Category Books

Qusayr 'Amra: Art and the Umayyad Elite in Late Antique Syria »

Authors: Garth Fowden, Peter Brown
ISBN-13: 9780520236653, ISBN-10: 0520236653
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: University of California Press
Date Published: September 2004
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Garth Fowden

Garth Fowden is Research Professor at the Centre for Greek and Roman Antiquity, National Research Foundation in Athens. He is author of The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (reprinted 1993) and Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (1993).

Book Synopsis

"Three features make this book remarkable. First, its scholarship is impeccable, unusually broad, and complete. Second, its author has a clear story to tell. Third, it illuminates the world of Late Antiquity, which is only now beginning to be understood."—Oleg Grabar, author of The Shape of the Holy

1	Musil's fairy-tale castle	1
	8 June 1898	1
	Shaykh Musa / Alois Musil	5
	1900 to 1909	9
	Publication and its problems	12
	After musil	25
2	Luxuries of the bath	31
	The buildings	31
	A hunting lodge in the desert	46
	Nudity	57
	Entertainers and decorative women	64
	Singers and poets	79
3	The hunt	85
	The ode and its parts	85
	The art of the hunt	89
	Hunting with nets	102
	Women at the hunt	106
4	"O God, bless the Amir"	115
	Portrait of a prince ...	115
	... In the image of Adam	127
5	The princely patron	142
	The patron's identity	142
	The building a mirror of the man?	163
6	Maintaining the dynasty	175
	A family portrait	175
	The succession to al-Walid II	183
	Grace (?) and victory	191
7	The six kings	197
	A royal delegation	197
	Khusraw, Caesar, the Negus, Roderic ...	207
	From the Dukkan to Damascus	214
8	A captive Sasanian princess	227
	Portrait of a bathing beauty	227
	Beauty contests and displays	235
	Shah-i Afrid	240
9	Qusayr 'Amra contextualized	248
	From inner coherences to contexts	248
	Patrons, artisans, and artists	251
	Mythological themes?	257
	Arabic and Greek	265
	Qusur	272
10	Umayyad self-representation	291
	Constructing a cultural persona	291
	Barbarians in the bath	311
	Philosophers in the bath?	316