Encyclopedia of Islam

Arab

  

49  J

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Arabs are not necessarily Muslim, and indeed 

there are many Christian Arabs. Moreover, the 

majority of Muslims (about 80 percent) do not 

consider themselves to be Arab, and some people 

who do consider themselves to be Arab—espe-

cially the 

children

 of migrants—do not neces-

sarily speak Arabic. Like all ethnic categories, 

the definition of Arab is somewhat flexible and 

depends on context.

See also a

rabic

 

langUage

 

and

 

literatUre

; a

rab

l

eagUe

.

David Crawford

Further reading: Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab 

Peoples (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 

1991); Maxime Rodinson, The Arabs (Chicago: Univer-

sity of Chicago Press, 1981).

arabesque

Arabesque is a term meaning à l’arabe, or in the 

a

rab

 mode, a European designation for ornamen-

tal passages in 

mUsic

, dance, poetry, and visual 

art

. First used by 17th-century European travel-

ers as an adjective, it began to function as a noun 

by the later 19th century, when it entered debates 

Carved stucco arabesque designs decorate arches in the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra, Granada, Spain 

(13th/14th century). 

(Federico R. Campo)

K  50  

arabesque

---

on the nature of ornament. The arabesque was 

understood to represent a paradigmatic way 

of life—simple and instinctual, close to nature 

yet profoundly spiritual, unchanging, and stoic. 

These characteristics were visually apparent in 

applied decoration of floral scrolls, interlaced 

and/or overlapping geometric motifs, or styl-

ized writing, sometimes in combination. To 

European eyes, the two-dimensionality, abstrac-

tion, and nonfigural nature of these decorative 

designs made them perfect expressions of Arab-

Semitic abhorrence of representations of living 

beings (even though some of them included 

such representations). Their being categorized as 

ornament underscored their additive and unnec-

essary nature and their lack of meaning, while 

their infinite repetition with minute variations 

expressed a horror of emptiness. By 1900, when 

the first handbooks on Islamic art were written, 

the arabesque was cited as the major character-

istic of an art whose goal was to express infinite 

(ethnic or created) variety within unity (of Islam 

and God). Some Muslim scholars now uphold 

this concept as an expression of 

tawhid

 (unity) 

partly as a way of affirming Islamic cultural and 

political identity.

Recent research demonstrates that the ara-

besque has complex histories and meanings. On a 

theoretical level, floral, geometric, or calligraphic 

arabesques may have acted as carriers of pleasure, 

mediators between (human) nature and culture. 

Historically, they first appeared in late 10th-cen-

tury  b

aghdad

, when they were also introduced 

into the three-dimensional muqarnas decoration 

used for the portals and domes of shrines. The 

Persian term girih (knot) expresses their math-

ematical and geometrical complexity, and their 

specific context indicates that they belonged 

to inter-Islamic philosophical, theological, and 

political discourses on the nature of God and 

the universe. The visual appeal of the girih mode 

eventually led to its adoption in a variety of later 

contexts, even when its original purpose was no 

longer operative.

See also 

architectUre

; 

calligraphy

; i

bn

 

al

-b

aW

-

Wab

, a

bU

 

al

-h

asan

 

ali

; 

mathematics

; 

theology

.

Nuha N. N. Khoury