The Art and Architecture of Islamic Cairo

The Art and Architecture of Islamic Cairo is an English book by Richard Yeomans, first published by Garnet Publishing in Reading, England, in 2006. ² It follows the architecture and decorative arts of Cairo from the Arab conquest to the Ottoman conquest (642-1517), setting the development of styles within their religious, social and political contexts. ¹

In the preface Yeomans recalls that he first visited Egypt in 1964 to see only the Pharaonic monuments, then entered the Khan al-Khalili quarter and met Islamic architecture in its living setting, and later visited the Museum of Islamic Art. ³ He holds that the West has marginalised Egypt's Islamic identity and passed over some fourteen centuries of its history, citing Edward Said, and he treats Napoleon's expedition (1798-1801), the Description de l'Égypte and the birth of Egyptology as the start of Europe's turn to ancient Egypt alone. ^{3 4}

He lists what had been written in English on Islamic Egypt: Edward William Lane's account of the modern Egyptians (1836), Stanley Lane-Poole's History of Egypt (1901) and his Art of the Saracens in Egypt (1886), Butler's Arab Conquest of Egypt (1902), the studies of Kubiak on Fustat and MacKenzie on Ayyubid Cairo, and the architectural books of Creswell and Behrens-Abouseif. ⁴ He says he wanted to bring this scattered scholarship into one volume and one continuous narrative for the general reader, updating what Lane-Poole attempted in 1886, and drawing also on his own observation after years of drawing and painting Egypt's monuments. ⁵ He ends the preface with the view that Cairo's Islamic monuments are falling apart through neglect, lack of resources and earthquakes, and need rescuing as urgently as Venice; this is his own judgement. ⁵

• Preface (p. 1), then Introduction: Egypt and the Arab Conquest (p. 4). ¹
• Chapter 1: Umayyad and Tulunid Architecture, Fustat and al-Qata'i (p. 14). ¹
• Chapter 2: Fatimid Architecture (p. 42); Chapter 3: The Decorative Arts of the Tulunids and Fatimids (p. 70). ¹
• Chapter 4: Ayyubid Architecture (p. 100); Chapter 5: The Architecture of the Bahri Mamluks (p. 124); Chapter 6: The Decorative Arts of the Ayyubids and Mamluks (p. 164); Chapter 7: The Architecture of the Burji Mamluks (p. 198). ¹
• Apparatus: notes and references (p. 240), glossaries of Islamic and English terms (pp. 251, 253), a chronology of dynasties and rulers (p. 256), a table of dynasties (p. 258), bibliography (p. 259) and index (p. 265). ¹

The book gives architecture and the decorative arts separate chapters, and studies ceramics, glass, woodwork, metalwork, textiles and manuscripts from the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo and collections in Europe and America. ¹ Its narrative rests on the Arabic sources as modern scholarship transmits them, such as al-Maqrizi, Ibn Duqmaq, al-Qalqashandi and al-Balawi, and on the research of Creswell, Kubiak, Behrens-Abouseif and Hillenbrand, and it sets out where these scholars disagree on the dating of parts of a building, as with the minaret of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. ^{6 7 8}

The chapter opens with the founding of al-Fustat beside the fortress of Babylon and describes its tribal allotments around the Mosque of Amr, following Kubiak. ^{9 10} It then follows the phases of the Mosque of Amr from its first building in mud-brick and palm trunks to Murad Bey's rebuilding of 1800. ^{11 12} It moves on to Abbasid al-Askar and then Tulunid al-Qata'i, describes the Nilometer on Rawda and the Mosque of Ibn Tulun with its stucco in the Samarran styles, and closes with the palaces of Khumarawayh and the fall of the Tulunid state in 905. ^{13 6 14 15}

Chapter 2 studies al-Azhar, the mosque of al-Hakim, the gates of Badr al-Jamali, al-Aqmar, the Alid shrines and the mosque of al-Salih Tala'i. ^{16 17} Chapter 4 treats the Citadel, the mausoleum of al-Shafi'i and the Salihiyya. ^{18 19} Chapter 5 covers Bahri Mamluk building from Baybars's mosque and the Qalawun complex to the mosque of Sultan Hasan. ^{20 21} Chapter 7 covers the Circassians from Barquq to Qaytbay and al-Ghuri, ending with a postscript on the Ottoman period and the mosque of Muhammad Ali. ^{22 23 24}

First edition, Garnet Publishing, Reading, 2006, ISBN 978-1-85964-154-5, printed in Lebanon. ² The book carries over two hundred photographs, plans and elevations and a glossary of architectural terms. ²⁵