Chapter 7 explores the ephemeral image, transcended on the journey to truth. Emphasis on inward mimesis and perception through spiritual training shifts the art-historical emphasis on material objects toward a recognition of the importance of dreams, visions, and dematerializing images in Islamic discourses. The similar functions of the trope of the image and the dream image underscore their functional interchangeability as well as the reality often ascribed to dreams and visions over materiality. This emerges in uses of the image as identification; in Prophetic visions proving his miraculous journeys; ibn Arabi’s interpretation of sleep as a metaphor for exile in the Quranic parable of the Cave of the Seven Sleepers; and in the theorization of sleep and dreams as enabling an interface with reality impossible in the waking or material world. The resulting valorization of meaning over matter suggests a mode of preservation rooted in ideas rather than physical forms, accepted as inevitably perishable. Similar tropes of the image in Nizami’s Shirin and Khosrau, and Rumi’s story of the Three Princes, suggest that the image should be approached with neither love nor hate, but with indifference.

Chapter 5 traces the heart as a polished mirror in transformations of the story of the competition of the artists as told by al-Ghazali and retold by Nizami, Rumi, and ibn Khaldun. Following the episteme of inward mimesis established in earlier chapters, the story reveals reflection as an enhancement of representation rather than through the model of deception common to modern interpretations of Platonic thought under the influence of biblical image prohibitions. The parable reflects insights suggestive of Platonic and Buddhist sources. Tropes of the heart and the curtain, metaphors for the heart and revelation, persist in later poetic renditions by Nizami and Rumi. They add the figure of Mani, mentioned already in Firdausi’s Shahnameh, to the story, elaborated through the thought of Suhrawardi and ibn Arabi. Ibn Khaldun reprises the tale to compare science and mysticism as paths to knowledge. The story reflects a relationship with the image not founded in prohibition so much as in its utility as a vehicle of transcendence. Far from the modern assertion of latent secularism in epic poetry and underlying representational painting, the cultural and religious aspects of Islam emerge as indivisible as a reflection and its mirror.

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.