4 Seeing with the Heart
If‘art’designates a category of objects, then the Quran says nothing about
art. Yet to delineate‘art’through modern concepts limits our understand-
ing of the past. While the Quran does not discuss painting or sculpture,
many of its passages address concepts central to art: sensory appreciation;
materiality; value; and representation of the divine. Although the Quran is
often conceived as the foundation of Islamic law, only around 500 of its
6,236 verses are consulted for jurisprudence.^1 That leaves 5,726 verses
informing otherwise. For the Quran is not only a book consulted for
instructions about how to live Islamically. Rather, its recitation brings to
life the sonic presence of the divine word. It does not simply describe the
sensory relationships between the human, the world, and the divine, it
activates them. It has everything to do with art–perhaps because it has
nothing to say about it.
A secular art-historical method foregrounds the Quran as an object:
stylistically, medially, and paleographically. Yet the mythology of its emer-
gence and its history as an expression of faith and identity are central to its
engagement with perceptual culture. These, in turn, are indivisible from its
historical emergence in the world of late antiquity, from which it inherited
premises about perception and mimesis.
The Quran is not simply a book or a scripture. Within a spiritual
framework, it clarifies the divine for the world. It embodies multiple
simultaneous states of being as a physical book, the concept of the book,
and the word of God translated for humankind. It was not only read, but
frequently memorized, making each passage continually available. This is
reflected in the ubiquitous references to it woven through a vast array of
literary texts, images, objects, architecture, and speech. Permeating every-
day life, the Quran functions as a lens for experience. It offers two paths to
understanding the Islam in Islamic art: through its own ontology traver-
sing object, text, and sound; and in its statements about the world our
senses inhabit.(^1041) Ahmed, 2017 : 23,n.20.