Ḥadīth in Islamic period art historiography:obstacles and restrictions

Ḥadīth is considering as the most important source to know the religion of Islam after the Quran. Therefore, studying Ḥadīths is necessary to know Islam teachings in respect of beauty, art and recognizing art condition in the early Islamic period. However, little attention is paid to Ḥadīth in art studies. For having the most out of Ḥadīths, obstacles and restrictions confronting the art researcher should be considered first. The main question of the article is that what are the obstacles and restrictions confronting the Islamic art history researcher for using Ḥadīths? In this study, it was indicated that Islamic art historiographer confronts serious problems and obstacles due to differences between the contemporary horizon and the horizon of Hadiths expression and compilation and different requirements of these two worlds, the issue of dating and validity assessment of Ḥadīths regarding art, the issue of understanding vocabulary regarding art in the first centuries of Islam, and visual language differences with written language and its influence on using Ḥadīths in the reconstruction of early Islamic centuries artistic world. Thus, the Islamic art researcher should go to Ḥadīths with the knowledge of leading restrictions not to have misconceptions and superficial analysis.