The Materiality of Pious Texts: The Qur’an and Devotional Manuscripts 1
Alya KARAME, Umberto BONGIANINO
24 June 2024
Part 1 at 9am
Part 2 at 11am
Both the Qur’an and Islamic devotional manuscripts have traditionally been studied as texts and artistic achievements, but rarely as material objects. Concerns about how to handle and dispose of Qur’anic matter – how to use the manuscript, where to place it, when to touch it – or whether it is permissible to perfume it, ingest it or sell it, were among the anxieties of the first centuries of Islam. Formative to the Qur’an’s physical manifestation as codices, scrolls or inscribed artefacts, these debates shaped its sacrality in the material realm and affected the use of Islamic devotional manuscripts in which passages of the Qur’an appear next to other pious texts, prayers or illustrations of holy places. Art history has been rarely concerned with such phenomena, or with the corporeality of sacred and pious texts in general.
This session aims to interrogate the materiality of pious texts and the roles they played in shaping artistic forms embedded in a diverse range of practices, at the time of their production or in their afterlives: Qur’anic calligraphy, calligrams, and emblematic inscriptions in books and scrolls, but also on tablets and panels of various materials, interspersed or combined with devotional texts and images presented in diagrammatic or iconified forms. By moving away from archaeological taxonomies and the study of styles and repertoires, we hope to create space for approaching pious texts through their materiality, their use, and the range of physical reactions they elicited. Meanings – whether religious, political, or aesthetic – can be found not just in how texts looked, but also in how they functioned, and it is through the lens of materiality that previously neglected ideas and behaviors can be examined.
Talks :
- Nourane BEN AZZOUNA – La matérialité au secours d’une question controversée : l’image au service de l’islam
- Mounia CHEKHAB ABUDAYA – From Creation to Devotion: Investigating the Role and Materiality of Mecca and Medina Scrolls
- Yasin ZARE – Analyse des Corans en Waqf de l’Astan Quds Razavi en Iran : Une Étude des Lettres de Dédicace
- Zahra KAZANI – Blessings Amplified: Interlacing Script/Pseudo-Script on Mosuli Metalwork
Chairs
Umberto BONGIANINO, Oxford University (Oxford , Royaume-Uni), Alya KARAME, INHA (Paris, France)
Speakers
Nourane BEN AZZOUNA, Université de Strasbourg (Strasbourg, France), Mounia CHEKHAB ABUDAYA, Museum Of Islamic Art (Doha, Qatar), Yasin ZARE, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montreal, Canada), Zahra KAZANI, University Of Oxford (Oxford, United Kingdom)
Venue :
Salon Roseraie 2
Centre de Congrès de Lyon
Matter Materiality
Matter and materiality are inherent to the conception, production, interpretation and conservation of artifacts in all cultures across all periods of time. In recent decades these notions have given rise to theoretical reflections, including a rethinking of the hylemorphic model (form/matter opposition). A world is open to us in which matter is no longer fixed and inert but in motion, in the grip of infinite transformations, a world of flux (G. Deleuze, T. Ingold), where vital matter is endowed with agency (J. Bennett).