Art and Architecture

The rapid expansion of Islam in its early days encouraged a unique absorption and integration of disparate cultural forms and traditions. This book follows the historical development of the Islamic regions and their ruling dynasties, and illustrates their greatly varied forms of artistic expression from the birth of the religion to the present day. Basic architectural elements demonstrate, in their diverse modes of execution, the independence of regional building traditions. In the restrained yet inventive brick and tile ornamentation of Uzbekistan, just as in the bright, naturalistic arabesque of India or Iran, and in the ubiquitous geometrical ornamentation of Spain and the Maghreb, clear forms of expression are manifest, celebrating the riches and beauty of God’s creation. This impulse also inspires the colorful and fantastical book illustrations and calligraphy, sumptuous tapestries, extravagant metalwork, ceramics, and jewelry produced by all Islamic cultures. Contributors: Mukaddima Aschrafi, Marianne Barrucand, Sheila Blair, Jonathan Bloom, Sergej Chmelnizkij, Volkmar Enderlein, Joachim Gierlichs, Almut von Gladiss, Julia Gonnella, Oleg Grabar, Annette Hagedorn, Markus Hattstein, Wolfgang Holzwarth, Natascha Kubisch, Jesús Bermúdez López, Sibylle Mazot, Viktoria Meinecke-Berg, Elke Niewöhner-Ederhard, Peter W. Schienerl, Philippa Vaughan.

The material culture of the Islamic world, from Spain to Indonesia, North Africa to the Steppes, is richly varied, taking in architectural projects on a vast scale and minutely detailed miniature paintings, exquisitely patterned silk textiles and bold yet sophisticated calligraphy. Now the spectacular format of Islamic Art and Culture: Timeline and History allows the reader to view the magnificent sweep of the art of Islam in a unique way. With a continuous timeline chart of the history of the Islamic lands, illustrated with a gallery of color photographs, chapters on the ruling dynasties, and sections devoted to the different art forms, this lavishly illustrated book is a rich celebration of Islamic artistic heritage.

The Arab–Islamic city has been always a glamorous urban dream in human cultural memory. This is manifested in Cairo, the world’s largest medieval urban system where traditional lifestyles are still implemented. Nevertheless, despite the extensive efforts to preserve Historic Cairo, it is sadly vulnerable. Ahmed Sedky investigates the reasons behind this condition, exploring and comparing regional and international case studies. Questions such as how and what to conserve are raised and elaborated through the perspectives of different stakeholders. A resulting evaluative framework is accumulated that underpins the criteria for assessing area conservation in the Arab–Islamic context and that can be used to delineate the causes responsible for the present condition of Historic Cairo.

Margo Veillon, one of Egypt’s best known and best loved artists, returns to enchant us again with a collection of paintings and drawings depicting the festivals of Egypt. The cycle of Egyptian life is marked by festivals and celebrations: those for births, weddings, saints’ mulids, national holidays, and closing the circle, funerals. Margo Veillon draws us in to the joy, exuberance, and occasional sorrow that mark the seasons of Egyptian festivals. This remarkable collection of images fills the viewer with the music and dance that punctuate these events and allows us to participate vicariously through the pages in a swirl of colors, smells, sounds, and exultation.

Born in 1907, Margo Veillon was one of Egypt’s best-loved artists. Presented here is a sampling of her work spanning seventy-five years of her productive career, in a variety of graphic media—pen and ink, watercolor, pencil, and crayon, as represented in a legacy bequeathed to the American University in Cairo. Although she lived part of her life in Europe, it is clearly Egypt that held her imagination and inspired her artistic innovation. Possessed with an ability to capture the energy of a specific moment in time, Margo Veillon drew people and animals, landscapes and street scenes with her characteristic sly humor and gift for depicting a lively vignette or serene visual moment in just a few strokes. These threads and others no less individual and innovative make up the extraordinarily rich tapestry of Margo Veillon’s artistic career, brought together in the AUC Permanent Collection.

From 1964 onward much of the ancient land of Nubia sank forever in the waters of Lake Nasser, behind the new Aswan High Dam. Margo Veillon had been fascinated by the vibrancy, color, and movement of the life of ordinary people in Nubia since the 1930s. In the company of friends and fellow artists she made numerous extended visits to capture in her artwork a lifestyle that has now vanished. This book is a record of her journeys. Presenting the Nile as this beautiful land’s thoroughfare, her drawings and photographs reflect the impact of this world upon her. Veillon’s diaries, notes, and pictures vividly illuminate one of the world’s most visually oriented cultures in a style that is as expressive as its subject, thus offering not only an image captured at a particular moment in time, which will never be seen again, but the sensitivity and skill of brain, eye, and hand that made that capture possible. Also available: Margo Veillon: The Bursting Movement edited by Charlotte Hug (AUC Press, 1996) Margo Veillon: Egyptian Harvests edited by Charlotte Hug (AUC Press, 2000) Margo Veillon: Egyptian Festivals edited by Bruno Ronfard (AUC Press, 2002) Margo Veillon: Painting Egypt: The Masterpiece Collection at the American University in Cairo edited by Bruno Ronfard (AUC Press, 2003)

This expansive book reveals the great diversity and range of art of the Arab lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and later South Asia. Published to coincide with the historic reopening of the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum’s Islamic Art Department, it presents nearly three hundred masterpieces from one of the finest collections in the world. The works range chronologically from the origins of Islam in the seventh century through the nineteenth century, and geographically from as far west as Spain and Morocco to as far east as India. Outstanding miniature paintings and illuminated manuscripts, ceramics, textiles, carpets, glass, and metalwork reflect the mutual influence of artistic practice in the sacred and secular realms. Many of these beautiful objects display the rich traditions of calligraphy, vegetal ornament (the arabesque), and geometric patterning that distinguish the arts of the Islamic world. With seven informative essays and almost three hundred catalogue entries—supplemented by introductory essays on the collection and its display—this handsome and comprehensive overview will enlighten the specialist and the general reader alike.

Since the turn of the twentieth century the dramatic rise of mass media has profoundly transformed music practices in the Arab world. Music has adapted to successive forms of media dissemination—from phonograph cylinders to MP3s—each subjected to the political and economic forces of its particular era and region. Carried by mass media, the broader culture of Arab music has been thoroughly transformed as well. Simultaneously, mass mediated music has become a powerful social force. While parallel processes have unfolded worldwide, their implications in the Arabic-speaking world have thus far received little scholarly attention. This provocative volume features sixteen new essays examining these issues, especially televised music and the controversial new genre of the music video. Perceptive voices—both emerging and established—represent a wide variety of academic disciplines. Incisive essays by Egyptian critics display the textures of public Arabic discourse to an English readership. Authors address the key issues of contemporary Arab society—gender and sexuality, Islam, class, economy, power, and nation—as refracted through the culture of mediated music. Interconnected by a web of recurrent concepts, this collection transcends music to become an important resource for the study of contemporary Arab society and culture. Contributors: Wael Abdel Fattah, Yasser Abdel-Latif, Moataz Abdel Aziz, Tamim Al-Barghouti, Mounir Al Wassimi, Walter Armbrust, Elisabeth Cestor, Hani Darwish, Walid El Khachab, Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri, James Grippo, Patricia Kubala, Katherine Meizel, Zein Nassar, Ibrahim Saleh, Laith Ulaby.

The fabled land of Nubia, whose very name means ‘gold,’ was famous in ancient times for its supplies of precious metal, exotic material, and intricate craftsmanship. Many of the adornments made in Nubia are masterpieces of the jeweler’s art—marvels of design and construction rivaling, and often surpassing, adornments made in Egypt and the rest of the ancient Mediterranean world. Although these unique treasures are among the most stunning to have survived from antiquity, they remain little known. Richly illustrated with beautiful photographs of these exquisite items, many of them never before published, Nubian Gold also places the jewelry within the cultural contexts in which it was manufactured and employed. It tells the story not only of the treasures themselves but of the exciting tales of their discovery and the rich background of the exotic and remote civilizations that produced them. The book also explores the innovative techniques used to procure the precious materials used in the jewelry and to craft them into intricate ornaments replete with magical purpose and coded meaning. Featured in the book are not only the intricately crafted pieces themselves but depictions of them in sculpture, relief, and painting as well as references to them in ancient texts, locating them within the full spectrum of Nubian history, from the earliest beginnings of society to the advent of Christianity.

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Cairo, ‘Mother of the World’: its vividly diverse neighborhoods and building styles reveal its cosmopolitan energy and reflect the myriad of economic, political, and cultural forces that have shaped the city over the centuries. So impressed was Khedive Ismail after a visit to Haussmann’s ‘new’ Paris in 1867 that he decided to build a modern city along the same architectural lines and aesthetics, and brought European architects to Cairo to initiate Egypt’s most dynamic building period since medieval times. The stunning buildings of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Cairo remain, but they are neglected, threatened by pollution, and are being pulled down for concrete highrises and parking lots. Paris along the Nile captures in 200 black-and-white photographs the architectural jewels of ‘modern’ Cairo.