Journal of the History of Ideas

Why Islamic art has the distinctive features it has continues to generate clashing explanations. The Islamic visual treasury has no figural images, for instance, and three-dimensional sculpture or large scale oil painting, but instead contains miniatures, vegetal ornaments, arabesque surface patterns, and complex geometrical designs. To account for the phenomena the following radically opposing theories have been offered: the influence of Judaism, the Quranic prohibition against making images, ¹ Islamic resentment of the glory of Byzantine icons, ² logocentricism of classical Islam, ³ the spiritual dimension of Islam, ⁴ tacit Islamic assertion of “otherness,” ⁵ and contingency of history. ⁶ The merits of these theories have been roundly discussed in the literature, and so I will not repeat the task here. I will insist that none of these theories offer a coherent explanation for all arts, but my presumption is that such an explanation is possible. In nonvisual arts the Muslim prefers simple tunes over that of the symphony, for instance, whirling dervishes over the ballet, and lyric poetry over dramatic literature. In my view what explains the common characteristic of all these arts is a certain kind of Islamic attitude informed by a certain philosophical outlook. Although it would be hasty to suggest the existence of a monolithic [End Page 683] Islamic art, it would be equally rash to deny some striking commonalities among its diverse examples. ⁷

The following observation by a Muslim scholar is notable in this regard: “Whether in the great courtyard of the Delhi Mosque or the Qarawiyyin in Fez, one feels oneself within the same artistic and spiritual universe despite all the local variations in material, structural techniques, and the like.” ⁸ Some cite geometry as what mediates that feeling to the observer despite the cultural divergences in style. ⁹ Even those who have given up the search for the universal or the spiritual in Islamic art cannot help but see in it the classical ideal of beauty. ¹⁰ It is this classical heritage that in fact holds one of the important keys to the puzzle at hand. In particular I shall claim that Islamic art is the living image of what Plato has in mind for art in a theocratic state. Clearly, to refer to Plato and art in the same breath invites trouble. As is well enough known, giving a general interpretation of Plato’s views on the nature of art is a very complex endeavor. ¹¹ Even in the face of grave difficulties in textual exegesis, however, there is sufficient evidence that Plato has some settled views on art. Those pertinent to our discussion here involve two claims, that beauty and goodness are divine and that all human endeavor (including artistic creation) must imitate the divine. ¹² Although Platonic strain in Islam has been noted in other areas, its persistent legacy has been overlooked in art. ¹³ I shall argue that the Platonic influence on Islamic thought can be traced not only to political philosophy ¹⁴ and geometry, ¹⁵ as it has been commonly accepted, but also aesthetics. ¹⁶ A philosophical explanation of the Islamic attitude toward art may therefore be derivable from the Platonic axiom that god is the paradigm of beauty, which is the cosmological principle of [End Page 684] order and harmony; and as all created things, art, too, must reflect the divine paradigm.

Before defending this ahistorical hypothesis on the character of Islamic art so reviled in recent literature, a few caveats are in order. “Islamic art” contains redundant terms. Strictly speaking all art in Islam is “Islamic,” because for the Muslim art is a crucial point of contact with the divine. That art should direct the mind to the divine is also Plato’s view. ¹⁷ Second, the categories that have traditionally been used to describe Islamic art such as “aniconic” and “nonrepresentational” are unhelpful for the problem at hand. ¹⁸ When it comes to the issue of iconography in Islamic arts, there is no consensus, for Islamicists are notably divided on the semiotic dimension of the Islamic visual language. The question of whether the geometric surface pattern is essentially iconography, for instance, is yet...