The book presents investigative and interpretive articles on some of the most significant monuments and innovative features of medieval Islamic architecture, ornament, and gardens in Syria and Iraq, with comparative expansions into Anatolia, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. These monuments, many of which have vanished in recent years, are examined within the context of the political divisions and theological ruptures that characterized the Islamic world between the eleventh and mid thirteenth centuries. Although some of these forms—including muqarnas vaulting, proportioned Qur’anic scripts, and ... More

The book presents investigative and interpretive articles on some of the most significant monuments and innovative features of medieval Islamic architecture, ornament, and gardens in Syria and Iraq, with comparative expansions into Anatolia, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. These monuments, many of which have vanished in recent years, are examined within the context of the political divisions and theological ruptures that characterized the Islamic world between the eleventh and mid thirteenth centuries. Although some of these forms—including muqarnas vaulting, proportioned Qur’anic scripts, and cursive public inscriptions—would become ubiquitous in all Islamic architecture, these papers argue that they were produced and systematized within highly contentious political and theological discourses that imbued them with fairly specific meanings. Furthermore, the monumental types that were created in this period—in particular, the madrasa, the hospital, the tribunal (dar al-‘adl), and the citadel palace—represent borrowings from Baghdad, the Abbasid capital and safeguard of Sunni Islam. As such, the reader will be presented with medieval Islamic architecture as a discursive formation that echoes, though on a reduced scale, Abbasid glory and signals future developments in later Islamic architecture.