According to miniaturist folklore, the greatest master miniaturists will go blind in old age as a “reward” from Allah for a lifetime of devotion to their art. Though blindness might seem like a strange reward, considering that miniaturists’ lives revolve around their visual art, the celebration of blindness comes from the notion that blindness brings a person away from human sight and closer to divine sight. This also highlights what makes miniaturist painting distinct from other artistic traditions. As the miniaturists often point out, the goal of miniaturists is not to depict the world as the human eye sees it, but rather to illustrate the imagined vision of Allah. Master Osman—who ultimately chooses to blind himself—notes that the best miniaturists work as if they are blind to the world around them. At the same time, other characters maintain a more ambivalent relationship to blindness. Black is particularly determined not to go blind, for example, because he wants to spend the rest of his life looking at Shekure. The resistance of some characters to blindness indicates an attachment to the pleasures of the mortal world, which contrasts to complete surrender to the world of Allah (the afterlife) to which Muslims are encouraged to aspire. In this sense, blindness is another way in which the tensions between traditional Muslim life and the Europeanization of Istanbul are explored.
Blindness Symbol Timeline in My Name is Red
