Islamic Architecture through Western Eyes: Volume 2

Download or read book Islamic Architecture through Western Eyes: Volume 2 written by Michael Greenhalgh and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-01-15 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, the second of three, offers an anthology of Western descriptions of Islamic religious buildings in Syria, Egypt and North Africa, mostly from the seventeenth to early twentieth centuries, taken from travel books and ambassadorial reports. (The third volume will deal with Islamic palaces around the Mediterranean.) As travel became easier and cheaper, thanks to better roads, steamships, hotels and railways, tourist numbers increased, museums accumulated eastern treasures, illustrated journals proliferated, and photography provided accurate data. All three deal with the impact of Western trade, taste and imports on the East, and examine the encroachment of westernised modernism.