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Session 10b: Depictions of Demons and Devils
Chair: Anna Kowalcze

The Human in the Monster: Changes in Demonic Imageries in 14th-16th century Persian Painting
Francesca Leoni
Art & Archaeology Department, Princeton University, USA

In the Shāhnāma (The Book of Kings, ca 1010)—an epic poem that relates the history of ancient Iranian kings—fantastic encounters are very frequent and take many forms. Legendary heroes and kings are described as fighting enormous dragons, as well as meeting extraordinary beings, such as talking phoenixes and animal-headed trees. Their most significant deeds, though, are those accomplished against dīvs (demons), hideous creatures that threaten the human order. While hybridity and monstrosity constantly characterize the representations of these beings in illustrated versions of the poem, we assist to a significant transformation – and progressive humanization – of their imagery from the 16th century on. These monsters change from impassive half-human/half-animal creatures to deformed humanoids with disproportioned limbs and caricaturized physiognomies. At times, they almost look more “human” than the men fighting them, which are instead shaped according to well-established but rather artificial iconographic conventions. My paper reconstructs the changes in the imagery of dīvs between the 14th and the 16th century and discusses the artistic implications and the historical factors underlying them. It also raises questions about the cultural values attached to specific visual choices, aiming to prove that precise notions of personal and social appropriateness shaped the protagonists of such artful compositions. The case of demonic imagery—and its tension with other figurative types—offers the opportunity to challenge the derivative role traditionally attributed to miniature painting in the Islamic world. In fact, it proves that the pictorial space was a locus for the articulation of relevant historical and cultural issues and not only a way to embellish classical works of Persian literature.

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Islamic Depictions of Enduring Evil: The Devil, Lesser Demons and the Antichirist
Saiyad Ahmad
College of Arts and Sciences, The American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

Whilst the most comprehensive historical study of the devil of which I am aware devotes a section to Islamic diabology, the section is based entirely on secondary sources. Islamic demonology is, however, an exceedingly rich subject yet has received scant attention by modern researchers. We propose to examine Islamic depictions of evil in its most enduring image of the latter, namely Iblıs or Shay†n (Arabic terms for “the Devil”). In Islam the Devil is not depicted as the fallen angel Lucifer, but as a monstrous, fiery being of the particularly frightening species of supernatural creatures known as the jinn (genies). Like man, jinn have the power of free choice and thus, though they are not inherently evil, the vast majority are seen as creatures of the most hideous malignancy whose unbridled wickedness is placed in the service of Shaytan who is of their number and is their leader. The singular evil ambition of these malevolent jinn and Shaytan is the destruction of humanity. It is interesting to note that the jinn may take control of human beings through possession as well as consort with human beings in either a benign or malevolent mode by taking on a variety of corporeal forms (canine, serpentine, sauran or human). There is much discussion of such matters in Arabic texts and we propose ann alysis of some of these materials. The primary sources (such as the Quran, its commentaries, monographs on demonology and other sources) indicate that devils (shaytaın pural form of shaytan) exist not only among the jinn (of which Iblıs is the preeminent example) but among human beings as well. The pre-eminent human counterpart of Iblıs is the Antichrist (Dajjal in Arabic) and it is with an account of the Islamic depiction of the latter—whose nature and identity is the topic of vigorous contemporary debate amongst Muslims—that we will conclude the paper.

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