Dec 15 2020
The World

Programmed a website that places the user on an abstracted prayer rug, in a panoramic landscape, facing the physical direction of Qiblah.

In Farsi the word “prayer rug” is translated to جاینماز (jainamaaz). Breaking down the term further, the components become جای نماز, or “place of prayer”. This translation differs greatly from its Arabic counterpart, سجادة الصلاة (sajjadah as-salat), which translates roughly to “bowing, or prostration rug”. I think there is a beauty in both of these versions, but there is a poetic and abstracted gesture in the Farsi translation. It may stem from the beauty of classic Farsi poetry and literature, where the namer has given an object as simple as a rug a poetic identity; I have no idea.¹