The competition he describes is less artistic than a rhetorical and scien-
tific show of skill, a courtly performance akin to poetry, music, or dance.
The described paintings–black on a white ground and yellow on a red
ground–seem to appear or disappear based on optical illusions discussed
by ibn al-Haytham:
The inapparentness of the forms of faint lights on account of their closeness to
strong lights has parallels in colors. Thus if a pure white body is dotted with a dark-
colored paint, by allowing small drops of the paint to fall on it, or if minute designs
are made on it with this paint, the paint will look black or very dark; its distinctive
quality will cease to be apparent and the eye will not be able to perceive its true
color...Similarly, if designs are made with fresh-green paint on a dark-blue body,
the paint will look [red] and of a clear color; but if designs are made with the same
paint on a clear-yellow body, the paint will look [green] and of a dark color.^6
The story also reflects ibn al-Haytham’s thought in distinguishing between
the external, glancing function of vision and the internalized imprint of
contemplation retreating from exteriority in the space of the mind (see
Chapter 4.2). Like the immobile dancing girls they depict, the paintings
provide less entertainment than foils for the deployment of knowledge.
The capacity to create illusory forms persisted as a mark of mastery, as in
this praise for the marquetry of the early seventeenth-century Ottoman
architect Mehmet Agha:“Looking from one angle, one type of form or
circle was seen, and [from another] other types of designs and patterns
emerging, other forms appeared. However much the point of view was
changed, that many forms were transformed into other shapes.”^7 Although
the dominant mode of representation had shifted across time and place
fromfigural to geometric, the capacity to bedazzle through the imperma-
nence of created form serves as a mark of skill. As Graves argues, objects
that allude to other states of being may function not through the repre-
sentational trope of language, or the categorial distinction between text and
form naturalizing the modern distinction between mind and body, but as
signifiers through an“intellect of the hand”surpassing modern epistemic
forms.^8
As with al-Ghazali’s parable, al-Maqrizi’s decision to discuss rhetoric
rather than describing paintings indicates painting as a secondary concern.
The comparison is both aesthetic and political. It suggests calligraphic skill
as analogous with painterly prowess. As with the Roman and Chinese
(^6) Sabra,1989: 99; for the uses of color theory at the Alhambra Palace, see Bush,2018: 44; under
Ilkhanid rule, Gruber,2019.
(^7) Crane,1987: 34. (^8) Graves,2018: 215.
al-Maqrizi and the Politics of Competition 161