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In this important and timely publication, top international scholars present current research and developments about the art, archaeology, and history of the ancient city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site located in Syria. Palmyra became tragic headline news in 2015, when it was overtaken by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which destroyed many of its monuments and artifacts. The essays in this book include new scholarship on Palmyra's origins and evolution as well as deve...

A beautiful, fully-illustrated guide to Turkey's outstanding collections of icons, with descriptions and historical overview.

Light of the Sufis introduces the complex and multilayered topic of Sufism, or Islamic mysticism, by concentrating on its expression in the visual arts and offers new insights into the integrative and fluid nature of the Sufi experience that has solicited strong reactions-both negative and positive-in Muslims and non-Muslims alike for several hundred years. Sufism became well established in the 9th to 10th century and reached its height in the 12th to 13th century. From its inception, Sufism r...

Once interred with mummified remains, nearly a thousand funerary portraits from Roman Egypt survive today in museums around the world, bringing viewers face-to-face with people who lived two thousand years ago. Until recently, few of these paintings had undergone in-depth study to determine by whom they were made and how. An international collaboration known as APPEAR (Ancient Panel Paintings: Examination, Analysis, and Research) was launched in 2013 to promote the study of these objects and to...

The Holy Land, so bitterly fought over by Israel and Palestine, was mainly desert and arid land, the only fertile plains being down by Galilee. The flowers that would have grown 2000 years ago are very different from those that grew in northern Europe in the late Middle Ages. This book is not a literal interpretation of the flowers described in the Bible, but an accompaniment, with manuscript illuminations. It is a celebration of both the language of the Bible and the beauty of medieval manuscri...

(This title was originally published in 1989/90.)

Shi'i Islam has been the official religion of Iran from the Safavids (1501-1732) to the present day. The Shi'i world experience has provided a rich artistic tradition, encompassing painting, sculpture and the production of artefacts and performance, which has helped to embed Shi'i identity in Iran as part of its national narrative. In what areas of material culture has Iranian Shi'ism manifested itself through objects or buildings that are unique within the overall culture of Islam? To what exte...

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Ayyubid dynasty brought unprecedented architectural development to Aleppo, the most important city in medieval Syria. While early Islamic empires usually expressed their grandeur by founding new cities with vast extra-urban palaces, the Ayyubids asserted their power by "modernizing" existing towns. With its large, well-preserved citadel and a wide variety of pious institutions, Aleppo is the ideal subject for Yasser Tabbaa's study of the pan-Islamic t...

Roman emperors, Arab scholars, and early travellers were already drawn to and enchanted by the fascination of the land along the Nile. The pyramids of Giza, the temple-city of Karnak, or the Valley of the Kings with the grave of Tutankhamen even today maintain their extraordinary force of attraction.Across the centuries, the high culture of the ancient Egyptians has pertained its allure. This can certainly be attributed to their astounding architectural, artistic, and technological achievements...