Abbasid art
The arts of the Abbasid Caliphate covered ceramics, textiles, glassware, metalwork, painting, stucco, and especially the production of decorated Qur’ans. Ceramics became a leading art form, with the invention of lustreware—glazed pottery painted to look metallic—marking a major improvement that spread across the region. Lustreware likely borrowed ideas from glassmaking and then transformed ceramic decoration, featuring yellow-brown, green, and purple glazes along with geometric patterns, Kufic lettering, arabesques, and figures such as animals or humans. Samarra, the Abbasids’ capital for a time, produced some of the finest 9th-century pieces, and lustreware tiles were made as well. Glassware also grew in importance, with 9th-century pieces from Samarra echoing earlier Sassanian forms and including bottles, flasks, vases, and cups decorated with moldings, honeycomb patterns, and Kufic inscriptions.
Textiles were another vital art form, especially inscribed tiraz fabrics. Egypt’s textile workshops—where Copts worked—were famous for linen and silk, with Tinnis housing thousands of looms. Fabrics carried royal inscriptions and sometimes liquid gold, and complex stamping produced intricate colors and designs. Abbasid fashion flourished and became cosmopolitan, influenced by Persian court dress. Caliphs wore lavish robes, kaftans, and turbans, and rules discouraged flashy color clashes while allowing rich materials such as silk, satin, and brocade. The court’s color symbolism was notable, with black becoming a distinctive ceremonial color and yellow avoided in others.
Metalwork from the period is less well-preserved because precious metals were often melted down, but remarkable pieces survive. Bronze and brass objects have been found, and a notable copper-alloy bird-shaped pouring vessel from 796–797 CE in the Hermitage shows early inlay and floral decoration. Iranian pieces continued Sasanian traditions in silver, while Abbasid metalwork sometimes revived inlay techniques that would influence later Islamic metal arts.
Painting and stucco decoration flourished in Abbasid architecture. Early Abbasid painting is not abundant, but Samarra’s palace walls reveal lively scenes and carved stucco dadoes with strong Sassanian influence, depicting harems, dancing figures, and garments within scrollwork. Nishapur developed its own painting school, with 8th–9th-century works in monochrome and color, including scenes of hunting nobles and stylized flora. Abbasid stucco often used vegetal and abstract motifs, and its style spread from Iraq to places as far as Balkh in Afghanistan and Ibn Tulun’s mosque in Egypt.
Islamic manuscript arts, especially Qur’ans, were central to Abbasid culture. The period saw a flourishing of Qur’anic production and the growth of Arabic calligraphy, binding, and illumination. Paper began to replace parchment in the late 8th century, enabling more elaborate book arts. Kufic script was the first dominant Abbasid style, known for precise, angular letters and generous spacing. In the late 9th and early 10th centuries, Abu Ali Ibn Muqla introduced the New Abbasid style, with vertical, highly angular letters and a system of proportional writing that transformed both script and page layout. Illumination moved from simple geometric and vegetal motifs to richer decorations that accommodated the denser script, including frontispieces and divisions within texts. The main binding method was the binding-cum-case, where a Qur’an was housed in a wooden or leather chest for protection. A notable manuscript from this era is the Amajur Qur’an, copied in Kufic script on parchment, bound in leather, and stored in a protective chest, reflecting the high standards of 9th-century Abbasid bookmaking.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 14:26 (CET).