Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr—Islam: Truth and Beauty

ladies and gentlemen thank you for your attendance tonight we welcome you to this distinguished lecture in international affairs co-hosted by the weave institution and the Brigham Young University Museum of Art my name is Stephen Jones and I'm the Dean of the College of Fine Arts and communications we're most pleased to have with us tonight professor sayed hossein Nassar from George Washington University who will be formally introduced introduced later on I can tell you you're in for a real treat tonight I had the privilege of joining him dr. NASA at lunch and as he spoke to those much more knowledgeable than I I was reminded of something I had read in one of the BYU Islamic translation series books this is a fairly recent book on the nature of learning and the Islamic scholar whose name fails me right now I should have prepared I didn't plan to say this but he said that essentially knowledge would not give anything to you until you gave all of yourself to it and dr. Nasir is one who has dedicated his life to giving himself to knowing the topic which he'll address regarding truth and beauty we are met here near the end of a wonderful exhibition that has come to BYU after many years of hard work and I hope that you've had a chance to see beauty and belief if not the museum will be open after the lecture and you'll have that opportunity the museum and the College of Fine Arts and BYU are so pleased to present this exhibition it represents I think a significant statement in our commitment to building bridges across diverse groups that normally might not immediately understand one another and through cultural understanding and cultural exploration come to love and appreciate and value highly the things that they share and that unify them I think we stand at a moment of tremendous opportunity in the world in terms of building bridges and this exhibition is something that I certainly feel is important not only for our local community and university but in the other areas of United States to which it will soon travel bridging those differences is it tasks larger than can be accomplished or mandated through political will it won't come alone through education or science or technology while these and other means I think can aid the building of the bridges it really will take I believe a genuine understanding of culture to culture of truths that are much larger that we share and that are so universal they must be communicated it takes spiritual energy to do that and I think you'll sense in both the lecture tonight and the objects themselves that kind of spiritual energy we would like to recognize tonight Steve and Martha West who chair the museum Leadership Council they have generously given contributed to this exhibition we also recognize Museum Leadership Council members Ray and Rita hangsen and Curtis Atkeson we thank and recognize dr. Mary Fran akheon who is a member of the BYU faculty who with her husband who Xiong Funaki and have contributed art objects to the exhibition tonight I'm pleased now to turn time to richard williams who directs the Wheatley institution he will formally introduce our guest speaker and other guests and introduce you to the program dr. Williams Thank You Dean Jones ladies and gentlemen welcome to this distinguished lecture as Dean Jones mentioned just sponsored jointly by the Museum of Art and the Wheatley institution it's been our pleasure to be involved in this event it's also been a great pleasure I have to say personally for us to have been able to spend the day with who I hope is now our good friend dr. Sayed Hussain Nasser there is no finer gentleman and more gracious guest and more gracious colleague than than he we're pleased also to have with us dr. Terry Moore who has come as an associate of Professor Nasser and where we've enjoyed getting to know him he and I had a very lively conversation at dinner we're grateful to also to acknowledge the president of doctors presence of dr. Sandra Rogers the international vice president at BYU who is representing the administration she's also a member of the Board of Overseers of the Wheatley institution I'd like to mention particularly Jim Toronto who is here as the academic coordinator over the Middle East Studies an Arabic program here at BYU we have other distinguished guests and colleagues who we've had the pleasure of entertaining this evening we appreciate your attendance and we look forward to Professor Nasser's comments as is our custom at Brigham Young University we'll begin our evening together with a prayer it will be our pleasure to have Imam Ahmed Saleh offer that invocation following the prayer it will be my pleasure to introduce dr. Nasir more formally a mom not Imam Salah thanks the pro Williams Salam alaikum everyone before I do the opening prayer and I have to warn you that as a PhD or a graduate student it will be long but let me read this verse from the Quran I'll read it first in Arabic and then read the close translation shala similar manner Rahim yeah your nest in hollow Kanaka endocrine wanta Oh Johnny comes Obon waka Bella letter r fo in Cremona and allah had become close translation o mankind we created you from a single male and female so that you get to know each other we we created you from a single male female and we made you into nations and tribes so that you may get to know each other indeed the most righteous of you in the indeed the best amongst you excuse me I'm just translating as we go here indeed the best amongst you is the most righteous and again I like I said like we lived here for quite some time about 12 years and we went through different events here at BYU and like everything starts with prayer for us also for a Muslim world whenever we start anything we start with a prayer and the prayer is not going to be long because it's only four words and again I will read it in Arabic first and then read the English translation and we say bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim and that is by the name of God the most merciful the most gracious thank you sayed hossein Nassar Nasir is a University professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University he is a Muslim Persian philosopher and renowned scholar of comparative religion dr. Nasir was born to a physician of the Persian royal family his father was one of the founders of modern education in Iran dr. Nasir was sent to the United States for education at 13 ultimately receiving a BS and MS from MIT and a PhD from Harvard University he has taught at Harvard tehran sharif and temple universities and at the university of edinburgh a prolific scholar dr. Nasir has lectured widely throughout the world and has authored over 50 books and 500 articles on Islamic studies as well as comparative philosophy and religion philosophy of art and the philosophy and religious dimensions of the environmental crisis it's our pleasure now to hear from dr. Saeed Hossein Nasr shipments of Islamic art in a mosque the natural sound system would have worked one would never have needed these gadgets I'm sorry gotta turn it on I want to thank all the authorities of this university who brought me here to be frank with you I'd never visited Provo before while having visited your sister or brother or maybe distant cousin University in Salt Lake City many many times I always associated Utah with Salt Lake City and was over standard and middle of the desert you had one of the best programs in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies in the United States Thanks essentially to two men who did a lot for the state of Utah and fields of study pertaining to what I'm going to say tonight alert Georgia Tia who was a Christian Arab and host Roma Sophie a Persian Muslim scholar from other Belgium from Iran Ottoman have died god bless her soul who together created one of the major libraries in this country concerning the Middle East both Arabic and Persian Iranian part of it and subjects pertaining thereto and from the 1960s I used to come here to lecture I was vice chancellor Tehran University we established a program of exchange with the receive Utah sending both students and faculty and receive them and also changing books there are over 30,000 books and the distance of 45 minutes drive from you there which I sent personally to the University of Utah library other responsible which was got 30,000 books we send them people who would teach people the poacher of affairs they would send us people who know how to cure cows that we were especially interested of course in all of the medicine and art dealing with agriculture for which the state is so well known and you cannot imagine what it means for me to come to this state I also must tell you this little anecdote before I begin I owe a lot one Iran Revolution took place I was in London and for years and years Harvard Princeton this place had been trying to get me so I wrote to these places saying I never come out of Iran it was a middle of the year they were not it was not possible for them and were political things going on and it which I will not go the president of University of Utah was David Gardner and as soon as he heard that he took a special bill to the University Senate and asked me to become distinguished was even professor in reserve Utah so I left London for Salt Lake City I came down the plane for map you from the FBI with big hat Sistani the plane to protect me as guards because of what happened I thought them go home would like nothing better than to be buried in the land of Utah when nobody unfortunately nobody shot me so yeah it is 30 years later still lecturing and talking and preparing students and now my first intellectual relationship with this university and that is one of my books will appear in the next volume in the series of this university bilingual editions which under the direction of mr. Peterson is coming out of all Pritam University in Utah is best in the world of the Western world is a bilingual series which many universities including Harvard tried to do and they did not really succeed but here now you're doing it and I feel proud I'm sure sorry is not here now to be part of this very important academic endeavor now let's hit the subject for Chum to have come here and which I shall speak aslam truth and beauty let me congratulate this university for being able to create an exhibition of this order to start with mission of Islamic art of the highest quality both as far as individual objects are concerned and the flow the flow of forms and ideas as one goes from one room to another I had the privilege of seeing it this morning and what I shall do today tonight for you is to try to bring out some of the deeper meaning of Islamic art now that you have this remarkable exhibition here which is one of the best I've seen in this country let me begin with the universal principle no authentic expression of the truth is ever separated from beauty the famous saying a Plato that beauty is a splendor of the truth is one of the most profound statements ever made everything that is true is beautiful including with the human soul the hearts for a work of art of God when it's truthful there's a beauty in the soul that's the highest form of beauty and in Arabic it's quite interesting that the word for goodness and virtue and beauty of San are the same so from the highest level which is that of a creature when God is created to speak to who can dress God that is human beings down to the little mollusk that are in the sea or little bugs that walk in the forest the truth have anything really real is always related to Beauty ugliness is our invention the possibility of naked in the truth in the human order is the origin of the creation of ugliness we don't think of it usually in these terms but look at the world of nature wherever you go is beautiful the forest has one home Beauty the desert and other beauty is majestic mountains you have here one former beauty a much lower rolling hills of Virginia near where I live at their own beauty flowers have their own Beauty the sea has its own beauty have you ever seen ugliness in nature don't say oh yes I saw a shark eating a smaller fish or something like that that is not really ugliness that's another facet of the cycle of life but the shark itself how beautiful is this form to the extent that we make cars that try to look like sharks on the Zelda ugliness is human invention it is we who have the choice of making that which is ugly and that which is beautiful starting with ourselves we have the choice of making our souls beautiful our souls ugly and from that issues what we say we have the choice of saying things which are beautiful and things which are ugly and make making these visible make anything but you're ugly this is the very important rule to realize even across the boundaries of Islam there's no religion in which the expression of authentic truth in that religion is not combined with beauty it might not be used to its language but from the Sun painting of the American Indian that the Navajos and the hope is just south of here a thousand miles to the EZ temple in Japan which is a center of Shintoism look how beautiful they are two very very different religions from there to the great churches and cathedrals that various forms of Christianity have created two beautiful tourists the Jews have created to the Buddhist statuary this remarkable wedding between the sacred and beauty is universal and throughout history throughout history religious truth has spoken to human beings more through the language of beauty than through the language of abstract thought of theology and a philosophy I having to be a philosopher but how many people read my books but if I write a beautiful Persian poem in Nice calligraphy everybody doesn't understand butter with ponies appreciates the beauty of it the language of beauty is a universal language and it's very very important to understand this in a universal sense but I'm not here to give you a universal lecture and lecture on universal meaning a beauty but to sweep out Islam so I shall whittle down my comments tonight to the case of the Islamic tradition first of all in Islam who can ask the question what is the truth mal happy by the question has been asked throughout Islam like history going back to the time of the Prophet what is the truth the bar on the sacred fruit of Islam is essentially a document that is concerned with the truth what is true what is false what is good what is evil what is ugly what is beautiful the criteria which enable us to distinguish between these categories of opposites which govern our life are what the Quran is concerned with and here at the Fountainhead of what for Islam is a truth that is the revelation from heaven again you have this wedding between truth and beauty the billion I have Muslims in the world today they never experienced the power on outside of either beautiful sound or beautiful form either see beautiful calligraphy on buildings at home in books or they read it themselves or they hear it you never hear ugly recitations of the hora the highest form of oral art the highest form of music others not called music in Arabic is the chanting of the Quran so in the Islamic experience truth which is a social Quran always appears in a dress of beauty this is very very important experience which underlies the most profound aspects of Islamic living I wanted the most devastating and terrible things that has occurred in the last 200 in Islamic world is on the one hand the modernism coming from the West which is opposed to beauty and to Islamic art which has destroyed so much of the Islamic civilization so many of the great Islamic cities have been turned into slums and by modernist where people have studied modern architecture and france and germany and isis other places and there are traditional islamic architects or by fundamentalists or the other side of the coin of modernism a more recent phenomenon the slavic world or totally indifferent to beauty for them the destruction of a thousand-year-old mosque are just happen in mali two weeks ago it's as if you took a wastebasket and threw your handkerchief into it dirty handkerchief into it it's really a great great tragedy and it's also time for the salami world itself to wake up to this reality because if you look at islam it's impossible for islam to survive as a religion without beauty beauty is the hallmark husband have everything islamic throughout history look at the literature look at the art look at the poetry look at the ground at one with people sat that isn't Persian carpets or Anatolian carpets my masterpiece is a world art the rooms in which they lived the sound which they heard and so on and so on so in Islamic experience it is not what you read in the newspapers that Islam is just a set of rules and laws and do's and don'ts and very harsh religion and punishment yes God is just and he punishes and they have there in the Old Testament even more than we have in the Quran if Aslam is the religion of God is the judge so Judaism so is Christianity which accepts the Old Testament that's part of his sacred scriptures shows Mormonism shows every other religion that's that doesn't mean that other aspect of the US where beauty is to be neglected especially in the Islamic context if you talk of that physically theologically what does it mean to talk about the truth truth means that first of all there is God God is transcendent he is one is beyond all qualities is beyond all this is beyond all that can be said of it him/her is beyond all pronouns at the same time the God was created who speaks to us who all do beyond everything is our interlocutor it's a God who is it at the same time thou to whom we can speak and this truth is divine reality while beyond all qualities has manifested itself through its names which are in the Quran and attributes which are in the Quran and the hadith of the Prophet and the acts which has performed this is the heart of the truth of Islam and all of this is contained in a single sentence Laila Hill Allah there is no reality or there is a divinity but the divine reality is which is the formula of you oneness but also formula of returning everything back to God now I don't want to talk about suspect except to emphasize that according to this truth which is foundational to Islam this truth all go beyond this world and beyond the human persona and even divine persona beyond all the Guardian concealer and beyond because persona Latin his mask beyond the mask of persona the it's beyond the mask nevertheless has a will that works in human history and in our lives and has a wisdom which is manifested in what that will has brought into being and he's here with a relation with the truth between truth and beauty become manifest one of the names of God is one Allah one of the names of God is all-powerful and I could go over all the rest but another one of the names of God is very sent Allah is the beautiful Jameel God is beautiful and according to the famous saying of the Prophet of Islam God is beautiful and he loves beauty in the same way that God is good and he loves goodness in the same way that God being good once a super form good acts God being well he wants our sport to be beautiful and to make beautifully and this is really the foundation the spiritual foundation of Islamic art Islamic art is a manifestation of the inner dimension of the Islamic revelation here I have to part ways from almost all Western scholars of Islamic art Islamic art like any form of art developed as an academic discipline 19th century Germany it was caught really actually kunst Doshisha in german that is art history becoming the form of history you study who influenced on balloons dome and then graduated from Germany to France and England and then into the United States and universities began to have the Portland history of art and gradually began to study what is we call Islamic art today at first even this kept this category was not accepted it took ananda coomaraswamy a great deal of doing to establish the category of Hindu art the beginning of 20th century to show us that only the art of India is a Hindu art is a Buddhist art that's related to these traditions and in the case of Islam with much more resistance all museum to be museum that part of the Persian art and the Lucian art some Egyptian art sundry mogul and northern Indian Islamic art but not Islamic art per se you will be very very surprised to realize that the first first exhibition in the west of Islamic art was in 1977 as late as that in the Hayward Gallery in London in the late 80s pork art god bless a soul and myself around exhibition of Islamic art I called Islamic art which was inaugurated by Queen Elizabeth and in since it baptized it officially as Islamic art with all these posters in the London subway and soberness on and it was very soon thereafter victoria and albert museum put all of his collections of persian or Indian art Egyptian art them together as Islamic art the British Museum follows dude and in 1978 two years later the Metropolitan Museum of Art which has the largest collection of Islamic art in the United States most of which was in the basement had a curator called Richard ellinghouse and the famous German art historian was a good friend of mine he wrote to me in Tehran and said can you give us some money to put on the first exhibition of Islamic art at the Met for the Museum of Art we promised most of the galleries with the Persian art so at that time it was in Lucknow with one telephone I could get a few million dollars so I picked up the telephone I got a few million dollars for him in five minutes I can't do that anymore fortunately I can get a few tens of thousands of dollars for everybody but in those days I could do anything in Iran so I got the money for him and exhibition was inaugurated and the first Museum in the right stage to have a section on Islamic art was the Metropolitan Museum a very soon was followed by the Cleveland Museum museum Boston is a fine arts when the greatest museum in this country San Francisco Museum and and then in Washington Sakura in fact the whole new session was built for Islamic art so it's a very recent phenomenon the very acceptance of the category of Islamic art is a recent phenomenon and even though it became accepted in most places were Islamic artists taught Lawrence a Michigan Harbor do the two oldest universe in this country which teach Islamic art as a discipline was always considered in a historical way as some kind of our that developed in a strange way in the Middle East on the basis of influences of solid Byzantine and other artistic influences and suddenly that appear like that I believe this is a total disregard for the truth all sacred art is like a descent from heaven what is the origin of Gothic architecture who can explain the incredible massive is a suddenly appear in Europe called Gothic architecture from any kind of influence yes the buttresses were influenced by the mosque of Cordoba this was similar by that but this total form total formal economy descend from heaven shows an inspiration in every civilization is like this and Islam is not accept Islamic art is not only a result of going over influence asana the Byzantine architecture and techniques and so forth of course the use of sassani techniques at bricklaying in iran Byzantine techniques of stone laying in Syria which was a business in Provence but the artists of the Christian art itself comes from something else sacred art is always divinely inspired art in the case of Islam it comes not from the actual words of the Quran but from its inner meaning because from the Quran also flows Islamic law that's based on the meaning of certain verses let's say we like the Jews to not eat pork derivatives of the animal and it's written or written there or not you drink wine or not to steal or not to accept interest you know different things that you haven't where's religious law it's really there's no sentence in the Quran that says now may do art in such and such a way there's no chapter on art it's much much more subtle than that it was really the great genius of tedious work art a European Muslim Sufi artist and art historian incredible genius to have brought this out for the first time in his book the art of Islam may God bless his soul on the greatest man I've ever met in my life in the field of art unbelievable person unbelievable I've met so many great traditional masters in Iran in India other places but nobody had his vision could look at something and look at the seed the inner intention I've got for apart and he has brought that out quite well where the Quran comes from is the extreme in Islamic art comes from is what we call the happy era the inner truth of the Quran yes the injunctions of the Quran said certain social conditions for the development of the power certain social conditions I will just give you one example according to Islamic law going back to the Quran private spaces for private living should be private that is you should not have a house with a garden and then apartment looking right onto the garden were you and your wife and children and so forth do not have the freedom to go about in any way that you want you see how we've destroyed the slaw MacArthur modernist as Muslim cities where every where your goods exactly what is happening but in tradition Islamic cities this was always observed that is the space of the garden or a no matter how swirled the courtyard was always private now this the condition for that was set by the Quran but now how you make a beautiful courtyard in Morocco a tile work a little fountain one or two little trees which symbolize the whole of creation incredible works of art which are created in gardening the art of gardening and not to talk about the architecture itself all of that comes from the inner meaning of the Quran it's very subtle thing it was handed down through generations and flowered in the various forms of Islamic art alas and an introduction lecture like this I cannot do not have time to all go over in metaphysics and the cosmology of this herrera this inner meaning of truth who has raised - art - art forms and the significance upon the human mind this whole science unto itself we cannot go into it but at least I can point out the Nexus that exists in Islam between the have regard the inner meaning of the Quran and Islamic art not either/or what is written in the Quran is outdoor meaning or even the sounds necessarily although as when we talk about the sounds of the Quran they are in subtle be related the spacious create an Islamic architecture or to which I am going to turn in a moment now this hardly dry this truth which is central to the Islamic message of course come there was many things involves ethics human life social life political life economic life scientific life in a sense everything islam is a comedy from the Quran from books of mathematics of hyeyeon to the poetry of the same Khayyam or not abhi or somebody else everything but as far as the protest particularly to art I want to point out some of the ways in which the Islamic understanding of the truth in its application is related to the particular art form that Islam creates the sentence you have to pay close attention I sit in this application because in your reversal sense truth has no boundary it is true that I'm now speaking in English and I use the word true which comes from anglo-saxon or usual you could use the word very thoughts coming from Latin and if you are speaking Arabic or Persian I would make another sound system coming out of my mouth which would say ha ha beta all kinds of things rusty and many different words but the boundaries there are linguistic whereas the concepts are universal whereas when get to the domain of art the form itself becomes much more particularized like the form of language and it's the inner meaning that is universal and is universalized but it's much more difficult to grasp it's for example Westerners in the Middle Ages could not read the language of Hindu art after colonization of India about Great Britain this became much more popular now every educated Englishman can look at a beautiful hindu statue and appreciate it gradually learned the language in the same way that Seiji ozawa who come to conduct the Boston Symphony a Japanese who should know nothing at all about Western music is the conduct of the I think the premier orchestra of the United States after I was certain Boston will be prejudiced but and here there was a circle is way out there that can happen that can happen and paradoxically Western people have today a more global taste for art than Eastern people someone from Nepal has never seen any Persian art or French art but someone from France has probably seen both Persian or Nepalese art so there is this because of the opening up in the West which also destroyed much of Christian art nevertheless I made an opening towards other forms of art whereas in the Islamic world itself or other traditional worlds that opening is not that great but it was nevertheless understand get into it understand why there are these particularities why is it that whenever a Christian studies the art of another civilization the first that comes into its mind is painting and why is that if a Muslim studies art of another civilization the last night comes into his mind is painting who's right and who's wrong of course they're both right for very very profound reasons each expression of the truth below God whose absolute truth its expression Allah truth in foreign various revelations various religions also brings with it a particular understanding of the hierarchy of art what is universal in the hierarchy of art of all religions of all traditions from Taoism to Judaism is that the highest form of the art is the art that deals with God with the sacred Fordow with absolute reality whether however you want to name it again we get into difference and name but the concept is and ultimate the ultimat now once we understand that gradually becomes clear for Christianity yes this view of the hierarchy of art is based exactly on this but in Christianity what is the highest it is a depiction of the Word of God for Christianity that is Christ therefore the highest art is the icon the icon which or followed by the sculpture of the icon that is either two-dimensional or three-dimensional you might say icon in Islam the highest expression - 'the is not a person it is the word of the quran so what is the high start the clothing of the Divine Word which now would no longer be the painting of the god man as in Orthodox let's say Greek Orthodox tradition which still goes on or Russian Orthodox beautiful icons they've created over two thousand years but calligraphy calligraphy which was the response of the Muslim soul to the beauty of the Quranic revelation the Muslims the Arabs before the rise of Islam of course work Arabic the Arabs before the coming of Islam but a very refined poetic sense at a very fine poetry which in Arabic is called jahiliyyah the poetry of the age of ignorance I was model in his eloquence and the Quran had to outdo eloquence in eloquence that's why the greatest miracle of Islam for Muslims is the balada of the Quran is the miracle of the eloquence of the Quran but the Muslim didn't write beautifully they just learned out the alphabet from the Nabateans novel tia is a town in southern Lebanon and it created an alphabet was adopted just century for their coming of Islam into Arabia itself and we have some documents a phone Shaheed famous Christian professor George Turner's assemble some of them have others with a few lines here and there and they're very ugly they're not a beautiful calligraphy the cut descended the Quran was followed by the response of the Muslim soul to the art of the sound of the Quran which the Muslim did not invent that comes from heaven by beautiful calligraphy so the first great sacred art of Islam at the top of the hierarchy of the Arts corresponding to the icon is calligraphy what is painting for the Christian eye is calligraphy for the Muslim eye and don't forget all secular painting in the West issues from sacred paintings you studied the history of Christian art from the very beginning it goes step by step before we get to Cuba sermon of modern paintings and a few lines on the wall and things like that this is a long long distance but first of all the Graduate secularization of human form and finally it's excited consolidation and classicism and finally its breakup with Impressionism Expressionism in which form is denied that's another very very own process another with Islamic art but as the Christians or non-christian Westerners who try to understand Islamic art try not to use the same categories it just happens that in the Christian West calligraphy is a very minor art if you take four great civilizations next to each other China India Islam and the West in Islam and China calligraphy is the highest form of art in Taoism also the Taoist calligraphy you know if you write the Dao de Jing you just kind of throw in the wastebasket that sacred burning urns in the Middle Ages in China where any painting writing was might have a character from the dodging Beijing or Confucius in it it was burned ritual it was like that whereas the other two India and the West of course the vinegary in Sanskrit that have Latin lettering some of these very beautiful don't play the same role doesn't play the same role when you go to see this exhibition absolute understa where it is do not try to look for a painting as if you're going to the National Art Gallery and looking where Ram Brandt is unzip the painting of Christ ordered version a very gentle version that he painted do not look for that that's not the central art it's based on another hierarchy the hierarchy of Islamic art determined by the understanding the truth in this Islamic context which is based on absolute transcendence opposition to all anthropomorphic images of the divine but based on God speaking to man through a sacred language therefore concentrates on an art of the language which is calligraphy and the second great art in Islamic civilization was related to very much to the first now the in our mind today but it's a deeper sense architecture it says in a hadith of the Prophet and where God addresses the Prophet Islam he said verily I made for thee the whole of the earth thy mosque I'll master that where we use the word Masjid for mosque the word mosque itself in English continent mesquita comes from arabic masjid means the place of prostration one of the forms of prayers that we use daily the Muslims is that we bow down put her head on the ground before God that's called sujood that's the lowest form of the movement of the body and the highest form of humility before God and so the mosque is called that's what we do it the very word mosque is not an anglo-saxon words original Arabic work master now it says it is hadith I have made the whole of the earth a message with you what does that mean that means I'm here at Provo if I have the permission of the president of somebody who is in charge I'm going to grass and pray are going to do all the things that a Catholic and only do before an altar in the church let's conduct a Eucharist with the priest right on the grass out of here that's how Islam is made and therefore I say this because in a sense Islam did nothing in architecture until they came out of nature into the cities otherwise nature is God's architecture the nomads had no architecture but their very bodies people that know mosques they prayed one you know going back and forth between the high places and low places with summer and winter and like the Indians died and nomads in the old days dad the left no architecture behind architecture came to Islam when there was need of creating a sacred space in a space which had lost a sock or ality because of human habitat once we began to build we destroyed the sacred quality natural space to create our own human spaces and within that it was therefore necessary to create a sacred space and that's how the mosque architecture began I don't obviously have time to go how it developed from the symbol moths of the Prophet to essentially later one of the most perfect buildings in the world the Dome of the rock in Jerusalem which has no historical presidents nobody can explain how these things suddenly appear they're written thousands of books to try to explain it away but it's really like a sudden descent even ordinary works in human art cannot be reduced to their influences I mean interview with lover of Western music if you hear the Santa said B minor mass above you can only lose that to any work a box the hotel shoots anybody else it's almost inspiration heaven that has come right down so much more so a major work of sacred art which still stands and so all of this suddenly appears like this without really historical precedence when it is necessary to create these sacred spaces and we then from there on wherever the Muslims go to build a mosque and they vary from very simple mud structures in Mali or in chard or other places center of Africa to the Sultan Ahmed mosque or the Shah mosque or now called imam mosque and so on or assembled of the great mass at near seen pictures of mongering messages the world art that these two remain and the plastic arts saw the place to go is the peak of the hierarchy of the Islamic arts and they have remained the peak because of the particular expression of the truth in his Islamic form at Nara be Mohideen Inara be the great sage and the Lucian sage writes and one of his books he said for Muslims it's forbidden to depict the image of the divinity but Lilith let us not criticize Christians for whom these depictions were allowed by another dispensation from God it's very interesting that the traditional Muslims when I said these people running the destroying churches right now in Iraq because being angry with all the bombs that the American army through on their heads unfortunately the Christian community in Iraq is almost completely destroyed thanks to the invasion of Iraq of course they've been there for fifteen fourteen hundred years but putting these horrible acts aside as going on now which are already due to very immediate condition and causes the Muslims are always very appreciative of christian painters of the icons when shah abbas the great powerful Persian king establish Isfahan asses capital and he brought an arab armenians by the very good craftsmen i settled them across the river the cross design the ruler where mr. Miller was playing Santora upstairs was in Iran and vanessaanddan they one day his members on the other side River they silver armies is still there he had not only allowed him to build churches he told him to invite icon painters from Armenia and Russia to come and paint for them and they're still there among the most beautiful Christian churches looks very strange to Muslim eyes with all these paintings on the walls and so forth and so on but the Muslims understood that they did not oppose it they did not oppose it the fact that even the aya sophia which was a mosque for such a long time the tremendous painting of christ and ceilings still there they didn't tear down that place was until other Turkic agreed as part of the agreement not to be deposed to convert that from a mosque into General museum or something like that for six hundred years before that this is a mosque where people prayer every day and all this against Islamic law to have human paintings olam are accepted as an exception this is a penny of christ up there and they relate so much we must remember that the Islamic understanding of the hierarchy of the arts basically the particular tool as Manifest in Islam that truth itself ordered the Muslims to also respect other exclusive truth were not Islamic at least for the sages who understood it there was a poem Bush my father often times said was my favorite poem the Persian language my father was a very good scholar and one of the great scholars of his day and the poem is like this muscle man got bananas leaky boats East Bay dawn is seated in the boat Paris this unbelievable verse but one of the greatest of Sufi masters ma Mucha has studied the author of the wall channel Roz he said if a Muslim were only to understand what is an idol he would realize that true religion is an idol worship how daring I mean bin Laden would shut this verse in the media you had found him but authentic Islam over the centuries understood what this man was saying that even the Hindu idols that appear as polytheism outside and both Muslim and Christian missionaries were against him and so far as all over the centuries looked at more profoundly represent another hierarchy of the arts another way in which God speaks to humanity anyway in the non strong oral arts the peak of their artistic hierarchy in Islam is of course the psalmody of the Quran the chandi and the Quran I should have asked somebody here to perhaps start the session tonight with three or four minutes of Quranic chanting but I'm sure most of you have heard of it this is an art which Muslims claim listen to me very carefully claim is ultimately derived from an art which God taught to the Prophet David and there's a book in French and was a Frenchman claims that the Gregorian chant plainchant Shankara guap all you know now know what Gregorian chant is I was soon as Harvard nobody in the Western with Gregorian chant was assured the few Catholics and we discovered one tape of tape and we listened to 6-7 sort of athletes at Harvard and it was wondering where the sound was at the beginning now thank God after many years y'all know what Gargery enchant is that is really the treasure house of all western music which was for a thousand years what believers help heard in Europe more than anything else is little folk songs has claimed that Google enchant and method of China or on ultimately go back to the same source as music I'm not a person to judge about that God knows but as a Muslim but is said or traditional Islamic sources we believe that a prophet taught the Muslims had the Chanda Quran they didn't invent it their modulations of course the Egyptian chanters carry out some notes more intense than the others switches I jokingly after Verdi's Aida was inaugurated in Cairo somewhere parties in Egypt try to emulate even you know Italian opera singing and they were holding on to notes while they're bloating a like fish like that over exaggerating I'd be used together but that a basis of the Quranic traditional singing it's based on a science it's not just anybody makes up anything it's very very carefully directed like the Gregorian chant in the Christian tradition which is lasted for two thousand nineteen hundred years two thousand years God knows how long but it doesn't change every two years like rock and roll it's it's a permanent form of art the Gregorian chanting is like a Quranic chanting in many ways and for the Muslim ear that is the highest form of music although is it's not called music music in Arabic uses either the Greek word mousse musica which in arabic is mu siapa or a henna an arabic word which is the useless everyday word is messiah and in persian we should be and that's a very very tall order and at the arts that were based on is especially esoteric mystical arts and Sufism is used in Sufism and sacred dances and things like that bulu shall not even deal to it and I wanted to just because there's a few minutes left there finally I will talk about these forms of Arts which we do not in the West usually associate with a most important art high art with painting itself the art of painting the art of painting quite rightly was named by Western historians of art as miniatures which was small like the prefix mini which were attached to many things in English in Latin and in small small miniature it was always small until it went to India the Persians you know have a job to save a very slender cucumbers are about this big and they're very tasty once they went to India they grew to be this big and with everything person goes to India study grows in size this exactly happened with the miniature so you do have big miniatures of the Mughal period especially individual portraits of Jahangir and a quarter another great Emperor's destroys Nagas all mature small and the Turks the Ottoman Turks also in certain miniature as battles of the Sultan Suleyman in 17th century against Vienna and so on and so on that is battles in which are fairly big but the miniature began actually as illustration for books miniature began as illustration for books and the first examples that we have or scientific books the books from a thousand years ago the fourth is long a century of mineralogy which there are small paintings of let's say piece of cobalt or coarse to something like that kind of neurological textbook Illustrated and then gradually plants the translation of dog or ADIZ famous book are pharmacopoeia lost quarters with famous greek from pharmacist who collected herbs and wrote about the medical affect very very important than sub science it was thrust into arabic and the arabic versions have beautiful drawings of the plants and they're also very practical it helped the pharmacist to identify various but from that gradually grew up illustration of the Shawano mafiosi epic book of kings it was called the Homer of the Persian language the greatest epic poets of the Persian language or any Islamic language number two like him his heroes are even our mood our Arab names that people call rostam in Algeria who not even Persians but they've taken from the Xiang army is it with the great hero of the Xiang army and are very famous also in India very very famous administration of Kali no Adam no other protocol works and then when the Mongols came and took over Asia and for a while two cousins one was ruling over China the other one over Western Asia holoku horn and Kublai Khan a Tonka unbelievable they exchanged scientists and painters it simogo these Mongols they were not at all what we think of a bloodthirsty people it's cutting of heads very much interested in the Arts and Sciences so they exchanged there was a lot of between a lot of persians were sent to Beijing and all Chinese painters with central degrees and they're gradually in Tabriz which is true the capital of Persia Azerbaijan a new phase of Persia miniature developed the great miniatures of the honey and the turmeric periods which I think are the greatest masterpieces of Islamic art of painting exocrine units of a period there was some very fun examples in this exhibition attracted a great deal of attention of Western art historians and connoisseurs who are interested in art as painting and unfortunately for us Persians there were two good connoisseurs the English took about 90% of all the major ministry pennies of Iran to England I use the word took in as it the grain of salt of course but it's another verb that should have been used anyway today from London I always had to - we take a protractor and draw a circle of 50 months with the centre protractor than British Museum Russell Square not about 90 percent of all the important parameters of the world on that area the other 10% survived in Iran the lot that could I guess the donkey's were to go to her heavy that can carry the rest of the load whatever it was but that that builds your tradition became very well known in the West because one of the great schools are painting but it's not the central sacred art of Islam on certain parts of the Islamic world like the Arab world never develop any notable painting tradition there is folk painting in Syria and some in Egypt but not the high art there's nothing in Arabic art correspond to painting like this of course reaching ellinghouse and drawed a book called arabic painting it was about painting in Iraq there were almost all by Persian painters but there in Iraq which was being ruled by the buses at that time there were Arabs but anyway the little are between that we have does not have the quality of the three great schools of painting first of all Persian which was a mother and an ottoman and mogul India the Mogul even influenced Rajput Hindu painting the beautiful school of late Hindu painting in India now my time is coming to an end I want to save your words about the relation between truth and beauty as far as the language of Islamic art is concerned and conclude they happen who also have said that there is no symbolism and Islamic art I disagree completely with this thesis every traditional art is symbolic and if you're a bit positive what I mean symbol originally in Greek comes from the word symbol on means to tie and to bind symbol is what binds a lower order of reality to a higher order of reality how curious that its opposite is the Oberland a diabolic which separates the two states two realities from each other is very very telling now Islamic art by definition either reminds you of God or it's not Islamic art reminds you of something sacred and reminds you of some divine command you might have sent some sacred history or what is not Islamic art art is everything Muslims make is Islamic art there are things that some Muslims draw today we put in the Sun it started with silk rolling and go back into the grass garden a muhammad or Parveen doesn't mean that everything they do is Islamic art I'm talking about authentic Islamic art Islamic art is symbolic in the deeper sense but you have to understand this language it's not symbol in the same way let's say that Hindu statuary symbolic once you learn that dance of Shiva you see a form like that God with many hands is dancing with on one leg on Parvati and this is the circle of fire and so they explain what this mean you understand symbolism this is not an iconic artist and an iconic art Islamic art is an anti conical and therefore a symbolism also it's not to be sought in this way Simba's of islamic art comes through other ways first of all with nothing through the void I once wrote many many years ago an essay on the significance of the void in Islamic art to transiently Italian Japanese French many languages made a lot of noise at that time because I claimed that in order to understand Islamic art we have to look not only at what is but also what is not there's emptiness avoid Islamic architecture is defined by emptiness when you go inside the church the altar or this cross or some image or a Hindu temple the statue of divinity Ganesha samel in the middle who defines the space when you go into a mosque the shot your subrata fight is nothing the immediate experience the sacred space of the mosque is emptiness now this is a very profound metaphysical significance you can say the following and this is a metaphysical statement Iraq sector expect us all to understand it immediately let us say nevertheless if this world is something God is nothing no thing if God is something this world is nothing that's what la-la-la-la says that's the in younger than one of the meanings of yin-yang no for the Far East is a very important thing that if you look at thing eNOS the world things objects materials is told and so then sure that God does not one of those you have to be known in front of that that's why I said no thing and nothing means nothing I did nothing a stuff for a London sense of reality so but it's no thing if in Reverse God is everything cause that's the reality and the world is nothing and the genius of Islamic art is in the second choice of bringing out something of the effing essence of their nothingness the brittleness of the world before God throughout centuries Muslims except for houses of worship always built not to last they always built so each generation would built for itself not the thing that one lives in this world forever when make steel and he's like I came to Tehran to build private houses are many older people with a visor son son why do you using all these steel beams do theme going to live forever as lower they couldn't understand it something that would last you what if the years you die the house falls down and son build something but every Afghan village has been rebuilt 500 times over history or in Pakistan or God knows where this is very very important point the question of the it the void to the Muslim is not simply lack it is presence where there's an absence of this world's the presence of God and I can hardly over emphasize for the significance of the void in the understanding of Islamic art you can even see it actually in the empty parts of a page u.s. calligraphy at another empty spaces those empty spaces play a role in the Muslim consciousness and definition of space islamic art is very much related to us then we come to what we call positive forms that are used in Islamic art I shall only talk about two of them one is geometric patterns of course all sacred art uses geometry even the beautiful icons that the business painted you don't see that side but they have geometric form beneath it some that have been analyzed but there's no art in the world no sacred art in the world which is openly a geometrical as Islamic art everybody has noted that anybody has visited say the great portal of the Hamas or the imam mosque of Isfahan is astounded every single polygon is present there I remember this episode I told this to my dear friend dr. Moore once the great German mathematician was there at Princeton Norman Norman had come to Iran was one of the greatest mathematician of twentieth-century and we took him to Islam it was a fairly short man is standing in front of the port I wouldn't move the person one Norman let's go in he said no after about ten minutes he said this is the first time I've seen the world of mathematics it was completely immersed that is for the Muslim mind the geometric forms are the world of intelligibility not abstract ideas that we learn in school today but intelligibility and like platonic ideas the principles of this world but govern over this world and so geometric patterns are absolutely essential to Islamic art the symmetries the relationships the forums the symbolism of the sides I can you know you could spend the rest of your life my dear friend Keith Chris law - students here right now is I got him to write the Islamic patterns wouldn't even know it Islamic patterns were but that book is that a classical book advance the word life's work and sacred geometry from the Greeks all the way through Western civilization and now fortunately it's established field and he and many others have worked on that I want to appoint to them significance of that and then the arabesque the arabesque of course is an English word or comes from French ah ha Bisky and it means Arab like you don't use that in Arabic itself the word that's used in Arabic is 'aslim carefully slimmy is that from Muslims do not even know if most Muslim do not know it but that's a technical name for it now this is an abstraction of life forms geometries eyes but living life forms feminine the the geometry dramatic forms and the our Basque are like the wedding of the masculine to feminine the by unity through which God has created the world as the quran says verily we created you in pairs as wife Jana and this is so G and they always go together finally and my time is over for conclude with this much of Islamic art makes use of vivid colors and some of no color at all you're completely whitewashed walls of moss no color whatsoever some of the early mosque and then you have the moss of summer run and it's fahan which are the most colorful buildings in history of art there's no civilization has produced buildings outside of which also colorful are um you must have seen pictures of these things now it is a very elaborate science of the symbolism of colors these are not accidental and they've been very rarely treated in Western art I remember once Allegro bar you just died god bless his soul his professorship art at Harvard an old friend of mine from the old days and classmates together when I left here went to Harvard and 97-90 asked me to a series of lectures on Islamic artists class and I get three scissors herb lecture on just the symbols of color in Islamic art then he who is the greatest Western scholar and an Islamic artisan you know I'd never paid attention anywhere it studied this this son that really needs to be studied same as in Christianity call it color symbolism medieval art and when a son sword is very very important I mean just give you one small example the colored green the color green is the color of Islam the flag of the Prophet the Dome of the prophets tomb in Medina is green and has been used in a symbolic way many other ways and then in the Persian miniature you have pink mountains your blue trees what do they symbolize they symbolize actually the intermediate world the world beyond this world is they're not simply natural trees and mountains they're the landscape of a world beyond and that's what they symbolize it's a wonderful a very vast world which you can only understand by taking recourse to a vast Islamic literature in various languages and also practices of the still-living or tradition my conclusion is I come to an end of these few words Islamic art is in a sense like a non political theology or metaphysics it is silent theology and there is no more important than the language in the world today for the expression of what is deepest in Islam than the silence it speaks much more eloquently than political discourses is not accidental country like France where Islamophobia is that it speak or their attacks against Muslims almost every day in the suburbs of non-si or Paris some other city Lyon especially in the south whenever it is a concert of authentic Persian or Arabic music you could not get a ticket it's always full the concert of sacred art and fests that's held every facility art is attended by thousands of Frenchmen and Germans who didn't don't want to read at all about this is longer there is longer than opposition is open and so on I'm not belittling the importance of course of religious discourse theological discussions I've been at the forefront of this for 50 years but as a humble student of Islamic art I think an exhibition like this is in a sense speaks more eloquently than 10 speakers protea to speak very specific subjects except that we have to learn to atone our ears to the voice of silence we can only do that we also saw become better human beings not only a lot of deserving Islamic tradition a visa vie our own thank oh yeah does a couple of questions yes this way Thank You professor now sir he has consented to ask to take just a couple of questions the hours late so we have two questions please wait for the roving mic because they'll be recorded and I think I have possession of it you're going to take it from me we'll just take a couple of questions we usually like to give students the first shot at these if if any of you have questions all right I'll stand up I guess um you started sure you started saying that if something was true truly true then it would also be beautiful does it then follow that every that it's possible for something to be beautiful without being true that it's a two-way street beauty as I said is a double-edged sword because it can ensnare entice as well as deliver us and this ambiguity has been marked by many moral philosophers in both East and West there's no doubt about that but in the deepest sense that which is beautiful to the extent that is beautiful is also true if it is beautiful and false it's because there are other aspects of it which are not beautiful that's the answer I will provide you thank you with regards to the environment what do you think is the greatest thing that humans can do to reclaim the beauty of the void in a sense to appreciate any kind of beauty needs an education on our behalf you have to educate ourselves it's not only mental education there's also spiritual education some people are given to one kind of beauty more than to others some for example more musically inclined some who are more visually inclined and so on and so on but I see your question how do we appreciate the beauty of the void the answer to that is very similar very difficult we have to empty ourselves of ourselves to experience the void within not as an emptiness but someone else do in depression but the emptiness from the negative aspects of our soul and a fullness of the presence of the spiritual within us that's how we experience the void in its positive aspect externally that's all thank you very much and good luck on behalf of all of us I want to thank you once more for being with us this evening and thank you all for your attendance would remind you that the museum will be open until nine o'clock you have just about 4045 minutes to to visit the exhibit if you'd like to and we have a good evening and we hope to see you at the next event thank you

Channel: BYU MOA

Views: 54,824

Rating: 4.8350515 out of 5

Keywords: Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Wheatley Institution, Brigham Young University, BYU, BYU Museum of Art, Islamic Art

Id: asTPBo9ei1M

Length: 76min 2sec (4562 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 11 2012