Attitudes towards architectural conservation, the case of Cairo By Hossam Mahmoud Mahdy Submitted to the Mackintosh School of Architecture, University of Glasgow on August 1992, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. ProQuest Number: 11007655 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11007655 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 O^V4_c,C| f ^ asgqv TI TTNrvEKsirv I I fJBRA-RV I In the name of God, The Compassionate, The Merciful To my mother and my father with much love List of contents Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations xi Notes on translation xii Glossary xiv List of figures xviii List of tables xxiv Introduction xxv PART ONE: HISTORY OF CONSERVATION IN CAIRO 1. Pre-Napoleon Cairo 1 a. Introduction 3 1. The mosque of 'Amr 3 2. The mosque of Ibn Tulun 5 3. The mosque of al-Azhar 8 4. The mosque of al-Hakim 10 b. Context 14 1. Fatimid period 14 2. Ayyubid period 19 3. Bahri Mamluk period 23 4. Circassian Mamluk period 27 5. Ottoman period 30 c. Interpretation 35 1. The mosque of 'Amr 35 2. The mosque of Ibn Tulun 37 3. The mosque of al-Azhar 39 4. The mosque of al-Hakim 41 d. Concluding remarks 43 Notes 46 2. Post-Napoleon Cairo 48 a. The process of Westernisation 49 1. Chronology 49 2. The Muslims defeated 50 3. European interest 53 4. The Europeans' image of Egypt 55 5. Cultural colonisation 56 b. Attitudes to the conservation of Islamic architecture 60 1. A shift in the responsibility for architectural conservation 60 2. Establishing the Comite 60 3. The Comite's attitude 68 4. The Egyptian Antiquities Organisation (E.A.O.) 77 c. Concluding remarks 80 Notes 82 PART TWO: DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF CONSERVATION 3. Ideological and cultural aspects 84 a. Orientalism 86 1. Islamic history 89 2. Islamic archaeology and art history 91 3. Islamic architecture 92 4. Conservation of Islamic architecture 94 b. Islam 96 1. 'Aqidah (the belief) 96 2. Shari’a (the code of conduct) 97 - Purpose of shari'a 98 - Principles of shari'a 98 - Sources of shari'a 99 - Knowledge of shari'a 100 c. What is "Islamic"? 101 1. The Islamic criterion 101 2. The "Muslim" and the "Islamic" 103 d. The Islamic concept of conservation-related subjects 105 1. Characteristics of the Islamic concept 105 2. History 106 - Islamic principle of history interpretation 107 - The interpretation of history 109 3. Archaeology 110 4. Art 111 5. Built environment 114 6. Architecture 118 e. The Islamic concept of architectural conservation 120 f. Arabic language 122 1. The importance of Arabic 122 2. Characteristics of Arabic 124 3. Cultural influence of Arabic 127 4. Arabic and architectural conservation 131 g. Case study: The mosque of Sultan Hassan 134 1. Misconceptions 135 2. Islamic interpretations 138 3. Arabic interpretations 139 4. Conclusions 142 Notes 143 4. Social, economic, and cultural aspects 149 a. Formal approach to conservation 151 1. Architectural conservation in developing countries 151 2. Unrealistic urban conservation 153 3. Reality 156 b. Informal approach to conservation 160 c. The nature and importance of the informal sector 166 1. The existence of unfulfilled needs 166 2. The existence of invisible forces and networks 168 3. The possibility of good management 171 4. The absence of a major partner in development plans 171 d. Lessons from collectors of domestic refuse (al-Zabbaleen) 173 1. The story of an ordinary day 173 2. Social characteristics 175 3. The settlement 176 4. Collecting and recycling refuse 178 5. Territoriality: the role of the Wahiyya 179 6. The economics of garbage collecting / recycling business 180 7. Why does the system function? 182 - Observations and analysis 183 e. Conservation as a recycling operation 185 1. Initial motivations of the construction of monumental architecture 185 2. The recycling of historic buildings 187 f. Alternative approach to conservation 190 Notes 196 5. Technical aspects 199 a. Problems on the scale of Cairo 200 1. Economic and political decline 200 2. Environmental challenges 201 3. Changes in the subsoil condition 201 b. Problems on the scale of a building 207 1. Rising damp 207 2. Weathering 212 3. Structural problems 218 - Deformations 219 4. Lack of maintenance 220 c. Conservation of building materials, the case of lime stone 221 1. Diagnosis and laboratory tests 221 2. Conservation treatments 224 - Cleaning 224 - Consolidation 225 - Gap filling and joining parts 226 - Protection 227 vi d. An approach for tackling technical problems 227 1. Integration of planning on different levels 227 2. Appropriate techniques and skills 228 Notes 230 PART THREE: ATTITUDES TO ARCHITECTURAL CONSERVATION 6. Range of possible attitudes 232 a. Notes on the method 233 - Cautions 233 b. The four cities 234 c. The hypothetical conservation question 235 d. Different possible attitudes 237 - Attitude 1: Anti-restoration 237 - Attitude 2: Revival of traditional craftsmanship 239 - Attitude 3: Refusal of new architectural vocabulary 241 - Attitude 4: Revival of historic styles 243 - Attitude 5: Revival of historic concepts and principles 245 - Attitude 6: Conservation as an archaeological exercise 246 - Attitude 7: Conservation according to the livelihood of a monument 248 - Attitude 8: New architectural vocabulary in contrast with the old 249 - Attitude 9: Neutral new architectural vocabulary to emphasise the old 251 - Attitude 10: Replicas and reconstruction of historic monuments 252 - Attitude 11: Conservation on wheels 254 - Attitude 12: Eclectic restoration 256 - Attitude 13: Restoration 258 - Attitude 14: Conservation of the meaning or the symbol 260 - Attitude 15: Urban conservation 261 - Attitude 16: Conservation of the function 263 - Attitude 17: Architectural or urban rehabilitation 265 - Attitude 18: Conservation for tourism 266 - Attitude 19: Ignoring or ignorance of conservation 268 - Attitude 20: Refusal of conservation 269 Notes 271 PART FOUR: CASE STUDY 7. The mosque of Ulmas 272 a. Description and analysis of the building 272 1. Location 272 2. Architectural description 273 - External appearance 273 - Interior and plan arrangement 278 b. History 280 1. The founder, Amir Ulmas 280 2. Urban history of the site 281 - The time of building the mosque 281 - The time of the Napoleonic Expedition 282 - The time of modernising Cairo 283 - The present time 283 3. Architectural history of the building 284 c. Assessment of values to be conserved 286 1. The assignment of priority values 286 - Values from pre-Napoleonic history of conservation 287 - Values from post-Napoleonic history of conservation 287 - Ideological and cultural forces 287 - Socio-economic and socio-cultural forces 287 - Technical problems 288 - Different possible attitudes 288 2. Values to be conserved 288 - Integrity of values 288 - Use values 289 - Emotional values 289 - Material cultural values 289 d. Conservation problems 291 1. Religious problems 291 2. Socio-economic problems 291 3. Technical problems 292 e. Conservation proposal 292 1. Integrity of values 292 2. Use values 292 3. Emotional values 294 4. Material cultural values 295 Notes 297 Conclusion 299 Bibliography 302 Unpublished works 302 Books and articles 305 viii Acknowledgements I owe a special debt of gratitude to Tony Vogt, my supervisor and the Director of Post Graduate Studies at the Mackintosh School of Architecture, who followed up patiently the progress of my work and gave me all the support and advice I needed. I also owe a great debt of gratitude to Dr. Michael Burgoyne who supervised my work during the first year of the research . Dr. Burgoyne's advice and help continued even after he left the Mackintosh School, as he kindly received me in his house, offered his valuable advice, and permitted me to borrow many books from his rich library. I am thankful for the help and stimulus I received from Mr. Michael Calthrop, Dr. Sylvia Auld, and Dr. Ian Appleton in different stages of my work. Gratitude and appreciation are also to the family of the Mackintosh School of Architecture for the support and encouragement they gave me. I am grateful to Dr. Christie Kessler who, through correspondence, offered me so valuable advice and encouragement. I am also grateful to Professor Dr. Michael Meinecke, Director of the Museum for Islamic Art in Berlin for his kind advice on the mosque of Ulmas. Also the help Dr. Phillip Speiser offered me concerning the Comite's records on the mosque of Ulmas deserves my thanks. I am grateful to Dr. Shahindah Karim at Cairo University, who kindly permitted me to read her valuable unpublished Ph.D. thesis on the Amirs of al-Nasir Mohammed. My correspondence with many other scholars contributed immensely to the research. My thanks and appreciation to all of them. My thanks must extend to architects, conservationists, and librarians in Great Britain, Belgium, Poland, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, and Yemen who offered me their kind help and advice during the three study trips 1 made during the period of My gratitude is to Professor Dr. R. Lemaire, the Honorary President of ICOMOS, and Mounir Bouchenaki from the Division of Cultural Heritage, UNESCO, who invited me to participate as an observer in the Symposium on the "Integrated Urban Policy for the Conservation of the old city of San'a'", which allowed me to see the decision makers' politics and attitudes on national and international levels.