Abstract
There are specialists for dating Persian paintings but it is surprising that such precession is
missing in the field of Islamic non-figural ornament which isstrange because from the
second half of the sixteenth century there are several treatises that provide the names for
the major ―motifs‖ – the haft asl (the seven modes). Although several modern scholars
have suggested meanings for one or more of the seven terms – islīmī, khatā’ī, band-i rūmī,
dāgh, nīlufer, abr, faṣṣālī and firangī– no one heretofore has presented an explanation for
them that intergrades the wordsinto a comprehensive statement of Islamic design. This
research includes a new historical sequence for the motifs. Beginning in the ninth century
with the mis-named ―arabesque‖, now rightfully termed the islīmī aṣl; the first
combination occurs in the tenth century with the addition of the ―band-irūmī” a process
for knotting and braiding vines taken from Byzantine art. In the eleventh to twelfth
century, with the invasions of the Seljuqs into Persia and Turkey, the wāqwāq asl was
joined to the previous two. Wave of Chinese influence supplanted the wāqwāq aṣl, with
cloud bands (abr) and khatā’ī, another type of more delicate vine with flowers, buds and
leaf motifs. Combination of islīmī with khatā’ī generated the aṣl, faṣṣālī. Lastly, firangī
the Persian word used to indicate the Franks or Europeans in general, is a type of design
organization with larger motifs overlapping smaller ones, deriving from designs on
Venetian textiles of the fourteenth century popularly imported into Islamic cities. Not only
does this research, which was carried out on both a theoretical level – tracing the
meanings of terms through the centuries -but also on empirical basis with interviews of
contemporary craftsmen in Pakistan and Iran, add clarity to descriptions of Islamic
ornament but also aids art historian in verifying dates and schools of Qur‘an illumination
and so forth.
Masooma Abbas. (2018) Haft Aṣl: The Seven Modes of Ornamentation in Islamic Art, Journal of Arts and Social sciences, Volume 5, Issue 1.
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