ABSTRACT
Although there remains a persistent belief that the religion of Islam, in its myriad expressions, opposed images and the creation of paintings, painting was consistently practiced in the historical Islamic lands, especially in books. The size of the book, and comparisons to Western medieval manuscripts, led scholars to reference painting in Islamic codices as “miniatures.” For Islamic material, however, the term is restricted to painting—generally in polychrome—alone and not to the illuminations in gold and opaque pigments that accompany books.
