Islamic Aesthetics

Is there something unique about Islamic art? This book argues that there is not - that Islam does not play a leading role in the aesthetic judgements that we make about objects created in the Islamic world. Oliver Leaman challenges all these ideas, showing them to be misguided. Instead, he suggests that the sort of criteria we should apply to Islamic art are identical to the criteria applicable to art in general, and that the attempt to put Islamic art into a special category is a resultof orientalism.