The origins of visual culture in the Islamic world : aesthetics, art and architecture in early Islam / Mohammed Hamdouni Alami.
Hamdouni Alami, Mohammed, author.
2015
N6260 .H34 2015 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

Items

Details

Title The origins of visual culture in the Islamic world : aesthetics, art and architecture in early Islam / Mohammed Hamdouni Alami.
Author Hamdouni Alami, Mohammed, author.
ISBN 9781784530402 hardcover
1784530409 hardcover
Published London : I.B. Tauris, 2015.
Language English
Language Note Text in English.
Description xiii, 184 pages : illustrations, plans ; 22 cm.
Call Number N6260 .H34 2015
Dewey Decimal Classification 709.17671
Summary "In tenth-century Iraq, a group of Arab intellectuals and scholars known as the Ikhwan al-Safa began to make their intellectual mark on the society around them. A mysterious organisation, the identities of its members have never been clear. But its contribution to the intellectual thought, philosophy, art and culture of the era - and indeed subsequent ones - is evident. In the visual arts, for example, Hamdouni Alami argues that the theory of human proportions which the Ikwan al-Safa propounded (something very similar to those of da Vinci), helped shape the evolution of the philosophy of aesthetics, art and architecture in the tenth and eleventh centuries CE, in particular in Egypt under the Fatimid rulers. With its roots in Pythagorean and Neoplatonic views on the role of art and architecture, the impact of this theory of specific and precise proportion was widespread. One of the results of this extensive influence is a historic shift in the appreciation of art and architecture and their perceived role in the cultural sphere. The development of the understanding of the interplay between ethics and aesthetics resulted in a movement which emphasised more abstract and pious contemplation of art, as opposed to previous views which concentrated on the enjoyment of artistic works (such as music, song and poetry). And it is with this shift that we see the change in art forms from those devoted to supporting the Umayyad caliphs and the opulence of the Abbasids, to an art which places more emphasis on the internal concepts of 'reason' and 'spirituality'.Using the example of Fatimid art and views of architecture (including the first Fatimid mosque in al-Mahdiyya, Tunisia), Hamdouni Alami offers analysis of the debates surrounding the ethics and aesthetics of the appreciation of Islamic art and architecture from a vital time in medieval Middle Eastern history, and shows their similarity with aesthetic debates of Italian Renaissance."--Publisher's website.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Series Library of Middle East history ; v. 55.
Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
All Resources
Introduction
An aesthetic revolution: from trance to meaning, a metamorphosis of Islamic aesthetics
The ethics of arts and crafts
Painting in a world of images
Stone metaphors and architecture's whispers.

Browse Subjects

Show more subjects...

Statistics

from
to
Export