After the midday prayers, I was ever so swiftly yet pleasurably drawing the darling faces of boys when I heard a knock at the door. My hand jerked in surprise. I put down my brush. I carefully placed the work-board that was on my knees off to the side. Rushing like the wind, I said a prayer before opening the door. I won』t withhold anything from you, because you, who hear me from within this book, are muearer to Allah than we in this filthy and miserable world of ours. Akbar Khan, the Emperor of Hindustan and the world』s richest shah, is preparing what will one day bee a legendary book. To plete his project, he sent word to the four ers of Islamdom inviting the world』s greatest artists to join him. The men he』d sent to Istanbul visited me yesterday, invitio Hindustan. This time, I opehe door to find, in their place, my childhood acquaintance Black, about whom I』d fotteirely. Back then he wasn』t able to keep our pany, he was jealous of us. 「Yes?」
He said he』d e to verse, to pay a friendly visit, to have a look at my illustrations. I weled him so he might see it all. I learned he』d just today visited Head Illuminator Master Osman and kissed his hand. The great master, he explained, had given him wise words to ponder: 「A painter』s quality bees evident in his discussions of blindness and memory,」 he』d said. So let it be evident:
Blindness and MemoryBefore the art of illumination there was blaess and afterward there will also be blaess. Through our colors, paints, art and love, we remember that Allah had anded us to 「See」! To know is to remember that you』ve seen. To see is to know without remembering. Thus, painting is remembering the blaess. The great masters, who shared a love of painting and perceived that color and sight arose from darkness, loo return to Allah』s blaess by means of color. Artists without memory her remember Allah nor his blaess. All great masters, in their work, seek that profound void within color and outside time. Let me explain to you what it means to remember this darkness, which was revealed i by the great masters of old.
Three Stories on Blindness and MemoryALIFIn Lami』i Chelebi』s Turkish translation of the Persia Jami』s Gifts of Intimacy, which addresses the stories of the saints, it is written that in the bookmaker』s workshop of Jihan Shah, the ruler of the Blacksheep nation, the renowned master Sheikh Ali Tabrizi had illustrated a magnifit version of Hüsrev and Shirin. Acc to what I』ve heard, in this legendary manuscript, which took eleven years to plete, the master of master miniaturists, Sheikh Ali, displayed such talent and skill and painted such wonderful pictures that only the greatest of the old masters, Bihzad, could have matched him. Even before the illuminated manuscript was half finished, Jihan Shah khat he would soon possess a spectacular book without equal in all the world. He thus lived in fear and jealousy of young Tall Hasan, the ruler of the Whitesheep nation, and declared him his aremy. Moreover, Jihan Shah quickly sehat though his prestige would grow immensely after the book was pleted, an eveer version of the manuscript could be made for Tall Hasan. Being one of those truly jealous men who poisoned his own te with the thought 「What if others e to know such bliss?」 Jihan Shah se ohat if the virtuoso miniaturist made another copy, or even a better version, it would be for his aremy Tall Hasan. Thus, in order to prevent anyone besides himself from owning this magnifit book,