Pictorial and Semantic Investigation of God's Names in Safavi's Prayer Carpet

The Safavi era as the brilliant era of Islamic art represents precious examples of different types of carpets and prayer carpets with their special features are a part of the superior artistic creations of the artists of this era. Prayer carpets in addition to maintaining the structure in terms of size and internal composition are noticeable regarding the application of God's names. The present article is based on documentary data in an analytical-descriptive manner; The purpose of presenting this research is to enumerate the structural components of prayer carpets, based on the divine names woven into them. The problem of the research is to interpret the position of divine names and to emphasize their centrality as the ruling principles of Islamic art. Assuming that in the artistic works attributed to the Islamic era, some aspects of the nature of the world, human beings and God's names have been manifested in the form of the work as well as in its meaning, six samples of prayer carpets attributed to the Safavid era were examined; The results achieved through the identification and introduction of some samples of carpets with the representation of God's names signify the importance and interpretation of God's names as one of the sources of recognition of which human beings and nature are considered a part. The use of divine names in the upper part of the prayer rugs refers to their conceptual position with the visual principles. This degree of importance is emphasized with motifs taken from nature. Thus a spiritual dimension is represented by decorative motifs. semantically, this fact was determined that the one essence of God can be associated with many names in the same unity and at the same time can fulfill the duty of intimidating, worshiping, and teaching regarding the audience. Therefore, both formal and semantic aspects of the God's names are complementary to each other in the studied works of art.