Closer To God

By Douglas Britt, *Shining light on art of Islamic mysticism* - Houston Chronicle - Houston, TX, USA
Wednesday, May 13, 2010

“You should see the celebration that they do for the death of Rumi,” said Francesca Leoni, MFAH [Museum of Fine Arts, Houston]  assistant curator of the Arts of the Islamic World. “It's everything but mourning because it's a moment of joy. It's the moment in which your earthly boundaries are finally over, and your spiritual dimensionality reaches back to the source — to the unity that was at the beginning of time.”

Leoni is coordinating the MFAH's presentation of Light of the Sufis: The Mystical Arts of Islam with Ladan Akbarnia, who organized a smaller version of the exhibition last summer at the Brooklyn Museum.

The first exhibit at the MFAH to be devoted to Sufism, it features mosque lighting furnishings ; attributes and representations of Sufi mystics; illustrated, illuminated and laser-etched manuscripts of Sufi poetry; and contemporary works inspired by Sufi principles and practices. The objects date from the ninth century to the present.

For example, an untitled 1998 etching by Pouran Jinchi, an Iranian-born, New York-based artist, quotes verses by the 14th-century poet Shams al-Din Muhammad Hafiz-i Shirazi but arranges the words in a swirling composition of contorted strokes.

Including contemporary art in the mix was an unconventional choice. What is traditionally called Islamic art dates from the beginning of Islam in 622 to the 1920s, which witnessed the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the end of the Qajar dynasty.

“For whatever reason, academics are kind of reluctant in talking about an Islamic artistic tradition after these big empires' fall,” Leoni said. “But the question is: OK, what defines Islamic? How do you use this term? And hasn't the Islamic world continued to produce art that is ultimately inspired by Islamic ideas or inspired by Islamic visual practices that had been rooted and developed in the centuries before? That's what (Akbarnia) was, in a way, trying to challenge by incorporating works by contemporary artists.”

Another bone of contention is Sufism's place within Islam.

“It developed as a sort of heterodox form of devotion, which did not always respect the limits of orthodoxy,” Leoni said. “The most fundamentalist fringes of Islam may be the least inclined to recognize this phenomenon as part of Islam altogether. So there is an ambivalent attitude toward Sufism, but I can assure you that probably 90 percent of Muslims would recognize this experience as the mystical side of Islam, much as Christians (recognize) monasticism, which took forms that were not necessarily (widely) shared.”

The exhibit takes light — symbolizing both God and enlightenment — as its overarching theme while exploring how Sufi ideas are physically embodied by artworks or affect their production. For example, the verses in a ninth- or 10th-century Folio from the “Blue Qur'an” are written in gold on blue parchment, creating a luminous effect. A 14th-century mosque lamp is inscribed with part of Ayat al-Nur [24:40], which is known as “the Light Verse” of the Quran.

It also includes depictions of various Sufi mystics including Whirling Dervishes, whose prayer and ritual dances produce rhythmic movements and ecstatic moods meant to bring practitioners closer to God.

Picture: *Zulaykha's maids entertain Yusuf in the garden*, page from a dispersed illustrated manuscript of Yusuf and Zulaykha of Jami; Iran, c. 1575; Opaque watercolors, ink, and gold on paper. Smithsonian Institution.