Having previously been largely neglected, the art of the Middle Eastern Christian communities during the Middle Ages has, over the last dozen or so years, begun to receive proper attention. In part this can be explained by the recent discoveries of new wall paintings in monasteries and churches in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. The present volume makes a significant contribution to the ongoing discussion of the subject. In what might be termed a companion volume, M. Immerzeel's Identity problems: medieval Christian art in Syria and Lebanon (this Journal lxii [2011], 588–90), coverage was given to the surviving Christian wall paintings in Lebanon and Syria; Snelders, by contrast, is concerned primarily with Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), although the artefacts and paintings from Dayr al-Surian in Egypt are also included, since this monastery had close connections with locations in Mesopotamia (Tagrit and Mar Mattai Monastery). As the research for both Immerzeel's and Snelders' books was undertaken as part of a larger research project at Leiden University entitled ‘The formation of a communal identity among Syrian Orthodox Christians (451–1300)’, the question of identity markers features throughout quite prominently, and Snelders's first chapter is entirely devoted to the more theoretical aspects. As both authors, however, discovered in the course of their research, specific identity markers are hard to find in the Christian art under consideration, and one of the most important findings of Snelders's book is that Muslims and Christians in the Mosul area during the twelth and thirteenth centuries in fact shared a common artistic idiom which could only be distinguished as specifically Muslim or Christian in cases where the particular context indicated this. After the initial chapter (aptly entitled ‘Context is everything’) there is a helpful chapter on the historical and artistic settings of the Syrian Orthodox communities at the time of what has been called the ‘Syriac renaissance’ of the twelfth/thirteenth centuries. This is followed by detailed studies of evidence from, in turn, Dayr al-Suryan, two famous illuminated Syriac Gospel lectionaries, a ssrecently discovered wall painting in Qaraqosh, the sculptural decoration of the Mar Behnam monastery, and of two parish churches, one in Mosul the other in Qaraqosh. The penultimate chapter, before the conclusions, turns to the significance of the language chose for inscriptions, Greek, Syriac or Arabic, and the dating systems employed. Two appendices are devoted to Mar Behnam, the second of which provides translations of all the extensive ornamental Syriac inscriptions. The book, which provides a stimulating and illuminating discussion of the materials available, is generously and well illustrated. Its finding that there is in fact no specific Syrian Orthodox art for the period covered of course serves as an invitation to extend the study to include what survives of the art of the Church of the East in the same region; it is to be hoped that the author might some time undertake this.