Folio. Volume I: Inscriptions et Monuments d’Alep: Texte: xvi, 250 pp., 82 figures / Volume II: Inscriptions et Monuments d’Alep: Text: 251-493 pp., figures 84-131, / Volume II: Planches: 16 pp., 173 photographic plates including 1 plan of Aleppo, half-titles, publisher’s original wrappers, slightly rubbed at spine extremities, set inside in very good condition, Mémoires publiés par les membres de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire, sous la direction de Jean Saite Fare Garnot, Tome LXXVII-LXXVIII, Imprimerie de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, Cairo, 1954-1956.

Synopsis

Extremely rare. Ernst Herzfeld (1879-1948), was a leading German scholar who specialised in Islamic monuments. He wrote several works on Islamic monuments in the Euphrates Valley and Syria. He excavated in Samarra (Iraq), and lectured at the University of Baghdad in 1920. In 1947 he excavated and studied extensively the city of Aleppo. In this work he documented the location of 282 Islamic inscriptions from different historical periods in Aleppo. The first volume of this study covers briefly the history of Aleppo, its monuments, a detailed description of the city, its walls and fortifications. The second volume contains detailed studies of the Citadel, the Great Mosque, the city and its environments, the Seljuk, Nourid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman periods. This is a very important and rare study.
In retrospect Herzfeld was one of the last examples of the all-encompassing, erudite learning of the 19th century humanistic cultural tradition. Herzfeld combined a wide array of talents and interests. Although trained as an architect and appointed professor for historical geography and art history, he also translated and published new texts and inscriptions in Assyrian, Old Persian, Middle Persian and Arabic.
Bibliographic reference: Creswell 403.