Published on the occasion of the Colonial Exhibition of 1931, Ancient and Medieval Syria Illustrated was commissioned by the High Commissioner of France to the Levant Henri Ponsot with the aim of promoting the archaeological riches of the region, then under French mandate. The work, produced jointly by Paul Deschamps, director of the Museum of Comparative Sculpture at the Trocadero, Henri Seyrig, Director of the Antiquities Service in Syria and Lebanon and René Dussaud, contains an album of 160 plates, each provided with a notice. Introduced by a succinct but valuable summary of the history of Syria from the earliest times to the end of Mamluk rule, it reviews an impressive number of localities and civilizations. From the Phoenician temples of Byblos to the palace of Beit ed-din via the sanctuary of Bel in Palmyra, the great mosque of Aleppo or the Crac des Chevaliers, this book is a complete panorama of the Syrian and Lebanese heritage that this book, thanks to to magnificent period photographs, offers its reader. |