Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks.

by Esin Atıl

Book by Esin Atil

Paperback

First published December 31, 1981

Reviews

[Horus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This almost coffee table sized book is a good overview of, specifically, Mamluk art. It is organized throughout by art type with a general discussion at the beginning of the section followed by, mostly, large colour photographs and catalogue listings and descriptions. Because of the larger format, the photos are really excellent, and in a few cases, more than one view is provided of an artifact. The sacrifice is the catalogue description which is in tiny print. If you are only interested in one segment of eastern art, this book likely isn’t for you. It is a good introduction and the author does a fair bit to tie the sections together in an historical context. One of my main frustrations was the persistent tendency to include descriptions of similar finds to the one depicted, and then spending all the text space describing the one not depicted, instead further discussion of the photo.