Browse Items (101 total)

A pencase (qalamdan), carried tucked into a shawl tied around the waist, is the symbolic badge of the scribe's vocation. While some scribes served the general public, preparing documents for those unable to write, others worked for highly educated…

This talisman from Islamic Spain is a striking example of cloisonné enamel, created when coloured glass paste is added between strips of metal and heated. The vivid orange, green, and blue of this pendant were likely achieved by using coarsely…

This pilgrimage (hajj) certificate shows the holy city of Mecca, with the Ka'ba at center and various monuments surrounding it. The style of the domed arches at the map's edge suggests that they may have been painted by Indian artists in Arabia. Like…

This monumental map follows India’s Ganges River and one of its sources, the Alakananda, from the point of view of a Hindu pilgrim travelling from one shrine to the next, following the path of the rivers from left to right. Beginning at Devprayag,…

The prayer book "Waymarks of Benefits" (Dala'il al-Khayrat), originally composed in fifteenth-century Morocco, was frequently copied from Senegal to Turkestan, at the western and eastern extremes of the Islamic world. It was the most popular…

This late copy of the Dala'il al-Khayrat was created in Morocco, where the work was originally composed four hundred years earlier. Thousands of others were produced throughout the Islamic world, making it the most popular devotional work after the…

Prayer books in various faith traditions provide virtual pathways to spiritual journeys in the form of pilgrimage maps. For Muslims, the Dala'il al-Khayrat (Arabic, "Waymarks of Benefits") is the most important of these. Composed in northwestern…

This carpet's size, design, and wear pattern reveal that it is a prayer rug, of a type popular in Turkey, Syria, and Iran. The symbolic forms woven into the carpet--prayer niche (mihrab), lamp, candles, incense burner, and ewers--bring its user…

This Buddhist prayer sheet is one among dozens of identical copies featuring the bodhisattva Guanshiyin of Great Compassion, commissioned in the city of Dunhuang in northwestern China during the summer Ghost Festival in the year 947 CE. Early in the…

In addition to Qur'anic and other devotional inscriptions, amulets often display magic squares--symmetrical arrangements of equal numbers, arranged on vertical, horizontal, and diagonal axes--in regular patterns called wafq, murabba', or buduh. One…

"Glory to God" (subhan Allah) appears on the right-hand page as an ornate Arabic letter form upon a delicate floral background. The sweeping letter forms and particularly thin uprights show how the monumental thuluth script was adapted by Chinese…

This unique case was designed to hold a miniature Qur'an, which would have been worn as a talisman to protect the wearer. A single loop at the upper right of the case indicates that this valuable object would have been suspended on a chain or cord.…

This signed and dated copy of the Qur'an produced in northern India near the end of the fourteenth century is a rare survivor: even though Muslims had long been settled in the region, very few manuscripts from that time and place have come down to…

This East African Qur'an was produced in Harar, the capital of a vibrant Islamic emirate that co-existed with the Christian and Jewish communities of Ethiopia. Harar's scribes developed a distinctive style of Arabic script that is related to bihari…

This Qur'an provides an example of a lacquered book binding, a Persian technique that was first developed in the fifteenth century but became highly popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These glossy bindings are created by building up…

The fusion of Persian and Indian art found in eighteenth-century Mughal India is embodied in this Qur'an written on cloth. Its various scripts--the minute ghubari ('dust') of the text, with chapter headings in majestic red thuluth--demonstrate the…

This magnificent Qur'an was copied in 1847 on a narrow paper scroll that is more than five metres (sixteen feet) long. Its tiny 'dust' script (ghubar) is a miniature form of naskh that was originally developed for the minute messages conveyed by…

This version of the Sanskrit epic Ramayana uses images instead of words to tell how Rama, a manifestation of the Hindu god Vishnu, struggled to defeat the demon king Ravana. On this page, Rama is exiled to the forest, but the austere sage at left…

This book, on making the Islamic pilgrimage (hajj) from China to Mecca, is printed on lightweight but strong Asian paper and bound using a style traditional to China and East Asia which creates intricate geometric designs.

This version, a simple…