TIME: BEyOND LATE ANTIQUITy | 25in the 1930s, excavation levels from after c. 200 CE were usually discarded.
But occasional mistakes were made, as for example Kaiser Wilhelm II’s ac-
quisition in 1903 of the whole facade of the supposedly Sasanid or Ghassa-
nid, in any event pre- Islamic, palace of Mushattā near Amman, which once it
arrived in Berlin turned out, frustratingly, to be Umayyad. The Mushattā de-
bate became, in fact, something of a turning point, closely linked to the
founding of the Berlin Islamic Museum.^22 At the same date another related
conundrum occupied the same German Orientalist and art- historical circles,
this time about the Umayyad bath house of Qusayr ʿAmra quite near
Mushattā. Was it fourth- or fifth- century, or Umayyad, or even later?^23
Disputes—and errors—such as these made scholars uncomfortably aware
that the Islamic world was not as irrelevant to late Antiquity as they had
assumed.
The passions Mushattā and Qusayr ʿAmra aroused have to be understood
in the light of a debate which, after simmering for some time, had taken off as
recently as 1900 and 1901, especially in Vienna, and is often said to have in-
augurated late antique studies. The debate was conducted within—indeed,
at the very foundations of—the new discipline of art history, and revolved
round the question of late antique style, touching on psychological issues at
the heart of the period and its definition. Characteristic of this debate are
four books representing a spectrum of positions from extreme Romanocen-
tricity, via inclusive Romanocentricity, to emphasis on creative impulses sent
out by the empire’s eastern provinces, especially in Christian art. While none
of these works dealt with the Islamic world, one of the scholars concerned
had done so earlier in another book, to which I shall turn after examining the
controversies of 1900 to 1901.
The Italian architectural historian Giovanni Rivoira (d. 1919) published
his Le origini dell’architettura lombarda (translated into English, with revi-
sions, as Lombardic architecture: Its origin, development and derivatives) in
1901–7 in the capital of the new Italian state, appropriately enough for this
hymn to the creative genius of ancient Roman architects from the pen of a
whole- hearted patriot. Given the strength of classical education in Europe, a
considerable degree of Romanocentricity was taken for granted at this pe-
riod; but Rivoira’s version was particularly rabid. For him, both East Roman
(“Byzantine”) architecture and Islamic architecture were entirely derivative
from Roman, their creators effeminate and/or depraved. With his Viennese
opponents in mind (see below), Rivoira wrote disparagingly of “these days
when Schools of Art are being discovered all over the East, and theories run
22 V. Enderlein and M. Meinecke, “Graben—Forschen—Präsentieren. Probleme der Darstellung
vergangener Kulturen am Beispiel der Mschatta- Fassade,” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 34 (1992)
137–72.
23 Fowden, Qusayr ʿAmra [1:32] 19–21, 24.