Titus Burckhardt, son of Swiss sculptor Carl Burckhardt and great nephew of famous art historian Jacob Burckhardt, was born in Florence in 1908. His youth was devoted to studies in art, art history, and oriental languages, and to journeys through North Africa and the Near East. In 1942, he became director of the Graf-Verlag publishing house, which specialized in facsimile editions of ancient manuscripts. He presided over the interesting series Statten des Geistes (Homesteads of the Spirit) covering Mount Sinai, Celtic Ireland, and Constantinople. To this he contributed two of his own works, Siena: City of the Virgin and Chartres and the Genesis of the Gothic Cathedral.

 

Titus Burckhardt, the son of Swiss sculptor Carl Burckhardt, was born in 1908. His youth was devoted to studies in art, art history, and oriental languages and to journeys through North Africa and the Near East. In 1942, he became director of Urs Graf-Verlag, a publishing house specializing in facsimile editions of ancient manuscripts. He remained there until 1968. In addition to writing books in German, he has translated many important works from the Arabic.

Of his own books, An Introduction to Sufi Doctrine, Sacred Art in East and West, Moorish Culture in Spain, The Art of Islam, Siena: City of the Virgin, Fez: City of Islam, Chartres, and a collection of his essays Mirror of the Intellect have all appeared in English. The last three, as well as Alchemy, were translated from the German by Dr. William Stoddart.