Word & Image

A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry

ISSN: 0266-6286 (Print) 1943-2178 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/twim20

The lamp of paradox

Margaret S. Graves

To cite this article: Margaret S. Graves (2018) The lamp of paradox, Word & Image, 34:3,
237-250, DOI: 10.1080/02666286.2017.1409007

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.2017.1409007

Published online: 06 Sep 2018.

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The lamp of paradox
MARGARET S. GRAVES

Abstract The transferable image of a hanging lamp suspended from an arch appears across several media in the Islamic world from
the medieval period. Lamps and lamp-shaped objects also survive in significant numbers. While the relationship of the lamp image to
the Qur’anic Light Verse (24:35) and its medieval exegeses has long been recognized, this article questions both the a priori assumption
of textual primacy over images and objects, and the ascription of univocal symbolism to a highly complex polyvalent phenomenon.
The image of the radiant lamp, in both the Qur’anic text and its subsequent mental and material envisionings, represents a symbiotic
engagement between the visual and verbal realms, at the core of which lies a seemingly paradoxical stress on the materiality of the
lamp itself as metonym for light. This study addresses the use of the lamp image in medieval Islam by considering the implications and
outcomes of a representational model that hypostatizes light as matter and mental image as external form. Textual sources, and their
relationships to both internal and external forms of vision, are first discussed. Following this, an examination of individual objects
scrutinizes an increasingly dense materiality of the lamp image as the Word is embodied in glass, ceramic, metal, and wool. The
visual–verbal–material nexus of radiance, as formulated within the Qur’anic text, reaches its most complete incarnation, paradoxi-
cally, in fully opaque votive “lamps” that replace optical illumination with a web of connotative signification.

Keywords surat al-nur, lamp, Qur’an, materiality

And God strikes similes for men, and God has knowledge of
everything.
(Qur’an 24:351)
Richard Ettinghausen, in an article first published in 1974,
disclosed a palpable sense of frustration as he described the
limits of symbolism in Islamic art—and, by extension, the limits
of iconographic interpretation by historians of Islamic art,
including himself. In illustration of these frustrations, he cites
the image of a hanging lamp suspended from the apex of an
arch, an early incarnation of which can be seen in figure 1. This
visual unit seemingly takes its authority from a strikingly con-
crete simile presented in the famous āyat al-nūr or “Light Verse”
of the Qur’an (24:35). Ettinghausen was perturbed by what he
regarded as a tendency for supposedly unequivocal visual sym-
bols, generated from within Islamic culture, to undergo a rapid
loss of meaning through successive reiterations of form.2 The
“built-in self-destructive factor,” as he presented it, is the act of
elaboration through decoration, wherein “content or function
is sacrificed for mere outer form.”3 Death by ornament, in
other words. In Ettinghausen’s formulation, the image of the
suspended lamp quickly dissipates its semantic content and
symbolic power. It becomes, he argues, debased and suscepti-
ble to meaningless reinterpretations as a result of possessing
what another great Islamic art historian, Oleg Grabar, has
termed elsewhere a “low symbolic charge”; this condition
results in a rapid loss of signification when a form is trans-
planted to new contexts or viewed from a later perspective.4
The intractable processes of transformation that discomfited
Ettinghausen also serve to confound iconographic analysis. As
an art-historical method, iconographic analysis typically seeks
to render artworks and motifs readable as stable “texts.” The
dominance of iconographic methods in Islamic art history has
come under cross-examination since Ettinghausen’s article was
written, although such questions have perhaps been raised
more discreetly in this sub-field than they have in other areas
of art history.5 None would deny the tremendous value that
research in iconography—including many of the pioneering
studies published by Ettinghausen—has brought to the scho-
larly investigation of Islamic art. Latterly, however, an increas-
ing interest in multivalent models of interpretation has
emphasized the agency of artworks, their material qualities,
and their contextual specificity, as well as the entangled and
sometimes contradictory roles of artists and audiences. These
approaches have begun to direct attention toward the question
of how art works, rather than focusing exclusively on what it
means.6
Amongst such studies a recent article by Stephennie Mulder
takes up the challenge of the hanging lamp image, carefully
exploring the appearance and placement of this visual unit in
the commemorative context of three medieval ʿAlid shrines in
Syria.7 Her detailed investigation shows that varying doctrinal
and social inflection had the potential to affect quite signifi-
cantly the reception and interpretation of the image by differ-
ent confessional constituencies, probably simultaneously. She
concludes that the depiction of a lamp suspended from the
apex of an arch, singly or in sequence, was in the case of the
ʿAlid shrines “an active polyvalent image” capable of bearing
multiple interpretations. This made it possible for the motif to
participate in sectarian debate in multiple ways and even on
occasion act as a mediating element, a case she argues for the
twelfth-century portal of the Mashhad al-Husayn in Aleppo
(figure 2).8 Recognition of this kind of “active polyvalence”
creates a discursive field in which the fluid realities of produc-
tion and reception in the visual and plastic arts can expand.
The image of a hanging lamp suspended from an arch is
widespread within the Islamic world from the medieval period

WORD & IMAGE, VOL. 34, NO. 3, 2018 237

https://doi.org/10.1080/02666286.2017.1409007

# 2018 Taylor & Francis

 onwards, although not universal. It can be found in architec-
tural decoration and among the portable arts in many media,
and it has a correspondingly diverse range of potential (and
potentially simultaneous) interpretations that, as Mulder has
demonstrated, are best elucidated on a case-by-case basis.
Rather than attempting to pin down meaning or trace defini-
tive evolutions across time, space, or media, I will instead
address here certain idiosyncratic and even paradoxical aspects
of the lamp image by considering the implications and out-
comes of a representational model that hypostatizes light as
matter, and mental image as external form.
Textual sources, chief amongst them the “Light Verse” of
the Qur’an (24:35), have often been regarded as the authorita-
tive “explanation” for the image of the hanging lamp sus-
pended from an arch, but they will here be argued to
represent only one facet of a mutually constitutive relationship
between visual, verbal, and material phenomena. The entan-
glement of these realms is reflected in this study as the argu-
ment oscillates between texts, images, and objects. The next
section of this article will explore the textual descriptions of
light and lamp that have often been given art-historical pri-
macy, looking through them to explore the dense materiality of
the lamp image they articulate. Following this, the subsequent
section will scrutinize the materiality of the lamp and its images
at the “threshold of substance,” as it becomes embodied in
glass, ceramic, metal, and wool.9 I argue that the hypostatiza-
tion of light witnessed in the Light Verse contains within it the
germ of an increasingly dense material expression of illumina-
tion, which finds its ultimate, paradoxical realization in the
occlusion of illumination from the image of the lamp—a phe-
nomenon explored in the final section.
Figure 1. Carved panel, 450 AH/1058 CE. Marble. Dimensions unknown.
Ghazni, Afghanistan. Formerly Museum of Ghazni. Photo: Italian
Archaeological Mission in Afghanistan.
Visual, verbal, material: the matter of light
In the Muslim tradition light (nūr) is “the most inclusive attri-
bute by which God is described,” and one of the ninety-nine
beautiful names of God.10 Correspondingly, natural light is
frequently understood in medieval Islamic exegesis to be a
visible, temporal counterpart of the pre-existent divine light.11
It is also, as in many other religious systems, a phenomenolo-
gical constant in mysticism. By now it is received wisdom that
any discussion of the image of the hanging lamp suspended
from an arch must begin, and will often end, with the Qur’anic
text of the Light Verse, the thirty-fifth verse of Sura 24—itself
called the “Sura of Light,” Sūrat al-nūr, taking its name from its
most celebrated passage. While I question the a priori assump-
tion of textual primacy, the Light Verse—one of the most
famous passages in the Qur’an—is undoubtedly the touchstone
for the lamp image in both its mental and material
envisionings:
God is the light [nūr] of the heavens and the earth; the like-
Figure 2. Carved decoration in the portal of the Mashhad al-Husayn, ness of His light is as a niche [mishkāt] wherein is a lamp
Aleppo, Syria, 1195, with a frieze of lamps, scrolling decoration, and an [mi ‫ׅ‬sbā ‫ׅ‬h]—the lamp in a glass [zujāja], the glass as it were a
inscription praising the Twelve Imams. Limestone. Photo: Stephennie glittering star [kawkabun durrīyun]—kindled from a blessed tree
Mulder, 2004.

238 MARGARET S. GRAVES

 [shajaratin mubārakatin], an olive [zaytūn] that is neither of the
East nor of the West whose oil well-nigh would shine, even if
no fire touched it; light upon light. God guides to His light
whom he wills. And God strikes similes for men, and God has
knowledge of everything.12
The Light Verse is unusual within the corpus of Qur’anic
imagery for its explicit self-identification as a simile, and for
its requirement that the reciter/reader/listener perform an
extended and additive act of visualization. Identification of
the passage as a self-conscious form of analogous imagery is
first indicated in the statement “the likeness of His light is as a
niche” (mathalu nūrihī ka-mishkātin). Following the internally
coherent composite image of light, niche, lamp, glass, and oil,
the centrality of likeness and visualization to the verse is again
underscored by the statement that “God strikes similes for
men” (ya ‫ׅ‬dribu Allahu ‘l-amthāla li’l-nāsi). The Arabic text carries
within it the connotation of striking a coin, or striking a form
from matter, further embedding the already concretized com-
ponents of the Qur’anic image into the material realm.13 The
word mathal, translated here as “simile,” can carry a number of
meanings related to the concept of likeness, and this excerpt
has sometimes been translated into English in ways that do not
adhere so closely to the original Qur’anic conjunction of ‫ׅ‬daraba
(to hit or strike) with mathal. Probably the most common trans-
lation of mathal in such contexts is “parable.”14 However, the
Light Verse is not a parable in the usual modern sense of a
narrative, but a near-static similitude based on conceptual
analogy, and for these reasons the translation of mathal as
“simile” is preferable.
In material terms, then, what is described in the Qur’anic
verse is an arrangement that engenders maximum illumination.
The mi ‫ׅ‬sbā ‫ׅ‬h—a word usually translated as “lamp” or “lighted
wick”—is placed in a glass container, which is in turn placed in
a mishkāt, an enigmatic term most commonly taken to mean an
architectural niche (presumably windowless).15 Through the
light reflected in the niche and refracted through the glass,
this combination of elements lights up more of the darkness
than a simple lighted wick alone could manage. The evocation
depends for its efficacy upon a precise visualization of tangible
material components at the moment of use. As a result, a
paradoxical emphasis on materiality lies at the heart of the
passage. The Qur’anic text articulates substanceless effulgence
not through description of light itself, or even through descrip-
tion of the direct effects of light, but through an invitation to
visualize and contemplate the material things used to set a light
in the darkness. Even the glittering star of the glass and the
shining oil are tangible materials that have become vehicles for
refraction or vessels for light.
Various commentaries on the Light Verse survive from the
early Islamic period onwards, with works of tafsīr (Qur’anic
interpretation) glossing both the abstract and the concrete
possibilities of light, in the Light Verse and elsewhere in the
Qur’an, as a symbol of guidance, of the Prophet Muhammad
and of the Qur’anic text itself.16 In the ninth and tenth cen-
turies, the Light Verse became first a focus and then a spring-
board for early Sufi mystic writings on the illumination of the
spirit.17 Many of these mystical writings are arranged around,
although not limited to, an interpretation of the concrete ele-
ments of the Light Verse as a series of symbols for spiritual
phenomena.
Within this framework, a univocal iconographic interpreta-
tion of the lamp image has long proved tempting to art histor-
ians. For example, several have selected the most apposite
textual excerpt from one of the best-known and most elaborate
medieval interpretations of the verse, the Mishkāt al-anwār (Niche
of Lights) of the Persian mystic polymath al-Ghazālī (d. 1111),
and used it to fix the visual symbolism of the lamp image.
Ettinghausen and others proposed Ghazālī’s Mishkāt as a cata-
lyst for the wide dissemination of the image of the lamp hang-
ing from an arch in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a point
to which I will return.18 The Mishkāt is a short treatise, written
towards the end of Ghazālī’s life, which develops a complex
metaphysics of veiling and illumination clearly bearing the
influence of emanationist cosmologies, in spite of Ghazālī’s
famous earlier opposition to Neoplatonic philosophy.19
Outlining a nested hierarchy of perceptual “lights,” Ghazālī
observes that it is that which allows others to see, whilst being
simultaneously capable of seeing itself and others, that is most
worthy of the name “light” (nūr).20 This is then qualified by the
author as a category that should most appropriately bear the
name “light-giving lamp” (sirāj munīr), a characteristic of the
Prophetic spirit and a title given to Muhammad in the Qur’an
(33:46).21 “All prophets are lamps [suruj],” observes Ghazālī.22
In the iconographic tradition of art history, the image could
thus be regarded as decoded upon the authority of the
Qur’anic verse as mediated through Ghazālī’s text, as well as
other exegeses. In this line of interpretation, the representation
of the lamp would stand as a direct symbol of the Prophetic
spirit and the holy illumination that it bestows upon the world.
The correlation of this imagery with the concept of the pre-
existent nūr Mu ‫ׅ‬hammad (“light of Muhammad”), a topos that has
led to visual and literary characterization of Muhammad as a
vessel of light and radiant being, adds further appeal to the
interpretation.23 Case closed?
In fact, there are a number of pragmatic objections to what
Finbarr Flood, in his erudite analysis of light imagery in early
Islam, has termed the “Ghazālī hypothesis”—as well as a larger
and more pressing problem of art-historical praxis.24 The sim-
plest problem is whether an avowedly esoteric text such as the
Mishkāt had enough effect to make it the progenitive source for
the hanging lamp image, a visual unit that survives in a very
broad range of contexts across media from the eleventh century
onwards. Most significantly, Ghazālī’s text postdates the ear-
liest surviving examples of the image of a globular hanging
lamp suspended from an arch (e.g. figure 1).25 Both of these
points could in theory be countered with the argument that
WORD & IMAGE 239
Ghazālī’s text should be understood as only one part of a larger
hermeneutics of illumination that always and ultimately refers
back to the Light Verse itself, and therefore defers to the
primacy of the Qur’anic text whether or not the intermediaries
of medieval commentary are recognized.26 However, this leads
to a much more significant question: can even the most author-
itative text serve as the interpretive end-point of material
artifacts?
Consider first Ghazālī’s Mishkāt, and then the Qur’anic text
itself. Certainly, the image of a glass lamp containing a lit wick,
placed in a niche, is drawn in coherent terms in the Qur’anic
verse, and Ghazālī’s Mishkāt is a symphonic exegesis of that
description. But Ghazālī’s text, as a mystic extension of the
enigmatic Qur’anic simile, is concerned in equal measure with
perception, manifestation, darkness, unveiling, and illumina-
tion. Ghazālī was not the most materially minded of medieval
scholars, but in the Mishkāt’s multilayered engagement with
visuality it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the text was
created within, and in response to, a material as well as a
mental landscape of emanating lights and, quite possibly,
images of lamps. Ghazālī’s text is constituted through the visual
realm, rather than ordering or dictating it.27
Furthermore, the epistemological structures of medieval
Islamic philosophy and theology, including those of Ghazālī
himself, do not often support the kind of tightly conclusive
symbolism favored by the iconographic method of art history.
Rhetorically, Ghazālī frequently parallels exoteric and esoteric
interpretations of the same texts and presents a mirroring of the
earthly and spiritual realms.28 However, in the Mishkāt he also
notes that the visible world is neither a lexicon nor a grammar
of symbols through which spiritual realms can be mechanically
transcribed. Explicitly refuting and destabilizing the univocal
correlation of visible form with spiritual meaning, he writes:
It may be that one thing [in the visible world] is a similitude
[mithāl] for many things in the world of dominion [ʿālam al-
malakūt], and that one thing in the world of dominion has
many similitudes in the visible world [ʿālam al-shahāda].29
Elsewhere, he theorizes that the experience to be encountered
by the elect “lies beyond the limits of language,”30 and on more
than one occasion in his vast œuvre he has argued against the
possibility of equivalence between “images” (mithāl) and their
referents in religious contexts.31 Concepts of mimesis and repre-
sentation in the pre-modern Islamic world followed different
trajectories from those of the European tradition, and enabled
complex and fluid systems of allusion and likeness that are not
easily accommodated within the quest for direct symbolism.32
Ghazālī was only the most prominent of several authors
whose writings attest to the burgeoning mystical hermeneutics
of light in the medieval Islamic world. Beyond the Mishkāt, the
mystic philosophy of ishrāq (illumination) furnishes one of the
most intriguing paradigms for comprehending the values of
light, and its representations, in medieval Islamic contexts. As
240 MARGARET S. GRAVES
a school of thought Ishrāqism was established in the twelfth
century by the Persian-born scholar-philosopher Suhrawardī
(d. 1191), who formulated an alternative to Aristotelian philo-
sophical traditions with the theory of “knowledge-by-presence”
(al-ʿilm al- ‫ׅ‬hu ‫ׅ‬dūrī).33 In the conceptualization of existence itself as
light, with God as “The Light of lights” (nūr al-anwār),
Suhrawardī’s thought differed quite fundamentally from the
light symbolism of earlier Peripatetic philosophical traditions,
represented by Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037; known in the West as
Avicenna) and others. As Ian Netton has observed, “[t]he key
to Suhrawardian theology is that it deals not simply with a
symbolism of light but an ontology of light,” with Aristotelian
conceptions of matter giving way before a highly complex
cosmology of emanation and the hypostases that comprise its
entities.34
Concurrently, but not coincidentally, Suhrawardī also pro-
pounded a remarkable theory of the “world of suspended images”
(ʿalām al-muthul al-muʿallaqa). This elusive realm, which is mentioned
in his ‫ׅ‬H ikmat al-ishrāq (Philosophy of Illumination), is distinct from
the more standard “three worlds” of intellect, soul, and body. This
“fourth world” is most prominent in the philosopher’s ideas about
eschatology. However, it seems to have been formulated primarily
through his philosophical probing of the nature of vision, and
particularly the location of the images perceived during the act of
sight. Questioning the Peripatetic tradition that conceptualized
sight as the imprinting of forms into the crystalline humor of the
eye or the mind, Suhrawardī wrote, in his search for an alternative
model, that “the truth is that the forms in mirrors and the imagi-
native forms are not imprinted, but are instead suspended fortresses
[ ‫ׅ‬sayā ‫ׅ‬sī muʿallaqa], not having a locus.”35 ‫ׅ‬Sayā ‫ׅ‬sī (“fortresses” or
“strongholds”) is used here to mean “human or animal bodies,”
and suggests a form of mediation that is framed in spatial terms and
yet exists outside of three-dimensional space.36 While this paradigm
penetrated only so far into later philosophical and mystical thought,
it remains an important testimony to the problems of light, matter,
image, and imagination that occupied some of the greatest and
most original thinkers of the medieval Islamic philosophical tradi-
tion for centuries.
When it is viewed against the later traditions of medieval
exegesis and Ishrāqism, it becomes easier to see what the
Qur’anic Light Verse does, in textual terms. Description is
used to call up an internal visualization of something that
could be seen in the sensory world, but which is being visua-
lized to aid in the comprehension of something that cannot be
seen.37 It is in this sense a form of takhyīl, or image evocation,
after the meaning this term was given by the great philosopher
al-Fārābī (d. 950) in his treatise on poetry, the Kitāb al-Shiʿr
(Book of Poetry): that is, an image created through words in the
imagination of the listener.38 The post-facto engagement of the
Light Verse into medieval mystical ontologies of illumination
serves to demonstrate its extraordinary power as a highly
sophisticated visual–verbal nexus with a notable emphasis on
materiality.
The lamp and its images from the apices of arches also appear in Early Christian artworks,
The mishkāt of the Light Verse is the only appearance of this as in the representations of cult niches used to decorate the sides
term in the Qur’an.39 The “niche” that it designates is now and back of the late fourth-century Pola casket, made from ivory.-
45
commonly identified visually with the mihrab, the arcuated The convergence of this imagery from multiple sources recalls
niche that indicates the qibla or direction of prayer in mosques controversies over the origins of the mihrab itself.46
and other buildings for Muslim worship, and most often con- In some of the early examples of the mihrab image there is a
stitutes the focus of decoration in the mosque’s interior. discernible emphasis on the material mechanisms of suspen-
Although the association between the mishkāt of the Light sion, with hooks, rings, and chains carefully and realistically
Verse and the architectural mihrab is not inherent in the articulated in both the Ghazni marble image (1058) (figure 1)
Qur’anic text, the assimilation of radiance into the form and and the frescoes in the tomb tower at Kharraqan (1067–68,
concept of the mihrab seems to have begun in the early Islamic although the frescoes may be later than the building).47 By
period. Such radiance could be enacted literally, via architec- contrast, many of the well-known ceramic tile examples of the
tural illumination through ingeniously placed apertures, or mihrab image that survive from fourteenth-century Iran tend
could take the form of ornamentation with reflective or lustrous towards a sublimation of the suspension apparatus, hanging by
materials, hanging lamps and pearls, or the inclusion of the straight lines drawn without obvious means of connection from
Light Verse or other passages from Sura 24 within the decora- the lamp lip or shoulder to the apex of the arch (figure 3).48
tive program.40
One of the most striking outcomes of the persistent charac-
terization of the mihrab as a point of emanation is the self-
contained and transferable image of a hanging lamp suspended
from the apex of an arch or arched niche.41 Sometimes this
imagery was made to coincide with the physical space of the
mihrab, through the inscription of the mihrab’s central field
with the image of a hanging lamp.42 More common, however,
is the phenomenon described by Nuha Khoury, following a
terminological distinction drawn by the fourteenth-century tra-
veler Ibn Baṭṭūta, as the “mihrab image” ( ‫ׅ‬sūrat mi ‫ׅ‬hrāb) or
“mihrab shape” (shakl mi ‫ׅ‬hrāb). That is, a two-dimensional or
low-relief image of a decorative arch, frequently encountered
in funerary contexts, and often including the image of a hang-
ing lamp. Such images survive in stone, stucco, and ceramic
from the eleventh century onwards, notably but certainly not
exclusively in greater Iran, and are most commonly found not
on the qibla wall of mosques but on tombstones and cenotaphs,
as well as in isolated tile panels and single tiles. This has led to
the conclusion that they have a commemorative function and
should be understood as distinct from, while reflective of,
“true” architectural mihrabs.43
As a unit that connects the mental image evoked by the Light
Verse with the physical phenomenon of hanging lamps in archi-
tectural settings, the mihrab image with hanging lamp stands at
the intersection of the visual, verbal, and spatial worlds.
Suspension of the lamp was not indicated in the Light Verse,
but it seems to have been critical to the mihrab image from the
outset, and must be understood as only one manifestation of a
longstanding tradition of symbolic suspension in Middle Eastern
architecture. In this respect, the mihrab image flattens into two
dimensions a spatial construct descended from a venerable line-
age of hanging crowns, pearls, ostrich eggs, and other precious
suspended objects, all used to confer distinction upon specific Figure 3. Tile panel, signed by Hasan ibn ʿAli ibn Ahmad Babivaih, early
fourteenth century. Glazed ceramic (fritware) with luster overglaze decora-
coordinates within regal and sacred monuments in pre-Islamic
tion. 123.2 × 59.7 centimeters. Iran. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
Middle Eastern and Mediterranean contexts.44 In low-relief con- York, Rogers Fund, 1909, accession number 09.87. Photo: Metropolitan
texts, closely related depictions of lamps and crowns suspended Museum of Art.

WORD & IMAGE 241

This may be an outcome of the limitations of ceramic molding
and painting, but it also seems to be accompanied by an
increasing focus on the physical body and decoration of the
lamp itself, with artists apparently favoring this aspect of the
image over the construction of a spatially logical assemblage or
plausible mechanism for suspension.
The lamps depicted within mihrab images are generally of a
consistent appearance and clearly refer to a specific type, of
which many medieval examples survive in glass and metal: the
globular hanging lamp with footring and flaring neck.49
Earlier, but closely related, versions of the form can be identi-
fied in ninth-century fragments from globular hanging lamps
with rounded bases, found at Samarra in Iraq.50 A very similar
type can be seen in the multiple lamps hung in arcades
depicted in the famous architectural frontispiece images of
the Sana’a Qur’an (late seventh or early eighth century).51
The fully developed medieval form, characterized by a globu-
lar body, flared neck, and stable foot, is known from glass
examples of the tenth century onwards, and usually has an
applied tube fixed inside to hold the lit wick and oil.52 A small,
fragmentary glass lamp of this type was found at Nishapur in Figure 4. Lamp, thirteenth century. Mold-blown glass with gilding and
Iran, although the precise findspot is unknown, and is dated by enameling. Height 21.2 centimeters. Syria. Victoria and Albert Museum,
London, 330-1900. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Jens Kröger to the tenth or eleventh century.53
The globular footed lamp was not only executed in glass.
Pierced metalwork lamps of this type from North Africa, Syria,
as has recently been demonstrated by researchers at the
Anatolia, and Iran, from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries,
University of Pennsylvania.59 It would also cause the pool of
demonstrate the very broad sweep of the form’s popularity.54
cast light to be set in liquid motion by vibrations or distur-
Some examples are even inscribed with the Light Verse, expli-
bances. Differing qualities of the various pellucid materials
citly drawing the verbal and material imagery of light into a
available for lamp manufacture were noted by medieval obser-
single field.55 In two-dimensional representation, the type oper-
vers: Ibn Jubayr, in records of his travels between 1183 and
ated as a medieval and Early Modern signifier of sacred space
1185, differentiates between lamps of crystal (ballūr) and those of
not only within the mihrab image but also in paintings in
glass (zujjāj), presumably on the basis of their mediation of
manuscripts and Hajj certificates of mosque settings and
emanated light as well as other aspects of their appearance.60
other types of religious architecture—as can be seen, for exam-
Crystal and glass are frequently paired as substances in med-
ple, in the famous illustrated manuscript of the Maqāmāt of al-
ieval texts, but are sometimes ranked in order of their “nobi-
Ḥarīrī, dated 1237.56 As a result of its pan-Islamic visibility, the
lity,” with crystal perceived as a nobler substance than glass—
globular hanging lamp has come to achieve postmodern cano-
the implication being that its greater transparency, clarity, and
nization as a transhistorical unit of celebratory piety. This
rarity accords it higher status.61
status is borne out by the form’s citation in four monumental
Many of the mystic exegeses of the Light Verse are notable,
contemporary suspended stained-glass lamps, created by Julio
too, for their focus on the substance of the glass in the Qur’anic
LaFuente, which stand on the Jeddah corniche in Saudi
image: its physical qualities are exploited for extended meta-
Arabia.57
phors of transparency and purity, as well as its glittering ability
The upright tubular wick and oil or candle-holder attached
to act as the material conduit and embodiment of immaterial
to the base of many extant early glass lamps formed the
light.62 Varying conceptualizations of the interaction between
operational unit of the lamp (figure 4). As Avinoam Shalem
light and physical substance circulated in the Islamic world
has described it, the bellies of such lamps would be filled to just
throughout the medieval period. In an early context, the
below the height of the wick or candle-holder with water,
great litterateur al-Jā ‫ׅ‬hi ‫ׅ‬z (d. 868/69) wrote in praise of the
creating a fire-safety mechanism that would extinguish the
transparency of glass that
flame when the wick burned out or if the lamp were knocked
over.58 The refractory qualities of water in a transparent glass when a ray of light strikes the glass, the flame and the light
lamp, such as the thirteenth-century Syrian example shown in together becomes a single source of light, reflecting each
figure 4, would also effect an intensification of the light source other’s ray [. . .] its brightness is doubled, and if it shines in
and cast more downward light than a glass lamp without water, someone’s eye it dazzles and may even blind him.63

242 MARGARET S. GRAVES

Refraction and reflection are thus redoubled in al-Jā ‫ׅ‬hi ‫ׅ‬z’s
description, with the transparent glossy substance of glass func-
tioning as both conduit and mirror; his concern lies with the
effects rather than the workings of light. In later texts one finds
more probing analysis of the physical sciences enmeshed with
the mystic values of both light and reflective materials, as in the
Sufi philosophical tale of Ḥayy Ibn Yaq ‫ׅ‬zān, by Ibn Tufayl
‫ׅ‬ (d.
1185). The author notes in a discursus on spontaneous genera-
tion and emanation that “it is the highly reflective bodies, not
the transparent ones, that take up light best; next are opaque,
non-reflecting bodies; but transparent bodies with no trace of
opacity do not take on light at all.”64 This distinction tackles a
fundamental problem of optics: Ibn Tufayl, ‫ׅ‬ following other
scholars of the period and most notably the great theorist of
vision Ibn al-Haytham (d. 1040, and known in the Latin tradi-
tion as Alhazen), recognized that light travels by radiation, and
thus that receptivity to light “was based not on transparency,
but on reflectivity.”65 The radiation of light through glass is
recognized by Ibn Ṭufayl as a result of its transparency, refrac-
tion as the result of this transparency being incomplete.
The thirteenth-century Syrian lamp (figure 4) is notable for Figure 5. Lamp, fourteenth century. Glass with gilding and enameling.
Height 33.5 centimeters. Egypt. Victoria and Albert Museum, London,
the high transparency of its glass. This has been exploited by the
1056-1869. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
object’s painter, who anticipated the liquid contents of the lamp
by painting the linear image of a fish on the lower belly of the
lamp, while the feet of the galloping horse touch down above Kahil, who sees in it the reflection of a fourteenth-century
what would be the waterline if the lamp were to be filled to just exegesis of the Light Verse by Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373). The latter
below the top of the wick-socket.66 In use, the piece would have argued that the mishkāt of the Light Verse referred not to a
presented the image of a falconer by a pool or charging along a niche but to the place of the wick in the lamp.70 Alternatively,
riverbank, with real water visible through the glass and effecting and perhaps more convincingly from a pragmatic viewpoint,
a microcosmic simulacrum of substance, while the enameled Shalem has suggested that the Mamluk lamps without integral
image of the horseman would be silhouetted in opaque, glowing wick holders most likely employed a floating-wick system, with
colors against the light source within.67 The figural content a layer of oil on top of a volume of water and the wick
makes it unlikely that the lamp was intended for use in a supported upon a floating cork and metal holder.71 In either
religious setting, and therefore distances it from the world of event, the silhouette of the globular hanging lamp became, in
the mihrab image. However, this object not only serves as a the Mamluk context, almost caricatured in its dramatically
reminder of the ubiquity of the globular lamp form but also curving profile and exaggeratedly wide body and mouth and
showcases the medieval craftsman’s sensitivity to the illustrative flared foot; these overstated contours were refined through the
and even illusionistic possibilities of materials. The equivalence great multiplication of the form that took place, with hundreds
of air, water, and glass as transparent bodies penetrable by light, of such lamps manufactured for sequential hanging in mauso-
already observed by Ibn al-Haytham, has in this case become lea and other sacred spaces.
the raison d’être of the manufactured object.68 The dense epigraphic programs found on Mamluk lamps
The best-known of all hanging lamp types from the Islamic make frequent use of the Light Verse. During use, such inscrip-
world are the large glass lamps produced in significant num- tions would shine forth if executed in reserve, or, if in solid
bers for donation to pious establishments by the amirs and color, they would appear silhouetted against the light, render-
sultans of Mamluk Egypt (figure 5). These are now found in ing them a direct embodiment of scripture at the moment of
museum collections all over the world. Like the extant pierced use.72 The example shown in figure 5 bears the text of Qur’an
metalwork lamps of globular hanging form, most of them do 24:36, i.e., the lines that immediately follow the famous Light
not have internal wick-holding tubes. Some scholars propose Verse (24:35) quoted in full above.73 Verse 36 has an ambig-
that the Mamluk lamps were originally equipped with a sepa- uous opening that most commentators and translators have
rate, simple container (probably glass) that held the wick and understood to imply a continuation of radiant light as the
oil—and, therefore, the light—within the more elaborate initial subject, carrying the central motif of a light or lamp
superstructure of the globular vessel, the latter probably con- over from the more famous verse that immediately precedes it.
taining water.69 This modus operandi is favored by Abdallah However, verse 36 does not actually include a reference to

WORD & IMAGE 243

lamps and so requires the reader to supply the mental image
that forms the initial subject: “[The light is lit] in houses God
has allowed to be raised up, and His name to be commemo-
rated therein; therein glorifying Him in the mornings and the
evenings.”74 In this case, the lamp itself supplies coherence to
the Qur’anic excerpt with which it has been inscribed through
its concrete embodiment of the light that forms the subject of
Qur’an 24:35 and completes the opening of 24:36. At the same
time, it also performs the very action of commemorating the
name of God, through its epigraphy, that it ordains through
the same inscription. Thus, by its material presence the
Mamluk lamp simultaneously completes its own inscribed mes-
sage and fulfills its own doctrinal command, an act of synphra-
sis that closes the referential loop between text and object.75
The glass lamps discussed here, which are only two examples
selected from a much larger body of objects, demonstrate the
ability of medieval artisans to harness intelligently the particu-
lar qualities of glass, and to put them to quite different ends
within the production of globular lamps. In both these con-
texts, the substance of glass functions as a form of embodied
metaphor. In the Syrian lamp, glass acts as an extension of, and
container for, the transparent liquid that provides a fictive pool
in which a painted fish swims.76 In the Mamluk Egyptian
example, the Word is embodied as material object, as calli-
graphic logos, and as mental image simultaneously through the
inscribed radiance of the light-bearing glass. In both cases, light
would be conducted during use through both the solid body of
the glass and the liquid body of water, their transparency
simultaneously hypostatizing and liquefying the radiance of
the light source.
finds its ultimate realization in the total opacity of ceramic and
unpierced sheet metal objects of lamp form. It is in these
creations that the paradox of the lamp image, first intimated
in the visualization of light through the description of matter
contained within the Light Verse, is fully embodied.
Many examples of the “blind lamp” phenomenon survive
from the Early Modern period, particularly from Ottoman
Turkey, but it is also encountered amongst earlier materials.
A glazed ceramic lamp in the British Museum, of “Raqqa”
type and speculatively attributed to the early thirteenth cen-
tury, is completely without perforations and can only have
been an inefficient generator of light at best, if indeed it were
ever used as such.79 Similarly, a well-known Mamluk Egyptian
metalwork object from the second half of the fourteenth cen-
tury, inlaid in silver with Qur’anic excerpts including the
Throne Verse (2:255, a passage often inscribed on mosque
architecture and fittings), takes the form of a globular hanging
lamp. And yet it could not have been used for illumination, at
least not when suspended on high, having no capacity to
emanate light other than directly upwards (figure 6).80
Equally, the many unpierced ceramic “mosque lamps” cre-
ated at the Ottoman imperial ceramic manufactories at Iznik
from the early sixteenth century must also have been symbols
of light rather than generators of it. Sometimes the symbolic
aspect of such “lamps” is underscored by their inscription with
the Light Verse, as can be seen on an example originally made

Opacity and occlusion

While it has certain advantages, the form of the globular
hanging lamp is not strictly necessary to its primary function:
the task of illumination could be fulfilled by a simpler vessel. As
mentioned above, the earliest examples from which the form
descends were round-bottomed. The globular-footed lamp
appears, from the evidence of miniature painting, to have
been suspended during normal use, which means the ubiqui-
tous foot is a largely unnecessary addition to the type—
although it may certainly have had its uses for storage, and
during lighting. The flared neck, too, perhaps has a role to play
in casting light upwards, but by the time of Mamluk glass lamp
production it had become emphasized to a degree that must
have gone beyond mere functionality. The formal peculiarities
of the globular hanging lamp have been ascribed by Shalem to
a medieval matrix of correlations drawn between water and
light, positing the globular form of such glass lamps as a
reference to jugs and stressing the radiant liquidity of their
contents during use.77 There is a certain tension, then, between
form and function that was inherent in the earliest surviving
examples of the type, with their quotidian wick-holding tubes Figure 6. Lamp-shaped hanging ornament, c.1350. Copper alloy inlaid with
mounted within a more sensuously gratifying, and perhaps silver and gold. Height 30 centimeters. Probably Cairo, Egypt. Museum of
intellectually and spiritually stimulating, form.78 This tension Islamic Art, Cairo, 15123. Photo: American University in Cairo Press.

244 MARGARET S. GRAVES

for the Süleymaniye mosque complex in Istanbul (completed
1557) and now held in the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London (figure 7).81 However, other types of textual content
were certainly also encountered on these objects: another well-
known example, found on the Haram at Jerusalem and now in
the British Museum, is dated 956 AH/1549 CE (figure 8).
Conjectured to have been an imperial commission for Sultan
Süleyman’s decoration of the Dome of the Rock, the lamp is
signed by an artist called Musli, who refers to himself as al-
nakkāş (the decorator).82 It is a work of the utmost skill, testify-
ing to the high status of this form within Iznik production, and
its inscriptions include ‫ׅ‬hadīth and Qur’anic texts, as well as the
craftsman’s name, the date, and a dedication to a local saint—
but not the Light Verse.83 Radiance could be enacted through
formal connotations alone, and was not dependent on precise
alignment with scriptural quotation.
The practice of suspending “blind lamps” continues in
sacred spaces to the present day: hanging ornaments shaped
like globular lamps were suspended above the tomb of Rumi in
Konya when I visited it in 2007 (figure 9), their presence a fully
materialized embodiment of the concept, rather than the act,
of radiance. The same phenomenon appears at the very heart
of Islamic practice: recent photographs of the interior of the Figure 8. Lamp-shaped hanging ornament, dated 956 AH/1549 CE. Glazed
Kaʿba published on Instagram in 2015 show an accumulated ceramic. Height 38 centimeters. Iznik, Turkey. British Museum, London,
mass of hanging lamp-shaped ornaments, all apparently exe- 1887,0516.1. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.
cuted in metalwork and none with any capacity for the emana-
tion of light, suspended from metal rails running between the
supporting pillars and the interior walls of the holiest structure
in Islam.84 While the provenance and history of these objects in

Figure 7. Lamp-shaped hanging ornament, late 1550s. Glazed ceramic. Figure 9. Lamp-shaped hanging ornament suspended above the tomb of
Height 48.2 centimeters. Iznik, Turkey. Victoria and Albert Museum, Rumi, date of object unknown. Konya, Mevlana Museum. Photo: author,
London, 131-1885. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. 2007.

WORD & IMAGE 245

the Kaʿba is at present unknown to me, from the context it is
evident that they represent dedicatory artifacts and pious offer-
ings, probably amassed over time.
The occlusion of illumination from fully opaque objects in
the form of lamps is often paralleled in miniature paintings.
Representations of light in the form of flaming wicks can be
seen within the earliest known depiction of hanging lamps from
the Islamic world, the famous frontispieces of the Sana’a
Qur’an, which clearly show transparent glass lamps with lit
wicks or candles burning inside them. But in later miniature
painting there is only quite rarely any explicit intimation of
flame, light, or emanation in the depiction of hanging lamps.85
The gold often used to color the represented lamp body in
miniature paintings quite possibly carries a secondary significa-
tion of radiance, via its warm reflective tone and changing
appearance by flickering light, as indeed might the yellow
metals of the blind sheet-metal lamps that decorate the
Kaʿba and other holy sites. But gold is also used to simulate
the shiny surface of all kinds of metalwork artifacts in miniature
painting, while transparency typically has a distinct model of
representation, and so the golden globular hanging forms
depicted in miniature paintings seem to be sheet-metal lamp-
shaped objects rather than radiant surfaces.86 Khoury cate-
gorizes the opaque, blind objects of lamp form that were
created in ceramic and metalwork as votive offerings and
commemorative gifts, and reads their two-dimensional coun-
terparts in miniature painting as “code for the subject matter
[of commemoration] or a metaphor for sanctification.”87
Hence, their role as signifiers par excellence of sacred space
within the highly regulated idiom of miniature painting.
One final material transformation of the lamp image
remains to be considered. The image of an arch (with or
without a lamp in its central field) is effectively the defining
feature of the “prayer rug” as a category, and it has long
been associated with the mihrab image.88 On an individual
prayer rug (sajjāda), the image is singular, normally scaled to
the use of one person alone, and is often understood to
present the purported mihrab image as a kind of portal or
entrance to paradise, casting the prayer rug as a space of
individual connection to the divine.89 There also exist large-
scale prayer rugs that multiply the image of the arch many
times. Amongst extant examples of the type, a seventeenth-
century carpet taken from the Selimiye mosque in Edirne,
Turkey, bears a design of arches repeated in a single hor-
izontal row, with a lamp hanging from the apex of each and
two images of footprints placed below (figure 10).90 This
sequential image of identical arches is the defining design
for large-scale prayer rugs of the type that has come be
known by the name ‫ׅ‬saff, and it is commonly understood to
be a multiplication of the single image of an arch, often with
hanging lamp, that is found on individual prayer rugs.
However, Walter Denny has argued that, rather than the
multiplication of a unique mihrab image, the ‫ׅ‬saff originally
246 MARGARET S. GRAVES
Figure 10. Detail of a multi-niche prayer rug, seventeenth century. Wool. 435
× 155 centimeters. Selimiye mosque, Edirne, Turkey. Museum of Turkish and
Islamic Art, Istanbul, inv. no. 88; from Nazan Ölçer, ed., Turkish Carpets from the
13th–18th Centuries (Istanbul: Ahmet Ertuğ, 1996), pl. 125.
represented an arcade, a form that acted as pictorial short-
hand for a mosque by the medieval period, and so the
imagery of the prayer rug marks it as a single unit that
was originally extracted from this larger architectural
framework.91 Within Denny’s argument, the ‫ׅ‬saff opens out
an expansive fictive space that, in its early incarnations, was
displayed on walls as well as on the ground.92
Into this dialectic, “so prominent in Islamic art and archi-
tecture, between solid and void, between motif and ground,
and between reality and illusion,” the materiality of the lamp
image has been dissolved into woven representation.93 The
suspended lamps depicted on the Edirne ‫ׅ‬saff reflect contem-
porary ceramic designs in both outline and decoration, and in
representational terms they model opacity through a solid
ground color of green.94 As already shown, the concretizing
materiality of the lamp image binds text to form and effulgence
to matter in sometimes surprising ways. The retreat from the
threshold of substance—or is this the advance beyond it?—is
signaled in the case of this ‫ׅ‬saff by the decisive extinguishing of
the lamp: it has been lidded.95
In all “blind” lamps, the evaporation of light itself from the
lamp and its representations, and the voiding of function from
form, replaces physical illumination with a web of connotative
signification that is directly engaged with, but not subordinated to,
the textual history of light in Islam as Qur’anic simile and mystical
ontology. The coagulation of the hanging lamp into an inherently
functionless opaque state is, paradoxically, the means by which
the lamp’s metonymic role as material conduit and embodiment
of radiance—first established in concrete terms within the Light
Verse itself—is most powerfully realized. In this manner, an
increasingly dense material presence effectively turns the lamp
into its own image, a representation of itself.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This article is dedicated to the memory of Oliver Charles Grant.
For helpful comments on earlier drafts, I thank Robert
Hillenbrand, as well as my writing-group colleagues at Indiana
University: Marina Antić, Guadalupe González Diéguez, Seema
Golestaneh, Ayana Smith, and Izabela Potapowicz.
NOTES
1 – Qur’an 24:35.
2 – Richard Ettinghausen, “Decorative Arts and Painting: Their Character
and Scope,” first published with “The Impact of Muslim Decorative Arts
and Painting on the Arts of Europe,” in The Legacy of Islam, ed. Joseph
Schacht and Clifford Edmund Bosworth, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1974), 274–320, at 281–82; revised version published as
“Muslim Decorative Arts and Painting: Their Nature and Impact on the
Medieval West,” in Islam and the Medieval West: A Loan Exhibition at the
University Art Gallery, April 6–May 4, 1975, ed. Stanley Ferber (Binghamton:
State University of New York, 1975), 5–26.
3 – Ettinghausen, “Decorative Arts and Painting,” 281, 283. Ettinghausen
expands on this theme in Richard Ettinghausen, “The Early History, Use
and Iconography of the Prayer Rug,” in Prayer Rugs, ed. Richard
Ettinghausen, Maurice S. Dimand, Louise W. Mackie, and Charles
Grant Ellis (Washington, DC: Textile Museum, 1974), 10–25, esp. 24–25.
4 – Oleg Grabar, “Symbols and Signs in Islamic Architecture,” in
Architecture as Symbol and Self-Identity, ed. Jonathan G. Katz (Philadelphia:
Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1980), 1-11, at 4.
5 – Since the 1980s, the dominance of iconographic analysis has been
queried repeatedly, and explicitly, within the study of certain areas of
European art, particularly medieval and Northern Renaissance; e.g. James
H. Marrow, “Symbol and Meaning in Northern European Art,” Simiolus:
Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 16, nos. 2/3 (1986): 150–69; and
Michael Camille, “Mouths and Meanings: Towards an Anti-Iconography
of Medieval Art,” in Iconography at the Crossroads: Papers from the Colloquium
Sponsored by the Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, 23–24 March 1990, ed.
Brendan Cassidy (Princeton: Index of Christian Art, 1993), 43–57.
6 – For influential formulations of this agenda, again drawn from the study
of Northern Renaissance painting in the 1980s and 1990s, see Joseph Leo
Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1993), xix; and idem, “The Mortification of the
Image: Death as Hermeneutic in Hans Baldung Grien,” Representations 10
(1985): 52–101. For a relevant overview of recent trends in the study of
objects, see Avinoam Shalem, “Epilogue: The Salerno Riddle and Some
Reflections on Artifacts in the Post-Semiotic Age,” in The Salerno Ivories:
Objects, Histories, Contexts, ed. Francesca Dell’Acqua, Anthony Cutler,
Herbert L. Kessler, Avinoam Shalem, and Gerhard Wolf (Berlin: Mann,
2016), 241–45.
7 – Stephennie Mulder, “Seeing the Light: Enacting the Divine at Three
Medieval Syrian Shrines,” in Envisioning Islamic Art and Architecture: Festschrift
for Renata Holod, ed. David Roxburgh (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 89–109.
8 – Ibid., 93, 96–97, 106–09.
9 – This phrase is borrowed from Fabio Barry, “Lux and Lumen: The
Symbolism of Real and Represented Light in the Baroque Dome,” Kritische
Berichte 30, no. 4 (2002): 22–37, at 25.
10 – Gerhard Böwering, “The Light Verse: Qur’ānic Text and Ṣūfī
Interpretation,” Oriens 36 (2001), 113–44, at 113.
11 – In this sense, there are strong theosophical parallels with the Early
Christian differentiation between lux (uncreated light) and lumen (created
light) that were to form the basis for medieval Christian emanatistic
theories of creation; Michael Huxtable, “The Relationship of Light and
Colour in Medieval Thought and Imagination,” in On Light, ed. K. P.
Clarke and Sarah Baccianti (Oxford: Medium Aevum, 2014), 25–44, at
26–27. On the material enactment of these concepts in later church
architecture, see Barry, “Lux and Lumen,” 22–37.
12 – Qur’an 24:35; Gerhard Böwering’s translation: Böcwering, ‘Light
Verse’, 114.
13 – On the recurring Qur’anic pairing of mathal with ḍaraba, and its
possible consonance with coin striking, see E. W. Lane, English–Arabic
Lexicon, 8 vols (London: Williams & Norgate, 1863), 1: 1779.
14 – Two variant published translations of the same phrase are “So does
God advance precepts of wisdom for men” (Al-Qurʾān: A Contemporary
Translation, trans. Ahmed Ali [Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2001]) and “God speaks in parables to mankind” (The Koran, trans. N. J.
Dawood [London: Penguin, 1999]).
15 – On the range of meanings supplied for this term in Qur’anic exegesis,
see Finbarr B. Flood, The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies in the Making of an
Umayyad Visual Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 46.
16 – William A. Graham, “Light in the Qur’an and Early Islamic
Exegesis,” in God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth: Light in Islamic Art
and Culture, ed. Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 2015), 43–59, at 53–57; Finbarr B. Flood, “Light in
Stone: The Commemoration of the Prophet in Umayyad Architecture,”
Bayt al-Maqdis, Part II: Jerusalem and Early Islam (Oxford Studies in Islamic Art),
ed. Jeremy Johns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 311–59.
17 – Böwering, “Light Verse,” 132–44.
18 – For example, James Dickie, “The Iconography of the Prayer Rug,”
Oriental Art 18 (1972): 41–49, at 42–43; and Ettinghausen, “Early History, Use
and Iconography of the Prayer Rug,” 19. Nuha Khoury and Finbarr Flood
have already noted that such interpretations are based on an assumed correla-
tion between image and text that is problematic; Nuha N. N. Khoury, “The
Mihrab Image: Commemorative Themes in Medieval Islamic Architecture,”
Muqarnas 9 (1992): 11–28, at 11–12; Flood, “Light in Stone,” 339–347.
19 – Hans Daiber, “God versus Causality,” in Islam and Rationality: The
Impact of al-Ghazālī; Papers Collected on his 900th Anniversary, Vol. 1, ed. Georges
Tamer, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 1–22, esp. 7–12. On Ghazālī’s light
symbolism and its Neoplatonic sources, see Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Studies in
al-Ghazzālī (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1975), 264–312.
20 – Al-Ghazālī, The Niche of Lights: A Parallel English–Arabic Text, trans.
David Buchman (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1998), 12–13.
See also Ghazālī on the ninety-third beautiful name of God: al-Nūr, al-
Ghazālī, The Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God, trans. David B. Burrell and
Nazih Daher (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1992), 145.
21 – On the relationship between conceptions of the “prophetic spirit” in
commentaries on the Light Verse by Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) and Ghazālī, see
Alexander Treiger, Inspired Knowledge in Islamic Thought: Al-Ghazālī’s Theory of
Mystical Cognition and its Avicennian Foundation (New York: Routledge, 2012), 74–78.
22 – Al-Ghazālī, Niche of Lights, 12–13.
23 – On the nūr Mu ‫ׅ‬hammad, see Graham, “Light in the Qur’an,” 52–53; Uri
Rubin, “Pre-Existence and Light: Aspects of the Concept of Nūr
Mu ‫ׅ‬hammad,” Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975): 62–119; and Flood, “Light in
Stone,” 339–47. On visualization of the nūr Mu ‫ׅ‬hammad in painting, see
Christiane J. Gruber, “Between Logos (Kalima) and Light (Nūr):
Representations of the Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Painting,”
Muqarnas 26 (2009): 229–62.
24 – Flood, “Light in Stone,” 331.
25 – Finbarr B. Flood, “Palaces of Crystal, Sanctuaries of Light: Windows,
Jewels and Glass in Medieval Islamic Architecture” (unpublished Ph.D.
diss., 3 vols, University of Edinburgh, 1993), 1: 257, 266–67, 271; idem,
“Light in Stone,” 329–39.
26 – For some other exegeses of the Light Verse, see Böwering, “Light
Verse,” 129–44.
27 – This point is raised in Flood, “Palaces of Crystal, Sanctuaries of
Light,” 271.
28 – Louis Gardet, “ʿĀlam, 2: ʿĀlam al-djabarūt, ʿālam al-malakūt, ʿālam
al-mithāl,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (accessed July 12, 2017). https://
doi.org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0041
WORD & IMAGE 247
29 – Al-Ghazālī, Niche of Lights, 27.
30 – Al-Ghazālī, I ‫ׅ‬hyā ʿulūm al-dīn, 4 vols (Cairo: ʻĪsa al-Babī al-Ḥalabī,
1347/1928–29), 4: 20; see also T. J. Winter, “Introduction,” in Al-Ghazālī,
The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife, Kitāb dhikr al-mawt wa-mā baʿdahu:
Book XL of the Revival of the Religious Sciences I ‫ׅ‬hyā ʿulūm al-dīn, Translated with and
Introduction and Notes by T. J. Winter (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society,
1989), xiii–xxiii.
31 – Jamal Elias, Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 223–24; see also Kojiro
Nakamura, “Imām Ghazālī’s Cosmology Reconsidered with Special
Reference to the Concept of ‘Jabarūt,’” Studia Islamica 80 (1994): 29–46.
Such statements participate in a wider medieval debate about the nature of
God’s attributes.
32 – José Miguel Puerta Vílchez, Aesthetics in Arabic Thought: From Pre-Islamic
Arabia through al-Andalus, trans. Consuela López-Morillas (Leiden: Brill,
2017), 268–310. For a development of these ideas in relation to portable
arts, see Margaret S. Graves, Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture
in Medieval Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
33 – R. Arnaldez, “Ishrāḳ”; and Hossein Ziai, “al-Suhrawardī,” both in
Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (accessed July 12, 2017). https://doi.org.
proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_3624; https://doi.org.
proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_1107
34 – Ian Netton, Allah Transcendent: Studies in the Structure and Semiotics of Islamic
Philosophy, Theology and Cosmology (London: Routledge, 1994), 257, 268. On
subsequent developments, see John Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights:
Qutb al-Dīn Shīrāzī and the Illuminationist Tradition in Islamic Philosophy
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).
35 – Suhrawardī, The Philosophy of Illumination: A New Critical Edition of the Text
of Ḥikmat al-ishrāq with English Translation, Notes, Commentary and Introduction
by John Walbridge and Hossein Zaki (Provo: Brigham Young University Press,
1999), 138. See also Lambertus Willem Cornelis van Lit, “Eschatology and
the World of Image in Suhrawardī and his Commentators” (unpublished
Ph.D. diss., Universiteit Utrecht, 2014), 188–228; and Nicolai Sinai, “Al-
Suhrawardī on Mirror Vision and Suspended Images (Muthul al-muʿallaqa),”
Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 25 (2015): 279–97.
36 – The concept was further developed by some of Suhrawardī’s commen-
tators into a “world of image” (ʿalām al-mithāl), a non-spatial, immaterial
realm of image existence quite distinct from the places in which images are
manifest, while at the same time being bound up with eschatological visions
of departure from the sense-world of matter, Sinai, “Al-Suhrawardī”; Van
Lit, “Eschatology and the World of Image,” 237–52; on the eschatological
dimension, see also Sabine Schmidtke, “The Doctrine of the Transmigration
of Soul According to Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (Killed 587/1191) and his
Followers,” Studia Iranica 28 (1999): 237–54, at 242–43.
37 – The very image presented in Qur’an 24:35 is proposed by Böwering to
respond to a particular material practice: the Early Christian use of oil
lamps; Böwering, “Light Verse,” 117–18.
38 – Wolfhart Heinrichs, “Takhyīl: Make-Believe and Image Creation in
Arabic Literary Theory,” in Takhyīl: The Imaginary in Classical Arabic Poetics,
ed. Geert Jan van Gelder and Marlé Hammond (Cambridge: Gibb
Memorial Trust, 2008), 1–14, at 5; Geert Jan van Gelder and Marlé
Hammond, “Al-Fārābī,” in ibid, 15–18. This meaning roughly corresponds
to phantasia as described in literary texts written in Greek during the time of
the Roman Empire; Anne Sheppard, “Preface,” in ibid, ix–xv, at x.
39 – The word itself seems to be of Ethiopic origin; Nuha N. N. Khoury,
“The Mihrab: From Text to Form,” International Journal of Middle East Studies
30, no. 1 (1998): 18; Böwering, “Light Verse,” 118–19.
40 – Flood, “Palaces of Crystal, Sanctuaries of Light,” 243–49; idem,
“Light in Stone.” On proposed connections between luster-glazed pottery,
light symbolism, and Shi'ism, see also James W. Allan, The Art and
Architecture of Twelver Shi’ism: Iraq, Iran and the Indian Sub-Continent (London:
Azimuth, 2012), 80–83
41 – Erica Cruikshank Dodd, “The Image of the Word: Notes on the
Religious Iconography of Islam”, Berytus 18 (1969): 35–79; Charles
248 MARGARET S. GRAVES
Clermont-Ganneau, “La Lampe et l’olivier dans le Coran,” Revue de l’histoire
des religions 81, no. 3 (1920): 213–59.
42 – See for example the Ulu Camii at Dunaysir, Turkey (1204), or the
multiple mihrabs in the mosque of Panja ʿAli in Mosul, Iraq (1287–88). For
further thirteenth-century examples, see Khoury, “Mihrab Image,” 13–14.
43 – Ibid.; Mulder, “Seeing the Light.” For a different interpretation, see
Géza Fehérvári, “Tombstone or Mi ‫ׅ‬hrāb? A Speculation,” in Islamic Art in
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ed. Richard Ettinghausen (New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1972), 241–54. For some examples of the
form’s broad application to grave stele, see James Michael Rogers,
“Calligraphy and Common Script: Epitaphs from Aswan and Akhlat,” in
Content and Context of Visual Arts in the Islamic World, ed. Priscilla Soucek
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1988), 105–37.
44 – Richard Ettinghausen, From Byzantium to Sasanian Iran and the Islamic
World (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 28–34; Nazan Ölçer and Daniş Baykan, eds,
Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art (Istanbul: Akbank, 2002), 298–300; Nile
Green, “Ostrich Eggs and Peacock Feathers: Sacred Objects as Cultural
Exchange between Christianity and Islam,” Al-Masaq: Islam and the
Medieval Mediterranean 18, no. 1 (2006): 27–66, at 35–37, 39–40. Flood,
“Palaces of Crystal, Sanctuaries of Light,” 248–49, and idem, Great
Mosque of Damascus, 47–56, describes the qulayla (pearl or precious
stone?) that was said to shine like a lamp and was hung in the mihrab
of the Great Mosque of Damascus. It was stolen in the early ninth
century and eventually replaced with a glass lamp. See also Avinoam
Shalem, “Fountains of Light: The Meaning of Medieval Islamic Rock
Crystal Lamps,” Muqarnas 11 (1994): 1–11, at 2; and idem, “Jewels and
Journeys: The Case of the Medieval Gemstone called al-Yatima,”
Muqarnas 14 (1997): 42–56.
45 – On the play of “occlusion and ostentation” through which this
imagery articulates the function of the reliquary it adorns, see Jaś Elsner,
“Relic, Icon and Architecture: The Material Articulation of the Holy in
East Christian Art,” in Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium
and Beyond, ed. Cynthia Hahn and H. Klein (Washington, DC: Dumbarton
Oaks, 2015), 13–40, at 20–21; and idem, “Closure and Penetration:
Reflections on the Pola Casket,” Acta ad archaeologiam et atrium historiam
pertinentia 26 (2013): 183–227.
46 – For debates concerning the origins and etymology of the mihrab, see
Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture, Vol. I Part 1: The
Umayyads A.D. 622–750, 2nd ed., 2 vols (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1979),
147–48; Géza Fehérvári, “Mi ‫ׅ‬hrāb,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (accessed
July 12, 2017); Assadullah Souren Melikian-Chirvani, “The Light of Heaven and
Earth: From the Chahār-ṭāq to the Mi ‫ׅ‬hrāb,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 4, no. 1
(1990): 95–131; and Khoury, “Mihrab: From Text to Form,” 1–27.
47 – Abbas Daneshvari, “A Stylistic and Iconographic Study of the Persian
Tomb Towers of the Seljuk Period” (unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of
California, Los Angeles, 1977), 82; see also Gönül Öney, “The
Interpretation of the Frescoes in the I. Kharragan Mausoleum near
Qazwin,” in Akten des VII. Internationalen Kongresses für Iranische Kunst und
Archäologie (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1979), 400–08.
48 – For example, see also the so-called “Salting Mihrab,” Victoria and
Albert Museum, London, acc. no. C.1977-1910.
49 – David Rice uses the term mi ‫ׅ‬sbā ‫ׅ‬h to denote this type of lamp as distinct
from other forms of illumination apparatus, such as the polycandelon, but
does not cite historical evidence for this usage and I have not encountered
it elsewhere: David S. Rice, “Studies in Islamic Metal Work—V,” Bulletin of
the School of Oriental and African Studies 17, no. 2 (1955): 206–31, at 228.
50 – Ibid., 225–26. For a speculative reconstruction, see Carl Johan Lamm,
Das Glas von Samarra (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1928), 35–37; and for a near-
complete example, twenty-three centimeters in diameter, reassembled from
glass fragments found at Samarra in the excavations of 1936–39, see Iraq
Government Department of Antiquities, Excavations at Samarra 1936–1939,
Part II: Objects (Baghdad: Government Press, 1940), pl. CVI.
51 – Oleg Grabar, The Mediation of Ornament (Washington, DC: National Gallery
of Art, 1992), 155–62, pls 16, 17.
52 – For examples, see Stefano Carboni, Glass from Islamic Lands (London:
Thames & Hudson, 2001), cat. nos 38b, 38c, 166–67.
53 – Jens Kröger, Nishapur: Glass of the Early Islamic Period (New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995), 179–80, no. 235. Several other museum
pieces of this type are also attributed to tenth- or eleventh-century Iran,
suggesting that the globular glass hanging lamps may at this point have been
associated with the Persian cultural area. However, excavation documenta-
tion appears to be very limited. For example, see Sidney M. Goldstein, Glass:
From Sasanian Antecedents to European Imitations (Nasser D. Khalili Collection of
Islamic Art) (London: Nour Foundation/Azimuth, c.2005), 82–85.
54 – Rice, “Studies in Islamic Metalwork,” 207–17; Anton D. Pritula,
“Fragment bronzovoy azhurnoy lampy dlya mecheti iz raskopok
Khersonesa [Fragment of a Bronze Openwork Mosque Lamp from the
Excavations at Chersonesus],” in Memoirs of the Oriental Department of the
Russian Archaeological Society, n.s. 2 (XXVII) (2006): 541–50.
55 – For example, the lamp from Konya, dated 679 AH/1280–81 CE, and
published in Rice, “Studies in Islamic Metalwork,” 207–12.
56 – Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Arabe 5847, f. 164v, http://
visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Mandragore&O=7823349&E=
1&I=5394&M=imageseule (accessed July 12, 2017).
57 – For LaFuente’s lamps, see http://archnet.org/sites/612/media_con
tents/19600 (accessed July 12, 2017).
58 – Shalem, “Fountains of Light,” 4.
59 – Joseph T. Kider, Jr., Rebecca Fletcher, Nancy Yu, Renata Holod, and
Alan Chalmers, “Recreating Early Islamic Glass Lamp Lighting,” in 10th
International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage
(VAST), Eds Kurt Debattista, Cinzia Perlingieri, Denis Pitzalis and
Sandro Spina (Geneva: The Eurographics Association, 2009), 33–40.
60 – Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, edited from a MS. in the University
Library of Leyden by William Wright (Leiden: Brill, 1907), 101 (qanādīl zujāj,
“glass lamps”); 273 (qandīl kānna min ballūr, “lamp that seems to be of
crystal,” which is differentiated shortly thereafter from zujāj, “glass,” of
Iraq or Tyre). For Shalem’s interpretation of these substances, see
Shalem, “Fountains of Light,” 2–3, n. 15; and, more recently, Avinoam
Shalem, “Medieval Arabic Terms for Glassware Imitating Precious Stone
Vessels,” in Şehrâyîn: Die Welt der Osmanen, die Osmanen in der Welt:
Wahrnehmungen, Begegnungen und Abgrenzungen, ed. Yavuz Köse (Wiesbaden:
Harrasowitz, 2012), 25–34, at 27–29.
61 – For example, the anonymous tenth-century authors of the Rasāʾil
ikhwān al- ‫ׅ‬safāʾ opine that crystal (al-billawru) is a nobler substance than
glass (al-zujāj), which is in turn nobler than ceramic (al-khazafi); Ikhwān
al- ‫ׅ‬Safāʾ, Epistles of the Brethren of Purity: On the Natural Sciences: An Arabic Critical
Edition and English Translation of Epistles 15–21, ed. and trans. Carmela
Baffioni (Oxford: Oxford University Press/Institute of Ismaili Studies,
2013), 112, 115. Elsewhere, the same authors observe that “the purest of
attributes is translucence” (ibid., 137), which is a quality of the spheres but
also of the paired materials, glass and crystal (ibid., 159, 163, 207). See also
al-Bīrūnī, The Book Most Comprehensive in Knowledge on Precious Stones, trans.
Hakim Mohammad Said (Islamabad: Pakistan Hijra Council, 1989), 158;
and the discussion in Shalem, “Fountains of Light,” 3.
62 – Böwering, “Light Verse,” 133, 136, 143.
63 – al-Jā ‫ׅ‬hiẓ, The Book of Misers: A Translation of al-Bukhalāʾ, trans. R. B.
Serjeant (Reading: Garnet, 1997), 17–18.
64 – Ibn Ṭufayl, ‫ׅ‬H ayy Ibn Yaqẓān: A Philosophical Tale, trans. and ed. Lenn
Evan Goodman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 104.
65 – Ibid., 187, n. 66.
66 – The linear image of the fish is a common motif on Ayyubid and
Mamluk glass vessels, and clearly makes reference to the liquid contents of
drinking vessels as well as lamps; Carboni, Glass from Islamic Lands, 329 (the
first dateable appearance of the motif on the Sultan Sanjar beaker), 350, n.
26; also Shalem, “Fountains of Light,” 7–8.
67 – For further information on the piece, see Stefano Carboni and David
Whitehouse, Glass of the Sultans (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art,
2001), 226–27.
68 – Roshdi Rached, “Le ‘Discours de la lumière’ d’Ibn al-Haytham
(Alhazen). Traduction française critique,” Revue d’histoire des sciences et de
leurs applications 21, no. 3 (1968): 197–224, at 208–10.
69 – For example, Lamm, Glas von Samarra, 35–37; and Grace M. Crowfoot
and D. B. Harden, “Early Byzantine and Later Glass Lamps,” Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 17, nos. 3/4 (1931): 196–208, at 205, believe that most of
the hanging glass lamps of this form were used with secondary internal
containers for the wick and oil.
70 – Abdallah Kahil, “The Delight and Amiability of Light in Mamluk
Architecture,” in, God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth: Light in Islamic Art
and Culture, ed. Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 2015), 231–55, at 253–55.
71 – Illustrated in Shalem, “Fountains of Light,” 4.
72 – This has been noted by a number of scholars, e.g. Carboni and
Whitehouse, Glass of the Sultans, nos. 116, 117. According to Kahil, the
Light Verse is the most commonly employed Qur’anic verse on the
Mamluk glass lamps; Kahil, “Delight and Amiability of Light,” 244.
73 – The Qur’anic text is written on the upper band; the larger lower
inscription names the patron.
74 – Al-Qurʾān, trans. Ali, 301.
75 – Interestingly, some of the earliest quotations from Sura 24 inscribed
upon mihrabs are taken from this verse, rather than the Light Verse,
perhaps indicating a similarly reflexive conception of architectural inscrip-
tion. It was notably popular in North Africa, including Fatimid Egypt;
Flood, “Palaces of Crystal, Sanctuaries of Light,” 258–59. On the potential
for “synphrasis,” a term coined in twenty-first-century art criticism, to
articulate certain qualities of pre-modern artworks, see Anthony Cutler,
“Synphrasis,” in Thirty-Sixth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 8–10 October 2010: Abstracts of Papers (n.d.), 25–26.
76 – On the medieval conception of glass’s nobler cousin, rock crystal, as a
form of petrified water, see Shalem, “Fountains of Light.”
77 – Ibid., 6–8.
78 – Ibid., 6–8.
79 – British Museum, London, accession number 1915,0215.1. For a
related object that bears piercings in apparent imitation of metalwork,
see Arthur Lane, Early Islamic Pottery (London: Faber & Faber, 1955), pl.
45a. For a fragmentary glazed ceramic lamp without any perforations,
attributed to thirteenth-century Nishapur, see Marie G. Lukens,
“Medieval Islamic Glass,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 23, no. 6
(1965) 198-208; at 201.
80 – Esin Atıl, Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks (Washington, DC:
Smithsonian, 1981), no. 32.
81 – Oliver Watson, “An Iznik Mosque-Lamp,” Oriental Art 35, no. 4 (1989–
90): 194–95.
82 – James M. Rogers and Rachel Ward, Süleyman the Magnificent (London:
British Museum, 1988), 203; Nurhan Atasoy and Julian Raby, Iznik: The
Pottery of Ottoman Turkey, ed. Yanni Petsopoulos (London: Alexandria, 1989),
135–38, figs. 239, 355.
83 – C. Drury Fortnum, “On a Lamp of ‘Persian Ware’ Made for the
Mosque of Omar at Jerusalem in 1549,” Archaeologia 42 (1869): 394–95.
84 – Published May 31, 2015, https://instagram.com/p/3UgasjBxQe/?
taken-by=yasser_b_m and https://instagram.com/p/3XKaofBxQU/?
taken-by=yasser_b_m (both accessed July 12, 2017).
85 – Some examples can be found in which flame is shown issuing from the
top of a solid1E62bodied hanging lamp. For example, for one Maqāmāt
manuscript possibly created in Syria in the second half of the thirteenth
century, see BnF, Arabe 6094, f. 49v, http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?
Destination=Mandragore&O=8422967&E=110&I=5626&M=imageseule
(accessed July 12, 2017). Much more common, however, are hanging lamps
without any depiction of flame or emanation.
86 – For example, see the metalwork objects in the great sixteenth-century
Shāhnāma manuscript of Shāh Ṭahmāsp, discussed by Sheila R. Canby, The
Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp: The Persian Book of Kings (New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 2014), 21–33, as compared with the domed lantern with a
WORD & IMAGE 249
candle burning inside it in the same manuscript, which Canby speculates is
to be understood as covered with “light brown paper or skin,” through
which the candle is visible (ibid., 32).
87 – Khoury, “Mihrab Image,” 20–21.
88 – The term ‫ׅ‬saff means “rank,” “row,” or “line,” and can be used to
mean a class (of students), lines of worshippers in a mosque, or ranks in
military maneuvers. For more information, see Clifford E. Bosworth and P.
Shinar, “Ṣaff,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (accessed July 12, 2017).
89 – James Dickie, “The Iconography of the Prayer Rug,” Oriental Art 18
(1972): 41–49; Schuyler V. R. Cammann, “Symbolic Meanings in Oriental
Rug Patterns: Part I,” Textile Museum Journal 3, no. 3 (1972): 5–54, esp. 17–21;
Ettinghausen, “Early History, Use and Iconography of the Prayer Rug”;
Walter Denny, How to Read Islamic Carpets (New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 2014), 110.
90 – Nazan Ölçer, ed., Turkish Carpets from the 13th–18th Centuries (Istanbul:
Ahmet Ertuğ, 1996), 230–31, pl. 125.
91 – Walter Denny, “Saff and Sejjadeh: Origins and Meaning of the Prayer
Rug,” Oriental Carpet and Textile Studies 3, no. 2 (1990): 93–104. Denny does
not emphasize this argument in later publications: idem, How to Read Islamic
Carpets, 110; and “Is this the Gate of the Lord?,” HALI: the international journal
of Oriental carpets and textiles, 126 (2003): 89–91.
92 – A number of later medieval mihrabs are decorated with arcades
arranged in registers, e.g. the Adina Mosque, Bengal, India, c.1364–75,
250 MARGARET S. GRAVES
illustrated in John Terry, The Charm of Indo-Islamic Architecture: An Introduction
to the Northern Phase (London: Alec Tiranti, 1955), fig. 19. In Mamluk Egypt,
see the famous mihrab of the mausoleum of Qalawūn in Cairo, built 1285,
and illustrated in Finbarr B. Flood, “Umayyad Survivals and Mamluk
Revivals: Qalawunid Architecture and the Great Mosque of Damascus,”
Muqarnas 14 (1997): 57–79, at 63.
93 – Denny, “Saff and Sejjadeh,” 98.
94 – In the Ottoman imperial context, designs and colors alike resonated
between textiles, tile surfaces, and the ceramic vessels (including mosque
lamps) that represented a significant but “subordinate offshoot of the tile
industry”; Gülru Necipoğlu, “Early Modern Floral: The Agency of
Ornament in Ottoman and Safavid Visual Cultures,” in Histories of
Ornament: From Global to Local, ed. Gülru Necipoğlu and Alina Payne
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 132–55, at 149.
95 – An inlaid metalwork object from fourteenth-century Egypt in the
Museum of Turkish and Islamic Art, Istanbul, has an analogous form:
the “lid” and body are all one piece. The object, which is inlaid with
various Qur’anic verses but not the Light Verse, was published under
the title “lamp” in 1981, although Esin Atıl pointed out in the accom-
panying catalogue entry that it could not have been used as such; Esin
Atıl, Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks (Washington, DC:
Smithsonian, 1981), 98–99; Ölçer and Baykan, Museum of Turkish and
Islamic Art, 185.