The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus

The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus PDF Author: Alain Fouad George
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781909942455
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
An expansive illustrated history of the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus is one of the oldest continuously used religious sites in the world. The mosque we see today was built in 705 CE by the Umayyad caliph al-Walid on top of a fourth-century Christian church that had been erected over a temple of Jupiter. Incredibly, despite the recent war, the mosque has remained almost unscathed, but over the centuries has been continuously rebuilt after damage from earthquakes and fires. In this comprehensive biography of the Umayyad Mosque, Alain George explores a wide range of sources to excavate the dense layers of the mosque's history, also uncovering what the structure looked like when it was first built with its impressive marble and mosaic-clad walls. George incorporates a range of sources, including new information he found in three previously untranslated poems written at the time the mosque was built, as well as in descriptions left by medieval scholars. He also looks carefully at the many photographs and paintings made by nineteenth-century European travelers, particularly those who recorded the building before the catastrophic fire of 1893.

The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus

The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus PDF Author: Alain Fouad George
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781909942455
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Get Book Here

Book Description
An expansive illustrated history of the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus is one of the oldest continuously used religious sites in the world. The mosque we see today was built in 705 CE by the Umayyad caliph al-Walid on top of a fourth-century Christian church that had been erected over a temple of Jupiter. Incredibly, despite the recent war, the mosque has remained almost unscathed, but over the centuries has been continuously rebuilt after damage from earthquakes and fires. In this comprehensive biography of the Umayyad Mosque, Alain George explores a wide range of sources to excavate the dense layers of the mosque's history, also uncovering what the structure looked like when it was first built with its impressive marble and mosaic-clad walls. George incorporates a range of sources, including new information he found in three previously untranslated poems written at the time the mosque was built, as well as in descriptions left by medieval scholars. He also looks carefully at the many photographs and paintings made by nineteenth-century European travelers, particularly those who recorded the building before the catastrophic fire of 1893.

The Great Mosque of Damascus

The Great Mosque of Damascus PDF Author: Finbarr Flood
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004491619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
The celebrated Great Mosque of Damascus was built in the early eighth century by the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd b. ‘Abd al-Malik. This book provides a detailed study of this Mosque. Using textual, visual, and archaeological evidence, the author attempts to reconstruct some of the basic formal and decorative features of the Umayyad mosque, to locate it within its broader urban context, and to consider its role within al-Walīd's unprecedented programme of architectural patronage. The work explores the intracultural and intercultural functions of religious architecture within an official visual discourse intended to project a distinctive Muslim identity in a manner determined by Umayyad political aspirations. It will be of particular interest to those concerned with the relationship between the Umayyad caliphate and Byzantium.

THE DAMASCUS FRAGMENTS

THE DAMASCUS FRAGMENTS PDF Author: Arianna D'Ottone Rambach
Publisher: Ergon
ISBN: 9783956507557
Category : Manuscripts
Languages : de
Pages : 544

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Book Description
Die Beiträger des Bandes haben es sich zum Ziel gesetzt, den umfangreichen Bestand an Handschriftenfragmenten, der sich in der Qubbat al-khazna von Damaskus befindet, in der Geschichte des Mittleren Ostens zu verorten. Ebenso wie ihr berühmtes Pendant, die Geniza in Kairo, wurde die Qubba im 19. Jahrhundert "entdeckt", doch ihre 200.000 Fragmente fanden in der Forschung bisher nur geringe Aufmerksamkeit. Ein internationales und interdisziplinäres Team von Wissenschaftlern hat sich nun zusammengefunden, um die faszinierende Geschichte dieser Sammlung zu skizzieren und die außergewöhnlichen multilingualen, multireligiösen und multiscripturalen Artefakte, die sie beinhaltet, zu erfassen. Dieses Buch ist grundlegend für jene, die an Handschriftenstudien, Philologie und an der Geschichte des Mittleren Ostens interessiert sind.

Stealing from the Saracens

Stealing from the Saracens PDF Author: Diana Darke
Publisher: Hurst & Company
ISBN: 1787383059
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
A revealing history of Islamic architecture's influence on Europe's cathedrals, palaces and public buildings.

Conceptualizing Cultural Hybridization

Conceptualizing Cultural Hybridization PDF Author: Philipp Wolfgang Stockhammer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642218466
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
Within the context of globalization, cultural transformations are increasingly analyzed as hybridization processes. Hybridity itself, however, is often treated as a specifically post-colonial phenomenon. The contributors in this volume assume the historicity of transcultural flows and entanglements; they consider the resulting transformative powers to be a basic feature of cultural change. By juxtaposing different notions of hybridization and specific methodologies, as they appear in the various disciplines, this volume’s design is transdisciplinary. Each author presents a disciplinary concept of hybridization and shows how it operates in specific case studies. The aim is to generate a transdisciplinary perception of hybridity that paves the way for a wider application of this crucial concept

Damascus after the Muslim Conquest

Damascus after the Muslim Conquest PDF Author: Nancy Khalek
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199876193
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Before it fell to Muslim armies in AD 635-6 Damascus had a long and prestigious history as a center of Christianity. How did this city, which became the capitol of the Islamic Empire and its people, negotiate the transition from a late antique or early Byzantine world to an Islamic culture? In Damascus after the Muslim Conquest, Nancy Khalek demonstrates that the changes that took place in Syria during this formative period of Islamic life were not simply a matter of the replacement of one civilization by another as a result of military conquest, but rather of shifting relationships and practices in a multifaceted social and cultural setting. Even as late antique forms of religion and culture persisted, the formation of Islamic identity was affected by the people who constructed, lived in, and narrated the history of their city. Khalek draws on the evidence of architecture and the testimony of pilgrims, biographers, geographers, and historians to shed light on this process of identity formation. Offering a fresh approach to the early Islamic period, she moves the study of Islamic origins beyond a focus on issues of authenticity and textual criticism, and initiates an interdisciplinary discourse on narrative, storytelling, and the interpretations of material culture.

Damascus

Damascus PDF Author: Brigid Keenan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500282991
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Damascus, reputed to be the worldʹs oldest continually inhabited city, has enjoyed a history of immense grandeur, enormous political and mercantile power, and great cultural and artistic achievement. In addition to some of Islamʹs most magnificent architecture, such as the Umayyad Mosque, the city boasts a heritage of fairy-tale palaces and sumptuous private houses. Sadly, many of them are in urgent need of restoration. Brigid Keenan and Tim Beddow were given unprecedented access to the inner, "hidden" city, which has resulted in a book that is of immense importance to all concerned with the heritage of architecture in the Islamic world. The superb photographs include façades, courtyards, alleyways and fountains, and the breathtaking interiors that often lie behind the unassuming walls of the old town, with exquisite details in stone, wood, paint, marble, plaster, glass and mother-of-pearl. The whole, published with the generous support of Wafic Rida Said, forms a convincing and elegiac plea for the preservation of the heart of this historic ancient capital. -- Jacket.

Islamic Empires

Islamic Empires PDF Author: Justin Marozzi
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241199050
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
'Outstanding, illuminating, compelling ... a riveting read' Peter Frankopan, Sunday Times Islamic civilization was once the envy of the world. From a succession of glittering, cosmopolitan capitals, Islamic empires lorded it over the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and swathes of the Indian subcontinent. For centuries the caliphate was both ascendant on the battlefield and triumphant in the battle of ideas, its cities unrivalled powerhouses of artistic grandeur, commercial power, spiritual sanctity and forward-looking thinking. Islamic Empires is a history of this rich and diverse civilization told through its greatest cities over fifteen centuries, from the beginnings of Islam in Mecca in the seventh century to the astonishing rise of Doha in the twenty-first. It dwells on the most remarkable dynasties ever to lead the Muslim world - the Abbasids of Baghdad, the Umayyads of Damascus and Cordoba, the Merinids of Fez, the Ottomans of Istanbul, the Mughals of India and the Safavids of Isfahan - and some of the most charismatic leaders in Muslim history, from Saladin in Cairo and mighty Tamerlane of Samarkand to the poet-prince Babur in his mountain kingdom of Kabul and the irrepressible Maktoum dynasty of Dubai. It focuses on these fifteen cities at some of the defining moments in Islamic history: from the Prophet Mohammed receiving his divine revelations in Mecca and the First Crusade of 1099 to the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and the phenomenal creation of the merchant republic of Beirut in the nineteenth century.

Power, Patronage, and Memory in Early Islam

Power, Patronage, and Memory in Early Islam PDF Author: Alain George
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190498935
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
When the Umayyads, the first Islamic dynasty, rose to power shortly after the death of the Prophet Muhammad (d. 632), the polity of which they assumed control had only recently expanded out of Arabia into the Roman eastern Mediterranean, Iraq and Iran. A century later, by the time of their downfall in 750, the last Umayyad caliphs governed the largest empire that the world had seen, stretching from Spain in the West to the Indus valley and Central Asia in the East. By then, their dynasty and the ruling circles around it had articulated with increasing clarity the public face of the new monotheistic religion of Islam, created major masterpieces of world art and architecture, some of which still stand today, and built a state apparatus that was crucial to ensuring the continuity of the Islamic polity. Within the vast lands under their control, the Umayyads and their allies ruled over a mosaic of peoples, languages and faiths, first among them Christianity, Judaism and the Ancient religion of Iran, Zoroastrianism. The Umayyad period is profoundly different from ours, yet it also resonates with modern concerns, from the origins of Islam to dynamics of cultural exchange. Editors Alain George and Andrew Marsham bring together a collection of essays that shed new light on this crucial period. Power, Patronage, and Memory in Early Islam elucidates the ways in which Umayyad lites fashioned and projected their self-image, and how these articulations, in turn, mirrored their own times. The authors, combining perspectives from different disciplines, present new material evidence, introduce fresh perspectives about key themes and monuments, and revisit the nature of the historical writing that shaped our knowledge of this period.

Damascus

Damascus PDF Author: Ross Burns
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134488505
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Lavishly illustrated with beautiful photographs and original plans, traces the story of this colourful, significant and complex place through its physical development and provides, for the first time in English, a compelling and unique exploration of a.