Newsletter No. 1403
News-Analysis
July 5, 2009

 

EARLY ISLAMIC VASE DISCOVERED IN NARA

We have occasionally mentioned the fact that Japanese ties with the Islamic world date back to the 8th century. Specifically, this has been addressed in Shingetsu Newsletter Nos. 101, 921, and 1197. However, this week there has been a new discovery announced in Nara. We forward here the relevant report from PanOrient News, our partner organization.

New Discovery Highlights Early Ties between Japanese and Islamic Civilization

PanOrient News -- Kitakyushu, Sunday, 5 July 2009

A new discovery in Nara yields fresh information about the ancient ties between Japan and the Islamic world.

Few people realize that Japan was in intermittent contact with the Islamic world perhaps within a century of the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD. The companions of the Prophet and, later, the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates were stunningly successful in quickly creating, by the 8th century, a major empire stretching from the Iberian Peninsula in the west to contemporary Afghanistan in the east.

At the same time, Tang China was at the height of its own glory. Indeed, in the year 751 the armies of China clashed with those of the newborn Abbasid Caliphate at the River Talas in Central Asia. In that battle, about 200,000 Muslim troops met a combined army of 30,000 Tang Chinese and mercenaries. The Muslim forces prevailed in the encounter, but both armies soon became preoccupied with matters closer to their respective homelands, and most contacts between the two empires involved peaceful trade.

As for Japan, in the 8th century it was standing at the dawn of its civilized history. Although the surrounding seas allowed it to maintain its political independence, the Japanese court at Nara (710-784) drank deeply from the superior material civilization of China. Indeed, the capital city of Nara itself, with a population thought to have reached 200,000, was built in imitation of the Tang Chinese capital of Changan (Xian).

The simultaneity of these political developments in the 8th century meant that, for the first time, it was possible to travel overland from Nara to Cordova, and to establish what would come to be known as the Silk Road. Moreover, there was also a sea route, and Tang Chinese ships sailed as far as the Persian Gulf and the eastern coast of Africa. Arabs and Persians, in turn, began arriving in the cities of coastal China as traders and, sometimes, as pirates.

All of this forms the background to a groundbreaking discovery announced this week in Nara. According to Kyodo News, pieces of an Islamic ceramic vase dating back to the late 8th century have been discovered at Saidaiji Temple in Nara. This is thought to be the oldest Islamic porcelain found in Japan. Previous finds in Fukuoka Prefecture are thought to date to the late 9th century.

Keisuke Morishita, the head of Nara's research center for buried cultural property, told Kyodo News that this was "first-class historical data that indicates there was a Silk Road of the Sea linking eastern and western Asia."

Nineteen pieces of porcelain with a blue-green exterior and dark green interior surface were unearthed, and the Nara researchers believe the vase was more than fifty centimeters high and had a diameter of about twelve centimeters at its base. The researchers think it likely that the vase was used to carry spices or dates.

Together with the treasures previously collected by the Shosoin in Nara and by other researchers in Fukuoka Prefecture, there is now little doubt that the material civilization of the early Islamic world was readily available to Japanese artists and craftsmen as they built their own new civilization in East Asia.