The Creswell photographic archive at the American University in Cairo is an invaluable resource of over 12,000 printed images of Islamic architecture, mainly in Cairo, but also including buildings in other important cities such as Córdoba and Baghdad. Creswell’s own photographs constitute the majority of the collection, but he also assembled work by photographers active in the decades before he began his systematic recording in the 1920s. This volume of collected studies seeks to highlight the value of this collection for scholars, who can examine the visual evidence of architecture now destroyed or altered in order to better understand various aspects of these significant buildings. Contributors discuss such issues as epigraphy in domestic and religious architecture, the use of early photographs as guides for modern restoration, and military architecture. Contributors: Tarek Galal Abdel-Hamid, Noha Abou-Khatwa, Conchita Añorve-Tschirgi, Dina Ishak Bakhoum, Nairy Hampikian, May al-Ibrashy, Hani Hamza, Chahinda Karim, Dina Montasser, Bernard O’Kane, Seif El-Rashidi, Ola Seif, Nicholas Warner.
Creswell Photographs Re-examined
New Perspectives on Islamic Architecture
Edited by
Bernard O’Kane
416 pp.
125 illus. incl. 25 color
16.5X23.5cm
ISBN 9789774162442
For sale worldwide
29.95
Also available by this author
The World of Islamic Art
Bernard O’KaneThe World of Islamic Art presents a vivid portrait of the cultural heritage of Islam and its great artistic traditions, across an enormous span of geography and time. Having originated in the remote deserts of the Arabian peninsula, Islam grew so quickly that within a century it had dominated North Africa and the former Christian heartlands of Syria and Anatolia. From there the community of believers spread eastward to Persia, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and India, eventually reaching China, Indonesia, and elsewhere in the Far East. The historical diffusion of this truly global religion is related in seven chapters devoted to regionally dominant kingdoms and empires. Each chapter contains an illuminating commentary revealing the beauty and breadth of the many artistic influences—it is explained, for example, how figural imagery was often displaced by calligraphic and geometric forms, and how the sense of the divine in Islam came to be symbolized by the harmonious use of color, pattern, and proportion. Illustrated throughout with a wealth of ornate, often sublime, examples, which include paintings, jewelry, metalwork, sculpture, architecture, and many other art forms, The World of Islamic Art celebrates Islam’s truly magnificent contribution to the cultural and spiritual heritage of humankind.
...read more
Hardbound
224 pp.170 color photographs
23.5X30cm
24.95
Related products
Islam
Art and Architecture
Edited by Markus HattsteinPeter Delius
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.
...read more
Flexibound
624 pp.Over 900 color illus.
21.6X25.3cm
35.00
Ibn Tulun
His Lost City and Great Mosque
Tarek SwelimAhmad Ibn Tulun (835–84), the son of a Turkic slave in the Abbasid court of Baghdad, became the founder of the first independent state in Egypt since antiquity, and builder of Egypt’s short-lived third capital of the Islamic era, al-Qata’i‘ and its great congregational mosque. After recounting the story of Ibn Tulun and his successors, architectural historian Tarek Swelim presents a topographic survey of al-Qata’i‘, a city lost since its complete destruction in 905. He then provides a detailed architectural analysis of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, which was spared the destruction and is now the oldest surviving mosque in Egypt and Africa, from the time of its completion until today. Rare archival illustrations and early photographs document the changing appearance and uses of the mosque in modern times, while extraordinary 3D computer renderings take us back in time to recreate its architectural development through its early centuries. Plans, drawings, and maps complement the history, while striking modern color photographs showcase the elegant simplicity of the building’s architecture and decoration. This definitive and generously illustrated book will appeal to scholars and students of Islamic art history, as well as to anyone interested in or inspired by the beauty of early mosque architecture.
...read more
29 November 2015
Hardbound
322 pp.120 illus., including color photos, computer drawings, archival prints
19X24cm
39.95
Film in the Middle East and North Africa
Creative Dissidence
Edited by Josef GuglerNine essays presenting the major national cinemas, from Iran to Morocco, are complemented by in-depth discussions of eighteen films that have been selected for both their excellence and their critical engagement with pressing current issues. The introduction provides a comprehensive overview of filmmaking throughout the region, including important films produced outside the national cinemas. The long history of Iranian cinema, its international renown, and the politics of directors confronting the state, earns it a special place in this volume. The other major emphasis is on the Israel/Palestine conflict, featuring films by Palestinian directors, Israelis, and an Egyptian working in Syria. Twenty contributors, from film and literary scholars to film directors and a novelist, bring to this unique volume differences in disciplinary orientation and variation in the perspectives that inform their writing. Together they offer an illuminating range of approaches to the cinemas of the region.
...read more
Hardbound
368 pp.55 b/w illus.
15X23cm
29.95
Anna’s Egypt
An Artist’s Journey
Anna BoghiguianAnna Boghiguian, one of Egypt’s foremost contemporary artists, has traveled the globe and recorded her artistic reaction to each new place in drawings and paintings in the notebooks she carries everywhere. But her roads through India or Cambodia, Canada or France always come back to the land of her birth, Egypt. Her drawings of Egypt reflect her instinctive and emotional responses to the country’s many layers of history and myth, and to the people, ancient and modern, grand and everyday, who populate those histories and myths with such entrancing spirit. In this very personal presentation of Egypt, Anna Boghiguian shares both her visual and her verbal thoughts, as she leads us on a tour of this incredible land of fact and fiction, across space and in and out of time, through her words that paint pictures and her drawings that tell stories. This truly unique book is as much about the artist as it is about the land, and a treasure on both counts.
...read more
Paperback
192 pp.100 illus.
24X22cm
19.95