Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online is a free and open-access online platform of digital resources to aid the teaching of Islamic art, architecture, and visual culture. It is sponsored by the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan, from which it has received substantial funding. It also has received financial support from DISC, through a grant by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as funding from ARIA and LSA’s Office of the Dean.
Khamseen is spearheaded by Christiane Gruber, Professor of Islamic art at the University of Michigan. The seeds of the project were sown in early 2020, when she and several PhD students began to discuss ways to make Islamic art history more widely accessible online. With the subsequent outbreak of COVID-19 in Spring 2020, the need for reliable scholarly materials became more clear and pressing. In the spirit of change, our initiative was named after the seasonal khamsin winds, and our Arabic-script Khamseen logo includes the abstract design of a wind-catcher (badgir).
Since 2020, Team Khamseen has grown to include to a dozen members. The first stage of the project was achieved in August 2020 with the launch of a collection of Topic presentations created by a group of international experts in Islamic art, which were provided to educators in order to create an engaging and dynamic classroom experience. One year later, in August 2021, Khamseen launched its Glossary of Terms, which features short video presentations explaining the meaning, etymology, and use of key terms relating to Islamic art, architecture, and visual culture. Khamseen is now growing its platform with Concepts, Themes, Projects, teaching resources, and translations with the aim of bringing new voices, subjects, and audiences to the field of Islamic art history. Over the last three years, our pages have been viewed from all over the world over a quarter of a million times, and we look forward to continuing to expand and enrich our content in the future.
On Khamseen’s beginnings, its development, and future plans, we invite you to read more here.
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