The Kaaba in Mecca, from Dala'il al-Khayrat (Collection of Prayers for the Prophet Muhammad), c.1660...

Court: Golconda School: Deccani State/Province: Telangana Facing pages from a prayer book show Mecca and Medina, holy places of pilgrimage and prayer for all Muslims. On the right the Qa'ba at Mecca is in the center, with minars and other buildings pointing towards it, the whole surrounded by an arcade. The House of the Prophet, at Medina, is also a courtyard surrounded by an arcade and includes a group of date palms and several buildings. A love of topographical representation pervades Ottoman art, and pilgrimage sites, palaces, and foreign cities are all depicted using a flattened perspective—half birds-eye, half-schematic. The Holiest Shrines of Islam parallels Turkish illustrations to the Futuh al-haramayn (Conquest of the two sanctuaries) of Muhyi Lari. The text was written in Persian and dedicated to the sultan of Gujarat, Muzaffar, b. Mahmud (r.1511-1526), who presented it to the Safavid ruler. The Binney work, which owes its composition to earlier Ottoman versions of the manuscript, portrays significant elements—the Kaaba in the upper center, the hijr, a semi-circular enclosure, and the well of zamzam below—in a typically fanciful palette with lavish use of gold. Scale is unimportant here. Instead, the artist has focused on details such as the number of minarets and the enumeration of relevant structures. The Kaaba at Mecca At the time of Muhammad's revelation, local religious rites were centered at the Kaaba, a small, black, nearly cubic structure that contained idols of an Arabian god and goddesses. As one of his first acts as Prophet, Muhammad cleansed the Kaaba of its idols and implemented the strict monotheism of Islam. Pious Muslims are enjoined to go on pilgrimage to the Kaaba, and their prayers are all oriented towards Mecca. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Dalai’il al-Khayrat is an Arabic text that offers a set of prayers to the prophet Muhammad, each to be recited on specific days of the week. The only illustrations in the work belong to an introductory section describing the Prophet Muhammad’s tomb in Medina. These illustrations, the Kaaba in Mecca (on the left) and Muhammad’s mosque and tomb at Medina (on the right), marry bird’s-eye views with easily recognizable ground-level perspectives of the structures. The technique follows the idiosyncratic convention established by illustrators of the famous guide called the Futuh al-Haramayn (The Conquests of the Two Holy Sites). The Kaaba, draped in black cloth, appears at the center of the painting of Mecca, encircled by the Zamzam well, two minbars (pulpits), and other important structures. The seven minarets (towers) indicate that the image was designed after the final tower was added by the Ottoman sultan Suleyman in 1565–66. In the Medina painting four gravestones covered with green cloths lie at the center; below are three palm trees with twisting trunks that appear in profile.