Books

  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. Table of contents :  Contents Preface to the Three Volumes List of Illustrations Chapter 1 Introduction 1 The Crusades and Their Impact 2 Contacts Through Trade 3 Manuscripts Throughout the Empire 4 Nineteenth-century Travel and Tourism 5 Jerusalem and Cairo 6 The survival of Islam 7 Muslim...