Notes on Contributors
Deniz Beyazit
A graduate of the Sorbonne in Paris (2009), Dr. Deniz Beyazit is a curator in the Department of Islamic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which she joined in 2010. She has widely published, lectured, and taught courses on various aspects of Islamic Art and architecture, and curated many exhibitions and installations: these include her role as co-curator of Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs in 2016. She was consulting curator for the exhibition Stories of Syria’s Textiles: Art and Heritage across Two Millennia at the Katonah Museum of Art (2023). Since 2018 she co-directs the research project From West Africa to Southeast Asia: The History of Muhammad al-Jazuli’s Dala’il al-Khayrat prayer book (15th–20th centuries), on the global history of al-Jazūlī’s Dalā’il al-Khayrāt, a prayer cycle for the Prophet Muhammad. Her current projects include an upcoming exhibition on “Orientalism” (co-curated with Dr Maryam Ekhtiar and Dr. Asher Miller), and her ongoing research on The Met’s Islamic art collection of over 400 garments and dresses.
Guy Burak
Guy Burak is the Librarian for Middle Eastern, Islamic and Jewish Studies at New York University’s Elmer Holmes Bobst Library. He is the author of The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He is also the co-editor (with Said Aljoumani and Konrad Hirschler) of The Library of Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar: Book Culture in Late Ottoman Palestine (Brill, 2025). Burak has published several studies on devotional texts and the history of Mecca and Medina. He is currently working on a monograph on the history of kanun.
Sergio Carro Martín
Sergio Carro Martín is a Tenured Researcher at the Spanish National Research Council. He holds a PhD in Humanities from Pompeu Fabra University and was trained as an Arabic philologist at the University of Salamanca (2003–2007), in Sanaa (Yemen, 2005), and in Cairo (Egypt, 2009). He has worked on several projects in Papyrology funded by the Spanish Government at the Spanish National Research Council and Pompeu Fabra University. He has also taught courses in Arabic language, Arabic literature, Islamic and Byzantine Art, and Medieval History at the University of Salamanca and Complutense University of Madrid. Since 2009, he has been a member of the DVCTVS team, which focuses on the conservation, cataloguing, editing, and study of the most important papyrological collections in Spain. Since 2019, he has also been the research coordinator for the Arabic fund of the Palau-Ribes papyrological collection (Barcelona). His research focuses on Arabic manuscripts, Islamic documentary practices, materiality and the legal and social aspects of medieval pilgrimage scrolls.
Mounia Chekhab-Abudaya
Mounia Chekhab-Abudaya is Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar. She completed her Ph.D. in Islamic Art History and Archaeology at the Pantheon Sorbonne University in Paris and is specialized on the Western Mediterranean, manuscripts and pilgrimage-related devotional materials in the Islamic world. With a great interest in languages, Chekhab-Abudaya holds a degree in Literal Arabic from the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations (INALCO). She taught Islamic Art at BA and MA levels for four years at the Pantheon Sorbonne and INALCO. She also helped at the Department of Islamic Art at the Louvre Museum in Paris for the preparation of the new display which opened in September 2012. At MIA, she has led the Curatorial team during the revamping of the museum’s permanent galleries (2015–2022) and has curated or co-curated 11 temporary exhibitions including Hajj – The Journey through Art (2013) in collaboration with the British Museum, Building Our Collection: Ceramics of Al Andalus (2014), Qajar Women (2015), Imperial Threads: Motifs and Artisans from Turkey, Iran and India (2017), Baghdad: Eye’s Delight (2022) and Splendours of the Atlas (2024).
Haris Dervišević
Haris Dervišević is an expert in Islamic art and culture in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a PhD in art history. Dervišević is an associate professor at the Faculty of Philosophy (University of Sarajevo) and also teaches at the Faculty of Architecture (University of Sarajevo) and at the Interior Design Studies (University of Mostar). He ran a cycle of lectures at the University of Lisbon (Instituto de História da Arte, 2017) and a cycle of lectures at the University of Graz (Institut für Kunstgeschichte, 2019; Zentrum für Südosteuropastudien, 2023). He has participated in local and international projects. At the moment, he is involved in the project Under the Sky of Cheerful Faith: Islam and Europe in the Bosnian Experience (Riyasat of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina), and Islamic Architecture and Orientalizing Style in Habsburg Bosnia, 1878–1918 (Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Universität Wien/European Research Council). Haris Dervišević is the author of academic, review, professional and popular works, as well as of texts in dailies, weeklies and online journals. He is a co-editor of the Proceedings of the International Symposium on Islamic Art in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2021) and co-author of the book 40 Bosnian and Herzegovinian Mushafs (2022). He was the director of the 2nd Sarajevo Ramadan Festival – Festival of Islamic Art and Culture (2015). He has received several fellowships and recognitions such as ‘The Best in Heritage Travel Fellowship’ (2006, 2008), and ‘The Hamad bin Khalifa Travel Fellowship’ (2009). He is a member of the Historians of the Islamic Art Association (HIAA), International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), International Council of Museums (ICOM), International Committee for Museums and Collections of Fine Arts (ICFA), International Scientific Committee on Places of Religion and Ritual (PRERICO), Council of the Congress of Bosniak Intellectuals (VKBI), and the Parent Committee of Preporod, the Bosniak Association of Culture.
Nicoletta Fazio
Nicoletta Fazio is Curator of Iran and Central Asia at the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha. A medievalist by training, she has received her PhD in Global Art History from the University of Heidelberg (Germany). Before joining the curatorial team in Doha, she was Junior Curator at the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin. In Doha she has been part of the MIA relaunch project and has worked on several exhibitions, most recently Baghdad: Eye’s Delight and Fashioning an Empire: Textiles from Safavid Iran. Her next exhibition, a collaborative project on Afghanistan with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), is scheduled to open in early 2026.
Finbarr Barry Flood
Finbarr Barry Flood is founder-director of Silsila: Center for Material Histories and William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of the Humanities at the Institute of Fine Arts and Department of Art History, New York University. His books include The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Umayyad Visual Culture (2000), Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter, (2009), and the 2-volume Blackwell Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture (2017), co-edited with Professor Gülru Necipoğlu. In spring 2019 he was the Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, delivering a series of eight public lectures entitled Islam and Image: Beyond Aniconism and Iconoclasm. In autumn 2019 he delivered the Chaire du Louvre lectures at the Musée du Louvre on the theme Technologies de dévotion dans les arts de l’Islam: pèlerins, reliques, et copies, accompanied by a book with the same title. In 2023, Tales Things Tell – Material Histories of Early Globalisms, co-written with Beate Fricke, University of Bern, was published by Princeton University Press. He is in the final stages of a long-term book project, provisionally entitled Islam and Image: Contested Histories, which formed the basis of the Slade Lectures.
Sabiha Göloğlu
Sabiha Göloğlu is a recipient of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (Global) for her research project at Universität Hamburg and the University of Michigan. She was formerly a postdoctoral university assistant at the University of Vienna’s Department of Art History and a CAHIM (Connecting Art Histories in the Museum) fellow of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz and the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin. She holds a PhD in Archaeology and History of Art from Koç University in Istanbul (2018). She received her MA in Architectural History (2011) and Bachelor of Architecture (2009) from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara.
She has published an article in Muqarnas about a canvas painting of Mecca and Medina and exchanges between photography, painting and print media; co-edited a special double issue of the Journal of Islamic Manuscripts on Sulaymān al-Jazūlī’s (d. 870/1465) Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt (Proofs of Good Deeds); wrote a book chapter about the talismanic use of hand-executed and printed images of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem in prayer manuscripts; and prepared the catalogue entries for devotional books from the Collection of the Kubbealtı Foundation in Istanbul. Sabiha is now working on her monograph entitled The House of God and the Tomb of the Prophet: Images of Mecca and Medina in the Ottoman Empire (16th–19th Century).
Nurul Iman Rusli
Nurul Iman Rusli studied Arabic language, history and cultures of the Islamic world. Currently, she is involved in an innovative museum project in Abu Dhabi, sharing her passion and expertise for the forthcoming Zayed National Museum, after working for twenty years at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia in variety of curatorial and managerial roles. Nurul Iman’s research addresses different aspects of Islamic art particularly in manuscripts and codicology. Her publications include The Royal Dala’il al-Khayrat Manuscript from Terengganu, Malaysia (2021) in the Journal of Islamic Manuscripts.
Marika Sardar
Marika Sardar is a museums and heritage professional who has worked at the Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. She is currently one of the curators for the Islamic Arts Biennale to be held in Jeddah in 2025. Among the exhibitions she has contributed to are Interwoven Globe (Metropolitan Museum, 2013), focusing on the worldwide textile trade between the 16th and 18th centuries; Sultans of Deccan India, 1500–1700 (Metropolitan Museum, 2015), examining the artistic traditions of the Muslim sultanates of central India; Epic Tales from Ancient India (San Diego Museum of Art, 2016), looking at narrative traditions and the illustration of texts from South Asia; and Image: The Power of the Visual (Aga Khan Museum, 2022), exploring figural imagery in art from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. Her research interests include the arts of India, particularly the Deccan region; trade and intercultural exchanges; and the circulation and collecting of objects. She earned her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Avinoam Shalem
Avinoam Shalem is the Riggio Professor of the arts of Islam at the Columbia University in New York. He served as director of the American Academy in Rome from 2020 to 2021. His main fields of interest concern the global context of the visual cultures of the world of Islam in the Mediterranean, medieval aesthetic thoughts on visual arts and craftsmanship, and the making of the image of ‘Islamic’ art as well as the modern historiography of the field. He has published extensively on varied topics concerning intercultural exchanges within and between the world of Islam and Europe. His current book project, “When Nature Becomes Ideology”, critically explores the varied approaches of ‘scaping’ and curating the rural landscape of Palestine after 1947. He directs at present the project Black Mediterranean/ Mediterraneo Nero – Artistic Encounters and Counter-narratives/ Incontri artistici e contronarrazioni, as part of the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative (together with Alina Payne, Villa i Tatti, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence).