ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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The representation in the arts of Islam, that is, the production of figurative images of living beings (animal and human), and in particular of prophets, including Mohammed, is the subject of complex debates in Islamic civilization, at the intersection of artistic, religious, social, political and philosophical factors.

Produced in the Islamic world between Hegira (622) and , the arts of Islam are the result of a culture influenced by the Muslim religion. As a religion of the Book, Islam is a continuation of the Judaic tradition of aniconism. Yet, while animal and human representations are, with a few exceptions, still absent from Muslim religious spaces and objects (mosqués, Korans, religious furniture), many are found in objects produced in the Islamic world. Whether they are secular or religious works other than Islam, these figurative representations have existed since the origins of Islamic civilization. They are of a wide variety: animals, court characters, genre scenes, religious characters like Mohammed, etc. God, on the other hand, is never represented in a figurative form.

Muslim conceptions, however, were able to guide the development of the arts of Islam, giving first place to calligraphy, limiting sculptures in three dimensions, or favouring a stylization aesthetic. The development of Sufism, then European influence from the period of the three empires, on the contrary, favored more realistic representations: the appearance of portrait, model, perspective.

The question of the legitimacy of representation in the arts of Islam is central to the history of the arts of Islam. It was approached from the beginning of the discipline, especially after the discovery of the frescoes of the baths of Qusair Amra in the 1890s. Georges Marcais published a founding article on the subject in 1932, but other researchers, both Western and Muslim, also looked at the subject: K.A.C. Creswell, Ahmad Muhammad Isa, and B. Farès, who highlighted the existence of a "flash of images" in the , or more recently, in G.R.D. King. Finally, some researchers have approached the issue from a more philosophical perspective.

The image in religious texts
The great religious texts, which are also the sources of Islamic jurisprudence in Islam, all share very little attention to the problem of image. There is no statement equivalent to the Bible:

The Qur'an

. However, several verses could be highlighted by theologians, especially from the .

These extracts show that the fear of the image is above all that of idolatry. A parallel interpretation is found in the Jewish religion. This fear of idolatry