Join Glaire Anderson for a fascinating conversation about one of great inventors of Andalusia: Abbas Ibn Firnas, who successfully invented a glider plane in the 9th century, and undertook the first known flight when in his 60s! Find out about this fascinating man, his many inventions, and the relationship between science and religion in Muslim Spain.
Dr Glaire Anderson is senior lecturer in Islamic art and art history at the Edinburgh College of Art. She served on the Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) Executive Board and currently serve as an International Associate on the Board of Directors of the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA).
She is an advocate for the power of Islamic visual culture to reveal a more diverse and interconnected global history and to that end leads the Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture & Collections to explore new visualization and mixed reality technologies to create immersive experiences of Islamic spaces and objects.
She is the author of the award winning The Islamic Villa in Early Medieval Iberia: Aristocratic Estates and Court Culture in Umayyad Córdoba (Ashgate, 2013) and numerous articles and essays on the history and art of Islamic Spain and the medieval Mediterranean. Her current book is about Abbas Ibn Firnas, the great Andalusian inventor and poet.
This podcast is part of Converging Paths, an initiative organised by The Barakat Trust in partnership with the Asia House exploring the arts and cultures of the Islamic World. Converging Paths is generously supported by the Altajir Trust and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture’s Education Programme.
