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(Margaret Lowthian)

(b Washington, Co. Durham, July 14, 1868; d Baghdad, 11/July 12, 1926).

English archaeologist and architectural historian. The first woman to achieve a first-class honours in modern history at Oxford University, she travelled widely in Europe, Japan and especially the Middle East in the 1890s, achieving fluency in a number of European languages as well as in Persian, Turkish and Arabic. She developed an interest in archaeology and architecture that was reflected in an authoritative set of articles on the Early Byzantine churches of Syria and southern Turkey, based on her travels in 1905. Her first major travel book, The Desert and the Sown, contains a mixture of travellers’ tales and archaeological information, as does her Amurath to Amurath. Between 1905 and 1914 she made archaeological studies of the Early Byzantine and Early Islamic monuments of Turkey, Syria and Mesopotamia (now Iraq). In 1905 and 1907 she surveyed Binbirkilise with Sir William Ramsay; their book, The Thousand and One Churches, remains the authoritative account of this important site. The architectural recording by survey and photography at Binbirkilise was carried out by Bell and is a lasting monument in its own right. Bell’s interest in Anatolia was inspired by Josef Strzygowski and his book ...

[Kemalettin Bey]

(b Istanbul, 1870; d Ankara, July 1927).

Turkish architect. He studied at the College of Civil Engineering in Istanbul, graduating in 1891, and at the Charlottenburg Technische Hochschule in Berlin (1896–8). After his return to Turkey in 1900, he taught at the College of Civil Engineering in Istanbul and became chief architect of the Ministry of Pious Foundations (1909), entrusted with the restoration of historical monuments and the design of new buildings. This work enabled him to analyse the principles of Ottoman architecture and formulate a revivalist idiom. He built mosques, mausoleums, office blocks, schools, prisons and hospitals; the small mosque (1913) at Bebek, Istanbul, is a fine example of his revivalist style. The Fourth Vakıf Han (1912–26), a large seven-storey office block in Istanbul’s Bahçekapı district, epitomizes Ottoman revivalist architecture, also known as the First National Architectural Style (see Islamic art, §II, 7(i)). Its well-ordered stone façade with rich carvings and coloured tiles hides a sophisticated steel framework. His last building complex in Istanbul, the Harikzedegan apartments (...

Term used to refer to architecture from the western Sudan, generally understood as encompassing Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and northern regions of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, and Benin. The term ‘Sudanic’ is derived from the Arabic phrase ‘Bilad al-Sudan’, or ‘Land of the Blacks’, used historically to denote sub-Saharan Africa. References to Sudanic architecture were first employed in the late 19th century, particularly by French colonial administrators and adventurers, to refer to the architecture of French West Africa. These commentators frequently likened the architecture of the region to that of Egypt, thereby endowing the French colony with a degree of prestige, particularly in the wake of waves of Egyptomania that washed across Europe in the 19th century.

Perhaps more controversial are the much more common references to the Sudanese style of architecture. While focused primarily in the regions referenced above, this interpretation may also incorporate works from surrounding regions such as Guinea, Senegal, and Nigeria. What exactly constitutes the Sudanese style has been the subject of extensive debate. The ...

[Vedat BeyVedat Tek]

(b Istanbul, 1873; d Istanbul, 1942).

Turkish architect and teacher. After completing his secondary education at the Ecole Nonge in Paris, he studied painting at the Académie Julian and civil engineering at the Ecole Centrale, and then trained as an architect at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, completing his studies in 1897. On returning to Istanbul in 1899, he was employed by the Municipality, becoming chairman of the Supervising Committee for Public Works and later the chief architect. In 1900 he also became the first Turk to teach architectural history at the Fine Arts Academy in Istanbul. Like his contemporary, Kemalettin, he played an important role in the development of a revivalist Turkish idiom in architecture, known as the First National Architectural Style, and his works and his writings reveal the theoretical approach behind the movement.

Vedat’s first major work, the Central Post Office (1909) in Sirkeci, Istanbul, employed such features of traditional Ottoman architecture as depressed or pointed arches and glazed tiles (...