They enumerated the influence which moulded the character of...

They enumerated the influence which moulded the character of Muslim art and maintain by deft implication that Muslim art could be reduced to these influences, that there was nothing original in this art. They do not see that Islam not only absorbed external influences but also modified them to suit its own native genius. Muslim painting was only an aspect of Muslim life. It was an expression of the spiritual explorations of sensitive minds.

These sensitive minds, rooted in their own culture, had their own peculiar longings and yearnings, aspiration, and conflicts. It was out of these dynamic forces that peculiar idioms and patterns which we call by the name of Muslim Art. B. Characteristics of Muslim Painting Muslim painting began under a shadow – the shadow of taboo on pictorial representation of material things.

Islam started its career as an iconoclastic missionary religion to the main aim of which to establish a social order based on reason. It propounded laws, made institutions, and fostered organizations that the ideal could come to earth. It not only enunciated values and principles but also tried to demonstrate that they could be realized in this mortal life of ours. In this endeavour, Islam had to suppress the pagan orientation not only of the Arabs but of all the peoples it conquered.

Paganism had an uncanny and almost an internal relation with idol-worship, and Fine Arts were the only means by which idols could be raised and formed in such a way that they could, by their beauty and elegance, induce in the beholders a mood of devotion and emotional abandon. The aesthetic sense among the pagans was the religious sense. Devotion to beauty and worship were identified in the pagan mind. Paganism was the cult of the irrational.

It was based on the bond between the primitive man and the forces of nature that he faced in his daily life. Islam came with the message that there is only one God, that He alone is worthy of worship, and that the forces of nature can be subjugated and bent to serve man’s will and desire. It was necessary for Islam at that stage to sub-ordinate the aesthetic to the moral and the beautiful to the good.

It was, therefore, a historical necessity which led early Muslims to prohibit the art which fostered representation of gods, goddesses, and national heroes as objects of worship. It did not mean that such a prohibition is inherent in Islam. Muslim painting, therefore, began with a handicap.