Collection
/
Asian Art

The Bismillah

Indian

Brooklyn Museum photograph

Object Label

The Arabic phrase “Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim” (“In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate”) opens all but one chapter of the Qur’an. Calligraphers were the most celebrated artisans in traditional Islamic cultures: to repeat the Bismillah is to repeat the word of God; to do so in beautiful script is to glorify the word of God. In this unusual calligraphic composition, the phrase is written four times: right side up, upside down, and in the reverse of each of these. Mirror writing was a common practice in India, Turkey, and Iran in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Caption

Indian. The Bismillah, 1875–1900. Opaque watercolor and gold on paper, sheet: 19 5/8 x 11 13/16 in. (49.8 x 30.0 cm) image: 8 15/16 x 7 5/8 in. (22.8 x 19.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Philip P. Weisberg, 59.206.8. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Gallery

Not on view

Collection

Asian Art

Culture

Indian

Title

The Bismillah

Date

1875–1900

Geography

Place made: Hyderabad, Deccan, India

Medium

Opaque watercolor and gold on paper

Classification

Painting

Dimensions

sheet: 19 5/8 x 11 13/16 in. (49.8 x 30.0 cm) image: 8 15/16 x 7 5/8 in. (22.8 x 19.4 cm)

Inscriptions

Inscriptions: In Persian in black ink above on mount: "Tughra-i bismallah al-rahman al-rahim" from catalogue: Above, in upper border, in Persian, in black ink, in Nastaliq script: Tughva [in this context, a calligraphic emblem] of "In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate."

Credit Line

Gift of Philip P. Weisberg

Accession Number

59.206.8

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Artists and makers

Indian

312 works in the collection