Arthur M. Sackler Museum

Manuscript of the Rawda al-Ushshaq (Garden of Lovers) of Arifi, with three paintings, c. 1560–1575, Manuscript, Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum. More

The visual arts flourished with the advent of Islam in the mid-7th century. Rapidly expanding out of the Arabian Peninsula, Islamic civilization soon stretched onto three continents. The rich variety of Islamic arts expresses the dynamic history of the diverse peoples who produced them. Whether brilliantly patterned textiles, intricately worked metal wares, austere calligraphies, iridescent ceramics, or exquisite illustrations to works of poetry, art served a vast range of needs, including secular and religious, private and public, quotidian and ceremonial.

Broadly speaking, the Arthur M. Sackler Museum Department of Islamic and Later Indian Art seeks to represent the varied arts of peoples living in lands ruled by Muslims, or lands in which a substantial portion of the population followed (or follows) Islam. Practically speaking, the collection tips toward Western, Central, and South Asia (particularly Turkey, Iran, and India), and favors works on paper.

Calligraphy in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, 9th through Early 20th Century

Because of its role in preserving and disseminating the divine revelation, Arabic script became the most esteemed form of visual art and was adapted for languages other than Arabic. Over the centuries, countless scribes and artists labored with passion to perfect and refine the script and unfold its nearly infinite variations. The visual range of Islamic calligraphy is demonstrated in majestic Qur’an folios on both parchment and paper, and in many works of poetry, where the sweeping undulations of the script suggest the rhythm of the verses.

Islamic Paintings and Drawings, 13th through 19th Century

With written texts such as the Qur’an and Hadith foundational to Islamic societies, great prestige accrued not only to calligraphy, but to all the arts of the book, including papermaking, illumination, bookbinding, and where appropriate, illustration. The collection presents a broad range of manuscript illustration, from texts as varied as an Arabic translation of Dioscorides’ De materia medica, to the great Persian epic of the Shahnama by Firdawsi, and Arifi’s Turkish treatise on lovers, Rawda al-Ushshaq. The development of autonomous works of art, particularly figure studies and portraits, is also well represented in paintings such as Riza ’Abbasi’s study Youth in a Blue Cloak and the Equestrian Portrait of Sultan Osman II. The department is also rich in drawings, ranging from the bold Dragon in Foliage to Sadiqi Beg’s lightly tinted rendition of Figures from the Annunciation.

Indian Paintings and Drawings

Not all works of art gathered in the department were made by or even for Muslims. The Indian paintings and drawings include works from both Muslim and Hindu courts and Jain centers. The collection serves as one of the most important resources for the study of Rajput art in North America, with objects ranging from rare and early devotional manuscripts, such as a 16th-century Bhagavata Purana and a 17th-century Rasamanjari, to a wealth of impressive secular works that document and celebrate the life of the courts, for example, the powerful image of Bhoj Singh of Bundi Slays a Lion. Among the Muslim courts, the Mughals are best represented with works ranging from the large and bold painting A Heroine Releases a Prisoner from the Dastan-i Amir Hamza made for the emperor Akbar to the small, lyrical illustrations in a Divan of the poet Anvari. The department also has exceptional holdings in drawings, such as Payag’s The Battle of Samugarh and Bishndas’s remarkably fresh sketch of the Persian ruler Shah ‘Abbas I.

Ceramics from the 8th through 19th Century

Luxury ceramics were widely and prolifically produced across Islamic lands. The Art Museums’ collection well represents the most important developments of this industrial art, including the continuation of the Roman tradition of glazed relief wares, the beginning of blue-on-white floral designs, the majestic epigraphic wares slip-painted in Samanid lands, the iridescent designs of luster wares from Iraq and Iran, the brilliant but short-lived experiment of mina’i wares, and the gradual development of underglaze painting that culminated in the dazzling Iznik wares of the Ottoman Empire.