Islamic art is a part of Islamic culture and encompasses the visual arts produced since the 7th century CE by people who lived within territories inhabited or ruled by Muslim populations. Referring to characteristic traditions across a wide range of lands, periods, and genres, Islamic art is a concept used first by Western art historians in the late 19th century. Public Islamic art is traditionally non-representational, except for the widespread use of plant forms, usually in varieties of the spiralling arabesque. These are often combined with Islamic calligraphy, geometric patterns in styles that are typically found in a wide variety of media, from small objects in ceramic or metalwork to large decorative schemes in tiling on the outside and inside of large buildings, including mosques. Other forms of Islamic art include Islamic miniature painting, artefacts like Islamic glass or pottery, and textile arts, such as carpets and embroidery.
Detail of arabesque decoration at the Alhambra in Spain
The Ardabil Carpet, probably the finest surviving Persian carpet, Tabriz, mid-16th century
Hunters at a Stream - Riza `Abbasi, c. 1625 Brooklyn Museum
Tiles with some calligraphy in the courtyard of the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul (Turkey)
An oriental rug is a heavy textile made for a wide variety of utilitarian and symbolic purposes and produced in "Oriental countries" for home use, local sale, and export.
Carpet fragment, Loulan, Xinjiang province, China, dated to 3rd-4th century AD. British Museum, London
The Pazyryk Carpet. Circa 400 BC. Hermitage Museum
Animal carpet, Turkey, dated to the 11th–13th century, Museum of Islamic Art, Doha