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Arabesque
الزخرفة النباتية (الأرابيسك)
Explanation (not Quran text)
The arabesque is an ornament of scrolling stems, leaves and split palmettes that grows and repeats without a fixed end; in Persian and Turkish it is often called islimi. It decorates mosques, manuscripts, ceramics and textiles across the Muslim world, often alongside geometric patterns and calligraphy. No verse is attached to this card: it presents an art form and its history.
In Muslim civilisation
Historians of Islamic art trace the arabesque to the vine scrolls of late antique art, which craftsmen in the early Islamic centuries transformed into a more abstract, endlessly continuing design.
Sources
- Ettinghausen, R., Grabar, O., & Jenkins-Madina, M. (2001). Islamic Art and Architecture 650–1250. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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