Moaaz Lafi
Moaaz Lafi is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Architecture Theory, Criticism, and History. He holds an M.A. in Islamic Art and Architecture from The American University in Cairo and a B.A. in Islamic Archaeology from Cairo University. His research is centered on a fundamental question: how was knowledge about the city produced in the medieval Islamic world? Through this inquiry, he examines how historical, intellectual, and juristic writings shaped conceptions of urbanism and urban space, and how these texts have informed our understanding of the Islamic city and its history.
Moaaz’s work focuses particularly on Mamluk Cairo as a site for exploring the relationship between knowledge, urbanism, and power. His M.A. thesis examined the writings of the Mamluk historian and jurist Abu Hamid al-Qudsi, investigating how legal and scholarly discourses contributed to the production of specific conceptions of the city and the organization of its urban space. Working closely with primary sources, especially historical texts, juristic treatises, and biographical dictionaries, he approaches the city as an epistemological problem, exploring the roles of authority, law, institutions, and scholarly networks in shaping the built environment and the meanings attached to it.
While his research begins with Cairo, Moaaz situates Mamluk urbanism within a broader context that extends the medieval Islamic world, with particular interests in the architectural and intellectual traditions of the eastern Islamic lands, Iran, and the Seljuk world. He is also developing a parallel research project on the Prophet’s Mosque, examining the relationship between architecture and sacredness, and investigating how theological and devotional conceptions shaped the sacred space and guided its architectural transformations over time.
During his graduate studies at The American University in Cairo, Moaaz received a scholarship from the Barakat Trust. Beyond his academic work, he has participated in several research and documentation initiatives focused on Cairo’s architectural and urban heritage, including the documentation of the Dome of al-Ashraf Khalil, a project supported by the Egypt Exploration Society.
