Towards an Understanding of Islamic Ornament: Approaching Islamic Ornament through Ibn ʿArabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam’s Notions of the Ẓāhir-Bāṭin Interplay and the Ṣūfī Ḥayra

Abstract

 movement between the outward (ẓāhir)  and the inward (bāṭin) , or the created world (al-Khalq)  and the True God (al-Ḥaqq) . Only this dynamic link is the truth itself, interlocking both sides of the universal order as mutually necessary and presupposing each other. It is important to bear in mind that this link is something other than the two interlocked sides, as it is a third thing that we arrive at after transcending the first two. Such an understanding of truth as a dynamic link, which transcends the interdependent and interlocked sides but is impossible without their interrelation, is basically different from a Platonic vision of truth as a static, unchanging idea independent of its material embodiments.

This understanding of truth as a dynamic link between ẓāhir and bāṭin and of the ›technology‹ of arriving at it by bringing the two to their unity by transcending them is projected in this paper onto the issue of Islamic ornament and its aesthetic and epistemological value. The paper argues that Islamic ornament is a visualisation of ẓāhir-bāṭin-relation. If viewed correctly, it permits the two sides to be transcended to their unity not depicted on media but nevertheless constituting the truth and the aesthetic value of the ornament. In this ẓāhir-bāṭin interdependence of the displayed (outward) picture and its hidden (inward) meaning the latter is by no means a Platonic idea ›materialised‹ by the artist. Here too, the aesthetic and epistemological effect is produced by the interrelation and dynamic link between the two sides which is arrived at by transcending them to their unity.