At the nexus of trade routes linking the highlands of Ethiopia to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, the city of Harar has been a major centre of Islamic learning. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of manuscripts were produced within the city from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Yet only recently…

Beside the codenames and esoteric symbols inherited from Graeco-Egyptian antiquity, the later Arabic alchemical tradition also adopted motifs drawn from the Qur’an: from the blessed olive tree of the famous Light verse to the burning bush and Moses’ staff. This interweaving of scripture and…

Over the past two decades, the study of the art of the Qur’an in Southeast Asia has revealed the existence of a number of distinctive regional artistic schools, including the ‘Sulawesi diaspora geometric style’ defined primarily by the strongly geometric character of illuminated frames. Qur’an…

Professor Doris Behrens-Abouseif (SOAS University of London) will give this talk. More details to follow. To join the seminar please register.  

Drawing upon his recent research on a little-known corpus of 18th–19th century illuminated Qur’ans from Pate Island in Kenya’s Lamu Archipelago, this seminar paper will discusses how these remarkable manuscripts disrupt and challenge conceptions of the African Swahili-speaking Muslim communities…

Mrs Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Dr Sundas Ali and Ms Tehmina Kazi will talk about their recently released report entitled: 'The Inner Lives of Troubled Young Muslims'. To join the seminar please register.

Professor Reshmaan Hussam will talk about the findings of some recent research. In settings where employment opportunities are scarce, the inability to work may generate psychosocial harm. This talk will present a causal estimate of the psychosocial value of employment in the Rohingya refugee camps…

This talk will shed some new light on the rich, yet often overlooked tradition of Quranic calligraphy and illumination of the Islamic West. The specificities and context of production of some little-known Maghribī Qurʾans will be discussed as a means of unveiling the values and concerns of the…