section_path: Arts and culture/Art
section_name: Art
paragraph_text: Art
  
  Calligraphy, an essential aspect of written Arabic, developed in manuscripts and architectural decoration. This form of visual art can be found adorning the walls of palaces, the interior and domes of mosques as well as the surrounding structure of minbars. Calligraphy would use a variety of stylised and standardised scripts, two major scripts among them being kufic and naskh. Ceramics, metalwork and glassware were also brilliantly decorated with geometric patterns and vibrant colors.
  
  Manuscript illumination was an important art, and Persian miniature painting flourished in the Persianate world, and went on to influence miniature art in the Ottoman and Mughal court between the 16th–17th centuries. Very few surviving records of wall painting exists, especially ones that represented the human face. A rare example of this are the early 9th-century fragments from the ruins of the Dar al-Khilafah palace at Samarra from the Abbasid period. These are fragments of larger wall paintings depicting harem women, period-era clothing and animals.