Islamic culture is justly famous for its achievements in crafts which include the making of textiles and carpets, the carving of wood, ivory, stone and stucco, and the manufacture of vessels in ceramics, glass, and metal. Given the high reputation of Islamic craftsmanship among modern audiences, it is perhaps surprising to find that the makers of the diverse artefacts exhibited in major public and private collections were seldom accorded much status in their own societies. While Islamic law has quite a lot to say about the regulation of craft practices in urban markets (a body of literature known as hisba), jurists and other scholars generally held craftspeople in low esteem. This happened despite the admission, made by the North African polymath Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) and echoed in other sources, that the crafts (sina‘a in the singular) were essential to the maintenance of urban life. It is striking that so few artefacts – apart from manuscripts – bear the names of the artisans responsible for their manufacture, and these men and women are almost completely absent from the voluminous biographical dictionaries produced in the medieval Islamic world. Only scribes and, from the sixteenth century on, the best manuscript painters appear to have enjoyed a more privileged social status. While valuable information concerning craft practices, the economics of manufacturing, and the lives of artisans can be gleaned from contemporary written sources (including a few manuals written by craftsmen) and from inscriptions on artefacts, it is the objects themselves and the archaeology of manufacturing practices that remain the foundations for research.