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
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 2–4 PM, 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
Option: Arabic Texts on Islamic Art and Architecture
Teaching staff: Nadia Jamil, 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.
Mondays 15.30–17.30, Weeks 1–8 (KRC Lecture Room)
Text: Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Yūsuf al-Ḥakīm, Al-dawḥa al-mushtābika fī ḍawābiṭ dār al-sikka, ed. by Ḥusayn Muʾnis, Madrid 1958, Chapter 5, pp. 106–39 [44–78]
Portfolio of Practical Work
Teaching staff: Günseli Gürel, Umberto Bongianino, Juan de Lara
Restricted to second-year students on the MPhil in Islamic Art and Architecture.
Thursdays 14.00–16.00, Weeks 2, 4, 6, 8
Week 2: GIS mapping, KRC Lecture Room (GG)
Week 4: Coins, Ashmolean Museum (UB & JdL)
Week 6: Epigraphic metalwork, Ashmolean Museum (UB & JdL)
Week 8: Ceramics, Ashmolean Museum (UB & JdL)
Manuscript Viewing Sessions
Teaching staff: Alasdair Watson, Teresa Fitzherbert, Marinita Stiglitz, Niko Kontovas, Umberto Bongianino, Joumana Medlej, Federica Gigante
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, Horton Seminar Room)
Week 2: Introduction to the Islamic collections, Qurʾans and an Arabic new testament (AW, JM & UB)
Week 4: Islamic manuscripts conservation, paper, inks and pigments (MS)
Week 6: Ilkhanids and associated manuscript traditions (TF and NK)
Week 8: Astronomical and astrological manuscripts (FG & NK)
KRC Research Seminars
Convenors: Umberto Bongianino and Günseli Gürel
All Oxford students, staff, and the general public are welcome to attend. You are advised to arrive early in order to secure a seat, as spaces are limited.
Thursdays 17.15–18.45 PM, Weeks 1–8 (KRC Lecture Room)
Week 1 (22nd January): Timekeeping between art and science: integrated approaches to the history of Mamluk astronomy - Yusuf Tayara (Wolfson College)
Week 2 (29th January): The hidden life of Kūfī scripts: practice-based insights and theories - Joumana Medlej (Independent Scholar)
Week 3 (5th February): The silk core, or lessons from medieval Iberian textile studies - Maria Judith Feliciano (CSIC, Madrid)
Week 4 (12th February): BOOK LAUNCH — Islamic Objects in Seventeenth-Century Italy: Ferdinando Cospi, the Bologna Collection and the Medici Court - Federica Gigante (KRC)
Week 5 (19th February): Wall painting in the Islamic West and the aesthetic of naqsh - Umberto Bongianino (KRC)
Week 6 (26th February): Debt in stone: architectures of finance in late Ottoman Istanbul - Eva Schreiner (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence)
Week 7 (5th March): Picturing marvels, magic and monsters at the Ottoman court, 1574–1603 - Günseli Gürel (KRC)
Week 8 (12th March): A Greek-Orthodox monastery in the desert: Mount Sinai and the material culture of its Arabic (and Islamic) manuscripts - Johannes Niehoff-Panagiotidis (Freie Universität, Berlin)
