What was islamic art like

Hasan Sulaiman Isfahani. Tympanum with a Horse and Rider. Helmet with Aventail. Velvet with Figural Imagery. Pierced Window Screen. Dish with Bird, Rabbit and Quadruped Design. Fragments of a Carpet with Lattice and Blossom Pattern. Citation Department of Islamic Art. Central and North Asia, — A. The Eastern Mediterranean, — A. Egypt, — A. Iberian Peninsula, — A. Another example of functional yet decorative wood work are the complex muqarnas that fill in the niches in roof corners giving a stalactite-like appearance to the architecture.

The finest examples of these are found in the Alhambra palace in Spain. These are often in wood and plastered over before painting. Medieval Islamic metalwork offers a complete contrast to the European art, which is dominated by modelled figures and brightly colored decoration in enamel. In contrast Islamic metalwork consists of practical objects, with elegant surfaces highly decorated with dense Arabesque pattern.

The color is mostly restricted to inlays of gold, silver, copper. Household items, such as ewers or water pitchers, were made of one or more pieces of sheet brass soldered together and subsequently worked and inlaid. The use of drinking and eating vessels in gold and silver, the ideal in ancient Rome and Persia as well as medieval Christian societies, is prohibited by the Hadiths, as was the wearing of gold rings by men.

Most artisans therefore used brass, bronze, tin and steel. Commonly seen are candlesticks and lamp-stands, lantern lights, bowls, dishes, basins, buckets, pen-cases and plaques. Ewers and basins were brought for hand-washing before and after each meal, so are often lavishly treated display pieces. As it is not only a religion but a way of life, Islam fostered the development of a distinctive culture with its own unique artistic language that is reflected in art and architecture throughout the Muslim world.

The lands newly conquered by the Muslims had their own preexisting artistic traditions and, initially at least, those artists who had worked under Byzantine or Sasanian patronage continued to work in their own indigenous styles but for Muslim patrons.

The first examples of Islamic art therefore rely on earlier techniques, styles, and forms reflecting this blending of classical and Iranian decorative themes and motifs.

Even religious monuments erected under Umayyad patronage that have a clearly Islamic function and meaning, such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, demonstrate this amalgam of Greco-Roman, Byzantine, and Sasanian elements. Only gradually, under the impact of the Muslim faith and nascent Islamic state, did a uniquely Islamic art emerge.

The rule of the Umayyad caliphate — is often considered to be the formative period in Islamic art. One method of classifying Islamic art, used in the Islamic galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, is according to the dynasty reigning when the work of art was produced. This type of periodization follows the general precepts of Islamic history, which is divided into and punctuated by the rule of various dynasties, beginning with the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties that governed a vast and unified Islamic state, and concluding with the more regional, though powerful, dynasties such as the Safavids, Ottomans, and Mughals.

With its geographic spread and long history, Islamic art was inevitably subject to a wide range of regional and even national styles and influences as well as changes within the various periods of its development. It is all the more remarkable then that, even under these circumstances, Islamic art has always retained its intrinsic quality and unique identity.

Just as the religion of Islam embodies a way of life and serves as a cohesive force among ethnically and culturally diverse peoples, the art produced by and for Muslim societies has basic identifying and unifying characteristics.

Perhaps the most salient of these is the predilection for all-over surface decoration. The four basic components of Islamic ornament are calligraphy, vegetal patterns, geometric patterns, and figural representation.

The art of the Islamic world reflects its cultural values, and reveals the way Muslims view the spiritual realm and the universe. For the Muslim, reality begins with and centers on Allah. Allah is at the heart of worship and aspirations for Muslims, and is the focus of their lives. So Islamic art focuses on the spiritual representation of objects and beings, and not their physical qualities.

This lets the artist, and those who experience the art, get closer to Allah. For Muslims, beauty has always been and will always be a quality of the divine. There is a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad that says: "Allah is beautiful and he loves beauty. Because it is through writing that the Qur'an is transmitted, the Arabic script was first transformed and beautified in order that it might be worthy of divine revelation. Thus, calligraphy started to gain prominence, becoming essential also to Islamic ornament.

In architecture, following the hijra, Muhammad's house in Medina developed into a center for the Muslim community and became the prototype for the mosque, the Muslim sanctuary for God. The early structure, known as the hypostyle mosque, included a columned hall oriented toward Mecca and an adjacent courtyard surrounded by a colonnade.

The call to prayer was given from a rooftop later the minaret was developed for this purpose. Essential elements of the mosque were a minbar pulpit for the Friday sermon and a mihrab prayer niche set in the wall oriented toward Mecca. Islamic art has traditionally been patronized by the ruling kings, caliphs and sultans. Then as the new Muslim empire swept west as far as Spain and later, east into Asia, it absorbed new influences, notably from China.

And among each of these the perceived Islamic ban on figurative art was interpreted differently But secular art, which included utilitarian objects like like carpets ceramic vases, ivory caskets, glass jugs and metalwork, frequently showed flora and fauna. Some Muslim rulers even commissioned portraits of themselves.

The Silk Road was instrumental in bringing art from the Arab and Muslim world to eastern Asia and Europe and bringing art from those regions to the Arab and Muslim world. Books: Grabar, Oleg. The Formation of Islamic Art. The Venture of Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Most books, collections and exhibitions of Islamic art tend be grouped and organized chronologically, by dynasty or by material.

After the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in September many museums in North America and Europe began highlighting Islamic art as a way of promoting understanding between Muslim world and Western world.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has one of the best collections of Islamic art in the world. The display area is now called the Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art. Sackler Gallery have good Islamic art collection.

Muslims believe that only God creates. Only Allah has the power to give life. Extended to art this belief infers that any artist who paints pictures of people or animals is trying to outdo Allah himself and therefore deserves some of the worst punishments on the Day of Judgment. Some Muslims believe that when an artist, who has created animate objects, faces Allah in heaven, god will ask him to breath life into his creations.

When the images remain lifeless the artist will be cast into hell. The strongest statements on the subject of figural depiction are made in the Hadith Traditions of the Prophet , where painters are challenged to "breathe life" into their creations and threatened with punishment on the Day of Judgment. Partially as a result of this religious sentiment, figures in painting were often stylized and, in some cases, the destruction of figurative artworks occurred.

Iconoclasm was previously known in the Byzantine period and aniconicism was a feature of the Judaic world, thus placing the Islamic objection to figurative representations within a larger context. As ornament, however, figures were largely devoid of any larger significance and perhaps therefore posed less challenge. Initially Christians and Buddhists forbade images of humans and animals in their art for reasons similar to those endorsed by Muslims.

The ornamentation of surfaces of any kind in any medium with the infinite pattern serves the same purpose - to disguise and 'dissolve' the matter, whether it be momumental architecture or a small gold box. The result is a world which is not a reflection of the actual object, but that of the superimposed element that serves to transcend the momentary and limited individual appearance of a work of art drawing it into the greater and solely valid realm of infinite and continuous being.

This idea is emphasized by the way in which architectural decoration is used. Solid walls are disguised behind plaster and tile decoration, vaults and arches are covered with floral and epigraphic ornament that dissolve their structural strength and funcion and domes are filled with radiating designs of infinite patterns, bursting suns or fantastic floating canapes of multitude of mukkarnas, that banish the solidity of stone and masonary and give them a peculiarly ephemeral quality as if the crystallization of the design is their only reality.

It is perhaps in this element, which has no true parallel in the history of art, that Islamic Art joins in the religious experience of Islam and it is in this sense, that it can be called a religious art. Characteristically, very little actual, religious iconography in the ordinary sense exists in Islam. Although a great many fundamental forms and concepts remained more or less stable and unchanged throughout Islamic Art - especially in architecture - the variety of individual forms is astonishing and can again be called exceptional.

Almost every country at every period created forms of art that had no parallel in another, and the variations on a common theme, that are carried through from one period to another, are even more remarkable. Two important elements in Islamic decorative art are: Floral Patterns and Calligraphy.

Islamic artists habitually employed flowers and trees as decorative motifs for the embellishment of cloth, objects, personal items and buildings. Their designs were inspired by international as well as local techniques. For instance, Mughal architectural decoration was inspired by European botanical artists, as well as by traditional Persian and Indian flora.

A highly ornate as well as intricate art form, floral designs were often used as the basis for "infinite pattern" type decoration, using arabesques geometricized vegetal patterns and covering an entire surface.

The infinite rhythms conveyed by the repetition of curved lines, produces a relaxing, calming effect, which can be modified and enhanced by variations of line, colour and texture. Sometimes the ornate would be emphasized, and floral designs would be applied to tablets or panels of white marble, in the form of rows of plants finely carved in low relief, along with multi-coloured inlays of precious stones.

Proverbs and complete passages from the Qur'an are still major sources for Islamic calligraphic art and decoration. Thus, almost all Islamic buildings exhibit some type of inscription in their stone, stucco, marble or mosaic surfaces. The inscription is often, though not always, a quotation from the Qur'an.

Or single words like "Allah" or "Mohammed" might be repeated many times over the entire surface of the walls. Calligraphic inscriptions are closely associated with the geometry of the building and are frequently employed as a frame around the main architectural elements such as portals and cornices.

Sometimes a religious text is confined to a single panel or carved tablet cartouche which might be pierced thus creating a specific pattern of light. There are two main scripts in traditional Islamic Calligraphy , the angular Kufic and the cursive Naskhi.

Kufic, the earliest form, which is alledged to have been invented at Kufa, south of Baghdad, accentuates the vertical strokes of the characters. It was used extensively during the first five centuries of Islam in architecture, for copies of the Koran Qur'an , textiles and pottery. There are eight different types of Kufic script out of which only three are mentioned here: a simple Kufic; b foliated Kufic which appeared in Egypt during the 9th Century BCE and has the vertical strokes ending in lobed leaves or half-palmettes; c floriated Kufic in which floral motiffs and scrolls are added to the leaves and half-palmettes.

This seems also to have been developed in Egypt during the 9th Century BCE and reached it's highest development there under the Fatimids From the 11th century onward the Naskhi script gradually replaced Kufic. Ibn Muqula lived in Baghdad during the 10th century and is also responsible for the development of another type of cursive writing; the thuluth , or thulth. This closely follows Naskhi, but certain elements, like vertical strokes or horizontal lines are exaggerated.

In Iran several cursive styles were invented and developed among which taliq was important. Out of taliq developed nastaliq , which is a more beautiful, elegant and cursive form of writing. It's inventor was Mir Ali Tabrizi, who was active in the second half of the 14th century.

Nastaliq became the predominate style of Persian Calligraphy during the 15th and 16th centuries. Another important aspect of Islamic Art, generally completely unknown, is it's rich pictorial and iconographical tradition. The misconception that Islam was an iconaclastic or anti-image culture and that the representation of human beings or living creatures in general was prohibited, is still deeply rooted although the existence of figuative painting in Iran has been recognized now for almost half a century.

There is no prohibition against the painting of pictures or the representation of living forms in Islam and there is no mention of it in the Koran Qur'an. Certain pronouncements attributed to the Prophet and carried in the Hadith the collection of traditional sayings of the Prophet have perhaps been interpreted as prohibition against artistic activity, although they are of purely religious significance.

Whatever the reason, the fact remains that in practically no period of Islamic culture were figurative representation and painting suppressed, with the singular exception of the strictly religious sphere where idolatry was feared.

Mosques and mausoleums are therefore without figurative representation. Elsewhere, imagery forms one of the most important elements and a multitude of other pictorial traditions were also assimilated during the long and complex history of Islamic Art. That said, it is fair to say that other experts in Islamic art take a slightly narrower view. According to this view, because the creation of living things like humans and animals is regarded as being the role of God, Islam rightly discourages Islamic painters and sculptors from producing such figures.

Although it is true that some figurative art can be seen in the Islamic world, it is mostly confined to the decoration of objects and secular buildings and the creation of miniature paintings.