Quran/Recite
March 17th, 2012
The following is a depiction of the word ‘quran’, drawn close to the ear of a person. Quran literally means ‘recite.’ The word written here, in Arabic script, does not mean al-Quran, as in the noun form of the word referring to the holy book. Rather, it takes on the verb form of the word.
The depiction attempts to capture the moment in which Muhammad, on Mount Hira, was told to recite. That was the beginning of the Quran. The readings on recitation emphasized the oral tradition and practice tied to Islam and the Quranic text. The hafiz is the person who is the guardian of Quran, or in other words the person who memorizes and recites the Quran. Even before Arabic had a script, the Quran was transmitted first from Allah to Muhammad, then from Muhammad to his followers, and so on.
I think of this image as tied to the continued tradition of recitation all over the Islamic world. I imagine the impulse or motivation to practice recitation an infinite loop. One hears recitation and is inspired to take it up. When one recites the Quran for others, they too might be inspired to recite. But always, the primal moment of communication, before one can even speak the Quran, one must first hear it.
I thought about representing the word as if it were coming from a mouth, in order to highlight its aural quality as opposed to its written quality. The drawing might suggest that the writing precedes the hearing and then speaking—which is not depicted here. Of course, the written and calligraphic representation of the Quran came last. However, if the word is simply present in the drawing—without a representation of the body of the speaker—then it is possible that the word is spoken by Allah. From many discussions about art and representation in Islamic art, we learned that Allah cannot be represented in any form, known or unknown. In representing the word with no physical speaker I mean to invoke that first moment of listening and then recitation.
Charcoal on paper