1. West & Central Asia
500 BCE – 1980 CE

2. Enduring Understandings
Arts of West and Central Asia play a key role in the history of world art, giving form to vast cultural interchanges that have occurred in these lands, linking European and Asian peoples.
Religious arts are united by Buddhism & Islam.
Use of figural art in religious contexts varies among traditions.
Artists excelled in creation of particular forms of art unique to their regions & cultures. (ceramics, metalwork, textiles, painting & calligraphy)

3. Petra, Jordan: Treasury & Great Temple 400 BCE – 100 CE

5. Petra’s Architecture
Its architecture features a broken pediment and central tholos (a circular building) on the upper level; this architectural composition originated in Alexandria. Ornate Corinthian columns are used throughout. Above the broken pediments, the bases of two obelisks appear and stretch upwards into the rock. 

6. Petra, Great Temple

7. Buddha Bamiyan, Afghanistan 400-800 CE

8. The Kaaba Mecca, Saudi Arabia 631-632 CE

9. Jowo Rinpoche Enshrined in Jokhang Temple Lhasa, Tibet 641 CE

10. Dome of the Rock Jerusalem, Palestine 691-692 CE

11. Dome of the Rock floor plan

12. Do you smell what the Dome of the Rock is cookin’ ?!?!

13. Great Mosque Isfahan, Iran - 700CE

14. Folio from a Qur’an Arab, North Africa 800-900 CE

15. Basin Baptistere de St. Louis 1320-1340 CE

16. Bahram Gur Fights the Karg 1330 – 1340 CE

17. The Court of Gayumars 1522-1525 CE

18. The Ardabil Carpet CE