What art was for

This lesson asks you to identify the functions of different kinds of art works in past and present societies. The museum offers three cases from the Islamic past: a script used for copying the Qur'an and for monuments, coins that carry a message, and inscriptions on the gates and facades of Cairo. Examples from other societies and from today come from your class. ¹

For each record, write one sentence on what the work was made to do, and one on who was meant to see or use it.

Choose one record and list every function the record suggests. Then name a work from today that does the same job, and say how it differs.

Read one coin closely. The booklet Islamic Coins, published in Doha, describes a Ghurid coin struck in Afghanistan, at Nimruz or Herat, for Sultan Ghiyath al-Din's victories over the Khwarazmians in 597 AH ². It was meant to let people taste the victory by recording it on the chief emblem of kingship, with the motto "God is most high" ². The booklet defines such coins, which the record calls propaganda (literally "media") coins, as coins put into circulation officially by the sultan or ruler for the occasion they were struck for ².

The record reports what the booklet says the coin was for; it does not say who handled the coin or how people reacted. The booklet gives a second case, a Seljuk dinar that it calls a publicity issue, struck for some occasion and inscribed with the Throne Verse ³. The record says no more about that coin. Ask which of the two cases tells you more about its audience, and why.

The booklet says the Ghurid coin was meant to let people taste a victory. Give a reason, and answer the objection that people use coins to buy things, not to read them: is a coin a good way to spread a message?

• Propaganda coins: the booklet's definition and its two examples.
• Kufic script: the script of the earliest dated dinars, 76 AH, and of the inscription around the Dome of the Rock.
• Monumental calligraphy in Fatimid Egypt: inscriptions on the gates and facades of Cairo.

Read the records on Kufic script and propaganda coins. Pick one work, write what it was for in your own words, and quote the sentence of the record that supports you.