Minarets have defined Cairo’s skyline since its early history: they are one of the most characteristic features of Islamic architecture. In Egypt, where civilizations have manifested themselves through awe-inspiring structures since antiquity, "a thousand minarets" reveal the impact of Islamic civilization and urban aesthetics. The Minarets of Cairo offers an accessible and vivid insight into the religious, historical and architectural significance of the minaret in Cairo from the Arab Conquest, through the Abbasid, Fatimid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods. Students and scholars will welcome historian and art historian Doris Behrens-Abouseif’s excellent new research and analysis as well as over one hundred illustrated entries for individual minarets, brought to life by Nicholas Warner’s masterly architectural drawings and reconstructions. With nearly three hundred illustrations, this beautiful book provides depth and colour, displaying to full effect historic Cairo’s most impressive monuments.
Acknowledgements
• Illustration Credits
• Foreword
• Note to the Reader
• Introduction
• Culture and Architecture of the Minaret
• The Call to Prayer (adhan) and the Muezzin
• Function and use
• Evolution
• Placement
• Construction and Materials
• Architecture and Decoration
• Epigraphy
• The Minaret Depicted
• The Historic Minarets of Cairo
• Early History and Formation
• The Mamluk Minarets
• The Minarets under Ottoman Rule
• Minarets Beyond Cairo
• The Minaret in the Egyptian Provinces
• The Minaret of Cairo in Medina
Overview
Minarets have defined Cairo’s skyline since its early history: they are one of the most characteristic features of Islamic architecture. In Egypt, where civilizations have manifested themselves through awe-inspiring structures since antiquity, "a thousand minarets" reveal the impact of Islamic civilization and urban aesthetics. The Minarets of Cairo offers an accessible and vivid insight into the religious, historical and architectural significance of the minaret in Cairo from the Arab Conquest, through the ...