The bright blue-green Turquoise has been valued and revered for centuries by all the cultures around the world that had access to it. Several original sources of the stone are now long gone, having been mined to remove...

The 17th century world map from an Ottoman book on the discovery of the Americas “Tarih-i Hind-i Garbi” (“History of the West Indies”) points Mecca and the Kaaba as the centre of the world. Indeed, the centrality of...

Granada, a Moorish Stronghold The fall of Granada to the Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 marked the end of the Reconquista and the ultimate collapse of al-Andalus, the Islamic territory that had stretched across the Iberian...

I’m sure you’re well acquainted with European royal portraiture. But have you ever seen portraits of rulers from beyond Europe? I want to show you a stunning example from Persia, contemporary Iran. Time for Qajar portraits of Fath...

Mainstream art history often brushes off the artists who do not originate from Western Europe and North America. The masterpiece ‘canon’ barely includes any non-western art, and all the Old Masters are European, too. At DailyArtDaily we want...

What is a mihrab? It’s a typically semi-circular niche in the mosque. It’s usually inserted in the centre of the Quibla wall, the wall which points towards Mecca, the holy direction of Muslim prayer. With time, mihrabs turned from...

At the moment, Islam is a difficult topic to talk about. Yet art is beyond all that. We want to show you how beautiful and unique buildings Islam has created for us. Here are the wonders of Islamic architecture: 1....