Arts of the City Victorious is the first book-length study of the art and architecture of the Fatimids, the Shi‘ite dynasty that ruled in North Africa and Egypt from 909 to 1171. The Fatimids are most famous for founding the walled city of Cairo in 969, and their art—particularly textiles and luster ceramics, but also metalwork and carved rock-crystal, ivory, and woodwork—has been admired for nearly a millennium. Fatimid art is known for its strongly figural imagery, and its elegant and inventive use of Arabic calligraphy, particularly the angular Kufic script. Highlighting surviving examples of Fatimid art and architecture, this volume also draws on an unusual wealth of medieval sources that provide written evidence for the rich visual culture shared among the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish inhabitants of the Fatimid realm. Whereas earlier studies treated the two and a half centuries of Fatimid art and architecture as a single category, this book is the first to show how they grew and evolved over time. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book focuses on key works of art, copiously illustrated with photographs, many in color. With this volume, art historian Jonathan Bloom synthesizes the findings of many scholars in many languages, to offer a rich portrait of a vibrant artistic period in Islamic civilization.
Arts of the City Victorious
Islamic Art and Architecture in the Fatimid North Africa and Egypt
Jonathan M. Bloom
256 pp.
150 illus. incl. 50 color
22X28cm
ISBN 9789774161292
For sale only in the Middle East
$49.95
Related products

Egypt Visual Sourcebook
For Artists, Architects, and Designers
Jim Hewitt
$49.50
Buy Now
Egypt Visual Sourcebook
For Artists, Architects, and Designers
Jim HewittThis unique visual reference guide will be an invaluable resource to professional designers—from architects to illustrators, production designers, art directors, decorators, film concept artists, sculptors, and painters. It utilizes color photographs to illustrate a wide range of locations and styles of architecture throughout Egypt, particularly highlighting universal architectural elements that may be incorporated into a variety of designs and styles including arches, doorways, windows, balconies, wall finishes, and more. Photographic plates of modern and ancient Egypt, showing markets, buildings, temples, tombs, and daily life are cross-referenced with enlarged details and grouped for functional comparisons to cater to the various approaches a designer may take from conception to completion. With some 1,000 color illustrations, thorough referencing, and detailed observation, this book will serve a very specific need while also appealing to a wider audience as a visual celebration of many aspects of Egypt, familiar and unfamiliar.
...read more
1 March 2011
Hardbound + CD
392 pp.1000 color illus.
19X24cm
$49.50

Gardens of Sand
Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Egypt, Arabia, Turkey, and the Levant
Issam Nassar Patricia Almárcegui Clark Worswick
$39.95
Buy Now
Gardens of Sand
Nineteenth-Century Photographs of Egypt, Arabia, Turkey, and the Levant
Issam NassarPatricia Almárcegui
Clark Worswick
Between 1859 and 1905, a number of photographers working in Damascus, Mecca, Cairo, Istanbul, and northern Africa captured their landscapes, towns, and monuments, bequeathing an unprecedented visual documentation of the Middle East. Gardens of Sand brings together 100 original photographs, masterpieces mostly hitherto unpublished, taken between 1859 and 1905. The archive illustrates the themes of the expatriate photographers of the second half of the nineteenth century—study portraits, royal commissions, landscapes, inventories of significant monuments and buildings, orientalist scenes, steeped in classical European imagination—but also explores the confrontation between western imagination and the visual reality of the Middle East, a meeting that gave rise to a local photography, gradually moving further away from western stereotypes, and includes a critical analysis of orientalism and of photography as a means of conveying a reality of prejudices.
...read more
Hardbound
152 pp.90 illus.
24X28cm
$39.95

The Churches of Egypt
From the Journey of the Holy Family to the Present Day
Edited by Carolyn Ludwig Gertrud J.M. van Loon Gawdat Gabra Photographs by Sherif Sonbol
$49.95
Buy Now
The Churches of Egypt
From the Journey of the Holy Family to the Present Day
Edited by Carolyn LudwigGertrud J.M. van Loon
Gawdat Gabra
Photographs by Sherif Sonbol
With over 300 full-color photographs, this is the first fully illustrated book devoted to Christian houses of worship in Egypt. The text incorporates the latest research to complement the broad geographic scope covering nearly all significant Coptic sites throughout the country, from the ancient Coptic churches in Old Cairo to the churches in the monasteries of Wadi al-Natrun, the Red Sea, and Upper Egypt. Churches associated with the Holy Family’s sojourn in Egypt, including Gabal al-Tayr and Dayr al-Muharraq, enrich the volume. Churches of all other Christian denominations in Egypt are also described and beautifully illustrated here. A number of Greek Orthodox churches, Evangelical Coptic, Catholic, Armenian, and Anglican churches are included. Introductory chapters on the history of Christianity in Egypt, the architecture of the Coptic Church, and Coptic wall paintings help readers to appreciate fully the great cultural, artistic, and architectural heritage of Egypt’s Christians.
...read more
1 November 2012
Flexibound
330 pp.350 color illus.
25X30.5cm
$49.95

Hassan Fathy and Continuity in Islamic Arts and Architecture
The Birth of a New Modern
Ahmad Hamid
$39.95
Buy Now
Hassan Fathy and Continuity in Islamic Arts and Architecture
The Birth of a New Modern
Ahmad HamidHassan Fathy, the Egyptian architect known for his recognition of the potential of vernacular forms as a vital force in contemporary architectural design, sought to integrate the traditions of Islamic art with his modern visions for living. Guided by Fathy’s principles, Ahmad Hamid, an architect who collaborated with Hassan Fathy in the Institute for Appropriate Technology, identifies questions about the nature of Islamic art and its building culture, as well as the origins of modern architecture. This richly illustrated book provides new insights into Hassan Fathy’s profuse, pathbreaking design documents and built projects, while exploring the socioeconomic, environmental, psychological, and esthetic components of Fathy’s work in the light of a quest for a new universal modernity for the twenty-first century.
...read more
15 December 2010
Hardbound
224 pp.100 b/w photographs and drawings
19X24cm
$39.95