This is a remarkable volume and of considerable significance to art historians and university administrators. It contains most of the papers presented at the symposium “Historiography and Ideology: Architectural Heritage of the ‘Lands of Rum,’” held in Cambridge in 2006. A generation ago, the same (or more or less the same) contributions would have been called something like “The Interpretation of Islamic Architecture in Ottoman Times and in Turkey Today.” As I will argue shortly, the difference in titles reflects a major shift in approaching the history of architecture in the Ottoman world, but it is in fact a difference that affects all areas and periods from what is generally called “Islamic art” and that may well require all historians of art to redefine the traditional time-and-space dimensions of the ways of knowledge in the field and, by extension, the structure of departments.

But, before pursuing this major point, let me summarize the contents of the book. A preliminary article by the two editors is a manifesto for the consideration of a precise geographical entity—the “lands of Rum,” or those primarily Christian territories (Anatolia and the Balkans) that were incorporated into various Turkic regimes from about 1100 onward. This must be done because the entity needs to be considered as a self-contained phenomenon and not an exemplar of some broader category like Islamic art. Interestingly enough, the argument for what is a justifiable conclusion derives less from an analysis of the monuments than of the historiography that accompanied them.

Then, Cemal Kafadar, in a contribution entitled “A Rome of One’s Own: Reflections on Cultural Geography and Identity in the Lands of Rum,” seeks, quite successfully, and in a very learned manner, to identify culturally a historic land that is broader than present-day Turkey and that became both a specific living area and a myth. Kafadar’s essay is followed by three sets of four articles each.

The first seeks to broaden the issue by considering the Ottoman provinces in Arabian lands (Heghnar Watenpaugh), the Western discourse on Iran that focused too much on the interesting but ultimately secondary personality of Arthur Upham Pope (Kishwar Rizvi), the elaborate and intricate academic discourse on Turkish art in the early twentieth century (Oya Pancaroğlu), and the very different problem of the architecture of those Turkish groups that went east instead of west (Finbarr Barry Flood). All these articles are interesting and rewarding to read, but it is not clear that they accomplish more than provide examples of a variety of attitudes and passions that do not necessarily explain the character of the arts created in four different areas and under different ideological and practical rules.

The second set is the most successful one in the volume. It concentrates on the Ottoman “architectural heritage,” rather than its history, style, or development. Ahmet Ersoy recounts the ways in which the nineteenth century tried to explain the sources of Ottoman art. Gülru Necipoğlu discusses the complex means by which Sinan was transformed into a unique national genius. Shirine Hamadeh surveys the richly complicated elements of eighteenth-century Ottoman architecture, and Sibel Bozdoğan handles the “nationalist” interpretations of early twentieth-century architecture.

The last set of articles—by S.M. Can Bilsel, Scott Redford, Wendy Shaw, and Nur Altinyildiz—deals with the several ways in which the history of art and the taste of the twentieth century was shaped by the institutions—museums, departments of antiquities, preservation organizations, universities—that dealt with monuments.

Nearly every one of these articles is a significant contribution to the knowledge and understanding of Ottoman and pre-contemporary Turkish architecture. Like any publication of the proceedings from a colloquium, this one contains repetitions, and minor criticism can be leveled at statements or conclusions expressed in several of the articles. Most of these critical points belong to technical issues restricted in significance to a specialized and limited audience. In reality, the importance of this volume lies in the fact that, quite openly and thoughtfully, it presents its traditional scholarly pursuits within a different framework from the usual one of an “Islamic” architecture. It argues that the adjective “Islamic” is not appropriate for the arts and cultures of many different places and times, and that it was imposed, or at least propelled, by the “bad” Orientalism, the one that implied Western domination and that must be differentiated from the “good” Orientalism based on a careful knowledge of languages and of history. This volume also rejects as inappropriate to the past the nation-centered identifications and labels that have become so important in the contemporary world, most particularly in Turkey and Iran. It proposes to identify a region—Anatolia and the Balkans—that cannot be identified in national or religious terms, at least not until the early twentieth century, and to argue that this region has its own conception of architecture, at times its own forms, but mostly a way with forms that distinguishes it from surrounding areas and from the broad culture with which it is usually put.

The issue is not unique to architecture. It underlies the definitions proposed by the magnificent collection of artifacts found in the Benaki Museum in Athens dealing with the Greek communities of Anatolia under Ottoman rule. An argument comparable to the one in the volume surveyed here appears in recent articles written by María Isabel Álvaro Zamora and Gonzalo M. Borrás Gualis in the journal Artigrama (Gonzalo M. Borrás Gualis, “Estado actual de los estudios sobre arte andalusí: introducción,” Artigrama 22 (2007): 17–35; María Isabel Álvaro Zamora, “La cerámica andalusí,” Artigrama 22 (2007): 337–69), and claims that monuments of Spanish Islamic architecture and even its ceramics and textiles are more appropriately categorized as belonging to an art of Andalusia rather than to the general category of Islamic art. Already half a century ago, scholarship in the Soviet Union had focused on a “Central Asian” art and architecture for monuments from the eighth to the twentieth centuries. We used to interpret this argument as reflecting the political ideology of the former Soviet Union, but it may indeed be reasonable to understand the medieval and pre-modern arts of the area as a continuation of the Late Antique world of Soghdia rather than the implantation of a new and alien Islamic import.

Such cultural and geographical categories need to be discussed in greater detail, without necessarily following a current debate around colonialism, orientalism, alterity, non-East, and other terms expressing the unease most of us feel about traditional categories like Islamic and medieval, which are still the categories in which the field of art history is divided. We can probably agree that national labels are inadequate or misleading when dealing with the past, even though they are essential in identifying “national” museums or in fostering pride and knowledge of one’s heritage.

These are all matters that need discussion, preferably not an acrimonious one. For the issues involved are of two kinds. On the one hand, it is a matter of providing accurate categories for the cataloguing of monuments of architecture, painting, or decorative arts. Accuracy means at the same time correctness of information and interpretation and acceptance within generally accepted groupings. It is, for instance, easy enough to justify the group known as Andalusian. “Land of Rum” is more difficult to justify, because its intellectual and scholarly validity has no following, not even among art historians in general.

An educational program is implicit in the arguments of this volume, a program that will take time to set up and energy to continue. Education and research are activities for which art historians are, or should be, prepared. The more difficult issue is an administrative one. Is there much point in continuing this debate unless one knows that the leadership of universities, museums, and schools of art and architecture understand the nature of the problems and their importance at a time of academic globalization? It is noteworthy that of the thirteen authors of articles in this book, all but two are from Turkey, Iran, or Arab countries, and all but one were educated in American universities. What they, as well as many of their colleagues in Far Eastern art, bring to the history of art (and of culture in general) is an attitude and an expectation that traditional history should learn to understand.