This beautiful and much-anticipated book is a continuation and expansion of the author's earlier work on Fatimid Cairo (Jonathan M. Bloom, Arts of the City Victorious, New Haven and London, 2007). It is extremely well illustrated, with clear insightful text, eschewing the current trend for overinterpretation and theorizing, that provides a comprehensive overview of the subject, and is accompanied by a series of new plans drawn by Nicholas Warner. It fills the major gap in the literature that was previously only covered by Georges Marçais (L'architecture musulmane d'Occident, Paris, 1956).
Although Felix Arnold's recent book (Islamic Palace Architecture in the Western Mediterranean, Oxford, 2017), brought a large number of new sites in the region to light, it only addresses palaces, while in this book Bloom covers all the major structural typologies across the region. In addition, despite the date 1800 occurring in the title, the volume covers from the earliest to the most recent buildings, including the still unfinished Djemaa El Djazaïr in Algiers, thus placing them all into the living continuum of architectural development in the region.
The book consists of an introduction, followed by nine chapters, each with numerous large colour photos that complement the text and, in several cases show the buildings as there were in the 1970s, before many of the more recent alterations and restoration changed their appearance and much originality was lost. Perhaps the most striking example of this is the mosque at Tinmal, in Morocco.
After a personal, concise, and effective introduction, the first chapter addresses the monuments of the Umayyad period in al-Andalus, and Aghlabid Ifriqiya. As with the rest of the chapters, a brief historical overview is provided for the non-specialist reader, before attention turns to the surviving buildings. There is a detailed and evidence-based approach taken to the material throughout that clarifies the chronology of the buildings, especially the Great Mosque at Kairouan.
In chapter 2, attention turns to the early Fatimid sites of Mahdiya and Sabra-Mansuriya, as well as the Umayyad palace at Madinat al-Zahraʾ and the expansion of the Great Mosque in Cordoba. There is a convincing qualification of the older assumptions that link the mosque to Syrian architecture, and in between the study of the phases of expansion, there is a brief discussion of the significance of the Umayyad addition of minarets to mosques in Fez.
The third chapter addresses the developments during the long eleventh century, and is divided into three main sections, addressing the main structures at the Qalʿa of the Bani Hammad, with a case made against there being links to Fatimid architecture, followed by a study of some key sites of Taifa al-Andalus. The chapter concludes with the Norman monuments in Sicily, and an argument that they have closer links to al-Andalus than to Egypt.
This is followed by a study of the architecture of the Almoravids and Almohads, covering the period from the mid-eleventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries. The focus is on Fez and Marrakesh, and shows the connections to earlier Andalusian building. The austere texture, and distinctive lambrequin arches, of the Almohads are clearly demonstrated by Bloom. The chapter concludes with a study of the vast, incomplete, mosque of Hassan in Rabat.
Chapter 5 is one of the shortest, and covers the architecture of the Nasrids, with a brief, clear, overview of the Alhambra. This is a site about which no end of monographs have been written, and thus does not require the level of detail seen in the other chapters, which mostly address far less well-known sites. The concluding section looks at the Mudéjar buildings in Seville and Cordoba in order to demonstrate the existence of a trans-confessional luxury architectural aesthetic in the Iberian Peninsula during the fourteenth century.
Chapter 6 is one of the longest, and covers the monuments built under the aegis of the various heirs to the Almohads during the fourteenth century, with the focus on Marinid buildings in Chella, Fez, and Salé. The final part then addresses some later Hafsid structures.
The next chapter examines the architectural impact of first Ottoman, and subsequently Hapsburg, domination of the region encompassing what is now Libya, Tunisia and Algeria, up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The main focus is on a number of mosques built in Tunis and Algiers.
The penultimate chapter focuses on the developments under the Sharifan dynasties of Morocco, and covers the same general chronological span as chapter 7. Several mosques, palaces, and madrasas in Marrakesh are discussed, before attention turns to the early eighteenth-century monuments in Meknès.
The book ends with a study of the legacies of Maghribi architecture, which covers both the European engagement with, and at times appropriation of, aspects of architectural form and ornament in the nineteenth century, as well as the more recent revivalist structures built in Morocco in the latter decades of the twentieth century.
In this book Bloom highlights the more conservative and interiorized nature of Islamic architecture in the west, compared to the style found further to the east, as well as the reliance on wood for ceilings, and demonstrates the rich and distinctive tradition of the region over many centuries. While there are more detailed studies on many of the regions, and in the case of the Alhambra, individual elements of buildings, covered in the book, this is the first work in English to address the Islamic architecture of the wider region over the longue durée.
In summation, this book represents the distilled essence of a lifetime of scholarship, does exactly what its stated aims are, and will remain the key work on the subject of Islamic architecture in the Maghreb and al-Andalus for many years to come.
