Through its material remains, Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem analyzes several overlooked aspects of the earliest decades of Islamic presence in Jerusalem, during the seventh century CE. Focusing on the Haram al-Sharif, also known as the Temple Mount, Lawrence Nees provides the first sustained study of the Dome of the Chain, a remarkable eleven-sided building standing beside the slightly later Dome of the Rock, and the first study of the meaning of the columns and column capitals with figures of eagles in the Dome of the Rock. He also provides a new interpretation of the earliest mosque in Jerusalem, the Haram as a whole, with the sacred Rock at its center.

Despite political upheavals under Muslim domination in the Middle Ages, Palestine was a center of great artistic activity recognized for its incredible dynamism. Its unique contribution to the Islamic “macrocosm,” however, never became the subject of extensive study. Numerous archeological excavations on this relatively small geographic area reveal the existence of extremely well preserved monuments of high architectural quality and exceptional religious value. This is what Myriam Rosen-Ayalon exposes in this thorough introduction to Palestinian Islamic art and archeology. In chronological order she presents here for the first time the multifaceted and long-lasting achievements of Islamic art in Palestine, filling the gap of years of neglect on the subject.

This book explores several fascinating medieval Christian and Islamic artworks that represent and reimagine Jerusalem’s architecture as religious and political instruments to express power, entice visitors, console the devoted, offer spiritual guidance, and convey the city’s mythical history.

Moore traces and re-interprets the significance of the architecture of the Christian Holy Land within changing religious and political contexts.

This essay newly interprets the rise of the individual within the Italian peninsula between 1180 and 1300. It follows the historical events and the cultural products that define the period keeping in mind that the creators were conscious of a tangible, real Christ in their midst. For it is the time when Jesus was known to be in the Eucharist as a carnal potentiality, as well as a time when Europeans on Crusade had reached his temporal abode. As Christ as neighbor became a consistent idea, the relationship towards that idea became one of accommodation, making subsequent worship a form of individualism. The later Renaissance was as much a specific reaction to a particular understanding of Christology within the cultural sphere as it was a reawakening of Classical ideals through a new paradigm of European selfhood outside of Christianity. Understood in this way, the Incarnation helped to produce an action based Christianity amenable to the needs of the Roman Church. The later insistence upon text and notions of personal conscience that identifies the Reformation, can now be seen as a true end to the Renaissance Christian praxis which began with the excitement over Christ among them.

Presentations of offerings to the emperor-king on anniversaries of his accession became an important imperial ritual in the court of Franz Joseph I. This book explores for the first time the identity constructions of Orthodox Jewish communities in Jerusalem as expressed in their gifts to the Austro-Hungarian Kaisers at the time of dramatic events. It reveals how the beautiful gifts, their dedications, and their narratives, were perceived by gift-givers and recipients as instruments capable of acting upon various social, cultural and political processes. Lily Arad describes in a captivating manner the historical narratives of the creation and presentation of these gifts. She analyzes the iconography of these gifts as having transformative effect on the self-identification of the Jewish communities and examines their reception by the Kaisers and in the Austrian and the Palestinian Jewish press. This groundbreaking book unveils Jewish cultural and political strategies aimed to create local Eretz-Israel identities, demonstrating distinct positive communal identification which at times expressed national sentiments and at the same time preserved European identification.