Events

Juan de Lara Dr. Juan de Lara is an archaeologist, art historian, and digital engineer with a base in London. He holds the position of a fellow at the UCL Institute of Archaeology and is an Associate Researcher at the University of Oxford – Khalili Research Centre, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. De Lara is also the Director of the Armenian Institute in London. Dr De Lara’s academic expertise encompasses extensive research in the archaeology of the ancient and late antique Mediterranean and Near East. Additionally, he has delved into the development of Early Islamic cultures. His scholarly pursuits aim to comprehend and substantiate the continuity of Late Antiquity within the Islamic world, shedding light on the cross-cultural networks that flourished among societies during this period. Currently, De Lara is engrossed in a research project focused on the culture of Qaryat al-Fāw, a significant mercantile emporium strategically positioned at the crossroads of the major powers of its time. Beyond this research, he has applied his skills to the digital reconstruction of various sites worldwide, including the Acropolis of Athens and the city of Ai Khanoum in Afghanistan The City of Paradise: Qaryat al Fāw – an emporium between the Classical and Islamic world Qaryat al-Fāw, also known as ‘The City of Paradise,’ was a pre-Islamic site located in central Arabia, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Kindah, and a mercantile emporium at the crossroads of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Mediterranean. In this city, the first known written mention of ’Allāh’ was found, thereby unveiling its crucial role in the development of Islamic culture. Many wondrous artifacts have been discovered from this site, but among the most beautiful are a set of Classical- style frescoes. These murals serve as a valuable foundation for comparative analysis with the art of the early Umayyad period, particularly the opulent desert palaces like Qaṣr ‘Amrah. Ultimately, these artworks offer a glimpse into the art of the Arabian Peninsula ...

Ahmed Moustafa Dr. Ahmed Moustafa is a specialist in the science of Arabic penmanship and the roles of its letter shapes in the structural morphology of Islam. His creative works and tapestries are among the collections of international museums, institutions and private collections. His essays have been published in a number of languages, and a two-volume publication entitled The Cosmic Script – Geometry and the Science of Arabic Penmanship will be published by Thames & Hudson in the UK and Inner Traditions International in the USA The Cosmic Script This lecture provides an illustrated explanation of the cosmic laws governing the art of Arabic penmanship and addresses the notions that enabled it to acquire its well-deserved status as the prime art of Islam. First, it will discuss this topic with particular focus on the Arabic script, not only as a visual medium of communication for the Revealed Word but also as an abstract sacred medium of visual expression recapitulating the unity and multiplicity of Divine Creation. Second, it will present how writing manifest in the single, integrated system of proportionality governing the formation of all the various letter-shapes. The presentation will show how an in-depth understanding of how this opens a new vista on the tradition of Arabic penmanship and other visual arts in Islam     ...

حمد بن عبدالله بن سلطان العنقري استاذ مساعد بقسم التاريخ بجامعة الملك سعود، يشغل منصب مدير تحرير مجلة الدارة. عضو اللجنة التوجيهي لمركز الأمير محمد بن سلمان العالمي للخط العربي، و عضو اللجنة الاستشارية لمكتب مدير جامعة الملك سعود، و مستشار غير متفرغ سابق لدارة الملك عبد العزيز. له العديد من المؤلفات البحثية و الكتب ومنها اصار بعنوان ” مكتبات الدولة السعودية الأولى المخطوطة: دراسة تحليلية لعوامل انتقالها و اندثارها بعد سقوط الدرعية”. الملك عبد العزيز والكويت إرتبط الملك عبد العزيز خلال مسيرته لتوحيد المملكة العربية السعودية بعلاقات مميزة مع الكويت، إذا استقر لفترة من حياته فيها، وانطلق منها ليبدأ مسيرة التوحيد، وارتبط مع شيوخها بعلاقات تاريخية، وقف مع الكويت للدفاع عنها ووثق علاقاته بشيوخها وشعبها. لبى نداء الشيخ مبارك في غمرة انشغاله في تثبيت الحكم وسانده لرد حملات موجهة للنيل من الكويت. شجع على تعميق العلاقات الشعبية والعلمية والتجارية بين البلدين. ...

خالد النوري عضو هيئة تدريس بجامعة الكويت برتبة أستاذ مساعد في تاريخ الشرق الأدنى القديم و حضاراته. رئيس قسم التاريخ و الآثار / كلية الآداب / جامعة الكويت فيـما بين 2018 و 2022 مـ. ماجستير في الشـرق الأدنى القديم من جــامعة درهام / المملكة المتحدة في موضوع “مقارنة بين النشاط التجاري الاشوري و النشاط التجاري الأوجاريتى في الألف الثاني ق.م “1989مـ. دكتوراة في الشرق الأدنىالقديممنجامعةمانشستر/المملكةالمتحدةعنوانه:”َيُّمإلهالبحر في النصوص الاسطورية الكنعانية “1994مـ.. له عدد من الأبحاث المنشورة والمشاركات العالمية. عضو اتحاد المؤرخين العرب و عضو الجمعية التاريخية لدول مجلس التعاون الخليجي. تمثالان بشريان برونزيان من مجموعة الصباح الاثارية كان قد لفت نظري، خلال زيارتي لمعروضات مجموعة الصباح الاثارية المحفوظة في دار الآثار الإسلامية، تمثالان برونزيان صغيران (أكبرهما لا يزيد طوله عن 24سم) أحدهما لرجل والآخر لامرأة، بديا لي منذ الوهلة الأولى أنهما مرتبطان ببعض. وقد قررت دراستهما لتحديد المكان والزمان الذين يعود التمثالان إليه وتحديد إلام يرمزان إليه. وبعد مقارنات دقيقة مع تماثيل أخرى من مناطق مختلفة في شرق البحر المتو ّسط تعود إلى فترات متباينة من العصر البرونزي، فقد تب ّين لي مدى التشابه الكبير بين تمثا َلي الدراسة و تماثّيل مجموعة ُعرفت باسم تماثيل جبل لبنان، في كثير من التفاصيل المتعلقة بالهيئة و الملابس و كثير من تفاصيل الجسم و شعر الرأس و تفاصيل أخرى، مع التقارب في الأحجام. وأسعىفيهذهالمحاضرةإلىتحديدأدّقلهويةصانعيهذهالتماثيل والهدفمنصناعتها،فهلهيترمزإلىآلهةأوحّكامأومحاربينأومن طبقةاجتماعيةمهّمة،معتوضيحالخلفيةالاجتماعيةوالاقتصاديةلهذا المجتمع. ...

Michele Zini Architect and co-founder of ZPZ Partners, Michele Zini is a specialist in education environments. He is also a contract professor at Design Faculty, Milan Polytechnic Institute. ZIni works closely with Reggio Children and INDIRE (Italian Ministry of Education), where he is involved with research and project development. He carries out professional work with ZPZ Partners, in architecture and interior design, in Italy and abroad (San Francisco, Tokyo, Emirates, Washington DC, London), with focus on the design of schools and learning environments Architecture and Pedagogy in Dialogue Architecture and pedagogy in dialogue are powerful tools to support innovative education. The environment, which we take to be the total of spatial and sensory qualities including architecture itself, can determine the nature of the pedagogical project. New technologies imply new spaces for learning; the schools must change. The classrooms become home bases that are part of a more complex organism: a must-be beautiful and nurturing place. I will share design guidelines using our education projects in ZPZ Partners as case studies, from the book “children, spaces, relations – a metaproject for the environment for young children” and the work adventures with Reggio Children to the recent new design guidelines for the school of the future written for INDIRE/ italian Ministry of Education ...

Dr Simon Rettig Simon Rettig is associate curator for the Arts of the Islamic World at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC. Since he joined the museum in 2012, Rettig curated several exhibitions, including The Prince and the Shah: Royal Portraits from Qajar Iran, and The Art of the Qur’an: Treasures from the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts. His current projects are an exhibition on the Great Mongol Shahnama opening in August 2024 and a monograph on the Freer’s celebrated manuscript of Nizami’s Khusraw u Shirin Turning Prayers into Books: Compilations of Suras and Du‘as in the Central Islamic Lands between 1300 and 1750 The fourteenth century (7th century of Hijra) witnessed the rise of a particular genre of religious book consisting of selected chapters (Sura) of the Qur’an, which could greatly vary from one copy to another. Initially associated with the ruling elite, such compilations of suras began to circulate by the sixteenth century in wider social and religious circles, both for private and public devotional use. This talk introduces the development and evolution of compendiums of prayers in the Arab heartland, Turkey, and Iran from their inception in late Il-Khanid and Jalayirid Baghdad to their apex in Ottoman Istanbul and late Safavid Isfahan. They present an astonishing variety of content, format, and style and their distinctive identities – regional, sectarian, and visual—offer invaluable insight into religious practices in the early modern period ...

حامد مطلق محمد المطيري دكتوراة في علم الاثار من جامعة الملك سعود . عضو في العديد من الجمعيات والاتحادات الآثارية بالسعودية ومصر و الكويت. باحث آثار سابق بإدارة الآثار والمتاحف- المجلس الوطني للثقافة والفنون والآداب بالكويت.رئيس فريق دول مجلس التعاون للتنقيب المشترك في جزيرة فيلكا وفي موقع الدور الاثـري بإمـارة ام العيون بدولة الامـارات المتحدة. له عدة مؤلفات في الفنون والمسكوكات الإسلامية ودراسات في التنقيبات الاثرية بدولة الكويت. الآثار المغمورة بالمياه جزئياً حول سواحل جزيرة فيلكا إ َّن من أقدم الإشارات التي تناولت جزيرة فيلكا بشكل واضح ومحدد هو ما جاء في مدونات الرحالة سترابو 64 Strabo ق.م – 19 م، حيث جاء ذكر اًلجزيرة تحت اسم إيكاروس Ikaros ، وهو الاسم الذي ربما كان تحريفالاسمأحدالمعابدالتياشُتهرتبهاجزيرةفيلكا،وهومعبدإيكارا في النصف الأول من الألف الأول ق.م، وقد أكدت الدراسات الآثارية الحديثة أهمية الجزيرة على طريق التجارة القديم، وخلال الدراسات الجيومورفولجية لجزيرة فيلكا اتضح أن ارتفاع منسوب المياه في حوض الخليج العربي أدى في الألف الثالث ق.م إلى غمر أجزاء واسعة من الجزيرة، وبعد انحسار مياه البحر تشكلت جزيرة فيلكا بشكلها الحالي في حدود نهاية الألف الثاني قبل الميلاد، وتتناول هذه المحاضرة الآثار المغمورة بالمياه جزئياً المكتشفة حديثاً في محيط جزيرة فيلكا وهي نتاج أعمال مسح أثري تم خلال الفترة من 2013 حتى 2022. ...

Alison Shan Price MBE Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society FRGS Alison Shan Price is the Founder and CEO of the multicultural One World Actors Centre and a historian specialising in the history of human narrative through interculturalism in the Middle East. It is at the centre of her academic research, presentations, bilingual and Living History productions, and workshops in Kuwait and the UK. This lecture is the seventh in a series on the role of Western women travelling through, living and working in the pre-oil nineteenth and early twentieth century Near/Middle East Dr Eleanor Calverley (1887-1968): Khatun Halima, the first Western lady doctor in Kuwait Circa 1911, after the successes of the American Mission hospitals in Basra and Bahrain, a sister hospital was opened in Kuwait at the invitation of Sheikh Mubarak al Sabah, Mubarak the Great. Dr Eleanor Calverley was the Kuwait Mission’s first lady doctor. Travelling by donkey, in extreme conditions, to make house calls to women who could not come to the hospital or be seen by male doctors, she bridged the cultural gap between traditional healthcare and new Western medical methods. Dr Calverley opened a dispensary and, later, the first hospital for women on the site which is today the Dar al Athar al Islamiyyah Amricani Cultural Centre ...

Souraya Noujaim Dr. Souraya Noujaim is the Director of the Islamic Arts Department at Musée du Louvre in Paris, where she oversees the curatorial strategy and the development of its collection and narrative. Prior to this role, Dr. Souraya was the first appointed Scientific, Curatorial and Collections Management Director at Louvre Abu Dhabi. She has also been a key figure in driving the scientific aspects of international partnership programmes and has defined its research programmes along with supervising the creation of the museum’s scientific analysis laboratory Beyond frontiers: Connected stories of Islamic art Recent research interests in mobility, transculturality, and their mirror effects on globality has brought new perspectives to the study of Islamic art. This has led to an increasing interconnection among the various disciplines of art history. The phenomena that globalisation and migration embrace today, are not recent. At each stage of history, globalisation draws a complex map featuring commercial, artistic, intellectual, and scientific migrations and exchanges. The purpose of this lecture is to discuss the cultural and commercial exchanges that linked Islamic art to the world, explored via the prism of objects, the vast networks of exchanges and influences that fuelled creative activities from East to West, for what they translate of assimilation and transformation of forms and iconography in Islam   ...

Amira Abu Taleb Intrigued by the relationship between ethics and aesthetics, Dr Amira Abu Taleb designed a popular course titled “Beauty & Reason in the Arab/Islamic Civilization” which she taught at the American University in Cairo. She later taught this course at the University of Helsinki in Finland. In her research, she examines the Qur’anic concept of iḥsān (beauty/goodness). Her work intersects with today’s lived realities as she applies her findings to a wide array of fields including societal ethics, museology, and interfaith dialogue Theorizing Islamic Art: An examination of theological underpinnings The highly specialized nature of today’s academic scholarship often comes at the cost of a holistic examination. This issue becomes particularly pertinent when dealing with art that is a product of a civilization as rich and diverse as that of the Islamic world. The vast array of traditional Islamic art holds undeniable spatial and temporal specificities, yet conveys an overarching philosophical unison that is often overlooked. This lecture proposes a new epistemological theory that helps explain Islamic Art from a theological perspective. This lecture explores a deeper connection that grounds traditional Islamic art in the theological principles of the Qur’an. In this lecture, I will examine the interplay between ethics and aesthetics as foundational pillars of the Qur’anic worldview   ...

Bethany Walker Dr Bethany Walker is Professor of Islamic Archaeology at the University of Bonn and the Director of the Research Unit of Islamic Archaeology and Co-Director of the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg of Mamluk Studies at the same institution A historically trained archaeologist and ceramicist, Walker directs multiple archaeological projects in Jordan and the region, and is a Board member of the American Center of Research in Amman. She is the senior and founding editor of the Journal of Islamic Archaeology and co-editor of Equinox’s Monographs in Islamic Archaeology series :Making a Home in Long-Abandoned Places A life-history of Tall Hisbān, Jordan The resettlement of centuries-long abandoned towns, villages, and farmsteads across Bilād al-Shām in the 13th century CE is a demographic phenomenon that has yet to be explained. This lecture focuses on the occupational history of one particularly vibrant example of this phenomenon, the archaeological site of Tall Hisbān in central Jordan. Abandoned in the Abbasid period (10th century) and reoccupied suddenly three hundred years later, its life history is a fascinating one of migration, homeland- making, and resilience. In this lecture, we will investigate who the people were who came back to Hisbān in the last Ayyubid period, and what reasons brought them to this ruined place. We will trace the radical changes in the peopling and function of this site over the course of the Mamluk period ...

طلال صلاح الرشود الدكتور طلال صلاح الرشود أستاذ مساعد في التاريخ العربي الحديث بجامعة الكويت، حائز على شهادة الدكتوراة تخصص بالتاريخ من كلية الدراسات الشرقية والإفريقية بجامعة لندن، بالإضافة إلى شهادتي ماجستير بالتاريخ والعلوم السياسية من الكلية الملكية في لندن وجامعة جورجتاون الأمريكية، وهو متخصص بتاريخ التعليم الحديث والتيارات السياسية والفكرية الحديثة في الخليج. المدارس الكويتية في الإمارات، 1953 -1972 في العقدين السابقين لقيام دولة الإمارات العربية المتحدة لعبت حكومة الكويت دوراً مركزياً في تنمية وإدارة القطاع التعليمي فيما عرف آنذاك بـ”الإمارات المتصالحة” أو ً “ساحل عمان”. تطورت مساعدات الكويت التعليمية للمنطقة تدريجيا، حيث بدأت بانتداب المدرسين وتقديم الدعم للمدرسة القاسمية في الشارقة، وفي السنوات اللاحقة شرعت الكويت في توفير المدرسين وبناء المدارس في جميع الإمارات باستثناء أبو ظبي، وأدى ذلك إلى قيام نظام تعليمي حديث أشرفت عليه الكويت من جميع الجوانب بمساعدة دول عربية أخرى أبرزها مصر وقطر. لقد أهملت الأدبيات الأكاديُمية هذا التاريخ لا سيما الغربية منها التي أظهرت الدور الكويتي في المنطقة كرديف للمشروع الاستعماري البريطاني، وستبين هذه المحاضرة على عكس ذلك الأهداف العروبية والمناهضة للاستعمار التي ألهمت الجهود الكويتية.   ...