The Islamic conquest of Persia led to a renaissance of the Persian Culture, but now interpreted as the “Islamic Culture”. Architecture, writing, art and design were often taken from Sassanian Persians to the wider Muslim world. The earliest ceramic wares continued previous traditions, with unglazed wares having moulded, stamped and applied decoration, although most of their subsequent pottery was glazed. The influence of China and restrictions of Islam soon changed designs and decoration, including shapes that were inspired by Chinese designs, often from metalwork. Islamic decoration was restricted by the interpretation of the Qur’an not to depict living things. However, it brought out elegant stylised floral and foliate motifs together with wonderful geometric patterns partly expressing the Islamic view of order within the universe. Much of their early creative work was for the decoration of tiles for mosques. The first Muslim potters of the Umayyad Dynasty inherited the technologies from across the Middle East. There were the blue and green glazed quartz-based fritwares, known in Egypt since the Roman times. By Islamic times these bodies were made of fired quartz, white clay and glass frit. There was also the alkali glazing from the Achaemenid Persians and Roman lead glazing continued by the Byzantine potters. The Muslim artists decorated everything – walls, floors, pots, textiles and even book covers. Their absorption of Greek mathematics from the translations of Euclid and Pythagoras, described below, caused them to create infinite decorative patterns. Each of the shapes they used in the patterns, circle, square, hexagon, star and triangle has a fundamental meaning in Islamic Culture. Designs are built up from interlaced bands and these in turn can intertwine with each other producing very complex two-dimensional patterns. Floral motifs and calligraphy are also used as the basis of some patterns, such as “Arabesque” often based on palmettes. Persian craftsmen occasionally used three-dimensional representations.

Cordoba Mosque, Mihrab and cupola above
Mihrab - sources wiki LooinL and web J
Entrenas

9.50 The Abbasid Dynasty (750-1258 AD)

By 750 AD the Abbasids (followers of Mohammad’s uncle - Abbas), who had started a revolt in Persia, defeated the Umayyads and took over as the ruling Caliphate until 1258 AD. The remaining Umayyads fled westwards and ruled Moorish Spain from 756 to 1031 AD with their Capital at Cordoba. The second Abbasid Caliph, Al-Mansur, founded Baghdad in 762 AD, which became their capital. The Muslim conquests can be seen as not only territorial but also cultural. Baghdad was where the Caliph created the “Home of Wisdom”, where Greco-Roman books were translated. They moved Greek-speaking, Syrian Christians (e.g. Nestorians) to Baghdad to translate the books into Arabic, sometimes via Syriac (Syrian Aramaic). They concentrated on books covering certain topics – medicine, maths and engineering took precedence, as well as certain authors such as Aristotle. However they were not so interested in Greek Literature such as Homer. Sometimes the “pagan” philosophy was altered by the Christian translators to make it more acceptable to Islam (or to them!).