Alexander played an important role in medieval Islamic philosophy and Persian literature, serving as a vehicle for discussions of the ‘ideal king’ in Mirror for Princes literature. This chapter explores the background to one particular work, Amir Khusraw’s Mirror of Alexander (1299), in which the king consults the philosopher Plato for advice on rulership before embarking on his submarine voyage to explore the nature of the universe. Plato’s characterisation as a mystical sage is contrasted in medieval Islam with the wisdom of Aristotle, Alexander’s teacher. In Amir Khusraw as in Nizami, Alexander is as much a philosopher as a king.

Often conceived as the abstract counterpoint to the supposedly absent representational image, geometry suffuses visual cultures of the Islamic world. Chapter 9 examines its theorization in relation to legacies of Sufi cosmology and music. While often contrasted with European representational traditions, the geometry of Islamic pattern is, like perspective, an optical device structuring surface treatment. Without offering a hermeneutic of geometry, Islamic discourses suggest an implicit understanding of geometry as an agent of meaning without a semiotic structure of signifier and signified. Geometry does not re-present; it presents. As such, its religious significance has everything to do with perception and little to do with intention. Putting forth its own quiddity, geometry induces subjects to infinitely reaffirm their own transience. It prepares them for enhanced religious insight and theological theorization. The infinitely shifting subjectivity it induces both enacts and contrasts the doctrinal absoluteness of God. This chapter examines the meanings accorded to geometry both in Islamic and Western discourses. The first section suggests origins for the common art-historical premise that geometry functions decoratively rather than mimetically. The subsequent section uses Islamic discourses about geometry to reveal its meanings not only as a cultural sign but as a mimetic practice.

In contrast to the dearth of discussions about visual images in the first centuries of Islam, discussions of music abounded, often incorporating discourses inherited from Greek antiquity. Chapter 2 considers how juridical discussions of music reflected antique traditions of inward mimesis. Inheriting aspect of Eastern Roman music theory, discussions generally distinguished between theory and performance, affectivity and entertainment. Inheriting the Pythagorean–Platonic tradition, theorists emphasized the capacity of music to engage with the harmonies between the universe and the body that enabled its therapeutic and curative capacities. Music and instruments could be characterized through an iconography of sound. Music needed to be treated with caution due to its association with forbidden practices such as drinking and licentiousness. Yet it was also recognized as facilitating transcendence by opening the heart to the workings of the divine. Both aspects became central to literary gatherings devoted to the ritualized recitation of poetry with music, wine, food, and real or imaginary gardens. The centrality of music in the Islamic intellectual corpus undermines the oculocentrism of art history, offering instead a field of multimedial perceptual culture.