Al Jazeera 29/9/2026, AJ Labs
The Royal Armouries’ collection of Asian arms and armour is among the finest in the world. With the aid of stunning photography, former Deputy Master Thom Richardson outlines a rich and vibrant diversity of military cultures from the Ottoman Empire to East Asia. The book provides fascinating information about medieval Islam, the Ottoman Turks, the Arabian Peninsula, Islamic kingdoms of North Africa, Iran and Iraq, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, India and Indonesia.
A beautifully illustrated catalogue of a world-class collection of arms and armour from Asia, Africa and the Ottoman world.
Brimming with bejewelled and enamelled dagger hilts, swords and scabbards, and with delicately gilded spears, helmets, shields and breastplates, the Wallace Collection is home to one of the finest assemblages of arms and armour in the world.
The pieces within the collection provide an expansive view of three key areas – Asia, Africa and the Ottoman world – and span the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, with star objects dating from as early as the 15th century. Being both functional weapons and prestigious luxury items, objects in this area of the collection are fascinating and awe-inspiring both for their technical achievements and artistic virtuosity.
This richly illustrated catalogue, compiled by leading specialists in the field, is a landmark achievement and shines a light on a previously overlooked part of the Wallace Collection. It provides detailed photographs of almost every object, each accompanied by a description of its provenance, materials, inscriptions and construction. Also included is an introduction to the subject and a history of the collecting of non-European arms and armour by the 4th Marquess of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace.
The House of Fāṭimah (رضي الله عنها) – Inside the Sacred Chamber, al-Masjid an-Nabawī, Madinah
This spot lies within the golden grilles that surround the Prophet's ﷺ resting place, and it is all that remains of the home of his youngest daughter, Fāṭimah az-Zahrāʾ (رضي الله عنها), and her husband ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (رضي الله عنه).
Their home stood directly north of the room of ʿĀʾishah رضي الله عنها, where the Prophet ﷺ is buried. The two homes were separated only by a wall, so the Prophet ﷺ was always within a few steps of his daughter.
In 88–91 AH / 707–710 CE, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (رحمه الله) rebuilt the mosque on the orders of the caliph al-Walīd, and the Prophet's ﷺ wives' apartments were brought into the building. Part of Fāṭimah's (رضي الله عنها) house went inside the new five-sided wall around the Prophet's ﷺ resting place.
Today the site is inside the grille enclosure put up by the Mamluk Sultan Qāytbāy after the great fire of 886 AH / 1481 CE. The door on the eastern side of the enclosure is still called Bāb Fāṭimah, the Door of Fāṭimah.
Behind the house, on its northern side, the Prophet ﷺ is reported to have spread a mat at night and prayed Tahajjud. That spot was later marked as the Miḥrāb at-Tahajjud.
The cloth-draped structure is known as Sarīr Fāṭimah, "the Bed of Fāṭimah". It is not a grave. It is a raised, box-like structure dressed in the same green-and-red kiswah style used inside the Sacred Chamber.
For centuries it served a practical purpose. Gifts sent to the Prophet's ﷺ Mosque by sultans, royal women and dignitaries (lamps, silver and gold) were stored in chests beneath it. Much of this treasury was taken to Istanbul in the Ottoman era and is now in the Topkapı Palace collections.
Credit
https://x.com/muslimlandmarks/status/2103447922197053553?s=46&t=V4TqIkKwXmHjXV6FwyGPfg
Season two of Lessons from the Past continues with Dr. Roy Casagranda exploring the history of al-Andalus and the world that emerged in medieval Iberia before the Reconquista.
Beginning with the decline of the Roman Empire and the rise of Visigothic rule, this lecture traces the arrival of Arab forces in Iberia in the eighth century, the establishment of Muslim rule, and the emergence of Córdoba as one of the most important political, cultural, and intellectual centers of medieval Europe.
Drawing from history, politics, religion, architecture, music, and law, Dr. Roy explores the Umayyad rulers of al-Andalus, the communities of Muslims, Christians, and Jews who inhabited the region, the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, and influential figures including Ziryab and Lubna of Córdoba. The lecture follows the political struggles that eventually fractured the Caliphate of Córdoba into competing taifa states and helped set the stage for the centuries of conflict that followed.
Rather than approaching the period as a simple struggle between Muslims and Christians, the lecture examines a far more interconnected world shaped by shifting alliances, cultural exchange, migration, conflict, and the movement of ideas across religious and political boundaries.
This lecture serves as Part I of Dr. Roy’s exploration of the Reconquista, establishing the historical world that existed before the conflict took the form remembered today.
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00:00 Introduction
01:53 Texas Divorce Law and al-Andalus
09:00 Muslims and Christians in Medieval Iberia
14:07 Who Lived in the Iberian Peninsula?
22:27 Tariq ibn Ziyad and the Conquest of Iberia
31:54 The Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba
40:34 Al-Hakam I and Umayyad Rule
46:14 The Song of Roland: History vs. Legend
50:25 The Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba
56:26 Culture and Power in al-Andalus
01:04:00 Ziryab and the Cultural Legacy of al-Andalus
01:10:22 The Martyrs of Córdoba
01:13:33 Abd al-Rahman III and the Caliphate of Córdoba
01:18:48 Lubna of Córdoba and the Great Library
01:22:47 Subh and the Politics of the Caliphate
01:39:01 Al-Mansur, the Taifa Kingdoms, and the Road to the Reconquista
Saylac was once considered the chief port of the Horn of Africa, serving as the maritime outlet for the medieval Ifat and Adal Sultanates that connected interior trade routes across the Gulf of Aden.
Built during this era of regional commerce, the Shahari Mosque reflects the practical reality of Red Sea Islamic architecture. Local craftsmen built it using thick, porous coral stone bound with sea-lime mortar, which allowed the structure to breathe in high humidity and keep interior spaces cool without relying on heavy ornamental facades.
When major maritime routes shifted toward Berbera and Djibouti in the late 19^(th) and early 20^(th) centuries, Saylac quietened down and left its medieval core largely disconnected from modern infrastructure investment. Without dedicated conservation budgets or protective site management, decades of salt air, coastal winds and foundation erosion reduced the mosque to a fragile ruin. Today, its remaining walls stand exposed on the shore, facing the constant threat of total collapse.
Preserving sites like this matters because Somali spatial history reaches far beyond Xamar and the Banaadir coast. These ruins show how northern maritime settlements developed a distinct architectural identity grounded in regional trade, local material craft and environmental adaptation.
Thanks to the wonderful u/xasuuso, an interactive 3D digital modelling lets us step inside its geometry, study its proportions and ensure this heritage stays active in our collective memory. Feel free to explore more buildings and Somali history here: https://www.xasuu.so/
What is your favourite ancient Somali structure?
Abdul Latif Hashim and Haneen Al-Amassi have been awarded the $40,000 Unesco/Jikji Memory of the World Prize.
The House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) is one of the most mythologized institutions in history, but what do the actual medieval sources say? In this video, we separate legend from evidence, tracing what the House of Wisdom really was in Abbasid Baghdad & what role it played in the translation movement.
Sources/Recommended Reading:
Dodge, Bayard (translated by) (1970). "The Fihrist of al-Nadim: A Tenth Century Survey of Muslim Culture". Columbia University Press.
El-Hibri, Tayeb (2021). "The Abbasid Caliphate". Cambridge University Press.
Gutas, Dimitri (1998). "Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early 'Abbasaid Society (2nd-4th/5th-10th c.)". Routledge.
Kennedy, Hugh (2006). "When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World: The Rise and Fall of Islam's Greatest Dynasty". Da Capo Press.
The Encyclopedia of Islam. Brill.
Ibn 'Arabi's famous "Religion of Love" verses are some of the most striking lines in Islamic mysticism - a declaration that the heart can take the form of every temple, church, and shrine. In this episode, we do a deep dive into the poem itself, its context in the Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, and what it reveals about Ibn 'Arabi's views on love, God, and universality in Sufi thought.
Sources/Recommended Reading:
Abdel-hadi, Faris (2024). "Ibn ‘Arabi’s Religious Pluralism: Levels of Inclusivity". Routledge.
Addas, Claude (1993). "Quest for the Red Sulphur". The Islamic Texts Society.
Ali, Mukhtar H. (2023). "Philosophical Sufism: An Introduction to the School of Ibn al-'Arabi". Routledge.
Chittick, William (1989). "The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn 'Arabi's Metaphysics of Imagination".
Caner Dagli (translated by) (2004). Ibn 'Arabi - "The Ringstones of Wisdom (Fusus al-Hikam)". Great Books of the Islamic World. Kazi Pubns Inc.
Dickson, William Rory (2024). "Dissolving into Being: The Wisdom of Sufi Philosophy". Anqa Publishing.
Ibn 'Arabi - "The Openings Revealed in Makkah: al-futuhat al-makkiyya". Translated by Eric Winkel. Volumes 1-7. Pir Press.
Nicholson's Translation of the Tarjuman (Published by different houses.
Sells, Michael (translated by) (2021). "The Translator of Desires: Poems". Princeton University Press.
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As Israeli strikes leveled museums and 5,000-year-old sites across Gaza, volunteers dug through the rubble by hand to save what they could. Meanwhile, looted artifacts quietly resurfaced in a Paris exhibition.
In the rubble of a bombed site in Khan Younis, a group of volunteers in yellow high-visibility vests work in near silence.
They have no tools but their hands, relentless determination, and the knowledge that what lies beneath the debris is irreplaceable.
Carefully, they lift carved stone fragments and pottery vessels by hand, wrap ceramic pieces in whatever protective material they can find, and admire ancient statues, shattered on the ground, dating back thousands of years.
The volunteers are part of the Heritage Guardians Team, an initiative affiliated with the Mayasem Association for Culture and Arts. Although Israeli shelling never stopped rocking Gaza, they’ve been trying — carefully, methodically, and with bare hands — to save what remains of the Strip’s archaeological heritage before it disappears entirely under the rubble.
According to Hamouda al-Dahdar, director of the Department of Archaeological Sites and Excavations at Gaza’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Israeli forces systematically and deliberately targeted many of Gaza’s archaeological sites, most of which had remained closed throughout the war. “They were attacked without any apparent military justification,” he told Mondoweiss.
Before the war, the Gaza Strip was home to archaeological sites and artifacts from periods spanning more than 5,000 years of continuous human civilization. Nearly every part of the territory contained an archaeological site or historical remains, while five major museums preserved the vast majority of artifacts unearthed across Gaza.
But the ongoing genocide has left virtually nothing untouched. Beyond the destruction of homes, civilian infrastructure, and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, the war has also devastated archaeological sites and artifacts painstakingly excavated and preserved over decades. Many have also been taken out of Gaza, in what the Strip’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities regards as theft.
Systematic destruction
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, more than 500 archaeological and historical sites have been damaged since the war began.
“Among the greatest losses to Israel’s ruthless and blanket bombing is the Qarara Archaeological Museum, which housed more than 3,500 artifacts, some dating back over five millennia,” Yousef al-Abadla, a Palestinian journalist and member of Mayasem, tells Mondoweiss. The museum was destroyed during the war, and not a single artifact could be recovered as it fell behind the Yellow Line, which Israel prohibits Gazans from crossing.
Al-Abadla told Mondoweiss that the war has inflicted catastrophic damage on virtually every archaeological site in the territory. “Among the hardest hit is Hammam al-Sammara, which is over 1,000 years old; the Great Omari Mosque, a 2000-year-old architectural and historical treasure; and Qasr al-Basha, a 900-year-old place that was turned into a museum in the Old City of Gaza,” he noted.
The Byzantine Church in Jabalia, which dates back to the time of Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II, who reigned between 408 and 450 AD, and Tal Rafah, the ruins of a Roman-era brick building dating to 63 BC, have both been bulldozed.
“Many of Gaza’s oldest archaeological sites, some dating back more than two or three millennia, are located inside the Israeli-controlled Yellow Line. These include the Byzantine Church and Tell Rafah,” al-Dahdar said. “Both of which have been completely bulldozed and reduced to rubble.”
As of March 2026, UNESCO has verified damageto 164 cultural heritage sites in Gaza since October 2023, including eight archaeological sites and two museums. The agency has called on all parties to adhere to the 1954 Hague Convention, which prohibits occupying powers from destroying cultural heritage — a convention Israel has signed.
Salvaging history with bare hands
All five of Gaza’s principal museums suffered damage during the genocide, with those that escaped destruction left severely damaged.
Al-Abadla says the al-Aqqad Museum in Khan Younis — a private collection belonging to Palestinian antiquities collector Walid al-Aqqad containing hundreds of artifacts — was also destroyed. Only a small portion of its contents was recovered.
What the Heritage Guardians Team managed to salvage was transferred to the Mayasem Association’s headquarters in Khan Younis, but wartime preservation is its own threat. Al-Dahdar explained that the departure of archaeology specialists recruited abroad during the war, combined with a complete lack of specialized equipment, has made the work increasingly precarious. Given the age and fragility of many objects, improper recovery risks irreversible damage.
Al-Dahdar describes one particularly devastating sequence. During the first ceasefire, following Israeli withdrawals from certain areas, damaged artifacts were collected and moved to a storage site inside a residential building.
“Although many had already been damaged, the collection suffered another devastating blow when the building itself was later bombed,” he said. “Many of the artifacts that had been rescued were destroyed.”
Taken out of Gaza
The most contentious chapter in the story of Gaza’s wartime heritage involves not destruction, but removal.
Between April 3 and December 7, 2025, France hosted an exhibition organized by the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, titled “Saved Treasures from Gaza: 5,000 Years of History.” The exhibition presented itself as a rescue operation, with artifacts removed from Gaza during the genocide, displayed publicly to preserve and celebrate Palestinian cultural heritage at a moment of catastrophic loss. The institution’s website says the Palestinian Authority supported the exhibition.
Gaza’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities sees it differently.
The ministry says it had no involvement in the exhibition and insists that no international institution coordinated with it before the artifacts were removed. It maintains that they were taken out of the territory through illegal means.
“This is theft, not protection,” al-Dahdar said. “If the objective had truly been to safeguard these artifacts, they would have been transferred to the custody of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — not to France.”
He suggests that any arrangements concerning the artifacts may instead have taken place with Israeli authorities, without the participation of Palestinian institutions in Gaza. Attempts by Mondoweiss to reach the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris for comments, by email and telephone, went unanswered.
According to al-Dahdar, international human rights organizations have been in contact with Gaza’s authorities regarding the missing artifacts, and efforts are underway to secure their return.
Not everyone who encountered the exhibition shares the ministry’s framing. Qassam Muaddi, a Palestinian journalist who visited the Paris exhibition, found himself holding both responses at once.
“I believe that celebrating Gaza’s 5,000-year history in this way is important in times of genocide – as a response to the attempts to erase Gaza’s identity and history,” he said. “But it hurts a little to see that Palestinian life needs to be destroyed in order to give Palestine’s history some recognition. It is as if Palestine’s history isn’t recognized unless Palestine’s present is destroyed — and that recognition always has to take place outside of Palestine.”
During the 1948 Nakba, Zionist occupation forces and militias depopulated and destroyed more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages.
*The Scale of Destruction
Displacement: Over 750,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes and became refugees.
Depopulation: Around 530 villages and several major urban centers were emptied or leveled.
Timeline: The campaign of mass expulsion and village destruction escalated significantly leading up to and following the establishment of the occupation "Israel" on May 14, 1948.
When you lift your head up, another world begins on the ceiling!
Ceilings in the historical buildings of Uzbekistan are perhaps one of the most impressive details of architecture. Geometric patterns, embroidery and flower motifs and gold details create a different composition in each ceiling in the structures spanning from Semerkant to Hive, from Buhara to Tashkent.
Some meet you on the dome of a madrasa, some on the ceiling of a palace. Star shapes, repetitive geometric patterns, and intense use of color carry traces of a tradition of decoration that has flourished in the region's architecture for centuries.
1 Tilla-Kari Medresesi - Semerkant
2 Shah is Alive - Samerkant
3 Bolo Hauz Camii - Buhara
4 Stone Courtyard Palace (Stone-Hovli) - Hive
5 Center of Islamic Culture - Tashkent
As Israel removes millions of tonnes of rubble from Palestine’s Gaza, rights groups warn that crime scenes, human remains and evidence of Israeli crimes could be disappearing with it.
Tel Aviv, which controls access to areas under Israeli military occupation amid its ongoing blockade of Gaza, continues to deny access to the besieged Palestinian territory to independent international investigators.
From those killed and still missing beneath the rubble to the erasure of Palestinian homes and communities, the question is not only how Gaza will be rebuilt, but also what will remain as evidence of Israel’s genocide.