Tag Archives: Islamic art

Muraqqa

A Muraqqa (Turkish: Murakka, Arabic: مورّقة‎, Persian: مُرَقّع‎) is an album in book form containing Islamic miniature paintings and specimens of Islamic calligraphy, normally from several different sources, and perhaps other matter. The album was popular among collectors in the Islamic world, and by the later 16th century became the…

Muraqqa

Mughal painting

Mughal paintings are a particular style of South Asian painting, generally confined to miniatures either as book illustrations or as single works to be kept in albums, which emerged from Persian miniature painting (itself largely of Chinese origin), with Indian Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist influences, and developed largely in the…

Mughal painting

Chinese influences on Islamic pottery

Chinese influences on Islamic pottery cover a period starting from at least the 8th century CE to the 19th century. This influence of Chinese ceramics has to be viewed in the broader context of the considerable importance of Chinese culture on Islamic arts in general. Earliest exchanges Pre-Islamic contacts with…

Chinese influences on Islamic pottery

Zellige

Zellige (Arabic: الزليج‎; also zelige or zellij) is mosaic tilework made from individually chiseled geometric tiles set into a plaster base. This form of Islamic art is one of the main characteristics of Moroccan architecture. It consists of geometrically patterned mosaics, used to ornament walls, ceilings, fountains, floors, pools and…

Zellige

Yeseria

Yeseria is a technique of carving plaster used by the Spanish Moors like also by the post-Reconsquista’s Mudéjar architecture. Plaster was often carved into geometric and Islamic-influenced motifs. The Alhambra and the Córdoba Synagogue have many fine examples of yeseria. History It is assumed that plaster was introduced in the…

Yeseria

Mosque lamp

Mosque lamps of glass, enamelled and often with gilding, survive in considerable numbers from the Islamic art of the Middle Ages, especially the 13th and 14th centuries, with Cairo in Egypt and Aleppo and Damascus in Syria the most important centres of production. They are oil lamps, usually with a…

Mosque lamp

Mocárabe

Mocárabe, Honeycomb work, or Stalactite work (Arabic al-halimat al-‘uliya, “the overhang”) is an ornamental design used in certain types of Islamic architecture that spread throughout the Islamic world in the 12th century. The design consists of a complex array of vertical prisms resembling stalactites. The terms mocárabe and muqarnas are…

Mocárabe

Islamic interlace patterns

Interlacing patterns are patterns of lines and shapes that have traditionally dominated Islamic art. They can be broadly divided into the arabesque, using curving plant-based elements, and the girih, using mostly geometrical forms with straight lines or regular curves. Both of these forms of Islamic art developed from the rich…

Islamic interlace patterns

Arabic calligraphy

Arabic calligraphy is the art and design of writing in various languages that use Arabic letters. Arabic writing is characterized by being connected, which makes it possible to acquire different geometric shapes through the tide, return, rotation, elevation, interlock, interference and installation. The art of calligraphy is associated with Arabic…

Arabic calligraphy

Islamic calligraphy

Islamic calligraphy is the artistic practice of handwriting and calligraphy, based upon the alphabet in the lands sharing a common Islamic cultural heritage. It includes Arabic Calligraphy, Ottoman, and Persian calligraphy. It is known in Arabic as khatt Islami (خط اسلامي), meaning Islamic line, design, or construction. The development of…

Islamic calligraphy

Girih tiles

Girih tiles are a set of five tiles that were used in the creation of Islamic geometric patterns using strapwork (girih) for decoration of buildings in Islamic architecture. They have been used since about the year 1200 and their arrangements found significant improvement starting with the Darb-i Imam shrine in…

Girih tiles

Girih

Girih (Persian: گره‎, “knot”) is a decorative Islamic geometric artform used in architecture and handicraft objects, consisting of angled lines that form an interlaced strapwork pattern. Girih decoration is believed to have been inspired by Syrian Roman knotwork patterns from the 2nd century AD. The earliest girih dates from around…

Girih

Banna’i

In Iranian architecture, banna’i (Persian: بنائی‎, “builder’s technique” in Persian) is an architectural decorative art in which glazed tiles are alternated with plain bricks to create geometric patterns over the surface of a wall or to spell out sacred names or pious phrases. This technique originated in Syria and Iraq…

Banna’i

Iwan in architecture

An iwan (Persian: ایوان‎ eyvān, Arabic: إيوان‎ Iwan, also spelled ivan, Turkish: eyvan) is a rectangular hall or space, usually vaulted, walled on three sides, with one end entirely open. The formal gateway to the iwan is called pishtaq, a Persian term for a portal projecting from the facade of…

Iwan in architecture

Islamic influences on Western art

Islamic influences on Western art refers to the influence of Islamic art, the artistic production in the Islamic world from the 8th to the 19th century, on Christian art. During this period, the frontier between Christendom and the Islamic world varied a lot resulting in some cases in exchanges of…

Islamic influences on Western art

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