Great Mosque of Córdoba, interior

Once paper was available in the Islamic lands, artists and artisans eventually came to exploit its possibilities, but they were somewhat slower to do so than were writers, mathematicians, geographers, and merchants. Before paper, artists and artisans worked directly with their chosen materials—clay, bronze, cloth, brick, plaster—relying on experience and practice to do what we would...

During the early centuries of Islamic rule the cultural history of western Islamic lands was concentrated in two areas. One is the province of Ifriqiya under the rule of the Aghlabid dynasty of governors, with its new capital of Qayrawan and its fortified coastal cities like Sus (modern Sousse). The other is al-Andalus, the generic name given to all parts of the...