Twelver Shi'ism is the dominant faith in southern Iraq and Iran and it has had a major historical role also in India, in particular in the Deccan and in Lucknow, but its distinctive art and architecture have received little attention and seldom appear in books on the arts of the Islamic World. This book attempts to correct this situation. It looks first at the history of the great Shi'i shrines of Iran and Iraq, a subject almost completely untouched in the standard works on Islamic architecture; at the role of Shi'i and, unexpectedly, Sunni (orthodox Islamic) patronage in their development;...