The permissibility of depictions of Muhammad in Islam has been a contentious issue. Oral and written descriptions of Muhammad are readily accepted by all traditions of Islam, but there is disagreement about visual depictions. The Quran does not place any explicit or implicit prohibition on images of Muhammad. The hadith (supplemental teachings) present an ambiguous picture,The Koran Does Not Forbid Images of the Prophet, 9 January 2015, Christiane Gruber, University of MichiganProfessor Christiane Gruber Beyond Belief but there are a few that have prohibited Muslims from creating visual depictions of human figures.What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam, John L. Esposito - 2011 p. 14; for hadith see Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith: 7.834, 7.838, 7.840, 7.844, 7.846. It is agreed on all sides that there is no authentic visual tradition (pictures created during Muhammad's lifetime) as to the appearance of Muhammad, although there are early legends of portraits of him, and written physical descriptions whose authenticity is often accepted.
The question of whether images in Islamic art, including those depicting Muhammad, can be considered as religious art remains a matter of contention among scholars.Gruber (2010), p. 27. They appear in illustrated books that are normally works of history or poetry, including those with religious subjects; the Quran is never illustrated: "context and intent are essential to understanding Islamic pictorial art. The Muslim artists who created images of Muhammad, as well as the public who viewed them, understood that these images were not intended as objects of worship. Nor were the objects so decorated used as part of religious worship".Cosman, Pelner and Jones, Linda Gale. Handbook to life in the medieval world, p. 623, Infobase Publishing, ,
However, scholars concede that such images have "a spiritual element", and were also sometimes used in informal religious devotions celebrating the day of the Mi'raj.Gruber (2010), p.27 (quote) and 43. Many visual depictions only show Muhammad with his face veiled, or symbolically represent him as a flame; other images, notably from before about 1500, show his face.Gruber (2005), pp. 239, 247–253. With the notable exception of modern-day Iran, depictions of Muhammad were never numerous in any community or era throughout Islamic history, and appeared almost exclusively in the private medium of Persian and other miniature book illustration.Devotion in pictures: Muslim popular iconography – Introduction to the exhibition, University of Bergen. The key medium of public religious art in Islam was and is calligraphy. In Ottoman Turkey the hilya developed as a decorated visual arrangement of texts about Muhammad that was displayed as a portrait might be.
Visual depictions of Muhammad have always been rare in the non-Islamic West. In the Middle Ages they were mostly hostile, and most often appear in illustrations of Dante's poetry. In the Renaissance and Early Modern period, Muhammad was sometimes depicted, typically in a more neutral or heroic light; the depictions began to encounter protests from Muslims. In the age of the Internet, a handful of caricature depictions printed in the European press have caused global protests and controversy and been associated with violence.
Background
Although nothing in the Quran explicitly bans images, some supplemental hadith explicitly ban the drawing of images of any living creature; other hadith tolerate images, but never encourage them. Hence, most Muslims avoid visual depictions of any prophet or messenger such as Muhammad, Moses, and Abraham.
Most Sunni Muslims believe that visual depictions of all the prophets and messengers should be prohibited and are particularly averse to visual representations of Muhammad.Devotion in pictures: Muslim popular iconography – The prophet Muhammad, University of Bergen The key concern is that the use of images can encourage shirk or "idolatry". In Shia Islam, however, images of Muhammad are quite common nowadays even though historically, Shia scholars opposed such depictions. Still, many Muslims who take a stricter view of the supplemental traditions will sometimes challenge any depiction of Muhammad, including those created and published by non-Muslims.
Many major religions have experienced times during their history when images of their religious figures were forbidden. In Judaism, one of the Ten Commandments states "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image", while in the Christian New Testament all covetousness (greed) is defined as idolatry. During the periods of Byzantine Iconoclasm in the eighth century, and again during the ninth century, visual representations of sacred figures were forbidden by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, and only the Christian cross could be depicted in churches. The visual representation of Jesus and other religious figures remains a concern in parts of stricter Protestant Christianity.
Portraiture of Muhammad in Islamic literature
Several hadith and other writings of the early Islamic period include stories in which portraits of Muhammad appear. Abu Hanifa Dinawari, ibn al-Faqih, Ibn Wahshiyya, and Abu Nu'aym al-Isfahani tell versions of a story in which the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius is visited by two Meccans. He shows them a cabinet, handed down to him from Alexander the Great and created by God for Adam, each of whose drawers contains a portrait of a prophet. They are astonished to see a portrait of Muhammad in the final drawer. Sadid al-Din al-Kazaruni tells a similar story in which the Meccans are visiting the king of China. Al-Kisa'i tells that God did indeed give portraits of the prophets to Adam.
Ibn Wahshiyya and Abu Nuʿaym al-Isfahani tell a second story in which a Meccan merchant visiting Syria is invited to a Christian monastery where several sculptures and paintings depict prophets and saints. There he sees the images of Muhammad and Abu Bakr, as yet unidentified by the Christians. In an 11th-century story, Muhammad is said to have sat for a portrait by an artist retained by Sasanian emperor Kavad II. The emperor liked the portrait so much that he placed it on his pillow.
Later, al-Maqrizi tells a story in which al-Muqawqis, the ruler of Egypt, met with Muhammad's envoy. He asked the envoy to describe Muhammad and checked the description against a portrait of an unknown prophet which he had on a piece of cloth. The description matches the portrait.
In a 17th-century Chinese Muslim story, when the emperor asked to meet Muhammad, he responded by sending a portrait.. The king was so enamoured of the portrait that he converted to Islam, at which point the portrait, having fulfilled its mission, disappeared.
Depiction by Muslims Verbal descriptions
In one of the earliest sources, ibn Sa'd's Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, there are numerous verbal descriptions of Muhammad. One description sourced to Ali is as follows:
From the Ottoman period on, such texts have been presented on calligraphic hilya panels (, pl. hilyeler, from , plural ḥilān), commonly surrounded by an elaborate frame of illuminated decoration and either included in books or, more often, muraqqas, or albums, or sometimes placed in wooden frames so that they can hang on a wall.Gruber (2005), p.231-232 The elaborated form of the calligraphic tradition was founded in the 17th century by the Ottoman calligrapher Hâfiz Osman. While containing a concrete and artistically appealing description of Muhammad's appearance, they complied with the strictures against figurative depictions of Muhammad, leaving his appearance to the viewer's imagination. Several parts of the complex design were named after parts of the body, from the head downwards, indicating the explicit purpose of the hilye as a substitute for a figurative depiction.
The Ottoman hilye format customarily starts with the basmala shown on top and is separated in the middle by Quran 21:107: "And We have not sent you but as a mercy to the worlds". Four compartments set around the central one often contain the names of the Rashidun: Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali, each followed by radhi Allahu anhu "may God be pleased with him".
Calligraphic representations The most common visual representation of the Muhammad in Islamic art, especially in Arabic-speaking areas, is by a calligraphic representation of his name, a sort of monogram in roughly circular form, often given a decorated frame. Such inscriptions are normally in Arabic, and may rearrange or repeat forms, or add a blessing or honorific, or for example the word "messenger" or a contraction of it. The range of ways of representing Muhammad's name is considerable, including ambigrams; he is also frequently symbolised by a rose.
The more elaborate versions relate to other Islamic traditions of special forms of calligraphy such as those writing the names of God, and the secular tughra or elaborate monogram of Ottoman rulers.
Figurative visual depictions
Throughout Islamic history, depictions of Muhammad in Islamic art were rare. Even so, there exists a "notable corpus of images of Muhammad produced, mostly in the form of manuscript illustrations, in various regions of the Islamic world from the thirteenth century through modern times".Gruber (2005), p. 240-241 Depictions of Muhammad date back to the start of the tradition of Persian miniatures as illustrations in books. The illustrated book from the Persianate world (Warka and Gulshah, Topkapi Palace Library H. 841, attributed to Konya 1200–1250) contains the two earliest known Islamic depictions of Muhammad.Grabar, p. 19; Gruber (2005), p. 235 (from where the date range), Blair, Sheila S., The Development of the Illustrated Book in Iran, Muqarnas, Vol. 10, Essays in Honor of Oleg Grabar (1993), p. 266, BRILL, JSTOR says "c. 1250"
This book dates to before or just around the time of the Mongol invasion of Anatolia in the 1240s, and before the campaigns against Persia and Iraq of the 1250s, which destroyed great numbers of books in libraries. Recent scholarship has noted that, although surviving early examples are now uncommon, generally human figurative art was a continuous tradition in Islamic lands (such as in literature, science, and history); as early as the 8th century, such art flourished during the Abbasid Caliphate (c. 749 - 1258, across Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Mesopotamia, and Persia).
Christiane Gruber traces a development from 'veristic' images depicting the entire body and face during the 13th to 15th centuries, to more "abstract" representations in the 16th to 19th centuries, the latter including the representation of Muhammad by a special type of calligraphic representation, with the older types also remaining in use.Gruber (2005), 229, and throughout An intermediate type, first found from about 1400, is the "inscribed portrait" where the face of Muhammad is blank, with "Ya Muhammad" ("O Muhammad") or a similar phrase written in the space instead; these may be related to Sufi thought. In some cases the inscription appears to have been an underpainting that would later be covered by a face or veil, so a pious act by the painter, for his eyes alone, but in others it was intended to be seen. According to Gruber, a good number of these paintings later underwent iconoclastic mutilations, in which the facial features of Muhammad were scratched or smeared, as Muslim views on the acceptability of veristic images changed.Gruber (2005), 229