Islamic art encompasses the visual arts produced from the seventh century onward by both Muslims and non-Muslims who lived within the territory that was inhabited by or ruled by, culturally Islamic populations. It is thus a complicated art to define because it spans some 1400 years, covering many lands and populations. This art is also not of a specific religion, time, place, or single medium. Instead, Islamic art covers a range of artistic fields including architecture, calligraphy, painting, glass, ceramics, and textiles, among others.

Islamic art is not restricted to religious art, but instead includes all of the art of the rich and varied cultures of Islamic societies. It frequently includes secular elements and elements that are forbidden by some Islamic theologians. Islamic religious art differs significantly from Christian religious art traditions.

Because figural representations are generally considered to be forbidden in Islam, the word takes on religious meaning in art as seen in the tradition of calligraphic inscriptions. Calligraphy and the decoration of manuscript Qurans is an essential aspect of Islamic art as the word takes on religious and artistic significance.

Islamic art was influenced by Greek, Roman, early Christian, and Byzantine art styles, as well as the Sassanian art of pre-Islamic Persia. Central Asian styles were brought in with various nomadic incursions; and Chinese influences had a formative effect on Islamic painting, pottery, and textiles.

The ability to sell a painting for millions of dollars is not as easy as it looks, hence the overwhelming amount of "starving artists."

To date, the most expensive abstract oil paintings ever sold is an abstract landscape by Willem de Kooning called Interchange, which sold for $300 Million in 2015. Long gone artists seem to be able to sell their paintings for so much more than any living artist, yet Arab paintings have been pushing their way into the art market and growing in popularity over the past decade. Here are nine of the most expensive abstract art to ever be sold:

Islamic most expensive abstract art

1. Zainab bint Muhammad

Zainab bint Muhammad is the most expensive painting by British artist Gheorghe Virtosu, sold for $17.8 million.

Although Virtosu is legendary for his almost spiritual obsession with abstraction, the meaning behind his work is, in fact, the very root of the philosophy that he nurtures and solidifies in his entire artistic career. His art-making culminate in his masterful abstract paintings series of Prophet Muhammad Daughters, including the unmatched Zainab bint Muhammad (2017).

In secular art of the Muslim world, representations of human forms historically flourished in nearly all Islamic cultures, figures in paintings were often stylized, giving rise to a variety of decorative figural designs.

2. Break of the Atom and Vegetal Life

This painting from 1962 by Turkish-Jordanian artist Princess Fahr El-Nissa Zeid, sold for a record-breaking $2.74 million.

In Fahr El-Nissa's expansive and prolific oeuvre, Break of the Atom and Vegetal Life can be considered to be one of the most important works that the artist has ever created.

Painted in 1962, the large expansive and hypnotizing canvas reflects Zeid's distinctive style of geometric abstraction, grounded in a rhythmic gesture. Upon reflection of the painting, the viewer is transported into an alternate magical universe conjured up by the artist, the color palette and shapes moving together in a distinct harmony as if meant to push one into a trancelike state.

3. The Whirling Dervishes

It was sold for an astounding $2.54 million at Christie’s auction house in 2010.

The second most expensive Arab painting is labeled “The Whirling Dervishes” and was painted in 1929 by Egyptian artist Mahmoud Said.

Mahmoud Said was a central figure in modern Egyptian art, born in Alexandria. He is called the “father of modern Egyptian art.” He abandoned his career as a court judge when he turned fifty to dedicate himself to his art full-time. His paintings are much sought after by collectors. A museum dedicated to his art has opened in Alexandria.

4. Les Chadoufs

Also by artist Mahmoud Said, the painting Les Chadoufs from 1934 was sold at auction for $2.43million, exceeding its pre-sale estimated price of $150,000 - $200,000 by a mile.

To complement this powerful classical geometry, Said introduces a timeless and distinctly Egyptian iconography, which includes veiled statuesque women carrying water jars, men drawing water from wells, and white long-eared donkeys. The men, dressed only in turbans and loincloths, with their exaggerated postures, minimal clothing, and frieze-like distribution of across the canvas, closely resemble the gigantic male figures carved in low relief on the outer pylons of Upper Egyptian temples.

Its controlled and coherent design recalls principles of the Italian Renaissance, while its iconography evokes prototypes from key periods in Egypt's long history.

5. Tchaar-Bagh

Painted in 1981 by Iranian painter and sculptor Charles-Hossein Zenderoudi, Tchaar-Bagh was sold for around $1.6 million at Christie’s 2008 international auction in Dubai.

It is now nearly half a century that Zenderoudi, the Iranian artist residing in France, considered as one of the ten living important contemporary artists by the editorial board of the French journal Connaissance des Art (1971) and one of the most esteemed founders of Saqakhaneh School.

Zenderoudi arrived in Paris at the end of the widespread infatuation with gestural calligraphy.

6. He Is The Merciful

A relatively new painting from 2007 made by Iranian artist Mohammed Ehsai, “He Is The Merciful” was sold only a year later for around $1.16 million, although it was originally estimated to sell for about $100,000 - $150,000.

This spectacular painting is one of the largest works by Mohammed Ehsan. Trained first as a calligrapher, Ehsai's large scale paintings demonstrate his mastery of the craft. In his works, the intertwined letters are not meant to be read.

Mohammad Ehsai is undoubtedly one of the most gifted calligraphers to emerge from Iran within the past century. Utterly devoted the perfection of his craft, Ehsai has married the technical finesse of his formal training within a modern visual schema.

7. The Rukh Carries Amir Hamza to his Home

It was sold at auction for approximately $1.14 million and would have sold for even more had it been in better condition.

Dated back to the mid-16th-century, "The Rukh Carries Amir Hamza to his Home" is an Islamic painting and illustration found in "Hamzanama" (The Adventures of Hamza), which is attributed to Daswant (Dasavanta) in collaboration with Shravan (Sharavana) from Mughal, India.

Amir Hamza was an uncle of the Prophet Muhammed and the illustration is one of the few that survived over the years.

Even in a manuscript celebrated for its fantastic adventure stories and dramatic pictorial qualities, this spectacular illustration from the Hamzanama easily ranks among the most boldly conceived paintings to have survived from the original 1,400 monumental paintings in the most important of all Mughal manuscripts.

8. Sarajevo

Painted in 1992 and sold for $1.14 million in 2016 at the Now and Ten auctions in Dubai.

Sarajevo by artist Omar El-Nagdi mirroring the horrors of war for Bosnians similar to Picasso’s iconic Guernica. The painting “Sarajevo” by contemporary Egyptian artist Omar El-Nagdi captures the essence of pain and is deemed "the most expressive documentation of life" by Middle Eastern Art specialist Masa Al-Kutoubi.

Painted in 1992, the Sarajevo triptych is undeniably his most important and ambitious piece.

As the title suggests, the work takes as its subject the tragedies that befell the city during the Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian conflict of 1990–94, particularly the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Bosnian and Croat population by Bosnian Serbs.

9. Construction of the Suez Canal

The painting cost its buyer $1.02 million in March of 2014.

El-Gazzar has become one of the most iconic Egyptian artists to have lived since 1945. His legacy has left behind a national artistic wealth that has only recently been acknowledged and appreciated.

Digging of the Suez Canal from 1965 is a study for perhaps one of the most monumental and referenced works ever to have been painted by the artist, that is now part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Cairo.

A testament to his ability to impart a sense of the socio-political statement, even into a work commissioned by the very regime he questioned, Digging of the Suez Canal is undoubtedly a seminal work in the artist's oeuvre and both Egyptian artistic and social history. Here we close our most expensive abstract oil paintings list and continue with some insights on Islamic Art.

Getting the bottom of Islamic Art through Metropolitan Museum of Art eye

When dealing with the cultures of the lands that stuck to Islam over time. It starts with apprehending their differences, much more significant than those that different European countries. On the museum scene, the meaningless label "Islamic art" adheres to functions visually and conceptually unrelated.

Five most prominent institutions of its type, the newly opened "Islamic division" unwittingly illustrates the confusion.

They won't see panels from 15th-century Germany hanging together with images in the Florentine Quattrocento on the excuse they're Christian. And Chinese scrolls won't be thrown together with a few from Japan or Korea based on common Buddhist themes. The arts of Japan and Korea, China, whether Buddhist or Confucianist, are considered from the perspective of the history of the civilizations, sparing viewers any aesthetic inconsistency. Inconsistency is not a concern. Never mind that their histories clarify the highly distinctive nature of the artwork of every broad cultural location. Historical Iran, broken up To the modern countries of Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan, and pieces here and there, stocks with China the privilege of being among the two oldest civilizations on earth with an uninterrupted continuity on its own land.

In The Arab Near East lands such as Syria and Iraq have age-old pasts. But they largely rejected it, compared to Iran. This is true of Egypt, whose ancient civilization left few traces on its collective character from the Islamic period.

Turkey, at first, a mere expansion of the Seljuk sultanate of Iran at the Persian was the language of administration and culture well into the 14th century, and influences from the multiple cultures of lands that had been under Byzantine control penetrated its art. The artwork of Turkey as represented now in Western museums mostly dates from the early 16th century to the late 17th.

Add to the mixture the equally complicated history of the Persianate Islamic Civilization first introduced to India by invaders coming from historical Iran in the 11th century, led by rulers of Turkic stock. The most recent one of the Türki-speaking founders of a dynasty in India rushed in from Central Asia where Persian culture prevailed, preserved Persian at their courts and brought tens of thousands of Iranian literati.

Interaction with ancient Indian civilization resulted in a Special art into Which some strands of European influence crept in, especially in publication painting on which Western religious engravings, brought by European missionaries into the court of Akbar, affected.

Mix all the above and you also get a brew that's enough to disorient the visitor.

In the sections dealing with the early phases -- when Islam spread at a Slows - wall vitrines are full of bronzes, ceramics, and the pieces of rock crystal and ivory from the Arab and the Iranian world in more or less equal measure.

The juxtaposition, naturally determined by what can be found in the Museum's collections, causes a confusing if dazzling blur.

Labeling adds to the confusion and there. Ceramic vessels of the ninth century with blue themes on the ivory floor, ascribed to Iraq from the screen, have been coming up on the art market as the early 20th century.