35 years of support
Over 700 projects supported
Over 40 countries
Zakat Support
The Barakat Trust has survived on the generosity of its individual and corporate donors. The Barakat Trust needs your support to continue its work.
Each year The Barakat Trust raises funds to provide financial aid for tuition and fellowships, conservation, excavation, publications, exhibitions, conferences, and surveys.
Please give generously to support our continued legacy.
What is Zakat?
Zakat, or almsgiving, is one of the five pillars of Islam, along with prayer, fasting, pilgrimage (Hajj) and belief in Allah (SWT) and His Messenger, Prophet Muhammad (SAW). For every sane, adult Muslim who owns wealth over a certain amount – known as the nisab – he or she must pay 2.5% of that wealth as Zakat.
“…and those in whose wealth there is a recognised right, for the needy and deprived” (Qur’an 70:24-5)
Zakat Support
Support our annual grant-giving programme by making a donation!
The Barakat Trust has survived on the generosity of its individual and corporate donors. The Barakat Trust needs your support to continue its work. Each year The Barakat Trust raises funds to provide financial aid for tuition and fellowships, conservation, excavation, publications, exhibitions, conferences, and surveys.
Your donation will contribute to enabling us to support and promote the study and preservation of Islamic art, heritage, architecture and culture for future generations.
- £11,500 will fund a senior scholar on a taught masters
- £23,000 will fund an International Studentship
- £1,725 will fund a travel grant for fieldwork and study, attending conferences, and participating in educational and/or training programmes
- £11,500 will fund a research, educational and/or training programmes, and other projects relating to the archaeology, the conservation and the history of the material and visual culture of Muslim societies.
- £8,050 will fund a conservation project or the training of a conservator in the fields of Islamic art and architecture.
- £6,900 will fund a major publication on Islamic art, architecture, archaeology etc.
- £11,500 will fund making available online any major collection of Islamic art, architecture and archaeology
- £20,700 will fund Postdoctoral Scholarship at the University of Oxford
- £13,527 will fund a University of Oxford Studentship
Please give generously to support our continued legacy.
Examples of projects supported!
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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) [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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.