Masoumeh Madani Pour, Ligatus Research Centre, University of the Arts London

A closer look: Exploring the depiction of books in Islamic paintings

Despite the fact that enough information about Islamic manuscripts cannot be found in the literature, but some information can be collected from what artists have recorded in their paintings. Artists have shown many details about book in their Islamic paintings.

In this paper I will illustrate the features of book that can be found by looking at Islamic paintings. Furthermore I will investigate if we can rely on paintings to gather empirical information about books, information such as, writing surfaces, codex size or book decoration.

Also some questions will be explored like, who could afford books? How and where book production took place? What kinds of tools were used to make books? How were books preserved? Whether there are images of not only men, but women with books.

In this journey it will come to light how such small scale, yet detailed paintings can answer our many questions.