the more one ponders, the more its beauties register, whereas the modern song is
like a new fabric that appears atfirst, but the more one considers it the more
evident its faults become, and the more its splendor fades.^56
The Persian literary critic Shams-i Qays (1204–1230) indicated the analogous
nature of poetry and art, pointing out the frequent comparison of poetry to a
patterned brocade, a rhythmic arabesque, or stringing a necklace according to
the rules of measured composition andproportion. Likewise, poetry of the
Alhambra depended on a kaleidoscope of metaphors of gardens, jewelry, color,
and harmony that often inverted the relationship between subject and object by
speaking through the voice of the building. As Olga Bush explains,“In addition
to a mimetic and a contemplative gaze, then, poetic epigraphy articulates a self-
reflexive gaze, speaking for the ways in which architecture and objectswish to
be seen,aswellasthewaysbeholdersmayseethemselvesinrelationtothe
works of art they behold.”^57 Similarly, the Ottoman literary theorist Muslih al-
Din Mustafa Sururi (1491–1562) used craft metaphors, comparing the orna-
mental arts of poetry to wall ornament (naksh), tile work, and inlay.^58
Not merely decorative, applied geometries could be allegorically embel-
lished. An early twelfth-century wall tiling at the Friday mosque in Isfahan
using the geometry inFigure 33incorporates the following verse:
When they rolled up the letter of our accusation
Took and weighed it against the balance of actions
Our guilt was more than everyone else, and yet
They forgave us through the kindness of’Alī.^59
Interpreting geometric form, such verse corresponds to the interpretation
of a painting. The geometries function not simply as mathematical con-
structs or decoration, but are read as of movement, here the rolling of a
letter. As in a naturalistic painting, the forms signal something beyond
what is immediately visible. Yet unlike in an iconographic practice, where
this geometry would signify afixed meaning, this interpretive practice
relies on the productive associations of the viewer. This may reflect an
aspect of metaphor (isti’ara) framed in al-Jurjani’s exposition of rhetoric
which deliberately confuses subject and object, allowing for a diversity of
interpretations.^60 In this example, verse guides the viewer to a single
association particularly relevant to its use at this site. Applied to such
forms, words such as‘ornament’or‘decoration’implicitly associate repre-
sentation with naturalism in the European tradition. Conversely, such(^56) Wright, 2004 : 365. (^57) Bush, 2018 : 101. (^58) Necipoğlu, 1995 : 185.
(^59) Kheirandish, 2017 : 93, 95. (^60) Robinson, 1997 : 153.
288 Mimetic Geometries