The history of the present volume stretches back across three decades. In 1970, shortly after the death of Arthur Upham Pope, Jay Gluck began to gather articles for three more volumes of Survey of Persian Art to be published in honor and memory of his mentor and friend the Iranian art historian, Arthur Pope. Gluck had originally planned two more on the architecture and minor arts of Islamic [Post-Sasanian] Iran. By the middle of 1970s Gluck, assisted by his wife Sumi, had gathered a substantial number of articles and proceeded with editing and hoping to publish the three volumes in the late 1970s. Then suddenly he fell ill and his symptoms turned out to be the distant drums of the debilitating Parkinsons disease. His deteriorating health then delayed the completion and publication of these volumes for another twenty five years. In 1996 the publisher invited Professor Abbas Daneshvari to undertake the difficult task of editing and updating these two volumes and prepare them for publication. However, most of the contributions had become obsolete and were no longer relevant. Moreover, a large number of the authors had passed away making updates and revisions difficult, if not impossible. The editor, therefore excised a number of articles from the collection and invited other scholars to submit new articles instead, thus reducing the two volumes to one.