THE HERMENEUTICS OF ISLAMIC ORNAMENT: THE EXAMPLE OF THE ALHAMBRA

Abstract

Ornament is the least understood, most elusive, and perhaps the most complex of all traditional art forms in Islam. Yet, ubiquitous on all artistic media, it is one of the fundamental elements of Islamic visual expression throughout its history. In this sense, ornament constitutes a no less ipseitic feature of visuality and force of intervisuality in the cosmopolitan world of Islam than does the art of calligraphy in Arabic script, with which it forms an inseparable duo. Although much scholarly effort has been deployed to unravel this duo’s meaning, the hermeneutics of Islamic ornament remains characteristically flawed. The reason lies in the maintenance of an outdated epistemology by the academic mainstream and, in the process, the marginalization of the rare methodologically advanced studies available. Through the case study of the Alhambra’s palaces in Granada, thirteenth–fifteenth centuries, alAndalus (Islamic Spain), these few pages deconstruct some misinterpretations and provide a few clues to look afresh at the hermeneutics of Islamic ornament.