Abstract

AL-MASĀQ 2019, VOL. 31, NO. 2, 242–252 BOOK REVIEWS Mattia Guidetti, 2016, Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, xi + 235 pp., €129.00/US$155.00 (hardback) ISBN 9789004328839 Commonly nested in the discourse of the “collapse” and birth of empires, the Islamic con- quests of the first/seventh century have marked the threshold of many transitions in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East: among them, from Late Antiquity, the late Roman Empire and early Christianity to the early Islamic societies, with their post-classical cities, minority Muslim elites and vibrant commerce. However, the onset of Islam does not by itself explain the relationship between the “before” and “after” of these societies. In the Shadow of the Church examines the impact of the new religion on the urban landscape. Study- ing the early mosques of Greater Syria (Arabic: Bilād al-Shām), Guidetti shows that Muslims organised their life in pre-existing urban networks that provided fertile ground for the growth of a distinctly Muslim architectural vocabulary. Chapter 1 traces the scholarship on the Late Antique roots of early Islam, emphasising pro- cesses of “creative re-adaptation” (p. 4), although it is surprising not to include a reference to Hugh Kennedy’sinfluential 1985 article “From Polis to Madina”. Accepting