Abstraction in Islamic art manifests as a complex web of expressions reflecting the “unifying creativity” inherent in Islamic law. This study analyzes the elements of visual abstraction in Sultan Muhammad’s Mi’raj (Prophetic Ascension) miniature, predicated upon Avicenna’s fourfold principles of perception. The central research question asks: “What interpretive frameworks do Avicenna’s fourfold stages provide for analyzing the reflection of abstraction within the Mi’raj miniature?”
Employing a qualitative, fundamental research design with an interpretive methodology, this study utilizes documentary and archival methods. Given the significance of the viewer’s cognitive process in grasping abstraction, the research traces the trajectory of Avicennian perception from the sensory realm to the intellect. The fourfold ontological structure—comprising delimitation, determination, specification, and abstraction—is examined in conjunction with the stages of “sensory, imaginative, estimative, and intellectual” perception and the five internal senses to identify how these are encoded into the miniature’s visual lexicon.
The findings demonstrate that elements such as two-dimensionality, anti-naturalism, simultaneous perspectives, the negation of material depth, the use of symbolic/pure hues, intertextuality with poetry, linear and planar conciseness, and emanationist light culminate in the realization of the Imaginative Realm (‘Alam al-Mithal). Through these visual modalities and the progression of the fourfold stages, a coherent concept of pictorial abstraction is realized.