Folio. xxxix, 372 pp., 62 b/w plates hors text / vi, pages 373 - 684, b/w Plates 63-140, colour frontispiece, 690 halftone illustrations some of which are folding, with a contribution on the mosaics of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Great Mosque in Damascus by Marguerite Gautier-Van Berchem, original cloth, Part I in lightly torn d/w, Part II lacking jacket, otherwise set clean and in very good condition, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, second edition, 1969.

Synopsis

Second and amended edition with additional information. The author an expert on Muslim architecture, wrote the monumental work on Muslim architecture of Egypt in 1920. In July 1919, he was appointed inspector of monuments to the military government occupying Syria and Palestine. He proceeded to Aleppo, which remained his base for three months, and travelled extensively in Syria and Palestine, inspecting Umayyad monuments
This work covers the first three centuries of Islam, i.e. 622-935 AD. In dealing with each monument the author adopted the following system:
1- A description of the original structure.
2- An analysis.
3- Architectural origins.
The arrangement of this work is strictly chronological. Volumes I and II discuss extensively in three major chapters Islamic architecture with an analysis on the “Dome of the Rock”, the works of Abdul Malik, al-Walid, the Mosaics of the Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque of Damascus, the Aqsa Mosque, Qusayr Amra, the Palace of Anjai, the works of Caliphs Sulayman and Yazid II, the works of Caliphs Hisham, the Qasr Al-Hayr Aslt-Shaiqi, Khirbat Al- Hafjar, Mishatta, Qasr Ar-Tuba, and the Great Mosque in Hassan.
This second edition of Creswell’s masterpiece covers nine additional monuments and is one and a half times the size of the first edition which appeared between 1932 and 1940 by the same publishing house.