Category Archives: Art

The Game of Kings

Archaeology and Antiquities, Islamic History, Miniatures


This illustration from a Persian treatise on chess, possibly dating from the 14th century, is notable for its expressive faces that hint at the “different kinds of pleasantry and jests” Mas‘udi recorded as customary among players at that time in Baghdad.

[The latest issue of Saudi Aramco World has an interesting article on the history of chess in the Middle East. Here is an excerpt.]

The Game of Kings

by Stewart Gordon

Arab writers on chess acknowledge that the game spread west from Persia, probably soon after the Islamic conquest in the mid-seventh century. The Arabic term for the game was and is shatranj, a standard linguistic shift from the Persian chatrang, and all the names of the chess pieces (with the exception of the horse) are Arabic versions of their Persian names. As it spread, however, the game did not always find itself welcome. The Eastern Church at Constantinople condemned chess as a form a gambling in 680, and al-Hakim, the Fatimid ruler of Egypt, banned it in 1005 and ordered all chess sets burned. Continue reading The Game of Kings →

Iranians in The Mist

Contemporary Art, Film and Video, Iran, Journalism and Media, Literature

Demystifying Iran

by Noor Iqbal, Foreign Policy in Focus, July 29, 2009

Post-election turmoil in Iran has brought the country closer to the top of America’s foreign policy concerns. More importantly, though, it has piqued the interests of the American public. Green is the new black, Moussavi and Khamenei have become household names, and tweeting about Iranian politics has never been more popular.

But what is Iran like beyond its politics and the Western media hype? Iranian-born filmmaker Maryam Habibian tackles this question in her most recent documentary, The Mist. The film delves into the lives of young artists, poets, playwrights, and intellectuals in Iran whose creative energy flourishes alongside fundamentalist traditions. It explores the balance they reach between artistic expression and the limitations of a conservative political regime. Habibian shows her viewers another side to Iran, one that has been largely overlooked by conventional media. She is committed to showing her audience that a society cannot be defined solely by its political system and that when it comes to Iran, we are not facing a clash of civilizations.

Her film was recently screened in New York City as part of the NewFilmmakers Summer Festival.

NOOR IQBAL: What motivated you to make this film? Continue reading Iranians in The Mist →

Poster Martyrs

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Books You Should Read, Contemporary Art, Lebanon, Shi'a


A poster commemorating the second anniversary of the assassination of Sheikh Ragheb Harb, by Merhi Merhi, 1986 (Hizballah Media Office)

by Hicham Safieddine, The Electronic Intifada, July 6

Author Christopher Hitchens might have saved himself a beating had he read Zeina Maasri’s book Off the Wall: Political Posters of the Lebanese Civil War. Hitchens, a self-proclaimed expert on all matters theological and Middle Eastern, was attacked in the streets of Beirut last February after defacing a political poster. The power of posters apparently touched Hitchens himself, who felt compelled to express his vindictiveness by attacking an image. But in a war-ravaged place like Lebanon, images can be a lot more than mere symbols. As Fawwaz Traboulsi explains in Off the Wall’s forward, they can serve as weapons, and Hitchens’ attackers must have understood that quite well.

The power of posters, as not merely symbolic weapons but also sites of hegemonic struggle during Lebanon’s civil war, is a central theme of Maasri’s book. A mix of text and image, the book is a rich and visually engaging work that tackles a dimension of war long-neglected by Lebanese historians. A sample of 150 posters (out of 700 the author has examined) in full color and printed on laminated paper occupies the center of the book and it is hard to begin reading before going through them: portraits of “heroic” leaders of all factions, clenched fists facing enemy guns, silhouettes of martyrs and landscapes of religious and nationalist symbols overlooked by dominant war figures, many marked with slogans that range from the racist to the revolutionary. But the book is a lot more than a slideshow of images summing up defining moments of the war or a straightforward critical review of the posters. Maasri delves into questions of theory, representation and meaning that shaped and defined the art of poster-making and the politics of their interpretation during times of conflict.

For the rest of this article, click here.

Yemen’s Alabaster Windows

Art, Yemen

Moonglow from Underground

Alabaster, one of the rarest and most ancient of lighting materials, has now been reinterpreted in a contemporary idiom.

Used to illuminate Arabian palaces and tower-houses since 2,000 years ago, the subtle glow of alabaster – ‘moonlight stone’ – has been brought to light again by Abdulwahhab al-Sayrafi, master alabaster craftsman. His unique, hand-made range of alabaster windows, lamps and candleholders are perfect for today’s architecture and today’s interiors. Continue reading Yemen’s Alabaster Windows →

Reading Orientalism on Rorotoko

Books You Should Read, Literature, Orientalism, Orientalist Art, Teaching Resources

Rorotoko? Yes, Rorotoko. Forget about the name, but enjoy a relatively new website which allows authors to describe their books. As the site suggests:

• Rorotoko is an online venue for engaging the ideas and elaborations serious books are made of.
• Rorotoko is exclusive authors’ interviews on some of the most fascinating books coming out of some of the finest nonfiction and scholarly presses.
• But Rorotoko is not about books, it is about what books are about.

The April 3 edition of Rorotoko features an article I wrote about my Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid, published by University of Washington Press in 2007.

Reading Orientalism is literally a re-reading of the late Edward Said’s Orientalism. Said’s powerful critique remains a milestone in the critical theory of academic bias three decades after its first publication. As the years go by, Orientalism survives more as an essential source to cite rather than a polemical text in need of thorough and open-minded reading. Read by academics as well as the general public in almost three dozen translations, Said’s text analyzes novels, travelogues and academic books to argue that a dominant imperialist discourse of West over East has underwritten virtually all past European and American representation of a so-called “Orient.” The debate over these views of Edward Said, a prominent intellectual of Palestinian heritage, continues unabated even after his passing in 2003. Continue reading Reading Orientalism on Rorotoko →

Islamophobia 101, A call to analyse

Apocalypse Watch, Gender and Sexuality, Humor and Satire, Islam and Christianity, Islam in America, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Islamophobia 101, Journalism and Media, Muhammad, Orientalism, Orientalist Art, Teaching Resources, Terrorism Issue, YouTube Watch

[Webshaykh’s Note: This is the start of a new blog thread dedicated to energizing scholarly and pedagogical attempts to combat, or at least mitigate, the ongoing volume of Islamophobia in the media, especially on the Internet. The question is simple: what can be done to respond to Islamophobia in the media by our efforts in the blogosphere, formal media outlets, classroom, community and scholarly forums? I invite fellow scholars, professors and teachers and anyone concerned with this issue to contribute to the discussion here at Tabsir.]

People of any particular religious faith are understandably offended when someone or something they hold to be sacred is dragged through the media-made mud of ridicule. There is no way to completely stop desecration, even when hate crime laws are in place. As long as there are synagogues with walls and anti-Semites with paint, swatstikas will be painted. As long as there are artists who stretch their creative energies to the limit of tolerance, animal dung will adorn the body of the Madonna. And as long as so many individuals in Western societies fear Islam through the veil of their own ignorance and historically constructed disdain, the Prophet Muhammad will be pictured as a profligate. The Danish cartoon controversy was only the tip of the iceberg, one that created a titanic rift in the Muslim community worldwide. The irony is that portraying Muhammad in any form is considered wrong in Islam, so that placing a stud missile in the turban of a caricatured Mahound (to drop a literary motif of the same controversial dimension) glosses over the level of misunderstanding motivating those who made and appreciated the cartoon images.

So what is the proper response to the volume of prophet bashing out there, not only in the case of Islam. Here are a few suggestions to jumpstart the process of analysis so that we as scholars can mitigate the paralysis created by an Islamophobia that is only a mouse click away.

• Identify resources (books, relevant articles, websites, speakers) which provide a scholarly and objective-as-possible perspective on Islamophobia
• Discuss the merits of whether or not to provide examples of Islamophobic writing, art and videos that are admittedly offensive to many Muslims
• Provide lesson and project ideas to encourage students to critically assess the Islamophobia in specific examples they are likely to find in the media and on the Internet
• Engage with fellow scholars and concerned Muslims about the most effective and least offensive ways to combat and mitigate Islamophobic writing and art
• Link examples of Islamophobia to other forms of verbal and artistic ridicule of sacred materials.
• Expose Islamophobic rhetoric by politicians, celebrities and other people in the news.

Having set out the goals, I invite colleagues contribute comments, commentaries and examples for and against Islamophobia for this series, please email the webshakh at daniel.m.varisco@hofstra.edu. I will post the first commentary tomorrow.

Daniel Martin Varisco