• Date and time: Tuesday 18 February 2025, 5.30pm to 7pm
  • Location: In-person and online
    Room K/133, King's Manor, Exhibition Square (Map)
  • Audience: Open to alumni, staff, students, the public
  • Admission: Free admission, booking required

Event details

York Medieval Lecture

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Following the initial phase of conquest in the seventh century, garrison settlements (Arabic: misr, pl. amsar) were established across the Islamic world. Many of these developed over time into major cities that supported thriving manufacturing centres. The practice of founding new cities continued into later centuries, including Baghdad, Raqqa, Samarra and Cairo. The political elites of the early Islamic period were also avid patrons of palatial complexes, located both in urban and rural areas. These ambitious projects can, of course, be appreciated in architectural terms, but they also had profound implications for the evolution of the craft sectors of Islamic world, changing working practices and stimulating the development of novel technologies and visual conventions. This talk considers these issues through the close examination of selected media – relief-moulded ceramics, carved wood, and stucco – recovered from sites across the Middle East. These media exhibit signs of innovation, ranging from the practices of formation through to the generation of patterns. I argue that the caliphal promotion of large-scale construction provided an environment which accelerated the evolution of Islamic visual and material culture, creating a definitive break with the practices of Late Antiquity.

Image credit: Carved wood panel with traces of polychromy. Last quarter of the tenth century, Egypt. Metropolitan Museum, NY. Rogers Fund 1932: 32.102.1

Venue details

  • Not wheelchair accessible
  • Hearing loop