Sheila S. Blair is Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College. She is author of the prize-winning Islamic Inscriptions (Edinburgh University Press,1998) , and The Monumental Inscriptions from Early Islamic Iran and Transoxiana (1992) . She is co-author of The Art and Architecture of Islam 1250-1800 (1994) and Islamic Arts (1997) .