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Although the concept of "Islamic art" has been put into question by some modern art historians as a construct of Western cultural views, [9] [10] [11] the similarities between art produced at widely different times and places in the Muslim world, especially in the Islamic Golden Age, have been sufficient to keep the term in wide use as a useful ...
Islamic art was widely imported and admired by European elites during the Middle Ages. [5] There was an early formative stage from 600-900 and the development of regional styles from 900 onwards. Early Islamic art used mosaic artists and sculptors trained in the Byzantine and Coptic traditions. [6]
Islamic art began with artists and craftsmen mostly trained in Byzantine styles, and though figurative content was greatly reduced, Byzantine decorative styles remained a great influence on Islamic art, and Byzantine artists continued to be imported for important works for some time, especially for mosaics.
The representation of living beings in Islamic art is not just a modern phenomenon and examples are found from the earliest periods of Islamic history. Frescos and reliefs of humans and animals adorned palaces of the Umayyad era, as on the famous Mshatta Facade now in Berlin. [11] [12] The ‘Abbasid Palaces at Samarra also contained figurative ...
The metaphor of a golden age began to be applied in 19th-century literature about Islamic history, in the context of the western aesthetic fashion known as Orientalism.The author of a Handbook for Travelers in Syria and Palestine in 1868 observed that the most beautiful mosques of Damascus were "like Mohammedanism itself, now rapidly decaying" and relics of "the golden age of Islam".
Because of this, similarly with Roman art, Islamic art and architecture had regional versions. As the Islamic world extended into centres of late antique culture, it was enriched by philosophical and intellectual movements. The translation of Greek works into Arabic and advances in mathematics and science were encouraged by early caliphates.
The hypostyle mosque constructed by Muhammad in Medina served as a model for early mosque design throughout the Islamic world. [10] Umayyad religious architecture was the earliest expression of Islamic art on a grand scale [163] and the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus reproduced the hypostyle model at a monumental scale. [164]
For centuries, the art of writing has fulfilled a central iconographic function in Islamic art. [9] Although the academic tradition of Islamic calligraphy began in Baghdad, the centre of the Islamic empire during much of its early history, it eventually spread as far as India and Spain. Coins were another support for calligraphy.