The Profession’s Vanguards: Arab Architects and Regional Architectural Exchange, 1900–50

Abstract

Writings on architecture in the Middle East during the first half of the twentieth century have often focused on the legacies of colonial architects and planners in shaping Middle Eastern cities and built environments. Contrarily, this article focuses on the overlooked history of the first milieu of trained Arab architects in Middle East, focusing on Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Examining unstudied historical materials and archives, it maps out the trajectories of individual architects as well as the architectural profession more generally in this period of rapid change. It is divided into three main sections that highlight this: first, architecture’s transition from the Ottoman guild system to its professionalisation by the turn of the century; second, the mobility of architectural knowledge and expertise in the Arab region following the First World War; finally, the development of a new institutionalised architectural culture that sought to cultivate bonds between Arab architects not only in their individual countries, but also regionally throughout the Arab world towards the mid-twentieth century.

Keywords:

• Arab architects
• architectural mobilities
• professionalisation
• Middle East
• Arab regionalism
• local expertise

Introduction

In recent years, a growing body of architectural scholarship has emerged that has sought to revisit existing western paradigms and explore new terrains for understanding architectural history and the present. By emphasising the “global mobilities” and “contact zones” underpinning the transfer of architectural concepts, models, and skills throughout the twentieth century, scholars have expanded the historiography of modern architecture and urban planning into a more comprehensive global history.¹ Their studies pay special attention to how the exportation and importation of foreign expertise was tied into the legacies of imperialism and colonialism. They mainly trace how foreign and colonial experts—including architects, planners, and engineers—posited themselves as possessors of “objective” and “scientific” knowledge, turning colonised geographies into laboratories for modern architectural and urban planning experimentations.² While significant, these new global histories of modern architecture remain predominantly written through the roles of colonial and foreign architects and planners and their influences on the Global South during the twentieth century.

In contrast with the existing architectural scholarship’s emphasis on foreign actors and activities in the colonial and postcolonial eras, this paper foregrounds local professionals whose mobilities were equally instrumental in shaping modern architectural discourses and practices in both colonised and newly independent states outside the west.³ Focusing on the Middle East, it traces some of the thoughts, practices, and visions of the first milieu of Arab architects, engineers and planners who contributed to the regional exchange of technical expertise and the flow of modern architectural knowledge, experiences, and imageries in the early twentieth century. While this paper addresses the architectural legacies of colonialism on this period in the Middle East, it reads the emergence of the new class of local experts in the fields of architecture and planning not simply as a by-product of the imperial and colonial landscape of expertise. Instead, it explores how these Arab architects envisioned the past and future of their lived environments both within the confines of colonial systems of architectural knowledge but also beyond them.

Two main principles guide this paper’s thinking regarding the architectural culture of the Arab region during this period beyond its relationship to colonialism. The first is that, similar to Arab professionals in adjacent fields like the fine arts, Arab architects saw a need to approach their work collectively, and not only focus on their individual careers.⁴ This is evident in the establishment of architectural and engineering associations, congresses, and journals throughout this period. The second principle is that far from confining themselves to the narrow boundaries of their modern nation-states, Arab architects worked towards cultivating a culture of regional exchange and collaboration throughout the region. As with their contemporary intellectuals of the modern Arab nahda (renaissance), they saw the technical and cultural spheres as a main terrain for overcoming the Arab region’s geopolitical division in the First World War.⁵

This paper benefits from the growing interest in documenting the architectural and urban history of modern Arab world. It relies on established and newly available archival collections in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. These include the recently acquired architectural collections at the Harvard Fine Arts Library Archives and SALT Research Archives. It also includes unstudied private collections of individual architects such as those of Turkish architect Mehmet Nihat Nigizberk and Palestinian architect Rushdi Imam al-Husseini. This paper also consults different types of historical sources, including official correspondences, meeting minutes, published journals and newspapers, as well as photographic materials. The paper mostly focuses on Egypt and Greater Syria (encompassing Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine), as this was the part of the Arab world where pan-Arab exchanges in the first half of the twentieth century were most visible. However, this paper also sits in conversation with scholarship on other parts of the Arab region, especially recent works and archival initiatives on the Arab Gulf and North Africa.

This paper is divided into three main sections. The first section explores the early development of modern architectural culture in the Middle East, transitioning from its perceptions as an artisanal craft into its establishment as a central profession. The second section explores the regional exchanges underpinning the modern architectural profession in the Arab region, highlighting the mobility of people, ideas, and expertise in the transition from the Ottoman to post-Ottoman eras. The final section traces the institutionalisation of this new professional architecture culture in the Arab world both separately within individual countries and regionally through Arab Engineering Congresses held from 1945 onwards. It demonstrates that these institutions were foundational to the cultivation of a pan-Arab culture of architectural collaboration and exchange from the mid-twentieth century onwards.

From Masterbuilders to Architects

Unlike in Egypt, where the early development of the architectural profession in the nineteenth century is relatively well-known, little is known about the parallel developments taking place in Greater Syria, including modern-day Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.⁶ This is in part due to the more elaborate shifts in architectural culture in Egypt, where ruler Mehmed Ali Pasha and his successors were directly involved in the modernisation of architectural and engineering training and education as part of his empire-building project.⁷ Nonetheless, through a close reading of historical sources from Greater Syria during the same period, it is also possible to trace some key shifts in architectural culture towards the end of the Ottoman rule at the close of the nineteenth century. These shifts indicate that in this period, encompassing the Ottoman state’s reformation process known as the tanzimāt, local builders and architects witnessed a major transition from their embeddedness within the Ottoman guild system to their professionalisation into a modern field of technical expertise. At the same time, the design and construction process itself was also being formalised through new sets of tools, mechanisms, and institutions of architectural training, production, and organisation.

As with other crafts and trades throughout the Ottoman period, the building trade in Greater Syria’s cities was organised through the Ottoman guild system (in Arabic: esnāf, akhiyya, hirfa, or ta’ifa, depending on the subregion). These guilds were reasonably autonomous organisations, which protected their interests against other guilds and workmen outside the guild.⁸ They constituted a crucial part of the set-up of Ottoman social and economic realities, mediating the relationship between craftsmen and traders and the central Ottoman state.⁹ Whereas the vital role of guilds in the organisation of Ottoman urban society, economy and built environment has been one of the chief objects of study by both Orientalist and revisionist historians of architecture and cities in the Islamic world, the position of the building trade within the guild system and its development over time has received mere cursory attention in scholarly literature.¹⁰ How was the building trade organised? What was the role of architects, master builders, and other artisans involved in public construction works? How did these roles begin to transform in public constructions from the late nineteenth century onwards?

An Arabic scholarly account from late Ottoman Damascus provides us with some hints. Between 1890 and 1906, Damascene scholars Muhammad Saʿīd al-Qāsimī and Gamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī, later joined by Khalīl al-ʿAzm, conducted an extensive documentation of crafts and trades in Damascus. Their work was later published by Zāfir al-Qāsimī in two encyclopedic Arabic volumes in 1960 as Qāmūs al-ṣināʿāt al-šāmiyya (The Dictionary of Damascene Crafts).¹¹ Documenting in great detail some 437 different crafts and trades in the Syrian capital and its vicinity, the work offers a critical window into the material cultures as well as the economic and social life of Damascus and the Syrian provinces in the last decades of Ottoman rule.¹² Crucially, the Qāmūs includes entries on numerous guilds and craftsmen involved in the building industry, including brick workers, surveyors, painters, clay workers and stone extractors among others. The principal one among them, however, is the guild of builders. According to the Qāmūs and contemporary Islamic court records from the Syrian provinces, the guild of builders was among the most elite of all guilds, as builders were usually highly regarded in Ottoman urban society.

Importantly, as Wesam Asali notes, the Qāmūs points to the holistic scope of the task of miʿmar/bannaʾ (architects/builders), involving not simply the technical work of design and construction but also a social role of “problem solving,” including resolving conflicts between neighbours and relatives on structures, walls, and boundaries.¹³ This entailed their close relationship to the Islamic courts and their regular summoning to provide guidance on such matters. Further, unlike the other guilds, which were headed by the sheikh of the guild, the guild of builders was headed by the figure of the miʿmar bāshi (chief of builders). It has been argued that this distinction points to the “special relationship” between the guild of builders and the state compared to other guilds, with the position of the miʿmar bāshi not being inherited within families but instead being appointed directly by the central Ottoman government.¹⁴ Nevertheless, this did not mean that the central Ottoman state was always able to exert its influence over building guilds in provincial districts. In eighteenth-century Jerusalem, for instance, Islamic court records indicate that although Istanbul had made several attempts to remove traditional chief builders from their position, they remained held by members of the al-Nimari Çelebi family.¹⁵ As with other elements in the Ottoman Arab provinces, the organisation of the guild of builders was therefore not pre-determined by the Ottoman state, but was forged through a constant process of negotiation and followed shifts in Ottoman state-society relations.

By the late nineteenth century, the guild of builders led by the miʿmar bāshi was gradually declining. Following the turn of the century, it was almost entirely disbanded. This decline was not incidental. It was a direct result of the Ottoman tanzimāt, a state reorganisational effort that entailed the replacement of Ottoman guilds and Islamic courts with new institutions that represented the spirit of late Ottoman modernity. However, the tanzimāt was also an era of heightened public construction activity throughout the Arab provinces. Throughout this period, several new architectural building styles, typologies and materials were introduced. As the overpopulated cities expanded beyond their historical walls, newly detached buildings like hospitals, military garrisons, government houses, and railway stations were built in the new areas of modern development.¹⁶ These new developments abided to newly codified urban planning regulations that encouraged low-density construction with clear setbacks, departing from previous layout of the walled Arab cities (fig. 1).

Figure 1. Ground floor plan, imperial military middle school Şam-i Şerif Rüşdiye-yi Askeri-yi, Damascus, 1880–1893. LOT 9512, no. 6, Abdul-Hamid II Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

New figures entered the domains of architecture and urban planning in the Ottoman-Arab provinces to guide these modern developments. Official registers from late Ottoman Damascus mention the following professional positions: a provincial engineer (muhandis), a municipal engineer for the newly established municipal councils (majalis baladiyya), a building director (abniyya mudīrī), and a highways inspector (tarīq amīnī or mufattishī).¹⁷ Further references are made to a city civil engineering department (muhandis dā’iresī/nāfi’a idāresī) including a chief engineer and a section engineer.¹⁸ However, some of these positions, especially provincial engineers, were likely limited to provincial capital cities like Damascus or Beirut and not to smaller provincial towns.

These positions were both a byproduct of and the agents behind the intermarriage of the new landscape of late Ottoman bureaucracy with the reorganisation of the architectural profession around the turn of the century. But as with institutions like the municipal councils, which often relied on existing pre-modern systems of Ottoman administration like majālis al-idāra (administrative councils), the transition into this new system of architectural organisation was not entirely abrupt. In some instances, the mi’mar bashi, who belonged to the declining Ottoman guild system, briefly served as an assistant to the municipal engineer.¹⁹ This overlap was not only limited to provincial capitals. It also took place in a city like Jaffa where explicit references are made to the position of mi’mar bāshi al-baladiyya (chief of builders of the municipality) in Islamic court records.²⁰

Nonetheless, this momentary overlap between existing and new institutions and professional positions should not lead us to underestimate the extent of the transformations in architectural and urban planning practice in this era. New parameters were set as to who could lead the architectural profession, distinctive from those that turned journeymen into master builders in the days of the guild. As both the Qāmūs and the 1877 Ottoman municipal laws emphasise, qualifying as a muhandis al-baladiyya (municipal engineer) required formal training in technical drawing and planning, usually received in Istanbul.²¹ Unlike the mi’mar bashi who gained his experience from his local setting, therefore, qualifying as a municipal engineer required a broader regional setting of expertise and knowledge exchange. While the nineteenth century saw the early articulation of this setting, it was in the early twentieth century that this process of professionalisation reached its full potential. It is also in this era that a more substantial cross-over and mobility of expertise surfaced between Greater Syria and Egypt.

Mobilities of Architectural Knowledge

The emergence of a distinctive local class of trained architects and engineers in the late Ottoman Arab provinces—including those who qualified as municipal engineers—played a significant mediating role between the Ottoman state and the cities where they were employed. Their formal status within the reformed Ottoman system of governance granted them the legitimacy to transfer and implement their architectural knowledge into their rapidly changing cities. In the late nineteenth century, provincial capitals and economic centres like Beirut, Damascus, Jerusalem, and Jaffa were witnessing unprecedented levels of demographic growth and physical urban expansion.²² Local municipal engineers were increasingly aware of the weight of their role in both regulating present construction and planning works in their cities and guiding their future trajectories in lieu of these developments. Importantly, although they worked within the framework of late Ottoman urban planning regulations and building codes, the diversity of their local contexts, cultures and environments forced them to work not only with, but also around many of these regulations. They understood from the very start that they were not mere implementers of the imperial code, but also its interpreters.

One example from Beirut exemplifies the dynamics underlying the mutual centralisation and localisation of imperial architectural and urban planning knowledge within the Arab provinces, and local municipal engineers’ role in these processes. In 1896, Amin Abd al-Nour, the municipal engineer of Beirut, published an Arabic translation of the Ottoman Building and Land Codes, originally published in Ottoman Turkish.²³ On the one hand, as ‘Abd al-Nour indicates in his preface, the document was produced in direct response to the wide range of interpretations of the Ottoman codes throughout the imperial provinces:

Since one of the most important tasks of municipal councils is looking into building issues and the construction of roads, the [Ottoman] government wisely decided that such an important task cannot be left for the will and knowledge of local councils, and as such restrained it with specific laws that deal with the problems faced in carrying its job, protects the rights of the ahali [residents], and unifies their treatment among the rest of the cities of the empire.²⁴

On the other hand, the document’s translation from Ottoman Turkish to Arabic was, in itself, a form of localisation of the imperial building codes. The publication’s title, as both a tarjama (translation) and a sharh (explanation), was a clear indicator for this desire to interpret the building codes in relation to the translator’s local context. For each clause in the original building code, Abd al-Nour includes both a statement on its original context and his own assessment of its relevance to his provincial context. Abd al-Nour’s additions were also supplemented with stark omissions. His non-inclusion of a set of clauses from the original building code—done under the pretense that “they are only relevant to capital,” and not to the local context of Arab provincial cities like Beirut—was a clear indicator of the selective nature of his translation.²⁵

Abd al-Nour’s contextual translation of the imperial building codes from Ottoman-Turkish to Arabic exemplified the trans-geographical and trans-linguistic underpinnings that characterised the transfer of architectural and urban planning knowledge in the Arab region throughout the late Ottoman era. However, the transmission of Arab architectural expertise acquired throughout the late Ottoman era materialised not only across geographical boundaries, but also across temporal ones. In the historiography of the modern Middle East, the First World War marks the end of Ottoman rule in the Arab provinces and is often depicted as a moment of great historical rupture.²⁶ This idea has been repeatedly reproduced in the historiography of architecture and urbanism, attributing town planning schemes in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine to the Mandate period and reinforcing the idea that the “Ottomans left a tabula rasa in the occupied territories.”²⁷ Although a new wave of urban historians have repeatedly revisited this claim, indicating that modernisation efforts had already been underway since the late Ottoman rule, little remains known regarding the legacies of these efforts in the post-Ottoman era. Shifting the focus from imperial to local actors offers an opportunity to understand these continuities. An emerging class of Arab professional experts, including architects and engineers, were adjusting the knowledge they gained in the late Ottoman era and employing it to meet the challenges and conditions of the post-Ottoman world.

Two architectural undertakings in 1920s Palestine showcased the scope and limits of these late Ottoman architectural influences in the Arab provinces after the First World War more than any other: the restoration of Haram al-Sharif and the construction of the Palace Hotel in Jerusalem. In 1922, the Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem, led by Hajj Amin Husseini, hired the reputable Turkish architect Ahmet Kemaleddin, known as Mimar Kemaleddin, to lead the restoration of the Haram al-Sharif complex in Jerusalem, including the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.²⁸ But Kemaleddin was not the only expert involved in the reconstruction of Haram al-Sharif. An entire Technical Committee was hired by the Supreme Muslim Council in 1922 to assist in the works. The original contract between the council and Kemaleddin, originally written in Ottoman Turkish and later translated into Arabic, lists the following members of the Technical Committee with their specified positions: Rushdi Bey Imam Husseini (Head Engineer), Mehmet Nihat Nigizberk (Head Architect), Cemal Bey (Assistant Engineer), Hüsnü Bey (Assistant Architect) (fig. 2).²⁹ Importantly, the committee also included a hezâr-fen (art specialist) with his assistants as well as a clerk knowledgeable in Arabic, Turkish, and “foreign languages,” a critical requirement for a project led by an international team of experts.³⁰

Figure 2. Hüsnü Bey, Mimar Kemaleddin, Rushdi Imam al-Husseini, Cemal Bey, and Mehmet Nihat Nigizberk at Al-Aqsa Mosque restoration office in Jerusalem, date unknown. SALT Research, Istanbul.

That Ottoman Turkish, alongside Arabic, was not considered a “foreign” language was perhaps a sign of the lasting Turkish influence in post-Ottoman Jerusalem. But it was also reflective of the background of the committee members, all of whom were Turkish apart from Rushdi Bey, who was an Arab Palestinian. Born in Jerusalem in 1890, Rushdi Bey’s trajectory was no less mobile or influenced by the legacies of late Ottoman rule than his Turkish counterparts. He completed his engineering degree in Istanbul in 1913, where he was a student of Kemaleddin’s, and worked in the Istanbul Municipality until 1914.³¹ He then moved to Beirut where he worked as an engineer in the Ottoman Hijaz Railway until 1917 and in the Samsun-Sivas line until 1918, before returning to Jerusalem after the war.³² His involvement in the Haram al-Sharif project was a sign of a profession in transition. It indicated that gradually, a new generation of local architects were getting trained abroad and returning to the Arab region to lead projects in their own countries. However, it also indicated that at least in the early stages, foreign expertise was still viewed as essential in leading ambitious architectural projects.

However, as this period was particularly sensitive due to the gradual emergence of a modern Arabist culture, Turkish involvement was set to face some major challenges. Kemaleddin’s architectural sensibilities were inspired by the Ottoman classical style of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He revived the work of classical Ottoman architects, especially that of Mimar Sinan, and viewed their principles as foundational for a modern Turkish national architectural movement. These sensibilities were clearly reflected in his scheme for the renovation of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque, where he made a striking proposal to replace its original dome with a substantially larger and more vertical Ottoman-style dome that echoed those of Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia and Sulemeneye Mosque (fig. 3). His scheme, which would have radically altered Jerusalem’s cityscape, was never materialised. Instead, as renovation reports reveal, the Supreme Muslim Council ended up turning to a team of Egyptian architects and engineers who designed a more subtle and culturally sensitive renovation proposal.³³

Figure 3. Al-Aqsa Mosque drawing, signed by Architect Kemaleddin, 1920s. MNN_ALB11_phc_22, Mehmet Nihat Nigizberk Collection of Architectural Drawings and Photographs, Koç University Digital Collections.

The decision to refuse Kemalledin’s proposal, although he was the project’s leading architect, points us to the limits of Turkish architectural involvement in the Arab region following the First World War. Even when they were directly hired to lead projects, their architectural sensibilities influenced by Ottoman–Turkish architecture did not seem to match the cultural setting of the interwar Arab world. The fact that the Palestinian-run Supreme Muslim Council instead turned to Egyptian architects was not coincidental. It hinted at the growing desire for developing a new culture of architectural exchange within the Arab region—especially between Egypt and Greater Syria—in the early twentieth century. This desire grew in tandem with the rising sentiments of pan-Arabism, especially after the war. While some of the earlier efforts appeared in individual projects, this desire was soon engulfed within a new institutionalised landscape of professional bodies and platforms of transcultural exchange within the Arab world.

Architectural Institutions and Pan-Arab Regionalism

The emergence of a new institutionalised culture of architectural exchange within the Arab world was preceded by the emergence of professional bodies that organised Arab architects in their respective countries. The geopolitical break-up of the Arab region into separate mandatory territories following the First World War resulted in a different set of preoccupations for the architectural profession within each country. The case of Jerusalem illustrates the extent to which local settings influenced the trajectory of the architectural profession and the nature of its relationship to the broader context of pan-Arab regionalism. Rushdi Bey, for instance, played a significant role in shaping the future of the architectural profession in Palestine during the decades that followed his work on al-Aqsa Mosque. In 1936, he co-founded the first Arab Engineers Association in Jerusalem. The association’s 1937 by-laws and constitution listed its aims as follows:

Creating a bond between Arab engineers; elevating the state of engineering technically, conceptually, and materially throughout Palestine; improving arts, crafts, and sciences that are related to engineering professions; maintaining the interests of the profession and representing it; mediating conflict between the association’s members or with their clients; refining and influencing public opinions on engineering; and encouraging early career engineers to improve their technical skills.³⁴

To achieve these aims, the association listed a number of activities that the association would undertake, including the organisation of lectures, the regulation of pay rates, negotiating with public and private entities, establishing a technical library, the preparation of technical studies and reports, organising social events for members, and attending engineering congresses.³⁵ The constitution declared that “Arabic is the only official language of the association,” although it permitted the use of English translations for correspondence and negotiations with governmental entities and municipalities when needed.³⁶

The constitution was where the scope of the association’s main objectives and activities were declared. However, it was in the by-laws that the association’s role in defining the parameters of the professions was most explicitly visible. An initial draft of the constitution from Rushdi Bey’s archival collection is particularly revealing in this regard. In that draft, membership in the association is listed as exclusive to those with qualifications in “architectural engineering.”³⁷ In the same document, the term “architectural” is crossed over in pencil, likely by Rushdi Bey himself, leaving behind “engineering” alone, as it appears in the final approved constitution. It is unclear whether this was a simple typographical error or a major shift in the association’s scope. In some measure, it hinted at the blurry lines that marked the relationship between the architectural and engineering professions in this era.³⁸ However, in the approved version of the by-laws, the distinction was made clear: membership was open to persons with qualifications in “any type of engineering.”³⁹ These qualifications included holders of university-level degrees from an engineering department (architectural, mechanical, electrical, civil, or surveying), government-licensed surveyors, or holders of engineering diplomas who had gained five years of practical training.⁴⁰ For these members to qualify for nomination in the elected board of directors, they had to have had at least twelve years of experience “in the office, the field, or the site.”⁴¹

With the start of the Second World War, enthusiasm regarding the association’s future faded. The war’s frenzy brought in a lot of projects for Arab architects and engineers, which paradoxically rendered their participation in the association’s affairs difficult. In 1939, the association ceased its operations. It was not until July 1944 that the association resumed its works and its board, headed by Rushdi Bey, was reinstated. Meeting minutes from the board’s first meeting after this moment are particularly revealing. Of the different items discussed, three stand out as especially telling of the problem space of Palestinian architects in this period. The first concerned the need to pressure the British colonial administration to hire Arab architects in its public departments, particularly the department of public works. The second related to holding a congress for Arab engineers throughout Palestine, including members of the Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa engineering associations, with the aim of establishing a unified entity that represents all of Palestine’s Arab engineers. The third discussed an invitation received from the organising committee for the first pan-Arab Engineering Congress, with delegates from Syria, East Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt.

The first two matters were key expressions of the state of Arab Palestinian architects within Palestine and their dual commitment, first, to assert their role against the British administration’s preference for foreign experts; and second, to create an institution representing all Palestinian engineers across the different associations. The latter issue, meanwhile, was more indicative of Palestine’s embeddedness with a broader regional conversation regarding the future of the architectural and engineering professions. Some developments had already been underway in the Arab region that paved the way for these regional conversations. One critical example was the establishment of Majallat al-Imarah (Journal of Architecture) in Cairo in 1939 by Egyptian architect Sayyid Karim. Although primarily focused on Egyptian architecture—especially in its early years—the journal soon turned into a primary space for regional debates and discussions regarding the past and future of the architectural profession throughout the Arab region. This became especially clear from 1942 onwards, when a new section specifically devoted to “architecture in the Arab region” was added to several of its issues.

The work of Egyptian architects and planners in other Arab countries was also covered in Majallat al-Imarah. One key example was the 1945 masterplan for the Palestinian city of Jaffa, covered in the journal’s later issues.⁴² Conceding that Jaffa’s municipal engineer was “unfit” for such a large-scale endeavor, the city’s Palestinian mayor Yousef Haikal turned to the Egyptian government for assistance.⁴³ Interestingly, the news of Haikal’s trip concerned the Arab Association of Engineers in Jerusalem, who lamented Haikal’s circumvention of local engineering associations.⁴⁴ In Cairo, Haikal met with Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud El Nokrashy Pasha, who agreed to send two experts to Jaffa: Othman Rifqi Rustum, the Head Engineer of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities, and Ali Miliji Masoud, the Head of Municipal Town Planning in Egypt. Othman was assigned as the Chief Engineer in Jaffa whereas Masoud was tasked with preparing a masterplan for the city. Masoud’s masterplan was arguably one of the most comprehensive plans prepared by an Arab planner in modern times. Although it was not realised, Majallat al-Imarah still published the full masterplan, indicating its value within the regional exchange of architectural expertise as a model for future urban planning projects in the region.

Pan-Arab engineering congresses took these individual collaborations among Arab countries in the interwar era to a whole new level, expressing the common desire for the regional exchange of architectural and engineering knowledge and expertise throughout the Arab world. In February 1945, the Arab Engineering Association in Jerusalem received a formal letter of invitation for the First Arab Engineering Congress, to be held in Alexandria.⁴⁵ That the Arab League was founded that same year compounded the political significance of this endeavour. A delegation was sent from Palestine, as from other Arab countries. In his speech on the day of the congress’s inauguration, Sayyid Murtada, the General Secretary, announced: “We inaugurate with this conference a new epoch in the history of engineering in Egypt and the East. It is the first time that such a large gathering of Arab engineers come together to exchange ideas regarding topics that have occupied public opinion.”⁴⁶

Indeed, the congress in Alexandria paved the way for further regional meetings in the later years. The following year, in 1946, a second pan-Arab engineering congress was held in Cairo. A brief sent to the delegation in Jerusalem prepared by the organising committee indicates its scope. As with the previous meeting, the emphasis on the regional character of the congress was crucial: “The engineers of the Arab East face an added challenge. They are required to consult with each other and exchange opinions so that they are an entity with a powerful stature.”⁴⁷ The brief also indicated that unlike the previous conference, where a wide range of topics were covered pertaining to engineering, this conference focused on a single theme: “the engineering and industrial works that should be built in Egypt and the Arab region.”⁴⁸ In 1947, a third pan-Arab engineering congress opened its doors in Damascus where, yet again, Arab architects and engineers continued to exchange their expertise regarding pressing matters facing their individual countries and the region more broadly (fig. 4). These later congresses paved the way for the eventual establishment of the Arab Federation of Engineers in 1963. These meetings served as both embodiments of and the platforms for the exchange of conceptual ideas, expertise, and technical knowledge regarding architecture and engineering across the colonial and post-colonial boundaries of the Arab region around the mid-twentieth century.

Figure 4. “The Third Arab Engineering Congress in Damascus,” Majallat Al-Imarah, 1947. Majallat al-Imarah Collection, Fine Arts Library of the Harvard College Library.

Conclusion

In the Middle East, as with other places around the world, the first half of the twentieth century witnessed remarkable transformations in architecture and the architectural profession. Until recently, these transformations have remained largely obscured by the continued focus on colonial actors and experts as the main protagonists behind shaping the history and built environments of the Middle East. By focusing on the forgotten history and legacies of the first milieu of trained Arab architects in the modern Middle East, this article has explored new possibilities for thinking with and about the dynamics that shaped architectural expertise in this period. Tracing the entangled history of architects’ trajectories with the underlying social, political, and cultural shifts that marked this period, it paves the way for an understanding of the emergence of the local professionals not merely as instruments of colonial rule, but as agents of their own history.

Tracing these developments in the years from 1900 to 1950, this paper offers three critical cross-sections which, in some measure, correspond to three different stages of the professionalisation of architecture in the modern Arab region. The first, starting in the late nineteenth century and lasting until the early twentieth century, was the foundational era that witnessed the decline of the Ottoman guild system and the gradual emergence of a new class of local experts who received professional training in architecture and engineering. The second stage, especially around the 1930s, saw these architectural practitioners in the Arab region organised into new institutions and systems of bureaucracy within their individual countries. The final stage, starting after the Second World War, was when these institutions were extended into a broader regional landscape that encompassed architects, engineers, and other professionals from across the Arab region. While not always rigid, these delineations are helpful in allowing us to understand the overlap between the political shifts underlying these critical moments in the Middle East and the development of the architectural profession in that region.

Although the development of the architecture profession in the Middle East was not always confined to the temporalities of political change, this nonetheless had a clear influence on the personal and collective trajectories of architects. The geographical fluidity that characterised the late Ottoman world was not mirrored in the post-Ottoman years. The new colonial borders set by the British and the French in the aftermath of the First World War were gradually crystalising into clearly delineated divisions. Before the war, Rushdi Imam al-Husseini could move between Jerusalem, Istanbul, and Damascus, as an Ottoman citizen. This was not possible after the war, when these cities became part of three separate nation states. Still, the desire to establish regional connections did not vanish. Rather, al-Husseini and his generation of Arab architects saw their profession as a tool to re-establish the cultural, economic, and geographical ties that once connected them. Pan-Arab regionalism was arguably the most significant terrain for this exchange.

Tracing the developments of architectural culture in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, it is clear that pan-Arab regionalism had serious cultural implications besides its political and ideological importance. In architecture, the drive towards pan-Arab regionalism was articulated in both adversarial and collaborative terms. The rejection of Turkish architect Kemaleddin’s proposal for the renovation of Haram al-Sharif was a clear indication that architectural culture within the Arab world was gradually drifting away from the legacies of the Ottoman world. As the emphasis on the Arabic language in the Arab Engineers Association in Jerusalem indicates, it was also distinguished from the legacies of European colonialism. At the same time, pan-Arab regionalism sought to open new possibilities for productive exchange. Whether through journals, projects, or congresses, Arab architects saw their regional counterparts as colleagues who, though organised in their own local associations, were partners who shared their cultures and understood their preoccupations amidst the Arab region’s transition from colonial rule towards postcolonial nation building.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nadi Abusaada

Nadi Abusaada is an architect and a historian at ETH Zürich. He received his PhD in architecture from the University of Cambridge in 2021. He was previously the Aga Khan Fellow in Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also the co-founder of Arab Urbanism.

Notes

1 See for example: Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya Prakash, Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon (London: Routledge, 2007); Kathleen James-Chakraborty, “Beyond Postcolonialism: New Directions for the History of Nonwestern Architecture,” Frontiers of Architectural Research 3, no. 1 (March 1, 2014): 1–9, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foar.2013.10.001; Tom Avermaete and Cathelijne Nuijsink. "Architectural Contact Zones: Another Way to Write Global Histories of the Post-War Period?," Architectural Theory Review 25, no. 3 (2021): 350–61.

2 On colonial experts from an architectural perspective also see, for example, Tom Avermaete, Serhat Karakayali, and Marion von Osten, Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past, Rebellions for the Future (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2010); Łukasz Stanek, Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020); Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Gwendolyn Wright, “Building Global Modernisms,” Grey Room 7 (2002): 125–34; Éric Verdeil, “Expertises nomades au Sud. Eclairages sur la circulation des modèles urbains,” Géocarrefour 80, no. 3 (2005): 165–69; Johan Lagae and Kim De Raedt, “Editorial,” ABE Journal: Architecture beyond Europe 4 (2013), http://journals.openedition.org/abe/3384; Mark Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (Farnham: Ashgate, 2003); Anthony King, Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture, Urbanism, Identity (London: Routledge, 2004).

3 For an exception, see Joe Nasr, “Saba Shiber, ‘Mr. Arab Planner.’ Parcours professionnel d’un urbaniste au Moyen-Orient,” Géocarrefour 80, no. 3 (2005): 197–206.

4 Alex Dika Seggerman, Modernism on the Nile: Art in Egypt between the Islamic and the Contemporary (Durham: University of North Carolina Press, 2019); Anneka Lenssen, Beautiful Agitation: Modern Painting and Politics in Syria (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2020).

5 The Arab nahda was an Arab-led intellectual movement in the modern Arab region. For more, see Tarek El-Ariss, The Arab Renaissance: A Bilingual Anthology of the Nahda (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2018); Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss, Arabic Thought beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Peter Hill, Utopia and Civilization in the Arab Nahda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

6 On Egypt, see Mercedes Volait, Architectes et architectures de l’Égypte moderne, 1830–1950 (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2005); Mercedes Volait, “Une lignée d’architectes entre plusieurs mondes: les Fahmy d’Egypte,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 82 (2011): 251–66; Mercedes Volait, L’architecture moderne en Égypte et la revue Al-’Imara: 1939–1959 (Le Caire: CEDEJ—Égypte/Soudan, 1988); Donald M. Reid, “The Rise of Professions and Professional Organizations in Modern Egypt,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 16, no. 1 (January 1974): 24–57. For notable works on architectural professionalisation in Lebanon and Syria respectively, see Georges Arbid, “Practicing Modernism in Beirut: Architecture in Lebanon, 1946-1970” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2002); Hayma Zeifa, “Les élites techniques locales durant le mandat franćais en Syrie (1920–1945),” in The British and French Mandates in Comparative Perspectives/Les mandats français et anglais dans une perspective comparative, ed. Nadine Méouchy and Peter Sluglett (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 497–536.

7 On Mehmet Ali Pasha’s empire-building project, see Khaled Fahmy, All The Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2002).

8 Amnon Cohen, The Guilds of Ottoman Jerusalem (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 4–5.

9 Cohen, The Guilds of Ottoman Jerusalem, 4–5.

10 Nelli Hanna, “Guilds in Recent Historical Scholarship,” in The City in the Islamic World, ed. Salma K. Jayyusi, Renata Holod, Antillio Pertruccioli and André Raymond, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 895–921.

11 Mohammad Said al-Qasimi, Jamal al Din al-Qasimi, and Khalil al-Azem, Qāmūs Al-Ṣināʿāt al-Šāmiyya [Dictionary of Damascene Crafts], ed. Zafir al-Qasimi, 2 vols (Paris: Mouton and Co., 1960).

12 Marcus Milwright, “Wood and Woodworking in Late Ottoman Damascus: An Analysis of the Qāmūs al-Ṣināʿāt al-Šāmiyya,” Bulletin d’études Orientales 61 (2012), https://doi.org/10.4000/beo.1061.

13 M. Wesam Al Asali, "Craftsmanship for Reconstruction: Artisans Shaping Syrian Cities," in Urban Heritage Along the Silk Roads: A Contemporary Reading of Urban Transformation of Historic Cities in the Middle East and Beyond, ed. Fatemeh Farnaz Arefian and Seyed Hossein Iradj Moeini (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020), 107–19.

14 Wesam, "Craftsmanship for Reconstruction," 112.

15 Cohen, The Guilds of Ottoman Jerusalem, 154.

16 Çelik, Empire, Architecture, and the City. On how these new architectural types paralleled new methods of architectural drawing and construction management, see Maurice Cerasi, “Late-Ottoman Architects and Master Builders,” Muqarnas 5 (1988): 87–102.

17 Stefan Weber, Damascus: Ottoman Modernity and Urban Transformation 1808–1918, Proceedings of the Danish Institute of Damascus V 2009, 2 vols (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009), 84.

18 Weber, Damascus, 84.

19 Weber, Damascus, 84.

20 This was the case in Jaffa, for instance, where court records from the year 1899–1900 identify Mitri Elias Zakaria as the miʿmar bāshi al-baladiyya (chief of builders for the municipality). Ali Hasan Bawwab, Mawsū‘at Yāfā al-jamīlah, vol. 2 (Beirut: Arab Institute for Research & Publishing, 2003), 991.

21 Notably, the Qāmūs states that the miʿmar/bannaʾ (architect/builder) might possess some knowledge of handasa (engineering), yet includes a separate entry on the work of the muhandis (engineer). The Qāmūs defines the muhandis’s job as both a science and an art concerned with the preparation of technical drawings and plans for buildings, bridges, roads and rivers, and delineates it as one of “the most important crafts of this age,” namely the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See al-Qasimi, al-Qasimi, and al-Azem, Qāmūs Al-Ṣināʿāt al-Šāmiyya. According to Ottoman Municipal Laws, the municipal engineer was responsible for "carrying out of all works entrusted to him in connection with roads, buildings and technical matters generally, and to keep in safe custody all plans, drawings, and technical papers whether prepared by the municipality or received by it from outside." See Translations of the Ottoman Constitutional Laws, the Wilayet Administrative Law, the Municipal Law and Various Other Laws (Baghdad: Ministry of Justice, 1922), 54.

22 On urban transformation in Arab provincial cities in the late Ottoman era, see Nadi Abusaada, “Building Urban Palestine: Jaffa and Nablus 1870–1930” (PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2021); Weber, Damascus; Jens Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005).

23 Amin ’Abd al-Nour, Tarjamat Wa Sharh Qamun Al-Abniyya Wal-Istimlak [Translation and Explanation of the Law of Building and Land Register Decree] (Beirut: Al-Matba’a al-Adabiyya, 1896); On the municipal council of Beirut see Hanssen, Fin de Siècle Beirut.

24 ’Abd al-Nour, Tarjamat Wa Sharh Qamun Al-Abniyya Wal-Istimlak, 3 (author's trans.).

25 ’Abd al-Nour, Tarjamat Wa Sharh Qamun Al-Abniyya Wal-Istimlak, 4 (author's trans.).

26 On the historiography of the First World War as a moment of rupture, see James Gelvin, “Was There a Mandates Period? Some Concluding Thoughts,” in The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates, ed. Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan (London: Routledge, 2015), 420–32.

27 Salim Tamari, “Urban Planning and the Remaking of the Public Sphere in Ottoman Palestine,” in Locating Urban Conflicts: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Everyday, ed. Wendy Pullan and Britt Baillie (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 173–94, esp. 177.

28 Born in 1870, Mimar Kemaleddin had already been an established architect and architectural educator before the Ottoman defeat in the First World War. He taught at the Sanayi-i Nefise Mekteb-i Alisi (Academy of Fine Arts), Konduktor Mekteb-i Alisi (Conductor School), Muhendis Mekteb-i Alis (Academy of Engineering), and the Muhendishane-i Berri-i Humayun (Military School of Engineering). He was also appointed as the head of architecture at the Şerriye ve Evkaf Vekaleti (Ministry of Sharia and the Foundations) and played a pioneering role in the establishment of the Society of Ottoman Architects.

29 “Contract Between Supreme Muslim Council in Jerusalem and Mimar Kemaleddin,” 1922, 4, Israel State Archives, Jerusalem.

30 “Contract,” 4.

31 Ahmad Khalil Aqqad, Who’s Who? Arab Personalities in Palestine (Jaffa: Office of Press and Publication, 1945), 35.

32 Aqqad, Who's Who? 35–36.

33 Mustafa Bey Hamdi al-Qattan, Lecture on the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque at the Egyptian Royal Engineers Association (Cairo: Abul Hol Publishers, 1924); Supreme Muslim Council, Report on the Architecture and Renovation of Al-Aqsa Mosque and Haram al-Sharif (Jerusalem: Islamic Orphan House Press, 1928).

34 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds [Constitution and By-Laws for the Arab Engineers Association in Jerusalem] (Jerusalem: Commercial Press, 1937), 1 (author's trans.).

35 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds, 2.

36 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds, 2.

37 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds [Constitution and By-Laws for the Arab Engineers Association in Jerusalem] (n.d.), Rushdi Imam Husseini Collection.

38 Rushdi Bey himself embodied this blurriness, with mixed references to his qualifications as a mi’mari (archiect), muhandis (engineer), and muhandis mi’mari (architectural engineer) in his personal papers.

39 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds (1937), 4.

40 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds, 4.

41 Al-Dustūr Wal-Qanūn al-Dakhlil Li-Jam’iyyat al-Muhandisīn al-’Arab Fi-Alquds, 4.

42 Ali Miliji Masoud, “Jaffa: City Planning Project,” Majallat Al-Imarah 9 (1949): 5–22.

43 Yousef Haikal, Madinat Al-Zuhūr Yafa [Jaffa: A City of Flowers] (Amman, 2006), 52.

44 Arab Engineers Association in Jerusalem, Meeting Minutes of the Board of Directors on 3 August 1945 (Jerusalem, 1945), Israel State Archives, Jerusalem.

45 Arab Engineers Association in Jerusalem, Meeting Minutes of the Arab Engineers Association on 20 February 1945, (Jerusalem, 1945), Israel State Archives, Jerusalem.

46 Sayyid Murtada, “The First Engineering Congress in Alexandria 15-19 March,” Majallat Al-Imarah 5 (1945): 7–8.

47 Permanent Organizing Committee, Research Topic for the Second Engineering Congress in Cairo in April (Cairo: Matba’at al-Raghaeb, 1946).

48 Permanent Organizing Committee, Research Topic.