Cultural studies in the West are trying more and more to present a truly individualized portrait of the alien cultures with which they deal. Refinements in observation may be credited with some of our advance but true progress is mostly due to a refinement in analytical method. This in turn hinges on our ability to enter into the intimacy of alien thinking and feeling by selecting key concepts and key experiences which allow us to obtain documented insights into the less accessible ideas and attitudes. Certain theological concepts as crystallization points of reflections and emotions and, on a different level, the examination of dreams lend themselves as divining rods when it comes to probing the more recondite layers of Muslim mentality in the classical age.

Like most other fields, the study of Islamic art is both the beneficiary and the victim of its own past. Like many fields, it is affected in various more or less successful ways by developments and needs in related areas of learning. Like all fields, it is tied to the quality and idiosyncrasies of the men who practice it. Inasmuch as bibliographical surveys according to traditional lines of techniques and periods are available (Pearson, Index Islamicus with supplements, London, 1958, 1962, 1968; especially K.A.C. Creswell, A Bibliography of the Architecture, Arts and Crafts of Islam, Cairo, 1961) and current works are listed with a fair degree of completeness in the yearly Abstracta Islamica published by the Revue des Etudes Islamiques, my concern in this paper will be to review the state of the field, the ways in which one can find out about it, and the work being done according to three major categories: traditional techniques and documentation; new problems and solutions; light and dark areas of research.