Islamic art is the art of the civilization based on the Islamic religion. The Prophet Muhammad first preached the religion in Arabia during the early A.D. 600’s. People who follow the teachings of Islam call themselves Muslims.
Arab Muslims began a series of conquests in the A.D. 600’s and united all the countries they conquered into a single civilization. The Arabs themselves had little art. But through their conquests, they came into contact with the highly developed arts of Persia (now Iran), Syria, Egypt, and Mesopotamia (now Iraq). The peoples who accepted Islam blended these cultural influences and developed a distinct and fairly uniform style of art known as Islamic art. It was the product of many countries, extending from Spain to India. In Spain, Islamic art is called Moorish, from the Muslim group that first inhabited that country in the 700’s. From the 900’s on, local variations in the art appear, but the general interrelationship remains. Islamic art flourished from the mid-700’s to about 1700 and then declined, especially beginning in the later 1700’s.
Islamic artists were most inventive in architecture, especially in mosques, their houses of worship, and in palaces and such socially useful institutions as shopping areas and hospitals. They also produced beautiful textiles, metalware, pottery, carved and molded plaster, glassware, wood and ivory carvings, and book illuminations (decorations) and bindings. The best of these works show extraordinary mastery of technique, design, and color. They illustrate a consistent concern to beautify all aspects of daily life.
Characteristics
Islam is a strict religion. Its theologians prohibited artists from making images of living things. They feared that people might regard statues or paintings as something divine that had to be worshiped, rather than as images of God or of saintly figures. Muslims also believed that Allah (Arabic for God) was the one and only Creator of life. They regarded any attempt to paint or form something lifelike as trespassing on Allah’s position as sole Creator. According to strict Islamic theologians, the artist who made works of art depicting living things was condemned to hellfire. Muslims usually followed the Islamic laws about images in their religious and public life. But they did not always obey these laws so strictly in their private quarters, especially between 700 and 1300 and later in India and Iran. This prohibition of pictures was more strictly followed in Turkey and the Arab world—Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and North Africa—than in India or Iran.
Design motifs.
The prohibition of lifelike images channeled Islamic art into different directions. Artists usually avoided the realistic portrayal of human beings and animals. In paintings and reliefs, they designed highly stylized people, animals, and birds. These works have an abstract, flat character that makes them more like symbols than lifelike pictures. On the whole, designers preferred floral motifs, but drew even these in an abstract style. Artists developed a special type of decoration consisting of winding stems with abstract leaves. This scrollwork, called arabesque, became common in Islamic art in all Muslim countries beginning in the 900’s. Geometric patterning of remarkable sophistication developed in Iraq and Iran in the 1000’s and then spread elsewhere as geometry acquired an almost mystical significance.
Calligraphy.
Another characteristic feature of Islamic art is the wide use of Arabic script, which lends itself to calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing. Arabic, which is written from right to left, is the most widely used language in the Middle East. Its script was adopted for Persian, Turkish, Urdu, and most other languages used by Muslims. Excerpts from the Islamic holy book, called the Qur’ān, and nonreligious writings often appear on the walls of religious buildings and on art objects. These writings, in various styles, are beautifully executed. Sometimes they are combined with floral or geometric designs, but only rarely with animal or human figures.
Common styles of Arabic calligraphy include Kufic and Neskhi. Kufic, the formal and angular style of the two, received its name from the city of Al Kufah, Iraq, where this type of writing developed. Islamic scribes used Kufic for inscriptions until the 1100’s. They used it for copying the Qur’ān from the late 600’s to about 1000. Neskhi was a flowing script that was sometimes set against a background of arabesque designs. Beginning in the 1100’s, Neskhi calligraphy was increasingly used for writing the Qur’ān. Kufic was reserved for chapter headings. Other, more elaborate, writing styles developed especially in Iran and Turkey and were also used for literature.
Architecture
Mosques
are the main religious buildings of Islam and are usually the most important structures in a Muslim city or town. The essential features of a typical mosque include a courtyard where worshipers gather, a mihrab, a gate, and minarets. The mihrab is a small central niche or arched unit that marks the wall nearest to Mecca, which the worshipers must face during prayer. The gate is a monumental, highly decorated structure set into a usually plain facade (front) facing the street. Minarets are slender, tall towers of various shapes. The faithful are called to prayer five times a day from a balcony at the top of a minaret. Inside every mosque is a pulpit called a minbar. The minbar may be made of wood or stone. 
Styles of mosques vary from one country to the next. A large dome became the chief feature of the mosques of Persia, India, and Turkey. A high, arched entrance with a minaret on each side also characterized mosques in Persia and India. The typical Turkish mosque has an enormous enclosed central space covered by a dome and half domes resembling Byzantine churches. The Mosque of Sultan Selim in Edirne, Turkey, is a good example of this type. Many Persian, Spanish, and North African mosques are covered with tilework.
Madrasahs,
or religious colleges, also provide important examples of Islamic architecture. The madrasah is usually a four-sided building standing around an open courtyard. The center of each side of the quadrangle consists of an arched large hall, called an iwan or eyvan, which is open to the courtyard and used for lectures. Students attend classes in the iwans and live in individual cells that are located along the four sides of the courtyard between the iwans.
Other buildings.
Tombs provide some of the most striking examples of Islamic architecture. Builders cover a tomb with a square or eight-sided building. A dome is built over the building. They also build a round or many-sided tower with a roof that is cone- or pyramid-shaped. The most famous Islamic tomb is the Taj Mahal in Agra, India.
The rulers of various Islamic countries built many palaces, but only a few of these structures remain. Of the later ones, the best known is the Alhambra at Granada, Spain, built from 1248 to 1354. Others include the palaces of the Mughal emperors of India in Agra, Delhi, and Lahore, all built in the 1600’s. Other examples of Islamic architecture include inns called khans; large fortified resthouses along trade routes; hospitals; and market streets or bazaars called suqs.
Islamic architecture has many unique features. Perhaps the most original is the muqarnas vault, a stalactite-like honeycomb ceiling in which up to 5,000 small carvings are set at angles to each other.
Decorative arts
Rugs.
Traditionally, people sat or slept on rugs on the floor. Islamic craftworkers developed carpet weaving into a fine art. Craftworkers used small lengths of various colored threads of wool or silk to make knots into specific patterns. The knots created a pile with a richly decorated surface. Some of the finest silk rugs have 1,000 knots per square inch (160 per square centimeter). Sometimes craftworkers brocaded the rugs with gold and silver. The main areas of rug production in the Muslim world were central Asia, Turkey, Iran, and the Caucasus region.
Few rugs remain that date from before 1500. Persia produced the most elaborate rugs. The weavers of Persia and India preferred floral designs, scrolls, arabesques, and medallions, occasionally combined with animal or human figures. Many of these rugs seem to create the atmosphere of a garden. A few of them actually follow the general layout of a formal Persian garden, with trees, flower beds, and bodies of water stocked with ducks and fish. Most rugs that are made by Turkish weavers display abstract or geometric designs. In many cases, the precise origins of the rugs are unknown or the subject of disagreement among experts. Scholars of Islamic art generally classify the rugs according to their design, their period, and their country of origin.
Textiles.
The art of weaving on a loom reached a high development in Islamic countries. Fine textiles date from the 700’s on. They were used for clothing, for such decorative elements as wallhangings and coverings, for gifts, and even for tents. Many were woven with silk thread. Early fabrics had designs based on those used in silks of pre-Islamic Persia. After the 1250’s, craftworkers used Chinese motifs. In the 1500’s and 1600’s, Persian weavers created scenes with figures inspired by contemporary miniature paintings. Other textiles used floral designs and geometric patterns.
Metalware.
Few objects of gold or silver by Islamic artisans have been preserved. Islamic religious authorities have frowned on the use of precious metals. As a result, metalworkers achieved beautiful effects by chasing (tracing) bronze or brass objects. They sometimes inlaid one of these metals with copper, silver, or gold to form inscriptions or designs. At times, metalworkers inlaid them with a black sulfuric alloy called niello. Artisans who worked with base metals usually chased or embossed them.
Candlesticks, basins, boxes, mortars, trays, and water pitchers typify Islamic metalwork. The best works appeared between about 900 and 1400. Mosul, in Iraq, became one of the principal centers of inlaid bronze work. Cairo, Damascus, and eastern Persia were also important production centers.
Pottery
reached its highest development between the 800’s and the 1600’s. Muslim artists developed many techniques that are still used today. For example, they engraved into slip, an earthy coating under the glaze, or else painted on the slip, and then added transparent glazes of many colors. These techniques were imitated by Byzantine and Italian ceramists. Islamic potters also painted with a metallic pigment on a white or blue glaze to produce so-called luster painting. This difficult technique, practiced in the Middle East and Spain from the 800’s through the 1600’s, was also taken over by the potters of the Renaissance period in Italy.
Builders used bright tiles decorated with geometric or arabesque designs for wall surfaces and fountains. Outstanding examples of tilework decorate mosque walls, domes, and minarets in Isfahan, the capital of Iran in the 1600’s. Tilework was an ancient Persian art.
Carved and molded plaster
decorate buildings from Spain to Turkestan. Craftworkers designed floral arabesques and large letters in wet plaster on walls and arches. The Alhambra in Spain contains examples of wall surfaces that are richly covered with stalactites and intricate geometric ornaments and inscriptions, all molded in stucco and painted or gilded.
Glassware
was used for mosque lamps, drinking utensils, vases, and windows. Artisans practiced most of the processes of glassmaking known since ancient times. The finest Islamic glassware has relief designs of animals and arabesques. Glassmaking flourished in Iraq, Persia, and Egypt from the 700’s to the 1100’s. Syrian glassmakers became famous in the 1200’s and 1300’s for glass bottles, drinking vessels, and mosque lamps decorated with colored enamels. Builders used richly colored glass windows in many buildings, especially in mosques but also in private mansions. They filled wooden or stucco frames with bits of colored glass attached with wet plaster. The designs often consisted of abstract trees and flowers and geometric patterns.
Carvings.
Craftworkers carved wood into intricate patterns. They used wood for doors, boxes, ceilings, panels, prayer niches, and pulpits. Woodworkers often carved elaborate inserts into a plain geometrical framework of star designs. Sometimes they made these of ivory. They also carved ivory for valuable objects, especially for round boxes, chests, and hunting horns in Spain, Egypt, and southern Italy. Egyptian craftworkers often covered the domes and arched doors of mosques with arabesque carvings in stone. Indian art features carved marble window screens. Builders made these by cutting geometric or realistic motifs out of a slab of marble until it was perforated by tracery.
Books.
Although there are examples of early wall paintings, better-known Islamic painting originated as book illustrations. Most of the earliest remaining examples date from after 1200. The Persians had rich literary traditions, and illustrated many poems, such as the epic Shah-Namah (Book of Kings), by the poet Firdausi. They also chose the Quintet (Khamsah) by the poet Nizami and the poems and prose works by Saadi, including the Bostan (Fruit Garden) and the Gulistan (Rose Garden). Another popular subject was a book of fables, Kalila and Dimna, which came from an Indian collection, the Panchatantra. Artists also painted miniatures in books on plants, animals, and constellations.
Persia developed several styles of painting as the country was conquered by other Islamic peoples, including the Turks and the Mongols. The greatest period in Persian art extended from the 1300’s to the late 1600’s. The best-known Persian painter, Kamal ad-Din Bihzad, illustrated famous manuscripts with miniatures in the late 1400’s. During the late 1500’s, artists in India began to produce a more realistic style of painting. They especially excelled in painting portraits that were kept in albums. Beginning in the late 1500’s, painters in Ottoman Turkey concentrated on illustrating historical works in a realistic manner. Manuscripts of the Qur’ān never had decorations showing human figures or animals. Islamic painters decorated the sacred book with graceful scrolls and floral ornaments around the beautifully written texts.
Islamic books are enclosed in delicately worked leather bindings, which nearly always have a flap on the lower cover to be folded over all the pages. Persian craftworkers made bookbindings with molded or tooled designs on the outside and cut-out patterns on the inside. Some of these date back to the 1400’s. Beginning in the mid-1200’s, many bookbindings had part of their designs imprinted in gold. Experts consider Islamic bookbindings to be among the most beautiful bindings ever produced.
