Tahsisini

Tahsisini is a term used in Turkish- and Arabic-language scholarship to denote the practice and theory of beautification or embellishment in visual arts and textual presentation. It refers to techniques and outcomes intended to enhance the aesthetic appearance of a work while maintaining clarity of content. The word is derived from the Arabic root taḥsīn, meaning to beautify, and has been adopted into Turkish as tahsisini in nominalized forms describing acts of beautification or the resulting embellishment.

In practice, tahsisini appears most often in discussions of manuscript culture, calligraphy, illumination, and architectural ornament. It encompasses a range of activities from ornamental script and decorative borders to the design logic of surfaces in mosques, palaces, and secular buildings. The concept is related to the broader fields of Islamic decorative arts, including illumination and patterning, but tahsisini as a term emphasizes the intentional beautification aspect of the work.

Scholarly usage varies: some sources treat tahsisini as a distinct aesthetic category within ornament and readability, while others describe it as a general principle of embellishment that intersects with style, patronage, and function. Because the term is not universally standardized, its precise scope can differ between disciplines and historical periods.

See also: taḥsīn, tezhib, Islamic art, ornament, calligraphy. References: this is a stub entry and may not cite specific works.