In the seventeenth century, the Persian city of Isfahan was a crossroads of international trade and diplomacy. Manuscript paintings produced within the city’s various cultural, religious, and ethnic groups reveal the vibrant artistic legacy of the Safavid Empire. Published to coincide with an exhibition at the Getty Museum, Book Arts of Isfahan offers a fascinating account of the ways in which the artists of Isfahan used their art to record the life around them and at the same time define their own identities within a complex society.

This illustrated book gives a unique introduction to the world of Shah 'Abbas and the beautiful mosque and shrines that he created and adorned in the so-called golden age of Persian art.

In the early 1400s, Iranian elites began migrating to the Deccan plateau of southern India. Lured to the region for many reasons, these poets, traders, statesmen, and artists of all kinds left an indelible mark on the Islamic sultanates that ruled the Deccan until the late seventeenth century. The result was the creation of a robust transregional Persianate network linking such distant cities as Bidar and Shiraz, Bijapur and Isfahan, and Golconda and Mashhad. Iran and the Deccan explores the circulation of art, culture, and talent between Iran and the Deccan over a three-hundred-year period. Its interdisciplinary contributions consider the factors that prompted migration, the physical and intellectual poles of connectivity between the two regions, and processes of adaptation and response. Placing the Deccan at the center of Indo-Persian and early modern global history, Iran and the Deccan reveals how mobility, liminality, and cultural translation nuance the traditional methods and boundaries of the humanities.

Drawing on studies of kings from Cyrus to Shah Abbas, this volume provides a rich variety of readings on royal authority and its limitations in medieval societies in both Europe and the Middle East, exemplified especially in the case of Alexander the Great, God and King, and the persistence of his legend in later eras.

The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field. This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50 specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)

SHAH ʻABBAS (1571–1629) is the most well-known king of Iran’s Safavid dynasty (1501–1722), ruling at the height of its power and prestige. When Shah ‘Abbas came to power his country was in chaos. Yet within eleven years he had regained territory lost to his enemies, moved his capital city and begun a transformation of Iranian society. Few aspects of life were unaffected by his policies and the new capital he built, the spectacular Isfahan, is still referred to as nisf-i jahan, or “half the world”, by Iranians today. In this wide-ranging profile, Sholeh A. Quinn explores Shah ʻAbbas’s rise to power and his subsequent interactions with religious movements and artistic developments, reaching beyond the historical narrative to assess the true impact of the man and his politics. Thought provoking and comprehensive, this account is ideal for readers interested in uncovering the life and thoughts of a man who ruled during a period described by many as a golden age for the arts in Iran.

Shah Abbas (1571-1629) was shah of Iran from 1588 (when he assumed power by deposing his father, whom he later murdered) until his death in 1629. He is of critical importance in the history of Iran, restoring the power of the Safavids through war and the strategic negotiation of peace. He is still acclaimed for his strong and decisive rule and the architectural achievements of his reign although he is also recognised as a tyrant, whose paranoia (probably justified) caused him to imprison and assassinate many of his own relatives including his own son, ultimately leaving the throne to his grandson.Remarkably, this is the first biography of Shah Abbas in English. "On a Persian Throne" combines rigorous scholarship with a popular style to produce the definitive, accessible and objective biography of this seminal figure in Iranian history.