IMPORTANCE OF K.A.C. CRESWELL’S BOOKS IN REGARDS TO EARLY MUSLIM ARCHITECTURE EDUCATION AND RESEARCHES IN TURKEY

Abstract

In Turkey, the auxiliary resource books used in teachings of History of Islamic Arts and Architecture studies in higher education are the ones that are prepared through summarised translations from the publications of few European authors. It is noteworthy that the contents of these resource books provide very little information and visuals on important buildings of Early Muslim Architecture. In addition, the information about the works of Early Muslim Architecture given in these source books are conveyed as the only and the most accurate information available in the market, without comparing or reflecting the alternative views of other researchers. Even though K.A.C. Creswell put forward high volumes of alternative information in his very comprehensive book titled Early Muslim Architecture which he updated and published in two volumes (as 3 books) in 1969, but these valuable informations were not included in the afore-mentioned Turkish textbooks. In this research article, problems of insufficient information and visual materials exist in Early Muslim Architecture source materials in Turkish resourse boos is examined in comparison with K.A.C. Creswell’s above mentioned books. Further more, it will also be shown that there are large amount of information and visual materials exist in Creswell’s boks that will be enoguh to overcome the most of shortcomings which exist in Turkish mainstream textbooks.