What is Islamic Art?

Revealing what is ''Islamic'' in Islamic art Shaw explores the perception of arts including painting music and geometry through the discursive sphere ofhistoricalIslam including the Qur''an Hadith Sufism ancient philosophy and poetry. Emphasis on the experience of reception over the context of production enables a new approach not only to Islam and its arts but also as a decolonizing model for global approaches to art history. Shaw combines a concise introduction to Islamic intellectual history with a critique of the modern secular and European premises of disciplinary art history. Her meticulous interpretations of intertextual themes span antique philosophies core religious and theological texts and prominent prose and poetry in Arabic Persian Turkish and Urdu that circulated across regions of Islamic hegemony from the eleventh century to the colonial and post-colonial contexts of the modern Middle East.