Islam and Marble
from the origins to Saddam Hussein

Michael Greenhalgh:


CDROM accompanying the printed monograph

This CDROM is intended to extend the range of the printed monograph by providing both extra images, and useful web links. To examine the images, you will need a web browser on your machine. To explore the web links, your computer must be connected to the web. The printed monograph is also provided here in PDF electronic format (104MB), to read which you may need to download a PDF reader to your local machine (free of charge from Adobe). There is also a smaller version (11Mb) with the images in monochrome.

Although the images provided are restricted to monuments mentioned in the monograph itself, a large number of related or parallel monuments given as web links (especially to my server, ArtServe (cf. the section Islamic-Related Image Resources on ArtServe, below) will allow the user to extend, question and further illustrate many of the points made in the monograph. The images may be viewed with any image-viewer and, if the user simply clicks on the relevant hot-link below, pages of thumbnails backed by full-sized images will be displayed. But I have also included on this CDROM (by courtesy of Karl Maloszek) an excellent stand-alone viewer called Panorado, which will zoom in and out of all the images listed below, and deal smoothly with the large panoramas as well. At the foot of this page is a short account of why the Panorado Viewer offers greater flexibility than a web browser, and instructions on how to start it.

The final section below is devoted to web links related to my appendix on Saddam Hussein and Marble, so many of which it would have been messy to include in the printed text.

  1. Images on this CDROM to Complement the Monograph
  2. Islamic-related Image Resources on ArtServe
  3. Books of interest on ArtServe
  4. Some Web Resources
  5. Saddam Hussein and Marble
  6. The Panorado Viewer
  7. The Monograph in PDF format

Michael Greenhalgh
The Sir William Dobell Professor of Art History
The Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA
email: Michael.Greenhalgh@anu.edu.au

Images on this CDROM to Complement the Monograph:

All the images below are also to be found on my server, ArtServe (http://rubens.anu.edu.au). To view them, click on the thumbnail to bring up the large version of the image. Those labelled Pan are each of several megabytes, needing plenty of memory to open and scroll around them. You can view the panorama thumbnails here, and clicking on one will bring up the full-sized image.
  1. Agra: Mausoleum of Itimad ud Daulah; Taj Mahal; Pan: Prayerhall of al-Azhar Mosque
  2. Aleppo: Citadel; Madrasa al-Firdaus; Pan: Citadel;
  3. Cairo: Al-Azhar Mosque; Mausoleum of Imam as-Shafi; Mosque of Sultan Hassan; Pan: Mosque of Sultan Hasan: courtyard ; Pan: Mosque of Sultan Hasan: courtyard (2); Pan: Mosque of Sultan Hasan: entrance porch; Pan: Mosque of Sultan Hasan: inscription in Prayer Hall; Pan: Mosque of Sultan Hasan: mausoleum; Pan: Mosque of Sultan Hasan: mausoleum (2);
  4. Damascus: Madrasa of Baibars; Qasr al-Hayr (reconstructed in Damascus Museum); Umayyad Mosque; Pan: Umayyad Mosque: courtyard ; Pan: Umayyad Mosque: west arcade ; Pan: Umayyad Mosque: west arcade (2) ; Pan: Umayyad Mosque: west vestibule
  5. Delhi: Qutb Minar & Mosque; Pan: Mausoleum of Iltutmish; Pan: Qutb Minar Minaret;
  6. Fatehpur Sikri: Mausoleum of Shaikh Salim Chishti ;
  7. Istanbul: Chora; Haghia Sophia; Suleymaniye Mosque;
  8. Konya: Alaeddin Mosque;
  9. Lucca: San Michele; Pan: San Michele: facade, left ; Pan: San Michele: facade, right
  10. Monreale: Duomo: interior; Duomo: cloister; Pan: Duomo: interior
  11. Palermo: Cappella Palatina: interior ; La Zisa; La Martorana;
  12. Pisa: Duomo; San Sisto ; Pan: Duomo: apse ; Pan: Baptistery ; Pan: Baptistery (2); Pan: Duomo: interior ;
  13. Rome: Arch of Constantine; S Crisogono TO ADD;
  14. Sikandra: Mausoleum of Akbar;
  15. Venice: San Marco; Pan: San Marco: central west doorway ; Pan: San Marco: left and second doors; Pan: Duomo: piazzetta flank ; Pan: Duomo: piazzetta flank (2); Pan: Duomo, piazzetta: Tetrarchs

Islamic-related Image Resources on ArtServe

The following collections are listed alphabetically by country and then city, and in many cases consist of several thousand images:
  1. Austria: Vienna, Schatzkammer: Coronation robes from Palermo;
  2. England: London, British Museum: Islamic gallery; London, Victoria & Albert Museum: ivories, and islamic glass;
  3. Egypt: Cairo; (and here);
  4. France: Paris, Louvre: Islamic ceramics; ivories, metalwork, sculpture;
  5. Germany: Berlin: Islamic Museum;
  6. India:Agra; Delhi; Fatehpur Sikri;
  7. Sikandra;
  8. Italy: Lucca; Pisa; Rome: survey of the monuments; Venice: San Marco;
  9. Libya: Leptis Magna; Sabratha;
  10. Sicily: Monreale Cathedral; Palermo: Cappella Palatina; S. Giovanni degli Eremiti, La Martorana, La Cuba, La Zisa;
  11. Spain: Cordoba;
  12. Syria: Aleppo; Bosra (Syria); Damascus;
  13. Tunisia: Kairouan; Sousse;
  14. Turkey: Ankara; Istanbul; Konya;

Books of interest on ArtServe:

  1. Giulio Arata, L'Architettura arabo-normanna e il rinascimento in Sicilia (1914);
  2. A. Colasanti, L'arte bizantina in Italia (1923);
  3. Ahmed Djemal Pascha: Alte Denkmaeler aus Syrien, Palaestina und Westarabien (1918);
  4. Jose Ferrandis: Marfiles arabes de Occidente;
  5. Richard Delbrueck Die Konsulardiptychen und verwandte Denkmaeler;
  6. HM Treasury: Ordnance survey of Jerusalem (London 1865);
  7. Albert Gabriel, Les Monuments turcs d'Anatolie, vols I (1931), II (1934), and his Voyages archeologiques dans la Turquie oriental (1940);
  8. Cairo, Ministry of Waqfs: Mosques of Egypt vols I and II (both 1949);

Some Web Resources

  1. Image and text collections:
    1. Aga Khan Project for Islamic Architecture at Harvard and M.I.T.;
    2. The Creswell Photographic Archive at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford;
    3. The Gertrude Bell Project at the Robinson Library, University of Newcastle;
  2. Guides, lecture schedules, tutorials:
    1. Tutorial on The Islamic World to 1600
    2. Medieval Islamic Cultures;
    3. Prof. Nasser Rabbat's Religious Architecture and Islamic Cultures;
    4. The architecture of Isfahan;
    5. Islamic Architecture: A Presentation of Islamic Art and Architecture;
    6. Wiki Classical Dictionary;
  3. Collections of web links:
    1. Archaeologie Online;
    2. ArchNet: Archnet; an international online community for architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, conservationist, and scholars, with a focus on Muslim cultures and civilisations;
    3. Corinne Blanke: Teaching Islamic Civilization with Information Technology;
    4. The Internet Islamic History Sourcebook;
    5. The Internet Medieval Source Book;
    6. Islamic Arts and Architecture;
    7. Katalog der Internetressourcen für die Klassische Philologie aus Berlin;
    8. Metropolitan Museum; The nature of Islamic art;
    9. The Labyrinth:Resources for Medieval Studies;
    10. Alessandro Cristofori's Rassegna degli Strumenti Informatici per lo Studio dell'Antichità Classica, including the Near East, Egypt, Asia Minor and North Africa, and geography and cartography;
    11. WWW Virtual Library on the History of Islam;
  4. Marble:
    1. Association for the Study of Marble and Other Stones In Antiquity;
    2. La decorazione architettonica romana;
    3. James Harrell: Decorative Stones in the pre-Ottoman Islamic Buildings of Cairo;

      Rajasthan: A Dream in Marble: Dilwara Temples at Mount Abu, Rajasthan;

Saddam Hussein and Marble

  1. Oil and Marble:
    1. U.S. Department of State: Palaces and Oil Smuggling (13 September 1999, including aerial photographs);
  2. Saddam and the Past:
    1. The Guardian: Saddam does battle with Nebuchadnezzar (4 January 1999);
    2. Daniel O'Connell: Photo-tour of ancient Babylon (2 June 2003);
    3. Joel Soler: Uncle Sadam (documentary);
  3. Marble Palaces:
    1. Abu Ghurayb Presidential Site;
    2. Saddam Hussein’s palace in Tikrit (20 April 2003);
    3. The Australian: Palace Demolition Authorised (28 January 2004);
    4. Steve Liewer: In Iraq, some servicemembers live like princes (17 October 2003);
    5. Jackie Craven: Saddam's Architecture ;
    6. Dan Cruickshank: The Lost Palaces of Iraq (26 February 2003);
    7. Adel Darwish: Saddam Hussein's palaces;
    8. Catherine Donaldson-Evans: Saddam's Palaces Are Tasteless and Tacky (16 April 2003);
    9. Guardian Leader: Cultural vandalism 15 January 2005);
    10. Jean-Pierre Perrin: Bivouac américain dans les ruines de la présidence (11 April 2003);
    11. Patrick Perotto: Dans le palais de Saddam (17 April 2003);
    12. Kevin Whitelaw: Saddam's World: Inside a sybaritic inner sanctum rife with decadence and depravity;
  4. Looting:
    1. ARLIS: Cultural Crisis in Iraq;
    2. The Art Newspaper.com: The looting of the Iraq National Museum (database);
    3. Roger Attwood: Inside Iraq’s National Museum: A reporter on the scene in Baghdad describes how and why the looting happened (summer 2003);
    4. Roger Attwood: Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World (St. Martin's Press, 2004; (reviewed by Francis Deblauwe in National Catholic Reporter" (20 May 2005);
    5. Francis Deblauwe: The 2003- Iraq War & Archaeology (with links to other useful websites);
    6. Humberto Marquez : The plunder of Iraq's treasures (17 February 2005);
    7. Baghdad museum looting update (11 August 2003);
    8. Milbry Polk and Angela M. H. Schuster, editors: The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia, Abrams 2005;

The Panorado Viewer

Students of art and architectural history need high-quality images if they are to compensate for not being having the objects themselves permanently visible. Today this means the use of digital images taken with a digital camera (as opposed to scanned from slides, which often produces unsatifscatory results). The images on this CDROM are sometimes of five megapixels but usually of eight - that is, between A3 and poster-size, and hence larger than most computer monitors can display complete.

Within a web browser, software has yet to catch up with the large scale of today's digital images (let alone that of some of the panoramas listed above). Offering either a reduction to fit the browser window, or full-size, is unsatisfactory. Much better are java applets which allow the image to be presented and zoomed in and out at will: Panorado is one of several suppliers who offer a java applet for the fast viewing of panoramic images within HTML documents. Unfortunately, most java setups are unable to handle large images - over, say, two megabytes in size.

But there are no such limitations with the stand-alone (Windows) Panorado Viewer/Browser, offering special support for very large pictures and panoramic pictures. Dr. Karl Maloszek, its author, allows the distribution of his software on CDROM by users who have paid the shareware fee, the only restriction being that the viewer will deal only with material on the CDROM, and not on the computer running it, unless a valid Panorado licence is detected.

To start the Panorado Viewer/Browser, double-click on the "panorado" directory on the CDROM, and then double-click on the panorado.exe program. The program will offer two buttons at the right: click on Show CD/DVD, and then on the image-directory name. Please note that Panorado will display what look like duplicate thumbnails of all images except the large panoramas - the ones named ...PNG are the real thumbnails, needed so that they may display correctly when the directories are opened in a web browser.

To zoom in and out, use the "+" and "-" keys, or the thumbnail on the mouse - or the buttons at the top of the viewer.