Prof. Nasser O Rabbat

Rabbat taught his Fall '98 HASS-D class, "Religious Architecture and Islamic cultures." He co-taught with Professor Sibel Bozdogan the seminar "Orientalism and Representation," required as an introduction to criticism for SMArchS students interested in the relationship between architecture and culture. His survey courses were posted electronically on the web for greater net user access. He organized the Fall AKPIA /MIT An Evening With lecture series. Along with Professor Hasan-Uddin Khan he organized a January 1999 study trip to Cairo for sixteen graduate students to visit various conservation and restoration projects throughout Islamic Cairo.

Professor Rabbat delivered three papers recently in international conferences: the Mamluk Conference at the DePaul University Center, Chicago; the Islamic Area Studies Project at the University of Tokyo, Japan; and "Cultural Creation and Change in Arab Societies at the End of the Twentieth Century," in Granada, Spain. He also participated in the Friends of Islamic Art Lecture Series, Harvard University. Since June 1998, he has been contributing two articles a month to the Arabic newspaper al-Hayat on issues in cultural policies, art and architectural history and criticism, and reviews of books, exhibitions, and films. He also published the following essays: "Toward a Reevaluation of the Umayyad Artistic Culture," (in Arabic) Abwab 19 (Winter 1999); "Signs of the Built in 'Asfar al-Bunyan': Architecture in the Writings of Jamal al-Ghitani," (in Arabic) Al-Hilal 107, 1(January 1999); "The Interplay of History and Archaeology in Beirut," in Projecting Beirut: Episodes in the Construction and Reconstruction of the Modern City. Peter G. Rowe and Hashim Sarkis, eds. (Munich; London; New York: Prestel, 1998); "Mamluk Artists and Society: The Perspective of the Sources," Journal of Architectural Education (Sept. 1998). Professor Rabbat is currently writing two books. The first, tentatively entitled, Shaping the Mamluk Image: The Scope of the Sources , traces the processes whereby the image of the Mamluks was constructed in various artistic and architectural media. The second, tentatively entitled Historicizing the City: The Significance of Maqrizi's Khitat of Cairo, is a critical study of the life and ideas of al-Maqrizi (1364-1442) and his famous book, al-Khitat. This work will assess his invaluable contribution as a student of cities and buildings of the medieval world and his book. Professor Rabbat is also co-editing the NYU 1999 Kevorkian Lectures to be tentatively published as A Medieval Cairo for a Modern World.