Art historians have generally categorized ornament in Islamic art as the decorative attributes applied to a work of art with calligraphic, vegetal, geometric, or figural patterns. This paper concentrates on medieval Islamic art objects from the Fatimid Mediterranean world (10th - 12th c.) that displayed specific calligraphic ornamental epigraphy that evoked common words or phrases of emotion and sentiment. It argues that Islamic ornament is not only pleasing to the beholder but, as Oleg Grabar has proposed, serves as an intermediary between the viewer and the work of art and the society in which it was created. Rather than suppose that commonly inscribed ornament using words like bliss, joy, prosperity, content, and happiness were inscribed on Islamic art objects primarily for their aesthetic value, this paper argues that the meanings that these “medieval emoticons” conveyed were largely tied to specific socially constructed models of interpreting emotion. This paper examines specific instances from the medieval Fatimid Mediterranean and neighboring regions that culturally interacted with this form of emotionally laden ornament. Using an interdisciplinary approach to art history, material culture, epigraphy, and literary and historical sources, this paper furthers Grabar’s idea of ornament as an intermediary between the viewer and the socially constructed meaning of the societies from which the object originated or emulated. As Wendy Shaw has argued, Grabar’s universal humanism approach to deciphering ornament falls short of an exact method for understanding various culturally coded aesthetic experiences. She writes, “This betrays not only the lack of interest between Islamic intellectual history and artistic practices but a broader prejudice characterizing art making as a non-verbal, non-intellectual, apolitical endeavor.” Keeping these debates on Islamic ornament in mind, this paper looks at objects from the medieval Mediterranean world, specifically those emerging from geographic regions within the Fatimid habitus, and reads their common emotionally phrased epigraphy as conveying a socially constructed yet intentional and purposeful reading of ornament. 1. See Grabar, Oleg. The Mediation of Ornament. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992; 1. Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, Cosmophilia: Islamic Art from the David Collection, Copenhagen (Chestnut Hill, MA: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2006), pls. 9 - 30. 2. Wendy Shaw, What is “Islamic” Art? Between Religion and Perception, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pg. 272.