THE ISLAMIC INFLUENCE ON THE TRADITIONAL BASHKIR ART

Abstract

It is the geometric and vegetal ornamental motifs that dominate in the works of traditional arts and crafts of the Bashkir people. The Bashkirs are Muslims. Therefore, the popularity of abstract ornamental forms in their artistic creativity is often associated with the religious prohibition against images of human beings, animals and birds. However, a comparative historical study of the Bashkir ornaments shows that basic types of geometric and vegetal motifs and also their compositions were formed long before the adoption of Islam by the ancestors of the Bashkirs. Anthropomorphic, ornitomorphic and zoomorphic images were still preserved in the Bashkir art and had very stylized geometric shapes in accordance with the general structure of the composition, type and graphics of the ornament. The preservation of these images in the art was favoured probably not only by a high degree of stylization, but also by the fact that for a long time the Bashkirs, despite the Islamization, remained committed to many remnants of the pre-Islamic worldview with its totemic cults. It can be stated that the adoption of Islam could not ‘edit’ the traditional decorative art of the Bashkirs and exclude archaic motifs and compositions. Old compositions were revised in terms of the new religion. Thus, the fl oral and foliate ornament became associated with the Garden of Eden. New motifs, such as the images of mosques, qumgan (a special jug) and the Crescent, found their way into the Bashkir ornaments together with the new worldview and rituals. Traditional embroidery could be supplemented with embroidered texts in Arabic script. The decorated objects included those directly associated with the Muslim traditions (scullcaps, prayer rugs 'namaslyk', calligraphy pictures 'shama’il').