—Contains more than 595 objects beautifully photographed and published for the first time —This first volume of a three-part series on rare early Islamic glass is of interest to art historians and scholars of Middle Eastern history The methods of finishing glass by cutting and polishing first began in the regions of the Mediterranean in the first and second century B.C. during the Roman Empire. Within the next 200 years, these finishing shops were also producing glass both cut and with details engraved into the surface. Another technique, wheel-cutting glass, was also practiced by the Romans and their contemporaries, the Sasanians, in Iran and Iraq. However, with the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century A.D. these methods all declined and eventually disappeared from the Mediterranean but were sustained in Western Asia.
