Formed by a staggering four million beads embroidered by hand to a textile substrate, this composition is the result of a collaboration between the Egyptian born British artist Ahmed Moustafa, the Ismailia Helping Society, and twenty Ismaili women in Chitravad Gujarat, India. It is based upon a calligraphic painting produced by Moustafa in 1984, Nocturnal Journey, which commemorates the text of the first ayah of the Surah al-Isrāʾ (Q 17, The Night Journey). The verse describes a journey that Allah brought about where His servant, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), travelled by night from the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca to the Masjid al-Aqsa, understood to be Jerusalem, in order to reveal sacred knowledge (ayat) to him.
It is a verse that from the earliest Islamic centuries has been embellished with storytelling and myth, in part linked with the first eighteen verses of Surah al-Najm (Q 53, The Star) that describe an encounter between the Prophet and Allah. Those stories from early traditions and sīrat (biography) include the mythical beast Buraq, who flies the Prophet to Jerusalem, as well as the miʾrāj, a story of the Prophet’s ascent and descent through the levels of heaven and hell culminating in an encounter with the divine. The Isrāʾ and Miʾraj traditions have generated their own figurative, artistic conventions, as well as the commemorative pious celebration that takes place annually on the 27th of Rajab.
Here in this work, Ahmed Moustafa brings us back to the power of the word, of sacred text and the expressive and enlivening possibilities of calligraphy. Words and letterforms of the Qur’anic verse seem to travel and ascend against a dark background that reads like the night sky. In the lower half of the work, watery colors blend with each other, suggesting the earth’s horizon and movement from right to left, the direction of reading Arabic letters. This abstract composition describes a powerful and unique event, that like the Night Journey, is beyond our everyday experience and comprehension.
