The Bulletins of the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe
Published online in association with the Rare Books and Special
Collections Library (RBSC) in the American University of Cairo
Historical Background
Language of the Comité Bulletins
Note on the Numbering System used by the Comité for the Monuments
Comments on the Comité Bulletins Online
Historical Background
In December 1881 the Khedive Tawfiq established a committee responsible for
the preservation of Islamic and Coptic monuments in Egypt. As a body within
the Ministry of Awqaf (charitable endowments) it was an Egyptian
institution, although also known by its French title, Comité de Conservation
des Monuments de l’Art Arabe.
The Comité was composed of two sub-committees, each
with a specific role. The task of the First Commission was to provide a
complete inventory of every Islamic or Coptic monument in Egypt, and to
specify those monuments most urgently in need of attention. The Second
Commission, or Technical Commission would then visit the monuments and
recommend a particular course of action, basing its decision on the
monument's condition, and its architectural or artistic value.
In the vast majority of cases, the Comité opted for
preservation only; the reinforcement of decaying structures, the reparation
of old columns and pillars and extensive cleaning programs are among the
tasks most frequently listed in the Comité reports. However, restoration was
occasionally necessary for practical purposes. The Comité had to bear in
mind for example, that the mosques with which they were working were first
and foremost places of worship, and that to bequeath a structure that was
little more than a picturesque ruin to future Cairenes, was to ignore its
most essential aspect. And so some complete restoration programs were
carried out by the Comité, most notably the restoration of Sultan Qalawun
complex in al-Mu'izz street, and the funerary complex of Sultan Qaytbay in
the Northern Cemetery. If a monument was judged to be so badly dilapidated
that the design of the original was no longer evident as a basis for
preservation, then the Comité would not undertake any preservation or
restoration work. Instead they would dismantle dangerously unstable
structures, and transfer any valuable articles remaining in them to the
Museum of Arab Art, now known as the Museum of Islamic Art.
In 1936 responsibility for the Comité passed from the
Ministry of Awqaf to the Ministry of Education. The Comité was formally
dissolved in 1961, and its functions and responsibilities assumed by the
Permanent Committee for Islamic and Coptic Monuments of the Egyptian
Antiquities Organization, now known as the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
The Comité held over 303 official meetings and
commissioned over 919 technical reports during its lifetime. All its
procedures were summarised in a series of bulletins that were published by
the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO). A comprehensive index
of all the bulletins, prefaced by an alphabetical list of all the monuments
mentioned or registered by the Comité, was published in 1914 (Index Général des bulletins du Comité des années 1882 à 1910). Its author,
Max Herz Pasha, was a Hungarian
architect who headed the Comité from 1890 until 1914, when he was expelled
from Egypt as a ''foreign enemy''. His index together with the photographs,
plans and drawings contained in the bulletins, remains the best record of
the artistic monuments in Egypt, and sadly in some cases the only record, as
many buildings were subsequently destroyed or replaced, as modern Cairo
developed.
Language of the Comité Bulletins
The bulletins were originally published in French, as this was the official
language of the Comité's meetings and reports. In 1895 the first Arabic
translation appeared and translation of the early bulletins continued under
the Comité's head of publications, Ilyas Iskander Hakim. After Hakim's
retirement Ali Bahgat, Comité member and head of the Museum of Arab Art,
continued the work, and the majority of the later editions were released in
Arabic, between the years 1907 and 1915.
However the process was erratic and the Arabic
collection remains incomplete. It is worth while mentioning the current
program, headed by Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Tawwab (former Comité member and
consultant for the Supreme Council of Antiquities) to translate the
remainder of the bulletins, although the completed versions have yet to be
published or digitised.
By Alaa El-Habashi
Assistant Technical Director of the Egyptian Antiquities Project of the
American Research Center in Egypt.
He received his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001 with a
dissertation entitled From Athar to Monuments: the Interventions of the
Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l'Art Arabe.
Note on the Numbering System used by the Comité for the Monuments
The inventory drawn up by the First Commission took several years to
complete. Although the "Grand Bey" map drawn up for the Khedive Ismail in
1874 provided a starting point, not all the buildings on this map were
included in the first Commission's inventory, and not all the numbers given
to the monuments on the map were maintained. For example, 282 mosques were
featured on the ''Grand Bey'' map, but only 129 were registered during the
work of the First Commission. Other monuments were listed, and then delisted,
and their number transferred to a different building.
When the inventory of the First Commission was
eventually finalised, the number given to each monument was inscribed in
Arabic, and hung on a plaque on the building itself. Most of these green
plaques, bearing a crescent motif can still be seen on the building today.
The same numbering system for the identification of the
monuments has been used in the Photo Archive on our website.
For more details on the work of the Comité for numbering the Islamic
monuments in Egypt read:
Alaa El-Habashi and Nicholas Warner, ''Recording the Monuments of Cairo: an
Introduction and Overview,'' Annales Islamologiques 32 (1998): 81-99.
Comments on the Comité Bulletins Online
The bulletins were published over a period of seventy years; a length of
time reflected in the changing transliterations of monument names throughout
the publications, and in the changing methodology of the Comité members. The
following notes draw attention to some inconsistencies in the Comité
Bulletins in our Archive.
Comité Bulletin 1882-1883
French
version: pages 65 and 66 are missing.
Arabic
version: has been mistakenly titled 1884.
Comité Bulletin 1884
Arabic
version: the table of contents of 1882-1883 is published in the beginning
of the bulletin.
Comité Bulletin 1891
French
version: plate II is missing.
Comité Bulletin 1899
French
version: plate I is missing.
Comité Bulletin 1892
French
version: two editions have been published of this bulletin and both are
online. The first edition was published in 1892 while the second was
published in 1903. The second edition has the monuments' names written in
Arabic and the photographs were retaken, which is a good way to show the
changes, if any, that occurred to the monument or its environs throughout
this period.
Comité Bulletin 1894
French
version: two editions have been published of this bulletin and both are
online. The first edition was published in 1895 while the second was
published in 1908. The second edition has the monuments' names written in
Arabic and the photographs were retaken, which is a good way to show the
changes, if any, that occurred to the monument or its environs throughout
this period. Plate VII in the second edition is mis-numbered as plate VI.
Comité Bulletin 1902
French
version: page 94 is mis-numbered as 91.
Comité Bulletin 1906
French version: pages from 33 until 48 are missing.
Comité Bulletin 1909
French version: the copy used for scanning
had no plates in it and so the list of plates available for the
monuments in this bulletin corresponds to the plates in its Arabic
version.
