Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT, was the distinguished speaker this year for the H.A.R. Gibb Arabic and Islamic Studies Lecture Series, established in 1964 in honor of Sir Hamilton A.R. Gibb, who was a director of CMES as well as University Professor and James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic at Harvard. Meredyth Lynn Winter, PhD Candidate in History of Art and Architecture and Middle Eastern Studies, covered the lectures for CMES.... Read more about Variations on a Theme: 2018 H.A.R. Gibb Lectures Delivered by Nasser Rabbat

Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, MIT, delivers the first lecture of the 2018 H.A.R. Gibb Arabic and Islamic Studies Lecture Series. Also see a video of Rabbat's second lecture in the series, and read Meredyth Winter's coverage of both talks.... Read more about Video: The Historian and the City Between Ibn Khaldun and al-Maqrizi

A rare album of artists’ drawings, preparatory sketches, and more helped shape a Harvard Art Museums exhibition about art in 19th-century Iran, co-curated by McWilliams, Norma Jean Calderwood Curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art at the Harvard Art Museums, and CMES Steering Committee member David Roxburgh, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Islamic Art History and chair of the Department of History of Art and Architecture. Read more about the exhibition and related publications in HAM's...

Watch video of panel presentations at the April 7-8 symposium After Dark: Nocturnal Landscapes and Public Spaces in the Arabian Peninsula, co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. And read more about the symposium in the Harvard Crimson and the Ciudades Sostenibles (Sustainable Cities) blog.

In his new book, Paradoxes of Green: Landscapes of a City-State, CMES faculty affiliate Gareth Doherty, assistant professor of landscape architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, captures the tension between staying green and being sustainable. Read a Q&A with Doherty in the Weatherhead Center's Epicenter blog.

On April 7-8, 2017, scholars of history, architecture, design, film, and anthropology gathered to explore nighttime landscapes and public spaces in the Arabian Peninsula at the symposium "After Dark: Nocturnal Activities and Public Spaces in the Arabian Peninsula," organized by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Aga Khan Program at the Graduate School of Design. Michelle Y. Raji covered the symposium for the Harvard...