The Abbasids defeated the Umayyads to claim the caliphate and leadership of the Muslim world in 750. The Abbasids based their legitimacy as rulers on their

Architecture and Orientalism-Arquitectura y orientalismo-الهندسة المعمارية والاستشراق

Osman Hamdi Bey (Constantinople, 1842 - Constantinople, February 24, 1910) was an Ottoman administrator, intellectual, art expert and also a prominent and pioneering painter. Throughout his professional career as museum and academy director, Osman Hamdi continued to paint in the style of his teachers, Gérôme and Boulanger. [Alte und Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin - Oil on canvas]

From Iran to Spain, these magnificent mosques, many of which date back to the Islamic Golden Age, are more than places for prayer, they are centers of community life