Of serpents and dragons in Islamic art
Subtitle: an iconograpical study
By: by Abbas Daneshvari
Series: Bibliotheca Iranica. Islamic art and architecture series -- no. 13
Publisher: Mazda Publishers
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Costa Mesa
Language: eng
Number of pages: 236
ISBN-13: 9781568592640
Subjects: Dragons in art; Serpents in art; Islamic art and symbolism
Description: In the medieval Muslim world, the dragon was the most frequently represented fabulous beast. This applied across styles and media and in both sacred and secular contexts. Yet its prominence is marked by seemingly contradictory representations. Like Plato's "Pharmakon, "; the dragon was imbued with antithetical meanings: as it stood for both the darkness of the eclipse and the light of God, the satanic and the divine, the transcendent and the earthly. The "yin" and the "yang" of Islam were embodied in the dragon, whose fire was the hell of destruction and also the blessed light of the divine. The dragon thus represented one of those exceptional and mysterious symbols that explained the more baffling phenomena such as creation, chaos and order, furthermore signifying amalgamations of dichotomous forces whose balance made life and the understanding of life possible ... -- Book Description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Background information; title: Names, types and attributes; title: The intrepid hero; title: Astrocosmological symbolism of the dragon; title: The dragon at the navel of the earth; title: Hybrid representations of dragons and serpents; title: Dragons, opium and "the kitab al-diryaq"; title: Dragons in the cult of the saints.