Islamic Mandalas

Choose your own colors as you fill out these mandalas in outline, then consult the artist's "chart of emotions" to find out what you have revealed about yourself. Each of the 31 mandalas is drawn from breathtaking classical designs of anonymous artists in the High Islamic cultures of five hundred to a thousand years ago that survive today in book illustrations, fabrics, ceramics, metal objects, and decorative plates. Let your imagination trace labyrinthine meanderings along geometric patterns that run in ten directions, two-dimensional adaptations of arabesques circling a silver pitcher, a 10-starred design, multiple rotating concentric patterns, and entwined hexagrams. Each of these otherworldly images came from everyday objects such as a tile motif from a 15th century Turkish mosque, a 12th-century Iranian Bronze dinner plate, and a 14th-century Egyptian book border. With the mandala come meditative poems from the great Islamic literary and spiritual tradition of wisdom and peace.

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Select your own colors to fill out these 31 mandalas, then consult the artist’s “chart of emotions” to discover what your choices reveal. Each mandala is based on breathtaking classical designs from the high Islamic cultures of 500 to 1,000 years ago. Meditative poems from the great Islamic literary tradition accompany the mandalas. “It’s fun! It’s creative! It’s a coloring book for grown-ups!”—Publishers Weekly.

It's fun! It's creative! It's a coloring book for grown-ups! In Islamic Mandalas, readers get to use their imaginations to color in the geometric arrangements and patterns that occur in the book's selection of 31 historic mandalas. Included are designs from a 13th-century plate, a 14th-century Qur'anic illustration and a motif from a 15th-century Turkish mosque. It would be helpful to have more information about the mandalas' original purpose in Islamic art, and an idea of the spiritual illumination readers can hope to gain by decorating them; the book doesn't offer an introduction. Still, each design is accompanied by a brief quotation from an Islamic poet (Rumi dominates here), a nice touch. Also, the pages remove easily for proud display on the refrigerator. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.