Generally speaking, paintings of the human figure in early Islam can tentatively be divided into two main phases. The first cover the Umayyad and early Abbasid era between the late seventh and tenth century; the second begins in the late tenth or early eleventh century, covers Fatimed art in Egypt, and culminates in the late-twelfth to mid-thirteenth-century paintings in Mesopotamia. The two periods differ stylistically and ichnographically, but they also share some common sources that are reflected not only in the style of the figures, but also in the themes in which they appeared.

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