Voices of Islam (191 page)

T
HE
A
RT OF
Q
UR
’
AN
I
LLUMINATION

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Martin Lings

The art of Qur’an illumination was bound to develop more slowly than that of calligraphy because it was not directly called for by the text. It was further- more held in check by the fear of allowing anything to intrude upon that text. More positively, we can be certain that it was this same reverential awe,
hayba,
which guaranteed exactly the right channels for the flow of this development toward a result which is, by general agreement, marvellously right. ‘‘Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’’ This saying of Solomon, continually quoted in Islam, is itself a synthesis of wisdom which has its application at all levels. Sacred art is ‘‘wise,’’ and from what has already been said about its anonymity, it follows that the art of Qur’an calligraphy itself, let alone that of illumination, was bound to start on a note of ‘‘reserve,’’ a pious courtesy related to awe and to the artist’s consciousness of the Divine Majesty.

The main features of Qur’an illumination have been outlined more than once;
1
but to understand the significance of these features we have no alternative but to consult what was, beyond any doubt, the source of inspira- tion. Moreover, this source will give us a profound insight into the outlook, we might even say the psychic substance, of the artist himself. It is diffi

for Christians, whose primary access to the Divine Presence is not through words, to imagine how deeply a book can penetrate a soul which deliberately invites such penetration. Many of the calligraphers and not a few of the illuminators would have known the Qur’an by heart from beginning to end. But even when they did not know it all, the passages quoted in this and other chapters would have been so familiar as to be almost an organic part of their nature. ‘‘The verses of the Qur’an are not only utterances which transmit thoughts; they are also, in a sense, beings, powers, talismans. The soul of the Muslim is as it were woven out of sacred formulae; in these he works, in these he rests, in these he lives, in these he dies.’’
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The Qur’an itself may be said to hold out certain opportunities, as it were, in invitation to the illuminator. The most obvious of these are the
Sura
headings, and the divisions between the verses. In addition, indications that

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Voices of Art, Beauty, and Science

fi or ten verses have passed give an opportunity for a regularly repeated ornament in the margin, and the reader will fi it helpful to know at what points in the text he is required to make a prostration, which can also be indicated ornamentally. It is, moreover, in the nature of things that if the opening of a
Sura
admits of illumination, the opening of the first
Sura
and therefore of the whole book should be treated with a particularly striking display of art.

Such arguments as these, however, would hardly have been able to overcome the calligraphers’ scruples except on the understanding that ornamentation could, in fact, be a very positive means of heightening the effects they aimed at producing by the script. We have already seen that these effects are directly related to the nature of the Revelation itself, and it must be remembered in this connection that according to a fundamental point of doctrine, ‘‘the Qur’an is uncreated,’’ which means, however these words be interpreted, that the revealed book constitutes no less than a Divine Presence. How does this affect Qur’an illumination? The answer is bound up with certain aspects of the Islamic perspective.

It has been said that the ancient Greeks were dominated by the idea of per- fection which, with the onset of that decadence from which no civilization can escape, tended more and more to exclude other aspects of transcendence, with the eventual result that it took on the limitations of the untranscendent and finite. Now Islam is also dominated by the idea of perfection. To see this, one has only to stand in the courtyard of one of the great mosques, or in front of a prayer niche or an old city gate, not to mention examples which are closer to our theme. But Islam is also dominated by the idea of Infinitude. Perfection,
kamal,
is here imbued with the idea of Totality. ‘‘He is the First and the Last and the Outward and the Inward’’ (Qur’an 58:3).

One of the last
Sura
s of the Qur’an (Qur’an 112) is a defi of the Divinity, revealed in answer to a question about the nature of God. The two key Names with which it opens,
al-Ahad
and
al-Samad,
could be translated, respectively, ‘‘the Indivisible One-and-Only’’ and ‘‘the Totally Suffi ing unto Himself in His Infi ite Perfection.’’ It is true that the definition implied by these Names is nothing other than sound metaphysics with regard to the Absolute. It is therefore universal and belongs as such to all religions. But what characterises Islam is an unwillingness to leave this highest metaphysical plane except in passing and on condition of reverting, as soon as possible, from the relative to the Absolute. The differences between religions are always on the surface and never at the roots. In other words, one religion is implicit where another is explicit, and inversely, and it is these differences of emphasis which explain the immense variety of sacred art from one orthodoxy to another.

It is well known that Islam is a monotheistic religion. Less well known are some of the corollaries of this, and for understanding Islamic art it is essential not to forget the explicitness of Islam that the Absolute One defies

The Art of Qur’an Illumination
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not only addition and multiplication but also subtraction and division. Art in a sense depends on the Name the Outward (
al-Zahir
), yet since the One is Indivisible, the Outwardness is always one with the Inwardness. In other words, when the Qur’an says: ‘‘Wheresoever ye turn, there is the Face of God’’ (Qur’an 2:115), no commentator can rightly say that this verse con- cerns only the Outward, for it also concerns, inseparably and mysteriously, the Inward and the First and the Last.

It is the function of sacred art, in general, to be a vehicle for the Divine Presence, and it follows from what has been said that the Islamic artist will conceive this function not as a ‘‘capturing’’ of the Presence but rather as a ‘‘liberation’’
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of its mysterious Totality from the deceptive prison of appear- ances. Islam is particularly averse to any idea of circumscribing or localizing the Divine, or limiting it in any way. But totality is wholeness, and wholeness means perfection, and on the visual plane perfection cannot be reconciled with formlessness, which leaves us no alternative but contour and therefore limitation. What then is the answer? How can an art conform to a presence that is explicitly conceived as a union of qualities, when on the plane of forms these qualities are scarcely compatible?

The answer partly lies in the domain of what might be called the first sacred art of all, inasmuch as it was, for man, the first earthly vehicle of the Divine Presence, namely nature itself, and it is, moreover, the Qur’an which draws the artist’s attention to this primordial ‘‘solution.’’ There are few things that evoke more immediately the idea of perfection than a tree which has had time and space to achieve fullness of growth; and in virtue of the outward and upward pointing of its branches, it is not a closed perfection but an open one. The Qur’an uses this very symbol of itself; that is, of the ‘‘good word,’’ being itself the best of good words: ‘‘Hast thou not seen how God coineth a similitude? A good word is as a good tree, its root fi its branches in heaven, giving its fruits at every due season by the leave of its Lord. And God coineth similitudes for men that they may remember’’ (Qur’an 14:24– 25). These last words bring us straight to our theme, for the truth to be remembered here, with the help of the tree as a reminder, is precisely the nonfinite nature of the Qur’an. A Qur’an recitation must not be thought of as limited to this world for it has repercussions up to the Heavens, where its ‘‘fruits’’ await the believer. Otherwise expressed, the Qur’an uses the symbol of the tree so that it may liberate itself from being subject, in the awareness or in the subconsciousness of the believer, to the illusion that it is just one book among other books. It may thus be said to point a way for the illuminator,
4
telling him how to set free from the finite its Infinite Presence. We need not therefore be surprised that one of the most fundamental ornaments of Qur’an illumination should be arboreal, namely the palmette,
shujayra
or ‘‘little tree,’’
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nor need we doubt that it is meant to stand for the good word. The
Sura
heading consists of the title of the
Sura,
the number of its verses, and the word
makkiyya
or
madaniyya
to show whether it was revealed in

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Mecca or Medina. Written in a script deliberately different from that of the Qur’an itself, it is usually set in a wide rectangular panel, often richly framed with gold and other colors, and with an arabesque as background to the letters. This heading is prolonged into the outer margin by means of a palmette which points horizontally toward the paper’s edge and which achieves for the eye the effect of a liberation of incalculable scope.
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The above-quoted verse of the tree is immediately concerned with man’s fi ends, with the celestial ‘‘fruits’’ of the earthly action of reciting the holy book, which is considered here above all as a power of reintegration. This aspect of the
Sura
palmette is often confi med by an upward pointing marginal palmette which corresponds to the marginal ‘‘tree of life’’ in the Qur’an manuscripts of Andalusia and Northwest Africa. But the ascending movements of return cannot be considered independently of the original descent. The Qur’anic text is equally insistent upon both movements. In Arabic the word for revelation,
tanzil,
means literally ‘‘a sending down,’’ and the reader is again and again reminded that what he is reading is no less than a Divine Message sent down directly to the Prophet.

There are three main aspects which the artist has an obligation to convey if his art is to be relevant: the Qur’an as a descending power of revelation; the Qur’an as a mysterious presence of the Infi in the finite; and the Qur’an as an ascending power of reintegration. The tree as we experience it on earth is a symbol of the last two of these aspects, but there is one verse in which the tree may be said to point in the direction of descent: ‘‘If all the trees in the earth were pens, and if the sea eked out by seven seas more were ink, the Words of God could not be written out to the end’’ (Qur’an 31:27). Here the tree plays a negative part, but to be chosen for mention in this context has its positive aspect. The verse tells us, generally speaking, that earthly things are as nothing compared with what they symbolize, but at the same time it implies inescapably that the tree, for the purpose of representing heavenly implements of transcription, is a supreme symbol. One of the chapters of the Qur’an,
Surat al-Qalam
(Qur’an 68), is named after the Celestial Pen, which is also mentioned, in the very first verses revealed to the Prophet (Qur’an 96:1–5), as the instrument through which the Revelation was made.

The Prophet himself said, ‘‘The first thing God created was the pen. He created the tablet and said to the pen, ‘Write !’ And the pen replied, ‘What shall I write?’ He said, ‘Write My knowledge of My creation till the day of resurrection.’ Then the pen traced what had been ordained.’’ There are thus three levels to be considered. The Qur’an as men know it is an adapted form, reduced beyond all measure, of what is written on the Tablet, which itself only refers to creation and not to God’s Self-Knowledge. It is to this highest level, that of the Divine Omniscience, that ‘‘the Words of God’’ refer in the above-quoted Qur’anic verse. It is nonetheless an essential point of doctrine that the Qur’an as revealed to men, not to speak of the Tablet,