Samer Akkach's Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: An Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas is one of the more recent additions to a growing body of literature on the relationship between Islam and the arts. Akkach's focus on premodern Islamic cosmology, mysticism, and architecture begins with a series of questions about the conceptualization and appearance of a bounded world and its relationship to the divine. Akkach's answers to these questions are found in three arenas: the work of Ibn al-עArabi and other premodern mystics on cosmology, a brief study of the main monuments of Islamic architecture, and a search for the tool that links these two together. Akkach uses the notion of “spatial sensibility” to address the relationship between mystical cosmology and architecture. He argues throughout his study for the existence of a principle of universal order that served as the cornerstone of spatial sensibility in premodern Islam.

One of the many things that makes this study impressive is Akkach's self-conscious approach to the magnitude and difficulty of his topic. His book begins with an extremely thoughtful introduction to the study of the relationship between Islam and architecture that incorporates a discussion of two main trends in the field that can be loosely defined as the perennialist or traditionalist approach, and the art historical or modern approach. Akkach defines the perennial approach through an examination of the writings of Coomaraswamy, Nasr, Ardalan, and Bakhtiar. What links these scholars is a search for a consistent doctrine that links all forms, or what Nasr describes as the eternal truth at the heart of all traditions. The second group is those who search for meaning through an ever-changing sociohistorical context and have abandoned the idea of inherent meaning, preferring instead to focus on the nature of visual perception. As Akkach points out, scholars of this latter group—including this reviewer—have been particularly critical of the essentializing and generalizing trends of the perennialists who in their search for universal truths have overlooked the particulars of time and place. Ultimately, as Akkach points out, the distinction between these two groups comes from a difference in goals. Whereas Akkach follows those who use architecture as a tool to study patterns of thought and as a way to approach universal ideals, historians of Islamic art and architecture focus on how the reception and creation of works of art and architecture change over time and place.

The book is divided into four chapters of varying lengths that correspond to what Akkach sees as the different intellectual and spatial orders of premodern Islam. Beginning with a lengthy discussion of the use of symbolism in his chapter on discursive orders, Akkach takes us through a distinct Sufi conception of the metaphysical and cosmic orders. His discussions are linked by several themes. The first is a reliance on the doctrines of Ibn al-עArabi as a representation of a Sufi world view. Without question, the complexity and comprehensiveness of Ibn al-עArabi's writings, as well as his many diagrams, lend themselves quite well to Akkach's search for a premodern spatial sensibility. The second is an argument for the epistemological truth behind spatial forms and a call to follow the approach of traditionalists in rescuing the study of Islamic forms from the spiritual bankruptcy of the modern world. The latter is particularly problematic as Akkach himself agrees that many of his conclusions about spatial sensibilities are as much a part of other premodern worlds as the Islamic one.

It is not until the last chapter that Akkach turns his focus to a detailed analysis of such monumental works of Islamic architecture as the Dome of the Rock and the Kaעba. His discussion of the Kaעba, in particular, is quite rich and a badly needed addition to studies of Islamic architecture. In his discussion of the cosmology of the Kaעba, he brings in substantial information from early Islamic debates on the different shapes of the Kaעba. It is in such discussions as these that Akkach's approach makes the most sense, because these crucial forms and the historical debates surrounding their meaning can tell us the most about how people used key pieces of sacred architecture as both links to the divine and as ways to understand the relationship between the bounded world and the world beyond.

Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam is a timely book that should be read by all scholars interested in facing the divide between Islamic architectural historians and scholars of mystical philosophy and theology. Although Akkach could be criticized for making many sweeping generalities about Sufi thought and Islamic architecture, the book is an important addition to an ongoing debate about the relationship between Islam and art.