NOW AND TEN

Stone portal guardian or Lamassu (mythical winged guardian) from
the Palace of Sargon II (r. 722-705 BCE), Dur Sharrukin, now Khorsabad, Iraq.
Louvre Museum, Paris. Pictures from History Bridgeman Images
Kadhim Haider, The Martyr’s Epic, 1965.
Collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah. Courtesy Barjeel Art Foundation.
‘His Buraq is in part the horse of the Prophet’s night journey
and in part the soul’s journey through the dark blues of man’s
endless night of mystery.’
(Jabra Ibrahim Jabra).
Published in Jabra Ibrahim Jabra’s infamous book
on Iraqi art entitled The Grass Roots of Iraqi
Art (1983) and originally part of the art critic
and writer’s private collection, Al Buraq is an
outstanding example by pioneer Modern Iraqi
artist Kadhim Haider. Al Buraq relates to the
themes tackled in his most renowned body of work
known as the Martyr’s Epic (‘Melhamet Al Shahidi’
- 1965), based on a poem he wrote which refers to
episodes from the martyrdom of Imam Al-Hussein
at the Battle of Karbala.
The title of this monumental masterpiece
Al Buraq translates literally as ‘lightning’ in English.
It refers to a mythological creature in Islam, who
carried the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to
the ‘farthest mosque’ unanimously identifed as
Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and back during the
‘Isra’ or ‘Mi’raj’ or ‘Night Journey’, accompanied
by the angel Jibril (Gabriel). During this ‘Night
Journey’, Prophet Mohammed encountered the
various heavens, the earlier prophets and God
(Allah), hence defning his destiny.
Combining poetry, myth and metaphor, Kadhim
Haider creates his own personifcation of Al
Buraq using his symbolic pictorial vernacular to
produce an abstract creature hinting to the above
description of Al Buraq with its ‘two wings on
his thighs’ and it being a ‘white beast’. Floating
amidst a variation of deep blue tones, Haider
omits the ‘handsome-face’ by removing all facial
features, enhancing the magical powers of Al
Buraq, that flls up most of the pictorial space of
the present work with its imposing wings and
possibly ‘long ears’. Moreover, Haider opts for the
Islamic tradition of suppressing the portrayal of
the human fgure, because of the fear that people
would worship the image rather than God Himself.
Stylistically and in terms of overall colour tones,
Al Buraq is comparable to one of the highlights of
the esteemed collection of the Barjeel Foundation
in Sharjah, The Martyr’s Epic in which Haider’s
signature and simplifed forms and composition
are closely related to that of Al Buraq. In terms of
subject matter, the scene depicted in The Martyr’s
Epic commemorates the annual mourning for
Imam Al-Hussein’s martyrdom showing bright
white horses participating to the ceremonies
of grief under a symbolically blood-red moon.
Pain and horror of the reality permeate through
this painting as opposed to the more lyrical and
metaphysical tone that dominates Al Buraq.
This large masterpiece by Haider epitomises what
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (1920-1994) laid out in his
groundbreaking article of 1961 entitled Art in Iraq
Today (published in D. Al-Azzawi, C. Pocock &
S. Faruqi (eds.), Art in Iraq Today, Milan 2011, p.
32-33), in stating that ‘most artists in Iraq look on
ancient Mesopotamian sculpture and bas reliefs not
only as a source of infuence but also as the ground
where their roots are implanted’. Despite Al Buraq’s
Modernist approach with its Cubist and Symbolist
resonance, Haider also pays tribute to his
homeland’s cultural heritage and more particularly
to Mesopotamian Art. This painting appears like
a colourful two-dimensional Mesopotamian basrelief
and the subdued liveliness and strange
features of this mythological creature seem to
allude to the ‘lamassu’, an Assyrian protective deity.
It is often represented in art as hybrid creatures,
having the body of a winged lion or ox and a human
head, following the iconography that was frst
exposed in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. The
religious and mythical connotations of Haider’s
Al Buraq are hence complemented by the poetic,
nostalgic and historical dimensions skillfully
infused by the artist. Haider simultaneously
captures a fragment of the roots of Islam as well
as an aspect of Mesopotamian art and civilisation,
ultimately using these references as allegories for
contemporary Iraqi socio-political history in this
extraordinary painting.
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