The colourful world of Islam

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And Diverse Are Their Hues: Colour in Islamic Art and Culture

Edited by Jonathan Bloom & Sheila Blair

Drawing its title from a phrase in the Koran praising God’s creation, this book collects the papers from a conference on the use of colour in Islamic art and architecture.  Though the subject is vast and the coverage erratic, the collection is beguiling.

The introduction explores how colour is a cultural construct; while we, in the modern West, distinguish seven colours in the rainbow, Pliny and Aristotle only saw three.   Pre-Islamic Arabic had terms for only five colours – white, black, red, yellow and green; thus blue would not be distinguished from green, or orange from yellow, or red from brown.  In the Koran white is used to describe the water of paradise and thus is associated with purity; black is the colour of unbelievers and it is also associated with grief.  White and black are linked with day and night, light and darkness, and to this day the believer determines daybreak and the beginning of the fast as the moment he can distinguish a white thread from a black one.  

Curiously, an aversion to yellow is one of the most consistent attitudes across Islamic societies.  Throughout history it appears that yellow was associated with libertines and women; in 850 the Abbasid caliph ordered non-Muslims to wear yellow scarves because the Prophet disliked the colour; in Mamluk Egypt Jews had to wear yellow turbans (and Christians had to wear blue ones); in Andalucían Arabic poetry, yellow was the colour of treachery, separation and unrequited love.  Green, on the other hand, being the favourite of the Prophet, is often deemed the colour of Islam.

Blue enters the Arabic vocabulary late; religious texts refer to blue-eyed sinners  and even today blue eyes are often associated with evil.  Indeed, in many Arabic cultures blue is still seen as an inauspicious colour, suggesting magic, misfortune and failure; this, perhaps, explains why people often wear blue beads as amulets or paint their doors blue to ward off danger. 

While Muslim doctors, philosophers and scientists developed sophisticated theories on the nature of colour, light and optics, the 12th-century Persian poet Nizami Ganjun explored the seven major colours in his classic poem Seven Portraits.  Here, in the guise of the seven princesses visited by a Sassanian king, colours become metaphors for planets, climates, cultures, stages of life and aspects of destiny.   In the mystic tradition colour was seen as an outward sign of an inner spiritual state: a black Sufi robe indicates the wearer has overcome his carnal soul but is still mourning the loss, a white robe symbolizes the wearer’s purity and freedom from worldly concerns, a sky-blue robe indicates he has risen from the lower realm, while a multicoloured robe is worn by those who have completed their journey and experienced the lights of each mystical state. 

These arcane mystical, scientific, literary and philosophical approaches appear to have had little effect on the daily life of the Islamic world; much more important were practical considerations.  If blue was inauspicious how can we explain the famous Blue Mosque, or the glorious blue domes of Iran, or the popularity of blue textiles and blue-based carpets across the Islamic empire?  The wide availability of indigo as a colourfast dye seems to have overcome any qualms about this colour among textile workers, while the blue tiles of the near and middle east are probably explained by the abundance of cobalt, which creates a blue-hued glaze; in North Africa green tiles prevailed because copper, which creates a green hue, was more easily accessible…  And so the studies continue.

Focusing on textiles, ceramics, metal and leatherwork as well as art and architecture, the essays in this book explore the way colour was perceived and employed over 1,400 years of Islamic culture.  From the aesthetics of colour in the Alhambra – yes it was once all gilded and gaudy, like the classical statuary we hate to imagine in its original, authentic, painted glory – to the use of colour for religious and political propaganda, from colour in the garden to the role of geography in the artist’s choice of colour, this collection examines the subject from a multiplicity of angles.  In exploring a culture which spans millennia and continents, stretching from seventh century Arabia to modern Malaysia, there are, inevitably, discrepancies and contradictions between the various studies, but this only adds to the fascination of this very rich and varied topic. While the price, unfortunately, will probably exclude the common reader, this book will be essential for libraries focusing on design, horticulture, textiles, art and architecture as well as Islamic religion and culture.

And Diverse Are Their Hues: Colour In Islamic Art And Culture by Ed Jonathan Bloom & Sheila Blair is published by Yale University Press, 2011. 408pp., 256 colour and 5 mono illus, $85.00. ISBN  978-0-300-17572-1