What is Islamic Art

6 Deceiving Deception After thefifteenth century, the narration about competing artists shifted to more innovative stories that ...

have“loved painting and never tired of looking at illustrated books.”^2 So Yazuri invited the Iraqi painter ibn‘Aziz, whose fame ...

The competition he describes is less artistic than a rhetorical and scien- tific show of skill, a courtly performance akin to po ...

artists, the labor of the calligraphers is not oppositional, but ameliorative. Such refined, appreciative augmentation serves as ...

talent to the test, took aim at the arrows of the other masters’pens.”^11 Thus painting is rendered as a competition. The arrow ...

with its ruse and drives Mani away. Nonetheless, when the king comes across the pool with the dog, he recognizes Mani’s skill an ...

condemnation of Mani into a demonstration of his purity. Even“when it became certain that they were going to fret his lifeless b ...

form–a bamboo reed fermented in excrement to turn it red–and yet also imbued in the seeming oxymoron of silent speech, double-to ...

Abu’lFazl’s negotiation of European painting in the Mughal context, Qadi Ahmad’s writing reflected a similar naturalization of p ...

gold and silver. Making their way home, they share the booty. One day the goldsmith steals half of that which belonged to his co ...

The other for the play of his imagination. Thus the heart of the envious painter was broken; And in despair he sat down in the c ...

the painting–text brings painting into being, painting renders text visible, and thought makes the Real seen. Sight comes not fr ...

reforming their meaning into supposedly universal terms. And yet in recognizing the allegory, he has briefly crossed the very bo ...

mistake, with a modesty that did him honour, he yielded up the palm, saying that whereas he had managed to deceive only birds, P ...

Plate 1Anonymous,Temple Idols Fall and the Sea Dries up on the Birth of the Prophet Muhammad, from theHamzanamah, c.1562–1577, g ...

Plate 2Mir Kalan Khan,Lovers in a Landscape, 1760–1770, 22 × 15 cm. The David Collection, Copenhagen, 50/1981. Photographer Pern ...

Plate 3Anonymous, double-leaf frontispiece, fromThe Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, Baghdad,c.1287, 20 × 17 cm (each), Istan ...

Plate 4Sultan Muhammad,Allegory of Worldly and Otherworldly Drunkenness, from theDivanby Hafez of Shiraz,c.1531–33, 21.6 × 15 cm ...

Plate 5Madhu Khazanad,Plato Puts the Animals to Sleep with the Music of the Spheres, from theKhamsaby Nizami of Ganj, 1593–1595, ...

Plate 6Anonymous, double-leaf frontispiece,“The Courts of Bilqis and Solomon,” from theShahnamehby Firdausi, sixteenth century, ...