Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World volume 1: “Art” (837 pages) and volume 2: “Architecture” (653 pages) Susan Sinclair, ed. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Index Islamicus, begun in 1906, is a database of bibliographic information of publications in all areas of studies connected with the Islamic world. Since that time, interest in Islamic art and architecture has surged from specialists to many scholars, students, and general interest worldwide. The recent and updated sup- plements Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World, edited by Susan Sinclair, who was assisted by Heather Bleaney and Pablo Garcia Suarez, fills a serious void by listing the materials from 1906 to 2011. 120 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 31:1 ajiss31-1_ajiss 12/4/2013 2:16 PM Page 120 Sinclair, an independent scholar with a Ph.D. from the University of London’s Courtauld Institute of Art, is currently researching material in the medieval Arab world and has served as the co-editor of the Index Islamicus since 2007. With the support of the university’s renowned School of Oriental and African Studies, she was able to comb the archives of the United King- dom’s leading institutions, including the National Art Library in London, the British Library, the library of the Warburg Institute, the Cambridge Uni- versity Library, and the University of Oxford libraries, as well as important collections located in Spain (e.g., the Biblioteca Nacional de España, the Biblioteca Islámica, and the libraries of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas). The compilation of resources from these vast collections as well as the material available online has brought this bibliographic collection to a new level. At first glance, the material may seem to be no more than a listing of sources on the subject, with no “content” per se to read. However, the value of such texts and of this set in particular is that the bibliographic listings are grouped by type and subtypes, which enable researchers in particular areas to access a wealth of information not necessarily accessible by other search en- gines or mechanisms. Publications dealing with the Islamic world’s art and architecture are dom- inated by particularly well-known scholars and publishing houses. However, this bibliographic set includes not only acclaimed scholars and well-known European and North American publishing houses, but also publications in a variety of journals and periodicals as well as texts published in the Islamic world – written in all major European languages except Turkish. Many entries include a brief annotation on the content or materials in the source. In addition, the works cited are inclusive of several disciplines related to this vast subject, ranging from anthropology and ethnography to archeology, theology, and epigraphy. The set is organized into two large volumes, one dedicated to art and the other to architecture, with over 36,000 entries between them. It should also be noted that over 26,000 of these entries post-date 1980. Each volume is organized into categories of research, thereby allowing similar material to be grouped and organized by both alphabetical ordering of the author’s last name and serial number noted in the general index of the two-volume set. Volume 1, “Art,” contains thirty “subject” areas, many with subsections detailing further groupings of material. It begins with three general sections, including “Islamic Art and Architecture: General and Reference Works,” fol- Book Reviews 121 ajiss31-1_ajiss 12/4/2013 2:16 PM Page 121 lowed by “Museums, Libraries, and Galleries; Collectors and Collections; Ex- hibitions; Auctions; Foundations and Institutions.” The following section, “Local, Regional, and National Artistic Productions; Finds from Excavation Sites, Crafts and Folk Arts in General,” is subdivided in to the geographic re- gions and countries. The following twenty-four sections cover specific areas of art production in the Islamic world, including manuscript decoration; calligraphy and illu- mination; miniature painting; prints; paper marbling; pre-modern paintings; lacquer and papier-mâché; enamel, carpets, and rugs; textiles; costume and embroidery; jewelry; gemstones and hard stones; arms and armor; metal work; ceramics; glass; woodwork; ivory and bone; stonework and stucco; basketry and wickerwork; leatherwork and the arts of officialdom (viz., medals, coins, seals, and so forth). Each section’s bibliographic entries are further subdivided into the re- peated categories of “general,” “Eastern Islamic world,” “Central Islamic world,” “Western Islamic world,” “Sub-Saharan Africa,” and “East and South- east Asia.” This approach allows for clear access to the material but, impor- tantly, implies a comparative continuity between mediums and regions. The short notations in many of the entries outline the particulars of special media associated with the bibliographic entries. The volume’s final sections return to broader topics of research on art in the Islamic world with the provocative sections of “Circulation of Ideas and Objects in General between East and West and China and Islamic World,” “‘Orientalist’ Art and Influence/appropriation of Islamic art in Art in non- Islamic lands,” and “Attitudes of Non-Muslims to Islamic art.” Again, to allow for immediate access to diverse material and to imply comparison, each sec- tion is aptly subdivided into “general,” “medieval to pre-colonial,” and “colo- nial to contemporary” sections. The last section appropriately covers “Modern and Contemporary Art” since the early twentieth century and is subdivided into sections covering spe- cific countries and regions. Each volume concludes with a subject and name index to facilitate several methods of examining the content. The second volume, “Architecture,” is slimmer than the previous volume because much of the material was covered in the latter’s general first three sections. This volume is organized into nine sections, beginning with the gen- eral section of “Architecture, its decoration and functions,” which is subdi- vided into “general surveys” and “modern architecture.” The previous volume organized the majority of sections by medium and subsections as regional; this volume reverses this order by organizing the bib- 122 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 31:1 ajiss31-1_ajiss 12/4/2013 2:16 PM Page 122 liographic entries primarily by region. The following five sections cover spe- cific geographical areas: “Eastern Islamic World,” “Central Islamic World,” “Western Islamic World,” “Sub-Saharan Africa,” and “Southeast Asia.” Each regional section is further subdivided into specific countries and covers entries on historical to contemporary areas of study. After this comprehensive regional survey comes the section on “Gardens and Parks,” which is subdivided by the above-mentioned geographical regions and has the added subsection of “Ori- entalist gardens.” The final sections also end with broader subjects areas, including “Archi- tecture by Architects and Craftsmen from the Muslim world and/or buildings used by Muslims in the Non-Islamic countries,” which is further subdivided according to region. The final section, “Orientalist architecture; borrowings from Islamic architecture; Orientalist writings” concludes the set. One criticism is that this volume does not end with a section explicitly devoted to modern and contemporary architecture in the Islamic world – an area growing not only in production but also in architectural criticism mainly due to the initiations and recognitions of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture over the past three decades. Before the publication of this current work, the major specific biblio- graphic source was K. A. C. Creswell’s A Bibliography of the Architecture, Arts, and Crafts of Islam (1961). Creswell began his ambitious project in 1912 and published it in 1961, along with supplements in 1973 and 1984. He was one of the pioneering leaders in scholarship on the architecture of the Islamic world, with seminal works such as Early Muslim Architecture (1969) and Muslim Architecture of Egypt (1978), both of which continue to serve as es- sential reference texts. But the work under review here does not simply pick up where the last supplement of A Bibliography of the Architecture, Arts and Crafts of Islam stopped; rather, it includes a much broader range of relevant material on the subject and is indexed according to topic, subject, and author’s last name. This two-volume set should be included in public and institutional library collections and in the collections of scholars of Islamic art and architecture. It will amply support the research of interested students and scholars in these specific fields and those more broadly interested in art and architecture. Tammy Gaber Assistant Professor of Architecture, School of Architecture Laurentian University, Sudbury, ON, Canada Book Reviews 123 ajiss31-1_ajiss 12/4/2013 2:16 PM Page 123