The tendency to simplify artistic traditions outside of Europe is ubiquitous with the study of European art history itself. One such culture that has been subject to generalisations and oversimplifications is that of the Islamic empire. This culture, built over centuries, is reduced to a pastiche of itself, one with a lack of individuality, of naturalism and of figural representation. It’s this latter stereotype that we will talk about today.
How did we get here?
European understandings of the Islamic world have evolved out of the Orientalist movement where, what at first appears to be mere romantisation, is actually evidence of the violence of colonisation.
Europe’s colonial presence in the Islamic empire was extensive, spanning from Egypt to India, taking over the land of the once powerful Caliphs. Art was used as a way to share what they saw back home, but it was ultimately unreliable in portraying an accurate picture of what life was like in the Islamic empire- in other words, it was exoticised, sensationalised and overly stereotypical. They were able to prove the necessity of colonial rule, by portraying it as a place of sin and mystery, at once both alluring and dangerous, a deliberate comparison to the image of European restraint.
This comparison extended into the study of Islamic culture, notably seen in the long-held belief that Islamic art contained no depictions of people. This was, however, untrue.
Continued support for this one-dimensional view of Islamic art history is perpetuating the idea that Islam has no art history.
The reality of it
Typical narratives of figuration in Islamic art ignore the variety of opinion. For example, they tend to either state that it either never existed or that it eventually fell out of favour, but both are wrong and both ignore that this was a debate, with opinions differing person to person, period to period, place to place. While isolated periods of iconoclasm did exist, they do not make up the entirety of Islamic art history, just as the periods of iconoclasm in Christian art history do not mean it was an aniconic tradition.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F85b29eaf-b9df-44bd-a2d9-df6996dfa684_497x534.png)
Yazid II’s edict of 723 is a good case study of this.
The edict declared that all figural representation must be destroyed. Or, at least, that’s what the sources say. It’s actual content remains unknown, with all we know being taught through mostly Christian sources. Considering the animosity between these two religions at the time, they aren’t reliable and perhaps made up so as to paint Islam as being an overly strict, fanatical religion. Even if we assume that the edict is real, however, the mere fact of these Christian sources focusing on this edict so much suggest that it was unusual for such a drastic action against figurative art to be made.
Continuing to assume that the edict was real, it did not impact much: figural art was still made, murals were painted and manuscripts were illuminated. Whilst there were some examples of iconoclasm at the time, these were in churches far from the reach of the edict. Also the short length of Yazid’s reign, marred by his early death, and his successor withdrawing the edict, stopped the edict from impacting much.
My impression of aniconism is that it was highly debated throughout Islamic history, but this debate mostly remained theoretical, leading to no substantial or widespread action. These mixed opinions can be seen in a diarist’s account of an auction, where someone destroyed the figures in a manuscript that was being sold, resulting in an angry auctioneer as well as the punishment of the iconoclast. This suggests that not only was public opinion against iconoclasm, but also the authorities were as well, to the extent that the destruction of images resulted in public flogging.
And yet these disparate examples of iconoclasm have been taken as evidence for this being a purely aniconic art history, despite the visual evidence suggesting otherwise. This narrative, now common in European views on Islamic art, appears to stem from the need to present Islam as ‘the other,’ the opposite to Christian-Europe in every way. One way of doing so is with presenting Islamic art as limiting creativity and individuality.
Creativity and individuality
The supposed lack of figuration in art was seen as equivalent to a lack of . Thus, this was used as an argument, however implicit, of Islamic art’s inferiority. A rich visual tradition demeaned and reduced to a stereotype.
Stemming from the Italian Renaissance, European art has valued figural representation as evidence of individuality in art, so the typical narrative of Islamic art as being devoid of portraiture is thus equated with a lack of creativity and individuality. A preference for pattern was seen as being the result of copying rather than being anything to do with creativity.
Even if Islamic art did move towards having this preference for pattern over time, this was still the result of creative experimentation and individual thought. Specific art forms did exemplify this trend, such as lustreware tiles, but as a result of developments in the making technology, rather than of theological debate about the figurative subject matter.
The artistic periods that define our view of art, from realism to modernism, present this slow move to abstraction over figurative representation, suggesting that it was a world wide movement, inevitable even. I don’t agree with these periods that define our understanding, but that’s a topic for another day.
There is also the question of how artists worked in periods and places where aniconic ideas were widespread. Contrary to beliefs that this put limits on their creativity, examples actually present beautiful works which present individuality of both subject and artist.
A personal favourite is that of a 1747 copy of ‘A Key to the Comprehensive Jafr.’
The book itself contains no depictions of people, only clothes and objects which suggest a figure is there, resulting in landscapes filled with riderless horses and rose-headed rulers, as seen in the image above. It can be easy to assume that the individuality of the rulers is ignored through the replacement of their faces with inanimate objects, but the artist is able to skillfully hint at it. Whilst the poses are repeated, the outfits that create them are unique, and, just like every flower is unique, each of these rose is as well. The petals and the pattern they create are unique in each of these depictions. The result, though eerie, is beautiful.
Therefore, Islamic art’s creativity, even within the supposed limitations of aniconic debate, cannot be underestimated in terms of its capacity for creativity.
Conclusion
As we have seen, Islamic art’s relationship with figuration is more complicated than prior art historians would have us think. Just like every other culture, Islam has variety of opinions on the subject, a reflection of how it too is diverse and expanisve in its art histories.
I always enjoy writing these sorts of posts as they show that, in art history, the debate is always wider than you assume and no artist, period, tradition or place is ever as simple as we think. On that note, I leave you, hoping you have learnt about how assumptions limit our view of the world its expanse of cultures.
Questions to consider
How does this view that Islamic art lacks figuration contribute to the idea of them as the ‘other’?
What ways are these views ongoing?
How has this impacted your view of your own cultures and others in general?
Further reading
Currently reading: The Accidental by Ali Smith
Random recommendation: anything by Tomoko Kawase or any of her alter egos