Let us imagine an experiment: you have an hour to kill; idly and for the simple pleasure of having beautiful pictures before your eyes, you page through a collection of art works of all sorts. Greek statues follow Egyptian tomb paintings, embroidered Japanese screens follow bas-reliefs from Indian temples. As you turn the pages, your gaze falls successively on a panel of sculptured plaster from one of the halls of the Alhambra, on a page of an Egyptian Qur'an, then on the engraved decorations of a Persian copper bowl. Rudimentary as your artistic education is, you immediately identify the last three pictures as belonging to Muslim art. Without being capable of identifying in which country any of these was made, you are not inclined even for an instant to attribute them to any place other than the Muslim world.