The three volumes constituting The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture are based upon The Dictionary of Art, edited by Jane Turner (London: Macmillan, 1996). The entries from those sections dealing with Islamic art and architecture have been pulled out, and often rearranged under new titles. Notably, the long entry on “Islamic art” on pp. 94–561 of vol. 16 of the Dictionary has been divided into appropriate subtopics, and each listed alphabetically. Some new entries have been added, but the 1996 texts have in most cases remained as they were, although supplemented with additional bibliography. The illustrations are quite different between the two publications: the new Grove Encyclopedia has forty-eight color plates, most with three or four separate illustrations, where the Dictionary had no color. Both have numerous black-and-white illustrations scattered through the text, but quite frequently the illustrations differ.

The preceding dry and summary paragraph is more or less accurate, I hope, but not very satisfactory as an answer to the questions that many will pose: should I buy this moderately expensive set of books, or recommend it to my library? I consider myself a Medievalist in the broadest sense of the word who studied Islamic art in graduate school, long ago it now seems, but only began teaching and pursuing research in the area about ten years ago. Since receiving the volumes for review, I have not only read extensively in them for this review, but have also referred to various articles in conjunction with current teaching and research projects, and I am confident that I will be using them in the future, and glad to have them in my personal library, which is relatively small in the Islamic area. I think that I would probably buy the volumes for my own use, as I have done with some analogous reference works such as the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (3 vols., New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Like that work, the Grove Encyclopedia is a relatively recent project produced by excellent scholars, and is full of concisely presented information.

As far as libraries are concerned, there are several varying responses to my question. Virtually all library budgets are under pressure now, and they must be selective. First let me address the issue of libraries that already own the Dictionary: is it really worth investing also in the new Grove Encyclopedia? That the texts are to a large degree the same would seem at first to suggest a negative answer. However, it seems to me that the greatest value of such a work is for teaching, and for that purpose the Grove Encyclopedia has many advantages. I am teaching an introductory course on Islamic art this term, and have recommended the volumes to my students, something I did not previously do with the more diffuse Dictionary, and have indeed been able to place the volumes on reserve for the course, along with other materials. Getting students to use library materials at all is increasingly difficult, but mine have told me that having everything in one place, not divided between reserve and reference collections, has led them to consult the Grove Encyclopedia volumes more frequently than would otherwise have been the case. Since their consultation often has to do with essay projects, it is very helpful to have such expanded bibliographies, including some very recent scholarship. It seems to me that any institution that teaches one or more courses devoted to Islamic art should acquire these volumes, even if they already own the Dictionary, and libraries without the Dictionary should acquire these if Islamic art occurs in any of the curriculum, for example as a part of survey courses or broadly conceived medieval courses.

Let me say a few things about the bibliographies of the Dictionary and the Grove Encyclopedia. First, the Dictionary published the bibliographies with a significantly smaller typeface, whereas the Grove Encyclopedia publishes them at the same size as the text, which makes them much easier to read. As far as updating goes, the entry on “Subject matter” within the main “Islamic art” essay of the Dictionary, by Robert Hillenbrand (signed in the Dictionary but not in the Grove Encyclopedia, which, unfortunately, has removed all author names), has a sub-section on “Writings” listing eleven publications, the latest dating from 1992. The Grove Encyclopedia adds six more, but these are highly significant, including Sheila S. Blair’s books on inscriptions and on calligraphy (Sheila S. Blair, Islamic Inscriptions, New York: New York University Press, 1998), Irene Bierman’s book on Fatimid inscriptions (Irene Bierman, Writing Signs: The Fatimid Public Text, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), and three important exhibition catalogues, including the 2006 London catalogue Word Into Art, which deals with modern art in the Middle East (Venetia Porter, Word Into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East, London: British Museum, 2006). These are the books I would want my students to consult first. Another example is in the section “Architecture after c. 1900,” by Mohammad al-Asad, the text presented unchanged in the Grove Encyclopedia, but the bibliography expanded from thirteen to thirty-one entries. Some examples are even more dramatic: the article on “Vernacular architecture—Iran” by Elizabeth Beazley has seen its bibliography grow from two items (the most recent the author’s book of 1982) to twenty-three. In not all cases are the bibliographical changes so dramatic, but the scholarly literature on Islamic art has grown enormously during the last decade, and some areas have come into much greater prominence, as is reflected in the Grove Encyclopedia.

The Grove Encyclopedia is very much easier to use, and to find particular topics. That the index is confined to Islamic art is one major help, but so is the reorganization. For example, the Dictionary’s very long article on “Architecture” included sections on “Urban development” and on “Housing” that in the Grove Encyclopedia have been split into separate headings, very much easier to find if “Housing” is what one wants to address. Moreover, the Grove Encyclopedia has added a new section on “Diaspora” (vol. 1, 193), treating modern buildings of the twentieth and twenty first centuries. The Dictionary had a separate entry for “Iran” limited to ancient Iran only, whereas the Grove Encyclopedia has a significant section on medieval and modern Iran, including a useful section on “Archaeological sites, museums and collections” (vol. 2, pp. 284–289). If this material is in the Dictionary at all, and it might be, after some efforts I was unable to find it.

The new Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture is a real contribution to scholarship, including much new material, such as illustrations of new or little-known works. To take just one example, the article on “Beveled style” is accompanied by a photograph of an alabaster capital in the David Collection, Copenhagen, from Raqqa, not mentioned in the essay, which emphasizes Samarra as the key site for the development of this style in the mid-ninth century. The David Collection capital is associated with Syria, not Iraq, and might be dated close to the greatest early Islamic activity at the site, during the reign of Harun al-Rashid (796–808), who briefly made it his capital; moreover, the capital has a clearly Christian cross on one face, suggesting that the “beveled style” was not perceived at the time as exclusively “Islamic” (see discussion in Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, Cosmophilia: Islamic Art from the David Collection, Copenhagen, Boston: McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College, 2006, cat. no. 81). The Grove Encyclopedia opens up a treasure trove of scholarship, putting it at our, and our students’ fingertips, and poses new productive questions.