(back to: Palm Tree Books Home Page) (back to: description of
Five Essays on Islamic Art) If Islamic art is an outgrowth of
Late Antique art that does not mean that Islamic art is only
late Late Antique art, or even that most of Late Antique art
survives in Islamic art. The most obvious difference between the
two is the lack of figural representation in Islamic religious
art and a shift in the use of figural representation in secular
art in the Islamic world. The difference between religious and
secular usage is important to observe. The Umayyad palaces of
the inland Levant, such as Mushattâ and Khirbat al-Mafjar, show
that the art of the early Muslims was not entirely devoid of
figural imagery (Mushattâ, triangle A; Small apsed room, Bath
Hall, Khirbat al-Mafjar; Caryatid in Bath Hall entry, Khirbat
al-Mafjar). It was early religious art and architecture,
monuments such as the Dome of the Rock or the Great Mosque of
Damascus (Dome of the Rock, interior of the octagonal arcade,
pier 5; mosaic in W arcade, Gre