هنر اسلامی (Mar 2018)
A Study of the Concepts of Immanence and Transcendence according to Muhi Al-Din Ibn Arabi and Their Place in the Persian Painting Space (during 9th and 10th Hegira Century)
Abstract
The theoretical basics governing the Iranian miniature are conditioned on a special rendering of the imagery traditions based on spiritual manifestations due to the Islamic thoughts and submission to divine religion. For the same reason, Muslim miniaturist never misses in his or her creation of miniatures and adoption of transcendental attitudes the existence of God; rather, adopting an immanence-driven approach to the artwork, s/he knows the world of the miniature as a materialization of the divine instance and a demonstration of the praised God’s appearance. Thus, the present study aims at investigating the concepts of immanence and transcendence in miniaturist’s illustration style via underlining Muhi Al-Din Ibn Arabi’s approach as regards the epistemology of these two concepts. Based on the study findings, Ibn Arabi’s belief has been laid upon the underlying premise that the true knowledge depends upon an integration of immanence and transcendence. Moreover, the secret of transcendence lies in the name of the God’s nature and immanence’s secret stems from the verdicts of the apparent name of the praised God. So, the world of possibilities cannot be stripped in its interior and exterior from the God and the topic has been most eloquently expressed in the Holy Quran; and, because the Muslim artist in his or her resorting to the spiritual concepts of the Islamic and Quranic canonization tries to create an artwork and considering the idea that in Ibn Arabi’s perspective the Holy Quran and the Islamic attitude are the outcome of integration of the immanence and transcendence, it can be stated that the pictorial elements extant in Iranian miniature are as well specific kinds of a real language that have been converted to an expression of the two-dimensional illustration world being given the form of a single light in the practical arena by the artist. God’s characteristics and attributes are manifested in the miniature away from any thought of equalization to the divine creation. The present study has been carried out based on a descriptive-analytical method. The information has been collected through library research.
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