Islamic Art

Be Like a Traveller: Prayer and Reflection in Islamic Art

A Drowsy Coutier Reading by Candlelight. India, 1650. Ink, opaque watercolour, and gold on paper. Aga Khan Museum: AKM201 (image under creative commons)

In the middle of the Arabian desert lies a key trading town with a monument that drew pilgrims for millennia. Believed to be the world’s first religious space — founded by Adam, and rebuilt by Abraham and his son Ishmael — the Kaaba has attracted pilgrims from across the Arabian Peninsula and had gathered idols from the local pagan religions over the centuries. The accompanying trade that the Kaaba drew in was such that even the great king of Yemen grew jealous of its popularity and headed out with an army to destroy it. Unsuccessful due to miraculous circumstances, the even lent its name to the year in which it occurred: the Year of the Elephant. It was in this year, A.D. 571, that Prophet Muhammad was born into the Banu Hisham — a lesser family of the ruling Quraysh clan who controlled all trade and resources within the town. The Quraysh were primarily merchants, leading trade caravans on routes to Syria and Iraq and accumulating great wealth. It was a society based on family and honour, with great inequality between rich and poor, males and females.

Deterred by the polytheistic and capitalist environment in which he lived, Muhammad began retreating to a cave on Mount Hira, up above Mecca, in his late thirties. It was during one of these retreats in the holy month of Ramadan that the Angel Gabriel…