This monumental volume brings together a broad constellation of scholars who have contributed chapters on a wide range of material related to the important but still little-known Aghlabids and their neighbours in southern Europe and across North Africa. It takes an interdisciplinary and transregional approach to the subject and provides a platform for numerous interesting and wide-ranging studies.
The book consists of an introduction by the editors and 28 further chapters, of which 16 are in English and the rest in French. The 40 contributors range from current doctoral students to leading professors in an array of related fields, as well as museum curators and researchers. The large number of authors, with diverse backgrounds as well as different specialisms, give this volume a comprehensive feel rarely found in multi-author edited volumes. A significant number of the numerous illustrations are in colour, albeit with the currently fashionable matt surface. This gives them the same finish as home-printed documents, which is unfortunate in such a costly volume.
Due to the large number of chapters, and even larger number of contributors, it is not possible to review the contents and approaches of each one. Instead, an overview of the material covered and a slightly more detailed review of a selection of chapters covering a range of different topics will form the bulk of this review. After the maps, genealogical tables and introduction, the book is divided into four broad categories: state building, monuments, ceramics, neighbours, and a short final section on legacy (the latter has just two chapters, both of which address the materiality of Qurans).
The editors’ introduction identifies several key conceptual issues with the perception of the region and provides an excellent overview of Aghlabid historiography. They then go on to provide a clear and concise overview of the content of the book.
The first seven chapters are devoted to the topic of state building in its widest sense, with an excellent contribution addressing the origins of the dynasty by Hugh Kennedy. This is followed by chapters about Aghlabid governance of the region, as well as specific case studies on Sicily and Kairouan. Part 1 also has two chapters that deal with the numismatic evidence, and concludes with a study of the singer Ziryab.
The second main section is the largest, and comprises eight chapters which address themes around the physical construction of power through the prism of architecture. An overview of the Great Mosque of Kairouan is followed by Jonathan Bloom's chapter on the 28 marble panels in the mihrab of the mosque, with a new attribution to al-Andalus as the source of the marble. Next is an overview of the minbar of the mosque, before attention returns to the mihrab, with a study of its green and yellow tiles written by Khadija Hamdi. The next two chapters consider the Zaytuna Mosque in Tunis (chapters 13 and 14), with several images of the same aspects repeated in the two. The final two chapters study Aghlabid Kufic inscriptions, and issues concerning the identification of Aghlabid ribats.
Part 3 covers the morphology and mobility of ceramics, with five chapters. The first covers the ceramic finds from the excavations at Raqqada, south of Kairouan, and has a good selection of both colour images and sectional drawings of the wares. The next two chapters deal with the Aghlabid-period ceramics from Palermo, followed by a somewhat less well illustrated archaeological report of the finds in the vicinity of the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fez, from the ninth and tenth-century layers. Part 3 concludes with an overview of the relationships between the ceramics of al-Andalus and those of Aghlabid North Africa.
The penultimate part of the book consists of six chapters that address various different regional neighbours of the Aghlabids from across North Africa and southern Italy. Patrice Cressier's contribution on Nakur (chapter 24) includes additional ceramic data, and this is followed by a chapter by Elizabeth Fentress on the early Islamic phase of occupation at the Moroccan city of Volubilis. Other chapters address the city of Sijilmassa, the island of Jerba, and the city of Bari in Apulia.
The two final chapters in the book both address the materials and production method of exceptionally important Qurans, and offer excellent examples of how to approach the study of early Islamic manuscripts. Cheryl Porter integrates primary written sources with visual and chemical analysis to better understand the methods required to colour and decorate the folios of the Blue Quran. The book concludes with Jeremy Johns’ detailed codicological analysis of a work previously, and erroneously, considered to be Fatimid.
This truly interdisciplinary volume presents a wide overview of many aspects of the Aghlabids and their cultural milieu, and will be of great interest to scholars and students of not just North African Islamic art, but Islamic art more broadly. The editors succeed in their stated aim of raising the profile and understanding of the dynasty, and show that, far from being a peripheral frontier dynasty, the Aghlabids and their neighbours formed a vibrant centre. Numerous chapters highlight the close links between North Africa, Iberia and Sicily in the ninth century, and the book also demonstrates the importance of increased collaboration between scholars across both national and disciplinary boundaries.
