Islamic collection in DIA: Qur’an

Date. c. 1425-1450
Medium: Leather, paper, ink, colors, and gold
Dimensions: Book: 44.5 x 38.1 cm; Manuscript: 30.5 x 26.7 cm
Department: Islamic Art
Classification: Manuscript
Credit: City of Detroit Purchase

Photo ©2010, Detroit Institute of Arts

The rise of Islam as a religion in the seventh century paralleled the rise of the Islamic state, which once stretched from today’s Spain to Afghanistan. This vast empire incorporated varied peoples, religions, languages, social structures, gastronomic cultures and terrains and gave rise to one of the world’s great artistic traditions. Much of the richness of Islamic art is due to the centuries-long place of the Islamic world as an entrepot for commerce and creativity at the junctures between East Asia, Europe and Africa.

Some of the most important works of art from the Islamic World came into the DIA’s collections under the direction of Wilhelm Valentiner from the 1920s to the 40s. The collection includes splendid ceramics and metalwork from the central Islamic lands, a large collection of medieval textiles decorated with religious inscriptions from Egypt, lusterware ceramics from Iran, Egypt, Syria and Spain, woven silks from early modern Iran, and carpets from Western China among other works of art. Unusual objects include an ivory inkwell from medieval Sicily, an enameled glass bottle made in Egypt for a Yemeni Sultan in the thirteenth century, and magnificent Qur’an written on colored Chinese papers in the fifteenth century.

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