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Excerpt from A Descriptive Catalogue of the Objects Exhibited in the National Museum of Arab Art: Preceded by a Historical Sketch of the Architecture and Industrial Arts Arts of the Arabs in Egypt The National Museum of Arab Art is quite a new institution. Though Arabic literature has long been known in the West, and was assiduously studied as early as the sixteenth century, it has not been the same with Arab art, which already decaying in Egypt, was at that period completely unknown in Europe, unless ice except some slight acquaintance with the art of the Moors. Later on, the subject began to attract some attention, but the knowledge of the art was at first very superficial; as is proved by the quaint illustrations that usually accompanied early works concerning the East. The political events which marked the opening of the nineteenth century created permanent relations between the East and the West, and thus allowed travellers to become initiated into the knowledge of the Arab Art of Egypt. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.