Islamic Inscriptions

A vital reference for everyone interested in Islamic inscriptions on buildings, objects and works of art. This beautifully illustrated book explains the importance of Islamic inscriptions and places them expertly in their historical and cultural context. It shows you how to decipher and interpret inscriptions and provides a standard for recording them. In addition, a fully annotated bibliography provides further reading on all aspects of Islamic epigraphy. Winner of the British Kuwait Friendship Society Al-Mubarak Prize 1999 for the best academic work on the Middle East

Inscriptions 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.

This volume contains four essays on inscriptions and/or pseudo inscriptions made with letters of the Arabic alphabet or with characters deriving from the latter, used in artifacts produced in the West (and especially Italy) during the medieval and Renaissance period. Maria Vittoria Fontana is Full Professor of Islamic Archaeology and History of Art at the Department of Science of Antiquities of Sapienza University in Rome; previously, she held the same role at “L’Orientale” University of Naples. She has carried out excavations in Iran, Jordan and Yemen. The last excavation was at Istakhr and the final report was published in the volume Istakhr (Iran) 2011-2016: Historical and Archaeological Essays (Quaderni di Vicino Oriente XIII), Rome: Sapienza 2018. She is also the author of numerous scientific articles and monographs on both archaeological and iconographic subjects, the latter concerning Islamic productions as well as Western ones that have come into contact with Islam.

This book approaches the religion and rituals of the pre-Islamic Arabian nomads using the Safaitic inscriptions. Unlike Islamic-period literary sources, this material was produced by practitioners of traditional Arabian religion; the inscriptions are eyewitnesses to the religious life of Arabian nomads prior to the spread of Judaism and Christianity across Arabia. The author attempts to reconstruct this world using the original words of its inhabitants, interpreted through comparative philology, pre-Islamic and Islamic-period literary sources, and the archaeological context.

Architectural inscriptions are a fascinating aspect of Islamic cultural heritage because of their rich and diverse historical contents and artistic merits. These inscriptions help us understand the advent of Islam and its gradual diffusion in Bengal, which eventually resulted in a Muslim majority region, making the Bengali Muslims the second largest linguistic group in the Islamic world. This book is an interpretive study of the Arabic and Persian epigraphic texts of Bengal in the wider context of a rich epigraphic tradition in the Islamic world. While focusing on previously untapped sources, it takes a fresh look into the Islamic inscriptions of Bengal and examines the inner dynamics of the social, intellectual and religious transformations of this eastern region of South Asia. It explores many new inscriptions including Persian epigraphs that appeared immediately after the Muslim conquest of Bengal indicating an early introduction of Persian language in the region through a cultural interaction with Khurasan and Central Asia. In addition to deciphering and editing the epigraphic texts, the information derived from them has been analyzed to construct the political, administrative, social, religious and cultural scenario of the period. The first survey of the Muslim inscriptions in India ever to be attempted on this scale, the book reveals the significance of epigraphy as a source for Islamic history and culture. As such, it will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian Studies, Asian History and Islamic Studies.

Located on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock was constructed at the end of the seventh century by order of caliph 'Abd al-Malik. This seminal structure has been much studied but no definitive interpretation yet exists of the meanings conveyed by the Dome at the time of its completion. The recovery of meaning is complicated by the paucity of primary written sources relating to the construction phases of the building and the motivations of its patron. This book concentrates on the most important surviving primary text, the long mosaic inscription running around the interior. Comprising a dedication and date (72/691-92) and material of a religious nature, the mosaic inscription provides vital evidence for the reconstruction of the meanings and functions of the Dome of the Rock. The detailed study of the mosaics helps to place them in the context of Late Antique monumental writing, particularly in Greek. The book makes use of contemporary Islamic coins, graffiti, and other inscribed objects in order to examine the Dome of the Rock in the relation to the ideological concerns of the Umayyad elite during and after the second Civil War.

This book discusses a highly-debated research topic regarding the history of the Arabic language. It investigates exhaustively the ancient roots of Classical Arabic through detailed tracings and readings of selected ancient inscriptions from the Northern and Southern Arabian Peninsula. Specifically, this book provides detailed readings of important Nabataean, Musnad, and Akkadian inscriptions, including the Namarah inscription and the Epic of Gilgamesh. In his book, the author, a known Arabic type designer and independent scholar, provides clear indisputable transcriptional material evidence indicating Classical Arabic was utilized in major population centers of the greater Arabian Peninsula, many centuries before Islam. He presents for the first time a new clear reading of Classical Arabic poetry verses written in the Nabataean script and dated to the first century CE. Furthermore, he offers for the first time a clear detailed Classical Arabic reading of a sample text from two ancient editions of the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, separated by more than1000 years. Throughout his readings, the author provides verifiable evidence from major historical Arabic etymological dictionaries, dated many centuries ago. The abundant of in-depth analysis, images, and detailed original tables in this book makes it a very suitable reference for both scholars and students in academic and research institutions, and for independent learners.

The authors of this book have taken a rare opportunity to bring together the many factors crucial to an adequate understanding of architectural inscriptions, and they have done so in relation to those in an important but sadly under-published historic mosque. The grand mosque of Shoushtar contains many historic inscriptions installed over time for documentary purposes, but the four monumental Kufic texts are integral parts of its design and meaning. They are here studied calligraphically, hermeneutically and phenomenologically, and in relation to the structure of the mosque itself, the whole being set against an outline of Shoushtar’s history and the features of the mosque. Begun in the ninth century CE, the grand mosque of Shoushtar is one of the earliest hypostyle mosques in Iran. It was built in “the city of scholars” when its residents included two great Sufis, Sahl Ibn Abdullah Tostari and Mansur Hallaj. This scholarly, mystical emphasis is reflected in the mosque itself and it is tempting to wonder whether the eleventh Shiite Imam, Hassan al-Askari, under house arrest at the time of building, had anything to do with its design. This mosque is idiosyncratic and much modified and now presents a complex interpretational challenge. This book is an important and long overdue contribution to our knowledge of Shoushtar and the historic application of monumental Kufic inscriptions. Its high quality illustrations allow personal study of all four Kufic inscriptions of the city’s grand mosque: Surat Ya-Sin which was once encircling the entire prayer hall, the dedicatory inscription above the secondary internal mihrab, its fascia inscription containing the last two verses of Surat al-Isra’ whose content parallels the fourth inscription of Surat al-Ikhlas (al-Tawhid) on the external mihrab.