Siyah Qalem: Wind from the steppes : The Tribune India

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Siyah Qalem: Wind from the steppes

It was a long, very long, time ago that a friend from Germany, Franz Joseph Vollmer, came visiting and brought us as a gift from Afghanistan where he was then posted, a most impressive, album-sized book, simply titled: Siyah Qalem.

Siyah Qalem: Wind from the steppes

Angels and fairies struggling to harness dragons.



B. N. Goswamy

It was a long, very long, time ago that a friend from Germany, Franz Joseph Vollmer, came visiting and brought us as a gift from Afghanistan where he was then posted, a most impressive, album-sized book, simply titled: Siyah Qalem. It bore the name of Mazhar Ipsiroglu as its author, and had on the cover the image of a menacing looking demon, standing against an uncoloured ground, glaring at you: weight of the body on the right leg, knee touched by the foot of the other leg bent at the knee; one hand held at shoulder height with a warning finger raised, and the other resting on a crooked, golden staff held close to the chest; chocolate dark, scaly body bare but for a brief wrap wound round the loins, revealing a massive series of ribs; horned head, bulging eyes, mouth half-open with sharp fangs showing; long curling tail coming from the back and ending in a hissing dragon-head nudging the calf. The sight was stunning: the brilliantly rendered form scary, but arresting. I did not at that time know anything about Siyah Qalem — obviously the name, or possibly the nom de plume, of the artist — of whose work the album consisted; nor did I, then, know anything of Mazhar Ipsiroglu, the author. The text, which I was eager to read, was in German, a language to which I had access, even if the going can be a bit slow. I looked quickly at the astonishing range of paintings inside but, before I could dip into the text, for I was on the point myself of travelling, that had to be left to a later date. By the time I returned, however, the book had somehow disappeared. I looked for it high and low, but just could not find it. A demon’s trick?

Fortunately for me, however, equally suddenly the book re-appeared the other day. I had almost forgotten about it but there it was, lurking flat on its face in a low shelf, unnoticed, evidently due to a reshuffle of book cases in our over-crowded household. In any case, I had it now in my hand. My interest in it was re-kindled, and when I started reading it and entering the world of Siyah Qalem, I was not only deeply impressed by the work, but also intrigued by the thick haze surrounding that name: the vagueness, the uncertainties. Nearly the entire known work of the painter is contained in two albums, both in the famed Topkapi Serai Museum in Istanbul; nearly every page bears an inscription in Persian in a corner which reads either ‘kar-i Muhammad siyah qalem’, or ‘kar-i ustad Muhammad siyah qalem’ — clearly an attribution, not a signature — meaning much the same, which is that this is ‘the work of Ustad Muhammad Siyah Qalem’. There is no date, however, nothing even approaching it, the speculation of early writers on the work ranging from “before 1200” to “the second half of the sixteenth century”. There is no information about who Siyah Qalem was, or what area did he belong to, the guesses ranging, again, widely, from Iran and Turkey to the Steppes, from Mongolia to Russia. Chinese influences seem to run through some paintings; Buddhist sources are talked about by scholars. There was a whole conference held in 1980 where the issues were discussed at length. But nothing that can settle the matter convincingly has emerged. One knows that one is still casting about in the cloud of unknowing.

But with all these uncertainties hanging in the air, no questions have ever been raised about the sheer brilliance, the power, of Siyah Qalem’s work. The world he conjures up, in raw, brutal reality, is that of humans of his observation on the one hand and that of shamans and supernatural beings on the other. Barefoot nomads roam about in his pages, dressed in the coarsest of clothes and living on the edge of want and misery; one might see them occasionally sit down and play on instruments, at other times one might find them in an inebriated state, but they seem almost always on the move with their dogs by their sides, struggling against a heart-breakingly harsh environment, bodies stooped under the cold, hands and feet gnarled, barely stopping to talk or whisper or argue. At the same time, intermingling in this very environment and setting, demons and shamans appear, dancing their grotesque dances, wrists and ankles loaded with golden ornaments, sawing trees, flogging horses, whisking humans away to their unseen world. There is no let in the energy of these figures; robust bodies seem to push against their own skins; muscles ripple; hands and feet flail about; eyes keep glaring. It is a fearsome sight, but one that is absolutely riveting.

In one of the most brilliant of Siyah Qalem’s works one sees a lion and a bull, juxtaposed, separated by a small gap: the lion seen from behind, body completely taut, tail and paws whipping the air, massive, snarling head turned to look at the adversary; the dark bull at the other end is seen coming down hurtling at a speed, combination of aggression and fear in the eyes, ready to take the lion on and gore him, as it were, to death with his powerful horns. There is drama here, and untold intensity. A scholar, arguing that the theme is taken from an old Chinese painting of a sheep and a goat on the same page, believes that the two forms are symbolic of two competing political powers. But who knows? Meanwhile, one has this superb work and allows it to sear the memory with its presence.

Will one, some day, be able to fathom the mystery, pierce the haze, which surrounds the name, Siyah Qalem? Again, who knows?

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