In this conversation, Seif El Rashidi will discuss the over one thousand-year-old tradition of textile appliqué work (khayamiyya) in Egypt and how the aesthetic of the craft has been adapted to cater to international audiences and adopted by contemporary designers. Video footage of master-stitchers at work will also feature as part of this conversation.
Culturally significant animals in Arabia have become endangered due to habitat and population loss. This seminar – relating on the book Wuhush al-Qasidah – will shed light on the prominence and roles some of those animals played in pre-Islamic (Jahili) Arabic poetry, demonstrating their important place in Arabic literature. This [...]
Description Indians appear in Persian painting long before the Safavid period (1501-1722), either as characters in illustrations of the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi or Khamsa of Nizami or as unidentified labourers, elephant jockeys and the like. Over the course of the 16th and 17th centuries the Persian depiction of Indians expanded to include portraits and [...]
