The Suleymaniye Mosque – A Virtual Walking Tour
This virtual tour is comprised of various spherical panoramic photographs that place you inside the image, as if you were standing in the place where the photo was made. Use your mouse to…
From Cuneiform to Topkapi
In the Islamic world, where reading and literacy have always been highly prized for the access they provide to the word of God and the world of knowledge, books were objects of both…
Aleppo – Architecture and History
“The city is as old as eternity, but still young, and it has never ceased to exist. Its days and nights have been long; it has survived its rulers and commoners. These are…
The Met Says ‘Open Sesame’
In New York, the glories of Islamic art are laid before the world. A gorgeous salad-bowl-size ceramic dazzles the eye upon entry. The bowl suggests a highly refined and thoughtful curatorial choice as…
Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Textile Art
In traditional Islamic society, textiles and dress played a significantly greater socio-cultural role than in the western world. A crucial item of furnishing in the Islamic world, the carpet served not merely as…
Iznik and Ottoman Ceramics
In the latter half of the fifteenth century, following the Fall of Constantinople and the establishment of the Ottoman Court in the former capital of the Byzantine Empire, many areas of artistic production…
Turning the pages of an Ottoman illustrated manuscript
This essay is the 2004 Winner of the Margaret B. Sevcenko Prize in Islamic Art and Culture This paper focuses on an Ottoman illustrated manuscript copied in 1498-99, which is now in the…
Art of the Ottomans (before 1600)
At the time of its foundation in the early fourteenth century, the Osmanli or Ottoman state was one among many small principalities that emerged as a result of the disintegration of the Seljuq sultanate…
Leaf from Futuh al-Haramain
(Description of the Two Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina) Futuh al-Haramain is an example of a genre of religious writing devoted to the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage. It serves as a guide to pilgrims…
Cairo (Arabic: al-Qahira)
Capital of Egypt and one of the most prominent cities of the Islamic world. The English name for the city derives from the French, Le Caire, which in turn is derived from the…
The Later Ottomans and the Impact of Europe
The Ottoman sultans’ fascination with European art, which had so strongly influenced the arts of the eighteenth century, played an equally important role in the nineteenth. Just as they attempted to solve the…
Sultan Ahmet Cami Mosque (Blue Mosque)
Commissioned by Sultan Ahmed (1606-1617), the mosque was built by Mehmet Agha who is said to have toured key Ottoman monuments before he drew the plan of the blue mosque[1]. This can be…
