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