On the way from Rome to Rum

The art and culture of the Mediterranean region is as rich and diverse as its physical area is vast. A dramatic and ambitious attempt to offer a cohesive picture of a post-Roman Empire world which extended from the Algarve to Syria and North Africa, and was hugely affected by the rise of Islam and its influence on the existing cultures, will be mounted in a multi-disciplinary symposium taking place at University College Dublin next Saturday. "From Rome to Rum: Continuity and Change in the Mediterranean" is a co-project devised by the college's departments of history of art and classics. Among the speakers is Robert Hillenbrand, an international authority on Islamic art and architecture.

Central to the programme is the relationship between art and archaeology; art and architecture, architecture and archaeology. For too many of us, classical architecture has been reduced to a footnote in travel writing. As any student of art history will know, there is far more to the study of art than 19th-century Impressionism. But just as Irish students of archaeology tend to concentrate on the the Celtic world, the study of classical Greek and Roman archaeology is equally specialised and narrow. The development of an overview is the key to a fuller understanding of the past in an international rather than national context.

It is also true that the study of art should go beyond visiting art galleries. Museums play as large a role. Early Japanese ceramics, Mediterranean glassware and Islamic manuscripts are as much a part of world art as are European painting and sculpture. A visit to the British Museum is as valuable and as valid in the context of an appreciation and understanding of art as any made to a national gallery. Also in Ireland we have the advantage of the extraordinary collection of Oriental and Islamic art, in all its richness and lavish decoration, contained in the Chester Beatty Library.

According to one of the event organisers, Lynda Mulvin of UCD's Department of History of Art, the symposium is intended to take as broad a look as possible at a diverse subject, succeeding in being both general and specialist. One of the speakers, John O'Grady, will be looking at the ancient craft of weaving as practised in Egypt. A linen shirt held in London's Petrie Museum and believed to have been woven in Egypt some 5,000 years ago, he argues, is a distant relative of the Egyptian linen shirts available in Dublin, "the weaving of fine linen never having ceased in the land of the Nile."

Above all, the symposium's emphasis is on accessibility. "This is the first of a proposed series of colloquia," says Mulvin, "and we hope to encourage dialogue between scholars from various disciplines and we want the public to come." In her paper, she will examine the development and influence of the architectural plan of the late Roman villa and how specific elements of it, such as the apsidal reception hall and adjoining dining area, were adapted for use in both secular and religious buildings throughout the Danube-Balkan region and beyond. She will also be tracing the evidence of Roman forms in early Islamic architecture.

A German archaeologist, Dr Felix Teichner of the University of Jena, looks at settlement continuity from late Classical Antiquity up to the Islamic Period as seen in southwest Iberia, modern-day Portugal. According to Dr Teichner, Christian monastic communities were not the only groups in search of a simple country life. Increasing violence in cities as well as heavy taxation - sounds familiar - encouraged the impoverished urban proletariat to live from the land. The continuity of such settlements spanned from late Classical Antiquity up until the Christian West Gothic/Visigothic, to even the Islamic period. Brigitta Hoffmann, also German, but on the staff of UCD, surveys Mediterranean glassware from the late antique to early Islamic periods. The Arabs referred to Rome as Rum, and far from being insulated by their own culture, they had a profound respect and understanding of the Roman world. This openness and interest was not confined to the Roman world either - Andrew Smith, also of UCD, examined the transmission of Greek philosophy to the Arab world. The various speakers will be stressing that classical Roman civilisation did not suddenly disappear, it was actively assimilated and adapted by the existing Mediterranean civilisations and cultures.

Another of the project's co-ordinators, Barry Flood, charts the transformation of Damascus during the 8th century, as it became the early capital of an Islamic empire extending from the Straits of Gibraltar to Western India, and in the process acquired a spectacular array of secular and religious monuments. Today only the famous cathedral mosque (built between 70515), a still magnificent ghost of its former self, remains. This exciting opening session will also attempt to reconstruct various features of city and also highlight parallels between Damascus and the layout of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople.

Robert Hillenbrand will discuss the discovery of early Qur'an manuscripts in Yemen's Great Mosque of Sana'a. The manuscripts had been hidden in the coffering of a ceiling in the mosque and are believed to be among the earliest surviving illuminated Qur'ans. Professor of Islamic Art at Edinburgh University since 1989, Hillenbrand has travelled the Islamic world and brings a wide-ranging knowledge to a culture which spans 1,000 years of history while also physically extending from the Atlantic to the borders of India and China.

When one considers that this period begins with the death of the Prophet Muhammad in AD 632 and continues until the survival of the Ottoman Empire with its mosque-driven architecture, it becomes easier to appreciate the various, almost self-contained stages it contains. It is also important to grasp, as Hillenbrand has pointed out, that there is a distinct difference between the creation of the Arab world and the succession of military conquests which assured it and the formation of its artistic legacy.

`IN the two generations which saw the Arabs flood out of their desert homeland and overrun all of Western Asia and North Africa," he writes, "there was, it seems, neither the desire nor the time to foster artistic expression." He also stresses the need to respect the missing pieces, a great deal of early Islamic art has disappeared, yet it must be studied in order to understand the work of the later periods. As with many aspects of art and history, a practical catch 22 exists.

So what can we expect to walk away with at the end of symposium? A strong sense of not only the range of contrasting cultures and civilisations already in existence by the early Christian period, but also the inter-relationships. The symposium is an attempt to balance the European with the Oriental, the Western with the Eastern and also the sheer geographical range. The story of any culture must look to its art as well as its history. And as this symposium is attempting to illustrate, now more than ever in our age of specialisation, a multi-disciplinary approach is the surest route to a more complete understanding.

From Rome to Rum: Continuity and Change in the Mediterranean takes place at Theatre R, Arts Block, UCD, Belfield next Saturday. Tickets £15. For further information, tel 01-7068162.