DIVINE COMEDY, 2010

On beauty and gender aesthetics, today and in early Islamic art [14-18th century.] 

Divine Comedy

When Paul asked me whether I knew an artist specialized in drawing portraits of Islamic resistance martyrs, I had no idea that his random question would lead me into the worlds of Islamic art and the labyrinths of sexual identities. That day Paul showed me a book(1) on popular artistic images from Islamic countries, wishing to be depicted in the same aesthetics of these illustrations.

What first attracted my attention in the book was the image of the Buraq(2). Popular artists from Pakistan, India, Egypt and Syria depicted the human half of the Buraq as a woman, decorated with jewels and long hairdos. The Buraq itself has anklets dangling from its four extremities. The image of a white Buraq, specifically the one drawn in India in the middle of the preceding century, reminded me of the Lebanese pop star Najwa Karam. A few days before I had seen a billboard on which the famous singer was referred to as ‘The Pearl of the Gulf’, ‘standing’ in the air, with a tight white dress. The picture was taken from behind with Karam turning back towards the photographer. Her gaze is neutral and expressionless, her butt was projected upwards so that it was the focus of the picture. Later on, I discovered that countless Arab female pop stars, were photographed at some point in their careers in a ‘horse-position’. 

The Horse in Arab Tradition
 Arabs hold an immeasurably high esteem for the horse. Innumerable poems about the mare are the most salient testament to this admiration. They described the mare similarly to the way in which they used to praise and woo women or young men (Ghulam). Even the ‘scientific’ description of the pure Arab mare employed almost the same expressions used to describe the desired female body. For example, one online source writes, “The butt bones should be far apart and salient; the chest should be high, wide, its muscles visible, hard, neither deep-set nor caved-in, and two muscles resembling breasts should be jutting out. Its eyes should be large, rectangular, clear and shiny, fixed and staring hard, with delicate eyelids and seeing afar…”. No wonder that the Arabs chose the horse from all beautiful animals as the one that flew and transported the prophet from Mecca to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. 

A Return To Origins
Going through art books on Persian miniatures dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries, one can see a significant difference between the drawings of popular artists depicted in Imageries Populaires en Islam, and the Persian artists. The difference was not limited to aesthetics. For while the popular artists portrayed the human part of the Buraq as female, the 16th century artists portrayed it as a human being of undefined gender.

Another book I was introduced to entitled: “Le Grand Moghol Et Ses Peintres”(3). The book includes magnificent illustrations of miniatures from the 16th and 17th century, many of which I used as a background of the images. According to the author, Amina Okada, Mughal artists were influenced by European art, which they came in contact with when Jesuit missionaries came to India. Subjects inspired by European art are encountered in many Mughal pieces that nevertheless disregard the religious content of the European representations. The themes of Mughal painting were varied; its golden age was between the 16th and 17th centuries when it mainly portrayed glories of war, conquest, historical meetings, Imperial portraits, hunting trips; and in a later stage: animals, birds and scenes of leisurely life at the court. 

The Female Man
Going through the books of that era, it seemed that the Mughal artists who were in fact the students of the Persian artists, adopted a drawing/painting style that feminized male features, which was fashionable at the time. Thus, not only was the human part of the Buraq indeterminate as gender, but also that of male personages such as Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and other Indian Mughal Emperors: something soft appeared there, reminiscent of the ghulam, that is the youth whose beard hadn’t yet grown. Afsaneh Najmabadi, who, in her book "Women with Mustaches and Men"(4) without Beards deals with another period in history, making it interesting to note, that beauty in old Iran (at the beginning of the Qajar dynasty (1785 to 1925)) was not an exclusively female privilege: men shared in it equally with women, not to say surpassed them, particularly the ones dubbed ‘the beardless’ or ghulams. Najmabadi writes that men were portrayed with feminine features resembling, to a great extent, those of women. The only thing setting them apart is, for example, their headdress. Moreover, “the perception of male beauty and eroticism were considered elevated feelings”.

According to Khaled Ruwaiheb in his book "Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800"(5) attraction to a youth whose beard hasn’t yet appeared was completely acceptable”. For this reason, they did not consider it shameful to project erotic rapport with such a youth. And the decrees judges made at that time varied in their severity. For example, kissing, touching and “rubbing thighs” were not considered homosexual acts. What was decreed ‘homosexual’ and hence unacceptable was straightforward intercourse between two (adult) men.

The following is a text quoted by Ruwaiheb from the Aleppine scholar Ali Al-Dabbagh al-Miqati (1760):
“[The beardless]: In being free of a beard he is akin to the people of paradise [a reference to well-known tradition according to which the people of paradise will be beardless] … the Creator is pleased with him and so did not bring forth what would disfigure his cheeks, thus the mirror of his face is clear, as the cloudless sky….’’. 

Ruwaiheb also mentions that being infatuated with the beauty of a ghulam and desiring him were considered two different things. He quotes the following example by the jurisprudent and religious scholar (faqih) Abi Hamid Al-Ghazali (1058-1111):
“do not think that the love of beautiful forms is only conceivable with the eye toward satisfying carnal desire, for satisfying carnal desire is a distinct pleasure that may be associated with the love of beautiful form, but the perception of beauty in itself is also pleasurable and may be loved for its own sake.”

The Third Book
My research on the Buraq led me to Marie Rose Seguy’s book(6), The Miraculous Journey of Mahomet. The book includes a manuscript produced in Herat in 1436, illustrating Prophet Muhammad’s ascension to the Heavens on the back of the Buraq.

The Title 
The series was entiteld ‘Divine Comedy’ because of the similarity between the images presented in the Herat illuminatio- manuscript and Dante’s famous epic.  Some academics deem it probable that Dante was inspired by the story of  Night Jouney in his masterpiece. 

The Exhibited Images /Gender Aesthetic
Using contemporary techniques, this work explores and compares the aesthetic employed by Mughal and Persian artists (14th–18th centuries) in regard to gender representation, and the aesthetic practiced by popular artists from various islamic countries in the twentieth century.
The original paintings were altered in order to create a new narrative to the scene, and to the character being photographed.

The Models
The portrayed models describe themselves as cross-dressers, transsexuals and transgender, or simply as men exploring their feminin side.


1. Pierre Centlivres, Micheline Centlivres-Demont: Imageries Populaires en Islam, edition Georg, Genève 1997.
2. The Buraq is the steed which carried the prophet Mohammed from Mecca to Jerusalem during the al-Isra’ and Mi’raj. According to Islamic tradition al-Isra' refers to the Night Journey from Makkah to Jerusalem and al-Mi’raj refers to the Ascension into the Heavens. In this miraculous journey, the Prophet rides his Buraq across Paradise, Hell, and "experiences phenomena beyond all human comprehension". He meets previous Prophets, such as Adam, Moses and Jesus before encountering “in his heart” God himself. 
3.Amina Okada: Le grand Moghol et ses peintres, Miniaturistes de l'Inde au 16eme et 17eme siècles. (Flamarion, 1992).
4. Afsaneh Najmabadi: “Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards. Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity”, (California 2005).
5. Khaled Ruwaiheb: Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (University of Chicago Press, 2009).
6. Marie Rose Seguy: The Miraculous Journey of Mahomet (Braziller, 1977).

Chaza Charafeddine, November 2010
Translated from Arabic by Masha Refka

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Technique: photography, photomontage.
Photographs are printed with Epson UltraChrome K3 ink on Epson Somerset® Velvet (255gsm) fine art cotton rag paper.

Special thanks: to Randa Lamri, Alexandre Paulikewitch, George Zouain, Krikor Jabotian, Modi Modi, Tina la Diva, Mia, Boulos Khodr, Alya Karame, Ayman Baalbaki, and Hazem Saghie.