Traces the simultaneous crafting of political power, the codification of a historical record, and the unfolding of cultural change

Biography of the medieval Mediterranean's most cross-culturally significant sculptural monument, the tallest in the pre-modern world.

In Picturing the Islamicate World, Nadja Danilenko explores the message of the first preserved maps from the Islamicate world. Safeguarded in al-Iṣṭakhrī’s Book of Routes and Realms (10th century C.E.), the world map and twenty regional maps complement the text to a reference book of the territories under Muslim rule. Rather than shaping the Islamicate world according to political or religious concerns, al-Iṣṭakhrī chose a timeless design intended to outlast upheavals. Considering the treatise was transmitted for almost a millennium, al-Iṣṭakhrī’s strategy seems to have paid off. By investigating the Persian and Ottoman translations and all extant manuscripts, Nadja Danilenko unravels the manuscript tradition of al-Iṣṭakhrī’s work, revealing who took an interest in it and why.

Explores the Safavid and Ottoman empires through the lens of gifts. When the Safavid dynasty, founded in 1501, built a state that championed Iranian identity and Twelver Shi'ism, it prompted the more established Ottoman Empire to align itself definitively with Sunni legalism. The political, religious, and military conflicts that arose have since been widely studied, but little attention has been paid to their diplomatic relationship. Sinem Arcak Casale here sets out to explore these two major Muslim empires through a surprising lens: gifts. Countless treasures—such as intricate carpets, gilded silver cups, and ivory-tusk knives—flowed from the Safavid to the Ottoman Empire throughout the sixteenth century. While only a handful now survive, records of these gifts exist in court chronicles, treasury records, poems, epistolary documents, ambassadorial reports, and travel narratives. Tracing this elaborate archive, Casale treats gifts as representative of the complicated Ottoman-Safavid coexistence, demonstrating how their rivalry was shaped as much by culture and aesthetics as it was by religious or military conflict. Gifts in the Age of Empire explores how gifts were no mere accessories to diplomacy but functioned as a mechanism of competitive interaction between these early modern Muslim courts.

In the early twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire was in political turmoil. Officials moved valuable artworks--including thousands of sumptuous Qur'an (Koran) manuscripts and loose pages dating from the 7th to 17th century--to Istanbul to ensure their safety. Penned by celebrated calligraphers and embellished by skilled illuminators and bookbinders, these manuscripts are now housed in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts (Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi or TIEM) in Istanbul, established in 1914. This story unfolds in The Art of the Qur'an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, the companion publication to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery's groundbreaking exhibition, the first major presentation of Qur'ans in the United States. The book's authors describe the formation of this one-of-a-kind collection and the history of TIEM, whose centuries-old records on patrons, calligraphers, illuminators, and provenance allow us to create "biographies" detailing the production of the Qur'ans in the exhibition. Essays address the Qur'an as a written text--from content and organization to the elaborate calligraphy and illuminated designs that transformed the volumes into beautiful artworks. The Art of the Qur'an also includes in-depth descriptions of some seventy works from TIEM and the Smithsonian's Sackler and Freer Galleries. It features full-page, color images of the earliest known Qur'an folios and manuscripts from the Umayyad and Abbasid Near East (7th-10th century), Seljuk Iran and Anatolia (12th century), the Mongol Il-Khanid and Timurid empires and Mamluk Cairo (14th and 15th centuries), Safavid and Ottoman empires (16th and 17th centuries) as well as a number of mosque furnishings, such as Qur'an boxes and stands. Most of these works have rarely, if ever, been published.

"Deals with all aspects of Islamic art and architecture ranging from the Middle East to Africa to Central, South, and East Asia and includes entries on artists, rulers, writers, ceramics, sculpture, metalwork, painting, calligraphy, textiles, and more"--Provided by publisher.