Material Religion

The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief

ISSN: 1743-2200 (Print) 1751-8342 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfmr20

Prophetic products: muhammad in contemporary

iranian visual culture

christiane gruber

To cite this article: christiane gruber (2016) Prophetic products: muhammad in contemporary
iranian visual culture, Material Religion, 12:3, 259-293

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17432200.2016.1192148

Published online: 22 Aug 2016.

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prophetic products:
muhammad in
contemporary iranian
visual culture
christiane gruber

university of michigan, ann arbor, mi

 ABSTRACT
Much like religious objects produced and consumed else-
where in the Islamic world, images of Muhammad are often
associated with acts of play and worship, their power to
cultivate joy and direct religious feelings in various faith
communities strengthened in large part by their remove from
the commodity situation. As scholars of visual and material
culture have highlighted, a product is never merely an object
to be acquired and used, stripped of symbolic import and
application. On the contrary, it is a thoroughly socialized com-
modity central to cultural practices of exchange—of sending
and receiving social messages—that take place in regimes of
value. Within postrevolutionary Iran in particular, images and
objects depicting the Prophet Muhammad have been manu-
factured en masse over the past three decades, catering to of-
ficial regime ideology and popular devotional practices alike.
This study explores how these types of prophetic products
serve to visually reinforce and materially reify narratives about
the ascendancy of the Shi’i faith, the legitimacy of Islamic
governance, and the value of martyrdom within the larger
religious and political landscape of contemporary Iran.

Keywords: the Prophet Muhammad, Iran, Shi’ism, carnival,

martyrdom, Islamic visual and material culture.

Christiane Gruber is Associate Professor of

Islamic Art in the Art History Department
at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
She has written two books and edited half a
dozen volumes on various topics, including
Islamic book arts, paintings of the Prophet
Muhammad, Islamic ascension texts and
images, and modern Islamic visual and
material culture.
cjgruber@umich.edu

This article contains historical and Material Religion volume 12, issue 3, pp. 259–293
contemporary images of the Prophet DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2016.1192148
Muhammad from Iran. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 Holy figures and saints play a number of significant roles in
Islamic traditions. Whether acting as agents for intercession,
transmitters of baraka (blessings), or conduits to the sacred,
they essentially function as liminal beings that connect
the realm of the human with that of the divine. As spiritual

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

middle points, saintly personages provide pivots for the
riveting and molding of religious, political and cultural
identities. Like other holy figures in Islam, and indubitably
much more so, the Prophet Muhammad has been central to a
wide range of Muslim devotional practices at different times
and places. From his own lifetime in the Arabian Peninsula,
throughout the centuries in many Islamic lands, and into the
postrevolutionary period in Iran, Muhammad has held pride
of place for his many roles: as the seal of all prophets from the
Abrahamic line, the blessed carrier of God’s revealed word, the
leader of the community of the faithful, and the intercessor on
the Day of Resurrection. His many mediating functions make
him a holy figure par excellence as well as a key asset for the
expression of both piety and politics.

Christiane Gruber
Like saintly people, images and objects carry many
meanings that change according to historical and social
settings. They also play intermediary roles in constructing
knowledge and faith, in turn helping individuals conceive
of and communicate with the realm of the sacred. Within
Iranian visual culture, pictorial representations of the Prophet
Muhammad have tended to manifold devotional, political and
pedagogical needs for centuries. From ca. 1300 to 1900 CE in
particular, paintings of Muhammad were included in Ilkhanid
world histories, Timurid books of ascension, Safavid illus-
trated poems and Qajar lithographed books. In these pictorial

Volume 12
materials made in premodern eastern Islamic lands, Muham-

Issue 3
mad is depicted veiled or unveiled, with a flaming nimbus
or inscribed with pious invocations. He is also portrayed as a
world leader marked by divine selection, a miracle-working
prophet capable of traversing the celestial spheres, and a
close companion to God and Imam ‘Ali, Muhammad’s son-
in-law and the figurehead of Shi’i Islam. These varied illustra-
tions aimed to promote Muhammad’s prophetic status and
261 worldly authority while also serving as creative tools to bolster
a particular individual’s or community’s worldview, which
is at times expressed in sectarian terms. Over the course of
approximately seven centuries, depictions of the Prophet thus
have shifted along with aesthetic, political, cultural, and social
contexts (Gruber 2009).
Although historical Persian paintings of Muhammad have
become a subject of scholarly interest over the past decade,
Material Religion

much less is known about images representing the Prophet

that were produced in Iran during the twentieth century. From
Article

stamps to cartoons, postcards, posters, wall hangings and chil-

 dren’s books, images of the Prophet appeared in a wide vari-
ety of mass-produced goods during the period between the
1979 Revolution and 2006, when the publication of satirical
cartoons of Muhammad in Denmark seems to have launched
official Iranian attempts to curtail—or at least exercise some
degree of control over— the output of figural representations
(Gruber 2013; Klausen 2009).
Based on fifteen years of fieldwork in Tehran, I have been
able to track the changing trajectory of the pictorial arts in
contemporary Iran. For example, during Muharram (Decem-
ber) 2010, the large-scale religious posters used in ‘Ashura
ceremonies included depictions of Imam Husayn and other
protagonists of the Battle of Karbala (680 CE). These posters
employed a number of visual abstractions, most notably a
disk of light in lieu of a visage with facial features. Some years
prior, these kinds of religious posters did not shy away from
veristic modes of portraiture (Flaskerud 2012, 109–156).
In a similar vein, a visit to the shrine (imamzada) of Zayd
in the Tehran Bazaar in December 2010 revealed that a
prominent icon of the Prophet Muhammad surrounded by
mirror-work had been replaced by a roundel inscribed with
pious inscriptions. When asked about the epigraphic sub-
stitution, the superintendent of the women’s section of the
shrine stated that the Ministry of Endowments and Charitable
Works (sazman-i awqaf va umur-i khayriyya) had issued an
internal memo sometime in 2008 requiring that all shrines
remove their pictorial icons, or shama’il. Although the text of
this communiqué is not publicly accessible, there is no reason
to doubt that the ministry issued an order prohibiting figural
representations in shrines under its purview. For these reasons
and others, pictorial images of saints and holy figures are rarer
in Iran today than they were before 2008. Their removal seems
driven in part by contemporary practices of cultural differenti-
ation, in which figural imagery is especially vulnerable to acts
of erasure when official agents decide to amplify what they
(wish to) see as the uniquely “aniconic” character of Islamic
culture.
Popular practices are persistent, however, and authorita-
262 tive commands are not always followed. The shrine’s superin-
tendent stated that she and other women missed the shama’il,
which they deemed especially efficacious in visually trigger-
ing devotional thought during silent and spoken prayers per-
formed in shrine visitation. For these reasons, images of saints
and holy figures, especially the imams, still can be found in
some shrines in provincial cities or processed on ceremonial
standards in the streets of the capital city, despite increasing
official restrictions.
Much like religious objects produced and used else-
where in the Islamic world, images of Muhammad are often
FIG 1
The Prophet Muhammad standing in
a landscape and holding the Qur’an,
with the shahada inscribed in his
radiant halo. Postcard purchased by
the author in Tehran, 2000.

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

Christiane Gruber
Volume 12
associated with acts of worship, their power to cultivate and

Issue 3
direct religious feelings in humans strengthened in large
part by their remove from the “commodity situation” (Starrett
1995, 59). In devotional contexts, an item’s sacred alterity
is essentially secured by its removal from more profane
milieus. However, is this true of other representations of
saintly figures, such as postcards sold in supermarkets or
wall posters displayed in hotels and homes? These mass-pro-
263 duced commodities do not seem to be the stuff of shrines
and religious ceremonies, and yet they appear in arenas of
“ritual pageantry” (Bakhtin 1998, 250), as well. To give but one
example, postcards representing the Prophet Muhammad can
be sold in supermarkets, given as personal gifts, placed on
walls in private homes, processed in musical performances, or
appear as framed icons in shrines (Figure 1). From commodity
settings to cultic milieus, they roam freely between profane
Material Religion

and sacred realms.

As scholars of material and consumer culture have high-
lighted, a product is never merely an object to be acquired
Article

and used, stripped of symbolic import and application. On

 the contrary, it is a thoroughly socialized commodity central
to cultural practices of exchange—of sending and receiv-
ing social messages—that take place in various regimes of
value (Appadurai 1986, 6–9, 31). Indeed, an object or image
provides humans with a potent ideational view of the world,
delivering an index of reality while also helping individuals
organize their private and public affections (Brown 2001,
7–8). Whether an item retains its sacred “aura” or not when
it is mechanically reproduced is not so much a question of
the production process, however (Benjamin 1968). Rather, its
“aura” is the outcome of a reception and behavioral process
that occurs in an open network of human interactions and
narratives. Whether in shrines, quotidian life, or play-spheres,
the commodity thus carves out a ritual domain in devotional
life as well as an ideological position in its related politico-cul-
tural settings (Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry 1989; Kopytoff
1986). Such diverse possibilities are especially characteristic of
pictorial products depicting the Prophet Muhammad, which
have been manufactured en masse in Iran since the 1979
Revolution. Without a doubt, such prophetic commodities
visually reinforce narratives about the ascendancy of the Shi’i
faith, the legitimacy of Islamic governance, and the value of
martyrdom within the larger religious and political landscape
of contemporary Iran. They likewise cater to the particular
needs of individuals in both private and communal practices
of mourning and celebration.

The return of Muhammad’s umma

At the height of the 1979 Revolution, iconoclastic practices
played a key role in abrogating Pahlavi political legitimacy,
and the production of new slogans and images aided in
creating new conceptions of a distinctly religious identity
for the nascent Islamic Republic. In its most acute form, the
rejection of both the Pahlavi monarchy and the pre-Islamic
Persian past signified a desire to completely break with
FIG 2
Nine-rial stamp showing the Apadana
at Persepolis overwritten with
264 ‘Islamic Revolution’ and the profile
of Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi
canceled by vertical lines. Iran, 1979.
Stamp in the author’s collection.
 history. At this time, mass-produced commodities were
mobilized in the drive to create a distinct identity for a social
upheaval that, although at first varied in its ideological
constituencies, eventually became “Islamized” through a
number of rhetorical tools and visual products (Dabashi and

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

Chelkowski 1999, 22–28).
One typical revolutionary act consisted in the destruc-
tion of the icons of state on both currency and stamps. For
example, one Iranian stamp shows the Apadana Palace at
Persepolis, overwritten by the words “Islamic Revolution,” and
Mohammad Reza Shah’s heraldic profile overprinted with
vertical lines that look like the window of a jail cell (Figure
2). Here, the desire to break from the past, both recent and
distant, is expressed by overwriting and pictorial cancellation.
Like graffiti sprayed on walls and statues torn down in the
streets, the stamp captures the immediacy of the Revolution
through its discursive oppositions and visual annihilations.
Such fervor in the field of philately is not entirely anath-
ema. Other countries in the midst of regime change have

Christiane Gruber
used similar techniques of overprinting to exhaust supplies of
old stamps (Chelkowski 1987, 556; Siebertz 2005). Like paper
money, stamps comprise a form of mass media and therefore
provide highly accessible visual statements about identity
through an apparatus of state: that is, the postal service
(Dabashi and Chelkowski 1999, 193–211). With the erasure
of Pahlavi and pre-Islamic iconographies at the height of the
Revolution came a philatelic void, which was quickly filled
with a variety of new icons, including images of Ayatollah
Khomeini, martyrs of the Revolution, important Shi’i figures,
and, last but not least, the Prophet Muhammad.

Volume 12
Iranian images of Muhammad exited the more restricted

Issue 3
confines of book production after 1979. Produced as stamps,
they entered the public sphere as overt declarations of Mus-
lim identity befitting the newly emergent visual regime of the
Islamic Republic. They circulated in the public domain during
this tense “season of demand” (Starrett 1995, 54), at which
time the consumption of goods signaled the explicit staking
of an Islamic political stance.
265 Issued on the heels of the Revolution and replacing
Persian-Pahlavi iconographies, an innovative stamp dated
1980 shows a radiant Muhammad, silhouetted in white, as
he embarks on his emigration (hijra) from Mecca to Medina
(Figure 3). Mecca is symbolized by the Ka’ba in the lower left
corner, while Medina is recognizable in the background due
to the green dome topping the Prophet’s mosque. Muham-
mad is centrally placed between the two localities, bathed
Material Religion

in rays that fan out as from the sun at daybreak. The stamp
commemorates the establishment of a new Islamic calendar
Article

system based on Muhammad’s emigration. More significantly,

 FIG 3
Three-rial stamp depicting a radiant
Muhammad standing between Mecca
and Medina, issued to commemorate
the Prophet’s hijra. Iran, 1980. Stamp
in the author’s collection.

it also celebrates the ideal Muslim community (umma) that

the Prophet established in Medina after his hijra from Mecca.
Within this stamp, Muhammad’s umma serves as an emblem-
atic foil for the new Islamic Republic, itself conceived as an
ideal Muslim community witnessing the dawn of a new day
thanks to prophetic guidance and enlightenment.
In the stamp, prophetic iconography is rendered through
the metaphor of light rather than mimesis or synecdoche. The
latter method of physical representation was used in a 1984
stamp that depicts Muhammad’s arms wielding an axe and
breaking the idols at the Ka’ba during the Muslim conquest
of Mecca in the eighth year of the hijra (Figure 4). The later
stamp partially depicts the Prophet’s body while simulta-
neously commemorating a pivotal event in early Islamic
history: the destruction of polytheistic beliefs and practices
and the reconsecration of the Ka’ba to a single God. Like the
hijra stamp, it bears contemporary connotations, in this case
the abrogation of an old, secular system of rule (the Pahlavi
monarchy) in favour of a new, religiously guided government
(the Islamic Republic). In a manner similar to the toppling
of “pagan” statues of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi during
the Revolution, the arm of the Prophet offers an allegorical
266 channel for the emerging umma to dismantle the pagan
past through the breaking of its idols. It also provides a visual
mechanism to reconstitute the body politic under the exem-
plary guidance of Islam and its Messenger.
These two revolutionary stamps of the Prophet Muham-
mad offer a new set of religious icons deployed in the public
domain, in effect signaling the supersession of both the
pre-Islamic and Pahlavi pasts. They also display what Belk
has called the “ritual substratum of consumer behaviour,” in
which the selling and buying of commodities can exhibit
certain aspects of the sacred, in the process being invested
FIG 4
Five-rial stamp commemorating
the conquest of Mecca and the
destruction of the pagan idols at
the Ka‘ba. Iran, 1984. Stamp in the
author’s collection.

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

with devotional meaning or even triggering religious tran-
scendence (Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry 1989, 2). Stamps
bearing representations of Muhammad pictorially concretize
the sacred via commodification and objectification. Through

Christiane Gruber
epistolary exchange and connectedness, they also unite cul-
tural interlocutors into the “shared flow” of dialogue, thereby
creating like-minded communities (Turner 1977, 51–52).
Everyday acts such as the sending and receiving of mail thus
build lateral connections while at the same time reinforcing
top-down efforts to promote religio-political consensus across
a broad consumer base. In this and other cases, state ideology
intersects with popular devotion through prosaic acts, the lat-
ter undertaken within—yet, depending on the buyer’s private
inclinations, also independent from—the regime’s agenda.
Although the stamp in Figure 3 is novel in its depiction of

Volume 12
Muhammad, the conceptualizing of the Prophet as radiant

Issue 3
flux is not at all new. On the contrary, the idea that Muham-
mad existed as incarnated light finds its genesis in the Qur’an,
which mentions a light (nur) and a book (kitab) sent to the
people in order to lead them out of darkness (5:15 and 33:46).
From the revelation of the Qur’an onward—whether in the
Hadith, prophetic biographies, world histories, eulogistic
poems or Persian paintings—Muhammad is repeatedly
267 likened to the sun’s glowing radiance. The “light of Muham-
mad” (nur Muhammad) is described as engendering all of
creation from beginning to end; it is also a palpable sign of
the Prophet’s emanation from the sacred domain of God
(Rubin 1975). Its transcendence of time and place, along with
physical matter itself, endows Muhammad with a transub-
stantial quality, itself an attribute frequently associated with
saints and holy figures. As a result, light metaphors found in
Material Religion

Persian pictorial arts provide a potent visual argument for the

Prophet’s ontological link to the divine, especially as devel-
Article
 FIG 5
A radiant Ayatollah Khomeini
stands on the map of Iran, while an
inscription on the lower horizontal
proclaims that “The Truth Has
Arrived” (Qur’an 17:81). Tehran, 1980.
University of Chicago Library Special
Collections, poster 43.

oped within Iranian spiritual philosophy (Corbin 1994; Gruber

2009, 247–252).
Such claims buttressed the sacrality of the prophetic
corpus for Iranian Muslim devotees, especially those with the
more mystical proclivity to imagine Muhammad as primordial
light. In addition, they also fortified a number of political and
religious concepts essential to the religio-political platform of
the Islamic Republic. At the apex of the regime’s ideological
structure stand the immaculateness and indisputability of
268 spiritually inspired leaders contributing to Iran’s vilayat-i faqih
(Guardianship of the Jurists), an Islamic form of governance
based on the principle of divinely decreed custodianship
(Khomeini 1978; 1981). Political power in this “cleriastical”
system resides with expert jurisconsults, whose mandate
encompasses the preservation of the primacy of Islam along
with the implementation of its highest moral values in the
domain of everyday life. As Khomeini noted in this respect, it
is God, via his chosen Messenger, who “sent laws that astound
us with their magnitude,” and such laws must be instituted
 through “laws, practices, and norms for the affairs of society
and government” (Khomeini 1981, 29–30).
Under the vilayat-i faqih, ultimate authority is vested in
Iran’s supreme religious leader. Such authority was granted to
Ayatollah Khomeini, and it was buttressed by discourses that

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

portrayed the imam as essentially combining divine light and
prophetic sinlessness with political infallibility (Fischer 1980,
26). Mass-produced commodities similarly conveyed this
religio-political synthesis, praising the imam’s providential—
almost messianic—return, consecrated by the granting of
God’s divine light (Figure 5). With the added Qur’anic caption
declaring that “The Truth has arrived” (Ja’a al-haqq),1 posters of
the early revolutionary period do not shy away from equating
the ayatollah with absolute truth or true reality (al-haqq), itself
one of the many names of God (al-asma’ al-husna) as well as
a descriptor of the religion of Islam as an absolute, divinely
revealed reality that must not, and cannot, be challenged
(Hooglund and Royce 1985, 104). In the poster in Figure 5,
a textual legend introduces into the image’s discursive field

Christiane Gruber
what Bourdieu calls a “surplus of meaning which gives it its
illocutionary force” (Bourdieu 1991, 109). Indeed, the caption
does not constitute merely a descriptive or constative state-
ment; culled from the holy text, it is instead the declaration of
a decisive and ultimate moment of truth.
Qur’anic fiat aside, at this time Khomeini’s ascendancy to
power was also a fait accompli. Postrevolutionary religious
commodities such as the poster in Figure 7 are the products of
state or state-friendly industries, whose target demographic
included consumers partisan to pro-regime precepts as well
as dispassionate individuals who might benefit from some

Volume 12
nudging in the right direction. By heralding Muhammad’s

Issue 3
umma as righteous in the here and now, and by analogizing
Khomeini’s theocratic mandate to Muhammad’s prophetic
call, these products enable an association between the Mes-
senger of Islam and a similarly lambent Ayatollah Khomeini
as spiritual guides and political leaders. These visual products
therefore rely on carefully “coded” or “inculcated” content (Hall
1993), which, per Pierre Bourdieu, is most accessible to those
269 who possess a “mastery of a refined code, of successive codes,
and of the code of these codes” (Bourdieu 1993, 120). From
miniature stamps to large-scale posters, these encoded com-
modities expand prophetic paradigms, figuratively extending
Muhammad’s revered presence into the political and civic life
of postrevolutionary Iran.

Bearing witness
Material Religion

Representations of Muhammad and other holy figures

central to the Shi’i faith fulfill important religious and social
Article

needs in contemporary Iran. They can visually stimulate

 FIG 6
The Prophet Muhammad standing in
a hilly landscape while holding the
Qur’an and pointing his right index
finger toward the shahada inscribed
above his turban. Postcard purchased
by the author in Tehran, 2000.

FIG 7
Sani‘ al-Mulk, painting of the Prophet
Muhammad kneeling on a carpet,
included in a Qajar verbal icon
(shama’ilnama). Iran, ca. 1842. Islamic
Period Museum, Tehran, No. 4882.

270
 personal devotions within shrines and ceremonial settings
or bolster interpersonal exchanges in more circumscribed
environments. Traversing public and private domains,
as well as sacred and secular milieus, mass-produced
images of Muhammad remain rather standardized in their

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

iconographies. This pictorial uniformity suggests that the
divide between the fine or high arts, “middle-brow” artworks,
and popular commodities cannot be upheld in the case of
Iranian religious representations, which span the gamut
from one-of-a-kind canvas paintings to serially produced
sets of stickers (Bourdieu 1993; Venbrux and Rosi 2004). Just
as significantly, these migratory images of Muhammad also
indicate that the field of the sacred is not always marked by
a tightly regulated “set-apart” quality (Evans 2003). On the
contrary, the sacred permeates all aspects of spiritual life
through symbolic goods and quotidian exchanges, whether
these take place in a religiously demarcated zone or in the
living room of a private home.
Before the Danish cartoon controversy of 2005–6, I

Christiane Gruber
recorded postcards of the Prophet Muhammad that were
offered for sale in shops and supermarkets in central Tehran
(e.g. Puin 2008, vol. 2, 523–548). I bought several that were
displayed next to fruits and vegetables, while Iranian col-
leagues and friends similarly picked up these items while
running their daily errands. Some of these images were sent
onward by regular mail while others were framed and hung
on the walls of houses, where at times they were rubbed and
kissed in a pious and physically enacted form of daily saluta-
tions to the Prophet. The oral salutations usually involved a
repetition of prayers and salams (greetings), along with the

Volume 12
occasional supplication or thanks-giving.

Issue 3
In these popular prints, Muhammad is often shown as
an inspired prophet: he is bearded, cloaked, poised, mature,
beautiful and radiant. He stands firm and upright, looking
intently toward the sky, which is perforated by the light
of God’s revelations. Often, he holds a copy of the Qur’an,
which is identified as “Qur’an-i Majid” (The Glorious Qur’an),
brimming with the sparks of the divine logos (Figure 6).
271 Muhammad is also depicted with a flaming halo encircling his
visage and with Mecca visible in the background as he points
his index finger upward toward the sky. At the top of many
postcards appears the shahada (credal dictum), that “There is
no god but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger,” inscribed
as a curved epigraphic band above the Prophet’s head. As the
foundational pillar of Islam, the witnessing of the faith is of
paramount declarative value for its believing viewers, who are
Material Religion

confronted by its assertion via both oral-textual and figural

modes.
Article
 FIG 8
Figural wall hangings depicting,
from left to right, the Prophet
Muhammad, Imam Husayn, and
Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei,
included in a public fountain
(saqqakhana) decorated for ‘Ashura
commemorations. Vali Asr Street,
Tehran, 2010. Photograph courtesy of
Nasser Palangi.

The iconographic details in Figure 8 are neither haphazard

nor without meaning. Rather, as a collective whole they aim to
depict Muhammad as an authoritative leader, an inspired and
irradiant prophet, even a kind of theistic embodiment of holy
scripture. They both depend on and diverge from antecedent
images of Muhammad as found in Persian artistic traditions.
Earlier iconic, and thus non-narrative, paintings of Muham-
mad from the Qajar period share some similarities, depicting
the Prophet as beautifully bearded and cloaked (Figure 7).
However, in such depictions he is typically kneeling or sitting
cross-legged, not standing upright. In Qajar painterly tradi-
tions, moreover, Muhammad does not hold the Qur’an as a
kind of authorial emblem; he does not point upward with
his index finger; and he does not appear against background
landscapes (which in the postcards function as markers of
prophetic geography). Thus, although contemporary Iranian
postcards do follow on the heels of seven centuries of pro-
phetic imagery, they clearly include newly formulated features
and themes diverging from earlier Persian pictorial practices.
In a noticeable twist on tradition, modern images of
Muhammad not infrequently draw inspiration from European
modes of representing holy figures and saints. Medieval
Christian representations of Jesus—available to Iranian artists
through a variety of introductory art history textbooks trans-
272 lated into Persian during the past two decades2—can shed
some light on the issue. For example, a number of textbooks
illustrate Byzantine and Coptic icons depicting Christ with a
golden halo as he holds a jewel-encrusted Bible while making
a gesture with his right hand. Often, both Christ and Muham-
mad gesture with their right hands, the symbolism of the
right-hand side (Latin, dexter; Persian, rast) closely connected
with notions of purity and righteousness in both Christian
and Islamic traditions. While Christ typically makes a rhetor-
ical gesture of address, commanding the viewer’s attention,
Muhammad points his finger up toward the
 shahada. In Islamic thought, the index finger is called the
“finger of witnessing” (shahada) as well as the tahlil, the
declaration that there is only one God (Steingass 2010, 114,
“shahadat”; Eberhard and Boratav 1953, 350–351). In the
Persian postcard illustrated in Figure 6, Muhammad’s pointing

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

of the index finger is thus eminently suitable to the declara-
tion of the monotheistic creed inscribed above the Prophet,
who himself pictorially incorporates the shahada’s last clause,
“Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”
In both Christian and Islamic artistic traditions, Jesus
and Muhammad directly address the believing viewers,
inviting them to bear witness to God’s singularity through
their unmatched propinquity to the divine. Reading such
gestures within their cultural contexts and through cross-cul-
tural framings allows for an exploration of the meanings of
pictured signs in Islamic artistic traditions in a manner similar
to Michael Baxandall’s work on the symbolic meanings of
gestures found in Renaissance paintings (Baxandall 1972). By
adopting an approach that scrutinizes the culturally encoded

Christiane Gruber
rhetoric of gestures, one possible reading of the Persian post-
card can be proposed: Muhammad is addressing his audience
through sign language (and not through an exchange of
gazes), and this kind of gestural engagement is meant to help
the pious viewer reaffirm his or her faith through a visual-
spiritual encounter with the shahada, itself exteriorized by
written word, gestured symbol and embodied prophethood.
Pocket-sized and portable, postcards of the Prophet are
easily purchased and placed on a shelf, mantle or table top in
a private home, or given to friends as gifts that might con-
fer special blessings to their owners and viewers. Religious

Volume 12
commodities such as these—from models of the Ka’ba given

Issue 3
to family members after an individual’s completion of the
hajj, to Christmas cards depicting the infant Christ—benefit
from high circulation in the weeks surrounding holy days. For
these reasons, they also play a function in ritual behaviors and
settings by taking part in milieus designed to fulfil a conse-
cration function (Bourdieu 1991, 121). Within Iranian Islamic
cultural contexts, postcards of the Prophet and other figural
273 representations of holy people cater to personal needs and
religious rites for individuals who crisscross the mundane and
sacred spheres of everyday life.
Postcards and posters of the Prophet have appeared in a
host of imamzadas, where they have served as visual focaliz-
ers for private devotion (at least until 2008, after which their
presence tends to diminish). Beyond their inclusion in shrines,
mass-produced images of Muhammad also partake in Iranian
Material Religion

‘Ashura ceremonies, which commemorate the martyrdom

of Imam Husayn and the death of his companions at the
Article

Battle of Karbala in 680 CE. On this tenth day of the month of

 FIG 9
Carpet depicting the panj tan, or five
members of the prophetic household:
Muhammad, with Hasan and Husayn
sitting on his lap, ‘Ali and Fatima
kneeling beside him, and the Angel
Gabriel standing in the background.
Qaysariyya Bazaar, Isfahan, 2009.
Photograph courtesy of Nasser
Palangi.

Muharram, Iranians memorialize a pivotal moment in Shi’i

sacred history by reciting tales and staging passion plays of
the battle, listening to edifying sermons, praying and eating
in communal settings, participating in ceremonial proces-
sions in the streets, and visiting each other’s homes. From one
place to the next—from gathering halls to public streets and
beyond—figural representations of the Prophet Muhammad,
274 the virtuous heroes of Karbala, and the supreme leader(s) of
the Islamic Republic come together to formulate a panoply of
narratives extolling the redemptive power of self-sacrifice for
the Shi’i community as a whole (Ayoub 1978).
More than at any other time, during ‘Ashura festivities
depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are removed from the
market and embedded into a cultic complex. Within their new
religious milieus, they are not deployed in a haphazard or
unconsidered manner. Rather, such images frequently appear
in the presence of complementary representations and
inscriptions that allow interrelated storylines about religion
and state to unfold. For example, one typical pictorial assem-
 blage in halls used for ‘Ashura gatherings (majalis) includes
wall hangings of the Prophet Muhammad and Imam Husayn,
as well as posters of other battle heroes along with portraits
of Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei (Figure 8). The woven
representation of Muhammad on the far left obviously follows

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

the pattern of depicting the Prophet holding the Qur’an
with his index finger pointed toward the sky, a motif also
found in mass-produced posters and postcards. Other textile
representations of Muhammad displayed in audience halls
during ‘Ashura gatherings also show the Prophet kneeling,
with his grandsons Hasan and Husayn on his lap, his son-in-
law ‘Ali and daughter Fatima seated beside him, and the Angel
Gabriel standing in devotion behind these five core members
(panj tan) of the Prophet’s household (Figure 9). Like the wall
hanging of a single Muhammad, the carpet composition relies
on printed postcards of the ahl al-bayt (the Prophet’s house-
hold), which also appear as framed icons in shrines
(Khoshknabi 2000, 106–109, and 156).
Migrating between the graphic and textile arts, such

Christiane Gruber
prophetic products are serial as well as cross-medial. As a
visual totality, they help buttress Shi’i sectarian discourses and
postrevolutionary ideologies. During ‘Ashura festivities, Iranian
religious commemorations and tales deftly weave narratives
about the righteousness and infallibility of the ahl al-bayt and
their descendants, the imams. Muhammad’s prophetic aura
thus percolates through his family and his martyred progeny,
through the imamate, and onward to the supreme religious
leaders in a Shi’i Iranian context. In ‘Ashura oral narratives
and pictorial palimpsests, martyrs, leaders and heroes of the
past and present are not at all disassociated. To the contrary,

Volume 12
they symbolically conjoin and inhabit the same transhistori-

Issue 3
cal continuum, thereby collapsing time and space while also
catalyzing interlocked religious and nationalistic narratives
for Iranian citizens united in both celebration and mourning
(Pierre, Hutchinson, and Abdulrazak 2007).
The visual compendium achieved by figural hangings and
posters is not just a miscellany or mosaic work, but a grand—
even Olympian—gathering of saintly figures and godly men.
275 The portraits are brought together within ‘Ashura practices of
pictured oration, offering an abundance of connected scripts
and scenarios. In this regard, the telling of tales with images
is an old tradition in Iran: before and after the advent of Islam
the practice was used to activate popular folk belief (Mair
1998, 120). Persian practices of pictured storytelling grew
exponentially during the nineteenth century, at which time
large-scale canvas paintings (pardas) were deployed during
Material Religion

‘Ashura festivities to accompany the recitation of stories about

the Battle of Karbala. The growth in the genre was in no small
Article

part due to the official sponsorship of the Qajar court, itself

 keenly interested in promoting Shi’i rituals through a num-
ber of mechanisms, including the visual and performing arts
(Chelkowski 1989; Peterson 1981, 110–127; Sayf 1369/1990).
Practices of conveying religiously edifying tales through
images and orations have continued in Iran during the Pahlavi
and postrevolutionary periods—placed, depending on need
and circumstance, in the personal and/or political service of
the Shi’i faith.
In ‘Ashura picture-making practices, the Prophet Muham-
mad frequently does not appear in a single image but rather
as a companion to other depictions of Shi’i holy figures—
such as the panj tan or martyrs of Karbala—and Ayatollahs
Khomeini and Khamenei. Images of Muhammad are thus
enframed by motifs, images, texts and tales that reflect a
contemporary Iranian Shi’i worldview. No matter how “folk”
or “popular” they might appear, images of Muhammad are
overlaid with a range of solemn narratives about worldly
and otherworldly rulership. In general, this is quite typical of
an object’s liturgical condition: it emerges from top-down
constructs of authority and is deployed by institutions that are
invested with the power to control its manipulation (Bourdieu
1991, 115). To be sure, prophetic paraphernalia are not only
religious commodities; indeed, they are the stylized stuff of
politics, too.
Images of Muhammad are used for position-staking by
both producers and consumers, who themselves operate
within a system of subjective representations and social
relations facilitated by the use of material objects. The cere-
monial standards carried during Muharram street processions
(dastas) brandish this kind of surplus of meanings within a
ritual context (Chelkowski 1985). The typical metal stand-
ard—known as ‘alam, or “sign”—often includes incised figural
depictions of imams Husayn and ‘Ali as well as the Prophet
Muhammad (Calmard 1985; Newid 2006, 173–177, 274–276).
Despite recent directives aiming to curb veristic figural
imagery in ‘Ashura visual products, including large-scale
posters, lavishly decorated standards bearing representations
of holy figures and saints are often too expensive to replace
276 and so continue to be used in ‘Ashura parades. Beyond their
high cost, they also are prized for their inclusion of artistically
executed imagery and calligraphy.
Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad on ‘alams that
were carried in ‘Ashura processions during December 2010
vary but clearly fall within the compositional parameters of
print media. At times, Muhammad is represented holding a
bound copy of the Qur’an while he points his index finger to
the sky (Newid 2006, 173–177, Figures B7–9), as is frequently
the case in postcards. At others, he is shown holding an
unwound scroll bearing an inscription that invites pious devo-
FIG 10
Central finial of an ‘alam with a
composition depicting the Prophet
Muhammad standing on a hilltop
as he holds up an unwound scroll
inscribed with the proclamation:

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

“Say there is no god but God.” Tehran,
December 2010. Photograph by
Christiane Guber.

Christiane Gruber
tees to “Say that there is no god but God” (Figure 10), another
pattern found in postcards.3 In these types of standards, the

Volume 12
depiction of Muhammad adorns the ‘alam’s tall central finial.

Issue 3
Above and below him appear invocations that call out: “Oh
Muhammad, Oh Messenger of God.” Calligraphic cartouches
surround the tear-shaped composition; these include state-
ments that invoke Imam ‘Ali and Fatima by their given names
and respective epithets, “The Chosen One” (Murtaza) and “The
Radiant One” (Zahra).4 Yet again, a figural representation of
Muhammad is used to witness the unity of God and Muham-
277 mad’s prophetic calling, all the while inscribing a visual-tex-
tual shahada within a larger Shi’i signifying system, which is
activated by vocative inscriptions that echo the prayers and
songs uttered during ‘Ashura ceremonial processions.
The image of Muhammad holding the Qur’anic proc-
lamation of faith on a mountaintop recalls paintings and
prints of Moses standing atop Mount Sinai while displaying
one or two tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments.
Material Religion

Numerous European and American depictions of the sub-

ject—from Rembrandt’s oil painting of 1569 to the 1956 film
The Ten Commandments—have been available in Iran for
Article

the past half-century via art-historical survey texts, popular

 FIG 11
The Prophet Muhammad holding
the Qur’an, illustration by Jan Verhas
(1834–96) included in Louis Figuier’s
(1819–94) Vie des savants illustres
du moyen âge (Paris: Lacroix, 1867).
Image after Figuier 1867, 2.

prints, and imported Hollywood movies. As Wansbrough has

highlighted, it is not surprising to find a “Moses paradigm”
within Islamic prophetology, as the “historical portrait of the
Arabian prophet conforms to a pattern composed partly of
the Qur’anic data on prophethood, in character emphatically
Mosaic, and partly of motifs drawn from a narrative tradition
typically associated with men of God” (Wansbrough 1977, 78;
278 also see Wheeler 2009). The Moses pattern is followed here
once more—pictorially rather than rhetorically—in effect
driving home the argument that God’s divine logos is not a
spiritual call extended to Muhammad alone.
Moreover, the Qur’an is a divinely revealed code of
conduct governing a community of believers, much as the
Ten Commandments contains “goodly rules” that must be
obeyed.5
The theophanic Qur’anic sign is clearly in tune with the
Islamic Republic’s “goodly rules as entrenched in law. In
following a Mosaic model developed in non-Islamic artistic
sources, the ‘alam’s image of Muhammad provides an appo-
FIG 12
The Prophet Muhammad holding
the Qur’an, illustration and print
by Mustafa Tutunchiyan, Iran, ca.
1900–1950 CE. National Museum of
World Cultures, Amsterdam, Frederick

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

de Jong Collection, 7031-7033.
Photograph courtesy of Pooyan
Tamimi Arab.

Christiane Gruber
site setting to promote the Qur’an as a larger civic emblem of

Volume 12
justice and morality. It also reveals the clear influence of Euro-

Issue 3
pean iconography on the depiction of saints and holy figures
in modern Iranian visual culture (Mostafawy 2010a).
At the same time as the image of Muhammad on the
‘Ashura standard captures an artistic intersection between
religion and politics, it also engages in a process of icono-
graphic co-optation and orientalization. Several visual
elements—such as Muhammad’s fluttering cape and his
279 curly-toed sandals—evidently draw upon European artistic
precedents. Indeed, the Iranian image of the Prophet chiseled
into the ‘alam displays a strong resemblance to a depiction
of Muhammad executed by the Belgian painter Jan Verhas
(1834–1896) and included in Louis Figuier’s (1819–1894)
French-language Vie des savants illustres du moyen âge,
published in Paris in 1867 (Figure 11). Covering the eminent
learned men of the Middle Ages, Figuier’s text also includes
Material Religion

a chapter on “The State of Sciences in the Arab Nations from

the Capture of Alexandria to the Thirteenth Century.” The
Article

print image of Muhammad functions as a frontispiece to this

section, in which Figuier lauds the Prophet as “the first and
 principal founder of this memorable revolution [Islam]. He
also had great intellectual and moral qualities, which com-
prise true superiority. Moreover, he had a certain genius. This
man was Muhammad” (Figuier 1867, 2). Through both text
and image, Verhas and Figuier offer unadulterated praise of
the Prophet.
This positive, Moses-like European rendition of Muham-
mad appears to have directly influenced Iranian prophetic
iconography during the second Pahlavi period (1941–79), if
not prior.6 For example, one printed version of the image was
made during the first half of the twentieth century (Figure 12).
Signed by Mustafa Tutunchiyan, a designer and printer who
signed his name and claimed image and printing copyright,
this Iranian composition depicts the Prophet standing (with
his curly-toed sandals) on a mountain top while displaying an
unwound scroll proclaiming God’s all-encompassing unity.
In this creative twist on Verhas’ original image, however,
Tutunchiyan has filled Muhammad’s robe with micro-scripted
verses from the Qur’an, thus suggesting that the Prophet is
fully enwrapped or encloaked in holy scripture.
While serving to bear witness to the faith and its ultimate
rewards, this and other Iranian images of the Prophet engage
in a modification of global art forms through the mass media.
As a result, they provide individuals in distinct groups with
symbols with which to communicate and to build narratives of
religio-cultural cohesion (Papastergiadis 2004, 331). In addition,
they invite their beholders to proclaim the shahada, thereby
beckoning the translation of visual expressions into oral ones.
Depictions of the Prophet such as these are excerpted
from their European milieus of production, their interpreta-
tions altered by contemporary Iranian artists and viewers.
When such images leave their original cultural zones they
often undergo a process of transvaluation (Appadurai 1986,
23). Translocated and translated, European representations
of Muhammad undergo a similar transition when they are
adopted and adapted in Iran, where visual signs are carried
into new semiotic territory.
This new terrain involves the visual lauding of the Prophet
280 (and imams) within the ‘Ashura complex, itself a ritual expe-
rience that blends worship and mourning with carnival and
merriment. Beyond expressions of grief and sorrow, music,
singing, and parading construct a dynamic “play-sphere”
(Huizinga 1949, 164), in which fun and joy carve out their own
cheerful domain. For instance, young participants in ‘Ashura
festivities happily beat on drums—and often on their own
breasts, in the ritual practice of chest-beating (sina-zadan)—
transforming their physical bodies into locomotive boom
boxes that fill up urban space. Oftentimes youthful partic-
ipants bust a rhyme and jam away, with colorful feathers,
FIG 13
Postcard of the Young Prophet
Muhammad. Purchased by the author
in a Tehran supermarket, 2000.

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

Christiane Gruber
Volume 12
Issue 3
banners, and textiles dancing in the wind. These practices of
mourning and play coalesce into a “carnivalistic misalliance”
that unites high and low, sacred and secular, sadness and
laughter (Bakhtin 1998, 251). Within such ritual pageants,
images of the Prophet Muhammad raising his hand in the air
thus become rather ambivalent. While these types of depic-
tions may point to the seriousness of Qur’anic revelation, they
also may refer to the clanging of music, especially if prefaced
281
by drummers merrily thumping away on both foot and drum.
As Johan Huizinga elucidates, “dancing is a plastic creation
like sculpture, but for a moment only” (Huizinga 1949, 166).
In ‘Ashura practices, performers likewise remodel their bodies
into plastic art forms that mimic prophetic representation,
in the process catalysing an energetic “pathos of shifts and
changes” (Bakhtin 1998, 252).
Material Religion

Images of the Prophet have been produced en masse

in Iran since the 1979 Revolution. Not infrequently, they
adopt and adapt external prototypes, ranging from medieval
Article

European Christian icons to modern European print images.

 These modern Iranian depictions of Muhammad should not
be seen merely as co-optations of “Western” paradigms that
contaminate Islamic artistic practices, which many scholars
have deemed laudably creative only when they incorpo-
rate Eastern—rather than Western—forms. As Barry Flood
has astutely observed, traditionally, scholars have deemed
Islamic art masterful when interacting with Chinese forms in
the fourteenth century, but degenerate when turned into a
Euro-Islamic hybrid in the contemporary period. He rightly
criticizes this scholarly bias, noting that “while engagement
with a non-indigenous Asian tradition is a sign of artistic
inventiveness, the faltering reception of European artistic
conventions is a sign of aesthetic decadence characterized by
a loss of artistic autonomy” (Flood 2007, 36). Indeed, to reject
such pictorial interactions as derivative and thus debased, or
unworthy of academic attention due to their commodity sta-
tus, is to dismiss the vibrancy and ingenuity of visual culture
in the contemporary Iranian world at a time when its artistic
entrepreneurs turn to experimenting with global artistic forms
to express local identities and values.

Many a Young Muhammad

As noted previously, a number of multi-media depictions
show Muhammad as an embodied witness to the true faith,
as a heroic figure heralding the return of Islam as a system
of governance, and as an emblem of authority girded by
Shi’i Iranian political and religious discourses. In such serially
produced images, Muhammad is often an enlightened
adult, mature and bearded, upon whom revelations have
already been conferred and whose prophetic career is clearly
confirmed. He also is depicted via palpably Christological
and Orientalist paradigms, rather than within the pictorial
traditions of Persian painting—an engagement that, following
Flood, must be seen as a sign of lively artistic exchange.
This phenomenon of transculturally tailored prophetic
products also holds true for yet another corpus of images
of Muhammad, in which he is represented as a teenage boy
(Figure 13). Highly popular in Iran especially during and after
282 the Iran−Iraq War, postcards, posters, stickers, and wall hang-
ings of the young Muhammad were omnipresent from the
1990s until ca. 2008. Even Ayatollah Khomeini owned a copy
of this image, which he deemed permissible since it depicts
Muhammad prior to his prophetic appointment—a position
echoed in the 2015 Iranian film Muhammad, Messenger of God
(Muhammad, Rasul Allah) directed by Majid Majidi. For many
years these representations could be purchased in supermar-
kets and stores, given as gifts to friends and family, hung on
the walls of private homes, made into pious icons in public
shrines, and pasted to the relic cases of the young “martyrs”
 (shuhada’) of the Iran−Iraq War. From quotidian interactions to
funerary devotions, images of the young Muhammad fulfilled
a variety of interpersonal and religious needs in Iran during
the aftermath of one of the most brutal wars of the twentieth
century.

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

Much like a number of representations of the adult
Prophet, Iranian images of a young Muhammad were largely
inspired by yet another outside pictorial source, in this instance
a 1905–1906 photograph of a young boy taken by the Euro-
pean photographers Rudolf Lehnert and Ernst Landrock while
they were based in Tunisia between 1904 and 1914. During
the 1920s, Lenhnert and Landrock’s photograph was circulated
in black-and-white and colour variants inscribed with the
caption “Young Arab” (Jeune Arabe) or “Mohamed,” both typical
Orientalist descriptors for Arab boys. Forgotten for some
decades, their photographic oeuvre was rediscovered in the
1980s, at which time it became the subject of several exhibi-
tions and publications.7 Via these public projects the European
photograph of a “Young Arab” or “Mohamed” became known

Christiane Gruber
to Iranian artists and producers of devotional images, who
subsequently interpreted the image of the Jeune Arabe as the
Prophet Muhammad in his adolescent years.
Whether this was simply an innocent misreading of the
original picture or whether the reinterpretation was purpose-
ful remains unknown. What remains clear, however, is that
images of the young Muhammad have dwindled considerably
in Iran today. On the one hand, the general avoidance of pub-
lic images of the young Muhammad seems to have emerged
in part from discourses accentuating the putatively aniconic
nature of Islamic artistic expression, which emerged during

Volume 12
and after the Danish cartoon controversy of 2005–2006. On

Issue 3
the other hand, efforts to curtail this image also occurred
after its European source had become more widely known
within Iran, due to a Persian translation of Centlivres’s 2006
study tracking its non-Islamic origins.8 Thus, official attempts
to prevent the use of images of the young Muhammad in
popular religious practices combined with a growing public
awareness of the image’s iconographic reliance on an external
283 source resulted in their incrementally disappearing from view.
As George Kubler reminds us, to discard something (including
representations of the Prophet) is far from a simple decision;
instead, it marks ritual obsolescence as well as the “terminal
moment in the gradual formation of a state of mind” (Kubler
1962, 77, 79).
Many questions about the young Muhammad images
endure. From ca. 1990 to 2008, to which Iranian “animus” do
Material Religion

these images speak? Which narratives did they convey to

consumers and believers alike? What were their uses once
Article

dislodged from the marketplace and embedded within

 domestic, ritual or funerary contexts? Aside from their known
European iconographic roots, what were their new routes
through Islamic space and meaning? And, finally, did this flow
of religious pictures effectively create a sense of consensus
and community for some segments of Iranian society?
In attempting to answer these questions several factors
must be considered. First are the iconographic and tonal var-
iations of the compositions, which emphasize the Prophet’s
youth and purity, or his cosmic origins and stature. Second are
the added Persian inscriptions, which construct stories around
Muhammad’s youthful portrait. And third are the places in
which these postcards are located, the visual and textual
materials that accompany them, how they are approached
and used, and the ways in which they fit into a larger Shi’i
worldview, especially one concerned with family and togeth-
erness as well as the redemptive value of suffering and death.
Through their iconographic language, textual expansions,
contextual framings, and devotional uses, these images’
primary and contingent meanings within the social and reli-
gious life of contemporary Iran can be unravelled, at least to
a certain extent. Perhaps most significant in this regard is the
detectable drive to elevate deceased boys into sinless martyrs
through their and Muhammad’s intertwined infancy stories.
The Iranian postcard of the “Young Muhammad” alters the
original photographic image in a number of significant ways.
Besides slight manipulations of its iconography, a significant
alteration has occurred at the textual level. The Orientalist
“Jeune Arabe” caption has been removed to make way for a
detailed inscription in Persian, running over the course of two
lines at the bottom of the Iranian postcard. The text not only
identifies the portrait as that of the Prophet Muhammad, it
also adds a number of salient details that help expand and
delimit the depiction’s symbolic and narrative meanings.
Just as in the original postcard, the captions in the Iranian
composition function as “voice-overs” that quicken the visual
messages (Barthes 1978, 25–26; and Bourriaud 2005), in this
instance explicating the circumstances under which this
“blessed icon” of Muhammad came into existence. The inscrip-
284 tion reads:

The securest guardian of truth and righteousness, the glorious

and eminent leader of Muslims, his Holiness Muhammad, son
of ‘Abdallah, may God bless him and his family.

A blessed icon of his Holiness at the age of eighteen, depicted by a

Christian monk when he [Muhammad] was in the company of his
noble uncle while on a trading caravan from Mecca to Syria. The
original copy of [this icon] is now held in the “Museum of Rum.”
 In these lines, Muhammad is described as a holiness or
majesty (hazrat), a guardian (pasban), and a leader (pishva) of
the Muslim community, while the blessings of God are called
upon him and his family. These textual details certainly abide
by Islamic traditions of naming and praising the Prophet.

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

However, such honorifics and prayers gain a further semiotic
charge within their Iranian setting of the 1990s, in which the
nation’s foremost leaders were likewise the guardians of the
faith, with the supreme religious leader at the helm. That the
blessings are upon Muhammad and his family also suggests
a Shi’i milieu, in which the Prophet’s household—the ahl al-
bayt—and their descendants form the focal point of religious
doctrine and devotional practice. Last but not least, the image
of Muhammad is not merely a portrait, painting or depiction;
rather, it is a self-proclaimed “blessed icon” (shama’il-i
mubarak), a term that clearly points to its elevated status and
thus its potential use in pious practices.
The second part of the Persian inscription provides his-
torical and contextual information. It notes that the original

Christiane Gruber
“icon” of the eighteen-year-old Muhammad was created by a
Christian monk (rahib-i nasrani) while the Prophet took part
in a caravan mission to Syria with his uncle, Abu Talib. This
original “icon,” we are told, is now held in the “Museum of Rum”
(muza-yi Rum), which might mean a “museum in Rome” or a
“museum in Europe,” the term Rum signifying the culturally
“Roman” domains of continental Europe. Despite subse-
quent research proving the image’s reliance on an Orientalist
photograph of 1905–1906, the Persian caption claims that the
work is a printed copy of a seventh-century Byzantine icon
executed by a Christian monk while the young Prophet was

Volume 12
standing before him. The icon is thus truly “blessed” in that it is

Issue 3
believed to have been made by a man of God in honor of the
last prophet of God during their overlapping lifetimes.
The icon also involves a recognition and acceptance of
the Islamic faith, as it refers to a widely known story about
Muhammad that both foretold and legitimized his prophetic
career as an adult. The episode, recounted by the Prophet’s
biographer Ibn Ishaq, occurred when Muhammad was an
285 adolescent. When he arrived with his uncle, Abu Talib, to
Busra, Syria, he encountered a monk named Bahira, who
lived in a monastery and was well versed in the Torah and
the Bible. When Muhammad approached Bahira, the monk
noticed a mark (athar) on the boy’s body, recognizing it as the
seal of prophecy (khatam al-nubuwwa) as it was described
in his “sacred books.” Upon witnessing this mark—and other
natural phenomena aiming to protect the Prophet, including
Material Religion

a hovering cloud and a tree bending its branches to provide

shade—Bahira was able to decipher the signs of Muhammad’s
Article
 apostleship years before the Prophet began to receive revela-
tions from God.
Upon witnessing Muhammad’s predestined vocation, and
worried about his wellbeing, Bahira then warns Abu Talib to
“guard him carefully against the Jews because they will want
to do evil to him” (Ibn Ishaq 1985, 81). This was not the first
time that Muhammad’s prophecy was recognized by the “peo-
ple of the book” during his youth. Years earlier, when he was a
young boy living with his milk nurse, Halima, Abyssian Chris-
tians also examined him and, upon recognizing his prophetic
marks, petitioned Halima: “Let us take this boy, and bring him
to our kind and our country; for he will have a great future. We
know all about him” (Ibn Ishaq 1985, 73). Jointly, these infancy
stories aim to establish that Muhammad’s prophetic call was
physically discernible on his bodily self and that he was fore-
told and accepted by Christian communities from Levantine
to African lands.
Cued to such symbolic motifs as elaborated in Islamic liter-
ary traditions, the Iranian postcard of the adolescent Muham-
mad depicts him pure and elect already in his formative
years. Iranian artists and publishers indeed appear to “have
chosen a model of the Prophet Muhammad representing an
ideal of youth, beauty, and harmony” (Centlivres and Cen-
tlivres-Demont 2006, 19). However, the story of these pictures
does not halt there. Tracking their routes and functions reveals
that much more is at stake with this image, which flour-
ished from the 1990s to 2008. During the aftermath of the
Iran−Iraq War, postcards, stickers, posters and wall hangings
of the young Muhammad could be purchased in stores and
markets as well as being found in hotels and private homes.
In domestic spheres, images were (and sometimes continue
to be) rubbed and kissed while individuals utter salutations
and blessings. These prophetic images also were used as
devotional icons within prayer practices undertaken within
imamzadas, including the Shrine of Zayd in the Tehran Bazaar.
Lastly, still today they can be found pasted on or placed in
relic cases dedicated to martyrs of the Iran−Iraq War.
Many of the young men who died in the war are buried
286 in the sprawling Bihisht-i Zahra (Paradise of Fatima) cemetery
in southern Tehran, which I visited in December 2010. There,
tombstones lay flat on the ground, while relic cases include
a number of personal objects recalling the martyrs’ lives. The
cases’ artefacts include photographs, letters, drawings, prayer
beads, vases with plastic flowers, and other paraphernalia
that aim to commemorate the deceased in what is essen-
tially a hearth reliquary. Other objects, especially landmine
shells, also transform these relic cases into a kind of “trench
art.” Beyond their visual and material qualities, these artfully
arranged projectiles and explosives carry the olfactory and
 auditory memories of war (Saunders 2002, 183). These war-
time objects thus are filled with sensual ambiguities, not the
least of which is the metamorphosis of grotesque debris into
aesthetic amalgams (Saunders 2002, 199–200).
The relic cases frequently include an Iranian flag, as well as

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

figural postcards and stickers that are both religious and polit-
ical in character. For example, at the top of one case, images of
the young Muhammad, Ayatollah Khomeini, and a boy martyr
create a pictorial collage in support of both religion and
state (Figures 14 and 15). Just like ‘Ashura wall hangings that
create a visual palimpsest of the Prophet Muhammad, Karbala
martyrs, and the Ayatollahs, these wartime memorials likewise
promote the salvific value of martyrdom according to a Shi’i
soteriological worldview that was both officially endorsed and
popularly embraced in postrevolutionary Iran.
Engaging a largely non-verbal form of communication,
the spatial arrangement of images in relic cases reveals
the power of images to express or trigger pious emotions
(Fletcher 1989). Among them, in December 2010 I witnessed

Christiane Gruber
visitors to these relic-tombs engage in silent contemplation
and mournful lamentation. On Fridays in particular, families
and friends came together in the cemetery in order to socialize

FIG 14
A relic case, Bihisht-i Zahra Cemetery,
southern Tehran. Photograph by
Christiane Gruber, 2010.

Volume 12
Issue 3

287
Material Religion
Article
 FIG 15
Detail of Figure 14 showing a postcard
of the young Prophet Muhammad
placed alongside images of Ayatollah
Khomeini and a boy martyr of
the Iran-Iraq War at the top of a
relics case located in the Bihisht-i
Zahra Cemetery, southern Tehran.
Photograph by Christiane Gruber,
2010.

over a picnic. They also washed and offered flowers to the

tombstones and vitrines. At times, visitants kissed and rubbed
images of the deceased and young Prophet, admitting that
they felt a sense of closeness and intimacy through these acts
of rapprochement towards the depicted objects of their affec-
tion. Through their physical-visual engagements, individuals
treated Muhammad as if a close companion or family mem-
ber. Within the all-encompassing, agonizing reality of death,
images of the young Prophet no doubt provided individuals
with a “comfort zone” of sorts.
Besides these image-based practices, the collation of
visuals demonstrates that ritualized interactions with images
are the products of change, not stasis—a change that enables
viewers to make certain symbolic links, in the process creating
and/or deciphering a particular set of messages (Morgan
1998, 50–58). In the relic cases, combining images of a young
Muhammad (provided with the Bahira narrative inscription),
Ayatollah Khomeini, and a boy martyr can forward several
culturally encoded transcripts. For instance, the viewer is
invited to draw a parallel between the young Prophet and the
boy martyr, by virtue of their placement, their ages, and their
compositional similarities. By visual juxtaposition, narratives
288
about purity and faith are begotten. For example, Muham-
mad’s prophetic marks (athar) are visible to the monk Bahira,
while the martyr’s relics (also athar) are plainly visible to cem-
etery visitors, especially family members and close friends. The
Prophet wears a white garment (ihram) symbolizing his purity
and belief, while the young martyr also is buried in a white
shroud (also ihram). The image of the young Prophet narrates
a story from his adolescence, while the boy martyr’s relic case
relates his own biography, albeit one cut dreadfully short.
Finally, Muhammad is God’s messenger and prophet while,
according to Ayatollah Khomeini, during the Iran−Iraq War the
 boy martyr was truly “our leader” (rahbar-i mast). Within this
sepulchral environment are buried many young Muhammads,
bearing the observable marks of purity, election and leader-
ship.
These images invite mourners to see within the boy

Prophetic Products: Muhammad in Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture

martyrs a reflection of the prophetic call, a mission that is
divinely decreed and that must be steadfastly pursued, even
unto death. The postcards of the young Muhammad are thus
not only about depicting the Prophet as a paragon of beauty
and purity. Much more significantly, they collapse a martyrial
course with the prophetic path, creating coming-of-age sto-
ries that are sanctified by belief and practice. Consequently,
these images must be seen as chronotopes—products of their
time and place (Clifford 1988, 236)—that served a bereaving
community to find meaning and comfort in the face of horrific
loss of life. As a visual narrative addressing its viewers’ anxie-
ties and hopes (Morgan 2005, 61), the Orientalist photograph
of a Jeune Arabe diverted into a portrait of the young Muham-
mad was therefore a function of desire and demand during

Christiane Gruber
the postwar years. However, its utility in mourning rituals
appears to have diminished with the passing of time, while its
lifespan also seems to have been cut short by cultural agents
attempting to envision Islam and its Prophet in a markedly
different way in the postcartoon era.

Symbolic goods
Objects give sociomaterial form to culture. Indeed, as Boris
Arvatov underlines, a “person’s cultural type is created by all
of his material surroundings, just as a society’s cultural style
is created by all of its material construction” (Arvatov and

Volume 12
Kiaer 1997, 120; emphasis original). Perhaps even more so

Issue 3
than objects, pictures and images reveal the ways in which
the representational mode creates structures and fields of
meaning for society, functioning as heuristic devices or aids to
learning about cultural practices and individual subjectivities.
As religious commodities, images of the Prophet Muhammad
within postrevolutionary Iran thus are diagnostic of a sphere
of social and religious consciousness, in which they act as
289 identity markers as well as visual devices used in prayer,
mourning, and even play.
Commodities such as these are thoroughly socialized
objects that circulate in regimes of value. Their production
is based on demand, and this demand reveals a desire for
something new and different—yet still familiar and valuable
according to inherited systems of knowledge. This twinning
of the old and new engenders a kind of “inventive behavior”
Material Religion

(Kubler 1962, 82), including, as in the case of contemporary

Iranian images of Muhammad, a recurrent turning to Euro-
Article

pean pictorial models. This inventive behavior also includes

 the insertion of new, politicized messages into older devo-
tional images, thus allowing the political and personal use of
images to exist side-by-side.
At times, such co-existence is smooth and seamless. At
others, however, images inhabit a zone of contention in which
official authorities attempt to curb popular image practices while
the pious themselves question (or even ignore) official sanctions.
As a result, these types of prophetic products cater to individ-
ual pietistic needs while concurrently serving to implement
consensus and cohesion among various social groups within the
commercial, carnivalesque, and funerary landscape of contem-
porary Iran. From the revolution until today, such images depict
the Prophet Muhammad as the highest denominator for a target
public, for whom he fulfilled, and continues to fulfil, a wide range
of doxic and devotional needs.

notes and references

1 6
Qur’an 17:81. The full verse reads: See the illustration by Jan Verhas
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has disappeared. Indeed, falsehood influence on Iranian visual materials,
had to disappear.” see the poster in Puin 2008, vol. 3, 904,
plate J-4 and the carpet in Puin 2008,
2
Most important among these is vol. 3, 976, Figure 41.
Anthony Janson’s History of Art,
7
published in multiple Persian editions For a detailed study of Lehnert and
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the “Young Arab” and its subsequent
3
In metal standards, sometimes the scroll’s Iranian versions, see Centlivres and
inscription is expanded to read:“Say‘There is Centlivres-Demont 2005, 2006. For a
no god but God’and you will attain brief analysis of one Iranian postcard,
salvation”(Newid 2006, 173, Figure B7). published prior to the discovery of its
4
European origins by Centlivres and
The invocations read “Ya ‘Ali al-Mur-
Centlivres-Demont, see Grabar and
taza” (Oh ‘Ali, The Chosen One) and
Natif 2003, 35; Figure 4; Mostafawy
“Ya Fatima al-Zahra” (Oh Fatima, 2010b.
The Radiant One). Other standards
8
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