110 art: further reading and Gulshah), copied in Konya around 1250, which gives an account of a tragic love story Central Asia: The Mongol Invasion of P ersia and the I lkhanid D ynasty (13th Century to 14th Century) The greatest Mongol conqueror was Genghis Khan (ca 1162– 1227) He was able to gather under a single banner the numerous Turk-Mongol tribes and dominate a territory from Europe to China In 1258 one of his descendents, Hülegü (ca 1217–65) conquered Baghdad, defeated the Abbasids, and founded the Ilkhanid Dynasty (1256–1353), whose capital was established in Tabriz (today in Azerbaijan, formerly part of the Soviet Union) During the Ilkhanid reign, the economy and the arts developed significantly The artisans were known in the Islamic world for the elegance of their pieces and the extensive use of Chinese art patterns In pottery the so-called ceramic of Sultanabad technique and the lajvardina technique were employed to create tiles and everyday objects Ceramic of Sultanabad pieces were characterized by the depiction of animals, birds, and human beings on a background of lotus flowers, typical of Chinese art The colors chosen were black and brown Lajvardina (from Persian, meaning “blue” or “of lapis lazuli”) ware is distinguished by a series of geometric patterns in red, black, white, and gold colors on a blue background In the summer residence at Takht-i-Sulaiman the northern wing is enriched with lajvardina star-shaped and cross-shaped tiles, decorated with enameled and golden dragons, taken again from the iconography of Chinese art Ilkhanid artisans embellished the interiors of buildings with stucco The beautiful mihrab in the Winter Mosque in Isfahan (Iran) and the colored stucco decoration of the vault in the Mausoleum of Öljeitü at Sultaniya, the second capital of the Ilkhanid Empire, are especially distinctive The cupola exterior of the same mausoleum is trimmed with both faience mosaic and the banna-i, with which the craftsmen created holy names and sentences by alternating bricks and enamels The Ilkhanids were masters in the production of Koran books and miniature paintings The most famous calligrapher was Yaqut al-Mustasimi (1242–98), who copied a series of beautiful one-volume Koran books Although the manuscripts were small, they were extremely precious because of the skill of the artist, who inserted on the pages fine rosettes and marginal ornamentations in gold Yaqut’s successors, on the other hand, produced 30-volume Koran books of large dimensions The most celebrated book, decorated with miniature paintings, is the Shahnameh (Book of Kings) by Firdawsi (ca 935–ca 1020 or 26) The Shahnameh is the epic national poem and was discovered in Tabriz around 1335 It was pro- duced in two volumes and is decorated with 300 miniatures Since the pages have been removed from the volumes and sold for public and private collections all over the world, it is difficult to conceive of the work in its complexity The beauty of the single page, however, reveals the high level of expertise reached by the painter See also adornment; agriculture; alchemy and magic; architecture; astronomy; building techniques and materials; calendars and clocks; crafts; death and burial practices; economy; empires and dynasties; household goods; inventions; literature; metallurgy; migration and population movements; religion and cosmology; sacred sites; social organization; storage and preservation; textiles and needlework; trade and exchange; war and conquest; writing further reading Esin Atil, Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981) Fatima Bercht et al., eds., Taíno: Pre-Columbian Art and Culture from the Caribbean (New York: Monacelli Press, 1997) Jean M Borgatti and Richard Brilliant, Likeness and Beyond: Portraits from Africa and the World (New York: Center for African Art, 1990) Martyn Bramwell, ed., The International Book of Wood (New York: Crescent Books, 1987) Jerrilynn D Dodds, ed., Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992) Henry John Drewal, John Pemberton III, and Rowland Abiodun, Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (New York: Center for African Art, 1989) Robert Edwards and Bruce Guerin, Aboriginal Bark Paintings (London: Robert Hale, 1973) Ekpo Eyo and Frank Willett, Treasures of Ancient Nigeria (New York: Knopf, 1980) Gabriele Fahr-Becker, ed., The Art of East Asia (Cologne, Germany: Konemann, 1999) Peter Garlake, Early Art and Architecture of Africa (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2002) Maud Girard-Geslan, Marijke J Klokke, Albert le Bonheur, et al., Art of Southeast Asia (New York: Harry N Abrams, 1998) Rachel Hasson, Early Islamic Jewellery (Jerusalem: L A Mayer Memorial Institute for Islamic Art, 1987) Herbert L Kessler, Seeing Medieval Art (Peterborough, Canada: Broadview Press, 2004) Henry Luttikhuizen and Dorothy Verkerk, Medieval Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, 4th–14th Century, rev ed (New York: Prentice Hall, 2005) Mary Ellen Miller, The Art of Mesoamerica: From Olmec to Aztec, 4th ed (London: Thames and Hudson, 2006) Catherine Noppe and Jean-Franỗois Hubert, Art of Vietnam (New York: Parkstone Press, 2003) Pratapaditya Pal, Art of the Himalayas: Treasures from Nepal and Tibet (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1991)