West & Central Asia

500 BCE – 1980 CE

Enduring Understandings

Arts of West and Central Asia play a key role in the history of world art, giving form to vast cultural interchanges that have occurred in these lands, linking European and Asian peoples.

Religious arts are united by Buddhism & Islam.

Use of figural art in religious contexts varies among traditions.

Artists excelled in creation of particular forms of art unique to their regions & cultures. (ceramics, metalwork, textiles, painting & calligraphy)

Petra, Jordan: Treasury & Great

Temple400 BCE – 100 CE

Petra’s Architecture

Its architecture features a broken pediment and central tholos (a circular building) on the upper level; this architectural composition originated in Alexandria. Ornate Corinthian columns are used throughout. Above the broken pediments, the bases of two obelisks appear and stretch upwards into the rock. 

Petra, Great Temple

Buddha Bamiyan,

Afghanistan 400-800 CE

The KaabaMecca, Saudi Arabia

631-632 CE

Jowo RinpocheEnshrined in Jokhang

TempleLhasa, Tibet 641 CE

Dome of the RockJerusalem, Palestine

691-692 CE

Dome of the Rock floor plan

Do you smell what the Dome of the Rock is cookin’ ?!?!

Great MosqueIsfahan, Iran - 700CE

Folio from a Qur’anArab, North Africa

800-900 CE

BasinBaptistere de St. Louis

1320-1340 CE

Bahram Gur Fights the Karg1330 – 1340 CE

The Court of Gayumars

1522-1525 CE

The Ardabil Carpet1539-1540 CE