Islamic Art and Architecture

I learned from a glossary at the back of this book that the term muqarnas refers to “honeycomb or stalactite vaulting made up of individual cells or small arches”. A chapter on “The Muslim West” features a colour photograph of the vault of the Dome of the Two Sisters (c. 1380) in the Alhambra, which is made up of “over five thousand cells”. The effect of light on the surface produces a “multitude of reflections”. A local poet called Ibn Zamrak wrote, with perhaps forgivable hyperbole, that the vault “surpasses the stars in the heavens”.

While many of...