378. Incense burner, from Khu rasan, Iran . 11 8 1- 82.

Bronze, height 33W' (85 em). The Metropolitan Mu seum of Art,

New York. Rogers Fund, 195 1

ture" only while it is servin g its proper fun ction ; fill ed wit h
burnin g incense, breathin g fire a nd smoke, our a nima l
might well have seemed terrifyin gly real to a n a'i've beholder.
The Seljuk prince who owned it und oubtedl y e njoyed the
perfom1ance of this half-comic, h alf-dcmoniacal gua rd ian
mon ster. which he himself could "brin g to life" wh enc\cr he
wished .
PA INTING. The fate of pai nti ng in the Moslem world hetween the eighth and th irteenth centu ries rem ains almost
entirel y unknown to u s. So lit tle has survived from the five
hundred years followin g th e Da mascus mosaics that we
should be te mpted to assu me the com plete disappearance of
pictorial expression und er Islam if literary sources did not
contain C\i den ce to th e contrary. E\c n so. it seems clear that
the tradition of pai ntin g was kep t alive, not by J\loslems but

by artists of other lai th s. Byzan tine masters were imported

occasionall y to work for Arab rulers, a nd the Oriental hristian churches that su rvived with in the Islamic empire must
have in cl uded man y pai nters who were available to i\loslem
art patrons. But what kind of pictures could the i\ loslems
hme wan ted?
\ Vc may assume that there was a more or less continuous
demand for the illustration of scientific texts. The Arabs had
inherited such manuscripts from the Byzantines in the Ncar
East, and. being keenly interested in Creek science. they reproduced them in their own language. This meant that the
illustrations had to be copied as well. since they formed an
essential part or the content, whether they were abstract diagrams or rcprcscn tatiorJ al images (as in zoological. medical.
or botanical treatises ). \\'orks of this sort arc among the earliest Islamic illuminated manuscripts known so far. al-

ISLA \1/C ART

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