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Art and Mithāl: Reading Geometry as Visual Commentary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Carol Bier
Carol Bier*
Affiliation:
The Textile Museum, Washington, DC, USA
*
cbier@ textilemuseum.org
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Abstract

This article seeks to develop an interpretation of ornament as geometric pattern that embodies metaphysical intent in Iranian monuments of the fifth/eleventh century. The proposed argument elucidates cultural meaning relevant to a particular time and specific place, with implications for broader application.1 Reading geometric patterns as visual commentary, this approach relates the presence of patterns in art accompanied by a Qur'anic inscription to both the practice of pattern-making and the contemporary discourse concerning mathematics, philosophy, and the Islamic sciences in Iran. Particular emphasis is placed on the use of a passage from the Qur'an (59:21–24) inscribed on the tomb towers at Kharraqān, in which the Qur'anic term, amthāl, is taken literally to refer to the patterns executed on the monuments.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 4: Sciences, Crafts, and the Production of Knowledge: Iran and Eastern Islamic Lands (ca. 184–1153 AH/800–1740 CE) , September 2008 , pp. 491 - 509
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2008

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References

1 An initial attempt to present these ideas appears in Bier, Carol, “Geometric Patterns and the Interpretation of Meaning: Two Monuments in Iran,” in Bridges: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science (conference proceedings), ed. by Sarhangi, Reza (Towon, MD, 2002), 67–78Google Scholar, with further development of a new paradigm presented at the College Art Association Annual Meetings in New York in February 2007 in a paper, “From Textiles to Algorithms: Revising an Islamic Aesthetic Paradigm.” The proposed paradigm is elaborated by Carol Bier, “Number, Shape, and the Nature of Space: Thinking through Islamic Art,” in Oxford Handbook for the History of Mathematics, ed. by Eleanor Robson and Jacqueline Stedall (Oxford, in press).

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54 See Corbin, Mundus Imaginalis.