artists, the labor of the calligraphers is not oppositional, but ameliorative.
Such refined, appreciative augmentation serves as a common measure of
originality in poetic discourse, as well as in the call-and-response practice
in regional musical improvisation (taqsim).
The comparison also has political implications. Al-Maqrizi, an Egyptian
under Sunni Mamluk rule, uses a Fatimid source as a frame for calligra-
phers central to Abbasid politics. Vizier to the caliph al-Muqtadir (r. 908–
932), ibn Muqla helped reify the‘Uthmanic recension of the Quran by
enforcing its inscription with a regularized script. Ibn al-Bawwab further
refined the script during the reassertion of Sunni orthodoxy against Shi’ism
under the caliph al-Qadir.^9 Thus the competition of painters through the
metaphor of calligraphers is not a rivalry but a shared practice with
political implications. When the Egyptian artist does not oppose the
suggestion of the Iraqi, but deftly supersedes it, he underscores unity in
Islam over sectarianism. Similarly, although the Fatimids did not adopt the
scriptural innovations of ibn Muqla and ibn al-Bawwab in their own use of
scripts, Fatimid rulers showed respect for their work by collecting their
pens and copies of their manuscripts in their treasury.^10 Relating the story
in thefifteenth century, al-Maqrizi’s rendition may have advocated for a
cultural discourse transcending political and sectarian divisions.6.2 Mustafa‘Ali (1540–1600) and the Allegory of the Artists
Whereas earlier renditions of artistic competition used the image primarily
as a metaphor, the 1587Epic Deeds of Artistsby the Ottoman chronicler
Mustafa‘Ali develops an allegory in defense of the permissibility of paint-
ing. The work concludes the detailed histories of individual artists and
calligraphers preceding the narrative with a summation of the apparent
benefits and dangers of the art of painting–approximately at the same time
as the Mughal court engaged in parallel responses to the increasing pre-
sence of European modes of representation (seeChapters 3and 5.2).
Mustafa‘Ali begins by emphasizing Mani’s verism with metaphors
recalling that of Jesus’bird takingflight:“When he depictedflowing
water, he would make it visible in crystal-like form, and when he depicted
a blowing wind, he would make it manifest like an abundant stream.”
Complex narrative metaphors weave through poetic commentary.“Story
has it that among the artists of the past, three salaried masters, putting(^9) Tabbaa,1991. (^10) Roxburgh,2003: 44.
162 Deceiving Deception