This item has been added to the Database within the Explore Islamic Art Collections project. Information is available in: English, Arabic.

Name of Object:

An illustrated album of architecture, including views of Mecca and Medina

Location:

London, United Kingdom

Holding Museum:

Khalili Family Trust – Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage Collection

About Khalili Family Trust – Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage Collection, London

Date of Object:

AD 1727

Museum Inventory Number:

ARC.pt 77

Material(s) / Technique(s):

Paper; leather binding

Dimensions:

41.2x57.5cm

Provenance:

Europe

Description:

This large-format volume, entiled Entwurf einer historischen Architectur in Abbildung unterschiedener beruehmten Gebaeude des Alterthums (Project for a History of Architecture through pictures of various important buildings from antiquity and foreign people), by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach (1656–1723) was published in 1725, a few years after his death. Fischer was an Austrian architect and in 1705 he was appointed imperial court architect for Joseph I.
The book is considered one of the first to attempt an architectural history of the world. It includes nine Islamic buildings amongst its listing of thirteen ‘foreign’ buildings. The line drawings of the Iranian and Ottoman buildings are known to have been sourced from illustrated travellers’ accounts, but the addition of the View of Medina and the View of Mecca are remarkable for their originality. Underneath each picture is engraved explanatory text in German and French and they may be the first representations of Mecca and Medina in a European work.
The plan of Mecca contains some of the known buildings in the haram, which are identified by a key, but there is still much confusion about what they are, and although the general plan must have been taken from Ottoman images available at the time, there is much which is incorrect perhaps in an attempt to exoticise the drawings. The view of Medina on the other hand is almost entirely inaccurate and may have been compiled from oral accounts.

How date and origin were established:

The date and publication details are included within the book.

Selected bibliography:

Grabar, Oleg. “A Preliminary Note on Two Eighteenth Century Representations of Mecca and Medina”, in Islamic Visual Culture, 1100-1800: Constructing the Study of Islamic Art, vol. 2, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006. (First published in Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 25 (2001): 268-74).

Citation of this web page:

Qaisra Khan "An illustrated album of architecture, including views of Mecca and Medina" in Explore Islamic Art Collections. Museum With No Frontiers, 2024. https://islamicart.museumwnf.org/database_item.php?id=object;EPM;uk;Mus22;18;en

Prepared by: Qaisra Khan

MWNF Working Number: UK2 18