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Rivers of Paradise: Water in Islamic Art and Culture. Edited by Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Pp. ? +364, richly illus. $85.
One of the most frequently repeated tropes in Islamic studies is that of the central role of water in the arid lands of the Islamic world. Scholarship on the region often describes how the scarcity of water shaped the development of everything from individual pious practice to the construction of cities, and this climactic determinism has created a set of assumptions that have often been taken at face value. Thus, the publication of Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom's edited volume presents an opportunity to engage both the history and the historiography of water in Islamic society. This beautifully designed, richly illustrated collection would be any Islamic art historian's dream for publication - it is executed with high-quality reproduction, excellent maps, figures, architectural plans, and elegant chapter headings in gold calligraphy by Muhammad Zakariya. It reflects the proceedings of the second biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art and Culture held in Doha, Qatar, in 2007, under the auspices of the Qatar Foundation and Virginia Commonwealth School of the Arts. Like the conferences that followed, "And Diverse Are Their Hues: Color in Islamic Art and Culture"; published under the same title by Yale Univ. Press, 2011) and "God Is Beautiful; He Loves Beauty" (Doha, October 2011), the topic of water was chosen for "transcending the traditional boundaries of medium, technique, time, and place" (p. 1) or, in other words, to address broad topics and avoid the isolating tendency of academicians focusing on subjects of interest only to specialists. It brings together some of the brightest and most venerable thinkers in Islamic art, architecture, history, and archaeology, and it represents a signal contribution to our understanding of the role of water in the region, while at the same time serving as a fine coffee-table book for the non- specialist. A straightforward introduction by Blair and Bloom introduces the overarching themes and concerns of the volume, and limited notes at the end of each chapter combined with a well- selected glossary and bibliography aid in striking this balance between the scholarly and the popular. In addition, the...