7.3 Interactions Within and Across Cultures in West and Central Asian Art

This region links Europe, Africa and Asia. The Silk Road, a network of overland trade routes, ran through it from the Mediterranean to China and India, carrying goods, people, religions and styles. Hellenistic (Greek-style) architecture, Buddhist sculpture, Chinese motifs in Persian painting, and tile decoration all traveled this way.

Trade also spread the region's own art. Textiles were probably its most important export, and Iznik ceramics and Islamic metalwork, some even with Christian subjects, were made for buyers around the Mediterranean. Later, Persian court art of the Timurid and Safavid dynasties shaped Ottoman art in Turkey and Mughal art in India.

Petra, Jordan: Treasury and Great Temple (Nabataean Ptolemaic and Roman; c. 400 BCE–100 CE; cut rock). The Nabataeans, an Arab people, grew rich by controlling caravan routes for incense and spices. At their capital, Petra, they carved buildings straight into the rose-colored sandstone cliffs, working from the top down. The Treasury, about 40 meters tall, faces you at the end of a narrow gorge called the Siq. It was most likely a royal tomb; the name comes from a later legend about treasure in the urn on top. Its two-story facade uses Corinthian columns, pediments and a round pavilion in the style of Hellenistic Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt. The free-standing Great Temple was a large complex with columns topped by elephant heads. Rome took over Petra in 106 CE.

Buddha (Bamiyan, Afghanistan; Gandharan; c. 400–800 CE (destroyed in 2001); cut rock with plaster and polychrome paint). In the Bamiyan valley, a stop on the Silk Road, monks carved two colossal standing Buddhas into a cliff, about 55 and 38 meters tall, surrounded by caves for monks and wall paintings. Sculptors cut the rough shape from rock, then modeled robe folds in mud plaster and painted them. Radiocarbon dates suggest the statues were made in the 500s and early 600s. The style grows out of Gandharan art, which blended Indian Buddhist and Greco-Roman ideas: the robe's heavy, rhythmic folds recall Roman drapery. The Chinese monk Xuanzang saw them around 630. In 2001 the Taliban blew them up as idols, despite worldwide protest; today only the empty niches remain.

Dome of the Rock (Jerusalem; Islamic, Umayyad; 691–692 CE, with multiple renovations; stone masonry and wooden roof decorated with glazed ceramic tile, mosaics, and gilt aluminum and bronze dome). The Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik built it over a rock sacred to Jews, as the site of the ancient Temple, and to Muslims, who later linked it to Muhammad's Night Journey. It is a shrine, not a mosque.

Its builders borrowed from Byzantine Christian architecture. The central plan, an octagon with a dome on a drum, ringed by two walkways for circling the rock, resembles Christian shrines such as the rotunda of the nearby Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Mosaicists trained in Byzantine methods covered the interior in gold-ground mosaics of plants, vases and jewels, but no people. A long Arabic inscription stresses that God is one and calls Jesus a prophet, not God's son: a message aimed at the city's Christians. So the building announced Islam's arrival in a language its audience already knew. The outside mosaics were replaced with tiles under the Ottoman sultan Suleiman in the 1500s, and the gilded dome covering is modern.

Folio from a Qur'an (Arab, North Africa, or Near East; Abbasid; c. eighth to ninth century CE; ink, color, and gold on parchment). Muslims believe the Qur'an is God's word revealed to Muhammad in Arabic, so copying it beautifully is an act of devotion. This page uses Kufic, an angular script with letters stretched sideways, in only a few lines on a wide, horizontal page. Red dots mark vowels, and gold ornaments mark the ends of verses. Kufic Qur'ans were made across the early Islamic world, which is why the CED's attribution covers such a large area. Later Qur'ans moved to paper and rounder scripts.

Figures follow a clear rule. Islamic religious art, such as mosques and Qur'ans, uses calligraphy, geometry and plant forms, not images of people. Secular art, such as metalwork and Shahnama paintings, is full of hunters, courtiers and heroes; even a prophet may appear in an illustrated poem, but never in a Qur'an. Buddhist art is the opposite: images of the Buddha and other holy figures are central to worship.