Morphology and Symbolism of Birds Designs onto the Samanid Ceramics of the 3rd and 4th Hijri Centuries

Birds have always had a special place among the decorative designs of human-made artifacts. Certain characteristics of the birds and the symbolic concepts they imply have made many artists represent them in their artworks. In the early times of the Islamic age in Iran, especially during the Samanid era, the birds represented in the artworks are of high importance symbolically and aesthetically. Far from the natural world, such bird representations come much closer to abstraction and, subsequently, to symbolism. Notwithstanding, why certain birds were represented so extensively onto the surface ceramics has been only scantily studied. Given that symbolism is one of the integral parts of the Persian art and culture, the significance of studying the bird representations becomes clearer. The present research aimed to examine the importance of symbolism expressed by birds designs onto the surface of ceramics survived from the Samanid era. To do so, first, through a morphological survey, a contrastive analysis was applied between the mentioned designs and the relevant cases in calligraphy and literature. The results implied that the birds designs onto the surface of ceramics were mainly in abstract forms. At the same time, applying the Kufic calligraphy and floral decorations have played a major role in improving the representational quality of these designs. Symbolically, the belief that birds could bring bounty for the owner of the ceramic object may well justify why ancient Iranians intended to apply birds designs. The data were collected based on library sources and analyzed descriptively. The ceramics with birds designs examined in this research were from the 9th and 10th (3rd and 4th Hijri) centuries.