THE QURAN AND ISLAMIC ART
THE QURAN AND ISLAMIC ART
Among the numerous historians and specialists who have studied Islamic art, quite a few have attempted to sort out and analyze its specific traits in order to explain how, through the centuries when and in the countries where this art has appeared, it has marked with the same novel and original imprint the architecture, decorative forms, and many branches of the craft industry. This originality, however, together with the most conspicuous characteristics of this art, is obviously the result of the intimate relationship established since the advent of Islam between some forms of artistic production and the precepts and practices of the new religion, born from the Quranic revelation and the Prophetic tradition, or Sunnah. Therefore, it is this relationship that we shall try to elucidate here, first by examining what the Quran says about the creative power of human beings, and then by searching in the Noble Book and in the lessons the Prophet drew from it and passed to his community for the fundamental constituents of Islamic aesthetics and the ethical code of Muslim artists.
Armed with these guides, we shall be able to review the main branches of Islamic artistic production and observe how each of them bears the mark of the theological foundations (uṣūl al-dīn), the ethical rules (muʿāmalāt), and some of the great symbols and similes (amthāl) that initiated it and accompanied its development. Homo Faber Addressing the idolaters who were offended at seeing him striking with his right hand the statues of their divinities, Abraham said, Do you worship that which you carve, while God created you and that which you make? (37:95–96). With these words, the Friend of God reminded them of a truth that the Noble Quran unflaggingly calls to human beings’ attention: God alone, the omnipotent Creator and Lord of the universe, controls the destiny of all creatures, and no human being may pretend to take His place in the creative act, since none is like unto Him (112:4). And yet, having decided to create human beings in His image (ʿalā sūratihi), God has invested them with, among other faculties, a creative power that each individual is free to use according to the Eternal Decree. The similarity between the creative act of human beings and that of God is implied in the Quran when God says of Himself, He created man from dried clay, like earthen vessels (55:14).
Proceeding in the same order from the human level to the Divine, the theologian and mystic Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī writes: “Just as the architect first draws (yuṣawwiru) all aspects of a house on a blank piece of paper in order to build it subsequently according to the copy (nuskhah), so too the Creator of the heavens and earth inscribed the Preserved Tablet (allawḥ al-maḥfūẓ; 85:22) with a blueprint of the Word from its beginning to its end before bringing it into existence in accordance with His copy.” 1 Like the Creator, the artist, artisan, or crafts worker (ṣāniʿ)—in the traditional context, all these terms are synonyms—starts with a “blank canvas” that is devoid of any representation, whether it is the architect’s blank page, the carver’s bed of plaster, or other workers’ naturally occurring or prepared surfaces of earth, wood, metal, textiles, or leather, in order to re-create on it an image formed in the imagination. The work, then, is completed in three stages, namely, conception (taqdīr), creation or production (ījād), and shaping (taṣwīr), the last of which gives the object its form.
These stages have their prototypes at the Divine level, since God, according to a series of Names attributed to Him in the Quran, is called the Creator (al-Khāliq), the Maker (al-Bāriʾ), and the Fashioner (al-Muṣawwir; 59:24). The first Attribute implies a sense of predestination, as in the verse, He . . . Who created everything, then measured it out with due measure (25:2); the second suggests the power to originate and bring to life; and the third describes how He bestows on all that He makes the most perfect and beautiful form. The actual process of artistic creation has perhaps nowhere been analyzed and explained with such clarity in Islam as in the Epistles (Rasāʾil) of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ (“Brethren of Purity”), a group of Muslim philosophers who in the fourth/tenth century compiled an extremely detailed encyclopedia of contemporary sciences and their spiritual and metaphysical foundations. Distinguishing between practical arts (al-ṣanāʾiʿ al-ʿamaliyyah) and theoretical arts (al-ṣanāʾiʿ al-ʿilmiyyah), that is, the creation of an object and its preexistent form in the human intellect, the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ showed that the created object (al-maṣnūʿ) is a homogeneous entity composed of substance and form. 2 This is the sacred basis of all art as practiced by artists who seek to conform to God’s Will and create only by the power delegated to them and through an association with Heaven that spans the various degrees of Divine manifestation.
In this respect, Seyyed Hossein Nasr has pointed out that the word ṣanʿah has been used by the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ to designate “art” in the sense of “production,” because it encompasses all human creativity: Now used to mean also “technology,” it refers to the crafts, which are identical with art, or more precisely the plastic arts in the Persian and Islamic contexts. There are no arts “and” crafts; the two are one and the same. To make a beautiful plate or pot is as much art as to paint a miniature. The word ṣanʿah, therefore, confirms once again through the very breadth of its meaning the unity of art and life which has characterized Persian culture, like every other authentic traditional culture, throughout history. 3 However, human participation in the Divine Quality of Muṣawwir carries an intrinsic limit, since human artists are unable to give life to the creatures they reproduce, even if done with a great degree of perfection. Their creativity, then, is tainted by a gross imperfection, the result of a vain attempt to equal the Creator. The “Greatest Master” Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240), in his commentary on the famous ḥadith about the condemnation that awaits the “fashioners of images” (muṣawwirūn), explains: “God has condemned and threatened the shaper (muṣawwir), because he has not completed the form that he has created.” 4 Another interpretation of the same ḥadīth is given by Titus Burckhardt in the prologue to his remarkable book on the art of Islam.
Commenting upon the sacred character of the Kaʿbah and its value as the symbol of pure monotheism, Burckhardt recalls how the Prophet overturned the 360 idols surrounding the monument and ordered the effacement of the realistic paintings executed inside it. He adds: This traditional story demonstrates the meaning and the scale of what is erroneously called “Muslim iconoclasm,” and which we would rather call “aniconism”: if the Kaʿbah is the heart of man, the idols, which inhabited it, represent the passions which invest the heart and impede the remembrance of God. Therefore, the destruction of idols—and, by extension, the putting aside of every image likely to become an idol—is the clearest possible parable for Islam of the “one thing necessary,” which is the purification of the heart for the sake of tawḥīd, the bearing of witness or the awareness that “There is no divinity save God.” 5 The feeling of being no more than an instrument in the hands of an All-Wise and Guiding Will infinitely greater than their own is reflected in the care that artists take to follow as closely as possible the guidelines conveyed by the Quran, commented on by the Hadīth, and translated into rules and practices by the virtuous ancestors, the salaf al-ṣāliḥ. Filled with the certitude that the whole creation is the work of God, Who perfects (atqana) all things (27:88), and having heard that the Prophet Muhammad said, “God loves if one of you makes something that he leads it to perfection (yutqinahu),” 6 Muslim artisans endeavor to adopt itqān, the “search for perfection,” as a permanent ideal and rule of behavior.
The self-discipline followed by artists to attain perfection (or rather to approach it, since any believer knows that complete perfection belongs only to God) is very similar to the effort of the faithful who purify their souls by intensive devotions. Whence the ḥadīth: “God, indeed, loves the believing servant who practices a craft.” 7 Artists who produce well-finished artifacts are also motivated by the feeling of participating at their own humble level in God’s plan of action, a plan that includes the radiation of beauty throughout the created world. To a visitor who was anxious to know whether a person attracted to fine garments and shoes would have access to Paradise, the Prophet answered: “God, truly, is beautiful; He loves beauty!” 8 This saying contains a double invitation: to recognize God as the Source of beauty and to please Him with one’s own production.
No incentive, it seems, may have ever proved more effective than this ḥadīth in stimulating the zeal of the innumerable believers who, through successive generations, have used the formal language of art to celebrate the glory of the All-Powerful Lord. Two Celestial Gifts The very words by which the Quranic revelation began fourteen centuries ago, in AD 610, summoning Muhammad to recite and proclaim the Divine message, not only brought the good news that God still cared for the salvation of human souls, but, as pronounced in Arabic by the Archangel Gabriel, carried a unique resonance and strength: Recite in the Name of thy Lord Who created, created man from a blood clot. Recite! Thy Lord most noble, Who taught by the Pen, taught man that which he knew not (96:1–5). In addition, they contained the seed and heralded the advent of two art forms that are among the most precious aids enabling people to respond to the will of their Creator, Who declared, I did not create jinn and mankind, save to worship Me (51:56), and also, The remembrance of God is surely greater (29:45).
How could human beings effectively conform to their true raison d’être, which is to worship God and remember Him as constantly as possible, unless they received assistance from the Lord Himself? The answer to that question can be found in the history of humanity as revealed in the Holy Book. Created in the most beautiful stature according to 95:4, human beings lost their pristine nature through their own pride and disobedience of the Divine Command; after they had been driven out of Paradise, God forgave their error, and all the generations born from Adam through thousands and thousands of years have received sacred teachings brought to them by successions of envoys, prophets, and holy preachers. The last of these merciful interventions is the Quran, that is, the “reading” or “recitation,” descended from its heavenly Source to be heard, memorized, and incessantly repeated. In its auditory form, it is the source of the first art of Islam, psalmody, which manifests in time the sounds and modulations of the verses of the Noble Book.
And since the revealed words are composed of letters and assembled in a book, they may be seen as the source of the second major art form of Islam, calligraphy, which visually transcribes the Holy Word and gives it a spatial location. This is an art form that humans carry within themselves, in some way, from the very beginning of the revelation, since God taught by the Pen, the calamus or reed, a symbol of the Prime Intellect, which, having been plunged in the ink of Divine Wisdom, traces the sacred signs and grants to human beings access to knowledge. The psalmody of the Quran is the sacred art par excellence. “God has never sent a prophet without giving him a beautiful voice,” 9 declared the Prophet Muhammad, and the history of the Quranic revelation illustrates the pertinence of this remark. Brought to human beings in a clear, Arabic tongue (26:195), the Divine message had to be proclaimed clearly. Recite the Quran in a measured pace was the command given to Muhammad (73:4), and he himself, in a hadith, recommended to the faithful: “Make beautiful your voices [while reciting] the Quran,” 10 meaning that there exists a veritable correspondence between the Divine Word and the human voice. “Recite the Quran following the melodies and intonations of the Arabs,” the Prophet also recommended. 11 That this injunction was generally followed is demonstrated by the undeniable kinship that exists between all the styles of psalmody present in the Muslim world.
It is true that in the course of its expansion in space, the art of psalmody, even though its major structural elements had been fixed at an early date by several recognized schools, 12 absorbed a number of melodic elements present in various local milieus, giving birth to easily recognizable, characteristic styles. All these styles, however, bear the indelible stamp of Islam; they incorporate a unique sonorous sound, the one that has been and still is the vehicle of the Quranic message. Practiced on all occasions, individually or collectively, psalmody is for each believer the means par excellence of remembering God and of meditating on His signs and blessings, following His injunction: Truly in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the variation of the night and the day are signs for the possessors of intellect, who remember God standing, sitting, and lying upon their sides, and reflect upon the creation of the heavens and the earth, “Our Lord, Thou hast not created this in vain. Glory be to Thee! Shield us from the punishment of the Fire” (3:190–91).
Taught to children from the earliest age, it not only impresses upon them the spiritual and moral precepts of Islam, but acts on the very fiber of their artistic sensibility and actions, through the alchemy of the Word, a transmutation that restores to human nature something of its primordial sacredness. Making perceptible the eternal truth and beauty of the Quranic message is also the role of calligraphy. It served to establish, a few years after the death of the Prophet, a complete and definite recension of the Noble Book, and it has never ceased to spread the text in all directions, giving birth to forms and styles of writing the aesthetic qualities of which arouse the admiration even of nonMuslims and non-Arabists. Each script, in playing on the forms, dimensions, and proportions of the letters, brings certain Divine Attributes into greater relief. Thus, the Divine Majesty and Transcendence are evoked by the vertical strokes, especially those of the alif, symbol of the Oneness of the Supreme Principle, Allāh, which stamps its mark on the rhythms of the discourse. Beauty and Immanence are expressed by the horizontal lines, above and below which are written the diacritic and vowel signs, like the notes of a musical score. Mercy and Plenitude are suggested by the rounded forms, which in some styles of calligraphy exhibit generous curves under the horizontal plane. To this type belongs, for example, the letter nūn, which is a symbol of the protection granted to the prophet Jonah (Yūnus or Dhu’l-Nūn), who was swallowed by a whale and miraculously rescued. 13 “Whoever taught me one letter, I have become his slave!” 14 This saying is by ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad and the person to whom is attributed the Kūfic script, which developed in the city of Kufa about AH 30.
This script illustrates the value and importance of the letters as keys for the understanding of hidden mysteries and for obtaining special graces. In fact, a whole discipline, the “science of letters” (ʿilm al-ḥurūf), is based on the individual forms and arithmetic values of the letters (abjad) of the Arabic alphabet. At a popular level it is practiced by a certain class of fuqahāʾ (jurists, Quranic teachers; sing. faqīh) who have also acquired a knowledge of folk medicine and may prepare for their patients amulets (ḥirz, tilismān) bearing magic squares and written formulas drawn from the Quran. Just as the Divine Word chanted from minarets is diffused in all directions, weaving a network of sound around the whole space, so are the written verses present everywhere: on the pages of handwritten and printed maṣāḥif (“copies,” sing. muṣḥaf) of the Quran present in every Muslim home, on the epigraphic friezes of monuments, and on a multitude of ritual objects: candlesticks, lamps, lecterns, votive banners, embroidered cloths hung on walls or covering a catafalque after the example of the black velvet kiswah that is wrapped around the Kaʿbah and renewed annually.
Weapons, jewelry, wooden and metal chests, and domestic utensils like ewers and basins also bear formulas quoted or derived from the Quran, which are believed capable of keeping pernicious influences at bay and attracting Divine Protection to those who bear, use, or merely look at them. The inscriptions most frequently chosen as cues for recollection are the shahādah, especially its first part, lā ilāha illa’Llāh (“No god, but the One God”), and the Supreme Name, Allāh. Both may be seen drawn in “square Kūfic” characters with enameled bricks on the facades of many monuments in Iran and central Asia, traced in large ornamental style, the so-called thuluth, on the majolica coverings of Near and Middle Eastern mosques and palaces, and written in various styles of calligraphy wherever the human eye can perceive them: not only in oratories, but also in merchants’ boutiques, artisans’ workshops, and family sitting rooms. Although psalmody and calligraphy were instruments built directly into the revelation to facilitate the penetration and firm establishment of the Divine message, other forms of art were soon developed, in full accordance with the monotheistic dogma and the legal prescriptions, to respond to the moral, social, and material needs of the newly established community of believers (ummah).
The first of these needs, deeply felt by the Prophet as he was making his way toward Madinah on the hijrah as an emigrant (muhājir) from Makkah, was for a place where he himself would live and where he and his disciples could meet and pray together. The Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah The need for a suitable worship venue was in perfect harmony with the Divine Custom (sunnat Allāh), according to which, during the whole course of history and as an aid to His prophets and messengers, [It is] in houses (buyūt, sing. bayt) that God has permitted to be raised and wherein his Name is remembered (24:36). Just as the vessel constructed by Noah as a blessed refuge from the flood was made before Our Eyes and by Our Revelation (23:27); just as the Kaʿbah (al-bayt), when built by Abraham and Ishmael, was made a place of visitation for mankind, and a sanctuary (2:125); just as Solomon built sanctuaries (maḥārib, sing. miḥrāb) with some jinn who worked before him by the leave of his Lord (34:12); it was also with a special charism that Muhammad was led to the place where he built the mosque that was to be known forever as the ḥaram al-nabawī, the Sanctuary of the Prophet. This is how it happened. When the Prophet, after migrating from Makkah, arrived in Yathrib—the future Madinah—mounted on his she-camel Qaṣwāʾ, he was welcomed with such enthusiasm that he had to refuse some of the offers of hospitality made by a number of disciples.
To those who tried to grasp the camel’s bridle and lead her to their respective dwellings, the Prophet said, “Leave her alone! She is under the Command of God.” In fact, after several hesitations, she definitely stopped and bowed down so that the Prophet could dismount; he knew that the place she had chosen was the right one. The next day, after the price of the land had been paid to the two orphans to whom it belonged, the Prophet traced the floor plan of the mosque and, with his Companions, started digging to lay the foundation. The construction of the mosque took seven months. For its design, planning, and construction, the Prophet must have received the same heavenly assistance that had been given to the saintly builders of the past, especially since no building had ever been erected in the whole of Arabia that could have been used as a model fitting the needs of the new community. The final layout of the mosque was simple and adaptable; it consisted of a vast enclosed courtyard, the ṣaḥn, accessible by three doors. A part of it, along the qiblah wall, covered with a thatched roof supported by palm-tree trunks, served as the regular prayer room. The largest space was left open to the sky, ready at all times to welcome the visitors desirous to meet or just see the Prophet, to attend some religious or social gathering, or to stay in the blessed precinct while occupying themselves with some minor handicraft. On one of the lateral sides of the ṣaḥn were the houses or “apartments” (ḥujurāt) of the Prophet and his wives, a proximity mentioned in the Quran (49:4–5) as having caused some problems for the Prophet, paving the way for the formulation, at a later stage of urban development, of standard rules of correct behavior and good neighborly relations between citizens.
Another aisle sheltered a long bench (ṣuffah) where visitors could rest and where homeless Companions were hosted and could benefit from the Prophet’s proximity. One of them, Abū Hurayrah (d. 61/681), is still venerated for having kept and transmitted, thanks to his prodigious memory, thousands of the Prophet’s aḥādīth. The primary piece of liturgical furniture was the minbar, a wooden pulpit with two steps supporting a platform on which the Prophet could sit or stand when he delivered khuṭbahs (“sermons”) and solemn proclamations. The qiblah, the direction believers face while performing the canonical prayers, was marked in the very early days by the ʿanazah, a lance that the Prophet planted in front of him before leading the prayer, as he used to do during the military expeditions when he prayed in front of his troops. The lance was soon replaced by one or two big stones leaned against the north wall, in the direction of Jerusalem. This was the first miḥrāb, or niche in a mosque wall indicating the qiblah. A few months later, when the revelation changed the qiblah from Jerusalem to Makkah (2:142–44), the stones were transported to the middle of the southern wall, an indication that all believers had henceforth to face, when praying, toward the Masjid al-ḥarām, the Sacred Mosque of Makkah, in the center of which stands the Holy Kaʿbah.
As soon as it was erected, the Prophet’s Mosque gained the unanimous approval of the Prophet and the believers who prayed and meditated in it, asking God for the strength to fight against their outer and inner enemies in ranks, as if they were a solid structure (bunyān marṣūṣ; 61:4). It was also an effective setting for establishing bonds of mutual understanding and affection among the faithful. As the population of Madinah increased, the ṣaḥn became so frequented that seven years after its completion it became necessary to enlarge it. The work was done during the third year preceding the Prophet’s death (11/632). According to his will, he was buried in his wife ʿĀʾishah’s apartment, at a place known as the Rawḍat al-sharīfah, “The Noble Garden,” near the minbar from which he used to address the faithful. In spite of the many reshapings for restoration and enlargement carried out in the course of centuries, the Jāmiʿ Nabawī (Mosque of the Prophet) is still considered the second most sacred—after the Kaʿbah —religious monument of Islam, the one where it is possible to pay a pious visit (ziyārah) to the tomb of the last prophet whom God had chosen, among all people, to receive and proclaim His sublime last message to humanity. The Prophet’s Mosque, classified by orientalists as belonging to a group called “Arab” (because it was built by Arabs with their local methods and materials) or “hypostyle” (because of the rows of columns that divided the space and supported the ceilings), has played an essential role in the development of Islamic architecture.
Its layout has been adopted for the construction of a long series of celebrated monuments, starting with the Mosque of ʿAmr, built in Fusṭāṭ (Cairo) in 22/643 as a replica of the Prophet’s Mosque; however, in the later mosque the palm-tree trunks supporting the roof were replaced by columns and, for the first time, a square minaret (manār), possibly inspired by the steeples of the Christian churches of northern Syria, was annexed to the ṣaḥn. Among the other mosques of the same type erected during the Umayyad caliphate (41–132/660–750), some are well preserved and still in use today. Among them are the Great Mosque of Qayrawān, founded by ʿUqbah ibn Nāfiʿ in 50/670 and finely restructured in 200–249/816–63; Jāmiʿ al-Aqṣā of Jerusalem (83/702); and Jāmiʿ al-Umawī of Damascus (86/705). Mention must also be made, for their historical importance and architectural characteristics, of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, founded in 137/755 and subsequently extended three times, the Great Mosque of Sāmarrāʾ (231–37/846–52), and the mosques of Ibn Ṭūlūn (262/876), al-Azhar (362/973), and al-Ḥākim (381/991) in Cairo. 15 Although quite different structurally from the Holy Kaʿbah, which in the Quran (22:26) is called Bayt Allāh (“the House of God”), the Prophet’s Mosque, which his followers in Madinah called Bayt al-Nabī (“the House of the Prophet”), has been the object of almost the same kind of veneration as the Bayt Allāh. This comes from the fact that both “Houses” share the same characteristic: each is a sacred space, a ḥaram, with special status deriving from the pact sealed between God and one of His faithful servants, in the first case the prophet Abraham and in the second the Prophet Muhammad.
In Madinah, holy protection was bestowed upon the mosque built at the place and with the layout fixed by Providence, so that during the decade between the first year of the hijrah (AD 622) and the departure of the Prophet Muhammad from this world all of the doctrinal and practical content of the Islamic religion could be revealed, commented on, and applied by members of the newly constituted Muslim community; the Mosque of the Prophet served as the primary center for all these aspects of the nascent Muslim society. As expressed by a connoisseur of Islamic civilization: “The Prophet’s house-mosque became the context as well as the core of his communal tradition. In spite of its successive physical transformations well beyond its original simplicity, it acquired an archetypal stature as a mental model of social behavior and architectural imagination.” 16 The ḥaram ideal has been so strong that it has had a major influence on the physical and social development of Islamic cities. Made conscious of their state of estrangement from the Divine Presence by the severe teachings of the Quran, Muslims have realized that the protection offered by the Prophet’s Mosque was largely due to its specific, compact architectural layout inspired by him and that this could be extended to other components of the urban environment. Hence the quasi-systematic preference given to the “internal courtyard” system of construction for the private houses, mosques, and the majority of buildings in general in the classical cities of the Islamic world.
Seen from the air or surrounding hills, the Islamic city is easily recognizable by its appearance as a cellular conglomerate. Each cell comprises a square or rectangular structure surrounding a courtyard onto which open the living quarters of houses, the workshops and storerooms of bazaars and caravanserais, the rooms of religious colleges (madrasahs), or the galleries and prayer halls of mosques. Even though they may be of different sizes according to their functions, these quadrangular cells give the urban canvas a homogeneity akin to that of a biological organism, as it is formed from similar and compatible elements able to multiply and interweave without undue interference as the city develops. In fact, the classical Islamic city is a ḥaram, a sacred place for its occupants, just as every mosque is a ḥaram, and just as every family house, folded in on itself, closed to the exterior and open to the courtyard and the sky, is also a ḥaram, a sanctuary where the father officiates as an imām and the mother as an unchallenged mistress of domestic life. A Gift of Synthesis When Muslim crafts workers who had moved from Arabia and settled in parts of the Near and Middle East were called to participate in the expansion and embellishment of recently conquered cities, they came across and had to assimilate techniques and materials that were previously unknown to them. Their ability to adopt and even perfect building and decorative techniques and forms from other civilizations may be attributed to an intuitive feeling that many of these “novelties” were quite compatible with their own ancestral customs and Islamic cultural heritage.
In other words, they perceived these creations as blessed gifts issuing from the inexhaustible reservoir of traditional Wisdom provided by the Lord, Who provides for whomsoever He will without reckoning (e.g., 2:212). Among the significant elements borrowed from previous cultures, one may note: 1. Architectural components such as the Byzantine dome, a reminder of “the world above us,” and the Sassanid arch, a universal symbol for the intimate relationship between Heaven and earth. 2. Urban planning concepts, such as the arrangement of the Roman castrum with its two perpendicular axes or the composition of the Persian garden. 3. Structural and decorative features and motifs, including the Roman niche, originally made to shelter the statue of a god or hero and converted by Muslims to the miḥrāb, a reminder of the right orientation for prayer; the Persian muqarnas, often described as a stalactite or beehive; and Coptic geometric and linear patterns, which have been cleverly integrated into “arabesques” by generations of artisans. 17 A Perpetual Source of Inspiration This brief look at the history of Islamic art brings us back to the heart of our subject and leads us to consider the specifically Quranic origin of some of the great themes that have continually caught the attention of artisans, who have translated them from the world of ideals into the concrete language of forms. A first example is the Light Verse (āyat al-nūr, 24:35), which celebrates the radiance (tajallī) of God over the whole universe and proposes for meditation the simile of a lamp in a niche, lit by the oil of a blessed tree. This verse has inspired not only the generations of crafts workers who have built and decorated the splendid miḥrābs that can still be admired today from the far west (Cordoba, Fez) to the extreme east (Isfahan, Delhi) of dār al-islām (“the Abode of Islam”), but also the artisans who have wrought various metals to furnish mosques, palaces, and simple houses with fine chandeliers, lamps, and candlesticks and who have applied the highly symbolic image of the miḥrāb—an arcade with a lamp hanging from its apex—to ornate wood and ceramic panels, mural tapestries, and prayer carpets. Another source of inexhaustible creativity has been the verse in which God says of Himself, We made every living thing from water (21:30).
Whereas the primordial water, the materia prima (“first material”) of the creation, which the Bible designates as “the waters that were above the dome” (Genesis 1:7), cannot be represented by any artistic process, the lower waters, which lay under the dome and which the Quran designates by the sole word water, deserve the attention of artists. A gift of God indispensable for the material and spiritual life of every human being, the earthly water is common property, and every ruler or group leader has the obligation to ensure its equitable distribution among all members of the community. This explains the remarkable degree of development achieved in all Muslim countries with hydraulic works found in the countryside and city alike: irrigation canals and pools, waterwheels and aqueducts, and public fountains, not to mention the facilities needed for ritual purification in the form of baths (ḥammāms), latrines, and ablution basins. Water symbolizes beauty, joy, and plenitude, and in patrician and princely gardens it flows and sings continuously. When it is not actually present, because of unfavorable climatic or housing conditions, an effort is made to at least suggest its existence by some evocative means like a cruciform design on the pavement of the inner courtyard recalling the four rivers flowing in Paradise or an orderly arrangement of plant and flower pots simulating the outline of a riyāḍ, the classical closed garden with its partitioned borders and beds of vegetation.
In Arabic, the word jannah, which often appears in the Quran, may be used to designate an earthly or a heavenly garden, and for Muslims, especially in semi-arid countries, any garden, whether modest or richly arranged, allows the imagination a precursory sense of the joys that await the elect in their happy Abode. Processes and devices capable of enhancing this connection have been carefully selected and successfully applied throughout the centuries by the master gardeners of Islam. They include the planting of trees that have great longevity, like yews and cypresses, or bear the fruits of Paradise, like the dates and pomegranates mentioned in Quranic descriptions of the heavenly Garden; the choice of flowers whose fragrance is suggestive of an immaterial beatitude; the use of water mirrors, which produce an inverted image of earthly things and therefore consciousness of their impermanence; and the setting up of pleasant dwellings analogous to those reserved for the companions of Heaven in the form of pergolas, pavilions, and tents woven out of sumptuous brocades. To make sure that hearing, like the other senses, received its full part of joy in this place of delight, landscape architects working in the Shalamar Garden of Lahore (1641) caused water to zigzag upon marble grids and cascade before running into marble basins, so that the murmur of the stream may sweetly accompany the cooing of the doves. We will now look at two testimonies illustrating the very close relationship between Muslim artists’ work and their thoughts and feelings concerning religion.
In fact, this relationship is always harmonious, based on the faith in the one true God, the Merciful and Compassionate, and on a full confidence in His Wisdom. After the exposition of some theoretical and historical foundations of the art of Islam, some reflections based on the experience of artists may offer a welcome confirmation of the high value of Islamic art as an instrument of spiritual elevation. The first testimony is an account that comes from Titus Burckhardt, who relates his visit to an old comb maker in the historic city of Fez, where he watched him detaching the horns from the skulls of oxen, splitting them, opening them out over a flame, and filing each tooth of the comb with the greatest of care. The craftsman said to him: My work may seem crude to you, but it needs a sixth sense which I cannot describe in words. I only realized it myself after many years and, even if I wanted to, I could not teach it directly to my own son if he was not already capable of seeing it for himself. It is a trade which goes back from apprentice to master as far as to our lord Seth, who was the first to teach it to men. What comes from a prophet —for Seth was a prophet—is always remarkably profitable, both outwardly and inwardly. What I gradually came to realize is that nothing is done randomly in this trade. In every movement or gesture of the hand, there is a modicum of wisdom.
Not everybody understands this. But, even so, it is stupid and indefensible to deprive people of the heritage of the prophets by sitting them in front of machines where, day after day, they are required to carry out meaningless tasks. 18 In the second case, a researcher who was conducting a survey among those specializing in decorative arts interviewed a painter who had just decorated two wall panels in a local house. He questioned him about the way in which Muslim artisans in Malaysia are inspired by the local flora, and the painter responded: In the oval at the center of the first panel is the name of the Prophet’s father-in-law and the first Muslim caliph, Abu Bakr. The second oval is blank, because it represents the existence of the one and only God, whose Essence cannot be observed with the human eye. The endless cable pattern of intertwined lines around the ovals expresses the infinite existence of the Omnipotent, who is without beginning or end. All creation emanates from Him, its beginning represented by a bulb or seed and its end by a shoot, a flower, or a bud. The occupant of the house is therefore constantly reminded of the omnipresence of God and of the inevitable destiny of mankind.
(Source: Jean-Louis Michon)
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