The Development of Islamic Art in the West
The nineteenth century saw the development of Islamic art in the West. It does not define art with a proper set of theological imagery, unlike Christian or Buddhist art. Although there aren't many religious symbols in Islamic art, the phrase applies to all work that was created under Muslim rule, regardless of whether it's religious or secular. Additionally, its inventors and supporters may or may not be Muslims.
The Emphasis on Craftsmanship in Islamic Art
The emphasis on craftsmanship in Islamic art is one of its defining characteristics. Making a high-quality product is considerably more important than coming up with a standout design. Islamic art is not always a reflection of the artist's emotions or views, which is another component. Attention is often focused on a long, brick and mortar tradition. One more characteristic is its ample usage of geometric motifs to decorate architectural surfaces.
The Faith of Islam
Islam is a faith which is shared by millions of people all over the world. The teachings of Islam were exposed to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century A.D. It is considered to be the youngest of the world’s great religions. Muslims consider Islam to be the addition and finalization of Judaism and Christianity. Islam distinguishes between the Creator and the world he created. Muhammad didn’t share God’s sanctity. He was God’s prognosticator, his messenger and an ideal for people, but he was a human. God is amazing and abstract, and most prayers are said in glory rather than as calls for help. Muslims think they will be rewarded life in paradise for their right lives.
The Significance of the Quran
God’s disclosures to Muhammad are systematized in the Quran. It is the fundamental basis of Islam. It is not a description of the Prophet’s life and it doesn’t retell his teachings. It is God’s words as they were said by the angel Gabriel. The word “Quran” means “recitation”. Reciting the poetic language of Quran is considered to be the deepest expression of conviction. Due to encapsulating God’s words in Arabic, the language itself received colossal influence and became the common language in all Islamic lands. The significance of the Quran and its text promoted the art of calligraphy.
Islamic Calligraphy
There are a large number of Qurans nowadays. They survived even from early periods. Rewriting the Quran is an action of devotion. Damaged Qurans are said not to be destroyed, due to their holy nature. Though Qurans are mass-produced today, their texts are still treated with admiration. Koran is optically demonstrated by writing, which takes an especially revered place in Islamic society. Time passed and Islamic calligraphy (“beautiful writing”) developed into a complex art from. Such an art form is treasured not only due to the secular and religious meanings, but it is also valued due to its decorative characteristic. It is observed on a number of things from stone buildings to ceramic vessels. Some inscriptions encapsulate blessings; some of them consist of quotes from Koran. For example, such quotations were observed on the cenotaph. It included words from Koran which meant the proper location of a body at burial.
Islamic Prayer Rugs
It is common knowledge that Muslims pray five times a day. This is called Salah. While praying, people are considered to face towards Mecca. They use prayer rugs. Lots of them are arranged in the Persian tradition. The design isn’t necessary symmetrical, but it always has to be laid down facing Mecca. Islamic tradition dictates that people and animals can’t be depicted on a prayer rug. Its design often encapsulates geometric patterns, quotes from the Quran and flowers. The Muslims rugs have been luxury merchandise sought by textile museums and collectors all over the world. The glory of Aladdin’s rug added a mystery and profit to its exceptional beauty and quality. The prayer rug remains one of the most noticeable art form.
Mosques and Minarets
Speaking about architecture, there were few formal Muslim buildings. One of the most important aspects was the mosques. They were not very impressive and looked like quadrangular houses of prayers. They seemed to be rudely built. The model for all the mosques was the Prophet’s own house in Medina. His followers assembled together in an arcaded courtyard for praying and listened to his words. A roofed area guarded them from the weather conditions. The minaret became a typical feature of mosques. However, it wasn’t found in the Prophet’s house. The minaret is the tower one call faithful to prayer by the muezzin. The first muezzin was a devoted companion of Muhammad. He called faithful from the rooftop of the Prophet’s house. Moreover, the first minarets may not have been connected with mosques or they may have been produced to denote the mosque’s placement within the curving streets of ancient cities. Minarets assumed different forms. It could be a ziggurat spiral at Samarra or even the spires of Ottoman Turkey. As they functioned in a number of ways within the Islamic community, mosques grew to circumscribe a lot of distinct constructions. Some of them developed into sprawling complexes with religious schools (madrasas), graveyard, and even markets.
Islamic Art Patronage
Throughout the Islamic world, rulers and wealthy individuals contributed to the building and upkeep of mosques and other religious institutions. While the architects and artists of buildings often went unacknowledged, the patrons were often known. One of the earliest results of religious patronage is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, built in the late 680s with the support of the Umayyad dynasty caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (reigned 685–705). Another example of royal religious patronage is the Great Mosque in Cordoba, Spain, luxuriously renovated by Al-Hakam II (reigned 961–976) to the chagrin of his subjects, who were upset by his lavish architectural investments. In response to their objections, he included an inscription on the building giving thanks to God for helping him build a more spacious mosque to fulfill his wishes as well as his those of his subjects. In 1601, Sultan Ahmet, the ruler of the Ottoman dynasty of Turkey, set out to build a mosque more majestic than the Christian church of Hagia Sophia, which had reigned as the largest religious structure of Istanbul for centuries. Decorated with blue tiles and flanked by tall minarets, the mosque is called the Sultan Ahmet Camii, or Mosque of Sultan Ahmet, but it is known in the English-speaking world as the Blue Mosque.
The Barjeel Art Foundation
The Barjeel Art Foundation was conceived by Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi with the vision of creating a space where artwork drawn from diverse corners of the Arab world can coalesce in an interactive and communal setting. Art of the Arab world is as nuanced as the nations that comprise the historically, politically, socially and geographically diverse region. The foundation aims to exhibit works of established and emerging Arab contemporary artists in a public display that is unique to the region. Barjeel’s guiding principle is to extend the privilege of viewing eminent pieces of Arab art to the community at large. A 475-square-metre space has been dedicated to showcasing the Barjeel collection, which includes more than 200 pieces of Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi’s personal collection. The foundation will present artwork in rotating public exhibitions representing different themes of political, social and cultural importance to the Arab world.
The Significance of Arts and Artistic Thinking
The arts epitomize the creative impulse and are part of what makes us human. Art both shapes our understanding of the world and imagines what that world can be. In creating out of human experience, artists work in dialogue with nature, culture, and history. Artistic thinking is rooted in a keen aesthetic attentiveness and a dynamic interplay of sensibilities and skills, including memory, imagination, intuition, invention, empathy, feeling, and embodied practice. Study in the arts is valuable not only for the aspiring artist, but for all who strive to become inventive problem-solvers and innovative thinkers.
The Evolution of Modern Styles in Islamic Art
The adoption of painting by artists across the region, paired with the rise of new nation states in the middle of the 20th Century, led many artists to vigorously search for new forms and styles that reflected new aspirations and identities, and works that dealt with the complexities of the emergence of modern life. Themes of the nation and the self, the village and the city, abstraction, language, and identity emerge and are explored through these works.
Highlighting Diversity and Approaches in Islamic Art
Important artists from each region are represented to highlight the diversity of practices and approaches and the differing experiences of modernity. From Egypt, where the largest number of works originate, sees a wide variety of expressions, Seif Wanly’s Mother and Child and Self Portrait (Artist in Studio) highlight differing approaches to his colourful and expressive portraiture, and Inji Eflatoun’s Deer sees a work nearing abstraction to reflect her socially engaged explorations of the margins of Egyptian life. Hamed Ewais’ The Guardian of Life illustrates in great detail a complex and nuanced approach to nationalism in art in a time of war and defeat.
The Intersection of Modernism and Historical Allegory in Islamic Art
The artwork selected as the highlight image for the exhibition, Kadhim Hayder’s Fatigued, Ten Horses Converse with Nothing, depicts the convergence of modernist painting, historical allegory, and contemporary life.
The Spiritual Dimension of Islamic Art
Islam is one of the greatest religions of the world. Its approach to man’s life and his spirituality is to some extent different from that of other religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity. There is no objective or representation of the Supreme Reality in Islamic art-world to be painted or portrayed as in case of other religions. On the other hand, the consequent Void (‘adam) has its distinctive implication in the Islamic art-world. Allah (God) is not seen like an entity but He is realized as the Supreme Creator of everything. That Allah (God) is anthropomorphically portrayed in the Holy Quran as having hands and seated on a throne should not be taken literally. Such figures of verbal communication purely represent his symbolic demonstration. He has bestowed upon man the supremacy of perception and inspiration. In the present article, we shall try to discuss briefly some of the most crucial art-forms in order to comprehend the real meaning and implication of Islamic art as well as its spiritual message. Here we shall also discuss how Islamic art conveys the spiritual and prototypical meaning of Islam itself through a timeless and symbolic language; and how even today this art has the ability to present the spirit of Islam in a much more direct, wholesome and intelligible manner than many other communicative expositions. Generally, the work of art, as we be familiar with, is a well-thought-out multifarious of sensuous and communicative fundamentals, and its organization is its form. But in Islamic art man’s spiritual dimension has been overemphasized. All art and thought have been derivative from this very emphasis. According to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, it is in reality to the inner dimension of Islam, to the batin as contained in the manner and elucidated by the Truth that one must turn for the origin of Islamic art. This inner aspect is besides inextricably interrelated to Islamic spirituality. Man’s inwardness has been given much value in Islam. Likewise, it is within the inner aspect of the Islamic tradition that one must seek the origin of Islamic art and the “power” which has created different “forms” and sustained them over the ages. The Quran and the prophetic hadith are the main sources of Islamic philosophy as well as Islamic art. All forms of art must be created in the light of the Quran and the Tradition of the Prophet. The Quran provides the set of guidelines of Unity while the Prophet provides the manifestation of this Unity into multiplicity and the witness to this Unity in His creation. In brief, Islamic art is the result of the manifestation of Unity upon the plane of multiplicity. It reflects in its own idiosyncratic manner the Unity of the Divine Principle - the dependence of all multiplicity upon the One-Allah (God). This art manifests itself in the substantial order in a straight line perceivable by the senses and the archetypical realities and acts, and as a result, it is a hierarchy for the expedition of the soul from the audio-visual world to the world of Silence and Invisible one.
The Definition and Significance of Islamic Art
Generally speaking, Islamic art is the art of the civilization based on the Islamic religion. The Prophet Muhammad - the last of the Prophets - first preached Islam in Arabia during the early 7th century A.D. and-the people who followed the teachings of Islam called themselves “Muslims”. Islam has gigantic connotation with regard to every aspect of human life. It defines without a doubt the purpose of life, the universe and the relationship among the Creator (God), man and universe. The intellectual, social, economic, ethical and aesthetic features of Islamic religion make it distinct from worlds other great religions.
Work Cited
Allen, Roger. “Fiction and Publics: The Emergence of the “Arabic Best-Seller”
Aziz M, Muhammad Ali. “An Introduction to Arabic Calligraphy”
Babaie, Susan. “Voices of Authority: Locating the “Modern” in “Islamic” Arts”
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Grabar, Oleg. “ The Formation Of Islamic Art”
