The main title of this work may lead one to expect a wide conspectus of the whole range of Islamic book production; the subtitle indicates a limitation of the field. Nevertheless, we may admire the richness of the holdings of Indiana University, especially as represented in the Lilly Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts, and the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. This handsomely produced book, composed of an introduction by Christiane Gruber and seven essays by six further contributors, is the fruit of a graduate seminar and also of an exhibition. Perhaps with the exhibition visitor particularly in mind, Gruber herself offers an excellent general account of the manuscript tradition as an introduction, using items in Indiana Libraries as stepping-stones. The content of the works studied in the essays that follow is mainly religious or informative. The major emphasis in treatment is on function and cultural significance, rather than codicology and aesthetic qualities.

Janet Rauscher leads off with an essay on Ruth E. Adomeit of Cleveland (1910–96), a collector of miniature volumes, who bequeathed her collection of some 16,000 printed books and 172 manscripts to Lilly Library (p. 73, n. 30). Discussion of the Islamic part of this bequest – even unto its proportion of the whole – is held over until the following essay. Instead we have the life of Adomeit, together with reflections on the impulse to collect and, while some history is undoubtedly her due, much of this account is outwith the topic of the Islamic manuscript tradition. Adomeit is surveyed for scholarship and damned with faint praise, she is then assessed for Orientalism and found somewhat guilty, for religious belief, and almost exculpated for feminism and found wanting. With no deeper research than a consultation of the internet one finds that Ruth's father was George Adomeit, a painter and print-maker of German extraction who founded the Cleveland Society of Artists in 1913: this would have been worth a mention. It is also a pity that her interest in bats is relegated to a footnote.

Heather Coffrey discusses the twelve miniature Islamic items from the Adomeit collection, together with one more donated by W. E. D. Allen; all are of a religious character. Coffrey is concerned to demonstrate that small Qurans, sometimes described as sancak (Turkish “banner”) Qurans from the Ottoman practice of attaching them to standards for battle or parade, in fact had wider uses. On the one hand peoples other than the Ottomans attached them to standards, but more importantly they were often attached about the person, thus permitting and embodying a close bond between the individual and the text. The exposition is supported with reference to other material objects, such as talismanic shirts.

Gruber returns with an essay on a Lilly volume from another source. Her subject is an Ottoman prayer manual datable to the latter half of the nineteenth century. Written in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, this is of modest size, and thus portable, personal, and admitting of devotional touch. Gruber sets this in context and outlines the textual contents, which have been selected with a view to their protective and curative operation. She is at her most interesting when elucidating various figures – such as the footprint of the Prophet – which are rendered with copious use of gold, and which, somewhere between the symbolic and the representational, would have been experienced as iconic.

The two following essays, by Yasemin Gencer and Emily Zoss respectively, refer to the first officially sanctioned printing press in Istanbul. Founded in 1727 by İbrahim Müteferrika, a convert of Hungarian origin, the press produced 17 works in the founder's lifetime, all of which are represented in the Lilly Library. Gencer gives a general account of the production, which was restricted to secular material. She pays detailed attention to the use of features derived from manuscripts and those from printed books, whose various combinations by no means follow the simple progression one might anticipate. It would have been interesting to learn a little more about the moveable type employed, for instance whether the number of glyphs required were detectable. Zoss treats one particular book, a form of gazetteer, the Kitab Cihannüma (The World Indicator). Begun but not finished in the 1650s by Katib Çelebi, the Cihannüma is precisely suited to the ethos of the Müteferrika press since its map-making draws widely on Ottoman traditions and incorporates information from European geographical works. Its remarkable maps were hand-coloured.

Brittany Payeur discusses the Lilly Library's copy of the Shamshir Khani, an abridged version of the Shahnamah, in a manuscript in Sikh style of the early 1830s. The primary importance of this manuscript is a note to the effect that it was given to Lieutenant General the Comte de Rumigny by General Ventura, which is signed by the former in 1841. Rumigny was aide-de-camp to Louis Philippe; Ventura was an Italian in the service of Rangit Singh. Payeur's claims for the manuscript, while not without foundation, tend to inflation. The destiny of the manuscript is raised to the status of a “diplomatic gift” (p. 244): a term that should perhaps be reserved for transactions between heads of state. The style of its illustrations is claimed to refer to work for Shah Jahan: though with the exception of some branches of folk art, this is true of all styles in India from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. In the list of illustrations (p. 246) the versions of some names from the Shahnamah are unusual.

The final essay returns to an item from the Adomeit bequest. Kitty Johnson discusses a copy of Dala'il al-Khayrat, which takes the form of unbound folios enfolded in a leather cover, and carried in a leather pouch. The script used has the semi-circular descenders of Maghribi style, but the presence of the name ʿAbd al-Sahil, and more especially the character of linear motifs within the manuscript and on the pouch point to a sub-Saharan, probably northern Nigerian, origin. The work would be understood as an object of power in both the Islamic and the African traditions.

The plates are of excellent quality. In matters of detail, one may wonder whether the Mughal picture of a scholar (1.2) is not of the sixteenth century; and one may guess that the miniature Quran (3.15) has been trimmed to produce its present octagonal shape. In addition, a disturbing note is introduced when some manuscripts are held open by a clip or weight in the form of a golden hand, whose style is suggestive of European rococo.