About Us
The Barakat Trust was founded as a UK charity in 1987 and operates for educational and heritage purposes focusing on the heritage of the Islamic world. We provide 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. We support conservation and documentation work, travel for research and education, training programmes, including the training of conservation professionals and curators. We fund publications, and the digitisation of significant collections, and support other projects that preserve the heritage of the Islamic world, raise awareness, and engage with diverse audiences.
We work in partnership with a wide range of institutions who share common interests. Our partners range in scale from huge national institutions, like the British Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum, the Islamic Arts Museum in Malaysia, to cultural, research and academic institutions, professional organisations, and historians, archaeologists, conservators, curators, and others.
Over the past 30 years, we have invested resources in building the skills of heritage professionals and supporting projects in 40 countries. Many of our grantees have long-standing relationships with The Trust, developed over decades. On the other hand, we are open and welcome new partnerships, new ideas, and new generations.
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.
Projects
Creswell’s Cairo photographs: a project to enhance the Creswell photographic archive at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Grantee: Omniya Abdel Barr Date: 2016 The Barakat Trust funded the “Creswell’s Cairo Photographs” project with a senior visiting scholarship in 2016-2017. The project focused on enhancing the Creswell photographic archive of Cairo at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). The work is allowing this important photographic collection to be [...]
Religious and Biogeographic Identity in Qarakhanid Communities
Religious and Biogeographic Identity in Qarakhanid Communities Samarkand, Uzbekistan, 2016. Grantee: Elissa Bullion About the project: Elissa Bullion received funds from the Trust to conduct human data collection in Samarkand, Uzbekistan on medieval human osteological materials. The overarching aim of the project was to collect demographic and morphological skeletal data [...]
Reframing the Alhambra: Architecture, Poetry, Textiles and Court Ceremonial
The Nasrid builders of the Alhambra - the best-preserved medieval Muslim palatial city - were so exacting that some of their work could not be fully explained until the invention of fractal geometry. Their design principles have been obscured, however, by the loss of all archival material. This book resolves [...]
Magic and Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts
This book offers an integrated study of the texts and images of illustrated Malay manuscripts on magic and divination from private and public collections in Malaysia, the UK and Indonesia. Containing some of the rare examples of Malay painting, these manuscripts provide direct evidence for the intercultural connections between the [...]
Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem
Lawrence Nees is the current H.Fletcher Brown Chair of Humanities holder at the University of Delaware. He received a grant from the Trust to help publish his book Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem which was released in 2016. His book is a very detailed yet also user friendly [...]
Abbasid painting of the Caliphal Palace of Samarra, Iraq
Fatma Dahmani is a Barakat Trust postdoctoral fellow. Her original project was focused solely on the Abbasid painting of the Caliphal Palace of Samarra and the extent to which it is an original piece. After having conducted further research into the broader city more things caught her eye. This included [...]
San Giovanni dei Lebbrosi
During 2014 to 2015 a team led by Mr. Agudo and Mr Mandala performed an excavation of San Giovanni dei Lebbrosi, one of the earliest Norman churches in Sicily. They were funded by the Barakat Trust (2015) and the Spanish Ministry of Culture (2014-2015) The church is in Palermo [...]
Grantee Profile
Nikolaos Vryzidis
Nikolaos Vryzidis received his PhD from SOAS, University of London with a thesis on Greek ecclesiastical textiles of the Ottoman period. His doctoral research focused on the fertilization of the Byzantine canon with loans from Ottoman secular aesthetic mainly, following its evolution during the 16th and 17th centuries. In 2016 [...]
Muneer Elbaz
Mr. Muneer Elbaz has more than 13 years of experiences in the cultural heritage field. He holds a master's degree in the subject of Architectural Conservation from Cairo University in 2007. From 2005-2009, he worked in Cairo and Lahore in different Urban Conservation projects for the Aga Khan Trust for [...]
Cailah Jackson
Cailah Jackson‘s research focuses on the medieval arts of the book of the central and eastern Islamic lands. Cailah gained her DPhil from the University of Oxford in 2017 and is the recipient of several awards including the 2018 Leigh Douglas Memorial Dissertation Prize, given by the British Society for [...]
Doa Sarmad Khan
Doa Sarmad Khan received the Barakat International Studentship in 2019 to study the MA in Conservation Studies at the University of York. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan. She is interested in studying the interaction of cultures on the Indus Plains, [...]
Media
Art & Patronage – The Middle East by Thames & Hudson
The Barakat Trust was featured in 'Art & Patronage The Middle East' published by Thames & Hudson. More »
Harpers Bazaar Arabia featuring Barakat Trustee
Abir Dajani Tuqan takes Bazaar on a journey through a rich and textured life that includes an enviable collection of fashion moments More »
News
Departures Exhibition Featured in Arab News
Departures: A Photographic Journey Through The Islamic World an exhibition organised by The Barakat Trust and Asia House receives coverage in Arab News in an article entitled "Images of Syria's [...]
Islamic Baydha Archaeological Excavation Featured in Jordan Times
Dr Micaela Sinibaldi, director of the archaeological excavations taking place in al-Baydha, Jordan, supported by The Barakat Trust is interviewed in Jordan Times. Read the article here. Image courtesy of [...]
The Architecture of the Veil – Damascene Houses
'Damascene Houses - preserving the memory of an architectural wonder'. In 2017-18, Augustus Lersten was awarded a grant for the production of a video on 'Damascene Houses' - [...]
Hamida Alireza, Founding Barakat Trustee Receives the Saudi-British Society Rawabi Holdings Award
The Barakat Trust is proud to announce that Ms Hamida Alireza, one its founding trustees, received the Rawabi Holding Award from the Saudi-British Society, on Wednesday February 20th, at the [...]