Palmyra Reviews

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.

During two and a half centuries of rule by Mamluk sultans, Cairo acquired some of its most impressive medieval architecture, including the historical monuments that today define the city’s architectural heritage. In this comprehensive work of analysis and description, Islamic art historian Doris Behrens-Abouseif highlights the most important factors in the evolution of Mamluk urban architecture, along with the social and political reasons for their patronage as builders of mosques, schools, hospitals, and mausolea. Copiously illustrated with color photographs and architectural plans, Cairo of the Mamluks highlights sixty of the most important Mamluk buildings in Cairo, in chronological order, from the mausoleum built by Shagar al-Durr, in honor of her late husband, the last Ayyubid ruler, to the magnificent madrasa of Sultan Hasan and the funerary complex of al-Ghuri, the last powerful Mamluk sultan. Long a scholar of Cairo’s historic architecture, Doris Behrens-Abouseif draws on Arabic chronicles as well as the latest in contemporary scholarship to offer a remarkably complete history of Cairo’s justly-famous monuments.