Arabic or ‘Melkite Icons’

 أيقونات عربية أو أيقونات الروم الكاثوليك

هناك عدة أنماط مختلفة لرسم الإيقونات، إحداها النمط العربي وهو المعروف أيضاً بِـِ: " الإيقونات الملكية). وقد تطورت تلك الأنماط من الرسم في الكنيسة السريانية الأرثوذكسية إبان إعادة الوحدة مع الكنيسة الكاثوليكية الرومانية في القرن الثامن عشر الميلادي، وأصبحت شائعة لدى كافة كنائس المشرق. وقد كانت مدينة القدس مركزاً هاماً لرسم الإيقونات في القرن التاسع عشر، حيث تُعتبر إيقونة سيدة بيت لحم في كنيسة المهد، إحدى الأمثلة على ذلك. 

The Incarnation underlines the profound connection between faith and culture. Christian faith in God taking flesh makes the material world a profound medium for the sacred, and culture, be it music, architecture, literature, drama or art, as an important context in which faith can be expressed and explored.

Icons, as religious, artistic and liturgical artefacts root the Christian faith into particular cultures, at particular times and places. They are not simply reproductions of paintings made hundreds of years ago in Byzantine workshops. They are real, living expressions of the faith of people from as diverse places as the 6th century Egyptian desert, Venetian Crete and the renewed church of post-soviet Russia. Each of these times and places has thrown up new types, styles, themes and materials which has given iconography a rich history which continues today.

Christianity has been present in the Middle East since the time of the Apostles. Syria was the first place where the followers of Jesus were called Christians, and across the region there have been a great variety of national churches of differing theological convictions as well as styles of liturgy. For most of the past 2000 years most Arabs have been Christians of one type of another, though as time has passed the domination of Islam first politically, then socially and finally religiously has greatly diminished there presence and influence in the past 100 years.

Iconography in the region remained strongly aligned to Byzantium until its collapse in the 15th century. After this the main centre of Orthodox iconography moved to Muscovite Russia, newly emerged from the dominance of the Mongols. Thus in the Arab nations there was less central influence and control, and in the early 18th century a family of iconographers in Aleppo, Ysef al-Mussawwin; his son, Nemeh grandson, Hanamia; and great-grandson, Girgis, began developing something that became distinctively an Arab form of iconography known as the Aleppo School.

This family were Melkite Christians. This term refers to the ancient Christians led by the Patriarch of Antioch who accepted the Council of Chalcedon. The Patriarchs of Antioch tended to be sympathetic to the Roman Catholic Church and in 1729 there was an official reconciliation and the church became known as the Greek Melkite Church. This was a period of division with those who remained loyal to the Patriarch of Constantinople, and for a time the Melkite Christians suffered persecution from the Ottoman state. Yet, this time of upheaval and suffering also saw the birth an authentic Arabic school of iconography which in time was to influence not just iconography in those local churches in Communion with Rome but within Orthodox and Oriental churches too. The term ‘Melkite Icons’ to describe these Arabic icons was first used by Virgil Candea, a Romanian scholar, when he was consultant for an exhibition of icons from Lebanese and Syrian collections produced by the Sursock Museum of Beirut in May 1969.

The greatest of the Aleppo school iconographers was Nemeh. He followed the Byzantine models but preferred a stylized naturalism. His figures reflect Arabic features, with angels and women have more pronounced oval heads, his young people have rounded faces; and his men possess large heads with bulging foreheads, prominent cheekbones and hollow cheeks. While the noses retain the Byzantine slenderness, Nemeh's saints have almond-shaped and heavily-lashed eyes. He also adopted more Arabic decorative motifs, for example creating alternating green and red borders covered with gold decoration.

Melkite icons came to be characterised by oval and softer facial expressions than in Byzantine icons of the period. The bodies are fuller and rounder with less of the modelling which is characteristic of traditional icon painting. There are also Arabic costumes, contemporary furniture, and daily household objects - all in sharp contrast to the other-worldly Byzantine icons. For example there is an early 18th century Melkite icon where the infant Virgin Mary is being rocked in a cradle, still in use in Syria and Lebanon. In other examples Abraham wearing a turban, St. John the Evangelist writing at an Arabic desk, and St. George brandishing an Arab sword.

 From the outset one of the distinctive characteristics was the use of Arabic decorative motifs. Islamic culture, with its unease with portraying the human figure, developed the decorative motif into a style and excellence of its own and the Melkite iconographers incorporated it directly into their work. Borders, backgrounds, garments all were decorated using intricate decorations seen on brasswork, on Persian carpets, and on the brocades and wood panels of Damascus. Often, the entire background of Melkite icons are covered with floral, vegetable, and geometric designs, as twisted leaves, lotus flowers, pomegranates lilies, tulips, and palms all explode into a celebration of divine life. At different times this was more or less elaborate and dominant, but whatever the scale it was something distinctively Arabic.

Islamic culture also focused on the written text, and Arabic script and so it is not surprising that inscriptions, which are an essential element in iconography, became highly elaborated in an Arabic context. An icon of St. Spiridon was given to a Romanian church in 1794 by Sylvester, the Orthodox patriarch of Antioch and the salutations and blessings covering about one-fourth of the icon's surface!

This school spread its influence across the Arab Christian communities and went through various stylistic influences. An important off-shoot was established in Jerusalem, perhaps as early as the 18th century. This came to prominence in the 19th century as Aleppo itself began to wane in importance, in what is known as the Kudsi. This consisted of three Melkite painters Mikhail Mahanna, Yuhanna Saliba, and Nicolas Theodorus. Large brush strokes and simplicity characterize their works. Their saints have heads as round as oranges and faces touched with serenity. In turn this centre influenced the surrounding area, including Bethlehem which had an icon workshop until the 1940s.

The work of this workshop is to be seen in St Nicholas in Beit Jala and the Syrian Orthodox Church in Bethlehem. Devoid of any ornamentation, they still retain the strong Arabic features and the Arabic inscriptions, and a very simple, direct if somewhat romantic style. When I came to restore St Nicholas church I was immediately struck by how the faces resembled some of the Palestinian people I met. The large eyes, stocky figure, high foreheads were all classical products of the Melkite icon school, though much more simplified than the classical pieces of the 18th century. 

Local people have at times referred to these as Russian icons, but that is a misnomer. Though Russian Orthodox influences are strong in Palestine during the 19th century, and undoubtedly influenced the decoration of churches, the characteristics of the Arabic Melkite icons are still to be seen. Often what people mean is that they are not Byzantine in style, somewhat naturalistic and rarely distinguish the local truly Arabic icons from the sentimental devotional art that came from a mixture of European and Russian sources. 

Sadly the Christian presence in the Middle East has atrophied as its numerical strength has sapped, and iconography in general, let alone Arabic iconography, has withered away. Some iconographers exist in Lebanon and Syria, but those in the Holy Land itself tend to be from Europe, and few are full time iconographers, or part of a workshop. As iconography in Russia and Greece has been renewed in the past 40 years, it has eclipsed what is left of the local traditions, and its adherents have a somewhat evangelistic fervour, which looks on non-Orthodox iconographic traditions such as the Melkite school with deep suspicion. Its stylised naturalism is easily dismissed as simply a poor version of the naturalistic Russian icons so heavily influenced by Western baroque art and naturalism, and condemned in contemporary iconographic circles as decadent. 

This is a real pity, as we have, in these Melkite icons, an example of a developed local iconography, and one which flourished within an eastern Church in Communion with Rome. At a time when centralisation seems the norm, and local realities are subsumed by global movements, a renewed sense of the Incarnation must mean the emergence of new iconographic local styles, and the renewal of existing ones. We have seen something of that in Egypt with contemporary Coptic icons, and perhaps the time is ripe for something similar to take place among Arab Christians too?