Young Prince, mid-16th century; by Muhammad Haravi; Afghanistan (Freer Gallery of Art)
Islamic art is a term that covers many things, from mosques and religious works to the calligraphy and folk arts of the world’s predominantly Islamic cultural regions in the Middle East, North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the great early modern empires of Asia. Art historian Lawrence Butler highlights examples of Islamic art and architecture from the seventh century to today that embody its defining spiritual, luxury, and princely themes. Each session highlights a different region and a different aspect of the Islamic arts. The slide-illustrated talks also feature masterpieces of Islamic art found in Washington-area museum collections.
MAY 31 Arts of Islam
Since the establishment of Islam in the seventh century, artists and patrons have worked out appropriate principles of Islamic spiritual art and design. Explore the basic precepts of Islam, texts from the Qur’an, calligraphy and the arts of the book, geometric and floral ornamentation and the principles of mosque design.
JUN 7 Silk Roads and Spice Routes
The Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258) centered in Baghdad became part of a vast trade network linking the Islamic world with Tang and Song China via the overland Asian “silk roads” and the seaborne Indian Ocean trade routes. The Mongol Invasions of the 13th and 14th centuries further encouraged overland trade, as the careers of Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo demonstrate. The Abbasid and Mongol rulers’ great palace cities and their production of luxury silks, textiles, ceramics, and metalwork.
JUN 14 The Medieval Mediterranean
The luxury arts of Islam had a profound impact on the cultures of medieval Christian Europe long before the Crusades. Explore the great palace and market cities of western Islam in Egypt, Spain, and Morocco, and the luxury goods they produced. Metalwork in the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery illustrates the spread of princely imagery, a legacy of the Crusades. The Textile Museum has rare Spanish silks and Egyptian carpets that were eagerly sought by medieval princes. Encounters between Christians and Muslims inspired architecture still found in Spain, Sicily, Venice, and the Holy Land.
JUN 21 The Gunpowder Empires
The early modern empires of Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Iran, and Mughal India were military and cultural rivals, rich from trade and open to new artistic ideas from China and Europe. State patronage produced some of the Islamic world’s best-known artistic achievements: the palaces and mosques of Istanbul, the carpets and illustrated Shahnameh manuscripts of Persia, and India’s Taj Mahal. The commonalities and distinctive features of their arts and architecture represented in the Freer, Sackler, Walters, and Textile museum collections.
Butler is an associate professor of art history at George Mason University.
World Art History Certificate core course: Earn 1 credit
4 sessions
Smithsonian Connections
Learn more about Lawrence Butler.
