Download PDF | Eva Orthmann_ Anna Kollatz - The Ceremonial of Audience_ Transcultural Approaches-V&R unipress (2019).
211 Pages
Series Editors’ Preface
Two socialisation phenomena lie at the heart of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1167 at the University of Bonn, ‘Macht und Herrschaft, Power and Domination. Premodern Configurations in a Transcultural Perspective’. We put power and domination under the microscope and interrogate them with the tools of comparative research. Both have impacted human coexistence at all times and worldwide; as such, they are primary objects of investigation for scholars in the humanities.
Our multi-disciplinary research network aims to bundle the skills of the many participating fields in interdisciplinary cooperation, and to develop a transcultural approach to the understanding of power and domination. Our pool of case studies from a wide variety of regions provides a fresh perspective on both similarities and differences. The essays published in this series reflect both our interdisciplinary approach and our transcultural perspective.
The Research Centre uses four thematic approaches to phenomena of power and domination; they also form the basis of the four individual project areas of CRC 1167: ‘Conflict and Consensus’, ‘Personality and Transpersonality’, ‘Centre and Periphery’ and ‘Criticism and Idealisation’. All four have been at the centre of numerous international conferences and workshops that provide a basis for intellectual exchange with established scholars in Germany and further afield.
It would not have been possible to publish the fruits of these important exchanges within this series without the generous financial support from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and the continuous commitment of the University of Bonn, which provided the necessary research infrastructure.Wewould like to express our sincere thanks to both.
Introduction
On Saturday, the 7th Rabı¯˘ al-awwal 1022 (16. 6. 1611), a dice player made his way from Qazvı¯n via the Hindukush to India. On arriving in Agra, he was led immediately to the Mughal ruler Jahangir, because, as Jahangir’s chronicler explains to us, it was a good custom to introduce every visitor to the ruler once he had entered the residence.1 Regardless of his origin, profession or religion, every visitor should be “delighted by his (Majesty’s) universal goodness and generosity and rewarded according to his abilities, so that he might carry a good name out into the world.” Having received his greetings, Jahangir talks to our trickster about different sitting postures, rather harmless small talk, and soon dismisses him, certainly not without giving him a present.
This story, like many others, may be read as documenting Mughal ‘public relations policies,’ as we learn that such meetings were intended to make the empire appear positive to the outside world. Is this meeting an audience, though? How does it differ from other occasions when a ruler met with other people? Could a similar scene have taken place at another court? The ceremonial, in the sense of generally accepted rules of conduct, possibly also fixed in writing, makes hierarchy experienceable through the performative execution of certain behavioral patterns. Spatial organization of the meeting places, decoration, prescribed clothing and the like, also play a centralrole in the differentiation of meeting formats between rulers and other persons.
Ceremonial prescriptions thus have shaped and still shape the interaction ofrulers and ruled, as well as rulers and those participating in power, in many different cultural and geographic contexts from antiquity to the present. Using ceremonial to translate sometimes very subtle social differences into performatively perceptible actions thus appears to be a transcultural phenomenon. While the actual performance of ceremonial in distant times and places faded astime went by, those performative actions have left their traces in material culture as well as in texts accessible to us today. Royal courts and their rituals have been the issue of extensive studies in European medieval and early modern to modern history. Courts, ceremonial and castles have been studied extensively, and theories on court communication, performance and spatiality have been developed.
The German “Residenzen-Kommission,” a long-run project hosted by the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen,2 has provided abundant material including case studies on small and medium-size courts in Germany, and theoretical and methodological discussions. Similarly, we find research groups and societies specialized in royal courts in France3 and Great Britain.4 Cultural studies have contributed to the topic, especially by feeding in theory. Stollberg-Rilinger’s approach on symbolic communication in pre-modern times has widely shaped the discussion,5 as did Gerd Althoff with his theory of rituelle Kommunikation. Regarding transcultural and especially transdisciplinary approaches to the court, the field looks less explored.6 We have still not passed the first steps in building a field of transcultural court studies. The few volumes published so far can be divided into two streams.
The first attempts to examine non-European courts based on theories developed from the European example. Norbert Elias’ Court Society7 is the central, albeit controversially discussed point of reference.8 However, the main problem also keeping us from declaring Norbert Elias the basis for our transcultural analysis is the fact that his theory has been elaborated by an example from European history. It cannot be regarded as an ideal type in Weberian terms, but must rather, like other theoretical or definitional approaches (e. g. Paravicini), be regarded as an abstract representation of an example – albeit one that shaped European court cultures to a large extent. Therefore, in this volume we do not assume anapriori fixed concept from which we work on the examples presented here. Rather, the aim is to look at the particularities of the various situations in which actors meet a ruler in different contexts, at different times and in different settings, with as unobstructed a view as possible. Our volume joins the second trend of audience research that takes a microhistorical approach based on case studies and comparison. This approach seems far more practicable, considering the still very limited state of research on Islamic courts, for example. Even though research on this topic has steadily increased since the publication by Fuess and Hartung in 2011,9 which worked as a kick-off for an increased interest in Islamic courts, research on this topic still remains at the state of case studies and material collection due to the sheer amount of material.
The second stream of transcultural comparative court studies therefore often starts from questions or subject areas exploring, for example, ceremonies that regulate the contact with the other. Most publications limit their subject matter either by a time frame, or by reference to a specific region. There is only a handful of recent publications, all in the form of collaborative volumes, that aim at transcultural comparison of court culture, ceremonial, representation and similar topics related to court life. Very ambitious and wide in range, Jeroen Duindam and his colleagues issued a multi-thematic transcultural compendium in 2011.10
Other publications focus on a special aspect, for example the reception of foreign emissaries,11 or, as recently Pomerantz and Vitz, on performance culture in the pre-modern Middle East.12 Of course, this approach is also risky, as many anthologies rest on an ambiguous conceptual basis that makes it difficult to compare the results of the individual studies. The question then arises, for example, whether terms such as ‘court’ or ‘ruler’ are associated with the same concepts in all contributions. In many cases, European concepts are used without a critical discussion, which makes it particularly difficult to identify non-European peculiarities. Finally, transdisciplinary comparison remains a field without proven methods. Therefore, in some places, previous research has remained confined to the collection of results from case studies, without being able to complete the step towards transcultural comparison. The workshop “The Ceremonial of Audience” (June 2017) was organized to discuss questions of court culture and ceremonial in an interdisciplinary approach among experts on medieval history, Eastern Europe, China, India, Islamic Studies, Ottoman Studies, the Ancient Near East etc. Our attempt has not discovered a panacea for the above-mentioned problems either. Following the second approach described, we concentrate in this volume on audiences as the interface between the court and the world outside.
To achieve a broad basis of case studies providing material unrestricted by certain predirections, we too assume an openly formulated concept of our topic. As a common basis for the case studies brought together in this volume, we defined audience as a comprehensive term for a number of different formats in which a ruler meets other people. Interaction during these occasions is regulated by certain rules of behavior (ceremonial), spatial organization of the interaction space, and possible access restrictions. A promising approach is to examine how the purpose of each meeting (representation, advice, political decision, diplomatic affairs) and the composition of those present (close advisers and officials of the court, envoys, family members of the ruler) affect the format. Within this very openly formulated concept, some common features of audiences became yet apparent. One central element is hierarchy. Audiences are always encounters between a ruler and other persons of inferior status. Coming to the audience is therefore meaningful and communicates the acceptance of the ruler’s superiority. By contrast, meetings between different rulers of equal status are not considered to be audiences.
This hierarchical element is very obvious in all contributions to this volume. It is however most clearly demonstrated in Beihammer’s article on the interaction between the Byzantine emperor and the crusaders. In this article, the need to adapt traditional diplomatic etiquette and ceremonial patterns is explained by notions of hierarchy and submission associated with court ritual and displayed in the frame of audiences. This specific challenge emerged because of the crusader chiefs’ high status, which created an abnormal situation; usually, different rulers did not meet in person, but via envoys. However, even the reception of an envoy could pose a challenge to the hierarchical order, as described in Orthmann’s contribution: when the caliphal envoy with the letter of appointment for the Ghaznavid ruler arrived, the usual hierarchy was turned upside down, since the ruler had to publicly demonstrate his subservience to the absent caliph. In this case, the hierarchy was still there, but the person of highest authority was only represented by his paraphernalia. We would argue that typically there is not only a hierarchical difference between the host of the audience and the attendees, but also between the attendees themselves. The public display of status and rank is a common feature of the different meeting formats described in this volume.
It is expressed in the spatial arrangement of the meeting, the closeness or distance to the ruler, the dress code, the waiting time before admittance to the audience, the gifts, the food served etc. Reindl-Kiel describes these hierarchical discriminations very vividly in her analyses of Ottoman documents referring to diplomatic banquets and robes of honor. The number of dishes, the quality of the food and the material of the robe of honor clearly indicated status and hierarchy. As Kollatz argues in her article, in all meeting formats between the Mughal emperor and different groups of attendees, even in his encounter with female relatives, hierarchical differentiations played their part, usually again expressed in the spatial arrangement of the meeting. There is however one exception to this general display of hierarchy : the private audiences described by Pruß in his article on the Ancient Near East are clearly of another type, because the attendee came alone. Since this meeting format is quite exceptional in other regards, too, we should perhaps not include it in the general definition of audiences, but consider private audiences as a case apart.
The second common element of audiences is their performative character. Audiences are formalized encounters between rulers and attendees and have a representative function. This function implies that audiences need a certain number of participants or spectators. The number can be high, as is the case in general audiences, or much smaller. Access to the audience is usually regulated and in many cases restricted to male attendees. The performative and public character of audiences implies that coming to the audience is not only a privilege, but also a duty. With again the exception of the private audience, all articles in this volume describe meetings with specific groups of persons who are expected and allowed to take part. The most detailed analysis of different meeting formats and changing admission patterns is given by Kollatz, who attaches specific importance to understanding the Mughal ruler’s daily routine of encounters with varying groups of attendees, ranging from very public encounters to meetings of a much more private character. Due to their performative character, audiences generally display wealth, pomp and power and thereby make the ruler’s authority a sensuous experience for the attendees.
The extent of pomp is not the same in every audience and varies with the format of the audience and its occasion. They may be awe-inspiring or even intimidating. Pomp and power are usually underlined by the use of specific objects. Many of these objects are meant to demonstrate the ruler’s elevated rank and legitimacy. He is sitting on a throne, wearing a crown or specific headdress and might display further paraphernalia related to his sovereignty. Specific attributes of the attendees, like an eye cover required from people coming to the Neo-Assyrian court, furthermore emphasize the king’s status. His clothing also transmits specific messages, as does the clothing of the attendees. Clothing marks hierarchy and may also indicate specific functions at court or in administration and government. By following the same ceremonial, or by using specific elements of representation, a ruler can furthermore create a link to his predecessor or an earlier dynasty. He can also integrate elements of ideology, emphasize having been chosen by God or demonstrate outstanding piety. While different elements of representation are described in all articles, the royal insignia and the symbolic value of the king’s throne and carpet are paid specific attention in Orthmann’s article on the Ghaznavid court.
Directly related to representation and pomp is the architectural framing of audiences. Most articles point to particular spaces for formal meetings, some of them indoor and others in gardens and open spaces, allowing e. g. the lining-up of courtiers and a hierarchical arrangement of the attendees. Meetings did not necessarily always take place in the same spatial setting, but could vary depending on the season, the occasion and the meeting format. The architectural frame provided however not only a suitable space for the meetings, but was sometimes imbued with ideological connotations.AsKoch shows for the Mughal context, the audience hall or Chihil Sutu¯n, which was developed during the time of Sha¯h Jaha¯n, took the ancient palace of Persepolis as its model and was furthermore related to notions of Salomonic rule, thus linking it deeply to Mughal ideology. Audiences fulfill a multitude of functions.To a large extent, these functions are the same in all cases described in the volume. There is, first, the above-mentioned representative function. Audiences also have a communicative function. They serve as a space of interaction and negotiation between ruler and attendees. Interaction and communication take place in verbal and non-verbal form. The mere admission to the audience as well as the mere presence there are meaningful and communicate social standing and the acceptance of the ruler’s superiority.
The symbolic language may be enhanced by the use of specific greeting formula or gestures. The spatial organization of the audience, especially the placement of every single person is another form of non-verbal communication. Verbal communication with the ruler is generally highly formalized; it often does not take place directly, but via servants or chamberlains. Audiences serve different political functions. During the audience, state affairs are conducted or at least made public. Governors and military leaders regularly have to come to the audience when they return from their provinces or from an expedition and are officially received there. Appointments to new posts may also be announced in the audience, and justice was in some cases also administered in the frame of public meeting formats. Almost everywhere, the reception of ambassadors takes place during an audience as well, which thereby fulfills a diplomatic function. In the volume at hand, this aspect of audiences has especially been dealt with in the articles on the Ottoman Empire, the tsar’s court and on the Ancient Near East, where for a long time it was even the only function of an audience attested in the sources.
Dahlmann’s article on the tsar’s court is mainly based on the account of Sigismund von Herberstein, an imperial ambassador to Muscovy, and reminds us that such ambassadorial visits not only had a diplomatic function, but in some cases also stimulated the production of travel reports which spread the knowledge of foreign countries and provide us today with valuable information on the respective courts. Reindl-Kiel’s descriptions are drawn from Ottoman documents and sources, and give us inter alia insight into specific ways of hidden insults practiced in the encounter with non-Muslim envoys. Last but not least, audiences also have an economic function. This economic function is often related to the exchange of gifts. Both the ruler and the attendees received and offered gifts at specific occasions. As Beihammer shows, the Frankish lords received gifts in money, robes, precious items, and military equipment as a reward for their coming into the emperor’s presence and forging personal bonds of allegiance with him. In the Middle East, the most characteristic gift from the ruler was a robe of honor, which is already attested for the Ancient Near East.
The article on the Ottoman Empire discusses in detail the hierarchy of robes of honor and their material value, and points to the fact that robes of honor were always given in a downward movement. The gift of a robe of honor to a nominally equal ruler was therefore humiliating. Gifts from the attendees were not necessarily voluntary and might have formed a part of their dues. Banquets constitute a specific form of economic exchange or gifts. Both foreign envoys and attendees from the realm were on occasion invited to royal banquets. Asshown by Pruß, in the Ancient Near East the meal in the presence of the king constituted an important element of the reception of foreign delegations and could include large numbers of participants of different rank.
Pruß points to the rivalry and hierarchic stratification between different invitees who jealously noticed the amount and quality of food served to others. Quite similar attitudes prevailed at the Ottoman court. While all the above-mentioned functions can be observed in our case studies, they were not considered a part of the same event in all realms. Just by looking at the terminology, we easily realize that banquets were not necessarily regarded as part of the same official meeting at which the ruler sat on his throne and distributed gifts.
The same istrue for other elements ofrepresentation.We therefore best speak of a specific set of tasks usually fulfilled by a ruler in the frame of formal meetings, and subsume all these meetings under the umbrella term ‘audience,’ bearing in mind that the specific set of meeting formats and the association of specific tasks with specific meeting formats varies from realm to realm and is also open to change in the course of time. One has additionally to be aware of the fact that the narrative material on which we mostly rely follows certain literary conventions and stereotypes, making it important to understand the narrative strategies used in the description of audiences. Textual and pictorial narratives on meeting formats actually form a second ‘layer’ of representation, which also served functions of legitimation in many of the areas concerned in this volume.
These narrative strategies thus form a research topic in their own right, and have to be observed closely when it comes to the reconstruction of ‘real’ ceremonials of audience. It must be clear that, for the sake of positive representation, sources like court historiographies, but also pictorial representations and even archive materials may use narrative strategies to guide the reader’s understanding of the actual audience, but also the ruler, inacertain direction. The present volume does not consider those narrative strategies as its main topic, but rather as a subsidiary in certain case studies. Nevertheless, it would be worth considering the narrative representation of audiences in a follow-up project.
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