Matt is Visual Resources Librarian for Islamic Architecture at the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries. His research interests include imperial building practices in late antiquity and early Islam as well as the history of Islamic art as a discipline. As a librarian he is involved in building MIT's bibliographic [...]
This book offers a new interpretation of early Abbasid palaces as “impermanent monuments.” Synthesizing an array of sources, ranging from archaeological finds and classical Arabic literature to modern studies on the social and intellectual history of Islamic civilization, it reveals ways in which the Abbasid court designed, decorated, presented, and [...]
Independent Evaluator Hands on Islamic Art Heritage Lottery Project The Brief Project Evaluator/Evaluation Team for the evaluation of a three-year heritage project called “Hands On Islamic Art”. The project is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and is to be delivered by The Barakat Trust. We are [...]
Grantee: Hallie Nell Swanson In summer 2019, with the support of The Barakat Trust’s Barakat Postgraduate Student & Early Career Award, I travelled to Hyderabad to take part in the “Working in an Indian Archive” Indo-Persian Summer School, a workshop focused on reading Indo-Persian manuscripts, run by the University [...]
Alain Fouad George is IM Pei Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture and a Fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Oxford. He taught previously at the University of Edinburgh (2007-17) and the Université Saint Joseph in Beirut (2005-7). His research focuses on early Qur'ans, Islamic calligraphy, and [...]
Hallie is a third-year PhD student in the Religious Studies department at the University of Pennsylvania, specializing in Islam in South Asia. She holds an MSc in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA (Honors) in Comparative Literature and Society from Columbia University. She [...]
Kirsten Scheid is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the American University of Beirut and Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Fine Arts and Art History. She researches Imagination; Islamic and Arabic Theories of Visuality; and Modern and Contemporary Art between cultural junctures, especially in the Middle East and North [...]
Joining an emergent literature of “local art histories,” Fantasmic Objects offers the first English-language study of modern art in Lebanon. It is, moreover, the first study of Lebanon through art. An historical ethnography of “art acts” which played a significant role in co-founding the nation during French occupation (1920-1950), [...]
Celebrating Women in Islamic Arts, Heritage and Culture To celebrate, International Women's Day we have selected women, who over the last 35 years have received grants from The Barakat Trust, or have guided the charity as a Trustee or an Academic Advisory Committee Member. All the these women have [...]
The Altajir Trust is a UK based charitable incorporated organisation (CIO), registered charity no. 1159070. The Trust supports exhibitions, publications, educational activities and other programmes related to Islamic culture and history and Muslim - Christian relations. The Altajir Trust was founded by His Excellency Mohamed Mahdi Altajir and is financed [...]
