Islamic archaeology is an unusual area of enquiry because as a term it embraces a religious and cultural element as well as an empirical-scientific component. Of course the same could be said of many branches of archaeology, though in present times the use of the term “Islamic” carries with it specific connotations of ideology, belief, ethnicity, and culture. Specifically, the term may be taken to indicate a particular Islamic ideological approach to the practice and study of archaeology. Alternatively, the term may be used in a more neutral sense to indicate the study of Islamic culture, including religion through the medium of archaeology (see, for example, Timothy Insoll, The Archaeology of Islam, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). A third, and much more secular, historicist approach, is the archaeological study of societies of varying faiths under Muslim rule (the most eloquent expression of this point of view can be found in Changing Social Identity with the Spread of Islam: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by Donald Whitcomb [Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 2004]). In practice each of these theoretical standpoints can be used to study the same material, though the questions asked, and therefore any conclusions reached, will be markedly different.

As a field of academic engagement and as a practical endeavor Islamic archaeology has mostly been dominated by the third approach, where the role of religion has been downplayed in relation to other cultural factors such as the legacy of the Graeco-Roman and Persian world, the incorporation of Turkic peoples, and the development of technologies. While this approach has produced extremely valuable results and has provided a framework for the understanding of Muslim material culture, it stands at some distance from Muslim views of their own religion and culture. Moreover, this approach has meant that archaeology has had little input into either Islamic Studies or Muslim conceptions of their own societies.

Marcus Milwright’s An Introduction to Islamic Archaeology may be firmly placed in this category. Thus he explicitly questions whether archaeology is capable of reconstructing religious identity (7–8) and opts instead for an approach that allows “wider interpretations to evolve from the results of excavations, surveys and other forms of archaeological investigations” (8). While at first sight this may seem a sensible and properly scientific approach, it omits the concept of the “hypothesis” as the essential ingredient of scientific enquiry, opting instead for a collection of data with very little rationale or relevance to larger questions.

The book starts with a brief introduction stating the scope of the work and giving a brief history of Islamic archaeology (see also Andrew Petersen, “Islam,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, Timothy Insoll, ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). There are a few significant omissions from this historiographical section; most surprisingly there is no mention of K. A. C. Creswell (for bibliography, see C. L. Geddes et al., Studies in Islamic Art and Architecture in Honour of Professor K.A.C. Creswell, Cairo: AUC Press, 1965) who is generally regarded as one of the founders of this area of Islamic archaeology. (Creswell does, however, appear in the references and bibliography.) There is also no mention of Gertrude Bell whose 1914 publication of Ukhaidhir stands as the major publication of this Islamic site (Gertrude Bell, Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidhir: A Study in Early Muhammadan Architecture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1914); instead Milwright rather puzzlingly credits Oskar Reuther’s study (Oskar Reuther, Ocheïdir nach Aufnahmen von Mitgliedern der Babylon-Expedition der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, Hinrichs, Leipzig 1912 [Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, Bd. 20]).

Chapters 2 and 3 are concerned with the early Islamic period, and pay particular attention to the transition from Late Antiquity. In these two chapters Milwright demonstrates a somewhat limited knowledge of the available archaeological techniques and states that archaeology is unlikely to provide evidence of the development of Muslim society in the years between 622 and 692. In this assertion Milwright is following Jeremy Johns (“Archaeology and the History of Early Islam: The First Seventy Years,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46 (2003): 411–436) who argues that archaeology now and in the future is unlikely to reveal information about this formative period in Muslim history. Indeed both Johns and Milwright place considerably more trust in historical documentary sources than in archaeology. However, the views of Johns (and Milwright) are not shared by other archaeologists (for example, Alan Walmsley, Early Islamic Syria: An Archaeological Assessment, London: Duckworth, 2007) who see considerable value in investigating the archaeology of this early period. This view also means that Milwright can not accept the early dates for the mosque at Shanga, writing, “this issue has proven controversial, not least because it would place the introduction of Islam to East Africa earlier than is indicated in the historical sources” (129).

Chapter 4 is concerned with the archaeology of the countryside, an area that has intermittently been incorporated into Islamic archaeology and is mostly informed by evidence from regional surveys. In this chapter Milwright reviews some interesting projects, though as he admits, “a single chapter is insufficient to do justice to the range of environmental and cultural factors that have shaped every aspect of rural life” (59). One area of particular interests in this chapter is the review of the evidence for sugar production and processing, which concludes with the intriguing possibility that archaeological evidence contradicts the evidence from textual sources (73).

In chapter 5 Milwright amalgamates a discussion of towns, cities, and palaces. The rationale for discussing towns and palaces together in the same chapter derives from the fact that palatial enclaves are often referred to as cities. The classic example is Qasr al-Hayr East which is referred to in an inscription as a city (Ar. medina) (78). While in this and a few other examples there is some overlap or confusion about the attribution of the word “city,” in general the division is quite clear, and urban settlements are usually quite different from palatial settlements. Palaces may be included as part of the urban layout but are not in themselves sufficient to stand as urban entities. The chapter begins with a brief summary and critique of the concept of the “Islamic City.” However, Milwright misses the opportunity to provide a more general definition of the term “urban,” which in medieval European concepts is taken to center on the concept of market place.

The chapter also contains some interesting summaries of Islamic cities, including examples from Iraq to East Africa. The final section of this chapter discusses freshwater and sanitation, and focuses on the development of water management systems. Here Milwright could easily have made the connection between cleanliness and Islam as a culture and religion. In particular, no reference is made to bathhouses, which as an urban feature virtually disappear from the medieval West but remain a ubiquitous feature of Islamic urban life.

Chapter 6 discusses three aspects of religious practice in the Islamic world: the archaeology of the mosque, burials, and non-Muslim communities. The section dealing with mosques is mostly concerned with a detailed summary of discussions about the Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. While interesting, this section might have included an examination of the first mosque at Medina—especially as this book is an introduction to the study of Islamic archaeology. The section on burials includes the full range of methods of disposal, from monumental mausolea to anonymous graves. The section on non-Muslim communities is engaging and lends some support to Milwright’s assertion that Islamic archaeology is not just about Muslims. Also in this section, Milwright deals with the thorny issue of iconoclasm or the destruction of human images in both Muslim and Christian contexts.

Chapter 7 is perhaps the best part of the book. In it, Milwright describes the wealth and sophistication of industrial and craft production in the Islamic world. Much of the section on ceramics is based on Milwright’s own research on the ceramics of Jordan and Syria. The chapter closes with a discussion of handmade pottery, which rarely figures in museum displays of Islamic ceramics yet makes up a significant proportion of ceramics at many sites in the Middle East.

Chapter 8 is a description of the archaeological evidence for trade and travel within the Islamic world. Although Milwright does mention the Hajj routes, the significance of these routes for the formation of Islamic society and as a medium for the exchange of ideas (intellectual, social, artistic, financial, political, and religious) is not discussed. For example, Humayma in Jordan was a key location on the Hajj route used by the Abbasids for their takeover of the caliphate. In this connection it is worth noting that excavations at Humayma have revealed numismatic evidence for connections with the Eastern Iranian world where many of the Abbasid supporters lived. It should also be pointed out that Khan’Atshan was not on a Hajj route, and in several places where the toponym Tayma appears, Tabuk should be inserted instead. The other two sections of this chapter deal with trade in the Mediterranean world and trade in the Indian Ocean. The section on the Mediterranean is limited to the period of the Crusader presence in the Mediterranean, and in consequence is mostly concerned with trade between Muslims and Christians. The section on the Indian Ocean refers to the turquoise glazed storage jars as vessels for transporting date syrup (dibs). While this is one possibility, it is not necessarily generally accepted that this was their main function. However, my main criticism of both these sections is that they are discussed as separate areas, and so Milwright misses the opportunity to point out that Islam was the first civilization to bridge both the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

Returning to a chronological format, chapter 9 is concerned with the post-medieval Islamic world. Milwright does not regard any single event as marking the end of medieval Islam, but rather regards the transition as the result of a number of factors. Surely, however, the almost simultaneous European discovery of the Americas and a sea route to India in the 1490s can be regarded as a decisive point in world history. Two particular themes are outlined for this period. One is the growth, trade, and consumption of tobacco and coffee; the other is the concept of colonization. Tobacco and coffee are certainly symptomatic of the post-medieval Islamic world, and it is interesting to note that many of the coffee houses in London from the sixteenth century onwards were described as Turkish coffee houses. The section on the archaeology of colonialism is interesting and takes as case studies Portuguese colonialism in North Africa and the Gulf, and Ottoman colonialism in Greece. The Portuguese colonial experience has been particularly well documented through archaeological excavations at Qasr es Saghir in Morocco, which stands as one of the type sites for investigating changes from Muslim to Christian rule. Milwright gives as a counterpart to this the Ottoman (Muslim) colonization of Greece (Christian) as seen through the Ottoman water systems in Nafplio.

Edinburgh University has a long association with scholarship on the Islamic world. One of the best-known aspects of this scholarship has been the series of books on Islamic civilization produced by Edinburgh University Press both in cloth and paper editions. After a lapse of several years the series has been revived under the editorship of Carol Hillenbrand, current holder of the Edinburgh University Chair of Arabic. The new series includes studies of medicine, politics, aesthetics, hadith, and many others written by experts in their fields. It is therefore surprising that an art historian rather than an archaeologist has been chosen to represent the field of Islamic archaeology. Nevertheless, Milwright makes considerable effort to understand a discipline that has seen considerable growth in recent years, and there is certainly a need both for an overview and an introduction. There have of course been several other books that have provided an introduction to the subject, most notably Insoll’s seminal work, The Archaeology of Islam, and Whitcomb’s edited volume, Changing Social Identity with the Spread of Islam: Archaeological Perspectives. At first glance Milwright’s book contains all that one would expect with a series of chapters devoted in turn to Early Islam, the countryside, cities and palaces, religion, craft and industry, trade and travel, and the post-medieval period. The text is principally based on a review of extant literature, deliberately eschewing any temptations to refer to unpublished material or first-hand experience (9). Although such an approach may have its merits for those wishing to read further into the subject, it does have the significant drawback that the work lacks the freshness and insight derived from new and emerging research. While Milwright diligently delves into some complex methodological problems and reports interesting interpretations of data, one does not get a strong sense of the excitement of discovery or the intellectual challenge of a subject that covers a huge area of the globe and spans nearly 1400 years. Instead one is presented with a compendium of information derived from published site reports and more general secondary literature (10).

Overall, An Introduction to Islamic Archaeology is an adequate discussion of Islamic archaeology with some interesting sections. In particular it may be recommended for its bibliography and for its summaries of several issues, including industry and craft production (chapter 7). However, in other areas—e.g., the discussions of travel (chapter 8) and religion (chapter 6), which does not even mention Mecca or Medina—it must be read with caution. The book is well produced, as one would expect from Edinburgh University Press, and is also available in a paperback and electronic format so that it is easily available to students. The front cover carries a photograph of the entrance to the palace at Amman citadel in Jordan with the newly built and somewhat controversial dome. The book has a traditional layout with black-and-white photographs and line drawings placed in two blocks, the first set in the middle of the book and the other near the end. This arrangement does not facilitate easy reference. Also there are very few maps, and those that do appear seem to be focused on the area of Bilad al-Sham (the area covered by Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine). The book employs an odd system of referencing using endnotes with shortened references based on the Harvard system that then have to be looked up at the back. Although this seems to be a compromise, for students a clearer reference system would have been preferable.