Words for tools, materials and effects

Make a three-column list from the records: parts, tools, materials. Decide where each word belongs, and mark the words you did not know.

Choose one step from a record. Describe what the surface looks like before and after it, and name a technique you use that makes a similar change.

Illumination has its own words for the parts of a book. The record says it is the art of decorating title pages, headings, verse divisions, colophons, dedications, borders and book covers ². Norah Titley traces its origin to the simple decoration of vowel marks and of the circles separating verses in Qur'ans written by Arab calligraphers in the seventh and eighth centuries ². She notes Shiraz favouring deep maroon and Herat black ³, and Herat headings with lapis lazuli grounds ⁴.

Each term in the three records rests on a named source. Titley traces illumination to simple decoration in early Qur'ans ². The Turkish encyclopaedia defines the calligrapher's hand as writing the letters of the Arabic script according to aesthetic rules ⁵. Newcomb divides Moroccan decorative tilework into ceramic mosaic and painted tiles ^6 7. So each word in a glossary has a source behind it.

Titley says illumination was not confined to text pages but entered paintings themselves, on architecture, tents, saddlecloths and carpets ^8 3. Take a position and answer the strongest objection to it: is "illumination" a word for a place on the page, a technique or a style?

• Manuscript illumination: the parts of a book that were decorated, and the schools of Shiraz, Herat and Tabriz.
• Calligrapher (khattat): the reed pen, the soot ink and the hands named for their nibs.
• Zellij: cut ceramic mosaic, and inscriptions cut through the glaze.