Kaʿba Orientations

Simon O’Meara is an architectural historian of early to pre-modern urban Islamic culture, with a methodological interest in using the discourses of Islam to explore Islamic visuality and understand what scholarship can struggle to accommodate or see. He is Lecturer in the History of Architecture and Archaeology of the Islamic Middle East at SOAS, University of London.

• LIST OF FIGURESACKNOWLEDGEMENTSIntroductionChapter One: The Kaʿba as QiblaChapter Two: The Kaʿba as NavelChapter Three: The Kaʿba as SubstructureChapter Four: The Kaʿba as BelovedChapter Five: The House as HolderChapter Six: The House as DwellingConclusionbibliographyENDNOTES

This book is indispensable for anyone engaged in Islamic studies in general, and Islamic art history in particular. [...] Not only does the book legitimate the Kaʿba as an object of art historical study, but also, in deconstructing some entrenchments, it does a considerable service to a scholarship in need of modernisation. To finish on this epistemic note, it cannot be stressed enough that O’Meara’s rare interdisciplinary methodology and mode of reasoning ought to be heeded and emulated in any future research on Islamic art.