Mamlük medieval religious architecture was designed and built through a process which involved a deep knowledge of Sufism, the inner dimension of Islam. Through the symbolism implicit in this process, the external, limited, and sensible forms of these buildings carried within themselves inner transcendental qualities. This thesis adopts the traditionalist approach which has its foundation in objective truth based on Islamic metaphysical interpretations. This approach is applied to reach the symbolism of medieval religious buildings, focusing specifically on the Bahri Mamlük period in Cairo as a case study. The need for such a study is twofold: firstly, to know the truth about the intent and design process of the medieval Mamlük tradition; and secondly, to see if it is possible to formulate new guidelines for contemporary architects to use in today's mosque designs. Medieval historical sources emphasize that the Mamlük society had its roots in Sufi thought. Sultäns, emirs, scientists, intellectuals, the common people, and even some of the `ulama', respected and participated in Sufi rites. The hypothesis behind this study is that the Sufi thought which pervaded Mamluk society at large must have influenced the craftsmen who produced artifacts, particularly the sacred ones. A purely historical approach is used to introduce the buildings of the case study. This immediately raises several queries that have either been answered inadequately, or remain unanswered within a stylistic and historical approach; this shows the limitations of its scope of interpretation. By adopting the traditionalist approach it is possible to re-create the traditional Mamlük context applying both exoteric and esoteric dimensions of interpretation to these buildings. The context consists of both the setting and the design and building processes involved in creating a traditional product, as well as the traditional view of the relationship between the Süfi masters, the Süfi craftsmen, and the general craftsmen who were not necessarily Sufis. It is here that the relation between the symbol and the act of "creation" of traditional forms is revealed from a SO point of view to imitate the process of Divine Creation. This line of argument is adopted and applied to the different notions of architectural form which are in turn analyzed from a traditional viewpoint. Subsequently, specific architectural analyses reveal several layers of understanding in the symbolism of traditional religious buildings: the level of the elements, the level of the relationships which incorporates several elements visually and results in a second layer of symbolism, the temporal level through the sequence of spaces of a building which gives yet a further dimension to this wholistic system of symbolism. Bafiri Mamlük cases are analyzed at these three levels, and the results confirm the value of the methodology adopted in this thesis. The findings bring about a more vivid picture of how and why a traditional member of the society designed and used these buildings down to their constituents. It is at this level where architect, craftsman, and user are unified in their relations to the traditional artefact that the symbol of unity is found to be operative. The thesis ends in a general review of how a traditional prototype would have been created in the Bafiri Mamlük period. The benefits of adopting the traditionalist approach in order to re-create a lost tradition are then discussed. This is followed by a review of the basic differences between the modern and traditional processes, which sheds light on the extent of our contemporary displacement from our traditional past. The question of the relevance of this study to the contemporary situation is raised. It is here that it becomes evident that there can be no return to traditional principles while living in a modernistic society governed by modern values. The suggestion that is set forth is that there must neither be a faked tradition nor a faked modernity. If the contemporary architect is to make use of such traditional findings and symbolisms, he must first adapt his method of form-creation by learning from the principles of the traditional process so as to be able to reuse them to fit the society's contemporary needs and using the means of today.

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This thesis offers a study of the word ‘Europe’ in French Renaissance writing (c.1540- 1620). It uses the technique of close reading to analyse how the word was used in a variety of contexts and how it related to issues of significant cultural, social and political import, including the Reformation and the Wars of Religion, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, and the discovery of the ‘New World’. In considering these contexts, the thesis moves beyond an analysis of the term Europe in order to examine instances where the word does not appear and to assess the significance of non-usage. The thesis contributes to the history of the idea of Europe in the sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries by illuminating how Europe was a flexible term that could be adopted by different writers for different purposes. In turn, the focus on Europe gives rise to new interpretations of French Renaissance texts. Chapter One compares the use of geographical discourse in Rabelais’s 'Quart Livre' and Apian’s 'Cosmographie'. Chapter Two examines the representation of communities and their boundaries in Montaigne’s 'Journal de voyage' and the cosmographies of Thevet and Belleforest. Chapter Three considers the impact of the Reformation on thinking about Europe by analysing Léry’s 'Histoire d’un voyage' and d’Aubigné’s 'Histoire universelle'. Chapter Four investigates the impact of the Ottoman Empire on ideas of Europe through an examination of the poetry of Ronsard and the political tracts of François Savary de Brèves, French ambassador to Constantinople. Chapter Five explores Europe in relation to the New World, contrasting the differing uses of the word Europe in Thevet’s 'Les Singularitez de la France antarctique' and Montaigne’s 'Essais'.

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This thesis considers the imprint of unfinished work upon cultural history. It asks how one might record, interpret and situate abandoned and unfinished works within critical discourse. It explores the various opportunities they present to both disrupt and imaginatively develop existing perspectives on cultural production, the creative process, and the intellectual construction of everyday life. Discussing a range of unfinished projects from literature, film and architecture kept in public archives, this study attempts to find a renewed poetics of abandoned work that can displace the melancholy selectivity that pervades the topic. In addition to this, the project hopes to contribute to growing discourses on archives, ruins and fragments, where a consideration of the remains of unfinished work would broaden and problematise these conversations. The introduction considers the critical and cultural history of leaving work unfinished, identifying various critical motifs and absences that this project can address. The first chapter examines the legacy of an unfinished socialist city planned and partially built in 1914 called Llano del Rio; exploring how the abandoned settlement is mediated through its archival collection and material remains on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The second chapter then delves into the National Archives to investigate abandoned plans for London in the 1960s, demonstrating how unbuilt plans possess an under-researched intertextual and cultural function in their abandoned state. The third chapter traces a set of texts through literary and cinematic archives, charting the abandonment of Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey’s unfilmed Proust Screenplay. It maps the project’s afterlife and its contemporaneous relationship with the decline of cinema theatres in the 1970s, tracing the concomitant processes of unfinishing work and ruination. The fourth chapter looks at the papers of Muriel Spark and B.S. Johnson, considering their unfinished work and project proposals, from Spark’s brief narrative sketches to Johnson’s rejected ideas for television programmes. It sees corresponding tactics taken by the two writers, both authors using their unfinished work as a resource to reuse and recycle for texts that are eventually completed. Alongside this discovery, it reads unfinished work as a form of life writing, skirting autobiography and creative output. The conclusion draws these findings together and considers the potential for unfinished work to form its own critical rubric in the context of broader academic discourse.

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Central Asian crucible steel has been neglected in the scholarly literature in favour of Indian/Sri Lankan crucible steel (commonly called wootz). This is primarily because during the last few centuries Europeans frequently traded by sea, rather than via the overland route through Central Asia, with India and Sri Lanka where crucible steel was still being produced. The consequence of this was the assumption that the majority of crucible steel in Central Asia and the Middle East was imported from India and Sri Lanka. Moreover, the Central Asian crucible steel process is thought by many to be merely a variation of the Indian/Sri Lankan process. On the contrary, recently excavated archaeological evidence indicates that crucible steel was produced for centuries by a distinct process in various locations in Central Asia. This dissertation presents the first detailed investigation of crucible steel in Central Asia. The characteristics of Central Asian crucible steel production were primarily determined by laboratory analyses of archaeometallurgical remains excavated from an early Islamic (9th-10th century AD) crucible steel workshop from Merv, Turkmenistan. A selection of crucible steel production remains from Medieval Uzbekistan was also examined. Furthermore, fifty-seven blades from three locations in Central Asia: Kislovodsk Basin, Upper Kuban River Region, and around the Aral Sea, were examined using metallographic analyses. The analyses identified four crucible steel blades, one of which may be the earliest known example of Damascus steel. The laboratory analyses supports early textual accounts of the use of crucible steel in Persia/Central Asia in addition to India, and the presence of blades with a Damascus pattern. The results were compared to ethnographic reports, historical accounts, archaeological evidence, and replication experiments related to the production of crucible steel and Damascus steel blades. The results of the investigation clearly demonstrate the use of crucible steel in Central Asia for at least the past 1,500 years, and that it was being produced there for at least as long as it was produced in India and Sri Lanka.

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