I have also been working on creating a website about Byzantine coins in the Bryn Mawr Special Collections, which I will unveil here as soon as it is completed. As a teaser (and not a Byzantine one), here’s a Seljuq coin from Syria that Professor Stefan Heidemann graciously helped me identify:

Coin from Seljuq Syria, minted in Antioch under Sultan Ridwan ibn Malikshah, ruler of Aleppo from 1095 to 1113. Aleppo became a tributary state of the crusader principality of Antioch in 1111.
Obverse and reverse depict a winged lion or sphinx. Above, the word Sultan. BMC 2011.17.438

1. Understandings of Place and Museum
2. Communities and Audiences
3. Exhibiting and Educating

Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, by Christine and Hagen Graf (cocoate,com)

A Ewer from Rayy - MMA - sf1974-161-9b

I also recently attended the Historians of Islamic Art Association biennial symposium, “Looking Closely, Looking Widely.” It was wonderful to see papers presented by scholars working on such interesting and varied material, and to get a sense of where the field of Islamic Art History has been and is currently headed. In a few weeks I’m off to the American School of Oriental Research Annual Meeting in Chicago, where I’m looking forward to several panels devoted to Islamic archaeology.

“The Ministry of Culture then offered a bizarre “solution” that entailed unearthing the ruins and registering them, then covering them up with soil and 30-50 centimeters of concrete so that buildings could be constructed on top of them.

Burying ruins is an internationally recognized technique for preserving monuments when they are in danger. A time-resistant fabric is placed to isolate the ruins at the modern ground level and the archaeological discoveries are then covered up with sand or soil. This technique is used to bury rooms or mosaic floors. But this is the first time in the world that a whole archaeological site is being buried. Lebanese politics have imposed new methods in the field of archaeology.”

Artozia: The Many Ruins of Nahr al-Bared by Joanne Bajjaly

[21 August 1910]
Sunday Munich

Dearest Mother. I had a delightful day at the exhibition today. All the professors were taking a holiday so that I had the library to myself. I read a great big book all through – it was about carpets, but it had lots of other things in too, and I felt at the end that I had got a good way forrader. The exhibition is in the Ausstellungs-park – you know, near the huge statue of Germany. I lunch in a little open air restaurant near it, which saves time and is pleasanter than the hotel. It’s broiling hot – I love it.

Today before I came away I found in the park a place where a lot of orientals are sitting and carrying on their trades. So I sought out the Syrians – they are from Damascus – and had a long gossip with them. One was a Druze and he told me all the news of the Hauran. I was delighted and so were they for they never have anyone to speak to.

I am going to lunch with the Pagets tomorrow and then I shall hang about till Hugo comes. I have used these evening when I have been alone to write an article on the Persian and Arab poets for Mr Richmond. I hope it is all right. I think it is. And I am glad to have it off my mind. Ever your very affectionate daughter Gertrude

I’m writing to Father tonight.

(from the Gertrude Bell Archive, via Eva-Maria Troelenberg’s fantastic article on the exhibition in the latest Journal of Art Historiography)

In light of the seminar on a Seljuq Qu’ran manuscript I just took this semester, I was particularly interested to see François Déroche speaking about a monumental Abbasid Qur’an known as the Qur’an of Uthman in Tashkent.

The Library of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Parliament in Tehran has digitized a large number of manuscripts, which are now accessible on their website. These include Persian, Arabic and Turkish manuscripts:

Manuscripts can be searched by name or catalog number.

Expert tip: “I would recommend that you use Persian spellings while conducting searches with Arabic search terms which are common to Persian. Also, use minimal search strings to get better results. For example, instead of أخبار use the Persian spelling اخبار; instead of حنيفة use حنيفه

An entire digital copy of most manuscripts can be downloaded by pressing the link تحويل.”

Download speeds may be very slow.

The great thing about photographing for structure from motion – apart from the weird looks people give you as you take 300 photos of something they might snap once or twice – is that photosets can be dropped into all of these new algorithms, and the reconstruction software is only going to get better. Here are some new models made from photos I took at Qusayr ‘Amra in Jordan and Cappadocia in Turkey:

Ornament as Portable Culture: Between Globalism and Localism, a conference at Harvard University April 12-14, 2012, should be wonderful. Oleg Grabar’s work on ornament in Islamic art has too often been taken as the final word on the topic, when it seems actually to sketch the outlines of problem that no one could hope to unravel in a single book.

A new set of spherical panoramas of the Cathedral/Mosque of Cordoba was recently produced by Promedia 2.0. The map in the top right corner of the interface is especially useful for helping visitors understand the location of the panorama within the cathedral.