islamic architecture

The first type of ornamentation emphasises the present shapes and forms of the architectural unit. The themes used were vegetal bands for vertical or horizontal elements, marble imitations for the lower parts of long walls, chevrons or other types of borders on floors and domes, and even whole trees on the spandrels or undersides of arches. All these motifs tend to be quite traditional, being taken from the rich decorative vocabularies of pre-Islamic Iran.
             The second group consists of decorative motifs for which a concrete religious meaning can be given. For example in The Dome of The Rock as well as the Great Mosque of Cordoba there were religious themes that ran through the decorative art present. It is also believed that the inscribed texts that have been ornamented into the mosques to "remind the faithful that the word of God is the only reality in an ephemeral world." .
             The third type of architectural decoration consists of large panels, most often in stucco (for which no meaning or interpretation is yet known). These panels might be called ornamental in the sense that their only apparent purpose was to beautify the buildings in which they were installed. George Michell feels that "decorated surfaces have a physical reality as well as a visual impact, an independence of their own, which gives them an importance at least equal to their architectural forms." From this brief insight into the standard types of Islamic decoration it is not hard to see that decoration is interrelated with the structure of the building. Most of the embellishment is placed upon the structure, to enhance or further accentuate the beauty.
             The decoration on the Taj Mahal aims at achieving an overall effect for the viewer, a total impact where the applied decorative themes uniformly line the entire building, and obtrusive contrasts of texture are not present. "A type of decoration whose purpose was first and foremost that of providing buildings and objects with an intricate and complex overlay, covering their structural cores with an outer skin or mantle.