Bedouin tents today in the Arabian peninsula: Islamic environment Early medieval environment We can divide the environmental history of the medieval Islamic Empire into three different phases. The early phase, [...]
Turkomen on the Silk Road with camels Just like under Persian or Sassanian rule, the economy of West Asia during the Islamic period depended very heavily on trade. The Silk Road ran right across the Islamic Empire. It [...]
Medieval Islamic clothing: women covered their heads with veils, and men wore hats or turbans. Why did people cover up their bodies? It was hot in the Islamic Empire. So people [...]
A tin-glazed plate Just about the time of the Arab conquests (about 600-700 AD), potters started to use metal-based glazes on their pots. So Islamic pottery looks very different from the Roman pottery that came [...]
Islamic art: Mosaic from the Great Mosque in Damascus (about 710 AD) Umayyad art: no people or animals As soon as the Islamic Empire formed, under the Umayyad dynasty, artists began exploring the [...]
Dome of the Rock mosque, Jerusalem People didn't build a lot of new buildings during the Umayyad period. They were busy getting organized after the Islamic conquests, and the Umayyad dynasty didn't [...]
Topkapi Palace, Istanbul (Turkey, 1400s AD) By the time the Ottoman sultans conquered Constantinople from the Roman emperors in 1453 AD, the old palace of the Roman emperors was really very, very old. The Roman [...]
Court of the Lions, Alhambra (1200s AD) By 1250 AD, the Christian kings of Spain had pushed the Almohads south so that they only ruled just the city of Granada, far in the south [...]
Mosque history - Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo (Egypt, 900s AD) What is a mosque? A mosque (MAH-SK) is a kind of building where people who follow the Islamic faith pray to God. Mosque [...]
Kairouan's minaret - the oldest minaret still standing today. What is a minaret? A minaret is a tower that Islamic holy men called muezzins climb in order to call out [...]
