#leroibobo's additions

[leroibobo]

i don't know, this looks a lot like the umayyad mosque in damascus. (picture from wikimedia commons). where did you get the source on this (if you're still active)?

A quiet mosque in Palestine, 1926.Photograph by Jules Gervais Courtellemont, National Geographic Creative

[leroibobo]

that's a lotus, pretty common symbol in anything spiritual/religious (though not exclusively in that context) across south and east asia due to the spread of dharmic religions. they have their specific symbolism/significance in dharmic religions, but they sometimes show up in art relating to other ones practiced in those regions as well. because they're such ubiquitous shorthand, they could've been used to communicate new religious ideas by missionaries, syncretized into existing practices, or used by worshippers to express faith with what they already know (sort of like how fir trees probably made their way into christmas in central europe). they show up a lot relating to the church of the east's historical presence east of persia.

another example of lotuses being used in abrahamic art that i can think of off the top of my head is in the thazhathangady juma mosque in kerala, which has lotuses carved on its walls.

the saint thomas christians of the area also happen to use a lotus in the saint thomas cross, their representative cross. they were actually connected to the church of the east for a time before portugese colonization on the malabar coast made practices less cohesive.

Medieval epitaph of a Nestorian Christian, found in Mongolia. Nestorianism, an Asian variant of Christianity, may have had more followers than European Catholicism before the rise of Islam.