Islamesque The forgotten craftsmen who built Europe's medieval monuments

The title of this well-intentioned but profoundly disappointing book reflects the author's argument that the art-historical term "Romanesque" had nothing to do with the Romans. She argues instead that medieval European architecture was deeply indebted to migrant craftsmen from the Islamic lands, particularly al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) and Sicily. Hence, it should be called "Islamesque." Initially inspired by the zig-zag decoration in her Damascus house, she traces the motif back to the Egyptian hieroglyph for water and through the centuries to the medieval Mediterranean and Western Europe, accompanied by such other features as blind and pointed arches, zig-zag bands, and Lombard banding. The author trips lightly and repetitiously over facts and factoids, digressing for amusing anecdotes culled from local histories, old guidebooks, radio programs, and TV shows, as well as some serious scholarship. The result is a disorganized romp through centuries of European and Islamic architecture (the Islamic contributions to Western culture are often overlooked). Interested readers could be in far better hands than this author's, whose breathless enthusiasm is sure to leave them confused and perplexed. Summing Up: Optional. General readers. --Jonathan M. Bloom, emeritus, Boston College

Historian Darke (The Ottomans) offers a meticulous and piercing reassessment of the origins of the "Romanesque" style in medieval architecture. The Romanesque--long meant to evoke the revival of classical Roman traditions that brought an end to the Dark Ages and heralded the coming of the Renaissance--should more rightly be called Islamesque, according to Darke. Dismissing the theory of a Romanesque period as the product of 19th-century imperial powers' self-identifying with the Roman empire, Darke turns to contemporary scholarship, which has confirmed, she asserts, that "all the key innovations attributed to Romanesque--new vaulting techniques, the use of decorative frames... ornamental devices... and the use of fantastical beasts and foliage in sculpture--can be traced... eastwards." The "master craftsmen" responsible for these innovations were undeniably Muslims who settled in Europe and "brought... a multitude of design details," Darke writes. She follows the trails of these design details like clues in a detective story, beginning with the enigmatic zigzag patterns on her own house in Damascus, which she discovers replicated on Norman churches in England and France. As her narrative unfolds, the accumulation of such small details coheres into what feels like the uncovering of a historical conspiracy--Darke portrays a medieval Europe home to thriving Muslim communities that left a deep and lasting, but long overlooked, legacy. The result is a revelatory work of scholarship. (Jan.)