The tradition of study of landscapes in Islamic contexts has a long history. Leaving aside the Arab geographers themselves, it could perhaps be dated to the Survey of Western Palestine by Conder and Kitchener (Reference Conder and Kitchener1881) or to LeStrange's works of historical geography (e.g. 1890). In terms of modern landscape studies, however, it begins with the pioneering The Land Behind Baghdad by Adams (Reference Adams1965) and includes a substantial list of surveys carried out in different regions. This long history has seen many different approaches and perspectives being applied to the study of the landscapes. However, there has been a notable lack of reflection regarding methodological approaches, reflection which could provide diverse perspectives to analyse the complexity of the rural landscapes developed in the extensive lands of Islam. The present book could be considered a good beginning in filling this gap.
This volume is a compilation of different studies of landscapes in the Islamic world, all of them well documented and relevant. What makes the book unique, however, is that every contributor has striven to provide a balance between theory and practice in their work. This approach coordinates the substantially different methodological and theoretical perspectives of each author towards a common endeavour: the design of an interpretative framework for the study of Islamic landscapes from a multidisciplinary point of view. The comparison of the different perspectives highlights the complexity of the design of studies of historical landscapes and sheds light on the way in which these can be tackled in collaborative efforts.
The editors of the book are experienced archaeologists in different regions of the Islamic world, focusing particularly on Syria and Central Asia, respectively. They are both related to the Materiality in Islam Research Initiative (MIRI) of the University of Copenhagen. MIRI has developed archaeological projects from a range of methodological and theoretical perspectives in places as diverse as Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Qatar and Turkmenistan, and it has provided the authors with experience that informs the background of the edited book. The contributors include scholars with practical experience in different methods of analysis of landscapes of the Islamic period. Their range of specialization includes historical texts and different fields of archaeology, like survey, geoarchaeology, archaeozoology, burial archaeology and technology of materials.
The work is divided into 12 chapters, arranged in four sections: ‘Hydroeconomies: managing and living with water’; ‘Agriculture, pastoralism and subsistence’; ‘Landscapes of commerce and production’; and ‘Transience and permanence: movement and memory in the landscape’. The first section contains contributions from A. Meier, P. Macumber and K. Bartl. Meier deals with the materiality of Ottoman water administration in the area of Damascus as seen from the point of view of the written sources. Macumber analyses the relationship between water and settlements in Qatar and advances an explanation for the distribution of settlements in the peninsula. Finally, Bartl explains the relevance of hydrological infrastructures in Qasr Mushash, an early Islamic settlement in Jordan, for the understanding of the rural economy of the area. The section on agriculture and pastoralism includes historical studies of faunal remains and their implications for studies of landscape and of relationship between humans and animals in the southern highlands of Transjordan (R.M. Brown) and in eighteenth-century Qatar (P. Barnsgaard and L. Yeomans). The next section, dedicated to themes of production and distribution, features a work on copper mining and smelting in the Faynan region (Jordan) in the Middle Islamic period, by I.W.N. Jones; a study of ceramic rural production and distribution in the highlands of central Yemen in the Islamic period, by D. Mahoney; and the presentation of results of a survey and analysis of Ottoman water mills in the Upper Orontes Valley (Syria), by S. McPhillips. The three studies deal with questions of technology of production and distribution, and offer conclusions that are relevant to the understanding of rural economies in the Middle East in the Islamic period.
The last part of the book is dedicated to the questions of movement/permanence and memory in the landscape. It starts with a revision of the architectural remains of the Ghurids in Afghanistan, by D.C. Thomas and A.L. Gascoigne, who show the materialization of a lifestyle based in a combination of nomadism and imperial politics between the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries ad. This is followed by B. Walker's reflection on the advances of the Northern Jordan Project, where an alternative to the traditional account of depopulation of the Syrian landscape during the late Mamluk and Ottoman periods is presented; according to Walker, the concept of ‘liquid landscapes’ can be used for a better interpretation of the phenomena of settlement dispersion of the region, which does not necessarily imply depopulation. J. Bradbury's analysis of Islamic burial practices of the Homs region in Syria across the Islamic period is the next work; she deals with the topics of construction of memory of rural communities and ‘localization’ and ‘ruralization’ of Islamic practices. The final chapter of the book is P.D. Wordsworth's study of the economy of stopping places in the northeastern segment of the Great Khorasan Road, linking Merv and the river pass of Amul through the Karakum desert of Turkmenistan. Wordsworth is interested in understanding the sustainability of the places where travellers along the route had to stop, and offers an interesting perspective on the mechanics of movement of people and goods across Central Asia. All the chapters of the book are introduced by a text by the late T.J. Wilkinson, who competently explains the main themes that the contributors touch on and links them to the archaeological developments of landscape research in the Middle East (in the widest sense) in the last decades. In his concluding remarks to this book, A. Walmsley explains the significance of these approaches for the discipline of Islamic archaeology.
Landscapes of the Islamic World offers a thought-provoking and challenging view of the study of Islamic landscapes, and in so doing it contributes to the reorientation of the discipline of Islamic archaeology that has been going on approximately for the last decade. The perspectives offered by each of the contributors are not innovative in themselves, as they follow up developments in other archaeological fields or disciplines and incorporate into the publication the results of works that have been published elsewhere. However, the sum of these perspectives, together with explicit presentation of their theoretical and methodological underpinnings, offers an incomparable chance to examine in a single text the potential that an informed, multidisciplinary approach to landscape studies of Islamic societies holds for ground-breaking historical interpretations.
The work also has its shortcomings. The title Landscapes of the Islamic World does not seem particularly fortunate when most of the contributions are focused on the Middle East (only two papers deal with Central Asia). The Islamic territories in the Mediterranean (beyond the Levant), Africa or South Asia are not represented at all. It could be argued that there is a dearth of studies of rural landscapes in those territories, but that is certainly not the case for Iberia, where the analysis of landscape of al-Andalus has occupied a fundamental space since the 1980s (e.g. Barceló et al. Reference Barceló, Kirchner and Navarro1996). The book would have been much enriched if some recent studies from this area of the Islamic world could have been included.
All things considered, McPhillips and Wordsworth's work is a fundamental step forward in the development of Islamic archaeology which is interesting, wide-ranging and easy to read, and which offers a good balance between theoretical and methodological proposals and practical case studies. It is essential reading for scholars and students interested in Islamic archaeology in general, and a necessary one for those who want to know about landscape research in the Middle East.
