The Barakat Trust was founded as a UK charity in 1987 and operates for educational and heritage purposes, providing scholarships and grants for study and research projects at the world’s most respected academic and cultural institutions at post-graduate and post-doctoral level amongst other initiatives.

The Barakat Trust is an international non-political, non-religious, non-sectarian and independent charity based in the United Kingdom.

The aims of the charity are;

a) Intellectual Excellence; support, nurture and promote study and scholarship of Islamic art history, architecture and archaeology.

b) Preservation of Heritage; conserve the material culture of the Islamic world and elevate the level of curation and skills in conservation. To further make the material culture of the Islamic world more accessible through digital and other means.

c) Create Awareness; provide a platform for cross cultural understanding and tolerance across the world by promoting the findings, research and project outputs and study of Islamic culture.

d) Sustainable growth & development; develop effective long terms partnerships and sustain current and future aims of the trust.

For fourteen centuries, the art and architecture of the Islamic world has represented a pinnacle of achievement for some of the greatest civilizations in history. In recent years there has been deliberate destruction of cultural heritage and looting of art and antiquities in the Levant regions in Iraq, Syria, Libya and beyond, which has been branded “a form of cultural cleansing” by UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova.

In light of the current socio-political climate, there is a pressing need for the arts and culture of the Islamic World to be nurtured through scholarship and study programmes, preserved through elevated levels of curation and conservation, better understood through wider access and digital platforms creating long term growth and sustainability through a range of creative initiatives including the ‘curated culture’ programme aimed at adults and families.