Islamic Art
Out of wariness toward idol worship, human and animal figures are not depicted in religious spaces. This world did not treat that constraint as a loss. Instead, it grew geometry, the arabesque, and the letterform itself to a depth that borders on vertigo. Calligraphy in particular became an art. In 10th-century Baghdad there was a man named Ibn Muqla. A statesman and calligrapher, he built a flowing script to replace the angular Kufic style, and even worked out a system of proportion based on the height of the letter alif, giving the beauty of the written word a mathematical spine. One thing I want to state precisely: the restriction on figures applies to religious spaces. In Persian miniatures and Mughal painting, people and animals are depicted richly and often. It was never a blanket prohibition, it was a choice bound to place. One more thing. You sometimes hear it said that this geometry gave rise to 20th-century abstract painting, but that claim seems to overreach. What is certain is Escher: in 1922 he saw the tilework of the Alhambra and found his way from there into that world of shapes endlessly transforming into one another. The abstraction of Kandinsky and Mondrian is usually explained through a different current, mysticism. Resemblance and connection are not the same thing.