Dr Richard McClary
Senior Lecturer

Profile

Biography

Dr Richard McClary received his doctorate, entitled “The Rūm Saljūq Architecture of Anatolia 1170-1220”, from the University of Edinburgh in 2015. Prior to that he was awarded an MA in Islamic Art and Archaeology by the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University in 2011. He has lectured extensively on the topic of Medieval Islamic architecture around the world and has conducted fieldwork in India, Turkey, Central Asia and the Middle East.

From 2015 to 2018 he was a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, researching the surviving corpus of Qarakhanid architecture in Central Asia. His first monograph, Rum Seljuq Architecture 117-1220, The Patronage of Sultans, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2017.

He has published extensively on a wide range of topics, and is a specialist in the architecture and ceramic arts of the wider Iranian world from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries. He invites applications from prospective PhD candidates in the fields of Islamic art and architecture, and will be teaching both undergraduate and MA courses from 2019 onwards. 

Research

Overview

Richard's research interests focus on Islamic art and architecture.

Publications

Selected publications

2018

• Islamic Palace Architecture in the Western Mediterranean, by Felix Arnold. In: English Historical Review.
• Architecture of the Wider Persian World: From Central Asia to Western Anatolia in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Persian Art: Image-Making in Eurasia. Kadoi, Y. (ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
• On a Holy Mountain? Remote and Elevated Funerary Monuments in Medieval Islam. Grab, Erinnerung, Raum: Repräsentationskonzepte in der Christlichen und Islamischen Kunst der Vormoderne: Tomb, Memory, Space: Concepts of Representation in Premodern Christian and Islamic Art. Giese, F., Pawlak, A. & Thome, M. (eds.). Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 15 p.

2017

• Persian paintings as documents of social history: Images of craftsmen at work. In : Iran : Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies.. 13 p.
• Remembering the Imām Yaḥyā ibn al-Qāsim mashhad in Mosul. In : Iraq. 78, p. 1-26
  Craftsmen in medieval Anatolia: Methods and materials. Architecture and Landscape in Medieval Anatolia 1100-1500. Blessing, P. & Gashgorian, R. (eds.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
• Rum Seljuq Architecture, 1170-1220: The Patronage of Sultans. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 218 p.(Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art)

2016

• Legends of authority: The 1215 Seljuk inscriptions of Sinop Citadel, Turkey, Scott Redford (2014). In : International Journal of Islamic Architecture. 5, 2
• Book Review of Babaie, S and Grigor, T. Persian Kingship and Architecture. In : Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 79, 2
• A new approach to Mina'i Wares: Chronology and decoration.6 In : Persica. 25, p. 1-20

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Image and Icon
• Objects in Focus