This is my interpretation of the miraj,
which refers to the ‘night journey’ in which the Prophet Muhammad was
transported from Mecca to Jerusalem and then upwards, towards heaven. It is a copper plate etching that features plenty of aquatint, to give it the starry sky effect.
According to legend, the Prophet was
transported on the back of a winged horse-like creature with the head of a
woman, called al-Buraq. The creature bears comparison with the winged monsters of ancient Babylonian and Persian mythology, which often served as guardian figures. Indeed, Muslim historians made this connection. When Ibn Balkhi visited Persepolis in the 12th century, he associated the bearded bull monsters at the gateway of Xerxes palace with al-Buraq. For this depiction, I have followed the convention, observed by most
medieval Persian and Ottoman miniature painters, of veiling the Prophet’s head,
which is encircled by a fiery nimbus.
The image that I worked from was this
wonderful 17th century Safavid painting, in which the Prophet is
seen raised above a flurry of clouds into the angelic realm, with Gabriel as
his guide, against a starry moonlit sky, and surrounded by a sacred flame. The
ornately curved cloud shapes and delicate flames licking around the Prophet’s
form shows the stylistic influence of Eastern-Chinese painting on Persian art.
However, the tradition of Persian miniature painting developed into something
very unique. It is a flat, largely abstract way of panting which balances luminous
colour, shape and decoration, to
create a type of dream world. As Oleg Grabar, a scholar of Islamic art
points out, human figures do not enjoy the centrality that is given to them in
Western art but appear as one amongst many pictorial elements within an
overall design. I was also thinking of Tiepolo’s ceiling frescos, and his
amazing underside views of flying horses.
Included as well is a more stylized
interpretation of this theme, which I made for an unfinished comic book.
