(Continued)
Mosques and other Muslim foundations were not the only religious buildings of the Middle East in the Islamic period. Muslims regard Judaism and Christianity as "scriptural" religions based on earlier versions of the divine revelation (the Torah and the Bible), and the Islamic states protected the followers of these religions. The Christians and Jews, and in Iran the Zoroastrians, had their own places of worship, and many works of art were made for people of these faiths. As these patrons were culturally a part of the Islamic world, the objects they commissioned often differed little from those made for Muslims. Inscriptions in Arabic might be most readily associated with Muslim patronage, but the one on a medieval brass chalice, for example, tells us it was made for a Christian priest.