The Warrior

Fabric dye & acrylic on canvas, 70 x 50 cm, 3.000 Turkish Liras

The Abbasid Empire reached its greatest extent during the reign of al-Mansur's grandson, Harun al-Rashid (786-809). Battling the Byzantine Empire, his armies advanced into Anatolia as far as Nicaea (today’s Iznik, Turkey). While the Umayyads—the previous Islamic empire—prioritized conquest, the Abbasids gave importance to managing the wide geography they conquered in order to foster prosperity and the development of the arts and sciences.

Inspired by an 18th-century Persian tile