Art, calligraphy and the mosque
Islamic Studies · Key Stage 2 · The School
Why patterns instead of pictures
Walk into most mosques and you will find no paintings of people. Reports in the hadith collections warn against making images of living beings, and two concerns lie behind them. One is idolatry: images of people could become objects of worship, and Islam guards tawhid — worship of Allah alone — very tightly. The other is the belief that creating living things belongs to Allah. Muslims have read these warnings in different ways in different times and places, and views on photographs and drawings differ. But the tradition in sacred spaces mostly stayed clear of figures.
So the art went somewhere else
Muslim artists made two other arts central to mosque decoration. CALLIGRAPHY turned the Arabic script itself into art, so the decoration on a wall is often the Quran's own words. GEOMETRY built star patterns that can repeat without end, such as the eight-point star, and mathematicians still study them. One shrine in Isfahan, the Darb-i Imam, is a debated case. The scientists Peter Lu and Paul Steinhardt say its girih tile patterns do not repeat in a regular way. Emil Makovicky argues the builders were not trying to make patterns that never repeat. Calligraphy matters not only because figures were limited, but also because writing was central in Islamic culture. The art was redirected, not removed.
Reading a mosque
Many parts answer a need. The MIHRAB niche points to the Kaaba, so a stranger knows which way to face. The MINBAR is a raised step so the Friday speaker can be seen and heard. The DOME is traditionally set over the main prayer hall, and it often stands for the sky above. The open carpeted floor holds straight rows where nobody has a better seat than anybody else. Beauty here follows function and belief, not decoration for its own sake.
A historian can read one real tower in three steps. The Malwiya is a minaret, a tall tower of a mosque. It stands at Samarra in Iraq and dates from around 850 CE. Step one is to look. It is a spiral tower, about 50 metres high, though sources give 50 or 52. Step two is to ask what height can do. A tall tower is easy to see from far away. Step three is to ask what it was for. For a long time, people understood a minaret as the place to give the call to prayer. Jonathan Bloom, who studies Islamic art, argues that early minarets were mainly a sign that Islam was present. Other sources say its height made it useful for the call to prayer. So the safe sentence is this. The Malwiya is a spiral tower, about 50 metres high, built around 850, and sources differ on why.