Posted by Juan Cole

https://www.juancole.com/2025/12/conflict-prophet-muhammad.html

https://www.juancole.com/?p=228464

I gave an online talk to the `Inekas [Reflection] Study Group of scholars in Iran on a chapter of my book, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.. They have kindly put it up at YouTube, so I am mirroring it here. YouTube provides a computer-generated transcript. I asked Open AI’s ChatGPT to clean it up as a transcript. I think it is pretty accurate, but Caveat Emptor.

`Inekas: “Juan Cole | Conflict in Mecca: Muhammad and Soft Power”

[This post contains video, click to play]

Thank you so much for that very kind introduction. I want to talk today about this period, which traditionally in Islamic sources is given as 628 through 630— a couple of years towards the end of the Prophet Muhammad’s life, when, after a period of hostilities and battles, peace broke out. What might have been the context for this?

The Quran as a Primary Source

I’d like to propose that we use the Quran itself as our primary source. You know, historians weigh sources. They’re interested in documents that survive from the past. But we want to know: how close are they to the events they describe? A memoir written 30 years after the event is not as valuable as a quick account written right after the event happened by an eyewitness. And then things written by grandchildren, who remember the stories their grandparents told, are not as valuable as the eyewitness accounts.

A lot of contemporary academic scholars of early Islam feel as though the practice has been to privilege secondary sources, the sources from the Abbasid period. Some of them may be late Umayyad, but there was a proliferation of writing about early Islam after the Abbasids came to power. These accounts are 130, 150, 200 years after the fact. And I believe that they often have been influenced by later events, because memory changes over time.

There was a long period of time when entire books were not written about this subject. People depended on oral transmission or some kept notes. But, of course, notes are scattered and need to be put into final form. So, the first biography we have of the Prophet Muhammad of any length is that of Ibn Ishaq, which is preserved in later renditions of Tabari and Ibn Hisham. There are some other biographies of the Prophet, which are relatively early, and one recently has been found in Damascus -— a manuscript of al-Sira [the biography of the Propheet], which may predate Ibn Hisham. But they are all post-750 of the Common Era. These are at least 150 years later than the Hijra.

I believe that the earliest source we have for the life of the Prophet is the Quran itself. And I believe the Quran is early. There have been scholars, and there still are some, who have attempted to argue that the Quran, like the Gospels, developed over time and is relatively late. But I think the predominance of evidence points to it being a contemporary source with the Prophet, for the most part at least.

Things look very different if you privilege the Quran because many of the stories told in the Abbasid period are not in the Quran, and many of the attitudes displayed in the Abbasid texts are not in the Quran.

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Quran’s Stance on Warfare & Pagans

For instance, I believe that the Quran disallows offensive warfare —- that only defensive warfare is permitted in the Quran. This is not what the Abbasids thought. In fact, they—and later Muslim thinkers—often thought there was an obligation to attempt to expand the sphere of the Muslim Empire. I don’t believe that’s a Quranic attitude.

Moreover, the Abbasids and later sources often depict the relationship of the Prophet Muhammad with the pagan community, who still worshipped the old North Arabian gods, according to the Quran, as consistently hostile and as imposing thought and religion on them. I don’t find that attitude in the Quran either.

To give an example, we have Surah 4, verse 94, which is a late Surah from the period I’m talking about, which says: “Do not say to one who offers you peace, ‘You are not a believer.'” That is to say, the Quran is saying that if a Muslim party, out on their horses or camels, a war party comes upon a pagan group and the pagan group says, Assalamu alaykum [“Peace be upon You] -—- and the Muslims reject this greeting and say, “You’re not believers; why should we accept your salam [wish of peace]?”—the Quran says, no, you can’t do that. They have a right to a presumption of innocence. They may not be allied to your enemies. If they greet you with peace, you have to greet them with peace, and you can’t just loot them.

So, the Quran maintains that peace is possible with pagans who aren’t hostile, who aren’t at war with the Muslim community. I find it amusing that at some points in the Quran, there’s an attitude of understanding or sympathy for the plight of the pagans, who are set in their ways, which the Quran believes are wrong. But it says at one point, Don’t curse the gods of the pagans because they’ll curse Allah in turn -— just as a tit-for-tat. And it says, Every people thinks their own gods are beautiful. So the Quran has this kind of humanistic gaze at some points and holds out hopes for peace with pagans.

By this time -— 627, 628 —- the Muslims and the pagans, according to the Quran, have fought three major battles and some minor ones. The later Abbasid stories say that there were over 40 raids, but that’s not apparent in the Quran. And incidentally, I didn’t get to hear the presentation on the caravan raids, but I don’t believe that any caravan raids are referred to in the Quran. I don’t see that.

Geopolitical Context: Rome vs. Persia

But in any case, I think one of the geopolitical contexts for this period was the amazing defeat by the Roman Emperor Heraclius of the Sasanian Empire. Emperor Khosrow II had invaded the Roman Near East in 603. It wasn’t the first time, but remarkably, this time in the 610s, they made it stick. They were able to take substantial amounts of territory in Anatolia and then to go south into Syria, Palestine, and Jordan. In 614, Jerusalem fell to the Sasanian Zoroastrians, which was a traumatic event for the Christian world. I, and some other historians, including Glen Bowersock, the great classicist, believe that there is evidence in the Quran that the Prophet Muhammad and the early community of believers tilted in their sympathies toward Constantinople, towards the Romans.

Of course, famously in Surah al-Rum ([Chapter of Rome] the 30th chapter of the Quran), the first few verses predict—and I’ll come to this—that although, at the time of writing, the Romans had been defeated, this is likely a reference to events in Syria and Jordan—the Romans would come back after a few years, and remarkably, I read the Quran to say that the victory of the Romans would be considered the victory of God, and the believers would rejoice at it. This is very strong evidence of a pro-Roman attitude in the Quran.

I think it’s possible that the Quran sees Khosrow II as an aggressor. He’s the one who broke the previous peace treaties by invading Roman territory and usurping it. There’s also some evidence from an early work of tafsir (exegesis), one of the earliest that exists, by Makhlid bin Salim of Bal, who says that, according to traditions that reached him allegedly from Urwah bin Zubayr, the pagans of Mecca were at that point allied with the Persians. And because the believers around Muhammad sympathized more with the Romans, that was one of the roots of the conflict between the two. This seems eminently plausible and helps to explain some things.

The Defeat of the Sasanian Empire

In 628, as I said, Heraclius brought his armies down, and in late 627, he had defeated the Sasanians at Nineveh, in what is now Iraq. Then, the way was open for him to take his army all the way down to Ctesiphon, the capital. Khosrow II was on the western side of the Tigris at one of his favorite palaces, the Dastgerd, and when he heard that the Romans were coming, he fled that palace across the Tigris to Ctesiphon, his fortified capital.

He had imprisoned his son, Shiroyeh, who was the crown prince. But some courtiers freed him, and they made a coup against Khosrow II. Once Shiroyeh was on the throne, he took the name Kavad II. He had his father executed on February 28, 628. I think, by this time, the Sasanian elite was really tired of war. Since 603, they had been at war for a quarter of a century. Although they had largely won, it was deadly in terms of loss of life and the amount of treasury spent on these wars of conquest.

I suspect that some of the functions of government back in Iran were neglected -— maybe the government wasn’t keeping up the qanats [irrigation canals] the way it used to. There was also dissatisfaction, compounded by the fact that, during the time of Justinian, a century before, there had been an outbreak of bubonic plague, which devastated the Roman Empire. The plague didn’t go away; there were continued waves of it for decades, into the 600s. My suspicion is that, by going there, the Iranian army contracted a lot of the plague and ultimately brought it back to Iran. That, too, may have been a source of discontent.

Quranic Reflection on Roman Defeat

This is the verse from Surah Ar-Rum (30:30): “Rome lies vanquished in the nearest province, but in the wake of their defeat, they will triumph after a few years. Before and after, it is God who was in command. On that day, the believers will rejoice in the victory of God.”

Typically, Muslim commentators on the Quran haven’t read this as I am, as a political statement of support for the Roman Empire. But I believe there’s reason to think that that’s exactly what it was. If, as Ibn Sulayman suggests, the pagans of Mecca were allied with the Sasanians, then this defeat of Khosrow II was significant for Arabia. The Sasanians had Yemen and their allies in Mecca and Ta’if, who were tied to trade with Yemen. When Shiroyeh came to power as Kavad II, he pledged to withdraw from the Roman Near East -— Syria, Palestine, and so forth -— which I don’t believe happened immediately, but the pledge was made. So, the likelihood that Kavad II was going to give any help to the Meccan pagans was low. He was getting out of the Middle East.

Impact of Defeat on Mecca

I think that this change made the Meccan pagans more willing to make peace with the Muslims in Medina. Up until that point, they were confident in having an external backer, convinced they would win. But now their ally had thrown in the towel. I think they were more open to compromise than they had been before.

Again, the Quran in Surah Al-Fath [Chapter of Success] (48:10) had indicated that peace was possible with the enemy: “If they incline to peace, then you should incline to it, and put your trust in God.” The wars had continued not because the Muslims were bloodthirsty or aggressive but because the pagans had continued to attack Medina. The Quran is saying that if the pagans stand down, then so will the believers around Muhammad. And I think that’s maybe what happened.

The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah

Now, the sira [biography of the Prophet] tells a story that’s not in the Quran. In March of 628, two months after the fall of Khosrow II, the Muslims from Medina peacefully set out for a pilgrimage to the Ka’bah in Mecca. The sira makes it very clear that they didn’t go as a war party; they went as pilgrims. In ancient Arabian custom, pilgrims were under the sign of peace—they weren’t part of any military conflict.

If it happened as the sira says, this is a remarkable event because the pagans had made it very clear that the followers of Muhammad were banned from Mecca and were not allowed to worship at the Ka’bah. This stance of the pagans contradicted Hijazi custom. As far as we can tell, the custom in the Hijaz was that a sanctuary like the Ka’bah, a shrine, should be a place of peace, where feuding was forbidden. It was also a hima, a nature preserve where you couldn’t cut down trees or hunt animals. It was a place of peace, and everyone should have equal access to it. They had to put aside their feuds when they went to such a sanctuary.

We’ve found inscriptions, such as Nabataean inscriptions, which describe other such sanctuaries of peace in southern Jordan. My reading of the Quran is that the pagans, in banning the followers of Muhammad from coming to the Ka`bah for pilgrimage, were contravening the rules that governed religious life in the Hijaz. The Quran really minded that.

The Peace Process at Hudaybiyyah

So, the Muslim army came out and stopped the followers of Muhammad from entering Mecca in 628. The Prophet Muhammad then diverted to Hudaybiyyah. The sira says that his camel stopped there, and Muhammad took it as a sign. Rather than fight—of course, they weren’t prepared to fight, they were in pilgrimage clothes and unarmed—the Prophet sought peace and began negotiations with the pagans. This time, the pagans were willing to negotiate. They said, “Well, you can’t just show up unannounced. We’re not going to let you into Mecca this year, but you can come next year.” They then concluded a peace treaty.

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Interestingly, the provisions of the peace treaty sound a lot like the provisions of the peace treaty reached between the Sasanians and the Romans in the middle of the 6th century. This may have been modeled on that Roman-Sasanian peace treaty. And if it’s true that the followers of Muhammad and the pagans were tilting towards Rome and Ctesiphon, then that would make sense.

The Negotiations and the Terms of Peace

Famously, in that negotiation, the Prophet began by saying “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.” The pagan interlocutor refused to have that language in the treaty, so it simply said “In the name of God.” Then, Muhammad described himself as Allah’s Messenger, but the pagans wouldn’t accept that, so it simply said Muhammad, the servant of Allah. The sira tells us that some of the followers of Muhammad—like Abu Bakr and Umar—were upset that the pagans were dictating this neutral, even secular language in the treaty. But it seems clear, as the story is told, that the Prophet valued the possibility of peace more than standing on these principles.

Interestingly, Saudi archaeologists exploring the rock carvings around Mecca and Medina have discovered a number of inscriptions that begin “In the name of God”, without “the Merciful, the Compassionate”. It’s not entirely clear whether these are post-Muhammad, but they may date to the late 500s. That could have been the custom in the region, as Allah was considered the patron god, and perhaps invoked for treaties and other agreements.

The Treaty and Its Provisions

According to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, there would be no fighting for 10 years. People were free to ally with Muhammad or with the Quraysh as they pleased. The sira says there had already been some converts to Islam in Mecca—covert Muslims who were under pagan rule. Some of the tribes that hadn’t yet converted were starting to give Muhammad their allegiance secretly. This point becomes important later on when we read the Quran about it.

The treaty also specified that the youth would need their family’s permission to join Muhammad in Medina and leave Mecca. If they came to Medina and their family objected, they would be sent back to Mecca. However, if someone left Islam, they were considered apostates and could remain in Medina.

The Muslims also agreed to delay their entry into Mecca for one year. At Hudaybiyyah, they sacrificed their camels. Some of Muhammad’s followers, according to the sira, were uncomfortable with doing this, because sacrifices were typically made in Mecca, not at Hudaybiyyah. But since the Prophet did it, they were shamed into doing it as well.

The Following Year: Pilgrimage to Mecca

The treaty also stipulated that, when they came back the following year, the Muslims would be allowed to circumambulate the Ka’bah, but they would need to do so as part of a pilgrimage and under the conditions agreed upon.

The Peaceful Conversion of Yemen

Tabari has an intriguing story, though I can’t find direct evidence for it in early sources like the Quran. Tabari preserves a lot of Sasanian material, and as an Iranian historian himself, we must consider it. He says that the Sasanians sent a navy to conquer Yemen in the early 570s. The Iranian admirals and generals who came with the expedition became an oligarchy, the huthah, that ruled Yemen during the lifetime of the Prophet.

According to Tabari, the Prophet reached out to the general in charge of Yemen, a Sasanian officer named Ban ibn Sassan. The Prophet explained the principles of Islam, and the Iranian officer corps in Yemen accepted the new religion. They converted to Islam, and the Prophet appointed them as his representatives in Yemen. There was never a battle for Yemen. It was through the peaceful conversion of the ruling class that Yemen began to adopt Islam.

The only kind of evidence that I see in the Qur’an for this sort of event is in al-Hajj 22:17, the chapter of Pilgrimage, which is the only place in the Qur’an that overtly mentions the religion of Sasanian Iran, which was Zoroastrianism. And it says: “The believers, the Jews, the Sabians, the Christians, the Zoroastrians, and the pagans—God will decide among them on the Resurrection Day. God sees all things.”

And I’m not alone in making the observation that the majus, the Zoroastrians, are here being distinguished from al-ladhina ashrakū (the pagans). So it seems like they’re being accepted as one of those monotheistic religions like Christianity and Judaism, and were not categorized as pagans. And that may be a sign that there was in the time of the Prophet a proto-Islamization of Zoroastrians, an attempt to bring them into the new religion.

And you know, it makes sense to me. It’s just a little speculative, but Zoroastrians had many of the same beliefs as Islam. They believed in an afterlife. In fact, I think some of the descriptions of the heaven in the Qur’an are drawing on Iranian traditions, because it mentions silk and brocade and those things came from Iran. And then it talks about burzakh [barrier] -—that’s a Persian word. And so there’s something specially Iranian about the Qur’anic heaven.

And then we know that Zoroastrians often had millenarian tendencies, and they were expecting this Saoshyant, the kind of Zoroastrian messiah, to come at the end of time. Maybe they thought that Muhammad was it.

So this event that al-Tabari tells us about -— and we can’t be sure it happened or happened in this way -— but if it’s true, it shows a side of early Islam that’s usually not appreciated, which is how often peaceful acquiescence to the new religion and to the Prophet’s leadership occurred.

The Treaty Violation and the Move Toward Mecca

So that Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, according to the later sources, was violated by allies of the Quraysh in late 629, who attacked a tribe that was in Mecca but was allied with Muhammad. And it is said by the Sīra that the Prophet considered this a breach of the treaty. And so in January of 630 he went with his followers to Mecca.

Qur’an’s Narrative of Mecca’s Entry

I think that this story of the Prophet and his followers going to Mecca in January of 630 is told as a narrative in the Qur’an itself. People often say there isn’t much history in the Qur’an, but I think actually there’s quite a lot if you read it as history. And I think that Sūrat al-Fatḥ, the chapter of Success, is narrative history. It’s telling the story of how the Prophet and the followers went to Mecca.

And it’s not the way that the Muslim commentators in the Abbasid period and after have read it. There has been a tendency to read this surah as about the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. That makes no sense to me, because it talks about being inside Mecca, and at least as the Sīra [biographical literature] tells the story of Hudaybiyyah, they didn’t get to Mecca.

So I think this is about the later event of the entry of the Muslims into Mecca. And if you read it this way, it casts a very different light on this event.

Qur’anic Description of the Peaceful Entry

The surah begins with a kind of vision the Prophet had of being in Mecca and doing the rituals of pilgrimage, having his hair cut and so forth. And then it goes into an excursus, which is a complaint about the Muslims’ allies. The Qur’an says, those who stayed behind will assert, ‘When you plan to take booty, then let us follow you.’ So I read this as a suggestion that the Prophet had announced to his followers: we’re going to go to Mecca, but we won’t go as an armed group; we won’t go to conquer Mecca; we’re going there peacefully.

And the Bedouin allies of the Prophet, who were willing to fight the pagans of Mecca for him, were in it for the loot. They were in it for the booty. And so they tell him, “No -— well, if you’re going to Mecca and you’re not going to take any booty, then why would we go with you? We’re not coming.” And so the Qur’an scolds them about this.

Then, a bit later in verses 22–24, I think the Qur’an makes it clear that this entry into Mecca was peaceful:

“If the pagans had fought you, they would have turned and fled; nor would they have found any protector or helper. This is the tradition of God as ever before, and you will find no change in the tradition of God. He it is who withheld their hands from you and your hands from them in the heart of Mecca after He made you ascendant over them.”

Well, what is it saying? It is saying, first of all, that God had a custom which prevailed in Mecca—there was no fighting in Mecca, no fighting around the Ka‘ba—and that God arranged for this custom to be implemented again. It’s not a changeable custom. Mecca is a sanctuary; you don’t fight there. And so God arranged for the pagans not to oppose the entry of the Muslims into Mecca, and moreover arranged for the Muslims not to fight the pagans.

Why the Later Accounts Conflict

Now, this is not exactly what the Sīra and the later biographies of the Prophet assert. There are sayings, and some scholars like Gregor Schoeler have tried to show that they are very early, from ‘Urwa b. al-Zubayr, that he is alleged often to have gotten from Aisha. They say that his father -— al-Zubayr -— is buried in the Ka‘ba, that he carried a battle standard into Mecca, and that there was a skirmish at some point. But that’s not what the Qur’an says. The Qur’an is speaking about the same events; it says there was no skirmish, that nobody took up arms, and that this was arranged by God.

So why would ‘Urwa’s account differ from that of the Qur’an? Well, the Zubayrids had political aspirations. Al-Zubayr rebelled against the early Islamic state and was put down by Ali, and then ‘Urwa’s brother later led a revolt against the Umayyads and was put down. So the Zubayr family remembered al-Zubayr as the conqueror of Mecca. The family had a right to the Ka‘ba maybe, because their ancestor was the one who brought the battle standard in and subdued the pagans. And so I think the later history of the Zubayrids colored this account of the initial return of the Muslims to Mecca. But it colored it in an inaccurate way. They remembered things differently than they actually occurred.

Because I think the Qur’an is the primary source, and it says there was no fighting. And I think it strongly implies that the Prophet had announced before they left Medina that there would be no fighting, no looting; that a peaceful entry into Mecca was planned.

So this tendency of the later tradition to read militancy into early Islam is consistent, and we have to revise our idea of the religion in the time of the Prophet in light of what the Qur’an says, which is often very different from what the later tradition says.

And by the way, those Saudi archaeologists are finding a lot of Zubayrid inscriptions in the region, including ones that have ‘Urwa in the genealogy. So the historicity of that family’s participation is not in doubt, but we don’t have to take their account of their ancestor’s role verbatim.

The Culmination of Sacred History

Finally, I’ll just come to the last part of my talk. At the end of Sūrat al-Fatḥ, after the Qur’an’s description of what I believe to be the entry of the Prophet and his followers into Mecca—finally, after having been exiled to Medina in 622 -— there’s a very interesting passage in the 29th verse.

It says that the believers in the Prophet’s mission prostrate themselves to God as in the Torah, in the Hebrew Bible. And there’s a passage in Nehemiah 8:6 that says they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. So there’s a commonality between the humility and worshipfulness of Muhammad’s followers and the ancient children of Israel.

Then it says they are like the people in the Gospel, in being fruitful seeds. The parable for them in the Gospel is as a seed that puts forth its shoot. In Mark 4:5–8 it says that Jesus gave the parable and says, other seed fell onto good soil and brought forth grain. Well, that seems to me clearly that the Qur’an is referring to this passage in Mark.

And what is it saying? It is saying that the believers, after they have entered Mecca peacefully and reestablished their worship of the one God at the Ka‘ba, have come to exemplify the religious, moral, and ethical virtues of the previous religious dispensations. Like the Hebrews, they pray with their faces to the ground. Like the early Christians, they are the good seed that falls on fertile soil and gives forth fruitfulness.

I think Sūrat al-Fatḥ is saying that at that point, the believers, having come into Mecca, are exemplifying the fruition of sacred history. Not only is the chapter about this incident, but it is also a commentary on its significance.

Conclusion

So that’s my summary of some of the main points in my chapter. And again, I’m doing a number of things here as a historian. I’m insisting on the primacy of the Qur’an as our primary source, but I’m contextualizing it in what we know from contemporary Greek and to some extent Sasanian sources about these events, and trying to set the Hijaz in this geopolitical context.

And I am not ruling out some of the material that appears in the later sources. I’m saying that we have to read that material with suspicion, with a hermeneutics of suspicion, and we have to carefully compare it to what’s in the Qur’an. Where there’s a contradiction, we have to prefer the Qur’an.

And so I am ruling out that al-Zubayr b. al-`Awwam marched into Mecca with a battle standard, or that there was a skirmish between the pagans and the Muslims when they went in—that seems to me just not what the Qur’an says. And to the extent that I’m willing to consider stories like that one al-Tabari tells about the Sasanians in Yemen, that doesn’t mean that I accept everything al-Tabari says. I reject a lot of things al-Tabari says because they don’t make any sense in the light of the primary sources, whether they be Roman or the Qur’an itself. But where it’s plausible, where there doesn’t seem to be a contradiction, then I think we can consider some of this material. I think we have to have a moderate position on this matter.

https://www.juancole.com/2025/12/conflict-prophet-muhammad.html

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Posted by Global Voices

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Soraya Sharghi, ‘Rising with the Song of Nymphs,’ 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 152,4 x 236,2 cm (60 x 93 in). Photo courtesy of the artist.

( GlobalVoices.org ) – In her most recent exhibition, “Sculpture and Painting,” presented at 24 Avenue Matignon in Paris during Art Basel’s October 2025 week, Iranian-American artist Soraya Sharghi gathered recent bronze, ceramic, and painting works in a single, immersive environment. 

In this presentation, Sharghi unveiled a luminous universe where mythology, memory, and material intertwine. Through hybrid figures that seem to rise from fire and color, she explores the feminine not as muse but as a generative force. Works such as “Rising with the Song of Nymphs” and her hand-shaped ceramic guardians create a continuum between painting and sculpture, where myth is reimagined as a language of survival and rebirth.

Born in 1988 in Tehran and now based in New York, Sharghi studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she began experimenting simultaneously with painting, sculpture, and installation. As a child, she invented elaborate stories and imaginary characters for her younger sister, narratives that later became the foundation of her visual universe. “Imagination comes naturally in childhood,” she says, “and I’ve made sure never to lose that. It still drives the way I work today.”

Soraya Sharghi working on her bronze sculpture in China, 2025. Photo by Lei Jianzhong, courtesy of the artist.

Her art, she explains, is a form of reclamation and protection: “Growing up in Iran, imagination became my refuge. Surrealism was not just an artistic influence; it was a way of surviving reality.” In her visual lexicon, myth becomes autobiography; every hybrid heroine is a self-created guardian of endurance, shaped by restriction, migration, and the continuous negotiation of womanhood.

Sharghi’s journey reveals a constant dialogue between discipline and rebellion. Her intricate surfaces, radiant chromatic palette, and densely worked compositions echo, in spirit, the emotionally charged figuration of artists like Niki de Saint Phalle, Hayv Kahraman and Emma Talbot, who likewise weave myth, textural pattern, and feminine subjectivity into contemporary narratives. Yet Sharghi’s voice remains unmistakably her own — unflinchingly personal, intellectually grounded, and spiritually charged.

Soraya Sharghi, ‘Rising Nymphs,’ 2025. Painted on glazed porcelain, high-fired at 1280°C. 37 x 34 x 34 cm (14.57 x 13.39 x 13.39 in). Photo courtesy of the artist.

Speaking of her multi-material approach, Sharghi says, “Each material carries its own energy and teaches me something new… together they form a map of my spiritual evolution.” In this interview with Global Voices, Soraya reflects on imagination, hybridity, mythmaking, the politics and poetics of the female body, and the alchemy of clay, fire, and color that continues to shape her expanding universe.

Excerpts of the interview follow: 

Omid Memarian (OM): You often describe your art as a continuation of the imaginative worlds you created in childhood. Can you tell us about those early experiences growing up in Iran, what drew you to storytelling and visual expression, and how those early moments continue to shape your creative universe today?

Soraya Sharghi (SS): Since childhood, I’ve always created worlds of my own. I used to invent imaginary characters and tell stories to my younger sister so vividly that she believed they were real. In many ways, I’m still that same person, only now I have more tools and languages to express those ideas. Imagination comes naturally in childhood, and I’ve made sure never to lose that. It still drives the way I work today.

When I discovered visual art, it became the safest way to express myself without being fully read. I could encode feelings and stories into symbols and gestures, communicating through images rather than words.

Growing up in Iran, in a culture where girls were often told what they could or could not say, wear, or dream, imagination became my refuge. Surrealism was not just an artistic influence; it was a way of surviving reality.

Soraya Sharghi, ‘Out of Realm,’ 2017. Acrylic on canvas, 137.16 × 137.16 cm (54 x 54 in). Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: How did your experience at the San Francisco Art Institute influence or transform your artistic practice? Looking back, what would you approach differently now after years of independent exploration?

SS: Studying at the San Francisco Art Institute opened a door to seeing myself from the outside. It was the first time anyone had asked me, ‘Who are you? What was your childhood like?’ I had to define myself beyond geography, language, and expectation. That process made me look at my culture from a distance — its poetry, its places, its complexities — with deeper understanding and renewed curiosity.

At SFAI, I was known for being ambitious. Even when the assignment was simple, I would push the limits of what was possible, experimenting with complex forms, mixing materials, and demanding more from myself. I explored painting, sculpture, and installation simultaneously, not knowing yet how they would merge. That experimental mindset still shapes my practice today.

At that time, I began exploring the female body in my work not as a subject of nudity or provocation, but as a space of emotion and healing. It was about reclaiming presence and voice, transforming experiences of restriction into freedom. My art became a process of healing and self-discovery, a way to turn silence into strength.

Soraya Sharghi, ‘The Resolution of Eve (Eve 15),’ 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 198.12 × 114.30 cm (78 x 45 in). Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: Your practice moves fluidly between painting, drawing, sculpture, and ceramics. How did this shift across media begin, and what new possibilities did each material open for you in terms of form, storytelling, and spiritual resonance?

SS: I grew up surrounded by limitations, which is why I naturally resist them. Crossing between media feels like crossing between worlds, an act of freedom. Each material carries its own energy and teaches me something new.

Clay taught me patience and surrender. You can’t control fire; it decides what survives. Working with clay showed me that perfection is fragile and that loss can also be beautiful. Painting, on the other hand, is like facing yourself directly; it demands honesty. I believe a strong painter can do anything, because painting teaches you to see and to listen deeply.

Even when I sculpt, I think as a painter. I use glazes like pigments, layering them as if painting with fire. I love breaking rules; the chemists would tell me what not to do, and I would do it anyway, following intuition over formula. It’s that tension between discipline and rebellion that gives my work life.

Every material becomes a language for a different emotion; together, they form a map of my spiritual evolution.

Soraya Sharghi, ‘The Thinker,’ 2023-2024, Acrylic on canvas, 226.6 x 183 cm (89.21 × 72.05 in). Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: This year, you spent a few months in China and began to explore ceramics more deeply, experimenting with material processes and cross-cultural influences. How did working in that context shape your understanding of clay and craftsmanship?

SS: When I arrived in Jingdezhen, China, the ancient city of porcelain, I was carrying many emotions, especially as war and unrest were unfolding in Iran. I spent my first weeks in silence, letting my hands speak through clay. The rough, raw textures that appeared on my female figures came directly from that state, pressing, coiling, almost sculpting my emotions into form.

Jingdezhen was transformative. The city breathes clay; every family, every street carries that energy of making. People there had such humility and devotion to their craft. Each artisan mastered one small gesture with perfection; it was deeply spiritual.

It wasn’t only about learning technique; it was about listening to clay, to silence, to the rhythm of making. In China, I learned to slow down, to let the material lead me. The people’s energy, pure, generous, grounded, reminded me that mastery is not control, it’s harmony.

‘I,’ 2025. Bronze. Soraya Sharghi: ‘A material I’ve long dreamed of working with for its permanence, weight, and history. This sculpture is called ‘I,’ a self-portrait in many forms, holding all the characters, emotions, and imagined beings that live inside me. An archive of inner voice, forged in fire.’ Photo by Lei Jianzhong, courtesy of the artist.

OM: Your works depict hybrid female figures that merge human, animal, and mythological attributes. How did you arrive at this mythopoetic visual language, and how does it reflect your lived experience as an Iranian woman navigating multiple worlds?

SS: Mythology has always been close to me. Growing up in Iran, myths were everywhere, stories of angels, heroes, and gods that shaped how we saw the world. But as a woman, I was always told who to be within those stories. So I started rewriting them.

My figures are self-created myths, hybrid guardians who protect, transform, and evolve. They often carry both beauty and pain, because that’s how survival feels. Growing up, I learned to change shapes to adapt, to mask, to survive. That transformation became my visual language.

Iran itself is surreal, a place of contradictions where dreams and restrictions coexist. My work channels that paradox, creating new beings that belong to no nation or time. They are every woman who has had to become many things to exist freely.

Soraya Sharghi, ‘She holds, she continues,’ 2025. Painted on glazed porcelain, high-fired at 1280°C. 37 x 34 x 34 cm (14.57 x 13.39 x 13.39 inches]. Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: Your recent ceramic works reimagine Sofal-e Berjasteh, the ancient Persian embossed-glazed pottery tradition. How did you revive and transform this technique in your own practice? 

SS: In my ceramic practice, I explore several different techniques. One is the Sofal-e Berjasteh-inspired work, which is an entirely new and separate process from my other clay pieces. Another includes my sculptural figures, female heads and torsos shaped by hand, where I leave the rough textures and my fingerprints visible. I also experiment with painting on vessels and forms, using glazes like watercolors to achieve layered, fluid surfaces. Each method opens a different dialogue between tradition, body, and emotion.

A few years ago, in Isfahan, I came across simple old ceramic cups that I had seen since childhood but never truly looked at. This time, they spoke to me. I became fascinated by their embossed glaze, “Sofal-e Berjasteh”, and imagined translating my paintings into this ancient craft. Since then, I had been dreaming of creating such a piece, and finally, I did.

I painted with glazes like mosaic-like colors, building the image shape by shape, entirely by hand, and creating this piece was a complete joy.

Clay remembers touch; it holds your presence long after you’re gone. The cracks, the pressure marks, even the broken pieces, they all become part of the story. Working with clay is like working with life itself: you shape it, it resists, and together you become something new.

Soraya Sharghi, ‘The Story of a Triumph,’ 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 121.92 × 187.96 cm (48 x 74 in). Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: Your latest exhibition features monumental ceramic sculptures and hand-shaped figures that seem to rise from fire and survive it. What does this new body of work represent for you in terms of courage, vulnerability, and creative risk?

SS: This body of work was born from fire. Clay can only find its strength through burning. That process mirrors my own journey as a woman and artist, facing pressure, loss, and transformation until something new emerges.

These sculptures embody survival. They are spirits that rise from destruction and continue to sing. Each crack or glaze run becomes a testimony to endurance. I see them as self-portraits of resilience, vulnerable, yet unbreakable.

Creating them required courage because I had to let go of control and trust the elements. Fire became my collaborator. It tested my patience, my ego, my sense of perfection. What remained after the firing was the essence, truth stripped of pretense. That’s what this series is about: rising, not untouched, but reborn.

Soraya Sharghi, ‘Rise of the Rainbow From the Marsh’ 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 139.7 x 223.52 cm (55 x 88 in). Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM: In “Rising with the Song of Nymphs” (2022), memory, myth, and childhood merge into a cosmic tableau. How did this work evolve, and what does its connection to Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality” reveal about your relationship to time, imagination, and rebirth?

SS: “Rising with the Song of Nymphs” is about remembering the language of the soul. When I read Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” I felt deeply connected to his idea that childhood is a sacred memory, a place where we once saw the divine clearly, before forgetting it.

The idea for this painting actually came from an old traditional Iranian children’s game that I used to play. In this game, children form a circle while one girl sits in the middle, often pretending to cry, and the others sing for her to rise and rejoin the group. The game has many local variations across Iran and traces back to ancient ritual and performative traditions, part play, part symbolic enactment of emotion, separation, and reunion. The circle represents community; the central figure embodies longing, loss, or transformation; and when she finally stands, it becomes a moment of healing and rebirth.

Long after creating the painting, I came across Wordsworth’s poem, and it resonated so deeply. It expressed exactly what the painting had already revealed to me: that imagination is a bridge to that early, divine connection we once felt in childhood.

In this work, the nymphs represent both innocence and wisdom; they rise from memory like guardians of light. The painting became a conversation between my past and present selves, between myth and rebirth.

Some of the ceramic pieces in the exhibition carry this same spirit; their painted surfaces were inspired by “Rising with the Song of Nymphs,” echoing its imagery and rhythm in a new material form. Through clay and fire, those visions became tangible, as if fragments of the painting found a second life in three dimensions.

Soraya Sharghi at her studio in New York, working on ‘Rise of the rainbow from the marsh,’ 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.

OM:  In “She Holds, She Continues” (2025), the figure appears as both protector and creator. How does this work speak to endurance, transformation, and the feminine as a generative force?

SS: In “She Holds, She Continues,” the female figure is not passive; she is the source. She carries the weight of creation and the tenderness of care. Her gesture of holding is both an embrace and an act of power.

The imagery and characters evolved from “Rising with the Song of Nymphs,” which features girls holding hands in a circle as symbols of unity, rebirth, and feminine strength. Now, these themes are expressed in a new form through a ceramic technique I developed. This technique involves thousands of small, hand-shaped elements, each resembling a brushstroke, a cell, or a heartbeat, which merge to create a vibrant, living surface.

The initial spark came from Naghsh-e Berjasteh, the Persian embossed-design tradition, but I transformed its spirit into something my own. While inspired by the sense of relief and layered texture, the technique and visual language are new.

Through this process, the figures rise again, transformed by fire, yet still connected by touch. The work speaks to the generative force of the feminine — how creation continues quietly and powerfully through repetition, care, and persistence.

The Bridge features personal essays, commentary, and creative non-fiction that illuminate differences in perception between local and international coverage of news events, from the unique perspective of members of the Global Voices community. Views expressed do not necessarily represent the opinion of the community as a whole. All Posts

Via GlobalVoices.org

 

 

Written byOmid Memarian

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