Suad Al Attar, Garden of Eden, 1993, oil on canvas

What is Islamic Art?

Introduction by Sajid Rizvi

Although widely used in art history as well as mass media, the phrase Islamic Art is more of a term of convenience than an accurate definition of the art that has been produced through the past few centuries in lands inhabited by Muslim communities or ruled by Muslim caliphs or kings.

The subject of 'contemporary Islamic art' similarly is fraught with controversy; is the art really Islamic or simply contemporary art from 'Islamic' states or countries with majority Muslim populations? Or is it art created by artists who wish to assert their Islamic/Muslim identity? And what is one to make of art produced by Europeans or Americans of Muslim ancestry, or citizens of other nations brought up in or influenced by Muslim tradition outside the geographical sphere of the 'Islamic world'?

Some of the best known 'Muslim/Islamic' art -- Mughal art from the 15 century onwards and its modern manifestations -- does not even come from a Muslim/Islamic country, India, even though that South Asian country's Muslim minority is the largest of any modern political entity.

Added to these problems of definition and identity is the divergence of positions assumed by or ascribed to present-day artists from Muslim communities. Like artists drawn from other denominations -- Jews, Buddhists and indeed Christians -- Muslim artists do not often wish to be seen within a religious framework.

In the event these pages of Eastern Art Report Online concentrate on classical and traditional Islamic rather than 'contemporary Islamic' art. Although there are sections devoted to contemporary art from the Arab or wider Muslim world, including Iran, Turkey, Central Asia and the Caucasus, much of the latest work often categorised under that term of convenience cited above, Islamic Art, can be gleaned from the webpages devoted to South Asia, Southeast Asia, Iran, Turkey and the Arab world as well as contemporary European art.