The Architecture of the Seljuk Turks, as well as proving to be their most lasting contribution to history, is also a contribution to the great architecture of world, both from the point of view of technical accomplishment and in its marvellously imaginative use of decoration. Thanks to the pioneering work of Halil Edhem and Max Van Berchem in Part III of their Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum (Cairo, 1910–17) [CIA.] and of their many successors our knowledge of the extant, and destroyed, monuments has been increased to the extent that a series of secondary studies, on relations between various groups of monuments in default of more precise details of the relationships between craftsmen and their patrons or employers, or, more ambitiously, general attempts to explain the high place which architecture so obviously held in the Seljuks' estimation, becomes necessary. Moreover, although the individuality of their contribution is comparatively well-known by this time, even in Western Europe, it is still obscure how the manifold influences which the Seljuks in their progress westwards through Persia and the Caucasus underwent were transmuted in Turkey into a style of such originality, strength and charm.