Turquoise and cyan

The old colour word qing covers green, blue and the shades between. In the five-element system it belongs to wood, the east and spring.

Turquoise, firuzeh in Persian, has been mined near Nishapur for thousands of years. It is worn against the evil eye, and its colour covers the domes of mosques in Isfahan.

In the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mary wears a blue-green cloak covered in stars. Turquoise was precious to the Aztecs, who used it in mosaic masks.

The English word turquoise comes from the French for Turkish, because the stone reached Europe through Ottoman lands. Tiles from Iznik made the colour a mark of Ottoman mosques.

The mosques and tombs of Samarkand are faced with turquoise and deep blue tiles. The three great madrasas of the Registan square and their ribbed turquoise domes are the best known.