Turning the pages of a manuscript copy of the Maʿrifetnāme, an 18th-century encyclopedia authored by the Ottoman scholar and Sufi poet İbrāhīm Ḥaḳḳī Efendi, can lead readers to seventh heaven and the depths of hell.
A copy of the beautifully illuminated...
As the standard narrative goes, the tensions and conflicts that have afflicted the Middle East over the past century originate with the arbitrary redrawing of the region’s map by the British and French after the Ottoman Empire collapsed during World War I...
Last spring, Kishwar Rizvi, professor of the history of art, led a group of eight graduate students to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as part of her seminar “Museum and Nation.” Rizvi’s students conducted fieldwork there and later hosted a symposium on...