Mohammed Image Archive

Mohammed Image Archive

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Miscellaneous Mohammed Images

There have been depictions of Mohammed in every era throughout history. Here are a few from periods not covered in other categories:

The North Frieze on the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC features a bas-relief sculpture of Mohammed, among several other historical law-givers. He is in the center of this image holding a curved scimitar; on the left is Charlemagne, and on the right is Byzantine Emperor Justinian. You can download a detailed pdf of the Supreme Court friezes here. The urban legend site Snopes.com has info about the frieze in this entry.
(Hat tip: js, C. Reb, and Matt R.)

1928 German advertisement for bouillon extract shows Gabriel guiding Mohammed up to Allah.
(Hat tip: karmic inquisitor.)

Mohammed at Mecca, by Andreas Muller, late 19th century; this is a photogravure reproduction printed in 1889; the original is in the Maximilianeum Gallery, Munich. Mohammed is the one on the camel, and is depicted casting the idols out of the Kaaba.
(Hat tip: little old lady and Andrew.)

Certain towns in southern Spain hold an annual festival called "Moros y Cristianos" ("Moors and Christians"), which celebrates the Reconquista -- the recapture of the Iberian Peninsula by Christian Spaniards from the Muslim colonizers who had invaded centuries earlier. In some locales, at the climax of the festival, townspeople burn Mohammed in effigy. The Mohammed figure, called La Mahoma, is usually bigger than life-size and in full costume. The picture here shows La Mahoma from the 1920 Moros y Cristianos festival in the town of Biar, near Alicante. But according to this site, some of the villages are planning to tone down their celebrations this year by not having La Mahoma at all.
(Hat tip: foreign devil.)

A photo essay on this site shows La Mahoma of Biar being paraded through the town in the 2000 Moros y Cristianos.

A municipal fraternal organization maintains the tradition of La Mahoma from year to year.

This contemporary drawing of Mohammed is a thoughtful attempt to show what he might have actually looked like in real life, based on scholarly research into the earliest known descriptions of him, and into the type of clothing worn in Arabia during his lifetime.
(Hat tip: Rob.)

This unusual drawing of a dark-skinned Mohammed comes from a site about Factology, an obscure messianic Islamic-themed schismatic religious group which is based on the teachings of Dr. Malachi Z. York.
(Hat tip: Raafat.)

This Chilean scholastic site features a modern veiled portait of Mohammed -- a rarity in a non-Islamic country.

This modern drawing of Mohammed was used in public school instructional materials in Spain.

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo has this mohammed portrait on their Web site in a section about the history of Islam.

On one of the pages for its game Age of Empires II, Microsoft features a portrait of Mohammed as part of its description of "the Saracens."
(Hat tip: Martin.)

So far, pressure groups seem not to have noticed the portrait; the Archive has preserved this original .gif file in case Microsoft ever takes it down.

This 20th-century painting from a Shriners' Hall in Maine shows Mohammed receiving a vision.

Another Shriners' painting showing Mohammed (in the red robe on the right) being comforted by his uncle as he hides from Meccans during his flight to Medina.

Color print of Mohammed in anachronistic 17th- or 18th-century garb.

Recent issue of French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur with Mohammed on the cover. The magazine has extensive coverage of the Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons but make no mention of its own Mohammed cover.

Mohammed getting romantic with Khadijah, who would become his first wife.

Mohammed receiving a vision in a cave. These two panels are among many depicting Mohammed to be found in Jack Chick's 1988 booklet The Prophet. The tract is quite long -- Mohammed doesn't make an appearance until page 13 (as a pawn in a convoluted historical conspiracy).
(Hat tip: baldy.)

This reproduction is a bit small, but it shows Mohammed destroying the idols at the Kaaba in Mecca. It is taken from Manly P. Hall's occult guide The Secret Teachings of All Ages, which incorporates ideas from many religions, Christianity and Islam among them.
(Hat tip: MikalM.)

This painting was originally done by Russian symbolist painter and Theosophist Nicholas Roerich in 1932, and is entitled "Mohammed the Prophet," showing Mohammed receiving a vision. It has appeared in the literature of various Christian groups.
(Hat tip: David B., Aquarius, and Nicholas.)

Modern-era painting showing Mohammed. Artist unknown.

Contemporary stylized drawing of Mohammed.

Iranian woman artist Oranous (who is a Muslim and lives in Tehran) created this iconic painting of a young Mohammed and is selling it online. Though this would seem to violate Islamic and Iranian law, an expert in Iranian Shi'ite customs writes in to say that this particular painting is not forbidden because it depicts a young Mohammed before he was visited by the Angel Gabriel and started receiving his visions, which means that at this stage in his life he is not yet the Prophet.
(Hat tip: baldy.)

[Note: What became of the other Iranian icons that used to be on this page? Several readers emailed to say that the few modern icons from Iran (formerly visible here) that supposedly depicted Mohammed in fact depicted his cousin Ali, who is considered the founder of the Shi'ite branch of Islam. The sites from which these pictures were obtained -- The University of Bergen and Jyllands-Posten -- misattributed the images by accident. Our research indicates that it was indeed most likely Ali in the icons, so we apologize for the mix-up. Click here to see the best-known of these icons (still misidentified as Mohammed) on the Jyllands-Posten site.]
(Hat tip: Takin, Darmin, and Paul C.)