The aim of this thesis is to highlight the relevance of the spiritual dimension of Islamic calligraphy, focusing on the Turkish contemporary calligraphic tradition. Academic literature in the field has been dominated by the tendency to focus on the objects produced by artists, neglecting their personal experience and understanding of the art. Using a phenomenological perspective, I give voice to calligraphers I met in Istanbul and Konya, letting emerge their views on issues related to the relationship between art, religion and spirituality. I explore several themes that have arisen from the interviews I conducted with fifteen exponents of the contemporary tradition, organised as a journey from the most material aspects to the most abstract ones. The exploration of these themes starts with the symbolism hidden behind physical calligraphic tools, moving to the analysis of the symbolism of the point and the letters, elementary forms of the calligraphic creations. The bodily dimension has been taken into consideration, showing how the control of the body is an essential aspect of the calligraphic practice. The art can be conceived as a pathway requiring the development of several moral qualities and virtues, all necessary to improve both the artistic capabilities and the spiritual maturity of the practitioner, until the achievement of the authorisation to teach the art. Once a calligrapher reaches the license and the mastery of the art, they bear the responsibility of transmitting the art to others. Furthermore, they become agents of remembrance, portraying in the most beautiful manners the verses of the Quran in social religious spaces, as in mosques, or on calligraphic panels acquired by individual collectors or museums. Since their artwork focuses on representing religious materials, including the remembrance of the attributes of God and of Prophet Muhammad, their art is considered an act of worship. Finally, I investigate what the meaning of Divine Beauty is in Islamic calligraphy, presenting the perspectives of Turkish calligraphers and analysing the connections between the artistic form and the meaning of the contents of specific calligraphic works. In conclusion, I have not limited my analysis to the formal aspects of the art, rather I have highlighted the existential dimension of a complex practice which connects together several aspects of the human being, including the spiritual dimension. Thus, the traditional stream of Turkish contemporary calligraphy can be seen as a full manifestation of a culture, a lifestyle and a religion.

Thesis (M.C.A.-Res.)--University of Wollongong, 2008. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 70-79.

While academic discussion of ornament within medieval Islamic art has laboured much over the codification and meaning of certain forms, there has been relatively little research to date on the visual and iconographic function of architecture as ornament in this context. Those few authors that have dealt with this issue have focused overwhelmingly on two-dimensional architectural representations, largely ignoring the considerable body of portable objects from the medieval Middle East that imitate architecture through three-dimensional forms, whether in a mimetically coherent fashion or in a more elliptical or reconfigured manner. This thesis proposes, first and foremost, that there is significant cultural meaning inherent in the use of architecture as an inspiration for the non-essential formal qualities of portable objects from the medieval Islamic world. Through iconographic analysis of the relationships that such objects form with architecture, an understanding of both full-size architecture and its miniature incarnations in the medieval urban context is advanced within the thesis. To maximise the intellectual scope of the study whilst still enabling an in-depth treatment of the material, four discrete studies of different object groups are presented. All of these are thought to date from approximately 1000 to 1350 CE, and to come from the core Middle Eastern territories of Persia, Syria and Egypt. The first chapter examines the glazed ceramic ‘house models’ believed to originate in late or post-Seljuq Persia. The second discusses six-sided ceramic tables from the same milieu, and more numerous related tables produced in Syria during the same period. In the third chapter carved marble jar stands from Cairo, apparently produced from the twelfth century onwards, are analysed. The final chapter, on metalwork, broadens its approach to encompass two very different strains of production: inkwells from Khurasan and incense burners from the breadth of the Middle East. Because much of the thesis focuses on material that has been dramatically understudied, it performs the primary action of compiling examples of each of the object types under study. Though this information is presented as a catalogue vi sommaire, this component of the thesis is not regarded as an end in itself. The major tasks of the thesis are the identification of the architectural tropes that are being evoked within each object group, analysis of the manner in which those forms have been modified to suit the miniature context of the objects, and the location of meaning within such diminutive evocations of architectural form. Through comparisons with other objects, full-size architecture, two-dimensional representations of architecture and historical texts, the thesis moves discourse on this type of motif in Islamic art beyond the traditional and sometimes superficial discussion of ‘ornament’, re-setting architectural iconography within larger contexts of urbanisation and city culture of the medieval Islamic world.

The artistic tradition of the Middle East is under attack. While sensationalized media and fear-mongering politicians seem to dominate the discussion on ISIS, researchers are racing against time to work on conservation and education efforts to try and preserve what is left of the artistic heritage of Iraq and Syria. This paper seeks to present a factual and understandable view on cultural destruction in the Middle East at the hands of ISIS. This paper is divided into several parts discussing; the history of ISIS, why ISIS attacks art and architecture, the scope of their destruction and the long and short term effects this destruction has on local and global communities, as well as current and proposed conservation efforts. From this discussion it is clear that ISIS' propaganda does not always align with the group’s actions and that there needs to be a global awareness of the ongoing situation if current and future conservation efforts are going to be truly successful. This paper is part of a growing academic field studying ISIS and a larger community-based movement for accessible and accurate information. It is the hopes of the author that this paper accurately addresses the severity of this destruction within communities and encourages more discussion about conservation efforts in the Middle East, the importance of the artistic tradition of the Middle East, and the importance of global solidarity against this destruction.

This dissertation covers the emergence of a tradition of the fine arts in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century and its relationship to discourses of nationalism. Taking as a starting point the canon of the ‘pioneer’ generation as it is defined in the historiography, I follow the careers of the sculptor Mahmud Mukhtar and the painters Ragheb ‘Ayyad, Muhammad Nagi, and Mahmud Sa‘id, each of whom is treated in a full chapter. Narratives surrounding the life and work of these artists have tended to emphasize the ways in which the images they created participated in the definition of a single cohesive nation – through the use of Pharaonic imagery, which anchors the nation in a distant past, through rural symbolism, which ties the nation to the land and the Nile, and through a female iconography that links the nation to ideas of virtue and purity – what I term here, following Timothy Mitchell and Homi Bhabha, a pedagogical narrative of the nation. However, I suggest that the process of imagining the nation as a unified whole necessarily involves a negotiation of difference, sometimes that of the peasant or the woman who pose a challenge to the assumption of an unproblematic national collectivity, sometimes that of the artists themselves, who, for reasons of foreign education, religion, or social identity, are unable to fully identify with definitions of the nation that were themselves constantly contested. This negotiation of difference – what Mitchell has termed the performative - and how it appears within works of visual art, constitutes the main subject of this dissertation.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have made substantial progress in implicating genomic regions in type 2 diabetes (T2D) susceptibility. Whilst attributing causal mechanisms to loci has proved non trivial, these studies have provided insights into the genetic architecture underlying the disease. GWAS findings indicate a causal role for gene regulatory processes, and suggest that pancreatic beta-cells play a pivotal role in mediating common T2D association. Work presented in this thesis therefore sought to generate novel regulatory annotations from human islets, and to assess whether T2D-associated loci can be accurately fine-mapped using statistical approaches, with the aim of improving understanding of causal mechanisms underlying these associations through integration of the two approaches. Using small RNA sequencing in human islets and enriched beta-cell populations (both n=3) and mRNA sequencing in a large number of human islets (n=130), I increased the number of available human islet annotations. These studies identified high or islet-specific expression in many micro RNAs (miRNAs) without previously known roles in human islets. It also provided the largest study of quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) and allele-specific expression (ASE) in human islets to date, identifying significant eQTLs for 1,636 genes and significant ASE at 8,754 genes. There was enrichment of active islet chromatin, compared to other tissues, at the best eQTL variant for each gene, but also substantial sharing of significant eQTLs between islets and other tissues. Simulations were used to assess the utility of fine-mapping approaches for refining common disease-associated loci to smaller intervals or sets of variants likely to include the causal variant. The results demonstrated that fine-mapping can indeed refine these loci to sets or intervals of a size more amenable to functional follow-up or focussed intersection with high quality annotations. Furthermore, using an approximated Bayesian approach, I was able to refine twenty-one of the known common T2D-associated loci. Finally, using the newly generated annotations, I demonstrated enrichment of T2D association signal for regulatory RNA annotations (islet lncRNAs and miRNA target gene sets). I also identified examples in which these types of annotation overlap common and rare variation suggestive of a role in T2D pathogenesis. Using further islet annotations, I also uncovered potential causal mechanisms at four of the twentyone fine-mapped common T2D loci. These data therefore provide many novel islet regulatory annotations that can be intersected with T2D genetics, and provide a first example of how such an approach can lead to novel potential causal mechanisms underlying association loci.

Thesis advisor: Katherine Nahum / This thesis is a comparison between medieval Christian and Islamic sacred architecture, using the Great Mosque of Cordoba and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Chartres as examples. The paper links a formal analysis and comparison of the buildings, including their use of space, light, and decoration to an analysis and comparison of each religion's philosophy and theology. It includes a discussion of the role of Neo-Platonist philosophy on the architecture of each religion. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2007. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Fine Arts. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Si les reliures arabes et islamiques ont connu une immense variété de décors au travers du Moyen-Age, la période allant du XIIIᵉ au XVᵉ siècle représente sans conteste un âge d’or quant à la richesse et la beauté des œuvres réalisées. Si pendant longtemps ce sont les formes géométriques et circulaires qui ont dominé, les conquêtes mongoles dès le XIIIᵉ ont contribuées à la diffusion du décor central en forme de mandorle de la Perse vers l’empire Mamelouk puis vers l’empire Ottoman. Celle-ci était largement utilisée par les relieurs persans dont l’art a certainement connu une influence artistique venant de Chine. Ce sont les artistes persans qui ont porté le décor en forme de mandorle à son plus haut degré de raffinement esthétique. La mandorle n’est apparue dans le répertoire des relieurs mamelouks qu’à partir de la fin du XIVᵉ siècle et a couramment été utilisée à partir de la deuxième moitié du XVᵉ siècle. C’est également à partir de cette période qu’elle apparaît sur les reliures ottomanes avec des mandorles polylobées ornées de belles arabesques et de décors floraux fins et raffinés réalisés de plus en plus souvent sur des fonds dorés. La fin du XVᵉ siècle est marquée par l’apparition des décors réalisés à l’aide de plaque qui va rapidement se répandre et remplacer les mandorles réalisées à l’aide de petits. L’influence esthétique des décors en forme de mandorle fut telle qu’elle se répandit jusque dans les répertoires des décors des reliures de la Renaissance italienne. Cette étude présente l'évolution et la diffusion du décor en forme de mandorle réalisé à l'aide de petits fers du XIIIᵉ au XVᵉ siècle sur la base d'un échantillon composé de quatre-vingt-douze reliures. / Arab and Islamic bindings offer a very large variety of patterns throughout the Middle Ages. The period from 13th to the 15th century is undoubtedly a golden age regarding the beauty of their ornement and decoration.If during a long time circular and geometric profiles dominated the bindings decoration, the Mongol conquests from the 13th century have contributed to the diffusion of almoond profile from Persia to the Mamluk and Ottoman's bindings. It was widely used by Persian bookbinders whose art has certainly experienced an artistic influence from China. Persian artists have worn the almond shape at its highest degree of aesthetic refinement. The almond profile only appeared into the Mamluk binder's repertoire until the end of the 15th century and commonly used from the second half of 15th century. It is also from this period that it appears on the Ottoman bindings with lobed profiles usually filled with beautiful arabesques and floral ornamentoften on gilded background. In the late 15th century appears the technique of pressure moulding, that involved the pressing of the leather with large stamps. This technique quickly spread and replace almond shape using small stamps. The aesthetic influence of the almond profile was such that it were introduced into the Italian bookbinder's repertoire by the middle of the 15th century. This study presents the developments and dissemination of the almond profile made with small stamps from the 13th to the 15th century on the basis of a sample of ninety two bindings.

For the purpose of cultural heritage preservation, the task of recording and reconstructing visually complicated architectural geometrical patterns is facing many practical challenges. Existing traditional technologies rely heavily on the subjective nature of our perceptual power in understanding its complexity and depicting its color differences. This study explores one possible solution, through utilizing digital techniques for reconstructing detailed historical Islamic geometric patterns. Its main hypothesis is that digital techniques offer many advantages over the human eye in terms of recognizing subtle differences in light and color. The objective of the study is to design, test and evaluate an automatic visual tool for identifying deteriorated or incomplete archaeological Islamic geometrical patterns captured in digital images, and then restoring them digitally, for the purpose of producing accurate 2D reconstructed metric models. An experimental approach is used to develop, test and evaluate the specialized software. The goal of the experiment is to analyze the output reconstructed patterns for the purpose of evaluating the digital tool in respect to reliability and structural accuracy, from the point of view of the researcher in the context of historic preservation. The research encapsulates two approaches within its methodology; Qualitative approach is evident in the process of program design, algorithm selection, and evaluation. Quantitative approach is manifested through using mathematical knowledge of pattern generation to interpret available data and to simulate the rest based on it. The reconstruction process involves induction, deduction and analogy. The proposed method was proven to be successful in capturing the accurate structural geometry of the deteriorated straight-lines patterns generated based on the octagon-square basic grid. This research also concluded that it is possible to apply the same conceptual method to reconstruct all two-dimensional Islamic geometric patterns. Moreover, the same methodology can be applied to reconstruct many other pattern systems. The conceptual framework proposed by this study can serve as a platform for developing professional softwares related to historic documentation. Future research should be directed more towards developing artificial intelligence and pattern recognition techniques that have the ability to suplement human power in accomplishing difficult tasks.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 274-285). Also available on the Internet.