painting in illustrated manuscripts, Margaret Shortle explains,“It is not the
beloved...who causes desire in the audience; it is musk-smelling tresses
thatflutter and move in a spring breeze. Likewise,fluttering hemlines and
intertwined trees or other serpentine arabesques in painting draw the
viewer’s eye and invite a lingering visual engagement with the painting.”^80
Indivisible, paintings and poetry conspire in their seduction.
This understanding of the image, like love, as a vehicle for meaning
became a common means of normalizing painting within Islamic culture.
In hisCanon of Forms(seeChapter 7.4b), Sadiqi Beg Afshar wrote:
I take the chattels of my ambition to the alleyway of the Figure;
I aspire to Meaning from the face of the Figure.
My heart, which had known the Art of the Figure,
Brought itself, now, the high-road of Meaning...
So far have I come in portraying the Figure
That I have traversed‘Figure’and arrived at‘Meaning.’^81
Poetry explained how painting was understood to function in the world: it
served as a temporary pause on the journey to meaning. It represented
falsely in order to display truth. Rather than a deception, as in the story of
Zeuxis, or a window onto the world, as in the post-Renaissance European
tradition, the painted image functioned as a useful ruse, like a palace or a
Fortress of Form.
While retaining the proper subject as male and thereby not enabling a
(modern) vision of gender equality, such discourse is a far cry from the
suppression of sexuality (and so-called passive sexuality in particular) in
the Christian tradition reflecting modern mandatory heteronormativity in
the modern Islamic world.^82 Although the poem presents the male author’s
rendition of female heterosexual desire, it also reflects contemporary sexual
norms.^83 In contrast with common understandings of pre-modern sex-
ualities, often based on Euronormative histories of sexuality, this work
naturalizes rather than condemning passion. Jami’s assertion that we are all
Zuleikha, subject to legitimate passions beyond our control, reflects a
behavioral realm rooted not in the law, which does not address the com-
plex emotional lives of individuals, but in the ethical decisions that each
individual makes as governed by the discursive culture that surrounds
them. Zuleikha, a model for all readers regardless of gender, is portrayed
(^80) Shortle,2018: 23. (^81) Ahmed,2015: 53. (^82) Ze’evi, 2006; Babayan and Najmabadi,2008.
(^83) Merguerian and Najmabadi,1997.
From Theology to Poetry 253