A painting by Sultan Muhammad (c.1500–1550) from aDivan of
Hafez illustrates the ambiguities of music. It depicts asama in the
foreground. [Plate 4] Dervishes play the tambourine and clap, accom-
panied by a kneeling dervish playing akeman, a vertically held bowed
string instrument. Another plays a ney. In the foreground, twofigures
dance; others have collapsed from exhaustion. A turban lies forlorn in
the grass. A drunken customer is escorted out of the tavern behind
them. Young men lower and carry wine pitchers for use elsewhere.
Inside, a customer gives the shopkeeper money as he lowers aflask into
one of several wine jugs. Yet for all its apparent debauchery, a bevy of
angels set against a golden sky crowns the scene. As in the poem, these
figures are also drinking.^67 In the center, like the musician who brings
forth lover and beloved, an old man quietly reads, wineglass by his side,
conjuring worlds simultaneously within and beyond his own. Like an
artistic patron painted into a European votive painting, or like a
painting that represents itself in the painting, he reflects the subjectivity
of the reader enabled through poetry. With him, we read a couplet
framed on the same page:Mercy’s angel gripped communion’s cup
And poured a draft that pinked a huri’s
And a fairy’s cheek.^68Muchasmusiccreatestheimageoflove,herethepoetictropeof
opposition (tanzih) in similitude (tashbih) emerges as a painting. The
contrast between sacred and profane demonstrates how seeming oppo-
sites in the material world reflect the self-disclosure of divine unity.^69
Juxtaposing seeming opposites, Sultan Muhammad visually elaborates
Hafez’s preference, expressed throughout the Divan, for the rogue
dervish, whose humility drives him to seek self-effacing opprobrium
over narcissistic piety. Audition imprints divine ecstasy within the Sufi
practitioner’ssoulandbecomesmanifestinritualmovementofthe
body. In contrast to the European tradition, manifesting Man in divine
form through the externalized visual image, the Sufitradition used
music to imprint an internalized image of the divine within the recog-
nizing soul.(^67) The Quran refers to maidens in heaven with large eyes, as well as tohouris, who are often
conceived as heavenly virgins. However, the etymology is unclear and the exegetical
interpretations varied.
(^68) Barry, 2010 : 217; Ahmed, 2015 : 418–421. (^69) Çalış-Kural, 2014 : 88.
76 Seeing with the Ear