China's Early Mosques

China’s Early Mosques is a highly original account of global architectural history. It offers an innovative transregional perspective and deserves to be seen as a milestone to bridge the convergence of not only Chinese and Islamic architectural traditions but also their respective disciplines. -- Yuka Kadoi * Abstracta Iranica *
The reviewer commented that the book is outstanding in almost every single respect, making readily available, for the first time, an historical survey of China’s mosques. The authority with which the material is presented was also highly commended. The reviewer felt that the author’s ‘command of Chinese history and Chinese primary and secondary sources, not to mention Chinese architecture, is surely without equal’.' * British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize *
The first monograph by a single author on this topic, Nancy Steinhardt’s China’s Early Mosques spearheads an exploration of a new field of studies that is just beginning to take shape...Steinhardt’s identification and delineation of Chinese (early) mosques as an Islamic subgenre of architecture in China is groundbreaking.' -- Wei-Cheng Lin * Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies *
This pioneering book opens up an entirely new field for scholars of both China and the Islamic world: the history of Chinese mosques...[it] is unique because its clear prose and copious illustrations portray the physical spaces within which Chinese Muslims operated. -- Valerie Hansen, Yale University * Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society *
This well-illustrated book is a most welcome addition to art and architectural history studies, especially in the fields of Islamic and Chinese art… Before the publication of China’s Early Mosques, I had visited important early Muslim sites in southeast and north-central China, but until I read Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt’s text, I had great difficulty sorting fact from fiction about the monuments I saw. There is absolutely no other book in English or any European language that covers China’s mosques. Further, in addition to being unique, it is lucidly written, shedding light on a topic that might otherwise seem bewildering to the non-Islamic, non-China specialist. This volume will remain the standard work on Chinese mosques well into the future.' -- CATHERINE B. ASHER, University of Minnesota * Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians *