Image against Nature
@article{Flood2006ImageAN, title={Image against Nature}, author={Finbarr Barry Flood}, journal={The Medieval History Journal}, year={2006}, volume={9}, pages={143 - 166} }
Although the use of portable amulets and talismans in the pre-modern Islamic world is well documented, little is known about their monumental counterparts. Despite this neglect, references to apotropaia and talismans designed to offer protection from pests such as pigeons, snakes and scorpions are common in descriptions of medieval architecture in Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Iran. In many cases these consisted of pre-Islamic zoom-orphic spolia set at entrances and gateways. The function and nature…
55 Citations
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