The Citadel of Cairo: A New Interpretation of Royal Mamluk Architecture (Islamic History and Civilization) - Hardcover

Rabbat, Nasser O

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9004101241 ISBN 13: 9789004101241

Publisher: Brill, 1995

Synopsis

This architectural history of the Citadel of Cairo uses indices from maps, photographs, plans of hitherto unstudied structures, and a large array of historical documents to chronologically reconstruct the Citadel's development from its foundation by Salah al-Din until it reached its most monumental form in the middle of the fourteenth century.
The study analyzes the influence of Mamluk socio-political hierarchy on the conceptualization of the Citadel's spaces and forms; assesses its impact on medieval Cairo; proposes a new interpretation for the development of Mamluk royal architecture; and presents new definitions for a number of medieval architectural terms.
By weaving the history of the Citadel together with the history of Cairo and the Mamluk system, this book is relevant to historians of architecture and urbanism and medieval historians.

About this title

About the Author:

Nasser O. Rabbat, Ph.D. (1991) in Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is Associate Professor of the History of Architecture at MIT. He has published extensively on early and medieval Islamic architecture, institutions, and urbanism. His dissertation, upon which this book is based, received the 1991 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award.

Review:

'Far more than just a chronology of architectural remains, Rabbat's book is an exploration into the very fabric of Mamluk culture, written in the best historicist tradition.'
Yasser Tabbaa, ARS Orientalis, 1996.
'The great merit of this book is its approach, which always connects the architecture with its social and historical setting, seeking the function it was created to fulfill and the circumstances that accompanied its evolution, making it intelligible and interesting.'
Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Mamlūk Studies Review, 1997.
'...this book is a significant contribution to the field of military architecture and more generally to our understanding of the Mamluks.'
Nelly Hanna, MESA Bulletin, 1996.
'The meticulous and exhaustive scholarship shows that the author has read and examined everything and forgotten nothing. Specialists in Mamluk history will now be able to localize activities mentioned in their sources, and architectural historians will profit from learned and exhaustive disquisitions on architecture and architectural vocabulary during the early Mamluk period.'
Jonathan M. Bloom, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1997.
This book does more than meticulously reconstruct an impressive monument over the centuries of its development. It restores a life a bygone age through the evocation of its architectural heritage.
Carl F. Petry, Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, 1998.

About this edition

• Publisher: Brill
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 9004101241
• ISBN 13: 9789004101241
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 388