Draft: this lesson was written with AI help and has not yet been read by a human editor.
1 What your class asks
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
Curriculum expectations, with their official codes
- D3.1 describe how forms and styles of visual and media arts represent various messages and contexts in the past and present […]
- D3.2 demonstrate an awareness of ways in which visual arts reflect the beliefs and traditions of a variety of peoples and of people in different times and places […]
2 The lesson
What does art say about the beliefs of its makers?
For each example ask what this art writes or decorates, and what the choice of subject tells you about its makers.
How does a style's place change over time?
Follow Kufic from one setting to another, and ask what changed at what time and why that matters.
Go deeper
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.
Think about it
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?
Into the museum
- 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.
Try this
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.
3 Carry it further
Where this lesson leads in the museum.
4 Check yourself
Nothing here is marked or sent anywhere. It is for you.
In your own words: what does Manuscript illumination (tadhhib) have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
Decoration that frames the Qur'an. Norah Titley traces the origin of illumination 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. By the fourteenth century ornate palmettes and sunbursts decorated the borders of Qur'ans, and the arabesque had become inseparable from Islamic decoration. How does decoration come to say something about the book it frames?
In your own words: what does Kufic script have to do with this lesson?
Compare with the card
A script on coins, on a dome, then on headings. Maryam Ekhtiar writes that the earliest dinars, dated 76 AH/696–97 CE, bear Qur'anic verses in an early formal kufic, and that a dated architectural example is the inscription around the ambulatory of the Dome of the Rock, 72 AH/691–92 CE. She adds that once the new style and the rounded scripts took over, kufic was confined to ornament such as sura headings. What does a script's changing place tell you about its time?
I can now
Notes
- 1. Ontario Ministry of Education, The Ontario Curriculum: The Arts
- 2. Norah M. Titley, Persian Miniature Painting and its Influence on the Art of Turkey and India: The British Library Collections (London: British Library, 1983), p. 228
- 3. Maryam D. Ekhtiar, How to Read Islamic Calligraphy (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), p. 23
- 4. Maryam D. Ekhtiar, How to Read Islamic Calligraphy (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018), p. 24