Travelers, returning from trips to eastern countries, bring not only souvenirs and postcards, but also an unforgettable experience. Many, returning, recall the intricate and bizarre pattern on the walls of the Arab buildings, which fascinates and attracts the eye.
Complex patterns made up of
geometric shapes, calligraphic inscriptions and floral ornaments? I want to consider finding all new interesting and previously unnoticed details. Palaces and temples, the walls of which are decorated with marble and ashlar, figured bricks and various types of mosaics, inlays and carved woods, are pleasing to the eye and make you think about the great skill of the artists and artisans who created such splendor.
Features of the culture of the Arab world
In the Arab countries, the majority of the population professes Islam, which rather strictly regulates not only the ordinary life of people, but also issues of art and culture.
According to Muslim religious canons, a craftsman or artist can create any bizarre pattern, but only on condition that it does not contain images of Allah, people and animals. For this reason, in the Arab countries there are no paintings and sculptures so familiar to us. However, such a ban is a feat of architects and artists to create unique beauty ornaments called arabesques. Bizarre and unexpectedly combined and interwoven
floral ornaments, stylized Arabic script and
geometric patterns add a bright, elegant and bizarre pattern on the walls of Arab buildings, rhythmically repeating all over the surface.
Over the centuries, many complex ornaments have been created that adorn not only the external walls of buildings, but also the internal chambers of buildings, applied to furniture and carpets, weapons and decorations, and ceramics.
What are arabesques?
Only in the Arabian art of Muslim countries, under the influence of Greek Roman and Byzantine designs, did a special ornament with richness and decorativeness appear.
Arabic patterns have their own characteristics in each of the regions, but they are all subject to the general principles and laws of construction. Arabesque is a new type of pattern that has formed in Islamic culture, combining both vivid artistic imagination and a rigorous mathematical construction. Quite often, the structure of such an ornament included calligraphically executed Arabic script inscriptions, as a rule, these are quotes from sacred religious texts.
Specific traits
Artisans applied arabesques on plates of marble or gypsum, while painting the depressions in the figure in blue or purple, and the convex sections were covered with gilding. Similar color contrasts added brightness and vividness to the completed picture. Then, decorated plates were fixed outside or inside the buildings, creating a bizarre pattern on the walls of Arab buildings. Quite often, inscriptions were introduced into the structure of the ornament of arabesques, which could be made only by two canonized fonts:
- cursive - "naskh";
- rectangular calligraphic - kufic.
Arabesque is an embodied principle of Islam about the "everlasting fabric of the Universe" and gives the artist the opportunity to cover a surface of almost any shape and size with a continuous and developing pattern. Such ornaments are based on the multiplication or repetition of one or more fragments. When creating an arabesque, patterns can be continued or stopped at any point, without disturbing the pattern. In such ornaments there is practically no background, since one pattern is introduced into another, covering the surface.
Types of Ornaments
In the art of Muslim countries, including Arab countries, it is customary to use two main patterns:
- geometric "girih";
- vegetable islimi.
In addition, calligraphic inscriptions were often included in Arabic patterns. Girih and islimi can be used as independent ornaments, as well as complementary.
Girih
Translated from Arabic, “girih” means “bundle, knot” and symbolizes the structure of the world in Islam. It is formed by repeatedly superimposing geometric shapes and lines on each other.
The construction of this pattern is performed on special grids using mathematical calculations, a ruler and a compass. It is based on a circle divided into regular segments, with the help of which a polygon, square or rectangle is built. Individual elements of floral ornaments could be used to fill the background of the geometric pattern.
Islimi
Looking at the bizarre pattern on the walls of Arab buildings, quite often you can see a floral ornament depicting a spiral branch decorated with various leaves and flowers - this is islimi.
It distinguishes several subspecies:
- simple - garden;
- forked - khachaly;
- amygdala - butals;
- Wicker - Horm.
In addition to islimi, girih and calligraphic inscriptions, other motifs are quite often found in Arabic ornamentation, such as a triangle symbolizing the “eye of God”, a square - a schematic spelling of the name Allah and the symbol of the Kaaba, a six-pointed star - symbolizing the 6 pillars of faith, a pentagon - symbolically displaying the five pillars of Islam.