Islamic art and architecture

The location of the city of al-Ludd, between the lowlands and the coastal plain, made it an attractive settlement site through the ages. This location brought with it, on the one hand, a fertile catchment area and on the other, caravans looking for a safe inland route. The last settlement phase that resulted in the medieval town was extant until the mid-twentieth century, whence it was demolished leaving only a dozen buildings standing. Those remains are the starting point for this study in which we discuss topics such as shrines, sheikhs' tombs, the soap industry and public bath, presented here as part of a preliminary survey that lays the ground for further discussion of the town's urban dynamics.

The paper gives a brief overview of the annihilation of Mosul‘s historical architecture, whether deliberately perpetrated by ISIS (Daesh) or caused by terrestrial combats and bombardment during the liberation of the city. The situation of the architectural heritage in the city is monitored, among others, by the Monuments of Mosul in Danger Project since 2014. In addition to the main results of the documentation part of the project, the paper also introduces more conceptual questions regarding the ideological context of the violence on monuments, an ex post analysis of destroyed sites and future outlooks of the local heritage management.

Our recent discoveries are now fully accepted by most of the specialists of Islamic art and the Africanist archaeologists. Our archaeological investigations in Mayotte allowed us to understand the raison d’être of an early Islamic site in the western Indian Ocean. Dembeni was occupied between the ninth to the twelfth century, a period of intensive trad, first with the Abbasid caliphate in Iraq/Iran, then with the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt. Dembeni appears to be a major distribution centre for rock crystal in the Indian Ocean. The fragments of rock crystal discovered in Mayotte were imported from Madagascar. The rock crystal was exported from Madagascar to the Comoros together with other products, notably steatite (soapstone).

An important outcome of our research was to put the Comoros and Madagascar in the “big picture” of East African trade, as rock crystal was a much-valued product. This “Eastern” or Malagasy road could serve as an explanation for the urbanization of Kilwa, the biggest and most well-known city-state of the East African coast. The city state of Kilwa has always been interpreted in relation to the gold trade with Sofala and the gold mines in Zimbabwe. But Kilwa is also located at a major crossroads between the East African coast and the Comoros. I would argue that the development and urbanization of Kilwa was due to this key position at the crossroads, between gold and rock crystal mines, the two most valued products of the Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates.

In this book I endeavour to offer a concise account of Islamic archaeology as it has developed and is today in the region of
geographical Syria-Palestine. The region offers the archaeologist particular attractions in dealing with an Islamic past as a result of the tremendous advances made in relevant archaeological research in the last few decades. This work proposes new ways of understanding and interpreting the first Islamic centuries in Syria-Palestine, based on clear and verifiable information gleaned from a range of archaeological discoveries.

This dissertation examines the corpus of ornamentally carved wooden doors of the Swahili coast, defined here as those produced or sited within the narrow strip of Indian Ocean littoral that stretches from Mogadishu, Somalia, to northern Mozambique, including the islands and archipelagos that proliferate those East African shores. Swahili doors have long been considered iconic artifacts and revered for more than a century by locals and visitors as visual manifestations of the region’s complex roots and histories. The zone where the edge of eastern Africa meets western Indian Ocean shores has been a fulcrum for cultural, artistic, and intangible social confluence for millennia. As a region it has also long remained on the edge, or even outside of, geographically and temporally divided art historical inquiries, and warrants greater scholarly focus. I focus on the late nineteenth century in Zanzibar in particular, when the diversely populated emporium flourished as a center of global trade and cultural confluence, and so did the popularity of owning a carved door. The massive and elaborately decorated extant examples in Zanzibar are primarily understood for their role as expressions of power, prestige, and wealth—their surfaces filled with diverse motifs and designs that reflect an original owner’s access to the vast streams of trade, production, and elite society that converged at his doorstep. In addition to elaborating upon their role as prestige objects, I argue that Swahili doors also function—perhaps even more significantly so—on a spiritual and intangible level as protective devices. I illuminate the way carved doors are, and have been for centuries, firmly situated within the wide-ranging material world of amulets, totems, and other apotropaic devices. The considerations and examples that follow reflect my initial investigations to support this argument, and primarily focus on the rich dimension of water-related spirits and protective belief systems elementally linked to the simultaneous life-sustaining bounty and ever present perils of the sea. Rather than studying the corpus under the long-held assignations of ethnicity-based style categories, I contend that it is more productive to examine the doors for their expression of a multivocal visual vocabulary that developed to reflect the late nineteenth-century Zanzibar ethos. In outlining that primary argument, this dissertation is also in many ways an argument for a new methodological approach for the study of arts of the Swahili culture, and a demonstration of the results in its application. This is an effort toward an alternative approach, a focus on visual analysis and artistic agency that allows us to work past, through, or around obfuscations of style categories and ethnocentric limitations in historical studies.
https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/17773jvp5685

« Arts de l’ornement », dit-on souvent des arts islamiques, sans pour autant définir ce que recouvrent exactement le terme et le concept d’« ornement ». Depuis des décennies, des travaux tentent de comprendre les décors dans les arts des pays musulmans : sont-ils destinés au seul plaisir des yeux, portent-ils un message symbolique, en quoi sont-ils « islamiques » ou religieux ? Plus fondamentalement, pourquoi, pour qui décore-t-on un mur ou un objet ? Dans le sillage des débats sur l’ornementation islamique, cet ouvrage propose une nouvelle synthèse de la question et de nouvelles pistes de réflexion.

Il examine d’abord comment l’histoire et les caractéristiques des arts et des cultures islamiques, tout comme les problèmes méthodologiques ou idéologiques des sciences humaines, compliquent et troublent la perception et l’analyse contemporaines des décors.
Une seconde partie évoque les différentes présences – esthétiques, sociales, politiques ou religieuses – de l’ornement. Sources de plaisir, les décors reflètent un ordre social, un art de vivre, un sens culturel de l’espace et du temps ; par leur prégnance, ils détiennent une capacité d’influence, idéelle ou psychosomatique, voire magique. Embellir, décorer s’inscrit également dans un humanisme et une cosmologie, dans la mesure où la créativité humaine, au point de vue musulman, témoigne de la place de l’homme dans la création, du rapport de l’humanité au cosmos, et même d’un mystère métaphysique. 
Une dernière partie aborde la question de l’interprétation de l’ornement : peut-on lui donner un sens, alors que les sources historiques sont parcellaires ou obscures ? L’auteur propose un regard alternatif, en considérant le potentiel symbolique des décors plus que leurs significations historiques avérées ou hypothétiques. Par son usage de l’épigraphie, par les « universaux » de son esthétique (la lumière, la géométrie, le végétal), le décor islamique est avant tout un horizon de contemplations, un miroir d’herméneutiques, potentiellement toujours parlants et toujours actuels.     

Une large bibliographie, un index général, un index des versets coraniques, un cahier iconographique de plus de 500 illustrations en couleurs complètent l’ouvrage.

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo17703325.html

Hundreds of exceptional cartographic images are scattered throughout medieval and early modern Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscript collections. The plethora of copies created around the Islamic world over the course of eight centuries testifies to the enduring importance of these medieval visions for the Muslim cartographic imagination. With Medieval Islamic Maps, historian Karen C. Pinto brings us the first in-depth exploration of medieval Islamic cartography from the mid-tenth to the nineteenth century.

Pinto focuses on the distinct tradition of maps known collectively as the Book of Roads and Kingdoms (Kitab al-Masalik wa al-Mamalik, or KMMS), examining them from three distinct angles—iconography, context, and patronage. She untangles the history of the KMMS maps, traces their inception and evolution, and analyzes them to reveal the identities of their creators, painters, and patrons, as well as the vivid realities of the social and physical world they depicted.  In doing so, Pinto develops innovative techniques for approaching the visual record of Islamic history, explores how medieval Muslims perceived themselves and their world, and brings Middle Eastern maps into the forefront of the study of the history of cartography.

This document provides the full text, there are only very few  image changes to the printed version. 

Contributions by

KONSTANTINOS CHATZIANTONIOU
JOACHIM GIERLICHS
FRANAK HILLOOWALA
KATHRYN KALEMKERIAN
SABA AL KUWARI
LISA MALCOM
JULES MCDEVITT
SHEIKHA AL NASSER
SUSAN REES
MICHELLE WALTON

Madinat al-Zahra is today one of the most important archaeological sites of the Islamic culture in the west Mediterranean region. In 2018 the site was designated a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO. A five-year project which is conducted by the German Archaeological Institute and the Junta de Andalucía in cooperation with the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid is dedicated to the investigation of the Plaza de Armas of Madīnat az-Zahrāʾ, the main public square of the caliphal city. The aim of the second season of field work was the investigation of the eastern side of the plaza, an area previously untouched by excavations. The excavation work revealed the remains of an isolated pavilion which stood on top of a high platform. The T-shaped layout of the pavilion is reminiscent of Sasanian and Abbasid reception halls (maglis al-Hiri). The pavilion is the first example of this type to be found west of Tunisia, and sheds new light on the influence of Abbasid architecture on the design of Madinat al-Zahra.

Author: Carol Hotchkiss Malt. First published in Arts and The Islamic World, Volume I Number 3 [Summer Autumn !983]. Founding Editors Jalal Uddin Ahmed and Azra J. Ahmed. Digitised, edited and newly annotated by Sajid Rizvi, ed, in 'Selections from Arts and The Islamic World 1980-1990,' London: Saffron.

In the last two decades, architecture in the Arab world has undergone dramatic changes, driven by three major paradigms; globalization, environment, and technology. However, these changes seem to ignore the rich architectural heritage of the region, especially Islamic architecture, to replicate the same western building forms and concepts. This book discusses the current state of Arab contemporary architecture, then reviews computational design as an innovative design tool, highlights its potentials to revisit regional architecture in a contemporary manner, Evaluates various regional case studies, then concludes a design framework to achieve balance between the three design dimensions (Computation, Sustainability, and Regionalism).

The Great Mosque of Cordova was built in the context of the new Umayyad Emirate of Andalusia, founded by Abd ar-Rahman I in 756 AD. Abd ar-Rahman I was one of the last members of the Umayyad royal family that had escaped to North Africa from the Abbasid revolution in 750 AD. Cordova was already the capital of the Islamic province and Abd ar-Rahman I continued to use it as the capital of his independent emirate.1
Islamic civilization was a civilization that blended between the mind and the soul, and that distinguished it from many previous civilizations. Islam is a global religion that urges the demand of science and getting educated as well as designing and building its architectural monuments for the rise of its nation. With time, the fields of arts, sciences and architecture have varied if they do not fall outside the Islamic rules. This existing civilization was extended to reach to the countries of the West.
In this paper, we are going to highlight the Islamic Civilization and its impact on the Art and Architecture at the West that resembled in The Great Mosque of Cordova, and its relative to North Africa.

The virtual exhibition, elaborated within the SNSF-project "Mudejarismo and Moorish Revival in Europe", aims to demonstrate the importance of al-Andalus for 19th-century art and architecture by presenting the architectural sketches of the Zurich painter Wilhelm Meyer, made during his sojourn in Spain in 1845-1846.
Exhibition concept: Francine Giese and Ariane Varela Braga
Visit on: http://wilhelmmeyer.transculturalstudies.ch/en/al-andalus-in-zurich.html

This paper is an effort to study about the Mughal military culture and socio-economic importance of horses during the Mughal period. It explores the military and economic significance of the horses and its importance in the cavalry that was the mainstay of the Mughal army.It was the Mughal army that was the vanguard of the Mughal expansion. The most crucial feature of the Mughal army was its cavalry. The centrality of the horses in the cavalry regiment helped in the centralisation of the Mughal Empire. 1 The Mughal cavalry was admixture of „Turco-Mongol‟, Central Asian, Middle East Asian and Indian warriors, especially the horsemen. Apart from the military man power, the geographical fringes of the above mentioned also procured/supplied the best quality of the Arabian, Persian, Turki, Tuzuki, Qabuli, Qandhari and Janglah Horses to the Mughals. 2 The good horses were imported to the Mughal state from Arabia, Iran, Turan, Turkey, Turkestan, Badakhshan, Shirwan, Qirghiz, Tibbet, Kashmi...

NB: by "chicanery," I refer to Morocco's record of corruption and lack of oversight and enforcement of its laws, which could use reinforcement.

On nearly the eve of hosting the twenty second Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 22) in Marrakesh on November 7-18, 2016, the Moroccan government authorized a new group of constructions in the Bou Regreg River Valley. The constructions include a Zaha Hadid Ateliers designed theater, the Grand Théâtre de Rabat, in addition to luxury hotels, residences, a museum, and a park. The theater and park will join the Aga Khan award winning Zaha Hadid Ateliers Bridge to Salé, a city across the river and just north of the worksite. Signs around the construction state that the complex will add to the appeal of Rabat as a city of culture. The buildings are placed in what might be considered a floodplain with the same or similar characteristics of nearby Northern Moroccan Ramsar designated wetlands and classified National Parks and Reserves, some of the former of which are on the tentative list for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Status. The Zaha Hadid Ateliers construction is also placed in close proximity to sites with significant historical and cultural value recognized in the UNESCO classification documents for Rabat, among others. 

In the following paper, I present briefly the socio-environmental histories of the construction and adjacent sites in the Rabat-Salé-Zemmour-Zaër region and propose how accentuating certain aspects of the environment can be valuable additions to the contemporary Moroccan economy, specifically its two pillars of tourism and agricultural production and exports.

IASTE 2016 Online Program Poster: http://iaste.berkeley.edu/iaste/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/2016/05/IASTE2016_Poster.pdf

The city here described is Fatehpur Sikri. Not far from Agra, it was a time the capital city of the great Mughal emperor, Akbar, and its intellectual glory is recaptured in some of these photos from/for Marg, the heart of my essay delivered at a 1985 Harvard conference on Fatehpur Sikri chaired by Oleg Grabar.

بدأت فكرة هذا الكتاب أثناء كتابة موسوعة اليهود واليهودية والصهيونية، إذ اكتشف المسيري أن المفاهيم والمفردات المستخدمة لوصف العقيدة اليهودية والظاهرة الصهيونية متحيزة، ولا تعبِّر عن التجربة العربية من قريب أو بعيد. ولذا دعا مجموعةً من الكُتَّاب العرب (أولاً في الرياض في المملكة العربية السعودية، ثم في القاهرة) وغير العرب، ليكتب كلٌّ منهم دراسة في حقل تخصصه عن التحيزات التي وجدها أثناء بحثه، وإمكانية تجاوز هذا التحيز. ويقع كتاب (إشكالية التحيز فى الفن والعمارة ) فى ثمانى فصول للكتّاب :
د/بيتر واتكنز - د/عمر النجدى - د/راسم بدران - د/محمد عبد الستار عثمان - م/سهير حجازى -م/محمد مهيب - د/عبد الحليم إبراهيم د/ نذير العظمة

As an historian of Islamic art in the Department of Art History at the Maryland Institute College of Art, I am continually learning as I endeavor to teach my students about pattern. Teaching about pattern in Islamic art has facilitated my own exploration of geometry in ways that also benefits my students. This visual presentation explores the results of a single assignment that pertains to coloring a linear plate reproduced in Bourgoin’s classic work, Arabic Geometrical Pattern and Design.

Gustav Bauernfeind was born in southern Germany and trained as an architect before turning to painting. This panel depicting the northern gate of the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, painted in Munich in 1890, was the result of the last of three trips he made to the Middle East. The care Bauernfeind took is valuable today, not least because the mosque was gutted by fire in 1893, only three years after he visited. His exacting style, however, also conceals some elaboration of reality: the capital and relief panels of the central pillar are actually from different columns, for example, while the patterns on the underside of the arches come from bays that are not, in fact, adjacent to one another.

چکیده
بقعه هفت¬تنان، از بنا¬های کریم¬خانی در شیراز، بنایی تاریخی است که در شمال آرامگاه حافظ در دامنه کوه تخت¬ضرابی (کوه چهل¬مقام) قرار گرفته است. علت نامگذاری این بقعه و باغ اطراف آن به هفت¬تنان، وجود هفت قبر در باغ است که از زمان کریم¬خان بر روی هر کدام، سنگ بزرگ بدون کتیبه¬ای نصب شده است. این هفت قبر را به هفت عارفی نسبت می‌دهند که در جوار آرامگاه حافظ در این شهر می¬زیسته¬اند و در همان مکان نیز درگذشته¬اند.
بقعه یا تکیه واقع در این باغ دارای دو ستون یکپارچه سنگی است که تنها بر روی یکی از این دو ستون آثاری از رنگ و نقاشی به¬جای مانده است. در طاقچه¬های بالایی این ساختمان دو طبقه، که رو به حیاط هست، پنج مجلس رنگ و روغن بر روی گچ کار شده است که موضوع تحقیقی در این مقاله است.
این مقاله پس از شرح مباحثی در خصوص نقاشی زندیه، به بررسی ویژگی¬های زیبایی¬شناختی نقاشی¬های مزبور و رابطه آن-ها با مباحث عرفانی مطرح شده در آن دوره می¬پردازد. بر پایه تحقیقات توصیفی تحلیلی به عمل آمده در این پژوهش، ویژگی¬های زیبایی¬شناختی پنج مجلس رنگ و روغن بر روی گچ کار شده و در بقعه  هفت¬تنان شیراز به شیوه التقاطی ویژه نقاشی عصر زندیه تا حدودی در خدمت مبانی عرفانی رایج در دوره زندیه، تعریف و سازمان¬دهی شده¬اند.
اهداف
1- مطالعه نقاشی¬های دیواری این بقعه از منظر زیبایی¬شناسی؛
2- بررسی حضور پیوند میان زیبایی¬شناسی این مجالس با باور¬های عرفانی و دینی مطرح در دوره زندیه.
سؤالات
1. ویژگی¬های زیبایی¬شناختی پنج مجلس نقاشی موجود در بقعه هفت¬تنان چیست؟
2. آیا ارتباطی بین مشخصات زیبایی¬شناختی این نقاشی¬ها و مبانی عرفانی رایج در دوره زندیه وجود داشته است؟
کلید واژگان
بقعه هفت¬تنان، زندیه، شیراز، تصوف.

Figurative art in Islamic context. Not all figurative art is prohibited in all Islamic contexts. What is and what is not allowed as subject matter in art depends on a number of factors. This paper closes with an analysis of the figurative art at the desert castle of Qusair Amra.

Arthur Pope was one of the greatest scholars who introduced Persian culture and architecture to the world. This study aims to study the writing of Arthur Pope in his famous book entitled "A Survey of Persian Art". This book is one of the most important encyclopedias of Persian art before and after Islam and the most detailed and authoritative reference book on the history of Iranian art. This book is the richest resource of Persian art with the illustrations in which it has been published. In 1926, Pope began writing A Survey of Persian Art for the first time, after the first congress in Philadelphia, shortly after his return to the United States. In his research, he introduced any building using an image; Like the method that archaeologists use to present the results of their excavations. Pope's view of the history of Persian architectural art is positivist, influenced by the teachings of Kant's philosophy and the modern view of history. Relying on different types of resources, focusing on political and diplomatic history, this approach deals with the classification of documents, and with an empirical perspective, pays attention to objective spaces. The results indicated that the sub-criteria of Persian art that according to Pope, are effective in regulating the spatial system of Iranian architecture are: continuity, abstraction, symbolism, clarity and accuracy, social and traditional character of Iranian art history and the relationship and impact of Persian architecture and other civilizations and their influence on each other.

This study proposes a re-examination of twenty Ilkhanid (1256-1335) monuments with stucco repertoires. They retain signatures of stucco craftsmen and are mainly in Arabic and, at times, Persian. These monuments are located in Iran and neighbouring territories. The research comprises artistic and historical examination of these signatures. Its aim is to provide new information about identity, profession and mobility of craftsmen, as well as stucco workshop composition. The analysis attempts to surpass traditional examinations of craftsmen signatures, which were mainly concerned with their semantic meaning, the location on the stucco revetments, and, in particular, the identification of craftsmen and their mobility based on the nisbas in their signatures. To this aim, the study suggests that both the signature and its support, which is the stucco revetment, need to be considered as one: the trace and signature of the craftsmen. These findings are valuable for a better understanding of stucco production, the society of artists and patrons commissioning the Ilkhanid monuments and their decorative repertoires. The consideration of stucco artistic techniques, the detailed examination of repertoires and their respective signatures, therefore present valuable sources to the identity, mobility and task division of the stucco craftsmen. The relationship between signatures of craftsmen and patrons are also considered: they provide information on the links between patrons and the material culture they sponsored. The paper begins by examining a larger corpus of Ilkhanid craftsmen signatures (comprising names, surnames and verbs denoting their type of activity) in wood, lustre tiles, stone and stucco medium. Double signatures, such as those of heads of workshop and calligraphers, or architects and builders, prove especially informative on the use of different verbs to denote different artistic or architectural activities. This examination provides an insight into the differences between signatures in different media, which reflect the artistic techniques and role of calligraphers in inscription design, which is important for wall paintings, lustre tiles and wooden inscriptions. Stucco craftsmen signatures, due to the different design process and production methods, generally reflect the signatures of the heads of workshops-master craftsmen. The research combines the examination of signatures by investigating the different artistic techniques employed by the craftsmen. It tries to discern a link between signatures of workshops and artistic technique knowledge: a skill repository that migrated with them. The findings propose that stucco masters signed their works and their repeating signatures (cases of Bistam, Natanz, Turbat-i Jam, Ushturjan) reflected the use of the same artistic techniques and designs for stucco revetments. Differently from wall paintings, wooden and ceramic media, stuccos do not seem to have been signed by calligraphy experts, who helped design inscriptions. This is most likely because stucco craftsmen possessed this knowledge or because calligraphers only designed small sketches for stuccos. Stucco craftsmen mobility can thus be understood as long-distance (Turbat-i Jam-Natanz-Ushturjan; Sultaniyya-Ushturjan-Linjan-Na'in-Yazd-Abarquh; Iran-Azerbaijan-Pirsaat river) and short-distance (Bistam-Damghan; Haftshuya-Garladan-Linjan; Qurva-Sultaniyya). Furthermore, in some cases there appears to be links between patrons and craftsmen who were engaged on commissions (Na'in): they were sometimes from the same areas or settlements.

The aim of this paper is to determine the extent to which the local population identifies with the built heritage in cases when it has been destroyed and the people forced out of their homes. The paper is based on direct research backed up by scientific methods, primarily the use of surveys. Key words: migration, homeland, displaced persons, refugees, cultural heritage, post-war recovery, Bosnia, Stolac

According to the Department of Archaeology, Bangladesh, there is about 423 listed archaeological sites in the country. But, there are many more yet to be unrevealed. Their true value remains unseen to the world if not taken proper action and acknowledgement. Khan Jahan Ali, on his famous journey from Champanagar (currently in Barobazar, greater Jhenaidah district) to Khalifatabad (present day Bagerhat district); he crossed quite a few remote areas and set up human settlements. On his way he built roads, dug large water bodies for fresh supply of water, established mosques and houses for the inhabitants. His unique construction style is quite evident on the structures along the 112.7 km long road distinguished by an old earthen embankment, traversing through (i) Barobazar, (ii) Murali-Qasba, (iii) Poyogram-Qasba and (iv) Khalifatabad (Bagerhat) The road is still known as Khanjali Road. The first segment of this road, known as Hakimpur - Barobazar road contains nine sultanate mosques ...

A recent exchange of criticisms over a display of Islamic art illustrates the division of Islamic art history into two main schools. The disagreement was occasioned by the 2006 exhibition entitled Cosmophilia: Islamic Art from the David Collection, Copenhagen. The pleasure it gives, and the objects were arranged according to a traditional division of Islamic ornament into four themes. This occasioned a reaction from a prominent representative of the dominant trend in the academic study of Islamic art, who took the organizers of Cosmophilia to task for promoting a view that strips the artworks of their meaning. In this essay, I consider each of these viewpoints critically, point out a premise they share, and propose a fresh perspective under which to study works of Islamic art, one that takes into account the meaning of pleasure as a natural phenomenon.

This is the sixth of a series aimed at providing the existing details of the Madrasa al-Ashrafiyya built by Sultan Qaytbay in 887/1482 and referred to as the Third Jewel of al-Haram, the other jewels being the Qubbat as-Sakhra (Dome of the Rock) and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.  The madrasa although badly damaged by an earthquake in 1545  still contains many interesting details that directly relate it to Sultan Qaytbay’s Cairo foundations.

My intention is to illustrate the architectural evidence with minimal text partly because I have previously described and detailed many of the features , but, and perhaps more importantly, I believe that it should be the norm to make one’s research notes available to enable others to see the details and make their own comparisons and conclusions .

Das islamische Reich al-Andalus gilt schon lange als Vermittler antiken Wissens an die Höfe Italiens. Archäologische Untersuchungen einer Gartenanlage bei Córdoba lassen nun vermuten, dass das neue Menschenbild der Renaissance zudem von muslimischen Errungenschaften inspiriert war.