Constructions of Power and Piety in Medieval Aleppo

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Ayyubid dynasty brought unprecedented architectural development to Aleppo, the most important city in medieval Syria. While early Islamic empires usually expressed their grandeur by founding new cities with vast extra-urban palaces, the Ayyubids asserted their power by "modernizing" existing towns. With its large, well-preserved citadel and a wide variety of pious institutions, Aleppo is the ideal subject for Yasser Tabbaa's study of the pan-Islamic transformation in urban architecture.

Tabbaa argues that the intense palatial and religious architectural activity of the period was intended to create a royal image of the Ayyubid state while also fostering links between it and the urban population. His study is based on an entirely new evaluation of the architectural and epigraphic aspects of the standing monuments of the period. It presents for the first time full photographic coverage of these monuments, as well as many new plans and other renderings, and pays close attention to monumental inscriptions, correcting and augmenting previous studies.

The book utilizes the full panoply of the available literary sources, including topographies, chronicles, travel accounts, and poetry. The juxtaposition of thorough architectural analysis and keen evaluation of literary sources sheds new light on nearly all aspects of this architecture: its links with the city, its place within Ayubbid patronage, its role in the prevalent sectarian rivalry in the city, and, perhaps most important, its function as the propagator of royal power and integrator of this power within the urban population. At a time when Arabic poetry and court culture had lost much of their earlier resonance, Tabbaa finds that these architectural institutions contributed to the creation of a later medieval Islamic culture, one more closely tied to the grandeur of monuments than to the eloquence of ideas.

“This is an important book which can be used profitably by scholars and be accessible to students. It will ultimately be important to all historians of medieval architecture.”—Oleg Grabar, Institute for Advanced Study

“There is no doubt that this book is a significant contribution and is original in both its content and presentation. It can be used in various ways—to gain information about specific monuments, to get a sense of the period, or to explore the question of how architecture conveys messages to the viewer. There is nothing similar for this period, which has been overlooked in most recent studies of Islamic architecture. Its theoretical formulation will also stimulate interest in the topic of how architecture was perceived in earlier epochs.”—Priscilla Soucek, New York University

Yasser Tabbaa is Assistant Professor of the History of Art at the University of Michigan.

Art History & Architecture

           Architectural History

           Medieval

Religious Studies & Religion

           Art & Architecture

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

           Medieval Art and Architecture