Only a single illustrated edition of the Qur’an has been published throughout history.^[1] Mahomets Alkoran, a Dutch publication of 1696, is adorned with six illustrations by Caspar Luyken (1672-1708) that are seemingly both informative and sensational. In my masters' thesis, I traced these contradictory sentiments in the illustrations of Muslims and Muhammad to a concurrence of Orientalism and Enlightenment.^[2] Mahomets Alkoran was published in a period of increased interest in Islam for philosophical and entertaining purposes. The publisher Timotheus ten Hoorn (1644-1715) reacted to the audience’s demand through illustrations that are both informative and critical of Islamicate culture and Islamic prayer, and through illustrations that are mainly entertaining.^[3] The text itself, which was translated from French by Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker (1620-1682), informs the reader of Islamic law and culture, criticises the religion and the prophet and motivates a comparative reading with the Bible. Thus, both the text and the illustrations were contradictory in nature.

The six illustrations in Mahomets Alkoran can be divided into two groups that are entirely different in nature. The first four illustrations adhere to the actual translation of the Qur’an while the remaining two belong to the attached biography of Muhammad. While the first four depict a praying Muslim in an Islamicate setting, the latter two illustrate an alleged scene from the life of Muhammad. Dr. Alastair Hamilton characterises the four illustrations of Muslims as informative of Islamic prayer postures and the illustrations of Muhammad as entertaining.^[4] However, as we will see from looking at an illustration from both groups, the dichotomy should be nuanced.

Informative?

Figure 1: Caspar Luyken, Praying Muslim in a courtyard, 1696

The second illustration in Mahomets Alkoran (figure 1) depicts a man in bowing prayer position, or sujūd, with his feet, knees and lower arms on the floor and his eyes closed. Seen from the side, his hands are clasped together in front of his turbaned head. His pointed shoes are on the side and bear Caspar Luyken’s signature. The man wears an entari with either a yelek or a kaftan. Behind the praying Muslim is an open courtyard with a walking man seen from the back, who is similarly dressed. Adjacent to the courtyard on the right side is a wall that continues in the background. In the foreground, the wall has a crack and some stones have fallen on the ground. Arches in the bricked wall lead to a city with many buildings and high, narrow towers of which some are topped with a crescent moon. The building on the right is circular and domed, surrounded by high and narrow trees. The buildings in the back are less clearly identifiable and seem organised in a chaotic manner. Rather than other Islamic cultures, the clothing and the architecture identify the image as situated in the Ottoman Empire.

The illustrations that accompany the translation of the Qur'an can be deemed informative because they characterise Ottoman architecture and clothing and because they depict manners of Islamic prayer. Increased study of and direct contact with the Islamicate world and the Arabic language in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had greatly improved knowledge about the Islam and Ottoman culture. Early enlightened thinkers such as Spinoza (indirectly) drew from Islamic philosophy and in rare situations the Islamic religion was valued, especially in relation to the Catholic church. Along with textual information about Islam and Islamicate culture, these illustrations were informative of Ottoman culture and Islamic habits.^[5]

Sensational?

Figure 2: Caspar Luyken, The miracle of the bull and the dove, 1696

Visually there is a stark contrast between the illustrations of Muslims and the illustrations of Muhammad, such as the very last illustration on folio 496 (figure 2) that depicts the miracle of the bull and the dove, in which the animals bring the Qur'anic text to Muhammad as if sent by a divine force.^[6]  The illustration depicts a crowded square outside a city. Muhammad stands in a central place with a book in his right hand, between the horns of a bull. He points upwards with his left hand, where a dove with a paper attached to his neck approaches Muhammad. Another man behind Muhammad further visually connects the dove to Muhammad by turning his body diagonally towards the bird. The surrounding men are watching the event, some surprised or shocked, while most seem calm while observing the scene, silently discussing the event with their neighbours. Behind the group is a walled city with several high and narrow towers and in the background is a mountainous landscape.

All elements in this illustration were described in detail in the pages surrounding the image. This text is not only a narrative of the supposed miracles, but also very normative. The miracle is debunked as a forgery, Muhammad is called an impostor, and the people are characterised as miserable, ignorant and lazy gluttons. This miracle is only one of many narratives that all serve to accuse Muhammad as a fraud.

Beyond the dichotomy

At first instance, the visual differences between the two groups of illustrations are evident. The illustrations belonging to the Qur’an are static and informative while the group belonging to the biography of Muhammad is dynamic and sensational. Herein, they strongly relate to the accompanying texts, which are equally contradictory in intentions. However, the illustrations of praying Muslims are much more critical than observed at first sight while the images of Muhammad are more subdued than they could have been.

The cracks in the buildings were previously employed by Caspar Luyken to reflect the downturn of a monastery and can here represent the downfall of the Ottoman Empire or Islamic society at large. Further, the prostrating prayer position had negative connotations in the early modern Dutch Republic. In Caspar’s oeuvre, the position occurs almost exclusively in illustrations of Islamic and iconoclastic figures. The position further occurs in the book Natürliche und affectirte Handlungen des Lebens (1779), in which natural and affected or feigned actions are compared. In this publication, the kneeling prayer position is an example of affected prayer and thus deemed artificial. Earlier accounts of Islamic prayer ridicule specifically Islamic prayer positions. For example, in Itinerario (1596), the merchant Jan Huygen van Linschoten (ca. 1563-1611) describes “Upon entering [the mosque], they [Muslims] immediately fall flat on their faces and make several futile gestures with uplifted arms and hands” (emphasis mine).^[7]

It thus seems that the kneeling prayer position criticises and ridicules Islamic prayer or Muslims in general while at the same time the ruinous buildings foresee the downfall of the Islamicate society. The seemingly informative illustrations of praying Muslims are thus much more critical than they seem to be.

Concerning the illustrations of Muhammad, it cannot be denied that they depict narratives characterising the prophet as a fraud. However, as I argued above, the text is very negative about both Muhammad and the audience. While the essence of the narrative is captured in the illustration, neither Muhammad nor the audience is depicted inherently negatively. The images are thus rather neutral when compared to the text they accompany. At the same time, the informative aspects of the illustrations recur in the images of Muhammad and therefore these also convey some information.

It is important to analyse illustrations critically, interpret them in their specific context and it is essential to adapt a period eye, if I may borrow Baxandall’s term referring to the frame of reference of someone from a different culture or time.^[8] By adapting a period eye, it is possible to see beyond the seemingly informative or sensational nature of an illustration and reveal underlying intentions and connotations.

[1] The only other illustrated Qur'an was made by the American artist Sandow Birk in 2014. This Qur'an, illustrated with contemporary American scenes, is a one-of-a-kind artwork and thus not comparable to Mahomets Alkoran (1696). Visit https://sandowbirk.com/american-quran to view the American Qur'an by Birk.

[2] Sanne Steen, Illustrated Orienlightenment: early Dutch Orientalism and Enlightenment in Mahomets Alkoran (1696), Research Master Thesis (Utrecht University, 2021).

[3] I employ the term 'Islamicate' as coined by Marshall Hodgson in The Venture of Islam (1977): Islamicate refers "not directly to the religion, Islam, itself, but to the social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and the Muslims, both among Muslims themselves and even when found among non-Muslims.” Marshall Goodwin Simms Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilisation, vol. 1 The Classical Age of Islam (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 59.

[4] Alastair Hamilton, The Forbidden Fruit: The Koran in Early Modern Europe, The Hadassah and Daniel Khalili Memorial Lectures (London: London Middle East Institute, 2008).

[5] It should be mentioned that the information was not accurate. The illustrated prayer position is with the hands flat on the ground rather than clasped together. This knowledge was available in the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic, as Johannes Jacobsz van den Aveele depicted the position correctly in an illustration of 1681.

[6] For more information about such narratives in Western biographies of Muhammad, read Susanne Conklin Akbari, "The rhetoric of antichrist in Western lives of Muhammad," in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 8:3 (1997).

[7] “erse in gaen, ende binnen comende vallen op haer aensicht plat neder, en maken met opstaende armen ende handen veel visvasen” Jan Huygen van Linschoten, Itinerario: Voyage ofte Schipvaert van Jan Huygen van Linschoten naer Dost ofte portugaels Indien ... (Cornelis Claesz, 1596), 63.

[8] A period eye is determined by cognitive style. Baxandall defines cognitive style as “the equipment that the … public brought to complex visual stimulations.” Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style, vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 29–40.

Sanne Steen studied art history at the University of Amsterdam and Utrecht University. Specialising in cultural imagination in the Dutch Republic, she graduated from her research master with a thesis about an early modern illustrated Qur'an. Sanne has recently embarked on her PhD journey at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, where she studies the perception and appropriation of Desiderius Erasmus. 

Twitter: @sanne_steen | Website: http://sannesteen.nl/