Good afternoon, I'm Ali Behdad, the director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies

and on behalf of my colleagues at the Center, I would like to welcome you today's lecture.

Before I let our colleague Dr. Amy Landau introduce today's distinguished speaker,

Professor Christiane Gruber, I would like to take this opportunity to thank

my very dear colleague professor Asma Sayeed

and the Cluster on Global Islam for their current sponsorship of these events.

And I would like to take this opportunity also to welcome all the students

in the cluster program to this talk.

We're very excited to have you as part of this event. A few words about the Center, are just a couple words,

which Near Eastern Studies Center for those of you are not familiar.

CNES is a research hub where over 100 faculty from humanities, social sciences,

arts and the law school collaborate in a variety of research and pedagogical

projects including and the creation of the cluster on on global Islam.

It was founded in 1957 and is one of the oldest and most distinguished U.S

centers for interdisciplinary research on the Middle East broadly construed.

We provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and the dissemination of information within and beyond

the campus by offering cutting edge research and fresh perspective on the challenges and cultural richness of the Middle East.

The Center also supports graduate and undergraduate instruction as well as

fellowships, research by faculty, students and visiting scholar and vital public programming

on the challenges facing the region. I would like to invite you all to attend future lectures that are listed on our

website, as well as past recorded events that you may wish

to check out. Now it is my great pleasure to introduce briefly Dr. Amy Landau who is a director

of education and interpretation at UCLA's Fowler Museum. Previously she served as

the Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Islamic

and South and South East Asian art at the Walters Art Museum.

Dr. Landau earned her PhD from the University of Oxford and has held

fellowships at the Warburg Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Freer Gallery of Art, and and Arthur Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian.

In 2017, she was a fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership.

Dr. Landau has lectured and written on Islamic art and fostering empathic learning in museums.

Now, Dr. Landau will introduce our distinguished speaker.

Thank you very much for that generous introduction.

So on behalf of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, Islamic Studies and the Fowler Museum,

we welcome Dr Christiane Gruber, professor and chair in the history of art department at the

University of Michigan. Professor Gruber's publications,

"Exploring Figural Representation: Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, and Islamic Ascension, Texts and Images,"

have made an invaluable contribution to the field of Islamic art, Islamic studies in the field of art history, broadly speaking.

Over the years I have to say it's been a joy to watch Christie masterfully move between the

roles of respected academic, much admired and beloved teacher, curator and public intellectual.

Each year, not only does her list of publications grow, but perhaps more importantly so too does

her intellectual generosity to both her students and her colleagues.

And we're all very thankful for that.

So here we welcome uh, Christiane Gruber and we're delighted to have you with us

all today.

Thank you so much uh, Ali, Asma, Amy and I have to thank you, Amy also. The, the mentoring and the esprit de corps

uh, is that much stronger and better thanks to you um, as we all know. So thank you for the

the really wonderful and generous introduction. It's a real pleasure to be

here with all of you guys at UCLA.

So let me get started. Um, what I'd like to present to you

today is a topic uh, that I found so imbricated and so complex that I

couldn't include it in my book on text and images of the prophet Muhammad.

And some of the materials that you'll see today here were shared with me as a direct result

of a couple of my articles that were published in Newsweek.

So as I shuttled between producing scholarship in the dark corners of my office and

writing op-eds for the the public at large, the public responded

and started sharing materials with me and materials that were really unknown to me.

So what you're going to see here is a direct scholarly result

of publicly engaged scholarships. So the two are mutually enforcing.

This is an article that will come out quite soon at the turn of the 2021 calendar year. Here I want to thank

my colleague Anna Bigelow who's at Stanford in California with you at UCLA

who organized a workshop last year on Islam through objects.

This is going to be a really exciting contribution to the field of material religion, focusing on a wide

variety of visual and material uh, goods and elements that constitute

the world of Islam.

So keep your eyes open for that volume.

My article will appear in it but there are some really fantastic pieces on headgear and

rosaries and other objects that make an edifice for the devotional life of Islam.

My talk today is essentially the article that will come out soon and

it's on the Masonic Muhammad: Modern Euro Islamic Encounters in Prophetic Iconography.

I have structured it as detective work.

So you'll see that the structure of a usual talk or an article is actually flipped on its head

because I want you to go on that forensic exercise with me.

While pre-modern Persian images most often represent Muhammad as a bearded and mature adult embarked on his prophetic career, a

notable corpus of images depicting a young Muhammad emerged in Iran

over the course of the second half of the 20th century.

In these many postcards, posters, banners, and even carpets,

Muhammad is shown as an adolescent boy smiling as he tilts his head slightly to

the right.

Thanks to a Persian inscription located at the bottom of some of these images,

which you see right here, it is clear that artists and viewers

considered these so-called young Muhammad images to be exact replicas of a byzantine icon

that is supposedly held in a museum in Europe, for the inscription, the icon is said to

have been painted by the monk Bahira when he recognized the signs of prophecy

when the adolescent Muhammad visited Bosra in Syria during a caravan trip with his uncle Abu Talib. Besides

glorifying Muhammad's beauty and youth

these visuals of the young prophet, recognized and foreseen

already during his teenage years, proved highly popular in Iran during the 1980s and 1990s.

In more recent years, the original pictorial source of the Iranian image has come to light thanks to the

scholarship of Pierre and Micheline Centlivres who have demonstrated that

these types of young Muhammad images were based on an orientalist photograph taken around 1905 to 1906

by the photographers Lehnert and Landrock while they were stationed in North Africa.

Produced as postcards with captions reading either or simply just 'Muhammad' as a generic

name, such visuals reached Iranian artists through the mass media already around if not prior.

Once in Iran, the French caption indicating the prophet himself rather than a young Arab boy

bearing a highly common Arabic name. This strange encounter between orientalist photography

and Iranian religious arts thus yielded the most popular image of the young prophet

which circulated in a variety of media in Iran until about 2006,

at which time the Iranian government attempted to curb its manufacture and distribution in the aftermath of the

Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Now while this particular pictorial corpus of

young Muhammad images is well known and studied by now, another body of Iranian representations

of the young prophet remains largely unknown and unexamined.

The second body of Iranian prophetic depictions show Muhammad as a young man standing

upright and holding a banner. One poster printed

in Tehran around 1940 to 1960 is now held in the private collection of Elizabeth Puin who notes in her catalog of

Islamic posters that this particular depiction of the prophet is rare

and quite possibly derived from an otherwise unidentified western pictorial source.

Puin appears correct in her assessment. Images of a young and unbearded prophet holding a banner

standing with pointed toe with sword girdled to his waistband and sporting a turban whose top appears

as if a truncated fez decorated with a plumet certainly suggests

a non-islamic visual prototype, a question to which we shall return subsequently.

This Persian iconographic rendition of the prophet, however, is not as unusual as one might suppose.

Undertaking further research in international libraries, museums, and other private and public

repositories will uncover a plenitude of related materials.

For instance, an oil painting on canvas in a private collection even here

in Michigan, in Flint in fact, depicts the profit in a similar manner.

At over one meter in height, this large-scale painting most likely dates

to the first half of the 20th century and its owner notes that it used to hang

in a tea house in the city of Kashan in Iran before it

was acquired in the 1970s, at which time it was taken out of the country and it made its way to the American midwest.

While dating to the Pahlavi period, this image emulates both the style and function

of Qajar paintings executed on canvas which are known as pardas

or canvas paintings, cloth paintings.

These types of figural depictions on canvas were displayed in coffee houses

where they were used for public storytelling performances

known as parda-khwani or picture recitation, so storytelling with pictures.

Many of these canvas paintings depict scenes from the Shahnameh,

or The Book of Kings, as well as the Battle of

Karbala, which is what you see here during a modern day performance of parda-khwanis, a recitation

with a painting, enabling both reciter and audience members to regal in epic feats or else mourn the

death of early Shi'i martyrs. With regards to the image of Muhammad,

it is also possible that this parda painting and others like it

may have been used by Iranians for the communal recounting and glorification of the prophet's

valiant deeds, in particular his many accomplishments on the battlefield.

This martial reading of an otherwise immobile Muhammad is supported by the gold inscription

added to the prophet's banner, which provides the famous quranic verse

declaring that victory is from god and triumph is near.

So here is his banner and I flipped it for you guys. "Nasr min Allah wa fath qarib."

So this is the so-called victory verse

from the Quran.

Although lauded epigraphically as a warrior leader,

Muhammad does not sport attire suitable for a rough and tumble occasion.

To the contrary, with his debonair red fez

studded with jewels and a crescent moon, his

bouffant trousers whose seams flutter

out into billowy brown ribbons and his

dainty and well-laced shoes, which also have very sweet ribbons right here, the

prophet appears dressed for a french ballet de cour rather than for

the Hejazi battlefield. Besides posters and paintings, this refined and rather

europeanizing pictorial rendition of the prophet can also be found mounted

to the opening page of a Qajar period photographic album. This enormous album

of over 1 400 photographs recording various individuals and sites

in Iran was compiled by the late Qajar diplomat

and governor Ali Khan Valley sometime between 1879

and 1900. As many Persian manuscripts, books, and miscellanies that bear Shi'i

content or inflection, this work launches with a visual eulogy of the prophet Muhammad

right here.

Imam Ali and the Ahl al-Bayt. So here you see Ali and the Ahl al-Bayt, so Muhammad's family.

Immediately after this pictorial praise of the prophet and members of his household, the next

page appears to include a lengthy encomium to Nasir al-Din Shah under whom Ali Khan

Vali had served and with whom he traveled to the Shi'i shrines in Ottoman-governed Iraq.

Combining a lengthy laudatory text, which you see here, two photographs of the Qajar ruler in

both standing and seated pose as well as a miscellany of postcard,

post postage stamps from the time, this second page to the album is

essentially front matter and it praises both religion and now state, a combination that reflects its Qajar,

Persian, Shi'i context of production. So the first page is

Islam in its Shi'i iteration and the second page

is dedicated to the Qajar monarch.

Something you would call din or […] in Arabic. So state and religion or religion and state.

Returning to the album's opening page, the quasi-heraldic collage of devotional

images remains largely freestanding and independent of an exegetical apparatus. Only one

short textual insertion comprising two lines of Persian text

surmounts the image of the prophet at the top of the folio.

So here is Muhammad and here is the two-line inscription

above him. Handwritten by none other than Ali Khan Vali,

the note explains that this blessed icon of Muhammad, the so-called "seal of the

prophets" was made before his prophetic appointment while he was on a commercial

trip to Bilad al-Sham or the the province of Syria.

While there, Muhammad was depicted by a monk in his monastery. Ali Khan Vali then goes

on to tell us that a photograph of this painting on canvas,

this parda was taken during the so-called royal trips to Farhangistan

or to Europe. As is the case for the better known

young Muhammad visuals that we started this lecture

examining, a textual inscription here

also specifies that the image is in fact a pictorial record of a

painting that the Monk Bahira made of the adolescent Muhammad while he

visited Bosra prior to his receiving quranic revelations

as an adult. Moreover in this caption, Ali Khan Valley notes that this

pictorial record in fact comprises a photograph that was

taken of the original painting which at the

time was held somewhere in Farghangistan, somewhere in Europe, and viewed during

the so-called royal trips,

no doubt a reference to the multiple

tours of Europe undertaken by Naser al-Din Shah that is in

the 1870s and 1890s who like Ali Khan Vali kept travelogues and was himself a keen

practitioner of photography.

As these various pictorial depictions and textual explanations suggest,

this otherwise unstudied corpus of images

representing a young Muhammad holding a banner

dates from the late 19th century to no later than 1950.

Through both iconographic details and attendant explanations,

these depictions point to a non-Islamic source,

although this source has remained elusive to date.

Nevertheless, Iranian artists and patrons evidently

thought the visual prototype to be a byzantine

period icon of Muhammad painted during his adolescence which was subsequently transferred to

and preserved in a European museum. As a result, Iranian cultural entrepreneurs learned

patrons and popular owners and viewers thought to have before their eyes

reproductions of an authentic painterly record of the

prophet made during his own lifetime, preserved in a European museum

and then subsequently multiplied through the reprographic

and photographic arts. While one can imagine a Muslim devotee's drive to own

his or her own copy of this kind of vera icona or true icon of

the prophet from his lifetime, what is less clear however is why the

early 20th century witnessed such an upsurge in the production of this image

of a youthful Muhammad in particular. The search for

other clues to uncover the image's source and its possible meanings

thus press on. If one is to follow the data

wherever it may lead us, quite

surprisingly, we find ourselves forced to exit the

book and painterly arts and even the photographic arts

in order to investigate an entirely different domain

of production, namely Persian pictorial carpets, which brings us now to carpets.

By the dawn of the 20th century, the

Iranian carpet industry bloomed, catering to both a domestic elite and

foreign clientele.

Although geometric and vegetal motifs still held sway,

Iranian carpet designers and manufacturers largely based in the cities of Tabriz

and Kirman began to incorporate figural representations

within the textile arts by drawing upon a wide array

of European and Persian sources.

Among them exist more than two dozen rugs

generally referred to as the so-called

"Great Men carpets" which were produced in

Kirman during the first three decades of the 20th century.

One large and beautiful example now held in the World Cultures Museum in

Amsterdam measures almost 4 meters in height and includes more than

50 individuals identified in the center field and within roundels in the outer frame.

So let's look at a few of these individuals. At the bottom stand some of the famous men of world

history, including Peter the Great, Louis XIV, Christopher Columbus, Harun

al-Rashid and Chengis Khan. So here number 48 is Louis XIV and here is

Chengis Khan, number 26. Moving up to the top here can also be found great thinkers and leaders

stretching back through early Islamic history such as 'Umar, Greco-Roman times

inclusive of Socrates and Alexander the Great.

And in the upper right corner we see the beginnings of monotheism's

theism under Moses and Solomon. So here is Moses with the ten commandments and

he's number one right here. And here is uh uh, this is Moses. Here Solomon with

his king's crown and he is number two.

Moving up the rock's composition, the background is stippled by a white structure

resembling a greek temple constructed of fluted

columns and a pediment while the top most

horizontal frame includes portrait medallions depicting the famous poets of the

Persian tradition.

So here is our greek-like temple right here and above that are some

Persian poets. For those of you who can read Persian, you'll see Ferdowsi,

Hafez, Nizami and others.

This carpet rendering, to borrow Julia Bailey's wonderful expression,

representing quote unquote 50 odd members of an exclusive men's club

end quote, displays the early 20th century Iranian fascination with world

history and European thought while folding the entirety of the composition

within a quintessentially Persian cultural framework

and artistic medium.

Today, the largest and most elaborate of the so-called great men carpets is held in the Carpet Museum in

Tehran. And this is just elephantine, this

carpet.

Measuring over 5 meters in height and boasting more than 180 figures,

this carpet is most likely the most expensive and elaborate of all

extant pictorial rugs. Besides the leaders and thinkers of old,

including more than 100 Persian kings, at its bottom, at its bottom, the carpet

includes a number of members of the royal family

including Ahmad Shah Qajar right here who was placed on the throne at only 13

years of age by the parliament after his father

Muhammad Ali Shah was deposed. In this gargantuan carpet,

the last ruling member of the Qajar dynasty

and members of the Qajar elite evidently inserted themselves within an already

crowded scene, no doubt to emphasize the glory,

authority, and legitimacy of the ruling household at a moment when the constitutional

movement was putting a decisive end to Qajar rule within Iran.

This strategy of visually connecting the Qajar ruling class with the great men of

world history occurred not only in carpets but in paintings as well.

For example, one icon made in 1889 follows the same general pattern, albeit

with some noteworthy alterations.

At the bottom of the icon appear Nasir al-Din Shah

and members of the Qajar elite, so here is Nasir al-Din Shah

surmounted here by Ali Hassan and Hussain,

above whom a luminous banner-wielding Muhammad stands in apotheosis. So here is

the young Muhammad right here. The icon proves technically experimental

because the modern Qajar portrait photographs

appear to have been pasted in and painted, over while the putti and cherubs,

so these wonderful little flying angels, owe much to older European painterly styles.

Registers of Persian poetry enframe this creative mix of media and styles and their verses praise god, the prophet

Muhammad, the Ahl al-Bayt, and Nasir al-Din Shah who quote unquote gained only fruition

from his face blessing end quote.

Just as in the prologue to Ali Khan Vali's photographic

album, contemporary carpets and icons depict the Qajars

as if inheritors and custodians of the islamic faith in a Persian Shi'i geo-religious

milieu. Beyond pictorially crafting a Muslim

Shi'i Qajar lineage, plenty of other great men carpets do not include depictions of

the Qajar family.

These non-royal or sub-elite rugs are smaller in size and appear to have

catered to early 20th century wealthy and

well-educated patrons including Iranians who quite possibly

took part in the constitutional movement and eventually may have served as members of

the Majles of the parliament.

Many of these well-to-do great men carpets include about 50 figures that are

numbered and whose names are provided in cartouches that function as a concordance within

the surrounding frame of the carpets. Most apropos here, these other carpets prominently depict

the prophet Muhammad in the top most position. So here is Muhammad and he is

the tallest. He's at the apex of the carpet.

Here numbered 18, so here's the number 18, knotted in threads of wool and cotton,

there he stands.

Youthful, unbearded with a banner in hand and a plumet topped turban below a

pediment right here bearing the Persian language laudation quote, long live the great and illustrious men of the

world. The so-called […] great and illustrious men of the world.

As for Muhammad, as primus interpares, he stands in excellent company including

Solomon and Moses right here and 'Umar as well as all of these other

famous leaders of world history. And his name

Muhammad is in the cartouches in the frame right here. Hazrat-i Muhammad, number 18 and 'Umar is also noted as

number 19. And here is 'Umar number 19.

Most often the prophet appears at the very top of the figural composition

as can be seen in a carpet dated 1918.

Let's zoom in here. Here as in other carpets, Muhammad is flanked by the same

four individuals, namely Solomon, Moses, 'Umar,

and Harun al-Rashid right here.

Additionally in these pictorial carpets, the so-called great and illustrious men

are always numbered with the exact same digits. So some of you might be wondering why am I

paying so much attention to numbers.

That's because the numbers are always consistent

across the carpets. So Moses is always number one.

Solomon number two. Muhammad number 18.

By closely examining these very minute details, it thus becomes clear that the same

numerical system of identification is in use within the majority of these carpets.

This evidence in turn points to a single shared pictorial source that deploys the

same numerical concordance system that interlinks figures, numbers, and

names.

Hence the question begs to be posed yet

again, what is the original pictorial source of the young Muhammad holding a banner–

whether it's an icon or carpet– which is in this case

fitted within a tableau of the great and illustrious men of the world

produced as pictorial carpets during the first two decades of the 20th century.

Applying a laser sharp eye to these carpets will reveal major clues. Indeed one Kirmani carpet

which was sold at auction and is now in private hands holds the key to the entire puzzle.

It includes the same groupings of great men and numerical concordance.

However at its top now appears Jesus.

Here is Isa right here. Jesus, whose name in Arabic letters have been inserted since

he wasn't there, so he's not in the concordance, in the original source, among the top

five protagonists which includes of course Muhammad right here holding a banner.

The addition of Christ and he's literally inserted into the picture here

and he doesn't have a concordance in the margins hints at a European Christian audience

or patron for this carpet suggesting that it might have been

produced for export to Europe rather than for domestic Iranian consumption.

This hypothesis is further strengthened by the inclusion of inscriptions written

in French including the note at the top that reads

Fabrique de Milani Kermani. So the workshop of Milani Kermani, a major carpet workshop

in Kerman, as well as the names of the great men inscribed throughout this carpet

in French. So instead of say Pericles, you have Péricles and instead of Socrates you have Socrate.

Annibal for Hannibal. Léonidas and so forth. So all the names Moïse, right here from Moses, so all the names are in

French.

Last but certainly not least, the pediment praising the great and

illustrious men of the world in Persian includes an epigraphic

inscription in capital letters reading tableau des principaux grands hommes

right here, or depiction of the principal great men. This detail once again

suggests a Francophone audience.

Above all however, it provides the final giveaway

for the pictorial source of images of the young banner-wielding Muhammad that were

produced in various media within Iran at the turn of the 20th century.

In an intriguing international twist, these great men carpets in fact comprise a Persian

textile adaptation of an earlier French printed image

made around 1850 to 1880 bearing a title written in similarly upper case letters reading more fully, Tableau des Principaux

Grands Hommes, which is exactly the same as you see here illustrated.

Qui se sont illustrés dans toutes les parties du Monde. Par leur belles actions, leur génie, et leur courage.

which means depiction of the principal great men who made themselves

illustrious in all parts of the world through their beautiful deeds, their genius or their

courage.

Below the images identification appears the recognizable trope of the Greek

pediment, which we've seen already before, which in this case bears the plotted it 'Gloire immortel aux hommes illustres'

meaning immortal glory for to the illustrious men. And some of you might recognize that from the Pantheon in

Paris, in fact. From the title of the image to the

glorification of the world's great and illustrious men

rendered in both French and Persian equivalents, the overlaps in the textual contents

between the Persian rug and the French print are undeniable.

So you might want to know what this print looks like.

The French print was produced during the second half of the 19th century

for use in elementary school courses on world history as well as for other

French socio-cultural spheres, most especially masonic lodges such as

the Grand Orient in Paris in which the notion of a global fraternity

was often stressed through the great man or grand homme

rhetoric and images both of which became a hallmark of the third republic.

So this is known as great man history writing and the great man

sort of method of history writing was very typical of France

at that time. So at the cult of the great great man.

Its many educational and ritual uses aside,

the French print also foreshadows the Persian carpets by just a few decades

in its depiction of about 50 individuals as well as the numerical concordance of

identification which in in this instance is located in the lower horizontal frame.

So here are all of the numbers with the names which otherwise was placed in cartouches

around the carpets. Among the world's eminent characters standing in the upper right

are very familiar faces and numbers, that is 1, 2, 18, 19, and 22. Proceeding from left to right

stand Moses holding the ten commandments. Solomon with his king's crown. The young

Muhammed holding a banner made out of yak or horse hair. And Harun al-Rashid sitting

cross-legged and smoking the hubbly bubbly.

He has always shown that with a very strange little creature and nobody has been able to answer for me

why that would be the case. If anybody here has any ideas I'd welcome suggestions.

Unlike the other illuminati depicted in the crowded scene, these three Muslim leaders wear oriental

garb in particular robes and turbans.

Before proceeding with a discussion of this pedagogical print's contacts and its

context, a brief excursus into its particular

depiction of Muhammad which you see right here

is in order. After all, if we are to backtrack

once again, another question still has to be answered here.

And the question is why did the French artist of this great man scene decide to depict the

prophet of Islam as a young gentleman standing upright and holding a standard?

So we backtrack and backtrack. I think a preliminary answer can be offered

here. By the middle of the 19th century. the most likely pictorial resources for

the French artist must have been illustrated travelogues, costume books, and even theatrical depictions.

Although examples abound perhaps the closest pictorial prototype of the

prophet in the French print is the depiction of an Ottoman gentleman

and all in Ottoman Turkish smoking a long thin pipe. This illustration which you see

here on the left belongs to a series of 28 prints

made by an Italian artist whose name was Francesco.

And this artist accompanied the British nobleman Frederick Calvert to Istanbul in 1763 to 64.

These prints also served as illustrations to Calvert's travel

account entitled eastern costume which was

published in 1768.

So travelogues representing ottoman noblemen were likely a reservoir of inspiration here.

Now this said, other 18th and 19th century French depictions of

Ottoman rulers and individual types must have served as a visual repository

for the artist's depiction of Muhammad in the French tableau des grands hommes.

To give just one other example here, the similarities between

this image on the left of sultan Suleiman the second

made in 1825 to illustrate a French comedy entitled Soluman le deuxième ou les trois sultanes,

so Solomon the second or the three sultanas, which was originally premiered in Paris

in 1761 are actually quite striking.

The ottoman sultan who was considered the ruling embodiment of Islam at the

time wears a similar turban known as the katibi turbin right here

with a plumet just like the prophet Muhammad.

He also has a knife tucked into his waistband

just like the prophet Muhammad and he likewise wears pointed toed shoes with

one foot extended out as if in a ballet de cour

pose. In the French play plays depiction however, Suleiman II is shown with a well-trimmed mustachio

while the young Muhammad in the French great men print

is shown foregoing facial hair.

So it's quite likely that this French depiction of Muhammad relied on travelogues to ottoman lands as well as

theater and ballet performances in France.

So let's return with that sort of back narrative. Let's return to our French

print of the great men.

You will notice that it has a concordance at the bottom of the image

that gives information about each of these great men.

These include providing basic information about their birth

and death dates and also highlighting their most noteworthy contributions or

accomplishments. The entry for Muhammad number 18 as you will have guessed describes him as a prophet and legislator of

Muslims and founder of the Arab empire. It also notes that he is buried in a

superb mosque in Medina and that he quote unquote wrote the

Quran, the holy book of his followers end quote. You'll notice here and this is pretty typical of European

narratives. Uh, they describe the prophet Muhammad as the author of the Quran

rather than the recipient of divine oral recitations.

This is quite typical. Both the image and the text in the French print of the great

men of the world therefore eulogize the prophet Muhammad

in praiseworthy terms as a youthful and upright leader, law

giver, empire builder, and quote unquote author of one of the world's most influential

holy books.

It is this highly acclaimed Muhammad depicted in post-revolutionary and

enlightenment period French texts and images of the great and illustrious men of the

world that somehow made its way to Iran where artists and carpet designers

adopted, altered, and expanded the print's figural representations and accompanying textual apparatus.

Such Persian carpets were likely made at the behest of literate and powerful

patrons including members of the Qajar ruling family,

provincial governors, and elite individuals who were elected to the newly established Majles or parliament, itself conceptualized in

rhetorical strategies and visual

products as a contemporary assembly of great men who achieved a laudable deeds on behalf

of Iranian citizens.

So here you see a similar kind of paradigm

where you have the great men of the Majles and an identifying concordance,

a strategy that is quite similar to the great men carpets of around the same

time period. Via figural representation, photographic

portraiture, and numerical concordance, these great

men visuals attest to a Franco-Iranian encounter

propelled to no small degree by revolutionary and constitutional fervor

that intimately connected global movements

during the 19th and 20th centuries.

It is within this entangled political and cultural context

that the image of a banner-wielding young Muhammad

migrated from France to Iran.

In this regard, while Ali Khan Vali's note in his photographic

album insinuates that it was Nasir al-Din Shah who saw and recorded an alleged byzantine icon during his

trip to a museum in Europe, all evidence instead points to the great men French

print of the mid-19th century instead.

And in fact, Nasir al-Din Shah photographed this French print while he

was in Paris and he brought back a copy of it to Iran where today it remains pasted in one of

his albums preserved in the Golestan Palace. And here I want to thank Pedram Khosronejad

for the image and for flagging this to my attention.

So here is a copy of that French print which is actually pasted in an

album uh that was pulled together for Nasir al-Din Shah. so we know they had

access to this image. Once in Tehran, it is likely that this particular image

was made accessible at the newly established Dar al-Funun which was the modern equivalent of the

Ecole des Beaux Arts, which is like a polytechnical and art

school, where it served as a catalyst for replicas in paintings,

photographs, and carpets. This process of translating a European source in this

elite school for modern sciences in Tehran should come as no surprise whatsoever. After all, its curriculum

included world history classes in which Persian translations of the lives of Alexander

the Great, Peter the Great, Napoleon, and Columbus were all assigned to pupils. And

all of these world explorers and conquerors, you will have noticed,

figure prominently in the great men

carpets as well.

So the question is how did this image of Muhammad emerge in France, What was the

context here?

By the 1800s Nasir al-Din, Iranian diplomats,

intellectuals and students visited, studied,

and lived for substantial periods of time in Paris.

By then, within French literate milieus, the prophet Muhammad

was conceptualized as an inspired uniter of peoples and founder of a world

empire. No longer was he described as a trickster, a heresiarch, false prophet or imposter

as you can see here in James Miller's play

as had been the case in European polemical writings especially between the 12th and the 18th

centuries.

Instead by the 19th and 20th centuries, Muhammad came to be admired as a great

man, un grand homme, worthy of admiration and accolades in his position as a religious reformer,

statesman, law giver and world conqueror.

As John Tolan has observed, these common tropes quote allowed a relatively objective and irenic,

so positive, appreciation of the importance of the prophet and of Islam

on the stage of world history, avoiding the bitter religious polemics

that had so often colored European discourses on Islam.

End quote. By the 18th century French intellectuals started to include

Muhammad in their works on the great men of history.

Such was the case for Claude Pastoret who consecrated

his 1787 study to Zoroaster, Confucius and Muhammad. Later on,

during the second half of the 19th century, French writers and educators

continued the trend of describing the prophet through a series of plaudits

rather than repudiations.

For example, the French writer and politician Alphonse de Lamartine includes a lengthy

discussion of Muhammad in his book Les Grands homme de l'orient, so

the great man of the orient published in 1865. In his work, he

rejects the notion of Muhammad's imposture, arguing instead for his

unwavering conviction.

He then concludes his discussion of the prophet with the following

enthusiastic words, quote philosopher, orator, apostle,

law giver, warrior, conquerors of ideas, reviver of the human spirit, revealer of rational dogmas of a cult without

images, founder of 20 world empires, and one spiritual empire, that is Muhammad.

end quote. So that is all highlighted in

the original French for you.

That is the end of his section on Muhammad.

In de Lamartine's expose, Muhammad again stands tall

among the great men of the world as a highly gifted leader of peoples, places, and ideas.

And truly, this is exclamatory.

Not confined to discussion in erudite spheres only,

Muhammad also comprised the subject of learning

in French elementary schools at this time.

His life and deeds along with the history of Islam were taught in the école and lycée in

which a secular education was implemented by the late 19th century.

To prepare and aid instructors in their new teaching techniques, the French educational

bureaucrat and director of primary education

Ferdinand Buisson pulled together with his

colleagues Le dictionnaire de pédagogie, the dictionary of pedagogy

which was published in 1886.

Among the many entries can be found an article on Mahumet written by Maurice Wahl

who describes the prophet Muhammad as a uniter of peoples with remarkable talent as a writer and

orator who quote unquote, spoke as much to the

senses as to the spirit, end quote.

In the entries last paragraph, Wahl also notes that Muhammad established Islam

under whose aegis states were organized and civilizations flourished.

However he goes on to lament that these states have remained

stagnant since their heyday in the middle ages.

And so Europe bears the responsibility to return the light that it inherited

from Islam once upon a time. Thus while certain

French 19th century discourses on Muhammad were

on the whole quite favorable, the rhetoric on the

stagnation of Muslim countries no doubt reinforced France's

colonial projects and it's civilizing mission, its

so-called mission civilizatrice in the Middle East.

The great men print reflects these contemporary, historical,

and pedagogical discourses.

However it also diverges from them in two major ways. First in its emphasis

on a large white temple as a convening ground of this great brotherhood of men. So it's

very noteworthy that we have this strange white temple

right here as a background. And second, in its visual coupling of Muhammad

and 'Umar, the latter of whom played a significant role in French

historical writing at this time.

These two details strongly hint that this

large-scale print was used in a masonic lodge, perhaps the […] lodge in

Paris that belonged to the Grand Orient de France, the France league of free masons.

Other masonic visuals tend to follow a similar format,

showing the great leaders, known as knights and masters of freemasonry and affiliated masonic

organizations standing in a hierarchically stepped white structure

meant to symbolize the temple of Solomon, itself an architectural stand-in for a

new Jerusalem that could be reached through progressive, enlightened

universal and non-sectarian fraternalism.

Besides sharing compositional characteristics with masonic images,

the great men print also includes a white structure reminiscent of the temple of Solomon

right here. Muhammad is shown therein with a crescent and scimitar. Here is our crescent. Here

is our scimitar, both of which are key masonic symbols, right here. Moreover, the inclusion of which you see right here, 19, points in

the direction of masonic text which laud the Muslim leader for having reconsecrated the Solomonic temper

temple in Jerusalem which you see right here.

And in fact 'Umar at the Solomonic temple here at the dome of the rock

is a subject of frequent illustration in masonic lodges including a fresco mural in a lodge in New England.

This restorative act of 'Umar foreshadowed the efforts of the knights

templar through whom the Freemasons traced their mythical origins. Thus the figural formula of Muhammad and

with the glaring absence of Jesus Christ in the French print hail us to follow

the next twist in this already complicated tale, namely to trace the connections between

French and Iranian-Free Masons because it appears now most likely that

the young Muhammad with banner image was imprecated in international Masonic

channels. And this is where we start talking about

freemasonry.

Already since the early 1800s, Iranian diplomats, students, and intellectuals were

initiated into into freemasonry during this their

stays in Paris.

Upon their return to Iran, they carried with them

French revolutionary and masonic ideas such as that by 1858, the first Freemason

lodge known as Faramushkhana or House of Oblivion was established by Malkam Khan who

encountered freemasonry during his diplomatic sojourn.

I should note that the the term faramush here is from uh franc-maçonnerie or franc-maçon in French.

So it's a a strange sort of translation and it translates into

Faramush, franc-maçon becomes Faramush or uh you know turning something off or

oblivion. So it's it's not an exact match at all.

As a leading faculty member at Dār ul-Funu Malkam Khan

mobilized his colleagues and students to join his new secret organization

whose goals included implementing parliamentary reforms

and spreading liberal ideas based on French models.

In introducing the new republican notions of justice, equality,

liberty, fraternity, and democracy, Malkam Khan went on the record

as stating quote I knew that it was useless to attempt a remodeling of Persia

in European forms and I was determined to clothe my material reformation in a garb which my people would

understand, the garb of religion. End quote.

While Malkam Khan's organization earned the suspicions of Nasir al-Din

Shah who banned the group in 1861, freemasonry continued to spread its

political ideas in Iran during the last few decades of the 19th century.

Freemason groups and other secret societies known as Anjumans

encompassed an eclectic miscellany of ideologues.

While most active in Tehran secret societies also blossomed in Kirman after 1896.

These Kirmani groups included not only mullahs but also members of the carpet industry,

the very same social and economic locus that gave birth to the so-called great man carpets.

And finally by 1906, the first official masonic lodge was founded in Tehran known as the re awakening

of Iran lodge or Luzh-i bidari-yi Iran this lodge boasted official affiliation

with the Grand Orient of France. By 1910 the Bidari lodge included Qajar royalty

and constitutionalists.

As a result, it was a veritable who's who of prominent constitutionalist figures,

ideologically disparate ranging from radical through moderate to conservative in which French revolutionary ideals

were Persianized through masonic channels.

In the estimation of Paul Sabatiennes, such masonic lodges also served as quote

unquote schools for parliamentary democracy as well.

That can be put to debate.

Besides politicians, ministers, and princes,

the Bidari lodge also hosted famous writers and intellectuals

including the prolific lexicographer Ali Akbar Dehkhodā

and the poet Adib al Mamalik Farahani.

In 1907 Adib al Mamalik penned a poem on freemasonry and the

Bidari lodge. Comprised of 539 rhyming couplets, it is essentially a masonic catechism

whose main goal consists in giving masonry a Persian islamic framework of

expression by incorporating Iranian and Islamic themes into its alleged proto-history.

In his poem Adib al Mamalik praises that the inceptive […], so is equated to the set square or […]

and the […] is equated to the compass,

or […] yields the iconic double logo of free masonry. So k plus n equals a set square and compass so the […]

and therefore you've got the basic symbol of freemasonry.

The set square and compass. In addition, the poem informs us that the

prophet Muhammad inherited the masonic light from Zoroastor, the father figure of freemasonry and

that this light passed down to the twelve imams

via the Ahl al-Bayt who were in fact called the people of the lodge instead. So he

refers to the Ahl al-Bayt not as the Ahl al-Bayt but Ahl al-lodge which is an interesting

twist in terminology.

The trope of the luzh or masonic lodge pervades his poem. To name just another

example, in praising Abraham as the founder of the Kaaba, he refers to the holy site as the

Luzh-i bayt al-'atiq thereby rhetorically couching the Kaaba as the very first

masonic lodge in the world. So here is our line Luzh-i bayt al-'atiq,

so the kaaba is a luzh, a lodge. He then continues to praise the return of

the masonic light from France to Iran thanks to the Luzh bidari,

a center of fraternity and enlightenment at the very heart of Iran's constitutional movement. So here you see

Luzh Bidari which was constructed in Iran.

These many Franco-Iranian historical political, religious, cultural, and artistic

conjunctions strongly suggest that a number but of course not all

of the great men carpets belonged to Iranian revolutionary and or masonic milieus.

Such items may have served as material mementos for the big shots, the […],

who were initiated into Iranian secret organizations from the mid 19th century until the

first two decades of the 20th century.

They also could have been used as wall hangings in members' private homes as well as in masonic lodges such as the

Luzh Bidari, so the Bidari lodge, all of which could function as official or even clandestine

meeting places.

While otherwise unknown and unstudied, depictions of Zoroaster,

Muhammad, and 'Umar may have existed within

Iranian masonic lodges especially since a number of lodges in Europe and America

depict similar subject albeit as frescoes and not carpets on walls. So the masonic lodge fresco becomes a

masonic large

carpet in essence. In addition, the formula Muhammad plus 'Umar

instead of being replaced by the much more popular Qajar Shi'i duo of Muhammad plus Ali

also intimates a non-shi'i or non-overtly sectarian setting.

To borrow Malkam Khan's fitting expression, Iranian masonic milieus populated by great men

and potentially fitted by pictorial carpets indeed can be understood as ecumenical yet clad

in a quote-unquote Islamic garb, in this instance a garb personified by none other than

the prophet Muhammad.

So let us come full circle here. Structured as a forensic exercise, this talk

posed a basic question at its outset.

Why was Muhammad represented as a young man holding a banner in early 20th century Iranian visual culture as you can see right here.

This deceivingly simple query took us on an expedition into the world of Iranian carpet

making, French print making, Ottoman travelogues and costume books,

the cult of the great men in post-enlightenment France, Franco-Iranian masonic relations and

secret groups laboring on behalf of the constitutional revolution in Iran. By following these disparate yet

interconnected strands, the story of this particular prophetic

image highlights the many ways in which Muhammad could be

conceived in different times and places.

Within progressive intellectual and political settings

in early 20th century Iran, the prophet could be imagined and depicted as a youthful revolutionary founder of a new world order as an Irani […]

Iran if you want, as well as a great law giver

in a line of illustrious men who contributed to the progress of humanity across the globe.

The Iranian urge to panagerize and pantheonize the prophet

captures this highly dynamic moment in modern world history in the process catalyzing a new heroic

image of the prophet that might be best called the masonic

Muhammad. This new image of a masonic Muhammad emerged in France

around 1850, likely the result of a French artist

creatively mining illustrated European travel accounts, costume books, and illustrated theater books.

This prophetic image then migrated east again reaching Iran where it began to multiply

in paintings, icons, and carpets during the early 20th century.

In the end this young Muhammad image, which traveled across media and within several

circuits of exchange, proves not the product of a modernity

that can be simply called be called global, transnational,

constellational, peripheral, alternative or somehow liquid. These images of Muhammad instead

construct a larger modern matrix, a life world in which people and objects operate

through the artful vectors of encounter and exchange. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much Professor Gruber. That was a fascinating lecture of investigative art history.

And I really really enjoyed the ways in which you took us through so many intellectual artistic um uh and other landscapes and thank you so

much again for sharing this brilliant talk.