Ancient Persia was a vast geographical area encompassing most of what is today Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and parts of Central Asia. It had been home to three great empires – Achaemenid, Parthian and Sasanian – reaching as far back as 550 BC. Persia became Islamic in the eighth century following its conquest by Arab armies. For a time it was incorporated into the Baghdad-based Arab Abbasid Empire, the Turkish Seljuk Empire, and the Mongol Ilkhanid Empire. It is out of this cosmopolitan, multi-cultural environment with its Persian, Arab and Turkish inhabitants that some of the most extraordinary Islamic ceramics of all time were created. Fritware, the most successful attempt to imitate Chinese porcelain’s white body, was often glazed with green, cobalt blue or turquoise, the signature Persian color.