Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology: The Creswell Archive
In 1975 the Department of Eastern Art of the Ashmolean
Museum was fortunate enough to receive a bequest consisting of the unique
negative collection of Professor K.A.C. Creswell, the eminent pioneer
of medieval Islamic architectural history. Among the photographs are many
of those used to illustrate the two publications which remain the basic
research tools for scholars of medieval Islamic architecture: Creswell's
Early Muslim Architecture, and Muslim Architecture of Egypt.
The collection also includes large number of photographs
intended for a third volume of Muslim Architecture of Egypt,
which was to deal with the monuments of the Burji Mamluk period. Since
this project remained unfinished at the time of Creswell's death, the
bulk of these are unpublished.
Over the past decade the Ashmolean Museum has undertaken
the printing, identification and digitisation of the Creswell Archive
with the aim of making this exceptional collection available to a wider
audience.
The subjects of the photographs range in place and date
from al-Andalus to Iraq, from the late seventh century to the eighteenth.
The greater part of the archive consists of images of the architecture
of Egypt and the Levant between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Most
were taken in the second quarter of this century.
Some of the buildings which Creswell photographed are no
longer extant, others subsequently underwent drastic, and often poorly-documented
campaignes of restoration. The photographs therefore provide an invaluable
record for those interested in the history of the major monuments of the
Islamic Middle East.
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