With such techniques the king unlocked clear reflection from opaque metal. But
when you look in this mirror, you can now see the behavior of Alexander as an
example. For when one gives the hard back of Iron a round face, its entire nature
transforms in refinement. And because Alexander was thefirst to look into the
mirror, some of his nature entered the nature of the mirror. He was so happy to see
his own image that he kissed the back of the mirror. And each bride who follows
the convention, makes the mirror part of the dowry so that she kisses him in it.^40
Thus the wisdom of Alexander initiating his sovereignty emerges through
the metaphor of (in)sight enabled through the reflection of the world, as
likened to the act of painting. The story invests the gaze into the mirror
with a creative capacity not merely seeing the world, but seeing it in
exemplary form. The mirror resembles a painting, but its power lies in
the transparency of its deception: its demonstration that it is not a painting
depends entirely on the self-reflexive capacity of the observer. In retaining
the capacity to distort, the mirror represents like a painting, but retains the
self-conscious presence of the viewer.
In Nizami’s rendition of the competition of the artists, the doubling of
the Artangthrough the mirror, suggestive of the dualistic nature of
Manicheanism, mediates the‘idolatrous’beauty of the image. In Firdausi,
theArtangsignaled Mani’s false prophecy through its intrinsic failure to re-
present the real. Conversely, in Nizami, its reconstitution in the mirror
undermines its deceptive properties. The artists, described through Mani,
are great not because they try to represent prophetic truth through realistic
representation, but because the interplay between the image and its reflec-
tion undermines deception. Thefigure of Mani is redeemed through the
reflection of his image in the functionality of the mirror.
Nizami’s understanding of the mirror reverberates with that expressed
by Suhrawardi in hisPhilosophy of Illumination, written approximately a
decade before Nizami’sIqbalnamah. In it, Suhrawardi describes“the world
of Suspended Images,”or“the world of incorporealfigures,”as a realm
entered through dreams, imagination, and mystical vision, full of sus-
pended images and incorporealfigures mediating between the divine
realm and our own. This space resembles the types of virtual realities
that we today refer to as cyberspace, which may not be real but can only
be accessed through the gateway of our computer interfaces rather than
through the mirror.^41
Objects in mirrors enable a higher reality than the body inhabited within
the‘fortress’of nature.^42
(^40) Nizami, 1991 :93–94. (^41) Sinai, 2015 : 297. (^42) al-Kutubi, 2013 : 134.
Nizami, the Paintings of Mani, and the Mirrors of Suhrawardi 147