Pishtaq

Categorized as Terms

Pishtaq

Leslee Michelsen

Related Terms:

  • Caravanserai (inn for caravans, merchants and their wares) 
  • Chatri (small, elevated dome-shaped pavilions)
  • Iwan (three-sided, vaulted structure) 
  • Madrasa (establishment of learning, particularly of the Islamic sciences) 
  • Muqarnas (ornamental molding) 

Related Khamseen Videos:

Yael Rice, “Jahangir’s Dream,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 16 October 2020.

Denise-Marie Teece, “Monsoon Winds and Ming Porcelains: Collecting and Displaying Chinese Ceramics at the Mughal Court,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 10 March 2022.

References:

Blair, Sheila S. “Pishtaq”, The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art and Architecture, Jonathan M. Bloom and Sheila S. Blair (eds), Oxford Islamic Studies Online.  

Hillenbrand, Robert. Islamic Architecture. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.

Golombek, Lisa and Ebba Koch. “The Mughals, Uzbeks, and the Timurid Legacy”, A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture, Finbarr Barry Flood and Gülru Neçipoğlu (eds), Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2017, 811–845.

Knobloch, Edgar. Monuments of Central Asia. London: I.B. Tauris, 2001.

Michelsen, Leslee Katrina. “Iran and Central Asia, 651–1250”, Sir Banister Fletcher’s A Global History of Architecture, London: RIBA/Bloomsbury, 2020, 558–78.

Citation:

Leslee Michelsen, “Pishtaq,” Khamseen: Islamic Art History Online, published 24 October 2023.

Leslee Katrina Michelsen (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) is a Board Member and Programs Committee Co-Chair at ICOM-US. From 2017-2023 she was the Senior Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design in Honolulu, where she led the team responsible for the exhibition, interpretation, research, and conservation of the museum’s collection of historic and contemporary arts of the Islamic world. She was also the Head of the Curatorial and Research Section at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar from 2011-2016, and has worked on numerous cultural heritage and archaeology projects throughout Central Asia, South Asia, and East Africa. She is a specialist of materiality and making from the historic to the contemporary periods in Central and South Asia, and of myriad mediums ranging from architecture to ceramics to textiles. She also explores contemporary museology of the arts of the Islamic world, and serves on the Steering Committee of Steppe Sisters as well as the museum grantmaking initiatives of the National Endowment for the Arts.