The Imaginal World, Mulla Sadra and Islamic Aesthetics

John F. Quinn

The significance of the concept of the “imaginal world” (mundus imaginalis) develops from a rich philosophical tradition. Ibn Sina develops the richness of the world of imagination and its creative possibilities. This concept of the creative imagination has contributed to our understanding of art and artistic expression, yet remains on the level of the imaginative. In a clear sense the arts are an expression of creative imagination. The idea of the imaginative or the imaginary is quite different from the “imaginal world” as used in Suhrawardi. Like an image in a mirror, the imaginal has more than a physical existence and more than a fantastic presence. As a separate ontological realm, the imaginal exists independently of matter. Beings have degrees of intensity as processes and have a substance that is represented as light or in terms of luminosity. The aesthetic qualities of art rightly become an appropriate and symbolic method of expression or embodiment of the image in the mirror as imaginal. From this world of autonomous images and vivid imaginative perception to the existence of the “spiritual body” and a “celestial earth” brings us to the cosmic presence of the imaginal. Again, like the image in the mirror, imaginal reality is neither the mirror nor the material reality that is imaged. It is both in an intermediate reality. This World of Imagination is neither purely spiritual nor purely bodily. Either spiritual things become corporealized or corporeal things become spiritualized through words and imagery in the arts. For ibn al-Arabi, as microcosms, human beings live in the three worlds of spirit, body and imagination:

The Divine Presence has three levels - manifest, non-manifest, and in-between. Through this last, the Manifest becomes distinct and separate from the Non-manifest. This last is the barzakh, because it has a face toward the Non-manifest and a face toward the Manifest. Or rather, it itself is the face, for it cannot be divided. It is the perfect human being. The Real made him stand as a barzakh between the Real and the cosmos. Hence he makes manifest the Divine Names, so he is Real, and he makes manifest the reality of possible existence, so he is creature. That is why God made him in three levels: intellect and sense perception, which are the two sides, and imagination, which is the barzakh between meaning and sense perception. (ibn Arabi, qtd. in Nasr and Leaman 507)

The imaginary world, a barzakh or “isthmus,” has no clear existentialist edges because existence is present on all three levels with the supreme isthmus that embraces every possibility of existence as the human. Human becoming represents the unfolding of the perfect human being actualizing every possibility of knowledge and existence placed within Adam, the first human, when God “taught him all the names.” Artistic expressions may well be, for ibn Arabi, as his poetry, different languages taught to Adam.

A number of other philosophers before Saddruddin Muhammad Shirazi (Mulla Sadra), such as Da’ud Qaysari, Abd al-Karim Jili, Shamsuddin Muhammad Lahiji, as well as after Mulla Sadra, such as Abd al-Razzaq Lahiji, Kashani, Ahsa’i, Kirmani, and Sarkar Agha, have made the imaginal world the central pillar of their metaphysics. Mulla Sadra gave the first systematic and philosophical explanation following the guidance of ibn al-Arabi’s contribution to understanding the microcosmic existence of the imaginal world (Chittick 198). The imaginal world, as a macrocosm and objective reality independent and disconnected from the inner progress of human beings is his major contribution. Since the imaginal world has even more reality than the physical world since it possesses imaginal forms, which are wedded to matter, but not the matter of the physical world, the forms of the imaginal world are suspended forms, but forms having colors, shapes, odors, and everything else that is associated with the forms of the physical world. As a world of concrete realities, it is not physical, but above the physical, yet humans can experience in this life, as well as after this life, this world of subtle or imaginal bodies. It is as though the imaginal world is within us, can present at this moment to us, and will be present after this physical world.

“Everything to which man aspires, everything he desires is instantaneously present to him [referring to the imaginal world]” (Sadra, Book of the Theosophy of the Throne, qtd. in Corbin 166). For Mulla Sadra, bodily resurrection does not mean resurrection of the physical body as gross matter, but as resurrection of the body acquired by the soul through all of its modes of thinking, acting, and being on earth. This acquired body, as imaginal, possesses human form, but exists with subtle matter. Since the principle of human identity and individuality is the soul and not the body, it is the soul that individualizes the body, and it is the soul which constantly moves between the physical and the imaginal before it ultimately resides in the spiritual world of the oneness of existence. Thus death is a passage of the soul from the sensible to the imaginal, where the imaginal is a barzakh between the sensible and the spiritual. The idea here of the barzakh is like the line that divides the shadow from sunlight; it is neither shadow nor sunlight, but is between the two, but exists in virtue of the two realities that separate it. This world is intermediate between the world of the spirits and the world above us.

The world of spirits has simple and luminous beings which are separate from matter; the world of bodies has compound and shadowy beings which are immersed in matter. Again, like the image reflected in a mirror, the imaginal forms are both real and unreal, existent and non-existent, yet it is a grade or level of existence that has reality, microcosmically and macrocosmically. It is like a dream that testifies to the imaginal world in this world. Every existent in this world is given reality in the corporeal world, but is given a form or manifestation in the imaginal world and respectively in the spiritual world. This triple existence or manifestation reveals the cosmic levels of being as spiritual, imaginal, and corporeal, which exist in humans in a unitive and synthetic way. The human soul thus experiences three births: the birth into the sensible, the imaginal, and the spiritual worlds respectively. With the unity of existence as our spiritual goal, all processes of descent or ascent from the spiritual to the physical will necessarily involve crossing over the imaginal world.

At every stage of ascent or descent, which involves trans-substantial motion, the individuality or unity of the subject is preserved since it is the soul which is the principle of human individuality. “The imaginative enables man to perceive the forms or images of the imaginal world while still living in this sensible world” (Moris 110). In the sensible world, the imaginative faculty requires a material instrument to create images. In the imaginal world, the imaginative faculty needs no material instrument to produce images; those images can be produced on the power or strength of the imaginative faculty alone since they do not require matter in order to exist. Thus the objective existence of an imaginal form is identical to its represented or perceived form by the soul. The distinctions between the three types of existence depend on the degree of intensity of existence. This intensity determines the degree of manifestation of the attributes of the image. The microcosmic existence of the imaginal world is one type of manifestation of existence.

The resurrection of the body in a posthumous state is also an example of the macrocosmic existence of the imaginal body. This imaginal body grows to maturity in the posthumous state and eventually experiences another death which is also a birth: the death to the intermediate and imaginal world gives birth to the spiritual world. Accordingly, the creation of the imaginal body by the soul constitutes a lesser resurrection. The creation of a spiritual body is a greater creation. And as there are three modes of existences, the human soul experiences three births. The goal of creation is a return to the source of existence or God. Every creative being, whether human or not, manifests the attributes of God relative to the degree of intensity present within it. Mulla Sadra’s discussion of the imaginal world is one example of his general existential metaphysics, thus wahdat al-wujud, tashkik al-wujud, and asalat al-wujud, as well as his doctrine of al-harakat al-jawhariyyah apply.

The philosophical claims about the imaginal world by Mulla Sadra are used by the philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr in his philosophy of art. In describing the imaginal world, Nasr suggests, “Persian philosophers like Mulla Sadra have devoted many pages to its description and the proof of [the imaginal world’s] existence” (Nasr 181). Nasr, in his article on Persian miniatures, states that

the miniature serves as a reminder of a reality which transcends the mundane surroundings of human life. The space of the miniature is the space of that ‘imaginal world’ where the forms of nature, the trees, the flowers, and the birds, as well as the events within the human soul, have their origin. This world itself is in fact both beyond this external world and within the soul of man. (Nasr 182)

Nasr’s interpretation of the Persian miniature based upon his analysis of the concept of space argues that non-three-dimensional space as represented in the artificial perspective of the Western Renaissance is deliberately set aside for a natural perspective of two-dimensional space used by Muslim geometers and opticians. Although a Persian miniature has space, time, movement, colors and forms, and the qualities of three-dimensional space, it exists as a representation of the imaginal world. The canvas of a miniature depicts grades of reality and guides humans from material existence which includes profane and mundane consciousness to higher states of existence and consciousness which constitute the intermediate world of the imaginal world. The artistic expression of the themes of Persian miniatures take place in a world above ordinary time and space where it gains a non-temporal meaning. The aesthetic qualities are not simply that of physical nature, but of primordial nature, of paradise, which remains actualized in the imaginal world (alam al-khayal or alam al-mithal). Thus, the color of the mountains, the clouds, or skies, are different from natural colors because the miniature is a traditional art of the intermediate imaginal world with its own bodies, shapes, smells, tastes, and forms, as a replica of the physical world. Moving always between two-dimensional and three-dimensional existence, miniature painting does not allow the eye to fall into three-dimensional existence, but fluctuates between a three-dimensional and a two-dimensional world, the imaginal world, both microcosmically and macrocosmically.

For Nasr, Islamic miniature art is essentially an outcome of the inner dimension of Islam which is interwoven with Islamic spirituality. Islamic art thus leads to the inner chamber of the Islamic tradition as an expression of a message from the noumenal world sent to those qualified to hear it. The traditional masters of Islamic art who represent sophia perennis are speaking Hikmah or wisdom which is not the fruit of reason nor ordinary experience, but of a scientia sacra leading to the intellectual vision of the archetypes of the terrestrial world. Islamic miniature art thus becomes an echo of this noumenal world in the matrix of the temporal existence in which people live (Farooqi 241). Nasr has been described as an advocate of sophia perennis which is a critique of the materialist West, even a forceful diatribe against the ugliness of the modern world and the products of industrialized civilization, east and west. Nasr as a proponent of traditional Islamic values, like others, Burckhardt, Corbin, Schuon, and Gueron, wants Islamic art as a powerful transition from this vicious civilization to a virtuous past with a hope for a resurrected spirituality. The vanguard of this virtuous civilization is led by the artisans, artists, miniaturists, illuminators, calligraphers, poets and writers who will put before us the spiritual journey from material through imaginal to spiritual union with the divine (Lawrence 166).

Putting aside whether or not this critique is applicable or not, as well as whether or not Mulla Sadra would give the same critique, the issue before us for the philosopher of art is whether or not Nasr’s general theory of aesthetics is correct. The standard for being correct is based upon methodologies of art, in this case miniature art, that describe, interpret, and evaluate the miniature tradition. Are Nasr’s claims too broad, too generous, too devoid of textual or historical evidence? Nasr’s theory of art emphasizes two methodologies for interpreting art. The first, the formalist approach, emphasizes the abstract elements such as the primary qualities of organization, perspective, balance, the secondary qualities of color and texture, and the tertiary qualities of expressions of feeling, emotion, even spirituality. This approach also emphasizes the media as well as the general notion of style.

In the second approach, his theory of art unpacks the traditional iconography or levels of story that are interpreted by the artist. The miniaturist most frequently represents in figural art the stories of the epics of the Sufis and of the literature by famous writers of the Islamic tradition. The iconographic methodology is used to interpret the story which may be a simple story, a narrative, a meta-narrative, a world view, and even a philosophy of life, let alone a spirituality. This is done by first looking at what one sees with little or no knowledge of the miniature work which is quite difficult in the case of long poems that are painted with a minimal number of pictures. The second level requires some knowledge of the story such as the epic Shah-namih by the poet Ferdoswi or the quintuplet or khamsah of Nizami, for example. The third level interprets the comparative figural depictions of the same stories by different artists through time and space. The last level, often called iconology, looks at the icons of a story and interprets the meaning, be it philosophical, spiritual, political or moral. I believe that Nasr would agree that these methodologies are appropriate for describing, interpreting, and even evaluating the miniature tradition. If the iconographic methodology is sophia perennis and the formalist analysis of space, time, and qualities of the Persian miniature intimate the imaginal world, where is the evidence that this is the case?

Islamic art has no absolute ban on portraits of living creatures as long as human beings do not encourage idolatry nor usurp divine creativity, as long as they reject any idolatrous worship of anything other than God, then figural art is permissible despite the few hadith of Muhammad concerning embroidered curtains, icons of Jesus and Mary, and finding the correct soul within the figural depiction for the resurrection. Of course Islamic sacred art, art used for sacred purposes, has not used figural depictions. Figural depictions as popular pictures and portraits of holy people such as Muhammad, Ali, or Hussain, may be called Islamicate political art, thus distinguishing it from Islamic sacred art. Miniatures about Sufis, prophets, saints, and even epic leaders and heroes, may well be called Islamic religious art because, in some vague sense, the formal analysis of this art can be interpreted in a formal or an iconographic way.

There is a formalist and, indeed, Platonic hypothesis concerning the character of all Islamic art. This would argue that the paradigm of beauty as a cosmological principle of order and harmony is the best way to interpret and evaluate all Islamic art. Presence of the divine is manifested through existence and, thus, through the three levels of existence including the imaginal world through the unity, goodness, and beauty of God. Seeing beauty everywhere and in everything is seeing the beauty of God in all things. Since the essential reality of the divine is manifested by simple harmony, rhythm, and geometry, caution against realism in painting is well advised. Platonism sees geometry, exact proportion, mathematics as the key to understanding the universe. This way aesthetically draws an appreciator away from the physical world to the world of archetypal forms (Gocer 683).

This hypothesis for interpreting and evaluating Islamic art might even lead to the new iconoclasm in conservative Islam where not even photos in family albums are allowed, where global advertising and reliance on sex to sell everything one can imagine leads to the alienation of the feminine from public spaces. Perhaps even all forms of beauty, even geometric ornament, vegetal arabesque and calligraphy must be banished if they imitate any figural design. Thus, along with beauty, even spirituality is renounced as dangerous if in any way depicted in figural art. However, Nasr does not take this position because art is the outcome of the inner dimension of Islam. It is the creation of beauty as championed as the best expression of religious beliefs about God, individual spirituality, the status of Muhammad as a perfect human, and others embodying the ninety-nine names of God and the virtues that they express. This perspective for the role of art in sophia perennis is muddied, however, by Nasr’s interpretation of the Persian miniature. Is it a concession to Western iconism when Islamic art in its Platonic purity has fluctuated between an iconism and iconoclasm? The introduction of figural art under the Platonic evaluation is at best a distraction from our spiritual journey and at worst a deception.

If we push the case for Platonism as the best interpretation and evaluation of Islamic art, this formalist analysis would undercut Nasr’s acceptance of the importance of the miniature tradition. Much of art accepted rightfully by Nasr would be undercut by the distraction of beauty from the microcosmic and the macrocosmic realities of the imaginal world (Hahn, Auxier, and Stone 377). Muhammad criticized the beautiful embroidered curtains in the mosque because it distracted him from prayer, but he allowed for them as pillowcases; thus, if the goal is to transcend the present physical existence that we have by a two-dimensional formal world, the miniature is irrelevant. I do not believe that Nasr holds this strict Platonic view of Islamic art; however, a top-down philosophy of art where the procrustean bed of theory is used for all religious miniature art is evident when analyzing the miniature tradition. A bottom-up with multiple methodologies for describing, interpreting, and evaluating art, I believe is superior to Nasr’s. It will preserve both what he has said, but embrace a more inclusive understanding of the comments of Mulla Sadra’s discussion of ascent and recognition in this life of the imaginal world and the Safavid Persian context within which miniaturists flourished.

In contrast to the usual formal and non-figurative conventions of Islamic art, Persian miniatures, especially those made for Sufis and for the courts, depict human figures in narrative settings. The iconographic inclusion of Sufi and even epic spirituality as intimated by the imaginal world theory would be quite appropriate if the hard work of reading the works, studying Sufism, and knowing the connection with the miniatures where one picture speaks a thousand words were surmounted. Persian court artists, such as Bihzad, created a pictorial world rich in colors and patterns much like the u-kyio-e (pictures of the floating world) genre of Japanese art. The artists viewed as expressing their own beliefs of a political or spiritual nature are necessary to interpret art as expression. This includes looking to the autobiographical statements in journals, memoirs, even in signatures, and the biographical discussions of the contemporary Safavid artists and patrons as well as the psychological, or perhaps psychoanalytic interpretations of art in terms of religious art as a transition personally or spiritually (Irwin 87).

The impact of the miniature is enhanced by variations and proportions and in shifting spatial viewpoints; thus, Persian perspective can be both two and three-dimensional within a single frame or scene. The artists quite consciously preferred harmony of design to illusionistic representations of the naturalistic environment. The bright, rich pigments used in the works come from an abundant use of lapis lazuli, gold, silver, and other dyes; bright vermillion was made by grinding cinnabar, and green came from malachite (Stockstad 450). Many illuminations were commissioned by royal patrons but there was also a high demand for commercially produced illustrated manuscripts. Thus, a socioeconomic interpretation of the miniature is quite in order given these significant contextual factors in the production of miniatures. The teamwork necessary for the miniatures of a Bihzad would combine the talents of calligraphers, illuminists, book-binders, textual editors, as well as the availability of all those involved in making the materials necessary for the media to be accomplished.

Since Mulla Sadra lived in the Safavid Empire, a rich tradition of aesthetics was in full blossom. Famous Persian miniatures of the Safavid Empire produced by Bihzad and under his direction would have been familiar to Mulla Sadra. Sadra’s philosophical discussions of the imaginal world would have resonated loud and clear to Bihzad who was himself a Sufi, to Sultan Muhammad Nur and his calligraphy, and to the patrons of the miniature market. The work of Bihzad that I have chosen for a bottom-up philosophical approach to the aesthetics of the Persian miniature is entitled Harun al-Rashid Visits the Turkish Bath, 1494. The “bottom-up” approach of ibn Rushd in his commentary on Aristotle’s poetics makes the following statement about beauty in art:

“[It] does not shape an authentic theory of aesthetics insofar as the beautiful is not to be understood either as a value or as a quality per se, but has to be deduced from a systematic analytical approach of a perceptible reality conceived as a coherent and ordered whole” (ibn Rushd qtd. in Grabar 110)

This comment is made in the scientific context of understanding nature interpreted in terms of signs and symbols which is a semiotic approach to artwork. Its import is that the signs and symbols depend upon the perceptions that we have which are then generalized into an aesthetic theory.

In this particular miniature, painted by Bihzad in Herat, Khurasan, at a time when the Timurids were overtaken by the Safavids, the story being depicted in this image comes from the Khamsah which is a collection of five different stories of Nizami. The diverse stories are the Eskander-nameh, Haft Paykar, Leyla and Majnun, Khosrow and Shirin, and Makhzan al-asrar (a Sufi treasure of mysteries). This story as a Sufi narrative is illustrated in the miniature by an old Sufi looking on dispassionately at the bath of Harun al-Rashid. So the story is, from an iconographic perspective, an ethical story, and thereby one in the tradition of ibn Sina, ibn al-Arabi, Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra and their discussion of the imaginal world. These five stories would have been known for centuries as part of the culture, in Herat or in Tabriz. The picture is painted at the high point of Bihzad’s style, but at a time of transition from the Timurid to the Safavid period. However, his notoriety was well-known to the Persian Empire; this is evidenced by the publicity that he had in both Mughal India and in the Ottoman Empires.

An example, perhaps of the lack of rapport with the sensibilities of the Persian people is the miniature by Bihzad; however, an exception may not defeat the intent of the following statement:

Persian art of the Islamic period, while being profoundly Persian and in conformity with the sensibility of the Persian people, is also Islamic art in the traditional sense of that term and therefore can serve perfectly to demonstrate the universal rapport between Islamic spirituality and Islamic art. (Nasr 179)

Bihzad, however, was not always in accord with the sensibility of the Persian people, for around the same time he also painted the prophet Muhammad with a clear figural depiction along with his companions Omar, Uthman, Abubakr, and Ali. There are golden halos which rise around the head of the prophet and around the holy Qur’an in the center of the image. It is questionable whether or not this fit the sensibilities of the people because it appears to be an example of Islamic sacred art. If we include all the Persian people, however, even people interested in art, then Nasr’s statement is clearly overstated.

This particular work, Harun al-Rashid Visits the Turkish Bath, has an asymmetrical composition that is intense, bold, and deliberate with the use of sharp parallel lines that enclose and grid the picture plane. His style is very simple, yet his precise detail is extraordinary in its depiction of the story as it moves from frame to frame within the single work. The composition is arranged asymmetrically, yet the piece remains balanced because of the strategic location of figures and objects that place emphasis on certain areas of the picture plane. The realistic and expressive shapes are filled with radiant pure tones of blue, red, yellow, and green. There is a flow of figures, objects, and architecture that make the eye move across the whole work, such as the towels hanging from the ceiling and the pole reaching up to the towels. One starts at a focal point and moves around the composition and ends up where one started. The figures have no detail except for the contours of the bodies and the expressions on their faces. They appear completely two-dimensional, yet there is a vast sense of depth that is created (Grube 132).

The aesthetics is consistent with the aesthetics of the imaginal world and perhaps consistent with Nasr’s emphasis on two-dimensionality as being the entrance into the imaginal world. The iconography of the work shows the importance of bathhouses to cleanliness, both spiritual and physical. The cultural significance of cleanliness is captured by the presence of the old Sufi in the balcony, detached but yet an onlooker. The story itself is an amusing illustration of the bathhouse to the detail of the oil lamp spots on the walls. Will these spots also be in the imaginal world only more vibrantly colored?

The Sufi’s story as expressed in the harmonious coloring and the expressive faces show how the barber impudently professes love for the caliph’s daughter and asks for her hand. The caliph consults his vizier and says, “The man must be standing on a hidden treasure to be so bold. Change your place in the bathhouse next time and test the case” (Bahari 135). Harun does so and finds the barber very polite, attentive, and silent – as might be expected – and says no more of his foolish desires. However, Harun orders the excavation of the spot where the barber had been and finds the hidden treasures previously foretold by the vizier. Treasure, in this context, is part of the secret language of the Sufi who uses language on different levels of meaning. Is the treasure physical, psychological, a matter of character, spiritual, or the ninety-nine names of God? The barber is, thus, striving to be the “perfect man” of the imaginal world of ibn-Arabi. However interpreted, the moral of this story could, but not necessarily, be an example for not discriminating against the poor, or for seeing God in all things, or for thinking a man’s character as the hidden treasure is a good way to gain a son-in-law, and thus an appropriate suitor for his daughter.

The contextual socioeconomic approach to art, neglected by Nasr, reviews the status of patrons, artists, investors, buyers, the public, and all appreciators of art, even the subjects in artworks. The new patrons in Tabriz, the capital of the Safavid Empire, welcomed Bizhad’s miniaturist art as an opportunity to gain respectability. What is implied from the contextual perspective of this work is that Harun al-Rashid, as one who was striving to be a perfect man, thus embodying the ninety-nine names of God, wanted to select a man of character to marry his daughter and not to sell his daughter off. After all, qualities cannot be quantified.

The poet Nizami wrote this story as the backdrop against which Bihzad painted his miniatures. They were painted as part of a collection at first to be placed in the royal library of Sultan Hussein Bayeqra in Herat but later to be moved to Tabriz and placed in the palace of the Shah. If we take the psyche of the artist into account, his best work was done under Timurid Herat and not during the Safavid period. This miniature, as a product of the creative imagination, still portrays art as an activity of self-development and a transition both personally for Bihzad and spiritually for his patrons. Even though this is not Islamic spiritual art, as religious art, it provided an opportunity, albeit for some a distraction, to develop one’s spiritual life in the ongoing spiritual struggle of Jihad from one’s present awareness to the further states of interiority that are both within the appreciator and will be ongoing into the future imaginal world. In addition to viewing this miniature from the perspective of the artist, both autobiographically and psychologically, there is the approach of the semiotician. There is no evidence that there are any commentaries, nor any books for that matter, on aesthetics during the Safavid period by Bihzad or any other Sufi or philosopher that this miniature expressed Bihzad’s or his patron’s Sufi spirituality. It is an historical assumption at best to impute the original intent of the artwork to the artist nor for that matter anybody else’s conscious intentions. Thus, the need for an approach where, so to speak, the “artist is dead” and leaves us with the work as a text to be interpreted in terms of its signs and symbols whether it be through a structuralist or post-structuralist framework of interpretation. The language of miniature art has a rich tradition of signs and symbols that need to be reviewed in order to describe, interpret, or even, for that matter, evaluate the quality of a particular artwork. The positioning of the Sufi, the presence of bath towels, the importance of barbering, the symbolic use of colors, and this even includes the use of two-dimensional space, give us evidence today of how to approach semiotically works of art from the past. There is both a synchronic approach to the “Persian miniature” as if it were an artwork that transcends time and a diachronic approach that changes through time. The very fact that Bihzad has numerous others before him who had painted Nizami’s stories and many others after, faithful followers into the Mughal and Ottoman Empires, shows that miniatures exist through time. This leaves us today with a post-structuralist opportunity to look at a miniature as one might listen to a piece of Sufi music and on our own gain an experience in this life of the presence of the imaginal world that transcends the physical world. I am not sure that Nasr’s interpretation of the miniature would allow for this opportunity.

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