In Europe, art history often centers on painting and sculpture. In the Islamic world, some of the most prized arts were what Europeans called "decorative": carpets and textiles, metalwork, glass, ceramics and books. Kings paid as much for a great carpet or a finely copied manuscript as any European prince paid for an altarpiece.
Looking closely: The Ardabil Carpet. It is about 10.5 by 5.3 meters, one of a pair made under Shah Tahmasp for the shrine of Shaykh Safi al-Din at Ardabil, the ancestor of the Safavid kings. A pointed golden medallion sits at the center of a deep blue field filled with flowers and curling stems. Two lamps of unequal size hang from it toward the ends, and a quarter of the medallion repeats in each corner, as if the design continued under the borders. A woven panel at one end gives a line of verse, the date 946 in the Islamic calendar (1539 to 1540), and the name of Maqsud of Kashan, "servant of the court." It has about 340 knots in every square inch, some 26 million in all. Its twin, cut down to repair it in the 1800s, is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Key idea
Why it works
Glassmakers in Mamluk Egypt and Syria blew lamps like this one and painted them with colored enamel and gold, then fired them again to fuse the colors. Hundreds hung in the mosques and schools of Cairo.
Books were treasured too. Persian painters made small, brilliant paintings called miniatures for copies of poems such as the Shahnameh (Book of Kings), with flat bright colors, fine detail and gold. Calligraphers, painters, gilders and binders worked together in royal workshops.
Worked example: Count the knots
- 10 × 10 = 100 square inches.
- 100 × 300 = 30,000 knots.
- Every one tied by hand.
Answer: 30,000 knots.
Common mistake