[Redbook9:81][19910412:0905e][Isaac and Ishmael][12th April 1991]
19910412:0905
[continued]
‘In Muhammad’s view, the Ka’bah had been dedicated to the aniconic worship of one God (Allāh) by Abraham, who fathered the ancestor of the Israelites, Ishāq (Isaac), as well as the ancestor of the Arabs, Ismā’īl (Ishmael).’
*
*– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22: 106]
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[Redbook9:80][19910412:0905d][Time & Chance v Reward & Punishment][12th April 1991]
19910412:0905
[continued]
‘In place of time or chance, which the Arabs assumed to [sic] govern their destiny,* Muhammad installed a final reward or punishment based on individual actions.’
**
*Did they? Do we?
**– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:] 106
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[Redbook9:80][19910412:0905c]{The Trinity of Allah’s Daughters}[12th April 1991]
19910412:0905
[continued]
‘Where more complex settlement patterns had developed, however, widely shared deities had already emerged, such as the [pre-Islamic] “trinity” of Allāh’s “daughters” known as al-Lāt, Manāt, and al-‘Uzzāh.’*
**
*
?
|
R~ |
G~ |
|
|
J~ |
**– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:] 105
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[Redbook9:80][19910412:0905b]{The Kabah}[12th April 1991]
19910412:0905
[continued]
*‘The [pre-Islamic] Ka’bah housed the deities of visitors as well as the Meccans’ super-tribal creator and covenant-guaranteeing deity, called Allāh. Most Arabs probably viewed this deity as one among many, possessing powers not specific to a particular tribe; others may have identified this figure with the God of the Jews and Christians.’
**
*[Under the pre-Islamic Quraysh clans]
**– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:] 104
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[Redbook9:80][19910412:0905][The pace of change, and personal reflection][12th April 1991]
19910412:0905
‘In such town-and-country complexes [as Sumer from the 4th millennium BCE]* the pace of change quickened enough so that a well-placed individual might see the effect of his actions in his own lifetime and be stimulated to self-criticism and moral reflection of an unprecedented sort.’
**
*[square brackets per ms, indicating insertion in ms]
**– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica] 22:103
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[Redbook9:79][19910411:1858d]{The Pole}[11th April 1991]
.1858
[continued]
‘The idea of the hierarchy of saints, culminating in the qutb, the polar axis,* thanks to whose activities the world keeps going, belongs to the mythology of Sūfīsm (Islamic mysticism)’**
***
*{
|
C |
|
/ |
| |
\ |
|
| |
|
}
**[See above, [Redbook9:63][19910409:2243]{[Islamic] Mysticism}[9th April 1991]&ff;
& esp [Redbook9:64-67][19910410:1202]{The Path (Tariqah)}[10th April 1991]ff]
***– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:41]
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[Redbook9:79][19910411:1858c]{Khidr}[11th April 1991]
.1858
[continued]
‘Almost every figure mentioned in the Qur’ān has become the centre of a circle of legends, be it Yūsuf, the symbol of overwhelming beauty, or Jesus with the life-giving breath,* the model of poverty and asceticism. Of special interest is Khidr,** identified with the unnamed companion of Moses (Qur’ān, surah 20). He is the patron saint of the wayfarers,*** connected with green, the colour of heavenly bliss, appearing whenever a pious person is in need, and immortal since he drank from the fountain of life, which is hidden in the darkness. In many respects, he is the Islamic counterpart of Elijah.**** Strong influences of the Alexander romances (a widely distributed literary genre dealing with the adventures of Alexander the Great) are visible in his figure.’#
#*
*{ref [[Redbook9:73-74][19910411:0935l]{[Islamic] Aniconism}[11th April 1991],] 73}
**{[[Redbook9:66][19910410:1202g]{The Path (Tariqah) [continued (7)]}[10th April 1991],] 66}
***C Chris†opher Raphael
(Israfil)
****{(cf also r~, g~)}
#(See also [Encyclopaedia Britannica] Micropaedia entry [ref next fn=#*]) <930131>
#*– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:41]
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[Redbook9:78-79][19910411:1858b]{The Seven Spheres}[11th April 1991]
.1858
[continued]
‘Often the world is conceived as a succession of seven heavens and seven earths, and a popular tradition says that the earth is on water, on a rock, on the back of a bull, on a kamkam (meaning unknown), on a fish, on water, on the wind, on the veil of darkness – hence the Persian expression az māh tā, māhī, from the moon to the fish, ie throughout the whole world.’
*
‘Muhammad rode the winged horse Burāq in the company of the angel Gabriel through the seven spheres, meeting the other prophets there, until he reached the divine presence, alone, without even the angel of inspiration.’
**
*– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:40]
**– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:] 41
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[Redbook9:78][19910411:1858]{The Mahdi}[11th April 1991]
.1858
*
‘The end of the world will be announced by the coming of the Mahdī (literally, “the directed or guided one”) – a messianic figure who will appear in the last days and is not found in the Qur’ān but developed out of Shī’ah speculations and [is] sometimes identified with Jesus. The Mahdī will slay the Dajjāl, the one-eyed evil spirit, and combat the dangerous enemies, Yājūj and Mājūj,** who will come from the north of the earth. The trumpet of Isrāfīl, one of the four archangels, will awaken the dead for the day of resurrection, which is many thousands of years long and the name of which has come to designate a state of complete confusion and turmoil.’***
****
*(Took [d] & [s] for their first swimming lesson today)
**(Gog & Magog, presumably)
└→ Ez[e]k[iel] 38-39;
R[e]v[elations] 20)
VII [[Redbook7:341][19900928:1605]{Calculations of Redemption}[28th September 1990]]: 341;
II [[Redbook2:158-160][19791123:1850]{Religious Prophecy}[23rd November 1979]]: 158B-C
***{cf [[Redbook9:88][19910413:1056d]{Mahdis}[13th April 1991],] 88,
[[Redbook9:95][19910413:1056#]{The Expected Mahdi}[13th April 1991],] 95}
****– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:] 40
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[Redbook9:77][19910411:0935o]{The Romantic Wilderness [in Islam and elsewhere]}[11th April 1991]
19910411.0935
[continued]
The description of the Arab genius* contrasts interestingly ** with the characteristics of the Islamic religion – but there is a parallel with the British Celtic races, characterised as imaginative and (by more stolid citizens) illogical, and their relatively recent adoption of the harder extremes of Christianity, such as Calvinism.
There is another parallel: the Wilderness, in which (desert or mountain) both Arab and British Celt lived. I know from experience that such Wilderness both unlocks the imaginative well-springs of the mind, yet [sic] requires greater*** self-discipline (in work, for example) if one is to live off it.**** Perhaps Islam and Chapel alike are evolutionary cultural responses to an environmental stimulus which if unchecked by them, threatens physical survival? There are, of course, at once numerous exceptions....
*[See last previous ts entry]
**{But see [[[Redbook9:102][19910414:1104]{Islamic Art – The Word (2)}[14th April 1991],]] 102}
***[than do easier lands, presumably]
****(ref ↑ Vol[ume](s) [] ….)
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[Redbook9:76-77][19910411:0935n]{[Literature in Islam [continued] – Poetry]}[11th April 1991]
19910411.0935
[continued]
‘Poetry lent itself particularly well to this device, which was freely used in panegyrics, satires, and lyrics. As a form of of effective expression, poetry is eminently characteristic of the East. *|The Arab genius is almost natively poetical with its strong and vivid imagination not easily amenable to the rigorous order that reason imposes on the mind.|* This borderline attitude between the real and the unreal was particularly favourable to the development, in all medieval Islamic literatures of the Middle East, ** of the lyric and panegyric forms of poetry wherein every line is a self-contained unit. Much more importantly, it afforded a specially suitable vehicle for a type of mystic poetry in which it is sometimes impossible to determine whether the poet is talking of earthly love or spiritual love. For the same reason, poetry proved an effective haven for thinly veiled deviations from and even attacks on the literalist religion of the orthodox.’
***
*|{cf [[Redbook9:102][19910414:1104]{Islamic Art – The Word (2)}[14th April 1991],] 102}|*
**{c[ontra]
[[[Redbook9:102][19910414:1104]{Islamic
Art – The Word (2)}[14th April 1991],]
] 102}
***– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:] 38-39
[Single paragraph in source & ms split between last previous ts entry & this one]
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[Redbook9:76-77][19910411:0935m]{[Literature in Islam]}[11th April 1991]
19910411.0935
[continued]
‘In literature, drama and pure fiction were not allowed* – drama because it was a representational art and fiction because it was akin to lying. Similar constraints operated against the elaboration of mythology.... Story literature was tolerated,** and the great story works of Indian origin – The Thousand and One Nights and Kalīlah wa Dimnah – were translated from the Persian, introducing secular prose into Arabic. Didactic and pious stories were used and even invented by popular preachers. Much of this folklore found its way back into enlarged editions of the Thousand and One Nights and, through it, has even influenced later history writing. Because of the ban on fictional literature, there grew a strong tendency in later literary compositions – in both poetry and prose – towards hyperbole (mubālaghah), a literary device to satisfy the need of getting away from what is starkly real without committing literal falsehood, thus [sic] often resulting in the caricature and the grotesque.
***
*{→?←**}
[Perhaps story as in history, ie believed to be a true account?]
**[See fn=* above]
***– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:] 38
[Single paragraph in source & ms split between this ts entry & next]
[continued]
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[Redbook9:75][19910411:0935l]{[Music in Islam]}[11th April 1991]
19910411.0935
[continued]
*‘Instrumental music was forbidden by the orthodox in the formative stages of Islam. As for vocal music, its place was largely taken by a sophisticated and artistic form of the recitation of the Qu’rān known as tajwīd. Nevertheless, the Muslim princely courts generously patronised and cultivated music. Arab music was influenced by Persian and Greek music. Al-Fārābī, a 10th-century philosopher, is credited with having constructed a musical instrument called the arghanum (organ). In India, Amīr Khosrow, a fourteenth-century poet and mystic, produced a synthesis of Indian and Persian music and influenced the development of later Indian music.
‘Among the religious circles, the Sūfīs introduced both vocal and instrumental music as part of their spiritual practices. The samā, as this music was called, was opposed by the orthodox at the beginning, but the Sūfīs persisted in this practice, which slowly won recognition. The great Sūfī poet Jalālad-Dīn ar-Rūmī (died 1273[ce])** – revered equally by the orthodox and the Sūfīs – heard the divine voice in his stringed musical instrument when he said “Its head, its veins (strings) and it skin are all dry and dried; whence comes to me the voice of the Friend?”’
***
*{cf [[Redbook9:117-121][19910415:0840#]{[Islamic] Music}[15th April 1991],] 117ff}
**{2048J~1280CE}
***– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:] 38
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[Redbook9:74][19910411:0935l]{[Islamic] Aniconism [continued]}[11th April 1991]
19910411.0935
[continued]
*The ‘certain kind of poetry’** sounds (in the Qur’ānic description)** very much like romantic poetry, which – given the provisional C[ircles] A[nalysis and] S[ynthesis] attribution of realistic art to (around) the G~ degree – makes some C[ircles] A[nalysis and] S[ynthesis] sense of the Islamic dislike of both.
(On the other hand it was not realistic art that Hitler despised,*** but the (?)next stage of breakdown: he thought he supported realistic art, although we regard the art he and the Soviets supported as formula-ized [sic].)
*{cf ↓[]}
**[See last previous ts entry, final sentence]
***{ref [[Redbook9:9][19910326:2315b]{Fascism and Art [(1)]}[26th March 1991],]9}
[& [Redbook9:19][19910331:1706b]{Fascism and Art (2)}[31st March 1991],]
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[Redbook9:73-74][19910411:0935l]{[Islamic] Aniconism}[11th April 1991]
19910411.0935
[continued]
‘The most important principle governing [Muslim]* art was aniconism; i.e., the religious prohibition of figurisation and representation of living creatures. Underlying this prohibition is the assumption that God is the sole author of life and that a person who produces a likeness of a living being seeks to rival God. The tradition ascribed to the Prophet that a person who makes a picture of a living thing will be asked on the Day of Judgement to infuse life into it, whether historically genuine or not, doubtless represents the original attitude of Islām. In the Qur’ān (3:49, 5:113), reflecting an account in a New Testament apocryphal work, it is counted among the miracles of Jesus that he made likenesses of birds from clay **|“by God’s order”, and, when he breathed into them, they became real birds, again, “by God’s order”.|**
‘Hence, in Islamic aniconism two considerations are fused together: (1) rejection of such images that might become idols (these may be images of anything) *** and (2) rejection of figures of living things. Plato and Plotinus, Greek philosophers, had also dismissed representative art as an “imitation of nature”; ie, as something removed from reality. The Islamic attitude is more or less the same, with the added element of attributing to the artist a violation of the sanctity of the principle of life. The same explanation holds for the Qur’ānic criticism of a certain kind of poetry, namely, free indulgence in extravagant image-mongering: “They [poets]* recklessly wander in every valley.” (26:225).’
****
*[square brackets per ms, indicating insertion in ms]
**|{NB}|**
***cf G[e]n[esis]
([The] 10 Commandments)
[Prohibition of graven images; actually Exodus, Deuteronomy]
****– ibid. [Encyclopaedia Britannica 22:] 38
(which goes on to state that pictures were tolerated in in some private apartments and harems of palaces, particularly with the Shī’ah; combined with other ornamental designs; or, in the case of plastic art, in low relief.)
[continued]
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