Surface, size and place in design

This lesson asks you to explain how elements and principles of design communicate meaning, and to show an understanding of what visual art did in public life. The museum offers a decorative design that respects its surface and the inscriptions on the gates and facades of Cairo. How art shaped personal and cultural identity, and works from other places, your class must bring. ¹

In a design, nothing is only decoration: how big something is and where it sits tells the viewer what matters. Look for the choices the makers made about space, repetition and placement, and ask who was meant to see them.

Bernard O'Kane follows the inscriptions of Fatimid Cairo in order, and his last stop is the facade of the Aqmar Mosque (519/1125–6). ^{2 3 4 5} At the Aqmar Mosque the foundation inscription in the names of the caliph and his vizier al-Ma'mun appears twice on the facade, the upper floriated and the lower plain against a foliate scroll, with the caliph's name placed exactly in the middle above the doorway. ⁵

The museum's records preserve no statement in which Badr al-Jamali says why his gates were inscribed as they are. They show that he rebuilt the walls of Cairo in brick and stone between 1087 and 1092, and that Yeomans sees his building programme as one with his reconstruction of the country. ⁶ O'Kane notes that on Badr's gates his titles take up much more space than those of the caliph al-Mustansir, "a nod to the real holder of power". ⁵ That is O'Kane's reading of the sizes.

Floriated Kufic is celebrated in the inscriptions of Fatimid Egypt, but O'Kane stresses that it was not a Fatimid invention: a full century before the Fatimids reached Cairo, Mubarak al-Makki carved a tombstone dated Dhu'l-Hijja 243/March 858, now in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. ²

At the gates, O'Kane reads size as a sign of who held power. At al-Aqmar the record notes that the caliph's name stands in the middle above the doorway and gives no reading of it. Which would you trust more as a sign of who matters, size or position, and why?

• Monumental Calligraphy in Fatimid Egypt: O'Kane's chapter, from tombstones to the Aqmar facade.
• The Aqmar Mosque: the facade where the foundation inscription appears twice.
• Floriated Kufic: letters decorated with leaves, stems and blossoms, and its examples before the Fatimids.
• Badr al-Jamali: the vizier of al-Mustansir who rebuilt the walls of Cairo.

Read about the arabesque and then about monumental calligraphy in Fatimid Egypt. For each, write one design choice the record describes and what you think it tells the viewer.