Islamic miniature

Islamic miniatures are small paintings on paper, usually book or manuscript illustrations but also sometimes separate artworks, intended for muraqqa albums. The earliest examples date from around 1000, with a flourishing of the artform from around 1200. The field is divided by scholars into four types, Arabic, Persian, Mughal (Indian), Ottoman (Turkish) .^[1][2]

As in the art history of Europe, "miniature" is generally reserved for images including people, with abstract or geometrical decorative schemes on the pages of books called "illumination". These are much more common, and less sensitive, often found in grand copies of the Quran, as for example in Ottoman illumination.