Islamic Art and Spirituality

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Golgonooza Press, 1990 - Art - 213 pages
This is the first book in the English language to deal with the spiritual significance of Islamic art including not only the plastic arts, but also literature and music. Rather than only dealing with the history of the various arts of Islam or their description, the author relates the form, content, symbolic language, meaning, and presence of these arts to the very sources of the Islamic revelation. Relying upon his extensive knowledge of the Islamic religion in both its exoteric and esoteric dimensions as well as the various Islamic sciences, the author relates Islamic art to the inner dimensions of the Islamic revelation and the spirituality which has issued from it. He brings out the spiritual significance of the Islamic arts ranging from architecture to music as seen, heard, and experienced by one living within the universe of the Islamic tradition. In this work the reader is made to understand the meaning of Islamic art for those living within the civilization which created it.

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Contents

The Spiritual Message of Islamic Calligraphy
17
Three Muslim Sages
35
Ideals and Realities of Islam
59
Copyright

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About the author (1990)

Born in Tehran, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the son of an educator, received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1958, after which he returned to Iran to teach and eventually to become a university chancellor. He was compelled to leave his native country after the revolution of 1979 and since then has taught in universities in the United States. Deeply influenced by the mystical Sufi tradition, Nasr is less concerned with reconciling the faith with modernism and is more concerned with presenting a traditionalist, though mystical, interpretation of religion that offers a way out of the contradictions of modernity. Through authentic spiritual experience, Nasr holds, one can penetrate the superficiality of modern scientific and other knowledge to find eternal truth. He is associated with the neotraditionalist school of philosophy. Undoubtedly, Nasr has had more general influence in the Western philosophical world than any other contemporary philosopher in the Islamic tradition.

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