The fortress-palace of the Alhambra at Granada and the Great Mosque at
Cordoba are virtually all that remain in Europe of the Muslim conquests of the Middle Ages. These exotic monuments offer the Westerner a glimpse of a culture in which art and religion were indivisible, not only in architecture - as in the magnificent mosques of Isfahan, Tamerlane's tomb at Samarkand, and the Taj Mahal - but also in ceramics, textiles and metalwork.

Throughout the Islamic world the decorative arts achieved an intricacy and refinement unsurpassed elsewhere. Nevertheless, in this introduction
David James explodes the myth that all Islamic art is abstract, and illustrates for example the strong representational traditions in the various schools of manuscript painting, notably in Persia and Mughal india. Other surprises and delights await the reader who explores with the author the cities, the courts and the workshops of the vast empire that once stretched from Spain to the gates of China. He gives us the chance to see the Islamic world as a whole, so that the art can take on for us the significance that, as a matter of course, it has for the faithful.

22cm x 29cm, 96 pages, Hardcover, 1974 (Condition: Very Good)

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