Islamic Visual Culture, 1100-1800

Islamic Visual Culture, 1100-1800 is the second in a set of four volumes of studies on Islamic art by Oleg Grabar. Between them they bring together more than eighty articles, studies and essays, work spanning half a century by a master of the field. Each volume takes a particular section of the topic, the three other volumes being entitled: Early Islamic Art 650-1100; Islamic Art and Beyond; and Jerusalem. Reflecting the many incidents of a long academic life, they illustrate one scholar's attempt at making order and sense of 1400 years of artistic growth. They deal with architecture, painting, objects, iconography, theories of art, aesthetics and ornament, and they seek to integrate our knowledge of Islamic art with Islamic culture and history as well as with the global concerns of the History of Art. In addition to the articles selected, each volume contains an introduction which describes, often in highly personal ways, the context in which Grabar's scholarship developed and the people who directed and mentored his efforts. The focus of the present volume is on the key centuries - the eleventh through fourteenth - during which the main directions of traditional Islamic art were created and developed and for which classical approaches of the History of Art were adopted. Manuscript illustrations and the arts of objects dominate the selection of articles, but there are also forays into later times like Mughal India and into definitions of area and period styles, as with the Mamluks in Egypt and the Ottomans, or into parallels between Islamic and Christian medieval arts.

Oleg Grabar is Emeritus Professor in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, USA, and Aga Khan Professor Emeritus of Islamic Art and Architecture at Harvard University, USA.

Contents: Preface; Introduction. Part 1 Objects: Two pieces of metalwork at the University of Michigan; Les arts mineurs de l'Orient musulman à partir du milieu du XIIe siècle; Trade with the East and the influence of Islamic art on the 'luxury arts' in the West; The shared culture of objects; Epigrafika Vostoka, a critical review. Part 2 Art of the Book: A newly discovered illustrated manuscript of the Maqamat of Hariri; Notes on the iconography of the 'Demotte' Shahname; The illustrated Maqamat of the 13th century: the bourgeoisie and the arts; Pictures or commentaries: the illustrations of the Maqamat of al-Hariri; About an Arabic Dioskorides manuscript; Toward an aesthetic of Persian painting; About two Mughal miniatures; A preliminary note on two 18th-century representations of Mecca and Medina. Part 3 Architecture and Culture: The inscriptions of the Madrasa-Mausoleum of Qaytbay; Isfahan as a mirror of Persian architecture; Reflections on Mamluk art; An exhibition of high Ottoman art; The meanings of Sinan's architecture; The many gates of Ottoman art; The Crusades and the development of Islamic art. Part 4 Islamic Art and the West: Islamic architecture and the West: influences and parallels; Patterns and ways of cultural exchange; Europe and the Orient: an ideologically charged exhibition; Classical forms in Islamic art and some implications; Islamic art and architecture and the antique. Index.