plenitude of a reality increasingly impinged upon by the virtual. Culture
inscribes the boundaries of reality. An understanding of the veracity
attributed to dreams in a non-modern episteme is essential to considering
their relationships with images.
Central to Islamic revelation, visions–as well as their more mundane
incarnations as dreams – play a vital role in texts from theology to
literature. When the future Prophet Muhammad retreated for forty days
into the Cave Hira, he sought some sort of spiritual experience: he had the
idea that physical retreat from the world could enable it because his society
believed in visions. Nonetheless, Sunni biographies of the Prophet claim he
was initially terrified by the command of the angel Gabriel to“Read!”
Convinced that people would think him possessed, he resolved to commit
suicide. He ran home and asked his wife Khadijah to wrap him in his
mantle for comfort. As he received a second revelation (Q74), she imme-
diately recognized the truth of his vision. In this moment of recognition,
she became thefirst witness, and thereby thefirst Muslim.^17 Like us
moderns, people were skeptical. But visions, like miracles in the
Christian tradition, could function as proof.
After three years of further meditation, the Prophet began to experience
regular revelations. This included visionary travel believed to take place not
in a sleeping dream, but in a state of wakefulness,first (‘isra)to“the
furthest place of worship”(associated with Jerusalem in some early bio-
graphies of the Prophet) on the winged and human-headed steed Buraq,
and from there the ascent to heaven (mi’raj). The Quran equates this
visionary experience with God’s giving the tablets to Moses (Q17:1–2).
Since the vision is not a revelation, but an experience, the Quran alludes to
rather than describing it (see also Q17:60 and Q53:13–18). Biographies,
Hadith, and literature build on the basic narrative, including a Persian
prose rendition by ibn Sina and one in Arabic by ibn Arabi, describing his
mystical vision of the vision.
Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad soaring through golden heavens
on the back of Buraq during themi’rajbecame a favorite illustration in
biographies of the Prophet, as a frontispiece for poetic works and albums,
and in dream manuals and books of divination (falnamah).^18 [Plate 10] Its
inclusion in poetry books, such as the painting from a sixteenth-century
manuscript of theBustan(Fruit Orchard)ofSa’di, underscores the inti-
mate relationship between poetry and the religious discourses it elaborates.
While the depiction of the Prophet on his steed sailing among golden(^17) Shi’a conceive of him as preordained, and therefore not disquieted. (^18) Green, 2003 : 293.
190 The Transcendent Image