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Published on the occasion of the exhibition The Art of the Qur'an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts, Istanbul, held at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C., October 15, 2016-February 20, 2017.
This edited volume represents the research results of two international conferences organized and sponsored by the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg: "Environmental Approaches in Pre-Modern Middle Eastern Studies" and "Material Culture Methods in the Middle Islamic Periods". The following work consists of three parts, which correspond to the themes of the aforementioned conferences (Contributions to Environmental History and Material Culture Studies) and a third which bridges the gap between the two approaches (Practice and Knowledge Transfer). The present contributions cover a wide range of such topics as urban pollution, local perceptions of weather, rural estate economy, Sufi understandings of nature and the body and mind, houses and socialization, text and gardens, local know-how and interdependence in medieval Syrian agriculture, crop selection and the medieval agricultural economy.
The five Diez albums in Berlin, acquired by Heinrich Friedrich von Diez in Constantinople around 1789, contain more than 400 figurative paintings, drawings, fragments, and calligraphic works originating for the most part from Ilkhanid, Jalayirid, and Timurid workshops. Gonnella, Weis and Rauch unite in this volume 21 essays that analyse their relation to their “parent” albums at the Topkapı Palace or examine specific works by reflecting upon their role in the larger history of book art in Iran. Other essays cover aspects such as the European and Chinese influence on Persianate art, aspects related to material and social culture, and the Ottoman interest in Persianate albums. This book m...
A bold new conceptualization of Islam that reflects its contradictions and rich diversity What is Islam? How do we grasp a human and historical phenomenon characterized by such variety and contradiction? What is "Islamic" about Islamic philosophy or Islamic art? Should we speak of Islam or of islams? Should we distinguish the Islamic (the religious) from the Islamicate (the cultural)? Or should we abandon "Islamic" altogether as an analytical term? In What Is Islam?, Shahab Ahmed presents a bold new conceptualization of Islam that challenges dominant understandings grounded in the categories of "religion" and "culture" or those that privilege law and scripture. He argues that these modes of ...
"India retains one of the richest painting traditions in the history of global visual culture, one that both parallels aspects of European traditions and also diverges from it. While European artists venerated the landscape and landscape paintings, it is rare in the Indian tradition to find depictions of landscapes for their sheer beauty and mood, without religious or courtly significance. There is one glorious exception: Painters from the city of Udaipur in Northwestern India specialized in depicting places, including the courtly worlds and cities of rajas, sacred landscapes of many gods, and bazaars bustling with merchants, pilgrims, and craftsmen. Their court paintings and painted invitat...
Collected articles on Iranian art from the Qajar dynasty. The thirteen articles in this volume were originally given as presentations at the symposium of the same name organized in June 2018 by the Musée du Louvre and the Musée du Louvre-Lens in conjunction with the exhibition The Empire of Roses: Masterpieces of 19th Century Persian Art. The exhibition explored the art of Iran in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while the nation was under the rule of the Qajar dynasty. The symposium set out to present research on previously unknown and unpublished objects from this rich period of art history. This volume, published with the Louvre Museum in France, is divided into four sections. The first, "Transitions and Transmissions," is dedicated to the arts of painting, illumination, and lithography. The focus of the second section, entitled "The Image Revealed," also considers works on paper, looking at new themes and techniques. "The Material World" examines the use of materials such as textiles, carpets, and armor. The articles in the final section discuss the history of two groups of artifacts acquired by their respective museums.
This study is the first to examine the history and composition of the library of Aḥmad Pasha al-Jazzār (d. 1804), the famous governor of northern Palestine in the late eighteenth century, on the basis of the inventory of the library’s holdings. The chapters in the first volume situate the library, one of the largest in Palestinian history prior to the end of the nineteenth century, in its historical context, examine the materiality of the collection based on a study of the extant manuscripts and other historical sources, and analyse the contents of the library. The second volume consists of a facsimile of the inventory, a critical edition and index.
The Qur'an is the foundational sacred text of the Islamic faith. Traditionally revered as the literal word of God, its pronouncements and discussions form the bedrock of Islamic beliefs and teachings. Notwithstanding its religious pre-eminence and the fact that it is the sacred text for over one billion of the world's Muslims, the Qur'an is also considered to be the matchless masterpiece of the Arabic language. Its historical impact as a text can be discerned in all aspects of the heritage of the Arabic literary tradition. Over recent decades, academic engagement with the Qur'an has produced an impressive array of scholarship, ranging from detailed studies of the text's unique language, styl...
"This book is an introduction to Buddhism told as the story of the Korean pilgrim Hyecho, who traveled through the Buddhist world during its eighth-century golden age. Lopez tells the story of Hyecho's journey, along the way introducing key elements of Buddhism--its basic doctrines, monastic institutions, relationship to Islam, and importance of pilgrimage.