Great Mosque of Córdoba, marble sculpture near mihrab

During the early centuries of Islamic rule the cultural history of western Islamic lands was concentrated in two areas. One is the province of Ifriqiya under the rule of the Aghlabid dynasty of governors, with its new capital of Qayrawan and its fortified coastal cities like Sus (modern Sousse). The other is al-Andalus, the generic name given to all parts of the...

It is customary to separate secular and religious impulses in the formation and development of an art. It is also often said that the separation is not entirely meaningful in Islam, which did not make a distinction between the realms of God and of Caesar. A word of explanation must therefore be provided to justify our use of the term “religious” in the title of this chapter. What we are trying to identify are those elements or sources of inspiration in early Islamic art that could not have …