What we mean when we talk about Islamic art

The first point concerns the "Islamic" in "Islamic art". It would be wrong to try and downplay or excise entirely the effect of faith on Islamic art; the existence of important objects related to the practice of Islam - the striking textiles used inside and outside the Ka'ba in Mecca, or prayer rugs, or, of course, expertly calligraphed copies of the Quran - prove this, as does the centrality of the Arabic script within Islamic art.

However, it would be wrong to think of this cultural production as one based entirely around religion.

In reality, this is largely secular art, albeit with a more-or-less lightly worn mantle of Islam. Richly illustrated manuscripts, brass vessels inlaid with silver, enamelled glass, and silks made with gold thread all speak more to the dolce vita of the palace than the sanctity of the mosque.

This is not unique to the Islamic world; one need only think of the Borgia Pope Alexander VI and his patronage of Raphael and Michelangelo.

But where it is indeed possible to speak of "Christian" or "Buddhist" art, these would tend to refer only to things which were specifically religious in nature, and not to all aspects of material production between the birth of Jesus and the French Revolution, or from the Himalayas to Japan.

On the contrary, Islamic art is taken to encompass everything from bowls and cups to scientific instruments.

Museum visitors used to seeing paintings hanging on walls are often nonplussed by carpets or candlesticks

This brings us to another issue, which is that when judged by the standards of Western (particularly Renaissance) art history, Islamic art barely ranks as "art" at all. Although there is evidence for "the fine arts" - that is, sculpture and painting - in the Islamic world from the 7th century onwards, the general purview of Islamic art historians are the "applied" arts, such as textiles, ceramics, or metalwork.

This has meant that for much of the time in which it has been studied, it has - like almost all non-Western art - not fitted into Western frameworks used to study art history. Such frameworks, it should be noted, also make it difficult to display; museum visitors used to seeing paintings hanging on walls are often nonplussed by carpets or candlesticks.

Why, then, do we speak of "Islamic" art at all? The simple - albeit unromantic - answer is that it is considerably more convenient than the other options, because Islamic art only really exists as an abstract, a means of pulling together an enormous variety of works which don't quite fit in elsewhere.

With the possible exception of calligraphy, there was no systematic study of Islamic material culture in the Islamic world, and it is highly unlikely that a potter in 9th century Basra, or a miniature-painter in 16th century Istanbul, would have considered what they made to be either "art" or necessarily "Islamic" in nature.

Rather, the concept arose from 19th century Euro-American art history, although in those slightly less enlightened times it was refererred to either by ethnicity as "Persian" or "Turkish", or as more pan-Islamic terms such as "Mahommetan", "Moorish", or "Saracenic".

More recently, there have been attempts to further specify the nomenclature with the term "Islamicate" - used to refer to things made in societies where Islam played an dominant role, but which were not necessarily used for religious purposes.

The term has not, however, caught on, largely because it requires more nuance than "Islamic".

Elsewhere, some have returned to the earlier mode of ethnic labelling, as seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Islamic galleries, which were reopened in 2012 as the "art of the Arab lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia". It's perhaps not the catchiest title, but it does at least recognise that the arts of the Islamic world are not a single, undifferentiated mass, and there are major regional variations.

Throughout this article and this series, I have and will be frequently referring to the Islamic world; but what exactly does this mean? Generally, by our definition, it refers to anywhere where Islam was the defining feature of political and cultural power, and, for the purpose of art history at least, encompasses Spain (until 1492), North Africa, Turkey, the Arab lands, Iran, Central Asia, and much of South Asia.

Even where it is illegible or a mere jumble of letters, [Arabic or Persian script] is associated with learning and faith

Owing to trends in collecting, as well as trends in colonial and postcolonial thinking, huge areas of the world in which Islam has a long and rich history - notably West Africa, the Balkans, and South-East Asia - have been systematically ignored in "Islamic art" history. Such omissions are gradually being corrected, but the core area remains the lands which came under Islamic rule during the earliest periods.

In terms of the production itself, there are a number of elements which, in general, can be said to characterise Islamic art. As mentioned above, the use of Arabic - as well as Persian - script is a defining feature, proclaiming the presence of Islam from Morocco to Malaysia, whether in monumental inscriptions or on the humblest pottery.

Even where it is illegible or a mere jumble of letters, it is associated with learning and faith. The development of overall pattern has been another recurring feature in Islamic art from the earliest periods; sometimes geometric - as seen in the famous tiling of the Alhambra in Seville - and sometimes based on plant and flower motifs, they could be used to provide all-over surface decoration.

Whereas calligraphy and pattern provide a non-representational side to Islamic art, figural decoration was widely used from the earliest times in palatial settings, and later on metalwork, textiles, and especially the miniature paintings for which Iran was famed. Contrary to widespread belief, Islam does not forbid the depiction of living creatures - and the popularity of such images varied according to region and ruler.

This, then, is the outline of Islamic art. Such a short introduction can only hope to give the barest of outlines, and hopefully what remains unclear will be illuminated by the articles to follow.


Art historian William Greenwood was curator for Central Islamic Lands at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, and has also worked in several other areas of the art world - including journalism, auctions, museum consultancy, and lecturing.