Architecture of the Islamic West: North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, 700-1800

In Architecture of the Islamic West: North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, 700-1800 published by Yale University Press in 2020, author Jonathan Bloom provides an art historical overview of an often-overlooked area of inquiry in English-language scholarship. Though in the past five years, publications focusing on the Islamicate Western Mediterranean have become more common, Yale University Press is to be commended for their support of a project that Bloom writes he has mulled over for the past 45 years. Bloom’s authority as a scholar of Islamic art, his collection of photographs, his access to sites, and his expertise in mosque architecture come together in this work to offer a much-needed addition to the field of Islamic Art. Architecture of the Islamic West, with its stunning glossy photographs (many of which were taken by Bloom) and plans drawn by Nicholas Warner, offers a tantalising glimpse into the richness of the buildings of the Western Mediterranean, leaving the reader hungry for morein short this volume serves as the perfect amuse-bouche for the non-specialist, and a welcome contribution for specialists in need of a competent, survey text to introduce Islamicate architecture of North Africa and alAndalus to new students. While other scholars have provided apt chapter-by-chapter summaries of Architecture of the Islamic West, it is worth zooming out to look at the narrative arc of the book. Bloom starts following the Umayyad futūh, mentioning the territorial conquests of North Africa under the leadership of ‘Uqba ibn Nafi’ and that of al-Andalus under Tariq ibn Ziyad. The narrative then quickly moves to the construction of the Great Mosque of Córdoba