The recent exhibition, ”Reverberating Echoes: Contemporary Art Inspired by Traditional Islamic Art,” organized by the Center for the Arts & Religion at the Graduate Theological Union afforded an opportunity for me as curator to reconsider the definition of ‘traditional Islamic art.’ This effort led to the identification of an algorithmic aesthetic of pattern that characterizes artistic production in all media from the 9^th through the 12^th centuries in what were then Islamic lands, centered in Baghdad, but extending from Spain across North Africa through the Middle East and Iran to Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent.