This is the first major book about Islamic stucco, and the central theme is the re-examination of the uses of stucco in architecture across the Islamic world in the pre-modern period. The book engages with new methodological approaches, including those that go beyond traditional art-historical ones, and works with a wide range of disciplines, including material science and archaeology. It includes numerous sites that have not been previously studied in detail, as well as new approaches to the study of the material, and presents a greater understanding of the use of colour and understanding of materiality. It includes contributions from a range of leading scholars from around the world working on this ubiquitous, important, but at times ephemeral and still poorly understood, medium in a wide variety of different cultural contexts. There are separate parts for each of the main geographic areas, with each of these sections arranged broadly chronologically. Coverage includes Iran and reaches as far afield as Spain and India.

A wide-ranging volume that addresses a little-studied aspect of Islamic architecture, this collection explores plaster decoration over a thousand years across the Islamic lands. Written by a panoply of scholars demonstrating different approaches, it shows how various methodologies can reveal new insights. -- Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom, Boston College and Virginia Commonwealth University

Dr Richard Piran McClary is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of York. He received his doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in 2015. He has lectured extensively on a range of subjects related to medieval Islamic art and architecture, and has conducted fieldwork in India, Iran, Turkey, Central Asia and across the Middle East. He is a specialist in the architecture and ceramics of the medieval Iranian world, and the history of the Islamic art market. He has published three monographs; Mina’i Ware: A Reassessment and Comprehensive Study of Iranian Polychrome Overglaze Wares through Sherds (EUP, 2024), Medieval Monuments of Central Asia. Qarakhanid Architecture of the 11th and 12th Centuries (EUP, 2020), and Rum Seljuq Architecture 1170-1220. The Patronage of Sultans (EUP, 2017). He has edited Stucco in the Islamic World: Studies of Architectural Ornament from Spain to India (EUP, 2025), and co-edited a volume with Andrew Peacock, entitled Turkish History and Culture in India. Identity, Art and Transregional Connections (Brill, 2020). He has also published articles in numerous journals, including: Muqarnas, Iran, Persica, Anatolian Studies, the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. He has served as a trustee and the Research Director for the British Institute of Persian Studies, and is managing editor of the Journal of Islamic Art and Architecture.