Drawing s from Islamic lands encompass a range of works, from unfinished or preliminary sketches, to diagrams, to finished pictorial compositions. In the pre-modern period, they appear as illustrations in manuscripts and single-page pictures incorporated into albums. The Arabic word used for "drawing" is rasm. Other words, such as mashq , "exercise," or "drawing letters"; ṣūra , "representation"; ṭarḥ , "design"; qalam , "pen", and naqsh , "painting" or "drawing"; and the Arabic verbs raqama , "to write"; ṣawwara , mashaqa , and naqqasha , appear in Iranian artists' signatures on drawings, that is, works produced with