David Knowles remembered (review)

Reviews 121 Barbara Brend in her book traces historically the period styles and individual media of Islamic art and architecture over 1200 years. Starting with the legacy of the Umayyads, who ruled from 661 to 750, and their successors the 'Abbasids, who were overthrown by the Mongol conquerors in 1258, she goes on to describe the distinctive features of Islamic art in the lands of the West (Egypt North Africa and Spain), and in the regions ruled by Turks extending from Transoxiana to Western Iran and Anatolia. Before describing the majestic tile work on the monuments of the Mongols in Tabriz, Samarqand and Shahr-i Sabz and the fourteenth and fifteenth century Persian paintings of the Mongols, who had converted to Islam, she picks up some of the architectural monuments in Aleppo and Cairo which were built by the rulers of the dynasties who ruled over Northern Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt in the wake of the expulsion of the Crusaders from the region. She then discusses the artistic achievements of the Safavids and Qajars of Iran and those of the Ottomans both in the east and also west of the Bosphoras. Her last chapter deals with the development of Islamic art in the Indian environment under the Sultans of Delhi and the Mughal emperors. In her conclusion she points out the Western interest in Islamic patterns in passing. Barbara Brend, who is a lecturer for the British Museum and British Library, has developed a knack to explain complex artistic concepts to lay visitors. Whtie summarizing from the standard works on the subject she brings to bear upon her book her sktil of simplifying controversial issues for general readers. A large number of illustrations have been chosen from the objects in European and American museums. Most of them are frequendy reproduced by other general works also. However, photographs of exhibits in the Al-Sabah collection of the Kuwait National Museum, the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, the National Museum in Damascus and a number of illustrations from Topkapi Sarayi Library in Istanbul are not generally known. To conclude with a minor criticism, in the third quarter of the present century, painters, calligraphers and engravers of wood and metal depicting Islamic subjects have gone a long way to assimilating both the eastern and western styles. Ignoring their achievements, Brend has chosen to publish a painted lorry of Lahore. Certainly she could present something better than this. S. A. A. Rizvi Australian National University Brooke, Christopher, Roger Lovatt, David Luscombe and Aehed Sillem, David Knowles remembered, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xiv, 174; 1 plate; R.R.P. AUS$70.00. David Knowles (1896-1974) is most often remembered as the author of classic volumes on medieval monastic and religious history, notably The monastic order 122 Reviews in England (Cambridge, 1940; 2nd edn 1963), The religious orders in England 3 vols (Cambridge, 1948-59), 77* evolution of medieval thought (London, 1962; 2nd edn, ed. D. E. Luscombe and C. N. L. Brooke, London, 1988) and the essays in 77i* historian and character and other essays (Cambridge, 1963). Less well-known are the unusual circumstances of his career, that of a monk who lived in effective exile from his home community at Downside from 1933 until his death. H o w many readers of The monastic order realize that Knowles wrote most of the work while being nursed through a period of intense loneliness and nervous breakdown by an intensely pious Swedish medical student Elizabeth Kornerap, w h o m he considered to be a mystic and a saint? After spending five years living in her companionship, he was offered a position at Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1944. Although these events and the brilliant academic career which ensued have already been oudined by the late D o m Adrian Morey, David Knowles, a memoir (London, 1979), the picture which emerges from David Knowles remembered is a more intimate one, drawn from the recollections of three Cambridge academics (Brooke, Lovatt and Luscombe) and a Benedictine monk (Dom Aehed SiUem) who came under his influence. Their essays make fascinating reading, not just for their insights into a remarkable personality, but also for their comment on a...