| Summary: | [Excerpt] The International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA) recently celebrated its tenth anniversary. Scholarship and practice that concern the wider field of Islamic architectural studies rejoiced in the journal’s efforts over the last decade. Indeed, its articles, position papers, and reviews have managed to mediate disciplines elegantly, to negotiate concepts within a broader geography, and to push towards a new approach to the ‘Islamic’ built environment in a transdisciplinary way. When I was invited to write this short essay (initially for IJIA), I could not help but return to its first issue and rediscover what Hasan-Uddin Khan had said in the journal’s inaugural editorial.(1) In his opening address as academic editor of IJIA, Khan outlined some of the persistent interpretations of the subject – such as the conflict or synergy between religion and civilization – and he acknowledged the significant shifts and perceptions of the arts of Islam in the previous decades. Still, he underlined the need for their rereading. In fact, as he put it later in the text, cultural histories of Islam and its arts have to be further deepened within Muslim societies in order to better address the issues of the secular and sacred within the total human experience, so that we might craft a new narrative that searches for new paradigms and proposes novel positions of Islam in global art history. The reference to a compartmentalization of knowledge that refuses to see the arts, and particularly architecture or urban studies, as a hinge for discussing contemporary societal challenges and expressions has been recurrent. This aspect is vividly mirrored in the dichotomy between the image of the city and the curatorial options of museums, both in the Middle East and in western countries. While cities have gone global, whether within the Arab geography or on the European continent, museums have encapsulated an enduring vision that is, in a certain way, an orientalist gaze towards the lands of the Islam. So, what is the epistemological canvas of knowledge now: city or display? What is the becoming? [...]
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