Shadow puppet representing Bouraq
Item
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Title
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Shadow puppet representing Bouraq
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Creator
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Unidentified artist
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Subject
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Shadow puppet
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Culture
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Javanese
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Medium
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Buffalo leather; buffalo horn; pigments
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Format
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27 3/16 x 19 11/16 inches; 69 x 50 cm
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Description
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The Buraq is a semi-mythical being of half-human and half-quadruped animal, often depicted with the head of a beautiful woman, that accompanies the Prophet Muhammad in his miraculous night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and from Jerusalem to the seventh level of heaven in one night. It is unknown when the visual tradition of depicting the Buraq first emerged from its verbal accounts found in the hadiths (records of words and actions of the Prophet) and the biography of the Prophet, but it became a popular image in the Persian and Persianate worlds since at least the fourteenth century. The popular imagination of the Buraq circulates across the Islamic world along with the spread of Islam, including in Java and the rest of the Indo-Malay Archipelago. As seen in this object, the Buraq is made into a wayang kulit puppet and depicted with a rather naturalistic style that bears a reference to the Buraq images found in the South Asian visual tradition. It is likely that this Buraq puppet was made either as a memento or to be used in a wayang performance that tells stories related to Islam.
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Provenance
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Gift of Joseph Fischer acquired through the George and Mary Rockwell Fund and the gift of Louise Taraldson Woods by exchange
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Rights
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Collection of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. Coll. no. 2008.073.057
