Painted Spectacles: Evidence of the Mughal Paintings for the Correction of Vision: IDSK Occasional Paper 38 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Obscurity surrounds not only the date and name of the inventor of eyeglasses, but also the date and place where eyeglasses (or information pertaining to them) reached the Muslim world. It is assumed that eyeglasses were transmitted to the Muslim world through commerce with Italian traders, which is probable, while other options also present themselves. This paper shows, at any rate, that the date traditionally given for the first acquaintance of the Muslim world with eyeglasses is wrong. In this article, we present evidence that eyeglasses were available in Syria since the fourteenth century and discuss the implications of this discovery.
Spectacles in the Muslim World: New Evidence from the Mid-Fourteenth Century
Early Science and Medicine, 2013
Obscurity surrounds not only the date and name of the inventor of eyeglasses, but also the date and place where eyeglasses (or information pertaining to them) reached the Muslim world. It is assumed that eyeglasses were transmitted to the Muslim world through commerce with Italian traders, which is probable, while other options also present themselves. This paper shows, at any rate, that the date traditionally given for the first acquaintance of the Muslim world with eyeglasses is wrong. In this article, we present evidence that eyeglasses were available in Syria since the fourteenth century and discuss the implications of this discovery.
The History of early promulgation of eyeglasses in Persia
2018
Background & Aims: From ancient time the human being was familiar with refraction of light through the crystals. One of the earliest finished natural crystals as a lens belongs to 3000 years ago named as Nimrud lens. The purpose of this research was to find when the use of eyeglass was promulgated in Persia Methods: To answer the question, we looked for the first use of the “eyeglass” or its synonyms in the Farsi literature and Persian ancient artistic paintings. Results: Jami was the first the Persian poet that used a synonym of eyeglass in his poems. The frequency of its use in Farsi poems has been increased from 16 century onward. We also found two Persian paintings demonstrating the use of eyeglasses in the Safavid period. Conclusion: Eyeglass was introduced from Europe to Persia. The use of the eyeglasses in Persia was promulgated in the 15th century and early Safavid period onward.
Images of Thought: visuality in Islamic India, 1550-1750
'Images of Thought' provides easy to follow ways in which to read Indian, Persian and European paintings in terms of composition, proportion, colour symbolism and references to myth. Yet it also provides the intellectual contexts of Islamic cultures which inform our perceptions of how this visual language works. The author uses salient aspects of critical theory, anthropology and theology to sensitise viewers to the diversity and difference of cultural readings but never loses sight of the primacy of the visual and formal characteristics, gestures, geometrical structures and their cooperation with myths and theologemes. The book provides access to one of the world's major visual traditions whose characteristics continue to inform and elucidate Indian and Islamic contemporary thought today. 'Images of Thought' is a major, scholarly and provocative contribution not only to our understanding of cultural individuality but it offers important examples of how to engage in transcultural understanding and ways of seeing.
Survey of Ophthalmology, 1986
Editor's note. Every so often we receive letters to the editor commeIlting on a previously published paper. The following commentary is just such a letter. Its content and review are so thorough, we feel compelled to share the letter with our readers as it complements the original article on the history of glasses ("Spectacles: Past, Present and Future," March-April 1986). Modesty keeps me from further elaboration on my original article. SulEce it to say, Dr. Letocha's letter elaborates upon the issues of the date and mventory of spectacles. It stands solidly as an example of erudition in historical research.
Ophthalmology in Ancient Egypt
Asian Journal of Education and Social Studies, 2022
The civilization of Ancient Egypt is the one that has the most references regarding the work of ophthalmologists, compared to the rest of the ancient civilizations. There are complete anatomical and treatment descriptions. Pepi Ankh Or Iri, who lived between 2270 and 2210 BC, is recognized as the first documented ophthalmologist in history. Ophthalmological cures were carried out with prayers, incantations, astrology for prognosis, amulets and pharmacotherapy with eye drops and ointments. Details of ophthalmologic surgery are unknown. The Edwin Smith (1600 BC), Ebers (1550 BC), Hearst (1550 BC) and London (1300 BC) medical papyri include ophthalmological pathologies. Ophthalmological medical assistance was in charge of lay doctors or swnw, priests and magicians, who worked together, since they believed that the origin of diseases was the result of external agents, as well as supernatural causes. The importance of this historical review article lies in pointing out some of the avant-garde aspects of the ancient Egyptian civilization with respect to ophthalmology and its practice, and the coexistence in their society of a rational medical practice together with a magical-religious approach.
Could Medieval Islamic Oculists Remove Cataracts? The views of a fourteenth-century Egyptian sceptic
SUHAYL, 2022
As early as the ninth century ce, Arabic ophthalmological treatises described surgical procedures for treating cataracts. Most commonly the technique described was the ancient technique known to classical antiquity and today called, in English, «couching» (Arabic qadḥ), in which the cataract (the opaque lens) was pushed to one side. However, occasional mention was made of the extraction of a cataract by suction through a hollow needle. This study reviews the evidence for the practice of couching of cataracts as well as for their extraction, concluding with a translation and edition of the very sceptical report on cataract removal written by the eighth/fourteenth-century Egyptian oculist and scholar Ṣadaqa ibn Ibrāhim al-Shādhilī.