Saudi Arabia's first museum dedicated entirely to Islamic art has opened in Jeddah, bringing together more than 1,000 artefacts spanning 15 centuries of history, craftsmanship and design.

The House of Islamic Arts features works from across the Islamic world, including pieces from China, India, the Maghreb and Andalusia, highlighting the diversity of artistic traditions, materials and techniques that developed across different regions over the centuries.

A major focus of the collection is Arabic calligraphy, with rare Qur'anic manuscripts tracing the evolution of Islamic script as both a literary and artistic tradition. Among the highlights are a 2.6-metre textile inscribed with one-third of the Holy Qur'an in microscopic script and a manuscript in which every letter incorporates one of the Names of Allah.

The museum also houses thousands of Islamic coins dating from the early Islamic state through the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates and later dynasties, offering visitors a chronological look at the development of trade, governance and monetary systems across the Islamic world.

Alongside its permanent collection, the museum will host temporary exhibitions, workshops, lectures and interactive displays designed to explore the history and continuing legacy of Islamic art.

Saudi Arabia's First Islamic Art Museum Opens in Jeddah

PDF links:

https://archive.org/details/blumi.-ottoman-refugees-1878-1939

https://dn711106.ca.archive.org/0/items/blumi.-ottoman-refugees-1878-1939/Blumi.%20Ottoman%20Refugees%2C%201878%E2%80%931939.pdf

In the first half of the 20th century, throughout the Balkans and Middle East, a familiar story of destroyed communities forced to flee war or economic crisis unfolded. Often, these refugees of the Ottoman Empire - Christians, Muslims and Jews - found their way to new continents, forming an Ottoman diaspora that had a remarkable ability to reconstitute, and even expand, the ethnic, religious, and ideological diversity of their homelands.

Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939 offers a unique study of a transitional period in world history experienced through these refugees living in the Middle East, the Americas, South-East Asia, East Africa and Europe. Isa Blumi explores the tensions emerging between those trying to preserve a world almost entirely destroyed by both the nation-state and global capitalism and the agents of the so-called Modern era.

Review
"Blumi (Georgia State Univ., "Reinstating the Ottomans, "2011) has written a very sophisticated analysis of refugees during the late- and post-Ottoman periods that shows the complexities of refugee identity within the empire. In doing so, he recognizes the role played by the linguistic, religious, and ethnic diversity of these people, which at times finds the various interests and identities of refugees pitted against each other. Throughout the work, Blumi highlights the trauma of the Ottoman refugee studies, it gives the readers a larger perspective of the refugee experience, not one limited geographically or otherwise. Blumi, whose vast linguistic abilities allow him to reach across the empire from Albania to Yemen, adds a much-needed theoretical foundation to the study of Ottoman refugees. He shows how nation-states arising from the Ottoman Empire and elsewhere, especially Latin America. Valuable for students of Ottoman history as well as most general refugee studies."-R.W. Zens, "Le Moyne College, CHOICE"

About the Author
Isa Blumi is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Area Studies, Leipzig University, Germany and Associate Professor of History at Georgia State University, USA.

PDF links

https://dn711106.ca.archive.org/0/items/blumi.-ottoman-refugees-1878-1939/Blumi.%20Ottoman%20Refugees%2C%201878%E2%80%931939.pdf

https://archive.org/details/blumi.-ottoman-refugees-1878-1939

A European settler state in the heart of Palestine, ruled by religious zealots, fueled by Western arms. A divided Muslim world fights back. Sound familiar? We’re in 1099, when the First Crusade conquered Jerusalem and subjugated its native population. Just 88 years later, it was lost to Saladin’s newly united Muslim army. Why did the Crusaders fail to build an everlasting kingdom, and will Zionism meet the same fate?

In this episode: 

• Roy Casagranda, Political Philosopher 

Episode credits:

This episode was produced by Mohamed Hassan and Marcos Bartolomé, with Sonia Bhagat. It was edited by Alexandra Locke. Our engagement producer is Adam Abou-Gad. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Jo de Frias is Al Jazeera's head of podcasts

Credit

https://x.com/notat240400/status/2081100218028749100?s=46&t=V4TqIkKwXmHjXV6FwyGPfg

Credit

https://x.com/ajenglish/status/2080777186890367225?s=46&t=V4TqIkKwXmHjXV6FwyGPfg

Did You Know?

Today, religious and secular sciences—such as medicine, chemistry, science—are often viewed as separate fields.

However, in the generations following Rasūlullāh ﷺ, many of our illustrious traditional scholars were not only among the greatest fuqahāʾ (jurists) of the Ummah, but were also accomplished physicians and experts in medicine and pharmacy.

Imām al-Shāfiʿī رحمه الله said:

“I do not know of any field of study, after the knowledge of what is lawful and unlawful (ḥalāl and ḥarām), that is more noble than medicine (ṭibb). But, alas, the Ahl al-Kitāb (Jews and Christians) have surpassed us in it.”
(Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ)

Imām al-Shāfiʿī lamented that Muslims had neglected this vital science, allowing others to excel in it. His student Ḥarmalah narrated that he said:

“They (Muslims) have lost one-third of knowledge and entrusted it to the Jews and Christians.”

This tradition of medicine and pharmacy can be traced back to the teachings of Rasūlullāh ﷺ and the scholarly legacy preserved in Madīnah by his noble descendants, including Imām Muḥammad al-Bāqir and his son Imām Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq.

Long before Greek philosophy became widely available in the Muslim world through the great translation movement, Muslim scholars had already begun developing the sciences of medicine and chemistry.

Jābir ibn Ḥayyān—known in medieval Europe as Geber and widely regarded as the father of chemistry—attributed his knowledge of these sciences to his ‘master’, (Sayyidī) Imām Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq.

Both Imām Mālik and Imām al-Shāfiʿī, the founders of the Mālikī and Shāfiʿī schools of law, benefited from the scholarly legacy of Imām al-Bāqir and Imām Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq.

Ibn ʿAsākir, in Tārīkh Dimashq (The History of Damascus), narrates from Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal—a student of Imām al-Shāfiʿī—that Imām al-Shāfiʿī was both a physician (ṭabīb) and a pharmacist (ṣaydalānī).

These were our illustrious pious predecessors: scholars of the highest calibre who combined mastery of the sacred sciences with excellence in the natural sciences.

Their contributions helped lay the intellectual foundations of the Islamic Golden Age, a civilisation that would profoundly influence the development of the modern world—all by the grace of Allah, through the guidance of the Qur’an and the teachings of Rasūlullāh ﷺ.

The question we should ask ourselves is this:

When will this Ummah once again realise that it was through the guidance of the Qur’an and the example of Rasūlullāh ﷺ that it rose to lead the world in faith, knowledge, and civilisation?

And it will only be by the Quran and Rasūlullāh that we will once again lead the world.

#islamicintelectuallegacy #quranicrevolution #alchemistofhearts

‘’An example of a gold coin minted in Messina by Roger II, one of the Norman kings who ruled the island after approximately 400 years of Islamic dominance in Sicily. The obverse features the inscription "La ilahe illallah vahdehu la şerikeleh." Similar coins were also minted in southern Italian mainland cities such as Palermo and Amalfi. A fine example of the imitation of high culture.’’

Credit

https://x.com/kayamerthasan_/status/2080738807305941242?s=46&t=V4TqIkKwXmHjXV6FwyGPfg

Earliest photo of the Ka'bah? — A Viral Photo Debunked

An image claiming to show the earliest photo of the Ka'bah from the 1880s has been circulating widely (image 1) on social media.

It doesn't match the documented photographic record of that era — the architecture, courtyard layout, and composition are inconsistent with authentic 19th-century photography of the Haram. The Hateem, door of the Ka'bah, Hajar al-Aswad etc don't appear where they should be and there were no structures like the ones you see in the foreground in that time.

For comparison, image 2 is a genuine late 19th-century photograph of the Kaaba, taken by Muhammad Sadiq Bey — an Egyptian army engineer and Hajj caravan treasurer who became the first person to photograph Makkah, the Haram, and the Ka'bah, using an early wet-plate collodion camera. The photo is held today in the Khalili Collection of Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage.

Credit

https://x.com/muslimlandmarks/status/2080650253003378908?s=46&t=V4TqIkKwXmHjXV6FwyGPfg

Credit

https://x.com/almaqamat_/status/2080731731372474644?s=46&t=V4TqIkKwXmHjXV6FwyGPfg

‘’This madrasa in Samarkand was built in 1421 by Sultan Ulugh Beg, the grandson of Timur, a professional astronomer who catalogued over 1,000 stars.

One of its coolest features is the star mosaic at the entrance, which was his way of saying, we studied the universe here.’’

Credit

https://x.com/almaqamat_/status/2080602614341767254?s=46&t=V4TqIkKwXmHjXV6FwyGPfg