Islamic glass production from the seventh through the fourteenth century was also greatly innovative and witnessed glorious phases-such as those of superb relief-cut glass and spectacular gilded and enameled objects-that established its supremacy in glassmaking manufacture throughout the world.
Glassmakers inherited many of the techniques of their forebears in the Byzantine and Sasanian empires, including glassblowing, the use of molds, the manipulation of molten glass with tools, and the decorative application of molten glass. At the time of the Arab conquest in the seventh century A.D., glassmaking had flourished in Egypt and western Asia for more than two millennia and glassmakers in those regions went about their business despite the momentous political, social, and religious changes taking place around them.