LECTURES, SEMINARS & CLASSES
Teaching this term will be delivered in person in the KRC Lecture Room. If you have any questions regarding online access, please contact daniel.burt@ames.ox.ac.uk
Please refer to the Canvas website for teaching materials relative to the MPhil and MSt in Islamic Art and Architecture: https://canvas.ox.ac.uk.
History of Islamic Art and Architecture II (11th–15th centuries)
Teaching staff: Umberto Bongianino and Günseli Gürel, with a special lecture by Cailah Jackson
Restricted to first-year students on the MPhil in Islamic Art and Architecture, as well as AMES students accepted for an option, further subject, or special subject in Islamic Art and Architecture.
Tuesdays 15.30–17.30, Weeks 1–8 (KRC Lecture Room)
Week 1: Fatimid architecture and its messages
Week 2: The Seljuq Empire and its legacy
Week 3: The arts under the Almoravids and Almohads
Week 4: The Islamic facet of Norman Sicilian art
Week 5: Figural art and manuscript illustration in the Near East
Week 6: Architecture and visual culture in medieval Anatolia
Week 7: The Mamluk ‘public text’: epigraphy and calligraphy in Cairo
Week 8: The palaces of the Alhambra: myth and reality
Introduction to Arabic Palaeography
Teaching staff: Umberto Bongianino
Open to all Oxford students with a good grounding in Arabic. A written examination will be set for second-year students on the MPhil in Islamic Art and Architecture and the MSt in Medieval Studies.
Mondays 10.30–12.30, Weeks 1–8 (Venue: St Cross College, Sybil Dodd Room)
Week 1: The formative period
Week 2: The Umayyad State Week 3: The Abbasid horizon
Week 4: The Ifrīqī milieu
Week 5: Al-Andalus and the Maghrib, part I
Week 6: Al-Andalus and the Maghrib, part II
Week 7: The Fatimid era
Week 8: Ayyubids and Mamluks
Ottoman Manuscript Painting (15th–17th centuries)
Teaching staff: Günseli Gürel
Restricted to KRC and AMES students with an interest in the Ottomans. A written examination will be set for second-year students on the MPhil in Islamic Art and Architecture.
Mondays 11.00–13.00, Weeks 1–8 (KRC Lecture Room)
Week 1: Introduction: making and reading manuscripts at the Ottoman court Week 2: Cartographic representations
Week 3: Illustrated histories and royal iconography
Week 4: Depictions of marvels, magic, monsters and miracles
Week 5: Calligraphy and discourses on art
Week 6: An expanding book culture
Week 7: Painting in the provinces
Week 8: Review and manuscript viewing session at the Bodleian
Portfolio of Practical Work
Teaching staff: Silke Ackermann, Umberto Bongianino, Günseli Gürel, Juan de Lara
Restricted to second-year students on the MPhil in Islamic Art and Architecture.
Thursdays 14.00–16.00, Weeks 1, 5, 8
Week 1: Manuscripts, Weston Library (GG)
Week 5: Coins, Ashmolean Museum (UB & JdL)
Week 8: Astrolabes, History of Science Museum (SA)
Manuscript Viewing Sessions
Teaching staff: Umberto Bongianino, Teresa Fitzherbert, Niko Kontovas, Emilie Savage-Smith, Edward Shawe-Taylor, Alasdair Watson
Restricted to KRC and AMES students with an interest in Islamic manuscripts.
Registration is essential (e-mail teresa.fitzherbert@ames.ox.ac.uk).
Fridays 11.00–12.45 PM, Weeks 2, 4, 6, 8 (Weston Library)
Week 2: Introduction to the Islamic collections, Qurʾans, and an illustrated treatise on amulets (AW & UB, Meeting Rooms 3-10 and 3-11)
Week 4: Arabic illustrated manuscripts (UB & ES-T, Bahari Seminar Room)
Week 6: Ilkhanids and associated manuscript traditions (TF and NK, Horton Seminar Room)
Week 8: Maps Terrestrial and Celestial (ES-S & UB, Horton Seminar Room)
KRC Research Seminars
Convenors: Umberto Bongianino and Günseli Gürel
All Oxford students, staff, and the general public are welcome to attend.
Thursdays 17.15–18.45 PM, Weeks 1–8 (KRC Lecture Room)
Week 1 (23rd January) Reintegrating the Empire: taking an expansive view towards "Ottoman" collections - Michael Erdman (British Library)
Week 2 (30th January) Anatolian language carved in stone: reading the walls of Ani across Christian and Islamic visual cultures - Beatrice Spampinato (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence)
Week 3 (6th February) Enacting the divine love and remembering the dervish-sultan Murad II: the inscriptions of the Muradiye Mevlevi Lodge in Edirne (1435–36) - Tuğrul Acar (Harvard University)
Week 4 (13th February) Making medieval Spain: carpentry practices in Nasrid Granada and the Alhambra - Anna McSweeney (Trinity College Dublin)
Week 5 (20th February) The Pink Qurʾān: a reverse biography - Umberto Bongianino (KRC)
Week 6 (27th February) Knowledge and its transmission in Ottoman manuscript culture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: observations and propositions - Sinem Eryılmaz (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Week 7 (6th March) Epicscapes of medieval Anatolia: geographical imagination and identity in Anatolian Turkish frontier narratives - Zeynep Aydoğan (Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Rethymno)
Week 8 (13th March) Ideology and contestation in the foundation narratives of the first Islamic cities - Edward Zychowicz-Coghill (King’s College London)
