Islamic Architecture through Western Eyes: Volume 2 (full endnotes)

This volume offers an anthology of Western descriptions of Islamic religious buildings in Syria, Egypt and North Africa, mostly from the seventeenth to early twentieth centuries, taken from travel books and ambassadorial reports. As travel became easier and cheaper, thanks to better roads, steamships, hotels and railways, tourist numbers increased, museums accumulated eastern treasures, illustrated journals proliferated, and photography provided accurate data. The volume deals with the impact of Western trade, taste and imports on the East, and examine the encroachment of westernised modernism.