it narrowed the range of new themes that could emerge, above all the religious ones which were central to all Christian and Buddhist art – the depiction of God and his deeds, the stories of prophets and saints – everything on which an artistic impression of the world was founded in non-Muslim cultures during the Middle Ages. The reasons why anthropomorphic representation was unnecessary in the propagation of Islam are complex and have not been satisfactorily elucidated. We will examine a few of them here.
Theology, in the true sense of the word, took shape very late in Islam. Early Islam was interested only in external ritual observance and it elaborated questions of religious law, but despite this, in the 8th century, as Vasily Bartold writes, in Islam “the same disputes about God and his relationship to man were arising as in Christianity; apart from the direct influence of Christian dogma on that of Islam, this can be explained by the identical conditions in which both religions found themselves”.[14]
Especially important is the school of theology of the Mutazilites (from the Arabic for “separatists”). This school, which created Islam’s first carefully elaborated theological system, made widespread use of Greek devices and achievements in logic and philosophy, particularly those of Aristotle. Its fundamental thesis was “the cognition of the divine unity”.
The Mutazilites resolutely opposed the concept of God in human form and of his attributes or qualities which were invented by man, even those such as “omnipotent” or “all-seeing”, for these are “conceivable” categories. According to the doctrine of the Mutazilites, God is a unity that is pure, undefinable in human terms and unknowable.
It was during the flourishing of the Mutazilites that the following hadiths (traditions of the words and deeds of the prophet Muhammad) first gained popularity: “artists will be tormented on the Day of Judgement […] and they will be told: bring your own creations to life”.
But one must bear in mind that from the point of view of its structure Islamic theology was in no way comparable to, say, that of Christianity. Firstly, though it became a state religion, even the dogmatic theology of the Mutazilites remained such for only a few decades. Secondly, Islamic law pervaded all aspects of social life (even contracts for buying and selling had to be agreed upon in the presence of a religious judge, a qadi), yet it was not founded on any absolute and clearly formulated law, but had four bases: the Koran, the hadiths, ijma – consensus of opinion between the faqihs (the authoritative theologians), and qiyas – the method of analogy with the Koran or the hadiths.
In consequence, one can fully understand why the faqihs held various opinions on the subject of the “hadiths of the artists”, but views such as the following, expressed by Abu al-Farisi in the mid-10th century, were more or less general:
But if someone should say: “surely it is said in the hadith, “the artists will be tormented on the Day of Judgement”, and in other hadiths, “and they will be told: bring your own creations to life”, then the words “the artists will be tormented” relate to those who depict Allah in the flesh. And as far as any addition to that is concerned, these are communications of isolated individuals who are unworthy of trust. And as we have noted, the ijma does not dispute this opinion.[15]
Oleg Bolshakov, who has studied the known sources on this question, formulates his conclusions as follows: “Defining the permissibility of this or that depiction, the jurists proceeded first of all from the consideration of the extent to which they are dangerous as potential objects of worship. Disagreement between the various scholars arose over the attempt to define this very matter.”[16]
But the existence of persistent disagreements even between the faqihs did not, and never could, give rise to any official and general prohibition. Of course, in the history of Muslim theologians’ attitudes towards figurative art there have been periods when a more rigorous attitude prevailed, and even periods of persecution and extreme reaction (not until the 17th and 18th centuries, it is true, and then only in individual Islamic countries), but one thing is clear: the question was always one of religious anthropomorphism – and of that alone.
The Gate of All Nations, c. 470 BCE. Persepolis, Iran.
Therefore there is absolutely no reason to see figurative art in Islamic culture as the perpetual overcoming of a prohibition existing within the religion. On the other hand, the arrival of Islam in Iran brought about the abolition of other restrictions which had an important bearing on the development of art.
By the 8th century the Islamic state, the Caliphate, included not only the whole territory of Iran but also part of Byzantium, North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, Central Asia and Afghanistan, and it subsequently extended even further; yet this state was by no means a world empire like the empires of the Achaemenids or the Sassanids. Its ruler, the caliph (from the Arabic “successor” or deputy of the prophet Muhammad), inherited from the prophet the Imamate, the spiritual leadership of the Muslim community, and the Emirate political power. According to Islamic law, he either had to be elected by the whole community (this was, of course, only in theory), or appoint a successor during his lifetime, with the approval of the faqihs (this latter requirement was also not followed in practice). And although it was considered that the power of the caliphs had been established by God, the Islamic state was theocratic but far from despotic.
In theory, the Islamic state was considered to be a state of equals and the basic confrontation within it was not in terms of estates or between the nobility and the oppressed, but in terms of Muslims and infidels. In Sassanian Iran, and this was especially noticeable towards the end of the Sassanian period, divisions in society were strictly upheld – they were specifically sanctioned by Zoroastrianism. Priests, warriors, scribes and the common people each formed separate “estates” and movement from one estate to another was impossible or at least extraordinarily difficult. In artistic terms, this social system fostered the creation not only of a hierarchy of forms and themes but also of a hierarchy of individual types of art (“prestigious” and “non-prestigious”). The Islamic conquest swept away the social system of castes and estates and in so doing significantly changed the hierarchy in subject-matter and the branches of the fine arts. The Sassanian royal and “chivalric” culture was destroyed.
Lastly, it is necessary to say something about the conception of a world culture which also suffered notable changes after the arrival of Islam in Iran. Mention has already been made here of this conception as understood by the Achaemenid and Hellenistic eras. Its character during the Sassanian period is described thus by Vasily Bartold:
The world situation of the Sassanian state in the 6th and 7th centuries clearly had an even greater effect on the success of imperialism (Bartold uses this term only in the narrow political sense of the “creation of empires”) in individual countries than did the formation of Alexander’s empire in its time. This was the period of the unification of China under the rule of the Suis dynasty (589–618 CE), followed by the T’ang dynasty (618–907 CE), with their extensive claims in Central Asia; of the might of the kings of Kannauj on the Ganges, considered to be the imperial city of India during the first centuries of Islam; of the unification under the power of a Turkish dynasty of nomads from China to India, Persia and Byzantium. These events formed the basis of the Buddhist concept of four world monarchies at the four corners of the world: the empire of the king of elephants in the south, the king of treasures in the west, the king of horses in the north and the king of people [because of the vast population of the Chinese empire] in the east. With a few alterations, this same concept was transmitted to Muslim authors: the king of elephants was also called the king of wisdom because of a fascination for Indian philosophy and science; the king of people was the king of state government and industry because of a fascination for Chinese material culture; the king of horses was the king of beasts of prey; in the west two
Bartold 1969–1977, vol. VI, p. 121.
Bolshakov 1969, pp. 148, 149.
Ibid., p. 150.
