TEHRAN – Iranian scholar Hamidreza Bos’haq said on Monday that he has recently completed the translation of Islamic art history expert Valerie Gonzalez’s book “Beauty and Islam: Aesthetics in Islamic Art and Architecture”.

“Ms. Valerie Gonzalez is a celebrated scholar of Islamic art and aesthetics who has visited Iran,” Bos’haq told the Persian service of Honaronline.

“In her book, she has referred to many reputable sources for the study of Islamic art and aesthetics, and is highly under the influence of José Miguel Puerta Vílchez, the writer of a book on aesthetics in Islam that is the most comprehensive study on the history of Islamic art and aesthetics,” he added.

He noted that Gonzalez deems all studies that scrutinize Islamic art historically and sociologically incomplete, and wants to analyze Islamic artworks in architecture, painting, calligraphy and other areas based on a special scientific field named “phenomenological aesthetics”.

About Gonzalez’s scientific honesty, Bos’haq said that she ignores herself, her nationality and religion in the analysis of issues in Islamic art.

He said that the Persian translation of “Beauty and Islam: Aesthetics in Islamic Art and Architecture” is scheduled to be published by the Cheshmeh publishing house in Tehran in the near future. 

The book consists of five essays about aspects of aesthetics in classical Islamic thought in light of contemporary theories, offering new perspectives on Islamic art and architecture with examples ranging from the Quran and the Alhambra to the works of present-day artists and philosophers.

The original book was published by I. B. Tauris in 2001.

The publisher has earlier said, “Tracing the roots of Islamic aesthetics back to the works of the philosophers of the Middle Ages such as Avicenna and Averroes, Valerie Gonzalez finds that aesthetic theory in Islam must be seen within the much wider context of parallel thinking on theology, ethics, physics and metaphysics.

“She balances her analysis of this philosophy (moral, logical and scientific) of beauty with the equally important analysis of the perceptual experience of beauty.”    

Gonzalez teaches Islamic studies at the Leighton House Museum, London. She was previously a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University in the USA.

Bos’haq is the translator of numerous books by western scholars, including “History of Philosophy” by William S. Sahakian.

Photo: Front cover of Valerie Gonzalez’s original book “Beauty and Islam: Aesthetics in Islamic Art and Architecture”.

MMS/YAW