06

Mar

Cairo Lecture: Woman of the Year: Power of Female Agency on the Material Culture of Fourteenth Century Cairo

Presented by: Dr. Noha Abou-Khatwa; adjunct Assistant Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the American University in Cairo

  • 6:00 PM Cairo Time
  • ARCE Cairo Center2 Midan Simon Bolivar Garden City Cairo Governorate 11461 Egypt
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Doors Open at 5:30 PM and close at 6:00 PM

Lecture Information

This upcoming lecture focuses on the mother of the 23rd Bahri Mamluk Sultan Sha‘ban ibn Husayn ibn al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun, Khawand Baraka, who is the most celebrated female patron of the arts of fourteenth-century Cairo. It explores how she was perceived and portrayed by Mamluki sources, what the details of her unpublished waqf document reveal about her personality and identity, and finally what her Qur’an manuscripts say of her artistic agency and self-expression.

Speaker Bio

Noha Abou-Khatwa holds a PhD in Islamic art and material culture from the University of Toronto. She researches the manuscript tradition and architecture of the Medieval Muslim world, with a focus on the Mamluks. She is also an adjunct Assistant Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the American University in Cairo. She publishes on epigraphy, calligraphy, Qur’an manuscripts, and architecture.