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Crossing Boundaries, Creating Images: In Search of the Prophet Muhammad in Literary and Visual Traditions

 KHI Project Fellows:
Project Director: Prof. Dr. Avinoam Shalem, Munich University and Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut
Project Managing Director and Senior Research Fellow: Dr. Christiane Gruber, Indiana University, Bloomington
Research Fellow: Alberto Saviello, Ph.D. candidate, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut / Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf
Research Fellow: Dr. Michelina Di Cesare, post-doctoral fellow, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - Max-Planck-Institut

The interdisciplinary research project entitled 'Crossing Boundaries, Creating Images: In Search of the Prophet Muhammad in Literary and Visual Traditions' seeks to explore the multiple ways in which the Prophet Muhammad has been described and depicted in European traditions from the medieval era until the early modern period. The project is supported by a grant by the Max Planck Foundation (2007-2012). European materials that are examined include Latin translations of the Qur'an and vitas of the Prophet in Latin and Romance languages, illustrated medieval French and Italian manuscripts containing historical and belletristic texts, European printed books, sculptures, frescoes, and stained glass windows, as well as Euro-American Orientalist and Romantic paintings. The results of this research project will be published as a corpus, in which the visual materials as well as the literary sources are compiled, translated into English, and discussed.

This project will bring together, in a conference to be held from 16 to 18 July 2009 at the KHI in Florence, approximately thirty distinguished international scholars whose work explores the varied ways in which the Prophet Muhammad has been constructed and imagined, both through Euro-American eyes and within Islamic traditions, from the beginnings of Islam until the modern period. European materials that will be examined include translations of the Qur'an and vitas of the Prophet in Latin and vernacular European languages, pre-modern Jewish literature, illustrated medieval manuscripts containing historical and belletristic texts, printed books, sculptures, and frescoes, as well as Euro-American Orientalist and Romantic paintings. European and American textual and visual sources will be explored in relationship to internal debates over the construction and course of the Christian faith, as well as sustained attempts to delineate its contrastive position vis-à-vis Islam at particularly critical junctures in time. Islamic materials to be studied include descriptive, biographical, and historical texts, illustrated manuscripts from the 13th to the 19th century, Ottoman verbal descriptions ('hilyas'), Persian poetry, the Prophet's relics, and modern representations of the Prophet in lithographic works, posters, and other popular materials. Islamic materials are investigated in an effort to determine how writers and artists working primarily from within Arabic, Persian, and Turkish cultural spheres came together with the largely devotional aim to praise Muhammad through text-and-image production. The proceedings of this interdisciplinary conference on European and Islamic texts and images will be published by the KHI in Florence. (For additional information on the conference click "Weitere Informationen")

By crossing disciplinary boundaries in the field of the humanities, this project's principal goal consists in exploring how literary and visual descriptions of the Prophet Muhammad served multiple cultural, political, and religious purposes from the medieval period until today. These materials did not only emerge from the pietistic impulse to describe and imagine the prophetic persona within Islamic cultural practices but also from internal debates over the construction and future course of the Christian faith, as well as sustained attempts to delineate its contrastive position vis-à-vis Islam at particularly critical junctures in time.
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