Visual History of Buraq

Out of Their Love They Made It: A Visual History of Buraq | The Public Domain Review
http://publicdomainreview.org/2016/09/21/out-of-their-love-they-made-it-a-visual-hi...
Out of Their Love They Made It:

A Visual History of Buraq
Although mentioned only briefly in the Quran, the story of the Prophet
Muhammads night journey to heaven astride a winged horse called
Buraq has long caught the imagination of artists. Yasmine Seale charts the
many representations of this enigmatic steed, from early Islamic scripture
to contemporary Delhi, and explores what such a figure can tell us about
the nature of belief.
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Magnificent A model
of digital curation.
The Guardian (/testimonials/)
A project of:
One of our favourite

journals.
(http://okfn.org/)
Illustration of Buraq from Yusuf and Zulaykha, a 19th-century Judeo-Persian manuscript held at The
Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary, MS 1534 Source (http://garfield.jtsa.edu:1801
/view/action/nmets.do?DOCCHOICE=109391.xml&dvs=1474289507315~153&locale=en_US&
search_terms=&adjacency=&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/nmets.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=4&
divType=&usePid1=true&usePid2=true).
The Paris Review

(/testimonials/)
Oh this is the creature that never was.

They didnt know it, still they dared
to love its stride, its bearing and its breast,
clean to the calm light of its eyes.
It was not. Out of their love they made it,
this pure creature . . .
(/collections
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(/collections
/?medium=book&cachebust)
Rainer Maria Rilke,

from Sonnets to Orpheus
ou came here because you were told to, and because here is where wonderful
1 of 15
22/09/16 11:04 AM
Y
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/?medium=audio&
cachebust)
25
things are known to happen at night. You comb the streets, the
tangle of unfamiliar smells poultry, muskmelon, marigold
until you reach the pockmarked, once-red wall of the Ship Palace.
Theres a sad sort of majesty to the place, but youre not here for the beauty of
ruins. Youre here for the hauz, the tank, its fabled waters now scummed over
with algae and detritus. In your hand there is a pamphlet, saffron yellow and
Hindi scrawl, with a telephone number and an instruction: to call between 6
and 8 p.m., to speak long and loud, to say hello.
You say hello and for a moment the horse flickers into life, its incandescent
frame reflected in the water. A crowd has bloomed around the tank. Children
sing into receivers: hello becomes a ten-syllable word. Soon the line is
swamped as callers compete for the creatures fitful attention. Not quite the
miracle you had in mind, this rickety chimera part neon piata, part show
pony, plus wings assembled at the local metalworks and lit up by
Chinese-made LEDs. Still, it is a thing of wonder: a winged horse rests on the
surface of a lake and human voices make it glow.
Unlimiting the Bounds:

the Panorama and the
Balloon View (/2016/08/03
/unlimiting-the-boundsthe-panorama-and-theballoon-view/)
The second essay in a two-part
series in which Lily Ford explores
how balloon flight transformed
our ideas of landscape. Here she
looks at the phenomenon of the
panorama, and how its attempts at
creating the immersive view were
inextricably linked to the new
visual experience opened up by
the advent of ballooning.
Continued
/2016/08/03/unlimitingthe-bounds-the-panoramaand-the-balloon-view/)
The Secret History of

Holywell Street: Home to
Victorian Londons Dirty
Book Trade (/2016/06/29
/the-secret-historyof-holywell-streethome-to-victorianlondons-dirtybook-trade/)
Victorian sexuality is often
considered synonymous with
prudishness, conjuring images of
covered up piano legs and dark
ankle-length skirts. Historian
Matthew Green uncovers a quite
different scene in the sordid story
of Holywell St, 19th-century
London's epicentre of erotica and
2 of 15
(/collections
/?medium=image&
cachebust)
For the Sake of the

Prospect: Experiencing
the World from Above in
the Late 18th Century
(/2016/07/20/for-thesake-of-the-prospectexperiencing-the-worldfrom-above-in-thelate-18th-century/)
Screenshots from a film by Vishal Rawlley showing interaction with his installation Say Hello to the
Hauz (2010) Source (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEggDnT-ezw).
Say Hello to the Hauz (http://www.hauz-i-shamsi.in/) (2010), the brainchild of

designer and filmmaker Vishal Rawlley, was an attempt to revive the
long-neglected water reservoir in Mehrauli, one of the seven ancient cities that
make up the state of Delhi. Drawing on the story of the Prophet Muhammads
ascent to heaven astride a winged horse called Buraq, Rawlley designed a
sculpture of the creature, fitted it with a phone line and a constellation of fairy
The first essay in a two-part series

in which Lily Ford explores how
balloon flight transformed our
ideas of landscape. We begin with
a look at the unique set of images
included in Thomas Baldwin's
Airopaidia (1786) the first real
overhead aerial views.
Continued
/2016/07/20/for-the-sake-of-theprospect-experiencing-the-worldfrom-above-in-the-late-18thcentury/)
Frankenstein, the
Baroness, and the Climate
Refugees of 1816 (/2016
/06/15/frankensteinthe-baroness-and-theclimate-refugees-of-1816/)
It is 200 years since The Year
Without a Summer, when a
sun-obscuring ash cloud
ejected from one of the most
powerful volcanic eruptions in
recorded history caused
temperatures to plummet the
world over. Gillen DArcy Wood
looks at the humanitarian crisis
triggered by the unusual weather,
22/09/16 11:04 AM
smut. Continued
/2016/06/29/the-secret-historyof-holywell-street-home-tovictorian-londons-dirtybook-trade/)
Francis van Helmont and

the Alphabet of Nature
(/2016/06/01/francisvan-helmont-and-thealphabet-of-nature/)
25
Largely forgotten today in the

shadow of his more famous
father, the 17th-century Flemish
alchemist Francis van Helmont
influenced and was friends with
the likes of Locke, Boyle, and
Leibniz. While imprisoned by the
Inquisition, in between torture
sessions, he wrote his Alphabet of
Nature on the idea of a universal
natural language. Je Wilson
explores. Continued
/2016/06/01/francis-van-helmontand-the-alphabet-of-nature/)
George Washington at the

Siamese Court (/2016
/04/21/george-washingtonat-the-siamese-court/)
lights, and left it to bob in the middle of the tank. People could dial in and
speak; their voices would trigger the phantasmagoria. In the night footage
preserved online, Buraqs skeleton flashes on and off to the babble of unseen
voices. The gasps are subtitled, the curiosity palpable. What to an outsider may
have seemed an alien landing was really the portal to a mythic past: the horse
had a history here.
The hauz was built in the thirteenth century after an early slave sultan of
Delhi, Shamsuddin Iltutmish, dreamed he was visited by the Prophet
Muhammad astride his winged steed. In the dream, the Prophet directs the king
to a fountainhead that sprang where Buraq struck the ground with her hoof. On
waking, the story goes, Iltutmish hurried to the site where he discovered the
mark of a hoof imprinted on the earth. Dreams were an important part of the
apparatus of medieval kingship; auspicious visions could steady a shaky
crown. More, a widely circulated hadith declared that seeing the Prophet in a
dream was equal to seeing him physically. To dream of the Prophet, then in
other words, to be considered a direct witness to his words and deeds, which
together form the basis of Islamic law was to be in a very privileged
position indeed, and Iltutmish acknowledged the honour with due piety: he
built a water tank, the Hauz-i-Shamsi, to mark the hallowed spot. For centuries
the tank remained a site of local devotion. Magical properties were ascribed to
its waters, and the great fourteenth-century traveller Ibn Battuta described how
small boats ferried pilgrims to the red sandstone pavilion at its centre.
The story of the reservoir and its otherworldly aura echoes another origin
myth: that of the Hippocrene, or Horse Fountain, which sprang from the
hoof-scuff of Pegasus and is remembered in Greek mythology as a fount of
poetic inspiration. Unlike Pegasus, however, who emerged fully formed from
the blood of Medusa, Buraqs conception was gradual, her evolution more
peculiar and circuitous. She crops up on Persian miniatures and Pakistani
trucks, Zanzibari ephemera and Libyan airplanes, Senegalese glass paintings
and Indian matchboxes. Yet despite her many incarnations, or perhaps because
of them, her essence remains elusive. There is no original, no definitive Buraq,
but rather an unruly palimpsest of jumbled creeds, kitsch, and sheer artistic
caprice.
Keen to appear outward-looking

and open to Western culture, in
1838 the Second King of Siam
bestowed upon his son a most
unusual name. Ross Bullen
explores the curious case of
Prince George Washington, a
19th-century Siamese prince.
Continued
/2016/04/21/george-washingtonat-the-siamese-court/)
Divine Comedy: Lucian

Versus The Gods (/2016
/03/23/divine-comedy-
3 of 15
Buraq with Taj Mahal, poster bought in Delhi. Sandria Freitag personal collection.
and how it offers an alternative

lens through which to read Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein, a book
begun in its midst. Continued
/2016/06/15/frankensteinthe-baroness-and-the-climaterefugees-of-1816/)
Frolicsome Engines: The

Long Prehistory of
Artificial Intelligence
(/2016/05/04/frolicsomeengines-the-longprehistory-of-artificialintelligence/)
Defecating ducks, talking busts,
and mechanised Christs
Jessica Riskin on the wonderful
history of automata, machines
built to mimic the processes of
intelligent life. Continued
/2016/05/04/frolicsome-enginesthe-long-prehistory-of-artificialintelligence/)
Picturing Don Quixote

(/2016/04/06/picturingdon-quixote/)
This year marks the 400th
anniversary of the death of
Miguel de Cervantes, author of
one of the best-loved and most
frequently illustrated books in the
history of literature Don
Quixote. Rachel Schmidt
explores how the varying
approaches to illustrating the tale
have reflected and impacted its
reading through the centuries.
Continued
/2016/04/06/picturingdon-quixote/)
The Strange Case of Mr

William T. Horton (/2016
22/09/16 11:04 AM
lucian-versus-the-gods/)
/03/09/the-strange-case-ofmr-william-t-horton/)
With the twenty-six short comic

dialogues that made up Dialogues
of the Gods, the 2nd-century
writer Lucian of Samosata took
the popular images of the Greek
gods and re-drew them as greedy,
sex-obsessed, power-mad
despots. Nicholas Jeeves explores
the story behind the work and its
reception in the English speaking
world. Continued
/2016/03/23/divine-comedylucian-versus-the-gods/)
Championed in his day by friend

and fellow mystic W. B. Yeats,
today the artist William T. Horton
and his stark minimalistic
creations are largely forgotten.
Jon Crabb on a unique and
unusual talent. Continued
/2016/03/09/the-strange-case-ofmr-william-t-horton/)
25
Worlds Without End

(/2015/12/09/worldswithout-end/)
Leather shadow puppet with coloured pigments of a human-headed winged horse, most likely Buraq,
from Istanbul, 1970s Source (http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online
/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3318808&partId=1&searchText=buraq&page=1).
At the end of the 19th century,

inspired by radical advances in
technology, physicists asserted
the reality of invisible worlds
an idea through which they
sought to address not only
psychic phenomena such as
telepathy, but also spiritual
questions around the soul and
immortality. Philip Ball explores
this fascinating history, and how
in this turn to the unseen in the
face of mystery there exists a
parallel to quantum physics today.
Continued
/2015/12/09/worlds-without-end/)
The Science of Life and

Death in Mary Shelleys
Frankenstein (/2015/11/25
/the-science-of-lifeand-death-in-maryshelleys-frankenstein/)
Professor Sharon Ruston surveys
the scientific background to Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein,
considering contemporary
investigations into resuscitation,
galvanism, and the possibility of
states between life and death.
Continued
/2015/11/25/the-science-of-lifeand-death-in-mary-shelleysfrankenstein/)
The Buraq Worshipped by Two Princes, from Kashmir region, 19th century Source
(http://collections.lacma.org/node/238387).
Notes on the Fourth

Dimension (/2015/10/28
/notes-on-the-fourthdimension/)
Hyperspace, ghosts, and colourful
cubes - Jon Crabb on the work of
Charles Howard Hinton and the
cultural history of higher
dimensions. Continued
/2015/10/28/notes-on-the-fourthdimension/)
4 of 15
The bare bones of Buraq look like this. From the Arabic root b-r-q, which
means to shine or sparkle, her name evokes the lightning speed with which she
carried the Prophet from Mecca to Jerusalem and thereon to heaven, an episode
known as the miraj, or ascension. The Quran alludes to this journey in
two cryptic verses that lend a whole chapter (The Night Journey) its title
but makes no mention of the vehicle. Because Buraq is absent from scripture,
theologians give her short shrift, confining her to fly-by-night cameo roles: she
first appears in the eighth century, in the earliest extant biography of the
Prophet, as a winged beast, white in colour, smaller than a mule and larger
than an ass. Buraq is a creature not of scripture but of lore, and in these early
writings she is still a vague, unfinished thing, uncertain of shape, let alone sex.
She will take centuries to evolve a human face: some five hundred years passed
before the historian al-Thalabi wrote that Buraq had a cheek like the cheek of
a human being, a not-quite metaphor that launched her never quite completed
metamorphosis.
Richard Spruce and the

Trials of Victorian
Bryology (/2015/10/14
/richard-spruce-and-thetrials-of-victorianbryology/)
Obsessed with the smallest and
seemingly least exciting of plants
mosses and liverworts the
19th-century botanist Richard
Spruce never achieved the fame
of his more popularist
contemporaries. Elaine Ayers
explores the work of this unsung
hero of Victorian plant science
and how his complexities echoed
the very subject of his study.
Continued
/2015/10/14/richard-spruceand-the-trials-of-victorianbryology/)
22/09/16 11:04 AM
Bad Air: Pollution, Sin,

and Science Fiction in
William Delisle Hays The
Doom of the Great City
(1880) (/2015/09/30
/bad-air-pollutionsin-and-science-fiction/)
Dr Mitchill and the

Mathematical Tetrodon
(/2015/09/16/dr-mitchilland-the-mathematicaltetrodon/)
Deadly fogs, moralistic diatribes,

debunked medical theory - Brett
Beasley explores a piece of
Victorian science fiction
25considered to be the first modern
tale of urban apocalypse.
Continued
/2015/09/30/bad-air-pollutionsin-and-science-fiction/)
Detail from the 17th-century Persian manuscript Mirajnamah Source (http://brbldl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3436726).
When the Birds and the

Bees Were Not Enough:
Aristotles Masterpiece
(/2015/08/19/whenthe-birds-and-thebees-were-not-enougharistotles-masterpiece/)
Mary Fissell on how a wildly
popular sex manual - first
published in 17th-century London
and reprinted in hundreds of
subsequent editions - both taught
and titilated through the early
modern period and beyond.
Continued
/2015/08/19/when-the-birdsand-the-bees-were-not-enougharistotles-masterpiece/)
The Nightwalker and the

Nocturnal Picaresque
(/2015/06/03
/the-nightwalker-and-thenocturnal-picaresque/)
The introduction of street lighting
to 17th-century London saw an
explosion of nocturnal activity in
5 of 15
One of the early Republic's great

polymaths, New Yorker Samuel
L. Mitchill was a man with a
finger in many a pie, including
medicine, science, natural history,
and politics. Dr Kevin Dann
argues that Mitchill's peculiar
brand of curiosity can best be
seen in his study of fish and the
attention he gives one seemingly
unassuming specimen.
Continued
/2015/09/16/dr-mitchill-and-themathematical-tetrodon/)
Cat Pianos, SoundHouses, and Other

Imaginary Musical
Instruments (/2015/07/15
/cat-pianos-sound-housesand-other-imaginarymusical-instruments/)
The Fabulous Creature Buraq, from Deccan, India, ca. 166080 Source
(http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/453334).
The literature on Muhammads ascension to heaven grew to be enormous, but

only after it slipped its scriptural moorings and slid out into poetry and
folklore. Every life of the Prophet had a chapter on the subject, and scholars
and mystics endlessly pondered its meaning. The story was deployed and
reinterpreted among Islams subcultures, and also among its foes: there are
versions in Malay, Uzbek, and Old French, in Buginese and Castilian, and a
beautifully illuminated version in Chaghatay, a form of Middle Turkish named
after Genghis Khans second son. Like Buraq herself, the story has never
settled into a final form; it alters every time it is told. In some accounts, the duo
do not stop at Jerusalem but venture through the seven heavens where, at the
climax of their journey, the Prophet comes face to face with God. There he
Deirdre Loughridge and Thomas

Patteson, curators of the Museum
of Imaginary Musical
Instruments, explore the
wonderful history of made-up
musical contraptions, including a
piano comprised of yelping cats
and Francis Bacon's 17th-century
vision of experimental sound
manipulation. Continued
/2015/07/15/cat-pianos-soundhouses-and-other-imaginarymusical-instruments/)
The Empathetic Camera:

Frank Norris and the
Invention of Film Editing
(/2015/05/20
22/09/16 11:04 AM
the capital, most of it centring

around the selling of sex.
Matthew Beaumont explores how
some writers, with the intention
of condemning these nefarious
goings-on, took to the city's
streets after dark, and in the
process gave birth to a peculiar
new literary genre. Continued
/2015/06/03/the-nightwalkerand-the-nocturnal-picaresque/)
25
Scurvy and the Terra

Incognita (/2015/05/06
/scurvy-and-the-terraincognita/)
One remarkable symptom of
scurvy, that constant bane of the
Age of Discovery, was the acute
and morbid heightening of the
senses. Jonathan Lamb explores
how this unusual effect of sailing
into uncharted territory echoed a
different kind of voyage, one
undertaken by the Empiricists
through their experiments in
enhancing the senses artificially.
Continued
/2015/05/06/scurvy-and-the-terraincognita/)
Ignorant Armies: Private

Snafu Goes to War (/2015
/03/25/ignorant-armiesprivate-snafugoes-to-war/)
Between 1943 and 1945, with the
help of Warner Bros.' finest, the
U.S. Army produced a series of
27 propaganda cartoons depicting
the calamitous adventures of
Private Snafu. Mark David
Kaufman explores the
overarching theme of
containment and how one film
inadvertently let slip one of the
war's greatest secrets.
Continued
/2015/03/25/ignorant-armiesprivate-snafu-goes-to-war/)
6 of 15
might meet a celestial rooster, or a polycephalous angel, and sometimes he

pays a visit to his mother and father in hell. In others, the Prophet ascends to
heaven by means of a glittering ladder, having fastened Buraq to a wall at the
foot of the Temple Mount. (To this day the spot is known as the Buraq Wall to
Muslims and the Western or Wailing Wall to Jews.)
Buraq was not born a woman, she became one but when this happened is
unclear. At some point an anonymous genius gave her a lustrous mane and a
jeweled throat, and artists have never looked back. In her many guises classical
and modern, Buraq is squarely female, adorned now with a peacock tail, now
with a leopard-print coat, almost always with a gem-encrusted crown and
brightly coloured wings. She grew into a staple of Muslim visual art, seizing
the collective imagination until writers too followed suit. By the sixteenth
century, the Persian historian Khwandamir could write that Buraq had
a face like that of a human and ears like those of an elephant; its mane
was like the mane of a horse; its neck and tail like those of a camel; its
breast like the breast of a mule; its feet like the feet of an ox. Its breast
looked just like a ruby and its hair resembled white armor, shining
brightly by reason of its exceeding purity.
The Persian language has no gender, obliging writers like Khwandamir to
continue to describe Buraq in neuter terms even as she gained in feminine
lustre and finery. It is perhaps no coincidence that Buraq is most spectacularly
beautified in works by Persian miniaturists, as if these artists were giving
excessively lavish expression to a femininity their language would not allow
them to convey in words as if the sexual restraint (the greyness) imposed
by one medium made for an aesthetic of sexual maximalism in another.
/the-empathetic-camerafrank-norris-and-theinvention-of-film-editing/)
At the heart of American author
Frank Norris' gritty turn-ofthe-century fiction lies an
essential engagement with the
everyday shock and violence of
modernity. Henry Giardina
explores how this focus,
combined with his unique
approach to storytelling, helped to
pave the way for a truly filmic
style. Continued
/2015/05/20/the-empatheticcamera-frank-norris-and-theinvention-of-film-editing/)
Black on Black (/2015

/04/09/black-on-black/)
Should we consider black a
colour, the absence of colour or a
suspension of vision produced by
a deprivation of light? Beginning
with Robert Fludd's attempt to
picture nothingness, Eugene
Thacker reflects* on some of the
ways in which blackness has been
used and thought about through
the history of art and
philosophical thought.
Continued
/2015/04/09/black-on-black/)
Sex and Science in Robert

Thorntons Temple of
Flora (/2015/03/11
/sex-and-sciencein-robert-thorntonstemple-of-flora/)
Bridal beds, blushing captives,
and swollen trunks - Carl
Linnaeus' taxonomy of plants
heralded a whole new era in
18th-century Europe of plants
being spoken of in sexualised
terms. Martin Kemp explores
how this association between the
floral and erotic reached its visual
zenith in Robert Thornton's
exquisitely illustrated Temple of
Flora. Continued
/2015/03/11/sex-and-science-
22/09/16 11:04 AM
Illustration from 1543 of the miraj probably created by the Persian court painter Sultan Muhammad,
and used to illustrate the Khamseh by Nezami Source (https://commons.wikimedia.org
/wiki/File:Miraj_by_Sultan_Muhammad.jpg).
When Chocolate was

Medicine: Colmenero,
Wadsworth, and Dufour
(/2015/01/28/whenchocolate-was-medicinecolmenero-wadsworthand-dufour/)
Chocolate has not always been
the common confectionary we
experience today. When it arrived
from the Americas into Europe in
25the 17th century it was a rare and
mysterious substance, thought
more of as a drug than as a food.
Christine Jones traces the history
and literature of its reception.
Continued
/2015/01/28/when-chocolatewas-medicine-colmenerowadsworth-and-dufour/)
The Poet, the Physician

and the Birth of the
Modern Vampire (/2014
/10/16/the-poetthe-physician-and-thebirth-of-the-modernvampire/)
From that famed night of ghoststories in a Lake Geneva villa in
1816, as well as Frankenstein's
monster, there arose that other
great figure of 19th-century
gothic fiction - the Vampire - a
creation of Lord Byron's personal
physician John Polidiri. Andrew
McConnell Stott explores how a
fractious relationship between
Polidiri and his poet employer
lies behind the tale, with Lord
Byron himself providing a model
for the blood-sucking aristocratic
figure of the legend we are
familiar with today. Continued
/2014/10/16/the-poet-thephysician-and-the-birth-of-themodern-vampire/)
7 of 15
in-robert-thorntons-templeof-flora/)
Illustrations of Madness:
James Tilly Matthews and
the Air Loom (/2014/11/12
/illustrations-of-madnessjames-tilly-matthewsand-the-air-loom/)
Detail of Buraq from an illustrated manuscript, ca. 152535, from present-day Uzbekistan and
Afghanistan, probably Bukhara and Herat Source (http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection
/search/452670).
If Buraqs early, skeletal form most recalled Pegasus, the sexless winged horse
of classical antiquity, her new embellishments brought her closer to those other
feminized hybrids, Sphinx and Chimera. Gustave Flaubert summed up the
appeal of such composite, yet distinctly female creatures: Who has not found
the Chimera charming; who has not loved her lions snout, her rustling eagles
wings, and her green-glinting rump? In taking on the allure of these figures,
however, Buraq also acquired a troubling ambiguity. After all, unlike those
other mythical beings, Buraq is a devotional object, theologically more akin to
an archangel than to a many-headed beast of prey. She is, existentially,
inseparable from Muhammad she exists only to carry him on his journey
making her feminized appearance all the more startling. Visually, they evolve
in opposite directions: the more Buraq gains in baroque adornment, the more
the figure of Muhammad seems to retreat into allegory. As her body comes to
the fore, his grows austere and immaterial.
Bodies are everywhere in this story, and they are awkward. The friction
between the historical Prophet and his fantastical mount, between the sacred
and the physical, reflects a similar divide within Buraq herself: she has been
perceived both as a dream-horse mythical, sexless, emblematic and as a
creature of flesh. And Buraq as animal, especially in her more sexualised
incarnations, in turn raises thorny questions about the body of the Prophet
himself. Artists generally elided this problem, or creatively eluded it; early
images of the Prophet tend to show him with a veil, and more recently his body
has been symbolized by a white cloud, a rose or a flame.
Mike Jay recounts the tragic story

of James Tilly Matthews, a
former peace activist of the
Napoleonic Wars who was
confined to London's notorious
Bedlam asylum in 1797 for
believing that his mind was under
the control of the "Air Loom" - a
terrifying machine whose
mesmeric rays and mysterious
gases were brainwashing
politicians and plunging Europe
into revolution, terror, and war.
Continued
/2014/11/12/illustrationsof-madness-james-tillymatthews-and-the-air-loom/)
Redressing the Balance:

Levinus Vincents Wonder
Theatre of Nature (/2014
/08/20/redressingthe-balance-levinusvincents-wonder-theatreof-nature/)
Bert van de Roemer explores the
curiosity cabinets of the Dutch
collector Levinus Vincent and
how the aesthetic drive behind his
meticulous ordering of the
contents was in essence religious,
an attempt to emphasise the
wonder of God's creations by
restoring the natural world to its
prelapsarian harmony.
Continued
/2014/08/20/redressingthe-balance-levinus-vincentswonder-theatre-of-nature/)
22/09/16 11:04 AM
O, Excellent Air Bag:

Humphry Davy and
Nitrous Oxide (/2014
/08/06/o-excellent-air-baghumphry-davy-andnitrous-oxide/)
The summer of 1799 saw a new
fad take hold in one remarkable
circle of British society: the
inhalation of "Laughing Gas".
The overseer and pioneer of these
experiments was a young
25
Humphry Davy, future President
of the Royal Society. Mike Jay
explores how Davy's extreme and
near-fatal regime of
self-experimentation with the gas
not only marked a new era in the
history of science but a turn
toward the philosophical and
literary romanticism of the
century to come. Continued
/2014/08/06/o-excellent-air-baghumphry-davy-and-nitrousoxide/)
The Naturalist and the

Neurologist: On Charles
Darwin and James
Crichton-Browne (/2014
/05/28/the-naturalistand-the-neurologiston-charles-darwinand-james-crichtonbrowne/)
Stassa Edwards explores Charles
Darwin's photography collection,
which included almost forty
portraits of mental patients given
to him by the neurologist James
Crichton-Browne. The study of
these photographs, and the related
correspondence between the two
men, would prove instrumental in
the development of The
Expression of the Emotions in
Man and Animals (1872),
Darwin's study on the evolution
of emotions. Continued
/2014/05/28/the-naturalistand-the-neurologist-on-charlesdarwin-and-james-crichtonbrowne/)
8 of 15
Picturing Pyrotechnics
(/2014/06/25/picturingpyrotechnics/)
Depiction of Buraq, with the Prophet Muhammed represented by stylised flames, from an
18th-century Ottoman manuscript, 1717 AD Source (http://art.thewalters.org/detail/83974).
Did the Prophet ascend to heaven in body or only in spirit? For all those who
grappled with the meaning of the night journey, this was a central question.
One solution was to skirt the problem of bodies altogether. The Persian
polymath Avicenna thought the miraj a purely internal, intellectual journey;
less concerned with Muhammads ascent than with the potential elevation of
anyone engaged in abstract thought, he used the storys currency as a folk
narrative to coax a largely uninitiated community into the pursuit of
philosophy. For Avicenna, the ascension tale was a useful means of dispelling
anxieties about foreign intellectual traditions: by presenting these questions in
terms familiar to his Muslim audience and by reframing the Prophets
ascension as a spiritual journey one should try to emulate he showed that
the study of philosophy was not only compatible with traditional Islamic
teachings, but central to the task of the pious believer.
Which sounds all very well and rational, but if bodies are erased from the story
if the night journey was merely a voyage of the mind, a static reverie
what is to be done with Buraq, who is pure colour and pure form, who stands
for nothing beyond her exuberant self? Avicenna doesnt say. The reality of the
prophets flight is dismissed in a line (It is known that he did not go in the
body, because the body cannot traverse a long distance in one moment) but
winged horses are not so easily idealised. Buraq is unavoidably, infectiously
physical. Astride her back, the Prophet is wrenched out of abstraction, trapped
and tangled up in the body of the beast as Leda by the swan in Yeatss poem:
and how can body, laid in that white rush/ But feel the strange heart beating
where it lies?
Simon Werrett explores how

artists through the ages have
responded to the challenge of
representing firework displays,
from the highly politicised and
allegorical renderings of the early
modern period to Whistler's
impressionistic Nocturne in Black
and Gold. Continued
/2014/06/25/picturingpyrotechnics/)
In the Image of God: John

Comenius and the First
Childrens Picture Book
(/2014/05/14/in-the-imageof-god-john-comeniusand-the-first-childrenspicture-book/)
In the mid 17th-century John
Comenius published what many
consider to be the first picture
book dedicated to the education
of young children, Orbis
Sensualium Pictus - or The World
of Things Obvious to the Senses
drawn in Pictures, as it was
rendered in English. Charles
McNamara explores how,
contrary to Comenius'
declarations, the book can be seen
to be as much about the invisible
world as the visible. Continued
/2014/05/14/in-the-image-of-godjohn-comenius-and-the-firstchildrens-picture-book/)
Victorian Occultism and

the Art of Synesthesia
(/2014/03/19/victorianoccultism-and-the-art-ofsynesthesia/)
22/09/16 11:04 AM
Grounded in the theory that ideas,

emotions, and even events, can
manifest as visible auras, Annie
Besant and Charles Leadbeaters
Thought-Forms (1901) is an odd
and intriguing work. Benjamin
Breen explores these
synesthetic abstractions and
asks to what extent they, and the
Victorian mysticism of which
they were born, influenced the
Modernist movement that
flourished in the following
decades. Continued
/2014/03/19/victorian-occultismand-the-art-of-synesthesia/)
Darkness Over All: John

Robison and the Birth of
the Illuminati Conspiracy
(/2014/04/02/darknessover-all-john-robisonand-the-birth-of-theilluminati-conspiracy/)
Conspiracy theories of a secretive
power elite seeking global
domination have long held a
place in the modern imagination.
25Mike Jay explores the ideas
beginnings in the writings of John
Robison, a Scottish scientist who
maintained that the French
revolution was the work of a
covert Masonic cell known as the
Illuminati. Continued
/2014/04/02/darkness-over-alljohn-robison-and-the-birthof-the-illuminati-conspiracy/)
Frederik Ruysch: The

Artist of Death (/2014
/03/05/frederik-ruyschthe-artist-of-death/)
Luuc Kooijmans explores the
work of Dutch anatomist Frederik
Ruysch, known for his
remarkable still life displays
which blurred the boundary
between scientific preservation
and vanitas art. Continued
/2014/03/05/frederik-ruyschthe-artist-of-death/)
Lost in Translation:
Proust and Scott
Moncrieff (/2013/11/13
/lost-in-translationproust-and-scottmoncrieff/)
Scott Moncrieff's English
translation of Proust's A la
recherche du temps perdu is
9 of 15
Page from 16th-century Ottoman ruler Murad IIIs commissioned copy of Siyer-i Nebi, the Turkish
epic about the life of the Prophet Source (http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/siyar-i-nablife-of-the-prophet#/?tab=about).
Others felt it too. The Ottoman poet Veysi was obsessed with the physical
character of the night journey, which he held to be the salient event in
Muhammads biography; his contribution to the genre was accordingly titled
The Life of the One Who Ascended. Veysis most famous work, the Habname
or Book of Dreams, takes the form of a dream conversation between Sultan
Ahmed I and Alexander the Great, and suggests a belief in the essential fluidity
between the world of dreams and real life. A similar fluidity pervades Veysis
account of the night journey, which stresses the physical reality of the
ascension, and of the transcendental world to which the Prophet traveled.
Central to his argument are detailed descriptions of Buraq and of the Lote Tree
of the Limit, which marks the edge of heaven and the boundary beyond which
nothing can pass. The tree has an infinite number of branches, each with an
infinite number of leaves, and on each leaf sits a huge angel carrying a staff of
light. A Sufi text calls it a tree without description, which grew from an
unimaginable ocean of musk. What sorts of things are these, that are rendered
in exquisite detail yet remain without description, both sensually evoked and
still unimaginable? The clue to Buraqs nature, perhaps, lies in this paradox.
That Avicenna and Veysi represent seemingly irreconcilable views that
Buraq can be considered both pure abstraction and pure physicality is
hardly surprising; it is in her nature to divide. In its earliest versions the
ascension story functioned as a kind of shibboleth: those who believed in
Muhammads heavenly ascension were regarded as having accepted his
prophetic mission, whereas those who did not were deemed to have rejected
Islam itself. This problem of belief was recently revived in a debate archived
on YouTube under the title Richard Dawkins versus Muhammads Buraq
horse. The Oxford Union had invited Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, to
share the stage with the journalist Mehdi Hasan Science v. Religion,
firebrand against firebrand. At one point in the video, Dawkins exclaims twice
in disbelief: You believe Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse! The
crowd jeers, Hasan flounders, and the debate grinds to a deadlock. The mere
mention of Buraq her quaintness, her garish absurdity was apparently
Encounter at the
crossroads of Europe
the fellowship of Zweig
and Verhaeren (/2013
/12/11/encounter-at-thecrossroads-of-europethe-fellowship-of-zweigand-verhaeren-2/)
Stefan Zweig, whose works
passed into the public domain this
year in many countries around the
world, was one of the most
famous writers of the 1920s and
30s. Will Stone explores the
importance of the Austrian's early
friendship with the oft overlooked
Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren.
Continued
/2013/12/11/encounter-at-thecrossroads-of-europethe-fellowship-of-zweigand-verhaeren-2/)
The Serious and the

Smirk: The Smile in
Portraiture (/2013/09/18
/the-serious-and-thesmirk-the-smilein-portraiture/)
Why do we so seldom see people
smiling in painted portraits?
Nicholas Jeeves explores the
history of the smile through the
ages of portraiture, from Da
Vincis Mona Lisa to Alexander
Gardners photographs of
Abraham Lincoln. Today when
22/09/16 11:04 AM
widely hailed as a masterpiece in

its own right. His rendering of the
title as Remembrance of Things
Past Continued
/2013/11/13/lost-in-translationproust-and-scott-moncrieff/) is
not, however, considered a high
point. William C. Carter explores
the two men's correspondence on
this somewhat sticky issue and
how the Shakespearean title
missed the mark regarding
Proust's theory of memory.
enough to clinch the argument, exposing Hasan the believer as irretrievably

backward, painfully naive, or a fraud.
The debate made for uncomfortable viewing. It seemed odd that among all the
mystery of religious lore, the night journey and its sensational metonym, the
winged horse should be singled out for special treatment in this way. Buraq,
true to her name, seems to have become a lightning rod in the atheist crusade, a
byword for the irrationality of Islam and religion in general. Yet by posing the
question restrictively in terms of belief, both speakers ignored the many
ways in which believers and non-believers might engage with an object like
Buraq (in the literal sense of object, a thing presented to the mind), not
simply as an article of faith but as metaphor, myth, paradox, emblem, or visual
trope.
25
someone points a camera at us,

we smile. This is the cultural
Continued
/2013/09/18/the-serious-and-thesmirk-the-smile-in-portraiture/)
Robert Baden-Powells
Entomological Intrigues
(/2013/07/10/robertbaden-powellsentomological-intrigues/)
In 1915 Robert Baden-Powell,
founder of the worldwide Scouts
movement, published his DIY
guide to espionage, My
Adventures as a Spy. Mark
Kaufman explores how the
books ideas to utilise such
natural objects as butterflies,
moths and leaves, worked to
mythologize British
resourcefulness and promote a
certain weaponization of the
Continued
/2013/07/10/robert-badenpowells-entomological-intrigues/)
The Lost World of the

London Coffeehouse
(/2013/08/07/the-lostworld-of-the-londoncoffeehouse/)
In contrast to todays rather
mundane spawn of coffeehouse
chains, the London of the 17th
and 18th century was home to an
eclectic and thriving coffee
drinking scene. Dr Matthew
Green explores the halcyon days
of the London coffeehouse, a
haven for caffeine-fueled debate
and innovation which helped to
shape Continued
/2013/08/07/the-lost-worldof-the-london-coffeehouse/)
Vesalius and the Body

Metaphor (/2013/04/18
/vesalius-and-thebody-metaphor/)
As a Lute out of Tune:
Robert Burtons
Melancholy (/2013/05/01
/as-a-lute-out-of-tunerobert-burtonsmelancholy/)
In 1621 Robert Burton first
published his masterpiece The
Anatomy of Melancholy, a vast
feat of scholarship examining in
encyclopaedic detail that most
enigmatic of maladies. Noga
Arikha explores the book, said to
be the favorite of both Samuel
Johnson and Keats, and places it
within the context of the
Continued
/2013/05/01/as-a-lute-out-oftune-robert-burtons-melancholy/)
10 of 15
Maometto portato in cielo [Mohammad taken to heaven], Italian engraving by

Migliavacca, ca. 1823-38 Source (http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items
/510d47e1-3821-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99).
City streets, a winepress, pulleys,

spinning tops, a ray fish, curdled
milk: just a few of the many
images used by 16th century
anatomist Andreas Vesalius to
explain the workings of the
human body in his seminal work
De Humani Corporis Fabrica.
Marri Lynn explores. Andreas
Vesalius threw down a
Continued
/2013/04/18/vesalius-and-thebody-metaphor/)
Buraq is a product of miscegenation. First found in the nineteenth century BC,

the motif of winged horses was picked up by the Assyrians, made its way
through Greece and Asia Minor, and eventually became ubiquitous in Eurasia:
Etruscans, Persians, Celts, Finns, Koreans, Bengalis, and Tatars all boast some
22/09/16 11:04 AM
version of the myth. Often these horses are able to travel at supernatural speed;
they sometimes have a human head; and they can also be linked to storms and
lightning. So it turns out that Buraq, far from being the risible cultural
aberration deplored by Dawkins, is actually a version of one of the oldest and
most widespread myths in our history, her shimmering body a receptacle for
the many myths, metaphors, and moral concerns that Islam inherited.
Mary Toft and Her
Extraordinary Delivery of
Rabbits (/2013/03/20
/mary-toft-andher-extraordinarydelivery-of-rabbits/)
In late 1726 much of Britain was
caught up in the curious case of
Mary Toft, a woman from Surrey
who claimed that she had given
birth to a litter of rabbits. Niki
Russell tells of the events of an
25
elaborate 18th century hoax
which had King George Is own
Continued
/2013/03/20/mary-toft-andher-extraordinary-deliveryof-rabbits/)
Athanasius, Underground
(/2012/11/01/athanasiusunderground/)
With his enormous range of
scholarly pursuits the 17th
century polymath Athanasius
Kircher has been hailed as the last
Renaissance man and the master
of hundred arts. John Glassie
looks at one of Kirchers great
masterworks Mundus
Subterraneus and how it was
inspired by a subterranean
adventure Kircher himself made
Continued
/2012/11/01/athanasiusunderground/)
The world was a combination of real and mythological objects until somewhat
recently; a clear distinction could hardly be made before the onset of modern
comparative biology. And yet science has not abolished the interstitial zone
which a figure like Buraq inhabits: we need such liminal objects to connect
seemingly divergent realms of empirical and spiritual experience. Her presence
in contemporary culture acts as a bridge between knowledge and belief,
between rationalist taxonomies of the world and the vestigial power of myth.
This idea finds its most forceful and literal expression in the Islamic transport
industry, where the figure of Buraq, usefully combining piety and speed, recurs
as a kind of patron saint. She gives her name to airlines from Libya to
Indonesia, to bus companies, freight ships and motorcycle-taxis, to a space
camp, an engineering college, and to Pakistans first unmanned drone. The
fluidity of Buraq as an aesthetic and linguistic object perhaps explain her
pliability in being put to commercial use: she presides not just over wings and
wheels but is also used to sell plastic and PVC, heavy metal and heavy-duty
diesel (BURAQ LUBRICANTS), Indian food and surgical instruments.
The longer you study her, the deeper you dig, the more elusive Buraqs identity
becomes. In a luminous essay, The Chimera Herself, Ginevra Bompiani
parses the symbolic implications of these composite creatures. The
many-headed Chimera exemplifies the arbitrary union of countless experiences
she is the synthesis of disparate things. She who, in myths, was purely a
fiery apparition, without a voice or a history, was to become, in the early days
of modern philosophy, the ens rationis, the creature of language, the metaphor
of metaphor. As a hybrid, Buraq does what metaphors do: she makes the
impossible visible. Achilles is a lion is literally false; you cannot figure it,
yet there it is on the page. In the basic metaphorical statement, A is B, Buraq
plays the same role as the copula (the is), brazenly flouting the law of noncontradiction, mixing that which should not be mixed. Since she does not
exist, Bompiani writes, the question arises as to what Chimera is. Which
depends, some might say, on what the meaning of the word is is.
Still Booking on De
Quinceys Mail-Coach
(/2013/02/20/still-bookingon-de-quinceysmail-coach/)
Robin Jarvis looks at Thomas de
Quinceys essay The English
Mail-Coach, or the Glory of
Motion and how its meditation
on technology and society is just
as relevant today as when first
published in 1849. In the last
quarter of 1849 Thomas De
Quincey published two separate
essays in Blackwoods
Continued
/2013/02/20/still-booking-on-dequinceys-mail-coach/)
Trth, Beaty, and

Volapk (/2012/10/17
/truth-beautyand-volapuk/)
Arika Okrent explores the rise
and fall of Volapk a universal
language created in the late 19th
century by a German priest called
Johann Schleyer. Johann Schleyer
was a German priest whose
irrational passion for umlauts
may have been his undoing.
During one sleepless night in
1879, he felt Continued
/2012/10/17/truth-beautyand-volapuk/)
The Polyglot of Bologna

(/2012/06/26/the-polyglotof-bologna/)
Yasmine Seale is a writer and translator. She is reading for a PhD on Ottoman attitudes to antiquity at
St Johns College, Oxford.
The Implacability of
Things (/2012/10/03
/the-implacabilityof-things/)
Jonathan Lamb explores the
genre of it-narratives stories
told from the point of view of an
object, often as it travels in
11 of 15
Public Domain Works
Michael Erard takes a look at The

Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, a
book exploring the extraordinary
talent of the 19th century Italian
cardinal who was reported to be
able to speak over seventy
languages. Without a doubt, the
most important book in English
devoted to Cardinal Giuseppe
Mezzofanti (1774-1849), the
Continued
/2012/06/26/the-polyglotof-bologna/)
22/09/16 11:04 AM
circulation through human hands.

Some of the best recent books
about things, such as John Plotzs
Portable Property (2008) and
Elaine Freedgoods Ideas in
Things (2006), deal Continued
/2012/10/03/the-implacabilityof-things/)
More images of Buraq on Wikimedia Commons

(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Buraq).
Further Reading
Ginevra Bompiani, The Chimera Herself, in Fragments for a History of
the Human Body, Part One (http://www.amazon.com/Zone-FragmentsHistory-Human-Body/dp/094229923X?tag=thepubdomrev-20) (ed.
Michel Feher et al.).
Seeing Joyce (/2012/06/12

/seeing-joyce/)
This years Bloomsday 108
years after Leopold Bloom took
his legendary walk around Dublin
on the 16th June 1904 is the
first since the works of James
Joyce entered the public domain.
Frank Delaney asks whether we
should perhaps now stop trying to
read Joyce and instead make
Continued
/2012/06/12/seeing-joyce/)
25
THE PROPHETS ASCENSION: CROSS-CULTURAL

ENCOUNTERS WITH THE ISLAMIC MIRAJ
TALES(Indiana University Press, 2010)
edited by Christiane Gruber and Frederick S. Colby
In the latter half of the 17th

century the English polymath
Thomas Browne wrote Musaeum
Clausum, an imagined inventory
of remarkable books, antiquities,
pictures and rarities of several
kinds, scarce or never seen by any
man now living. Claire Preston
explores Brownes extraordinary
catalogue amid the wider context
of a Continued
/2012/02/20/lost-libraries/)
When a volcano erupted on a

small island in Indonesia in 1883,
the evening skies of the world
glowed for months with strange
colours. Richard Hamblyn
explores a little-known series of
letters that the poet Gerard
Manley Hopkins sent in to the
journal Nature describing the
phenomenon letters that
Continued
/2012/05/28/the-krakatoasunsets/)
The essays in this collection discuss how the many cultural

narratives bound up with the story of the prophet Muhammads
journey through the heavens, including the miraj as a missionary
text, its various adaptations, its application to esoteric thought, and its use in
performance and ritual.
(HTTP://WWW.AMAZON.COM/PROPHETS-ASCENSION-CROSSCULTURAL-ENCOUNTERS-ISLAMIC
/DP/0253353610?TAG=THEPUBDOMREV-20)
THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS(Penguin Classics,

2006)
Lost Libraries (/2012
/02/20/lost-libraries/)
The Krakatoa Sunsets

(/2012/05/28
/the-krakatoa-sunsets/)
by Jorge Luis Borges

From the pen of one the 20th-centuries most singular and inventive
writers, comes this compendium of imagined beasts including
mythological creatures from folklore as well as popular literature
beautifully illustrated throughout. Includes a chapter on the Buraq.
(HTTP://WWW.AMAZON.COM/IMAGINARY-BEINGS-PENGUINCLASSICS-DELUXE/DP/0143039938?TAG=THEPUBDOMREV-20)
ON WINGS OF DIESEL: TRUCKS, IDENTITY AND

CULTURE IN PAKISTAN(Oneworld Publications,
2011)
An Unlikely Lunch: When

Maupassant met
Swinburne (/2012/01/24
/an-unlikely-lunchwhen-maupassantmet-swinburne/)
Julian Barnes on when a young
Guy de Maupassant was invited
to lunch at the holiday cottage of
Algernon Swinburne. A flayed
human hand, pornography, the
serving of monkey meat, and
inordinate amounts of alcohol, all
made for a truly strange AngloFrench encounter. Continued
/2012/01/24/an-unlikely-lunchwhen-maupassantmet-swinburne/)
by Jamal J. Elias
Illustrated with beautiful colour photos throughout, On Wings of
Diesel takes us on a journey through the fascinating world of
Pakistani truck decoration.
(HTTP://WWW.AMAZON.COM/WINGS-DIESEL-IDENTITYCULTURE-PAKISTAN/DP/1851688110?TAG=THEPUBDOMREV-20)
The Mysteries of Nature

and Art (/2011/11/28
/the-mysteries-of-natureand-art/)
Julie Gardham, Senior Assistant
Librarian at University of
Glasgows Special Collections
12 of 15
Books link through to Amazon who will give us a small percentage of sale price (ca. 6%). Discover more
recommended books in our dedicated section of the site: FURTHER READING (/further-reading/).
The Memoirs of Joseph

Grimaldi (/2011/11/14
/the-memoirs-of-josephgrimaldi/)
Andrew McConnell Stott, author
of The Pantomime Life of Joseph
Grimaldi, introduces the life and
memoirs of the most famous and
celebrated of English clowns.
22/09/16 11:04 AM
Department, takes a look at the

book that was said to have
spurred a young Isaac Newton
onto the scientific path, The
Mysteries of Nature and Art by
John Bate. Courteous reader, this
ensuing treatise hath lien by mee
Continued
/2011/11/28/the-mysteriesof-nature-and-art/)
Few biographers have proved so

reluctant, but when the raw
materials that would become
*The Memoirs of Joseph
Grimaldi* reached Charles
Dickens desk in the Continued
/2011/11/14/the-memoirsof-joseph-grimaldi/)
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On Benjamins Public
(Oeuvre) (/2011/10/31
/on-benjamins-publicoeuvre/)
25
On the run from the Nazis in

1940, the philosopher, literary
critic and essayist Walter
Benjamin committed suicide in
the Spanish border town of
Portbou. In 2011, over 70 years
later, his writings enter the public
domain in many countries around
the world. Anca Pusca, author of
Walter Benjamin: The
Continued
/2011/10/31/on-benjamins-publicoeuvre/)
Labillardire and his

Relation (/2011/08/15
/labillardiere-and-hisrelation/)
When the French explorer
Laprouse went missing, a search
voyage was put together to
retrace his course around the
islands of Australasia. On the
mission was the naturalist
Jacques Labillardire who
published a book in 1800 of his
experiences. Edward Duyker,
author of *Citizen Labillardire:
A Naturalists Life in Revolution
and Exploration (1755-1834)*,
explores the impact of his
pioneering work. Continued
/2011/08/15/labillardiere-and-hisrelation/)
13 of 15
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Dog Stories from The

Spectator (/2011/09/05
/dog-stories-from-thespectator/)
Dogs who shop, bury frogs, and
take 800-mile solo round trips by
rail writer and broadcaster
Frank Key gives a brief tour of
the strange and delightful Dog
Stories from The Spectator. Here
is a puzzle: [Feb. 2, 1895.] I
venture to send you the following
story I have Continued
/2011/09/05/dog-stories-from-thespectator/)
American Kaleidoscope:
Morton Prince and the
Boston Revolution in
Psychotherapy (/2011
/08/05/americankaleidoscope-mortonprince-and-the-bostonrevolutionin-psychotherapy/)
In 1906 the American physician
and neurologist Henry Morton
Prince published his remarkable
monograph The Dissociation of a
Personality in which he details
the condition of Sally
Beauchamp, America's first
famous multiple-personality case.
George Prochnik discusses the
life and thought of the man Freud
called an unimaginable ass.
Continued
/2011/08/05/americankaleidoscope-morton-princeand-the-boston-revolutionin-psychotherapy/)
22/09/16 11:04 AM
The Life and Work of

Nehemiah Grew (/2011
/03/01/the-life-and-workof-nehemiah-grew/)
25
In the 82 illustrated plates

included in his 1680 book The
Anatomy of Plants, the English
botanist Nehemiah Grew revealed
for the first time the inner
structure and function of plants in
all their splendorous intricacy.
Brian Garret, professor of
philosophy at McMaster
Univerity, explores how Grews
pioneering mechanist vision
Continued
/2011/03/01/the-life-and-work-ofnehemiah-grew/)
Christopher Smarts
Jubilate Agno (/2011
/01/31/christopher-smartsjubilate-agno/)
The poet Christopher Smart
also known as Kit Smart,
Kitty Smart, Jack Smart and,
on occasion, Mrs Mary
Midnight was a well known
figure in 18th-century London.
Nowadays he is perhaps best
known for considering his cat
Jeoffry. Writer and broadcaster
Frank Key looks at Smarts weird
and Continued
/2011/01/31/christopher-smartsjubilate-agno/)
(https://goo.gl/3cCfo1)
14 of 15
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Visual History of Buraq

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Visual History of Buraq

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Out of Their Love They Made It: A Visual History of Buraq | The Public Domain Review

Out of Their Love They Made It:

One of our favourite

The Paris Review

Oh this is the creature that never was.

Rainer Maria Rilke,

Unlimiting the Bounds:

The Secret History of

For the Sake of the

Say Hello to the Hauz (http://www.hauz-i-shamsi.in/) (2010), the brainchild of

The first essay in a two-part series

Francis van Helmont and

Largely forgotten today in the

George Washington at the

Keen to appear outward-looking

Divine Comedy: Lucian

and how it offers an alternative

Frolicsome Engines: The

Picturing Don Quixote

The Strange Case of Mr

With the twenty-six short comic

Championed in his day by friend

Worlds Without End

At the end of the 19th century,

The Science of Life and

Notes on the Fourth

Richard Spruce and the

Bad Air: Pollution, Sin,

Dr Mitchill and the

Deadly fogs, moralistic diatribes,

When the Birds and the

The Nightwalker and the

One of the early Republic's great

Cat Pianos, SoundHouses, and Other

The literature on Muhammads ascension to heaven grew to be enormous, but

Deirdre Loughridge and Thomas

The Empathetic Camera:

the capital, most of it centring

Scurvy and the Terra

Ignorant Armies: Private

might meet a celestial rooster, or a polycephalous angel, and sometimes he

Black on Black (/2015

Sex and Science in Robert

When Chocolate was

The Poet, the Physician

Mike Jay recounts the tragic story

Redressing the Balance:

O, Excellent Air Bag:

The Naturalist and the

Simon Werrett explores how

In the Image of God: John

Victorian Occultism and

Grounded in the theory that ideas,

Darkness Over All: John

Frederik Ruysch: The

The Serious and the

widely hailed as a masterpiece in

enough to clinch the argument, exposing Hasan the believer as irretrievably

someone points a camera at us,

The Lost World of the

Vesalius and the Body

Maometto portato in cielo [Mohammad taken to heaven], Italian engraving by

City streets, a winepress, pulleys,

Buraq is a product of miscegenation. First found in the nineteenth century BC,