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The Creswell Library of Islamic Art and Architecture at the American University in Cairo Part Two: The Evolution of a Teaching Library 1973-1992
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 June 2016
Abstract
From 1973 until early 1992, the Creswell Library of Islamic Art and Architecture, first established at the American University in Cairo (AUC) in 1957, evolved from a restricted research library dominated by its original owner, K. A. C. Creswell, into a teaching and research branch library integrated within the university’s library system. International politics and university-wide library needs delayed improvements, but the Creswell collection was fully catalogued and interfiled when the new Main Library opened in 1982. As use of the Creswell Library accelerated, stacks nominally closed were opened to faculty and trusted students until standard procedures resumed after a 1989 budget and staff increase, anticipating the library’s 1992 incorporation in AUC’s new Rare Book and Special Collections Library.
A marked increase in MA degrees awarded in the discipline and in use by visiting researchers during the library’s final years testifies to its effectiveness in supporting the study of Islamic art. Assessments of the library’s overall contribution, however, must balance the value of a core collection of beautiful books, little used, against an incalculable loss: the records of Cairo buildings no longer extant that would have resulted from the larger student group a more accessible library would have encouraged.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 1993
References
Notes
1 Murphy, p.186.
2 AUCA: KACC file, Crabbs to Creswell 6/22/67; Kessler to Crabbs, 10/9/67; Crabbs to Hussein Said, 10/12/67; Williams to Hussein Said, 11/7/67.
3 Murphy, p.188-189.
4 On the bibliography, see part 1, note 39; on the annuity-salary, see part 1, note 33.
5 AUCA: KACC file, ‘Promotion and Leave Record’ and KACC to Crabbs 5/19/70.
6 AUCA: KACC, Creswell to Jones, 10/17/63; Jones to Creswell, 10/19/63.
7 Murphy, p.211. When there was still no catalog in 1978, the professor who had clashed with Creswell over the festschrift urged new university librarian to make this project a priority; CAS/CLib, Jones to Duggan, 4/17/78.
8 AUCA: KACC, Byrd to Al-Nowaihi, 9/26/73.
9 Joint interview, C. Karim and G. Karnouk, 11/11/91.
10 The figure excludes the discrete Debanné and the small Arabic studies group. The core Creswell collection, reliably numbered at 3,000, was reported as 4,000 in Freudenthal, Juan R., ‘Art Libraries in Egypt’, Art Libraries Journal Spring 1981, p.13.Google Scholar The ‘gift’ of the library (pp.13, 15), like the catalog of photographs mentioned (pp.13-16), was mistaken, and it was the General (now Main) Library, Special Collection which was being converted from Dewey to LC (p. 13). The first complete Creswell catalog was LC.
11 The Harvard prints came from Berenson’s I Tatti bequest (Grabar, Muq 8, p.3). The Ashmolean bequest in the codicil (3/27/73) was a retraction, for unknown reasons, of an agreement known only by McLain’s April 27, 1964 reference to its supporting document, a letter from Creswell, when McLain, then University Chancellor, wrote the primary Creswell benefactor that the university had acquired both photographs and negatives, presumably after taking up Creswell’s January offer to sell them as a unit. Although the 1973 codicil suggests that the 1964 agreement was another hedged sale, it may be that US-Egypt political tensions in the wake of the 1967 War led to concern about the security of the negatives in Egypt (although they remained in the country until 1975). The 1964 Creswell letter, missing in July 1968, apparendy never was recovered. AUCA: KACC, Creswell to McLain, datable early 1/64; O’Connor to Bartlett, 7/25/68, quoting McLain to Lloyd, 4/27/64; Fitzherbert, ‘The Creswell Photographic Archives at the Ashmolean Museum Oxford’, Muq 8, p. 125.
12 Creswell’s writing, marked by scientific rigor, normally excluded this, although most readers would agree with Grabar that ‘his feisty, opinionated, at times prejudiced personality … often pierces through the seeming neutrality …’ (Grabar, Muq 8, p.1); ‘the keen architectural insight of the Persians’ is an exceptional tribute (Short Account, 1989 ed., p.117).
13 ‘Three Decades of Art History in the United States’. Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1955), p.341.Google Scholar The reference, in fact, is to all studies in the humanities, but for the problems of the visual search, the quotation seems particularly apropos: ‘Humanists cannot be “trained”; they must be allowed to mature … It is not the reading … for course 301 but a line of Erasmus, … or Spenser, or Dante … which will “light our candle”; and it is mostly where we have no business to seek that we shall find’.
14 Behrens-Abouseif, Doris. Islamic Architecture in Cairo: An Introduction (Leiden: Brill, 1989; Cairo; AUC Press, 1989)Google Scholar; sponsored by the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Art and Architecture, this book, originally written to assist AUC students in one introductory course in the program, is particularly useful to those who know the city. For people new to the city, the third edition, revised and enlarged by Williams, Caroline, of Islamic Monuments of Cairo: A Practical Guide by Parker, Richard, Sabin, Robin, Williams, Caroline (Cairo: AUC Press, 1985)Google Scholar is helpful. Williams, the AUC MA, essentially created a new, truly informative book using a familiar title.
15 Lyster, William. The Citadel of Cairo: A History and Guide. Cairo: Palm Press, 1990.Google Scholar
16 Seif, Ola. Khan al-Khalili: A Comprehensive Mapped Guide to Cairo’s Historic Bazaar, with text by Seif, Ola and Spencer, Jayme. Cairo: AUC Press, 1991.Google Scholar
17 ‘Paper Marbling: History, Samples, Technique’, May 13-July 31, 1992; curator, John Benson.
18 In fact, ‘Islamic Cairene Architecture in the First Half of the Twentieth Century’, thesis no. 950, by Tarek Mohmmaed Refaat Sakr, will have a broader audience, with publication by the AUC Press, as the first winner of the Wisner Award for MA Theses on Contemporary Egypt, a prize established in 1991 in honor of departing U.S. Ambassador Frank Wisner.
19 ‘The Bimaristan of al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh and the Area Round It’, thesis no. 943, by Nairy Hampikian.