A vibrant urban settlement from medieval times and the royal seat of the Safavid dynasty, the city of Isfahan emerged as a great metropolis during the seventeenth century. Using key sources, this book reconstructs the spaces and senses of this dynamic city.Focusing on nuances of urban experience, Farshid Emami expands our understanding of Isfahan in a global context. He takes the reader on an evocative journey through the city’s markets, promenades, and coffeehouses, bringing to li...

An exhilarating and original history of Egypt, from the pyramids to the precarious presentIn The Shortest History of Egypt, Maria Golia draws on extensive historical research, and her years of experience living and working in Egypt, to offer a fresh and insightful perspective on one of the world's oldest civilisations. Golia deftly traces Egypt’s trajectory from Neolithic times to the Arab Spring and up to the present day, and in doing so illuminates the environmental, t...

Hassan 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 archi...

An examination of the popular view of ancient Egypt as an exotic, esoteric, and mystical culture that questions if that view is entirely accurate.The Greek historian Hecataeus of Abdera declared during the 4th century BCE that the Egyptian civilization was unsurpassed in the arts and in good governance, surpassing even that of the Greeks. During the Renaissance, several ecclesiastical nobles, including the Borgia Pope Alexander VI claimed their descent from the Egyp...

This volume is an inter-disciplinary endeavour which brings together recent research on aspects of urban life and structure by architectural and textual historians and archaeologists, engendering exciting new perspectives on urban life in the pre-modern Islamic world. Its objective is to move beyond the long-standing debate on whether an ‘Islamic city’ existed in the pre-modern era and focus instead upon the ways in which religion may (or may not) have influenced the physical structure of ...

Ellen Adams is Reader in Classical Archaeology and Liberal Arts at King’s College London. She has participated in many archaeological excavations in Greece and published widely on the subject. She is the author of Cultural Identity in Minoan Crete: Social Dynamics in the Neopalatial Period (2017).

Tunisia offers a synoptic and chronological vision spanning thirteen centuries of Islamic History. After the creation of Kairouan at the rise of the Islamic era during which time local traditions were enriched with the distant souvenir of Samarra successive dynasties embellished the architectural language of the area with their own unique artistic expressions. The Aghlabid monuments, for example, offer the dual physiognomy of Christian art revisited by oriental craftsmanship, which was in ...

From Berlin to Boston, and St Petersburg to Sydney, ancient Egyptian art fills the galleries of some of the world's greatest museums, while the architecture of Egyptian temples and pyramids has attracted tourists to Egypt for centuries. But what did Egyptian art and architecture mean to the people who first made and used it - and why has it had such an enduring appeal? In this Very Short Introduction, Christina Riggs explores the visual arts produced in Egypt over a span of some 4...

Often characterized as a ‘lost’ civilization that was ‘discovered’ by adventurers and archaeologists, ancient Egypt has fascinated and inspired many other cultures. Classical Greek and Roman writers admired ancient Egyptian philosophy; in the eighteenth century, secret societies like the Freemasons still upheld the wisdom of ancient Egypt. But why? Christina Riggs introduces the history, art and religion of Egypt from its earliest dynasties to its final fall to Rome, and explores the influ...

The Middle Eastern bazaar is much more than a context for commerce: the studies in this book illustrate that markets, regardless of their location, scale, and permanency, have also played important cultural roles within their societies, reflecting historical evolution, industrial development, social and political conditions, urban morphology, and architectural functions. This interdisciplinary volume explores the dynamics of the bazaar with a number of case studies from Cairo, Damascus, Al...

A richly illustrated examination of the Ottoman Empire, 100 years since its dissolution, unraveling its complex cultural legacy and profound impact on Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.A hundred years after the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate on November 1, 1922, enough time has passed to reexamine the Ottomans and reassess their legacy. This illustrated volume, by critically acclaimed author Diana Darke, explores their unique achievements in architectur...

The many followers of Islam are spread around the globe from traditional lands in the Middle East and parts of Africa to metropolitan European cities. This extremely varied group of people nevertheless shares a distinct and rich style of arts, architecture, poetry, epic literature, painting, and philosophy. This book follows the intriguing history of Islamic arts and literature through the ages from the Umayyad Dynasty to the modern Islamic world.