Islamic Art, Architecture and Material Culture

Book excerpt: "This book is the published record of the proceedings of one of the first conferences held under the auspices of the newly established Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World. The Centre, set up in 2006 with a £5 million grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council, comprises a consortium of the universities of Edinburgh, Manchester and Durham whose brief is to secure long-term improvements in the teaching of the Arabic language and of Middle Eastern studies in the United Kingdom. The conference, held in Edinburgh in August 2007 under the title 'Arab art, architecture and material culture', was organised by Margaret Graves, then a Ph.D. student of Islamic art history at the University of Edinburgh. The intention was to use the conference as a way of encouraging younger scholars of Islamic art history to present their ideas before an audience of their peers, and to highlight the variety of research currently being undertaken into Islamic art, principally in British universities - though a few speakers from abroad also contributed. Twelve of the participants provided final versions of the papers that they had delivered at the conference, and these have been expertly edited by Dr Margaret Graves in the present volume. These twelve papers fall quite naturally into categories defined by medium. Half of them deal with the so-called "minor", "decorative" or "applied" arts - the uncertain nomenclature betrays a long outdated but still persistent Eurocentric taxonomy from which Islamic art historians have still not entirely freed themselves, and which embodies a hierarchical distinction between architecture, painting and sculpture (a notional first division) and all other arts and crafts (a notional second division). This distinction simply does not work in the field of Islamic art, where such media as metalwork, textiles and ceramics effortlessly claim major status. These media re the subject matter of the first six papers in this collection, and it is entirely appropriate that they are so well represented here. The second half of the book comprises three papers on the built environment and three on the arts of the book." -- introduction, p. v.