Description
Book SynopsisInscriptions on buildings are a distinctive feature of Islamic architecture, and this book studies the 79 surviving monumental inscriptions in the Iranian world from the first five centuries of the Muslim era (A.D. 622-1106), the period in which all the major trends of monumental epigraphy in the area were set. These foundation, commemorative, and funerary texts come from the region between Iraq and Soviet Central Asia. Written primarily in Arabic, they embellished architectural monuments and furnishings whose nature implies the construction of major buildings. An extended introduction discusses such general topics as titulature, patronage, and stylistic development. Each text is then presented individually with photographs, drawings, transcriptions, translations and an extensive commentary, which presents the inscription in its larger palaeographic and historical contexts.
Trade Review'...collects together secondary material which is scattered and difficult to locate.' J.M. Rogers, BSOAS, 1992. '...cette somme de travail patient et érudit qui apporte une contribution notable à l'épigraphie arabe.' Solange Ory, Bulletin Critique des Annales Islamologiques, 1993. '...this is a very important work of scholarship which will be of great benefit to a wide range of scholars in different fields of Islamic studies.' Carole Hillenbrand, Journal of Semitic Studies, 1996.
