The fascinating landscape of the Djebel Nafusah has generally been overlooked by English-language academic literature, and although the present book is (plus ça change) in French it is a notable contribution to the research on this area. Nevertheless, the photographs and plans make a large part of the information accessible to non-French speakers. The reasons for the neglect of the area and its cultural heritage are manifold: among them the fact that there are none of the major monuments or sites of the Classical period that have attracted archaeologists to the Libyan coastline for over a century, and this, in conjunction with the lesser interest that vernacular Islamic architecture elicits, the relative inaccessibility of the terrain, not to mention the political pressure to promote Arab over Berber culture in the past, have all contributed to making the Djebel one of the least well-known areas of Libya.

The book is divided into three main parts, the first setting the scene by describing the geography and examining the history of the region; the second is a well-elaborated catalogue of the mosques themselves (28), organised into five geographical areas, going from east to west, from Nalut near the Tunisian border to Yefren in the east. The third part analyses the architecture of the Ibadi mosques. The Ibadis are a Kharijite sect within Islam, founded in the 8th century AD, with ‘strongholds’ in North Africa on the Tunisian island of Djerba and in the Algerian Mzab, as well as in Oman. Ibadis are conservative Muslims and their mosques are as austere as their faith. Frequently looked upon askance by the authorities in Tripoli (up to and including the previous regime), the architecture in the area has remained simple and generally unaffected by trends elsewhere in the Islamic world. With regard to the historical background, some attention might have been given to settlements in the Classical period, but in a work on medieval mosques this is not a serious shortcoming.

Virginie Prevost has used all the available sources on the sites in the Djebel to inform her reconnaissance, from both Ibadi and Arab chronicles (helping, amongst other things, to date the original mosques and settlements), as well as the work of the Polish orientalist Tadeusz Lewicki, the geographical and ethnographic study by Jean Despois, a true classic on the area (Despois Reference Despois1935), to more recent research of a largely architectural nature by James Allen (Reference Allen1973; assisted by Olwen Brogan and Philip Kenrick), the published PhD thesis of Mohamed Warfelli (Reference Warfelli2007) and (to a lesser degree) by the Italian amateur enthusiasts Franco Bencini and Claudio Dell'Aquila, who undertook some private trips in the Djebel a few years before Prevost (cf. e.g. Bencini and Dell'Aquila Reference Bencini and Dell'Aquila2007), referred to by Prevost (xix).

The result is an excellent book. The author has covered her subject thoroughly, both from the point of view of the history and background of Ibadism and the architecture of the mosques themselves, with first-rate colour photographs (by Axel Derricks) and the reproduction of remastered black and white photos from earlier publications. It is a pity, though no fault of the author, that further fieldwork has been impossible given the current uncertain conditions in Libya. More fieldwork was originally envisaged before publication, in order to gain greater knowledge of the area, with more time to study the previously known mosques and to find others, while also creating new and accurate plans, and with better lighting to photographically document the buildings more thoroughly, all of which would have taken our understanding of the area to the next level. As it is, apart from new photographs and in situ observation (followed by a patently exhaustive library research), the overall data on the Djebel Nafusa remains only slightly further on from the works of James Allen and, in particular, Mohamed Warfelli. On the other hand, Allen's fieldwork is restricted to one 30-page article published some 45 years ago, and Warfelli's PhD thesis, completed in 1981 and subsequently published by the Tripoli DoA in 2007, is not widely available. Prevost deals with all aspects of the mosques, some actually underground and others among the mysterious Hawariyyin, or so-called Apostolic mosques. It is hoped that this volume will in the future be followed by a second tome, with a more detailed structural analysis of not only the mosques but also of the associated domestic buildings and granaries, together with new plans and elevations. This in association with excavation at key sites, such as at the long-abandoned Berber town of Sharus (96–102), or at selected mosques, such as at the Kanisa mosque at Tamazda.

Finally, an important aspect of the book is that it highlights the fragile nature of the vernacular architecture, whose coarse stonework, mud mortar and fragile plasterwork requires an amount of maintenance to withstand the vicissitudes of time and weather, not to mention human interference. While some of the mosques are clearly cared for by the nearby modern communities (vide figures, passim), others are further from towns and far more exposed. The photographs and descriptions may in time be useful for restoration work, if necessary, and when it becomes possible.