Early Islamic Pottery. Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia.

"Against a skilfully drawn background of Islamic civilisation, which stands in so marked a contrast with the barbarism of Europe in the same period, he (Mr. Lane) traces the rise and fall of dynasties and the fluctuations of patronage. He writes not only of the wares of Rya, Kashan and Sultana bad within the limits of modern Persia, but of the earlier wares of Mesopotamia - of Baghdad and Samara, and of the superb pottery known as Samarkand ware, made in Transoxiana in Central Asia. He discusses too the beautiful wares of medieval Egypt, many of them known to us, alas, only by fragments found in the rubbish heaps of Old Cairo." Creswell 730; Chamberlin 1776; Handley-Taylor S. 66.