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Stone relief with arabesques of tendrils, palmettes and half-palmettes in the Umayyad Mosque at Damascus. The Islamic arabesque is a form of artistic decoration consisting of "rhythmic linear patterns of scrolling and interlacing foliage, tendrils" or plain lines, [13] often combined with other elements.
As an arcade element the structure is often found surrounding and defining the courtyards of mosques and madrasas, and used for covered circulation, meeting and rest, and ritual circumambulation. The arcade element is also found along principal walkways of larger bazaars .
David Wade [b] states that "Much of the art of Islam, whether in architecture, ceramics, textiles or books, is the art of decoration – which is to say, of transformation." [10] Wade argues that the aim is to transfigure, turning mosques "into lightness and pattern", while "the decorated pages of a Qur’an can become windows onto the infinite."
Muqarnas (Arabic: مقرنص; Persian: مقرنس, or Persian: آهوپای, romanized: ahoopāy), also known in Iberian architecture as Mocárabe (from Arabic: مقربص, romanized: muqarbaṣ), is a form of three-dimensional decoration in Islamic architecture in which rows or tiers of niche-like elements are projected over others below. [1]
Mihrab of carved stucco decoration in the Jameh Mosque of Ardestan (circa 1160) [25] While brick decoration favoured geometric motifs, stucco or plaster was also used to cover some surfaces and this material could be carved with a wider range of vegetal and floral motifs . Tilework and color took on increased importance by the late 12th-century ...
The word alem came to be applied to the decoration at the top of the flagpole. [10] The word also came to be applied to the architectural device which caps a minaret, dome of a mosque or minber (pulpit). [citation needed] It may incorporate an Islamic emblem of the crescent (with star), a tulip or other shape.
The general layout of the mosque is a traditional hypostyle building with a central courtyard. As the mosque's prayer area is aligned with the qibla (direction of Mecca) but the street outside is not, the mosque's external façade has a different alignment from the rest of the structure and the entrance involves a bending passage from the street to the mosque interior. [3]
The Jameh Mosque of Na'in, one of the oldest surviving congregational mosques in Iran, contains some of the best-preserved features from this period, including decorative brickwork, Kufic inscriptions, and rich stucco decoration featuring vine scrolls and acanthus leaves that draw from the earlier styles of Samarra.