Archibald Creswell photographs

Born in London, Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell was a pioneer in Islamic architectural history who considered photography an essential part of his fieldwork. Following World War I, Creswell used his connections to obtain an appointment as Inspector of Monuments under General Edmund Allenby's Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. Between July 1919 and May 1920, he travelled throughout Syria and Palestine measuring and photographing monuments. During this time, he produced 960 photographs, 20 measured drawings, and 300 pages of notes. Based on this material, he successfully petitioned King Fuad I of Egypt to finance his work. Beginning in Cairo in October 1920 and continuing until 1969, he published five volumes of Early Muslim Architecture and the Muslim Architecture of Egypt. Mostly illustrated with his photographs, these works remain essential in the history of Egypt's Islamic architecture. Creswell served as Professor of Islamic Art and Archeology at Fuad University in Cairo, ex-officio member of the Higher Council for the Conservation of Arab Monuments, a trustee of the Palestine Archeological Museum in Jerusalem, a Rockefeller Institute fellow, and a Bollingen Foundation fellow. After the Suez Crisis in 1956, he donated his library for safekeeping with the American University in Cairo. In addition to his photographs, it includes primary source materials and other works on Muslim art and architecture that he collected over some 60 years and used as the basis for his Bibliography of the Architecture, Arts and Crafts of Islam published in 1961.