Art that carries a belief: writing and decoration

This lesson asks you to describe how forms and styles of visual art represent messages and contexts in the past and present, and to show awareness of how the visual arts reflect the beliefs and traditions of peoples. The museum offers the decoration of manuscripts and a script that appeared on coins and monuments. The art of other peoples your class must bring from elsewhere. ¹

For each example ask what this art writes or decorates, and what the choice of subject tells you about its makers.

Follow Kufic from one setting to another, and ask what changed at what time and why that matters.

Norah Titley traces illumination to the simple decoration of two things in Qur'ans written by Arab calligraphers in the seventh and eighth centuries: the vowel marks, and the circles that separated the verses ². By the fourteenth century palmettes and sunbursts decorated the borders of Qur'ans ². Maryam Ekhtiar says the earliest dinars, dated 76 AH, bear Qur'anic verses in an early formal Kufic ³. Later, Kufic was kept for ornament, such as sura headings ⁴.

Titley says illumination began with decorated vowel marks and verse circles, and later reached the borders. If you were decorating a book of your own, which part would you decorate first, and why?

• Manuscript illumination: from the verse circles to the schools of Shiraz and Herat.
• Kufic script: from the first dated dinars to the headings of the suras.
• The Dome of the Rock: the building with the dated Kufic inscription that the Kufic record names.

Read about manuscript illumination and the kufic script. Choose a picture of a manuscript page from a book your class has, and name what in it is writing and what is decoration.