ALLAH IS BEAUTIFUL AND LOVES BEAUTY

In Islam, beautiful is in the core of the religion, since God's names are understood and felt as beautiful, Allah Jalla Shanuhu and his deeds are comprehended as beautiful. Prophet Muhammad, a.s., says: “Allah is beautiful and loves beauty.” God's mercy is deserved by beautiful acts. Man strives towards this sublime beauty through praying and building the beautiful in the heart, in himself and around himself. The human being is a creature of life, will, knowledge and power (Ibn Arebi). With his virtues and activity, man returns and expresses his gratitude to The Sublime for his existence. 

Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country of green fields and hills and the light karst regions has preserved traces of millennia-long life and spiritual and cultural changes. Conquest by Ottoman Turks in the 15th century introduced this country and a great part of the Balkans to the world of Islam. Medieval Bosniaks, its indigenous citizens, mostly adopted Islam and became Muslims. Even before, on their tombstones, they labeled themselves by engraved inscriptions as good Bošnjansor noble Bošnjans, and it was easy for them to accept benevolence, cleanliness of heart, body, soul and home. Doing good was immanently beautiful. Qur'an reveals: All good and pure things are made lawful for you (Al-Maʼidah, 4). The feeling of beauty in the soul and mind was a crucial stimulus for Islamic aesthetics, the aesthetic in building, writing, weaving, etc. 

Until the arrival of Islam and Islamic art in Bosnia, Islamic art had spread from Spain to India and, over more than seven centuries, created works which are recognized as Islamic by their spiritual-aesthetic characteristics. Both big structures, monumental mosques and palaces, and small objects for daily use were distinguished by the style, aesthetic features with many territorial and temporal distinctions. What makes these works an expression of Islamic culture and civilization emerges in the process of the coexistence of communities, cultures and beliefs. In the first significant constructions of mosques and palaces during the Umayyad dynasty, Islamic builders used many elements and forms of the Late Antique architecture, which were decorated by Byzantine mosaicists. As early as from the time of the Abbasids (750–1258), forms (bevel) developed in Samarra which reduced realistic forms of floral decoration and announced stylized and geometric relief plastic decoration, i.e. arabesque. Besides, this period soon witnessed new shaping of constructive architectural forms – later recognizable as Islamic arches: the horseshoe arch, the ogee arch, and the polylobed arch of three, five, nine or more smaller arches in the shape of a single bridge between two pillars or vaults. During the Seljuk period, from the 11th century, new forms and contents: muquarnas, iwwan, mosaics in faience, madrasas and tombs expanded the style of expression. Same as the Seljuks shifted from the art of nomads to upgraders of the classical Islamic art upon their adoption of Islam, so did Mongols, after their destructive warpath to the Islamic world become patrons of art upon the adoption of Islam. This is how new layers of Islamic art came to life, in the art of the Seljuks, Ilkhanids, Timurids and Mughals. 

Spreading of Islam by means of Ottoman conquests was crucial for Bosnia of the late Middle Ages. As early as some dozen of years after the conquest of Constantinople, the first mosques, dervish lodges, inns, hammams, stores, bridges (waqfs of Isa-beg Isaković, Ajas-beg and Jahja-beg) were built. The first accomplishment of these developments was the fact that previous suburbia of the medieval Bosnian towns became the nuclei of future towns, important features of Islamic culture and civilization in these regions. While the medieval suburbia hosted residences, production and trade alike, in towns with mostly Islamic population residential zones were separated from the business zone and public buildings, same in the former newly established capital of the Abbasids, Baghdad. The business center with public buildings – the so-called čaršija - was in the center of the town, while the residential neighborhoods – the so-called mahalas – were on the outskirts. In the same way, other values and phenomena of Islamic culture and civilization from the Islamic east were accepted in Bosnia, in the Sanjak of Bosnia.

The towns were made beautiful by benefactors and dignitaries who sponsored the construction of monumental facilities such as mosques with slender minarets and domes, madrasas and hammams, which still make the picture of the towns beautiful because of the synthesis of spirituality and aesthetics. Examples include the Emperor's mosque, Gazi Husrev-beg's mosque, Ali-paša's mosque and Ferhadija mosque in Sarajevo, Karađoz-beg's mosque, Koski Mehmed-paša's mosque and Ćejvan-ćehaja's mosque in Mostar, and Ferhadija mosque in Banja Luka. Other, modest and generous people who were impelled by their faith to do good, also initiated the construction of stone water fountains with troughs and small mosques, and embellished small graveyards around these mosques in their town and neighborhoods. 

Other forms and artistic contents of the Middle and Far East also became a means of the spiritual and artistic expression of the Bosnian soil. Books, levhas – plates with inscriptions of Qur'anic ayats, chronicles, records, teo-philosophical treatises were written in Arabic script of profiled styles: Thuluth, Diwani, Reqaa, Naskh and Taliq, where the beauty resides in the artistry of writing and an individual harf – letter and the entire composition. Examples are many: tarih (chronogram) on Gazi Husrev-beg's/Kuršumli madrasa, big levha and tarihs and inscriptions in the porch of Sinan's lodge, or big levhas of Mehmed-beg KapetanovićLjubušaka, Ešref-efendija Kovačević and others. Nišans, tombstones with their epigraphic contents across the Ottoman Bosnia, with open tombs, are true gardens of sculptures and abstract art, distinctive chronicles of places and towns. The abstract-sculptural character can also be seen in the geometric forms of muqarnases – stalactites on the capitals of pillars, in trompes and pendentives of monumental buildings. 

A particular significance for Islamic culture and art is attached to residential architecture: the Bosnian house. This kind of building also draws its origin form the Ottoman space. The Islamic element in the concept of the shape of the house of the Ottoman age pertains to the integrity of family life. One house equals one immediate or extended family. It leads to more or less elaborated house which typically consists of two courtyards, a male courtyard (selamluk) and a courtyard for women and the immediate family (haremluk), the house itself, accompanying facilities and the garden – a flower garden and an orchard, both in Bosnia and in Herzegovina. The beautiful in the Bosnian house can be seen in its pure geometric form, composed of the ground floor and the upper floor. It does not have so representative facade as Western European houses. It has developed open and closed forms, balconies and anterooms overlooking the panorama of the town rather than the street. Architect Juraj Neidhardt (1901–1979), an associate of architects Behrens in Berlina nd Corbusier in Pari, had the Bosnian house in mind when he wrote, a long time ago (1956), that Cubism had been present in Bosnia for centuries already.  

The interior of the Bosnian house is arranged particularly meticulously and beautifully. One does not enter the house wearing shoes. The religion requires clean body, clothes and floor coverings. Each room has wooden compartments decorated with carvings along one entire wall (musandara). Every room is universally furnished and can be used as a living room where one can both eat and sleep.Musandarais located where one enters the room and has four compartments – recesses: aisle, a recess for the earth stove with enamel pots, a recess serving as a room bathroom, a tub and a cabinet for bedding. On the walls there are shelves for decorative items and books. Along the wall with the window there is aminder, a divan with bolsters and cushions. The floor is always covered with a rug, made locally or obtained from the East. In the Islamic world, a lot of attention was paid to the production of fabrics, and they reveal a sense for beautiful and decorating. The beautiful in Islamic art is also widely present in the objects for daily or special use: pans, copper plates (sahans), ewers, lamps, headscarves, kerchiefs and jewelry. Their shaping and expression of the beautiful was the task of artisans, who gave their products the recognizable feature of the Islamic aesthetics.