50 Fun Facts About Islamic Art

Which white marble mausoleum in Agra did Mughal emperor Shah Jahan commission to house the tomb of his late wife?

The Taj Mahal took more than 20,000 workers and artisans to build, under a board of architects led by the emperor's court architect. Shah Jahan's own tomb was later placed there too.

Which sixth-century Byzantine church in Istanbul was converted into a mosque by Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453?

Hagia Sophia remained the principal mosque of Istanbul for more than 150 years after the conquest. Its minarets were Ottoman additions, not part of the original Byzantine design.

Which Nasrid palace-fortress above Granada takes its name from the Arabic for the reddish colour of its walls?

The Alhambra was begun in 1238 by the first Nasrid emir, and its walls of rammed earth gave it a name meaning the red one. Granada's last sultan surrendered it in 1492.

Which octagonal Jerusalem shrine of the 690s is the oldest surviving work of Islamic architecture?

The Dome of the Rock was built on the orders of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik. Its gold-plated roof is a modern addition, fitted in 1959–64 and again in the 1990s.

The Kaaba in Mecca is draped each year in a new silk cloth, embroidered in gold, of which colour?

Black silk embroidered with gold Qur'anic verses forms the covering, known as the kiswa. A fresh one is made and fitted every year.

Which Istanbul landmark with six minarets takes its popular name from the thousands of tiles lining its interior?

The Blue Mosque was built between 1609 and 1617 for Sultan Ahmed I. Folklore says its six minarets came from an architect mishearing the Turkish for gold minarets.

Twelve marble statues of which animal ring the fountain of a Granada courtyard built by Nasrid sultan Muhammad V?

Lions carved from marble surround the basin, whose rim carries a poem by the court vizier Ibn Zamrak. Water channels link the fountain to smaller ones in four surrounding halls.

Which jewelled seat, made for Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, did Nader Shah carry off to Persia as a war trophy in 1739?

The Peacock Throne took seven years to complete and was named for the jewelled birds displaying their tails on its canopy. It stood in the emperor's Hall of Private Audiences.

Which town in Mali has a Great Mosque of mud brick whose walls are replastered at a yearly festival?

Djenné's whole community joins in each year, with men climbing palm-wood scaffolding to smear fresh plaster over the walls. The building seen there dates from 1907.

Which garden flower, a favourite motif on Ottoman tiles and silks, gave its name to an Ottoman era of the early 1700s?

The Tulip Period ran from 1718 to 1730 and was named for a craze for the flower among Ottoman court society. Tulips filled Istanbul's flower markets, silks and textiles.

Which Ottoman chief architect designed more than 300 structures, including the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne?

Mimar Sinan was about fifty when he was appointed chief royal architect, after learning his engineering in the army. He went on to serve three sultans.

Which mosque wall niche, sometimes traced to the apse of Christian churches, shows worshippers the direction of Mecca?

Mihrab niches spread after one was built into the Prophet's Mosque in the early 700s, on the orders of a local governor. Other scholars trace the form to Buddhist alcove shrines.

Which honeycomb-like decoration of tiered niches most likely first developed in eleventh-century Iraq?

Muqarnas grew out of the squinch and turns a bare structural corner into a smooth, decorative zone of transition. In Iberian architecture the same technique is called mocárabe.

Which angular script, the oldest calligraphic form of Arabic, was used for early copies of the Quran?

Kufic takes its name from Kufa, a city in southern Iraq that was an intellectual centre of the early Islamic period. Its letters are rectilinear and set out along the horizontal.

Which ornament of rhythmic scrolling and interlacing foliage has filled Islamic art since about the ninth century?

Arabesque was known as moresque in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe, where Renaissance designers took up the style for their own decorative art.

Which Anatolian town gave its name to Ottoman ceramics made to rival Chinese porcelain from the late fifteenth century?

Iznik potters could not make true porcelain, so they painted a low-fired fritware body instead. A distinctive bole red joined their palette once tile production took off.

Which Spanish city's Great Mosque, famed for its two-tiered arches, had a Renaissance cathedral nave inserted into it?

Córdoba's mosque became a cathedral in 1236. Charles V, who let the new nave go ahead three centuries later, is reputed to have been displeased when he saw the result.

Which Iranian city's Shah Mosque, begun in 1611 under Abbas the Great, stands on the south side of Naqsh-e Jahan Square?

Isfahan's Shah Mosque is said to contain 18 million bricks and 475,000 tiles. The building was completed around 1630.

Which Uzbek city's Registan square, once the heart of the Timurid Empire, is framed by three grand madrasas?

Samarkand's square gained its first madrasa under the Timurid ruler Ulugh Beg. The other two, the Sherdar and the Tilakari, were added later under the Janid dynasty.

Which mathematician's aperiodic tilings of the 1970s appear to underlie girih patterns on a 1453 shrine in Iran?

Roger Penrose investigated his tilings in the 1970s, about five centuries after craftsmen decorated the Darb-e Imam shrine. Researchers have argued the same geometry underlies its strapwork.

Which Iraqi city's Great Mosque, once the largest in the world, is known for a minaret encircled by a spiral ramp?

Samarra's mosque was commissioned in 848 by the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil. Its tower, the Malwiya, is a spiralling cone 52 metres high.

Which city's Umayyad Mosque, built over a cathedral, is held to be the burial place of John the Baptist's head?

Damascus gained the mosque after the caliph al-Walid I resolved in 706 to build on the cathedral site. Its gold mosaics covered some 4,000 square metres, by some estimates the largest area in the world.

Which city holds the monumental Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Hasan, built for a Mamluk ruler between 1356 and 1363?

Cairo's Sultan Hasan was assassinated in 1361 and his body was never found, so the mausoleum built into the complex never served its purpose.

Which Istanbul complex, the main residence of Ottoman sultans from the 1460s to 1853, became a museum in 1924?

Topkapı Palace lost its role when the court moved to the newly completed Dolmabahçe. Its museum holds Ottoman clothing, weapons, miniatures, religious relics and illuminated manuscripts.

Which epic by the Persian poet Ferdowsi inspired some of the most sumptuous miniature paintings?

The Shahnameh runs to some 50,000 rhyming couplets, more than three times the length of Homer's Iliad. Ferdowsi spent 33 years completing it.

Which Persian miniaturist headed the royal ateliers in Herat and Tabriz under the late Timurids and early Safavids?

Behzad is said to have been orphaned young and raised by the painter Mirak Naqqash, whom he succeeded as head of the Herat ateliers in 1486.

Which Mughal emperor commissioned the vast illustrated Hamzanama about 1562 and founded Fatehpur Sikri as his capital?

Akbar abandoned Fatehpur Sikri in 1585, just fourteen years after founding it, when he left to fight a campaign in Punjab. His manuscript tells the legendary exploits of an uncle of Muhammad.

Which Indian city holds the Qutb Minar, the tallest minaret in the world built of bricks, begun in 1199?

Delhi's tower was started by Qutb ud-Din Aibak as a victory monument, but he finished only the first level. His son-in-law Iltutmish completed it around 1220.

Which inlay of cut, polished coloured stones, matured in Florence, did Mughal craftsmen reinterpret as parchin kari?

Pietra dura was regarded by the Florentines as painting in stone. Small objects from their workshop reached the Mughal court by the early 17th century, where the form took on a native style.

Which calligraphic monogram of an Ottoman sultan was fixed to official documents and stamped on the coins of his reign?

Tughra history at the Ottoman court begins with Orhan, the dynasty's second ruler. Each sultan's was also carved on his seal.

The Pyxis of al-Mughira, carved in 968 for the son of a caliph of Umayyad Spain, is made of which material?

Ivory for the box came from elephant tusk that the caliph imported from North Africa. The little container is thought to have been a coming-of-age present for the prince.

Which Paris museum holds the Baptistère de Saint Louis, a Mamluk brass basin used to baptise the future Louis XIII?

The Louvre keeps the basin in its Islamic Arts department. It was hammered from brass and inlaid with silver and gold by the coppersmith Muhammad ibn al-Zayn, who signed it.

Fine Mamluk mosque lamps of the fourteenth century, enamelled and often gilded, were usually made of which material?

Glass lamps had their enamel painted onto a plain pre-fired body and were then fired a second time. Three pristine examples fetched about £3.4 million between them at Christie's in 2000.

Which subject is typically absent from religious Islamic art, which favours calligraphy and geometric pattern instead?

Living creatures are avoided partly because of the ban on idolatry and partly from a belief that creating living forms is God's prerogative. In secular art, human and animal figures flourished.

Which term describes a prayer hall whose roof rests on rows of columns, the form of many early congregational mosques?

Hypostyle comes from the Ancient Greek for under columns. The same word describes the great hall of the Temple of Karnak in Egypt, raised many centuries before Islam.

In which Arabian city did Muhammad build the Prophet's Mosque, whose early form shaped the plan of later mosques?

Medina's first mosque had a roof of beaten clay and palm leaves held up by palm trunks. Muhammad is buried on the site.

Which mosaic tilework of individually hand-chiseled pieces fell from fashion after the 15th century except in Morocco?

Zellij pieces are fitted together into geometric designs such as radiating stars. The earliest reliably dated Moroccan example is on the minaret of the Kutubiyya Mosque.

Which mosque pulpit, climbed by a straight flight of steps, is where the imam stands to deliver sermons?

Minbar steps usually run in a straight line on the same axis as the seat, unlike many Christian pulpits. In use it is closer to a church lectern, serving for readings and prayers too.

Which vaulted hall with one open end, a trademark of the Parthian Empire, later defined Persian mosque courtyards?

Iwan halls are pre-Islamic Iranian in origin and were fully developed in Mesopotamia around the third century. Four of them set around a courtyard form one of Islamic architecture's most characteristic plans.

Which architect was coaxed out of retirement to design Doha's Museum of Islamic Art on its own stand-alone island?

I. M. Pei turned down every site he was offered and asked for an island instead, so that no later building could crowd the museum.

Which Gulf capital's Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque has 82 domes, more than 1,000 columns and a vast hand-knotted carpet?

Abu Dhabi's mosque carpet weighs 35 tons and took around 1,200 to 1,300 knotters to make. The chandeliers overhead incorporate millions of Swarovski crystals.

Which city's Hassan II Mosque stands on a promontory over the Atlantic and has a retractable roof?

Casablanca's mosque was completed in 1993, and its 60-storey minaret is topped by a laser whose light is directed towards Mecca.

The four-part charbagh garden of Persia and Mughal India, divided by waterways, represents which place in the Quran?

Paradise is described in the Quran with four gardens and four rivers, which the layout mirrors. The design itself goes back to the royal gardens of the Achaemenid Empire.

Which city's museums hold the Mshatta Facade, an Umayyad palace front given by an Ottoman sultan to Kaiser Wilhelm II?

Berlin received a large part of the 8th-century facade in 1903. It came from Qasr Mshatta, one of the Desert Castles of Jordan, and is installed in the Pergamon Museum.

Which German portraitist at Henry VIII's court gives his name to Ottoman carpets shown in Renaissance paintings?

Hans Holbein painted one such carpet in The Ambassadors, although the designs appear in paintings from many decades before his time.

Which Iranian city names a pair of carpets woven in 1539–40, the larger held by London's Victoria and Albert Museum?

The Ardabil pair was sold in 1890 to a British dealer, who restored one carpet using pieces of the other. The smaller survivor is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Which Tunisian town's Great Mosque, founded by Uqba ibn Nafi around 670, became the model for later Maghreb mosques?

Kairouan's mosque is one of the oldest places of worship in the Islamic world. Some of its column shafts are red porphyry imported from Egypt, and others are white marble from Italy.

Which tenth-century Abbasid vizier, a master calligrapher, is traditionally credited with the proportioned script?

Ibn Muqla held the vizierate three times before a rival had him imprisoned and his right hand cut off. Admirers called him a prophet in the field of handwriting.

Which English city's university holds parchment leaves of the Quran radiocarbon dated in 2015 to between 568 and 645?

Birmingham's leaves belong to the Mingana Collection in the university's Cadbury Research Library. The date range is striking because Muhammad lived from about 570 to 632.

Which leader gives his title to the museum of Islamic art that opened in Toronto in 2014, designed by Fumihiko Maki?

The Aga Khan Museum shares its 6.8-hectare site with Toronto's Ismaili Centre, the work of the Indian architect Charles Correa.