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Barakat, 1 Gough Street, London (2026)

21/08/2026

بعد العصر
After the ‘asr prayer

Featuring the blue Ottoman tiles of the qibla wall in the Chinese Mosque of Jirja, Upper Egypt as the rays of the sun filter through the dome shortly after the ‘asr prayer.
Although a small town today, Jirja was the capital of Upper Egypt when the country was administered by the Ottoman Empire. During that period, Jirja experienced a wealth of patronage from ambitious amirs, one of whom constructed in 1706 the mosque known today as the Chinese mosque. Despite the name, no Chinese material was used to make the titles but the name caught on as the blue and white style was reminiscent of the porcelain style famous in China.

11/08/2026

2026 Grantee: Edoardo Paulo Ferrari
Project: Study and Architectural Analysis of the Historical Mosque in Silmo village, Ladakh

This summer, Edoardo will travel to Ladakh with the rest of his team from India and Italy to document and develop a conservation plan for a rare late 19th-century Purki mosque in Silmo village, Ladakh, a stone-and-wood structure shaped by Baltistani and Kashmiri influences. The work combines a 3D survey, photographic documentation of its wood carvings, and oral history collection with a conservation plan co-developed with local stakeholders, addressing the urgent threat facing one of the region's last traditional mosques as climate pressures put this architectural heritage increasingly at risk.

The mosque is an almost unique example of a Purki vernacular construction from the late 19th century with influences from Baltistan and Kashmir made in stone and wood. Silmo village is situated in the Kargil District of Ladakh, close to the Indus River. It is a remote hamlet of approximately 1,600 inhabitants, set in a valley where houses and agricultural terraces are supported by dry stone retaining walls.

Edoardo is an independent researcher and conservation architect specialising in traditional construction techniques, with extensive fieldwork experience across the Western Himalayas and Iran. He holds a PhD in Architectural Anthropology from Oxford Brookes University. Edoardo has contributed to multidisciplinary projects worldwide, learning hands-on alongside craftspeople through an apprentice-style ethnographic approach. His research spans mud brick construction in South Khorasan, Iran; dry stone walling in Italy and the UK; and carpentry traditions in Eastern Baltistan, India. Through his documentation and conservation work with the Achi Association India in Ladakh, he has focused primarily on Buddhist temples and stupas, while also consulting on domestic architecture projects in the region.

Second image attribution: Bernard Gagnon. The village of Phyang, a typical Ladakh village set in a steep valley, similar to Silmo where Edoardo's project will take place.

06/08/2026

Maghribi Calligraphy - podcast with Umberto Bongianino

"Maghribi may look different from the scripts people already know. It is rounder but it also has surprisingly angular features. It is often more fluid and more expansive than the Arabic calligraphy of the Islamic East. Some letters stretch dramatically across the page, others do graceful loops. It has a rhythm, a movement that is immediately recognisable..."

Our most recent podcast with Umberto discussed the Maghribi script. Listen now to discover more about its story.

https://youtu.be/eMQNLvXEllg
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2b1E7MevaPOYRQebdSdF0r?si=6778b6e72278436d

1. M.88.206a-b. Folio from a Mathematical Treatise (18-19th century Morocco). Los Angeles County Museum of Art
2 & 3. A Maghribi illuminated Qurʾān dated 1182/1768–9. Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, ms. Raṣīd Maṣāḥif 25, fol. 3b–4a, as discussed at the end of the episode.

03/08/2026

https://youtu.be/eMQNLvXEllg
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2b1E7MevaPOYRQebdSdF0r?si=fd0b48aa772d4266

Join Umberto Bongianino as he walks us through one of the western Islamic world’s least appreciated artistic treasures: its calligraphy. For years, Maghribi calligraphy has been treated as amateurish, archaic, and unruly in contrast with the highly theorised conventions of Mashriqi calligraphy in the so-called centre of the Islamic world of Egypt, the Levant, and Anatolia.
In this episode, Umberto challenges this view, emphasising the interaction of Maghribi calligraphy with multiple traditions specific to its geographical milieu.

Maghribi calligraphy is traditionally written with a pointed tip (Ar. قلم مدبب) meaning that the line is always of equal thickness. It features distinctive curved letter forms, extended horizontals, and notation of certain Arabic letters below the main body.

Umberto’s work on Maghribi calligraphy forms part of CallFront, a collaborative research project that attempts to draw attention to the calligraphic traditions of the “frontiers” of the Islamic world, amongst them Maghribi, but also sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia, and China.

Umberto Bongianino is Samir Shamma Associate Professor of Numismatics, Epigraphy, and Material Culture at the Khalili Research Centre, University of Oxford. His research focuses on Arabic epigraphy, palaeography, the aesthetic of inscribed objects, and the arts of the book in the western Islamic world. His recent monograph is titled The Manuscript Tradition of the Islamic West: Maghribī Round Scripts and the Andalusī Identity.

This episode is part of our series Peripheries which seeks to push our understanding of the cultural heritage of the Islamic world away from the traditional centres that we associate with it. With a fantastic range of guests we will examine places and topics often considered peripheral to the Islamic world and understand why they are in fact of central importance to the region’s cultural heritage, from Armenia to England, from Ethiopia to West Africa.

27/07/2026

In Chapter 5 of his book "Natural Energy and Vernacular Architecture", architect Hassan Fathy wrote:

"To satisfy the need for ventilation alone, the malqaf or wind-catch was invented. This device is a shaft rising high above the building with an opening facing the prevailing wind. It traps the wind from high above the building where it is cooler and stronger, and channels it down into the interior of the building. The malqaf thus dispenses with the need for ordinary windows to ensure ventilation and air movement. The malqaf is also useful in reducing the sand and dust so prevalent in the winds of hot arid regions. The wind it captures above the building contains less solid material than the wind at lower heights, and much of the sand which does enter is dumped at the bottom of the shaft."

Malqaf, in Arabic, or Badgir, in Persian, is the term used to described the windcather that used to be so common in the vernacular architecture of the Islamic world, especially in its hotter climes. As the summer really digs in across most of the northern hemisphere, the need for sufficient cooling becomes an ever pressing question.

1 - Golestan Palace, Tehran, built 19th century (Photo credit: Nasser Sadeghi)
2 - Borujerdi House, Kashan, built 1857
3 - Dowlatabad Garden, Yazd, built 1747 (Photo credit: Bernard Gagnon)
4 - 1878 illustration of malqafs in Egypt (Image credit: Travelers in the Middle East Archive)
5 - Malqafs of Cairo's citadel

24/07/2026

Survey of the Wan Mohd Saghir Collection at Khazanah Fathaniyah, Kuala Lumpur

Mohd Affendi Shafri was the recipient of an A3 grant in 2023 to survey the Malay and Javi manuscripts of the Wan Mohd Saghir Collection at Khazanah Fathaniyah while providing personnel at its institution with training in cataloguing, handling, and storage of manuscripts.

Named after its collector, Wan Mohd Saghir, the collection features materials from Sheikh Ahmad al-Fathani (d.1912), an important scholarly figure in religious sciences around the Malay peninsula and archipelago. The collection features over 1000 materials from the 19th century of which 500 were part of this project.

Amongst the grant's activities were two workshops for research assistants of Khazanah Fathaniya on cataloguing and material preservation (pictures 1-6), the publication of a manuscript catalogue (picture 7) and rare books catalogue, and two seminars presenting the findings of the project and the uncovered manuscripts (photos 8-10).

Shafri's work, alongside his colleagues, revealed previously unknown manuscripts, coins, printed books, and written correspondence. Maybe even more importantly, it showed that the community cared about the preservation of this material for future generations.

In the two years since the completion of the project, the team have moved to survey the Arabic manuscripts of the collection and aim to complete the remaining 500 items in the Malay and Javi collection.

21/07/2026

2026 Grantee: Abdulmalik Abdulrahman
Project: The Influence of Islamisation in the Material Culture of Northern Nigeria: An Archaeological Investigation of Birnin-Bordan Settlement

Old Birnin-Kudu is an archaeologic site in Northern Nigeria best known for its neolithic rock art but the area has another story to tell. This August, Abdulmalik will lead this pioneering project, funded by The Barakat Trust, to investigate the later settlement between the 10th and 18th centuries AD when it served as a trade route for Arabian merchants in the Trans-Saharan trade from Kanem-Bornu to other Hausaland regions, including Kano, Rano, and Katsina.
Despite the significance of the settlement and the ruined structures under threat from farming, no comprehensive archaeological research has been conducted, aside from a brief survey in 2019. This project tends to investigate the constituents of Islamic cultural materials, periods of Islamisation and the influence of the Trans-Saharan trade in Northern Nigeria.

What will this new round of excavations reveal...?

Abdulmalik is currently a CHASE doctoral researcher at the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, Univeristy of East Anglia. He possesses expertise in anthropology and archaeology, with a specialisation in the field of art history, specifically focusing on the archaeology of the West African Coast. He previously held the position of a tutor specialising in heritage studies within the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria. The focus of his current research pertains to the reconstruction of the interactions between West African communities and Europeans within the context of the historical era along the Atlantic ocean.

16/07/2026

Our speaker in this month's podcast episode, Keelan Overton, points out the missing door at Emamzadeh Yahya's shrine in Varamin, Iran. She says:
“Please keep a look out for the tomb’s wooden Safavid door dated 971/1563 and inscribed with Yahya ebn-e Ali’s genealogy, subsequently stolen, whereabouts unknown. It is currently only known visually through its reproduction in a 1915 sales catalog. Its inscriptions were recorded in 1863.”

In hoping to find the door and have it returned to public view we can look for inspiration in a different case. In 2014 a number of Mamluk glass mosque lamps were stolen from the Museum of Islamic Art after a security incident there. Scholar and art historian Doris Behrens-Abouseif was able to confirm their provenance after being alerted to their circulation in the international art market in 2016 after which they were successfully returned to Egypt.

The door of Emamzadeh Yahya has been missing for much longer than the Mamluk lamps ever were but there is still hope that it could turn up somewhere someday.

To learn more about the shrine and Keelan's efforts to reunite the disparate aspects of the site into one museological project listen to our most recent podcast episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv3wYol7uUI
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6zY8a6movBCR8xiofoRSny?si=57b47f42b2624809

13/07/2026

chārbāgh چارباغ चारबाग़

As this year's monsoon sets in over the Indian subcontinent and the rains provide relief to the parched earth after a long, hot summer, the trees and plants become verdant once again.

The subcontinent's gardens, of which the charbagh is the most famous form are particularly special at this time, appearing sublimely fresh during those glimpses of sun when the rain momentarily ceases.

Charbagh, literally "four gardens", is a quadrilateral shaped garden that produces four distinct gardens divided by axial waterways and a central fountain, mausoleum, or other building. The design is thought to have originated in Persia but were canonically brought to India by Babur, the first Mughal emperor. Under his dynasty, charbaghs flourished around the Indian subcontinent in palaces and mausoleums of the family's most important members were designed around them.

1 - Humayan's Tomb, Delhi. 1558.
2 - Bibi ka Makbara, Aurangabad. Built in 1660 for Dilras Banu Begum, wife of Aurangzeb. Its waters no longer flow.
3 - 1590 miniature of Babur supervising the layout of his charbagh named the Garden of Fidelity in Kabul. Victoria & Albert Museum, IM.276A-1913.
4 - "Three Trees of India", Folio from a Baburnama (Autobiography of Babur). Metropolitan Museum, 2013.576.

10/07/2026

Introducing 2026 Grantee: Tobias Scheunchen
Arabic Legal Papyri Research at the Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung in Berlin

Tobias is a social and material historian of the Middle East interested in the formation of the Islamic state, documentary culture, and the intersection of Byzantine and Islamic law. His research focuses on social, material, and global approaches to history, asking how premodern practitioners and consumers of law engaged with the material form of legal documents, how material scarcity and documentary practices governed the dispensation of Byzantine and Islamic justice, and how ordinary Muslims, Christians, and Jews employed sophisticated legal strategies to navigate the evolving legal landscape of the Islamic Middle East, especially during the first two centuries following the Arab Muslim conquests in the 640s. He is currently a lecturer in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and Cotsen Fellow in the Society of Fellows.

During his archival research in Berlin, funded by The Barakat Trust, Tobias will examine some of the earliest Islamic legal documents preserved on papyrus: legal claims (adhkār ḥaqq), quittances (barāʾāt), and affidavits (iqrārāt) for his current book project entitled "Recording Justice in Byantine and Early Islamic Egypt (550–800)."

1 Tobias himself
2 A papyrus held in the Berlin collection (P 24011) featuring an exit permit from the Upper Egyptian city of Ashmunayn
3 Another papyrus, P 1.682, that Tobias will be working on during his stay in Berlin

Congratulations to Tobias and best of luck to him with his project!

Barakat

21/08/2026

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Tuesday	10am - 5pm
Wednesday	10am - 5pm
Thursday	10am - 5pm
Friday	10am - 5pm