A Comparative Study of Islamic Medieval Pottery Motifs with Constellations

Archaeological evidence and the study of remains from prehistory to the Islamic era show that astronomy has been prevalent among ancient peoples for thousands of years. Astronomy made a great progress in the Islamic era and was used in both science and astrology. In the middle Islamic Period, the motifs used on pottery varied widely, so that the origins of pottery motifs on the one hand and the interpretation of its concepts on the other challenged scholars and has been caused disagreement and divisions between them, insofar one group refers to pre-Islamic influences especially the Sassanians and the other seeks to interpret it with the ideas of the community context in which these motifs were formed. The necessity of this research, therefore, is due to the vacuum felt by the authors in locating the purports of pottery motifs by an astronomical approach. The forgoing essay is rooted in questions such as "Should the origins of medieval pottery motifs be merely searched in the pre-Islamic era?", "How the constellations were reflected on the pottery motifs of this era?" The methodology of this paper is historical-analytical-comparative and based on and library studies. In the process of researching, we first done to gathering statistical samples from museums, drawing the motifs with CorelDraw software and matching the pottery designs with constellations and in the continuation of the research, library studies have been carried out to trace the semantic themes and meanings of historical documents. The achievement of a comparative study of pottery motifs with constellations showed that astronomy and constellation discussions formed part of the credence and beliefs of the medieval peoples that often incorporated with superstitions and supernatural beings. Therefore, some of the themes of pottery motifs can be attributed to superstitious beliefs of constellations.