In internationally renowned museums such as the Louvre in Paris and the MET in New York, the collections of "Islamic arts" show the wealth of techniques and materials used by artisans, who lived in Islamic empires. . From Asia to Africa and Europe, they rethought the pre-Islamic arts to release a new aesthetic.

These collections are today the material witness of a civilization which is not so strange to the West. Contrary to popular belief, Islamic arts are not religious. They attest to an astonishing crossbreeding of cultures and civilizations since antiquity.

Arts and science

The prohibition of the use of human figures inside religious buildings and the centrality of the Arabic language in the emerging culture gave birth during the reign of the Umayyad dynasty to the art of calligraphy. Mosques are the witness of an exceptional encounter between masterpieces of mosaic and foliage, borrowed from the Greek and Roman worlds, and an undeniable mastery of geometry in scriptures. 

The buildings in the big cities of the world are the proof of the richness of these cities, but also of an abundant artistic production. The great Umayyad Mosques in Damascus and Cordoba, the Taj Mahal in India and Isfahan, "the blue city" in Iran, are testimony to an artistic richness which required the collaboration of several artists from different disciplines: glass craftsmen, chandeliers , silversmiths, upholsterers… etc, who used noble materials such as jade, marble, ebony, African rosewood and gold. So many traces of the different art movements that have marked successive dynasties.

This aesthetic is also proof of a permanent dialogue between the arts and science. The astrolabe, used by sailors and scientists to know the position of planets and stars, or the manuscript translated from the medical book "De Materia Medica", in Baghdad in the 9th century, with so many other objects, we discover a culture that has given a central place to scientific knowledge.

Since the Abbasid Caliphate, which launched a great movement of translation, artists and scientists living in the lands of Islam, have bequeathed very beautiful manuscripts, but above all an abundant scientific knowledge which has been transmitted to the West.

The intimate stranger

If the architectural art linked to the space of the mosque has borrowed an aesthetic based on calligraphy, flowers, colors and geometry, other places such as palaces, houses of notables, or even decorative objects and the books have welcomed the figuration of humans and animals.

The lion of Monzón, which is in the collections of the Louvre, comes from Al-Andalus (in Spain) and served as a molded bronze fountain mouth. It was made between the 12th and 13th centuries. At the MET in New York, we discover an Iranian tile panel (17th century), which represents a woman serving wine to a European. Proof of a freedom of tone that was present in the Islamic arts in particular in illustrated books such as the epic poem "Shâhnâmeh" (the book of kings), written at the beginning of the eleventh century by Ferdowsi, or "Jami al-tawarikh" ( 14th century) by Rashid al-Din who does not hesitate to represent in drawing the "prophet" Jonah and an angel with Mongolian features.  

These objects have traveled across geographies and eras. Thus, certain techniques have also been transmitted to the West such as glassmaking in Italy, or architecture in Spain. Objects made by Muslim artisans were used by Europeans, even for religious rites, as in the case of the Baptistery of Saint Louis. Made in Mamluk Egypt, it was probably imported during the reign of Louis IX (13th century), according to the Louvre. It was used for the baptism of several kings of France including Louis XIII and for that of Prince Napoléon-Eugène, son of Napoleon III in 1856.

The journey of so-called "Islamic art" objects in the West is proof of an intimate relationship between the two cultures according to the curators of the museums which house thousands of objects qualified as "Islamic art", but which are also a heritage of humanity.

The summary of the week France 24 invites you to come back to the news that marked the week

I subscribe

Take international news everywhere with you! Download the France 24 application

google-play-badge_FR