Art History as Political History, a critique of the political approach in Islamic Art Historiography

The dominance of political approach in historiography was challenged in late 19th century and contemporary to the emergence of the new approaches in historiography. In their attempt to challenge traditional paradigm of historiography, historians presented some new models and approaches in historiography which are called “new history”. Different sources of Islamic art and architecture, after nearly two centuries of the emergence of this field of study and one year of its entrance into the academy which led into the production of many texts on the artistic heritage of Islamic civilization, has formed a specific historiographical tradition called “Islamic art historiographical tradition” by the authors of this paper. Had we criticize this historiographical tradition according to the “new history” paradigm, we would come into significant results. This research seeks to reveal the political approach in Islamic art historiography and criticize its dominant traditional historiographical paradigm. This is a qualitative study. Data are gathered from library and are analyzed with thematic analysis technique. Results show that the main sources and texts of Islamic art history had almost chosen political perspective for their historical narration of the story of art in Islamic countries and thus have marginalized great parts of the artistic heritage of Islamic civilization.