David J. Roxburgh
David J. Roxburgh is Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Islamic Art History at Harvard University.
Roxburgh, David J.
Roxburgh, David J.
United States of America
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Description: Writing the Word of God: Calligraphy and the Qurʾan
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00180
The art of Islamic calligraphy developed from the 7th to the 14th century, beginning in western Arabia, spreading south to Yemen and north to the Near East, and continuing east and west to Iran, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. This book demonstrates the breadth and beauty of Islamic calligraphy across centuries and continents, as seen in rare early folios of the Qur’an.

Noted scholar David J. Roxburgh begins by discussing the Qur’an, which Muslims believe to be the written record of a series of divinely inspired revelations to the Prophet Muhammad. He then analyzes Kufic script, the preeminent vehicle for writing early manuscripts of the Qur’an; reforms of calligraphy in the 10th century; and the great master Islamic calligraphers, in particular Yaqut al-Musta‘simi. The images of folios and bifolios validate Roxburgh’s conclusion that “the miracle of the text of the Qur’an found its equal in the technical mastery of the calligrapher’s practice, a miracle in its own right.”
Print publication date October 2008 (out of print)
Print ISBN 9780300142006
EISBN 9780300247978
Illustrations 23
Print Status out of print
Description: The Persian Album, 1400–1600
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00153
This groundbreaking book examines portable art collections assembled in the courts of Greater Iran in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Made for members of the royal families or ruling elites, albums were created to preserve and display art, yet they were conceptualized in different ways. David Roxburgh, a leading expert on Persian albums and the art of the book, discusses this diversity and demonstrates convincingly that to look at the practice of album making is to open a vista to a culture of thought about the Persian art tradition.

The book considers the album’s formal and physical properties, assembly, and content, as well as the viewer’s experience. Focusing on seven albums created during the Timurid and Safavid dynasties, Roxburgh reconstructs the history and development of this codex form and uses the works of art to explore notions of how art and aesthetics were conceived in Persian court culture. Illustrated with a number of rare works of art, the book offers a range of new insights into Persian visual culture as well as Islamic art history.
Print publication date March 2005 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780300103250
EISBN 9780300233582
Illustrations 125 b/w + 51 color illus.
Print Status in print