Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Ibn Tulun: his lost city and great mosque
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.tarekswelim.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://www.archaeological.org/tours/leaders/tarekswelim * http://www.tarekswelim.com/Static_Pages.aspx?SP_ID=2
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.:
no2016020750
LCCN Permalink:
https://lccn.loc.gov/no2016020750
HEADING:
Swelim, Tarek
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__ |a Ibn Tulun, 2015: |b title page (Tarek Swelim) jacket (Ph.D. in Islamic art and architecture from Harvard in 1994; lecturer in Egyptology and Islamic art and architecture; has taught at the American University in Cairo)
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PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Helwan University, B.A., 1979; American University, Cairo, M.A., 1986; Harvard University, Ph.D., 1994.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Egyptologist. American University in Cairo, lecturer and assistant professor, 1990–98; Ain Shams University, lecturer; Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, associate professor of Islamic Art & Architecture.
WRITINGS
Contributor to anthologies, including Muqarnas, edited by Oleg Grabar, 1998.
SIDELIGHTS
Egyptologist and expert in Islamic art and architecture Tarek Swelim is an art historian, academic guide, and lecturer. He is associate professor at the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies of the Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, and has lectured at the American University in Cairo and Ain Shams University. He was also assistant director to the seventeenth-century house/museum restoration project of Bayt al-Suhaymi, Cairo. Swelim earned a Ph.D. in Islamic art and architecture from Harvard University on a full scholarship when he was only thirty. In his thirty-year career, Swelim has led tours and lectures through Egypt, the Middle East, and North Africa with the Archeaological Institute of America. He has published books and articles, and serves as architectural consultant on documentary films.
Swelim attributes his love of Islamic art and architecture to his American University in Cairo professor Shahira Mehrez and to “godmother” Laila Ali Ibrahim who took him to see the monuments. Speaking to Yasmine El-Rashidi at Al-Ahram Weekly, Swelim talked about Ibrahim: “She forced, imposed, clarified, made perfectly clear an important issue—you cannot study Islamic architecture in the library. You have to go to the monuments, you have to deal with them and see them to understand the architecture.”
Swelim contributed to the anthology Muqarnas, an annual publication edited by Oleg Grabar that gathers essays, debate, and commentary from historians of Islamic art and architecture. Calling Swelim’s article, “An Interpretation of the Mosque of Sinan Pasha in Cairo,” “particularly outstanding,” Estelle Whelan noted in The Journal of the American Oriental Society that Swelim provides “formal and functional analyses of one of the earliest and most unusual Ottoman buildings in that city.”
In 2015, Swelim published Ibn Tulun: His Lost City and Great Mosque, which chronicles the creation and history of the ninth city of al-Qata’i’ and its mosque, the oldest surviving mosque in Africa. Ahmad ibn Tulun (835-834) was the son of a Turkic slave in the court of Abbasid in Baghdad. He founded the first independent state in Egypt and built the short-lived third capital of the Islamic era, al-Qata’i’. Built between 867 and 879, the mosque was the centerpiece of the city, the only structure that was spared when the city fell in 905.
Swelim recreates the grandeur of the city and the mosque through archival illustrations, early photographs, archaeological discoveries, ancient maps, and modern 3D computer renderings. He discusses architectural features like the iconic scroll-shaped minaret. Commenting on the Aramaco World Web site, a reviewer noted that the book provides “visual context for the mosque’s important role in the history of Egypt and Islamic architecture.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Journal of the American Oriental Society, July, 1998, Estelle Whelan, review of Muqarnas, p. 421.
ONLINE
Al-Ahram Weekly, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ (June 13, 2002), Yasmine El-Rashidi, “When is a tour not a tour? When the guide is right.”
Aramaco World, https://www.aramcoworld.com/ (March 1, 2017), review of Ibn Tulun.
Tarek Swelim Home Page, http://www.tarekswelim.com/ (May 1, 2017).*
Ph.D. Harvard University, 1994
Islamic Art & Architecture
Egyptian
Professional Experience
1) The American University in Cairo (AUC) (1990 - 2011)
• Worked as Assistant (Part Time) Professor (1990 - 1997) – During that period, I taught graduate and undergraduate courses on Islamic Art and Architecture of Cairo, Greater Syria, North Africa, India and the Ottoman World.
• Being a specialist on Mamluk Architecture, I read, corrected and monitored several MA theses.
• I have continuously been asked to lecture to special visiting programs at the AUC, on Egyptology as well as, on Islamic art, architecture, history, culture and religion, in addition to the history and politics of modern Egypt (1990 - 2011).
2) The Bayt al-Suhaymi Restoration Project (1992 - 2000)
• Being interested in the preservation of Egypt's cultural heritage, I acted as the Assistant Director of the restoration project of the 17th century house of Bayt al-Suhaymi, located in the Gamaliyya Quarter of Historic Cairo, that was directed by the late Folklorist Dr. Asaad Nadim.
• After the expansion of the Suhaymi Project to being an area restoration (rather than a single monument) to include 3 additional monuments neighboring the house of Bayt al-responsible for the historical and photographical documentation of the project.
• My involvement with the project never stopped after the project was completed. I became responsible of the Suhaymi Archives located at the NADIM office, across from the house/museum of Bayt al-Suhaymi, from which a new publication on the project is now in process (2011).
3) The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) (2004 - 2011)
• Educating people has always been my passion. It was the reason why I wanted to educate more of a general public, as well as academics. At ARCE, I have lectured over the last few years, for the "Special Lectures' Series", which are scheduled twice a year. Each series varies between 3 to 5 lectures. The choice of the lecture topics are mine and are on various subjects related to the history, art, architecture and culture of Egypt in addition to Arab context; ancient & modern (2005 - 2011)
• I pursued the same concept of educating the general public, by leading / guiding walking tours for ARCE's members, known as their "Walking Tours of Islamic Cairo, off the beaten tracks", which became very popular over the years.
• The annual educational program of ARCE's "U.S. State Department Language Programs in Egypt" has engaged me to cover its cultural components (2005 - 2010).
4) The Field of Tourism
• As a child, I grew up in an environment of Egyptologists and Egyptology. I studied Egyptology at the university and got my B.sc in tour guiding. Later I obtained an MA and then a Ph.D. in Islamic Art and Architecture. These degrees enabled me to work as a free-lancer in tourism; tour guiding, lecturing, tour managing and tour operations (1979 – 2011).
• Throughout my career of 33 years, I have always aimed at promoting cultural tour programs in Egypt, which allowed me to travel to almost every historical and archaeological site in Egypt, which enriched my fascination with Egyptian cultures.
• I managed to use my knowledge on Islamic history, art and architecture, in trying to expand my destinations by promoting cultural programs in the Middle East and Arab World. Therefore, I worked as "Study Leader / Guest Lecturer" on numerous programs, in countries like: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Turkey (1994 - 2011). During that time, I managed to visit almost every historical site as well as, every museum in those countries.
• Since I was a teen-ager, I have been interested in the cultural diversity and heritage of Egypt as well as, the Near East. I therefore, enhanced my knowledge in lecturing on the various subjects related to: Ancient Egypt, Ancient Mesopotamia, the Ancient Greek, Roman & Byzantine worlds, as well as, the Islamic; Tulunid, Fatimid, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods, in addition to the recent / contemporary history of the Modern Middle East (1994 - 2011)
• Over the years, I have had a life-long relationship with some top-notch and most prestigious institutions in the United States, who have continuously employed me to develop and lead their cultural programs in Egypt, the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean. Some of these institutions are as follows: - Stanford Alumni Association – Travel / Study Programs (1985 - 2011)
- Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) (1997 - 2010)
- Association of Yale Alumni (2005 - 2011)
- Princeton Alumni Association (2005 - 2011)
- Harvard University Alumni Association Programs in Egypt (1998 - 2010)
- American University of Natural History (AMNH) (1990 - 2007)
- Crow Canyon Foundation (1998 - 2010)
- Field Museum of Natural History / Chicago (1997 - 2010)
- Santa Barbara Museum of Arts (2000 - 2007)
- The Art Institute of Chicago (1993 - 2003)
- Virginia Museum of Arts (1993 - 1998)
- National Trust Foundation (1999 - 2001)
- Washington & Lee University (Lexington, Virginia) (2005 – 2011)
5) Public Lectures and Seminars
• Invited at a seminar on Islamic Cairo, Louvain University (2009) – the seminar was focused on the Tulunid and Mamluk period in Egypt.
• At the inauguration of the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha / Qatar (2008), I was invited to lecture on the architecture of the museum as it was designed by the world-wide known architect I. M. Pei, who was inspired by the Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo, which was the subject of my Ph.D. thesis at Harvard University.
• Seminar on Egypt at Washington & Lee University (Lexington, Virginia), I was invited as leading lecturer for a period of 3 days (2005).
• At the Educational Travel Conference (ETC) in Washington, I was invited to lecture on the importance of the role of the guide in educational travel (2004).
• Lectured at the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyya / Kuwait (2003).
• "Round-Table Discussion" with her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands, I was invited to discuss problems that face the preservation of the "Islamic" cultural heritage of Egypt (1997).
• Invited to lecture at Stanford Alumni Association (1985 & 2000)
• Frequently lecturing at the cultural institutions in Cairo
AIA Lecturer/Host: Tarek Swelim
Associate Professor of Islamic Art & Architecture at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha.
Tarek Swelim is Associate Professor of Islamic Art & Architecture, and Urban Design & Architecture, on the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha. A native Egyptian, he is an expert on the art, architecture, and history of the Middle East and has been lecturing on tours throughout Egypt, North Africa, and the Middle East since 1979, including eight previous AIA-sponsored tours. Tarek received his BSc from Heiwan University, his MA from the AmericaUniversity in Cairo, and his PhD in Islamic art and architecture from Harvard.
TAREK SWELIM
"ACADEMIA VS. TOURISM"
Thursday, April 7, 2016
1 - 2 pm
Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Hall, Room P071, AUC New Cairo
As part of the Qahwa and Kalam series, Tarek Swelim, an alumnus of the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations (formerly: Arabic Studies) at the American University in Cairo gave a lecture titled "Academia vs. Tourism." He earned his PhD from Harvard University in 1994. His recent book, Ibn Tulun: His Lost City and Great Mosque was recently published by AUC Press. You can find it here: http://www.aucpress.com/p-4949-ibn-tulun.aspx
In this Qahwa and Kalam talk Swelim addressed the tension and difference between academia and tourism, both of which are fields he has much experience in.
4/13/17, 12)12 AM
Print Marked Items
Swelim, Tarek: Ibn Tulun: his lost city and great mosque
J.M. Bloom
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.10 (June 2016): p1469. From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bloom, J.M. "Swelim, Tarek: Ibn Tulun: his lost city and great mosque." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic
Libraries, June 2016, p. 1469. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942660&it=r&asid=a6babb3f9999fc009abdb4fe0877835e. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A454942660
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Muqarnas: An Annual on Islamic Art and
Architecture, vol 10, Essays in Honor of Oleg
Grabar Contributed by His Students
Estelle Whelan
The Journal of the American Oriental Society. 118.3 (July 1998): p421. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 1998 American Oriental Society
Full Text:
Edited by OLEG GRABAR. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1993. Pp. xiii + 390. HF1 136, $78.
In 1983, the annual Muqarnas was launched under the editorship of Oleg Grabar, who announced in his preface a set of goals and expectations that generated considerable enthusiasm among historians of Islamic art and architecture at the time: to provide a vehicle for scholarly and critical studies, including theoretical essays and works in progress; to encourage debate over issues; and to make the journal widely available, especially in Muslim countries. In commenting on that first issue the present reviewer noted that, despite expressed eagerness for more daring, imaginative, or speculative approaches, the articles were almost entirely traditional in orientation, combining careful formal and iconographic analysis with conscientious use of relevant texts. This tenth volume of the journal is devoted to a Festschrift for its founder and thus offers an appropriate occasion for assessment of progress toward his announced goals.
Of thirty-seven contributions, twenty-two are devoted to what Professor Grabar has elsewhere called "the built environment," eight to various aspects of painting, and the remainder to other media or to more general questions. The proportion representing methodological innovation is no larger than it was in 1983, nor are all such departures successful. One example of a stumble is "Survivals and Archaisms in the Architecture of Northern Syria, ca. 1080-ca. 1150," by Yasser Tabbaa. Because of a three-hundred-year gap in the surviving monuments leading up to the period in question, there has been long-standing controversy over whether "classicizing" Syrian architecture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries represents continuity or revival of classicizing forms known from the eighth century and earlier. Tabbaa, having apparently forsworn Creswell's "positivist methodology," passes lightly over what evidence, however limited, might be drawn from Hamdanid architecture of the crucial period in the region, in order to focus instead on the regional use of stone as building material and on a single decorative device, the continuous exterior molding, as proof of the continuity of architectural style through the troubling gap. A stone tradition does not by itself provide evidence pertaining to architectural form, however, and the continuous molding can just as well be interpreted - and has been interpreted - as pointing to a revival of the classicizing style. In fact, the crux of Tabbaa's argument is that stone construction and the continuous molding were borrowed outside north Syria in regions where they sometimes lasted for several centuries longer, a later continuity that he takes as enhancing the likelihood of an earlier one.
In Nuha N. N. Khoury's "The Dome of the Rock, the Ka ba, and Ghumdan: Arab Myths and Umayyad Monuments" what can be characterized only as methodological confusion arises from the dubious assumption that the Ka bah in Mecca and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, though sharing no formal or functional features, must belong to the same "typological class." In order to further this view, she must define that class at such a level of abstraction that her arguments and conclusions seem forced and meaningless. Relying primarily on legendary accounts of Ghumdan, the ancient Sabean royal palace at San a, and comparable structures also known only from texts, she defines the class as consisting of mihrabs, in the meaning simply of "monuments." (For other, sometimes more detailed definitions of the term from early texts, she might well have consulted collections by Horovitz, Sauvaget, and Serjeant, though she does cite the last on peripheral points.) Of the "inherent qualities" defining the mihrab, only two seem applicable to all cited examples: height and restricted access. Even here, however, interpretations are blurred. For example, in the
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eleventh century al-Thaclabi described the mihrab of Mary in the Temple of Solomon as a raised chamber accessible only by means of steps that were closely guarded by the priest Zechariah. The Dome of the Rock, on the other hand, is simply a tall building containing no comparable restricted high place; the claim that access to the building was restricted to Muslims, that is, every adherent of Islam, seems disingenuous, even if the claim is true. Hardly anyone would disagree that the Dome of the Rock should be classified as a monument, but beyond that this study adds little to understanding its position in the history of Islamic architecture.
On the other hand, some contributors have successfully devised approaches that open new possibilities for all historians of Islamic art. In "Gates as Signs of Autonomy in Muslim Towns," Jamel Akbar has probed communal life in traditional Islamic urban spaces, recording traces of gates that once closed off quarters, subquarters, and culs-de- sac before they were demolished, and showing how modern urban circulation patterns came to predominate. More important, Akbar has drawn on textual sources seldom used by art historians, most notably legal opinions issued in specific disputes, to explore the rights and obligations of those who lived or worked in such closed off areas. Almost all the evidence he presents is from North Africa, including Egypt, leaving open the question whether urban patterns were identical in other Islamic areas like Iran and Anatolia, but his study nevertheless both enriches our knowledge of how life was lived in some traditional Islamic city spaces and suggests a powerful approach to parallel questions.
In "Restorations of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock and Their Political Significance, 1537-1928," Beatrice St. Laurent and Andras Riedlmayer have drawn on archival documents to describe renovations to existing monuments in Jerusalem over a long period previously largely ignored. The innovation here is less one of method than one of perspective. In a field where most scholars take for granted the disruptive impact of European colonialism and related forces on the culture of the Islamic world, it is refreshing to find events of the early twentieth century treated as part of a continuum from the sixteenth, reflecting imperial goals and relations with European powers.
Most of the remaining papers in the book are based on more familiar art-historical approaches, and almost all of them are valuable contributions to the field. Particularly outstanding are "An Interpretation of the Mosque of Sinan Pasha in Cairo," by M. Tarek Swelim, who provides formal and functional analyses of one of the earliest and most unusual Ottoman buildings in that city; "The Domestication of Knowledge: Cairo at the Turn of the Century," by Khaled Asfour, who focuses on the Hilmiyyah district in a brief but subtle history of shifts in planning philosophy and architectural training in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and "The Kadirga Palace: An Architectural Reconstruction***;' by Tulay Artan, who weaves together plans, accounting records, and other historical documents to reconstruct a distinctive building of which there are no material remains. To note that the scholarly strategies employed in such works represent those on which the discipline of art history has been built is not to imply that the authors are guilty of dull caution or lack of imagination and ideas. Instead, it has become clear after ten years that traditional art-historical methods still generally offer the most useful tools for tackling art-historical questions. Nevertheless, we must continue to make conscious efforts to expand the intellectual boundaries of the field to encompass questions that seem more difficult or even impossible because we have yet to find the best ways of approaching them. Professor Grabar has led these efforts in our time, and this volume is a fitting acknowledgment of his leadership.
ESTELLE WHELAN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Whelan, Estelle. "Muqarnas: An Annual on Islamic Art and Architecture, vol 10, Essays in Honor of Oleg Grabar
Contributed by His Students." The Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 118, no. 3, 1998, p. 421+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA54064475&it=r&asid=bfc28a2163539cf3abb57b0bf2437bd2. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A54064475
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Al-Ahram Weekly, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/Archive/2002/590/profile.htm
13 - 19 June 2002
Tarek Swelim:
When is a tour not a tour? When the guide is right
Guiding passions
Profile by Yasmine El-Rashidi
First impressions are not my specialty, as an initial meeting with a gentleman by the name of Tarek Swelim made clear.
"He got his PhD from Harvard," the whispers went. "They offered him a full scholarship. And he was only 30. He's fascinating."
Yet apart from striking brown eyes, and a rather raucous laugh, he seemed ordinary enough; bright -- a brain, maybe -- but boring.
It was an impression that was promptly laid to rest, however, when Swelim opened his mouth and began to talk.
"Being unique," he began, "being different, was always appealing to me."
He grew up, he explained, amid Ancient Egypt: "My father is an archaeologist, Egyptologist, pyramidologist -- he is a pyramid scholar." Which perhaps explains how setting himself apart from the rest might have propelled him in the direction of Islamic art and architecture.
"I'm not a guide in the traditional sense," Swelim says, and his crescendoing voice suggests horror that anyone should make that mistake. "I would say my work is global, though on a Middle East level: Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, the Gulf, and Morocco."
His tourists, for the most part, are students, professors, and affiliates of institutions such as Stanford, Harvard, the Smithsonian, and a host more.
"I'm more of a study leader than a tour guide," he says. "I give lectures -- academic lectures. In Egypt, for example, it is a part of trying to promote and enhance tourism here."
A point about which he feels especially passionate.
"Visiting Egypt shouldn't only be about Ancient Egypt. There are so many other things in Egypt," he says in a perfect English accent. "There is the Islamic element of the country's history."
Which is, he laments, almost completely ignored.
"When tourists come to Egypt, they stay, let's say, ten days, of which only half a day is oriented to Islamic [heritage], and the mosque they visit is the Mosque of Mohamed Ali, which is by no means the ideal example of Islamic architecture of Cairo."
Fired-up describes a fraction of Swelim's presence -- his sentences staccato, his hand movement angular, his voice excessively stern.
"It doesn't represent Egyptian Islamic architecture," he continues, pausing just long enough to catch his breath. "Egyptian Islamic architecture is Mameluke. Not Ottoman."
A much better place to go, he suggests, is the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. "It is exceptional," he says.
Swelim stops, and leans across the table.
"I think now is the time for a biscuit," he smiles.
Swelim's passion began at the Faculty of Tourism, where a professor by the name of Shahira Mehrez advised him to apply for a master's degree in Islamic Art and Architecture at the American University in Cairo (AUC).
"It was a huge shift from the Egyptian educational system to AUC," he chuckles. "You start to build up the character and ideas and opinions of an individual, rather than repeating what you have memorised. You actually start thinking about what you are saying. And you're treated as an individual."
It was Laila Ali Ibrahim, whom he calls his "godmother", who introduced Swelim to the buildings that would become his overriding interest.
"She took me around the monuments and ultimately had a great impact on me," he recalls fondly. "Tante Laila she became. She forced, imposed, clarified, made perfectly clear an important issue -- you cannot study Islamic architecture in the library. You have to go to the monuments, you have to deal with them and see them to understand the architecture. To study Islamic architecture is to react to the monuments. You can read about them, but you won't understand them."
"Going into Islamic art rather than Egyptology was exciting because the monuments are there -- they're very close. If you study Saqqara, or Luxor, or Aswan, you have to travel there, but the monuments are just half an hour away from your home."
But that is not all.
"Every time you go, you see something different," he says. "If you concentrate on two monuments a day, you have a whole summer. You've filled up your summer, khalas, period. And not just one summer -- at least two. And you walk around, with your camera, observing, taking pictures"
But proximity is only part of the appeal.
"This accessibility made it more exciting," he says. "And then of course, it's different".
"How many people are studying Islamic art and architecture today?" he questions, "or at that time? It is a rarity."
He decided to take it further.
"Everyone was advising me to apply to Harvard for a PhD," he says, shaking his head in seeming recollection of the absurdity of the suggestion at the time. "I told them it was impossible. And of course I had no money," he half laughs.
He applied, and was accepted with a full fellowship to study under Oleg Grabar, one of the most respected authorities on Islamic art and architecture.
"At the time I was working in tourism," he says. "I had been working as a guide since 1979. And a good guide," he laughs. "I was not desperate for a PhD. I already had a very good job here, great life, a wonderful social life, friends all over. So I went to Harvard!"
Finishing his requirements two years later in 1989 Swelim returned home to Cairo to begin work on his thesis, on the mosque of Ibn Tulun.
"It was then that I started guiding plus lecturing. I used to work with my father, we used to take the tours together," he says, explaining how his academic-oriented guiding began. "It was Peter Volk, the head of the Stanford Study/Travel Programme who suggested that I should share the lectures with my father, so I started on Islamic architecture, Islamic history. Then I went into other subjects, like 19th century paintings of Egypt; subjects people were not talking about, were not lecturing on, at that time."
He wanted to make his own lectures "different" from others. "And I wanted people to leave me thinking about what they have learned," he adds.
"In my teaching," he said of his position as assistant professor at AUC, "I try to do the same thing."
Juggling his time between his tour sites, his teaching, restoration work on Bayt Al-Suhaymi with Assad Nadim and Nawal El-Messiri, and his family, Swelim found himself drained of his usual zeal.
"It was exhausting, flying in to Cairo at 5am to teach a course at eight, and flying back to Aswan a few hours later to catch up with my tour," he says. "But I love teaching. I love to see a student learn. Just one student, even."
He decided, instead, to gather all his experiences together and put them into one package.
"I decided to expand, start leading tours outside of Egypt. I started with Syria and Jordan. I was fascinated by the wealth of their cultures, and by the variety. In Egypt there is just too much. Ancient Egypt, there's too much; Graeco Roman, Islamic, too much. Over there it's different. One day you're doing Crusaders, the next you're doing Islamic, the third Ancient."
"There is wonderful architecture in Syria, for example, that is either contemporary to Egypt or earlier," he says. "Where does Egypt fit in this history. It forced me to open my eyes and look at the country as part of a bigger, global evolution. It makes you understand and appreciate the architectural and cultural heritage more. And once you go to places like Dubai, with their modernism and flamboyance, it makes you more aware of Egypt's strengths, weaknesses, and the problems we are really encountering."
"Always when we're in Egypt we say that there is nothing like Egypt. But in what way?" he asks. "Yes, it is wonderful to be around Karnak, Edfu, the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Qalawun and Sultan Hassan, but it is also wonderful to be visiting Crak des Chevaliers, Palmyra in Syria, Baalbak in Lebanon, and the Palace of Imam Ali in Yemen. It's important to see the rest of the region; it puts Egypt in historical perspective -- deepens and enriches its history as you understand it."
This realisation propelled Swelim headlong into his regional lecturing, expanding his expertise from its core at the Mosque of Ibn Tulun to the rest of the Middle East, crossing the desert in four-wheel drives in Yemen, through Oman and the countries of the Gulf. There -- even in remote villages -- he became known as "the professor".
Swelim pauses.
"Just a moment, excuse me," he says, leaning over and pointing. "You have an eyelash under your eye. I always tell Karim and Farida [his children] to make a wish."
He pauses a moment more while the wish is made, then continues.
"I was the first to lead the Smithsonian Institute group into Syria and Jordan, the first to lead the American Museum of Natural History into Yemen and Oman, and I was asked to lead a group on the Song of Flower -- one of the most luxurious cruise ship in the world -- chartered by Harvard University. My groups were becoming more intellectual, more academic, much more diverse. I also occasionally did joint lecturing with people such as Whealer Thaxton and Roger Owen from Harvard."
He thinks of himself, he says, as a lecturer to the world on the Middle East and Islamic world.
"Like I said, you can learn all you want about a place from a book, but you will never fully understand it unless you actually go there and interact -- with the architecture, with the people, with the culture. There is a difference."
A difference, too, in how he thinks, and what he hopes to achieve through his work.
"I want to revolutionalise tourism, I want to create a new form of academic tourism, intellectual tourism."
And he wants, of course, to shed light on areas, monuments, and issues too often brushed aside.
"Architecture," he says, "is the art of motion, in a sense. You see a building, and it attracts you, so you want to enter. It may draw you in further, and you won't want to leave. You are experiencing good dynamic architecture," he continues. "An unsuccessful building is one you enter and want to leave right away. You don't fall into the context of its surroundings. Buildings have to relate to the mode of the people in them -- how they talk, dress, sit. The air and wind and light all need to be taken into consideration -- it has to blend into its surroundings and the culture and history and heritage of the area."
Take the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, for example.
"I always show it to people because it's a fantastic building. But what is fantastic? It is unique in that it is quite alien to Egyptian architecture in general -- its style is purely Iraqi-Mesopotamian. And there are interesting legends connected to the site where it was built."
"It's very simple, and has effects [of light and shade] that relates to the visitor, so your eye is constantly moving from one point to another. It is extraordinary."
Its history, is another story.
"It was never appreciated by Egyptians because it was never understood. It was seldom used for prayer, for example, because it had piers not columns. It was neglected and only revived later on during the Fatimid period."
The Fatimid vizir, Swelim says, would stand at the top of the mimbar after the Friday prayers and announce the taxes.
"Then at the time of Salaheddin it was used as a shelter for Maghrebi pilgrims -- a political tool that he used, allowing them to pass through Cairo on condition that they stayed in the mosque. In 1296, under the leadership of Sultan Lajin, it was re- revived, some elements were restored and added, then it just deteriorated during the time of Mohamed Ali and was converted into an asylum."
The theory is that Mohamed Ali wanted to get rid of people he did not want roaming about but lacked the funds to build a prison.
"It was only really given importance in modern times, because it brought in money to the government from the tourism industry."
But if the mosque now receives a great deal of attention from locals and foreigners alike Swelim still believes it is not yet receiving its due.
"It is unique. It has a spiral minaret and mosaic Mihrab. The monumental mimbar is the largest wooden piece of work of its kind -- a masterpiece. The dome over the fountain is unique. And the relation between the different elements of the mosque is incredible... the windows and arches propel people to walk around it. Everything in the building is unique: its history, reconstructions, architecture, legends."
Which is why, perhaps, so many years after his first introduction to the building, he has embarked on a project -- sponsored by the Dutch Institute -- to write a book on the mosque.
"Bored of going to Ibn Tulun? Or the sites?" he retorts, laughing at the absurdity of the thought. "When you like your job you never get bored. Besides, every time is different because the people in your group are different. You have to cater to their needs and desires and interests. You lecture to the intellectual level of your clients, and success, in this case is when you get on their wavelength and talk to them accordingly. If you give them too much they switch off, if you give them too little, they get bored. Once you give the right amount, you see it in their eyes -- they light up; they are yours."
"Our job is to teach them, and make sure they have a great day," he continues. "If you have a family you have to cater to the academic parents, but also to the kids. You have to make it exciting for them, make it an adventure. You actually have to talk to the children."
This, Swelim says, is critical to promoting Egypt and pushing it into a different global light.
"We need to promote the country. Our mass media, unfortunately, is on a totally different frequency than that of the West. We have to expose our culture to the world. We need to show them that we are well-educated, cultured, that we have a heritage and civilisation. It is our job to raise the awareness of the heritage of the country, to create a global cultural awareness of that heritage," he insists.
"Basic tours of Ancient Egypt are not going to do the job. We have a huge responsibility as guides -- whether academic or not. I get many people who have diverse and negative ideas about Egyptians, but as the days pass their impressions start to change. By the time they leave they are saying that they want to come back, and many have. That is the ultimate success of a guide."
And Swelim is undoubtedly successful. The key to a good adventure, Newsweek International wrote in a feature profiling the "five best guides in the world", is finding the right guide. And out of the five profiled, Swelim came out top.
"Lecturing is an art," he tells me as we are sitting in his Pyramids home, with mashrabeya, shukhshaykhas and malqafs. "There is always a build up and I know how to make the chemistry work with my groups. How? One is experience, and two is just being gifted, or talented, or lucky. You need to give correct information from its truest point. Then you have to test the intellectual level of the group. Then as it gets more and more serious, a joke has to break through. That is when the ice is broken, and from then on everyone is relaxed."
And what he does for his clients he does, too, for his children.
"Everyone in my family encouraged me to love and appreciate my Egyptian heritage," he says. "My father used to take me round the archaeological sites when I was a child. I used to enjoy the adventure, and that, now, is what I enjoy to do with my children. I try as much as possible to take them to the museums and sites and they love learning. When we are on vacation I take them and their friends on daily tours. Just a couple of hours here and a couple of hours there makes a world of difference. The result is that my children enjoy their cultural heritage and are aware of its beauty, importance and values."
One evidence of which, he says, is that his daughter fell in love with Tutankamun when she was four.
"When we returned to the museum later," he laughs, "she was furious that other people were admiring the king's throne because she considered it hers!"
It is a duty that he takes as seriously as his professional lecturing.
On a Tuesday afternoon Swelim answers his mobile, and abruptly asks if he can return my call later.
"I can't talk now," he says. "I'm on a trip with the kids. I'll have to call you back later. Half an hour."
It was a half-sentence question, but it is too late. The call has been ended. Swelim is at work.
Ibn Tulun: His Lost city and Great Mosque
By Tarek Swelim
2015, AUC Press, 978-9-77416-691-4, $49.95 hb.
Reviewed by Tom Verde on March 1, 2017
This elegant, richly illustrated volume covers the history, architecture, folklore and cultural significance of Africa's "longest surviving" mosque. Built by Abbasid Governor Ahmad Ibn Tulun between 867 and 879, it was the centerpiece of his new city of al-Qata’i, northeast of Fustat, the earliest Arab settlement in Egypt (both now part of Cairo). Tarek Swelim comprehensively documents the building's "glorious architecture," focusing on its elegant inscriptions, pointed arches (among Egypt's first), famed scroll-shaped minaret and more. He also examines periods of neglect, e.g., during the Crusades of the 13th century when Mamluk sultans had their hands full elsewhere, and restoration, such as the work undertaken early in the 20the century by King Fuad. Filled with modern and historical images, maps and illustrations, including 3-D renderings of the structure throughout its history, the book's design provides visual context for the mosque's important role in the history of Egypt and Islamic architecture.
Tarek Swelim:
When is a tour not a tour? When the guide is right
Guiding passions
Profile by Yasmine El-Rashidi
(photos: Ayman Ibrahim)
First impressions are not my specialty, as an initial meeting with a gentleman by the name of Tarek Swelim made clear.
"He got his PhD from Harvard," the whispers went. "They offered him a full scholarship. And he was only 30. He's fascinating."
Yet apart from striking brown eyes, and a rather raucous laugh, he seemed ordinary enough; bright -- a brain, maybe -- but boring.
It was an impression that was promptly laid to rest, however, when Swelim opened his mouth and began to talk.
"Being unique," he began, "being different, was always appealing to me."
He grew up, he explained, amid Ancient Egypt: "My father is an archaeologist, Egyptologist, pyramidologist -- he is a pyramid scholar." Which perhaps explains how setting himself apart from the rest might have propelled him in the direction of Islamic art and architecture.
"I'm not a guide in the traditional sense," Swelim says, and his crescendoing voice suggests horror that anyone should make that mistake. "I would say my work is global, though on a Middle East level: Syria, Jordan, Yemen, Oman, the Gulf, and Morocco."
His tourists, for the most part, are students, professors, and affiliates of institutions such as Stanford, Harvard, the Smithsonian, and a host more.
"I'm more of a study leader than a tour guide," he says. "I give lectures -- academic lectures. In Egypt, for example, it is a part of trying to promote and enhance tourism here."
A point about which he feels especially passionate.
"Visiting Egypt shouldn't only be about Ancient Egypt. There are so many other things in Egypt," he says in a perfect English accent. "There is the Islamic element of the country's history."
Which is, he laments, almost completely ignored.
"When tourists come to Egypt, they stay, let's say, ten days, of which only half a day is oriented to Islamic [heritage], and the mosque they visit is the Mosque of Mohamed Ali, which is by no means the ideal example of Islamic architecture of Cairo."
Fired-up describes a fraction of Swelim's presence -- his sentences staccato, his hand movement angular, his voice excessively stern.
"It doesn't represent Egyptian Islamic architecture," he continues, pausing just long enough to catch his breath. "Egyptian Islamic architecture is Mameluke. Not Ottoman."
A much better place to go, he suggests, is the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. "It is exceptional," he says.
Swelim stops, and leans across the table.
"I think now is the time for a biscuit," he smiles.
Swelim's passion began at the Faculty of Tourism, where a professor by the name of Shahira Mehrez advised him to apply for a master's degree in Islamic Art and Architecture at the American University in Cairo (AUC).
"It was a huge shift from the Egyptian educational system to AUC," he chuckles. "You start to build up the character and ideas and opinions of an individual, rather than repeating what you have memorised. You actually start thinking about what you are saying. And you're treated as an individual."
It was Laila Ali Ibrahim, whom he calls his "godmother", who introduced Swelim to the buildings that would become his overriding interest.
"She took me around the monuments and ultimately had a great impact on me," he recalls fondly. "Tante Laila she became. She forced, imposed, clarified, made perfectly clear an important issue -- you cannot study Islamic architecture in the library. You have to go to the monuments, you have to deal with them and see them to understand the architecture. To study Islamic architecture is to react to the monuments. You can read about them, but you won't understand them."
"Going into Islamic art rather than Egyptology was exciting because the monuments are there -- they're very close. If you study Saqqara, or Luxor, or Aswan, you have to travel there, but the monuments are just half an hour away from your home."
photos: Ayman Ibrahim
________________________________________
But that is not all.
"Every time you go, you see something different," he says. "If you concentrate on two monuments a day, you have a whole summer. You've filled up your summer, khalas, period. And not just one summer -- at least two. And you walk around, with your camera, observing, taking pictures"
But proximity is only part of the appeal.
"This accessibility made it more exciting," he says. "And then of course, it's different".
"How many people are studying Islamic art and architecture today?" he questions, "or at that time? It is a rarity."
He decided to take it further.
"Everyone was advising me to apply to Harvard for a PhD," he says, shaking his head in seeming recollection of the absurdity of the suggestion at the time. "I told them it was impossible. And of course I had no money," he half laughs.
He applied, and was accepted with a full fellowship to study under Oleg Grabar, one of the most respected authorities on Islamic art and architecture.
"At the time I was working in tourism," he says. "I had been working as a guide since 1979. And a good guide," he laughs. "I was not desperate for a PhD. I already had a very good job here, great life, a wonderful social life, friends all over. So I went to Harvard!"
Finishing his requirements two years later in 1989 Swelim returned home to Cairo to begin work on his thesis, on the mosque of Ibn Tulun.
"It was then that I started guiding plus lecturing. I used to work with my father, we used to take the tours together," he says, explaining how his academic-oriented guiding began. "It was Peter Volk, the head of the Stanford Study/Travel Programme who suggested that I should share the lectures with my father, so I started on Islamic architecture, Islamic history. Then I went into other subjects, like 19th century paintings of Egypt; subjects people were not talking about, were not lecturing on, at that time."
He wanted to make his own lectures "different" from others. "And I wanted people to leave me thinking about what they have learned," he adds.
"In my teaching," he said of his position as assistant professor at AUC, "I try to do the same thing."
Juggling his time between his tour sites, his teaching, restoration work on Bayt Al-Suhaymi with Assad Nadim and Nawal El-Messiri, and his family, Swelim found himself drained of his usual zeal.
"It was exhausting, flying in to Cairo at 5am to teach a course at eight, and flying back to Aswan a few hours later to catch up with my tour," he says. "But I love teaching. I love to see a student learn. Just one student, even."
He decided, instead, to gather all his experiences together and put them into one package.
"I decided to expand, start leading tours outside of Egypt. I started with Syria and Jordan. I was fascinated by the wealth of their cultures, and by the variety. In Egypt there is just too much. Ancient Egypt, there's too much; Graeco Roman, Islamic, too much. Over there it's different. One day you're doing Crusaders, the next you're doing Islamic, the third Ancient."
"There is wonderful architecture in Syria, for example, that is either contemporary to Egypt or earlier," he says. "Where does Egypt fit in this history. It forced me to open my eyes and look at the country as part of a bigger, global evolution. It makes you understand and appreciate the architectural and cultural heritage more. And once you go to places like Dubai, with their modernism and flamboyance, it makes you more aware of Egypt's strengths, weaknesses, and the problems we are really encountering."
"Always when we're in Egypt we say that there is nothing like Egypt. But in what way?" he asks. "Yes, it is wonderful to be around Karnak, Edfu, the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Qalawun and Sultan Hassan, but it is also wonderful to be visiting Crak des Chevaliers, Palmyra in Syria, Baalbak in Lebanon, and the Palace of Imam Ali in Yemen. It's important to see the rest of the region; it puts Egypt in historical perspective -- deepens and enriches its history as you understand it."
This realisation propelled Swelim headlong into his regional lecturing, expanding his expertise from its core at the Mosque of Ibn Tulun to the rest of the Middle East, crossing the desert in four-wheel drives in Yemen, through Oman and the countries of the Gulf. There -- even in remote villages -- he became known as "the professor".
Swelim pauses.
"Just a moment, excuse me," he says, leaning over and pointing. "You have an eyelash under your eye. I always tell Karim and Farida [his children] to make a wish."
He pauses a moment more while the wish is made, then continues.
"I was the first to lead the Smithsonian Institute group into Syria and Jordan, the first to lead the American Museum of Natural History into Yemen and Oman, and I was asked to lead a group on the Song of Flower -- one of the most luxurious cruise ship in the world -- chartered by Harvard University. My groups were becoming more intellectual, more academic, much more diverse. I also occasionally did joint lecturing with people such as Whealer Thaxton and Roger Owen from Harvard."
He thinks of himself, he says, as a lecturer to the world on the Middle East and Islamic world.
"Like I said, you can learn all you want about a place from a book, but you will never fully understand it unless you actually go there and interact -- with the architecture, with the people, with the culture. There is a difference."
A difference, too, in how he thinks, and what he hopes to achieve through his work.
"I want to revolutionalise tourism, I want to create a new form of academic tourism, intellectual tourism."
And he wants, of course, to shed light on areas, monuments, and issues too often brushed aside.
"Architecture," he says, "is the art of motion, in a sense. You see a building, and it attracts you, so you want to enter. It may draw you in further, and you won't want to leave. You are experiencing good dynamic architecture," he continues. "An unsuccessful building is one you enter and want to leave right away. You don't fall into the context of its surroundings. Buildings have to relate to the mode of the people in them -- how they talk, dress, sit. The air and wind and light all need to be taken into consideration -- it has to blend into its surroundings and the culture and history and heritage of the area."
Take the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, for example.
"I always show it to people because it's a fantastic building. But what is fantastic? It is unique in that it is quite alien to Egyptian architecture in general -- its style is purely Iraqi-Mesopotamian. And there are interesting legends connected to the site where it was built."
"It's very simple, and has effects [of light and shade] that relates to the visitor, so your eye is constantly moving from one point to another. It is extraordinary."
Its history, is another story.
"It was never appreciated by Egyptians because it was never understood. It was seldom used for prayer, for example, because it had piers not columns. It was neglected and only revived later on during the Fatimid period."
The Fatimid vizir, Swelim says, would stand at the top of the mimbar after the Friday prayers and announce the taxes.
"Then at the time of Salaheddin it was used as a shelter for Maghrebi pilgrims -- a political tool that he used, allowing them to pass through Cairo on condition that they stayed in the mosque. In 1296, under the leadership of Sultan Lajin, it was re- revived, some elements were restored and added, then it just deteriorated during the time of Mohamed Ali and was converted into an asylum."
The theory is that Mohamed Ali wanted to get rid of people he did not want roaming about but lacked the funds to build a prison.
"It was only really given importance in modern times, because it brought in money to the government from the tourism industry."
But if the mosque now receives a great deal of attention from locals and foreigners alike Swelim still believes it is not yet receiving its due.
"It is unique. It has a spiral minaret and mosaic Mihrab. The monumental mimbar is the largest wooden piece of work of its kind -- a masterpiece. The dome over the fountain is unique. And the relation between the different elements of the mosque is incredible... the windows and arches propel people to walk around it. Everything in the building is unique: its history, reconstructions, architecture, legends."
Which is why, perhaps, so many years after his first introduction to the building, he has embarked on a project -- sponsored by the Dutch Institute -- to write a book on the mosque.
"Bored of going to Ibn Tulun? Or the sites?" he retorts, laughing at the absurdity of the thought. "When you like your job you never get bored. Besides, every time is different because the people in your group are different. You have to cater to their needs and desires and interests. You lecture to the intellectual level of your clients, and success, in this case is when you get on their wavelength and talk to them accordingly. If you give them too much they switch off, if you give them too little, they get bored. Once you give the right amount, you see it in their eyes -- they light up; they are yours."
"Our job is to teach them, and make sure they have a great day," he continues. "If you have a family you have to cater to the academic parents, but also to the kids. You have to make it exciting for them, make it an adventure. You actually have to talk to the children."
This, Swelim says, is critical to promoting Egypt and pushing it into a different global light.
"We need to promote the country. Our mass media, unfortunately, is on a totally different frequency than that of the West. We have to expose our culture to the world. We need to show them that we are well-educated, cultured, that we have a heritage and civilisation. It is our job to raise the awareness of the heritage of the country, to create a global cultural awareness of that heritage," he insists.
"Basic tours of Ancient Egypt are not going to do the job. We have a huge responsibility as guides -- whether academic or not. I get many people who have diverse and negative ideas about Egyptians, but as the days pass their impressions start to change. By the time they leave they are saying that they want to come back, and many have. That is the ultimate success of a guide."
And Swelim is undoubtedly successful. The key to a good adventure, Newsweek International wrote in a feature profiling the "five best guides in the world", is finding the right guide. And out of the five profiled, Swelim came out top.
"Lecturing is an art," he tells me as we are sitting in his Pyramids home, with mashrabeya, shukhshaykhas and malqafs. "There is always a build up and I know how to make the chemistry work with my groups. How? One is experience, and two is just being gifted, or talented, or lucky. You need to give correct information from its truest point. Then you have to test the intellectual level of the group. Then as it gets more and more serious, a joke has to break through. That is when the ice is broken, and from then on everyone is relaxed."
And what he does for his clients he does, too, for his children.
"Everyone in my family encouraged me to love and appreciate my Egyptian heritage," he says. "My father used to take me round the archaeological sites when I was a child. I used to enjoy the adventure, and that, now, is what I enjoy to do with my children. I try as much as possible to take them to the museums and sites and they love learning. When we are on vacation I take them and their friends on daily tours. Just a couple of hours here and a couple of hours there makes a world of difference. The result is that my children enjoy their cultural heritage and are aware of its beauty, importance and values."
One evidence of which, he says, is that his daughter fell in love with Tutankamun when she was four.
"When we returned to the museum later," he laughs, "she was furious that other people were admiring the king's throne because she considered it hers!"
It is a duty that he takes as seriously as his professional lecturing.
On a Tuesday afternoon Swelim answers his mobile, and abruptly asks if he can return my call later.
"I can't talk now," he says. "I'm on a trip with the kids. I'll have to call you back later. Half an hour."
It was a half-sentence question, but it is too late. The call has been ended. Swelim is at work.