In the Eye of the Beholder: The Æsthetic (In)significance of Architecture in Arabic Geography, AH 250–400

This paper, intended as a brief first intro­duction to the subject, will concentrate on Arabic authors from the third and fourth centuries A.H. who were, whether as travellers or on the basis of textual information only, concerned with ‘human geography’ in a broad sense. Their testimony on architecture ‒ pre-Islamic as well as Islamic ‒ will be measured against the following scales: credulity vs. realism; dependence on literary tradition and authorities vs. auto­psy; ‘poetic’ evocation vs. detailed description; committed value judgment vs. disinte­rested observation. Perhaps not surprisingly, it will emerge that the examined writers’ appreciation of architecture was primarily informed by concern for symbolic values, rather than for artistic merit.