Analysis of Islamic seals with visual approach (Whit and emphasis on circular seals safavid)

Seals are amongst the valuable treasures of art which similar to other arts of Persia devise a prolonged and ancient history. One of the most significant practices of seals were to inscribe their owner’s proprietorship and possession. With the entrance of Islam and the holy book of Qur’an, many pictorial seals gradually evolved into written forms. In the Safavid period, the seals of the sovereigns reflected the dominance and supremacy of the powerful rulers and phrases depicting Shi’ah principals were engraved on the delicate artwork, hence, a new formation of seals occurred in this era. The following research paper follows an analytic and descriptive methodology and seeks to find a connection between usage, shape and inscriptions in order to appreciate the affiliation between form and meaning implied within the seals. In this paper, data is collected via library and document research. It can be concluded that the usage, inscriptions and content of the seals are relevant to the overall structure of the seals and in a number of cases applied via the framing technique. Furthermore, the proportion between the type of calligraphy in regard to the language of the inscriptions including both Persian and Arabic has a defining role in creating harmony between form and meaning. It can be concluded that the visual characteristics of the Safavid seals are clearly associated with the three-way schemes of meaning, usage and structure.