This volume offers a range of interdisciplinary research. The chapters deal with topics dating from the early Islamic period through to the late twentieth century. Art historians, archaeologists, numismatists, sillographers and historians contribute perspectives, with a recurrent concern being to find ways to correlate visual and material culture with evidence drawn from primary written sources.
This interpretive process is aimed, as the subtitle of the volume indicates, at the reconstruction of the “history of the Muslim Middle East”. This seems an overly specific categorization in that it sidelines the non-Muslim dimensions of society (the book does, however, include a fine study based on a document from the Cairo Geniza) as well as the vital interactions between Muslims, Jews and Christians that are such a feature of the cultures of the Middle East. The presence of “history” in the subtitle brings to mind the fact that the disciplines of archaeology and art history are still sometimes called upon to support a dominant narrative created by texts. There is, of course, the danger that scholars can underestimate the extent to which aesthetic or technological advances in the material record can follow trajectories largely independent of political and economic factors – dynastic change, military conflict, famines, and so on – that loom large in contemporary chronicles.
Interdisciplinarity has become something of a mantra in modern humanistic scholarship. The introduction to the volume (penned by the editors and Yasser Tabbaa) notes that students of Islamic art and archaeology have long embraced the idea that primary textual sources are an essential dimension of the analysis of physical evidence. Oleg Grabar's 1959 study of the Dome of the Rock is justly cited as a turning point in the study of Islamic material culture. Conversely, historians such as Hugh Kennedy and Michael Morony have widened their scope to incorporate numismatic data and archaeology. One might ask, therefore, what novel approaches are being advanced in the present volume given the claim that the authors have been “guided by our rigorous adherence to the prevailing methodologies of our respective disciplines” (p. 1)?
These methodologies are mostly left implicit, with the approaches adopted in some chapters appearing rather conventional. If this is somewhat disappointing, the reader is amply compensated by the sheer range of source material utilized by the contributors to this volume. Notable too is the conscientious way in which the art historians and archaeologists now approach the interpretation of primary written sources. These sources are carefully evaluated in terms of authorship, function and wider context prior to the extraction of nuggets of information.
The book itself comprises fifteen chapters, written by established scholars and emerging names in their respective fields. The chapters are organized into five thematic sections: economics and trade; governmental authority; material culture; changing landscapes; and monuments. The following paragraphs pick out what seem, from this reviewer's perspective, to be the most interesting themes and approaches.
The focus on portable objects is welcome, and includes some fascinating contributions. Bacharach draws on his long experience of teaching Islamic history to make some acute observations about how coins were employed and perceived. Heidemann is also concerned with numismatic evidence. He offers a masterly examination of the role of coins in measuring levels of economic activity. Amitai-Preiss adopts a narrower focus, using a series of seals to illuminate events of a single year (155/771–72). Frenkel and Lester offer an edition and translation of a partial inventory from the Geniza archive. The authors sift through the challenging vocabulary of this document in order to suggest correlations with surviving objects in metal, ceramic, and stone. They conclude that the document lists the stock of a Cairene pawnbroker.
Archaeology is well represented. Whitcomb considers the ways in which gender is reflected in the material culture of the Red Sea port of Quseir. This is an interesting question, though his conclusions are rather preliminary in character. The study of early Islamic Ramla by Shmueli and Goldfus shows how interdisciplinary approaches – including aerial photography and published excavations – can facilitate the reinterpretation of written sources. The authors argue that, contrary to earlier viewpoints, the city was not fortified during the tenth century.
Several chapters concern themselves with architecture, with some addressing single monuments and others clusters of buildings. Meital discusses the changing iconography of Egypt's Monument to the Unknown Soldier before and after the assassination of Anwār al-Sādāt in 1981. Sharef-Davidovich argues that palaces played an important role as foci of new neighbourhoods in late nineteenth-century Istanbul. Hartmuth offers novel approaches, inspired by the work of Jan Vansina, to the interpretation of oral traditions relating to the construction of the sixteenth-century mosque of Foča. He argues that such sources should not be dismissed simply because they contain unreliable components.
The activities of two relatively atypical architectural patrons, a Fatimid Queen Mother (Calderini and Cortese) and the chief surgeon of a fifteenth-century bīmaristān (Hamza), are reconstructed on the basis of textual evidence. The latter is notable for its reconstruction of the groundplan of the founder's tomb complex described in the waqfiyya document. Kühn concentrates instead on a craftsman called al-Dimyāṭī, a master carpenter engaged in the production of minbars in fifteenth-century Cairo. He was deemed important enough to warrant an entry in a biographical dictionary.
In summary, this is a thought-provoking contribution to the study of Islamic material culture. Adopting a wide range of approaches, the authors show how portable objects, monuments, and architectural fittings can be understood within their precise historical and cultural contexts. The chapters are supported by generous illustration, much of it in colour. The diversity of the subject matter, the consistent quality of the scholarship, and the visually attractive layout should attract a wide readership for this valuable volume.
