Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The face of Mohammed


Surfing the web I ran across a series of sites that showed picture of scenes in the life of Mohammed. In order to comply with the prohibition against actually depicting Mohammed, the artists showed him with his face blank or hidden.


This reminded me of a (now closed) synagogue in Hamilton known as the "bird-synagogue" because it had stain glass depictions of bible stories where the characters (Moses etc) were all birds so as to avoid any suggestion of making images that could be worshiped.


In this illustration we see the Prophet Mohammed (Turkish, 16th Century, painting on paper. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) in very long sleeves so as to avoid even showing his hands.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

beautiful.
Foot'