A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c19.s6.3

c19.s6.3

M. Migeon believes that the Muhammadan use of enamelled tiles in numerous Persian buildings of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was derived from Khorasān. From that province it seems to have spread to Samarkand, where we find coloured tile facings on the tomb of Tīmūr at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Coloured tiles had become known in India at an earlier date, certainly in the first quarter of the fourteenth and possibly in the thirteenth century, but the Tīmūrid tradition of the Mughal emperors made them still more fashionable. The Indian work, although sometimes very good, is not admitted by experts to equal the best Persian in either the beauty of the colours or the brilliancy of the enamel.⁴