forschungsbericht november 2008 – juli 2012 - Kunsthistorisches ...

CROSSING BOUNDARIES, CREATING IMAGES | 35
Crossing Boundaries, Creating Images:
In Search of the Prophet Muhammad in Literary and Visual Traditions
Avinoam Shalem
Project Managing Director
Christiane Gruber
(University of Michigan)
Anonym, Mahomet Apocalypsis or
the Revelation of certain notorious
Advancers of Heresie, 1658
Einzelforschungen
The interdisciplinary research project seeks to explore the multiple ways in which the
Prophet Muhammad has been described and depicted in European traditions from the medieval
era until the early modern period. European materials that are examined include Latin
translations of the Qur'an and vitas of the Prophet in Latin and vernacular European languages,
pre-modern Jewish literature, illustrated medieval French and Italian manuscripts
containing historical and belletristic texts, European printed books, sculptures, frescoes,
and stained glass windows, as well as Euro-American Orientalist and Romantic paintings.
The results of this research project will be published as a corpus, in which the visual materials
as well as the literary sources are compiled, translated into English, and discussed.
This project brought together, in a conference held from 16 to 18 July 2009 at the KHI in
Florence, approximately thirty distinguished international scholars whose work explores
the varied ways in which the Prophet Muhammad has been constructed and imagined, both
through Euro-American eyes and within Islamic traditions, from the beginnings
of Islam until the modern period. European and American textual and visual
sources were explored in relationship to internal debates over the construction
and course of the Christian faith, as well as attempts to delineate its contrastive
position vis-à-vis Islam at particularly critical junctures in time. Islamic materials
to be studied include descriptive, biographical, and historical texts, illustrated
manuscripts from the 13 th to the 19 th century, Ottoman verbal descriptions
(hilyas), Persian poetry, the Prophet's relics, and modern representations of the
Prophet in lithographic works, posters, and other popular materials. Islamic
materials are investigated in an effort to determine how writers and artists
working primarily from within Arabic, Persian, and Turkish cultural spheres
came together with the largely devotional aim to praise Muhammad through
text-and-image production. The proceedings of this interdisciplinary conference
on European and Islamic texts and images will be published by the KHI.
The members of the research group have also prepared a volume, entitled The
Subjective Eye: Constructing the Image of Muhammad in Europe, which will be published
by De Gruyter in 2012 or early 2013. The book provides a comprehensive
overview and analysis of the most pertinent examples of the depictions of the
Prophet Muhammad produced in the Latin West from the 12 th to the 19 th century.
By crossing disciplinary boundaries in the field of the humanities, this project's principal
goal consists in exploring how literary and visual descriptions of the Prophet Muhammad
served multiple cultural, political, and religious purposes from the medieval period until
today. These materials did not only emerge from the pietistic impulse to describe and imagine
the prophetic persona within Islamic cultural practices but also from internal debates
over the construction and future course of the Christian faith.
Heather Coffey | Corpus of Images of the Prophet Muhammad in Manuscripts and Frescos,
c. 1100–1500 (Doc)
Michelina Di Cesare | Corpus of Medieval Latin Lives of the Prophet Muhammad (Postdoc)
Claus-Peter Haase | Text und Illumination von persischen Anthologien der Timuridenund
Safawidenzeit (wissenschaftlicher Gast)
Mika Natif | Mughal Occidentalism: Artistic Encounters Between Europe and Asia at the
Courts of India (Postdoc, Kurzzeitstipendium)
Alberto Saviello | The Faces of the Prophet – Visual Representations of the Prophet
Muhammad in Western European Qur'an Translations and Printed Material (Doc)