Islamic arts bear a particular significance for the understanding of not only one of the forms of expression but, more broadly, cultures of the past and present. But what are Islamic arts? This short article attempts to dissociate some common misconceptions surrounding Islamic arts.

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Islamic arts denote art forms created either for religious purposes or ones created in lands where Islam is the dominant religion. However, not all Islamic art was created by Muslims, and not all Islamic artefacts were linked to religion. Overall, the expression encompass all art produced since the 7th century until today from Spain to India. 

 

The very expression “Islamic art” is the early 20th century invention propagated by European and American scholars and collectors. For them, the term consolidated a bulk of unfamiliar art forms. This gave rise to a specific field of inquiry that would very soon be questioned.

 

However, scholars from the Islamic lands chose to use more nationalistic names to define their field like Egyptian art or Persian art. This is explained by the rise of nationalisms in the first half of the 20th century all over the Middle East. These terms are misleading on their own, Persian, for instance, can refer to a 15th century Timurid Qur’an or to the bas-relief of Persepolis, one of the capital city of the Achemenid dynasty dating back to the 6th century B.C.. The length of Islamic arts chronology starting from the 7th century, as well as the multiculturalism of Islam make these national distinctions really uneasy.

 

Academics have questioned the term 'Islamic' arts as too vague and general because it does not refer to a particular era, region, culture or medium. To facilitate discussions, they have started to use regional or dynastic categories. For example, the Safavid of Iran, the Mamluk of Egypt, the Umayyad of Spain. While this fragmentation is very useful, it doesn’t reflect neither the similarities nor commonalities running through the Islamic lands. Some commonalities include the use of Arabic language and the importance of calligraphy and shared decorative patterns.

 

This division can also be problematic because as Isabelle Imbert argues, transmission is at the base of Islamic arts.

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transmission is at the base of Islamic arts

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As a religion, Islam was born in a land traversed by many cultures and religions like the Eastern Christians from the Byzantine Empire, Persians, Ethiopians coming through the Red Sea, and naturally, polytheist Arab tribes from the Nejd desert. When a new form of art that was linked to the new power established after the Hegira became needed, Arabs adapted existing forms of cultures that were surrounding them. This explains why the coins from the Umeyyad dynasty, the first Islamic power in the Middle-East (664-750) resemble Byzantine coins. An example of the birth of the early 'Abbasid art is discussed in the essay Early 'Abbasid Art through a Plaster Fragment from Samarra.

 

Cultural transfers  continued to define the core of Islamic arts through the centuries. It is possible to discuss Mamluk architecture or 'classical' eras of Persian painting, but such studies limited by region do not truthfully reflect the constant artistic turmoil, nor, to use Isabelle Imbert's phrase, 

 

'the artists never-ending quest for innovation,

nor the genuine open-mindedness to the rest of the world '.

 

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