The Profession’s Vanguards: Arab Architects and Regional Architectural Exchange, 1900–50

Abstract

Writings on architecture in the Middle East during the first half of the twentieth century have often focused on the legacies of colonial architects and planners in shaping Middle Eastern cities and built environments. Contrarily, this article focuses on the overlooked history of the first milieu of trained Arab architects in Middle East, focusing on Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Examining unstudied historical materials and archives, it maps out the trajectories of individual architects as well as the architectural profession more generally in this period of rapid change. It is divided into three main sections that highlight this: first, architecture’s transition from the Ottoman guild system to its professionalisation by the turn of the century; second, the mobility of architectural knowledge and expertise in the Arab region following the First World War; finally, the development of a new institutionalised architectural culture that sought to cultivate bonds between Arab architects not only in their individual countries, but also regionally throughout the Arab world towards the mid-twentieth century.

Keywords:

• Arab architects
• architectural mobilities
• professionalisation
• Middle East
• Arab regionalism
• local expertise

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See for example: Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya Prakash, Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon (London: Routledge, 2007); Kathleen James-Chakraborty, “Beyond Postcolonialism: New Directions for the History of Nonwestern Architecture,” Frontiers of Architectural Research 3, no. 1 (March 1, 2014): 1–9, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foar.2013.10.001; Tom Avermaete and Cathelijne Nuijsink. "Architectural Contact Zones: Another Way to Write Global Histories of the Post-War Period?," Architectural Theory Review 25, no. 3 (2021): 350–61.

2 On colonial experts from an architectural perspective also see, for example, Tom Avermaete, Serhat Karakayali, and Marion von Osten, Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past, Rebellions for the Future (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2010); Łukasz Stanek, Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020); Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Gwendolyn Wright, “Building Global Modernisms,” Grey Room 7 (2002): 125–34; Éric Verdeil, “Expertises nomades au Sud. Eclairages sur la circulation des modèles urbains,” Géocarrefour 80, no. 3 (2005): 165–69; Johan Lagae and Kim De Raedt, “Editorial,” ABE Journal: Architecture beyond Europe 4 (2013), http://journals.openedition.org/abe/3384; Mark Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (Farnham: Ashgate, 2003); Anthony King, Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture, Urbanism, Identity (London: Routledge, 2004).

3 For an exception, see Joe Nasr, “Saba Shiber, ‘Mr. Arab Planner.’ Parcours professionnel d’un urbaniste au Moyen-Orient,” Géocarrefour 80, no. 3 (2005): 197–206.

4 Alex Dika Seggerman, Modernism on the Nile: Art in Egypt between the Islamic and the Contemporary (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 2019); Anneka Lenssen, Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2020).

5 The Arab nahda was an Arab-led intellectual movement in the modern Arab region. For more, see Tarek El-Ariss, The Arab Renaissance: A Bilingual Anthology of the Nahda (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2018); Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss, Arabic Thought beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Peter Hill, Utopia and Civilization in the Arab Nahda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

6 On Egypt, see Mercedes Volait, Architectes et architectures de l’Égypte moderne, 1830–1950 (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2005); Mercedes Volait, “Une lignée d’architectes entre plusieurs mondes: les Fahmy d’Egypte,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 82 (2011): 251–66; Mercedes Volait, L’architecture moderne en Égypte et la revue Al-’Imara: 1939–1959 (Le Caire: CEDEJ—Égypte/Soudan, 1988); Donald M. Reid, “The Rise of Professions and Professional Organizations in Modern Egypt,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 16, no. 1 (January 1974): 24–57. For notable works on architectural professionalisation in Lebanon and Syria respectively, see Georges Arbid, “Practicing Modernism in Beirut: Architecture in Lebanon, 1946-1970” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2002); Hayma Zeifa, “Les élites techniques locales durant le mandat franćais en Syrie (1920–1945),” in The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspectives/Les mandats français et anglais dans une perspective comparative, ed. Nadine Méouchy and Peter Sluglett (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 497–536.

7 On Mehmet Ali Pasha’s empire-building project, see Khaled Fahmy, All The Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2002).

8 Amnon Cohen, The Guilds of Ottoman Jerusalem (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 4–5.

9 Cohen, The Guilds of Ottoman Jerusalem, 4–5.

10 Nelli Hanna, “Guilds in Recent Historical Scholarship,” in The City in the Islamic World, ed. Salma K. Jayyusi, Renata Holod, Antillio Pertruccioli and André Raymond, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 895–921.

11 Mohammad Said al-Qasimi, Jamal al Din al-Qasimi, and Khalil al-Azem, Qāmūs Al-Ṣināʿāt al-Šāmiyya [Dictionary of Damascene Crafts], ed. Zafir al-Qasimi, 2 vols (Paris: Mouton and Co., 1960).

12 Marcus Milwright, “Wood and Woodworking in Late Ottoman Damascus: An Analysis of the Qāmūs al-Ṣināʿāt al-Šāmiyya,” Bulletin d’études Orientales 61 (2012), https://doi.org/10.4000/beo.1061.

13 M. Wesam Al Asali, "Craftsmanship for Reconstruction: Artisans Shaping Syrian Cities," in Urban Heritage Along the Silk Roads: A Contemporary Reading of Urban Transformation of Historic Cities in the Middle East and Beyond, ed. Fatemeh Farnaz Arefian and Seyed Hossein Iradj Moeini (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020), 107–19.

14 Wesam, "Craftsmanship for Reconstruction," 112.

15 Cohen, The Guilds of Ottoman Jerusalem, 154.

16 Çelik, Empire, Architecture, and the City. On how these new architectural types paralleled new methods of architectural drawing and construction management, see Maurice Cerasi, “Late-Ottoman Architects and Master Builders,” Muqarnas 5 (1988): 87–102.

17 Stefan Weber, Damascus: Ottoman Modernity and Urban Transformation 1808–1918, Proceedings of the Danish Institute of Damascus V 2009, 2 vols (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009), 84.

18 Weber, Damascus, 84.

19 Weber, Damascus, 84.

20 This was the case in Jaffa, for instance, where court records from the year 1899–1900 identify Mitri Elias Zakaria as the miʿmar bāshi al-baladiyya (chief of builders for the municipality). Ali Hasan Bawwab, Mawsū‘at Yāfā al-jamīlah, vol. 2 (Beirut: Arab Institute for Research & Publishing, 2003), 991.

21 Notably, the Qāmūs states that the miʿmar/bannaʾ (architect/builder) might possess some knowledge of handasa (engineering), yet includes a separate entry on the work of the muhandis (engineer). The Qāmūs defines the muhandis’s job as both a science and an art concerned with the preparation of technical drawings and plans for buildings, bridges, roads and rivers, and delineates it as one of “the most important crafts of this age,” namely the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See al-Qasimi, al-Qasimi, and al-Azem, Qāmūs Al-Ṣināʿāt al-Šāmiyya. According to Ottoman Municipal Laws, the municipal engineer was responsible for "carrying out of all works entrusted to him in connection with roads, buildings and technical matters generally, and to keep in safe custody all plans, drawings, and technical papers whether prepared by the municipality or received by it from outside." See Translations of the Ottoman Constitutional Laws, the Wilayet Administrative Law, the Municipal Law and Various Other Laws (Baghdad: Ministry of Justice, 1922), 54.

22 On urban transformation in Arab provincial cities in the late Ottoman era, see Nadi Abusaada, “Building Urban Palestine: Jaffa and Nablus 1870–1930” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2021); Weber, Damascus; Jens Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005).

23 Amin ’Abd al-Nour, Tarjamat Wa Sharh Qamun Al-Abniyya Wal-Istimlak [Translation and Explanation of the Law of Building and Land Register Decree] (Beirut: Al-Matba’a al-Adabiyya, 1896); On the municipal council of Beirut see Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut.

24 ’Abd al-Nour, Tarjamat Wa Sharh Qamun Al-Abniyya Wal-Istimlak, 3 (author's trans.).

25 ’Abd al-Nour, Tarjamat Wa Sharh Qamun Al-Abniyya Wal-Istimlak, 4 (author's trans.).

26 On the historiography of the First World War as a moment of rupture, see James Gelvin, “Was There a Mandates Period? Some Concluding Thoughts,” in The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates, ed. Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan (London: Routledge, 2015), 420–32.

27 Salim Tamari, “Urban Planning and the Remaking of the Public Sphere in Ottoman Palestine,” in Locating Urban Conflicts: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Everyday, ed. Wendy Pullan and Britt Baillie (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 173–94, esp. 177.

28 Born in 1870, Mimar Kemaleddin had already been an established architect and architectural educator before the Ottoman defeat in the First World War. He taught at the Sanayi-i Nefise Mekteb-i Alisi (Academy of Fine Arts), Konduktor Mekteb-i Alisi (Conductor School), Muhendis Mekteb-i Alis (Academy of Engineering), and the Muhendishane-i Berri-i Humayun (Military School of Engineering). He was also appointed as the head of architecture at the Şerriye ve Evkaf Vekaleti (Ministry of Sharia and the Foundations) and played a pioneering role in the establishment of the Society of Ottoman Architects.

29 “Contract Between Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem and Mimar Kemaleddin,” 1922, 4, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem.

30 “Contract,” 4.

31 Ahmad Khalil Aqqad, Who’s Who? Arab Personalities in Palestine (Jaffa: Office of Press and Publication, 1945), 35.

32 Aqqad, Who's Who? 35–36.

33 Mustafa Bey Hamdi al-Qattan, Lecture on the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque at the Egyptian Royal Engineers Association (Cairo: Abul Hol Publishers, 1924); Supreme Muslim Council, Report on the Architecture and Renovation of Al-Aqsa Mosque and Haram al-Sharif (Jerusalem: Islamic Orphan House Press, 1928).

34 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds [Constitution and By-Laws for the Arab Engineers Association in Jerusalem] (Jerusalem: Commercial Press, 1937), 1 (author's trans.).

35 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds, 2.

36 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds, 2.

37 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds [Constitution and By-Laws for the Arab Engineers Association in Jerusalem] (n.d.), Rushdi Imam Husseini Collection.

38 Rushdi Bey himself embodied this blurriness, with mixed references to his qualifications as a mi’mari (archiect), muhandis (engineer), and muhandis mi’mari (architectural engineer) in his personal papers.

39 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds (1937), 4.

40 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds, 4.

41 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds, 4.

42 Ali Miliji Masoud, “Jaffa: City Planning Project,” Majallat Al-Imarah 9 (1949): 5–22.

43 Yousef Haikal, Madinat Al-Zuhūr Yafa [Jaffa: A City of Flowers] (Amman, 2006), 52.

44 Arab Engineers Association in Jerusalem, Meeting Minutes of the Board of Directors on 3 August 1945 (Jerusalem, 1945), Israel State Archives, Jerusalem.

45 Arab Engineers Association in Jerusalem, Meeting Minutes of the Arab Engineers Association on 20 February 1945, (Jerusalem, 1945), Israel State Archives, Jerusalem.

46 Sayyid Murtada, “The First Engineering Congress in Alexandria 15-19 March,” Majallat Al-Imarah 5 (1945): 7–8.

47 Permanent Organizing Committee, Research Topic for the Second Engineering Congress in Cairo in April (Cairo: Matba’at al-Raghaeb, 1946).

48 Permanent Organizing Committee, Research Topic.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nadi Abusaada

Nadi Abusaada is an architect and a historian at ETH Zürich. He received his PhD in architecture from the University of Cambridge in 2021. He was previously the Aga Khan Fellow in Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also the co-founder of Arab Urbanism.