Islamic culture's most striking visual achievement is an art of light and colour, a mastery of lustrous surface reflections and aqueous depths. The small and mostly muddy black and white illustrations here give no suggestion of this world of subtlety and gilded brilliance. It needs the best colour reproduction of which modern technology is capable.
Furthermore, the entries have been sliced up salami-like into small subsections, each with its own repetitive bibliography, making them maddeningly impossible to read continuously and rendering the Dictionary's book-length entry on "Islamic Art" no contest for a single well-written book. This could have been avoided by the methods of searching available as a norm with computer technology.
There are contributions from many leading scholars, who may not always be the best people to write reference-style entries. For example, Oleg Grabar's keynote entry under "Definition" gives a prominent place but an incomplete reference to near-impenetrable discussion of a minor medieval philosopher, which presents a serious deterrent to anyone wanting to pursue an interest in Islamic art theory. The term Islamic is quite rightly broadly defined by Grabar, but there seems a general reluctance to mention Islam.
As well as the main entry under "Islamic art" there are others under headings such as names of cities and dynasties. Almost all aspects of the subject are present, including the more specialised ones such as calligraphy and bookbinding, but not always easily found. Military architecture, for example, is dealt with under a separate entry, which leaves a gaping hole at the centre of the accounts of Cairo and Aleppo. But the casual reference-seeker will eventually always find a factual answer, and there are ample cross-references.
The quality of bibliography is an important aspect for the specialist researcher and the paucity of Arabic sources is indicative of a general lack of cultural context. For example, the modern Egyptian editions of important foundation documents are not cited in the appropriate architectural bibliographies, and sometimes Arab authors appear to be mentioned as a matter of lip-service: several entries covering Cairo cite the medieval Arab historian Maqrizi's Khitat in the scarce 1853 Boulaq edition without mentioning the indispensable index published in 1983 or the accessible work of P. Ravaisse.
An uncontexted approach, unsatisfying at a scholarly level, is bound to surface at a more popular level in such a puzzled comment as "it is not clear why such an impressive building should have been erected by a man who accomplished little else of note in his lifetime" (in the entry under "Cairo" on one of the most famous achievements of Islamic architecture, the mosque/ madrasa of Sultan Hassan).
We may wonder indeed why great art was produced in the reigns of such adolescent epigones as this sultan if we persist with the traditional western or westernised approach that has ignored the context in which the patron's personality was merely one strand in a web that included belief, law, custom and technology. Lack of cultural background is also reflected in the lifeless treatment of domestic architecture.
These criticisms should not detract from the achievement of Stephen Vernoit, the section editor, whose remarkable feat of organisation in a quasi-Linnaean schema has rendered a massive service to the subject. I doubt any other scholar in the field has the overall perspective to create this taxonomy.
Vernoit has also managed to achieve a remarkable homogeneity of tone among the disparate flock of his many contributors. As to whether the contents answer all readerly demands of a reference volume, the answer is yes, with three qualifications: if you have plenty of time to spare; if you are satisfied with a western perspective; and if you do not long to feast your eyes on art.
Jane Jakeman is an Oxford librarian with a doctorate in Islamic art history.