Proceedings of the Colloquium on Paradise and Hell in Islam Keszthely, 7-14 July 2002

Proceedings of the Colloquium on Paradise and Hell in Islam Keszthely, 7-14 July 2002 - Part One - EDITED BY K DÉVÉNYI - A. FODOR THE ARABIST BUDAPEST STUDIES IN ARABIC 28-29 THE ARABIST BUDAPEST STUDIES IN ARABIC 28-29 Proceedings of the Colloquium on Paradise and Hell in Islam Keszthely, 7-14 July 2002 EDITOR ALEXANDER FODOR - Part One - ASSOCIATE EDITORS KINGA DÉVÉNYI TAMÁS IVÁNYI EDITED BY K. DÉVÉNYI - A. FODOR EÖTVÖS LORÁND UNIVERSITY CHAIR FOR ARABIC STUDIES & CSOMA DE KŐRÖS SOCIETY SECTION OF ISLAMIC STUDIES Copyright Ed. Csorna de Kőrös Soc. 2008 MÚZEUM BLD. 4/B BUDAPEST, 1088 HUNGARY BUDAPEST, 2008 THE ARABIST CONTENTS BUDAPEST STUDIES IN ARABIC 28-29 P reface........................................................................................................................................ vii Patricia L. Baker (London): Fabrics Fit for A ngels ............................................................... 1 Sheila S. Blair (Boston): Ascending to Heaven: Fourteenth-century Illustrations of the Prophet’s Micra g ......................................................................................................... 19 Jonathan M. Bloom (Boston): Paradise as a Garden, the Garden as Garden . 37 Giovanni Canova (Naples): Animals in Islamic Paradise and H ell ...................... 55 István Hajnal (Budapest): The Events o f Paradise: Facts and Eschatological Doctrines in the Medieval Isma'ili History ................................................................................ 83 Alan Jones (Oxford): Heaven and Hell in the Qur’an .......................................... 105 Tom Klobe (Honolulu): Islamic Paradise in a Christian Context: The Ceiling of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, Sicily............................................................. 123 Miklós Maróth (Piliscsaba): Paradise and Hell in Muslim Philosophy................. 137 Rachel Milstein (Jerusalem): Paradise as a P arable.................................................. 147 Zoltán Szombathy (Budapest): Come Hell or High Water: Afterlife as a Poetic Convention in Mediaeval Arabic Literature ....................................................... 163 Nyomdai munkák: Roberto Tottoli (Naples): What Will be the Fate of the Sinners in Hell? The nend/4t Kfit. • Budapest Categories of the Damned in Some Muslim Popular Literature ..................... 179 www.mondat.hu Reviews .................................................................................................................................. 197 ISSN 0239-1619 PREFACE The Tareq Rajab Museum in Kuwait acquired a magical textile of exceptional size a few years ago. Mr. Tareq Rajab, the internationally known collector of Islamic artefacts and Director of the Museum kindly offered me the possibility to study this interesting acquisition which looked like a large triangular banner. Upon closer examination it turned out that the textile contained the Sürat al-Fath and magical squares of different size which were composed of an enormous quantity of magical numbers. The lay-out of the inscriptions presented a stepped construction of eight layers which seemingly symbolized the Islamic Paradise. This gave me the idea to organize a Colloquium on Paradise and Hell in Islam. Participants were expected to deal with the subject from the most different aspects (art and archaeology, religion, history, literature, ethnography, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, etc.). Professor Géza Fehérvári, presently Curator of the Tareq Rajab Museum enthusiastically sup ported the concept and helped in the organization of the Colloquium which took place in 2002 in the historic city of Keszthely, situated on Lake Balaton in Western Hungary. The venue of the Colloquium was the Helikon Castle Museum, a beautiful 18th-19th century baroque palace which housed an exhibition on Islamic Arts in the 18th-20th centuries (on loan from the Tareq Rajab Museum). The Director of the Castle Museum, Dr. László Czoma was our excellent host and offered a very kind hospitality to the participants in an amiable and inspiring environment. The number of those attending the Colloquium was about 50 and nearly 30 papers were read. Mr. Tareq Rajab and his wife were also present and took active part in the scholarly discussions. The present volume contains the first part of the Proceedings, 11 papers which cover a wide variety of topics. Patricia Baker, Sheila Blair, Jonathan Bloom and Rachel Milstein approached the subject from the aspect of Islamic arts, while Tome Klobe dealt with it in the Christian context. Theological and philosophical considera tions came to the fore in the contributions by Alan Jones, Miklós Maroth and István Hajnal. Giovanni Canova and Roberto Tottoli wrote about the folkloric elements in the descriptions of the Islamic Paradise and Hell, while Zoltán Szombathy turned his attention to the subject of afterlife as it was used in Arabic literature. Finally, it is my sad duty to remember the untimely death of two good friends and colleagues, Patricia Baker and Duncan Haldane who passed away before the publication of their papers. Alexander Fodor FABRICS FIT FOR ANGELS Patricia L. Baker London Within Islamic painting the depiction of angels generally occurs in the context of temporal power and authority, of religious narrative and of the garden, both heaven ly and terrestrial. It is their wings which identify their inclusion within the pictorial composition rather than any distinguishing attire but, that said, it appears that while the Islamic artists employed the visual metaphor of luxurious contemporary court fabrics to evoke the image of heavenly splendour and magnificence, they were less inclined to dress these heavenly beneficent beings in types of garments too closely associated with the styling of court robes. As is well recognised the Islamic painter was rarely overwhelmingly concerned with recording accurately, naturalistically and minutely every detail in his pictorial composition. Few depictions display such clarity of garment structure as certain early Qâgâr paintings, such as those formerly in the Amery collection (Falk 1972), which reveal the use of bias cutting, types of fastenings and braiding, seaming details as well as clearly portraying textile patterning and texture. Furthermore it is apparent that few Islamic artists perceived that it was a requirement in such depictions to reflect the accepted literary notions regarding angels. Arabic writers, such as at-Tabarl (d. 9 2 3 AD) and al-Qazwïnî (d. 1283 AD ), described their immense size and stature with numerous wings, anything from four as possessed by Isràfïl who will sound the trumpet on the Day of Reckoning to four thousand as with Izrà il, the angel of death. One such wing could easily, we are told, cover a quarter of the earth s surface when unfurled. Little concerted effort is made by the artist to represent the scale of these enormous wings nor of the angelic body covered with saffron hairs, nor the multiple faces of these divine beings positioned at various places on their body to watch humanity1. Plowever, as always, there are a few exceptions, one of the most important being the first-half of the 15th century Uighur manuscript of the M ïrâg- nâmah (Bibliothèque Nationale (BN), Paris, Suppl. turc 190,). In this work the angels are frequently depicted on a larger scale that the Prophet Muhammad and there appears to be a deliberate wish to convey a feeling of a distinct celestial world, peopled by such super-normal divine creatures, different from ordinary terrestrial beings. 1 MacDonald I960-; ERE IV, 615ff, which notes that 6 ib ril (Angel of the Revelation) possessed six huge wings each formed a i 100 smaller ones, bi- elsewhere as 1G00 wings covered with saffron hair; the wings of M ika’il were described as being made of green emerald, while fora »I had four faces, on his head, chest, back and at his feet. 2 PATRICIA L. BAKER FABRICS FIT FOR ANGELS 3 There is also a matter of gender: the stories explaining the fall of the angels Hárüt has already been made of the early 13th century frontispiece of the Kitäb al-agdnt and Márüt suggest that these beings possessed some masculine sexual feelings; indeed manuscript in Istanbul with the two female winged victory angels wearing a style of it was yielding to such emotions that resulted in their fall from heavenly Grace. But clothing similar to those worn by the centrally-placed ruler and his attendants although theologians and philosophers agreed that angels could weep, feel annoyance surrounding him. The depiction of the two recording angels in the 1280 cAgdcib al- and required nourishment (albeit with spiritual food and drink), the matter of their mahlüqàt of al-Qazwini (Bayerische Staatsliche Bibliothek, Munich, Arab 464 fol. gender does not appear to have been much discussed, let alone decided. Such 36r,) also suggests a heavy reliance on courtly garments with both Munkat and Nakat ambiguity regarding gender is reflected in a number of Islamic manuscript depictions. wearing turbans with, among the folds, a small calligraphic ornamental square and However, it must be said that our knowledge of the differences in male and female dressed in voluminous robes with tirdz bands on the dropped shoulder line, in the dress, especially of the early and medieval periods, in the Islamic Middle East is fashion of the then-defunct “Abbasid court bureaucrat or member of the prosperous imprecise2, and identification of gender tends to be based on jewellery, hair-styling bourgeoisie4. The honorific connotations

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