few surviving pieces of evidence that Abbasid court culture included extensive secular figural painting in private palace spaces.