Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World

Awesome.

Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible. In our post-9/11 world, a greater understanding across cultures is more important than ever before, yet the purpose of this program is not simply to provide political or historical context. Rather it is to explore and celebrate the great richness of Islamic art and architecture throughout the world to peer into extraordinary palaces and mosques, decorated with exquisite gardens, ceramics and paintings, to watch the play of light and space, and to sense the sheen of delicate textiles, of gold and silver work, and of rock crystal and precious gems.

The film shows that after a long history of Islam and its struggle one of the greatest gifts it has given for civilization is its creativity and intelligence embodied in Islamic art. The nuance and elegance of Islamic art is appreciated regardless of one's belief and religion. The art is used to depict the true and deepest emotions and also aspirations of people who follow Islam. Other from reflecting the essence of Islamic world it also shows the development of Islam throughout the complex world with influence of different traditions. The given film effectively shows the role of art in muslim tradition and how it reflects culture and aspirations of people of that community.

First of all, the great emphasis of Islamic art on writings illustrates the importance of it to Islamic culture. As Jesus Christ, the son of God is a gift of God to Christians, Qur'an is a gift for muslims. Our'an teaches the law and the way of life, but most importantly it is very word of God. So, for muslisms the Qur'an is not just a holy book or poetry but it is word of Allah. As Allah revealed himself through words the art of calligraphy, or beautiful writing is the most important art in Islamic tradition. So the Qur'an is a focus of devotion and also the focus of art as people try to make manuscripts as beautiful as possible. And the use of word everywhere is the distinctive feature of Islam different from other religious traditions. Various breathtaking mosques including Taj Mahal and Alhambra while having enormous territory, are full of scriptures on their walls. These are the words from the holy book that are painted painstakingly with great precision and attention. People also used glass cubes with gold foils, the most expensive kind of cubes. In addition, special minerals as cobalt from Iran were used to create unusual and vivid colors. This also reflects the extraordinary wealth of Islamic leaders. The meticulous attention of people to materials needed to calligraphy as reed pen, tools used to sharpen it, usage of expensive animal skins and also special treatment of paper prior writing on it shows the relation of people to writing and its importance. For muslims, copying Qur'an was the experience of divine presence in those words, and it was a kind of prayer and meditation.

By looking at different objects of Islamic art we can figure out what are the important things for muslims. For example, the symmetry and organization of columns and other objects in mosques illustrates the importance of geometry in religious and also everyday life of muslims. The geometry is required to determine the direction of prayer and also the time of prayer and this constitutes the religious importance of geometry. Moreover, the knowledge of geometry also was needed while traveling as a map in a desert landscape where people lived. So, the importance of geometry was reflected in the design and decoration of mosques that is common in different mosques throughout the world. This shows how Islamic art especially the decoration of mosque's walls reflects important aspects of people who follow Islam. In addition, the decoration as use of ornaments, mosaic paintings were also important as they created a play of light and gave special experience or feeling in a sacred place. So due to light playing people experience differently in summer, winter, sunrise or sunset. And this gives unusual feeling that is accesible to everyone. The special thing about the ornaments is that regardless of who you are muslim or of other religion you'd appreciate the beauty of them. This may bring to conclusion that the beauty of islamic art that reflect people's thought cannot call for hostility. The other important point is the water in Islamic tradition. So there can be a lot of reasons why water is important in Islamic tradition. Firstly, this can be due to scarcity of water in early and also present day Islamic societies. Also, it says «God make everything alive through water» in Qur'an and water is needed prior to prayer. So it is a sign of cleansing in a literal and metaphoric way that helps to put muslims in the right mental framework to approach the divine. So, a common feature of mosques are ablution places with water and also gardens that contain water and plants, too. So, the architectural design shows the importance of water in Islamic culture.

It is clear that islamic art reflects culture and also history of Islam, its development throughout the time and its interaction with other traditions. From the lecture we know that at the very beginning of emergence of Islam there was no clear distinction that this is the new religion, and at first there was believer's movement that included Hebrew and Christians, too. So we don't have clear distinction from the early times. Also the interaction of different traditions are illustrated in designs and architecture of mosques. For example, the earliest Quranic words found in stone building in Jerusalem the Dome of the Rock that borrows the form from Byzantine martyrdom. The Dome covers massive rock where prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven on his mystical night journey. So here we see the coexistence of different religions and their connection with each other. However, the new features are apparent in a way that the Arabic inscriptions are depicted throughout the Dome. This careful and beautiful writing is an indication of new culture. The another depiction of influence of other traditions on Islam is shown in the example of Emperor Jahangir. He collected European and also Christian art, and there is a picture of him with halo, that is a christian item. These findings show that Islam coexisted with other religious traditions in a peaceful environment and in tolerance towards them. And indeed, emergence of Islamic religion was not a breakage of preexisting traditions but their continuation.

The art reflects people's aspirations and deepest feelings. In the film Muhammad al-Asad says that Islam contains different people but need in shelter is common for all muslims. So, people put tremendous effort in what they build and therefore they reflect a great deal about them. Buildings reflect economic, social and cultural values. For example, the ornaments represent heaven that is the promise of God for his people. It is clear that the concept of heaven is important for muslims as they believe in resurrection when people will be judged by their deeds. So for proper behavior and righteousness they were promised with heaven and indeed most muslims carry the image of heaven in their hearts. The other reflection of religious aspirations of muslims by islamic art is representation of flora and fauna in other words the creatures of God. God says: "To know me, know my creatures". And as there is no depiction of God in Islam as in Christianity or Hinduism, muslims believe that they will get closer to God by deeply looking on its creatures and understand their essence. This belief is reflected in art in a form of living paintings on walls and rugs.

To sum up, I think that the purpose of the film was to show how islamic art reflects the people who believe in Islam. And that the art is common for whole humanity, one doesn't need to learn Islam to understand its art, everyone regardless of his religious background can appreciate the beauty of it. It shows who are the people that follow Islam, their religious and cultural aspirations. And their treatment of art and Quranic words with great attention, patience cannot beget violence. The beauty of Islamic art and architecture is universal and it teaches peace and unity of people. Knowing the essence and understanding the different religions are important in our world where we have various prejudice towards religions. The Islamic art is a very way to compehend Islam and its teachings.

Review: Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World

The documentary "Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World" was filmed by Robert H. Gardner explains the history and development of art in the Islamic world. Gardner highlighted the huge contribution of Islamic art to the architecture, water supply systems, calligraphy, and studies of the Islamic religion. The main message of this movie is to show and understand Muslims' everyday activities in Middle Ages with help of Islamic art. According to interviewees in the documentary, art reflects the detailed history of the Islamic world. The movie is divided into five different parts related to Islamic art: word, space, ornament, color, water. Each of the parts played a key role in the Islamic culture and will be independently reviewed in this essay.

To begin with, the meaning of the word 'art' should be defined. Art is an expression of human creative skills in a visual form such as painting and sculpture. Commonly, the object of art is closely connected with daily life practices or thoughts of the artist. The crucial thing to notice is that the objects of Islamic art are quite different in style, shape, and design. This can be explained by the sensible difference in cultures in various parts of the Islamic Empire. Therefore, the film director shows at the beginning of the documentary the history of the establishment of the Islamic Caliphate and the invasion of the territories of North Africa, Persia, Byzantine, Central Asia, and West Europe. Each of the conquered nations had its own culture that was mixed with Islamic and Arabic lifestyles and had produced unique fusion.

Word. The first daily practice of Muslims of that period is reading of Holy Qur'an. Since Qur'an is defined by Muslims as a life manual for humanity, the reading of this revelation is very important for each Muslim. The problem of that period is the absence of typewriters. Each copy of the Qur'an had to be completed by hand and required maximum concentration because the mistakes in this Book were not tolerated. To illustrate, billions of Qur'an copies were required to spread the religion of Prophet Muhammad to all people in the world. Henceforth, a scribe was a common occupation and became an integral part of the culture at that time. Eventually, copying of the Qur'an was transformed into the type of art, Islamic calligraphy.

Space. The second daily practice is collective prayers and visiting mosques. According to the Islamic set of rules, collective prayer is more desirable than an individual one. Moreover, each Muslim is obliged to accomplish "jummah salat" (Friday prayer), which is held at the mosque every Friday. Therefore, visiting mosques was a common action in the everyday life of Muslims. In the documentary, mosque construction represents the Islamic art of space. There were a huge number of mosques over the Islamic world that are different in style, shape, and size. Commonly, mosques were constructed from any materials that were locally available at that period. Such that, a dramatic distinction can be noticed between mosques in Syria and Africa. The only common requirement for all mosques is 'mihrab', a small area directed to Mecca. Since the mosque played an important role in the life of Muslims and is considered as the 'home of God', architects tried to design and construct these buildings in a very attractive and fascinating manner, regardless of the abundance of constructing materials. Art of space included such constituents as sunlight management, capacity, safety, and visual design.

Ornament. The third daily practice of each Muslim is five-time prayer. This obligation is one of the elements that distinguishes Muslims from adherents of other Abrahamic religions. One of the requirements of prayer is the tidiness of place, where prayer is accomplishing. Therefore, most Muslims use special small rectangular carpets to pray. As well as copying Qur'an, carpet weaving became a widespread occupation, especially in Persia, Byzantine, and Central Asia. The carpets began to be decorated with ornaments symbolizing Islamic signs. For instance, geometric patterns, which are associating with infinity (one of the attributes of God), can be noticed on most carpets.

Water. Another condition to start prayer is small and large ablution (wudu and ghusl). Muslims have to wash their faces, hands, ankles, and hair before worshipping, otherwise, the prayer will be void. This ritual Muslims do multiple times a day so that access to water at that time was a crucial factor for each mosque or settlement. The art of water supply is closely related to physics and geometry as well as the art of ornaments. To provide water to settlements or mosque yards, architects of that time were computing slopes and volumes of reservoirs to construct complex water supply systems.

Color. The afterlife is one of the main concepts of the Islamic religion. According to Islamic traditions, each human being on the earth will be transferred to paradise or hell, regarding his/her deeds during the earthly life. The director of this movie connects this concept of the afterlife with Islamic art of color. The Persian word 'paradisus', from which the word 'paradise' was obtained, means 'vibrant garden', such that for Muslims abundance of vivid colors is something that is associated with supreme reward for their worship - paradise. Henceforth, the daily thoughts of most Muslims were always connected with heaven and this was reflected in Islamic art.

In conclusion, it can be highlighted how Islamic art reflects the history, philosophy of Islamic traditions, and daily activities that Muslims were accomplishing. With the help of art, we can observe more detailed pieces of evidence than with scriptures and chronicles. Therefore, the documentary is called "Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World", but not just "Islamic art".

Islamic art and the heritage that the Muslim World built through centuries are a door and a key to understanding the Islam itself. This can clearly be seen in Robert Gardner's film Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World. As the film depicts, the art is a reflection of faith, believe and culture of followers of Islam. This fascinating documentary, with the collection of beautiful shootings from different countries with Islamic background, was able to illustrate the history, art and the role, that Islam played in the life of people.

The importance of writing and reading (which is stated in Qur'an) is introduced through the art of calligraphy. Qur'an is the direct speech of God and the film also comments "God speaks through the pen". Therefore, Qur'anic inscriptions are a huge fundamental part of Islamic art. We can see in the film, that different Mosques such as Süleymaniye Mosque, (dedicated to Ottoman Empire), the old mosque of Damascus Umayyad Mosque have Qur'anic inscriptions. Another example is one of the most significant mosques the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. As it is stated in this film and our class reading of Ibn Ishaq's The Life of Muhammad, this is an important place for followers of all 3 religions (Islam, Christianity, Judaism) and happens to be the place where prophet Muhammad was sent to heaven. That night is known to be one of the 5 sacred nights in Islam Mi'raj Night. The mosque's Qur'anic inscriptions are written in the most expensive gold cubes. Sheila Blair comments that the interior inscription says about the existence of only one God and is a rebattle to tripartite In Christianity. This can also be viewed in our class reading Apology of Patriarch Timothy of Baghdad, where he uses the allegory of a pearl to resolve a debate regarding the tripartite with Caliph. Through the example of Qur'anic inscriptions and the role of calligraphy, we can see that writing and reading had a significant role (reading and writing Qur'an is also considered as praying) in the life of Muslim people and that might be a reason for the birth of different famous mathematicians, scholars and literary figures during the Islamic Golden Age (8th to 14th century) such as Al-Biruni, Ferdousi.

Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World was also able to identify the meaning of space in Islam. The religion that spread to 3 continents had variations due to the different cultural values and traditions (as professor Garipova commented in one of her lectures). Therefore, there are different designs of mosques and their grandiosity was the signature of wealth and represented the local culture, tradition and material background. All of the mosques have pulpit known as minbar. Most of the mosques are dome shaped and hypostyle mosques (following the design of Umayyad Mosque). However, the mosque of Djenne located in Mali, has a different structure that was based on the preferences and views of the people that live there. The mosque does not have a big dome and is made of mud bricks. It contains 99 columns that are deicated to 99 holy names of Allah. The West African branch of Sufism that is spread in this region is for tolerance. It states that the main importance here is the connection with God and each person can have their own way of connection. Roderick Mcintosh also comments that "We need to make space where we can be alone with our own thoughts". This moment in film reminded me of one of our first readings in class Eliade (The Sacred and the Profane), where Eliade says that the sacred place can be anywhere, it is the moment, where you feel that you are connected with the divine, where you understand that God is always with you, whether you are in a mosque or in a church. I feel the connection of this idea in the Eliade with the above mention moment in film. In our class reading of Rahman Major themes of Qur'an, he also says we should keep in mind that God is always with us and we should not forget it. I believe that the diversity of mosques in different places can be explained through the fact that everyone's divine experience might be different but they all do have same faith and religion of Islam. Therefore, the meaning of space is broad and deep for Muslim people.

After explaining the role of space, the film describes the role of ornaments, textile and water. Different ornaments in Islamic art are very connected with geometry since Muslims had to know the proper direction of sun in order to pray, the time and the navigation. Therefore, we can see different types of geometrical ornaments with different textile, such as metalwork, adding colors to paintings and ceramics (literature is also not an exception, an example could be Shahname). Through the ornaments and textile, we can see that figurative art existed in Islamic art. Sultans, in fact, had sculptures of lions specially made by their request. Moving on to the water, it had and still has a sacred meaning. It is the foundation of our survival and living since as the film shows, for some Muslim countries water is a treasure that is hard to find.

In conclusion, the film Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World describes the history and culture of Muslim world through Islamic art and is a very interesting documentary. A viewer will get new information and will enjoy the beautiful scenery of Islamic heritage that was build through many centuries.

"A translucent glass is beautiful regardless of your religious background, mosaic sparkles regardless of what time in history you are in, monuments are awesome whoever you are, whether you walk in there to pray or walk in there with a camera as a tourist" - this is how the movie ended. And this is exactly what the movie is about... The Islamic Art: Mirror of the Invisible World done by Robert H. Gardner was able to illustrate the heritage of Islamic world, specifically influence of Islam on art. The movie is divided into subtopics such as Word, Space, Ornaments, Color and Water. It, in its turn could immerse me to the other side of Islam, the side which not every person could observe, by providing deeper insights towards how religion might look through different perspective. Moreover, accompaniment by commentaries of academic researchers on Islamic art made the movie more of an objective product. It demonstrates Islam not only as a religion but also as a way of living. The movie is not theological. It is more about philosophy of Islam or influence of this youngest world religion to the life of its followers as well as people from non-Muslim communities. The film was set out in a concise way that made it possible to understand for almost anyone and quite fascinating even to people who are not good at artistry. It brings a valuable sense of Islamic art which is unknown not only among ordinary people but also among Muslims. First of all, the movie showed the importance of calligraphy in Islam. Writing becomes central feature of Islam and use of the word is the one aspect that separates Islam from all others. This might be mainly, due to the fact that the first revelation came to prophet Muhammed was about reading as mentioned in the second lecture "Quran and Tafsir". In some sense, "Koran became a focus of devotion but it also became a focus of art" From his memories, the calligrapher, Mohamed Zakaria, mentioned in the film, after his first visit to Istanbul to learn Islamic calligraphy, he had to forget all things that he learned before. In my opinion it should not be taken into consideration that there were not art before Islam but rather audience should concentrate on how Islam shaped the culture of art. It turns out that it really does! Secondly, all the architecture that is taken into consideration such as the exact space left open to provide sun to the room, all the geometrical calculations in providing water tubes all along the deserts (most Muslim countries were not water-riched one) and estimation of how people would pray while building the palace or other buildings is astonishing. It kind of awakened me in the way of architecture. From now on, I started to look at my religion through different lenses. I knew about Muslim architectures in our country, Kazakhstan, but personally, have never thought about the way how they were built. Now thinking about them, I am surprised that X, XI, XII century built constructions still preserve their beauty even up to nowadays. It definitely shows the quality of work and how passionately it had been constructed. Third, I would like to mention the philosophical idea behind the existence of water. But before, let's look at interesting similarity between Islam and Daoism. In both cases, water is considered as central to their religion. "Water is here for all stages of life. I literally understood that water in palaces that are currently pouring are water of Romans, Islamic countries and etc. Because water is presented in the world at every stage of its creation" Thinking for a while about this quote that is taken from the movie, one would understand its rationality to think so. Because water evaporates and falls back to the ground and this circulation is repeated dozens of times. And one can understand that the speaker has a strong argument in believing it. All these above mentioned Islamic Art beauty is depicted in the movie but not only listed ones. There are also various documented materials mentioned about ornaments, carpentry, poetry, love between two people, stone art, textile and many many other things that brings spectators into delight. However, in my opinion, the key element that unites and forces Muslim people to produce such kind of amazing art is passion and pure love of God. From the movie, I could see that these two things combined could do/make astonishing products. To conclude, I hope I did my best to demonstrate all the beauty of this movie. I would strongly recommend it absolutely for everyone despite his/her religious background because as I have already mentioned it is not about religion but rather it is about reflection of religion on culture. Of course, stating that the movie filmed all the aspects of Islamic art would be wrong but it would be a perfect beginning in that direction.