Islamic Architecture Through Western Eyes Volume 2

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.

An anthology of mainly 17th to early 20th-century Western published descriptions of Islamic religious buildings in Spain, Turkey, India and Persia, charting decoration, dilapidation and restoration, as well as the impact of Western trade, taste and imports on the East.

Profusely illustrated critical appraisal vividly describes the glories of world architecture, from Spain and Egypt to other areas of the Middle East.

Despite the West's growing involvement in Muslim societies, conflicts, and cultures, its inability to understand or analyze the Islamic world threatens any prospect for East–West rapprochement. Impelled by one thousand years of anti-Muslim ideas and images, the West has failed to engage in any meaningful or productive way with the world of Islam. Formulated in the medieval halls of the Roman Curia and courts of the European Crusaders and perfected in the newsrooms of Fox News and CNN, this anti-Islamic discourse determines what can and cannot be said about Muslims and their religion, trapping the West in a dangerous, dead-end politics that it cannot afford. In Islam Through Western Eyes, Jonathan Lyons unpacks Western habits of thinking and writing about Islam, conducting a careful analysis of the West's grand totalizing narrative across one thousand years of history. He observes the discourse’s corrosive effects on the social sciences, including sociology, politics, philosophy, theology, international relations, security studies, and human rights scholarship. He follows its influence on research, speeches, political strategy, and government policy, preventing the West from responding effectively to its most significant twenty-first-century challenges: the rise of Islamic power, the emergence of religious violence, and the growing tension between established social values and multicultural rights among Muslim immigrant populations. Through the intellectual "archaeology" of Michel Foucault, Lyons reveals the workings of this discourse and its underlying impact on our social, intellectual, and political lives. He then addresses issues of deep concern to Western readers—Islam and modernity, Islam and violence, and Islam and women—and proposes new ways of thinking about the Western relationship to the Islamic world.

This book seeks to energize the ongoing debate in academia and among practitioners on the meaning and understanding of Islamic architecture, and explores how the design profession can be employed to build in the spirit of Islam.

The products of a highly-developed architectural style even today bear witness to the greatness of Arabic culture. To the western eye, cities such as Jerusalem, Mecca, Baghdad or Cairo can seem utterly alien. It is not only the way of life that is unfamiliar, it is also the astoundingly varied architecture. This volume surveys more than six centuries of Islamic architecture, from the late 7th century to the mid-13th, placing mosques, Koran schools and palaces in their cultural, religious and political contexts. Distinctive features are its view of building as reflection of Moslem thinking, and its focus on the Arab world.With more than 200 colour photographs, numerous plans, chronological tables and an extensive glossary, this is a reference work which appeals to the expert and the travel-hungry reader alike.