From Cuneiform to Topkapi
In the Islamic world, where reading and literacy have always been highly prized for the access they provide to the word of God and the world of knowledge, books were objects of both…
Sufi-Inspired Artist Books
One of the great feelings I experience at the Brooklyn Museum is when I see a true connection between the Library and art collections here. This connection was felt recently at a public…
Filigree Bindings of the Mamluk Period
The technique of leather filigree work is an ancient one; it was known to the Copts and has been found on binding fragments from Turfan dating from the eighth and ninth centuries.1 Within…
Turning the pages of an Ottoman illustrated manuscript
This essay is the 2004 Winner of the Margaret B. Sevcenko Prize in Islamic Art and Culture This paper focuses on an Ottoman illustrated manuscript copied in 1498-99, which is now in the…
Arts of the book – 1600-1800
The technical aspects of calligraphy, painting, and bookbinding are important facets of the study of Islamic art. Treatises by sixteenth-century Persian authors Qazi Ahmed and Sadiqi Beq are the major sources on the…
