In contemplation … the cosmos – Divine signs of Divine reason

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IN CONTEMPLATION … THE COSMOS

KUWAIT CITY, Feb 3: Professor Roy Mottahedeh delivered a fascinating lecture on ‘Aja’ib in the book of Qazwini’ at the Yarmouk Cultural Center on Monday evening, as part of the Dar Al Athar Al Islamiyyah’s 21st cultural season.

“Over the last 21 cultural seasons, the DAI has enjoyed bringing a variety of international scholars to share their expertise with the audience here in Kuwait. It is a pleasure to welcome back one of these individuals, Professor Roy Mottahedeh, 21 years after the last time he spoke at the DAI at its newly restored cultural activities after the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait”, stated Bader Al Baijan, President of the Friends of DAI Steering Committee.

Roy Parviz Mottahedeh is the Gurney Professor of History at Harvard University. He has written extensively on the history of the middle east in the 10th and 11th centuries CE. His publications include Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society, The mantle of the Prophet (PBUH), and Lessons in Islamic jurisprudence. He has written numerous articles on the social, intellectual and political history of the Middle East from the 7th century to the present.

One of the best known and most lavishly illustrated books of the pre-modern Arabic tradition is Ajaib al Makhluqat by Qazwini written in the 13th century CE. This encyclopaedia of the world of creation has a special interest in the marvels, the fabulous animals, plants and people, assumed to exist in the world.

Islamic painters from the 13th to the 19th century portrayed these creatures in their work. In his lecture, Mottahedeh discussed how the illustrations in Qazwini’s manuscripts help us understand the way in which painters of the time visualised both familiar and fabulous creatures. Qazwini’s text conveys the way in which a Muslim intellectual mentally organised and also disorganised creation even as the illustrations tell us about the varied imaginative worlds of the artists.

The lecture considered the subject of Qazwini’s Ajaib from the perspective of social and intellectual history and Mottahedeh described it as the most popular survey of the heaven and the earth in the pre-modern Islamic Middle East. It was written by Zakariya Qazwini in or before 12 AD, who was born in Iran but lived much of his life in Iraq. While Qazwini wrote in Arabic, a vast majority of his books were translated in Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and many other languages.

The earliest Arabic copy was lavishly illustrated. As these manuscripts exist in hundreds and possibly thousands in number, Prof. Mottahedeh shared that they provide alook into how artists from the 13th to the 19th century imagined their subjects. “Visualisation is the first step of Qazwini’s project because he believed that if a human not only visualised but also contemplates any object of creation, he or she will see its wonderful nature”, he stated. Qazwini proposed a theology of creation and a demonstration that God has made everything in creation marvellously appropriate.

The 15th century Freer manuscript of Qazwini is typical of the somewhat similar to the square and symmetrical art of Iraq during this period. In his portrayal of the celestial beings, Venus is personified as a fully clothed female lute player that comes as close to a beautiful creature the painter could bring himself to portray. The depiction of Mars from the same manuscript he holds a decapitated head and seems to threaten those under his sway. The figure is appropriately Martian for a planet associated with oppression, subjugation and tyranny.

Two signs of the zodiac from the same manuscript, Sagittarius and Capricorn, are shown as composite creatures. Sagittarius is provided with a long dragon headed tail that grows out of a Celtic looking interlaced thorn. Mottahedeh remarked that it is appropriate that there’d be composite creatures in heaven since Qazwini believed that many such creatures existed on earth. He pointed out that Islamic angelogy is a huge and relatively unexplored subject and informed that we get a idea of people’s representation of them from Qazwini.

In the early 15th century, manuscripts of Qazwini appeared with angels before the throne of God in the form of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle — the same four figures mentioned in the tradition of Ezekiel in the Bible and the same four same symbols customary employed for the four evangelists in Christian art.

The archangel Israfil who will sound the trumpet on the day of judgment is also featured in the manuscript. He inspires souls into body and ultimately will frighten souls out of bodies because the end of his trumpet is as large as the heavens and the earth and its noise will be sharp for all except those who God wants to save.

Mottahedeh then turned to describe creatures of the earth beginning with the depiction of plants. In the early 15th century manuscript of Qazwini in the freer, plants are carefully drawn in the manner of Greek manuscripts. The degree of detail in plant description points to the identification of useful and poisonous was as much reviewed as discovered knowledge and the treatment of plants reminds us that Qazwini was writing a compendium of all things, a virtual encyclopaedia even if he had a special text for the marvellous.

The next illustrations from the same manuscript show animals for which some confusion exists both along the writer and illustrator. A magnificent Spotted stag is drawn for an entry on a wild ox. “Such Confusion typically happens when Qazwini describes animals either he or the illustrator has not seen”, Mottahedeh revealed.

The giraffe was a subject of much speculation in the medieval Middle East. While some did not believe the creature existed others thought it existed but was a hybrid of a hyena, a gazelle and a camel.

A Persian manuscript of Qazwini from 1560 AD shows the depiction of a peacock and falcon, and 17th century Indian copy of Qazwini now held at the Harvard University shows the unicorn. Qazwini mixes the accounts from the ancient sources of the unicorn with accounts about the rhinoceros.

Mottahedeh then moved on to elaborate on four illustrations portraying the Rukh, an animal made fabulous because of its exaggerated design. The first view of the rukh is from a very early manuscript of Qazwini produced around 12 AD. The formal and static rendering of bird typical of this period cast vividly with the atypical mountains upwards despite the byzantinesque of its prose, has an air of desperation. The second view of the rukh from an early Iraqi manuscript depicts the same scene but the bird is the most dramatic figure and the third view comes from a 15th century Iraqi manuscript, where the scene is the same but the drama is lost. The last illustration of the subject comes from a 17th century Indian manuscript where the Rukh is close to some Chinese representations of large birds, the Indian passenger is horizontal and lacks the required anxiety, and the whole scene is placed upside down on the page.

Another animal rendered fabulous by exaggeration is the phoenix. The phoenix l is considered to be the largest bird of the world, according to Qazwini. Before examining the creatures of the sea, he pointed out that there is great ambiguity towards the sea among some writers in the Islamic world middle ages and the Middle East.

The sea in the Bible is by and large threatening; it was the home of the monster Leviathan and its outer reaches a very terrifying place. Yet in the Quran it says that when God created the heavens and the earth, His throne was on the waters. The creature portrayed as the dragons of the sea the tinnin is analogue to leviathan in related traditions of the terrors of the sea in the Bible as well as Babylonian and Mesopotamian literature. The Tinnin’s ferocity is suggested by its red hot colour. In other illustrations of a tinnin, it is more close to Qazwini’s description with a human head, snake like skin and a circle of snakes growing from its neck portraying a deeply sinister creature.

Another common creatures in the book of marvels is the merman. Prof. Mottahedeh described the depiction of a merman from a manuscript in the John Ryland’s library which is very fishlike except for his head. Other illustrations from a 17th century manuscript at Harvard University shows a Merman with human features including extremities that resemble hands and legs. Other manuscripts show a common interest in hybrids with examples of an offspring of an octopus and a rabbit, and an offspring of a Lion and an octopus.

“Some license was allowed for such books about the marvellous where nakedness could be set in places too far to visit but not too far to dream about.” The most remote place is the famous Waqwaq, a set of islands in full reversal of the ordinary, the 1700 islands are ruled by a naked woman, attended by 4,000 naked female servants. In an illustration from the John Rylands library, drawn in 1,619, is seen the queen of Waqwaq and some of her female attendants. The ultimate miracle of this island was the Waqwaq tree for Waqwaq creatures were the products of great trees to which they were suspended by their hair. The Waqwaq tree became a standard for what you would encounter if you travelled to the end of the world and the islands entered the Alexander romances since he was presumed to have reached the end of the world. Moreover, when the new world was discovered, some people felt that it was the rediscovery of Waqwaq.

The last set of illustrations is from a copy translated from Turkish into Persian and contains realistic rendering of natural life and also some wonderful animals in the western hemisphere. The manuscript is a powerful testimony of the hardiness of the genre of Ajaib. He pointed out that much of this literature which is partly imaginative also had links with great international networks of merchants and with court culture and therefore it is no accident that scenes of the marvellous are set in travels or court.

Qazwini in his introduction sees the marvellous as evidence of God’s omnipotence and sees himself as justified in placing marvels with human craftsmanship along with natural wonders because human have the innate capacity to produce wonders. These marvels are clear variations on things known to exist, often taking the form of gigantism, or in the composite creatures they combine the more remarkable features of their sources, or display features drawn from exotic sources like China which had a strong tradition for iconographic art. A different kind of exoticism was allowable in representing human societies, in the farthest ends of the world, where morality was turned upside down. And understood as an invitation for guiltless fantasy.

These books on marvel usually take the whole cosmos as their subject and the presence of a human cataloguer makes the world more whole and readable. He shared that these books — a system of intellectual organisation for all things that existed and offering a system of disorientation when faced with the variety of creation — are unanimous in saying that the marvellous constitutes a set of divine signs behind which there is divine reason.

By Cinatra Fernandes – Arab Times Staff

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