The impact of Mesopotamian myths on the drawings of Al-Wasiti

Abstract

Al-Wasiti's drawings are the first attempt to document the Arab landscape more than 778 years ago. These drawings were associated with a fine literary material, and the relationships between words and poetic sentences are matched by artistic, aesthetic and color relations in drawing, as they are all outputs of a sense that agreed in creativity and differed in the language of expression. Al-Wasiti was creative in drawing these events. Islamic painting has a goal that differs from the goals of the painting arts that preceded it or its contemporary, as it tends to “beautification” only. This is achieved by true copying from nature, just as it is achieved by drawing what is transmitted from nature, transforming and refining it. The shocking and ambiguous thing in these (Maqamah), especially in the thirty-ninth (Maqamah), He dared to draw a woman going through labor, revealing her body parts with a clear frontal drawing & we find that it exceeded what is expected of a Muslim painter. In another drawing from this (Maqamah), we notice the presence of strange beings that distort the human form and link it to some ancient Mesopotamian myths.
After doing research to try to find the origin of these strange beings, the researcher reached the Mesopotamian origin of these figures (Ishtar and the Bird of Spirits), which go back to the Assyrian antiquities with ancient Babylonian roots.