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This article originally
appeared in the Sony Gallery catalog for the exhibit and the Islamic Art
Network.
For more information on Creswell's Cairo go to www.islamic-art.org.
Sir
Archibald Creswell: Biographical Notes
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Professor
Sir Keppel Archibald Creswell was born in London in 1879 and died there
in 1974. He trained as an architectural draughtsman and served in the
Royal Flying Corps in Egypt in World War I. While serving as surveyor
of monuments in Palestine and Syria, his interest in Muslim architecture
was quickened and upon his return to Egypt in 1920 he commenced his life-long
dedication to that field. His publications attracted attention within
the broad academic strata of Europe and the Middle East and secured public
and private support to sustain his rigorous routine of field work and
research.
Prof.
Creswell taught at Fu’ad I (later Cairo) University and the American
University in Cairo, which purchased his unrivalled library. The University
of Oxford and Princeton University conferred honorary doctorates in 1946
and 1947, in which year he was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
He was knighted by the Queen in 1970.
Suffice
it here to list his major publications, a litany now familiar to any who
have attained distinction in Muslim architecture:
Early Muslim Architecture. Vol. I Umayyads A. D. 622-750 (1932); Vol.
II Early Abbasids, Umayyads of Cordova, Aghlabids, Tulunids and Samanids
A. D. 751-905 (1940).
Muslim
Architecture of Egypt. Vol. I Ikshids and Fatimids A.D. 939-1171 (1952);
Vol. II Ayyubid and Early Bahrite Mamluks A. D. 1171-1326 (1959).
Bibliography
of the Architecture, Arts and Crafts of Islam (1961).
Early
Muslim Architecture. Second edition in two parts (1969).
Supplement
to the Bibliography of the Architecture, Arts and Crafts of Islam (1973).
When
to these large tomes one adds innumerable articles on specialized aspects
of Muslim art and architecture, one can only agree with the president
of the Royal Asiatic Society who, when bestowing on Creswell the society’s
Triennial Gold Metal, averred that he “had not only got to the head
of his profession; he has created it.”
In
writing of the wonderfully proportioned Qubbat al-Sakhra (Dome of the
Rock) in 1932, Prof. Creswell inadvertently paid tribute to his seventy
years of work in his field, to Egypt and the Muslim world, and to the
colleagues and students he inspired and who remain indebted to him, when
he wrote, “…[when] the size of every part is related to every
other part in some definite proportion …a building…becomes a
harmonious chord in stone, a sort of living crystal.”
Prof.
G.T. Scanlon
Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture
Department of Arabic Studies
The American University in Cairo
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