A Stylistic Analysis of Islamic Art

Author(s): Ernst Diez

Source: Ars Islamica , 1938, Vol. 5, No. 1 (1938), pp. 36-45
Published by: Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Institution and Department of the
History of Art, University of Michigan

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A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF ISLAMIC ART BY ERNST DIEZ

ISLAMIC ART

AS THE ISLAMIC RELIGION AND CONCEPTION OF LIFE ARE IN THEIR ESSENCE RELATED TO THE
Old-Christian-Byzantine ones, that is, are monotheistic and transcendental, the gene
clusion can be drawn beforehand that Islamic art must possess the same qualities in
the Byzantine. Thus it is polar, cubistic, static, and its totality lies in the ornamenta
ever, the tension in the outward appearance of works of art of both religions seems to
great that categories to unite both groups may be suspected of too great liberality.
When we realize that the diversity in appearance is purely outward and results from
absence of human figures in Islamic religious art, it is evident that the difference is les
at first appears. The essence of the Islamic theory of life is embedded in religion.
Muhammadan religion, like the Christian, is revealed, but goes further by calling
"islam," i.e., subjection to God. This clear designation became a catchword and a bat
Muhammadanism is much more definite and limited than Christianity ever was, an
attributes may also be applied to the "art of Islam," a term which for clearness is to
ferred to "Muhammadan art." Accordingly the art of Islam or Islamic art is the art
expresses submission to Allah. "Christian art" or "Byzantine art" indicate nothing
essential qualities of the religion which gave rise to them, but are mere historical notion
Unconditional submission to God comprehends complete incapacity of self-determin
that unconditional surrender of one's own personality to the Divine Will, which the Mu
madan expresses in the words "inshallah" and "kismet." As self-determination is th
pensable assumption for the elevation of the subject above the object, and thus of
production, the greatest subjection is naturally the chief quality in the style of an art w
to give expression to a fettered theory of life. Yet restricting itself to the two-dim
plane and thus giving up the constructed third dimension is the supreme sacrifice in th
arts. The third dimension as it was created in the Renaissance expresses in art the emanc
tion of the individual from destiny.
As we are no longer living in the time of simple composition but in the post-Ch
period of polar composition, the plane, in which this art develops and to which it is
does not signify a material, but an ideal plane in the sense of polarity.! It denotes a
which does not need to be produced by such drawing as is to be found in the simpl
mental art of primitive peoples, but which pre-exists in space-bringing forward and vis
ing by drawing and relief one of the many qualities of Allah, usually his irrational infin
This relation to the plane is "ornamentalism" in Coellen's sense, and it can be just
produced by rows of columns in architecture as by lines of plastic units or purely ornam
forms.
In order to make the idea of "ornamentalism" (in Coellen's sense) entirely clear, atten-
tion must now be drawn to the difference between this notion and that contained in the terms
ornament and ornamentation. We call shaped linear decoration of surfaces ornament. Orna-
mentation is a system of such elements, whether it is taken within a group or period or in a

1 See my "A Stylistic Analysis of Islamic Art, General Part," Ars Islamica, III (1936), Pt. 2, 2It.

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 A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF ISLAMIC ART 37

generally abstract aesthetic sense. The conception of

the relation of the ornament forms to the surface o
interested in the countless individual forms of ornam
are naturalistic or abstract, rational or irrational, fr
to the question of their relation to the plane on whi
significance of the relation. This, however, is the sta
ornamentation in a philosophical, i.e., an absolute, se
life. It is true that Strzygowski and Riegl emphasized
to planes, and Riegl attempted to interpret it philoso
and describe the term ornamentalism as a style-gene
nize the fundamental difference between such ornam
(first category) and such as simply makes use of a pl
category). He further shows the difference in genet
the next, which is in the tectonic category, and takes
to be represented, and between this and the ornamentalism of general space in the fourth
category.2
Taking note of the leading and influential part assumed by ornamentation in Islamic art,
let us again consider, apart from the ornamental standpoint, these four categories. Ornament
in a primary sense, "pure" ornament as placed by Coellen in the first category, is pattern
without foundation. Pure ornament is direct plane-genesis through purely genetic means
which have no individual significance. The employment of individual forms, especially of
human beings, animals, and plants, is, on principle, excluded in the first category, where the
organizing arrangement of the creating resources can only be pure, i.e., abstractly geometric.
The plane to be produced is ideal form.
The producing resources also constitute the plane by leaving overempty spaces between
themselves and thus generating the pattern, which is laid on the empty ground, appearing in
the spaces between; the pattern alone is the plane to be produced, while the ground, pri-
marily, and according to its origin, has no artistic significance. The pattern is the total
space and its existential fulfillment. It fills the whole plane, if possible, without interruption,
and constitutes it as such. Prehistoric finds and the art of primitive peoples, as well as the
early works of historical peoples, furnish ornamentation corresponding to and exactly fulfill-
ing the conditions described. A geometric arrangement produces of itself the plane, mostly in
such a way that as much of the ground as possible disappears. This peculiarity of primitive
ornament was misunderstood and romantically designated as horror vacui. Coellen was the
first to give the correct interpretation of it-namely, that the plane is not only the totality of
space but also its existential fulfillment.
The preservation of the plane in the next category of space-totality, the "individual
space,"3 can only take place by the plane's, through its creative resources, being put into con-
tact with individual forms of plants, animals, and human beings. All the form-conditions of
pure ornamentalism remain valid-the geometric order of the elements, their rhythmic

2 Op. at., p. 202. 3 Loc. (it,

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 38 ERNST DIEZ

arrangement, and the h

of course, be abolished
art, though it represen
Ornamentation started
partial space forms the
individual forms into an organized whole. Examples of tectonization are found in the piling
up of demonic figures on a totem pole, the arrangement of sphinxes in rows to form an avenue,
the relationship of a figure to the ground by means of a base, or the construction of a temple of
walls, pillars, and beams. The beginning of tectonization is the beginning of human history.
In art the tectonization leading to the most important results occurs in establishing a relation
of the human figure with the background in relief. All these processes belong to the third cate-
gory of space-genesis, the partial space which coincides with the organizing of human society
in social forms. The change in the form of ornament in this category can be seen especially
clearly in Egyptian ornamentation. The arrangement of individuals determines the style in
this category, in accordance with which the symmetric ranking of geometrically stylized indi-
vidual forms, above all of plant-and-animal forms, becomes the main feature of the ornamenta-
tion. In addition, the tectonic arrangement of individuals as the dominating form-idea is
indicated by the separation of the ornamental pattern from the ground. The same tectonic
relationship comes into action which also leads to the relief. Here, too, the ground becomes
the tectonic basis for the ornament-plane, which from now on (as pattern) is tectonically
related to the ground. The ground is no longer indifferent, but an essential component of the
form, for which many new possibilities are open.
Finally the adaptation of the ornament into the totality of general space takes place in
the same way as it does in individual space. The genetic resources of the ornament acquire
relationship to general space. Their primary function of constituting the surface as such, is, so
to say, double. They now have at the same time to connect the plane with general space.
Thus this plane is a boundary layer between its own existence and the totality of general space.
The means by which this transformation is brought about are the same as those used in the
former category: chiaroscuro and color. Any ornamentation by these two mediums can become
elevated to the function of a general space-totality.
Islamic art has the restriction to the plane in common with Early Christian and Byzan-
tine, and thus the former as well as the two latter belong to the ornamentalistic style phase of
art development, determined polarly. In Western art this category of ornamentalism is fol-
lowed by the category of plasticism in Romanesque, of tectonics in Gothic, and finally of
general space in Renaissance art. The question ensuing for us is whether Islamic art has not
taken place in the second and perhaps also in the third category.
The direct identity of general and partial space is the basic determination for Byzantine
as well as for Islamic art. The identity of general spatial totality and its partial-spatial
realization determine both styles as ornamentalistic. Earlier, in the period of simple composi-
tion, existence was put as its own basis. Now, in the period of polar composition, of transcen-
dental world ideas, existence is raised to the sphere of the transcendental basis and made
identical with it. The result of this, stylistically, is the determination that the partial-spatial

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 A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF ISLAMIC ART 39

formula is raised to the sphere of the presupposed form

tical with it, i.e., the form is ornamentalistic plane-gene
to the ornament, but the general spatial ornamentalistic d
can be subjected to it, the style characteristic for catego
sculpture and so it was eliminated or ornamentalized from
The ornamentalistic plane-genesis is produced by the cu
stereometric formulas, to which can also be added irregular, inorganic, spatial elements, as
well as organic forms which are divested of their function.
There are far-reaching differences between Islamic and Byzantine art, although they
belong to the same categories of style. Islamic art had only started its formation at a time
when Byzantine was at its zenith. Vigorous nomadic peoples, such as the Arabs and the Turks,
united with old peoples of culture, such as the Egyptians, the Syrians, and the Iranians, in one
idea, submission to the will of God. In spite of this common trend, these various peoples at
different phases of culture clung to their own traditions. As an example, they maintained their
traditional manner of building even when they had to adapt themselves to the laws of style
inherent to their time and to Islam.
A survey of Islamic architecture reveals two types of building of different origin and
character. First, the memorial buildings, such as tombs, tomb towers, and minarets; second,
the open-court buildings of the mosques and madrasas. The buildings of the first group are not
spatial, but plastic. The domed tombs, or kubbas, cannot be considered pure spatial buildings,
because that formation was not the primary object of these buildings but was only a necessary
result of their object as memorials. A proof of this is the darkness of their interiors, which get
whatever light they may have through four barred windows only. Such constructions cannot
be classed with spatial buildings such as the Pantheon, in which space was the primary prob-
lem and was placed in relation to, and dependence on, infinite space by means of the widely
open opaion in the zenith of the cupola. This relation to open space was always emphasized
by the skylight lantern in Western architecture. Those who, recalling the never-to-be-forgotten
effects of light and space in the Pantheon, have visited the Gol Gumbaz in Bijapur, the largest
domed building in the East and exceeding the Pantheon in space, will remember how disap-
pointed they were in their expectations. The light is too scanty to give life to the space, which
remains the whole day in leaden twilight. Gol Gumbaz is not a space building and could not
have been conceived as such, but is simply a monumental memorial.
In what category of style can these buildings be placed? Let us recapitulate the four
categories within which the totality of the pre-Christian periods of style, that all belong to
the objective view of life, has been realized. First, the formation of the plane through orna-
ment by primitive hunting tribes of the Old Stone Age; second, the formation of single space
by means of plastic single figures which are not yet in standing position, i.e., are not yet
tectonized, such as the palaeolithic "Venuses" and negro sculpture; third, the connecting of
such single figures, i.e., their tectonization, and thus the formation of limited partial space, the
evolutionary step that was taken in the polytheistic phases of human culture; fourth, the
formation of general space since Hellenism, which culminated in architecture in the formation
of the interior-in the separation of closed space from general space-nwhile its original

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 40 ERNST DIEZ

sphere was the creation

As has been learned, t
jective transcendental views of life, but on a different plane. All that had been already
created could not simply be pushed aside, and it was continued under other names.
It now becomes possible to determine the mass of Islamic memorial buildings according
to category-they belong to the tectonic order, the formation of limited partial space; to the
phase of polytheistic religions as it had been visualized in the art of the great old oriental
empires and of Greece. The greatest mental achievement of Hellenism, the discovery of gen-
eral space with all its cultural consequences and its realization in art, had no effect on the
peoples who spread and organized a new world religion in the eighth century A.D. Islamic
architecture did not take part in the forming of the interior, although it appears now and then
as a borrowed form. Later Osmanic architecture cannot be cited as an exception, as it devel-
oped entirely in the spirit of the Italian Renaissance. Although Islamic architecture remained
in the categorical order of pre-Christian tectonics, its buildings were nevertheless raised to the
phase of contemporary polar ornamentality and are thus to be recognized as children of the
period of absolute, so to say, aprioristic general space, and artistically placed in connection
with the pneumatic view of life, of which they are witnesses.
Before this correlation is considered, a few observations may be added on the categorical
tectonics of Islamic buildings and their origin. As has been indicated the tomb memorial and
beacon tower are tectonized forms of ancient landmarks, such as the stakes and mounds of
primitive tribes-in Iran chiefly of northern nomads.4 This applies too, with certain restric-
tions, to the domed tombs which go back to primitive house forms. Thus there is here a tec-
tonization of ancient primitive forms, such as is found among all peoples of the earth who are
in the polytheistic phase of religion. The mounds with round bases and globular- or cupola-
formed shapes, or pyramids on square foundations, erected by the Red Indians of the North
Atlantic coast may be taken as examples. Similar landmarks and burial hills (kurgans) were,
according to the reports of travelers in former centuries, scattered over the Russian and Asiatic
steppes. All these simple tectonizations are the precursors of that tectonic development which
led to the pyramids and obelisks in Egypt, the pyramid temples of Mexico and South America,
the stupas in India and Further India, the pagodas in China, the brick-built memorials in Iran,
and the thousands of domed tombs and memorials of saints all over the Islamic world. These
innumerable landmarks and memorials spread over the earth characterize their countries far
better than the spatial buildings do, and all belong to the same category of style, the tectonic
order, and are the result of century-long development, starting their career in the second, the
plastic phase of single space, as primitive wood stakes, stone-heaped pyramids, dolmen menhirs,
and kurgans. They are anthropologically much more interesting, and from the human historical
standpoint more revealing, than the far later spatial buildings.
In order to arrive at concrete conclusions a distinction must now be made between
primitive and developed, early and late, archaic and classical tectonics. The totem poles of the
American Indians are tectonizations, and the classical temple of the Greeks is still a tectonically

4 E. Diez, Persien, Islamische Baukunst in Churasan (Hagen i. H., I923), pp. SI ff.

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 A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF ISLAMIC ART 4I

determined building. The reach from the totem post to the G

opment from tectonized single objects to the partial space ac
of a number of features such as walls and columns, and this space, embodied in the Greek
temple, represents the totality of Greek architecture. Now, in this group of Islamic buildings
there is no concern with partial space but only with tectonized single objects which stand as a
rule alone and isolated in a plain or on a hill. They would not be considered as partial-space
formations, unless they were known to be centers, for instance, of a Paradeisos surrounded by
an arrangement of columns like the tomb of Cyrus at Pasargadae. Such a tectonization may
have been carried out much more frequently than can be ascertained today, as such garden-
like tectonic enclosures were always destroyed. Yet there are enough instances which exclude
such a partial-space tectonization, on account of the isolated position on a hill, so that neither
a positive nor a negative conclusion should be drawn. Our present memorials (for instance, of
prominent men) belong to the same early phase of the tectonic order when they do not exercise
a determined function in a more extensive tectonic partial-space formation, such as the central
point of street rays in a city. Such examples only prove that all features in older phases of
style are preserved and again made use of with new stylistic significance in later phases.
Through experience one can test quite simply how completely different their stylistic function
is in historical cultures. If one thinks of Egypt, first pyramids and obelisks, then perhaps also
the pylon front of a temple, appear before the mind's eye, but certainly not the interior of
such a building; in China, the curved roof or a whole pagoda; in India the stupa; in Greece
the temple; but in Rome the interior of the Pantheon or of the Christian basilica; in Con-
stantinople the interior of Saint Sophia; in Cairo or Baghdad, again, the minarets and cupolas
of the tombs only. These associated images are the infallible eidola of the characteristic
phases of style for different cultures. While the tectonic single objects, such as obelisks,
pagodas, or minarets, characterize sufficiently Egypt, China, and the Islamic Orient, this cate-
gory of buildings does not signify anything at all either for imperial or papal Rome, or for
Paris, though they were and are very frequently to be found in these cities. Thus one comes to
the conclusion that Islamic architecture is partly characterized by buildings which belong to
an earlier phase of the tectonic formation. They are only raised to the contemporary tran-
scendental phase by their polar ornamentality.
The column-and-pillar mosques as well as the iwan-mosque-madrasas may be considered
as the next group. Here, too, there is a purely tectonic formation, which was only placed in
connection with general space by the chiaroscuro of the colonnades in the courtyard. Interiors
of the general-space order had long dominated in the Christian realm, while Islam still found
its totality in a purely tectonic type. Hellenism formed single-space units, imperial Roman art
combined them in the public baths, but still in a tectonic way, the Christian basilica already
knew the composition of space-units, aisle, transept, and apse. In the eighth and ninth cen-
turies, when in the Byzantine Orient the basilicas had been long supplanted by the domed
churches, which were spatially far better organized, Islam built its tectonic pillar mosques
and continued to do so for centuries.
The madrasa was the next type of prayer house. It made its way from Iran to the western
countries of Islam.5 Instead of column or pillar halls square courts were now built, with lofty
5 Diez, op. cit., pp. 6i-65, 82-88.

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 42 ERNEST DIEZ

iwans in the main axes and cell niches. The iwan of the kibla was now used for the prayers
and a dark-domed hall containing the prayer niche often lay behind it. What has been style-
genetically changed as compared to the mosque with pillared court? One now stands in a court
surrounded by high walls with two-story cells and iwans in which complete symmetry of
the organization of the walls dominates, instead of in a court surrounded by pillars, the arcades
of which are too low to allow an impression of space. Although the court is open at the top,
it is a space creation, as are also the lofty-arched iwans, which intensify the space kubus in
the four axes. Such are the half-open types of space, which were created in the Hellenistic
period, when general space became for the first time style-totality in art. The wall forms, how-
ever, no longer belong to the "simple-compositional" Hellenistic phase with plastic tectoniza-
tion of the walls, but to the phase of polar composition, which now employs general-spatial
tectonic forms, such as walls, arches, and vaults. This phase of style developed in the Roman
imperial period. The earlier classic Greek spatial limits were now extended to indefinite
general-spatial features by means of arches and vaults instead of columns and beams. Yet the
relation to antique tectonics was not abolished in Roman architecture so long as buildings
with beams supported by columns or piers continued, and walls, arches, and vaults were sub-
ordinated to it. Polar composition in general space did not assert itself till the end of the first
century of our era, when brick wall as well as vaulting became dominant.
Finally let us consider the domed building as the most puzzling one from the point of
style-genesis. The formation of the interior was achieved by Hellenism. Hall buildings or
stoas in two stories and interior-space buildings such as basilicas, council rooms, and libraries
are the new types, which the architects of Hellenistic interiors created essentially with the
old tectonic means of columns and beams in combination with walls. They also built rooms
with barrel-vaulted ceilings, but not the dome, which was not used till the time of polar com-
position. Till then the formation of cupolas started from below and rose to the top, but now in
the building of domes it begins from the top, not technically, but according to the logic of
form and therefore lying within the conception of such buildings. For an architect designing
a dome, the dome itself is the main point which he tries to visualize, and from this he
descends to form the walls in the service of, and dependent on this idea. The central form
of building is a mere result. The classical example of this is the Pantheon. WVhoever enters
first looks upward, and his first impression is the magnificent extension of the space of the
dome. The rotunda is the most complete stylistically and the most satisfying solution of this,
the greatest building idea of polar composition. Coellen formulates the imperial-Roman style
order as it is manifested in the Pantheon, as demarcation of an inner space from the assumed
general space and its formation into a dynamic unity, organized in a pictorial chiaroscuro
ambient, leaving out of consideration the formal inherent values of the components of indi-
vidual space. He finds it important that here dynamic effect is produced through the constant
curving of the plane towards the cylinder-and-cupola form, so that we must speak of dynamic
architecture as opposed to static. This alone distinguishes such a domed building from an
Islamic one with its straight static walls.
There now arises the intrinsic question as to whether all Islamic dome buildings are to
be regarded as polarly composed and therefore conceptionally of the same kind as Western

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 A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF ISLAMIC ART 43

ones. In order to understand the Islamic attitude b

genetic development of Christian dome building w
basilica is a new form of building which depends
the narthex, aisle, transept, and apse. By means o
parts, the basilica became a prototype of polar com
mentalistic order. Communication with outside sp
Since the reign of Justinian the basilica has been
space building, while in the West, at any rate, the
soleums were mostly domed.
In contrast to the basilica, which was something
point, the early Christian tendency of style found
of space-form which was rooted in the conditions
was to transform this type in the sense of a Chri
features with a cubistic collective character and
transformation took place in the Byzantine East
the central building transformed into cubistic orn
was necessary for ornamentality, and the whole c
The central body, which was originally placed on
the plane. The portion of space over which the cen
the walls but the square bounded by four huge pillars. The square, in exceptional cases
replaced by the polygon, also became the typical plan-form for all Islamic domed buildings.
An octagonal intervening zone, which forms the transition to the dome, is placed on four
solid square walls.
There are two important differences between the Islamic and the Christian-Byzantine
domed buildings: the Islamic dome always rests on solid walls with a horizontal termination
instead of on pillars, and the transition is formed by separating squinches instead of by con-
necting pendentives. The impression of cubism and ornamentality is still more intensified by
the four unbroken walls of the main body, and the space effect, too, is quite different through
the towering of cubus, prism, and calotte. These buildings are not, like the Pantheon type,
conceived from above, thus polarly out of a space-conception, but on the contrary quite nor-
mally from below, in tectonic layers. We cannot consider constraint on account of material or
technical difficulties as an objection, for the spirit ever conquers the material on the path of
its aim.
On the other hand, as we cannot deny the polarity of the Islamic religion and therefore
of its art also-in the case of these buildings it can only be a question of inhibitions for the
overcoming of which the mental attitude of Islam was not dynamic enough. This does not
refer to its outward vitality but to the lack of the profound ethical emotional background of
the Christian world, that was already latent in the pre-Christian.
Oriental architecture also lacked the sense for the composition of space-features, as they
were realized in Christian basilicas and in Byzantine central buildings. Islamic architecture
has no spheric exedras nor apsides. The walls of their domed spaces are stepped by rectangular
recesses. The Mediterranean triconcha was rejected by Islamic architecture, which admitted

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 44 ERNST DIEZ

only the straight wall as the termination of space. The curved plane had to be taken into the
bargain only in the case of the dome, but various methods were employed to flatten it out by
means of ornamenting. Thus the real function of the Islamic dome lay in its outward effect,
which was heightened by the reflecting splendor of its glazed spheres. For this reason the
Turks and Mongols imitated the double-shelled towering stupas scattered over Central Asia
when they built their memorials in Samarkand, Iran, and Egypt.
The conclusion follows that dome-building, though it was abundantly employed in Islamic
architecture and can even be regarded as an architectural eidolon of Islam, did not play the
same creative role style-genetically as in the West. So, in the face of all the discussions on this
problem during the last few decades, the surprising but inevitable conclusion is that the
genuine dome as polar space-building originated entirely in the Western mind and did not
come from the East. This does not mean that the slightest doubt is cast on the theory that the
architectural invention of dome-shaped vaulting almost certainly belongs to the Afro-Asiatic
desert zone. This is a question dealing exclusively with the style-genetic function of the dome
as spatial formation from the standpoint of art.
Every comparison of medieval Christian with Islamic spatial composition confirms the
theory that the evolution from the tectonic partial-space to the general-space form has been
denied to Islamic architecture. The Christian church composes with space-units and arranges
them in spatial crystals; Islamic mosque- and palace-building set partial spaces beside each
other at divergent axes and frequently even in a directly misleading labyrinthic manner.
Those who have gone through the palace Chihil Sutun in Isfahan and tried to understand
the arrangement of the halls and porticoes by drawing a plan have experienced this
confusion in spite of the symmetric scheme. And why do the prayers at the great general
religious services stand in long horizontal rows parallel to the latitudinal Kibla wall and form
ten to twenty even layers one behind the other? The law of ornamentality is thus confirmed
in life.
One of the main means of the polar ornamental order of style is immaterialization. The
hard and heavy effect of the material is to be annulled as far as possible by Tiefendunkel,
resplendance, and luster. While we find this principle applied in the interior of Byzantine
cathedrals, it is the leading formative factor of the outward appearance of buildings, especially
of monuments without inner space, in Islamic architecture. The Iranian tomb towers as well
as the minarets emphasize ornamentality by disintegrating their wall surface with brick relief
work, with ornamentalized rows of pillars and tiled spheric roofs. The facades of the mosques,
madrasas, and musallas are covered with tiles. The masonry is in strictly cubic forms and
coated with colored ornamentation which visualizes ornamental color effects in an isolated and
cubistic arrangement of pure pigment surfaces. The static regularly geometric plan predomi-
nates and relates all individual forms into an ornamental rhythm. The construction of the
linear configurations is irrational as far as possible-beginning, course, and end-insoluble for
the spectator's eye, and thus elevated above the limits of normal human reason into the
sphere of divine inscrutability. These nets of lines and formulas, though thought out by human
intellect, signify to a certain degree an outwitting and a supernatural surpassing of the limits
of human reason.

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 A STYLISTIC ANALYSIS OF ISLAMIC ART 45

The best confirmation for the categorization of Isla

is the Persian denotation of a rug pattern as zemdn ("time"), and of the ground as zemin
("space").6
No more significant metaphor, indeed, could have been found for the philosophic a
conforming to our ornamentality on the transcendental polar level. The third and the f
dimensions, space and time, are thus projected and interwoven in a two-dimensional weft.
Metaphorically the whole Islamic ornamentation has this spiritual function. The manifold
arabesque schemes were supposed to visualize transcendentalism and fulfilled this task in two-
dimensional polar ornamentality.
Besides this general symbolism, however, almost every single figure of any ornamental
design, animal or plant, as well as every color, has a concrete mystic and symbolic significance
and thus a polar orientation.7 And it is this latent ambiguity which encouraged the flowery
speech of Oriental poetry.
The problem of book illumination has already been discussed in a previous article on
Sino-Mongolian temple painting.8 Iranian book illumination belongs to the same category as
the Eastern Turkestan-Chinese school of painting alluded to there. This painting is ornamen-
talistic-cubistic in an ambient of general space, which is not the result but the supposition of
the formation of design. There is, however, a static and a dynamic phase traceable, just as in
the evolution from Romanesque toward Gothic. The well-known Iranian illustration of
Rustam's sleep in the Shah Ndme of 868 H. (I463 A.D.) is a good example of the dynamic
phase.9
To summarize, Islamic art appears as the individuation of its metaphysical basis (unend-
lichen Grund). This individuation is mechanistic-cubistic, not organizistic like classic Greek
and Roman art. The totality of existence was represented by the collective-mass individual,
not by the single one. Islamic art had mechanistic individuation in common with Christian art
up to the Renaissance, but remained at the ornamentalistic level determined by the magic-life
philosophy.'0 The individualistic tendency of the western Romanesque style since the ninth
century A.D. is not traceable in Islamic art, though Eastern and Western mysticism developed
in a similar manner.
The aim of such a study is primarily morphological. In contrast to individuations of the
metaphysical basis in other categories of a culture, the individuation in art is visible and legible,
alid, adequately analyzed, indicates convincingly the limits of the entelechy of a historical
culture. This could be confirmed by a similar investigation of poetry and philosophy. Thus
the conditions may be prepared for a comparative morphology of human cultures.

6 J. Karabacek, Die persische Nadelmalerei Susan- 8 E. Diez, "Sino-Mongolian Temple Painting and Its
djird (Leipzig, I88i), pp. 36 ff. Influence on Persian Illumination," Ars Islamica, I
7 The symbolism of Islamic elements of pattem ac- (1934), Pt. 2, 168-70.
cording to the Arabic and Persian authors is discussed by 9 See footnote 7.
Karabacek, op. cit., pp. I37-67. 10 Cf. the schedule in the first part of this article,
"A Stylistic Analysis of Islamic Art."

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