The Meaning and Concept of Beauty

In 2008, as part of a series called “Wisdom and Art” at the Iranian Academy of Arts, I authored and published a brief treatise entitled The Meaning and Concept of Beauty in Al-Manazir and Tanqih Al-Manazir. In 2015, along with UNESCO’s announcement of the International Year of Light (marking the 1000th anniversary of Ibn al-Haytham’s writing of Al-Manazir), Kerman University organized the Ibn al-Haytham Conference. On the proposal of the scientific council of this conference, the book The Meaning and Concept of Beauty in Al-Manazir and Tanqih Al-Manazir was reprinted. In this new edition, published by Kerman University Press, the text was expanded and elaborated. In this revised edition, the previous text was revisited and many points which were briefly and superficially stated were given detailed explanation and discussion. Moreover, more complete and well-supported evidence and arguments were added to the text. The original Arabic text of Ibn al-Haytham’s discussion on beauty, along with its English translation, was included in the book for the benefit of researchers and scholars.