Islamic Painting

Although there has been a tradition of wall-paintings, especially in the Persianate world, the best-surviving and highest developed form of painting in the Islamic world is the miniature in illuminated manuscripts, or later as a single page for inclusion in a muraqqa or bound album of miniatures and calligraphy. The tradition of the Persian miniature has been dominant since about the 13th century, strongly influencing the Ottoman miniature of Turkey and the Mughal miniature in India. Miniatures were especially an art of the court, and because they were not seen in public, constraints on the depiction of the human figure were much more relaxed, and indeed miniatures often contain great numbers of small figures, and from the 16th century portraits of single ones.

The largest commissions were usually classics of Persian poetry such as the epic Shahnameh, although the Mughals and Ottomans both produced lavish manuscripts of more recent history with the autobiographies of the Mughal emperors, and more purely military chronicles of Turkish conquests. Portraits of rulers developed in the 16th century, and later in Persia, then becoming very popular. Mughal portraits, normally in profile, are very finely drawn in a realist style, while the best Ottoman ones are vigorously stylized. Album miniatures typically featured picnic scenes, portraits of individuals or (in India especially) animals, or idealized youthful beauties of either sex.

Chinese influences included the early adoption of the vertical format natural to a book, which led to the development of a birds-eye view where a very carefully depicted background of hilly landscape or palace buildings rises up to leave only a small area of sky. The figures are arranged in different planes on the background, with recession (distance from the viewer) indicated by placing more distant figures higher up in the space, but at essentially the same size. The colours, which are often very well preserved, are strongly contrasting, bright and clear. The tradition reached a climax in the 16th and early 17th centuries, but continued until the early 19th century, and has been revived in the 20th.

Unlike the strong tradition of portraying the human figure in Christian art, Islamic art is often associated with the arabesque style. Early Islam forbade the painting of human beings, including the Prophet, as Muslims believe this tempts followers of the Prophet to idolatry. A prohibition against depicting representational images in religious art, as well as the naturally decorative nature of Arabic script, led to the use of calligraphic decorations, which usually involved repeating geometrical patterns that expressed ideals of order and nature. It was used on religious architecture, carpets, and handwritten documents.

The Arabesque, one of aspects of Islamic art, usually found decorating the walls of mosques, is an elaborate application of repeating geometric forms that often echo the forms of plants and animals. The choice of which geometric forms are to be used and how they are to be formatted is based upon the Islamic view of the world. To Muslims, these forms, taken together, constitute an infinite pattern that extends beyond the visible material world, they in fact symbolize the infinite, and therefore nature of the creation of the one God (Allah).

Geometric artwork in the form of the Arabesque was not widely used in the Islamic world until the golden age of Islam came into full bloom. During this time, ancient texts were translated from Greek and Latin into Arabic. Like the following Renaissance in Europe, math, science, literature and history were infused into the Islamic world with great, mostly positive repercussions. The works of Plato and especially of Euclid became popular among the literate. It was Euclid's geometry along with the foundations of trigonometry codified by Pythagoras that became the impetus of the art form that was to become the Arabesque. Plato's ideas about the existence of a separate reality that was perfect in form and function and crystalline in character also contributed to the development of the Arabesque.

To the adherents of Islam, the Arabesque is symbolic of their united faith and the way in which traditional Islamic cultures view the world. There are two modes to Arabesque art:

The first mode recalls the principles that govern the order of the world. These principles include the bare basics of what makes objects structurally sound and, by extension.

The second mode is based upon the flowing nature of plant forms. This mode recalls the feminine nature of life giving.

In addition, upon inspection of the many examples of Arabesque art, some can argue that there is a third mode, the mode of Arabic calligraphy. But calligraphy (as seen by the Muslims) is a visible expression of the highest art of all; the art of the spoken word - the transmittal of thoughts and of history. In Islam, the most important document to be transmitted orally is, of course, the Qur'an. Proverbs and complete passages from the Qur'an can be seen today in Arabesque art.

The coming together of these three forms creates the Arabesque, and this is a reflection of unity arising from diversity (a basic tenet of Islam). The Arabesque can also be equally thought of as both art and science, some say. The artwork is at the same time mathematically precise, aesthetically pleasing, and symbolic. So due to this duality of creation, they say, the artistic part of this equation can be further subdivided into both secular and religious artwork. However, for many Muslims there is no distinction; all forms of art, the natural world, mathematics and science are all creations of God and therefore are reflections of the same thing (God's will expressed through His Creation). In other words, man can discover the geometric forms that constitute the Arabesque, but these forms always existed before as part of God's creation.