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Published in SUFI, vol. 47, pp. 15-19, Autumn 2000

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Remembrance and repetition: Thespiritual foundations of Islamic art

Author: James Winston Morris

James W. Morris

Remembranceand Repetition:

Spiritual Foundations of Islamic Art

BY JAMES W. MORRIS

.SUFI

God is Beautiful and He lovesbeauty... (Hadith, recorded byMuslim, Ibn Maja, Tirmidhi)

he best approach to appreciating anyof the Islamic visual arts, for someoneencounteting them for the first time, isto begin by listening attentively to thesacred music (whether popular .orlearned) of almost any traditional Is­lamic culture. It might seem strange to

learn to look by listening, but Islamic art, in all itsexpressions, is above all a highly refined visual music.So if we begin to approach that art as a special sortof visible music, we are' far more likely to understandit on its own aesthetic terms, as it was experienced byits otiginal creators and patrons. And at the same timewe will avoid the many extraneous aesthetic standardsand assumptions of 'representation', 'originality', 'self­expression' and the like which modern viewers tend tocarry over unconsciously from the context of Western(European) visual arts.

In fact the 'outsider' or naive 'beginner' in tillSsituation may be uniquely capable of seeing how theIslamic humanities, in cultural settings extending fromWest Attica to China and Indonesia, still share certaincommon forms and presuppositions-aesthetic and meta­physical foundations that stand out all the more clearly

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...Surely hearts findpeace inremembrance ofGod: .. .joyfUl bliss

for them, and a beautifulreturning! (Koran 13:28-29)

in contrast to the habitual assumptions of contemporarymass culture in any part of the world. For whether itbe in the distinctive patterns of these tribal and courtlycarpets; the styles of Arabic calligraphy adapted for somany Islamic languages; the ornamental interplay of'arabesque' and geometric elements in all the visualmedia (ceramics, wood, leather, textiles and metalwork);the architectural layout of fountains and gardens, tomb­shtines, palaces, or urban markets and religious com­plexes; the multiple perspectives in classical schools ofminiature painting; the repertoire of symbolic themes inmystical lyric poetry; or the intricate formulae of socialetiquette (adab), ritual and polite speech: in all of theseforms of the classical Islamic humanities, no matter whattheir original culture and period, one inevitably encoun­ters recurrent elements of repetition and 1-hythm in­tended to evoke an inner harmony and balance integrat­ing and transcending the momentarily visible tensionsand emotional expressions of their constituent parts.Uninitiated modern observers of each of these artisticforms, of course, have often mistakenly perceived pre­cisely these same shared aesthetic qualities and expec­tations as representing qualities of repetitiveness, 'for­malism', 'decorative' superficiality, and an apparent lack

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SUFI Remembrance and Repetition: Spiritual Foundations of Islamic Art

of originality or truly 'authentic' expression. For as withany traditional art or ritual, it is certainly true that onlylong personal apprenticeship can reveal the heights ofindividual creativity and mastery that can be realizedwithin the form.al constraints of each of those fields.

However, one essential key to penetrating thismysterious aesthetic unity and 'musicality' of the Islamichumanities can be found simply by asking traditionalIslamic musicians (or their audien·ce) what it is they areactually doing. For more often than not, they would

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describe their performance-or their listening--:-not as'music', but rather as an act of 'intimate prayer' or'remembrance' of God, using the central Koranic temldhikr. How that fundamental religious concept and itsrelated Koranic context actually came so thoroughly toinspire and pervade the Islamic humanities in all theirmanifold creative expressions is a story that has yet tobe written. But for our purposes here, it is sufficient todescribe as succinctly as possible the fundamental spili­tual role of the Islamic humanities as dhikr-as bOtll

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James W. Morris

cultural 'reminders' and repeatedindividual 'invocations' of the arche­typal divine Qualities, the 'MostBeautiful Natnes'-within the broaderKoranic vision of human being andthe world.

T o begin with, in order to graspthe primordial 'musicality' of

Islamic art, it is essential to recall thatthe Koran, both in its origins and asit is experienced in the daily ritualand prayer life of most Muslimsthrough the centuries, has alwaysbeen primarily an aural, nlusicalreality. In fact the Arabic ternl quranoriginally meant 'recitation,' andwitIlin the revelations to Mu1)ammadeventually assembled as a writtentext, tIlat expression and related termsare also applied to the divine Arche­type of all revelation and creation.In fact the most fundamental Koranicimage for God's ongoing creativerelation to tIle world is that ofSpeech-and that divine Music issaid to be directly reflected in theresponse of all the creatUres, evenif we too often remain spiritually'tone-deaf to that Symphony: theseven heavens and the eartIl, and allwho are in them, are singing Hispraises: there is no tIling but that itjs singing forth with His praise-andyet you-all do not grasp their song­of-praise! (16:44).

Within that nl~taphysical con­text, the ultimate purpose of theKoran-as with all the earlier divinerevelations, and with all the laterartistic attempts to furtIler that samepurpose-is simply to help 'remind'or awaken human beings to an activerealizatjon of their unique role andspecial responsibility in that largercosmic chorus. In' that regard, thekey Koranic root dh-k-r beautifullyexpresses several equally essentialaspects of that all-encompassingdivine Concert. (Those unfamiliarwith Arabic may not know that theconsonantal roots of the Koran, likethe chords of musical leitmotifs ortraditional Chinese ideograms, typi­cally express a broad range of poly­valent meanings and intricate se­mantic connections that cannot beadequately 'translated' or othelwise

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reduced to written or conceptualform. Thus in the prayerful re-cre­ation of the Koran, those Arabicroots are both literally and figura­tively the 'notes for each new reci­tation and genuine realization of thatconstantly recurring Revelation.)Hence the various forms of tIle worddbikr may convey simultaneously­and almost always from both thedivine and tIle individual humanpoint of view-tIle related meaningsof (a) a reminder (in which sensethe Koranic revelation itself is re­peatedly called the divine 'Reminder'par excellence); (b) the act of re­membering or recollecting; (c) men­tioning or repeating something; and(d) even more specifically, the pro­cess of 'invoking or prayerfully re­citing (whether silentIy or in audiblechanting or rhythmic song) tIle di­vine Names, tIlose archetypal At­tributes or Qualities of tIle all-en­compassing divine Essence that areInade manifest tIlfough the Spirit increation and 'returned' to their di­vine Source tllfough our individualacts of prayer and recollection.

Thus from the divine perspec­tive, tIle Koran portrays all of mani­fest existence as an ongoing, time­less Act of divine dbikr, stressing inparticular the instantaneous, ever­renewed repetition of that creativeprocess of divine Self-manifestation:God begins the creation, and tllenHe repeats it again, and to Him youare all returned (30:11). According tothe Koranic account of the pre­eternal Covenant of Adam and allsouls with God (at 7:174), all humanbeings were originally aware of thatReality and constitutive relationshiptllfough tlleir common root in thedivine Spirit: Remember God's bless­ing on you-all by which He boundyou, when you said: "We hear andwe obey!", and be mindful of God...(5:7). so in reality, all the realms ofexistence and experience alike arethe constantly repeated divine 'Signs'(ayaO and archetypal 'Likenesses'(amthal) constituting God's creativeAct of Remembrance: "We shall showthem Our Signs on the horizons andin their souls, until it becomes clearto them that Hu [tlle divine Essence]

SUFI

is -'the Truly-ReaL." (41:53). Indeed. tIlete is notIling at all that is not partof the 'Words' of this ongoing divineConcert: "Even if all tlle trees onearth were pens, and the sea (wereink), witIl seven more seas replacingit, still the Words of God would notbe used up" (31:27).

From the human point ofview, of course, few could arguewitll the Koran's repeated observa­tion that "no one really renlembers,but tIle people of Hearts" (2:269, 3:7,etc.). In response to that more usualhuman condition of spiritual 'deaf­ness' and heedlessness, few themesare more frequently stressed in theKoran tIlan our uniquely individualresponsibility for constantly 'remem­bering' God and 'mentioning' orinvoking the divine Names, not sim­ply through the prescribed forms ofritual prayer, but at every momentof life: "...remember God while stand­ing, and sitting, and (lying) on yoursides, .. " (4:103, 33:191), "and remem­ber your Lord in your soul, humblyand in awe.. .in the morning and inthe evening... " (7:205), ".. ,and re­member/mention your Lord, when­ever you have forgotten!" 08:24).Thus the imperative of dhikr, in thisbroader sense of all awareness, allrecollection and realization of thedivine Presence, extends far beyondtIle dozens of explicit Koranic refer­ences to include ultimately evelYfacet of the practical spiritual role ofthe Koran, the earlier divine revela­tions, and the divine messengers,teachers and spiritual guides whoare the present living embodimentsof this divine 'Reminder'. The veryessence of this inner movement of'remembrance', and tIle hue goal ofhuman existence, is the soul's con­stant 'returning' from tlle transientforms and events and 'tests' of thisworld to their true realities (thedivine 'Names') and meanings in the'unseen world' (al-ghayb) or the'next life' (al-akhira) of the Spirit.And the inner, spiritual focus of thatmovement is of course most clearlyreflected in the nearly intangiblestates and rhythms of traditionalIslamic music (including lyric po­etry). Within tllat practical spiritual

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SUFI Remembrance and Repetition: Spiritual Foundations of Islamic Art

context it becomes easy to recognizethe inseparable connections betweeneach of the Islamic arts, as well astheir integral ties to the wider com­plexes of the local Islamic humani­ties and ritual in every domain ofpre-modern life.

From that comprehensivemetaphysical perspective, it is hardlysurprising that the ongoing creativeexpressions of tlns same process ofspiritual 'reminding' throughout thelater Islamic arts and humanities havebeen profoundly influenced by theaesthetic model of theKoran on many dif­ferent levels. Eventu­ally the religiouslyand ritually centralrole of the Koran inIslamic life helped tomold tlle implicit can­ons and ideals ofaesthetic expressionand appreciationalike in at least thefollowing fundamen­tal ways. First andperhaps most funda­mentally, on a verybasic formal andstructural level, eachof the Islamic arts(whether musical,visual or literary) hastypically come toreflect the Koran'sdistinctive musicalqualities of rhythmand constantly inter­woven symphonicrepetition and subtleelaboration of itscentral themes. Second, and evenmore obviously, the concrete selec­tion of 'visual iconography,' of tllebasic themes and formal elementsrepresented in the Islamic visual artsfrom tlle very earliest period, hascontinued to be drawn from thethree basic symbolic families of vi­sual images of .tbe divine Presence,of the transcendent Reality revealedthrough all the appearances of thisworld, that constantly recur in theKoran itself: namely, (a) tlle Arabiccalligraphy of the divine 'Words'tllemselves; (b) the paradisiac syrn-

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boIs of the 'Other World' (the 'Gar­dens', fountains and flowing water,the celestial 'banquet' , the divine'Court', and birds, greenery, fruitsand vegetal life of every sort); and(c) the mysterious divine order ofthe heavens, celestial bodies, thefour elements and the geometric andmathematical patterns underlyingtheir creation and harmonious com­binations. The third basic aestheticfeature reflecting the Koranicmodel-and again in the musical,visual and literary arts alike-is the

essentially contemplative aim of eachof these artistic forms: what is essen­tial in these arts is always what goeson inside each viewer or auditor, themysterious inner shift in awarenessfrom the sensible material, temporalforms in 'this world' Cal-dunya) totheir transcendent Source and Real­ity among the archetypal divineNames. In this respect, as we havealready mentioned, tlle endlesslyvaried musical forms of dhikr-

. whether chanted, sung, or with more"elaborate instrumental accompani­ment-most clearly illustrate the 're-

creation' of essential Koranic struc­tures and intentions that takes morepalpable form in the visual or liter­ary arts.

The fourth essential principleof traditional Islamic aesthetics, fol­lOWing from its contemplative ainl(and likewise clearly mirroring itsKoranic mode!), is the assumption ofthe actively transformational or 'Par- _ticipatorj nature of the spiritualrelationship between the 'creator'(or performer) and their 'audience'.An art whose purpose is the move-

ment from 'thisworld' to thenext, fromspiritual uncon­sciousness to aheightenedawareness ofthe divine SWritand the particu­lar divine At­tributes andActions consti­tuting all ourexperience, isnot likely towork in a pas­sive or unde­manding fash­ion. Such aradically spiri­tual and partici­patory concep­tion forces usto enter a verydifferent worldfrom the wide­spread contem­porary' notionsof the artist's

work as some kind of mediatic 'pro­duction' (whether ideC?logical oreconomic) or simply as anotherdistracting 'entertainment'. As pre­eminently with tlle Koran itself, theadequate appreciation of any of theclassical forms of Islamic art inevi­tably requires us to cross (or at leasttemporarily erase). the imaginedboundaries between what modemculture has come to construe asseparate realms of religious, aes­thetic, ethical, intellectual, personaland communal actiVity and experi­ence. In all honesty, few of us today

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are really used to thinking of-muchless actually living-embroidery, orweaving, or gardening or everydayconversation and storytelling as in­tegral acts of prayer. One strikingindicator of this very different under­standing of the spiritual role of both'artist' and audience in traditionalIslamic cultures is that the closestexpression one could find for thehumanities or fine arts in manyIslamicate languages, adabiyat issimply the plural of adab, a termthat could be very roughly translatedas "the spiritually and ethically ap­propriate attitude and its harmoni­ous expression in right action ineach particular situation.' From thispoint of view, the very act of artisticcreation and appreciation necessar­ily requires an unsettling and de­manding kind of inner surrender,before one can discover the under­lying peace of the deeper, divineharmony to which it leads: in factthose two inseparable aspects of thisexpe~ence of the artist's transform­ing intention--contemplative 'surren­der' and the resulting spiritual'peace'-together are the originalliteral meaning of the Arabic word'islam'.

Y et another fundamental featureof the traditional Islamic arts

and humanities-implicit in each of~ the points mentioned above-was

the typical anonymity of their cre­ators and the pervasiveness of thosecultural forms precisely among themost 'popular' and 'uneducated' el­ements of society. (As a visibleemblem.. of this reality that onceencompassed every area of socialand communal life, one need onlythink of the countless masterpiecesof carpets and textiles woven bywomen from the most diverse tribal~d village settings:) One strikingindication of the' deeper truth of theKoranic perspective is the way thatthe actual concrete realization ofthese essential spiritual virtues,whether in the 'arts' or any otherarea of human life, seems to haveremarkably little to do with the formallearning and 'official' religious ide­ologies of the past or present.

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The Arabic language has asingularly expressive term, il;Jsan,for describing this unique God-givencapacity for actually perceiving, andthen bringing into existence, what isbeautiful-andat the same time trulygood: a single word conveys theinner unity of that living awareness.In tl1e Koran, that rare spiritual vir­tue is connected above all to God'sspecial love for the prophets or themost accomplished saints, in a waythat may inevitably seem far re­moved from our own ordinary, so­cially constructed conceptions ofeither good or beauty. But in afamous Prophetic l;Jadith that is stillWidely used as a sort of catechismin many parts of the Islamic worldtoday, Mu1)ammad describes the truenature of ihsan in terms that clearlysuggest the most characteristic pIjn­ciples of Islamic art: the harmoniousmarriage of aesthetic, ethical andintellectual perceptions and demandswithin their unifying spiritual Sourceand Aim.

The l;Jadith itself recounts theMessenger's replies to three ques­tions posed by a mysterious white­robed stranger, who he eventuallyidentifies for his companions as theangel "Gabriel, who came to teachthe people their Religion" (Din, the

,primordial relationship between thesoul and its Creator). Nothing moreclearly highlights the culminating andguiding role of aesthetic perceptionand creation-and the essentiallyspiritual understanding of the artist'sactivity-Within this tradition. Thestranger's first two questions areabout the intellectual and ethico­ritual dimensions of religion, whichthe Prophet answers by summariz-

. ing the objects of faith and theessential religious obligations ofmonotheism, prayer, charity andfas~g. Then Gabriel asks him "Whatis il;Jsan?", the perception and real­ization of what is truly beautiful andgood. Mu1)ammad's reply is usuallytranslated as "To serve God as thoughyou see Him; and even if you didnot see Him, surely He sees you."But the last part of his reply can alsobe translated even more revealin°gly:"...and if you are not, then you do

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see Him..." This art has accomplishedits purpose when its viewer (orlistener) disappears in the contem­plation of that divine Beauty.

T he Islamic arts and humanitieshave their genesis, in every

cultural and social setting, in theongoing spiritual obligation to com­municate the primordial message ofthe Koran (including that of all theearlier prophets and messengers) inways that can effectively touch andtransform the lives and souls of eachhuman being. From that perspective,the recorded teachings of the Prophetand the Imams (including the l;Jadithwe have just recounted) ~re reallythe first Islamic exemplars of that , .necessarily ongoing creative process'of teaching and transformation. Anawareness of the fundamental spiri-­tual necessity of that process, and ofits indispensable preconditions atany time, suggests rather differentperspectives and agendas from thoseso loudly and vociferously pro­claimed by the modem 'defenders'(and detractors) of religion.

Another way of opening upthose forgotten perspectives is toreflect more deeply on just what itwas that enabled the master of Shirazto compress everything we havediscussed-and so much more-intothese few lines:

The Musician/Composer ofLove has a wondrousinstrument and song:

The impression of each chord(S)he strikesl has its wayto a Place.

May the world never be without the lament of lovers-­

Such a beautifully harmoniousand joy-giving melody2

it has!

Notes1. Also: "each veil(S)he removes/sets up...2. AlsQ: 'intention' and 'air, atmosphere'.

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