Islamic art history accounts for fourteen centuries of art, architecture, and visual and material culture produced across the world. Its scope is vast and varied, and extends well beyond Arab lands and the Middle East to incorporate Islamic creative practices stretching from America to China. Khamseen aims to capture this nuance and complexity by providing educators, students, and the public at large with a broad range of digital resources about the Islamic world. Our goal is to not only pry open the field but also engage students and interested audiences in a more global, polyphonous, and interdisciplinary view of Islam, art, and history.
Since launching in August 2020, we have sought to expand the accessibility of Khamseen through the inclusion of closed captioning and foreign-language translation as well as developing new projects. For the former, we are currently translating short-form presentations’ titles and abstracts into six languages, and we hope to provide fully translated closed captioning in the near future. Regarding the latter, we launched a Glossary of Terms in August 2021, which consists of short-form videos by leading scholars who provide concise, engaging, and expansive definitions of key terms for the study of Islamic art, architecture, and visual culture. Looking ahead, we will build out the range of subjects and materials to provide a rich repository of resources in the realm of digital Islamic humanities. Through this platform, we seek to take the study of Islamic art out to the world, reaching a truly international level of engagement and learning thanks to the possibilities of integrated digital technologies.