The Prince and the Elder: A Display of Sufism at the British Museum

The British Museum recently hosted an exhibition dedicated to Sufis and the concept of 'Elder' and 'Dervish'; titled 'The Prince and the Elder: Dervishes and Sufism in Iran and India', the exhibition aims to present an image of this concept to the museum's audience through paintings and designs from past centuries, alongside various items belonging to dervishes, from staffs to different garments. The exhibition seeks to explain the relationship between the disciple and the master 'Sheikh' or 'Elder', illustrating how since the twelfth century many Sufis have regarded the best way to know God as through the guidance of someone who has experienced this path. On the other hand, the organizers believe that Sufis have not necessarily renounced the world, and many have been involved with social and political issues; thus, the title of the exhibition, 'The Prince and the Elder', emphasizes the complexity of these relationships. Dr. Ladan Akbarnia and Payvand Firouzeh, the curators of this exhibition, state: 'We not only wanted to introduce Sufism and the image of dervishes but also aimed to emphasize the social aspect of Sufism through the relationship of Sufis with others. One of the most fascinating of these relationships is between the prince and the elder, who is also referred to as a Sheikh, master, or holy man (for example, where the prince meets the elder in a deserted place), allowing us to look at the role of princes who often appeared as patrons.' Dr. Akbarnia, who is writing her doctoral thesis at Cambridge University on Sufi lodges in Iran and India in the fifteenth century, previously organized an exhibition titled 'The Light of Sufis: Islamic Art of Sufism' at the Brooklyn Museum in 2009 and the following year presented the same exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. This time, in collaboration with Payvand Firouzeh, the exhibition 'The Prince and the Elder' has been curated based on the British Museum's collection. The exhibition features various images from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries from Iran and India. These images display dervishes in different situations, including a depiction of a dervish concentrating under a tree from the seventeenth century, or a Sufi sitting on a fish from early seventeenth-century India, or an image of a Sheikh and his disciple in the desert next to a divan created in early seventeenth-century Isfahan. There are also images of Sheikhs based on notes written in Nastaliq script on the back of these works, created according to the Tazkira of the Saints by Attar. Naturally, the title of Sufi and Elder encompasses various dimensions over the centuries, but ultimately we are faced with a small exhibition. The exhibition supervisors state: 'The works in this exhibition are mostly gathered from the permanent collection of Islamic arts at the British Museum, in addition to works from other sections and a few borrowed pieces. The title may seem grand, but that is due to its subject. However, with the small space we had, we could only display more than twenty-five to thirty works; most of them are designs and paintings (and one or two calligraphies) and a few objects used by dervishes placed in the middle of the exhibition. The selected works constituted one-third of the collection available to us, from which we chose pieces that were closer to our theme and of better quality.' All selected works are from Iran and India. The exhibition organizers discuss this selection and the connection between Iran and India and whether they view Sufism in these two countries as identical or not, stating: 'In fact, Sufism has not been uniform even within one country, including Iran itself. We displayed works from the pre-modern era in these regions (mostly from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries). The traditional aesthetics in India at that time were heavily influenced by Iran, due to the connections between Iran and India even before the Mongol invasion. Iranian and Indian artists at that time interacted with each other and traveled to each other's countries. Our aim was also to present examples of the commonalities and differences in the aesthetics of Islamic and non-Islamic Sufi works in these regions. We hope our efforts have borne fruit.'