Monument or Ornament? Early French architectural histories of Islamic buildings in Egypt (1850s-1870s)
Résumé
In 1869, the French publisher Veuve A. Morel and Co. was engaged in the publication of two parallels works illustrating monuments in Egypt: Les Arts arabes, architecture, menuiserie, bronzes, plafonds, etc. avec une table descriptive et explicative et le trait général de l'art arabe, by the architect Jules Bourgoin (1838-1908) and L'art arabe d'après les monuments du Kaire depuis le VIIe siècle jusqu'à la fin du XVIIIe siècle by Emile Prisse d'Avennes (1807-1879), who defined himself as an artist and antiquarian. Resulting from surveys made in Egypt in the 1850s and 1860s, the books are quite different in their method, scope and philosophy. They represent distinct approaches to Islamic architecture in Egypt that can be broadly summarized as engaging with theory vs. engaging with history. The former publication is driven by a theory of forms and ornament, while the latter belongs to a historiographical genre that was fast developing, that of "monumental history". Their confrontation shows that very different concerns drew (marginalized) scholars towards the studying of Islamic architecture, which may explain the late emergence of the discipline. In their own ways, both publications indeed address issues and topics that are still of relevance to current scholarship of Islamic art and architecture. Furthermore, they share an evolution towards including objects in their enquiries that is worth questioning. Using what remain from the private archives, textual and visual, of both authors, as well as their publications, the paper proposes to discuss the historiographical framework of the parallel works of Bourgoin and Prisse d'Avennes, to assess their contributions to, and limitations in, the understanding of Islamic architecture, and to question the role assigned to objects in their interpretations.