Fatimid
- Scope note
- Refers to the art and culture associated with the Islamic Berber dynasty of this name that ruled in Ifriqiya (modern Tunisia) from 909 to 972 and in Egypt from 969 to 1171. The Fatimids, of the Shi'a sect, traced their ancestry back to Fatima, the daughter of Muhammad. The Fatimids had many rivals to contend with as well as the challenge of the Crusaders. Fatimid art is noteworthy for its internationalism: it bridges the east and west of the Islamic world and it was open to the Hellenic heritage of the Mediterranean and to some ideas from Christian powers to the north. Although Fatimid artists continued to use materials and techniques developed by the Tulunids, the abstraction favored by the Tulunids was replaced by an interest in exploring the tradition of figurative representation inherited from Iraq. Painting, book illustration, wood and ivory carving, and glass, ceramic and textile design bear figurative decoration unparalleled in contemporary Islamic art. An interest in naturalism is also evident. The iconography of Fatimid art is often indebted to Abbasid court art. Just as figural traditions were being developed, so were designs based on infinite systems of linear pattern; this form of ornamentation became one of the most successful forms of abstract Islamic art. Figural art was inappropriate for religious buildings, which were instead decorated with a vigorous new style of stone carving typically featuring elegant inscriptions in a distinctive form of kufic script elaborated with foliate and floral elements. A conch shell motif known from late antiquity was popular with the Fatimids, as seen on the façade of the mosque of al-Akmar. Nothing has survived of the two Fatimid palaces that stood in the center of Cairo but accounts of them attest to their magnificence.
- Date of creation: 18-Nov-2024
Accepted term: 18-Nov-2024 
