"Islamic Inscriptions" by Sheila Blair

Islamic Inscriptions
by Sheila S. Blair

http://www.amazon.com/Islamic-Inscriptions-Sheila-Blair/dp/0814713289/ref=sr_1_1/002-7363174-5144854?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1187740474&sr=8-1

Ugh, ok, this was knowledge I needed to pick up and it really is a truly valuable reference book on the topic, but...ugh...it was a textbook in every sense of the word. Islamic Inscriptions is the main reference work (at least that I could find and it was well-reviewed by specialists) on the topic of...Islamic Inscriptions. Blair covers monumental inscriptions, wood, textiles, glass, and other portable objects.

It's probably worth a couple notes on what the book is and is not. It is not a detailed review of lots of examples of the various genres of Islamic inscriptions, but is really more of an introduction to the entire field. As such, rather than lots and lots of illustrations and detailed discussion of actual texts used in inscriptions and detailed discussions of stylistic developments with images - rather than all of that, it is more of an overview of everything that has and hasn't been done in the field. That does involve a decent number of images and lots of mention of different examples of specific inscriptions, but the book spends more time telling you about other sources where you can find the images, texts, and translations than it does actually showing them to you.

What you get as a result is a sense of where the field is, you get a decent overview of the structure of how inscriptions work with a decent smattering of examples, you get a good geographic overview of the differences between regions and across time and materials, and you get a good bibliography. But do you get a huge catalog of lots of examples with transcriptions and texts? No.

In all fairness, the sheer volume of examples she points to in other sources shows you the book probably could have run 1000 pages if she had included them all, if that would even have been possible (I doubt it actually given the likely copyright restrictions and rarity of many of the objects and hence likely paucity of available images). Still, it does feel like the book was more of an introduction and overview than a comprehensive study to fill one with a sense of understanding the field. Perhaps that's good, sometimes it may be too easy to think we know it all after reading a book rather than having just been introduced. This book at least gives you an honest level of knowledge.

For me, I'm looking for artistic inspiration backed by technical and historical understanding, so I value the knowledge I gained, but I'm going to have to keep looking now using this as a starting point, not an end point.