The delicate splendour and fairytale beauty of Islamic art The art which arose from the 7th century in the Islamic empires reached from Spain and Morocco to the borders of China. It bore the stamp above all of Arabs, Persians and Turks, but outstanding contributions also came from Egypt and India. "Islamic Art" presents prominent examples: luxury ceramics, prayer mats, goldsmithery, as well as witnesses to the decorative arts and calligraphy – and above all the masterpieces of the splendidly colourful courtly book illumination of Persia and the Mughal emperors of India. The book examines the contributions of the different countries and how they influenced each other, and in this way vividly illustrates the unfolding of the delicate splendour and fairytale beauty of Islamic art from its beginnings into the modern era. About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre Series features: a detailed introduction with approximately 35 photographs, plus a timeline of the most important events (political, cultural, scientific, etc.) that took place during the time period a selection of the most important works of the epoch; each is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and, on the facing page, a description/interpretation of the work and brief biography of the artist as well as additional information such as a reference work, portrait of the artist, and/or citations

About the editor: Norbert Wolf gratuated in art history, linguistics and medieval studies at the universities of Regensburg and Munich, and earned his PhD in 1983. He held visiting professorships in Marburg, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Nuremberg-Erlangen, and Innsbruck. His extensive writings on art history include many TASCHEN titles, such as Diego Velázquez, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Caspar David Friedrich, Expressionism, Romanesque, Landscape Painting.

About the author: Annette Hagedorn studied the history of oriental art, German literature, and art history at the universities of Bonn and Mainz. She has held part-time teaching posts at the universities of Bonn, Mainz and Utrecht. In 1991 she was awarded the Alice-Boner-Memorial Prize from the Alice Boner Foundation in Zurich for her dissertation on Islamic metalwork in the 13th and 14th centuries. Since 2000 she has been co-editor, responsible for art history and archaeology, of the journal Zeitschrift