A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture: 2 Volume Set

The two–volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture surveys the field in all its grandeur, whilst encouraging original approaches to canonical subjects and offering new scholarship on previously neglected topics. The combined volumes showcase more than 50 newly commissioned essays that bridge the gap between the summary treatment of the traditional survey and the specialized monograph. These essays are organized according to a new chronological–geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field in recent years and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during a 1400–year span. Each volume is organized under a broad chronological rubric: Islamic art before and after the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258, an event widely accepted as a watershed, with thematic essays grouped under further chronological subdivisions. The first volume begins with a general introduction co–authored by the editors, which outlines relevant concepts, approaches, and historiographies, providing a framework within which to understand the structure and contents of both  volumes. In addition to a map of major sites included in volume one, each of the subsections is accompanied by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question.

Finbarr Barry Flood is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of the Humanities at the Institute of Fine Arts and Department of Art History, New York University. He publishes on late antiquity, Islamic architectural history and historiography, transcultural dimensions of Islamic art, image theory, museology, and Orientalism. His books include The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Umayyad Visual Culture (2000), and Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval Hindu–Muslim Encounter, (2009), awarded the 2011 Ananda K. Coomaraswamy Prize of the Association for Asian Studies.

Gülru Necipo lu is Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Art at the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University. She publishes on architecture and architectural practice, aesthetics of ornament and figural representation, cross–cultural exchanges, and Islamic art historiography. Her books include Architecture, Ceremonial and Power: The Topkapi Palace (1991); The Topkapi Scroll, Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (1995) which won the Albert Hourani and Spiro Kostoff awards; and The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (2005), winner of the Fuat Köprülü award and the Albert Hourani honorable mention award. She edits the journal Muqarnas and its Supplements.