Overcoming the Dichotomy of Text and Image
The Safavid Album Prefaces (1500–1700)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20037228 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Berenike Metzler (0009-0000-3271-5957, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Pages | 129-148 |
| Publication date | 2022-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Writing As Intermediary (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | University of Bamberg Press (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.20378/irb-57641 |
| OpenAlex | W4323899277 |
| ISBN | 9783863098636 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 1 |
The opinion that the relationship of Islam to imagery can hardly be called "aniconic" and even less so "iconoclastic" 1 , has recently been illustrated once more by the volume The Image Debate.Figural Representation in Islam and across the World 2 , published in advance of an exhibition on figural art from the Islamic world.Nevertheless, the dichotomy of "image" versus "text" still seems to shape our thinking in such a way that almost all attempts to explain the subject, formerly discussed under the general term "Bilderverbot/prohibition of images," operate along this medial divide.The present paper aims to question this rigid categorization of "text" and "image" by examining the terminology used in Safavid album prefaces from the 16 th and 17 th centuries. Overcoming the Traditional Text-Image DichotomyThe explanations for the part figurative representation played in Islamic art through the ages seem to be as varied as the representations themselves.It can be considered common knowledge that neither the Qurʾān 3 nor the Hadith literature 4 give indications for a religiously legitimized "Bilderverbot/prohibition of 1 Lamia Balafrej points out that historical iconoclastic acts involve not so much a destruction than a transformation of the pictorial, and that both historical and contemporary "iconoclasts" must deal intensively with the materiality of the image in their actions, cf.Balafrej, Lamia: "Islamic Iconoclasm, Visual Communication and the Persistence of the Image".Interiors: Design/Architecture/Culture 6.3 (2015), pp.351-366.Finbarr Barry Flood underlines that there are no Arabic or Persian equivalents for the term "iconoclasm" and that in many cases it was not the figural image per se but its content that was the stumbling block, cf."Iconoclasm"
Art · Literature · Byzantine Studies and History · Computer Science · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Islamic Studies and History · Artificial Intelligence
| Highly cited | No |
|---|