Numerous biographic dictionaries (tazkira) have been compiled to commemorate Muslim saints, poets, great men, and Sufis throughout the Islamic world. Recent scholarly attention has explored the development of tazkira writing in the early modern era, portraying it as a process of place-making, commemoration, and pre-nationalist identity formation. While these investigations have underscored the value of tazkiras as sources in literary, political, and cultural studies, their significance in the historiography of architecture and urbanism remains largely unexplored. This paper aims to concentrate on Persian panegyric-tazkiras, commissioned biographic dictionaries of poets, in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as manifestations of a new social and political order in post-Safavid Iran. Anchoring this analysis at the intersection of urban and architectural patronage and tazkira commissions, the paper highlights the intertwined matrix of material and immaterial legacies and memories recorded and revived in tazkiras and the built environment. This research centers on the production of Madayeh al-Husayniyya (Tazkira-yi Baqi), commissioned by Isfahan’s governor, Mohammad Husayn Khan Sadr-i Isfahani on the eve of the nineteenth century. In addition to introducing this untapped manuscript held at the Majlis Library in Iran, the paper examines understudied visual documents, including maps and engravings of Isfahan in the early Qajar period, to reconstruct the architectural activities under Sadr-i Isfahani. This approach sheds light on key concepts and complexities at the intersection of individual/community, royal/non-royal, center/periphery, local/transregional, and textual/spatial in the post-Safavid city. Besides mining illuminating information on buildings, urban spaces, and architectural activities, the paper highlights the conceptual and formal interconnectedness of textual representations and physical transformations of the city. It suggests that Persian panegyric-tazkiras produced a unique way of negotiating social and political status and crafting a public image for non-royal urban elites in post-Safavid Iran. This study revisits current scholarship on post-Safavid urbanism and architecture, challenging the perception of it as an eventless period and emphasizing the architectural agency of lesser patrons in the city. Considering the prevalence of tazkira writing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries across the Islamic world, further research will expand this method as a viable approach to bridge the gap between literary studies and urban history.

The invention of lithography in the 19th century allowed for the continuation of manuscript culture and its visual conventions in the Islamic world. The central role of the scribe and the work of the illuminator and illustrator stayed the same, and new players such as publishers (chapchi) and wholesalers were added to this network. Publishers attempted to maintain the close resemblance between printed books and textual artifacts, but they gradually reshaped their approaches to production in accordance with their own particular choices and the expectations of audiences. In Persianate culture, particularly in Iran, and among the lithographed reproductions of iconic Persian literature, the work of poet Sheykh Moṣleḥ al-Din Saʿdi Shirazi (d. 1291) reveals a specific range of evolution in terms of content, layout, format, and picture cycles. The poet’s great literary merit, which inspired the creation of several illustrated and illuminated manuscripts, led to the particular conventions in producing manuscripts on Saʿdi’s works. While the first lithographed versions of his works imitated the originals in term of format, layout, and the order of content, the later printed works of the book (in the format of the entire Kolliyāt, single books of Golestān, and anthologies) reveal innovations that depart from old conventions. How can these differences help reconstruct the social and economic context in which these books were created? What light does the study of these deviations from old conventions shed on the reception of Saʿdi’s works when the audience shifted from a privileged few to a much broader group of people? The proposed paper will first explore how the format and contents were shaped in the first lithographed printed books of Saʿdi produced in Tehran, Tabriz, and Bombay between 1851 and 1874. Then it will chronologically trace changes made to the work in response to later social and economic conditions. To this end, through a comparative analysis of early lithographed versions of Kolliyāt and their manuscript counterparts, I will assess the continuum of manuscript tradition. In the next section, I will analyse margin annotations (sharḥ dar ḥāshieh) printed in newer lithographed versions of Golestān and examine the later tradition of writing comprehensive motivational notes—what producers defined as taꜥriż—at the end of the book. Through this analysis the paper will seek to reconstruct the cultural context(s) and practices that both shaped and reshaped lithographed versions of the book.

The Dome of the Rock, built at the end of the 7th century CE is the first monumental structure built by Muslims, and is considered the most impressive monument in Islam. To this day, scholars ask what causes the observer a sense of majesty and holiness. The purpose of this paper is to highlight structural aspects that have not yet been explored, which contribute to the awe-inspiring nature of the monument. There is a series of features, including symmetry, parity of dimensions, repetition and rhythm that contribute to the high-aesthetic impression of this monument. This paper argues that their effect is synergistic. Chief among these features is the Golden Ratio, approximately equal to 1.618. When used in art and architecture, this number which was called by Pacioli and da-Vinci “the Devine Proportion”, is known to effect visual beauty and to evoke a sensation of perfect aesthetics, majesty, and holiness. The paper offers evidence that the Golden Ratio plays a prominent role in the Dome of the Rock. To assess the occurrence of the Golden Ratio in the Dome of the Rock visual and computer-aided techniques were used. The `Jerusalem GIS` was utilized for the 3-dimensional imaging to analyze the top-view of the Dome of the Rock, and to measure the height of the building, which so far relied on estimates and calculations. Visual and computer-aided means determined that the Golden Ratio proportions are dominant in multiple components throughout the whole structure of the Dome of the Rock, starting from its overall silhouette, and continuing with many fine details in the exterior view of the building. Using the 3-D imaging system further determined that the top-view of the monument also matches the Golden Ratio. Moreover, the same phenomenon further prevails abundantly in the interior of the octagonal shrine. While the Golden Ratio appears in other monuments of faith, such abundance of occurrences of it in the same building seems to be unprecedented, which raises the question how such a design was conceived by the builders of the Dome of the Rock; Was it pre-determined or incidentally or intuitively achieved? These new findings help to clarify why the Dome of the Rock is so admired. It seems that the combination of symmetry and parity of dimensions, the repetitive rhythm and the manifold occurrences of Golden Ratio proportions, provides an omni-synergic contribution to the `WOW effect`, which characterizes this unique sacred shrine.

Dotted across the Saharan massifs and plateaus are millennia-old rock engravings and paintings that act as anchors to a profound historical continuity, bridging the present with the ancient past. Particularly, the enormous plateaus of Tassili n’Ajjer are rife with depictions of animals and humans caught in the midst of mundane, everyday activities. Dating back an impressive 12,000 years, Tassilian rock art takes varying forms—sharp, deep etchings, shallow peckings, paintings made with natural pigments—and provides what is possibly the earliest record of life in the prehistoric central Sahara. The Neolithic rock art of Tassili n’Ajjer forms the foundation of this paper, wherein I focus on the chronicles of its so-called discovery. Prior to its designation as a National Park in 1972 by the postcolonial government in Algeria, this region has been the target of numerous expeditions, each of which has set out to discover and document its much-talked-about petroglyphs. The original “discoverer” of the Tassili frescoes has been a topic of debate in Western archaeological circles for quite some time. The epithet has been attributed, among others, to Lieutenant Brenans, a French Foreign Legion camel corps officer who is said to have found them in 1933, and French archaeologist Henri Lhote, who made a similar claim in 1956. These petroglyphs may have seemed like a lost treasure to outsiders, but the Kel Tamasheq people of the Sahel-Sahara considered them an intrinsic part of local, quotidian knowledge and life in the desert. What constitutes acceptable and ethical research methods is the central question of this study. Has any explorer ever set foot on Indigenous soil without unintentionally or intentionally introducing some form of devastation? Indeed, as the paper details, a disturbing tableau of destruction, despoilment, disenfranchisement, and cultural erasure emerges from the research histories surrounding Tassilian art. By addressing the researchers’ moral dilemmas, this study seeks to contribute to the wider conversation about responsible research methods and the deleterious consequences of scholarly endeavors in geographies developmentally marginalized by colonial enterprise.

A precursor of oriental studies in the East, Louis Cheikho collected manuscripts stemming all the way from Morocco to India. He then placed those books in the Bibliothèque Orientale in Beirut at the beginning of the twentieth century. This paper revisits Cheikho's endeavor to offer a nuanced perspective on manuscript collection beyond the traditional scope of Europe and North America. Drawing on archival research conducted at the Jesuit residence in Lebanon, I contend that Cheikho's mission transcended mere emulation of European institutions; rather, it reflected an aspiration to foster religious and linguistic education in the region, underpinned by notions of modernity and secularity. The case of the Bibliothèque Orientale illuminates the complexities of manuscript studies, providing insights into issues of access, ownership, and cultural heritage within an "Eastern" context. Beyond amassing manuscripts, Cheikho's diaries from World War I reveal his determination to safeguard these treasures amidst Beirut's turbulent events. In this paper, I also examine this narrative to demonstrate how religious rhetoric fluctuated as the war unfolded. In doing so, this paper aims to illuminate how manuscripts serve as both mirrors reflecting the history of the region and as pivotal elements in its evolving cultural dynamics. Through an examination of Louis Cheikho's collecting and safeguarding activities, it becomes apparent that these manuscripts are not merely artifacts but essential components in understanding the nuanced layers of the region's past and its ever-changing landscape.