Islamic art encompasses the visual arts produced in the Islamic world from the 7th century to the present day. It includes architecture, calligraphy, painting, ceramics, metalwork, and textiles created across a vast geographic area stretching from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa to Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.
The origins of Islamic art lie in the early centuries of Islam, when artists adapted and synthesized influences from Byzantine, Sasanian, and late antique Mediterranean traditions. Over time, a distinctly Islamic visual language emerged, characterized by the arabesque, geometric patterning, and the integration of calligraphy as a major decorative element. Because Islamic doctrine discouraged figurative representation in religious contexts, artists channeled creative energy into abstract ornamentation, architecture, and the applied arts.
Islamic art developed across several major historical periods and empires, including the Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Seljuq, Mamluk, Ottoman, Mughal, and Safavid dynasties, each contributing regional styles and technical innovations. Significant contributions include Iznik ceramics, Persian manuscript painting, Mughal hardstone carving, and monumental mosque architecture. From the 18th century onward, Islamic art came under increasing European influence, while contemporary artists in the Islamic world continue to engage with and reinterpret this rich heritage.
Beginnings Pre-dynastic The period of a rapid expansion of the Islamic era forms a reasonably accurate beginning for the label of Islamic art. Early geographical boundaries of the Islamic culture were in present-day Syria. It is quite difficult to distinguish the earliest Islamic objects from their predecessors in Persian or Sasanian and Byzantine art, and the conversion of the mass of the population, including artists, took a significant period, sometimes centuries, after the initial spread of Islam. There was, notably, a significant production of unglazed ceramics, witnessed by a famous small bowl preserved in the Louvre, whose inscription assures its attribution to the Islamic period. Plant motifs were the most important in these early productions.
Influences from the Sassanian artistic tradition include the image of the king as a warrior and the lion as a symbol of nobility and virility. Bedouin tribal traditions mixed with the more sophisticated styles of the conquered territories. For an initial period coins had human figures in the Byzantine and Sassanian style, perhaps to reassure users of their continued value, before the Islamic style with lettering only took over.
Umayyad Religious and civic architecture were developed under the Umayyad Caliphates (661–750), when new concepts and new plans were put into practice.
The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is one of the most important buildings in all of Islamic architecture, marked by a strong Byzantine influence (mosaic against a gold ground, and a central plan that recalls that of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre), but already bearing purely Islamic elements, such as the great epigraphic frieze. The desert palaces in Jordan and Syria (for example, Mshatta, Qusayr 'Amra, and Hisham's Palace) served the caliphs as living quarters, reception halls, and baths, and were decorated, including some wall-paintings, to promote an image of royal luxury.
Work in ceramics was still somewhat primitive and unglazed during this period. Some metal objects have survived from this time, but it remains rather difficult to distinguish these objects from those of the pre-Islamic period.
'Abd al-Malik introduced standard coinage that featured Arabic inscriptions, instead of images of the monarch. The quick development of a localized coinage around the time of the Dome of the Rock's construction demonstrates the reorientation of Umayyad acculturation. This period saw the genesis of a particularly Islamic art.
In this period, Umayyad artists and artisans did not invent a new vocabulary, but began to prefer those received from Mediterranean and Iranian late antiquity, which they adapted to their own artistic conceptions. For example, the mosaics in the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus are based on Byzantine models but replace the figurative elements with images of trees and cities. The desert palaces also bear witness to these influences. By combining the various traditions that they had inherited, and by readapting motifs and architectural elements, artists created little by little a typically Muslim art, particularly discernible in the aesthetic of the arabesque, which appears both on monuments and in illuminated Qurans.
Some Umayyads commissioned erotic art for private settings. The Umayyad caliph Al-Walid II built the Qusayr Amra, as his country retreat, whose decoration includes naked females and love scenes.Ettinghausen, Grabar, & Jenkins-Madina, p. 47
Abbasid
The Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258Gruber, World of Art) witnessed the movement of the capital from Damascus to Baghdad, and then from Baghdad to Samarra. The shift to Baghdad influenced politics, culture, and art. Art historian Robert Hillenbrand (1999) likens the movement to the foundation of an "Islamic Rome", because the meeting of Eastern influences from Iranian, Eurasian steppe, Chinese, and Indian sources created a new paradigm for Islamic art. Classical forms inherited from Byzantine Europe and Greco-Roman sources were discarded in favor of those drawn from the new Islamic hub. Even the design of the city of Baghdad placed it in the "navel of the world", as 9th-century historian al-Ya'qubi wrote.Hillenbrand (1999), p.40
The ancient city of Baghdad cannot be excavated well, as it lies beneath the modern city. However, Abbasid Samarra, which was largely abandoned, has been well studied, and is known for its surviving examples of stucco reliefs, in which the prehistory of the arabesque can be traced. Motifs known from the stucco at Samarra permit the dating of structures built elsewhere, and are furthermore found on portable objects, particular in wood, from Egypt through to Iran.
Samarra witnessed the "coming of age" of Islamic art. Polychrome painted stucco allowed for experimentation in new styles of moulding and carving. The Abbasid period also coincided with two major innovations in the ceramic arts: the invention of faience, and of metallic lusterware. Hadithic prohibition of the use of golden or silver vessels led to the development of metallic lusterware in pottery, which was made by mixing sulphur and metallic oxides to ochre and vinegar, painted onto an already glazed vessel and then fired a second time. It was expensive, and difficult to manage the second round through the kiln, but the wish to exceed fine Chinese porcelain led to the development of this technique.Hillenbrand (1999), p.54
Though the common perception of Abbasid artistic production focuses largely on pottery, the greatest development of the Abbasid period was in textiles. Government-run workshops known as tiraz produced silks bearing the name of the monarch, allowing for aristocrats to demonstrate their loyalty to the ruler. Other silks were pictorial. The utility of silk-ware in wall decor, entrance adornment, and room separation was not as important as its cash value along the Silk Road.
Islamic calligraphy began to be used in surface decoration on pottery during this period. Illuminated qur'ans gained attention, letter-forms now more complex and stylized to the point of slowing down the recognition of the words themselves.Hillenbrand (1999), p.58
Medieval period (9th–15th centuries) Beginning in the ninth century, Abbasid sovereignty was contested in the provinces furthest removed from the Iraqi center. The creation of an Ismaʻili Shiʻi dynasty, that of the North African Fatimid Caliphate, followed by the Caliphate of Córdoba in the Iberian Peninsula, gave force to this opposition, as well as small dynasties and autonomous governors in Iran.
Spain and the Maghreb
The first Islamic dynasty to establish itself in Iberia, known in Arabic as al-Andalus, was the Umayyads, descended from the great Umayyad Caliphate of Syria. After their fall, they were replaced by various autonomous kingdoms, the taifas (1031–91), but the artistic production from this period does not differ significantly from that of the Umayyads. At the end of the 11th century, two Berber tribes, the Almoravids and the Almohads, captured the head of the Maghreb and Spain, successively, bringing Maghrebi influences into art. A series of military victories by Christian monarchs had reduced Islamic Spain by the end of the 14th century to the city of Granada, ruled by the Nasrid dynasty, who managed to maintain their hold until 1492.
Al-Andalus was a great cultural center of the Middle Ages. Besides the great universities, which taught philosophies and sciences yet unknown in Christendom (such as those of Averroes), the territory was an equally vital center for art.
Many techniques were employed in the manufacture of objects. Ivory was used extensively for the manufacture of boxes and caskets. The pyxis of al-Mughira is a masterwork of the genre. In metalwork, large sculptures in the round, normally rather scarce in the Islamic world, served as elaborate receptacles for water or as fountain spouts. A great number of textiles, most notably silks, were exported: many are found in the church treasuries of Christendom, where they served as covering for saints' reliquaries. From the periods of Maghrebi rule one may also note a taste for painted and sculpted woodwork.
The art of north Africa is not as well studied. The Almoravid and Almohad dynasties are characterized by a tendency toward austerity, for example in mosques with bare walls. Nevertheless, luxury arts continued to be produced in great quantity. The Marinid and Hafsid dynasties developed an important, but poorly understood, architecture, and a significant amount of painted and sculpted woodwork.
Arab Mashriq The Fatimid Caliphate, which reigned in Egypt from 909 to 1171, introduced crafts and knowledge from politically troubled Baghdad to their capital of Cairo.
By 1070, the Seljuq Empire emerged as the dominant political force in the Muslim world after they liberated Baghdad and defeated the Byzantines at Manzikert. During the rule of Malik-Shah I, the Seljuks excelled in architecture at the same time in Syria, the atabegs (governors of Seljuk princes) assumed power. Quite independent, they capitalized on conflicts with the Frankish crusaders. In 1171, Saladin seized Fatimid Egypt, and installed the transitory Ayyubid dynasty on the throne. This period is notable for innovations in metallurgy and the widespread manufacture of the Damascus steel swords and daggers and the production ceramics, glass and metalwork of a high quality were produced without interruption, and enamelled glass became another important craft.
In 1250, Mamluks seized control of Egypt from the Ayyubids as the Mamluk Sultanate, and by 1261 had managed to assert themselves in Syria as well; their most famous ruler was Baibars. The Mamluks were not, strictly speaking, a dynasty, as they did not maintain a patrilineal mode of succession; in fact, Mamluks were freed Turkish and Caucasian slaves, who (in theory) passed the power to others of like station. This mode of government persevered for three centuries, until 1517, and gave rise to abundant architectural projects; many thousands of buildings were constructed during this period. Patronage of luxury arts favored primarily enamelled glass and metalwork and is remembered as the golden age of medieval Egypt. The Baptistère de Saint Louis in the Louvre is an example of the very high quality of metalwork at this period.
Iran and Central Asia