Mission

Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online is a free and open-access online platform of digital resources to aid the teaching and learning of the history of Islamic art, architecture, and visual culture. It currently offers a collection of short-form video talks on Topics and Terms important for the scholarly discipline of Islamic art history. These Topics and Terms, which are available in various languages, are also collected into Themes for subject-based exploration. Additionally, Khamseen supports large-scale, born-digital Projects on various cities, sites, artworks, objects, and materials. Many of these projects result from collaborations with international colleagues, institutions, and foundations.

Khamseen’s resources are intended to support educators and students, particularly those who face limited access to institutional and archival resources. Our endeavor also aims to bring new voices, perspectives, methodologies, artworks, and objects into classrooms and expand access to scholarship in the public domain. Besides catering to undergraduate and graduate students, the pedagogical materials provided here are intended to help lifelong learners and inspire interested audiences outside of academia.

Through this platform, which conjoins Islamic Art History and the Digital Humanities, we seek to take the study of Islamic art out to the world in a completely free, open, and accessible manner. We hope to support continuous learning and reach an international level of engagement thanks to the possibilities of integrated digital technologies. Above all, we aim to build bridges across cultures through the arts.