This course uses the Mediterranean Sea as a framework for exploring early modern cities under Islamic and Christian rule. We look at key cities – Venice, Istanbul, Aleppo, Granada, Rabat-Salé, and others – tracing contacts between them, and discovering parallels and differences in urban form and architecture. Themes include dialogues with antiquity; religious complexes as urban design; social life and public space; trade and commerce; impacts of disasters and diasporas. We also consider wider global connections such as the intertwined histories of coffee, sugar, and slaves. 

A critical introduction to Islamic heritage in Spain, focusing on key surviving monuments and their complex, often contested afterlives. Each provides a window onto the dynasty that built it, with a range of ideological agendas, construction techniques, and mnemonic devices that track across the Mediterranean from Syria, Palestine, the Maghrib, and beyond. Along with North African exemplars, these structures represent a unique, western Islamic idiom that had a lasting impact on Spanish architecture.

Following defeat of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada in 1492, Islam was gradually banished from the peninsula – yet these monuments survived, openly or in disguise. Their transformations tell intriguing stories about Spaniards’ evolving views of the Islamic past. In this course we supplement historical sources, studies and building/site analysis with theoretical readings on time, memory, and agency in architecture. We explore hybrid methodologies for overcoming archival silences and teasing out new narratives, using the building as the primary text.

Seminar on selected topics from the history of Islamic urbanism. Examines patterns of settlement, urbanization, and architectural production in various places and periods, ranging from the formative period in the 7th century to the new cities emerging today in Asia and Africa. Discusses the leading factors in shaping and transforming urban forms, design imperatives, cultural and economic structures, and social and civic attitudes. Critically analyzes the body of literature on Islamic urbanism. 

Research paper required.

This course offers a wide review of the history of Islamic architecture, tracing fifteen centuries of development across three continents — Asia, Africa, and Europe. Beginning with the House of the Prophet in Medina in the 7th century and culminating with the skyline of contemporary Dubai, the course presents architecture as both a material record and a cultural expression of the historical conditions in which Islam was formed, practiced, and continually reinterpreted.

Each session centers on a city, monument, or building type, while keeping sight of the larger narrative that links diverse regions and periods into a coherent story.  Lectures analyze form, construction techniques, materials, style, ornament, and decoration, as well as the social, religious, political, and cultural frameworks that shaped architectural production.  Particular emphasis is placed on the role of patronage and on the ways architecture served as a stage for identity, power, and community.

Cross-cultural exchanges are examined throughout, from the absorption of Late Antique traditions in early Islam to encounters with the West during the colonial and postcolonial eras. The course concludes by exploring the revival and reinvention of Islamic architecture in the modern age of nation-building, globalization, and rapid urban development.