Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 128 pages
- Published by: Assouline February 2001
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 284323199X
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-2843231995
-
Book Dimensions:
8.8 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches
- Weighs: 1.2 pounds
Product Description
Over 13 centuries, Islam has become a powerful religion whose symbols, whether linked to its doctrine (prayer, the profession of faith, alms giving), or its architecture (the Kaaba, the mosque, the mihrab), reveal a wealth of meaning for those wishing to explore their history and cultural significance. This book provides a visual synthesis of the Islamic world. Its clear text and gorgeous full-page color photographs offer a new and fresh approach to the fastest growing religion in the world.
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader ReviewsI own every title in this glorious Editions Assouline series, to which--as you've, no doubt, noticed--nearly every reviewer has seen fit to ascribe four or five stars. The book is a delight to review, brimming from cover to cover with glorious photography that distills--as its author purports, and alone purports--the SYMBOLS of Islam. After reading the book, I found myself enthralled, fascinated, appreciative of the profound beauty of the Muslim artisan, and motivated to learn more of the faith that drove him to create. I neither found nor expected to find a deep theosophical treatise on Koranological foundations or eschatology. Explanations of various Muslim habits abound--though you must pick through mountains of detail to find them--in the appendices of Khalifa's annotated Quran. Ranging from most to least learned, Jordan's "Islam: An Illustrated History," Nomachi's "Mecca the Beautiful, Medina the Radiant," and Michaud's "The Orient in a Mirror" span the gamut of excellent Muslim-explanative (though markedly not Muslim-apologetic or Muslim-eschatologic) reading, and all offer breathtaking photographs and--at times--impart a distinct "you are there" feeling to the armchair traveler. Now, I grant William his right to stingily reserve but a single star for this book, but I must disagree as strongly as possible with him. He is clearly in the minority here. I have no handy titles on the jurisprudential aspects of fiqh to which to refer him--nor, indeed, am I oriented thither. (Of course, insofar as he dares to mention the holiness of Islam and the cancerous, muddled, rumor-mongering of Hadith in the same sentence, I could wonder about the purity of this aspiring softa in the first place, but I digress: let him devote his jihad to the appreciation of what the book has to offer, not to what it neither advertises to offer nor remotely could within such a short expanse.)
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