Hidden Bibliographic Details
Varying Form of Title: | Wonder, image, & cosmos in medieval Islam
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Other authors / contributors: | Yale University Press, publisher.
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ISBN: | 9780300264371 0300264372
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Notes: | Includes bibliographical references and index. Description based on print record and online resource (A&AePortal, viewed on October 30, 2021).
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Summary: | "This original book untangles fundamental confusions about historical relationships among Islam, representational images, and philosophy. Closely examining some of the most meaningful and best preserved premodern illustrated manuscripts of Islamic cosmographies, Persis Berlekamp refutes the assertion often made by other historians of medieval Islamic art that, while representational images did exist, they did not serve religious purposes. The author focuses on widely disseminated Islamic images of the wonders of creation, ranging from angels to human-snatching birds, and argues that these illustrated manuscripts aimed to induce wonder at God's creation, as was their stated purpose. She tracks the various ways that images advanced that purpose in the genre's formative milieu-- the century and a half following the Mongol conquest of the Islamic East in 1258. Delving into social history and into philosophical ideas relevant to manuscript and image production, Berlekamp shows that philosophy occupied an established, if controversial, position within Islam. She thereby radically reframes representational images within the history of Islam"--Publisher's description.
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Other form: | Print version: Berlekamp, Persis, 1968- Wonder, image, and cosmos in medieval Islam. New Haven [Conn.] : Yale University Press, ©2011 9780300170603 0300170602
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