Aniconism in Islam

The prohibition of images in Islam is the result of in the Islamic tradition, literature and jurisprudence controversial debate on the legitimacy of pictorial representations of people and animals, both in the secular and the religious field. The Arabic term for pictorial representations is sura, Pl Suwar / صورة, صور / Sura, Pl Suwar /, image, drawing, figure, statue ' and timthal, Pl tamathil / تمثال, تماثيل / timṯāl, Pl. tamāṯīl /, illustration, statue ', the latter mostly in three dimensions.

The Koran and pictorial representations

The Koran contains no prohibition of images. In some Quran verses, God is presented as the greatest sculptor and creator: Sura 3, verse 6; Sura 7, verse 11; Sura 40, verse 67 in Surah 59, verse 24, God praised as " the creator, creators and designers ." In the Koran exegesis the above passages of the Koran are not associated with a prohibition of images, it is about God's attributes and His almighty creative power. A claim for a ban on images is not to be derived.

Moreover, in the context in Islamic theological literature cited more often Sura 5, verse 90 and Sura 6, verse 74, but obviously not directed itself than against their worship and thus against polytheism and idolatry images. Effectiveness and compliance with the Islamic prohibition against images are available yet up to the present, but rather are derived basically from the collections of traditions because of the revelation from Scripture. " Especially in the sacral area, that is, in the mosques and in the manuscripts of the Koran, can be found virtually no images of living beings. "

Bishr Farès finally pointed out that about al - Qurtubi had claimed in his Tafseer Ahkam al -Qur ʾ ān, the prohibition of the production of images is possible to manufacture due to single Koranic stories like that, after Solomon was had by the jinn sculptures and Jesus pigeons have formed from clay, in order to subsequently bring to life was not without controversy.

Iconoclasm or prohibition in the Hadith literature

The first written document handed down against pictorial representations is detectable only in the hadith literature in the late 8th century, in the Muwatta ʾ al - Muwatta '/ الموطأ of Malik ibn Anas. As Umm Habiba and Umm Salama - two wives of Muhammad - Mariya about the Church of Abyssinia and the local pictorial representations of the Prophet, reported shortly before his death, he replied that according to tradition:

"If under which a pious man dies they build a place of worship over his grave and bring it to these images. Such people are before God on the Day of Resurrection the worst of creatures. "

With the emergence of the canonical hadith collections, whose authors have died 870-915, even more sayings of Muhammad came into circulation, the opposite pictorial representations brought his personal dislike for expression. Even in the four books of Shia can be iconoclastic traditions find. A well characterized and demanded punishment for the production and use of pictorial representations in this world, however, is not recorded in the Hadith; the threatened only in the hereafter punishment in hell is to deter the people from the pictures and sculptures from the production or possession of the same. The German Orientalist Rudi Paret has compiled some hadiths with similar, pictures hostile content and presented the possible time of origin of the discussions on the prohibition of images in Islamic scholarly circles in a study devoted to this question. On the basis of the canonical collections of traditions he assembles fourteen tradition variants that are more or less speak for a ban on images and document the discussions.

Temporal classification of Hadithmaterialien arise from the circumstances described there some historically actionable fixed points that are in the dating of the discussion of meaning. The following Hadith Qudsi you updated during the visit at the house of Marwan ibn al - Hakam, were mounted in the pictures. Thereupon the Prophet's companion Abu Hurayrah quoted († 679 ) the saying:

"And who is more unjust than he who is preparing itself to creating a way I can do [God ] ... "

This view, according to which such a creative power is God alone own, is documented several times in the Islamic literature; it is based on the Quran, says in the God of Jesus:

" And (then) as you didst create something with my permission of clay, what looked like birds, and hineinbliesest in them, so that they with my permission ( eventually real ) birds were ... "

The house of Marwan - 662-669 and 674-677 governor of Medina - is known and its construction history is literary. In the same time also leads another tradition:

"Those who manufacture these pictures will be punished on the Day of Resurrection. It will be said to them: '! Power alive what you have created ' ... "

This saying is said to have caused the early Koranexegeten Mujahid ibn Dschabr († 722), reprehensible even explaining the pictorial representation of fruit-bearing trees and to establish its view Qudsi with the above hadith: "And who is more unjust than he who is preparing to to create as I (God) create ... "

Another tradition that is handed down several times in the canonical collections of traditions, is related in content to the above hadith:

" From the person who makes an image of the Resurrection will be required on the day that he breathes his breath of life ( RUH). That he is but can not do. "

The Melkite theologian Theodore Abū Qurra ( † about 820 ) quotes this saying almost verbatim.

Overall, discussed by Paret Hadith thus provide evidence to inform the debate about the ban already in the last decades of the seventh and beginning of the 8th century. However, the stand " does not preclude that details of the implementation rules have been discussed and decided only in the later legal literature, such as the question of what degree of destruction of the image of a living organism not covered by the ban. " Creswell and Graber put the beginning of the discussion of a ban on images, however, only in the late second half of the 8th century.

Historical documentation

The famous historian al-Tabari, whose work falls in the late 9th century, reported by older sources that after the Arab conquest of Ctesiphon (al- Mada'in ) the commander Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas the abandoned, magnificent palace of the Sassanid ruler ( Kisra ) entered and by reciting a Koranic point (Sura 44, verse 25-26) expressed his admiration for the porticoes expressed.

"Then he performed there the morning prayer, not the congregational prayer, but prayed eight Körperverbeugungen ( ruku ʿ ) in succession. He made the place ( thus ) to a place of prayer, reflecting plaster figures, infantry and horsemen were. Neither he nor the ( other ) Muslims have taken umbrage, they beließen ( the figures) as they were. Sa'd finished the prayer on the day when he entered the (city ), because he wanted to reside there. The first Friday prayers, the one performed in Iraq for all (Muslims ), in Ctesiphon in Safar of the year was 16 "( March 637). "

According to this report, there were at the time of the first conquests no prohibition of images. For not even the narrators of this event seems to have taken umbrage that their ancestors have created a place that visually depicts an Islamic place of worship. The later assignable fear of pictorial representations is not documented among the first Umayyad; I. under Caliph Mu'awiya - ruled between 661-680 - there are portraits of rulers of Arab coins. Only with the coinage reform in the first half of the 8th century, an iconoclastic attitude prevails gradually. During the last Umayyad coin - under sassanidischem influence - comes with the image of the Caliph Abd al -Malik from the year 703, the coins subsequently carrying only Arabic inscriptions.

The pictorial representation of people took place in two main phases of Islamic history: During the first the Umayyad and early Abbasidenherrschaft between the 7th and 10th centuries includes, began the second under the Fatimids in the 10th/11th. Century and reached its climax in the book painting of the late 12th and 13th centuries in Islamic Mesopotamia.

On 'Abd al -Malik and the initiative to build the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem goes back, which is characterized in the interior by Rank rich elements and mosaics by Byzantine model.

His successor Hisham and al - Walid II reigned 724-744 and the builders of the magnificent Khirbat al - Mafdschar خربة المفجر / Ḫirbatu ʾ l - mafǧar were - " Hisham Palace " called - in Jericho, a desert palace, in turn, with its generous representations in mosaics and sculptures of the most beautiful witnesses of Islamic architecture from the first half of the 8th century counts. Many of the sculptures, the Caliph, half-naked women, hunting scenes, all under Byzantine - or nabatäischem - standing influence, and also parts of the worship Musalla المصلى / al - Musalla are now displayed in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. Another example is Quseir Amra and its frescos of naked women from the same period dar. al - Hakam II (died 976 ) was in Madinat az- zahra ' مدينة الزهراء / madīnatu ʾ ʾ z -Zahra in Cordoba embellished with a human figures up wells.

Also in the interior of the Ka'ba sculptures were erected, which still has himself seen the deceased in the year 736 Meccan scholars ' Ata ' ibn Abi Rabah: the figures of Jesus and Mary are only in the year 692, during the firing of the Ka'ba the " counter- caliph " Abdallah ibn az- Zubair, had been destroyed.

The edict of the Umayyad Yazid ibn ' Abd al -Malik about the destruction of images in Christian churches on its territory in the year 721 or 722 can be seen in the context of the then sparked Byzantine iconoclasm.

The Islamic Jurisprudence

Since neither the Qur'an nor the Hadith literature provide strong evidence for a prohibition of images in Islam, the Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh ) was required to issue legally binding regulations on this issue. The Islamic jurists represented on the pictorial representation of human or animal three, sometimes controversial views:

• Representations are not prohibited, haram, if they are not as objects of religious veneration - are - next to the only God. The representation of God is of course taboo, the description of his attributes and his nature in theological writings is not the subject of jurisprudence.
• Representation of objects, the " cast shadows ", that sculpture is prohibited, drawings of the same on paper, walls, in fabrics, are not prohibited, but reprehensible ( makruh ). If people or animals without head, or not fully shown in other ways, but cast shadows, so they are allowed. The spread in the Middle East and North Africa shadow theater is thus legalized Islamic law, as the figures are perforated and thus no " soul" ( ruh ) may have.
• The representation of living beings, human and animal, is prohibited in all respects.

All three directions can cite appropriate, returned to Muhammad statements as a basis for argumentation for their lesson from the hadith literature.

Several hadiths, both prophetic speeches and statements of the Prophet's companions put in this context with the chess game Shatranj / شطرنج / šaṭranǧ apart. The prohibition of chess is justified, because it figures that cast shadows can be used, and because the game ( lahw ) to distract from the prayer. In contrast, at the time of Saladin newly emerged shadow play is tolerated because the figures " riddled " ( muṯaqqab ) and thus are not living things.

Another object whose representation is banned in Islam, is the Cross ( Salib ) صليب / Salib, the symbol of the Christians. It is not only the symbol of rum, the Byzantines, the enemies of Islam, but is on the day of resurrection of Isa bin Maryam destroy itself - it is, at least in several returned to the Prophet Hadith in the canonical collections of traditions. The Prophet is, further, according to traditions let the cross in his surroundings and the patterns of the same from garments, probably passes through Christian merchants were among the Arabs, have to remove.

The same mentality is possible to express in a hadith Ahmad ibn Hanbal obtained in, where you can talk Mohammed as follows:

" God has sent me as a mercy and guidance to mankind and told me to destroy the wind and string instruments, the idols, the cross and the jahiliyyah - mores. "

Even in the earliest writings of Islamic jurisprudence, the public display of the Cross by living under Islamic rule non-Muslim population in the urban areas of the Muslims is prohibited shari'a - law.

As pictorial representations of people, animals and objects, the " shadow ", the Muslim can not produce cross, not order its production or trade.

In general it can be said that the visual depiction is the more avoided in art and architecture, the

• Closer to the building or work of art is the religious sphere (eg the mosque and their inventory ),
• Faith- strict the environment (client, artist, ruler ) is in the works or art is created,
• Is the area accessible to more people, in which a building or work of art is located.

One can assume that "the prohibition of images, which was indeed handed down by theologians, put in legal and monitored within certain limits, especially in religious art has been observed: especially of course in mosques, but also in other public buildings, continue on grave stones and when it comes to book art, in manuscripts of the Koran. " This is true, however, with some restrictions. In one acquired in Istanbul in 1930 Quran copy multiple pictures are obtained. The unknown copyist who prepared the book in 1816, was a student of a certain Damad ʿ ʿ Uthman Afif Zadeh († 1804). The black and white drawings have been added to the text of the Koran and later provide episodes from the life of Muhammad among his companions dar.

That of an absolute prohibition of images in Islam can be no question, show many examples in Islamic art: reception rooms, palaces and bathing facilities are in the secular construction nor to imagine how in the devotional literature ( adab ), for example, without pictorial representations in the Makamen of al -Hariri, or fable Kalila wa Dimna work. In medical and scientific works from the Arab- Islamic culture, the representation of living beings is also common.

Islamic Images of Mohammed

The depiction of the prophet is assessed throughout Islamic culture differently. In connection with the importance of the word, as if the carrier revelation leads the avoidance of pictorial representations to the exceptional role of writing (calligraphy ) and ornament in Islamic art. Here is the Scripture itself often for jewelry or ornaments are designed in writing similar.

Images of Mohammed are therefore rare; they are found mainly paintings as a book in Persian and Ottoman manuscripts. Images of this type first appeared in the second half of the 13th century in the kingdom of Mongol Ilkhanate to Islam. Muhammad's night journey was a very popular motif. Initially, the pictures showed a representation of Muhammad's face, often surrounded by a halo or a flaming aureole; From the 16th century was gone to hide his face behind a veil of piety or portray Mohammed only as a flame. The illuminations were not part of public life, but served the private edification of rulers and wealthy cartridges that could make for these images. In Iran, however, one finds today popular images of Mohammed, which are sold as postcards or posters.

Islamic iconoclasm

In the history of iconoclastic destruction of sacred works of art of other religions were held by Muslims. Examples in the present are the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan and frescoes as well as exhibits of Buddhist religion of the museum in Kabul by Islamist -motivated terrorist attacks by the Taliban in 2001. Talibanische militias attacked in 2007 with explosives in northwestern Pakistan re- millennia-old Buddha statues of the Gandhara culture, among others at Manglore and Jehanabad.