The Mosques of Egypt /
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Less than ten years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the new religion of Islam arrived in Egypt with the army of Amr ibn al-As in AD 639. Amr immediately established his capital at al-Fustat, just south of modern Cairo, and there he built Africa's first mosque, one still in regular use today. Since then, governors, caliphs, sultans, amirs, beys, pashas, among others, have built mosques, madrasas, and mausoleums throughout Egypt in a changing sequence of Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, Ottoman, and modern styles. Here, a leading historian of Islamic art and culture celebrates the great variety of Egypt's mosques and related religious buildings, from the early congregational mosques, through the medieval mausoleum--madrasas, to the neighborhood mosques of the Ottoman and modern periods. With outstanding architectural photography and authoritative descriptive texts, this book will be valued as the finest on the subject by scholars and general readers alike. Includes more that 80 of the country's most historic mosques, with more than 500 color photographs. -- Inside jacket flap.
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xxxix, 359 pages : illustrations ; 31 cm. :
Includes bibliographical references ( pages 351-356) and index. :
9789774167324
Creating medieval Cairo : empire, religion, and architectural preservation in nineteenth-century Egypt /
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"This book argues that the historic city we know as Medieval Cairo was created in the nineteenth century by both Egyptians and Europeans against a background of four overlapping political and cultural contexts: namely, the local Egyptian, Anglo-Egyptian, Anglo-Indian, and Ottoman imperial milieux. Addressing the interrelated topics of empire, local history, religion, and transnational heritage, historian Paula Sanders shows how Cairo's architectural heritage became canonized in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book also explains why and how the city assumed its characteristically Mamluk appearance and situates the activities of the European-dominated architectural preservation committee (known as the Comiť) within the history of religious life in nineteenth-century Cairo. Sanders explores such varied topics as the British experience in India, the Egyptian debate over religious reform, and the influence of The Thousand and One Nights on European notions of the medieval Arab city ... this volume examines the unacknowledged colonial legacy that continues to inform the practice of and debates over preservation in Cairo."
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xv, 216 pages, [16] pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm. :
Includes bibliographical references (pages 188-206) and index. :
9774160959