Table of Contents

Preface Introduction I The Relation between Islamic Art and Islamic Spirituality Art and the Sacred II The Spiritual Message of Islamic Calligraphy III The Principle of Unity and the Sacred Architecture of Islam IV Sacred Art in Persian Culture Literature V Metaphysics, Logic and Poetry in the Orient VI The Flight of Birds to Union: Meditations upon 'Attar's Mantiq al-tayr VII Rumi, Supreme Poet and Sage VIII Rumi and the Sufi Tradition Music IX Islam and Music X The Influence of Sufism on Traditional Persian Music The Plastic Arts XI The World of Imagination and the Concept of Space in the Persian Miniature XII The Significance of the Void in Islamic Art Postscript The Spiritual Message of Islamic Art List of monochrome plates List of coloured plates Index

About the Author

Seyyed Hossein Nasr is currently University Professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University. Born in Tehran and educated at MIT and Harvard, he was previously professor of the history of science and philosophy at Tehran University and first president of the Iranian Academy of Philosophy. He has taught throughout America, Europe, the Middle East, Pakistan, India, Japan, and Australia. He is the author of over twenty books in English. Among them are Sufi Essays, Islamic Life and Thought, Knowledge and the Sacred, and Three Muslim Sages.