Projects
The Barakat Trust has funded a unique collection of research and projects over 30 years, which needs to be collated and archived. We are currently trying to fundraise to develop a digital collection and educational pack to make this research available to the public.
A Selection of Projects Funded
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 [...]
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 [...]
Fantasmic Objects: Art and Sociality from Lebanon, 1920-1950
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), [...]
An Archaeological Study of the Impact of Islam on Domestic Architecture of Surame, Nigeria
The concern of this research is to reconstruct the inward orientation of space within the domestic architecture of Surame. The traditional domestic and by extension, the community environments are some of the important archaeological material manifestations of Islam in sub-Saharan Africa. Between January 7-February 3, 2022, this author conducted [...]
The excavation of the Islamic historical core of Dumat al-Jandal (ad-Dira’ district)
BRIEF FINAL REPORT season 2021 Introduction The project, as part of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Saudi Arabia (season 2021), took place from 10/17/2021 to 11/19/2021, proceeding with both the archaeological research and excavation work and the restoration work for the immediate consolidation of the structures excavated inside the Dūmat [...]
Ask The Expert: May al-Ibrashy
This month, May Al-Ibrashy is our selected expert. Dr. May Al-Ibrashy is a conservation architect who undertakes projects to preserve the architectural and cultural heritage of Egypt, especially Cairo. She focuses on working with local communities and ensuring that they are an integral part of any heritage preservation project. She [...]
How Syrians are adapting to home away from home
As a result of the Syrian crisis, many people have left their homeland and started to live abroad. Some came to reside in the United Kingdom. The experience of this change has been overwhelming for many; while others have adapted to their newfound homes with relative ease. In these times, [...]
Post-Conflict Urban Recovery of Historic Cities: A Capacity Building Workshop for Aleppo
Between January 13-18, 2020, the Urban Recovery Platform at the Beirut Urban Lab, the American University of Beirut, conducted a capacity building workshop funded by the Barakat Trust and the Ford Foundation. The workshop focused on post-conflict urban recovery and took the city of Aleppo in Syria as [...]
Documenting Historic Commercial Buildings in Bulaq – Cairo
As a first stage towards preserving a valuable neighbourhood of historic Cairo, a team of four art historians and two conservation architects will survey and assess the conservation state of historic commercial buildings in the area of Bulaq, Cairo, the city's historic river port. Bulaq is a largely overlooked quarter [...]
Archaeological landscape survey at Khirbat al-Mafjar
The Barakat Trust endowed Mahmoud Hawari with a grant to help him with his research project on Hisham's palace located in the West Bank. The overall aim of the Khirbat al-Mafjar is to enhance the understanding of the 8th century Umayyad Hisham's Palace within the context of its cultural and [...]
Kids Camp: Islamic Miniatures & Noble Sports
Our Kids Camp: Islamic Miniatures & Noble Sports workshops introduced young children in London to the wonderful world of Islamic miniatures and the noble sports of the golden age of the Islamic. The educational materials and workshops were funded by Amal and the Royal Borough of Kensington's Grenfell Fund. [...]
Islamic Baydha Archaeological Excavation Video
Enjoy the video of the Islamic Baydha Archaeological Excavation Project in Petra, Jordan supported by The Barakat Trust. The Islamic Bayda Project includes a training programme in archaeological fieldwork, designed for Jordanian and international trainees.
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' - Interior dimensions, architecture, and the cultural nuances and stories that these houses carry and what they mean to Syrian people. [...]
Digitising the K.A.C Creswell’s International Collections
Between 2018 and 2019 the Barakat Trust funded Omniya Abdel Barr's very ambitious project to enhance the Creswell archives in six International collections. K.A.C Creswell's works are held by at least five institutions and in private collections. And together they constitute an invaluable The project provided digitisation, cataloguing and extensive [...]
Shuqayra Conservation Project
Shuqayra Conservation Project: Phase I, West-Central Jordan, 2017. Grantee: ZAKARIYAN.BENBADHANN NA’IMAT, Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn, Germany About the project: The project undertook three main tasks: 1) a detailed artistic and architectural documentation of the mosaic pavement, 2) a complete diagnosis of the current state of preservation [...]
Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the Supernatural
This catalogue, Power and Protection: Islamic Art and the Supernatural deals with the entirety of the Muslim world with a total emphasis on pre-Modern Islamic cultures through the lens of visual and material culture. It contextualises the art work in three essays reflecting the thematic divisions adopted in the exhibition. [...]
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 [...]
Crusader Landscapes in the Medieval Levant: The Archaeology and History of the Latin East
Crusader Landscapes in the Medieval Levant is a collection of scholarly essays addressing a number of aspects of the archaeology and history of settlement in the crusader states established in the Middle East during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, collectively known as the Latin East, and on their influence on the [...]
The Women Who Built the Ottoman World Female : Patronage and the Architectural Legacy of Gulnus Sultan
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Ottoman Empire remained the grandest and most powerful of Middle Eastern empires. One hitherto overlooked aspect of the Empire's remarkable cultural legacy was the role of powerful women - often the head of the harem, or wives or mothers of sultans. These [...]
Sacred Precincts : The Religious Architecture of Non-Muslim Communities Across the Islamic World
This book examines non-Muslim religious sites, structures and spaces in the Islamic world. It reveals a vibrant portrait of life in the religious sites by illustrating how architecture responds to contextual issues and traditions. Sacred Precinctsexplores urban context; issues of identity; design; construction; transformation and the history of sacred sites and [...]
International Training Programme 2014
International Training Programme 2014: Interim report In 2014 the British Museum, in collaboration with seven UK partner museums, hosted 21 museum and heritage professionals from 12 countries on the ninth International Training Programme (ITP). The programme was tailored around group sessions which covered a whole range of museum activities [...]
CRESWELL’s CAIRO PHOTOGRAPHS AT THE V&A
A publication composed in March 2017 to accompany the Creswell Photographic Archive at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington, London. Grantee: Omniya Abdel Barr, researcher at the V&A Museum About the publication: It provides a catalogue, digitisation and extensive data cross referencing. The publication seeks to allow this important [...]
“Mamluk Patronage: An Expansion of a Traditional Concept.”
Iman R. Abdulfattah, Doctoral candidate in Islamic Art and Archaeology at the University of Bonn The grantee is well acquainted with the School of Mamluk Studies (SMS). It was created in 2014 to foster and promote a greater awareness of the Mamluk sultanate. As well as to provide junior and [...]
Contemporary Art from the Middle East
This timely book tackles ongoing questions about how 'local' perspectives on contemporary art from the Middle East are defined and how these perspectives intersect with global art discourses. Leading figures from the Middle Eastern art world, western art historians, art theorists and museum curators discuss the historical and cultural circumstances [...]
Digital Access to Persian Manuscripts
Digital preservation of illustrated Persian manuscripts, forming part of a larger Digital Persian Manuscripts project which aims to put details of 11.000 manuscrpts online together with digitised images of 50. Author : Ursula Sims Williams This digitised manuscripts are available here : https://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/persian.html
Ornament and space in the Islamic architecture of southeast Europe, 15th-19th centuries
In 2012 the Barakat Trust gave a grant to Dr Maximilian Hartmuth, Professor of Art History at the University of Vienna. His research project was predicated upon delving deeper into the Islamic architectural heritage of Southeast Europe. Paradoxically whilst it has close proximity to International centres of research and its [...]
Djarawa
In 2012 the Barakat Trust gave a grant to Caroline Goodson, Ms Corisande Fenwick, Professor Hassan Limane and other experts to help them travel to Djarawa, Eastern Morocco. The purpose of the visit was to fieldwalk the site and the surrounding area and test the chronology of the site. Whilst [...]
The Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin
In 2012 the Barakat Trust gave a grant to the Museum of Islamic Art, Berlin. The exhibition was titled "Vorsicht Glas! Zerbrechliche Kunst 700-2010". It was dedicated to 1,400 years of creative and diverse treatment of glass in the Middle East. The material qualities of the glass emanating from its [...]
North American Textile Conservation Conference
In 2012 the Barakat Trust gave a grant to Annette Beselin to help her attend the 8th annual North American Textile Conservation Conference from the 8th of November to the 11th held in Oaxaca, Mexico. The conference titled "Plying the Trades: Pulling Together in the 21st Century" explored the various [...]
Tüpraş Field
In 2012 the Barakat Trust gave a grant to Dr Asa Eger from the Greensboro Campus of the University of North Carolina. He is the director of the Tüpraş Field site which is an early Islamic and Middle Byzantine site 900 metres north of the Kinet Mound. This was the [...]
The Tod Mosque Conservation Project, Egypt
Doctors Mohammed Kenawi and Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis are extensively involved in The Tod Mosque Conservation Project. The Amari Mosque is in Tod, Upper Egypt. Near the Pharaonic temple. It is a prime example of a mosque in a rural centre with re-used classical columns and capitals from churches and other late [...]
RAB‘A OF SULTAN QAITBEY
RAB‘A OF SULTAN QAITBEY(monument # 104), Eastern Cemetery, Cairo A publication accompanying the excavation of the Mausoleum of Sultan Qaitbey in Cairo which took place from August 2016 to March 2017 by ARCHiNOS Architecture in collaboration with the Historic Cairo Project of the Ministries of Antiquities. Grantee: , Director, [...]
UNESCO Wood Conservation Course
The Barakat Trust endowed Abdel Hamid Sayed with a conservation grant. The purpose of this grant was to cover travelling costs for the grantee to travel to Norway to attend the prestigious 14thInternational Course on Wood Conservation Technology (ICWCT,2011) in Oslo. The conference was organised under the auspices of UNESCO. [...]
Cairo Cemetery Salvage Project
In 2011 the Barakat Trust gave a grant to May Al-Ibrashy a grant to help participate in the Cairo Cemetery Salvage Project (CCSP). The Mausoleum and Sabil‐Kuttab Radwan Agha al‐Razzaz Conservation Project is building 2 of the Cairo Cemetery Salvage Project (CCSP). Building 1 was the Mausoleum of Ruqayya Dudu [...]
Khirbat Shwaykeh
In 2011 the Barakat Trust gave a grant to Marwan bu Khalaf to help him manage the technical work on the material cultures found in Khirbar Shwaykeh, Palestine in 2009-2010. This find was made more significant by the fact this part of Palestine had been under an economic embargo for [...]
Kenyon Institute
The Barakat Trust helped the Kenyon Institute(Jerusalem) librarian Hussain Gheith continue his part time job. He has been instrumental in developing the library collection which continues to include a core collection of works on modern Palestinian history to serve the changing needs of the library's visitors. Hussein is continuing in [...]
Ottoman endowment deeds
In 2010 the Barakat Trust endowed Aysin Yoltar-Yildirim with a grant to assist her in study and conservation of an important group of endowment deeds belonging to thirteen Ottoman women. This was the subject of a successful exhibition which was set up in the Ankara Museum of Foundations in May [...]
Corrosion phenomena on Islamic glass
The Barakat Trust funded Hams Mohamed's conservation project. He sought to study the corrosion phenomena on the Islamic glass collections at the Petrie Museum based at University College London, and also study the roles of pollutants, relative humidity and temperature effects on the glass collections in Egyptian museums. The project [...]
The Art and Material Culture of Iranian Shi’ism
The official religion of Iran has been Shi'i Islam from the Safavids in the sixteenth century to the present day. Little is known about the material culture produced, especially in Iran, by the narratives and traditions surrounding Shi'ism. The Shi'i world experience has provided a rich artistic tradition encompassing painting, [...]
36th Association of Art Historian Conference
The Barakat Trust endowed Hamid Keshmirshekan with a grant which enabled him to be able to participate at the 36th Association of Art Historian Conference held at the University of Glasgow between the 15th and the 17th of April 2010. The conference had a session devoted to “New Perspectives on [...]
Persian Gardens and Pavillions: Reflections in History Poetry and the Arts
From Timur's tent in Samarqand to Shah 'Abbas's palace in Isfahan and Humayun's tomb in Delhi, the pavilion has been an integral part of Persianate gardens since its earliest appearance at the Achaemenid garden in Pasargadae in the sixth century BC. Here, Mohammad Gharipour places both the garden and the [...]
Imperial Women in Mughal India: The Piety and Patronage of Jahanara Begum
At the height of the Mughal Empire's wealth and power, Jahanara Begum, a 17 year old princess, became the head of the imperial harem. Imperial Women in Mughal India shows how this unmarried princess was able to transcend the customary and religious restrictions imposed on her gender, and make an [...]
International Training Programme at the British Museum 2010
In 2010 the Barakat Trust endowed Hemmat Moustafa Salem with a grant which enabled here to come to London to attend a five week training course at the British Museum entitled the International Training Programme. This was not something new to Hemmat who has extensive experience in the arts being [...]
Glass conservation in Egypt
In 2010 the Barakat Trust endowed a grant to Abdelrazek Mabrouk Elnaggar to support his travels to an important conservation conference in Istanbul, Turkey (IIC Congress,2010) where he presented his work on conserving Egyptian glass using laser cleaning. Abdelrazek is a pioneer in using this revolutionary new method in [...]
The Yezidis: The History of a Community, Culture and Religion
Yezidism is a fascinating part of the rich cultural mosaic of the Middle East. The Yezidi faith emerged for the first time in the twelfth century in the Kurdish mountains of northern Iraq. The religion, which has become notorious for its associations with 'devil worship', is in fact an intricate [...]
Vernacular Architecture of the Western Sahara in Egypt: Al- Dakhlah Oasis
The Barakat Trust gave a grant to Dalia Nabil Aly Abdul-Ghany who wanted to study elements that shaped the physical forms of the medieval towns of al-Qasr and Balat on the urban and interior architectural level, learn more about their qualities of living that they provided to the local community [...]
Rashid Al-Din : Agent and Mediator of Cultural Exchanges in Ilkhanid Iran
Rashid al-Din (1274-1318), physician and powerful minister at the court of the Ilkhans, was a key figure in the cosmopolitan milieu in Iran under Mongol rule. He set up an area in the vicinity of the court where philosophers, doctors, astronomers, and historians from different parts of Eurasia lived together, [...]
Living with Heritage in Cairo: Area Conservation in the Arab-Islamic City
The Arab-Islamic city has been always a glamorous urban dream in human cultural memory. This is manifested in Cairo, the world's largest medieval urban system where traditional lifestyles are still implemented. Nevertheless, despite the extensive efforts to preserve Historic Cairo, it is sadly vulnerable. Ahmed Sedky investigates the reasons behind [...]
Sultans and Mosques : The Early Muslim Architecture of Bangladesh
Before the Mughal style came to dominate the Islamic architecture of the Indian sub-continent, Bengal and its rulers had developed their own forms. The mosque architecture of the Independent Sultanate period (from the 14th to the 16th centuries) represents the most important element of the Islamic architecture of Bengal. This [...]
Glossary of Arabic terms for the Conservation of Cultural Heritage
Glossary of conservation terminology (Arabic-English and English-Arabic) developed by Dr Hossam Mahdy for the ATHAR programme and intended for conservation professionals working in the Arab region. This is a preliminary document distributed to invite discussion and comments. Author : Hossam Mahdy This publication in pdf can be downloaded here : [...]
Osman Hamdi Bey and the Historiophile Mood
Orientalist Vision and the Romantic Sense of the Past in Late Ottoman Culture. Author : Ahmet Ersoy This publication in pdf can be downloaded here : https://www.academia.edu/11300463/Osman_Hamdi_Bey_and_the_Historiophile_Mood
Embroideries and Samplers from Islamic Egypt
One of the world's most important collections of medieval Islamic embroideries is to be found in the Department of Eastern Art in Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum. The textiles were collected by the Egyptologist Percy Newberry between 1900 and 1930, while he was living in Cairo. Most of the embroideries were [...]
Constantinopolis/Istanbul: Cultural Encounter, Imperial Vision, and the Construction of the Ottoman Capital
A symbolic locus embodying myriad meanings, the political center of the eastern Mediterranean, and one of the old world’s largest urban centers, Constantinople was the site of large-scale urban and architectural interventions. Changing visions—the changing political, cultural, and religious orientations of those who lived there and those who ruled from [...]
A Survey of Architectural Remains along the Mughal Highway from Agra to Lahore
This study makes use of the primary sources like ancient texts, and medieval chronicles retrieved initially from Indian archives, and studies of archaeological survey of India reports, district and state Gazetteers. Author : Subhash Parihar The publication can be purchase from here : https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9788173053351/Land-Transport-Mughal-India-Agra-Lahore-8173053359/plp
Early Persian Painting : Kalila Wa Dimna Manuscripts of the Late 14th Century
"Kalila and Dimna" or "The Fables of Bidpai" is one of the gems of world culture, having been translated through the centuries everywhere from China to Spain. "Kalila and Dimna", like the fables of Aesop or Lafontaine, are subtle and suggestive moral tales - a kind of repository of wisdom [...]
The Monuments of Historic Cairo: A Map and Descriptive Catalogue
Comprising thirty-one maps at a metric scale of 1:1,250 and a descriptive catalogue, The Monuments of Historic Cairo marks the first time that the city's significant architectural heritage has been mapped in ground plan within the present-day urban context. The work surveys an area of nearly six square kilometers, stretching [...]
Islamic Art and Architecture, 650-1250
This richly illustrated book provides an unsurpassed overview of Islamic art and architecture from the seventh to the thirteenth centuries, a time of the formation of a new artistic culture and its first, medieval, flowering in the vast area from the Atlantic to India. Inspired by Ettinghausen and Grabar's original [...]
Constructions of Power and Piety in Medieval Aleppo
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Ayyubid dynasty brought unprecedented architectural development to Aleppo, the most important city in medieval Syria. While early Islamic empires usually expressed their grandeur by founding new cities with vast extra-urban palaces, the Ayyubids asserted their power by "modernizing" existing towns. With its large, [...]
The Traditional Architecture of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia encompasses a greater variety of architectural styles than any other country in the Arabian peninsula. The buildings of the coastal, mountain and plains regions are entirely distinctive and local in their character. By contrast, several towns, especially Mecca and Medina, have naturally been directly exposed to foreign architectural [...]
The Court of the Il-Khans, 1290-1340
The proceedings of the Barakat Trust Conference in Islamic Art and History held at St John's College, Oxford in 1994, on the politics and artistic patronage of the Ilkhanid court in Iran between circa AD 1290 and 1340. The Ilkhanids were of Mongol origin, and the papers range from their [...]
The Topkapi Saray Museum: The Albums and Illustrated Manuscripts
This volume focuses on the museum's exceptional group of Islamic miniature paintings found in illustrated copies of classic works & as surviving fragments pasted or bound into albums in the former royal libraries. It is illustrated with representative examples of sacred, literary, & technical works reflecting the patronage of individual [...]
Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning
This beautifully conceived and produced survey of Islamic architecture explores the glorious world of the caravansarai, mausoleum, palace, and mosque. Focusing on the multifaceted relation of architecture to society, Robert Hillenbrand covers public architecture in the Middle East and North Africa from the medieval period to 1700. Extensive photographs and [...]
Balat, Egypt
In 2011 the Barakat Trust gave a grant to Marwah Dabaieh, a doctoral student at the University of Lund. She studied within the faculty of Architecture and Built Environment, in the division of architectural conservation and restoration. Her project involved research into the conservation of the desert vernacular in Egypt, [...]