History through the lens of a stone is alluring. It presents us with the possibility of a different slice of history that we usually glimpse only in passing through fragments of material culture but that we rarely stop to focus on as a whole. The history of turquoise is a promising topic that Khazeni does not fully realize.
Khazeni's book is divided into five chapters: “The Colored Earth”; “Turquoise, Trade, and Empire in Early Modern Eurasia”; “Turquoise of Islam”; “Stone from the East”; and lastly, “Other Side of the World.” All seem to be tantalizing in topic until one reads the book and realizes that the first three chapters are repetitions of each other. Only with the last two chapters, in particular, “Other Side of the World,” does the reader start to get new and different information, and even here there are issues of distribution, truncation, and uneven layout of information.
“Colored Earth” tells of the origin of turquoise as a phosphate of copper and aluminum in desert environments. The colors of turquoise can range from green, as in the case of Mexican Aztec stones, to an unstable pale blue if it is mined too early. This chapter also discusses the mines of Nishapur, the Sinai, and Mexico, information that Khazeni repeats throughout the book. Khazeni also provides a listing of Arabic and Persian treatises on precious stones, such as al-Biruni's Jamahir fi Ma꜂rifat al-Jawahir, and provides a list-like set of quotations from these treatises about the color of turquoise.
“Turquoise, Trade, and Empires” discusses the role that the turquoise trade played in the tributary empires of Islamic Eurasia—namely the Timurids, Turkmen dynasties, Safavids, Mughals, and Ottomans. These were land-based empires “of difference (that) were neither commercial nor colonial but rather based on an ongoing negotiation of power and a layered sovereignty . . . that ruled through the collection of tributes and revenues” (5). Leading the pack in an age of “turquoise cities” were the Timurids (1370–1526) who “transformed turquoise into an object of inter-imperial contact and exchange, a measure of power and sovereignty, across Central Asia, South Asia, and the Near East” (29). The Turkmen dynasties strove to create a turquoise city of their own in Tabriz to rival Timurid Herat and Samarqand. The Safavids inherited turquoise mania from the Timurids and put the Nishapur mines under direct imperial control, while the Mughals continued Turkmen turquoise envy by pressing the Safavids into turquoise tribute. The latter is emblematized by the vignette that opens Khazeni's book in which the Mughal emperor Jahangir requests turquoise from the Safavid Shah ʿAbbas who responds with six bags of the lowest quality turquoise, thereby insulting the Mughal emperor (1–2; repeated 52–53). The Mughals responded in kind by creating the famous 1618 painting of Jahangir towering above Shah ʿAbbas, whom he falsely embraces in brotherly love, while suggesting a growing dominion of world control below their feet with the Mughals represented by the lion devouring India and Central Asia and Shah ʿAbbas is shown perched on a tiny lamb of limited territory, all against a turquoise blue background. It is no surprise then that the Mughals and Safavids tussled for two centuries (sixteenth to eighteenth) over control of the oasis town of Qandahar, which was the nexus of the overland trade routes between Iran, India, and Central Asia, while the Ottomans rated turquoise objects high on their lists of acquired booty.
“Turquoise of Islam” focuses on the creation of the turquoise color of firuza, made from mixing copper, lead, and tin, and its use to create the famed turquoise cities of Iran, Central Asia, and India. Khazeni harnesses travel narratives from the period to provide a series of lengthy citations on travelers’ accounts of the “skylines of the cities in blues” (59).
“Stone from the East” discusses turquoise in Europe that “arrived on the heels . . . of the age of exploration and discovery” (71), and as such, never gained the cachet that the stone had in the east. This was partly related to poor quality green turquoise found in the Aztec mines and partly related to the difficulty of acquiring turquoise from the east. The chapter digresses at the outset to tell how important lapis lazuli was for the Italian painters of the Renaissance but does not clearly articulate the connection with the overall narrative of turquoise. As with previous chapters, this one relies heavily on quotes from travel narratives—this time of European origin—and devotes a considerable part of the chapter to a discussion of Camillus Leonardus’ 1502 Speculum Lapidum (The Mirror of Stones), supplemented with extensive quotations detailing the power of the stone to cure melancholy and misfortune.
“The Other Side of the World” chronicles the end of turquoise mania as the nineteenth century gold rush and global quest for precious metals upend the Eurasian turquoise trade. The Qajars strove to reactivate the turquoise mines of Nishapur in order to establish a monopoly, but by this point Mesoamerican turquoise deposits in the deserts of the American Southwest had been rediscovered. American turquoise rivaled the sky-blue color of the Persian stones and eventually won out. Thus turquoise lost its precious standing and was reclassified as a semi-precious stone.
Although a terrific topic, the history of turquoise has yet to be fully told. This book is a chronicle of sources and quotations with oft-repeated blanket statements and few sustained arguments. After a certain point, the repetitions, poor organization, and digressions impede the reader's enjoyment of the subject. Khazeni has pointed the way through his excellent collection of sources. It remains for someone else to pick up the trail and make a truly engaging historical story out of it.
