11/17/2023 0 Comments Old manuscript illustration line art![]() ![]() Shia Islam has been prominent in Iran since very early in Islamic history, but it became especially dominant in Iran during the Early Modern Period. 1594 showing Ali beheading Nadr ibn al-Harith in the presence of Muhammad, whose face is obscured by a white veil These illustrations usually accompanied works about Islamic history.ĪBOVE: Ottoman manuscript illustration dated to c. Notably, Muhammad is often shown in a large number of Iranian manuscript illustrations produced during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries AD. Iranian Shia Muslims tended to be the most lenient with regard to depictions of the prophet Muhammad. Nonetheless, they don’t seem to have entirely agreed whether it was categorically wrong to create an image of Muhammad in any context. Muslims agreed that Muhammad couldn’t be represented in the form of a statue, since statues were generally associated with idolatry, and they agreed that the Quran could never be illustrated. Medieval Iranian manuscript illustrations of Muhammadįor roughly the first thousand years of Islam, there was a broad agreement among Muslims that images of Muhammad were forbidden in most contexts. Many Shia Muslims still produce representations of Muhammad today, although contemporary Shia depictions of Muhammad rarely ever show his face. Historically, many Shia Muslims have believed that it is permissible to make images of Muhammad in certain contexts as long as those images are respectful and they not used in any manner that could be construed as idolatrous. Shia Islam, on the other hand, tends to be significantly more relaxed when it comes to this particular subject. Sunni Islam, the dominant form of Islam throughout most of the Middle East and the most commonly practiced form of Islam worldwide, tends to be very strict about the rule of not creating images of Muhammad. When non-Muslims create images of Muhammad, they usually create ones that portray him in a negative or disrespectful manner.Because of this, no image of Muhammad can be perfectly accurate, meaning that any image that purports to represent him is, in some way or another, deceptive. Although there are surviving descriptions of Muhammad’s appearance, these are not detailed enough to create a perfectly accurate image of him. There are no surviving depictions of Muhammad made during his lifetime.Islam therefore generally discourages the creation of images of religious figures of any kind. ![]() In Islam, it is believed that creating images of religious figures is the first step toward idolatry.There are several reasons, though, why Islam generally discourages Muslims from creating images of Muhammad: The Quran actually never explicitly says anything about whether or not it is acceptable to create images of Muhammad. Why Muslims are generally prohibited from making images of Muhammad Let’s take a look at the extremely strange, somewhat disturbing history of representations of the prophet Muhammad. Nevertheless, not all Muslims are as strict about not making depictions of Muhammad as others and many Muslims artists throughout history have actually created images of him. There are a number of reasons why Muslims generally oppose images of Muhammad. Most Muslims, however, are strongly opposed to the creation of images of the prophet Muhammad. Nevertheless, in modern times, most Christians generally don’t have a problem with creating images of Jesus and most Buddhists don’t have a problem with creating images of the Gautama Buddha. As I talk about in this article from March 2020, early Christians seem to have been rather hesitant to depict Jesus in art and, as I discuss in this article from May 2020, early Buddhists were similarly hesitant to depict Siddhārtha Gautama. This tendency towards aniconism isn’t entirely unique to Islam. It is widely known that Islam strongly discourages Muslims from creating anthropomorphic representations of the prophet Muhammad. ![]()
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