The somewhat curious title Identity puzzles finds explanation in the fact that the research for book was done as part of a Leiden University research project on the formation of a Syrian Orthodox identity during the period 351–1300. The initial aim of the two art historians involved (the other being B. Snelders, whose companion monograph on the Mesopotamian region should appear shortly) was to try to isolate any distinctively Syrian Orthodox features in the Christian art of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the event, it turned out that it was not possible in either of the two regions studied to discover any such identity markers, and so in cases where no written, or other external, evidence was available, it proves impossible to say to which Christian community a particular wall-painting or other artistic product belonged.

Even as recently as thirty years ago the corpus of medieval Christian art in Syria and Lebanon was diminutive, and it is only in the subsequent years that a respectable number of wall paintings, for the most part in a lamentably fragmentary state, have come to light. The most extensive of these, in the revived monastery of Mar Musa in Syria, have by now been studied in detail, above all in a monograph by E. Cruikshank Dodd (2001). The same scholar subsequently produced a valuable volume (2004) covering all the medieval paintings of Lebanon, but for Syria, where several important paintings have come to light recently (notably some very fine ones in Kaftun), only studies confined to single churches have been published so far. For this reason alone, the present volume, whose second and third chapters provide an inventory of materials from both Syria and Lebanon, is greatly to be welcomed; it is, however, much more than just an inventory, for thanks to the concerns of the Leiden project, attention is paid throughout to questions of identity. Of the three other chapters, the first, which is mainly of an introductory character, sketching the historical and religious setting, also includes a brief section on the Syrian monastery (Dayr al-Suryan) in Egypt, where several further wall paintings have come to light in recent years, and the artistic materials from the Mosul region; the fourth chapter looks at the related subject of icon painting in the county of Tripoli (including a discussion of how these correlate chronologically with the wall paintings). The fifth and final chapter addresses head-on the frequent problems of identity that have emerged from the discussion of individual churches with wall paintings in chapters ii and iii. In those two chapters it had often been the case that it was only when there was external evidence, such as that provided by colophons of manuscripts, that it was possible to say to which Christian community a particular church belonged. Various possible identity markers are discussed: iconography, donor representations, dress, style and languages used in accompanying inscriptions. Potentially the appearance of certain saints should be indicative of ecclesiastical allegiance, but only rarely, such as at Amiun where the Chalcedonian Symeon Stylites the Younger features, does such convenient evidence turn up. Donor representations and dress can certainly offer help, but in some cases this may simply add to the problem, as at Bahdeidat, where there are Latin ex voto images, indicating Frankish patronage. At first sight one might have thought that language would be an important indicator, but this too proves elusive, for although Greek was certainly more at home in the Melkite community, it could nevertheless occasionally turn up in Syrian Orthodox painting, while Syriac is quite frequent in Melkite ones (and is common in Melkite liturgical manuscripts of the time; the statement [p. 25] that ‘Melkite intellectual circles … in the twelfth to thirteenth century … too changed to Syriac’ is puzzling, for Syriac had always been one of the written languages used by Melkites). Given that artists were often itinerant, it could well be that in some cases the painter's ecclesiastical allegiance might be different from that of the church he was painting. It is in fact one of the main findings of this study that there was much more interaction between the different communities, including between the Crusader and indigenous ones, than has sometimes been thought. The book ends with a plea that future studies should broaden their scope and take into account, not only the icons of Sinai, but also the medieval icons of Egypt. One might also add the wall paintings of Georgia, seeing that there was a strong Georgian presence not only in Jerusalem but also on the Black Mountain in the Antioch region. As far as Sinai is concerned, the colophons of the many thirteenth-century Syriac manuscripts are suggestive, for the scribes of most of them come from Syria. It might be noted here that one of these (Sinai Syr. 245), a Melkite psalter, dated June 1274 and copied in the Monastery of the Theotokos in Kaftun, should be added to the conflicting evidence for the ecclesiastical allegiance of this monastery (discussed at pp. 98–9).

The volume is generously illustrated with a large number of colour photographs, including several of the recently discovered paintings in the church of St Sergius and Bacchus at Kaftun.