An Outline of Islamic Architecture.

AuthorEcker, Heather
PositionBook review

An Outline of Islamic Architecture. By RAFIQUE ALI JAIRAZBHOY. Rpt. Oxford: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2003. Pp. 216, maps, illus. $19.95 (paper).

Oxford University Press's recent reprint of R. A. Jairazbhoy's An Outline of Islamic Architecture (first published in 1972) provides readers with a rather antiquated summary of Islamic architecture in six global regions: a single unit on early architecture in Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, and "Mesopotamia," and individual units on Spain, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, and India. Although the reprint is billed as a textbook for schools and colleges, it has been superseded in this regard by Yale University Press's more recent Islamic Art and Architecture, 650-1250 and its continuation The Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250-1800. The recent revision of the former updates arguments, photographs, plans, and bibliography, and shows what Jairazbhoy might have done for the re-edition of his text. Instead, An Outline remains largely as it was in 1972, with a now outdated system of transcription, obsolete place-names (e.g., Brussa, Cordova, Isnik), antiquated and idiosyncratic spelling of the names of well-known monuments (e.g., Tchinili Koshk, Top Kapu Serai, Selimya of Konia). While these aspects may be merely annoying to the reader accustomed to the orthographic norms of contemporary scholarship, the out-of-date bibliography, and consequently outdated arguments are more serious matters. Apart from two more references in the new preface, the bibliography does not extend beyond the early 1960s. Thus, the advances made in the field in the past forty years are ignored--a major Iacuna, as the majority of new scholarship has arisen in the context of university departments of Islamic art history in America, Europe, and the Middle East that were not founded, or not functioning at high levels, before the 1980s. Though one might argue that the very latest scholarly discoveries in the field need not concern beginning students, likewise there is no need for students to be burdened with outdated views and errors of interpretation in what purports to be an authoritative text.

Jairazbhoy's treatment of primary sources is also problematic. He cites sources in translation exclusively. I have no argument with this practice, as accessibility in this...

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