Voices of Islam (190 page)

•

Martin Lings

The need to record and hand down to succeeding generations every syllable of the Qur’an with exactitude made it impossible to rely on anything so fallible as human memory, even though the memories in question were outstanding. But the point to be made here is not that people ungiven to writing and build- ing should have come to be, through the force of circumstances, both writers and builders. The analogy we are drawing is based on the change from almost nothing to almost everything; and in the case of calligraphy, the change is perhaps even more striking than in that of architecture. It might even be said not only that the Arabs have never been surpassed as calligraphers
1
but also that they have only been equaled by one other people, namely the Chinese, whose art has, however, developed along very different lines.

It cannot, however, be considered a paradox that the civilization of the Unlettered Prophet
2
should have been destined to excel in the art of lettering. Even apart from the probable advantages of starting an enterprise uncluttered by previous experiences, the Arabs’ disinclination to write down precious words had no doubt a very positive part to play in the genesis of Arabic calligraphy. These people were in love with the beauty of their language and with the beauty of the human voice. There was absolutely no common measure between these two summits on the one hand and the ungainliness of the only available script on the other. Their disdain for writing showed a sense of values; and in light of final results it is legitimate to suppose that it was the reverse side of an openness to calligraphic inspiration, as much as to say, ‘‘Since we have no choice but to write down the Revelation, then let that written record be as powerful an experience for the eye as the memorised record is for the ear when the verses are spoken or chanted.’’

The most usual explanation of the phenomenon we are now considering is that of human genius having been curbed from the art of sculpture, and from that of painting in most of its aspects, and made to flow with all its force into a relatively narrow channel. But this explanation, despite its elements of truth, is really more of a question than an answer, for it impels us to ask,

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Voices of Art, Beauty, and Science

‘‘Where did that force come from? What was it doing before the outset of Islam? Was it a dormant potentiality that the new Revelation awoke?’’

It is impossible to deny that human genius has a vital part to play in sacred art; but there is genius and genius. In art that is related to religion, a distinction has to be made between sacred art in the strict sense and art that is religious without being sacred; and this means making a distinction between a genius which is dominated and penetrated by its own transcendent archetype, and a genius which is more or less cut off from that archetype and free to follow its own devices.

This distinction is one which Western Christendom has been trying not to see for almost the last 500 years. It is nonetheless fundamental and becomes immediately clear in light of a wider context. For if a sensitive and intelligent Christian be confronted with an ancient Egyptian wall-painting of Osiris, for example, or a sacramental statue of Buddha, and if he be asked, ‘‘What has your religion produced that can measure up to these?’’ it is then that he is compelled to see the limitations of humanism, and to return, for an answer, to the theomorphic art of the Middle Ages. The Islamic answer to the same question would be in an altogether different mode—a prayer niche in one of the great mosques or perhaps, despite the smaller dimensions, something within the scope of a book on Islamic calligraphy. Miniature painting, in which the Persians excelled, is only on the periphery of Islamic art and does not come near to the central and sacred domain.
3

In his concise yet far-reaching definition of what may be said to constitute a religion, Frithjof Schuon includes the presence of sacred art as one of the criteria of authenticity.
4
This will not seem surprising to anyone who bears in mind that the function of sacred art, always in the strictest sense of the term, is parallel to that of the Revelation itself as a means of causing repercus- sions in the human soul in the direction of the Transcendent. It is seldom, however, contemporary with the initial impact of a religion, and it is thus able to compensate for certain losses, above all as a means of expressing to later generations something of what the presence of the Messenger expressed to the first generation. The Qur’an makes it clear that a Prophet must be considered as a Divine Masterpiece. In one passage, God says to Moses what could be translated: ‘‘I have fashioned thee as a work of art for Myself’’ (Qur’an 20:41); and in another, Muhammad is told: ‘‘Verily of an immense magnitude is thy nature’’ (Qur’an 68:4).

To compensate for an absence is to be a prolongation of a presence; and this function is at once apparent in Christian sacred art, of which the icon is as it were the cornerstone. But it also becomes apparent as regards Qur’an calligraphy and illumination when we remember that to be the vehicle of the Revelation was the primary function of the Prophet of Islam.

If sacred art comes as a half-miraculous sign that Providence has not abandoned the religion since its foundation, and if it therefore comes implicitly as a guarantee of that religion’s Divine Origin, it is also a criterion

The Art of Qur’an Calligraphy
35

of authenticity in the way that a result is a criterion of its cause. To see this we have to simply remember that the function of religion is to bring about a restoration, if only a virtual one, of man’s primordial state. Each new Revelation, whatever form it may take, is destined to precipitate a renewal of consciousness, in a particular people or group of people, that man was made in the image of God and that as His representative he is the mediator between Heaven and Earth. The difference between man and all other creatures is that the latter merely refl ct various Divine Qualities, whereas man refl the Divine Essence, which comprises all the Qualities. The difference between man and man is that though each refl the Totality, one individual will have certain qualities as it were in the foreground of his nature, whereas another will have others in the foreground and so on, with a never exactly repeated variation. Each soul thus offers a differently ordered receptivity to the imprint of the Divine Nature, so that when that imprint is renewed by the pressure of the Revelation, the general excelling of oneself which results from it will be in different directions. As we learn from the Islamic litanies of the 99 Divine Names, God is not only the King, the Just, the Wise, the Omniscient, the Almighty, the Victorious, and the Irresistible, but He is also the Beautiful, the Creator, the Former, the Marvelously Original, and the All-Holy, and here lies the metaphysical inevitability of sacred art as a result of the Revelation. Here also lie the roots of all artistic genius, and it is only from these roots that a tradition of sacred art can spring; a tradition which will eventually enable less-gifted artists to participate in the consecrated genius of others and to excel themselves beyond all measure, whence the connection between sacred art and the traditional arts and crafts.

In other words, sacred art presupposes, somewhere, inspiration in the fullest sense. But the word ‘‘somewhere’’ is signifi for even where a definite name is attached to a masterpiece, there is always the possibility that the known artist worked under the influence of an unknown visionary, and there may be more than one generation between the perfector of any given style and the man who received the initial spiritual impetus. This possibility, which is in the nature of things, is nowhere more widely recognized than in the civilization of Islam. Thus, for example, when a celebrated fifteenth- century grammarian of Egypt, Khalid al-Azhari, is quoted as saying that he had been prompted to write one of his most important works by a great Sufi Sheikh of his day, the quoter adds the following note, ‘‘The good done by most of those who are famous for their outward science has been achieved through their frequenting the company of a saint, that is a man of inward science;’’ and he goes on to mention the founder of the Shadhili order of Sufi and his successor as eminent personifi ations of an outward-radiating inward science.
5

Moreover, apart from such possibilities, it must be remembered that sacred art is always strikingly impersonal
6
through its transcendence of the individ- ual. All the more fitting therefore that it should be anonymous, as in fact so

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Voices of Art, Beauty, and Science

much of it is, and there can be no doubt that a large part of its anonymity has been deliberate, resulting from the consciousness of this or that artist that the work in question is not, ultimately speaking, ‘‘his.’’

To have one of its poles in Heaven and to have come into existence by a path that is something of a parallel to the process of creation are essential conditions without which sacred art could never fulfill its ritual or liturgical function as a ‘‘Jacob’s Ladder’’ of return. It is in virtue of its parallel ‘‘descent’’ that a great cathedral or mosque or other monument of sacred art has the privilege of being able to stand amidst the wilds of nature without the eye condemning it as an alien presence, and the rungs of these ladders of return offer the worshipper the relatively effortless means of taking a higher standpoint, which, by repetition and by combination with other means, can even become more or less permanent. The way of creation is also the way of revelation, and in the particular art which is our theme the connection with revelation is very direct. Calligraphy and illumination are as it were compensations for such contingencies as ink and paper, a ‘‘step up’’ that makes it possible, in a flash of wonderment, to approach more nearly and penetrate more deeply the Divine Substance of the Qur’anic text, and thus to receive a ‘‘taste,’’ each soul according to its capacity, of the Infi and the Eternal. The use here of the Sufi term ‘‘taste’’—in Arabic
dhawq
—may be taken as a reminder of the close connection, in all traditions, between sacred art and mysticism.

As regards the earthly pole of sacred art, it is normal that a certain technical development should need to take place. It cannot be expected that Heaven should always dictate to man the details, as it did, exceptionally, in the case of Solomon’s Temple, and the delay caused by the interval of man’s apprenticeship is, as we have seen, in perfect harmony with the Providential function of a spiritual support that is needed far less at the outset of a new religion than in subsequent generations. Meantime the Revelation makes it clear that the Archetype of Qur’an calligraphy already exists in Heaven, ‘‘in a hidden book’’ (Qur’an 56:78), accessible only to angels. Nor can it be in the spiritual nature of things that its earthly manifestation should depend mainly on human initiative.

NOTES

This chapter is taken from
Splendours of Qur’an Calligraphy and Illumination
(
©
2005 Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation, all rights reserved). It is reproduced with permission from the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation and the Lings estate.

1. With the Arabs must be included certain others of those people—preeminently the Persians and the Turks—for whom Arabic is the liturgical language, but the Arabs themselves were the pioneers.
   

2. So Muhammad is named in the Qur’an (7:157–158) and, by extension, in many Islamic litanies.
   

   The Art of Qur’an Calligraphy
   37
   

3. For one remarkable exception however, which is truly a work of sacred art, though it could never have a central place in the civilization of Islam, see Titus Burckhardt,
   Art of Islam: Language and Meaning
   (London, U.K.: World of Islam Festival Publishing Company, 1976), plate 13. The miniature in question depicts the Night Journey of the Prophet and a postcard of it is sometimes available at the British Library where the manuscript in question is (Or. 2265.f.195a).
   

4. See the opening of Chapter 2 in Frithjof Schuon,
   Islam and the Perennial Philosophy
   (London, U.K.: World of Islam Festival Publishing Company, 1976).
   

5. Ibn Hamdun,
   Sharh al-Ajurrumiyya.
   

6. See Frithjof Schuon,
   Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts
   (Ghent: Sophia Perennis, 1969), 29–33. See also, in general, Titus Burckhardt,
   Sacred Art in East and West
   (Ghent: Sophia Perennis, 1967).
   

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