The Study of Plant Designs in Painting ( Beginning of Islam to the Early 8 th Century AH )

The use of plant designs in artistic works of different nations since a long time ago indicates a close relationship between religion, culture, traditions and rituals in any nation with nature. These designs were usually depicted with a symbolic approach and ritual attitude. In ancient Iran, using plant designs has found a mythical aspect or has been used with a symbolic-decorative approach in different works. With the arrival of Islam to Iran, this attitude has gradually changed and using plant designs was not done only to express symbols, myth-making or shows its holiness but also it found a scientific and typology aspect in the remaining works of the 3 to 8rh centuries AH. Now, a question arises that were the plant designs depicted in painting of the above periods merely with the aim of expressing the symbolic or decorative aspect or were the other aspects considered? This paper was aimed to answer the above question and confirm the hypothesis that the designs of nature in painting of the 3 to 8 centuries AH were done due to the sanction of portrait painting at the beginning of Islam with a focus on the introduction of the performance of useful plants. The tangible representation of them and decoration of literary texts and the expression of the symbolic aspect of plant were not considered. In this regard, it was attempted to refer to little documents in library to describe and analyze the plant designs in painting (the beginning of Islam to the early 8 century AH).


Introduction
Plants have attracted the attention of human beings since a long time ago as one of the important elements of nature and have been depicted in different ways on daily and functional objects.The use of plant designs can be observed as symbolic to decorative patterns in the artistic works of all nations.With the development of nations, the prosperity of human thoughts and the emergence of religions, the attitude of plants' holiness and their depicted patterns gradually changed.One of the main reasons of change in attitude is the use of natural elements like plant in the creation of different patterns, the emergence and acceptance of religion and rules of portrait painting inhibition at the beginning of Islam.The cultural-business expansion and transactions and using different sciences required the necessity of writing and recording them.Civilized and knowledgeable human decided to depict and illustrate the texts and also write in order to transfer his knowledge to the next generations and also better understand the subject.
According to many studies on different aspects of plant designs in painting, it seems that the other aspects of plant designs in illustrated books-that are considered as the important scientific documents-have been less fortunate.In this regard, the study of the origin and functions of plant types alongside the resources related to painting were considered necessary and the images of the early periods of the emergence of Islam, Abbasid School, and Seljuk period were selected as case studies.The obtained results confirmed the hypothesis and achieved an appropriate answer.It seems that the plant designs used in the remaining documents from the beginning of Islam to the 8 th century AH were performed mostly with the aim of expressing the performance of plants' functional features and creating decorative coverage in literary texts and the expression of the symbolic aspect of plants was not considered so much.
In order to exploit and use the results of similar studies, some versions like the study of plant designs in Islamic arts: Hadi Arefi the visual feature of trees in Persian painting, Maryam Najafi and the study of symbolic elements in Persian painting: Hussein Kafashchian Moghadam and … were studied.
This study first examined the beliefs and attitudes of painter and then introduced the images related to the subject under discussion in order to confirm the hypothesis.

Plant Designs in Line with the Beliefs of Muslim Artists
As we know, with the establishment of Islamic governments in different occupied areas, the cultural status and its effect on arts changed.The emergence and expansion of Islam in the east, created a culture and civilization that led human from Secularism to ideationalism by increasing the national abilities of these areas.The concept and meaning that Islam gave to these nations created specific artistic features that are unique and can be studied.Islamic art was created in line with the intertwined Islamic beliefs and ideas with national traditions and rituals of these nations and tribes.Thus, on the one hand the infrastructure of Islamic art was founded on the basis of the religious worldview of Islamic beliefs and on the other hand was created on the basis of national and ancient traditions, civilizations and cultures and taste and tendencies of nations that caused a variety of Islamic art in different areas.(Ghazvini, 2003, p. 62) It should be said that no image can certainly express unity that is the basis of Islamic Muslim painter with his deep thoughts tried to display special images to express divinity and unity of God without depicting God or His prophet directly.Muslim artist has always attempted to use the natural elements to depict a beautiful face of spirituality, monotheism and all things related to the ability of God.In the mind of Muslim artist, the beauty of everything is in the expression of God's attributes, as the prophet of Islam said: the perfection or beauty of everything is in the praise of God.(Burckhardt, 1970, p. 19) According to this belief, Muslim artist accepted new beliefs about unity and then found out that his art should make the world bright and smooth and help the soul to disconnect from the disorderliness and distress about itself and move toward unlimited unity.Thus, one of the most important tasks of Islamic art is to serve Islamic religion and beliefs.In this regard, the artist should have a creative and active mind to leave the tangible world and real nature and achieve a mystical intuition with a deep look and attitude.(Ghazvini, 2003, p. 62) The law of sanction in the early Islamic period caused the recession of painting to some extent in Islamic countries and often was revealed in the form of geometric shapes and Arabesque and Khataei patterns in religious centers.However, despite the severe religious inhibition, Iranians and even the artists of Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties never left the art of painting.(Vaziri, 2004, p. 185) It seems that among the created artistic branches, the law of sanction created a limitation at least from the 3 rd to 5 th centuries AH, but the Muslim artist especially Persian painters created innovative ways to continue their works.In this regard, a special aesthetics, that was the result of Interference between past traditions and new Islamic attitudes, was established in traditional painting.(Pakbaz, 2004, p. 54) It should not be forgotten that in the holy Quran there is not a verse that implicitly or explicitly inhibited the art of illustration, but there are some reasons for the sentence of sanction.For example, the prophet has narrated that: if someone depicts the picture of living creatures, he will go to the hell unless he could make the picture alive.However, according to some believers, such narrations read interpretations by qualified priests.(Akbari & Kashani, 2008, p. 41) The necessity to use visual elements according to this view and created events like the sanction of portrait painting made the objective phenomena in nature especially plant elements to be used more than ever and with a different attitude in the creation of different works such as painting.
It should be said that abstracting has been a kind of basic and fundamental tendency in Persian art that was not canceled even at the time of Roman and Greek traditions.In fact, the Persian painted tried to show his mental expressions before achieving and Islamic attitude and the mere imitation of the real world and its appearances were considered as target in his mind.Although with the arrival of Islam many attitudes and executive methods changed but enjoying the objective aspects of a natural element like plant and transformations of form remained in the base of an image or any artistic work.Following this fact, using plant designs was doubled due to specific visual and semantic abilities but the increasing trend of using this natural element especially in executive method continued for centuries so that the peak of its evolution can be seen specifically after the 7 th century.(Pakbaz, 2004, p. 54)

Painting in the Early Centuries to the 4 th Century AH
From the emergence of Islam and The Rashidun Caliphs (11-41 AH) no painting or painting work was observed that was probably due to the inhibition of portrait painting in Islam.But with the arrival of Umayyad dynasty (41-132 AH) and the construction of palaces, the art of painting was used to decorate buildings according to the     der to he 8 th n the d not der to g the itude cially s the eljuk period and Abbasid School.Although we see the use of plant designs in painting of these periods, but this trend was performed gradually and precisely so that it led to the creation of great works in the next periods.

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Figure 4. F

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Figure 6.I