CRESWELL AND CONTEMPORARY CENTRAL EUROPEAN SCHOLARSHIP

Abstract

This paper will examine the relationship between Creswell and the Central European scholarship of his time, especially in the period before the First World War. Such an examination entails a brief general survey of what this Central European scholarly tradition had to offer. Detailed analysis of a single work, namely Alois Musil's Kusejr 'Amra, should serve to focus these generalizations. The careers of three major German-speaking scholars of the time van Berchem, Strzygowski, and Herzfeld will then pass under review and Creswell's interaction with the last two of them in particular will be assessed in an attempt to discover what they have in common. It should be possible thereby to place Creswell within the context of his contemporary Germanspeaking colleagues. What, then, were the strengths of the German-speaking scholarship which Creswell encountered? A thorough philological training based on the classics was de rigeur, and most of these scholars studied history and philosophy too before fixing on their specialization. Central Europe had the most active body of Islamicists in the world, with numerous chairs in major universities and a dozen specialistjournals.' The museums of Berlin and Vienna already had a well-established interest in the Islamic world, through such men as von Bode, Riegl, Sarre, and Kiihnel.2 Above all, for the purposes of this paper, Central Europe boasted the senior school of art history in the world, which centered in Vienna.3 It is hard to recapture now the heady flavor of that school in the years around 1900. Art history as a subject was still relatively new; there was no need to contend with the dead weight of established authority. Ideas were in a state of ferment. To espouse them in crusading fashion was felt to be the essence of art history. This sense of big issues to be confronted fostered a quality of daring and a certain openness of aesthetic sympathies from which the study of Islamic art drew great profit. The state of the field was primitive by modern standards, with few large collections, a relative lack of accessible illustrations, and a dearth of specialist literature. A particularly relevant factor for the still embryonic study of Islamic art was the widespread ignorance about the art of the eastern Mediterranean. The exca-