Professors Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair (Boston College), Professor Walter B. Denny (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) and Artstor have collaborated on the digitization of more than 19,000 images of the art and architecture of Islam from the combined personal archives of this team of leading scholar/ photographers.

While all three scholars focus on the study of Islamic art and architecture, they have diverging specialties: Sheila Blair studies Iran and Central Asia, the art and architecture produced under the Mongols, and calligraphy and books; Jonathan Bloom centers on the history of paper, and art in the medieval Mediterranean world; and  Walter B. Denny’s interests lie in the artistic traditions of the Ottoman Turks, Islamic carpets and textiles, and issues of economics and patronage in Islamic art.

This collection in Artstor is as diverse as the specialties of these scholars. It includes architecture, ceramics, carpets and textiles, metalwork, ivories, stone inlay and other decorative arts, manuscripts and much more from historic centers across the Islamic world – Esfahan, Istanbul, Agra, Fez, Baghdad and beyond.