‘Ilm: Science, Religion and Art in Islam ‘Ilm: Science, Religion and Art in Islam Edited by Samer Akkach Published in Adelaide by University of Adelaide Press Barr Smith Library The University of Adelaide South Australia 5005 [email protected] www.adelaide.edu.au/press The University of Adelaide Press publishes peer-reviewed scholarly books. It aims to maximise access to the best research by publishing works through the internet as free downloads and for sale as high-quality printed volumes. © 2019 The Contributors This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This licence allows for the copying, distribution, display and performance of this work for non-commercial purposes providing the work is clearly attributed to the copyright holders. Address all inquiries to the Publisher at the above address. For the full Cataloguing-in-Publication data please contact the National Library of Australia: [email protected]. ISBN (paperback) 978-1-925261-75-2 ISBN (ebook: pdf ) 978-1-925261-76-9 Senior Editor: Rebecca Burton Cover design: Emma Spoehr Typesetting: Midland Typesetters Cover image: 20072A13(a-c) Celestial globe, 19th century, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, silver, 15.5 cm (diam); Gift of Barrie and Judith Heaven 2007, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide CONTENTS Preface vi Notes to the reader viii Glossary ix List of contributors xi List of illustrations xiv Introduction xvii PART I ʿILM AS SCIENCE 1 1. Polarising ʿilm: Science and religion in early modern Islam — Samer Akkach 3 2. Science and art: Anatomical illustrations in early Islamic optics — Perri Sparnon 19 3. The imperial Mughal hunt: A pursuit of knowledge — Shaha Parpia 39 4. The House of Stars: Astronomy and the architecture of new science in early modern Lucknow (1831-49) — Katharine Bartsch and Peter Scriver 59 PART II ʿILM AS RELIGION 79 5. ‘By the Pen!’: Spreading ʿilm in Indonesia through Quranic calligraphy — Virginia Hooker 81 6. The Islamisation of ʿilm: Ideals and realities in a globalised world — Syed Mehboob Bukhari 98 7. In between the mind and the heart: Kātip Çelebi’s concept of ʿilm — Selen Morkoç 113 8. ʿIlm and the human body: Al-Suhrawardī’s concept of the illuminated temple — Faris Hajamaideen 125 PART III ʿILM AS ART 139 9. ʿIlm and the ‘architecture of happiness’: The Ottoman imperial palace at Edirne/Adrianople, 1451-1877 — Susan Scollay 141 10. ʿIlm or fashion? The question of identity in the batik designs of Java — James Bennett 157 11. Curating ʿilm: Chapter or bridge? — Sam Bowker 181 Bibliography 193 PREFACE Conceptions of ‘knowledge’ (ʿilm in Arabic) — its virtue, necessity, and socio-religious function — have played a central role in Muslims’ life throughout Islamic history. The two sacred sources of Islam, the Quran (words of God) and the Hadiths (words of the Prophet), placed a strong emphasis on ʿilm, considering knowledge acquisition to be mandatory for all Muslims, the act of knowing to be essential to all aspects of cultural production, and knowledge in its highest state to be akin to prophecy. Discriminating between knowledge and ignorance, the Quran asks, ‘Are those who know and those who do not know equal?’ (39:9), and goes on to assure Muslims that God will raise believers and possessors of knowledge above others (58:11). The Prophet Muhammad adds further import to the Quranic view by declaring that ‘seeking knowledge is obligatory on every Muslim’, and that ‘the ʿulamāʾ (possessors of knowledge) are the inheritors of the prophets’. It is little wonder that ʿilm framed Muslims’ high aspirations, determined their social status, and paved their ways to paradise. The high significance Muslims accord to ʿilm is evident in the numerous sources (in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish) devoted to articulating the nature, virtue, and function of the three related aspects of knowing: ʿilm (possession of knowledge), taʿlīm (dissemination of knowledge, through teaching, education, and moral upbringing), and tuʿallum (acquisition of knowledge, through learning, training, and making). There are also numerous biographical reference books on the life and works of the ʿulamāʾ — that is, the individuals who had devoted their lives to the pursuit of knowledge. These sources show the enduring preoccupation with ʿilm’s epistemological, moral, and socio-religious values. Indeed, the large body of literature available on various aspects of knowledge testifies to the fact that the concept ofʿilm has dominated Islam to such an extent that one can safely say it has given Islamic civilisation its distinctive shape and complexion today. This edited volume of chapters resulted from an international conference held at the University of Adelaide in July 2016 under the same title to explore the multifaceted concept of ʿilm in Islam — its agency and manifestations in the connected realms of science, religion, and the arts. ʿIlm is normally rendered into English in a straightforward manner as ‘knowledge’. This unnuanced translation tends to conceal the complexity and multivalent nature of the Arabic expression, which is at once simple and complex. It is simple in its transparent and intuitively recognisable meaning, yet complex in its many derivations, connotations, and associations, which link it to diverse aspects of knowing, such as comprehension, conception, perception, feeling, and familiarity, as well as different modes of knowledge acquisition, production, and dissemination, including teaching and learning, education, and morality (tarbiya).1 Mediaeval Arabic lexicographers relate ʿālam, ‘world’, also to ʿilm, thereby signifying that the divine creative act was fundamentally an act of knowing and that the created world was a product of knowledge.2 Muslim mystics (Sufis) customarily report a holy tradition in which God identifies the main reason behind creating the world as being ‘his desire to be known’, thus rendering knowledge as the ultimate aim of the religious pursuit. The conference presented an opportunity, at national and international levels, to examine the concept of ʿilm in pre-, early, and postmodern Islamic cultures in order to better understand its role in social, cultural, and intellectual developments. Over four days, the conference brought PREFACE VII together a broad group of scholars, artists, designers, curators, conservators, and higher-degree researchers across the fields of Islamic intellectual history, history and theory of Islamic art and architecture, history of Islamic science, and Islamic studies to address key issues of concern and to highlight points of intersection between science, religion, and the arts. Presenters and participants discussed how ʿilm is understood, engaged with, and experienced by Muslim communities today; what practices, territories, and histories of ʿilm are in need of better understanding; and how ʿilm continues to shape Islam’s past, present, and future within the Muslim world and beyond. In conjunction with the conference the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) staged, in collaboration with the University of Adelaide’s Centre for Asian and Middle Eastern Architecture (CAMEA), an Islamic art exhibition titled ʿIlm: Art and Knowledge in Islam. On display at AGSA were 45 works of art from Iran, Egypt, Turkey, India, and Indonesia dated from the 10th century to the contemporary era. A rare cultural feast in Australia, the displayed objects showed the rich diversity of Islamic art, and, most important for this occasion, they showed how knowledge formed a constant basis and framework for artistic expression in the Islamic tradition. Both the conference and the exhibition provided intellectually stimulating and thought-provoking occasions for contemplating the contributions Islam had made, and has continued to make, to humanity and global civilisation. The conference was generously supported by two grants, a Discovery Project grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC), and a culture and art grant from the Council for Australian- Arab Relations (CAAR). I wish to thank both organisations for their support, without which neither the conference nor this edited volume would have been possible. I also wish to extend special thanks to the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) for accepting my invitation to set up the exhibition, and the curator of Islamic art, James Bennett, for assuming the responsibility of designing and setting up the exhibition and turning it into such an attractive and informative event. I am thankful to the four keynote speakers, Professors James Piscatori, Nidhal Guessoum, Peter Harrison, and Stefano Carboni, for enriching the conference through valuable lectures and stimulating discussions; to the University of Adelaide and School of Architecture and Built Environment (SABE) for providing the facilities and administrative support for the event; and to the conference secretary and my research assistant, Perri Sparnon, for her tireless organisational and research efforts from inception to end; without her much appreciated assistance theʿilm project would not have reached its current state. Finally, special thanks go to the conference participants whose works are published here in chapter form, and to John Emerson and Rebecca Burton of the University of Adelaide Press for their support and assistance in the production of this volume. NOTES 1 In many Arab countries today, the ministry for education is called wizārat al-tarbiya wa -l-taʿlīm, placing ‘moral upbringing’ (trabiya) before ‘teaching’ (taʿlīm, from ʿilm). This shows the enduring bond between knowledge dissemination and moral upbringing in the collective Arab imagination to this day. 2 Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿarab al-muḥīt, ʿ-l-m. NOTES TO THE READER In various chapters, authors have used primary sources in different Islamic languages (Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Farsi, and Urdu), and thus transliterations may vary according to the systems used by each author. Attempts have been made to unify them as much as practically possible.