Soul At Rest: Death in Islamic Art
Pauper or pasha, serf or soldier, merchant or mullah — all are equal in death, according to Islam. In the Qur’an, Allah created both life and death. Therefore, in Islam, death is not only a fact of life: it is the subject of beliefs, rituals, and art.
This exhibition will delve into how death was interpreted in Islam from the 14th to 17th centuries. Between illustrated manuscripts and tombstones, these relics will show how the early modern Islamic culture defined and interpreted death.
Written history is one of the ways that humans have connected to the past for centuries. In this exhibit, the Mantiq al-Tayr manuscript will be focused on. Specifically, the manuscripts panel focused on a funeral procession from a bird’s perspective. This unique manuscript shows the different struggles that humans face from a third-parties point of view. The "Funeral Procession" folio will be focused on due to it's connection to the topic of how death is handled in the Islamic community.
Additionally, the folio painting depicting the mourning scene over the death of Iskandar (Alexander the Great), found in the famous illustrated manuscript The Great Mongol Shahnama, will be showcased. Through prominent grief displayed throughout the painting, and the abundance of luxury materials in a glorified interior setting, the viewer is able to better understand the widespread impact that Iskandar’s death had on the Islamic community.
While “Islamic art” can refer to art by Muslims for Muslims, it can also apply to art with looser connections to Islam, such as the incorporation of Islamic iconography in Ottoman Jewish tombstones. Treatment of Jewish people in the early modern Muslim world was not uniform: some were embraced, some were tolerated, some were forced to convert, and some were driven out. In the Ottoman Empire, Jewish people were generally accepted and considered dhimmi, or non-Muslims granted protection by the state. As dhimmi, Jewish people’s appropriation of Islamic iconography in their tombstone art may have been the result of friendly cultural exchange rather than forced assimilation. This exhibit examines the tombstones of three Ottoman Jewish women in the 16th and 17th centuries in the greater context of their community.