Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain

This beautifully illustrated volume is much more than the catalog of an exhibition of Spain's Islamic art that was held at the Alhambra and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York this summer. It opens with an excellent historical outline of Islamic Spain, divided into sections by period; each section is written by a leading scholar and followed by a discussion of the characteristic arts, architecture, fortifications, and so forth. The subsequent four articles on the Alhambra itself give the best analysis of the subject in English. The catalog is precisely reproduced, with photographs of the highest quality. That it collects in one volume artworks that are so widely dispersed is a major achievement, especially because there is no institute in Spain devoted to the art of the Islamic centuries. Designed for both scholar and lay reader, it is the most important volume to be produced on the subject and belongs in every art and academic library for its contribution to both history and art.