Yuan: Chinese Architecture in a Mongol Empire - Hardcover

Steinhardt, Nancy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691240167 ISBN 13: 9780691240169

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2023

Synopsis

A monumental illustrated survey of the architecture of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century China

The Yuan dynasty endured for a century, leaving behind an architectural legacy without equal, from palaces, temples, and pagodas to pavilions, tombs, and stages. With a history enlivened by the likes of Khubilai Khan and Marco Polo, this spectacular empire spanned the breadth of China and far, far beyond, but its rulers were Mongols. Yuan presents the first comprehensive study in English of the architecture of China under Mongol rule.

In this richly illustrated book, Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt looks at cities such as the legendary Shangdu―inspiration for Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Xanadu―as well as the architecture the Mongols encountered on their routes of conquest. She examines the buildings and monuments of diverse faiths in China during the period, from Buddhist and Daoist to Confucian, Islamic, and Christian, as well as unusual structures such as observatories, archways, stone and metal buildings, and sarcophaguses. Steinhardt dispels long-standing views of the Mongols as destroyers of cities and architecture across Asia, showing how the khans and their families built more than they tore down. She demonstrates that the stipulations of the Chinese building system were powerful and resilient enough to guide the architecture that rose under Mongolian rule.

Drawing on Steinhardt’s groundbreaking textual research in numerous languages as well as her pioneering fieldwork at sites across East Asia, Yuan will become the standard reference on this critical period of cultural and artistic exchange.

About this title

About the Author

Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt is professor of East Asian art and curator of Chinese art at the University of Pennsylvania. Her many books include Chinese Architecture (Princeton), winner of the Alice Davis Hitchcock Book Award, and China’s Early Mosques.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691240167
• ISBN 13: 9780691240169
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336