Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

This study comes as a solution to a problem that the researcher has faced by overcoming a lack of resources providing a macro overview of the artifacts in human history of the Arabian Peninsula. Using letters, manuscripts, research, and memoirs of participants, this study advances our knowledge of the peninsula’s historical artifacts from the 4th century BC until the 20th century. It intends to transform art knowledge development by seeking significant, long-term trends in world art history. It also covers the interaction of the Arab nomadic with the former empires such as the Sabaeans, Himyarites and Umayyad Caliphate, and how this interaction has played a crucial role in developing the peninsula’s artifacts. Those sedentary states have built robust artifact heritage in different peninsula areas as the Arabs traded with the Natufians, as well as with Egypt and China. This interaction took a different form after the emergence of the Islamic Empire in the 600s, with systemic change in the shape of artifact production. This paper explores a marked bifurcation between all those entities, though each era produced artefacts independently. A map of a comprehensive peninsula historical timeline shows the significant artifacts from the 4th century BC until the 20th century. This macro timeline provides a broad view of how the nomadic and sedentary together represent an important historical dimension of the art historiography in the Arabian peninsula.