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Congratulations New Grantee – British Museum

Congratulations to one of our successful 2022 grantees! We are thrilled to fund the International Training Programme (ITP) at the British Museum, London, United Kingdom. So what is the ITP? We know museums change lives. To improve museums across the world, this excellent programme teaches exciting and important skills [...]

Matt Saba

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 [...]

Impermanent Monuments, Lasting Legacies: The Dār al-Khilāfa of Samarra and Palace Building in Early Abbasid Iraq

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 [...]

Press: Helping Gaza university restore a Sufi institute

We are delighted to be funding the Iwan Center for Cultural Heritage at the Faculty of Engineering at the Islamic University of Gaza in an important forthcoming project. This project will undertake essential restoration work on the oldest Mamluk religious site in the Gaza Strip: a 700-year-old Sufi institute called [...]

Hands On Islamic Art Project – Congratulations Grant Winner!

We have some exciting news: our grants committee have made their decisions. It's time to start announcing the grant-winners of this year's Hands On Islamic Art Project, sponsored by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Three fantastic projects have been chosen, and this is one of them... Congratulations to Leighton [...]

Saudi Modern: A new podcast with Abdulrahman and Turki Gazzaz

How did the discovery of oil transform Saudi Arabia's cities and its architecture?  How can art and architecture come together to capture the spirit of modernism in a nation known more for tradition? Join this conversation with Abdulrahman and Turki Gazzaz, two architect brothers, to discover how their curiosity [...]

Independent Evaluator – Hands on Islamic Art Heritage Lottery Project

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 [...]

Working in an Indian Archive: Indo-Persian Documents

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 [...]

New Podcast: Secret Geometry with Wael Sabry

Join Wael Sabry on his quest to save the ancient craft of Kundekari - complex wooden geometry. Sabry is  tracking down the few remaining master carpenters in Turkey and Egypt, trying to learn their carefully-guarded secrets, hidden even from father to son.  Discover how he is using technology to [...]

New Podcast: Decoding Arms and Armour with Arthur Bijl

Join Arthur Bijl for a revealing conversation about the forgotten meanings of arms and armour, once a global symbol of male status, fashion and identity.   Arthur draws upon the magnificent Wallace Collection to challenge our understanding of what we think of today simply as 'weapons'. He tell us the [...]

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