Music, frozen in stone: a quaint pattern on the walls of Arab buildings

Travelers, returning from trips to eastern countries, bring not only souvenirs and postcards, but also unforgettable impressions. Many, returning, recall an intricate and bizarre pattern on the walls of Arab buildings, which fascinates and attracts the eye. Complex patterns, composed of geometric figures, calligraphic inscriptions and plant ornaments? It would be desirable to consider, finding all new interesting and not noticed earlier details. Palaces and temples, whose walls are decorated with marble and hewn stone, figured brick and various types of mosaics, incrustations and carved wood, pleases the eye and makes you think about the great skill of artists and artisans who created such splendor.

Features of the culture of the Arab world

In the Arab countries, most of the population professes Islam, which quite rigidly regulates not only the ordinary life of people, but also the issues of art and culture. According to Muslim religious canons, an artisan or artist can create any bizarre pattern, but only on the condition that there are no images of Allah, people and animals in it. 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 in beauty ornaments, called arabesques. Quaintly and unexpectedly combining and intertwining plant ornaments, stylized Arabic ligature and geometric patterns add a bright, exquisite and bizarre pattern to the walls of Arab buildings, rhythmically repeating over the entire surface.

Over the centuries, a lot of complicated ornaments were created, decorating not only the exterior walls of buildings, but also the internal chambers of buildings, applied to furniture and carpets, weapons and ornaments, ceramics.

What is arabesques?

Only in the Arabic art of Muslim countries, under the influence of Greek Roman and Byzantine samples, a special ornament, distinguished by richness and ornamentality, appeared. Arabian 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, formed in Islamic culture, combining both a vivid artistic fantasy and a strict mathematical construction. Quite often, the structure of this ornament included also calligraphically executed inscriptions of Arabic script, as a rule, these are quotations from sacred religious texts.

Character traits

Craftsmen put arabesques on plates of marble or plaster, while staining the grooves in the figure in blue or purple colors, and convex sections covered with gilding. Similar color contrasts gave the executed drawing brightness and liveliness. Then the decorated plates were fixed outside or inside the buildings, creating a bizarre pattern on the walls of Arab buildings. Quite often in the structure of the arabesque ornament inscriptions were inserted, which could be executed only by two canonized fonts:

- cursive - "nonsense";

- rectangular calligraphic - Kufic.

Arabesque is the embodied principle of Islam about the "eternally continuing fabric of the universe" and gives the artist the opportunity to cover with a continuous and developing pattern the surface of almost any shape and size. Such ornaments are based on the multiplication or repetition of one or more fragments. When creating arabesques, patterns can be continued or stopped at any point, without disturbing the pattern. In such ornaments, there is almost no background, since one pattern is introduced into the other, 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. Girich and islimi can be used as independent ornaments, and complementary.

Girich

In Arabic, "girih" means "bundle, knot" and symbolizes the structure of the world in Islam. It is formed by repeatedly overlapping geometric figures and lines on each other. The construction of this pattern is carried out on special grids using mathematical calculations, rulers and compasses. It is based on a circle divided into regular segments, with which a polygon, a square or a rectangle are built. Individual elements of floral ornament could be used to fill the background of a geometric pattern.

Islimi

Considering the bizarre pattern on the walls of Arab buildings, you can often see a floral ornament depicting a spiral branch, decorated with various leaves and flowers - this is islimi. It is divided into several subspecies:

• Simple - garden;
• Bifurcated - khachal;
• Almond-shaped - butals;
• Wicker - the chorus.

In addition to islimi, giriha and calligraphic inscriptions, other motifs are often found in Arabic ornamentation, such as the triangle symbolizing the "eye of God", the square is a schematic spelling of the name Allah and the symbol of the Kaaba, the six-pointed star symbolizing the six pillars of faith, the pentagon symbolically Reflecting the five pillars of Islam.