Book excerpt: This book uses photographs as documentary evidence to study Islamic architecture. The Creswell photographic archive at the American University in Cairo is an invaluable resource of over 12,000 printed images of Islamic architecture, mainly in Cairo, but also including buildings in other important cities such as Cordoba and Baghdad. Creswell's own photographs constitute the majority of the collection, but he also assembled work by photographers active in the decades before he began his systematic recording in the 1920s.