The broad purpose of this book is twofold. One, to provide a systematic study of the forms, techniques, decorative vocabulary, and epigraphy of a body of metalwork that will be shown to have been produced in Iran under the reign of the Timurid dynasty and...

The work covers several decades, from the second half of the twelfth to the first quarter of the thirteenth century, comprising white and under glaze, as well as, luster painted vessels, and also some mihrab titles. The book includes a general discussion of...

Social architecture is a theoretical approach that takes the city itself as a text. In the anthropologist’s Clifford Gertz’s words the cityscape is “a story people tell themselves about themselves.” The built environment reflects the...

The present study is a first attempt to throw some light on the development of the human figure in the arts of Islam. It progresses chronologically, basing itself primarily on observation of paintings and sculptures in architectural decoration and minor arts....

The traditional Persian ice houses were built at villages on the perimeter of the large deserts on the Central Plateau. Their cone-shaped domes, up to 20 meters high, consisted of mud and mud bricks from the excavation of the deep ice pits protected by the...

Based on a series of lectures given at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in 1997, this book is a survey of the art and archeology of the Sasanian Near East from the 3rd to the 7th century A.D. Drawing upon the examination...

Among the .proud remains and wonderful memorials of the ancient land of Iran/Persia are the palaces which the Achaemenian Kings built at Pasargadae and Persepolis of massive polished stones in an incomparable manner. Each one of these splendid buildings, the...

The present volume is a collection of articles by the noted critic and translator, Karim Emami, on art, cinema, theatre, and literature in Iran in the dynamic 1960s, when culture and society were in the throes of transformation. Emami's insightful and...

In this survey of more than forty illustrative murals excavated over the last 54 years in Panjikent, a 5th-8th century C.E. town in the Zerafshan Valley in Tajikistan, Boris Marshak discusses the rich repertory of legends, tales and myths of the Sogdians that...

From “Foreword” to the Volume. Scholars have favored various periodisations for mediaeval Persian painting. The simplest, and most widely accepted division has been by ruling dynasties, for it was precisely court art in feudal Iran which, as a rule, ‘set...