On Feb 19, 2008 9:47 AM, Raphael Wegmann wegmann@psi.co.at wrote:
On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 09:20:19AM -0500, Wily D wrote:
Both veiled and unveiled depictions have substantial historic traditions - so far in our discussions at Talk:Muhammad, I haven't seen any studies on the relative prominance of the two traditions.
None of those "traditions" are nearly as prominent as Muslim caligraphy. With all the energy people put into finding Muhammad images, we have found - what 40? - in >1.5 thousand years old culture? Compare that to occidental/christian art? Here the output is more like 40.000/year.
-- Raphael
The 37 I quoted was the number on the commons page. By comparison http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Confucius - 4 images http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha 50 images http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Jesus 24 images
The Commons page probably isn't a good metric - one could count the images in the categories - but there's no particular reason to believe that's a better metric either - it certainly reflects the biases of who has internet access, scanners & so forth.
But yes, [[Muhammad]] leads with a piece of caligraphy recognising that's probably the most prominant historical tradition. We only have a couple of piece's of caligraphy freely licensed, and only one of any apparent external importance http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Aziz_efendi-muhammad_alayhi_s-salam.... while we have several dozen historical illustrations of Muhammad from various prominant sources (e.g. the Siyer-ı Nebi http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Siyer-%C4%B1_Nebi). Please feel free to join the discussion at Talk:Muhammad or spend some effort location historically important caligraphy if you feel the correct balanced isn't being achieved (and this opinion is not uncommon among reasonable editors).
The comparison to other traditions isn't really relevant.
Cheers WilyD