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Using a single light suspend-ed from the ceiling to shine through a laser-cut sculpture in wood that is painted black, Pakistani-American artist Anila Quayyum Agha transforms the Rice Art Gallery in Houston into an allusion to Islamic sacred spaces where geometric ornamentation and patterns themselves allude to the infinity of creation. The artwork was inspired, Agha says, by her visit to the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, where the Nasrid palace’s all-encompassing beauty of interlacing designs prompted re-flection upon her own childhood in Lahore, Pakistan, where culture barred her and other women from the creativity and community of the mosque—an experience she says...

A ninth century library in Morocco, widely believed to be the oldest in the world, is going digital to make its ancient treasures available to a wider audience. The al-Qarawiyyin library in the former Moroccan capital, Fez, is home to some of the rarest and most unique manuscripts in the world, with access limited to just the curator in some special cases. However, the library installed a new laboratory this year to oversee the protection and digitalizing of the 4,000 manuscripts on site in conjunction with the Institute of Computational Linguistics in Italy. "The main aim is to provide means...

Adria Lawrence speaks about about the recent elections in Morocco on this week’s Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) podcast with Marc Lynch, “The outcome isn’t really surprising, though very few people expected a big surprise. The PJD [Party of Justice and Development, a moderate Islamist-oriented party]  took more seats than its rival.” Adria Lawrence is Associate Professor of Political Science and a research fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. Her research reflects her expertise in the politics of the Middle East and North Africa. Listen to the full conversation above.

Accounts of travel from the Maghreb to the rest of the world have given birth to a particular literary genre known as rihla. Over the centuries Maghribi scholars traveled to the Mashriq for religious purposes, namely to accompish pilgrimage (rihla hijaziya). Others recorded their travel experience to European countries when they were part of official embassies (rihla sifariya). In both cases the writers of these travel accounts wanted to share their experience with their countrymen and underline how much their culture was different. Today scholars from different disciplines resort to these travel accounts which are a mine of information that...

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