Name

Saladin, Henri

Birth and Death
Bolbec (Seine-Maritime) 22.11.1851 – 16.12.1923 Paris
Author and Date of Entry
Sarah Keller 2024; Francine Giese 2024
Biographical Data

Shortly after graduating as an architect from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Henri Saladin was dispatched by the French Ministry of Public Education to Tunisia, charged with the task of making a survey of antiquities. Since then, Henri Saladin has been recognized as an authority on the ancient and Islamic art of North Africa, which he came to promote untiringly, whilst encouraging the study and restoration of Tunisian monuments. Saladin popularized Islamic architecture by publishing several books, among them the Manuel d’Art Musulman, 1907, written together with Gaston Migeon, and Tunis et Kairouan, 1908. In both publications, he refers to stucco and glass windows.

Saladin designed the Tunisian pavilions at the Expositions Universelles held in Paris in 1889 and 1900 (IG_92, IG_249), and the fumoir arabe for Henri Moser-Charlottenfels, for which he had designed a replica of an Islamic stucco and glass window (IG_64). He was also Marie Augustine Angélina Delort de Gléon’s architect and responsible for dismantling the interior of her husband's hôtel particulier at Rue de Vézelay 18 in Paris, when it was transferred to the Musée du Louvre in 1922.

Literature

Bacha. M. (2009). „Henri Saladin (1851-1923). Un architecte «Beaux-Arts» promoteur de l’art islamique tunisien“, in: Nabila Oulebsir, Mercedes Volait (Hrsg.) L’Orientalisme architectural entre imaginaires et savoirs, Paris: Picard, 2009, 215-230. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.4000/books.inha.4916.

Henri Saladin, Les Monuments historiques de la Tunisie. 2e* *partie. Les monuments arabes. 1. La mosquée de Sidi Okba de Kairouan, Paris: Leroux, 1899.

Henri Saladin, Notes sur des monuments de la calaâ des Beni-Hammâd, commune mixte des Maadid, province de Constantine (Algérie), Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1904.

Henri Saladin, Manuel d’art musulman – I. L’architecture, Paris: Auguste Picard, 1907.

Henri Saladin, Tunis et Kairouan, Paris: Laurens, 1908.

Henri Saladin, L’Alhambra de Grenade, Paris: Albert Morancé, 1926.