condemnation of Mani into a demonstration of his purity. Even“when it
became certain that they were going to fret his lifeless body, he did not
consider turning away from his conviction that a wicked picture [should
be] discarded.”Mani’s own body is the wicked picture–it is the form held
sacred, which Mani sacrifices as he is made into an effigy, as are all of the
painters in the society. Mustafa‘Ali then tells of the society of binders,
implying that the painting arts came to an unjust end, but survive in the
broader realm of book arts.
6.3 Qadi Ahmad and Painting as Calligraphy
Roughly contemporary with Mustafa‘Ali’sEpic Deeds, Qadi Ahmad’s
Calligraphers and Painters(in Persian,Gulistan-i Hunar, Rose Garden of
Accomplishments,c.1596–1606) only refers to the competition of the artist
through brief mention of the pitcher broken against Mani’s painting of a
fountain.^18 Fully integrating painting into the Persianate book arts through
his discourse of the two pens, Qadi Ahmad replaces al-Ghazali’s story of
the competition with a different allegorical rendition of the deceptive
nature of the image as revelation.
For Qadi Ahmad, the legacy of the pen is intimately tied with the sacred
nature of writing embedded in Islamic history. Framing writing through
reference to the heavenly tablet, he introduces the work with an encomium
toqalam, indicating the pen but also connoting speech and philosophy. His
extensive quotation from theRules of Alexander(Ayin-i Iskandiri, 1543) by
‘Abdi Beg of Shiraz exemplifies the tradition of intertextual incorporation
in a society where literary sources would be recognized by cultivated
readers.
Thefirst thing the Lord created was theqalam
Through theqalamexistence receives God’s orders,
From Him the candle of theqalamreceives its light.
Theqalamis a cypress in the garden of knowledge,
The shadow of its order is spread over the dust.^19
Playing on the ambivalence between speech and writing embedded in the
wordqalam, Qadi Ahmad describes writing as part of a system of authority
from God to man through the practice of knowledge, reflective of divine
order. He continues the ambiguity, referring to the reed both in its material
(^18) Porter, 2000 : 109. (^19) Minorsky, 1959 : 49.
Qadi Ahmad and Painting as Calligraphy 165