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This is the first book ever written about Jewish carpets. The history of these rugs goes back nearly 4,000 years and offers a unique and novel insight into Jewish culture through the centuries as well as into cross-cultural history. Background documentation ranges widely through descriptions taken from the Bible, Roman and Talmudic writings, the riches of the Genizah, the reports of medieval travellers, as well as archaeology and folklore. One hundred individual carpets woven in Israel, Iran, Tu...

'Edge of Arabia' is the first book to explore the extraordinary contemporary arts culture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This book centres around the Edge of Arabia project, which has shed new light on a group of pioneering and relatively unknown artists practicing at the center of the Islamic world. Through the voices of curators, collectors, patrons and the artists themselves, this book illustrates the birth of a contemporary art scene in one of the world's most misunderstood countries.

The nine essays in this volume were first presented at the Historians of Islamic Art Association’s (HIAA) seventh biennial symposium entitled ‘Regime Change’ and they highlight some of the regimes of thought and changing trends that structure the field of Islamic art history. The authors present new research exploring the intentions of patrons, the agency of craftsmen and their responses to previous artistic production, thereby allowing artefacts and monuments to be set within their historical,...

In this companion volume to "Images of Enchantment", the editor has gathered authoritative papers from note-worthy scholars from around the globe that explore the visual and performing arts in the Middle East. The book has an emphasis on Arab theatre from the early modern period to the present. Topics include race and national identity in Egyptian theatre; early writing in the Arab theatre in North America; Persian-language theatre and the Islamic Revolution in Iran; Palestinian nationalist thea...

The Ottoman court of the late 16th century produced an unprecedented number of sumptuously illustrated chronicles. While usually dismissed as imperial eulogies, Emine Fetvaci demonstrates that these books commented on contemporary events, promoted the political agendas of courtiers as well as the sultan, and presented their patrons and creators in ways that helped shape the perspectives of their elite audience. Picturing History at the Ottoman Court traces the simultaneous crafting of political...

A rare look into the grandeur and distinctiveness of Persian art through one of the world’s leading private collectionsBestowing Beauty showcases an assortment of stunning works from one of the world’s most distinguished private collections of Persian art. Featuring more than 100 exquisite objects spanning many centuries, from the eve of the Islamic period in the 6th century to the end of the 19th century, this wide range of treasures demonstrates the remarkable depth and diversity of the Hossei...

This book surveys four thousand years of pottery production and presents totally unexpected fresh information, using technical and analytical methods. It provides a study of ancient pottery of Jerusalem, from the earliest settlement to the medieval city and brings to light important aspects that cannot be discovered by the commonly accepted morphological pottery descriptions. New insights include the discovery that third millennium BCE pottery appears to have been produced by nomadic families, m...

Contemporary artists in Pakistan have, in recent decades, revived and reinvented miniature painting: a traditional artform which had faded under the colonial influence of the British, and is now gaining ground as a medium for a new generation of artists to challenge the world around them. At once traditional and postmodern, the miniature paintings reveal a satirical treatment of serious issues: from religious and political fundamentalism to 'McDonalization', from violence against women to nuclea...

In the wake of controversies over printing or displaying images of the Prophet Muhammad, Christiane Gruber's aim is to bring back into scholarly and public discussion the 'lost' history of imagining the Prophet in Islamic cultures. By studying the various verbal and visual constructions of the Prophet's character and persona over the course of more than one thousand years, Gruber seeks to correct public misconceptions and restore to Islam its rich artistic heritage, illuminating the critical r...

Yezidism is a fascinating part of the rich cultural mosaic of the Middle East. The Yezidi faith emerged for the first time in the twelfth century in the Kurdish mountains of northern Iraq. The religion, which has become notorious for its associations with 'devil worship', is in fact an intricate syncretic system of belief, incorporating elements from proto-Indo-European religions, early Iranian faiths like Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, Sufism and regional paganism like Mithraism. Birgul Acikyi...