A theological reading of pictorial calligraphy in Islamic art

Positivist and historicist approaches in Islamic art studies, despite their achievements in analyzing the material dimensions of artworks, have failed to adequately comprehend and interpret the conceptual underpinnings of calligraphy due to their reductionism and neglect of art’s theological functions. By confining meaning to archaeological data, these approaches overlook a fundamental question: whether these works, beyond their apparent utility, held deeper semantic functions for the faithful viewer.
The present study adopts a critical-analytical method, moving beyond these conventional frameworks to propose "visual theology" as an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for examining the religious and semantic dimensions of this branch of Islamic art. This approach grounds the analysis of artworks in a dual investigation: on one hand, the intellectual and theological contexts derived from Imami theoretical texts, and on the other, the analysis of the visual characteristics of the work—particularly the representation of the "image" through the "word." The findings demonstrate that a theological reading of pictorial calligraphy necessitates engagement with the theoretical framework established by Erika Dodd through the concept of the "word of image." Accordingly, these works cannot be reduced to mere text or image; rather, they demand simultaneous attention to their theological (verbal content) and iconic (visual form) dimensions. This perspective necessitates a redefinition of iconographic methodologies for this field. From this standpoint, pictorial calligraphy functions as a "sacred object" for the faithful viewer, whose full epistemic dimensions can only be grasped through a simultaneous analysis of both text and its iconic aspect as an inseparable whole.