The Madrasah al-Shu'aybiyah in Aleppo, erected in 545/1150 by Nur al-Din
Mahmud, is an Islamic building in which antique forms are reused.
Starting from this building the author draws wider and wider circles of
comparison around it, discussing the development of Islamic architecture
and demonstrating that there was a classical revival in this
architecture. Herzfeld regarded the Shu'aybiyah and other classicizing
buildings as represntatives of an uninterrupted antique tradition and
denied a "renaissance of the antique". Allen clearly shows the
differences between Islamic classicism and the classicism that occured
in the many revivals of classical architecture in the West. In Italy,
for example, antique prototyps were copied, reused and reinterpreted in
their original sense, with their iconography maintained intact. Such
kind of renaissance could not take place in the Islamic world, since it
did not regard Greaco-Roman culture as its heritage. The classical
revival in Islamic architecture that developed in Syria and neighboring
lands during the 5th and 6th centuries A.H./11th and 12th centuries A.D.
has double value for anyone interested in European architecture. This
book will find its readers not only among art historians and those who
are interested in architecture but also among anyone who is interested
in the history of art and culture in general.
