Not Everybody’s Darling

 

The original sources for the detailed descriptions of legends and fairy tales which circulate among both ordinary people in the Islamic world and, for example, Sufis since Muhammad’s and his followers’ conquest of much of the world have never been described in a scientific way. When reading, for instance, Eliot Weinberger’s Muhammad (Verso, London 2006), which is, according to the author, mainly based on the Holy Qur’an and ahadīth, or the traditions of the Prophet, one may ask the question how many generations of people have, over the centuries, embellished so nicely the historical facts (?) so that an attractive legend was created which fascinates even sober, contemporary Westerners, the main target audience of Weinberger’s nice booklet.    

Allah’s Darling (or Allahs Liebling, the original title of the book which has, so far, been published only in German) is the attempt of the renowned German Orientalist Tilman Nagel, a professor emeritus of the University of Göttingen, to explain the origins and manifestations of the belief in the founder of Islam, Muhammad. The book is sort of a spin-off of Nagel’s opus maximum, his voluminous biography of the Prophet, mainly praised but also heavily criticized by others.

When having read the subtitle of “Allah’s Darling” (“Ursprung und Erscheinungsformen des Mohammedglaubens”), I was wondering whether the author wants to make the point that Islam is not an extreme form of monotheism, as claimed in particular by Sunni Muslims, but rather that Muslims are “Mohammedans”, a pretty frivolous, Orientalist, conception. He frankly admits that everyone who would undertake the task of highlighting the circumstances under which a faith could emerge which was essentially based on prefabricated “eternal” knowledge, ever-valid for any area of life; a faith in an ever-competent messenger of Allah, would inevitably face the “foolish” charge of Orientalism or Essentialism. He may be right, but whether the charge is in fact foolish was not clear to me after having read the book.

The seemingly sound construction of what one may describe as the House of Islam is, however, not different from that of other, older, world religions. That, after the Age of Enlightenment, fundamentalist Christianity, for instance, has largely (unfortunately not entirely, though) been repelled in modern, determined secular, societies may have something to do with the foundation of Christianity as the author correctly claims, but not with its Church(es), as it (they) developed in century-long processes, with its (their), for example, heated arguments regarding the “nature” of Jesus, the World’s Redeemer; or strange beliefs in the Virgin Mary. There is no difference in overall absurdity. It is self-evident that, in order to write a credible, in particular scientific, treatise or even book on one of the world religions authors should make clear in the very beginning that they are not religious! That is unfortunately not the case here.   

Several times Nagel points to the huge problems of Integrationspolitik, i.e. how Muslims may be integrated in Western societies. He stresses that the time and again overpowering (erdrückende) majority of Muslims still live their fatalism due to strong beliefs in the believer’s general inability of getting hold of his own lives. For Nagel it seems to be clear that Mohammedanism should be regarded the main reason for the widely observed (in comparison) developmental retardation in Islamic societies. His plenty arguments, however, are taken from medieval authors commenting on ahadīth [1]; notoriously unreliable, as it becomes clear time and time again in Nagel’s narrative. The realm of medieval Islam (note, that the Middle Ages describe the dark ages of European cultures and societies when, at the same time, the Islamic world was bright and pretty enlightened) was huge, though, and spanned from Spain to Central Asia, from North Africa to parts of India. Islam, as Nagel describes it using accounts of numerous medieval authors, Andalusian, Cairene, Damascene, or Iranian [2], is not, and never has been, a monolithic entity. There are four prominent Sunni schools of fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence, and two schools for the Shi’a, which are not covered in Nagel’s book.

In his epilogue, Nagel concludes with the description of his pretty unjustified dismay about the publication of now, since in 1981, eight volumes of Muhammad. Encyclopedia of Seerah (The Muslim Schools Trust, London, 2^nd ed. 1985), clearly a sort of personality cult. He might not even be aware of comparably voluminous works of contemporary authors about Shi’a Imams with a similar, of course questionable, approach [3]. That currently by the majority of the faithful practiced Islam won’t fit into a rapidly changing, now again flat, world with its traffic, world wide web, demands of intercultural competence etc, is commonplace. Professor Nagel acknowledges, in the preface of Allahs Liebling, one of his co-workers for introducing him to and solving emerging problems with electronic data processing. So, even he might not have arrived yet in modern times.

 

Notes

[1] When introducing the reader to his text, Nagel describes the pretty bizarre “fly” hadīth: The Prophet once narrated: “If a fly falls into one of your containers (of food or drink), immerse it completely (falyaghmis-hu kullahu) before removing it, for under one of its wings there is venom and under another there is its antidote.” The purpose here is clearly defamatory, not realizing that Christian salvation history is full of similar absurdities, not mentioning the Jewish Tanakh.

[2] As regards the latter, I am not even sure. Iran, a center of medieval Islam, seems not to be covered at all. Moreover, Nagel rarely informs the reader about the specific background of the authors he extensively quotes: the historical circumstances during the periods they lived when they created their scriptures. That, of course, raises questions about the targeted audience. Is it politicians, a lay audience? The book is not a reference text. In contrast to his claims, I would not even regard it a sound scientific study. Too copious, even biased, in its descriptions of absurdities (see [1]) which may have led eventually to his (or our) perceived totalitarian Mohammedanism of the Islamic world.

[3] I own, for instance, an English translation by Jasim al-Rasheed of the 1926 book by Baqir Sharif al-Qarashi’s The life of Imam Ali bin Musa al Rida; Ansariyan Publications, Qum 2001, which was a personal gift by Kuwaiti Shi’ites on the occasion of their pilgrimage to the Holy Shrine of Imam Ridha in Mashhad in 2006, when I was invited to join the group. Much of Nagel’s descriptions of the Prophet’s reported excellence, for example of his physics, his manners, his generosity etc., which elevated him from ordinary people, may be found in the description of Imam Ridha as well. It would have been even more interesting to study the deeply rooted piety of ordinary, say, Iranian people in rural areas, including their legends and personality cults as regards Ali, Husayn, the numerous Imami Shi’a Saints, etc. In particular ahadīth related to Ali, the Nahj al-Balagha, may prove that Allah may have just another darling besides Muhammad.

Profiles in Courage

September 11, 2001 had been a turning point for almost all people in the world. As regards me, I remember filling packing cases after a hard work’s day in the preparation of a significant move: to the Middle East; my departure scheduled only some ten days later. I was about to join a brand new faculty at Kuwait University when I switched on the TV and saw, again and again, Manhattan’s Twin Towers hit by airplane, and hit again, then collapsing. Only thirty minutes later I had received the first telephone call of a friend who tried to convince me that Kuwait would be safe and I certainly would not change my stance.

Well, I didn’t loose my courage although none of my new and most curious colleagues really expected me to come after 9/11. The new beginning was cumbersome but overall quite interesting. I met people from all over the world, a true international faculty. They had, though, very different profiles of courage. I learned to know rather anxious people who never really understood that Islam was a great cultural achievement and worth of being studied in detail. I met greedy people who were there for the money only. As usual in Academia, you always also meet people with highly problematic personalities, preventing any real collaboration.

The Kuwaitis were friendly and in essence very helpful. Some of my new colleagues from the West who had been there for some time complained, though, that they were snobby, considering themselves very special. Some allegedly even looked down to us, the western expats, coming for the money, the infidels.  

As I settled, I became aware of a would-be colleague from the Ministry of Health who was somehow a relative of our Dean. Dr. I. presented himself as a VIP within Kuwait’s health system, a former MP, even a journalist; in fact a multitalented member of Kuwait’s closed society. He arduously tried to get into the faculty. When having been seconded, he quickly demanded giving lectures on topics he could hardly be considered to be an expert of. When finally appointed as assistant professor, he managed to serve in two independent departments.

The first Arabic word I learned in this context was wasta, or insider relationship, old boys’ network. Dr. I. represented wasta. Asking him a favor, one almost immediately got satisfied. He knew people and places. In his own private clinic he had employed numerous humble and subservient domestics. He could always count on their slavish obedience.

While his remote relative, the Dean, knew about Dr. I. but could not prevent him from joining the faculty, problems with him quickly emerged. Absurd criticism of expats led to early cessation of contracts. Then he attacked his Kuwaiti colleagues. There is a highly questionable rule at Kuwait University that a permanent appointment does not depend on scientific publications but rather on passing the American board examination or an equivalent qualification. Dr. I. had dozens of publications (which have to be considered worthless from a scientific point of view) and he was a specialist who had passed an equivalent board exam in Ireland. But some of his rivals among the Kuwaiti colleagues had not. If they were too close to his arch enemy, the Dean, he liked to question their qualifications. He usually involved the media and even the University President, who received dozens of letters of complaint.

On an especially revealing and even instructional occasion Dr. I. sent a pages-long email to the culprit, a very likeable young colleague with certain talents as a University teacher, where he referred to a certain hadith which is well-known among adherents of Shi’a Islam: mubahala. He updated this email, in which he accused his colleague of lying about the assumed expiration of his part II board exam, on a daily basis and sent copies of it to the President’s office, the Ministry and all faculty members. He even sent copies to students.

Mubahala reminds the pious believer of an incident in 631 CE (9 AH) when a group of Arabic Christians argued with the Prophet Muhammad which of the two parties erred in its doctrine concerning the nature of Jesus. Muhammad, after likening Jesus’ miraculous birth to Adam’s creation, called the Christians to mubahala, or cursing, where each party should ask God to destroy the lying party and their families. He then covered himself and his family (Ahl al-Bayt), i.e., his daughter Fatima, her husband Ali and their two boys Hasan and Husayn with a cloak. The Christian envoy declined taking part in mubahala and chose instead to pay tribute.

As far as I know, I was the only western expat who recognized the tremendous impact of Dr. I.’s curse on our young Kuwaiti colleague. Muslims, who read through all the baseless accusations which were sent day after day to dozens of people, were deeply shocked. Mubahala is definitely exceeding the limits. Dr. I. did not fear any consequences for his ruthless defamation. But the young colleague eventually resigned and left the faculty for good.

Years later, I learned that Dr. I. is a pretty prominent liar himself. In 1990, Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein had invaded the tiny but oil-rich country in the corner of the Persian Gulf. A 15-year-old Kuwaiti nurse, who had only been introduced as Nayirah and who later turned out to be the Kuwaiti US ambassador’s daughter, testified to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990 that she herself had witnessed babies being taken out of incubators and being left on cold floors to die. The incubators were then taken to Baghdad. After the war, it became clear that another alleged witness, who had testified before the UN Security Council and the Congress that he had supervised the burial of 120 infants and personally buried 40 newborn babies who had died after taken from their incubators by Iraqi soldiers, had used false names and identities. This witness later revoked and admitted that he had never seen these atrocities. The alleged Dr. Issah Ibrahim was in fact our Dr. I., not a surgeon but rather a dentist. The notorious story is still remembered as the “incubator lie” which essentially served in motivating the World public to support America’s actions of throwing the Iraqi troops out of the Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm. More information can be found in L. May’s Crimes against Humanity: A Normative Account, Cambridge University Press 2004.

A notorious liar is suffering from a habit. A Kuwaiti lawyer who I once had asked for some support in a libel case, in which Dr. I. was involved, was very hesitant to accept the job. “Is it about libel?” he asked me. “But that’s the way how we do it in this society.”

I recently got to know that Dr. I. has lost a lawsuit in court against his faculty chairman and has now sued the University President.

 

Note: Profiles in Courage is the title of the 1955 Pulitzer-Prize-winning bestseller by John F. Kennedy, which describes the integrity and bravery of eight US senators. It profiles moral courage of highly reputed men in the history of the Unites States. Despite overall enthusiastic reception the later 35^th US president was quickly blamed that he was the only man who won a Pulitzer Prize for a book which had been ghostwritten for him. The book has actually been written by his speechwriter Ted Sorensen.

Ramadan in Afghanistan

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has promised that the circumstances under which 125 people, many of them civilians (in fact 70), were killed in a NATO air strike last week near Kunduz in northern Afghanistan will be scrutinized carefully. The German Colonel Georg Klein  had ordered the air strike after two fuel tankers had been hijacked by the Taliban. The commander’s call has probably been in breach of NATO rules as it was based on just one intelligence source.

Chancellor Merkel and her Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier are amidst an election campaign where the highly unpopular issue of the 3720 or so German troops in Afghanistan under International Forces in Afghanistan (ISAF) command has consistently been played down, even ignored. The majority of the German population questions the presence of German soldiers in the Hindu Kush.

For some time, there are also incriminating questions being asked by the allied forces. It is not clear to German soldiers that they are fighting in a war in Afghanistan. According to Minister of Defense Franz Josef Jung, Germany isn’t at war in Afghanistan. “The goal of the German army is, alongside providing security, to help the country rebuild and with its development. We are not occupiers. Unfortunately there are situations where our soldiers have to fight. But we’re not looking for fights.”

“In a war, you don’t build schools, you don’t set up the water and power supply and you don’t build kindergartens and hospitals and you don’t train the military and the police.”

The official, prescribed, terminology of not being occupier does not fit with the known fact that German troops consume incredible amounts of alcoholic beverages. It has long been known that German soldiers are allowed two cans (1 l) of beer per day or an equivalent of wine. German Armed Forces are “importing” millions of liters of beer and wine each year to the Islamic country selling alcoholic beverages even to their NATO allies. As a matter of fact, local law is simply neglected in the country, not mentioning Ramadan, the holy month when Muslims observe strict rules for fasting.

When trying to figure out what had happened in the September 4 air strike, head of ISAF General Stanley McChrystal noted that too many of his underlings at the NATO base were either drunk or hungover, only a few hours after the deadly NATO attack. Furious, he immediatley banned any alcohol consumption.

When specifically asked the common response by German Armed Forces authorities is that alcohol is only consumed inside the camp and after hours. It violates Afghanistan law anyway. Lives are put at risk since radical Islamists usually know and will not forgive. It doesn’t make even a difference whether civilians are killed in a devastating air strike or soldiers behave like occupiers partying on weekends during the holy month.  

 

See also on this blog

Mobile Phone and Embedded about embedded journalism.

Better Off if the Europeans… about criticism of the German contribution in the war in Afghanistan.

In the Tower of Babel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those who have studied Islamic art and architecture for some time inevitably have asked sooner or later the following questions: How did they do that? Apart from the application of fundamental principles in geometry, how could they create most sophisticated and highly complicated geometric designs over extended areas in this stunning precision? And then, why did Muslims in the Golden Age of Islam do that? Who had taught them, and how? Where are the books and manuscripts? When and on what occasions met and collaborated  scientists and artists in Islamic civilization?

In the early 1970s these simple questions struck a young and extraordinary talented Iraqi lady with a strong background in history and historiography when she searched for a suitable topic for a doctoral thesis at Harvard [1]. These questions weren’t obvious at that time. When Wasma’a Chorbachi had explained her preliminary proposal and her desire of finding the relevant literature which had obviously been lost during the centuries, she was rather quickly turned down. Her advisor expressed his strong opinion that there was not such a thing. There had never been. His good advise was rather to expand her list of questions in order not to fail, for instance, including questions such as: Has the interest in science or geometry been part of the average cultured person’s background in the ninth or tenth century? What practical geometry had been developed by the tenth century? What caused the growth of this phenomenon? Geographically, where did it begin and in what directions did it spread?

 

A Needle in the Haystack

Wasma’a started her search taking advantage of the extensive resources of the Harvard library system. She read through catalogues and indices of manuscript collections available in libraries throughout the world. By the end of the week she had come across Kamāl al-Dīn Yūnis bin Man’a, one of the most outstanding teachers at the main school of the early 13^th century in Mosul, Iraq (which has later been named after him, al-Madrasah al-Kamālīyah, [2]). Among his work was a commentary on an earlier work of one of the most eminent mathematicians and scientists of the Islamic world of the 10^th century, Abū’l-Wafā al-Būzjānī. He lived in Baghdad from approximately 945 CE until his death in about 987 CE. The transliterated title of the main work was also more or less the title of Wasma’a’s PhD project: “A treatise on what the artisan needs of geometric problems”, while the title of Kamāl al-Din Yunis’ commentary was “Commentary on the geometry problems.” Thus, by the third week of her search Wasma’a Chorbachi had already been successful in achieving her first aim: to locate the relevant literature as regards the teaching of medieval artisans of the Islamic world by scientists.

Wasma’a’s next step was to travel to Europe and find and read the original manuscripts, in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris where she had located a Persian translation of Abū’l-Wafā al-Būzjānī’s manuscript of the “Treatise on what the artisan needs of geometric problems.” In Paris, she found an unnamed, undated manuscript probably from the 14^th century which clearly was of significantly greater importance than Abu’l Wafa’s work: “On interlocking similar and congruent figures.” Wasma’a writes:

“By the time I returned to Cambridge, I had located a range of written material, in the history of Islamic science and geometric design from the tenth century of the mid-nineteenth century, lying in library and museum storage rooms all over the world. In point of fact, my material turned out to be so convincing that it is now being used and propagated even by those who demonstrated such a strong sceptical attitude towards it at the beginning. Though locating the manuscripts took only two months, acquiring microfilms and/or photocopies of these documents without any backing or support took several years. Meanwhile; I was struggling to decipher the material, and to find an appropriate language in which to discuss it and describe the geometrical patterns with which it dealt.”

 

Confusing Language

Studying the right language (while noticing that different people with different background will describe what they see by using different terminology) took years for Wasma’a. It foremost included Group Theory, Crystallography and Symmetry Notation, fields with which historians and art historians are not really familiar per se. Wasma’a strictly applied scientific reasoning, though. It is interesting reading her rebuttal of ‘esoteric’ reasoning in explaining the ‘meaning’ in Islamic art which became most popular in the mid 1970s. According to proponents, the “principle of the unity of being’ was even “pushed to a point of scientific fallacy such as the claim that all geometric patterns of Islamic art are derivable through a single method of construction based on the subdivision of the circle, in order to declare this art work an example of the “Unity of Being”. ” Divine Unity, or Tawhīd, as the driving force for geometric patterns. That didn’t make sense in her opinion.

“The general public unfortunately remains unaware of this. If in these books, that are now readily available on the market, their authors had made clear that the presented views were modern understandings of old forms, turning them into symbols, there would be no reason to object. The problem lies in presenting these modern mystical views as historical truths, as if these symbols were the meanings at the time the art forms were created. The non-Islamicist who is exposed to these books [for example, I. El-Said’s Geometric Concepts in Islamic Art; L. Bakhtiar’s Sufi: Expressions of the Mystic Quest] will anachronistically assume that a modern interpretation is the historical truth. Where does one draw the line between true historical research and the creation of and attribution of symbolic meaning to forms from the past? How can we redeem the geometric shapes, forms and patterns from the shrouds of mystical interpretations in order to see the precise scientific design at their basis?” 

Describing the visual perception and linguistic or even fashionable semiotics further served only to confuse the interested layman in particular in the 1970s [3].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In a comprehensive case study Wasma’a Chorbachi deconstructs one of several amazing brick pattern on one of the two Seljuq Kharraqan tomb towers (1093 CE) in the vicinity of Qazvin in northern Iran which consists, at first sight, of V-forms, X-forms as well as dots, but which, at second sight, comprises an extremely popular geometric structure, a square within a square within another square. I have described this pattern, which can be found, for instance, several times on the western and southern iwans of Esfahan’s Great Mosque [4], and how it may be created in another posting on this blog. It’s construction in five steps had been described in a systematic, scientifically correct, way in the above mentioned, unnamed, undated Paris manuscript No. 169 “On interlocking similar and congruent figures”, Wasma’a had been working on.

What follows is another case study of the Persian manuscript folio 192b about a similar structure of a kind of pinwheel which fascinates “in its use of a strict algorithm with irrational numbers.” It shows how the principles may lead to different designs which probably have been considered from a pure esthetic point of view.

“The science of symmetry of patterns tell[s] us that there are 17 different periodic two-dimensional groups and 7 groups periodic in a singular direction (string or ribbon), also that each of these groups could have an infinite number of different designs. Ad seen, these Islamic geometric manuscripts give us samples of the infinite design variations of the basic 17 periodic groups; these documented geometric problems or examples in turn could be the basis for developing  many new sets of design.”

See Dr. Wasma’a Chorbachi homepage here.

 

Notes

[1] This posting is about a remarkable text by Wasma’a K. Chorbachi which was based on two lectures given at MIT, Cambridge, in November 1987 and had been published in Computers Math Applic 1989; 17: 751-789: In the Tower of Babel: Beyond symmetry in Islamic design. It deals with a lot of questions which I have asked myself (and many others) since I became fascinated of Islamic art and architecture in recent years.

[2] Despite his Arabic name, Wasma’a’s advisor considered Kamāl al-Dīn Yūnis a member of the Nestorian Church which had been revived in Iraq in the 12^th century. Dr. Chorbachi explains her dismay with considerable prejudices as well. I suppose it is not entirely correct that the annoying response of her supervisor reflected a general ignorant attitude towards the achievements of the Islamic world in the West after WWII, as she describes it. Ignorant supervisors are frequently found in Academia, even at Harvard. It might in fact be the case that in particular Americans are in essence Eurocentric. Not to forget that the 1970s were a decade of great technological and scientific achievements mainly coming from the US, which were very much occupied in proxy wars of the Cold War, for instance in Vietnam. Islamic art and architecture may not have been regarded a fruitful field where scientific breakthroughs had to be expected. In any way, Wasma’a continued her search and found quite a lot of information about Kamāl al-Dīn Yūnis. I have to admit that in spite of considerable search of the internet, I could not identify the scholar yet.

[3] Mystic interpretations of Islamic geometric patterns are still prevalent in many esoteric circles in the West. When trying to talk about new discoveries or searches, for instance, the search for quasi-crystalline patterns, one generally faces incomprehension among people with a general interest in Islamic art and art historians. The “meaning” of the stunning patterns is of greater importance than the question, how could it be created. And whether it has been chosen for esthetic reason only.

[4] Interestingly, Wasma’a mentions 1122 CE as construction date of the iwans, i.e., after Assassin rebels had set the mosque on fire in 1121. She also mentions that the iwans were re-decorated in 1800. In fact, restoration and repair of the structures and tessellations constantly takes place. The celebrated decoration of, for instance, the western iwan is usually considered to be Timurid (15^th century) or Safavid (16^th and 17^th century).

See ArchNet for further pictures of the two Kharraqan tomb towers.

Sacked

Controversial figure Tariq Ramadan has been sacked as a visiting professor at Rotterdam’s highly reputed Erasmus University for the reason of not giving up presenting the presstv talk show Islam & Life produced in London studios. Presstv is an English language Iranian news channel largely imitating western formats such as BBC World News or CNN as well as Qatar-based Al Jazeera. Claims that it is independent of any commercial or governmental influence are not trustworthy in particular with respect to the latter. Definitely, presstv is, since its foundation in late 2007, an indispensable source when trying to follow sometimes confusing political news in Iran. One has to be very cautious, though. Current appearances of Mohammad Marandi, assistant professor at University of Tehran, on presstv (the “basiji professor” as he is called by his adversaries), who is notorious for eloquently trivializing the regime’s brutal oppression of the opposition movement in the aftermath of the recent election and power struggles within the labyrinthine ruling establishment have substantiated grave concerns about presstv lopsidedly featuring certain individuals acting solely as the regime’s mouthpieces. See, for example disgraceful Marandi in a revealing interview of July 27 with brave Fareed Zakaria at CNN.

Now, Ramadan, who is denied a US visa for some time now, could not resolve doubts that he acted as a mouthpiece of post-election Iran as well. In any case, Erasmus University’s decision should be seen as wrong as false accusations of Iranian prosecutors in the current show trials against top members of Iran’s opposition movement that what has been called the Green Revolution has mainly been orchestrated by Western powers (doubts continue to exist, though, even when Ali Khamenei has expressed yesterday his strong beliefs that Western powers were not involved). The University’s decision should be based on content. So far, Ramadan has not produced such scandalous contributions on presstv as Marandi did.

Ramadan, who is right now on vacation in Morocco, has announced that he would appeal Erasmus’ decision. He may be well-advised also revising his decision of appearing presently on presstv.

No Mercy

 

 

 

 

I know that I was always very privileged when living in the country. My Ramadans were usually nice times full of interesting discussions about religious matters and in general plenty of opportunities for widening my horizon.

However, the easy-going times of Ramadan are now definitely over. Since last year (when I had left the Middle East for good already) the Holy Month is moving into the summer months and will be observed for about 12 years during the scorching heat. A full circle of the Gregorian-Hijra calendar is 33 years, an entire generation. Since in Muslim countries the population is very young, few people have experienced the harsh conditions of fasting during the long, extremely hot and, what makes it even worse, humid days.

I have noticed that the weather conditions were very uncomfortable in Kuwait the last days. When living in Kuwait, I had expressed my concerns many times and usually was told by the older Kuwaiti colleagues that people were used to it. I doubt. Most people are anyway working indoors. My compassion and sympathy is especially with Bangladeshi, Pakistani or Indian construction workers who have to bear the brutal heat and humidity in full which is in fact unbearable when it comes to 40+ degrees and close to 100% humidity. I remember only one time that this condition had hit me. In my first September in Kuwait, it was very similar: water running outside the windows.

I was also wondering how it had been in Makkah, for example, when the Holy Qur’an had been revealed to the Prophet (PBUH). According to tradition, he’d got the first revelation in a cave of Hira on August 10, 610 CE when he was fasting in the month of Ramadan (I think that it was at the end of Ramadan, the last few days are still observed by the faithful as Laylat al-Qadr). On that very day this year Makkah reported 42 degrees maximum temperature and rather humid conditions.

So, people at that time were in fact kind of used to it. By Hijra of the Muslims in 622 CE, Ramadan had moved 132 days ahead, i.e., end of April, which still seems not to be very comfortable in Makkah (37 degrees, very humid this year).

Madinah may in fact be a bit different. It is also at a higher altitude, >600 meters above sea level.

In the old days in Kuwait without any air condition people would not have worked too much but used the long hours for contemplation and prayers. Badgirs, or wind towers, dominated the village, not skyscrapers as today (see Sharq Market as an example; they are found all over and on both sides of the Persian Gulf). The need for physical activity was at a very low level, I suppose.

Today’s greed and hyperactivity makes life so difficult during Ramadan in the summer. There might be a chance right now for a change in the society. Since I would expect even casualties this summer and in the coming years, authorities have to do something about it. Not only there but also in the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, even Saudi Arabia.

Before I left Kuwait, working hours during Ramadan had been shifted already to the early morning hours. Construction workers woke me up, not the muezzin. But then Ramadan was still in October, which may be nice in Kuwait, especially at the end of the month.

First published at Salmiya.

 

Rafsanjani’s Sermon

I doubt whether any of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s numerous Friday prayer sermons in the past has ever attracted more attention than yesterday’s speech when he tried to calm down the present unrest in Iran and stylized himself as an elder statesman in sorrow of loosing the achievements of 30 years of Islamic Revolution. However tempting it might be praising his speech at Tehran University one should never forget another Friday prayer sermon of his at exactly the same location. It was on 14 December 2001, Qods Day, when he predicted:

“If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.”

This was formulated only weeks after 9-11, a couple of months after ‘reformist’ President Mohammad Khatami had been re-elected, and only days before former US President G. W. Bush would put Iran on his notorious Axis of Evil. In essence, this threat towards Israel was much more frightening than any of those the incumbent and now, under questionable circumstances, re-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had ever made, his alleged “wiping Israel off the map” statement included.

Now, Rafsanjani’s speech yesterday had a completely different tone. When reading through the transcript, I noted several interesting issues. He is remarkably clear in blaming the Guardian Council in missing a chance of re-gaining the public’s trust after doubt had raised that the election results were rigged, which has eventually led to the deep split in the clerical establishment:  

“We have to provide the ground to return this trust to the people. Unfortunately, good use was not made of the opportunity that the Supreme Leader (Ali Khamene’i) gave the Guardian Council in which an extra five days was given to them to talk to the ulema. I do not of course want to blame anyone for this lost opportunity, but, nonetheless, it did not happen. (Crowd chanting) We have passed that stage. We are going through another stage now.

“Why should our Sources (of Emulation, meaning senior clerics), who have always been supportive, and our seminary schools, which have never had any expectations for their efforts, be upset today. We should keep their support and rely on them.”

He might in fact refer here to Grand Ayatollah Hosein-Ali Montazeri, one of the “sources of emulation”, who had recently issued a fatwa on request of Dr. Mohsen Kadivar, Visiting Associate Professor at Duke University, Durham, NC. Montazeri, for years under house arrest in Qom, is considered one of the most dangerous figures for the ruling establishment in Iran. In his fatwa of July 6, he more or less concludes that, if Ahmadinejad had stolen the election, the present regime was illegitimate.

The next interesting point in Rafsanjani’s sermon is his mentioning of Ali, the first Shi’a Imam, who had been advised by the Prophet that even he, Ali, has to seek support from the people. 

“Ali Ibn-Abi-Talib himself says that when the prophet (Mohammad) was (indistinct words) rather worried in the last year of his life. He said this to Abi-Talib; (reads a short verse from Koran) This is after Eid-e Ghadir. He said that you are the Guardian of this Ummah (nation) this is a Guardianship that belongs to you, and is something that God has given you.

“If you felt that these people are satisfied (with you) and they accept you, and felt that you are a worthy person (ruler) and there was consensus, of course consensus is always relative it can never be absolute; if the majority coalesced around you, then have to accept it. You will become the Guardian and see to their day to day affairs and resolve their problems.

“If you saw that they opposed you, and that they do not come along with you, then you have to leave them. Let them do what they want to; they know themselves what they need to do with their lives.

“God will find a way for you to realize your goals.”

Imam Ali is mentioned a second time:

“The title of Islamic Republic is not just a formality. This is a reality passed on to us on the basis of Koran, as well as the religious sayings of the (Shiite) Imams and prophet. We believe in them. We should have them at the same time. Rest assured if one of those two aspects are damaged we will loose our revolution. If it looses its Islamic aspect, we will go astray. If it looses its republican aspect, it (The Islamic Republic) will not be realized. Based on the reasons that I have offered, without people and their vote there would be no Islamic system. Ali bin Abi-Talib (the first Shiite Imam) stayed at home for 19 years for the same reason. When the people came forward (word indistinct), Ali bin Abi-Talib accepted to come to power after people’s insistence, despite the difficulties he faced.”

Rafsanjani is presently chairman of the Assembly of Experts which, at least theoretically, can even dismiss Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The above sentences may in fact directly address Ali Khamenei, advising him to better seek the people’s support, to establish a true republic. It is about legitimacy, too, without any doubt.

One should not forget that Rafsanjani has been an active part of the system of the Islamic Republic since its beginning. The supposedly richest man in the country, a two-term former president, has much to loose if Iran, what many expect, will be drifting towards a military dictatorship. So, his sermon yesterday was an extremely clever maneuver of somebody who has understood that Iran is at a watershed.

As far as we have come to know, no further fatalities had occurred in the streets of Tehran despite thousands of protesters.

Polygons

“He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, shun him. And he who knows not and knows that he knows not, awaken him. And he who knows and knows that he knows, follow him.”

Arabic saying

The swastika has nowadays a bad reputation but it has of course not been invented by German Nazis. Rather it is a positively connoted, sacred symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism, such as lucky charm. It is interesting to see that it has also found its way into Islamic Art, even as a sign of blessing. A famous square panel on the western iwan of Esfahan’s Great Mosque dating from the 17^th century (Shi’ite Safavid) resembles a Swastika, and its calligraphy mentions Ali [1]. It might be a beautiful example of “a simple design rotated 45 degrees which acquires two separate values, one as a carrier of geometric forms filled with (by the time of the panel) antiquarian writing, the other one as a violator of the sequence of both writing and architecture by forcing one into rare contortions to read the writing” [2]. The southern iwan which had got additional decorations by Sayyid Mahmud-e Naqash in 1475/76 sports a similar but definitely Timurid swastika-like panel, with its ample arabesque and floral motifs [3].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Square from Five Squares

These examples are not strict swastikas. Rather, they represent a popular Islamic geometric pattern, a square composed of three squares. In the 10^th century, artisans were thoroughly taught in a distinct academic context by mathematicians in geometry. Alpay Özdural (d. 2003) describes [4] how, for instance, Abu’l-Wafā’ al-Būzjāni (940- ca. 998), in his famous treatise Kitāb fīmā yahtāju ilayhi al-sani’ min al-a’māl al-handasiya (On the Geometric Constructions Necessary for the Artisan) teaches the right way of constructing this very combination of squares and avoid often made mistakes of the carpenter whose job involved cutting single pieces of material into parts and arranging them skillfully in attractive patterns in mosaics. Abul’l-Wāfa explains that artisans and even geometers (muhandis) often err in the assembling of the pieces, the former since they do not know the scientific proof, the latter due to lack of practice. As Özural writes, Abu’l-Wāfa’s book on Geometric Constructions was apparently motivated by meetings with practitioners and aimed in the proper advancement of Islamic Art. As a true academic, he displayed, in his book “pure geometry, familiarity with practical applications, and skill in teaching theoretical subjects to practical-minded people.”  

The figure below (from Özdural’s article) shows how, by cutting and pasting two, five and nine squares, according to Abu’l Wāfa’s theoretical solutions [5], pretty attractive patterns are created. The earliest “square from five squares” can be seen on the wooden door of the mosque of Imām Ibrāhīm in Mosul which is dated 1104 CE. And Abu’l-Wāfa also explains patiently why some popular ‘practical solutions’ were essentially wrong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While between the 11^th and 15^th centuries in Iran and Central Asia, Spain and elsewhere in the Islamic World, geometric tessellations became more and more ambitious, dazzling, breakneck artistic, it is not clear how much artisans actually knew about geometry and mathematics. Özdural’s paper convincingly shows how academics such as Abu’l-Wāfa in Baghdad or later Omar Khayyām in Esfahan and Jamshīd al-Kāshī in Samarqand frequently met with artisans, architects, masons and carpenters in what he calls conversazione, i.e., seminars and practical sessions, where the then popular cut and paste technique of dividing larger material into smaller pieces was exercised and got a sound theoretical foundation. While the Golden Age of Islamic Science and Art before and around 1000 CE, in particular Persia, was brutally brought to an end by Mongol invasions after 1220, with catastrophic destruction and by and large architectural inactivity for several decades, later-on, during Ilkhanid, Timurid, and even Ottoman periods, scholars again took over in assisting those who created the most incredible geometric and arabesque tessellations. But they still noted lack of knowledge and unwillingness of master-builders to entirely rely on geometric proof but rather dealt “with geometry in their unmethodological and incorrect way three centuries after Abu’l-Wāfa.” “Yes, we have heard of it, but in essence we have not heard how science of geometry works and what it deals with.”

 

Pentagons and Decagons

Especially fascinating may be the way, artisans had tried to use pentagons and decagons in their tessellations. There have even been speculations, at least since the late 1980s, whether medieval Islamic artists had been able to create aperiodic tiling, such as those which had been described by Roger Penrose in the 1970s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In studying the probably 13^th century manuscript by an anonymous author, Fī tadhākul al-ashkāl al-mutashābihah aw al-mutawāfiqa (On Interlocking Similar or Congruent Figures), which is now located in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, Wasma’a K. Chorbachi and Arthur L. Loeb [6] point to the similarity of the here described problem of interlocking convex decagons and pentagonal stars (the Islamic Pentagonal Seal) with those being now popularly known as aperiodic Penrose Tiling [7].

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this manuscript one may find an interesting ‘practical’, albeit incorrect, solution for creating regular decagons and pentagons by cutting and pasting the kunya-5 triangle, a right-angled triangle with one angle equal to 36°. The approximation differs from 36° by only 12’22’’, i.e., 0.5% [8].

 

 

 

 

 

In particular in the 13^th century, the golden triangle (an isosceles triangle having angles of 36°, 72° and 72°; its base length equals f times its side-length, where f is the golden fraction defined by the equation phi = 1/(1+phi)), was used by Muslim scientists for the construction of regular pentagons and decagons [9]. The golden triangle can be subdivided in such a way that another golden triangle and a golden gnomon results, i.e., a isosceles triangle having angles 108°, 36° and 36°. As Chorbachi and Loeb write, artisans may actually have created the 36° angle using the (incorrect) method of constructing kunya-5.

The construction of the Pentagonal Seal in the Paris manuscript is, according to Chorbachi and Loeb, a very particular one, with its five-pointed star constituted by ten golden gnomons which exactly match the ten golden triangles which constitute the decagon. “It is historically significant that as early as the thirteenth century A.D., it was known that what we presently call the golden triangle and golden gnomon are together capable of tessellating the Euclidean plane, and that during the Middle Ages, Islamic design continued in the tradition of the Alexandrian and other eastern Mediterranean schools of mathematics. The use of this five-pointed star appears to have stimulated mathematicians to work on these practical problems in design. The importance of this problem to the Muslim scientists may be inferred by the fact that they tried over the course of several centuries to find the perfect solution.”

According to Wasma’a K. Chorbachi in “The Tower of Babel” [5], “[t]he true patron of the scientists who wrote these ancient manuscript was art. It was the artisans and the architects who called for the services of science and scientists to assist them solving the design problems that they were facing. And as in the case of Islamic art in the past, science must come to the service of the arts, whether we are talking today of Islamic art, of Western art or of art generally, today more than ever before […].” “[I]slamic tradition is so strong that, if we are in touch with the language of the present time and ground ourselves in this strong old tradition, we can arrive at an expression that is not only contemporary but could be meaningful and valid in the coming century.”

 

Notes

[1] According to Oleg Grabar in his fine book The Great Mosque of Isfahan (New York University Press 1990, p. 34) it contains in the four corners the pious quatrain: “As the letter of our crime became entwined [i.e., grew so long], [they] took it and weighed it in the balance against action. Our sin was greater than that of anyone else, but we were forgiven out of the kindness of Ali.” Grabar notes that the central part of the panel is nothing else than the plug of the artisan who was diligently involved in restoring the mosque in the 17^th century, Muhammad ibn Mu’min Muhammad Amin.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Decorative brickwork on the northern iwan of the mosques also shows clockwise and counterclockwise swastikas in one of the circumferential bands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[4] Özdural A. Mathematics and Arts: Connections between Theory and Practice in the Medieval Islamic World. Historia Mathematica 2000; 27: 171-201.

[5] Ibid. It is the Islamic proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, which is closer to the Indian method of Bhāskara Achārya (d. 1185) than to the Greek method in Euclid’s Propositions, as is beautifully explained by Wasma’a K. Chorbachi in her eye-opening article “In the Tower of Babel: Beyond Symmetry in Islamic Design. Computers Math Applic 1989; 17: 751-789.

[6] Chorbachi WK, Loeb AL. An Islamic pentagonal seal (from scientific manuscripts of the geometry of design). In Hargittai I (ed) Fivefold symmetry. World Scientific, Singapore 1992, pp. 283-305

[7] Ibid., p. 284: “Although the approach to the generation of this pattern in the Paris manuscript is quite different from that taken by Penrose, it is notable that these ‘quasi-periodic’ patterns were already of interest at least in the thirteenth century A.D. The manuscript stresses the uniqueness of the fivefold center of rotational symmetry in the pentagonal seal, thus implying the lack of translational symmetry in the pattern, but does not explicitly deal with the matter of non-periodicity.”

[8] Ibid., p. 286f: “The construction was therefore remarkably accurate, though not correct. Kamal ad-Din Musa Ibn Yunus Ibn Man’a in his thirteenth-century commentary on Abu’l Wafa’ al Buzjani’s book on the geometry of construction, with whom this construction may well have originated, actually was quite explicit in cautioning that some of his constructions, in particular of the heptagon, were practical, but not mathematically exact. They can be used in small-scale designs without noticeable discrepancies, which however become manifest on a larger scale.” 

[9] Ibid., p. 293: “[I]n the second half of the thirteenth century (ca. 1259) in the town of Marāgha, which became a center of scientific activities and contained the famous observatory, another illustrious mathematician, Nasir ad-Din at-Tusi, wrote commentaries on Euclid, in which he made obvious use of the golden triangle. … [H]is commentaries on Euclid included a short treatise dealing with the inscription and circumscription of polygons within the circle: Sittat Maqalat min Kitab Tahrir Uqlidis: Six Books/Articles from Euclid’s Book of Elements.” As an example, see the construction below, which had been created with some guidance from Eric Broug’s booklet Islamic Geometric Patterns, Thames & Hudson, New York 2008.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See also on this blog

About difficulties of the Western perception of Islamic abstraction which might easily result in fundamental misconceptions

About decagonal tessellations on the west iwan of Esfahan’s famous Friday Mosque

About Alpay Özdural’s proof that the mysterious North Dome of Esfahan’s Great Mosque is based on Omar Khayyām’s triangle

A review of a booklet which makes complicated Islamic geometric patterns easy to reproduce

The Light Verse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pentecost might be the right holiday for asking this simple question: Can Christians, or even agnostics, be touched by verses of the Holy Qur’an? Yes, they can (we are not in Obama’s campaign here). Some years ago, when I had just moved to Kuwait, which is a very conservative Islamic country, I got a gift from my brother, Navid Kermani’s doctoral thesis about the beauty of the Qur’an. Its main topic (on a bit more than 500 pages) was, in particular, what Muslims know as i‛ğāz, meaning the miracle of the supernatural beauty of their Holy Book. I am quite convinced that he (my brother) has not read it, but on me it had a profound effect. It is, of course, a scientific text but easy to read and of admirably persuasive power. The effect was twofold. I first became interested in the Qur’an, and even religion at large. And then I detected that I am not really religious. The holy book I am more familiar with, the Bible, obviously lacks beauty and poetry, and Kermani, a German-Iranian orientalist, novelist, and journalist who is living in Cologne, is a master of explaining that particular (if you want) deficiency of the Book of the Books (I would still disagree spontaneously for certain parts, for example, the Sermon on the Mount, Matth 5-7. But being nearly overwhelmed by revolutionary ethics is somewhat different from being immensely touched by pure beauty).

Kermani comes to the (my) point on page 122 when he portrays, and tries to interpret, the famous Light Verse (Q24:35): 

“God is the Light of the heavens and the earth.

The parable of His light is, as it were, that of a niche containing a lamp;

the lamp is [enclosed] in glass,

the glass [shining] like a radiant star:

[a lamp] lit from a blessed tree -

an olive-tree that is neither of the east nor of the west

the oil whereof [is so bright that it] would give light [of itself] even though fire had not touched it:

Light upon Light!

God guides unto His light him that wills [to be guided];

and [to this end] God propounds parables unto men,

since God [alone] has full knowledge of all things.”

Ayat An-Nur is named after this verse, although the remaining revelations deal with completely different issues. Indeed, when I tried to get a comment from a dear Muslim friend on it, she became angry, for obvious reasons. But I only wanted some opinions about this special, mysterious, paragraph, in particular this “neither of the East nor of the West”. The English translation (here by Mohamed Asad) is, as all translations of, what is believed by Muslims, God’s words, insufficient.

As I learned later, especially this most famous verse in the Qur’an has guided so many mystics on their spiritual journeys!

Published first at Salmiya.

Interreligious Incompetence

Celebrated German-Iranian scholar of Islamic Sciences, novelist, essayist and journalist Navid Kermani was denied Hesse’s highest cultural award, the Kulturpreis. As he tells us, he was second choice anyway after Professor Fuad Sezgin, Director of the Institute of Arabic-Islamic Sciences at Frankfurt University, who had been nominated first, had already declined; allegedly because of some statements made by Salomon Korn, Vice President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and another laureate, on Israel’s war in Gaza.

After Kermani had accepted the award, definitely too quickly but bona fide, the other two awardees, Karl Cardinal Lehmann and the former President of the Protestant Church of Hesse-Nassau Peter Steinacker declined next, owing to Kermani. Allegedly, because he (Kermani) had described his emotions when contemplating a painting of the crucified Christ by Guido Reni (d. 1642) in such a positive way that one indeed may doubt his good Muslim faith. However, of course is the crucifix the main reason for the schism in monotheism. Of course must Muslims consider worshipping the crucified Christ as idolatry. This is THE DIFFERENCE. What one faction considers the holiest expression of piety is for the other pure blasphemy. By definition.

Nothing is wrong with the decisions of these honorable men, except the insistence on fundamentalist religious dogmas and childish bossiness. One might advise these ignoble laureates to scrutinize their own level of tolerance first before frivolously accepting awards which they might not really deserve.

 

See also on this blog

Almost a Revelation. Some thoughts after reading Navid Kermani’s Der Schrecken Gottes.