Mosaic glass enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the Islamic
world, in the eighth and ninth centuries in Mesopotamia and
probably Syria. The majority of extant Islamic mosaic objects
were unearthed at the site of Samarra, the capital of the
cAbbasid dynasty (7501258) founded on the Tigris River in 836
A.D. To our knowledge, no specific term for this type of glass
was used in the Islamic world; since the fifteenth century, it
has commonly been known as millefiori (Italian for "thousand
flowers"). Mosaic glass first appeared in Egypt about 1400 B.C.
and has been produced intermittently for 3,500 years up to the
present day. The technique gained popularity in different areas
of glass production, usually for short periods. It is seen in
the Hellenistic art (332165 B.C.) after ancient Egypt, then in
Rome and Alexandria in the fourth century A.D. There is no
evidence of continuity between late antiquity and the eighth
century, and the Islamic manifestation of the technique was
probably an attempt to imitate and