Islamic Art is Dead, Long Live Islamic Art!

The Historiography of Persian Architecture. Edited by Mohammad Gharipour. London & New York: Routledge, 2016. Pp. 232. ISBN: 9781138915022.

Epigraphy and Islamic Culture – Inscriptions of the early Muslim Rulers of Bengal (1205–1494). By Muhammad Yusuf Siddiq. London & New York: Routledge, 2016. Pp. 273. ISBN: 9780415297820.

Beauty and Identity – Islamic Art from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. By Linda Komaroff. London & New Haven: University of Yale Press, 2016. Pp. 311. ISBN: 9781943042036.

God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth – Lightin Islamic Art and Culture. By Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2015. Pp. 366. ISBN: 9780300215281.

The Islamic architecture of Persia is a relatively recent field for scholarship because the important monuments were mosques and shrines from which non-Muslims (even non-Shi’as) were rightly excluded. As these religious buildings occupied long-sanctified sites, much early history was also concealed within them.1