‘Alam al-Mithal is my zine about the ‘world of images’ (likened to the world of Platonic forms), which existed as a type of threshold between heaven and earth in premodern Islamic cosmologies. It attempts a mythopoeic history, encompassing allegorical verses of the Quran, the miracles of the Prophet, Sufi imagery, the symbolic tropes of Urdu poetry and other historical sources. The story ends with the rise of European colonial power and the beginnings of modernization (and scientism) in the nineteenth century.
safdar ahmed 