The original “Chinese style” blue-and-white porcelain is the product of Islamic culture!

Blue and white porcelain, also known as white blue and white porcelain, often referred to as blue and white, is one of the mainstream varieties of Chinese porcelain, under the glaze color porcelain.The original blue-and-white porcelain appeared in the Tang and Song dynasties, and the mature blue-and-white porcelain appeared in the Hutian kiln in Jingdezhen in Yuan Dynasty.Qing Hua became the mainstream of porcelain in Ming Dynasty.The period of Qing Kangxi reached its peak.During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the varieties of blue and white, malachite green glaze blue, bean green glaze blue, red green, yellow ground blue and goose glaze blue and white were also created.Blue-and-white porcelain is one of the classic symbols of “Chinese style”, but its origin is actually derived from Islamic culture, so how it was born and become “national porcelain”?

Blue-and-white porcelain is no doubt a typical Chinese style.So that the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, like a blue-and-white porcelain culture exposition _ the Olympic Park has spread a “century-old blue-and-white porcelain Road”, the park has a “blue-and-white” legend of the “Xiangyun House,” An enormous blue-and-white porcelain sculpture was erected on the edge of Chang ‘an Street.

Similar blue and white porcelain sculptures appear in various parks

… class = ‘class2’> blue-and-white porcelain series Olympic awards dress with Chinese cultural tradition and color in line with our aesthetic taste.

2008 is the Olympic year, also is the blue and white porcelain year, Zhou Jielun that spring evening singing “blue and white porcelain” popular throughout the year, everywhere can hear “sky blue and so on smoke and rain, and I am waiting for you, the moon is salvaged up, fainted the end, such as the world’s blue and white porcelain take care of their own beauty. ”

However, “White Green” porcelain, at first, does not conform to the traditional Chinese aesthetic.

According to Pope, the earliest reference in the literature to the blue and white porcelain was made by Cao Zhao of the Ming Dynasty, who commented in the book Ge Gu Yao Lun, which was written in Hongwu for 20 years, that “people with blue and five-colored flowers are very vulgar” and that the meaning of derogation is quite obvious.In the gentry’s view at that time, the monochrome porcelain which was popular since Song Dynasty was a good thing with taste, while the vulgar blue-and-white porcelain should not appear in the scholar-bureaucrat’s room.

But in the Islamic world, especially in Persia, blue-and-white blue-and-white porcelain is their ideal vessel.Blue is the royal color of Persian culture. Mosques around Persia like to be decorated with blue.And white is a good color in islamic belief.The first self-proclaimed porcelain in the Chinese character “Green Flower” has been found in IranAl Adbira mosque

foldImam Mosque Dome

Transport and trade of blue-and-white porcelain described in a Turkish painting of the 15th century

Correspondingly to the love of the Islamic world, Ming Dynasty blue-and-white porcelain imitates the style of Islamic artifacts.Most of the blue-and-white porcelain in the early Ming Dynasty can be traced back to Western Asia or the Middle East ancient metal, glass or porcelain, this phenomenon has continued since the mid-Ming Dynasty.

For example, the celestial sphere bottle (left), which has been popular since the Ming Dynasty (right), draws on the styling of a glass bottle made in Western Asia since the 8th century (right).

Blue and white jug (bottom left), also from the 12 th century West Asia began to popular metal jug shape (bottom right).

The blue and white fold along the big basin (below), originated from the Middle East Muslim metal pure hand basin (below).

The unobstructed statue (left) of the yongle-style green flower in the tianjin museum is not only shaped like the bronzes of the mamrouk dynasty (right), but also uses a large amount of islamic metal carvings and is written in arabic very prominently.

What’s more, the blue-and-white back canteen of the Flier’s Museum of Art is painted in the center of Islam’s octagonal star:

The blue-and-white porcelain with a large number of exotic elements is not easy to mature.Although blue-and-white porcelain was claimed to have started in the Tang Dynasty, it did not form a mass production process until the Yuan Dynasty.Even in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, when it began to turn over, Jingdezhen’s technology for making blue-and-white porcelain was not mature.The main raw material of making blue-and-white color cobalt earth ore can be imported from foreign countries, and the technical control of blue-and-white color, often the so-called pigment accumulation of the so-called “fainting” phenomenon.

“Scattering” is regarded as the characteristic of early blue and white flowers, and it is often copied by later craftsmen

However, these difficulties are no longer a problem after the blue-and-white porcelain was favored by the imperial power.

In “Jingdezhen Tao Lu” recorded that two years, Hongwu, the central government in Jingdezhen set up factories, “pottery supply Shangfang”, known as the official kiln, to Zhengde years first known as the Imperial Artifact Factory.Jingdezhen official kiln porcelain manufacturing, mostly by the court sent eunuchs or ministry officials to supervise, strict requirements, “where the burning of supplies and other things, such as vessels, need to determine the sample system.”

At that time, blue-and-white porcelain was specially made for imperial use. People were not allowed to copy it. “Ming Yingzong Record” and “Orthodox Three Years” were ordered to make it out of the list. Jiangxi porcelain kiln factory was forbidden to make official-like blue-and-white porcelain for sale and delivery to the official’s home. The offender was executed and the whole family was away from the garrison.”

Blue-and-white porcelain kilns for the royal service, working hours and costs naturally need not be considered, may be at the expense of manpower and material resources to organize technology.At that time, as long as the firing out of a bit of blue and white porcelain does not meet the requirements, immediately on the ground to break deep burial, strictly prohibit the outflow of folk.It wasn’t until the late 20th century, when archaeological excavations began, that tons of china fragments reappeared.

The site of the formation and accumulation of the Yuyao site in Gujingdezhen

By the time of Zhengde, blue-and-white porcelain makers had finally mastered the high-quality production technology of blue-and-white porcelain, using blue-and-white materials that no longer relied solely on imports.And the appreciation of the arts has been gradually reversed, starting to see blue-and-white porcelain as a fine porcelain.Zhang Yingwen praised Xuande Qinghua Road in his book “Secrets of the Qing Dynasty”: “I will Xuanmiao kiln ware, thin material, hidden orange peel lines, ice-torn eel blood lines, several with officials, you kiln enemies. That is, the dark flowers, saffron, blue flowers, have not, for a generation.”

The demand of imperial court not only promotes the blue-and-white porcelain, but also makes the original blue-and-white porcelain with Islamic aesthetics more halal.

In the six years of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the vessels” not to paint the imperial concubines, saints, palace forbidden stories, the moon, the dragon and phoenix, the lion, the unicorn, the rhinoceros, etc………… the crime of the offender “.Although the order was not strictly enforced, the Ming blue-and-white porcelain did become a rare figure, and the depiction of animals was greatly reduced.For the overseas popularity of blue-and-white porcelain, this trend obviously has a strong boost.

Who did the Ming government make these Islamic-style porcelain for?

Traditional interpretation generally holds that the palace porcelain is limited after all, and the main consumption group of blue-and-white porcelain is overseas Muslims.From Pakistan, Iran, the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt to East Africa, many mosque sites and tombs are buried a large number of blue-and-white porcelain, Mingting to meet the needs of foreign trade, only to make the porcelain so quiet, so that do a big business.

The explanation may seem plausible, but scholars who looked at the blue-and-white porcelain, written in arabic, persian or in mosques, found many features that clashed with it.

Blue-and-white porcelain has copied many Islamic styles in its form and symbols, but it has not abandoned all the traditions of Chinese porcelain.Blue-and-white porcelain, written in Arabic and Persian, is largely a Chinese pen holder, inkstone stand, and pencil case, and is of little use to foreigners.He found one of the most religious blue-and-white porcelain, complete with three sentences from the Koran, but it was an ink-stone screen, something for the Chinese literary house.

Moreover, the details of both Arabic and Persian are not all religious.The capital museum’s two-year blue-and-white pen stand, which means” pen rack “in Persian.

Others write about foreign-language chicken soup, such as” when I suddenly found a fortune, I was wandering in the desert “,” a fool is never satisfied “, and the most common is” the practice of beautiful calligraphy, because it is a key to life.”Some of the sentences are obviously Chinese. There is a blue-and-white porcelain round pot hidden in the Palace Museum in Taipei.The bright blue and white basically avoided the character image, and does not accord with the Islamic belief dragon grain, the phoenix grain.

So does this mean that the Ming emperors were, according to legend, secret Muslims?

The Chinese emperor always had a high degree of enthusiasm for all religions, and he did not reject them, such as Zhu Yuanzhang, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, who made “the most holy hundred-character Zan” and said “Muhammad, the most holy noble man” and had built some mosques.But at the same time, he also called on the Taoist Tianshi Zhang to hold a regular Lent sacrifice, and personally for the “Tao Te Ching” as a note;He also held large-scale legal meetings in nanjing, the pro-civil and martial arts officials worship buddhism, and personally organized the publication of the buddhist great tibetan sutra, that is, the famous” hongwu nanzang. “Every religion can find examples of his proximity to this religion, so we do not know the true faith of zhu yuanzhang.

Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang of the Emperor Ming Taizu of the Ming Dynasty

Of course, it is undeniable that the Ming Dynasty is the most close to Islam in all dynasties except the Yuan Dynasty, especially the early Ming Dynasty emperors had many close ministers for Muslims, influenced by them, emperors in the aesthetic preference for Islamic style is consistent with common sense.

The Ming emperors came from the grass roots and did not have much feeling for the literati tradition.Moreover, the emperor’s true religious fervor, which is probably the most powerful driving force for the development of blue-and-white porcelain, was in the reign of Zhu Houzhao, one of China’s emperors who most loved Islam.

Ming Wuzong has given himself at least two Islamic names, one named “Shaji Aolan”, an Arabic transliteration, meaning “the glory of Allah”;The other was called King Suleiman.

The palace museum has a white glaze, red-colored arabic platter, three lines of persian at the bottom of the disk meaning “emperor of daming is king suleiman imperial system.”

He also contrasted various religions, believing that “the ways of all religions are different, but the teachings of God, deeply rooted in the truth,” and poetry to show his mind: “a religion of metaphysics of the fans, among whom little people know. Buddha is a man is a Buddha, who does not respect God but who?”

Of his many suspected close to Islam, the most unusual is the ban on folk pigs.Although the apparent reason is that he is a pig and his surname is Zhu, but “Wanli wild received” recorded the full text of the decree, he also mentioned that pork eat to “sore disease”, and also opened the ban on killing cattle to eat meat.

So many historians think there are signs that,Mingwuzong most like aIslamic believers,He is versatile, liberating in character and devoted to foreign cultures.As long as there were foreign envoys, whether tartar, returnees, portugal or the city, he wanted to be around, either to learn his language or to learn his skills.He studied many foreign languages and read the classics of Islam.

Portrait of Guming Wu Zong

In the final analysis,Although the sea between china and arabia is vast,Thousands of miles apart,But both sides have been since ancient timesThere’s going to be exchanges, both sidesA long history of friendly relations established the Arab Islamic culture and Confucianismfamily culturethe foundation of communication and integration.This multicultural form interacts with each other,to draw lessons from each otherinterdependence,forThe promotion of human civilization and historical development played an important role.