medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Critchlow, Keith Islamic patterns: an analytical and cosmological
approach, Thames and Hudson 1976 (1983 ed) is another well-known
introduction in English. It's written (I say this from memory) by an
architect, which usually rings alarm bells with architectural
historians, and I recall finding it hard to tell from the volume what
the historic (or even modern Islamic) sources were for the many
mathematical and geometrical ideas it reveals in Islamic tile patterns.
Nevertheless a fascinating read.
Colour symbolism in these patterns is touched on in the glossy,
beautiful book by Roland and Sabina Michaud with Michael Barry, Colour
and Symbolism in Islamic Architecture, Thames and Hudson 1996 (English
edition). This work is more pictures and poetry than text, but is a
rapturous thing to look at.
Anne is right that the complexity of these patterns is a side-effect of
the general (not complete) disapproval of images of the human figure in
Islamic art. They are a kind of abstract icon, richly encoded, but the
common sources of the numerology will make many of them familiar to
medievalists: for example the ideas associated with ever-present hexagon
in Islamic patterns are closely paralleled in, for example,
Grosseteste's Hexaemaron.
As for the connections or otherwise between Gothic and Islamic
pointed-arch based architecture, that's a rich and controversial tangent
that I leave for others to pick up on, should they wish...
Jon
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