As a student in the 1980s, studying for qualifying exams in Islamic art history, I was so desperate to read the first edition of this title in the Pelican History of Art series that I ordered a copy from England months before it was available in the United States. At that time, there were few comprehensive surveys of Islamic art and architecture, and even those reflected a conservative, formalist vision of the subject. The Oleg Grabar and Richard Ettinghausen volume of 1987 conformed to the Pelican guidelines of that era: a firmly chronological narrative with black-and-white illustrations. One could levy many criticisms at that book. At the time, however, it was an extraordinary contribution to the field of Islamic art and architecture, defining the state of the field, and in the sixteen years since its first appearance, scholars have relied on it as an authoritative survey. When the volume on the later period, The Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250–1800, by Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, was published in 1994 by Yale University Press, Pelican standards had changed markedly, and in comparison Grabar and Ettinghausen’s book seemed to lack vigor and to no longer reflect the state of the field....