HUMA 1845 Lecture Notes - Lecture 77: Christian Art, Cornucopia, Kaaba
6 Jan 2018
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Topic: aniconism: the absence of human figures in islamic art. It is often wrongly assumed that the depiction of living things is forbidden in islamic art. The quran has very little to say on the subject of figural representation, although it does explicitly forbid idolatry, divination, drinking, gambling, and other vices, which seem to have been commonly practiced at the time of the revelation. Making pictures of people was apparently not a topic of paramount importance in arabia in the late sixth and early seventh centuries. Furthermore, there is no reason to depict people in islamic religious art, because muslims believe that god is unique and without associate and therefore that he cannot be represented, except by his word, the. God is worshiped directly without intercessors, so there is no place for images of saints as there is in christian art. Muhammad was god"s messenger, but unlike christ, muhammad was not divine.
