AyatSigns in the Universe

In Arabic, an ayah is a verse of the Quran. It is also a sign: something in the world that points beyond itself. The Quran uses the same word for both, and the painting is built on that double meaning. The old man reads ayat, and ayat rise out of the page.

One verse holds the whole idea, though it is not written on the canvas: "We will show them Our signs in the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the truth" (41:53, Saheeh International). The painting shows both halves. In the horizons: the planets, the orbits, the galaxies. Within ourselves: the double helix and the child in the womb.

Hafsa wrote each verse by hand, in English, beside the thing it speaks of. As painted: "And the heaven We constructed with strength and indeed, We are expander" (51:47). "And among his signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your language and your colors" (30:22). "It proceeds by Our vision" (54:14). "And all [of them] are swimming in an orbit" (21:33). "It is he who created you from a single soul" (6:98). "And of everything We created pairs" (51:49). "And We made from water every living thing" (21:30).

Their order follows the stream: the heaven and its orbits at the top, the earth and its waters in the middle, and, closest to the reader, the verses about where human beings come from.

The first verse, 51:47, is the one most often quoted beside pictures of galaxies. Saheeh International renders it "And the heaven We constructed with strength, and indeed, We are [its] expander"; Abdel Haleem, "We built the heavens with Our power and made them vast".

The classical commentators, al-Tabari and al-Qurtubi among them, read its last word as God's vast power and provision, or as the sky made wide. In 1980 Muhammad Asad translated it "it is We who are steadily expanding it", and saw in it the modern idea of an expanding universe. Both readings are alive among Muslims today. The painting does not settle the question. It paints the verse as wonder.

The verse beside the galaxies, 54:14, comes from the story of Noah. In the Quran it describes the Ark "sailing under Our observation" (Saheeh International), "under Our watchful eye" (Abdel Haleem), carried through the flood.

Hafsa wrote it as "It proceeds by Our vision" and set it among the orbits and spiral arms. Read there, it widens: the planets in their courses, the galaxies turning, all moving the way the Ark moved, kept and watched over. That is the studio's reading of where she placed it, not a commentary on the verse.

Lower down the verses turn from the sky to life. "We made from water every living thing" stands beside the sea that rises from the page. "It is He who created you from a single soul" sits near the embryo, curled in the dark. "Of everything We created pairs" is written beside the double helix: two strands, wound together, carrying the instructions for a living body.

Many Muslims read verses like these as pointing to discoveries made centuries later. Many Muslim scholars and scientists urge care: the verses are signs that invite reflection, and science keeps changing while the verses do not. The black-hole reading of 81:15–16 is an example. It is a modern one; the classical commentators read those verses as the planets and stars that withdraw and hide.

The painting stays on the side of reflection. Its figure is the person the Quran describes in 3:190–191: one who remembers God "standing or sitting or [lying] on their sides and give[s] thought to the creation of the heavens and the earth".

The old man reading under the stars belongs to a long line. Around 964 the astronomer al-Sufi recorded, in his Book of Fixed Stars, the earliest known reference to a galaxy beyond our own, the one we now call Andromeda. Many of the brightest stars still carry Arabic names: Aldebaran, Altair, Vega, Deneb, Rigel, Betelgeuse.

Lahore is part of that story. Around 1650 Muhammad Muqim made an astrolabe in Lahore, with lines for the times of the afternoon prayer, which is now in the History of Science Museum in Oxford. In Karachi, Sadequain's great unfinished ceiling at Frere Hall is called Arz-o-Samawat, The Earth and the Heavens. Hafsa's painting is a young Lahore artist's answer to the same sky.