Year 8 Blog

Muslims do not like to make pictures of God because they believe that Allah is invisible and any pictures of him would not do justice to him.

However, they do use shapes and patterns to make art which represents different things.

Symbolic structure
Repeating patterns can represent the order Allah has put into the world, and can also represent the unchanging his laws.

Symbolic Shapes
In Islamic patterns many of the shapes have meanings:

• Circle – A symbol of Allah who has no beginning and no end. The centre can also be a symbol for Mecca, towards which Muslims face to pray.
• Triangle – A symbol for three aspects of human beings: body, mind and spirit.
• Square – The four elements of the world: earth, water, wind and fire.
• Hexagon – This can be created from six circles placed around a seventh. As seven is a perfect number, and circles are perfect the hexagon represents heaven.
• Star – Often represents the spread of Islam because the points of the star spread out from the middle. (Thanks Bisshu for reminding me about this)

Here are some examples, which you might be able to explain:

Tags: Islamic Art

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Assessment, Homework, Lesson. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.