Heritage
A selection of reports on the heritage projects we have supported and funded in the field of Islamic Art, Heritage and Culture since we were founded in 1987
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Teaching Islamic Art in Schools – A new podcast with Rizwan Iqbal
Join Rizwan Iqbal as he explores how to get young people excited about Islamic art. Listen as he details the problems faced, solutions he has discovered, and the exciting work he has done as part of our Hands On Islamic Art project, which connects the wider UK to Islamic art collections, with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Rizwan is the lead curator for Salaam Festival which explores the future of Islamic art [...]
Gaza: Art History & Lost Monuments – A new podcast with Leena Ghannam
Join Leena Ghannam as she walks us through an often unfamiliar aspect of Gaza: its art, architecture, and monuments. Listen in as she takes us through mermaid monuments and golden markets, from temples of Aphrodite to masterpieces of modern art, exploring from the conquests of Alexander until the recent [...]
Alison Ohta
Alison Ohta is the director of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. She completed her doctoral thesis at SOAS, University of London, on bindings of the Mamluk period (1250–1516). She has lectured and published widely on the subject.
Congratulations New Grantee – Laura Hinrichsen
Congratulations to one of our 2023 grantees! We are thrilled to fund Laura Hinrichsen for her publication. So what is it? About the project: In her upcoming book, provisionally titled The Lost Libraries of Tunis and published by De Gruyter, Hinrichsen explores the medieval libraries of Tunis, long accepted [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]