West and Central Asia: every key term you need (+ practice quiz)
34 flashcard terms for AP Art History Unit 7, written to match the course framework. Study them here, then drill them as interactive flashcards, or test yourself with the 20-question quiz — free, no account needed.
Arts c. 500 BCE–1980 CE: Persia, the Buddhist Silk Road, and the Islamic world — empire, pilgrimage, and the arts of the book and ornament.
Persepolis
Iran, c. 520–465 BCE. Achaemenid ceremonial capital of Darius and Xerxes; its Apadana reliefs show delegations from across the empire bearing tribute.
Apadana
Persepolis's hypostyle audience hall whose stairway reliefs process 23 subject nations — imperial harmony choreographed in stone.
Bamiyan Buddhas
Afghanistan, c. 400–800 CE. Colossal rock-cut Buddhas (55 and 38 m) on the Silk Road, coated in painted plaster; dynamited by the Taliban in 2001.
The Kaaba
Mecca, pre-Islamic origins; Islamic form 631–632 CE onward. Granite cube draped in the kiswah, the qibla of global Muslim prayer and focus of the hajj.
Kiswah
The black silk textile embroidered with gold Qur'anic calligraphy that annually re-drapes the Kaaba — textile as sacred architecture.
Jowo Rinpoche
Lhasa, Tibet. Gilt-bronze image of the young Buddha in the Jokhang, brought (by tradition) in 641 CE; Tibet's most venerated statue, richly re-adorned by pilgrims.
Dome of the Rock
Jerusalem, 691–692 CE. Umayyad octagonal shrine over the sacred rock, sheathed in mosaics and later tiles — early Islam announcing itself amid Christian and Jewish monuments.
Aniconism in Islamic Religious Art
Avoidance of figural imagery in mosques and shrines; ornament turns to calligraphy, geometry, and vegetal arabesque instead.
Great Mosque of Isfahan
Iran, begun c. 700 with major Seljuk and Safavid phases. Four-iwan courtyard plan, brick domes, and muqarnas — a compendium of Iranian mosque design.
Iwan
A vaulted hall open on one side to a courtyard; the four-iwan plan invented in Iran became standard for mosques and madrasas.
Muqarnas
Honeycomb-like tiers of niche elements dissolving structural transitions into ornament, as in Isfahan's vaults — geometry made celestial.
Folio from a Qur'an (Kufic)
Arab world, c. 8th–9th c. Parchment page in horizontal format with angular kufic script and gold vowel markers — calligraphy as the supreme Islamic art.
Kufic Script
Early angular Arabic script used for monumental Qur'ans and architectural inscription; legibility subordinated to sacred rhythm.
Basin (Baptistère de Saint Louis)
Egypt/Syria, c. 1320–1340. Mamluk brass basin inlaid with gold and silver hunting and court scenes by Muhammad ibn al-Zain; later used for French royal baptisms.
Bahram Gur Fights the Karg
Folio from the Great Il-Khanid Shahnama, c. 1330–1340. Persian hero slays a horned monster — Mongol patrons claiming Iranian kingship through the Book of Kings.
Shahnama
Firdawsi's Persian 'Book of Kings' (c. 1010), the epic whose illustrated copies let successive dynasties graft themselves onto Iran's royal past.
The Court of Gayumars
Sultan Muhammad, c. 1522–1525. Folio from Shah Tahmasp's Shahnama: the first king's court in a paradise of rocks and blossoms — a summit of Persian painting.
Court art of the book: jewel-like opaque watercolor, high viewpoints, tilted ground planes, and figures integrated into ornamental landscape.
Ardabil Carpet
Iran, 1539–1540. One of a pair of enormous Safavid medallion carpets (roughly 25 million knots) made for the Ardabil shrine; signed by Maqsud of Kashan.
Medallion Carpet Design
A central sunburst medallion with pendant lamps and corner quarters — the Ardabil's scheme, echoing bookbinding and dome decoration.
Mosque of Selim II, Edirne
Sinan, 1568–1575. Ottoman masterpiece: a vast dome on eight piers with four pencil minarets — Sinan's answer to Hagia Sophia, which he sought to surpass.
Sinan
Chief Ottoman court architect (c. 1489–1588) whose hundreds of buildings refined the centralized domed mosque to structural and luminous clarity.
Iznik Tiles
Ottoman ceramics with cobalt, turquoise, and tomato-red underglaze floral designs, sheathing mosques like the Selimiye's interior.
Petra, Treasury (Al-Khazneh)
Jordan, c. 400 BCE–100 CE. Nabataean rock-cut tomb facade mixing Hellenistic orders with local invention on the caravan routes.
Buddhism on the Silk Road
Merchant routes carried Buddhism from India through Central Asia to China; cave sanctuaries and colossal Buddhas (Bamiyan) marked the way.
Calligraphy's Primacy
Because the Qur'an is God's word in Arabic, beautiful writing became Islam's most honored art, outranking figural painting.
Arabesque
Scrolling, infinitely extendable vegetal ornament suggesting the boundless nature of creation in Islamic design.
Geometric Ornament
Star-and-polygon interlace built from compass-and-straightedge constructions — mathematical order as theological metaphor.
Mihrab and Qibla
The qibla wall faces Mecca; its mihrab niche concentrates prayer's direction and often the building's richest ornament.
Pilgrimage (Hajj)
The obligatory Meccan pilgrimage that gives the Kaaba its function: circumambulation (tawaf) makes moving bodies part of the monument's meaning.
Cultural Heritage Destruction
The 2001 dynamiting of the Bamiyan Buddhas made deliberate destruction of art a global political issue — context now includes absence.
Mamluk Metalwork
Cairo and Damascus workshops inlaid brass with silver and gold figural and calligraphic friezes for elite and export markets, e.g., ibn al-Zain's basin.
Ilkhanid Patronage
Mongol rulers of Iran commissioned Persian epics and histories, using art to legitimate foreign rule — the Great Mongol Shahnama is the prime example.