The Southern cross, Boghdad/Boghdod or Moghdad is widely seen in West Africa and Southern Morocco. This type of pendant seems to be strongly connected to the Moors, and those with contact with the Moors, including the nomadic peoples in the Western part of the Sahara and all the other related groups as well as those who came… Continue Reading
A presentation by Professor Henrique Leitao in association with the publication of The Global City: On the Streets of Renaissance Lisbon at the London gallery of Michael Backman This is a transcript of the introduction an presentation given on the 18th November 2015. Annemarie Jordan Gschwend was shown a truly awkward painting, a very peculiar… Continue Reading
There existed in the 19th century in Bukhara the largest and finest collective of Islamic Artists and craftsmen. The region around Bukhara has been inhabited for at least five millennia, and the city has existed for half that time. Located on the Silk Road the city has long been a center of trade, scholarship, culture,… Continue Reading
Since the first travel accounts of Morocco were made by Arab and European explorers during the Middle Ages the jewellery of North Africa has aroused great interest. A plethora of ethnologists, during the colonial era made journeys, during which they gathered many fine examples to create the exhibits of the European museums, notedly those museums… Continue Reading
Sir Marc Aurel Stein (1862-1943) was born in Budapest in 1862. He studied Sanskrit, Old Persian, Indology and philology at the universities of Vienna, Leipzig and Tübingen, and map-making as part of his military service in Budapest, before setting out for a career in India. His formal positions from 1888 onwards were as registrar of… Continue Reading