Commonly nested in the discourse of the “collapse” and birth of empires, the Islamic conquests of the first/seventh century have marked the threshold of many transitions in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East: among them, from Late Antiquity, the late Roman Empire and early Christianity to the early Islamic societies, with their post-classical cities, minority Muslim elites and vibrant commerce. However, the onset of Islam does not by itself explain the relationship between the “before” and “after” of these societies. In the Shadow of the Church examines the impact of the new religion on the urban landscape. Studying the early mosques of Greater Syria (Arabic: Bilād al-Shām), Guidetti shows that Muslims organised their life in pre-existing urban networks that provided fertile ground for the growth of a distinctly Muslim architectural vocabulary. Chapter 1 traces the scholarship on the Late Antique roots of early Islam, emphasising processes of “creative re-adaptation” (p. 4), although it is surprising not to include a reference to Hugh Kennedy’s influential 1985 article “From Polis to Madina”. Accepting the premise that religious identity boundaries were fluid from the first/seventh to the fifth/eleventh century, and that coexistence necessitated pragmatic solutions, the author is interested in how an exclusively Muslim architectural culture was formed. Chapters 2 and 3 both point to how little can be recovered about the building of the earliest mosques and attribute related uncritical perceptions to later Arabic writing, starting from the third/ninth century. These later texts emphasised the conversion of churches into mosques in an effort to interpret the past and fill the voids in the early narrative traditions. Chapter 2 examines first what the dhimmī statusmeant for the sacred spaces of the non-Muslim communities. It shows that, despite common perceptions, churches were mostly not converted to mosques after the conquests and that new churcheswere built. The integration of the new,Muslim spatial needs into the existing sacred landscape was therefore nuanced. Chapter 3 looks closely at the dominant paradigm of the partitioning of churches to create mosques. The author meticulously demonstrates that this could not have been the case. Instead, he presents a less systematic usage of Christian spaces based on varied forms of contiguity of mosques with churches – from abutting an existing church to being built in the vicinity or even occupying disused areas. Chapter 4 looks at the increasing visibility of religious architecture in the second/eighth century. The chapter posits that the identities of the various communities became more rigid at that time. Mosques were still located close to previously sanctioned sacred spaces, which held a shared attraction for both Muslim and non-Muslim communities. The chapter also suggests that the appearance of Christian and Jewish sites was adjusted in response to Islam, for example through internal iconoclastic interventions. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the use of spolia. Chapter 5 examines the reuse in mosques of marble columns from churches. Written narratives persist in this attribution of the origin of spoliated columns, although these were sometimes removed with permission and often without obliteration of Christian symbols, such as crosses. Motifs found on spolia also had apotropaic properties. The author returns repeatedly to the dissociation of spolia from

中文翻译：

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在教会的阴影下：中世纪早期叙利亚的清真寺建设

通常嵌套在“崩溃”和帝国诞生的话语中，一世纪/七世纪的伊斯兰征服标志着东地中海和中东许多过渡的门槛：其中，从古代晚期到罗马晚期帝国和早期基督教到早期伊斯兰社会，以及后古典城市、少数穆斯林精英和充满活力的商业。然而，伊斯兰教的兴起本身并不能解释这些社会“之前”和“之后”之间的关系。在教会的阴影中考察了新宗教对城市景观的影响。研究大叙利亚的早期清真寺（阿拉伯语：Bilād al-Shām），Guidetti 表明，穆斯林在预先存在的城市网络中组织了他们的生活，这为明显的穆斯林建筑词汇的增长提供了肥沃的土壤。第 1 章追溯了关于早期伊斯兰教的晚期古董根源的学术研究，强调了“创造性的重新适应”的过程（第 4 页），尽管令人惊讶的是没有引用休·肯尼迪 1985 年有影响力的文章“从波利斯到麦地那” . 接受宗教身份界限从一世纪/七世纪到五世纪/十一世纪是可变的假设，并且共存需要务实的解决方案，作者对完全穆斯林建筑文化是如何形成的感兴趣。第 2 章和第 3 章都指出，关于最早的清真寺的建造几乎无法恢复，并将相关的不加批判的看法归因于从 3/9 世纪开始的后来的阿拉伯文字。这些后来的文本强调将教堂转变为清真寺，以努力解释过去并填补早期叙事传统中的空白。第 2 章首先考察了 dhimmī 地位对于非穆斯林社区的神圣空间意味着什么。它表明，尽管有普遍的看法，但在征服之后，教堂大多没有改建为清真寺，而是建造了新教堂。因此，将新的穆斯林空间需求融入现有的神圣景观是微妙的。第 3 章仔细研究了划分教堂以创建清真寺的主要范式。作者一丝不苟地证明了这不可能是事实。相反，他基于清真寺与教堂的各种邻接形式——从毗邻现有教堂到在附近建造，甚至占据废弃区域，对基督教空间的使用不太系统。第 4 章着眼于 2/8 世纪宗教建筑日益增长的知名度。本章假设当时各个社区的身份变得更加僵化。清真寺仍然靠近先前批准的圣地，这些圣地对穆斯林和非穆斯林社区都有共同的吸引力。本章还表明基督教和犹太教遗址的外观是为了响应伊斯兰教而调整的，例如通过内部的反传统干预。第 5 章和第 6 章重点介绍 spolia 的使用。第 5 章考察了教堂大理石柱在清真寺中的再利用。书面叙述坚持认为被破坏的柱子的起源，尽管这些柱子有时会被允许删除，而且通常没有删除十字架等基督教符号。在 spolia 上发现的图案也具有避光特性。作者反复回到 spolia 与