Voices of Islam (187 page)

Arabic was able to retain a morphology attested to as early as the Code of Hammurabi,
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from the nineteenth to the eighteenth century before the Christian era, and to retain a phonetic system which preserves, with the excep- tion of a single sound, the extremely rich sound range disclosed by the most ancient Semitic alphabets discovered,
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although there was no ‘‘literary tradi- tion’’ to bridge the gap between the far-off age of the Patriarchs and the time when the Qur’anic revelation would establish the language for all time.

The explanation of this perennial quality of Arabic is to be found simply in the conserving role of nomadism. It is in towns that languages decay, by becoming worn out, like the things and institutions they designate. Nomads, who live to some extent outside time, conserve their language better; it is,

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moreover, the only treasure they can carry around with them in their pastoral existence; the nomad is a jealous guardian of his linguistic heritage, his poetry, and his rhetorical art. On the other hand, his inheritance in the way of visual art cannot be rich; architecture presupposes stability, and the same is broadly true of sculpture and painting. Nomadic art, in general, is limited to simple, yet striking, graphic formulas, ornamental motifs, heraldic emblems, and symbols. In the situation we are studying, the existence of these formulas is by no means a negligible factor, for they carry creative potentialities that will blossom forth when they meet the artistic techniques belonging to the sedentary civilizations. It is true that the presence of these model formulas among the pre-Islamic Arabs is not generally apparent except retrospectively, by analogy with what we find with other nomads and in consideration of the sudden flowering in the Muslim art of the first centuries of ornamental motifs which are vastly different in their modes from anything coming from the sedentary civilizations and which are, in some way, parallel to the figurative ‘‘devices’’ of the Arab language.

In order to explain in a few words, and without recourse to specialized linguistic knowledge, the specifi nature of the Arabic language, let us fi

of all recall that every language has at its beginnings two poles, as it were, one of which comes to predominate without excluding the other. These two poles can be described by the terms ‘‘auditive intuition’’ and ‘‘imaginative intuition.’’ Auditive intuition essentially identifies the meaning of a word with its quality as sound; this presents itself as the development of a simple phonetic formula which expresses a fundamental action such as ‘‘to unite,’’ ‘‘to sepa- rate,’’ ‘‘to penetrate,’’ ‘‘to emerge,’’ and so on, with all the physical, psycho- logical, and intellectual polyvalence of which a type-action of this kind is capable. This has, moreover, nothing to do with semantic convention or ono- matopoeia; the identification of sound and act is immediate and spontaneous, and in this regard, speech conceives everything it names as being basically an act or as the object of an act. Imaginative intuition, on the contrary, manifests itself in speech by the semantic associations of analogous images; every word pronounced evokes inwardly a corresponding image, which calls up other images, with the type-images dominating the more particular ones, according to a hierarchy that stamps itself, in its turn, on the structure of speech. The Latin languages are examples of this latter type, whereas Arabic discloses an almost untrammelled auditive intuition or phonetic logic, in which the identity of sound and act, as well as the primacy of action, is affirmed across the entire rich tissue of this language. In principle, every Arabic word is derived from a verb consisting of three invariable consonants, something like an aural ideogram, from which are derived as many as 12 different verbal modes—simple, causative, intensive, reciprocal, and so on—and each of these modes produces in its turn a plethora of nouns and adjectives whose first meaning is always linked, in a more or less direct way, to that of the fundamen- tal action depicted by the trilateral root
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of the entire verbal ‘‘tree.’’

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Voices of Art, Beauty, and Science

This semantic transparency of the language, the fact that in its symbolism it fl wholly from the phonetic character of the verb, is a clear proof of its relative primordiality. In the beginning, and in the very seat of our consciousness, things are spontaneously conceived as determinations of the primordial sound which resounds in the heart, this sound being none other than the first, non-individualized, act of consciousness; at this level, or in this state, to ‘‘name’’ a thing is to identify oneself with the action or the sound which bring it forth.
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The symbolism inherent in speech—and obscured or deformed to a greater or lesser extent by acquired habits—seizes on the nature of things not in a static fashion, as an image is seized, but, as it were,
in statu nasciendi,
in the act of becoming. This aspect of language in general, and of the Arabic language in particular, is moreover, in the

Muslim world, the object of a whole gamut of sciences, some philosophical and others esoteric. Muslim scholars can be said not only to have con- served this structure of Arabic but also to have contributed to its precise definition.

In Arabic, the ‘‘tree’’ of verbal forms, of derivations from certain ‘‘roots’’ is quite inexhaustible; it can always bring forth new leaves, new expressions to represent hitherto dormant variations of the basic idea—or action. This explains why this Bedouin tongue was able to become the linguistic vehicle of an entire civilization intellectually very rich and differentiated.

Let us point out, nevertheless, that the logical link between a form of expression and its verbal root is not always easy to grasp, because of the occasionally conventionalized meaning given to that particular form and the extremely complex significance of the root idea. One orientalist has gone so far as to say that ‘‘the structure of the Arabic language would be of incompa- rable transparency were the meanings of the verbal roots not arbitrary’’; but it is actually hardly possible for the basis of a language to be arbitrary. The truth is that the verbal roots constitute a threshold between discursive thought and a kind of synthetic perception.
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The Arabic language is, as it

were, dependent upon auditive intuition and we shall see, in what follows, what this signifies for art.

It would be tempting to say that the Arab does not so much see things as hear them, but that would be a false generalization. It is true, nevertheless, that the need for artistic exteriorization is, in the Arab, largely absorbed by the cultivation of his language with its fascinating phonetic range and almost unlimited possibilities of expression. If the term contemplative be taken to describe the type of man who contemplates rather than acts and whose mind loves to repose in the being of things, then the Arab, who possesses a dynamic mentality and an analytical intelligence, is no contemplative. But that he is nevertheless contemplative is proved by Islam and confi by Arab art. Contemplation is not, in any case, limited to simply static modes; it can pursue unity through rhythm, which is like a reflection of the eternal present in the flow of time.

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Plastic examples illustrating these tendencies leap to the eye. The arabesque in particular, with its both regular and indefinite unfolding, is the most direct expression of rhythm in the visual order. It is true that its most perfect forms are inconceivable without the artistic contribution of the nomads of Central Asia; it was, however, in an Arab
milieu
that it flowered most resplendently. Another element which is typical of Muslim art, and whose development goes side by side with Arab domination, is interlace- ment. It first appears in all its perfection in the form of sculptured trellis- work on the windows of mosques and palaces.
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In order to appreciate the geometrical play of interlacement, it is not enough simply to look at it head on; it must be ‘‘read,’’ by letting the eye follow the flow of intertwining and compensating forces. Interlacement exists already in the pavement mosaics of late antiquity, but it is rudimentary and naturalistic in conception, without any of the complexity and rhythmic precision of Arab-Muslim interlacing work. These examples belong to abstract art, which is itself a

characteristic of the Arab genius. Contrary to what is customarily believed, the average Arab does not by any means possess an ‘‘extravagant imagina- tion.’’ Whenever such imagination is found in Arab literature, in the
Tales of the Thousand and One Nights
for example, it comes from some non-Arab source, Persian and Indian in this case; only the art of storytelling is Arab. The creative spirit of the Arabs is
a priori
logical and rhetorical, then rhythmic and incantational. The luxuriance of typically Arab poetry lies in mental and verbal arabesque and not in the profusion of images evoked.

Islam rejects portraiture for theological reasons. Now it is a fact that the Semitic nomads had no figurative tradition—the pre-Islamic Arabs imported most of their idols from abroad—and the image never became a natural and transparent means of expression for the Arabs. Verbal reality eclipsed the reality of static vision: compared with the word for ever ‘‘in act,’’ whose root is anchored in the primordiality of sound, a painted or a carved image seemed like a disquieting congealment of the spirit. For the pagan Arabs, it smacked of magic.

The Arabic language is not wholly dynamic; true, its base is the action-verb, but it possesses likewise a static, or more exactly a timeless, ground which corresponds with ‘‘being,’’ and which reveals itself particularly in the so- called nominal sentence, where the noun and its predicates are juxtaposed without a copula, thereby permitting a thought to be expressed in a lapidary fashion and without any consideration of time. The Arabic language is such that a whole doctrine can be condensed into a short and concise formula of diamantine clarity. This means of expression is realized in all its fullness only in the Qur’an, yet it is part of the Arab genius nonetheless and is reflected in Arab-Muslim art, for this art is not only rhythmical but also crystalline.

The conciseness of the Arabic sentence does not, quite clearly, limit the profundity of the meaning, but neither does it facilitate synthesis on the descriptive level: an Arab will rarely assemble a number of conditions or

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circumstances in a single sentence; he prefers to string together a series of brief phrases. In this respect, an agglutinative language like Turkish, which belongs to the family of Mongol languages, is less austere and more flexible than Arabic; when it comes to describing a situation or a landscape, Turkish is frankly superior to Arabic, and the same applies to Persian which is an Indo-European language close to Gothic; however, both languages have borrowed not only their theological terminologies but also their philosophical and scientific terms, from Arabic.

The opposite extreme to Arabic is a language like Chinese, which is ruled by a static vision of things and which groups the elements of a thought around generic images, as is shown by the ideographic nature of Chinese script.

The Turks, like the Arabs, were originally nomads, but their languages reveal vastly different mental types; the Arab is incisive and dynamic in his thought processes; the Turk, for his part, is all-embracing and circumspect. In the general framework of Muslim art, the Turkish genius reveals itself by a certain power of synthesis—one might almost say, by a totalitarian spirit. The Turk has a plastic or sculptural gift which the Arab does not have; his works always proceed out of an all-enveloping concept; they are as if hewn from a single block.

As for Persian art, it is distinguished by its sense of hierarchical gradations; Persian architecture is perfectly articulated, without ever being ‘‘functional’’ in the modern sense of the term. For the Persian, Unity manifests itself above all as harmony. Moreover, Persians are, by nature and by culture, people who see things, but see with lyrical eyes; their artistic activity is as if animated by an inner melody. It is said proverbially in the East that ‘‘Arabic is the language of God, but Persian is the language of paradise,’’ and this describes very well the difference that exists, for example, between a distinctively Arab type of architecture, like that of the Maghrib, where crystalline geometry of forms proclaims the unitary principle, and Persian architecture, with its blue domes and floral decoration.

The Arab architect is not afraid of monotony; he will build pillar upon pillar and arcade upon arcade, and dominate repetition by rhythmic alternation and the qualitative perfection of each element.

The language of the Qur’an is omnipresent in the world of Islam; the entire life of a Muslim is filled with Qur’anic formulas, prayers, litanies, and invocations in Arabic, the elements of which are drawn from the Sacred Book; innumerable inscriptions bear witness to this. It could be said that this ubiquity of the Qur’an works like a spiritual vibration—there is no better term to describe an infl ence which is both spiritual and sonorous—and this vibration necessarily determines the modes and measures of Muslim art; the plastic art of Islam is therefore, in a certain way, the reflection of the word of the Qur’an. It is assuredly very diffi to grasp the principle by which this art is linked to the text of the Qur’an, not on the narrative plane, which plays no part in the customary art of Islam, but on the level of formal structures,

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since the Qur’an obeys no laws of composition, neither in the strangely disconnected linking together of its themes nor in its verbal presentation, which evades all the rules of meter. Its rhythm, powerful and penetrating as it is, follows no fi measure; entirely unpredictable, it maintains at times an insistent rhyme like the beat of a drum and will then suddenly modify its breadth and pace, shifting its cadences in a manner as unexpected as it is striking. To affirm that the Qur’an is Arabic verse, because it includes passages with a uniform rhyme like the Bedouin
rajaz,
would be mistaken; but to deny that these uniformities and abrupt breaks correspond to profound realities in the Arab soul would be equally so. Arab art—poetry and music as well as the plastic arts—loves to repeat certain forms and to introduce sudden and unforeseen variants against this repetitive background. But, whereas art is played out in accordance with easily fathomable rules, the waves of sacred speech may sometimes fall in regular patterns, but they arise out of a whole formless ocean. In the same way, the state of inner harmony engendered by the words and sonorous enchantment of the Qur’an is situated on quite another plane than, for example, perfect poetry. The Qur’an does not satisfy, it gives and at the same time takes away; it expands the soul by lending it wings, then lays it low and leaves it naked; for the believer, it is both comfort- ing and purifying, like a rainstorm. Purely human art does not possess this virtue. That is to say, there is no such thing as a Qur’anic style which can simply be transposed into art; but there does exist a state of soul which is sustained by the recitation of the Qur’an and which favours certain formal manifestations while precluding others. The diapason of the Qur’an never fails to join intoxicating nostalgia to extreme sobriety: it is a radiation of the divine Sun on the human desert. It is to these poles that the fl and flamboyant rhythm of the arabesque, and the abstract and crystalline character of architecture, in some way correspond.