Search results

From coast to coast, the English landscape is still richly studded with castles both great and small. As homes or ruins, these historic buildings are today largely objects of curiosity. For centuries, however, they were at the heart of the kingdom's social and political life. The English Castle is a riveting architectural study that sets this legion of buildings in historical context, tracing their development from the Norman Conquest in 1066 through the civil wars of the 1640s. In this magnif...

This is a comprehensive study of the surviving monuments of the Qarakhanids - an important yet little-known medieval dynasty that ruled much of Central Asia between the late 10th and early 13th centuries. Based on extensive fieldwork and many hard-to-find Russian sources, the book places the surviving monuments into the wider cultural context of the region. Many photographs and new ground-plans are included, as well as detailed studies of individual monuments and the wider architectural aestheti...

The eleven articles in this volume examine controversial subjects of central importance to medieval economic historians. Topics include the relative roles played by money and credit in financing the economy, whether credit could compensate for shortages of coin, and whether it could counteract the devastating mortality of the Black Death. Drawing on a detailed analysis of the Statute Merchant and Staple records, the articles chart the chronological and geographical changes in the economy from th...

Anatolia was home to a large number of polities in the medieval period. Given its location at the geographical and chronological juncture between Byzantines and the Ottomans, its story tends to be read through the Seljuk experience. This obscures the multiple experiences and spaces of Anatolia under the Byzantine empire, Turko-Muslim dynasties contemporary to the Seljuks, the Mongol llkhanids, and the various beyliks of eastern and western Anatolia. This book looks beyond political structures an...

Investigating the historical tradition of Chinese architectural writing from antiquity to the twelfth century, Chinese Architecture and Metaphor reveals significant and fascinating social and cultural phenomena in the most important primary text for the study of the Chinese building tradition. Unlike previous scholarship, which has reviewed this imperially commissioned architectural manual largely as a technical work, this volume considers the Yingzao fashi's unique literary value and explores t...

This book unveils the inheritance of a fascinating city. Christened "Constantinople" by Constantine the Great, the city successively served as the capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires and commanded a key position between Occident and Orient for more than sixteen centuries. The wealth of cultural treasures that characterize the face of Istanbul today reflects this rich history. The Hagia Sophia stems from the early Christian era; the Middle Ages bequeathed us churches and monasteries rich...

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Ayyubid dynasty brought unprecedented architectural development to Aleppo, the most important city in medieval Syria. While early Islamic empires usually expressed their grandeur by founding new cities with vast extra-urban palaces, the Ayyubids asserted their power by "modernizing" existing towns. With its large, well-preserved citadel and a wide variety of pious institutions, Aleppo is the ideal subject for Yasser Tabbaa's study of the pan-Islamic t...

Robust, romantic and imposing, castles capture our imagination when we were children and continue to hold interest throughout our lives. From Europe to Haiti, from India to Japan, Castles of the World explores forts, strongholds, towers and citadels from the ancient world up to the 20th century. Entries range from well-known examples such as Corfe Castle in England, the crusader stronghold of Krak des Chevaliers in Syria and the romantic palace of Neuschwanstein in Bavaria, to lesser-known curio...

Wrought iron has been used as a decorative element in architecture since the eleventh century. Initially used to strengthen and embellish doors, the material was soon adopted for free-standing screens and railings in churches and cathedrals. Towards the end of the seventeenth century iron screens, gates and railings became a fashionable element of country and town houses, resulting in the most creative period of decorative ironwork. Though the cheaper technique of casting led to a subsequent dec...

Rainbow Like an Emerald is the most comprehensive study of Lorraine stained glass as a regional style developed in conjunction with the typical Gothic architecture of the province. Situated between France and Germany, medieval Lorraine increasingly looked to France for it cultural standards. While French in inspiration, however, its Gothic architecture and stained glass quickly developed strong regional and distinctive characteristics. This architecture has only in the last decade been studied,...