• Note from Founder and Director of NYU Center for Dialogues
• Introduction
• Changing impressions: Muslim Voices: Arts and Ideas
• The Arts of Islam in the Eyes of the West: A Historical View
• Cultural exchanges: viewing history through gifts and commerce
• Gift exchanges: Harun al-Rashid and Charlemagne
• Gift exchanges: Venice and the Ottoman Empire
• Commerce: coins, jewelry, and other goods
• Commerce: twentieth-century changes
• Creative Lives Under Changing Circumstances
• Early Muslim Society
• The Post-Mongol Muslim World
• The Early Modern Muslim World
• The Muslim World in 1900
• The Muslim World Today
• The Arts of Islam: A Brief History
• A. Poetry and Song
• B. Quranic Chant
• C. Calligraphy
• D. Belles Lettres
• E. Music and Dance
• F. Theater
• G. Painting, Sculpture, and Design
• H. Architecture
• Islamic Art Today
• Conclusion
• Recommended Further Reading
  General
• Poetry and Prose: Arabic
• Poetry and Prose: Persian
• Poetry and Prose: Turkish
• Poetry and Prose: Urdu
• Quranic Chant
• Music and Song
• Calligraphy
• Painting and Design
• Architecture
• Theater and Cinema
• Dance
• Videologue

Cultural exchanges: viewing history through gifts and commerce

A more benign grand narrative that highlights rather then buries these facts is sorely needed in today’s climate of religious animosity. Fortunately, there are a wealth of materials that support a retelling of history in which there is a continual flow of cultural influences between European society and the Muslim world, and a joint exploration of a common heritage from classical antiquity. The debt owed by European philosophers, theologians, and scientists to translations of books from Arabic into Latin has been abundantly studied, though sadly it is often misrepresented as purely a transmission of Greek lore from the Hellenistic era with little or no mention of the important additions, refinements, and intellectual breakthroughs made by Muslim scholars.