Resources & Publications

Podcast

Tree of Pearls: The Extraordinary Architectural Patronage of the 13th-Century Egyptian Slave-Queen Shajar al-Durr

An Interview with D. Fairchild Ruggles

Shajar al-Durr--known as "Tree of Pearls"--began her remarkable career as a child slave, given as property to Sultan Salih of Egypt. She became his concubine, was manumitted, became his wife, served as governing regent, and ultimately rose to become the legitimately appointed sultan of Egypt in 1250 after her husband's death. Shajar al-Durr used her wealth and power to add a tomb to his urban madrasa; with this innovation, madrasas and many other charitably endowed architectural complexes became commemorative monuments, a practice that remains widespread today. A highly unusual case of a Muslim woman authorized to rule in her own name, her reign ended after only three months when she was forced to share her governance with an army general and for political expediency to marry him.

Despite the fact that Shajar al-Durr's story ends tragically with her assassination and hasty burial, her deeds in her lifetime offer a stark alternative to the continued belief that women in the medieval period were unseen, anonymous, and inconsequential in a world that belonged to men. D. Fairchild Ruggles' Tree of Pearls: The Extraordinary Architectural Patronage of the 13th-Century Egyptian Slave-Queen Shajar Al-Durr (Oxford UP, 2020)--the first ever in English--places the rise and fall of the sultan-queen in the wider context of the cultural and architectural development of Cairo, the city that still holds one of the largest and most important collections of Islamic monuments in the world.

Tanja Tolar is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

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Podcast

From Granada to Berlin: The Alhambra Cupola

An Interview with Anna McSweeney

Part of the series CAHIM Connecting Art Histories in the Museum, Anna McSweeney's book From Granada to Berlin: The Alhambra Cupola (Kettler Verlag, 2020) is the story of an extraordinary survivor from the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain: the Alhambra cupola, now in the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin. The cupola, a ceiling crafted from carved and painted wood, was made to crown an exquisite mirador in one of the earliest palace buildings of the Alhambra. The book is the cupola's biography from its medieval construction to its imminent redisplay in Berlin. It traces the long history of the Alhambra through the prism of the cupola, from the Muslim craftsmen who built it, to its adaptation by the Christian conquerors after the fall of Granada in 1492, to its creation as a heritage site. The cupola was sketched by artists from across Europe before it was dismantled by a German financier and taken to Berlin in the 19th century. It witnessed the dramatic events of the 20th century in Germany and was eventually bought by the Museum in 1978. In recent decades, the new visibility of the cupola to the wider public has prompted questions about the object and its movement from Granada to Berlin. Its removal from the Alhambra and the complex reasons behind this loss is central to this biography. Setting the cupola within the wider context of Islamic heritage, it considers the role of collecting practices in the transformation of living monuments into heritage sites in the 20th century. This book presents a focused study of this unique object that cuts across academic disciplines and geographic boundaries to reveal a new perspective on the legacy of Islamic art in Europe and its continuing relevance today.

Tanja Tolar is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

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Job

Barbara Stoler Miller Assistant Professor, Indian and South Asian Art History

Columbia University

Columbia University’s Department of Art History and Archaeology invites applications
for the Barbara Stoler Miller Assistant Professorship in Indian and South Asian Art, a
tenure track position beginning July 1, 2022.  Specialists in all subfields and periods will
be considered. The Department particularly encourages applications from candidates
whose research and teaching will contribute to a global vision of the history of art and to
the diversity of the Columbia academic community. View

Job

Pomona College – Assistant Professor of Art History - Islamic Art History

The Department of Art History at Pomona College invites applications
for an open rank tenure track position in Islamic art history
beginning July 1, 2022. The field of specialization is open and
includes any area of Islamic art and architectural history from the
early Islamic period to the present. The qualified candidate will
teach two courses per semester while supervising undergraduate theses
and projects. The department seeks scholars who can offer an
interconnected, global art history curriculum within a liberal arts
environment, with creative interdisciplinary collaborations with other
departments and programs, such as Asian and Middle Eastern Studies,
Gender & Women’s Studies, Late Antique & Medieval Studies, and
Religious Studies. View

Call for Participation

Call for papers-journal 21:Inquiries into Art, Theory, and the Visual

We are pleased to invite submissions to the journal 21:Inquiries into Art, Theory, and the Visual. Published quarterly, the journal presents peer-reviewed articles on the visual arts of all cultures, regions, and time periods. The journal welcomes a diversity of perspectives and methodological approaches, and seeks to include work that expands narratives on global culture. This forum embraces the full range of diverse objects, questions, and methodologies that comprise and enrich the discipline. In parallel with this openness in subject matter, 21: Inquiries is available online as an Open-Access-eJournal, making it freely accessible to the widest possible audience. We do not charge “Author processing charges” (APCs) and are a scholar-led journal. Authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions. Our issues are published with the license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, unless this license has to be removed for a specific issue because of restrictions by the provider of the image rights. The journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual – Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und visuellen Kultur was launched in September 2019 with the aim of establishing a new forum for art history. We particularly encourage topics and cultural perspectives that remain marginalized in art history and related fields, and work by scholars of underrepresented backgrounds and/or in early career stages.

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Book

City in the Desert, Revisited: Oleg Grabar at Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi, 1964-71

by Christiane Gruber and Michelle Al-Ferzly, with a foreword by Renata Holod

Between 1964 and 1971, renowned Islamic art historian Oleg Grabar directed a large-scale archaeological excavation at the site of Qasr al-Hayr al-Sharqi. Drawn to the remote 8th-century complex in the…

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New jobs/positions

JOB-Assistant Professor of Art History - Islamic Art History

Pomona College

The Department of Art History at Pomona College invites applications for an open rank tenure track position in Islamic art history beginning July 1, 2022. The field of specialization is open and includes any area of Islamic art and architectural history from the early Islamic period to the present. The qualified candidate will teach two courses per semester while supervising undergraduate theses and projects. The department seeks scholars who can offer an interconnected, global art history curriculum within a liberal arts environment, with creative interdisciplinary collaborations with other departments and programs, such as Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Gender & Women’s Studies, Late Antique & Medieval Studies, and Religious Studies.

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Book

The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus: Art, Faith and Empire in Early Islam by Alain George

The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus: Art, Faith and Empire in Early Islam by Alain George edited by Melanie Gibson The Great Mosque of Damascus is an iconic monument of world architecture, and the oldest…

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HIAA Newsletters

HIAA Fall 2021 Newsletter

HIAA is pleased to share with its members the 2021 Fall Newsletter. It includes the President's Fall Letter, interviews of key scholars, biennial symposium report, notes from the field, and member news. Download PDF View

Book

Antique Dealing and Creative Reuse in Cairo and Damascus 1850-1890: Intercultural Engagements with Architecture and Craft in the Age of Travel and Reform, by Mercedes Volait

The commodification of Islamic antiques intensified in the late Ottoman Empire, an age of domestic reform and increased European interference following the Tanzimat (reorganisation) of 1839. Mercedes Volait examines the social life of typical objects moving from Cairo and Damascus to Paris, London, and beyond, uncovers the range of agencies and subjectivities involved in the trade of architectural salvage and historic handicraft, and traces impacts on private interiors, through creative reuse and Revival design, in Egypt, Europe and America. By devoting attention to both local and global engagements with Middle Eastern tangible heritage, the present volume invites to look anew at Orientalism in art and interior design, the canon of Islamic architecture and the translocation of historic works of art

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